Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, July 6, 2010
The Age of Obama makes even Republicans nostalgic for Camelot...
(*WINK*)
*** NOTE ***
THERE'S A PROBLEM WITH BLOGGER TODAY. COMMENTS WERE DISAPPEARING BUT THAT ISSUE SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN RESOLVED.
NOW, HOWEVER, THE COUNTER IS OFF.
(*CHUCKLE*)
OH, WELL... TECHNOLOGY, RIGHT?! I WON'T COMPLAIN TOO MUCH - AFTER ALL, BLOGGER IS PROVIDING FREE SERVICE. I SINCERELY THANK THEM FOR THAT.
BILL
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http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20009642-10391695.html
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is blocking certain websites from the federal agency's computers, including halting access by staffers to any Internet pages that contain a "controversial opinion," according to an internal email obtained by CBS News.
The email was sent to all TSA employees from the Office of Information Technology on Friday afternoon.
It states that as of July 1, TSA employees will no longer be allowed to access five categories of websites that have been deemed "inappropriate for government access."
The email does not specify how the TSA will determine if a website expresses a "controversial opinion."
There is also no explanation as to why controversial opinions are being blocked, although the email stated that some of the restricted websites violate the Employee Responsibilities and Conduct policy.
The TSA did not return calls seeking comment by publication time.
* THE AGE OF OBAMA... (*SIGH*)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303828304575180421298413374.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
[A]re federal employees overpaid?
Data from the March Current Population Survey (CPS) suggest they are.
CPS data show that the average hourly wage for a federal worker is about 48% higher than a private worker's.
* NICE... (*PURSED LIPS*)
Yet because federal employees tend to be more educated and experienced than their private counterparts...one has to control for these skill differences.
* YES AND NO. FIRST ONE HAS TO SEPARATE TRUE "EDUCATION" FROM MERE "CREDENTIALISM." IN OTHER WORDS, HOW IS THE EDUCATION APPLIED? ARE THE SKILLS/KNOWLEDGE GAINED VIA FORMAL EDUCATION NECESSARY FOR THE ACTUAL JOB OR DO THE CREDENTIALS SERVE MAINLY AS A "CONTROL" ON THE APPLICATION PROCESS? HMM...???
* IN ANY CASE... CONTINUING...
This reduces the public-private salary gap - but it does not eliminate it. The federal wage premium for workers who have the same education and experience stands at 24%, still a windfall for public employees.
* TWENTY-FOUR PERCENT, BABY! NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL INCOME REDISTRIBUTION! (*SMIRK*) (*SNORT*)
Even using all the standard controls - including race and gender, full- or part-time work, firm size, marital status, region, residence in a city or suburb, and more - the federal wage premium does not disappear. It stubbornly hovers around 12%, meaning private employees must work 13½ months to earn what comparable federal workers make in 12.
* FUNNY... THAT DOESN'T EXACTLY SOUND "FAIR" TO ME; HOW'BOUT YOU?
In addition to the wage premium, federal workers enjoy more generous fringe benefits than do private workers. For instance, federal workers receive a defined benefit pension with benefit levels comparable to those from private 401(k) plans, except that federal workers contribute only 0.8% of pay and are not subject to any market risk.
(*SNORT*)
They also receive employer matches to the defined contribution Thrift Savings Plan that significantly exceed the typical private employer match.
* FOLKS... WE'RE THE EMPLOYERS...!!!
Federal employment also carries significant nonfinancial benefits - in particular that layoffs and firings are much rarer. If you think these aspects of federal employment lack value, ask any private employee who is now looking for work.
(*SIGH*) (*NOD*)
Given our 2.7 million-strong federal work force, the government effectively over bills Americans by almost $40 billion every year just on labor costs.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-06/merkel-raises-german-health-premiums-to-15-5-of-gross-pay-to-plug-deficit.html
[German] Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition backed higher health-insurance premiums...
[German] Coalition [government] leaders meeting in Berlin today agreed to raise health premiums to 15.5% of gross pay from 14.9%...
The measure is part of an overhaul of health care intended to plug an 11-billion euro ($13.8 billion) deficit in the public health-insurance system in 2011. It follows Cabinet agreement on June 29 to cuts in spending on drugs to reduce soaring costs to public health-insurance funds.
* HMM... CUT SPENDING ON DRUGS... (DO I DETECT RATIONING...?!?!)
