The Freedom Minute

Welcome Fellow John & Ken Listeners

Return here for upcoming posts on the LA Budget, illegal photo ticketing by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, and recommendations for the upcoming June election.

If you want to be notified the next time I write something, sign up for email alerts or subscribe to the RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

May 20th, 2010 Posted by freedomminute | Local Government | no comments

Paul Koretz Backtracks – Sort Of

Last week, the Los Angeles City Council voted to boycott the State of Arizona in protest of their recently passed immigration law, SB 1070, which targets illegal immigrants. Regardless of what one might think of the law, I was particularly troubled by the public statements of Council Members Janice Hahn and Paul Koretz in which they equated Arizona with Nazi Germany. Perhaps I’m a bit sensitive on this subject since some members of my family were victims of the Nazi regime and died in the concentration camps.

My objection to the use of this type of hyperbole is that when public officials (and private citizens) begin equating everything they might object to with the atrocities of the Holocaust, it minimizes the slaughter of 12 million people.  Paul Koretz, who also lost family members in the Holocaust, should be particularly conscious of the dangers of this type of grandstanding.  However, during last week’s council meeting, this is what he said in regard to Arizona’s new laws (including two measures relating to public education):

“If this was being proposed at the Federal level, I would think we were absolutely at the beginning of what went on in Nazi Germany.  It’s not much different.  Fortunately it’s a State, but this State needs to be stung in every possible way until they stop this behavior.  We can’t let this advance any further, this is absolutely dangerous.”

So last night, Paul Koretz attended the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association meeting to speak to his constituents.  Not surprisingly, he was taken to task about these comments.  Here’s what he had to say in his defense. (My comments are in parenthesis.)

First of all, anything that they’ve heard that I said is probably from right wing talk radio and not what I actually said. (However a clip of his actual comments were played numerous times on the radio show in question.) So allow me to say what I actually said.

What I said was that I’m concerned not only with Arizona’s immigration law but some other things in addition that Arizona has done and gives me great pause that it’s more than just the desire to deal with illegal aliens … Beyond the immigration issue, Arizona has recently voted to ban all ethnic studies courses (that elicited cheers from the audience.  It’s also not quite true.) so Jewish Studies, Latino Studies, the programs that we have in California and every other state would be banned.

(This is absolutely not true. Quoting from the website of the Arizona State Legislature, the law:

States that the Legislature finds and declares that public school pupils should be taught to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people. Prohibits a school district or charter school from including in its program of instruction any courses or classes that:

• Promote the overthrow of the United States government.
• Promote resentment toward a race or class of people.
• Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.
• Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.

States that this act cannot be construed to restrict or prohibit:

• Courses or classes for Native American pupils that are required to comply with federal law.
• The grouping of pupils according to academic performance, including capability in the English language, that may result in a disparate impact by ethnicity.
• Courses or classes that include the history of any ethnic group and that are open to all students, unless the course or class violates this act.

That’s not the same as banning all ethnic studies courses.)

They also voted, which I think is pretty amazing and somewhat bizarre, to ban people who teach and have an accent from teaching English.

(Again, incorrect.  First, the law pertains to teachers that teach English to those students for whom English is their second language.  Meaning, teachers who are teaching the English language to non-English speaking students.  It requires that they not be “heavily” accented or speak ungrammatical English.  A requirement that one would think would be a prerequisite for those who are teaching English to non-native speakers.)

Again, not done anywhere else in the country.

(Not true, the actual law is based on a requirement in the No Child Left Behind Act which states that for a school to receive federal funds, students learning English must be instructed by teachers fluent in the language. Defining fluency is left to each state.)

This is not just a policy statement. They are actually sending out monitors to every classroom in the State of Arizona to listen to whether they have an accent or not.  If they have an accent, they will either have to remove that accent with training or they will not be able to teach English as a second language.

(At least he finally got it right that this only has to do with teachers who are teaching English as a second language, but he still left the audience with the mistaken belief that Arizona now has “accent police” rounding up any teachers that have an accent.)

Again I think this a pretty bizarre thing and it makes me wonder about where they’re headed. Now let me go back to what I said, then everyone else can listen to what I said, as opposed to what John and Ken (local radio hosts here in Southern California on KFI radio) said I said. What I said was that I lost relatives in the Holocaust, I lost my Aunt because she didn’t believe that some of these kind of things were going on, and she never believed them. And what I said was “how does this compare to what was going on in 1933 and earlier; the very subtle beginnings of what was going on in Nazi Germany. If you look at what was going on then, there are some similarities to what is going on in Arizona”.

