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Tag: race card
Republicans Try To Ban Eric Holder From Getting Paid

Republicans Try To Ban Eric Holder From Getting Paid

Attorney General Eric Holder infuriated Republicans earlier this month, when he claimed that he has faced “unprecedented, unwarranted, ugly, and divisive adversity” throughout his tenure.

“You look at how the attorney general of the United States was treated yesterday by a House Committee,” Holder said during a speech at the National Action Network convention, in reference to his heated exchange with Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX). “What attorney general has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment?”

Although Holder later elaborated that he was referring to a general “breakdown of civility in Washington,” his critics on the right immediately accused the attorney general of playing the race card.

“Liberalism has a kind of Tourette’s Syndrome these days. It’s just constantly saying the word ‘racism’ and ‘racist,’” conservative pundit George Will said on a recent edition of Fox News Sunday. “It’s an old saying in the law: If you have the law on your side, argue the law, if you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. If you have neither, pound the table. This is pounding the table.”

Will’s complaint neatly summarizes the right’s charge against Holder: He is not being targeted or singled out, but is merely playing the victim for political gain.

As usual, however, the Republican majority in the House is here to screw up the messaging.

On Thursday, Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) introduced the Contempt Act — a bill that would withhold the pay of any federal officials who have been held in contempt by Congress.

That would prevent exactly one member of the Obama administration from getting a paycheck: Eric Holder.

Conveniently, Farenthold’s bill would not require a federal court to convict the employee in order for his/her pay to be cut off — so the fact that the contempt vote against Holder was a thinly veiled partisan attack with little legal consequence would not stop House Republicans from penalizing the attorney general.

Upon announcing the bill, Farenthold did not bother to disguise the fact that his proposal was a targeted strike against the attorney general.

“In 2012, the House of Representatives voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over documents related to the botched Fast and Furious gun-running sting operation – despite this fact, he is still receiving his paycheck courtesy of American taxpayers,” the congressman said in a press release. “[M]y bill will at least prevent current and future federal employees, like Attorney General Holder, from continuing to collect their taxpayer-paid salaries while held in contempt of Congress.”

“The American people should not be footing the bill for federal employees who stonewall Congress or rewarding government officials’ bad behavior,” he added. “If the average American failed to do his or her job, he or she would hardly be rewarded. High-ranking government officials should be treated no differently than everyone else.”

Putting aside the fact that Farenthold — a particularly unproductive member of the least productive Congress in memory — still gets rewarded quite handsomely for his work, his bill should create a messaging problem for his party.

Republicans can either accuse Eric Holder of lying when he claims that he’s being singled out for unfair treatment, or they can vote on a bill specificallydesigned to single him out by withholding his — and only his — pay. They can’t do both.

Photo: Ryan J Reilly via Flickr

On Race, Conservatives Are Silent

On Race, Conservatives Are Silent

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sometimes, you get the feeling that’s the only King quote conservatives know.

They can’t quote what he said about unions: “We can all get more together than we can apart.”

They can’t quote what he said about poverty: “The solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.”

They can’t quote what he said about injustice: “America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked, ‘insufficient funds.'”

But they always quote the “content of character” passage from King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. They see it as supportive of their ideal of a so-called “colorblind” society wherein race — and racial problems — are acknowledged never.

Sarah Palin is the latest. Last week on the King holiday, she quoted that passage on Facebook and added: “Mr. President, in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. and all who commit to ending any racial divide, no more playing the race card.”

You will hear President Obama talk about race only slightly more frequently than you will hear Mitch McConnell say, “Get down with your bad self!” so there was a moment of disconnect in trying to figure out what she was talking about. Apparently, the reference was to a piece in last week’s New Yorker, where Obama acknowledged that there are “some folks who really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black president.” He also said some people probably cut him slack for the same attribute.

By now, most thoughtful people would take both observations as self-evident. And you have to wonder: If this mild remark is “playing the race card” what, then, may we permissibly say about race in Palin’s ideal world? Apparently, nothing.

Thus, you will wait in vain for a conservative to speak against the profiling of Trayvon Martin, the mass incarceration of black men under the failed War on Drugs or, ahem, the myriad racially tinged attacks against President Obama. Indeed, other than their cries of pious indignation when some black conservative is mistreated, you’ll wait in vain to hear them say anything about race at all.

To acknowledge that we did not overcome, to admit there are miles to go before the Promised Land, is to play the dreaded “race card.” So, mass incarceration? Don’t talk about it. Racial profiling? Hush. Economic exploitation? Ignore it and it will go away.

You have to wonder, as conservatives make their belated embrace of Martin Luther King, if they realize they are what he struggled against all his life. They’ve never been on the right side of history where black people are concerned. So where do they get the idea that they have moral authority on the subject of black struggle? Where do they get the temerity to shush those who have labored in — and lived — that struggle for years, generations and lifetimes?

The silence they preach is not golden. It is poison. It is moral cowardice.

But it is not new. The race card? Though that term did not exist in his lifetime, King was familiar with the argument. His focus on racial injustice, said critics, fanned flames of racial tension.

To which King said this: “We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with.”

Another quote most conservatives will not know. Too bad. If they understood it, they might better understand the man they purport to embrace.

“Our lives begin to end,” said King, “the day we become silent about things that matter.”

(Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via email at lpitts@miamiherald.com.)

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Sarah Palin Plays ‘The Race Card’ On Martin Luther King Day

Sarah Palin Plays ‘The Race Card’ On Martin Luther King Day

Former Republican nominee for vice president Sarah Palin used the occasion of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to attack the first African-American president of the United States:

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Mr. President, in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. and all who commit to ending any racial divide, no more playing the race card.

(Isn’t the “race card” what Republicans are demanding to stop black people from voting?)

The star of a new show on the Sportsman Channel is referencing an outrage that exists only in the right-wing blog world over the president pointing out — as he has several times — that some people do not like him because he is black.

“Now, the flip side of it is there are some black folks and maybe some white folks who really like me and give me the benefit of the doubt precisely because I’m a black president,” he said, according to The New Yorker‘s David Remnick.

Of course, right wingers fail to point out the second part of the president’s point. You see, to them, race is a subject that should not be discussed, but only hinted at as a means of destroying the social safety net.

Salon’s Joan Walsh points out what’s going with Palin:

Celebrating Dr. King’s birthday has become a bipartisan affair since Republicans stopped opposing the creation of a holiday to celebrate the slain civil rights leader.

But take a look at this post by MSNBC’s Ned Resnikoff and you’ll see King’s economic beliefs would repulse most Republicans — even if they love using his “content of their character” quote to justify opposing affirmative action. He championed the labor movement, and called for a minimum guaranteed income and the right to a job. These beliefs bear a strong resemblance to the “Five Economic Reforms Millennials Should be Fighting For” that Jesse A. Myerson recently published in Rolling Stone, and which earned him overwhelming ridicule from the same right-wing blog world that’s furious with the president for pointing out the obvious about race.

Mrs. Palin using this holiday to try to shame the president for discussing race is sadly predictable. What would have been shocking is if she had instead used her considerable platform to encourage Republicans to support an extremely moderate fix to the Voting Rights Act.

PS: This Daily Kos diary post from 2011 about what Dr. King “actually did” has gone viral, with both Republicans and Democrats touting its unique insight.

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr