All That's Left Of Democracy?

I'd like for our system of government to work as the law says it's supposed to work.  Since that doesn't seem feasible anymore, perhaps Professor Reynolds' reference to Irish Democracy is the only tool we have left to save ourselves:

Writing in the Washington Post back in November, Jennifer Rubin observed:

It is a coin flip, at best, for the president as to whether his signature achievement, his only achievement, will fail. It will be repealed in essence by a popular referendum: The mass refusal of people to go along with Obama's top-down, compulsory system that was set to transform a sixth of the economy. That possibility should traumatize and probably is traumatizing the White House. ... The political implications of this are almost too enormous to calculate.

Now, as February draws near, things don't look much better. Far fewer than half the number needed by March 31 have signed up. And, as it turns out, most of the people signing up for Obamacare aren't the uninsured for whom it was supposedly enacted, but people who were previously insured (many of whom lost their previous insurance because of Obamacare's new requirements). "At most," writes Bloomberg's Megan McArdle, "they've signed up 15% of the uninsured that they were expecting to enroll. ... Where are the uninsured? Did hardly any of them want coverage beginning Jan. 1?" It looks that way...

If the program fails, it won't be because Republicans stopped it, despite all the House votes and defunding efforts. It will be because millions of Americans' passive resistance brought it to its knees. Irish Democracy, indeed.

Utopia does run on unicorn farts, despite the assertions of the Utopians.

This president is a failure.  What an embarrassment.

Unemployment Benefits

I've been on unemployment 3 times in my life, the longest time for about 6 months--during the recession of late 1990 to early 1991.  During that first stint, when I had just gotten out of the army, I kept the heater in my Colorado Springs apartment set to 55 degrees so I wouldn't freeze to death but wore sweatclothes (what is the current term for such athletic wear?) to stay warm.  I ate ramen so much that I didn't eat it again for about 20 years.  My apartment complex had a swimming pool and a restroom/changing area, and I would shower each day in there so that I didn't have to pay extra to heat my own water; a long shower was luxury I afforded myself whilst looking for work in the pre-internet days.  My last day of actual work in the army was August 1st; I was on "terminal leave" until September 15th, burning up the leave (paid time off) I had accrued.  I didn't find another job until March, over 7 months since I'd last actually worked.  In the interim I'd already moved back to Sacramento (in December) and to the Silicon Valley (in March, where I found a low-paying job within a week of my arrival).  I've been on unemployment twice since then, neither time for more than perhaps 6 weeks.

No one can ever accuse me of not being sympathetic with the unemployed.  I've been there.  I know the feeling of despair that comes with not supporting yourself financially.  I know how much of a man's ego is tied up in productive work.  I know the shame.  I am not unsympathetic.  I can empathize.

Two years of unemployment benefits, though?  That just seems so extreme.  I don't know where the line is, but it seems that two years is beyond the "temporarily unemployed" phase.  At some point it's time to admit that you're not "temporarily unemployed" anymore, that the situation itself isn't all that temporary, and that you belong on some other type of public assistance.  We shouldn't pretend, even though pretending makes the politicians feel better.

Neither should we pretend, a la Nancy Pelosi, that paying and extending unemployment benefits helps the economy.  The money certainly helps the individuals and families to whom it is paid, but using Pelosi's logic, why would anyone work?  If giving money to some is good for the economy, giving it to everyone would be awesome, wouldn't it?  Not necessarily:

New academic research released last week showing that extending unemployment benefits is a net economic drag could strengthen the conservative case against extending those benefits at the federal level.

Congress allowed benefits for the long-term unemployed to expire at the end of 2013 as part of a larger budget deal. Democrats have offered proposals to extend the benefits.

The latest legislation, a 10-month extension with budget offsets, was held up in the Senate on Thursday after Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) blocked Republicans from offering amendments.
The liberal case for an extension of benefits for the long-term unemployed rests on the supposed simulative effect of greater disposable income for the unemployed.

The new study, conducted by economists at the University of Pennsylvania and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, contends that any such stimulus is dwarfed by the economic damage done by extending jobless benefits.

Welfare was limited in the mid-90s with positive results.  There should be similar considerations made here.

Lefties and Their Protests

I'm not one of those bloggers who merely lifts other people's work--I lift specific pieces and add commentary, under the auspices of "fair use".  What commentary could I possibly add to this, though, except to say that it doesn't surprise me that it's happening in the SF Bay Area?

SO LEFTIES WERE ALL OVER TWITTER RIDICULING this letter in the Wall Street Journal, mostly on the grounds that its author is rich, and has a fancy penthouse place. (Ironic, given the digs some of said lefties enjoy.)

But then there’s this: Protesters show up at the doorstep of Google self-driving car engineer. “Protests against tech giants and their impact on the San Francisco Bay Area economy just got personal. According to an anonymous submission on local news site Indybay, an unknown group of protesters targeted a Google engineer best known for helping to develop the company’s self-driving car.”

More here: “Is the anti-tech worker sentiment nearing a boiling point? And are tech workers and companies responsible for the world’s ills? Protesters have now reportedly targeted an individual Google employee, not just the buses carrying workers like him. And whereas previous protests by other groups have addressed complaints such as gentrification in San Francisco, a flier accompanying the protest at the Google engineer’s Berkeley house is basically a diatribe against capitalism. . . . That means this has gone past the stage where people roll their eyes at the quaint protesters. Google has reportedly hired security guards for its shuttles, and Brandon Bailey wrote that the company has also launched a private ferry service.Could things get worse? Let’s go back to Lennard’s mention of the animal-rights activists’ protests against biotech companies: One of those activists, Daniel Andreas San Diego, is believed to have been responsible for the 2003 bombings of Chiron in Emeryville and Shaklee in Pleasanton. No one was injured, but San Diego remains on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist list.”

When Tea Partiers show up at somebody’s house to protest, I don’t want to hear any complaints about civility. But you can bet that the press will act like nothing of the sort has ever happened before.

UPDATE: From the comments:

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded—here and there, now and then—are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as ‘bad luck’.”

More and more of late I’ve been getting this ominous feeling that we are about to have an extended period of bad luck.

When you adopt policies that promote stagnation and make the economy more of a zero-sum game, jealousy becomes much greater. And many commenters note that the Google crowd, via its generally left-leaning politics, has enabled such. True enough.

Voter ID

From National Review:

This week, the Presidential Commission on Election Administration issued its report on improving voting in the U.S., and here’s hoping Americans pay attention to it. Our sloppy and archaic voting systems leave us tottering every election on the brink of another Florida-style electoral meltdown like the one we had in 2000. The president’s commission says that it’s finally time to address the systemic defects.

One of its recommendations is earlier voting registration, including allowing people to register online. With proper safeguards, such as requiring that people be already listed in some existing government database through which they can verify their identity, such reforms are laudable. The commission also recommended greater use of technologies that compare registration lists across state lines and that allow purges of ineligible voters. A 2012 Pew Foundation study found, for example, that 2.2 million dead people are still listed as being registered to vote...

We were reminded just this week of problems associated with absentee ballots. Guerrilla videographer James O’Keefe released an undercover video of a meeting of Battleground Texas, a leftist group working to elect Wendy Davis, the Democratic candidate for Texas governor. The video shows the Davis supporters ignoring questions about whether forging a signature on a relative’s absentee ballot was legal. “People do that all the time,” said Lisa Wortham, pretending to cover her ears. Wortham is an attorney and a deputy voter registrar working with the group. A volunteer from the group adds her opinion: “I don’t think that’s legal, I’ll do like Lisa did — I didn’t hear you say that.” Other Battleground Texas workers agree but jokingly cover their ears and also pretend not to hear.

This is why the subject is so important (and yes, I genuinely believe this is true):

Democrats, as matter of electoral strategy, rely on a lot of voter fraud, so it’s best for them to pretend it doesn’t exist, and to loudly scream racism when people point out that it does.

