Monthly Archives: August 2013

Scientists Turn To Gamers

Posted on August 25, 2013 | Leave a comment

While I have long ago given up my gaming habits, I like to see geeks ruling the world:

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Posted in Health Care, Technology

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Solilquy On Treyvon

Posted on August 25, 2013 | 3 comments

"Think Like a Man" Los Angeles Premiere - Arrivals

From the stack.

The societal impact of the Martin-Zimmerman trial:

 People are using Trayvon Martin’s death as an excuse to project their own deep-seated issues with racism and will not be capable of intelligent, empathetic debate until they’ve cooled down and afforded themselves an education.

Addressing Trayvon without first addressing the absence of critical thinking in our schools, the lack of introspection, the reasons for our low tolerance and our country’s skewed value system does nothing more than create a sounding board for the ignorant. So rather than facilitate more racism outcry, I’d like to address young black people specifically.

I believe we lost that trial for Trayvon long before he was killed. Trayvon was doomed the moment ignorance became synonymous with young black America . We lost that case by using media outlets (music, movies, social media, etc.) as vehicles to perpetuate the same negative images and social issues that destroyed the black community in the first place. When we went on record glorifying violent crime and when we voted for a president we never thought to hold accountable. When we signed on to do reality shows that fed into the media’s stereotypes of black men, we ingrained an image of Trayvon Martin so overwhelming that who he actually may have been didn’t matter anymore.

Don’t you find it peculiar that the same media outlets who have worked so diligently to galvanize the negative stigmas of black men in America are now airing open debates on improving the image of black males in American media? Do you honestly think CNN is using their competitive time slots for philanthropy?

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” – Rahm Emanuel

People respond to perceptions.  And when perceptions are put out there in a specific manner, it should surprise no one that people will react predictably.

Romany’s prescription?

If we really wanted to ensure Trayvon Martin’s killing was not in vain, we’d stop perpetuating negative images that are now synonymous with black men in America. We’d stop rapping about selling drugs and killing niggas. The next time we saw a man beating a woman, we’d call for help or break it up, but one thing we would not do is stand by with our cellphones out — yelling WORLDSTAR! Instead of rewarding kids for memorization, we’d reward them for independent and critical thinking.

We’d spend less time subconsciously repeating lyrics about death and murder and more time understanding why we are so willing to twerk to songs that bemean women and boast of having things we cannot afford. We’d set examples of self-love for our youth by honoring our own hair, skin and eye color. We’d stop spending money on designer gear that we should be spending on our physical and psychological health. We’d seek information outside the corporate owned-media that manipulates us. We’d stop letting television babysit our kids and we’d quit regurgitating pundits we haven’t come up with on our own.

Education, introspection, self-love and excellence are the only ways to overcome the wrath of ignorance. So before going back to popping molly and getting Turnt Up, I urge you to consider the implications of your actions. Your child’s life may depend on it.

Indeed.

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Barack Knows Best

Posted on August 25, 2013 | 10 comments

Barack Obama

I was playing around this weekend reading up on retirement accounts and options available to me when I came across this gem:

How many times have you read financial-advice stories lecturing you to max-out on your IRA, save as much as you can in your 401(k), and even pay taxes now to change your regular IRA into a Roth IRA that will be tax-free until you die?

Well, be careful how much you save.

That’s the message in President Obama’s budget for fiscal 2014, which for the first time proposes to cap the amount Americans can save in these tax-sheltered investment vehicles. The White House explanation is that some people have accumulated “substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving.” So Mr. Obama proposes to “limit an individual’s total balance across tax-preferred accounts to an amount sufficient to finance an annuity of not more than $205,000 per year in retirement, or about $3 million for someone retiring in 2013.”

That’s the annoying thing about the Left; they just feel they know all about “fairness”.  See, it’s not fair that someone retire with more than a certain amount.

And why?

Because, the Barackness Monster knows best.

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Posted in Politics: National

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Teacher Salary: North Carolina

Posted on August 24, 2013 | 3 comments

Teacher

North Carolina now ranks # 46 nationally in the amount of money we pay our teachers:

RALEIGH — North Carolina public school teachers saw their pay drop to among the lowest in the country as state budget-balancing during the Great Recession included a multiyear pay freeze, according to a report Wednesday to the State Board of Education.

