Over the course of the last few years there have been more and more calls to remove or lower standards. The reason most often given is that the results of standards is not equitable.

The math goes something like this. If you have a 1000 people/institutions being tested and the break down of that population is 597 Pink, 186 Blue, 126 Cyan, 59 Green and 32 purple and you give a standardized test that is suppose to select the 100 best you would expect to get 60 Pink, 19 Blue, 13 Cyan, 6 Green and 2 purple.

If that standardized test instead gives you 65 Pink, 16 Blue, 5 Cyan, 9 Green and 2 purple something is wrong.

This is the problem. What happens if the Pink group consistently scores better than expected and the Green group as well. Regardless of the sample size or when the sample is picked in less random ways. What does it mean when the sample is skewed to have more Cyan and less Pink and still the Pink dominate those being chosen as best?

What does it mean?

In one sample, of nearly 400, there were 35 Pink, 364 Cyan, 1 purple. When standards were used to select “best” 29 Pink, 1 Cyan were picked as “best”.

Is the test biased to the Pink group?

Well the answer is often times “yes, it is biased.” But not based on color. It is based on objective measurements. It turns out that different groups value different things at different levels. Because of this differentiation different groups perform better when objectively measured.

Standards must be evaluated to see if they have a bias. If a test is asking about history and it focuses on the civil war students that live in the south are more likely to do better than people in the north. If on the other hand it focuses on the revolutionary war, people in the north are more likely to do better. Because of this, having tests with an unbalanced focus can result in unbalanced, biased, results.

What we know is that certain groups score better on standardized tests and when judged by objective standards. A standard that requires a certain number of pull ups in a given time, humping a certain amount of weight a specific distance or height will show a bias towards males over females.

Does this mean that females can’t meet those requirements? No, it doesn’t.

One of my younger friends was over along with his wife. His wife was in the US Army and was talking up how well they had done in PE and how much they could lift. This women was strong. She was in great shape. She is showing me her bicep development and is telling me to squeeze it to see just how strong she was.

I did. I’m old. I’m fat. I’m out of shape. I did squeeze. And she was on her knees squealing in pain. My hand grip is a little more than she expected. I knew this. So the first squeeze was gentle. She demanded that I actually squeeze. Nobody had ever actually done that to her. I’m an ass. I know this too. I showed her that there was a difference.

She was by and far the most physically fit and strong woman I’ve ever met. She was the best in her unit, all females. She looked down at the “soft bodies” of the other women in her unit that didn’t even try to meet male standards. She still wasn’t as strong as an old man. (Ok, sneaky old man, I do know where all those pressure points are.)

Unfortunately, bias is sometimes required. If what you are looking for is the best students you are going to be looking for students with good scores in standardized tests as well as good grades. If one group doesn’t perform as well as another group they are not going to be represented within the selected group at the same rate as in the applicants or population at large.

Consider Nobel prizes, Israel has 12(13?), Egypt which is larger in size and population has 4, Turkey 2, Iraq 1, Iran 1, Palestine 1, Yemen 1. 12 v. 10? Why? Is there discrimination based on religion for Nobel prizes? Or is there a cultural difference?
Source: Nobel Prize Winners By Country Wikipedia claims Isreal has 13, WorldAtlas says 12.

Should Israel have been denied Nobel prizes until the Muslim countries have received their “fair share” of Nobel prizes?

This has moved into education in a huge way. I’ve watched our local gifted and talented program be destroyed. It doesn’t exist any longer as it wasn’t fair. Having all those smart kids, all from the same cultural group be pulled out of class harmed those that didn’t meet the standards. They modified the standards three or four times and kept ending up with the same group of smart kids. Until they removed standards and it was “who wants to join this club?”

We saw it when magnet schools stopped using standardized criteria and suddenly had students that were just not as good.

Now we have this from the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The Philadelphia school board Thursday night began a process to pull the charters of three schools it cited for academic, operational, and financial flaws.
…
They accused the district of using an unfair evaluation process that had resulted in the closures of a disproportionate number of Black-led charters — both Laboratory and Southwest Leadership Academy have Black leaders — and board members of ignoring the needs of Black communities.
— Philly board moves to close 3 charters amid allegations of bias against Black-led schools

Once again, standards are under attack as being racist. We didn’t get equality of outcome so the standards used must be biased.

This totally ignores the possibility that it could be something else. Especially as there are operational and financial flaws listed.

How come the other charter schools can meet the standards but these schools can’t?

