Jimmy's 1993 ESPY Speech

It's hard to believe that this speech is 17 years old. Still worth every second.

Food stamp challenge

After posting the previous questions about charity, I ran into this article on the food stamp challenge.....

Pittsburgh City Councilwoman Natalia Rudiak had second thoughts yesterday about buying a cup of coffee, because it would have eaten up one-third of her daily food allowance.

Through the end of this week, Rudiak said she will be spending under $7 a day on food, the same allotment a food stamp recipient receives, to highlight cuts in the federal program.

"I'm always up for a challenge, and surviving on (under $7) a day is certainly a challenge," Rudiak said.

Rudiak of Carrick is participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Challenge, a nationwide poverty simulation exercise sponsored locally by Just Harvest, a South Side-based anti-hunger organization.

Nationally, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department, nearly 40 million people are enrolled in the food stamp program. In Allegheny County, according to Just Harvest communication coordinator Adam MacGregor, more than 150,000 people and families in receive food stamp benefits.

I planned to try this challenge but then it dawned on me that I've already participated in this in the past. We just called it college.

See, me and my roommates subsisted on Ramen noodles, spaghetti, grilled cheese, pancake mix, boxes of macaroni and cheese, spam, day old dunkin' sticks from the local thrift bakery and for a good time ............$1.50 pitchers of some rank ass draft beer.

The thought of opening one of those Kraft cheese food slices still makes my stomach turn a little.

One year, one of my roommates got a turkey for Thanksgiving and we had that thing in our freezer for two months before one of us had a girlfriend who knew how to fix one. It was big time feasting.

The fact is, we were all willing to live that way because we all knew that was a temporary way of life........not meant for perpetuity.

The next time I do some grocery shopping, I'll do a quick price check on all those awesome culinary delights to help out this babe.

I'm sure everyone who's read this blog has some sort of cheap food story to share for Ms. Rudiak, feel free to let her know in my comment section. It looks like she needs some hints to live on $7.00 a day.

I'm feeling scrooge like this December

Yesterday, my assistant and I had a conversation about charity. She and one of my clients have been fairly involved in a charity where they donate clothing and educational items to Appalachia.

I've contributed to this charity in the past but, in all honesty, I've really started to wonder why we continue to support people who live in a place where the economy is so depressed and has been for generations. Instead of giving these people the ability to subsist in such a poor area, shouldn't we be helping them by giving them moving vans and rent to places where job and educational opportunities actually exist?

But Gordon, you're asking people to uproot their families and abandon their culture.

Yes, I am.

Why shouldn't they? In the Lovely Mrs. Gekko's family, there are ten kids who were born and raised in Warren/Youngstown, Ohio; not exactly the hot bed of economic activity. Today only one kid still lives in the area; five have moved to the Cincinnati area, two to Chicago, one to Seattle, one to West Virginia.

In my family, our five kids live in Cincinnati, Charlotte, Reno and two still live in the Lancaster area.

In most of these cases, we left our homes not because we we're dying to leave our birth places but because that's where the job and/or education opportunities took us.

It really came home to roost when one of our family members lost their job recently. The Lovely Mrs. Gekko asked me if we should help out in some way and my quote was "Of course we should. We're conservatives. That's what we do".

Fortunately, this family member has since found another job but it might mean a relocation.

But I can't help but wonder, why don't we all kick in and give this family enough money so they can maintain their lifestyle in the area in which they live? Why should they be forced to relocate if they love the area where they currently reside?

What if someone is unemployed in Chicago but there's a job in Alabama waiting for them, should they be forced to take it or should we all pony up and subsidize their current lifestyle so they don't have to move?

Of course, it sounds ridiculous on it's face. But isn't that what we're doing to the poor in this country? Isn't that what we're doing to the people in Appalachia? What about the poor in our ghettos?

On Thanksgiving, there were probably well over 50,000 meals delivered from various charities to the poor in this area. My church donated over 6000 meals for our outreach. That's in addition to all the other charities and/or government programs being delivered to the poor in this area.

In our Over the Rhine area, there are currently over 100 different organizations to help the poor in an area that probably doesn't have but 20,000 residents at most.

Are we not perpetuating poverty by supporting it? What's the motivation for people to get up and struggle and aspire for more when the basics are being handled?

