August 01, 2001

Lott on Civil Rights

John Lott debunks the report of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, despite attempts to silence him.

The [Democratic] majority [on the Commission] has consistently acted to stifle debate. First, the commission report was leaked to the New York Times before minority Republican members were even given a copy. Then the majority refused to provide their data to the minority before a Senate hearing last month. As noted earlier, they are still unwilling to explain how they calculated their results. Despite promises to the Senate that the minority report would be disseminated by the commission, the majority decided two weeks ago to allow only the portions of the minority report that omitted any references to the research that I had done.
Because the majority refused to provide the minority commissioners with any resources for a statistical analysis, I agreed to do such work without compensation. Despite numerous precedents to the contrary, the majority now argues that only work by consultants paid by the commission can be included in any dissent. Amazingly, the minority is not even allowed to cite my work regarding the Florida elections. How then is the minority supposed to be able to produce any contrary evidence? What is the majority afraid of?

Rational debate. The wolf-criers are always afraid of rational debate since it detracts from their appeals to emotion. Lott may be a brilliant economist and statistician, but politically, he's a babe in the woods.

Posted by wasylik at August 1, 2001 02:14 PM