We don’t know, it is just easier to scream “RACIST!” and leave it at that.

UPDATED: Spelling/grammar fixes.

Joe climbed into a B-17 flying fortress. He moved to the bombardiers position and went through his part of preflight.

The signal is given and the airplane starts to taxi. Soon it is in position for roll out and take off. Joe tenses as he starts another flight over enemy territory.

His air craft joins up with others and soon the sky is filled with 100s of aircraft. Soon they are over the channel and shortly thereafter they pass over the coast heading towards Germany. Huge contrails tell the enemy exactly where they are. 88mm AA open up and soon have the altitude. Bombers are flying into flack and flack is hitting different bombers.

Planes are exploding or damaged to the point they can no longer fly.

JOe clutches his hands tightly, wishing he could wipe the sweat from his palms. His gear stops him. It is cold at altitude and yet he sweats and wishes he was as brave as the other men in the plane with him

The flack comes closer, but they push on. They have over an hour to go before they reach the target yet the Germans are throwing everything at them. He prays that they will make it home again.

There is a sound of a huge explosion and the plane seems to stop for a second in midair. Joe feels something hit him on the back and turns to see what is left of his friend sitting in the navigators position, his chest missing, splattered over Joe and the cabin.

The left engine is out. The co-pilot orders everybody to bail out. Joe can’t get to his exit without pushing his friends body out first. He watches it tumble downwards, he counts chutes, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7… His friend makes eight and he is about to go up when he sees a body falling, no chute. That’s 9. Joe forces himself out of the dying aircraft.

The wind whips past, tearing at him. He opens his chute and floats towards the ground. It is quiet while above him the ugly black explosions continues. More of his friends dying. More aircraft falling from the sky.

The ground rushes up to meet him and he lands. There is a terrible pain as he hits. His right hip is shattered. He passes out.

He wakes as he is carried into the hospital. Not a POW camp or a POW hospital. The faces looking down at him speak in German.

Joe is one of the lucky ones. He lives. A German found him and instead of turning him in to the army, he got Joe to the hospital. WHere the POW camp would have cut his leg off and Joe would have likely died, the doctors operate and save the leg. They have to fuse the hip.

At the end of the war, Joe is returned to America. He becomes a high school teacher and coach. He gets into local politics and is elected to mayor. He writes a book.

He interviewed ever survivor that he could find. His book is full of the heroes of that day. And he names them. All of them did so much more than Joe.

Joe was a hero. He was my great uncle. He never considered himself a hero. Heroes were what those other people did. He spoke to me only once of that day. And when his tears filled his eyes his sister in law stopped him. My mother stopped me for asking and listening.

Joe, the hero, never finished his own story. Another veteran that knew that the horrors of war were not for the gentle folk that stayed behind.

I grieved for my uncle Joe that day. I grieve for him today as I write this.

This song is for him.

The gist of NYSR&B v. Bruen was that the requirement to show good cause in order to get a CCW permit was unconstitutional.

Of course this lead to weeping and rending of clothing as the left bemoans the streets of NY, MA, NJ, MD, HI, and CA are now going to run red with blood as minor disagreements turn into gun battles.

This never happens. This is the same predictions that we heard in Florida when they became a “Shall Issue” state. It is the same story of impending woe that we heard when any state went “Shall Issue” or even “May Issue” from “No Issue” and again when states went to constitutional carry.

Everytime we get more of our gun rights back, the left screams that the children are going to die and the streets will run red with blood. They wait for the lunatic to kill and then pounce. We watch as the work through dozens of “mass shootings” and “random gun violence” until they get one that sticks.

The left firmly believes that any law or decision that goes their way is set in stone from that point forward and that any law or decision they disapprove of can be fought. “We are going to keep holding votes on the proposal until it passes!” followed by “It is the law! You can’t disagree with it!”

Since they lost the “good cause” provisions of their may issue scheme they are now moving forward with a requirement of “good moral character”. Another euphemism for “may issue.” Who judges good moral character? The government.

Examples given include being arrested. This means that if there is a domestic dispute and the cops arrest both parties or arrest the wrong person and then release that person with out charges, OR if the person goes to court where they are found not guilty, they are still prohibited from getting government permission to exercise their rights.

Another term that is being used is “suitability”. Which means whatever the grantor wants it to mean. I expect we’ll see dozens of cases over the next few years where people apply and are denied based on moral or suitability grounds.

