Government

Socialism hurts everyone

Boston schools have eliminated educational courses that are designed for advanced students because not enough black students are admitted to the program. This is the basic flaw with socialism- it seeks to achieve equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity.

The students who are seeking to enter the program took a standardized test in the third grade, earned a high score, and won an open spot via lottery. Even with that, the rate of black students that entered the program was far below that of white and Asian students.

Many studies have shown that black students do poorly on standardized tests and on intelligence tests. As a result, researchers have concluded that the tests have racial, cultural, and socio-economic bias built in. There is no evidence of this claimed bias, aside from the results. The conclusions of these researchers ignore an obvious, alternative conclusion: that some races and cultures are less intelligent or place less value upon education, which results in the disparate scores.

My guess is that this is not because blacks are inherently inferior or less intelligent than whites, but that the black culture itself places little value on intelligence or on education. There is research that even supports this. When black or mixed-race children are raised in white rather than black homes, their pre-adolescent test scores rise dramatically. These adoptees’ scores seem to fall in adolescence, but this could easily be because their social and cultural environment places them into social circles with other black teenagers.

The whole point of desegregating the schools was to place black students into classrooms with white students, with the belief that black test scores have not risen. Instead, the white/black gap has shrunk, mostly through white students losing ground as they began to adopt the “hip hop” culture.

No matter what the cause, eliminating the advanced classes in order to put the advanced students in with the underperforming students will create equal results, but that only means results will be equally poor.

There you have the essence of socialism: as long as everyone has the same outcome, it doesn’t matter how poor that outcome is. Welcome to education in a socialist environment.

By Divemedic, ago

Why do I need to know this?

This is my answer to SiGraybeard:

There are many challenges to being a teacher in a failing high school. One of those challenges is the students have parents who are largely high school dropouts and drug addicts. They didn’t become that way because they value education. Kids emulate the behavior they see at home. Countering years of a parent who is ignorant and telling the child, “You don’t need to know that. You will never need to know how to use any of that stuff they make you learn. I graduated 20 years ago, and still haven’t used any of it,” is nearly impossible.

One of the things that I do is present the students with a digital photo album. It’s a photo story of my life. My time in the military. My time as a firefighter. A paramedic. A master SCUBA diver. I show them pictures of my travels. I show them how great life can be, and how different it can be from what they know. Then I tell them that the key to living an interesting life is education. That doesn’t mean college, necessarily. It could be a trade. Then I try to tie my lessons into a skill.

Kids, did you know that a bullet begins to fall from the acceleration of gravity as soon as it leaves the barrel of a gun? If a sniper shoots a bullet perfectly horizontal, and his watch falls off at the same time, the bullet and the watch will hit the ground at the same time. Then I prove it.

If four firefighters are on the fourth floor of a building, and there is 200 feet of firehose between the truck and their position, you have to add pressure to the water to account for friction and elevation. This is how you calculate just how much pressure you need to add in order to get them enough water to put out the fire.

Efficiency is important. Chemical reactions have efficiency. Some reactions are not perfect. Let’s say we are making drugs like in “Breaking Bad.” Let’s say that we know that our reaction is 90% efficient. (Pointing to kid in front row) Is John stealing from us, or are we losing product to inefficiency? If he is stealing, we need to whack him. Let’s do the math and see if John lives or not. (students all laugh) So we start by calculating…

I use examples to make the class fun, interesting, and relevant. Math isn’t racist, but a poor teacher can make it boring. Even these tactics fail more than half the time. The kids don’t care, their parents don’t care, and so the kids don’t even come to school more than half the time.

So many people fall back on the race card. It isn’t that my kid is absent and refusing to cooperate with the lessons. That would be an indictment of my parenting. It isn’t that my kid is becoming a gang member. A drug user. My daughter isn’t going to wind up as a stripper. No, all of this is the teacher’s fault. Not mine. Not my child’s. The teacher MUST be racist. Blaming racism is the same fundamental logic as 1930s Germans blaming the Jews- “It can’t be MY fault. It must be someone else’s fault.” The people need a scapegoat for their own failures.

By Divemedic, ago

Intrusive

My sister just got a letter in the mail from the US Census Bureau, claiming that she had to take the “American Community Survey.” The letter gives her 48 hours to take the survey by mail, online, or by calling some woman for a phone interview. The claimed penalty for refusing to answer is $5,000. There is an even larger penalty for lying.

The questionnaire is 28 pages long, and asks questions like how much you make, what your rent payment is, and what time you leave the house to go to work.

The Census bureau claims that they will keep your answers confidential. Uh, the CIA couldn’t even keep the identity of their spies confidential.

Fuck that. No one has been prosecuted for refusing to answer since 1970. Look, I will answer to tell you how many people live in my house, as the Constitution requires, but that is it. If there is a penalty for lying, that must mean that you are comparing my answers to some database somewhere. That tells me two things:

  • You already have the answers.
  • You plan on using the answers to incriminate me, which is a violation of one of those Amendments you keep ignoring.

