Stones Cry Out

Hurricane Katrina caused unimaginable devastation to the city of New Orleans and to the state of state of Louisiana itself, but it did provide an opportunity to push the reset button on some of the city’s and state’s policies. One of these resets has occurred in the area of education.

Last year, Louisiana’s legislature established a voucher program for poor kids who would otherwise be stuck in failing public schools. It received bipartisan support, and is part of a larger set of reforms statewide; that reset button. Here are some of the results:

• Last spring, Louisiana’s graduation rate reached an all-time high, with 72.3 percent of students graduating from high school on time, up from 64.8 percent in 2005.
• About 85 percent of students using Louisiana’s vouchers are black. In Louisiana, where 45 percent of blacks remain in poverty, this can only be a good thing economically, both for the kids for whom many more doors open when they have a high school diploma, and for the state economy, as more workers with a better education helps deal with unemployment.

When he was in Louisiana this month, President Obama said these words in a speech. “Let’s give everybody a chance to get ahead, not just a few at the top, but everybody. If we do that, if we help our businesses grow, our communities thrive and our children reach a little higher, then the economy is going to grow faster. We’ll rebuild our middle class — stronger.”

Now that sounds great, and it’s exactly what the school voucher program is doing; giving everybody a chance to get ahead. Which is why it’s rather incongruous of the President’s Department of Justice to be suing the state to essentially halt the program, on the grounds that if poor black children leave terrible schools for better ones, those failing schools become less diverse?

And here we get to the crux of the matter. To the Left, results don’t matter if they are achieved by proving liberal policies wrong; in this case, the idea that the government is the best educator of kids. Further, diversity has not been negatively impacted, and in some cases, has improved, so they’re making stuff up just to protect their orthodoxy, and hurting school children in the process.

Don’t listen to this administration’s rhetoric, watch what they do. Their politics are more important than the outcomes.

G’day

1. And the fossil record clearly shows all those mass die offs every time the globe warmed far hotter than it is now, which it has done many times … oops, what do you mean it doesn’t? Hmm. So, then what’s the point of the article?
2. A “seems to have forgotten” moment that will likely never again be forgotten by at least one individual.
3. Disagreeing with Aristotle (and I think the founders who I suspect agreed with Aristotle).
4. Although I think the above post author would agree with this.
5. So, do you agree? Was it illegal or  just unprincipled?
6. Related to the above.
7. Cool. (HT)
8. And he’d be right.
9. A certain running back, back in the news.
10. Another person who envies the VA system.
11. The press and a prophet.
12. Stupid if true.
13. Ditto.
14. Obamacare and it’s implementation. Hypocrisy?

Well, I’m exercising again (too much work for quite a bit there). It would feel better if I wasn’t so horribly out of shape.  … Links?

1. Tools for staying in power, kind of like suborning the IRS to harass opposition groups. Makes you feel good doesn’t it.
2. More not-feel-so-good news about our government “for and by the people”.
3. Obamacare, bending that cost curve … since 2003, err, wait!?
4. Fertilizer pollutants and a possible solution.
5. This is making the rounds. I don’t understand very well his objection. Legal != moral. Do what is right and let the cards fall. What else can/should a man do but that?
6. This too is making the rounds. Looks like lying and playing the victim card scored the liar thousands of dollars and some fame and notoriety. Yet another strikeout for the (liberal) press.
7. Way way better than pigs in space.
8. A non-mistake by the Administration. Heck, even a stopped watch is right twice (or once depending) a day.
9. Synchronization.
10. Mona Lisa re-imagined.
11. Mr Matthews backhand criticism of the President.
12. A debated noted.
13. For those who think there are no non-religious arguments against SSM. Think again.
14. Mr Thomas in a heartbeat.

Yo. No excuses this week. I’m home and I’m off work.

1. Obamacare satire (HT).
2. Less humor, more insight on Obamacare here.
3. ROTFL, geesh. Maybe he’s right, it’s not about ideology it’s about inclusion in the “Democrat team”.
4. GQ skewers Obama for the Holidays.
5. Ten points to consider when thinking about immigration. Look carefully at #1 if you think “open borders” is anything but a joke.
6. 2nd Amendment and knives.
7. America, where if it’s really weird, we will build it.
8. Remember carbon credits.
9. Smelling a rat.
10. Zoom.
11. Progressive taxation.
12. I disagree. You’re both being racist. A good definition of racism is using race as a criteria where it is unwarranted. You aren’t being “tribal” unless you are part of that tribe. If you are using color of skin to judge suitability for a job, that is racist whether you decide to give the job or withhold it on that basis.
13. Curious chemistry.

