Title One school

I teach at a title one school. The reason my school is a title one school is that more than 70% of the students receive free or reduced lunch. Being a title one school entitles the school to receive a large amount of additional funding. For my school, that means an additional half a million dollars in title one funds. Our budget is somewhere north of $15,000 per student.

In addition, students and their families are entitled to:
- free breakfast for all students, regardless of whether or not they qualify for free or reduced lunch
- free coats for students who request them
- free groceries that can be sent home for the families of students who need them
- free daycare during days when school is not in session (winter break, summer, etc.)

Throwing money at the problem isn't going to fix education. There is a well known connection between poverty and poor performance in education, but after spending 5 years as a teacher, I think I know why:

Whether it is nature or nurture, affluent parents generally have smart, well educated children. The reason for this is simple: parents who are successful tend to be smart and well educated themselves, and pass this trait on to their children.

Parents who are poor do not.

The funny thing is that students who need public funds to buy food all seem to have smart phones with data plans. Several of my students have taken cruises this year, even though they are on food stamps.

We as a society are wasting gobs of money for little return. No one believes this money will fix anything. This is just another scheme for redistributing wealth.

Small government

Tell me again why the Republicans are the party of small government...

The more it becomes blue

the more it looks like the liberal paradise of Chicago.

The former police chief of Biscayne Park, a city in Miami-Dade county, was sentenced on Tuesday to three years in prison for ordering officers to arrest black people for crimes they did not commit in order to give the impression that his department was solving crimes, court documents say.

Every person arrested of any crime at all in that city should immediately request and receive a new trial. All evidence provided by that police department should be disallowed in those trials. This case is less about racism and more about cops who will do anything to look good, even if that means destroying the lives of the very people that they are sworn and paid to protect.

The officers of this department are nothing more than a street gang with qualified immunity.

Snowiest decade

Even local news station weather forecasters are beginning to doubt global warming.

Interestingly, some scientists have stated that increasing snow is consistent with climate change because warmer air holds more moisture, more water vapor and this can result in more storms with heavy precipitation. The trick, of course, is having sufficient cold air to produce that snow. But note that 93% of the years with more than 60″ of snow in Boston were colder than average years. The reality is cooling, not warming, increases snowfall. Note the graph depicting declining January through March temperatures for 20 years at a rate of 1.5 degrees F. per decade in the Northeast!

Meanwhile, it is 40 degrees outside of my home as I type this. That's pretty cool for this early in the season for Central Florida.

Reasoned discourse

My son's girlfriend posted a link to an article where doctors were taking the NRA to task because the NRA demanded that they "stay in their lane." I commented.

Here is how the conversation went:

Divemedic: I'm surprised that you would advocate for gun control.

Son's GF: Gun control is such an antiquated term used for propaganda. And sharing a Facebook post isn’t necessarily advocating for anything. However, I find it interesting this story regarding the NRA’s remarks toward an ER Physician . I think many people look past what makes us individuals and how we make decisions, which is our experiences. It is easy for people to say things against ER docs and nurses when they have never spent a Saturday night in a trauma room.

DM: Regardless, people who work in a trauma room have no training in public policy, law, or firearm safety. They are no more qualified to pontificate on gun law than anyone else. Medical people get mad when others who are unqualified try to tell them how to do their jobs. This is the same thing. Last time I checked, firearm laws were not a part of nursing school.

SGF: So disregarding criminals what about the mentally ill? People who have no criminal record, pass background checks and buy guns legally? Yet have intention of committing horrific crimes? There has to be a compromise and it starts with respecting other people’s opinion who are different from your own so this conversation can be had. I do not want to worry about my friends who are teachers, law enforcement, club goers, gay, straight or who have children that go to school to live in fear that they may be a victim of the next shooting. It’s time to stop the nonsense political outdated jargon and come up with a plan. I’m sorry but I completely disagree with you. As an avid hunter, and someone who does enjoy going to the range I would say that I am above average then normal person when firearm safety training. I spent many summers in Tallahassee learning the development of public policy as you call it and also many years in the trauma room. It is time to have a conversation about the gun violence that is going on in this country. I’m not advocating for people’s rights to be violated in anyway. But I’m tired of seeing innocent people die at the hands of people who had guns that did not deserve them.

DM:  Actually, the US homicide rate (as of 2016) was the lowest is has been in decades. It is less than half of what it was in 1990. Also, you can't predict when people will snap and kill others. All you can do is look at their past and try to guess what they will do. There are no guarantees.

