The State of New York secretly settled a lawsuit for $300,000 where Governor David Paterson (D) was accused of firing a white photographer to hire a black photographer. Paterson was the minority leader in the State Senate in 2003 which is when the event took place.
Paterson has just increased taxes in New York by $8 billion and has now cost the state an additional $300,000 with his racism. The attorney generals office has made no comment on the embarassing lawsuit. The suit was scheduled to go to Federal Court in Syracuse with Paterson as the key witness.
You can find this in the New York Post. I'll provide the link at the end of this. There are a couple of things in this story that I find interesting.
Party Identification
The story never mentions that Paterson is a Democrat. It does mention the person that Paterson replaced as minority leader, Martin Connor, and shows the (D) after his name but not until the fifth paragraph. Later it identifies the Senate Majority leader, Malcolm Smith as (D). For those that are politically aware, they would know that Paterson is a Democrat. But, papers are delivered to a variety of people many of whom don't follow politics.
Racism by a Democrat
Isn't it interesting that on news programs when Democrats are asked about what's wrong with the Republican Party, they say that Republicans don't include minorities hinting racism is systemic within the Republican Party. Do we need reminding that Janeane Garafolo and others have called the tea party attendees in recent weeks as complaining about a black man being elected? Saying it's racist. Yet, the racism comes from Bill Clinton in the campaign, even from Obama in the campaign talking about how a face like his doesn't appear on money, and now the Governor of New York as minority leader putting a man out of work because he's white and hiring a black man because he's black.
Reverse Discrimination
A brief mention is made of reverse discrimination in the story. If you reverse racism, isn't it not racism? If a white man discriminates against a black man, it's discrimination. If a black man discriminates against a white man, wouldn't that also be discrimination? This is just one of my little pet peeves about language, so I won't go further with this part of the topic.
Where's the outrage?
So why isn't this act of racism leading the news? Ok, we have the swine flu and the media wants to hype that as much as possible, and Justice Souter is retiring and the media will want to talk about what a great opportunity this will be for Obama, but isn't a major political figure, a leader of a state, a man that has raised taxes by $8 billion and causing the state to spend $300,000 additionally, isn't that a huge story? In addition, if Republicans are the racists in our society, wouldn't a Democrat being caught committing discrimination and having the people pay for his racism be a huge story? After all, the way racism in this country is portrayed, a Democrat displaying racism should be very rare and therefore a huge story.
Some Quotes:
The suit was brought by Joseph Maioriello. The new hire is El-Wise Noisette.
Maioriello claimed he was told by John McPadden, then Paterson's chief of staff, that he was being fired because a number of minority senators wanted to replace him with "a minority photographer, a black photographer." He said he was also told, "You got to remember who Sen. Paterson is. Sen. Paterson is black."
Paterson, who is legally blind, claimed in a sworn deposition that he didn't see well enough to have fired Maioriello because of his race. A spokesman for Paterson later said the comment was "a quip, a joke."
I have given depositions in the past. I can't remember anytime that I would take a deposition so cavalierly that I'd joke in my answers and quite often, I make quips or jokes, in odd situations. But not in a deposition.
You're welcome to comment.
Brett
http://www.nypost.com/seven/05012009/news/regionalnews/paterson_burned_by_a_racial_fire_167078.htm
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