As IF Times

link  Supreme Court rules in favor of 6,000 black applicants for Chicago firefighter jobs – latimes.com.

This will be interesting.  If one reads the linked article closely, one won’t find anything about the firefighter’s exam that excluded race, at least not that I can see.  On a job competency test, the threshold needed to pass for consideration to be a firefighter was a score above 89, a threshold which was applied after receiving 26,000 applicants for only a few hundred jobs.  I’ll assume the test is more than asking candidates which is the working end of the hose.

Somehow, this has transmogrified into a racial issue with potential estimated damages of over $100 million payable to aggrieved candidates.  !!!  This will be interesting not because of the debate over the common sense of the issue, but because the dispute is centered in Chicago, home of the President AND hizzoner Mayor Richard Daley, who will each wind up on opposite sides of the battle.  If the city loses, they will have to pony up $100 real large, money which they don’t have.  If  the city wins, it will be seen as another blow to Obama’s allies.

But before we discuss this, there are some aspects to the statistics that were not revealed.  While the article states that 6000 blacks were excluded because of the “arbitrary” cutoff line of the test scores, how many whites were excluded as well?  How many Asians? How  many Hispanics?  Were there any blacks that tested over the threshold score? If so, does this not preclude a racial issue and instead create an issue of aptitude?   Apparently, experts insist that even with much lower scores than the threshold, people could become competent firefighters.  Perhaps.  But in the real world, people will choose the best available quality item that their purchasing power will allow.  If this is not evidently common sense, it’s because there are lawyers involved. 

For me, I cannot recall a time when shopping for food, that I didn’t try to select the best apples or bunch of bananas in the produce area.  I’m pretty sure I’ve never selected the off color product thinking, what the heck, it’s  all the same.   In the case of spending taxpayer dollars, why wouldn’t the city try to get the best candidates possible for the job as a matter of duty to the taxpayers?  Whether the civil servant is a firefighter, policeman or ambulance driver, the public should expect that the employees have gone through some kind of competency filter not a quota system.  When your house is aflame, you don’t want to be directing the fireman where to point the hose. The race of the guy holding the hose is irrelevant.   If a city cannot set some kind of standards for hires ( and remember we’re talking civil servants here), why have any at all? Just hire people on a  first come first served basis. 

In fact, think of how this policy would greatly expand the supply of doctors in the country.  Overnight, the applicants to medical school would skyrocket and the health care crisis is solved!  As we all know, they’ve essentially done this to driver’s tests, since competency is clearly not required, at least not  in our town. The only other area of work that has no test for competence is politics and look where that’s got us.

However, as said earlier, the interesting part of this story will be how the opposing factions resolve the issue.  There are some pretty powerful and vested interests here and the implications are far reaching.  Kind of like two mafia groups fighting for dominance over turf, except in this case, they’re all members of the same family.  This will be better than Godfather 2.

link So why did Floyd Landis spend $2 million on his defense? – Game On!: Covering the Latest Sports News.

Another scandal.  We’re shocked that somone would lie for personal gain.   Recently, Connecticut congressman Blumenthal was outed for misleading people about his Vietnam service.  To this day, he claims it was a misunderstanding and that a few misplaced words cast him in a bad light.

!!!

Years ago, we witnessed the Canadian sprinter  Ben Johnson steroid scandal, then the Florence Joyner incident after that.  Now this incident comes to light which threatens to rope in Lance Armstrong as well.  Landis is especially contemptuous because he actually spent $2 million dollars defending his known misdeed!  So he knew he did it, but figured that if he spent enough money, he could get away with it.  That in  a nutshell is the calculus that goes through the minds of people who cheat.  They assess the pros and cons of a cheat and decide to go ahead if benefits outweigh the detriments.

 How did our society become so lacking in integrity and conscience?  It’s useless to discuss the issue of morals because I’m sure in every other aspect of these people’s lives, they would consider themselves to be moral. It’s only in the big things that affect their lives that morality is set aside.  The pull of fame, fortune or power is enough to overcome any trite concerns about morality for these people.  The worst part of these kinds of scandals is that over time, a  huge callous of cynicism develops on the public psyche.  When we hear of super feats achieved by some athlete, in the back of our minds, we expect that there’s an angle to it.  From home run records in baseball, to running, to cycling, we’ve seen scandals in all these sports.  Does that mean we have to go back and place asterisks beside championship records?

In politics, it’s expected that liberties will be taken with the truth at any given opportunity.  Little wonder that most thinking people hold politicians with such disregard if not contempt.  Usually, it’s the outright impossible lies that we hear, the ones that pander to a naive audience, such as balancing the budget, reducing the deficit, equality for all or fixing global warming.  Those are transparent and people actually expect those lies.  Kind of like enhanced breasts on a porn star.  Everyone knows they’re fake, but so what.  But when it comes to lies about personal achievements, it speaks to character and such lies should not be tolerated by the populace regardless of partisan leanings. 

In the case of athletes, well, it’s entertainment and people will believe what they want to believe, but in the more serious theater of politics, character is everything.  If someone can look into the eyes of constituents and tell a verifiable bold face lie, then nothing the person says has any credibility regardless of intent or circumstance.  I’m fond of old sayings because there’s often wisdom in them.  The one that comes to mind here is that people deserve the government they get.

But to me, the most galling thing about cheating and lying on the part of public figures is the implied contempt for everyone being misled.  It’s as if the perps think that the public is too stupid to simply check the facts.  Unfortunately, there is precedent for these assumptions.  The public has been misled on all kinds of things and often, the same things.  The Lucy and Charlie Brown football scenario comes to mind.  At the moment, only the most naive or partisan person could possibly believe the pronouncements being foisted on the public by those in charge.  Like congressman Blumenthal, the present administration contemptuously believes that people will not be able to simply verify that their pronouncements are just categorically untrue.

Given that politicians are mainly lawyers and this administration is no exception, mendacity is a required trait for success in that racket.  Interestingly an article written recently for the U.K. Telegraph, here, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/7730522/Lying-children-will-grow-up-to-be-successful-citizens.html  actually characterises kids who can lie effectively in early life as being successful in adult life.  So, they imply fibbing is actually a success trait.  Maybe the truth shall set you free, but the fib will make you rich.