Obamic Foreign Policy

Obama’s foreign policy is loosely based on an analogue to what in theological circles is known as “laying on the hands” — both are “fantastical thinking” approaches which have no basis in reality. The religious practitioners “touch” people and think it will cure illnesses, while the Obama administration pressed a magic reset button (literally, as wielded by the High Priestess of Obamic Foreign Policy, SecState Hillary!,) thinking with would transform, or more aptly, transmute Putin — a KGB thug — into Mr. Nice Guy, as if water were being turned into wine. It is foreign policy based on faith trumping reality, and we are now reaping the frightful harvest sown by it.

It’s times like this that we can all be thankful for an administration that has its priorities set, focused like a laser on hobbling our own economy in a futile gesture towards reining in Global Climate Conflagration, on protecting Wymyn from rampaging GOP members of congress intent on stealing their uterii, and, oh, yes, trampling the 2nd Amendment in its zeal to disarm law abiding citizens, while legislating from the Oval Office as it jams its profoundly flawed take over of the Health Insurance system down our throats. And in the meanwhile, the Ukraine strangles as Putin’s noose tightens, Libya is a mess, being taken over by Jihadists, and Syria is in the process of being taken over by the same. One must admit, this is, both domestically and abroad, an administration of extraordinary multidisciplinary incompetence and malfeasance.

_ Longshadow in Vermont

Are Most Federal Workers Overpaid? CBO Says Yes – The Atlantic

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/most-federal-workers-overpaid-cbo-223938063.html

By contributors@theatlantic.com (Jordan Weissmann) |  (c) 2012

 

The less educated you are, the better it is to work for the federal government — at least when it comes to your paycheck.

That’s more or less the finding of a new study by the Congressional Budget Office, which compared federal workforce compensation to the private sector using data from 2005 through 2010. The big headline figures, sure to make the rounds in conservative media, are that government employees made 2% more in wages, and 16% more in overall compensation, than their private sector counterparts. But as the graph below shows, there were vast variations between education levels.

The higher your degree, the lower your salary and benefits compared to your educational peers. A high school graduate earned 36% more compensation than an equivalent private sector worker. A college graduate earned roughly the same salary, but made about 46% more in benefits. If you had a professional degree or doctorate, you made an average of 18% less in compensation.

It’s great that the federal government is providing livable wages to workers, and their families, who would probably have a tough time of it in the private sector. But as an efficient use of resources, the current setup doesn’t make much sense. This might sound cold-hearted to some, but this is exactly the opposite of what the chart should look like if we’re interested in attracting the best and brightest to public service, and keeping them there. According to the CBO, a full 33% of the federal workforce is employed in professional occupations, such as science and engineering, compared with 18% of the private sector. And yet, the better your bona fides, the more likely you are making less money than the friends you graduated with, and the more pressure there is to use government experience as a stepping stone to a more lucrative career. True, federal workers enjoy better job security than their private sector counterparts. As USA Today vividly put it, employees at some agencies are more likely to die than than get fired. Literally. But top performers generally care more about their pay stub than tenure. What we have now is simply a recipe for losing talent.

And for those wondering, no, the CBO didn’t compare investment bankers to USDA program analysts. The analysis controlled for various differences between workers, including years of experience, occupation, the size of their employer and geography. This is, as much as possible, an apples to apples comparison.

The upshot: Federal pay might be too high overall, and it’s probably not getting us a better government.

 

(c) 2012 The Atlantic

Here are some ‘green’ jobs for you; 529 lost because of EPA

http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/blog/energy/2012/01/first-energy-to-close-kittanning-power.html?ed=2012-01-26&s=article_du&ana=e_du_pub

First Energy to close Kittanning coal-fired plant
Pittsburgh Business Times by Paul J. Gough
Date: Thursday, January 26, 2012,
A 54-year-old coal-fired power plant near Kittanning will be closed by September as part of First Energy Corp. ‘s plan to comply with new environmental regulations.
Sixty employees at the Armstrong Power Station in Adrian are among 529 employees at six coal-fired power plants in Ohio, Maryland and Pennsylvania who will lose their jobs.
First Energy announced the closings Thursday in an initiative to comply with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards that seek to reduce mercury and other emissions from the plants. The Armstrong Power Station, which hadn’t been running much over the past three years due to economic conditions, was judged too expensive to retrofit for the environmental rules that take effect in 2015.

