Like Sherlock Holmes, National Review's Marc Oestreich makes deductions from a curious absence: The Empty Desks Are Telling Us Something. (archive.today link) The basic facts aren't in dispute: "chronic absenteeism" rates in the public schools spiked during the pandemic, and have not returned to pre-pandemic levels in years since.
There's quite a bit of finger-pointing going on. Educrats (of course) blame everyone (except themselves): parents, stingy governments, the kids themselves. But:
The students who are chronically absent are not making a random choice. In many cases, they are responding to schools that have failed to teach them to read, failed to adapt to their needs, failed to make the case that another day in the building is worth what it costs. This is especially true for poor students, older students, and boys, the groups most likely to have been told, year after year, in a thousand bureaucratic dialects, that the system was not built with them in mind.
The honest version of the absenteeism story is not that American parents have suddenly become uniquely irresponsible, or that students have collectively misplaced their work ethic somewhere between TikTok and the bus stop. The honest story is that a significant number of families, concentrated among the poor, the male, and the badly served, have concluded from direct experience that what their local public school offers is not worth the time it costs. Legislatures, confronted with this judgment, have largely chosen to punish the reviewers rather than improve the product.
One of my hopelessly radical crackpot stands: Compulsory attendance laws should be repealed. (See here and here.) I'm reminded of what Yogi Berra was endlessly quoted as saying: "If people don’t want to come out to the ballpark, nobody’s going to stop them."
Explanation of Holmes reference above is here.
Also of note:
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I suppose someday I'll stop blogging about this. But Kevin D. Williamson is (as usual) eloquent, biting, and honest: Donald Trump Is Attempting To Pardon Himself. (archive.today link)
President Donald Trump’s abuse of the pardon power has been consistently corrupt, of course, but it also has been expensive: While the president made headlines last week by proposing to hijack around $1.8 billion from the Treasury to hand out to his political supporters, he already had come close to equalling that sum by means of the pardon power, depriving federal coffers—and crime victims—of some $1.5 billion in fines, restitution, and other obligations owed by—let’s remember this part—criminals. For comparison, President Joe Biden’s pardons, also frequently corrupt, molested the fisc to the tune of only a relatively measly $680,000—not even enough money to buy a (really) good used Ford. Dan Greenberg writes for Cato:
Trump’s pardon pen was a boon to ex-criminals like Trevor Milton (who no longer must repay the investors he defrauded $660 million) and Lawrence Duran (who no longer must repay the government he defrauded $87 million). It was also a boon to HDR Global Trading Ltd., which owed the nation a $100 million fine; in this case, Trump also made history by granting the nation’s very first pardon to a corporation.
HDR Global, no one will be surprised to learn, is one of those shady crypto firms for which the Trump clan has evident enthusiasm. It is reasonable to expect that Trump will attempt to find some way to use his traditional pardon powers to protect himself and his allies from future criminal prosecution—he is better positioned than almost anyone else to appreciate the extent and depth of his criminality and that of his circle—but there is a limitation there: The presidential pardon power applies only to criminal proceedings, not civil suits, to which Trump may find himself vulnerable when he is an ex-president. (This assumes that he does become an ex-president, i.e., that he does not execute a more effective coup d’état than his failed 2021 attempt. Trump himself may be incapable of learning, but there are those around him who are not.) And so there is the “addendum” to his bulls–t payola “settlement” with the IRS—an “addendum” that probably ought to be understood as the main point of the entire exercise. The document amounts to something the law does not give the president even in the context of his very broad pardon power: the power to grant himself, his family, and his business associates federal civil immunity for a lifetime’s (so far) worth of misdeeds—“FOREVER,” all-caps in original.
Kids, ask your local CongressCritters where they stand on impeachment.
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Erwin Schrödinger pets his cat and smiles. Ars Technica points out a possible speedbump on Trump's Road to Serfdom: US's big bet on quantum computing may not be entirely legal.
Last week, the US government announced $2 billion in investments in quantum computing companies, allocating $100 million each to a range of startups in exchange for equity in the companies. Those could be make-or-break investments for many companies that are likely years away from a product that could see widespread use. But a member of the US Congress is now arguing that those deals are illegal, as Congress did not allocate the money for this purpose—instead, it was meant to support public research in semiconductors.
Yes, it's a bad, stupid, fascistic idea. But what guaranteed a link from Pun Salad was the article's subhed:
SIMULTANEOUSLY LEGAL AND NOT LEGAL?
Reader, I looked in the box, and that wave function collapsed to "not legal".
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"Sherman, set the Wayback Machine to 2006." Twenty years ago today I blogged about Tim Grahham's observation that the N.Y. Times Can't Seem To Find A 'Fiscal Liberal' Anywhere in Washington.
New York Times reporter Robert Pear tapped out another article for Thursday’s editions highlighting "conservatives" versus opponents who are merely "Democrats." In fact, Pear used "fiscal conservative" today more times than the New York Times has used the term "fiscal liberal" in 25 years.
By Tim's count, "fiscal conservative" appeared four (4) times in Pear's single article. In comparison, the term "fiscal liberal" only appeared three times in the NYT between 1980 and the (then) present.
I did my own search: back then, Google claimed 344,000 hits for "fiscal conservative" and a mere 10,500 for "fiscal liberal". About a 33-to-1 ratio!
Clearly, with all those fiscal conservatives, we must have had a balanced budget back then, right? But …
Today's Googling reports 218,000 results for "fiscal conservative" and 11,000 for "fiscal liberal". A mere 20-to-1 advantage! And yet…
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LFOD Alert! The WSJ reports: How Business Casual Blew Up the Libertarian National Convention. (WSJ gifted link)
Live free or die, but would it kill you to wear a tie?
That was the essence of Ben Weir’s plea ahead of the biennial Libertarian National Convention in Grand Rapids, Mich.
In a May 15 post on X, Weir, 36, declared that he’d had it with the wacky costumes, which have long been a staple of political party conventions but seem particularly popular among do-what-thou-wilt libertarians.
No more using a boot for headwear, as one convention mainstay named Vermin Supreme did. No more see-through clothing to promote government transparency.
Ben's tweet is linked above, and as you might expect, the replies are entertaining. He is running for Merrimack County sheriff here in the LFOD state. I wish him properly-attired luck.
The "see-through clothing" link is disappointing, and I'd say "don't bother", but (1) that wouldn't be very libertarian of me and (2) you've probably already clicked it.
![[The Blogger]](/ps/images/barred.jpg)
