Posts Tagged ‘ROBERT F. KENNEDY’
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 14, 2023 at 12:12 am
John F. Kennedy became President when civil rights suddenly became a burning issue throughout the Nation.
At Kennedy’s request, dozens of law firms sent lawyers South, so civil rights demonstrators would not lack counsel.
Prominent blacks such as Thurgood Marshall, Robert C. Weaver and George L.L. Weaver were appointed, respectively, to the Supreme Court, the Housing and House Finance Agency and the office of Assistant Secretary of Labor.
But Kennedy was highly reluctant to push for a civil rights bill addressing the overall issues of racial discrimination.
The reason: Most of the chairman of House and Senate committees were deeply conservative Southern racists–whether Republican or Democrat. They decided whether Kennedy’s foreign policy initiatives would be approved or opposed–especially his bills for increased foreign aid.
Kennedy believed he could not offend such men without jeopardizing the legacy he wanted to achieve in foreign policy.
This timidity, in turn, led many prominent blacks—such as Martin Luther King and Malcom X—to believe they would see no innovative moves on Kennedy’s part.
James Meredith
But events forced Kennedy’s hand.edn September 30, 1962, the President sent deputy U.S. marshals and National Guardsmen into Mississippi to restore order. Rioting had erupted when, by federal court order, James Meredith, a black, was enrolled at the state university.
Kennedy’s problems in winning support for his civil rights program arose in the folkways of the Nation. When laws run counter to a nation’s folkways, the laws lose.
In backing the admission of Meredith, the President chose an incident which would set off shockwaves for black rights.
Kennedy held mixed emotions about the demand for civil rights by blacks. On one hand, as an Irish Catholic, he grew up with stories about longtime discrimination against his ancestors (such as the “No Irish Need Apply” signs posted by numerous employers).
On the other hand, he had been born into a world of power and wealth, and he had to grope his way toward understanding the problems of the oppressed.
Another major confrontation broke out between Kennedy and the forces of segregation on June 11, 1963. Alabama Governor George C. Wallace personally blocked the entrance of two black pupils to the University of Tuscaloosa.
The President, watching on TV, federalized the Alabama National Guard, which Wallace had used to ring the school. Wallace withdrew and the students were admitted and enrolled.
That same day, Kennedy addressed the nation on the need for genuine equality for all Americans: “The question is whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated.”
JFK addresses the nation on civil rights
And he called on Congress to pass his civil rights bill, which had been stalled by the legislators.
On August 28, 1963, 200,000 civil rights demonstrators flooded Washington, D.C., for a massive rally.
Fearing that violence would erupt—embarrassing his administration and setting back the cause of civil rights—Kennedy had sought to persuade Dr. Martin Luther King, the march’s chief figure, to cancel the proposed march.
But King and his fellow organizers were determined to go through with it. They had, they said, waited too long for justice to be satisfied with anything less.
The dignity and peacefulness of the rally–and, most especially, King’s soaring “I Have a Dream” speech–won tremendous sympathy throughout the country. Kennedy met with civil rights leaders afterward to offer his support.
Martin Luther King during the March on Washington
But Kennedy’s civil rights bill remained stalled in Congress until 1964. President Lyndon B. Johnson used the assassinated Kennedy’s new status as a martyr to gain enough support for its passage.
Meanwhile, on yet another front, the Kennedy administration was waging an unprecedented war against organized crime.
This was primarily the work of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. As chief counsel for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (1957–59), he had interrogated about 800 mobsters who had been summoned by subpoena.
And he had learned, firsthand, how ineffective the FBI and Justice Department were at bringing such powerful criminals to justice. The FBI had long steered clear of organized crime investigations, largely because its director, J. Edgar Hoover, feared corruption of his agents.
Upon taking office as Attorney General, he greatly expanded the number of attorneys assigned to the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Section. And, more important, he used his status as brother to the President to jawbone FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover into attacking the Mob.
The FBI installed illegal microphones in Mob hangouts throughout the country and started building cases against such mobsters as Sam Giancana, Santos Trafficante and Carlos Marcello.
The administration’s attack on the Mob has led some historians to believe the assassination of President Kennedy was Mob-orchestrated.
The reasons:
- Joseph P. Kennedy, the family patriarch, solicited Mob money and influence for his son’s 1960 Presidential campaign.
- Through singer Frank Sinatra, the elder Kennedy assured Chicago Mafia boss Sam Giancana that the mob would get a free ride if his son were elected President.
- The CIA, seeking any way to topple Fidel Castro, enlisted the Mafia to assassinate him.
- But Robert Kennedy, as Attorney General, ignored the Mob’s “contributions” and pressed his war against the syndicates
- As a result, mobsters felt betrayed and lusted for vengeance.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 13, 2023 at 12:10 am
By October, 1962, Nikita Khrushchev, premier of the Soviet Union, had supplied Cuba with more than 40,000 soldiers, 1,300 field pieces, 700 anti-aircraft guns, 350 tanks and 150 jets.
The motive: To deter another Bay of Pigs-type invasion.
Khrushchev also began supplying Castro with nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.
Their discovery, in October, 1962, ignited the single most dangerous confrontation of the Cold War.
John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis
On October 16, Kennedy was shown photographs of nuclear missile sites under construction on the island. The pictures had been taken on the previous day by a high-altitude U-2 spy plane.
Suddenly, the two most powerful nuclear countries—the United States and the Soviet Union—appeared on the brink of nuclear war.
Kennedy officials claimed they couldn’t understand why Khrushchev had placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. “Maybe Khrushchev’s gone mad” was a typical musing.
The Kennedy administration never admitted that JFK had been waging a no-holds-barred campaign to overthrow the Cuban government and assassinate its leader.
Kennedy convened a group of his 12 most important advisers, which became known as Ex-Comm, for Executive Committee.
For seven days, Kennedy and his advisers intensely and privately debated their options. Some of the participants—such as Air Force General Curtis LeMay—urged an all-out air strike against the missile sites.
Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General (and the President’s brother) opposed initial calls for an air strike.
