Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Texas police commander says race cost him promotion

A veteran Austin police commander has sued City Manager Toby Futrell, former Police Chief Stan Knee and incoming Police Chief Art Acevedo, saying he was denied a promotion to assistant chief because he is white. Cmdr. Harold Piatt claims in the seven-page suit filed late Tuesday in U.S. District Court that he was the victim of a years-long police department practice of "racial set-asides for positions for assistant chief."

Piatt, who now supervises the department's homicide unit, said that he was the most qualified person in the department for the job last year but that the position was given to Cmdr. Charlie Ortiz, who is Hispanic. Piatt has been with the department since 1979, three years longer than Ortiz. Ortiz was one of two assistant chief promotions Knee made in March 2006. Knee also promoted Assistant Chief David Carter, who is white. Acting Police Chief Cathy Ellison demoted Ortiz to the rank of commander in January but has not publicly stated the reason for her decision. Ortiz has since filed a complaint with the city's civil service commission, saying that Ellison retaliated against him for defending an officer's use of force and that his job performance had never been questioned. The department now has three assistant chiefs: one Hispanic, Leo Enriquez, who replaced Ortiz; and two whites, including acting Assistant Chief Julie O'Brien.

In his suit, Piatt said Knee told a group of commanders in a January 2006 meeting that he would "exercise his prerogative to maintain the racial balance" among assistant police chiefs. "The Austin Police Department has a longstanding policy of employing racial set-asides for positions of police chief," the suit said. "This policy, in existence since at least the mid-1990s, is unwritten, unjustified and unlawful."

City spokesman Gene Acuna said city officials are aware of Piatt's lawsuit and are reviewing it. The suit also claims that Austin City Council members weigh in on assistant chief appointments, which is in violation of the city charter. Piatt declined to comment on the lawsuit Wednesday. He said Acevedo was named as a "replacement defendant" for Knee, who is now working as a mentor to the minister of the interior in Afghanistan.

Source



Black racism in Mississippi

A federal judge has ruled that a majority black county in eastern Mississippi violated whites' voting rights in what prosecutors said was the first lawsuit to use the Voting Rights Act on behalf of whites. U.S. District Judge Tom S. Lee ruled late Friday that Noxubee County Democratic Party leader Ike Brown and the county Democratic Executive Committee "manipulated the political process in ways specifically intended and designed to impair and impede participation of white voters and to dilute their votes."

The Justice Department accused Brown of trying to limit whites' participation in local elections in violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, written to protect racial minorities when Southern states strictly enforced segregation. "Every American has the right to vote free from racial discrimination," said Wan J. Kim, assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. "The court's ruling is another victory in the department's vigorous efforts to protect the voting rights of all Americans," Kim said.

Noxubee County is a rural area along the Alabama line with a population of about 12,500, of whom 70 percent are black. Brown did not immediately return calls Saturday from The Associated Press seeking comment. The Justice Department alleged in the 2006 lawsuit that Noxubee County blacks tried to shut whites out of the voting process. Brown had claimed the Justice Department was misconstruing as racial intimidation his attempts to keep Republicans from voting in Democratic primaries.

Lee, who presided over the case without a jury, gave attorneys on both sides until July 29 to file briefs suggesting how to end the discrimination. The case was a civil matter carrying no criminal penalties, but defendants who violate Lee's final order could face contempt of court charges and fines, prosecutors said.

Ricky Walker, who is white and the county's prosecuting attorney, believes Brown recruited an opponent to run against Walker in 2003 simply because of Walker's race. "We're glad to be getting it over with so we move on and get to the point where maybe we can just have fair, honest, impartial elections here and just go about our business and not have to go through all this circus to get an election done," said Walker, who was a Justice Department witness during the trial in January. Walker, who is unopposed this year, said the lawsuit created some unrest in the county "that we were getting past ... blacks and whites starting to support people on their ability to fulfill the job rather than just strictly a political or racial basis."

The judge said there was a pattern to Brown's efforts to keep all whites out of the county's Democratic Party, including holding party caucuses in private homes rather than public voting precincts and inviting only blacks to the meetings.