About 12 Hours of Sleep Last Night

School, both teaching and learning, must wear me out more than I realize.

"Managing" An Economy Without Statistics

One way to do it is just to do it:

Cowperthwaite was a humanist in a field that had fallen victim to social science. I have no great confidence that Chairman Yellen will follow his lead—even if I advise her to do so—and banish statisticians from her cold marble temple on Constitution Avenue. As a highly decorated economist, she has reached the top of a trade that considers statistics indispensable to its own functioning. 

But Cowperthwaite didn’t believe it. Stripped of his numbers an economist would have to resort to the old home truths about how the world works: If you tax something you get less of it; as a general rule an individual manages his own affairs better than his neighbor can; it’s rude to be bossy; the number of problems that resolve themselves if only you wait long enough is far larger than the number of problems solved by mucking around in them. And the cure is often worse than the disease:

In the long run, the aggregate of the decisions of individual businessmen, exercising individual judgment in a free economy, even if often mistaken, is likely to do less harm than the centralized decisions of a Government; and certainly the harm is likely to be counteracted faster.

Somehow the most successful practical economist of the twentieth century knew this was true, and he didn’t have to work out a single equation.

Where It All Began

My introductory blog post, 9 years ago today.

Time For Compromise If We Want To Win

I don't want the Republicans to nominate any more John McCains or even more Mitt Romneys--they were definitely squishy compromise candidates--but I think I can agree with this piece:

While I respect and recognize people’s religious traditions, what concerns me is this — this issue will be used effectively as a wedge to sabotage a whole lot of change at a time when it couldn’t be more necessary  It dovetails perfectly with the mythological “war on women,” which we all will be sure to hear about incessantly.

Now I readily acknowledge I have been pro-same-sex marriage for many years.  So I am not a perfectly honest broker.  But  as an observer of society,  and as a writer that’s what I’m paid to do, I have to say in all candor that political opposition to same-sex marriage is the Achilles Heel of the right going into 2016.  Social conservatives who intend to make a serious issue out of it should realize that the fallout from their views could adversely affect all of us in a catastrophic way.

No one is going to be happy here. SoCons who continue to press this issue on the political (not the personal or religious) stage have to realize that they are damaging many of us who have other concerns domestic and foreign, many of which we would probably agree on more easily.

This is a great moment.  A seriously smaller government is a real possibility with electoral victories in 2014 and 2016.  Let’s not jeopardize them by emphasizing an issue more properly, and unquestionably more successfully, dealt with in the private realm.

I don't like the idea of calling gay marriage "marriage", but I'm perfectly content with civil unions/domestic partnerships.  Whatever, though; it's not an issue on which I'm willing to plant my standard and fight to the death when there are bigger issues out there.

I'd rather keep politics pretty much out of the social arena anyway, wherever possible; I'd prefer to go back to the big(ger) tent of advocating for smaller, limited government and strong national defense.  In that regard I am a proud Tea Partier. 

I Can't Believe A School Would Suspend A Kid For This

What a kid does outside of school is no business of the school's, and they have no business disciplining a student for out-of-school behavior (with very few, delineated exceptions, and this is not one of them):

An 18-year-old Florida student is set to return to class Wednesday after he says he was suspended when school officials learned of his pornographic online photos and videos.

Robert Marucci, a senior at Cocoa High School in Cocoa, Florida, told CNN affiliate WKMG that he picked up his X-rated gig to help his mom pay the bills.

His mom, Melyssa Lieb, said when students discovered the explicit material online, her son became a target. "He was bullied, he was threatened."

Then, according to Lieb, her son was suspended, because the principal didn't approve of his after-school activities.

Lieb told CNN affiliate WPLG, "I think that it is Dr. (Stephanie) Soliven's morals and her personal beliefs and I don't think that this is anybody's business except for my son's. The children at the school found (the porn), and she didn't do anything to stop it."

State Worker Civics Test

So far I'm on the fence about this:

A measure that would require the state to develop an online civics curriculum for state workers is on the Thursday agenda for the Senate Appropriations Committee. The bill, authored by Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, would require that employees take the online course when they are hired, promoted or reclassified after July 1, 2015.

Yee, a candidate for California secretary of state, wrote the bill last year after learning that only a third of Americans can name the three branches of U.S. government.

Of course it would be nice if more people, especially those who work for our government, understood how government is supposed to work.  But in this case I worry about the potential for politically-motivated, heavily-biased curriculum.  I’m not sure this would be a good expenditure of state money.  I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, though.

Some Still Won't Believe It

Standardized testing can be important:

A study from Case Western Reserve University last year showed that standardized testing scores are excellent measures of general cognitive ability. And they continue to play a role in the competitive college admissions process.

The standardized tests discussed in the report are the SAT and ACT, not K-12 standardized tests.  Still, that won't matter to some; the SAT/ACT are sexist or racist or something.

No! Not Target!

It’s the store we’re allowed to like that’s not Walmart!  What to do now?

Target Corp. (TGT) will end health insurance for part-time employees in April, joining Trader Joe’s Co., Home Depot Inc. and other U.S. retailers that have scaled back benefits in response to changes from Obamacare. 

Who could possibly have foreseen this?  :-)

Killing A Child

For those of you who don’t believe in the death penalty, does even a monster like this not change your mind?

Even in a city accustomed to the rhythm of crime and violence, this stood out. A 4-year-old boy, dead, prosecutors said, after a caregiver beat, tortured and starved him. 

The caregiver, prosecutors said, whipped the boy with an electric cord, seared his legs with an oven rack, fed him little, and forced him outside in his underwear as New York’s temperature dropped near zero.

Suzanne Vega's Luka.


Pat Benatar's Hell Is For Children.

Do We Really Need To Teach This In School?

From Joanne's blog, complete with video :-)

A poster listing sex acts isn’t appropriate for 13-year-olds, says a Missouri father. The school says it’s part of the sex education curriculum.

This Is What Classy Looks Like

Former First Lady Barbara Bush talks about her and President Bush's relationship with former President Bill Clinton in an exclusive interview with C-SPAN for its First Ladies series. 

Only The Green True Believers Are Surprised

The citizens of first-world countries want reliable, reasonably-priced power, and solar and wind just aren't going to cut the mustard:

The EU's reputation as a model of environmental responsibility may soon be history. The European Commission wants to forgo ambitious climate protection goals and pave the way for fracking -- jeopardizing Germany's touted energy revolution in the process...

But now it seems that the climate is no longer of much importance to the European Commission, the EU's executive branch, either. Commission sources have long been hinting that the body intends to move away from ambitious climate protection goals. On Tuesday, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported as much.

At the request of Commission President José Manuel Barroso, EU member states are no longer to receive specific guidelines for the development ofrenewable energy. The stated aim of increasing the share of green energy across the EU to up to 27 percent will hold. But how seriously countries tackle this project will no longer be regulated within the plan. As of 2020 at the latest -- when the current commitment to further increase the share of green energy expires -- climate protection in the EU will apparently be pursued on a voluntary basis...

But in the future, European climate and energy policy may be limited to just a single project: reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Commission plans also set no new binding rules for energy efficiency.

In addition, the authority wants to pave the way in the EU for the controversial practice of fracking, according to the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The report says the Commission does not intend to establish strict rules for the extraction of shale gas, but only minimum health and environmental standards.

Praise the Lord and pass the sauerkraut, the Europeans are figuring out that you can't power successful economies with unicorn farts.

North Korean Geometry Lesson

Linked from Joanne's blog, here's a pleasant video from the peace-loving people of the Democratic Socialist People's Pleasant and Happy and Prosperous Republic of North Korea:

They don't even try to be subtle with that propaganda.

