racial quotas

Vote Expected Soon on Judicial Nomination of Left-Wing Law Professor Goodwin Liu

by Hans Bader on May 18, 2011

in Economy, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Property Rights, Zeitgeist

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has filed a cloture petition on the pending nomination of Berkeley Law Professor Goodwin Liu to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. A vote on the nomination could come as early as tomorrow. The National Review‘s Ed Whelan comments here (Whelan is a former Justice Department lawyer). I earlier discussed the Liu nomination here.  Liu has virtually no experience in the courtroom, and has argued that “‘free enterprise, private ownership of property, and limited government” are right-wing ideological “code words.”

Liu is a big supporter of race-based busing, arguing it should be required not merely within school districts, but across school district lines to create what are effectively region-wide racial quotas, a radical claim rejected by the Supreme Court long ago (the Supreme Court rejects busing across district lines even in desegregation cases). CEI filed an amicus brief in the Seattle Schools case against race-based school assignments within a school system (the racial percentages in that case were struck down in a 5-to-4 vote after being upheld by the Ninth Circuit, to which Liu has been nominated).

Dodd-Frank Financial “Reform” Violates Property Rights and Equal-Protection Guarantees

by Hans Bader on January 9, 2011 · 2 comments

in Bailout Watch, Economy, Legal, Property Rights, Regulation

Last week, I described how the Dodd-Frank financial “reform” law passed last summer violates constitutional separation-of-powers safeguards by giving unaccountable bureaucrats the power to seize companies and legislate through administrative fiat.  But that is not the only way Dodd-Frank violates the Constitution.  It also violates property rights and equal-protection guarantees.

For example, it contains racial preferences that were criticized by members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. It “imposes race and gender employment quotas on the financial industry,” noted economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth in the Washington Examiner. Its ”Section 342 states that race and gender employment ratios must be observed by all government agencies that regulate the financial sector, as well as private financial institutions that do business with the government.”

This unconstitutional requirement is the brainchild of Los Angeles Congresswoman Maxine Waters, the Castro-loving, left-wing ideologue who earlier praised the Los Angeles race riots that destroyed scores of Korean-owned businesses as an “uprising” against injustice. Waters once told a CEO in a public Congressional hearing, “This liberal will be all about socializing . . . .uh, uh . . . would be about, basically, taking over and the government running all of your companies.”

Law Professor Richard Epstein notes that Dodd-Frank is also an unconstitutional “taking” of private property, since it deliberately forces certain banks to process debit card transactions at a loss. (That provision is being challenged in a lawsuit called TCF Bank v. Bernanke. Debit cards did not contribute to the financial crisis in any way, but Dodd-Frank regulates them at the behest of large businesses that objected to being charged any fee by banks for processing debit card payments. Thanks to Dodd-Frank, some customers will now be charged annual fees for their debit cards.)

Dodd-Frank itself contains little “reform,” reinforcing the very features of the status quo that spawned the financial crisis.  Congressional Democrats blocked a GOP amendment that would have reformed the government-sponsored mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the Obama administration lifted a $400 billion limit on bailing them out and showered their executives with $42 million in pay — even though Treasury Secretary Geithner has admitted that “Fannie and Freddie were a core part of what went wrong” in the financial crisis.

Fannie and Freddie helped spawn the mortgage crisis by buying up risky mortgages and repackaging them as prime mortgages, thus creating an artificial market for junk: “From the time Fannie and Freddie began buying risky loans as early as 1993, they routinely misrepresented the mortgages they were acquiring, reporting them as prime when they had characteristics that made them clearly subprime.”

At the direction of the Obama administration, Freddie Mac ran up more than $30 billion in losses to bail out mortgage borrowers, some of whom had high incomes. Federal regulators sought to make Freddie Mac hide the resulting losses from the SEC and the public.

