When the marshals moved into the building and the first stick of furniture appeared on the street, the crowd charged the police and began pummeling them with fists, stones, and sticks, while the "non-combatants urged the belligerents to greater fury with anathemas for capitalism, the police and landlords." The outnumbered police barely held their lines until reinforcements arrived.

The situation at Olinville Avenue was only calmed down when a compromise was reached.

the strikers agreed to a compromise offer that called for two- to three-dollar reductions for each apartment and the return of evicted families to their apartments. "When news of the settlement reached the crowd," the Bronx Home News reported, "they promptly began chanting the Internationale and waving copies of the Daily Worker as though they were banners of triumph."

"The women were the most militant," noted the New York Times they constituted the majority of the crowds, the arrestees, and those engaged in physical conflict with the police. This time, the evictions did occur, but only with the help of over fifty foot and mounted police and a large and expensive crew of marshals and moving men.

"This is a peculiar neighborhood. It is the hot bed of Communism and radicalism. The people in this neighborhood are mostly Communists and Soviet sympathizers. They do not believe in our form of government."
- state senator Benjamin Antin

The landlords continued their offensive and the judges rarely considered the neediness of the families. By December 1932 is appeared that the Bronx rent strikes had largely been crushed.
But then something happened.

in December of 1932 and January of 1933, the Unemployed Councils began a new wave of strikes that rapidly assumed far greater proportions than the last one. Beginning in Crotona Park East, the strikes spread into Brownsville, Williamsburg, Boro Park, the Lower East Side, and much of the East Bronx. In February of 1933, a panicked Real Estate News writer warned that "there are more than 200 buildings in the Borough of the Bronx in which rent strikes are in progress, and a considerably greater number in which such disturbances are brewing or in contemplation."

Unemployment and Civil Unrest in America

"There is no poverty in America."
- Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur, Secretary of the Interior, 1931

Unlike today, the unemployed haven't always suffered in silence.
On November 5, 1857, 15,000 unemployed men convened at Tompkins Square Park in New York City. They did not ask for charity, but for work. However, some of the hungry stormed baker's wagons and the police responded with force.
Tompkins Square Park was again the site of another mass protest of the unemployed and hungry on January 13, 1874. Once again the demonstrators demanded public works projects, not charity. Once again the police responded in kind.

"mounted police charged the crowd on Eighth Street, riding them down and attacking men, women, and children without discrimination. It was an orgy of brutality. I was caught in the crowd on the street and barely saved my head from being cracked by jumping down a cellarway."
- Samuel Gompers, 1874

Most of these demonstrations achieved nothing. But decade after decade of efforts convinced local governments to set up soup kitchens and, in some places, public works projects.

It's difficult to find accurate information about the unemployment situation of the early Great Depression and the civil unrest it caused because the newspapers and politicians simply refused to acknowledge it until 1932. The AFL, the sole remaining national labor union after all other national labor unions had been brutally crushed, was completely unable to deal with the changing environment.

There was only one organization in America prepared to capitalize on the suffering and strife caused by the economic meltdown - the communists. While all other organizations in America either denied the social and economic problems, or ran away from them, the communists embraced them.

The Origin of Unemployed Councils

"If a modern state is to rest upon a firm foundation its citizens must not be allowed to starve. Some of them do. They do not die quickly. You can starve for a long time without dying."
- leader of Children's Bureau of Philadelphia, 1931

On August 31, 1929, in Cleveland, Ohio, the Trade Union Unity League (TUUL). The idea behind it was "dual unionism".
As part of the 13-point plan that included unemployment insurance, a seven-hour workday, and recognition of the Soviet Union, they called for each local to set up Unemployed Councils.

Into these Councils shall be drawn representatives of the revolutionary unions, shop committees and reformist unions, as well as unorganized workers. The councils shall be definitely affiliated to the respective TUUL.

“Marching columns of unemployed became a familiar sight. Public Square saw demonstrations running into tens of thousands. The street-scene is etched in memory. It was in the heart of working- class Cleveland, during a communist-led demonstration. Police had attacked an earlier demonstration. In the Street battle, several unemployed had been injured, and one had since died. In the same neighborhood, the Unemployed Councils had called a mass protest, a solemn occasion that brought out thousands. The authorities, under criticism and on the defensive, withdrew every cop from the area, many blocks wide. . . (163-164)”
- Len de Caux, labor journalist living in Cleveland

Proving once again that they were way out in front of events, the Communists declared March 6, 1930, International Unemployment Day. The demonstrations in places like Chicago and San Francisco were peaceful, but other places weren't so lucky. In Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Boston, battles broke out between police and demonstrators. The worst clash took place, as usual, in New York.