* AHH... AMERICA... GAZE UPON THE FUTURE! PAY MORE; GET LESS. (*SMIRK*)
The Christian Democrats, their CSU Bavarian allies and Roesler’s Free Democrats also agreed to allow health insurers to levy higher surcharges for health care, paid by the insured person alone, according to the ministry document. Surcharges exceeding 2% of an insured’s gross pay will be financed from general tax revenue.
* MEANING THE FIRST 2% IS ADDED TO THE NEW, HIGHER 15.5% OF GROSS PAY THAT GOES INTO PURCHASING... er... FEWER DRUGS... THUS EQUALING A NEW RATE OF 17.5%. (AIN'T MATH FUN...?!?!)
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fb933f08-885b-11df-aade-00144feabdc0.html
U.S. states faced budget deficits of $89bn for fiscal 2011, which began for most of them on July 1, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. That is after shortfalls of more than $300bn since 2008.
* THE AGE OF OBAMA... (*SIGH*)
Investors are worried that the risk of default for U.S. local governments is growing, amid signs that some regions are facing the same type of difficulty in curbing pension and budget deficits as some eurozone countries.
“The risk in the second half of the year is that investor attention switches from Europe to the US,” said Robert Parker, senior adviser at Credit Suisse Securities, who singled out parts of California, as well as towns and cities in Illinois, Michigan and New York state as among the most vulnerable. “You will see investor concern about the viability of those cities and therefore you will see, inevitably, further spread widening in the municipal bond market.”
If these market swings are sustained, they could push up borrowing costs for local governments, which, in turn, could exacerbate the squeeze on local authority finances and place more stress on the federal budget.
* SO... HOW'S "HOPE AND CHANGE" WORKING OUT FOR YOU...???
The sharpest swings in the muni market have been seen in the $100bn so-called “Build America bonds” - or Babs- a type of US muni debt that has characteristics similar to corporate bonds. Risk premiums, or spreads on Babs relative to Treasuries, have risen to 228 basis points, according to an index from Barclays Capital. The spreads have climbed from a low of 161bp in early May to their highest level since Barclays started compiling the index last October.
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2010/07/06/would_it_be_so_bad_if_new_york_city_dropped_dead_98556.html
According to the Manhattan Institute's Nicole Gelinas, New York is set to announce a $66 billion budget which, despite the economic downturn and a generalized belt-tightening among its private citizens, includes spending increases over the next two years of $3.4 billion. On its face, the aforementioned increase speaks to city leadership that is divorced from economic realities that its citizenry knows all too well.
Sadly, it gets worse when we consider what some of this increased spending will help fund.
Within the city's labor unions, there is Lucille Roberts, executive director of District Council 37 whose annual pay tops out $333,000 per year. It's also reported that she enjoys a full-time driver, paid for by New York's hapless taxpayers.
There's also Veronica Montgomery-Costa, president of District 37, whose yearly pay tops out around $300,000 per year, not to mention perks that include expenditures on first-class air travel and luxury hotels allegedly necessary for her to remain aware of the doings of other union grandees around the country. The school aides she represents earn $14.14 per hour.
* MAKES YOU SICK TO YOUR STOMACH, DOESN'T IT...?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,704665,00.html
Billions of dollars are being secreted out of Kabul to help well-connected Afghans buy luxury villas in Dubai.
Since invading Afghanistan in 2001, the United States alone has invested almost $300 billion in military and reconstruction efforts there. But far less progress has been made than what was either hoped for or expected. One major reason for this could be the fact that a significant portion of the millions meant for reconstructive efforts continue to be siphoned off.
Brigadier General Mohammed Asif Jabarkhel sits with folded arms in his office, just a few steps away from the security checkpoint at Kabul International Airport. "Of course I know what's going on here," the 59-year-old head of the airport's customs police grumbles from beneath his thick moustache as a fan whirs in the background. "But, in this country, who's allowed to speak the truth?"
Jabarkhel is referring to the huge amounts of money regularly being secreted out of Afghanistan by plane in boxes and suitcases. According to some estimates, since 2007, at least $3 billion (€2.4 billion) in cash has left the country in this way. The preferred destination for these funds is Dubai, the tax haven in the Persian Gulf. And, given the fact that Afghanistan's total GDP amounts to the equivalent of $13.5 billion, there is no way that the funds involved in this exodus are merely the proceeds of legal business transactions.
