Progressive At Cal
Sunday, May 30, 2004
The Old Boys Need to Grow Up
Here's another highlight from DAAP's petition for a rehearing that highlights some of the incestuous corruption of the J-Council:
Subsequent to the hearing in LaFata v DAAP 2, defendants have learned that on the evening of the same day charges were filed in the instant case, Judicial Council members were discussing the charges with Paul LaFata at a hearing in an unrelated case. UC-Berkeley student Kenny Kroll, who is unaffiliated with DAAP, was shocked to witness the judges engaging in ex parte communications with LaFata, in which they expressed their view of DAAP’s guilt and the truth and correctness of LaFata’s charges—for which there had neither been a hearing nor even a response from the defendants who at that point were not even aware of the charges against them. Among other statements, these Judicial Council members asserted that the behavior of DAAP amounted to badgering and/or threatening behavior and exchanged animated anecdotes with LaFata on the underlying events. Mr. Kroll described the impact of this scenario as convincing him that the Judicial Council is “a good old boys club” in which only the persons in the club can expect basic fairness.
Kenny Kroll, if you'll remember, had filed a lawsuit against Misha Leybovich for sending spam in violation of the Elections Code, a lawsuit which was not treated seriously by the J-Council. In fact, Misha Leybovich was able to get away with a wrist-slap for spamming Hermanos Unidos and the Queer Resource Center, based on a stupid argument cooked up Paul LaFata that charging Misha for two violations constituted "double jeopardy." This argument is flawed for two reasons. One, there is no definition of "double jeopardy" in ASUC rules, nor is there any J-Council precedent for determining when "double jeopardy" applies. Second, this is not how "double jeopardy" works in the real world. If you shoot a bullet out of a gun and that bullet kills two people, you can be prosecuted for two murders. You cannot claim "double jeopardy" and argue that you should only be prosecuted for one murder.
The right-wingers at Berkeley often complain that liberals and leftists do not have a grasp of the "real world," but the quote from DAAP's petition for rehearing suggests that it is the J-Council who has no grasp of the real world. Ex parte communications with the plaintiff in a lawsuit by the judges who will decide that lawsuit is precisely the sort of thing that gets lawyers disbarred in the real world. Stop this corruption. The J-Council has been Berkeley ASUC's court of first and last resort for too long.
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The Law is An Ass...and It's Name is Mike Davis
I just got a hold of DAAP's legal briefs against the J-Council and I wanted to pass on the following highlight:
In fact, even accepting the Council’s Decision’s description of the events in question at face value, it is clear that the Council found DAAP guilty of “badgering” based upon criticism of the competence of the Justices (“personal attacks”), the vigor with which Massie and Felarca pressed their appeal (“the bellicosity of these arguments”), their asserted use of the word “asses” (“foul language”), and the fact that both made known “their thoughts on our decision.” According to the Council, “This was all badgering”-but according the United States Constitution, all this was classic, protected free speech.
Yup, there you have it. One of the reasons that the J-Council in its less-than-infinite wisdom decided to disqualify the entire slate of the Defend Affirmative Action Party was that somebody said the word "ass." You can't say "ass" any more? What is this, the Brady Bunch?
Another facet of DAAP's legal briefs suggests that a lot of this situation is due to Mike Davis overreacting to having his judgments questioned:
During the hearing of that day, the ASUC Judicial Chair Michael Davis issued a ruling excluding from the hearing room Mr. Luke Massie—a DAAP supporter who was not a student at UCB and who was a spectator at the hearing on the charges against the other party targeted by Mr. LaFata—on the basis of facial expressions that were purportedly disrespectful to the Judicial Council.
When the Council took a break, Mr. Massie and Ms. Felarca approached members of the Judicial Council and asked for an appeal from Mr. Davis’s ruling to the entire Judicial Panel, arguing that the ruling was unjust and undemocratic and that Mr. Massie should be readmitted to the hearing. Under the Judicial Council’s Rules of Procedure, any ruling of that chair may be challenged and subjected to en banc reconsideration. After initially refusing to reconsider the Chair’s ruling, the Judicial Council then reconsidered, upheld the Chair’s ruling, and the hearing proceeded. Mr. LaFata charged that this request for reconsideration constituted the offense of badgering, which, under the ASUC By-laws was grounds for disqualifying DAAP.
It's almost as if Paul LaFata and Mike Davis were in cahoots. Felarca and Massie challenge Davis's ruling and assert their right, given to them under the J-Council's own rules of procedure, to have the ruling reheard by the entire council. When they exercise that right, Paul LaFata argues that this constitutes "badgering" and LaFata's interpretation is actually considered seriously by the J-Council. It's a great scam. LaFata claims to be oh-so-fragile. He filed suit because Yvette Felarca gave him a phone call. He filed suit because Luke Massie shook his hand too "vigorously." Mike Davis then steps in to give LaFata and his complaints a credibility they do not deserve, in order to disqualify a party that they as conservative Republicans both oppose.
It's sad that it had to come to this, but the DAAP lawsuit is a necessary step to ensure that the prima donnas on the Judicial Council don't stomp all over the democratic rights of the Berkeley student body.
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Saturday, May 29, 2004
ASUC, Murderous Rage, and Calstuff.
So, seems some folks are so worked up that there are leftists on campus, that they wish death on the most visible of the folks they disagree with. Calstuff comments are currently featuring a series of comments to the effect that three campus activists should kill themselves or be killed. Astonishing, and reflects really poorly on the campus right.
I thought Calstuff didnt allow blatant ad hominem attacks, but apparently anonymous threating language is A-OK.
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Friday, May 28, 2004
Yoo Know I'm Not That Innocent
Some may say I'm being to hard on Professor John Yoo and his role in the recent human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. They say that Yoo was merely a legal advisor who merely did what his client asked him to do. Needless to say, this does not pass the smell test. A 2002 Wall Street Journal story shows that John Yoo was "the man to see" when it came to writing arguments that granted the Bush administration unlimited executive power to violate human rights:
After the terrorist attacks, Mr. Gonzales took a new look at those agreements. The reference book "The Laws of War" is the newest addition to his research shelf. It was given to him by John Yoo, a former University of California, Berkeley professor now serving in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Council. Mr. Yoo built a formidable
reputation in elite international law academic circles -- the "academy" as they call themselves -- for his provocative writings asserting profound presidential powers during time of war. He quickly became the White House counsel office's "go to guy," says Mr. Gonzales.