Pay for the teachers who educate the state’s roughly 1.5 million public school students ranks 46th in the country, above only Mississippi and West Virginia among 12 Southeastern states, the report said. Five years ago, North Carolina teachers’ salaries were in the middle of the state rankings.

That’s pretty bad.  I guess.  At first blush anyway.  I’m not sure that ranking 4th from the top would be any better than 4th from the bottom.  After all, I don’t wanna be in the position of overpaying teachers to perform at a level more consistent with the median salary range.

For example, the highest paying state is New York at $72,708 a year.  However, New York SAT test scores are 43rd in the nation.  North Carolina ranks 40th, a full 3 spots higher than New York.

The second highest spender on teachers?  Massachusetts.  At a spending rank of #2 they purchase the #27 spot in SAT scores.  How about the worst SAT scoring state in the nation – Delaware.  How much do THEY spend?  They come in #13.  So, for all that money Delaware spends, they come in dead last in SAT scores.  But, you can argue that at a 100% test taking clip, they are at a disadvantage.  So let’s go to the 2nd worst performing state – Washington DC.  Their spend?  #6 on the list.

Truly pathetic.

Anyway, it got me to thinking.  Who controls the spending in these various states?  In Minnesota, for example, teacher salaries are negotiated and funded at the local district level.  But here in North Carolina, a vast amount of the spending falls on the state.  Perhaps if local citizens felt that their teachers needed to be better compensated, they could organize at the local level and pay the teachers as much as they like.

Just a thought.

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Posted in Education, Politics: North Carolina

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From Poverty To Middle Class

Posted on August 23, 2013 | 10 comments

Middle Class

A conversation on my Facebook feed brought me here today:

In addition to the thousands of local and national programs that aim to help young people avoid these life-altering problems, we should figure out more ways to convince young people that their decisions will greatly influence whether they avoid poverty and enter the middle class. Let politicians, schoolteachers and administrators, community leaders, ministers and parents drill into children the message that in a free society, they enter adulthood with three major responsibilities: at least finish high school, get a full-time job and wait until age 21 to get married and have children.

Our research shows that of American adults who followed these three simple rules, only about 2 percent are in poverty and nearly 75 percent have joined the middle class (defined as earning around $55,000 or more per year).

Three things.  Simple things.  Not hard to do things.

Go to school and finish it.

Get a job.  Any job.

Wait to have children.

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Posted in Economics, Education, Life, Middle Class, Politics: National

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This Is Obama’s Economy

Posted on August 23, 2013 | 18 comments

Barack Obama

The United States is experiencing job growth, to be sure.  But look at the kinds of jobs being created:

(Reuters) – U.S. businesses are hiring at a robust rate. The only problem is that three out of four of the nearly 1 million hires this year are part-time and many of the jobs are low-paid.

…

Executives at several staffing firms told Reuters that the law, which requires employers with 50 or more full-time workers to provide healthcare coverage or incur penalties, was a frequently cited factor in requests for part-time workers. A decision to delay the mandate until 2015 has not made much of a difference in hiring decisions, they added.

“Us and other people are hiring part-time because we don’t know what the costs are going to be to hire full-time,” said Steven Raz, founder of Cornerstone Search Group, a staffing firm in Parsippany, New Jersey. “We are being cautious.”

Raz said his company started seeing a rise in part-time positions in late 2012 and the trend gathered steam early this year. He estimates his firm has seen an increase of between 10 percent and 15 percent compared with last year.

Other staffing firms have also noted a shift.

“They have put some of the full-time positions on hold and are hiring part-time employees so they won’t have to pay out the benefits,” said Client Staffing Solutions’ Darin Hovendick. “There is so much uncertainty. It’s really tough to design a budget when you don’t know the final cost involved.”

Watch the word from the Left as they mention “anecdotal”

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Posted in Economics, Economy, Health Care, Politics: National

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Racism – What Is It

Posted on August 22, 2013 | 5 comments

Race Relations

I firmly believe that the term “racism” has reached the point where it is essentially meaningless, at least in a formal “words have meaning” sense.

