{"id":3371,"date":"2012-02-02T13:21:12","date_gmt":"2012-02-02T18:21:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=3371"},"modified":"2012-02-02T13:21:12","modified_gmt":"2012-02-02T18:21:12","slug":"eeocs-forgotten-racial-racketeering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/02\/eeocs-forgotten-racial-racketeering\/","title":{"rendered":"EEOC’s Forgotten Racial Racketeering"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Future of Freedom Foundation <\/strong><\/a>posted online today this article from the November issue of Freedom Daily <\/strong><\/a>– <\/p>\n

The EEOC\u2019s Forgotten Racial Racketeering<\/strong><\/p>\n

by James Bovard<\/p>\n

Few federal agencies have a more brazen history of trampling due process and basic fairness than the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. From the time the EEOC was created in 1965, it has continually stretched its power and sought to win by legal intimidation. Its latest shenanigans need to be judged in light of its early bureaucratic racketeering. <\/p>\n

The 1964 Civil Rights Act explicitly banned racial quotas and specifically required that an employer have shown an intent to discriminate in order to be found guilty. However, by the late 1960s, the EEOC had intentionally subverted the law by establishing a definition of discrimination that was the opposite of the one that Congress had specified. EEOC chairman Clifford Alexander announced in 1968, \u201cWe … here at EEOC believe in numbers…. Our most valid standard is in numbers…. The only accomplishment is when we look at all those numbers and see a vast improvement in the picture.\u201d <\/p>\n

The government created numerous administrative tests to give it power to cajole, intimidate, leverage, and pressure private companies to do what government officials wanted. In 1970 the EEOC issued regulations to severely restrict the use of testing for hiring and promotion. The agency had no authority to issue such restrictive regulations, which clearly contradicted the actual wording of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Herman Belz, author of Equality Transformed, noted, \u201cAchievement of identical rejection rates for minority and nonminority job applicants was expressly stated as a policy objective…. Yet the guidelines did not stipulate a concern with qualified minority applicants.\u201d <\/p>\n

The EEOC strove to enforce a \u201cknow-nothing egalitarianism\u201d on company hiring policies. It routinely presumed that businessmen who seek to hire workers with more than minimal qualifications were acting unfairly towards less-qualified workers. Much of its routine work consisted of punishing corporations because their standards were too high. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 specified that a company could discriminate among job applications on the basis of \u201cbusiness necessity\u201d or Bona Fide Occupational Qualifications (BFOQ). But, with its interpretation of BFOQ, EEOC officials effectively appointed themselves czars over how competent American workers needed to be. The EEOC almost always intervened against competence \u2014 in support of the notion that workers do not need to be as intelligent, as literate, or as capable as an employer demands. <\/p>\n

Race norming and adverse impact <\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1973, the EEOC compelled AT&T to sign a consent decree to increase its hiring of minorities and women. As Belz noted, \u201cThere was a pioneering wrinkle in the decree: the \u2018affirmative action override.\u2019 To meet its goals, the company could promote a \u2018basically qualified\u2019 person rather than the \u2018best qualified\u2019 or \u2018most senior.\u2019\u201d That was a radical change in the meaning of the law. Equal opportunity went from requiring that the best man or the best woman be given the job to a demand that jobs be distributed to minimally qualified applicants, or even to applicants who could be made qualified at sufficient expense to the company. The CEO of AT&T publicly accused the EEOC of trying to force the company to lower its hiring standards and denounced the agency\u2019s policy as \u201ca misguided form of paternalism.\u201d <\/p>\n

The EEOC routinely effectively punished employers if minority job applicants gave the wrong answers to test questions. William Gorman, a Civil Service Commission staff psychologist, noted, \u201cBased upon an untested hypothesis, tests were presumed guilty of being anti\u2013equal employment opportunity until proven innocent.\u201d The EEOC assumed that a fair test would automatically provide equal scores among all racial groups of test-takers, although it had no evidence for that assumption \u2014 only a surfeit of moral self-righteousness and legal authority. <\/p>\n