I’ve written before about the problems big cities are facing when it comes to Cadillac pensions. San Bernadino, California and Detroit, Michigan declared bankruptcy largely due to this. And now comes word that another California city may follow in their footsteps.

Desert Hot Springs , a resort town of 26,000 warned that it will run out of money by March due to burdensome salary and pension costs. That would make it the third California city along with San Bernardino and Stockton to succumb to that. Amy Aguer, the interim director of finance, said nearly 70 percent of the city’s budget was consumed by police costs, most of which were spent on salaries and pension payments.

Now, part of this problems is the California public employees’ pension program, Calpers. The cost charged for participating keeps going up. Karol Denniston, a bankruptcy attorney in San Francisco said, "Calpers keeps increasing costs and many of these cities have cut costs down to where there is nothing else left to cut." And I’m sure that contributes to the problem, but I really don’t think it accounts for 70% of Desert Hot Springs’ budget.

But the main thing is, if they do go under, who gets paid? Do the pensions get cut in order to pay off creditors? That’s a difficult question to answer. It’s a case of competing promises. The root causes of all of this, though, are those initial promises. Russell Betts, a council member, stated the obvious when he sad, "It’s obvious we can’t continue with salaries and pensions that are in the stratosphere, no matter how much love there is for our police department.” Sure, it’s obvious now, when the problems arise. But if you’d said anything like that years ago, you’d have been labeled as someone who “hates” the police, or public workers in general. “We should be paying our police more than our football players!”, some might shout, even though I’m sure that Desert Hot Springs doesn’t have a national football team. But anyway…

That’s a nice sentiment until you have no money left. I’m not suggesting what Desert Hot Springs should be paying its cops, nor suggesting that such pensions aren’t deserved. It’s just that when you overpromise, sooner or later someone’s got to pay the piper. And even if it’s shared pain between pensioners and creditors, promises get broken.

The solution is to state the obvious before having to break those promises. The problem is that there are too many voters and council members who think that government money is limitless, which is only true until it isn’t. Sure, stating the obvious – that we should live within our means – may get you called ‘heartless’, among other choice adjectives, but it must be said.

That’s kind of like how those of us who were against this huge set of promises we often call ObamaCare were treated. We’re stating the obvious, but we’re being called ‘heartless’, all because we don’t want to go bankrupt. We’re already going bankrupt, that much is for sure, but we’re rather not hang another boulder around our neck while trying to stay above water. As I’ve mentioned before, federal pensions and existing entitlements alone cost more than we take in in taxes. Among the many promises that ObamaCare will not fulfill is that it will reduce the deficit. We can’t afford that.

I feel like I’m council member Cassandra sometimes, warning of danger that is obvious to anyone who would see, but not being believed, in spite of so much evidence surrounding us. Website glitches are sideshows. Economic realities will bury us.

Quite busy busy busy, ’tis the season I guess. How about you?

1. Intrusions of sorts. To what end? I understand why Google or Target wants to know lots about you, … to sell you stuff and make money. Why does the state want to know? Perhaps the critical question is what reasons for wanting to know are valid and what are not? I suspect, like what constitutes a right left and right will not come to easy agreement on that question.
2. To that point? 100% free and voluntary, yah, right.
3. National character and pride of place demonstrated. Rightly it seems too.
4. Woodland creatures prepare for the zombie apocalypse.
5. Cutlery for the season.
6. UN treaty trumps local laws? Hmmm.
7. Remember those remarks in September about security and the government health insurance exchanges …
8. Discovery!
9. A contrast.
10. Setting the mood.
11. Whose money was spent, eh?
12. Wow.  Serious mad skillz.

James O’Keefe has been exposing fraud with his Project Veritas for years. The oxen that have been the target of his goring have been of the variety that liberals tend to hold dear, which is why, while saying they don’t like fraud, they typically try to marginalize him. And when that doesn’t work, people like Rachel Maddow just make stuff up.

The latest group to find themselves in front of the cameras of Project Veritas are the ObamaCare “Navigators”, those 50,000 folks who will, if you need it, give you help in getting signed up for the Healthcare Exchanges. Once those exchanges are actually, y’know, working. They’ll get you the lowest premium, even if they have to tell you to commit fraud.

