Who is this super trucker?

Discussion in 'Truckers News' started by iceman32, Jun 1, 2020.

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  1. Infosaur

    Infosaur Road Train Member

    This, in a nutshell, is why I hate the NBA. I knew a lot of kids in school that were smart, but wouldn't take tests or get good grades because they had a devastating jump shot. None of them ever played pro.
     
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  3. Infosaur

    Infosaur Road Train Member

    Oh don't get me started on how non-Irish "celebrate" St. Patrick's day. The term "minstrel" comes to mind.
     
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  4. Infosaur

    Infosaur Road Train Member

    Got that one too, my inlaws are Puerto Rican.
     
  5. Infosaur

    Infosaur Road Train Member

    I wanted to see an A-10 in Tuskegee colors for so long. I finally got off my duff and MADE one!

    IMG_0473.JPG IMG_0475.JPG

    Now if only I can get someone in the pentagon to agree with me.
     
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  6. gentleroger

    gentleroger Road Train Member

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    The answer is simple, but long.

    First things first discount the idea that "Democrat" equates to "Liberal". There are maybe 3 Republicans in Chicago, yet some of the Chicago Aldermen and Precinct Captains make Ted Cruz look like a bleeding heart socialist. Anyone who applies the label "liberal" to Mike Madigan (the man who has had de facto control over Illinois for the last 20 years) should be examined for head trauma.

    The last time I checked, Chicago was 49% white, 25% black, 15% Hispanic, and 10% Asian. So in terms of direct voting power, white people are still in the majority, assuming everyone votes along racial line which is a pretty asinine assumption. Now look at Chicago's wards:
    Chicago’s Dumbest Wards

    The structure/shape of Chicago's wards have been gerrymandered beyond cognition for many reasons over the last century. One factor that has always been considered is racial and ethnic makeup. The other is how to get a problematic alderman out and a compliant one in. If you look at the racial distribution what you'll find is that majority black neighborhoods have either been packed into one ward or sliced into several. You can do the same thing with economic status, again you'll find a distinct crack/pack pattern. Assuming a single issue election where Party A is for police reform and Party B is against reform, up to 70% of the city could vote for Party A yet only elect 40% of the Aldermen. But things are never as simple as a single issue and candidates on the ballot are rarely ideal. Do I vote for the guy wants police reform but also supports eminent domain rules that will force me to sell my house at below market value or the guy who doesn't give a hoot about police misconduct or anything else for that matter so long as he gets his kickback? I won't get into voter suppression and election fraud except to point to what happened to the guy who decided to try and primary Mike Madigan.

    The next issue is in Chicago, the Police leadership isn't elected. The Police Board are appointed by the mayor and until recently have had very little actual power over the police department or it's budget. Of much greater significance is the Police Union. The Chicago Police Union just elected a gentleman who is currently suspended, has had numerous complaints and was almost fired at least once. Between union rules and civil service rules, actually firing a police officer is hard.

    Even if the Mayor of Chicago and the entire Board of Aldermen agree on police reforms, those reforms can be stymied from Springfield. There are state laws the dictate police procedures, while individual departments have leway, they cannot break state law. Police officers generally have broad protection under state law, and state lawmakers don't want to erode those protections for departments that "don't have problems". A reasonable argument, but one that allows police departments to avoid civilian oversight and accountability. And we haven't even started talking about budget games - Chicago provides most of the state revenue, but Springfield gets to decide how much of that is returned to Chicago and what they can spend it on.

    Despite this, reforms have been planed and enacted. Most often because of A) Lawsuits, B) Riots or C) Federal intervention. Whenever they can, the City of Chicago settles abuse claims. They do this not because it's cheaper than fighting them in court, or because the City thinks they will lose, but because they don't want some random litigant to get lucky in discovery and find the thread that will lead to another Ronald Watt or John Burge. Yet as attention fades, so too does the will to enforce reform plans, or there is a political change that undermines the reforms. In 2018, the Attorney General Jeff Sessions attempted to block a consent decree in Chicago and did issue guidance that limits the power of the independent monitor to enforce consent decrees.

    As I've said before we know what the problem is, we know what the solutions are, all that is lacking is the will to enact them. That will not occur "until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are" (Ben Franklin).
     
