Boots & Sabers

The blogging will continue until morale improves...

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Author: Owen

Mequon Schools Increase Spending Despite Decreasing Enrollment

by | 0638, 3 Jul 2424 | , | 0 Comments

This is happening all over Wisconsin.

The budget, as of now, assumes the following: An increase in equalized values of 2.5%, a decrease of 40 resident students, $325 per pupil increase on the revenue limit, a continuation of service for personnel and educational programming, as well as salary increases that include a 4.12% cost of living increase applied to teacher base wages, 4% increase for support staff and 3.5% for all other groups.

 

It calls for a general fund budget of $52,718,149, a 6.9% or $3,418,913 from the previous year. The total budget of all funds — excluding Fund 73 — is roughly $70.6 million and net total expenditures are $65,040,309.

Most districts are educating fewer and fewer kids and spending keeps increasing. There’s always an excuse. Inflation. Old buildings. Whatever. At some point, should spending decrease with the student population? No, it’s not linear, but I don’t think I’ve seen a single district actually lower their spending even though many of them have lost well over 10% of their previous attendance. It’s not like this is a temporary bubble. All of the projections show the decline in students to be a widescale trend that will continue for at least another 10 years.

I’m tired of hearing excuses for why school districts can’t scale spending to their customer base like every other private entity in the universe.

Tanny Baldwin Snubs Joe Biden

by | 1848, 2 Jul 2424 | , | 0 Comments

Can you blame her?

WASHINGTON – If Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin wanted to show her support for President Joe Biden following his shaky debate performance last week, she’d have her chance Friday.

But the Madison Democrat, in a tight reelection race that will help decide the balance of the Senate, will not appear with Biden when he visits her hometown later this week, according to her campaign. Instead, Baldwin will be in northeastern Wisconsin on a pre-planned statewide tour.

Her absence Friday will mark the fourth time this year that Baldwin did not appear with Biden on one of the president’s visits to the state. She last visited the president when he stopped in Superior in late January, then did not join him for his subsequent visits in March, April and May. Baldwin’s campaign noted she was in Washington during those previous visits.

To be fair, ol’ Joe won’t have any idea she’s not there anyway. Although it is telling that she supports his agenda nearly 100% of the time but still doesn’t want to be associated with him.

Stripper Sues Over Florida’s New Age Law

by | 1822, 2 Jul 2424 | | 0 Comments

I’m not going to comment on the merits of the case, but that is a stripper name for a very specific kind of patron.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A 19-year-old and the club where she worked as a stripper have sued Florida’s attorney general and two local prosecutors to stop enforcement of a new state law prohibiting adult entertainment businesses from employing people who are under 21, claiming it violates their constitutional rights.

 

Serenity Michelle Bushey claims in the lawsuit that she lost her job at Cafe Risque in the Gainesville area after the law took effect on Monday since she is younger than 21. The purpose of the law was to deter human trafficking, according to Florida lawmakers.

Half of Student Loan Borrowers are Deadbeats

by | 1809, 2 Jul 2424 | , | 0 Comments

We’ve cultivated a generation of deadbeats.

At the end of March, six months after the hiatus ended, nearly 20 million borrowers were making their payments as scheduled. But almost 19 million were not, leaving their accounts delinquent, in default or still on pause, according to the latest Education Department data.

“The nonpayment rate really is emblematic of a system that’s not doing its job,” said Persis Yu, the managing counsel for the Student Borrower Protection Center, an advocacy group.

 

Some 7 million borrowers with federally managed loans were at least 30 days overdue on their payments at the end of 2023. That’s the highest delinquency rate since 2016, as far back as the department’s public records go. Because of a policy adopted by the Biden administration, those borrowers will face no penalties for their nonpayment until October at the earliest.

 

Millions more had their accounts frozen through deferment or forbearance (which allows borrowers to temporarily stop making payments), and nearly 6 million borrowers remain mired in defaults that began before the pandemic.

Trump’s Sentencing Delayed

by | 1806, 2 Jul 2424 | , , | 1 Comment

I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t see how the SCOTUS ruling would impact a state case about something that candidate Trump allegedly did. Even if one accepts the facts of the case, it would not be an official act of a president.