And it’s not just the fraud that is of concern. Enrollment information is being shared with a political group called Battleground Texas, one that is trying to get more Democrats elected. There’s more in the video, and O’Keefe says this isn’t the last of what he has. Hopefully he’ll get to the issue of no federal background checks being required for these folks.

O’Keefe’s undercover videos were a major reason that fraud was uncovered in the group ACORN, and it seems like these Navigators are cut from the same cloth. In fact, in some states, they’re one and the same, with former ACORN people forming more groups under different names and supplying people to work as Navigators.

Yup, if you liked ACORN, you’ll love the ObamaCare Navigators, because both groups seem to have the same agenda. And competence.

G’day

1. Creativity in science and a reply. I’ve been reading David Bently Hart’s new book … in it he remarks that science is an ascetic discipline (mental), in which the discipline is to hold and perfect your thinking to certain methodologies. Perhaps the best way to consider creativity in science, similarly, as  constrained creative process. To narrow down further, you can make a creative chess move, but that isn’t freely open to creativity your movements and options are constrained by the rules.
2. And here just this weekend, I was joking that if we get a new dog, we’d name him/her “lunchmeat”.
3. Obamacare compared.
4. Liberty for all.
5. A search and rescue in the White House.
6. I might have to read this to find out what “exact numerical solution” might mean.
7. Uhm, … duh. Next on from our science reporter, the sun rises in the east and moving air is called “wind”.
8. Categorizing the senseless.
9. Heh.
10. In flight repairs of a unique sort.
11. Why are we married? A conversation.
12. Old salty sea stories.
13. Teaching and competition.

Woops.

1. A legal debate noted.
2. A legal question posed …
3. and one remark on that front from another lawyer.
4. Splitsville.
5. So, there was this zebra and this donkey and they walk into a bar ….
6. Or more likely the “core idea” is not actually a good one.
7. Says the guy who doesn’t take raw garlic when he gets a cold.
8. If there’s no there there, why the NDA?
9. An extreme embarrassment for the administration and their now obvious lack of anything resembling competence.
10. Just change the words and it’s not racism.
11. Archaeology and spice.
12. Logic.

G/day

1. Wooh, racism … liberal hue and cry for aff action is … curiously absent.
2. Wealth transfer (HT).
3. 2nd hand smoke, meet 2nd hand consent.
4. Scary story?
5. War on marriage, the economics front.
6. “Snuck in” … uhm, no. Yet another lie appears.
7. “Transitioned” from the plan you like to the plan you are required to have.
8. Remote touch.
9. Freedom or federal healthcare, pick one. Just remember that.
10. Slime … not the beltway variety.
11. Coyote benefits?
12. Intentional edit?
13. 50k signups … in perspective.

In October of 2012, I noticed an article noting that global warming had essentially stopped since 1997. Well, it’s still stopped, and Professor Judith Curry from the Georgia Institute of Technology is taking a closer look at it.

A paper by her in the peer-reviewed journal Climate Dynamics not only explains the pause, it suggests that the scientific majority have underestimated the role of natural cycles and exaggerated that of greenhouse gases. This is the foundation on which the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC report we keep hearing about) is built, and she’s shaking it to the core.

Imagine that; nature – the massive ecosystem that is our planet Earth – has more influence than man.

Check out this article that includes a graph of what all the various and sundry climate models have predicted, and then a line showing reality. The climate is now at a point at the bottom of the lowest prediction model. On top of that, Professor Curry says that this is likely to continue until at least 2035. She presents evidence of natural cycles that can be documents for the past 300 years in making this claim.

Now, accept or reject Professor Curry’s data or conclusions, we still are left with the nagging issue of predictions, used by the UN, that were presented with 95+% certainty. Somebody didn’t tell Mother Nature. Well, more likely, as Prof. Curry said, “The growing divergence between climate model simulations and observations raises the prospect that climate models are inadequate in fundamental ways.”

“Inadequate.” That’s putting it mildly. Not unlike our climate, actually.

G’day again.

