Let’s begin with the makeup of the school district: It boasts a $7.52 billion budget and more than 60,000 employees, including about 26,000 teachers, with the average annual salary being $73,000. While employment has gone up 16% since 2004, enrollment has dropped 10% in the same period.
According to the latest available data, California school funding surged by nearly 10% from 2015 to 2016. If you examine a five-year period (2011 to 2016), school funding in the state is up a whopping 26%. Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) has further proposed the “largest ever investment” in the LAUSD.
Plus, the district already offered LAUSD educators a pay raise of 3% this year and another 3% in 2020. It was rejected.
But the school district can’t afford another pay hike. Next year, LAUSD will have a $422 million budget deficit, mainly because employee pension and health care costs represent a great portion of the budget – they will account for more than half within 10 years. Overall, it has $5.1 billion more in liabilities than in assets and another $15 billion in unfunded health care benefit liabilities for retirees and current workers.
So if you want to know why teachers can’t get a pay raise, it’s because of teachers.
Should President Trump comply with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s demand that he deliver a written instead of oral State of the Union address on Jan. 29, he would be on the right side of history.
According to the House Historian’s Office, 26 of 45 presidents have not given oral State of the Union addresses, though they have become common since the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. That stretched from 1800-1913.
Former Presidents George Washington and John Adams gave the speeches, which are suggested in the Constitution.
But Thomas Jefferson cut off the practice, feeling it looked too much like the speech the British king gives.
Instead, he and subsequent presidents offered a written version. That was followed for every president until Woodrow Wilson.
Former President Herbert Hoover also skipped the speech in the House chamber.
So if Trump can kill off the State of the Union and congressional junkets in one week, he’s doing pretty well.
The service anticipates having aircraft and fighter jet-fired lasers in operation as soon as the early 2020s, as mobile power systems and other integral technologies continue to evolve rapidly.
Not only do laser weapons bring increased precision attacks at the speed of light to incinerate targets, but they can be scaled or adjusted to achieve a desired effect – such as total destruction, partial damage or an even smaller, more measured impact, depending upon the threat.
“Laser weapons offer warfighters opportunities for quick and precise target engagement, flexibility and lighter and more responsive support logistics,” Eva Blaylock, spokeswoman for the Air Force Research Laboratory, told Warrior Maven in a written statement.
I really hope this works out, and not just for all the “Jets with frickin’ laser beams” jokes.
COLD WAR II: China’s Plan to Break off US Allies. “There’s a reason Beijing is pressuring Canada – not the US – over Meng Wanzhou’s arrest. Australia and New Zealand could be next.”
On the issue of Huawei, China realizes that the United States has enlisted its allies to collectively encircle the Chinese high-tech company. This sets a precedent for the United States to gather allies to suppress China in other areas in the future.
The Chinese official media Global Times published a particularly stern editorial entitled “Let the country that is invading China’s interests pay the price” on December 16, 2018. saying that “for countries which do not care about China’s interests and have extraordinary behavior, China should resolutely fight back, let it pay the price, and even suffer huge losses.” Doing so, to article reasoned, “also allows other countries to understand that China is principled”:
There is a high risk in following the U.S. to harm China’s interests. This time Canada helped the United States to detain a Huawei executive, which broke the bottom line. China needs to clearly express our attitude that we do not accept Canada’s doing so. If Canada finally extradites Meng Wanzhou to the United States, Canada will certainly pay the price of the retrogression of Canada-China relations. China needs to use practical actions to show the world the consequences of Canada’s doing so.
The commentary added, “We need to select counter-targets and make those countries be beaten very painfully. We argue that in this complex game, China should focus on the Five Eye alliance countries, especially Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. They follow the United States to harm China’s interests, especially in a step-by-step manner. Their performance is radical, and they are some of the targets that China should first hit.”
We must, indeed, all hang together, or… you know the rest.
ON THIS DAY IN 1689: Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, advocate of separation of powers, was born.
