Thursday, June 20, 2013

Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, June 20, 2013


Does it make me a bad guy that I don't give a $hit that Tony Soprano dropped dead yesterday?

 Frankly... I'm still mourning Mitch Rapp.

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6 comments:

William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://news.investors.com/061913-660419-local-governments-cut-hours-to-avoid-obamacare-mandate.htm?p=full

Here is just a small sampling of local news reports about what local government officials are saying about ObamaCare, and the steps they're taking to avoid or minimize its costs:

Phillipsburg, Kan. -- "School administrators here say they are alarmed and confounded by the looming new costs they face with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act," according to the Kaiser Health Institute News Service. Chris Hipp, director of a Kansas special education cooperative, warned that ObamaCare's costs "could put us all out of business or change significantly how we do business," adding that "we are not built to pay full health benefits for noncertified folks who work a little more than 1,000 hours a year."

Dearborn, Mich. -- "If we had to provide health care and other benefits to all of our employees, the burden on the city would be tremendous," said Mayor John O'Reilly, explaining why the city is cutting its more than 700 part-time and seasonal workers down to 28 hours a week. "The city is like any private or public employer having to adjust to changes in the law."

Indiana -- "What I'm seeing across the state is school districts, unfortunately, having to reduce the hours that they are having some of their folks work, primarily so they don't have to worry about the (ObamaCare) penalties, or they don't have to provide them health insurance, which would be very, very costly," said Dennis Costerison, executive director of the Indiana Association of School Business Officials. Ft. Wayne Community Schools, for example, are cutting yours for nearly three-quarters of its part-time aides.

Omaha, Neb. -- "The biggest problem is everyone said that ObamaCare is only going to help cut costs. Nothing could be further from the truth," said Mike Kennedy , who serves on the board of Millard Public Schools, just outside the city, and figures ObamaCare will raise its costs by $400,000. A neighboring school district is reducing hours for up to 281 part-time employees to avoid $2.5 million in new costs, which will result in pay cuts of up to $3,300.

Long Beach, Calif. -- "We are in the same boat as many employers," said Tom Modica, Long Beach's director of government affairs. "We need to maintain the programs and service levels we have now." So the city is going to cut hours for 200 part-time workers so it doesn't have to pay $2 million to provide health benefits.

* TO BE CONTINUED...

June 20, 2013 at 11:42 AM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

Salt Lake City -- "With new provisions in the Affordable Care Act, there was going to be a significant burden upon Granite School District and our taxpayers to offset the cost of benefits," said spokesman Ben Horsley. He says covering the district's part-time workers would cost about $14 million, and so about 1,000 will have their hours cut to 29 a week.

Cape May County, N.J. -- "A number of people in the nation who read it are recognizing how detrimental (ObamaCare is) to government and private employers out there," said Gerald Thornton, the county's finance director who is trying to figure out how to budget for the law.

Virginia -- "The Commonwealth of Virginia is grappling with the same issues that many businesses in the private sector are as they struggle to deal with the costs imposed by the Affordable Care Act," Paul Logan, a spokesman for Gov. McDonnell, said. The state is requiring that about 7,000 part-time government workers put in no more than 29 hours a week.

Texas -- "The Affordable Care Act has added so much complexity and administrative burden that there is nothing affordable about it," said Jared Pope, who is consulting with Texas municipal governments on ObamaCare. Dallas expects its health costs to climb $2.1 million next year. Plano is cutting hours to avoid $1 million in new costs.

Kern County, Calif. -- "It will affect multiple departments, a majority of departments," said the county's deputy administrative officer Eric Nisbett, explaining that unless the county cut worker hours for 800 employees, ObamaCare would cost it up to $8 million a year.

Allegheny County, Pa. -- "There's frustration and anger and sadness and resentment, you know, but you don't have a voice," said adjunct English professor Clint Benjamin in the wake of the Community College of Allegheny County's decision to cut hours for about 400 adjunct faculty and other employees so it wouldn't have to pay $6 million in ObamaCare-related fees next year.

