Department of Just-Us

I've been a critic of the Justice Department, in particular the Civil Right Division. This current administration has shifted the division's focus from protecting the interests of minorities, to filing lawsuits alleging things like white voter disenfranchisement. As if....

Considering how in my eyes, they have dropped the ball in protecting the civil rights of minorities, I now can see how such focus was shifted. Follow me...

John Tanner is the Chief of the Civil Rights Divisions' Voting Rights section. This is what he said while discussing the proposed Georgia Voter Id Law. A law which is still subject to litigation, but a law that some argue would disproportionately discriminate against African-Americans. A Federal Appeals Judge even compared it to a Jim Crow-era poll tax. But not ole John Tanner, no sir! This fool says the voter ID requirements actually disproportionately affect whites. Now I know you are probably saying, Spike, that may be true. Hear the man out. Well, I want you to follow his logic, this is how he explained it. You ready?

He argues,"primarily elderly (white)persons" are the ones affected by such laws, but "minorities don't become elderly the way white people do: They die first." So anything that "disproportionately impacts the elderly, has the opposite impact on minorities," he added. "Just the math is such as that."

Read it again please.

You digest that yet?

This is from the guy who is in charge of the Civil Rights Division. This is the kind of logic he is working with? WTF? There are some that may want to cite life expectancy charts for black folk, but that would not justify such logic. One former employee of the Justice Department Toby Moore, a redistricting expert said, "This is the kind of analysis that the voting section has been doing: seat of the pants generalizations and suppositions instead of hard numbers and analysis. "It's false." Tanner's conclusions, he added, were "always in support of what his Republican appointee bosses wanted him to say, which is why he got to where he is."

Since you may not believe dude said it, I searched high and low for the audio, and guess what??? Yep, herrre you go. Notice the straight face when he said it.