The Seattle City Council is facing something of a dilemma in its popular pledge to cut the police budget by 50 percent. To do so would require firing a significant number of police officers, which is also popular. The problem is that the firing would be done by seniority and many of the less senior officers are black. The solution according to City Council member Lisa Herbold is simple: fire officers based on their race. While that would be the definition of racial discrimination, Herbold clearly believes that it is discrimination for a good cause. The federal courts are likely to disagree. Most notably, Herbold’s call for racial discrimination against white officers would seek to undue the work of Justice Thurgood Marshall who insisted that racial discrimination unlawful and evil regardless of the race you want to disenfranchise or discriminate against.
Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best released a video calling the plan of Herbold and others “completely reckless.” She also sent a letter to Mayor Jenny Durkan warning that dramatic cuts would require the layoff of hundreds of officers. The Police Department also warned that the firings would include many minority officers.
It was only the last risk that concerned Herbold who promptly suggested discriminating on the basis of race:
Herbold insists that this would be perfectly legal despite the prohibitions under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
What concerns me most is not that such calls for racial discrimination are possibly constitutional but that they are so clearly popular.
The EEOC amplifies this point on its website: “It is unlawful to discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race or color in regard to hiring, termination, promotion, compensation, job training, or any other term, condition, or privilege of employment.”
In taking this position, Herbold is opposing one of the best known opinions by Thurgood Marshall. In McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transportation Co. (1976), Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote opinions that called for the broad interpretation of Title VII to protect everyone. In McDonald, two white employees were fired after a theft in the business. The two white employees were held jointly and severally liable with a black employee. However, only the white employees were fired. After they sued under Title VII, Marshall wrote for the majority in denouncing such discrimination against white employees, insisted that “racial discrimination in private employment against whites [must be] on the same terms as racial discrimination against nonwhites.” He denounced “the illogic in retaining guilty employees of one color while discharging those of another color.” While Marshall would vigorously support affirmative action (including his dissent in Bakke), he believed that all races were protected from discrimination under federal law.
This of course would be even more egregious since Herbold wants to fire white officers due to their race alone. They would not be accused of any wrongdoing or failure. The problem is their race.
It is notable that is not an action that is part of or in furtherance of a valid affirmative action plans ordered by a court or approved by a federal agency. See United Steelworkers of America v. Weber (1979) and Johnson v. Transportation Agency (1987). In Ricci v. DeStefano (2009), the Supreme Court ruled against the city of New Haven after a group of white firefighters and a hispanic firefighter challenged the refusal to certify the results of promotion exams in order to promote black firefighters who performed less well. The Court held that the City’s refusal to certify the test was unlawful discrimination under Title VII. If found that “race-based action like the City’s in this case is impermissible under Title VII unless the employer can demonstrate a strong basis in evidence that, had it not taken the action, it would have been liable under the disparate-impact statute.”
Herbold would not only refuse to promote on the basis of race but would fire officers on that basis. No test. Just a pure racially discriminatory program of terminations. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (2007), Chief Justice John Roberts once declared “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” That is clearly not the plan of Herbold and any of her colleagues who want to fire officers based on their race.
Seattle City Council, how can you live with yourself knowing that your city was named after a slave owner and also committed genocide on another Indian nation. Don’t believe me…it is all there in black and white and easily found on Chief Seattle’s Wikipedia page.
Requiem for a once great city;
I have fond and wonderful memories of walking around Pike Place Market after finishing my work day, having dinner at the Market, when it was un-crowded in the Wintertime.
I was awaiting a performance of the Seattle Symphony, where I had season tickets.
I didn’t realize at the time that all this would end. I didn’t vote for Democrats then either. But they were not as insane as they are now.
We left in 1999.
I offer this post as a Requiem for wonderful and fond memories. Seattle has joined the s******e that is now the Democrats virus of societal destruction.
This is so sad,
Sanjosemike (no longer in CA)
I have family in the Seattle area and have spent lots of time over the years in Seattle. Absolutely great city, and by ‘city’, I mean the people, the buildings, the attractions, the scenery, the activities, etc. I think this can be said for lots of great cities in the US and the world. But city ‘leaders’ seem to think that the city government is what makes these places so special. It’s usually not. The gov’t can help with crime and good zoning, but as we have seen lately, it’s really easy for them to do more harm than good. Very sad.
spot on, my wife was born there and have may relatives there but it’s turned into a SHole. Once a great city.
