IngeMusings

Racist. Xenophobe. Bigotry. Ignorance.

These words are examples of some of the mud flung at Lou Dobbs in a recent column by Ruben Navarrette, a nationally syndicated columnist whose work is carried by the Star. Dobbs is the former anchor of CNN who is outspoken on illegal immigration issues--a stance that's earned him the undying hatred of amnesty supporters.

Navarrette is too cowardly to call Dobbs a racist directly:

A few years ago, Dobbs accused me of calling him a racist and a xenophobe. I told him that I had done no such thing, and that all I'd written was that he was making a handsome living ($7 million to $9 million per year, according to the New York Post) by pandering to racists and xenophobes. It was bigotry, fear and ignorance that paid the mortgage on Dobbs' lavish horse farm in New Jersey.

Or he employs surrogates:

"You could be a racist and not be against illegal immigration," said Enrique Morones, a San Diego-based immigration activist and anti-Dobbs crusader. "And you could be against illegal immigration and not be a racist -- although, a lot of times, if not most, they go hand in hand."

Either way, the message is clear. It's not Dobbs that's a racist. It's you--you who want immigration laws enforced. Because Navarrette can't win the debate, he has to ensure that a debate doesn't take place.

And he does that by using the race card to silence his opposition.

It's official--Assemblywoman Audra Strickland is running for Ventura County's treasurer -tax collector seat, as previously reported. Shortly after learning of her plans, County Supervisor Kathy Long, in what appears to be a nakedly political move to disqualify Strickland's candidacy, announced that an ordinance should be adopted that would prohibit anyone that is not a formally trained financial expert from occupying the post.

Long, a Democrat, cited a state law that passed in the wake of Orange County's financial meltdown in 1995. The law requires the treasurer to possess experience in a senior financial management position in a public agency, be a CPA or CFP, or have a degree in accounting, finance or a related field. Read more...

The Star decided to identify Ventura County's top-earning public employees last week in a story highlighting the growth in those making over $200,000 annually. Most of the county employees named are top public officials, but two were rank-and-file public safety workers whose overtime pay vaulted them to the top of the pay scale. Certainly, the story needs to be told--the public has a right to know if its tax dollars are being spent wisely. The article was a thoroughly researched, informative piece and served the public interest well. But do the Star's readers have a right to know the names? What balance should a newspaper strike between the public interest and an individual's privacy?

My goal here is not to criticize. This story merely afforded me an opportunity to discuss an ethical dilemma that journalists (and bloggers) face.  I honestly don't know the right answer; both sides' arguments have merit, and it's a worthy debate to have.

What are the legal issues?

The first order of business is to examine the legality of publicly disclosing the names of private citizens. I don't mean the most powerful people in the county--those are mostly elected officials who live in the public eye. The Star probably didn't blink to identify those individuals, nor should it. But doing the same to regular public safety personnel must have given the Star pause. These are just everyday citizens that woke up one day to find their names in the paper.  

Are they afforded any legal protection? No. According to the Star:

This is the first time that the county has turned over the names of all of its top salary and overtime earners. The identities of fire and law enforcement employees were once shielded from the public, but a series of court decisions over the past few years reversed that policy.

The California Supreme Court handed down one of those decisions, in a case involving a Contra Costa newspaper that requested--over the objections of the city and the police union--the  salary and identification information for all public employees in Oakland who earned six-figure salaries. In affirming the lower court, the Supreme Court stated:

The superior court also concluded that, even assuming a privacy interest existed, that interest is outweighed by the public interest in disclosure. The court found "extremely speculative the fears expressed by two declarants that identity fraud and unwanted solicitations would ensue in the event information disclosing their salaries were to be released. Furthermore, the superior court found, the evidence presented by the Newspapers supports their contention that disclosure of the names of employees in connection with their individual salaries is in many cases necessary to disclose inefficiency, favoritism, nepotism, and fraud with respect to the government's use of public funds for employee salaries.

Furthermore, although public safety employees' personnel records are shielded from disclosure, the court found that their names and salaries did not fall under the definition of "personnel records."

The county can legally disclose their names to the newspaper, which can legally publish them.

What are the ethical issues?

But just because something is legal doesn't mean it should be done. In following standards set by the Society of Professional Journalists, the Star demonstrates great caution about identifying the names of victims and juveniles. The SPJ states:

Recognize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention. Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone's privacy.

The public needed to know if the county is overpaying its employees, and the Star should be commended for looking out for our interests. As the California Supreme Court said, we have the right to determine if inefficiency, favoritism, nepotism, or fraud is in play. But does disclosing the names of rank-and-file police officers further that interest in a way that merely listing their positions or job titles does not?

