Muda69

The city of Frankfort has already cancelled recyclables pickup on Wednesday due to the cold.    I fully expect CSF to cancel school on Wednesday, possibly Thursday as well.

10 minutes ago, Impartial_Observer said:

So in other words, use some common sense.......sage advice Muda. 

Meh, like you have anything to worry about down there in balmy Seymour: https://www.wunderground.com/forecast/us/in/seymour?cm_ven=localwx_10day

https://www.jconline.com/story/news/politics/2019/01/27/indiana-teacher-pay-how-holcombs-plan-could-widen-pay-gap/2660717002/

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A plan to save public school districts money — and hopefully get those dollars into the pockets of overworked, underpaid teachers — was supposed to save schools millions.

In some cases, like large and suburban districts in the Indianapolis metro area, it will. And teachers in those districts are poised to see raises of $1,000 or more. In some small and rural districts, though, the savings will be paltry and teachers may see little benefit.

The plan, which Gov. Eric Holcomb unveiled this month during his State of the State address, would take $150 million from Indiana's budget reserves and pay off an unfunded portion of the state's retirement fund for teachers, dropping the amount that school districts are required to pay toward the plan. Holcomb said he wants those savings to go toward raising teachers' salaries — a top issue at the Statehouse this year.

Some districts, like Speedway Schools, have already said they'll do just that.

"If the governor's proposal becomes law, we will direct the savings into teacher salaries," Superintendent Ken Hull said. "We believe that we have exceptional teachers who deserve the best compensation possible."

 

Others, though, aren't moving as fast. In a state with robust school choice and where money follows students, some small school districts could see their savings erased by enrollment losses.

An analysis from the Indiana Public Retirement System, which manages the state's public pension programs, estimated savings for public school districts based on their eligible wages paid in fiscal year 2018. Contributions to the pension fund are paid as a percentage of wages, and the governor's plan would drop school districts' required contribution by 2 percent.

 

A 2 percent reduction in 2018 would have saved schools nearly $63 million. Eligible wages would have to grow by more than 11 percent from the 2018 fiscal year to hit the $70 million savings target. The governor's office said that figure was an estimate, based on expected wage growth and other factors.

Should the plan be adopted, the state's largest districts stand to save millions in pension payments.

Based on the analysis of 2018 wages, Indianapolis Public Schools could save more than $2 million a year. Lawrence, Perry and Wayne townships would save more than $1 million. Hamilton Southeastern Schools would save nearly $1.5 million.

For tiny Medora Community Schools in rural Jackson County, the loss of just two students would erase the $12,000 that district is projected to save. An enrollment drop of two students — or even 10 students — spread across all 13 grade levels isn't enough to cut staff. So fixed costs will stay the same, but state money will drop, explained Roger Bane, superintendent at Medora.

"The money following the student like it is right now is hurting all the small schools," he said.

That will remain true, he said, as long as the state has open enrollment between districts.

This fall, the district lost 85 students through transfers to other public school districts, to public charter schools or through the state's private school voucher program. Most of those were to a neighboring public school district, Brownstown Central Schools.

The total amount schools would save isn't the only disparity, either. The amount school districts save per teacher also varies widely.

Some districts, like South Henry Schools, are projected to save as little as $500 a year per teacher. The district, in a rural area between Indianapolis and Richmond, has fewer than 60 teachers and will benefit far less than almost every other district in the state.

East Porter Schools, serving 2,500 students in northwest Indiana, is on the low end, too. It will get back a little less than $650 a year for each of its 160 teachers.

Some districts in Marion and surrounding counties will bank more than $1,000 per teacher. Wayne Township is looking at somewhere around $1,100 per teacher, as are Perry, Washington, Pike and Warren townships, Speedway, Hamilton Southeastern, Carmel Clay, Plainfield and Westfield-Washington schools.

While 25 districts stand to save around $1,000 per teacher, more than 60 districts look to get $750 or less to theoretically put toward their teachers' paychecks. 

And this figure matters, especially when schools are being encouraged to put this money back into teachers' pockets. Should they do so, the suburban districts that already tend to pay their teachers more will have greater capacity to raise salaries, potentially widening the pay gap between rich and poor districts. 

"It will absolutely widen the gap," said Bane, whose district in Medora is projected to save about $600 for each of its 20 teachers. 

The disparity in savings per teacher is largely driven by two factors: the age of a district's workforce and what the district is already paying its teachers. Teachers who were hired before 1996 aren't included in the pension fund at issue (they're in a different pension fund), and therefore districts won't save any money on those teachers.

And because the savings are a percentage of eligible wages, districts that are already paying their teachers higher wages will save more.

Many of the districts that stand to benefit the most from the plan have passed property tax increases in their communities in the last several years, enabling them to boost teacher pay ahead of a concerted effort by the state to do so.

