I discovered this for myself one day about two years ago when I was looking to write a blog attacking Novak, who died of a cancerous brain tumor today. In searching around I stumbled on a photograph featuring a group of African American kids and adults holding what looked like a plaque and an elderly Caucasian man dressed like...Robert Novak. This photo:
I fell out of my chair.
See, Novak has a well-cultivated and well-deserved reputation as a muckraking "Prince of Darkness" all the way down to the black three-piece suits he wore on television. I saw Novak as the kind of conservative one loves to hate, but I never thought of him as racist, just cold blooded, especially in the way he outed Valerie Plame. But that photo, and this one:
..changed my view of him - Novak has a heart - and then more so when I learned that these picts were from Youth Leadership Foundation (YLF) events, and that Novak was more than just a visitor, he was on the board of directors. Moreover, Novak contributed not a small amount of money to YLF. At their 2005 awards gathering he contributed $50,000.
Now, even if that may not have been all his own money - some board members get credit for causing others to donate - the effort required to raise $50,000 for any non-profit organization is considerable. Plus, the contribution was just for that event; Novak has been involved with YLF almost since its creation in 1997.
What does YLF do? It's based in Washington DC and has the charge of helping young people from DC's poorest neighborhoods between 8 and 15 years old who are "just passing" and need some attention and guidance to help them make the extra effort in school and in life to reach their potential.
Novak was as involved in YLF as he was in giving Washington politicians a headache. Today, you'll read a lot of blogs and columns about Novak, almost all of them referring to his work as a columnist. Well, that's not all there was to Novak. The "Prince of Darkness" as it turned out, was his stage name. It's not surprise that donations in Novak's name are to be directed to YLF, because in reality Robert Novak was a community leader who cared about kids and their growth into the leaders of tomorrow.
In the wake of my interview with Chevron employee Dennis Roos I've gotten a number of email and calls updating me on the matter of the negotiations to restart the stopped construction of the improvements to the Richmond refinery.
One of them was this "Meet The Mayor" community meeting held Friday, August 7th at 5:30 PM. Here, one could ask questions of Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin for one hour, but my intent was to attend, film residents who were concerned about the project, pro and con, and after it was over, get the Mayor's direct point of view if she would give it to me. (Take note of that.)
To review, Chevron's planned upgrade of their giant Richmond oil refinery was stalled because environmentalists sued them in court regarding what was viewed to be an inadequate environmental impact report (EIR) regarding how emissions were going to be lessened over current levels. Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Barbara Zuniga agreed with their view and ordered planed construction stopped until Chevron could create a "better" EIR. The judge's decision threw over 1,000 construction employees out of work and threatened the future of Chevron in Richmond.
So I did arrive and sat next to a white-haired gentleman who as it happened gave me a copy of a letter I'd not seen from Richmond's Mechanics Bank. The letter stressed the importance of keeping Chevron in Richmond and arriving at a settlement to get the plant project going again.
So the meeting started and as the Mayor listened to people introduce themselves I explained that I was a video-blogger who wanted to ask her about the plant matter after the meeting was over if I could. She did say that was fine.
There were only two people who came to the meeting to talk about the refinery issue. The first person, an African American man, said that the Mayor seemed not to care about the people who need jobs and more about her own agenda (this is in the video). The Mayor said that she does did support a support a substitute to the the resolution voted on by the Richmond City Council two weeks ago calling for settlement talks (with California Attorney General Jerry Brown involved) so that all the workers can get back to their jobs and she's working to make that happen. The Mayor said doing this is important because Richmond has a 17 percent unemployment rate.
A few minutes later, and after a number of residents expressed concern for and presented programs to stop the violence plaguing young African Americans in Richmond (which was heart-breaking to see, no matter how many times I am presented with this issue), the man I was sitting next to, who's name was Richard Lompa, asked the Mayor about the bank letter, and explained that he didn't understand "why do we continuously bash Chevron" and quoted the letter written by Mechanics Bank President and CEO Stephen Foster which said the reason given for opposing Chevron doesn't stand up to scrutiny . He said no one would support Chevron putting out more pollution, and that it was as if she was plunging a dagger in the heart of the city.
