DNA & Ancestry Are Not The Same Thing

[toucana]

In one of his recent populist rallies, in Montana last Thursday, Donald Trump bragged “I’m going to get one of those little [DNA] kits, and in the middle of the debate, when [Elizabeth Warren] proclaims that she’s of Indian heritage … we will slowly toss it to her…”

In what might be termed “Birtherism II,” Trump intends “disproving” Senator Elizabeth Warren’s self-proclaimed Native American heritage with a DNA test kit — should the opportunity arise.

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/07/07/politics/2020-insight-trump-warren-pocahontas-dna-test/index.html

The interesting point here is that Donald Trump clearly did not run this idea past anyone with a modicum of scientific knowledge.

Robert Harrington writing for the Palmer Report reached out to former Administrative Judge from the US Department of the Interior Cynthia Métivier. Here’s what she had to say about the matter.

DNA proves genetics, not ancestry,” Métivier said. “Yes, they are different. Two full-blooded siblings can have different DNA results. For example, one can show 1/8th Cherokee while the other shows zero. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Two siblings from the same parents will not have the exact same DNA—DNA is unique to the person— however, they will have the exact same ancestors.” 
In other words, “Senator Warren’s DNA results would not be dispositive.”

And how does Métivier know all of this? “I studied and made judicial rulings based on the tribe’s determination of its members for years while serving as a[n] Indian Probate Judge. It is based on tribal rolls and their blood quantum membership requirements at the time.” So a DNA test from one of those “little kits” will not necessarily establish one way or another if Elizabeth Warren has any Cherokee ancestry after all.

http://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/dna-donald-trump-test-real/11265/

[wolfhnd]

Genetic anthropology is a new science and the old school people are are going to be unhappy with it because they are largely social constructionist. Add to that how much of the social sciences have been taken in by post modernists and wild assertions are going to be common place. I saw a social scientist from a respected university say on a national TV program that there is no such thing as biological sex so I'm not sure you can really trust a profession so overrun by misguided social justice.

https://isogg.org/wiki/Genetic_anthropology

These kind of studies are heavily dependent on statistics and do not translate well to individual cases but someone without certain genetic markers is unlikely to have a significant cultural heritage associated with the group those markers are associated with. That is unless their ancestors were adopted into a tribal situation. The burden of proof falls on the person claiming the cultural heritage.

Trump is particularly poor at details but in both cases, Obama and Warren the birth issue is not as important as the culture under which they were raised. If someone is born in the US but is taken to another country immediately after birth to be raised as a member of that culture then at least the spirit of the requirement that presidents be native born is violated. In Warren's case their is no evidence that having native American ancestry effected the way she was exposed to that culture during childhood development. It is pretty racist to claim that genetics trump culture. It also ridiculous to claim that being born somewhere but never spending any time there during early childhood development meets the requirement to be native born. In the later case the requirement itself could be debated but it doesn't remove the element of disingenuousness.

[TheVat]

. It also ridiculous to claim that being born somewhere but never spending any time there during early childhood development meets the requirement to be native born....

If you study Article II, and how it has been interpreted for many years, you will know that the requirement is to be "natural born," meaning born to a US citizen, not native born. If Obama had been born in Kenya, it would have posed no legal problems since his mother Anne was an American. Nor would it have been a problem for John McCain who was born in Panama, or George Romney who was born in Mexico or Ted Cruz who was born in Canada. All were qualified for office, and their early exposure to other cultures would seem to be a positive thing. Don't know many people who would suggest that Senator McCain was somehow deficient in his grasp of American culture or lacking in the right stuff, even those who might have ideological differences with him. (well, there's that one fellah, but his knowledge of heroism only extends to bone spurs...) Also it is worth noting that the first nine presidents were not born in the US, and were not born as US citizens, for obvious reasons.

Was there any purpose in your snipe at Obama, that relates to the thread topic BTW? If not, let's keep the focus on DNA and how it relates to ancestry. Please.

[wolfhnd]

. It also ridiculous to claim that being born somewhere but never spending any time there during early childhood development meets the requirement to be native born....