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  7. SmallPackage

    SmallPackage Road Train Member

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    Nice!
    My father in law built a B-25 mitchell in red tail. Tuskegee’s 477th bomb group had them coming but never really got them going before the war ended.
    My father in law was stationed up in Alaska with the 477th in ‘64-‘69 during Vietnam. He built a F4 Phantom in red tail to commerate that. He’s won a few trophy's at model shows with the planes he’s built. He did USAF aircraft maintainance for 40 years. As Enlisted for first 20 and than civilian the last 20.
     
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  8. gentleroger

    gentleroger Road Train Member

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    I have seen a parent complain that his straight A son was being discriminated against because a latino kid was chosen for the school's model UN travel team over his son. Didn't matter that both kids had the same classes, and had the same grades, the latino kid got the spot because he was latino. No proof of discrimination, just opinion.

    When I've asked for proof of systemic discrimination against white people, I've gotten anecdotes in return. No empirical data, no references, nothing. Yet there is empirical data out there.

    The Truth about Anti-White Discrimination
    The Truth about Anti-White Discrimination
    Many white Americans feel that discrimination against whites is on the rise. Experiments suggests otherwise


    A friend complained to me recently that his son wasn’t getting into Ivy League colleges because it’s so hard for a middle-class white kid to be admitted, even with straight A’s. I asked if the advantages of being a middle-class white kid might be part of the reason his son had become a straight-A student in the first place. It got awkward.

    As our politics have fractured increasingly around race, there seems to be more and more confusion about who’s discriminating against whom. For example, a national survey reported that both blacks and whites believed that discrimination against blacks had declined over the past few decades, but whites believed that discrimination against whites was now more common than discrimination against blacks.

    The reason, say the study’s authors Michael Norton and Sam Sommers, is that whites see discrimination as a zero-sum game. The more they thought discrimination against blacks was decreasing, the more they felt discrimination against whites was increasing. That’s consistent with other studies showing that if you remind whites that the American population is becoming more diverse and that whites will soon be less that half of the population, their concern about anti-white discrimination increases. Whites tend to view increasing diversity as anti-white bias.

    These kinds of data capture an important snapshot of public opinion, but that is the problem—surveys treat the question as a matter of opinion, like which basketball team you like most. But the question of whether discrimination disadvantages whites or blacks is not really a matter of opinion. It is a factual question that can be answered by science. In fact, it has been.

    News stories are full of statistical evidence for disparities between black and whites, such as the fact that the average black family earns about half as much as the average white family, or that the unemployment rate for blacks is twice that for whites, or that the wealth of the average white family is ten times the wealth of the average black family. But this kind of evidence is like a political Rorschach test that looks very different to liberals and conservatives. What looks to liberals like evidence of discrimination looks to conservatives like evidence of racial disparities in hard work and responsible behavior.
     
  9. gentleroger

    gentleroger Road Train Member

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    This dynamic was captured in a New York Times readers forum about a study showing large racial disparities in economic mobility, especially for black boys. A reader named Michael wrote, “Why is racism the only explanation for this phenomenon? Perhaps something happens to black boys while they are growing up that makes them less capable of succeeding in the U.S. economy… So, why do the authors take the easy way out and blame amorphous racism?” Professor Ibram Kendi responded, “Actually, the easy way out is to say there must be something wrong with these black boys. It is the easy way out that Americans have historically taken in trying to explain racial disparities in our society…Racist ideas of black inferiority is the easy way out.”

    This kind of back and forth seems to be everywhere, from intellectuals arguing in books and essays to the general public arguing on social media. When it comes to statistical disparities, this is a rare case in which almost no one is disputing the facts. But the meaning of those facts appears endlessly up for grabs because opponents cannot agree on what is the cause of the disparities—discrimination or differences in merit.

    The only kind of evidence that can hope to bridge this divide comes from experiments which directly measure discrimination — and these experiments have been done.

    Consider an experiment by sociologist Devah Pager, who sent pairs of experimenters—one black and one white—to apply for 340 job ads in New York City. She gave them resumes doctored to have identical qualifications. She gave them scripts so that the applicants said the same things when handing in their applications. She even dressed them alike. She found that black applicants got half the call backs that white applicants got with the same qualifications.

