Divemedic

School

The headline reads “Florida school tackles chronic absenteeism with unconventional model — and it’s working,” but that’s a lie. This is a carefully written story that not only ignores the facts, it downright fabricates them.

First, let’s look at the most obvious lie- that the school is working. The school’s graduation rate is 9 percent, less than one in ten. Even with their “largest graduating class yet” they are graduating less than half of the students who are currently still there. The student body here is about 314 students, with more than 200 of them being 12th graders. Who cares if you graduate from a program like this? We have public schools who are graduating students that are literally illiterate. I once had a student in the 10th grade who wrote assignments like this one.

More than a third of Florida’s students are chronically absent. This school is intended for students who won’t go to school. That’s a real problem, especially when you remove the kids who at the top of the class- the college prep kids, the ones who are dual enrolled, the honor students. I don’t understand how this school makes a difference, since when the kids DO come to this school, they are only there for half a day. This is nothing more than a daycare center that awards a diploma for merely being present. The students can’t even meet that absurdly low standard.

Making things worse, students and parents actively try to get the teachers who DO hold kids to a standard fired.

One other thing that this article flat out misrepresents- 85% of the student body of this school is not white, yet the interviewed the white girl. I’m guessing it was to conceal the fact that it is a nearly homogenous school.

This entire school is a waste of money, and only perpetuates the cycle of poverty and lack of education. I have a more cost effective solution:

For students under the age of 15:

  • If a student misses more than 5 school days in a quarter, then the parents will be subject to a monetary fine of up to $250, unless they can produce a doctor’s note outlining an illness that prevents the child from coming to school.
  • If a student misses more than 10 school days in a semester, then that fine increases to a maximum of $1,000. If the 10 day absence is due to an illness of the child, then there will be a hearing where a panel will review the doctor’s explanation of the illness. Also: If the ruling is that the child’s absence is unexcused by illness, the parent doesn’t get any public assistance- no welfare, no food stamps, nothing. Get your kids to school, or we aren’t going to pay you to raise more little drains on society.
  • If a student misses more than 30 days in an entire school year, then the parent can be sentenced to up to 30 days in jail and additional fines. Additionally, the parent is not eligible for any public assistance for 3 years.

For students over the age of 15:

  • If a student is tardy to school more than 5 times in a semester, then the student loses campus parking privileges. Take the bus.
  • If a student skips or otherwise misses 15 hours of any single class in a single school year, they will automatically fail the course and their parents would be subject to a fine of not more than $500. The student’s driver’s license is suspended for not less than 6 months.
  • If a student misses more than 5 school days in a quarter, then the parents will be subject to a monetary fine of up to $250, unless they can produce a doctor’s note outlining an illness that prevents the child from coming to school.
  • If a student misses more than 10 days in a school semester, they will be subject to a hearing that will determine whether or not they are defacto dropouts. If they are ruled to be dropouts, the student will be removed from taxpayer funded school and will not be able to re-enroll in school at taxpayer expense. Wanna skip school and waste money? Do it on your own dime.
  • Dropouts are not eligible for any public assistance for at least 3 years, or until 21 years of age, whatever comes first. You already had public assistance in the form of a free education, and you aren’t going to use your failure as a means of getting money to be an even bigger waste of time than you already are. Stop being a loser. We are deporting tons of illegal immigrants, and someone has to harvest the crops- you can go pick lettuce or something.

Harsh? It’s no harsher than what the government will do to me if I refuse to pay all of the taxes that are the source of this wasted money. It’s time we stop wasting all of this money.

By Divemedic, ago

How I Became Homeless, Then Not

Yesterday, I talked about struggles and how we overcome them. I have had mine, and most of them were caused by my poor selection of female partners. This is the story of my journey from divorce, homelessness, on to success. Maybe it can inspire someone who is struggling.

I’m going to mention a song today. It’s a song from a genre that I typically don’t like- rap. This particular song was popular while I was in the military, and the reason why I mention it is related directly to a period in my life when I was really struggling: the summer of 1999. Most rap “music” is simply someone talking over music while loosely rhyming. Typically, they are talking about their genitals, drugs, gang violence, or some other antisocial drivel. However, every once in awhile, one of them displays a level of societal truth, proving that they are the exception to the rule of rap being an annoying waste of time.

