RealClearPolitics - Magician Politics Page 1 of 2

Magician Politics
By Thomas Sowell

Distracting the audience's attention is one of the ways magicians pull off some of their tricks.
President Barack Obama's televised news conference on medical care shows that he is
something of a magician when it comes to politics.

The big trick for the president is to convince the public that he can add tens of millions of
people to his government medical care plan without raising the costs. But an analysis by the
Congressional Budget Office showed that Obamacare would in fact raise the costs and increase
the deficit by billions of dollars.

With both common sense and economic

analysis saying that Obama cannot expand
government medical care without expanding
the already runaway federal deficit, it is
quite a trick to get the public to believe
otherwise-- a big challenge requiring big
distractions.

One of those distractions has been to blame

current high costs on scapegoats whom the
president can rein in. Talking about the high
pay of the CEOs of pharmaceutical
companies is one of those distractions.

In an industry where developing just one

new pharmaceutical drug can cost a billion dollars, whether the head of a mega-billion-dollar
pharmaceutical company is paid a million dollars a year, 20 million dollars or works free of
charge is not likely to raise or lower the cost of the medicine you buy by one dollar.

But, if making the CEO's pay an issue can distract your attention from the impossible math
used by Barack Obama and his supporters, then that is a trick worthy of Houdini.

Insurance companies are another distraction and a scapegoat because they do not insure "pre-
existing conditions." Stop and think about it: If you could wait until you got sick to take out
health insurance, why would you buy that insurance while you are well?

You could avoid paying all those premiums and then-- after you got sick-- take out health
insurance and let the premiums paid by other people pay for your medical treatment.

That is not "bringing down the cost of health care." It is sticking somebody else with paying
those costs. So is taxing "the rich." So is passing on those costs to your children and
grandchildren through government deficit spending.

When Obama makes the insurance companies the villains for not insuring pre-existing
conditions, that gives him another distraction and enables him to be another escape artist, like
Houdini.

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RealClearPolitics - Magician Politics Page 2 of 2

What is the point of government-controlled medical care if it is not going to lower costs but just
shuffle them around, like a shell game?

The government does not have some magic wand that can "bring down the cost of health care."
It can buy a smaller quantity or lower quality of medical care, as other countries with
government-run medical care do.

It can decide not to spend as much money on the elderly as is being spent now. That can save a
lot of money-- if you think having a parent die earlier is a bargain.

The idea of a "duty to die" has been making some headway in recent years around the fringes of
the left. It is perfectly consistent with the fundamental notion of the left, that decisions should
be transferred from ordinary citizens to government elites.

Liberals don't have to advocate it. But, once you have bureaucrats empowered to decide what
treatments you can and cannot get, they may well decide that money spent keeping some 75-
year-old grandmother alive for a couple of more years could be better spent politically by
enabling ten younger people to have acupuncture or visit a shrink.

Even if her children or grandchildren are willing to spend their own money to keep grandma
alive, when bureaucrats control the necessary technology or medication they may decide that it
is not for sale.

Those pushing for government-controlled medical care say that you can keep your doctor. But
bureaucrats in Washington will decide whether what your doctor prescribes will be allowed.
Talking about your doctor is another distraction from the crucial question of who will actually
have the power to decide, which can be the power of life and death.

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RealClearPolitics - A Post-Racial President? Page 1 of 2

July 28, 2009

A Post-Racial President?
By Thomas Sowell

Many people hoped that the election of a black President of the United States would mark our
entering a "post-racial" era, when we could finally put some ugly aspects of our history behind
us.

That is quite understandable. But it takes two to tango. Those of us who want to see racism on
its way out need to realize that others benefit greatly from crying racism. They benefit
politically, financially, and socially.

Barack Obama has been allied with such

people for decades. He found it expedient to
appeal to a wider electorate as a post-racial
candidate, just as he has found it expedient
to say a lot of other popular
things-- about campaign finance, about
transparency in government, about not
rushing legislation through Congress
without having it first posted on the Internet
long enough to be studied-- all of which
turned to be the direct opposite of what he
actually did after getting elected.