I am a God fearing man so I know my generosity is about my growth and not on the people who receive it. None the less, as I see people bitching about continued unemployment benefits after 99 weeks, I can't help but wonder if our charitable nature isn't counter productive.

Jews - is there anything they can't do?

An Egyptian official believes that Israel's intelligence agency might be behind the fatal shark attack of a German tourist in Sinai over the weekend, the Jerusalem Post reports.

"What is being said about the Mossad throwing the deadly shark (in the sea) to hit tourism in Egypt is not out of the question, but it needs time to confirm," South Sinai Gov. Muhammad Abdel Fadil Shousha told egynews.net.

You know, I'm thinking that if the Mossad can communicate with sharks, why don't we just let them rule the world. It would make life a lot easier.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/12/07/egyptian-official-believes-israel-deadly-shark-attack/#ixzz17Rvokcph

The economy brings back rabbit ears

If it wasn't for our DVR, I'd be begging the Lovely Mrs. Gekko to ditch our satellite dish. Mainly because we spend over $100/month for the opportunity to watch Independence Day for the 1,998th time.

For those channels not showing a Bourne Identity, an Oceans 11, 12, 18, etc. they show us home shopping channels.

To make matters worse, we don't even get the THIS network where I can watch old reruns of Mr. Ed, Highway Patrol or Sea Hunt I have to go into a spare bedroom for those treats.

In fact with a pair of rabbit ears, I can get 36 non-shopping channels on that old set.

Applying that old cost/benefit principle, it's probably not a coincidence that cable subscribers are shrinking.........

Julie and Anthony Bayerl of St. Paul, Minn., love watching prime-time shows on the sleek 50-inch television in their bedroom. They also love that they pay nothing for the programming.

The only thing they do not love is how a low-flying plane, heavy rain or just a little too much movement in the room can wipe out the picture.

“If someone is changing in there, it messes up your reception,” said Ms. Bayerl, a legislative assistant. “We try to stay very still when we watch television.”

The Bayerls are using an old technology that some people are giving a second chance. They pull free TV signals out of the air with the modern equivalent of the classic rabbit-ear antenna.

Some viewers who have decided that they are no longer willing or able to pay for cable or satellite service, including younger ones, are buying antennas and tuning in to a surprising number of free broadcast channels. These often become part of a video diet that includes the fast-growing menu of options available online.

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Life in "Progress" State - California edition

From the golden state, where there hasn't been a conservative run the state since Ogg won the last Pterodactyl shoot...............

This year's Republican sweep, says the conventional wisdom, stopped at the Sierras in large part because California—the “left-out coast”—is a liberal outlier from the rest of the country. In this telling, the Golden State is a broken relic, a basket-case which has lost its status as the vanguard of American politics. While America embraced the angry politics of the Tea Party, the story goes, California reelected Jerry Brown, a nostalgic throwback to the 1970s.

In fact, the exact opposite may be occurring: California, and indeed much of the West, is far ahead of the country, as it often has been—demographically, economically, politically, socially—and it points to a future in which the whole nation will look much like California does now: multi-ethnic, increasingly tolerant of gays and other minorities, more global in outlook, and more environmentally conscious.

The author conveniently forgets out of control spending, a crumbling infrastructure, businesses fleeing the state.

If that's the future, put me on a time machine to the Mr. Ed era.......

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The Masculist Movement

It's always been my belief that the feminist movement has always been a misnomer. The appropriate name should be the masculist movement since the aims has always seemed to turn women into men.

If you had any doubt, read this..........

This holiday season, Feministing.com, an “online community for feminists,” is encouraging women to opt out of eyebrow waxing appointments in favor of looking like “Frida,” the girlfriend of Marxist Diego Rivera.

In response to “Movember,” a charity effort to raise awareness and money for prostate and testicular cancer during the month of November by having men grow moustaches, Feministing.com is calling for women to grow unibrows during December, which they are trying to dub “Decembrow.”

“While women in the U.S. generally rock two groomed brows, I say let’s be inspired by Movember and take this opportunity to let our facial hair grow…for a cause,” the Feministing.com website says.

But hey, why stop there? Let's have women watch lot's of ESPN, drink lot's of beer & use foul language. That'll make for a real attractive woman.



Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/12/06/feminist-website-encourages-women-to-make-december-decembrow-for-cause-of-their-choice/#ixzz17M5JtAsy

The Spinal Tap presidency

Glenn Reynolds on how the Obamunists look an awful lot like Spinal Tap..........

President Obama's term so far has been compared to many fictional and non-fictional characters: Chauncey Gardener of "Being There" is frequently invoked, along with the self-invented charmer Don Draper from "Mad Men," and of course there are the usual tiresome comparisons with Hitler that most presidents face these days.

But I have a different character in mind. The more I watch this administration at work, the more I think we're seeing the first Nigel Tufnel presidency.

Nigel Tufnel, many will remember, was the fictitious heavy metal guitarist in the fictional "rockumentary" "This Is Spinal Tap." In a classic scene, he displays his guitar collection and his special amplifier that -- unlike all other amplifiers in existence -- has knobs that go all the way up to 11, instead of just 10.

And that's what Obama has done: In his first two years as president, he's taken us to 11 in so many ways.

People have been having a lot of fun with the metaphor so let me offer this one.

Consider how the Obama administration resembles the Stonehenge scene where the band decides to create this incredible Stonehenge stage set but when the rubber hits the road they forget that the drawings are to scale. Essentially turning lots of money into small impact.

But hey, it's just funny to have a reason to put these clips on......



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Stuff liberals run - Medicaid

Ethel Johnson couldn't get her prescription for pain medication filled fast enough. The 60-year-old Buffalo woman was hurting — but investigators say that wasn't the reason for the rush.

According to secretly recorded telephone conversations, the sooner Johnson could pick up her pills, the more quickly she could sell them to her dealer. Her pain pills were destined for the street.

Johnson is among 33 people charged so far in a large-scale investigation that has opened a window into an emerging class of suppliers in the illicit drug trade: medical patients, including many who rely on the publicly funded Medicaid program to pay for their appointments and prescriptions. She has pleaded not guilty.

For the first time, the Buffalo investigators devoted the kinds of resources normally aimed at street drugs like heroin or crack — wiretaps, buys, surveillance and cross-agency cooperation to trace the drugs from pharmacy to street. Even they were taken aback by the burgeoning market for the kinds of pills found in medicine cabinets in typical American homes.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/12/05/ny-bust-medicaid-patients-rx-drugs-dealers/#ixzz17L2QFuFI

Mancession

The collapse in the labor force participation rate has been one of the key stories of the great recession. The participation rate is the percentage of the working age population in the labor force.

The labor force participation rate has fallen from 66.2% in May 2008 to just 64.5% in November 2010.

A few weeks ago I looked at Labor Force Participation Rate: What will happen?. I looked at the aging of the population and concluded that the participation rate will probably increase to around 66% over the next 5 years before declining again - and that will keep upward pressure on the unemployment rate.

However one of the key trends has been the decline in the participation rate of men - and that is continuing.

I think there are other reasons for this trend.

1) As a result of child support delinquencies, many men are dropping out of the work force in order to avoid payment.There's usually more than one woman willing to take these d-bags in. Just look at any nurse or school teacher.

2) Frankly, as a result of the woman's movement where women are allowed to "have it all", they get to. And that includes a man who doesn't want to work or work "under the table".

3) Because of the earned income credit, it's actually against a woman's economic interest to marry. As a result, they're willing to tolerate a man who uses and deals drugs or does some other low end labor.

I continually say that the woman's movement and pressure to hire women has resulted in a large segment of our population to just kick their heals back and say "you go girl". Congratulations, you've succeeded.

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Dr. Coburn in debt commission 12.1.2010

Don't taze me bro

Coal powered cars

I find it hilarious that your average environmentalist believes that electric power is the magical clean elixir of energy in this country.

They're all lining up dying to buy coal powered cars (the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf) because they get that miraculous 90+ mpg on that yucky energy........... oil.

I call these cars coal power because where do you think we get most of our electric from in this country. (Hint, your electrical outlet is not the answer).

IT COMES FROM COAL!

So if we compute the use of all fossil fuels to power one of these gems, exactly how efficient would they be compared to the anti-Christ of all fuels, OIL.

