Friday, September 10, 2010

Mayor Ballard's Friend Amos Brown

You reap what you sow. The administration of Mayor Greg Ballard has bent over backwards to please radio talk show host Amos Brown as if he holds the keys to winning support among African-American voters at the same time he's done everything he can to shit all over the people who actually worked to put him in office, and despite the fact Brown's constituency typically votes 90-10 in favor of the Democratic candidate. Ballard appointed Brown to co-chair Indianapolis' census committee and he recently appointed him to a newly-created public safety advisory board, along with that other controversial radio talk show host, Abdul Hakim Shabazz, who admits he's not even a voting, taxpaying resident of Indianapolis, who has advocated police beatings as a way of deterring crime and who has done his best to denigrate Ballard's original supporters. I've commented how Brown would continue to club Ballard over the head with a baseball bat every opportunity he gets regardless of how much and how often Ballard bends down and kisses his feet and there's more proof of that. Brown hasn't disappointed me on that prediction.

A fact often overlooked in our local news media is how the Tea Party movement that has swept the country actually started right here in Indianapolis during the 2007 mayoral election. Ballard gladly rode that wave of voter discontent, jumped ashore the City-County Building upon arrival and then quickly cut the line mooring his ship of supporters to send them adrift at sea while offering safe passage to almost every miscreant who worked to elect his opponent in that election. Here's what Brown had to say about the Tea Party activists in his latest black versus white rantings about this year's election in the Indianapolis Recorder:

This time, segments of the Republican base are “fired up and ready to go.” But it’s an enthusiasm based on naked racism and the cold fear of the nagging “great recession.”


The tea party bigots pulling the trunk of the Republican elephant are moving the party of Lincoln into the sort of racist, xenophobic and demented hatred not seen in America since the Great Depression or even the Civil War.

The lies about Obama’s birth and his faith are emblematic of the tea party’s Obama hatred. A hate driven not by ideology, but by bigotry.

Our Black community must respond to the hate-filled attacks with our energy and our vote. But it doesn’t help when the president’s party and campaign machinery isn’t helping get our community “fired up and ready to go.”
Yeah, that's the kind of guy a Republican mayor who barely won election with the support of white independent voters wants tied to his ship.

On Mayor Ballard's recently-announced IMPD reforms, Brown had these kind comments to say:

But nothing the mayor said last weekend does anything to improve minority recruitment and promotion, or improve training or make Ballard’s police treat everyone like civilized human beings . . .

Mayor, when will your IMPD mess end? When will you get your act together, start exercising leadership and end this crisis? And when will you end your disrespect of ignoring of the institutions and people of the quarter-million-large Indianapolis African-American community?


In case Brown has forgotten, Ballard appointed one of his convicted felon friends as a deputy mayor in one of his first acts as mayor, appointed numerous other minorities to his administration who did nothing to help him get elected to satisfy the political correctness crowd, passed out millions of dollars in useless crime prevention grants to nonprofits controlled by African-American ministers and has awarded more contracts to minority contractors in the history of the City to the detriment of more qualified non-minority contractors. And Brown says Ballard is ignoring the African-American community? Like I said, you reap what you sow.

UPDATE: I know it frustrates Amos Brown to no end that civil rights laws protect all of us from discrimination on the basis of race, but a reminder of this basic notion had to be made by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals this week to our Indianapolis police department in Finch v. Bart Peterson, in which it was held:

This interlocutory appeal arises from a complaint filed against the City of Indianapolis, its law-enforcement Merit Board, and seven city officials alleging violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 1981, and 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The plaintiffs—three white police lieutenants—claim they were subjected to reverse discrimination because they were passed over for promotion to the rank of captain despite ranking higher on the Police Department’s promotion eligibility list than three African-American lieutenants who were promoted ahead of them. The individual city officials moved for judgment on the pleadings, claiming qualified immunity based on the terms of a 1978 consent decree entered into by the Indianapolis Police Department and the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”). They maintained that the consent decree required them to make the promotions at issue here. A magistrate judge disagreed and denied the motion, and the city officials appealed. We affirm.

The 1978 consent decree does not operate to confer qualified immunity on the city officials who were involved in making the challenged promotions. Nothing in that decree required them to take race into consideration in making promotions. To the contrary,specific language in the decree required promotions within the Police Department to be made without regard to race or color.
Hat tip to Indiana Law Blog.

9 comments:

Paul K. Ogden said...

Amos Brown doesn't understand that there is a lot more racism among the counntry club Republicans running the Ballard administration than the tea party types who helped Ballard get elected but were shunned after the election.

