Hypocrisy Is Always an Option: Civil Service Examinations and The Eye of Sauron

[roo_ster]

http://takimag.com/article/civil_service_examinations_make_a_comeback_steve_sailer#axzz3Wgm2MW53

Just as the Eye of Sauron in the LOTR has a baleful effect on the object of its focus, objects of the focus of MSM and progressive agitators may come to serious harm.  Objects outside the focus of The Eye / MSM and progressives can get along reasonably and rebuild the damage done by the progressives.

Federal civil service exams were ended in 1981 after the Carter administration signed a consent decree on a lawsuit ginned up by the EEOC to sue the rest of fed.gov because different racial cohorts performed differently on the exams.

Looks like federal civil service exams might be coming back by a curious path.

Do read mash the link and read it in its entirety.  It is an education in the limits imposed on malevolent power by memory and outlawing badthink.

One of the more evil things an outgoing administration can do is to intentionally forfeit in court against what ought to be a nuisance lawsuit. One of the President’s duties is to defend the federal government against all the people constantly suing the government. But an administration also has the relatively arbitrary privilege to sign a consent decree giving in. Worse, an outgoing administration can gin up a lawsuit against itself by its friends, and then concede to them on its way out the door.

For example, its last day in office in January 1981, the Carter administration did long term damage to the U.S. government by abolishing the venerable civil service examination for hiring federal bureaucrats...

The outgoing Carter Justice officials declared that no exam could replace PACE until a valid one without adverse impact on blacks and Hispanics could be devised. In the 34 years since, this has proven impossible...

The ruling logic of our age is that any disparities in outcomes unfavorable to privileged groups are intolerable. Theoretically, his provides unlimited grist for the mill.

This is alarming to thinking individuals. I’m often asked: “How can necessary institutions continue to function when the reigning dogma is lunatic?...”

For example, the obscure town of Ferguson, Missouri remains in the spotlight of national concern because in Ferguson the cops tend to be white and the criminals black. Something must be done about this!...

But even individuals as ambitious as Eric Holder and George Soros have their limits.

A useful metaphor for understanding how the world works these days is the Eye of Sauron. In Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the eponymous bad guy manifests himself as a giant eyeball that focuses on a hapless victim.

You do not want to attract the attention of the Eye of Sauron...

The national media increasingly fixes its Eye of Sauron upon dubious local imbroglios: Haven Monahan’s fraternity initiation rite gang rape, the white cop gunning down the gentle giant Michael Brown in cold blood, or white male George Zimmerman murdering black baby Trayvon Martin without provocation.

For the last nine months, for instance, unimportant little Ferguson has preoccupied what might be called the Eye of Soros (since the billionaire funded so much of the protest and mayhem)...

As you’ll recall, after Ferguson turned into a factual fiasco last fall, the Eye briefly shifted its malevolent gaze to the death of a fat guy in police custody on Staten Island. But Staten Island is part of New York City, where the Eye is based. So after this attention inspired a black man to murder two cops in Brooklyn in vengeance, the NYPD, in effect, mutinied against leftwing mayor Bill de Blasio. The mayor backed down, more or less.

A soft coup by cops that brings the democratically-elected government of New York City to heel might seem pretty newsworthy. You probably haven’t heard much about it lately in the national press because all those globally important events in Ferguson, such as yesterday’s city council elections, take up most of the column inches that could otherwise be devoted to minor matters such as: Who runs New York City?

Moreover, there are certain limits to the Eye of Sauron, such as that it can’t be focused upon everything at once...The Eye can’t monitor too many of its casualties at once...

The Eye can ignore things for decades. For example, the PACE civil service exam was abolished in 1981, but the military has used the similar AFQT, the test that is central to The Bell Curve, as the enlistment entrance exam for generations. This has passed almost without comment in the press, perhaps because the Pentagon’s psychometricians believe Charles Murray is right, but nobody else is supposed to know that.

Interestingly, out of the glare of the Eye, the Obama administration inadvertently has restarted civil service exams...

The White House blundered into reviving civil service testing by issuing a call for faster, more efficient federal hiring back in 2010...

One reason for the comeback of testing is that the Carter administration’s Luevano Job was so shameful that it’s not well remembered. Even though it was a massive, enduring triumph for Democrats, its history is too grotesque to celebrate.

So, lots of contemporary bureaucrats don’t understand the enduring reason why the Democrats trashed a fine system in 1981...

I suspect that when today’s bureaucrats think about testing minorities, they assume the problem back in the bad old days must have been the virulent racism among Watergate Era academics and federal bureaucrats who devised the PACE in 1974. The media has retconned the past so ridiculously that contemporary individuals have a hard time realizing their predecessors were nice liberals just like them who faced the same unchanging problems with black and Hispanic competence that they will soon confront...

This means the system is unlikely to collapse from the sheer absurdity of its dogmas: because hypocrisy is always an option.

[Jamisjockey]

The FAA recently began using a personality test to screen applicants for Air Traffic Controller positions.  So they could have a "more diverse" applicant pool.
It seems that only taking applicants who were either A) veterans with ATC expeience, or B) college educated in the very college program the FAA built (College Training Initiative, or CTI program) didn't give them the "diversity" they wanted.
I've heard anecdotal horror stories about the off the street applicant pool from the FAA Academy in OKC.  Drugs and Alcohol.  Assaults in the classroom and fights at the approved academy apartments.  Washout rate over 50%, and nearing 70% of the applicants with no prior ATC exposure are washing out. 
It was such an abysmal failure last year that it was a heated topic during FAA appropriations. 

[charby]

The FAA recently began using a personality test to screen applicants for Air Traffic Controller positions.  So they could have a "more diverse" applicant pool.
It seems that only taking applicants who were either A) veterans with ATC expeience, or B) college educated in the very college program the FAA built (College Training Initiative, or CTI program) didn't give them the "diversity" they wanted.
I've heard anecdotal horror stories about the off the street applicant pool from the FAA Academy in OKC.  Drugs and Alcohol.  Assaults in the classroom and fights at the approved academy apartments.  Washout rate over 50%, and nearing 70% of the applicants with no prior ATC exposure are washing out. 
It was such an abysmal failure last year that it was a heated topic during FAA appropriations. 

USDA does a mini knowledge and personality test as part of the application process.

I would be all for a standardized civil service exam and also a knowledge test related to the job position. Such as a 50 point exam related to items that someone educated in forestry would know for a forester's position.