Raise your hand if you are familiar with AB 1921, a bill signed by Jerry Brown in 2016. I do not see any raised hands! Do not feel bad, as the California Republican Party apparently was not familiar with it either, as became apparent in the most recent midterm elections. The California Democrats, however, were very familiar with AB 1921, and they used it to their big time advantage on November 6, 2018. As background there are approximately 20 million registered voters in California, and this year about 5 million ballots (approximately 40% of the overall total votes) were counted after Election Day . . . in fact some counties were still tabulating ballots as of Nov. 30th! You might be asking yourself, “Is this Florida all over again?” The answer is “probably no” although AB 1921 makes skullduggery a real potential issue, and I will not be at all surprised is some voting irregularities are discovered. FYI: in L.A. a ring bribed homeless to register fraudulently, and the DMV registered 1500 ineligible voters, but this unlawful registering is small potatoes compared to AB 1921, which is legal . . . I mean it has to be legal as it was passed by a Democratic Legislature and signed into law by our Democratic Governor!Drum-roll, please!AB 1921 was a change in California law that now allows anyone to drop off a person’s absentee ballot, rather than a family member as previously required. In 2018 more than 42% of the votes were tabulated after Election Day because of a huge number of absentee ballots that were turned in by ??? on Election Day. In Orange County alone more than 250,000 ballots were dropped off on Election Day! (In Orange County no Republicans were elected, even though it had previously been a Republican stronghold.) This collecting of absentee ballots, and then turning the ballots in (a vast majority on Election Day) is called “ballot harvesting.” I have many questions about “ballot harvesting.” My main question concerning this practice is, “are these ‘ballot-transporters’ bonded,” or are they just random impartial Democrats? Are all of the harvested ballots sealed? Can anyone be sure that the voter actually filled out the entire ballot? For instance if the actual voter voted on only a few of the candidates or on only a few of the ballot measures, what’s to stop the “ballot-transporter” from filling in a few of the empty spaces in an unsealed ballot. How long can these “ballot-transporters” hold on to the ballots that they have collected? If 250,000 absentee ballots were turned in in Orange County on Election Day, does that mean that 1000 separate “ballot-transporters” each collected 250 ballots that day? (25 ballots per hour for 10 hours on Election Day – turned in before the polls closed by each of these 1,000 separate “ballot-transporters . . . extremely unlikely, if not impossible!). Worse yet, everyone knows that these good-hearted individuals who presumably deliver and then later pick up the absentee ballots would be more than happy to offer “suggestions” to these absentee voters . . . Duh! The only question in my mind is not did some “irregularities” occur, but how many thousand of these absentee ballots were, in fact, tainted!
Tradition
On Saturday, 12/8, my wife and I sat down to watch the annual Army-Navy football game. No, it had not been a prior tradition. No, we were not big college football fans. No, the weather outside was not frightful, as it was sunny and in the 60s. No, we did not watch it because our President was going to be in attendance. My wife and I both watched the entire game because one of our friend’s grandsons was the punter for Navy. The game itself was “slow” . . . I would call it a “defensive struggle.” However, the pomp and circumstance surrounding the actual game was very cool, and watching the midshipmen and the cadets in the stands was motivating, and I learned a lot on-line during the commercials about the tradition of the Army-Navy football game. The game was first played in 1890, and in 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt was the first President to attend the game . . . in a snowstorm, no less. He also started the tradition of switching sides at halftime. Since then nine other sitting presidents have attended the game. President Trump was the tenth. (He also attended the game as president-elect in 2016.) Ford, Clinton, and Obama each attended once, while JFK attended twice during his abbreviated term. George W. Bush attended three times.Some presidential Army-Navy football trivia that could possibly come up when you are a future contestant on Jeopardy!Which president attended the most Army-Navy games . . . President Truman attended all seven games during his presidency. Likewise who was the only president to actually play in the game? . . . President Eisenhower!Since our friend’s grandson is only a freshman and will probably punt for another few years, we have put it on our schedule for next year, and will make it a tradition.
