|
Banned
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by djtestudo
I think the problem with what you are saying about a "GOP base" is that it is like saying the Democratic base is ultraliberal communists who burn SUV dealerships and believe anyone who says the words "US military" in a positive tone is a babykilling imperialist.
I personally believe racism DOES still exist, mostly because it is impossible to eliminate something like that while we are all still human. However, I don't think that it exists to the extent many would like us to believe.
It can definately cross party lines as well. In Maryland, as an example, the Democrats have spent forty years telling the black voters in Baltimore and PG County that they are the party for them, when the highest office held in the state's history by a black person is our Republican Lieutenent Governer, who is also running for Senate against two Democrats: a white guy the party is backing, and a black guy they are trying their damndest to ignore.
The point is, it is both parties that are using minorities for thier own purposes, so to single out the Republicans is to show extreme bias in thinking.
|
djtestudo...before I invest in what it is required to reply to you in detail, I want to remind you that the last time that I responded to your reference to a Maryland politician, I received no reply from you....
here: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...do#post2019672
If you were African American, how does Michael Steele compare to John Lewis, and how do you supose the recent "record" of the Bush administration and the effort, on a local level, to push through new "Jim Crow" voting laws, "play" to African Americans?
Is it your position that John Lewis, permits Democrats, to "use" him, in any way that is similar to the "poster boy", role that Steele is used to playing?
Quote:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,161710,00.html
Ehrlich Brushes Off Country Club Dust-Up
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Gov. Robert Ehrlich (search), <b>responding to complaints about a fund-raiser at a golf club that critics say does not have any black members, described the flap Tuesday as "all a bunch of nothing."</b>
.....Lt. Gov. Michael Steele (search), the state's first black lieutenant governor, said Tuesday in an interview with The AP that he had not talked with Ehrlich about the golf tournament that raised $100,000 for the governor's re-election bid and didn't know if it was appropriate to use the club as a location for a fund-raiser.
"I don't know that much about the club, the membership, nor do I care, quite frankly, because I don't play golf. It's not an issue with me," Steele said.
Steele's comment that the membership was not an issue and he had not talked to Ehrlich about the fund-raiser last month drew criticism from two black Democratic lawmakers.
Sen. Lisa Gladden of Baltimore said as a black lieutenant governor, Steele "ought to be more sensitive. He ought to be the first person out front speaking of injustice everywhere. It's bigger th.......
|
Quote:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,108675,00.html
Bios: Civil Rights Leaders
Friday, January 16, 2004
The following are profiles of some of the leaders of the civil rights movement:
JOHN LEWIS
AGE: 63
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Chaired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee from 1963 to 1966; one of the "Big Six" keynote speakers at the March on Washington in 1963; co-led 1965 Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Ala., which led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act; elected in 1986 to U.S. House of Representatives, representing Georgia's 5th District, and he is serving his ninth term.
|
Quote:
http://www.accessmontgomery.com/apps...603030343/1001
<b>1960s Selma sheriff won't back down</b>
By Alvin Benn
Montgomery Advertiser
......The most violent incident occurred on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, located two blocks from the courthouse.
On March 7, 1965, about 600 black activists were attempting to march to Montgomery to urge elimination of ballot box barriers, including recitation for blacks of complex legal documents.
Instead, they were greeted by Alabama state troopers and Clark's mounted posse, and wound up being tear-gassed and clubbed. Captured by television cameras, the confrontation shocked the nation.
Clark describes what became known as "Bloody Sunday" as the "bridge deal." He said he has doubts anyone was injured that day even though film and photographs show demonstrators being beaten by club-swinging troopers.
<b>Lewis, a Troy native who now is a congressman from Georgia, is shown on the ground. A trooper is above him -- about to hit him on the head with a billy club. Lewis wound up with a concussion.</b>
"They all came and just flopped down," Clark said of the marchers. "Some might have hit their head when they fell down, but they weren't knocked down. They fell down all at once in one big swoop."
Selma historian Alston Fitts was astounded by Clark's recollection, calling him "delusional."
"The record speaks for itself," Fitts said this week. "There were 55 patients treated that day. The hospital records are on file at the Old Depot Museum. I think (Clark) is trying to rewrite history in his own mind."..........
|
Quote:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationwo...,5162569.story
<b>Bush not strong on diversity</b>
Newsday analysis of personnel records creates a snapshot of political appointees
By Tom Brune
Washington Bureau
August 30, 2004
......But the Bush administration is not nearly as diverse as it appears in that picture, particularly when it comes to blacks and women, according to an analysis by Newsday of personnel records that created a snapshot of political appointees.
And Bush's overall record of diversity pales when compared to the standard set by his predecessor, President Bill Clinton, for filling the roughly 2,800 political posts that form a presidential administration.
Blacks held 7 percent of administration jobs under Bush, less than half of the 16 percent they held under Clinton, the snapshot shows. Women won 36 percent of Bush's appointments, noticeably fewer than the 44 percent of Clinton's.
Overall, the Bush administration gave more than half, 54 percent, of its political positions to white men. Clinton awarded 57 percent of his jobs to women and minorities.
A diverse cabinet
The snapshot does confirm Bush's claim that he has assembled the most diverse cabinet and top-level officials requiring Senate approval of any Republican president, creating a profile that nears the record-setting diversity of Clinton.
But it also shows that just below those highly visible positions -- in the hundreds of little known but important appointments to senior executive posts that don't need Senate confirmation -- the diversity of the Bush administration fades.