In essence, people know that being racist is bad and that it involves something between one race and another.  In attempt to establish the high road, they label their opponents as that bad thing, never understanding what the term means.

The most recent example is North Carolina’s voter ID laws.  These laws, so say the opponents, are examples of racism.  The data shows that minorities and the poor are most likely to be burdened by voter ID requirements.  And therefore, laws demanding ID are “racist”.

Hardly.

I suggest something different.  I suggest that the very thing that leads to poverty is the thing that leads to an individual not having an ID.

When  turned 16, the VERY day I turned 16, I took my driver’s test and passed.  I obtained a license.  When the plastic came in the mail, my father sat me down and explained what a driver’s license meant.  He taught me that I needed to never leave home without it, ever.  That it needed to be correct and up to date.  When I moved, it needed to reflect that move.

Further, when I turned 18, he did the same thing with my social security card and birth certificate.  He taught me where they were kept, where I should jeep them and how I could obtain replacements in the event they were lost.

In short, a picture ID, a social security card and a birth certificate are  mandatory elements to a fully functioning citizen in the United States.  To not have one of these things was seen as unacceptable and delinquent.

So I ask you, what is more racist?

  1. Expecting that a fellow man be responsible enough to live in modern society in the EXACT way and manner that my father taught me and I my son?Or
  2. That we diminish expectations of modern life based on race?

Given that minorities and the poor suffer more from lack of ID, is the ideal solution to:

  1. Pass laws that make such reasonable and responsible behavior meaningless
  2. Admit that we don’t have dads teaching sons that keeping ID, birth certificates and SS cards is a reasonable requirement of all responsible people.

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Posted in Politics: National, Race

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A Mile Away

Posted on August 22, 2013 | Leave a comment

Obvious

Truly shocking news, but at least it’s being reported:

(Reuters) – U.S. businesses are hiring at a robust rate. The only problem is that three out of four of the nearly 1 million hires this year are part-time and many of the jobs are low-paid.

…

Employers say part-timers offer them flexibility. If the economy picks up, they can quickly offer full-time work. If orders dry up, they know costs are under control. It also helps them to curb costs they might face under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

People are responding to incentives.

Executives at several staffing firms told Reuters that the law, which requires employers with 50 or more full-time workers to provide healthcare coverage or incur penalties, was a frequently cited factor in requests for part-time workers. A decision to delay the mandate until 2015 has not made much of a difference in hiring decisions, they added.

“Us and other people are hiring part-time because we don’t know what the costs are going to be to hire full-time,” said Steven Raz, founder of Cornerstone Search Group, a staffing firm in Parsippany, New Jersey. “We are being cautious.”

Raz said his company started seeing a rise in part-time positions in late 2012 and the trend gathered steam early this year. He estimates his firm has seen an increase of between 10 percent and 15 percent compared with last year.

Other staffing firms have also noted a shift.

“They have put some of the full-time positions on hold and are hiring part-time employees so they won’t have to pay out the benefits,” said Client Staffing Solutions’ Darin Hovendick. “There is so much uncertainty. It’s really tough to design a budget when you don’t know the final cost involved.”

One hundred percent the result of an administration that has never had to “do” anything but win votes.

Obama will point to the fact that he’s delayed the mandate:

The delay in the Obamacare employer mandate “confused people even further,” said Bill Peppler, managing partner at Kavaliro, a technology staffing firm in Orlando, Florida. “When we talk to customers, I still don’t think anyone has a handle on this.”

But this will HELP employees:

Some businesses are holding their headcount below 50 and others are cutting back the work week to under 30 hours to avoid providing health insurance for employees, according to the staffing and payroll executives.

Under Obamacare, any employee working 30 hours or more is considered full-time. An effort to trim hours might have helped push the average work week down to a six-month low in July.

“As organizations and companies reduce the hours of part-time workers, they still have to replace the capacity, so they go out and hire additional part-time workers,” said Philip Noftsinger, president of CBIZ Payroll in Roanoke, Virginia, which manages payroll for more than 5,000 small businesses.

This is a train wreck.  And we’re all in for the ride.

