August 31, 2009

White House: More quotas, ahoy!

The New York Times reports on something I pointed out in VDARE.com on April 13, 2008 based on reading the civil rights pages on BarackObama.com: "More quotas, ahoy!"
White House to Shift Efforts on Civil Rights
By CHARLIE SAVAGE

The Obama administration is planning to revive high-impact enforcement of civil rights against policies where statistics show that minorities fare disproportionately poorly.

Seven months after taking office, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is reshaping the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division by pushing it back into some of the most important areas of American political life, including voting rights, housing, employment, bank lending practices [swell idea! Too bad nobody ever thought of it before] and redistricting after the 2010 census.

As part of this shift, the Obama administration is planning a major revival of high-impact civil rights enforcement against policies, in areas ranging from housing to hiring, where statistics show that minorities fare disproportionately poorly [i.e. Disparate Impact]. President George W. Bush’s appointees had discouraged such tactics, preferring to focus on individual cases in which there is evidence of intentional discrimination.

To bolster a unit that has been battered by heavy turnover and a scandal over politically tinged hiring under the Bush administration, the Obama White House has also proposed a hiring spree that would swell the ranks of several hundred civil rights lawyers with more than 50 additional lawyers, a significant increase for a relatively small but powerful division of the government.

The division is “getting back to doing what it has traditionally done,” Mr. Holder said in an interview. “But it’s really only a start. I think the wounds that were inflicted on this division were deep, and it will take some time for them to fully heal.”

... Under the Bush administration, the agency shifted away from its traditional core focus on accusations of racial discrimination, channeling resources into areas like religious discrimination and human trafficking.

Uh, what about Alberto Gonzales's successful 2007 discrimination lawsuit, Vulcan Society against the Fire Department of New York, that was 100% Disparate Impact and 0% Disparate Treatment?
... The division has filed about 10 “friend of the court” briefs in private discrimination-related lawsuits since Mr. Obama’s inauguration, a practice that had dwindled in the previous administration.

In July, moreover, the division’s acting head, Loretta King, sent a memorandum to every federal agency urging more aggressive enforcement of regulations that forbid recipients of taxpayer money from policies that have a disparate impact on minorities.

Like Westchester County.
... Bush-era changes to the division’s permanent rank may also have lingering effects. From 2003 to 2007, Bush political appointees blocked liberals from career jobs and promotions, which they steered to fellow conservatives, whom one such official privately described as “real Americans,” a department inspector general report found. ...

Can't have that...
Many of their replacements had scant civil rights experience and were graduates of lower-ranked law schools. The transition report says the era of hiring such “inexperienced or poorly qualified” lawyers — who are now themselves protected by civil service laws — has left lasting damage.

Instead, we must have affirmative action admittees from top schools.
... The Civil Rights Division is now seeking to expand those changes. It is developing a new hiring policy under which panels of career employees — not political appointees — would decide both whom to hire and to promote for positions from interns to veteran lawyers. The policy could be completed as early as this month....

Some conservatives are skeptical that such a policy will keep politics out of hiring, however. Robert Driscoll, a division political appointee from 2001 to 2003, said career civil rights lawyers are “overwhelmingly left-leaning” and will favor liberals.

“If you are the Obama administration and you allow the career staff to do all the hiring, you will get the same people you would probably get if you did it yourself,” he said. “In some ways, it’s a masterstroke by them.”

Mr. Holder has elsewhere called for social changes with civil rights overtones, like the passage of a federal hate-crimes law, the elimination of the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine and greater financing for indigent defense.

By contrast, he described his Civil Rights Division efforts as more restoration than change. The recent moves, he argued, are a return to its basic approach under presidents of both parties — despite some policy shifts between Republican and Democratic administrations — before the “sea change” and “aberration” of the Bush years.

So, as Obama demands that the public trust him on the infinitely complex health bill, he's simultaneously raising the most fundamental question in politics: "Whose side are you on?"

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

38 comments:

Anonymous said...

Charlie Savage is the same NYTer who contributed to the rotten coverage of the Duke lacrosse fiasco. Great, just great!

agnostic said...

Is there some way to improve on current debt-to-GDP measurements, to show how sane vs. insane the overleveraging is?

Like, relative to GDP, how much debt went to enhancing welfare, and how much went to bullshit like maintaining a peasant underclass from Central America? But not that specific, since we'd want to compare these ratios across countries.

