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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   18980 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 29, 2024

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Tracing's effortpost https://nitter.adminforge.de/tracewoodgrains/status/1752091831095939471

A scandal at the FAA has been moving on a slow-burn through the courts for a decade, culminating in the class-action lawsuit currently known as Brigida v. @SecretaryPete, brought by a class who spent years and thousands of dollars in coursework to become air traffic controllers, only to be dismissed by a pass-fail biographical questionnaire with a >90% fail rate, implemented without warning after many of them had already taken, and passed, a skill assessment. The questionnaire awarded points for factors like "lowest grade in high school is science," something explicitly admitted by the FAA in a motion to deny class certification.

Mainstream outlets have given it sparse coverage, for reasons that will become clear shortly. Right-wing sources paid attention initially, but few ran follow-ups or took a close look at the court filings. So: What exactly is going on? How did all of this happen?

I am not a professional. I am a law student with a part-time job on @TheBARPod, a podcast about internet nonsense, and a side hobby of sticking my nose where it doesn't belong. I wanted, and want, to do a thorough report on this when I get the time. But the story is big enough, and spreading fast enough, that I want to make sure that people have access to accurate info as quickly as possible.

First, though: court filings are public records, but they are often expensive and difficult to obtain. Tools like RECAP help, but I was lucky to have people around me willing to pay the $80 in PACER fees for a few of the documents. This story is much larger than me and I do not want people to have to rely on me for it. Here are the court documents I have: drive.google.com/drive/folde… Most of the interesting exhibits are in 139. Please look for yourself if this story catches your interest.

With that out of the way, my current understanding of the situation is as follows. It will be dry at times; others can editorialize more:

Historically, the pipeline into air traffic control has followed a few paths: military veterans, graduates of the "Air Traffic-Collegiate Training Initiative" (AT-CTI) program, and the general public. Whichever route they came from, each candidate would be required to take and pass the eight-hour AT-SAT cognitive test to begin serious training. This test was validated as being effective as recently as 2013.

The FAA has faced pressure to diversify the air traffic control for generations, something that seems to have influenced even the scoring structure of the AT-SAT cognitive test used for pre-employment screening of air traffic control candidates. Leading up to 2014, that pressure intensified, with the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees (NBCFAE) leading the push.

To start with, in 2000, a three-member task force, including NBCFAE member Mamie Mallory, wrote "A Business Case and Strategic Plan to Address Under-Representation of Minorities, Women, and People with Targeted Disabilities," recommending, per the lawsuit, a workplace cultural audit, diversity "hiring targets" for each year, and "allowing RNO- [Race and National Origin] and gender-conscious hiring." They were advised by Dr. Herbert Wong, who helped the NBCFAE analyze FAA diversity data in 2009. Wong authored a report concluding that the FAA was "the least diverse agency within the executive branch of the federal government." Mallory and Wong were consulted as part of the 2014 test replacement process.

From there, the NBCFAE sent letters in July and October 2009 to the FAA administrator and the Secretary for the Department of Transportation claiming disparate treatment, adopted a strategic plan "advocating for affirmative employment, obtaining an 'independent valuation of hiring and/or screening tools,' and pursuing litigation," a "Talking Points" document pushing the FAA to address diversity, and the creation of a group called "Team 7."

In 2012, Team 7 members met with the secretary of the Department of Transportation, the FAA administrator, and senior FAA leaders to discuss diversity, after which the FAA commissioned a "Barrier Analysis" with a number of recommendations. Central to this: the cognitive test posed a barrier for black candidates, so they recommended using a biographical test first to "maximiz[e] diversity," eliminating the vast majority of candidates prior to any cognitive test.

In 2012 and 2013, the NBCFAE continued pushing this process, with members meeting with the DOT, FAA, Congressional Black Caucus, and others to push diversity among ATCs. By July 2013, the FAA created a "Barrier Analysis Implemention Team" (BAIT, and I swear I am not making this acronym up).