A New York judge has delayed Donald Trump’s sentencing until September as his lawyers seek to challenge his conviction after a Supreme Court ruling.

 

Trump was initially scheduled to be sentenced on 11 July.

 

His legal team asked for his conviction in a hush-money case to be overturned after the nation’s highest court ruled Monday that former presidents had partial immunity for “official” acts during their presidency.

 

Justice Juan Merchan said on Tuesday that he would issue a decision on the motions by 6 September.

 

If sentencing is necessary, the judge wrote, it will take place on 18 September.

Call me cynical, but I believe that the sentence will be in direct correlation to Trump’s position in the polls at that time.

Biden Proposes New Regulation For People Experiencing Room Temperatures

by | 1738, 2 Jul 2424 | | 0 Comments

80 degrees? 80!?!? Isn’t that what these same Lefties tell us to set our ACs to in the summer to “combat global warming?”

Despite increased awareness of the risks posed to human health by high temperatures, extreme heat protections — for those routinely exposed to heat index readings above 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius) — have lagged.

 

“The purpose of this rule is simple,” a senior White House administration official told reporters. “It is to significantly reduce the number of worker-related deaths, injuries, and illnesses suffered by workers who are exposed to excessive heat … while simply doing their jobs.”

 

Under the proposed rule, employers would be required to identify heat hazards, develop emergency response plans related to heat illness, and provide training to employees and supervisors on the signs and symptoms of such illnesses. They would also have to establish rest breaks, provide shade and water, and heat acclimatization — or the building of tolerance to higher temperatures — for new workers.

 

Penalties for heat-related violations in workplaces would increase significantly, in line with what workplaces are issued for violations of Occupational Safety and Health Administration rules, a senior White House administration official said.

“Absolute Immunity”

by | 1819, 1 Jul 2424 | , , | 2 Comments

SCOTUS made this ruling today. It gave me pause.

Held: Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.

Affirming that any person in our United States has “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution” is a very, very serious thing. In this case, however, I think the court got it right.

Go read the whole opinion and the dissents. It’s an informative read and fairly easy to follow.

Such an immunity is required to safeguard the independence and effective functioning of the Executive Branch, and to enable the President to carry out his constitutional duties without undue caution. At a minimum, the President must be immune from prosecution for an official act unless the Government can show that applying a criminal prohibition to that act would pose no “dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.” Fitzgerald, 457 U. S., at 754. Pp. 12–15.

(3) As for a President’s unofficial acts, there is no immunity.

In any system of government, the Executive is granted immense power and authority precisely to do things that regular citizens can’t do. We give the Executive the power to wage war, use violent power to strip people of their rights, enforce the collection of taxes, and so much more. Any of these powers, if exercised by an ordinary citizen, would be a crime. An ordinary citizen is not permitted by law to kill someone except in self defense. An ordinary citizen may not lock up their neighbor in prison. An ordinary citizen may not legally take their neighbor’s money to spend on other people.

Since the Executive is empowered and charged by the People to exercise these extraordinary powers on the People’s behalf, the Executive must be free of the threat of criminal prosecution for executing their charge within their official capacity. The People have ceded their right to exercise violent authority on their fellow citizens in exchange for an orderly society enforced by the government to which they ceded their power. It’s a trade.

In our system of government, the proper remedy for correcting an Executive who is using their extraordinary power inappropriately is found at the ballot box. In exceptional cases, an Executive can be removed from office via the Constitutional impeachment and removal process. Our Founders thought this out.

No, it’s not perfect, but no representative government is. It is merely the least objectional form of government necessitated by the pervasive evil imbued in our fallen race.

Once again, this court got it right. It is worth noting that no previous court has ever had to consider and opine on this issue because no previous DOJ had ever sought to prosecute a former president for acts done in office. But here we are…

A Different Future for Jackson’s School?

by | 1756, 1 Jul 2424 | | 0 Comments

An astute reader reminded me of this post I wrote some five years ago. As the West Bend School Board continues to wrestle with declining enrollment and is thinking about a $100+ MILLION referendum, this map is worth reconsidering.

