I Was Told There Would Be No Math

They lied.

Fun case where my client owns a restaurant.

A mismatch occurs in the food orders and the bills, and the provision company claims he owes over $20k over the year relationship.

This is compounded by the fact that the head chef (now appropriately fired) was apparently ordering things on the restaurant's dime that he was then taking out the back door to use for his own benefit - apparently with the knowledge and in cahoots with the delivery guy from the food provision company.

So they sue, and I'm defending against this 20k claim.

Both delivery guy and head chef are now no longer with their respective companies and not about to admit what they did, we have some hearsay statements from other employees as to what was going on but admissibility of such statements are rather difficult.

Even better, the food provision company claims they had no idea what was going on and denies they ever made a statement to my client that they also thought something was off when they saw stuff being ordered that had not been ordered before that was out of character for the type of restaurant it is.

So we want to see how much is owed.  They had sent invoices they claimed were unpaid but did not provide all of the invoices so we can't match payments to invoices.  Nor do they provide an actual running balance nor record of payments being applied. 

We ask for the invoices in discovery, they send the same ones they already sent and do not send all of them, even as we had asked for all of them.

We're on a stupid tight timeline, and the court had originally ordered it to trial without any discovery period.

I asked for discovery and the court is rocketing this one through and give exactly 30 days for it - and parties have 28 days to respond to a request for discovery.  Not good, so I send the requests out immediately.

They answer claiming they already provided the invoices.  Well, no they did not - they only provided those they claim are unpaid as they are the most recent.

They finally provide all invoices a few days before the scheduled trial date as I threaten to do a motion to compel them to produce it - unfortunately it wouldn't be heard until after the trial date so that is a problem. But at least they provide them.

Over 192 pages.   Not given in any particular order. Many pages are not invoices either. A couple days before trial I might add.

So we start going through and adding them up.

And we find duplicate invoices salted into the pile. Not beside one another, but shoved in throughout the stack.

So we stop, reshuffle all 192 pages to date order, remove the duplicates that just happened to be the highest possible invoice amounts,  purely a coincidence I'm sure, and start again. 

We also calculate all the payments from the cashed checks my client has to see what was paid.

The mathing really doesn't math. 

Totaling up all the payments and charges, instead of owing 20k, he at most owes $8k and possibly less.

We do it again to make sure and come up with the same result.

This isn't even counting the issues with the invoices themselves, nor the fact that stuff on them is clearly not for the restaurant, just straight comparison of the numbers. Total truly owed is likely even less. 

With this pointed out to opposing counsel, we get a very quick settlement for a lot less than the revised 8k amount, as they are stuck with the evidence they provided and the math is not exactly going their way, and neither side wants to spend money on a trial at this point and with no time to further prepare.

So instead of a trial we put the settlement on the record and are done with the matter. 

Their delay in providing the backing for their claim certainly raised the pressure on getting this done, but done it is. Sheesh.

Education Gone Woke: Getting The Right Answers In Math And More Is Now White Supremacy Culture

Critical Race Theory first infiltrated and infected the higher echelons of Academia and its now spread to the corporate world (See Coca-Cola telling its white employees to try to act less white for example)  the entertainment world - see the cancellation of Gina Carano and the current force-feeding of BLM and woke theology in just about every show these days)

Now its working its way down the educational chain into primary and secondary schools.

See for example the curriculum at  Equitablemath.org:

Highlights from the first section alone include such gems as: 

We see white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom can show up when:

• The focus is on getting the “right” answer.

• Independent practice is valued over teamwork or collaboration.

• “Real-world math” is valued over math in the real world.

• Participation structures reinforce dominant ways of being.

• Teachers enculturated in the USA teach mathematics the way they learned it.

• Expectations are not met.

• Addressing mistakes.

• Teachers are teachers and students are learners.

• Math is taught in a linear fashion and skills are taught sequentially, without consideration of prerequisite knowledge.

