Paid Administrative Leave for Racist Calling for Race War

What I'd like to know is if the bozos working at the dept of homeland security bother to run background checks at all. You would think they would need a pretty decent security clearance, wouldn't you?

Then again, Holder and his band of monsters are actually suing at least one private company saying that by using background checks, they discriminate against blacks. True. Not from the Onion.

I suppose I can see how they could be under certain specific circumstances, possibly (if, for example, they were using them to find past addresses and then refusing to hire people just on the basis that they used to live in a poor, black, crime-ridden neighbourhood), but in general it would seem a fairly ridiculous idea. I don't know the details of what they are saying and why to comment on it, though - if the argument is just that black people are found to disproportionately have been involved in crime in the past, that is a symptom of a wider problem, and not one that can be solved by attacking the background checks that might happen to highlight the issue in some way.

Of course, background checks should be appropriate and proportionate, and I don't know how they work in the USA. Here most convictions become 'spent' after a certain time (something like about 7 years, I think, or 10 if it involves a prison sentence of over 6 months), so don't have to be declared when going for a job unless the higher level of background check is defined as being necessary (for working with children and vulnerable adults, for example) - they are no longer seen as something that should be considered 'relevant' unless they are very serious (involving prison sentences of more than 2.5 years - those effectively remain 'permanent'). If they are not hiring to an ordinary job on the basis of something like a single conviction for petty theft, for example, from 20 years ago when someone was a teenager, with no record of criminal or dishonest behaviour since, that would be ridiculous, and could be unfair to people who came from 'bad' background situations but improved themselves (perhaps after the shock of getting a conviction) and have been law abiding ever since. I guess that could be disproportionately effect black people because they disproportionately come from such situations, but that doesn't make it actually 'racism' unless it is being done intentionally to target black people. It would still be unfair, but only unfair on the basis of 'race' because of deeper problems in society that mean that black people end up being caught out by it more often (statistically). It would be entirely a symptom of another problem, and as I have said elsewhere it is the real problem and its causes that should be addressed, not just the symptom.

Background checks should be appropriate but that is not for the govt to decide for private companies. Petty juvenile crimes are sealed.


www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/22/obama-administration-files-suits-against-businesses-using-criminal-background/

So the employer is damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they knowingly hire a felon and that person commits a crime, the company is liable. And if they don't hire the felon, they are racist.

We state and federal representatives. Certainly I can call up the state rep. but I hate him too.

Originally, the states had no central govt. There was a gap between defeating the British and adopting the Constitution. A central govt was needed to take care of disputes and stuff. The Constitution was meant to cover things that could not reasonably be left up to individual states. If we had adhered to the Constitution faithfully, I believe we would not have the division and problems we have now. Governors should be the most powerful people in the land. The federal govt was never supposed to have this much power.

It's the 'direct personal experience' thing, though, that the numbers involved mean inevitably that people in the UK are far more likely to have. For example, my current MP used to work in the same place as I did before he was an MP, so I've met him on a professional basis a number of times (I doubt he'd remember me particularly, but that's not the point - I remember him). In the Welsh Assembly the system is slightly different, and we have several 'regional' as well as a local representative - one of my regional representatives was (many years ago) married to the sister of one of my best friends, and another former one was previously one of my family doctors. Both were local councillors in the place where I lived before they went on to the Assembly (one in my council ward, one in the ward next door). I'm by no means exceptional in that kind of thing - these people generally come from, or at least live in, the same town as the people they represent. They are far more 'local' to a far smaller area, and people are far more likely to have met them in some capacity, even if they haven't met them specifically as MPs (or Assembly Members). The representatives at the Federal level there are, by the nature of the beast, far, far more 'remote', and won't have been met by anything like the same percentage of their electorate. People don't personally 'know' them in the same way - they don't see them walking around their town, they probably don't happen to have previously met them in some other capacity, and so on.

The 'hate' issue brings up another 'personal experience' issue, too, with regard to the royals. We have a ceremonial Head of State, supported by an entire family, who is non-political in nature, and will have been seen or met by many more people than the President of the USA. There will be few adults who haven't either seen the Monarch or a member of the close family, or at least known a time when they've been visiting their own town, and/or been at an event where they are in attendance - that applies certainly throughout the mainland of Britain. Personally, I saw her maj in my local area when I was a child, and have known her to visit since (although I didn't bother to go and take a look). Her son and heir has visited quite regularly (and I've seen him there several times, without ever intending to do so!), and actually has a residence near the town where some of my girlfriend's family live (and he's regularly seen walking around the town). A couple of weeks ago I was at an event where he and his wife were in attendance, and they were within yards of me (although at the time they were inside a small building, and I didn't wait around for them to come out so didn't actually see them). He also personally awarded an 'honour' to a friend of mine on behalf of her maj (and another friend has been to one of the palace garden parties quite recently). His son and heir is patron of the Welsh Rugby Union, and often been in attendance at international rugby matches that I have also attended.

Because they are non-political, most people don't 'hate' them in the same way as people sometimes 'hate' their elected representatives from parties that they vehemently don't support. They might ignore them, but they don't 'hate' them because they aren't the ones doing whatever the government are doing that they don't like, if you see what I mean - most people who don't like them simply ignore them, but they still know that they are around, in their area, dealing with their friends in some way, or whatever. Given the history of the two countries, it is something of an irony that the President of the USA is actually a far more 'remote' figure to the population at large than the royal family is in the UK, but that is the case, partly because of the sheer scale of things, and partly because of the time that the royals devote to 'ceremonial' duties (including particularly just getting out there and doing the meet and greet stuff in the community), because they have no role in actually running anything (unlike the president, obviously). Put together, that common 'personal experience' people have of both ther elected representatives and their Head of State and her family is a massively significant factor in how 'remote' these people seem from the ordinary population, and that makes a huge difference when it comes to the depth of mistrust. Nobody really trusts a politician, of course, but there's a difference between not trusting them to do exactly what they should be and the level of almost paranoia that there seems to be within the US population about their own government actually being a threat to the population that the population need protection from.

How are we protected from our government? For most people in the UK the question probably doesn't really apply in those terms at all - our government is there to protect us from outside dangers, and from those within our society that would seek to do harm to others, and that is how it should be. We know it, and we know them, and generally speaking we know we are in control of them through the ballot box, so it's not an issue of concern. I suspect that much the same thing would be true in most long-established Western democratic countries. It's the sheer size of the USA that is the problem, so it's not a problem the rest of us really have (although I can see the same kind of issues beginning to develop within the EU with regard to that particular institution, of course).


The problem is, then, that what was really a collection of separate countries working together really became one country, and one nation (with the loyalty of the people clearly to it as a 'nation state' entity, even if their loyalty to its government is not so sure). Had they remained as separate countries and become 'nations' at that level, that issue of mistrust wouldn't exist to the same extent, but the size of the USA as a whole makes it inevitable that there will be an 'elite', incredibly remote both physically and psychologically from the overwhelming majority of the population.

You think it is reasonable to forgive a 20 year old minor crime. I believe most people would. We don't need a giant govt micromanaging our businesses. My business is not a democracy. We can talk about what we think people should or should not do, but it's a whole 'nother thing to make it a law.