Trial begins on the constitutionality of Connecticut’s school funding system.
Plaintiffs claim that the state, which already spends more per pupil than almost every other state, should be coughing up an extra $2 billion per year. Where would that money come from? Not Bridgeport, that’s for sure.
Democrats slouch towards Greenwich
Filed under Uncategorized
Just one more time
Of course, you’ll have to quit calling those phone-sex numbers for the economics to work out.
I THINK THIS ANALYSIS OF POWERBALL IS WRONG, because when you buy a ticket, you’re not really paying for a chance at winning — which is astronomically minuscule — but for a few minutes of fantasy about winning. So at 5 minutes of fantasy for $2.00, that’s 40 cents per minute. Contrast that with phone-sex rates and it’s a pretty good deal. . . .
Filed under Uncategorized
Everyone out of the pool – it’s Hugh’s turn!
Huge Hefner’s house is hitting the market at $200 million. Leaving aside that its sole value is the land it sits on (still valued at $60 million, mind you), if you buy the house, you get Hugh, still locked in his bedroom. At one point – say, 50 years ago, that might have been appealing to party animal types, but the idea of a 90-year-old man in pajamas skulking around upstairs will probably deter most buyers.
Filed under Uncategorized
Paradise found, at Tod’s point
Corporations moving back to cities to attract younger workers.
Suburban office parks are out of fashion.
[T]he nature of GE’s Fairfield headquarters — along with details about its preferred landing spots — raise the possibility that costs may only play one role, and that the company leaning toward the kind of centralized, walkable communities that are in fashion now and away from an isolated, suburban office park like its current space.
The common thread in the locations GE has said to be eyeing is something Connecticut, for all its positive attributes, cannot offer — a big-city experience.
“It’s rarely enough to just put in basic food service,” [commercial broker Sandy Paul] said. “People are seeking a variety of amenities, and people need walkable access to those things, or it puts you at a significant disadvantage.”
The trend fits into larger patterns of younger workers showing interest in dense, walkable communities that offer conveniences suburbs can’t offer, the report says.
It strikes me that if younger workers prefer compact neighborhoods, the call of the wilderness found in our Back Country may not be heard again. Or at least, until tastes shift, as they do.
Filed under Uncategorized
Algebra class in P.S. 121
NYC schools now pass out “warning notes” to disruptive students instead of suspending them.
The behaviors that now merit a warning note with a “request” that the student bring the card home to his mother to discuss it, but no obligation to do so, of course, including fighting, threatening teachers, smoking dope in the bathrooms and, as in the case linked to above, bringing seven bags of marijuana to school, presumably to sell it.
“This type of turning your back on illegal behavior is grooming criminals,” said Gregory Floyd, president of Teamsters Local 237, which represents school safety officers. He says students who get warning cards should have to pass a class on behavior, instead of getting off with a slap on the wrist.
“The mayor is saying crime is down in the schools,” Floyd said. “Crime is not disappearing. It’s just that we’re ignoring it.”
Just as his order ending the “stop and frisk” program merely left armed blacks to prey on their neighbors, DeBlasio and his ilk are condemning the few students who actually want to learn and improve their lives to the mercy of bullies and thugs. Blacks might want to ask, “why do they hate us so?”
Filed under Uncategorized
Perhaps his adoration is because “Shorty” is no taller than Sean – that’s a fellow who’s hard to find.
Sean Penn meets secretly with El Chapo, writes glowingly about it for Rolling Stone
“While I was surfing the waves of Malibu at age 9, he was already working in the marijuana and poppy fields of the remote mountains of Sinaloa,” Penn says of Guzman, who, like the actor, is in his early 50s.
“Today he runs the biggest international drug cartel the world has ever known, exceeding even that of Pablo Escobar,” Penn says.
“He shops and ships by some estimates more than half of all the cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana that come into the United States.”
Penn concedes in the piece that he “may be perceived as protecting criminals.”
Guzman may be a billionaire murderer and peddler of poison, but what of our own guilt, as customers of his wares, Penn muses.
As an American citizen, I’m drawn to explore what may be inconsistent with the portrayals our government and media brand upon their declared enemies. Not since Osama bin Laden has the pursuit of a fugitive so occupied the public imagination. But unlike bin Laden, who had posed the ludicrous premise that a country’s entire population is defined by – and therefore complicit in – its leadership’s policies, with the world’s most wanted drug lord, are we, the American public, not indeed complicit in what we demonize?
We are the consumers, and as such, we are complicit in every murder, and in every corruption of an institution’s ability to protect the quality of life for citizens of Mexico and the United States that comes as a result of our insatiable appetite for illicit narcotics.
Penn adds, “As much as anything, it’s a question of relative morality.”
I assume we’ll see Robert Kennedy and Jimmy Carter play starring roles in the upcoming hagiography.
Filed under Uncategorized
For What It's Worth 