St. Louis CofCC Blog

Taki’s got it.  It’s worth the time.

I’ll add that white college grads are even less likely to get jobs commensurate with their education, thanks to affirmative action, even though their debt is the same.  In fact, the jobs they get are ones they very well could have had without a college education.  Therefore, the Education-Industrial Complex actually reduces the standard of living of whites.

Belleville News-Democrat:

Activist plans to lie in front of Metro bus to protest gas prices

ST. LOUIS — A preacher and activist says he will lie in front of a Metro bus Friday to protest high gasoline prices and a shortage of construction jobs given to black residents of St. Louis.

The Rev. Cleo Willis has participated in similar acts of civil disobedience in the past. He got in front of a MetroLink train in 2003 and helped shut down Interstate 70 in 1999.

Willis says he expects to be arrested for his rush hour action.

A Metro spokesman said he wasn’t aware of the impending protest.

And he did indeed do this this afternoon on Natural Bridge in north city, and some of St. Louis City’s finest were right there to give Mr. Willis a shiny new pair of handcuffs and a free trip downtown. The irony of this is that Metro (formerly Bi-State) is one of the more affirmative action-happy institutions in town. The city hall to which he was trying to send a message is 90% black. If he’s referring to the construction trades locally, he might do well to tell his people to brush up on basic math.

Also, what’s this about the high price of gas?  As often as gas stations in certain areas of this city are victims of pump-and-run, it seems like the price of gas is immaterial to a lot of Cleo Willis fans.

When I first spied the Slashdot headline, I thought the reason was racial, in that the “power that be” are doing everything they can to discourage white American students from getting too comfortable with CS/IT as a career track, in order to create the faux necessity for expanding H-1-B allotments.  Turns out race is the motivation, but in a more practical manner.

Education Week (h/t Slashdot):

College Board Intends to Drop AP Programs in Four Subjects

Officials overseeing the Advanced Placement program have announced that they intend to drop AP classes and exams in four subject areas, in a pullback expected to affect about 12,500 students and 2,500 teachers worldwide.

Following the end of the 2008-09 academic year, there will be no AP courses or exams in Italian, Latin literature, French literature, and computer science AB, said officials at the College Board, the New York City-based nonprofit organization that owns the AP brand.

The College Board has in past years withdrawn one undersubscribed AP course at a time, but has never taken so many courses off its table of offerings in the half-century since the program started as a way for students to take college-level courses and potentially earn college credit while still in high school.

Trevor Packer, the College Board vice president who oversees the AP program, said the decision was made at a trustee meeting on March 27, and that AP teachers in the affected subjects were notified by e-mail April 3. “Of course, it’s sad for them,” he said of the teachers.

Resource Allocation

Mr. Packer said the decision was made principally because of demographic considerations.

Only a tiny fraction of the members of underrepresented minority groups who take AP exams take the tests in one of those four affected subject areas, he said.

The College Board has made it a priority to reach such students, including those who are African-American and Hispanic.

Therefore, if a given AP exam is too white for the College Board, then the test has to go.  Pretty soon, we’ll read a story that the College Board has added AP exams in Diversity Studies and Ebonics.  The College Board is going the way of college itself.

To join the U.S.eless Border Patrol.  Pro-immigrant groups are outraged; the irony of that, if my suspicions are correct, is that the lax education standards are there in order not to hinder non-white (especially Hispanic) recruits.

USA Today:

Texas’ 10% admission could teach colleges a thing or two

Ten years ago, after a federal court blocked Texas colleges from considering race as a factor in admissions, the state, with George W. Bush as governor, came up with an innovative alternative. In an attempt to make affirmative action colorblind, the top 10% of graduates at each of the state’s high schools was granted automatic admission to state universities.

(snip)

Ten years later, we know a little more about the law: It works. Maybe even a little too well, given that the president of the University of Texas asked the Legislature last week to scale it back.

Examples of its success at the University of Texas at Austin include:

* Students admitted under the 10% rule get better grades than other students. Plus, they graduate at higher rates.

* Racial diversity at the Austin campus improved. The number of Hispanic students has risen by 29% and the African-American student population by 32%.

* Economic and geographic diversity improved as well. Before the law took effect, the Austin campus drew from 616 high schools. Now it draws from 853 schools.

