Last month, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration agreed to pay back $98 million to African American and Hispanic firefighter applicants who took two civil service exams in 1999 and 2002. The decision proves the city is succumbing to pressure from the Vulcan Society, an organization that claimed the New York Police Department tests discriminated against minorities. Dennis Saffran, an attorney and former GOP candidate for city council, is at least one New Yorker who isn't staying silent about the City's politically correct decision - especially considering that settlement money could have helped put thousands of kids through De Blasio's universal Pre-K program. In an editorial in the City Journal entitled, "De Blasio's Dereliction," Saffran let the mayor have it:
This unnecessary and wasteful expenditure touches on a troubling aspect of modern progressivism. The settlement money would have paid for one-third of the yearly cost of de Blasio’s universal pre-K program, funding over 10,000 classroom seats. But as legal scholar Mary Ann Glendon suggests, in today’s lawyer-led and court-driven liberalism, those asserting “rights” take precedent over other social-welfare causes that may have greater merit.
He's not kidding. De Blasio secured $300 million from the state budget to fund his Pre-K program, an achievement he even bragged about in a recent ad. In addition to this outrageous payment, the City has also agreed to introduce an affirmative action bureaucracy in the fire department, while working to ensure African-Americans are overrepresented by 3 percent compared with their portion of the labor market, according to Saffran.
In De Blasio's short time in office thus far, he's proven his priorities are shamefully out of order. First, horse and buggies over unborn children. Now, political correctness over pupils.
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I hope he enjoys his one term.
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