Medina, Ohio -- "We feel bad as a city administration and as a council in having to cut hours from 35 to 29," Medina Mayor Dennis Hanwell said. "We have the budget to pay the people, but we do not have the budget to pay for the health care." If they hadn't made that cut, the city faced up to $1 million in new health costs courtesy of ObamaCare.

Birmingham, Mich. -- Commissioner Gordon Rinschler may have summed up best the reaction that countless businesses and governments are having to ObamaCare, saying: "We simply can't afford the Affordable Care Act."

[P]art-time government workers — many of them low-income — face pay cuts that can top $3,000 a year, and yet will still be left without employer-provided benefits.

* THANK YOU PRESIDENT OBAMA...

June 20, 2013 at 11:42 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/scrapping-equipment-key-to-afghan-drawdown/2013/06/19/9d435258-d83f-11e2-b418-9dfa095e125d_story.html?hpid=z1

Facing a tight withdrawal deadline and tough terrain, the U.S. military has destroyed more than 170 million pounds worth of vehicles and other military equipment as it rushes to wind down its role in the Afghanistan war by the end of 2014.

Military planners have determined that they will not ship back more than $7 billion worth of equipment — about 20% of what the U.S. military has in Afghanistan — because it is no longer needed or would be too costly to ship back home.

The most contentious and closely watched part of the effort involves the disposal of Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, the hulking beige personnel carriers that the Pentagon raced to build starting in 2007 to counter the threat of roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan. ... The Pentagon has determined that it will no longer have use for about 12,300 of its 25,500 MRAPs scattered at bases worldwide, officials said. In Afghanistan, the military has labeled about 2,000 of its roughly 11,000 MRAPs “excess.” About 9,000 will be shipped to the United States and U.S. military bases in Kuwait and elsewhere, but the majority of the unwanted vehicles — which cost about $1 million each — will probably be shredded, officials said...

June 20, 2013 at 11:55 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-19/background-checks-faked-with-lax-oversight-watchdog-says.html

Investigators charged with conducting background checks of U.S. national-security workers have falsified records and aren’t receiving adequate oversight, according to an inspector general’s testimony.

* OH... IS THAT ALL...?!

(*SNORT*)

One worker fabricated 1,600 credit checks before it was discovered her own background investigation had been falsified, Patrick McFarland, inspector general of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, said in prepared testimony obtained by Bloomberg News in advance of a Senate hearing tomorrow.

* AND... (IS SHE BEING PROSECUTED...???)

While 18 investigators, including contract and government employees, have been convicted of falsifying reports since 2006, McFarland said the inspector general’s office lacks the resources to clear a backlog of an additional 36 cases.

* I AM CURIOUS; WHAT DOES HAPPEN TO THESE PEOPLE?

June 20, 2013 at 1:06 PM
William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-upward-mobility-has-become-tougher-to-achieve/2013/06/19/90365d52-d83b-11e2-a016-92547bf094cc_story.html

If America is to be equitable, with careers open to all talents and competent citizens capable of making their way in an increasingly demanding world, Americans must heed the warnings implicit in observations from two heroes of modern conservatism.

In “The Unheavenly City” (1970), Edward C. Banfield wrote: “All education favors the middle- and upper-class child, because to be middle or upper class is to have qualities that make one particularly educable.”

In “The Constitution of Liberty” (1960), Friedrich Hayek noted that families are the primary transmitters of human capital — habits, mores, education. Hence families, much more than other social institutions or programs, are determinative of academic and vocational success.

Elaborating on this theme, Jerry Z. Muller, a Catholic University historian, argued in the March-April 2013 issue of Foreign Affairs that expanding equality of opportunity increases inequality because some people are simply better able than others to exploit opportunities.

“Assortative mating” — likes marrying likes — concentrates class advantages, further expanding inequality.