It would be, he said, “a Pearl Harbor in reverse.” And, he added: “I don’t want my brother to go down in history as the Tojo of the 1960s.”
Robert F. and John F. Kennedy
Others—such as Adlai Stevenson, the United States delegate to the United Nations—urged a reliance on quiet diplomacy.
It was Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara who suggested a middle course: A naval blockade—a “quarantine” in Kennedy’s softened term—around Cuba. This would hopefully prevent the arrival of more Soviet offensive weapons on the island.
The President insisted that the missiles had to go—by peaceful means, if possible, but by the use of military force if necessary.
Kennedy finally settled on a naval blockade of Cuba. This would prevent additional missiles from coming in and give Khrushchev time to negotiate and save face.
On October 22, President Kennedy appeared on nationwide TV to denounce the presence of Russian nuclear missiles in Cuba.
He demanded their withdrawal, and warned that any missile launched against any nation in the Western hemisphere would be answered with “a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”
Kennedy ordered American military readiness raised to a level of Defcom-2—the step just short of total war.
The United States had about 27,000 nuclear weapons; the Soviets had about 3,000. In a first nuclear exchange, the United States could have launched about 3,000 nuclear weapons and the Soviets about 250.
Nuclear missile in silo
On October 28, Khrushchev announced that the missile sites would be destroyed and the missiles crated and shipped back to the Soviet Union.
In return, Kennedy gave his promise—publicly—to lift the blockade and not invade Cuba
Privately, he also promised to remove obsolete Jupiter II nuclear missiles from Turkey, which bordered the Soviet Union. Those missiles were, in effect, the American version of the Russian missiles that had been shipped to Cuba.
The world escaped nuclear disaster by a hair’s-breath.
Khrushchev didn’t know that Kennedy had intended to order a full-scale invasion of Cuba in just another 24 hours if an agreement couldn’t be reached.
And Kennedy and his military advisors didn’t know that Russian soldiers defending Cuba had been armed with tactical nuclear weapons.
If warfare of any type had broken out, the temptation to go nuclear would have been overwhelming.
The Cuban Missile Crisis marked the only time the world came to the brink of nuclear war.
The Right attacked Kennedy for refusing to destroy Castro, thus allowing Cuba to remain a Communist bastion only 90 miles from Florida.
The Left believed it was a needless confrontation that risked the destruction of humanity.
For Kennedy, forcing the Soviets to remove their missiles from Cuba re-won the confidence he had lost among so many Americans following the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
It also made him face the brutal truth that a miscalculation during a nuclear crisis could destroy all life on Earth.
He felt he could now move—cautiously—toward better relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Ironically, the crisis had the same effects on Khrushchev—who had witnessed the horrors of Germany’s 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union and the subsequent loss of at least 22 million Soviet citizens.
Slowly and carefully, Kennedy and Khrushchev negotiated the details of what would become the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which banned nuclear testing in the atmosphere.
Underground tests would continue, but the amounts of deadly strontium-90 radiation polluting the atmosphere would be vastly reduced.
The treaty was signed between the United States and the Soviet Union on July 25, 1963.
Kennedy considered it his greatest achievement as President, saying in a speech: “According to a Chinese proverb, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. My fellow Americans, let us take that first step.”
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 10, 2023 at 12:10 am
During the 1960 Presidential campaign, then-Senator John F. Kennedy promised to build a Peace Corps to train people in underdeveloped nations to help themselves.
In March, 1961, the program went into effect, with the President’s brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, as director.
Starvation, illiteracy and disease were the enemies of the Corps. Any nation wanting aid could request it. The first group of volunteers went to the Philippines, the second to Ecuador and the third to Tanganyika.
The problems of the underdeveloped world were too great for any single organization to solve. But the Corps lifted the spirits of many living in those countries. And it captured the imagination of millions of Americans—especially those of thousands of idealistic youths who entered its ranks.
John F. Kennedy
To combat the growing Communist threat to Latin America, Kennedy established the Alliance for Progress. He defined the Alliance’s goal as providing “revolutionary progress through powerful, democratic means.”
Within two years he could report:
“Some 140,000 housing units have been constructed. Slum clearance projects have begun, and 3,000 classrooms have been built. More than 4,000,000 school books have been distributed.
“The Alliance has fired the imagination and kindled the hopes of millions of our good neighbors. Their drive toward modernization is gaining momentum as it unleashes the energies of these millions.
“The United States is becoming increasingly identified in the minds of the people with the goal they move toward: a better life with freedom,” said Kennedy.
Critics of the program, however, charged that the President was trying to “dress up the old policies” of Franklin D. Roosevelt in new rhetoric. Since FDR’s time, the United States has believed in giving economic aid to Latin America.
Much—if not most—of these billions of dollars wound up in the pockets of right-wing dictators, such as Anastasio Somoza and Rafael Trujillo.
Meanwhile, Kennedy was urging action on another front—that of outer space.
“This generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space,” declared the President. He committed the United States to putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
As indeed it happened less than six years after his death—on July 20, 1969.
Kennedy’s idealistic rhetoric masked his real reason for going to the moon: To score a propaganda victory over the Soviet Union.
Another of his anti-Communist goals: To remove Fidel Castro from power in Cuba at almost any cost.
Fidel Castro
Immediately after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy appointed his brother, Robert–who was then the Attorney General—to oversee a CIA program to overthrow Castro.
The CIA and the Mafia entered into an unholy alliance to assassinate Castro—each for its own benefit:
- The CIA wanted to please Kennedy by overthrowing the Communist leader who had nationalized American corporate holdings.
- The Mafia wanted to regain its lucrative casino and brothel holdings that had made Cuba the playground of the rich in pre-Castro times.
The mobsters were authorized to offer $150,000 to anyone who would kill Castro and were promised any support the Agency could yield.
“We were hysterical about Castro at about the time of the Bay of Pigs and thereafter,” then-former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara testified before Congress about these efforts. “And there was pressure from JFK and RFK to do something about Castro.”
Nor was everyone in the CIA enthusiastic about the “get Castro” effort.
