Month: August 2010

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

I work for a law enforcement agency.  I want to add to your previous reader’s statement “This isn't comparing apples and oranges as much as it is comparing apples and filet mignon” but not just because of the cost of pensions.  Compensation numbers include regular benefits not unlike those associated with any other job – for example employer cost of health insurance, worker’s comp, and employer matching 401K.  If that $47,000 figure reflects only average wages and we assume that at least most of the wages that were averaged were from full time jobs with benefits, adding in the cost of those benefits that number would be higher.   
 
Also not included is the fact that if you average police or fire compensation in a given department, you’re not talking about what the front line officer or fire fighter earns, you’re talking about an average that includes all the higher ranks and their commensurately higher salaries.  So depending on how ‘top heavy’ the command structure that could significantly skew that average compensation number.  

 

I also take issue with the reader who mentioned the 500 applicants for every one firefighter position “20 years ago”.  First of all, the number of applicants per position naturally fluctuates with the local economy and unemployment rates.  Low unemployment means fewer applicants.  In our area, there are multiple agencies that must compete to fill their academies when jobs are plentiful, and pay has to be competitive.  Second, out of a pool of applicants, only a small percentage are going to qualify.  To be a police officer (at least in our department), a candidate must pass extensive background checks, a tough interview board, a polygraph, and psychological evaluations, plus attend 6 months of intensive training and pass a licensing exam before we give her/him a gun and authority to use it, and a full time job with benefits. There are similarly stringent requirements for firefighters.  I think that’s quite a bit more than most non police/firefighter jobs require.

Another reader:

My significant other is a NYC fireman.  He barely makes enough to live in a lower middle class neighborhood in Brooklyn.  Every month is a financial struggle.  He could not support a family on his salary.  Many of his colleagues live in far-flung suburbs — not because they choose to, but because they cannot afford to live in the city they protect.  They risk their lives on a daily basis to protect every citizen of this city — rich and poor alike — and they don't deserve their hard-won pensions?  Most of them cannot physically work after their 40s.  It is a tough demanding physical job.  This is one place our tax dollars should, and must, be spent.  Especially in cities like New York and DC where our firefighters are really on the front lines — they are trained to deal with chemical, biological, and nuclear attacks.  Of course we want 500 applicants for every job!  Of course we want the best of the best!  I can't believe this is a serious debate in today's world.

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

Your reader wrote, "What I do know is that isn't what I think of as a sincere apology. When one is sorry, they realize the error in their way." Right there is an encapsulation of everything that infuriates me about this debate. I'm what most would consider a fairly conservative Evangelical Christian pastor. And I firmly believe in the right of homosexuals to have every civic right that any other citizen of this nation enjoys. I believe that gays and lesbians should be able to marry, to pass on benefits to their partners, and so on. If they are Americans, then they should enjoy the same rights as every American, regardless of what I think of their lifestyle.

But I do believe that homosexual behavior is sinful, and I do believe the Bible when Paul reaffirms the sinful nature of homosexual activity. I believe that some activities are not God-pleasing and yet can still be a "right" in our civic understanding. A good number of Christians in my generation (Gen X) believe similarly.

For the past several years, we've been hearing more and more from the gay community that they don't care what we think of their sexual practices, as long as we agree that they should have the same rights as everyone else. That sounds great, and like a goal I can work towards. But then, we catch glimpses like this commenter. And Andrew slips into this kind of talk sometimes as well. And it begins to cast real doubt on how much I can trust the rhetoric coming from the gay community. Here is an evangelical saying basically what I have encapsulated, that while he disagrees with the lifestyle he realizes he has been unloving in his attitude. That while he can disagree with the sin that someone commits, perhaps the best tactic is to try and accept them on the basis of their humanity and express kindness, despite the differences.

And what do we get for it? "Sorry, that's not good enough. Not only must you allow us to live as every other citizen, but you must also believe in your heart that homosexuality isn't a sin." Really? What happened to all the talk of

tolerance?

After all, isn't tolerance a two-way street? Doesn't tolerance have to also mean that the homosexual community must accept the fact that I might disagree with their lifestyle? They will have to tolerate the fact that I disagree with them, even as I argue for equal civic rights. Apparently not. Instead, I read something like this poster's (and many others who have responded on this site) opinion and apparently I'm not allowed to have a belief that s/he finds unfashionable.

So I must bend my personal held beliefs to the will of others who find my thoughts judgmental or condemning. This attitude is repulsive and does nothing to benefit the cause of gay rights or to build bridges between communities. It is a selfishness that only causes many of my Christian friends to shake their heads. And it places little seeds of doubt in our minds about how wise it is to continually put ourselves out in front of our Christian peers as apologists for the gay community.