• State standards guide learning in the classroom.

• Procedural fluency is preferred over conceptual knowledge.

• “Good” math teaching is considered an antidote for mathematical inequity for Black, Latinx, and multilingual students.

• Rigor is expressed only in difficulty.

• “I do, we do, you do” is the format of the class.

• Students are required to “show their work.”

• Grading practices are focused on lack of knowledge.

Note this insanity of course comes from California, with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation providing "generous financial support" for this insanity.

First, it is amazingly racist to deem math a matter of white superiority and "white supremacy culture".  Many races and ethnicities of all sorts are rather upset with this unfounded assertion.

Second, it's even more amazingly racist towards black and brown people and "multi-lingual" people [seriously - what?] to claim that getting "the right answer", being required to "show your work",  "Addressing mistakes",  having "expectations",  "procedural fluency",  and that teachers are expected to be teachers and students are expected to be students are somehow signs and features of white supremacy culture.

Just imagine if the real-life Black women of NASA in Hidden Figures when asked by astronauts for their orbital calculations simply replied: 

"Sorry, we can't be expected to meet those expectations and getting the right answer and then showing how we did that is a matter of white supremacy culture - hope y'all have a good launch and good luck"

Just imagine if Jaime Escalante, when teaching his Hispanic students about calculus and advanced math, that instead of inspiring and challenging his students to learn and excel instead just said:

    "That's just white supremacy culture esse, you can't be expected to learn that or get the right answer, just go back to the barrio."

I think we've gone past the soft bigotry of low expectations and have started hitting the hard stuff.  

Would you want anyone designing a bridge, vehicle, or doing financial calculations, or anything else for that matter related to math not being concerned with getting the right answer, showing their work, etc?

It's bad enough that Gates inflicted Common Core on the nation, now he's funding an even more destructive Common Wokeness on our nation.

Timing, While Not Everything, is Pretty Damn Important

On today's legal soap opera: Like sands through the hourglass, these are the statutes of limitations.

Yep another hapless potential client lost to the sands of bad timing, on their part. Even better, I told him in writing of the time limit - twice!

Our potential but not retained client had his concealed pistol license denied.

The denial is due to the CPL clerk misreading the disqualifying statutes and thinking something he did fits the definition, which it actually dies not. In short this is a very winnable case and the denial can be fixed because -

There's an appeals process for a denial, and the appeal must be filed within 21 days from the denial or it is lost.

Remember the 21 day part, it's kinda important.

When he first called, he was 60 days past his denial. As such, do not pass go, do not file appeal, as 60 is greater than 21, you're over 21 days, no point paying me to tell you you've lost, you've lost.

I explain this to him and reiterate the importance of appealing within 21 days of the denial, and tell him to apply again to get denied again if they deny for the same reason so we can appeal a fresh denial.

He agrees to do so and I send him a retainer letter and he states he will apply and retain me then. He doesn't sign or return the retainer, nor pay the rather modest retainer amount, and as such I assume he doesn't want me to fix this problem for him.

He just called me today. He last applied in January and was duly denied on January 31, 2020.

While you may have been told there would be no math in this post dear readers, all of you (I hope) instinctively know without even looking at a calendar, nor counting on your fingers, nor on your phones, that there are more than 21 days between any day in January and March 10.

Counting days is apparently very hard. Sheesh.

Of Cheap Political Points And Being Bad At Math

This cute bit of anti-gun propaganda was making its way around Facebook by someone too clever by half while being twice as bad at math:

See the problem? Aside from being an inapt comparison between a potential pandemic outbreak and deaths by firearms, which are rather different things, as a cute nudge for gun control, the math is very, very, very wrong.

Since .00001% of 28,159 the latest number we have for gun deaths in the US in 2018, is .28 that means per this smug little graph, that the Coronavirus has or will kill less than a third of a person?

Math, how does it work again?