Jackson is a growing community. Currently, the West Bend School District has an elementary school in Jackson. There are two Lutheran High Schools in Jackson and the village sits at the intersection of three districts. It is actually closer for many of Jackson’s kids to go to Germantown HS than West Bend HS. There is a substantial percentage of Jackson’s kids who leave the West Bend School District when they get to high school because of all of the options they have through Open Enrollment and School Choice.

So… given that the West Bend School District is bleeding students and trying to cut costs, wouldn’t this be the perfect opportunity to engage in some multi-district cooperation? Could Jackson set up a K-8 school of their own and rely on the neighboring districts for the higher grades? Wisconsin has a number of districts that only serve the lower grades and feed neighboring high schools. Could it be done here?

Something to consider if this School Board is interested in anything more than just shoveling more tax money into a shrinking district. Is it about best serving the kids or is it about school board members feeling important by spending a crap-ton of someone else’s money?

Gazans Continue to Attack

by | 0649, 1 Jul 2424 | | 0 Comments

Why are people telling the Israelis to stand down when the Gazans won’t? It is worth noting that the Gazans are filtering back into areas that the Israelis have left to stage more attacks. It confirms that the only way the violence ends for Israelis or Gazans if for Israel to reestablish full control of the region. It won’t be easy or painless. But it is necessary for peace.

CAIRO/GAZA (Reuters) – The Palestinian Islamic Jihad group fired a barrage of rockets into Israel on Monday, in an apparent show of force as Israeli tanks pressed their advance deeper into Gaza amid fierce fighting, residents and officials said.

 

The armed wing of Islamic Jihad, an Iranian-backed ally of Hamas, said its fighters fired rockets towards several Israeli settlements near the fence with Gaza in response to “the crimes of the Zionist enemy against our Palestinian people”.

The volley of around 20 rockets caused no casualties, according to the Israeli military. But it showed militants still possess rocket capabilities almost nine months into Israel’s offensive it says is aimed at neutralising threats against it.

 

In some parts of Gaza, militants continue to stage attacks on Israeli forces in areas that the army had left months ago.

SCOTUS Rejects Judicial Overreach on Homelessness

by | 0642, 1 Jul 2424 | , | 0 Comments

Another great, if obvious, ruling.

The Supreme Court on Friday upheld ordinances in a southwest Oregon city that prohibit people who are homeless from using blankets, pillows, or cardboard boxes for protection from the elements while sleeping within the city limits. By a vote of 6-3, the justices agreed with the city, Grants Pass, that the ordinances simply bar camping on public property by everyone and do not violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

 

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch contended that the Eighth Amendment, which bans cruel and unusual punishment, “serves many important functions, but it does not authorize federal judges” to “dictate this Nation’s homelessness policy.” Instead, he suggested, such a task should fall to the American people.

 

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, in an opinion joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. She argued that the majority’s ruling “focuses almost exclusively on the needs of local government and leaves the most vulnerable in our society with an impossible choice: Either stay awake or be arrested.”

If the activists were successful in using the 8th Amendment to negate simple loitering ordinances, then the reach of the 8th would have been almost limitless. It is good to see this court affirm the appropriate role of the court and have a strong deference to leaving public policy in the hands of elected officials – as it should be.

SCOTUS Pushes Back on Overreaching DOJ

by | 0626, 1 Jul 2424 | , | 0 Comments

And another excellent ruling. The DOJ stretched the meaning and intent of this statute in an act of political retribution. This is not as much about Jan 6 as it is about a rogue law enforcement agency that is targeting political opponents wherever it can. I hope that every person prosecuted by the DOJ under this law sues and gets relief.

The Supreme Court on Friday threw out the charges against a former Pennsylvania police officer who entered the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks. By a vote of 6-3, the justices ruled that the law that Joseph Fischer was charged with violating, which bars obstruction of an official proceeding, applies only to evidence tampering, such as destruction of records or documents, in official proceedings.