12/10/18
Going Off the Deep End
Just today I came across two different things that made me shake my head and say to myself, “Really! Is this representative of who is educating our children ?” First, let me be very upfront about my feelings about teachers . . . for the most part, they are saints!
But I get concerned when I read about those in school administration who seem to be multiple standard deviations from what I would refer to as normal. I hope that these following two episodes of “going off the deep end” are outliers, but two different episodes in one day makes me wonder.
These two incidents involving going off the deep end were not from the usual bastions of liberalism like San Francisco or New York City, but were from places that I would consider to be bastions of normalcy.
The first comes from Elkhorn, Nebraska where a grade school principal, Jennifer Sinclair at Omaha Manchester Elementary School went off the deep end! She was doing her best to go from a princi-pal to a princi-ple-maker when she in essence banned Christmas at her school. A few of the things that she banned included:
- Christmas trees in classrooms
- Santas or Christmas items (clipart) on worksheets
- Singing Christmas Carols [?White Christmas, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer, A Holly Jolly Christmas, or I’ll be home for Christmas?]
- Playing Christmas music
- Elf on the Shelf – that’s Christmas-related
But she didn’t stop there, and this is where she goes from being a grinch to being a wacko. Sinclair’s list had more:
- Sending a Scholastic book that is a Christmas book
- Making a Christmas ornament as a gift – (This assumes that the family has a Christmas tree which assumes they celebrate Christmas.) And the ultimate topper . . .
- Candy Canes “Historically, the shape is a ‘J’ for Jesus”. This conclusion cannot be considered to be included in any umpteen standard deviations from normal!
Ms. Sinclair defended her extreme position by saying that students need to learn to be “inclusive and culturally sensitive to all of our students.” Wow! Keep in mind that this is in Nebraska!
The second episode has no segue to the first other than they are both examples of liberalism going off the deep end. This episode occurred in Florida at Chasio Middle School where a school administrator reprimanded and threatened to transfer a P.E. teacher and coach who refused to oversee a biological female student, who “identifies” as male, get undressed in the boy’s locker room. Apparently the school district LGBT liaison agreed that the P.E. teacher was “not doing his job in the locker room!” What the hell is a “school district LGBT liaison?” Do the school district also have a normal people liaison? I want a liaison!
Where do these people get the idea that this type of behavior is indeed good for their liberal cause? Well perhaps they are listening when the leaders of the Democratic Party speak. Just this week Tom Perez, The Chairman of the DNC, made a statement that shows that going off the deep end is not restricted to school administrators in Nebraska and Florida. He said that, in essence, church goers vote for the G.O.P. because they buy what they hear from the pulpit which is their only source of information! This sounds familiarly similar to Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” comment which sunk her in the deep end! My advice to Tom Perez, “Keep talking, Tom.”
Is This an I.Q. Test ?. . . Oui!
Over the last few days, I have read multiple newspaper descriptions of what was happening in France with the protests of the “gilets juanes.” The fires and the widespread rioting were precipitated by a gas tax increase. As I read the various articles I could not help but play a substitution game – substituting “California” for “France” and “Governor. Brown” for “President Macron.” (A lot of what follows are sentences taken directly from various news articles.)
I invite you to play the substitution game along with me. Have fun!
12/3/18
The worst rioting to hit France in years left President Macron weighing an emergency crackdown on protests. The gilets juanes (yellow jackets) movement was sparked in October by Mr. Macron’s decision to raise fuel taxes. The protests gained strength in areas outside big cities where people depend on cars. The movement has broadened to those who say that Macron’s policies punish the working class. The outbursts of violence raised the stakes for Mr. Macron plans to push through his economic overhauls, as Mr. Macron’s party is firmly in control of the legislature. Many at the protesters said that low wages and high taxes make it impossible for ordinary French to make ends meet, “It’s always the little guy who pays.”