One example is Brown County Schools, a small, rural district with declining enrollment. They should be on the lower end of the scale, but projections show the district would save around $1,000 per teacher, per year.

Superintendent Laura Hammack said the district has been concerned about teacher pay for years and took a tax referendum to voters in May 2016. Pitched as a way to raise salaries, the referendum passed and teachers have received a raise each of the last three years.

But, she said, they want to do more and the governor's proposal could help them do just that.

"We're really excited about this line of thinking," Hammack said. "We genuinely think that this will translate into more dollars for teachers."

Not every school district can pass a referendum, though, to help close the gap between "haves" and "have nots."

Chris Lagoni, executive director of the Indiana Small and Rural Schools Association, said schools are largely grateful for the governor's proposal and really any effort to get them more funding or cut expenses. 

All school districts want to pay their teachers better, he said, but the state's funding formula hurts schools with declining enrollment and many small, rural districts are at a disadvantage. And some of his member districts just can't pass a referendum.

"There are two groups," he said. "You're either increasing enrollment or declining enrollment."

While all school districts will save under the proposal, it won't do anything to address the disparity between districts. There seems to be little agreement on how to fix that problem, though. Most lawmakers argue that teacher pay is inherently a local decision, so the state can encourage districts to raise pay but won't mandate it.

Rep. Terry Goodin, a Democrat from Austin and superintendent of Crothersville Schools, said lawmakers should just increase school funding instead of playing what he calls a "shell game."

"If you really want to give a pay raise, stop the hocus pocus," he said. "Just give a pay raise. Put the money in (the budget) to give a raise." 

.....

Smaller schools will soon be forced to consolidate or close their doors.  The enrollment numbers will soon reach a point where it is economically unfeasible for them to stay open.  

https://www.indystar.com/story/weather/2019/01/28/indianapolis-weather-record-breaking-cold-temperatures-tuesday-night/2698744002/

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Central Indiana is in for the kind of cold stretch sure to have us longing for temperatures that are just freezing.

After a round of rain and snow on Monday, Indianapolis could see record-breaking cold, with temperatures dipping to about eight below zero on Tuesday night.

"A large area of low pressure (is) coming down out of Canada," said Senior Meteorologist Mike Koch of the National Weather Service in Indianapolis. "It's part of the polar vortex. This is polar air, that should tell you something."

Tuesday night also could bring dangerous wind chills of -26 degrees to Central Indiana, Koch said.

Lafayette, Kokomo and other parts farther north will see actual temperatures of about -15 with wind chills of -34 degrees.

The Weather Service on Monday issued a wind chill watch for Central Indiana from Tuesday night to Thursday afternoon.

Dress for the cold and watch out for frostbite and hypothermia, the Weather Service warned.

"This system should move out pretty quickly so that's a good thing," Koch said.

Friday's temperatures will climb to about 32 degrees in Indianapolis, Koch said. Temperatures climb to about 42 degrees on Saturday and could hit 50 on Sunday.

Rain and snow will reach Indianapolis by Monday afternoon, turning to just rain after 5 p.m. The high will reach about 42 degrees, and the low falls to about 9 degrees.

Getting cold.  Hope my new furnace can keep up.  Spent the weekend wrapping some basement pipes and setting up  some spaces heaters in attempt to keep pipes from freezing.  

I wonder if young Mr. Phinisee is rethinking his decision to attend I.U. instead of the hometown Boilermakers.

Honestly it seems like half the current I.U. squad is just biding time, thinking they can be "one and done" and then head to untold riches in the NBA.

20 hours ago, 77Jimmie said:

Because they can take out GEO Bonds and pay it back over time.  They most likely have debt coming off of their books.  They can get the Bond and keep their tax rate the same.  Now, this negates the fact that they are not decreasing the tax rate as they could.  This is a common practice with Indiana school systems now that the State has required referendums for any capital project over $10M.

Doing it this way protects the educational monies that come to the school systems from the State.   Pretty ingenious way to do it.   Some school systems use if for maintenance, repairs, classroom additions.   Many advantageous ways to take advantage of these bonds.

 

So one debt gets paid off, then just incur more debt. And the taxpayers are left none the wiser.   Must be nice to have a guaranteed taxpayer income stream to continuously fund this debt, and some bank(s) get rich off of it as well!

7 hours ago, foxbat said:

Then why post an article entitled "Making Community College 'Free' Will Harm Serious Students" and highlight a sentence talking about the seriousness of student effort if all you really care about in the argument is whether it's funded by taxpayer dollars?  This is like the local pastor arguing before the city council that he doesn't want a strip club next to his church because they fill up his recycling bins with the beer bottles from the strip club patrons.

I never stated that the taxpayer funded aspect was my only concern, aka "care about".     Providing something for "free", like a post-secondary college course,  will tend to have an affect on the demand for the course.

