Kansas City Closing Schools

This is a good insight into how hard it is for government to cut things.

Superintendent John Covington called for the closing or consolidation of almost half of the schools in the Kansas City, Missouri, school district, and a school board voted Wednesday to approve the downsizing.

Covington calls it the “right-size” plan,” but many residents say it’s plain wrong.

A packed room of people watched the board make its historic move after weeks of debate and years of declining enrollment. Some parents voiced their anger, while some students cried.

Yeah, it sucks to close schools, but look at the facts:

Covington said the closures were the first phase of “right-sizing” a district where enrollments have plummeted from more than 35,000 in the 1999-2000 school year to about 17,000 in 2009-10.

They are at less than HALF of enrollment.  How can anyone justify keeping open the same number of school buildings except with emotional arguments?  They can’t.  While I appreciate a school board that is willing to make some hard choices here, the public needs to get a grip and realize that it makes absolutely no sense to maintain the same infrastructure for half of the student population. 

Birds of a Feather

Huh.

A federal judge has denied ex-Detroit councilwoman Monica Conyers’ request to withdraw her guilty plea in a corruption case and sentenced her to three years and one month in prison.

As guards cleared the courtroom Wednesday, Conyers yelled that she planned to appeal.

Turn On Your Lights

For cripes sake, people.  When it’s foggy and you can’t see more than a hundred yards, TURN ON YOUR LIGHTS! 

Morons… 

Poo-Eating Plant

Huh.

The largest meat-eating plant in the world is designed not to eat small animals, but small animal poo.

Botanists have discovered that the giant montane pitcher plant of Borneo has a pitcher the exact same size as a tree shrew’s body.

But it is not this big to swallow up mammals such as tree shrews or rats.

Instead, the pitcher uses tasty nectar to attract tree shrews, then ensures its pitcher is big enough to collect the feeding mammal’s droppings.

Details of the discovery are published in the journal New Phytologist.

Airlines Will Cancel Flights Rather Than Risk Fines

Yup.

Passengers may soon be seeing more cancellations on airport departure boards.

Several airlines, including Fort Worth-based American and Houston-based Continental, say they will cancel flights rather than risk paying stiff penalties for delaying passengers on the runway.

Continental’s CEO told investors Tuesday that the airline will opt to cancel flights rather than chance being fined.

Aviation consultant Denny Kelly expects other airlines to follow suit.

“I think all of them will cancel flights,” he said. “They’ll do it partially because they think they are going to punish passengers, and if they punish them, someone will get this legislation removed.”

Under new federal guidelines that take effect next month, airlines can be fined up to $27,500 per passenger if a plane is stuck on the tarmac for longer than three hours.

Gee, who could have predicted this?

Delays throughout the airport are several hours long.  The airlines don’t want to risk anyone staying out there too long, so they just cancel the flights

Sexual Predator Bill Up for Hearing Tomorrow

This isn’t cool.

Suburban Milwaukee leaders are mobilizing against a bill that would outlaw local ordinances that restrict where sex offenders can live.

A hearing on Assembly Bill 759 is set for Thursday before the state Assembly Committee on Corrections and the Courts.

Franklin Ald. Steve Olson said Tuesday that elected officials from Franklin, Greenfield, Cudahy and possibly other suburbs plan to attend the hearing.

Olson said he thinks the bill would result in Milwaukee sex offenders being released from prison and allowed to live in the suburbs.

“It’s an effort by some Milwaukee legislators to again pass something quickly, when nobody sees it, and put their problems on to other communities,” Olson said.

“Why should we accept Milwaukee’s, why should Milwaukee accept Franklin’s (sex offenders)?” he said. “It’s a matter of simple logic and fairness - take your own back.”

Franklin is among municipalities that restrict sex offenders from living in certain areas, such as a prescribed distance from schools.

The bill would prevent those municipalities from enforcing such ordinances and would prohibit any more such ordinances from being enacted.

Once again we have the state wanting to impose a blanket rule instead of letting different municipalities manage these things according to their own values.  It’s disappointing to see so many Republicans co-sponsoring this.  Local control, folks… dig it. 

Different Format for March 22nd School Board Meeting

Hmmmm…. where have I seen something like this before?

The third presentation of the 2010-11 proposed budget recommendations will be at the March 22 board meeting. District administrators and school board members have indicated they would like to see a large audience.

  The purpose of the School Board meeting, according to Ted Neitzke,, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, is to increase the community’s awareness of the school district’s budget — past, present and future — and to collect community feedback.

  Because the focus of the meeting is on collecting feedback, the format will be different than a typical board meeting, Neitzke said.

  The evening will begin with a budget presentation by Neitzke. After the presentation, community members will be split into large groups and put into classrooms. The size of the groups, Neitzke said, would depend upon attendance.

  If 300 people attended the meeting, for example, they would be divided into groups of 30 in 10 classrooms.

  Within the classrooms, people will be further divided into groups of five to six people Neitzke said.