Those who were shocked at President

Obama's cheap shot at the Cambridge police
for being "stupid" in arresting Henry Louis Gates must have been among those who let their
wishes prevail over the obvious implications of Obama's 20 years of association with the
Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Anyone who can believe that Obama did not understand what the
racist rants of Jeremiah Wright meant can believe anything.

With race-- as with campaign finance, transparency and the

rest-- Barack Obama knows what the public wants to hear and that is what he has said. But his
policies as president have been the opposite of his rhetoric, with race as with other issues.

As a state senator in Illinois, Obama pushed the "racial profiling" issue, so it is hardly
surprising that he jumped to the conclusion that a policeman was racial profiling when in fact
the cop was investigating a report received from a neighbor that someone seemed to be
breaking into the house that Professor Gates was renting in Cambridge.

For those who are interested in facts-- and these obviously do not include President Obama--
there has been a serious study of racial profiling in a book titled "Are Cops Racist?" by Heather
Mac Donald. Her analysis of the data shows how this issue has long been distorted beyond
recognition by politics.

The racial profiling issue is a great vote-getter. And if it polarizes the society, that is a price that
politicians are willing to pay in order to get votes. Academics who run black studies

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RealClearPolitics - A Post-Racial President? Page 2 of 2

departments, as Professor Henry Louis Gates does, likewise have a vested interest in racial
paranoia.

For "community organizers" as well, racial resentments are a stock in trade. President Obama's
background as a community organizer has received far too little attention, though it should
have been a high-alert warning that this was no post-racial figure.

What does a community organizer do? What he does not do is organize a community. What he
organizes are the resentments and paranoia within a community, directing those feelings
against other communities, from whom either benefits or revenge are to be gotten, using
whatever rhetoric or tactics will accomplish that purpose.

To think that someone who has spent years promoting grievance and polarization was going to
bring us all together as president is a triumph of wishful thinking over reality.

Not only Barack Obama's past, but his present, tell the same story. His appointment of an
attorney general who called America "a nation of cowards" for not dialoguing about race was a
foretaste of what to expect from Eric Holder.

The way Attorney General Holder has refused to prosecute young black thugs who gathered at a
voting site with menacing clubs, in blatant violation of federal laws against intimidating voters,
speaks louder than any words from him or his president.

President Obama's first nominee to the Supreme Court is, like Obama himself, someone with a
background of years of affiliation with an organization dedicated to promoting racial
resentments and a sense of racial entitlement.

An 18th century philosopher said, "When I speak I put on a mask. When I act I am forced to
take it off." Barack Obama's mask slipped for a moment last week but he quickly recovered,
with the help of the media. But we should never forget what we saw.

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RealClearPolitics - Medical Care Confusion Page 1 of 2

Medical Care Confusion

By Thomas Sowell

Is there a coherent argument for government-controlled medical care or are slogans and
hysteria considered sufficient?

We hear endlessly about how many Americans don't have health insurance. But, if we stop and
think-- which politicians hope we never do-- that raises the question as to why that calls for
government-controlled medical care.

A bigger question is whether medical care

will be better or worse after the government
takes it over. There are many available facts
relevant to those crucial questions but
remarkably little interest in those facts.

There are facts about the massive

government-run medical programs already
in existence in the United States-- Medicare,
Medicaid and veterans' hospitals-- as well as
government-run medical systems in other
countries.

None of the people who are trying to rush

government-run medical care through
Congress before we have time to think about it are pointing to Medicare, Medicaid or veterans'
hospitals as shining examples of how wonderful we can expect government medical care to be
when it becomes "universal."

As for those uninsured Americans we keep hearing about, there is remarkably little interest in
why they don't have insurance. It cannot be poverty, for the poor can automatically get
Medicaid.