 

Friday’s ruling could affect charges against more than 300 other Jan. 6 defendants. The same law is also at the center of two of the four charges brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith against former President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C.

 

[…]

 

The law at the center of Fischer’s case is 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2), which makes it a crime to “otherwise obstruct[], influence[], or impede[] any official proceeding.” U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols concluded that because the previous subsection, Section 1512(c)(1), bars tampering with evidence “with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding,” Section 1512(c)(2) only applies to cases involving evidence tampering that obstructs an official proceeding, and he dismissed the obstruction charge against Fischer.

 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed Nichols’ ruling, concluding that the “meaning of the statute is unambiguous,” so that it “applies to all forms of corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding, other than the conduct that is already covered by” the prior subsection.

 

On Friday, the Supreme Court vacated the D.C. Circuit’s decision, interpreting the law more narrowly to apply only to evidence tampering.

Perhaps the most stunning about this ruling was the breakdown of the Justices. Barrett sided with the leftists and Jackson sided with the conservatives. Jackson even said in her concurring opinion:

Jackson suggested that it “beggars belief that Congress would have inserted a breathtakingly broad, first-of-its kind criminal obstruction statute (accompanied by a substantial 20-year maximum penalty) in the midst of a significantly more granular series of obstruction prohibitions without clarifying its intent to do so.”

And, frankly, Barrett’s opinion is downright scary:

Although “events like January 6th” may not have been the target of subsection (c)(2), she acknowledged (noting in a parenthetical, “Who could blame Congress for that failure of imagination?”)… For Barrett, the text of subsection (c)(2) clearly supports the government’s broader interpretation. Subsection (c)(2), she asserted, “covers all sorts of actions that affect or interfere with official proceedings,” and the word “otherwise” does not limit its scope.

For Barrett, the DOJ should stretch statutes well beyond their intent or writing if something happens that Congress could not have anticipated. She is supporting a government in which the Executive Branch should act in response to events how they see fit even when they do not have Congressional authority to do so.

Nuts to that.

SCOTUS Ends Chevron

by | 0619, 1 Jul 2424 | , | 0 Comments

I was blissfully in a wilderness area for a few days and came back to this fantastic news. Huzzah, huzzah.

In a major ruling, the Supreme Court on Friday cut back sharply on the power of federal agencies to interpret the laws they administer and ruled that courts should rely on their own interpretation of ambiguous laws. The decision will likely have far-reaching effects across the country, from environmental regulation to healthcare costs.

 

By a vote of 6-3, the justices overruled their landmark 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which gave rise to the doctrine known as the Chevron doctrine. Under that doctrine, if Congress has not directly addressed the question at the center of a dispute, a court was required to uphold the agency’s interpretation of the statute as long as it was reasonable. But in a 35-page ruling by Chief Justice John Roberts, the justices rejected that doctrine, calling it “fundamentally misguided.”

 

Justice Elena Kagan dissented, in an opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Kagan predicted that Friday’s ruling “will cause a massive shock to the legal system.”

 

When the Supreme Court first issued its decision in the Chevron case more than 40 years ago, the decision was not necessarily regarded as a particularly consequential one. But in the years since then, it became one of the most important rulings on federal administrative law, cited by federal courts more than 18,000 times.

Yes, ELECTED officials should be debating and making decisions about our live. Unelected bureaucrats should never have been given this power. Does this mean that elected officials will have to work harder and write more detailed legislation without hiding their intent behind the bureaucracy? You bet. That’s good.

Now the hard work begins. Every regulation that is unauthorized by legislation must be challenged in court and thrown out. This will take years, but it must be done. In every case, the question must not be whether or not the regulation is good or not. The question must be whether or not the regulation was passed by our elected officials in Congress.

Presidential Debate Answers a Lot of Questions

by | 0530, 28 Jun 2424 | | 22 Comments

I listened to the debate on WISN, which had the Fox News Radio feed. Some thoughts, but first this:

The president came into the debate with a low bar to clear, and he stumbled. He was flat. He was rambling. He was unclear.

