Daily Archives: 3 September 2012

Voting Rights

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From The Wall Street Journal‘s Law Blog comes this hopeful sign.  A number of states have filed a Friend of the Court brief in support of South Carolina as that state prepares to defend itself against the Obama administration’s assault on its effort to protect the sanctity of the vote.  The money paragraphs in the brief speaks is this, and it needs no further comment from me.

Because Section 5 [of the Voting Rights Act of 1965] applied arbitrarily to the Covered Jurisdictions [i.e., those states subject to the VRA], none of which uses discriminatory tests or devices, and many of which have higher voter turnout, or lower disparity in minority voter turnout, than many of the uncovered jurisdictions, the Covered States are denied the fundamental principles of equal sovereignty and equal footing.  Because the VRA’s purpose is to eradicate voting discrimination for all United States citizens, treating states differently is not congruent with the Act’s purpose.

The brief, BRIEF OF ARIZONA, ALABAMA, GEORGIA, SOUTH CAROLINA, SOUTH DAKOTA, AND TEXAS AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONER, can be found here.

(Over)regulation

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Here’s an example, from The Des Moines Register.  Federal banking and mortgage company employment “guidelines,” issued in May 2011 and February 2012, respectively, require these institutions to not employ

executives and mid-level bank employees guilty of transactional crimes, like identity fraud or mortgage fraud.

Fear of Federal litigation, though, has driven these enterprises to apply the regulations across the board to all employees, even the most junior.  Natasha Buchanan, an attorney with Higbee & Associates in Santa Ana, CA notes that

Banks are afraid of the FDIC and the penalties they could face[.]

The results include this one, involving a customer service rep making the princely sum of $30,000 per year.  Richard Eggers is a 68-year-old Vietnam veteran with a conviction, 50 years ago, of using a cardboard dime to try to fool a washing machine in a Laundromat.  He spent two days in jail way back then, and he’s been an upstanding citizen ever since, including that tour in Vietnam.

Now it’s true enough that the FDIC, for instance, has a waiver process that (fired) employees can follow, but it’s a six month-to-a-year effort that might end in denial. Even with gaining a waiver, though, six months is a long time for a low-wage ex-employee to be without a job, especially when it’s caused by Uncle Sugar.  The FDIC also has an “automatic waiver” that supposedly works “faster,” but it’s limited to people sentenced to less than year in jail and who never actually were locked up.  Those two days disqualify Eggers even from this government largess.

This has got to be stopped.