In fact, we already know that there are people with substantial incomes who choose to spend
those incomes on other things, especially if they are young and in good health. If necessary,
they can always go to a hospital emergency room and receive treatment there, whether or not
they have insurance.

Here, the advocates of government-run medical care say that we all end up paying, one way or
another, for the free medical care that hospitals are forced by law to provide in their emergency
rooms. But unless you think that any situation you don't like is a reason to give politicians a
blank check for "change," the relevant question becomes whether the alternative is either less
expensive or of better quality. Nothing is cheaper just because part of the price is paid in higher
taxes.

Such questions seldom get asked, much less answered. We are like someone being rushed by a
used car dealer to sign on the dotted line. But getting stuck with a car that is a lemon is nothing
compared to signing away your right to decide what medical care you or your loved ones will

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RealClearPolitics - Medical Care Confusion Page 2 of 2

get in life and death situations.

Politicians can throw rhetoric around about "bringing down the cost of health care" or they can
even throw numbers around. But the numbers that politicians are throwing around don't match
the numbers that the Congressional Budget Office finds when it analyzes the hard data.

An old advertising slogan said, "Progress is our most important product." With politicians,
confusion is their most important product. They confuse bringing down the price of medical
care with bringing down the cost. And they confuse medical care with health care.

Nothing is easier than for governments to impose price controls. They have been doing this, off
an on, for thousands of years-- repeatedly resulting in (1) shortages, (2) quality deterioration
and (3) black markets. Why would anyone want any of those things when it comes to medical
care?

Refusing to pay the costs is not the same as bringing down the cost. That is why price controls
create these problems. When developing a new pharmaceutical drug costs roughly a billion
dollars, you are either going to pay the billion dollars or cause people to stop spending a billion
dollars to develop new drugs.

The confusion of "health care" with medical care is the crucial confusion. Years ago, a study
showed that Mormons live a decade longer than other Americans. Are doctors who treat
Mormons so much better than the doctors who treat the rest of us? Or do Mormons avoid doing
a lot of things that shorten people's lives?

The point is that health care is largely in your hands. Medical care is in the hands of doctors.
Things that depend on what doctors do-- cancer survival rates, for example-- are already better
here than in countries with government-run medical systems. But, if political rhetoric prevails,
we may yet sell our birthright and not even get the mess of pottage.

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Martin Feldstein - Obama's Health-Care Reform Plan Is Not the Answer - washingtonpost.com Page 1 of 2

Obama's Plan Isn't the Answer

By Martin Feldstein TOOLBOX
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Resize Print E-mail
For the 85 percent of Americans who already have health insurance, Yahoo! Buzz
the Obama health plan is bad news. It means higher taxes, less
health care and no protection if they lose their current insurance
because of unemployment or early retirement.

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WHO'S BLOGGING
President Obama's primary goal is to extend formal health insurance
to those low-income individuals who are currently uninsured despite » Links to this article
the nearly $300-billion-a-year Medicaid program. Doing so the
Obama way would cost more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years. There surely must be better and less costly
ways to improve the health and health care of that low-income group.

Although the president claims he can finance the enormous increase in costs by raising taxes only on high-
income individuals, tax experts know that this won't work. Experience shows that raising the top income-tax rate
from 35 percent today to more than 45 percent -- the effect of adding the proposed health surcharge to the
increase resulting from letting the Bush tax cuts expire for high-income taxpayers -- would change the behavior
of high-income individuals in ways that would shrink their taxable incomes and therefore produce less revenue.
The result would be larger deficits and higher taxes on the middle class. Because of the unprecedented deficits
forecast for the next decade, this is definitely not a time to start a major new spending program.

A second key goal of the Obama health plan is to slow the growth of health-care spending. The president's
budget calls explicitly for cutting Medicare to help pay for the expanded benefits for low-income individuals.
But the administration's goal is bigger than that. It is to cut dramatically the amount of health care that we all
consume.