12/4/18
“There is no Plan B because there is no Planet B,” Emmanuel Macron lectured Donald Trump last year. The French President has viewed stopping climate change as a grand legacy project, and he had hoped to use higher fuel taxes to discourage driving for the sake of slashing carbon emissions. It did not matter to him that French emissions were already low on a per-capital basis. But this did matter to lower income voters whose use of cars for daily life and business was about to become much more expensive!
12/5/18
President Macron stopped his fuel tax increase after concluding that marginal reductions aren’t worth knee-capping an economy!
Now that you have read the aforementioned paragraphs, what is the basic difference between France and California? I could be glib and say that the people in France are just smarter as they apparently can recognize when they are getting shafted. Also, however, note that President Macron was honest when detailing the reason for his tax hike, whereas Governor Brown danced around the truth when he said that the only reason for his gas tax increase was that the infrastructure was in dire straights. His additional white lie was that this was the only way to remedy the problem. Perhaps if Macron had sold his gas tax as a way to fix infrastructure, the rioting would not have occurred on Paris streets . . . err . . . no, this could never happen because the French are, indeed, much smarter than Californians!
Educational System Gets a D
Last month the ACT released its annual report, the Condition of College and Career Readiness, and the news is not good. As a whole the nation did not do very well, as the percentage of students meeting college-ready benchmarks (CRB) dropped slightly in all subjects tested, specifically English, science, reading , and math. More disturbing in this age of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) is that math readiness was at a 14 year low indicating that only 40% of 2018 graduates could succeed in a first year college algebra class! This is down from 46% in 2012. (National grade = ‘C’) What makes these numbers even worse is that the graduating students who took this test made up only approximately 60% of the graduating class, and in some states only those students who were applying to higher tier colleges found it necessary to take the ACT. Worse yet 35% of the graduates who took the test met none of the four ACT benchmarks that determine college readiness in subject areas (up from 33% in 2017). (National grade = ‘F’) In conclusion, for the nation as a whole, the average grade would be ‘D’, as the country as a whole did not do very well, and actually appears to be regressing.
How are individual states doing? It is difficult, if not impossible to compare all of the individual states with each other. For instance on the nationwide map for 2018, California has a much higher composite ACT score (>24) than Wisconsin (20-22), but in Wisconsin all high school seniors take this test, whereas in California only 31% took the ACT, and for the most part, those students are applying to higher tier colleges.
In 2018 how did California do compared to prior years? What sort of letter grade, in general, should we give the California Educational System.
From 2013-2017, in general students in California did somewhat better in meeting ACT CRB in Reading and Science, but did worse in Math. (Here the grade appears to be a ‘C’.) However even though there appears to be an improvement in Science, only 54% of graduates taking physics in high school met the ACT CRB! – i.e. only 54% were college ready in physics! Likewise only 56% of those who had 3 or more years of high school math met the benchmark – only 56% of this select group were college ready in math! (Grade = ‘D’)
If we then look at these same CRB in that select group of graduating seniors in California, the findings are depressing as 20% of that select group who took the ACT failed to achieve a CRB in any of the four tested subjects( 0/4!). (Here I give the California Educational System a grade of ‘F’, as it has apparently failed 1/5 (20%) of those students who took the ACT.)
When we look at different racial subgroups within California, the results are equally depressing, as there is a wide disparity in CRB. White/Asian students met CRB in 3 or 4 of these same subjects about 70% of the time (Grade =‘B+’, whereas African-American/ Hispanic students met 3 or 4 only 25% of the time! (Grade= ‘D’) In conclusion, the California Educational System gets an overall grade of ‘D‘.
We in California are spending quite a lot on education. Are we getting our money’s worth ? An overall grade of ‘D’! . . . I think not, but why not?