We now have an answer.........

As Auto Blog says of the rating: “It looks good.” Of course it looks good. But there’s a whole lot more to the story. Note that the MPG rating is MPG equivalent. The MSM has been dropping the “equivalent,” making it seem to consumers that the vehicle is far more efficient than it truly is. Which is the intent, of course.

The ratings for the Chevy Volt have just been released as well. From the Detroit Free Press:

Chevy Volt to hit 93 m.p.g. in electric-only mode; battery-only Nissan Leaf to reach 99 m.p.g.

There is not a single instance of the word “equivalent” in the entire article. Nor is there any mention of last year’s claim that the Volt gets 230 miles per gallon (that was a different fraudulent number, based on a separate fraudulent scheme).

The current “miles per gallon equivalent” is a fraud perpetrated to hide the true environmental cost of these cars. One gallon of gas does have about 33.5 kilowatt-hours of chemical potential (depending on blend, additives, etc). And about that much energy is needed to get the Leaf to go 99 miles, and the Volt to go 93. But here’s where the fraud is perpetrated: the electricity for those vehicles is being generated by mostly coal power plants that are only about 33% efficient (minus transmission losses and losses from charging). Coal plants are off-site power generators (whereas car engines are on-board) and are totally ignored in the EPA rating.

Let me illustrate by example how this scheme works, and why it’s such a fraud.

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Football wrap up

What a difference a year makes. Last year, UC traveled about 15,000 fans to Pittsburgh to stand in the freezing cold and celebrate their Big East championship.

This year, there was about 15,000 fans at a home game capped off by the Bearcat mascot being arrested for throwing snowballs and then pushing a security guard.

At 4-8, I'm glad the season's over. My friends comfort me by saying that the team will return almost all the starters next year. But if the starters all suck, why would I be happy about that?

To the side is the Bearcat getting the beat down by the cops.

Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats - ...

This is cool.

I'd like to see him pare out California and New York like he does the Chinese provinces.

McCaskill Talk Tax Cuts

Life in "Progress" City - Cincinnati edition

From the Queen City, where there hasn't been a republican mayor since Ug died of carbon monoxide poisoning when he brought the first fire to the cave ..............

A panhandler enraged that a 63-year-old woman declined to give him money as she walked out a gas station here Friday morning, pulled out a steak knife and slashed her face, police said.

Scott O’Neal, 33, was arrested on felonious assault and aggravated robbery charges.

Police say that the woman had just stepped outside of the Thornton’s and was holding lottery tickets and cash when O’Neal approached her at the North Bend Road location at around 9:15 a.m.

“She politely turned him down, and he began attacking her,” said Lt. George Brown.

Court records state he was trying to wrestle the money out of the woman’s hands as he was attacking her.

We don't have this crap in "Redville". First, people out here aren't so stupid as to buy lottery tickets. Second, they're not out in the street holding up money. Third, the cops harass these derelicts until they move to a place where people tolerate them....like "Progress" City.

Getting stabbed in the face?

Now that's "progressive"!

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Life "unexpected"

In roughly 60 articles since the beginning of the summer every author has been "surprised" or the results "unexpected"..

Here's yet another............

The U.S. economy added fewer jobs than expected in November and the unemployment rate rose, dashing hopes that the recovery is gaining momentum.

How is that the feds have made it more expensive to hire employees in this country and everyone's surprised that employment lags despite what many say is a recovery?

I, for one, don't see this data as "unexpected". I believe you'll be more than able to expect bad results for some time..........

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Life in "progress" City - Camden edition

From the city of Camden NJ, where there hasn't been a republican in city government since Thag invented the wheel..............

Camden City Council, as expected, voted Thursday to lay off almost 400 workers, half of them police officers and firefighters, to bridge a $26.5 million deficit.

That’s about a quarter of the city’s entire work force.

Five members of City Council voted unanimously to approve the layoff plan — two other members were absent. The cuts take effect in mid-January.

Exactly how many city workers will be affected is still an open question, although nearly half the city’s police and a third of the firefighters are slated to go.

Making the nation's most dangerous city even more dangerous?

Now that's "progressive"!

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Meetings - the fuel for nothing

On this blog, I've expressed my displeasure of meetings several times. The only thing I ever experienced in a meeting was the need to have more meetings.

