U.S. students trail global leaders

Just what business wants – Cheap Low Paid Labor

In response to concerns raised by federal regulators, Los Angeles Unified School District and eight other school districts have filed an amended application for a waiver from a federal law requiring that all students be proficient in English and math by 2014. This was reported on May 29, 2013 in the Los Angeles Daily News. The article went on to say that Rather than using No Child criteria to gauge a school’s achievement, CORE has proposed its own accountability system, called the School Quality Improvement Index. Sixty percent of a school’s score would be based on standardized tests and graduation rates, 20 percent on absenteeism and suspension rates, and another 20 percent on campus “culture and climate.”

Yes, “culture and climate” has a 20% value, what ever that means, should be considered rather than the ability to communicate in English.

Meanwhile Scores from the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), 15-year-old students in the U.S. performing about average in reading and science, and below average in math. Out of 34 countries, the U.S. ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math.

Between 1995 and 2008, for example, the United States slipped from ranking second in college graduation rates to 13^th, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Paris based organization that develops and administers the PISA exam. Of 34 OECD countries, only eight have a lower graduation rate than the United States.

Our next door neighbor, Canada, ranked 4^th in Math and 6^th in Science.

Meanwhile the LAUSD and other school districts representing over 1 million students want a waiver on proficiency in English and math. If granted, the United States is on its way to a two class society. Those with English and math skills and everyone else. Everyone else will be working at McDonald’s, Target, making beds in hotels, or other low paid blue collar jobs.

You Would Be Smiling Too!

Lloyd Blankfein is the CEO of Goldman Sachs. The company cut 900 jobs last year. He earned $26 million in 2012. Wouldn’t you be smiling? But he is not alone!

John Stumpf, the head of Wells Fargo Bank was awarded $19.3 million in 2012.

The Capital One chief, Richard Fairbank, was the third highest-paid bank CEO in North America even after taking a 8.9 percent pay cut, dropping his compensation to a mere $17.5 million for 2012.

Poor Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, saw his 2012 compensation cut in half to $11.5 million after a loss of more than $6.2 billion on a failed bet on derivatives.

The pay of the top 20 bank CEOs increased an average of 7.7 percent for 2012 compared with a year earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The tally is based on salaries, stock, bonuses and long-term incentive pay awarded to the CEOs for 2012.

The annual earnings of the heads of America’s largest corporations average is over $28 million.

Meanwhile the United States BLS reported last September that Median family household income declined by 1.7 percent in real terms between 2010 and 2011 to $62,273.

In other words the leaders of our largest companies earn more than 456 times the average family household earnings.

Isn’t free enterprise a wonderful thing?

Sheriff Joe Arpaio is at it Again!

You all remember Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona , who painted the jail

cells pink and made the inmates wear pink prison garb. Well……….

SHERIFF JOE IS AT IT AGAIN!

Oh, there’s MUCH more to know about Sheriff Joe!

Maricopa County was spending approx. $18 million dollars a year on stray animals, like cats and dogs. Sheriff Joe offered to take the department over, and the County Supervisors said okay.

The animal shelters are now all staffed and operated by prisoners. They feed and care for the strays. Every animal in his care is taken out and walked twice daily. He now has prisoners who are experts in animal nutrition and behavior. They give great classes for anyone who’d like to adopt an animal. He has literally taken stray dogs off the street, given them to the care of prisoners, and had them place in dog shows.

The best part? His budget for the entire department is now under $3 million. Teresa and I adopted a Weimaraner from a Maricopa County shelter two years ago. He was neutered, and current on all shots, in great health, and even had a microchip inserted the day we got him. Cost us $78.

The prisoners get the benefit of about $0.28 an hour for working, but most would work for free, just to be out of their cells for the day. Most of his budget is for utilities, building maintenance, etc. He pays the prisoners out of the fees collected for adopted animals.

I have long wondered when the rest of the country would take a look at the way he runs the jail system, and copy some of his ideas. He has a huge farm, donated to the county years ago, where inmates can work, and they grow most of their own fresh vegetables and food, doing all the work and harvesting by hand.

He has a pretty good sized hog farm, which provides meat, and fertilizer. It fertilizes the Christmas tree nursery, where prisoners work, and you can buy a living Christmas tree for $6 – $8 for the Holidays, and plant it later. We have six trees in our yard from the Prison.

Yup, he was reelected last year with 83% of the vote.

Now he’s in trouble with the ACLU again. He painted all his buses and vehicles with a mural, that has a special hotline phone number painted on it, where you can call and report suspected illegal aliens. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement wasn’t doing enough in his eyes, so he had 40 deputies trained specifically for enforcing immigration laws, started up his hotline, and bought 4 new buses just for hauling folks back to the border.. He’s kind of a ‘Git-R Dun’ kind of Sheriff.

