Tuesday, December 06, 2011

I will own that I don't fully understand the short or long term impacts of devaluing a currency on an economy. But if I had to guess, I'm betting on it not being a good thing when a finite group of people decide on manipulating a free market discipline.

This thought from MJ Perry gives more clarity to the issue...........


"Let me break from [the] consensus about China's currency policy and present an alternative position: In the best of all possible worlds for the United States, China would use its labor and capital to manufacture consumer products like clothing, footwear, furniture, electronics, and appliances and send $300 billion worth of these products to U.S. consumers for free every year as a gift or a form of foreign aid to the American people. In addition, the Chinese would produce and send to America another $100 billion worth of raw materials, parts, industrial supplies, inputs, and natural resources at no charge, as a gift to American manufacturers every year. (Note: That's roughly the amount of goods we will purchase from China this year.) . . .

Unfortunately, that extreme Chinese generosity is not realistic, so here's a possible second-best outcome: . . . [China] agrees to send us $500 billion worth of consumer and industrial goods every year, but agrees to sell us those manufactured goods at a substantial 20 percent discount for only $400 billion. In that case, the amount of foreign aid will be less than the $400 billion in the first example, but will still be significant—a $100 billion gift every year from the Chinese people to the American people.

How will China generate this $100 billion in annual foreign aid to the United States? One way is to keep its currency undervalued to bring about the 20 percent discount on its products coming to America.

Which then raises the question: If China is willing to undervalue its currency, and in the process provide approximately $100 billion of foreign aid annually to American consumers and businesses, what's the problem? Why should we complain?"


Read his blog here..........



When being poor isn't

A Seattle woman who is receiving welfare assistance from Washington state also happens to live in a waterfront house on Lake Washington worth more than a million dollars.

Federal agents raided the home this weekend but have not released the woman or her husband's name because they have not officially been charged with a crime.

However, federal documents obtained by KING 5 News show the couple currently receives more than $1,200 a month in public housing vouchers, plus state and government disability checks and food stamps. They have been receiving the benefits since 2003.

The 2,500 square-foot home, which includes gardens and a boat dock, is valued at $1.2 million. And even though the couple has been receiving the benefits for nearly 10 years, records show that they accurately listed the address of their current home when applying for the state and federal benefits.




Paraphrasing an Ohio liberal blogger "just because someone has a boat dock doesn't mean they're not poor".

More.........


Monday, December 05, 2011

What's 400 million between friends

Just because Ohio doesn't have a good business climate doesn't mean they don't have money to throw around for more bad companies........

Ohio has pitched $400 million in incentives to lure Sears' corporate headquarters away from Illinois, far more than Illinois was preparing to offer to keep the retailer in suburban Chicago, a spokeswoman for Gov. Pat Quinn told an Ohio newspaper.


Quinn said Thursday he is not willing to get into a bidding war with Ohio to keep Sears Holdings Corp. from leaving the state, saying a tax package that Senate lawmakers passed earlier this week "is more than adequate" to keep the company from rolling up the carpet.
Article



Good news for the Obamunists..........

President Obama, with his electoral fate tied to the economy, must be pleased with the momentum he’s getting.


Just months ago, the U.S. credit rating was downgraded and Democrats worried Obama was following in the footsteps of one-term President Jimmy Carter. Maybe he will, but reports in the last week suggest manufacturing and construction are humming, and Thanksgiving saw record-setting shopping by consumers.

The icing on the cake? A jobs report Friday shaved nearly half a point off the unemployment rate. The 8.6 percent rate was down from 9 percent in October and is the lowest unemployment has stood in two and a half years.

Nevermind that the unemployment rate job primarily as a result of discouraged workers, workers who have just quit looking for a job.

So if Obama can only get another million or so workers get on with being a "lazy Americans" and quit looking for a job, he'll be looking fine...........

More...... 

Saturday, December 03, 2011

How to lose weight the easy way

Watch this video before every meal. If it doesn't make you nauseated, you probably need to opt for liposuction

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

About ten years ago, I was in municipal court for a speeding ticket (52 in a 35). As I sat there were at least 20 DUI's being prosecuted that night. About five of them were illegal immigrants who needed interpreters to understand the proceedings.

I couldn't believe my ears as the magistrate just went from one to another and said $500.00 three days in jail plus court costs ($110.00). It didn't matter if you blew a .04 parked in your driveway or if you blew a .29 parked in someone's bedroom, it was clear to me that it had less to do with getting drunk drivers off the streets and more about keeping that cash register humming........

Of course by even mentioning it, I will be perceived by some as soft on drunk drivers. Which is how law enforcement extracts it's money from the public.............


Drunk driving enforcement in this country has become a racket. It’s not about safety, it’s about money. Actually, the drive over the past two decades to lower the legal limit of alcohol for drivers has likely made traffic less safe. It has undoubtedly, though, put millions of dollars into the coffers of various jurisdictions via fines and vehicle confiscation. Additional millions have lined the pockets of police officers via overtime pay to appear in court and to man sobriety checkpoints.


The cynic in me says that as long as police officers and municipalities see drinking drivers as cash cows and hide behind the fig leaf of “traffic safety”, arbitrary standards based on BAC will continue even though they may be counterproductive. In fact, after there was a national push by Mothers Against Drunk Driving to lower the legal BAC limits nationally from 0.10% to 0.08%, backed up by federal pressure on states, alcohol-related traffic fatalities went up in 2000, after 20 straight years of going down. That increase shouldn’t have been surprising. The push for a de facto national limit of 0.08% came after a 1995 NHTSA study already showed that some states that lowered the BAC limits were less safe than before. Those lower limits may have meant a windfall of revenue to jurisdictions and individual police officers, but they didn’t necessarily make us any safer. They may have led to more booze related driving injuries and deaths.