The unemployment demonstration staged by the Communist Party in Union Square broke up in the worst riot New York has seen in recent years when 35,000 people attending the demonstration were transformed in a few moments from an orderly, and at times a bored, crowd into a fighting mob. The outbreak came after communist leaders, defying warnings and orders of the police, exhorted their followers to march on City Hall and demand a hearing from Mayor Walker. Hundreds of policemen and detectives, swinging night sticks, blackjacks and bare fists, rushed into the crowd, hitting out at all with whom they came into contact, chasing many across the street and into adjacent thoroughfares and rushing hundreds off their feet. . . . From all parts of the scene of battle came the screams of women and cries of men, with bloody heads and faces. A score of men were sprawled over the square with policemen pummeling them. The pounding continued as the men, and some women, sought refuge in flight.
- NY Times

I'm spending my nights at the flophouse
I'm spending my days on the street
I'm looking for work and I find none
I wish I had something to eat
- the popular 'Soup Song' sung to the tune of 'My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean'

At this very same time unemployment was causing a massive wave of evictions for poor families. More than 200,000 evictions occurred in New York City in 1930 alone. There would be millions more to come.
Proving yet again that they were out in front of events, the Unemployed Councils called for a nationwide moratorium on evictions and direct aid to the dispossessed. The politicians of both political parties responded by calls for donations to charities.

The Councils would mobilize neighbors to stop the evictions and even move the furniture back into the apartments after the police had left. Thousands of organized incidents of eviction resistance occurred throughout the Great Depression.

By early 1931 millions of Americans were dependent on Relief aid. Unemployed Councils helped families apply for aid, demonstrated at relief offices, and sent delegations to lobby for more aid for local offices.

The first real food riots in the Great Depression broke out in February 1931.

In Minneapolis, several hundred men and women smashed the windows of a grocery market and made off with fruit, canned goods, bacon, and ham. One of the store's owners pulled out a gun to stop the looters, but was leapt upon and had his arm broken. The "riot" was brought under control by 100 policemen. Seven people were arrested.

Food riots broke out in San Francisco, Oklahoma City, St. Paul, Van Dyke, and many other cities. But I dare you to find any mention of them in the New York Times.
As the Depression deepened and starvation spread across the country, the media reported it less and less.

Thousands of unemployed workers looted food stores (afraid of their contagious effect, the press usually did not report food riots); indeed, Irving Bernstein reports, "By 1932 organized looting of food stores was a nationwide phenomenon."

Hunger Marches

"We march on starvation, we march against death,
we're ragged, we've nothing but body and breath;
From north and from south, from east and from west
the army of hunger is marching."
- Hunger Marcher's song, 1932

Local hunger marches started on April 1, 1931, when a large group of unemployed forced their way into the Maryland state legislature to demand relief.
Later that month 3,000 turned out in Columbus, Ohio. In May 15,000 unemployed marched on Lansing, Michigan. By the end of summer there had been 40 hunger marches in states all over the country.

"One vivid, gruesome moment of those dark days we shall never forget. We saw a crowd of some fifty men fighting over a barrel of garbage which had been set outside the back door of a restaurant. American citizens fighting for scraps of food like animals!"
-- Louise Armstrong, an incident in Chicago, spring 1932

Despite this growing movement, it was business as usual in Washington. A few of the more bold Democrats proposed modest relief packages which Hoover immediately vetoed. It required someone outside of the two parties to take this movement to the next level, and that someone was Herbert Benjamin.

Herbert Benjamin was an unapologetic communist until his dying day. A few months before he had returned from Moscow where he had received training on organizing the unemployed.
Unlike Coxey's Army in 1894, this hunger strike would have 1,670 "delegates" rather than being a ragtag group. Columns of unemployed represented by all races would leave from Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, and St. Louis, and all arrive on December 6. Marches from the west coast would leave earlier and meet up in either Chicago or St. Louis.
Each delegate wore an armband that said "National Hunger March, December 7, 1931", which was the day that Congress would open for a new session. There were ten marchers to a truck as well as a smaller car that would run ahead looking for hostile crowds and/or police. While the media and local governments were extremely hostile to the marchers (Mayor Mackey of Philadelphia advised them to "pass by" his city. Hartford closed its streets to them), the public often turned out in large numbers to cheer them on and protect them from the local police. The marches were given $40 for all expenses, but frequently local communities would furnish them food and medical care free of charge, or at cost.

All of the columns reached Washington D.C. on December 6, as scheduled. Both the Hoover Administration and the media was in an uproar.

Three days later, however, 14 persons appeared outside the White House as "hunger marchers." In a cold drizzle they unfurled their banners ("Mr. Hoover, We Demand Food & Lodging," "Mr. Hoover You Have Money for the Entertainment of the Fascist Assassin Grandi."). Promptly the police pounced on them, arrested all 14 for parading without a permit.
[...]
Next day the U. S. Secret Service paid Leader Benjamin the compliment of taking his "hunger march" seriously and thus helping to publicize it throughout the land. Chief Moran declared that his sleuths had learned the march was really a Communist demonstration on a large scale. "Marchers" from all parts of the country would be brought to Washington in 1,144 trucks, 92 automobiles. They would be lodged and fed along the way. They would have medical attention. They would defend themselves with stones. They would be organized in military fashion. They would petition the President and Congress for relief for the jobless. They would make trouble. Only one thing in their plans did Chief Moran fail to ascertain and that was where the money was coming from to finance such a large undertaking. As usual, Moscow was publicly suspected.

1,000 police showed up for the march, as well as 1,000 Marines, and an unknown number of secret service. Another 500 police were in the Capitol. Police were armed with shotguns and machine guns.
Vice-President Curtis sent out word that no marchers could enter the Capitol grounds carrying placards that were critical of the president.

