SCOTUS presents a victory for individual merit

Posted on June 30, 2009 by LOUDelf

23150197Yesterday, the Supreme Court Of The Unites States handed down a decision for the 20 New Haven, CT firefighters who had sued based on discrimination.  The result:  a 5-4 decision that the city had violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. 

This is a victory for the individual in this country.  This is a victory for those who feel race should not be the issue, but the qualifications to do the job should.  Discrimination has no place in this country, whether it be race, gender, or other.  What does and should matter when considering hiring or promotion should be ability, and track record.  The SCOTUS go it right here, and not too soon. 

In a dissent read from the bench, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg questioned the fairness of the test, which was 60 percent written and 40 percent oral.

“Relying so heavily on pencil-and-paper exams to select firefighters is a dubious practice,” Ginsburg said, calling the majority ruling “troubling.”

Frankly, I found Ginsburg’s response puzzling.  At first blush, it confounds me that she questioned the fairness of a test that was 60 percent written.  As a matter of fact, considering one of the ones who passed the written portion has dyslexia, and thus is at a huge disadvantage, it brings me to think her response was “dubious”.  But, in fairness, I only read the excerpts, and have not read the complete dissent. 

So again.  Good for all of us who have been discriminated against because of the color of our skin.  The SCOTUS again, focuses municipalities and employers to focus on qualification, not appearance.

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Another victory for the people of Rhode Island!

Posted on June 29, 2009 by LOUDelf

mp_headerlogo2The below attached bulletins were forwarded to me from Ken Block, of the Moderate Party of Rhode Island.  These are great results for the populace of Rhode Island as people can now have more choices other than just red or blue (not that they are always poor ones).  Though I am not a resident of the state, I do support the values set for on the website of the Moderate Party of Rhode Island.  Ken has done a great job fighting the good fight over in the Ocean State to get the judicial and legislative bodies to reduce the most restrictive political entrance requirements in the country to something more reasonable.  As you can see below, the judicial found the original start date of collecting signatures unconstitutional, and allowed for earlier collection of signatures.  Additionally, the legislature codified the judge’s decision, but also reduced the signature requirement to something more manageable. 

While this may not yield an immediate change, I truly believe that by adding this party – that represents the middle of the political spectrum – to the mix, the people will receive messages from hopeful politicians that are focused, and goal-driven.  Good job once again Ken and crew.  You’ve earned a hearty congratulations thus far for all of your hard work.

RI Attorney General Patrick Lynch just issued a press release indicating that his office will not pursue an appeal of U.S. District Judge William Smith’s decision in Block v Mollis.
 
This lawsuit asked the U.S. District Court to evaluate whether or not Rhode Island’s ballot access laws were constitutional.  Two aspects of Rhode Island’s laws were brought into question: a 5% threshold requirement for signatures to qualify a new party for the ballot (which for 2010 comes to 23,588 signatures) and the timeframe in which those signatures were allowed to be collected (the start date prior to the lawsuit was January 1, 2010).
 
Judge Smith found that the 5% threshold was constitutional, while describing it as onerous.  Rhode Island’s 23,588 threshold requirement ranks our state 12th highest among all states for the total number of signatures required to gain access to the ballot for a new political party.
 
Judge Smith found that the January 1 start date was unconstitutional.
 
I am very pleased that the three defendants in this case (the Secretary of State’s office, the Attorney General’s office and the Board of Elections) have decided to not appeal Judge Smith’s decision.  Rhode Island’s ballot access laws were unreasonably and unnecessarily stringent.  As things stand now, the 23,588 signatures required for access to the ballot remain a huge barrier to overcome.  At a rate of 20 signatures an hour, and the need to collect as many as 30,000 signatures to end up with 23,588 certified signatures, over 1,500 hours will be spent in the collection of signatures to qualify the Moderate Party of Rhode Island for the 2010 ballot.
 
Our bills to modify the ballot access portion of RI General Law are still alive at the legislature.  We’ll have to see if they move during the final frenzy of lawmaking happening as we speak.
 
The MPRI currently has signature sheets in the hands of more than 70 volunteers.  These volunteers will be collecting signatures at public events around the state all summer.  Look for us at the air show this weekend in Quonset Point, as well as at the Bristol 4th of July parade, the Ancients and Horribles parade in Glocester and Water Fire on the 4th of July.  We need as many signature collectors at these events as we can muster.  Please contact Margaret Paynich to get involved with our unprecedented interaction with Rhode Island voters this summer.
 
Our best count right now (which I am pretty sure is undercounted) has our signature total at well over 2,000 signatures.  State Senators, State Representatives, mayors and prominent labor leaders have signed our petition.
 
If you are unwilling to collect signatures but would like to ensure that you are able to sign our petition, please contact Margaret above to coordinate.
 
Look for the Moderate Party on ABC6 this weekend with John DeLuca and Buddy Cianci, as well as on Operation Clean Government’s State of the State program on public access.
This evening, the Rhode Island Senate passed bill S0203, originally submitted in February of this year.
 
S0203 codifies U.S. District Judge Smith’s decision striking down the start date aspect of Rhode Island’s ballot access laws.
 
S0203 also lowers the number of signatures to qualify for recognition as a formal party in Rhode Island to 10,000, down from 23,588.
 