The Mayor's response was that the judge made the decision and then she threw in that Chevron does not pay its fair share of taxes and talked about the company's court battle against Measure T which imposed a new tax structure for manufacturers like Chevron. She also pointed to Chevron's appeal of its property tax assessment.
After the meeting and people left the room, the Mayor did give me her time and put to rest the idea some have expressed that she was not talking to Chevron, stating that she talks to representatives of the firm every day.
Mayor McLaughlin then essentially repeated her claim that Chevron doesn't pay its taxes in response to my question that as a person trained and who's practiced economic development, tax reductions are a normal part of negotiations to make it easier for employers to maintain their business in a city. She asked if I was referring to the Measure T issue, and repeated what she said before regarding the firm not paying its fair share of taxes. Then, weirdly and after presenting herself well on camera but before I could deactivate it, suddenly turned and said "I have a community meeting" but I turned the camera to show that the meeting had ended long ago. Moreover, the Mayor agreed to give me just a moment of her time, and I gave her a platform to present herself; the Mayor didn't say she had more people to meet when we started the interview. She didn't have to essentially rain on her own parade but that's what happened as one can see and I'm really disappointed that she did that. I turned off the camcorder.
As I went outside, Mr. Lompa was talking to another person, but after he finished gave me his view. "The Mayor," he said, "was being shallow and not grounded with reality" regarding her repeating of the idea that Chevron has a $24 billion profit. He also said that he appeals his tax bill if he thinks it's not valid.
I agree with Mr. Lompa, but I'm really concerned that the good Mayor seems to have more of a personal agenda that may cloud her ability to effectively negotiate with Chevron. It's common practice for businesses to want and ask for tax reductions and its equally normal for city economic development officials (and that includes the Mayor) to structure rates that help businesses.
In all of my years in the public sector I've not seen or met a Mayor that didn't understand that, but Mayor McLaughlin's a new breed of activist city official. That's all well and good for getting elected but it seems to cloud one's ability to conduct the business of maintaining a municipality's economy. One can have their personal beliefs but when a city's unemployment rate is at almost 20 percent as is the case in Richmond, its a recession, and the job base has decreased by over 50 percent in the last two years, it's time to be more pragmatic and less antagonistic.
What started as a calamity threatening to divide America has seemingly ended in a planned beer bust at the White House, courtesy of President Barack Obama himself. The ill-advised (in my opinion) arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Lewis Gates by Cambridge Police Officer Sgt. James Crowley four days ago caught the attention of the nation, but it was President Obama's comment that the Cambridge Police "acted stupidly" and the rather terrible response by the Cambridge Police Union at its press conference , which created a much-needed national conversation about race, law enforcement, and American culture.
Regardless of where you stand on this issue, there's no doubt that it has been the political talk of the day, even if much of it was disjointed, nasty, and ignorant, especially online. My first video blog, which asserts that Professor Gates was arrested for being an "uppity black man", has drawn over 355 comments on YouTube.com alone within one day, pushing it to over 2,700 views and the 14th most commented on video in the "News and Politics" section of the giant video-sharing site as of this writing. While demographic data is not yet complete, I can say just by combing through all of the comments that the viewers were overwhelmingly male, and about 80 percent white and 20 percent "of color" at first, then on the second day more people identifying themselves as black (who really knows in the comment section, right?) pushing the result to about 60 percent white to 40 percent of color.