Congress refused to let them speak in the Capitol. Neither Democrat nor Republican heard their demands. In response the demonstrators sang the "Internationale". President Hoover also refused to see them. According to the Washington Herald, the marches who were arrested were beaten.
The march then went to the AFL Headquarters to meet with President William Green, who promptly berated the marchers.

The first hunger march was over and the marchers left Washington. However, it had forced the media to actually report on the hunger problem in America, something it was loath to do. It also pushed Congress to propose relief legislation, which the Hoover Administration promptly defeated.

“The communists brought misery out of hiding in the workers’ neighborhoods. They paraded it with angry demands.... In hundreds of jobless meetings, I heard no objections to the points the communists made, and much applause for them. Sometimes, I’d hear a communist speaker say something so bitter and extreme, I’d feel embarrassed. Then I’d look around at the unemployed audience; shabby clothes, expressions worried and sour. Faces would start to glow, heads to nod, and hands to clap (162—163).”
- Len de Caux

A grassroots movement grows

Father James R. Cox was known as Mayor of Shantytown in Pittsburgh because he was so active in helping the homeless.
The first hunger marchers had scarcely left Washington before Father Cox started his own Hunger March. Dubbed "Cox's Army", it started on January 6, 1932 at 12,000 in size, but grew to 25,000 by the time it reached Washington.
Father Cox hated communists and felt the need to reclaim the pressing issue of homelessness and hunger in America from the communists. In fact, Cox's march was funded by store owners in the Pittsburgh area.
President Hoover personally met with Father Cox and heard his proposals, which were then ignored after the photo-op was over.

In March 7, 1932, about 4,000 unemployed factory workers marched on the Ford Motor Company in Detroit. They were looking either to get their old jobs back, or unemployment insurance.

They marched from Detroit to the River Rouge plant. Their signs read, "We Want Bread Not Crumbs," "Tax the Rich, Feed the Poor," "Free the Scottsboro Boys," and "Stop Jim Crow." At the Dearborn line, the crowd was told to disperse. None of the marchers was armed, but teargas and fire hoses were used on the crowd. Finally, the order to shoot was given - scores were wounded. Killed outright were Joe York, Joe DeBlasio, Coleman Leny, and Joe Bussell.

The Unemployed Council decided to hold a public funeral, and between 30,000 and 70,000 people turned out for what was later called the Ford Hunger March. The Detroit police wisely decided not to make a show of force that day.

A massive crowd, tens of thousands strong, took over the broad main street. Detroit police decided it was better to disappear. For several miles, through the downtown area, stopping all traffic and all business, the crowd escorted the victims to their graves. Nothing like this had ever been seen in Detroit.

Moderate Resistance

During the summer of 1931 the socialists finally took the hint and set up their own Unemployed organizations.

In Chicago socialist Karl Borders formed the Workers Committee on Unemployment, and by the end of 1932 he had twice as many members as the local UC.
Independent socialist A. J. Muste organized the Leagues of the Unemployed in small towns throughout Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.

In Seattle it was the Unemployed Citizens League, formed by socialists Hulet Wells and Carl Branin, who directed the Seattle Labor College and published The Vanguard, a weekly newspaper. It was set up as a self-help organization and distributed food, firewood, and clothing.
By 1932 it overshadowed the local Unemployed Council, which called the organization a “social fascist” effort. However, the Councils couldn't compete with the immediate aid that the UCL offered the unemployed.
The communists changed tactics, joined the UCL, and agitated for more direct political action. By 1933 this tactic began to bear fruit as the self-help organization began to demand public assistance.

The Great Rent Strike War of 1932

Which brings us back to the spreading rent strike of New York City. These were the poor, the hopeless, the unemployed. Most of the people effected, and sympathetic, were about to be evicted anyway. So why not put up a fight?

Using the networks they possessed in fraternal organizations, women's clubs, and left wing trade unions, aided by younger comrades from the high schools and colleges, Communists were able to mobilize formidable support for buildings that were on strike and to force police to empty out the station houses to carry out evictions. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the strike of five buildings on Longfellow Avenue between 174th and 175th streets, which the Greater New York Taxpayers Association made a test case of its efforts to suppress the movement. Three separate waves of eviction provoked confrontations between police and neighborhood residents, the largest of which involved three thousand people "hurling stones, bottles and other missiles." On another occasion, a mob of fifteen hundred fought the police for an hour and then took off after the landlord when they saw him moving through the crowd. The strike finally was broken, but only after more than forty evictions, an injunction against picketing, and numerous arrests and injuries. The police needed full-scale mobilization to suppress such strikes. "The police have set up a temporary police station outside one of the buildings," read the Daily Worker description of a Brownsville rent strike. "Cops patrol the street all day. The entire territory is under semi-martial law. People are driven around the streets, off the corners, and away from the houses."

"Rent strikes can be compared to epidemics, for when a strike breaks out in one apartment house, strikes start in nearby houses or landlords are forced to capitulate to threats of tenants. Some landlords have been forced to reduce their rent a number of times."
- secretary of the Bronx Landlords Protective Association

Although evictions did take place, some tenants won rent reductions through striking, while others won reductions merely by the threat to strike. Most of the strikers were Jewish, and often they were communists as well.
As many as 77,000 evicted families were restored to their homes using these tactics.