Gary R. Welsh said...

Why is this man given any credibility at all? He absolutely hates white people and foments racial divide and hatred in the same sentence he decries bigotry. He can say whatever he wants and people just shrug it off, "Oh, that's Amos being Amos." If a white media person said anything approaching what he says, his or her career as a reporter/radio talk show host or whatever would be finished. Look at the recent uproar over Dr. Laura. She's going off the air for using the n-word in response to a black caller who repeatedly used the n-word in conversation with her. Her sponsors started dropping her and several radio stations dropped her show. Brown defames people with the racist label almost daily on his show without consequence. In Amos' world, if you are white and you are a Republican, you are a racist.

M Theory said...

About one quarter or more of the key activists, that helped Ballard usher his victory and met often in my living room to map our strategy, were black.

Why doesn't Amos ever acknowledge the people who work together with people of all religions and races? The answer is that Amos has built his livelihood on racism and Amos NEEDS to live in a racist world.

Downtown Indy said...

Good old Amos Brown, his stock-in-trade is hyperbole, race card playing and ridiculous conclusion-leaping.

He does more to foster hatred than just about anyone on the local scene. Hr rallies his audience by attacking anyone with a question that's gone unanswered, a differing opinion, a loud voice that doesn't align with his ideas 100% -- as being a fountain of hatred.

I guess it's partisans becoming lazy. They have found it easier to race-bait and sow Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt instead of putting together a coherent explanation of what the other guy is 'wrong' about.

Just once I'd like to hear him refute an alternative point of view with solid, meaningful data instead of his patented angry rhetoric.

It's old, it's boring and it's counterproductive. But he's just a talkshow host in search of ratings points.

Cato said...

"This time, segments of the Republican base are “fired up and ready to go.” But it’s an enthusiasm based on naked racism"

HE'S RIGHT!!!!

IT IS!!!!!

There's very little difference between the policies and spending of Bush and Obama. The only thing that really changed between 2008 and 2009 was the color of the dude in the big chair.

The Republicans were nowhere near this angry under Bush, but they're furious under Obama, while having no articulable platform telling just what they're upset about.

If you look at the vague anger coming from the Tea Party, you'll see nothing specific. They want to "take back the country," where "taking back" means voting out Obama and Democrats while imposing no platform or demands on the Republicans.

The Tea Partiers will vote Republican neocons into office who are not much different than the Democrat neocons they vote out.

Are the Tea Partiers demanding an end to the wars, surveillance state and fiat money? Fat chance. They don't even know what fiat money is, and they're born authoritarians, so they like everyone stripping to their skivvies at airports.

There's nothing motivating these people except an abiding dislike of Obama's melanin poisoning.

Marycatherine Barton said...

Amos Brown should not be given any cedibility, and what all you have written has not given the half of why I say that, AI. Thanks.

Gary R. Welsh said...

Well, Cato, the color of the dude in the big chair in Indy in 2007 was a white Republicrat named Bart Peterson. The tea party people who elected Ballard are very discerning in their views towards limited government and individual freedom. When Ballard turned his back on the principles upon which he was elected, he was abandoned by his supporters. That has become abundantly clear in race after race across the country this past year to the frustration of the Republican establishment, which has seen many of their candidates go down in flames as a result of the grassroots efforts of tea party activists.

Christine Scales said...

Does Amos Brown mention anywhere that the chief IMPD recruiter is an African American?

Gary R. Welsh said...

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday issued an opinion in which it held this in a case brought by 3 IMPD officers who were passed over for promotion in favor of 3 lesser qualified African-American candidates (Finch v. Bart Peterson):

"This interlocutory appeal arises from a complaint filed against the City of Indianapolis, its law-enforcement Merit Board, and seven city officials alleging violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 1981, and 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The plaintiffs— three white police lieutenants—claim they were subjected to reverse discrimination because they were passed over for promotion to the rank of captain despite ranking higher on the Police Department’s promotion eligibility list than three African-American lieutenants who were promoted ahead of them. The individual city officials moved for judgment on the pleadings, claiming qualified immunity based on the terms of a 1978 consent decree entered into by the Indianapolis Police Department and the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”). They maintained that the consent decree required them to make the promotions at issue here. A magistrate judge disagreed and denied the motion, and the city officials appealed.
We affirm. The 1978 consent decree does not operate to confer qualified immunity on the city officials who were involved in making the challenged promotions. Nothing in that decree required them to take race into consideration in making promotions. To the contrary, specific language in the decree required promotions within the Police Department to be made without regard to race or color."

I'm sure Amos is fuming over that decision.