“Everyone at CIA was surprised at Kennedy’s obsession with Fidel,” recalled Sam Halpern, who was assigned to the Cuba Project. “They thought it was a waste of time. We all knew [Fidel] couldn’t hurt us. Most of us at CIA initially liked Kennedy, but why go after this little guy?
“One thing is for sure: Kennedy wasn’t doing it out of national security concerns. It was a personal thing. The Kennedy family felt personally burnt by the Bay of Pigs and sought revenge.”
It was all-out war. Among the tactics used:
- Hiring Cuban gangsters to murder Cuban police officials and Soviet technicians.
- Sabotaging mines.
- Paying up to $100,000 per “hit” for the murder or kidnapping of Cuban officials.
- Using biological and chemical warfare against the Cuban sugar industry.
- Planting colorful seashells rigged to explode at a site where Castro liked to go skindiving.
- Trying to arrange for his being presented with a wetsuit impregnated with noxious bacteria and mold spores, or with lethal chemical agents.
- Attempting to infect Castro’s scuba regulator with tuberculous bacilli.
- Trying to douse his handkerchiefs, cigars, tea and coffee with other lethal bacteria.
But all of these efforts failed to assassinate Castro—or overthrow the Cuban Revolution he was heading.
“Bobby (Kennedy) wanted boom and bang all over the island,” recalled Halpern. “It was stupid. The pressure from the White House was very great.”
Americans would rightly label such methods as ”terrorist” if another power used them against the United States today. And the Cuban government saw the situation exactly the same way.
So Castro appealed to Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union, for assistance.
Khrushchev was quick to comply: “We must not allow the Communist infant to be strangled in its crib,” he told members of his inner circle.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 9, 2023 at 12:10 am
November 22, 2023, will mark the 60th anniversary of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Dallas, Texas.
Today—62 years after he took office—millions of Americans bitterly contrast his memory with the character of the most hated President in American history: Donald John Trump:
JFK – A decorated war hero
DJT – A five-times draft-dodger
JFK – Youthful (43 upon taking office) and handsome
DJT – Old (77) and overweight
JFK – A fervent anti-Communist
DJT – Elected with support from Russian Communist Intelligence
JFK – Witty, self-mocking
DJT – Humorless, self-bragging
JFK – Optimistic, well-informed, appealing to the best in Americans
DJT – Doom-saying, uninformed, appealing to the “darker side” of his Right-wing base
Some have called the Kennedy administration a golden era in American history. A time when touch football, lively White House parties, stimulus to the arts and the antics of the President’s children became national obsessions.
John F. Kennedy
Others have called the Kennedy Presidency a monument to the unchecked power of wealth and ambition. An administration staffed by young novices playing at statesmen, riddled with nepotism, whose legacy includes the Bay of Pigs, the Vietnam war and the world’s first nuclear confrontation.
The opening days of the Kennedy Presidency raised hopes for a dramatic change in relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.
But detente was not possible then. The Russians had not yet experienced their coming agricultural problems and the setback in Cuba during the Missile Crisis. And the United States had not suffered defeat in Vietnam.
Kennedy’s first brush with international Communism came on April 17, 1961, with the invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. This operation had been planned and directed by the Central Intelligence Agency during the final months of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s term as President.
The U.S. Navy was to land about 1,400 Cuban exiles on the island to overthrow the Communist government of Fidel Castro. They were supposed to head into the mountains—as Castro himself had done against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1956—and raise the cry of revolution.
The invasion would occur after an American air strike had knocked out the Cuban air force. But the airstrike failed and Kennedy, under the pressure of world opinion, called off a second try.
Even so, the invasion went ahead. When the invaders surged onto the beaches, they found Castro’s army waiting for them. Many of the invaders were killed on the spot. Others were captured—to be ransomed by the United States in December, 1962, in return for medical supplies.
It was a major public relations setback for the newly-installed Kennedy administration, which had raised hopes for a change in American-Soviet relations.
Kennedy, trying to abort widespread criticism, publicly took the blame for the setback: “There’s an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan….I’m the responsible officer of the Government.”
The Bay of Pigs convinced Kennedy that he had been misled by the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Out of this came his decision to rely heavily on the counsel of his brother, Robert, whom he had installed as Attorney General.
The failed Cuban invasion—unfortunately for Kennedy—convinced Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev that the President was weak.
Khrushchev told an associate that he could understand if Kennedy had not decided to invade Cuba. But once he did, Kennedy should have pressed on and wiped out Castro.
Khrushchev attributed this to Kennedy’s youth, inexperience and timidity—and believed he could bully the President.
On June 4, 1961, Kennedy met with Khrushchev in Vienna to discuss world tensions. Khrushchev threatened to go to nuclear war over the American presence in West Berlin—the dividing line between Western Europe, protected by the United States, and Eastern Europe, controlled by the Soviet Union.
Kennedy, who prized rationality, was shaken by Khrushchev’s unexpected rage. After the conference, he told an associate: “It’s going to be a cold winter.”
Meanwhile, East Berliners felt they were about to be denied access to West Berlin. A flood of 3,000 refugees daily poured into West Germany.
Khrushchev was embarrassed at this clear showing of the unpopularity of the Communist regime. In August, he ordered that a concrete wall—backed up by barbed wire, searchlights and armed guards—be erected to seal off East Berlin.
As tensions mounted and a Soviet invasion of West Berlin seemed likely, Kennedy sent additional troops to the city in a massive demonstration of American will.
Two years later, on June 26, 1963, during a 10-day tour of Europe, Kennedy visited Berlin to deliver his “I am a Berliner” speech to a frenzied crowd of thousands.
JFK addresses crowds at the Berlin Wall
“There are many people in the world who really don’t understand, or say they don’t, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world,” orated Kennedy. “Let them come to Berlin.”
Standing within gunshot of the Berlin wall, he lashed out at the Soviet Union and praised the citizens of West Berlin for being “on the front lines of freedom” for more than 20 years.
“All free men, wherever they may live,” said Kennedy, “are citizens of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, ‘Ich ben ein Berliner.’”
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 31, 2023 at 12:35 am
The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one—no matter where he lives or what he does—can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on.
