16:11 – Barbara and I drove down to Winston-Salem this morning to make a Costco run. There’s an old joke about Costco and preppers. How do you recognize preppers at Costco? They’re the ones with the flat carts.
And I suppose it’s true. For our first run through this morning, we grabbed a flat cart, the first time we’d ever used one there. We rolled it toward the checkout lanes, carrying two 50-pound bags each of sugar and white flour, a 50-pound bag of rice, two cases of green beans, a case of spaghetti sauces, three 8-pound packages of Barilla spaghetti, four 7-pound packages of Barilla assorted pasta, and a partridge in a pair tree. Near the checkout, we passed two Costco ladies at one of those stands where they pass out samples of stuff they’re trying to sell. One lady commented to Barbara, “You must be…” I swear I thought she was going to finish that “preppers.” but she said “having a big spaghetti dinner.”
After we paid for what was on the flat cart and loaded it into the Trooper, we went back and grabbed a regular cart. We filled that up with a lot more stuff, from toilet paper to meat. Lots of meat. I’d guess probably 100+ pounds of it. Then we drove home and unloaded all but the 50-pound bags. Those, we’ll transfer to foil-laminate Mylar bags with oxygen absorbers. I’d planned to do the same with the Barilla spaghetti and pasta, but Barbara asked why we should bother doing that. She said we go through enough pasta that it should be fine in the original packages for at least a couple of years, which is true. She also added that we just had some packaged mac and cheese that was two years past its best-by date, and she couldn’t tell any difference.
All in all, we probably hauled back 600 pounds of stuff, mostly LTS food and fresh meat and butter. Something over 300 pounds of that was dry bulk stuff, which is about a twelve person month supply of sugar and carbs. We’d need to add protein and oils to make it a complete diet, but it’s not a bad run as is. Next time, I want to make a Sam’s Club run. Costco doesn’t carry a lot of items I want. They carry largish jars of spices, but there isn’t nearly as much variety as Sam’s carries. Also, I wanted to get a couple cases each of cream of mushroom and cream of chicken soup, which our Costco doesn’t stock.
The canned green beans wouldn’t cut it for us; very few canned veggies would, maybe just beets, carrots, early peas, and of course, beans. OTOH, if we get hungry enough, we might even eat those horrid yellow wax beans out of a can, so long as we can dump butter and salt and garlic or something on them.
Got the rear fence half done and I’m having to improvise a couple of things but all is good so far. Cleaned up a bunch of twigs and branches from our wind storm today. Paid a couple of local kids to mow the lawn and stack firewood while I worked on other stuff and wife was riding the horse 18 miles to the east, out in the fabled Bumfuck area. And loaded the car for the dump and recycling run tomorrow, on my way to or back from my little “compensation and pension” exam interrogation regarding my VA disability filing.
The downstairs is cleaned up pretty good, thanks to wife mainly, and this week we’ll work on the two bedrooms and the porch. Plus my perimeter fence and booby traps.
Yum! Partridge in pear sauce!
Near the checkout, we passed two Costco ladies at one of those stands where they pass out samples of stuff they’re trying to sell.
If they were the sample staff, they don’t work for Costco. It’s one way Costco keeps costs down.
I recall a checker’s comment at Sam’s Club about mass quantities.
“Beans and rice?”
“Yep. Beans and rice.”
Uh, what’s your point?
From the Insanities of the Week Department:
http://takimag.com/article/the_week_that_perished_takimag_august_21_2016/print#axzz4I05qc6bF
We really need to do a remake of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” wherein all the white males in the world not only disappear totally but never existed. Then let’s see how all these imbeciles and commie scum like it.
Got some heavy rain today so some of what I wanted to do gets pushed back, again.
Lots of soggy stuff in the yard and drive needs to be taken care of, and I can’t get it dry.
Harvested some basil and will be drying it in the kitchen. I just hang it in bunches. I’ve got LOTS of dried basil already. Oregano too. Basil grows really well here.
Supposed to have spent a few hours checking in purchases, and getting pix for ebay listings. So freaking hot and humid, I’ve barely been able to do any of it.
Sold a bunch of cables this week. It’s the perfect ebay item. Limited availability in the primary market (cop radio harnesses), and fairly strong demand from refitters and ham radio ops, and I got it in bulk numbers so one listing, lots of sales. I bought a pallet of it cheap, and have been selling it for very reasonable prices. I sold the last of one style today. As an example of weirdness, I haven’t sold any in weeks, then sold one, and the next day got offers for 10 and for the remainder. Sometimes it goes in waves….