How do lower BAC limits mean more alcohol related accidents?  Because those lower BAC limits in most cases led to the institution of sobriety check lanes, legal in all but 9 states. Assuming that the purpose of those checkpoints is genuinely to catch drinking drivers and not just put money into municipal coffers and cops’ pockets, I think it stands to reason that the rationale is to catch those drinking drivers that conventional on the road enforcement wasn’t catching. The idea, I suppose, was that if you check every driver, you’ll find the ones who have been drinking but aren’t impaired enough to catch attention from police or other drivers. In other words, the purpose of the check lanes is to catch drivers who aren’t driving dangerously, except for the fact that they have a particular amount of alcohol in their system.

Read the rest..........

Adam Carolla explains the OWS Generation

Who did she vote for?

Meet Arlene Ackerman. Why is Dr. Ackerman in the news?




Former Philadelphia schools superintendent Arlene Ackerman, who was given a nearly $1-million buyout earlier this year, has applied for unemployment.

School District spokesman Fernando Gallard today confirmed that Ackerman wants to collect state unemployment benefits.

“The former superintendent did apply for unemployment,” Gallard told KYW Newsradio today.
This comes after taxpayers funded a $905,000 buyout when she was shown the door in August (see related story).

As part of her separation agreement, the School Reform Commission agreed not to contest any unemployment claims she might file.


So in 2008, did the good Dr. vote for Obama or McCain?

From The Desk Of Donald Trump: Inconsiderate Obama

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Issue 2 aftermath

For the past three months, voters in Ohio were bombarded with commercials from the unions saying that if Issue 2 passed it would result in fire fighters and police layoffs.

Well Issue 2 went down but yet somehow police and fire layoffs are coming anyway.............

The Middletown City Council voted 3-4 to eliminate nine Middletown firefighter positions as part of the 2012 budget.
Local 336 says it will continue to find a solution to prevent cuts and reach out to city officials.
Wow, if the city would have been able to save money by having these guys pay for more of their benefits maybe they would have enough money to save a cop or two..........





Governor Christie: What the hell are we paying you for?

Monday, November 28, 2011

PETA - People Eating Tasty Animals



How do I get a reservation?

Something about Tim

I try to not watch the NFL. Any business model that can line the pockets of a douchebag like Mike Brown doesn't need my support.

None the less, I am an avid sports fan and I do listen to talk radio when the topic isn't exclusively pro sports.

With that said, what the hell is it about Tim Tebow?

I couldn't tell you the names of quarterbacks in San Francisco, Seattle, Jacksonville, Tampa, etc. yet I know every thing about Tim Tebow outside of a rectal exam.

What's most unnerving is the negative, almost mocking coverage of this guy. For the past few weeks I've heard Merrill Hoge, Colin Cowherd, Mike and Mike, etc. flat out make fun of this guy as some sort of freak show disguised as an NFL quarterback. And all he's done is win games for his team.

But it really goes beyond the sports talking heads of ESPN. People who have little, if any, knowledge of sports have to ridicule this guy. Bill Maher, Matt Taibbi, and, for all I know, Joy Behar mock this guy. Why?

I've come to the conclusion that it's because he's an outspoken Christian. Seriously, do you think any of these people would spend one moment trying to drag this guy down if he were your garden variety NFL thug?

When I was involved in a number of Bible study groups, many would speak figuratively of "evil winds" that were always whirling and circling looking for opportunities to bring down the devout. The Screwtape Letters is an excellent book describing how Satan uses opportunity to bring people down. For some reason, I've always tended to minimize the impact of evil in the world. It's always felt like a way to minimize our own failures to temptation.

But when you see all these media types praying to their non existent god that Tim Tebow be cast into their non existent hell along with Sarah Palin, it really starts to make you a believer.

So you keep going Tim, win more games. I will always be a huge fan of anyone who pisses off Bill Maher.




Sunday, November 27, 2011

Getting back in shape sucks

For the past couple of months, my blog posts have been few and far between.

There's a couple of reasons for that but the first has been my fitness commitment to get myself back in shape.

Since April 15th, I've lost 50 lbs and after some of my workouts, all I can think of doing is going to bed.

My workout regimen culminated with a Thanksgiving day 10k run.

Here's my result if you are interested.

As I was running Thursday morning, it dawned on me that there's some fairly clear barometers that tell you that you're not quite in the shape you want to be.

1) When a guy in a turkey suit passes you.
2) When a bunch of 70 year old shriners wearing fez's are running figure 8's around you.
3) When a homeless guy runs up to you asking you if you'd like a drink.
4) When you've been running for 6 minutes and you haven't even passed the starting line.
5) It's three days after the race and your quadriceps still feel like someone shot you in the legs.


Hopefully, I'll get back to blogging soon but for now, I'm going to keep up my Thanksgiving day size consumption of ibuprofen.

Friday, November 18, 2011

He should have been a senator

A Harvard-trained physician was sentenced Friday to five years in prison for evading $30 million in investment losses by obtaining inside information from a fellow doctor.

Joseph "Chip" Skowron III apologized to his wife and friends in a packed Manhattan courtroom before U.S. District Judge Denise Cote announced the sentence.

