de Blasio: California Dreamin'

"We are here on Earth to help others. What the others are here for, I've NO idea."--W.H. Auden  

I am increasingly disappointed in football. Some of it is from the Steeler's obvious limits but the other games I have watched all outlasted me. 

The world-citizen view insists on the need for all citizens to understand differences. … It is connected with a conception of democratic debate as deliberation about the common good. The identity-politics view, by contrast, depicts the citizen body as a marketplace of identity-based interest groups jockeying for power, and views difference as something to be affirmed rather than understood.--Martha Nussbaum

Japan has taken serious measures wherever it can to make sure the six-week Rugby World Cup meets the demands of the hardest-drinking fans in sports. (from the wsj)

Paul McHugh, a renowned psychiatrist from Johns Hopkins University, told The College Fix he believes transgender people are being experimented on because the doctors treating transgender patients with hormones “don’t have evidence that (the treatment) will be the right one.” He also criticized the manner of treatment given to many children who claim to be transgender:

“Many people are doing what amounts to an experiment on these young people without telling them it’s an experiment,” he told The Fix via phone.

“You need evidence for that and this is a very serious treatment. It is comparable to doing frontal lobotomies.”

Have you ever seen an aerial or satellite photograph of the “sea of plastic”?

Because of the declining size and changing composition of US households over time, comparisons of median household income in two different years (like 1999 and 2018) is an apples-to-oranges comparison and will understate the household income gains on a per-person basis over time, and significantly understate the income gains for a households that have a constant number of earners over time (e.g., one-earner and two-earner households).

The number of public school teachers increased by 57% between 1970 and 2016 from about 2 million to 3.17 million, which reduced the pupil-to-teacher ratio by 30%, from almost 23-to-1 in 1970 to below 16-to-1 in 2016.

Over the same period, the number of non-teaching staff at public schools more than doubled, increasing by 147% from 1.4 million in 1970 to 3.3 million in 2016. Interestingly, while the number of public school teachers was flat between 1996 and 2016, the number of non-teaching staff continued to grow and by 2015 there were more non-teaching staff than teachers and that gap grew even larger in 2016. As a direct result of public school staff (both teachers and non-teachers) growing so much greater (57% and 157% respectively) than the increase in public school students (10.3%) between 1970 and 2016, the inflation-adjusted cost of educating a student in US public schools increased by 150% between 1970 and 2016, from $4,934 to $12,220. Department of Education report found that “Average reading and mathematics achievement for 17-year-olds did not change significantly between the early 1970s and 2012 or between 2008 and 2012.” 

On average, thirteen inches of snow equals one inch of rain.

On this day in 1789, The Judiciary Act of 1789 was passed by Congress and signed by President George Washington, establishing the Supreme Court of the United States as a tribunal made up of six justices who were to serve on the court until death or retirement. That day, President Washington nominated John Jay to preside as chief justice, and John Rutledge, William Cushing, John Blair, Robert Harrison, and James Wilson to be associate justices. 

                      de Blasio: California Dreamin'

In a new Wired essay, the New York City mayor and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate explains, “Why American Workers Need to Be Protected From Automation,” and aims to accomplish that through a new agency with vast enforcement powers, and a new tax. 

First, de Blasio proposes a new federal agency, the Federal Automation and Worker Protection Agency (FAWPA), to “oversee automation and safeguard jobs and communities.” He continues: 

“FAWPA would create a permitting process for any company seeking to increase automation that would displace workers. Approval of those plans would be conditioned on protecting workers; if their jobs are eliminated through automation, the company would be required to offer their workers new jobs with equal pay, or a severance package in line with their tenure at the company.”

Second, de Blasio proposed a “robot tax” that would be imposed on large companies “that eliminate jobs through increased automation and fail to provide adequate replacement jobs.” Those firms would “be required to pay five years of payroll taxes upfront for each employee eliminated” and that revenue would be used to fund new infrastructure projects or jobs in new areas, including health care and green energy. “Displaced workers would be guaranteed new jobs created in these fields at comparable salaries,” he says. 

Imagine, trying to define taxable change. Imagine, laws against technology. Imagine, laws against progress. All run by the Post Office.