“No Individual Should Face Workplace Discrimination Based on Race”
Part of the appeal of American culture has always been the sense of fair play and equal opportunity offered by our political and economic system. What has attracted so many immigrants to our shores for hundreds of years was the notion that, given a level playing field, those who worked the hardest could achieve the most.
This system has worked well, creating a vibrant and diverse American culture in which success is largely blind to race. No system is perfect, of course, but until something better comes along, it has worked well enough to make America’s economic and social system the envy of many other nations. Fortunately, but by a very slim margin, common sense ideas of achievement recently prevailed in a Supreme Court ruling on workplace bias.
Justices Rule for White Firemen In Bias Lawsuit
The Supreme Court yesterday restricted how far employers may go in considering race in hiring and promotion decisions, a ruling that puts workplaces across the nation on notice that efforts to combat potential discrimination against one group can amount to actual discrimination against another.
The court ruled for white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who said city officials violated their rights when it threw out the results of a promotions test on which few minorities scored well. The case drew outsize attention because President Obama’s nominee for the high court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, had been part of a unanimous panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit that endorsed a lower-court ruling upholding New Haven’s decision.
“No individual should face workplace discrimination based on race,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the five-member majority.
The case has been used by Sotomayor critics as evidence that she allowed her personal preferences to influence her rulings
Those who oppose Sotomayor contrasted the court’s 89 pages of opinions, concurrences and dissents with the 134-word summary judgment from Sotomayor and the other judges on the panel. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called the Supreme Court’s decision a “victory for evenhanded application of the law” and said that “all nine justices were critical of the trial court opinion that Judge Sotomayor endorsed,” an assertion the White House rejected.
Kennedy said that New Haven’s test — 60 percent of the firefighters’ scores were based on a written test and 40 percent on interviews — properly evaluated what candidates would need to know to perform their jobs, and that it was equally applied to candidates of all races and ethnic backgrounds.
“The process was open and fair,” he said. “The problem, of course, is that after the tests were completed, the raw racial results became the predominant rationale for the city’s refusal to certify the results.”
More On This Topic
On Race, The Slog Goes On - George Will
Although New Haven’s firefighters deservedly won in the Supreme Court, it is deeply depressing that they won narrowly — 5 to 4. The egregious behavior by that city’s government, in a context of racial rabble-rousing, did not seem legally suspect to even one of the court’s four liberals, whose harmony seemed to reflect result-oriented rather than law-driven reasoning.
Energy Department’s New Lighting Standards
The Energy Department announced new lighting standards that are expected to reduce the nations energy bill by $4 billion annually when implemented in 2012.
The change that will affect the average American the most will be the ban on the sale of standard incandescent light bulbs in 2014. Huge energy savings are already immediately available to every American by simply replacing incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent. One has to wonder, why would the Energy Department take another 5 years to ban the energy wasteful incandescent bulb?
Before beginning any calculations or comparisons, it is important to understand some basic differences between CFLs and incandescent light bulbs, which are the watts of electricity used and the expected lifetime of each. Understanding these differences will help ensure that two equivalent light bulbs will be compared.
The first difference between the two types of bulbs is that CFLs use up to 80% less electricity, or watts, to produce similar light output, or lumens, as incandescent bulbs. For example, a typical 100 watt incandescent light bulb will have a light output between 1600 and 1750 lumens, which is a similar range to that of a 23 watt CFL. This is why a 23 watt CFL would be labeled as a 100 watt replacement. It is important that two light bulbs that produce similar light output are being compared.
Another difference is how long they last, or the life of the bulb. CFLs last anywhere between 7,000 and 12,000 hours compared to incandescents that will only last between 750 and 1,000 hours.
Replacing just one incandescent bulb with a CFL can save a homeowner roughly $90 over four years in electricity cost. Incredibly, many Americans still chose the much more costly incandescent bulb over the much less expensive and energy efficient CFL because of the cost difference up front. An incandescent bulb can cost 25 cents while a CFL can cost $2 to $3.
Thomas Edison unveiled his incandescent bulb in 1879, and since then it has illuminated the world. But it is highly inefficient, generating 90% heat and 10% light.
