Called it

Disney recently announced that they would be increasing their minimum wage to $15 an hour. Now the local fish wrapper is demanding that they increase that wage again, to some unnamed amount called “living wage.” In support of this, they claim that Gabby Alcantara-Anderson, who makes $14.75 an hour, is not making enough to support her family and still afford gas money to make the 63 mile commute to her home in Lakeland, so she often spends the night in her car.

I have a few problems with this:
1 She makes $30,600 a year and her husband makes $15,000 a year. The problem here isn’t her income, it is his. The article claims that her husband is working two jobs, with the second one being part time 4 days a week at an auto parts store. Even assuming a 4 hour day at the part time gig, he is working 800 hours a year at the second job. Doing the math, that part time job alone would pay him $7000 a year.

2 Look at the picture of her in the paper:

Note that she has a smart phone. Her problem isn’t with income, it is that she would rather sleep in her car for lack of gas money that give up her smart phone. It isn’t Disney’s fault that this family doesn’t know the difference between wants and needs.

3. In the article, the woman is complaining that it costs too much to commute from Lakeland, and it is too hard for her and her husband to support themselves, their kid, and her 40-something year old mother. She wants more pay as a result. Why is that her employer’s problem?

4. Her checking account has a balance of negative $500 and she claims that they don’t know where their next meal will come from, have no savings, but she has tattoos.

5. As much as she is hurting for money, she is on leave from her job so she can do volunteer work for the union.

This entire article is bullshit.

Plumbing mystery

So I have an odd issue with the plumbing in my house. In one of the bathrooms, the toilet occasionally doesn’t flush. If you try to use a plunger, the toilet doesn’t drain, but you can hear gurgling in the 2 sinks and the shower in that bathroom, and this gurgling comes with a smell of raw sewage. There is another bathroom on the same side of the house which works just fine, and the pipes from the affected bathroom use the same line as the unaffected bathroom. No other drains or fixtures are affected.

Here is where it gets odd:
– It happens frequently, almost always in the spring and fall
– It has been happening for the past 4 years
– The toilet will remain clogged for a day or two, and then it spontaneously begins working again
– Once when it was clogged, I opened the front door to leave for work, and my wife yelled and told me that opening the door fixed the clog
– We had a plumber come out. Of course, by the time he got here, it was working. They put a camera through the pipes, charged us $500 for the hour he was here, and told us there was nothing wrong. Three days later, the toilet stopped working again.

The wife gets pretty aggravated. So do I. Any suggestions?

Tuba Skinny

Being originally from New Orleans, my favorite music is usually of the jazz variety. New Orleans is well known for street musicians doing what musicians did for centuries: playing for their supper. Busking is widespread, and the amount of talent that is on the streets of New Orleans can’t be matched for the digitally processes screeching that passes for pop music these days. For example, here is a band playing right on the street in New Orleans:

Here they are again, and you will note that they have the collection plate out. This is how many musicians in New Orleans make their living.

Hunting with a Glock 45

I finally have found a gun control law that I will support, as long as it remains narrowly tailored. Current law states that non-citizens cannot purchase firearms in the US, unless they have a hunting license. It seems that the terrorist who attacked the base in Pensacola used that law to his advantage and bought himself a handgun, a Glock 45 to be exact. I would not be opposed to eliminating that particular exception. Even so, are any of my readers familiar with any sort of hunting that you can do in Florida with a 9mm handgun? If a person from Alabama,which is only 8 miles from Pensacola, wishes to buy a handgun in Florida, they would be prohibited by law from purchasing that handgun. In this case, Saudi Arabian terrorists have more rights than US citizens. 

What say you?

On another note, if we are supposedly engaged in a GLOBAL war on terror, why aren’t our troops armed while here in the US, at least while on base? The US is a part of the globe, last time I checked. Our entire nation has grown accustomed to the idea that we are safe within our borders. That illusion is going to cost us more.

Snowflakes and helicopter parents

Here is an illustration of what teachers deal with:

A kid in my 10th grade Biology course doesn’t turn in any work for several weeks, gets a slew of zeros and is now failing for the quarter. A month later, his mom writes me (his teacher) to demand that I allow him to make up the work that was due as far back as October 6th. Here is the email chain that followed:

From: Angry Mom
Date: November 11, 2019
To: Other teacher
CC: Divemedic
Subject: Lazy Son
I am reaching out to you in regards to my son mentioned above. I am his mother and I am concerned with his grades in school and would like to schedule a parent teacher meeting with you and his other teachers as well to try to figure out why his grades are so low, what’s going on, is he not doing classwork or homework, just to try to get a grasp on what’s going on and a better understanding and some help for him so his grades will improve. Please respond back to me via email so we can schedule a conference please. Thank you in advance and I hope you have a wonderful week.
Sincerely,
Angry Mom

Conference was scheduled for Tuesday the 18th by the other teacher, but I was off that week and didn’t attend. Here is the email that I got on December 2:

I’m just following up on my last email regarding my son , Lazy Student. He told me his missing assignments are from a book that you will not allow him to take home. I am asking for a response from you before going to the guidance counselor. He has a free period everyday for a class that he has already finished and I don’t see why he can’t come to your class on that free period and get his missing work turned in. Let me know what options he has as I am trying to prevent him failing your class.
Thank you,
Angry Mom

Note that I took off the week before Thanksgiving. I don’t take off many days, and I had weeks of vacation on the books and had to burn some of them. Before I could answer her email (I have students and can only answer emails during my lunch), my computer died and when it was finally fixed by IT on Wednesday, I answered her with this:

I apologize for the delay in my response, my computer died and I have been working without one for the past several days.
 Students may take books home, if they sign one out. However, there is no homework in this class, and students are given significant amounts of time to complete these activities in class. If they fail to complete them in class, they can bring the assignment in the next day for full credit, and up to five days later for partial credit.
 Unfortunately, Lazy’s free period is during sixth period, and I am not teaching Biology during that period. I cannot dedicate time away from my other students and their needs to provide specialized instruction to students who were not willing to complete their work when it was assigned, as the rest of their classmates were able to do.
 At this point, he currently has a 45 percent F for the quarter, and there is little that can be done to salvage his grade. His best hope is to spend the weekend studying for his quarter exam, which he will be taking on Monday, and to study for the midterm exam that he will be taking the following week. Perhaps a high score on one or both of those exams would serve to increase his grade. 

This apparently pissed her off, because I got this back in return:

So you’re telling me that you won’t allow him to sign a book out and bring it home and still turn in his missing assignments Because it’s past the free period and we were not made aware of this until now because you were on vacation for ten days and not present for the conference we had with his guidance counselor and then the kids were out for a week due to thanksgiving break ? His other teachers are allowing him to still turn in his work so that he doesn’t fail but you will not allow it ? Even possibly taking points off for it being late ? Is that what you are telling me ? You would rather let my child fail when you have the capability of helping him catch it up as his other teachers are ? I just want to be clear. Lazy is in trouble for not getting this work done when he should have but I have been reaching out to you for weeks now with only getting a response yesterday. I will wait for your response to this email.
Thank you ,
Angry Mom

So here was my next answer to her, which I also carbon copied to my boss:

Again, students are given ample time to complete all assignments in class. If the assigned work is not completed, students are told to complete it and bring it back the next day. If they fail to do so, the work is considered to be late work. As far as late work being accepted, the syllabus states that if any assignment is late, one full letter grade will be deducted for each class day that the assignment is late. After the third day, the assignment will not be accepted and the student will receive a ‘zero’ for the assignment. I have actually tried to be lenient in Lazy’s case, and offered to let him turn in missing work that was up to a week late. This policy is in place because the concepts taught in this class are taught in a specific sequence, with the knowledge learned in one week being applied to concepts being mastered in the current week. With Biology being a vocabulary intensive course, a student who falls behind will have difficulty understanding classroom discussions if they do not understand the words being spoken. This makes it difficult to master the course content. Since each course has its own requirements and pacing, this means that each teacher has their own policy for how they deal with late work. How those teachers choose to present their course and how they choose to handle late work has no bearing whatsoever on my course or classroom.

 All students have been aware of that since the first day of school, as we reviewed this policy during that time. In addition, the syllabus is on the class website. I will attach a copy of the syllabus to this email. It would be unfair to show favoritism by allowing one student an exception to this policy while holding others accountable. The fact that I was on vacation has absolutely no bearing on this policy, and I am not interested in debating vacation policies or my personal life with my students or their parents. 

This is when she became unglued:

Thank you for your rather RUDE response!! Teachers are supposed to help struggling students and the fact that you WERE on vacation and therefore not present for the parent/teacher/guidance counselor DOES have bearing on this situation!! But you have made it quite clear what kind of teacher you are and that you would rather have students fail then help them due to “your policies” which I am not expecting leniency for JUST MY CHILD !!! I feel it is your responsibility to first of all help your students and second of all to RESPOND TO A PARENT EMAIL ASKING FOR HELP and not some lame excuse about your computer being broken !!! I have emailed you 4 times in the past month. I’m quite certain there are computers at the school that you have access to. This will not end here. I will be contacting the dean when I get back in town requesting a conference with YOU !! 

I will not be answering this email, and have referred her to my boss. 

Gun violence reporting

This is crappy reporting.

First off, I doubt that the journalist interviewed Harris, even though he was quoted in the article, because the only person named Harris in this story is one of the decedents.

“Jerric, you know, he’s not a bad (person), he’s not bad at all,” Harris said.

Second, the story claims that “there are victims on both sides,” but I don’t consider the person shot in a gun battle with police after he murdered someone to be a “victim.” He is a murderer, a criminal. This is the basic problem that I have with the left: they view all people who are shot as “victims,” even if the so called victim is the perpetrator.

Third, the family of this murderer then begins campaigning for gun control because their choir boy relative isn’t a bad person, so what happened must be the fault of the gun he used, and of the police who obviously overreacted and killed yet another black man for no reason whatsoever.