If you study Article II, and how it has been interpreted for many years, you will know that the requirement is to be "natural born," meaning born to a US citizen, not native born. If Obama had been born in Kenya, it would have posed no legal problems since his mother Anne was an American. Nor would it have been a problem for John McCain who was born in Panama, or George Romney who was born in Mexico or Ted Cruz who was born in Canada. All were qualified for office, and their early exposure to other cultures would seem to be a positive thing. Don't know many people who would suggest that Senator McCain was somehow deficient in his grasp of American culture or lacking in the right stuff, even those who might have ideological differences with him. (well, there's that one fellah, but his knowledge of heroism only extends to bone spurs...) Also it is worth noting that the first nine presidents were not born in the US, and were not born as US citizens, for obvious reasons.

Was there any purpose in your snipe at Obama, that relates to the thread topic BTW? If not, let's keep the focus on DNA and how it relates to ancestry. Please.

“Birtherism II,” was not something I would have introduced.

The point I was trying to make is that there is a difference between being exposed to a culture and adopting it during early childhood. While you can make a good argument that DNA is largely irrelevant to your ethnicity you can't then also argue that adopting a culture is irrelevant to the clear intention of Article II. It would be less disingenuous to simply start by arguing that Article II is irrationally prejudicial to people not born US citizens.

More importantly it is clear that those that have adopted multiculturalism cannot be good stewards of Western Civilization or respect the office they hold from any perspective other than the post modernist/neo Marxist view of power struggles between groups. If you believe that other cultures are as desirable then you would necessarily fail to see how the constitution is a direct result of enlightenment ideas or hold them to be exceptional. The lie is betrayed by the direction of migration away from those cultures who have not adopted Western Liberal Democracy. This is where the negative influence of neo Marxism comes in because Marx was an opponent of liberal democracy and it's existence outside the West is unremarkable. Which leads to an acknowledgably weak argument for article II because clearly where you are raised can matter in how you view the world.

While the birthier movement may be technically wrong there is justification for examining how cultural and ideology has influenced a candidate during their formative years. It is not racist as the "dog whistling" suggests to question ethnic influences. The fact that a more nuanced examination of the issue is not presented is due to the nature of politics, the fear of being labeled a racist, the hegemony of the left at present in media and entertainment, the educational systems love affair with Marx and post modernism, and quilt over past events that is frankly irrational.

[toucana]

wolfhnd wrote:

More importantly it is clear that those that have adopted multiculturalism cannot be good stewards of Western Civilization or respect the office they hold from any perspective other than the post modernist/neo Marxist view of power struggles between groups. If you believe that other cultures are as desirable then you would necessarily fail to see how the constitution is a direct result of enlightenment ideas or hold them to be exceptional.

The ‘Enlightenment’ in question presumably being the 18th century European one which derived from the values and writings of classical Greek and Latin speaking cultures of antiquity which was further developed and prosleytised by thinkers such as Descartes, Voltaire, and Rousseau (who spoke French), Immanuel Kant (who spoke German) or the jurist Cesare Beccaria (who spoke Italian) ?

Or did you perhaps mean the Buddhist concept of Enlightenment as exemplified in the Sanskrit/Pali terms of Bodhi and Prajna and the related terms Kensho and Satori used in Japanese Zen Buddhism? - No, of course not. You clearly meant western Christian values, which probably then excludes Baruch Spinoza (1632-77) another great founder of the Age of Reason who happened to be a Sephardic Dutch Jew of Portugese origins, and one who wound up being excommunicated from both Judaism and the Christian church after conversion, on account of his philosophical writings.

So to be clear, we are talking about the civilizing influence of the European Enlightenment, a philosophical, social and political movement which lead among other things to the French Revolution which was responsible for the summary execution of around 40,000 people during the ‘Reign of Terror’ and the detention and mistreatment of another 300,000 between the years of 1793-4 alone.

http://ultimatehistoryproject.com/executions-the-guillotine-and-the-french-revolution.html

One would have to note in passing that the European Enlightenment did not conveniently end with the passing of the 18th century. The work of German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) in particular was continued by Georg Hegel (1770-1831), whose thinking led directly into that of Karl Marx (1818-83) - you do know that Karl Marx wrote his doctoral dissertation about Hegel’s philosophical system ?