A student at the 90th percentile at a black school could very well be as dumb as rock in reality, but have a polished transcript because of grade inflation and course title inflation.  A student at the 89th percentile at a white suburban school could probably run circles around the former when it comes to brain pans and other academic accomplishments, but W thought that the former was more worthy of automatic admission to state schools than the latter.

And ten years on, note that of the three things USA Today are most proud of, two of them involve diversity.

From PJB’s latest:

In 2006, Connerly went to Michigan to overturn an affirmative action policy that kept Jennifer Gratz out of the University of Michigan, though she had superior grades and performance records than many minority students admitted. The Michigan proposition also carried and has been upheld by the courts.

One U.S. senator, however, taped an ad denouncing Connerly’s Proposition 2 in Michigan and endorsed affirmative action for minorities and women. That senator was Barack Obama.

***

Ward Connerly and Michigan CofCC Chairman John Raterink.  The Michigan CofCC was instrumental in getting MCRI to pass in a blue state on what turned out to be a good day for Democrats.

Chronicle of Higher Education:

Federal Judge Dismisses Challenge to Michigan’s Ban on Affirmative Action

A federal judge ruled today that Michigan’s voter-approved ban on the use of affirmative-action preferences by public colleges and other state agencies is constitutional.

In doing so, Judge [*****] of the U.S. District Court in Detroit dismissed a lawsuit brought by opponents of the law, which is known as Proposal 2, or the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative. Voters approved the measure in 2006. The opponents include high-school and college students who say they were harmed by it.

A lawyer for those plaintiffs told the Detroit Free Press that he planned to file an appeal immediately.

Proponents of the law, meanwhile, cheered the decision. “Fairness and equality are now unequivocally Michigan law,” said Jennifer Gratz, who was the chief plaintiff in one of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases that challenged race-based admissions at the University of Michigan.

If the other side appeals, it would be heard in the Federal Appeals Court at Cincinnati.

CNS News:

Students Urged to Fight ‘Debt Disease’

Beware of debt “disease.” That’s the message from the Service Employees International Union and the League of Young Voters. The groups are urging students to “push back” against big banks that are pushing credit cards.

SEIU and LYV are sponsoring a Web-based video contest, in which students create public service announcements warning about the adverse consequences of going into credit card debt.

The contest’s theme is “Keep It In Your Pants” — the “It” being one’s credit card.

Students ages 14 and up are competing for a top prize of $5,000 for school-related expenses.

(snip)

The Web site accuses the biggest banks of using their size and market dominance to drive up credit card, banking and ATM fees on consumers around the country. It also accuses the big banks of under-serving low-income and minority communities.

Among other things, the SEIU wants Congress to set “basic standards” for fees and interest rates on credit cards, bank accounts and other bank products. It wants the nation’s largest banks to be held to “super” Community Reinvestment Act standards; and it wants to give the Federal Trade Commission the authority to scrutinize bank practices.

The Community Reinvestment Act, and its affirmative action mandates, is the reason why banks are pushing credit cards like candy, to the point where the average person gets many pre-approval junk snail mails every week.  That’s also the source of the “subprime mortgage crisis.”  If “young people” are falling into a “credit trap,” it’s precisely because banks are begging them to get credit cards.  I don’t read here that the SEIU wants to stop that flood of junk mail.

Stamford (Conn.) Advocate:

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A New Haven middle school honors student, suspended for buying candy from a classmate, will have the discipline expunged from his record, the superintendent of schools said Wednesday night.

Michael Sheridan also was stripped of his title as class vice president, barred from attending an honors student dinner and suspended for a day after buying a bag of Skittles last month from a classmate.

(snip)

Michael Sheridan said he didn’t realize his candy purchase was against the rules, but he noticed the student selling the Skittles on Feb. 26 was being secretive.

An administrator busted Michael with the candy in his pocket. His mother says the student who sold him the Skittles out of a lunch box also was suspended. School officials say his suspension also will be expunged.

The suspensions and demotions were eventually reversed.

My bet?  The diversity industry is always complaining that school districts are picking on black and Hispanic students by suspending them more often (not that the students’ severe behavior has anything to do with it), and that Mr. Sheridan and his “pusher” are white, and that the New Haven District has a sizable non-white student body, and the two of them were suspended for a minor infraction just to even up the district’s suspension stats.