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Posted in Health Care, Politics: North Carolina

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North Carolina Education – This Isn’t What We Want Either

Posted on August 21, 2013 | 4 comments

Teacher

North Carolina is making national headlines with voter ID, with capital punishment, with tax reform and even educational priorities

Much of that change is being portrayed negatively in the press, though I do believe that much of that reporting is the result of a definite left leaning bias.

One of the priorities of the republicans has been to reform our educational system here in the state.  And part of that strategy has been to limit spending:

The Senate’s budget, which passed last week, would freeze public teacher salaries for the fourth time in five years and spend $50 million less on K-12 education in 2013-14 than Gov. Pat McCrory’s proposal.

Funding for teaching assistants and professional development for teachers would also be slashed under the Senate plan, as would the 10- to 15-percent pay bonus for incoming teachers with master’s degrees.

Not that educational spending  has been a target simply because legislatures feel that education should be cut, but rather because the budget doesn’t allow that spending to take place.

For example:

“The idea that we can simply increase teacher pay with the money we have … reveals ignorance about the different things the state government does and is obligated to fund,” he said.

He added that North Carolina’s high school graduation rate — which hit 80.2 percent in 2012 — is the highest it has ever been.

“We haven’t seen any evidence that freezing teacher pay has had any negative consequences on student performance.”

And there are other changes to the system that are taking place that should award more money to the right educators:

The Senate budget also includes a provision that would begin to eliminate teacher tenure at the K-12 level and shift to a pay-for-performance model — which rewards teachers based on classroom evaluations and students’ standardized test scores, not years of experience.

A full merit pay system would not be funded next year, but the budget allocates $10.2 million in 2014-15 to start implementing pilot programs for merit pay, which McCrory has said he supports.

Starting in fall 2014, tenured teachers could opt out of their tenure status in exchange for a four-year contract and a $500 bonus.

All of which is a long version of me saying that I support fiscal responsibility and value based increases in pay.

However, that being said, this is unacceptable:

“I do the babysitting to help get money to buy toys and books,” said the North Carolina native. “I even had to buy shelves and a stool for the kids to stand on to wash their hands at the sink. I spent about $500 on supplies last year, and It definitely hurts my own pocketbook.”

With school budgets across the country slashed, Martin is part of a growing number of teachers spending more of their own money for school supplies, according to a recent survey from insurance firm Horace Mann, which focuses on products for educators.

The problem has reached near-crisis levels, especially in states like North Carolina.

There’s a not so fine line in the expectation that a professional purchase reasonable equipment for their jobs.  For example, at my office I buy my own notebooks, pens and pencils.  I buy my own clocks and calculators.  When I need to study for a specific technology, I buy the books and or course.  But I do NOT buy paper towels, or desk cleaner.  I don’t buy carpet scrubber or PCs for which I work company business.

I don’t buy my own desk phone or desk for that matter and I don’t contribute to the electric or water bills.

If these teachers are providing supplies out of their own pockets, the system is abusing them and we have to address that.  One way or another, these teachers can not be expected to:

The survey said that 26% of the 814 teachers participating spent $400 of their own money on supplies last year—that’s a 3 percentage point increase from 2011 in the number of teachers spending that much.

The teachers need to send notes home with their kids and explain that parents have to pick up the slack – items like books and tissues, wipes and books and pencils, they need to come to school with the kids.  I’ll tell you what, I get a note like that from my kid’s teacher and I’m going to talk to the principal and then the board.

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Posted in Education, Politics: North Carolina

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Why The Liberal Is Liberal

Posted on August 19, 2013 | 10 comments

Without Comment:

Which is why successful people should be a lot more humble and willing to redistribute income to those who have not achieved the same in our meritocracy.  It’s totally not fair that I’ve succeeded, in very large part, due to having two great upper-middle class parents, who raised in me in a great community with great schools, and provided the DNA for high cognitive skills and impulse control.   I didn’t deserve that any more than somebody deserves to have been born to a 15-year old crack addict.  That’s why I’m liberal.

To which I added in the comments:

However, you aren’t interested in the “willingly” part of it – you want to mandate it by government fiat and force me to distribute my income. And not even in ways I see fit, but in ways YOU see fit.

You want me to spend my money on your programs while you keep your money to spend on your choices.

Indeed.

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Posted in Liberty, Politics: National

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