There is a better bulb. In fact, there are several. The spiral-shaped “compact fluorescent,” around for years, produces the same amount of light as its incandescent ancestor with one-quarter the energy. It lasts for years, provides light in an array of hues, and, by lowering electricity bills, pays for itself in about seven months.
Studies say improving the efficiency of the light bulb is among the easiest ways to start meaningfully curbing fossil-fuel consumption. Lighting accounts for some 20% of residential electricity use in the U.S. — a lot to fritter away as wasted heat. Yet about 80% of all bulbs sold to U.S. consumers are incandescents, which often cost less than 25 cents apiece, about one-tenth the price of a compact fluorescent.
Given the facts involved, why would most people still use the much more costly incandescent light bulb? Is it simply a case of consumer ignorance - or is the average American budget simply too tight to afford the right choice?
Power Mad Officials Go To Far
The Supreme Court recently found that the constitutional rights of a 13 year old female child had been violated by an overzealous Arizona school administration that forced the child to submit to a humiliating strip search. Although not prohibiting schools from conducting future strip searches of children, the Court held that school officials must have “specific suspicions” before conducting a full body search.
Washington Post - A SUPREME COURT majority ruled yesterday that the 2003 in-school strip search of a 13-year-old student violated her constitutional rights against unreasonable search or seizure. As in many cases, how the justices got to this result is as important as the result itself; in this matter, a six-justice majority correctly balanced the privacy interests of the student with the need to preserve school officials’ flexibility to maintain order and safety.
Savana Redding was in middle school in Arizona when a classmate told school officials that she had gotten over-the-counter naproxen, an anti-inflammatory pill, and prescription-strength ibuprofen from Savana. The school had a no-tolerance policy on drugs and banned the possession even of nonprescription pain relievers without explicit permission. Although law enforcement officials must have “probable cause” to conduct a warrantless search, school officials are required only to have “reasonable suspicion.”
The Supreme Court agreed that the strip search violated the Constitution but wisely refused to embrace the 9th Circuit’s logic. Instead, the justices reaffirmed their earlier analysis that a search “will be permissible in its scope when the measures adopted are reasonably related to the objectives of the search and not excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction.” The invasiveness of a strip search, wrote Justice David Souter for the majority, requires that school officials have “specific suspicions” that the student is hiding contraband in undergarments.
It seems to me that when you giving a public official the power to detain and strip search someone based on “specific suspicions” (whatever that means) you will have situations where that power is abused.
We can all agree that schools should be drug free. That being said, it seems absurd to treat school children like criminals if they are caught in possession of common aspirin or other harmless over the counter medications that all of us use without thinking twice. Perhaps our schools should be equally concerned with graduating high school students who can read and write properly.
No where, in any of the press coverage on this Court decision, have I seen any mention of the role that parents should play in contributing to a safe school environment. Sorry, but public employees should not and will not ever properly substitute for the role of responsible parents in establishing proper conduct guidelines for their children. Prior to subjecting the child in question to a strip search, why were the parents not contacted to discuss the situation? Let’ s hope the reason was not due to the hubris of school officials thinking that they can raise children better than the parents.
America has become more of a welfare state than most of us would care to admit as Robert Samuelson details in a recent article. The shock to many will come when it becomes obvious that the promises made by Government are so large that they simply cannot be kept.
Washington Post - Raised in an individualistic culture, Americans dislike the concept of the “welfare state” and do not use the term. But make no mistake, the United States has a welfare state, and its future is precarious. The true significance of General Motors’ bankruptcy lies more with this welfare state than with the battered condition of American capitalism.
Broadly speaking, the U.S. welfare system divides into two parts — the private, run by firms; and the public, provided by government. Both are besieged: private companies by competitive pressures; government by rising debt and taxes. GM exemplified the large corporation as private welfare state. In contracts with the United Auto Workers, GM promised high wages, lifetime employment, generous pensions and comprehensive health insurance. All this is ancient history: New workers get skimpier benefits.
What most Americans identify as government “welfare” are payments to single mothers, food stamps and (perhaps) Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for the poor.
