Justice Department gives cash awards - just how do you earn them?

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

One up and comer got one after being the sole person on a team to support a law discriminatory to minorities

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/27/AR2007042702190.html?hpid=topnews

According to a former deputy chief in the civil rights division, one honors hire was a University of Mississippi law school graduate who had been a clerk for U.S. District Judge Charles W. Pickering Sr. about the time the judge's nomination by President Bush to a federal appeals court provoked opposition by congressional Democrats, who contended that Pickering was hostile to civil rights.

A few months after he arrived, that lawyer was given a cash award by the department, after he was the only member of a four-person team in the civil rights division who sided with a Georgia voter-identification law that was later struck down by the courts as discriminatory to minorities, according to two former Justice lawyers.

That article makes it seem as though the cash award was a reward for his stance on that law - I would like to know if that really is the case. Because if it is, then we have very serious problems here.

Maybe the Justice Department could have its own "rewards" credit card with bonus points for:

every Regent hire
every Republican scandal buried
every Democrat prosecuted
every USA fired with extra points for a "Bushie" replacement
every fake "vote fraud" prosecution
every "election fraud" lack of prosecution
every erased email
every instance of saying "I don't recall"

[maddezmom]

1. glad you posted

recommended, hope this gets some traction.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

2. Thanks. I took your advice. nt.

[maddezmom]

5. a must read, if you haven't yet: Civil rights hiring shifted in Bush era

Civil rights hiring shifted in Bush era
Conservative leanings stressed
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/07/23/civil_rights_hiring_shifted_in_bush_era/?page=1

[hwmnbn]

3. Official bribery is the best description......

I could come up with. Maybe now we can stop wondering why the loyal Bushies are loyal.

[maddezmom]

4. memo from 2002 about cash awards

UNITED STATES
OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT
WASHINGTON, DC 20415-0001

February 7, 2002

MEMORANDUM FOR HEADS OF DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES

FROM: KAY COLES JAMES
DIRECTOR

SUBJECT: CASH AWARDS FOR POLITICAL APPOINTEES

Questions have been raised about granting lump sum cash awards to political appointees. At the request of the White House, the Office of Personnel Management is developing guidance on the appropriate use of awards for employees in Schedule C and noncareer Senior Executive Service positions.

The President has stated that he supports recognizing superior performance with appropriate awards. The guidance we are developing at OPM will enable you to make these awards and will ensure that the awards are based on substantial work achievements, consistent with the President's agenda, that go beyond the performance of routine duties. Guidelines will be forthcoming.

Until the guidance is distributed, in order to develop and maintain uniform policy and practice, I ask that you refrain from granting any cash award to a political appointee.

http://www.usdoj.gov/jmd/ps/memawdpolapp.html#att


and another pdf:

https://www.opm.gov/fedregis/2006/71-062106-35562-a.pdf


But this is way, way over my pay grade. :D

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

7. memo is amazing

since it makes clear the OPM was developing guidelines in 2002 to make it possible to make cash awards to political appointees for work "above and beyond" in pushing the President's agenda. And we know from the Post story that the Justice Department actually did it.

Boy, this really opens up a whole new line of questions and multiple cans of worms. So, seriously, could a USA (who is a political appointee, after all) be paid a bonus for bringing an agenda pushing prosecution? Could the Wisconsin guy Biskupic who brought that bogus suit with no merit against the Democratic campaign worker have gotten a "cash award" for doing it? I'm not saying he did, but I think it is a question the House Judiciary Committee should ask, since they have invited him to appear.

I think the Senate committee and Leahy need to ask for a list of every "cash award" paid out in the justice Department. To whom and why?

[annabanana]

6. How long have they been doing this?. .In other words..

How far back do we have to look to monitor how these "awards" have been distributed?

[maddezmom]

8. for a long time, this memo is from 1996

http://www.opm.gov/perform/articles/1999/4508guid.asp

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

9. that memo says it is illegal to give cash awards during any

"Presidential election period." I wonder how they define a "presidential election period?

Also, I understand that broadly what is being discussed is the ability of political appointees to earn bonuses. They are non- career and not part of the civil service per se. And the memo is addressing ALL departments in government (I think)

The crux of the matter is:

What kinds of activities lead to earning these bonuses? The example in the Post story is horrific - one gets earned in the Justice Department Civil Rights Division ( :wtf:) for someone standing up for discrimination because that apparently is promoting the Presidential agenda.

I have to wonder if ANY cash awards are appropriate in the JUSTICE DEPARTMENT for "promoting Presidential agendas". Why do you think that justice is always depicted with a blindfold? Politics corrupts justice. And it certainly does when bags of cash are handed out to people who interpret laws the way a particular political party would like them to.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

10. This story from TPM muckraker gives details about the case and the award winner in the OP

Please read the thread -

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002989.php

Inside The Bush DoJ's Purge of The Civil Rights Division
By Paul Kiel - April 17, 2007, 3:41 PM

According to Moore, his supervisor and the political appointees in the section consistently criticized his work because it didn't jibe with their pre-drawn conclusions. That was bad enough, he said, but the real trouble came after he and three colleagues recommended opposing a Georgia voter I.D. law pushed by Republicans. After the recommendation, which clashed with the views of Moore's superiors, they reprimanded him for not adequately analyzing the evidence and accused him of mistreating his Republican colleague, with whom he'd had frequent disagreements. But it got worse. Moore said that his Republican superiors even monitored his emails, eventually filing a complaint against him with the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility for allegedly disclosing privileged information in one email (he was cleared of wrongdoing). Fed up, and worried that it was too dangerous to his professional future to remain there, he left.

"Mr. Moore's allegations about political interference in the Civil Rights Division surrounding the Georgia memo, are very much in line with what we are learning daily about this Justice Department," Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) told TPMmuckraker. Nadler is the chairman of a House Judiciary subcommittee that held a hearing on the voting section last month. "A clear picture is developing of a department culture that seems to encourage politically-motivated, improper and lawless activity."

skip
( note- Tanner mentioned is the Voting Section chief)


In the private meeting, Moore said that Tanner criticized him for his performance -- for not adequately analyzing the evidence -- and for his behavior. "I was accused of mistreating the Republican-hired attorney, because I criticized some of the things he said and did," Moore told me, adding that there had been frequent disagreements between the lawyer, Joshua Rogers, and the others on the team. "He was just out of law school and had only been in the section a few months. He was saying things and writing things in his memos that we believed were incorrect... We had some very sharp disagreements with him."

Moore said that instead of meeting with Tanner like the others, Rogers was "called over to main Justice and commended for his work on the case." Rogers, a member of the Republican National Lawyers Association, is still with the section.

[maddezmom]

12. kick

:)

[ljm2002]

11. Totally agree!

This jumped out at me, and I am sure it will raise eyebrows of people who might be able to do something about it (Waxman? Leahy? Conyers?). This is just crazy!

The really good thing going on here is that, after 6 years of no checks on their lamentably greedy, self serving, politically tainted activities, and with a Democratic Congress in town to start looking into it all -- they simply won't be able to cover up the stuff they did, it all became too blatant because they thought they'd never have to answer to anyone for it.

Ha ha, the old story. The Greeks knew human nature I'd say: start with Hubris, the inevitable result is Nemesis.