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JANUARY 18-19,  2023

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE:

BYE-BYE:  Lots of people are leaving New York, as the Empire State slides into chaos.  From the New York Post:  Dazed and abused by high taxes and rising crime, more New Yorkers fled to Florida in 2022 than any year in history, according to new data.  A staggering 64,577 Empire staters exchanged their driver’s licenses for the Sunshine State version last year, according to figures from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.  “They come in every day,” a staffer at a Jacksonville DMV office told The Post this week with a weary laugh. “I hear all the complaints. I feel like a therapist sometimes.”  The worker said the venting refugees harbor a long list of grievances — with taxes and eroding quality of life at the top of the list.  “It’s slowed down a little bit,” she said of the stampede. “But not by a whole lot, I can tell you that.”  I'm not at all sure that New York – at least New York City – can recover.   The institutions that made the city great, like Broadway, are in serious decline.  And the major population groups do not begin to value the great educational system that their ancestors created here.

THE LATEST ADVICE:  Pass this on to your friends.  Urgent.  From PJ Media:   Britain’s top food watchdog recently warned that bringing cake to the office is comparable to subjecting coworkers to second-hand cigarette smoke.  Professor Susan Jebb, chair of the UK’s Food Standards Agency, told The Times Health commission, “We all like to think we’re rational, intelligent, educated people who make informed choices the whole time and we undervalue the impact of the environment,” adding that “If nobody brought in cakes into the office, I would not eat cakes in the day, but because people do bring cakes in, I eat them. Now, OK, I have made a choice, but people were making a choice to go into a smoky pub.”
Jebb, who was speaking to The Times in her capacity as a private citizen, said that passive smoke is harmful, “and exactly the same is true of food,” citing skyrocketing obesity rates in the UK.  There! Write that down.  I've always suspected that people who bring cake are a secret enemy, a key component in bringing down the United States and freedom.  Now it's confirmed.

GREAT START:  He may be a Democrat, but Pennsylvania's new governor, Josh Shapiro, is off to a great start with an innovative idea that people across the political spectrum can endorse.  And he is showing courage in taking on one of the most powerful establishments in this country – the vastly overpowered colleges and universities.  From Fox Business:   

Just one day after being sworn in as the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro signed an executive order getting rid of four-year college degree requirements for most state jobs. 

"In Pennsylvania the people should decide what path is best for them, not have it decided by some arbitrary requirement or any arbitrary limitation. There are many different pathways to success, whether it's through on-the-job training, an apprenticeship, vocational education, or college," Shapiro said before signing the executive order. 

"Degree requirements that reward folks who pursue one of these-19 paths, while shutting out those who pursue others, hurts us all."

About 92% of all government jobs in Pennsylvania, which is equivalent to 65,000 positions, will now be available to people regardless of their educational background. 

Shapiro wrote in the executive order that job postings should emphasize the "skills and experience" necessary over college degree requirements.

Pennsylvania also released a new website for job postings this week, which currently lists 738 openings. 

Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announced last year that the state would drop college degree requirements for thousands of state jobs. 

Companies in the private sector are also increasingly dropping college degree requirements for middle-skill and even higher-skill roles, according to a survey last year by Harvard Business Review, which projects that 1.4 million jobs will be available to workers without college degrees in the next five years. 

COMMENT:  It's about time.  The college mystique has become far too pervasive in hiring practices.  Most jobs don't require a college degree, and many young people, according to statistics and anecdotal accounts, are looking for alternative training.  Also, the prestige of colleges has nosedived.  Stories about wokism, cancel culture, and various forms of bigotry, are circulated widely.  They don't provide much of an incentive for students to spend everything they have to spend four years on campus.

Many young people have also learned skills in the armed services.  In fact, it's a great incentive for joing the military, all the while serving your country.

January 18, 2023       Permalink

JANUARY 16-17,  2023

CHILLING:  We always remind our readers that, no matter how dramatic are the stories in our own country, it is events abroad that can kill us.  Russia is on the move.  From Bloomberg: 

(Bloomberg) -- Russia will create new commands near Europe as it expands its military to 1.5 million people amid deepening tensions with the US and its allies over the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.