It was one of the driving forces for me to get out of corporate America.

Apparently, I'm not alone.............

Almost everyone I know or meet, when asked, does not hesitate to assert that he or she hates meetings. There are a vast number of jokes about the wearisome and useless nature of meetings in business, in faculty boards and education, in government, and in nonprofit organizations.

And that's why so few citizens wish to run for political office -- because they rightly recognize that the bulk of a politician's life is spent in meetings over the minutiae of how many parts per billion of ozone molecules can safely reside in a glass of water or lungful of air.

The jist of the article is that successful politicians love meetings. I would agree with the premise of this but for a different reason. See, your average politician loves meetings because 1) it means recess from actually doing something tangible 2) after a problem solving meeting ends with a solution being to have more meetings politicians get to slap each other on the back so they can pretend that something real was actually accomplished even though nothing was.

Look at UN meetings regarding Darfur. These clowns have been having meeting for years and yet somewhere no meeting has resulted in the parties actually stopping the starvation there.

So if Obama hates meetings. In my mind, it's because even the dimmest of bulbs understands that your average meeting is nothing more than a giant circle jerk.

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S*%t liberals run - student loans

It's kind of interesting how politicians create laws to help debtors walk away from bad home loans, credit card debt, etc. But you know, the government's not so generous when you owe them money.

Take student loans. If you owe the government money on a student loan, they will hound you FOREVER. Student loans can't be discharged in bankruptcy. The feds can seize any tax refund to apply against your student loan. In other words, you'd be better off borrowing money from Carmine, your neighborhood Youngstown pawn shop owner/"banker". See, if you default on a loan from Carmine, he'll send over his collectors, Big Nicky and Tony the Fish, to "talk" to you about your repayment plans.

Now, they may break a bone or two in the process but at least you have the ability to run away and start a new life in Lexington KY or Athens GA without too much fear of repercussion.

Try doing that with a student loan.

I note this as a backdrop in what is coming down the pike. Massive defaults on student loans...............

Over the last decade, private lenders, abetted by college financial aid offices, eagerly handed young people hundreds of thousands of dollars to earn bachelor's degrees. The student loan bubble may be about to burst.

In some respects, the student loan crisis looks remarkably like the subprime mortgage crisis. First, outstanding student loan debt has ballooned: It grew roughly four-fold in the last decade to $833 billion as of June — surpassing outstanding credit card debt for the first time.

Secondly, defaults have soared amid the difficult job market. In 2008, the most recent year for which data are available, nearly 3.4 million borrowers began repayment, and more than 238,000 defaulted on their loans. The number of loans that went into forbearance or deferment (when borrowers receive temporary relief from payments) rose to 22 percent in 2007, from 10 percent a decade earlier, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Over a 15-year period, default rates range from 20 percent for federal loans to 40 percent on loans to students who attend for-profit schools, The Chronicle found.

When are we going to have congressional hearing on the feds pushing loans on to students who had no ability to repay them?

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More tax fraud

Just a few posts ago, I noted how the tax business is rife with widespread fraud.

Now we have prisoners getting refunds.......

A government investigator says nearly 50,000 prison inmates claimed more than $130 million in tax refunds this year without providing any wage information to the IRS.

A report by the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration stops short of saying the refunds were fraudulently claimed. It does, however, say the Internal Revenue Service should investigate further.

The report, scheduled for release on Thursday, is the latest in a series of audits looking at prison inmates claiming tax credits and other government payments.

The report noted that the IRS identified nearly 250,000 fraudulent tax returns during the 2010 filing season — a 50 percent increase over 2009 — preventing $1.48 billion in fraudulent refunds.

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intellectual elitism

Ted Srtickland criticizing the democrats for "intellectual elitism".

The money quote........

"I mean, if we can't win that argument we might as well just fold up," he said. "These people are saying we are going to insist on tax cuts for the richest people in the country and we don't care if they are paid for, and we don't think it is a problem if it contributes to the deficit, but we are not going to vote to extend unemployment benefits to working people if they aren't paid for because they contribute to the deficit. I mean, what is wrong with that? How can it be more clear?"