Trump Says He Will Sign Short-Term Deal To Reopen Government After 35-Day Shutdown: https://www.npr.org/2019/01/25/688414503/watch-live-trump-addresses-shutdown-from-white-house-rose-garden

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President Trump has endorsed a bipartisan deal that could end the 35-day partial government shutdown, making a way for a three-week stopgap funding measure to reopen shuttered agencies.

"I am very proud to announce today that we have reached a deal to end the shutdown and reopen the federal government," Trump said in the White House Rose Garden.

The proposal backed by congressional leaders would fund the government through a Feb. 15. The deal does not right now include funding for the wall along the Mexican border President Trump has pushed for, a House Democratic source says.

But that the three-week spending bill would would also include a deal to move forward on the longer-term Department of Homeland Security funding bill without any wall money, the source said. Federal employees who have been working without pay or are furloughed would also get back pay as part of the agreement.

The Senate would vote first on the agreement, and Trump said he has instructed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to put it on the floor immediately.

The breakthrough comes as federal workers missed their second paycheck in a row on Friday, now going without their salary for more than a month. The prolonged stalemate has pushed the nation's security and infrastructure to the brink, with significant flight delays at major airports due to FAA and TSA absences escalating on Friday. The FBI has also warned, with their agents limited and working without pay, critical crime-fighting measure are also being curtailed.

....

Bummer.

2 minutes ago, foxbat said:

I merely pointed out that the idea that making folks pay for it FORCES them to take the coursework seriously is itself flawed.

And I don't really care if they take the coursework seriously or not, if they pay for it with their own money.  Using taxpayer funds to make it "free" however, is another matter.

Trump Stands Up for Blue Collar Workers by Reducing Their Profit-Sharing Checks: https://reason.com/blog/2019/01/25/trump-stands-up-for-blue-collar-workers

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The Ford Motor Company will send hourly workers $7,500 checks in March as part of the company's profit-sharing agreement. Those checks would have been about 10 percent bigger if not for the tariffs that sapped hundreds of millions of dollars out of the carmaker's profits last year.

During a discussion Thursday with reporters about Ford's annual financial report, Bob Shanks, Ford's chief financial officer, said the company had lost about $750 million due to tariffs, the Detroit Free Press reports. Under the terms of their union contract, hourly workers at Ford production facilities earn a $1,000 bonus for every $1 billion the company makes in profits in North America. So having to pay $750 million in higher taxes because of Donald Trump's tariffs translates into a $750 reduction for each worker.

Beyond the direct costs of the tariffs, Ford reported an unexpected $1.1 billion increase in supply costs for steel and aluminum—a knock-on effect of Trump's 25 percent tariff on imported steel and 10 percent tariff on imported aluminum. When those tariffs jacked up prices for imported metals, domestic producers raised their prices too, a Ford economist tells the Free Press.

The reduced checks for Ford factory workers is the latest example of how Trump's protectionist trade policies often hurt the very blue-collar workers and industries the president says the tariffs are supposed to be helping.

...

The tariffs have also backfired spectacularly for American farmers, who now have to pay higher prices for equipment and supplies while also losing access to export markets in China. The Trump administration has scrambled to hide that mess by offering to bail out farmers, but the bailout funds are likely insufficient to cover all losses—and some people who aren't really farmers have been getting funds from the pot.

Ford workers may be disappointed by their smaller profit-sharing checks, but other blue-collar workers have faced layoffs because of the costs of Trump's tariffs. From a factory in rural South Carolina where televisions are assembled to a nail manufacturer in Missouri, the higher costs created by tariffs have translated into pink slips for American workers.

Accoring to an analysis by the Tax Foundation, Trump's tariffs will reduce the gross domestic product, a shorthand measure for the overall size of the economy, by about $30 billion while also depressing wages and costing more than 94,000 jobs. Oh, and Americans have already paid more than $42 billion in higher taxes due to tariffs—a $146 decreasein after-tax income for middle-class Americans.

Those taxes aren't saving jobs or resurrecting America's industry. Like the $750 that will be missing from those checks handed out to Ford's hourly workers later this year, those dollars are being transferred from American wallets, bank accounts, and balance sheets to the federal Treasury. That's what tariffs do.

Good job Mr. Trump.

1 hour ago, foxbat said:

I think this is a misnomer ... there are plenty of people who spend their own money to go to college and don't take the coursework seriously.  Does spending their own money encourage them?  To a degree.  Does it force them?  Not really.  There are also students who have full-ride scholarships aka someone else's money who take the work very seriously as there are also kids whose parents are covering their cost of schooling aka someone else's money that also take it seriously too.  Similarly there are also kids with parents footing the bill that also don't take it seriously.

It depends on the person now, doesn't it?    Does that justify making a post-secondary education free for everybody?   And what about the supply & demand issue Mr. Greenhut raises?