Meanwhile, 86,000 people will likely die (if it follows the stats from the prior season) of the regular influenza virus in the USA this year and no one bats an eye, which is just short of six times the amount of people killed by someone using a firearm - coming in at 14,611 of the 28,159 (the rest being suicides), or instead influenza kills three times the number of people killed or killing themselves with firearms each year.

Again a meme for the innumerate and progressives to swoon over, but I repeat myself.

While People Paid Less Tax This Year, They're Upset They're Not Getting Larger Refunds

In other words, less of their money was withheld form their paychecks this year so they actually had MORE money during the year to spend and are now getting less of a refund than expected.

Of course this is because a lot of people can't do math and also somehow think a tax refund come tax time is money they're getting from the government. It's not, it's their own money coming back to them after giving the government an interest free loan for the year.

The Detroit Free Press: Frustration grows as Trump tax cut affects refunds

The IRS should have kept the same withholding tables and people would be happy that they gave more of their money during the year and got back more come tax time. Doesn't make any actual sense, but people aren't always rational actors.

Only about 6 percent of tax filers are actually expected to pay more under the new tax rules, according to the the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center in Washington, D.C. The average tax increase would be $2,760.
Another 29 percent are expected to see no change in their taxes. But that doesn't mean they're going to see the same sized refund, either.
"There is a difference between having a tax cut and getting a bigger refund this year," said Frank J. Sammartino, senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center.
"Most taxpayers received a tax cut," he said.
"But because the IRS changed withholding tables to withhold less tax during the year, many will see a smaller refund than in past years."

In short, yes you are getting a smaller refund, but you are paying less in taxes as you had less taken out during the year.

This again goes to my personal plan to eliminate tax withholding and make everyone write a check on April 15 for the full amount of their taxes owed so they absolutely know how much in taxes they are paying. Oh, and have national elections on April 16.

More Detroit Free Press Editorial Excellence Or This Headline Brought To You By The Letters T And B.

The Headline in Question: President Obama unveils $3.77B budget plan

That's some layers of editorial fact-checking ladies and gents. Apparently the Detroit Free Press editors know as much about numerical abbreviations as they do about firearms laws.

Look, he's not proposing a $3.77B(illion) budget plan,which would be a rather astonishing reduction in the size of government spending, he's proposing a $3.77T(rillion) dollar plan. There's one hack of a significant difference. Don't believe me? It even says so in the very first line of the article.

President Barack Obama unveils a $3.8-trillion budget proposal today that includes a plan to raise more in tax revenue from wealthier Americans even though Republicans in Congress have already rejected the idea.

But as the Detroit Free Press Editor might say, "Math is hard".

At The End Of Your Rope? You'd Better Check The Length.

When you fail to do the math before doing a death defying stunt, bad things happen:

A 22-year-old Utah man was killed trying to swing through the opening of a 110-foot-tall sandstone arch in a stunt made so popular on YouTube that state authorities recently banned the daredevil activity by commercial outfitters.

Kyle Lee Stocking, of West Jordan, left too much slack in the rope he was using, and it sent him crashing into the sandstone base of Corona Arch near Moab, Grand County sheriff's officials said. He died Sunday afternoon.

From The Detroit Free Press: Daredevil dies in rope swing stunt popularized by YouTube

Afghan Pro-Insurgent Protest Against Violence Leads to Violence

In the Afghanistan feel-good story of the day, after NATO forces on a raid killed 4 insurgents, a protest against the raid of 1,500 people turned violent.

The AP via Findlaw: Protest over NATO raid turns violent; 11 killed
Note in the article that the 4 "civillians" reported in the first paragraph as being killed were, according to NATO, shot after pointing weapons at NATO forces during the raid in the sixth paragraph.

The protest turned violent as some in the crowd started looting shops and throwing stones at a small German base in the city.

So the protest over the deaths of 4 insurgents led to the deaths of 11 of the protestors protesting.

Insurgent supporters of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan must be adepts of the new math.