ACORN Favorite Tom Perez Is Unfit to Be Secretary of Labor
It's understandable that the ACORN President would nominate ACORN favorites like Hilda Solis and Tom Perez to be his Secretaries of Labor, but that's hardly good cause to confirm.
The confirmation hearing on the nomination of Thomas Perez, President Obama’s pick to become the next Secretary of Labor, will start and perhaps end today.
Republican lawmakers issued a 63-page report accusing Perez of misusing his power last year to persuade the city of St. Paul, Minnesota to withdraw a housing discrimination case before it could be heard by the Supreme Court in exchange for the Justice Department agreeing not to intervene in two whistleblower cases against St. Paul.
Perez claims that he wanted St. Paul to drop its case because he feared an adverse ruling from the United States Supreme Court would jeopardize the government's use of statistics to win housing discrimination cases.
Republicans charge that the deal was dubious and Perez misled senior officials about his intentions and tried to cover up the real reason for his decision not to intervene in the whistleblower cases.
"This offer was inappropriate and potentially violated Perez's duty of loyalty to his client, the United States," said the report from Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, California Rep. Darrell Issa, House Oversight Committee chairman and Virginia Rep. Bob Goodlatte, House Judiciary Committee chairman.
The deal deserves strict scrutiny, but it is hardly the only reason not to confirm the second ACORN favorite to be nominated by President Obama to be Secretary of Labor.
The Center for Security Policy released a 20-minute video urging the Senate to reject the Perez nomination and citing "a litany of extremely troubling behavior spanning the nominee’s career prior to and during his tenure in his current position as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.
The following participants and topics are featured in the “Reject Perez” video:
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., President of the Center for Security Policy, hosts the VPC and addresses Perez’s leading role in the Obama administration-wide effort to embrace, legitimate and empower the Muslim Brotherhood and its operatives.
Chris Farrell, Director of Investigations at Judicial Watch, describes Perez’s radical political philosophy and conduct before and during his time in the Justice Department.
ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief, now a voting integrity activist with True the Vote, discusses Perez’s troubling proclivities with respect to immigration and labor law stemming in part from his past-presidency of Casa de Maryland, an organization that helps illegal aliens violate federal statutes.
Hans von Spakovsky, former counsel to one of Perez’s predecessors as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, who decries the “toxic culture” and mismanagement inside that organization as a result of the incumbent’s leadership – and the prevarication he engaged in during the course of a highly critical examination of the Perez tenure by the Justice Department’s Inspector General.
Rosemary Jenks, Director of Government Relations at Numbers USA, who questions whether the Senate can responsibly entrust the U.S. Labor Department to an individual who has worked to enable illegal aliens to take jobs from American workers.
J. Christian Adams, a former career attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Voting Section details various actions – some taken personally by Perez and others by his organization on his watch – that have subverted the principle of equal justice under the law.
Upon the release of the video, Gaffney stated: "Tom Perez is perhaps the most controversial of President Obama’s nominees to Cabinet positions in his second administration – and that is saying something in light of the competition for that dubious distinction. His past record and present mismanagement, if not actual malfeasance, at the Justice Department should disqualify him from serious consideration for not only the job of Secretary of Labor, but for any position of responsibility in the U.S. government."
Vadum asked "What would Perez be like as labor secretary?" and then answered as follows:
"He told AFL-CIO leaders that if Martin Luther King were alive today, 'He would join with you … in calling for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act' — legislation that would drastically tilt workplace elections in favor of labor. He said the 'civil rights movement and the labor movement are … essentially the same.'
"At DOJ, Perez led the Obama administration’s assault on voter ID laws last year. As John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky report in Who’s Counting, as a member of the Montgomery County, MD Council in 2003 he also tried to force governments to accept fraud-prone matricula consular ID cards issued by Mexican consular offices.
