Month: January 2022

Supreme Court To Hear 2 Cases Challenging Race-Based College Admissions


Supreme-Court-building-Wikimedia

The Supreme Court will soon consider whether race-conscious admissions practices at Harvard and the University of North Carolina (UNC) are constitutional. 

The court agreed today to hear both Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina in the next term. These high-profile cases are likely to determine the future of race-conscious practices, colloquially known as affirmative action, in college admissions. 

The Harvard case centers on claims by that the university’s admissions process discriminates against Asian applicants. The Asian-American plaintiffs claim that Harvard penalizes Asian applicants through use of personality ratings, which work to create an effective ceiling for them in admissions. The plaintiffs argue that Harvard rated Asian applicants lower on traits such as likability, courage, and kindness. An internal study from Harvard showed that Asians would comprise 43 percent of the admitted class if only academics were considered in the admissions process. Instead, Asian Americans made up 25.9 percent of Harvard’s admitted students for the class of 2025.   

Harvard argues that the plaintiffs used a flawed analysis and that they do not discriminate against Asian applicants. In a brief asking the Supreme Court to deny review, Harvard defended race-conscious admissions policies and said that these policies help the university fulfill its institutional mission of educating “citizens and student leaders for our society.” 

The UNC case argues that the school unfairly discriminates against Asian and white applicants by giving admission preferences to underrepresented minorities. UNC defended its admissions practices in a public statement published on their website: “We prepare students to become the next generation of leaders and enhance the quality of life for all North Carolinians. Students, faculty, and business leaders who hire hundreds of our graduates each year say the strength of a Carolina education lies in the diversity of experiences among our student body.”

The cases were built with the help of Students for Fair Admissions founder Edward Blum, a legal activist who The New York Times describes as “a matchmaker bringing together two forces: students and others who believe they are being mistreated in the name of racial justice, and conservative donors who finance his work and that of the high-powered, establishment Republican lawyers who take the cases to court.” Blum played a role in Abigail Fisher’s lawsuit against affirmative action at the University of Texas, which ultimately did not succeed.   

Race-conscious admissions policies are deeply unpopular in some surveys. A 2019 survey from Pew Research Center found that most Americans—including 62 percent of blacks, 65 percent of Hispanics, 78 percent of whites, and 58 percent of Asians—believed that race should not be a factor in admissions decisions.

The Harvard economist Richard Kahlenberg has compiled data that shows Harvard could actually increase the number of underrepresented minority admissions by using socioeconomic preferences while dropping legacy preferences. From 2014 to 2019, Harvard admitted 33 percent of legacy applicants, as opposed to roughly 5 percent of the general applicant pool. The median Harvard student comes from a family that earns $168,000 a year, and poor students are outnumbered by well-off students by a ratio of 23-to-1. 

In the United Kingdom, Oxford University has been able to increase the number of minority students on campus through outreach programs, even while maintaining a completely race-neutral admissions process. 

“Of course, a truly diverse student body may produce a number of benefits. It might teach tolerance, acceptance, and open-mindedness,” reads an amicus curiae petition filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Reason Foundation (which publishes this website), the Center for Equal Opportunity, the Chinese American Citizens Alliance, and several other parties. “But none of those purported benefits can justify the harm of racial preferences: racial discrimination.”

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Biden Family Made $31 Million From Individuals With ‘Direct Ties To Chinese Spy Apparatus’: Schweizer

Biden Family Made $31 Million From Individuals With ‘Direct Ties To Chinese Spy Apparatus’: Schweizer

The Biden family bagged $31 million from just five deals in China – all inked with individuals who have direct ties to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence, claims author Perter Schweizer in his new book, Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win.

As Breitbart News reports, “Multiple financiers with direct ties to Chinese intelligence partnered with Hunter Biden during and after his father’s time as Vice President — including the former head of the Ministry of State Security and the head of foreign intelligence recruitment — and some of those relationships remain intact,” according to Scnweizer.

The book outlines how Beijing sought a financial relationship with the Bidens as a method of “elite capture,” which led to meetings between Hunter Biden and high-level Chinese financiers, as well as the CCP, in order to exert leverage over the powerful family.

One of the central early players in the Bidens’ Chinese deals is a tycoon by the name of Che Feng, or “The Super Chairman,” as Hunter and his partners referred to him.