Nathan Phillips rally protesters attempted to disrupt Mass at DC’s National Shrine: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/nathan-phillips-rally-attempted-to-disrupt-mass-at-dcs-national-shrine-91038

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While demonstrators chanted and played ceremonial drums, protesters at a rally led by Nathan Phillips attempted Jan. 19 to enter Washington, DC’s Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception during a Saturday evening Mass.

The group of demonstrators was stopped by shrine security as it tried to enter the church during a Saturday evening Vigil Mass, according to a shrine security guard on duty during the Mass.

“It was really upsetting,” the guard told CNA.

“There were about 20 people trying to get in, we had to lock the doors and everything.”

The guard said the incident was a disappointment during a busy and joyful weekend for the shrine.

“We had hundreds and hundreds of people from all over the country come here to celebrate life, to celebrate each other together. That a protest tried to come inside during Mass was really the worst.”

The guard told CNA the situation was “tense.”

....

A California seminarian, who was not permitted by seminary officials to be publicly identified, spoke to CNA about his experience of the events.

“I was outside when the protesters were coming up the steps of the basilica. I was curious because of the noise and chanting. At first I didn’t take it too seriously, but as they came up the steps we were told to go inside - I was with a group of people from California there for the March for Life. The security people shut the doors and locked them.”

“I was inside and the protesters were banging on the doors.”

On the basilica steps, Mr. Phillips read a statement which said: “We demand that the students of Covington Catholic High School be reprimanded not just by their school officials but, as seniors, by their upcoming universities.”

“We demand that the Catholic Church hold itself responsible for the [indistinct] hundred-plus years of genocide that indigenous peoples have endured and endure persistently by implementing the following: with reparations of land and restorations to the indigenous peoples in the U.S. and across the world.”

“We demand that the Catholic Church revoke the papal bulls related to the doctrine of discovery, which laid the foundation for religious prejudice and the dehumanization of indigenous peoples.”

The video shows several shrine security guards standing between the group and the basilica's entrance.

Inside the basilica, the seminarian said that visitors to the shrine and Mass attendees were unable to leave immediately, either through the main doors or the various side exits.

“We couldn’t leave from there either [downstairs and side doors],” the seminarian told CNA. “There was more security that told us it was not exactly safe to leave at that point.”

The seminarian said his group was not permitted to exit the building for another 20 or 30 minutes.

“It was about 30 minutes before the police were able to contain the situation and disperse the protestors,” he told CNA.

...

Video footage posted by CBC showed one supporter saying that the group had gathered at the shrine to listen to Phillips, and to hold the Catholic Church “accountable” for the alleged actions of the Covington Catholic students and for the “colonial violence that the Catholic Church reproduces every day.”

The Facebook video viewed by CNA concluded with the reflections of one protester.

“It’s cold, but you know what the cold, the rain, the snow, whatever, it ain’t gonna stop us. We’re gonna get out here and let our voices be heard. Whether it be at a Catholic Church, it don’t matter, Catholic school, whatever.”

“We’re still gonna come on this property, it’s all our ours anyway. We came, said our part. You know, because what them boys did, you know, Trump supporters, and you know, being disrespectful. We didn’t bother them. They came over and bothered us, saying stuff, being disrespectful. You know what, we’re still here. We’ll be back.”

The shrine security guard told CNA that for him the incident was especially distressing because Mass was underway.

“It’s a house of worship, a place of prayer where people come to celebrate. All this anger is so against what we are all about here.”

He told CNA that he’d never witnessed anything like it during his whole time of employment at the basilica.

“I don’t know the details of what happened on Friday [after the March for Life], I wish I did. All I know is it’s a shame, and it’s got nothing to do with why people were here.”

“And this all happened on our biggest event of the year. I hope we never see it again.”

4 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

There are a few towns in Indiana that I use JHA for, but still visit if required.

Is Elwood on the list?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/elizabeth-warren-tax-plan-is-asset-forfeiture/

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...

Senator Warren apparently has found her guiding spirit and has announced along with her presidential campaign a campaign of economic terror based on force, not law. Specifically, she has proposed to begin seizing a portion of the assets of some wealthy Americans, a course of action that the federal government has no constitutional power to undertake. The seizure of assets is a fundamentally different thing from the taxation of income, which itself took a constitutional amendment to implement. What Warren is proposing is essentially a federal version of the hated asset-forfeiture programs that have been so much abused by law-enforcement agencies — minus the allegation of criminal misconduct and made universal and annual.

The senator is in a bit of a panic: She hadn’t expected to face a challenge from her left in her quest for the Democratic nomination, but as her entire party lurches in a chávista direction, she has been forced to go one step farther lest she fall into the “moderate” class, whose members almost certainly will be slaughtered in the 2020 Democratic primary. And so she proposes this ridiculous and illegal course of action.

...

