Saturday, July 11, 2009

For What it's Worth

A possible Doctoral Disseration: "Black Trumps Reason"; 'The History of African-American Culture, from OJ Simpson to Michael Jackson (with special emphasis on the Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson)'

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Food For Thought at the Buffet

"LBN-HISTORICAL COMMENTARY By WARREN BUFFET: 'I don't have a problem with guilt about money. The way I see it is that my money represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. It's like I have these little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption. If I wanted to, I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture every day for the rest of my life. And the GNP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or teaching, or nursing. I don't do that though. I don't use very many of those claim checks. There's nothing material I want very much. And I'm going to give virtually all of those claim checks to charity when my wife and I die. (1997)'"

A Female Liberal's Dilemma

A sadistic question for women: The country falls into the toilet for the next three years. At the next (2012) Democratic convention, Hillary Clinton challenges Barack Obama for the nomination. Who do you root for?

Friday, July 03, 2009

Of Tests and Fairness

The facts of a recent Supreme Court decision: The New Haven Fire Department gave a bunch of up and coming firemen tests on which to base advancement. Only whites and two Hispanics passed it; no blacks. Sensitive to general workplace diversity sentiment, the Mayor and council overruled the results. The white firemen who passed sued; they claimed discrimination. The lower courts and the appeals court backed them; they supreme court decided, 5-4 on the fireman's side.

Civil Rights groups are up in arms. They are afraid this spells the end to the effort for workforce diversity.

Does it? A bunch of firefighters couldn't pass a test. Maybe they weren't qualified. Maybe, heavens forbid (and I know we shouldn't say this about any group of blacks, or other minorities), maybe they weren't as talented or hadn't they studied as hard as their fellow competitors. Or maybe they had already been advanced beyond their capabilities and the test revealed that fact?

A meaning of equality: we all have the possibility to fail as well as succeed. Shouldn't that be a fundamental truth of equality.

If we non-minorities (By the way, is there any such thing anymore?) as Americans feel (and properly so) rotten about the injustices perpetrated on blacks in this country because centuries of slavery, and we want to (and I would hold, rightfully) correct for the educational and opportunity disadvantages that have resulted, fine; let's do it, but don't punish those (whites, Asians, etc) whom, without their acquiescence, are playing by the new, fair rules and win. The white firefights were not slaveholders. They didn't cause slavery or its legacy. We must distinguish charity from rights.

As a society we should and must redress the legacy of black injustice: pour money into the schools, tutor those who need to catch up. But don't set forth and uphold one set of success standards for one group, another set for the other.

Don't build baseball stadium with two set of home run fences; or call a triple a home run for one set of players, just a triple for the other set; even if in the formerly unfairly treated players, their muscles may have been weakened by years of being locked in a closet and weren't able yet to develop competitive abilities in the arena being contested. Give the formerly disadvantaged free gyms and remedial batting lessons, but don't try to correct for old unfairness with new unfairness by applying ex-post-facto shifting rules. Don't redress an old wrong with a new wrong.

In this new and better post-Obama world of ours, I'm afraid the old math still applies: two negatives, when added together, don't make a positive; two wrongs still don't make a right.

In New Haven and elsewhere, don't correct for prior discrimination with new discrimination. It only creates a double wrong.

Thursday, July 02, 2009

The price of slavery in the US is only beginning to be known.

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Bernie Madoff and My Mom

The LA Times said today in the editorial on the sentencing of Bernie Madoff:

"But by now we are growing tired of being apologized to by politicians, athletes, corporate chieftains and financial wizards for their various crimes, scandals and misjudgements only after their luck has run out. Ordinary people are required to make ethical decisions each day about what is acceptable behavior of what is not. By and large, they make those decisions before they act not after they are caught. Is it too much to expect the same from people who ought to be our role models?"

My Mother's lesson: "If you were truly sorry, you wouldn't have done it." Whack to the ass!

Whack! to Bernie Madoff.

The lesson: the time for applying your morality and ethics is before the fact, not after. Mom knew it sixty years ago. Is that why they call it the "good" old days?