Women and minority owned business requirements

[woofner]

This act of political correctness will cost $6 million.

The practice of not hiring equivalently qualified women and minorities for the first two centuries of this country's existence cost a hell of a lot more than $6m. If government equality in hiring practices were required of the private sector we would quickly and significantly reduce our spending on social services.

not factoring in the costs of not building it.

What exactly are the costs of not building a bridge connecting a small city to farmland that's 10 minutes away from another bridge?

[UptownSport]

I'm sure private enterprise would be able to create many more jobs if they overpaid their vendors, but they're not in the business of creating jobs upstream in the supply chain since it is nearly always in opposition to providing the best value for their customers.

Yes, our private sector saviors

[Neptune]

The practice of not hiring equivalently qualified women and minorities for the first two centuries of this country's existence cost a hell of a lot more than $6m. If government equality in hiring practices were required of the private sector we would quickly and significantly reduce our spending on social services.

Oh, barf. This is a $6 million handout to fund a race-based quota system. Government does many valuable things, but funding White Guilt programs is not one of them.

[woofner]

Oh, barf. This is a $6 million handout to fund a race-based quota system. Government does many valuable things, but funding White Guilt programs is not one of them.

What is wrong with a race-based quota system in a country that was founded on racial discrimination? I agree if the problem is that it is limited to government agencies and their contractors rather than being required of all employers.

Guilt is an emotion that has nothing to do with it, by the way. There are very real social and economic consequences to two centuries of racial discrimination in the USA that are costing us very real money today. I can link to stats on economic indicators by race and government social spending by race if you are too lazy or stupid to look them up, but give me a few days.

[MNdible]

I don't disagree with the underlying issues you're pointing to, but in my experience, these programs are a very ineffective way to remedy the situation. They tend to enrich a very small number of already wealthy individuals, and encourage some very cynical gaming of the system.

[woofner]

I would agree that it's the least we could do, and as a result can be distorted and engender corruption. I have also experienced that result, but have also experienced results in which it seemed to help firms that were hurting for work.

[mplsjaromir]

Helping minority contractors is pretty close to least the federal government can do at this point.

It just so happens that Ta-Nehisi Coats has been spending lots of time on the subject. I recommend his blog to anyone, he is a fantastic writer. Ta-Nehisi

The gist of his argument is that through statutory and social policies, minorities were given a different deal than whites in this country, housing, education, jobs. I recommend reading all he has written on the subject. This quote really sums it up for me:

One retort that people often make when discussing the history of racism is "We should not dwell on the past." It's an opportunistic claim--no one looks at July 4 and says "We should not dwell on the past." But more to the point, this is not the distant past. The men and women who suffered at the hands of the FHA and the racist aspects of New Deal legislation are very much alive today. Furthermore, their children are alive and the effects of that policy on the country are fairly obvious. We know what we want to know. We believe the ghetto is manifestation of individual will and amorphous culture values because that is what we would prefer to think. It's not so much that we don't want to dwell on the past, so much as we want to choose our past.