Latest Audiobook

I've written before about how I got involved in listening to audiobooks while doing my morning run on the elliptical trainer. 

The first book I listened to was the 30-hour book John Adams, on which the HBO miniseries was based.  When that was finished I listened to Longitude, about the 18th century search for an accurate method of determining longitude at sea; I just finished that book this weekend.

I've downloaded Augustus and will spend the next couple weeks learning about the Roman Empire's first emperor.  If I listen to it only while on the elliptical I'll be listening to it into March!

For Those Who Think Unions Are The Answer To Their Prayers

The AFT is very strong in New York.  How was it that this principal was allowed to stay in her job for so many years without so much as an investigation?

Former teachers gave The Post 10 letters sent since 2005 to Condon, Klein, Lloyd-Bey, Fariña and former Queens Superintendent Kathleen Cashin — now a member of the state Board of Regents. Most of the letters are anonymous, because the teachers feared retaliation by Sills. Some kept a “harassment log.”

The teachers also showed more than two dozen letters and e-mails to reps at the United Federation of Teachers, including then-President Randi Weingarten, now a national union president, but said even she could not help.

If a union cannot even deal with pay, benefits, and working conditions, why do people want to pay them?

Go to the link and read about all the crazy things this principal did.  Then tell me you still believe in a government monopoly over education.

I Did Not Know This About Dr. King

One of the Facebook groups I'm a member of is the Things I Remember Growing Up In Sacramento group, and today there was a reference to a visit to CSUS/Sacramento State by Dr. King in 1967.  I haven't been able to find much about his talk there except here, a bulletin from over 6 years ago:

King visited the campus Oct. 16, 1967 after receiving an invitation from the University’s Cultural Programs Committee. He spoke to a crowd estimated at 7,000 at what was then the soccer field and is now the Alex Spanos Sports Complex.

More hometown history of which I was completely ignorant. I'd love to see video of the event, or at least read contemporary accounts.

Could You Imagine If Business Could Get Away With What These College Students Are Trying To Get Away With?

Actually, under Obamacare, the insurance companies already can get away with this--wait till they raise their rates this year!  The difference between Obamacare and this story out of local UC Davis (aka Berkeley-lite) is that under Obamacare, at least citizens have a choice about which insurance company they want to pay!

As a generation of students raised on the Internet takes hold, UC Davis’ campus newspaper faces the real possibility of going extinct before its 100th anniversary next year.

The California Aggie has already gone from a daily to a weekly, eliminated staff positions and imposed across-the-board pay cuts. Now, in a desperate measure, it wants undergraduate students to finance its operation through an annual $9.30 campus fee.

“In a school that doesn’t have a journalism program, the Aggie is a learning laboratory for future photographers, writers and editors,” Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth Orpina said Friday at her office in Lower Freeborn Hall. 

If people valued their product they'd pay for it.  What does it say about UC Davis and its student paper that they have to compel students to subsidize this paper?

Miles Thomas, Senate president pro tempore at UC Davis, backed the student fees and described the Aggie as “one of the most critical institutions on campus.”

“They keep student government accountable and the administration of UC Davis accountable. Look at the pepper-spray incident,” Thomas said, referring to the 2011 event that gained international notoriety after campus police pepper-sprayed demonstrators protesting tuition hikes on the university quad.

“A fee referendum is the only way the Aggie could keep its integrity as a newspaper,” Thomas said.

How many people recorded the pepper-spraying incident with their phones, and published the videos to YouTube, before the Aggie ever got an issue to press?

The precipitous decline of the publication began seven years ago as the Aggie struggled to cope with the digital age. Orpina and past editors said financial mismanagement, combined with slumping ad revenue and decreasing readership, forced the paper last year to slash print publication from four days a week to one day.

The paper has tried to cut costs in other ways. Writers and photographers are not paid for their work. Managers receive a stipend averaging $50 a week.

Marc Cooper, a professor of journalism at the University of Southern California, criticized the proposed student fee, suggesting it was primarily driven by nostalgia.

“When you’re dying at this rate, it’s like asking people to donate to keep you on life support,” Cooper said. “If you can’t sell enough ads to sustain one or two days of publication, what kind of force are you in the community?” 

It's obvious that the Aggie isn't valued, at least as a printed paper.  How much did the paper cost before this request for subsidizing?  Or was it printed and distributed and students could pick one up for free?

In the face of economic realities and the changing habits of student consumers, the Aggie has struggled to find its place on campus. Cooper said the money would be better spent on retooling the Aggie’s website, which could be maintained for very little compared with the cost of printing papers.

“There’s an inherent danger of falling behind the ecology of news,” Cooper said. 

It seems to me that Professor Cooper has the right idea.  And if even that doesn't work, then Davis doesn't need a student-run paper.  Trying to require all students to subsidize the pastime of a few students who call themselves a newspaper staff but can't support their own hobby?  What an admission of failure!

They are, however, learning the lessons of liberals well.

Update, 3/18/14:  Forgot to link the outcome here, so here's the outcome!

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/01/18/6082249/fighting-to-stay-alive-ucd-paper.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/01/18/6082249/fighting-to-stay-alive-ucd-paper.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/01/18/6082249/fighting-to-stay-alive-ucd-paper.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/01/18/6082249/fighting-to-stay-alive-ucd-paper.html#storylink=cpy

 

Update, 

Yet Another Tax On People Who Don't Understand Economics

Why not just raise the minimum wage to $100/hr?  Then we'd all be rich:

Think $4 toast is bad? Try $6 toast, with no one to serve it to you.

A survey on one major Bay Area city's minimum-wage hike and its negative impact on businesses could be a warning sign for San Francisco leaders who are seeking to boost the nation's already-highest minimum wage.

In San Jose, a 25 percent minimum-wage hike last year led to higher prices for consumers and fewer hours for workers at restaurants, according to a survey conducted by the Employment Policy Institute, a conservative Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

Meanwhile, leaders in San Francisco -- which has a $10.74 minimum wage -- are calling for The City's lowest-paid workers to take home even more, possibly $15 per hour. And House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, has repeatedly called for an increase to the federal minimum wage.

"It's just bad public policy," said Michael Saltsman, the EPI's research director. "It's a warning for San Francisco -- and it's a warning for Congress"...

Out of the 163 South Bay restaurants surveyed, 108 -- or two-thirds -- raised prices after the $10 minimum wage took effect. Another 73 reduced workers' hours, and 69 restaurants cut staff entirely.

The notion of increasing San Francisco's minimum wage to $15 an hour is getting more traction. The influential San Francisco Labor Council recently called for such a figure.

It amazes me that lefties still haven't figured out that you can't merely legislate people into prosperity.

Who's The Most "Authentic" Feminist Of All?

White women need not apply:

There was not enough popcorn growing in the States of Iowa and Nebraska combined to cover this outbreak of intra-feminist racial greivances.

What's Good For The Anti-Free-Speech Goose...

From the Daily Beast:

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday for McCullen v. Coakley, a case in which anti-abortion activists argue that their First Amendment rights have been violated by a 2007 Massachusetts law that bars any person from entering or staying in fixed 35-foot-buffer zones around entrances to abortion clinics...

Mark Rienzi, who argued the case against the buffer zones, told the Court that the zone is, “a place where the government claims it can essentially turn off the First Amendment” for some people but not others. Justice Scalia described it as a “dead speech zone.”

What is perhaps most disturbing is that the Massachusetts law was created by people who call themselves liberal.  It is also being defended by an assortment of liberals from the ACLU to Planned Parenthood. Which raises an obvious question:  Is it now liberal to oppose free speech...

The state has argued that this law is necessary to prevent obstruction and congestion going into the abortion clinics.  But obstructing an entrance is already a crime. Abortion rights supporters have also argued that women need to be protected from violent acts of anti-abortion rights protestors.  But violent acts are already illegal and anyway, it’s hard to imagine that a painted line around an entrance is actually going to stop a violent maniac.  What about someone screaming in the face of a woman entering the clinic, causing her to feel fear?  That’s already illegal under anti-harassment statutes...

