The FDNY, New York City and The Vulcans are Failing New Yorkers

John Coombs (President of the Vulcans - the FDNY's Black fraternal organization, pictured left) seems to believe that written tests “discriminate against black candidates.”

He believes that without any apparent proof.

Disparate impact is NOT proof of either “test bias” nor actual “hiring discrimination.”

Mr. Coombs and those like him, would have you believe that written exams do not measure aptitude but merely learned facts, which means that those from better schools have an distinct advantage.

That argument has been used against the SATs, but ALL available research shows that SAT scores do, in fact, correlate virtually 1 to 1 with how well a prospective student will do in College.

Same for the U.S. Military’s use of a battery of IQ tests and aptitude tests, that are used to determine which areas of service a recruit will serve in.

The IQ tests used DO NOT measure a candidate’s “knowledge” or “known facts,” they actually measure the candidate’s ability to process and absorb information...and they do that quite effectively.

Firefighters and police must process a tremendous amount of information at the scene of an emergency, Firefighters must be able to process and absorb information on Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation and Defibrillation, as well as courses in dealing with Hazardous Materials.

There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that written exams discriminate against black candidates. To argue that, in fact, is a tacit endorsement of "white supremacy." In this case, it's also an endorsement of "Asian and Hispanic supremacy, as those groups have also done better than blacks have on recent standardized entrance exams across the board.

Oddly enough, on the one hand Mr. Coombs argues that the physical exam should be made more competitive, and while I agree and even believe it should also be made more stringent as well, that inconsistent reasoning - opposing a competitive written, while supporting a competitive physical undermines the argument that "arbitrary standards are wrong," as Mr.Coombs and the Vulcans even support "arbitrary standards" when they perceive them to be advantageous.

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Now I agree that the physical portion of the exam should be more competitive, but so should the written exam! The argument that essentially goes, "What's the certifiable difference between a candidate who gets a 96 on an exam and, say, a 72," is (1) absurd on its face and (2) is just as valid for arguing that the physical standard should be pass/fail, as well as the written.
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In point of fact, ALL standards, are to some extent, arbitrary, BUT the employer, in this case the FDNY and the City of New York, has the right to hire those candidates with the highest overall standards - combined written and physical qualifications. There is no good argument against that.
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Hopefully the courts will ultimately acknowledge that disparate impact, a concept that has done tremendous harm to the fabric of America, is not a valid means of assessing discrimination.

The problem is high standards and stringent exams, the problem is with the individual candidates. Those who are motivated to do these jobs will prepare for the exams and do well, those who aren’t as motivated will not.

Two Energy Giants May Abandon Venezuela’s Chavez

Last week, Conoco-Phillips and Exxon Mobil refused to meet Venezuela’s deadline to reach an agreement on ceding control of their major oil production ventures, possibly indicating their imminent separation from billions of dollars in investments in that country.

The possible exit of two major American oil companies from Venezuela is not expected to have an immediate impact on American energy supplies.

Moreover, most energy experts believe that the Venezuelan state oil company will be hard pressed to sustain production levels without American expertise.

Oil is the centerpiece of a broader nationalization effort that includes telecommunications and electricity companies. Hugo Chávez is seeking a stronger hand for his government in Venezuela’s economy even as the oil industry, by far the country’s largest source of revenue, struggles to maintain its current, anemic production levels.

The possible abandonment by Conoco-Phillips and Exxon Mobil could be troublesome for Venezuela, what with public spending surging under Mr. Chávez and with oil companies from Brazil, China and India hesitant to make major investments in Venezuela while legal uncertainty persists, energy analysts have cautioned that Venezuela’s government may risk allowing prized reserves to remain underdeveloped.

“The Venezuelans have increased the cost of developing this resource,” said Roger Tissot, director for Latin America at PFC Energy, a consulting firm, in Washington. “At the end of the day, the Venezuelan people will pay the price for these decisions.”

In a similar move Zimbabwe’s government has put forward legislation that would require virtually all publicly traded companies to cede controlling interests to “indigenous” citizens, raising the possibility of a sizable redistribution of the country’s remaining wealth at a time when its economy is collapsing.

The draft legislation, which was published Monday, would mandate that a 51 percent stake in the companies be transferred to Zimbabweans who were “disadvantaged by unfair discrimination on the grounds of his or her race” before April 1980, when the nation won independence from white rule.