A recent report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers claims that the government can cut the
projected level of health spending by 15 percent over the next decade and by 30 percent over the next 20 years.
Although the reduced spending would result from fewer services rather than lower payments to providers, we
are told that this can be done without lowering the quality of care or diminishing our health. I don't believe it.

To support their claim that costs can be radically reduced without adverse effects, the health
planners point to the fact that about half of all hospital costs are for patients in the last year
of life. I don't find that persuasive. Do doctors really know which of their very ill patients will benefit from
expensive care and which will die regardless of the care they receive? In a world of uncertainty, many of us will
want to hope that care will help.

We are also often told that patients in Minnesota receive many fewer dollars of care per capita than patients in
New York and California without adverse health effects. When I hear that, I wonder whether we should cut back
on care, as these experts advocate, move to Minnesota, or wish we had the genetic stock of Minnesotans.

The administration's health planners believe that the new "cost effectiveness research" will allow officials to
eliminate wasteful spending by defining the "appropriate" care that will be paid for by the government and by
private insurance. Such a constrained, one-size-fits-all form of medicine may be necessary in some European
health programs in which the government pays all the bills. But Americans have shown that we prefer to retain a
diversity of options and the ability to choose among doctors, hospitals and standards of care.

At a time when medical science offers the hope of major improvements in the treatment of a wide range of

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Martin Feldstein - Obama's Health-Care Reform Plan Is Not the Answer - washingtonpost.com Page 2 of 2

dread diseases, should Washington be limiting

the available care and, in the process,
discouraging medical researchers from
developing new procedures and products?
Although health care is much more expensive
than it was 30 years ago, who today would settle
for the health care of the 1970s?

Obama has said that he would favor a British-

style "single payer" system in which the
government owns the hospitals and the doctors
are salaried but that he recognizes that such a
shift would be too disruptive to the health-care
industry. The Obama plan to have a government
insurance provider that can undercut the
premiums charged by private insurers would
undoubtedly speed the arrival of such a single-
payer plan. It is hard to think of any other
reason for the administration to want a
government insurer when there is already a very competitive private insurance market that could be made more
so by removing government restrictions on interstate competition.

There is much that can be done to improve our health-care system, but the Obama plan is not the way to do it.
One helpful change that could be made right away is fixing the COBRA system so that middle-income
households that lose their insurance because of early retirement or a permanent layoff are not deterred by the
cost of continuing their previous coverage.

Now that congressional leaders have made it clear that Obama will not see health legislation until at least the
end of the year, the president should look beyond health policy and turn his attention to the problems that are
impeding our economic recovery.

Martin Feldstein, a professor of economics at Harvard University and president emeritus of the nonprofit
National Bureau of Economic Research, was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1982 to 1984.

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RealClearMarkets - Translating ObamaCare Into Plain English Page 1 of 2

July 27, 2009

Translating ObamaCare Into Plain English

By Bill Frezza

Forget for a moment whether you believe healthcare is an inalienable right like freedom of
speech or a service one purchases like auto repair. Do you prefer honestly debating the
issue or hiding behind Orwellian doublespeak?

Do you support open and transparent deliberation or do you believe that "change" justifies
the use of misinformation, intimidation, and obfuscation?

Are you thinking through the likely consequences of the detailed healthcare "reforms"
being proposed or are you more invested in making sure that your tribe - be it Red or Blue
- "wins" this particular legislative fight?

Do the questions above matter or is

your remedy for one screwed up
presidency piling on another one?
How happy were you when our last
President bamboozled the country into
a hasty war in search of non-existent
"weapons of mass destruction?" Were
you shocked that he had no plan to
secure the peace after achieving military
victory? Once entangled, were you
surprised that it took years of blood and
treasure to set things right?

Then why are you comfortable watching

this President stampede the country
into the remodeling of 18% of our economy in search of non-existent "savings" that cannot
possibly come from expanding the menu of government entitlements? Will you feign
surprise when it becomes undeniable that Congress has no idea how to pay for the new
benefits being proposed?