Some of the comments were nasty and some were excellent, but the one I liked best of all was not on YouTube, but on Facebook and made by my long-time friend and Oakland, Bret Harte Junior High School classmate Lars Frkyman (who stared with my other long-time Oakland friend from the same school and from Skyine High School, Bill Boyd, in my "Star Trek Review" vlog), who wrote (and I reprint this with his permission):
You keep fighting that good fight against prejudices. As a white guy growing up in Oakland I was beaten several times cause of the color of my skin by a bunch of ignorant angry...fill in the blank.Later in life I've been hassled by white cops because of the length of my hair and my unshaved face. I think it must be human nature to exert power over anything, whether it be pit bulls, gray hounds, the homeless, gays, women, men you name it, humans will abuse it. I guess the sad fact is there's a bully in every crowd. We've come a long way but we sure do got a long way to go eh?
ps Obama's right..stupid cop! No apology necessarry
Lars
Lars is right. The Crowley / Gates incident was one of institutional racism on the part of Crowley, versus classism on the part of Gates. Crowley keeps saying "I went by the book" which opens the door to the kind of racial profiling African Americans and others are just plain tired of. "Going by the book" just means that Crowley didn't use his own judgment in the matter, plus he let his ego get in the way when he realized this "black man" was yelling at him and not following his orders. Gates' was angry that Crowley entered his house (without a search warrant) and from his point of view did not show him his police ID or look at the professor's identification, and so was going to "inform Crowley of who he was".
Two yaks ramming heads. Only one of the yaks, Gates, represented a group of people who'd had it. Racial profiling has been the bane of the African American existence for too long, and Obama's comment that the "Cambridge Police acted stupidly", even if his words may have been poorly selected, was right on and struck a cord from sea to shining sea. For Crowley to behave with the proper judgment in this case, many agree, would have been to make no arrest at all. But some officers are hard-wired to feel (not think) they have to make an arrest if the person's black, at least that's the perception of most African American (especially in the wake of the Oscar Grant shooting) and many whites too, like this commenter on my first YouTube video on this issue:
ALL of you are blaming everyone but whos responsible. First the media was the first person to play the race card to be exact it was CNN. Why because it will sell they know it why dont you? I am irish and white my family came to america in the 1910's we where hated by EVERYONE but my family overcame and if you want to blame someone blame the press they are the ones who plaster black men on the news every damn day and now you wonder why people are scared of blacks. All of us need to put this down.
Or just have a good, ice-cold beer or two! In fact, that's what President Obama, Sgt. Crowley, and Professor Gates plan to do at The White House. According to Obama, it was Crowley's idea, and Gates accepted the invitation. In a statement provided to "The Root" , a website covering news from a black perspective where Gates is editor-in-chief, he wrote:
"..if we can all use this to diminish racial profiling and to enhance fairness and equity in the criminal justice system for poor people and for people of color...After all, I first proposed that Sgt. Crowley and I meet as early as last Monday. If my experience leads to the lessening of the occurrence of racial profiling, then I would find that enormously gratifying. Because, in the end, this is not about me at all; it is about the creation of a society in which 'equal justice before law' is a lived reality."
Ok, fine, now what beer should they drink?
The Beer Poll
Having gotten past the arguments, we can watch Obama, Gates, and Crowley have a beer, but what brand? You can pick the beer in my poll below:
As of this writing, Budweiser has the lead over Pabst Blue Ribbon by 12.5 percent. No one picked Miller, while my favorite, Japan's Sapporo beer is even with Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, and 12.5 percent picked "Other" beers. In the interest of real diversity, pick Sapporo! But that written, the day Obama, Gates, and Crowley meet for a beer should be called "National Raise a Glass for Diversity Day."
Seriously.
I think it should be a day that people of different stripes deliberately get together to just get along, get to know each other, and have fun. Considering how far America's come in being a true melting pot, it's not hard to do at all. But the rule should be to have a beer with someone who's of another background and race from your own. That would be huge!
I've got to admit, I'm not a fan of South Carolina Republican Governor Mark Sanford and mainly because of his refusal to use the stimulus money to help the people of his state and due to his constant "I'm better than you" approach to President Obama. I'd hoped Sanford would get what's coming to him. I was more than a little annoyed that Sanford allowed himself to be considered a 2012 Presidential candidate just for going against President Obama and nothing else (in fact the GOP's really lacking in leaders, ya know?) and hoped he'd trip.
