At least some organic and other small farmers suggest the bill would be a disaster for their way of life. Maybe that’s just paranoia run rampant. Or maybe they’re right: Consider the largely liberal, countercultural artisanal toy makers who found themselves making common cause with right-wing congressmen and free-market interest groups after the Chinese toy scare led to new regulations on the manufacture of children’s toys—detailed in the excellent Reason magazine article, Dangerous Toys, Strange Bedfellows a couple months ago.

But I digress.

The small farm movement has launched a letter-writing campaign, which has led to a ton of letters like this one:

Sadey this well intended bill is a disaster for small farms and does not address the fact that agribusiness farms are at the heart of compromising food safety and yet they are not the ones who will be over regulated by this bill.

I urge you to stop this nonesense of trying to regulate at a federal level a matter that is best suited for State management.

Small local organic farms will be what feeds this nation as oil peaks and people are now demanding, in ever greater numbers, food from these safe clean sources.  This bill as an attempt to over regulate small farms and is government regulation at it’s worst.

And that’s it. The letter never says what “this bill” refers to. It doesn’t identify the “you” who is supposed to “stop this nonsense.“ If you read that in the paper, you’d have no idea what the heck the writer was talking about. 

In most cases, letters like that are generated by websites where someone has read about an issue and been urged to write a letter about it. They dash off a few lines about whatever it is they have just read in a template and hit send to direct the letter simultaneously to members of Congress, an advocacy group’s petition, and multiple media outlets. Sort of like what you can do here.

Sometimes, people will ask, “Why the heck did you run such-and-such a letter?“ Sometimes, the answer is: Well, it was better than the alternative. . .

We’re concerned about the impact on employers who want to comply with the law and do not want to discriminate ... and it’s not clear how to do that.

Precisely. That was the case before the Ricci decision and probably afterward. Employers can’t do anything that has a disparate impact on minorities, but many things they might do to avoid a disparate impact could be discriminatory as well. Good luck to ‘em!

P.S. Many of those quoted in the story say they want clarity, and who can blame them? But clarity shouldn’t automatically win the day. Jim Crow was pretty clear. Apartheid was pretty clear. Didn’t make them right!

P.P.S. What’s wrong with the bright-line clarity of “Thou shalt not discriminate on the basis of race, period”?

P.P.P.S.What’s wrong with it (say some) is that it does not produce the outcomes desired by those who view justice in terms of outcomes rather than processes:

In a 1971 decision, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a test that was “fair in form, but discriminatory in operation” could violate Title VII even without proof that the discrimination was intentional. Congress eventually amended Title VII to codify that decision, Griggs v. Duke Power. The rule was clear: if a job requirement produced a “disparate impact,” the employer had the burden of showing that the requirement was actually necessary.

Federal agencies, in turn, stepped forward to define the statistical disparity that prompted the further inquiry. Under the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s “four-fifths rule,” a test that one racial group passed at less than 80 percent the rate of another group would place an employer in presumptive violation of Title VII.

The computer industry is journalists in their 20s standing in awe of entrepreneurs in their 30s who are hiring salesmen in their 40s and 50s and paying them in the 60s and 70s to bring their marketing into the ‘80s.