Under Clinton, women held 43 percent and blacks 13 percent of the senior executive posts, and 45 percent went to white men. Under Bush, women won just 24 percent and blacks 6 percent of the jobs, and 66 percent went to white men.......
<b>.....Satisfied with numbers
The White House reviewed Newsday's data and said it found nothing anomalous and that it was comfortable with the numbers and ratios, spokesman Trent Duffy said.</b>
"The president chooses those professionals who can best help him enact his agenda and give the American people the highest quality government that they deserve," he said.........
......Last year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, chaired by Bush appointee Cari Dominguez, voted unanimously to eliminate affirmative action for federal employment, a major policy shift that has broad implications.
Quietly changed
In quietly adopting a new policy, the commission scrapped the decades-old requirements that federal agencies set goals for hiring and promotion and that they target minorities and women for special assistance.
Those steps are similar to the affirmative action that the government requires of federal contractors and programs used by many states and cities.
Under the new relaxed federal policy, federal agencies must examine statistics, but only to look for barriers to free and open competition for jobs to everybody, including white men.
Dominguez declined to comment. EEOC staffer Catherine McNamara said the policy needed to be updated to reflect Supreme Court decisions, demographics and the changing nature of discrimination......
........Sincerity or strategy?
Mayer said Bush is sincere in his pursuit of black votes and endorsement of diversity.
But John D. Skrentny of the University of California San Diego, an expert on affirmative action, said Bush is employing "a political strategy" that dates to President Richard M. Nixon.
In it, Republicans nominate very conservative minorities or women for top jobs or judgeships to place diversity-minded liberals in an awkward position. Bush's father did that when he nominated Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court.
Skrentny said Bush is following his father's example.........
.........Yet overall, Bush has nominated fewer blacks and women than Clinton -- a third of his candidates compared with more than half of Clinton's.
Sheldon Goldman, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and an authority on federal judicial selection, credits Bush for embracing diversity.
But, he said, the Bush administration has focused more on finding candidates with a conservative philosophy like the one held by Thomas.
"With Clinton, diversity trumped philosophy," Goldman said. "With Bush, philosophy trumps diversity."
|
Quote:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/103004U.shtml
Bush Seeks Limit to Suits Over Voting Rights
By David G. Savage and Richard B. Schmitt
The Los Angeles Times
Friday 29 October 2004
Administration lawyers argue that only the Justice Department, not the voters, may sue to enforce provisions in the Help America Vote Act.
Washington - Bush administration lawyers argued in three closely contested states last week that only the Justice Department, and not voters themselves, may sue to enforce the voting rights set out in the Help America Vote Act, which was passed in the aftermath of the disputed 2000 election.
Veteran voting-rights lawyers expressed surprise at the government's action, saying that closing the courthouse door to aspiring voters would reverse decades of precedent.
Since the civil rights era of the 1960s, individuals have gone to federal court to enforce their right to vote, often with the support of groups such as the NAACP, the AFL-CIO, the League of Women Voters or the state parties. And until now, the Justice Department and the Supreme Court had taken the view that individual voters could sue to enforce federal election law.
But in legal briefs filed in connection with cases in Ohio, Michigan and Florida, the administration's lawyers argue that the new law gives Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft the exclusive power to bring lawsuits to enforce its provisions. These include a requirement that states provide "uniform and nondiscriminatory" voting systems, and give provisional ballots to those who say they have registered but whose names do not appear on the rolls.
"Congress clearly did not intend to create a right enforceable" in court by individual voters, the Justice Department briefs said.
In one case the Sandusky County Democratic Party sued Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, arguing that the county's voters should be permitted to file provisional ballots even if they go to the wrong polling place on election day.
The Justice Department intervened as a friend of the court on Blackwell's side........
|
Quote:
http://www.ajc.com/today/content/epa...dc1d200d5.html
<b>Voter ID memo stirs tension
Sponsor of disputed Georgia legislation told feds that blacks in her district only vote if they are paid to do so.</b>
Bob Kemper, Sonji Jacobs - Staff
Friday, November 18, 2005
The chief sponsor of Georgia's voter identification law told the Justice Department that if black people in her district "are not paid to vote, they don't go to the polls," and that if fewer blacks vote as a result of the new law, it is only because it would end such voting fraud.
The newly released Justice Department memo quoting state Rep. Sue Burmeister (R-Augusta) was prepared by department lawyers as the federal government considered whether to approve the new law. It also says that despite Republican assurances the law would not disenfranchise elderly, poor and black voters, Susan Laccetti Meyers, the staff adviser for the Georgia House of Representatives, told the Justice Department "the Legislature did not conduct any statistical analysis of the effect of the photo ID requirement on minority voters."
It cites analyses showing that, in fact, the effects of the law --- which will require Georgians seeking to vote to present a driver's license or an identification card for which they must pay --- could fall disproportionately on blacks. It concludes that the state had failed to show the law would not weaken minority voting strength, and recommends that the attorney general's office formally object to it.
However, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in August approved the law. Last month, a judge suspended the photo ID requirement after finding the law imposes an unconstitutional poll tax and will not effectively combat voter fraud. A lawsuit in the case continues...........
..... Rep. John Lewis, an Atlanta Democrat and veteran of the civil rights movement, derided Burmeister's remarks.
"It's unbelievable that any elected official would say something like this. It doesn't have any, any merit," Lewis said. "This is an affront to every black voter and would-be black voter not just in my district but in the state of Georgia."
State Rep. Tyrone Brooks (D-Atlanta) called Burmeister's claim "reprehensible demagoguery."
"That is racist," he said. "I think the African-American community deserves an apology.".......
|
|