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Banned
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Originally Posted by ottopilot
For something to be institutionalized, there has to be a standard and an authority (established policies and laws). Can you provide an example of institutionalized racism? If you could, it would be illegal, against the law, and prosecutable. Is there prejudice? Probably, but if you can prove it, they will be prosecuted. There is no "institutionalized" racism. If there was, the laws are there to handle it. What you speak of is more likely done subtly by individuals outside the rule of law ... but it's not institutionalized.
Should there be affirmative action or a quota system applied to the fortune 500? What percentage of the fortune 500 CEOs are women or minorities?
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Have you been living under a rock this past year, Ottopilot?
Quote:
http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0507/420376.html
Story:
Some of the most notorious crimes committed in America – police brutality..cross burnings..violence at abortion clinics..modern day slavery - all federal crimes - are prosecuted by The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.
But our investigation has found that the Justice Department is missing a key component in its mission to protect civil rights - DIVERSITY – diversity in the attorney ranks to prosecute cases.
Congressman John Conyers: "They need someone to investigate them."
The I-Team has learned that since 2003...the criminal section within the Civil Rights Division has not hired a single black attorney to replace those who have left. Not one.
(Graphic)
As a result, the current face of civil rights prosecutions looks like this: Out of fifty attorneys in the Criminal Section - only two are black. The same number the criminal section had in 1978 - even though the size of the staff has more than doubled. .....
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Quote:
http://judiciary.house.gov/media/pdfs/Rich070322.pdf
March 22, 2007
Joseph D. Rich
Director, Fair Housing Project
Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
1401 New York Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20005
jrich@lawyerscommittee.org
My name is Joe Rich. Since May, 2005 I have been Director of the Housing and
Community Development Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under
Law. Previously I worked for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division for
almost 37 years. The last six years – from 1999-2005 – I was Chief of the Division’s
Voting Section. Prior to that, I served as Deputy Chief of the Housing and Civil
Enforcement Section for twelve years and Deputy Chief for the Education Section for ten
years. During my nearly 37 years in the Division, I served in Republican administrations
for over 24 years and Democratic administrations for slightly over 12 years.
.....During the Bush Administration, dramatic change has taken place. Political
appointees made it quite clear that they did not wish to draw on the expertise and
institutional knowledge of career attorneys. Instead, there appeared to be a conscious
effort to remake the Division’s career staff. Political appointees often assumed an
attitude of hostility toward career staff, exhibited a general distrust for recommendations
made by them, and were very reluctant to meet with them to discuss their
recommendations. The impact of this treatment on staff morale resulted in an alarming
exodus of career attorneys -- the longtime backbone of the Division that had historically
maintained the institutional knowledge of how to enforce our civil rights laws tracing
back to the passage of our modern civil rights statutes.
Compounding this problem was a major change in hiring procedures which
virtually eliminated any career staff input into the hiring of career attorneys. This has led
to the perception and reality of new staff attorneys having little if any experience in, or
commitment to, the enforcement of civil rights laws and, more seriously, injecting
political factors into the hiring of career attorneys. The overall damage caused by losing
a large body of the committed career staff and replacing it with persons with little or no
interest or experience in civil rights enforcement has been severe and will be difficult to
overcome.
In August, 2005, the first article bringing to light the problems in the Civil Rights
Division was written by William Yeomans for Legal Affairs.i Following this, there was a
flurry of articles in many newspapers and broadcasts on NPR over a four month period
revealing not only the change in personnel and hiring policies in the Division, but also,
alarmingly, the crass politicization of decision-making. Constant oversight of the
Division is necessary to address these very serious problems......