 

Roughly midway through the debate, the Biden campaign told reporters that the president was battling a cold – an attempt to explain his raspy voice. That may be so, but it also sounded like an excuse.

 

For 90 minutes, more often than not, Joe Biden was on the ropes. Particularly early in the evening, some of his answers were nonsensical. After losing his train of thought he ended one answer by saying, “We finally beat Medicare” – an odd reference to the government run healthcare programme for the elderly.

 

[…]

 

For those of us who have been paying attention, Biden’s terrible performance was not a surprise. At least, the fact that he’s an incoherent, mumbling, liar who is clearly well down the path of mental decline, was not a surprise. Perhaps the only surprise was the degree to which that is true and the fact that he is so far gone that they couldn’t juice him up enough to even pull off the first half hour of the debate before slipping.

The most pressing concern I had throughout the debate is, “WHO THE HELL IS RUNNING THIS COUNTRY!?!?” And no matter what one thinks about how the debate impacts the election, it cannot be overstated how the world just saw that the United States is rudderless without a captain at the helm right now.

While Biden’s performance was very bad, Trump’s performance was pretty good. There were a few times when he let his temper get the best of him and he strayed, but most of the time he was measured, direct, and stayed on the issues.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the debate format and moderators. I enjoyed the way each candidate spoke with very little crosstalk. The format, with slotted time and muted microphones, ended up favoring Trump. It kept him disciplined and on message. And the questions, while slightly slanted to the Left, were not terrible. They asked hard questions about the economy, border, inflation, etc. to Biden. These are issues that favor Trump. Of course they asked about abortion and global warming too. Trump’s answer on the abortion question was quite good. It was nuanced and compassionate while Biden’s was a screed. The only hot topic that was glaringly missed was about trans issues. But given the content of the rest of the debate, it may have just fallen victim to time.

By the standard that it is very hard to win a debate, but the goal is to not lose… Biden clearly lost. But even had Biden been more coherent in his delivery, his content was also bad. He contradicted himself on raising taxes, the inflation rate when he took office, and his administration’s record. He also shamed himself by bragging about the Afghanistan surrender and ignoring the Americans who were killed. Biden repeated proven lies, like the Charlottsville claim, even though that was debunked as recently as last week. It is clear that there is a world happening in his addled brain that is a reflection of BS that his wife and staff have been feeding him, and there is the world we are all living in. We needed a president who was willing and able to address the real issues hitting Americans. Biden is not that president.

Will the Democrats replace Biden? That seems to have been the overarching question after the debate being proffered by liberals and conservatives alike. I think some might try, but it will be difficult. There are two major roadblocks. First, the Democratic Party consolidated so much power into the hands of the president during Obama that Biden holds all of the reins of power. They cannot oust him without his consent. Given Biden’s tremendous ego and seemingly sincere belief that he is doing a great job and is the best protection for America against Trump, I do not think he will abandon his campaign unless he dies.

Second, who do you replace Biden with? The only real choice is Kamala Harris. She has the national name recognition and the Democrats have been telling us for four years that she is the best person to be a heartbeat away from the big chair. But if there is any Democrats less liked than Biden right now, it’s Harris. And were she to be the nominee, she would still have to own the disastrous results of the Biden presidency. But her ego is such that she will not willingly step aside either. And the intersectionality of the Democrat Party culture will not abide them pushing aside a Black woman in favor of another candidate. Such a move would fracture their already fragile coalition.

I believe that the most likely scenario is still that Biden meanders his way to November with his staff doing their best to hide him and gaslight the American people. Then the American voters will have a choice to make. Let us hope that that choice will be accurately reflected by our questionably secure and accurate electoral process.

Choice for Waukesha County D.A. is Becoming More Clear

by | 1802, 27 Jun 2424 | | 2 Comments

Ummmm… yeah. Boese is right. And Thurston’s position is stupid bordering on nutty. Why is it that so many Republicans reflexively want to include Democrats when Republicans win elections? Democrats feel no such compunction. Just ask those in Milwaukee, Madison, Chicago, etc. Republicans in those places are ignored and excluded.