Please note that "Gonzales" refers to Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel who seconded John Yoo's memos on circumventing the Geneva Convention. In addition, the above paragraph makes clear that Yoo's area of expertise is international law, military law, and the laws of combat. It's his frickin' job to know what consequences will result from his interpretations of international law. If we can't hold him to that standard, what ethical standards are there at all?
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Do Yoo Read Me?
Welcome to Progcal where the news is all John Yoo, all the time. I just dug up this choice quote where Yoo basically defends getting the goverment to rummage through your credit card bills and library records:
Also, you don't have a constitutional right to privacy for those records. The general rule is: Once you give a record to someone else, you don't have a Fourth Amendment right to privacy any more. This includes records like credit cards and bank account information, which are not under your control. The same with library records; the objections to obtaining those are ridiculous.
Keep him on the faculty if you must, but John Yoo is definitely not the kind of guy I'd let anywhere near my file cabinet.
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Thursday, May 27, 2004
If Yoo Love Somebody, Set Them Free
I found another legal opinion attributed to John Yoo that goes a long way toward explaining why 71% of Iraqis view the United States as occupiers rather than liberators. Here's the money quote:
Both John Yoo, a visiting professor at the University of Chicago and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and Paul Rosenzweig, a senior legal research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said that the United States is for now the sovereign government of Iraq and, as such, could not be sued in U.S. federal court. And, as a sovereign power, they added, the United States would have to consent to being sued in the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Rosenzweig called Scheffer's argument "an interesting theoretical exercise" with little chance "of coming to fruition."[Emphasis added]
The context is that Yoo is providing justification for not only why the United States government cannot be sued for its actions in Iraq (somewhat consistent with the U.S. constitution), but why private contractors hired by the federal government (e.g., Haliburton) cannot be sued for their actions in Iraq either.
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It Had to Be Yoo
I've done some more research on Professor John Yoo and even I'm surprised how far his worship of untrammeled executive power can go. According to an article in the National Journal, John Yoo had considerable praise for the Bush Administration's efforts to render itself unaccountable to the judicial and legislative branches:
"The administration has been vigorous in reasserting the constitutional powers of the presidency," wrote John Yoo, a former deputy assistant attorney general under John Ashcroft in Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, in an e-mail response to a reporter's question. "This extends from the president's war powers, to claims of executive privilege, to efforts to preserve executive discretion in the operations of government.... Even should the administration lose these cases, it will still have several achievements to point to in the effort to restore presidential power, most notably in foreign affairs."
Yoo, who is now a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, offered examples such as Bush's decision to withdraw the United States from the International Criminal Court, and to terminate the Antiballistic Missile Treaty with Russia, without seeking congressional approval.
Given this record of unquestioning support for executive power, it's no wonder that Yoo and his defenders are such apologists for war crimes.
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Yoo Want It, Yoo Got It
I urge everybody to check out the new blog Mere Dicta for its great coverage of the Boalt student campaign against war-crime enabler, Professor John Yoo. Here's a really great post I wanted to quote in full:
A number of people have suggested that Prof. Yoo was only "doing his job" in writing the infamous memo, answering a question posed by his client as he saw fit.
I wonder how far this is supposed to go. Assume for a minute that Prof. Yoo's advice was legally accurate (a highly questionable assumption, but just for the sake of argument). He must have or should have known that in the real world, his client would end up imprisoning completely innocent civilians, and that they would be using his legal advice as a cover for doing so. (And if anyone thinks the U.S. only imprisons genuine al Qaeda and Taliban combatants at Guantanamo and Bagram, I have some Iraqi marshland to sell you.)
Suppose a moonlighting law professor takes on a mafia family as a client. He provides them with legal advice that, while accurate, he knows will be used to cause great harm to innocent persons. Is that protected by academic freedom? If students are so repulsed by his immoral actions, is it inappropriate to ask him to resign?
Are lawyers just hired guns with no duty to consider the consequences of the legal advice they provide? I realize many lawyers act like this is the case, but is it really an excuse?
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Profiling Doesn't Work, David Harris Shows Why
Check out Profiles In Injustice. Turns out all that stuff Jon brought up 2 posts back, while noble, is totally irrelevant.
Racial profiling does not work. Argumentation as to strategy or morality is unnecessary.
The evidence, as collected by the practitioners of racial profiling, shows that you are statistically less likely to catch criminals when you racially profile. In other words, you do better if you have a totally random profiler, a computer that has NO SELECTION CRITERION WHATSOEVER, than you do if you have a cop who has been told to pay special attention to any category.
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How to Abuse ASUC Rules, Part 1: Disqualifying Your Enemies
Step 1, File an election lawsuit against a rival political party that requires that the rival party be disqualified.
Step 2, Recruit people to taunt members of the rival political party until at least one rival party member does something to get the J-Council to declare them in contempt. "Respect my authoritah!" says the J-Council in true South Park-like fashion.
Step 3, Using article 4.15, section 3, subsection 2 of the Judicial Council's Rules of Procedure, get the rival party disqualified. According to article 4.15, section 3, subsection 2 of the Judicial Council's Rules of Procedure, "Individuals found in contempt may be asked to leave the proceedings, may be forcibly removed from proceedings, may be disallowed from appearing again before the Council, and a default judgment issued against the party the participant sought to benefit." Since a member of the rival party committed "contempt of council" and your remedy was to have the rival party disqualified, J-Council will get the rival party disqualified, regardless of the merits of the original lawsuit.
Try it! It's hella fun! It works just as easily against Student Action as it does against DAAP.
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Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Profiling Doesn't Work, Ashcroft Shows Why
I got into a debate about ethnic profiling a while back. Now while I don't want to get into charges and counter-charges ad infinitum, I would like to show how John Ashcroft makes my point for me. At a recent press conference, Attorney General Crisco Head revealed the following about U.S. intelligence reports:
Our intelligence confirms al Qaeda is seeking recruits who can portray themselves as Europeans. Al Qaeda also attracts Muslim extremists among many nationalities and ethnicities, including North Africans and South Asians, as well as recruiting young Muslim converts of any nationality inside target countries.
