It's...
BACK...!!!
Postscript - Thursday, June 14th, 2012
Last night's eagerly anticipated premiere of TNT's Dallas
struck it rich with 6,863,000 viewers, to rank as the #1 scripted series
premiere on all of cable for the year-to-date.
Dallas also out-performed all broadcast network programs head-to-head from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m.
On the demo front, Dallas drew 1,926,000 adults 18-49 and 2,482,000 adults 25-54.
(*GIANT THUMBS UP*)
15 comments:
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.jeffjacoby.com/11842/a-free-market-brings-down-health-costs
Six years after RomneyCare became law, health insurance coverage in Massachusetts is all but universal. Yet a new statewide survey finds that those most in need of medical care are finding it harder than ever to pay for.
According to the study, which was directed by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and sponsored by WBUR, the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation, and the Robert Wood-Johnson Foundation, 78% of sick adults consider health care costs a serious (50% say very serious) problem in Massachusetts. And far from seeing improvement, nearly two-thirds of sick adults say the problem has only gotten worse over the past five years.
This wasn't supposed to happen.
Romney was confident his law would ease the pressure of medical costs.
"Every uninsured citizen in Massachusetts will soon have affordable health insurance and the costs of health care will be reduced," he optimistically forecast in 2006.
Yet today 14% of sick adults in Massachusetts report being unable to get medical care they needed at some point over the past 12 months, usually for financial reasons. About half of those who went untreated said they couldn't afford the out-of-pocket costs; another 21% said their insurer wouldn't pay for the test or treatment.
To be sure, the survey relies on respondents' own perceptions, which may not always be realistic or consistent. And its definition of "sick" adults is broad: It includes everyone who said they had a serious illness, medical condition, injury, or disability requiring a lot of medical care, as well as anyone who was hospitalized overnight in the past year. By that yardstick, 27% of Massachusetts adults are regarded as sick.
But even if that number should be taken with a grain of salt, it is clear that universal health insurance is no panacea for health care's financial pressures - especially those that affect people with pre-existing or expensive medical conditions.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
The way to make medical insurance more affordable and accessible for everyone, above all those whose health problems are greatest, is not by forcing insurers to pretend that the chronically ill or those requiring frequent care don't have above-average costs. If companies that sell homeowners insurance were barred from taking into account the size, location, or age of the houses they wrote policies for, it goes without saying that premiums and deductibles would keep rising and fewer losses would be covered. Making it illegal for health insurers to craft policies and charge premiums that accurately reflect the needs and risks of people with significant medical issues has a similar effect.
* DUH!
Rather than outlawing insurance for pre-existing conditions, health-care economist John C. Goodman argues, we should be encouraging it.
In a new book, "Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis", Goodman offers an abundance of ways in which an unfettered market could address the problems of people with chronic medical needs.
One proposal: employers could buy health insurance that was fully portable - employees would own their policies and could take them from job to job.
Another idea: Health Savings Accounts for the chronically ill that would allow disabled patients to manage their own budgets and choose the goods and services that best meet their needs.
Still another: "Health status insurance," which would allow individuals to protect themselves against the risk that a pre-existing condition could emerge down the road and cause their insurance premiums to rise.
What America's health-care landscape needs is more freedom and competition, not less. True reform would end the tax-code distortion that links health insurance to employment. It would tear down the barriers to buying health insurance across state lines. It would roll back the mandatory benefits that make everyone's health coverage too expensive.
Massive health-care "reforms" that restrict choice, suppress prices, and block innovation aren't reforms at all. In sickness and in health, they generally make things worse.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-time-to-drop-the-college-for-all-crusade/2012/05/27/gJQAzcUGvU_story.html
[w]e’ve dumbed down college.
The easiest way to enroll and retain more students is to lower requirements. Even so, dropout rates are high; at four-year schools, fewer than 60% of freshmen graduate within six years. Many others aren’t learning much.
The college-for-all crusade has outlived its usefulness. Time to ditch it. Like the crusade to make all Americans homeowners, it’s now doing more harm than good.