......Equally disturbing is the decimation of voting section staff assigned to the
important work required by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Prior to the Bush
Administration, Section 5 staff was uniformly strengthened, and by 2001 – the
year that the new round of redistricting submissions began -- approximately 40%
of Section staff was assigned to this work, including a Deputy Section Chief,
Robert Berman, who oversaw the Section 5 work; 26 civil rights analysts
(including 8 supervisory or senior analysts) responsible for reviewing, gathering
facts, and making recommendations on over 4,000 Section 5 submissions received
every year; and over six attorneys who spent their full-time reviewing the work of
the analysts. Since then, and especially since the transfer of Deputy Chief
Berman from the Section in late 2005, this staff dropped by almost two-thirds.
There are now only ten civil rights analysts (none of whom hold supervisory jobs
and only three of whom are senior) and two full-time attorney reviewers. During
my tenure as Section Chief until 2005, I made several requests to fill civil rights
analyst vacancies, but these requests were always rejected. It is difficult to
understand how this Administration expects to fulfill its Section 5 responsibilities
– especially the coming redistricting cycle – with such a reduced staff.....
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Ottopilot, the regime appointed a fucking race relations "challenged" partisan hack to run voting rights enforcement:
Quote:
http://speaker.house.gov/blog/?p=893
Judiciary Hearing on DOJ Voting Rights Section
October 30th, 2007 by Jesse Lee
The Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties is currently holding a hearing, “Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.” John K. Tanner, Chief of the Voting Right Section, will testify, as will Toby Moore, a redistricting expert with the division’s voting section until the spring of 2006....
....Subcommitee Chairman Jerry Nadler questions Tanner on a Georgia Voting ID Law on which Tanner overruled the recommendations of his staff that it was discriminatory:
Nadler: “But in making that decision you differed from the 4 of the 5 attorneys… permanent staff who recommended a contrary decision, is that correct?”
Tanner: “I’m in an awkward position in that we are not allowed and it is inappropriate for department personnel to discuss internal deliberations and the confidences of our clients. I’m happy to give you information and explain the basis…”
Nadler: “Mr. Tanner, I believe that is public information. That that has been testified to before, I think, the Senate. Is that not correct, that this is public? That the 5 individuals who reviewed this, who did the staff work, 4 of them recommended disapproving and one differed from that? That is all public information.”
Full Committee Chairman John Conyers expresses shock at Tanner’s claims that the section is operating smoothly:
Chairman Conyers: “I hope that you will take what is directed at you as constructive, because the one thing I am concerned about is that we stop having happen what has happened since the 2000 elections. And then you come here to stagger our imagination by telling us that ‘it’s never been better,’ its never been worse!”
Rep. Artur Davis (AL-07) questions Tanner on a series of controversial remarks he made:
Extended transcript of above exchange:
<h3>Rep. Davis: “You also make the comment, by the way, that blacks are more likely to go to check cashing at some point in Georgia. Did you make that observation?”
Tanner: “In addressing the Georgia…”
Davis: “Don’t give me a long answer because I don’t have the time. Did you make the comment or did you not make it?”
Tanner: “I made a comment about that…”</h3>
Davis: “OK, now this is the point, Mr. Tanner, that I think we want to drive home. Do you have any statistics about how many blacks visit check cashing business versus the number of whites who do?”
Tanner: “I do not have any with me, I believe that statistics about the number of un-banked persons here in the United States, by race, would be available through the office of the comptroller…”
Davis: “Do you know those numbers?”
Tanner: “I do not know those numbers.”
Davis: “Well this is the problem. Once again you engaged in an analysis without knowing the numbers. And the point, Mr. Tanner, you’re a policy maker, sir. You are encharged with enforcing the voting rights laws in the country. And if you are not fully informed about things that you are talking about and pontificating about, if you’re basing your conclusions on stereotypes and generalizations that raises a question in the mind of some of us whether or not you are the person best positioned to be making these choices. You said that minorities don’t become elderly the way white people do, that they die first. And you say ‘well that was a horrible generalization on my part,’ <h3>you say you don’t know how many elderly minorities vote versus the number of whites who vote who are elderly. You make observations about people going to check cashing places and you suggest that ‘well, because blacks go to check cashing places they surely must have photo ID’ and then I ask you if there is a statistical basis for that and you say you don’t know it. If you are basing your conclusions on stereotypes rather than facts, then it suggests to some of us that someone else can do this job better than you can.”</h3>....
