Archive for 2013
September 24, 2013
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Kid expelled for playing with airsoft gun in own yard.
Two seventh grade Virginia Beach students previously suspended for shooting an airsoft gun have been expelled, WAVY.com has learned.
During a hearing Tuesday morning, Aidan Clark and Khalid Caraballo were expelled in a unanimous vote. Clark was offered the option of attending an alternative school, but his father, Tim, told WAVY News’ Andy Fox he will be homeschooled.
Caraballo will attend an alternative school.
Like thousands of others in Hampton Roads, Khalid Caraballo plays with airsoft guns. Caraballo and his friend Aidan were suspended because they shot two other friends who were with them while playing with the guns as they waited for the school bus.
The two seventh graders say they never went to the bus stop; they fired the airsoft guns while on Caraballo’s private property.
Aidan’s father, Tim Clark, told WAVY.com what happened next lacks commons sense. The children were suspended for possession, handling and use of a firearm.
Khalid’s mother, Solangel Caraballo, thinks it is ridiculous the Virginia Beach City Public School System suspended her 13-year-old son and Aidan because they were firing a spring-driven airsoft gun on the Caraballo’s posted private property. “My son is my private property. He does not become the school’s property until he goes to the bus stop, gets on the bus, and goes to school.”
The bus stop in question is 70 yards from the Caraballo’s front yard.
Homeschooling is the right solution. The school district should worry that others will follow suit. And the parents should (1) file suit: (2) oppose funding for the public school system, which has obviously gone off the rails.
DAVID HARSANYI: Are Robots Killing The Middle Class? More wishful thinking on joblessness. “The economy grows, innovation ratchets up — but jobs do not. Even during the 2000s, when productivity grew at a faster pace than it had in decades, median income declined slightly. Is creative destruction breaking the middle class? Has technology outpaced our ability to adapt? Are robots destroying the prospects of a vibrant future? Maybe. But the theory has a few holes. For starters, technology always kills jobs. American industry did not stumble upon innovation in 2007. The first ATM machine was installed in 1969, after all, and some of you may never have spoken to live bank teller. Are today’s modernizations really more disruptive than those hatched during the first half of the 20th century or the Industrial Revolution? It seems unlikely that Facebook is a bigger game-changer than the mass production of the automobile. . . . Question: Which one of these things is more likely to undermine economic activity: a) Twitter b) over 12,000 new pages of regulations added by this administration.”
AT AMAZON, 25% or more off on Household Essentials. At the top of which, apparently, is toilet paper. Also, batteries. Can’t argue!
TEST DRIVE: 2014 Mercedes-Benz S63 AMG 4Matic. I remember when zero-to-sixty in five was a big deal. Now we have massive sedans that can do it in under four.
A FAMILY TRUCKSTER FOR THE 21ST CENTURY? Driving the VW Crossblue Prototype.
TED CRUZ IS CURRENTLY filibustering ObamaCare. Well, kind of: “Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, rose to speak on the Senate floor at 2:41 p.m. He stood up to in opposition to Obamacare, he said. And he said he would continue to speak until he could no longer stand. It’s not a filibuster. But it’s looking like it may be a very, very long speech from the Texas senator who has been the center of attention in D.C.’s budget fight, and the Senate leader in a doomed-to-fail movement to strip funding for Obamacare out of any resolution that Congress passes to fund the government. If Congress fails to come to an agreement, the government will shutdown at the end of September.”
Video here.
SCENES FROM INSIDE the Apple Store. “From behind the Genius Bar, I can check the customer queue on a laptop or on an iPod I keep holstered on my belt. The wait time hangs over everyone’s head. When customers have to wait more than five or ten minutes for their appointment, they get antsy. When the wait time pushes thirty minutes, they get murderous.”
POPULAR MECHANICS: 7 Builds We Love From World Maker Faire New York 2013.
IT WORKED SO WELL FOR DEMOCRATS IN COLORADO: Terry McAuliffe Pledges Colorado-Like Gun Control if Elected.