In a recent book, “Academically Adrift,” sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa report that 45% of college students hadn’t significantly improved their critical thinking and writing skills after two years; after four years, the proportion was still 36%. (Their study was based on a test taken by 2,400 students at 24 schools requiring them to synthesize and evaluate a block of facts. The authors blame the poor results on lax academic standards.) Surveyed, one-third of the same students said that they studied alone five or fewer hours a week; half said they had no course the prior semester requiring 20 pages of writing.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
The larger — and overlooked — consequence of the college obsession is to undermine high schools.
The primacy of the college-prep track marginalizes millions of students for whom it’s disconnected from “real life” and unrelated to their needs. ... [V]ocational education is de-emphasized and disparaged. Apprenticeship programs combining classroom and on-the-job training — programs successful in Europe — are sparse. In 2008, about 480,000 workers were apprentices, or 0.3% of the U.S. labor force, reports economist Robert Lerman of American University. Though not for everyone, more apprenticeships could help some students.
The rap against employment-oriented schooling is that it traps the poor and minorities in low-paying, dead-end jobs. Actually, an unrealistic expectation of college often traps them into low-paying, dead-end jobs — or no job. Learning styles differ. “Apprenticeship in other countries does a better job of engaging students,” says Lerman. “We want to diversify the routes to rewarding careers.” Downplaying these programs denies some students the pride and self-confidence of mastering difficult technical skills, while also fostering labor shortages.
(Most jobs — 69% in 2010, estimates the Labor Department — don’t require a post-high-school degree!)
* AND BEYOND THE ABOVE STAT, JUST CONSIDER... OF THE REMAINING 31% OF JOBS THAT SUPPOSEDLY "REQUIRE" A POST-HIGH-SCHOOL DEGREE... HOW MANY ACTUALLY DO? IN OTHER WORDS, WHAT PERCENTAGE OF THESE ENTRY-LEVEL JOBS "REQUIRE" A POST-HIGH-SCHOOL DEGREE ONLY AS A SCREENING MECHANISM... NOT BECAUSE INTRINSIC SKILLS NECESSARY FOR THE JOB WERE TAUGHT IN COLLEGE AND NOT IN HIGH SCHOOL?
(*SHRUG*)
The fixation on college-going, justified in the early postwar decades, stigmatizes those who don’t go to college and minimizes their needs for more vocational skills. It cheapens the value of a college degree and spawns the delusion that only the degree — not the skills and knowledge behind it — matters.
We need to rethink.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://michellemalkin.com/2012/06/13/republican-surrenderists-for-obamacare/
During the summer of 2009, conservative activists turned up the heat on Democratic politicians to protest the innovation-destroying, liberty-usurping ObamaCare mandate.
In the summer of 2012, it’s squishy Republican politicians who deserve the grassroots flames.
(*SIGH*)
In case you hadn’t heard, even if the Supreme Court overturns the progressives’ federal health care juggernaut, prominent GOP leaders vow to preserve its most “popular” provisions.
* GUNS... AMMO... GUNS... AMMO... (DON'T WORRY, FOLKS... JUST MUMBLING TO MYSELF...)
GOP Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, vice chair of the Senate GOP Conference, told a St. Louis radio station two weeks ago that he supports keeping at least three ObamaCare regulatory pillars: federally imposed coverage of “children” up to age 26 on their parents’ health insurance policies (the infamous, unfunded “slacker mandate”), federally mandated coverage regardless of pre-existing conditions (“guaranteed issue,” which turns the very concept of insurance on its head and leads to an adverse-selection death spiral) and closure of the coverage gap in the massive Bush-backed Medicare drug entitlement (the “donut hole fix” that will obliterate the program’s cost-controls).
(*SARCASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)
Some Republicans are even trying to out-Obama ObamaCare.
GOP Rep. Steve Stivers of Ohio is pushing a proposal to increase the mandatory coverage age for dependents to age 31.
(*BACK TO MUMBLING TO MYSELF*)
And once a fire-breathing dragon for repeal, GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee hem-hawed when asked by the liberal Talking Points Memo website whether Republicans would be introducing specific bills to preserve the guaranteed issue and slacker mandate provisions.
“Well, I think we need to be prepared,” Alexander told TPM. “And we will be prepared.”
* WTF...?!?!