I had just gotten divorced, and things were financially rough for me. I was making $8.25 an hour as a firefighter/EMT. As a firefighter, you work a 24 on/48 off schedule, and this results in three different sized paychecks:

  • The large paycheck has 106 hours of straight pay and 14 hours of overtime.
  • The medium paycheck has 106 hours of straight pay and 6 hours of overtime.
  • The small paycheck has 104 hours of straight pay.

The divorce was punishing. The judge gave her the car, the kids, child support, and I got all of the debts. Those debts would be taken out of my paycheck before I even saw it. By the time all of my deductions were taken out (including child support) I wound up making an average of about $525 per two week paycheck. Since the rent on my apartment was $535 a month, it wasn’t long before I was homeless. I just couldn’t afford rent, utilities, and all of the other expenses that went with living in an apartment.

I was sleeping on the couches of friends until I could save enough for a buy here/pay here car, then I began living in my car. This was probably the worst time of my life. It took more than 3 months to save enough for a down payment on a 10 year old Ford Tempo. I would go several days at a time without eating. At work as a firefighter, I would eat everyone’s leftover food, and for that reason, they started calling me catfish, because I was a bottom feeder (from the bottom of the pot, you see). I lost 25 pounds in three months. Finally, after 3 months, I was able to come up with the $1200 I needed for a down payment and for the first 6 months’ insurance.

That’s when the song came into play. It was “Bust a Move.” Here are the lyrics that really struck home with me:

Girls are fakin’, goodness sakin’
They want a man who brings home the bacon
Got no money and you got no car
Then you got no woman and there you are
Some girls are sophistic, materialistic
Looking for a man makes them opportunistic
They’re lyin’ on the beach perpetratin’ a tan
So that a brother with money can be their man

So there I was: homeless, broke, and living in my car. I was alone, and couldn’t even have my kids over for visitation, because I had no place to bring them. I was alone: no friends, no money, no place to live. Every day was a search for ways to make a better living. I got a second job, working as a janitor in a theme park. I had to keep that second job a secret from my ex-wife, so she wouldn’t take me back to court to have that extra income be used to calculate a higher child support amount. Things were a bit better, because the extra income from the janitorial work nearly doubled my take home pay. Things were hard, but I knew that I could make it.

I lived in my car for about six months, parking it in various places so I wouldn’t have the cops called on me. I showered at work: once when I got there, then again when I left. On the third day, I was able to shower at the city’s owned gym, because city employees got a free membership.

That lasted until I found a woman willing to rent me a room. She was s supervisor at the theme park where I worked who found out how much I was struggling and decided to help me out by letting me rent her spare bedroom for $200 a month. I lived there for about three months, until she moved to Montana. Now here I was, just over a year after my divorce, and had to find another roommate.

That brings us to the summer of 2000.

The place I was living wasn’t great- it was in the middle of one of the most dangerous, most crime filled neighborhoods in Orlando, but it was cheap, and it was all that I could afford. If I remember correctly, my share of the rent and expenses was around $400 a month, my car was another $300 a month, and by the time I was done with the “must have” expenses like gas, insurance, and the like, I had $200 a month left over for food and other things. While still rough, things were much better than they had been just a few months before. Sometimes, I would only have $30 to last from one payday to the next, and $15 of that went to gas to get me to work.

Meanwhile, I didn’t stop working to get myself out of the situation I was in. I was working two jobs and began going to school at the same time. I spent the next year getting my Paramedic license, and along with it, an AS in Emergency Medicine. That was a miracle for my monetary situation.

It was now the summer of 2001.

My pay in the fire department was so much better at that point. As a Paramedic, I was finally making $10.65 an hour. On the days that I was acting engineer, I got an extra 75 cents an hour. It was during this time that I moved out of my ghetto apartment, and moved into an apartment in a better neighborhood. I had two roommates in this new place, a woman and a man. It was a good arrangement for them, because my now three jobs meant that I only slept there one night out of every three. It was good for me because it was half a mile from my fire station, and I could have my kids over for visitation. I was still living there on 9/11. Yeah, that 9/11.

It was that experience that gave me a unique perspective on needs versus wants, as well as how to make your money stretch. I know what it means to struggle, I know what it means to know that your next meal is likely days away.

That’s why I become so offended when the current generation complains that the generations that came before had it easy, while complaining that they can’t buy a house. Bull crap, they just don’t have any idea what the difference is between a need and a want.

