Scottsdale Activist #159

On Tuesday, November 4th, YOU, the citizens of Scottsdale will go to the polls and make some very important decisions as to how you want your city to look in the next four years. If you have not already voted, please ask yourselves, what is important to me? After all, you live and work in Scottsdale; you shop, dine, attend events and pay taxes here.

This is your city – you own it and the decisions that are made on your behalf. Take ownership of that future and vote for what you really want to see happen in Scottsdale.

If you’d like more traffic congestion, higher buildings that dot our skyline and block views of our precious mountains and landscape, create denser neighborhoods, bring more people to smaller areas and reduce open spaces, increased bars and entertainment venues and a 24/7 Downtown with the potential for bleed into existent neighborhoods, the decrease in our traditional arts communities and Downtown merchants, then vote accordingly: McCullagh, Drake, Klapp and Borowsky. They have all supported this type of architectural urbanization and future "look" and "feel" for Scottsdale, killing what we once had and for which we were world renowned.

But what most people don’t recognize is that this urbanization is short-lived in most cities. Unless the greater population supports its continued efforts, it will dwindle and die, leaving with it a wake of disaster, abandoned structures, obliteration of our city’s character, uniqueness and beauty which, today, makes us a must-see landmark destination across the globe. We can not, as a city, afford to let this happen to Scottsdale.

The balance of the votes this campaign leads back to two very important factors: money and power. It’s not about putting the RIGHT people who will support the citizens, neighborhoods and businesses into office – it is about which candidate has the most pull with political insiders, key endorsements (Chamber & Scottsdale Republic) and of course, money.

If each candidate had been given a cap of ^$15K to invest in their campaigns, do you think that they’d all look as good to voters as they do today? Absolutely not. It’s the glam, the money, the power and the push that make McCullagh, Drake, Klapp and Borowsky look attractive. In reality, they are VERY bad news for Scottsdale’s future.

Your voting choices are limited if you want to see Scottsdale positively progress in the future, build, yes build, but with serious forethought and planning and according to the input derived from citizens, neighborhoods and businesses who will be most affected by its outcome.

Our city should not be mowed over by special interests money and undue influence in order to succeed. We have seen their handiwork: OrchidTree, Z and X Lofts, the "4333" Building, SkySong, the mass exodus of the car dealerships, the Hualapai Fiasco, Barrett-Jackson, Hanover, and the list goes on…is this really what you want for Scottsdale’s future? If you support McCullagh, Drake, Klapp and Borowsky, you will get more of the same.

They don’t talk the talk now, but they surely walk the walk. They are endorsed by the special interests, and have taken money from special interests in spite of what they say, or lie, about these things.

This is YOUR city and you have a right to send a message to City Hall – you deserve to be heard and your future deserves to be protected.

~We Need Change in Scottsdale City Government

In order for Scottsdale to have a better future, you, as a voter, must make definitive change in our Scottsdale City Government.

This is the opportunity that we, as citizens and employees, have been waiting for since the days of Herb Drinkwater: to right the wrongs, correct unethical behaviors and unfair approach to business dealings by some of our elected and appointed officials, uproot the stranglehold by political insiders and fat pocketed developers and to take back our beautiful city once and for all.

ONLY YOU, as Scottsdale voters, can make these changes.

Our current Council and Mayor can not and have never been able to get the job done due to a total lack of planning and public input.

Not only have they driven us into extreme debt over the past eight or more years, they have also totally mismanaged our city’s resources, sold out to developers and special interests, driven out sales tax producers like the Coyote’s Arena and Rawhide, put private agendas ahead of those belonging to the citizens and businesses of this city, and discounted the uniqueness and natural beauty that has been legendary in Scottsdale.

They have made it blatantly obvious that, if re-elected, your citizen voice will continue to be quashed and your point of view, lost and forgotten.

Incumbents Manross, Drake and McCullagh are part of the problem, and definitely not the answer. If they have not been able to get the job done to date, why re-elect them?