Race norming was a result of the EEOC\u2019s attack on private tests. Race norming is the covert manipulation of people\u2019s test scores to produce an equal number of winners in each race. With race norming, each citizen has an equal opportunity to have his job test scores secretly raised or lowered in response to government manipulation or intimidation. <\/p>\n

The EEOC continually sought to further slant employment law in favor of plaintiffs by creating new definitions of discrimination. In 1978 it revealed that a private company could be presumed guilty of discrimination if its employees represented less than 80 percent of the racial groups in its surrounding area. In its Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures, the EEOC officially defined \u201cadverse impact\u201d as \u201ca substantially different rate of selection in hiring, promotion, or other employment decisions which works to the disadvantage of members of a race, sex, or ethnic group.\u201d The EEOC then defined \u201cunfairness of selection procedure\u201d as \u201ca condition in which members of one race, sex, or ethnic group characteristically obtain lower scores on a selection procedure than members of another group, and the differences are not reflected in differences in measures of job performance.\u201d <\/p>\n

The EEOC revealed, \u201cDisparate treatment occurs where members of a race, sex, or ethnic group have been denied the same employment, promotion, membership, or other employment opportunities as have been available to other employees or applicants.\u201d Thus, almost any instance where EEOC officials felt that an employer should have more blacks, women, or Hispanics on the payroll could allow a lawsuit on disparate treatment. The EEOC declared regarding affirmative action plans, \u201cGoals and timetables should be reasonably related to … the availability of basically qualified or qualifiable applicants.\u201d <\/p>\n

The history of the EEOC exemplifies how government agencies can achieve near-absolute power simply by issuing incomprehensible regulations. When the EEOC issued the Uniform Guidelines, the regulations were widely denounced for their vagueness and complexity. The General Accounting Office noted that one study of the regulations concluded that \u201ctheir reading difficulty level is at about grade 23 \u2014 that is, beyond the Doctor of Philosophy education level.\u201d The GAO noted, \u201cAn EEOC official told us that the Guidelines were not meant for use by laymen but, rather, by lawyers and psychologists. However … the reading difficulty of the Guidelines … was probably beyond that of most personnel managers, lawyers and psychologists.\u201d <\/p>\n

The EEOC official\u2019s comment captures the arrogance of the equalizers: the rules for pursuing or imposing equality are so complex that commoners need not understand them. The EEOC\u2019s official statement vivifies the EEOC\u2019s disdain for the organizations that it regulates: the regulated businesses do not need to understand the law, as long as they comply with the EEOC\u2019s wishes. <\/p>\n

The purpose of the guidelines was not to enable employers to make a good-faith effort to comply with federal regulations but rather to provide a slew of pretexts for individuals to sue or threaten to sue companies. The vagueness of EEOC regulations provided a huge advantage to plaintiffs in court cases, since it was unclear what was legal or illegal. The only sure way employers could comply was by imposing affirmative-action programs. <\/p>\n

Felons and minorities<\/strong><\/p>\n

The EEOC has long been one of felons\u2019 best friends. In the 1970s the EEOC began suing companies that refused to hire people with criminal records. It argued that \u201cdiscrimination\u201d against ex-convicts is simply an illegal pretext for discriminating against minorities. <\/p>\n

In 1989, the EEOC sued Carolina Freight Carrier of Hollywood, Florida, for refusing to hire as truck drivers people who had been convicted of felonies (especially larceny) and who had served prison time. Carolina Freight truckers carried \u201chigh risk\u201d freight, such as computers, munitions, and drugs. The company\u2019s average loss from a theft exceeded $100,000 and the company attributed 85 percent of the thefts to employee misconduct. Since drivers were largely unsupervised, the company believed them to be the primary sources of theft losses. <\/p>\n

The EEOC sued on behalf of a Hispanic man who had twice been arrested and who had served 18 months in prison for larceny. It asserted that since Hispanics have a higher rate of felony convictions than do whites, the company\u2019s policy violated Title VII because of its disparate impact on Hispanics. It argued that the only legitimate qualification for the job was the ability to operate a tractor-trailer. <\/p>\n

