Recent content by intertidal

Last weekend, I bought beer and wine at Nick's. When the cashier didn't ask for ID, I asked her if she wanted to see my license. She burst out laughing. I told her that wasn't very nice but was happy she was so enjoying her job...

IMO, Mike Miller needs to go. But this complete fool is not the person to do it. At one time, Calvert was represented by decent and honorable people like Bernie Fowler. Now we have trash looking out for themselves.

I've never seen this "thug-like" teacher union behavior. Perhaps you can describe a local example. I have however, witnessed the AFL-CIO bus in real union thugs from DC who tried to prevent mostly local senior citizens from attending a meeting about Dominion at the Southern Community Center...

I'm a product of parochial schools that I mostly despised for their brutality (can never forget seeing a student with a compound leg fracture forced to climb/crawl up a flight of stairs in obvious great pain). My kids attended excellent public schools in Calvert and excelled. One got a perfect...

http://hechingerreport.org/devos-praises-virtual-schools-new-research-points-problems/ https://www.the74million.org/article/betsy-devos-trumps-edsec-pick-promoted-virtual-schools-despite-dismal-results https://www.idahoednews.org/kevins-blog/devos-overstates-grad-rates-idva-virtual-schools/

People commonly think the argument by politicians in favor of vouchers is for alternative brick-and-mortar schools. The actual push by Betsy DeVos et al is for "virtual schools" - little more than some superficial website put up by a corporation that wants taxpayer funds without the overhead of...

I'm not aware of any correlation between teacher compensation and the expenditures cited by county. Teacher pay is only one, and probably a fairly minor component to total expenditure per student. Since teachers can have over 200 students, many would be quite happy to be paid per student - say...

There is no reason to "guess" who will be squeezed by the perpetually underperforming pension fund. The history of who will pay has been very clear - it has been the employees. In 2011, the forced pension contribution was increased 40%. For new teachers and state workers, retirement age was...

Actually, all MD state workers (except contractuals) and teachers pay the same 7% of their pay since the 2011 change. The extra 2% of pay was put into the general fund in the early years, but now goes to the pension fund. The counties pay a percentage of the pension to the state and that portion...

Salary scales for positions show grades and steps within grades. They are used by recruiters to suggest that each step is an annual increase. Even those in this discussion look at the salary scale and assume that step 10, for example, means that a teacher or state worker, with 10 years...

You have to admit that gov't has done an excellent job at screwing over the workers while at the same time demonizing them for receiving the very worst pension value in the US. Such shrewd and cynical politics is often bad public policy. Ask an actuary what he would be willing to pay for the MD...

There is no need for anyone to pony up more money - not the employees nor the taxpayers. Stop the insanity of paying hundreds of millions in very high fees for consistently bad performance and go with low-cost index funds. OR tie the fee structure to performance (wishful thinking, yes...).

The returns are indeed dismal and why they are so dismal is the real issue. The hundreds of pension fund managers hired by the state pension fund are paid very high fees. No sane person would pay such fees as an independent investor...

AKA "liars and thugs", language used to demean teachers - but only those who teach at public schools.

Nearly all entrances to route 4 are made from a dead stop from side roads, and not everyone can go from 0 to 60 in 4 seconds. I drive it daily and at 61-62 mph, I'm the slowest vehicle on the road. It seems to be worse now than ever.