His nominee for attorney general to replace race hustler Eric Holder told Congress during her hearing that everyone has a “right” to work, whether they are in the country legally or not.
Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions set up his question about Obama’s unilateral amnesty executive orders — the first for children brought here illegally and then for their parents — by pointing out how many citizens and people with green cards are unemployed and asking who has more right to a job in this country — citizens, unlawful immigrants or illegals?
Loretta Lynch (WSJ photo)
“Senator,” Loretta Lynch replied, “I believe the right and the obligation to work is one that’s shared by everyone in this country, regardless of how they came here. And certainly, if someone is here — regardless of status — I would prefer that they be participating in the workplace than not participating in the workplace.”
Never mind that more than 10.4 percent of the black labor force is unemployed. Obama and his nominee can throw them under the bus, because they’re going to vote for Democrats anyway. Go for the Hispanic vote.
Besides, where in the penumbra of the Constitution is this “right” to a job hidden?
When Obama announced his “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative a week ago many took him at his word that this would not be another huge government program in which money is poured down a hole.
“Just to be clear, My Brother’s Keeper is not some new, big government program,” Obama said in a 40-minute speech in which he repeatedly referred to the need to help “young men of color.” Obama gave the speech on a stage in front of a bunch of “young men of color” from Chicago.
“I didn’t have a dad in the house. And I was angry about it, even though I didn’t necessarily realized at the time. I made bad choices. I got high without always thinking about the harm that it could do. I didn’t always take school as seriously as I should have. I made excuses,” he said in attempt to make it seem like his travails were like those of today’s minority youth, though he was largely reared by white grandparents in Hawaii.
Obama pointed out that “Latino kids are almost twice as likely as white kids to be suspended from school. Black kids are nearly four times as likely.”
It creates a task force chaired by an assistant to the president and consisting of members of:
— the Attorney General;
— the Secretary of Agriculture; — the Secretary of Commerce; — the Secretary of Defense; — the Secretary of Education; — the Secretary of Health and Human Services; — the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; — the Secretary of the Interior; — the Secretary of Labor; — the Secretary of Transportation; — the Director of the Office of Management and Budget; — the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers; — the Director of the Office of Personnel Management; — the Administrator of the Small Business Administration; — the Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation for National and Community Service; — the Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement; — the Director of the Domestic Policy Council; — the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy; — the Director of the National Economic Council; and — the heads of such other executive departments, agencies, and offices as the Chair may, from time to time, designate.
This task force is to provide recommendations for how “young men of color” can gain access to “early childhood supports; grade school literacy; pathways to college and a career, including issues arising from school disciplinary action; access to mentoring services and support networks; and interactions with the criminal justice system and violent crime.”
That part about school disciplinary action sounds entirely too much like the proposal in January from Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who issued a set of national guidelines for discipline in public schools, claiming current discipline procedures disproportionately affect minorities.
“Too often, so-called zero-tolerance policies, however well intentioned they might be, make students feel unwelcome in their own schools; they disrupt the learning process,” Holder said, specifically talking about minority students. “And they can have significant and lasting negative effects on the long-term well-being of our young people, increasing their likelihood of future contact with the juvenile and criminal justice systems.” He ignored the negative impact on education for classmates who must put up with the unruly students.
Holder and Duncan, like Obama, were obsessed with the statistics that show black students make up only 15 percent of students. but blacks account for more than one-third of students suspended once, and 44 percent of those suspended more than once.
Ipso facto, there is bias. Bias that can remedied only by racial quotas.
Racial quotas in home loans and cars. Racial quotas in hiring. Racial quotas in college admissions. Racial quotas for prisons. Now, racial quotas in school discipline.
Or, as Investor’s Business Daily calls it: Race mongering:
“The president didn’t mention in his speech that a new Education Department rule will require every public school district to report suspension and expulsion data by race. Nor did he say the department also wants to know how often black students are put in ‘handcuffs’ or other ‘restraints’ on campus vs. white students.
“Once Obama’s race cops compile their discrimination database, every school district in the country will come under intense political pressure to scrap discipline at the expense of classroom safety. And every black kid will have a built-in excuse for bad behavior: racism.”
It may sound like a carrot, but it is really a big government stick. Make things come out proportionately with race or the attorney general will hammer you with a discrimination lawsuit. And if you disagree, you are a racist.
Obama’s half brother George lives in a shack in a slum in Nairobi. (CNN photo)
Attorney General Eric Holder is suing the Standard & Poor’s credit rating service for $5 billion for fraudulently giving overly optimistic ratings to residential mortgage-backed securities that subsequently crashed in value and cost investors untold amounts of money, according to Bloomberg News.
The Justice Department investigation, code-named “Alchemy,” began in November 2009, and reportedly looked into a number of ratings agencies but litigation against only S&P was announced Tuesday.
Eric Holder (Bloomberg photo at WSJ)
A funny thing happened along the way, according to a Wall Street Journal editorial today.
The newspaper quotes an S&P attorney as saying “things seemed to rev up in terms of the intensity” of the federal probe in 2011, about the time the agency downgraded Washington’s credit worthiness during the debt-limit fight. That was about the same time the credit rating agency Moody’s, which did notdowngrade the government, was dropped from the investigation.
WSJ could not resist pointing out the rich irony of the fact that Jack Lew, nominated to be secretary of the Treasury, was the head of Citigroup’s subprime mortgage investment division. Lew was paid nearly $1 million at a time the company’s stock value was crashing as a result of bad investments.
Bloomberg also points out that Obama’s new director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Richard Cordray, when he was the attorney general in Ohio, sued all of the big three ratings agencies — S&P, Moody’s and Fitch — accusing them of giving fraudulent credit ratings that cost public employee pension funds to lose money.
A judge dismissed the case, saying such opinions are essentially protected free speech and “predictive opinions.” A federal appeals court upheld the ruling in December.
In a right-hand-doesn’t-know-what-the-left-hand-is-doing mode, the WSJ points out that SEC rules require financial institutions to hold assets that are highly graded by the Big Three. But Justice is suing S&P, not the SEC.
Don’t think it is a co-incidence that only S&P is being sued and the government is using an argument that has already failed in court, while the president appoints people involved in abject failures to lucrative government jobs.
4TH ST8 