There is an interesting legal challenge in Cambridge where an independent Senate candidate has alleged that Democratic city leaders have improperly used their authority to try to shutdown his campaign against Mass. Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Specifically at issue is a bus featuring campaign slogans parked in the lot of an apartment building owned by Shiva Ayyadurai. Ayyadurai’s signs poke fun at Warren’s disputed claim that she is Native American. Ayyadurai whose family came from India has posted signs proclaiming “Only A REAL INDIAN Can Defeat The Fake Indian.” City officials ordered the signs removed, though the basis for the action is hardly self-evident. Ayyadurai has filed a free speech challenge in federal court.
Ayyadurai then received a notice from Cambridge building inspector Branden Vigneault that the signs lacked the appropriate “approvals and permits.” Vigneault threatened fines of $300 per day plus additional legal penalties if the signs remain in place.
The move seems legitimately suspicious. It is hard to believe that everyone who puts messages on their buses or vans is deemed a posted sign under the regulations. It is also problematic when it is a political message as opposed to a commercial advertisement. Finally, since this is on a moving vehicle as opposed to a building, it is hard to see why a “building inspector” is even involved.
Various experts have cast doubt on Warren’s claim, despite her claiming minority status on difficult law faculties. That does not mean that the allegations are fair and I frankly find President Trump’s attacks to be beyond the pale. However, it is a legitimate campaign issue that goes to questions of character and veracity.
I am less interested in the underlying controversy as I am the free speech issue. I find the actions taken against the campaign to be deeply troubling and it is a good thing that a federal judge will review the matter and underlying regulations.
Before his run, Ayyadurai was best known for his dubious claim to have been the inventor of email — a claim that he maintains on the campaign.
Excuse me, that’s The Peoples Republic of Cambridge!
All of us who were born in the USA are entitled to check the “Native American” box on various silly government sponsored forms.
Send any who doubt this to read Hardy’s “The Return of the Native”.
Reblogged this on The Inquiring Mind.
Prior restraint
“Ayyadurai then received a notice from Cambridge building inspector Branden Vigneault that the signs lacked the appropriate “approvals and permits.”
______________________________________
In California, any property owner can post any political sign anywhere he chooses anytime he chooses.
Code enforcement departments, HOA’s, etc., have entirely stopped enforcement based on a recent Supreme Court ruling on signs as free speech.
Check out Shiva Ayyadurai & see for yourself what think about him. I found it interesting as I learned a bit more about the history of the US & India.
This is a great slogan and he should win just for that. I think the DNC has their mitts in this.
DNC?
When do we get the data from the DNC laptop?
A veritable plethora that.
I suppose education time is here. Two roots for the English Word Indian. First is from the Latin translated through Spanish becoming indigenes meaning indigenous. Poke A Haunt Us fails on that count just as badly as she’s failing on her committee assignments in congress. The first indigenous or indigenes are thought to have crossed the Land Bridge between Baltic and North Pacific with possible from far ranging Pfacific Islanders and perhaps Chinese.
From the East to West in order it was Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Irish, Portuguese and then Giovanni Come Lately an Italian mercenary working for the King of Spain and possessed of a far better publicity agent than either Poke A Haunt Us or Camiltoe Harris. The two motor mouth wind bags full of nothing the Former Democrats turned Socialist Regressives offer.
The second from India through the British into English were immigrants (legality unknown) from the Indus River valley region into the rest of India. They gave us West Indies and East Indies geographical locations and were considered to be a spcy lot to the British Traders. But they did not invent salsa.
Either group is far more relevant and interesting than someone who twice not once but twice checked Native American on application papers for a university professorship and probably at this point has rehearsed the story so much it has in her mind and nowhere else become plausible.
But her record in Congress begs to be conquered by some one Yelique igvnedi which is Cherokee for Capable instead of galosga which is their word for fake .
What a pile of make-believe.
If Elizabeth Warren spent time on a typical Indian reservation, she would understand the outrage. Tribal members are born into a culture of alcohol and drug addiction, dependent on abysmal government services. The entitled and elite Ms. Warren from Massachusetts flouts her family story and assumes an identity for political gain.
Ayyadurai is smart to tap into that outrage. The linked article states that his bus sported a noncontroversial sign for months with no attention from authorities. Only when he changed it to call Warren a fake Indian did the city charge him. Looks very much like government abridging his free speech.