This is why any ethnic profiling system (or any other type of profiling system) is doomed to fail. All a terrorist has to do is find out what the "profile" is and recruit somebody who doesn't fit the profile. As a report by MIT students has shown, the United States would be safer if the money we spent on "profiling" were reallocated to security devices used for searching everybody (like metal detectors and baggage X-rays) and security procedures that search people at random. If we assume that the procedures search the same number of people, random security procedures are safer than procedures based on profiling, because it is always possible to "reverse engineer" the profile, whereas it is impossible to determine who will get selected by a random process. Any other "profiling" occurring will result from the discretion given to security personnel to act on hunches. It should not be institutionalized as policy.
Last but not least, "terrorists" are practitioners of a tactic, not members of an ethnic group. It doesn't matter whether a courthouse gets blown up by Al-Qaeda or by a white supremacist militia. The damage in property and human lives is the same. To make it sound like terrorism is something that only the "Ay-rabs" do is not merely racist, but counterproductive to improving real security.
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Lies and the Anti-Latino Liars who Tell Them
It turns out that a recent posting from David Orland at Res Ipsa Loquitur based on a column by state senator, Tom McClintock, is a complete fabrication. McClintock claimed that 7500 qualified applicants to UC Berkeley were turned away to make room for (presumably Mexican) illegal immigrants. The problem is that a Los Angeles Times investigation finds that McClintock's claims are totally bogus:
So where did Sen. McClintock's statistics come from?
Last week he told me that he thought they came from the Office of the Legislative Analyst, Sacramento's nonpartisan analytical body. But that office says it has never produced any such numbers. McClintock also says he's unsure whether his figure of 7,500 illegal immigrant students includes those at the community colleges; given that there are more than 1 million community college students, that's a lot of wiggle room.
This leaves the possibility that Sen. McClintock seized on the figure of 7,500 because it so handily matches the number of qualified UC applicants denied admission this year because of enrollment cutbacks. The implication, plainly, is that illegal immigrants have stolen opportunities that should go to citizens and law-abiding newcomers.
That's certainly the narrative line that grabs people's attention. "I find it appalling that the illegal immigrant population can get into our university system easier than can the children of people whether legal immigrants or born and bred in the United States," one exercised reader wrote the Daily News.
The trouble is that it's a fabrication.
To begin with, AB 540 doesn't give anyone, illegal immigrant or otherwise, preferential admission to a state university or college. Each has to qualify academically like anyone else. Moreover, McClintock's tally of 7,500 prospective university freshmen "turned away for lack of funds" doesn't cover both UC and Cal State — it refers to an option UC alone has given those students to spend two years at a community college in return for guaranteed enrollment as juniors. Suggesting they were turned away because their slots were taken by "7,500 illegal immigrants," especially when UC has reported granting waivers to no more than 93 "potentially undocumented" students, is slicing the baloney pretty thick.[Emphasis added.]
The fundamental untruth in McClintock's column is the intimation that a subsidy to illegal immigrants helped cause the financial crunch in California higher education. In fact, there is a reason for the fiscal crisis at UC, Cal State and the community colleges, and Sen. McClintock is partially responsible: It's the refusal by the Legislature and governor to close the state's budget gap by levying enough taxes to pay for all the programs they like.
Oh well, McClintock was only off by two orders of magnitude. Sounds like par for the course at Res Ipsa Loquitur.
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A Patriot Blast from the Past
There is yet another parallel in the controversies involving John Yoo and Hatem Bazian. True to hypocritical form, the Patriot's most recent issue argued, "Statements like Dr. Bazian's must not go unpunished." Yet two months earlier, the Cal Patriot published a laudatory softball interview of John Yoo that barely scratched the surface of this man's Orwellian involvement in foisting the Patriot Act on this country. I suppose Yoo's involvement in Abu Ghraib is a surprise that the Patriot was keeping under wraps for a future issue.
In addition, if we adopt the viewpoint of the Daily Cal's editorial department that it is inappropriate to demand the resignation of law professor John Yoo, then it is just as inappropriate to demand the firing of Hatem Bazian for his statements outside the classroom. Neither John Yoo or Hatem Bazian should be punished for statements made outside the classroom, but if the university does take reprisals against Bazian, it's only fair that Yoo should get the ax next.
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Big Brother Is Watching Yoo
I heard some complaints from Progcal's right-wing "fan base" that we are posting too much on Calstuff and not enough on our own blog. Be careful what you wish for.
Anyhow, I wanted to compare the recent calls for firing the Berkeley professors, Hatem Bazian and John Yoo, coming from opposite ends of the political spectrum. I oppose all of this, because I think professors should be judged on the quality of their academic work, not their statements outside the classroom.
So whose statements were more damaging, Hatem Bazian or John Yoo? By any objective accounting, the consequences of John Yoo's words were much more damaging than those of Hatem Bazian's.
Just so I can't be accused of selectively editing Bazian's words to make him look good, here's a short excerpt of what Hatem Bazian said at an April 10th rally from the right-wing Free Republic web site:
“Are you angry? [Yeah!] Are you angry? [Yeah!] Are you angry? [Yeah!] Well, we’ve been watching intifada in Palestine, we’ve been watching an uprising in Iraq, and the question is that what are we doing? How come we don’t have an intifada in this country? Because it seem[s] to me, that we are comfortable in where we are, watching CNN, ABC, NBC, Fox, and all these mainstream... giving us a window to the world while the world is being managed from Washington, from New York, from every other place in here in San Francisco: Chevron, Bechtel, [Carlyle?] Group, Halliburton; every one of those lying, cheating, stealing, deceiving individuals are in our country and we’re sitting here and watching the world pass by, people being bombed, and it’s about time that we have an intifada in this country that change[s] fundamentally the political dynamics in here. And we know every— They’re gonna say some Palestinian being too radical — well, you haven’t seen radicalism yet!”
I'm not going to get in a fruitless discussion over what Bazian meant by the word "intifada" in this context, but even if you agree (reasonably) that Bazian's statement was inflammatory and amounted to an exhortation to commit violence, there is no evidence that any violence can be directly attributed to what Bazian said. According to the Supreme Court decision, Brandenburg v. Ohio, Bazian's speech is constitutionally protected, because no imminent violence resulted from his speech, nor was any such violence likely to occur. Nobody blew up civilians on AC Transit buses; nobody set off any carbombs in San Francisco. In fact, the speech itself received very little press coverage, except on the very same right-wing web sites that are calling for Bazian to be fired or arrested for sedition! If it hadn't have been for these web sites calling for Bazian's head, Bazian's speech would have faded out of memory due to sheer indifference.