Don't get me wrong. Maybe a majority of Americans really do want every citizen to be
taken care of according to his needs while "the rich" are forced to pick up the tab according
to their ability. Many other countries work that way, although the definition of "rich" has a
way of expanding as quickly as the entitlements. And maybe we do want wise central
planners telling our doctors how to treat us. But before we enshrine this into law, doesn't it
make sense to have an honest debate?

Here is how my dictionary defines "insurance."

Insurance - coverage by a contract binding a party to indemnify another against

specified loss in return for premiums paid.

Compare this to the definition of the word "welfare."

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RealClearMarkets - Translating ObamaCare Into Plain English Page 2 of 2

Welfare - financial or other assistance to an individual or family from a city, state, or

national government.

As Congress attempts to remake the healthcare industry, which are we talking about -
insurance or welfare?

Health insurance - like fire insurance and life insurance - is a financial product sold by
underwriters who offer a menu of services with prices based on an actuarial analysis of
risk. The average premium paid for coverage has to be higher than the average payout for
covered services or else the underwriter goes broke. Health insurance does not magically
deliver "free benefits." Even if coverage comes through your employer, the premiums paid
could have otherwise gone into your paycheck. Plans vary from high deductible coverage of
only the most severe catastrophes to gold plated reimbursement for every sneeze and
sniffle. Medical services are not "rationed" by insurance companies, they are contractually
provided as specified in the product you or your employer buys. Some employers buy fancy
plans and others cheap out depending on what kind of employees they need to attract.

Welfare is the ultimate in "free benefits." It is run on a pay-as-you-go basis. Plans are
structured by community activists, not actuaries. Payouts are usually based on need,
although middle class welfare programs are often the most expensive. Of course welfare
has to be rationed because there is no price mechanism to balance supply and demand, no
need to generate profits, and the provider can't go out of business - although California is
testing that proposition. Rationing has nothing to do with what recipients "deserve," it
comes from the fact that government treasuries are not infinite.

Once we agree to speak plain English, is it so disastrous to take the time to carefully
consider what we're getting into? Do we really want Congress to pass a 1,000 page trillion
dollar medical welfare bill that guarantees every American free healthcare regardless of
their ability to pay? Are we willing to let recession-battered Federal and State governments
go deeper into debt to support this? Are we ready to turn most doctors into civil servants so
we can set their salaries? And are we prepared to raise everyone's taxes a little bit today
and a lot tomorrow to pay for it all?

If you are a current recipient of medical welfare - namely Medicare or Medicaid - are you
willing to share your benefits by having a fixed amount of services spread over an
additional 45 million people? Please don't pretend that Medicare is not welfare, we agreed
to speak English. If Medicare were really "insurance" with premiums set by actuaries, then
why do both tribes agree it is destined for bankruptcy? You say it's because the nation is
aging? Insurance companies don't go broke when their customer base grows, they make
more money. And if national aging is the cause of Medicare's ultimate bankruptcy, how are
things going to be improved by adding another 45 million people to the rolls who can't
even afford bare-bones insurance?

Telling the truth is fundamental to running a democracy. Calling things what they are is
integral to telling the truth. We'd better get started if we hope to pass policies that don't
themselves need to be "reformed" before the ink is dry.

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Unable To See Wind's Deficiencies For Forests Of Concrete

And Steel
By PAUL DRIESSEN | Posted Monday, July 27, 2009 4:20 PM PT

T. Boone Pickens, Nacel Energy, Vestas Iberia and others are extolling the virtues of wind as an
affordable, sustainable energy resource. What's taking hold, however, is renewable reality.
Spain increased its installed wind-power capacity to 10% of its total electricity, although actual energy output is 10% to 30% of
this, or 1% to 3% of total electricity, because the wind is intermittent and unreliable.

