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Sometimes, I just shake my head.  This started when we were going over “Federal Projects” of which one is Title II whereupon the Feds allocate monies to the Various States and then the State Board of Educations then allocate their share to towns and cities based on grant requests from said towns and cities.  Briefly said, this is money to “improve learning and school staff” (programs to make their teaching capability better). Involved in this is curriculum upgrades – new courses like, say, a new match curriculum for kids in 3rd-5th classes.  Knowing that past experience, we used to flip courses a LOT and while I saw the costs, I never heard what the outcomes were (gee, silly me for wondering, eh?).  So silly engineer me asked the following question (emphasis mine):

Scott, Kirk, and Steve, I am following up on a question that I asked during the Federal Projects subcommittee (in the line of “how do we know if taxpayers are getting sufficient bang for their bucks”):

With respect to the “revamp” question, even if no new curriculum is being introduced, I would still like to know what metrics, especially financial and educational improvement outcomes, were used previously. It goes to the heart of the issue of “we’re spending all this time, effort, and other peoples’ money – what did we get for it?”. Can you, or someone else on the team, dig up that information? What were/are the procedures that you use to determine, in a postmortem / multi-dimensional analysis, whether you got it right, just even, or a failure (to learn from)?

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From Weekend Pundit (emphasis mine):

Speaking of small town New Hampshire, we are going through out budgeting process for both the town and school. It can be a time-consuming effort, with some wanting a lot more money this coming year and others making do with the same amount they spent this year. One of the biggest parts of the budget for our town is the school system which takes up over 68% of the money the town spends. The town side of the budget has managed to keep spending in check, with most budget increases coming in at approximately 1% or less (this coming year’s is no different). But there have been times when the school side has seen huge increase, both as a percentage and in actual dollars. Of course the reasoning we always hear for those increases are the usual “But it’s for the children!”

It’s funny how all that money “for the children” ends up paying rather high salaries for teachers, supervisory staff, and paraprofessionals. I would say it would be worth it if we had the best schools in the state and out kids performed at the top. However the reality is that our school system is really slightly above average. We spend a lot of money for ‘slightly above average’.

In fact, here’s how “slightly above average” our hamlet really does:

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Cemeteries.  Usually a very small part of any town or city’s budget but it is there.  It seems that every town has at least one within its boundaries; mine, due to historical reasons, has a bunch of them.  Many of them were old family plots started well over a hundred years ago and over time, the town took “ownership” of the land and care of the plots (and yes, if they were and descendants are now among us, I feel they should take care of those plots instead of socializing the costs across the rest of us but this is a beef from my last stint on the BudComm) as well as the “central” one across from our Middle/High Schools).  It’s not much of a budget – a couple of guys to properly take care of the grass and detritus that seemingly collects on the grounds.

And urn vaults….what, URNS VAULTS? Is this a Proper Role of Government? And is this a prime (if tiny) example of mission creep?

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With the Left all a twitter about the news of Flynn’s statement of lying to the FBI, never forget that the late US Senator Ted “The Swimmer” Kennedy, that “lion” of the Democrat Senate caucus, actually did connive and collude with Russians (the Communist Soviets at the time) to keep Ronald Reagan from being re-elected as President even as he was thinking about running for the Presidency himself:

Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy had “selfish political and ideological motives” when he made secret overtures to the Soviet Union’s spy agency during the Cold War to thwart then-President Ronald Reagan’s re-election, a Reagan biographer said in an interview with The Daily Signal.

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Court Says Two Women Cannot Conceive a Child, Same-Sex Divorcee Shouts ‘Discrimination!’

Again, who says the Left is the side that believes in Science and Reality?

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Each year, the Budget Committee devolves into sub-committees to handle each area or department of both the Town and the School District.  Yesterday was dedicated to three such meetings for me on the School Board budget: Federal Projects, Food Service, and “District Wide” maintenance.

Now those of you that have been reading the ‘Grok for a while know that one of my big bugaboos is the combination of TANSTAAFL and “free money” – the former being “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch” (H/T: Robert Heinlein) and the “free money” really isn’t – somewhere someone is paying state or federal taxes in order for my hamlet to get “free money.”  I dunno about your elected or appointed officials but mine can very seldom put those two concepts together in a cogent fashion.  Actually, TANSTAAFL doesn’t seem to be in their vocabulary but “free money” often is.