1. Spot the horrible warming trend.
2. Mr Clinton says it was a lie too. And he’s not alone. Of course that begs the question of why, unlike the rest of us, they didn’t realize it when he said it and not now.
3. Enrollment numbers, success was 500k, got 50k … and they lied to get to arrive at 50k  … wonder how low it really was, eh?
4. Doc Ock wasn’t a credible villain … comes to life.
5. Advocates for any given thing often bring them to demonstrations. Liberals find that odd apparently.
6. Servicemen drink. Who knew?
7. Progress in peer review?
8. No. What we need are people to look at studies (eg) which show no correlation between gun violence a gun control legislation.

OK, so let me get this straight. The problem that ObamaCare was trying to fix was this: uninsured people got free healthcare at emergency rooms, but this cost was borne by taxpayers.

So the solution is to subsidize their insurance. The subsidies come from their tax refund via the IRS. Where does the money come for these subsidies? The taxpayer. And for those not getting subsidies for their ObamaCare insurance, many are seeing rate increases to also offset these lower cost plans. And since the Supreme Court called this a tax, then again, the money is coming from the taxpayer.

And since those subsidized plans don’t really get subsidized until folks get the credits on their tax refund, they have to front both the cost of the plan and the cost of the often huge deductibles, until tax time. How about that? The poor give Uncle Sam a no-interest loan. How compassionate.

Here’s the bottom line: The problem was that taxpayers bore the cost of the poor getting free health care. The solution is that the taxpayers bear the cost of insurance for the poor, and the poor bear the full cost of the insurance and thousands of dollars of deductible until sometime the following year. Does that make sense to anyone?

G’day

1. Seems to me the logic problem (I figure about 51% btw) is that “one daughter is a girl born on Friday” doesn’t preclude the other daughter from also being a daughter born on Friday. The other child’s birth day and sex is unconstrained.  The probability any given child is born female is 51% if memory serves. (One coinflip was heads on a Monday what’s the chance that my other flip was tails?)
2. Well, this may be a problem … but at least Mr Obama’s recent promise broken/lie isn’t at issue (after all he never promised his healthcare reforms would not cause job lose).
3. Examining drug development.
4. A boat and a typhoon.
5. Bat-zappers.
6. The car I’d really really like to own and drive when it comes out, but the boneheads in Washington most likely won’t let me.  There is no excuse for this rampant stupidity.
7. Art meets the modern Political Correctness.
8. The iceberg tip.
9. A science lesson for the global warming alarmists (and those think any science is settled on either side).

Meet Simon Fitzmaurice, an Irish filmmaker who chose life in the face of certain death:

Ruth Fitzmaurice watched as the consultant, a man they had never met before, entered the hospital room and made his way towards her husband’s bed.

Simon, a talented filmmaker and the father of three small boys, lay there with a tube going down his throat, pushing air into his lungs, allowing him to breathe but preventing him from being able to talk.

They listened as the medic spelled out in no uncertain terms what he expected them to do.

‘He basically announced that this was the end of the road,’ explains Ruth. ‘That was it, they had done all they could – that he had phoned Simon’s own consultant in Beaumont Hospital who agreed that ventilation for Motor Neurone Disease (MND) is not advocated in Ireland.’

The consultant continued, telling Simon that it was now time for him to make ‘the hard choice’ – to agree to come off the ventilator.

But Simon was not going to give up that easily.

Despite the consultant’s stark and very clear recommendation, Simon refused to grant permission to take him off the machine that was keeping him alive.

‘Simon’s family very much think for themselves, and Simon in particular is a very strong character,’ smiles Ruth. ‘He wouldn’t be fazed by being told what to do by a doctor, he would question things and say: “Hang on a second.”

‘The consultant told us if he stayed on the ventilator that he wouldn’t get out of the hospital. With MND [a degenerative condition that destroys the cells that control voluntary muscles and can affect speaking, walking, breathing, swallowing and general movement] it’s like, “where do you think this is going? You’re only going to get worse. Why would you choose to ventilate?” So that’s when we decided to fight.’

Not only did they decide not to take Simon off the ventilator they went a step further by deciding to have more children (they already had three when they received his diagnosis). They ended up having twins.

‘Everyone thought we were a bit mad,’ laughs Ruth. ‘But we felt in the face of death and with everything that had happened, well, kids are the ultimate opposite of all that, they’re life-affirming.’

But that’s not all. Simon also went on to finish a script that he had been working on for a movie he will direct starting next year.
Rather than accepting a death sentence, Simon has chosen to go on living life to the fullest possible. It’s a beautiful picture of what it truly means to choose life. Be sure to read his entire story.