[NYPost] NYC spends a staggering $43B a year to school about 850,000 students.
In failing school districts across the country, administrators are engaged in the clearest sign of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again.
Nowhere is that more true than in New York City.
The state of Gotham’s public schools is so dire that Amazon’s Jeff Bezos recently took aim.
“If we ran Amazon the way New York City runs their school system,” he declared, “packages would take six weeks to arrive, we’d charge you a $100 delivery fee and when the package did finally arrive, it would have the wrong item.”
For liberals, the solution is the same one they offer for every other societal problem: throwing more taxpayer money into a bottomless pit.
And yet no matter how much is spent, the problems don’t just linger; they grow like a cancer.
Along with poor academic outcomes, those billions are buying increasingly unsafe schools: Student assaults are rising even as city schools suspend fewer students.
Worse yet, the US Department of Education recently opened a civil-rights investigation following reports of in-school discrimination against Jewish students.
It’s a deeply troubled system at every level.
But while New York City schools remain trapped in a cycle of apathy and excuses, administrators in another big-city school district are demonstrating another path is possible.
In Houston, Texas, just two years into a dramatic state-led intervention, student gains in the Houston Independent School District are the envy of urban districts across the country.
The turnaround began in 2023, when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s administration took over HISD after years of chronic academic failure, including a persistently underperforming high school that failed to meet state standards.
Predictably, the move was met with outrage: The state’s American Civil Liberties Union chapter claimed the “hostile takeover” was motivated by racial bias.
Two years later, the results are impossible to ignore.
According to HISD’s latest academic report, the number of A- and B-rated campuses has more than doubled, rising from 93 schools before the takeover to 197 schools today.
Meanwhile, D- and F-rated campuses collapsed from 121 schools to just 18, and the district no longer has a single F-rated campus remaining.
Reading scores on the state’s STAAR standardized test increased by nearly 14% districtwide.
And for minority students, the numbers are just as impressive: Black and Hispanic students posted reading gains of more than 15%.
Economically disadvantaged students and emergent bilingual students also posted double-digit STAAR gains.
Math achievement has climbed as well, with Hispanic students, black students and low-income students all showing meaningful improvement.
Even more impressive, Houston students are now closing achievement gaps with the rest of Texas that had once been so entrenched as to seem permanent.
So what changed?
The answer is refreshingly simple: Adults started acting like adults again.
#2
Aside from the usual Liberal Agenda & NEA issues.
Could the NYC school failings be in large part to,
too much diversity and the impossibility of addressing so many cultural issues instead focusing on applying the old simple working process to teach all students the same way, in a single classroom?
#3
The purpose of a system is what it does. As a make-work jobs program and grifting engine, NYC schools are a great success. Not quite the scale of California's Train to Nowhere, but NYC is only one instance of a pattern repeated across the country.
From Skid's link: California students, in all grade levels, have long struggled in math. Last year, just 37% of students performed at grade level in math, with some groups of students faring far worse.
With "some groups" being 100 - 37 = 63% which, mathematically speaking, is most.
It is amusing to think that the generation that took us took us to the Moon was educated in one-room schools with chalk boards and McGuffy Readers.
#4
Some 5000 of them segregated schools, the best of which — providing despite segregation an education as good as anything the better white schools did — were built as a gift to local Southern Black communities by the Jewish owner of Sears. See Rosenwald Schools.
#1
Anything the govt gives you for free will be worth every penny.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
06/09/2026 8:44 Comments ||
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#2
The Times of London states the main reason for extremely long A&E wait times is not the emergency room itself, but rather that the other departments in hospitals are so overcrowded they cannot admit any more patients for treatment.
Perhaps the overcrowding of new citizens is a factor?
...all patients should be seen within four hours of arriving at A&E. The last time that happened nationwide was in 2015.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/09/2026 8:59 Comments ||
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#3
Travelers from the States (USCITS) face even greater medical challenges getting seen, meds, or treatment.
#5
In the State, a lot of emergency rooms closed because of the unfunded federal mandate that they could not refuse (uninsured) patients. Most emergency rooms now are found in state funded university hospitals. Give the inventiveness of Americans, the system has come up with commercial 'urgent care' outlets to cover most non-threatening immediate medical care.