The bottom line is that while California is not getting its money’s worth in education, the situation is not getting any better. As usual those Democrats that run the state are either incapable of solving the problem or don’t really care, and those African-American/Hispanic students, that need education the most, are paying the price!
Change Behavior ?
“He’ll have trouble reassembling his 2016 coalition unless his behavior changes.”
So says an editorial writer from the Wall Street Journal two days after the 2018 midterm elections. I realize that those that write editorials in major newspapers are supposed to be smarter and more well informed than us peons that merely read these editorials, but I must humbly disagree with these sorts of prognostications that apparently can emphasize only one side of our President . . . the side that they do not like, namely his sometimes “quirky” behavior.
As for myself, I am not having a problem with most anything that he does because what I see are the results of his actions, and what occurred in these midterms was an example of President Trump getting results. What happened in these midterm elections was something that has happened only three times in the last hundred years, namely that the sitting president’s party gained seats in the Senate while losing seats in the House. To put the results of this recent midterm in a historical perspective, since WWII the sitting presidents party has lost an average of 37 seats. (The Republicans have lost a total of 36 seats when combining both the House [-39] and the Senate [+3] results.) More recently, at the midterm of Barack Obama’s first term, the Democrats lost 63 seats in the House and six seats in the Senate (-69 total!). Likewise at the midterm of Bill Clinton’s initial term as president the Democrats lost a total of 63 seats, -54 in the House and -9 in the Senate.
So what I am seeing is really pretty good for a sitting president as far as initial midterms go. More importantly how did the Republicans pull off this +3 in the Senate? Certainly the disgusting behavior of the Democrats during the Kavanaugh conformation hearings had a lot to do with the defeat of the anti-Kavanaugh senators at the midterm ballot box. (Note that the only Democrat who voted for Kavanaugh was re-elected. A coincidence? Not likely.) Without question it was President Trump and his campaigning in various states that was primarily responsible for the Senate gains. In the six days prior to the 11/6/18 midterms the President held over-flowing campaign rallies in eight different states, including Florida, Missouri, Indiana, and Tennessee – note that the Republican Senate candidates won in all four of these aforementioned states. He also held rallies in Ohio and Georgia in the last few days of the campaign, and in these two states the Republican candidate beat out the Democratic opponent for governor in two very close races. And just in . . . the Republicans held on to their Senate seat in Mississippi, thanks in part to two big Trump rallies (one in Tupelo and another in Biloxi) the day before that election.
Conservative America should be saying, “Thank you for your extra effort, Mr. President!”
So after digesting the results of the midterms, I think that I would re-phrase the comment from the Wall Street Journal to instead read, “He’ll have no trouble reassembling his 2016 coalition unless his behavior changes.”
So Smart, Yet So Dumb
Last week the Associated Press approached Supreme Court Justice, John Roberts for a comment after President Trump described a jurist who ruled against his asylum policy as an “Obama judge”. In response, Roberts asserted that “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”
When I read Chief Justice Robert’s comments, my first immediate thought was “how can someone so smart say something so dumb?”
According to Wikipedia it appears that Judge Roberts has always been smart. In high school he took five years of Latin in four years at a private boarding school. A smart guy. When he started at Harvard as a history major, he started as a second year student. A very smart guy. At Harvard Law School he was a managing editor of the Harvard Law Review, and he subsequently graduated in 1979 with a J.D. magna cum laude. An exceptionally smart guy!
So again I ask the same question, “how can someone so smart say something so dumb?”
To my way of thinking there are only three possibilities:
1. He is, for what ever reason, purposefully lying.
I doubt that this is the case. It makes no sense for someone of his status to willfully
lie. There is no upside to a boldface lie.
2. He is, for lack of a better word, an airhead who while being extremely scholarly in his profession, is not in touch with day-to-day things in everyday life. He thus would not be aware of what is happening, for instance, in the Ninth Circuit. Perhaps he cannot find his car in a parking lot and is constantly losing his glasses or his keys. Even though this is possible, there is nothing to suggest that this is the case.
