DOJ Report: Criminal Background Checks, Immigration Status Are Barriers To Law Enforcement Diversity

By William Teach October 6, 2016 – 8:37 am

This is, um, well, just bat guano insane. The DOJ is utterly sincere in their, let’s call it “wackadoodle”, beliefs

(CNS News) The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released a comprehensive report Wednesday examining hiring, recruitment, and retention policies with the aim of increasing diversity in law enforcement.

The report highlighted barriers to diversity within police departments, such as “the use of criminal background checks” which the researchers found “is likely to disproportionately impact racial minority applicants.”

The report also found that U.S. citizenship requirements “may prevent a considerable number of racial and ethnic minorities – many of whom have valuable foreign language skills – from being hired by law enforcement agencies.”

Well, of course they are barriers. Does it really need to be stated that they should be barriers? Should a non-citizen really be in charge of law enforcement? Should a convicted felon really be in charge of law enforcement? One would think that the Department Of Justice, that nations top law enforcement office, would be interested in law and order, but, they’re morphing into the Department of Social Justice.

The report opened with an analysis of EEOC labor force data, which “found that African-American, Latino, and Asian-American police officers were underrepresented relative to the local area population in a significant number of the departments analyzed. Using a statistical test of underrepresentation, the researchers found that within their sample, African Americans were underrepresented in 60 percent of the departments, Latinos were underrepresented in 41 percent, and Asian Americans were underrepresented in 31 percent.”

So what? Women are underrepresented in the NFL and STEM fields. Men are underrepresented in education and health sciences. Whites are underrepresented in rap music and the NBA, Blacks in heavy metal and the NHL. Go to a car dealership: how many women work there in sales? It all comes down to choice and capability. There’s nothing wrong with attempting to diversify a work force. Many police forces have been thrilled to be able to have more female officers, who can often deescalate situations, but, guess what? They still have to pass a background check. And they have to want to become police officers.

What if Blacks, Latinos, and Asians do not care about becoming officers in amounts large enough to be “represented”? Are we to force them? What if part of it is that they cannot pass a citizenship or background check? Sadly, it needs to be said “of course not.”

The use of criminal background checks, the report noted, “is likely to disproportionately impact racial minority applicants since, for a variety of reasons, individuals from those communities are more likely to have contact with the criminal justice system.”

It added that “law enforcement agencies are undeniably justified in carefully vetting and investigating potential hires,” but “excluding applicants regardless of the nature of the underlying offense, or how much time has passed since an offense occurred, or without any consideration of whether the candidate has changed in the intervening period, can be a significant – and unwarranted – barrier.”

So, if someone is essentially committing crimes as a teenager and young adult, that should be thrown out or something. There wouldn’t be a lot of time passing between those time periods in a person’s life and when they would try to join law enforcement.

One has to wonder: while the DOSJ is whining about local, county, and state police forces, are they forcing the FBI and DOJ to hire people with serious criminal offenses in their backgrounds, or who are illegal aliens?

On the hiring of women in law enforcement, according to the report, “research has shown that physical tests may have a significant and unnecessary impact on female applicants when they lack a corresponding benefit or job-related need.

So now the DOSJ wants to add “physically unable to do the job” as a barrier to getting a job.

I’ll leave it up to you to read the rest of the article, which doesn’t get any better when it comes to facepalming from what the DOSJ is stating.

 

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Washington Post: A President Trump Could Destroy The World Economy Or Something

By William Teach October 6, 2016 – 7:51 am

I’m starting to see a pattern here from the Washington Post Editorial Board. It’s another day, another crazy editorial from the WP editorial Board. Previously, we’ve learned that a Pres Trump could deport freely (hooray!), that he’d end the era of US global leadership (not much left to lose after 8 years of Obama) or something, and that he could wreck progress on ‘climate change’.  Now we see

A President Trump could destroy world economy

THE DECADES since the end of the Cold War have seen strong and widely shared economic growth, on a global scale. The portion of the world’s population living on $1.25 per day or less fell from 44 percent to 23 percent. Some 200 million Chinese, 90 million Indians and 30 million people each in Indonesia, Egypt and Brazil moved into the global middle class. This progress had many causes, but a major one was the United States’ hard work, under presidents of both major parties, to promote the free flow of goods and capital, within a robust legal framework, among nations.

