Gdanning
2yr ago
Does it say it is a mostly unvaccinated population? China claims to have vaccinated the vast majority of the population though with a vaccine that is probably less effective than those used in the West
Gdanning
2yr ago
Then China opened up and as far as I’m aware nothing happened.
Gdanning
2yr ago
Note that "crime is a result of social deprivation" does not necessarily imply that "social workers are a better use of money than police for solving it". My deprivation might enormously increase my propensity to burglarize cars, yet I probably will refrain from doing so if there is a cop on every block.
OTOH, there are declining returns to all uses of resources, so there is presumably a level of policing at which hiring one more cop will have less effect than hiring one more social worker. The trick is figuring out what level that is.
Gdanning
2yr ago
I'm hesitant to believe those reports given the chronic undercounting of hispanics in crime and incarceration in general.
But since your first link is re change over time, that is a valid concern only if the rate of undercounting has increased over time. Do you have any reason to think that is true?
But besides that, if age is a maximally relevant factor it would only start playing a part if the immigration of young people from South America was at some point halted. I am not sure what you mean, but if age is the key factor, then your concern should be about age, not race or ethnicity.
Gdanning
2yr ago
Hispanics have a higher crime rate. Do they, after controlling for age (per 2020 census, median age was 30, versus 44 for non-Hispanic whites)?
Gdanning
2yr ago
after about 2 years pandemic interest just sort of died out
Surely that has something to do with the fact that the pandemic itself had died out by then.
Gdanning
2yr ago
IMO, there a lot more important criminal issues to focus on than automated speeding tickets.
Wouldn't this free police officers to focus on those important issues?
I view this as a clear cash grab Good. That neans I get more public services, without my taxes increasing.
Gdanning
2yr ago
Surely one can avoid being milked simply by not exceeding the speed limit, at least not by 11+ mph. Especially given that "The first violation notice would be a warning."
Gdanning
2yr ago
expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.
This conflates two things:
- A prediction of how NATO expansion will affect Russian behavior; and
- A statement that said Russian response means that NATO expansion would be bad policy.
We actually don't know whether or not policy makers disagreed with #1. They might well have agreed with #1, but not with #2. And we do not know whether #2 is true, and cannot say whether it is, unless we assess the benefits of expansion, including the avoidance of the effects of a failure to expand, none of which you mention. Finally, re #2, as Zhou Enlai probably didn't say, it is too soon to tell. (Heck, if Russia's current policy re Ukrainian grain exports causes food inflation and results in Biden losing the election, most people here will consider NATO expansion a very good thing indeed).
Gdanning
2yr ago
Even assuming that everything you say is true, it does not allow us to accurately predict whether or not country X will become an empire, for several reasons:
- Those things might be necessary for becoming an empire, but are they sufficient, alone on in combination? It seems clear that they are not. An obvious additional necessary element is demographics, for example. And of course, all sorts of external factors, such as the status of rivals.
- We don't know what level of meritocracy, or work ethic, or self-confidence, etc, is necessary.
- Even if we knew what level of each is necessary, we cannot accurately measure them.
Gdanning
2yr ago
Hm, the links in the source re supposed race-based prioritization of the vaccine are all from late 2020, which would be the Trump Administration.
Gdanning
2yr ago
This Pew report says that the rates of intermarriage among Asian and Hispanic newlyweds is about the same.
Gdanning
2yr ago
Literally just stop immigration from Africa and Central America
Africa, you say? Not China, India, the Philippines, Vietnam or Korea, each of whom send far more immigrants than does Africa
Gdanning
2yr ago
The song is about shooting rioters.
The music video notwithstanding, the lyrics don't mention rioting at all:
Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk; Carjack an old lady at a red light; Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store; Ya think it's cool, well, act a fool if ya like; Cuss out a cop, spit in his face; Stomp on the flag and light it up
Gdanning
2yr ago
like “Melly” who isn’t currently on trial (the kids love him!). I don't know why people so often insist on making false statements that are easily checked
Gdanning
3yr ago
legal recourse is available to the Black guy alone, based exclusively on immutable racial characteristics, then it seems to me (a non-lawyer, but a member of the educated laity) that the White guy has clearly been denied equal protection of the laws.
What makes you think that legal recourse was not available to white applicants? Do you have evidence that they attempted to sue, but were rebuffed?
I don't see what bearing the length of the process has on the vigor of the procedure
You claimed that the city rolled over. The fact that they fought the case for 27 indicates that that is not the case. As is the fact that there were numerous appeals.
why wouldn't class members be eligible solely for the difference between what they actually earned and what they would have earned as NYC teachers
How do you know they weren't? You have no idea how the damages were calculated, do you? And I believe someone on here calculated the average payout at 350K. That is nowhere near full teacher salary for 20+ years. And the award is going to include interest, and lost pension contributions, not just lost salary.
I haven't edited the original post since publishing.
Very odd.
Gdanning
3yr ago
But the test was not a generic IQ test, was it? The complaint was about a specific test. The issue is whether that test meets the criteria, not whether a generic IQ test would have.
In fact, the plaintiffs originally challenged two tests, but prevailed only re one of them. The other one apparently met the criteria.
Gdanning
3yr ago
The city seemingly agreed to stop fighting the case when DeBlasio set aside the $2bn for compensation. That was at least in part for ideological reasons since it seems unclear why the city couldn’t have appealed to a higher level court - as someone else said, current SCOTUS might well rule all these aptitude tests universally acceptable
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The trial court verdict on the issue of whether the tests were discriminatory was in 2012. Gulino v. Bd. of Educ. of City School Dist. of NY, 907 F. Supp. 2d 492 (SD New York 2012). That was during the Bloomberg Administration. DeBlasio took office in 2014.