So, no. I will take my chances with you ignoring me. Or maybe I can get an attorney. I don’t know if you can rely on the courts any longer, and I am sure that the ACLU isn’t interested.

By Divemedic, ago

Home of the free no more

This is going to be commonplace for many of us over the next several years as we are forced to come to grips with the fact that this is no longer the “home of the free and the land of the brave.” We can stomp our feet and deny it, we can try to act as though we don’t accept it, but it is not going to change the reality that the great American experiment that was launched just over 230 years ago is finally producing empirical results. The conclusion: People are capable of sustaining individual liberty only for as long as they can be constrained by a system of law that suppresses and contains their true nature.

Hobbes was right.

By Divemedic, ago

Status Quo

Jack brings up some good points in comments when he points out that many people will want to just allow the commies to take over, in the hopes that they will get eaten last. They want to protect their pensions, their property.

Let me point out that we are just a few weeks into the takeover, and in that time, there are troops fortifying DC, the President has declared war on the NRA and gun owners, taken steps to shut down our oil industry, which has raised average gas prices by 25% nationwide. He has signed 55 Executive orders in all- just 28 days into his regime.

The US government, over the past year, printed or electronically created over 40% of all the dollars that have ever existed.  Ask yourself how long that can continue. A large part of our economy is at a standstill. Ford had to shut down its assembly lines. We aren’t producing anything except stimulus checks. Things are getting worse. The police in Portland are being used to keep people from raiding grocery store dumpsters.

The insane policies of the ‘great reset’ are killing the country’s economy. These are the canaries in the coal mine.

By Divemedic, ago

Support animal tenant scam

I am a landlord. I allow my tenants to have pets, but they must pay an extra, nonrefundable, one-time cleaning fee of $250 when they move in, and I charge an extra $50 a month. This is because pets cause me extra expenses. My insurance costs are higher because of the risk of a dog biting someone. It costs more to clean a home after animals have lived there, and that doesn’t mention the added risks of damage to the property.

I cannot do that any longer. The reason for that is because of people like my sister. My sister has gone online and gotten her pet certified as an emotional support animal. It costs $129 online to get a letter from a licensed therapist, certifying that you are disabled and have a disability requiring that landlords let you keep your pet, and preventing them from charging you extra. (I was going to provide a link, but I decided not to drive business their way)

Last year, Florida passed a law allowing landlords to demand a letter from a licensed healthcare provider, and requiring the provider to have seen the tenant in person at least once. I could do that, but it entails a lot of risk on my part- you see, the law is a minefield. Play it wrong, use the wrong wording, and you get sued under the Fair Housing Act.

So instead, I will simply price that risk into everyone’s lease. I will charge more for a security deposit for everyone. I will charge more in rent for everyone.

A few scammers make it more expensive for everyone.

By Divemedic, ago

Another bad apple

I have some inside information on this one. Some of the people involved are people that I personally know. I know them pretty well, actually. Back in November, a Kissimmee Police officer (that I don’t know) was at a party and got pretty intoxicated. Some people that I do know were at the party knew that he was too drunk to drive and begged him not to drive. He left anyway.

Nearly 20 miles away, he called 911 to report that he had been carjacked by “four dudes” who “pulled him the f*ck out” and took his truck. His truck was found in a retention pond just down the street. The cop was soaking wet from the knees down. A search revealed that the keys to the truck were found in his pocket.

Now at this point, most people would be in trouble: DUI, filing a false police report, etc. Heck, there are members of the Trump administration that got YEARS in prison for lying to the police. What did this cop get? He got a ride home from other cops.

So who are the bad apples here? Certainly the Kissimmee cop who was DUI for 20 miles, got in an accident, fled the scene, then called 911 and filed a false report of a carjacking to cover it all up. What about the Orange County deputies who let him call his buddies for a ride home? The Orlando police who failed to report it? The Belle isle cops who didn’t report it either? The Kissimmee cops who gave him a ride home?

Was this a case of a “few bad apples?” Or is this yet another example of the “thin blue wall of silence” protecting their own?

This isn’t the first time this Department has had a scandal like this. Not even in the first time this year, nor the past two years. Just another bad apple.

By Divemedic, ago

Police = Revenue Generators

This is me, shocked that the government is angry that all of the lockdowns are preventing their minions in the police department from robbing their citizens on the highway.

The amounts are staggering. Across the state, Florida’s 17.7 million drivers pay $410 million to $540 million a year in traffic fines. Miami-Dade county revenue police officers write nearly 700,000 traffic tickets a year.

In 2004, someone stole a $200 check from my mail box, forged it, and deposited it in their bank account. I went to the OCSO office and gave them a copy of the cancelled check with my forged signature, the signature of the thief, and his bank account # printed on the back when I filed the police report. I was told that there was not enough manpower available to investigate the crime. I passed three cops on the way home, all writing tickets. There is no profit for the police department in actually solving crime.

By Divemedic, ago