Around this time, the FAA decided to pause the hiring of CTI graduates pending the implementation of the biographical assessment. Neither the schools that ran the CTI programs nor their students were informed of this when the decision was initially made. A number of students, including the class representative, passed the AT-SAT (in the case of the class representative, with a perfect score), not knowing they would never get to use it.

In 2014, the FAA rolled out the new biographical questionnaire in line with the Barrier Analysis recommendation, designed so that 90% or more of applicants would "fail." The questionnaire was not monitored, and people could take it at home. Questions asked prospective air traffic controllers how many sports they played in high school, how long they'd been unemployed recently, whether they were more eager or considerate, and seventy-some other questions. Graduates of the CTI program, like everyone else, had to "pass" this or they would be disqualified from further consideration. This came alongside other changes de-prioritizing CTI graduates.

ojs.library.okstate.edu/osu/…

CTI schools were blindsided and outraged by this change. A report on FAA hiring issues found that 70% of CTI administrators agreed that the changes in the process had led to a negative effect on the air traffic control infrastructure. One respondent stated their "numbers [had] been devastated," and the majority agreed that it would severely impact the health of their own programs. The largest program dropped from more than 600 students to less than 300.

Concurrent to all of this, NBCFAE members were hard at work. In particular, one Shelton Snow, an FAA employee and then-president of the NBCFAE's Washington Suburban chapter, provided NBCFAE members with "buzz words" in January 2014 that would automatically push their resumes to the tops of HR files. A 2013 NBCFAE meeting advised members to "please include [on resumes] if you are a NBCFAE Member. [...] Can you see the strategy", emphasizing they were "only concerned" with the employment of "African-Americans, women ... and other minorities."

After the 2014 biographical questionnaire was released, Snow took it a step further. As Fox Business reported (related in Rojas v. FAA), he sent voice-mail messages to NBCFAE applicants, advising them on the specific answers they needed to enter into the Biographical Assessment to avoid failing, stating that he was "about 99 point 99 percent sure that it is exactly how you need to answer each question."

Per a 2016 Yahoo Finance article, an internal FAA report cleared the NBCFAE and Snow of wrongdoing.

finance.yahoo.com/news/faa-a…

A few changes were made by 2015. In 2016, Congress passed Public Law 114-190, which among other things banned the use of biographical assessments as a first-line hiring tool for air traffic controllers.

People snubbed by the process filed dozens of lawsuits as a result, culminating in the class-action suit now underway as Brigida v. Buttigieg. In arguing to deny class certification, the defendants argued that the "underlying grievance--that they pursued college degrees in reliance on their perception that the role of the CTI program in the FAA's hiring process would never change--is not actionable."

In a moment with a certain bitter irony, black CTI graduates who were left adrift by this process are the only demographic left out of the class: while the plaintiffs tried to include them initially, the court denied certification until they were excluded. The class has been granted certification, and the suit is slowly rolling forward.

Finally, in 2024, @whstancil picked a fight with @Steve_Sailer, who like many in right-wing media had released occasional articles touching on this case. Their scuffle stirrred up enough attention towards it to catch my eye. @SashaGusevPosts, almost alone out of many who accepted my points and moved on, pushed me to look with a more skeptical eye. To win a petty bet with him, I elected to spend an evening digging into this. @raspy_aspie, who I shared early info with, drew my attention towards the initial exhibit I posted, and I went from there.

To get a bit personal for a moment: I was a day-one donor to @PeteButtigieg during his presidential campaign, impressed by his deep understanding and articulate defense of liberal principles. He has been saddled with a messy, stupid lawsuit built on bad decision after bad decision, from predecessors who--between a rock and a hard place in the impossible task of avoiding disparate impact while preserving objective standards--elected to take the easy road and cave to political pressure to implement absurdities. He has extraordinary power to end this mess in a moment and begin to make things right for those who were directly denied a chance at the jobs they had worked towards thanks to an arbitrary and perverse biographical questionnaire.