You always see leftists comparing the defense-spending-to-GDP ratios of many countries, with the US in outer space -- let's come up with some illuminating ratios of our own.

Anonymous said...

And conservatives aren't complaining about the plan, they're complaining because they won't be allowed to appoint enough of their cronies. This is why the Republican Party is DOA.

eh said...

...politically tinged hiring under the Bush administration,...

Good thing there won't be any more of that! I mean, it's not like this whole business is in any way 'political'.

Anonymous said...

The federal hate crimes bill will be the harbinger of doom.

Mr. Anon said...

"The Obama administration is planning to revive high-impact enforcement of civil rights against policies where statistics show that minorities fare disproportionately poorly."

That's a poorly written sentence. Does the NYT employ editors anymore?

Anonymous said...

This is all part of that frank conversation on race the country is supposed to have. BOHICA.

Anonymous said...

agnostic: Is there some way to improve on current debt-to-GDP measurements, to show how sane vs. insane the overleveraging is?

Like, relative to GDP, how much debt went to enhancing welfare, and how much went to bullshit like maintaining a peasant underclass from Central America?


The name you are looking for is "Robert Rector".

The average black family in the USA imposes on society direct costs of at least $22,449 per family per year:

The Fiscal Cost of Low-Skill Households to the U.S. Taxpayer
April 4, 2007
by Robert Rector, Christine Kim and Shanea Watkins, Ph.D.
heritage.org
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: ...A household’s net fiscal deficit equals the cost of benefits and services received minus taxes paid. If the costs of direct and means-tested benefits, education, and population-based services alone are counted, the average low-skill household had a fiscal deficit of $22,449 (expenditures of $32,138 minus $9,689 in taxes)...

The average aboriginal hispanic family in the USA imposes on society direct costs of at least $19,588 per family per year:

The Fiscal Cost of Low-Skill Immigrants to the U.S. Taxpayer
by Robert Rector and Christine Kim
May 21, 2007
heritage.org
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: ...A household's net fiscal deficit equals the cost of benefits and services received minus taxes paid. When the costs of direct and means-tested benefits, education, and population-based services are counted, the average low-skill household had a fiscal deficit of $19,588 (expenditures of $30,160 minus $10,573 in taxes)....


Sorry, but I don't have any figures on indirect costs [e.g. economic "friction" produced by government-mandated quota hiring] - not entirely sure how you'd go about figuring that one.

[Maybe you could run Monte Carlo routines on e.g. lily-white government agencies in Utah or Idaho versus heavily NAM-ed government agencies in East LA or Detroit and try to least-squares/Legendre your way to some sort of underlying law? I guess if you had a lot of bandwidth to your data points, then you could see how badly non-linear the problem was as a function of the percentage of quota hires. Of course, so much of modern government runs on "point & click" software and systems produced by private-sector contractors that it might be difficult to extricate the immersed phenomenon from the ambient influence of the private sector.]

PS: If you combine these hatecalcs with hatestats like this or this, then you quickly realize that the USA's demographic situation is simply untenable.

Compare Igor Panarin's latest predictions - some of the details might be wrong, but I think he's got the big picture about right.

Anonymous said...

Nothing new here:

EXCLUSIVE: Panel sees race bias in health care bill
Jennifer Haberkorn
August 11, 2009
washingtontimes.com

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights says some little-noticed provisions in the House health care bill are racially discriminatory, and it intends to ask President Obama and Congress to rewrite sections that factor in race when awarding billions in contracts, scholarships and grants.

The commission also fears the programs, which are designed to improve health care in underserved areas, will not be effective.

In a draft of a letter the commission approved Friday, the group raises constitutional questions about giving preferential treatment to minority students for scholarships, and about favoring medical schools and organizations that have a record of sending graduates to areas with inadequate health care services...

The draft letter also cites testimony from Dr. Amitabh Chandra of Harvard University who said the idea that expanding the number of minority physicians and providing "cultural competence training" will bridge the health status gap is "grounded in hope more than science," according to the draft language...



More than any other major commentator, I think that Spengler really nailed Obama in postulating that he hates America, and that his hatred is fueled by a spiritually vacuous infatuation with the myth of the tribal world [as augmented by ghostwriter William Ayers's intellectually infantile infatuation with the myth of the Noble Savage].

Racialist-Luddite-Marxist-Nihilism: Is there any heresy to which these clowns do not subscribe?

SF said...