Still, Spain spent $3.7 billion on the program in 2007 alone, King Juan Carlos University economics professor Gabriel Calzada
determined. It created 50,000 jobs, mostly installing wind turbines, at $73,000 in annual subsidies per job — and 10,000 of these
jobs have already been terminated. Spain's economic problems put the remaining 40,000 jobs at risk.

Meanwhile, soaring electricity prices forced other businesses to cut 2.2 jobs for every "green" job created, says Calzada. Spain's
unemployment rate is now 17% and rising.

Job Drain

Across the Channel, Britain's wind-energy projects are also in trouble. Just as the U.K. government said it would create 400,000
eco-jobs by 2015, a major green energy employer is ending production. All 7,000 turbines that Downing Street intends to install
over the next decade will be manufactured — not in Britain, but in Germany, Denmark and China, where coal still powers steel
mills and factories.

For businesses, existing global warming policies have added 21% to industrial electricity bills since 2001, and this will rise to
55% by 2020, the U.K. government admits. Its latest renewable energy strategy will add another 15% — meaning the total
impact on British industry will likely be a crushing 70% cost increase over two decades.

These costs could make British manufacturers uncompetitive and send thousands more jobs overseas, the Energy Intensive Users
Group reports. English steel mills could become "unable to compete globally, even at current domestic energy prices," says
British journalist Dominic Lawson; "but deliberately to make them uncompetitive is industrial vandalism — and even madness . .
. a futile gesture . . . and immoral."

'Green' Miners

On this side of the pond, legislators are promoting "green" energy and jobs, via new mandates, standards, tax breaks and
subsidies. However, the U.S. would need 180,000 1.5-megawatt wind turbines by 2020, just to generate the 600 billion kilowatt-
hours of electricity needed to comply with the Waxman-Markey global warming bill, retired energy and nuclear engineering
professor James Rust calculates.

Erecting these forests of concrete and steel would require millions of acres of scenic, habitat and agricultural lands, and 126
million tons of concrete, steel, fiberglass and "rare earth" minerals for the turbines (700 tons per turbine); prodigious quantities of
concrete, steel, copper and land for new transmission lines; and still more land, fuel and raw materials for backup gas-fired
generators.

Those miners and drillers would likely be reclassified as "green" workers, based on the intended purpose of their output.
However, these raw materials will probably not be produced in the U.S., as so many lands, prospects and deposits are off-limits,
and NIMBY ("not in my backyard") litigation will further hamper resource extraction.

Air-quality laws and skyrocketing energy costs will make wind turbine manufacturing in the U.S. equally improbable.
Manufacturing could well be in China or India, and most "green" jobs could be for installers.

Posturing has already collided with reality in Texas. Austin's GreenChoice program cannot find buyers for electricity generated
entirely from wind and solar power. After seven months, 99% of its most recent electricity offering remains unsold, as Austin's
renewable electricity now costs three times more than standard electricity.

All this is happening as global warming patterns are reversing. Satellite data reveal that the planet has been cooling for nearly a
decade, despite steadily rising CO2 levels. Evidence for man-made catastrophic global warming is dissipating faster than carbon

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dioxide from an open soda bottle on a hot summer day.

Wind and solar power is not economical without major government subsidies or monstrous carbon taxes.

Moreover, cap-and-tax legislation currently being promoted in the House and Senate is "not enough to do anything," notes
Daniel Rice, the past decade's best-performing U.S. equity fund manager (BlackRock Energy and Resources Fund). "All it does
is provide Obama a pass to Copenhagen," where the U.N. will host another global warming confab in December.

Silencing Opponents

Congress and the administration are dragging their feet on nuclear power, closing off access to more resource-rich lands and
imposing layers of new regulations on oil, gas and coal energy. Meanwhile, slick wind-turbine ad campaigns promote costly,
unreliable technologies that only climate activists and company lobbyists would describe as sustainable, affordable, eco-friendly
or socially responsible.

