Thoughts On A Sunday

In yesterday’s post I talked about traffic observations and today I found out that yesterday a neighbor of mine was a victim of someone speeding along the road that passes by The Gulch. In this case he was broadsided as he pulled out from our neighborhood by someone going well above the posted speed limit. Both vehicles were totaled and my neighbor suffered minor leg injuries. Fortunately, he is already home, his stay in the hospital lasting only long enough to treat his injuries.

This accident shows that some people are speeding even on two-lane roads with limited visibility. I must wonder why they are in such a hurry.

I think one more than one occasion I have mentioned I am hooked on watching dashcam videos on YouTube, watching people do dumb stuff that gets them and others into accidents. I have a feeling my neighbor’s experience would have made an excellent example of why checking cross-traffic again and again and again before pulling out is a good idea. I have also seen more than a few videos of accidents caused by people running red lights, in some cases long after the traffic light turned red. It’s one reason I do not automatically start moving once my traffic light changes to green. I pause for a couple of seconds to check for cross-traffic that missed or ignored the red light. That earned me a few horns blowing because I didn’t stomp on the accelerator the instant the light changed. It has also saved me a couple of times when someone did run the red light. On one occasion the motorist behind me got impatient, pulled around me and into the intersection and got T-boned by someone who ran the red light.

On an entirely different subject it looks like we’ll be experiencing freezing rain overnight, perhaps enough to cause damage and knock out the electricity. Therefore, I will be spending some time later today to move the Official Weekend Pundit Generator and make sure it will fire up should the need arise. Even though the chance of losing power is relatively low, I know that if I don’t prepare it will be the one time I will need it and will have to move vehicles around in the dark to get to the generator. (In case you’re wondering, I did ignore prepping once and had to do the vehicle shuffle at 3 in the morning.)

And one last thing: Beezlebub and I are moving the Official Weekend Pundit Snowblower from the storage unit to his place. I haven’t needed it since we sold The Manse mainly because my present driveway is a couple of feet longer than the trusty RAM 1500, something I can handle with a snow shovel, or if I am really lazy, the Official Weekend Pundit Toro Power Shovel.

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This isn’t really a surprise to me.

NYC phone ban reveals some students can’t read clocks.

For years, parents and teachers have blamed technology for a range of lapsed skills — from legible handwriting to sustained attention to reading whole books — even as their proficiency with technology far outstrips their elders. Still, while educators have widely praised New York’s statewide smartphone ban that went into effect this fall, multiple teachers told Gothamist it has also laid bare an unexpected gap: How to tell time.

So many kids are used to reading the time off their smart phones, tablets, and computers. No one ever taught them how to read a traditional clock.

My son – a millennial – never learned to write cursive in school. His mother, her parents, and I taught him how to do that after we realized he couldn’t read cursive. While he still mostly prints, he can read and write cursive. The school system here in my little town started teaching kids to write cursive again a couple of years ago.

Our state legislature banned smart phones in schools statewide earlier this year. Children’s grades and test scores started rising shortly after the ban went into effect. Some schools had banned phones well before the state ban and I think the resulting rise in test scores motivated the legislature and governor to do so statewide.

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When I read the following, my reaction was “Is it all that surprising?”

The EU Could Be Gone In Four Years.

In 1988, if you had told anyone that the Soviet Union would cease to exist just four years later, you would have been dismissed as a crank. The institutions looked solid, the bureaucracy entrenched, and the power absolute. Yet by 1992, it was history.

Today, European politicians in Brussels, Berlin, and Paris suffer from the same dangerous optimism. They believe they are so safely ensconced in their institutional frameworks that public anger can never truly throw them out of the saddle. But looking at the trajectory of the European Union, I believe we are closer to a revolutionary moment than the elites dare to imagine.

The signal I’ve been reading that has led me to believe the EU as we know it is doomed is something I’ve mentioned before:

Increasingly draconian and expensive environmental regulations that have gone well past the point of diminishing return. I deal with them every day at work and they take up more and more of my time and effort to make sure we comply in order for us to be able to sell our products in the EU. It wasn’t all that difficult to do so when a bunch of new regulations that applied to electronic and electrical equipment went into effect in mid-2006. Since then, those same regulations have increased the number of substances we must quantify and added a new directive that dealt with all kinds of products, not just electrical and electronic products. At present there are 251 different chemicals covered under that newer regulation, and more are added every six months.

While in the past compliance with those regulations could be handled through documentation – statements listing the chemical components if they were on the list and what percentage of the chemicals in question were contained in the products, that will soon end, and only certified testing labs will be allowed to quantify the content. That adds a lot of time and cost to each product and testing will have to be performed again and again and again as new chemicals are added to the list even if the product in question does not contain those added to the list.

That is a sign of a runaway bureaucracy, something that has never benefitted the people under the control of those bureaucracies. It will get to the point that it becomes almost impossible to do business in EU or with the EU.

That is but one small example of the EU’s decline. There are plenty more…like Net Zero mandates.

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I’m lumping these two stories together since the both deal with fraud, one about $1 billion student aid fraud and the other about daycare fraud in Minnesota.

In the first case it appears the Department of Education managed to block $1 billion in student aid fraud and are promising to block even more such fraud in 2026.

The U.S. Department of Education announced it has stopped over $1 billion in attempted student aid fraud in 2025, crediting strengthened identity verification policies reinstated under the Trump administration.

The reforms, which include mandatory ID checks for select first-time FAFSA applicants, were introduced after a wave of fraud schemes exploited loosened rules under the Biden administration.

Federal investigators found nearly $90 million in aid had already been fraudulently disbursed, including over $30 million to deceased individuals and more than $40 million to bots posing as students.

The Department responded with a nationwide identity check in June, immediately flagging nearly 150,000 suspicious FAFSA submissions and notifying colleges of potential fraud.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon said requiring an ID to access taxpayer-funded aid is common sense. “From day one, the Trump administration has been committed to rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse across the federal government,” she said. “Merry Christmas, taxpayers!”

Of course I expect the Left to scream bloody murder about the inadequate Biden guidelines and policies being blocked by the Trump Administration because how else can they fund protests carried out by Rent-A-Protester Inc., Antifa, and other leftist organizations? Let’s hope that Trump’s DOE can chop out even more fraud in the coming year.

And then there’s the fraudulent daycare centers with no children and health care operations with no patients in Minnesota being funded by taxpayers:

Minnesota’s fraud problem is no longer theoretical or buried in audit reports. It is happening openly, in real buildings, during normal business hours, with millions of taxpayer dollars flowing to providers that appear unwilling or unable to explain what they actually do.

Recent video investigations by YouTuber Nick Shirley show what happens when someone simply shows up and asks basic questions.

Again, organized fraud siphoning millions of dollars while providing no actual services. In this case it seems to be mostly Somali immigrants defrauding the public and stealing taxpayer dollars. Yet the state of Minnesota seems to be doing absolutely nothing to stop it. It makes me wonder if members of the state government gain something through this fraud.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we’re waiting for the freezing rain to start, we’ve prepped our generators, and where we won’t need to venture out on Monday.