IF TRUE, THAT SHOWS GOOD JUDGMENT: Entering Law Students Do Not Rely On The U.S. News Rankings In Choosing A Law School. “We compared changes in law school US News rankings to changes in prospective law student preferences the following year. Those variables should be strongly positively correlated. If a school’s US News ranking increases, prospective law students should prefer it more the following year, and if it decreases, they should prefer it less. But in fact, they were at best very weakly positively correlated, and often they are weakly negatively correlated. In other words, prospective law students appear to be largely indifferent to changes in a school’s US News ranking. This suggests that prospective law students are getting information about which law school to attend from someplace other than US News. And it also suggests that law schools can safely stop paying attention to the US News rankings, because their customers don’t care.”
May 28, 2024
READER FAVORITE: Dickies Men’s Original 874 Work Pants. #CommissionEarned
PLAY STUPID GAMES, WIN STUPID PRIZES: California’s $25-an-Hour Minimum-Wage Boomerang: Gov. Newsom now says the law he signed last October would add to the state’s fiscal woes. He ignored warnings at the time.
Progressives in Sacramento rarely think twice before burdening businesses. But lo and behold, they are having second thoughts about California’s new $25-an-hour minimum wage for healthcare workers. Why? Because its burdensome budget costs are threatening liberal programs.
California’s Democratic Legislature is scrambling this week to delay the state’s higher healthcare minimum wage, which is scheduled to take effect on June 1. It’s not uncommon for politicians to reverse themselves, but California Gov. Gavin Newsom is walking back a law that he signed only last October. What’s changed?
The state’s budget deficit has ballooned to $45 billion. Mr. Newsom projects that the new healthcare minimum wage would cost the state $4 billion more a year owing to higher Medicaid costs and compensation for workers at state-owned facilities. Legislative analyses warned about these costs, but Mr. Newsom signed the law anyway.
Thus the minimum wage for healthcare workers is set to rise to between $18 and $23 an hour this Saturday, depending on the type and size of healthcare provider. California’s current minimum wage for all workers is $16 an hour. Nearly all workers at healthcare facilities including janitors will have to be paid at least $25 an hour by 2028.
Democrats shrugged when healthcare providers warned that the wage mandate could force cuts to patient services. Who cares if Californians wait longer before being seen at the ER? But now Democrats worry that the state’s higher health costs could force bigger government spending cuts. Oh no. Californians may have to wait even longer for their bullet train to nowhere.
Mr. Newsom is proposing to tie health worker minimum-wage increases to the state’s general fund revenue and to exempt state facilities. But once capital-gains revenue picks up again, California’s private healthcare providers will be stuck paying for the wage mandate, which they will ultimately pass on to patients. Far better to repeal the $25 wage minimum en toto.
As usual, Democrats don’t want to eat their own lousy cooking.
Well, would you?
CELEBRATE APPROPRIATELY: Magpul’s Silver Anniversary.
Magpul has become a legend in a short 25 years, developing an enviable reputation for innovation and uncompromising quality along the way. It officially launched in 1999, although company founder Richard Fitzpatrick recognized a need for the firm’s initial product back in 1991, while serving as a member of 3rd Recon Battalion in the Marine Corps.
Most U.S. combat troops began adding paracord and duct tape to the bottom of magazines to improve reload speed in Vietnam. They continued to do so while Fitzpatrick was in uniform because a reliable alternative never appeared. When he left the service, though, he invented a combat-tough, rubberized system to fulfill the same mission. That year was 1997, but he still needed a method of reproducing the device in volumes large enough to meet even a modest order. So, he purchased an injection mold and began making the magazine pulls in his Colorado garage.
An entrepreneurial triumph.
MORAL LEADERSHIP: OpenAI backpedals on scandalous tactic to silence former employees.
SEND YOUR NOMINATIONS: Minding the Campus is accepting nominations for the 2024 Lysenko Award. Nominate your (least) favorite academic bent on suppressing free inquiry and dissent.
TODAY’S BEVERAGE OF CHOICE: LEFTIST TEARS. Dear Mainstream Media: You’re Squirming and We Love It.
PARODY CONTINUES TO PLAY CATCH-UP IN JOE BIDEN’S AMERICA:
This is both satire and also exactly what the corrupt New York judge has told jurors. https://t.co/QGdqQFaEp2
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) May 28, 2024
GET IN SHAPE: Ally Peaks Pull Up Bar for Doorway. #CommissionEarned
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I got one of these doorway pullup bars during Covid when the gyms were closed and went from being able to do only a few pullups (always my worse exercise) to being able to do 4 sets of 15. Just put it in a doorway and did a few every time I passed by.
