2016: Year of Celebrity deaths

It seems like 2016 is the year of celebrity deaths. There are many names that I recognize who have passed on this year. The year is nor even a quarter complete, and it seems like many talented people are leaving us…

George Kennedy: Star in dozens of films
Tony Burton: Man who play Apollo Creed and Rocky Balboa’s trainer in the Rocky series
David Bowie: Singer
Harper Lee: Author of To Kill A Mockingbird
Glen Frey of The Eagles
Alan Rickman
Natalie Cole
Craig Strickland of Backroad Anthem
Cara McCollum: Miss New Jersey 2013
Vanity: Singer from the 80’s
Justice Scalia
Maurice White of Earth, Wind, and Fire Feb 3.
Abe Vigoda
Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane/Jefferson Starship/Starship
Richard Libertini
David Margulies
Pat Harrington Jr.
Wayne Rogers of MASH
Dan Haggerty – American actor, Grizzly Adams
George Gaynes, best known for his role as Commandant Lassard in the Police Academy movies
Joe Alaskey, voice of many Looney Toons characters
Otis Clay R&B legend

Sovereign citizens

This sovereign citizen movement is a group of people who believe that there is some magic pharse that exempts them from paying taxes or following laws. By wrapping it in a bunch of mumbo jumbo vocabulary words that sound vaguely like legal lingo, the claim that they are exempt from the laws that the rest of us have to follow. Here is a fine example of their ignorant rants, and how they turn out:

This officer has a LARGE amount of patience. You cannot debate these idiots, they will argue with you for hours.

Public support

Remember the cops that threw the flash bang into the baby’s crib? Then the Sheriff doubled down on the stupid, and said his men would do it again, under the same conditions?

This sort of thing is the exact reason why there is so much traction for the anti police and BLM movements. The police are creating more and more anti-cop backlash as they continue to support and defend these sorts of acts and the cops who commit them.

Good cops: Stand up and stop protecting the bad comps among you. Cops are supposed to protect babies, not throw grenades at them. You cannot claim to be brave and claim to protect the public if you are willing to throw a grenade into a baby’s crib, and then defend that action by saying you want to go home at night. If you do, then don’t wonder why things like this gain traction:

Low pay

Yet another reason why schools can’t attract good teachers. Read this excerpt from a recruiting email that I got this morning:

Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS) is in the midst of a targeted recruitment campaign aimed at attracting individuals with a strong STEM background for a highly selective summer program, the TEACh Strong Summer Academy. This summer immersion program will prepare participants to become excellent STEM teachers.
In its continued commitment to impacting the academic achievement of the students in its highest need schools, M-DCPS will afford those selected the following opportunities:
• Participation in an intensive six-week summer training (June 1st – July 13th) consisting of enrichment programs, hands-on work experience and a comprehensive professional development curriculum
• Access to mentor teachers and additional support from district Curriculum Support Specialists (CSS)
• Participation in and access to monthly cohort meetings, webinars and an online support community
Immersion in this summer training experience will prepare program participants to make an immediate impact on the students they will serve, and the ongoing professional development and other support opportunities will continue to strengthen their performance as educators throughout the course of the school year and beyond.
Participants will receive a $3,500 stipend to be paid in two equal parts of $1,750 each. First payment will be issued upon successful completion of initial three (3) weeks of the training, and a second installment upon successful completion of the full six (6) weeks.
Minimum Requirements:
• Completion of a Bachelor’s Degree in a STEM field
• No prior teaching experience as teacher of record in a K-12 classroom
• Completion of M-DCPS employment application (see link below)
• Commitment to full six-week summer academy
• Commitment to teach in a M-DCPS high-need secondary school 

So this school system wants people with STEM degrees to come work for them, and they are paying $1750 for three weeks? That works out to $14.58 an hour. Unarmed security guards, which requires graduating from a 40 hour course, pays $12-14 an hour in Miami. How are you going to recruit quality people from outside of Miami and entice them to relocate for ridiculously low pay like that?

The job market CAN’T be that bad.

It pays to be well qualified

On February 6th, I was summarily fired from my teaching job with no warning and no reason given, other than “We are going in a different direction, and you are no longer a good fit for us.” Rumor had it that a student who has a wealthy and well connected father was angry that she got a C on one of my Chemistry exams, and had had her father come in and demand that I be fired.

I got an informal job offer today and will start very soon, pending background check and salary negotiation, meaning that I was out of work for exactly 20 days. I will be teaching Chemistry and Physics to 11th and 12th grade honors students. The new school is 30 minutes away from my house, but that is fine with me.

It seems that teachers who are certified to teach STEM classes are hard to come by. I am certified to teach Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Health, and a number of other sciences.  Teachers with those certifications are not easy to find.

Other than putting my resume out there, I spent the last three weeks getting caught up on household chores like yard work and getting some maintenance done on the cars. The old school had to pay me some money under the terms of my contract (which came to two months’ pay), I got two weeks’ unemployment, and now I am back to work. As it turns out, I actually made money on the deal.