Funny thing about Senator Warren’s asset-forfeiture scheme. Like many similar proposals, it probably would not raise much revenue and might in fact leave the country as a whole economically worse off. And the people advising Senator Warren on that are perfectly content with that outcome, because, as Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman argue in the case of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal to radically increase income taxes, this is to be understood not as an economic question but as a moral one: It is simply morally obligatory to hurt wealthy people. “The point of high top marginal income tax rates is to constrain the immoderate, and especially unmerited, accumulation of riches,” they write.

 

And who gets to decide what’s merited and what’s unmerited? What are the chances that, say, Senator Warren’s modest millions or her multimillion-dollar home are deemed “unmerited”? What decides, of course, is “unrestricted power based on force, not law,” because the law cannot substantially answer that kind of question but can only instead encode the desires of people with power, which is what Senator Warren is seeking more of.

Again, we have been here before.

When the socialist schemes of Joseph Stalin et al. foundered, they blamed the “kulaks,” i.e. those who had enjoyed the “unmerited accumulation of riches.” There was never any real definition of a “kulak.” Basically, if you had one cow and your neighbor had two, he was a kulak. Stalin announced the “liquidation of the kulaks as a class” as a necessary precondition for the progress of his program, which was, like Kamala Harris, “for the people.” Dekulakization (раскулачивание) was responsible for the deaths of about 5 million subjects of the workers’ paradise. This was necessary, the socialists argued, because the kulaks dominated the political party system (“for the rich, wealth begets power,” Zucman writes), because expropriating their wealth was necessary to fund benefits for the people (“The affluent,” Saez and Zucman write, “can contribute more to the public coffers. And given the revenue needs of the country, it is necessary”), because the kulaks were hoarders (under the headline “Elizabeth Warren is trying to save capitalism from itself,” David Atkins of Washington Monthly decries the “artificial lack of resources caused by the looting and hoarding of the obscenely wealthy”), etc.

But do our modern progressives really propose to liquidate these “hoarders” as a class?

Saez and Zucman write hopefully of the prospect that high tax rates would make the class of people with larger incomes “largely disappear.” Representative Ocasio-Cortez declares it “immoral” that we have a “system that allows billionaires to exist.” Marshall Steinbaum, the research director of the progressive Roosevelt Institute, wrote: “It’s increasingly clear that having wealthy people around is a luxury our society can no longer afford.”

And, so, here we are again: The kulaks must be liquidated as a class. But who is a kulak?

We might glean some insight into that from the progressives’ thinking in the recent free-speech debates, which goes something like this: “We’re all in favor of free speech, but Nazis should be chased from the public square, by violence if necessary, and we should harass their employers in order to ruin them financially. Also, everybody who disagrees with me is a Nazi, including children wearing hats that I don’t like.”

Indeed, who will be the kulaks if the progressive wing of the uni-party takes power?  It's a scary question.

Two Proposals To End the Government Shutdown Just Failed in the Senate: https://reason.com/blog/2019/01/24/two-proposals-to-end-the-government-shut

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Parts of the federal government will remain closed after two proposals to re-open the government failed on the floor of the U.S. Senate Thursday afternoon.

A plan backed by Democrats that would have funded the government for two weeks without including $5.7 billion for President Donald Trump's border wall received 51 votes—short of the 60 required in the Senate to avoid a filibuster. Even if it had passed, it may have faced a veto by Trump.

Separately, a Republican-backed proposal to fund the government and Trump's wall received just 50 votes, with several Republicans voting against the proposal. That plan would have increased borrowing by about $20 billion to find the border wall and spend $12.8 billion on disaster relief, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Even if it had passed, it would have faced an uncertain future in the Democrat-controlled House.

 

And so the shutdown rolls on.

Thursday's votes provide a nice illustration of the dilemma facing Congress as the government shutdown reached its 34th day. It's impossible for either party to get a funding bill through the Senate without bipartisan support, and there does not appear to be enough bipartisan support for much of anything at the moment. Sen. Joe Manchin (D–W.V.) was the only Democrat to cross party lines and support Trump's border wall, and the six Republicans who backed the Democratic proposal were not enough to push it over the line.

Trump's efforts at blaming House Democrats for the shutdown—a shutdown that he said last month would be his responsibility—are only going to make it more difficult to reach any compromise that could pass the Senate.

The next attempt to reach a breakthrough is expected to come from the House, where Democratic leaders are reportedly prepping a bill that would spend $5.2 billion on border security—mostly high-tech options like drones and cameras—without granting permission for Trump to build a physical wall.

Trump has rejected that idea. On Thursday, he wrote on Twitter that "very simply, without a Wall it all doesn't work."

That's the other complicating factor. Even if a compromise to reopen the government could find a path through Congress, it may face a veto from Trump—who has spent this week embarking on a misleading effort to turn his border wall proposal into a rhyming slogan. There's not much in the way of an obvious solution to all this, short of Trump backing down.