Well, he did.
When the news about Sanford's disappearance came out, I assumed he just flew the coup, but when I learned that his wife had not got a call from him, I tweeted NBC's David Gregory - who was conversing about the matter on Twitter - that it smelled like an affair.
Bingo, I was right.
But I've got no joy in from seeing this latest train wreck this week. Earlier, on Monday, we had Perez Hilton's video meltdown and Sanford's press conference was Wednesday. While Sanford didn't tell anyone to go do something with themselves, given the gravity of what he did, the people he hurt who trusted him, and his wife, it was every bit the train wreck we saw.
But I feel sorry for him.
I do because of his honest presentation. I mean he just plain said, "Look, I screwed up. I hurt people and I'm sorry." He also explained that the affair was last year and he and his mistress Maria - with a name like and living in Brazil she's got to be a looker - have known each other for eight years. Yes, Sanford was critical of President Clinton during the Lewinsky matter. Yes, Sanford's reportedly not well-liked by some of his associates. But he was well-liked enough to become governor of South Carolina.
The only part of Sanford's press conference that bothered me was the statement "I spent five days crying." Well, come on, Governor Sanford was crying because he was leaving his mistress and all that fun you he had and returning to a life that he's not happy with. Look, he missed his four boys on Father's Day! What does that say?
Sanford is a man with a lot of issue to work out, but heck we all have them. I really do hope he gets a chance to right his ship without dire consequences. If there's anything we've learned from all these media show train wrecks, it's that no one's perfect and I get no joy in learning this about anyone.
Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, who's resistance to the use of Stimulus funds to help his high-unemployment state made headlines, had me thinking he was stupid, and had many thinking he would challenge President Obama in the 2012 presidential race, admitted to cheating on his wife today after he was spotted at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport coming from Buenos Aires.
What does this do to his political fortunes? Well, he's already resigned from the Republican Governor's Association today. I think he can kiss any future presidential ambitions goodbye for now.
As the song says, "it's getting hot in here", or more like hotter. According to Reuters, Iran Minister Mohammadreza Habibi has issued a statement threatening death to protesters. That's a lot of people, several million, including now (according to the Huff Posts Nico Pitney) Iranian soccer stars who wears green in solidarity with the protestors, which makes him a protester.
On the matter of the Huffington Post, it's blocked in Iran as the government continues its efforts to stamp out the impact of the Internet. I'll bet there's a proxy for it somewhere...
Meanwhile, Iran blames Washington for the protests siting "Intolerable" meddling. They missed the mark; they should blame San Francisco, the capital of New Media.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009 will go down as an eventful San Francisco day, sunny, and yet dark, and one that saw a lot of people marginalized who didn’t want to be. But then, who does. Before I turn to who said what, and who got arrested, I stick my head right into the belly of the beast, the California Supreme Court’s decision.
Today, in first upholding Proposition 8, the voter-approved initiative to make same-sex marriage illegal that passed in November 2008, and yet protecting the 18,000 same-sex marriages that were done before the passage of the initiative, the California Supreme Court successfully stood logic on its head. I’ve just read the Court’s entire 167-page decision, and while I understand the reasons given by the majority of justices (six supporting the decision, one against it and even then the six judges that agreed were not perfect in their union) I’m concerned with the logic behind them.
To cut to the chase, the Court has placed the 18,000 same-sex marriages in a legally questionable second-class status of rights that, even though the Court claims to protect their rights under marriage, didn’t even consider if those rights would be maintained if the couples elect to divorce or remarry each other for the sake of the children they have.
First, even though I’ve read the full document, I encourage you to do so as well. Even if you think you can’t understand what’s there, challenge yourself, read it, talk about it with your friends. And most of all learn from it.
A Three-Pronged Decision
The California Supreme Court based its decision on three considerations, if the initiative was a constitutional amendment or revision, the validity of the initiative process itself, and if Proposition 8 itself is retroactive, applying to existing same-sex marriages.
