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The Spectacle Blog
Well.
So the woman who accused Herman Cain at the National Restaurant Association is outed.
And lo and behold — her complaints against employers about matters of sex in the work place include more than Herman Cain.
That’s right.
Ms. Kraushaar, according to this AP story, hired the same attorney she sent after Herman Cain to go after — wait for it — the federal government.
Why? Here are some excerpts from the AP exclusive by reporters Brett J. Blackledge and Suzanne Gamboa:
WASHINGTON (AP) - A woman who settled a sexual harassment complaint against GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain in 1999 complained three years later at her next job about unfair treatment, saying she should be allowed to work from home after a serious car accident and accusing a manager of circulating a sexually charged email, The Associated Press has learned.
Karen Kraushaar, 55, filed the complaint while working as a spokeswoman at the Immigration and Naturalization Service in the Justice Department in late 2002 or early 2003, with the assistance of her lawyer, Joel Bennett, who also handled her earlier sexual harassment complaint against Cain in 1999. Three former supervisors familiar with Kraushaar’s complaint, which did not include a claim of sexual harassment, described it for the AP under condition of anonymity because the matter was handled internally by the agency and was not public.
To settle the complaint at the immigration service, Kraushaar initially demanded thousands of dollars in payment, a reinstatement of leave she used after the accident earlier in 2002, promotion on the federal pay scale and a one-year fellowship to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, according to a former supervisor familiar with the complaint. The promotion itself would have increased her annual salary between $12,000 and $16,000, according to salary tables in 2002 from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
The story goes on to say:
Kraushaar’s complaint was based on supervisors denying her request to work full time from home after a serious car accident in 2002, three former supervisors said. Two of them said Kraushaar also was denied previous requests to work from home before the car accident.
The complaint also cited as objectionable an email that a manager had circulated comparing computers to women and men, a former supervisor said. The complaint claimed that the email, based on humor widely circulated on the Internet, was sexually explicit, according to the supervisor, who did not have a copy of the email. The joke circulated online lists reasons men and women were like computers, including that men were like computers because “in order to get their attention, you have to turn them on.” Women were like computers because “even your smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for later retrieval.”
Now.
Let’s add this together with this news from Kraushaar, found in this story at Politico:
Kraushaar, 55, said in an interview with POLITICO that she would like to band together with the other three women accusing Cain of harassment.
“That would be my preference, that we all go together in a joint press conference,” she said, noting that she’s turned down interview requests from a number of TV news shows.
So now the picture as presented by the AP and Politico comes clear:
• Karen Kraushaar is serially sensitive, demanding redress not just for whatever actions by Herman Cain (still unknown) at the National Restaurant Association, but also
• Taking offense at some dopey Internet “joke” that is one of roughly two-gazillion floating in cyberspace — then wasting taxpayer time and dollars to lodge a formal complaint because some office bozo who passed it around. Perhaps the question for her supervisor was why she spends her time at work on the US government payroll reading Internet jokes in the first place.
Wanting to work at home? Are we serious? There is a way to work at home. Quit your government job with the nice salary, the health care and the pension — all of it paid for by taxpayers - and park yourself behind your desk at home and do something else. Risk. Take a chance. But suffice to say the notion of this woman filing a complaint because Uncle Sugar — ahh, Uncle Sam — because he won’t let her work at home could only be described with a wonderful Jewish word: chutzpah
• Last but certainly not least is Ms. Kraushaar suddenly kicking into anti-Cain political operative mode while in the Obama Administration. Now she wants to organize an anti-Cain pep rally with this, that or the other woman? Fine. Quit her job — or better yet be fired from her job as a non-political career employee and go do it. But not on the taxpayer’s dime.
• And a question? News reports have Kraushaar working for both the Clinton and Bush administrations. Implying she has always been a career employee. Is this so? How did she enter federal government service in the Clinton administration? As a career employee? Or as a political — Clinton — employee who later “careered in” — the latter a standard Washington practice that effectively has layered the Washington bureaucracy with one-time political appointees.
What AP has uncovered is not some one-time incident with Herman Cain but a woman, who by the AP account, is presented as a serial complainer — taking offense for any number of reasons from reading dopey Internet jokes she shouldn’t have been spending time reading in the first place to complaining the federal government wouldn’t send her to Harvard!
There is a reason Herman Cain’s message and that of others in the GOP race are so popular with millions of Americans. And Karen Kraushaar is about to put a face on that reason.
View all comments (13) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Jeffrey Lord
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/11/09/karen-kraushaar-anti-cain-oper
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Reasonable Views | 11.9.11 @ 12:24PM
Herman Cain has enough resonance with the public to hold on until these charges are more properly vetted. Another more traditional candidate would already be destroyed. Many conservatives writers are afraid to support him for fear of looking stupid when his campaign collapses, but that may not happen.
He is willing to hang in, and there is not yet any proof of misconduct. The old rules don't necessarily apply to Cain.
http://bit.ly/w0osCe
Teflon93| 11.9.11 @ 12:40PM
She's a Democrat---donated to the DNC in 2009:
KRAUSHAAR, KAREN
GERMANTOWN,MD 20874
U.S. TREASURY/PUBLIC AFFAIRS
1/11/09
$250
DNC Services Corp (D)
tonypal| 11.9.11 @ 12:47PM
There's a few questions I would love to pose to the crew over at Politico. In fact, I'd ask these questions of any of the reporters obsessed with the Herman Cain story:
1. If Politico was my only source of information, would I know anything about Fast and Furious?
2. If Politico was my only source of information, would I know that AG Eric Holder may have lied to Congress during sworn testimony a few months ago?
