Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Anti-Quota Ballot Initiatives: Republican Candidates Must Have Their Feet Held To The Fire On This Issue

Affirmative Action is now a major national issue, since five states have these initiatives moving towards ballot appearance, and Michigan has approved one in current months.
From The LA Times:
"By Stephanie Simon, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer January 19, 2008
DENVER -- Intent on dismantling affirmative action, activists in five states have launched a coordinated drive to cut off tax dollars for programs that offer preferential treatment based on race or gender.The campaign aims to put affirmative action bans on the November ballot in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma. The effort is being organized by California consultant Ward Connerly, who has successfully promoted similar measures in California, Michigan and Washington.Supporters of affirmative action say the initiatives will be hard to block, given that Connerly has a proven ability to raise funds and persuade voters, even in more liberal states."They've targeted states where there's a white majority electorate and a vocal, if small, extreme anti-immigrant right wing," said Shanta Driver, who runs By Any Means Necessary, a coalition that defends affirmative action. In such states, she said, "it's extremely difficult for us to win."Connerly's campaign -- which he calls Super Tuesday for Equality -- could also get a boost if the presidential ballot includes an African American or a woman. That would help him make the case, he said, that the playing field is level and minorities no longer need a hand up.In most states, Connerly has until spring or summer to collect enough signatures to put the measures on the ballot. His allies have already submitted more than 140,000 signatures in Oklahoma. Petitions are circulating in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri and Nebraska."
From earlier:
If Affirmative Action Were Working As It Was Advertised During Most Of Its First 36 Years...
...with Disparate Impact quotas breaking the ice, you would now need, every year, LESS intervention rather than MORE each year. Quite the contrary to this expectation, though, what we get is an automatic increase every year, of the extent of intervention for affirmative action, as the disadvantaged minority numbers eligible increases every year. Can affirmative action and the discrimination which supposedly gives rise to a need for this aggressive intervention of government power, possibly interact so as to increase discrimination at exactly the rate which would justify each new increment of disparate impact quotas, again tracking exactly the increase in the disadvantaged minority percentage eligible? Could it do this with exactitude year after year, and decade after decade? The odds against that could hardly be less than billions to one.

1 comment:

Audacious Epigone said...

I wish I could shift over to the other side of the state line on election day!