It’s funny how the rumor mills work around the VI. Earlier this week I posted a blog entry entitled Blog Wars. Well apparently some people have got in their head that I’m the guy who created the new site WhatDemManDontSay.com. So, I just wanted to set the record straight on this posting.
In short, I’m not the guy. I have no idea who started the site. But I think I have a pretty good idea of where the rumor started, seeing as they’re no stranger to rumors.
I don’t support sites of this format that deal in character assassination (however, judging from the source material I can see why they went in that direction). In fact, it would be pretty hypocritical of me to set up such a site after posting so much on blogging and ethics.
Nobody pays me to do this. No one directs me to do this. I blog because I genuinely love politics and I like talking about the issues. And when I post some thing here, I have no problem standing behind it and putting my name on it. This is how I exercise my freedom of speech guaranteed to me as a citizen of the United States of America. At the same time I respect everyone else’s right to their opinions. I don’t call people stupid or idiots because they support something I don’t (at least not in print anyway). And yes, I am slanted towards Democrats. It’s in the title of the blog! That doesn’t mean every Democrat gets a free pass though. Again, my concern is the issue not the person.
In an Internets not too far away, two blogs waged a war against the current administration. For those who kept track, they’ve been quite active since before the current governor was even elected. I don’t think I need to call them by name but if you didn’t know those sites are DemManSay.com (still waiting for that Jackass of the Week trophy guys) and Crucians In Focus. The former takes the exposé route; posting documents and offering commentary…usually with a heavy dose of name calling. The latter is a more traditional blog where anonymous posters can leave comments. The majority of commentators disapprove of the current administration. Now we have a new entry in the blog wars, but it’s not what you think. This new site targets DemManSay.com and purports to “call out” the people behind the site; the so-called “Board”. The catchy name: WhatDemManDontSay.com. I can see the days leading up to this year’s election are going to be rather interesting.
Now if you expected me to praise the site because it goes after DemManSay.com, then you’re mistaken. I’m not saying the site didn’t need to be called out, I just disapprove of the method. In my eyes, two wrongs don’t make a right. While I’m sure it’s quite poetic that DemManSay had their own methods used against them, it’s STILL hearsay. My stance on blogging, journalism and ethics remain the same.
I did not hear the sad news until well into the late evening last night. My heart goes out to the families of the victims. Nobody goes on vacation expecting to not bring everyone home safe and sound.
Naturally, the community is angry. VERY angry. What do people do when they’re angry? You got it. They find someone to blame. Top blames are going out to Governor John de Jongh and the VIPD. You can read the governor’s statement here. There’s a paragraph that stands out though:
This trend of senseless killings by some of our young people will not end until parents and guardians stop being enablers. Stop ignoring the fact they are bringing illegal guns into their homes or accepting the angry behavior they exhibit and so easily act upon. The police continue to do their jobs as we see increases in the number of guns taken off the streets and as was witnessed by the quick action in taking into custody potential suspects.
This community is way too small for someone not to have known about this. This is our problem in a nutshell. The fact that everybody knows everybody and people are willing to turn a blind eye to crime because it involves people they’re in direct contact with, related to, or know who they’re related to. I have no problem with people blaming the governor, this administration or the VIPD. They knew they were going to be the whipping boys when they took the job. What I want to know though is when we as a community are going to stop laying blame, take some responsibility and look at real solutions to our problems? When are we going to put aside our personal feelings and actually help the police put these criminals behind bars? Don’t want to talk to the police? Then fine, we have Crime Stoppers now. The number’s 1-800-222-TIPS.
People, we have the tools, we can get the technology, WE CAN PROTECT THIS COMMUNITY. But that won’t happen unless we take action. We have leaders in the community. Talk to them. Tell them your ideas. ORGANIZE. I know it sounds like I’m scolding, but I’m scolding myself just as much because I’m a part of this community too. START SNITCHING!
Congress has agreed to send the draft constitution submitted by the 5th Constitutional Convention back to the territory for amendment. Additionally, funding to reconvene the convention to address the areas of concern outline by the Department of Justice. However, this is it. Once the 5th Constitutional Convention reconvenes, whatever document to come up with will be put directly to a vote by the people of the US Virgin Islands pending a 60 day review and comment period from the President of the United States.
I find the comments of the convention president rather disheartening though. Either he doesn’t understand what the issue is or he’s simply not going to address it in this medium:
James said Tuesday the question of defining ancestral Virgin Islanders should not be controversial because the definitions were derived from the wording used in U.S. treaties and acts concerning the territory.