New structures in the regions around Moscow, St. Petersburg and Karelia on the border with Finland will be created under the program, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told commanders Tuesday, saying the major changes will start this year and continue through 2026. In addition, he said, “self-sufficient” units will be set up on the Ukrainian territories that Russia has illegally annexed.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the military expansion came in response to the “proxy war” he claimed the US and its allies are waging against Russia in Ukraine, Interfax reported. Kyiv and its allies are fighting to fend off Russia’s invasion of its neighbor.
Russian President Vladimir Putin last month approved Shoigu’s plan to boost the size of his military from the current target level of 1.15 million but the Kremlin hasn’t said how fast that will take place. 

Shoigu said the expansion will be spread across all branches of Russia’s military and will be coordinated with the delivery of new weapons to equip them, the Defense Ministry said in a statement, according to Interfax.

Russia will create three new motorized-infantry divisions and two airborne divisions, combining a number of brigades, Shoigu said in comments posted on the ministry’s Telegram channel. He also called for special attention to the recruitment of contract soldiers to fill out the ranks of the expanded military.

Since ordering the invasion nearly a year ago, Putin has laid plans to reverse years of reductions in the ranks of Russia’s military. The Kremlin hasn’t said how it will recruit all the new troops, but has proposed raising the draft age, which may increase the number of men eligible for conscription.

Russia has repeatedly said it plans to boost deployments in the northwest in response to a pending expansion of NATO, where Finland and Sweden are in the process of joining, with their applications ratified by 28 of 30 alliance members. The Nordic countries’ entry into the military bloc would double its land border with Russia.

COMMENT:  And what is our response to this?  I'm not sure we have one.  We can't even be sure what our Ukraine policy is.  On the one hand, we've committed ourselves to supplying Ukraine with many of the weapons needed to fight off the Russian invasion.  On the other hand, Americans are uneasy with how long this war will take and how much will be needed.  The president provides no real leadership and has not seen fit to explain Ukraine to the American people.  If political support for aid to Ukraine founders just before the 2024 election, what would we do?  Our own prestige and position as leader of the free world are involved.

January 17, 2023     Permalink

OUR CONTINUALLY SINKING SCHOOLS:  Education has become a major topic at Urgent Agenda, because there's so much to report, and little of it good.  From RealClearInvestigations: 

Reports of student misbehavior have risen sharply in public schools, as districts also report widespread “stunted” social development among students.

Yet special education resources may not be able to cope with the subsequent rise in students with special needs.

The annual “School Pulse Panel,” a survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences (IES), revealed some troubling trends:

• More than 80% of public schools reported “stunted behavioral and socioemotional development” among students because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Schools also saw a 56% increase in “classroom disruptions from student misconduct” and a 49% increase in “rowdiness outside of the classroom.”

• Seven in 10 public schools reported increases in students seeking mental health services since the start of the pandemic.

Many of the problems reported in the survey were preexisting, even if exacerbated by pandemic policies. For example, the demand for social and mental health services was already trending upward well before COVID-19.

Data reveal struggling students are increasingly turning to special education professionals following a return to in-person classes.

The National Center for Education Statistics reports more than seven million children in America receive special education services, roughly 15% of kids in grades K-12. This caseload predates the pandemic and represents a level of need that is already straining district budgets.

According to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, each special needs student must have an Individual Education Plan (IEP). IEP teams are comprised of therapists and psychologists, as well as teachers and administrators.

However, as schools struggle to find these professionals and more students request special education services, the pre-existing deficit between students and resources increases, leaving more would-be special education students without federally mandated care and placing schools and districts in legal jeopardy.

IES data reveals roughly 60% of public schools already lack enough professional staff to meet their school’s need for mental health and behavioral intervention services.

If resources are tapped, students for whom special education services are essential will be harmed by the resulting diminishment of services.

This strain on special education raises the question of whether the use of limited special education resources is appropriate for students whose difficulties don’t necessarily impair their learning long term, but rather are more indicative of an episodic struggle.

However, parents in states that offer school choice programs may qualify for scholarships that can be used for special education tutoring or even enrollment in a private school.

COMMENT:  RealClearInvestigations should be commended for this kind of journalism.  Quality reporting on the details of how school systems perform, and how students behave, is pretty rare.  There's an old political saying that "children don't vote," and are therefore ignored, and it's true in many respects.  Education today has been so politicized that schools have become part of the political mix of news stories.  Impact on kids is secondary.

If Republicans are smart, they'd make education issues, especially school choice, central pieces of their 2024 campaign.  If they're smart.

January 16, 2023      Permalink