I Am a Firefighter, and I Have Dyslexia

The New Haven Fire Department administers a written test to evaluate, in part, which firefighters should be promoted. Blacks and Hispanics taking the test performed about half as well as their white counterparts. Gee, you say, was the test about golf and tea? No, it was an intelligence test that tries to figure out who the most qualified firefighters are.

Now, you might say, why would a person's race affect how they do on a test? Wouldn't the people who studied the hardest do the best? How would skin color ever cause you to do poorly on a test?

Apparently, New Haven politicians think that being black or Hispanic made those people do badly, so they threw out the test results. Pretty racist if you ask me. But maybe the test was really that hard and unfair. Maybe they didn't have a chance.

Meet Frank Ricci. Ricci has dyslexia. He studied as much as 13 hours in a day for the exam. He hired someone to record the textbooks onto audio tapes so he could listen to them. He is very bad at taking written tests.

Still, Ricci managed to work hard enough to do well and qualify for a promotion. He beat a lot of black and Hispanic and white people who don't have dyslexia. He simply worked harder.

But all of that hard work will go to waste if the Supreme Court does not rule in favor of the firefighters who want the test to count. In fact, Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's pick for the court to replace Justice Souter, ruled against the firefighters on the Appeals level, saying the city was right to throw out the results because it was discrimation.

Obama said he wanted to appoint a judge who would be empathetic to ordinary Americans. There are no Americans more oridnary than firefighters working hard for a promotion. What Obama meant to say was that he wanted a judge who would be empathetic towards minorities, even at the expense of other hard-working Americans who just happen to be white.

Hopefully, the John Roberts-led court will rule in favor of the hard-working firefighters, especially Mr. Ricci, and they will get their well-deserved promotion.

I have less confidence that Ms. Sotomayor will show any empathy for anyone who's skin isn't brown.

A Word on the First Amendment and the Acts of the Apostles

"About noon the following day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles of the earth and birds of the air. Then a voice told him, "Get up, Peter. Kill and eat."

"Surely not, Lord!" Peter replied. "I have never eaten anything impure or unclean."

The voice spoke to him a second time, "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean."

- Acts of the Apostles 10: 9 - 15

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

- First Amendment to the United States Constitution

Anti-gay rights activists often use religious justification for their views. God is against homosexual behavior, they say, it's in plain black and white. Let's see if that's true. People with Bibles like to quote them to their advantage, so I see nothing wrong with cracking open the good book to see if there's anything in there.

True, Leviticus 20:13 seems pretty explicit: "And if a man lie with mankind, as with womankind, both of them have committed abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them."

But the entire trend of the Bible points in a different direction, especially if we take something out of the atheist playbook - a modification of the problem of evil.

Atheists say God can't exist because there is evil in the world. By definition, God must be all-powerful and all-good. If God can prevent evil but doesn't, he is not good. If he can't prevent evil, he's not all-powerful.

Fast forward to issues of homosexuality. God created the world and everything in it. In fact, man was made in his image. So, if God created someone to be homosexual, than he or she is naturally good, because he or she was made that way by God. I think the above passage from Acts, which deals with Kosher food laws, is also apt.

The Kosher laws list all types of impure and unclean things that people should not eat. In Peter's vision, God says, "Nonsense. Would I make something unclean or impure?" In other words, if God made it, it's good, so chow down Pedro.

Or if God made Johnny like James, and James likes Johnny, then why shouldn't they be together?

That's a religious argument, which I think is very interesting, but is actually irrelevant to the current political debate over gay marriage in the United States. Marriage has been, since its inception, a religious event. I believe it should stay that way, and that when government becomes involved in marriage, it is in violation of the first amendment.

I don't think government should ever be able to decide who's married and who isn't. Why not give the same tax and hospital benefits to straight and gay couples through "civil unions" and leave "marriage" to the church, where it belongs.

That way everyone is equal under the law, and the sanctity of marriage is protected. It seems like a fair compromise that gives everyone what they deserve, and actually retracts the power of government ever so slightly. Which is why it will never happen, but hey, this is just a word after all.

Mr. and Mrs. Pontiac

There was a very interesting story in the Times this morning (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/us/04land.html?hp) about two families in western Pennsylvania who have been selling Pontiacs for generations and are now in trouble because GM is phasing them out.

At first, I immediately reflected on the microeconomics I had been catching up on for my final over the past few days. It's all well and good to right about "average variable cost" and companies "exiting the industry in the long run," but those are real people who's marginal cost and marginal revenue curves aren't lining up the way they used to.