Turning around to look at his wife in the first row of spectators, Skowron said she was the most harmed by his insider trading venture, which helped him avoid millions of dollars in losses.

"I am not what she expected when she married a young doctor 15 years ago," he said.

The 42-year-old Greenwich, Conn., resident pleaded guilty in August to conspiring to commit securities fraud and obstructing justice.

He called the last year "devastating" and "incredible" with glimpses of the best parts of humanity emerging from the most unexpected of circumstances.

"I was not aware of the changes that were happening in me that blurred the line between right and wrong," he said. "I allowed myself to slip into the world of relativism where the ends justified the means."

Skowron admitted gaining an advantage in his work as a hedge fund analyst in 2007 and 2008 by using tips gained through meetings and conversations with a French doctor who knew inside information about clinical drug trials.

More.....

When EF Senator talks, you better listen

I always say, I'm not the smartest guy in the room but I try to imitate what the smart guys are doing.

So if you want some insider trading tips.... don't follow Martha Stewart.... follow your local senator........

Why isn’t congressional members required to put their holdings into a blind trust?

Why can’t we ban insider trading by Congress members be banned?

How cant these elected officials do “the people’s business” when they are too busy running around trading on the votes they are about to cast?

How one earth can we ever get fair outcomes of issues involving finance, healthcare, or energy when the members so personally have a monetary stake in an outcome they may or may not be in the public interest?

