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When Reagan tried to undo affirmative action, corporations fought back
washingtonpost ^ | 01/21/2024 | Julian Mark

Posted on 01/22/2024 9:28:24 AM PST by ChicagoConservative27

President Ronald Reagan had been slowly chipping away at affirmative action since taking office in 1981, but it was six months into his second term that his administration saw its chance to deal it a decisive blow.

Reagan and his Cabinet viewed his resounding electoral victory against Walter Mondale in 1984 as a mandate to end the Lyndon B. Johnson-era policy requiring all government contractors to take “affirmative action” to end discrimination at their firms. By the mid-’80s, that meant some of the country’s largest companies — such as General Motors, IBM and Merck — had implemented robust affirmative action plans to hire women and people of color.

Reagan’s replacement order would have removed those requirements, a policy consistent with his push for deregulation and vision for a racially colorblind America. If all went according to plan, the new executive order would be viewed as the administration’s “landmark legacy,” writes legal historian Melvin I. Urofsky in his 2020 book “The Affirmative Action Puzzle.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: actions; affiramtive; affirmativeaction; corporations; industry; reagan
This is why the Washington Post is losing so much money. Stupid articles by Julian..
1 posted on 01/22/2024 9:28:24 AM PST by ChicagoConservative27
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To: ChicagoConservative27

The point isn’t that the WAPO is losing money. All newspapers, except for The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times (maybe) are losing scads of money. The point should be that American campaign finance law limits the contributions an individual can make to a campaign to something like $2700/candidate/year. And yet if you are wealthy enough to acquire and sustain the Washington Post at $100M-$150M of losses per year, you can make putative in-kind contributions of unlimited value to candidates and parties and never test the contribution limits that apply to mere mortals.


2 posted on 01/22/2024 9:36:14 AM PST by Wally_Kalbacken
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To: ChicagoConservative27

The good, the bad and the ugly.

Cold war, Affirmative Action and the Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986.


3 posted on 01/22/2024 9:39:53 AM PST by TauntedTiger (If voting mattered, they wouldn't let us do it. Mark Twain)
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To: ChicagoConservative27

JFK signed the first affirmative action bill in 1961.


4 posted on 01/22/2024 9:45:03 AM PST by ansel12 ((NATO warrior under Reagan, and RA under Nixon, bemoaning the pro-Russians from Vietnam to Ukraine.))
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To: Wally_Kalbacken

EXACTLY !


Contributions to fake-ass politicians who are part of “The Show”, and not actually in charge of decision making.

VS. controlling Cathedral institutions like the NYT and Post who set the opinions of the elites - hence the direction of the country.


5 posted on 01/22/2024 9:47:15 AM PST by Reverend Wright ( Everything touched by progressives, dies !)
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To: ansel12

Now we have toxic DEI embraced by corporations and government, the cancer has gone terminal


6 posted on 01/22/2024 10:02:21 AM PST by ronnie raygun
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To: ronnie raygun

Give Palestinians the Gaza. Give Arafat 95% of what he wants and then guess what they really want. Sound similar?


7 posted on 01/22/2024 10:10:44 AM PST by DIRTYSECRET
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To: Wally_Kalbacken
Great post. The good news is that the readership of these propaganda rags is so far down in the toilet that they don’t even serve their basic purpose as propaganda rags anymore.

Give it another year or two, and owning the Washington Post will be as useful as spending $100-150 million dollars a year to spread propaganda by smoke signals.

8 posted on 01/22/2024 10:35:04 AM PST by Alberta's Child (If something in government doesn’t make sense, you can be sure it makes dollars.)
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To: ChicagoConservative27
What the WaPo article intentionally obscures is that at the time, major corporations and unions saw affirmative action as a deterrent to and good faith defense against potential civil rights actions based on past racial discrimination. What affirmative action quickly became after the thin pool of capable and work-ready black potential employees was exhausted was institutionalized reverse racism and a de facto quota system that set lower standards for black employees, mandated their hiring in spite of poor qualifications, and protected them against firing for misconduct or poor performance.