Dodd-Frank is not unique in containing racial preferences. Many bills backed by Obama are riddled with racial set-asides, including the health care law passed last year. Obamacare has attracted criticism from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights for containing both racial preferences and lower standards for treatment in predominantly-minority institutions, potentially harming both white applicants and minority patients. This racial discrimination appears to violate court rulings like the Supreme Court’s Adarand decision, and the Rothe and Western States Paving decisions issued by the federal appeals courts.

Four Radicals Renominated to Federal Judgeships

by Hans Bader on January 8, 2011

in Legal

On Wednesday, President Obama renominated four radicals to federal judgeships, even though their nominations previously died in the Senate. A week earlier, he made six controversial recess appointments. Those sharply partisan and ideological acts contradict his recent rhetoric about the need for “bipartisanship.”

Obama once again nominated John J. “Jack” O’Connell, who gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to liberal politicians.  O’Connell used $2.5 million in state-settlement money to pay off a creditor, in an unethical diversion of state funds. Using political influence, he got himself hired to bring a costly and futile lead paint lawsuit that “achieved nothing, other than waste thousands of hours of attorney time.” The U.S. Chamber of Commerce opposed O’Connell’s nomination — the first time it ever opposed a federal judicial nomination.

Obama renominated Edward Chen, a fervent advocate of racial preferences who unsuccessfully challenged a provision of the California Constitution banning racial discrimination and preferences. Chen also “objected to the singing of ‘America the Beautiful’ at a funeral because of his ‘feelings of ambivalence and cynicism when confronted by appeals to patriotism.’”

Radical law professor Goodwin Liu was also renominated. As lawyer Ted Frank noted in the Washington Examiner, Liu once claimed that racial quotas are not merely permitted, but constitutionally “required.”  If confirmed, Liu would sit on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, a sharply-divided federal appeals court with jurisdiction over a whopping one-fifth of the American people. Liu wrongly argued in the past that the Constitution requires some forms of welfare, although he denied supporting such a constitutional right to welfare in his more recent testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, when he experienced a politically-convenient confirmation conversion after his nomination became controversial.  Although Liu briefly worked for a law firm, Liu has no experience actually trying cases, despite the fact that judges are supposed to have “substantial courtroom and trial experience” (a fact that did not keep the staunchly liberal ABA, which shares Liu’s ideology, from supporting his nomination despite his lack of this basic qualification).   Liu has claimed that “‘free enterprise, private ownership of property, and limited government” are right-wing concepts and ideological “code words.” Liu is also a big user of politically-correct psychobabble, writing that a judge is supposed to be a “culturally situated interpreter of social meaning” rather than an impartial umpire who interprets the law in accord with its plain meaning or its framers’ intent.

Obama also renominated Louis Butler, who was so extreme that he was removed from the Wisconsin Supreme Court by voters in 2008 (the first time the state’s voters had removed a Justice since 1967).  Butler’s empathy for criminals was summed up by his nickname, Loophole Louis.

House Panel Releases Ethics Charges Against Rep. Maxine Waters

by Hans Bader on August 9, 2010 · 1 comment

in Bailout Watch, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

A House ethics panel has released the charges against left-wing firebrand Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) arising out her shady dealings with OneUnited Bank. (Her family owns an interest in the bank, which got $12 million from taxpayers.) We previously described the controversy here.

This is the same congresswoman who once told a CEO in a public congressional hearing, “This liberal will be all about socializing . . . would be about, basically, taking over and the government running all of your companies.”

Having socialist leanings apparently doesn’t stop a politician from cozying up to banks like the terribly mismanaged OneUnited Bank–or supporting corporate welfare. In practice, socialism has nothing to do with equality, as its supporters claim; it’s just a way to justify taking and spending other people’s money.

Despite her ethical problems, Waters is a powerful lawmaker. She inserted racial preferences into the financial reform bill, which became law despite criticism from the Wall Street Journal and economists.

