Posted on 09/13/2005 5:55:36 PM PDT by wagglebee
Peter Flaherty, president of the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), Tuesday denounced Lehman Brothers for apologizing for its alleged links to slavery, warning that such apologies, without legal or moral merit, will only embolden slave reparations activists to advance their unjust agenda.
The bank, responding to a Chicago ordinance that requires companies to disclose slave-related business dealings, issued the apology after discovering that the brothers who founded the firm's predecessor in 1850 owned slaves.
Joe Polizzotto, general counsel of Lehman Brothers, said, "This is a sad part of our heritage...We're deeply apologetic."
Flaherty called the company's decision an act of moral cowardice. "Lehman Brothers should have made the case against group guilt. Whatever ties the company or its officials may have had with slavery 150 years ago is irrelevant."
Flaherty added that, "Lehman Brothers should have stood up to the activists whose goal is to force companies and individuals to compensate the descendants of slaves. This is morally indefensible as it forces innocents to pay money to non-victims."
By apologizing, Flaherty said that Lehman Brothers gives the reparations movement a legitimacy it does not deserve. Lehman Brothers is the fourth bank this year to disclose ties to slavery.
Predictably, Lehman Brothers' act of contrition did not mollify reparations activists. Chicago Alderman Dorothy Tillman refused to accept the apology and demanded that the company be removed from a $1.5 billion bond issue.
Flaherty said the negative reaction shows that corporate appeasement does not work, and will only lead to greater demands.
"Reparations activists only care about money. They aren't interested in apologies," said Flaherty.
NLPC recently published a 35-page monograph titled, "The Case Against Slave Reparations," co-authored by Peter Flaherty and NLPC policy director John Carlisle.
So, according to the leftists in Chicago, something that was legal (even though it was immoral) 150 years ago will bar a company from business today, this certainly sounds like an ex post facto law to me.
http://www.nlpc.org/
Anyone fighting against compulsory union dues is my friend. Also, the Lehman Brothers have never heard the proverb that an 'open grave is never satisfied'.
With all the attention on New Orleans, we should remember Andy Jackson, our most racist president, and remembered annually in the many Jackson Day dinners that are comparable to the Lincoln Day dinners of the GOP.
That racist fouder of the Democrat Party invaded New Orleans and wiped it out, killing many of its inhabitants.
We need an apology and we want it now.
Apparently the BLOOD of the MOSTLY WHITE soldiers who DIED TO END SLAVERY is not enough for these reprehensible ship of fools. They will answer for what they are doing on their judgement day...
Don't forget the century of Jim Crow laws that white Democrats used to oppress blacks in the South for over a century after the Civil War.
Heck's bells, the more I think about the injustice the madder I get. If these people think Lehman Brothers even has a right to exist, they have another think coming. I don't see how Polizzotto can even show his face. He ought to kill himself tonight.
I am so sick of this stuff.
Lemming Brothers more like it.
Why do you think that Lehman Brothers has no right to exist?
Turnabout is definitely fair play here.
And while we're on the subject, I'd like to start a class action suit to sue all African slave-trappers who started this whole mess. By golly, we'll get to the bottom of this! (/sarcasm)
So, if we're going to be giving people money for injustices that they never even suffered, to be paid by people and corporations who have done nothing wrong, then I want some too dammit!
I would think it would be perfectly obvious. Two guys who owned slaves formed a companny. I'm not sure how it all happened, but eventually this Company managed by Mephisto became Lehman Brothers. Doesn't that bother you???
Worse, a guy named Joe Polizzotto went to work on behalf of these guys. What is he? A white supremacist? A skin head? Do you really believe he is sorry for all of this? If he really is sorry, he will realize he has done something so evil there is no redemption. He will kill himself. Tonight! If he doesn't he really isn't sorry.
Every account I have read about Union soldiers indicate that they didn't fight to"end slavery"but to preserve the Union.
As so many people here correctly point out,the North was at times even more racist than the South in its views on blacks.
Do you have any idea just how many companies in this country that could be said about? The present owners of this company in no way profited from this. What about people today whose ancestors owned slaves?
What about all of the Christians who were thrown to the lions and the Jews who were crucified by the Romans -- does Italy owe us all money? Did the ancestors of the Enzo Ferrari serve in the Roman Empire, and if so does he owe us all Ferraris? (Because I would REALLY like one!)
While not nearly as deep as your post, a young "african-american" female "parked" at our local grocery store, and stared at me while I was simply leaning on the trunk of my car, as my wife prepared, with my help to load groceries. The hate and the words that were expended in my direction, I will not utter.
I encourage those that will to notice how many "african-americans" have handicapped placards on their rear-view mirrors, yet can walk out of the local mass merchandiser with fifty pounds of goods and load them into a quite expensive Escalade, Lincoln Navigator......you name it. Oh, I see not a wobble.
Ban me, flame me, do whatever you wish. Delete the post, not a dare. What I say is the simple truth.
The arrogance, the excuses, the political correctness has nothing to do with skin, and everything to do with behavior and character.
That's my opinion, and, quite frankly a fact.
Then you should probably read more history because you're coming across as completely unknowledgeable.
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