  The small “focus” groups would be asked to provide feedback on a number of budget related issues. Feedback would then be collected by a facilitator and brought back to the school board.

  “The changed format will give the most people the most opportunities to have their voices heard,” Neitzke said. “Our district is very unique. There is no other school board in the state that is going out this early to ensure that the community understands the budget.”

Ah yes, I remember now.  It’s a variation of the Delphi Technique used by liberal activists for decades to build faux consensus.  I don’t like this format for a variety of reasons.  First, there is the opening for manipulation of the results.  If all of the groups are divided up and the administrator comes back and says “the majority did not want to cut X from the budget,” who can dispute it?  If your group was OK with cutting X, how do you know what the other groups thought about it?  How can you verify the administrator’s statement?  You can’t. 

Second, it is a process designed to exclude all but the most committed.  If it were a regular board meeting, then I could go and listen to the budget presentation, perhaps say my piece, and then leave if I have other commitments.  This format forces all attendees to commit to the evening.  That means that the passively interested won’t bother to attend because they don’t want to commit to the time and the folks with the most to lose or gain will dominate the process.  Who will be the most likely to take an entire evening to attend?  Take a guess. 

Third, this process filters the ideas that will boil up for the board to hear, and the filter will be applied by the school administration.  For example, if someone in Group #6 has a great idea that nobody else thought of, the board may never hear it because it didn’t develop into a “theme.”  Or if a theme develops of people saying “cut 10% of administration” and the administration considers that “unworkable,” then the input may be excluded from the final results. 

This method is a tried and true method to give the facilitators maximum control over the flow of information.  How they use that control should be of great concern to the citizens in this school district.

One more thing… the Superintendent is up for review this month.  Odds are about 20,000 to 1 that she will receive a raise. 

Keep tabs on health care

My column for the Daily News is online.  It’s called, “Keep tabs on health care.”  Here’s a portion:

Here’s where we are: The House Democrats won’t pass the Senate version of the bill because they don’t trust the Senate Democrats to pass a fix for it. The Senate Democrats won’t pass the fix because they don’t trust the House Democrats to pass the Senate version. It’s also problematic for the Senate Democrats to pass a fix for a bill that hasn’t been passed into law yet. President Obama is promising liberal House Democrats that they can vote for the Senate bill without a public option and they’ll “improve” it later even though the president has no ability to keep that promise with the current makeup of the Senate. A handful of pro-life House Democrats are refusing to pass the Senate version because it doesn’t include a ban on funding abortions. And all of the Democrats are refusing to scrap both bills and start over because they are afraid of being seen as unable to govern.

  Whew, got all that? There are some lessons here.

  First, the whole reason the Democrats are having so much trouble passing a bill is because it’s a steaming pile of, er, dreadful legislation that the public strongly opposes. It’s an election year. Many Democrats are looking at the polls and would like to remain in office after the election despite their leadership’s desire to sacrifice them on the altar of health care reform. Perhaps Democrats should learn a lesson about trying to shove through legislation that their constituents oppose.

  Second, huge pieces of legislation that dramatically change our relationship with government should be difficult to pass. Such gridlock is the result of the genius of our Founding Fathers. They built us a system where competing interests must align before major changes can happen. Such alignment hasn’t happened yet in the health care debate, which is a warning that it shouldn’t pass.

  Third, just look at how little trust there is between all of these politicians and remember that they know each other better than we know them. If they don’t trust each other, why should we trust them with our health care?

Van Hollen Charges Five With Felony Vote Fraud

Good for the AG.

Five Wisconsin residents have been charged with criminal counts of voter fraud in the November 2008 general election, state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen announced today.

Two of those charged - Maria Miles, 36, of Milwaukee, and Kevin Clancy, 26, of Racine - worked for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the embattled community organizing group.

“The complaint alleges that Miles and Clancy submitted multiple voter registration applications for the same individuals, and also were part of a scheme in which they and other (special registration deputies)  registered each other to vote multiple times in order to meet voter registration quotas imposed by ACORN,” the Van Hollen release says.

Both were charged with one felony count.

Woman Crashes Car While Shaving

I agree with the Spring City Chronicle.... “There is a cornucopia, nay, a veritable plethora, of things wrong with the next two sentences:”

Megan Mariah Barnes, 37, crashed into another vehicle on Cudjoe Key after giving her ex-husband the wheel as she shaved her private parts.

Barnes was driving to meet her boyfriend in Key West and told authorities she wanted to be “ready for the visit,” WJZ.com reported.

Of course, there’s this too:

Barnes should not have been driving in the first place. The day before the accident, she had been convicted and sentenced to nine months of probation for DUI and driving with a suspended license.

Her license was revoked for five years and she was ordered to get her car impounded.

Milwaukee Police Delayed Investigating Voter Fraud

Wow.  Here’s a stunning, if not too surprising, report from Dan Bice in the MJS.

Milwaukee police officers sat on their hands for months last year instead of investigating possible voter fraud cases from the 2008 general election.

It’s an incredible claim, but it’s coming from a credible source:

Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf, the Milwaukee County prosecutor responsible for overseeing campaign and election issues.