Now, if you are an abortion-rights supporter you may still be thinking, “I don’t want anti-abortion advocates bothering women going into abortion clinics, so I’m okay with this.”  That’s an understandable sentiment. But even if this law was constitutional—and it isn’t—one has to consider the implications of accepting the government exercising such a broad power that infringes on constitutionally protected free speech...

If the Supreme Court were to uphold the Massachusetts law, it’s not hard to imagine businesses lobbying to create zones where union members are not allowed to speak, but workers for the business are. Businesses could use the same logic used in McCullen:  the picketers are disrupting business and upsetting customers. So, government, please silence them—even though they are standing on a public sidewalk...

What goes around, comes around. Which is why it’s always best to stick to first principles and avoid “ends justifies the means” reasoning.  The first principle here is that the government does not have the right to control the content of speech, no matter how uncomfortable that speech may make certain people. Abandon that principle and your free speech may be next.

Nobody likes having their arguments or actions turned against them, which is exactly why the goose/gander warning is so effective.

If This List Is Any Indication Of What We Can Expect From Textbooks Aligned To Common Core, It's All Over

Here's the opening of the press release from the California Dept. of Education announcing Common Core-aligned math textbooks:

School districts now have a list of more than 30 instructional materials to choose from that are aligned to the Common Core State Standards for mathematics, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson announced today.

I don't know much about elementary school math programs but I'm more than a little familiar with algebra programs.  Since these texts are aligned to the CC standards they're new enough that I don't know many of them, but 2 jump out at me with flashing red lights and extremely loud klaxons.

The 4th text on the Algebra 1 list is from College Prep Math, CPM.  CPM published an integrated curriculum that was widely used in the 1990s; it was horrible.  I did some subcontract work when I was a relatively new teacher, and that work required me to match up CPM Course 1 to California's relatively newly-adopted math standards (adopted in 1997).  Turns out that what they claimed was an integrated Algebra 1 and Geometry program in CPM 1 aligned quite well not with Algebra 1 or Geometry, but with California's math standards for 5th, 6th, and 7th grades, and a smidgen of Algebra 1.  This program was so bad that it wasn't even submitted for adoption in California after the state adopted its 1997 standards.

Needless to say, I'm suspicious of anything put out by CPM.

Two down below it on the list is JRL Enterprises' I CAN Learn Algebra 1.  I've previously written about the crook John Lee and his ineffective I CAN Learn program; should you be interested, please click here.  Sadly, the link in that post to the Fort Worth Weekly article about JRL is no longer active, but you'll still get a sense of what I CAN Learn is all about--and now it's approved here in California.  I wonder who Lee bribed, and how much, to get his crap on the approved list.  But Darren, you say, that was 9 years ago; what if the product is improved now?  Read the link about how he got his crappy product approved, and tell me you think that he has any interest at all in mathematical education.  The word "shyster" comes to mind, and rightly so.

Needless to say, I'm suspicious of anything put out by JRL.

With these two organizations on California's approved list, watch out for a disaster in math education.

Is This What You Want For A President?

Is this what you want as a president?  Can you give an example where President Bush did this?  Do you want a Republican president, and there will be another one eventually, to conduct himself as President Obama has?

The Constitution, many of us learned in grade school, assigns the legislative power to the legislative branch, not the executive. The Constitution also commands that the president “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Unfortunately, President Obama either missed that lesson or considers it inapplicable to his own administration. Thus, his promise-cum-threat, made in the heat of last year’s campaign: “Where Republicans refuse to cooperate on things that I know are good for the American people, I will continue to look for ways to do it administratively and work around Congress.”

Obama has delivered on his promise and worked around Congress with breathtaking audacity. In his signature legislative achievement alone, the Affordable Care Act, the president has unilaterally amended the law multiple times, including delaying the employer mandate and caps on out-of-pocket expenses, waiving the individual mandate for certain people, extending tax credits to individuals who purchase insurance through the federal health insurance exchange and ignoring a statutory requirement that Congress and their staff participate in the exchanges. But the president’s audacity doesn’t stop with Obamacare. He has also suspended immigration law, refusing to deport certain young illegal aliens—a major reform that Congress has refused to enact. Similarly, with the stroke of a magisterial pen, he has gutted large swaths of federal law that enjoy bipartisan support, including the Clinton-era welfare reform work requirement, the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law and the classification of marijuana as an illegal controlled substance.

So much for the separation of powers.

Voter ID Laws

I received the following from a reader and am happy to pass this information along:

I and several others have been working for over a year to get an Initiative addressing Voter ID to the ballot. We need your help in spreading the word. I have read your blog for 3+ years and know that you occasionally write about voter ID. Our web site is guardmyvote.org and we have a Face Book page as well titled Guard My Vote. Our petitions are being printed today and we need people to collect 504,760 valid signatures before May 30th. This is a total grass roots effort and donations will be needed to sustain this effort…. so any help you can provide by spreading the word will be appreciated. We hope that you will also post some of your opinions and articles on our Face Book page. Mexico even has a better voting system than CA and they require an ID.

America's Tech Future

This is interesting:

The pipeline of students who will be tomorrow's tech leaders is alarmingly vanilla.

According to a new analysis of test-takers, not a single girl, African-American or Hispanic student took the computer science Advanced Placement test in Mississippi or Montana last year. More than a third of the population in Mississippi is black...

There are 11 states where not a single African-American took the test, and eight states where no Hispanics sat for the exam.

We're not talking here about people who passed or didn't pass, either. We're talking about people who simply took the test, which means African-Americans, Hispanics and girls aren't enrolling in AP computer science classes in the first place.

I'm sure there are some ready to cry racism here but feel compelled to echo Newsalert's snark:

The "diversity experts" tell us a companies can't succeed without diversity in gender and skin color: so someone will have to program those computers even if they are "alarmingly white". No word yet on whether the National Journal feels that public school teachers are "alarmingly female". Since, we all know registered Republicans control inner city public education: this must be a plot by Republicans to steer minorities away from the computer science field. 

Yeah, what he said :)

The Evils of Capitalism

I smile, knowing that I'm not the progenitor of the expression "capitalism is the worst economic model ever created by man, except for all the others."  Lefties hate hearing some of the truths about capitalism, and I'm happy to share some:

As F. A. Hayek points out in Capitalism and the Historians, an extraordinary collection of essays he edited and published in 1954, “The widespread emotional aversion to ‘capitalism’ is closely connected with this belief that the undeniable growth of wealth which the competitive order had produced was purchased at the price of depressing the standard of life the weakest elements of society.” This picture of economic depredation, notes Hayek, is “one supreme myth which more than any other has served to discredit the economic system [capitalism] to which we owe our present-day civilization"...

Not a day goes by without lamentations about the evils or limitations of capitalism emitted by some of capitalism’s most conspicuous beneficiaries. Barack Obama, for example, speaking in Kansas a couple of weeks ago, chided the “certain crowd in Washington” that believed “the market will take care of everything.” Of course, that is rhetorical overstatement; we all know what he means. Do we want big government, high taxes, and intricate regulation, or do we want lean government, low taxes, and the minimum regulation consistent with public safety? Or consider Does Capitalism Have A Future? a collection of essays by “a global quintet of distinguished scholars,” published by Oxford University Press, arguing that the capitalist system is teetering on the brink of collapse and it’s a good thing, too, because the socialist system that may ensue will be far better. It’s an hysterical (not in the sense of “funny”) volume, full of tired Marxoid clichés about the “internal contradictions” of capitalism and impending ecological crisis, but it is also a thoroughly typical product of the comfy intellectual caste that has enjoyed all the benefits of capitalism without bothering to understand what has made those benefits possible.