As for my old school, the morning before I was fired they hired a guy to take over my classes who isn’t even certified to teach those subjects. He is a teacher who is only certified to teach Middle School physical education and has never taught before. The school has to send a letter to the parents of all of his students, informing them that the classes are being taught by an uncertified teacher. I am guessing that he won’t last long.

My election prediction

There has been a discussion of Trump’s campaign occurring on the Blogs that I read over the past few days. Over at Uncle’s place, I had this to say:

Trump is doing well because the electorate is tired of getting a bunch of politicians who say one thing and do another. They want an outsider. The Republican party only has themselves to blame for this: people are sick of getting back sliding from the likes of Boehner.

Over on Borepatch’s blog, I added this:

As an aside, I also think that this is the same reason why Sanders was getting as many votes as he did.

The fact is this: Hillary is using her establishment contacts to garner “Superdelegates” and win the Democratic nomination by gaming the system. This will take all of the wind out of the sails of the Democrats. Remember that Obama and Bill Clinton both won the Presidency by energizing the youth vote, which Hillary does not have.
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Obama beat McCain in the general election by getting 66% of voters who were under 30 years old, and getting 95 percent of the Black vote. Obama beat Hillary in the Primary by taking 57 percent of voters under 30 years old, by energizing the youth vote and getting a large voter turnout.

My prediction is that once Sanders, who has the youth vote in this election, loses the nomination, those voters will not bother to show up at the polls for the general election. We are already seeing signs of this happening with the low voter turnout as the primaries progress and Hillary takes the lead through gaming the system.

On February 1 in Iowa, Sanders won 70 percent more of the under 30 demographic and 22 percent more of the 30-44 age group than did Hillary. Voter turnout was record breaking with 180,000 Republicans and a large number of Democrats. Hillary lost the voters with 44 percent of the votes to Sanders’ 50 percent, but won the delegate count 23-21, thanks to Superdelegates.

In New Hampshire on February 9th, Sanders got 83% of voters under 30. A whopping 78% of voters who selected Sanders stated that this was their first election. Out of 246,000 voters, sanders received 60% of the vote. Republicans had about the same number of voters, with Trump winning 100,406 out of 289,000 voters.

In Nevada on February 23rd, only about 12,000 Democrats vote, with Hillary getting about 53% of the vote. The Sanders youth vote largely didn’t bother to show up. Nevada Democratic Party spokesman Stewart Boss estimated turnout at 80,000, falling short of the nearly 120,000 voters who turned out in 2008.

Why? Because Hillary already has 504 delegates to Sanders’ 71. It is lopsided, even though Sanders has won more than 61% of the 247,000 votes cast so far. If Hillary can hold on to take just 45 percent of the remaining delegates, she wins. As the youth vote sees that their guy isn’t going to win, they will become uninterested and stay home in ever increasing numbers.

Hillary is an insider, and anyone that remembers her as first lady is over 30 years old by now. Everyone who didn’t vote for Bill Clinton while still a teenager is now in their 40’s or older. She can’t claim to be the energetic newcomer any longer. Once Sanders is out of the picture, the title of newcomer goes to Trump.

This, in my opinion will lower the youth turnout and hand her the nomination. Once that happens, the young voters will stay home in significant numbers in the general election, and this will make Donald Trump our next President.

Economic intelligence?

Bernie Sanders has a net worth of just over $525,000, including the town home that he owns, which is valued at $100,000. Consider that he is paid $174,000 a year for being a member of Congress. He has been a member of Congress since 1991. Before that, he was the Mayor of Burlington, Vermont for nine years. He receives a pension for that as well.

Looking at the pay Congress receives, he has made $2.9 million since 1991. He also has a Senate expense account, which cost taxpayers $2.5 million in 2014, yet with all of this pay and benefits for more than two decades, he has almost nothing to show for it, aside from a $100,000 condo.

Is this the guy who you want running a national budget? My 29 year old son has a higher net worth than that.

This is why a communist can run for office

Anyone singing the “Happy Birthday Song” over the past 66 years was forced to pay royalties to the Warner/Chappell music company, who was making an average of about $2 million each year from the royalties for the song. 

The company finally admitted in court that they never owned the song and agreed to pay the artists suing them $14 million in a settlement. That’s right, they committed fraud that got them over $100 million in profits, and in the end had to only pay out around $14 million to settle the claims.
The banks, who made well over $1 trillion in profits by engaging in illegal mortgage securities fraud and thereby collapsed the US economy, which was followed up by the government bailing them out with ANOTHER trillion dollars, were forced to pay back a mere $13 billion in settlements. Goldman Sachs, who made the whole scheme work by selling the worthless loans as mortgage backed securities, had to pay back a mere $5 billion.
It seems as though companies are committing wholesale fraud and paying pennies on the dollar when they get caught. This is one of the reasons why so many people are so unhappy with our government, and I am betting it is a big reason why Sanders has such a large following.