#Personnel is Policy

[arcticdementor]

A Massachusetts public high school math assignment recently asked students how they “believe systemic racism” leads to higher incarceration rates for black Americans. The assignment for students in multiple ninth-grade classes at Newton South High School included a chart showing the percentage of U.S. males likely to go to prison by race and age, Parents Defending Education (PDE) reports. The assignment asked students to interpret a chart showing the likelihood of U.S. males going to prison, broken down by race and age, with the data showing white men having a lower incarceration rate than Hispanics and blacks. 

…

Additionally, it asked students to “Explain how you believe systematic racism creates the data displayed by the above time plot (Compare your answers to the group before moving on.)”  Such a “racism” math quiz adds up to indoctrination, Erika Sanzi, director of outreach for Defending Education, told Townhall.  “Newton Schools work hard to ensure that their captive audience of students uncritically adopts their preferred world view – even in math class,” she said. “What happens if a student doesn’t believe in structural racism? Do they fail 9th grade math?” 

(@mitigatedchaos)

[another-country-heard-from]

Personnel is Policy: Kamala Harris's Campaign Appointments Should Alarm Israel-Supporters

In any normal year, people with such radical records wouldn’t be allowed near a presidential campaign, let alone given senior appointments; but radical anti-Zionism is now unremarkable in today’s Democratic Party. This column originally published in the Jerusalem Post Continue reading Personnel is Policy: Kamala Harris’s Campaign Appointments Should Alarm Israel-Supporters

[arcticdementor]

And the fact that this is an inescapable element of human systems, no matter how much Weberian rationalization and proceduralism you attempt to enact, serves as a fundamental counter to the whole of liberalism.

The amount of outcomes that are due to personnel is amazing.

Flaws of specific guys in charge. Availability of types of guys. Lack of availability of guys.

Really ranks up there as one of the all-time causes of things.

[sokolygrandaananeva]

Project 2025: A Detailed Analysis

Project 2025: A Detailed Analysis Project 2025 is an initiative led by the Heritage Foundation and supported by over 100 conservative organisations in the United States. Its objective is to prepare a political agenda and an administrative team for a potential conservative administration in 2025. This project is structured around four fundamental pillars: Public Policy Agenda: In April 2023, the…

[mariacallous]

[corporateintel]

Don’t Yell at the Pilot

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know I spend a lot of time on planes. When you fly a lot or spend a hunk of time at airports, you observe human behavior in many of its less magnificent expressions. There’s no way around it — the more you fly, the more likely things are to go wrong. It’s a numbers game. Take 100 flights, and if just 5% of them don’t go as planned, that’s five bad…

[rightnewshindi]

हिमाचल में अनुबंध कर्मचारियों के लिए बड़ी खबर: 31 मार्च 2025 तक दो साल पूरे करने वाले होंगे रेगुलर, फाइल वित्त विभाग को भेजी गई

Himachal News: हिमाचल प्रदेश में अनुबंध पर कार्यरत कर्मचारियों के लिए एक राहत भरी खबर सामने आई है। राज्य सरकार के कार्मिक विभाग ने 31 मार्च 2025 तक दो साल की सेवा पूरी कर चुके कर्मचारियों को नियमित करने की प्रक्रिया शुरू कर दी है। इस कदम से सैकड़ों कर्मचारियों को स्थायी नौकरी की उम्मीद जगी है। कार्मिक विभाग ने अपनी तैयारियां पूरी कर फाइल को वित्त विभाग के पास भेज दिया है, जिसके बाद यह मामला…

[bharatkhabarnama]

Punjab Police zero tolerance policy against corruption : 58 police officials dismissed

DGP announces to take stern action against corrupt police personnel Chandigarh, February 19, 2025 (Bharat Khabarnama Bureau) In consonance with the instructions issued by the Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann led Punjab Government emphasising transperancy, accountability and integrity in public service delivery, Commissioners of Police and Senior Superintendents of Police (CPs/SSPs) in all…

[gurutrends]

Third-Party Motor Insurance Policy Enforcement: Enugu Police Cautions Personnel against Unprofessional Conduct

Third-Party Motor Insurance Policy Enforcement: Enugu Police Cautions Personnel against Unprofessional Conduct The Enugu State Police Command says it has commenced full enforcement of the Third-Party Motor Vehicle Insurance Policy across the state. The enforcement, which commenced on February 1, 2025,  follows the directive of the Inspector-General of Police, IGP Kayode Adeolu Egbetokun,…

[the-psudo]

Trump got absolutely dumpstered in court in the last few days.

