The Meaning of Obama in the White House
By:  Alton Maddox, AmNews

Black people should expect Sen. Barack Obama, as the 44th U.S. president, to outperform his predecessors, including Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and William Clinton on the question of the federal protection of Blacks.

According to Justice Joseph P.Bradley of the U.S. Supreme Court, newly freed Blacks were supposed to be “the special favorite of the laws.” Bradley was hostile, however, to Blacks, and he penned the Civil Rights Cases in 1883 to put Blacks back into their places. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was broader than the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

None of these presidential predecessors survived the White House intact. Lincoln and Kennedy were assassinated. Clinton was impeached and disbarred from the practice of law in the U.S. Supreme Court. Johnson sought retirement instead of running for another term in the White House.

The lesson to be learned is that any favorable overture to Blacks is disfavored in the United States. Obama knows enough about presidential politics to realize that the fair treatment of Blacks is its third rail .U.S. presidents have always played the race card.

So far, Obama is tiptoeing around race while Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, is attempting to throw a sucker punch. Every effort is being made to devalue the issue of race. To win the White House, Obama must embrace a centrist position.

Supporters of Obama argue that his current coolness to race is a political ploy and that once he has been administered the oath of office, he will come out blazing on the question of racial equity. Actually,Obama is displaying his best shot on race during this presidential campaign. The effort to secure racial equity will probably fizzle once he becomes a public tenant in D.C.

The ruling class, which is bent on maintaining the status quo, at best, has three tools in its arsenal to keep Obama in check — assassination, impeachment and disbarment. William McKinley was also assassinated in office and Andrew Johnson was impeached. The White House is the hot seat.

Even if Obama decides to flirt with being a sacrificial lamb for advancing Black rights, he will also have to sidestep the separation of powers doctrine and the states’ rights doctrine. Dixiecrats will insist on an expanded role for states’ rights. This is natural for people who love the acquisition of power.

Under the separation of powers doctrine, Obama must successfully court the legislative and judicial branches of government to respectively write laws and to interpret them equitably. Given its Republican slant, the Supreme Court will be trouble for an Obama administration.

States’ rights empower states to exercise jurisdiction over all matters that are not common to the national government. Federalists, on the other hand, look for national sovereignty in most issues. After this country had to face these opposing views in addition to reconciling free trade with protectionism, the Civil War ensued in 1861.

To survive these competing views, Blacks must secure political leverage even if it means forming a third party and manipulating the current economy through the exploitation of a bear market. This is our best shot for owning a piece of the action and navigating turbulent waters.

It would be suicidal if Blacks continue to be simply cheerleaders for Obama while every other special interest group is staking out economic and political venues to become stakeholders. You have to be in it to win it. This means suiting up and hitting the field. “A squeaky wheel gets the grease.”

Attorney Bill Borders was a thorn in Pres. Ronald Reagan’s judicial side and U.S.D.C. Judge Alcee Hastings opposed Reagan’s Haitian immigration policy. Reagan sicced the Justice Department on them for allegedly conspiring to take a bribe. Hastings beat the charge in 1983. Pres. Clinton would later pardon Borders.

Hastings beat the criminal rap, but the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals called for his impeachment and referred his case to Congress. Like in the “Jena 6” case, double jeopardy is of no moment for Blacks. Cong. John Conyers led the case for impeachment. Most members of the Congressional Black Caucus refused to support Hastings. Congress removed him from judicial office in 1989.

The lesson is simple: oath takers must survive a high-wire act. To be on the safe side, oathtakers must work to maintain the status quo. This is in direct contradiction to Obama’s campaign theme: “Change.” Blacks have failed to witness any change in 140 years. The last change for Blacks was from enslavement to emancipation.

I went to law school with the notion that law could be used as a tool for social change. While I was at the University of Georgia Law School, I discovered that most of the students could have qualified for membership in the Ku Klux Klan. In fact, the late Justice Hugo Black belonged to the KKK. He joined because most members of Alabama juries were KKK members. See “Scottsboro Boys.”

Bush 43 is up to the same old trick. His administration has employed a political litmus test for hiring attorneys in the Justice Department. These civil servants must embrace the same legal philosophy as the KKK. This means that Obama’s inherited Justice Department will be in sync with white supremacy.

Presidents Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43 have stacked the deck not only in the Justice Department, but also in the Supreme Court. Obama would need the cooperation of the executive and judicial branches of government to protect Blacks. Progressive and ameliorative legislation would help.

Blacks had better wake up and smell the coffee. It is not Obama. It is the system, stupid! We are living under a kleptocracy. See, for example, Bush v. Gore. This system is xenophobic, ergophobic and misogynistic and it has a built-in repellent to “change.” Blacks could do worse. Try McCain. His family made its fortune off of our backs.

I will appear in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 500 Pearl St., New York, NY, at 9:30 a.m. on Aug.8,2008. The ultimate issue is the constitutionality of surreptitiously converting the Brooklyn Federal Court into a FISA Court under the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act. Thus, a “citizen” is converted into a terrorist.

I never met nor was I informed of the judge who decided Maddox v. Prudenti et al. This disparate treatment is usually reserved for terrorists. This secret maneuver violates Rule 50.2 of the Eastern Rules of the NYCRR and undermines due process of law.

Moreover, I was disbarred from the practice of law on or before 2005 without any semblance of notice and opportunity to be heard. The office of New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer informed me of my new status in a legal pleading. I had been indefinitely suspended from the practice of law for four years without a hearing. Afterwards, I was definitely suspended for five years in 1994.

My petition for reinstatement to practice of law in New York was denied in 2003 after the Appellate Division, Second Department of New York ruled that New York had no mechanism for a wrongfully disciplined attorney to challenge his suspension. Instead, the attorney must concede that he was accorded due process of law and equal protection of the law.

This waiver of grievances is constitutionally suspect. It gets suspects like former Gov. Mario Cuomo, former State Attorney General Robert Abrams and Spitzer off the hook. To make matters worse, State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is defending the defendants in Maddox v. Prudenti et al. This is an odious, conflict-of-interest and a suppression of exculpatory evidence.

August 8—Oral argument in Maddox v. Prudenti et al. is scheduled in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 500 Pearl St. in Manhattan at 9:30 a.m. Take the 4/5/6 trains to Brooklyn Bridge; J/M/Z trains to Chambers Street; 2/3 trains to Park Place; R/W trains to City Hall; A/C/E trains to Chambers Street/WTC.

August 13—UAM’s planning retreat at 7:30 p.m. at Elks Plaza, 1068 Harriet Tubman (Fulton Street) near Classon Avenue in Brooklyn. Take the C train to Franklin Avenue. The weekly UAM assemblies will be in recess for three weeks and will resume on Sept.3.

For further information on all events, call United African Movement at (718) 834-9034.

See: www.reinstatealtonmaddox.net for “Motion and Memorandum of Law in Maddox v. Prudenti et al.”; “Legal and Life Experiences of Alton H. Maddox, Jr.”; “The Politics of Oil”; “The Right to Keep and Bear Arms”; “Stand with Councilman Barron”; “Police Pressures Hynes for Convictions”; “Community Control of the NYPD”; “U.S. Pardon for Marcus Garvey?”