Sadly, the greatest impediments to the progress of black Americans (and all Americans, at that) has never been effectively addressed as a matter of urgent public policy -- not poverty or racism -- but the weakening and collapse of families and the ensuing chaos for children, especially young children. The Left's assault on faith, traditional values, and families has penetrated deeply into American culture and had a devastating effect. Remedying that requires the ouster of the Left from control of America's educational and welfare systems.

Few conservatives have the stomach for that battle because it inevitably means: (1) confronting the teacher unions and restructuring public education into a voucher system; and (2) reforming welfare into a system that encourages useful work and traditional families. Instead, conservatives tend toward preachy blather about "traditional values" and wonder why so many people tune them out.

9 posted on 01/22/2024 10:35:48 AM PST by Rockingham (`)
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To: Rockingham
> What the WaPo article intentionally obscures is that at the time, major corporations and unions saw affirmative action as a deterrent to and good faith defense against potential civil rights actions based on past racial discrimination.

And methinks the same corporations later saw it as a cudgel to wield against nimbler and leaner competition.

10 posted on 01/22/2024 10:39:55 AM PST by SecondAmendment (The history of the present Federal Government is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations ...)
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To: ronnie raygun

Something that shocked me to learn as a young man was that large corporations are not conservative, they pushed for or embraced affirmative action, corporate supplied babysitters at work, etc.

The large corporations knew they could afford to house people in “Human Resources” departments and set up daycare at work while their smaller competitors and potential challengers and start-ups could not.

It also shocked me to learn that big corporate businessmen were amoral and untouched by patriotism and American loyalty, things that most of us did not know about American corporations in 1970.


11 posted on 01/22/2024 10:43:11 AM PST by ansel12 ((NATO warrior under Reagan, and RA under Nixon, bemoaning the pro-Russians from Vietnam to Ukraine.))
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To: Wally_Kalbacken

Leftist MSM are entirely content that their news organizations have been relegated to “loss leaders.” The propaganda value of their abject bias is worth it to them because it offers other parts of their owners’ organizations to get funded by Democrats in other ways and means. It’s all about power and mind control.


12 posted on 01/22/2024 10:45:01 AM PST by Gaffer
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To: DIRTYSECRET

I agree, but it was more like 98%.

They didn’t want their own nation and peace then.

They don’t now, more than they want to kill Israelis.

When Arafat turned down the deal everyone was saying Israel
was crazy to offer, it outed those people for who they were.


13 posted on 01/22/2024 11:09:11 AM PST by DoughtyOne (I pledge allegiance to the flag of the USofA & to the Constitutional REPUBLIC for which it stands.)
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To: SecondAmendment

Could be, but unionization has more heft for that purpose.


14 posted on 01/22/2024 11:17:13 AM PST by Rockingham (`)
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To: ansel12

No such thing as an “American Corporation”, they have no loyalty to nations.


15 posted on 01/22/2024 11:19:50 AM PST by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: Wally_Kalbacken

If you are wealthy you can donate an unlimited amount of funds to a SuperPac.

If the campaign are not super idiots (like DeSantis) who are incapable of following federal election law then those donations can fund massive advertising campaigns in targeted areas that relieve the campaign of the need to spend their dollars there.

The tricky part of the law is that there is not supposed to be any “coordination” between the campaign and the SuperPac—which means the campaign cannot change strategic direction if it does not approve of the SuperPac activities—the SuperPac becomes a runaway train.

DeSantis SuperPac made the insane error of constantly talking to the media. They may have thought they were being clever—but that approach could end with a bunch of them in jail.

SuperPacs should be:

—Silent with the media
—Focused with specific messages in specific states/areas
—Have a broad enough message that events are unlikely to overtake them
—Strictly follow the non-coordination rules—which means that there can be no revolving door between the campaign and the SuperPac.
—Do not change course based on public statements issued by the campaign.


16 posted on 01/22/2024 11:28:19 AM PST by cgbg ("Our democracy" = Their Kleptocracy)
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To: ChicagoConservative27

Reagan didn’t put much effort into this. Probably because it was not as extensive and dangerous as it is now.


17 posted on 01/22/2024 12:22:24 PM PST by Socon-Econ (adi)
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