“Honestly, the Milwaukee Police Department largely ignored your double voter (and other) referrals received in January 2009 for the first six months of 2009,” Landgraf wrote in an e-mail to a city elections official on Jan. 26.

Speaking with unguarded candor, the veteran prosecutor said in his note that MPD’s tardy response had a major impact. The cases involve voters who may have cast more than one ballot, felons who may have voted illegally and other cases of possible election fraud.

“Sadly, several probable cases of genuine voter fraud were harmed by that delay,” Landgraf wrote in an e-mail obtained through an open records request.

The assistant district attorney was even more pessimistic about the investigation of more than 500 individuals who registered to vote on election day but whose addresses could not be confirmed later by postcard.

“I do not expect them to ever get to the Address Cards,” he said of the Milwaukee cops.

On Friday, Landgraf declined to provide specifics, referring questions to his boss, District Attorney John Chisholm.

Interestingly, Chisholm wouldn’t elaborate on his assistant’s concerns.

“I’ll let the e-mail speak for itself,” he said while praising Landgraf’s experience and knowledge.

No Lawyers for Animals

Well, I suppose there is a little sanity out there.

The result was emphatic: Swiss voters don’t think abused animals need to have their own lawyers.

It’s a proposal that would never even come near a referendum in other countries, but the measure’s defeat Sunday disappointed animal rights advocates, who say Switzerland’s elaborate animal welfare laws aren’t being enforced.

Comparing California and Texas

Michael Barone makes some good comparisons.  Which one of these states is Wisconsin more like?

No one would include Perry on a list of serious presidential candidates, including himself, even in the flush of victory. But in his 10 years as governor, the longest in the state’s history, Texas has been teaching some lessons to which the rest of the nation should pay heed.

They are lessons that are particularly vivid when you contrast Texas, the nation’s second most populous state, with the most populous, California. Both were once Mexican territory, secured for the United States in the 1840s. Both have grown prodigiously over the past half-century. Both have populations that today are about one-third Hispanic.

But they differ vividly in public policy and in their economic progress—or lack of it—over the last decade. California has gone in for big government in a big way. Democrats hold big margins in the legislature largely because affluent voters in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area favor their liberal positions on cultural issues.

Those Democratic majorities have obediently done the bidding of public employee unions to the point that state government faces huge budget deficits. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s attempt to reduce the power of the Democratic-union combine with referenda was defeated in 2005 when public employee unions poured $100 million—all originally extracted from taxpayers—into effective TV ads.

Californians have responded by leaving the state. From 2000 to 2009, the Census Bureau estimates, there has been a domestic outflow of 1,509,000 people from California—almost as many as the number of immigrants coming in. Population growth has not been above the national average and, for the first time in history, it appears that California will gain no House seats or electoral votes from the reapportionment following the 2010 census.

Texas is a different story. Texas has low taxes—and no state income taxes—and a much smaller government. Its legislature meets for only 90 days every two years, compared with California’s year-round legislature. Its fiscal condition is sound. Public employee unions are weak or nonexistent.

But Texas seems to be delivering superior services. Its teachers are paid less than California’s. But its test scores—and with a demographically similar school population—are higher. California’s once fabled freeways are crumbling and crowded. Texas has built gleaming new highways in metro Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.

In the meantime, Texas’ economy has been booming. Unemployment rates have been below the national average for more than a decade, as companies small and large generate new jobs.

And Americans have been voting for Texas with their feet. From 2000 to 2009, some 848,000 people moved from other parts of the United States to Texas, about the same number as moved in from abroad. That inflow has continued in 2008-09, in which 143,000 Americans moved into Texas, more than double the number in any other state, at the same time as 98,000 were moving out of California. Texas is on the way to gain four additional House seats and electoral votes in the 2010 reapportionment.

Lost Jewish Tribe In Zimbabwe

Cool.

In many ways, the Lemba tribe of Zimbabwe and South Africa are just like their neighbours.

But in other ways their customs are remarkably similar to Jewish ones.

They do not eat pork, they practise male circumcision, they ritually slaughter their animals, some of their men wear skull caps and they put the Star of David on their gravestones.

Their oral traditions claim that their ancestors were Jews who fled the Holy Land about 2,500 years ago.

It may sound like another myth of a lost tribe of Israel, but British scientists have carried out DNA tests which confirm their Semitic origin.

These tests back up the group’s belief that a group of perhaps seven men married African women and settled on the continent. The Lemba, who number perhaps 80,000, live in central Zimbabwe and the north of South Africa.

Judgment In Favor of Open Carry

Judgment.

IT IS ORDERED that judgment in the amount of $10,000.00, inclusive of attorney’s fees and costs, is entered in favor of plaintiffs, Wisconsin Carry, Inc., and Frank Hannan Rock and against defendants, City of Racine, Sgt. Nethery, and R. Prince, as to all claims of said plaintiffs, state and federal, respecting this action.

Good news that the courts are backing legally protected actions.  Here’s the background.