As I said to my Senators “Why do you have ‘work around’ the second amendment? Why can’t you just follow what it says?”

.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the majority opinion striking down New York’s “proper cause” requirement to get public carry licenses, has claimed that “the Framers made a clear choice: They reserved to all Americans the right to bear arms for self-defense.” This claim is false. It represents the greatest hoax yet perpetrated upon the American people.
— Allan Lichtman, NY Daily News: The Supreme Court and the Second Amendment hoax

Allan wants you to know that even though only six states require proper cause to get a permit to carry or own, in some cases, that this covers a quarter of the US population. He further reports that there is a lower firearm death rate in these six states. As normal, he doesn’t bother to report any other violent crime statistics. He also carefully words it as “firearm deaths” which includes all homicides, justified or not, suicides and accidents. Since most firearm deaths are from suicide the CCW argument doesn’t really have any bearing.

He then goes on to argue that the second amendment is a collective right. He does it via an appeal to authority, quoting a NRA memo from 1955 that said that the 2a was a collective right. This is similar to the arguments about Ronald Reagan signed gun control bills while he was governor of California, leaving out that he later became much more pro-gun rights.

Allan continues with the theory that because the reason for the right to keep arms was given, it only existed for members of the militia. He fails to mention all the state laws that said that there was an organized militia as well as an unorganized militia consisting of all men.

Then he starts into the same old game. The founders were bad men creating bad laws because they didn’t include blacks, women, indians, and all the rest. Added to this is the use of negatives to prove a positive. Allan claims that nobody ever spoke of an individual right, thus the right must be assigned to the militia. As normal he fails to quote “the right of the people”. Somehow the people that agonized over every period and comma felt that it would be understood that “the right of the people” actually meant “the right of members of the militia”

Feel free to read his article. Know your enemy.

Bruen decided that the constitution means what it says and that there is a federal law that guarantees our right to self defense.

Dobbs decided that the constitution means what it says and there is nothing in it that grants a federal “right” to an abortion.

This lead to the humorous situation of people screaming that the states should be able to and at the same time screaming that the states shouldn’t be able to. Often times in the same breath.

When Roe v. Wade was overturned there were a number of trigger laws that went into effect. Arizona had such a law and on Friday it went into efect.

I don’t know what limits the AZ ban puts on abortion, I’m not about to believe anything I read in the media.

Utah’s trigger law, banning abortions in the state, went into effect Friday night after the U.S. Supreme Court announced its reversal of Roe v. Wade, the nearly 50-year-old decision that protected a woman’s right to an abortion. The suit asks the court to declare the state’s abortion ban invalid, alleging that it violates rights given to Utahns in the state’s constitution.
— The Salt Lake Tribune: Planned Parenthood of Utah files suit, asking court to declare state’s abortion ban unconstitutional

This is the way it is suppose to be done. On a state by state basis. I know that NY, MA, CA and a bunch of other liberal states will put abortion till the end of the 4th (not typo) trimester in place. Other places will put bans in place starting at conception. That is the wonder of our Republic. We have the ability to test different ideas politic in small before committing to them in large.

The pro-life battle now moves to the state and local levels. I expect it will be an uphill battle in most places. There will be battles.

Those battles are now happening where it should happen. At the state level.

I will point out that PP immediately went looking for more judges to make a ruling in their favor, having lost the battle with the public. This is still the right way to do it.

Friday was a long drive with my lady. We discussed Dobbs and she made the statement “I’m worried because this will affect the class of poor black women”. I’m in total disagreement.

Some states will or have banned abortion. The response from the death clinics will be to send buses or vans into those states with bans and offer free transportation to the nearest death clinic in the next state over.

We see this with states with no sales tax. You find stores popping up right across the border on well traveled roads. Not because there is a driving need within the sales tax free state, but to service all the out of staters that can do math and balance a 6% sales tax against a 30 mile round trip drive.

Yes, it might be that a woman with murder in her heart will have to wait for a bit for the van to arrive and then she might have to wait a couple of hours to get to the clinic before she finally is able to exercise her will. And then she’ll have the same long ride back to her home state.

The people this will actually affect is poor rural women that still have to make that long trip to the death clinic but can’t afford the trip into the city to catch that bus.

To be absolutely clear, for the longest time I was pro-choice and anti-abortion. I had lived in the cesspool of “pro-choice” for so long I couldn’t step out of it. What this meant to me is that at a personal level I would do everything in my power to convince a woman to carry to term but I felt that in the end, it was her choice.

