I'm sure California's having problems meeting the exact requirement, but it has shed quite a lot of prisoners, not through amnesty but by transferring the lower-level prisoners to county jails.
That article makes all kinds of helpful points!
Taxpayers will ask how we can determine if the funding is adequate if the spending is inefficient, when half of the education funds are spent on instruction and the average school district has one non-teacher for each teacher.
What is that supposed to prove? Is there a set ideal ratio of teachers : support staff? Fuckin' janitors and lunch ladies, man. Stealing all our tax dollars.
Montana suit settled giving schools more money.
It's very rare for courts to order appropriations of money to government programs. Courts will sometimes order the government to do things that will cost a lot of money, but only when there's some really important principle at stake: for example, a string of cases created the right to defense counsel for indigent defendants and required governments to pay for public defender services. But even with such an important right (the right to have a lawyer if you face imprisonment), courts don't like to tell the government it's not spending enough money to meet its obligations. The idea is that the legislature is the branch of government that's in charge of spending.
Anyway, I saw in Friday Night Lights how they bought a jumbotron instead of a music teacher, so clearly Texas school funding is out of whack.
re: 2
FFS. As you say: imagine a school with 1000 pupils, in 30 or 40 classes of ~30 kids. It doesn't seem unreasonable that a building that size, and an administration that complicated might have dozens of more janitors, grounds-keepers, secretaries, senior management, financial people, lab technicians, AV and computer technicians, etc etc.
What happens if they don't?
The people who don't get to join the unreleased prisoners eventually.
All the cliches about spending on Texas Football are true. Jumbotrons, etc. It's nuts.
Towns will delay building a second high school for as long as they possibly can, because they don't want to split the football team and drop down in size.
The result is that Texas produces a lot of great football players. If its communities wanted to produce more great other things, the money would be spent differently, and they would.
6: Right. I think there's a romantic idea that schools run themselves, like back in the one-room schoolhouse days, when students all brought their lunch pails, and the teacher would sweep up on Friday evening, and students who got in trouble would have to clap the the erasers out back to clean them.
In 1997 the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that the state educational finance system was unconstitutional due to overreliance on local property taxes and insufficient state funding for school buildings. Various half-hearted attempts were made to change the system, but they all failed, and then in 2003, the Ohio Supreme Court, while not taking back their previous decision, declared that they wouldn't do anything to enforce it.
I used to work as a cleaner in a high school. Our cleaning team had, I think, something like 15 or more staff (admittedly only working 3 or 4 hours a day each). That's just the cleaning team alone.
I should revise 7 in light of 11. Either the people who don't fix the jails and release the prisoners will go to jail themselves, or they won't, if the judges decide to let them off the hook. Thanks peep!
14: You're welcome, text! I think you're right now about the 2 options, but I'm not sure there is any case in which elected officials were sent to prison for failing to follow a judicial mandate to change public policy. Has that ever happened?
Has that ever happened?
My guess is, yes, it has happened. In this case the elected officials would probably be out of office first.
like back in the one-room schoolhouse days
To the best of my knowledge, those still exist. They certain did when I was growing up.
As Minivet says, there have been a lot of transfers from prisons to county jails, who in turn have (sometimes) work released (some) prisoners. And the state built a new medical prison facility (the original problem was that health care and facilities were so poor as to equal cruel and unusual punishment). But the state still probably won't meet the deadline for inmate reduction.
I'm pretty skeptical about litigation as a tool for school finance reform; the results don't seem great. For prisoners, there's no other option. The state happily would have let conditions in the prison system deteriorate forever, and if I was a state legislator looking at the budget I could see why.
People were making too many speeches about prison overcrowding for anything to happen, right Robert Halford?
Is there some way that I could persuade you to stop trolling, text? I would, for example, be willing to send you an unopened pack of Ludens. Cold and flu season is just around the corner, you know.
The state happily would have let conditions in the prison system deteriorate forever
My guess is that this is true of some elected officials, but not all of them. The state doesn't happily do anything, but usually has to move against great opposition to get things done.
Do you know off-hand if private prisons have a better or worse record of overcrowding, violence, and poor conditions than public prisons?
Having now googled, I see that Ludens still markets its cough drops. I'm sorry, text; I should have done my due diligence before making the original offer. Still, all's well that ends well!