People will turn this into a culture war issue, and in one sense, that is perfectly fair: it represents a decades-long process of institutional failure at every level. A thousand things had to go wrong to get to this point, and if people want to harp on it—let them. But this is not a fundamentally partisan issue. Virtually nobody, looking dispassionately at that questionnaire, wants to defend it. Everybody wants competent, effective air traffic controllers. Everybody, I suspect, can sympathize with the people who paid and worked through years of education to have their career path suddenly pulled away for political reasons far beyond their control. I am confident that Buttigieg can see that just as well as the rest of us, that for many, it is simply the same neglect everybody else has shown towards the case that has led it to linger awkwardly unresolved for a decade.

There is nothing to be gained from fighting the suit further. It is a black eye on the FAA, a black eye on the DOT, and a black eye on our public institutions as a whole. People have paid shockingly little attention to it as it's rolled through the courts, in part, no doubt, because anything touching on diversity is a hot topic that becomes a culture war football in a moment. My instinct, looking at the whole mess, is that the DOT and FAA should publicly apologize, settle, and do their best to begin making right what was so badly broken

Everybody wants competent, effective air traffic controllers.

I know we do our best to not typical-mind around here, but goddamn, when it's staring you right in the face and they are telling you exactly what they think, to deny it in this manner is like watching someone deny the walls they're walking into. From the suit alone and the tireless, documented efforts of the NBCFAE, it's clear that the competency and effectiveness of air traffic controllers mattered less than if they were African-American or not.

I remember TracingWoodgrains' attempt to try and start an offshoot of The Motte he believed needed to exist with "less of a right-wing slant". I remember thinking that the attempt was idealistic, misguided and naive at the time. It's nice to know that he hasn't changed that much. I wish him all the best, but when the leopards eat his face I won't be at all surprised.

Looking forward to seeing the fuller version. This looks pretty terrible.

I hadn't realized that this was a thing that had stopped in this form, though I'm sure that that sort of thing is still happening everywhere, even if not this exactly.

Disparate impact needs to go.

People will turn this into a culture war issue, and in one sense, that is perfectly fair: it represents a decades-long process of institutional failure at every level. A thousand things had to go wrong to get to this point, and if people want to harp on it—let them. But this is not a fundamentally partisan issue.

This is, of course, a blatant lie. I understand why that lie is getting made here, of course- TW is trying to get liberals to pay attention instead of ‘lalala anti white discrimination isn’t a real thing in the real world affirmative action is just undoing prior discrimination I can’t hear you’. But it is still a lie, and it’s a lie that won’t work.

Obviously, we can imagine if the roles were reversed. But I think it’s more reasonable to imagine a different cultural group, and a specific one, that isn’t favored by TPTB. Let’s go with Mormons; they’re an actually unpopular group that probably does suffer from some light discrimination, and it’s readily imaginable to think that they could do something like that. Do you really believe that an officially-unofficial Mormon whisper network gaming resume acceptance in a meritocratic-for-good reason field like aviation would go unnoticed? How about requiring you to have lived rough in a foreign country(mission year) to sit for the exam when it’s totally irrelevant? Prioritizing applicants from a not-highly-regarded program at BYU because of probably technically illegal collusion between the LDS aviation association and the FAA?

Nobody will ever get punished for this and it’s all who/whom, and that’s a damn shame for the smart, capable blacks who already made it. It also sucks for whatever white applicants lost out. But it sucks even more for the people affected by the accidents.

Something like the affair of the casseroles?

That showed up as haha-fun-trivia on one of Scott’s link posts. It was so outlandish! What a crazy conspiracy!

It's not really a lie. If you, as Trace appears to, believe that most liberals wouldn't disagree with his conclusions -- creating a fake ATC exam for black union to cheat on is bad -- then it's more of a strategic framing. Jesse Singal's Signal Boost had the same sort of framing. "Gee, look how legitimate, uncontroversial, yet juicy and important this story is. Shouldn't Real Journalists be covering this very uncontroversial story?"

