Ten Reasons Not To Confirm Thomas Perez As Next Labor Secretary

Supporters of the Center for Equal Opportunity know that Thomas Perez, who has headed the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division during the Obama administration, has been a disaster.   In spite—or maybe because—of this, President Obama has decided to promote him, nominating Mr. Perez to be the new Secretary of Labor.  With some input from CEO, Heritage Action this week has posted the information below (the website is here).  Worth reading!

It is not every week that the Senate confronts a cabinet nominee who does not believe in the equal application of the law and intends to micromanage your life, except for this week. On Thursday the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will hold a vote on the nomination of Thomas Perez, the current Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, to be the next Secretary of Labor. That vote will likely send Perez’s nomination to the Senate floor. Before that occurs, here’s a list of 10 examples of why Thomas Perez should not be confirmed as the next Secretary of Labor.

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A Speech President Obama Should Give (But Probably Won’t)

Here’s a speech that I think President Obama should give if the Supreme Court rules the way the Center for Equal Opportunity has urged it to in the Fisher case:

My fellow Americans, I want to talk to you tonight about the decision that the Supreme Court handed down today in Abigail Fisher v. University of Texas, in which a narrow majority of the Court said that our colleges and universities can no longer consider race in making admissions decisions.

My first reaction was disappointment, because my Justice Department had urged to Court to continue to allow this practice. But on reflection I have decided that maybe this is a blessing in disguise, or a wake-up call, or at least that if this decision is a lemon then we can still make lemonade out of it.

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Could We Have Caught the Boston Bombers Earlier?

Twelve years after September 11, our intelligence and federal law enforcement agencies still haven't fixed the data-sharing problems that make us vulnerable to more attacks. It's difficult to reach any other conclusion after unnamed counterterrorism officials at the CIA this week revealed that Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev remained in their system as a person with possible ties to terrorism, while the FBI had closed its investigation into the man.

If this information had been shared between the agencies and the FBI had continued to monitor his activities, could the bombing have been prevented? That is a question no one can answer definitively. It may be that our laws still would not have given the FBI sufficient authority to track him. And the sheer number of individuals whose profiles suggest they pose similar risks may simply overwhelm our ability to keep a close eye on all of them.

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Woe to Bowdoin

The much-anticipated National Association of Scholars report on political correctness at Bowdoin College was released last week and can be viewed on the NAS website here. You can read some of my earlier pieces on the project, the prime mover for which was Center for Equal Opportunity board member Tom Klingenstein, here and here.  And you should already have received Linda Chavez’s column on the report, here.

In this post, I just want to flag the release of the report, and make one lawyerly point. Much of what universities like Bowdoin do these days is not illegal but merely foolish; some of it is foolish and possibly illegal; and some of it is not only definitely foolish but also definitely illegal. In the latter category I would place making any faculty hiring decisions on the basis of race, ethnicity, and sex. So see the discussion of “Faculty Recruitment” in Peter Wood’s preface and of “Faculty Diversity” in the report itself, and my discussion of the legal distinctions between weighing “diversity” in student admissions versus faculty hiring here.

But all of this foolishness, whether illegal or not, ought to be of interest to Bowdoin alumni and to anyone who cares about higher education.

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Speaking of academia, the cover story in the spring issue of The American Scholar is an interesting essay by W. Ralph Eubanks, “Color Lines.” The theme of it is the increasing, and welcome, impossibility of relegating individuals to racially defined boxes, literal and figurative. I would add that it follows from this, of course, that schools ought not to be admitting students based on such boxes.

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That’s what the people of Michigan voted for, by the way, and the Supreme Court is likely to vindicate their wishes.  The Court, that is, has granted review in an important affirmative-action case, involving a bizarre 8–7 en banc ruling by the Sixth Circuit that it is a denial of equal protection for the people of the state of Michigan to pass a ballot initiative that, well, requires equal protection — by banning, among other discrimination, racial preferences in university admissions.

You can’t make this stuff up, folks! Here are my earlier thoughts on the case, in which the Center for Equal Opportunity has been actively involved — we opposed the Sixth Circuit’s ruling and urged the Supreme Court to take the case — and will remain so in the months ahead.

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Life (if you can call it that) imitates art (if you can call it that):  I am referring to a news item from last week here reporting on the City of Phoenix’s efforts to recruit more black and Latino lifeguards — even if they aren’t strong swimmers — with my 2010 item here that ridiculed a politically correct (but entirely fictional) policy in training lifeguards. In this instance, truth is much stranger than fiction.

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In addition to education and employment, the other big area for preferences based on race, ethnicity, and sex is government contracting.  So let’s finish with this item:  The current Small Business Administration certification form for EDWOSBs — that’s “economically disadvantaged women-owned small businesses,” for those of you lucky enough not to know — states that an owner-applicant can have quite a bit of money and still be eligible:

(xviii) The economically disadvantaged woman upon whom eligibility is based has read the SBA’s regulations defining economic disadvantage and can demonstrate that her personal net worth is less than $750,000, excluding her ownership interest in the concern and her equity interest in her primary personal residence. . . .

(xx) The adjusted gross income of the woman claiming economic disadvantage averaged over the three years preceding the certification does not exceed $350,000.

(xxi) The adjusted gross income of the woman claiming economic disadvantage averaged over the three years preceding the certification exceeds $350,000; however, the woman can show that this income level was unusual and not likely to occur in the future, that losses commensurate with and directly related to the earnings were suffered, or that the income is not indicative of lack of economic disadvantage.

(xxii) The fair market value of all the assets (including her primary residence and the value of the business concern but excluding funds invested in an Individual Retirement Account or other official retirement account that are unavailable until retirement age without a significant penalty) of the woman claiming economic disadvantage does not exceed $6 million.

Whether it’s education, employment, or contracting, the Center for Equal Opportunity believes the time is long overdue for treating all Americans equally, without regard to skin color, national origin, or gender.  That’s what we’re fighting for!

Let’s End the Government’s Racial Discrimination in Contracting

In an recent op-ed, I posed this question:  As the federal government struggles with sequestration and governments at all levels also face the need to economize, isn't it time to start awarding government contracts to the lowest bidder, rather than on the basis of skin color, national origin and sex?

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What Has Happened to Liberal Education?

Liberal education once stood for something grand and good: the study of the arts, humanities and sciences with the aim of improving the mind through the acquisition of knowledge and the pursuit of truth. But some of America's most elite colleges and universities have all but abandoned this goal. Instead, many selective schools favor the faddish, the politically correct and the dogmatic, all the while proclaiming their devotion to promoting "critical thinking" and tolerance.

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When Half a Loaf Is Enough

The immigration reform bill introduced this week by a bipartisan group of senators will please few die-hards on either side of the immigration debate, but it's likely to please most Americans. Polls consistently show majority support for allowing the 11 million people who reside illegally in the U.S. to remain here, as long as they pay a penalty for violating immigration laws, have not committed serious crimes and, importantly, learn English. But many people remain skeptical that our borders are secure and want proof that we're making progress toward that end before Congress makes other changes to immigration law.

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Let the People Decide

The arguments on gay marriage before the Supreme Court this week pose the most momentous questions the court has faced in the past 50 years -- and perhaps in its history. At stake is the definition of an institution that has been the bedrock of civilization from time immemorial.

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