Ebay has been changing their interface and sneaking in changes to workflow while doing so. I spent about a half hour on the phone with them today complaining about the changes, and I did get a couple of workarounds. Still, makes my shipping workflow longer and more of a hassle.
Now if I can sell a couple of higher dollar items this week I’ll be back on average.
School starts tomorrow, and so I need to scope out the kids’ new classrooms, exit paths, ingress if I need to get them, etc, and get a feel for their teachers’ awareness of safety issues. I’ll be glad to have them out of the summer program where they didn’t take even fire drills seriously.
Back out to the garage, hopefully I can get at least a few things ready to list.
nick
“”We really need to do a remake of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” wherein all the white males in the world not only disappear totally but never existed.””
Ya know, that’s an excellent thought experiment concept for lots of what-if questions.
Been done. Just look at Rhodesia.
n
Or detroit, or any other white flight city….
n
http://www.citylab.com/work/2013/11/mapping-60-years-white-flight-brain-drain-and-american-migration/7449/
notice anything about the cities with net decreases?
I didn’t mean specifically the white male detail, but yeah, good examples.
Try it for other significant inputs into society or technology.
Classic fictional scenario is “The Man in the High Castle” (Axis won WWII)
by Philip K. Dick. I keep meaning to pick it back up on Amazon Prime video,
but it was so unpleasant.
“Yep. Beans and rice.”
Uh, what’s your point?
Probably testing to see if you were a Dave Ramsey fan and would catch the reference. “Beans and Rice. Rice and Beans.”
I swear Sallie Mae changed their name because of Ramsey’s line, “Sallie Mae is a mean ol’ woman you want out of your life as soon as possible.”
Question for the hive mind….
I need to replace my Buffalo Terastation NAS/RAID. Not interested in Buffalo again.
I’ve got it down to QNAP TS-451+, Drobo 5N, WD My Cloud EX410, or possibly Netgear ReadyNAS 314 RN31400.
My main concern is actual redundancy, and hot swap rebuild on one failed drive. The media server stuff would be nice.
Anyone have direct experience with these? Or done some research for someone else? I need 3-6TB usable space. And it looks like that’s gonna cost me between $800 and $1200.
nick
I only worked on IBM-proprietary stuff with regard to that sorta hardware and won’t have my own RAID1 setup configured until I get the attic work space set up.
Steady rain from mid-afternoon on, heavy at times, monsoon-level, and everything is soaked here, too. This fouled up my fence detail but no biggie.
What if: there had never been any white males in human history, or that they’d all died out around 3,000 BC. I reckon the Chinese and Japanese would then have ruled the earth for the past 5,000 years instead, and my other guess is that they would have been far less tolerant and compassionate about other races, ethnicities and religions. They’d probably be running a vast plantation/mining system based on the labor of everyone else, who would, of course, be speaking Chinese and/or Japanese. They also might all be Christians and musloids and Buddhists and Jews anyway.
Hey, go for it; What If No White Males World fiction contest.
On a related note, more of the German gaulieters chattering about minimal prep stuff and intel analysis thereof:
https://readfomag.com/2016/08/germany-tells-citizens-stockpile-food-and-water/
And regarding our own random chatter concerning ballistic defenses for windows and vehicles:
http://zerogov.com/?p=4842
As he points out, yeah, it’s becoming a two-front war, just like in Europe. We have musloid terrorists attacking us from one side and the regime and its costumed thugs from the other when we attempt to dissent from the Cloud People directives or fight back.
Tool up, mes amis, and don’t forget the food and wotta, of course. Boy does this suck at my age, having to fret about this kinda chit. We were told we were stopping the commies in ‘Nam so they wouldn’t end up in Kalifornia and all along they were right down the road (I-95) in NYC and Mordor.
I have a Drobo 5D and a mini. I keep the firmware updated and haven’t had a problem with either. They both have Thunderbolt and USB. I use the 5D for all the misc crap I collect. The mini is on my Mac Mini and my iTunes library lives on it.
I installed the “accelerator” SSD in each. Here’s a link to their “Beyond RAID” White Paper in case you don’t have it:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1764140/Beyond-Raid.pdf
“Thinking about Big Data — Part Three (the final and somewhat scary part)”
http://www.cringely.com/2016/07/11/thinking-big-data-part-3-final-part/
I really do not know what to think about this. Big data is definitely here. And it is ruining parts of our lives right now. Had any pleasant experiences with your healthcare insurance lately ?