SGF:  I honestly don’t have a solution to the problem, what I think needs to happen is put a committee together not just of one sided opinions. Leave legislators out of it. Politicians (no offense to those that are on here) are motivated by outside forces such as re elections so they don’t want to take a stand unless there is motivation to be backed by a large amount of future voters. And together come up with a solution to the problems. One problem at a time.

For me the biggest issue is why mentally unstable people have guns. Whether they get them from outside sources or obtained legally. I mean to go to nursing/ med/ police/ fire school, we have to prove that we are mentally capable of carrying such responsibilities. We are finger printed back ground checked, interviewed over and over again, tested on multiple levels teas, gmat, GRE it takes YEARS to accomplish these goals and lots of money.

People say well yeah you have to go through all the training and schooling because you care for my mother...

I’m not saying we need to take guns away, trust me it’s prime hunting season right now. But if it takes years of hard work to get and obtain an RN or medical license because “ they could injure or kill someone” I think firearms carry that responsibility as well

DM: What if we required a license to vote? Or have an Internet connection? This license would require a test, fingerprinting, and background checks.

SGF: This attitude of zero tolerance is getting to me.

Then, reasoned discourse broke out and I was banned from her FB page. At no point was I rude or disrespectful.

The government you deserve

The Democrat governed state of California keeps voting for the same old, same old. They vote for things, and when their chickens come home to roost they come to the rest of us, demanding help.

The voters ask for and receive the toughest gun control laws in the nation. Not only do those laws fail to stop the shooters, but leave the targets of those shooters defenseless.

The voters pass laws that allow them to build homes in the middle of forests without a thought of putting defensive zones for wildfires around those homes. Then demand aid to help rebuild.

It seems to me that California voters are getting exactly the government that they have asked for.

(and yes, I say the same thing about people in Florida who build homes right on the beach and then demand help when hurricanes destroy their homes. It isn't the responsibility of the rest of us to fund your bad decisions.)

Civil War 2

People who live jammed into cities where the food and water must be imported from rural areas should not pick fights with those who feed and provide water for them.

Headline:

NBC REPORTER WONDERS HOW LONG ‘AMERICAN MAJORITY WILL TOLERATE BEING PUSHED AROUND BY A RURAL MINORITY’

What he is saying is that the people in cities should be able to order the people in rural areas to provide agricultural products to them. The last time Democrats made that demand, the Republicans had to start a civil war to stop them

Voters not voting

From NYmag comes a story called "12 young people on why they probably won't vote." If you read the reasons, you see the "If the person I support doesn't win, I won't play" attitude. Here is Samantha from New Jersey:

I had my Clinton sweatshirt on all day... Watching the results come in, it was just disheartening. My faith in the whole system was crushed pretty quickly.

So the entire system is there to ensure that your favorite candidate wins, and if they don't, the system is obviously broken.

Most of the other 11 people say that voting is too hard, or that they don't have the time or energy to vote. I don't understand the lack of energy thing. The oldest of them is 29 years old. How can you not have energy in your 20s? I think that the lack of energy or ambition is the reason why so many of them support people like Sanders or Ocasio-Cortez. After all, if they are too lazy to vote, how motivated are the to actually earn a living and work for themselves? With that said, here is a quote from Anna in New York City:

 When I was at the post office to register, this poor girl, clearly also a college student like me, didn’t know what “postmarked” meant and had no idea how to send an important document by mail. Most people my age have zero need to go to the post office and may have never stepped into one before. Honestly, if someone had the forms printed for me and was willing to deal with the post office, I’d be much more inclined to vote.

Seriously, an entire generation that doesn't know how to mail a letter?

Personally, I am kid of happy the morons in this story don't want to vote. Read the whole thing. It is an interesting look into the youngest adults in the nation.

Domestic Violence

Women in this country have learned that they can accuse a man of domestic violence or sexual assault, and use the accusation as a trump card to almost any situation, even to get revenge on a previous amour. I know, it happened to me.

With that being said, I fell sorry for the man that this woman is pissed off at, because he is likely going to jail:

Voter drive

A liberal group is trying to "get out the vote" by sending out letters that list the voting record of neighbors. It's legal, even if despicable. Public shaming is a common tactic of the left, as seen by the publishing of CCW records. These lists are important to the people on the left, because they are going to use them as guidebooks for when they again have the power to take revenge on their political enemies.
After all, Maxine Waters has already sworn to use any power she gets in order to exact revenge on her political enemies.

“What I am going to do to you is fair. I’m going to do to you what you did to us,” she vowed.