People like the Arnolds, who opened their Pontiac dealership in 1916, are the real victims of the economic downturn. They really didn't take part in GM's idiotic decision making. They didn't negotiate an unsustainable deal with the union, and they didn't want GM to focus on gas guzzlers while oil prices skyrocketed. They simply tried to sell Pontiacs and make ends meet.

Or so the media and the economy-planning left would have you believe.

There is another family of Pontiac dealers mentioned in the article: the Mikans. Ivan Mikan started selling Pontiacs in the 1920s after trying Chryslers for a while. His grandson, who now runs the dealership, said Pontiac sales have steadily declined recently. But here's where the Mikan's stand out:

"David Mikan, who runs the dealership now, says their sales of Pontiacs have steadily declined: 100 sold last year, compared with twice that in 2000. Although the emphasis has shifted to their Volkswagen line and their used cars, he says, the Mikans have always considered themselves a Pontiac family.

Still, a few days ago he removed all the preening Pontiacs from the front of the dealership and replaced them with shiny Volkswagens. Partly out of anger, he says, and partly because Volkswagen, not Pontiac, is central to the Mikan future.

Back in Houston, there is no Volkswagen fallback. The Arnolds have been hitched to Pontiacs since 1926, the year the car made its debut."

At some point, the Mikans looked at the auto-selling situation in their town, and made a decision. They realized that people didn't want Pontiacs as much anymore, for whatever reason. They wanted Volkswagens. Maybe it was the quality of the car, or maybe the prices. In any case, real people decided that Volkswagens were better than Pontiacs, so they bought them instead.

The Arnolds, on the other hand, romanticize selling Pontiacs, like its some sort of family custom.

"Because of Pontiac, Bob Arnold the elder attended the General Motors Institute in Flint, Mich., more than a half-century ago. Because of Pontiac, then, he happened to meet his future wife, Angela, at an institute dance. “Girls got in free,” recalls Ms. Arnold, whose first car was a 1955 Pontiac Star Chief Catalina, turquoise and ivory. Now she drives a 2005 Pontiac Bonneville, candy-apple red."

Here's the problem. I really like Babe 2: Pig in the City. True, it's not as good as the original, but I've been watching Babe movies all my life. I just think that pig is the cutest thing. It's basically my childhood.

Let's say I love Babe so much, that I open a dvd store. I decide to only sell Babe and Babe 2. The thing is, nobody wants to buy Babe or Babe 2. Even though I really really love it.

If the government bails me out to save the "American Babe 2 industry" and all the other businesses it serves, including dvd box manufacturers and pig trainers, I'll keep my store. But the American people already decided they don't want a Babe 2 industry. When the government takes money away from productive businesses through taxation and gives it to unproductive businesses like Babe 2 Stores, it basically says, "People, you don't want Babe 2, but guess what? You're going to buy it anyway with your tax dollars. Let's get the economy going again by producing more things nobody wants, like Babe 2."

Madness, right? Perhaps, an auto company may have to sell its cars at too-high prices because of sales taxes, taxes used to subsidize the production of goods no one wants to buy. Sales taxes probably weren't the downfall of the auto companies, but the point is, once the government tries to get involved in economic planning, everything gets messed up.

Really been a while

I haven't posted on here in a very very long time. A bunch of cool stuff has happened though. A couple weeks ago I went to a big press event for Michael Bloomberg where he was launching a new Service initiative. I went with a couple of my friends on united student government, and it was cool to see Bloomberg up close. I got a picture of him as he walked by, but he didn't stop to talk because he had to drop his kids off at the pool, apparently. Caroline Kennedy was there, too, and so was Eliot Spitzer's far too loyal wife. I saw Lizzy Edwards on tv recently as well. What is it with all these wives who stick with husbands who have affairs with disgusting women that sometimes result in children? I dunno. Anyway, that same night, Newt Gingrich came to Fordham and spewed some pretty good conservative stuff and then some not so good neo-conservative fear-mongering, but it was awesome to see him. I asked him a question about the Fed causing the recession, though I was incredibly nervous and I stumbled all over myself, which is very unlike me. Anyway, he said unsustainably low interest rates defnitely contributed to recessions, which was good.

I've also been getting attention again for the newspaper, though this time it hasn't been bad. First, an article I wrote about our mascot beating up some kid who tried to beat him up ended up on a national sports blog (check it out: http://deadspin.com/5225053/mess-with-the-fordham-ram-you-get-the-horns) and then I beat up the school for not talking to the New York Times when they do bad things (here: http://www.theramonline.com/opinions/sorry-no-comment-is-not-enough-1.1737413) and then a report about the dean breaking up a party got me some street cred because I was shockingly objective (here: http://www.theramonline.com/news/spring-weekend-party-bust-1.1738792)