“This is pretty unbelievable,” begins the email send from the campaign manager of Presidential Candidate Barack Obama to supporters today.
The email, from David Pouffe, calls on members of the public to demand the DoJ fire its Civil Rights Division Voting Section chief, John Tanner, in the wake of disturbing and inaccurate comments, video-taped and first reported by The BRAD BLOG, as made during a recent panel discussion at the National Latino Congreso in Los Angeles.
The email, which exhorts readers to send emails to DoJ via their new “John Tanner Must Go” campaign at http://Action.BarackObama.com/TannerMustGo continues thusly [emphasis in original]:
He went on to argue, irrationally, that these requirements actually benefit minorities because: “Anything that disproportionately impacts the elderly has the opposite impact on minorities.”
The letter to supporters from Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, is posted in full here.
Last week, Obama had sent a letter to Acting Attorney General Peter D. Keisler, demanding he immediately fire Tanner. Our coverage, along with his full letter, is here.
“The situation is clear,” Plouffe writes in today’s email after detailing a number of concerns about Tanner’s record at the DoJ. “John Tanner has an obvious disregard for the voting rights of minorities and should not be in charge of protecting them.”
Plouffe concludes by charging that “His recent comments are the last straw — he must go.”
Hearings have been tentatively confirmed by The BRAD BLOG as scheduled in the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties for October 30th at 10:00am ET. Tanner will be called as a witness and likely presented with clips from the video tape that we delivered yesterday in D.C. to committee staffers.
The chairman of the sub-committee, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), has said he’s hopeful that Tanner “will be as willing to provide lawmakers with the same candid views he has been providing at various public venues.”
The chairman of the full House Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), a 78-year old elderly minority member who, contrary to Tanner’s assertions has not, in fact “die[d] first,” has expressed consternation recently and over the years about the DoJ’s chief voting official, including a 2005 letter in which he said he was “flabbergasted” at Tanner’s contention that the reason for long voting lines in minority areas in Ohio’s 2004 Presidential election was due to African Americans coming to the polls later in the day than non-minority voters.
The twisted conclusions from Tanner’s “investigation” of voting problems reported during the 2004 Presidential election, including his assertion that minority voters actually had more access than whites to voting machines, were detailed in a letter, posted here in 2005, which can only be described as an extraordinary (and literal) “white washing” of the facts on the ground that day.
Conyers and his staff published a comprehensive report, entitled “Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio,” as based on their own, far-reaching investigation after the election. We look forward to his questioning of Tanner next week.
Yesterday, we detailed additional allegations likely to be faced by Tanner in hearings next week.
A quick, video-taped snapshot of Tanner’s most offensive — and inaccurate, according to his former DoJ colleagues — comments from the October 5th National Latino Congresso panel in Los Angeles, follows below…
I guess I don’t see what the big hubbub is.
The guy is an ass or he wouldn’t have made that comment. An awful lot of politicians are asses.
However, he is correct with regard to African Americans. Blacks statistically are less affluent than whites in this country because of historical discrimination, discrimination in the court system (jailing Blacks at a much higher rate than whites for the same crimes), etc. Because they’re less affluent, they have statistically less access to adequate healthcare than whites. Because they have less access to healthcare, they die earlier statistically than whites. When its all said and done, on average when viewed statistically, he’s right, blacks die earlier than whites. There also seems to be genetic reasons that blacks have heart attacks at earlier ages than whites, and certainly sickle-cell anemia is genetically related to race.
Interestingly, he’s wrong when it comes to Hispanics vs Non-Hispanic Whites (sorry if this BBS code doesn’t work):
link
Link for the study that shows Hispanics outlive other whites:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sit...RVAbstractPlus
I don’t have much time at the moment to dispatch with your apologistic comments Disillusioned, but the short version is, Tanner was wrong on a whole host of levels. Quickly summarized:
+ It’s more than just a “shame” that the elderly would be disenfranchised by the restrictive, and unnecessary Photo ID law that he approved against the advice of the DoJ career attorneys.