Now compare the outcome of Bazian's speech to John Yoo's memo justifying the United States violating the Geneva Convention. Yoo's memo not only paved the way for the deaths of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, 70 to 90 percent whom were arrested by mistake, but it also led to "blowback" when a terrorist group decapitated Nick Berg in response to the Abu Ghraib scandal. In fact, John Yoo's words represent a continued danger to U.S. troops, because as Colin Powell warned in his own memo, it undermined "the U.S. objective of ensuring its forces are protected under the [Geneva] Convention."
Regardless of the rightness or wrongness of Bazian's speech, nobody died because of it. We can't say the same about John Yoo.
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Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Tragedy
The killed professor was Prof. Zelnik, a large supporter of the Slate and FSM in the 60s and a popular history professor.
That's awful. Zelnik was beloved by activists and students alike.
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Online Voting
In response to the charge by Ben N.
The only thing UCLA does seem to do right is allow students to vote from their own computers, something our Senate (Cal-SERVE senators in particular) has dragged its feet on. It seems that Cal-SERVE is afraid of increasing voter turnout, speculating that the party has reached a ceiling as to party voter turnout, and increased accessibility to voting opportunities could theoretically hurt their power base. Arguments against the possibility for fraud on home-based computers are moot in light of the many problems the Election Council has had in the last couple of years with inconsistent reliability and security loopholes that, while uninvestigated by our AG, definitely compromised the integrity of the election. So much for the progressives being the champions of efficient democracy.
First off all, it is "Cal Students for Equal Rights and a Valid Education." "Cal -- Students for Equal Rights and a Valid Education makes little sense." CalSERVE has no hyphen.
Moving on, I encourage Ben to examine the wonderful example of schools like Michigan, where groups organize parties to attract votes. The catch? Next to the kegs of free flowing beer is a laptop computer. 1 beer, 1 vote. Online voting also encourages massive bribery. You could walk down a floor in a Unit with $100 and pick up 25 apathetic votes. Additionally, peer pressure will be able to rear its ugly head. There is a reason we have an Australian ballot in this country, we don't want others pressuring people to vote. If you have online voting, bribery and peer pressure are both not only possible, but the likely outcomes.
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Saturday, May 15, 2004
A Berkeley Blogger in the News, Sort of
This is not really news nor progessive, but a picture Kevin Deenihan, of the retired CalStuff blog, graces the front page of today's Oakland Tribune. The story is on college debt, although Kevin serves as one of several anonymous Berkeley students.
A picture can be seen at the tribune's sister-paper's site.
More to come on the other events in the news....
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Wednesday, May 12, 2004
Rebuttal to the Restrictionists, Part VII
vii) Immigration threatens national security.
Think of September 11th.
September 11th didn't happen because of liberal immigration policy, but because of the Bush Administration's demonstrated ineptitude in protecting this country, such as by ignoring intelligence data from the Clinton Adminstration and foreign intelligence services, shifting priorities to an ill-conceived missile defense system, and many other missteps. Orland basically wants to provide a rationale for ethnic profiling as a method to protect our national security, but the problem with ethnic profiling (aside from it conflicting with core American values) is that it doesn't work. Researchers at MIT published a paper showing how any security system based on "profiling" (ethnic or otherwise) is not as resource-efficient or as secure as a security system that screens persons randomly. All terrorists would have to do to defeat a "profiling" system is to recruit a new member who does not fit the profile. Send the new terrorist recruit on a "dry run" through the system to see if he gets "profiled." Once you find enough recruits who don't get "profiled" on a practice run, you have the critical mass necessary to pull of another September 11th. All it takes is a John Walker Lindh (white American citizen) or a Jose Padilla (Latino American citizen) or an Arab who dyes his hair to disguise his ethnicity and your "profiling" system is a joke.
Think of what happens when every state in the American southwest is majority Latino.
There is no Latino political unit in the Southwestern United States equivalent to the role that Parti Quebecois played in the secessionist debate in Canada. There is no separatist Latino political party in California, whatsoever. (Troll repellent: MECHA doesn't count. Most members aren't separatist and, even if they were, they're not a political party.) You had over 200 political candidates in the recall election, with minimal barriers to entry, and there wasn't a single candidate who favored returning California back to Mexico (or if he did he got zero press coverage). At most there are some radical college students & professors who want to retake Aztlan (which is basically a land from Aztec mythology anyway), but this is the mostly the fringe anyway.
By the way, there already is place where white hegemony has been lost in the United States. It's called Hawaii. In Hawaii, there actually is a secessionist movement (backed mostly by indigenous Hawaiians not immigrants), complete with minor party candidates, which has much more support than any back-to-Aztlan movement in California. But guess what? Hawaii is doing just fine, thank you very much. If you really wanted to measure how well Hawaii is doing, I can furnish the statistics for you, but I'm sure there are some low-immigrant "red states" that are doing a lot worse than our 50th state.
And what happens to our military when we can no longer command the allegiance of troops by reference to a national idea, something that is already happening on a small scale?
David Orland continues this argument in a later post:
My point ultimately has to do with the conditions of allegiance. My worry is that, as the US military becomes more multicultural and imperial, the allegiance of its soldiers become less certain. As I mentioned earlier in the comments section, it seems perfectly intuitive that the US military would have problems dealing with, say, a military confict with Mexico now that so many of its soldiers are of recent Mexican origin. Is this outrageous? I don't think so. It came as little surprise that the soldier who threw the grenade into the officer's tent at the outset of the most recent Iraq War should have been a Muslim convert: his religious identity trumped his national one, just as racial identies often do (but he was black, too, and no doubt had additional grievances on that score). It is for the same reasons that I found nothing shocking in the investigation of Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee. All things being equal and once preliminary investigations had been completed, he was the only person in the lab who might have been lured by the figure of ethno-racial solidarity. He was for that reason an obvious suspect.
Here's a simple solution. Maybe the U.S. military shouldn't be so imperial and stick to defending the U.S, instead of engaging in preemptive wars? The problem of "blowback" multiplies exponentially with every intervention the U.S. makes, regardless of how ethnically homogeneous American society becomes in David Orland's fondest (wet) dreams. In addition, the examples are all wrong. Islam is a religion that crosses national borders, so stopping immigration does not mean that Americans will stop converting to Islam. The Wen Ho Lee example is also ridiculous, because Wen Ho Lee was later released, complete with an apology from a District Judge.