While political gridlock is almost always entertaining, the current shutdown has done nothing to actually reduce the federal government's power or cost. If anything, the shutdown is likely to swing public sentiment towards bigger government, since each passing day brings new stories of how the shutdown is creating hardships for public employees in a variety of ways.

But the ongoing shutdown does create opportunities for finding ways to get government out of areas where it really shouldn't be in the first place. Like air traffic control, for example. Or the completely unnecessary agency within the Department of Treasury that's supposed to approve the labels that go on beer bottles. Regardless of how the shutdown eventually shakes out, one can hope that the past month has at least highlighted a few ways in which government's involvement in everyday life is problematic—not just when the government is running, but when it's stopped too.

Agreed.

Who here on the GID is currently missing a government service due to the shutdown?

https://reason.com/archives/2019/01/25/making-community-college-free-will-harm

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It took nearly a dozen years after graduating from college to pay off the student debt I accumulated to get my degree—and that was in the days when tuition to a private university was around $5,000 a year including room and board. I've been through the college-shopping process with three daughters and have looked at asking prices of nearly $50,000 a year at some universities, so I understand the importance of affordability. It's depressing thinking of kids getting their start in life with college loans the size of mortgages.

Given that reality, it's also easy to understand Gov. Gavin Newsom's budget proposal that would provide California residents with a "free" second year of community college along with the provision of additional Cal Grant funding for parents who are struggling to put their children through college. This is well intentioned, but is one of the worst ideas in the governor's new budget given the real-world effect it will have on California students.

The idea of a free college education goes back to California's earliest days. As recently as 1960, the Master Plan for Higher Education reaffirmed "the long established principle that state colleges and the University of California shall be free to all residents of the state." Shortly after that, the state university systems began charging tuition—and prices have soared as demand has outstripped supply and the legislature cut back on subsidies. As a matter of policy, it's a good idea for people to pay for the things they use. If you want an education, you need to pay for it.

...

In all aspects of life, the price mechanism is the best way to assure the right balance of supply and demand. If, say, the government mandated that car dealers slash the price of new cars by 50 percent, buyers theoretically would be able to get a cheaper car—but they'd take a number and wait a long time to actually get one.

...

Community college already is dirt cheap, at $46 a credit. Making it free will only assure that people who aren't particularly serious about getting an education will take up space in sought-after classes, thus making it tougher for others to get into their preferred classes. This sounds harsh, but people unwilling to invest $1,100 a year in their own education perhaps ought to find something else to do. There is nothing like spending one's own money to force people to take the coursework seriously.

...

Bingo.

15 hours ago, gonzoron said:

The odds are high. He's a white man in Florida. I won't take my family there.

?  Not even Disney World?  What other places won't you take your family?

Trump ally Stone arrested on charges of false statements, witness tampering, obstruction: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia/trump-ally-stone-arrested-on-charges-of-false-statements-witness-tampering-obstruction-idUSKCN1PJ16M

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Roger Stone, a long-time ally of U.S. President Donald Trump who advised his 2016 presidential campaign, was arrested on Friday and charged with seven counts, according to a grand jury indictment made public by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office.

Stone, who was indicted on Thursday, faces one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, five counts of making false statements and one count of witness tampering, according to the Special Counsel’s Office.

Stone is scheduled to appear at the federal courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, later on Friday, Mueller’s office said.

 

Stone has faced scrutiny for his support for Trump during the 2016 presidential election campaign, when Stone implied that he had inside knowledge of data obtained by hackers that could embarrass Democrats, including Trump’s rival for the White House, Hillary Clinton.

U.S. prosecutors, in the indictment, said Stone had “sent and received numerous emails and text messages during the 2016 campaign in which he discussed Organization 1, its head, and its possession of hacked emails.”

....

One step closer to Mr. Trump.

Florida Secretary of State Michael Ertel resigns after Halloween blackface photos emerge: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2019/01/24/new-secretary-state-ertel-dressed-blackface-halloween-2005/2649161002/

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Michael Ertel, the newly appointed Secretary of State of Gov. Ron DeSantis, has resigned after photos emerged of him posing as a Hurricane Katrina victim in blackface at a private Halloween party 14 years ago.

The photos obtained by the Tallahassee Democrat were shown to the Governor's Office on Thursday morning. Hours later it issued a statement. 

"The governor accepted Secretary Ertel's resignation," the Governor's Office said.

....

The photos are the sole blemish on a seemingly spotless public career, highlighted by a record of increasing voter registration and making the elections office more accessible to the public.

Ertel began serving as supervisor of elections for Seminole County on Feb. 5, 2005, when Gov. Jeb Bush named him to replace Dennis Joyner, who stepped down for health reasons.

He ran against Democratic Party activist Marian Williams in 2006, beating her by 59 percent. He was subsequently re-elected without opposition. That same year he participated in monitoring the New Orleans mayoral election.