Waukesha County District Attorney candidate Mike Thurston said during a June 19 debate that, if elected, he would invite Democrats to train prosecutors in the DA’s office on election integrity matters, a plan his opponent Lesli Boese called “silliness.”

 

Thurston said he would also invite Republican experts.

 

“This wouldn’t just be a Republican thing,” Thurston, a deputy DA in the office, said. “I’d invite Democrats too. They could come in. They could train us.” He didn’t name the experts who would get his invitations.

 

The idea of bringing Democrats in to train Waukesha prosecutors on election integrity generated a sharp rebuttal from his opponent in the race, Deputy DA Lesli Boese.

 

“This county needs a conservative candidate to run this office – that’s the bottom line. I am that candidate,” said Boese, who also hammered Thurston for five donations he made to Democratic DA John Chisholm, as well as other Democrats.

“Mr. Thurston says he wants to, for election integrity, he wants to bring in Democrats to help. Is it because of all the experience that they have without election integrity? That’s silliness,” she added. “We don’t need politicians to come in and tell us how to follow the rules. That’s called the rule of law. You read the statute; you apply the statute to what’s going on in the community. We don’t need people to guide us. We have the statutes to guide us.”

Justice Jackson Still Can’t Define What a Woman Is

by | 1753, 27 Jun 2424 | , | 0 Comments

She still doesn’t know that only women get pregnant.

WASHINGTON — In a scathing dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned Thursday that the Supreme Court’s Idaho abortion decision is “not a victory for pregnant patients,” even though it allows emergency abortions for now.

 

“It is delay,” she wrote in her dissent, which she read from the bench. “While this court dawdles and the country waits, pregnant people experiencing emergency medical conditions remain in a precarious position, as their doctors are kept in the dark about what the law requires.”

Coup in Bolivia

by | 1700, 26 Jun 2424 | | 1 Comment

These two things can’t possibly be related, can they?

In 2005, Morales, an Aymara India rode discontent with foreign-backed coca eradication programs into the presidency. For more than a decade he made a name for himself as the unyielding and insurgent leader of the coca-growers union. His defiant, leftist rhetoric electrified Bolivia’s long-marginalized indigenous majority. Morales spoke of nationalizing industries, empowering labourers, and forcibly redistributing land held by wealthy elites.

 

For some, he became a champion of the oppressed. For others, a dangerous demagogue threatening free markets and private property.

 

The socialist policies he implemented are credited by supporters with fueling economic growth and lifting many Bolivians out of poverty. His Movement for Socialism (MAS by its Spanish initials) party has dominated elections for two decades, giving him a 14-year-run as president.

And the coup…

Bolivia, a country of 12 million people, has seen intensifying protests in recent months over the economy’s precipitous decline from one of the continent’s fastest-growing two decades ago to one of its most crisis-stricken.

Let’s see…. for 20 years a socialist party has been in control. They implemented socialist policies and drove their once-flying economy into recession. And now civil unrest is manifesting as a coup.

Are you watching, America? We’ve seen this story play out the same way dozens of times. Yes, it can happen here. It already is.

West Bend School Board Spitballs Referendum Amount

by | 1629, 26 Jun 2424 | , | 0 Comments

FFS.

– After discussion on maintenance needs, the board returned to the discussion of the referendum total. “We kinda need that price point so we can combobulate that accordingly,” said Wimmer.

 

– An initial total of $110 million was proposed as a starting point.

 

– “Typically, the minimum would be $80 million to get a new Jackson K-5 built,” said Donaldson. “Asking for extra money to do something that has to be done anyway; if we’re going to ask for the money just to make it easier to balance the budget…I think that’s wrong.  We do have a capital maintenance budget if we have to shift stuff around or using the money we already get, using it the right way then… $100 million gets us $20 more million anyway.”

  • “So you’re telling me if we don’t get $80 million, we’re leaving all the schools open,” said Donaldson.

  • “No, you can still close schools,” said Wimmer.

  • “That’s what I’m talking about,” said Donaldson. “Those things have to happen anyway … just to be utilizing the district the way it should be. We are way under capacity at schools. Silverbrook has half the school closed down in sections because they don’t have enough students to fill them.”