“We did not make that up,” he said. “The language … came from the treaty in 1917 when Denmark sold the islands to the United States,” he said. “
This isn’t the issue at hand though. There was never anything wrong with defining “Virgin Islander”. The problem was trying to carve out special privileges for them.
I did write a review of the points of concern I found in the draft here if you want to review. Let’s hope that the reconvened convention will at least address the major ones.
***UPDATE: July 1, 2010***
As I stated in the comments, the Virgin Islands Daily News article has some conflicting information in it in relation to the who gets to review the document after re-convention and for how long. The Daily News article though is more telling of 5th Constitutional Convention President Gerard Luz James III. These aren’t all direct quotes so I can only hope they were taken out of context:
Gerard Luz James III, president of the Fifth Constitutional Convention, said he was optimistic about the House vote. He said he does not believe the document should be changed, but he has only one vote.
“The constitution may not be the best loved draft for everyone, but it gives us a start. It gives us something that we’ve never had before,” James said.
He said as soon as funding is available, he will reconvene the convention.
“This is of great importance to us, to complete the constitution,” he said.
He argued that the allegations about the document being unconstitutional are irrelevant, because only the U.S. Supreme Court can decide what is constitutional or not.
If these are the feeling of the 20 who voted in favor of the constitution and sent it to Washington, then unfortunately we may see very little to no change during the re-convention.
While Adlah “Foncie” Donastorg has been tight-lipped about a gubernatorial run, this showed up in the ads section of Facebook today:
I don’t know if this counts but if it’s accurate, then not only is he running for Governor he’s going to directly challenge the incumbent Democratic Governor John P. de Jongh for the party’s nomination. Although the ad links directly to his official site there’s no mention there of a gubernatorial run. So is this official and someone jumped the gun, or is this just the hopes of someone who knows how to use Photoshop? Only time will tell.
I don’t really have a whole lot to say at the moment. Here’s the link for more info. What I’m wondering is if given this opportunity will the 5th Constitutional Convention really consider the input from the White House and the Justice Department or just put forth the document for a vote this November unedited. Personally I think this is the best shot we’ve ever had at this and it would be insanity to push a document with so many strikes against it. I implore the convention, if given the opportunity, to put country before self and give the people a basic constitution worth voting for.
In December 2008, the U.S. Justice Department said that Mexican gangs are the “biggest organized crime threat to the United States.”
This statement is true. But how is this connected with the enactment of Arizona’s Immigration bill? Let’s continue to panel 2:
In 2009, Phoenix had 316 kidnapping cases, turning the city into our nation’s kidnapping capital.
Almost all of the persons kidnapped were illegal immigrants or linked to the drug trade.
The first statement is also true. Things get kinda fuzzy in the second statement. It uses qualifiers like “almost” and “or” and doesn’t offer any hard statistics. So I went looking for them…and was unsuccessful. I’m not saying the data doesn’t exist. I just had no luck finding it. I did read this article though that suggests the statement is true. Let’s move on:
Until January of 2009, any smugglers carrying under the threshold of 500 pounds of narcotics were often not prosecuted.
Also true. More specifically, the narcotics in question is marijuana. The next panel is a bit confusing:
Narcotics prosecutions in Arizona have risen 202% in 16 months.
Refer to the article I just linked. The reason prosecutions have risen is because the 500 pound threshold was done away with. This was thanks to funds received from the Justice Department to hire more prosecutors. Apparently it worked since the prosecutions went up. Not really seeing how this is a bad thing though. Keep that article open though, the next panel is also related:
1080 prosecutions will STILL be refused this year in the Tucson Sector alone.
True. Even with the influx of new prosecutors they can only accomplish so much.
I’ll skip over the rest. It’s criticism of Obama for making a joke about Arizona. The clip comes from the White House Correspondents Dinner…where the President is SUPPOSED to be funny. However, if you want to see how President Obama really feels about SB 1070 then here you go:
Jan Brewer’s ad was released no doubt as PR in support of SB 1070. It does something else though. While the information presented is factual, it doesn’t always present the entire story and it presents it in a way that makes it look like illegal immigrants are responsible for the state’s drug trafficking problem. The ad also criticizes the Obama administration, saying “Do Your Job. Secure The Border”. Fair enough. Obama’s on it.