"The entire East Bronx is full of fire."
- a Bronx landlord

By January of 1933, the landlords were starting to use the charge of "criminal conspiracy" against rent strike leaders. By March the City issued a ruling against picketing of apartment buildings. This last law had dubious legal standing, but it was temporarily effective at shutting down the epidemic of rent strikes.
The Unemployed Councils then shifted tactics by taking large numbers of tenants to the newly created Home Relief Bureaus, where they would conduct sit-ins and hunger strikes until given relief. The government was more sensitive to pressure, and had more resources, than the landlords. Eventually the government simply took over paying rent for the tenants, while the Unemployed Councils became their de facto bargaining agents.

“I stood in the rain for three days and the Home Relief Bureau paid no attention to me,” a woman declared at a neighborhood meeting in New York City. “Then I found Out about the Unemployed Council...We went in there as a body and they came across right quick.” “The woman at the desk said I was rejected,” another woman added. “I was crying when Comrade Minns told me to come to the meeting of the Unemployed Council. One week later I got my rent check.”

In Detroit it took 100 police to evict a single resisting family.

The outcome of the rent strike movement was to force the government to enact serious housing reforms, the twin pillars of which were rent control and public housing.

Of course it wasn't just renters who faced evictions. On July 13, 1933, at 11413 Lardet in Cleveland, Ohio, the Cuyahoga County sheriff's deputies arrived and evicted John and Sophie Sparenga and their four children.

As their furniture was carried to the street, a local "home defense" organization went up and down the street raising the alarm. Before long 4,000 to 6,000 protesters surrounded the 150 cops.

As police arrived, they were greeted by taunts, jeers and volleys of rocks, bricks, sticks and even kitchen utensils. The officers responded with nightsticks, tear gas and fire hoses. Four times during that day and night, the protesters were dispersed, only to re-form and battle again into the darkness.

"This is a crowd that won't scatter, a crowd that is strangely grim and determined," wrote James Steele in an account of the incident for The Nation magazine.

Some 14 people, including two policemen, were injured in the fracas, most suffering minor bruises, scrapes and tear-gas burns. Four people were arrested but later released.

Today the home at 11413 Lardet is bracketed by foreclosed homes.

Many might be under the false impression that the New Deal was completely implemented after FDR took office. In fact, most parts of the New Deal weren't passed until years afterward. Social Security didn't get passed until 1935. The United States Housing Act didn't get passed until 1937.
The Emergency Price Control Act, which limited rent hikes on apartments didn't get passed until 1942. When the law expired in 1947, many state and municipal governments stepped in.

All during this time the unemployed kept up the pressure.

In Colorado, when the federal relief funds were discontinued in the winter of 1934 because the state had repeatedly failed to appropriate its share of costs, mobs of the unemployed rioted in relief centers, looted food stores, and stormed the state legislature, driving the frightened senators from the chamber. Two weeks later, the General Assembly sent a relief bill to the governor, and federal funding was resumed (Cross). An attempt in Chicago to cut food allowances by 10 percent in November 1934 led to a large demonstration by the unemployed, and the city council restored that cut.

Some people may be under the impression that FDR's election and the New Deal was simply a logical reaction to extreme hardships. That democracy naturally corrected itself.
That wasn't the case. It took a grassroots movement, working against all odds, to push the government into action. It's a lesson we should remember.

The authors concluded that the strain responsible for the 1977 outbreak "had been preserved since 1950." The likely cause of its re-emergence was "an accidental release from a laboratory source in the setting of waning population immunity to H1 and N1 antigens."

The H1N1 study findings highlight longstanding concerns about the safety of a proliferating number of high-containment laboratories in the United States that handle dangerous biological agents. Many accidents have been reported, but more are never documented or publicly acknowledged.

Since 2001, there has been a major increase in the number of high-containment labs in the federal, academic, state and private sectors. Oversight, however, failed to keep pace, according to 2007 Congressional testimony by the Government Accountability Office.

No single federal agency, according to 12 agencies’ responses to our survey, has the mission to track the overall number of BSL-3 and BSL-4 labs in the United States. Though several agencies have a need to know, no one agency knows the number and location of these labs in the United States. Consequently, no agency is responsible for determining the risks associated with the proliferation of these labs.

In 2001, a series of biological attacks employing weaponized anthrax distributed via the U.S. mail demonstrated the perils of operating high-risk laboratories with inadequate oversight. The FBI subsequently reported that it had traced the anthrax strain to a lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

Here is how I think we should look at this case and testing cases in general.

The use of tests in employment is as a proxy for the ability to do a job. The best test of ability to do a job would, of course, be actually doing it and seeing how well you did. Obviously, that is not possible when you are trying to pick which of several applicants is qualified to do a job. You’d have to have all the applicants cycle in and out of the job. That would be disruptive. You’d risk that some were minimally competent or even incompetent, and that would be a disaster.

Some workplaces have people gain some of that experience and demonstrate their ability through substitution when someone goes on vacation. Again, doing the job is the best predictor of ability to actually do the work.

That is not always possible, so testing becomes part of a next best way to get this information.

But testing is not perfect. It is important to recall that when you consider testing cases. There is no test that is a perfect predictor of competency or aptitude. I personally have always been good at multiple choice tests. I have no idea why. I just tend to be able to spot the most likely answer. I know other people who perform far worse on multiple choice tests than they should. They just don’t get the format.

So what that test measures, in part, is a skill that is just not that relevant to most jobs.