Suzanne Klapp is woven from their very same cloth, strongly sponsored by the Scottsdale Chamber, and has been campaign sponsored and privately directed by political insider Susan Bitter-Smith.

Lisa Borowsky is supported by pro-establishment newspaper The Scottsdale Republic, campaign managed by political insider Lamar Whitmer (Although he vehemently denies it but his fingerprints are all over her campaign). She is heavily funded by special interest and "Daddy’s" money. Experience, in this case, does not speak to accomplishment for the incumbents. Klapp and Borowsky are special favor driven to succeed and be elected.

We can ill-afford to put any one of these people into office. They do not now and never will have your best interests in mind.

Candidates Nan Nesvig, Tom Giller and Jim Lane are the ONLY candidates who REALLY understand the mission: to protect and serve Scottsdale’s best interests and have been actively involved in and for the public sector for a number of years which the others have not.

It is important that, in order to make change, we vote to place these worthy, hard-working individuals, who have no ties to special interests, in positions where they can effectively do the job that we expect out of Council and Mayoral members.

This is your opportunity to make change. Please vote wisely. Take a friend with you to the polls. Rock the Vote. Get back the Scottsdale that we all know and love before it is too late. Make your vote count.

A long time Scottsdale Citizen and City Employee
Anonymous by request due to suspected retaliation by current Administration

VOTE for a New, Improved, Honest, Ethical and
Open Scottsdale city government November 4th,
Vote Lane, Nesvig and Giller !!

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~ COGS Corner

The Coalition of Greater Scottsdale, a citizen and small business owner’s advocacy organization particularly concerned with "consistent land use policy and protecting our unique quality of Scottsdale life" provide the following information. More information is available on their website at http://cogsAZ.org

Late Breaking News:

The long-time renown Scottsdale artist, George Ann Tognoni died yesterday after a brief illness. She was the artist for the bronze statues of the Winifred Scott family and the mule, Maude. It sits in front of the Little Red School House in Old Town Scottsdale. Darlene Petersen reports that the memorial service will be Monday, 3 November, at the Messinger 9300 E. Shea facility. Please attend to pay your respects if you can. Thank you, Sonnie Kirtley, COGS Chairperson

GOOD MORNING COALITION OF GREATER SCOTTSDALE MEMBERS 10/30:

POLL WORKERS ARE NEEDED NOV 4TH: If you can make yourself available to sit outside the polling places next week---hold or monitor a sign for Jim Lane, Nan Nesvig and/or Tom Giller--you would be performing a VALUABLE ACT FOR CHANGE IN SCOTTSDALE. Polls need to be covered from 6 am to 7 PM. Each campaign manager can assign a polling place or you can request a particular site. You greet incoming voters and politely encourage them to vote for Lane, Nesvig and Giller. As they exit, you thank them for voting (even if they had expressed to you they don't support your candidates).

CONTACT THE CANDIDATE'S TEAM: You can reach the Jim Lane for Mayor campaign group at wjlane@lane4scottsdale.com. You can get a direct telephone number on these websites--the Nan Nesvig team at www.nannesvig.com and the Tom Giller team at www.tomgiller.com.

Even if you can contribute only a couple of hours, that would relieve someone else. All 3 candidates can use your help.

Jim Lane WON the most votes on the September city election, let's help put him resoundingly over the top for the November 4th run-off election.

PROPOSITIONS: Be sure to carefully read the entire proposals--this includes the arguments For and Against found in the Secretary of State's Pamphlet mailed to your home.

THOSE TV ADVERTISEMENTS FOR SOME PROPOSALS ARE DOWNRIGHT DECEPTIVE and YOU DON'T SEE THE 'DRAGONS' HIDDEN.

