Budget Problems In Wisconsin : Drug Testing for Welfare Recipients

If you haven't noticed in Wisconsin there is battle going on in this state to try and bring the state budget in line with common sense and what resources that are available without raising taxes.

After decades of corruption and internal rot from democrats, this is no easy task to reestablish responsible government.

One of the proposals in Governor Scott Walker budget is requiring welfare recipients take a drug test before receiving assistance. Tax payer dollars.

To most of us this would seem reasonable but this to the progressive socialist democrats is an attack on middle class values, if you are down on your luck we shouldn't apply extra pressures to these unfortunate individuals that are struggle just to survive.

Many questions abound that the democrats cannot answer and they believe aren't  necessary to answer as they believe it's all about doing the right thing. At least the democrats are trying, they say, even if what they are doing is counterproductive, the Republicans only want to hurt the disadvantaged and the poor. Heartless.

The real tough job in Wisconsin, like many other states, where decades of democrats have established a entire system of ideological rot that has to be identified and dug out so the state can be brought into the twenty first century where a balanced budget is the rule of day.

Governor Scott Walker won 3 elections in 4 years proving he is on the right track.

College A Waste of Time & Money? : Marketable Skills Needed

As most of us that attended college can attest - many students that we encountered had no business being in a college or university situation. It wasn't that they were stupid, although some were, it was just they had no idea what they were doing there. It was just the thing to do as everyone else was doing it.

Now the with the cost of attendance beyond common sense every since the government took over the educational loan programs, the fund in debt to the taxpayer to more then $1.2 trillion dollars and loan defaults rising, it should be understandable there has to be alternative to college. And as logic would have it, maybe obtaining a marketable skill would better suit the students future.

Is College Necessary?
Source: Claire Daniel, "A surprising number of presidents never graduated college," Washington Examiner, February 16, 2015.

February 18, 2015 

One-quarter of American presidents did not graduate from college, reports Claire Daniel in the Washington Examiner. The most recent man to hold the nation's highest office yet not graduate from college was Harry Truman, who began working for a railroad after he graduated from high school. The other presidents without college degrees include William McKinley, Grover Cleveland, Andrew Johnson, Abraham Lincoln, Millard Fillmore, Zachary Taylor, William Henry Harrison, Martin Van Buren, Andrew Jackson and George Washington.

While times have certainly changed, might America start to see fewer students enter college and head straight into the workforce? NCPA Research Associate Farhad Mirzadeh said as much in a recent report for the NCPA on the rising costs of college education, suggesting that students and parents -- who have seen a 160 percent, inflation-adjusted increase in college tuition and fees since 1990 -- may begin to question the value of a college degree.

While tuition rates have skyrocketed, Mirzadeh explained that most of those dollars have not gone to instruction -- instead, colleges are hiring large numbers of administrative staff, replacing full-time faculty with adjunct professors and building luxury dorms and campus centers.

Moreover, consider a recent report from NCPA Senior Fellow Pam Villarreal, who explained that some of the fastest job growth is projected to take place in skilled-trade industries that do not require a college degree, such as brick masonry, plumbing, pipefitting, construction, insurance sales and more. In fact, one survey reports that four of the top 10 jobs that are most difficult to fill do not require a college degree.

Moreover, there are a number of fast-growing occupations that require only vocational training or an associate's degree, especially in the health care industry. For example, between 2010 and 2020, the United States is projected to see a 44 percent increase in demand for diagnostic medical sonographers, a 41 percent increase in occupational therapy assistant jobs and a 38 percent increase in opportunities for dental hygienists.
 

Drones Are Here to Stay : Innovation Unlimited - (Good/Bad/ Ugly)

Isn't technology great? Just think of all the different ways to take advantage of this new form of  an airborne resource in business and politics. See also the link at the bottom for some more ideas for drones that the FAA might not want in the hands of bad people.

In reality there is no way to completely regulate something that is so new. The only hope is that we will have some common sense when innovations rule the day.

FAA Proposes Drone Regulations
Source: Scott Shackford, "Who Will Be Screwed Over by the FAA\'s New Drone Rules?" Reason.com, February 17, 2015.