Well Ted, there's no better example of the intellectual elitism than your quote above. Your language starts from the presumption that all money is the government's first and that the people need to show the government how they'll pay for stuff in order to have their own money back.

Years ago, I was at a tax conference where the head of the Ohio Department of Taxation got up and talked about how the state would be able to "afford" a lapse in what was supposed to be a temporary sales tax hike.

I challenged her first by getting her to acknowledge that her job with ODOT was to simply collect the tax not to deal with how those funds would be spent and second to get her to acknowledge the government will spend what the citizens decide to give it.

Somehow, I don't remember these people showing up to my office expressing concern about how I'll continue my business when my best client leaves or I have to reduce my prices because of competitive forces.

But hell maybe I'm not as smart as the Governor. The next time a client of mine wants to sell his business, I'll tell him "you can sell your business but how are you going to replace my loss in revenue?"

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It's still the spending stupid

Veronique de Rugy on taxes..........

This chart by Mercatus Center Senior Research Fellow Veronique de Rugy shows the historical path of federal taxation as a percentage of GDP using the earliest records available from the Office of Management and Budget and top marginal tax rate data from the Tax Policy Center. From 1930 to 2010, tax revenue collection in the United States has never topped 20.9%, averaging 16.5% of GDP over these 80 years. This comes despite the drastic historical fluctuation in the rate of taxes on the wealthiest Americans. As we move toward debt reduction, it is critical to keep the long-term path of the United States in mind.

It's the spending stupid.....

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It's the spending stupid

Last weekend, I was driving through a local park in the city and I noticed a plaque on a shelter house acknowledging the WPA.

Now we can debate the propriety of the WPA's, CCC's, et al, impact on the economy during the depression. But what we can't debate is that through many of those works, we still have functioning projects that have paid extended dividends to society well after their original construction.

Hoover Dam, the TVA, etc. are all projects that continue to provide value for their tax dollars.

Fast forward to the fifties and sixties where we have a great interstate highway system that provides Americans with prosperity via increased productivity. The space program provided all kinds of technological advances that have progressed to this day.

You can even move ahead to the 80's when Reagan's SDI ("Star Wars" to his haters) has paid dividends through the development of GPS systems and satellite & laser technology. You could argue that the development of those technologies is what fueled the tech boom of the '90's.

But as I was looking at that shelter house, I started to wonder. With all the trillions being spent by governments of all levels, what will be the recurring dividend to the public who had to dole out those trillions?

In other words, 30 years from now, we be able to say, "Wow! For 20 trillion dollars, we got.........."?

The fact is, this is what the masses are pissed about. We are effectively spending trillions of dollars for all kinds of shit and we have nothing to show for it. No damns, no nuclear facilities, no new transportation systems (that work). Hell, we don't even get a nice pyramid out of the deal.

In fact, here in Cincinnati there are at least four significant bridges/via ducts within the city that commuters get to watch crumble before their very eyes and there's yet no plan to replace these.

There is absolutely no economic multiplier effect if all we're doing is taking money from person X, borrowing from country Y, and giving it to person Z.

And it would be one thing if we could say that for 4 trillion dollars we wiped out poverty, or for $100 billion we reduced crime, or we've spent trillions on education and now our kids are the smartest in the world. But we've spent money on these things with absolutely no visible and/or tangible results. In fact, I would offer that the spending of these funds have been counter productive.

I went to this site to check the state of government spending since 1980. Since 1980, government spending at all levels has an inflation rate of 5.7% (the rate of growth is about the same for federal spending alone). When is the last time you got a 5.7% raise?

It doesn't take an awesome mathematician to figure out that if wages are only growing at 1-2% a year but government grows at 5.5-6% per year there will be a breaking point at some point in time.

And despite all that spending, in the end, we'll have nothing to show for it.

So when the Obamunists keep saying the government can't afford tax cuts for families over $250k a year (forget for a moment the assumption that it's the government's first), I have to ask "to do what?"

Life in "Progress" City - Chicago edition

Thousands of fraudulent free rides have been taken on Chicago's mass-transit system by people using passes issued to now-deceased senior citizens, officials said Monday.

The Regional Transportation Authority found that at least 164 senior free-ride cards remained in use after the person to whom the card was issued had died. One card alone racked up as many as 1,400 free trips, officials said.