#6
In fairness, I've had some nightmarish experiences in California emergency rooms.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
06/09/2026 12:46 Comments ||
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#7
In the State, a lot of emergency rooms closed because of the unfunded federal mandate that they could not refuse (uninsured) patients.
That's a big, big part of the problem. Of course, the uninsured are usually here illegally. You know it's a problem when you walk into an emergency room and it looks like the Third World.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
06/09/2026 12:49 Comments ||
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#8
Thinning the herd.
Posted by: Regular joe ||
06/09/2026 13:06 Comments ||
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#9
^5
Agree with Proco...
Also note that the spreading of Urgent Care facilities has been very beneficial. Probably about 15,000 or so in the USA. Probably 160 M or so visits to these facilities. In some small towns, it is almost like a hospital in terms of the town's dependence on them. They were overwhelmed during Covid but still probably saved many lives.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
06/09/2026 13:16 Comments ||
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#10
#6 Abu: Show up in a CBP uniform. Watch the room empty out.
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/09/2026 13:55 Comments ||
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#11
^ That'd be fun.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
06/09/2026 16:08 Comments ||
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#12
Urgent Care is where you go when it's non-life threatening but bad enough that you don't want to wait for an appoint with your primary care doctor. It's a good thing.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
06/09/2026 16:12 Comments ||
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#13
2018, UC Davis Sacramento Emergency Room, my wife had a 102+ fever and urinary tract infection. After 7 hours waiting, with the patient next to us an illegal Mexican with a stomach ailment, handcuffed to a gurney, with a Sacramento Country Deputy Sheriff escorting him, we notified the desk we were leaving. Within five minutes a Nurse arrived took my wife's temperature, put her in a wheel chair and she was admitted. We were placed in a semi=private room, waited another two hours for a Doctor who examined my wife, provided oral antibiotics and a prescription, and signed the discharge paperwork. After midnight so that they could bill for the overnight hospitalization. We were clearly admitted solely to avoid the loss of a paying customer! We left CA in 2019 and have never regretted to move, despite my wife being a native Californian and most of her family and ours still in Newport Beach and Huntington Beach. Paradise Lost!
#21
Nice, Beavis! It’s always nice when one’s child(ren) share an interest.
For some reason, many of the cardiology fellows at the University of Cincinnati happen to be Pakistani. It will be interewting to see if that’s still so a year from now.
#22
Nice, Beavis! It’s always nice when one’s child(ren) share an interest.
“The sport they play in Heaven”. I have 3 pics mounted of the USS Alabama in the background in Mobile with myself, my daughter and son the first is me, then 12 years later my son and then my daughter a couple years after that on the exact same pitch
[The Daily Economy] Adam Smith (1723-1790) is widely considered to be the father of modern economics. There were precursors, such as the School of Salamanca and the French Physiocrats, but Adam Smith’s 1776 magnum opus, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, was the first comprehensive treatise.
In this 250th anniversary year, much ink will be spilled — and with good reason — celebrating the legacy of Adam Smith. My purpose here is as joyous as it is modest: to share ten quotations that are particularly relevant today, and demonstrate Adam Smith’s enduring influence. I like to weave them into my lectures — on markets, on political economy, on constitutional economics, or on the moral foundations of capitalism. Adam Smith, in the versatility of his writings, was indeed a man for all seasons.
1. THE INVISIBLE HAND ACTS
[B]y directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention… By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
Perhaps the single best-known concept from Adam Smith, the invisible hand was famously picked up by the Austrian school of economics and its key lesson of spontaneous order. FA Hayek, especially, noted the importance of phenomena that were “the result of human action, but not of human design.” Alas, interventionists of all stripes still think they can supersede the invisible hand of the market.
2. PEOPLE ARE NOT PAWNS
The flip side of the invisible hand involves social and economic engineering. Adam Smith was prescient in describing the psychology of social engineers, those self-proclaimed experts who believe, in their hubris, that they can run an entire economy.