So far you haven't had anything to say about the Dugard case. One thing that strikes me is that there is definitely a place for women in law enforcement. That place is not in guarding 200 lb prisoners, but it is in investigation and intuitive police work.

Eric said...

... The Civil Rights Division is now seeking to expand those changes. It is developing a new hiring policy under which panels of career employees — not political appointees — would decide both whom to hire and to promote for positions from interns to veteran lawyers. The policy could be completed as early as this month....

Oh, what a great idea - a tenure system at Justice so no matter what the voters do policy doesn't change.

Anonymous said...

Perfect!! I was wondering when we, the TRUE minorities,(by that I mean white folks) would be able to have an "even playing field".

Anonymous said...

South African man becomes refugee after being persecuted for being white
By Ian Evans
Last updated at 11:09 AM on 01st September 2009
dailymail.co.uk

A white South African man has been granted refugee status in Canada after an immigration board ruled he faces persecution if he is returned to his native country.

Brandon Huntley, 31, from Cape Town, said he had been stabbed three times by black robbers, who called him a 'white dog'...

dearieme said...

The figures do suggest that those NAM fellows make a disproportionately small contribution to American income and wealth. Something should be done about it.

testing99 said...

What did anyone expect? Obama is a guy out of the Chicago shakedown school, it's what he knows. He doesn't think there will be any backlash from this because the media will fly air cover for him.

And David Brooks really, really likes his pants.

Current thinking is "Rahm it through" (Obamacare, Cap and Trade) and let the chips fall where they may, even with Obama at 42% approval and falling. It's what electing Obama over McCain meant -- more of this basically unstoppable, until there is a crisis point that becomes remarkably ugly.

There is no "safety" or margin of error built in with Obama, a President McCain needing SOME Republican votes would have had a safety margin to tamp down this AA palooza frenzy.

Obama has promised basically the moon to Blacks and Hispanics so he has to deliver. That means firing White employees and hiring Black/Hispanic ones.

testing99 said...

Conservatives are not complaining about the plan because they are afraid of being labeled "racist" which matters to the White Squishy middle class, and SWPL, and the media (which uses it to effectively destroy conservatives).

Only those not holding office: Palin, Limbaugh, Levin, etc. can speak openly. Eventually the matter will come to a complete crisis point with a radicalized and furious Middle Class but it will take a long time and THAT solution won't be good either.

Basically the powerful elites with ENORMOUS sums of middle men (Soros, Geffen) money trump populist votes.

Top said...

Since when did Americans accept the idea that a bunch of racially driven cronies can take over their government and drive it into a third-world hell hole? There is more to running a country than cheating and robbing - that's what the American experiment was supose to be about. The failure and collapse of USA is a tragedy for the whole world.

Eric said...

And conservatives aren't complaining about the plan, they're complaining because they won't be allowed to appoint enough of their cronies. This is why the Republican Party is DOA.

I could take this sentiment more seriously if it didn't look like the Democrats are about to be slaughtered by those very same Republicans in 2010.

Tom Merle said...

I actually think this will prove to be a fortunate turn of events, for the same reason that the fire fighters case raised national consciousness. Yes, there will be some fall guys who will get poked and prodded and more, but they will be heroes to the cause of constitutional fairness and help join the issue by grounding the ongoing debate in real world situations. Bring 'em on.

rob said...

If, IF the government has to impose diversity on us, actual two-way street quotas are the best possible mechanism. Unlike top 10% plans, or scrapping aptitude testing, 'holistic assessment' and such, straight quotas don't destroy standards for whites.

If the quota minorities are chosen by the same assessment mechanism as whites, at least the fire dept or whatever will have the most qualified minorities who applied.


Or let NAMs have their percent (but no more) chosen any way they like. Straight quotas don't savage the selection mechanisms for whites and asians.

First anon. The federal civil service is a wing of the Democrats. If Republicans, or maybe some day a conservative, can't appoint and promote cronies, they can never have policies implemented in good faith.

All the old civil service protections like seniority and merit promotions have disparate impact on blacks and hispanics, so they need to go from a left-perspective.

From the right, once those protections are gone, Republicans might be able to have more loyal and higher-morale bureaucrats.

Agnostic, the expense of welfare and prison for immigrants and their children would be a good comparison. So would fraction of immigrants with lower incomes than the natives.

David Davenport said...

... One thing that strikes me is that there is definitely a place for women in law enforcement. That place is not in guarding 200 lb prisoners, but it is in investigation and intuitive police work.