3. He is an idealist.
Obviously he is an idealist, but I believe that he is judging the motivations of others, using his own ethics and his own behavior as the measuring stick. I think that he is, what he says that all judges are . . . “not a Bush judge, . . . but a dedicated judge doing his level best to do equal right to those appearing before him.” This is obviously an idealistic measuring standard, and while he may be that ideal judge, his error is extrapolating his personal standards of judicial behavior to other judges. He is thus, truly, a prisoner of his own naïveté. This could be because he is truly of a conservative mindset . . . meaning that he thinks things through. His major mistake here is applying conservative principles and standards to liberal judges.
If I had the opportunity to address Judge Roberts, I would ask him the following two questions:
1. If what you say is true, how do you explain the fact that the Ninth Circuit, to the best of my knowledge, has not ruled in Trump’s favor even once?
2. If what you say is true, how do you explain that in the major cases before the Supreme Court, the so-called “conservative” Supreme Court Justices may cross over and side with the liberal justices, but to the best of my knowledge, the “liberal” justices do not seem to have it in their playbook to cross over and side with the “conservative” justices.
In both #1 and #2, if what you say is true, the law of averages would dictate that the Ninth Circuit should side with President Trump at least once, and Justice Ginsberg, for instance, should side with Justice Thomas at least once in a 5-4 decision.
Even though I am not nearly as smart as John Roberts, I am not prone to say such dumb things!
A Real Hero
On Sunday I sat behind an old guy at church. He was really old!
He was sitting next to his daughter who appeared to be in her fifties, but there was no wife – obviously he was widowed. Every once in a while during the service, the old guy would raise his left hand up next to his ear, as if he was silently saying the boy-scout oath, left-handed. At first I thought he was trying to signal a friend, but after he did it a few times, I realized that all of his contemporaries were probably long gone, and perhaps this was his way of speaking directly to his creator. He appeared to be paying attention during the sermon even though I am sure that he had heard every variation of every possible sermon topic over his umpteen years. His handshake was an unusual combination of weak and firm, as if it had always been firm, but had been eventually weakened over his many years. Did I mention that he was really old?
It wasn’t until after the service that I “got it,” for it was then that I saw his hat, a baseball type hat that said:
“World War II vet
Korean War vet
Vietnam War vet
Retired vet”
I shook his hand when the service was over and in response to my comment on his hat, he softly said, “There aren’t many of us left.”
The Choice The Dems Do Not Like
School choice is “the civil rights issue of out time,” to quote Condoleezza Rice. This subject apparently had an impressive effect on the outcome of the recent Florida governor’s election according to an 11/21/18 Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “Minority Women Put DeSantis Over the Top.” This piece was about surprising effect that race had upon the outcome of the recent race for governor in Florida, for you see, the final result was determined not by race. The Democratic candidate, Mr. Gillum, was black. However apparently 100,000 black women voted for the white Republican candidate, Ron DeSantis. These DeSantis’ votes made up approximately 18% of the 650,000 black women who voted in this election, and this was critical in an election that was decided by a mere 40,000 votes. According to this WSJ op-ed, “the reason for this surprising support from African-American women . . . school choice.” Mr. Gillum was opposed to school choice, a choice that the Dems do not like. Meanwhile Mr. DeSantis and the Republicans were in favor of the Step Up for Students program, which grants tax-credit funded scholarships to attend private schools in Florida. More than 100,000 low-income students participate in this program. Is this number, 100,000, a coincidence? I think not, as to me, a large percentage of the 100,000 black women who voted for DeSantis were mothers of children who are the beneficiaries of this Step Up program. (Also interestingly, Mr. DeSantis’ support among Latinos was an amazing 44%.)
