I wrote a bit ago about racism in our Federal government.  Here’s another example, this time in the milieu of a Federal court reaching deep inside a State to overrule the vote of the people of a local community.  All in the name of racial preference.

It seems that the voters of Kinston, NC, via a 2008 plebiscite, had decided that, rather than bearing the costs of primaries and to reduce burdens imposed by their existing electoral system on third party and unaffiliated candidates, they’d alter their city charter to provide for a nonpartisan election system, one in which anyone would be able to run for local political office, and no candidate would be required, a priori, to have a party affiliation or a potful of petition signatures to find a place on  the ballot.

But no.  The illustrious Federal Attorney General Eric Holder objected on the basis that

…elimination of party affiliation on the ballot will likely reduce the ability of blacks to elect candidates of choice.

In a decision filed just a few days ago via LaRoque v. Holder, 755 F. Supp. 2d 156, Federal District Judge John D. Bates, actually upheld Holder’s objection and ruled that the good people of Kinston may not speak for themselves; their decision does not count because the Federal government knows better.  A copy of Judge Bates’ ruling can be found here.

The basis of the Bates’ and Holder’s Progressives Know Better position?  It’s that asserted inability “of blacks to elect candidates of choice” without knowing party affiliations.  These worthies think American blacks a) are stereotyped into voting Democratic preferentially, b) are too lazy to find out who the candidates are without a party logo, and c) are simply too stupid to know what to do without someone telling them.

This is another example of the racism of low expectations.  And of the very stereotyping against which so many anti-racism organizations object.  Yet it’s the only way for a failed government to preserve its power: keep Americans properly on the plantation.

Arthur C Brooks’ 2007 book, Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism, contains a trove of data that indicate conservatives give more to charity—even after taking out church-related giving—than do Progressives.  This is substantiated by a 2008 Gallup poll covering 2008 in which the polling data indicate that Conservatives donated 3.5% to 4.5% of their incomes to charitable endeavors, whereas Liberals donated just 1.25% to 1.5%.

And now there’s this from The Washington Post concerning the Solyndra fiasco and the Progressive loans for greens program.  The Post went through some thousands of memos, company records, and internal ­e-mails obtained from the Obama administration in an effort to understand the underpinnings of that loan and the motivations underlying the Department of Energy’s general lending practices.  Although nominally about supporting development of “green” energy and “green” jobs, the Solyndra loan, and apparently DoE’s support for “green” loans, was driven more by politics and political optics than anything else.

The documents reviewed demonstrate that, as Solyndra began to falter and its imminent failure became increasingly obvious, administration officials worried almost exclusively about political fallout and the impact that the company’s failure could have on President Obama’s re-electability.  Indeed, The Post reports that

Rarely, if ever, was there discussion of the impact that Solyndra’s collapse would have on laid-off workers or on the development of clean-energy technology.

Ryan Alexander, of Taxpayers for Common Sense, expands on this:

What’s so troubling is that politics seems to be the dominant factor.  They’re not talking about what the taxpayers are losing; they’re not talking about the failure of the technology, whether we bet on the wrong horse.  What they are talking about is “How are we going to manage this politically?”

There’s also a lot of crony capitalism revealed in The Post‘s reporting, but that’s not unique to this administration or to Progressives; rather, the point in this context is the callousness of the Progressives (who piously demand taxation for wealth redistribution in their Roman Circus-like pandering, in contrast to their attitude toward personal charitable giving, and toward the human fallout of their policies).

Now it’s certainly true that a program must be politically feasible, or government can’t do it, no matter how legitimate it may be for government to have that program.  But political consideration to the exclusion of any concern at all for the harm done to the flesh and blood people that do the work associated with the program?

Big Brother is at it again.

Now Uncle Sugar’s National Highway Transportation Safety Administration wants every automaker to follow the exact same rule about how to turn off a car.  Because we’re unable to figure out how to turn off our engines and electric motors unless all the systems look alike.  Next, NHTSA will be mandating the size of the fins on our cars.  Oh, wait….

There is a superficially sound argument for this mandate.  Steven Stepanian, a driving instructor at Driving Concepts, supports it this way:

The faster you can get the car disabled, the faster you are out of danger.  If the situation is such that you need to shut down the power to the engine or electric motor, you want it done as soon as humanly possible. I can’t come up with a reason that you would want to delay that action.

There are a couple of problems with this, though.  What is the danger, exactly?  Shutting down the engine disables the power steering and power brake systems: the car doesn’t become uncontrollable, but it does get, suddenly, a lot harder to control.  Second, how often does our car actually run away with us?  Most often, runaways turn out to have been caused by operator error: the driver stamped on the gas pedal instead of the brake pedal, and then panicked (even if only momentarily).  Reaching for the Emergency Off switch is faster than getting off the wrong pedal?  The driver is going to think of that switch while he’s panicked?  I can’t come up with a good reason why I need another switch to manipulate in such a situation.  The ignition key turns everything off just fine.  Even in keyless entry cars.

Electric cars certainly would benefit from a kill switch that disconnects the battery system from the motor (and that cuts off the ignition from the backup gasoline engine).  (If that disconnects the battery system from the power steering and brakes, too, that would be a design flaw that wants correction.)

NHTSA also worries that, with the many and varied ways there are to start a car (really?  Turn the ignition key or push the boot-up button—how many ways are there to do that?), we might get confused in a rental or a newly bought car.  I’ve never been confused, and I’ve driven all over the country, and all over the world, in my cars and in a wide variety of rental cars (OK, I’ve not driven in Great Britain, but they all drive on the wrong side of the road, anyway, so that datum is well contaminated).  Have you ever been confused by your car’s ignition key or boot-up button?

There’s a larger question to all of this, and that is why Big Government is mandating what we must have in our cars, why Big Government is insisting on doing our thinking for us: apparently our Betters think we’re just too stupid to function in an environment that isn’t absolutely identical everywhere we go.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) likened Republicans who objected to Obamacare to congressmen (Democrats, incidentally) who, 150 years ago, fought to delay anti-slavery laws.

Congressman John Lewis (D, GA) manufactured charges of racist slurs aimed at him as he approached the capital building on the passage of Obamacare.

Ex-President Jimmy Carter (D) announced that “an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African-American.”

Congresswoman Frederica Wilson (D, FL) blames black unemployment on racism.

On the other hand, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D, CA) doesn’t think President Obama is black enough; she’s called him out for not doing enough to target jobs efforts at blacks in particular, instead of pushing them for all Americans.

Attorney General Eric Holder cries out that photo ID requirements for voter registration are racist: they’ll inhibit minorities from voting because they don’t already have the “correct” ID.  Apparently Holder thinks minorities are too stupid to figure out how to get an ID, and how to do so sooner than the day of an election—including one that’s still 10 months off.  Holder’s performance is just the racism of low expectations.

It seems that a failed government is hiding behind racism to try to distract us from its failures and to prevent any criticism of it for its failures.  As Charles Krauthammer has pointed out, though,

…it’s…a cowardly use of the race card and it’s unbecoming. It also is dangerous in a country where it can stoke that kind of racial animosity.

Here is another case where our government is missing a great opportunity to shut up.