"Feminine intuition"? Isn't that an old-fashioned stereotype?

And who says a woman must weigh less than a man? Weight-ism is sexism.

John Seiler said...

This is going to kill more jobs. If you're a manufacturing-plant owner, why risk a decade-long "civil rights" lawsuit when you can shutter the plant and move manufacturing to China, where they don't have these absurdities.

Svigor said...

I'm all for some quotas.

E.g., I'd like to see 100% of the decision-making and important jobs in the media go to blacks; everything but crap like makeup and broom-pushing.

And I mean real blacks, not Obamas and Thandie Newtons.

I'd prefer that to the current situation, or a SWPL dominated media like exists in the Tel Aviv Scots-Irish imagination.

JCS said...

I've always wondered how the engineering and hard science departments at major research universities do not get slammed by disparate impact. Easily 60 to 80 percent of their graduate students have Asian ancestry (East Asia, India, and the Middle East), and females rarely exceed 10 percent of the population. Often American blacks number a handful out of every thousand, if that. American Latinos of non-white descent are perhaps two handfuls. If that isn't disparate impact, I don't know what is. Is the Obama administration going to investigate this blatant example of disparate impact?

Does the law forbid lawsuits against educational establishments, or is it something more complex? For example, does the law count an entire university when determining the numbers for disparate impact, instead of the more reasonable method that would go department by department? I'd really like to know, if anyone has the answer.

Robert said...

For just a moment, I thought I was reading Iowahawk. Then I realized, this blog didn't make any sense!

Anonymous said...

That place is not in guarding 200 lb prisoners, but it is in investigation and intuitive police work.

An experiment: try watching a representitive range of cop shows, all those female and non-white detectives and forensic scientists.

Then try watching a few true crime documentaries. Those fictional women and NAM detectives and scientists have mysteriously turned into white guys. Not all of course, Im sure Discovery Channel flings every NAM and woman it can find onto the screen but even then their scarcity is noticible.

One has to buy into a full on liberal/feminist world view to belive that all thats holding women back from being the next Sherlock Holmes is the entrenched attitudes of male police officers.

Reg Cæsar said...

The Obama administration is planning to revive high-impact enforcement of civil rights against policies where statistics show that minorities fare disproportionately poorly... including voting rights, housing, employment, bank lending practices... and redistricting after the 2010 census.

You can bet that Holder's list will not include the issuing of concealed-carry permits, even though the disparity therein has got to be at least as great as in any of these other matters, and the prejudice of the decisionmakers both more real and vastly easier to establish.

I know I harp on this point, but it is not minor. The message sent by the gun politics of black leaders is simply: We said we were equal, but we lied.

Never mind affirmative action, civil rights, and all that. If they're right, we really have to reconsider the Fourteenth Amendment.

Anonymous said...

Agnostic,

lagriffedulion has already helped to calculate the economic costs of affirmative action here:

http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/robinhood.htm

Underachiever

jody said...

JCS, there are lots of fields in large multi-racial nations with "disparate impact". IE the field is primarily filled with the dreaded, hated, white guy. white guys out there creating, pioneering, developing 80% of everything in the world, just like they have for a long time. they build up entire industries from NOTHING, from absolute scratch ZERO, and it takes a few decades before the other races start demanding equal representation in these enterprises that they had virtually nothing to do with creating or maintaining. black americans, for instance, haven't been the primary driver behind the creation of even one single major sport. white run sports enterprises would be just fine without blacks, but not the other way around. the other way around is africa, with almost no professional sports despite having nearly 1 billion africans.

give the diversicrats and race mongers some time. there are a lot of fields they haven't gotten their hands on yet. the only industry that is bulletproof is law. i mean, law firms with zero black lawyers are called in all the time to sue other companies for having the exact same number of blacks. how do they not get countersued? they're already lawyers, that's how.

Anonymous said...

I think white guys need to start demanding that the government collects statistics that disperately impact them. Right now there are 133 women graduating from college for every 100 men! I am sure Eric Holder will be on that one right away. Also, I have heard nothing from Obama or anybody else on how much money will be spent on men vs. women and blacks vs. whites. My guess is women will try to continue consuming a disproportionally high percentage of our health care dollars. This is no small problem.

Figgy said...

What's the deal with this administration and the NY Times? Does Obama have one of those vacuum tubes on his desk whereby he can write out some policy decision, stick it in the tube and the Times sucks it right up to New York? Maybe my effort is lacking but I don't see this story showing up anywhere else. Has the times become his sounding board or something?

