Keep in mind that your targeted individual can't be tested without a warrant, no matter what the coke-using informant does to the cup. They could probably get a warrant if the coke-using informant says the target is a junkie, but the test isn't actually proof of anything illegal (remember: using drugs is technically legal, it's possessing them before you've taken them that's the problem). They might be able to use to get a warrant for the target's house, and plant some drugs or something in the toilet; but the informant's word the target had drugs would probably be enough for that too.

In other words, this test is not gonna make the drug war worse.

A private companys is by definition not managing things so that the people get the best use of their resource, it's managing things so that it's owners personal well-being is maximized. That could mean either a) maximizing revenue in the short term by ignoring long-term planning, b) finding ways to put competitors to the owners out of business, and/or c) engaging in the owners ideological hobby horse.

It is by definition less transparent then the government because private corporations only have disclosure requirements if they're publicly traded, and since there's no Congress to keep them honest they're notorious for shading things.

For example, let's say the owners decide that global warming is a great threat to their business, and therefore decide to dramatically cut the water allocation to anyone who is using it to raise cattle. Which will incidentally create a huge allocation that the largest shareholder's tomato farm could use. Depending on the exact wording of the contract the ranchers could lose their entire allocation immediately. They're definitely screwed whenever the next contract is negotiated.

The minutes of the meeting where the decision was made can't be FOIA'd because they are private records. Information on whether the company is telling the truth that the tomato farm is paying more then the ranchers is impossible to get without a lawsuit, which may (or may not) be possible under the exact text of the relevant contract, and won't help them anyway because cattle need water every day and they ain't getting none during the lawsuit. You've established there's no Federal legislation in this at all, which means Congress can bitch/moan/and actually do jack-squat.

I'd guess that intellectually they know Dubya got into Yale, but they got here by being perfect in school and hitting that test score exactly, and so they moved heaven and earth so their kid could hit the test score; and everyone went "gee, another guy named Singh with a perfect GPA, a 2300 SAT, and a whole bunch of clubs which are all known to be helpful on college applications, but absolutely no personality of his own; why don't we let him attend a state school where they don't already have 15 of those."

That would suck as a parent, particularly if your life experience back in India is that the best guy from a the equivalent second-tier-public-school has a worse career then their equivalent of Harvard.

They can't do that. Literally. It's illegal.

They can look at someone whose application is absolutely perfect, with great test scores, a 5.0 GPA (note: I have never met a person with a soul who got a 5.0), has numerous clubs listed that were clearly selected mostly because they're the kinds of club that one joins if one wants to get into Harvard, has a bland and uninformative but objectively perfect essay, etc. and conclude this person is a boring-ass-motherfucker with no personality outside of his/her mother's insistence he/she do well in school and say "fuck that guy" in favor of the person who got a 3.8 and wrote an essay about how they want to get into Harvard because they really fucking hate helping mom at the store.

Statistically speaking the former are almost certainly either a) Asian American or b) Indian American. There isn't enough info to tell the race of the latter guy.

Homeowner's associations aren't for-profit. And it'd be very hard for anyone who didn't read the actual case law to know the difference between them and a governmental body that happens to be totally unbound by the Constitution.

A for-profit River authority would be even more subject to lobbying and crony capitalism then the Feds, because you could simply buy the organization and use it to put your rivals out of business.

Strictly speaking my parents actually used pre-school to get me and my sister into a very good University.

We lived in Detroit, and the school options were a) shitty neighborhood schools, b) expensive private schools, and c) a K-8 magnet School called Golightly that always had a waiting list. But the Wayne State University pre-school (which happened to be in the Projects) had a direct pipe-line to Golightly.

So we went to pre-school in the Projects, my mom swears she only had to duck and cover due to gunfire once, and we got into Golightly. Which prepared us for Detroit's magnet High School placement test, and the magnet High Schools have such a good reputation with the University of Michigan that it's quite easy to get admitted if you have a decent GPA and acceptable test scores. Kirsten actually ended up being paid to go there because tuition was covered by a Wade McCree scholarship, room and board was covered by the 529 they'd bought when she was three to pay for tuition at an in-stste-school; and the Drama department loved her so much they were giving her a couple grand scholarship.

