Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley’s image to the outside world is that most American of conceits – a meritocracy where people are rewarded for what they know not who they know. The meritocracy myth has taken a series of hits lately as major firms have disclosed that the companies are overwhelmingly owned and operated by white men with privileged backgrounds.

Combine the employee demographics with recent reviews of the history of Silicon Valley that show it is mostly a product of government subsidy – particularly the Department of Defense - and the legends of bootstrapping entrepreneurs making a dent in the universe seem considerably inaccurate and self-serving. Not to mention the role government research has played in the founding and product development of most of the major Silicon Valley companies from Apples Macintosh to Google’s algorithm.

But Silicon Valley has nothing if not a grasp on public relations. There even exists a go-to excuse for why the valley looks so different than much of America – not enough qualified people to join the white male incumbents. The problem? A recent analysis by USA Today reveals that there are more than enough qualified minorities to fill the jobs Silicon Valley has available.

Top universities turn out black and Hispanic computer science and computer engineering graduates at twice the rate that leading technology companies hire them, a USA TODAY analysis shows. Technology companies blame the pool of job applicants for the severe shortage of blacks and Hispanics in Silicon Valley…

On average, just 2% of technology workers at seven Silicon Valley companies that have released staffing numbers are black; 3% are Hispanic. But last year, 4.5% of all new recipients of bachelor’s degrees in computer science or computer engineering from prestigious research universities were African American, and 6.5% were Hispanic, according to data from the Computing Research Association. The USA TODAY analysis was based on the association’s annual Taulbee Survey, which includes 179 U.S. and Canadian universities that offer doctorates in computer science and computer engineering.

In other words, no, there is not a “shortage” of qualified minorities that can work in the tech sector.. Silicon Valley just likes a certain type of employee with a certain type of background. That doesn’t mean those that are working in Silicon Valley are not competent it does mean that getting hired is not all a function of being the best person for the job.

Though based on some recent court cases it may be awhile before workers of any background get properly compensated. Of course to have your wages stolen you have to get hired in the first place.

In my continuing quest to improve how polling is conducted around marijuana policy I want to point out what I consider to be the least useful way to ask a marijuana question. This is from High Point University Poll:

There are several reasons why it is a bad idea to combine marijuana legalization and medical marijuana into a single question. They should also be asked separately.

First, it is very easy for people to misinterpret poll questions with multiple parts like this. When pollster try to combine these questions they often leave out the critical fact that recreational marijuana would be tax and regulated or the important clause that personal use would be legal in addition to medical use. For example, a voter might support legalization for adults but consider allowing medical marijuana much more important so “medical use” is closer to their view. This would under count support for legalization.

More significantly, allowing legitimate patients to use cannabis for medical purposes should not be considered part of some spectrum of how people think the law should treat recreational use. These are separate issues that were only combined because the idiots, drug warriors, and political cowards in our federal government refuse to recognize the science showing marijuana medical value. After all there are many “hard drugs,” like cocaine, methamphetamine and morphine, which are legal for legitimate medical purposes but that has no impact on how people think the recreational use of these drugs should be treated under the law.

If a pollster insists on trying to put people’s opinion about marijuana on a spectrum they should at least make it only about recreational use. For example, the poll could ask something like: do you think adults using marijuana at home should be punished with jail time, only a $100 ticket, or personal marijuana use should be legal under a taxed and regulated system?

Jon Walker is the author of After Legalization: Understanding the future of marijuana policy

The fantasist is a hard creature to tame, if for no other reason than he or she always has somewhere outside of reality to escape to when the facts get harsh. So it is with President Obama’s self-admitted fantasy of having moderate Syrian rebel forces aligned with US interests that can alter the reality on the ground in Syria. Despite abysmal results so far, Obama and company can not let go of the dream.

Rather then dropping the delusion of having “moderate” rebels prevail after the Free Syrian Army collapsed and joined with ISIS and Al Qaeda, the Obama Administration is trying to build a new moderate rebel army to fight ISIS, from scratch. Somehow the lesson of failing to have a force that can gain local support and overtake jihadists on the ground was to try an even more audacious plan of implanting fighters into the conflict from an organization wholly organized and structured by the US government.

Seriously.

For most of the three years of the Syrian conflict, the U.S. ground game hinged on rebel militias that are loosely affiliated under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, or FSA. Their problems were no secret: a lack of cohesion, uneven fighting skills and frequent battlefield coordination with the al Qaida loyalists of the Nusra Front.

This time, Allen said, the United States and its allies will work to strengthen the political opposition and make sure it’s tied to “a credible field force” that will have undergone an intense vetting process. “It’s not going to happen immediately,” Allen said. “We’re working to establish the training sites now, and we’ll ultimately go through a vetting process and beginning to bring the trainers and the fighters in to begin to build that force out.”

This time will be different might as well be the slogan for US foreign policy in the Middle East. Policies that have led to wasting trillions of dollars, shedding oceans of blood, and having nothing really to show for it but contagious smirks at the UN when a US official says the word “democracy” into a microphone.

President Obama is never more intellectually formidable than when he channels his inner-Hamlet and critiques his own reasoning. His self-critique that “former doctors, farmers, pharmacists” were never going to be a real fighting force – i.e. the Free Syrian Army was doomed – turned out to be correct. Of course, this time the rebel fighters might not be former professionals but people who just want the money – like those that joined the Iraqi National Army. What could go wrong?

Don’t think about it too much. Just see what you want to believe.