CRISIS BY DESIGN:
NEW: Another 118 Chinese nationals crossed illegally into San Diego sector yesterday, per CBP sources.
I’m told San Diego sector has now had 30,000+ Chinese since October 1st.
Other San Diego sector nationalities since 10/1:
8,900+ India
7,800+ Turkey
2,900+ Uzbekistan
4,400+…— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) May 26, 2024
I already read Kurt Schlichter’s “The Attack” and would rather not live through it.
THE 21ST CENTURY IS SERVING UP HORRORS BEYOND IMAGINATION: Illinois brewpub serving cicada-infused Malort liquor shots. Malort is perhaps the worst drink ever, except maybe for Buckfast tonic wine.
DON’T GET COCKY: ‘Full-Blown Freakout,’ Democrats Are Having a Panic Attack Over Joe Biden’s Electoral Prospects.
Fortunately, one man can save them — and that man is Travis Bickle! “The idea had been growing in my brain for some time: TRUE force. All the king’s men cannot put it back together again:”
BOB DENIRO IS A TOTAL MESS! pic.twitter.com/mm7V8u7iRh
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 28, 2024
Although Travis wore Mohawks, not masks when he was getting ready to move in for the kill:
DeNiro wears a large mask walking outside years post-Covid only to take it off while speaking while surrounded by other people. Ludicrous speed already reached this week. https://t.co/dqouU6iZ50
— Joe Concha (@JoeConchaTV) May 28, 2024
DON’T GET COCKY BUT DO ENJOY STORIES LIKE THESE: The Great 2024 Democratic Party ‘Total Freakout.’
POOR GEN Z: The Global Loss of the U-Shaped Curve of Happiness. “Happiness used to be U-shaped by age, with middle age the least happy. Not anymore. Young people are now the least happy. . . . It seems that the well-being of young adults (ages 18-25), especially young women, went into precipitous decline beginning around 2017 (with some evidence showing around 2014).”
In space warfare, the U.S. military is seeking the ultimate high ground.
The satellites central to national defense and global communications have long faced threats from the ground, such as signal jamming and missile attacks. Orbital menaces are the next frontier.
Intelligence disclosures about Russia’s interest in antisatellite weapons and satellite launches from China have energized U.S. efforts to defend its interests hundreds and even thousands of miles above the Earth’s surface.
Defense companies are developing systems ranging from satellites that can chase other satellites in orbit to protecting ground stations that can beam signals to space. Those protections are critical as mobile navigation services and some television and internet services rely on equipment in orbit. Commercial startups are working on technologies, including orbital capsules, sensors and satellite structures, that could have military applications.
Pentagon officials are also doing something unusual: talking more publicly about the weapons that hostile nations might use in space to engage in warfare. Gen. Chance Saltzman, the Space Force’s top operational leader, said adversaries are trying every day to restrict access that the U.S. and its allies have in space. . . .
The Space Force—the newest military branch—has stepped up training of its Guardians, including how to best maneuver U.S. satellites and predict what adversaries may be planning.
It has developed scenarios for countering lasers, jammers, grabbers and nuclear weapons being used in space. U.S. officials oppose placing its nuclear weapons in orbit, pointing to commitments under a decades-old space treaty, but the Pentagon has been looking to further deploy its own set of space-based arms and capabilities.
In the Space Force’s recent budget request, about 25% of the $29.4 billion funding would go toward so-called space superiority, a concept that Saltzman calls “responsible counter-space.”
To be fair, the United States has been working on this stuff for a long time. For an elderly but excellent history of the early days, see Paul B. Stares’ The Militarization of Space: U.S. Policy, 1945-1984. It’s quite impressive what was going on in the 1960s — operational satellite interceptors, AGENA drones tested for capturing enemy satellites, etc.
STATE CAPITALISM IS A GRIFTER’S DREAM AND THAT’S WHY JOE BIDEN IS SO FOND OF IT: China Throws Money At Semiconductors Again. “Do you remember the last time I covered where the money went to in those previous phases? The money went to companies like Wuhan Hongxin Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Result? ‘Hongxin’s unfinished plant in the port city of Wuhan now stands abandoned. Its founders have vanished, despite owing contractors and investors billions of yuan.'”