Altho to be fair, I'm pretty sure the entire reason we were living in Detroit was to avoid people like your neighbors. They sound quite punchable.

They have her essay. They have the rest of her application, which will include her after-school activities. They know the name and reputation of her High School. Most High Schools with 8 AP classes are not the kind of place where mom allows you to work after-school to make money. In quite a few cases they will have spoken with the counselor at that High School. I went to a less selective school, and they actually sent an admissions officer to my High School to interview kids in person. So they don't know 100%, but they can make a damn good guess.

They probably get it wrong sometimes, but they get it less wrong then they would if they just created a computer algorithm and put raw numbers into it.

That's actually the point of the "holistic" policies they're suing to over-turn.

The problem is that the race of people who a) really know how to game the system to get the best college application possible and b) actually do so is overwhelmingly Asian. Plenty of white people know how, but the Asian 5-6% really includes a lot of people who treat their kid's High School career like a min/maxed D&D character. Except they don't let the kid play D&D because that doesn't look good on a college application.

OTOH, the race of the class you need to give help, because their Mom doesn't actually know she should be planning for college in the 8th grade, is overwhelmingly not-Asian. It's probably plurality white (there are so many white people in this country it's hard for anything to not be majority white), but there's a lot of blacks and hispanics in there too.

So class-based affirmative action is not much different in outcome to discriminating against all Asians. And if you're the mom who just devoted 5-6 years to making your child miserable so he could get into fucking Harvard, you're not gonna be happy that a) you managed to hit all the numeric targets necessary, while b) you did not get in because they decided the smartest working class Mexican kid from Texas would be a better fit then the 37th-smartest John Park from Sausalito.

Pretty much my entire High School class got into U of Michigan under an older version of Affirmative Action that allowed for explicit racial preferences. You actually got points for being black, or being a white kid who went to a mostly black school (which nobody talks about, because of course I -- white boy Nick Benjamin -- got points to go to the University of Michigan, but black chicks named 'Toya clearly had no moral right to such a thing). We did fine. The black kids actually did better then the white kids. And by white kids I mean me and April, because Jessica went to MSU.

The black kids who fail are not the ones who end up in highly selective schools, and spend their entire fucking careers convincing half-oinformed white people that they aren't "affirmative Action hires;". They're the ones who end up in part-time programs and are struggling to balance work, their studies, and a kid.

The thing you have to worry about in those cases is that you get a University where every single fucking kid is part of the upper middle class. Why?

Because they're the people who enter 9th grade thinking about how everything the kid does will look on a college application. They're the people who find out that the only way to get all the AP classes at this particular High School is take this particular Honors Course Freshman year, and use the prerequisite to take two more Sophomore year, which qualify for three AP classes and two honors classes Junior year, and senior year you only take four classes because what kind of moron would destroy their GPA by taking Gym?

Or test time. Who do you think schedules a PSAT, then gets their kid to the first possible SAT as a practice, then hires a coach to make sure the kid's weak spots get addressed, then repeats until the right score hits?

The answer is quite simple: somebody who has no fucking clue what the first day of deer season is because they don't like guns and they're not too cool with eating meat.

Don't give a shit about the melanin count. It's actually illegal to give a shit about melanin count in a quantifiable sense.

Do give a shit that folks like Mitt Romney can arrange it so their kids maximize their SAT scores and GPAs, while using their superior knowledge of the college admissions process to ensure that when their kid spends a couple months obsessed with silly-ass hobby it's something that colleges give points for (ie: computer programming) rather then something they consider more suited to the hoi polloi (ie: learning to be a car mechanic).