Left-Wing Politician Faces Ethics Charges for Improperly Using Influence to Aid Bank

by Hans Bader on August 3, 2010

in Bailout Watch, Economy, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Zeitgeist

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) is facing ethics charges after she improperly used her influence to get special favors from regulators, and costly taxpayer bailouts, for a mismanaged bank whose executives gave her money and enriched her husband (and then lied about it).

Waters, notorious for her race-baiting and hard-left ideology, earlier praised the Los Angeles race riots that destroyed scores of Korean-owned businesses as an “uprising” against injustice. Waters once told a CEO in a public congressional hearing, “This liberal will be all about socializing . . . would be about, basically, taking over and the government running all of your companies.”

Waters made sure that the financial “reform” law recently signed by President Obama contained costly racial preferences and discrimination.  The bill ”imposes race and gender employment quotas on the financial industry — at a time the job market is stalling and economic growth is slowing,” writes economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth.  Its ”Section 342 states that race and gender employment ratios must be observed by all government agencies that regulate the financial sector, as well as private financial institutions that do business with the government.”  That provision was Waters’ brainchild.

The so-called financial “reform” bill is actually 2,315 pages of special-interest payoffs.  The bill does nothing to reform the biggest bailout recipients, the government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even though administration officials admit they were at the “core“ of “what went wrong.”  Fannie and Freddie helped spawn the mortgage crisis by buying up risky sub-prime mortgages and repackaging them as prime mortgages, thus creating an artificial market for junk.  Now they are getting a $400 billion bailout.

Bank Failures Rise; Banks Shuttered at a Faster Rate in 2010 Than in 2008 and 2009; Financial “Reform” Adds to Banks’ Woes

by Hans Bader on July 13, 2010 · 3 comments

in Bailout Watch, Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

“This past Friday, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) shuttered another four US banks,” notes Neil Hrab in the Washington Examiner. ”That makes 90 bank failures so far in 2010.  If bank failures continue at the same rate for the rest of 2010, you can expect perhaps 200 in total to fail this year. That would represent a jump over 2009, when the FDIC closed 140 failed banks.  In 2008, just 25 US banks were closed by the FDIC. (To keep the number of failures in perspective, we need to remember that the US has about 8,000 banks in total.)

The so-called financial “reform” bill that now looks certain to pass Congress will make matters worse.  It will impose useless, burdensome regulations on banks, while doing nothing to prevent another financial crisis.  The bill ”imposes race and gender employment quotas on the financial industry–at a time the job market is stalling and economic growth is slowing,” writes economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth in the Washington Examiner. Its ”Section 342 states that race and gender employment ratios must be observed by all government agencies that regulate the financial sector, as well as private financial institutions that do business with the government.”   This unconstitutional requirement is the brainchild of Los Angeles Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who earlier praised the Los Angeles race riots that destroyed scores of Korean-owned businesses as an “uprising“ against injustice.  Waters once told a CEO in a public congressional hearing, “This liberal will be all about socializing . . . .uh, uh . . . would be about, basically, taking over and the government running all of your companies.”

That bill contains little “reform,” reinforcing the very features of the status quo that spawned the financial crisis.  Earlier, congressional Democrats blocked reform of the corrupt government-sponsored mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the Obama administration lifted a $400 billion limit on bailing them out.  (Even though administration officials admitted that they were at the “core“ of “what went wrong“ in our financial system.)  At the direction of the Obama administration, Freddie Mac ran up more than $30 billion in losses to bail out mortgage borrowers, some of whom have high incomes.  Federal regulators sought to make Freddie Mac hide the resulting losses from the SEC and the public.

Meanwhile, the administration has backed a new tax on productive private banks that did not receive bailouts at taxpayers’ expense.

Government pressure on banks to make loans in economically-depressed neighborhoods was one of the causes of the mortgage crisis.  That pressure will increase under the financial “reform” legislation.  Legislators approved Obama’s proposal to create a new consumer “protection” agency. “The agency would be in charge of enforcing the Community Reinvestment Act, a law that prods banks to make loans in low-income communities.” It would do so with little regard for banks’ financial safety and soundness, even though the Community Reinvestment Act was a contributor to the financial crisis.