February 19, 2015

Scott Shackford at Reason.com reports that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has issued its plans to regulate the private and commercial use of drones (or, more formally, Unmanned Aircraft Systems). He summarizes some of the regulations:

• Drones would have to weigh less than 55 pounds.
• Drone operators would have to be in visual sight of the drone.
• Drones could only operate during the daytime and would have to stay below 500 feet.

What does this mean for business? Consider the case of Amazon, which had planned to roll out a drone delivery service. Shackford says the proposed rules would prevent the company from doing so, quoting Amazon's vice president for global policy who said the rules simply "wouldn't allow Prime Air to operate in the United States" but said the company remained committed to the program and was "prepared to deploy where we have the regulatory support we need."

Shackford accuses the FAA of regulating "out of fear of what harms may (or may not) come," rather than allowing drones to operate before issuing heavy restrictions.

Shackford also notes the rules could impact companies much smaller than Amazon who might also seek to employ drones in their businesses. Reason TV has produced a video on the use of drones, and NCPA Research Associate Evan Carr released a paper on drones, noting that they were poised to "redefine the aviation industry and drive substantial economic growth."

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=SNPJMk2fgJU
 

American Millennials Fall Short : Test Scores Overseas Are Better

This report does not bode well for our future given how our students stack up against their peers over seas, the people that they will be competing against in the future for jobs and prosperity.

New Report: American Millennials Scoring Poorly Compared to International Peers
Source: "America's Skills Challenge: Millennials and the Future," Educational Testing Service, February 2015.

February 19, 2015

A new report from the Educational Testing Service says that millennials might be the most educated generation in history, but American millennials' scores on international skills tests are less than impressive.

The Educational Testing Service (ETS) analyzed data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), an international test which assesses the literacy, numeracy and problem-solving skills of adults ages 16 to 65.

Millennials are designated as adults born after 1980, ages 16 to 34. As of 2012, millennials were 26.2 percent of the American population and 35 percent of the civilian labor force. How'd they do? The ETS report puts it bluntly: "Across all three scales, the scores for U.S. millennials are disappointing." Consider the results:

• Millennials in 15 of 22 participating countries scored higher than U.S. millennials.
• U.S. millennials ranked dead last for numeracy, alongside Italy and Spain.
• American millennials were also in last place for "problem solving in technology-rich environments," alongside the Slovak Republic, Ireland and Poland.

The report also compared top millennial performers across countries rather than merely looking at national performance as a whole. Still, top-scoring Americans scored lower than their top-scoring peers in 15 countries. Moreover, low-scoring American millennials scored lower than millennials in 19 countries.

The ETS report notes that while America has invested countless dollars into K-12 education in recent history, Americans are not stacking up against their foreign peers. In fact, the report notes that while more young Americans have attained higher education levels since 2003, those who have at least a high school education have demonstrated declining numeracy scores. Moreover, American millennials with master's or research degrees scored higher only than millennials in Ireland, Poland and Spain.
 

Common Core or Better Teachers : What Works - What Doesn't

Oh no, not this - teachers make the difference? Not unions or politicians? How can this be? Students that have quality teachers do better then students that have bad teachers?

The question that remains is how to attain good teachers and who will set the standards that are required for quality in education? Who will deicide what standards are needed? The feds, Common Core, or parents and locals that live the results.

Standards Don't Work: Better Teachers Do
Source: Jason L. Riley, "Common Core Has a Central Problem," Wall Street Journal, February 18, 2015.

February 19, 2015

Common Core (more formally, the Common Core State Standards Initiative) -- a set of federal standards for math and reading that states can adopt in exchange for federal grant money -- has sparked debate across the country, with critics concerned about everything from the federal government's role in education to the head-scratching math problems that accompany the new teaching methods.

Jason Riley, a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute, says one of the biggest problems with Common Core is that it's a set of standards -- and there's no real evidence that national standards will improve student achievement:

• According to Russ Whitehurst of the Brookings Institution, there are states with high-quality standards that produce high levels of achievement (such as Massachusetts), but there are also states with high-quality standards and poor student achievement (such as California).
• According to Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution, states with high standards improved their National Assessment of Education Progress scores from 2003 to 2009 "by roughly the same margin as states with awful ones." 
• The Department of Education has released three reports finding no link between student achievement and the difficulty of state tests.
• Students in countries such as South Korea (which has national standards) do perform better on international tests than American students. However, Canada lacks national standards, and its students also outperform American students. Furthermore, Americans perform better than students in some countries who do have standards.