Why aren’t these people in jail?

~~~

1. General Electric (GE)

Members invested: 75
Total value of holdings (max.): $11.41 million
Total value of holdings (min.): $3.58 million

Top Congressional Investors
Darrell Issa (R.-Calif.) – $1 million to $5 million
John Kerry (D.-Mass.) – $616,004 to $1.315 million
Michael McCaul (R.-Texas) – $400,003 to $850,000

2. Procter & Gamble (PG)

Members invested: 62
Total value of holdings (max.): $39.42 million
Total value of holdings (min.): $8.72 million

Top Congressional Investors
Rodney Frelinghuysen (R.-N.J.) – $7.07 million to $35.15 million
Michael McCaul (R.-Texas) – $200,002 to $500,000
James B. Renacci (R.-Ohio) – $180,485 to$222,482

3. Bank of America (BAC)

Members invested: 57
Total value of holdings (max.): $5.41 million
Total value of holdings (min.): $2.83 million

Top Congressional Investors
Rodney Frelinghuysen (R.-N.J.) – $1.02 million to $1.08 million
John M. Spratt Jr. (D.-S.C.) – $500,001 to $1 million
Dianne Feinstein (D.-Calif.) – $500,001 to $1 million

4. Microsoft (MSFT)

Members invested: 56
Total value of holdings (max.): $6.43 million
Total value of holdings (min.): $3.22 million

Top Congressional Investors
John Kerry (D.-Mass.) – $1.77 million to $2.55 million
Michael McCaul (R.-Texas) – $515,003 to $1.05 million
Jane Harman (D.-Calif.) – $130,003 to $350,000
Thanks reader Tim


Read the rest..........








Life in "Progress" City- Detroit

What says progress more than a city that is 90% democratic?
With Detroit Mayor Dave Bing preparing to explain the city's fiscal crisis tonight in a rare televised address, Council President Pro Tem Gary Brown says the situation is even worse than anyone has let on.

Bing is expected to discuss a confidential Ernst & Young report obtained by the Detroit Free Press that suggests Detroit could run out of cash by April without steep cuts to staff and public services.

That's a grim prognosis, but according to Brown, the city actually could be unable to make payroll "as early as December."

"I know the report says April, but there are certain risk assumptions that when you take those into consideration, worst case scenario you could run out (of cash) in December," Brown said this morning on WJR-AM 760.

In his speech tonight, Bing is expected to propose privatizing the city's public bus system and lighting departments, both of which have have been failing residents but reportedly cost them $100 million a year in subsidies.

More......


"....fundamentally right wing"

As part of the solidarity with OWS, Harvard students (some of the 99% don't you know) are boycotting Greg Mankiw's basic Econ class...........

Students believe that several problems with the class itself contributed to that conservative bias. Some, including Sandalow-Ash, said that the class is “not mathematically rigorous” and presents a simplified view of the economic models. According to MIT economics Professor Jonathan H. Gruber ’87, MIT’s introductory economics courses, 14.01 and 14.02, differ from Harvard’s because they use more advanced mathematical models.

The other specific problem raised with the class is a lack of primary source material. “We just read his textbook. … We would rather read Adam Smith or studies by other economists rather than [Mankiw’s] interpretation of them,” said Sandalow-Ash.

Some question whether the walkout was the most effective way to discuss a problem with the course and to support the Occupy movement. Gruber, who teaches 14.01 this fall, said that “the Occupy movement has a good, strong message and I don’t want them to muddy it up … [by] protesting economics.”

When asked why the students chose a walkout approach instead of talking privately with Mankiw, Sandalow-Ash responded that “he’s not very accessible” and that they wanted to draw attention to their cause. According to an article published in the Harvard Political Review, Mankiw has only given three lectures this semester, while the rest of the material was presented in sections and by guest lecturers. Mankiw declined to comment for this article.

There is room for debate about whether or not Economics 10 has a conservative bias. According to Gruber, “basic economics is fundamentally right wing. … It’s not about bias; it’s how the free market works.” When it comes to teaching economics without bias, you have to “acknowledge [that fact] and … approach things even-handedly,” Gruber said.

"Basic economics is fundamentally right wing"? Seriously?

Why might that be? Because it actually makes sense? Because, unlike global warming, you can actually prove things like the Law of Supply and Demand?  Because maybe, it's the conservative view point that's actually supported by "science"?

More.......


Thursday, November 17, 2011

McCaskill Outlines Plan To Solve $15 Trillion Debt

Kind of like proper inflation of tires will solve our energy demands.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Obama thinks Hawaii is in Asia

Since when did Sarah Palin become a black man?

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

CTU President Karen Lewis Uncensored - NSFW

And this is the quality of person molding our youth?

Afterburner with Bill Whittle: Three and a Half Days

Tea Party Filth


For some reason, I've grown fond of old westerns I couldn't stand when I was a kid. Probably because every other show was either Bonanza, Gunsmoke, or Big Valley.

So imagine you are a cowboy on the trail and you come across this sight; syringes, feces, broken bongs,  stench from BO.

I can hear Marshall Dillon now "Festus, I think those tea partiers are only a couple of hours a head of us, it looks like they're following the trail to a local country club".

Thanks reader Jeremy for the link.




Monday, November 14, 2011

The question no one will ask

I saw this article on the front page of a USA today this morning...........

Medical authorities are witnessing explosive growth in the number of newborn babies hooked on prescription painkillers, innocent victims of their mothers' addictions.

The trend reflects how deeply rooted abuse of powerful narcotics, such as OxyContin and Vicodin, has become. Prescription drug abuse is the nation's fastest-growing drug problem, classified as an epidemic by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"I'm scared to death this will become the crack-baby epidemic," says Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. Last month, she asked the state Legislature to establish a task force to compile data on drug-exposed babies and develop prevention strategies.

National statistics on the number of babies who go through withdrawal are not available, and states with the worst problems have only begun to collect data. Scattered reports show the number of addicted newborns has doubled, tripled or more over the past decade. In Florida, the epicenter of the illicit prescription drug trade, the number of babies with withdrawal syndrome soared from 354 in 2006 to 1,374 in 2010, according to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration.

Here's what I want to know. How many of these babies are being carried by moms on public assistance?

No where in the article is a mention of welfare but I'd bet my life savings that the majority of these moms are sucking off the government tit for their high and getting knocked up in the process.

But instead, we'll dance around the issue and talk about education and lack of economic opportunity and the issue will just get worse.

Who did she vote for?

I think it's so unfair that people are able to climb the corporate ladder faster than I can.

