2014 archive

It’s not the students.

It’s not the teachers.

It’s not even the administrators, though a lot of them are grifters who serve no useful purpose.

It’s wishful thinking and a ginormous misdirection play.

Our elite class has decided that they will not consider economic solutions to economic inequity. Instead, they will ask the educational system to solve what are, in large part, economic problems. Educational systems can help improve economic problems on the margins, but if the core problem is economic you need an economic solution. Elites will not consider economic solutions, so educators are given incoherent and unrealistic demands, and all else follows.

James Howard Kuntsler is not optimistic.

SO, NOW we are threatening to start World War III because Russia is trying to control the chaos in a failed state on its border – a state that our own government spooks provoked into failure?

Image via Jaunita Jean.

Shaun Mullen looks across the Delaware River to contemplate New Jersey. He does not find conducive to peaceful contemplation.

He starts with a question:

Say “Iowa” and you think of cornfields. Say “Texas” and you think of the Alamo. Say “Florida” and you think of Disney World. But say “New Jersey” and you think of . . . Oil refineries? Toll roads? The 1932 Lindbergh kidnapping? The Sopranos? And most recently Chris Christie, who has parlayed a career as a crime-busting U.S. attorney into a career as the most corrupt New Jersey governor in recent memory.

Do read the rest.

The father of the gunshine state’s “Stand Your Ground” law is moving into breakfast foods, pushing a bill to prevent schools from punishing kids who nibble their pop-tarts or other food items into the shape of guns.

My two or three long-time readers know that I think schools’ “zero-tolerance” rules are silly and stupid. They have resulted in the punishment of elementary school children for silly, harmless kid stuff that was malicious in neither intent nor result.

Those same readers know that I think “Stand Your Ground” is pernicious and vile. Underneath the high-fallutin’ rationale, it does nothing more than provide legal cover to Judge Lynch.

The Florida legislator is clearly grandstanding to the gun nut portion of his constiutency, but Frank Cerabino thinks some good might come from his effort:

But this might be the rare Florida gun bill that actually won’t create more harm to Floridians.

If this bill encourages school kids to imagine that Pop-Tarts function better as building materials for fake guns, rather than an acceptable breakfast food, it will be doing Florida’s kids a lot of good.

Florida has more than its share of child obesity . . . .