Except, of course, the past 7+ years, where leftist economic policies have kept most of the 1st World in economic doldrums, where people, at least in the U.S., still think the country hasn’t recovered from the recession, and many still think we’re in one.

These policies benefited the American people, too — though by no means all of them, a fact that has caused understandable concern, especially in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Seizing on this backlash, and dissenting radically from the long-standing bipartisan consensus, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks of “bringing back” American jobs by repudiating international trade agreements and resorting instead to pressure tactics, such as threatening tariffs against China and other trading partners.

Because attempting to bring back jobs, businesses, increasing wages, and thinking of American citizens first is a Bad Idea in Liberal World. Which is an interesting idea, considering how many of the Democratic Party base are stuck working low wage, often part time, jobs. If they can get one after building up $50,000+ in student loans debt.

The United States needs to ensure that more of its own middle class shares in the benefits of globalization. Mr. Trump’s policies, however, could trigger a trade war, or wars, thus threatening the achievements of the past three decades without helping Americans who need it most.

So, doom.

Anyhow, a few more paragraphs of Doooooooooom, ending with

U.S. leadership of the global trading system has helped stabilize an area of international life that had bred conflict, even war, for centuries. To abdicate in favor of Mr. Trump’s zero-sum mind-set not only would undo the work of generations and lower the United States’ standing among the nations; it also would license other nations to conduct themselves just as selfishly. The disruption to market confidence could breed economic damage in excess of any transitory benefits. His approach would be a historic error, which, as president, he would be free to commit.

Here’s the question not discussed by the WPEB: what if his policies work? In reality, Mr. Trump would not implement policies that would damage American prosperity: he may be rather bombastic and wacky, but, he’s no dummy when it comes to business. He’s certainly smarter than our current president, who has never seen a year with 3%+ GDP growth since Herbert Hoover.

Many of the Trumpites say this election is about the Globalists vs. the Nationalists. Certainly, I have some serious reservations and concerns over pitching nationalism, but, while globalism has certainly afforded Americans cheaper goods, we’re seeing companies and jobs constantly bolt overseas. We see foreign workers brought in to take the jobs of American citizens for lower wages. We see countries dump their products in the US at a cost that is below typical value, damaging American workers and companies. Perhaps it is time to re-evaluate the global business models, and do what we can to put Americans first.

Again, do not take this as an endorsement of Trump. I’m simply amused by the incoherence, apoplexy, and fear-mongering of the WPEB, which never seems to question Hillary Clinton and her ideas in the least.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Good News From Washington Post: A President Trump Could Wreck Progress On Hotcoldwetdry

By William Teach October 5, 2016 – 6:25 pm

Another day, another crazy editorial from the WP editorial Board. Previously, we’ve learned that a Pres Trump could deport freely (hooray!) and that he’d end the era of US global leadership (not much left to lose after 8 years of Obama) or something. Now we get

A President Trump could wreck progress on global warming

IT TOOK global negotiators a quarter-century to strike the Paris climate agreement, an international accord aimed at slowing global warming. The agreement represents the best hope for a world in which no one country acting alone can do enough to fight this global threat. Donald Trump could destroy the agreement with a stroke of a pen, and with it any hope that the world will keep the planet’s temperature within the boundaries scientists say are safe.

Hooray! I still think his rationale for skepticism is silly (that it’s a scheme by China), but, hey, if he’ll kill off this silliness, good for him. I still don’t trust him on most things, but, hey, cheers!

The rest of the editorial is what you’d expect, ending with utter doom

Moreover, neither the judicial check nor a subsequent president who tried to pick up the pieces could compensate for the loss of time and focus as climate change accelerated . U.S. foot-dragging on warming would give other nations a pretext to avoid hard actions, too. The planet would warm more; the oceans would become more acidic; corals would bleach; sea levels would rise; deadly temperature extremes would get more frequent; species would die off; landscapes would change; shipyards would swamp; climate refugees would seek shelter. Some of these things are already bound to happen, to some extent. Mr. Trump is promising to exacerbate the problem, and he could do so by executive fiat.

