Registered: Aug 2000
Location:
Posts: 7974

Reports like this
http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/vote2000/main.htm
this
http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/bush/bush04.pdf
and this
http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/tragedy/main.htm
are a thing of the past..

Bush picks conservative to head civil rights commission
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/10361461.htm

By Matt Stearns

Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - A Kansas City attorney long at odds with the civil rights establishment is President Bush's choice to chair the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Gerald Reynolds, a black conservative who was assistant secretary of civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education early in the Bush administration but never won Senate confirmation to the post, would replace Mary Frances Berry as head of the bipartisan, independent commission. The commission historically highlights the need for civil rights enforcement but has no enforcement powers. Its members aren't subject to Senate confirmation.

Reynolds said he considers education the key issue in civil rights and hoped the commission would focus on how young African-Americans can expand their opportunities through education.

"In some communities, young black boys won't walk around with books because they'll be ridiculed," Reynolds said. "I want to address that situation."

Supporters of Reynolds, 41, say they think he will take civil rights in a more modern direction.

"The obstacles facing African-Americans today are not problems of discrimination, but of not seizing opportunities that are available," said Roger Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative think tank where Reynolds once worked. "It makes sense to have someone who's younger, who can look at issues with a fresh eye."

But several civil rights leaders questioned Reynolds' ties to the Bush administration and his commitment to civil rights enforcement.

William Taylor, the chairman of the Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights, called Reynolds' appointment "the death of the agency as an independent force and a fair fact-finder in civil rights."

Nancy Zirkin, deputy director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said Reynolds had "showed antipathy toward programs that encourage and protect equal opportunity."

Reynolds' critics base their concern on his record at the Education Department.

During Reynolds' tenure, the Bush administration appointed a commission to consider changes to Title IX, the federal law guaranteeing women equal access to educational and athletic opportunities. Some had complained that the law led to cuts in men's athletic programs. After public outcry, the administration backed off and no changes were made.

"Reynolds was one of the officials who by his public statements and his actions were committed to undoing Title IX athletic policies in very serious ways," said Jocelyn Samuels, vice president of the National Women's Law Center.

Reynolds said then that the level of support for Title IX surprised him.

Reynolds was also a key player in the Bush administration's decision to oppose the use of race in college admissions. The Supreme Court upheld the use of race as an admissions factor last year. Afterward, Reynolds' Education Department office issued a booklet suggesting race-neutral alternatives for colleges and universities to consider, which civil rights advocates said only sowed confusion.

Reynolds defended his tenure at the Education Department, saying, "It was not a situation where I ignored any law. Title IX was enforced during my stint."

Prior to his Education Department appointment, Reynolds was a regulatory attorney for Kansas City Power & Light Co. He had been president of the Center for New Black Leadership and a legal analyst for the Center for Equal Opportunity.

Opponents saw Reynolds' resume as thin for the Education Department job and mobilized against his appointment in 2001. Reynolds never won Senate confirmation, and Bush appointed him to a temporary recess appointment.

When that expired, Reynolds took a lower-level job at the Justice Department before returning to Kansas City. He's a lawyer at Great Plains Energy Services Inc., a utility company.

Uncle Sam, meet Uncle Tom! Indint dat sweet. Dey's holdin' hands.

Weep Jesus, weep.

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Getting Down to Where the Rubber Meets the Road
Susan Q. Stranahan
http://www.campaigndesk.org/archives/001152.asp

Once every four years a hot new book, largely unknown to the general public, makes the rounds of Washington, D.C. and environs. It's known as The Plum Book, and in a way it's a shame it isn't made available to every jobseeker in America. For inside its covers lies a gold mine -- a listing of thousands of presidentially appointed jobs in the federal government. The newest edition is due out soon.

