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 AFP: Obama bemoans ‘diversions’ of IPod, Xbox era.

You have to read this article carefully to make sure that it’s an accurate reporting of events.  It appears to be genuine and therefore alarming.  Did he really say that  “information had become a diversion that was imposing new strains on democracy”? In the same breath, he says that education is the key to progress.  I have written before about how the President’s actions have often been in direct contrast to his actions.  This is the first time he has contradicted himself in the same sentence.

It becomes clearer what the reference is when he states:

 “…some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction,” in the clamor of certain blogs and talk radio outlets….All of this is not only putting new pressures on you, it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy….”

Now this becomes clearer; what he is really doing is throwing an oblique dig at certain right of center media outlets, led no doubt by Fox Cable, a notorious critic of the administration’s policies.  Strangely, all of the mainstream media outlets have given favorable spin to the President’s policies; Fox is the only balancing voice to those views.  Somehow, this qualifies a mention in a commencement speech. Truly ironic in a place of learning since in the latter part of the same speech, the Pres includes this obligatory message invoking Thomas Jefferson:

“…What Jefferson recognized… that in the long run, their improbable experiment — called America — wouldn’t work if its citizens were uninformed, if its citizens were apathetic, if its citizens checked out, and left democracy to those who didn’t have the best interests of all the people at heart….It could only work if each of us stayed informed and engaged, if we held our government accountable, if we fulfilled the obligations of citizenship…”

So a confusing message is being sent.  If he doesn’t care for the role that technological devices are playing in society, he is the First Luddite.  That doesn’t speak well of the thousands of high tech jobs created by likes of Apple, Amazon, Sony etc, companies and  industries that have led the U.S. over the past decade.   Like it or not, society needs more engineers and technologically savvy grads to propel America forward.  Lawyers seem to be in surplus at the moment.  If he doesn’t care for the few dissenters with his policies, perhaps an official White House news service will be implemented, although that would be redundant in the presence of NBC, CBS, ABC and PBS.

Lastly, there is the discussion of learning being the equivalent of  emancipation.  Again a function of pandering to your audience, but emancipation is no longer an issue, hasn’t been one since, well, 1863.   This may explain the skepticism of modern technology.  It looks like someone’s looking to the past instead of the future.  Or maybe it’s just the politican/lawyer showing, covering both sides of an discussion without saying anything.  Bottom line, I think the man is confused.  Information, regardless of how it’s transmitted is everything.  Like the old saying, the truth shall set you free.