What does make a difference in student performance? Teacher effectiveness. Riley notes that a child with a top elementary school teacher gains a half-year of learning compared to a child with one of the worst elementary school teachers.
 

Federal Spending Cuts Proposals : No Will - No Way

What a great idea on how to cut federal spending - cut spending from every department including welfare and defense. The only problem is there isn't anyone in congress that's willing to do this.

Even the most ardent disciple of cutting the deficit and debt before they reach Washington seem to sing a different tune once they have their hand on the wallet of the taxpayers.

Getting Rid of Ineffective, Unnecessary Federal Spending
Source: "The Budget Book: 106 Ways to Reduce the Size and Scope of Government," Heritage Foundation, February 2015.

February 19, 2015

The Heritage Foundation has released a great report on ways to cut federal spending category by category. In fact, the report notes that over the last two decades, federal spending has grown a staggering 63 percent faster than inflation.

Reining in spending will require cuts in every sector -- from science to energy to agriculture to national defense to transportation and welfare. Here are a few of the report's suggestions on cutting spending on education, training, employment and social services:

• Privatizing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which funds services such as PBS or NPR, would save Americans $445 million every year. In 2012, 82 percent of spending on public broadcasting came from non-federal sources, and the report contends PBS and NPR could survive on their own without government funding.
• Getting rid of the Job Corps would save Americans $19 billion over a decade. The program is intended to teach trade skills to youth, but a National Job Corps Study concluded that for every $25,000 that taxpayers invest in a single Job Corps participant, Corp participants were less likely to graduate from high school than their peers, were no more likely to attend or complete college and earned just 22 cents more in hourly wages compared to their peers, wasting taxpayer dollars.
• Eliminating funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA and the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) would save Americans $3.2 billion over a decade. The report notes that private giving to the arts far outweigh federal funding (Americans gave $13.1 billion 2011 to the arts and humanities, compared to just $292 million from the NEA and NEH), and private philanthropy would be more than sufficient to support the arts.

The report calls cutting entitlement spending "the ultimate challenge," as half of all federal spending goes to just three programs: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
 

ObamaCare Sign-Up Figures Managed : Gruber Is Back

Know this, Gruber wasn't just being dumb, he was serious, and smart as it turns out about how Mr Obama and the progressive socialist democrats believed they would have to lie about what they intended to do to get the Affordable Care Act passed. Yet even in the face of living the disaster that is ObamaCare the voting public comes back for more.

What has happened to our country?

Don't Be Misled by Obamacare Sign-Up Figures
Source: Avik Roy, "Contra White House, Obamacare Exchanges Enroll Approx. 5 Million Uninsured, Not 11.4 Million," Forbes.com, February 18, 2015.

February 19, 2015

While the White House is cheering 11.4 million health insurance sign-ups in the exchanges, Avik Roy of the Manhattan Institute says those numbers are misleading and obscure the number of previously uninsured individuals who now have coverage.

To start, Roy reminds readers that "signing up" for Obamacare doesn't mean "enrolling" in Obamacare -- in fact, just 84 percent of people who signed up for coverage last year actually ended up paying their premiums and enrolling. Last year, the White House hailed 8 million exchange sign-ups, despite that just 6.7 million were actually enrolled at the end of the enrollment year. If that trend holds true, Roy says the likely figure for 2015 is closer to 9.5 million enrollees, not 11.4 million.
On top of that, Roy says that signing 11.4 million Americans up for health insurance is not the same as signing up 11.4 million previously uninsured Americans for health insurance -- many of those enrolling on the Obamacare exchanges already had private health insurance prior to the Affordable Care Act. Consider:

• In 2013, at least 4.7 million Americans had their insurance policies canceled because of Obamacare.
• A Kaiser Family Foundation survey concluded that 57 percent (3.8 million) of exchange enrollees in 2014 had been previously uninsured.
• Combining the Kaiser figure of 57 percent with the expectation that 84 percent of the 11.4 million sign-ups will not actually pay their premiums, Roy estimates that just 5.4 million previously uninsured individuals will be enrolled in Obamacare by the end of 2015.