You improve the likelihood of making a good choice by adding other sources of information about a candidate’s qualifications. Past performance in relevant tasks is a helpful predictor, for example. Of general competency in other jobs.

Now, consider the type of tests. Some tests set a baseline. The Bar Exam is a good example. If you score above X on the Bar Exam (and pass character and fitness tests), you become a member of the Bar. Civil Service exams are another example of this sort of test. As long as you get above that score, you go on the list and can be considered for a job. If you don’t make the cut, then you can not be considered for the job.

One hopes that the passing score for all these tests is set with a margin for error. You need that margin, because all tests are flawed. They under and over predict competence.

Another type of test may be used so that you select the top scoring person for the job.

However, using a test in that way is fundamentally flawed whether you are looking for the best person to do the work or a person who is competent to do the work. It is flawed decision making, again, because tests are imperfect. You always improve your decision making process by using multiple factors and types of sources.

A brief history of Title VII and testing

Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424 (1971) is the key case in this area historically. In that case, the majority reasoned:

Congress did not intend by Title VII, however, to guarantee a job to every person regardless of qualifications. In short, the Act does not command that any person be hired simply because he was formerly the subject of discrimination, or because he is a member of a minority group. Discriminatory preference for any group, minority or majority, is precisely and only what Congress has proscribed. What is required by Congress is the removal of artificial, arbitrary, and unnecessary barriers to employment when the barriers operate invidiously to discriminate on the basis of racial or other impermissible classification.

Here are some of the facts of Griggs.

Duke Power had completely segregated departments. Work in the higher paying, more pleasant departments was done by all white workers. Work in the dangerous, dirty, most unpleasant department was all done by black workers.

On the day Title VII became effective the employer changed its requirements for hire or transfer into the more pleasant, better paid departments to include a high school diploma or pass 2 tests. The tests’ passing grade was set at the national high school median. In other words, it was more stringent than the requirement to have a North Carolina diploma.

Bear in mind that this was North Carolina in the 1960's where far, far more white than black workers were likely to have graduated from high school. But not all whites had diplomas. So the test would exclude some white workers as well and not exclude all black workers.

There was no evidence that the test was related to job performance.

There was no evidence that the high school diploma was related to job performance.

Now, you may ask why would the employer require the test and high school diploma if they had no relationship to job performance?

It may have wanted to mask discriminatory intent. It was using the tests and high school diploma as a proxy for race. It may have decided that it wanted to have a better class of employees who were smarter or at least better educated. It may have wanted to be a good citizen and promote getting education in North Carolina.

Griggs held that it is illegal discrimination if an employer uses any non-neutral criteria without business justification. It is illegal – even if the criteria are facially neutral – the criteria have a disparate impact based on race (here).

What Griggs told employers was that they must re-evaluate their workplace standards if they were not justified by the needs of the business. They must make personnel decisions based on employee ability to do the job in question and not on irrelevant factors.

How this applies to the decision by the New Haven Fire Department

When an employer sees that it is getting results from tests (or other criteria) that show an imbalance in results based on race, sex, religion, color, etc. it is wise and even incumbent upon the employer to take a good look at the validity of that test. The discussion of the case was that the New Haven police department was afraid of being sued, so that’s why they responded as they did. It sound as if they were justified in being afraid of being sued, but far more important is that they needed to check that test to make certain it was not defective.

Again, no test is perfect.

Indeed, in at least one report I heard that the test New Haven was using has been discarded by fire departments in general and is no longer in use. I can’t seem to dig that source up right now, but Nina Totenberg’s report from Tuesday morning did a good job of running the issues down. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106083630
I recommend reading her brief rundown of the issues.

It is also worth noting this quote from one of the white firefighters.

But Frank Ricci, one of the white firefighters who filed suit, praised the court's decision that he was unfairly denied a promotion because of race. He praised the other firefighters who joined the lawsuit not knowing if they qualified for promotion.

"It's phenomenal that everybody stepped forward and took this position because the exams were valid, and if you work hard you can succeed in America," he said.

Ricci’s view is widely held, but it is just incorrect. I say that because no test we have is perfect as a predictor for job performance.

As the Supreme Court in Griggs said:

Nothing in the Act precludes the use of testing or measuring procedures; obviously they are useful. What Congress has forbidden is giving these devices and mechanisms controlling force unless they are demonstrably a reasonable measure of job performance. Congress has not commanded that the less qualified be preferred over the better qualified simply because of minority origins. Far from disparaging job qualifications as such, Congress has made such qualifications the controlling factor, so that race, religion, nationality, and sex become irrelevant. What Congress has commanded is that any tests used must measure the person for the job and not the person in the abstract.

From the test constructor / evaluator's view

Here is an excerpt on this testing issue written, not by a lawyer, but by a professor of psychology and psychiatry and familiar with the issues involved in measuring and predicting aptitude.

If someone had demonstrated that a multiple-choice test
is the best way to predict successful leadership in a
fire department, no one could argue with the New Haven
exam results. But in fact, no one has ever demonstrated
that how well a fireman answers questions on a bubble
sheet predicts how well he wields a fire hose when
confronted with a fire, let alone how well he can lead
his fellow firefighters into burning buildings. In
fact, if Woody Allen studied a couple of books on
firefighting and took the exam, I suspect he'd do a lot
better than virtually all of the firefighters who
passed it, regardless of their color. But frankly, I'd
feel a lot more confident with firefighters of any race
or color leading the charge into my burning home than
Woody Allen.