Despite this anti-capitalist narrative, however—a narrative we hear repeated by “progressive” politicians and iterated in more barbaric, polysyllabic strains by academics everywhere — the capitalist system has made possible over the last century, and especially in the last several decades, the greatest accumulation of wealth in the history of the world.  England was the crucible of this modern prosperity in part because of the freedom of economic activity that it, unlike the states of continental Europe, enjoyed.  And that freedom, in turn, and again unlike the continent, was underwritten by the limited government England also enjoyed. “The rapid growth of wealth” in England in the early nineteenth century, Hayek observes, “is probably in the first instance an almost accidental byproduct of the limitations which the revolution of the seventeenth century placed on the powers of government.”  We’ve been working diligently in this country to remove those limitations.  How far will we have to sink before the people once again rise up and repudiate the elites who wish to fetter them in manacles forged by statist overreach?

Read the entire piece for details and clarifications.

Using Academic Credentials To Cover Partisan Hatred

Dr. Helen Smith, wife of the Instapundit, received a press release:

A Psychologist Diagnoses the Tea Party-and other extremists threatening our world. In “The Polarized Mind: Why It’s Killing Us and What We Can Do about It,” Kirk J. Schneider Ph.D., calls for a new and deeper psychological understanding of our greatest political and social conflicts and those who drive them...

“You can see gradations of the ‘polarized mind’ at work in virtually all destructive political movements from Nazi Germany to Maoist China to our very own Tea Party. In fact, it is the pervasive malady of the 20 and 21st Centuries,” says Schneider.

She responded thusly:

How DARE YOU send me this trash associating law abiding American citizens with Nazi Germany and Maoist China. I am a psychologist who has sympathy for my fellow Americans who are so “extremist” that they believe in lower taxes and the Second Amendment. Horrors!

What is “killing us” are polarized minds like Kirk J. Schneider Ph.D who is so narrow-minded that he thinks those who have different political beliefs than himself are the enemy and seeks to assign them with a “diagnosis.” What is truly extremist and scary to those of a more conservative or libertarian persuasion is that so many psychologists such as the one below are such political hacks for the Democratic Party.

Please take me off your list of hate.

Helen Smith, PhD

Good for her.

To Those Of You Who Say/Said Benghazi Was A Made-Up Republican Scandal...

...screw you:

The Senate Intelligence Committee has released a bipartisan report on the Benghazi attack that finds that the assault could have and should have been prevented. The Obama administration should have stepped up security at the facility, but failed to do so. The committee concluded that the threat environment in Benghazi leading up to the attack should have caused the State Department to make up for the known security shortfalls at the U.S. facility in the city before the attack. The report does not explore or explain why the State Department consistently denied field requests to beef up security...

News broke Tuesday that despite the Obama administration’s claim to have had a security meeting including top military personnel leading up to September 11, 2012, there was no meeting. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified in classified session before the House that there was only a conference call, followed by no force repositioning, despite knowledge within the administration that the al Qaeda threat had been building in Benghazi for months....

Remember that the Senate is run by Democrats, so to say as much as they did is fairly damning.  Left unaddressed, however, is why the Administration stuck to the "caused by a YouTube video" lie for so long, why military assets in Tripoli were told to stand down rather than rescue, and why there is no effort to go after the people who did this even though one of them lives in the open in Libya.  Why did the
Administration refuse to say this was al-Qaeda?

Still, to say that an attack on an embassy, in which an ambassador and 3 others were killed, is a made-up or phony scandal, is sickening.  Were the Kenya and Tanzania embassy attacks in 1998 also made up by Republicans to embarrass a Democratic president?  Was the Tehran embassy attack in 1979 made up by Republicans to embarrass a Democratic president?  It takes a sick person to suggest such things.  Sick and exceedingly, blindingly partisan.

Update, 1/19/14: Downloaded from Facebook:

Absolutely True, Downloaded From Facebook

I Gotcher Fast Food "Living Wage" Right Here

With a seemingly endless line of talking-heads willing to ignore essentially every study that has been undertaken with regard the effects of raising the minimum-wage; and propose what is merely populist vote-getting 'benefits' for the ever-increasing not-1% who benefitted from Ben Bernnake's bubbles - we thought the following burger-flipping robot was a perfect example of unintended consequences for the fast food industry's workers. With humans needing to take breaks, have at least 4 weekend days off per month, and demanding ever-increasing minimum-wage for a job that was never meant to provide a 'living-wage', Momentum Machines - a San Francisco-based robotics company has unveiled the 'Smart Restaurants' machine which is capable of making ~360 'customized' gourmet burgers per hour without the aid of a human. First Jamba Juice, then Applebees, next McDonalds...

Link is here.

I Didn't Have Anything To Do With This, But...

...this guy has been a student of mine the past two years.  Local boy makes good :)
http://www.news10.net/video/default.aspx?bctid=3054131691001

Is History Repeating Itself?

I've quoted from this article before:

Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

 

After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.

 

"Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump," said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA's Department of Economics. "We found that a relapse isn't likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies."

 

In an article in the August issue of the Journal of Political Economy, Ohanian and Cole blame specific anti-competition and pro-labor measures that Roosevelt promoted and signed into law June 16, 1933.

Huh.  You don't say!  Might there be any similarities between that situation and today?

But the debate hasn’t focused on the academic literature on the subject – including an important, surprising new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), perhaps the most respected economic research institution in the world. (The NBER is the organization tasked with determining when recessions officially begin and end.) The study’s finding: “Most of the persistent increase in unemployment during the Great Recession can be accounted for by the unprecedented extensions of unemployment benefit eligibility.”

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, the federal government has dramatically expanded the length of the unemployment insurance program from the typical 26 weeks, the period states more or less have the funds to offer, to as long as 99 weeks. That program has helped millions of people get by, but the NBER study suggests it’s also kept the labor market much much weaker than it would have been otherwise — in fact, they calculate, unemployment is 3.6 percentage points higher than it would be if benefits hadn’t been extended.

You should go read the whole thing.

 

You Keep Hearing The Stories and Still You Don't Believe In Voter Fraud?

Lefties think (or say they think) that conservatives want voter ID laws in order to suppress minority votes.  To counter that, I'd be happy to have free state-issued ID cards to anyone who has proven his/her citizenship.  I say they say they think that is because they really don't; look at any list of tasks that require a state-issued ID and tell me that minorities use none of those services.  What are the ID requirements for Obamacare?  :-)

Conservatives believe that lefties don't want voter ID laws because lefties like to cheat; "vote early, vote often" isn't a saying that comes out of a conservative city.  Church groups aren't as likely to help people violate election laws as labor unions are.  Just sayin'.

But lefties often cry that there's never been any evidence of voter fraud; that's patently false, but even if it weren't, how would such evidence be gathered on a large scale?  It would require ID in order to prove!  It's like the millions of children who mysteriously disappeared on year when you had to start listing social security numbers of dependents on your federal income tax returns in order to claim a deduction for them...

So they won't allow us to gather the evidence of their wrongdoing, but sometimes it comes to us anyway:

But New York City’s watchdog Department of Investigations has just provided the latest evidence of how easy it is to commit voter fraud that is almost undetectable. DOI undercover agents showed up at 63 polling places last fall and pretended to be voters who should have been turned away by election officials; the agents assumed the names of individuals who had died or moved out of town, or who were sitting in jail. In 61 instances, or 97 percent of the time, the testers were allowed to vote. Those who did vote cast only a write-in vote for a “John Test” so as to not affect the outcome of any contest. DOI published its findings two weeks ago in a searing 70-page report accusing the city’s Board of Elections of incompetence, waste, nepotism, and lax procedures.

When word of this got out, guess who and what "the establishment" complained about!

Go read the whole thing.