Von Wafer, can you define "troll" in a way that it includes me and not you?
How about just in a way that it doesn't include you?
Von Wafer, can you define "troll" in a way that it includes me and not you?
How about just in a way that it doesn't include you?
There are also endless lawsuits on whether state Medicaid rates are so low they violate federal law. It's far from over, but my rough understanding/expectation is that when rate cuts are made solely for budget reasons, they might be in danger, but if they can throw an evaluatory fig leaf over the decision, the courts will stay hands-off. Another case where it's a better prospect (hard as it is) to change values than to try to get courts to read the law and evaluate the existing situation and find a gap.
26: no worries. As to your question, sure I can!
There are also endless lawsuits on whether state Medicaid rates are so low they violate federal law.
What federal law would low Medicaid rates violate?
28: then please get to work on that and join us when you have something to share.
30: no, thanks. Instead, I'll just try to ignore you, I suppose. But as I'm ignoring you, I'll occasionally regret that you're working so hard to annoy people here. I'll also wonder what makes someone behave as you've chosen to. And I fear that eventually I'll lose patience with you and tell you to fuck off. I'd like apologize in advance for that. Wouldn't it just be more soothing, for both of us, if you stopped acting like this and accepted some Ludens from me?
To the best of my knowledge, those still exist. They certain did when I was growing up.
Where do they still exist? In very small communities? My dad went to one, but by my time, bussing and consolidation had ended them. I think I can remember some districts that would have two grades in the same classroom.
31: Then please get to work on that and join us when you have something to share.
I've never encountered a troll who trolled only by calling others trolls. It's an interesting strategy.
I am here to talk about the post, which asked what happens when elected officials purposefully violate court orders. The answer: they go to jail. In this case, they will go to the same overcrowded jails they refused to reform, which is a wonderful bit of irony, isn't it?
6: I'm not sure it works out exactly like that. The K-8 school I went to (It's like K-9, but they'll owe you one) for jr. high was a little smaller than that -- maybe 700 students. There were half a dozen people working in the office, 3 or 4 full time janitors, one lunch lady, a couple of hall monitors, a couple of librarians and a school nurse (who was only there 3 days a week if I remember correctly). So maybe 17 or 18 non-teachers vs . 30 or so homeroom teachers & gym, art, music, and Spanish teachers. It may very well be the case with 35-40 student classrooms that the ratio has moved closer to parity, but a big chunk of that non-teacher staffing is going to be the administrative people downtown. (School bus drivers are usually employees of a contractor here.)
34: I was responding specifically to 20. That said, carry on elevating the conversation.
Medicaid payments must be "sufficient to enlist enough providers so that care and services are available under the plan at least to the extent that such care and services are available to the general population in the geographic area".
35: I don't claim that it's 50-50, but your numbers seem a bit low to me. (One lunch lady for 700 students? Who cooked (/warmed up) the food?) You also don't include any special ed classes, which usually have a lot more aides. I think also that as class sizes have increased, there have been more teacher's aides and assistant teachers hired in general. And if the districts around where my parents live are any indication, even small rural schools may have a full-time technology coordinator now.
Instead, I'll just try to ignore you, I suppose.
I've been waiting for everyone to come to this conclusion.
32: Mostly in Montana and Nebraska. But, yes, in very rural areas. Apparently Kansas closed all of theirs. Some of the ones I knew when I was a kid were certainly within a reasonable school bus ride of a larger district, but the parents I guess liked that status quo. I don't know if those are still open and googling isn't really helping. There are certainly areas so rural that you couldn't get enough kids to fill a regular school within the distance of a reasonable bus ride.
In California, both Serrano and Williams concluded in settlements that resulted in significant allocations of money for public schooling.
re: 35
My former high school has most of their staff list online. There are 50 administrative staff members -- clerical people, support assistants, pastoral staff, etc -- not including janitors and cleaners. I don't know how many of those as they aren't listed, but I'd be surprised if it's more than another 15-20 in total. Plus about 120 teaching staff and senior management. So, about 1/3 non-teaching staff.
That's for a school with 1700 pupils.
What problem did you have with 20, Von Wafer? Robert Halford ran away from a debate and I wanted to get his thoughts on that.
There is a movement to close the smaller schools, but they are still going.