A democrat on an escalator

VP Biden says he called Jon Corzine for advice

I agree with Obama for a change

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

I agree with Obama, we were damn lazy to check this guy out to ensure he wasn't a job killing socialist before electing him.



Sunday, November 13, 2011

To Catch a Journalist: New Jersey Star-Ledger

Who did she vote for? #10018

Meet unnamed fat ass.

Out of curiosity, has she ever counted her carbon footprint for all the excess calories she inhales?



None the less, did this whaler vote for McCain or Obama in the last presidential election.

Thanks reader Jeremy for the link.

Friday, November 11, 2011

Life in "Progress" City - Chicago edition

My sister-in-law is looking to get the hell out of Chicago.

Geez, I wonder why?

Police have launched an investigation after a man was caught on video knocking out an older man at the Chicago Avenue Red Line stop while others laughed and mimicked the attack.

The assault occurred in April, but the video has only recently surfaced on the Internet.

The video, posted at worldstarhiphop.com, shows a man in a tan coat moving among people on the southbound subway platform as a group of youths joke and laugh. One of the youths starts following the man, turning around and smiling as his friends whoop and laugh.

The youth, dressed in a black vest jacket, then appears to tap the man to get his attention. When the man turns around, the two appear to exchange a few words before the youth suddenly strikes him on the side of the head.


Check out the video here..........

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Merry Christmas

When journalists discovered yesterday that the Federal Registry included a new 15-cent tax on fresh Christmas trees, they cried "War on Christmas!" and accused President Obama of trying to destroy American traditions. This was fairly silly, of course, but no more silly than the tax itself.

The administration was never trying to destroy Christmas. (It suspended the fee this afternoon.) In fact, it was trying to save Christmas -- for the Christmas tree lobby. The fee was requested by the National Christmas Tree Association to pay for a new marketing campaign to save itself from further collapse.

Fresh-tree sales fell by 16 percent in 16 years to 31 million in 2007. A 2004 article on the crisis in fresh trees reported that in 1990, roughly equal numbers of households put up real trees and fake trees -- about 35 million each. "A decade later, the split was 32 million live and 50.6 million artificial," they said. (If anybody's "killing Christmas" by letting pine trunks rot in parking lots, it's Christian families and their fake Christmas trees.)

As Ronald Reagan once said, if you see business move, you tax it. If it continues to move, you regulate it. When it quits moving, you subsidize it.

Thanks reader Jeremy for the tip.

More....

#occupy Joe Paterno

I was surprised last night when the lovely Mrs. Gekko was so insistent on watching the Joe Paterno coverage. She's not exactly a big sports fan.

But as i watched the coverage, these were my original thoughts on the matter.

1) You don't go to the cops when you see and/or report the RAPE OF A CHILD? I told Mrs. Gekko, I think the sight of witnessing something like would really be such a shock I wouldn't know what to do initially. But after talking to someone about it, I think it would become pretty obvious.

2) The people McQueary told never had the sobriety to actually counsel McQueary to call the cops. Instead, they just washed their hands by telling someone up the chain of command.

3) Actually seeing this Sandusky guy continue to walk around campus, even bringing children on campus as recently as 2007 (after the initial rape was witnessed in 2002), it never occurred to anyone to follow up on what happened to THE RAPE OF A CHILD.

4) The University had no choice but to can Paterno. How can you claim any moral high ground when you allow anyone on your payroll to turn their back on the RAPE OF CHILDREN.

5) Paterno still doesn't get it. First, he tried to dictate the terms of his own dismissal; the arrogance of power that started this whole mess. Second, he's pissed that they fired him over the phone. You mean to tell me that the University did the absolute minimum to cover their ass? Pot meet kettle.

6) So the students riot on behalf of Joe Pa. Seriously? This is the man you want as your flag bearer? A man who enabled the continued rape of children. I heard one student proclaim "he did so much for the University". Yeah, he allowed it to become a safe haven for pedophiles.

7) So according to the rioters, it's OK to support a man who turned his back on how many rape victims because he was good for the institution? Would any on these students be so willing to riot on behalf of the Bishops and Cardinals of the Catholic church who did the exact same thing? I mean, hey they did good as well. It's the highest form of moral relativism. Joe Pa should call Roman Polanski for his mailing list of sex crime enablers.


Monday, November 07, 2011

Voting reminder

Tomorrow is election day for a large part of the country. As we go to the polls, I ask each of you to keep in mind two things.

First, look at the map below. It's the 2000 Gore-Bush presidential election by county. As you can see by the map, it's not a red state-blue state country. Our country is divided primarily by urban areas dominated by liberals and suburban and rural areas dominated by conservatives.

Seriously, is there one measurable quality of life statistic that would make life better in the blue areas over the red?

Schools? Crime? Employment? Poverty?

There's not one area in the country run by democrats that creates a better life for it's residents over conservatives.










Second, below are various demographic groups and individuals who you can probably group as liberals or conservatives.

When you vote tomorrow, ask yourself the question, which of these groups do you want as neighbors, teaching your kids, your coworkers?

Because your votes align you with the people below. And those people will be the people who will turn your school district/city/state/country into Detroit............ or not.

So tomorrow, you'll make a choice in the voting booth. Choose wisely.


War Protesters
Active Military
20 year olds
60 year olds
Larry Flynt
Pat Robertson
Criminals
Cops
Union Heads
Corporate executives
Drug Dealers
Convenience store owners
Alec Baldwin
Kelsey Grammar
Welfare Queens
Working women
Michael Stipe
Ted Nugent
Planned Parenthood
Right to Life
Sharon Stone
Bo Derek
ACORN workers
NASCAR Fans
Joy Behar
Elisabeth Hasselbeck
Atheists
Born again Christians
Madonna
Martina McBride
Vegans
Hunters
Non repentant terrorists
FBI agents
Homeless
Homeowners
College professors
Small business owners
Urbanites
Suburbanites
Any network news anchor
John Stossel     

Sunday, November 06, 2011

#occupy Rockford Files

Can we get James Garner to deliver this to all those derelicts living in parks?

why you should vote yes on Issue 2

Serious crime in Cincinnati continues to decline, and the number of police officers is dropping - yet taxpayers still pay more for police service.

The city now has 1,032 officers, the lowest number since 2003, according to an Enquirer comparison of staffing, crime and budget data. But the department's budget jumped in the eight years since to $104.4 million this year - a 22 percent increase.

Police officials have reduced civilian ranks and held the top ranks essentially steady, according to data obtained through a public records request. They haven't hired any new officers since 2008.

