Wisconsin: After the Collective Bargaining Law

Posted on July 19, 2011 | Leave a comment

On June 14th, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the Wisconsin legislature did not, in fact, break any laws when they passed the bill into law that removed a large portion of the collective bargaining rights from public sector unions.

From the Left, the words spewing from the bleachers were ones of destruction the end of education as we know it.

Teachers would have their power taken from them and, without said power, would be left–ahem, powerless in the streets.  Schools would crumble and a darkness would be upon the face of the deep.  But I wonder, is it possible that something might happen?  Is it possible that the passing of this law would allow districts the ability to save their schools?  Would communities be able to educate their children with teachers they loved and class sizes they want?

I think so.

Let’s check the tale of the tape:

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Posted in Education, Government, Politics: National

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Hot Off The Presses – This Just In

Posted on July 18, 2011 | Leave a comment

This just in from CBSNews:

Over to our correspondent’s desk in Raleigh for related news:

100% of Pino children polled Disapprove of the Parents handling of the “Veggies for Dinner Crisis”.

Back to you….

Hat Tip SkyDancingBlog

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Posted in Economy, Fun, Government, Politics: National

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Superior Court Judge: I’ll Write The State Budget

Posted on July 18, 2011 | 2 comments

The North Carolina legislature passed a budget.  This budget passed both house of  properly elected lawmakers.  Then, this budget was vetoed by the Good Govna’ of the Great State of North by God Carolina, herself properly elected.

Bev Purdue certainly can veto bills she doesn’t like.

After learning of said veto, the legislature convened and took up  vote to over-ride the veto.  And over-ride that veto the legislature did.  And so, the budget became law without the consent of the governor.

That, however, is not the end of the story.

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Posted in Education, Lobby/PAC, Politics: North Carolina

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Middle Class – Part III

Posted on July 18, 2011 | 2 comments

My last post in this space demonstrated that the Middle Class in America has gotten larger, not smaller, over time.

I made the point that more and more people are making more and more money even as we keep the dollar values locked into 2008 values:

In 1967 [earliest data available] 83.7% of the families in America made less than $75,000 in constant 2008 dollars.

That percentage in 2008? 59.7%.

In other words, 16.3% of Americans were making $75k or more in 1967. In 2008, better than 4 in 10, or 40% of Americans were making that same money.

And the mean income in 2008? $79,634.00 compared to $49.606.00 in 1967. Not only has the median income gone up, but the % of people making it has gone up as well.

But how does it FEEL today vs. yesterday? Are we able to enjoy a standard of living that is significantly better now than it was then?

Well, I think so:

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Posted in Economy, Liberty, Middle Class

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Economics: Supply and Deman – Twins Style

Posted on July 17, 2011 | Leave a comment

So, yeah, the Twins have been horrible since the start of the season.  Some of that has to do with some guys getting hurt, to be sure, but I think most of it has to do with not having very many good players.

However, as fate would have it, the Twins play in a  horrible division of baseball and are only 6 games out of 1st.

The Twins think they’re “in it”.

And so too, it seems, do the fans:

The defending American League Central champs struggled out of the gate with a mixture of poor play and injuries. Throw in some inclement weather and it was the “perfect storm” according to Michael Nowakowski, one of the owners of Ticket King, an online ticket broker. A representative from StubHub agreed, saying brokers were “giving away 400 to 500 tickets a game.”

…

As he negotiated a deal Thursday, one scalper said he was selling $60 tickets for $5 early in the season. “There was an abundance of tickets on the street. It was bad,” he said. But scalpers were getting as much as $35 more than face value per ticket for the first game following the All-Star break.

In a market that’s widely seen as free, the street, literally, is determining the value of a Twins game.

Fascinating.

An interesting side note:  Notice that in each case, the two parties that exchanged goods–one money for tickets, the other tickets for money–walked away feeling “richer” than they did when they met.  One party was able to ttrade some amount of cash for something that meant more to them; a baseball game.  The other party was able to trade a baseball game for something that meant more to them; cash.

This is the text book example of how trade creates wealth.

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Marginal Value: The Poor

Posted on July 15, 2011 | 12 comments

So, I was going through some old blogs and looking for some quick insightful nuggets and came across this little gem from TJIC:

http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2011/0…

Krugman gets to his main point: that in the national debate, his side is that of morality, justice, and reason â?? while his opponents on the conservative side are immoral, uncaring, and actually want the poor to die or disappear.

Speaking for myself, I don’t want the poor to die.

I want them to work harder, to bring themselves up into the middle class (recall: the main thing that seperates the poor from everyone else is that poor people work about 15-20 hours per week, middle class people work 40-45 hours, and upper class people work 60+ hours), or – if they prefer – I want them to keep working very little, and enjoying the trade off of potential cash for increased free time – as long as they do it with out dollars stolen from others.

So I did a little looking.  By God he’s right:

Hours Worked Number of Workers Median Weekly Earnings
1 – 34 21802 233
1 – 4 548 62
5 – 9 1203 69
10 – 14 1865 112
15 – 19 2729 156
20 – 24 6425 212
25 – 29 2953 262
30 – 34 6079 337
35 or more hours 94452 750
35 – 39 8200 485
40 67195 700
41 or more hours 19056 1153
41 – 44 1084 867
45 – 48 5294 994
49 – 59 8450 1246
60 or more hours 4228 1338

Amazingly, the more you work, the more you make.  However, there is a flip side; the more you work, the more you work.

However, as I considered the numbers, it occurred to me, “Of COURSE you earn more when you work more–you’re working more hours!  Duh!”