–Robert F. Kennedy, April 4, 1968
Senator Robert F. Kennedy announcing the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
By https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPYNb4ex6Ko, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14289385
What should the surviving victims of gun massacres do to seek redress?
And how can the relatives and friends of those who didn’t survive seek justice for those they loved?
Two things:
First, don’t count on politicians to support a ban on assault weapons.
Politicians—with rare exceptions—have only two goals:
- Get elected to office, and
- Stay in office.
And too many of them fear the economic and voting clout of the NRA to risk its wrath.
Consider Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama.
Both rushed to offer condolences to the surviving victims of the massacre at the Century 16 Theater in Aurora, Colorado, on July 20, 2012.
And both steadfastly refused to even discuss gun control—let alone support a ban on the type of assault weapons used by James Holmes, leaving 12 dead and 58 wounded.
Second, those who survived the massacre—and the relatives and friends of those who didn’t—should file wrongful death, class-action lawsuits against the NRA.
There is sound, legal precedent for this.
- For decades, the American tobacco industry peddled death and disability to millions and reaped billions of dollars in profits.
- The industry vigorously claimed there was no evidence that smoking caused cancer, heart disease, emphysema or any other ailment.
- Tobacco companies spent billions on slick advertising campaigns to win new smokers and attack medical warnings about the dangers of smoking.
- Tobacco companies spent millions to elect compliant politicians and block anti-smoking legislation.
- From 1954 to 1994, over 800 private lawsuits were filed against tobacco companies in state courts. But only two plaintiffs prevailed, and both of those decisions were reversed on appeal.
- In 1994, amidst great pessimism, Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore filed a lawsuit against the tobacco industry. But other states soon followed, ultimately growing to 46.
- Their goal: To seek monetary, equitable and injunctive relief under various consumer-protection and anti-trust laws.
- The theory underlying these lawsuits was: Cigarettes produced by the tobacco industry created health problems among the population, which badly strained the states’ public healthcare systems.
- In 1998, the states settled their Medicaid lawsuits against the tobacco industry for recovery of their tobacco-related, health-care costs. In return, they exempted the companies from private lawsuits for tobacco-related injuries.
- The companies agreed to curtail or cease certain marketing practices. They also agreed to pay, forever, annual payments to the states to compensate some of the medical costs for patients with smoking-related illnesses.
The parallels with the NRA are obvious:
- For decades, the NRA has peddled deadly weapons to millions, reaped billions of dollars in profits and refused to admit the carnage those weapons have produced: “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” With guns.
- The NRA has bitterly fought background checks on gun-buyers, in effect granting even criminals and the mentally ill the right to own arsenals of death-dealing weaponry.
- The NRA has spent millions on slick advertising campaigns to win new members and frighten them into buying guns.
- The NRA has spent millions on political contributions to block gun-control legislation.
- The NRA has spent millions attacking political candidates and elected officials who warned about the dangers of unrestricted access to assault and/or concealed weapons.
- The NRA has spent millions pushing “Stand Your Ground” laws in more than half the states, which potentially give every citizen a “license to kill.”
- The NRA receives millions of dollars from online sales of ammunition, high-capacity ammunition magazines, and other accessories through its point-of-sale Round-Up Program—thus directly profiting by selling a product that kills about 30,288 people a year.
- Firearms made indiscriminately available through NRA lobbying have filled hospitals with casualties, and have thus badly strained the states’ public healthcare systems.
It will take a series of highly expensive and well-publicized lawsuits to significantly weaken the NRA, financially and politically.
The first ones will have to be brought by the surviving victims of gun violence—and by the friends and families of those who did not survive it. Only they will have the courage and motivation to take such a risk.
As with the cases first brought against tobacco companies, there will be losses. And the NRA will rejoice with each one.
But, in time, state Attorneys General will see the clear parallels between lawsuits filed against those who peddle death by cigarette and those who peddle death by armor-piercing bullet.
And then the NRA—like the tobacco industry—will face an adversary wealthy enough to stand up for the rights of the gun industry’s own victims.
Only then will those politicians supporting reasonable gun controls dare to stand up for the victims of these needless tragedies.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 13, 2023 at 12:10 am
City agencies need to see landlords for what they truly are—as, at best, potential predators, if not actual ones. And to act aggressively on that knowledge.
As Niccolo Machiavelli warned:
“All those who have written upon civil institutions demonstrate…that whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it.
“If their evil disposition remains concealed for a time, it must be attributed to some unknown reason; and we must assume that it lacked occasion to show itself. But time, which has been said to be the father of all truth, does not fail to bring it to light.”
Niccolo Machiavelli
The power of slumlords calls to mind the scene in 1987’s The Untouchables, where Sean Connery’s veteran cop tells Eliot Ness: “Everybody knows where the liquor is. It’s just a question of: Who wants to cross Capone?”
Many tenants have lived with rotting floors, bedbugs, nonworking toilets, mice/rats, chipping lead-based paint and other outrages for not simply months but years.
This holds true across the United States. But it also holds true in San Francisco—the “renters’ paradise” where the District Attorney’s Office hasn’t prosecuted a slumlord in decades.
Part Two of this series presented a series of badly-needed, long-overdue reforms for the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection (DBI). This is the agency charged to ensuring safe housing conditions for San Francisco residents.
Renters across the country should demand similar protections.
This concluding part will cover the remainder of those needed reforms.
- Landlords should be required to bring all the units in a building up to existing building codes, and not just those in need of immediate repair.
- Landlords should be legally required to hire a certified-expert contractor to perform building repairs. To save money—that they can well afford to spend—-many landlords insist on making such repairs despite their not being trained or experienced in doing so. They thereby risk the health and/or safety of their tenants.
- DBI should not view itself as a “mediation” agency between landlords and tenants. Most landlords hate DBI and will always do so. They believe they should be allowed to treat their tenants like serfs, if not slaves, raise extortionate rents anytime they desire, and maintain their buildings in whatever state they wish.