39: Food was/is distributed from a central commissary, not sure if it is MPS employees or private contractors who work there. Basically the lunch lady just shoved big trays of food into the warmer and kept the milk stocked up. Even at my HS, which had about 2,000 students, I believe there were only about 4 or 5 cooks, and they were actually cooking real food to some extent.
You're probably right about the special ed and tech coordinator staff bringing the ratio down. Although it's often not THAT many extra people for special ed. Much less than it should be, from what I have heard from my friend, the EBD teacher.
That also doesn't include catering staff, when I went there there were something like a dozen of those. Might have changed now. They'd be employed by the local authority or outside contractor, so don't appear on the school's website.
pastoral staff
So the jokes about Scotland and sheep are true.
"Pastoral staff" is just a polite way of saying someone's a crook.
40: yeah, sorry. I thought it was worth a try, but that was pretty naive, obviously.
Oh, the other thing, of course, is that I am generalizing from inner city schools, and I would be surprised if there were not a higher ratio of support staff to teachers in the wealthy suburban districts.
Pastoral staff = shepherd's crook, you see...
My larger point was going to be: Too many administrators! And the administrators who get cut are often the ones in curriculum support, or things that actually make a difference to the student experience.
Sigh. I was walking by my HS yesterday and was struck by (a) the fact that the HS kids didn't look as young as the kids at the University often do, and (b) it must be a very different experience, at least in a big, urban school like the one I went to, to be a queer/nerdy/theater geek/punk rock/activist HS student nowadays.
My larger point was going to be: Too many administrators!
Do you have anything to support this claim? Just because there are more administrators than there used to be doesn't mean they're extraneous. There are more regulations than there used to be, and funding structures are more complex as well. In Missouri, there's a decent amount of money awarded competitively, or on a year-to-year basis dependent on specific requirements, and it takes a lot of paperwork and line-toeing to keep the $$ rolling in.
I imagine there's a great amount of administration necessitated by NCLB and all the grants that get given out federally.
If people are actively engaged in lobbying/development, that's reasonable, although it also tends to highlight the larger systemic issues. I guess around here, the main problem is we have a ridiculous amount of duplication due to Minneapolis' "Special School District #1" status. As with a number of other activities, it would be much more efficient to have a true metropolitan government (which we already have the armature for -- the bus system is run metro-wide). Of course, then you get into some Parkinson's law type stuff with more administrators begetting more administrators ad infinitum. I'm not crazy about (somewhat) mandatory government schooling in the first place either.
it would be much more efficient to have a true metropolitan government
Let's not get me started on that.
It seems like the problem of inefficient administration in public schools could be handled on the local level. I probably don't pay enough attention to those local issues. I have only a general idea how the L.A. school system is actually administrated. Blume, where would I go to find this stuff out?
If people are actively engaged in lobbying/development, that's reasonable, although it also tends to highlight the larger systemic issues.
Agreed. It is appalling that public schools have to apply for grants to do basic things like open a computer lab.
it would be much more efficient to have a true metropolitan government
As opposed to the present situation of a Transmetropolitan government.
I wonder how much administrative costs increased in local school districts after passage of the No Child Left Behind Act during the W. Bush administration?
This is probably something we could all find out for our respective districts, then post!
Like when we all measured our penises!
In California, a huge percentage of a school district's budget can be grant-funded, and that requires that administrators spend a lot of their time applying and tracking compliance for Title I and other categorical funds. (Until recently, this meant that school districts classified large percentages of teachers as "temporary" on the basis that their positions were funded by categorical money, even though their job -- e.g., teaching first grade -- was indistinguishable from other teachers', but that's another story.)
My mom's job at an elementary school used to be mostly keeping track of student records-- daily attendance, medical information, that sort of thing. Over time an increasingly large part of it has been administering various things related to special-needs students, who require a lot of extra record-keeping, meetings between parents and teachers, meetings with school system employees who specialize in various things, etc. The number of people working in the school's office has increased by at least one over the years, plus the number of system-wide employees who spend significant amounts of time at the school has increased, but it looks to me like it's largely because they're actually serving a subset of the students (those with either learning disabilities or psychological difficulties) much better than they used to.
64: Is that a problem that could be solved at the federal level, by stream-lining the grant process, or would it be better solved at the local level, by increasing state and municipal expenditures on schools?