As well as the French and American Revolutions, the European Enlightenment also led quite directly to the Revolutions of 1848 (aka -‘The Spring of Nations’) which caused tens of thousands of more deaths across Europe from Sicliy, throughout France, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Denmark, Netherlands and the German Confederation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848

At this point I’m beginning to get a little confused by claims about American ‘Exceptionalism’. Precisely which aspects of the European Enlightenment do you wish to lay claim to ? More to the point, which aspects of the USA’s current political climate would you say most perfectly represent and embody the superior intellectual and moral qualities of American 'Exceptionalism' ?

[BadgerJelly]

Just got my genetic results in. Turns out I’m not a badger :(

I guess if genetics has nothing to do with ancestory though I’ll just go back into my set if it’s okay by everyone.

Wolf, was there a “snipe” at Obama? Did I misread something?

[TheVat]

More importantly it is clear that those that have adopted multiculturalism cannot be good stewards of Western Civilization or respect the office they hold from any perspective other than the post modernist/neo Marxist view of power struggles between groups.....

None of this was at all clear to me. But more importantly, this is off topic. We would need a separate thread, and a fairly longish one, to define multiculturalism and then do some fair analysis of its core concepts and ideological genesis.

Similarly, the earlier suggestion that Obama was unqualified for office due to spending part of his childhood overseas, seems like it needs its own thread and the laying down of some more robust foundation in terms of political theory and child development. I respectfully request that you either do that or leave that aside for now.

[wolfhnd]

Just got my genetic results in. Turns out I’m not a badger :(

I guess if genetics has nothing to do with ancestory though I’ll just go back into my set if it’s okay by everyone.

Wolf, was there a “snipe” at Obama? Did I misread something?

No it was a snipe at diversity and equality measured by genetic heritage and identified by such superficial markers as sex and skin color, especially in terms of identity politics. Voting for someone because of their gender is sexist or their race is racist. Ethnic heritage may be relevant but it is sleazy to even use it to get votes especially if that heritage isn't clear.

[toucana]

No it was a snipe at diversity and equality measured by genetic heritage and identified by such superficial markers as sex and skin color, especially in terms of identity politics.

None of which has anything to do with the original topic posted.

But no matter. I'm quite used to having my threads hijacked by axe-grinders from the boondocks of Trumpistan.

[TheVat]

Well, as a matter of forum rules laid down by Bio Wizard, we don't allow hijacking. And he had specifically instructed mods in 2016 to disallow partisan soapboxes anywhere at SPCF. I still think that's what works best when having a conversation about science. If I may offer an example that would illustrate....

You could post a news story that reports a federal policy decision on funding research into cat naps. You could offer an informed opinion on the merits of cat nap research. You could even go to Political Theory and start a topic on The Dangers of Government Spending for Soporific Research. What you can't do is engage in a partisan digression on the perfidy of [insert party or coalition here] and their conspiracy to suppress cat naps or their regressive obsession with siesta identity politics. When you want to do THAT, you go here:

www.debatepolitics.com

An amazing and well moderated website, perfectly structured for that. So maybe I'll see you over there someday, across a crowded room.

[wolfhnd]

These topics are complicated by the many factors not the least of which is the depth of the cultural divide.

[BadgerJelly]

No it was a snipe at diversity and equality measured by genetic heritage and identified by such superficial markers as sex and skin color, especially in terms of identity politics.

None of which has anything to do with the original topic posted.

But no matter. I'm quite used to having my threads hijacked by axe-grinders from the boondocks of Trumpistan.

Said with no irony?

[toucana]

Said with no irony?

Said with no sense of irony at all.