- Above all, DBI must stop viewing itself as a regulatory agency and start seeing itself as a law enforcement one. The FBI doesn’t ask criminals to comply with the law. It applies whatever amount of pressure is needed to force their compliance. William Tecumseh Sherman, speaking of the rebellious Southern states, said it best: “They cannot be made to love us, but they may be made to fear us.”
- The San Francisco District Attorney’s Office should create a special unit to investigate and prosecute slumlords. Prosecutors should offer rewards to citizens who provide tips on major outrages by the city’s slumlords.
- Install Rent Control protections for tenants on fixed incomes. San Francisco is notorious for having the highest rents in the nation. The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment runs $3,000 a month. Even those in the vaunted high-tech industry spend most of their income on rent.
- For tenants on fixed incomes—seniors, disabled, students—the predatory greed of landlords amounts to a staged-in eviction notice. Social Security recipients often don’t get a cost-of-living increase if there hasn’t been a rise in gasoline prices. But many of them don’t own cars—while the price of everything else—such as groceries—has sharply risen.
- Allowing landlords to jack up rents to the fullest extent possible every year will eventually drive out all tenants who are not multimillionaires. In fact, an unknown portion of this City’s homeless population doubtless stems from the ability of landlords to gradually raise rents above tenants’ ability to afford them.
- In 1979, San Franciscans passed a Rent Control law to protect tenants against predatory rent hikes and unfair evictions. As a result, a landlord can only raise a tenant’s rent a certain percentage every year. This is set by the set by the Rent Stabilization and Arbitration Board, more popularly known as the “Rent Board.”
- But there is a gaping hole in the law: Once a tenant moves out, the landlord can jack up the rent as high as he wants. This is why the average rent in San Francisco is priced beyond most middle-class wage-earners.
- In addition, landlords are allowed to charge tenants yearly fees to maintain the existence of the Rent Board. This is both unfair and insulting, since the Board was created to protect tenants from predatory landlords. Most tenants have far less money to pay such fees than do landlords, who are free to raise rents every year. And landlords—unlike tenants—can and do write off Rent Board fees on their taxes every year.
As Robert F. Kennedy wrote: “Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 12, 2023 at 12:10 am
“We investigate complaints of building code violations and compel building owners to fix the violations.”
So boasts the website for the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection (DBI).
Yet DBI has long been outmaneuvered by predatory, law-breaking landlords.
And San Francisco renters—many of them elderly, poor and/or disabled—have been the victims of landlord greed, neglect and/or harassment.
Among the reforms that DBI should immediately enact:
- Hit slumlord violators with a fine—payable immediately—for at least $2,000 to $5,000 for each health/safety-code violation. The slumlord would be told he could reclaim 75-80% of the money only if he fully corrected the violation within 30 days. The remaining portion of the levied fine would go into the City coffers, to be shared among DBI and other City agencies.
- This would put the onus on the slumlord, not DBI. Appealing to his greed would ensure his willingness to comply with the ordered actions. As matters now stand, it is DBI who must repeatedly check with the slumlord to find out if its orders have been complied with.
- If the landlord failed to comply with the actions ordered within 30 days, the entire fine would go into the City’s coffers-–to be divided among DBI and other agencies charged with protecting San Francisco residents.
- In addition. he would be hit again with a fine at least twice the amount of the first one.
- Inspectors for DBI should be allowed to cite landlords for violations that fall under the jurisdiction of the Department of Public Health (DPH). They could then pass the information to DPH for its own investigation.
- If the DBI inspector later discovered that the landlord had not corrected the DPH violation within a designated time-period, DBI should be allowed to levy its own fine for his failure to do so.
- If DPH objects to this, DBI should propose that DPH’s own inspectors be armed with similar cross-jurisdictional authority. Each agency would thus have increased motivation for spotting and correcting health/safety violations that threaten the lives of San Francisco residents.
- This would instantly turn DBI and DPH into allies, not competitors. And it would mean that whether a citizen called DBI or DPH, s/he could be assured of getting the necessary assistance. As matters now stand, many residents are confused by the conflicting jurisdictions of both agencies.
- DBI should insist that its Inspectors Division be greatly expanded.DBI can attain this by arguing that reducing the number of Inspectors cuts (1) protection for San Francisco renters–and (2) monies that could go to the general City welfare.
- The Inspection Division should operate independently of DBI.Currently, too many high-ranking DBI officials tilt toward landlords because they are landlords themselves.
- DBI should create a Special Research Unit to compile records on the worst slumlord offenders. Thus, a slumlord with a repeat history of defying DBI Notices of Violation could be treated more harshly than a landlord who was a first-time offender.
- Turning DBI into a revenue-producing agency would enable the City to raise desperately-needed revenues—in a highly popular way. Fining delinquent slumlords would be as popular as raising taxes on tobacco companies. Only slumlords and their hired lackey allies would object.
- DBI should legally require landlords to rehabilitate a unit every time a new tenant moves in, or have it examined by a DBI inspector every two years. A tenant can occupy a unit for ten or more years, then die or move out, and the landlord immediately rents the unit to the first person who comes along, without making any repairs or upgrades whatsoever.
- Slumlords, unlike drug-dealers, can’t move their buildings from one street or city to another. If they want to make money in San Francisco, they will have to submit to the jurisdiction of landlord-regulating agencies.
- DBI should require landlords to post their Notices of Violation in public areas of their buildings—and levy severe fines for failing to do so. When DBI orders a slumlord to take corrective action, s/he is the only one who is notified. If that slumlord refuses to comply with that directive, s/he is the only one who knows it. Given the pressing demands on DBI, weeks or months will pass before the agency learns about this violation of its orders. Tenants have a right to know if their landlord is complying with the law—so they can promptly notify inform DBI if a violation is occurring.
- Landlords should be legally required to give each tenant a list of the major city agencies (such as DBI, the Rent Board and the Department of Public Health) that exist to help tenants solve problems with their housing.