65: I would guess that by spending money on special needs students we actually save money in the long run. I wonder if federal expenditures on asylums (I don't know a better term) for the mentally ill have increased or decreased lately.
66 - I don't know about "solve," but surely both would help. Although as essear points out, a lot of the extra administrative work comes out of the fact that there are more rules requiring districts to better serve their students (in California, there's paperwork generated by Williams compliance, as well as the IDPs and special needs programs essear refers to) -- and additional funding wouldn't necessarily eliminate the need for that work.
68: No, but additional local funding would decrease reliance on federal funds. And if local schools aren't in desperate need of funds, it's probably harder for congress to dictate curriculum when communities would rather teach something else.
I wonder why there isn't some sort of movement for local schools to try to get local corporate sponsorship. The corporations would get a tax break, local good will, etc., and the schools would get money without all the federal strings. I'm surprised that CEOs haven't tried it.
The more reliant schools are on local funding, though, the (even) more disparity there will be between schools in wealthy areas and schools in impoverished areas.
71: It depends on how local we're going. I think there's enough wealth in each state for the states to fund their own schools adequately. They just don't.
I wonder why there isn't some sort of movement for local schools to try to get local corporate sponsorship
Final score: Odessa Permian High Dell Computer (formerly Panthers) 38 San Angelo Central Dr Peppers (formerly Bobcats) 14
Does this sort of thing ever result in better funding, even when the court rules with the plaintiff? I'm having trouble seeing how a positive verdict will have any effect on the budgeting process.
There have been lots of cases where such lawsuits have resulted in increased funding. The increased funding generally has no discernible effect on student performance. But liberals love such lawsuits anyway because they show that they care which is the most important thing.
Final score: Odessa Permian High Dell Computer (formerly Panthers) 38 San Angelo Central Dr Peppers (formerly Bobcats) 14
Amusing! Leech, you made a funny. It might turn out that way, but if I were a CEO I wouldn't try to build good will by making Permian change its mojo. I don't think that would be money well spent. What I might do is buy the Panthers a bunch of computers and then stick my name on them.
65
... but it looks to me like it's largely because they're actually serving a subset of the students (those with either learning disabilities or psychological difficulties) much better than they used to.
Is there some evidence of this? That these students are actually doing better overall than when they were dumped in with everybody else? For example as I understand it bilingual programs turn out to be counterproductive.
76: I wonder about that too. Certainly, it seems like in the distant past, the practice was to keep kids around until they became to large to control, then kick them out into the world, at which point they either sank or swam. Nowadays, if you've got parents who are willing to go to bat for you, like my cousin, you can overcome many learning disabilities and become a productive member of society. It's certainly not the system I, as a radical, would design, but it does seem like it probably saves money in the long run.
Here's my stupid anecdote about school funding- back in the early days of the internets (not the really early days but when it was becoming a commonly used public resource, early 90s) I and a couple other students who were in various nerdy math/science clubs found that there were lots of good math lessons available on this new web thingy. We thought it would be nice to help math teachers get them, but that involved printing them out and we didn't have a good printer for that. We looked into who in the district could give us several hundred bucks (laser printers also not being cheap in those days) and ended up talking to the booster club. They agreed to give us money if we did the design & layout of their various newsletters, event advertising, etc. So a couple kids ended up doing free work for a sports fundraising organization so that math teachers could have access to free lesson plans. Thanks a lot for that very logical arrangement, jock parents and school district.
I just sent an email semi-trolling the Tea Party-ish candidates for our local school board, by which I mean just casting a little shade and asking them to show their work when making assertions. But I really don't care what they say and won't vote for them and just want to make them sweat a little.
Their big push is for reciprocity agreements with the wealthy public school district south of us so that the people in our neighborhood who are doing the white flight thing won't have to keep paying up to $4K per kid per year to go there. I'm not sure if it was nice or not to get leaked the information from their planning meeting and see that a number of parents we know and are friendly with are involved in supporting them, but it's no surprise.
OT: Would it be stupid for me to dress as Oscar Wilde for Halloween if I go to the same party where no one recognized me when I was Sappho? I'll have a green carnation, but I assume that's still too obscure, right? It's a school/literature/music theme, so I'm not sure who else to be unless we do a themed To Sir with Love or some shit.
I think there's a read virus, and you can get it over the internet, and it's spreading.