The ads and lobbyists seek new mandates, tax breaks and subsidies. Wind promoters want to quiet opponents long enough to get
energy and climate legislation enacted — before Americans realize how it would drive the price of energy still higher, kill jobs,
curtail living standards and liberties, and raise the cost of everything we eat, drive, heat, cool, grow, make and do.

Driessen is senior policy adviser for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author
of "Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death."

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RealClearPolitics - What Constitutes Discrimination? Page 1 of 2

What Constitutes Discrimination?

By Thomas Sowell

Much of the backlog of cases in our over-burdened courts has been created by the courts
themselves, with adventurous judicial "interpretations" of laws that leave a large gray area of
uncertainty around even the most plainly written legislation. Lawyers of course fish in these
troubled waters, creating much needless litigation, but it is judges who have troubled the
waters in the first place.

Nowhere is this more true than in civil rights cases. Since the Constitution of the United States
and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 both decree equal treatment for all, there should not be nearly
as much basis for litigation in civil rights cases as there is-- at least not in cases where the facts
are well known and undisputed, as in the recent New Haven firefighters' case that made it all
the way up to the Supreme Court.

What was it that required three different

levels of federal courts to try to figure out
whether what actually happened was or was
not racial discrimination-- with a decision
finally being reached by the narrowest
possible margin of 5 to 4 in the Supreme
Court?

At the heart of much of this legal complexity

and moral angst is a judge-made theory that
a "disparate impact" of any job requirement
on different groups is evidence of
discrimination.

With two very different theories of what

constitutes job discrimination-- either different treatment or different outcomes-- it is no
wonder that courts have tied themselves into knots trying to figure out whether a particular
case shows racial discrimination, even when the facts are known and plain.

The same notion-- and the same confusion-- applies in many other situations. If a higher
proportion of blacks than whites get turned down for mortgage loans, then that too has been
taken as evidence of racial discrimination.

It doesn't matter if blacks and whites are different on innumerable factors that go into
mortgage loan decisions, as are Hispanics or Asian Americans as well.

All these groups have different credit scores, different incomes and many other differences.
Why is it surprising that they have different loan approval rates? While the issue is often posed
in terms of whites versus non-whites, whites also get turned down for mortgage loans more
often than Asian Americans, who usually have higher credit scores than whites.

Only the underlying dogma that different outcomes for different groups are evidence of
discrimination makes this an issue-- and a source of unending controversy and polarization.

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RealClearPolitics - What Constitutes Discrimination? Page 2 of 2

It is not that judges are incapable of seeing through the intellectual flaw in the "disparate
impact" dogma. But that dogma is too central to efforts at social engineering to be given up for
the sake of mere logic or facts.

That is why courts split along ideological fault lines in cases like the New Haven firefighters'
case, where the crucial facts are not even in dispute. The only real dispute is over whether a test
is automatically biased if different groups pass it at different rates. Apparently the groups
themselves cannot possibly be different, according to "disparate impact" theory.

Facts play a very small role in such issues-- including the facts as to whether social engineering-
- especially a lowering of standards for blacks-- actually helps blacks on net balance. But
empirical studies indicate that black students do better at colleges and universities where their
qualifications are similar to those of the other students at those institutions and worse where
they are admitted with wide disparities in qualifications.

Where in fact have blacks been most successful? Sports and entertainment come to mind
immediately. These are areas where blacks have to meet the same standards as anybody else.

If Derek Jeter swings at three pitches and misses, he is out, just like any white ballplayer. If
people stop watching Oprah Winfrey's program, it will get cancelled, just like anybody else's.

The biggest beneficiaries from the "disparate impact" dogma are those who claim to be helping
minorities. They benefit by feeling noble, winning votes or attracting money. The actual
consequences for blacks-- or for the polarization of American society-- seems to be of little
concern.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/07/09/a_tangled_web_part_two_97328.html 7/28/2009