Category Archives: morality

A Thought on Disparate Impact

Posted on by
Reply

There is another disparate impact case wending its way to the Supreme Court; hopefully, this one actually will be argued, and the Court will come to a right decision.  The case is Township of Mount Holly v Mount Holly Gardens Citizens, and it concerns Mount Holly, NJ’s, plan to

redevelop a housing project afflicted with crime, overcrowding and property code violations.

Naturally, some of the affected renters sued, and importantly here, they’re claiming no intent to discriminate on the part of the township or the redevelopers.  They’re just saying that, because most of the folks impacted are minority, there must be racism in there somewhere.

No racism actually is present, so we’ll make some up.  Because the redevelopment will inconvenience us.

But that’s the purpose of disparate impact, generally.

Racism of the Federal Government

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s another example of the WilsonianObaman government’s racism.

The EEOC is haling Dollar General and a US unit of BMW into court, charging them with racism for the heinous practice—seriously—of using background checks to screen those convicted of

Murder, Assault & Battery, Rape, Child Abuse, Spousal Abuse (Domestic Violence), Manufacturing of Drugs, Distribution of Drugs, [and] Weapons Violations

from job applications.

Just to add racism to the EEOC’s racism, in the BMW case, there’s this: 70 black and 18 non-black contractors had criminal convictions, and the company declined to hire any of them.  The EEOC is only suing over the blacks’ non-hiring.  The non-blacks can go hang.

Indeed, the President Barack Obama’s EEOC has proudly codified its racism.  It said just last April that

an employer’s evidence of a racially balanced workforce will not be enough to disprove disparate impact.

Don’t worry about the inherently racist nature of disparate impact.  Such a worry would be racist.

Laughingstock

Posted on by
1

That’s putting it mildly.  “Futile” also applies.  I’ve written earlier how President Barack Obama reduced himself to a laughingstock and is reducing the United States as a whole to a laughingstock.

Now those in Syria who’ve been begging us for help speak derisively about us as a result of Obama’s…behavior.  On the heels of Obama’s belated acknowledgment that his bright red bunting strewn upon the beach sands had been stepped on and over; followed by his decision to send small arms to Syrian rebels (which all of Arabia already is providing them) with which to fight al Assad’s helicopter, artillery, and tank assaults (supported by Hezbollah fighters and Iranian soldiers); coupled with Obama’s continued refusal to send the rebels the weapons with which to defeat those helicopters and, artillery tubes, and tanks; and his continued refusal to suppress al Assad’s air force in any way, the rebel beneficiaries of the Obama Munificence had this to say:

It’s all talk.  Until we see weapons in our hands here in Syria, they are just words floating in the air.

Obama’s team is cited at the WSJ link just above in this way:

While US officials acknowledge that Hezbollah and regime forces are closing in on Aleppo, they believe there is time to train rebels and improve their defenses—with or without a no-fly zone, officials say—underscoring their belief the conflict is nowhere near a conclusion.

Umm, maybe not.  This isn’t the mid-19th century, when a two week holdout at the Alamo was enough for Sam Houston to train his forces to effectively resist Santa Ana.  More importantly, whose fault is it that the conflict “is nowhere near a conclusion?”  It’s not the rebels’.

And those…officials…had this:

US officials question whether US and European arms alone will make a decisive difference in a country already awash in weapons.

What a breathtaking, willful ignorance.  Of what use to these persons think small arms—rifles and pistols, and the occasional light machine gun—are against helicopters, artillery, and tanks?

And where is Obama anyway on this seeming change of position concerning chemical attacks and arming the rebels?  Why is he sending out low-level functionaries to tell us, in vague terms, about this?

Of what is Obama so terrified that he can’t talk to us—in detail—personally?

A Whistleblower

Posted on by
Reply

I offered this first as a comment to a Spiegel Online article.  Here it is with slight modifications to support its stand-alone status here.

Edward Snowden, of Verizon metadata and PRISM outing fame, thinks of himself as a whistleblower, and so do many who agree with him that the US’ PRISM program and its program for collecting metadata from cellphone providers are terribly wrong programs.

I agree that the programs are anathema to individual liberty.  However, the programs are legal under US law.  The only question here is whether the programs’ limits and checks are being honored–and that’s a matter of trust, since the programs and its procedures are secret.  That secrecy and the need for that blind trust in Government (not just the Obama administration, but any Government) form a large part of my dismay over the programs.

However, the programs’ legality mean Snowden cannot be a whistleblower; he’s simply a man who has illegally revealed classified data to the public.

What about civil disobedience, then?  Is he practicing this honorable means of protest of a government behavior to which he objects?

There are many legal avenues of calling legitimate attention to these flawed programs, including, for instance, any of the several formal whistleblower and Inspector General facilities to which he could have taken his case.  Given the damage already done by these programs (stipulating arguendo that damage to individual liberty has been done) any additional damage done through the delays of going through these legitimate programs would have been quite trivial.  Yet Snowden eschewed these programs and went directly public.  From within a foreign country.

Were this an act of civil disobedience, it would have had to satisfy two criteria: he would have had first to exhaust his legal remedies.  As I noted, he chose not to do so.

Secondly, he would have to have been willing to face the consequences of his actions.  It is, after all, those consequences and their absurdity in the face of the disobedience and the thing over which the disobedience is occurring that give force and credibility to the disobedience.  Snowden’s reason for being in Hong Kong, as stated by him, is to avoid facing those consequences.

If Snowden truly believes that what he has done is just, he must return to the US and face the outcomes of his actions in open court.  Let him make his case in front of the American people (where he’ll find no small measure of support) and convince our representatives in that court case–the jury of his peers–that his act was justified.

Of course he risks not being supported by our representatives, that jury, as there also are a large number of Americans who disagree with what he has done.

Snowden’s flight and so far refusal to return indicates he’s unwilling to take that risk, that he does not have the courage of his convictions.  In that case, Snowden did not commit an act of civil disobedience; he is simply a small man who is placing his ego above justice.