Lee said he could not find that the defendants had a specific animosity against white people. "Brown, in fact, claims a number of whites as friends," Lee wrote. "However, there is no doubt from the evidence presented at trial that Brown, in particular, is firmly of the view that blacks, being the majority race in Noxubee County, should hold all elected offices, to the exclusion of whites; and this view is apparently shared by his allies and associates on the NDEC, who, along with Brown, effectively control the election process in Noxubee County."

Source



More than geography divides America

Go West to discover the true America of patriots and humanitarians, writes Irwin Stelzer

"Go west, young man, go west," newspaper editor Horace Greeley advised ambitious 19th-century Americans as their nation pursued its manifest destiny. Well, it may have been Greeley or perhaps John Babsone Lane Soule, editor of the Terre Haute (Indiana) Daily Express. No matter the author: the advice is as applicable today as it was 150 years ago, and not only for young men.

After a stint in the rancorous atmosphere of the nation's capital, I headed west on a business trip to fulfil speaking engagements and attend meetings at Arizona's most venerable law firm, Snell & Wilmer. At one of those meetings I was reminded that Washington, DC, is not America, that patriotism and civility remain dominant strains in American life and that the American west is not the same as the West Side of Manhattan, where love of country is confined to an appreciation of the virtues of country houses scattered across Long Island.

The audience for my talk included 400 lawyers and a smattering of spouses. The session's chairman began by welcoming back a partner who had been serving with the marines in Iraq. With no prompting, the audience sprang to its feet and bathed the returnee in waves of applause. Some wept. I later found that the firm had made up the difference between the partner's military pay and what he would have earned at the firm, and that it is doing the same for a woman serving as a captain in the army in Iraq.

Flash back to Washington. Newspapers report atrocities American soldiers are allegedly committing in Iraq; Democratic politicians speechify on the uselessness of the sacrifices of our troops; and it takes a mighty battle by George W. Bush to prise funds from Congress to pay for the armour and ammunition needed by American servicemen and women.

In Phoenix and the west (for these purposes Hollywood and San Francisco count as part of the east), patriotism is considered a virtue; in some Washington circles it is thought to be the last refuge of scoundrels or something practised only by uncool rednecks.

Differences over Iraq are only the most obvious manifestation of the east-west divide. Go west and you get a sense of the possible, a sense that deserts can become townhouses, country clubs and shopping centres; that families matter so much that the baseball field includes an adjacent swimming pool for use by children too young to appreciate the game; that a vast increase in population represents hands to work rather than bodies to hasten global warming.

But you also understand why Congress's popularity rating languishes in the 25 per cent range, alongside Bush's. The President and Congress are pushing an immigration bill that includes a form of amnesty for the 11 million, or 12million, or 13 million illegal aliens, most of whom have slipped across the border in pursuit of jobs that pay little by US standards but handsomely by those of Mexico's mismanaged economy.

Arizonans are outraged. Washington lawmakers see downtrodden workers; Washington lobbyists see a source of willing, cheap labour for their business clients. Arizonans see crowded schools, increased pressure on hospital facilities, rising crime and politicians out of touch with reality. But they nevertheless create water stations in the desert to prevent illegal migrants from dying of dehydration. They would be more generous to these strangers in a strange land if experience with prior amnesties hadn't proved such generosity serves as an invitation to the next wave of immigrants. So they want a fence, about 3200km long and virtually impenetrable.

But in the end, when it comes down to one-on-one relationships, the folks we met in Phoenix are welcoming to the new wave of immigrants. That's because immigrants work and westerners are about wealth creation: building houses, shopping centres, stadiums, businesses, new schools. Contrast this with most Washingtonians, who are about redistributing the wealth that others create. When people take a long view and see a pie that is growing, they have no need to fight over the crumbs. But Washington's politicians and lobbyists have a short-term view. For them the pie is fixed and their job is to rob Peter to pay Paul, who is probably planning to rob Frank or Joe. Wealth-creation energises, redistribution saps pride.

Source

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.


For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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