Howard Adamsky's emphatic post on the OFCCP Internet Applicant Rule, while overheated, is interesting to me for a number of reasons.   

First is my long and extensively documented disgust with the rule.  I don't think keywords are a prevailing or even material tool of discrimination (but I do think names and ZIP codes are). I think the economic impact of the rule is way beyond $100 million (the threshold a rule must not cross to avoid an actual cost/benefit analysis by executive order).  I think the rule is unconstitutional as hell because you are forced to report to the government which of your own documents you have read.    

But more noticeable to me lately is how much politics have infused themselves into business.  I can remember a time not so long ago when business etiquette tended toward euphemism when politics entered the stage, and smooth operators kept indications of political leanings to a minimum (beyond healthy admiration of a dollar, which now sadly seems to have disappeared as well).

See the politics creeping in there?   It's hard to keep politics at bay day-to-day when events have names like credit crunch, housing meltdown, war, peak oil, and torture.  I don't really want to think about the implications of a truly evolved totalitarian / capitalist government driven by an ideology of profit for a two class system of owners and everyone else.  (naturally the ownership class will be more finely graded than Olympic figure skating, but that's human beings fer ya...) 

All I want is to do is my bit to help make it happen.  After all, talent management may be the killer app for social control. 

Howard compares the rule to SOX, as did Kurt Ronn (in a BusinessWeek online article), but in opposite ways.  Kurt argued that the rule is better than bad, its good- because process gives structure, and structure is good.  I strongly disagreed with Kurt because bad process gives bad structure.  SOX provides for reasonable generalized control objectives relating to accounting and on the whole, while expensive, seems to have turned out well. The OFCCP rule, on the other hand, is unreasonable, far too specific, and has had no good results yet (I have no information about results because I have yet to hear of any enforcement actions).    I'll say this for Kurt; from his comment on Howard's post, he remains sanguine about the potential for abuse and the slippery slope on this one.   

Howard, on the other hand, compares it to SOX as both being examples of bad regulations.  I disagree for the same reasons; SOX seems to be OK.

But then Howard has to bring Al Gore into it.  And to finish with a real flourish, he has to bring Ayn Rand, the Ann Coulter of her day, into it.  And then Colin Kingsbury had to bring global warming into it, along with a cite of Whittaker Chambers, just to show his range.  So the whole thing went political.   

Colin throws out the sophistry that:

"OFCCP regulations apply to a very specific group of companies, namely, those who do a significant amount of government contracting. No government contracts, no OFCCP compliance requirements."  

When we are facing a government of 40% of GDP in a generation that is not a sustainable position.   

Colin says about climate change that "generalized guilt and suspicion of progress and wealth underlies much of the current global warming frenzy" Maybe its just suspicion of the wealthy that's the driver.....but I don't really think that it is.  I think it's the ease with which anyone can do a simple thought experiment to figure out the issue:  

1) Park your car in your garage and close the door, but keep the engine running.   What happens?  

2) Multiply your garage's volume by a some billions and do a powertrain upgrade on your car to a billion internal combustion engines, and leave the whole rig running in your big garage for 100 years.  What happens ?

Old Whittaker and I agree- Atlas Shrugged sucked as both novel and philosophy.   I find it a little unsettling that as he utterly destroys Atlas Shrugged he culminates with a foreshadowing of our current polarized body politic: 

"In an age like ours, in which a highly complex technological society is everywhere in a high state of instability, such answers, however philosophic, translate quickly into political realities. And in the degree to which problems of complexity and instability are most bewildering to masses of men, a temptation sets in to let some species of Big Brother solve and supervise them. "

Howard too culminates with a warning, and thats what makes his post special and well worth writing about:

"I get the feeling they are looking at the recruiting industry closely, very closely. You never wanted to work for the government? Guess what: You already are, and you ain't seen nothin' yet."

The OFCCP Rule is nothing but Big Brotherism and should be vigorously fought at every turn, not "accepted" as a stage on the way to perdition.