Montesquieu would likely have hated the modern administrative state, which liberally mixes the legislative, executive and judicial functions. I know I hate it. As Professor Gary Lawson wrote about the Federal Trade Commission in his well-regarded article The Rise and Rise of the Administrative State:
“The Commission promulgates substantive rules of conduct. The Commission then considers whether to authorize investigations into whether the Commission’s rules have been violated. If the Commission authorizes an investigation, the investigation is conducted by the Commission, which reports its findings to the Commission. If the Commission thinks that the Commission’s findings warrant an enforcement action, the Commission issues a complaint. The Commission’s complaint that a Commission rule has been violated is then prosecuted by the Commission and adjudicated by the Commission. This Commission adjudication can either take place before the full Commission or before a semi-autonomous Commission administrative law judge. If the Commission chooses to adjudicate before an administrative law judge rather than before the Commission and the decision is adverse to the Commission, the Commission can appeal to the Commission. If the Commission ultimately finds a violation, then, and only then, the affected private party can appeal to an Article III court. But the agency decision, even before the bona fide Article III tribunal, possesses a very strong presumption of correctness on matters both of fact and of law.”
This doesn’t work very well, you know. Just ask Montesquieu.
Don’t be fooled by the “toxic” qualifier – all masculinity is toxic to these human weebles. What they call “toxic” is really the essence of freedom. It’s toxic all right, but to their goals, not ours. Masculinity means freedom from them and the puffy, non-binary utopia they dreamed up because that’s the only world in which such losers could be anything more than a sorry punchline.
It’s a War on Testosterone, and we’re culturally surrounded. But that’s awesome. As Toxic Male Icon and Army hero, General Anthony McAuliffe of the 101st Airborne put it at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, “Men, we are surrounded by the enemy. We have the greatest opportunity ever presented an army. We can attack in any direction.” And Marine legend and Toxic Male “Chesty” Puller said something similar: “We’re surrounded. That simplifies our problem of getting to these people and killing them.” . . .
The answer to the attack on toxic masculinity is to recommit to what they label “toxicity,” because what they call “toxic masculinity” is not about criminality or being a jerk. It’s about the basic premise of being a man, the role of builder and destroyer, engineer and warrior. They want to take what makes you special from you, so all you have are the scraps they choose to give you. And then they will own you.
Do you want to be owned?
Cue the SJWs liars to hop in to say that praising masculinity means celebrating rape and abuse and mindless criminality and mayhem. But everything leftists say is a lie, and so is this. The answer to rape and abuse and mindless criminality and mayhem is, of course, more masculinity – the confrontation of evil, and its destruction, by righteous force. And righteous force is a masculine notion.
Want to see real “rape culture?” Look at a lefty strongholds like Hollywood, or DC.
WELL: Shock Poll: Trump Gains 19 Points with Latino Voters During Border Wall Shutdown. “In the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll released Thursday, President Donald Trump may have suffered some among Republicans overall, but he saw a huge point gain in a different demographic breakdown, and an unexpected one by conventional wisdom. In early December, the poll had Trump’s approval rating among Latino adults at 31%. The results from the poll released Thursday show the president’s job approval among Latino adults at 50%. That is an astonishing 19 point swing. Prior results had less variance, with Latino approval numbers at 36% in their November 1st findings. It was 27% in the pollster’s mid-October survey. The January poll was conducted during the government shutdown over border wall funding, most notably. So the big swing among Latinos was while Trump and Democrats faced off over funding for the wall.”
Well, that’s a shock all right. I wonder what the Democrats’ internal polls show. They haven’t been acting like they think this shutdown thing is a winner for them, but wow. Or else this is an outlier, but if so it’s a big outlier.
UPDATE: I mean, how can Trump be gaining points against this kind of opposition? There must be something wrong with the poll.
REALLY, REALLY PREMATURE PUBERTY: A 4-Year-Old Trapped in a Teenager’s Body “I was all of the things people are when they’re 14 or 15” — except a decade younger. “I couldn’t talk, I could barely walk, but I started growing a bush. Or so they tell me. I have no recollection of a time before puberty, before the carnal cravings, the impulses, the angst and anger and violence. There was no prelapsarian age of innocence for me; I was born, I took a huge bite of the apple, and, by 2 years old, I was pretty much ready to get busy with Eve. It was the same for my father, and for his father, and for his father, and for the men in my family going back as far as we have records. We’ve all carried the same hereditary genetic mutation.”