Springfield News-Leader:

Initiative may affect election

Whoever wins the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination will have to run against both John McCain and Ward Connerly during the campaign for the White House.

McCain, it appears all but certain, will be the Republican Party’s standard-bearer. And Connerly will be the GOP’s weapon of mass distraction.

While McCain can be expected to wage a frontal attack on his Democratic opponent [I'll believe that when I see it -- Blogmeister], Connerly will mount a stealth campaign. He will champion just one issue: opposition to affirmative action.

Connerly is trying to get anti-affirmative action initiatives on the ballot in five states: Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma. While these measures aren’t labeled as the political weaponry of the GOP, they may prove to be the party’s most effective means of combating the surging voter support for Democrats.

In other words, this op-ed writer in the SNL thinks that the Connery initiatives might swing the election toward McCain.  Actually, there is some worry about just the opposite — that with McCain at the top of the ticket, this will keep conservative voters at home and take votes away from the Connerly initiatives.

But those worries are overblown.  Democrats could carry the day in the states where the Connery initiatives are on the ballot, and the initiatives will all pass nevertheless.  Remember Michigan 2006 — MCRI won, in spite of Democrats Granholm and Stabenow being re-elected for Governor and Senate.

Springfield News-Leader:

Group forms against affirmative action ban

St. Louis –Opponents of a proposal banning most affirmative action programs in Missouri are trying to discourage people from signing an initiative petition to get it on the 2008 ballot.

The Missouri Civil Rights Initiative is collecting signatures to get a measure on the ballot that would “ban state and local government affirmative action programs that give preferential treatment in public contracting, employment or education based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin.”

(snip)

Opponents have set up a hotline (1-877-644-0466) that people can call if they see someone collecting signatures for the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative. We Can officials then send out a volunteer to the same site to distribute information asking people to “think before they ink” their signature to the petition.

If you read between the lines of the article, the other side is admitting that MCRI will win if it gets on the ballot.  Also, notice that the SNL/AP published the phone number of the opponents’ hotline — as if the SNL/AP is engaging in anti-MCRI activism.  If they were that helpful in the other direction, the Connerly organization would already have enough signatures.

The ideology responsible for 100 million dead bodies in the 20th Century now wants to prevent whites from working.

Eliot Spitzer strikes again.  If New York State can never have a true blue right-winger as Governor, this guy is the next best thing — he’s so ridiculous that he’ll do for the Democrats in NYS what McCain might do to the Republicans nationally if he has the chance, that is turn them into a punchline that they won’t live down for years.

New York Post:

ALBANY - An influential state senator yesterday accused Gov. Spitzer of jeopardizing the safety of children by seeking to gut funding for an office that conducts criminal background checks on prospective teachers.

Spitzer has proposed slashing the $1.6 million budget for the state Education Department’s Office of School Personnel Review and Accountability by almost a third. Education Commissioner Richard Mills warned the cut could lead to the hiring of individuals with criminal histories.

(snip)

[NYS Senate Education Committee Chairman Stephen] Saland called it “absolutely bizarre, appalling and beyond comprehension” that Spitzer not only rejected the Education Department’s request for an increase, but cut the existing budget.

No, Mr. Saland.  It may be appalling, but it’s not bizarre and not beyond comprehension.  Let me comprehend it for you:  R-A-C-E.  The current criminal background check probably prevents too many non-whites (especially blacks) from becoming teachers, in the opinion of Gov. Spitzer.  As a parallel, Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser wants those with adult felonies to become KC cops (or does he really?), but he admits the racial motive right up front.

He is Wayne Taylor, 35, a NYPD Detective for the unit that patrols the city’s public housing projects.  She is Zelika Brown, 29, his girlfriend.  They’re both accused of pimping out a 13-year old runaway from Bed/Sty.

Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do? Join the KCPD, that’s what.

WDAF-Fox-4 Kansas City:

Mayor Suggests Lowering Standards for Police Officers
Should people with a felony be allowed to be cops?

KANSAS CITY, MO. — The Kansas City Missouri mayor is looking for creative ideas on ways to recruit more minority cops. So, Mayor Mark Funkhouser said lowering the standards to be a cop may be the solution.