TO THOSE OF YOU NOT FAMILIAR WITH JOE ARPAIO

HE IS THE MARICOPA ARIZONA COUNTY SHERIFF

AND HE KEEPS GETTING ELECTED OVER AND OVER

THIS IS ONE OF THE REASONS WHY:

Sheriff Joe Arpaio (In Arizona ) who created the ‘ Tent City Jail’:

He has jail meals down to 40 cents a serving and charges the inmates for them.

He stopped smoking and porno magazines in the jails… Took away their weights Cut off all but ‘G’ movies.

He started chain gangs so the inmates could do free work on county and city projects.

He Wouldn’t Get

Then He Started Chain Gangs For Women So

Sued For Discrimination.

He took away cable TV Until he found out there was A Federal Court Order that Required Cable TV For Jails So He Hooked Up The Cable TV Again Only Let In The Disney Channel And The Weather Channel.

When asked why the weather channel He Replied, So They Will Know How Hot It’s Gonna Be While They Are Working

ON My Chain Gangs..

He Cut Off Coffee Since It Has Zero Nutritional Value.

When the inmates complained, he told them, ‘This Isn’t The Ritz/Carlton……If You Don’t Like It, Don’t Come Back.’

Security vs. Liberty

IN TIMES OF WAR, WASHINGTON HAS OFTEN RESTRICTED PERSONAL FREEDOMS IN THE NAME OF NATIONAL SECURITY

You probably thought that the U.S. government always honors and defends the constitution.

1798

The Alien and Sedition Acts are passed by Congress as war with France appears imminent. The acts allow deportation and detention of aliens and prohibit malicious writings against the government. The act was signed into law by President John Adams. No one was prosecuted under the law.

1861

After a series of riots in Maryland, President Lincoln suspends habeas corpus and arrests dissidents. This suspension is also used to detain influential citizens and lawmakers sympathetic to the South to prevent the state from seceding.

1863

The Habeas Corpus Act permits suspension of habeas corpus by order of the President for the duration of the Civil War, allowing Lincoln to free or detain prisoners without trial and with impunity.

1917-18

The Espionage and Sedition Acts impose severe penalties for any speech, statement or article written against or interfering with the government in wartime. As a result, union leader Eugene V. Debs is sentenced to 10 years in prison for giving an antiwar speech.

1942

In the wake of Pearl Harbor and amid growing anti-Japanese sentiment, FDR authorizes the relocation and internment of more than 120,000 people of Japanese descent.

1947

Unnerved by the possibility of Soviet infiltration, President Truman establishes the Federal Employee Loyalty Program, requiring all government employees to sign loyalty oaths and submit to loyalty investigations.

2001

Congress passes the USA Patriot Act by a near unanimous vote in response to 9/11. Law enforcement officials gain sweeping powers to search without warrants, eavesdrop, and detain and deport terrorism suspects.

2011

President Obama gives federal agents new powers to data-mine terrorism suspect’s devices and communications and delay reading of Miranda rights to suspects under arrest as well as new surveillance powers and the right to interview witnesses without identifying themselves as FBI agents. But Obama also backs off closer surveillance of mosques in the U.S.

A Growing Welfare Class in the United States

I hear the constant drum beat that 47 million Americans pay no taxes. That those people are on the dole. All those people don’t really want to work. The argument goes they are happy sitting in their homes doing nothing.

Is this all really true? If so, how did this happen?

A Google search [percentage of Americans paying income taxes] confirms that about one half of all Americans do not pay income taxes. The sites How Stuff Works, Fox News, The Washington Post, Reuters, and others all offer their take on why this is fact and some offer arguments about changing the taxing system. All the postings do affirm that everyone pays Social Security and Medicare taxes.

From How Stuff Works: So who are the 49 percent of Americans who don’t pay income taxes? The vast majority are the lowest income households, the elderly and young working families with children.

The reason this situation exists and is becoming worse was clearly defined in a Market Watch article posted on April 24, 2012.

Manufacturing employment as a fraction of total employment has been declining for the past half century in the United States and the great majority of other developed countries. A 1968 book about developments in the American economy by Victor Fuchs was already entitled “The Service Economy.”

Although the absolute number of jobs in American manufacturing was rather constant at about 17 million from 1969 to 2002, manufacturing’s share of jobs continued to decline from about 28% in 1962 to only 9% in 2011.