Thus, says Roy, it's misleading to attribute the 11.4 million sign-ups to the Affordable Care Act, if just 5.4 million are actually individuals who previously lacked insurance.
 

Best States to Find A Job : North Dakota Is Best - Why?

I wonder which states that are at or near the bottom of the list are controlled by progressive democrats? I wonder as well why New York is near the bottom? 

The Best States to Find a Job
Source: Kate Scanlon, "The 10 Best (and Worst) States to Find a Job," Daily Signal, February 16, 2015.

February 17, 2015

Having trouble finding a job? Maybe you should move. Kate Scanlon of the Daily Signal reports on a new Gallup poll which reveals which states are most likely to be hiring. The poll asked employed workers whether their employers were hiring, firing, expanding or downsizing. The results?

• North Dakota sits in first place for the best hiring climate, where it has been for the last six years due to energy development. In North Dakota, almost half (48 percent) of workers reported that their employers were hiring, while 12 percent said their employers were letting employees go
• Behind North Dakota was Texas, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa and Utah.
• On the other hand, the worst hiring climate in the United States is Connecticut, where just 33 percent of employees reported that their employers were hiring and 17 percent reported that their employers were firing workers.
• Just behind Connecticut were Alaska, New Mexico, West Virginia, Maine, New Jersey and Mississippi.

Contrast North Dakota's experience with that of New York, which was twelfth from the bottom according to the poll. Scanlon interviewed Heritage policy analyst James Sherk who noted that New York has decided to ban hydraulic fracturing, a process which has sent North Dakota and Texas to the top of the job-creation charts.
 

Dodd/Frank Banking Bill : What's The Purpose AND Outcome?

Is the Dodd/Frank banking bill designed to assist the banking industry to ensure a secure system, or is it designed to eliminate the small banks and therefore, in conjunction with the federal government, concentrate the financial assets into the hands of just a few large institutions which in turn take control of all outcomes.

Why would anyone believe Chris Dodd or Barney Frank to do anything that  would even be close to actually trying to help the system given they were directly responsibility for the disaster that was the mortgage failures of the past decade?

Given how over the last several years, the federal government and the big banks having an inside track to cheap money and huge profits, it would appear the politics of a mutual agreement has occurred where the federal reserve keeps the interest rate low or at zero to facilitate growth in the larger economy, and then transferring funds to the big banks for distribution.

The regulations brought on by Dodd/Frank bill, as this article points out, will in the end will eliminate the small bank, leaving the power to dictate outcomes to everyone. It's a sweet deal for all concerned especially when the banks contribute large sums to the campaigns of those in power.

Will this be the end of local banks leaving just a few large institutions in control along with their friends in government?

Community Banks Struggle under Dodd-Frank Regulations
Source: Marshall Lux and Robert Greene, "The State and Fate of Community Banking," Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, February 13, 2015.

February 18, 2015

The harms caused by the Dodd-Frank Act keep adding up for American banks, especially smaller community banks which struggle to bear the costs of new regulations. A new report from Marshall Lux and Robert Greene, fellows at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Business School, details how the financial law is taking a toll on community banks.

While the federal entities which regulate banking each have a different definition of what constitutes a community bank, in general community banks are relatively small and have a regional focus, close ties to customers and lending policies that allow borrowers who may struggle to get loans from large banks to take out loans from community banks.

According to Lux and Greene, community banks' share of the bank lending market and banking assets has fallen by 50 percent over the last 20 years. However, they're still key players in certain sectors.

Unfortunately, these banks have struggled in recent years, losing asset share as the banking market has consolidated. While the financial crisis played a role in their market share losses (community banks' share of banking assets fell 6 percent from the second quarter of 2006 to 2010), the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act resulted in even larger losses, with community banks' asset shares falling more than 12 percent since the second quarter of 2010.