"Publishing the names served absolutely no purpose but to raise eyebrows and sell papers," said Matt Findlay, president of Ventura County Deputy Sheriffs Association. "Yes there was a court decision and we abide by those decisions but the reality is it still does not serve any purpose."

Findlay, a 31-year veteran of the Sheriffs Department, also said his organization asked the Star not to publish the names.

In Ventura County and elsewhere, in tough economic times public agencies find themselves at odds with a public that is skeptical about their tax dollars going to what is considered to be a highly compensated and protected class.

But Findlay points out that law enforcement personnel have difficult and dangerous jobs, and it's necessary for some individuals to rack up overtime because it's cheaper than hiring new deputies.

"I have heard the public complain about the overtime hours worked and the money made by the deputies," he said. "However I have not heard the side of the deputy in the newspaper as to the time away from his family or personal time to work those extra hours that have to be filled regardless. That is called minimum deployment and 24/7 jobs such as public safety don't get to go home at 5pm Monday through Friday with weekends off."

There are its bright sides, like only having to work seven days every two weeks. But if a deputy wants to put in a little (or a lot, as the case may be) extra effort, should he have in the back of his mind the thought that he might end up in the paper one day? Should his kids have to explain to their friends why their dad's name is in the newspaper? Should the deputy's neighbors, friends, and relatives all be made aware of how big of a paycheck he takes home?

It's a tough decision, and I know the Star gave it due consideration. Perhaps it felt that the personnel were taking advantage of the public, in which case it's commendable to expose it. There is no easy answer, but I hope by discussing it we can strike the best balance between serving the public interest and protecting individual privacy.

Political humorists are sort of the wartime diplomats of political debate. Their audiences give them safe passage through their defensive walls and grant them permission to directly influence decisions of hostile entities. Humorless conservative commentators spend years laying siege to liberal castles, pounding their walls with the artillery of reasoned argument, only to fail to dent the hardened fortifications that were designed over a lifetime to resist any fire that they can muster. But the besieged liberal might temporarily lower his drawbridge to receive a political humorist to impress an argument directly upon the soft underbelly of the brain that is not clad in the armor that automatically rejects all conservative arguments. 

Quality political humorists of any ideological stripe that can entertainingly deliver profound political messages are particularly rare, and even more so in conservative camps.  Michael Ramirez comes to mind as an editorial cartoonist whose drawings can resonate with viewers so quickly that with just a glance at his work their predispositions are bypassed. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have successfully used humor to make their respective cases, but they are each persona non grata in liberal camps and are utterly dismissed by them.

Then there's Evan Sayet, whose stand-up routine I recently saw at a small club in Ventura. Sayet spent most of his career working side-by-side with liberals in Hollywood, as a comedian and television writer. In fact, he is a reformed liberal himself, which he says helps him understand them.

The centerpiece of his routine concentrates on liberals' childlike misperception of the world--that everyone will play nice with you, that fighting is always bad, guns are scary, hard work is to be avoided, if it feels good do it, and in the end if all doesn't turn out like we want, we can run to our government to make things right for us. Read more..

The Conejo Valley Unified School District will be unable to put off budget cuts next school year after depleting the $10 million in one-time federal bailout funds for this year, so two information meetings will be held to discuss how the district will be affected by the cuts.

Deputy Superintendent Dr. Jeff Baarstad will give a presentation and field questions.

The first meeting is November 16th at the Newbury Park High School Performing Arts Center. The second meeting will be November 18th in the Redwood Middle School gymnasium in Thousand Oaks.

Both meetings will start at 6:30 p.m. and are sponsored by the Conejo Council PTA and the CVUSD.

In 1762 George Wythe, Virginia's "foremost classical scholar" and signer of the Declaration of Independence, took it upon himself to educate a young Thomas Jefferson. For five years they studied the classics--works of literature, political philosophy, and law--before Jefferson was admitted to the bar.

Wythe would also mentor great American statesmen such as James Monroe, John Marshall, and Henry Clay before his brilliant life ended prematurely as an indirect result of his opposition to slavery.

Jefferson described Wythe as "... my ancient master, my earliest and best friend, and to him I am indebted for first impressions which have [been] the most salutary on the course of my life."

Two-hundred-and-fifty years later, a small university in Utah bears Wythe's name with the mission to churn out statesmen for the 21st century. Students study the classics as Jefferson did, and can earn degrees in fields such as political economy and philosophy.