People like Singal and TracingWoodgrains use the soft, strategic framing, because they think they can walk some Real Journalists, Real Progressives, and so on back to a more honest(?) space. They, probably correctly, assume that journalists aren't touching it, because of the discourse. If there was no National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees involved in the story, and instead was the National Coalition of Italian-American Aviation Employees that cheated the hiring process for ATC jobs, then this may have been front page on the the New York Times 6 years ago. This is a terrible failure for Affirmative Action advocates, so it is needs to stay hidden, but it doesn't have to be that way

If you believe you can change minds for the better, then using a story few serious people will disagree with is a good way to walk the Overton Window a little closer to your ideal area.* Conservatives see this and, understandably, it makes them angry. Media, progressives, liberals, and the rest of us walked -- or were led -- into the political landscape we live in today. There has to be a way to walk and lead towards another place, right?

Let's say the Murder Is Okay party rolls into your town, organizes protests advocating for senseless murder, hangs up posters, writes long essays about why murder is okay, and otherwise directly and obviously advocates for murder. The extremists in the party genuinely do seem to think murder is okay, but can't fully act on their beliefs with laws as they currently are. The moderates think the extremists are just using figurative language and really mean that you should murder your flaws, or figuratively "murder" bad influences by kicking them out of your life.

Eventually a murder happens. The extremists in the Murder Party spend years hiding the murder and internally promoting the murderers, praising them for their actions. Finally the murder is discovered by people outside the Party, but surprisingly, everyone in the Party, including the "moderates", closes ranks around the murderers. Only people outside the Party seem to care at all. The extremists are still celebrating, and I have no idea what the Moderate party members are thinking, but they're going along with everything.

Yes, framing this as uncontroversially wrong is a strategic decision, but it's the wrong one. Really you're carrying water for the extremists of the Murder Is Okay party by framing this as a surprising outcome of their actions and policies, rather than an inevitable and intended one. This gives anti-Party members less ammo to attack the Party, and gives the Moderate party members a great excuse to keep their heads buried in the sand even while they continue to defend the Extremists. "This is not partisan; everyone knows murder is bad" is an outright lie, and one that benefits the extremist partisans who continue to support and advocate for murder, because the guys who gave them power are given a potent way to avoid any accountability.

In short, I think that this:

using a story few serious people will disagree with is a good way to walk the Overton Window a little closer to your ideal area.

is very misguided. People need to know just how far the Overton Window has stretched to the left. The way to convince people that their side has gone too far is to show them that their side has gone too far, not to tell them that the extremists on their side aren't actually on their side and can safely be ignored.

The trick is, specifically, to cast this behavior as "nonpartisan" when it was obviously extremely partisan. Doing this allows the partisans who made this happen to be safely disavowed by the rest of the party in public, while privately they continue to be hired and given enormous amounts of power. It's an even more dishonest version of the motte and bailey. The motte is that obviously their actions were despicable and we can't condone that and they're getting fired immediately and this doesn't represent our party. The bailey is that we do condone that, they're getting promoted, but in public we'll have to act sad and have the government fine the government a few million dollars, and next time the people we put in place to do the same thing will be smarter and their actions harder to catch. @TracingWoodgrains, whether he wants to or not, is doing a masterful job of constructing the Motte for them.

If you disagree, please show me anywhere that any moderate or progressive criticizes the people who put these people in power, rather than sadly lamenting the unforeseeable and inevitable circumstances that inexplicably led to a coalition of extremists being given the reins of the government.

Yes, framing this as uncontroversially wrong is a strategic decision, but it's the wrong one. Really you're carrying water for the extremists of the Murder Is Okay party by framing this as a surprising outcome of their actions and policies, rather than an inevitable and intended one.

Those dastardly murderers.

People need to know just how far the Overton Window has stretched to the left.

I understand the frustration, but I'm not sure why people need to know this to change their mind. I suspect left-right framing is about the fastest way to not change minds, which is why so many people, even those adjacent dissidents like Freddie deBoer, always take the time to say their not-a-conservative mantras. That this is a requirement to have any sort of movement in a rightward direction for progressives may very well be a flaw of their own making, but I do not blame people for respecting the fact it is a reality.

It was predictable that we'd have racial interest groups engaging in racial spoils when we decided racial preferences were a good thing to institutionalize. I mean hey, if the price for increased diversity is every once in awhile some dirty union takes advantage and gets caught, that's a price worth paying. The fact that the Federal government is actively defending a lawsuit about it is unfortunate, but that's what lawyers do, ya know?