But costs continue to grow, specifically because of benefits and health care.

Payments to the police pension fund have jumped an average of almost 4 percent every year since 2000, according to the city budget office, and health care costs for all city employees averaged 18.5 percent increases annually in that same time period. Police agreed last year to a wage freeze, but it didn't take effect until this year.

More......

Friday, November 04, 2011

This makes my hair hurt


Here.......

President Barry probably boycotted his lecture as well.

Apparently, a bunch of OWS protest supporters at Harvard showed their support of the movement by boycotting Greg Mankiw's EC 10 class.

Here's how the Harvard Crimson covered the boycott.......

The Occupy movement has become known for its many, and often contradictory, faces. Now we can add a new group of faces to that list—Ec 10 students. Students in the popular introductory economics class walked out fifteen minutes into the class yesterday in a gesture of solidarity with the Occupy movement and to protest what the event organizers consider a class that promotes a “strongly conservative neoliberal ideology.” We find it troubling that students would protest a class because of its supposed ideological bent at an institution dedicated to academic integrity. Such an action sets a dangerous precedent of ideological discrimination against professors.

While it is true that Professor N. Gregory Mankiw, who was lecturing during the walkout, has conservative views and held a position in the Bush Administration, we take issue with the claim that his class is inherently biased because he is the professor and author of its textbook. The truth is that Ec 10, a requirement for economics concentrators, provides a necessary academic grounding for the study of economics as a social science. Professor Mankiw’s curriculum sticks to the basics of economic theory without straying into partisan debate. We struggle to believe that we must defend his textbook, much maligned by the protesters, which is both peer reviewed and widely used.

Furthermore, the students protesting the class who desire that he give more time to other, less accepted schools of economic thought—like Marxism—would do well to remember that such interrogation is the domain of social theory, not economic theory. Supply-and-demand economics is a popular idea of how society is organized, and Mankiw’s Ec 10 never presents itself as more than that. As such, including other theories would simply muddy the waters of what is intended; Ec 10 is an introductory class that lays the foundation for future, more nuanced, study


This reminds me of a lecture my Econ 101 professor gave the class after his students did so poorly on an exam. After about 15 minutes of listening to him complain about how the people who didn't show up to class did poorly, I got up in front of about 600 students and said "Dr. Berry, the people who you are complaining about aren't here and the one's who are don't need to hear it."

Given the total lack of aptitude of the OWS people and our president, it appears that many of them could have sat in on this lecture and learned something.

More.......

If he were a republican we'd have known about this five years ago

Out of curiosity, how many of the media outlets who found time and space to report on Herman Cain's anonymous allegations will find time to report on The Big O's issues..........

A blockbuster new book rips the lid off President Barack Obama’s darkest se­crets – and could doom his bid to win a second term in the White House!

The explosive tell-all by take-no-prisoners blogger Mondo Frazier reveals the command­er in chief is a “chain-smok­ing wreck” who could be hooked on prescrip­tion drugs, and claims he may have spied for the CIA in col­lege.

“I’ve uncovered that Presi­dent Obama has spent over $2 million in legal fees to keep the details of his past hidden,” Frazier told The ENQUIRER. “This new book will surely impact his re-election campaign.”

In “The Secret Life of Barack Hussein Obama,” published by Simon & Schuster’s Threshold Editions press, Frazier alleges President Obama could have been a “CIA double agent” when he was a student at Columbia University.

That may be the reason why Obama re­fuses to release his Columbia records, ac­cording to Frazier, who also discloses that former National Se­curity Agency employee Wayne Madsen has discov­ered CIA files directly linked to this secret.


More.....

Helping my fellow man

Hey, even though I'm a conservative, I have compassion for my fellow man.

Because of that, I'm looking to help Joe Therrien get a job by throwing out his story on my blog.

Who is Joe? Well let's read this.........

A few years ago, Joe Therrien, a graduate of the NYC Teaching Fellows program, was working as a full-time drama teacher at a public elementary school in New York City. Frustrated by huge class sizes, sparse resources and a disorganized bureaucracy, he set off to the University of Connecticut to get an MFA in his passion—puppetry. Three years and $35,000 in student loans later, he emerged with degree in hand, and because puppeteers aren’t exactly in high demand, he went looking for work at his old school. The intervening years had been brutal to the city’s school budgets—down about 14 percent on average since 2007. A virtual hiring freeze has been in place since 2009 in most subject areas, arts included, and spending on art supplies in elementary schools crashed by 73 percent between 2006 and 2009. So even though Joe’s old principal was excited to have him back, she just couldn’t afford to hire a new full-time teacher. Instead, he’s working at his old school as a full-time “substitute”; he writes his own curriculum, holds regular classes and does everything a normal teacher does. “But sub pay is about 50 percent of a full-time salaried position,” he says, “so I’m working for half as much as I did four years ago, before grad school, and I don’t have health insurance…. It’s the best-paying job I could find.”

Like a lot of the young protesters who have flocked to Occupy Wall Street, Joe had thought that hard work and education would bring, if not class mobility, at least a measure of security (indeed, a master’s degree can boost a New York City teacher’s salary by $10,000 or more).


Now, I know what you are thinking. How does a master's degree in puppetry increase his class mobility?

You may even be wondering if the guy did a cost/benefit analysis to see if a $35,000 investment in puppetry would yield a return greater than that?

But hey, the guy pursued his passion in life.... puppetry. Certainly, everyone has done that and it's always yielded results.

I only wish I could have pursued my dream. It really bummed me out to apply to school after school only to find out none of them had a program in Elvis Pressley. (For the record, Mama Gekko can attest that I told a first grade teacher that's who I wanted to be when I grew up).

I'm sure that if there were such a degree, I would have received a master's in the course of study and it would have paid off big bucks if it weren't for those greedy ass corporate Wall Street Bankers like Jon Corzine to hold me down.

Instead, I was forced to pursue my second greatest passion in life...... "accounting".

None the less, I want to help this guy out. Surely there is a coffee shop out there looking for a puppetry guy who can do a puppet skit while simultaneously squirting foam on a double crappccino.

More.........