Most Affirmative Action programs that have survived the court system look at the "whole student," so that a kid from a school system that has no AP classes doesn't get penalized for not having those classes, particularly compared to the kid whose Mom got them above 4.0 by refusing to let little Timmy take anything but the 5 AP classes offered his senior year. They look at the numbers, but they are allowed to consider the fact that, yes, little Timmy has GPA and test scores in the top 4%, but compared to his actual peers at $50k a year Prep Schools he's more like 12th percentile. OTOH Billy Bob from West Virginia was top in his class, spent time doing things that look shitty on a college resume (like hunting and car races), and he still got a test score in the top 5%.

Billy Bob could be taught to be the smartest man in the country. Timmy from Prep School is gonna be lucky if he turns into Dubya.

The problem with that is that nobody wants to marry a working class guy with a part-time gig in retail, but nobody wants to give working-class guys without a very nice degree and some good networking skills any other type of job.

If they try to get ahead by getting that college education, some Tiger Mother will notice their mother didn't make their applications 100% perfect, and sue the school for racial discrimination because the white/asian-types who have perfect apps are racially different then the black-Latin-white types who make up the working class.

Note that the obvious solution (having Harvard accept lots more kids) is untenable because part of the USNews college ranking formula is how many kids they say no to.

That would be nice.

But wouldn't solve the problem that working class guys are unmarryable in the first place.

Depends on what you mean by qualified.

If you're looking for the kid whose actual talent level is top 1%, then a valedictorian from a school with few AP classes, whose SAT score is low because he had to spend his off-hours working at his dad's gas station is a really good bet. Especially if he got a 95th percentile on the test. You know he didn't spend 20 hours a week with an SAT coach. He's probably actually a lot better then 95th percentile.

OTOH a rich tiger daughter, whose mother insisted she take 8 AP classes, was not allowed to do any extracurricular activities that don't add mondo points to the student-selection algorithm (ie: classical violin rather then rock guitar), and got 96th percentile. You know she did spend 20 hours a week with an SAT coach. Let's just say she's probably not gonna do better then 96th percentile in real life.

But any criteria solely for accepting applicants based on points, GPA, test scores, etc. is gonna result in her getting in 100% of the time.

So who is this mysterious third "private party"?

If it's a for-profit entity you've just sold the water on the Colorado river to a bunch of shareholders, which not good.

If it's a non-profit it has to be one with a Federal charter, because it's operating in multiple states. It's got a remit that includes law enforcement actions because it's deciding who gets to use river water. Many, many hated Federal Agencies are not that different in structure then this. For example, there would be very little difference between this and the FCC.

The series doesn't stop there. By book nine ("Ashes of Victory") he's advanced them to WW2-style carrier combat. He's also added some things that have very little modern real life analogue (pod-laying dreadnoughts, for example).

But a big part of the series appeal is to folks who are interested in military history. I sincerely doubt that anyone else has based an entire Star Empire on references to a mid-18th century monarch of a country that does not currently exist, yet he turned Frederick the Great of Prussia into the Andaman Empire. And the background even made some sense.

Bullshit. Let's say you set up this system and there's a drought year. There's less water then has been sold on the private market.

The Court in Utah can't have jurisdiction over a theft that took place in Colorado, and can't force a Colorado rancher to appear. The Judge in Colorado is subject to retention elections. He isn't gonna rule farmer Bob is evil for taking his full allocation.

But even that's assuming a Federal rule of some sort. Why? Because to sue for property rights you have to establish standing, that means you have to show that there's a very concrete dispute between you (and only you) and your opponent (and only him). If you;re one of 300 farmers in Utah with a cut of the river, and one of 200 farmers in Colorado is taking more of his cut then he should, that's a harm shared by 300 farmers in Utah and everyone downstream of that guy in Colorado. Under current private property law you do not have the right to sue. So no, under state private property law you cannot deal with water rights on the Colorado River.

There needs to be a Federal rule (probably a statute), disputes need to be resolvable in Federal Court, and the Federal Marshal's service has to enforce the rulings.