Che, the son of a PLA soldier, has been described in Western media as “a shadowy and discreet investor,” whose father-in-law was the governor of the People’s Bank of China, and whose business partner was the Vice Minister of State Security, a man by the name of Ma Jian. Schweizer writes that Ma was reportedly the director of the ministry’s No. 8 Bureau, overseeing North American operations targeting foreigners with its counterintelligence apparatus. -Breitbart

“The hazard of a Chinese businessman with close ties to the top ranks of Beijing’s spy agency conducting financial transactions with the son of the U.S. vice president cannot be overstated. How this did not set off national security or ethics alarm bells in Washington is a wonder in itself,” writes Schweizer, who added that the Super Chairman’s role was to “fuse Chinese financial might to those with access to the highest levels of power in the Western world,” which led to the foundation of Bohai Harvest Trust (BHR) – which was “funded by China’s biggest government-backed financial institutions” with the Bidens and their American partners.

The Super Chairman also introduced the Bidens to Zhao Xuejun (aka Henry Zhao), a former CCP general secretary at Harvest Fund Management. Zhao also owned “Harvest Global Investments,” co-founded with the daughter-in-law of a member of the Politburo Standing Committee at the time, Jia Liqing. Her father, Jia Chunwang, is the former minister of state security, “in charge of secret service, espionage, and domestic and overseas intelligence work.”

Harvest Global Investments wired $5 million to another Hunter Biden business called Burnham, according to the book.

“There is no one more powerful in the world of Chinese intelligence,” Schweizer writes. “The seductive and lucrative deal that Hunter was now putting into place, creating BHR, involved two financiers with ties to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence, a billion-dollar private equity deal that we first exposed in Secret Empires. What we now know are the roles played by the spy-connected ‘Super Chairman’ and Zhao.”

“According to Michael Lin, another Chinese partner, Hunter’s role in the venture was pretty straightforward: ‘Open as many doors as possible in the western world for this very famous Bohai professional team.’ There was also the expectation that Hunter and his partners would ‘join some of the meetings in HK and China they arrange’ when communicating with possible financial partners.”

Read the rest of the report here.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/24/2022 – 17:35

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/35a5eo2 Tyler Durden

Why Does the Supreme Court Refer to Preferences for Hispanics/Latinos as “Racial Preferences”?

As discussed in my forthcoming book, Classified, when the Office of Management and Budget created the official Statistical Directive 15 “Hispanic” (later changed to Hispanic or Latino) category in 1977, it dictated that Hispanic was an ethnic classification, not a racial one. Despite occasional efforts to change the category to a racial one, most recently with the blessing of the Obama administration, it has remained an ethnic category ever since. This surprised me, because not only are Hispanics often colloquially often referred to a racial minority, but the Supreme Court has consistently referred to preferences for Hispanics in higher education as “racial preferences.”

In the course of my research, I cleared up the mystery. When the Statistical Directive 15 categories went into effect, most government agencies that collected racial and ethnic statistics mostly responded by placing a two-part race/ethnicity question on demographic forms. These forms asked individuals if they were Hispanic and, separately, what race they saw themselves as belonging to (White, Black, Native American, or Asian American).

The Department of Education, however, demurred. Its Office of Civil Rights left it up to the schools and universities gathering statistics about their applicants and student bodies to decide whether to use a two-part question or a one-part question. A one-part question asks individuals whether they are Black, White, Hispanic, Native American, or Asian.

Universities overwhelmingly chose the one-question route. This made Hispanic status the equivalent of a racial status—for example, one could not be both Hispanic and White on these universities’ admissions forms.

The Department of Education did not change its rules to require a two-question ethnicity classification until 2007, about a decade after OMB told the Department it had to do so. By then, the notion that Hispanic affirmative action preferences in university admissions amounted to a “racial” preference was entrenched. But for whatever it’s worth, as far as the U.S. government is concerned, preferences for African Americans, Native Americans, and Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders are “racial” preferences, while preferences for Hispanics are “ethnic” preferences, and Hispanics can be of any race. [About fifty percent of Hispanic check the White box on forms, most of the rest identify themselves as “other”].

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Supreme Court To Hear 2 Cases Challenging Race-Based College Admissions


Supreme-Court-building-Wikimedia

The Supreme Court will soon consider whether race-conscious admissions practices at Harvard and the University of North Carolina (UNC) are constitutional. 

The court agreed today to hear both Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina in the next term. These high-profile cases are likely to determine the future of race-conscious practices, colloquially known as affirmative action, in college admissions. 

