Some things that deserve disputing...
[...]Ward Connerly, described by the Omaha World-Herald as 'a California businessman and affirmative action foe." Of course, the Omaha World-Herald reporter, Martha Stoddard, either in ignorance or by choice, fails to mention that Connerly is a former California Regent and a black man who successfully helped pass a similar initiative in California and in several other states.
Never underestimate someone's ability to read political bias into the media. The World-Herald gave an accurate description of Connerly, a glorification of his previous successes is unnecessary and a distraction from the issue of their article (the ad).
The article also mentions a good friend and conservative, David Kramer who has apparently become a spokesman for Nebraskans United which is apparently "the" group opposed to the initiative.
Not to split hairs but it is "the" coalition of groups and individuals... Nebraskans United is the leading organization opposing the affirmative action ban, if Mr. McPherson knows of another he can not only challenge NU's claim to being the leader but he can also inform the rest of us as to who exactly is.
Clearly, the ad is in bad taste and poorly represents the thrust of the Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative. Chalk one up for Kramer and his group--the financial supporters of which I haven't checked out but can certainly speculate on, but won't.
Nebraskans United has, like the NCRI, disclosed its contributions as the law requires they do (click schedules A and B for contributors). These reports are publicly available, but nevertheless Mr. McPherson chose instead to imply shadowy motives and connections on Nebraskans United.
It's a handy trick, let's see if we can find another use for it. Like, what if I said, "[...]Mr. McPherson - who got a bunch of money from some place I can wildly speculate about, but won't." It's almost as though an invisible asterix is contained in the sentence, leading one to the unstated thought that he probably sells dope to school children.
[Kramer] and [Nebraskans United], along with the editorial page of the Omaha World-Herald, use equally bad taste and scare tactics in their tirades about the inappropriateness of dollars from outside the state funding the initiative and the destruction such an initiative will reap upon our fair state.
Yea, but examples be damned! Nebraskans United has made a point about the fact that where all of their money comes from Nebraskans, 99% of the NCRI's money has come from California and the vulture-fund millionaire from New York mentioned in my previous post. That's not a scare tactic, it's making the point that we want politics to be local, grassroots, and representative of the people here who should have the opportunity to decide their own government and laws collectively without influence from hundreds of miles away. Nebraska has become a target for well-funded right-wing special interest groups like Club for Growth and ACRI who think a few hundred thousand can buy them a slot on our ballots. Nebraskans have had the sense to reject them in 2006 when Club for Growth and others attempted to force a disastrous state spending lid on us, I have faith they'll do so again this year. And thanks to Senator Shimek's LB 39 we won't have to deal with the flood of petitioners engaging in questionable and downright illegal practices again in the future.
Ronald Reagan and Martin Luther King both wanted color blind societies where a person was judge not by the color of his/her skin or by their gender or by anything other than then character and ability.
HA! Mr. McPherson is right - that Reagan and Dr. King agreed - but in the wrong way. Both in fact agreed that affirmative action was a just and necessary solution to the history of racial discrimination in this country.
Ronald Reagan, 1974:
Time and experience have shown that laws and edicts of non-discrimination are not enough. Justice demands that each and every citizen consciously adopt and accentuate a real and personal commitment to affirmative action so as to make equal opportunity a reality.
(For the sake of later argumentative continuity, I understand Reagan later probably opposed affirmative action - I mention this Reagan quote only in jest. I'd never take, and would never want to take, the position that Reagan was some sort of major affirmative action advocate.)
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1963, Why We Can't Wait:
Whenever the issue of compensatory treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic.
Dr. King went on, in the same book, to enumerate a massive compensatory justice program not only including affirmative action for ethnic minorities but also for poor whites, which he modeled off of the GI Bill of Rights (an affirmative action program if there ever was one!) and which he called the Bill of Rights of the Disadvantaged. It's a common mistake, nowadays bordering on malevolent ignorance of Dr. King's actual ideas and positions, to take that one line, that one quote, about the content of character from the I Have A Dream speech and think just because of that one sentence Dr. King would oppose affirmative action. Please for the sake of honest debate on the issue, cut it the fuck out already!
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