3. Would I know who Brian Terry is or that he was murdered by someone using a gun that was allowed to "walk" as a result of Fast and Furious?
4. Would I know anything about Solyndra or any of the companies similarly situated to Solyndra?
5. Would I know that the Obama administration has given billions of dollars in taxpayer money to Solyndra, etc., only to have a significant portion of that money returned to the campaign coffers of Pres. Obama by bundlers associated with those companies?
Since I'm a busy guy, I'll leave it at 5 questions. But someone has to ask these basic questions of the Politico guys. Perhaps someone at TAS will get a crack at them at some point in the near future and pose some of these questions.
Frank | 11.9.11 @ 12:57PM
One unintended consequence of this sordid mess may be the reawakening of the angry white male. Can we see that they do so to defend a happy black male as a sign of progress?
DRed| 11.9.11 @ 12:58PM
Just by running simple keyword searches on Politico, I can tell you the answers to 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 are all yes. It took me maybe 2 minutes to figure that out.
Rhett Torical| 11.9.11 @ 1:51PM
Is the inability to recognize rhetorical questions something you frequently struggle with?
tonypal| 11.9.11 @ 3:36PM
As stated by Rhett Torical, these are rhetorical questions. I too did a search on that site and found some stuff. The point is the misplaced priorities of the Politico and other mainstream news outlets. It's all Cain, all the time.
Don't you think the Fast and Furious saga is of major concern? Apparently Politico, the NY Times, NBC, etc., don't think much of it because they either run very few stories (Politico) or virtually none at all (NBC). Do you think it's worthwhile for an investigative reporter from a major network to ask about Solyndra?
Of course you don't. It's much more important to get the black conservative. Gotta take him down. Democrat plantation owners - some things never change - can't afford to let this guy slip through. They've done their best to destroy Clarence Thomas and failed. Cain's a much bigger existential threat to the Simon Legrees and race hustlers on the left that you support. So let's put that silly little matter of a murdered agent aside and concentrate on the really important stuff, right?
DRed| 11.9.11 @ 4:14PM
First, Politico is run by a Reagan Republican, so it probably isn't part of the Democrat machine out to get Herman Cain, along with Rick Perry and Mitt Romney and the accuser's son who works for Politico and whatever other unsubstantiated nonsense the Cain campaign comes up with next.
The Times has covered both Solyndra and Fast and Furious. I think your problem is that the Times doesn't think those stories are as important as you do. I tend to agree with you about Fast & Furious-I think it's a much more important story than the implosion of a ridiculous presidential candidate (although, obviously, the Cain stories are very amusing). As far as tv news goes, I never watch it, and I'd encourage you to do the same.
Finally, if those were rhetorical questions, the answers to them should have been 'no'.
tonypal| 11.9.11 @ 6:47PM
Yes, but the writers are from the Washington Post. So what's your point?
I'm actually more interested in your 2nd paragraph, because we actually agree on the NY Times not placing too much emphasis on Fast and Furious. The question is why. Do you really think the Times would think it unimportant if the President was, let's say, George Bush? Can you imagine the Times or any other left wing hack newspaper being unconcerned with what John Ashcroft knew about F & F and when he knew it? We may not agree politically, but you can't possibly believe that the Times would be so lackadaisical about this if it was a republican administration.
As for Cain, you can have your own opinion as to whether he's legitimate or ridiculous. Right now we have a president who after nearly 3 years is still the least qualified person every time he's in a room with at least one other person. So I'll take the ridiculous candidate who actually has a track record of success over the man from ACORN any day of the week.
Bumr50| 11.9.11 @ 1:01PM
Excellent summation.
The "group attack" strategy, orchestrated by two harassment lawyers, will manage to make all of their claims go away at once.
If any of them had anything substantial, unless they are constructing bulletproof lies, they would speak up individually and would have done so yesterday.
Their credibility is now shot.
KaribooKidd| 11.9.11 @ 3:24PM
Credibility? Those womyn don't need no stinkin' credibility!
The evidence does not matter for a crime of this magnitude. Most important is the seriousness of the allegation!
bobmontgomery| 11.9.11 @ 3:58PM
A problem: On the conservative side, being responsible and fair and all that - When Bialek's financial difficulties turned up on the Net, Michelle Malkin came on to let us know theAttorney in the case was not THE David Axelrod. Sowe're all, like, okay we won't go off on wild goose chases. Next thing we know, the horses' mouth is beig interviewed on FOX and we find out that not only did she live in the same apartment bldg. as THE David Axelrod, she saw him in the gym. Unfortunately, we are overbudget and cannot investigate any further. Did we mention Rahm Emmanuel lives in Chicago and has massive power?
Niniane| 11.9.11 @ 8:11PM
This whole thing is turning into a MSM media circus. What we have here is two insecure women who need to degrade a man to make themselves feel better. With Bialek, her record shows that she has huge liens against her plus filing for bankruptcy twice -- she was offended but never filed charges, never got out of Cain's car to catch a cab back to the hotel, never told close friends any details as she was too embarassed but is telling millions of an event 14 years later. Uh-huh.
And with Krautshaar, the serial accuser, her demands are astounding. Evidence is real flimsy.
Grandpa warned my dad when he was looking into buying a commercial building to never buy one with a couple of steps in front as there are plenty of folks who purposely fall down so they can and will sue, some making their living that way. Wise words that seem to be resurrected with these two.