Obama and criminal background checks

President  Obama wants the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to restrict employers’  use of criminal background checks in  hiring decisions. In the wake of the massacre of the innocents at the Washington  Naval Yards does he feel differently now?

As  Scott Thurm wrote in the Wall  Street Journal last month:

Civil-rights  activists and the EEOC say the checks can be discriminatory because blacks are  convicted of crimes at higher rates than whites. Last year, the EEOC issued  guidelines that don’t prohibit the use of criminal checks, but urge employers to  consider the crime, its relation to an applicant’s potential job, and how much  time has passed since the conviction.

The guidelines also recommend that employers review  each case individually, and allow applicants to show why they should be hired  despite a conviction.

 

In  practice, the EEOC  has been on a rampage to pressure companies to abandon  such background checks. They are used by 87 % of employers to screen workers. 

 

The  agency has so overstepped its bounds — and the law — that their efforts to  compel obedience to their dictates has been derailed by federal judges.   But as more of them are nominated by Barack Obama, expect such fidelity to  the law to suffer).

 

In  the case of a Texas-based company, Freeman Company, Judge Titus wrote a stinging  criticism of the efforts by the EEOC:

 

In  his opinion, Judge Titus harshly criticized an outside statistician hired by the  EEOC to evaluate Freeman’s hiring practices, citing “a plethora of errors and  analytical fallacies” that made the conclusions “completely unreliable.” The  statistician “cherry-picked” data and examined the wrong time period when  reviewing Freeman’s records, the judge said.

The  defeat has not stopped the EEOC, as it has brought cases against companies such  as Dollar General and a unit of BMW, the German auto company. Why spend taxpayer  money to engage in blatant social engineering?

 

Would  any journalist care to ask Jay Carney if the President feels abashed now since  Aaron Alexis, the killer at the Washington Naval Yards had “brushes with the  law” that included acts of violence?  After all, Barack Obama rarely puts  himself at risk by holding press conferences. Apparently, he cannot handle the heat but he has  a staff to take the hit (ask Susan Rice) for him. He is also heartless when it  comes to the deaths of people in the military (recall his blasé approach towards  announcing the Ft. Hood massacre — I mean workplace violence incident — and  his partisan attack on Republicans right after the Washington Naval Yard  attack).

 

Aaron  Alexis gained access and carried weapons into the location because he possessed  a valid military identification card he  received when he  was hired by the defense contractor operating at the Naval Yard  .

 

Now  his employer, The Experts, has declared the company would have never hired him  had they known of his criminal background. That was a mistake on the company’s  part-facilitated by the military careless approval of a security clearance to  Alexis.

 

Imagine  the problems that will arise if Obama is successful in twisting the EEOC’s role  in the direction he wants.

 

But  the point remains: if Obama pressures companies to end the practice of using  criminal background checks how many more crimes, including murder, will follow  on behalf of Obama’s affirmative action agenda?

 

How  many innocent people will pay the price for his obsession?

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