Financial “Reform” Bill Engages in Racial Engineering, While Ignoring Corrupt Mortgage Giants

by Hans Bader on June 15, 2010

in Bailout Watch, Culture, Economy, Employment, Labor, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

Congress and the Obama administration refused to do anything about the corrupt government-sponsored mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even though administration officials admitted that they were at the “core” of “what went wrong” in our financial system.  Doing so was just “too hard,” they claimed, and too time-consuming.

But they did find time in their financial “reform” legislation to push racial quotas at the Federal Reserve, requiring each Federal Reserve Bank to establish an “Office of Minority and Women Inclusion” to “increase the participation of minority-owned and women-owned businesses in programs and contracts.”  This requirement is the brainchild of Los Angeles Congresswoman Maxine Waters, the Castro-loving, left-wing ideologue who earlier praised the Los Angeles race riots that destroyed scores of Korean-owned businesses as an “uprising” against injustice.

Forget about those pesky Supreme Court decisions saying that racial preferences are presumptively unconstitutional and subject to strict scrutiny, and not permissible to promote “racial balance.”  Apparently, they are obsolete in the era of “hope and change.”  Plenty of other changes are afoot too.  Obama fired an inspector general for exposing corruption by one of his cronies.  And the Obama Justice Department illegally defied the Civil Rights Commission to cover up the fact that the administration let members of the racist, anti-Semitic New Black Panther Party get away with voter intimidation.

Radical Law Professor Goodwin Liu Approved as High-Ranking Judge by Senate Judiciary Committee, on Party-Line Vote

by Hans Bader on May 14, 2010 · 1 comment

in Economy, Employment, Labor, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

Radical law professor Goodwin Liu was approved to sit on the federal appeals court for the Ninth Circuit in a party-line, 12-to-7 vote, by the Senate Judiciary Committee.  His nomination now heads to the full Senate, which will confirm him unless there is a successful filibuster by Republicans.

Liu, a left-wing ideologue, is now poised to sit on the nation’s largest federal appeals court, the Ninth Circuit.  Many Ninth Circuit rulings are decided by narrow majorities, like the recent 6-to-5 ruling against Wal-Mart in a multi-billion dollar lawsuit.

Liu has been suggested by left-wing racial lobbies as a possible Supreme Court nominee, because he believes that racial preferences are not merely permitted by the Constitution (as liberal justices argued in the Bakke case), but required by it.   Liu believes that race-based busing should be required not merely within school districts, but across school district lines to create what are effectively region-wide racial quotas, a radical claim rejected by the Supreme Court long ago (the Supreme Court rejects busing across district lines even in desegregation cases).  (The slippery Liu claims to oppose racial quotas, but he supports mandating fixed racial percentages and ratios, which is exactly what racial quotas are, under a dictionary definition of “quota.”)  Racial quotas are often implemented at the urging of left-wing academics who harbor divisive and offensive racial stereotypes, such as “diversity” trainers who claim that whites are coldly “impersonal” and “intellectual” and thus need to be racially balanced with minorities who are “emotional” and “personal.”

Liu is hostile to “’free enterprise, private ownership of property, and limited government.’ According to Liu, these are ‘code words for an ideological agenda hostile to environmental, workplace, and consumer protections.’”

Liu also believes in “a constitutional right to welfare.“   Liu is also a big user of politically-correct psychobabble designed to hide judicial activism, writing that a judge is supposed to be a “culturally situated interpreter of social meaning” rather than an impartial umpire who interprets the law in accord with its plain meaning or its framers’ intent.

Bar association standards say lawyers are supposed to have practiced law for at least 12 years before being nominated to a judgeship, and should also have “substantial courtroom and trial experience.“  Liu has no trial experience, and had not even been out of law school for 12 years when he was nominated, meaning he was by definition unqualified under ABA standards.  But a liberal ABA committee, showing ideological bias, quickly rubberstamped his nomination anyway, ignoring his lack of the required qualifications, since the committee members shared his extreme political views.