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
How about getting informed? As I reported while the ObamaCare backroom wheeling-dealing was going on, some 20 states already had passed legislation requiring insurers to cover adult children before the federal rule was imposed, and nearly 20 others were already on the expensive path toward doing so. In New Jersey, Wisconsin and elsewhere, these top-down benefits mandates were among key factors driving up the cost of insurance and limiting access instead of expanding it.
(*SIGH*)
Fortunately for fiscal conservatives, GOP Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina still has his head screwed on straight. Last week, he blasted GOP enablers of the welfare state. He notes that “multiple studies have suggested that every 1% increase in premiums increases the number of uninsured by approximately 200,000 to 300,000 individuals nationwide.”
(The slacker mandate has raised premiums by at least 1% since it was enacted, DeMint adds, meaning “that hundreds of thousands of individuals have lost coverage because they were priced out of the individual market or because their employers decided to stop offering coverage as a result of the new requirements.”)
This is no textbook hypothetical. No less than the Service Employees International Union Local 1199 — one of ObamaCare’s biggest cheerleaders — dropped health care coverage for children in late 2010 because of costly mandates, including, you guessed it, the slacker mandate.
(“Our limited resources are already stretched as far as possible,” the SEIU 1199 benefits managers wrote in a letter to more than 30,000 families, “and meeting this new requirement would be financially impossible.”)
Chris Jacobs, senior analyst for the Senate Joint Economic Committee, points to a new study by the Left-leaning Commonwealth Fund that reveals that the benefits of the slacker provision have “disproportionately accrued to affluent and wealthy families.”
* DUH!
Moreover, this unfunded mandate is fostering greater dependency — and providing employment disincentives — by encouraging high numbers of young adults to reject other forms of insurance in order to take advantage of “free” parental coverage.
* AGAIN... DUH!
Where does presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney stand? Despite repeated assurances that he will abandon ObamaCare in its entirety, Romney is surrounded by GOP socialized medicine helpmates. In January, Romney adviser Norm Coleman said, “(We’re) not going to repeal the act in its entirety … you can’t whole cloth throw it out.”
* YEP... GONNA GET DRUNK, DRUNK, DRUNK AND PULL THE LEVER FOR ROMNEY COME ELECTION DAY...
Earlier this month, Romney named former Utah GOP Gov. Mike Leavitt his transition leader. Leavitt supports and has profited handsomely from ObamaCare’s health care exchange mandate.
(*SNORT*) WHY OF COURSE HE HAS!
Then there’s the RomneyCare mandate in Massachusetts, conceived by ObamaCare architect and MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, which includes the very same slacker mandate provision enshrined in the Democrats’ law.
(*HEADING TO THE TOILET TO PUKE UP MY LUNCH*)
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.humanevents.com/2012/06/12/pat-buchanan-will-heads-roll-for-the-stuxnet-leak/
Within days of SEAL Team Six's killing of Osama on that midnight mission in Pakistan, Defense Secretary Bob Gates, reading all about the raid in the press, went to the White House to tell President Obama's national security adviser pungently to "shut the (bleep) up."
Leaked secrets of that raid may have led to the imprisonment for 33 years of a Pakistani doctor who helped us locate bin Laden.
Yet, according to Judicial Watch, the White House has been providing Hollywood with details of the raid for a movie that will, we may be sure, heroize our commander in chief. More troubling are two recent stories in The New York Times.
One, by Jo Becker and Scott Shane, describes how, at meetings in the Situation Room, Obama examines "baseball cards" of al-Qaida targets in Pakistan and Yemen and decides on the "kill list" for drone strikes.
Most explosive was the June 1 story by David Sanger, who wrote of the origins and operation of a secret U.S-Israeli cyberwar strike on Iran's uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. The Stuxnet virus we introduced into Natanz put 1,000 centrifuges out of action.
Sanger describes how this "highly classified program," code-named "Olympic Games," was begun in the Bush years, how the worm was inserted in Natanz, and how it escaped from the centrifuges to outside computers and the world. He quotes the president's dismayed reaction: "Should we shut this thing down?"
Sanger implies that he spoke with "participants in the many Situation Room meetings on Olympic Games."