The Harvard case centers on claims by that the university’s admissions process discriminates against Asian applicants. The Asian-American plaintiffs claim that Harvard penalizes Asian applicants through use of personality ratings, which work to create an effective ceiling for them in admissions. The plaintiffs argue that Harvard rated Asian applicants lower on traits such as likability, courage, and kindness. An internal study from Harvard showed that Asians would comprise 43 percent of the admitted class if only academics were considered in the admissions process. Instead, Asian Americans made up 25.9 percent of Harvard’s admitted students for the class of 2025.   

Harvard argues that the plaintiffs used a flawed analysis and that they do not discriminate against Asian applicants. In a brief asking the Supreme Court to deny review, Harvard defended race-conscious admissions policies and said that these policies help the university fulfill its institutional mission of educating “citizens and student leaders for our society.” 

The UNC case argues that the school unfairly discriminates against Asian and white applicants by giving admission preferences to underrepresented minorities. UNC defended its admissions practices in a public statement published on their website: “We prepare students to become the next generation of leaders and enhance the quality of life for all North Carolinians. Students, faculty, and business leaders who hire hundreds of our graduates each year say the strength of a Carolina education lies in the diversity of experiences among our student body.”

The cases were built with the help of Students for Fair Admissions founder Edward Blum, a legal activist who The New York Times describes as “a matchmaker bringing together two forces: students and others who believe they are being mistreated in the name of racial justice, and conservative donors who finance his work and that of the high-powered, establishment Republican lawyers who take the cases to court.” Blum played a role in Abigail Fisher’s lawsuit against affirmative action at the University of Texas, which ultimately did not succeed.   

Race-conscious admissions policies are deeply unpopular in some surveys. A 2019 survey from Pew Research Center found that most Americans—including 62 percent of blacks, 65 percent of Hispanics, 78 percent of whites, and 58 percent of Asians—believed that race should not be a factor in admissions decisions.

The Harvard economist Richard Kahlenberg has compiled data that shows Harvard could actually increase the number of underrepresented minority admissions by using socioeconomic preferences while dropping legacy preferences. From 2014 to 2019, Harvard admitted 33 percent of legacy applicants, as opposed to roughly 5 percent of the general applicant pool. The median Harvard student comes from a family that earns $168,000 a year, and poor students are outnumbered by well-off students by a ratio of 23-to-1. 

In the United Kingdom, Oxford University has been able to increase the number of minority students on campus through outreach programs, even while maintaining a completely race-neutral admissions process. 

“Of course, a truly diverse student body may produce a number of benefits. It might teach tolerance, acceptance, and open-mindedness,” reads an amicus curiae petition filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Reason Foundation (which publishes this website), the Center for Equal Opportunity, the Chinese American Citizens Alliance, and several other parties. “But none of those purported benefits can justify the harm of racial preferences: racial discrimination.”

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Affirmative Action Without Racial Preferences

The Supreme Court, as most readers surely know by know, has decided to hear appeals to two cases challenging racial and ethnic preferences in higher education. Assuming the Court is disinclined to allow the use of overt racial and ethnic preferences, is it possible that some version of affirmative action that takes ancestral “background” into account may be salvaged?

In my forthcoming book, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America, I suggest that the answer is yes, at least with regard to most African Americans and some Native Americans. (The book is not about affirmative action, but obviously a book on racial classifications is going to address that issue.)

The book describes how the familiar categories universities use to sort students by race and ethnicity–Asian American, Black/African American, Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latino, Native American, and White–came to be. To make a long story short, they were invented by the Office of Management and Budget in the 1970s to regularize statistics-keeping and reporting within the federal government. While “white” and “black” were familiar categories, almost no one considered themselves or anyone else to be Hispanic, “Latino” or “Asian” before 1970 [as opposed to Mexican, Cuban, Chinese, Japanese, etc.] and it was by no means inevitable that white ethnic groups like Cajuns, Italians, Poles, and Jews would be classified as generic whites.

The classifications the government came up with were never intended to be proxies for “diversity” in higher education or elsewhere, and they explicitly came with the caveat that the “classifications should not be interpreted as being scientific or anthropological in nature.” OMB warned that the categories also should not be “viewed as determinants of eligibility for participation in any Federal program,” such as affirmative action programs.

Nevertheless, because universities had to use these categories in reporting admissions statistics to the Department of Education, they almost immediately became affirmative action proxy categories. In the book, I first address the use of these categories in Minority Business Enterprise programs:

Businesses owned by African American descendants of slaves (ADOS) were the original primary intended beneficiaries of minority business enterprise (MBE) preferences. Nevertheless, members of all minority groups became equally eligible for these preferences….
Most MBE preferences now go to businesses owned by members of official minority groups who are not descendants of enslaved Americans. The ADOS population is dwarfed demographically by the combined population of Hispanics, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean and their descendants. The non-ADOS groups not only outnumber black Americans but on average have more of the economic, educational, and social capital needed to obtain government contracts.