THIS WILL END WELL: Denver police say DRONES will respond to 911 calls instead of cops after city defunded the force by millions.
The Denver Police Department has launched a new program that will have drones respond to 911 calls instead of cops.
The law enforcement agency that was recently defunded by millions to pay for migrants is now launching its own drone program, along with other Colorado police departments.
Robert White, the former chief of The Denver Police Department originally disagreed with the use of drones in 2013 and in 2018, the agency’s only drone was shelved.
Now, the department is planning on using a $100,000 grant from the Denver Police Foundation to start the program. Denver police plan to buy several drones with that money, and begin their drone program within six to 12 months.
Phil Gonshak, director of the department’s Strategic Initiatives Bureau told The Denver Post: ‘It’s beginning to lift off.’
‘The long-term scope of what we are trying to do is drones as first responders,’ he added.
‘Basically, having stations on top of each one of our districts so we can respond with drones to critical needs or emergencies that arise throughout the city.’
The Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office, based in Centennial, Colorado, has been using the robotic flying devices since 2017.
‘This really is the future of law enforcement at some point, whether we like it or not,’ Sgt. Jeremiah Gates, who leads the drone unit at the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office, said.
I’m so old, I can remember when Robocop was touted as “the future of law enforcement” – and he got far better results than these drones likely will.
CIVIL RIGHTS AND ANTISEMITISM AT COLUMBIA.
THEY MIGHT HAVE THE SOLUTION, TOO: How Big Tech Helped Bring on America’s New Energy Crisis.
MICHAEL WALSH: Good-Bye to All That.
The principal architect of the Tories’ demolition is [Boris] Johnson. Born in New York City with some notable Turkish ancestry, BoJo is the very model of a modern Briton: witty, quippy, raffish, well-read, part-foreign, and an absolute toff who panicked at the arrival of Covid and abandoned all pretenses of governing as a conservative from that moment on. He flouted his own Covid strictures and threw himself headlong into the economic stupidity of “climate change,” from which Britain has yet to emerge and certainly will not under Starmer. Johnson could debate, but he couldn’t lead. Just as the two Bushes squandered the post-Cold War legacy of Ronald Reagan, so did Johnson and the Tory ragamuffins who flanked him put paid to the accomplishments of Margaret Thatcher.
As Harold Wilson, another Labour prime minister, once said, a week is a long time in politics, but so also can just a few years vanish in the blink of an eye: just ask Boris Johnson. With his victory in World War II, Churchill was shown the door by an unsentimental electorate. Now, 80 years later, his entire party may be about to get the boot, and it only need look in the mirror to understand why.
Exit quote: “Despite the Tories’ promise to address the issue of economic migration, the situation has only gotten worse in the decade since that article in The Guardian was published, and their repeated failure (despite the Brexit victory) to do so has left them on the edge of political purdah.”
OUCH: Buying a home is getting more difficult — and it isn’t just because of price. “Today’s homebuyer faces a smaller pool of options than in previous years. And there’s little relief in sight, as the pace homes are arriving on the market remains outstripped by demand.”
“IRAN DENIES” IS ONE OF THE LEAST-CONVINCING PHRASES IMAGINABLE: Iran Denies Sabotage in President’s Death After Helicopter Crash.
READER FAVORITE: Cruise Ship Essentials, Flat Extension Cord with Multiple Outlets. #CommissionEarned
JOANNE JACOBS: Yale wants science profs to ‘promote DEI through teaching.’
Yale wants biophysics and biochemistry professors to place “DEI at the center of every decision,” according to its website, Sailer writes. Every job advertised links to a rubric that tests candidates’ “knowledge of DEI and commitment to promoting DEI,” their “past DEI experiences and activities,” and their “future DEI goals and plans.”
The “exceptional” candidate will have a “clear and detailed plan for promoting DEI through teaching,” he notes. Anyone who expresses doubts about microaggressions, implicit bias and systemic racism need not apply.
“Diversity statements raise serious issues about free expression, and they also signal an ill-advised shift in priority — away from disciplinary excellence and toward social activism,” writes Sailer.
Cornell’s DEI policies are “corrupting” its science, math and engineering hiring, according to a report by the Cornell Free Speech Alliance, writes Carl Campanile in the New York Post. Twenty-one percent of applicants in a recent faculty search in a hard-science field were rejected because their views were deemed ideologically suspect, according to the alliance.
Trofim Lysenko smiles.
