Author Archives: eehines

“Employment Violence”

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Boston University has laid off some 15 staffers of the university’s Center for Antiracist Research. BU’s School of Social Work Clinical Assistant Professor and faculty lead for education and training at the Center for Antiracist Research, Phillipe Copeland, claims that’s violence.

This act of employment violence and trauma is not just about individual leaders. It’s about the cultures and systems that allow it to occur. And too often rewards it. Antiracism is not a branding exercise, PR campaign or path to self-promotion. It is a life and death matter[.]

Never mind that the Center remains a strongly going concern (for good or ill), and its founder, Dr Ibram X Kendi, remains its Director.

Copeland went on:

Taking a program [he’d resigned from the Center and founded Fellowship program otherwise within the Center] from the Black faculty member that created it is apparently what BU considers “antiracism” and “diversity and inclusion.”

And that gives the game away. The idea that only a Black person can teach matters regarding Blacks—which necessarily involve whites, Hispanics, Americans with Asian heritages—is itself a most insidious form of racism.

Still, if this is what employment “violence” looks like to the Woke, the fastest and most direct way to mitigate that violence, if not to eliminate altogether, is for employers, Boston University in particular, to not hire these folks in the first place.

A Couple of Thoughts re Yakima

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Yakima is a city in central Washington, and its Progressive-Democratic Party mayor, Janice Deccio, claims she’s being harassed since the release of her 911 call regarding some petition signature gatherers who were gathering at a Walmart. Yes, the mayor made an emergency call over petitioners gathering signatures and exercising their 1st Amendment right to petition government.

Her call:

There’s some far right-wing petitioners at Walmart, and they don’t—they’re not leaving. Walmart has asked them repeatedly to do so, and the police have not taken them off the premises.

Never mind that the police—and they told her so during her 911 call—absent a court order that Walmart had not bothered to seek, had no authority to remove the signature gatherers, not when the activity is occurring on public property or on private property that’s intended for public use, like shopping malls and store fronts.

Later, Deccio claimed she was unaware of all the nuances of the law at that time, though, and, in hindsight, I could have waited to hear from the chief. That’s risible. She’s the mayor, of course she knows the laws applicable to her role. Or she’s ignorant, having skipped or slept through, which is the same thing, her junior high Civics class, to the point of unfitness for office.

Her decision not to wait on actual answers is all too typical of the arrogance of Party politicians: obey me, subjects, and quit arguing.

That’s one (where have I heard that before?).

The group that was gathering petition signatures is Let’s Go Washington, and these are the sort of initiative for which they’re working (it’s unclear for what initiative they were gathering signatures at the Walmart):

  • I-2113, which would roll back some restrictions on when police officers can engage in vehicular pursuits
  • I-2117, to prohibit state agencies from imposing any type of carbon tax-credit trading
  • I-2124, which would allow employees to opt out of the state’s long-term care insurance program
  • I-2109, to repeal the state’s capital gains tax
  • I-2111, which would prohibit state and local jurisdictions from imposing income taxes
  • I-2081, which would allow parents of public school students to review instructional materials and student records upon request

That a Progressive-Democratic Party politician thinks such center-right positions are far right-wing clearly demonstrates how Left-extremist Party has gone.

That’s two.

Crippling under “Migrant” Crisis

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New York City Progressive-Democratic Party Mayor Eric Adams thinks the city is crippl[ing] under monumental budget cuts due to a migrant crisis straining public resources.

Adams is either entirely duplicitous in this, or he really is that oblivious to the facts staring him in the face, or he’s consciously turning his face away from what’s going on along our southern border (duplicitous along a different axis). In the first place, he’s not inundated with migrants, he’s getting a small flow of illegal aliens.

To the extent they are “straining public resources,” it’s because, first, the city never has taken public resource availability seriously—see the high level of homelessness before the small flow of illegals began. Second, that “strain” is because he’s chosen to divert those resources away from city residents in favor of supporting those illegals, who have no call on any American resources other than those any detention facility must provide for its inmates.

Aside from that, his city does not, in fact, have an illegal alien crisis. The cities and towns and villages along our southern border have an illegal alien flood crisis. They’re the ones who have to deal with high and increasing flow of illegals across our border.

To further illustrate the manufactured nature of his hysteria, this is what Adams wants to do otherwise with city—city residents’ tax—money.

He wants to remove from the city statues of heroes of our War of Independence and of our subsequent national founding; statues, for instance, of George Washington. He also wants to remove statues of figures involved in the Western World’s discovery of the New World; statues, for instance, of Christopher Columbus.

He wants to create a reparations task force.

He wants anti-racism training for human services contractors and city employees.

All that while pushing for budget cuts—because all those illegal aliens “migrants” of his are costing so much to welcome into his sanctuary city.

Not at all Baffling

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Last weekend, the San Francisco 49ers and the Los Angeles Rams played an NFL football game. With four seconds to go in the game, and the Rams in possession and down by ten, they went for—and made—a field goal. No time left, and the Rams lose by seven. Had they gone for a touchdown (not a pipe dream, the line of scrimmage was the 49ers’ 20 yard line) and made that, they would have lost by three (or two had they then chosen a two-point conversion). Fail on the touchdown try, and they’d have lost by those ten. Some folks thought the Rams’ decision was “baffling.”

But maybe losing by seven points was all they needed.

By game start, the betting spread on the game had settled at the 49ers winning by 7 points or 7.5 points, depending on the betting parlor. (Lots of parlors don’t like gambling ties, and that half-point in the spread eliminates those.) By losing by 7 instead of by 10, they beat the spread, and the field goal was a surer thing than going for the touchdown. The parlors paid holders of the correct side of the 7.5 point spread, and they refunded all bets on the 7 point spread (one reason parlors don’t like ties).

The Rams coach, Sean McVay, has a different take on his decision. Before the field goal’s prior play, he intended that prior play simply to get them into field goal range, and with time on the clock, hit the field goal, recover an ensuing onside kick, and go for the tie or win. In the realization, though, the down and in (in-cut) ran longer on the field and on the clock than expected so there wasn’t time left–those four seconds–to hit the field goal, get the onside kick, and…. At that point, he simply decided to stick with the field goal. He says he was unaware of the betting line [bowlegs in the original]:

Apparently, (Rams V.P. of communications) Artis (Twyman) told me there’s a lot of people in Vegas pissed off about that decision. I clearly was not aware of that stuff[.]

The first-linked article went on at some length about the spread and the field goal, but it missed the larger point: this is the impact of allowing gambling on professional sports, even if McVay, on the sidelines, wasn’t aware of the betting line. The mere discussion of the betting implications demonstrates the vulnerability.

I’ll Virtue Signal…

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…but no fair holding me to that.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said she is “fearful that any day” planes filled with illegal immigrants will be flown into the city.

Never mind that the Progressive-Democratic Party mayor is proud to tout her city as a sanctuary for illegal aliens.

But don’t you dare hold her to her proudly given word by sending, you know, actual illegal aliens, who volunteer for the trip, to her city. Bass says that doing so is evil and just an effort to destabilize cities.

Never mind that what LA has received in the way of transported volunteer illegal aliens in their aggregate are what the cities and towns along our southern border get inundated with every few days.