Politics /Color TV
Norquist, Grover G.
Color TV by Grover G. Norquist S ince 1978, selling radio and broadcast licenses to preferred racial groups has meant a generous tax break for the seller. The tax preferences can reach astonishing...
...Their initiative, the California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), would prohibit the state of California from using "race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin as a criterion for either discriminating against, or granting preferential treatment to any individual or group in the operation of the state's system of public employment, public education or public contracting...
...Jim McDermott (D-Wash...
...Affirmative action is particularly offensive to Jews and Asian-Americans...
...Most contract set-asides already claim to be for the benefit of the "disadvantaged...
...California has a history of using initiatives to thrust into the national debate issues that politicians would love to sweep under the rug...
...After his election, Reagan guided it into law...
...The Democratic Party's death grip on the quota issue will continue to drive Asian Americans to the Republican Party...
...Finally, voters oppose government discrimination, period, no ands, ifs, or buts...
...Yet a Gallup Poll showed only 11 percent of men and 14 percent of women approve of affirmative action programs for minorities that use quotas...
...The tax preferences can reach astonishing proportions: the $2.3 billion sale of broadcast giant Viacom to a purportedly black-owned consortium would have saved the sellers $400 million...
...Asked if government should "take race and gender into account in addition to economic circumstances," only 7 percent agreed...
...They must support quotas, racial set-asides, and deliberate preferences to keep their party from breaking in two—and to avoid a Jesse Jackson primary or a third-party challenge...
...East Germany was not an improvement over South Africa...
...Trying to avert a Republican drive to eliminate all racial preferences from the Internal Revenue Service code concerning the sale of radio and TV stations, Rep...
...And affirmative action with quotas to "help" women is supported by only 7 percent of men and only 12 percent of women...
...Bob Dole has been equally vague, saying, "If affirmative action means quotas, set-asides, and other preferences that favor individuals simply because they happen to belong to certain groups, then that's where I draw the line...
...A serious reappraisal of affirma- tive action threatens to tear the Democrats' coalition apart...
...He need not wait for Congress or the courts...
...A prolonged discussion of affirmative action will also highlight the longstanding gap between black Americans and those who claim to speak for them...
...This political paradox has existed for thirty years, but it is now under severe challenge thanks to the intervention of two conservative California professors, Thomas Grover G. Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform...
...Fully 61 percent of men and 52 percent of women disapprove of affirmative action with or without quotas...
...Twenty-three percent of black leaders believed that "ability should be the main consideration...
...A 4 percent drop in GNP cost the economy $236 billion in 1991, and the cost has grown in subsequent years...
...authored a bill that would have quashed the Viacom deal's tax break but allowed racial discrimination to continue in broadcast sales under $50 million—with the added requirement that the racially preferred buyer agree to hold the property for three years before resale...
...This tax revolt won Ronald Reagan's support for the Kemp-Roth income tax cut, and helped make it a part of the Republican platform in 1980...
...First, discrimination by class is no prettier than discrimination by race...
...The California initiative has brought affirmative action to the nation's attention with a vengeance...
...Clinton is presently insisting, "Our administration is against quotas and guaranteed results...
...Second, the present affirmative action establishment is well-entrenched and would accept any language change that did no more than change the basis for discrimination from "race" to "class," and would continue all present policies...
...Jewish voters see their children's future damaged by affirma58 The American Spectator May 1995 tive action in education and hiring...
...The same question, asked of all blacks, found the exact reverse: 77 percent of black Americans wanted people to be judged on the basis of ability, and only 23 percent supported racial preference...
...The two proposals demonstrated the political challenge facing Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party...
...The CCRI issue will force both of them as well as all other candidates—to answer "Yes" or "No" to racial preferences under any name...
...For just as Presidents Johnson and Nixon used executive orders to establish affirmative action, so can any president use executive orders to abolish the present system of race preferences...
...A recent Frank Luntz poll gave respondentsthree options: Asked if "the government should help people based on economic circumstances but without regard to race or gender," 19 percent agreed...
...Affirmative action is also very costly to taxpayers and the economy, and defending it forces Democrats to stand once again as the party of tax-and-spend...
...The other two groups were evangelical Christians and those earning more than $200,000 a year...
...Wood and Glynn Custred...
...Since 1970, affirmative action's drag on the economy has kept GNP 4 percent lower than it would have been under color-blind conditions...
...Twenty-six percent of men and 29 percent of women support affirmative action for minorities if there are no quotas...
...Wood and Custred have announced plans to begin gathering signatures to place a ballot question before the voters of California on the March or November 1996 ballot...
...In 1978, after the state legislature refused to do anything about exploding property taxes, Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann put Proposition 13 on the ballot...
...Republicans for three reasons...
...This deal is being proffered by Democrats and should be rejected by The American Spectator May 1995 59...
...With this initiative on the ballot in our largest state during a presidential election year, all the candidates will have to take a stand on an issue that begs for presidential leadership...
...And Proposition 187, the California legislation restricting welfare spending on illegal immigrants, passed so strongly in November 1994 that a welfare cut-off to illegal aliens is in the House Republican welfare reform package...
...The quota issue once again reminds Asians and Jews where they stand in the pecking order of Democratic interest groups...
...A 1985 study by Linda Lichter, co-director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, found that 77 percent of black leaders felt that, to make up for past discrimination in hiring, "minorities should be given preference...
...To keep the Congressional Black Caucus happy, Clinton must support affirmative action in all its forms...
...Peter Brimelow and Leslie Spencer, in a 1993 study for Forbes magazine, calculated that racial quotas cost the American economy an astonishing $113 billion in 1991 alone...
...Having lost their bid to keep racialism alive, all but forty-four Democrats joined Republicans in passing the measure by a 381-44 vote...
...C3 While the affirmative action debate divides the Democratic Party, Republicans must avoid taking the bait being offered by some "moderates," who suggest that America replace government discrimination based on gender and race with a system that discriminates in hiring and education based on an applicant's income, economic class, history, or claim to being "disadvantaged...
...That's what most Americans want—and Republicans should fight for it without compromise...
...Yet they know perfectly well that the majority of Americans oppose such racial discrimination...
...the voters cut their owntaxes by more than half, and the victory spawned similar initiatives in a dozen other states...
...Polling data indicate that CCRI will pass with strong support in California...
...Asian-Americans were one of three groups that gave George Bush a majority of their vote in 1992...
...All but ten Democrats in the House supported the McDermott bill, but Republicans defeated it, introducing instead an amendment that not only stripped out the Viacom deal but also outlawed the current practice of taxing Americans different amounts based on the color of the people they sell to...
...Democrats will have a hard time explaining away this essential fact: government racism is expensive...
...It was California's 1992 term-limits initiative that guaranteed the issue, repugnant to most politicians, was front and center in the House Republicans' Contract With America...
...The good news for those political leaders now willing to move away from affirmative action is that fully 74 percent of Americans told the Luntz pollsters that "government should treat everyone equally...
...This included direct costs—$202 million for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, $53 million for the Office of Federal Contract Compliance, $48 million for the Department of Education, $112 million for other federal agencies, and $120 million for state and local agencies—as well as indirect costs such as the compliance costs borne by schools and colleges, which came to a whopping $11 billion...
Vol. 28 • May 1995 • No. 5
