Liberal democrats continue to make the claim that the opposition party is the party of oppression – while they themselves engage in oppression.
Out of the frying pan, into the fire
I don’t agree with this CSU proposal to end the use of standardized testing. It’s simply not the correct response to a disparity in test results.
I do agree that students from more affluent backgrounds tend to perform better on these tests, but evidence points to the cause as simply being the additional resources afforded affluent youths. In short, higher tests score are the result of being better prepared – both for the standardized tests and for college; higher test score are good.
By eliminating the test requirements, two things will happen:
1) Students in general won’t prepare for these tests, and as a result will be less prepared for college; and
2) More affluent students will simply go to better colleges where their test scores matter.
This is just another example of how dropping the bar to the lowest common performance level – not exactly something that will drive American excellence – will have significant unintended consequences. It will make the average American student dumber while widening the performance and prosperity gap between affluent and poor youth.
While I applaud the effort to increase college prospects for less advantaged youths (after all, it’s not their fault that their family is poor), we need to remember that education is a scarce resource. As such, it must be allocated to those who will do the most with the opportunity. In this case the solution is not to lower the bar; we must instead maintain the bar while improving the study and test resources available to poor or disadvantaged students.
To do otherwise is a disservice to the student.
Something from the “WTF?!?” bin
What – did you really think that criminals would not figure out how to game the system? Dream on!
This offender (reported as a biological male) did not identify as a female until they were in custody. As a result of their new-found identity – and DA George Gascon’s absurd policies – for molesting a 10 year old girl this offender will be sentenced to two years in a juvenile detention facility for girls. Really; you can’t make this stuff up!
Here are the highlights:
Because Tubbs began identifying as female after she was taken into custody, and Gascon refused to try her as an adult, Tubbs was sentenced to two years in a juvenile facility. In L.A. County, juvenile facilities can house both females and males, but in separate areas. Tubbs will be housed with the females.
Two years is the maximum sentence for any juvenile in the new program over the age of 25, according to Deputy District Attorney Shea Sanna.
So I say again: WTF?!?
Why retail theft continues in CA
Almost $2M worth of stolen goods recovered, and the criminals get less than 1 year in jail + 2 years of probation? $2M for less than a year? Sounds like crime really does pay in California:
California organized retail theft ring suspects plead guilty
I wonder if they are hiring…
Punishing the innocent
We’ll just make law-abiding gun owners pay instead of locking up violent, gun-toting criminals. Yeah, that’s the ticket… yeah…
San Jose approves gun owners liability insurance
I love this quote from the article:
“The proposals include two requirements for gun owners that no city or state in the U.S. has ever implemented: the purchase of liability insurance and the payment of annual fees to fund violence-reduction initiatives,” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo wrote in an op-ed with the Los Angeles Times last week. [emphasis mine]
By definition, law abiding gun owners (like the ones who would comply with this new law) have nothing to do with criminal behavior or gun crime. So why should they be singled out to pay for violence reduction initiatives, rather than the entire population? Particularly when it was the majority vote that put the politicians in power who now refuse to hold criminals accountable for their violent actions?
Here’s another doozy:
On Monday, Liccardo explained at a news conference that the proposal intends to better compensate shooting victims and their familes, as well as make it harder for people who aren’t willing to follow the rules to own a firearm, KTVU reported. [emphasis mine]
But the majority of criminals who use guns in the commission of their crimes are already prohibited from owning a firearm (even Politifact concedes this point). In addition, these criminals are going out to shoot people – an act of far greater legal consequence than ignoring this new requirement. To believe that this law will somehow “…make it harder for people who aren’t willing to follow the rules to own a firearm…”, in particular criminals, is laughable. They won’t even notice.
How about this:
“While gun rights advocates argue that gun owners should not have to pay a fee to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms,” Liccardo said, via the report, the “2nd Amendment does not require the taxpayers to subsidize folks to own guns.”
But the taxpayer is not subsidizing law-abiding gun owners – they are instead subsidizing criminals. This is like blaming banks for bank robberies, automobiles for drunk drivers, airplanes for hijackings – oh, and guns for gun crime. It’s the criminals, stupid!
Well, at least it is clear and convincing evidence that California liberals hate gun owners more than they hate criminals. Who’d have thought?
China’s gonna kick our ass…
I have been watching a documentary on Amazon entitled “China’s New Silk Road”. In it a man’s 11 year old son is watching an English presentation of a mathematics course. He’s learning about the chain rule for calculus.
He’s learning calculus at 11 years of age.
We can’t even get our union public school teachers to show up for class; they’d rather work remote – maskless from a beach in Florida – while trying to get 12th graders to pass a 10th grade test so that they can graduate high school.
Enough is enough. Screw the “voting rights” (aka “Democrats Forever”) bill; pass a bill granting universal school choice instead. Let’s give the teacher’s union some competition so that we can RAISE the bar rather than lowering it.
And we’d better act soon. If not, let’s at least start teaching Mandarin and Cantonese in our public schools so that our students are prepared to be good little communist slaves to their new overlords.
But, wait…
When Trump said this regarding COVID-related changes to election law he was labeled a liar and a quack; but when a Democrats say the same thing it’s accepted as fact?
I particularly like this little tidbit from the same article:
But a bill passed by the Democrats on a party-line vote – like their “voting rights” bill – that’s fine, right?
Hypocrites!
NPR credibility = 0 (and falling)
Even after Sotomayor and Gorsuch released a statement calling NPR’s report “false”, even after it was refuted by the Chief Justice himself, NPR is sticking to their story. Their claim?
I’ve two point to make here:
1) In their statement responding to NPR’s story, Sotomayor and Gorsuch specifically said:
That sounds like a pretty clear challenge to the story line “…the justices in general are not getting along well.” Uncontested premise? I don’t think so…
2) Anecdotal leads meant to be illustrative must be demonstrably true. That the facts – as supplied by firsthand participants rather than Totenberg’s vague, unidentified “sources” – are of little concern to NPR should be of grave concern to their readers.
By continuing to stand by this story, NPR has shown its true colors: that of a political propagandist; a tool of the administration for sowing dissent. They should be treated as such, and their work given little if any credence.
Hubris
So why don’t they just accept less money and pay their workers more? Or keep their money and let the free market system eventually work things out?
Over 100 millionaires call for higher taxes worldwide: ‘Tax us now’
It’s because with money these people have power. With money they can control politicians; and by allowing some small portion of their wealth to be redistributed by the government, the politicians can exert control over the people through dependence. Thus, money gives these people power over you – if you let them.
The hubris of demanding they be taxed more – that you become more dependent on them, their money, and the politicians who redistribute it – rather than simply taking less and allowing you to gain independence exposes their true goal.
Voting rights my a##…
The left’s continued push to pass the “voting rights” bill (H.R. 1) with only the barest majority in the Senate – and that only with the assistance of the Vice President to break a tie – should be concerning to most Americans. Why the push to federalize our elections, and what do they hope to gain? Why is their legislation hell-bent on eliminating voter ID laws when 75 to 80% of Americans are for them? Will the contents of this bill be so beneficial to future Democratic campaigns that they would be willing to risk the use of another “nuclear option”, given how poorly these have worked out for them in the past? Let’s take a look at H.R. 1 and see if we can answer some of these questions. Because it’s an 886 page behemoth, we’ll only be looking at the portion of the bill associated with voting “rights”.