For those of you not familiar with this Step Up program, it was created in 2001 to assure that low-income children had more learning options. The “scholarships” are based on financial need, not how well your child does in school. Families may choose between financial assistance toward private school tuition and fees, or transportation costs to attend a public school in another district. Eligibility for the program is determined yearly and scholarships are awarded with priority given to renewal families followed by new families with the greatest financial need. The program pays up to $6,519 for Kindergarten–5th grade, $6,815 for 6th-8th grade and $7,111 for 9th-12th grade for the school year until the maximum is reached. The maximum is based on both income and the number of people in the family. (Documented homeless students have no income threshold to qualify, and children in foster care receive priority.) Likewise with the income-based transportation scholarship, families can choose a $750 scholarship to assist with the cost of transportation to another public school which must be out of the student’s assigned district.
Question: Why do we not have a similar program here in California? Of course the politicians will say that California does not have the money necessary to fund such a program. To that I say, “Poppycock!” or “Balderdash!” (keep in mind that my comments must be P.G. as this is a family oriented blog), because while Florida has no state income tax, California has one of the highest state tax rates in the country! Also note that in comparing high school graduation percentages, Florida ranks #32 while California is the caboose at #50! Clearly one of the main reasons that California lags desperately behind in education achievement is political. Here in California affluent families have the option of sending their children to private schools (school choice), whereas those with lower incomes do not (“no school choice for you,” say the state’s Dem politicians). Ask yourself, “Is this fair?”, and consider your answer when voting in the next election. Many of these “school choice moms” did exactly that recently in Florida.
Surprise!
Listen to the following comments on the governor’s race in Georgia between Stacy Abrams (D) and Brian Kemp (R), and then think about what the speakers all have in common.
Cory Booker (D, NJ) on the governor’s election in Georgia, “the election is being stolen from Abrams.”
Hillary Clinton again on the same issue, “Abrams would have won if the election was fair.”
Sherrod Brown (D, Oh), “If Stacy Abrams doesn’t win in Georgia, they stole it.”
Now obviously they are all Democrats who thought that Oprah would wrap it up for Abrams. Oops! . . . surprise! . . . and each of them sees him/herself as a possible presidential candidate in 2020.
For those of you that do not know the background, I will do my best to summarize. To begin with Brian Kemp was the Secretary of State in Georgia before the election. There was a purge of the voter rolls. The “1.5 million purged” is the total number of voters that have been removed from the rolls since 2012. Many have been removed because they moved, committed felonies, died etc. A similar purge of the voter rolls in Ohio was upheld by the Supreme Court earlier this year.
The overwhelming majority of the rest were removed because of Georgia’s “Use it or lose it” law. This law was passed in 1997 by A Dem legislature and a Dem Governor in Georgia. Similar laws have been upheld by SCOTUS. It requires the rolls to be updated by removing voters that have not voted for some time and do not respond to contact from the state.
There was another controversy concerning voter applications. Here Kemp was invoking an “exact match” law that was passed in 2017. Brian Kemp stated that he was merely following the laws, whereas the Dems were proclaiming alleged voter suppression.
While I can understand Democrat allegations of voter suppression when the laws are followed, this is no real surprise. I am, however, surprised that I have not yet heard either Sen. Brown, Sen. Booker, or for that matter any Democrat state the obvious solution to this perceived problem.
Drum roll, please!
The solution to this perceived “voter suppression” is no surprise.
The solution is to adapt Mexico’s method of voter registration and voter identification. In Mexico everyone is responsible to get a government voter I.D. card. No matter where the individual lives, no matter the age, no matter the color of his/her skin each individual is required to present his/her laminated voter I.D. card in order to vote in any election in Mexico. (In addition there are substantial penalties for fraudulent use of the card.)
If the Dems were to begin a concentrated effort right now, by the 2020 election, all legal voters would be registered and all would possess a laminated valid photo I.D with a thumbprint.
The surprise here is that the Dems have not yet thought of this solution to “voter suppression.” Oops . . . on second thought, this is actually no surprise!