Dogs and cats, living in sin!

Anyhow, it’s weird that suddenly the WPEB isn’t thrilled with ruling by executive fiat. Go figure.

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Posted in AGW Scaremongering, Donald Trump, Global Warming | 9 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach October 5, 2016 – 1:00 pm

…is horrible heat created snow, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Strata-Sphere, with a post on what kind of genius loses $9 trillion.

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Who’s Up For The Rap Guide To Climate Change, Featuring Bill Nye?

By William Teach October 5, 2016 – 11:00 am

Just in case you’re wondering, I don’t hate you for exposing you to this bit of ear destruction. Chris White calls this the worst 5 minutes of music ever. It’s bad. Really bad.

(Daily Caller) Comedian and former TV show host Bill Nye “The Science Guy” collaborated on a new global warming-themed hip-hop song lecturing listeners about the evils of climate change skepticism.

Nye is featured in a new song by Canadian rapper Baba Brinkman that drones on for more than 5 minutes about why millennials, among others, should paint scarlet letters on so-called man made global warming skeptics.

The song, titled “The Beef,” hashes out a laundry list of grievances environmentalists and politicians level against people who strike skeptical positions against scientists who claim global warming is real and man-made.

It’s lyrics are a hodge-podge of words and spliced together sentences bemoaning how the skeptics’ views on global warming still get media attention despite politicians and celebrities best efforts to drown them out.

And here it is. Again, I do not hate you

I made it through the first 30 seconds. How’d you do?

The song itself (with it’s original title, considering how many others have used “What’s beef?”) is part of an album (snicker) entitled The Rap Guide to Climate Chaos, with “Twenty-four original tracks diving deep into the science and politics of climate change. A great gift for activists and climate deniers alike (effects may vary).” Hey, it’s only $15! Or, you can snag it with a torrent….oh, wait, no one has cared enough to bother.

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Charlotte PD Release Full Videos Of Keith Scott Shooting

By William Teach October 5, 2016 – 8:44 am

For the most part, the videos solve nothing, except showing that the officers were not cold hearted racists who just love shooting Black people (despite the officer who took the shot being Black): the spent a lot of time providing medical aid

(Charlotte Observer) Police body camera footage released on Tuesday shows in graphic detail the final minutes of Keith Lamont Scott’s life after he was shot on Sept. 20 by a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer.

The video shows police officers handcuffing Scott and then trying to save his life in the parking lot of his University City apartment complex. Officers in the video said they found three bullet wounds on Scott– on his wrist, abdomen, and on the back of his shoulder.

While a gun is not seen in the footage, one officer is heard telling another to “come watch this gun.”

The body camera video, which lasts 16 minutes and 29 seconds, begins after Scott was shot. Much of it shows officers assessing and then tending to Scott’s wounds, securing the scene and talking to Scott as they knelt beside him.

“Stay with us, bro, stay with us now,” one officer says to Scott.

Weirdly, the article barely mentions the second video, which is the full dash cam. Neither solves the question of the gun. What has been proposed is that the officer in the red shirt was initially standing over the weapon. Then you see him putting on medical gloves to render aid, and another officer goes and stands in the exact same spot.

You can also download the videos from Charlotte governmental website, or watch them at WTVD, which also offers

Keith Lamont Scott was a different person after suffering a traumatic brain injury in a motorcycle accident last year. Friends say his medications made him zone out, slurring his words and forgetting what he was saying in the middle of a conversation.

“You could look at him and tell something was wrong,” said Dana Chapman, a former neighbor. “You could walk up to him, you didn’t have to speak. You could look at him and tell there was a problem.”

Doesn’t matter. Officers do not know this. When they are giving commands to a subject carrying a firearm, and they are not complying, then the results are on the subject, not the officers.