Whenever anyone advocates for the government taking care of us from cradle to grave, I think of the Projects and the Reservation. The government actually does quite a poor job of caring for people. Non-gaming tribes fare far better off the reservation and integrated with their fellow Americans.
Even more non-factuals.
No, David, the social statistics on public housing projects and on Indian reservations are depressing. Dopey drive-bys from you aren’t going to change that.
haha
And the removal controversy draws national attention.
This guy should be elected solely on the brilliant ‘Real Indian little guy vs. D machine’ strategy to make his story go national for little expense out of his campaign coffers. Smart !
I would want to see the code. Never heard of a permit being required for a moving vehicle. What would happen as it drove from state to state? Get pulled over in every district and impounded unless the driver paid for a permit?
I suspect this is, once again, the Democratic party abusing its authority in government to fight political opponents.
If they actually do have a code pertaining to signage on moving vehicles, then Mr. Ayyadurai should comply with the law. The law should apply equally to everyone. If the law is NOT being applied equally, and other moving vehicles with signage are not being harassed, then he should sue the pants off them.
Of course, lawsuits take time and money, all of which drains away from his campaign. Even if they lose, they have succeeded in causing trouble to his campaign.
I thought the slogan was quite witty. She should have taken the high road from the beginning, admitted to her perjury, and claimed mea culpa for the fabricated family story. I wouldn’t blame anyone for believing their own family lore, especially when they were young. But she has been presented with contradicting evidence, and she has refused to prove her claim. That’s when you bow out and say sorry. She would have been forgiven but this has gone way past an honest mistake. Then, of course, there was the outright plagiary of the French chef recipe. Sure, it’s just a recipe, but it’s a troubling sign of poor character. The book was expressly for tribal recipes, so she plagiarized a French chef? Does that indicate she never believed the stories all along? Or that she had zero tribal cultural heritage but still believed she was distantly genetically related? That always seemed so weird to me. If she thought she had tribal blood, why didn’t she get to know the tribe? Why would she contribute a supposed tribal recipe, posing as a native woman, if she had never taken the trouble to actually learn any tribal recipes. If I went on Ancestry.com, and discovered to my surprise that I had Russian blood, I wouldn’t contribute any Russian recipes to any cookbooks, because I hadn’t actually learned any Russian culture or recipes. Merely believing myself to be Russian wouldn’t make me an expert on Russian cooking.
If they actually do have a code pertaining to signage on moving vehicles, then Mr. Ayyadurai should comply with the law.
Do you honestly think anyone’s ever received a citation for having “Gabe’s Dry Cleaners” painted on their truck? And if there were a ‘code’, why would it be in the municipal ordinances and not in the state vehicle and traffic law?
No, I don’t. I think this was abuse of government power to play partisan politics. It seemed highly unlikely for there to be any permit requirement for signage, whether business or political, on a vehicle. I meant it as one heck of a big “if”.
The law should be applied equally, but it’s clearly not.
In general, large signs need permits. Ayyadurai should comply. Warren should stay above the fray. She is a fair target. Her record in Congress should get her re-elected.
It’s on a vehicle, you idiot.
A parked vehicle. Love you, too.
You mean I have to strip ‘Gary’s Dry Cleaners’ off my vehicle every time I park it?
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
That’s funny stuff, and humor is a great way to strip someone of any aura they may have. She is totally outclassed by Shiva. Going to be hard to beat that big party machine there though. I don’t know, with all the heat on the increasingly perceived gangster Democratic organization, they may choose not to fight this one. We’ll see…
Various experts have cast doubt on Warren’s claim, despite her claiming minority status on difficult law faculties. That does not mean that the allegations are fair and I frankly find President Trump’s attacks to be beyond the pale.
Actually, her claim is fraudulent and debunked, and there’s no mystery why she traded in it. There’s a reason she won’t take a DNA test. Everyone in your line of work gets these rancid professional courtesies from you.
Warren’s claiming minority status was always laughable, as is the entire cottage industry of affirmative action and racial set asides. Time to move on.
Have a great weekend.
Please provide the evidence that her claim is fraudulent and debunked. If she hasn’t taken a DNA test, I’d like to know the source and evidence for your assertion. You need to learn the difference between a ” rancid professional courtesy” and not making false assertions. Your opinion is one thing, but you don’t get to confect your own facts.
Here’s one summary
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/is-elizabeth-warren-native-american-or-what/257415/
(The claims that she did not benefit professionally are implausible given her pedestrian background prior to being hired by Harvard).