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Quote:
http://kennedy.senate.gov/newsroom/p...B-9605BA16FF0D
Statement By Senator Edward M. Kennedy Committee Statement on U.S. Attorney Firings
(As Prepared for Delivery)
March 22, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
....The Civil Rights Division virtually stopped enforcing the Voting Rights Act on behalf of African Americans. Instead, it sued African American officials in Mississippi for discriminating against white voters.
The new regime began to simply ignore the recommendations of career attorneys. Political appointees approved the Texas redistricting law that was later struck down by the Supreme Court. Political appointees approved a Georgia photo ID law for voting that was subsequently struck down by a federal court as a poll tax.
Approval of the Georgia photo ID law was driven by the same partisan motivations that produced the current U.S. Attorney scandal. Georgia’s Republican-dominated state legislature said it was enacting the law to respond to allegations of voter fraud. But there was no evidence of such fraud. The ID law was passed anyway, with full awareness that it would disproportionately prevent minorities from voting.
Not only did political appointees reject the career attorneys’ recommendation to block the law, but they transferred Robert Berman -- the leader of the career team that reviewed the Georgia law and a 28-year veteran of the Civil Rights Division -- out of his job as a Deputy Chief of the Voting Section and into a dead-end job. The conclusion is inescapable that the Department of Justice ended Mr. Berman’s long and distinguished career as a Voting Section attorney because he applied the law faithfully and well, and refused to serve the partisan interests of his political superiors.
Incredibly, Bradley Schlozman, the inexperienced political appointee who oversaw approval of the Georgia ID law and the retaliation against the career staff, was rewarded with an appointment as interim U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri. He has served in that capacity for a year without Senate confirmation.
Mr. Schlozman is a good example of the new regime at our Justice Department. His professional resume is a short one. He practiced law for about one a year at a large firm before joining the Bush Administration in a series of political jobs at the Department of Justice. He had no experience prosecuting cases. But he was a loyal Bush supporter who was willing to use the power of federal law enforcement to benefit the Republican Party.
While supervising the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division, he presided over the Texas redistricting and Georgia photo ID fiascos. He failed to authorize the filing of a single affirmative voting rights case on behalf of African American voters, but he jumped at the chance to sue African American officials in Mississippi for discriminating against white voters. On the eve of the 2004 election, he orchestrated the filing of two extraordinary amicus briefs – one in Florida and the other in Ohio – that argued that individuals could not go to court to enforce the Help America Vote Act. The briefs argued that only the government could enforce the act and that individuals who wanted to get their provisional ballots counted were simply out of luck. This extraordinary partisan intervention by the Civil Rights Division weeks before a national election in battleground states to suppress the votes of predominantly Democratic voters was unprecedented.
Mr. Schlozman also led the charge in punishing other dedicated career attorneys who were insufficiently partisan. For example, he transferred at least two longtime career attorneys out of the Division’s Appellate Section and told several others that they could no longer work on civil rights cases, but would have to stomach a full docket defending deportation orders. He changed performance evaluations to punish career attorneys. He was a key participant in a politicized hiring regime that – as the Boston Globe reported – started looking to partisan credentials and membership in the Federalist Society and de-emphasized academic qualifications and any experience in enforcing the civil rights laws.
For this disgraceful record, Mr. Schlozman was rewarded with a U.S. Attorney position for which he would never have to face Senate confirmation.....
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Quote:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washing...92899591_x.htm
Voting rights chief reassigned
By Lara Jakes Jordan, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department's voting rights chief, who said voter ID laws aren't a problem for blacks because they often die before old age, has been transferred to a new job, officials said Friday.
John Tanner, a longtime attorney in the department's Civil Rights division, requested the move from the division's voting rights office, Justice spokesman Peter Carr said. Tanner now works in the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices, Carr said.