“Had any pleasant experiences with your healthcare insurance lately ?”
Don’t ask.
On another, and somewhat related note: so the WAPO rumpswabs are saying that Field Marshal Rodham has a “comfortable lead” and is now configuring her WH staff and the next chit she’s gonna be doing once she’s in there. Last poll I saw had it a dead heat, way too close to call, within one percentage point, but I guess the polls are mostly lies and anything the WAPO and like organs say are also lies. Everybody now acts, and I include the prepper and “extreme rightwing” types, like she’s got it in the bag. WTF?
So, meanwhile, can’t hurt to be prepared for a long cold snowy winter with no power and local goblins trying to steal chit from us or worse. With a possibility of musloid hadjis roaming around that our state and Fed scum let loose on us up here. Quite frankly, I’d rather put some rounds downrange at the latter, than our local riff-raff, who are at least LIKE US to some extent and probably desperate. But hey, first come, first served; try to hurt my wife or me or the neighbors or take our chit and you gon be in a world of damage.
Nick,
Check out the Synology line https://www.synology.com I’ve been using one of their products for years on my home network and I couldn’t be happier with it. Reasonably priced, good hardware and ongoing software support.
Hey Al, I saw them featured on the Revision3 TV comparisons. I stopped watching revision3 (TechTV) so I don’t recognize the presenter. They seemed to like it equally with the Drobo.
You had a good experience? I’ve been using my Buffalo for years and never liked it. $1000-ish is a bunch of do-re-mi to drop on a box of drives. (not JBOD, but it really is just a box to hold drives and some control) I don’t want to spend the next decade regretting the expense and purchase….
nick
The LAT Daily Poll has tRump up by 2. Another great thing about a tRump win is flipping the bird to the MSM and to Cankles for the 10X+ amount of $$$ she is spending to buy the election.
There are recipes on the web to make dry mixes of cream of _____ soup. They’re all basically powdered milk, corn starch, some form of dehydrated onion and spices. Also there are recipes to make and store the dry ingredients to make your own onion soup mix.
I’ve been looking for lentils in bulk, and this seems to be the best deal. Although it’s only slightly cheaper per pound than the Augason Farms bucket.
Another hateful, bigoted and mean-spirited screed from Uncle Fred:
http://fredoneverything.org/paris-1877-it-reaches-manhattan-doubtless-due-to-continental-drift/
I know two good-sized, fairly smart, and armed cis-hetero Christian Anglo-Saxon males in my family who had high-tech jobs for a while and now have nothing, while their wives still slave for crappy pay and even crappier benefits. Multiply those two guys by hundreds of thousands and the country has a serious problem on its hands. Which is gonna make the screeching and whining by all the BLM, SJW and prog asswipes seem like the tiny buzz of gnats.
Had any pleasant experiences with your healthcare insurance lately ?
Cringely overstates some things. Health insurers were doing individual risk assessments in the 60s and 70s. What I think was the phase change was HIV. One HIV case could make the policy written for a smaller company unprofitable. A handful could make a big company policy unprofitable. As a result, they got much more stringent in underwriting and also had experience based rating at the company level.
There have been some stumbles along the way. The facial image recognition software he talks about has been shown to be less reliable than thought.
One of the reasons that the big data analysis techniques are impenetrable is that they are based on neural networks – they learn from the data sets they train on to pick out what’s relevant and apply weights to it. Nothing explicit is discernable. Back in the 80s when I was doing AI research, neural networks were considered a dead end – they needed too much computer power and since they weren’t something you could examine, they were hard to verify that they worked correctly.
“The facial image recognition software he talks about has been shown to be less reliable than thought.”
I wonder how good it is at our state DMV; they now make me take my glasses off when I renew my enhanced operator license, they say, due to the new FRS. The resulting pic has me looking a lot like some recent dangerous escapee from a max security prison, like the one just across the lake from us….
…then I look at my late dad’s old mil-spec ID from WWII and boy, the apple don’t fall fah from the tree…why we weren’t just locked up right on achieving adulthood is a mystery…
You achieved adulthood? Well there’s your mistake right there. I maintain an impenetrable childishness.
It appears, however, that zillions among the current generations have not made the same mistake and have remained, like Peter Pan, kids forever.
