Multicultural Meltdown, or Power to Politicos or to People?

[jbg]

Usually, I praise the US "melting pot" ideal and model over Canada's "multiculturalism". Today, about 5 klicks from where I live, a multi-million dollar multicultural farce is playing out. The Journal News article excerpted below (link to article) discusses how a viollage of roughly 15,000 people (officially) are being forced to spend millions to defend their right to vote for their six member Board of Trustees "at large", or on a village-wide basis. The Federal Government is challenging "at large" voting, saying that the roughly 50% of residents who are Hispanic have never succeeded in electing a Trustee.

Today, I walked into the Courthouse with a Hispanic civic leader, who conceded that voter turnout among Hispanics is 20%. I mention to him that the Jews, with 1.9% of the US population, enjoy political power since approximately 80% of our numbers vote. He also conceded that elected politicians, even if not Hispanic, could not and would not ignore the needs of 50% of the voters.

I am saddened that the US Federal Government, and the people of the Village of Port Chester, are being forced to expend millions of dollars to rectify a problem that would solve itself if people got off their @rses and voted. The more I think about it, this is really about the politicians who want to be guaranteed election and not about the constituents they are "serving". Is a Hispanic trustee really going to want the garbage collected in a different manner?

This would be funny, if it weren't such a waste of resources. I shudder when I see people on these boards advocating "FN Ridings" and the like. It's a bad road to head down. Excerpts of article below:

Port Chester voting rights case headed to trial

By LIZ SADLER

THE JOURNAL NEWS

(Original publication: May 21, 2007)

PORT CHESTER - The village will head to court today for the first day of the federal voting rights trial after failing to settle the case with the Justice Department.

U.S. District Judge Stephen Robinson, who ruled in favor of the federal government at a hearing on whether to stop the March trustee election, will preside over the weeklong trial in White Plains.

As the trial date approached, board members remained skeptical about the village's chances, and its attorney was already portraying it as an opportunity to strengthen its argument for an appeal, possibly all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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