Under current rules and norms, anyone with partial Asian or Hispanic ancestry going back at least to one’s grandparents and perhaps indefinitely can claim membership in those groups. Americans of mixed ancestry are generally willing to shift their self-identified racial or ethnic status to whatever currently benefits them….Within a generation or two, a large majority of Americans will be eligible for MBE preferences. If almost everyone is eligible for affirmative action preferences, they cease being meaningful. Limiting MBE preferences to fewer people may be the only way the preferences can be saved.

All this suggests that to the extent MBE preferences continue, the government should limit them primarily to the original intended beneficiaries, ADOS. Members of recognized Indian tribes who live on and perhaps very close to reservations, a much smaller demographic, should also be included. Such a limitation would have several advantages. First, ADOS and residents of Indian reservations are the two American groups whose ancestors suffered the most by far from state and private violence, oppression, and exclusion, with continuing reverberations today….

Finally, government-granted preferences to people based on their racial or ethnic category raise constitutional, ethical, and practical concerns. But neither descent from American slaves nor membership in an Indian tribe and residence on an Indian reservation is a racial category, as such [see Morton v. Mancari]. Black Americans born in Africa would no longer qualify for MBE preferences, nor would a Los Angeles resident who has one Native American great-grandparent from whom he inherited tribal membership.

I then turn to racial preferences in higher education:

The only purpose for which the Supreme Court permits university-level affirmative action is to enhance the “diversity” of a school’s student body for the benefit of all concerned…. Yet the way colleges go about achieving racial and ethnic diversity makes little sense if diversity per se is the objective, as opposed to using diversity as a subterfuge while pursuing other objectives.

First, many elite schools try to match their percentage of minority students from various groups with their respective percentages of the applicant pool or other demographic baseline. Approximately one-half of one percent of the American population identifies as Native American, compared to 18 percent as Hispanic. In an entering class of, say, one thousand, the one hundred and eightieth Hispanic student surely does not make the class more ethnically diverse than would the sixth Native American.

Moreover, universities often give little or no consideration to the fact that members of official minority groups “may have no interest whatsoever in the culture popularly associated with the group….” Meanwhile, the relevant official minority categories are themselves internally ethnically diverse, often radically so…. [Meanwhile, a] Yemeni Muslim student may add significant religious, ethnic, and cultural diversity to a campus. For campus affirmative action purposes, however, admissions offices classify her as just another non-Hispanikc white student. The same is true of an Egyptian Copt, a Hungarian Roma, a Bosnian refugee, a Scandinavian Laplander, a Siberian Tatar, a Bobover Hasid, and their descendants.”

Those who qualify for the African American category also are not culturally uniform [including everyone from an African immigrant with one white parent to descendants of American slaves]….
The Native American category is also extremely internally diverse [and fraudulent claims of Native American status are common]….

The best way forward for schools truly interested in attracting a diverse group of students would be to cease relying on crude government-imposed racial and ethnic classifications as a proxy for genuine diversity. As in the MBE context, affirmative action preferences, if pursued, should be limited to African American descendants of slaves and members of American Indian tribes who live on reservations. The goal of such preferences would not be diversity, but the righting historical injustices that have modern reverberations, and helping to bring marginalized groups into the American mainstream.

There is a risk, however, the Supreme Court would hold that the ADOS and Indian reservation resident categories are proxies for racial classifications and therefore presumptively unconstitutional.

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Court Asked To Block Punishment Of All Navy Members Seeking Religious Exemptions From Mandate

Court Asked To Block Punishment Of All Navy Members Seeking Religious Exemptions From Mandate

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A federal court that blocked punishment of 35 Navy members seeking religious exemptions to the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate should widen the ruling to cover any Navy personnel seeking an exception, lawyers said in a filing on Monday.

A Navy member gets a COVID-19 vaccine on Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Va., in a file image. (U.S. Navy/Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Jackson Adkins via The Epoch Times)

The complaint in the case, U.S. Navy SEALS 1-3 et. al v. Lloyd Austin et. al, was amended to a class-action effort.

That means the judge presiding over the case could widen the block of the mandate to the nearly 4,000 Navy active-duty or reserve members who are seeking religious exemptions.