    This study inspired experiments in lots of areas of life. One study, for example, responded to more than 14,000 online apartment rental adds but varied whether the name attached to the email implied a white applicant (e.g., Allison Bauer) or a black applicant (e.g., Ebony Washington). The black applicants were twenty-six percent less likely to be told that the apartment was available.

    These kinds of experiments are not ambiguous like statistics on disparities are. There were no differences in merit. Race was the cause. Real employers and landlords discriminated against blacks and in favor of whites, by a large margin.

    This kind of direct evidence of discrimination against minorities have been found in other arenas. Professors are more likely to ignore emails from students of color. Airbnb hosts are more likely to tell black renters that the listing has already been taken. Pager and her colleagues published a meta-analysis incorporating every field experiment on hiring since the first ones were carried out in the 1980’s. Across two dozen studies, black applicants were called back 36 percent less than whites with the same qualifications. Not a single study found a reliable anti-white bias. Most sobering of all, the rate of discrimination is the same today as in the 1980’s.

    The stakes in this debate are high, as Federal courts and potentially the Supreme Court will soon hear landmark cases on the use of race when making college admissions decisions. Is the present environment one that discriminates against black applicants? Or is it a level playing field made uneven by affirmative action policies? These are empirical questions, and we already have a lot of evidence in hand to answer them.

    It may seem naïve, in a way, to think that data like this will change people’s minds. After all, even the overwhelming scientific consensus that humans are causing climate change hasn’t persuaded many whose worldviews conflict with the evidence. But there is a critical difference between short-term arguments and long-term belief change. Confronting an opponent with facts in the middle of a heated argument has probably never changed a single mind. Back-and-forth arguments are social contests in which people are often more motivated to win than to seek truth.

    And yet, beliefs in the basic facts of climate change have gradually come more into line with the evidence over the last decade. The key is to keep repeating the facts and their basis in reason and science, until they become part of the background that any conversation takes for granted. It is frustratingly slow work. But to even get started, we need to move the conversation about discrimination beyond evidence of disparities, and focus on the experiments and the stubborn facts they deliver.

    Rights & Permissions
    ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
    Keith Payne
    Keith Payne is a Professor in Psychology and Neuroscience at UNC Chapel Hill. He is author of The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die.
    Or

    The Debate Around Police Violence and Racial Bias - CityLab

    Key qoute for me is
    “I want to stress how hard it was to get information about these police officers,” said Johnson. “It took over 1,800 hours requesting information from police, looking at legal cases and legal documents as well as media accounts. We didn’t know any of that before we started on this analysis.”
    If you want to claim that there is no racial bias in the criminal justice system, then prove it. You'll run into some of the same problems these researchers did - police don't want to share this data because they are afraid of what it will show. If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear right? Or in other words "if he had just complied, nothing bad would have happened."
     
  10. gentleroger

    gentleroger Road Train Member

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    Why can't you answer the question?

    If you can provide a logical explanation on why the Unions pulled out of a long standing relationship with CPS when it looked like they might have to admit black students that doesn't include racism then I will happily concede the point.


    Here's a hint - the school's name was Washburne Vocational.
     
  11. gentleroger

    gentleroger Road Train Member

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    I was coaching DIII, no "athletic" scholarships, but I did have "pull" with the admittance and financial aid departments. I could and did get kids admitted who would not have been admitted without me asking (okay pleading, begging). I was taught to get incoming freshmen the best financial aid package, then worry about the sophmores, and don't worry about the juniors and seniors. At that point they are unlikely to transfer. There was one kid we had who was a behavioural problem. We could handle that, but what we couldn't handle was the fact the kid sucked - didn't train over the summer, gave a half effort in practice, etc. That spring he was surprised that his financial aid package was non-existant. He came to the head coach for help and Greg flat out told him "I feel for you kid, but it's not my problem". We had recrutied this kid and promised him an affordable education if he came. Now he had some serious debt, had to transfer (good luck getting all the credits to transfer), and couldn't start at a new school until at least 2nd semester if he could get in at all. That kid had no business at that school, but I got him in. I could handle the 100 hour weeks, I could handle the emotional investment, but I couldn't handle screwing kids.
     
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