The not a problem to actually a good thing pipeline is a problem. Do you have any examples of more effective aggressive methods of moderating progressive beliefs in the past? Practically speaking, dissidents on the left don't keep reach, influence, or stay on the left. 'That's what a conservative would say' is a powerful antibody. If we go back in time 48 hours, rewrite TracingWoodgrains post for maximum effect how would you change it? Who would be the speaker? I'm not a person out there exists that can deliver what you want to happen.

Apologies this is all I have time to respond to at the moment.*

The not a problem to actually a good thing pipeline is a problem. Do you have any examples of more effective aggressive methods of moderating progressive beliefs in the past?

Chris Rufo and libs of tiktok had a fair amount of success.

I understand the frustration, but I'm not sure why people need to know this to change their mind. I suspect left-right framing is about the fastest way to not change minds, which is why so many people, even those adjacent dissidents like Freddie deBoer, always take the time to say their not-a-conservative mantras. That this is a requirement to have any sort of movement in a rightward direction for progressives may very well be a flaw of their own making, but I do not blame people for respecting the fact it is a reality.

For the purposes of this discussion there are two groups of people:

  1. Partisan conservatives, and open-minded moderates, who recognize bad behavior coming from the left and are willing to condemn it.
  2. Partisan progressives, and close-minded "moderates", only willing to condemn bad behavior if it's not coming from the left

Your claim seems to be that some people in group 2 can be fooled into condemning bad behavior if they're told it's not coming from the left. I don't think this is accurate--whether the issue is framed as partisan or nonpartisan, they will recognize it as partisan, and close ranks accordingly. This is already happening at the federal level and is why everyone involved is still employed. Those who don't close ranks are already part of group 1 and are willing to hear out your claims even if they are partisan claims.

So I don't think calling this stuff "nonpartisan" fools anyone in group 2. I do think it fools some people in group 1, who are eager to find any excuse not to be seen as partisan. "I don't have an issue with the left, just with opportunist extremists who say they're on the left," they'll say, conveniently ignoring those who deliberately put those "opportunist extremists" into power and are still enthusiastically supporting them now that their "opportunist extremism" has come out.

This means that framing the issue as "nonpartisan" does nothing to convince people in group two, but does give them a powerful defensive weapon to use against group one. Moderate progressives were the ones who put these "nonpartisans" into power. Calling the issue nonpartisan fundamentally distracts from that inconvenient truth. Parties must take responsibility for the power which they give to their extremists.

Those dastardly murderers.

The point of the name is that the extremists are very forthcoming about their values, yet the moderates support them anyways.

Do you have any examples of more effective aggressive methods of moderating progressive beliefs in the past?

The biggest example I can think of is the expulsion of NAMBLA from the ILGA in the 90's. As far as I can tell this happened due to external pressure from group 1, not because people told those in group 2 that expelling NAMBLA is "nonpartisan."

If we go back in time 48 hours, rewrite TracingWoodgrains post for maximum effect how would you change it? Who would be the speaker? I'm not a person out there exists that can deliver what you want to happen.

My central point is that the Left has always been advocating for this sort of thing. It shouldn't be surprising that this is what happens when they're given power. Drawing attention to their success stories, e.g. the situations where they've been able to enact their preferred policies, is inherently partisan. They want to do this and way more and the only reason they haven't is because even this is barely skirting the line of legality. "Maximum effect" defined by me would focus on the systems that put these extremists in power, and the fact is that those systems are nothing special, just the results of moderate amounts of progressivism. So "maximum effect" means being maximally partisan, and trying to paint people like Pete as consciously supporting this kind of policy.

Knowing what you know, does this paragraph sound honest to you?

To get a bit personal for a moment: I was a day-one donor to @PeteButtigieg during his presidential campaign, impressed by his deep understanding and articulate defense of liberal principles. He has been saddled with a messy, stupid lawsuit built on bad decision after bad decision, from predecessors who--between a rock and a hard place in the impossible task of avoiding disparate impact while preserving objective standards--elected to take the easy road and cave to political pressure to implement absurdities.