You Fear For The School Choice Movement? It Could Be Worse

From PJMedia:

Things are different in the Fatherland of Germany, where a judge recently ordered that parents may not have custody of their children because “the family might move to another country and homeschool, posing a ‘concrete endangerment’ to the children.”

Got that? Let me repeat it just in case. A German judge took children away from their parents because “he family might move to another country and homeschool, posing a ‘concrete endangerment’ to the children.”

In August, 20 armed police, equipped with a battering ram just in case, arrived at the door of this Darmstadt family and forcibly took four children, ages 7 to 14.

Was there anything wrong with the children? Nope. The judge — whose name, by the way, is Marcus Malkmus, in case you have a voodoo doll handy or wish to burn him in effigy — the judge admitted that the children were 1) academically proficient and 2) well adjusted socially.

He just didn’t like homeschooling.

Why? Pay attention now: this takes us deep into the heart of a leftist: because he feared that “the children would grow up in a parallel society without having learned to be integrated or to have a dialogue with those who think differently and facing them in the sense of practicing tolerance.”

The invocation of “tolerance” is especially cute, don’t you think?

Wow.  Just, wow.

Media Bias? What Media Bias?

From Breitbart via Newsalert:

At a Television Critics Association event on Friday, Zucker alleged that "the Republican Party is being run out of News Corp. headquarters masquerading as a cable news channel" without acknowledging that he runs a network that accused former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin of being responsible for the attempted murder of Gabby Giffords without any evidence whatsoever. CNN has been repeatedly called out for its left-leaning biases that masquerade as "objective" news, which is why the network's primetime ratings hit a 20-year low last year.

And let's not forget about "Bridgegate":

That’s juicy, just as Bridgegate is juicy. It’s something we can all understand, it speaks to our greatest fears, and it’s the sort of thing TV newspeople could gab about for days on end without needing a fresh piece of news to keep it going.

And yet, according to Scott Whitlock of the Media Research Center, “In less than 24 hours, the three networks have devoted 17 times more coverage to a traffic scandal involving Chris Christie than they’ve allowed in the last six months to Barack Obama’s Internal Revenue Service controversy.”

Why? Oh, come on, you know why. Christie belongs to one political party. Obama belongs to the other. You know which ones they belong to. And you know which ones the people at the three networks belong to, too: In surveys going back decades, anywhere from 80% to 90% of Washington’s journalists say they vote Democratic.

Was ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN harping every night during the government so-called shutdown on Obama's barricading of highway turnouts so that people couldn't even stop on the side of the road to look at Mt. Rushmore?  Or the barricading of a federally-owned parking lot at Mt. Vernon so that visitors couldn't park and tour?  Did you hear about those every night on the legacy media?  No?  Me, either.

A Compliment

I volunteered to attend a meeting after school today at our district office.  There's a suggestion out there that our district should switch from a traditional pathway to integrated math, and of course the reason given is Common Core.

Fewer than 20 math teachers from across the district attended this meeting--three of us were from my school, and there were at least two high schools that I don't think were represented at all.  Still, much to my surprise, the overwhelming agreement seemed to be to keep the traditional Algebra 1--Geometry--Algebra 2 pathway; several reasons were given for this, and spanned the gamut from practical to legal to pedagogical to financial.

I was talking to one of my school's teachers outside after the meeting had adjourned, and a few minutes later another participant walked up to join us.  We offered to move because we thought that might be her car we were blocking in there in the parking lot, but she said she'd come to speak to me specifically.

She mentioned how she not only liked what I had to say, but liked the way I got my points across.  She said several nice things for which I thanked her, and then she gave what is among the highest compliments one teacher can give to another:  I think I'd really enjoy being in your class.

That alone made going to the meeting worthwhile :-)

First Positive Thing I Will Say About Torlakson

From a fluff piece in the major Sacramento newspaper about state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson and the implementation of Common Core standards:

Parents and teachers said Wednesday they were hoping that new standards would mean fewer tests. Torlakson said his department is interested in embedding the California High School Exit Examination into the Smarter Balanced tests. 

I won't hold my breath for that bit of common sense to materialize.

Am I Supposed To Cheer This?

It's sad that school idiocy has reached a point where a state lawmaker feels compelled to craft this:

Schoolchildren in Oklahoma could not be punished for chewing their breakfast pastries into the shape of a gun under a bill introduced this week by a Republican legislator.

Rep. Sally Kern said Wednesday her measure dubbed the Common Sense Zero Tolerance Act was in response to school districts having policies that are too strict or inflexible.

Kern cited a recent Maryland case that gained national media attention where a boy was suspended after his teacher accused him of chewing his Pop Tart into the shape of a gun.

"Real intent, real threats and real weapons should always be dealt with immediately. We need to stop criminalizing children's imagination and childhood play," Kern, Republican from Oklahoma City told News9.com.

"If there's no real intent, there's no real threat, no real weapon, no real harm is occurring or going to occur, why in the world are we in a sense abusing our children like this."

How Tired Was I?

I just finished the first week of school after Christmas break and I'll admit it, I've felt a little tired this week.  I didn't realize, though, how tired I've been.

After school I went to the local watering hole with a few others for "7th period", got home around 5:30, and laid down on top of my bed.  A half an hour ago I woke up!  After feeding the dog (poor Boomer!) and puttering around the house doing little things for a bit, I'm now going to bed for real.

It should be a great weekend :-)

You Think This Really Happened?

http://screen.yahoo.com/broken-news-daily/teachers-hilarious-response-awful-exam-224511848.html

Limiting The Reach of Schools

I've long written on this blog that schools' ability to punish student behavior should not extend beyond the campus, except for the "bus stop" rule (which, here in California, gives jurisdiction while students are en route to or from school).  Penalizing students for posting on Facebook pictures of themselves drinking, for example, is not the school's business--at least, it shouldn't be.  I've written plenty of posts where schools undertake to do extend that reach, though, and I wonder why school administrators want to go after behavior that doesn't take place at school or even affect the school.  Don't they have enough work to do with at-school behaviors?

While FIRE focuses on student and faculty rights at our nation’s colleges and universities, some cases in the K–12 context have the potential to affect our work as well. On December 27, a federal judge in Tennessee refused to throw out a First Amendment claim against a public school district that punished students for out-of-school social media posts. With many colleges striving to expand their jurisdiction over offenses committed off-campus, this ruling is a helpful affirmation that even K–12 schools—which may legally restrict student speech in a way that public colleges cannot—may not punish speech without actual evidence that such speech had an impact on the school’s activities or environment.

As the post points out, this particular case is K-12 but some colleges try to do the very same thing.

EIA's Public Education Quotes of the Year for 2013

These are classic, and I post them here in full in case, for some reason, the EIA site were ever to go away; these quotes need to be preserved for posterity in more than one location:

EIA is proud to present the 2013 Public Education Quotes of the Year, in countdown order. Enjoy!