Obama seems outraged by such a suggestion: "The notion that my White House would purposely release classified national security information is offensive." Fair enough. But presidential meetings are held in the Situation Room because they involve the most sensitive security secrets, and Olympic Games was, as Sanger relates, "a highly classified" program. Whom did Sanger get all this from?
Who leaked and why?
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
These security leaks raise moral, strategic and legal issues.
Does Obama alone decide in the War on Terror who dies, where and when, whom it is permissible to terminate as collateral damage, who gets a reprieve? What are the criteria that this, our Caesar, has settled upon for who gets whacked? Do we have a right to know?
And there is blowback to actions like these. Asked why he would target civilians, the Times Square bomber replied that U.S. drones do not spare civilians in Pakistan.
Is it wise to have it leaked that President Obama is routinely ordering assassinations? Have we forgotten our history?
After John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, we discovered that the CIA had been plotting to kill Fidel Castro, and Lee Harvey Oswald had visited the Cuban embassy in Mexico City. The Kennedys were "running a damned Murder Inc. in the Caribbean," Lyndon Johnson allegedly said.
Men targeted for assassination in their countries may feel justified in reciprocating and assassinating Americans in our country.
As for the malware, or Stuxnet virus, introduced into Natanz, was it wise to use this powerful and secret weapon against a plant that is under international inspection and enriches uranium only to 5%? We may have disrupted Natanz for months, but we also revealed to Iran and the world our cyberwar capabilities. And we became the first nation to use cyberwar weapons on a country with which we are not at war.
If we have a right to attack Iran's nuclear facilities like Natanz and Bushehr that are under U.N. supervision, does Iran have a right to attack our nuclear plants, like Three Mile Island, with cyberwar viruses they create?
We have now alerted technologically advanced nations like Russia and China to our capabilities and impelled them to get cracking on their own cyberwar weapons, both offensive and defensive.
Pvt. Bradley Manning faces a life sentence for divulging security secrets to Wikileaks. What did he do that the leakers of the Stuxnet secrets did not do?
John McCain alleges that the leaking of security secrets - on how SEAL Team Six got Osama, on the Stuxnet virus that ravaged the Natanz plant, on the president ordering up drone strikes on a "kill list" of al-Qaida operatives - is politically motivated. Purpose: Paint the president as a ruthless and relentless warrior against America's enemies.
Whatever the purpose, the leaks appear to be breaches of national security and violations of federal law, and two U.S. attorneys are investigating.
It is not improbable that officials on Obama's national security team, if not White House aides, will soon be addressing a federal grand jury.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://blog.heritage.org/2012/06/13/morning-bell-auto-bailout-was-really-just-a-uaw-bailout/?roi=echo3-12277562171-8885256-66c65b334aa0e4256014e7288d5aa132&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
President Obama told the United Auto Workers (UAW) in February not to listen to critics of the auto bailout who said union members “made out like bandits — that saving the auto industry was just about paying back the unions.”
“Really?” Obama said. “I mean, even by the standards of this town [Washington], that’s a load of you-know-what.”
New research from Heritage labor economist James Sherk proves that it was, in fact, a load of truth.
The Treasury Department estimates that taxpayers will lose $23 billion on the auto bailout.
Sherk and co-author Todd Zywicki find that none of these losses came from saving jobs, but instead went to prop up the compensation of some of the most highly paid workers in America.
They write, "We estimate that the Administration redistributed $26.5 billion more to the UAW than it would have received had it been treated as it usually would in bankruptcy proceedings. Taxpayers lost between $20 billion and $23 billion on the auto programs. Thus, the entire loss to the taxpayers from the auto bailout comes from the funds diverted to the UAW."
(*SIGH*)
The Obama campaign is touting the bailout in Michigan this week, crowing about "saved-or-created" jobs. What the bailout actually "saved" was the UAW’s heavily padded compensation packages; what it "created" was a massive taxpayer loss.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
The UAW was a significant factor in the automakers’ decline: It had raised Detroit’s labor costs 50% to 80% above other automakers such as Toyota and Nissan.
(In 2006, General Motors paid its unionized workers $70.51 an hour in wages and benefits. Chrysler paid $75.86 an hour.)
Added to mistakes by management, these labor costs were a major reason the automakers went bankrupt.
