The city could pay billions for a test that didn’t really discriminate

The city could pay billions for a test that didn’t really discriminate: 
"It’s just nuts that the city might have to cough up billions for supposedly racist teacher-certification exams it stopped using long ago. 
But don’t count on Mayor de Blasio to fight it.
To be clear: No one has ever had to show that the Liberal Arts and Sciences Test, aka LAST, was actually discriminatory. 

“Disparate impact” law makes it necessary to demonstrate only that members of minority groups perform worse on an exam than their peers. 
And if officials can’t then prove the tests are effective at screening out unqualified would-be employees — a highly subjective measure — well, case closed.
Thus, federal Judge Kimba Wood found that the fact that more than 90 percent of whites passed the LAST, but less than 62 percent of blacks and 55 percent of Hispanics did, was enough to brand it “biased” and hold the city liable.
Now, as The Post reported Thursday, a court-appointed special master has recommended the city pay $91.6 million to 219 plaintiffs theoretically harmed by the LAST “discrimination.”...
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Tech Giants Spend $80 Billion To Make Sure No One Else Can Compete - Slashdot

Tech Giants Spend $80 Billion To Make Sure No One Else Can Compete - Slashdot
"An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg:
Google parent Alphabet and the other four dominant U.S. technology companies -- Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook -- are fast becoming industrial giants. 

They spent a combined $80 billion in the last year on big-ticket physical assets, including manufacturing equipment and specialized tools for assembling iPhones and the powerful computers and undersea internet cables Facebook needs to fire up Instagram videos in a flash. 
Thanks to this surge in spending -- up from $40 billion in 2015 -- they've joined the ranks of automakers, telephone companies, and oil drillers as the country's biggest spenders on capital goods, items including factories, heavy equipment, and real estate that are considered long-term investments. Their combined outlay is about 10 times what GM spends annually on its plants, vehicle-assembly robots, and other materials. 
...The $80 billion tab also is a snapshot of why it's tough to unseat the tech giants. 
How can a company hope to compete with Google's driverless cars when it spends $20 billion a year to ensure it has the best laser-guided sensors and computer chips?..."
Read on!

You decide-----Kavanaugh denies assault allegations in exclusive interview

Noon-toon

Flashback: Clarence Thomas responds to Anita Hill

Kavanaugh fires back at latest allegation, says he won’t be ‘intimidated into withdrawing’ | Fox News

Kavanaugh fires back at latest allegation, says he won’t be ‘intimidated into withdrawing’ | Fox News:

“I will not be intimidated into withdrawing from this process,” Kavanaugh wrote in the letter. “The coordinated effort to destroy my good name will not drive me out. The vile threats of violence against my family will not drive me out. The last minute character assassination will not succeed.”
Kavanaugh, who intends to testify Thursday before the committee about the allegations along with the first accuser, has been hit with fresh but uncorroborated accusations.
“There is now a frenzy to come up with something—anything—that will block this process and a vote on my confirmation from occurring,” Kavanaugh wrote. “These are smears, pure and simple. And they debase our public discourse.”

Public sector unions must be reined in

Public sector unions must be reined in
"Public sector unions have long exploited taxpayers by pushing for higher taxes, higher spending, and generous benefits and extravagant pensions for government workers while opposing efforts to hold bureaucrats accountable.
...Although the public sector is much smaller than the private sector, public sector union members make up nearly half of all union members. 
... 34.4 percent of the public sector was unionized while only 6.5 percent of the private sector was unionized.

...This past May, President Donald Trump issued three executive orders to deal with some wasteful bureaucratic practices, 

• including public unions’ free use of taxpayer-funded office space,
• numerous federal employees conducting union business on government time, and lengthy firing processes for underperforming workers.

In the short term, Congress should at least allow for the firing of federal government workers on an expedited basis, while still providing due process rights, by immediately passing the MERIT Act.

Of course, Democrats can be expected to obstruct almost any effort to rein in public sector unions or to streamline the removal of incompetent bureaucrats..."

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Report: Congress Should Stop Funding International Junk Science Agency | Competitive Enterprise Institute

Report: Congress Should Stop Funding International Junk Science Agency | Competitive Enterprise Institute
"American taxpayers fund an international agency that puts out junk science, scaring consumers and leading to costly jury decisions and unnecessary product bans, a new Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) report documents.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) is an influential but secretive research group, funded by world governments and housed within the World Health Organization. 
...The agency focuses on determining if a chemical or activity poses a “hazard,” but that should be just the first step in risk assessment. 
The next steps should consider dose and exposure and whether actual human exposures are significant enough to matter.
“IARC’s hazard-based approach results in nonsensical cancer classifications, placing plutonium and smoking in the same carcinogenic category as salty fish and processed meats,” said Angela Logomasini, CEI senior fellow and author of the report. 
“Worse, the organization has become tainted by political influences and conflicts of interest.”...
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#1 This day 1973-----Grand Funk Railroad - We're An American Band song [promo film]