Example: Prop 105. Any "money" laws would need the approval of the majority of REGISTERED voters. Why would we let people who don't bother to vote decide an election? Registering is passive---voting is an educated action by a citizen. If approved, how would citizen organizations ever get any valuable initiatives passed?...We would need 70% of the REGISTERED voters (not voting counts!). Scottsdale ACTUAL voters seldom achieve a 30% show-up-and-vote rate in our precincts. Why would non-voters be permitted to decide an issue? VOTE NO !!

Example: Prop 200 Payday Loan Business... Approval would guarantee the Payday operators continued freedom from the state's 36% usury law. Their 391% interest rate would become permanent. In 2000 our state legislature gave the Payday Loan owners a 10 year exemption from our usury law. (The federal government does not permit payday loans to the military personnel).

You should note that the PayDay Loan industry is funding the TV ads on this proposition--which are very deceptive. VOTE NO !

Example: Prop 201 Homeowners' Bill of Rights--WOW what a mis-titled Prop!!! If approved, you would NOT be able to resolve home buyer disputes without hiring an attorney and going to court. The current Notice to Cure (the Buyer provides the Seller with a written notice of repairs/dispute) procedure is effective and keeps all options open to continue with the contract or cancel. The current Mediation Clause in real estate contracts is effective with an objective-qualified 3rd party involvement. With this Prop---litigation is the only option! Current law provides mediation and the option to continue to court. Also this Prop eliminates the Sellers Right-to other Attorney-and -Court Fees if the Seller prevails. AZ has the Registrar of Contractors--an office that receives and inspects homeowner complaints. They ride herd on licensed contractors. There is also a Recovery Fund if the contractor has gone out of business. VOTE NO !

Example: Prop 202 Amending Illegal Worker Hiring Laws. This Prop exempts incorporated companies, partnerships and Transaction Privilege Licenses. Most corporate retailers like restaurants, hotels and retail chains are exempt. Are you getting the picture of who is backing this? Additionally, the requirement that anyone blowing-the-whistle on a drop house or employer must put it in writing and identify themselves. No more Sheriff Joe's successful Hot Line would be allowed. Read all the employer probation periods granted if this passes. AND the state must notify the feds and they must take the action first----yawn...how many months/years will it take to process a complaint through the federal E Verify program? Vote NO !

Coalition of Greater Scottsdale Political Committee
CS- 2006-18

Sharon Oberritter, Chairperson
480 949 5757
Sonnie Kirtley, Treasurer
602 717 3886

~ Campaign Mailer:

The Coalition of Greater Scottsdale Political Committee sent a campaign mailer to registered voters for mayoral candidate Jim Lane and City Council candidates Nan Nesvig and Tom Giller. They will also have a coming weekend newspaper advertisement.

Reminder; the COGS Political Committee provides these endorsements as an independent expenditure---not in coordination with any candidate or our non-profit COGS AZ organization. The Political Committee Chairperson is Sharon Oberritter— email sw1170@cox.net Do not send your campaign donations to our COGS AZ mailbox.

Check our website www.cogsAZ.org (or .net)

For the COGS Board of Directors
Sonnie Kirtley, Chairperson
cellular: 602. 717. 3886 anytime

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~Shout and Spout ~

shoutandspout@scottsdaleactivist.com

Iraq: What would happen if the U.S. won a war but the media didn't tell the American public? Apparently, we have to rely on a British newspaper for the news that we've defeated the last remnants of al-Qaida in Iraq.

Addendum: The reason you haven't seen this on American television or read about it in the American press is simple--journalism is 'dead' in this country. They are controlled by Liberal Democrats who would rather see our troops defeated than recognize a successful Republican initiated response to 9/11.

An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" ( http://snipurl.com/457townhall_com] ): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."

These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.

This article first appeared in The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro, North Carolina, and is used here by permission.

In 1961, Barack Obama was born to a black father and white mother in Hawaii. Two years later, in my junior year of high school, I began working as the only white (actually, olive) on a black janitorial, porter and kitchen staff of an exclusive country club in a wealthy St. Louis suburb on the other side of the tracks from my working-class neighborhood.