I changed my opinion when my ex-Wife got a code while we were out and I drove her to the code. It was a woman with excessive vaginal bleeding. My ex-wife and her crew got the women onto the gurney and she was transported to the hospital where they hoped to save her. My ex-wife reported it as “she’s a frequent flyer. She uses the ambulance as a taxi. We transported her yesterday for her 5th abortion. This is just complications.”

On that day I change my opinion. Turns out that there was a fair number of women that were using abortion as birth control. Easier than using real birth control because it was free.

On Friday the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) asked Joe to declare a national emergency. They want him to use his power to “protect access to abortion services”

They also said the court’s decision will disproportionately affect Black women living in the South at a time when the maternal health crisis is already severely affecting the Black community. The Biden administration released a plan to tackle the maternal health care crisis Friday, promising to focus on building equity within the system.
— The Hill: Congressional Black Caucus calls for national emergency after SCOTUS decision

So there you have it, the law is racist and all pro-lifers that support the law are racist.

Third and most important, the government should nationalize Big Oil. That would allow the government to manage the industry’s drawdown, a process the private sector is ignoring. A coalition of climate-action groups showed the world’s 60 largest banks financed nearly $4 trillion in fossil energy projects over the last five years, investments that could be stranded and lead to more requested taxpayer bailouts when the carbon bubble pops.
— The Hill: Why we must nationalize Big Oil

The author of this opinion piece doesn’t even understand the words he uses. He calls “Big Oil” a monopoly. For some reason, companies that compete with each other for profits seem to set prices that are close to one another. According to my understanding of economics this price reflects the costs of producing the product including all labor, taxes, transportation, facilities and raw goods PLUS the profit.

In most cases, the costs of goods is pretty close from company to company. Sometimes one company is able to get their raw goods a little cheaper or their labor costs are lower. Over all it balances.

Once that is done, the company looks at how to maximize their profits. The greed part of capitalism. Profit is not calculated on an item by item bases but as the value of number of items sold multiplied by the amount of profit.

A widget costs $1.00 to manufacture. As long as the price of the widget is greater than $1.00 there is profit. If the company expects to sell 1000 widgets and they want a profit of $1000 then they will set the price of the widget at $2.00. If they are able to sell 1000 widgets then great. They made their profit.

But what if people aren’t willing to pay $2 for the widget and they can only sell 100. Then the company only makes $100 in profit.

This is the balancing act. Trying to find the price for a good that will sell the most goods with the most profit per item.

As soon as there is profit in widgets, people will create competition. The competition wants people to by from them instead. They have only a few ways of accomplishing this. They can get people to believe that their widget is better so that the people believe they get more value for their dollars or they lower the price at the same quality level.

As an example, cheap imported gear cutter set from China, $159 from Amazon. Same 8 cutters from McMaster-Carr: $712. I know the the McMaster-Carr gear cutters are better quality than the ones from China. The ones from China will work for what I need.

When the price of goods goes up so much that the people start complaining, there is always a group of people that will promise to make prices better (lower) if they can take control. The idea is that a single group of people overseeing an industry will balance not just the profits of the company but also the social profit of the company.

In this case these author believe that all oil companies will be gone in 30 years. If they are going to be gone in 30 years nobody should invest in them today because they are going to be ripped off. If the companies continue to produce goods that people want and in a way that people want them to do it, that is cheating and the companies should be punished.

Thomas Sowell talks about price signals in terms of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had a horrible time with their trains. A large part of that was that they forced their rolling stock to carry more than it was rated for. This caused the cars to wearout faster and fail. Engineers and the experts that explained this were punished.

Thomas looked a bit deeper into what was going on and found that in the Soviet Union, different government bureaus created verticals. Thus a bureau responsible for making a tractor might have mines to get coal, iron and other metals. It might have a factory that made plastic parts and so forth. This was because nobody trusted anybody in the Soviet Union to delver what was promised on time and at the quality needed.

This lead to the interesting situation of trains carrying coal and wood from the west all the way to the east where they were unloaded at factories of one bureau and then loading up with wood and coal at the mines of another bureau to transport them back across the same rails with the same goods.

Socialism fails. It fails every time. It is impossible for any small group of people to know everything that the population knows. There is no way for a government bureaucrat to know that the soil just proved to loose and that the road work is going to need a few tons of sand and stone to stabilize it by next Wed.

Socialism, just say no.