But check this out:

Hours Worked Rough Dollar per Hour
1 – 34
1 – 4 24.8
5 – 9 9.86
10 – 14 9.33
15 – 19 9.18
20 – 24 9.64
25 – 29 9.7
30 – 34 10.53
35 or more hours
35 – 39 13.11
40 17.5
41 or more hours
41 – 44 20.4
45 – 48 21.38
49 – 59 25.43
60 or more hours

It turns out that the more you work, the higher your hourly wage.  [Though I do admit that the two low values look abnormal.]

 

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Posted in Economics, Economy, Politics: National

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You Need A License To Fish

Posted on July 15, 2011 | 8 comments

You know, when I read about the story that suggested parents have their children taken from them if those children are morbidly obese, I recoiled a little bit.  I mean, sheesh, have we really come to that?  Are we really at the point where the state can take our kids if we aren’t feeding ’em like they think we should?

According to Dr. Ludwig, state intervention would involve placing a child in temporary foster care while his parents were taught about better parenting and weight loss. Removing a child from home would be used as a last resort, reserved for cases where the child has severe obesity-related conditions such Type 2 diabetes, breathing difficulties and liver problems, the Associated Press reports. Rather than place the blame on parents, the goal of state intervention is to act in children’s best interests, and in some cases, it is “the only realistic way to control harmful behaviors,” Ludwig wrote.

Shouldn’t a parent be able to decide what’s best for their children and government be damned?

Then I saw this story:

Raleigh, N.C. — Raleigh police charged a father with misdemeanor child abuse Wednesday after his 3-year-old daughter left home and walked across four lanes of traffic on Lynn Road.

The girl was not injured.

Aaron Harris Rush, 27, of 920 Hearthridge Court, told police that he was home asleep because he “stayed up until 6 a.m. for no reason,” according to court documents. His bond was set at $1,000.

Police said the little girl, Katelynn, crossed Lynn Road and then walked several blocks down North Hills Drive before someone noticed her and called police.

It turns out that parents often times don’t have their kids best interests at heart.  For example, thousands of children are born to Democrats everyday!

I kid.

But back to the point.  If I wanna catch a fish here in North Carolina, I have to have a license.  To catch a fish.  Because if I don’t have a license  I might…um, well, I might endanger the population of fishes.

If we can arrest parents for endangering their kids, and we rightly should, is it THAT far of a stretch to think that maybe we should require parents to obtain a license to have a child?

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Posted in Liberty, Politics: National

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Minnesota: Mark Dayton Blinks – What This Means For America

Posted on July 15, 2011 | Leave a comment

The Democratic governor of Minnesota backed down yesterday.  Said governor, who claimed to be elected into office with a mandate, has realized that he’s damaging the state of Minnesota.  Unlike his election, the election of a republican congress DOES carry a mandate.  And that mandate is “no new taxes”.  So, after allowing the state to experience a government shutdown for nearly two weeks, the governor accepted a deal that the republicans had offered as far back as June 30.

Despite my serious reservations about your plan, I have concluded that continuing the state government shutdown would be even more destructive for too many Minnesotans,” Dayton wrote to legislative leaders. “Therefore I am willing to agree to something I do not agree with — your proposal — in order to spare our citizens and our state from further damage.

Dayton walked away from the edge.  I suspect that he realized his partisan agenda didn’t mesh with the responsibilities of governing a state.  And he relented.

This should serve as a guide to national republicans.  This is how the debate is to be won.

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Recession: Obama, Bush, Clinton and Reagan

Posted on July 15, 2011 | 1 comment

We are now 7 quarters into our recovery from the previous recession.  I have long thought it time to conduct a review of this current recovery as compared to previous recoveries.

I have gone back to the previous 4 recessions and their recoveries.  Above is a graph showing the growth of GDP for each recovery starting with the date in which the NBER calls each recession cycle.

The numbers above reflect the GDP growth in current dollars. Further, I have only gone out 12 quarters, or 3 years.  Anything past this and I think we have normal economic cycles taking place that have little to do with the recovery efforts put in place during the recessions described.

There has been little secret that the current administration holds the previous administration responsible for the recession.  However, if that is true, the current administration is responsible for the recovery.  So, how has it done?

At this point, the Obama’s recovery is only slightly ahead of any of the other 3.  The current quarter represented a 4.0% increase in GDP over the previous quarter.  The only other recovery that had a worse showing was the Reagan recovery of 1982; it had a 3.9% increase.  However, unlike the Obama recovery, the Reagan recovery had significant growth for the first 6 quarters.  Obama’s recovery has not shown that degree of success.

Reagan vs Obama

Here is the direct comparison:

The visual is clear, the Reagan recovery was much more vibrant than the current Obama recovery.  While Obama did better this quarter, the lack of growth in the preceding quarters is disappointing.

Obama vs Bush

Perhaps a more damning comparison, at least for this specific political cycle, is the comparison of Obama vs Bush:

Here the Obama recovery is very similar to the previous Bush recovery.  However, the pressure is on.  Beginning in the 8th quarter on, Bush had a very impressive record of strong GDP growth.

We’ll see if Obama is able to match that record.

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Posted in Economy, Politics: National

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Dear Minnesota Republicans

Posted on July 14, 2011 | 6 comments

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Republican Congress,

Congratulations on your efforts to force the liberal leftist Governor into agreeing to your deal.

Now, don’t be asses and insist on your social agenda policies. This is about the budget. Let it BE about the budget.

Love,
Pino

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Posted in Government, Liberty, Politics: National

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