The Larry Flakes Case: Alaska Human Rights Commission Fines Alaska Sales And Service $118,375 For Failure To Promote A Black Salesman To Team Leader

An administrative law judge has upheld a claim by the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights that an Anchorage auto dealership racially discriminated against a Black salesman, Larry Flakes, when it failed to promote him to a "team leader" position. The Commission claimed that Alaska Sales and Service had violated Alaska Human Rights Law, and concluded that Alaska Sales and Service, Inc. must pay Flakes back-pay damages of $118,375. Either party can appeal this decision to the state court system. Primary media story from the Sitka News, but a September 29th, 2008 Anchorage Daily News story provides significant additional background.

According to Flakes, he had been selling cars for nearly 18 years, including two years as a sales manager or assistant manager at two other dealerships. He had worked for Alaska Sales and Service for nearly 11 years and had been named the "sales representative of the month" on 12 occasions. Yet in April 2002, when Alaska Sales and Service selected the team leaders, they passed him over. Flakes claimed that Alaska Sales and Service promoted five non-Black salesmen to be team leaders instead. Caitlin Shortell was the lawyer representing the Commission in this case. The use of the term "non-Black" implies that the five team leaders chosen were not all of the same race, which would also imply that race did not enter into promotion consideration. Those implications are confirmed by the ADN story, in which it was reported that one of the five selected team leaders was Asian, chosen in part because his language skills would help him make sales in the Asian immigrant community.

However, an unidentified second Black salesman for the company alleged that he also was not chosen for the team leader position because of the color of their skin. The professional qualifications of the second salesman were not reported. Nevertheless, the existence of a second complainant of the same protected class as the first complainant may have swayed both the Commission and the judge to presume racial discrimination in the absence of any objective corroborative evidence.

Sarah Palin Supports Senator James Inhofe's Call For Climategate Investigation, While Mark Begich Continues Cheerleading For Cap-And-Trade

On Thursday December 3rd, 2009, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin expressed support for Senator James Inhofe's call for a Congressional investigation into the growing Climategate scandal, and has urged President Barack Obama to reconsider his decision to attend the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Copenhagen from December 7-18. She posted the following announcement on her Facebook page:

Mr. President: Boycott Copenhagen; Investigate Your Climate Change "Experts"

Thu at 4:17pm

The president’s decision to attend the international climate conference in Copenhagen needs to be reconsidered in light of the unfolding Climategate scandal. The leaked e-mails involved in Climategate expose the unscientific behavior of leading climate scientists who deliberately destroyed records to block information requests, manipulated data to “hide the decline” in global temperatures, and conspired to silence the critics of man-made global warming. I support Senator James Inhofe’s call for a full investigation into this scandal. Because it involves many of the same personalities and entities behind the Copenhagen conference, Climategate calls into question many of the proposals being pushed there, including anything that would lead to a cap and tax plan.

Policy should be based on sound science, not snake oil. I took a stand against such snake oil science when I sued the federal government over its decision to list the polar bear as an endangered species despite the fact that the polar bear population has increased. I’ve never denied the reality of climate change; in fact, I was the first governor to create a subcabinet position to deal specifically with the issue. I saw the impact of changing weather patterns firsthand while serving as governor of our only Arctic state. But while we recognize the effects of changing water levels, erosion patterns, and glacial ice melt, we cannot primarily blame man’s activities for the earth’s cyclical weather changes. The drastic economic measures being pushed by dogmatic environmentalists won’t change the weather, but will dramatically change our economy for the worse.

Policy decisions require real science and real solutions, not junk science and doomsday scare tactics pushed by an environmental priesthood that capitalizes on the public’s worry and makes them feel that owning an SUV is a “sin” against the planet. In his inaugural address, President Obama declared his intention to “restore science to its rightful place.” Boycotting Copenhagen while this scandal is thoroughly investigated would send a strong message that the United States government will not be a party to fraudulent scientific practices. Saying no to Copenhagen and cap and tax are first steps in “restoring science to its rightful place.”

- Sarah Palin

Other GOP figures have joined in the chorus of caution. Twenty congressional Republicans, including the top House GOP leadership, sent a letter to Obama on Friday December 4th expressing their grave concern that the U.S. delegation might commit to mandatory greenhouse gas emissions reductions. They reminded Obama that only a treaty ratified by the United States Senate or legislation agreed to by Congress may commit the United States to any mandatory emissions reduction program.

In contrast, Alaska Dispatch reports that Alaska Senator Mark Begich joined nine other Senate Democrats in signing a letter supporting the goal to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 50 percent by 2050, with industrialized nations reducing emissions by 80 percent by the target date, although the letter is softened somewhat by demands that reciprocity and trade implications be factored in. Of course, the problem is that the elite are betting everything on carbon dioxide - and don't tell us what happens if we do reduce emissions and climate change doesn't stop.

Obama had planned to attend the conference December 9th, but the White House now says he won't go until December 18th, the last day of the conference when many other state leaders will be there. This is viewed as a sign of growing optimism that at least a tentative agreement might be reached, an optimism fueled by announcements by both China and India of domestic targets for slowing emission increases as their economies continue to grow quickly.

