Waste in the education system

I'm not well versed in the pros and cons of unions but generally believe that in civilized societies such as ours they generally hinder labor mobility and cost us more trouble than they are worth. Specifically, teacher unions gum up the works of attempts to reform the public school system, but I had no idea to what an extent they soaked up money and paralyzed the system. Case in point this AP article about suspended teachers that the district is unable to fire due to their union contracts:

Hundreds of New York City public school teachers accused of offenses ranging from insubordination to sexual misconduct are being paid their full salaries to sit around all day playing Scrabble, surfing the Internet or just staring at the wall, if that's what they want to do.

Because their union contract makes it extremely difficult to fire them, the teachers have been banished by the school system to its "rubber rooms" — off-campus office space where they wait months, even years, for their disciplinary hearings.

This is one of the worst wastes of taxpayer dollars I've heard of in a while!

Hat tip: Freddie

Homesick for Texas

I blame the torrential downpours of the last two weeks. I think it might be the first time since I moved here permanently after college that I'm actually homesick for the Lone Star State. "It's a lovely place to be born and raised, but I've had my fill, " I say at cocktail parties when introduced as the token Texan. Immediately people always want to know if I'll ever go back. Probably not for a multitude of reasons, but today...today my friends I am homesick.

Homesick for incessant sunshine...
Homesick for being baked alive when I get into a car that's sat in triple digit heat...
...for Blue Bell Ice Cream...
...for that friendly Texan twang...
...for TexMex and margaritas...
...for pick up trucks and guns...
...for Sonic Drive-In drinks...
...for goshdarn sunshine!

How much could I pay you to stand in line?

Fascinating story about the economics of line standing to get into Congressional Hearings on the Hill. The reporter does a good job of covering both sides of the story:

Freedomfest in Vegas!!!

OMG - OMG - OMG

I get to go to Freedomfest in Las Vegas for work! Three huge reasons to get excited for Whitney:

#1 I've never been to Vegas.

#2 This is libertarian/free-market mecca. It even has a theme song called "Freedom and Gold" - lol

#3 This means my boss doesn't hate me after all! whew

My black thumb

My college boyfriend once berated me for having gone through five cellphones during the course of our relationship. He had the same one circa 1999 and he was damn proud of that. I also went through three computers in college, two mp3 players, three printers, a palm pilot, and God knows how many other various sundry electronics that now escape my memory.

Now my office rajah (ahem Romulo) claims I'm the only one who ever has systemic computer/printer problems. I like to think I'm just a good user of these items - I use them so much and so vigorously they just give up. It's not my fault things are built to fall apart and be replaced these days! I may not be an environmentalist hippie, but I do lament the quality of consumer goods having deteriorated over time. It seems egregiously wasteful and seems to be a poor reflection of our culture. One European habit I wish we would adopt was buying high quality clothes. Europeans don't own as much as us - especially in their closet - but what they do have lasts much longer and fits even better. So there - it's the poor production quality and not my incessant mouse clicking that is the downfall of electronics in my path.

In other news, my office plants are thriving.

Quintessentially Arlington, VA

So there are some places that give Arlington a little more character than this video/rap gives it credit for, but I thought my out of town friends would be amused to see a little slice of life of where I currently live. For my DC peeps, this is mucho entertaining as well!

LYRICS

Just moved to a new hood
and it's straight up gangsta
Let me show you around...
my town

People all around
better know the deal
that the people in this town
are ghetto for real

So when people tell me
Remy, where you calling from?
I say a straight up thug town
called Arlington

It's a real tough town
packing heat and boat shoes
my crib's in a rough spot
right next to the Whole Foods

I'm ducking gunfire daily
check to see if one got me
but that's just life in the hood
when I go get my puffed kashi

But we never do ... more

Becoming the Party of Freedom

I've recently come out (hardy har har) about how I feel on the issue of gay marriage and was excited to see another conservative touting the same sentiment over at Big Hollywood:

...gay marriage isn’t a complex issue. Science aside, one needn’t believe that homosexuality is moral in order to understand that nowhere does the Constitution give the federal government the right to regulate marriage.

The Republican Party has made a huge mistake in advocating a kind of Cafeteria Constitutionalism. (I’ll take some guns, no helmet laws, please, a free market, and…yuck, hold the gay marriage!). One can’t legitimately invoke the Constitution to oppose federally mandated sex education, and then use the federal government to impose school prayer. Leave that fair-weather-federalism to the Left.

It’s not a state secret that the Democrat Party has become little more than a loose coalition of special interest groups with few or no coherent philosophical underpinnings. It’s also apparent that the Republicans are equally lost philosophically and couldn’t even manage to nominate a presidential candidate with the fiscal good sense to oppose corporate bailouts. Now here we are: face to face with an opportunity to take stock, recalibrate, and decide what we want from our political leaders.

Me, I implore the Republicans to become — once and for all — the party of freedom. The true moral highground is there to seize. Our Constitution was created as a shield against government encroachment on our personal lives. Conservatives should be the last people who would dare turn this document into a weapon.

To me, pressing a social agenda like this is part of the Republican party's undoing. To be consistent and ultimately successful at the ballot box, we need to always be on the side of liberty.