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If an average classroom size is about 25 students and we multiply that by the average spending, that gives us $275,000 per year per classroom. If you’re in a school with 40 classrooms that’s $11 million per year to run a school. “But Kira, not all that money is for the classroom. What about principals, staff, and other administrators at the district and state level? Surely those things suck some money out of the classroom.”  You have pinpointed the exact problem. Indeed, much of that money does get funneled to staff and off-site administration. So much that in many places administrative costs have massively outpaced school population growth. In some states, like Louisiana, the public school population actually decreased even as administrative hires exponentially increased.

From 1950 to 2009 the student population increased by 95% while school personnel grew by 386%. In contrast, teacher hirings increased by just 252% while administrators and other school staff increased by a shocking 702%.

The actual post started from a very different place and wound up here – go read it.  I will tell you how LITTLE

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Yes, I am deliberately being shameless in “culturally appropriating” a line from a well beloved Christmas carol – deal with it because FREEDOM!  That’s what Americans do – take from other cultures (after all, there’s plenty to “borrow” from) and repurpose it to make our culture better.  But here, the question fits as now the massive flurry of subcommittee meetings and report writing has calmed down and one can actually start to sit down and meditate, cogitate, and try to do something more than a surface cursory level analysis.  Like “how come it costs so much?”

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And being close to the North Pole, Canada give us another reason to ignore them.  From an official Government of Canada website:

Santa is moving to the South Pole

What?

Thanks to rising global temperatures, rapidly melting Arctic ice and growing human operations in the North, Santa Claus has signed an agreement with the International community to relocate his village next year to operate in an exclusive zone in the South Pole.

So What?

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This from a guy who lives behind a 39 foot high wall:

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis strongly defended immigrants at his Christmas Eve Mass on Sunday, comparing them to Mary and Joseph finding no place to stay in Bethlehem and saying faith demands that foreigners be welcomed. Francis, celebrating his fifth Christmas as leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, led a solemn Mass for about 10,000 people in St. Peter’s Basilica while many others followed the service from the square outside.

Yes, he is preaching – let everyone into your country on his say-so. After all, it’s the Christian thing to do.  Yet, this:

Security was stepped up, with participants checked as they approached St. Peter’s Square even before going through metal detectors to enter the basilica. The square had been cleared out hours earlier so security procedures could be put in place.

Gee, Mary and Joseph were never metal detected and

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EPIC trolling by Fox News’ Jesse Watters on this topic by having a Ph.D candidate, Anne DeLessio-Parson, who maintains that eating meat is  perpetuating “toxic masculinity”.  Best as I can tell from reading the blogosphere, that’s basically third wave militant feminists doing more man hating and hating the fact they haven’t feminized men to act they way they want (er, subservient). Yeah, sure – I suppose that the Eldest serving in Iraq in the Marines and the Youngest with the 101st in Afghanistan would be prime targets of these self-deluded full of themselves “speakers of twaddle”.

Anyways, you gotta love how Watters handles the entire interview:

Oh yeah, she’s a vegan – and ran away from Watter’s question of how does meat eating do this.  That’s a first order action by a nitwit who knows that the jig is up.  What is most dangerous, however, is that 

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Yup, everything is racist, every one that disagrees with Progressives/Democrats/SJWs/Leftists is a racist. Especially all you deplorables and irredeemables that refuse to stop clinging to your Bibles and guns. Why can’t you just admit that you lost and now you should be like us who are desperately trying to be European Socialist Intellectual chic. Because RACISM!

Tucker Carlson has put together a whole long list of 100 things that became racist one night while we Normals were sleeping and then were accused of being such even as we all went “huh?  When?”

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Treehugger’s Lloyd Alter is on his own jeremiad about cars, technology, suburbs, cars, that people don’t like cities, and cars.  His post is about Elon Musk – you know, that smart smart guy behind Tesla, Sun City, SpaceX, PowerWall, the Boring Corporation, and a few others.  The thing that many have noticed is that he is especially great at rent-seeking vast subsidies from various levels of government to keep his companies going.  That, however, isn’t Alter’s rant – rather that Musk is enabling a future that goes completely against what Alter believes our future should be (in short, rack’em and stack’em in micro-apartments that would force you to walk everywhere and shop for your food every day because he hates anything big including normal size fridges).  Anyways, it apparent he’s all in on “planners” being in charge and making many of decisions for “us” instead of we ourselves.  Commenter “professor” seems to agree (emphasis mine):

Professor 
Couldn’t agree more with this article. So much of today’s tech just seems like a bunch of band aid “solutions” to problems that wouldn’t exist if cities were planned properly as complete communities.