@Nick: I’ve had a QNAP running on our network for ages – must be nearly 10 years now. I really can’t speak to the redundancy, because I’ve not had a drive failure. It just sits there and works, though, which is what one wants. Someone else mentioned Synology; I’ve heard good things about their stuff too, but have no experience with it myself.
Re health insurance: I suppose I’ve never read the fine print, but other types of insurance always include an expense cap. We’re covered for liability, but only up to $x, and after that it’s our problem. I have always assumed this to be the case for health insurance as well – is it not?
@SteveF: I’ve always liked the philosophy that “growing old is mandatory, growing up is optional”. Doesn’t always please my wife, but I follow it as I can…
Obamacare outlawed lifetime caps on health insurance, which is one of the very few popular aspects of it.
If Trump wins and the Republicans really do scrap Obamacare, which is about to collapse anyway, they’ll face a political firestorm if their replacement doesn’t provide capless coverage and no limits on pre-existing conditions. That’s not actual insurance, of course, for the same reason you can’t buy an insurance policy on your house if it’s already burning down, but that’s political reality. Of course, pre-existing conditions should be excluded, or at least assigned to a risk pool with premia an order of magnitude higher, but that’s a political third-rail at this point.
I suspect that the Republican replacement plan will exclude pre-existing conditions, but only for people who have maintained continuous health coverage since before ACA went into effect. That’s really not fair to the vast majority of those covered, of course, since their payments subsidize people who shouldn’t be eligible for insurance at all, let alone as preferred risks.
Whatever the regime dreams up and kludges together will be yet another disaster anyway because government. This empire is way too big for such stuff now and the “one-size-fits-all” is impossible. We’re gonna run outta money one way or another anyway so it’s all moot eventually.
This deal where half the country pays for the other half plus themselves is not sustainable and neither is our system of fiat currency and money being represented totally by bits and bytes in cyberspace and insecure databases somewhere. The house-of-cards analogy holds.
Replacement? Please. Scrap it. There’s no fixing it. It’s totaled.
Would somebody please list ONE THING government has done that has made things cheaper, better, and more popular?
Beuhler?
Anything government touches automatically gets at least 10% more expensive simply by virtue of the paperwork required to prove you’re in compliance, even if you are already in compliance.
Would somebody please list ONE THING government has done that has made things cheaper, better, and more popular?
Basic science research. As the dismantling of Bell Labs has shown, it won’t get done by private companies, and foundations don’t have enough money.
I agree in theory, but science funding has become broken almost beyond repair since the government got involved. It’s also polluted the whole PI/grad student dynamic, and greatly extended the time needed to get a science Ph.D.
Better we return to the old days.
“Thinking about Big Data — Part Three (the final and somewhat scary part)”
http://www.cringely.com/2016/07/11/thinking-big-data-part-3-final-part/
I really do not know what to think about this. Big data is definitely here. And it is ruining parts of our lives right now. Had any pleasant experiences with your healthcare insurance lately ?
Cringely overstates some things. Health insurers were doing individual risk assessments in the 60s and 70s. What I think was the phase change was HIV. One HIV case could make the policy written for a smaller company unprofitable. A handful could make a big company policy unprofitable. As a result, they got much more stringent in underwriting and also had experience based rating at the company level.
Cringley overstates everything. After all, any good journalist blows his own horn long and hard. But he is correct about health insurance companies trying to avoid paying for anything. My 29 year old daughter is chronically ill and lives with us as there is no way she can be independent. We have managed to get her listed as disabled and on our health insurance which is BCBS PPO. They are very good at taking my money and very good at saying no.
We need Medicare for All ™. I am confident that Trump will address this after the election. However, it won’t fix all of our problems and it will create a whole new set of problems.
Half? If you exclude government “work”ers, the workforce is barely over a quarter of the population. If you further exclude government contractors and people in jobs which exist only to comply with government regulations or because unions won’t allow robots to replace humans, it’s almost certainly under 20%.
You keep saying that. What I say is that you need to move to Canada or Britain. They have the equivalent of Medicare for All ™, and it works so well that all their citizens can’t stop talking about how wonderful it is. Or at least, the CBC and BBC never have anything bad to say about it.
Yep. We need a 330,000,000-payer system, where everyone pays themselves for whatever healthcare they are willing to pay for.