Mayor Funkhouser said why not let people with a criminal record be a police officer?

Barely 11 percent of Kansas City’s police officers are African American. The police chief and the mayor say that’s not enough. At a town hall meeting Wednesday, Mayor Funkhouser suggested lowering standards to recruit more minority police.

“At some point we’ve got to, I believe, allow people who have a felony on their record to go ahead and be a police officer when they pass various hurdles,” said Funkhouser.

And by this, I presume he means those with adult felonies, and not those with juvenile felonies but no adult ones. The latter idea was already floated here in St. Louis.

The Mayor said this is just an idea… a way to provoke debate to come up with creative ideas to hire more minority cops. But is it realistic?

Usually, these kinds of outlandish ideas are fronts for less ridiculous ideas that wouldn’t have a chance of happening on their own merits. Politician will propose a stupid idea, everyone gets outraged, and then out of a spirit of compromise, a less stupid variation of the idea is passed. If the less stupid variation was proposed to begin with, it would be rejected.  The running joke in the late 1990s was that if President Clinton proposed to implode the Capitol Building, the Republicans in Congress would introduce an alternative to phase it in over five years.

I just wonder what the “less stupid variation” is here that Mayor Funkhouser really wants. I’m guessing a two-tiered testing system with lower standards for black applicants.

The reason the felons-as-cops idea is not realistic is because felons are not allowed to possess firearms. There’s one clue, sherlock.

Ken Christopher is a criminal justice professor with Park University. He said, “The more you can attract candidates you can reliably trust the better off you are.”

Christopher said there are other ways to recruit minorities without compromising standards.

“To say you’re willing to take on people who’ve committed felony violations is pretty much outside the mainstream about what police hiring practices are about,” said Christopher.

“Pretty much?” How about “totally?” Per my bait-and-switch theory stated above, I think those “other ways” referenced vaguely by Prof. Christopher are what will really be adopted, and what Mayor Funkhouser really wants.

To change those requirements, means changing state law which now says you can’t have a criminal history.

I can ill imagine the General Assembly in Missouri giving this the time of day.

Another requirement is passing a written exam, something a number of candidates struggle with. That’s why the police department holds tutoring sessions to help more candidates become police officers.

There you go, “written exam,” and “struggles” thereof.

I should add this: If Mayor Funkhouser is serious about this proposal, then it doesn’t surprise me. After all, diversity uber alles. You knew this day would come.

Arrested for home invasion and speeding from the cops.  One is a Philly cop.

Bob Barr:

Firefighters as spies truly over the top

The image of the friendly firefighter helping rescue a wayward kitten from a tree might need updating. If the federal Department of Homeland Security has its way, firefighters across the country will be armed not only with firefighting equipment, but also issued training materials on how to recognize suspect behavior on the part of citizens and what to look for in peoples’ homes that might be “suspicious.” In other words, firefighters would become domestic spies. In fact, such training already has begun.

(snip)

According to published accounts of such training, firefighters are being trained to watch for “hostile” or “uncooperative” individuals, or those “expressing discontent” with our government. They are also trained to watch for and report on things that “seem out of place” in a home or business such as firearms and video recording equipment. Rooms with “little or no furniture” fall within the reportable suspicious activity.

Other than the fact that this is an unconstitutional invasion of privacy, in some cases, firefighters are the problem, if they are black firefighters that are members of affirmative action junkie extremist hate groups like FIRE and the Vulcan Blazers.

Buried in the middle of a Mayor Slay blog post that praises the glory of charter schools:

Right now, for example, I am working on an initiative to connect 3,000 minority workers to jobs that pay decent wages. I am getting a strong pushback from some employers who worry that there are not enough minority workers who are workforce-ready. And their concerns are probably justified. The City’s personnel department recently conducted an entry level test for new City firefighters. The vast majority of African Americans who took the test failed it. What does this mean?

What does it mean?  Ask Arthur Jensen.  Or better yet, read this book, or this one.

Mayor Slay proposes 3,000 jobs for minority (i.e. black) workers, and the only criticism he gets is from “employers who worry that there are not enough minority workers who are workforce-ready.”  Evidently, it doesn’t occur to any of them that the plan is obviously discriminatory, that that white people might like to have these jobs, too.