[Yet...] through the bailout, the Obama Administration insulated the UAW from most of the sacrifices unions usually make in a bankruptcy—at taxpayer expense.
GM and Chrysler owed billions to a trust fund they had created to provide UAW members with gold-plated retiree health benefits. In bankruptcy, these funds should have been paid proportional to other unsecured creditors. Instead, while the Administration paid other creditors only a fraction of what they were owed, it gave the UAW trust fund assets worth tens of billions — including partial ownership of both companies. The U.S. Treasury should have received these assets[!]
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Bankruptcy law also enables reorganizing companies to improve their post-bankruptcy situation by renegotiating union contracts to competitive rates. If the UAW had been treated normally under bankruptcy law, the automakers’ average labor costs would have fallen to the same levels as the foreign-based carmakers, approximately $47 an hour. While this is still 40% higher compensation than the average manufacturing worker, it would have reduced UAW members’ standard of living.
[T]he Administration wouldn’t allow that. So while the UAW accepted huge pay cuts for new hires, the Administration kept the pay structure of existing UAW members at GM intact.
Even Stephen Rattner, President Obama’s “car czar,” has admitted that “We should have asked the UAW to do a bit more. We did not ask any UAW member to take a cut in their pay.”
As a result, even after the reorganization, GM still has higher labor costs ($56 an hour) than any of its foreign-based competitors.
The average American worker — whose taxes paid for the bailout — earns $30.15 an hour in wages and benefits.
Few Americans have the ability, as UAW workers do, to retire in their mid-50s before they can collect Social Security.
Fewer still receive retirement health benefits in addition to Medicare, as UAW workers do.
* AND YET...
[Our] tax dollars went to subsidize UAW pay and benefits.
Had the government treated the UAW in the manner required by bankruptcy law, taxpayers would have broken even. The program would have amounted to bankruptcy financing instead of an outright bailout. The Administration could have kept the automakers running without losing a dime. Instead, more than $26 billion went out the door and into the UAW’s pockets.
Let’s put that in perspective: The amount of the subsidy given directly to the UAW was bigger than the budget of the entire State Department. It was bigger than all U.S. foreign aid spending. It was 50% more than NASA’s budget.
None of that money kept factories running.
Instead, it sustained the above-average compensation of members of an influential union, sparing them from most of the sacrifices typically made in bankruptcy — a bankruptcy they contributed to.
President Obama engaged in special interest spending at its worst.
The Administration did not bail out GM and Chrysler. It bailed out the United Auto Workers.
* AND SCREWED THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303807404577434610282644948.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
Anyone who thinks pension reform is a partisan issue should check in on Michigan. Republicans run the entire state government, but some of them are blinking like Democrats in Illinois.
Republicans in the state Senate recently committed the good deed of voting to close the public-school employee retirement program to newly hired teachers and move them into a 401(k)-style plan.
(*CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)
This is the kind of reform that has long been occurring in the private economy and is crucial to getting pension costs under taxpayer control.
* YEP!
The plan would also require that current workers contribute at least 5% of salary to their traditional pension.
* FRANKLY, THEY SHOULD BE WEENED OFF OF TRADITIONAL PENSIONS OVER THE NEXT FOUR YEARS - PERIOD. TRADITIONAL PENSIONS ARE A PONZI SCHEME. 401(K)-STYLE PLANS ARE REAL!
Enter the Michigan House, also controlled by Republicans, which promptly dropped the Senate reform in favor of some useful patches that will reduce future liabilities and create an optional 401(k)-style plan.
* SCUMBAGS!
New teachers would be able to choose between a fixed pension and the 401(k)-type plan, which means keeping the gateway to the bankrupt pension system open.
* JEEZUS... FRIGGIN'... CHRIST...!
Michigan needs reform, because the combined pension and health-care unfunded liabilities for its 450,000 education employees and retirees is close to $50 billion. Teachers can retire at age 55 (and in some cases earlier) with full benefits and take another job. The average retiree pays only 10% of health-care premiums, and teachers hired before 1990 contribute almost nothing to pensions.