In upholding Proposition 8, The California Supreme Court tried to get itself out of a legal pickle created in early 2008, when it protected same-sex marriages in a case called “The Marriages Cases”. To recap, the Court determined that marriage was not limited to a man and a woman.
But later in the same year, Californians passed Prop 8, which earned 52 percent of the vote. Then, California Attorney General Jerry Brown challenged Prop 8 in the California Supreme Court, most famously. (Brown used the observation that “natural law” was over the California Constitution, and since Prop 8 eliminated the rights of a group of Californians, it was in violation of the “unalienable rights” granted by the California Constitution and “natural law”. In today’s decision, The Court wrote that while Brown’s argument was creative, and I would add logical, it was “without merit.”)
And there we have the Court’s pickle: upholding their own decision protecting existing same sex marriages, and yet protecting the initiative process of which Proposition 8 is a part.
In the Decision the majority of judges argue that the initiative process itself is part of The California Constitution and thus can’t be considered something that alters and is outside of the California Constitution. Moreover, the Court writes that Proposition 8 itself is not a constitutional revision, but just an amendment. Why? Because the Court’s majority claims it only concerns marriage and doesn’t call for a large number of word additions or changes. The decision outlines a number of case examples where the Court’s decision backed the idea that an initiative was an amendment and not a revision to the California Constitution, as some of Prop 8’s attackers have claimed.
Finally, the Court majority asserts that even though the framers of Prop 8 may have intended otherwise, the way it was written itself prevents it from being retroactively applied. Thus, existing same sex marriages are upheld.
But here’s where the problem starts, even if one agrees with the other aspects of the majority’s decision. The Court writes “a retroactive application of the initiative would disrupt thousands of actions taken in reliance on The Marriages Cases by these same-sex couples, their employers, their creditors, and many others” (p. 134) and then goes on to mention that such would result in “undermining the ability of citizens to plan their lives according to the law as it has been determined by this state’s highest court.”
But I argue in upholding Prop 8 and existing same-sex marriages, the Court has placed the rights of the existing married couples in disarray and damaged the California Constitution in the process: it’s not for all Californians. If same-sex married couples chose to divorce, they can’t then marry someone else of the same sex, or remarry the same person even if it would be to the benefit of the family they established! There’s no evidence in the Court’s decision – and I looked for it - that this was taken into account.
The dissenting opinion by Justice Moreno focused on the stripping of rights to a minority group, but since the reality is that being gay or straight is really more fluid than fixed and the choice of the individual, the Court’s decision impacts a much broader group of the population and one that’s hard to quantify.
Peaceful Protests in San Francisco
The decision left a lot of people scratching their heads in and around San Francisco City Hall and the California Supreme Court building just next door. While a peaceful protest complete with pre-arranged arrests amassed on Van Ness Avenue between the City Hall and Davies Symphony Hall, a large press conference was held in the South Light Court in City Hall.
California Supreme Court There, many of the lawyers who worked to combat the passage of Prop 8 shared their observations with the audience. San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who played a key role in the battle against Prop 8, said I’m disappointed... I think the Court in my view focused on procedure rather than arguments. And that fundamental rights are part of the debate.” He said it was back to the ballot box, a view shared by the Court itself in the decision issued today.
A Shameful Intellectual Display
The Court’s majority decision was shameful, to say the least. I told someone that people will develop an intellectual argument to support their raw emotions, and this California Supreme Court did just that. The Court’s emotional bent is to protect what was decided by it and by the voters in the initiative process rather than challenge it, even if such an alteration would protect the full state constitutional rights of all Californians.
Some conservatives have interpreted the California Supreme Court’s decision as the Court defining marriage as between “a man and a woman”, but that’s wrong. The Court is protecting the initiative called Proposition 8 which claims marriage is between a man and woman because it interprets the California Constitution as consisting of these constitutional amendments and the Court has stated that its job is to interpret the state constitution and that it’s not above it. That distinction is important because should voters pass a new initiative that overturns Prop 8, the Court would be legally inclined to protect it as well.