We also need a system where a hip joint is not $24,000.00, not including installation. Most people could not afford an operation that comes in at about $45,000.00 when you add in hospital cost, surgeon cost, anesthesiologist, and five doctors who just stick their head in the door of the hospital room, say hello, and bill $500 for “consultation”. When my wife had surgery this “consultant” doctor visited all 15 rooms with patients thus being able to bill a cool $7,500.00 without doing any work and only taking about an hour.
And if you were paying, Ray, you’d flat refuse to pay the consultant’s fee without some proof that he earned the money. And, without government (both federal and state) restrictions, you’d have a market to shop around for a replacement part at the best price. Ditto for the services provided.
Or you could do without, whether because you couldn’t afford it at all or because you decided it wasn’t worth tens of thousands of your dollars. You could arrange a payment plan. You could ask for charity. What you can’t do is take money from me under threat of force.
Unless the robbery is by government order. Then it’s ok, I guess.
What you can’t do is take money from me under threat of force
Agreed.
In the case of the latest surgery for my wife (the hip replacement) what I had to pay was my maximum out of pocket, $8,000, insurance paid the rest. So I guess that looser doctor got paid by the insurance company. If I was paying I would have refused to pay and if the doctor did not like tell him to take me to court as I would be counter suing with fraud charges.
Many moons ago my wife had some out patient surgery to repair some internal plumbing. I got the itemized bill from the hospital even though insurance paid a significant chunk.
On the bill I found an item for “Video Recording” in the amount of $250.00. I called the hospital and demanded the recording. The hospital refused. I said I paid for it, I want it. Hospital said that video was for their protection and thus I could not have the video. I told the hospital if the video was for them, take it off the bill, otherwise I file in small claims for posession of the video. The hospital removed the charge. I wonder how many people the hospital bilked over that little scam.
We need Medicare for All ™.
You keep saying that. What I say is that you need to move to Canada or Britain. They have the equivalent of Medicare for All ™, and it works so well that all their citizens can’t stop talking about how wonderful it is. Or at least, the CBC and BBC never have anything bad to say about it.
No, they have Single Provider, not Single Payer. Single Provider is like the VA where the bureaucrats run everything, including the doctors.
And Medicare is not a real Single Payer system even. You have to purchase Part B, Part D, and other unknown parts supplied by various old age insurance companies such as AARP.
We need Medicare for All ™.
You keep saying that.
And I continuously say that we need this to save our ERs. We are going to lose our ERs due to non-payers. We really do not want to do that. I selfishly want ERs because I will probably end up there a few more times in the next 10 to 20 years due to my heart problems. Three times in the last 7 years (wow, where has the time gone?).
According to a paper that I read a while back, people with my condition either have one big heart attack or 7 to 8 heart attacks. I survived the big one! And if I am going to have more heart attacks, I want to be able to stop them. Unlike my great-grandfather who did not stop his at age 52 in 1936 ??? and never walked again due to angina.
@lynn, get a prescription for an AED and put it in the house!
n
Yikes, don’t be a deaf-mute speeding motorist in North Carolina!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3753378/North-Carolina-state-trooper-shoots-dead-deaf-mute-man.html#ixzz4I7eqVGG3
Last I knew, speeding wasn’t a capital crime. And this skinny little guy was a THREAT to the trooper??? Gee whiz, guess we have special snowflakes now among the “law enforcement community” in this country, too. Look at them cross-eyed or make funny motions with your hands and get your chit blown up instantly.
Best move? I used to say, exit the vehicle, throw yourself down on the pavement fast and hard with arms and legs spread wide open and say a prayer that THAT doesn’t trigger (pun intended) a lethal response.
Now? There is no best move. Sit there and don’t move fast enough and get shot. Give the cop any back-talk and get shot. Exit the vehicle before he or she says and get shot. Be bigger and meaner looking than him or her and get shot. Be smaller and deaf and mute and get shot.
Had a local cop come and take the report for my vandalized windshield a few days ago and he was half my size with a thin reedy voice. Standard-issue baldy cut and mirror shades, and a slew of gimcracks and geegaws hanging off his navy-blue uniform.
Back in the ancient times, the commandant of the Maffachufetts State Police was a guy seven feet tall and you did NOT want him walking up on your driver’s side with his polished jackboots and jodphurs and mirror shades at any time of day or night.
Then there was one of my partners; 6’6″ and 410 pounds. I was only an inch shorter and 150 pounds lighter and he picked me up like I was a loaf of bread one time for laffs. But during PR24 class he gave me a wide berth and claimed he didn’t trust me. Can’t imagine why.
