• The Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education voted to ban smartphones for its 429,000 students in an attempt to insulate kids from distractions and social media that undermine learning and hurt mental health. The board voted 5-2, approving a resolution to develop within 120 days a policy prohibiting student use of both items. The policy would be in place by January 2025.
I think this is wonderful. If parents need to reach their kids at school, they can call the office (like the good old days). Now we need to get parents to hold off on giving kids cell phones until at least middle school and permanently ban them from use while the family is eating.
Recently I saw a family of 4 eating at a restaurant and all 4 (parents and 2 teenagers) were using their phones. I wanted to scream.
•Donald Trump is taking aim at business leaders, saying they should be fired if they don’t support him.
In two long Truth Social posts quoting a Wall Street Journal article, Trump said “Business Executives and Shareholder Representatives should be 100% behind Donald Trump! Anybody that’s not should be fired for incompetence!”
We don’t need a president who gets elected by blackmail.
•I was excited when I read this, but it was a little misleading. “The Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s approach to regulating the abortion pill mifepristone with a ruling that will continue to allow the pills to be mailed to patients without an in-person doctor’s visit.”
They did not rule on the matter at all just refused to hear the case on a technical issue. The court ruled that the doctors and anti-abortion groups that had challenged access to the drug did not have the standing to sue.
•The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has given Ventura $30 million to support the city’s planned water recycling program. The grant is for the VenturaWaterPure project that will ultimately treat wastewater to drinking water and reduce discharges of effluent into the Santa Clara River.
The project is expected to deliver up to 20% of the city’s annual water demand when fully operational.
The VenturaWaterPure program has already received some federal funding. The Reclamation Bureau previously provided $18 million, and the Environmental Protection Agency last year provided nearly $174 million of low interest loans.
Overall cost estimates for the project just keep getting higher and higher. In November, city officials estimated the price had risen at least $182 million more than previously budgeted. The figure increased from $374.4 million to $556.9 million.
Inflation, bids and project design costs all went up, officials said. Shouldn’t that have been factored in the original projected costs? This is how government agencies get a project started. When half completed, they run out of money and, of course, need more to complete the project.
The project has been very disruptive to many of our streets and continues to be. I certainly hope the final results will be worth at least $556.9 million. To learn more, you can visit VenturaWaterPure.net.
Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.
~ Plato
