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By fear or favour once more let down

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

30 November 2012.  Yesterday Judge Leveson delivered his long awaited report into Media ethics.  

It was hardly the storming of the Bastille.

The Judge seemed to some to lean over backwards to shield the police, Ministers and the Prime Minister from criticism over their conduct.  

But Prime Minister David Cameron and the majority of his Conservative Party MP’s rejected even Judge Leveson’s muted and temperate central recommendation even despite the fact this was the 8th time in 70 years press behaviour had necessitated such an inquiry.   

Lord Justice Leveson recommended a statute which would 1) enshrine the principle of free speech, and 2) require the Press to establish an Independent Press Commission to watchdog Press behaviour. The Commission would be independent of government and politicians, and be composed of distinguished people drawn from outside the active Press.   

Both in the report's thrust and in his carefully chosen words at yesterday’s press conference, Judge Leveson focused on bad behaviour -- not the content of speech. He additionally stressed the point that no one -- no one -- spoke for him as to what he “really” meant, thereby underlining the care, temperance and caution he brought to the report.  He was, it seems to me, remarkably temperate, considered and narrowly focused on a narrow reform.  As Alastair Campbell remarked, one could characterize the Judge as pulling his punches. But one can not -- by the wildest stretches of imagination -- call his proposal partisan, personal, recriminatory, repressivly aimed at the content of speech or free speech in the public interest.  

But it was all too much for the Prime Minister.

Or was that the heat in the political kitchen? Was it principle or lost nerve?  Or maybe political advantage? Did the Prime Minister calculate his best hope to salvage a respectable (if losing) finish for his party at the next general election was for him to be the one who sucked up to the Press Barons?  Certainly, election strategy looms larger by the day.   

Whatever motivated the Prime Minister, his decision triggered a political firestorm. 

The faces of the firestorm are the unhappy ones of the Dowler family and celebrities Hugh Grant, Stephen Fry, and Charlotte Church. But the outraged and disappointed victims of press misconduct are not alone. This firestorm may yet escalate into the equally long awaited “last straw” between Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.   

Liberal Democratic Leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg took a step without precedent in response. Clegg spoke separately from the Prime Minister and against the Prime Minister’s position.

Conservatives met Clegg’s decision with outrage, some calling for his resignation. 

Maybe, as some perhaps jaded commentators opined, they will patch this up, too. After all, it is their sacred jobs and power at stake.  On the other hand, it just maybe this is the affair that breaks up the always bad marriage between the two parties. 

What are the relative prospects for the two parties?  

Three Parliamentary by-elections took place the same day as Judge Leveson announced his report.  They were utter disasters for both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. Both finished behind euro-skeptic rival UKIP, itself perhaps a significant change in political winds. But worse, Conservatives finished behind UKIP, the British National Party and the Respect Party in one district. The Liberal Democrats lost deposits in 2 districts so poor was their showing. In one Liberal Democrats finished 8th, behind the, ahem, erm, how shall I describe them (?) ... oh, the “other” parties.   

But these three by-elections cannot be considered bell weathers.  They were all Labour strong holds. It is interesting how badly the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats did. It is interesting how well UKIP did. But the results are probably not solid indicators of a blood bath to come, although some will dream. 

On the other hand, the Prime Minister’s response to the Leveson report came only in the late afternoon. One must wonder just how bad the results would have been had the Prime Minister’s reaction been known the day prior.  At least one poll conducted in the pre-release build up to the report suggested that as much as 80% of the country wanted some form of statutory regulation of the Press.

It ain't over yet.

In the weeks ahead the Coalition government will draw up a bill that allegedly does what Leveson recommends. But Ministers "are confident" it will illustrate why the idea won't work.  So, that would be a bill sabotaged in the writing by its opponents, then? A lot of credibility that will carry.  

I will not rehash here the arguments concerning whether or not these proposals would actually impinge on freedom of speech or the press in any way inconsistent with democratic tradition.  Whatever those arguments, whatever the future regulatory and political consequences of this moment, one thing appears crystal clear in this writer's honest opinion. When the chips are down, the Conservative Party stands for neither stabilizing conservative principle nor acceptance of the democratic will if principle or democratic will threaten the special privileges of the entrenched special interests. 