The first day on the job, my black boss told me to clean the grimy employee restroom, which hadn’t been cleaned in months. An hour later, as I was finishing the job, a black cook and former prize fighter walked in drunk and began peeing on the wall. "Clean this up, whitey," he demanded.

At that moment, another black coworker walked in, grabbed the cook by the lapels, threw him against the wall, and said, "Do that again and I’ll kick your black ass." He then asked for my help in hiding the tipsy cook in a storeroom until he could sleep off the liquor and not lose his job.

So began my odyssey with blacks, an odyssey that saw too many of them go from the self-reliance of yesteryear to the government dependency of today. Now they are being hoodwinked by the half-black from Hawaii, a man who preaches self-reliance but whose policies will make blacks even more dependent on the state.

I didn’t know the following statistics at the beginning of my odyssey, but they match my experience. (Statistics are from Economic Facts and Fallacies, by Thomas Sowell)

- In 1969, young black males earned the same income as young white males, if they had the same years of schooling and lived in homes where newspapers, magazines and library cards could be found.

- Thirty years ago, the income of college-educated married blacks was slightly higher than the income of college-educated married whites.

- During the First World War, Southern white soldiers scored lower on mental tests than Northern black soldiers.

- The rate of black out-of-wedlock births was 31 percent in 1931, versus over 70 percent today.

Granted, life was far from idyllic for blacks in St. Louis in the early 1960s, but in spite of the difficulties and discrimination they faced, most had class, determination, family togetherness, a strong work ethic, jobs, and rising incomes.

The head waiter at the country club was one of the classiest men I’ve ever known. A former waiter on Pullman trains, he was groomed impeccably, wore his waiter’s uniform like it was a tuxedo, and had the etiquette of British royalty. For extra money, I would wash and wax his blue Pontiac Bonneville, which had power windows, wide whitewalls on the tires, lots of chrome, sofa-like seats, and a big V-8. By contrast, my parents had a rusty Plymouth with a six-cylinder engine, torn vinyl seats, and no whitewalls.

An even classier man was the black manager in charge of the staff, including the office employees, one of whom was my mom, who worked as a bookkeeper. He wore beautiful suits tailored to perfection, with a silk handkerchief artfully peeking out of the pocket of his suit coat, and with French cuffs and cufflinks peeking out of the sleeves. At the invitation of my mom, he visited us at our home one night, parking his big Oldsmobile on the street in front of our tiny brick bungalow. We were the talk of the neighborhood the next day.

As an aside, we were also visited frequently by two homosexual men who were close friends of the family. In today’s politically-correct vernacular, they’d be called a "gay couple." We just called them Ken and Jerry.

My black coworkers would invite me to their employee picnics in St. Louis’ Forest Park. I still salivate at the memory of the barbecued ribs being slow-cooked and slathered in homemade sauce. All of the mothers and fathers in attendance were married and doted over their children, just like my Italian relatives who lived on nearby Dago Hill, which is what we called the Italian neighborhood back then, before the era of political correctness made everyone thin-skinned. Baseball notables Yogi Berra and Joe Garagiola grew up on the Hill.

A statue of an immigrant family carrying all of their possessions stands outside the parish church on the Hill. My immigrant grandparents lived nearby in a two-flat, residing in the second-floor unit. My aunt and uncle and their five kids lived downstairs in the two-bedroom, one-bath unit, getting by on a tile setter’s salary. Today, the federal government would consider the unit to be substandard housing for a family of seven, if they were on welfare.

A black neighborhood bordered the Italian neighborhood on two sides; yet there were no blacks living on the Italian side, due to an unspoken rule among Italian homeowners and realtors that homes would be sold to only Italians. Discriminatory? Yes. Understandable? Yes. Prescient? Yes. The higher crime rates and decrepit housing on the black side were soon going to get much worse, due in part to whites and companies leaving the city for the suburbs on new interstate highways, but also due to the corrupt Democrat machine that ran the city and to the unintended consequences of federal social policies and court rulings.