Anyone who has been following threads here for the last 18 months will know that it has been almost impossible to address any factual news story about the destructive assault launched on science and truth in general, without attracting a non-stop bourdon and discordant counter melody of dissent from people using the “But what about Hillary Clinton”, and “President Obama did the same” tropes - regardless of context or content.

We have had multiple examples of polemicists trying to justify the violent misconduct of radical neo-nazis and white supremacists newly emboldened by President Trump’s “Good men on both sides” rhetoric by hijacking threads at every opportunity. A number of those visitors were subsequently banned sine die by moderators, or given warnings for repeated ad hominem attacks, and for making threats against people who argued against their points of view and exposed the falsity of their positions with factual references.

I have kicked back against people trying to push discredited right-wing conspiracy fantasies such as the #SethRich, #Pizzagate and #DeepState memes that were apparently being implanted by Bretibart readers and QAnon cultists - And if you are not sure who or what the latter are, try this article by Will Sommer

https://www.thedailybeast.com/what-is-qanon-the-craziest-theory-of-the-trump-era-explained?ref=home

[BadgerJelly]

is this fitting for a Science News Discussion? Nope.

I would personally prefer if things resorted to how they were previously handled where political stories were posted in the lounge and only occasionally brought forward into the News Discussions.

Anyone can look back over the previous months and see a swathe of articles posted about Trump (around 2-3 a week in some cases.) I don’t find such things fitting into the category of Science News.

If post political news stories played out largely for senstaionalist reaction then what do ou expect? I think I nade it clear enough with the ridiculous attack displayed about Milo. I fin it silly and yet I cannot help but take notice of the posts because they appear on “new posts” page and what seem likely to not mention Trump inevitably lead to the same old “Trump is a bad guy,” point of view thrust down my throat. The irony is ‘ve done the opposite. As reprehensibel as he is people like yourself reveal the some of the problems he points out with society and news channels.

Furthermore who has been trying to deny the science? Where? How? It is clear enough above that you brought up the Obama issue and then when that was referenced by someone it appears you have different views to he is treated like he’s defiling Obama’s name simply for mentioning his name.

When I’ve tried to bring up difficult topics I understand that I may be painting myself in a bad light. I thikn, they are important topics though and I present ample data to back them - the issue with IQ was one such event on this forum where people were quicker to distance themselves fro teh discussion rather than face the scary task of dealing with public opinion and the diffeences between the term “race” in popular culture and i the scientific community.

If you take this as “hijacking” when it is a broad news discussion and not your expressed opinion then how is it “hijacking”? I don’t think the point of this thread has anything to do with Trump, but you may like to frame it as such.

Can we procede with the science and cultural theory involved? It seems not becasue Wolf attempted to do so and was quickly beaten down.

Are we to conclude that ancestory has no connection to gentics? That would seemto me to be a appalling anti-scientific claim. Are genetic markers conclusive? No. Are they helpful in determining someone’s ancestory and geographical origin? Yes. Are ancestory and culture the same thing? No, it would seem not. Does the term “ancestory” perhaps need some analysis before moving forward? Seems like a rational approach.

Here is someone (not a geneticist) saying that your genes can tell you something about your “ancestory” but not about your “race.”

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MQlmX7gvYRA

All that Trump revealed was a provacative joke aimed at someone claiming identity as justification to take the moral high ground - strangely it seems more than a little trite coming from Trump, but that doesn’t make the ridicule and mocking of Warren any less revealing - or saldy, it appears it does because people are quicker to call “racist” than to consider the possible intent behind the words (be they uttered by someone racist or not.)

The most disgusting and immoral human being is still capable of saying something revealing, and in fact they are likely to point out uncomfortable truths being blunt and arrogant with it, whee others would never consider even suggestig such a thing.

So we cannot avoid a discussion of genetics, race and ancestory if we’re to get into the OP. What is also unavoidable is the need to address identiy politics and general human behavior in regards to wishful thinking and adherance to social norms and what is culturally deemed “acceptable” in common discourse apart from what is unacceptable and difficult.