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Persuasion and Power: The Art of Strategic Communication Book Review Essay

By Patricia H. Kushlis

James Farwell’s soon to be published book Persuasion and Power:  The Art of Strategic Communication (Georgetown University Press) is a “how to” book for professionals and wannabe professionals as well as an interesting read for those who simply want to learn more about how governments and politicians (elected and non-elected) have informed and influenced publics about their policies and candidates. 

Farwell is a long-time political campaign and US military strategic communications consultant. He wrote this book as a way of explaining in lay terms the thinking behind campaigns of influence – or in less pejorative terms – ways of “winning hearts and minds.”  In essence, Farwell suggests that there are certain common elements between what the US military calls strategic communication, governments call public affairs and public diplomacy, businesses see as advertising and political advisors view as campaigning.  He eschews or questions incomprehensible jargon and quantitative studies and instead uses numerous real world examples told through narrative to illustrate his points.

Paramount importance of truth telling

Farwell’s basic argument is that the overriding goal of any information campaign is not only to inform but also to influence the people who matter.   He suggests that this is the case for authoritarian regimes and dictators seeking to keep their populations in line as well as for democracies, militaries, foreign offices and elected politicians.  And, he argues that whatever the message – the facts and the story need to be accurate.  They must be judged as credible by the intended recipients because the long term veracity of the messenger is crucial to his or her obtaining and maintaining popular support. 

I also think the medium is not the message; the message is the message; but the messenger must choose the most effective medium or media for its delivery whether for good or ill.  Witness - as Farwell tragically points out - the efficacy of hate radio campaigns in the 1996 Rwandan genocide and, I would add, also 1990s Former Yugoslavia.   

Truth be told, you will see my name in several different chapters of this book because I was involved in its initial editing.   I donated my time – and expertise on public diplomacy – because I thought the book had the potential to go beyond the tiny readership of communications specialists cloistered – for the most part – on military bases and in university communications departments.

And although I have been subjected to various social science quantitative theories over the years in graduate school and beyond and found some useful in practice, I also know that people remember concepts told through stories far better than when presented through hard, cold data or entangled in specialist jargon.  Farwell uses his gift for story telling – he after all, lives in Faulkner country – to excellent advantage in this readable and instructive volume.

Here comes the Judge

25 November 2012.  

Judge Leveson will soon release his long anticipated report on Press Practices. You would have thought the Luftwaffe had suddenly appeared over the English Channel. 

Observers widely and wildly anticipate some form of press regulation. For weeks now some politicos and media alike have fulminated against what is, in essence, their own speculation.   

They need to take a chill pill. It isn't the end of life as we know it. 

It isn’t about freedom of speech, is it  

Leveson has a context. It isn’t freedom of the press (at least as that concept is embodied in the United States Bill of Rights). It is alleged widespread illegal practices, especially illegal searches and seizures of confidential information. It is alleged hacking of private phones and computers. It is alleged bribery. It is the alleged use of the information -- and the proven capacity to gain it --  to unduly influence the policies and decisions of public officials.  It isn’t the vital Freedom of the Fourth Estate. It is the Corrupt Practices of a ruthless Big Press.  

Most of these charges have not yet been proven criminally in a court of law. I express no opinion as to the accuracy of those charges in any individual case, especially those still pending.   

But I will offer this opinion -- had the allegations been lain at the doorstop of MI5 or even MI6 they would have ignited furious righteous indignation among the very figures now protesting the regulations Leveson has not yet proposed.   

Why would the public accept the behaviour Leveson revealed? 

Why would the public accept behaviour from multi-national media giants it would not tolerate from big government? Why would the public accept extortionate practices it would not accept from the Mafia?   

Some argue public interest. But in many of the cases Leveson examined the alleged victims were ordinary, private citizens caught up in allegedly "press worthy" events.   

Would we accept a “public interest” defence where big government illegally spyed on ordinary, private citizens? Wouldn’t we demand at least a showing of probable cause before an independent magistrate? Wouldn't we insist the procedure be confined to allegations of truly terrible nature -- terrorism, organized crime?  

Leveson didn't explore the illegal search and seizure of information pertaining to "Johnny the Fish" or "Osam Bin N Gone."  Leveson explored the illegal search and seizure of information pertaining to Millie Dowler.   