10) “A lethargic membership is more cancerous than reforms, charter schools, and excessing. Members’ expectation of any president must be tempered with what they are willing to do for themselves.” – Nathan Saunders, outgoing president of the Washington Teachers Union. (July 31 letter to members)
9) “We’re not about picking a mayor. We’re about making a mayor, making the winner. And that’s what we’re gonna do…. I talk to them (the mayoral candidates) constantly. All of them. I know all about all of their families. I know about their dogs and this and that.” – Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, two weeks before the union endorsed Bill Thompson for mayor of New York City. (June 4 Politicker)
8) “Once at City Hall it became clear that the union — especially under its current leadership — was an enormous impediment to reform. Watching the parade of candidates genuflecting before the UFT and pledging fealty to its positions is an embarrassment. The prospect of the next mayor handing the keys of Tweed over to Michael Mulgrew makes me fear for the future of the city.” – Howard Wolfson, deputy mayor of New York City and former consultant to the United Federation of Teachers. (June 19 Capital New York)
7) “Where is the line in terms of how far the government gets involved in the operation of a private business, which is what MEA in its essence is.” – Doug Pratt, the Michigan Education Association’s temporary director of member benefits, testifying before a state senate committee about the union’s compliance with the right-to-work law. (December 5 MLive.com)
6) “As we celebrate the 150th Anniversary of CTA, we must remember that we were founded for one reason – and one reason only – and that was to engage in politics. We were founded to engage in the political process in order to create an organized system of public instruction and to elevate the profession of teaching in California.” – Carolyn Doggett, executive director of the California Teachers Association, in a January 27 speech to the union’s State Council. 
5) “Anytime there’s an audit of Title I dollars, you’re going to see errors at the school level because schools spend money for what they need, and then sometimes they worry about if it fits the parameter of the grant later.” – Andres Alonso, CEO of the Baltimore City Schools, after a federal audit revealed that Title I and stimulus dollars were used for dinner cruises, meals, theater performances and a mother/daughter makeover. (May 23 CBS Baltimore)
4) “We don’t blame the firefighters when there’s a fire, and we don’t blame the police for crime! Why would we? Then why are educators being blamed for the struggles of our public schools? Let’s look at the policies and the policymakers instead of the people doing the work every day.” – Earl Wiman, current member of the National Education Association Executive Committee. (April 12 speech to the Virginia Education Association Delegate Assembly)
3) “It would be akin to making you and your wife redo your marriage license every year.” – John Havlicek, president of the La Crosse Education Association, describing Wisconsin’s annual recertification requirement for teachers’ unions. (November 27 La Crosse Tribune) 
2) “Because maybe these teachers have an ungodly fear of interviews. Or maybe they’re on vacation in the Netherlands and don’t want to return for an interview. Or maybe they think interviews are a sham. It doesn’t matter.” – Lynn Nordgren, president of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, explaining to school district negotiators why unplaced tenured teachers who refuse to show up for job interviews should not be dismissed. (September 27 MinnPost)
1) “Since a teacher’s working conditions are a child’s learning conditions, attacking teachers is the same as attacking children.” – Randy Mousley, president of United Teachers of Wichita. (February 9 Wichita Eagle)

Global Warming and The Left

What to do when Mother Nature doesn't comport with your ideology?

You gotta hate interrupting a comic like Jon Stewart in a state of high dudgeon by peeing in the left’s punchbowl. But his entire rant blasting Fox News for the presumably fallacious premise that subzero temperatures defy the enviroleft’s global warming dogma is misleading.

Weather is just the ironic premise for discussing the subject. What Stewart’s entertaining stemwinder is missing one thing: evidence. Weather has nothing to do with the right’s objections to global warming dogma.

Not just one, but FIVE major datasets used in climate science research show that global temperatures are flat for the last 17 years, despite the rise of Carbon Dioxide levels to 400 parts per million in earth’s atmosphere...

Stewart’s rant shows the power of satire and ridicule, which the left uses in lieu of an actual argument nowadays. The Comedy Central host can cherry-pick the bragadocious Donald Trump as an exemplar of the other side’s argument, and then “freeze, personalize and polarize” him so that other people ‘don’t want to be like Donald Trump.’

I heard on the radio today that it's colder in some parts of the US right now that it is on much of Mars.  That's an interesting comparison, given that the Left's ideology is "out there".

Walmart's Health Insurance Benefits

New Obamacare health insurance enrollees may feel a pang of envy when they eye the coverage plans offered by Walmart to its employees.

For many years, the giant discount retailer has been the target of unions and liberal activists who have harshly criticized the company's health care plans, calling them “notorious for failing to provide health benefits” and "substandard.”

But a Washington Examiner comparison of the two health insurance programs found that Walmart's plan is more affordable and provides significantly better access to high-quality medical care than Obamacare.

What will be the Left's next bugaboo?

1968 West Point Video

A Foreigner's View

The symmetry of life. In 1985 I saw Foreigner perform in Nuernberg, Germany, and now I have a foreigner from Nuernberg as an exchange student in class.

He dropped by after school today to show me the math book he'd be using if he were back home--it's about 1/4" thick! We chatted for a bit as well.

I asked him what his biggest surprise was, what has he encountered that he never expected. Without hesitation he said, "Customer service. We have no such thing in Germany. Nobody cares about the customer there."

I thought that a most interesting observation for a teenager.

Parents, How Can You Let Such Kids Go Off To College?

The question preceding that one would be, how could you possibly raise your kids this way?

Let's back up. Today a former student came in to visit (we had a teacher work day today, students return tomorrow). He's now an RA in college and he shared with me some of the questions he's been asked. Parents, I marvel at the idea of
a) sheltering your child so much that they have to ask such questions, and
b) letting such a sheltered child out of your house to go away to college.

Here are just three of the questions he's been asked.
1) How do you do laundry?
2) (asked just a couple hours before the final move-out time) Do you have a suitcase I can borrow?
3) (when told there were no extra suitcases lying around) Can I take a garbage bag on the plane?

These students attend a $60,000/year private school.

If you had to guess, would you think these questioners are majoring in engineering or related fields? :-)

Just A Reminder

America, you made a mistake in November 2012.

When Left Becomes (What They Think Is The) Right

An apt analogy:

It is no accident that American progressives put so many of us in mind of our Puritan ancestors: not for their virtues, such as they are, but for their sanctimoniousness, their humorlessness, their grim little mouths set permanently in rictuses....

The article is about the left's favorite boogeyman, racism:

Touré’s concept of “niggerization” is very subtle, so subtle, in fact, that only the most discerning of sensibilities — presumably Touré’s — can detect it, like one of those world-class master sommeliers uncovering notes of burnt pencil shavings in an ’82 Bordeaux. The less subtle forms of that phenomenon — for example, using the famous racial epithet on national television — have been in the 21st century restricted to members of the political party that Touré supports, for reasons that are no doubt subtle beyond the brute understanding of the uninitiated. And that is the state of play today: When Robert Byrd, a Democratic senator and Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan, helpfully elucidates the concept of “white niggers” on the evening news, that’s an unfortunate episode that demands sympathy for the wretched old coot. But when the Associated Press accurately transcribes the current president’s faux-folksy “g”-dropping — “Stop complainin’,” etc. — the verdict from MSNBC is not just “racist” but “inherently racist.”

Except he really does talk that way. Sometimes. And if you’ve ever noticed that Barack Obama’s propensity for slipping into ersatz southern cornpone preacher-speak correlates with the complexion of the audience being addressed, you might wonder who, exactly, is behaving in a way that is “inherently racist.” But such thoughts are unthinkable.

I like this observation as well:

The Left needs racism, because unlike their good, old-fashioned Marxist forebears, the postmodern Left’s politics is not rooted in economics or history but in narrative — the most adolescent narrative: Good Guys and Bad Guys. (You could call it Cowboys and Indians, but that would be . . . ) If the other side is Hitler, then almost anything is acceptable, because Hitler can’t win. But, unfortunately for the inventors of national crusades, you don’t get a lot of Hitlers. So Hitlers must be invented. This is one of the reasons every social issue adopted by the Left (and a few adopted by the Right) becomes the “moral equivalent of war” — War on Poverty, War on Drugs, etc. Hitler was many things: nationalist, socialist, central planner, advocate of substantial “investments” in national infrastructure projects, in favor of generous spending on the arts. And, of course, a racist. The GOP checks off none of those boxes, the Democrats check off a few, but Republicans are Hitler because somebody on Fox News said Santa is white. It makes sense, if your worldview depends on its making sense.

At this point in history, the Left needs a spectral standard of evidence when convicting its opponents of racism because there is so little actual evidence to be found. Right = Racist is an article of faith on the left, facts be damned.