The world doesn’t owe you a thing. You can have the lifestyle you want, but you can’t expect others to give it to you, you have to earn it. Doing so requires hard work and consistently making good decisions. One of those decisions, perhaps the most important of them, is the person you choose to partner with. That is the decision that I have struggled with more than any other, and I am glad that I finally got that one right.

By Divemedic, ago

Handouts

As I see the people on social media who are angry because the government is changing the rules so that people on food stamps/EBT can’t use it to buy luxuries like soda and junk food, I am reminded of an argument that I got into with my ex-wife’s sister about 13 years ago. What started the argument was me being upset with this picture:

She said that she, who is on handouts, should be able to experience going out to eat like families anytime they want. She went on to tell me that I should stop complaining about EBT and be happy that I was getting paid to go to school and that I didn’t have to deal with struggles like some families do.

I hate this. The recipient class in this society sees the successful life that I have and thinks that I didn’t have struggles. This entire generation today (puts on old man hat) thinks that nothing happened before they were born, and they are the first ones who ever had to struggle or work for anything.

I was homeless- twice. Once, about a year after I was discharged from the Navy. The second time was just after my divorce. I didn’t receive, ask for, or want free handouts from anyone. Instead, I worked my ass off. Was I getting paid while I was in school? Sure was, but that was through student loans (which I paid back) and my pension (which I earned and contributed to while I was working).

Instead of sitting around on handouts and doing nothing, I worked hard. At times, I had three jobs AND went to school. I still have more than one job. Was it difficult? It sure was. I eventually earned several college degrees and got myself out of poverty.

What was my reward for all of that? Now I get to pay nearly half of what I earn and I am forced to watch as others post videos of themselves using my tax dollars to buy soda, steak, and lobster.

When I am watching those videos, a part of me is excited, thinking of how much fun it will be to watch them starve when it all comes crashing down. Then reality hits, and I think of how far I will fall as well.

By Divemedic, ago

Kangaroos Stealing Money

I once lived near a school zone with signs posted that read “School Zone. Speed Limit 20 mph when children present” and I thought it was too vague. The way that the sign was worded, a child nearby at 2 am on Christmas morning would trigger the 20 mph speed limit.

That’s the problem that many drivers have in Florida since a new law allowing traffic cameras to enforce school zones went into effect. The signs read “School Zone Speed Limit 20 mph when flashing,” but there is no requirement for the light to actually be flashing in order for a driver to get a ticket. In fact, the sign doesn’t even have to have a light on it.

But Weaver doesn’t dispute that it was him behind the wheel or that he was going over the 20 mph zone limit, he believes the violation was issued to him in error.

“I’m not happy, I’m not happy,” he said.

That’s because what the camera doesn’t show is the speed limit sign that’s posted warning drivers that the speed limit is 20 mph “when flashing,” wasn’t flashing at the time.

In fact, it can’t.

“There’s not a device that would afford a light to flash because they did not attach a lighting system or flashing system to this particular post,” he explained.

People are contesting the fines, but the judges are upholding them 90% of the time. The judges are claiming that the law says the sign has to either have times that the speed limit is in effect, or it has to have the words “When flashing,” but showing a complete lack of sense, the same judges claim that their hands are tied because the law doesn’t require that the lights be flashing, or even present.

A single company called RedSpeed is responsible for the cameras. So far, the company’s cameras have written half a million tickets. About 3,000 of them have been contested, and only 300 of them have been dismissed. Since the fine is $100 and the company gets 20% of it, it’s quite a lucrative shakedown.

The officers of the corporation? They are retired cops. One of them (a retired assistant police chief of Miami Beach) had this to say:

“I’m sympathetic with the ‘I didn’t understand the signage in the school zone.’ I’m sympathetic to that, but we have to implement and install in compliance with whatever [the Florida Department of Transportation] and the state tell us,” De La Espriella said.

When asked if he believes the law, as it’s written right now, is fair to drivers, he responded, “I think it’s an excellent law.”

I bet you do, you corrupt piece of shit. Where does the law say to entrap people by putting “when flashing” on the sign, but having no flashing light? We all know that isn’t what the law intended, you weasel. I am ready to vote against every single proposed law or politician who wants to make a law favoring any cop. I am on the verge of agreeing with the “defund the police” assholes.

Don’t forget that Miami Beach is where open carriers were arrested and won a lawsuit for stopping people who weren’t breaking the law.

If one of those signs in your area happens to get vandalized or destroyed in the middle of the night, you didn’t see shit.