Welcome to the Chicago PRC:
A massive fight that broke out inside an Illinois Walmart ended with a woman having her clothes ripped off.
The all-out brawl occurred inside the store in Crestwood, south of Chicago, and was all captured on video by a witness.
The fracas involved four women and was attempted to be stopped by a single male security guard, who got lost in the fight.
From the Prepper Laff Track Department:
https://lewrockwell.com/2016/08/jack-perry/doomsday-lite/
More laffs here:
“Progressivism is a cartel. It is breaking down. It wins only by default. Its political leaders no longer inspire confidence. Yet the whole movement has been a massive confidence game for over a century: faith in bureaucracy. That faith is waning. So are new revenue sources to support the existing programs, which are all running deficits.”
http://www.garynorth.com/public/15561.cfm
Another example of police “gotta get home safe” at all costs. I feared for my life because the guy was using his fingers and hands. Probably no remorse ’cause just another dirt person. Sue the shit out of them. Cops only trained to use immediate deadly force. No taser, no baton, no pepper spray. Just lead. A mag to the chest just to be sure.
“The fracas involved four women and was attempted to be stopped by a single male security guard, who got lost in the fight.”
Well, that was a mistake on his part. Don’t get involved in them things; let ’em tire theyselves out and then write up a few citations, call it a job well done. Ditto when arresting a group of bikers; the big bruisers are the least trouble; watch out for the biker chicks; they’ll take your head off or gut you like a fish.
“Probably no remorse ’cause just another dirt person.”
No doubt a suspension with pay while they investigate and then exonerate themselves, per SOP, and then a promotion later, so in effect, a paid vay-cay and a promotion.
@lynn, get a prescription for an AED and put it in the house!
Not that kind of problem. When my heart gets loopy (150 to 200 bpm), I need a boatload of Lopressor (I take a little each day for grins). And it works way better at that point in an IV. I finally broke down and started taking Rythmol so I am doing better in that regard, I have not had an tachycardia incident in three years.
I love the side effects of Lopressor, “Common side effects of Lopressor may include nausea, vomiting, dry mouth, gas, heartburn, diarrhea, constipation, dizziness, tiredness, depression, decreased sex drive, impotence, difficulty having an orgasm, headache, sleep problems (insomnia), anxiety, nervousness, and rash.”
Note the diarrhea and constipation, side by side. Each day is a new adventure !
Actually, I expect “Medicare for all” would be the best possible compromise for the US, at this point. Let the government pay the health care costs for indigent and the uninsurable. They do anyway, and this could hardly be less efficient that the mess that is Obamacare.
Then – in addition – allow a deregulated health insurance market. Let everyone else get private insurance, with a minimum of stupid restrictions and regulations.
That’s basically the way it works in the UK. Most people are basically satisfied with the state-provided insurance, in the sense that they are unwilling to pay for private insurance. But private insurance does exist, and it isn’t even all that expensive. According to this article, an average policy costs about $1500 per year. For a young healthy single with only minimal coverage, it costs less than $500/year.
Seems to me that this would be a good way for the US to go as well. You’ll never dismantle Obamacare, so turn it into single payer, and deregulate private insurance.
The problem is we will not get Medicare for all, we’ll get Medicaid for all.
More cop BS:
“Shocking LAPD video capturing moment officer kicked, elbowed and punched man as he lay on ground finally gets released – and even cops think it’s ‘horrific’
In October 2014, a Los Angeles police officer was caught on video kicking and hitting a man as he lay face-down on a South L.A. sidewalk
Officer Richard Garcia’s actions immediately drew concerns from police officials — one called the footage ‘horrific’
Prosecutors took the rare step of charging the officer with assault of Clinton Alford Jr.
The video was kept under wraps by the LAPD and only released after the LA Times obtained the footage under a court order
The video had been introduced as evidence in the criminal case against Garcia”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3753535/Video-suppressed-police-two-years-shows-man-kicked-head-cop-held-ground-officers.html
And what was the crime that led to the beating??
“Clinton Alford Jr., then 22, was riding a bike along Avalon Boulevard near 55th Street in South L.A. when officers pulled up to him and ordered him to stop.
Alford, who later claimed that the officers did not identify themselves as law enforcement, jumped off his bike and began running.”
