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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (48442)	10/18/2000 1:08:35 PM
From: jlallen	Respond to of 769670

Well put. Equal opportunity. Not equal outcome. JLA

To: one_less who wrote (48442)	10/18/2000 4:51:21 PM
From: nihil	Respond to of 769670

Affirmative Action implies nothing of the sort. I have hired many people with the Labor Department breathing down my neck. No AA plan exempts an employer from his obligation not to discriminate. Any person who believes he has been discriminated against as the result of an AA plan can sue. The federal government merely says that it will not (in general) initiate discrimination suits that arise from the working of an approved AA plan adopted and run in good faith (i.e. honesty in fact). Surely you know that hard quotas are illegal unless they have been imposed by courts in response to specific cases. Even so, the arbitrary power of enforcement agencies (OCR, OFCC) is awesome and inadequately restrained. Affirmative Action (at the federal level) is not statutory, but is imposed by Executive Order of the President (e.g. XO 11246). This only applies to federal contractors or grantees. You don't do federal work, you don't suffer the demands of AA. Reagan and Bush could have modified AA significantly, but they didn't. The president can abolish AA with the stroke of pen. This would make most large businesses miserable, since AA shields them from most employee and nonhire suits. Most employers have been out of compliance with their own chosen AA plans for many years. The big job of the company AA director is making excuses for continued underrepresentation of many disadvantaged groups. If you cannot find enough minority technologists, you must go out and educate them. Gates and MSFT are stars at this.