His and Elon's program to pay people to retire early has been halted by a temporary restraining order issued by District Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. of the US District Court, District of Massachusetts in American Federation of Government Employees et al v. Charles Ezell (acting Acting Director of the Office of Personnel Management). This temporary order only lasts until they have a hearing on Monday to determine whether this program is constitutional.

13 state attorneys general sued to prevent Elon from accessing personal data about government employees and citizen clients of their agencies, leading to Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in the case Alliance for Retired Americans v. Scott Bessent (Trump's Secretary of the Treasury) ordering the Department of Justice to ensure no unauthorized persons, including Elon and his team, have access to the Labor Department's database of information on tax filings, employment, and the like.

Two separate judges have ruled that Trump's executive order trying to eliminate birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment is unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge John Coughenour of the western Washington district, a REAGAN appointee (!), said, "It has become ever more apparent that to our president the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals. The rule of law is, according to him, something to navigate around or simply ignore, whether that be for political or personal gain." The other judge, US District Judge Deborah Boardman of Maryland, ruled that the executive order cannot be implemented until she has had a chance to rule on the merits of the case.

US District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth in DC paused Trump’s restrictions on transgender women being incarcerated in women’s prisons and federal prisons providing gender-affirming medical treatment, after inmates (!) sued to block the policy.

US District Judge Loren L. Alikhan of DC broadly blocked the Trump administration’s memo halting almost all federal assistance.

That's six rulings scrapping five of Trump's major policy operations in the past four days (Feb 3rd through the 6th, 2025).

That's news worth celebrating!

[arcticdementor]

"University administrators will never voluntarily give up on DEI, no matter what laws are passed. The only way to get DEI out of a university is to shut down the university. Fire the staff, Raze the buildings. Plow the land. Plant corn, soybeans, potatoes…"

—Rusty Bill

[lexlawuk]

Home Office Sponsor Licence Compliance Visits: Strategies for Success

For UK companies holding a Sponsor Licence, the prospect of a Home Office compliance visit can be a source of unease, especially when unprepared. In this article, our business immigration solicitors provide insights into handling these visits effectively. Our leading London Immigration Law Firm can prepare you via pre and post-licence mock compliance audits, including mock interviews with key…

[arcticdementor]

I'm seeing a lot of under-supported optimism here.

University degrees mark selection for talent, and they can't drop the talent-selection system and replace it with nothing.

More specifically, degrees mark a selection for talent protected from disparate impact action (EEOC, lawsuits). You can't replace it with something, because any employer who tries to hire on the basis of that something will be destroyed via civil rights law.

Republicans have already been splitting K-12 schooling using the idea of charter schools - privately-operated schools that receive public money through vouchers.

To very limited effect, as practically all of the charter schools end up just as ideologically captured as public schools, because personnel is policy, and thanks to institutional capture of academia, the entire (credentialed) teaching profession — save some remnants in the oldest cohorts — is entirely aligned with the "woke left." It's part of why homeschooling is on the rise (until it ends up banned like in Germany).

What's different between universities and the K-12 system?

A whole lot. Regional/national accrediting as opposed to local; funding ("a mutual fund with a school attached"); the importance of individual institutional reputation and history; degrees of exclusivity and class stratification; degree to which de facto protection from "disparate impact" action depends on the "legitimacy" of the credential…

Republicans could begin partitioning out the different functions of the universities

How? Through what enforcement mechanism?

after the shift from truth-oriented organization to politics-oriented organization.

What shift is this? How do you expect it to happen?