Why would we put up with this? We wouldn’t. We didn’t. We won’t.  

It’s an opportunity

Leveson presents an opportunity if embraced.  The Press could negotiate seriously healthy changes to British law.    

For example, the Press could negotiate limiting Britain's strict liability Libel law. Liability could be limited to proven actual increments of actual damage proximately caused by any publication. They could negotiate adding a defence now accepted in the US -- absence of malice with respect to a public figure about whom inaccurate information was published mistakenly but honestly after reasonable diligence.   

The press could negotiate an overhaul of the Freedom of Information Act, including a Private Attorney General enforcement mechanism. The mechanism could award prevailing plaintiffs' costs and attorney fees.  Individual public officials could be made liable for civil penalties for bad faith refusals to comply.

For that matter, the press might negotiate a Private Attorney General mechanism in lieu of a regulator to enforce whatever regulations Leveson does propose.   

Seems to me a responsible Press would seize this moment, turn it into a triumph for responsible freedom. That certainly would be preferable-- and invoke considerably more public sympathy -- than some of the panicked and petulant rants I have read against regulations not yet recommended and a report not yet released. 

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Public Accountability and "Trial by Twitter"

Public Accountability and “Trial by Twitter”

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

19 Nov 2012. It must be a full moon. The wolves are running. They bay for a starless night.  

Buzzing up "Trial by Twitter"

The chorus reporting “Trial by Twitter” grows.  Sky News is the latest. Other major media outlets have also reported consternation and disapproval for the "raucous" Twitter environment.  One must wonder at such "stories" -- some thinly disguised editorials, IMHO -- questioning Twitter's expressive freedom.  The Press is entitled to its opinions, of course -- subject to the criticism they come from organizations whose owners and editors regularly demand unfettered and unregulated “freedom" for themselves.

Responsible freedom 

Channel 4 News, on the other hand, took a more de-escalating approach. It isn't about either unrestricted freedom or no freedom at all. It is about responsible freedom.

Freedom in a civilized society means responsible freedom, not anything goes. We are not free to yell “fire” in a packed theatre, invade ordinary citizens' privacy, defame even public figures (oh so tempting as it may be) even in the US unless an innocent error based in a reasonable belief as the truth of the underlying facts -- or sometimes ordinary negligence.  There are limits.  A civilized society must balance the just rights of the speaker with the just rights of the spoken against.  

I agree with thus tempering freedom. 

Tweeps may offend against that balance from time-to-time.  But the answer isn’t to shut Twitter down. Nor is it to intimidate Tweeps into silence -- any more than it is to shut down the Free Press or intimidate it into silence.   

An imbalance in access and power

There is a certain imbalance in access and power Twitter addresses. It gives voice to the voiceless, power to the powerless, hope to the hopeless.  Most personal Tweeps cannot afford to match attorneys, process, discovery and access with the powerful who Tweeps seek to hold to account, who sometimes seek to insulate themselves from being held accountable.   

Twitter serves a vital role as forum and petition for the governed. It provides direct lines of communication between the ordinary man in the street and the elite.  Kind of an extended BBC Questiontime with infinite panel, participants, and ongoing time slot. If you believe in democratic Western values, surely this is a good thing -- to be protected and encouraged within basic bounds of civilized society. 

The Big Chill

I am no expert on US defamation law much less UK. But if British law is as described by persons who claim to know, then it appears to strike a different balance than the US strikes. It appears there may not be a “malice” defence. 

The Road Not Taken: Is Another Path for Israel Still Possible?

A Review Essay by Patricia Lee Sharpe

 I had no idea that Israeli army reserves would shortly be called up or that Israeli tanks would soon be positioned on the border with Gaza when I bought The Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Yale historian Timothy Snyder a few weeks ago. I wasn’t even pursuing the matter of the Holocaust, as such. I was following up another long term interest: what happens in border areas where nations or cultures meet? More to the point, what happens when an ill-fated people is in the way of a more powerful people’s expansions plans?