* JEEZUS... FRIGGIN'... CHRIST... (*SIGH*)
The virtue of 401(k)-style plans, by contrast, is that they fix taxpayer costs, instantly reducing future liabilities that contributed to the bankruptcy of GM and are crushing California and Illinois. Politicians can no longer raid pension funds to balance the budget in the short-term, and workers can't load up on overtime and sick leave in their final years to pad their lifetime pensions.
(*NOD*)
Part of the current debate concerns the transition costs of moving to the new system. Opponents claim that without new workers to pay for current retirees, short-term taxpayer costs can increase.
* SO BE IT! AS LONG AS WE CAN SEE WHAT THE ACTUAL NUMBERS ARE AND WILL BE, WE CAN DEAL WITH THEM!
Michigan shows that many politicians prefer short-term pension fixes, but the current defined-benefit system is unsustainable.
Pension costs are already crowding out vital current services like schools, roads and police.
If Michigan's House Republicans are too timid to adopt the Senate plan, the least they could do is amend theirs to increase the incentives to choose the 401(k)-style plan by requiring that employees contribute 15% or more of their salaries to the traditional pension.
* HOW'BOUT 50/50?
Michigan's GOP Governor Rick Snyder has asked lawmakers to delay closing the school-employee pension system until the transition-cost argument is sorted out. But the sooner states reduce long-term liabilities, the better for their fiscal well-being.
Gov. Snyder could take a lesson from his neighbor in Wisconsin and show more leadership.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303901504577462670248126392.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
One reason industry handouts flourish in Washington is that they provide concentrated benefits to a few producers, while the cost is spread widely to all Americans.
A case study is the sugar program...
The program provides about $1.4 billion each year to fewer than 5,000 large and mostly prosperous beet and sugar cane producers. But according to a 2011 American Enterprise Institute study by North Carolina State economist Michael Wohlgenant, it costs consumers about twice that amount, mostly in higher food prices.
It's a conveniently hidden tax and a regressive one too. When Big Sugar says the program imposes "no net cost" on the budget, they're not talking about the family budget. Americans pay about 50% more than the world price of sugar.
This giveaway survives because sugar cane producers in Florida, Louisiana, Texas, and Hawaii have formed an alliance with sugar beet producers in about a dozen states, from Michigan and Minnesota through North Dakota and Wyoming in the Great Plains. Corn producers also like the import restrictions because the higher the price of sugar, the more demand for cheaper corn-based sweeteners. That's a lot of Senators.
* BUT THERE'S MORE!
[S]ugar quotas that are designed to keep prices artificially high cause a net loss of jobs.
A Commerce Department study in 2006 found that for every agriculture job that is saved by the program, the U.S. loses as many as three jobs, mostly in the food industry, which has higher costs due to the sugar quota. A 2011 Iowa State study found that eliminating price supports and quotas would create 20,000 jobs for food processors, bakeries and candy makers.
The Senate amendment to reform this program is sponsored by Republicans Richard Lugar of Indiana and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Democrats Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Richard Durbin of Illinois. They have the support of dozens of groups on the left and right, from Americans for Tax Reform to the National Wildlife Federation.
This is bipartisan cooperation that the good-government media types ought to be celebrating. Reforming Washington's corporate welfare culture will require victories on votes like this. Senators who protect the sugar program are voting for the 0.001%.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303552104577438391495522820.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
President Obama likes to say that everyone in America should "play by the same rules."
Okay, so then why does the Administration's new student-loan rule apply to for-profit colleges, but not non-profits?
The regulations that go into effect in July cut off federal student aid to career and technical colleges whose former students don't meet the Education Department's definition of "gainful employment."
Education programs would be cut off from the government trough if their former students don't meet one of three thresholds for three out of four years: They must have at least a 35% loan repayment rate, 30% debt-to-discretionary-income ratio, or 12% debt-to-annual earnings ratio.
The stated purpose of the regulations is to protect taxpayers. Fine.
(If only the White House had been as scrupulous when it doled out billions to its for-profit friends in the green lobby.)
[But] if the feds are going to subsidize higher education and it makes sense to attach strings to the taxpayer purse, then shouldn't the White House apply the same medicine to all colleges?
* ONE WOULD THINK...!!!