There's also an excellent counterexample from American history that Orland neglects. Japanese-Americans served valiantly in the American armed forces during World War II, even though the U.S. had declared war against Japan. This is true, even though some of these servicemen had legitimate grievances, because their families were sent to internment camps and had their property taken away from them.
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Rebuttal to the Restrictionists, Part VI
vi) Immigration erodes the foundations of the welfare state.
Hmmm...that's funny. David Orland of Res Ipsa Loquitur actually favors the welfare state? In reality, though, Orland is only concerned about the welfare state or overpopulation or environmental degradation when they are convenient to him as a rhetorical club to attack immigrants. It's true that social welfare spending tends to be higher in ethnically homogeneous societies than in ethnically heterogeneous societies. On the other hand, the United States has historically had low welfare state spending compared to the rest of the developed world, even before the boom in immigration that resulted after the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration Act. In fact, some liberals have argued that, if forced to make a choice, humanitarian principles might force them to accept a relatively smaller welfare state in exchange for preserving relatively liberal immigration laws and an "open" society, a la Karl Popper and George Soros. (I consider myself to fit in that category.) Here's an excellent discussion on the delicate balance between distributive justice issues and liberal immigration laws found on Matthew Yglesias's blog. A lot of the discussion on that page makes my points for me better than I ever could.
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Rebuttal to the Restrictionists, Part V
v) Immigration produces cultural strife/racializes political conflict.
I quote David Orland's response in full:
In today's political environment, with every racial and ethnic minority scrambling to reclaim its share of grievance, further Third World immigration can only contribute to deepening divisions in American society. This is particularly evident in what concerns affirmative action and racial preferences, policies that were never meant for immigrants but which have somehow been extended to them. Meanwhile, both parties struggle to bite off as large a share as possible of minority group votes by pandering to their supposed interests (almost never those of the nation per se). Meanwhile, native Americans are rubbed the wrong way on a daily basis by practices that are not their own and of which they don't approve -- genital mutilation, the recrudescence of long obsolete diseases, arranged marriage, polygamy, etc. Somehow, access to exotic cuisine does not quite compensate.
This is barely a coherent argument. First, it shifts the topic to affirmative action. Orland argues that immigration is bad, because immigrants will take advantage of affirmative action and politicians who pander to them. Even if you agree with this statement, this is not a criticism of immigration per se, but a criticism of affirmative action. In other words, it's a non sequitur. It's changing the subject. It also makes the dubious assumption that the interests of "minority group votes" are "almost never those of the nation per se." (That's a can of worms there I don't want to open.)
What's worse with this argument is that it's blaming the victim. It blames the formation of prejudices on the target of that prejudice. If we had this attitude during the Nazi persecution of the Jews, you could rephrase David Orland's writings to say "native Germans are rubbed the wrong way on a daily basis by Jewish practices that are not their own and of which they don't approve." Hmmm...that doesn't sound to good, now does it?
In addition, I don't know where you live, David, but the only genital mutilation I'm aware of in Berkeley is that which people do voluntarily when they get a Prince Albert or labial jewelry at Zebra Tattoo. The "recrudescence of obsolete diseases" could just as easily refer to native-born homeless people suffering from TB. And if you want to see polygamists, you're more likely to find them in rural Utah than in immigrant enclaves.
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Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Rebuttal to the Restrictionists, Part IV
iv) Immigration contributes to environmental degradation.
There are two basic opposing models of the human race's impact on the Earth's natural resources pertinent to the debate on immigration: the cornucopia model and the neo-Malthusian model. According to the cornucopia model,associated with economist Julian Simon, immigration has a long-run positive effect on the environment, because any short-term scarcity problems created by immigration will lead to demand for new resource-efficient technologies that wouldn't have been made if we hadn't had the original scarcity problem in the first place. The cornucopia argument has its merits, but an immigration restrictionist could reply with the argument that the environmental damage caused by immigration in the short term would be so damaging that it could not be compensated for by more environmentally efficient technologies in the future.
In this sense, the anti-immigration argument rests on a neo-Malthusian model of humanity's impact on the environment. A good measurement of human impact on the environment, according to this model, is the ecological footprint.The ecological footprint is a measure of the number of hectares of arable land and sea water necessary to make the resources that maintain the prevailing standard of living in a given country. By this standard, the United States has a large ecological footprint of 10.3 hectares per capita. Since the United States has only 6.7 hectares per capita of arable land and water, this means that the United States has an ecological deficit of 3.6 hectares per capita [6.7 - 10.3 = -3.6]. Would the United States be able to wipe out its ecological deficit if it sent all immigrants back to their home country? The evidence suggests that the answer is no. According to the 1990 census, there were 19,767,316 foreign-born persons living in the United States out of a total population of 248,791,000, which comes to about 7.9%. If all of those people were returned to their home country, that means we would have 92.1% of our population left. If we assume that immigrants consume resources at the same rate as native residents (a very generous assumption, because less affluent immigrants would presumably consume less resources), then the resulting ecological footprint if all immigrants were returned to their home countries would be 92.1%*10.3 hectares per capita or an ecological footprint of 9.4863 hectares per capita. Since America has 6.7 hectares of usable land and water per person, this means that the U.S. would still have an ecological deficit of approximately 2.8 hectares per capita [6.3 - 9.4863 = -2.7863].
Conclusion: Regardless of what you use to model human impact on the environment, you can't blame immigrants for the environmental problems America faces. You either have to consume less resources or develop more resource-efficient technologies.
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Monday, May 10, 2004
Good Bye
The father of Berkeley Blogs, CalStuff, has retired. I wish him well.
Now that Rory has retired too, I am the only Berkeley Blogger of the original 6 (Kevin, Rory, Amit, Joan, and Smokey) left.
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Rebuttal to the Restrictionists, Part III
iii) Immigration generates over-population.