“Our clients are boldly leading the fight against the vaccine mandate, but no service member should face discipline or punishment for following their faith,” Mike Berry, general counsel for First Liberty Institute, which is representing Navy personnel in the case, said in a statement.

“The fact that the military continues to demonstrate hostility to anyone who expresses religious objection to the vaccine mandate shows that the Biden Administration does not care about religious freedom. The lawsuit seeks to protect as many service members as possible from further punishment. We have to put a stop to this before any more harm is done to our national security,” he added.

The Navy has approved zero religious exemptions, and only two have been approved by the entire U.S. military. That runs afoul of federal law, including the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, plaintiffs asserted.

U.S. Judge Reed O’Connor, a George W. Bush nominee, agreed, ruling last month that the Navy does provide a process to apply for religious accommodations “but by all accounts, it is theater.”

“The Navy has not granted a religious exemption to any vaccine in recent memory. It merely rubber stamps each denial,” he added.

A Navy spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email shortly after the ruling that the branch “supports and respects the beliefs and religious practices of our Sailors.”

“Waivers for immunizations are balanced with operational readiness, unit cohesion, good order, discipline, health and safety,” the spokesperson said. “When this interferes with a member’s right to practice their faith according to the dictates of their conscience, the Navy works with the member to find ways to accommodate religious practice that are the least burdensome way possible for the member. All requests for religious accommodation, to include the COVID vaccine mandate, are handled in the same manner.”

Twenty-two Navy members have been discharged for refusing to get vaccinated as of Jan. 19.

The branch has only granted a single religious accommodation request since the beginning of 2015, according to documents filed in a different case challenging the military mandate, which was imposed by Austin, the secretary of defense, with support from President Joe Biden.

The amended complaint comes several days after Biden administration lawyers asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to overturn O’Connor’s preliminary injunction, which blocks punishment against the 35 Navy personnel as the case is decided by the courts.

The administration hasn’t yet submitted its argument as to why the injunction should be lifted. It was ordered by the court to provide certain information by Feb. 7, according to the docket.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/24/2022 – 17:14

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3KRqVKf Tyler Durden

IBM Jumps On “Strongest Revenue Growth In A Decade”, But A Closer Looks Reveals Same Old Accounting Gimmicks

IBM Jumps On “Strongest Revenue Growth In A Decade”, But A Closer Looks Reveals Same Old Accounting Gimmicks

Another quarter, and another masterclass by IBM at obfuscating financial reality, only this one actually worked unlike the last few quarters.

Moments ago IBM, which had seen its stock tumble after catastrophic Q3 earnings, then bounced near one-year highs only to slide over the past month into earnings alongside the rout in the broader market as traders seemingly forgot that the company is the biggest melting ice cube of all, reported non-GAAP operating EPS of $3.35, a number that as usual, has been exquisitely goalseeked to just beat expectations, which this quarter were $3.23.

More surprisingly, the company’s GAAP EPS was not that far off, at $2.72. This is unexpected for a company which traditionally had applied about a 100% “improvement” between its GAAP and non-GAAP Results.

First a quick reminder that today’s results were the first since IBM completed the spinoff of a large portion of its legacy infrastructure services unit in November into a new company called Kyndryl, which includes service operations like managing client data centers and traditional information-technology support. The divestment marked IBM’s fourth major transformation and a significant step in Chief Executive Officer Arvind Krishna’s plan to pivot Big Blue into cloud and artificial intelligence

So what’s going on here? Has IBM miraculously changed course, and is it no longer a melting ice cube? Of course not – one just has to look at the fine print to understand what is going on: as IBM reveals, the $2.5BN in net income (which translates into $2.72 in GAAP EPS), consisted of $1.5 billion in pre-tax charges for structural actions in Q4. Translation: more than half of the company’s Q4 earnings was an pro forma addback!

And since all the historical data is apples to oranges with the separation of Kyndryl (which was completed on Nov 3, 2021) serving as the divider line, and since historical data prior to the separation remains unadjusted, IBM was proud to boast that its Q4 revenue was $16.70 billion, beating the estimate of $16 billion and up 6.5% compared to Q4 2020…

… even though in absolute terms IBM’s revenue looks like this.

Suffice to say, wait until we have a full breakdown of historical revenues excluding Kyndrul before making any investment decisions based on top line changes.

“This is the start of the new IBM and perspective on what we look like going forward,” Chief Financial Officer Jim Kavanaugh said in an interview. “We saw a very healthy acceleration in cloud and consulting which are key growth areas.”