The events surrounding Scott’s death are more important than anything in his past, said Justin Bamberg, the family’s attorney. “In the end, it was his life to live until law enforcement determined they should take it from him.”

In other words, we are to ignore his long history of criminality and violence, all the threats and restraining orders. If he wanted to live his life, then he shouldn’t have been sitting around at the bus stop waiting for his child with marijuana and a handgun. If he had so many problems, perhaps someone should have been watching him.

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UN Makes A Power Play Against Trump On Paris Climate Deal Or Something

By William Teach October 5, 2016 – 8:23 am

Last night we had the big Vice Presidential debate, which pretty much everyone said that Pence won. He looked and acted like the adult in the room, while Tim Kaine looked over-caffeinated and was rude. And desperate. Even with the assist from moderator Elaine Quijano. Politico offers 12 of the most interesting moments, but, Ed Morrissey offers the best play by play of the debate. Which, no, I did not watch. Masterchef Canada returned! And you do not miss an episode, because they do not have in-demand. Unfortunately, I think I may have seen the name of the winner (it is played in Canada well before shown on Cooking in the States) while searching for the start time. Much like the GOP declared Pence the winner….before the debate. Good thing Tim Kaine wasn’t interrupting, eh?

Anyhow, there’s this

UN makes power play against Donald Trump

International governments have made a power play against Donald Trump by ratifying an international climate deal earlier than expected, effectively preventing him from “canceling” the deal as he has promised to do.

The European Union’s Tuesday decision to join the Paris climate deal will push the deal over the threshold for ratification; it will formally take effect in 30 days.

That means Trump, should he be elected president in November, could not “cancel” or renegotiate the terms of the agreement.

The Hill then contradicts itself

President Obama committed the United States to reduce its emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent by 2025 as part of the deal. The agreement is nonbinding, so Trump would be free to ignore it if he wins the White House.

A President Trump could do more than ignore it: he could cancel America’s involvement, since Congress did not ratify it. Obama used an Executive Order. Trump could cancel that EO with a second EO. It really is that simple.

Once the deal takes effect, the United States cannot back out of the plan — or force changes to it — for at least four years.

Yes, it can, because, without Senate ratification, it has no force of law for the United States, so the US can opt out. Forcing changes? That won’t happen anyhow, because I doubt Trump cares enough to even bother.

Before the U.S. joined the agreement in September, Obama’s top climate change adviser, Brian Deese, said the dynamics of a change in presidential administration is “certainly a discussion we have.”

“The history of these agreements is: Once they’re in place and once the United States has not only supported and signed the agreement, but has formally joined the agreement, that we stay in the agreement that we commit to,” Deese told reporters in early September.

We didn’t agree. The United States did not sign the agreement. Obama agreed. Which is not the way our Republic works. Trump could, again, simply ignore the deal, or sign an EO rescinding Obama’s EO.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Progressive Haven Of NY Times Suddenly Upset About This Whole “Democracy” Thing

By William Teach October 4, 2016 – 3:00 pm

Progressives have long been big adherents of Direct Democracy, where the people vote for lots and lots of things directly to determine the outcome. Think of ballot initiatives. This is different from representative democracy, where people vote lawmakers, who then go and vote the way their big moneyed donors constituents determine. But, NY Times writers Amanda Taub and Max Fisher have a problem with people actually voting for things

Why Referendums Aren’t as Democratic as They Seem

The voters of the world have had quite a year: They rejected Colombia’s peace deal; split Britain from the European Union; endorsed a Thai Constitution that curtails democracy; and, in Hungary, backed the government’s plan to restrict refugees, but without the necessary turnout for a valid result.

Each of these moves was determined by a national referendum. Though voters upended their governments’ plans, eroded their own rights and ignited political crises, they all accomplished one thing: they demonstrated why many political scientists consider referendums messy and dangerous.

When asked whether referendums were a good idea, Michael Marsh, a political scientist at Trinity College Dublin, said, “The simple answer is almost never.”

“I’ve watched many of these in Ireland, and they really range from the pointless to the dangerous,” he added.

