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New Jersey Archive

Sunday

13

May 2012

1

COMMENTS

Overgovernment: Distracted Walking Edition

Written by , Posted in Big Government, The Courts, Criminal Justice & Tort, The Nanny State & A Regulated Society

The old joke says that blondes can’t walk and chew gum at the same time, but the government of Fort Lee, N.J. might soon be taking it seriously if their new law is anything to go by. After all, they take a rather dim view of the capabilities of their citizens:

Avid texters beware: Fort Lee, N.J. police said they will begin issuing $85 jaywalking tickets to pedestrians who are caught texting while walking.

“It’s a big distraction. Pedestrians aren’t watching where they are going and they are not aware,” said Thomas Ripoli, chief of the Fort Lee Police Department.

Ripoli said the borough, which is home to approximately 35,000 residents, has suffered three fatal pedestrian-involved accidents this year. He hopes his crackdown on people who display dangerous behavior while walking will make his town safer…

They even pulled out the big guns, grabbing some hotshot college aca-deem-ics to “study” the problem.

Two professors at Stony Brook University in New York conducted a study on walking and texting. They found texters are 60 percent more likely to veer off line than non-texters.

I’m glad they settled the important question of whether people who don’t look where they are going are more likely not to walk straight. It was keeping me up all night.

Three pedestrians got themselves killed this year. Tragic, no doubt, but not cause for legislative action. First of all, how many pedestrians normally get killed? Were those three even on their phones? Alas, there was no real journalist around to ask the question.

This sort of social micro-management is unbecoming a free society, and probably has more to do with police budget shortfalls than an earnest effort to protect people. And even if it were born of good intentions, protecting people from themselves is no business of government. It is a waste of police resources to be nagging citizens into self-awareness.

Thursday

14

January 2010

0

COMMENTS

Justice Sues New Jersey For “Racist” Police Test

Written by , Posted in Identity Politics, The Courts, Criminal Justice & Tort

When the city of New Haven tried discriminate against the police officers who passed their promotion test, because they weren’t appropriate ‘diverse’ for the PC crowd, the Supreme Court rightly struck it down.  Now, the Justice Department’s Civil Right Division is suing New Jersey for not discriminating on behalf of black and hispanic officers who don’t pass the written exam for promotion in the same numbers as white officers.  Though of course that’s not how they frame it.

The exam, a written test that New Jersey police officers must pass in order to advance to the rank of sergeant, quizzes candidates on state and local laws.

“This complaint should send a clear message to all public employers that employment practices with unlawful discriminatory impact on account of race or national origin will not be tolerated,” said Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division. “The Justice Department will take all necessary action to ensure that such discriminatory practices are eliminated and that the victims of such practices are made whole.”

Actually, what this complaint tells us is that it’s more important to bow at the alter of identity politics than to insure that police officers know and understand the laws which they are tasked to enforce.  Unless there is evidence that the test itself is inherently racist, i.e. that the questions somehow lend themselves to be answered better by white test takers than others, then there is no discrimination.  But there is no such evidence.

The entire argument of discrimination is based on nothing more than a few percentage points of difference between how white and minority candidates perform.

White officers pass the New Jersey test at a rate of 89 percent, as opposed to 77 percent of Hispanic candidates and 73 percent of African-American candidates.

So what? What percentage of right-handed and left-handed people pass the test?  What percentage of blondes and brunettes?  How is race any more relevant to understanding the law than these entirely superficial characteristics?  The fact of the matter is that races are not taking the test – individuals are.  Individuals who study and know the material pass, while individuals who are not prepared or sufficiently well versed in the law fail. Those who fail should not be promoted. Dicing these individuals into artificial categories and comparing passing percentages is entirely meaningless.

“Our suit does not have an issue with a written exam period, but we do believe it has a disparate impact on African-American and Hispanic candidates,” Alejandro Miyar, a spokesman at the Justice Department Civil Rights Division, told The Daily Caller.

Disparate impact is a little-known legal term that describes an employment practice that isn’t intentionally discriminatory, but which results in a discriminatory outcome. It is forbidden under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Disparate impact was first described by the Supreme Court in the 1971 case Griggs v. Duke Power Co. which found that “good intent or absence of discriminatory intent does not redeem employment procedures or testing mechanisms that operate as ‘built-in headwinds’ for minority groups and are unrelated to measuring job capability.”

One would think that understanding the law goes to the heart of measuring the job capacity of police officers.

Thursday

26

March 2009

0

COMMENTS

NJ Ninny's Seek To Ban Brazilians

Written by , Posted in The Nanny State & A Regulated Society

No, not the people from South America that seem to have such an unusually high concentration of sexy women:

New Jersey is drawing the line when it comes to bikini waxing.

The state Board of Cosmetology and Hairstyling is moving toward a ban on genital waxing altogether after two women reported being injured in their quest for a smooth bikini line.

Both women were hospitalized for infections following so-called “Brazilian” bikini waxes; one of the women has filed a lawsuit, according to Jeff Lamm, a spokesman for New Jersey’s Division of Consumer Affairs, which oversees the cosmetology board.

Technically, genital waxing has never been allowed — only the face, neck, abdomen, legs and arms are permitted — but because bare-it-all “Brazilians” weren’t specifically banned, state regulators haven’t enforced the law.

Ugh…technically, it has.

Do I really need to go into much detail about why it’s stupid to ban elective activity over a few people getting hurt?  Really? Nah…I don’t.