You may be of the opinion that we shouldn’t talk about it, but the OP would suggest otherwise or that you wished to hear others opinions about it? I don’t know. You may not have even understood the underlying implications of such a “snipe” at Trump (who hardly needs to made to look arrogant or foolish, becasue he tends to play on this and enjoys manipulating pop media.)

Crying and being sad are nto the same thign either. That doesn’t mean there is no common ground between them. This plays into huma nature and our need to map out the world as black and white for convenience. When it comes to politics people will always play into the hands of public opinion becasue the public decide who to choose (at least more easily in more democratic countries.)

What we do know when it comes to statistical data is that the larger the data set the more accurate the information tends to be. This is why in DNA test kits there is generally a greater degree of PREDICTIVE’ accuracy fro Europeans, given that most people taking these tests likely stem fro a European ancestory given the collonial rule and global spread of Europeans to the far reaches of the globe.

I am really interested in how and if tribalism ca be traced to any particular biological structure with any degree of accuracy. Such things fascinate me and scare me.

[toucana]

is this fitting for a Science News Discussion? Nope.

I addressed this once before only a couple of months ago back in March. You probably didn't read the thread, so I will repeat it.

Users who can remember back more than a couple of years may recall there used to be *two* News sections here on the forum pages. One explicitly for for 'Science News', and the other (and substantially larger one) for more general 'News'. I used to post articles in both of them, but usually favoured the general News section because I was at best a working technician rather than a scientist.

At a certain point, the admins decided to merge the two news sections into each other and call it the 'News Discussion Forum', which is fine, but it's a little disingenuous to try and pretend that it was only ever a "Science News' forum that somehow became contaminated with current affairs and politics. If anything the truth was the other way round, because the general News section usually received substantially more posts than the old 'Science News' section ever did.

This site has *never* been explicitly just about 'Science News' ever since I began posting here back in 2006. It always had a section for more general news. When the site admins decided to merge the two news sections together they called the renamed section 'News Discussion'. *not* 'Science News Discussion' - effectively abolishing the old (and lesser used) 'Science News' forum.

If you have a problem with that, then I suggest you raise it with the admins, instead of trying to gaslight me by trying to pretend that I am failing to follow the spirit and protocols of this discussion forum.

[BadgerJelly]

Fair enough, my mistake. I confused the rules for political theory forum with news discussion. I’ll just give this foru a wide berth from now on unless there is a actual scientific basis to the topic that has no tenuous relation to US politics.

[TheVat]

My note was only in regard to the conjecture that growing up in other nations made one less fit for presidency and more neo-Marxist. NOT because it couldn't be conjectured, but because it was an off-topic. Thought I made that clear in a second post. And encouraged that poster to start a thread in pol theory. if you read back to what that poster said about Obama, you will see I was just keeping us focused on the OP. Everyone is free to do reasoned, evidence-based Obama critiques over in PT, so long as it follows BioWizard's original rule that it doesn't become a soapbox.

If you would prefer, I could start doing what mods at many sites do, which is just remove off-topic posts. But I like to think that courteous reminders of the OP topic work better.

[toucana]

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has told Donald Trump to pony up on his $1 million challenge he made earlier this year, when he said he’d bet she wouldn’t get a DNA test done to prove her Native American ancestry—which she just did.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/warren-tells-trump-to-donate-dollar1-million-to-native-american-charity-after-dna-test?ref=home

Warren revealed her DNA test results early Monday and they show that she does indeed have Native American ancestry, undermining repeated jibes from prominent Republicans that she was fabricating her heritage.

Trump said at a rally in June this year:

“I will give you a million dollars to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you’re an Indian. I have a feeling she will say no.”

Warren has now told Trump to donate the $1 million to the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center—a nonprofit that helps protects Native American women from violence.

“I took this test and released the results for anyone who cares to see because I’ve got nothing to hide. What are YOU hiding, @realDonaldTrump? Release your tax returns – or the Democratic-led House will do it for you soon enough. Tick-tock, Mr President.”