- DBI should launch—and maintain—a citywide advertising campaign to alert residents about its services. Everyone knows the FBI pursues bank robbers. But too many San Franciscans don’t even know that DBI exists, let alone what laws it enforces. This should be an in-your-face campaign: “Do you have bedbugs in your apartment? Has your stove stopped working? Are you afraid to ride in your building elevator because it’s always malfunctioning? Have you complained to your landlord and gotten the runaround? Then call DBI at—- Or drop us an email at_____.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 11, 2023 at 12:11 am
As of 2022, seven states—California, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and the District of Columbia—offer tenant protections via residential rent control.
Only 34 out of 482 cities in California have strong tenant protections.
And only 15 cities in California have rent controls on landlords’ greed: Alameda, Berkeley, Beverly Hills, East Palo Alto, Hayward, Los Angeles, Los Gatos, Mountain View, Oakland, Palm Springs, Richmond. San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Monica, and West Hollywood.
To hear slumlords tell it, San Francisco is a “renters’ paradise,” where obnoxious, lazy, rent-evading tenants constantly take advantage of hard-working, put-upon landlords.
Don’t believe it.
Kip and Nicole Macy are two former San Francisco slumlords who pled guilty to felony charges of residential burglary, stalking and attempted grand theft.
Nicole and Kip Macy
Determined to evict rent control-protected tenants from their apartment building in the South of Market district, they unleashed a reign of terror in 2006:
- Cut holes in the floor of one tenant’s living room with a power saw—while he was inside his unit.
- Cut out sections of the floor joists to make the building collapse.
- Created fictitious email accounts to appear as a tenant who had filed a civil suit against the Macys—and used these to fire the tenant’s attorney.
- Cut the tenants’ telephone lines and shut off their electricity, gas and water.
- Changed the locks on all the apartments without warning.
- Mailed death threats.
- Kicked one of their tenants in the ribs.
- Hired workers to board up a tenant’s windows from the outside while he still lived there.
- Falsely reported trespassers in a tenant’s apartment, leading police to hold him and a friend at gunpoint.
- Broke into the units of three tenants and removed all their belongings.
- Again broke into the units of the same three victims and soaked their beds, clothes and electronics with ammonia.
The Macys were arrested in April, 2008, posted a combined total of $500,000 bail and then fled the country after being indicted in early 2009.
In May, 2012, Italian police arrested and deported them back to America a year later.
Having pled guilty, they were sentenced in September, 2013, to a prison term of four years and four months.
How could such a campaign of terror go on for two years against law-abiding San Francisco tenants?
Simple.
Even in the city misnamed as a “renter’s paradise,” slumlords are treated like gods by the very agencies that are supposed to protect tenants against their abuses.
The power of slumlords calls to mind the scene in 1987’s The Untouchables, where Sean Connery’s veteran cop tells Eliot Ness: “Everybody knows where the liquor is. It’s just a question of: Who wants to cross Capone?”
Everybody in San Francisco knows who the slumlords are. But the District Attorney’s Office hasn’t criminally prosecuted a slumlord in decades.
Many tenants have lived with rotting floors, bedbugs, nonworking toilets, mice/rats, chipping lead-based paint and other outrages for not simply months but years.
Consider the situation at the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection (DBI), which is charged with ensuring that apartment buildings are in habitable condition.
Under San Francisco law:
- A landlord is automatically given 30 days to correct a health/safety violation. If he drags his feet on the matter, the tenant must live with that problem until it’s resolved.
- If the landlord claims for any reason that he can’t fix the problem within one month, DBI doesn’t demand that he prove this. Instead, it automatically gives him another month.
- A slumlord has to work at being hit with a fine—by letting a problem go uncorrected for three to six months.
- And even then, repeat slumlord offenders often avoid the fine by pleading for leniency.
- That’s because many DBI officials are themselves landlords.
But the situation doesn’t have to remain this way.
How could it be changed?
By learning some valuable lessons from the “war on drugs” and applying them to regulating slumlords.
Consider:
- In 2022, at least 25,000 untested rape kits sat in law enforcement agencies and crime labs across the country.
- But illegal drug kits are automatically rushed to the had of the line.
It isn’t simply because local/state/Federal lawmen universally believe that illicit drugs pose a deadly threat to the Nation’s security.
It’s because:
- Federal asset forfeiture laws allow the Justice Department to seize properties used to “facilitate” violations of Federal anti-drug laws.
- Local and State law enforcement agencies are allowed to keep some of the proceeds once the property has been sold.
- Thus, financially-strapped police agencies have found that pursuing drug-law crimes is a great way to fill their own coffers.
- Prosecutors and lawmen view the seizing of drug-related properties as crucial to eliminating the financial clout of drug-dealing operations.
It’s long past time for San Francisco agencies to apply the same attitude–and methods–toward slumlords. 
DBI should become not merely a law enforcing agency but a revenue-creating one. And those revenues should come from predatory slumlords who routinely violate the City’s laws protecting tenants.
By doing so, DBI could vastly:
- Enhance its own prestige and authority;
- Improve living conditions for thousands of San Francisco renters; and
- Bring millions of desperately-needed dollars into the City’s cash-strapped coffers.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 7, 2023 at 12:10 am
Fifty-five years ago, Robert Francis Kennedy aroused passions of an altogether different sort from those aroused by Donald Trump.
Kennedy had been a United States Attorney General (1961-1964) and Senator from New York (1964-1968). But it was his connection to his beloved and assassinated brother, President John F. Kennedy, for which he was best known.
Kennedy himself remained haunted by the assassination for the rest of his life. He had spent most of his adult life in service to his brother’s ambitions—first as Congressman (1946), then as Senator (1952) and finally as President (1960).
For the last five years of his life (1963-1968) Robert Kennedy had to chart his own course and find his own voice.
As Attorney General, he had waged an unrelenting war against the Mafia. But he also championed civil rights and guaranteed protection of James Meredith, the first black student who entered the all-white University of Mississippi (1963).
In October, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, his wise counsel had helped steer America from the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
As a U.S Senator he continued to support civil rights and urge greater Federal efforts to fight poverty. Like his dead brother, he called on Americans to improve their own lives while aiding the less fortunate.
Robert F. Kennedy campaigning for President
Millions saw RFK as the only candidate who could make life better for America’s impoverished—while standing firmly against those who threatened the Nation’s safety.