Ertel has a long record of expanding voting rights and registering people to vote. The city of Longwood gave him a Martin Luther King Jr. award for registering voters. In 2012, Ertel spoke out against Scott’s purge of so-called non-citizens from the voter rolls, saying many of those who were purged were actually eligible voters.

Ertel also has won international awards for his plans to restore voter confidence and trust in the elections system.

Prior to his time in public office, Ertel was in public relations, and was the first professional public affairs spokesman for Seminole County. After the 2004 hurricanes hit Florida, Ertel provided post-disaster media relations for Visit Florida.

Before that he spent eight years in the U.S. Army, providing public relations during the 1992 L.A. riots, and in Macedonia and Bosnia.

So should this one admittedly bad decision, made 14 years ago, ruin Mr. Ertel's career?    Is he a racist?

http://reason.com/blog/2019/01/24/dont-call-congressional-interference-on

Quote

Most NFL fans wouldn't deny that the New Orleans Saints were robbed of a chance to play in Super Bowl LIII. But is the issue really worthy of congressional intervention?

Rep. Cedric Richmond (D–La.) told The Washington Post's Mike DeBonis yesterday that he has broached the possibility of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell answering questions from congressmen about the blown call at the end of Sunday's NFC championship game.

....

"The Saints should be on their way to Atlanta to play in the Super Bowl," Richmond says in a statement. "Instead, they are left with the memory of officials who failed to create an equal playing field and deprived them of that opportunity. Officials should not have the ability to determine the fate of a team who rightfully earned their place in NFL championship history."

From an NFL fan's perspective, Richmond is absolutely right. But Richmond isn't just a Saints fan; he's a member of Congress. "I have since spoken with colleagues on the Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee about inviting NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to answer some important questions about the unfair call against the Saints; a call that he has the jurisdiction to overturn," his statement says.

Richmond was likely referring to a section of the NFL rulebook giving the commissioner "the sole authority to investigate and take appropriate disciplinary and/or corrective measures" in the event of an "extraordinarily unfair" occurrence that "has a major effect on the result of the game." But the rules also state that this authority will not be applied "in cases of complaints by clubs concerning judgmental errors or routine errors of omission by game officials."

Richmond was not the only elected official to complain about the call. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards has written a letter to Goodell expressing his "deep disappointment" with the game's outcome. Edwards calls on Goodell to make changes so that something similar never happens again, though he stops short of suggesting the government might take official action.

Both Richmond and Edwards are clearly pandering to the Saints' rabid fan base. But Richmond's statement, if taken seriously, raises concerns. Yes, Saints fans want answers, but it's not Congress' job provide them.

...

If this comes to pass, it's yet another waste of Congresses  time and taxpayers money.

Why must government be the default answer to virtually every circumstance when someone of some group feels they were wronged?

32 minutes ago, foxbat said:

Actually, it's nobody's words.  The article that you provided doesn't show a quote and also doesn't show an official statement or document, which would be nice to have in a situation like this. 

Here are a few pictures of official DoD documents regarding Mr. Phillips's service record, obtained via a FOIA request.  I haven't watched the actually video from this link yet though:

https://www.redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2019/01/22/nathan-phillips-dd-214-released-shows-hes-not-quite-claims/

So what special goodies do veterans who have a <insert wartime period here> designation receive that "peacetime" veterans do not?

And this is frankly asinine:

Gulf War (August 2, 1990 – through a future date to be set by law or Presidential Proclamation)

http://reason.com/blog/2019/01/24/new-poll-shows-medicare-for-all-is-popul

Quote

A new poll shows that a clear majority of Americans support Medicare for All—until they are told what it is and how it would work.

The survey was conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which regularly asks Americans about health policy issues as part of its Health Tracking Poll series. It finds that 56 percent of the country supports a "national health plan, sometimes called Medicare for All" and an even larger percentage—71 percent—supports the idea when told that it would "guarantee health insurance as a right for all Americans." When told that such a plan would eliminate health insurance premiums, 67 percent say they're in favor.

One way to look at these numbers is as strong public approval for the broad outlines of a single-payer health care system, which would create a single national health insurance plan run by the federal government and financed through taxes. That public is support is why so many 2020 Democratic presidential contenders have been warming up to the idea.

But the more revealing part of the survey, I think, comes from the questions focused on the costs of single payer, all of which caused support for Medicare for All to drop below 40 percent. Told that it would eliminate private health insurance and require people to pay more in taxes, for example, support fell to 37 percent. Told that it would cause some medical treatments and tests to be delayed, support dropped even further, to 26 percent.

