Archive for 2016
May 26, 2016
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1113.
IVY LEAGUE RACISM UPDATE: The “Asian Problem” Won’t Go Away:
“The Asian problem” continues to be a thorn in the side of the diversity bureaucracy that runs America’s elite college campuses. The Wall Street Journal reports on the latest efforts by Asian-Americans to convince the authorities that affirmative action—at least as currently practiced—is essentially a repackaged form of anti-Asian discrimination, the successor to academia’s infamous anti-Jewish bias of the early-to-mid 20th century. . . .
This conflict will probably persist as long as affirmative action does (and with Justice Scalia’s passing, it seems unlikely that the Supreme Court will deal the body-blow to racial preferences that many admissions offices feared) because affirmative action partisans don’t have a clear or consistent answer to the Asian students’ concerns. Is affirmative action designed to give a boost to groups of people who have faced discrimination in the United States? Surely this applies to Asians as much as Hispanics. Is affirmative action designed to increase ethnic diversity? It’s unclear why Asian-Americans contribute less to the diversity project than other racial minorities. Is the apparent bias against academically qualified Asian applicants simply the result of a neutral “holistic” process that evaluates students on the basis of nebulous character traits? That is, of course, the precise justification Ivy League schools used to cap Jewish enrollment.
The core problem, as Dennis Safran has pointed out, is that the logic of affirmative action that applied in “the essentially biracial society of the 1970s” has become strained to the point of breaking in “the multiracial America of 2016,” where the number of identity groups with claims to marginalized status has multiplied, and where class status increasingly rivals racial status as a determinant of academic and professional success.In the long run, however, the vituperative wars about the role of race in admissions probably distract from more important injustices in the higher education system. Prohibitive tuition costs—driven up by federal regulations, short-sighted student loan programs, and, to some extent, and campus diversity bureaucracies—probably present more of an obstacle to the Ivory Tower than race-based admissions policies for the vast majority of students. And degrees from the Ivy League still carry far too much cultural cachet, delivering special opportunities to their graduates not because of their talents but because of their access to elite social networks.
Sadly, true. Related: Asians Get The Ivy League’s Jewish Treatment.
IT’S COME TO THIS:
Of course — this being Hillary “reset” Clinton — there’s a problem:
And, as usual, IowaHawk nails it:
Plus, an opportunity for audience participation:
WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-RUN INDUSTRIES SUCH CESSPITS OF VIOLENCE? Bloodbath at rapper T.I’s New York gig: One dead, three wounded and hundreds flee as gunfire erupts at popular Manhattan concert venue.
#CROOKEDHILLARY OR #LYINGHILLARY? EMBRACE THE POWER OF “AND!” Politifact: Hillary Clinton claim about Donald Trump paying no federal taxes ignores the years when he did. Hey, this stuff worked against Mitt Romney so it was worth a try.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, FATCAT EDITION: A Look At University Endowments.
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ACCELERATE THE CONTRADICTIONS: The Democrats’ Green/Blue Divide.
TO BE FAIR, BAD GOVERNMENT IS AT THE ROOT OF MOST MALADIES: Bad government often at root of humanitarian crisis.
I SUSPECT WE’LL LEARN MORE: Man Arrested In Murder Of Dan Markel.
ASHE SCHOW: Double Jeopardy At Berkeley Law.
College campuses seem to be hostile environments for the rights of the accused. Now we’re starting to see professors denied due process the same way students often are are.
University of California Berkeley law professor Sujit Choudhry was accused of sexual harassment because when he showed support for his executive assistant, he would hug her and kiss her on the cheek.
This was unacceptable to her, so she reported him. A settlement was reached and Choudhry was punished. But when the school came under fire for the accusation — and UC President Janet Napolitano herself came under fire for mishandling sexual misconduct complaints — Choudhry was subjected to a new, second round of punishment and investigations.
Choudhry resigned in mid-March after the second investigation was launched. Had he not, he could have faced being fired.