What’s Coming Next? | Power Line

What’s Coming Next? | Power Line
A reader passed along to me a top ten list of the next accusations that will be thrown at Brett Kavanaugh, which appeared in a comment thread on Ann Alhouse’s site. 
I wasn’t able to spot the author quickly, but hat tip to you whoever you are, for this is genius:

Top Ten Other Things Brett Kavanaugh Has Done:

10. “Mr. Brett” at McMartin Pre-School

9. Helped Jack Johnson violate the Mann Act

8. Shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die

7. Mocked Chuck Schumer by singing “The Name Game” using Schumer’s moniker while at a Yale party

6. Allowed Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle to take the rap for him

5. Physically abused his Sierra Club activist girlfriend

4. Left a woman to drown in an Oldsmobile

3. Shot President Reagan to impress Yale classmate Jodie Foster

2. Gave Sheldon Whitehouse the finger at the Giant Food in the Westwood Shopping Center in Bethesda

1. Had sex with Stormy Daniels while wearing a Donald Trump mask

Read on.

Note the date of this editorial cartoon.

You ought to know!

James Woods banned from Twitter, defends free speech - Washington Times

James Woods banned from Twitter, defends free speech - Washington Times:

Woods said he wants open discourse, and called the situation a dangerous one for free speech.
“I wish this were about an unknown Twitter user so that I could be even more passionate about it,” Woods said. “This is not about a celebrity being muzzled. This is about an American being silenced – one tweet at a time.”

How to Spot Misleading Statistics in the Gun Control Debate | Intellectual Takeout

How to Spot Misleading Statistics in the Gun Control Debate | Intellectual Takeout
"The academic debate over gun control consists mainly of a war of statistics. 
...How should untrained laypersons go about interpreting the findings of statistical studies?

• It’s About Resistance, Not Prevention

Statistics come in all shapes and sizes, so the first thing we need to do is determine which kinds of statistics are relevant to the gun control debate and which are irrelevant. 

To do this, we need a clear understanding of what the gun control debate is fundamentally about. 

We can’t separate the relevant from the irrelevant if we aren’t clear about how to frame the issue.

So, what is the debate over gun ownership fundamentally about? 

Many seem to think that it’s about deterrence; that is, whether gun ownership prevents crime. 

...To illustrate the difference, let’s suppose that I encounter a mugger while taking a walk. 

I brandish my firearm to the mugger, who is undeterred and rushes me with a knife. 

I then shoot the mugger, stopping the crime. 

In that situation, my gun has failed to prevent a crime, but it was successful at resisting a crime. 

The gun was an effective and reasonable means of self-defense even though it failed to deter the would-be mugger.

This is a very crucial point that must be carefully appreciated. 

Even if guns don't prevent crime by reducing the overall crime rate, it wouldn’t mean that guns are not a reasonable means of resisting crime. 

As far as gun rights are concerned, the single most important issue is simply the question of whether guns do a good job when deployed against a criminal assailant. 

Deterrence is not the key issue at stake..."

Much more here.

Read all!

AM Fruitcake

History for September 25

History for September 25 - On-This-Day.com
William Faulkner 1897, Barbara Walters 1929 - TV personality, Michael Douglas 1944 - Actor


Mark Hamill 1951 - Actor ("Star Wars"), Christopher Reeve 1952 - Actor ("Superman"), Will Smith 1968 - Actor ("Independence Day," "Fresh Prince of Bell-Air")


1789 - The first U.S. Congress adopted 12 amendments to the Constitution. Ten of the amendments became the Bill of Rights.















1983 - A Soviet military officer, Stanislav Petrov, averted a potential worldwide nuclear war. He declared a false alarm after a U.S. attack was detected by a Soviet early warning system. It was later discovered the alarms had been set off when the satellite warning system mistakenly interpreted sunlight reflections off clouds as the presence of enemy missiles.

The Burning of Brett Kavanaugh

The Burning of Brett Kavanaugh:

We have also lost track of the concept of innocent until proven guilty -- beyond reasonable doubt. This has been slipping away for quite a while now. The media have become our judge and jury; the more sensational and politically potent an accusation is, the more likely it will be seen as true, and no amount of correction will undo that.
What bothers me the most, however, is that we’ve lost all contact with common sense, with any desire to arrive at the truth.

Big Brother: Google Admits to Altering Android Phone Settings Remotely Without Permission | Breitbart

Big Brother: Google Admits to Altering Android Phone Settings Remotely Without Permission | Breitbart:

Tech giant Google has admitted to changing Android phone settings remotely without user permission, a move considered by experts to be bad for “transparency and consent.”

The way we were-----The Monkees - "Daydream Believer" (Official Music Video)