As television correspondent Charles Quinn observed: “I talked to a girl in Hawaii who was for [George] Wallace [the segregationist governor of Alabama]. And I said ‘Really?’ [She said] ‘Yeah, but my real candidate is dead.’
“You know what I think it was? All these whites, all these blue collar people who supported Kennedy…all of these people felt that Kennedy would really do what he thought best for the black people, but, at the same time, would not tolerate lawlessness and violence.
“They were willing to gamble…because they knew in their hearts that the country was not right. They were willing to gamble on this man who would try to keep things within reasonable order; and at the same time do some of the things they knew really should be done.”
Campaigning for the Presidency in 1968, RFK had just won the crucial California primary on June 4—when he was shot in the back of the head.
His killer: Sirhan Sirhan, a young Palestinian furious at Kennedy’s support for Israel.
Kennedy died at 1:44 a.m. on June 6, 1968. He was 42.
On June 8, 1,200 men and women boarded a specially-reserved passenger train at New York’s Pennsylvania Station. They were accompanying Kennedy’s body to its final resting place at Arlington National Cemetery.
As the train slowly moved along 225 miles of track, throngs of men, women and children lined the rails to pay their final respects to a man they considered a genuine hero.
Little Leaguers clutched baseball caps across their chests. Uniformed firemen and policemen saluted. Burly men in shirtsleeves held hardhats over their hearts. Black men in overalls waved small American flags. Women from all levels of society stood and cried.
A nation says goodbye to Robert Kennedy
Commenting on RFK’s legacy, historian William L. O’Neil wrote in Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960′s:
“…He aimed so high that he must be judged for what he meant to do, and, through error and tragic accident, failed at….He will also be remembered as an extraordinary human being who, though hated by some, was perhaps more deeply loved by his countrymen than any man of his time.
“That too must be entered into the final account, and it is no small thing. With his death something precious disappeared from public life.”
America has never again seen a Presidential candidate who combined toughness on crime and compassion for the poor.
Republican candidates appeal to negative emotions—hatred, greed, fear. They constantly seek new “enemies” to frighten their voters: Asians, Hispanics, blacks, “uppity” women, liberals, “socialists.”
They constantly attack the Federal Government as a source of repression—especially when it reins in predatory businesses or levies taxes on the rich. And they try to convince their voters that if only “government gets out of the way” of these businesses and doesn’t tax billionaires, wonderful riches will “trickle down” to those far below.
They champion “law and order” when they control law enforcement—as governors or Presidents. But when the Biden Justice Department started investigating former President Donald Trump for illegally withholding classified documents, Republicans demanded the defunding of the FBI.
And Democratic candidates try to appease the Right by supporting its foreign and domestic agendas. In 2003, liberal Democrats—such as then-Senator Hillary Clinton—supported President George W. Bush’s unprovoked attack on Iraq.
Democrats have aided Republicans in opposing anti-poverty programs and efforts to combat pollution and climate change.
RFK had the courage to fight the Mafia—and the compassion to fight poverty. He called on Americans to act on their best qualities, not their worst.
At a time when Americans long for candidates to give them positive reasons for voting, his kind of politics are sorely missed.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 20, 2023 at 12:05 am
On February 14, 2018, Nikolas Cruz found an unforgettable way to celebrate Valentine’s Day.
The 19-year-old former student returned to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and allegedly slaughtered at least 17 people.
As in: “What are all these allegedly dead people doing here?”
The massacre has become one of the deadliest mass shootings in modern United States history.
He carried out his massacre with at least one AR-15 assault rifle and multiple magazines.
Although he had posted “I wanna die Fighting killing shit ton of people” he didn’t have the nerve to shoot it out with police SWAT teams. Instead, he concealed himself among the hundreds of students fleeing the school.
Nikolas Cruz posted this picture of himself on the Internet
Investigators used school security videos to identify Cruz and found him in a nearby neighborhood in Coral Springs, Florida.
Cruz had posted “I am going to kill law enforcement one day they go after the good people.” But he was arrested without incident.
Like so many other mass killers, he didn’t have the courage to shoot it out with armed police. He could only prey on defenseless men, women and children.
As always, most Republican lawmakers believe the answer to halting such future attacks lies in giving everybody a firearm.
That, of course, is the standard mantra of the National Rifle Association (NRA), which lavishly bankrolls the GOP.
National Rifle Association headquarters
Bjoertvedt, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
But it it true?
(In 2016, the NRA spent more than $38 million on Federal elections. Donald Trump proved the largest beneficiary—netting more than $21 million.
(In 2020, the NRA spent $29,355,400 on Federal elections—over $12 million campaigning against Joseph Biden and $4.5 million for Donald Trump.”
On July 7, 2016, five Dallas police officers were shot and killed by a disgruntled ex-Army Reserve Afghan War veteran named Michah Xavier Johnson. Another seven officers and two civilians were wounded before the carnage ended.
The shootings erupted during a Black Lives Matter protest march in downtown Dallas.
Texas has long been an “open carry” state for those who want to brandish rifles without fear of arrest. And about 20 people wearing “ammo gear and protective equipment [had] rifles slung over their shoulder,” said Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings.
“When the shooting started, at different angles, [the armed protesters] started running,” Rawlings said, adding that open carry only brings confusion to a shooting scene. What I would do [if I were a police officer] is look for the people with guns,” he said.
AR-15 assault rifles
“There were a number of armed demonstrators taking part,” said Max Geron, a Dallas police major. “There was confusion about the description of the suspects and whether or not one or more was in custody.”
A 2012 Mother Jones article on “More Guns, More Mass Shootings–Coincidence?” offered a striking finding: After analyzing 62 mass shootings over a 30-year period, the magazine determined: “In not a single case was the killing stopped by a civilian using a gun.”
So much for the ability of gun-toting, untrained amateurs to “stop a bad guy with a gun.”
But even highly-trained shooters—such as those assigned to the United States Secret Service—don’t always respond as expected.