The Cato Institute’s Brink Lindsey argued in “Human Capitalism: How Economic Growth Has Made Us Smarter — and More Unequal” that this growth intensifies society’s complexity, which “has opened a great divide between those who have mastered its requirements and those who haven’t.” Modernity — education-based complexity — intensifies the demands on mental abilities. People invest increasingly in human capital — especially education — because status and achievement increasingly depend on possession of the right knowledge.

Lindsey cited research showing that “by the time they reach age 3, children of professional parents have heard some 45 million words addressed to them — as opposed to only 26 million words for working-class kids, and a mere 13 million words in the case of kids on welfare.” So, class distinctions in vocabularies are already large among toddlers. Parental choice of neighborhoods and schools mean that children of college-educated parents hang out together. Such peer associations may have as much effect on a child’s development as do parents. These factors, Lindsey said, explain why “people raised in the upper middle class are far more likely to stay there than move down, while people raised in the working class are far more likely to stay there than move up.”

* TO BE CONTINUED...

June 20, 2013 at 1:23 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

Today, the dominant distinction defining socioeconomic class is between those with and without college degrees. Graduates earn 70% more than those with only high school diplomas. In 1980, the difference was just 30%.

* TAKE THESE STATS WITH A HUGE MEASURE OF SALT, FRIENDS; BELIEVE ME... IT'S NOT NEARLY AS CUT AND DRY. (YOU COULD DO THE RESEARCH TO VERIFY THIS... BUT YOU CAN ALSO JUST TAKE MY WORD FOR IT - SINCE I'VE DONE THE RESEARCH MYSELF!)

Soon the crucial distinction will be between those with meaningful college degrees and those with worthless ones.

(*NOD*)

* NOW WE'RE TALKING...!

Many colleges are becoming less demanding as they become more expensive: They rake in money — much of it from government-subsidized tuition grants — by taking in many marginally qualified students who are motivated only to acquire a credential and who learn little.

(*NOD*)

Lindsey reported that in 1961, full-time college students reported studying 25 hours a week on average; by 2003, average studying time had fallen to 13 hours.

* MY FRIEND PHIL SAYS THIS IS BULLSHIT. (OF COURSE MY FRIEND PHIL HAS BEEN KNOWN TO SPEAK OUT OF HIS ASS...) (*WINK*)

Half of today’s students take no courses requiring more than 20 pages of writing in a semester.

(*SHRUG*)

Given the role of practice in developing expertise, “the conclusion that college students are learning less than they used to seems unavoidable.”

* ONE WOULD THINK...

Small wonder those with college degrees occupying jobs that do not require a high school diploma include 1.4 million retail salespeople and cashiers, half a million waiters, bartenders and janitors, and many more.

* THE "REQUIREMENT" OF A COLLEGE DEGREE IS MORE OFTEN THAN NOT AN ARTIFICAL ONE - AT LEAST FOR ENTRY LEVEL EMPLOYMENT. A BIT OF TRIVIA: THIS "REQUIREMENT" ACTUALLY STARTED OUT AS A WAY OF LIMITING THE AMOUNT OF MINORITY APPLICANTS APPLYING FOR POSITIONS IN A PROACTIVE ATTEMPT TO LIMIT UNSUCCESSFUL BLACK APPLICANTS FROM CLAIMING DISCRIMINATION IF THEY DIDN'T GET THE JOBS!

“Most American kids,” Lindsey concluded, “are now raised in an environment that is arguably less favorable for developing human capital than that in which their parents were raised.” America’s limited-government project is at risk because the nation’s foundational faith in individualism cannot survive unless upward mobility is a fact.

* YEP. THE PROBLEM WITH MANY OF MY FRIENDS IS THAT THEY WON'T ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THEIR KIDS LIVE IN A BUBBLE. THEY CAN'T SEE THE FOREST FOR THE TREES!

June 20, 2013 at 1:23 PM

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