"Mr. Tanner made the decision to pursue this opportunity on his own accord," Carr said in a statement.
Tanner, who worked for the voting section since 1976 and served as its chief for the last two years, came under fire in October for remarks that were criticized as racially insensitive.
In an Oct. 4 speech to the NAACP in Georgia, Tanner said minorities are "slightly more likely" than non-minorities to have a photo ID. He suggested that was due to vestiges of racism still at work in the United States.
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No, Ottopilot, there's nothing to see here, is there?
Quote:
http://epluribusmedia.net/archives/f...under_bus.html
Civil Rights Division to “Throw Tanner Under the Bus” to save Hans von Spakovsky’s FEC nomination
Publius Revolts
October 10, 2007
ePluribus Media has learned that the leadership of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has reversed its July decision and is now signaling its willingness to permit Voting Rights Section Chief John Tanner to testify before Rep. John Conyers (D-MI)’s House Judiciary Committee. Although a Judiciary Committee spokesperson has confirmed the reversal, the final date and time for the testimony have not been finalized. There’s speculation that Tanner in his testimony will assume responsibility for the Georgia Voter ID controversy, leaving Hans von Spakovsky, currently up for confirmation to the Federal Elections Commission, a cleaner resume.
Tanner gained notoriety as the Section Chief who overruled career Justice Department staffers and permitted the State of Georgia to implement a law that requires all Georgia voters to show photo identification despite the fact that the career lawyers believed the new law discriminated against minorities in violation of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Tanner returned to the national spotlight when he made controversial remarks defending his Georgia decision. Last Friday, he stated, in remarks videotaped by Alan Breslauer of BradBlog, that “minorities don't become elderly the way white people do. They die first.” Earlier in the week, at a Georgia NAACP conference, Tanner remarked that:
You think you get asked for ID more than I do? I've never heard anyone talk about driving while white. When someone goes to a check cashing business God help them if they don't have a photo ID. People who are poor are poor. They're not stupid. They're not helpless.
Tanner’s recent comments suggest that whites are disadvantaged by photo ID requirements, an argument that Tanner’s predecessor, Joseph D. Rich, who was forced to retire by the Civil Rights Division front office in which Bradley Schlozman1 and Hans von Spakovsky held sway, called "frankly ludicrous." Supporting this assessment of shoddy logic, former Voting Section political geographer Toby Moore told TPM Muckraker’s Paul Kiel that:
This is the kind of analysis that the voting section has been doing: seat of the pants generalizations and suppositions instead of hard numbers and analysis. . . It's false." Tanner's conclusions, he added, were "always in support of what his Republican appointee bosses wanted him to say, which is why he got to where he is.
Alabama native Tanner came on the scene shortly after Rich’s forced retirement in the aftermath of his resistance to the approval of Rep. Tom DeLay’s mid-decade gerrymander of Texas congressional districts, which career staff also attempted to block. Tanner quickly moved to transform the Voting Rights Section into what has been described by 30-year veteran African-American civil rights analyst Teresa Lynn as a “plantation.” Under Tanner, there has been an unprecedented exodus of professional staff from the Voting Rights Section, including nine of thirteen African-American professional staff members and between one-half and two-thirds of its attorneys. Three out of four Deputy Chiefs left. Bob Kengle, a 20-year veteran of the Civil Rights Division, stated that he left due to “institutional sabotage,” while Robert Berman, a 28-year veteran of the Voting Section, was transferred to what Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) called a ‘dead-end’ training job. Gilda Daniels, who was the Section’s only African-American deputy chief, became a law professor at the University of Baltimore. On Tanner’s watch, two African-American employees filed Equal Opportunity Employment complaints against Tanner and his hand-picked replacement for Berman, Yvette Rivera. A source with ties to the Voting Section told ePluribus Media that Rivera had no supervisory experience in civil rights enforcement at the time she was appointed Acting Deputy Chief. Voting Section staffers also say that Tanner took little action on a complaint of sexual harassment made by a female staffer against three new hires in the Voting Rights Section. During the incident, it is reported that one of the newly-hired lawyers – incredibly, in a section of the Civil Rights Division created to secure the voting rights of African-Americans – accused the staffer of being “too pro-black” and asked why she had not been made to leave like so many other staffers who were dedicated supporters of civil rights and many of whom were themselves black.