Time Flies

I was watching some music videos last night and sent one to an old friend who's now pretty much just a "Christmas card friend"--saying to him, guess which song I just heard?  His reply this morning was the he can't believe it's been almost 20 years since we went to "that" concert at Shoreline.

UPS, Fedex, Christmas, and High Expectations

I was tempted to jump on the "quit'cher whining, ye-who-wait-till-the-last-minute buyers" in reference to the delays experienced over Christmas in overnight package delivery.  Part of me thinks that anyone who waits that long to be "thoughtful" deserves to have their hopes dashed.

But that part of me is towered over by the part of me that loathes the idea that governmental action is required to fix the problem or guarantee that it never happens again; I'm sure that UPS, Fedex, and especially Amazon will work on their own to repair the damage done to their reputations.  As for people being upset that their packages were late, this post made eminent sense to me:

Counting your blessings is always a good idea, but calling the Christmas delivery breakdown a “first world problem” points to what’s wrong with that criticism. We want first world reliability, and if the public just shrugged when things went wrong we wouldn’t get it...

Online shopping and overnight shipping have become like Google or IMDB. They constitute what what my strategy-professor husband Steven Postrel calls “new-wave utilities,” a category that also includes ubiquitous retailers such as 7-Eleven and Starbucks. These businesses have taught us to count on them -- and take them for granted -- the way we assume the tap water will be clean and the lights will turn on. Unless something goes wrong, we don’t think about how amazing they are or how we got them in the first place.

It took years of sustained efforts by online retailers and delivery services to make overnight orders realistic. It also took dissatisfaction: insanely demanding companies working to please insanely demanding customers -- or, in some cases, to offer customers services they hadn’t even thought to ask for -- as each improvement revealed new sources of discontent...

Rising expectations aren’t a sign of immature “entitlement.” They’re a sign of progress -- and the wellspring of future advances. The same ridiculous discontent that says Starbucks ought to offer vegan pumpkin lattes created Starbucks in the first place. Two centuries of refusing to be satisfied produced the long series of innovations that turned hunger from a near-universal human condition into a “third world problem.”

Complaining about small annoyances can be demoralizing and obnoxious, but demanding complacency is worse. The trick is to simultaneously remember how much life has improved while acknowledging how it could be better. In the new year, then, may all your worries be first world problems.

I don't even have a label with which to adequately categorize this post.  First world problem.

The Irony Burns Like Candle Wax

I've avoided talking about the group of Global Warmers who, in the Antarctic summer, had to be rescued because their ship got stuck in pack ice.  I don't know why I avoided it, but I did.  Now, however, how can I avoid the story?  According to the BBC:

The Chinese ice-breaker that helped rescue passengers stranded on the Akademik Shokalskiy vessel in Antarctica may now itself be stuck.

The link above, and the commentary below, come from here:

Strangely enough, the BBC devotes almost 1,000 words to this story, but not once is it mentioned what these passengers were doing there. Just seeing the sights? Trying to prove that global warming climate change threatens to melt the polar ice caps and flood Al Gore’s basement?

Who knows? Who cares? Shut up, you climate denier. Now, be a dear and turn up the thermostat, won’t you? It’s positively beastly in here!

Awesome :-

Bill Gates Wanted His Money And He Said No

Bill probably isn't used to being told no:

Bill Gates is the richest person in the world — but one retired New York hedge-fund mogul thought the software pioneer’s Giving Pledge was “practically worthless"....

Wilson found especially problematic the pledge’s loophole that allowed signers to gift their wealth to a family-controlled foundation.

“And these foundations become, more often than not, bureaucracy-ridden sluggards,” Wilson wrote to Gates in a June 2010 e-mail, a copy of which was obtained by the website BuzzFeed.

“I’m going to stay far away from your effort,” Wilson told Gates in the same e-mail...

 Wilson, by signing the pledge, could inspire younger people to increase their giving, Gates wrote.

Wilson, in a second e-mail to Gates, was a bit more testy.

“You, being a liberal, think you can change people more than I think,” he wrote.

Wilson had his own views on how and when to engage in philanthropy.  Read more here.

When The Best And Brightest Have No Freakin' Idea What They're Doing

How is the education establishment going to react to this?  Charter schools, which they hate, run by state universities, which they love, being recommended to be shut down, which they love, by an organization, which they hate, that supports charter schools, which they hate:

The California Charter Schools Association called Thursday for the closure of a West Sacramento charter school that is run by UC Davis, Sacramento City College and the Washington Unified School District.

West Sacramento Early College Prep, which served 119 students last school year, is among the worst-performing campuses in the state based on standardized tests.

While the statewide organization is a champion of charter schools, it believes that calling for the closure of struggling programs demonstrates that charter schools are willing to be held accountable, said CCSA President Jed Wallace...

The West Sacramento school is one of six charters that CCSA has identified; the others are in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Santa Rosa, Antioch and Delano.

Ever hear of anyone in the education establishment making calls to shut down low-performing public schools?  Me, either.

The funny thing is, one could argue that perhaps this school is doing fine given its population, that its "value-added" is significant.  To argue that, and to counter that argument, would require the usual sides to reverse their usual positions!

No matter how you look at it, though, the performance of the students at this school is among the worst in the state.  It ranks in the bottom 15 schools in a 4-county region.  They may be doing wonderful things at that school, but there's no empirical evidence for such a belief.  And the excuse they gave was a classic:

Levine says students at the school don’t fare well on the state’s standardized tests, known as STAR tests, because they aren’t aligned to “the way we want them to think.” He said the school adopted project-based learning in 2008 that is more closely aligned with the new Common Core State Standards curriculum that California students will begin to be tested for in 2014.

The dean noted that California students are no longer taking STAR tests. He questioned why the charter association is using an “outmoded” measure to decide if a school is performing well academically.

Isn't that beautiful?  I'm told that Common Core will boost students' academic thinking beyond mere regurgitation of facts, that they'll understand the material on a deeper level.   If this school is teaching its students to operate that way, wouldn't those students perform even better on the STAR tests, which supposedly ask for only a cursory, fill-in-the-blank-style understanding?

I'm no fan of the Common Core standards or of the effort to use them to impose so-called discovery learning or any other educational fad on us, but even CC supporters must concede that using CC standards to excuse and explain low performance is a harsh indictment indeed.

But here's the fun part:  this school is run with input from the University of California, Davis.  A UC campus.   If this school is the best those eggheads can come up with, how much confidence should we taxpayers have in that university's school of education?  Why should prospective teachers pay to attend a UC program with such results?

Will the California Charter Schools Association's proposal lead to any introspection on the part of the movers and shakers at Davis?  Sadly, I wouldn't bet on it.  They're ideologues, evidence means nothing to them.

Why The Rest Of The Country Thinks We're Nuts Here In California

Anyone who thinks this is the best way to handle the problems posed by the smallest fraction of a percent of students--well, they're why the rest of the country just shakes their heads at us:

With a law that spells out the rights of transgender students in grades K-12 set to take effect in California, school districts are reviewing locker room layouts, scheduling sensitivity training for coaches, assessing who will sleep where during overnight field trips and reconsidering senior portrait dress codes.

But administrators, counselors, teachers and school board members also are watching and waiting. The law, the nation's first requiring public schools to let children use sex-segregated facilities and participate in the gender-specific activities of their choice, could end up suspended within days of its Jan. 1 launch if a referendum to repeal it qualifies for the November ballot.

Are we going to require students to have signed affidavits attesting to their sexual identity?   Is sexual identity "fluid"--a boy could use the girls' restroom and play on the boys' basketball team, or vice versa? 

I'm not arguing against the rights of the transgendered, or being insensitive to what they see as their plight.  I'm arguing that what we've done in California is among the worst ways of addressing it.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/12/26/6028303/calif-schools-prepare-for-transgender.html#storylink=cpy