Over the years I’d become sensitized to the marginalization of hill peoples around the world, including the folk of Appalachia. When I bought The Bloodlands, I was mainly thinking of the many tribal peoples who border the rice basket state of Assam in India, but also of the embattled hill tribes in Myanmar. Another very troubled mountainous borderland I’ve spent a long time thinking about is the violently contested stretch between Afghanistan and Pakistan. I wondered if I could learn something relevant from Snyder’s handling of borderland issues in Europe.

The bloodlands between Germany and the U.S.S.R. weren’t hilly, of course. They were vast fertile plains, a prize both countries wanted to control. Unfortunately, millions of people occupied that rich terrain, and there was no convenient marginal land to absorb the Poles, Ukrainians and Belorusians who would have to be shoved out of their homes. They had to die. As for the Jews, Hitler’s initial Final Solutions, bizarre plans to ship European Jews to almost-empty Madagascar or Siberia, fell through. Mass killing was the final Final Solution. But the Jews weren’t the only people to have been declared superfluous. It’s important to know and remember this, Snyder says, and I agree.

Snyder describes, in The Bloodlands, in hard-to-read detail, how, when, where and by whom fourteen million non-combatants were shot, starved or gassed to death, as a result of deliberate national policy by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.  We all know that National Socialist policy called for eliminating Jews from Europe.  No less horrible, Hitler and Stalin did their best to kill off as many Poles as they could to prevent the revival of anything like an inconvenient independent Poland. Here are the numbers of the murdered, for the most part actual numbers, not estimates, and conservative according to Snyder, since they were found in Nazi and Soviet records:

• 3.3 million Soviet Ukrainians starved in 1932-33 to provide food for the Russian heartland.

• 300,000 Soviet citizens (mostly Poles and Ukrainians) shot by the USSR in the Great Terror 1937-38

• 4.2 million Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians starved on purpose by German occupiers

• 5.4 million Jews (mostly Polish or Soviet citizens) gassed or shot by Germans 1941-44

• 700,000 Belarusian and Polish civilians shot in reprisals for partisan actions, etc.

As I plowed through Snyder’s hideous day by day, year by year, place by place detailing of slaughter, my vague interest in marginalized people was wholly diverted to the particular horrors of mass killing in Europe. This led to thoughts about Israel, which had been founded to give Jews a homeland where they might be safe from persecution.

Like Snyder I prefer not to use the term genocide. It is divisive and it leads to macabre inclusions and exclusions that take the form of value judgements—as in, we suffered more than you did, etc. Snyder observes that “what begins as competitive martyrology can end with martyrological imperialism.” Israel seems to have succumbed to this temptation. Israel, like Nazi Germany, developed a lust for lebensraum, land enough to settle Jews from the disapora and, of course, to provide for coming generations.

Unsurprisingly, the land that Western guilt managed to carve out of Palestine for a new country of Israel was tiny. Its shape wasn’t perfect from the point of view of easy defense either. But these refugees from Nazi persecution had been given an extraordinary, unprecedented opportunity: a chance to begin again on anciently lost land. They were also handed a problem: hostile neighbors. (I'd like to know more about whether and how Israel attempted to assuage their understable resentment of the new state thrust upon them.)

Re that land: Israel wanted more—and took it. Having occupied the West Bank of the Jordan after a failed invasion by ill-led Arab armies, Israel set about creating facts on the ground: Jewish settlers by the tens and hundreds of thousands. Whatever the high-minded blather about a two-state solution, Israeli leaders had no obvious interest in sharing the territory with a sovereign sister state called Palestine.

As I got further into Snyder's painstakingly even-toned book, I found myself surprised and disturbed by the extent to which I found myself thinking of how often the victim ultimately replicates the actions of the tormentor. The hazee becomes a hazer. The bullied becomes a bully. Jews dehumanized by the Nazis became Israelis who systematically dehumanize Palestinians so as to get them out of the way of a relentless process of land expropriation.  In short, Palestinians must die (the shocking slaughter in refugee camps, the wildly disproportionate retaliations for Hamas provocations, the fatal shootings of kids throwing stones, countless deaths from lack of access to hospitals or healthy living conditions) or be made so hopelessly miserable that they will self-deport, to use Mitt Romney’s euphemistic term for ousting undocumented Latinos.

The result: violence begets violence, death begets death. Bloodlands in the Middle East.