Well, our Assistant Superintendent for Business (chief bean counter) Scott Isabelle decided a bit of bamboozling was in order (paraphrasing here):

Of our total budget, we only have to raise X number dollars via taxes as Federal/State grants take care of the rest.

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Reformatted, emphasis mine:

Sales of new, single-family U.S. homes reached their highest level in ten years due to an increase in housing demand across the country.
The Commerce Department released a report Monday stating that home sales rose 6.2 percent, the highest increase since October 2007, according to Bloomberg Markets…Reuters polled several economists who originally predicted that new home sales, which comprise 11 percent of all home sales, would decline by six percent last month. Instead, new home sales have continued to increase for three months straight.

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We keep hearing that illegal immigrants are a “boon” to our economy – this example (like the meat packing plants of a few years ago) shows that American workers see a “boon” when illegal immigrants, working at lower wages, are removed from the workplace (reformatted, emphasis mine):

A huge Chicago bakery is now hiring Americans at higher wages, following a federal immigration enforcement action which forced the firing of 800 illegal immigrants. The forced departure of the illegal-immigrant workers at the Chicago-based Cloverhill bakery was a financial shock to the Swiss company which bought the bakery from a U.S. investment group in 2014. The illegals comprised one-third of the bakery’s employees, so U.S. sales fell by seven percent when the enforcement forced the company to rebuild its workforce by hiring Americans

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The labeled horizontal lines on these charts aim to give a sense of perspective on electricity consumption levels across the world. For example, in the chart below a very large hydro or nuclear plant could produce enough electricity to meet the demands of 100 million people in Ghana; a large hydro, nuclear, or coal plant could provide for 10 million average global citizens, and average-sized plant would meet demands of ten million in Brazil.

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Boy, they just keep coming as if Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 weren’t enough!  It does bring up a couple important questions:

• Do they ever wonder when enough is enough?
• Do they really think that we in Civil Society have no clue in making decisions for ourselves?
• Or, do they not believe that the vast majority of us would just rather be left alone?

Certainly doesn’t seem that way, does it?  Any ways, next up are the 30%-35% ratings

More after the jump:

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Batter up!  More LSRs / House Bills.  As before, I’m bolding the ones that I’ll be looking at.  As before, if you, dear readers and commenters, have a bit of time and interest, pick one or two (or more, there’s PLENTY to share!), write a paragraph on why you think it is anti-Freedom and pro-Statism (e.g., politicians get to make the decisions instead of letting us Individuals make that decision for ourselves).  I’ll use your name or post it up anonymously based on what you’d prefer.

So, we previously did 0-5% and 6-10% HRA ratings by the LSR/House Bill sponsor; this time we’ll go 11% to 29% (seems like the worse they are, the more they wish to meddle and make our lives more regulated – simply because they believe they are special and won more votes than the other guy):

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Continuing on from Part 1, here is the next tranche of LSRs/House bills submitted into the House of Representative:

Reminder: this list is for purposes of triage – quickly guesstimating which bills are bad or good based on whether their sponsors have good or bad voting records. There are times when bad Reps sponsor good bills and vice versa. But if I were looking for bad bills, I would start by looking at bills from bad Reps, then look at the bill text to make a more definitive evaluation.

So, we did the 0-5% sponsor rating LSRs/HBs last time – now for the 6-10% range.  Again, I am bolding ones that I’ll try to look at:

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“I can go bankrupt at 40 percent as easily as 100 percent.”

One or two or three stories may be anecdotal – but this is starting to turn into a flood and we have only Obama and Democrats to thank for this.  They designed it, they legislated it, they passed it, they regulated it, they did illegal changes (via E.O.s to it), they ran it.  And not one Republican voted for it and they ALL ran on getting rid of it (but they’ve proven, as a Party, they can’t get the job done when it really counts).  RedDiaperBaby and Jeemo have tried to deflect, discombobulate, and blame everyone except those that did the deeds (er, Democrats) and deny that the stories about the cost of individual plans for those that make too much to qualify for everyone else to pay their bill (e.g., subsidies from the Government).

So, here’s a few more – that hit more to home because they are from NH (and I know some of them as well).  Once again, let’s watch RDB and Jeemo try to plug up the Obamacare dike that’s leaking like a sieve.  From the Union Leader (emphasis mine, reformatted):

Sticker shock hits NH health insurance buyers

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