“The Seattle City Council is facing something of a dilemma in its popular pledge to cut the police budget by 50 percent. To do so would require firing a significant number of police officers, which is also popular. The problem is that the firing would be done by seniority and many of the less senior officers are black.”
Ready. Fire! Aim.
This is what happens when people in authority make decisions without considering the actual consequences. Sometimes consequences are hard to predict, and sometimes they are not. This is like walking off the edge of a skyscraper and then wondering how you’ll survive once reality sets in.
Note to future decision makers: PAY ATTENTION!
The communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs) are adding insult to injury – pouring salt in the wound. At what point do Americans (i.e. Patriots) grasp that their nation is at war? At what point do Americans recognize the existential threats posed by communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs)? At what point do Americans (i.e. Patriots) acknowledge that affirmative action privilege is, itself, racist and unconstitutional, and that generational welfare, in all its forms, is unconstitutional communist redistribution of wealth, ineffective, counter-productive and a complete failure?
At that point, a la Lincoln, Habeas Corpus will be suspended and the mortal enemy, such as this woman, will be “neutralized” with extreme prejudice, never to be suffered again under the U.S. Constitution. The joke is over. Enough of the constitutionally corrupt, improperly ratified and illegitimate, post-Bill of Rights, “Subsequent” amendments. Enough of “…fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” It is long past the time for Americans to reestablish the dominion of the U.S. Constitution and the principles and parameters of its founding.
I would suggest to Ms. Herbold that we first fire half the nitwit Council members, and start by firing all the white ones, Ms. Herbold being the first. These virtue signaling lefties don’t seem to see the cognitive dissonance when they call for penalizing whites, while they, too, are white. They don’t realize that if they actually get their way, they are next, because those they are patronizing will turn on them the instant they have the power. What a bunch of Bumb Dunnies.
This lady is beyond stupid. Is she retarded? If not, she is totally ignorant of the law.
I’m sure they don’t see this as racist though.
I sincerely, with all my heart, hope she dies a miserable death
Speaking Of The Northwest..
What The Hell Is Happening In Portland??
Unmarked Federal Officers Pulling People Off Streets
Federal law enforcement officers have been using unmarked vehicles to drive around downtown Portland and detain protesters since at least July 14. Personal accounts and multiple videos posted online show the officers driving up to people, detaining individuals with no explanation of why they are being arrested, and driving off.
The tactic appears to be another escalation in federal force deployed on Portland city streets, as federal officials and President Donald Trump have said they plan to “quell” nightly protests outside the federal courthouse and Multnomah County Justice Center that have lasted for more than six weeks.
Federal Officers Shoot Portland Protester In Head With ‘Less Lethal’ Munitions
Federal officers have charged at least 13 people with crimes related to the protests so far, while others have been arrested and released, including Pettibone. They also left one demonstrator hospitalized with skull fractures after shooting him in the face with so-called “less lethal” munitions July 11.
Officers from the U.S. Marshals Special Operations Group and Customs and Border Protection’s BORTAC, have been sent to Portland to protect federal property during the recent protests against racism and police brutality.
But interviews conducted by OPB show officers are also detaining people on Portland streets who aren’t near federal property, nor is it clear that all of the people being arrested have engaged in criminal activity. Demonstrators like O’Shea and Pettibone said they think they were targeted by federal officers for simply wearing black clothing in the area of the demonstration.
Edited From: “Federal Law Enforcement Use Unmarked Vehicles To Grab Protesters Off Portland Streets”
Oregon Public Broadcasting, 7/17/20
……………………………………………………………….
NOTE: This story is getting wide coverage today. It’s funny Professor Turley hasn’t covered it.
I’ll tell you what’s happening.. So far we’ve sat back and taken it. Let the temper tantrums go.. But it’s coming to an end. It’s time to show these ‘radicals’ what power looks like. If some die, their families can say they died for their cause. Let’s roll.
Yeah Seth they were saying it all scared like on NPR. But my heart leaped for joy when I heard the news!
Let it rip! Comradeship, adventure, hazard pay, opportunities for advancement!