The long-term goal would be to move the credential-minting portion of the university's portfolio - its main source of cash and influence - from universities to a third-party in-person exam service.

Again, how? And how do you keep employers from facing EEOC action when the "third-party in-person exam" shows disparate impact?

New university degrees would then be legally deprecated, and employers would be prohibited from accepting or knowing about them in hiring and promotion.

And how exactly would they enact and enforce this?

The intermediate, "one foot in the water" approach would be to require that all accredited degree-granting universities provide a by-exam award of each degree they grant

Require how? Via what authority (particularly for private universities)? Enforced by whom, exactly?

What is the value of learning on Harvard's campus, from Harvard's professors, as compared to someone with a similar level of aptitude learning from a small school in Iowa?

Try the entire reason for going to a school like Harvard, Yale, Princeton… socializing with the scions of the elites? You don't go to HYP for the learning, you go for the status and connections, — they're finishing schools for the ruling class.

None of these ideas are actionable, because there's no mechanism actually available (in reality, not words on old, musty paper nobody in DC actually cares about) to Republicans through which to enact and enforce anything along these lines.

A lot of the lefty people in the universities assume that they can be as partisan as they want, and the university won't go under, because Republicans don't have a choice. University degrees mark selection for talent, and they can't drop the talent-selection system and replace it with nothing.

Republicans have already been splitting K-12 schooling using the idea of charter schools - privately-operated schools that receive public money through vouchers.

What's different between universities and the K-12 system? Well, mostly research. If the research is increasingly partisan, however, then the two systems become more similar, and Republicans could begin partitioning out the different functions of the universities as part of a reform movement after the shift from truth-oriented organization to politics-oriented organization.

The long-term goal would be to move the credential-minting portion of the university's portfolio - its main source of cash and influence - from universities to a third-party in-person exam service. New university degrees would then be legally deprecated, and employers would be prohibited from accepting or knowing about them in hiring and promotion.

The intermediate, "one foot in the water" approach would be to require that all accredited degree-granting universities provide a by-exam award of each degree they grant, and they can't differentiate between traditional students and exam-only students in the awarding process - or mark it on the credentials in any way. (Naturally, this rule would also require that all of the involved texts are published openly, and there is no factual information involved which is not in the texts.)

What is the value of learning on Harvard's campus, from Harvard's professors, as compared to someone with a similar level of aptitude learning from a small school in Iowa?

Who can sit to take the exam? That depends on just how brutal the people who implement this policy want to be. If you're feeling merciful, you can allow Harvard to limit the number of by-exam seats to match the number of seats they have on campus, and impose conditions similar to the ones they use for admissions on the exam takers. This would still allow Harvard to keep most of their revenue, especially since a Harvard student would likely be guaranteed a seat.

If you're feeling harsher, you can allow Harvard to set the fee necessary to administrate the test, but 1) all in-person Harvard students must also pay the fee, and if they can't pay it, they can't take the test, and 2) the fee is limited to 1/10th of tuition, adjusted downwards for financial aid received by Harvard students.

I'm not going to go in to further details. There are also a number of potential problems, which I'm not going to go into, either.

The reason that the Republicans haven't unbundled the universities isn't because it's impossible. It's because they don't want to. They still think the universities can be salvaged, and that it makes sense to pool researchers with learners. They have lighter-touch tactics available before resorting to this, as well.

[allthegeopolitics]

The New Hampshire Supreme Court upheld a school district’s policy Friday that aims to support the privacy of transgender students, ruling that a mother who challenged it failed to show it infringed on a fundamental parenting right.

In a 3-1 opinion, the court upheld a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit filed by the mother of a Manchester School District student. She sued after inadvertently discovering her child had asked to be called at school by a name typically associated with a different gender.

At issue is a policy that states in part that “school personnel should not disclose information that may reveal a student’s transgender status or gender nonconfirming presentation to others unless legally required to do so or unless the student has authorized such disclosure.” [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @vague-humanoid

[night-dragon937]

I'm going to commit unspeakable acts of violence

[undefeatednils]

Having political thoughts today...

It's not easy being red.