On May 15, 1972, Alabama Governor George C. Wallace was campaigning for President in Laurel, Maryland. He gave a speech behind a bulletproof podium at the Laurel Shopping Center. Then he moved from it to mingle with the crowd.
Since the 1968 assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, all those campaigning for President have been assigned Secret Service bodyguards. And Wallace was surrounded by them as he shook hands with his eager supporters.
Suddenly, Arthur Bremer, a fame-seeking failure in life and romance, pushed his way forward, aimed a .38 revolver at Wallace’s abdomen and opened fire. Before the Secret Service could subdue him, he hit Wallace four times, leaving him paralyzed for the rest of his life.
Arthur Bremer shoots George Wallace
Nor was he Bremer’s only victim. Three other people present were wounded unintentionally:
- Alabama State Trooper Captain E C Dothard, Wallace’s personal bodyguard, who was shot in the stomach;
- Dora Thompson, a campaign volunteer, who was shot in the leg; and
- Nick Zarvos, a Secret Service agent, who was shot in the neck, severely impairing his speech.
None of Wallace’s bodyguards got off a shot at Bremer—before or after he pulled the trigger.
On October 6, 1981, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was reviewing a military parade in Cairo when a truck apparently broke down directly across from where he was seated.
Anwar Sadat, moments before his assassination
Suddenly, soldiers bolted from the rear of the vehicle, throwing hand grenades and firing assault rifles. They rushed straight at Sadat—who died instantly under a hail of bullets.
Meanwhile, Sadat’s bodyguards—who had been trained by the CIA—panicked and fled.
Sadat had been assassinated by army officers who believed he had betrayed Islam by making peace with Israel in 1977.
The ultimate test of the NRA’s mantra that “there should not be any gun-free zones…anywhere” will come only when one or more heavily-armed gunmen target an NRA convention.
It will then be interesting to see if the surviving NRA members are as quick to blame themselves for being victims as they are to blame the victims of other mass slaughters.
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
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JFK: “CAMELOT” ENDED SIXTY YEARS AGO: PART FOUR (OF TEN)
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 14, 2023 at 12:12 amJohn F. Kennedy became President when civil rights suddenly became a burning issue throughout the Nation.
At Kennedy’s request, dozens of law firms sent lawyers South, so civil rights demonstrators would not lack counsel.
Prominent blacks such as Thurgood Marshall, Robert C. Weaver and George L.L. Weaver were appointed, respectively, to the Supreme Court, the Housing and House Finance Agency and the office of Assistant Secretary of Labor.
But Kennedy was highly reluctant to push for a civil rights bill addressing the overall issues of racial discrimination.
The reason: Most of the chairman of House and Senate committees were deeply conservative Southern racists–whether Republican or Democrat. They decided whether Kennedy’s foreign policy initiatives would be approved or opposed–especially his bills for increased foreign aid.
Kennedy believed he could not offend such men without jeopardizing the legacy he wanted to achieve in foreign policy.
This timidity, in turn, led many prominent blacks—such as Martin Luther King and Malcom X—to believe they would see no innovative moves on Kennedy’s part.
James Meredith
But events forced Kennedy’s hand.edn September 30, 1962, the President sent deputy U.S. marshals and National Guardsmen into Mississippi to restore order. Rioting had erupted when, by federal court order, James Meredith, a black, was enrolled at the state university.
Kennedy’s problems in winning support for his civil rights program arose in the folkways of the Nation. When laws run counter to a nation’s folkways, the laws lose.
In backing the admission of Meredith, the President chose an incident which would set off shockwaves for black rights.
Kennedy held mixed emotions about the demand for civil rights by blacks. On one hand, as an Irish Catholic, he grew up with stories about longtime discrimination against his ancestors (such as the “No Irish Need Apply” signs posted by numerous employers).
On the other hand, he had been born into a world of power and wealth, and he had to grope his way toward understanding the problems of the oppressed.
Another major confrontation broke out between Kennedy and the forces of segregation on June 11, 1963. Alabama Governor George C. Wallace personally blocked the entrance of two black pupils to the University of Tuscaloosa.
The President, watching on TV, federalized the Alabama National Guard, which Wallace had used to ring the school. Wallace withdrew and the students were admitted and enrolled.
That same day, Kennedy addressed the nation on the need for genuine equality for all Americans: “The question is whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated.”
JFK addresses the nation on civil rights
And he called on Congress to pass his civil rights bill, which had been stalled by the legislators.
On August 28, 1963, 200,000 civil rights demonstrators flooded Washington, D.C., for a massive rally.
Fearing that violence would erupt—embarrassing his administration and setting back the cause of civil rights—Kennedy had sought to persuade Dr. Martin Luther King, the march’s chief figure, to cancel the proposed march.
But King and his fellow organizers were determined to go through with it. They had, they said, waited too long for justice to be satisfied with anything less.
The dignity and peacefulness of the rally–and, most especially, King’s soaring “I Have a Dream” speech–won tremendous sympathy throughout the country. Kennedy met with civil rights leaders afterward to offer his support.
Martin Luther King during the March on Washington
But Kennedy’s civil rights bill remained stalled in Congress until 1964. President Lyndon B. Johnson used the assassinated Kennedy’s new status as a martyr to gain enough support for its passage.
Meanwhile, on yet another front, the Kennedy administration was waging an unprecedented war against organized crime.
This was primarily the work of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. As chief counsel for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (1957–59), he had interrogated about 800 mobsters who had been summoned by subpoena.
And he had learned, firsthand, how ineffective the FBI and Justice Department were at bringing such powerful criminals to justice. The FBI had long steered clear of organized crime investigations, largely because its director, J. Edgar Hoover, feared corruption of his agents.
Upon taking office as Attorney General, he greatly expanded the number of attorneys assigned to the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Section. And, more important, he used his status as brother to the President to jawbone FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover into attacking the Mob.
The FBI installed illegal microphones in Mob hangouts throughout the country and started building cases against such mobsters as Sam Giancana, Santos Trafficante and Carlos Marcello.
The administration’s attack on the Mob has led some historians to believe the assassination of President Kennedy was Mob-orchestrated.
The reasons:
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