[toucana]

Just to remove any doubt about exactly what Donald Trump did or did not say at his rally in Montana on Thursday 5th July 2018 (watch from 2:05 elapsed).

[davidm]

Whatever exactly an “Indian” (Native American) is supposed to be — race is mostly a cultural construct — Elizabeth Warren isn’t one.

I very much doubt that she claimed that she was — only, I would imagine, that she had some Native America ancestry. But so what? Lots of us probably have that, just like lots of “black” people have “white” ancestry in some proportion. Of course, these facts tend to show how bogus the entire concept of race is.

I think that Trump, lying pig that he is, set up a strawman — claiming that Warren asserted that she was an “Indian,” which I very much doubt that she ever did. (Notice that this is what he says in the video.) But regardless of what she said or how or why she said it, Trump does not owe a million bucks in this case. Warren is not an “Indian” no matter how you define race, and that was the "I'm an Indian" strawman President Cheeto Benito set up, to the roars of his usual pack of morons at his rally. If one were to call her an “Indian,” then by the same logic most black people are actually white people. The biologist Jerry Coyne says that the average “black” person has 20 percent of his/her genes from whites. If Warren’s “Indian” ancestry is eight generations back, as the report estimates, then she is 0.4 percent Native American, according to the biologist P.Z. Myers.

So the pig Trump doesn’t owe a million bucks. He owes the country his resignation, but that is a different matter.

[Forest_Dump]

I would agree with most of this post except that Trump did specify his metric in "Native American" or "Indian" being determined by a DNA test.

However, as noted, there is an interesting topic in the expectations of what these terms or ideas are supposed to signify. Does "Indian" mean something related to a history of riding horses on a Prarie or cleaning beaver skins by a fire? The reality was that First Nations people (Indians or Native Americans) ranged from pedestrian hunter-gatherers to dwellers of veritable cites in the Valley of Mexico or along the Mississippi. Of course there was variable amounts of genetic mixture with "white" colonialists and escaped slaves. There was also variable emphasis on inheritance with some groups having rigidly defined inheritance of status (ranging from an aristocracy to slaves) but for many the concept of inherited status, including ethnicity or "race", was something imposed on them hundreds of years ago (or less) and that they are still adjusting to. Perhaps as interesting as question is why many (most?) Americans seem to prefer to deny their German (in the case of Trump) or heritage and identity.

[wolfhnd]

My mother's family spoke German at home (1930s) but by time I was born they would only speak German if nobody including us children were around. Two world wars will have that kind of effect. My Irish side in contrast would openly admit they supported the IRA.

Overall I would say my Irish Chatholic relatives were more racist than the Germans perhaps owning to the fact that black people in previous generations were employed preferentially to Irish. Most Germans came to U.S. with resources, especially education, that the starving Irish didn't have but the Irish maintained their ethnic pride while the Germans only maintained the superficial aspect of culture such as language, food and aesthetics.

Ethnicity does matter however. My German relatives are stoic to a fault, prone to bitterness and depression, and less extroverted but highly intelligent. My Irish relatives are extroverted, not given to introspection, less educated, prone to taking unnecessary risks and volatile. Both are hard working but also prone to alcoholism. None of these traits seem to be passed on to the third generation accept alcoholism. The fourth generation because of intermarriage and changes in the culture at large are indistinguishable from each other.

One thing that is important to keep in mind is that class has more importance in Europe than the U.S. My German ancestors were what they call Russian Germans or those imported to Russia to raise technical competency in farming although they returned to Germany generations before immigrating to America. They still apparently carried the taint of Slavic association. My Irish ancestors although Catholic were lucky enough to not be so impoverished as to be stuck in Eastern ghettos. They were amount the few Irish Catholics that became farmers instead of manual labourers. Still desperately poor by any standard. In the 19th century small ethnic differences still had dramatic impact. A Prussian could not be confused with a Bavarian and a Irish tenet could not be confused with poor Irish land owners or city dwellers.

My experience is that ethnic differences have an impact but it is exceedingly complicated. Trump wanting to avoid his German heritage is reasonable given that being of German ancestry is to complicated for the news cycle. Being German like everything else has good and bad points.