From CNN: A very large portion of U.S. apparel imports comes from Bangladesh. Many companies have been shifting orders there, because labor costs in the country are so low. Bangladesh is on track to surpass China within the next seven years as the largest apparel manufacturer in the world.

It is already the third biggest exporter of apparel to the U.S., behind China and Vietnam. The value of clothing imported from Bangladesh into the U.S. has quadrupled over the last decade to $4.5 billion annually, according to the apparel group.

Go into any store in the United States and you will find most products have been made in another country. Talking to a lady at Trader Joe’s just yesterday and she complained that the fresh produce is primarily from Mexico.

Back in 2007 the total unemployed that included part time workers and those who have given up searching for a job was below 8.5% of the likely working population. Today that number is 13.9%. That is the BLS number referred to as U6 on the monthly reports. It’s an improvement from the maximum number of 17.1% reached in October 2009.

I can’t prove it but I believe no one wants to live poorly when they see the things they can have with an income. Unfortunately the poor are also the least educated. That condition of poor education is partially lack of opportunity and partially lack of capability. Not all of us are capable of working in Silicon Valley or performing surgery at the Mayo Clinic. Those less technical jobs have been sent to the places where labor costs less. Every company has the right to lower their costs. Middle class and blue collar America has paid the price for those off shored jobs.

So the wealthy of America (they pay most of the taxes) have concluded that welfare is a cheap price to pay to keep peace in the United States. It’s the thing the royalty of France and Russia did not understand. We all know how that worked out. There is no royalty in the United States but there is a wealthy class that is the equivalent of royalty. Once again the U.S. leads the list with 442 billionaires the most of any nation in the world says Forbes magazine. The New York Daily News reports that there are 9 million members of the millionaires club in the U.S.

My prediction is that the welfare class will continue to exist in the United States and is likely to grow throughout the 21st century. This is not negative. It is reality.

Los Angeles on the Verge of Collapse

I grew up in this city. Nothing speaks more to Los Angeles than the beautiful architecture of many of our buildings. Above is a photo of the Bonaventure Hotel in the downtown area. I have lived in many communities from Westchester to Canoga Park. Los Angeles has been decimated by poor governance.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Average (DWP) employee pay rose 15% over the last five years to $101,237 in 2012, according to records obtained by The Times.

The median household income for Los Angeles residents – the public utility’s customers – fell over roughly the same period, from $48,882 in 2008 to $46,148 in 2011, the latest year for which U.S. Census numbers are available.

The conundrum in voting for the next city mayor is that both candidates, Wendy Gruel and Eric Garcetti, are liberal Democrats that have voted for every DWP labor union contract and every city employee union contract.

Worse is that in their TV debates neither has addressed the question of labor contracts, high pension costs, high medical insurance costs, or the gross revenue tax that is imposed on every business in the city.

In my view the gross revenue tax is the most harmful of these issues to the city. After all adjoining cities do not have that kind of tax. So Pasadena, Glendale, and Burbank are all in the central part of the metropolitan area but provide far lower costs of doing business.

Garcetti and Gruel’s unwillingness to address those big issues sends me one message. They are not prepared to confront the city’s major problems. Instead they talk about improving the schools (they do not have any direct authority over the schools), transportation (limited authority), and street paving (they have authority but there is no money available). Are we heading down the Detroit path to bankruptcy and desolation? We may not be near there now but the road signs are obvious.

Links

http://www.dailynews.com/ci_21366902/editorial-easing-gross-receipts-tax-will-improve-business

http://www.scpr.org/blogs/politics/2012/09/18/10032/las-business-tax-holiday-extended-2015/

photo taken from 5th Street and Figueroa Street using a Panasonic DMC-FZ150

Investing in Gold

A year or two ago there were non stop ads on radio and television promoting the purchase of gold. The primary thrust of the messages was that the United States and perhaps the rest of the world was on the verge of massive inflation. The only protection of your wealth is gold ownership was the drum beat argument.

I did buy a few thousand dollars of GLD shares. I bought and sold the shares twice. In that time my net profit was about zero. I decided sticking to stocks and bonds was a wiser plan after receiving a caution call from the stock broker that handled those trades. That was 2011.

With all the talk about declining value of gold I decided to plot its movement in relation to the movement of the S&P 500 starting January 1, 2013. My source for the data is the Yahoo Finance graphing tools. As you can see on the linked graph the S&P 500 has increased in value about 14% while GLD gold shares have dropped about 14%.

What happened to inflation and its effect on the price of gold? Someone will have to explain it to me. I do know one man who said the bubble will be bursting soon.

Anyone care to comment?

Author: coastcontact