The Ninth Circuit, to which Liu was nominated, already contained a lot of leftist judges.  The Wall Street Journal criticized a recent 6-to-5 ruling by the Ninth Circuit allowing six employees to bring a  multibillion dollar class action lawsuit against Wal-Mart in the name of 1.5 million other Wal-Mart employees they had little in common with.  As the dissenting opinion, written by Judge Sandra Ikuta, noted, the lawsuit was based on junk science that violated the Supreme Court’s Daubert decision, and let a few employees whose situation was anything but typical sue in the name of countless employees they shared nothing with but gender.  The plaintiffs’ lawyers sought at least $450 billion!  The intellectually dishonest ruling in Dukes v. Wal-Mart allowed just six employees to bring a national class-action even though Wal-Mart’s hiring and promotions are decentralized and not done on a company-wide basis, and Federal Rules of Procedure say that national class-actions are supposed to challenge a company-wide practice.  The Ninth Circuit’s earlier ruling against Wal-Mart was likewise an abuse of basic legal principles.

Although the lawsuit will affect employees and managers across the country (and probably reduce the value of your retirement plan, since the mutual funds in your 401(k) probably own Wal-Mart stock), a verdict will be rendered solely by a left-leaning jury drawn from the San Francisco Bay Area, since the plaintiffs sued Wal-Mart in one of the most anti-employer judicial districts in America, the Northern District of California.

In the ruling against Wal-Mart, the Ninth Circuit was split along ideological lines, with only hard-core liberal judges in the majority, and a dissent joined in by all the moderate and conservative judges (as well as a mainstream liberal Democrat Barry Silverman).

Republicans Will Lose Many Seats in Congress Due to Right-Wing Paranoia About the Census

by Hans Bader on March 31, 2010

in Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Privacy, Zeitgeist

Republicans will lose many seats in Congress due to right-wing paranoia about the census and refusal to fill out Census forms, gloats the liberal web site Daily Kos. The number of congressional districts a state gets is based on how many of its citizens return completed Census forms.  Because voters in conservative states are completing and returning Census forms at lower rates than voters in liberal states, conservative states will lose many seats in the House of Representatives that they would otherwise gain due to increases in their population.

Republican-leaning “Red States” will also lose out on billions of dollars in federal funds, which are apportioned based largely on population.

Unlike many things the federal government does, the Census is expressly authorized by the explicit language of the Constitution.  (As a believer in free markets, limited government, and the Constitution, I have criticized some of the legislation backed by the Obama administration as being unconstitutional and beyond Congress’s enumerated powers.  But the Census and the questions it asks are perfectly constitutional, even though some of those questions may seem unnecessary.)

A few white Census respondents are stupidly listing their race as “human” or “some other race” rather than white.  Many commenters at the conservative website Free Republic say they will just refuse to report their race on their Census forms, viewing it as irrelevant.

This inaccurate reporting of racial information may unintentionally prolong racial set-aside programs that are obsolete and no longer necessary.  By making the white percentage of the population appear smaller than it in fact is, such responses can make it easier for the federal government to get away with racial quotas, which are based on so-called disparity studies, which measure the supposed gap between racial percentages in the population and racial percentages in awards of government contracts.  Under Supreme Court rulings like the 1987 Paradise decision, quotas are supposed to be used only as a “last resort” and for no longer than absolutely necessary.  But faulty Census data can give them a new lease on life, even when they serve no valid purpose, and enforce, rather than remedy, discrimination.

