I reserve the right to change my mind, but I think this is a good idea. I generally hate loud sounds, especially high-pitched loud beeps that seem to be more and more common. I don’t know, maybe I’m just a bit autistic, but whatever. I’ve thrown eggs at honking cars. Hell, I’m proud of that:…
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RAND has a study showing that in tough economic times, it still makes sense to spend money on police: “Returns on investments in police personnel are likely to be substantial.”
I had a good time in Philadelphia. It struck me a bit like a big version Baltimore. And I like Baltimore. And I like big. So there you have it. Hungry and roaming the Old City, not wanted to eat lunch in some Frat Bar that smelled like last night’s beer, I remembered I have…
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I’m off to Philadelphia for a conference. Just for the record I got nothing against the city. But one of my students just cracked me up by saying, “Philadelphia? What a dump. Imagine if New York and D.C. had a baby. …And beat it.” Ouch.
From Montclair SocioBlog. Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows: * South Carolina – 50th * North Carolina – 49th * Georgia – 48th * Texas – 47th * Virginia – 44th If you are wondering,…
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From Mother Jones. Worth a look. If you don’t support “income redistribution,” can we at least stop redistributing income from poor to rich? A huge share of the nation’s economic growth over the past 30 years has gone to the top one-hundredth of one percent, who now make an average of $27 million per household.…
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This may not be news to anybody who was old enough to read in 1975, but Joseph Wambaugh writes a good police story. I just finished reading The Choirboys, 38 years after it was written. It’s about a bunch of police in Los Angeles: “They were just policemen. Rather ordinary young guys, I thought” It…
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Texas just executed its 466th murderer in the last three decades (not surprisingly, the guy being executed was black. Black murderers are much more likely to be executed than are white murderers.) But I’m not here to defend murderers. I’m not even really even against the death penalty. (As long as we can be certain…
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So here’s the longer storyin the Sun. What I don’t get (there’s a lot I don’t get), is how could officers get a kick-back of $300 per car? The tow company would need to charge more than that. And the article says that approved towers are only charging $130-$140 dollars. When I needed to tow…
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I know it’s important, but I’m a bit clueless here. Can somebody explain to me just what collective bargaining means? Why is it important to unions? And what would happen if it were taken away?