She had 8 great grandparents:
John Hayne Herring (b. 1860 in Cornwall, England)
Anna Mary Scharan (b. 1860 in Switzerland)
Summerfield Jones (b. 1837, Maryland)
Sarah Frances Kerr (b. 1854, Missouri)
Joseph Reed (b. 1837, Ohio)
Charity Gorman (b. 1841, Illinois)
John Huston Crawford (b. 1858 in Missouri)
Pauline Bowen (b. 1860 in Missouri)
None of these people were born within 20 years of the named state’s admission, so I don’t think you can say they were born on the frontier. Elizabeth Warren’s grandmother, one Hannie Crawford, lived in the Indian Territory ca. 1893. The 1900 census records 265,000 whites living there and you can see her parents were born in Missouri.
You can GOOGLE it to find sources that you are comfortable with. Basically, the Cherokee tribe has extensive genealogical records, and says she is not tribe. Her ancestor actually fought in the Indian wars and started people walking on the infamous Trail of Tears. I do think that someone in her family started lying about having tribal ancestry, perhaps out of guilt about the Indian wars. One of the grown children of the woman in question claimed tribal ancestry, while none of the other descendants did. Plus, you can look up the proven plagiarism for the Pow Wow Chow cookbook, where they copied recipes verbatim from chefs.
Item #637502 in the file marked, “The Democratic Party is an abusive criminal organization”.
The contradiction in Warren’s claiming Native American ancestry vis a vis her representing the party that is supposed to champion universal Americanism will be her downfall. Whether there is an ounce of Native American blood running in her veins is irrelevant. She has absolutely no history akin to that of a minority, no experience of what it is or was like growing up Native American, and no real claim given the dilution in her blood coupled with the comparative luxury she has enjoyed.
Warren blew it when she brought it up, blew it again when she ‘stood her ground’, and continues to blow it. After all this nonsense, she is limping on an Achilles heel that makes Hillary’s cankles look athletic. Too bad, she has all the other attributes but American politics is a sideshow and in a sideshow the biggest freak wins, ie Trump.
I imagine Warren kicks herself every time the subject comes up.
But how was she to know when she was angling for jobs in academia that someday she would be a prominent politician and her spurious claim would be put to the test?
Well, if she was kicking herself, then all she had to do was say she never questioned her family history. She could either accept the evidence disproving it with a shrug that it was an innocent mistake (except for the plagiarism), and everyone would have moved on. Instead, she insisted that she was tribe and refused to prove it.
Native tribes are actually quite strict about who gets to claim affiliation, because there are a lot of “stolen valor” cases such as these. Many keep extensive genealogical records, and there are minimum requirements on percentage ancestry.
She is not limping, unfortunately, or if she is limping, she will continue to walk. They all get passes unless it suits their narrative or agenda. The agenda here is to keep Poca in office.
“Whether there is an ounce of Native American blood running in her veins is irrelevant. She has absolutely no history akin to that of a minority, no experience of what it is or was like growing up Native American, and no real claim given the dilution in her blood coupled with the comparative luxury she has enjoyed.” That is exactly one of the problems.
Universities and employers preferentially chose minorities to create “diversity”. She would not have experienced any of the obstacles that a Native American would growing up poor on a reservation, with substandard schooling. Nor would she ever have been discriminated against for having darker skin.
This brings to mind a really interesting discussion Professor Jordan Peterson had on diversity. He remarked that if you had a project, you would want diversity in ability and strategy. If your goal was success, you would bring people on who would all look at the problem from a different standpoint. For instance, in oncology, maybe you would want an oncologist, chemist, botanist, and people from other professions who would look at therapy outside the box that a homogenous team of oncologists would. Their race, skin color, religion, or political affiliations would have nothing whatsoever to do with how they would approach the problem.
Or perhaps you would create a project team with a highly organized person and a highly creative one. What in the world would skin color have to do with either of those abilities?
Diversity of ideas, of how people think about problems, are more meaningful and collaborative. Who cares about melanin?
An election this stupid deserves a great song:
https://youtu.be/21ixwIaN7qw
Hilarious! This song should be blasted everywhere Warren appears! “And all the beads we made by hand are now-a-days made, in . . . China.”
Warren has the ugliest photo on the blog
Except for Hillary who is a log.
Dogwood.
Indi, Indi, bo bendi
Banana fanna fo fendi..
MINDY!
If neither one is Mindy then neither can claiim
To be an Indian and lay some blame.