Daily Archives: 15 June 2020

Affirmative Action in California

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The good citizens of California banned discrimination on the basis of race and sex when they voted up Proposition 209 nearly 25 years ago. That proposition barred affirmative action programs.

Those citizens of a generation ago understood that affirmative action programs, by their deliberate use of race and sex as selection criteria, are fundamentally racist and sexist.

Here we have the California Assembly affirmatively supporting just that racism and sexism.

California Legislative Black Caucus Chair Dr Shirley Weber, primary sponsor of ACA 5, which is designed to rescind Prop 209 and to that end puts the matter on the November ballot, said this about her bill, claiming that the current political and social environment is

forcing Californians to acknowledge the deep-seated inequality and far-reaching institutional failures that show that your race and gender still matters[.]

However, rather than addressing the root causes of “inequality” (carefully undefined, that—inequality of outcome? of initial opportunity? of…?—of whatever seems convenient to the politician, apparently) and of “institutional failures,” the California Assembly has chosen to expand those failures, to strengthen the prejudice, by reverting to those inherently bigoted programs.

My irony alarm is sounding.

And the Assembly as a whole is proud of its bigotry.

“American Retreat from Europe”

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Congressman Mac Thornberry (R, TX), Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee, has misunderstood the American situation in Europe. In his Thursday Wall Street Journal op-ed, he asserted that

press reports surfaced of a proposal, backed by some in the administration, to withdraw a significant number of troops from Europe….

His piece went on in that vein.

Thornberry is badly mistaken along a number of dimensions.

First, the alleged withdrawal of troops is from Germany, not from Europe.

More than that, though, Germany along with the majority of NATO members have demonstrated that they have no interest in defending themselves or each other—for starters, they’ve all welched on their own commitments to spend even minimally—a whole 2% of their national GDP—on NATO capability.

We can’t force those nations to defend themselves, nor should we spend American treasure or risk American blood trying. Poland and the Baltics do have such an interest, and that’s where our troops should go. All of those currently stationed in Germany should go, not just the token 9,500 currently being bandied about by “reports” for withdrawal. Apparently, too, at least some of those supposed to be taken out of Germany would be slated for Poland.

Overarching all of that is this. Germany isn’t upset over the 9,500 American troops supposedly to be withdrawn from the country. Germany is upset over the loss of all those millions of American dollars being spent on the German economy by the tens of thousands of American dependents of those soldiers, as well as by the soldiers themselves.