Carol Browner
with President-elect
Barack Obama (AP)
Barack Obama's pick for his new "climate czar", Carol Browner, is an odd choice for this influential post.
Not because her radical views about global warming and economics don't line up perfectly with the latest far Left fads, but because her background is marred by incidents of racial discrimination that happened on her watch at her last big Washington job.
Others have already exposed Browner's high level membership in Socialist International, where she served as a "commissioner." (In the great Soviet tradition of "disappearing commissars," Browner's bio has now been stripped from the SI website.)
However, Browner's performance at one of her previous jobs -- as head of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton Administration -- is only now receiving renewed scrutiny.
According to a February 2001 report in TIME magazine, the EPA was plagued with “festering racial problems” during Browner’s time in charge. One African-American EPA employee, Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, told TIME that she’d been passed over for promotions for being “too uppity,” adding, "We [African-American employees] were treated like Negroes, to use a polite term. We were put in our place.”
Coleman-Adebayo was later awarded $600,000 in damages in a settlement that found the EPA guilty of “discrimination and retaliation against whistle blowers.” Shortly thereafter, Congress passed the “No Fear” government whistle blower protection act in response to the Coleman-Adebayo v. Carol Browner decision.
Dr. Coleman-Adebayo lamented in a recent interview,
The very woman I prevailed against in court is being elevated to a White House decision-level position.
At least 150 EPA employees filed similar lawsuits during Browner’s time there. In one particularly bizarre incident, blogger Shawn Mallow notes, “Anita Nickens, an EPA specialist, and the only black present during a visit of Mrs. Browner, was told to clean the toilet prior to her arrival. Afterward, the rest of her white co-workers bragged about it.”
It's a good thing Browner's appointment to the newly invented post of "Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change" isn't subject to Senate approval. Or maybe it doesn't matter, given the Democratic makeup of Congress.
After all, during last week's hearings, one Senator asked African-American candidate for Attorney General Eric Holder if he was a decent basketball player. The party of JFK and Lyndon Johnson doesn't seem to be as "racially sensitive" as it used to be.
Special Report: Inauguration Day 2009
Comments
The list of seedy relationships and associations of Obam-uh just keeps getting bigger and bigger and goes on and on. Does this GOOBER know anyone who isn't CORRUPT. Amazingly THE ONE has emerged through all this filth completely clean???
Sorry I just read the headline before commenting. Sounds like typical phony allegations of racial oppression. Come on, "Mrs. Browner, was told to clean the toilet prior to her arrival". What a line of standard bulls**t. Next time I'll read the whole article.
So much for "post racial" America.
In 2001, in the landmark court case Coleman-Adebayo v. Browner, Carol M. Browner and the agency she administered, the EPA, were found guilty of race, color, and sex-based discrimination as well as tolerating a hostile work environment. The case provided the impetus for the passage (unanimous in both chambers) of=2
0the No FEAR Act (Notification of Federal Employees Anti-discrimination and Retaliation) that was signed into law by President George W. Bush. The law was heralded as the first civil rights law of the 21st century. Study of Coleman-Adebayo v. Browner is now mandated for all new Federal employees within 90 days of their being hired, and every 2 years for all Federal employees. The extent of the racism and retaliation within Ms. Browner's EPA was so pervasive that Congress and the Executive required study of it as the penultimate example of what was WRONG with government. When asked in Congressional hearings whether she accepted the judgement of the jury, Ms. Browner said she did.
The question for Mr. Obama, is: Given her unrepentant position on the deplorable conditions she oversaw at EPA, how is Carol Browner qualified to hold administrative position again?
coupeditor: there you have it....progress for America! Carol Browner has proven that she is able to bend Government towards positive improvement! Besides which, if I had been appointed to a Cabinet Post I wouldn't suffer insubordination from a any subordinate either. I find it very interesting that the MainStreamMedia has not reported the substance of the dispute between Secretary Carol Browner and the Mademoiselle who was so insulted by being reprimanded. It would be interesting to learn what was the root cause of their acrimony, yes? Race was the excuse presented to the Public Eye, but I believe not the true reason. Otherwise, President Barack Obama would seem to be appointing a Racist to a very close advisory position, and we certainly do not believe that Obama is that naiive, that foolish, or that blind, do we?
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