The government calls it a plan for black empowerment, while critics label it a bid to shore up crumbling political support for Zimbabwe’s president, Robert G. Mugabe. Given that Mr. Mugabe’s party dominates Parliament, the measure will almost certainly pass.

It was unclear, however, how Zimbabwe’s bankrupt government, beset by hyperinflation and a currency crisis, would finance the transfers.

At the same time, the government began an effort to rein in Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation, officially about 4,500 percent, but described by private economists as approaching 20,000 percent. A cabinet-level task force on price controls ordered factories and sellers to cut the prices of certain basic goods and services by as much as 50 percent — to levels that existed roughly one week ago.

the legislation evokes the specter of Mr. Mugabe’s seizure of thousands of white-owned farms early this decade, mostly without compensation, in what was then called a redistribution of land to poor blacks. Instead, many of the best farms were awarded to leading figures in Mr. Mugabe’s government and his ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front. Once “the breadbasket of Africa,” Zimbabwe today, can’t even feed it’s own population.

Could This be the Perfect Solution From a Radical Environmentalist Perspective???

The World Health Organization (WHO) claims that 1 Billion people worldwide will die from smoking this Century!

That’s tragic to those who respect human life, but it should make environmentalists, many of whom inanely see human life as “the enemy of earth,” ecstatic! After all, many environmentalists are always going on about “too many humans polluting the earth.”

Better still, at least for the enviro anti-humans, while smoking rates declining across the board in developed nations, they are skyrocketing in developing nations, especially among teens.

This should make environmentalists extremely happy, since it’s developing nations that are responsible for an increasing amount of pollution. China recently passed the US as the world’s premier CO2 emitter.

Opponents of the anti-human environmental ideology like to point to the fact that the earth is incredibly regenerative and is great at balancing itself. Perhaps increasing smoking and lung cancer rates in the developing world are “the earth’s means of pollution offsets.”

SEE: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070702/india_nm/india282814

Liberal Redistributionist Loses His “Missing Pants” Case

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Roy L. Pearson, the Liberal, Democrat redistributionist, who sees business as “the enemy,” lost his ridiculous law suit against Washington D.C.’s Custom Cleaners yesterday.

In deciding the case, District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff ruled that "A reasonable consumer would not interpret 'Satisfaction Guaranteed' to mean that a merchant is required to satisfy a customer's unreasonable demands" or to agree to demands that the merchant would have reasonable grounds for disputing, the judge wrote.

Judge Bartnoff further ordered Mr. Pearson to pay the court costs of defendants Soo Chung, Jin Nam Chung and Ki Y. Chung, estimated to be slightly over $1,000. A decision on their legal costs, a significantly larger sum, will be held later.

Pearson, an administrative law judge, originally sought $67 million from the Chungs, claiming they lost a pair of trousers from a blue and maroon suit, then tried to give him a pair a pair of charcoal gray pants that he said were not his.

Judge Bartnoff wrote that Pearson failed to prove that the pants the dry cleaner tried to return were not the pants he taken in for alterations.

Pearson later dropped demands for damages related to the pants and focused his claims on signs (“Satisfaction Guaranteed”) in the shop, which have since been removed.

Conservatives would do well to make Roy Pearson the face of the Kos-Huffpo-MoveOn Liberal nexis.

The “Father of Climatology” calls Global Warming Hooey

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The UW-Madison professor emeritus, who stands against the scientific consensus on this issue, is referred to as a global warming skeptic. But he is not skeptical that global warming exists, he is just doubtful that humans are the cause of it. Reid Bryson, known as the father of scientific climatology, considers global warming a bunch of hooey.

Bryson contends that there is no question that the earth has been warming. It is coming out of the "Little Ice Age," he said in an interview this week.

"However, there is no credible evidence that it is due to mankind and carbon dioxide. We've been coming out of a Little Ice Age for 300 years. We have not been making very much carbon dioxide for 300 years. It's been warming up for a long time," Bryson said.

The Little Ice Age was driven by volcanic activity. That settled down so it is getting warmer, he said.

Humans are polluting the air and adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, but the effect is tiny, Bryson said.

"It's like there is an elephant charging in and you worry about the fact that there is a fly sitting on its head. It's just a total misplacement of emphasis," he said. "It really isn't science because there's no really good scientific evidence."