[TheVat]

The analytical aspect of your post I will attribute to your German roots.

The word count I will attribute to the Irish.

JK

My two "sides" are Norwegian and English/Irish. Food is, mercifully, a "superficial aspect" of my cultural heritage. :-)

[wolfhnd]

The analytical aspect of your post I will attribute to your German roots.

The word count I will attribute to the Irish.

JK

My two "sides" are Norwegian and English/Irish. Food is, mercifully, a "superficial aspect" of my cultural heritage. :-)

I actually got to where I could eat blood pudding but I draw the line at pork brains. Then there is German chocolate cake which is heavenly. My Irish relatives liked steak and eggs for breakfast with greasy fried potatoes, I would go with tea and toast. The good, the bad and the disgusting, you have to pick and choose.

[SciameriKen]

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has told Donald Trump to pony up on his $1 million challenge he made earlier this year, when he said he’d bet she wouldn’t get a DNA test done to prove her Native American ancestry—which she just did.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/warren-tells-trump-to-donate-dollar1-million-to-native-american-charity-after-dna-test?ref=home

The problem is that Warren even bothered to respond. Proper response to Trump should have been, "Explain how the tax plan is supposed to work again...?"

[toucana]

Kevin McCarthy (L) - William Wages (R)

An interesting side-panel to the Warren ‘Native American Ancestry’ story is another one about an influential GOP-connected businessman called William Wages recently reported by the Los Angeles Times.

I can’t access the LAT website in UK, but a precis can be found here:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/mccarthys-in-laws-made-millions-off-dubious-native-american-heritage-claim

A construction company owned by the in-laws of House Republican second-in-command Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was awarded more than $7 million in federal contracts since 2000 based on a “dubious” claim of Native American heritage, the Los Angeles Times reported in a lengthy investigation Sunday.

McCarthy’s In-Laws Made Millions Off ‘Dubious’ Native American Heritage Claims

William Wages, whose sister Judy is married to McCarthy, the House Majority Leader, claims he is one-eighth Cherokee. He is a member of the Northern Cherokee Nation, which is not a federally-recognized tribe and which the Times reported is considered a fraud by tribes that are federally recognized.

The company, Vortex, also employs McCarthy’s father-in-law and sister-in-law, and his mother-in-law is a co-owner. McCarthy’s wife stepped down as a partner in 1995, which William Wages said was to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest with McCarthy.

The Small Business Administration (SBA) accepted Wages’ claim of Native American heritage in 1998, making his company eligible for federal contracts designated for “socially and economically disadvantaged individuals.”

Contracts for projects at the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, which sits at the edge of McCarthy’s district, made up the majority of the $7 million in no-bid and “other federal contracts,” the Times found.

A review by the paper found that Wages’ ancestors were listed as white on available public records; none of his known ancestors were identified on records of recognized Cherokee tribes. Wages said he submitted Northern Cherokee Nation membership card to the SBA when he applied for the designation, and that he would be “very surprised” to learn he does not have Cherokee ancestry.

Cherokee genealogist David Cornsilk called Northern Cherokee Nation “very much a con.”
Wages and McCarthy both denied McCarthy having any involvement in the construction business, though McCarthy has supported millions in funding for programs at China Lake.

Presumably Donald Trump won’t be calling for William Wages to be taking a DNA test to prove his ’Native American Heritage’ any time soon.

[SciameriKen]

As I think about this further -- i've come to the conclusion that Warren broke the number 1 rule... DON'T FEED THE TROLLS!!


She may have sabotaged the democrats this midterm -- last thing they need is a reminder of how foolish Dems are too!

Did Warren really think she would win over trumpers by invoking science??? lol!!

[TheVat]

You should read Russ Douthat today in the New York Times. He's right - she is not going to be the best frontrunner for the Democrats. A lot of Independents (who are now 40% of the American electorate) don't much care for what they see as posing, in either party.

Are you SURE you're retired, Al Gore??