To take one example: When "separate but equal" was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education, the idea took hold of integrating formerly all-black schools, many of which were inferior to white schools, but some of which were outstanding schools with high academic standards and discipline that provided a path to the middle class. The push for integration and equal outcomes not only accelerated white flight but also had the perverse effect of lowering the standards of the better all-black schools. Tragically, the dropout rate is 50 percent or higher today in black inner-city schools.

I did not experience the worst of the decay of inner-city St. Louis, because from 1964 to 1971 I was away at college, then at graduate school, and then a stint in the Army as an artillery officer, where I once again worked with impressive blacks. The intervening years saw the passage of the Great Society, Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act. The years also saw Selma, the assassination of Martin Luther King, race riots, the Black Panthers, "Burn baby burn," urban renewal (known at the time as "Negro removal"), and the horrible social experiment of herding blacks into high-rise government housing, which became incubators of social pathologies and would be torn down decades later.

In 1965, Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat, predicted what was coming in his controversial but insightful report, "The Negro Family: a Case for National Action." He understood how welfare was dramatically increasing the rates of illegitimacy, divorce, and unemployment, tearing the fabric of society in the process. The report contained a number of astonishing charts, including one that showed the correlation between AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) and black unemployment. For instance, black unemployment increased by 180 percent between 1947 and 1964, while filings for AFDC increased by 188 percent.

In 1967, Barack Obama moved with his mother and her new husband from Honolulu to Jakarta, and then in 1971, back to Honolulu, where he lived until graduating from high school in 1979.

In 1971, while Obama was moving back to Honolulu, I was moving to Chicago after active duty to begin my business career in the Loop and to serve in an Army Reserve unit on the Southside of the city, not far from Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church and where Obama would later do his community organizing.

Things had changed dramatically in the black community since my days at the country club--and not for the better. It was scary to walk the block from the Reserve unit’s parking lot to the armory. Roving bands of angry, unemployed black men would glare at me and sometimes yell racial epithets. Although the commander of the unit was a black colonel, things weren’t much better inside the armory. He would call morning formation, and the black enlisted men would shuffle to line up, wearing combs in their bushy Afro hairstyles instead of wearing the required military caps. The message from Reserve headquarters was that they shouldn’t be disciplined, for fear of claims of racism.

One of my responsibilities was to safeguard the arms vault and to take the unit to the firing range outside of the city for annual arms qualification. I should have received combat pay. To keep the arms and ammunition from being pilfered or hijacked along the way, we were escorted by both military police and Chicago police. Once there, it was my responsibility as a range officer to keep people safe, but without the authority to maintain military discipline.

The situation in my business career wasn’t much better. One day, while commuting on the El, a young black man got on the train at the stop for Malcolm X College. When he sat next to me, I smiled and said, "Good morning." He glared at me. I averted my eyes, looked down, and saw these words written in large letters on his briefcase: "Whites eat shit."

By then, due to the Civil Rights movement and the changing racial attitudes of whites, corporate America was reaching out to blacks to remedy past discrimination through voluntary affirmative action. One of my responsibilities was to head up the outreach program for an international insurance company, ensuring that qualified blacks were hired and later promoted based on merit. I also spearheaded an initiative to do away with race-based employment practices, such as a longstanding practice that restricted black claims adjustors to black neighborhoods, and white claim adjustors to white neighborhoods.

One time, I bypassed two levels of management and went directly to the CEO to appeal a decision that had been made regarding a white supervisor who had been caught stealing office equipment from a field office in the middle of the night. The decision was to let the employee keep his job instead of being fired, a decision that I vehemently disagreed with, because a black clerical employee had been fired a couple of weeks before for stealing claims drafts. The CEO took my side in the matter and later promoted me.