Another writes:

Seriously? We're going to police other people's beliefs now? We're going to tell people what they should and shouldn't think of as wrong, even when they're actively attempting not to hurt others with those beliefs? There's a term for that. It's called "religious intolerance".  Oh, no doubt somebody will think it offensive or whatever that I would invoke that for one of the world's most dominant and frequently-dogmatic religions, but it's true. Tolerance goes in every direction.

It may well be that Marin is being deceptive, in that he's trying to get queerfolk to lower their guard so his allies can better attack us. If he is, well, tough beans – life sucks. But I don't know that for certain, and somehow I don't think most of your readers do, either. What I think is that people are taking a traditional Christian message – dealing with the log in one's own eye before worrying about the speck in your brother's – and reading treachery into it. If he's willing to leave me alone about my sins, and focus instead on dealing with his own, I don't care what he thinks of me. That's not him lying, that's him being … Christian.

FWIW, I'm queer with Catholic parents. Traditional Catholic parents, whom I'm not out to and may never be able to come out to. I have my problems with Christians. Still, I find this whole thing ridiculous and, worse, hypocritical.

by Chris Bodenner

From France to Israel to Turkey:

by Patrick Appel

Steve Clowney defends rental inspections. So does a reader:

I work for a local government in Maryland. We also have regular inspections of rental properties — mostly when the landlord is applying to renew his/her license, but at other times as well. These inspections are never used to investigate illegal activities on the part of the renters, as your scary post seems to imply. Rather, the inspections are almost always for the sake of the renters — that is, to ensure landlords are properly maintaining their homes to the standards of our rental housing code (it should be noted, there are no such standards for owner-occupied homes). Renters in our county can demand inspections at any time, and if any code violations are found, the landlord must address by a certain deadline or face daily, compounding fines.

Maybe this is too heavy-handed (tyrannical?) towards landlords. Although some landlords are great, there are many that will take advantage of renters, especially those families with few other housing options. Indeed, while in college several years back, I moved into a rental house with a deck that was in danger of collapsing, stairs were rotting, a basement that leaked with even the most minor rain shower, and a massive infestation of fleas. I fought the landlord for a month over these issues, until one day when I came home to find a pamphlet on my door from a rental inspector asking if I was having any problems with the house. I called the number and scheduled an inspection the next day. A few days after that, contractors started showing up at my house and I got a refund for my first month's rent.

Another reader:

Rental safety inspections serve a legitimate public interest, and as a renter I am grateful for them.  They help ensure that landlords maintain their properties.  Mandatory annual inspections in my municipality were on the books, but not conducted very frequently, until two pretty outrageous violations a few years back.  In one case, raw sewage was leaking into a woman's apartment from upstairs, and her landlord (a slumlord) was unresponsive in addressing the issue.  In another, tenants had installed an electric space heater within the wooden kitchen cabinets.  Both situations resulted in building fires (due to an electrical short in the case of the sewage leak).  Thankfully, nobody died, but the resulting public outcry led code enforcement officials to reinstate the practice of conducting the inspections annually. 

I don't want strangers poking into my business any more than the next guy, but letting inspectors visit my apartment once a year to make sure the place has a working smoke detector, a fire extinguisher in the kitchen, and secondary means of escape if on an upper floor is a small price to pay for the community's peace of mind that local rental properties are safe and livable. 

Another reader:

Condominium owners are also subject to the same requirements as renters as far as regular safety inspections (Usually a fire inspector. They look at smoke detectors, alarms, fire sprinklers, etc.). I think it is less about taking Fourth Amendment rights away from the "rental class" as it is about an interest in public safety in conditions where people are living in close proximity, and at risk of their downstairs neighbor's meth lab exploding at any time.

Another:

I am baffled why your reader would assume housing inspectors are looking for some illegal activity on the part of the renters.  Housing inspectors are not police and their authority is limited to issues related to the condition of the property. Besides, renters are given advance notice before inspectors can enter a unit (same as any time a landlord wants to enter a property in a non-emergency situation).  Having said that, conducting illegal activities probably violates the lease, so you'd think a prudent renter would (say) remove the pot plants from the living room on the day an inspection is scheduled.

by Patrick Appel

Pivoting off the experience of this Cal State professor, a reader writes:

Years ago (in about '81 and '82) I tutored introductory physics to engineering students in the "women and minorities" program at UC Berkeley.  Many of these young people came from backgrounds I can't even imagine, and had to show a level of grit and perseverance that still astonishes me.  I remember two of my students who came from very tough areas – one in Richmond and one in Oakland.  They would often fail classes and have to retake them.  I can remember seeing the look on the face of the young man from Richmond when he would get the report that he failed a class.  Crestfallen doesn't begin to cover it – my heart still aches from the memory.  But then he would summon up all of the courage that took him out of the environment he grew up in and I would watch his face transform as he girded himself for taking the class again.