It's one thing to know the "rules" of firefighting.
It's another to be able to move into action at a
moment's notice and actually perform the actions
required to save lives and homes in a crisis. The
distinction is between what cognitive scientists
sometimes call declarative and procedural knowledge--
that is, between knowledge you can consciously
"declare" and knowledge that automatically "comes out"
in your behavior. Imagine asking a tennis player and a
physicist how a tennis player should adjust her feet
and swing her racquet if the ball comes 35 percent
faster and at a 40 degree angle to the right of what
she had anticipated. I'd bet on the physicist in the
oral exam to explain how she should adjust but on the
tennis player on the court to know how to adjust in
real time.

There's one other factor oddly missing from the
procedure the city established to promote firefighters:
actual performance. The best predictor of future
behavior is generally past behavior.

You can find the article here.

• work,
• labor,
• employment,
• discrimination
• Title-VII,
• Ricci,
• Supreme-Court

If not, then it makes a mockery of the city's professed concern that Title VII's provision on disparate impact required it to throw out the results.

The judgment handed down today by SCOTUS' conservative bloc in Ricci v. DeStefano actually was a remarkably liberal ruling. It's altogether too rare for the Scalia wing to stand up for the common man who's been kicked in the teeth arbitrarily by the powerful.

In this case, it was the Ginsburg wing of the Court that proved to be reactionary. The firefighters who did well on the exam, she said, "understandably attract the court's sympathy"... but nevertheless the Court ought to tell them to bend over again just because it can. The reason it can is that the grandiosely flawed (and unevenly enforced) law on disparate impact permits the Court, if it chooses, to join in treating job applicants as fodder in ideological jousts.

For what it's worth, I suspect that if New Haven had tossed out exam results in which minorities performed disproportionately well, the two blocs of the Supreme Court would have taken the opposite views of Title VII than the ones they adopted here.

• Ricci-v.-DeStefano
• Title-VII
• discrimination

Those of you who are old enough will recall that the private sector used to be a place full of the entrepreneurial spirit. Risk and reward. Free market spirits would take their good idea to the market place, where it would either sink or swim, lose money or make a barrel full of money. And that was what made it exciting to be an entrepreneur.

The public sector was a place where good souls who wanted to promote public ends and didn’t know their balance sheets from their business plan went to eke out life of a salary. No great financial risk, but no great financial reward either.

But then, in the 1980's things started to get all mixed up. Suddenly being a civil servant was full of risk. You might get your pay . . . and you just might not if Congress and the President decided to have a hissy fit over the budget or other issues but the budget was where they slugged it out.

But if there was one place where you could be sure they knew about risk and reward and public versus private it was surely Texas.

But no more. For “entrepreneurs” (who are now scarcely worthy of the name) who bid on a Texas tollroad there is no risk. At worse they walk away with a six figure consolation prize. Well, that’s enough to make it almost worthwhile to through something together just to see how it all plays out.

It’s in the new bill signed by Texas Governor Rick Perry.

Also on Friday, Governor Perry signed Senate Bill 882 into law. This measure allows TxDOT to pay amounts "in excess of $250,000" to design-build firms that submit unsuccessful bids for major toll road projects.

At the same time, he vetoed a bill to ban the state’s $10.5 million ad campaign promoting highway tolling.

Taxpayers will foot the bill for efforts to promote the tolling of roads throughout Texas after Governor Rick Perry (R) vetoed legislation that would have reined in public relations efforts at the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). Only one member of the entire legislature voted against the proposed bill that would have amended existing law to clarify that pro-tolling advertising campaigns could no longer be bankrolled with state funds.

"This section does not authorize the department to engage in marketing, advertising, or other activities for the purpose of influencing public opinion about the use of toll roads or the use of tolls as a financial mechanism," House Bill 2142 stated.

In one year, TxDOT spent $10.5 million on 130 public relations and government affairs staff, including a full-time lobbyist. The agency also created a special report designed to convince the US Congress to hand TxDOT the authority to toll existing freeways (view report). The group Texans United for Reform and Freedom (TURF) found the lobbying campaign so outrageous that it filed a lawsuit to stop the effort. The suit was put on hold after it appeared that the legislature had addressed the issue.

And where will those dollars from reimbursement of loser "entrepreneurs" come from? You got it. Deep from the heart of taxes.

Yes, shed a tear for the good ol’ days of risk and reward.

P.S.
In a new report out this afternoon, GAO notes:

OMB’s guidance on using award fees includes principles such as limiting the opportunities for earning unearned fees in subsequent periods, linking award fees to acquisition outcomes, designing evaluation criteria to motivate excellent performance, and not paying for performance that is unsatisfactory.

At least >u>someone understands that losing is part of what makes a free market function.

• Texas,
• Rick-Perry,
• highways,
• roads,
• tolls,
• taxes

A bit extreme, you may say, but I bet GAO would just love to be able to issue show cause orders to get GSA to stop wasting government money and obey basic contracting rules. A new report - just one of so many GAO reports - gives us the low down on why GSA is just plain lucky that the only power GAO has is to study and report . . . and hope Congress takes real action.