For once, the AP tells the truth on race.

AP:

Riots Point to Racially Divided France

French officials point to a host of causes—poverty, unemployment, the influence of criminal gangs—for riots that erupted this week.

But there’s one taboo issue that officially colorblind France has been unable to confront: race.

(snip)

France does not like to see its recurrent, and some say worsening, bouts of urban violence through the prism of race or color. Rioters are often described simply as “youths,” while poor projects with large concentrations of immigrants are “sensitive urban zones.”

In the name of equality, France has so idealized the melting pot that it has made its minorities invisible—on paper at least. The country does not compile statistics on the foreign-born or their French-born children. France, a nation of 60 million people, has the largest Muslim community in western Europe but does not know how many Muslims live here. The number is estimated at about 5 million—though some experts disagree.

Critics argue that being officially colorblind has limited France’s ability to recognize and treat the difficulties its minorities face—sometimes because of their color. Immigrants and their French-born children often complain that it is harder for them than whites to get work, job interviews, housing, even entrance to nightclubs.

While it’s good that AP is telling the truth, and in the process, obliterating the credibility of the “we all need to be color-blind” neocons in America, (look at how well it worked in France), their angle is that France needs to drop color-blindness and thus see race for the purpose of racial pity programs, like discrimination positif, as the French call it.

Also:

In some such areas of the Paris region, “there are no white French people left in the streets. You can drive around for two or three hours and all you will see are North Africans and blacks. And these are neighborhoods with enormous problems,” he added. “Those who have the means to leave the projects are white, and they leave. There’s no more ethnic diversity.”

***

Metro lost its lawsuit against the Cross County Collaborative (CCC), the consortium of engineering and construction firms (which included Kwame Building Group) that was initially responsible for designing and building the Cross-County Metro Link extension, but had those duties taken over by Metro itself after cost and time overruns.  The CCC’s countersuit against Metro won.

KSDK-NBC-5:

Latest Incident Of Violence At Hazelwood Prompts Response

Two Hazelwood high school students have been taken into custody after a gun was reportedly fired outside of Hazelwood Central High School.

The incident happened after school hours on Monday night.

Charles McCrary, a former St. Louis police officer and safety director for the St. Louis Public School District, was hired to deal with a series of threats and violence in the Hazelwood School District. McCrary was hired for three months at $100 an hour for 20 hours per week.

Since October, there have been five bomb threats in the district and two guns have been found — one was loaded.

(snip)

Over the next three months, McCrary said he’ll visit every school in the district. At the end of that time period, he’ll present the school board with a new safety plan.

Whatever this new “safety plan” is, I’m sure it has already been thought of and implemented in other places.  And yet, the Hazelwood School District finds it necessary to dump superlawyer hourly compensation rates on this affirmative action flunkie.

Rocky Mountain News:

Denver diversity-training video said to ‘hammer the white guy’

The city of Denver is showing its employees a diversity training video that portrays a white man as a narrow-minded buffoon — triggering allegations of “institutional racism” against Anglos.

“Right now, their diversity program is racially motivated against white males,” said Dennis Supple, a heating, ventilating and air-conditioning mechanic who has worked for the city 1 1/2 years.

The video, titled “Laughing Matters — Think About It,” is meant to show employees how humor at the expense of others diminishes respect in the workplace.

The character who breaks all the rules is Billy, a white, blue-collar worker who’s a racist, sexist goofball.

A commenter wrote:

I am Caucasian. I was once very pointedly told by a (non-white) Denver city-worker “You people are the n*gg*rs now!” I never reported it. What would be the point? She would deny it. No one would believe it. A waste of time. But it does seem as though racism is verboten *EXCEPT*… except if it’s directed at white people. Why is that; do you think?

How is any of this different than prime time TV?

Baltimore Sun:

A note with racial overtones and a knotted rope found in an East Baltimore firehouse early yesterday triggered a probe by the city’s fire and police departments, and the FBI has begun its own preliminary investigation into possible civil rights violations.

The note and the rope were discovered by two Fire Department employees — one black, one white — at the Herman Williams Jr. fire station at East 25th Street and Kirk Avenue. It was the second time in five months that the station has been hit with racial allegations.