The EEOC had bad luck in the federal judge who was selected for the case. The judge \u2014 Jose Gonzalez Jr. \u2014 was outraged at the EEOC\u2019s condescending attitude towards Hispanics: \u201cEEOC\u2019s position that minorities should be held to lower standards is an insult to millions of honest Hispanics. Obviously a rule refusing honest employment to convicted applicants is going to have a disparate impact upon thieves.\u201d The judge fumed that \u201cto say that an applicant\u2019s honest character is irrelevant to an employer\u2019s hiring decision is ludicrous…. To hold otherwise is to stigmatize minorities by saying, in effect, your group is not as honest as other groups.\u201d <\/p>\n

The EEOC declared that it would not follow Judge Gonzalez\u2019s decision outside of his judicial district in southern Florida. In 1992, it sued Continental Air Transport, claiming that its policy of not hiring people with arrest records violated federal civil-rights law. EEOC attorney Elaine Chaney explained that the law was discriminatory because \u201cblacks and Hispanics are far more likely than whites to have arrest records.\u201d <\/p>\n

It is ironic that the government penalized a private company for relying on a person\u2019s criminal record, since both the federal and state governments suspend many of a person\u2019s civil and constitutional rights once he is convicted of a felony. Convicted felons are prohibited, for example, from owning guns or voting in most states. The government declares that a convicted felon cannot be trusted to pull a lever in a voting booth, yet it sought to penalize private companies who felt that he also cannot be trusted with $100,000 in private property. <\/p>\n

The government launched a noble-sounding crusade to equalize opportunities between blacks and whites and soon began suing private companies to force them to provide equal opportunities to ex-convicts and law-abiding citizens, to more-literate and less-literate people, and to highly qualified and minimally qualifiable applicants. Equal-opportunity policy degenerated to pursuing almost everything except equality. <\/p>\n

Federal civil-rights policy presumes that politicians should be the ultimate judges of which opportunities each group of citizens should receive \u2014 that politicians and bureaucrats should have practically unlimited power to tilt the economic playing field in the direction of preferred players. Rather than creating equal opportunity, this process simply led to a general political confiscation and redistribution of opportunity. As federal judge Alex Kozinski observed, \u201cNo one has yet proposed a satisfactory rule that distinguishes proper racial classifications \u2014 permissible exercises of the government\u2019s power to classify people for the common good \u2014 from those based on hatred, prejudice or a desire to help one\u2019s own at the expense of others.\u201d We are long overdue for a separate of Race and State. <\/p>\n