I have no embroidered band to give you, Thorn, such as I wore. Go with Wilde and use the one-liners.
SP: I went to almost all my high-school football and baseball games because math and debate funded themselves by working gate & concessions. The math and debate teams generally won, the football team generally lost.
Wouldn't you want a sunflower, rather than a carnation? With a literature theme, I don't think you should worry about obscurity -- it's going to be hard to do much of anything interesting that isn't obscure by that measure.
I'd think Oscar Wilde would be good even if some people took you as Generic Victorian Guy or whatever.
Semi-OT link: At CT today Clay Shirky referenced a book arguing that the major factor driving the cost of providing higher education was the cost of skilled labor (teachers)
Let me also recommend Robert Archibald and David Feldman's Why Does College Cost So Much?* Archibald and Feldman diagnose a bad case of Baumol's cost disease. The defend this thesis in several different ways, including noting that college costs were flat in the 1970s, when productivity improvements in the rest of the economy stalled, and that since the early 1980s, college costs have risen in line with other fields that require skilled labor (e.g. dentists) but not unskilled labor (e.g. housecleaning.)
Archibald and Feldman conclude that institution-specific explanations -- spoiled students expecting a climbing wall in the gym; management self-aggrandizement at the expense of the educational mission -- don't hold up. The price of attending 2 year colleges, presumably less Roll-Royce-like than 4 year colleges -- has risen at the same rate, and that the costs for room and board, the site of many lifestyle upgrades, have risen more slowly than tuition.
Instead, they conclude that the generic observation -- colleges need a lot of highly skilled people, people who have commanded a significant wage premium since the 1980s -- is the most significant source of the cost increase, an increasing amount of which is passed on to students and their families as a price increase.
A FB friend of mine just asked if anyone had a copy of Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead that she could borrow. She was quick to specify that it's for her Halloween costume.
I should probably specify that I dressed as Oscar Wilde for something Halloweenish my senior year of high school, so apparently I secretly think there's a resemblance or something. Also one of the neighbors throwing the party said something flattering yet creepy about my appearance the first year I went, as Trinity from The Matrix, and a costume that's as unsexy as possible feels like what I ought to be doing. Or maybe this should go in heebie's new thread.
It's hard to do flattering without creepy if the costume is really tight.
Oh man. Paul Ryan/Eddie Munster will definitely be the costume of the moment, won't it.
84
Semi-OT link: At CT today Clay Shirky referenced a book arguing that the major factor driving the cost of providing higher education was the cost of skilled labor (teachers)
I think this is backwards. Colleges charge what they can get away with and then figure out ways to spend the money.
88: It was not THAT tight. Not even pleather, I don't think. But I was thin and noteworthy, apparently, and many of the husbands in the neighborhood are still commenting on it five years later, though the only wife who says anything is the one who named baby Trinity [Thorn] and says that sometimes makes her think of me.
On the topic of state spending, I am so happy with the girls' doctor, who only takes patients on Medicaid/Medicare or with no insurance. We had an excellent visit with Mara today, everyone complimented her on not freaking out when she goes to see the doctor anymore, and then she got to pick up her complimentary book on the way out, though Mean Mom made her choose one we didn't already have.
78
... Thanks a lot for that very logical arrangement, jock parents and school district.
Hard to see how it hurt your education.
86: You know, I wouldn't have said there's a resemblance, but there's something about the shape of your chin and mouth that makes the costume plausible.
Colleges charge what they can get away with and then figure out ways to spend the money.
He was specifically talking about the costs, to the college or university, not the price of tuition.
96
He was specifically talking about the costs, to the college or university, not the price of tuition.
And I am saying this is the wrong way to look at it since what they can charge determines their costs not the other way around.
67: there are no Federal Expenditures on asylums, i.e. state mental hospitals. Neither Medicare nor Medicaid will pay for treatment in them. To some degree the Federal government pays for care in the community. That is, as insurers they'll pay for people to stay in a regular psych ward. Medicaid also pays some for group homes by reimbursing staff when they engage in psychiatric rehabilitation services.
And I am saying this is the wrong way to look at it since what they can charge determines their costs not the other way around.
Do you believe that is true for community colleges as well as 4-year programs?
And you are wrong, James, at least when it comes to public schools. At most large state schools, the total cost of instruction has not increased over and above the general rate of inflation. The drop in state funding, however, has required a larger increase in tuition to make up the difference.