You can see where this is going, no need for more excerpts. I wonder, though, have they explained this to the People’s Republik Of Brokeifornia, which has 17 ballot initiatives on deck for November? Probably not, because the article thinks that citizens are just too stupid to know which way to vote.

How does that accord, though, with voting for representative democracy?

Of course, the big problem here is votes that do not come out the way Progressives want. Then we’re told that direct democracy is a Bad Idea (or they sue to overturn the results of the will of the people).

And, no, the results are not always optimal. Sometimes they are downright stupid. People may vote against their own best interests. Democracy is messy. Would they prefer dictatorships of some fashion (well, yes, they kinda would, but, that is a different story.) How is representative democracy any less messy? People so often do not know what they are voting for, who they are voting for, what they stand for, what they have done, what they plan on doing, their legislative record, or who influences them.

Oh, and let’s definitely take note that one of the things the Times is bitching about is the vote in Columbia. About that

(NY Sun) Congratulations are in order for the people of Colombia, who, in a democratic referendum, have rejected the peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces known as FARC. The vote is a rejection of a compromise with a nihilistic Marxist movement whose entry into peace talks was one of the most cynical maneuvers in the history of the Americas. Yet the resulting compact was hailed by nearly every liberal paper and politician in the world (including Hillary Clinton), only to be brought up short by a people who turned out to be smarter than the elites who rule them.

Read the whole thing. Maybe voters are smarter than the Times gives them credit for being.

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If All You See…

By William Teach October 4, 2016 – 1:00 pm

…is snow melting from too much carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Welcome To The Rightly Guided, with a post on losing a billion dollars.

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People With Giant Carbon Footprints Warn There’s No More Time For People To Be Allowed To Have Opinions

By William Teach October 4, 2016 – 10:18 am

Let me posit a hypothesis: if you say you believe in anthropogenic global warming/climate change, yet have a carbon footprint well beyond most citizens on the planet, are you, in fact, denying your own beliefs?

Obama And Leonardo DiCaprio Warn There’s No Time Left For Climate Change Denial

President Barack Obama on Monday warned that Republicans in Congress who deny climate change contribute to a growing problem that he hoped to give more political urgency by emphasizing moral issues.

“Climate change is happening even faster than five years ago or 10 years ago,” Obama said. “What we’re seeing is the pessimistic end of what was possible, the ranges that had been discerned or anticipated by scientists, which means we’re really in a race against time. We can’t put up with climate denial or obstructionist politics for very long, if we want to leave for the next generation beautiful days like today.”

If by faster and more pessimistic he means “a more stable climate system with fewer severe storms”, well, alrighty then.

That said, it’s rather disturbing, to say the least, that the POTUS is essentially saying that people should not be allowed any belief, even when based on Science, that disagrees with the beliefs (not based on Science) of the Cult of Climastrology. Seems rather fascistic, does it not?

Monday’s panel at the White House “South by South Lawn” festival preceded the U.S. premiere of DiCaprio’s climate change documentary, “Before the Flood,” which will air on the National Geographic channel later this month.

The Oscar winner opened the panel by explaining that he planned to release the documentary before the November election to highlight the political importance of the issue. Like Obama, DiCaprio had strong words for climate change deniers.

Which means it should be considered an in-kind contribution to Hillary, and treated accordingly by the FEC and IRS, among others.

“If you do not believe in climate change, you do not believe in facts, or in science, or in empirical truths, and therefore, in my humble opinion, should not be allowed to hold public office,” DiCaprio said.

If you are an utter hypocrite on the subject, you shouldn’t be allowed to dissemble on the subject. And, let’s see, since Obama is an utter hypocrite, it must mean he doesn’t actually believe in ‘climate change’, and shouldn’t have held office. The same goes for Hillary Clinton.

Patterico’s Pontifications touches on Leo’s climahypocricy, based on a Hill story: “And you thought we were against religious tests…”.

Twitchy has more.

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Posted in Climahypocrites, Global Warming | 12 Comments | Trackback URL
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