It is clear that much more money is making its way out of Afghanistan through Kabul's airport than is being officially declared and logged. For example, important politicians and businesspeople can often board planes from the airport's special VIP area without being searched. And if customs officials do conduct a search and find a suitcase stuffed with millions of dollars in cash, people with powerful connections often step in to make sure that the luggage makes it out of the country with its owner -- no questions asked. "A couple phone calls are made," General Jabarkhel says with frustration in his voice, "and the person can carry on."
* THIS IS WHAT AMERICA'S SONS AND DAUGHTERS ARE FIGHTING AND DYING FOR...??? THIS IS WHERE OUR TAX DOLLARS ARE GOING?
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/06/ex-official-accuses-justice-department-racial-bias-black-panther-case/
In emotional and personal testimony, an ex-Justice official who quit over the handling of a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party accused his former employer of instructing attorneys in the civil rights division to ignore cases that involve black defendants and white victims.
J. Christian Adams, testifying Tuesday before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, said that "over and over and over again," the department showed "hostility" toward those cases. He described the Black Panther case as one example of that - he defended the legitimacy of the suit and said his "blood boiled" when he heard a Justice official claim the case wasn't solid.
"We abetted wrongdoing and abandoned law-abiding citizens," he later testified.
The department abandoned the New Black Panther case last year. It stemmed from an incident on Election Day in 2008 in Philadelphia, where members of the party were videotaped in front of a polling place, dressed in military-style uniforms and allegedly hurling racial slurs while one brandished a night stick.
The Bush Justice Department brought the first case against three members of the group, accusing them in a civil complaint of violating the Voter Rights Act. The Obama administration initially pursued the case, winning a default judgment in federal court in April 2009 when the Black Panther members did not appear in court. But then the administration moved to dismiss the charges the following month after getting one of the New Black Panther members to agree to not carry a "deadly weapon" near a polling place until 2012.
* HEY... FOLKS... I DON'T MAKE UP THE NEWS - I JUST HIGHLIGHT THE NEWS YOU SHOULD BE AWARE OF!
[Adams] described the department's hostility toward that and other cases involving black defendants as "pervasive." He said that when the Black Panther case came up, he heard officials in the department say it was "no big deal" and "media-generated" and point to "Fox News" as the source.
The commissioners want to hear from Christopher Coates, the former chief of the Justice Department's voting section, but the commission claims the Justice Department is blocking Coates from testifying about why the case was dropped.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704535004575348980568232888.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
Because of declining tax collections and falling enrollment, Milwaukee's school board announced in June that 428 teachers were losing their jobs...
Yet the teachers union, the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association, had it within its power to avert almost all of the layoffs.
The average pay for a Milwaukee school teacher is $56,000 - [however] - the cost of health and pension benefits now exceeds $40,000 a year per teacher - bringing total compensation to $100,500.
The current health plan costs taxpayers $26,844 per family, compared to the typical $14,500 cost for a private employer family plan. The plan does not require teachers to pay any premiums toward the cost of the health plan...
In the spring, the school board offered a new health plan that would reduce costs to $17,172 per family. The plan would have saved money by requiring co-pays. According to a budget analysis the MacIver Institute obtained from the Milwaukee public school system, shifting teachers to the plan offered by the school board could have saved $47.2 million. This would have prevented, according to the report, the lay offs of "approximately 480 teachers" - more than the number that ultimately lost their jobs.
[W]hen union officials were presented the option, they chose to allow their members to be dismissed.
[W]hy were these teachers considered expendable by the people who are supposed to protect their jobs?
The Milwaukee Teachers Education Association was immovable on benefits in part because it placed a bet on its Democratic friends in Washington rushing to the rescue. "The problem must be addressed with a national solution, a federal stimulus package that will restore educator positions," Pat Omar, the union's executive director said in June. The union's strategy in recent weeks has been to stage rallies demanding a federal bailout, and it used hundreds of school kids at those rallies as political props.
* WILL SUCH CYNICAL TACTICS WORK...???
The Obama administration is pressuring Congress to spend $23 billion to rehire the more than 100,000 teachers who have been laid off across the country.
Milwaukee's experience suggests that the $23 billion bailout fund is meant to provide a federal life raft to keep afloat the unsustainable, gold-plated compensation packages that unions negotiated when states and cities were flush with cash.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704324304575306861120760580.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
President Obama said earlier this year that the health-care bill that Congress passed three months ago is "essentially identical" to the Massachusetts universal coverage plan that then-Gov. Mitt Romney signed into law in 2006.
As events are now unfolding, the Massachusetts plan couldn't be a more damning indictment of ObamaCare. The state's universal health-care prototype is growing more dysfunctional by the day, which is the inevitable result of a health system dominated by politics.