By Divemedic, ago

Blacks Behaving Badly

This black woman tries to sneak into Universal’s Islands of Adventure. She is caught, and tries everything that she can think of to get away, even to the point of tossing down the race card.

Then a bunch of other black people come to her defense, claiming that it shouldn’t be an arrestable offence, and the cops should have just let her leave the park. The cops, it seems, only arrested her because they are racists.

A socialist even shows up to claim that charging money to enter a theme park is one of the problems with capitalism. (Where does this socialist think that the money to pay employees, utilities, and maintenance costs for the rides will come from?)

She was arrested and her husband bailed her out. She didn’t show up to court, and there is now a warrant out for her arrest.

By Divemedic, ago

Taking Your Kids

Imagine if you will, someone fills out a form and drops it off at your child’s school. That form lets the school know that the person named on the form is a “nonrelative extended family member,” and has all of the same rights as a parent. They can authorize medical care, and even pick your child up from school.

You would think that such a form would require that the person filling it out present some form of identification, but you would be wrong. You would think that school officials would be required to contact the actual parents of the child to make sure that the person is actually on the up and up, but that also isn’t the case. The only protection in place is a statement printed upon the form, notifying the person filling it out that all statements made on the form are true and correct, upon penalty of perjury.

Does that sound crazy and stupid? Of course it does. That’s why it’s about to become law in California.

California officials claim that this is being done to protect illegals and fags. Sure it is.

Liberals, protecting the rights of criminals for over a century.

By Divemedic, ago

Laziness Can’t Be Retrained

When we recently built our pool, we were intending to care for it ourselves. The contractor that built it paid for the first month of pool servicing to get it started off on the right foot. At the end of the month, the pool servicing company came out and gave us a one hour lesson on the proper care of the pool and equipment. Of course, it was also a sales pitch.

It worked. They offered to take care of cleaning and servicing the pool, as well as keeping the chemicals in balance for $160 per month. That seemed economical to me, so we hired them. It went well for the first couple of weeks. The pool girl that came out did a good job, until she brought along a new trainee who would be taking over the route.

The new girl, Shamiqua, screwed things up from the start. The first week, she left the control panel open for the pool equipment and left it in service mode. It stormed that afternoon, and we were lucky that the electronic controls for the pool didn’t get water damaged. We complained, and they told us how she was new and they would talk to her.

The next week, she came out and didn’t bother cleaning the water filter. She left her filter cleaning tools next to the pool until she came back the following week, which indicates to me that she went a week without using them on anyone else’s pool, either.

The fourth week of her being on the route, and I watched her visit on the security cameras. She didn’t do ANYTHING but sit there on her phone for 10 minutes before leaving. The only thing that she did was retrieve her tools from the previous week.

We fired the company the next day. I received calls and emails from more than one person, asking us to give them another chance and saying they would retrain the woman. I told them that it wasn’t a case of substandard training. This woman was lazy and had no work ethic, and no amount of training can fix that.

The district manager offered to put another person on the route. I said no, we were just going to use a robot to clean our pool from now on. I spent $2,000 on remote monitoring equipment and a robot that automatically scrubs the pool.

The monitoring equipment tells me what chemicals to add, the robot cleans the pool. All I have to do is add the chemicals and empty the filter and skimmer basket.

When I am buying services or labor saving devices, my first and only consideration is value. That is, how much money would I make if I went to work for the same number of hours it will take to do the chore myself. If the cost of paying someone or buying a labor saver is less than half of what I would make, then I buy the product or service.

For example, mowing the lawn was taking me about 2 hours. You have to do it once a week most of the year, except winter, when you have to do it once a month. In total, I would spend about 90 hours per year having to mow the lawn. My choices are:

  • Hire someone. Lawn companies gave me quotes of $2400 per year to mow it for me.
  • A Husqvarna Automower that can mow my 3/4 acre costs just over $2000. All I need to do then is run a string trimmer around the edges of the house and blow off the driveway, which only takes about 8 hours per year.

I went with the robot. The same sort of choice was made with the pool. I can pay someone two grand a year to not clean my pool, or I can get a robot to do it. My lawn robot cost me a bit up front, but now that I have had it for over a year, it’s already paid for itself. Now I get free lawn mowing. The only thing I need to do now is replace the razor blades that it uses once a year.

