Wednesday, October 13, 2004

 
Excuses, excuses. The wymns had the two desktops tonight and the iMac stopped playing well with Blogspot and the laptop booted up with some weird self-diagnostic something or other..
Like the venerable JD, I *always* grimace when a lefty moves his/her lips disavowing "quotas." Not that I'm particularly well-informed on the matter; more a conviction that the sumbitches is lyin' on the subject. I've had at least a half-baked sense that quotas are accepted as alternatives to stuff that's *worse*. Perhaps quotas in some instances provide some protection for an employer or institution against demands for potentially unlimited affirmative action. And quotas may be hated by the Left because a demand for quotas can be, in a sense, honest. And quantifiable. An employer might well ask something of his legal counsel like, "O.K. just how many Lithuanian lithographers *do* I have to hire to stay outta' trouble?" If a plaintiff is allowed to argue that if an employer has hired a smaller percentage of some protected class than would be expected from their prevalence in some community this constitutes evidence of discrimination,- then quotas may be the effective result. Also I think that in some jurisdictions the use of say, I.Q. tests(which according to "The Bell Curve" are predictive of success in even "menial" jobs)in hiring must meet some very high standard of proof that they are a legitmate requirement for the jobs if their use results in "disproportionate" rates of minority hiring. -just stuff off der toppen der kopf, and one wished that GWB(who has so much more to do and be than do well in debates)had done much better tonight.