It didn’t have to be this way, I suspect. Instead of defining Jewish persecution as sui generis, unique, incomparable, never to be atoned for, Israel might have taken another path. That is why I quoted the ghastly figures from The Bloodlands. Why did it never occur to Israeli ideologues to make common cause with the surviving Poles (not all of them vicious anti-Semites) whose compatriots had also died in the millions at the hands of the Nazis and the Soviets?  Or to the Ukrainians? Or the Belorusians?   Why have Jews fought to hard to prevent the Turkish slaughter of Armenians from being called genocide? Why, for that matter, have they not reached out to native Americans whose total eradication was strenuously attempted by 19th century American settlers? Why have they not embraced the Tutsis in Rwanda who were murdered for the crime of being Tutsi? And so on.  Must a Chosen People build a wall around itself? 

The better decision? Well, here’s a hint. Israel’s one and only national capital would have been Tel Aviv. Palestine’s Ramallah, perhaps. Jerusalem would have become the shared Holy City of Jews, Christians and Muslims, all of whom have legitimate claims. This new Jerusalem would have been a true beacon to the world, a pilgrimage site bringing people together, not tearing them apart. Does anyone else remember that dream? Had it been realized, isn’t it possible that Iran’s or Hamas’s attitude toward Israel might be different today? And wouldn’t some of us in America feel better about the millions of dollars we lavish on Israel?

Why should it be a dream?

At the turning of the tide

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

16 Nov 2012.  The tide flowed back to the sea yesterday, leaving yet another Coalition initiative listing stranded on the shoals of public rejection.  

Election

15 Nov the British public went to the polls to vote in an election of the new post of Police and Crime Commissioner and 3 MP “by-elections.” These latter bear some resemblance to US mid terms in terms of political dynamics (although the scale and scope differ).  Typically, by-elections present problems of spin for the party in power, who regularly suffer from voter discontent.   

Repudiation

But these elections present more than the usual challenges to be spun for the UK’s ruling Coalition.    

A "flagship" Coalition “reform”-- an elected Police Commissioner to “McMillan and wife” UK policing -- suffered a severe public rebuke. In part because of activist and Union calls to boycott the election, turnout ran very low. As of the writing of this piece, turnout has been less than 20% in much of the UK and as low as below 10% in some jurisdictions.  In one location the turnout was zero. 

The first Commissioner elected -- Angus MacPherson in Wiltshire -- won a plurality of only a 15.8% turnout, and that only on the second count. The rules of the game gave voters 1st and 2d choices. A second reshuffle of the vote was possible in the event the first ballot proved not to be decisive.  Less than 7% of eligibile voters eventually supported the winner’s election, and that only on the second ballot.   

That’s some whopping big mandate, that. If such a result were the outcome of a “new democracy” election, the legitimacy of that election would be challenged across Western democracies. Leadership across Western democracies would call for new elections.   

Implications

Many raise such questions this morning. The UK Electoral Commission announced it will review the election because of the turnout, but this review will lead only to a report not a vacating of the elections.  

Coalition policing minister and spokesman Damien Green sought to put a brave face on it, saying the public would “warm up” to the idea.  Prime Minister David Cameron argued one could “always” have expected low turnout for a new post.  He predicted next time around the turnout will be higher. 

But no amount of “face” disguises the facts. Over and over again BBC on camera interviews with the “man on the street” demonstrated undisguised contempt for the initiative.  Moreover -- if pundits prove correct -- Labour, who opposed the concept of Police Commissioners, will field more winning candidates than the Conservative Party who proposed them.  In at least one jurisdiction the Liberal Democrat candidate received less votes than the number of ballots "spoiled" in protest of the election.

GAO TAKING A LOOK AT STATE DEPARTMENT HR BUREAU

 

By Patricia H. Kushlis

I understand that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is investigating allegations of irregularities in the State Department's Bureau of Human Resources.  For those of you not acquainted with the GAO please visit  http://www.gao.gov/about/index.html

 

Here is the GAO description and Mission Statement:

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress. Often called the "congressional watchdog," GAO investigates how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars. The head of GAO, the Comptroller General of the United States, is appointed to a 15-year term by the President from a slate of candidates Congress proposes. Gene L. Dodaro became the eighth Comptroller General of the United States and head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) on December 22, 2010, when he was confirmed by the United States Senate. He was nominated by President Obama in September of 2010 and had been serving as Acting Comptroller General since March of 2008.