(Re-read the exact quote in my introduction above, which I directly transcribed from the video of the City Council meeting, and see if you think this characterization of his original remarks is accurate.  I don’t.)

And I thought that the folks in Arizona needed to be called on it, rather than just continuing to do more and more things in this direction, more and more scapegoating.  We all have problems with illegal immigration issues.  California has… just as much as Arizona, maybe more so.  Texas … maybe more so.  How come these states are not doing this?  In fact, you have California complaining about what Arizona is doing.

(Well, no, the state is not complaining. Only the representatives in certain cities are complaining along with certain immigrant rights groups. In fact, the LA Times has a poll asking readers if they agree with the City Council’s actions. 96% of respondents believe the Council’s boycott is wrong.)

Because we don’t think this is the appropriate way to deal with this issue.  I don’t disagree that illegal immigration is a problem. I don’t think we can take the world’s population into the United States and take care of them. But I don’t think this is the answer.  I think this is a very dangerous approach.  And that was what I tried to say, that this is a very dangerous approach in my view and I think not calling Arizona on it, that would be the cowardly thing to do.  And taking the abuse that we get from talk radio I think is the right thing to do.

Ok, so this is what he had to say in the public comment part of the meeting.  Afterward, I spoke with him to express my displeasure at his Nazi Germany analogy.  I began by asking him if he had read the actual law.  He claims he did.  I then asked what specific part of the law he felt was akin to what the Nazis did.  Here’s the exchange:

Koretz: As I recall, and I did read it and I can’t tell you if I retained it all as I recall they changed the original concept to make it harder, but the original concept…

Koretz: And many people have and I’m not going to repeat them (referring to his remarks), having learned what I’ve learned from this experience.  And you’re certainly not the only one, or even the hundredth person that has observed that to me.  So I learned something.  But that was my gut, from the heart, response, and I probably wouldn’t say it again.  I mean even my friends at the Simon Wiesenthal Center… even they took a shot at me – and maybe appropriately so.

Well at least he finally admitted that he shouldn’t have used the Nazi analogy – sort of.  Although considering his tortured explanation of his comments, I suspect that he might be more concerned about the political backlash that any real regret about saying what he said.  I was really hoping for some sort of apology, but apparently politicians really don’t like to directly admit that they were wrong.

Some final thoughts –

Clearly, Mr. Koretz feels the Arizona legislature and governor are wrong in their approach to the serious problems facing their state due to the influx of illegal immigrants.  He is certainly entitled to his opinion.  What he is not entitled to do is use the murder of millions of innocent people in order to score political points.  I, too, am a bit concerned with how this law will be implemented and the possible expansion of police powers.  But I would never equate Arizona’s actions with those of the Nazis.  Nor should anyone else. Nor should anyone equate the policies of President Obama and/or President Bush (either in words or pictures) with the actions of the Nazi Germany.  Anyone who does so should also be ashamed of themselves.  The Nazis committed genocide.  Let’s not confuse that with anything that doesn’t rise to a similar level of depravity.

I firmly believe that if you are a representative on the City Council of a major city, you have an obligation to get your facts right.  It’s likely that Mr. Koretz really believes the distortions that he’s heard about the laws being passed in Arizona.  But that’s no excuse.  It took me all of ten minutes to get the exact information about the laws and read them.  If had read them, he might not have found them so “amazing and bizarre”.  Certainly a council member with staff personnel at his disposal should be able to do at least this much.  Furthermore, if you’re going to vote to boycott another state because they passed a law you think is “dangerous”, you should be able to clearly and succinctly articulate to your constituents exactly what parts of the law you feel are objectionable.  When directly questioned on this, Mr. Koretz was unable to do so.

Finally, in all fairness, I do want to give credit where credit is due.  Mr. Koretz courteously listened to what I had to say although it was clearly an uncomfortable few minutes.  I never got the impression that he was trying to blow me off or cut our conversation short.  I do want to commend him for that.

Edit –

After this post appeared, I was interviewed on the John & Ken Show. Listen to the audio here.

May 20th, 2010 Posted by freedomminute | Local Government | 9 comments