Here's a news video from Russia Today providing an updated report on the Climategate dispute:

Alaska's Self-Proclaimed "Ethics Taliban" Andree McLeod Files Mass Ethics Complaint Against Eight Former Sarah Palin Staffers On December 3rd, 2009

Sarah Palin has been out of office for five months now, but that makes absolutely no difference to Alaska's self-proclaimed "ethics Taliban" Andree McLeod, who is obviously intent upon destroying Palin and anyone who ever worked in her administration. And once again, McLeod is using the ethics complaint system as a weapon of political warfare against Palin.

On December 3rd, 2009, Andree McLeod filed a whopper of a mass ethics complaint against eight officials who served in Sarah Palin's administration, according to the Anchorage Daily News' Alaska Politics blog. The individuals named, all current and former governor’s office employees, include Mike Nizich, Randy Ruaro, Kris Perry, Rhonda McBride, Bill McAllister, Shelley James, Linda Perez and Mark Kelsey. They are alleged to have misused state resources during Palin's run as the Republican vice presidential candidate, in violation of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act (Alaska Statute, Title 39, Chapter 52). The complaint package is 213 pages long and is available from two sources:

-- As an attachment to the Alaska Politics story (takes about two minutes to load)
-- As a downloadable Docstoc document (hat tip to HuffPo for the link - loads much faster and is embeddable, as it is below)


AKcomplaint -

In response, Judy Bockmon, an assistant attorney general and the state's ethics attorney, says ethics complaints being investigated are confidential and she cannot comment on their status or whether they even exist.

In her cover letter, McLeod refers to a gaggle of official SOA email communications from the governor’s office attached, which she claims shows collaboration between the McCain/Palin campaign and each other as partisan political campaign activities conducted while on the clock. McLeod continues to allege that although Nizich and Perry took personal leave while attending the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis/St. Paul last September, they used state resources for political campaign purposes. She maintains that Commissioner Kreitzer’s directive, as well as the AEBEA, wasn’t entirely adhered to by governor’s office staff.

McLeod further alleges that public records requests from the McCain/Palin campaign were given priority status and responded to immediately, while similar requests from members of the public and media were disparately delayed for weeks on end. Perez stuck to the AK Public Records Act’s 10-business day waiting period and then typically followed up with another 10-day extension before fulfilling most public record requests, while in contrast, it appears that information requests by the McCain/Palin campaign were processed within hours.

Lou Dobbs Squares Off Against ALIPAC's William Gheen On Dobbs' Radio Program On November 30th; Dobbs Still Wants Conditional Amnesty For Illegals

Stung by negative reaction on the part of many American patriots to his November 20th, 2009 interview with Maria Celeste on Telemundo in which he was widely perceived to be too concilatory towards illegal immigrants, Lou Dobbs decided to invite one of his most vociferous critics, ALIPAC's William Gheen, on to his radio program on November 30th. ALIPAC earlier posted their reaction to the Telemundo interview HERE.

The interview was up on Lou Dobbs' website for 24 hours, then dumped into paid archives. However, while it was still available, someone captured it on YouTube; the videos are embedded below:

Part 1 of 2:




Part 2 of 2:



The crux of the dispute is amnesty. While Dobbs wants to beef up border and port security, and has been a lightning rod of criticism for Latino supremacist groups such as MALDEF and La Raza, he also favors (and has always favored) conditional amnesty for some of the estimated 12 million illegal aliens in this country. He states that only the most law-abiding illegals should qualify, but never gives a ballpark figure. Gheen, on the other hand, believes the only path to citizenship for illegals goes back OUTSIDE the United States, and is concerned that the additional voting power of as many as 12 million amnestied illegals could "end the United States as we know it".

Both these guys miss the boat. Lou Dobbs is clearly a class act, insisting on displaying proper manners at all times. But his charitable attitude towards illegals does not best serve the national interest because it rewards bad behavior. On the other hand, William Gheen has the right attitude towards illegals, correctly referring to them as criminals for breaking into our country, but his mannerisms are so offensive that he drives some prospective allies away. His ego hinders his effectiveness; he has publicly feuded with other immigration reform activists such as Jim Gilchrist because they don't meet his exacting standards of moral purity. In addition, Gheen seems to be scared to death of the Southern Poverty Law Center; in an effort to get them off his back, he sent a hysterical e-mail to David Duke and Stormfront virtually "ordering" them to stay out of "his" movement and not use "his" materials on their websites. Gheen should know that once you get on the hit lists of the ADL and SPLC, you never get off, because the anti-hate racket is a sweet deal financially for Abe Foxman and Morris Dees. And by responding to their concerns, Gheen undeservedly validates the ADL and the SPLC.

The ideal would be to combine William Gheen's ideology with Lou Dobb's manners. Nevertheless, in the fight to reclaim America's sovereignty, we haven't the luxury to be excessively choosy about our allies.