The Obama Administration argues that for-profits present a bigger risk. While they educate 12% of students, they receive a quarter of federal student aid and account for nearly half of loan defaults. However, career and technical schools also enroll a larger share of "high risk" students who are more likely to be poor, racial minorities, single parents and first-generation students. Studies that control for such factors find similar default rates among students at for-profits, community colleges and historically black colleges.
And therein lies the reason for the White House's disparate treatment. Were the White House to apply its rules to all schools, many historically black colleges and community colleges in the inner cities where wages are lower would also be barred from taking federal student aid.
(Traditional four-year colleges whose grads are "employed" occupying Wall Street could be affected as well.)
(*SMIRK*)
At any rate, the White House's unstated goal is really to steer taxpayer money away from profit-making institutions to colleges with purportedly more noble aims (like ensuring gainful employment for academics).
If the White House wanted to protect taxpayers, it would apply the standards broadly, or even better, it would exit the student loan market which it took over two years ago[!]
The Department of Education estimates that the federal government now stands behind about 90% of the $1 trillion in outstanding student debt, which is up by nearly $200 billion since 2009.
* JEEZUS...
Taxpayers also subsidize below-market interest rates on these loans.
(But notwithstanding Washington's fount of subsidies — and perhaps partly because of it — the student loan default rate is at its highest in over a decade.)
If President Obama really cares about fairness, he'd level the regulatory field between career colleges and nonprofits and turn off the taxpayer spigot.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/06/13/create_wealth_not_jobs_114461.html
Soon after the president dropped his ill-advised "the private sector is doing fine" gaffe, White House press secretary Jay Carney scolded the media for failing to frame the comment in the proper "context." Which is weird, because the context is the worst part.
Yes, government "creates" jobs, often out of thin air. The private sector creates wealth -- which, in turn, allows us to fund the vital work of sending weapons to Mexican drug lords and prosecuting Roger Clemens.
(*LAUGHING MY ASS OFF*)
Yet there is a pervasive argument coming from Democrats these days - and, no doubt, the president was thinking of this context when he gaffed - that goes something like this: "You know, if local governments hadn't laid off all those public service workers - a policy conservatives embrace, mind you - the unemployment rate would be closer to 7% rather than 8%."
(*SNORT*)
Let's just say that few Americans are grousing about the decline in government productivity since those dreadful purges.
(*CHUCKLE*)
A new survey from the Federal Reserve found that both American income and wealth have deteriorated dramatically since 2007, as the median real income has fallen by 7.7% - everyone taking a hit but "retirees and other nonworking families."
For the average American, net worth has declined by about 40% since 2007 - from $126,000 to $77,000. The average family can say goodbye to about 18 years' worth of savings.
* BULLSHIT ALERT! HOLD EVERYTHING, FOLKS... GOTTA CALL A SPADE A SPADE! THIS SUPPOSED "LOSS" IS A PAPER LOSS - MAINLY THE BURSTING OF THE REAL ESTATE BUBBLE.
* I HATE WHEN SO-CALLED "CONSERVATIVES" PLAY THE SAME GAMES WITH STATS THAT THE DEMS DO.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Meanwhile, not only does the Bureau of Labor Statistics find unemployment rates of government workers at 4.2% but also studies find that public-sector employees - free of the constraints of demand - make more than their private-sector counterparts in similar vocations.
What this signals to the president, naturally, is that the economy is jonesing for more unsustainable busy-work and debt.
(*SNORT*)
Hey, good salaries and job security - what's not to like?
(*SNICKER*) (*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Moreover, the context of President Obama's remark is simple: He believes that public-sector jobs are a vital measure of economic growth.
(*REDOUBLING THE HEAD SHAKING*)
This is the prevalent view from the left these days. "Everybody knows that government creates jobs," lied Sen. Sherrod Brown recently. Liberal Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne quipped that when conservatives say "government doesn't create jobs," "the riposte should be quick and emphatic: 'Yes it has, and yes, it does!'" (And really, how can anyone argue with that kind of ironclad logic?)
* IT MAKES YOU WANNA CRY, DOESN'T IT?
It's ironic that the same people pushing unsustainable job growth find the process of wealth creation so unsightly. But pumping money into public-sector unions is always good for businesses, communities and workers?