“Have a plan for killing everyone you see.” Gen. James Mattis, USMC
Good. Since the cities don’t do anything. I guess anything goes.
Nobody has any sympathy for these young thugs, Seth. At the least very few, and certainly not here.
To the citizens of the People’s Republic of Seattle – YOU voted for this moron – YOU deserve what you get.
To Amazon – how about you leave this $***-hole and move to Texas? Taxes are way less, you will be treated with respect, and you won’t have to deal with this despicable woman or with knuckleheads like AOC, the dumbest person on the planet, who virtually single-handedly sent you away from New York.
How do you think people like this are getting elected.. Amazon money
Amazon is owned by Jeff Bezos the richest man in the world, who hates Trump, because he wants to suck up to China, and get more into the export game, for which he thinks will go easier on him if Democrats are in charge and they drag us back into a bunch of rotten “free trade” deals that screw American workers.
Kind of like old Jeff Bezos has put ten thousand bricks and mortar businesses into the grave– do you think this guy cares about Americans? wow, he is exactly the kind of guy encouraging these nutjobs in Seattle, such like through his mouthpiece that he owns the Wash Post, and probably paying them for their mischief, too.
how about she gets fired also due to her being white.. stupid people will always be stupid no hope
Just what I thought when I read the post … Remove from the city council anyone who is a woman, is white (NOT a “person of color”), and has reddish hair!!
If I was an officer, I would lobby for this so they my fellow officers can file a class action suit against the city + get paid. While the trial is ongoing, already relocated to red state with a more supporting community getting a nice salary and waiting for a HUGE payday. Sue the city into oblivion, and collect on their stupidity + political agenda. This is a prime example of a huge opportunity that people can manipulate to their financial advantage. F#ck the politics, just collect + move on.
Jonathan, thank you for this writeup. You’re right on the law, but I don’t think people like Councilor Herbold care about the law. They are trying to CHANGE the law through defiant resistance, like the legislatures passing abortion restrictions in the Midwest and South to combat Roe v. Wade, or the various states and localities that have adopted campaign finance restrictions in opposition to Citizens United and related case law. So the real fight now is about what the law SHOULD BE, rather than what it is.
We had a similar incident in Oregon this week. The legislature allocated coronavirus relief funds on the basis of race. The state legislative counsel cautioned that this was very likely to be unconstitutional, but the legislative panel went ahead and did it anyway, and one of the legislators said he was offended by those who invoked the legal opinion. https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/2020/07/14/oregon-coronavirus-federal-relief-funds-distributed-small-businesses-black-community/5436764002/
one of the legislators said he was offended by those who invoked the legal opinion.
***
Laws don’t apply to blacks and don’t dare mention them.
Yes, please do. Lawyers are already frothing at the mouth to take this on in court. Hope Seattle likes paying out big money.
“Discrimination for a good cause”? Really? I didn’t think that was possible.
I’ve got an idea. Let’s make her jobless and leave the policemen alone.
Just sayin’
Just another liberal see you end tee
I love leftists, it would be legal even though it’s illegal……
You just can’t fix stupid!
in the immortal words of Steven Tyler…..’dude looks like a lady….’
people like Herbold usher US Decline:
https://www.newcenturion.us/blog/why-your-titles-should-be-no-longer-than-this-2
IT’S A DUMB IDEA BUT..
Councilwoman Herbold’s idea is totally unworkable and not even worth considering.
But City Council members are elected by narrow constituencies. And even in big cities Council Members are often dubious characters who say stupid things on a regular basis.
The local news in Chicago often plays like comedy; detailing the scandals and ridiculous statements by Council Members. To see these stories, night after night, you’d wonder how Chicago functions at all.
In smaller cities Council Members say stupid things so often that one could fill an entire newspaper with daily roundups from around the country. But who would care (outside the cities in question)?
A few days ago the story emerged that a Republican Congressman in Kansas has been charged with Voter Fraud. It turns out he registered to vote using a UPS office as his home address. It made a funny headline but Congress is full of silly, regional characters; especially The House.
The important thing to note is that local newspapers around the country are going out of business and, or, cutting their staffs to skeleton crews. This trend bodes badly for citizens wanting to track local government. One can’t depend on local TV newscasts to provide adequate coverage. However The Seattle Times seems fairly solid from what I have seen.