As the Bush administration begins a second term, there will be holdovers from the first, but there also will be plenty of replacements -- appointees taking posts everywhere from the West Wing to West Virginia making decisions about foreign policy, food safety, national standards for air quality and for air travel, and everything in between. Like every administration since the birth of patronage, this one will fill those slots with friends, fundraisers and political allies who share common views on social, economic, environmental, security and education issues. Inevitably, those appointees will carry baggage that the public deserves to know about, but seldom learns about. And that's where the press corps comes in -- at a minimum, it's their duty to keep us informed as the candy gets passed out. (After all, it's we the taxpayers who pay for the candy every April 15.)
Last May, Anne C. Mulkern of the Denver Post's Washington bureau documented the presence of a hundred-plus high-level officials in the Bush administration "who helped govern industries [that] they once represented as lobbyists, lawyers or company advocates."

In at least 20 cases, those former industry advocates have helped their agencies write, shape or push for policy shifts that benefit their former industries. They knew which changes to make because they had pushed for them as industry advocates.

Last edited by Thimbles worth of opinion on 12-08-2004 at 08:56 AM

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quote:

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Originally posted by Thimbles worth of opinion
Uncle Sam, meet Uncle Tom!

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Cambridge
Posts: 7113

quote:

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Originally posted by CHiPsJr

It's bad enough when African-Americans accuse people who oppose the consensus of being race traitors. It's a good deal worse when outsiders start making decisions about what people of a given race may and may not believe.

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And you CERTAINLY don't eliminate racist rhetoric by practicing it.

"Uncle Tom" is a term anyone ought to be ashamed to use. But I do think it's even worse for judgments as to what beliefs are racially acceptable to come from outside a community than from within it.

By the way, Title IX is not a racial issue in any way, shape or form.

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I listened to an article on NPR that was saying that the real shame is that the phrase 'Uncle Tom' is used as a misrepresentation of what the book was aiming at.

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Well, Stowe's character is something of a Christ figure, which in a practical sense means he tends to eat a lot of crap and smile and ask for seconds. Suffice to say that the term is not generally intended as a compliment.

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Oh, I know that it is used that way. It is a shame (from the literary perspective) if it is a misrepresentation of the character from the book, though.

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quote:

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Originally posted by CHiPsJr
"Uncle Tom" is a term anyone ought to be ashamed to use. But I do think it's even worse for judgments as to what beliefs are racially acceptable to come from outside a community than from within it.

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quote:

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Originally posted by 3MTA3
Fuck you uncle tom house nigger.

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quote:

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Are you of African ancestry, thimbles? Because if not, that's a term you ought to be very cautious about using.

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I shouldn't have gotten so inflamatory, however does anyone else think that the wave of conservative appointee control is getting out of hand? Especially when the power of that bloc is actively consolidated in a way that would make Macheveli proud?
In a way where the dicates of the leader overwhelm the differences of individual members
and freeze out descenters, never mind opposition party members?
And furthermore, in a way that rewards loyalty above competence?

It's what I see, I don't know about you, but that kind of thing lends itself towards "groupthink" whihc then becomes "fuckup" down the road. N'est pas?

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So your position is that groupthink within a Presidential cabinet is vile, but groupthink within the African-American community is desirable and those who reject it are race traitors?

My thinking: obviously it's dangerous to have a leader surrounded exclusively by yes-men. Primarily it is dangerous to the leader himself, as he runs the risk of isolating himself from the larger community and rendering himself ineffective--I tend to think many of us fear an EFFECTIVE Bush Presidency more than an ineffective one.

As its primarily their ox that gets gored in the end, it's pretty much the business of the people running the company as to what sort of dynamic they think is most useful in getting the job done. Moreover, some of the cabinet positions are so completely unimportant in terms of policy that it makes more sense to put a mediocre team player in the spot than a talented loose cannon.

And I think we're all well aware that the same people wouldn't be complaining if the President were a european style social welfare advocate surrounding himself with like-minded individuals. It's the politics that are the real issue here, not the leadership dynamic.