Medicare for All supporters might complain that these are loaded descriptions that don't accurately capture the reality of single payer, which they say is about freeing people from premiums while offering a guarantee of access. But these are, at a very basic level, just descriptions of what an American single-payer system would do. The most prominent such plan is the one put forth by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), which would eliminate all existing private health insurance plans in a four-year period. Although it allows for some secondary private coverage once the system is in place, it requires most everyone in the U.S. to enroll in a new, government-run plan. Arguably the whole point of the most ambitious single-payer schemes is to move everyone off private insurance and onto a single federally managed plan; that's not possible unless people who currently have private insurance get new coverage. Some single-payer proposal would make the transition more slowly, but coverage disruption is not incidental; it's the point.

Financing that plan would require a massive increase in federal spending—about $32 trillion over a decade, according to estimates from think tanks across the political spectrum. Even with the most carefree attitude toward debt and deficits, it is nearly unthinkable that an increase in government spending of that size would not come with higher taxes, probably much higher taxes, which would likely affect the middle class.

The contention that waiting times for health care services would be longer is the most debatable of the bunch, but given the experience of other countries and the probable design of a full-scale single-payer plan, it's a more than plausible outcome. Government-run health care systems like the ones in the United Kingdom (which is fully socialized) and Canada (a territorial single-payer system) are notorious for having long wait times for services such as cancer treatment.

Furthermore, the Sanders plan calls for significant reductions to reimbursements for health care providers, which, if implemented, would almost certainly put some health care centers out of business, reducing the number of doctors and other medical professionals. And although it's possible, in theory, to imagine a system that doesn't cut provider rates, that would be far, far more expensive, and would require even higher taxes while robbing supporters of one of their favorite talking points—that Medicare for All is much cheaper, overall, than the current system.

Medicare for All proponents might be pleased with the show of support found in the survey, but what those questions mostly revealed was that people say yes when you ask them if they favor a health care system that is essentially cost-free. Clear public support, in other words, only materializes when you ignore the practical reality of making a transition from a mixed public/private system to single payer—higher taxes, longer waits, and the loss of existing private insurance arrangements.

So it's not surprising that Medicare for All backers are remaining relatively vague about the particulars of their plans—especially when it comes to financing—and that the phrase's popularity has coincided with its transformation into a non-specific catchall for additional government intervention in the provision of health care, whether or not that intervention amounts to a single-payer system. Vagueness serves the cause here. The imaginary version of Medicare for All that entails no disruption or tradeoffs is popular; the reality is not.

As usual, "the devil is in the details".  And socialist programs like "Medicare For All" reveals itself as being bad for Americans who value small government and individual liberty.

https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2019/01/24/elwood-indiana-superintendent-casey-smitherman-insurance-fraud-sick-student/2665670002/

Quote

A superintendent of an Indiana school district faces fraud charges for using her insurance to obtain $233 in medical care for a sick student.

Elwood Community Schools Superintendent Casey Smitherman was charged with three felonies and a misdemeanor in an insurance fraud case after she allegedly used her son's insurance to get treatment for a sick student.

"I am committed to this community and our students and I regret if this action has undermined your trust in me," Smitherman said in a statement to Fox 59. "From the beginning, my ultimate goal has been to provide the best environment for Elwood students’ growth physically, mentally and academically and I remain focused on that purpose."

According to a probable cause affidavit, Smitherman was worried about the 15-year-old boy when he did not come to school on Jan. 9. She contacted him and he told her he was sick and had a sore throat.

Smitherman, documents said, picked the boy up and took him to St. Vincent Immediate Care in Elwood. She admitted to using her son's insurance card's to pay for the care, documents said.

The boy, using the name of Smitherman's son, was prescribed the antibiotic Amoxicillin. Smitherman, documents said, filled that prescription at a CVS in Elwood.

The total bill was $233, documents said.

"Mrs Smitherman stated she realized (the boy) did not go to school and was worried about him," Elwood Police Officer Ben Gosnell wrote in the document. "Mrs. Smitherman (has) helped him by purchasing clothes and trying to give (the boy) a decent way of living by also helping clean his house."

Smitherman told police she didn't call the Department of Child Services for fear the boy might be placed in foster care. DCS has since opened an investigation, documents said.

Smitherman was booked Wednesday into the Madison County Jail on felony charges of insurance fraud, identity deception and official misconduct and another misdemeanor count of insurance fraud.

She was later freed on $5,000 bond, records show.

No court date has been scheduled.

Hmm.  Something seems to be missing regarding Ms. Smitherman's motives and actions here.  The Elwood Community School Corporation has over 1,500 students.  Exactly why was this teenage boy singled out by her?

7 minutes ago, swordfish said:

Why is there not a greater focus on the Black Hebrew Israelites who were mocking Mr. Phillips and the Catholic kid?

Because they can't be effectively criticized for their part in the confrontation without the "that's racist!" label being thrown about.  Kind of like any criticism of an individuals of Jewish ancestry runs of the risk of "anti-Semite!" being applied.

Also other comments I have read concerning the BLI's is that they are kind of like the "neighborhood kooks" that have been wandering around Washington D.C. and proselytizing for years, and therefore are basically just "part of the fabric' of the city.