Again, David Orland's assertion lacks proper context. According to sociologist Douglas Massey, the average yearly rate of immigration to the United States from 1901 to 1930 was 6.3 per 1000 residents. By contrast, if you combine both legal and illegal immigration, the average yearly rate of immigration to the United States from 1971 to 1993 was only 3.8 per 1000 residents (The New Immigration and Ethnicity in the United States, by Douglas S. Massey, September 1995, Population and Development Review, Table 2, p. 647). David Orland then takes U.S. Census Bureau projections for the next 60 years and blames the subsequent rise in population on immigration (mostly Hispanic/Latino immigration), but he can only support that assumption if he assumes that Hispanic/Latino fertility rates will stay constant for the next 60 years! Yet he provides no evidence for why this assumption has the least shred of plausibility. (In addition, the Census Bureau projections probably also calculated the amount of immigration necessary to compensate for native-born Americans whose fertility dipped below replacement levels. In this sense, immigration may be necessary to avoid underpopulation, which was a major reason why Germany relied heavily on Turkish and North African guest-workers after suffering population declines in the 1970s. There simply weren't enough Germans to do all the work.) Instead of attempting to making prognostications he doesn't have the social science skills to make (note: I'm unsure whether I have the skills to make these predictions myself, but I can tell you I am more qualified at this than David.), Orland should stick to dealing with what we know about immigration trends that have already occurred.
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Rebuttal to the Restrictionists, Part II
ii) Immigration erodes the tax base.
According to a review of the fiscal effects of immigration on the welfare system, economist Julian Simon concluded:
From the time of entry until about l2 years later, immigrants use substantially less than do native families of such public services as welfare and unemployment compensation payments, food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, and schooling for children, largely due to less use of Social Security because of the youthful age of immigrants. Later, immigrant use becomes roughly equal to that of natives. By the time the immigrant family retires and collects Social Security, it typically has raised children who are then contributing taxes to Social Security and thereby balancing out the parents' receipts, just as happens with native families. In this way there is a one-time benefit to natives because the immigrants arrive without a generation of elderly parents who might receive Social Security. After about three to five years, average immigrant families earn as much as average native families and thereby pay as much in taxes as do native families; subsequently they earn more and pay substantially greater taxes.
The net balance of the two forces--taxes paid and services received--has a positive effect on natives in every year. That is, immigrants contribute more to the public coffers than they take from them. When looked at by natives as an investment, similar to such social capital as dams and roads, an immigrant family is an excellent investment worth somewhere between $l5,000 and $20,000 in 1975 dollars, even calculated with relatively high rates for the social cost of capital. (This is to be compared with mean yearly native family earnings of about $ll,000 in that year.)
Data from Great Britain, Canada, and Israel confirm the key data concerning the United States: Immigrants use little services, and pay substantial taxes, relative to natives.
According to Fix and Passel's Urban Institute report on immigration, immigrants generate a net surplus for federal government revenues. The problem is not the immigrants themselves, but inequities in how the federal government distributes revenue from high-immigration areas to low-immigration areas. Fix and Passel state, "Contrary to the public's perception, when all levels of government are considered together, immigrants generate significantly more in taxes paid than they cost in services received. This surplus is unevenly distributed among different levels of government, however, with immigrants (and natives) generating a net surplus to the federal government, but a net cost to some states and most localities." For example, tax revenue contributed by immigrants in Southern California gets distributed by the federal government to pay for ethanol subsidies in Des Moines rather than defraying the cost of emergency services in San Diego. The solution is not to bash immigrants, but to bring more of the proper share of federal tax revenues to states with the higher immigrant populations.
Orland also implies that many legal immigrants evade personal income taxes, but does not provide any evidence that immigrants evade taxes more than native-born Americans. Orland also derides the effect on the economy of immigrants sending their wages to their home country, but does not discuss other factors that erode the tax revenue available to federal and state governments. To put it another way, Enron is shifting millions of dollars to tax shelters in the Turks & Caicos and you’re worried about whether some janitor sends fifty bucks back to his village in Oaxaca? As is typical with some anti-immigrant arguments, they make a claim that immigration leads to Negative Consequence X, but they neglect to discuss other possible causes of Negative Consequence X. When the effect of immigration is weighed against the other possible sources of the negative consequence, the effect of immigration no longer appears to be so significant. Money transfers back to the Old Country are a mere pittance, when you realize that a General Accounting Office report concluded that 61% of U.S. corporation paid no income taxes between 1996 and 2000. A little perspective here is all we need.
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Rebuttal to the Restrictionists, Part I
To keep things at a manageable length, I will now respond to David Orland's TheCase for Immigration Restrictionism: Eight Theses by responding to each thesis one by one:
i) Immigration depresses wages.
Orland quotes one study by George Borjas claiming that immigrants depress wages, but neglects to quote other studies by Borjas that undermine his initial thesis. To look at broader range of studies, here's a table of academic studies about immigration and its effect on wages from a 1994 report by the Urban Institute:
Table B-2:
Do Immigrants Depress Wages?
Results of Selected Studies using Aggregate Statistics
Grossman (1982)
Data Source: 1970 census
Finding: SMSA data 10 percent increase in the number of immigrants is associated with 0.2 percent decline in wages.
Borjas (1983)
Data Source: 1976 Survey of Income and Education
Finding: Increased Hispanic share is associated with increased wages of African Americans (and, to some degree, whites).
DeFreitas and Marshall (1983)
Data Source: 1970 and 1978 SMSA level data
Finding: 10 percent increase in proportion foreign-born reduces manufacturing wages by 0.5 percent.
Borjas (1987)
Data Source: 1980 census individual level data
Finding: All effects of immigrants on earnings of native men are small. Native whites adversely affected; native African Americans gain. Immigrants lower wages of other immigrants.
Butcher and Card (1991)
Data Source: Current Population Survey, 1979, 1980, 1988 and 1989, city level data
Finding: Differentials in wage growth across cities unrelated to recent immigration for both low and highly skilled workers.
Rivera-Batiz and Sechzer (1991)
Data Source: 1980 census
Finding: Individual level data All effects of immigrants on natives are small. A 10 percent increase in the labor force from immigration is associated with a 1 percent decrease in wages for Mexican-Americans or 0.5 percent decrease for native whites.
Vroman and Worden (1992)
Data Source: Current Population Survey data for 13 years (pooled)
Finding: No evidence that immigration produces a decline in state level wages.
Enchautegui (1993)
Data Source: 1980, 1990 Current Population Survey & 1980, 1990 census, individual level data
Finding: Wage growth is better in high versus low immigration areas.
Source: Urban Institute survey of the literature, 1994.