"Perez was also president of Casa de Maryland, a notorious advocacy group for illegal aliens funded by George Soros and the soon-to-be laminated Hugo Chavez. (Big donors to Casa de Maryland include Soros’s Foundation to Promote Open Society –$270,000 since 2010– National Council of La Raza –$70,000 since 2004– and two government-supported entities, Neighborhood Reinvestment Corp. –$40,000 since 2011– and Maryland Legal Services Corp. –$630,203 since 2005.)
"Perez apparently favors Saudi-style anti-blasphemy laws. In Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries offenders are condemned to death merely for insulting Islam.
"Disturbingly, at a congressional hearing Perez pointedly refused to rule out bringing such laws to America. At a meeting of the House Judiciary Committee’s panel on the Constitution last summer, Perez would not say whether he would uphold the religious speech protections in the First Amendment in the future.
“'Will you tell us … that this administration’s Department of Justice will never entertain or advance a proposal that criminalizes speech against any religion?' Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) asked four times to no avail.
"Perez, like so many Obama administration officials, believes that America is a seething hotbed of 'Islamophobia,' filled with ignorant racist rubes who irrationally fear the Muslim religion. He has worked with hardcore Islamist groups such as the terrorist-linked Islamic Society of North America and applauded Islamists for lobbying against airline security measures.
"He played a major role in enacting the Church Arson Prevention Act, legislation based on the false premise that black churches were being targeted with disproportionate frequency by arsonists.
"Perez, now nominally the nation’s top civil rights enforcer at the Department of Justice, has an appalling track record at the DOJ and myriad unsavory associations.
"He has targeted Maricopa County, AZ Sheriff Joe Arpaio, for legal harassment because he doesn’t like Arpaio’s tough-on-crime approach, especially with respect to illegal aliens.
"Under Perez, the DOJ has refused to prosecute hate crimes committed against white Americans. He was reportedly instrumental in the Justice Department’s dismissal of a case involving two Philadelphia-based members of the New Black Panther Party who intimidated white voters on Election Day 2008."
Further:
"Perez is on record favoring the use of affirmative action in hiring at higher education and healthcare facilities. Perez appeared to argue that medical doctors should push for racial quotas in the hiring process because racial diversity among physicians somehow improves healthcare outcomes.
"Likewise, Perez also believes that medical schools should also lower admission standards for black applicants because they are more likely to practice in so-called underserved communities than whites, notes author David Limbaugh.
"Perez is proud of his role in inflating the mortgage bubble. He’s a fierce defender of financial affirmative action programs that forced banks to lend money to uncreditworthy borrowers.
"Perez likens bankers to KKK members, arguing that racial discrimination is afoot whenever a member of a minority group is turned down for a loan. The only difference between bankers and Klansmen is that bankers discriminate 'with a smile' and 'fine print,' but they are 'every bit as destructive as the cross burned in the neighborhood,' Perez said.
"As NPR reported a year ago, Perez said, 'I wish discrimination were a thing of the past. I wish we were living in post-racial America. I wish my phone were not ringing. But regrettably, it’s ringing off the hook in the voting context. It’s ringing off the hook in the hate crimes context and in so many other contexts.”
"As director of clinical law programs at the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore, in 2003 Perez whined about the difficulty he claimed illegal aliens and new legal immigrants have getting welfare benefits. 'Many people remain eligible for S-CHIP and Medicaid who don’t get access because of language barriers,' he said."
That's a plethora of good reasons for rejection of the Perez nomination that can be summed up as follows: Perez is an ACORN favorite out to "fundamentally transform" America.
For those who think ACORN died instead of morphed, it should be noted that when Perez ran for attorney general of Maryland in 2006, ACORN endorsed him, and his campaign ended when the state’s highest court ruled that he did not meet the constitutional requirements to be attorney general. See "Perez accepts labor backing in AG race" (http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2006-07-13/news/0607130016_1_montgomery-county-attorney-general-state-attorney).
It's understandable that the ACORN President would nominate ACORN favorites like Hilda Solis and Tom Perez to be his Secretaries of Labor, but that's hardly good cause to confirm.
Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.
Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.
The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.
Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.
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