The issue in this most recent study concerns which type of payment system GSA uses with contractors - fixed-price, time and materials (T&M), or cost-reimbursement. GAO finds that GSA seems smitten with T&M contracts, despite the high risk they present of paying billions of dollars for no final product. As GAO puts it: “T&M contracts constitute a high risk to the government.”

Put in terms of our own experiences, it’s the difference between hiring a plumber to install a toilet for a set price versus an hourly rate with no limit on the number of hours involved. In the second case, the plumber has no incentive to finish quickly and move on to other jobs. In other words, you bear all the financial risk in a T&M contract.

GAO observes:

The contractor provides its best efforts to accomplish the objectives of the contract up to the maximum number of hours authorized under the contract. Each hour of work authorizes the contractor to charge the government an established labor rate which includes profit. These contracts are considered high risk for the government because the contractor’s profit is tied to the number of hours worked. Thus, the government bears the risk of cost overruns. Therefore the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) provides that appropriate government monitoring of contractor performance is required to give reasonable assurance that efficient methods and effective cost controls are being used.

Further, because of the risks involved, the FAR directs that T&M contracts may only be used when it is not possible at the time of award to estimate accurately the extent or duration of the work or to anticipate costs with any reasonable degree of confidence. For many years, federal regulations have required contracting officers to justify in writing that no other contract type (such as fixed-price) is suitable before using a T&M contract.

Before using a time and materials contract, GSA is supposed to show that no other form of contract is suitable. That, GSA has, of course, failed to do. This finding is supposed to be possible only after a serious study is made that demonstrates this result. The contracts are also supposed to use a price ceiling so that the contractor bears the risk after that price is exceeded.

Despite these requirements, GSA has continued on its merry way, using T&M contracts where it was supposed to have been barred from doing so, with billions of dollars being spent in this way.

The FAR Part 12 revisions included procedural safeguards to ensure that T&M contracts for commercial services are used only when no other contract type is suitable and that cost growth is monitored due to the inherent risks to the government of this contract type. Contracting officers using FAR Part 12 procedures to buy commercial services under T&M contracts are required to conduct additional, more detailed analysis than is required when buying noncommercial services using T&M contracts.6 For example, the contracting officer must prepare a detailed justification, called a determination and findings (D&F), to explain why no other contract type is suitable for the procurement. The justification is required to contain several elements, including a discussion of market research conducted for the procurement and a description of actions planned to maximize the use of fixed-price contracts on future acquisitions for the same requirements. Additionally, the contracting officer is to include in the contract a ceiling price, which the contractor exceeds at its own risk, and any subsequent change in the ceiling price may be made only after the contracting officer determines that such a change is in the best interest of the procuring agency.

This GAO report includes useful tables and graphics to report its findings. Here are a few of the bullet points.

* Apparently GSA does not understand the definition of commercial activities. GAO finds that it has failed to report accurately which contracts should have fallen under this definition and thus have been required to use fixed-price contracts rather thatn T&M contracts.

* As GAO puts it: “Maintaining accurate data is an essential component of good oversight and helps lead to informed decisions.” However, accuracy and maintaining data seem to be beyond the abilities of GSA.

In addition, we found that T&M contracts for commercial services may be underreported based on a misunderstanding about contract type among contracting officials in most of the government agencies in our review. Some contracting officers had the incorrect belief that the fixed labor rate component of T&M contracts renders them fixed-price. 26 In fact, some contracts in our sample were referred to in the contract file as “firm fixed price labor hour,” a contract type that does not exist. Despite the fact that labor rates are fixed under T&M contracts, the overall ceiling price is not a firm, fixed price because the contractor will be paid based on the number of hours worked (up to the ceiling price). Some contracting officers acknowledged having coded other similar contracts outside of those in our sample as fixed-price, thus potentially understating the use, and correlated risk to the government, of T&M contracts.

* Contracting officers apparently have no idea what characteristics mark a service as commercial - a basic definition, one would think, in this area.

* GSA regularly raised the ceiling limit on prices, even though this violates the basic concept of a fixed-term contract. It was also supposed to document the need for increases. Supposed to being the operative words here.

However, in the instances where an increase did occur, contracting officers did not always follow the FAR requirement. A contract at HHS for financial services management more than doubled in value over the original “estimated not-to-exceed” cost. No written justification was provided for why this increase was in the best interest of the procuring agency. The contracting officer stated that the not-to-exceed amount on the contract was only an estimate and had not identified a separate ceiling price—which is required by the FAR Part 12.

* Now it would be amazing if all this happened despite training. You will be relieved to know that this was not the case. GAO found that the general practice was not to train acquisition officers in these cost control requirements.

None of the civilian agencies in our review had provided formal guidance or training to their contracting officers on the safeguards.
Officials who were aware of the Part 12 safeguards frequently found out through their own initiative.

I could go on, and there is much more in this report to go on about, but I am about to exceed my fixed blogging limits. The report says it so well and so clearly. Take a look at Contract Management: Minimal Compliance with New Safeguards for Time-and-Materials Contracts for Commercial Services and Safeguards Have Not Been Applied to GSA Schedules Program GAO-09-579, June 24, 2009

Show cause, anyone?

