New tactic on affirmative action could blunt Supreme Court rollback
As the Supreme Court looks ready to restrict or eliminate race-based affirmative action in its 2012-13 session, supporters of such preferences have a tool not yet deployed: race-based affirmative action as a means to compensate for the disproportionately negative impact of current-day "legacy admissions" policies on minority applicants.
A culture that celebrates cheating
Do all cultures celebrate cheating as much as we do? I’ll concede in advance the danger of falling into the this-is-the-worst-it-has-ever-been trap, and even acknowledge, on a moment’s reflection, that our time and place has no patent on pretense, disingenuousness, and deceit. But we are still in staggeringly bad shape.
Why are taxpayers helping companies pay for all their litigation?
An important benefit to one class of litigants is deeply baked into the current system. The tax code provides that businesses may deduct all of their legal expenses (lawyer and expert fees, and discovery costs) in all cases — win or lose, meritorious or non-meritorious, plaintiff or defendant.
NYT/CBS survey sticks with worst poll question in history
Apparently enamored of the virtues of "compromise" regardless of circumstance, the poll might just have well have asked: “Should officials in the two parties act like adults in order to get the country’s business accomplished, or should they insist on all their silly ‘positions’ as we watch effective governance grind to a halt?”
Let them eat iPhones
Apple's lack of any sense of obligation to support American workers — indeed, the lack of any national loyalty at all — is appalling. Yet that’s not even the truly frightening part of the recent New York Times story. Most troubling is the broader, underlying narrative conveyed and ultimately encouraged by the story: there is nothing that America as a nation can or should do to alter the trajectory of events.
Cheap labor not the way for U.S. to attract investment
Our article on how German automakers treat their workers in the U.S. less well than those in Germany highlighted a critical national choice: create structures that help to level the playing field between management and labor, or surrender to the pernicious idea that nothing can or should be done to restrict an employer race to the bottom.
Cuomo to the 1 percent: here's a tax cut for Christmas
If you have an adjusted gross income of $1.8 million, for example, and file a joint tax return, New York's Andrew Cuomo has engineered annual tax savings for you of $27,280 in future years.
RD to immigration advocates: are there any limits?
Offered opportunity to describe in extended interviews how U.S. immigration should ideally be regulated, no concrete limitations put forward.
Open spaces, closed files
Wouldn't facility by facility information on operating costs, staffing, and level of use help New York City's Parks Dept. and outside observers assess whether there is equity in funding between and among parks as well as the related question of whether and to what extent to rely on private as opposed to public funding? Good luck getting the data.
NYC gov't staffing, 1980 to present
Peaks and valleys across agencies and across the decades.
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