The real problem with the ERs is the exponential explosive increase in illegals using them. My inside contacts say the no-pay no-English highly infected illegals now make up more than 80% of ER admits, with most requiring admission to the hospital. Even the non-public hospitals can no longer dump these folks after giving them a band-aid as the gooberment has said that if they walk in your door they are the hospitals to fully treat to completion.
Soooo, guess who is now locking their ER doors?
Another trend is the creation of standalone ERs, not attached to or close to the hospital. This allows the ER to use a loophole to provide minimal treatment/stabilization and then be able to turn the GOOMER (Get Out Of My Emergency Room) out to the street.
Oh, and an additional cost is the translators that must be provided as well as printed material in their language.
Schools too. Given the number of non-english speaking kids in our local public schools, I’d say that without the section 8 apartment dwelling illegals and their (possibly legal) kids, we’d have no school budget problems. Test scores would immediately improve. In fact, we’d immediately decrease the student teacher ratio to about 4 students per teacher. (This would rise as some of the legal residents come back to public schools.)
Gang violence would decrease, school safety increases, graduation rates rise, dropout rates decrease, teen pregnancy in schools decreases significantly, all plusses in my book.
nick
The current situation is like the ERs, we HAVE to take the kids who are most needy, least prepared, provide translators and ‘life services’, food (in many of our schools 3 meals daily) and all sorts of other expensive and special treatment.
So if I put my kids in private school, like so many of my neighbors, I would be in the exact same position I’m in with health care. I pay more for MY family’s education, and pay for the education of the illegals and the poor.
Yep, that’s the whole idea…
All of that stuff was the Plan all along. Been going on since the 1960s and now rolling merrily toward the abyss.
Four out of five elementary schools in my town have issues with test scores, and our area happens to be very white and very few immigrants, legal or otherwise. I’m sure what you’re saying is accurate for your area, but it doesn’t cover the whole country.
Yes, I was going to emphasize that this is just for my district, although I see it in other surrounding districts too.
I’m wondering what your public school enrollment looks like. I was shocked that despite our neighborhood demographics being 40% white, 40% hispanic, 10% black, 10% other, in our SCHOOLS the ratio is more like 92% hispanic, 4% black, 4% white.
nick
” I was shocked…”
Hahaha…good one!
Well, was a bit surprised that the demographics were SO different. I understand why now, and it’s what happens when you stop paying attention to civic issues for a while.
The deeper problem is something Jerry Pournelle points out often– when you reward something, you get more of it.
For the schools, they get federal and state money for each butt in a seat. They are incentivized to put as many butts in the seats as possible, so they can get more money. They benefit in greater proportion because they spend more of each additional dollar on admin than they do on kids.
Landlords benefit as they get section 8 and other money for their crappiest properties, extending the time between remodels and maximizing income. (like the Russian mob and hookers, when they no longer appeal locally, they ship them off to places like the middle east.) Landlords extend the life of their properties by renting to people who don’t have any choices.
The whole social services industry benefits as they get more money for each “client” served and have similar expense structure to schools. The admin dollars get bigger faster than the dollars expended on clients.
Everyone who deals with these “unfortunates” benefits from increasing their numbers EXCEPT your average citizen. HE’S paying for it all.
War on illiteracy, war on drugs, war on gang violence, war on crime, war on poverty… which one of these things do we have LESS of despite decades of public spending?
nick
I’ve posted before, there over 100 different languages/dialects spoken in the LA school districts. A total disaster. Only social progression and “high school to prison pipeline” gets the kids out of school. At least the pipeline gets them out before the full 18 years.
100 different languages in the NYC public skools, too, for many years now. And a MASSIVE bureaucracy to run it all, while the parochial system manages with a couple of dozen peeps on its staff.
Good summary of how that all works, Mr. nick!
I’d bet we’re close to that in Houston ISD. Houston is a very cosmopolitan city with a metric ton of foreign ex-pats living here, as well as the vast number of immigrants.
In my ISD (independent school district) we have about (rounded) 30000 students, 20k of which are living below the poverty line. Even more than that qualify for free food. Oddly (not!) about the same number are not proficient in english. Despite that, under progressive “tax the rich! ‘robin hood'” laws, the state will steal $30M from homeowners and business taxpayers in our district and give it to other ‘less advantaged’ districts. Next year the theft increases to ~$60M and to ~$90M the next!
So what are they going to do? We’ve just gotten status as a “district of innovation” which allows us a tiny bit more authority over our spending, and over teaching methods and curriculum. What that means is they are about to start experimenting on our kids again. Get set for some new version of ‘the new math’ or ‘whole word based reading instruction.’ Get set for more ‘peer directed learning.’ Get set for another lost generation that wasn’t taught to think or the basics needed for literacy and numeracy.