• GSA,
• GAO,
• contracting,
• fraud

The rising tensions between Democratic legislators and constituencies that would typically be their natural allies underscore the high hurdles for Obama as he tries to hold together a diverse, fragile coalition. Activists say they are simply pressing for quick delivery of "true health reform," but the intraparty rift runs the risk of alienating centrist Democrats who will be needed to pass a bill.

Pity the poor 'centrists', who almost alone in Washington it seems must submit to listening to constituents' views. What makes these Senators' views 'centrist'? Evidently it's because they oppose reform that 76% of the public strongly backs (PDF), and side instead with the tiny minority of Americans who oppose a public plan.

The Post eventually gets around to acknowledging this inconvenient fact - however in a fashion utterly characteristic of this Tory paper.

"Democratic senators are taking millions of dollars from insurance and health-care interests and getting lobbied by those donors and coming out against a position that 76 percent of Americans agree on," said Adam Green, interim chief executive of Change Congress.

While recent polls show high initial support for a government option, the number declines if told the insurance industry could fold as a result.

In other news today, the Post reports that a large majority of the American public supports the safe disposal of used batteries but support falls away when people are told that as many as 23 states may need to be evacuated and turned into colossal landfills.

I don't know which polls the Post is referring to, but the recent NBC/WSJ poll (linked above) does not posit such a dire consequence as: 'The insurance industry could fold if you get your pesky public plan, so what do you think of it now?' It did ask people whether they thought employers might drop their health care plan if a public plan were created; and whether a public plan might limit access to doctors and medical treatment options. But that's very different from the dire scenario that the Post claims pollsters are putting to the public. Maybe it's only those damned elusive 'centrist' pollsters who are asking such questions.

Update: Ok, the Post itself did conduct a (single) poll in which it posited this silly question:

What if having the government create a new health insurance plan made many private health insurers go out of business because they could not compete? In that case would you support or oppose creating a government-run health insurance plan?

As the Post's own blogger Ezra Klein pointed out, that question is arbitrarily alarmist.

Meanwhile at Open Left Adam Green describes the foolishness of the line of questioning he endured from the Post reporter, Ceci Connolly.

• Washington-Post
• centrism
• healthcare-reform
• public-plan

• education,
• california,
• taxes,
• money

Some conservatives say it will turn the battlefield into CSI: Afghanistan, requiring soldiers to collect evidence as they're being shot at. Some liberals say holding people without trial is fundamentally un-American.

Evidently conservatism has no view at all about upholding the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution:

No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law [...].

Nor the Sixth Amendment:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial...

The proponent of this legislation, Benjamin Wittes, a faux-liberal pundit now lodged at Brookings, has been pushing all manner of national security 'reforms' that undercut fundamental American liberties. Wittes wants to see a parallel system of justice created, 'national security courts', to make it easier to convict people by stripping away rights and due process protections.

His current proposal, what purports to be a draft of legislation to create a 'system' of 'preventive detention' (i.e. indefinite imprisonment without trial), tries to help Barack Obama dig himself out of the ditch he drove into with his pronouncement last month that he wishes to have the power to pick and choose from a variety of courts and military tribunals in which to put certain terrorism suspects on trial. The venue will be chosen to favor conviction, and if conviction is insufficiently certain then any prisoner deemed dangerous will continue to be held without trial indefinitely. In other words, the Obama proposal is to create a specious facsimile of due process for terrorism suspects.

Wittes is happy to pitch in to help foist a law for imprisonment without trial upon the US because, as he helpfully explained to NPR, it's effectively what George W. Bush had been doing as president.

Those concerns lead many to ask why Wittes is pushing for indefinite detention at all. We already have it, he says. Detainees have been held at Guantanamo for years. Thousands more are imprisoned in Afghanistan. The Supreme Court has said the United States can detain some terrorists for the duration of hostilities against al-Qaida and the Taliban. So, Wittes says, "There's no question that we're detaining people outside of the criminal justice system. The question is what the rules are for that detention and who makes those rules."

Next month, perhaps Wittes will also get around to drafting helpful legislation to legalize the forms of torture that the Bush administration inflicted on terrorist suspects.

• NPR
• Gitmo
• indefinite-detention
• Benjamin-Wittes

Schmitt formerly devoted his vast abilities to cheerleading for an invasion of Iraq at the Project for a New American Century. Fresh off that resounding success, he's now taking on the threat posed by the rise in popularity of soccer inside the US. A veritable dagger aimed at the soft underbelly of the American heartland.

He denounces the US victory because the Spaniards had more shots on goal but still lost the match.

As someone who didn’t play soccer growing up, but had a dad who did and whose own kids played as well, I can say unquestionably that it is the sport in which the team that dominates loses more often than any other major sport I know of. Or, to put it more bluntly, the team that deserves to win doesn’t. For some soccer-loving friends, this is perfectly okay. Indeed, they will argue that it’s a healthy, conservative reminder of how justice does not always prevail in life.

Well, hooey on that. And, thankfully, Americans are not buying it. In spite of the fact that one can drive by an open field on Saturdays and usually see it filled with young boys and girls playing soccer, the game’s popularity has not moved anywhere toward being a major sport here in the United States.

Had this super patriot ever bothered to learn how to play soccer (as I once did), he might have figured out that the whole point of the game is to shoot the ball into the back, not just the front, of the net.

• Gary-Schmitt
• neocons
• PNAC
• soccer