If clever conspirators on the right set out to destroy higher education from within, they couldn’t do better than higher education is doing on its own.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Meet Kayla Johnson, The DePaul Protester Who Took a Swing At Milo. “The second lead protester at last night’s event at DePaul University has been identified as Kayla Johnson, the daughter of Juanita Johnson, who serves as the Chicago Police Department’s Director of Administration.”
So is that why the DePaul police providing security wouldn’t do anything?
WHERE’D ALL THOSE FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE REPORTS GO? About a thousand top appointees in every presidential administration are required to file financial disclosure reports that enable journalists, academic experts and members of the public to spot conflicts-of-interest. Well, not anymore, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Luke Rosiak.
In January, Rosiak reports this morning, “the list was inexplicably removed, leaving only a search box. That action severely reduced the chance of officials’ finances being scrutinized because it became necessary to know the name of a person and have a reason to want to look up that individual, as opposed to, for example, looking for listings from an agency of interest.”
And now? “Even that capability is gone, along with almost all references to actually seeing the disclosures. Thousands of PDFs have also been deleted, leaving dead links.” Just another day at the office for the “most transparent administration in history.”
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Trump victory road paved by New Mexico rioters.
Related: Joe Trippi: Hillary, Let Your Superdelegates Go Free!
SPRING FASCISM PREVIEW: If it’s spring during a presidential election year, a not-so-young pundit’s thoughts apparently turn to assassinating the candidates:
Shot:
Appearing on Beck’s radio program this morning, Thor said:
I am about to suggest something very bad. It is a hypothetical I am going to ask as a thriller writer.
With the feckless, spineless Congress we have, who will stand in the way of Donald Trump overstepping his constitutional authority as President? If Congress won’t remove him from office, what patriot will step up and do that if, if, he oversteps his mandate as president, his constitution-mandated authority as president, I should say.
If he oversteps that, how do we get him out of office? And I don’t think there is a legal means available. I think it will be a terrible, terrible position the American people will be in to get Trump out of office, because you won’t be able to do it through Congress.
Beck responded, “I would agree with you on that.”
—AUDIO: Glenn Beck, Brad Thor discuss a ‘patriot’ taking out Donald Trump, The American Mirror, May 25, 2016. (If that’s not what Thor and Beck intended, it’s certainly being read that way by numerous bloggers.)
Chaser:
On Olbermann’s April 24, 2008, program, guest Howard Fineman was discussing the delegate math with Our Hero, stating, “some adults somewhere in the Democratic party to step in and stop this thing, like a referee in a fight that could go on for thirty rounds. Those are the super, super, super delegates who are going to have to decide this.”
To which Olbermann replied, “Right. Somebody who can take her into a room and only he comes out.”
—As quoted at Ed Driscoll.com, May 24th, 2008.
(Classical reference in headline.)
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Oberlin Is An Insane Asylum — a devastating magazine profile [in the New Yorker, astonishingly enough] captures a liberal arts college in full Dostoevskian meltdown.
Related: “How 1960s Radicals Ended Up Teaching Your Kids.” The phrase you’re looking for is “The Long March Through the Institutions.”
THE FRAUD IN “GUNGATE” IS REAL, AND SHOULD END KATIE COURIC’S CAREER.
Speaking of which, when you’ve lost the Washington Post…:
[Writer/producer/director Stephanie Soechtig — Couric is credited as executive producer — explained away the edit by claiming] “My intention was to provide a pause for the viewer to have a moment to consider this important question before presenting the facts on Americans’ opinions on background checks. I never intended to make anyone look bad and I apologize if anyone felt that way.”
So editing out a crucial segment of interview dialogue is an artistic pause for audience reflection? Why didn’t Rose Mary Woods think of that defense?! But then, as with Dan Rather and producer Mary Mapes before them, Couric (Rather’s successor for a time at CBS) and Soechtig have just discovered that whom the gods destroy, they first make Nixonian.
Related: Katie Couric “did more faking in that one hour documentary than I did my entire first marriage…”
Heh, indeed.™