Even at UW Madison, some of his colleagues disagree. Galen McKinley, an assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at UW-Madison disagrees with Bryson, whom she notes is a respected researcher and professor with a long history at the university.

"There are innumerable studies that show that the shoe fits for global warming, I guess you could say, and the human causation for it," McKinley said.

Reid Bryson was the founding chairman of the department of meteorology at UW-Madison and of the Institute for Environmental Studies, now known as the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. He retired in 1985, but has gone into the office almost every day since. He does it without pay.

Professor Bryson contends that reporters will often call the meteorology building seeking the opinion of a scientist and some beginning graduate student will pick up the phone and say he or she is a meteorologist, Bryson said. "And that goes in the paper as 'scientists say.'"

The word of this young graduate student then trumps the views of someone like Bryson, who has been working in the field for more than 50 years, he said. "It is sort of a smear."

Bryson said he recently wrote something on the subject and two graduate students told him he was wrong, citing research done by one of their professors. That professor, Bryson noted, is probably the student of one of his students.

"Well, that professor happened to be wrong," he said.

"There is very little truth to what is being said and an awful lot of religion. It's almost a religion. Where you have to believe in anthropogenic (or man-made) global warming or else you are nuts."

While Bryson doesn't think that global warming is man-made, he said there is some evidence of an effect from mankind, but not an effect of carbon dioxide.

For example, in Wisconsin in the last 100 years the biggest heating has been around Madison, Milwaukee and in the Southeast, where the cities are. There was a slight change in the Green Bay area, he said.

The rest of the state shows no warming at all.

"The growth of cities makes it hotter, but that was true back in the 1930s, too," Bryson said. "Big cities were hotter than the surrounding countryside because you concentrate the traffic and you concentrate the home heating. And you modify the surface, you pave a lot of it."

Student Denied Education Degree Over MySpace Pix

Think the Nanny State is harmless?

Think again.

Stacy Snyder, a twenty-seven y/0 senior at Millersville College in PA was denied the education degree her grades and test scores earned, the day before her scheduled graduation for “unprofessional conduct.”

The “unprofessional conduct” in question was a picture posted on her MySpace Account with Ms. Snyder wearing a pirate hat and drinking from a plastic cup, captioned “Drunken pirate.”

Millersville College awarded her an English degree instead.
Instructors who’d previously evaluated “outstanding,” now called her “incompetent.”

Stacy Snyder had to file a federal lawsuit, alleging that by denying Snyder her degree without a hearing regarding the decision, Millersville administrators violated Snyder's constitutional right to due process. Snyder's suit requested her education degree, her teaching certificate, and $75,000 in compensatory damages as relief. It appears to have worked: Federal district court documents filed last Tuesday indicate an out-of-court settlement between the parties is imminent.

Sadly, Stacy Snyder's story isn’t at all that uncommon. Increasingly, university administrators are monitoring student speech and activity online.

As a lawyer for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education wrote, “While students may think their MySpace.com or Facebook.com posts are private, they aren't. Saying the wrong thing online - even if it’s legal or even constitutionally protected - can get you in a world of trouble.”

The Corrosive Impact of Race-based Preferences in Living Color

Nikita Rau (pictured), a precocious 11 y/o of Indian descent has been denied entrance into an elite NYC public school because of her race.

"I feel bad because I would have gotten in if I was white," said Nikita, and she’s right. Nikita took an entrance exam to get into Mark Twain Middle School IS 239, a magnet school for gifted students and scored and scored a 7Unfortunately due to a 18 974 Consent Decree, which ordered the school’s “desegregation,” 40% of the seats were reserved for minorities and 60% for whites.

In May, the Education Department sent her parents a letter that said Nikita was not accepted - even though white students who scored lower on the same test were admitted.

School officials told the Raus that because Nikita is classified as a minority, she would need to score at least 84.4 to be accepted, while white students needed to score 77 or more.

Her mom, Dr. Kanchan Rau, said that when she discussed the disparate treatment with Schools Regional Enrollment Director Paul Helfman, "he said, 'I agree with you: It's not right; it's not fair - but there's nothing I can do.' "

Kanchan Rau said Nikita reacted with "surprise and shock" after being told her skin color was keeping her out of the school.