Unfortunately, at the same time, the government was pushing involuntary affirmative action and giving more authority to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce the anti-discrimination provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Trust in the workplace went out the window. Cover your ass became the modus operandi in dealing with minorities. Blacks got a chip on their shoulders and whites became resentful. Attorneys got rich. Bureaucrats got more plentiful.

In 1979, just as Obama was graduating from high school in Honolulu, I took a job in Phoenix, and then, three years later, in New Jersey. While in New Jersey, my employer, an international consumer products company, was extorted by a former black sales manager in the company’s Chicago operation. He had been hired and promoted under the company’s outreach program. Falsely claiming discrimination after he was fired for not making his sales numbers, he threatened to use his position in Operation Push and his close association with Rev. Jesse Jackson to call for a boycott of the company’s products. I flew to Chicago several times to negotiate with him, finally handing him a check for $25,000. The experience made me nauseous.

In the early 1980s, Obama was attending Columbia University, and I was volunteering for racial sensitivity sessions at retreats in the woods of Maine, where blacks and whites would have no-holds-barred conversations about race. What I had learned at the country club as a teenager, I re-learned in the woods as an adult: that both blacks and whites engage in racial stereotyping, although one wouldn’t know this from the mainstream media’s treatment of racial issues.

Then in 1990, the diversity movement began, as a result of a landmark article in the Harvard Business Review by Roosevelt Thomas, a black intellectual I had met. The premise of the article sounded good and appealed to corporate executives, but it was a crock--at least in how it was interpreted. The premise was that it was good for the bottom line to have a workforce and a management cadre that were mirror images of society and customers in terms of racial make-up. Black marketing executives, the premise went, knew best how to market and sell to blacks. Likewise, black mangers knew best how to supervise and motivate black employees. The same with Hispanics regarding Hispanics, and Asians regarding Asians.

The falsity of the premise can be seen in the fact that homogenous Japan and Germany have no difficulty in selling products to blacks and Hispanics.

Putting the falsity aside, the main problem with the premise was that it turned the idea of equal opportunity and equal treatment on its head. Instead of discouraging race-based practices and job assignments, as I had done with adjustors in the insurance company, the diversity movement has encouraged them. Instead of not basing employment and promotion decisions on race, as the law requires, the diversity movement has encouraged such decisions. Meanwhile, the EEOC has looked the other way, thus making a mockery out of the law and making me feel like a fool for my past efforts to achieve an equal-opportunity society.

To see how far the racial pendulum has swung in the other direction, visit any major university. Where blacks were once discouraged from attending and teaching, there are now blatant policies of racial preferences for blacks (and Hispanics). Where there was once a paucity of black literature and history, there are now degrees in African-American studies and stand-alone black cultural centers--but no degree programs in Caucasian-American studies or Caucasian cultural centers. Students are taught to celebrate diversity--not true diversity, but the proscribed, selective, politically-correct kind of diversity.

After living in Honolulu and Jakarta for his teenage years, Obama got his introduction to mainland American black culture and racial thinking on the campuses of Occidental College and Columbia University--an introduction that began 16 years after I got my introduction at the country club. After graduating from Columbia and before entering Harvard Law School, his education (indoctrination?) in black culture and racial thinking continued as a community organizer in Chicago, where he worked at bringing more government money to the black community. By then, of course, Moynihan’s predictions had come true about black social pathologies. Not surprisingly, 90 percent of blacks had become Democrat Party loyalists, and most of them were enamored with the welfare state and redistribution.

It stands to reason that Obama is steeped in the false premise of diversity, in social engineering, in big government, and in the racial agenda of higher education. He has to be. His entire life in mainland America has been spent in that milieu. He has no other mental model of how the world can work for the betterment of blacks and all Americans.

My odyssey ends here, but not my hope that inner-city blacks will escape the government plantation and become self-reliant again. Sadly and ironically, if Barack Obama is elected president, he will extinguish that hope.