So this is what minimum wage labor is facing- I can get a robot to mow the lawn or clean my pool for less than what it cost me to hire a lazy moron who won’t do a good job. The only barrier to automating these jobs is the large upfront cost, but once that is paid off, things get much cheaper. The bonus is fewer workers eyeing up the stuff in my house, and considering that the person most likely to burglarize your home is a worker who has been in it before, that’s a big bonus. Lazy morons need to watch out- they are about to lose their jobs.

Check it out, if you are interested. The robot is pretty cool:

By Divemedic, ago

The Numbers Don’t Lie

Except when they do. Why is Statista, using the FBI’s numbers, reporting that there were 21,504 murderers in the US in 2023, but also reporting that there were 17,713 murder victims? Or is this just statista skewing the numbers?

EDITED TO ADD

It’s Statista lying. The FBI crime report shows a total of 19,402 homicides for the entire country in 2023. Note that homicide is a blanket statement that includes murder as a subset. There cannot be more murders than there are homicides, therefore the true number of murders (and by extension, murderers) is less than 19,402.

Yes, I know that one murder can be carried out by more than one murderer, but these would seem to me to be statistical anomalies that would be more than balanced out by the cases where one murderer killed more than one person.

By Divemedic, ago

Socialists Clueless About Economics

I keep seeing things like this, and it really bugs me:

Since 2013, I have been warning those pushing for an increase in minimum wage that it will simply cause higher prices. I, along with others, have been shouted down and told how stupid and wrong I am.

Seattle and California have a $20 per hour minimum wage. The answer is “real communism hasn’t been tried.” People in the Seattle area now have to contend with $26 coffees and $32 sandwiches, with taxes and delivery fees comprising nearly 30 percent of the total bill. Instead of listening, the left is now demanding $33 an hour as a new minimum wage.

If $20 is good, and $33 is better, why stop there? Why not make the minimum wage $250 an hour? Then we can all be rich!

Next month, Florida’s minimum wage will increase to $14 per hour, a 61% increase from the $8.56 minimum wage in the state back in 2020. Not coincidentally, the median home price in Florida went from $306,000 in 2020 to $436,600 in 2025, which represents a 43% increase in house prices.

Rents saw similar increases. Rentals were costing a median of $1187 in 2020, and now are running about $1752 in 2025, a 67% increase.

Increase the minimum wage, and prices will increase to match. Economics, it’s a thing. The socialist blames a free market, but it’s market manipulation that is causing a huge chunk of this.

It isn’t just housing. As long time readers are aware, my Denny’s Grand Slam scale is a great example of this. That breakfast has 2 strips of bacon, two link sausages, two eggs, and two pancakes. A good cross section of food products. I have been using the price of this breakfast in the same Denny’s location since 1997 as an indication of costs.

  • Here we are in 2025, and the cost of that breakfast is now $14.19.
  • In 1997, that breakfast cost $1.99
  • In 2009, it cost $4.99
  • In 2021, it cost $9.29
  • Just a year later in 2022, it was $11.59
  • In 2023, the rate slowed a bit. The breakfast was $11.99 in April
  • By November of 2023, the price was up again, to $12.99

So the breakfast in 2021 was $9.29, and it is now $14.19, a 65% increase. It’s almost like prices across the board are increasing to match wages. It’s a simple rule- more money (demand) chasing the same goods (supply) equals higher prices. Now there is a bit of a mismatch, because population (which is also part of demand) has increased a bit, but it still illustrates the point.

Before any of my readers respond with “well, technically…” please understand that my relatively short posts are not an exhaustive treatise on the issue. Books have been written about this, and I am not writing a book here. I had one reader respond to a recent post that mentioned income taxes with a comment that stretched into more than 600 words, explaining that I had calculated the taxes incorrectly. This post went into details about exemptions, credits, and other factors that made my numbers incorrect. My posts aren’t meant to withstand an IRS audit. I use public sources and usually post links to them, but they are still meant to be quick examples to illustrate the point. Responding with an over 600 word comment to explain one insignificant sentence in a 450 word post is just silly.

By Divemedic, ago

Florida Taxes Rising 10x Faster than Population

Property taxes in Florida are skyrocketing.

The population of the state of Florida has increased the most of any US state, but the increase in population was still only 8.2% since 2020. Where is all of the money going?

Taxpayers are being fleeced. Ripped off to pay for DEI, illegal immigrants, and for government employees to groom your children to turn them into twinks and trannies. Enough is enough.

By Divemedic, ago