Proponents of SB 1070 say all the bill does is mirror the federal statute, a claim that Politifact rates as mostly true. The problem is that when applied at the state level it becomes how to enforce it. Here’s part of the bill:
For any lawful contact made by a law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person. Any person who is arrested shall have the person’s immigration status determined before the person is released. The person’s immigration status shall be verified with the federal government pursuant to 8 united states code section 1373(c). A law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state may not solely consider race, color or national origin in implementing the requirements of this subsection except to the extent permitted by the United States or Arizona constitution. A person is presumed to not be an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States if the person provides to the law enforcement officer or agency any of the following:
1. A valid Arizona driver license.
2. A valid Arizona nonoperating identification license.
3. A tribal enrollment card or other form of tribal identification.
4. A valid United States federal, state or local government issued identification.
I hope Arizona has a lot of legal money in their coffers because they’re going to find themselves in multiple lawsuits over this. The bill states that “reasonable suspicion” must exist and that law enforcement cannot “solely consider race, color or national origin”. That said that I’m curious to see what kinds of “reasonable suspicion” they’re going to conjure up.
Here’s the facts that applies to everyone in the US whether you’re here illegally or not. You must be informed about what offense you are committing, or about what offense the officer believes you are about to commit or what offense the officer believes you have committed. If the officer doesn’t give you any information concerning an offense you might have committed or be about to commit, or if the officer doesn’t charge you with anything, you may refuse to identify yourself (unless you are driving a vehicle, are in a bar or a movie theater, in which cases you must always identify yourself). If you have not been charged with anything, police officers must let you leave, without asking for your ID, without asking any questions, without frisking you.
We’re far from the end of the immigration reform issue. Expect this to me a major subject in November.
Whenever I visit someone’s blog, I expect certain things. If you visit a liberal blog expect there to be a lot of good things written about liberals and, in some cases, bad things to be written about conservatives. Same goes for visiting a conservative blog. If you visit a blog for a product, expect there to be information about the product and the company that hawks it.
But even with this virtual soapbox, there are some things I expect to see that floor when I don’t. Here’s sort of my mini-code of ethics that I expect even the most amateur blogger to follow and I expect this because I expect if from live actual people I meet:
Don’t lie - I understand that blogs tend to be drenched in opinion, but if you have an opinion I expect you to be able to defend it with facts. If you make a statement you can’t back up you’ve just told a lie (i.e. Cheese comes from the moon). If you present a fact and then create an event around it then you’ve just told a lie (i.e. This is a hunk of cheese. Cheese was given to humans by space aliens as a symbol of peace). There’s a huge difference between believing your own opinion and outright not telling the truth.
Link/show your sources - I saw this just today. Someone posted a long diatribe from someone’s op-ed column. They picked and chose certain words and even put them in quotes. However they didn’t link to the article. They didn’t even mention the name of the publication where the article appeared. To me that screams of dishonesty. That just tells me you want carte blanche to say whatever you want and not be questioned on it.
Treat others how you would like to be treated - Just because you don’t agree with someone’s opinions or policies doesn’t mean you should vilify them. We should be able to disagree without being disagreeable. As a blogger that holds you to a higher standard especially when comments come into play.
That’s really all I have personally, but I would like to share A Blogger’s Code of Ethics I borrowed from this site:
A BLOGGERS’ CODE OF ETHICS
Be Honest and Fair
Bloggers should be honest and fair in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.
Bloggers should:
• Never plagiarize.
• Identify and link to sources whenever feasible. The public is entitled to as much information as possible on sources’ reliability.
• Make certain that Weblog entries, quotations, headlines, photos and all other content do not misrepresent. They should not oversimplify or highlight incidents out of context.
• Never distort the content of photos without disclosing what has been changed. Image enhancement is only acceptable for for technical clarity. Label montages and photo illustrations.
• Never publish information they know is inaccurate — and if publishing questionable information, make it clear it’s in doubt.
• Distinguish between advocacy, commentary and factual information. Even advocacy writing and commentary should not misrepresent fact or context.
• Distinguish factual information and commentary from advertising and shun hybrids that blur the lines between the two.
Minimize Harm
Ethical bloggers treat sources and subjects as human beings deserving of respect.
Bloggers should:
• Show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by Weblog content. Use special sensitivity when dealing with children and inexperienced sources or subjects.
• Be sensitive when seeking or using interviews or photographs of those affected by tragedy or grief.
• Recognize that gathering and reporting information may cause harm or discomfort. Pursuit of information is not a license for arrogance.
• Recognize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention. Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone’s privacy.
• Show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.
Be cautious about identifying juvenile suspects, victims of sex crimes and criminal suspects before the formal filing of charges.
Be Accountable
Bloggers should:
• Admit mistakes and correct them promptly.
• Explain each Weblog’s mission and invite dialogue with the public over its content and the bloggers’ conduct.
• Disclose conflicts of interest, affiliations, activities and personal agendas.
• Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence content. When exceptions are made, disclose them fully to readers.
• Be wary of sources offering information for favors. When accepting such information, disclose the favors.
• Expose unethical practices of other bloggers.
• Abide by the same high standards to which they hold others.