Of course, the obfuscation would only be complete if IBM also changed the reporting segments which it of course did, as follows:

  • Consulting segment (includes Business Transformation, Technology Consulting and Application Operations) revenue $4.75 billion, +13% y/y
  • Software (includes Hybrid Platform & Solutions, Transaction Processing) revenue $7.27 billion, +8.2% y/y
  • Infrastructure (includes Hybrid Infrastructure, Infrastructure Support) revenue $4.41 billion, -0.2% y/y
  • Financing revenue $172 million, -30% y/y

There was some genuinely good news: adjusted gross margin 56.9% just barely beat expectations of 56.1% but was down from 58.9% last year.

Going back to IBM’s bottom line, there was as usual much more, because the GAAP to non-GAAP bridge was, as usual, ridiculous and a continuation of an “one-time, non-recurring” addback trend that started so many years ago we can’t even remember when, but one thing is certain: none of IBM’s multiple-time, recurring charges are either one-time, or non-recurring.

 

We have said it before, but we’ll say it again: here is IBM’s “one-time, non-recurring” items In Q3 2021…

… and Q2 2020…

In Q1 2021…

… and Q4 2020…

… and Q3 2020…

And so on.

Commenting on the quarter, Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna said that “we increased revenue in the fourth quarter with hybrid cloud adoption driving growth in software and consulting. Our fourth quarter results give us confidence in our ability to deliver our objectives of sustained mid-single digit revenue growth and strong free cash flow in 2022.”

Maybe: we’ll wait until the conference call when IBM is expected to share its first guidance and expectations in almost two years.

And speaking of IBM’s cash flow target which the company disclosed previously as $11-$12BN, we assume that number is no longer meaningful after the Kyndryl separation, simply because the actual number was almost 50% lower!

As the company reveals, on a consolidated basis, full-year cash from operating activities was $12.8 billion and free cash flow was just $6.5 billion. These consolidated results include ten months of Kyndryl results, and reflect cash paid in 2021 for separation charges and fourth-quarter 2020 structural actions.

So to guide going forward, IBM’s post-separation baseline free cash flow for the year was $7.9 billion excluding Kyndryl charges and pre-separation activity, a view which is aligned to the company’s go-forward business. Payments for IBM-related structural actions and deferred cash taxes paid in 2021 contributed to the year-to-year decline in the post-separation baseline free cash flow.

IBM ended the year with $7.6 billion of cash on hand, down $6.7 billion from year-end 2020, reflecting acquisitions of $3.3 billion and debt reduction payments consistent with the company’s previously-stated intention to deleverage. We have said previously, that IBM’s decision to pay down debt will be ruinous for its stock as it means the company has no better use of cash (like investing, growing or M&A for example) than paying down debt at record low rates.

Debt, including Financing debt of $13.9 billion, totaled $51.7 billion, down $9.6 billion since the end of 2020, and down more than $21 billion since closing the Red Hat acquisition. The company returned $5.9 billion to shareholders in dividends.

But while there was more in the press release, including other red flags, the company’s ability to confise markets and give the impression that its revenues grew substantially was enough to send its stock higher after the close.

 

 

Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/24/2022 – 17:05

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3GU5k18 Tyler Durden

Affirmative Action Without Racial Preferences

The Supreme Court, as most readers surely know by know, has decided to hear appeals to two cases challenging racial and ethnic preferences in higher education. Assuming the Court is disinclined to allow the use of overt racial and ethnic preferences, is it possible that some version of affirmative action that takes ancestral “background” into account may be salvaged?

In my forthcoming book, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America, I suggest that the answer is yes, at least with regard to most African Americans and some Native Americans. (The book is not about affirmative action, but obviously a book on racial classifications is going to address that issue.)

The book describes how the familiar categories universities use to sort students by race and ethnicity–Asian American, Black/African American, Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latino, Native American, and White–came to be. To make a long story short, they were invented by the Office of Management and Budget in the 1970s to regularize statistics-keeping and reporting within the federal government. While “white” and “black” were familiar categories, almost no one considered themselves or anyone else to be Hispanic, “Latino” or “Asian” before 1970 [as opposed to Mexican, Cuban, Chinese, Japanese, etc.] and it was by no means inevitable that white ethnic groups like Cajuns, Italians, Poles, and Jews would be classified as generic whites.

The classifications the government came up with were never intended to be proxies for “diversity” in higher education or elsewhere, and they explicitly came with the caveat that the “classifications should not be interpreted as being scientific or anthropological in nature.” OMB warned that the categories also should not be “viewed as determinants of eligibility for participation in any Federal program,” such as affirmative action programs.