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The DeBlasio administration appealed the damages award in 2019. See timeline here
As noted in the current version of the Post article, the City initially prevailed in 2003, but the decision was reversed in part on appeal. As described by the trial court in 2012: "In 2003, after five month bench trial, Judge Motley entered judgment in favor of the Board and SED, finding that their use of the Core Battery exam and the LAST did not violate Title VII. In 2006, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the District Court's judgment with respect to the LAST, and remanded the case."
As for g being correlated with everything, that might well be true, but is it legally relevant? Because this is how the court described the governing law in 2012:
Under Title VII, an exam is job related — a statutory defense for an employer using an exam with a disparate impact — if it has been properly validated. Validation requires showing, "by professionally acceptable methods, [that the exam is] `predictive of or significantly correlated with important elements of work behavior which comprise or are relevant to the job or jobs for which candidates are being evaluated.'" Gulino IV, 460 F.3d at 383 (quoting Albemarle Paper, 422 U.S. at 431, 95 S.Ct. 2362).
The Second Circuit uses a five-part test for determining whether a content-related employment exam, such as the LAST, has been properly validated and is thus job related for the purposes of Title VII: (1) the test-makers must have conducted a suitable job analysis; (2) the test-makers must have used reasonable competence in constructing the test; (3) the content of the test must be related to the content of the job; (4) the content of the test must be representative of the content of the job; and (5) there must be a scoring system that usefully selects those applicants who can better perform the job. Guardians, 630 F.2d at 95; see also Gulino IV, 460 F.3d at 384.[13] The first two elements of this test concern the quality of the test's development. Guardians, 630 F.2d at 95. These parts are "particularly crucial" because "validity is determined by a set of operations, and one evaluates ... validity by the thoroughness and care with which these operations have been conducted." Id. at 95 n. 14 (internal citation and quotation omitted). The last three factors establish standards that that an exam, "as produced and used, must be shown to have met." Id. The "essence of content validation" is in the third requirement: "that the content of the test be related to the content of the job." M.O.C.H.A. Soc'y, Inc. v. City of Buffalo, No. 98 Civ. 99, 2009 WL 604898, at *14-15 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 9, 2009) (Curtin, J.) ("M.O.C.H.A. Soc'y I"), aff'd, 689 F.3d 263 (2d Cir.2012).
Honestly, the argument that the City rolled over on a case that was filed in 1996 but not settled until 2023 is difficult to take seriously unless there is a ton of evidence marshaled in its favor.
In this case it went against NYC’s politics to argue the test did work,
I sense you did not peruse the linked article, which says tgat the lawsuit was filed in 1996, and "The test was ruled discriminatory in 2012 by the third Manhattan federal judge to handle the case — which included a two-month nonjury trial and repeated trips to an appeals court." That does not sound like the city conceded anything. The recent* development is re the amount of damages.
*Although it isn't recent. The linked article is from 2018.
Edit: OP seems to have changed the link. When I initially clicked the link, it took me here: https://nypost.com/2018/09/19/city-may-have-to-pay-out-1-7b-over-biased-teaching-exam/. Now it takes me here: https://nypost.com/2023/07/15/nyc-bias-suit-black-hispanic-teachers-and-ex-teachers-rich/
I also don't see how this kind of settlement - available only to failed candidates based on their race - can satisfy an Equal Protection standard. Won't failed white candidates have a discrimination claim?
The lawsuit is a class action suit brought on behalf of African American and Hispanic applicants, alleging that the test discriminated against African American and Hispanic applicants. The money is meant to compensate them. Why would white applicants have a claim on the money?
Events like this feel deeply unfair - why work your whole life if you can get paid to not work?
The plaintiffs were not paid not to work. Presumably most of them worked at other jobs since 1996 (when the lawsuit was originally filed). They are being compensated for the damages incurred as a result of the ostensible discrimination. If I dropped a hammer on your head while working on a roof, and as a result you had to quit your job as an accountant and work retail, would you frame a lawsuit settlement as paying you not to work?
Edit:
But I wonder whether NYC politicians (or bureaucrats) failed to mount a vigorous legal defense out of ideological sympathy for the plaintiffs.
The article you linked says: "Four teachers in 1996 first filed a suit over the test. . . . The test was ruled discriminatory in 2012 by the third Manhattan federal judge to handle the case — which included a two-month nonjury trial and repeated trips to an appeals court."
That sounds like a vigorous defense to me. The settlement is only re the amount of damages.
It's possible that NYC got spooked by recent high-profile discrimination lawsuit outcomes (jury verdict against Equinox here, settlement with Fox News here).
The article you link is from 2018. Those settlements were in 2023. Edit 2: When I initially clicked the link, it took me here: https://nypost.com/2018/09/19/city-may-have-to-pay-out-1-7b-over-biased-teaching-exam/. Now it takes me here: https://nypost.com/2023/07/15/nyc-bias-suit-black-hispanic-teachers-and-ex-teachers-rich/ Did you change the link?
Ultimately, it is very difficult to use what happened in China among a largely vaccinated (with a mediocre vaccine) population to infer what would have happened in a completely unvaccinated population with higher rates of comorbidities such as obesity.
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