I’m watching it closely. There will come a day when private school (mostly religiously based here) or homeschooling is the answer. Until then, I’m trying to work with the system, and get some value out of it.
nick
Well go for the private school. Only problem is the cost. We sent my daughter to catholic school K-11. It cost about $60K. K-8 was pretty good but by high school she had it with the toxic bitches she had to put up with. My daughter really was pretty, intelligent and athletic (really not just dad talking) and that caused plenty of issues with snooty little rich bitches. She decided on public HS her senior year so we did a little cheating and got her in to the school she wanted with some decent friends. Yes it had a large percentage of hispanic and black but she did fine. Saved me about $5K.
I’m glad we did the elementary at catholic school and my wife has worked there for 20 years now. I’m just a heathen but can get along with them (at least they drink at many events).
It was a bit bothersome when our 5yo came home from summer day camp at the episcopal church and wanted to pray before dinner… I’m not sure I could deal with full time school with a strong religious background.
I was raised RC, as was my wife, and I studied western and eastern religions formally, but my wife is lapsed, and I’m a Taoist, when I’m anything (having formally renounced my catholicism.)
We are open to the kids becoming religious and don’t discourage it. In fact we’ve read the Bible stories, and had some pretty good discussions about God, religion, churches, and belief systems, considering the kids are 5 and 7! We usually point out alternative beliefs (the vast majority of the world’s population is not christian after all) or ask the kids questions when they bring something like prayer home from school, but the reality is that the country is majority (nominally) christian and christian beliefs permeate both our founding, and our success as a nation. [I know RBT has issues with this, I’m mainly thinking of the story of the good steward, and the protestant work ethic.] The kids need a good understanding of the ‘lore’ and practice of christianity to understand the nation.
nick
@Nick
If you haven’t already, you might want to look into local homeschool groups and co-ops.
yeah, that will come I think but I’m hoping to work with what we’ve got for a while. Several people in the neighborhood currently homeschool or did, and there are a ton of enrichment programs at area churches, schools, and museums specifically aimed at homeschoolers.
It’s frustrating to think of the expense of the unused schools, and the time (and temperment) needed to homeschool.
I’m currently treating it like Sarah Hoyt did, day care while I work, and add to it at night. If things change or if they get up my nose at the school, I’ll shorten my timeline.
Like prepping, it will probably take a major issue to bring my wife around to homeschool or private.
nick
I completely understand how Nick feels about school. I’m not yet ready to follow his consider school daycare and supplement at home, but I am asking my daughter how school was, and wife is checking her homework. Our schools seem generally OK, but I’ve heard a rumor about one kid in her class that concerns me. If my wife were not a public school teacher at the school in question, I’d be proposing we check out the local private school and providing additional science instruction as needed.
The local school is religious, and I don’t share Nick’s objection to that, although I am concerned about the rigor of their science education. Although I have no actual facts to confirm that assertion.
Depends on the type of religious school. Creationist/ID “science” is generally taught only at schools associated with SB and similar new-earth creationist denominations. RC, Presbyterian, Methodist, and similar teach real science.
Actually, I expect “Medicare for all” would be the best possible compromise for the US, at this point.
The problem is we will not get Medicare for all, we’ll get Medicaid for all.
I am worried about this also. Medicare is good, Medicaid sucks.
Medicare is mediocre, Medicaid sucks.
Even the non-public hospitals can no longer dump these folks after giving them a band-aid as the gooberment has said that if they walk in your door they are the hospitals to fully treat to completion.
Nope. All they have to do is get them stable and stick them in an ambulance and turf them to the public hospital. And they do it all the time. (Even a non-profit hospital chain here in Houston, the flagship of which was formed to serve the poor, does this.)
@ech, no longer in WA State. That was why I mentioned locked ER doors and satellite ER centers. It will be national soon.
Nope. All they have to do is get them stable and stick them in an ambulance and turf them to the public hospital.
Isn’t that the scheme Moochelle Obola used in Chicago to pull down her $300K/yr salary?
RC schools keep the religion mostly to religion classes. Of course they have mass once a week. There are always several Hindu, Shaikh and Jewish students since the population density isn’t high enough for them to have their own and the school has excellent ratings. Nobody pushes the jesus on them.