The Real Class War: Jimmy Hoffa, Ohio Union Bosses vs. Ohio Union Member...

Life in "Progress" city - Highland Park MI edition

As the sun dips below the rooftops each evening, parts of this Detroit enclave turn to pitch black, the only illumination coming from a few streetlights at the end of the block or from glowing yellow yard globes.

It wasn't always this way. But when the debt-ridden community could no longer afford its monthly electric bill, elected officials not only turned off 1,000 streetlights. They had them ripped out -- bulbs, poles and all. Now nightfall cloaks most neighborhoods in inky darkness.

"How can you darken any city?" asked Victoria Dowdell, standing in the halo of a light in her front yard. "I think that was a disgrace. She said the decision endangers everyone, especially people who have to walk around at night or catch the bus.


Hey, don't worry, in Detroit there are no buses to catch anyway.

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Life in "Progress" City - Detroit edition

People who catch the bus in Detroit may be waiting a while Friday morning. About 100 Detroit Department of Transportation bus drivers are at work, but are refusing to drive their buses.

WWJ’s Scott Ryan spoke with Henry Gaffney, spokesman for the D-DOT bus drivers union AFL-CIO Local 26, who said this was not an organized maneuver by the union. Gaffney said it’s a matter of bus drivers fearing for their safety, citing an incident that happened Thursday afternoon.

“Our drivers are scared, they’re scared for their lives. This has been an ongoing situation about security. I think yesterday kind of just topped it off, when one of my drivers was beat up by some teenagers down in the middle of Rosa Parks and it took the police almost 30 minutes to get there, in downtown Detroit,” said Gaffney.

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Thursday, November 03, 2011

Meet Ketchup

or is it Catsup................




Thanks reader Tim

Why you should vote yes on Ohio Issue 2

It use to be that public employees sacrificed pay and benefits for job security. Now they get it all.........

Since January 1985, the Batavia school board has paid 100 percent of its teachers’ contributions to their retirement.

Contracts approved by Cincinnati City Council include benefits that, among other things, permit many workers to draw 13 sick days a year, grant three weeks’ worth of compensatory time to public safety employees for holidays whether they work them or not, and entitle veteran police officers to nearly 10 weeks of various leaves annually.

In Butler County, sheriff’s deputies can earn a $200 per year physical fitness incentive based on how fast they can run a mile and how many pushups and sit ups they can do. There are different standards based on age and gender.

The public employee contracts in Cincinnati and the counties of Hamilton, Butler, Clermont and Warren, their municipalities and the state are laced with lucrative provisions, all approved by our elected representatives – township trustees, county commissioners, city councils – but seldom found in the private sector.



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Life in "Progress" State - California edition

Wednesday, November 02, 2011

Coloradans hate children

How else can you explain this................
By 63.5% to 36.4%, voters on Tuesday routed an initiative that would have raised sales and income taxes for five years to provide $2.9 billion for schools and colleges. That's a resounding defeat. What makes it especially significant is the tax hike was intended for education — typically the last thing that voters want to see cut. Even sacred cows are being put on short rations these days.
63% HATE CHILDREN!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Occupy White House

Nothing says 99% like big corporate bonuses for businesses with big federal bailouts and lots of democratic cash.........

But the fact is that the banks — most of which were mere victims of the financial meltdown — have paid back almost all the money they got from taxpayers. The much-ballyhooed $700 billion TARP program will likely end up costing taxpayers as little as $19 billion when all is said and done.

The same cannot be said of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Not only where they at the epicenter of the housing bubble, but also the government had to take them over, pumping in cash to cover their huge losses on the mortgages they owned and guaranteed. And far from paying taxpayers back, the best-case scenario for Fannie and Freddie is that their bailout will cost over $120 billion.

But that didn't stop the two agencies from giving their top 10 executives $12.8 million in bonuses for meeting what have been charitably described as "modest goals."

And the White House response to this genuine outrage? Crickets.

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Regulations create jobs

just think of all the bureaucrats employed for this mess............
Next up was Randy Truckenbrodt of Randall Industries. Randy told us of a facility he purchased in the 1980s that had two small gasoline tanks buried on the property by previous owners. He wanted to dig up the old ones and replace them with one that would better serve his needs for his fleet of trucks.

Truckenbrodt contacted the government, secured permits, hired a contractor and dug up the two aging gasoline tanks. Then the nightmare began. The IEPA and other agencies began a long, drawn out game of questioning, demanding, and stalling Truckenbrodt’s work resulting in almost two decades of obstruction. A 50-some-foot hole was left open in the ground in the middle of his property for 17 years as government officials dallied on giving him permission to complete his construction. 17 years!

All during this time, Truckenbrodt’s property was in a purgatory unable to be sold, improved, or used easily by his company. Worse, all financial avenues were closed to him for the property. He could not refinance or get loans as the IEPA had the property on its trouble list.

Truckenbrodt noted that the environmental testing game is a major scam more often than not because the state encourages testing, and testing, and testing ’til the cows come home racking up costs the whole time. It’s so bad, Truckenbrodt said, that many contractors have told him they quietly urge clients to just go ahead and build their buildings, lay their driveways, or do other things without notifying the IEPA at all and cross fingers that the government will never find out about the work being done. The system, Truckenbrodt says, is so bad that it encourages people to break the law and cheat in order to avoid the jobs-killing regulatory nightmare that can sometimes take decades to get through.

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But hey, you can move your business to Indonesia.....problem solved.

Life in "Progress" City - Kansas City edition

No one, it seems, is immune from the scourge of copper theft.

This weekend a Kansas City police radio tower was the target of thieves who made off with an estimated $12,000 worth of wiring and other metal items.

The theft in the 6800 block of Booth Avenue in the south-central part of the city was discovered Saturday morning. An officer checking the tower site discovered that a chain used to secure the gate had been cut and the gate was open.

Police discovered that a “large amount” of wiring and other items were missing.

The NCAA continues its ethnic cleansing act.......

on the Fighting Sioux.........