The man of system…is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamored with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it.
Whaddaya know? Looks like the charismatic Nithya Raman has overtaken maverick candidate Spencer Pratt in the Los Angeles mayoral “jungle” primary because. . . jungle reasons. That is, the denizens of LA’s vast homeless encampments — once known as “hobo jungles” — apparently voted overwhelmingly by mail for the Harvard-credentialed champion of street-junkies in the Silver Lake, Echo Park, Los Feliz, Atwater, and Hollywood neighborhoods (SELAH) she represents on the LA City Council.
So, it will be a November runoff between the super-duper “progressive” incumbent Karen Bass, and merely super-progressive Ms. Ramen. Better reserve your U-Haul trailer ASAP, as the City of Angels completes its transformation to the City of Zombies. And no complaining, please. This is what you voted for.
[FrontPage] Sure, let’s have mass migration from those parts of the world that hate us the most and want to kill us.
What could possibly keep going wrong over and over and over and then over again.
Here’s the latest incident of too many to keep count of.
Two California men have been charged over an ISIS terror plot to kill US Special Forces operatives with grenades and drones.
Bereen Dzayee, 25,
…briefly a Navy sailor, but Mummy harangued him all his life to kill Americans, so he tried via his new BFF, the FBI informant…
of Lakeside, near San Diego, and Elias Shamsaldeen, 21, of Porterville in Tulare County were arrested Friday alongside Bisaam Ghafoor, 21, from Leawood, Kansas.
Prosecutors allege the three paid $2,000 to someone they thought was from the jihadi group to buy rocket-propelled grenades and UAVs for the attack.
Pentagon officials have not confirmed Dzayee’s military status but neighbors and a former classmate told NBC 7 he served in the Navy and identified photos showing him in a sailor’s uniform.
Nothing is confirmed, but Dzayee tends to be an Iraqi Kurdish name and Shamsaldeen and Ghafoor tend to be Arabic ones. And they were really excited at the idea of killing Americans.
[Newsweek] There may be no clear victor yet, but as the Iran war marks its 100th day on Sunday, early winners and losers have emerged that have upset pre-conflict predictions.
Political and business leaders often tout their first 100 days in office as a timeframe to achieve swift objectives, but as the war hits the milestone, other significant numbers have come to the fore. These include up to 2,211 people killed, more than 22,000 injured and more than 3.9 million displaced, according to missile strikes.com, although estimates vary.
In just over three months, the war has spread to Lebanon, energy markets have been upended, Iran has retaliated with strikes across the Gulf, and the U.S. standing in the region, as well as global diplomacy, have been severely tested, raising questions over who has benefited and who has been hurt so far.
More at the link
Posted by: badanov ||
06/09/2026 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1767 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
It's Newsweak, so - reading between a few lines - I'm sure Trump is the big loser.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/09/2026 1:33 Comments ||
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Over three months of war, Iran and the U.S. have used the Strait of Hormuz to demonstrate resolve while inflicting economic pain. The world urgently needs the strait to reopen, but whether free passage returns or another arrangement solidifies will have far-reaching consequences.
The blockage of the Strait of Hormuz is a contentious element in negotiations to end the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and an issue of significant interest to countries nearby and far away.
The strait is an international waterway and the right to transit it is protected by international law. Nonetheless, Tehran’s influence over the strait is a tremendous source of leverage in its negotiations with the U.S. to end the war. Iran, which spent decades preparing for conflict with a conventionally superior adversary, made blocking shipping through the strait a major (though untested) component of its planning. After the U.S. and Israel launched their war on Iran on 28 February – which is widely viewed as violating UN Charter prohibitions of the use of force – Tehran turned one of the world’s most important waterways into a weapon. The U.S. has countered by imposing its own blockade of Iranian ports. Though a ceasefire that began on 7-8 April (depending on time zone) has tamped down the air war that began on 28 February, Iran and the U.S. continue to contest control of the strait.