As much as Americans make fun of the French, or Frogs, we’ve been following in their amphibian-like footsteps for over 200 years.

For example, France came to our rescue during the American Revolution, and we later returned the favor by coming to France’s rescue in the Second World War. France had a colonial empire, and we later had one of our own, albeit on a much smaller scale. France tired of fighting the Communists in Indochina, just as we would later tire of fighting them in Vietnam. France used military force to try to westernize Muslims and stop Islamic terrorism in Algiers, just as we are now trying the same policy in Iraq. France was the main arms supplier to Israel, until we took over the role after the Six-Day War. And France discovered the exorbitant cost of maintaining an empire and military garrisons around the world, just as we are now discovering the cost of having over 700 military bases around the world.

We will continue to follow in France’s footsteps if Barack Obama becomes president. Let’s see what’s in store for us.

France is a social democracy, or a modern variant thereof, meaning that it has a mixed economy of a highly regulated private sector and cradle-to-grave social security, including nationalized healthcare. It has steeply progressive tax rates, a trade policy of "fair" trade instead of free trade, corresponding protectionism for French industries, labor laws that make it nearly impossible to lay off unproductive workers or let creative destruction take place, a union stranglehold on the bloated public sector and much of private industry, and a religion of environmentalism that rivals the dominant religion of Catholicism.

France’s per-capita gross domestic product is only two-thirds the size of ours. The average French house is not even half as large as the average American house. In even good economic times, French unemployment is almost twice as high as ours. Granted, French industry is more productive than ours, but that is due to French labor laws that give companies the incentive to automate rather than hire new workers.

What about minorities in France? Mostly Muslims from North Africa, France’s minorities are isolated in government housing in ghettos, where generous welfare payments, multicultural mumbo jumbo, and pandering politicians discourage them from acculturating into mainstream society. With a moribund economy and few job prospects in the ghettos or larger society for young African men, unemployment is high. So is rage. So is radicalism. Meanwhile, entrepreneurially-minded young whites have been leaving the Africans behind by immigrating to countries with more opportunities and freer markets, such as Scotland.

Obama’s expansion of the welfare state and government dependency will have similar consequences for inner-city African Americans.

The good news is that Obama might reduce the number of U.S. garrisons around the world. The bad news is that, unlike France, there won’t be a powerful Western nation to come to our defense if we cut the military too much and leave ourselves vulnerable to attack. It’s also bad news that Obama wants to double foreign aid and continue sticking Uncle Sam’s nose in other countries’ affairs.

Obama won’t follow France in three areas where he should: (1) He won’t greatly expand nuclear power; (2) he won’t break the government school monopoly by giving public money to private schools; and (3) he won’t allow market forces and patient choice to exist under his nationalized healthcare program. But overall, he will follow France’s embrace of statism.

Oh, well, look at the bright side: Americans will no longer have to fly to France to experience French life.

New Issue Brewing? The City of Scottsdale has no formal noise ordinance. As new residential projects are approved in the downtown core, as existing neighborhoods nearby are impacted, and as new liquor and nightclub licenses are approved----abusive noise levels are an increasing problem for local residents. We have one COGS member who reports that a nearby club plays live music until 2 AM with their doors open. The level of noise is unlivable---and unsleepable in their home. They have received no enforcement from the police department. We haven't received a timetable on this discussion yet.

Unfortunately we have had to revise our Cafe Discussion Series for the Southern Scottsdale Community Area Plan Process. We now have only one event left to attend (10-29-08). Please see the attached flyer for more information. And we encourage you to sign up and help shape the future of Southern Scottsdale!

Ryan Stee
Associate Planner
7506 E. Indian School Road
Scottsdale, AZ 85251
O - 480.312.7089
F - 480.312.7314

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These modern-day robocops make ticketing easier and can be huge moneymakers for local governments. But critics question their accuracy and fret over privacy issues.