The Spirit Lake tribe Tuesday sued the NCAA for blocking its attempt to let the University of North Dakota use the sports nickname Fighting Sioux.

Tribal attorney Reed Soderstrom said the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court challenges the NCAA's policy banning the use of Native American names and imagery by collegiate athletic teams.

He said the suit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association was brought on behalf of more than 1,004 members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe "in direct response to their attempt to take away and prevent the North Dakota Sioux Indians from giving their name forever to the University of North Dakota" despite a tribal vote in 2009 and a "sacred and religious spiritual ceremony" by tribal leaders in 1969 that granted "perpetual use" of the name to the school.


Isn't it funny how a bunch of white bread, politically correct, liberal do gooders know so much. They even know when Sioux tribesman should be offended when a university takes on their name. Of course, they're also so smart that they know that Sioux in North Dakota should be offended but Seminoles in Florida or Illini in Illinois should not.

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trust an academician

NOT

When colleagues called the work of Dutch psychologist Diederik Stapel too good to be true, they meant it as a compliment. But a preliminary investigative report (go.nature.com/tqmp5c) released on October 31 gives literal meaning to the phrase, detailing years of data manipulation and blatant fabrication by the prominent Tilburg University researcher.

"We have some 30 papers in peer-reviewed journals where we are actually sure that they are fake, and there are more to come," says Pim Levelt, chair of the committee that investigated Stapel's work at the university.

Stapel's eye-catching studies on aspects of social behaviour such as power and stereo­typing garnered wide press coverage. For example, in a recent Science paper (which the investigation has not identified as fraudulent), Stapel reported that untidy environments encouraged discrimination ( Science 332, 251-253; 2011).

"Somebody used the word 'wunderkind'," says Miles Hewstone, a social psychologist at the University of Oxford, UK. "He was one of the bright thrusting young stars of Dutch social psychology -- highly published, highly cited, prize-winning, worked with lots of people, and very well thought of in the field."


I can attest to some shenanigans my ex wife went through with her Masters adviser who was hell bent on manipulating her data to prove that work place diversity increased productivity.

Why? Because they both knew that the more politically correct hypothesis your data can support, the easier it is to get published. Kind of like global warming.

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Tuesday, November 01, 2011

Stuff liberals run - MF Global

So Jon Corzine ran a for profit company much like he did the state of New Jersey.... into the ground......

Jon Corzine, the CEO of bankrupt broker-dealer MF Global, saw his reputation tossed from the frying pan right into the regulatory fire yesterday when investigators discovered as much as $700 million in customer funds missing from the firm.

Officials from two US regulators, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, were looking into whether the loot was diverted to support some of the firm’s own trades.

As if the allegedly missing funds, which happened on Corzine’s watch, are not bad enough, it was learned late yesterday that the $700 million was responsible for capsizing a potential deal between MF Global and rival Interactive Brokers Group that could have saved the firm and the jobs of the company’s 2,870 employees worldwide.

Chuck the union

I've been out of it for the past couple of weeks as I've been busy getting all of my firm's last minute compliance work finished before the 10/31 deadline.

None the less, for all the clamoring about how Walmart is hostile to unions.... maybe someone should tell the workers.

Workers at a Wal-Mart in Gatineau, Que., are officially decertified from their union after just more than a year with their first collective agreement.

Quebec's Labour Relations Commission removed the more than 150 workers, who are employed at a store on du Plateau Boulevard in the city's Hull sector, from their union.

The Wal-Mart workers first joined the union, United Food and Commercial Workers Canada, in 2008. Then after two years of unsuccessful negotiations between the union and Wal-Mart, an arbitrator enforced a collective agreement in the summer of 2010.

"This follows an application made by our Hull associates earlier this year to decertify the union at their store," said Andrew Pelletier, Wal-Mart's vice president of corporate affairs and sustainability.

"Wal-Mart respects the decision of our Hull associates. They have made their views clear in this matter."

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Pelosi: "Yes" The Obama NLRB Should Shut Down Boeing's Plan In SC

Only in government.......

is failure rewarded with more money.........
In the wake of Enquirer reports that Hamilton County's Job and Family Services agency is at the breaking point - with too many cases per worker and woefully out-of-date technology - two commissioners said Monday they want to help the agency.

Commission President Greg Hartmann, a Republican, and Todd Portune, a Democrat, both suggested allowing the agency to dip in a $28 million reserve in the children's services levy. That money has been set aside for an expected penalty for bad bookkeeping decisions a decade ago.

The idea to give JFS a cash infusion comes up 48 hours before Hamilton County commissioners are set to vote on the county's 2012 budget. It's expected to come in at $208.8 million, about the same as this year.

A technology upgrade could cost as much as $750,000 - but it all depends on what equipment is purchased and for how many social workers. Details are still being worked out, Hartmann said.

It will take two votes of the three-man board of commissioners to make the purchase.

Commissioners Chris Monzel was not at Monday's regular staff meeting due to a family medical emergency.

JFS Director Moira Weir, who oversees the children's services division, could not be reached for comment.

The Enquirer revealed the children's service's surplus last week. The agency is asking voters Nov. 8 to renew the levy that pays for the care of abused and neglected children in the county.

All eyes are on the agency right now after the Oct. 21 death of Damarcus Jackson, a 2-year-old who spent nearly his whole life in Hamilton County foster care. A Hamilton County Juvenile Court magistrate in August sent Damarcus to live with his biological parents.

So someone please explain to me how it is that better technology will help people make a decision to move a kid back into an abusive household?

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Monday, October 31, 2011

Solyndra Jr.

Another great investment by the feds goes feet up.............

(Reuters) - Beacon Power Corp filed for bankruptcy on Sunday just a year after the energy storage company received a $43 million loan guarantee from a controversial U.S. Department of Energy program.

The move comes about two months after solar panel maker Solyndra also filed for bankruptcy, setting off criticism of the government loan program.

The department guaranteed $535 million in loans to Solyndra, and Congress is investigating whether political influence played a role.

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