Got your local journalism on Seattle right here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpAi70WWBlw
Dont backpedal Seth. These are the people you have been cheering for all along.
They will eat you for breakfast if they could. You sow the seeds of your own destruction. As have all foolish liberals the past 50 years.
PS the plan is not “unworkable” it is remarkably simple. Fire the white guys. You just don’t like it,, Not because you want to be fair to white cops– you don’t. No, just because it scares the hell out of Whitey. Who will understand come November, the old doddering fool Biden will not protect them from the forces of chaos and anti-white hatred that your party leadership has unleashed.
Kurtz, you were the Bernie supporter. Not ‘me’.
I dont recall hearing Bernie say “fire all the white cops”
he has staked out some stupid positions in favor of BLM sure–
but this one is way past his farthest stupidity and mischief. dont blame him for this.
Or if you have proof, show it. and I’ll be interested to examine it.
Some day I hope we call out all racists regardless of their color and treat all races equally. Until then I hope everyone of those officers fired for being White sue the city and get the same payout as if they were a Black officer being fired for the color of their skin.
Race, tribe, faction, all forms of social groups, will ALWAYS be with us, because humans are social. it is in our very being
There is an inherent tension between democracy which depends on group coordination, and individual rights as a juridical norm.
It is a tension that works ok during normal times, but in crisis, it does not
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/crisis-parliamentary-democracy-1
Kurtz is living in a dream world that is his own personal nightmare, doomed to death or slavery – by his paranoid fantasy – because whites are a small and shrinking portion of the world’s human population. Fortunately, race is in reality a dying concept as people organize themselves around smarter “factions” which didn’t exist a century ago. Right now in America, each of our most dependable allies in living are probably not of close genetic stock, even if of the same race, and 100 years ago that would be the defining characteristic. Our success and survival as a nation is based on the benefits of a diverse population, not our lily white purity. We dominate culturally and scientifically with major inputs from non-white citizens – can I say athletically too? Anyone who wants the US to face the rest of the 21st century without those inputs – and hopefully new ones – is a fool.
Kurtz, I recommend 2 books to you:
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari which is a very compelling and enlightening history of our species. Among the interesting points is through culture, our ability to expand the size of our “group (“faction”) based on abstractions like country as opposed to the primitive reliance on those few we actually knew personally. The principle then is enlarging our alliances, not limited by biology, which is the antiquated, sodden, and headed for our demise view you think controls. https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari-ebook/dp/B00ICN066A
The other is Enlightenment Now by Stephen Pinker which factually and with mounds of data makes the case for the vast improvement in the lives of humans we are enjoying now worldwide and it’s basis in the 18th century Enlightenment of reason and science. Your dyspeptic outlook might improve and if not at least you’ll have a more realistic perspective on the reality and the possibilities. https://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Now-Science-Humanism-Progress/dp/0525427570
You won’t regret reading either.
Thanks. I am of the belief that the white type can should and will survive, actually. It’s obvious we are under what ecologists call “population pressure.”
But, I have a lot of admiration for various Asian nations, cultures, and individuals.
I am less enamored of the socalled “Global South.” Not at all a fan of it, to be honest.
I agree race IS less relevant than it was a hundred years ago. That is as it is, neither good nor bad, just the evolution of the species.
But in some places and situations, it becomes very relevant. For example, when your Democrat leadership is moving to impose more difficulties on me because I am white, because it pleases a fanatical slice of their team cheerleaders, well, then, it becomes relevant. When race is relevant to my existence, I take it into account.
The larger overarching political trends are not racial they are national. or, perhaps we might say, that the current dialectic is nationalism versus globalism. And at this juncture, nations are organized more around other things besides race, though race certainly remains a factor, especially more narrow conceptions of race as in national groups, such as the Han Chinese, who are the majority of the PRC population and the entire upper cadre of the CCP. One is tempted to say if there is a “national socialist” regime actually in existence in the world today, it is the PRC!
This is a strange irony because the PRC is now the champion of globalism, but the recent driver of globalism, But only for its adversaries: because of course, they continue to exercise Westphalian sovereignty in their own spheres of domestic relations (oppression of Tibet and Xinjiang) and the warlike encroachment in the South China seas. Again ironic, because, previously the United States was the champion of globalism, but suddenly now, it is exercising its nation state prerogatives more and more– and mostly against the PRC.