Note that two of the studies quoted in the table come from Orland's authority on immigration himself, George Borjas. The 1983 Borjas study concludes that African-American wages are higher in areas with high populations of Latino immigrants, while the 1987 Borjas study concludes that the effects of earnings on native-born men are small and that immigrants primarily lower the wages of other immigrants. The cumulative findings of the other studies indicate that immigration does reduce wages, but the effect is quite small, typically a fraction of a percentage point for every 10 percent increase in immigration.
Another interesting fact about Borjas is that he also has a history of making public statements in favor of restricting immigration that are at odds with the conclusions of his own scholarly work. According to a report from the Independent Institute by Richard Vedder, Lowell Gallaway, and Stephen Moore, Borjas can be quite schizophrenic when you compare his academic work with his public statements on immigration:
Taking a somewhat more ambiguous position is the prolific immigration scholarGeorge Borjas. An immigrant himself, Borjas writes extensively for mainstream eco-nomic journals and has authored oft-cited books. In his works, Borjas (1990, 1994b, 1998) often echoes an old anti-immigrant refrain, namely, that modern-day immigrants are less skillful and more dependent on welfare than their predecessors. In the “net burden” debate, Borjas (1994a) seemingly refutes the Huddle position promoted by anti-immigrant groups such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and the Carrying Capacity Network, arguing that immigration has modestly positive net welfare effects, a view seemingly consistent with that of Urban Institute scholars and the late Julian Simon. Yet Borjas frequently seems to argue against his own findings. For example, when the National Academy of Sciences (Smith and Edmonston 1997) released a lengthy report on the economic impact of immigration that suggested, as has Borjas independently, that the overall impact was small but probably positive, Borjas and fellow Harvard economist Richard Freeman (1997) wrote an op-ed piece blasting pro-immigrant groups for putting a positive spin on those findings. Borjas and Freeman emphasized that the short-term costs of immigration are obvious and easily measured, but that the long-term benefits are harder to measure and more sensitive to assumptions made. On balance, it seems that Borjas tries to use his research to support the age-old argument that immigration is a problem, in some cases even when his findings do not explicitly support that interpretation.
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Sunday, May 09, 2004
A New Patriot is Out
Which means a Cal Patriot Watch is already debunking article by article, line by line.
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Post Budget, I
ASUC Budget Approved: Some Comments
Berdahl’s stipulation that $42,000 of the monies be funneled into the recruitment and retention centers raised their budgets back to their funding levels from three years ago, which have fallen steeply since then.
I wonder why their budgets were seriously cut. Oh yes; Student Action...Furtheringg a segregated campus for the new millennium: DONE. Look at the admissions numbers since Student Action started cutting the RRCs. There are other factors, of course, but the RRCs budgets being slashed significantly hindered outreach for applicants and admitted students.
One group, United Leaders, which encourages youth to get involved in politics, was hit with cuts. The group, which did not show up at the meeting, lost 80 percent of its proposed $5,000 budget
Shucks! United Leaders was doing such great work. Um... yeah....
Student Action senators successfully rallied to revive the ASUC Ball with $3,500, which was killed last year despite protest from most CalSERVE senators.
My view on this matter: one and two.
Last year, CalSERVE executives slashed their budgets by $20,000 dollars.
Ironically, CalSERVE's progressives are fiscally responsible while Student Action's conservatives are not. Actually, considering how Bush and Republicans nationwide behave, incurred large debts and spending like there is no tomorrow (Jesus is coming soon, after all), it makes perfect sense.
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Wednesday, May 05, 2004
A Couple Pre-Budget Meeting Questions
Will the Student Action senator who failed the L.I.E. continue to practice her twisted brand of loyalty? Let us recall her score: 18 (out of 30) on the LIE with 6 points for loyalty, 6 points for experience, and 6 points for intelligence. I won't argue with that. Why did this person get slated after failing the L.I.E. again? Oh yes, I remember now.
Will Student Action continue its racist budgeting block? My money is that they will. Will Rocky "Hypocrite" Gade continue to sell out against liberal causes and vote with the anti-students of color block?
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Tuesday, May 04, 2004
Fun with Comments
I found this comment from BCR Boy in response to Res Ipsa's recent attempt at immigration debate: "Thanks for addressing this, David. That was a concerning post by ProgCal." What made the post so "concerning," BCR Boy? Is it perhaps you did not have an immediate reply to offer to it? I can just imagine BCR Boy now, overdramatizing like Shatner on a bad 3rd-season episode of Star Trek.
Exposed to liberal ideas...resolve weakening...Must...keep...mind....closed
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Res Ipsa Restorts To Straw Man, Admits Defeat
I thank Res Ipsa for giving me a respite from the recent ASUC electoral coverage by giving me an opportunity to discuss their alleged rebuttal of my criticism of Res Ipsa and Hovannes Abramyan's stance on immigration. First, if you notice clearly, the Res Ipsa post does not include any direct quotes from my own argument, but instead it only includes a paraphrase of my argument made by Hovannes Abramyan himself:
"Hovannes posts on Res Ipsa Loquitur. Res Ipsa Loquitur has a link to VDARE. VDARE has an editor who disagrees with some parts of the 1965 Immigration Act. The 1965 Immigration Act broadened the amount of immigrants who could come from certain areas, including Armenia. Hovannes' father came from Armenia. Hovannes, therefore, opposes his own existence."
When you paint an opponent's argument to make it appear weaker than it truly is, this is a logical fallacy called attacking a straw man. I suppose I could admit this as an admission of defeat by Res Ipsa, but I shall press on with my argument. In fact, I never said that Hovannes "opposes his own existence," nor do I believe that Abramyan's criticism of post-1965 immigration is illegitimate because of his father's immigrant origins. However, was Abramyan ignorant of logical consequences of the anti-immigration policies that he upholds? I would say yes. In fact, if I were a betting man, I would bet that Abramyan was ignorant of the differences between, say, the McCarran-Walter Act and the Hart-Celler Act of 1965.