Our Mission is to support the Congress in meeting its constitutional responsibilities and to help improve the performance and ensure the accountability of the federal government for the benefit of the American people. We provide Congress with timely information that is objective, fact-based, nonpartisan, nonideological, fair, and balanced.

Our Core Values of accountability, integrity, and reliability are reflected in all of the work we do. We operate under strict professional standards of review and referencing; all facts and analyses in our work are thoroughly checked for accuracy.

Our Work is done at the request of congressional committees or subcommittees or is mandated by public laws or committee reports. We also undertake research under the authority of the Comptroller General. We support congressional oversight by

•   auditing agency operations to determine whether federal funds are being spent efficiently and effectively;
  • investigating allegations of illegal and improper activities;
  • reporting on how well government programs and policies are meeting their objectives;
  • performing policy analyses and outlining options for congressional consideration; and
  • issuing legal decisions and opinions, such as bid protest rulings and reports on agency rules.

We advise Congress and the heads of executive agencies about ways to make government more efficient, effective, ethical, equitable and responsive.

Our work leads to laws and acts that improve government operations, saving the government and taxpayers billions of dollars.

After the Fat Lady Sang

By Patricia H Kushlis

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about elections it’s that the fat lady’s song sometimes resembles a five hour Wagnerian opera far more than a three minute hip-hop track for I-pod. 

Furthermore, such elections may also not follow the shortest distance, or even the most obvious route, between two points – as we saw with the recent 2012 US presidential race as the tipping point came when the media called the race in Obama’s favor not, as expected, because of the swing states of Virginia, Ohio or Florida (where the state finally went for Obama by some 74,000 votes) but with the unlikely combination of New Hampshire, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada.

Yes, this was a reasonably close election but no cliffhanger. In the end, Obama rode to a second term despite a still struggling economy and relatively weak jobs performance numbers caused primarily by a self-inflicted and inherited drawn-out financial sector crisis that threatened to destroy the US and global economies before this young president’s election in 2008.

There are many reasons for Obama’s second term victory – the pundits and the analysts will be pouring over massive amounts of data generated for months to come but, as John Nichols in The Nation points out this was nothing like George W Bush’s squeaker “victories” in 2000 or 2004 which the Republican Party – or at least the powers that existed then – delusionally termed mandates with “winners” that behaved delusionally accordingly.          

Even a week before the November 6, 2012 Elections I had sworn to friends that I intended to turn off the television, shut down the computer, go to bed early and pull the covers over my head for the duration of election night.  I didn’t do that – as the composite polls and analyses began predicting solid Obama and Democratic Senate victories almost immediately thereafter. I did watch the results at home on PBS - between trips to the refrigerator - in a far more serene atmosphere than when I had worked at Voter News Service elections headquarters in New York City for Elections 2000 reporting the then too close to call swing and bell weather New Mexico vote to the major US news outlets throughout the long night and into the early hours of the morning.  

A different electorate?

Certainly the American electorate has changed demographically over the past decade and these changes have implications for the elections. In a nutshell, there are simply fewer Evangelical, older white males - except in the Old Confederacy and several of the Plains States - than in the past.

This was the first time New Mexico was designated neither a swing nor a Bell Weather state.  In reality, New Mexico is still a Bell Weather state because, after all, the electorate went for Obama and, like the country as a whole, by smaller margins than in 2008.  The percentage of the vote in the president’s camp here was 52% - three percentage points below what, I’m told, is considered safely blue.

Yes, New Mexico has a majority Hispanic population but Hispanics in the state’s south tend to register as Democrats but vote Republican so it should come as no surprise that Republican Congressman Steve Pearce gained reelection in the geographically-large, mostly rural, population-small District 3 that borders Mexico.  New Mexican Hispanics also tend to be more integrated into the society as a whole than Hispanics elsewhere in the country:  some New Mexican Hispanics are very much part of the professional and leadership classes that run this state.  In fact, their ancestors came directly from Spain in the 16^th and 17^th centuries. In no way then are they part and parcel of an underprivileged, immigrant, Hispanic working class as is the case for some of this state’s neighbors.