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June 16, 2006

the perfect world of bill jefferson (D-LA)

So first the Democrats, then the full House voted to remove alleged crook William Jefferson from his House Ways and Means seat.

William Jefferson is a terrible, terrible excuse for a Democrat/black elected leader, and I kind of hope he goes to jail, or at the very least stops being a member of Congress. (Check his crap voting record here.) His refusal to step down pending resolution of the charges against him is what the old, alliterative folks like to call "both dishonorable and disgusting," and the subsequent ugly racial spill-over is 1000% Jefferson's fault.

Still, the forcible removal of someone from a committee seat is unprecedented (Jefferson is not under indictment... yet), and calling for new rules that respect due process while maintaining the highest ethical strandards for legislators is hardly unreasonable. In a perfect world, events would have played out differently and the following things would have happened:

1 - William Jefferson would not be in the pocket of every corporate interest or shady lobbyist from here to Nigeria ('Natch.)

2 - William Jefferson would not be some kind of (alleged) crook. ('Natch.)

3 - Accused of/and or caught being an alleged crook, William Jefferson would immediately give his committee seat up "in the best interests of the blah blah, in order to clear my blah blah" But barring that, in the absence of an indictment or formal House Ethics Committee investigation, basic fairness would demand allowing dude to sit there until an actual non-news cycle driven process produced additional results or milestones. Calling on Jefferson to resign is one thing, and I think "Resign, Bill Jefferson!!!" or "Lose, Harold!!!" would make great bumper stickers, but refusing to create rules and then using the power of the House Democratic Caucus to send pre-election ethics "messages" ("Dems super good," perhaps?) seems a mite like prematurely throwing a brother off the boat for atmospheric effect.

4 - The Congressional Black Caucus would have modulated its support for Jefferson, murmuring about due process and putting calls for a better procedural approach to open-ended ethics problems like l'affaire Jefferson front-and-center. What the CBC would not have done is talk pointless, hyper-aggressive smack about how there was going to hell to pay for the Democrats with black voters if anyone dared to lay a hand on one square centimeter of Jeff's gigantic, bald forehead. Black voters are loyal, but we give shits primarily about the treatment of our own, local machine hacks. Everyone else's hacks are under-serving the community and are generally understood as poxes on the race.

By putting race over rules in its defense of Jefferson, the CBC is acting as if the Democratic Party wasn't a political caucus but instead was some kind of corporation with different (i.e., potentially illegal) ways of treating black and white employees. There is certainly some cynicism in pointing out the Democratic leadership makes decisions like seeking today's vote at its discretion and according to highly complicated political rules, but none of that obscures the fact that it's William Jefferson, not Nancy Pelosi, that has been accused of breaking the laws of the land.The language of discrimination, of workplace inequality, of disparate treatment is powerful language, and evoking that language to defend one of the worst lobbyist-loving fatcats on the Hill cheapens us all.

5 - And speaking of cheapening us all: In a perfect world, progressive white folks (or at least, Daily Kos members and Huffington Post posters) would stop all the whining about how just pointing out the race angle in this story is harshing their gate-storming mellow. Like it or not, this story has racial implications, so deal with it, Kimosabe, and don't give me bullshit about how "dealing with it" involves bending over or kowtowing to "special interests." I don't agree with Nancy Pelosi's hard-line stance, but when she makes it a point to do a tour of black press to explain her logic, she isn't kowtowing, she's doing the difficult work of maintaining a valued relationship with a key segment of her coalition. (The so-called netroots are always down for "hard work" except when it comes to building bridges with people of color. I wonder why.)

But all that aside, in a perfect world, I would know what to call Bill Jefferson. I know what to call corrupt black conservatives - a talking android, 'natch! - but what funny, vaguely science-fictional tag do you give a machine hack black Democrat?

Posted by ebogjonson in politricknal sciences, race and other identities, talking androids, on June 16, 2006 1:03 PM

Comments

Posted by: Punch at June 19, 2006 4:08 PM

Posted by: karas at June 20, 2006 9:46 PM

Posted by: kaz at December 10, 2006 12:44 AM