Kagan another example of Institutional Nepotism

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Monday May 10, 2010 · 4:09 PM PDT

2010/05/10 · 16:09

Take a brief look at the educational pedigrees of those who serve on the Supreme Court. Then look at the educational pedigrees that they hire to clerk. It's not hard to see a trend - Harvard and Yale dominate almost to the point of willful monopoly. Logical, right? Well, no. Not even remotely. For those in the know, law admissions is strikingly and uniquely numbers-driven. While other professional schools require interviews, law schools, almost universally do not. Now, if the LSAT or one's undergraduate GPA were absolute and thorough predictors of law school success, the admissions process to a school might be a reasonable basis to "weed out" those less intellectually skilled. As it is, it's not. The LSAT has a respectable correlation to first-year law school success of 0.4. Far, far from foolproof, but not bad for a standardized test. At the time Barack and Kagan took the LSAT, it was not even as good a predictor.

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Do you believe the Ivy SCOTUS hegemony is meritocratic?

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Do you believe the Ivy SCOTUS hegemony is meritocratic?

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It's a quick and dirty way to discern between qualified candidates

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It's not justified, but it's not a travesty like you make it out to be

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Obama and Corporate Stockholm Syndrome: Labor

kwhitegocubs

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Monday September 07, 2009 · 10:33 AM PDT

2009/09/07 · 10:33

I started a post yesterday, but realized that it's length would be ridiculous if I made all the critiques I intended, and thus this "series" of diaries has been born. Moreover, it seems fitting that I begin the series with "Labor" on Labor Day. Despite using it in the title yesterday and today, I never defined Corporate Stockholm Syndrome. I suppose it's many things.

For one, it refers to our complete obliviousness towards our comparatively poor working conditions. Most people have no idea that we are the only industrialized country that does not guarantee a minimum number of vacation weeks. When I tell people that all countries in the EU mandate 4 weeks of vacation time as a minimum, and that most countries offer 5 or 6, along with 8 to 13 mandatory federal holidays, and generous sick leave, they are shocked. Sweden, Germany, France, The Netherlands, and Norway all average 400-460 less annual working hours than we do. That's 10-plus weeks of full-time work!

Yet, when people are offered a job that promises an increase to 3 weeks of vacation time after, say, 5 years, they are THRILLED! We have been held captive in our job-mindset by corporations for so long that we no longer can conceive the world without their unfair and unreasonable standards.

kwhitegocubs

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Saturday September 05, 2009 · 9:14 PM PDT

2009/09/05 · 21:14

I feel I've always been a somewhat erudite observer of political currents, though my personal political compass has turned at least 135 degrees over the last decade, but I have to admit that the first months of Obama's presidency have been trying. My Anne Frank-ish view that people are basically good has been overshadowed by the growing knowledge that goodness (however defined) is an essentially useless concept if buttressed only by ignorance. The worst aspect of this ignorance is the fact that huge swaths of people (primarily on the right, but not entirely) uncritically accept any and every piece of misinformation that conforms to their existing worldview. Sure, that's not an amazing new phenomenon, but its ferocity seems to have shifted "Don't let the perfect stand in the way of the good" into "Don't let the better stand in the way of what now exists."

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Kagan another example of Institutional Nepotism

Obama and Corporate Stockholm Syndrome: Labor

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