As for Peter Brimelow's flirtation with racism, I do not need to use leftist or even liberal websites to document this. Here's a website from the National Vanguard that praises Brimelow for his defense of "white nationalism." In fact, the National Vanguard site includes quotes from a reply that Brimelow made to a letter and posted on his own web site. According to Brimelow, "We do publish writers who could fairly be described as ?white nationalists,? in that they explicitly defend the interests of American whites?who, however, made up 90 percent of the populations in 1960, before the disaster of the 1965 [Immigration] Act. And we will continue to do so, because this point of view is at least as legitimate as black nationalism or Hispanic nationalism." Please note that Brimelow calls the 1965 Immigration Act a disaster and that he specifically explains his opposition to the Act in racial terms. In other words, Brimelow implies that the 1965 Immigration Act is a disaster precisely because it destroyed white people's 90% racial majority, not because immigration makes it more difficult to get people to vote against affirmative action. Brimelow also says that he publishes "white nationalists" in his own words. I did not put those words in his mouth, nor did any other of his critics.
Here are some other examples of right-wing criticisms of Peter Brimelow. A poster on the website of the right-wing think tank, the Claremont Institute, lists Brimelow as a crypto white nationalist, no better than Latino nationalists. Here's a buyer on Amazon.com who praises Brimelow's Alien Nation as a "persuasive white nationalist book." Ron Unz, the backer of the anti-bilingual education initiative, called Brimelow "America's most prominent "respectable" white nationalist intellectual." Even former Berkeley bloggers Gene Expression and Godless Capitalist got into a discussion over how Peter Brimelow is a crypto white-nationalist. Note that none of these quotes come from liberal or left-wing websites, but from Brimelow's supporters or from right-of-center critics of Brimelow. Res Ipsa might reply that being a "white nationalist" is not the same thing as being a racist, but I view all forms of racial nationalism or racial separatism as intrinsically racist. And even if Brimelow is not a racist, he has a very disproportionate amount of racist admirers, which doesn't seem to trouble Brimelow in the least.
I would also like to say a word about conservatives who resort to accusing their opponents of making ad hominem arguments. People do not have an adequate understanding of why argumentum ad hominem is a logical fallacy. It is not that calling people names is immoral or makes you a bad person. It's because argumentum ad hominem fails to separate the person making an argument from the merits of the argument. In other words, ad hominem arguments are based on the fallacy that the merits (or demerits) of an argument rest on the merits (or demerits) of the person making the argument. This is not an argument I have made. Res Ipsa's invocation of argumentum ad hominem is little more than an attempt to say, "You hurt my feelings. Therefore I win." That is not valid inference to make and, by allowing such an inference, you give an unfair advantage to the most thin-skinned participant (in most cases, the right-winger) in an argument.
Res Ipsa also writes, "As for the actual issues involved in the debate over immigration, res ipsa will be glad to discuss those if and when they arise." I accept the offer and I would be happy to continue the debate in the manner similar to the debate on global trade between David Orland, CalJunket, and AFortiori. I, too, believe that the discussion of "Is Peter Brimelow a racist?" is tangential to the real discussion on immigration, but I also believe that you don't have to consort with racists to articulate a conservative critique of immigration. In fact, to show I'm a nice guy, here's a link to the right-of-center immigration policy think tank, the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports "reforming" liberal immigration policy, but does not have the dubious social ties with racists that Brimelow does.
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Monday, May 03, 2004
CalStuff Reveals Its True Colors
CalStuff correspondent Andy Jessup recently sent the following comment to Progcal:
I dont necessarily agree with you on national politics Jon, but I cant respect what you post. Stay out of ASUC business you're clueless about.
Hmm... I can understand getting this flak from Mike Davis or Paul LaFata, but CalStuff is supposed to be a reasonably objective account of campus politics. In fact, our board links to CalStuff, even though CalStuff does not provide us with the same courtesy. The fact that a so-called CalStuff "journalist" is telling a Student Action opponent to "Stay out of ASUC business" shows that CalStuff has been biased in their coverage all along.
Correction: Please note that the CalStuff does currently link to Progcal. However, it has de-linked Progcal in the past.
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I'll Take ASUC Contradictions, Hairsplitting, and Election-Stealing for $800, Alex
The latest nonsense in the ASUC election follies deals with Mike Davis and Paul LaFata's efforts to twist the concept of "double jeopardy" as it suits them. Their legal reasoning is so warped that they've probably seen one too many Ashley Judd movies. A recent Calstuff post indicated that LaFata had attempted to disqualify the Defend Affirmative Action Party, because their legal representative, Luke Massie, was found in contempt of court. LaFata then wanted to disqualify the entire DAAP party on the basis of Massie's actions. DAAP argued that this was unconstitutional, because Massie was already punished by the J-Council and double jeopardy would attach if DAAP was punished a second time for Massie's actions. (Never mind the fact that it's unfair to punish plaintiffs for the actions of their legal representatives. To do so is to make a mockery of the right to effective counsel.)
However, when it benefits Student Action candidates, the LaFata/Davis machine have a different interpretation of double jeopardy. On the other hand, when it comes to the case involving Misha Leybovich's spam e-mail to the Queer Resource Center, Davis sings a completely different tune: "We put Kroll?s case on an expedited schedule so he could come in and offer arguments with the other case as well, getting him out of double jeopardy concerns. Something we didn?t have to do." Davis is referring to how Kenny Kroll got blindsided, because Davis expedited his case on bogus double jeopardy grounds before Kroll had the opportunity to assemble a case. (Although LaFata seemed to have no trouble being legal representative for Misha Leybovich... Funny how that works.) LaFata and possibly Davis are making the asinine claim that Leybovich is at most guilty of one violation for his spam emails, even though two different groups filed suits against him. That's as ridiculous as saying you can kill two different people, but you only need to face trial for one murder, because you committed the same type of crime twice. It's kind of a kill-two-get-one-free deal.
LaFata and Davis claim so much power for themselves based on their alleged knowledge of ASUC procedure, but when it comes to double jeopardy in the ASUC, Alex Trebek knows more than these clowns.
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Call in the Cavalry
According to the ASUC Election By-Laws, a "neutral third party" must be used to ensure the integrity of the elections. Here are the relevant provisions of the by-laws.
5.1 Contract With Third Parties
1. In order to ensure the integrity of the elections, the Elections Council shall contract with a neutral third party to observe and assist in ASUC Elections.
2. The Neutral Third Party may be the League of Women Voters, or any professional or volunteer agency which regularly acts as election overseers, provided the organization is approved by a two-thirds (2/3) Vote of the Entire Senate.
Let's give these provisions some teeth. Call the Berkeley/Albany/Emeryville Chapter of the League of Women Voters at 510-843-8824 and tell them that you don't want lawsuits or the Judicial Council stealing the ASUC election away from you.
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