Nobel Prize Winning Economist Says Obama Policies Delaying Economic Recovery

by Hans Bader on January 8, 2010 · 3 comments

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Employment, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Health and Illness, Healthcare, Insurance, International, Labor, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Sanctimony, Stimulus to Nowhere, Trade

In the Wall Street Journal, Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker and others explain how President Obama’s policies are delaying and retarding the inevitable economic recovery, keeping unemployment high even though the recession Obama inherited was similar to others in the past that gave way to rapid recoveries:

In terms of U.S. output contractions, the so-called Great Recession was not much more severe than the recessions in 1973-75 and 1981-82. Yet recovery from the latest recession has started out much more slowly. For example, real GDP expanded by 7.7% in 1983 after unemployment peaked at 10.8% in December 1982, whereas GDP grew at an unimpressive annual rate of 2.2% in the third quarter of 2009. Although the fourth quarter is likely to show better numbers–probably much better–there are no signs of an explosive take off from the recession. …

In terms of discouraging a rapid recovery, other government proposals created greater uncertainty and risk for businesses and investors. These include plans to increase greatly marginal tax rates for higher incomes. In addition, discussions at the Copenhagen conference and by the president to impose high taxes on carbon dioxide emissions must surely discourage investments in refineries, power plants, factories and other businesses that are big emitters of greenhouse gases.

Congressional ‘reforms’ of the American health delivery system have gone through dozens of versions. The separate bills passed by the House and Senate worry small businesses, in particular. They fear their labor costs will increase because of mandates to spend much more on health insurance for their employees. The resulting reluctance of small businesses to invest, expand and hire harms households as well, because it slows the creation of new jobs and the growth of labor incomes. …

Even though some of the proposed antibusiness policies might never be implemented, they generate considerable uncertainty for businesses and households. Faced with a highly uncertain policy environment, the prudent course is to set aside or delay costly commitments that are hard to reverse. The result is reluctance by banks to increase lending–despite their huge excess reserves–reluctance by businesses to undertake new capital expenditures or expand work forces, and decisions by households to postpone major purchases.

Several pieces of evidence point to extreme caution by businesses and households. A regular survey by the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) shows that recent capital expenditures and near-term plans for new capital investments remain stuck at 35-year lows. The same survey reveals that only 7% of small businesses see the next few months as a good time to expand. Only 8% of small businesses report job openings, as compared to 14%-24% in 2008, depending on month, and 19%-26% in 2007.

Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package, which failed to cut unemployment, is now pressuring states to raise taxes, thanks to costly requirements it imposed on states at the behest of powerful public-employee unions.

Obama claimed the stimulus package was needed to prevent the economy from suffering from “irreversible decline,” but the Congressional Budget Office admitted that the stimulus package actually would shrink the economy “in the long run.”  Unemployment has skyrocketed past European levels, as big-spending countries have fared worse than thrifty ones.  The Obama Administration claims credit for creating imaginary jobs in non-existent Congressional districts.

As the Examiner notes, “If his stimulus program was approved, Obama promised, unemployment would not go above 8 percent this year. The reality is that it passed 10.3 percent in October. So now the stimulus books are being cooked to mollify an anxious public worried that real-world jobs continue to disappear and angry that Obama has thrown almost $1 trillion down the stimulus rathole.”

The stimulus package actually destroyed thousands of real world jobs by triggering trade wars with Canada and Mexico that killed jobs in America’s export sector (the stimulus package barred a measley 97 Mexican truckers from U.S. roads, a minor NAFTA violation that led to massive Mexican retaliation against U.S. exports of 40 farm products and kitchen goods worth $2.4 billion).  It also is wiping out jobs by inflicting costly mandates on state governments (such as repealing welfare reform, and imposing costly “prevailing wage” regulations and expensive racial set-asides).

The stimulus package has since spawned countless examples of government waste and corruption.  Recently, Obama fired an inspector general, Gerald Walpin, who uncovered millions of dollars of waste and fraud in the AmeriCorps program, including by a prominent Obama supporter, endangering the Obama supporter’s ability to administer federal stimulus spending in Sacramento.  Obama’s alleged justification for firing the inspector general turned out to be false.

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