From The Detroit News today, we get a rough idea of how left wing ideologues operate;
DETROIT — The state’s largest city has no immediate plans to stop giving favor to businesses owned by minorities and women, despite the state ban on racial and gender preferences that begins Saturday.
Detroit gives extra points to minority- and female-owned companies when assessing bids for city contracts. Those efforts to encourage diversity will continue beyond Saturday, said Matt Allen, a spokesman for Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
The city will not be violating the state law, Allen said Thursday, because city officials believe affirmative action is a federal issue, not a state one.
And the idea that discrimination… of which this set aside is clearly an example… is not a moral one, eh? And what of the morality, or more correctly the lack thereof, of not following the will of the voters?
And on a side note, in the same paper, we see that Michigan’s population is dropping, rather dramatically. Given that people are exiting California at a similar rate, and their politics are similar in each state.. increasingly moonbat left, one might almost detect a pattern, here.
The phenomenon that we witnessed following hurricane Katrina, where most of the people from New Orleans didn’t bother going back, was about as damning a judgment against the city and state administration… all Democrats… as you could find. Most news outlets, however didn’t bother making the connection between the two situations. Those people who didn’t come back apparently don’t count for much.
But given what we see going on in Detroit, versus the population trends there, and what we’ve seen for many years going on in California, and the population trends there… well, it actually somebody’s going to figure out that there’s a connection between the politics and the people leaving. The press has already tipped its hand on this; they’re not going to report on the connection between the two situations.
But one could wonder, logically, if eventually that exodus would change the politics in the affected areas, at all? And the likely answer, is, alas, no. Mostly, because by the time people figure out two plus two dozen equal four, all that will be left in the affected areas is the moon bats. In short the asylum is being run by the inmates, now.
Tags: BitsBlog, Democrats, Social Issues
December 22nd, 2006 at 16:27
Sad to say, but Mayor Kilpatrick is probably right that, as stated in the linked story, the matter “will eventually be settled in federal court†and that “states cannot just opt out.â€
I gather from the article that the concern of the voters who passed Proposal 2 was to do away with programs that go *beyond* federal requirements to promote diversity. Yet it seems there is considerable disagreement between affirmative action friends and foes as to what the Feds actually require.
Ultimately, and particularly in the area of set-asides and aggressive affirmative action, they seem to require everything they recommend and everything anybody dreams up to as a new way funnel money away from people who make it on their own.
It’ll be a miracle if any current programs in Michigan which give preference to minorities or women are ever found, in court, to be *not* federally required and therefore capable of being stopped. The requirements are just nuts.
More than a decade ago, I worked for the general contractor on a large federal construction project. At one point, a crane operator had to be replaced. As a matter of federally required course, the project manager had to aggressively seek female applicants. And it wasn’t sufficient to tag on a line in local media and trade publication ads, saying “Equal Opportunity Employer†or even “Women and minorities encouraged to apply.†He had to advertise – for a crane operator – in women’s magazines. I mean like Mademoiselle, Ladies Home Journal, stuff like that. Seriously. I don’t recall exactly which magazines he targeted, but he had to keep copies showing the ad. And, of course, he had to hold the position open for some particular period of time – 30 days or so – in case a woman did decide to apply. I remember that no woman ever applied and, if I’m not mistaken, that lack of a female applicant necessitated additional paperwork with, of course, copies of the magazine ads attached.
Just absolutely crazy. And, as far as the project manager – and his employer – could descry, absolutely federally mandated.
December 22nd, 2006 at 22:26
Then this becomes a ‘states rights’ issue, doesn’t it?
December 23rd, 2006 at 14:53
One of the proponents of Prop. 2 is brandishing not states rights but individual’s rights against the feds in this fight. It says here (http://tinyurl.com/yhjffy) that the Washington-based Center for Individual Rights, representing an applicant to University of Michigan Law School, is seeking to overturn the ruling that extends the deadline for implementing Prop. 2 in three Michigan universities.
You may recall that the University of Michigan Law School had its affirmative action policies upheld by the Supremes in 2003, after they were challenged by rejected applicant Barbara Grutter, a woman just a bit too white and/or Asian to enhance the Law School’s diversity.
It’s interesting that, at least in the Wikipedia write-up I read (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grutter_v._Bollinger), the 2003 ruling is represented as *allowing* rather than requiring public universities to “use race as a plus factor in determining whether a student should be admitted.†And Justice Thomas, in dissenting, referred to “the deference the Court pays to the Law School’s educational judgments.†Yet the O’Connor opinion is also represented as settling the question of diversity being a “compelling governmental interest,†at least in higher education.
I guess this is the kind of linguistic muddle that occurs when the state takes on the responsibility of fine-tuning the respective rights of every person and group of persons that can be parsed out as an entity to be governed. It wasn’t the federal government, but rather the law school that held Grutter’s race against her in evaluating her application. But the feds allowed it because of its compelling interest in enabling the enhancement of diversity here and there. Nothing personal.
It doesn’t seem like the affirmative action express is going to be derailed any time or any place soon, but good luck to the people of Michigan.