All in all, I think that Bush should have a more ideologically diverse cabinet, but it's about the 1,543,674th public policy problem we face.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Smug Git
Oh, I know that it is used that way. It is a shame (from the literary perspective) if it is a misrepresentation of the character from the book, though.

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i think partly these appointments are sort of worrisome because intially a big selling point of mr bush was his bright and wise advisors. of course that hasn't been an issue for a few years, which is odd to me. people seem have gained so much trust in him since he was elected the first time, which is the opposite of what i would expect in a lot of ways (even within the conservative elite (though maybe he's still good for advancing the shadowy aims of neocon hq, buried deep in the earth beneath charlotte nc*)).

*arbitrarily chosen.

ps. "race traitor". haha!

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quote:

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So your position is that groupthink within a Presidential cabinet is vile, but groupthink within the African-American community is desirable and those who reject it are race traitors?

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Palast..
http://www.democracynow.org/article...4/12/08/1520204

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I want to talk to you about good old-fashioned punch card voting. 93,000 votes tossed in the garbage out of Black precincts. How? Okay? Because when – just like in – Black voters, Black neighborhoods get the bad schools, they get the bad hospitals, they get the bum voting machines, see? And their votes go in the garbage. And they know it. In fact, it should be against the law. And, in fact, it is. The ACLU sued the State of Ohio for a racist ballot counting system. They sued five states. Okay? Before the election. Before the election, four states said, “Well, gee, we’re kind of embarrassed. Yeah, we’re losing thousands of Black votes.” And they all agreed to fix the machines before the election, but one state. The Secretary of State of Ohio said, “Yes.” He said, ‘Yes, I know that the machines we use in Ohio eliminate tens of thousands of Black votes on bad machines.’ The only -- the only state that said, ‘Yeah, we'll fix them after the inauguration.’...

Yes, it’s true, you can get it on the internet, but it's actually from Appendix 14 of a report, this important information of the U.S Civil Rights Commission that found that if you are a Black person in America, the chance of your vote being tossed in the garbage -- you cast your vote and it's thrown away -- the chance of it being thrown away is 800% higher than if you are a white voter, okay? See, and it kind of adds up with 2 million votes which are discarded in America, half of them by Black voters, 1 million Black votes not counted in America. We have an apartheid ballot counting system in America. And we ain’t talking about it. Okay? But now we’re going to talk about it, alright? That's not all. There’s provisional ballots, see? So the fix this year is supposed to be provisional ballots. The republicans had a plan for that, too. There were 155,000 of them. 2 million votes were not counted in the 2000 election, now we're pushing up maybe towards 3 million votes, because we have something called provisional ballots, back of the bus bogus ballots. Who gets those ballots? No points for guessing Black vote.

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That didn't take long.

http://www.thememoryhole.org/usccr/purged.htm

Reports Purged From the Website of the Civil Rights Commission

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As of 7 January 2005, the website of the US Commission on Civil Rights has been purged of 20 reports that didn't meet the approval of the agency's Republican majority.

The site says that you may still order copies of these reports, but, tellingly, they require that you give them a physical mailing address. In other words, they'll send you a paper copy of a report, not an easily-postable electronic copy.

The Memory Hole was able to locate 17 19 of these deleted reports. They have been posted below. (If you can find any of the other three, please send them.)

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Shocked, yes, SHOCKED am I that an agency would decide not to put forward documents that don't match its official party line.

SHOCKED, I say!

It's a widespread phenomenon. I mean, I go to the Democratic party website, and lo and behold, I can't find a single one of their fire-breathing, historically important positions on the coinage of free silver or the maintenance of strict racial segregation. Surely this silencing of dissent within the organization foreshadows the death of the republic.

Last edited by CHiPsJr on 02-27-2005 at 04:27 PM

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Is this not a 'government' website, rather than a party website (like that of the democrat or republican parties), though, apd for with taxpayer's dollars?

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