Archives for April 2018

Today, there is a statewide teacher strike in Arizona that is affecting 852,000 students. The effort, known by its hashtag #RedForEd, is looking for an immediate 20% pay raise for teachers, and a restoration of around $1 billion dollars in school funding cuts that have been made since the Great Recession.

I’m going to attempt to explain to anyone, but especially teachers, why Americans (not just Arizonans) are increasingly reluctant to increase spending on government-run schools. I’m going to do my best to stay away from statistics (but there will be a few) because they are simultaneously overwhelming and limited. I say that because the vast majority of statistics available are put out by mainstream media and teachers’ unions. [Read more…]

In the 1980s, panic over waste disposal hit a fever pitch. No small player in the panic was a single trash barge called the Mobro 4000, loaded with over 3,000 tons of trash. The owner of the barge was a Long Island mob boss in the trash-hauling business.

He’d come up with a simple scheme. After earning New York rates to receive the trash, he planned to ship it to Louisiana where the cost-per-ton to dispose of it was significantly lower than New York’s. He’d pay Louisiana’s lower disposal fee and make a pretty penny on the difference in cost. [Read more…]