(snip)

Yesterday, the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Vulcan Blazers — a group that represents black city firefighters — demanded a federal investigation into the rope and note, while the fire union’s president said critics should not jump to conclusions.

(snip)

The discovery at the firehouse again threw a beleaguered department into turmoil over issues of race. In 2004, the department was criticized for hiring an all-white recruit class, and was pressed to change its testing and recruiting practices.

The department also is awaiting a report by the city’s inspector general, who investigated allegations that several black firefighters cheated on a promotion exam. That report is expected to be released next week, a City Hall spokesman said.

This sounds so familiar.  Then again, since St. Louis is going through most of the same issues, don’t be surprised if a F.I.R.E. member hangs a noose at some firehouse in St. Louis City to gain sympathy.  That said, one can already see where this writer’s accusatory mind is running with this Baltimore incident.

Though I should say that, if nothing else, the black rabble-rousing firefighters’ union in Baltimore chose a cool name for themselves.

Jerome Corsi had an article in WND today (no link because it has too many names of sitting judges), about how many banks and other financial institutions might fall like dominoes, because sub-prime mortgages have been bought and sold as assets. Incidentally, this is why Merrill Lynch is in trouble, and its affirmative action CEO was shown the door. The trouble is, the Federal judiciary is ruling that those who purchase the accounts receivable of a mortgage only get that, and not the deed — that means that if a house is foreclosed upon, the bank that originally issued the mortgage owns the house, and gets to keep all of the proceeds of the sale of that house.

But the more fundamental issue is this — Why were so many subprime adjustable rate mortgages issued to begin with, and issued to obviously credit-unworthy borrowers? When I see a lot of stories about the subprime crunch and foreclosures on TV, I’m seeing a lot of black and brown faces. And whenever you add non-white, banks, loans and credit, you get the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, a Federal law which, on the surface, states that banks have to meet the credit needs of the communities in which they serve, but the net effect is that banks have to engage in affirmative action in credit decisions.

So if you combine low-rate ARMs, in a low-rate climate, with the CRA, then you can see that a lot of blacks and Hispanics got approved for relatively big mortgages, when they really shouldn’t have, then used those pre-approvals against each other to bid-up the sales prices of houses to an insane amount. That kind of financial planning (for anyone) is like fitting a 15-foot tall truck under a metal bridge that has exactly 15 feet of clearance — once the temperature starts going down, and the metal contracts just enough, even if it’s only by one millimeter, that truck is stuck. Likewise, once interest rates inevitably went up from their nadirs, this would mean that ARM mortgages’ rates would go up, forcing the monthly payments upward, meaning that the borrowers couldn’t pay them in full without giving up food and utilities, meaning foreclosures.

Incidentally, this is why President Bush used to be able to gloat about the record-high rate of home “ownership” among blacks. It was all built on financial quicksand.

Verily, some of these banking and monetary problems would have happened even without the affirmative action effects of the CRA, but they’re worse than they would have been with it.

UPDATE 11/26:  Here is MSM corroboration that minorities tend to be more affected by the subprime crunch and foreclosures.

Breitbart/AP:

A plastic surgeon who operated on Kanye West’s mother the day before she died abruptly walked off CNN’s “Larry King Live” during a scheduled interview Tuesday with the talk show host. Dr. Jan Adams said he initially agreed to speak with King to clear up what he said were inaccurate reports about him in the news media. But he said West’s family asked him not to appear on the show.

“I have a tremendous amount of love and respect for the West family and they have asked me not to go on,” he said. “And I’ve said from the very beginning, I don’t have a side in this. They are my side and so I’m going to respect their wishes.”

As Adams got up from his chair to shake King’s hand, the TV host asked whether the surgeon would ever answer questions surrounding Donda West’s death.

“When they’re comfortable, then I’ll be comfortable. If they’re never comfortable, then I’ll never be comfortable,” Adams said, referring to West’s family. “They are what’s important to me. I said that from the start and that’s what I’ll continue to honor.”

See also:  Video from the Larry King Show on CNN;  Affirmative Action Plastic Surgeon and Kanye West’s Mother

If you fit that mold, then you can’t be a doctor in the British National Health Service (NHS), at least not a well-paid one.

London Sunday Times:

ONE of Britain’s most eminent consultants has claimed white male doctors are being denied bonuses because of politically correct “reverse discrimination” by the National Health Service.