James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy [2006] as well as The Bush Betrayal [2004], Lost Rights [1994] and Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (Palgrave-Macmillan, September 2003) and serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Future of Freedom Foundation posted online today this article from the November issue of Freedom Daily – The EEOC\u2019s Forgotten Racial Racketeering by James Bovard Few federal agencies have a more brazen history of trampling due process and basic fairness than the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. From the time the EEOC was created in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nEEOC's Forgotten Racial Racketeering - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/02\/eeocs-forgotten-racial-racketeering\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"EEOC's Forgotten Racial Racketeering - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Future of Freedom Foundation posted online today this article from the November issue of Freedom Daily – The EEOC\u2019s Forgotten Racial Racketeering by James Bovard Few federal agencies have a more brazen history of trampling due process and basic fairness than the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. From the time the EEOC was created in […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/02\/eeocs-forgotten-racial-racketeering\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-02-02T18:21:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jim\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@jimbovard\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jim\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2012\\\/02\\\/02\\\/eeocs-forgotten-racial-racketeering\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2012\\\/02\\\/02\\\/eeocs-forgotten-racial-racketeering\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Jim\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/79550830ad81c14be529a2c37469974f\"},\"headline\":\"EEOC’s Forgotten Racial Racketeering\",\"datePublished\":\"2012-02-02T18:21:12+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2012\\\/02\\\/02\\\/eeocs-forgotten-racial-racketeering\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":1836,\"commentCount\":0,\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2012\\\/02\\\/02\\\/eeocs-forgotten-racial-racketeering\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2012\\\/02\\\/02\\\/eeocs-forgotten-racial-racketeering\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2012\\\/02\\\/02\\\/eeocs-forgotten-racial-racketeering\\\/\",\"name\":\"EEOC's Forgotten Racial Racketeering - James Bovard\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-02-02T18:21:12+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/79550830ad81c14be529a2c37469974f\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2012\\\/02\\\/02\\\/eeocs-forgotten-racial-racketeering\\\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2012\\\/02\\\/02\\\/eeocs-forgotten-racial-racketeering\\\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2012\\\/02\\\/02\\\/eeocs-forgotten-racial-racketeering\\\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"EEOC’s Forgotten Racial Racketeering\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/\",\"name\":\"James Bovard\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/79550830ad81c14be529a2c37469974f\",\"name\":\"Jim\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/d95466cfd0934e38803c5035629df727ae4ec1f3f96c6883c05b5c52e2044505?s=96&d=mm&r=r\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/d95466cfd0934e38803c5035629df727ae4ec1f3f96c6883c05b5c52e2044505?s=96&d=mm&r=r\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/d95466cfd0934e38803c5035629df727ae4ec1f3f96c6883c05b5c52e2044505?s=96&d=mm&r=r\",\"caption\":\"Jim\"},\"description\":\"Bovard's homepage is at http:\\\/\\\/www.jimbovard.com He can be contacted at jim@jimbovard.com James Bovard is the author of ten books. The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \\\"the roving inspector general of the modern state\\\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \\\"one-man truth squad.\\\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \\\"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\\\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.\",\"sameAs\":[\"http:\\\/\\\/www.jimbovard.com\",\"https:\\\/\\\/www.facebook.com\\\/jim.bovard\",\"https:\\\/\\\/x.com\\\/jimbovard\"],\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/author\\\/admin\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"EEOC's Forgotten Racial Racketeering - James Bovard","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/02\/eeocs-forgotten-racial-racketeering\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"EEOC's Forgotten Racial Racketeering - James Bovard","og_description":"The Future of Freedom Foundation posted online today this article from the November issue of Freedom Daily – The EEOC\u2019s Forgotten Racial Racketeering by James Bovard Few federal agencies have a more brazen history of trampling due process and basic fairness than the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. From the time the EEOC was created in […]","og_url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/02\/eeocs-forgotten-racial-racketeering\/","og_site_name":"James Bovard","article_author":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","article_published_time":"2012-02-02T18:21:12+00:00","author":"Jim","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@jimbovard","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Jim","Est. reading time":"9 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/02\/eeocs-forgotten-racial-racketeering\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/02\/eeocs-forgotten-racial-racketeering\/"},"author":{"name":"Jim","@id":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/79550830ad81c14be529a2c37469974f"},"headline":"EEOC’s Forgotten Racial Racketeering","datePublished":"2012-02-02T18:21:12+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/02\/eeocs-forgotten-racial-racketeering\/"},"wordCount":1836,"commentCount":0,"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/02\/eeocs-forgotten-racial-racketeering\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/02\/eeocs-forgotten-racial-racketeering\/","url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/02\/eeocs-forgotten-racial-racketeering\/","name":"EEOC's Forgotten Racial Racketeering - James Bovard","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/#website"},"datePublished":"2012-02-02T18:21:12+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/79550830ad81c14be529a2c37469974f"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/02\/eeocs-forgotten-racial-racketeering\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/02\/eeocs-forgotten-racial-racketeering\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/02\/eeocs-forgotten-racial-racketeering\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"EEOC’s Forgotten Racial Racketeering"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/","name":"James Bovard","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/79550830ad81c14be529a2c37469974f","name":"Jim","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d95466cfd0934e38803c5035629df727ae4ec1f3f96c6883c05b5c52e2044505?s=96&d=mm&r=r","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d95466cfd0934e38803c5035629df727ae4ec1f3f96c6883c05b5c52e2044505?s=96&d=mm&r=r","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d95466cfd0934e38803c5035629df727ae4ec1f3f96c6883c05b5c52e2044505?s=96&d=mm&r=r","caption":"Jim"},"description":"Bovard's homepage is at http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com He can be contacted at jim@jimbovard.com James Bovard is the author of ten books. The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3371"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3374,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3371\/revisions\/3374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}