What happens when affirmative action literally decides who lives or dies? As I discuss in my article this week, the various SIV vulnerability metrics are being used to prioritze minorities for the vaccine. The real battle over that is shaping up at the CDC level, but multiple statues are using SIV to various disagrees, and the VA is also using racial prioritization based on CDC guidelines. Gail Heriot and Peter Kirsanow at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights are pushing back. The Honorable Robert Wilkie Secretary of Veterans Affairs 810 Vermont Avenue NW Washington, DC 20420 Dear Mr. Secretary: We write as two members of the eight-member U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and not on behalf of the Commission as a whole. We write to express our concerns regarding a recent announcement by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Judge ends suit saying Doraville writes too many tickets
The 2018 lawsuit alleged that the DeKalb County town excessively relies on fines and fees, which make up roughly 15 percent of its overall revenue. Author: 11Alive Staff, Associated Press Published: 8:18 PM EST December 20, 2020 Updated: 8:18 PM EST December 20, 2020
DORAVILLE, Ga. A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit claiming that an Atlanta suburb improperly relied on fines and fees to finance its budget.
U.S. District Judge Richard Story last week dismissed a case brought against the city of Doraville by four people represented by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian group.
The 2018 lawsuit alleged that the DeKalb County town excessively relies on fines and fees, which make up roughly 15 percent of its overall revenue. Story found that plaintiffs hadn’t proven that police and code enforcement officers were writing tickets for the sake of driving up revenue.
WHYY
By
It’s not easy to recognize important historical moments while they’re happening.
But 2020 has been a year marked by disaster and debacle. It has featured a deadly global pandemic, a reckoning over racism in the wake of several Black Americans killed by police, and a tense, litigious election.
Looking back, historians, political insiders, and on-the-ground organizers agree that the last 12 months or so will leave an indelible impression.
“I don’t know a historian right now who isn’t still kind of in shock,” said Timothy Lombardo, a Philadelphia-born historian of conservative politics.
Lombardo, who is now a professor at the University of South Alabama, is careful to note it’s impossible to predict how the future will remember the present too many moving parts and extenuating factors. However, it’s possible to take cues from the past.
There was a time, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when Black farmers and their families were thriving on the land they owned in this country, but that was short-lived. While Black farmers previously owned an estimated 20 million acres of land just after the Civil War and Reconstruction, the number of Black farmers in this country dropped by 98 percent, largely due to systemic racism at the hands of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to Mother Jones magazine.
In an effort to right this wrong, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), joined by fellow Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), introduced a new Senate bill in November: the Justice for Black Farmers Act. If passed, this legislation would provide land grants of up to 160 acres to existing and aspiring Black farmers, among other measures to correct the history of racism in this area.
by Christina Stella, NET News
(Photo taken from NET coverage of 2014 Class C1 Boys Basketball Flashback, Bishop Neumann vs. Wahoo)
Christina Stella, NET News
December 17, 2020 - 4:35pm
In testimony sessions this week with the Nebraska Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, local Tribal leaders said it’s time for schools statewide to have a reckoning around the use of Native American names, symbols, and images for their mascots.
The conversations came soon after the Cleveland Indians announced the team would begin the process of retiring its name and Native American mascot, which both had been widely criticized for popularizing racist depictions of Indigenous people. And in July, the Washington Football Team made its new name official after dropping its previous name, a racial slur for Native Americans.