As someone who has written his fair share about the dangers of Sustainable Communities Initiative (as it was renamed from Agenda 21 here in NH), that grabbed my attention. So yes, I went satire on him:

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Democrats: live by the tax!  Republicans (today): OK, die by your tax, too

And no, may it never live again.  As I said at the time of enactment of Obamacare (without a single Republican vote), the Founders would be spinning like mad to hearing that the Federal Government, supposedly limited in scope and power, would require citizens to purchase something that they otherwise not.  Not a whit, whisper, or wisp of such a power was enumerated in the Constitution.  Then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Roberts said that the Constitution allowed Congress to levy taxes – even a tax on “doing nothing” (e.g., refusing to participate in an commercial activity demand would result in a tax).

Who knew that he knew better than many at the time – that he set a trap that could be tripped if only the right people knew how (and had the gumption to do so)?

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The end is near?  Gosh, I’m still able to post this up so that other thingy that had the Democrats’ panties in a collective wedgie hasn’t come to pass – the Internet is still here.

The new Tax Bill – YAYAYA! The Obamacare “get taxed if you decide to do nothing” is GONE! Every tax bracket is getting tax cuts with middle class getting the highest percentage cuts (will post the chart later). Of course the Left and MSM are only using the amounts that are derived from percentages instead of the percentages themselves (e.g., at 2%, and $10,000 / worker will get a $200 tax refund while a $1,000,000/year worker will get $20,000) – use it in a classic Marxist way to provoke class warfare.  At this point, though, they don’t care as they can’t tell us the difference between themselves and Socialists.  They WANT a Socialist society – why else behave and report they way they do and why else behave and legislate and pontificate the way they do?

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The income tax now set up by the Republican Tax Reform SHOULD have Democrats jumping for joy – it makes it even MORE Progressive than before (which I don’t think is a good thing). Emphasis mine:

The Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) has released its distributional analysis of the final Republican tax bill. The bill provides even larger percentage cuts for middle earners than previous versions of the legislation. If the legislation is enacted, higher earners will pay an even larger share of the overall income tax burden than they do now. Our highly “progressive” income tax will be even more progressive. That approach is counter to sound fiscal governance and undermines the growth potential of tax reform, but that is what Republicans are delivering…

…Looking at JCT’s table for 2019, second column, the percentage cuts are roughly similar across income groups from $20,000 to $1,000,000. But the JCT table slants the results by including payroll and excise taxes. The table under-measures the percentage cuts to the middle compared to the top. The table below takes estimated payroll and excise taxes out of the JCT data. It shows individual and corporate income tax cuts as a percentage of estimated individual and corporate income taxes paid under current law. Middle-income households will receive by far the largest percentage income tax cuts in 2019.

Look at the right hand column – THAT 

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Oh, it sounds SO nice and fuzzy – it’s for the Children, it’s for the Adults, it’s for the Seniors. How could ANYONE be against – yet another government program.  Republican Committeeman Steve Duprey seems to be in favor of this:

…Steve Duprey, president of Foxfire Property Management and the Duprey Companies; Brad Sawler, owner of Oxland Builders; and Dee Fitzgerald, a brand manager for W.S. Badger Co….House Bill 628 would establish a fund to be used for paid family and medical leave. Funding would come from either employees or employers in New Hampshire, and funded through premiums that would be about 0.5 percent of an employee’s weekly wage.

Hey, it’s just a cuppa coffee, right?  Just one more after the other “just a cuppa”….as I’ve said before, I feel like I’m pulling a tank truck of joe behind me. Just another government program that, well, the private sector can do for itself – right Steve Duprey, you rent-seeker you!

Costs could be lowered as well for both the employers and the employees, which Duprey said he favors. Duprey said that he already has a similar program in place at his company, but the state program could cut premium costs by more than half. “I think this would not be successful if it had an employer burden,” he said.

Ah, I get it!  He’s 

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