Nevertheless, because universities had to use these categories in reporting admissions statistics to the Department of Education, they almost immediately became affirmative action proxy categories. In the book, I first address the use of these categories in Minority Business Enterprise programs:

Businesses owned by African American descendants of slaves (ADOS) were the original primary intended beneficiaries of minority business enterprise (MBE) preferences. Nevertheless, members of all minority groups became equally eligible for these preferences….
Most MBE preferences now go to businesses owned by members of official minority groups who are not descendants of enslaved Americans. The ADOS population is dwarfed demographically by the combined population of Hispanics, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean and their descendants. The non-ADOS groups not only outnumber black Americans but on average have more of the economic, educational, and social capital needed to obtain government contracts.

Under current rules and norms, anyone with partial Asian or Hispanic ancestry going back at least to one’s grandparents and perhaps indefinitely can claim membership in those groups. Americans of mixed ancestry are generally willing to shift their self-identified racial or ethnic status to whatever currently benefits them….Within a generation or two, a large majority of Americans will be eligible for MBE preferences. If almost everyone is eligible for affirmative action preferences, they cease being meaningful. Limiting MBE preferences to fewer people may be the only way the preferences can be saved.

All this suggests that to the extent MBE preferences continue, the government should limit them primarily to the original intended beneficiaries, ADOS. Members of recognized Indian tribes who live on and perhaps very close to reservations, a much smaller demographic, should also be included. Such a limitation would have several advantages. First, ADOS and residents of Indian reservations are the two American groups whose ancestors suffered the most by far from state and private violence, oppression, and exclusion, with continuing reverberations today….

Finally, government-granted preferences to people based on their racial or ethnic category raise constitutional, ethical, and practical concerns. But neither descent from American slaves nor membership in an Indian tribe and residence on an Indian reservation is a racial category, as such [see Morton v. Mancari]. Black Americans born in Africa would no longer qualify for MBE preferences, nor would a Los Angeles resident who has one Native American great-grandparent from whom he inherited tribal membership.

I then turn to racial preferences in higher education:

The only purpose for which the Supreme Court permits university-level affirmative action is to enhance the “diversity” of a school’s student body for the benefit of all concerned…. Yet the way colleges go about achieving racial and ethnic diversity makes little sense if diversity per se is the objective, as opposed to using diversity as a subterfuge while pursuing other objectives.

First, many elite schools try to match their percentage of minority students from various groups with their respective percentages of the applicant pool or other demographic baseline. Approximately one-half of one percent of the American population identifies as Native American, compared to 18 percent as Hispanic. In an entering class of, say, one thousand, the one hundred and eightieth Hispanic student surely does not make the class more ethnically diverse than would the sixth Native American.

Moreover, universities often give little or no consideration to the fact that members of official minority groups “may have no interest whatsoever in the culture popularly associated with the group….” Meanwhile, the relevant official minority categories are themselves internally ethnically diverse, often radically so…. [Meanwhile, a] Yemeni Muslim student may add significant religious, ethnic, and cultural diversity to a campus. For campus affirmative action purposes, however, admissions offices classify her as just another non-Hispanikc white student. The same is true of an Egyptian Copt, a Hungarian Roma, a Bosnian refugee, a Scandinavian Laplander, a Siberian Tatar, a Bobover Hasid, and their descendants.”

Those who qualify for the African American category also are not culturally uniform [including everyone from an African immigrant with one white parent to descendants of American slaves]….
The Native American category is also extremely internally diverse [and fraudulent claims of Native American status are common]….

The best way forward for schools truly interested in attracting a diverse group of students would be to cease relying on crude government-imposed racial and ethnic classifications as a proxy for genuine diversity. As in the MBE context, affirmative action preferences, if pursued, should be limited to African American descendants of slaves and members of American Indian tribes who live on reservations. The goal of such preferences would not be diversity, but the righting historical injustices that have modern reverberations, and helping to bring marginalized groups into the American mainstream.

There is a risk, however, the Supreme Court would hold that the ADOS and Indian reservation resident categories are proxies for racial classifications and therefore presumptively unconstitutional.

The post Affirmative Action Without Racial Preferences appeared first on Reason.com.

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Joe Biden’s Problem Isn’t Bad Messaging. It’s Bad Policy.


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This Monday, Peter Suderman hosts Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and special guest Reason Senior Editor Elizabeth Nolan Brown! The Reason Roundtable discusses Joe Biden’s first year as president and National School Choice Week.