In an April message to his staff, Robert Dynan, a career insurance commissioner responsible for ensuring the solvency of state carriers, wrote that his superiors "implemented artificial price caps on HMO rates. The rates, by design, have no actuarial support. Mr. Dynan added that "The current course . . . has the potential for catastrophic consequences including irreversible damage to our non-profit health care system" and that "there most likely will be a train wreck (or perhaps several train wrecks)."
Sure enough, the five major state insurers have so far collectively lost $116 million due to the rate cap. Three of them are now under administrative oversight because of concerns about their financial viability. [P]rice controls seem to be the only way the political class can salvage a program that was supposed to reduce spending and manifestly has not. Massachusetts now has the highest average premiums in the nation.
In a new paper, Stanford economists John Cogan and Dan Kessler and Glenn Hubbard of Columbia find that the Massachusetts plan increased private employer-sponsored premiums by about 6%.
Another study released last week by the state found that the number of people gaming the "individual mandate" - buying insurance only when they are about to incur major medical costs, then dumping coverage - has quadrupled since 2006. State regulators estimate that this amounts to a de facto 1% tax on insurance premiums for everyone else in the individual market and recommend a limited enrollment period to discourage such abuses. (This will be illegal under ObamaCare.)
(*SMIRK*)
Meanwhile, Richard Moore, a state senator from Uxbridge and an architect of the 2006 plan, has introduced a new bill that will make physician participation in government health programs a condition of medical licensure. This would essentially convert all Massachusetts doctors into public employees.
All of this is merely a prelude...and a preview of what awaits the rest of the country.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9GPQ1FG4&show_article=1
Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn has handed out raises - some of more than 20% - to his staff while proclaiming a message of "shared sacrifice" and planning spending cuts of $1.4 billion because the state is awash in debt.
* YEP. YOU READ THAT CORRECTLY.
The Democrat has given 43 salary increases averaging 11.4% to 35 staffers in the past 15 months, according to an Associated Press analysis of records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
* FOLKS... WHAT CAN I TELL YA?
http://www.cnbc.com/id/38110678
Lender Processing Services just put out its May "Mortgage Monitor," and...the total delinquency rate rose 2.3% [while] the 30-day delinquent bucket jumped 10%.
[D]elinquency rate nationwide now stands at 9.2% from this particular data set...the report also finds that the "cure rate," which is the rate at which bad loans actually get better, i.e. the borrowers start to pay again, is getting worse.
* IF THIS IS THE OBAMA RECOVERY, GOD HELP US WHEN THE OBAMA DOUBLE-DIP HITS FULL BORE!
After a two-month decline, deterioration ratios increased, with 2.5 loans rolling to a "worse" status for every one that has improved. The number of delinquent loans that "cured" to a current status declined for every stage of delinquency, except in the "greater than six months delinquent" category. This improvement was likely the result of trial modifications made through the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) that transitioned into permanent status.
[T]he HAMP program is helping "cure" those 6 month+ delinquencies [by] delaying them yet again...we know that the re-default rate on HAMP is only rising. Forget cure and think remission.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/07/02/immigration-costs-fair-amnesty-educations-costs-reform/
The cost of harboring illegal immigrants in the United States is a staggering $113 billion a year - an average of $1,117 for every “native-headed” household in America - according to a study conducted by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
The single largest cost to the government of illegal immigration, according to the report, is an estimated $52 billion spent on schooling the children of illegals. “Nearly all those costs are absorbed by state and local governments,’ the report states.
[T]he study’s breakdown of costs on a state-by-state basis shows that in states with the largest number of illegals, the costs of illegal immigration are often greater than current, crippling budget deficits.
In Texas, for example, the additional cost of immigration, $16.4 billion, is equal to the state’s current budget deficit; in California the additional cost of illegal immigration, $21.8 billion, is $8 billion more than the state’s current budget deficit of $13.8 billion; and in New York, the $6.8 billion deficit is roughly two-thirds the $9.5 billion yearly cost of its illegal population, according to Jack Martin, the researcher who completed the study.
The report found that the federal government paid $28.6 billion in illegal related costs, and state and local governments paid $84.2 billion on an estimated 13 million undocumented residents.
(FAIR's critics said the report wrongly included American-born children of undocumented workers in its study.)
* BUT OF COURSE WITHOUT THE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS THESE AMERICAN-BORN CHILDREN WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN... er... AMERICAN-BORN. (*DOH!*)
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