If I didn't know better, I might conclude the NYT is in Obama's corner.

rob said...

Mr. Holder has elsewhere called for social changes with civil rights overtones, like...the elimination of the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine and greater financing for indigent defense.

Mr. Obama's administration has decided that America's problems can be solved by having more poor crackheads out of prison? Rly?

If David Duke, Hell, if David Brooks advocated keeping black neighborhoods and cities full crack addicts and 'indigent defendents' he would excoriated.

Since this is a black-left plan, I'm guessing the freed crackheads will be put in currently white, conservative areas. Section 8 housing or half-way or whatever houses will go up where Obama didn't get many votes. The crackhead thugs will be unoffical guerillas and militia, punishing for conservative whites not smoking enough crack, and for not voting for Obama. Who, Whom?

Comment 31 anon, Yes. We need income and payroll tax collections broken down by race.

On healthcare, part of the difference between men and women is ob-gyn. That women live longer, and older people consume more healthcare also contributes.

Also, because many problems are best treated early, even the hypochondria that so many women have may be cheaper in the long run. Michael Milkens rag had a study showing how much money drugs saved in hospitalization and surgery. It may be that 30 years of high blood pressure medicine is cheaper than 10 years of dialysis.

Going to the doctor for every headache and sniffle will likely have to be rationed away, and women won't like the much lower touch and less huggy Bureau of Health, or BuHel, and apologies to Jerry Pournelle.

Truth said...

"Perfect!! I was wondering when we, the TRUE minorities,(by that I mean white folks) would be able to have an "even playing field"."

I for one, always thought "minority" meant less than 50%. Of course I went to a mediocre state college, so what do know?

BTW, "white folks" own 95% of everything, that's pretty "even." What you desire is an "even playing field" for stupid white people; can't help you there Sport.

"Current thinking is "Rahm it through"

Oh, I think you mean the "radical black muslim" president should "Rahm it through" with his Jewish chief of staff, then go home to his white grandmother's house for some afternoon tea (lord give me strength!)

"Only those not holding office: Palin, Limbaugh, Levin, etc. can speak openly."

Palin's not holding office? Oh yeah that's right, she cut and ran on the people of her state in the middle of her term. And Limbaugh has never held anything except GW Bush's jock...and a syringe full of illegal drugs.

"An experiment: try watching a representitive range of cop shows, all those female and non-white detectives and forensic scientists.

Then try watching a few true crime documentaries."

Yeah, well guess what old boy; the 54 year old (white) man on the true crime documentary is portrayed by a 24 year old blonde with big tits on the cop show. Are you complaining about that too?

It's entertainment buddy, I don't think cops shoot three people a week in real life either.

Anonymous said...

Hey Lucius, go back to using your screen name!

I like your comments and would appreciate it if you would at least identify yourself. Besides, Google already knows where you are, even if you don't have an account or pick a name.

Eric said...

I for one, always thought "minority" meant less than 50%. Of course I went to a mediocre state college, so what do know?

Oh, good point. What's the percentage of white men in the US?

jody said...

yes truth, it is accurate that the hated, evil white men do own about 90% of everything in the US.

BECAUSE THEY CREATED IT FROM SCRATCH ZERO.

that's not a statement of pride, it's a simple matter of fact, a statement of logistics. the builder or creator of something typically owns it.

black americans do not create much, and mestizos are even worse. they create or develop almost nothing, and as they become the predominant group in any state, the amount of cool stuff generated by the people there drops down to nearly zero. how much stuff comes out of mexico, anyway? ALMOST NOTHING! almost nothing important was invented, developed, or pioneered in mexico, in any field. and america is now taking on the lowest IQ, least literate, least capable people from there.

you typically own something that you created. white guys still create most stuff, so they own it. for now. until they don't, under south african style politics.

Anonymous said...

What percentage of total world population are white people?

I have heard 8%.

That's a tad less than 50%.

Anonymous said...

What I want to know is, when is the boycott of affirmative action businesses going to begin in earnest? It's not like we can really boycott the affirmative action state, since they can throw us in prison if we refuse to pay taxes (prisons which I am told are a little different from what they were in HD Thoreau's time). But a lot of businesses do openly practice and support affirmative action (and nearly all colleges do). So why not just route around them?

It doesn't matter how much you love your alma mater, if they are practicing affirmative action (especially openly), you shouldn't be giving them money.