An RTA audit turned up about 25,000 fraudulent free rides in 2009, costing the transit agencies about $50,000, said Grace Gallucci, RTA deputy executive director.

Although this is a relatively small amount of revenue and ridership, RTA officials fear more widespread abuse of the free-rides program is taking place.

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Life in "Progress" City - Newark edition

There is concern and worry in New Jersey’s largest city.

Newark residents were wondering Tuesday if their streets were safe after 14 percent of the city’s police officers were laid off, CBS 2’s Pablo Guzman reports.

The mayor of Newark and his police director said even with 167 officers laid off, people will not notice a difference on the street.

"Newark residents should know that tonight. We will have virtually the same amount of people, on patrol. As we had last night. And the night before,” Mayor Cory Booker said.

If that's the case, why were these people on payroll in the first place?

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"The most ethical congress evah"

Today's corrupt representative is..............

U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit, today called his son's use of his congressional vehicle over the Thanksgiving holiday "inappropriate" after the SUV was broken into and items were stolen.

The longtime congressman released the statement from Washington after news broke of his son, John Conyers III, filing a police report early Thanksgiving morning that the 2010 Cadillac Escalade registered to his dad's Detroit office had two laptops and $27,500 worth of concert tickets stolen from it. The SUV was parked at the corner of Brush and Congress.

"I am sorry it happened and will make sure that it does not happen again," Conyers said in a statement. "I will review the full circumstances of the use of this vehicle and make restitution to the Treasury for any non-official use."

A phone call to Conyers III was not returned.

Conyers, 81, who is the House Judiciary Committee chairman, did not address why his son was driving the vehicle or whether he was in town when the break-in occurred while the car was parked.

The police report stated Conyers III parked the car around 11:30 p.m. and when he returned an hour later, the burgundy SUV had been broken into.

The tickets were intended to be distributed to select retail locations as part of a Black Friday promotion for local Rapper Big Sean's concert at the Fillmore on Dec. 26. Conyers III is affiliated with Big Sean and the promotional group selling the tickets, an executive at the Fillmore confirmed.

Conyers' wife, Monica, a former Detroit City Councilwoman, is serving 37 months in prison for taking at least $6,000 to change her vote on the controversial $1.2 billion Synagro sludge hauling contract in 2007. The conviction was part of a wide-ranging ongoing probe of city corruption.

Hey it's all in the family!

The unemployment canard

If your only news consumption was the traditional network news media you'd never really understand the whole unemployment benefit debate going on today.

First, let me explain how unemployment works. Employers pay into a state insurance funds and the rate varies based on the company's history.

When a worker gets laid off, they can collect up to 26 weeks of unemployment benefits through that fund.

The feds have a backup fund (employers also pay into) that they can use to extend the base from 26 weeks to 39. The states are required to share in the costs of those extensions.

The feds have passed various extensions to now 73 weeks giving the unemployed 99 weeks of benefits.

Or have they?

What people don't know is that only 12 states have decided to participate in the extra benefit program.

Federal jobless payments, which last up to 73 weeks, kick in after the state-funded 26 weeks of coverage expire. These federal benefits are divided into four tiers of emergency unemployment compensation, which last between six and 20 weeks, followed by up to five months of extended benefits. The jobless must apply each time they move into a new tier.

Unemployed Americans who've just exhausted their state benefits are already blocked from entering the federal system in most states. They would have had to file their initial federal claim by this past weekend.

Those already in a federal emergency benefits system will not be able to move to the next tier after this coming weekend. However, they can continue to collect the benefits available in their current level. So those who just entered a tier could continue receiving benefits for awhile, but those who are near the end of their tier will see payments dry up sooner.

Many of the jobless who are in the last stage of the federal safety net -- the up to five months of extended benefits -- will stop getting checks this month no matter when they started this level. That's because the federal government will stop fully funding this stage after Nov. 30.

Not every state offers federal extended benefits, because they were required to split the costs of the program with the federal government. Prior to last year, only 12 states provided this support, depending on their state unemployment rate.

But of course, if republicans won't pass an extension it means that they're hating on the poor working guy. Never mind, that if you happen to live in one of 38 states, your state government is hating on you too.........

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