But again, overall, this is a showdown between the legacy of Westphalian nationalism, and the technological push for globalism. For my part, I believe nations have a place in a peaceful and sustainable form of human development. I reject the notion of the globalists, Soros and the World Economic forum types, including Silicon Valley honchos, and maybe guys like you perhaps, that national boundaries are impediments to progress., That is wrong, mistaken, and actually a false slogan that belies the underlying reality that it is economic interests of global capitalism that drive the push of globalism to “cancel” nation-states as valid juridical norms for government.
I appreciate the recommendations, I enjoyed listening to them in the thing you offered before. I also know that these two titles are on Lex Fridman’s book list. Im a fan of Lex.
Lex Fridman is an excellent podcaster, a former MIT prof in AI development research. But a fantastic guy, a BJJ player, which proves it.
https://mostrecommendedbooks.com/lex-fridman-books
Here’s a book i will offer you that may temper your enthusiasm for technology. Super-intelligence, by Nick Bostrom. If you know these other names, you may already know his.
Thanks for the recommendation. I am not familiar with it but Yuval Harari is very dubious of AI, so I have gotten a taste of that fear through him. His premise is that through algorithms, computers can already know more about us than we know about ourselves, and that a state leaning toward totalitarianism – if not thoroughly so – will use it for advantage in any number of areas. Other more benign states may be forced to travel that road to keep up.
As an example of this knowledge. he uses himself. He is gay, but did not discover this until his late teens. He says that any half way decent computer algorithm factoring in his likes and dislikes would have predicted this about him from his early teens. He discusses this in his book Homo Deus, which is criticism of modern trends like humanism.
I am fine with nation states as long as they don’t cause the destruction of civilization, and that is a real possibility. Hey, I root for the home team in sports too, but I try not to go nuts about it. The more cooperation there is among nations the better, and the stronger international agreements are, also best for our survival. Both are occurring is serious ways – China actually has tried to help on the virus by sharing information, whatever their f..k up in covering up their early screw up. It does us not good to foster vendettas without clear goals and a plan ahead. Trump has neither, and like everything he does, is based on his own ego gratification,
It is entirely possible that either artificial general intelligence, or, some other not too far off technological development, such as a disassembling grey goo problem arising from a runaway nanotechnology experiment; or even a future runaway bioengineered terrorist bioweapon or even an innocent “gain of function” research that turns out even more infectious and fatal than the Sars-Cov-2, could, any of them apart or together, decimate or annihalate humanity.
To say nothing of the ongoing danger of nuclear warfare.
Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom is a book that discusses the AGI part of this. Lee Ellsberg is a continuing voice of caution and sanity for nuclear war dangers.
the COVID shows us the danger of emergent viruses, and the CRISPR technology means that any modestly competent biotech actor can cook up in labs their own designer viruses in ways that were previously impossible.
but people may have not heard of the grey goo problem,. here, let me introduce you
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo
nanotech is not science fiction. we can literally manipulate atoms now. that opens up huge possibilities. they are not all just happy happy ones.
I had never heard of grey goo, so thanks for that – I think. The article seems to be saying that the originator of the term now poo poos its possibilities. While I don’t know enough basic science to evaluate th threat of this and probably other potential technological threats, I tend to be dubious because I think they are partly driven by a popular pessimism about science and technology on both the right and the left. Different flavors of the same fear and – as shown in the Pinker book – unmindful of the high level of success humans have achieved and especially since science and rationalism became dominant. Add to that the high adaptability of humans over hundreds of thousands of years, and one could easily view it as confirmation of a likelihood that we’ll figure out the next crisis before it destroys us too. We certainly would not be crazy to hold out that hope. Lastly, consider that our closest relatives are chimps. Approximately 1/3 of the deaths of chimps under 1 year old are due to murders by adult males seeking group dominance. That can be depressing to consider, but also a sign of our ability to change and for the better.
Stephen Pinker’s been singled out for “cancellation” by a list of post docs, junior faculty and misguided senior faculty in his specialty of inguistics. I thought the Left all shared notes on unpersons. https://jonathanturley.org/2020/07/09/harvard-professor-under-fire-in-latest-attack-on-free-speech/