  • “Once we know what Phase 1 is … and if it fails – I’m still going to close some things, voting ‘No’ doesn’t mean I will keep your school open,” said Wimmer.

  • “The purpose of this work session is to pick a number, whatever it is and then you’re coming back to us with (a list) of this is what you will get for it,” said Zwygart.

Notice how this discussion is going. Instead of defining a list of critical needs, adding up the cost, and going to the taxpayers with the request, they are starting with the number and working backwards. They are trying to gauge how much they think they can bamboozle the taxpayers into approving and then seeing how much they can do with it.

Having followed this district for over 20 years and seen referendum after referendum, they are running a playbook. They are flush with cash and could free up more cashflow by just closing some buildings and right-sizing staffing. They haven’t done that. Instead, they are fishing around for the right number and the right messaging to see what they think will cobble together enough votes to pass a referendum. They just want to spend some money and take credit for “doing something.” This is not about improving education.

SCOTUS Denies Standing for Social Media Litigants

by | 1615, 26 Jun 2424 | | 0 Comments

It seems that they took a pass on weighing in on perhaps one of the most important 1st Amendment debates of the modern era. On the one hand, I would have liked to see the court take a firm stance against the government dictating speech. On the other hand, a humble, constructionist court might be right to take a strict position on standing. Either way, this ruling is not good for our Republic and our state of freedom. And the liberals cheering today will come to rue the ruling.

Of immediate significance, the decision means that the Department of Homeland Security may continue to flag posts to social media companies such as Facebook and X that it believes may be the work of foreign agents seeking to disrupt this year’s presidential race.

 

Rather than delving into the weighty First Amendment questions raised by the case, the court ruled that the state and social media users who challenged the Biden administration did not have standing to sue.

 

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the opinion for a 6-3 majority.

 

“To establish standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will suffer an injury that is traceable to a government defendant and redressable by the injunction they seek,” Barrett wrote. “Because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction.”

Federal Courts Attempt to Stem Biden’s Lawlessness

by | 0655, 25 Jun 2424 | , | 0 Comments

It’s not much, but it’s something. The playbook that Biden learned from Democrats is to just do what you want a dozen different ways and let the chips fall. Sure, a court or two may push back on a couple of ways, but that will be years down the road. And the other 10 things you tried went through. We are living under a lawless regime.

TOPEKA, Kan. — Federal judges in Kansas and Missouri on Monday together blocked much of a Biden administration student loan repayment plan that provides a faster path to cancellation and lower monthly payments for millions of borrowers.

 

The judges’ rulings prevent the U.S. Department of Education from helping many of the intended borrowers ease their loan repayment burdens going forward under a rule set to go into effect July 1. The decisions do not cancel assistance already provided to borrowers.

 

In Kansas, U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree ruled in a lawsuit filed by the state’s attorney general, Kris Kobach, on behalf of his state and 10 others. In his ruling, Crabtree allowed parts of the program that allow students who borrowed $12,000 or less to have the rest of their loans forgiven if they make 10 years’ worth of payments, instead of the standard 25.

 

But Crabtree said that the Department of Education won’t be allowed to implement parts of the program meant to help students who had larger loans and could have their monthly payments lowered and their required payment period reduced from 25 years to 20 years.

 

In Missouri, U.S. District Judge John Ross’ order applies to different parts of the program than Crabtree’s. His order says that the U.S. Department of Education cannot forgive loan balances going forward. He said the department still could lower monthly payments.

Abortion Propaganda

by | 0647, 25 Jun 2424 | | 0 Comments

What a morbid position.

Infant mortality increased by 12.9% from 2021 to 2022 in Texas after Texas’ near-total ban on abortion was enacted, according to a new study published today in JAMA Pediatrics. A total of 2243 Texas infants, or children under 1 year, died in 2022 compared to 1985 Texas infant deaths in 2021.

So what they are saying is that we should kill babies with defects before they are born so that we can keep the infant mortality rate lower? What is the infant mortality rate if you include aborted babies?

 

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