But that’s not the half of it. Since 1960, government has changed radically. Then, 52 percent of federal spending went for defense, 26 percent for “payments for individuals” — the welfare state. By 2008, 61 percent consisted of “payments for individuals,” 21 percent for defense.
Social Security and Medicare — programs for the elderly — represented the biggest share: $1 trillion in 2008. Most Americans don’t consider these programs “welfare,” but they are. Benefits are paid mainly by present taxes; there’s little “saving” for future benefits; Congress can alter benefits whenever it wants. If that’s not welfare, what would be?
In theory, expanding public welfare could offset eroding private welfare. President Obama’s health-care proposal reflects that logic. The trouble is that the public sector also faces enormous cost pressures, driven by an aging population and rising health costs. The Congressional Budget Office projects the federal debt will double as a share of the economy (gross domestic product) to 82 percent of GDP by 2019.
Any sober examination of figures like these suggests that the system has promised more than it can realistically deliver. We are borrowing not to finance investment in the future but to pay for today’s welfare — present consumption. Sooner or later, the huge debt will weaken the economy. Nor would paying for all promised benefits with higher taxes be desirable. Big increases in either debt or taxes risk depressing economic growth, making it harder yet to pay promised benefits.
Politicians for the most part do not understand basic finance and they get elected based on who promises the most, regardless of the ability to pay. Do not expect things to change until America’s overextended credit line is cutoff.
President On A Roll
It seems as if the President is enjoying an extended honeymoon with both the press and voters, while the Republicans remain disarrayed and powerless. Public optimism and confidence is surging based on the hope that the steps taken by the Obama administration will lead to brighter economic days. The voters and Congress have effectively given the President what almost amounts to dictatorial powers.
The Obama infatuation is a great unreported story of our time. Has any recent president basked in so much favorable media coverage? Well, maybe John Kennedy for a moment, but no president since. On the whole, this is not healthy for America.
Our political system works best when a president faces checks on his power. But the main checks on Obama are modest.
The study examined 1,261 stories by The Post, the New York Times, ABC, CBS and NBC, Newsweek magazine and the “NewsHour” on PBS. Favorable articles (42 percent) were double the unfavorable (20 percent), while the rest were “neutral” or “mixed.” Obama’s treatment contrasts sharply with coverage in the first two months of the Bush (22 percent of stories favorable) and Clinton (27 percent) presidencies.
The infatuation matters because Obama’s ambitions are so grand.
The press has become Obama’s silent ally and seems in a state of denial. But the story goes untold: Unsurprisingly, the study of all the favorable coverage received little coverage.
Unlimited power allows one man to accomplish what could not otherwise be done with a gridlocked political system, but also allows for potentially unwise policy decision implementations that may have dangerous long term consequences. Our basic governmental structure of checks and balances seems to be in peril. Here are some more thoughts on this matter.
American Capitalism Gone With A Whimper
It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.
The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.
Obama Led the US Economy Into a Fiscal Trap Containing a Monetary Time Bomb
The majority of Americans elected an arrogant and bumbling ideologue to the presidency and so the rest of the world — little Israel in particular — will have to pay the price. However, Economics is what invariably brings the Obama’s of this world undone.
Despite the bitter lessons of history — a subject that Obama is as deeply ignorant of as he is of economics — he does not really believe in the existence of economic laws. Let us not forget that this is the same man who thinks he can regulate bubbles out of existence, even though he and his cronies are totally ignorant as to the origin and nature of this economic phenomenon.
Obama and his brilliant economic advisors have driven the US economy into a fiscal trap containing a monetary time bomb. And the markets are taking notice.
It’s a pretty state of affairs when China feels impelled to lecture the US on the need for exercising greater fiscal and monetary responsibility. Nevertheless Bernanke and the Obama administration appear to be completely oblivious to the situation. So much so that the Fed was authorised to print $1.75 trillion in new money so as to buy Treasury bonds. It’s almost as if they were deliberately thumbing their noses at the rest of world.
If the economy resumes its downward decline or the average American does not see his financial situation improving soon, expect the Obama administration’s honeymoon to come to an abrupt end. In the final analysis, it is always about jobs and incomes.
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