Does this sort of thing ever result in better funding, even when the court rules with the plaintiff?
Yes, on occasion.
Oh man. Paul Ryan/Eddie Munster will definitely be the costume of the moment, won't it.
Fleur and I are close friends with a couple who could pass for Paul and Janna Ryan. At a recent dinner, we got just drunk enough to suggest to them that they should do this for Halloween. They politely demurred.
I should probably know better than to engage with text, but I will point out that corporate sponsorship of schools exists in certain respects already. In many jurisdictions, Coke and Pepsi get into bidding wars over who will get exclusive rights to market beverages in schools. This kind of sponsorship deal was one of Rod Paige's big innovations as school superintendent in Houston, before W. made him Secretary of Education.
102
Of course WV is now (2011) dead last in eighth grade test scores for white students in reading and mathematics suggesting this lawsuit didn't accomplish all that much.
105: the intent of the suit was to ameliorate the financial inequities between the poor and not-quite-so-poor parts of the state. On that score, it has been reasonably successful. Remedying leaking roofs, unsanitary bathrooms, faulty heating and non-existent air conditioning may not be a sufficient condition for a successful school, but it's pretty important as an issue of basic fairness.
Oh man. Paul Ryan/Eddie Munster will definitely be the costume of the moment, won't it.
I'm dressing up as Jens Weid/mann, but I don't think I'm going to any parties where anyone will know who that is. (I'm going to wear a t-shirt I got custom printed with the Bundesbank logo, and a name tag on my blazer, and try to style my hair like his, but, yeah. Also considering finding vampire, but is the banker-as-vampire thing deprecated, even when the banker in question is a gentile?) Ah well--I'm pretty resigned to it. That said, if anyone knows any Bay Area Halloween parties where folks would appreciate the costume, you should totally send me an invite.
OT: Would it be stupid for me to dress as Oscar Wilde for Halloween if I go to the same party where no one recognized me when I was Sappho? I'll have a green carnation, but I assume that's still too obscure, right? It's a school/literature/music theme, so I'm not sure who else to be unless we do a themed To Sir with Love or some shit.
I certainly wouldn't recognize it from the carnation, but I'm a total philistine. Then again, that's a general problem with literature-based costume--even people who do read a lot often have no clue what the authors look like. Heck, some may even give you arguments for why knowing anything about the author is irrelevant.
tl;dr: I have nothing useful to contribute, sorry.
Semi-OT link: At CT today Clay Shirky referenced a book arguing that the major factor driving the cost of providing higher education was the cost of skilled labor (teachers)
There's certainly something to this, but it doesn't seem to address the enormous growth in administrators and staffers relative to faculty (who of course also tend to be expensive UMC professionals). Now I'm feeling deja vu--didn't we just have this conversation here?
knecht, don't be afraid of my betrothal. The issue of coke and pepsi machines can probably be taken care of through local regulations, so long as we're talking about public schools. But there's nothing to stop Very Fine (do they still exist?) from getting into a bidding war with Tropicana. If we're looking for private solutions, I'd take that direction.
there's nothing to stop Very Fine (do they still exist?) from getting into a bidding war with Tropicana.
Tropicana actually belongs to Pepsi (and MinuteMaid belongs to Coca-Cola). Veryfine is still around; they are owned by a PE firm.
Rant about administrative bloat in the UC system.
I'm not in a ranting mood. But my head does spin a little.
The best literature-themed costume I ever saw was in college, when someone dressed as Hobbes's Leviathan from the famous cover art.
Although I am not unproud of managing to dress as HG Wells's Invisible Man one year.
115: We were all wondering where you were, and then we just figured you decided not to come.
116: Actually, there is a legitimate way to do it, without any special tricks.
Although I suppose most people don't remember the first time the Invisible Man appears well enough to recognize the costume...
Hat, coat, gloves, sunglasses, facial bandages, wasn't it?
I am still pissed off that I lost the "best costume" contest to some guy in a rubber alien mask who said he was dressed as Kepler.
You could paint your nose gold and go as Tycho Brahe
Better, of course, if you were accompanied by a friend dressed as a drunken elk.
Just making sure it wasn't Rrr'ngak Kepler from the cult TV show Space Banditos or something.