Weird, because I thought all that stuff was socially constructed.
A close Mad Men-era analogue to Gillette’s new ad would be this Virginia Slims ad from 1967. It starts with a woman in 19th-century clothing, staring mournfully at her feet while a sad tune plays. “It used to be, baby, you had no rights,” intones a male voice saucily. “No right to vote. No right to property. No right to the wage you earned. That was back when you were laced in, hemmed in, and left with not a whole lot to do. That was back when you had to sneak up to the attic if you wanted a cigarette. Smoke in front of a man? Heaven forbid!”
And now—what’s this?—the woman has taken out a pair of scissors and she’s cutting away at her outfit, turning it into a stylish pant suit with a bare mid-riff. She offers a coy smile, too, and a few turnabout dance moves. Then the anthem starts: You’ve come a long way, baby, to get to where you’ve got to today…” And an announcer comes on “introducing new Virginia Slims, the slim cigarette for women only, tailored for the feminine hand. Slimmer than the fat cigarettes the men smoke, with the kind of flavour women like…in a slim purse pack.” The rousing last verse: You’ve got your own cigarette now, baby. You’ve come a long, long way!
In some respects, the act of watching that ad is a voyage to a distant land: It’s not just that cigarette ads have been illegal in western countries for decades (the woman actually takes a puff—right there on TV). But the very idea that “women” smoke with a small “feminine hand” also would constitute its own sort of transphobic thoughtcrime. Nevertheless, the basic Madison Avenue impulse behind the ad is recognizable to modern eyes: There’s this cool social trend out there. Let’s present our product as part of that cool trend. In the 1960s, the cool trend was empowering women. A half century later, it’s hectoring men. In the 1960s, being progressive meant expanding the range of permissible behaviour. A half century later, it’s about imposing constraints. In the 1960’s, the puritans were the bad guys. Today, they’re the ones setting the moral agenda.
Exactly. Although then as now, James Lileks noted, with a pair of commercials for Gillette’s Venus razor for women decades apart, but then and now, the message is, “YOU ARE AWESOME YES YOU ARE, and no one gets to tell you anything.”
In contrast, Gillette has no problem hectoring the men who buy their products. As Glenn wrote, “Men are used to being treated badly on TV shows and in ads, because women control most discretionary spending. But now men are even being treated badly in ads for the products they themselves buy. Advertisers thinking they can get away with that is a pretty open expression of contempt. And the contempt is being returned.”
Related: “Yes, it’s easy to be cynical, but perhaps in these uncertain times, without realizing it, what society is crying out for is an updating of the moral codes that underpin all human endeavor by retail sages who preside over multi-billion dollar enterprises. Because they must know a thing or two about how to lead a good and fulfilling life. Right? Enlightenment you can buy in the supermarket – amazing it’s taken humanity this long to come around to it.”
As Iowahawk tweeted when Starbucks’ CEO Howard Schultz had the ill-conceived (and quickly discarded) notion that his clerks could lecture their customers on whatever racism they perceived that day:
At the height of his superstardom, Bob Dylan famously said, “Just because you like my stuff doesn’t mean I owe you anything.”
The reverse is true as well. (Though Gillette’s product seemed increasingly unlikable, even before they attempted corporate seppuku. I shave much more often with an electric these days, because Gillette’s blades were frequently giving me German dueling scars. Steve has some thoughts on how to significantly upgrade your “analog” razor situation.)
RANDOM THOUGHT: The folks who worry about “toxic masculinity” tend to be the most gung-ho about giving women with gender dysphoria testosterone shots and fake penises. Hmmm.
WHY STENY HOYER AND RAND PAUL COULD BECOME SHUTDOWN HEROES: Unlikely? Yes. Far from an ideal solution? To be sure. Is it the best possible outcome, given the givens? That remains to be seen, but go here for the factors I see as making such a scenario at least conceivable.
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