Tanner’s apparent concern for “white voting rights” is not new. He presided over the first such suit ever brought by the Justice Department in Noxubee County, Mississippi. He also brought about a shift in the direction of the Voting Rights Section’s enforcement efforts that included a failed voter fraud lawsuit against Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan in an attempt to force the state to more aggressively purge voters from its rolls. That effort has continued in recent months, when Tanner sent letters, which, as journalist Steven Rosenfeld states, are an effort to pressure:
10 states to purge voter rolls before the 2008 election based on statistics that former Voting Section attorneys and other experts say are flawed and do not confirm that those states have more voter registrations than eligible voters, as the department alleges[.]
Curiously, Tanner appears eager to take responsibility for what many consider to be the Bush Civil Rights Division’s worst transgression, the preclearance, (the equivalent of pre-check that a law complies with the Voting Rights Act) of the Georgia photo identification law. At last Friday’s meeting Tanner also claimed the analysis that resulted in the Georgia preclearance as his own: “my analysis that was not affected by any other person” (see first video at 2:40). This statement goes against the widespread belief in the voting rights community that the Georgia approval was the work of Hans von Spakovsky. It was von Spakovsky, after all, who, as “Publius,” wrote a law review article defending photo identification requirements at the same time that the Georgia law was under review by the Justice Department. von Spakovsky has deep Georgia roots, having served as chair of the Republican Party in Fulton County, which includes Atlanta.
Is Tanner willing to take the fall for von Spakovsky, whose nomination to the Federal Election Commission was unprecedentedly reported out of the Senate Rules Committee without recommendation and then blocked by Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Barack Obama (D-IL)?2 Sources close to the Voting Section tell ePluribus Media that Tanner has told some colleagues that he plans to retire by next September, conveniently before the 2008 elections. Is Tanner serving the interests of the Bush administration because he desires a better retirement package? Unlike line attorneys and even deputy chiefs, the Voting Section Chief is a member of the Senior Executive Service, an appointment that carries a higher salary. Federal retiree benefits for an employee such as Tanner, who entered federal service in 1976, are based on a retiree's highest three years of pay (PDF – see p. 7). Or are Monica Goodling’s infamous “loyal Bushies” holding something more sinister over Tanner’s head? According to Joe Rich, following the Georgia ID incident, the Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility opened an investigation into the handling of the matter. The Office has the power to refer matters for criminal prosecution if it feels it is warranted. The investigation into the Georgia ID approval was mysteriously left hanging.
At this point, we can only speculate on Tanner’s motives. There is, however, an emerging consensus among the Section’s staff as to why the Civil Rights Division leadership would reverse itself and permit the Voting Section chief to testify. Sources described the consensus to ePluribus Media as “throwing [Tanner] under the bus.” Tanner became Section Chief in 2005. It remains to be seen whether, after his testimony, he will be able to hold out until he can retire with a Senior Executive Service retirement package, or whether he will join von Spakovsky, Schlozman, former Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Wan Kim, and Alberto Gonzales in the ranks of disgraced former Justice Department employees.
Footnotes
1 Schlozman, who served briefly as Acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and then was appointed Acting United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri by then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales after his predecessor, Todd Graves, was fired as part of the U.S. Attorney purges, has recently taken to practicing tax law at a small firm in Wichita.
2 Sources in the voting rights community have also reported that Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) were influential in blocking the Von Spakovsky nomination
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Last edited by host; 04-06-2008 at 07:59 PM..
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