In Thousand Oaks on Monday night, Dr. Shanon Brooks, the former president of George Wythe University, will address the failures of mainstream education and the role parents play in the tutelage of their children. He said:

The founders, students of Plato, Confucius, the Roman and Greek civilizations, the Christian Bible and many other great ideas, studying and learning great lessons from the past, developed and promoted the ideals that became the foundation of American culture and proper governance, allowing us to become the greatest nation in the world.      

Today, these very ideals are being systematically attacked, worn down and lost.

Last week the Star reported on a local filmmaker's documentary about Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb's 2008 peace delegation to Iran, the first public visit from an American rabbi since the Iranian Revolution in 1979. The article--which opens with the declaration "because peace comes through understanding"-- focuses on the film's creator, Ojai resident Alicia Cattoni, whose goal is to help counter "a dangerous level of suspicion between the United States and Iran." In a contradictory fashion, Rabbi Gottlieb--the protagonist of the documentary--scathingly criticizes the United States in an attempt to raise the very suspicions that Cattoni purports to reject, while pulling her punches on Iran's leaders in a weak attempt at reasoning with them.

In the opening minutes of "Faith in Iran", Rabbi Gottlieb--one of Newsweek's top 50 rabbis in America-- criticizes labeling Iran as part of the Axis of Evil. "It dehumanizes a whole entire nation and when we look at what happened to Iraq where we destroyed an entire civilization and fomented a civil war and bombed people and killed hundreds of thousands of people," she said, asking rhetorically, "Is this something we really want to do to yet a third country in the Middle East?"

Way to counter a "dangerous level of suspicion". If she thinks the United States is guilty of all that, maybe Rabbi Gottlieb wouldn't object to placing our own country in the Axis of Evil.

The ridiculous assertion that we "bombed people and killed hundreds of thousands" is at best an ignorant interpretation of the discredited Lancet Study, which estimated over 600,000 violent Iraqi civilian deaths, or the Opinion Business Research poll that concluded that over a million civilians were murdered, the only major studies where "hundreds of thousands" applies. Most other studies put the figure at fewer than 150,000--figures that include civilians murdered by insurgents, a factor that Gottlieb conveniently ignores because it does not fit into the skewed world view in which the United States is always in error.

She bewilderingly extends the benefit of the doubt to Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while withholding it from her own country.  Gottlieb came under fire from the Jewish Anti-Defamation League last year for attending a dinner that featured Ahmadinejad as the keynote speaker. Abraham Foxman, national director of the ADL, said that those that wished to break bread with such a leader represented a "perversion of the search for peace and an appalling betrayal of religious values."

But according to Jewish Week, Gottlieb "saw the primary role of herself and the others present that night as promoters of dialogue in active protest of a U.S. administration that rejects this." She rose to "gingerly" tell the dictator, "We are concerned about your statements that minimize or diminish the suffering of the Jewish people."

I doubt Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust-denier who also brutally suppressed peaceful Iranian protesters earlier this year, lost any sleep under her withering criticism.

Gottlieb, and peace activists like her, demonstrate a childlike naiveté in which they assume that all disputes can be settled with reasoned arguments amongst the interested parties--even amongst callous and murderous tyrants like Ahmadinejad.  And like children, they are always the first to criticize their own parents as rotten.

Ironically, as she gently reminded Ahmadinejad of Hitler's wholesale murder of six million Jews, she forgot that the very limp-wristed diplomatic overtures she advocates failed to stop Hitler from running roughshod all over Europe.  The Munich Agreement in 1938 is the classic example from history that demonstrates how negotiating with evil men merely emboldens them.  

Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who attempted to reason with Hitler in Munich, returned home and told his people that the agreement was "only a prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace. This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine. "

The following year, a week before he started World War II, Hitler told his generals, "The enemy did not expect my great determination. Our enemies are little worms, I saw them at Munich."

He then proceeded to enslave all of Europe and murder millions of people. Had Gottlieb been alive in 1938, she undoubtedly would have supported Chamberlain's insistence on diplomacy instead of conflict.

I am sure that, unlike Rabbi Gottlieb, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad learned the lesson of Munich--that evil men stand a good chance of succeeding because some foolish people always assume they can be stopped by force of argument instead of force of arms.

Winston Churchill understood what Gottlieb doesn't:  when reason fails, force prevails. Peace is not made through understanding, as the Star's article stated. Peace is made through strength. In his denouncement of Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler, Churchill said:

And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.

The term "martial vigour" would get Churchill branded as a warmonger these days even though he advocated using force to unseat dictators--an argument also used by George W. Bush to defend his invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Yet Cattoni's documentary features a man that inexplicably compares Bush's--not Ahmadinejad's-- foreign policy to Hitler's.