+ As it turns out, no matter your numbers posted above, African-Americans don’t *all* “die first”. Many become elderly and continue to vote.
+ Tanner’s claim was in fact, incorrect. “Minorities” as Tanner actually said actually live longer than caucasians when Hispanics, Asian-Americans and Native American women are factored into the mix. Those groups are also supposedly protected by the DoJ Civil Rights unit, led by Tanner.
+ Tanner’s own colleagues and predecessor has described his comments as “false” and “ludicrous”.
+ The man who collected the data that Tanner is relying on, has called Tanner’s use of that data “cherry picked”.
+ This isn’t the first time Tanner has failed to protect minority voters. Not by a long shot. And his record in total shows him as being the absolutely WRONG person to be tasked with protecting such enfranchisment rights on behalf on the now-wholly-politicized DoJ.
Brad,
Not sure it’s Toby’s data. But Toby is well qualified to talk about it.
And another point: even if Tanner’s statement were accurate, i.e., even if it were true that minorities have shorter life expectancies than whites, the statement, as made, is offensive, especially when made by a white person; especially when made by a white person in charge of a division of the federal government that is charged with protecting the voting rights of minority voters; and especially when made by a white person who is charged with protecting the voting rights of minorities who has repeatedly failed to do so.
It is probably true that the hair of some of the members of the Rutgers women’s basketball team meets the commonly accepted colloquial definition of the word “nappy.” That doesn’t make Imus’s statement okay. It is undoubtedly true that folks in the Harlem coffee shop were as well behaved as folks in coffee shops in Westchester. That doesn’t make O’Reilly’s statement okay. Black folks can use the “N” word with each other. I can’t. These are simple rules of polite discourse given the sordid racial history of our society. If anybody is sensitive to this, it should be a high-ranking government official in the fricking CIVIL RIGHTS Division.
A true statement, made in an offensive manner, is still an offensive statement.
Obama really needs to explain why it’s okay for him to ask last week for a Justice Department official to be fired for making a racially insensitive remark, but when a notoriously homophobic gospel singer “declares war” on gays and says that gays need to be cured, suddenly Obama is all Mr. Nice Guy and refuses to “fire” the bigoted singer from hosting a concert for Obama’s campaign.
http://www.americablog.com/2007...ocrisy-on.html
Interesting comment as we have seen during the history of the United States that even slaves out lived their masters. Today most elderly black people are living with family members as whites are in nursing homes. Stupid people don’t realize it’s the what the White House gives to the elderly that cause their deaths it’s God. The young man making the comment doesn’t know how long he has to live. When God calls you no amount of money and US program will stop you from dying. What’s more interesting is how these KKK White House and GOP Law Makers will answer their prejudice and hate to God. Hell will be overcrowded with the Bush Administration and their followers.
Obama also put a hold on Bush’s nasty anti-voting rights nominee, Hans von Spakovsky, to stop the guy’s pernicious influence on our elections.
I wasn’t attempting to be an apologist, I was just seeking a more clear explanation of why this is much of an issue compared to other other crazy situations this administration has caused.
I know you’re into the voting issue which is why I avidly read this site, so I understand why this is more of an issue here, but it still didn’t seem like too big of an issue, just more of a foot-in-mouth problem that the republicans seem to excel at.
I despise the voter card issue, and I realize this guy is one of the ones promoting it, hence a very good reason to get rid of him.
I guess the reason to make the biggest deal about it, is it seems this guy won’t be able to fairly protect the voting rights of minorities if he’s making somewhat sweeping comments like that about minorities.
BTW Brad, I’m a big fan of the site, and you’re 100% dead-on most of the time, I just needed a bit of ‘encouragement’ why I might want to care about this issue. I’m still not completely convinced its a big issue, but I do see some valid (although not overwhelming) points to be made for getting him the hell out of there. Thanks for taking the time to help clarify.
Disillusioned –
My apologies if in my rush to answer (and get out of the house to an event), I was hasty in tarring you as an apologist.
And you are dead-on in your comment about the inappropriateness of this guy heading Civil Rights Voting section of the DoJ.