I don't believe for a second that these people were put "between a rock and a hard place." This is what they wanted and they went way out of their way to get it. Framing them as innocent victims of circumstance is not a nonpartisan attempt to reach understanding with those on the left, it's a partisan attempt to cover for those on the left, and should be seen as such.

I understand the frustration, but I'm not sure why people need to know this to change their mind.

Because it doesn't do any good to have people turn against one policy that's already been rescinded. They need to turn against the people pushing this stuff, and those people's general philosophies. Being mealy-mouthed about it makes that impossible.

In practice, as long as the "Murder is Okay" party has what amounts to a direct line into the hearts and minds of the Moderates, it really doesn't matter how you put it. You can't move them by argument, they're not responsive to argument, they're only responsive to the signals they get on the Murder is Okay line. But if they were responsive to argument, softening the argument to such an extent would make it worthless.

But this is not a fundamentally partisan issue. Virtually nobody, looking dispassionately at that questionnaire, wants to defend it. Everybody wants competent, effective air traffic controllers. Everybody, I suspect, can sympathize with the people who paid and worked through years of education to have their career path suddenly pulled away for political reasons far beyond their control. I am confident that Buttigieg can see that just as well as the rest of us, that for many, it is simply the same neglect everybody else has shown towards the case that has led it to linger awkwardly unresolved for a decade.

And TW is still pushing mistake theory. Yes, no one wants to defend that questionnaire. The people who developed it and ran it don't want to have to. However, they also don't care about and won't actually sympathize with the people injured. They really do want more black Air Traffic Controllers, and they don't care much how they get them. We've seen this over and over again; DEI pushers will engage in open discrimination (as with the recently canceled race-based internships at NYC financial firms) when they can and covert discrimination if they think they can't do it openly. Their goals are what they say they are -- more people in favored groups being allowed into the positions they gatekeep for, and fewer people in unfavored groups.

Good point. We might as well argue that "everybody wants clean, safe and efficient public transportation", "everybody wants mentally ill homeless violent drug addicts off the streets", and yet we know what the reality is on the ground.

court filings are public records, but they are often expensive and difficult to obtain. Tools like RECAP help, but I was lucky to have people around me willing to pay the $80 in PACER fees for a few of the documents.

And then he uploads the documents to a random Google Drive folder, rather than telling his "people around him" to install the RECAP extension in their browsers so that they will automatically upload the documents to RECAP. This makes me pretty angry.

I now have purchased document 139 (memorandum in support for motion for class certification) and all its exhibits, using the RECAP browser extension so that they have been added to RECAP for public viewing at this link.

In the Google Drive folder, I shout at people to install RECAP. I went with the first guy who had PACER access, a stranger to me, trying to get into the story as quickly as possible.

Sorry, you just explained it and I still don't know how it works. They'll upload it to the courtlistener website for public viewing when your extension uploads it to them? That's a really neat system, and looks a lot more official than a google drive link.

Normally, whenever you download a document from the federal government's official PACER website, you must pay ten cents per page downloaded, capped at thirty pages (three dollars). If you have installed the RECAP extension in your browser, then the extension automatically uploads to the third-party website RECAP whatever you download from PACER. (You can create an account on PACER and download stuff from it even if you aren't a lawyer.)

Dang. Why doesn't someone (maybe the government itself??) just do that for every single public-but-paywalled document?

Ten cents per page is a reasonable fee for an archivist digging up and photocopying some documents, but it seems wildly out of touch with the costs of hosting a pdf.

Realistically there is a small but hopefully-growing set of folks advocating to strike the PACER paywall completely. Perhaps the pricing made sense when it involved paper copies, but no other federal branch of government demands fees for seeing the law these days.

I anticipate significant unintended consequences from such a decision.

no other federal branch of government demands fees for seeing the law

To be fair, documents submitted by parties to a lawsuit are not "the law". The judicial opinions that constitute "the law" are uploaded to the individual courts' websites plus GovInfo, not just to PACER.

A full understanding of the opinions requires seeing the exhibits and briefs that inform them.

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