(*ROLLING MY EYES*)
Obama is peddling a "jobs" bill right now that features one pinch of protectionism, one pinch of feel-good veteran help and a few hundred cups' worth of wealth-sucking, union-growing debt inducement.
(Can anyone name a single policy proposal by his administration that even pretends to clear the way for private-sector wealth creation?)
(*SIGH*)
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/06/13/surveillance-pictures-released-in-mob-attack-on-cta-red-line/
Chicago Police hope surveillance pictures help lead them to one of three weekend mob attacks on people downtown.
* DOWNTOWN CHICAGO. NOT THE GHETTO. NOT THE "BAD" PART OF TOWN. NOPE. DOWNTOWN.
* READ THE FULL ARTICLE, FOLKS; CHICAGO IS LOST. UNDERSTAND... CHICAGO IS LOST.
As WBBM Newsradio’s Bernie Tafoya reports, around 10:30 p.m. Saturday, a 23-year-old man was beaten up on the CTA Red Line near the State-Lake stop Saturday by a group of about six teenagers. The teens had just stolen the man’s 27-year-old female friend’s iPhone 4S. She had dropped the phone, and a teen had picked it up and taken it for himself. The man told the teen to give his wife her iPhone back. But they instead began punching him in the face. The group then fled the train at State and Lake streets, near the Chicago Theatre.
* STATE AND LAKE STREETS - NEAR THE CHICAGO THEATRE!
Another woman with the group, from West Chicago, tells the Aurora Beacon-News it was the scariest night of her life. She tells the paper she and her two friends got on the Red Line at the Addison stop after attending the Brad Paisley concert at Wrigley Field. Near downtown, the group of teens got on, and by the time it was over, the man with the group had a broken bone near his eye and broken teeth, and he was bloodied. The couple called 911 at street level, and the woman tells the Beacon-News that police were slow to respond.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
The Red Line incident was [just] one of three high-profile attacks by teen mobs in the downtown area over the weekend. Just before 10 p.m. Saturday, another teen mob attacked two men – one from Chicago, the other in town from Michigan – in the 500 block of North State Street. One victim was left with a broken jaw, the other suffered a cut lip.
In a third incident, a 36-year-old man was attacked by a teen mob as he walked home from work along Dewitt Place near Pearson Street in Streeterville. Police say the man was robbed and attacked by anywhere from 10 to 20 people. The man was taken to the hospital with a head injury, but he was able to walk on his own after the attack. ... The doctor [notes] that even though his home is four blocks from the hospital where he works, he will now be taking a cab home. ... [The doctor believes] that the group [of 10 to 20 alleged "people"] seemed just to be beating people for fun.
* THIS IS AMERICA, PEOPLE... CHICAGO... DOWNTOWN CHICAGO IN THE AGE OF OBAMA.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Police Supt. Garry McCarthy pointed out earlier this week that there were similar mob attacks last summer, and his department was able to get the problem under control. He said he believes they’ll be able to do it again this year, and it’s a matter of making sure his officers are where they’re supposed to be, to prevent these incidents from happening.
Among the most high-profile incidents around this time last year were a pair of attacks by mobs in Streeterville – one on a man who was parking his scooter in the 300 block of East Chicago Avenue, the other of whom was assaulted while riding his bicycle at Lake Shore Drive and Huron Street.
Less than a week later, two teens were attacked by a large mob of teens at Chicago and Wabash avenues in a fight that began at the Oak Street Beach. The attack shocked and terrified many people on the street corner.
Also last summer, the developmentally disabled brother of Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan was attacked by a mob while riding the CTA Red Line subway near Chicago Avenue.
Violent attacks by teen mobs also made headlines elsewhere in the country last year.
In one headline-grabbing incident, 24 teens were arrested after violent mob attacks marred the Wisconsin State Fair in suburban Milwaukee.
* ANYBODY WANNA GUESS WHAT ALL THESE "MOBS" AND THESE "YOUTHS" HAD IN COMMON - BESIDES BEING ANIMALS? HERE'S A HINT: POLITICAL CORRECTNESS DOESN'T ALLOW THE ANSWER TO BE GIVEN WITHIN THIS NEWS STORY ITSELF. (*SMIRK*)
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