David Rosin, a former vice-president of the Royal College of Surgeons, says female and ethnic minority consultants are being given preferential treatment to meet artificial quotas.

Rosin, also a former president of the Association for Cancer Surgery, failed to get the top “platinum award” award 10 years in a row despite being backed in his application by the royal college and his NHS trust.

He said: “When I asked a previous president [of the Royal College of Surgeons] why I had been unsuccessful, the answer came back immediately: ‘What do you expect? You are not black, you are not female and you have all four limbs.’ ”

Rosin’s comments are likely to provoke a row about whether policies to promote equal opportunities in the NHS have led to positive discrimination. Figures show a dramatic increase in the number of women and ethnic minorities winning merit awards over the past five years. They can add up to £73,000 to a consultant’s annual salary of about £112,000.

***

You decide.

New York Times:

The test of a new method for measuring radio audience in New York showed big ratings declines for stations appealing to blacks and Hispanics last week, causing considerable consternation among station owners and programmers.

Arbitron, which measures ratings for the radio industry, has been testing a new electronic measurement tool that monitors exposure to radio stations throughout the day. The results of the so-called personal people meter in New York followed the pattern set by two earlier tests, in Houston and Philadelphia, in which stations appealing to minorities also fell.

The results also seem to echo a decline in ratings for minority television programs when Nielsen Media Research switched its measurement system in 2004. The change led to an intense lobbying effort by networks and some black leaders to postpone the widespread introduction of the new ratings system.

(snip)

Previously, Arbitron had used paper diaries from sample listeners to determine ratings that were used to set prices for advertising. Under pressure to provide more detailed and accurate data, Arbitron has gradually swapped human memory for computer technology, in the form of pocket-size devices that detect radio frequencies to automatically determine which station is on.

This new ratings scheme’s purpose was to add “weight” to the listening preference of racial minorities, under the pretense that they were underrepresented under the old paper diary scheme.  The fear in talk radio was that this new ratings scheme would boost the ratings of minority-themed talk and music radio, and at the same time, the ratings for conservative talk radio would decline on paper (if not in reality).  Other articles I have read about this state that the ratings for conservative talk radio based on the new scheme have actually shot up.

If the new scheme is more accurate, then it means that minority radio was overrated and conservative talk radio was underrated all along until now.

Gone, but not forgotten — his golden parachute, even after his boneheaded executive decisions plunged ML’s stock prices, is still worth almost $160 million.

Perhaps ML’s Board of Directors thought it would make them the darling of the Civil Rights Industry when they made Stanley O’Neal CEO in 2002, but the dream turned into a nightmare when, as if he were that Greek tyrant that leveled the tops of corn stalks, he fired a bevy of senior executives to sweep away his potential rivals and replacements, then put all of ML’s eggs in the subprime mortgage basket.  And when that market went to the low place in a handbasket, he concealed the depravity of the financial situation to the Board.

KWMU-FM-90.7 St. Louis:

ST. LOUIS, MO (2007-10-29) Representatives for Missouri’s Division of Youth Services say case-workers aren’t paid enough and that fact is undermining attempts to rehabilitate troubled youth.

Nine juveniles are now back in custody after forcibly escaping from the Hogan Street Youth Detention Center in St. Louis.

Richard von Glahn is an organizing coordinator for the Missouri State Workers Union.

He says low pay and understaffing make it harder to create a working relationship with troubled teens.

“It is a less stable environment through their rehab, their less likely to act out so that when they come out of this facility their not fully rehabbed and they end up committing future crimes and then that puts them in the prison system.”

So, low pay, high turnover, and understaffing among juvenile detention center guards is to blame for these nine juvenile felons conspiring to escape, and gang-assaulting one of the guards in the process.  I suppose the nine juvenile felons themselves don’t deserve any of the blame.

As the Hogan Street Youth Detention Center is a state agency, and state agencies in urban areas are little more than affirmative action hiring agencies, and Missouri’s youth corrections system is drawing praise from the liberal media for being more of a social services agency for teenage felons than a juvenile prison system, thereby resulting in a mollycoddling attitude on the part of administrators at such facilities, it’s not hard to figure how something like the Hogan Street Nine was able to happen.  They didn’t need a Michael Scofield.