Iran and the U.S. are both betting that they can inflict sufficient economic consequences on their foes to strengthen their position at the negotiating table, while mitigating costs to themselves. Meanwhile, the strait remains closed to most traffic, and the war’s global economic consequences continue to mount. (At the time of publication, accounts were circulating in the press of a possible memorandum of understanding between the parties, but the terms are not included here, as they are still not final.)
More at the link
Posted by: badanov ||
06/09/2026 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1748 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
[Commentary] Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat did not, with great fanfare, sign a cease-fire in 1979. They signed a historic peace treaty. The American Revolutionary War was not ended by the Cease-Fire of Gay Paree, nor do we speak of the Cease-Fire of Versailles.
Yet cease-fires—vague, temporary, and ill-defined periods in which combatants sometimes retreat to their corners and sometimes just keep punching—are the best we can do when it comes to the Middle East today.
There is no great mystery here for anyone but the willfully blind: States that won’t make peace with Israel will nonetheless make cease-fires with Israel because a cease-fire isn’t peace.
These antagonists have one more characteristic in common, and that is their primary motive. We can discern this motive by observing where else, and against whom specifically, they carry on this same war.
Last week, Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi found himself in a Manhattan courtroom on terrorism-related charges that included his alleged role in the stabbing of two Jewish men in Golders Green last month, as well as the Molotov cocktailing of a synagogue on North Macedonia and plans to carry out similar Molotov cocktailings in several American cities.
Saadi is, according to the evidence against him, commander of an Iranian proxy group under the aegis of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the state military organization that is likely running the country since the death of the last ayatollah and mysterious condition of the current one.
Three weeks ago, Germany charged two men for allegedly planning to assassinate Jewish communal leaders in Berlin, as well as other identifiably Jewish targets. The leader of the plot was a Danish citizen who, according to Germany, worked for the IRGC.
Two months before that was the Michigan terror attack, in which a man tried to massacre Jewish children at a synagogue. His connections were to Hezbollah, also an Iranian militia.
The Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... of Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... is currently waging a global war on Jews. Israel is part of that war, and so is America. But so is every other country with Jews in it. Unless I missed it, no one has yet demanded a cease-fire in this broader war, because the Jews of Golders Green and Berlin and North Macedonia and New York and Arizona and Michigan and Los Angeles are not firing at Iran. They are only being fired at—by Iran. And the campus activists and NGOs and enlightened progressive politicians don’t seem to want that firing to cease.
And the cease-fires we do get are a joke, for the same reason: Iran has declared a war that is permanent. That means that while the forgivably war-weary can try to forget about the conflicts each time a cease-fire is reached, Jews cannot. Nor should anyone in the countries in which those Jews reside, because they will be either targets of Iran or at risk of being collateral damage in attacks on major population centers.
Saadi is a revealing example of how this all works. By all accounts, Saadi worked closely with Qasem Soleimani, the IRGC commander who, more than any other single person, was the poster boy for Iran’s global wars until he was killed in a U.S. dronezap in 2020. Saadi claimed he was "like a son" to the late terrorist leader. Saadi also appears to have had a reasonably close working relationship with the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ...the very aged actual dictator of Iran, successor to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini...> until he was killed in the opening hours of U.S. and Israeli operations in February.
The complaint against Saadi includes records of him calling for violence against "Jewish synagogues" and "Zionist headquarters" and "a Jewish temple" and "a Jewish center" and the like.
Again, there will be no cease-fires proffered by figures like Saadi. There is no expectation of getting Iran to formally agree to stop targeting Jews around the world for liquidation.
Iran will discuss potential cease-fires with the United States military, of course. Because it would like the Americans to turn a blind eye to its unceasing global war. But there is no point before, during, or after negotiations for cease-fires or nuclear deals at which Jews are not at that moment being targeted for murder somewhere by Iran. When that war is over, we can talk of peace.
#1
Until a few "influencers" actually read some HISTORY of the Muddled East written before 1970, and read and understand the true meaning of the Quran, there will never be anything but conflict in the area. Current "advisors" are stupid and uninformed, and provide bad advice. The only thing the Arab mindset understands is power, the "strongest horse" concept. Everything else is taqqiyah, another concept lost on current "thinkers".
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
06/09/2026 9:57 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling 