Barrington Senator David Bates and North Providence Senator Ed O’Neill sponsored this legislation.
 
A companion bill (H5426) remains in the House Judiciary Committee.
 
If H5426 is going to move, Friday will be the day. 

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Big Joe Biden fan here!

Posted on June 15, 2009 by LOUDelf

22541345How can you not love Joe Biden?  In these down economic and political times, Joe Biden has been a blast to look to.  As a matter of fact, I try to find out when he’s speaking and tune in.

One of the rules for a VP is to never seem like a better option than the president, so people will look at the president as amazing.  Let me tell you, despite the outward cringe of Obama when Biden speaks, he thanks the gods he has Biden. 

Biden has begun to make Dan Quayle look like a genius.  When he’s not saying something completely false, or creating mass terror, he’s insulting someone.  For that, he gets a thumbs-up in my book!

 

Sample quotes (You can’t make this stuff up):

“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” Biden said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

 ”you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.”

 ”Look, John’s last-minute economic plan does nothing to tackle the number-one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S, jobs.”

 ”When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.” – Televisions were still in experimental use at this time. 

 ”Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America. Quite frankly, it might have been a better pick than me.”

 ”Stand up, Chuck, let ‘em see ya.” –-Joe Biden, to Missouri state Sen. Chuck Graham, who is in a wheelchair

 ”I would tell members of my family, and I have, I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places right now. It’s not that it’s going to Mexico, it’s that you are in a confined aircraft. When one person sneezes, it goes everywhere through the aircraft. That’s me.”

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Can we build the wall already?!

Posted on March 26, 2009 by LOUDelf

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Sometimes things just make too much sense.  That’s most-likely why our government has refused to build a wall along our southern border with Mexico.  Building a wall would help fix four separate problems illegal immigration, drug trafficking, armed violence in Mexico, and invasion of hostile people.

 

If you’ve read my blog for long, you have read about my issues about illegal immigration (see here, here, and here).  With our economy in shambles, I am hard-pressed to find a positive point FOR allowing illegal immigration (not that we should allow it in good times either). You can read my previous posts for some of my other reasons.  Build the wall.

 

The United States population is by far, the largest consumer of illegal drugs in the world.  While drugs come into the US in many ways, the land route through Mexico is an enormous pipeline, including about 90 percent of our cocaine import.  Trafficking of illegal narcotics is obviously illegal (hence the term), and along with it, it brings a host of problems – violence, funding of other illegal activity, addiction, etc.  Blocking a major and easy route, would increase the difficulty to transport, and would reduce this flow.  Again, build the wall.

 

Armed violence has come to the border, and has perforated into the US.  You know it’s bad when the US military tells its own trained fighting personnel not to go across the border.  The US has its own problem with armed violence, and doesn’t need one little bit more.  You haven’t started building the wall yet?

 

With scenarios like al-Qaeda smuggling nukes across our southern porous border (a possibility according US interrogators) and other countries/organizations looking to harm the US by sending agents across the border, we need to cause them to look to other methods to get to the US.  We all saw the finger-pointing after 9/11.  Let’s not have a massive tragedy where we can all cast blame shall we?  Build the #&%$ing wall, would ya?

 

Here’s some more positives:  It would create construction jobs.  These would be respectable-paying jobs, that would buy materials, and use equipment, and later require maintenance.  While creating jobs, the wall would also allow our over-extended border patrol to focus on capture and release activities, as well as tightening our northern border. 

 

Where was the negative to this again?

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What if Pelosi and the CIA are both being honest?

Posted on May 19, 2009 by LOUDelf

23150130Martin Frost, a former 26-year member of congress wrote an article at Politico.com  in which he posed the question of “What if Pelosi and the CIA are both being honest?”  Always the cynic, I got a knee-jerk reaction of:  Let me double check which party this apologist was from again (already knowing the answer). 

After reconfirming my ‘suspicion’, I wanted to see what angle this guy was pitching to explain why this was just a simple little goof-up.  Please, if you haven’t read his article, take a quick peek at the link above.  Here is what the crux of his argument was:

 My point is that the CIA (and other government agencies and departments) sometimes talk in “official speak,” which is not entirely clear to members of Congress participating in a briefing. Unless members of Congress are listening very closely, and unless they ask follow-up questions, they don’t always get a clear picture of what’s going on. If asked a specific, direct question, government officials will give a specific, direct answer, as the deputy director did to my question that day.

 It is certainly possible that the folks at the CIA, on Sept. 4, 2002, thought they had given Pelosi a full picture of what was actually happening, and it is also possible that Pelosi did not wade through the bureaucratic language and ask a specific follow-up question. After all, in addition to being ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, Pelosi was then Democratic whip (with substantial responsibility for the day-to-day floor action in the House) and was in the middle of a hotly contested leadership race to succeed Dick Gephardt as Democratic leader after he stepped down in December of that year. She could have been preoccupied that day.

So wait, the current Speaker of the House who has accused the CIA of lying may not have been paying attention because she was trying to be Speaker of the House, and may not have asked follow-up questions?  This is somehow an excuse?  Isn’t this person supposed to be the best of her class?  As ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, wasn’t that her JOB?!  Not only did this sound fishy to me, but so does this guy’s reasoning. 

Incompetence run wild in our leadership.  But this is what We The People have elected… SO PAY ATTENTION NEXT TIME!

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