The young man from Oakland had gone to Castlemont High, which was not on anybody's list of top-performing college prep schools.  He told me about going back along with a classmate to visit.  They were the first people from the school to go to college in a long, long time and they were invited to come talk to the students.  He had graduated from Castlemont with straight-A's, and so had naturally assumed that he was ready to go on to college.  Then he arrived at Cal and took his first freshman math courses, and discovered that he didn't know things that were just assumed to be standard knowledge – he used quadratic equations as an example.  Something that the rest of us routinely learned in 9th grade and he'd never heard of.

So on that visit back to Castlemont he talked to his math teacher and asked her why she had given him those A's without him learning something so basic.  He told me her answer was that it should have been his responsibility to find that information and learn it.

by Patrick Appel

Surowiecki studies it:

The real problem may be that companies have a roving eye: they’re always more interested in the customers they don’t have. So they pour money into sales and marketing to lure new customers while giving their existing ones short shrift, in an effort to minimize costs and maximize revenue. The consultant Lior Arussy calls this the “efficient relationship paradox”: it’s only once you’ve actually become a customer that companies put efficiency ahead of attention, with the result that a company’s current customers are often the ones who experience its worst service. Economically, this makes little sense; it’s more expensive to acquire a new customer than to hold on to an old one, and, these days, annoyed customers are quick to take their business elsewhere. But, because most companies are set up to focus on the first sale rather than on all the ones that might follow, they end up devoting all their energies to courting us, promising wonderful products and excellent service. Then, once they’ve got us, their attention wanders—and Dave Carroll’s guitar gets tossed across the tarmac.

by Conor Friedersdorf

Jonah Weiner has managed to make the magazine celebrity profile interesting again. If you don't get why, this should help.

The headline in Mr. Weiner's effort is an allusion to the famous Gay Talese piece "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold." It's taught in journalism schools as an early example of New Journalism, and a demonstration of what can be produced when a profile subject refuses to cooperate. This celebrity profile of Val Kilmer is my favorite ever, largely due to the exchange between subject and writer on method acting, which is the most hilarious example of Socratic interviewing in the history of the craft. 

Quintessential example of a celebrity profile here.

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

Your reader is absolutely incorrect when he or she writes, "Mehlman is in a position to knock some folks back in their chairs and rethink their positions on gay people – and their civil rights." Twenty-five years ago, I would have (barely) agreed with that statement. But not these days. Stonewall was in 1969. The AIDS plague and Silence=Death began in the '80s and '90s. Will and Grace ended … well, not soon enough, but a few years ago.  We already have SSM in some states and in a large part of the Western World. We are now Post-Visibility.

I no longer believe this canard that a person must personally know someone to believe in his rights or that he is, in fact, a human being. I also believe that I don't need to have a Muslim women in my personal circle to understand that stoning her is wrong. I do not believe in the theory of geography – whether land or personal space – as a way to dismiss bigotry. "He's from a small town so he doesn't know better. He's never met one so he just doesn't know better."  My homestate of North Dakota – where there are about 20 black people – got on board with civil rights a lot quicker than Mississippi. Did Cheney and Rove and Bush and Clinton  – who all know gays and have gay family members – help in any way the cause of gay freedom?

These people whose hearts and minds will supposedly be changed because Mehlman confirmed an open secret already know gays and work with gays. They live in friggin' Washington, DC for God's sake, which is only slightly more gay than Mehlman's new hometown of Chelsea, Manhattan. No – those people are looking at him and thinking, "Well of course he's for gay rights; he's one of them now."

Maybe Mehlman should have remained "straight."  A straight man in a position of power and admired by his straight colleagues who comes out as a believer in gay rights goes a long way towards identifying with others and changing minds.

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

A parallel to Stephen Budiansky quoted here is the response of WWII veterans in the US.  There was no memorial in DC until somebody thought it a good idea in the 1990’s.   Small towns had memorials to all of their war dead typically a remnant of the Civil War memorials.  Universities have a notable memorial to the WWII vets.  Almost to a campus Student Unions after WWII were built as Memorials to the dead comrades that soldiers had left behind.  Until remodeled recently the Memorial Union at the University of Arizona had a prominent plaque displaying all of the University’s war dead by conflict.  This plaque was at the main entrance to the union.  As others have noted the “Greatest Generation”  sought to memorialize their dead family and friends by living a great life and building a great nation.  Would that our current times had such an intent?  I must imagine that the WTC dead would want a vibrant finance, trade and cultural center to rise form the ashes.  Which in many ways is what is being built at ground zero.  Memorials should not be sterile they should be filled with life, drama and laughter.