20TH CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: My Life Of Hell In An Afghan Harem. Okay, in Afghanistan, most relationships are probably more like 11th Century relationships. . . .
SHIKHA DALMIA: Obama’s University Scorecard Plan Deserves an “F”: It will promote a political agenda, not educational goals. Now there’s a surprise.
FROM THE COMMENTS TO AN EARLIER POST ON THE SENATE STRUGGLE:
There’s an aspect to this that has gotten lost in all the inside baseball and it’s kind of the dog that isn’t barking:
Ten months ago after Obama was re-elected, the news was all about how the Republican party was on its last legs and about to die. If you had said back then that in September of 2013 the debate would be about whether to defund Obamacare, and the tax increases, new spending, and end to the sequester, etc would be completely off the table and that a “win” for the President would be defined as maintaining discretionary spending at an Eisenhower percentage of GDP with the Bush tax cuts for the middle class permanently enshrined in federal law…you would have been considered a total wackjob.
We haven’t won, but we’re playing a weak hand pretty damn well.
Good observation.
UPDATE: A comment to Nick Gillespie’s article, below:
It is really insane when you think about it. In a sane world Obama and the Dems would be begging the House to delay Obamacare so they could try and fix the worst things about it and the story would be all about if the Republicans are so cynical they will do harm to the country in order to stick the Dems with the blame. Instead, in the insane world that is Washington, the story is about how cynical and evil the Republicans are for wanting to stop all of this harm from happening to the country.
We live in a bearded-Spock world, a world where Charles Krauthammer and Tucker Carlson yuk it up over Ted Cruz birtherism.
RICHARD EPSTEIN: Dodd-Frank Strikes Again.
IN THE MAIL: The War on Football: Saving America’s Game.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 138. Lots of new items today.
IN RESPONSE TO MY USA TODAY COLUMN, Nick Gillespie writes: Don’t Forget to Blame Senate Democrats and Harry Reid for any Government Shutdown. Good point! Nick writes:
Whatever else you can say about the House of Representatives and President Obama, at least these folks have consistently produced spending documents in rough approximation to legal requirements (to be sure, Obama’s latest offering, showed up two months late and $5.2 trillion long when it came to increasing deficits over the next decade).
In contrast and despite a solid one-party majority, the Senate has passed exactly one budget in the past four years and in most of those years, they didn’t even produce the necessary document as mandated by law. Instead, we were treated to journalistic valentines to former Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), the guy in charge of the Senate budget wonkery, by a pliant press.
As my colleague Ed Krayewski reminds us in his essential survey of “4 Washington Scandals That Still Matter,” the Democrats couldn’t pass a budget even when they controlled the White House, the Senate, and the House. It’s been the Senate all along that’s been the problem, at least since Sen. Harry “We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year,” Reid (D-Nev.) has been running that godawful show.
Yes. If you’re outraged over budget theatrics, you need to change control of the Senate.
UM, FALLEN ANGELS WAS JUST A SCIENCE FICTION STORY, RIGHT GUYS? RIGHT? The Sun That Did Not Roar.
This is the height of the 11-year solar cycle, the so-called solar maximum. The face of the Sun should be pockmarked with sunspots, and cataclysmic explosions of X-rays and particles should be whizzing off every which way.
Instead, the Sun has been tranquil, almost spotless.
As W. Dean Pesnell, the project scientist for NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, dryly noted, “We’re not having much of a solar maximum.”
A week ago, a solitary sunspot blemished an otherwise blank yellow disk. In the ensuing days, a few more specks appeared, but even a small explosion, or coronal mass ejection, last Thursday seemed like the halfhearted effort of a slacker star.
“The truth of it is there isn’t a lot going on,” said Joseph M. Kunches, a space scientist at the Space Weather Prediction Center. “It’s been a bit of a dud. You look at the Sun today and you say, ‘What?’”
Are we heading for another Maunder Minimum?
MY USA TODAY COLUMN IS UP: Will Obama’s Ego Cause Him To Force A Government Shutdown?