Discussed in the show:

1:56: One year of Joe Biden’s presidency.

16:47: Congress’ antitrust push.

34:34: Weekly Listener Question: So in a perfect world where the quality and safety of most schools available to a specific parent were commensurate, what criteria would they default to when choosing one? Specialty classes and opportunities would certainly be one of them but would many not desire for their children to be in an environment where people shared the same values or with other children “like them”? Whether this be based on race, class, political affiliation, or some other trait, in our hyper-polarized environment, could you imagine a world where parents and students self-segregate? While I firmly believe in the merits of individual choice, I also want to see a world where children of all backgrounds interact and learn from each other’s experiences. Diversity of class, race, and thought are essential for this to take place and to stop this worrying trend of polarization. While they’ve proven inordinately bad at providing equal opportunities to all students, public schools do in many cases force students of different backgrounds into the same building, which has its benefits. Am I being misanthropic here? Is there reason to believe that changing the system would also change the choice-making dynamic among parents for the better?

46:05: Joe Biden is thinking about moving warships to Eastern Europe.

50:55: Media recommendations for the week. (And click here for all of the Roundtable‘s media recommendations, ever.)

This week’s links:

Send your questions to roundtable@reason.com. Be sure to include your social media handle and the correct pronunciation of your name.

Today’s sponsors:

  • This episode is supported by The Long Time Academy, a new podcast about how to be a good ancestor. It’s a show about time, and how we think about time. The Long Time Academy is an audio documentary, but it also includes with practical exercises designed to expand your sense of time and help you be a good ancestor. Search for The Long Time Academy anywhere you listen to podcasts. Life is short. Time is long. The Long Time Academy.
  • If you feel something interfering with your happiness or holding you back from your goals, BetterHelp is an accessible and affordable source for professional counseling. BetterHelp assesses your needs and matches you with a licensed therapist you can start talking to in under 24 hours, all online.

Audio production by Ian Keyser
Assistant production by Regan Taylor
Music: “Angeline,” by The Brothers Steve

The post Joe Biden's Problem Isn't Bad Messaging. It's Bad Policy. appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/32wDOYK
via IFTTT

Joe Biden’s Problem Isn’t Bad Messaging. It’s Bad Policy.


headlines-00585-2

This Monday, Peter Suderman hosts Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and special guest Reason Senior Editor Elizabeth Nolan Brown! The Reason Roundtable discusses Joe Biden’s first year as president and National School Choice Week.

Discussed in the show:

1:56: One year of Joe Biden’s presidency.

16:47: Congress’ antitrust push.

34:34: Weekly Listener Question: So in a perfect world where the quality and safety of most schools available to a specific parent were commensurate, what criteria would they default to when choosing one? Specialty classes and opportunities would certainly be one of them but would many not desire for their children to be in an environment where people shared the same values or with other children “like them”? Whether this be based on race, class, political affiliation, or some other trait, in our hyper-polarized environment, could you imagine a world where parents and students self-segregate? While I firmly believe in the merits of individual choice, I also want to see a world where children of all backgrounds interact and learn from each other’s experiences. Diversity of class, race, and thought are essential for this to take place and to stop this worrying trend of polarization. While they’ve proven inordinately bad at providing equal opportunities to all students, public schools do in many cases force students of different backgrounds into the same building, which has its benefits. Am I being misanthropic here? Is there reason to believe that changing the system would also change the choice-making dynamic among parents for the better?

46:05: Joe Biden is thinking about moving warships to Eastern Europe.

50:55: Media recommendations for the week. (And click here for all of the Roundtable‘s media recommendations, ever.)

This week’s links:

Send your questions to roundtable@reason.com. Be sure to include your social media handle and the correct pronunciation of your name.

Today’s sponsors:

  • This episode is supported by The Long Time Academy, a new podcast about how to be a good ancestor. It’s a show about time, and how we think about time. The Long Time Academy is an audio documentary, but it also includes with practical exercises designed to expand your sense of time and help you be a good ancestor. Search for The Long Time Academy anywhere you listen to podcasts. Life is short. Time is long. The Long Time Academy.
  • If you feel something interfering with your happiness or holding you back from your goals, BetterHelp is an accessible and affordable source for professional counseling. BetterHelp assesses your needs and matches you with a licensed therapist you can start talking to in under 24 hours, all online.

Audio production by Ian Keyser
Assistant production by Regan Taylor
Music: “Angeline,” by The Brothers Steve

The post Joe Biden's Problem Isn't Bad Messaging. It's Bad Policy. appeared first on Reason.com.

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