According to Lux and Greene, Dodd-Frank has led to banking consolidation and hurt community banks by imposing hefty regulations that impose large costs on smaller institutions:

• Large banks can better bear the regulations imposed by federal regulators due to economies of scale. For community banks, the average costs of regulations are higher.
• According to a 2014 Mercatus Center survey, more than 25 percent of community banks planned to hire compliance or legal personnel within the following year. The same survey found one-third of banks had already hired additional staff members in order to comply with new regulations from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
• According to a 2014 study from the Minneapolis Federal Reserve, regulatory-driven hiring at the smallest community banks has a real impact on profitability, causing one-third of such banks to become unprofitable.
• In 2012, William Grant, former chairman of the Community Bankers Council of the American Bankers Association, estimated that industry compliance costs after Dodd-Frank were $50 billion per year (12 percent of operating costs). Grant also said regulatory compliance as a share of operating expenses was 2.5 times greater for small banks than for large banks.

For small business owners and farmers, this is a troubling trend, because large banks have less knowledge of local conditions than do community banks.  Lux and Green write, "Community banks had little role in the financial crisis, yet play a major role in critical U.S. lending markets." Unfortunately, "[O]ne of the most significant problems community banks face is the sheer volume of banking regulations…The legal costs for community banks associated with more regulations are inherently a larger portion of overall revenue than for larger institutions, making any form of compliance more difficult."

The solution? Lux and Greene urge lawmakers to create a better, more reasonable regulatory system that imposes fewer burdens on community banks, suggesting that federal financial regulators be required to conduct cost-benefit analysis for significant rulemakings and submit their proposed regulations to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for review. Not only would such reforms result in higher-quality analysis, but Lux and Greene say the standards "would help ensure that regulations achieve their intended outcomes without resulting in unnecessary harm for community banks."
 

Progressive's Climate Change : More Dangerous Then Terrorism

More evidence that the environmentalists and the their cohorts in the progressive socialist liberal democrat party are lying. And perhaps the biggest liar of all is Mr Obama, our glorious leader of the free world.

When Mr Obama proclaimed climate change more important to national security then terrorism, one has to understand he doesn't have our best interests at heart. What is import to Mr Obama is his ideology of transformation of our way of life.

Debunking Global Warming Claims: National Security Concerns and Shrinking Glaciers
Source: James Taylor, "Top 10 Global Warming Lies That May Shock You," Forbes.com, February 9, 2015.

February 18, 2015

Many of the claims made by environmentalists about the catastrophic effects of global warming have failed to transpire.  James Taylor, senior fellow at the Heartland Institute, dispels some of the most outrageous in a recent Forbes article.  Two claims seem particularly egregious and worthy of refutation: first, that global warming threatens national security and second, that global warming is causing glaciers to shrink.

President Obama himself said climate change posed "immediate risks to our national security" in his January State of the Union speech, a claim echoed by many environmentalists who believe global warming will cause instability in already unstable regions by creating weather such as droughts and natural disasters that could endanger food supplies, ultimately leading to resource shortages, mass migrations and conflict.

Taylor says the claim is faulty:

• Is global warming really causing a reduction in food and water? No. In fact, warming has promoted rather than damaged crop production -- it has lengthened the growing season, and higher concentrations of carbon dioxide have increased crop yields. 
• Water, too, is safe: soil moisture has improved, and the earth has seen more precipitation due to warming temperatures.

As for concerns about shrinking glaciers, the claim is equally misleading. In fact, Taylor says the Antarctic Ice Sheet has grown steadily since the government first began measuring it in 1979, despite that icebergs have broken off of it. While environmentalists point to an iceberg ("larger than the city of Chicago") that broke away from the Pine Island Glacier (part of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet) in 2013, Taylor says the Antarctic Ice Sheet actually set a record that year for being more extensive than any time in recorded history, and it grew even larger in 2014.

Additionally, environmentalists will contend that Montana's Glacier National Park has seen a reduction in glaciers from 150 to 35 over the last 100 years. Again, Taylor says that's entirely misleading: those glaciers have been receding for over 300 years, well before the rise of SUVs or coal-fired power plants.

To read the rest of Taylor's debunking of global warming myths, see his article here.