From a FaceBook post, here is how Obama buys votes.

“With him in office I went to school for free which got me this GREAT job, saved my home and kept me from moving out, kept my unemployment checks coming so I could do all that and still eat for 2 years..I voted for him last time and will again! I owe him a BIG thank you! I dont talk politics openly. But he works for me.”

>>> I guess I should be glad I could help pay for all of this.  I know this will sound mean but…

1. I guess you never acquired the correct education or worked hard enough before

2. you must have purchased a bigger home that you could not afford in a pinch

3. you could have taken another job while going to school

4. you could have signed up for the food bank

And you don’t owe him, YOU OWE THE TAXPAYERS.

Port Authority Transit of Allegheny County still bankrupt, morally and fiscally

The commission wrote that the Port Authority:“Has the highest transit wage rates in the country when adjusted for inflation.”

In addition, with overtime, they can make twice their base salary. Plus benefits. Plus the famous Pennsylvania pension.

Westmoreland County transit drivers make 60% of what PAT drivers make to do the same job.

AND NOT ONCE HAVE I HEARD THEM SAY ‘ “WE NEED TO CUT WAGES AND BENEFITS”. They blame it on revenue ( not ridership, but tax revenues no longer being handed out by the State ) .  Then they cut service and continue in a death-spiral :  service cuts = less drivers, less revenue, same overhead, same fat pension plan ( ‘ but they promised’ ), less riders and so forth.

Obama cancels Keystone pipeline

http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/205085-dems-propose-reasonable-profits-board-to-regulate-oil-company-profits

First they cancel Keystone II pipeline, then they plan to have the government decide what profits are “reasonable” for oil companies, and plan to use the money they steal from the oil company stockholders under onerous and confiscatory “windfall profits taxes” to finance their socialist cronies in the economically unfeasible Green Energy scams (like SOLYNDRA.)

This makes the same sense as President Downgrade’s claim yesterday that unemployment benefits create more jobs than the pipeline would.  If unemployment benefits create jobs, then the economy should grow faster the more people there are out of work and collecting unemployment benefits.  Yet, when unemployment rises steeply, GDP drops.  That, as Karl Popper teaches us, is what is known as a falsification of the hypothesis.

-Longshadow in Vermont

PA Taxpayers ALERT / REMINDER – INSIST on a change to this from your State rep

On one hand you must admire quinto-mom Chelsa Wagner for packing so much into her life.  But, how she expected anyone to believe that she could work 100% at two fulltime jobs ( State Representative and County Controller ) is suspect.

Now some might say many people work two jobs, but these jobs are in session at exactly the same time

Their real crime mentioned in the article is not one of Ms. Wagner’s doing.  The Trib said “Wagner, first elected in 2006, is fully vested in the state pension system after serving for five years.

Fully vested in five years.  Wow.  It takes military people, police, state troopers, and firemen ( all in harm’s way at some point in their job ) 20 years or more to become fully vested.

I realize that the state legislators are in danger of being hit in the head by a large wads of lobbyist money, but they did not earn anything close in five short years.  One person argued that quick pension vesting was an incentive for legislators to not stay around for too long.  Take that to the comedy club !

The Pennsylvania legislature must reform the pension rules.

– Concerned Taxpayer of PA

 

Chelsa Wagner resigns state House seat

By Jill King Greenwood and Brad Bumsted, PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Allegheny County Controller Chelsa Wagner moved from the state’s payroll to the county’s with her resignation on Monday from her 22nd District House seat, but the two-week delay still doesn’t sit well with some government observers.

the whole article

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/pittsburgh/s_776829.html

Suggested reading – chicksontheright.com

http://chicksontheright.com

 

Democrat mantra: If all else fails…CHEAT!!!!

China is ready to go the the moon

A local business radio show was discussing the fact that China is preparing to send men to the Moon. The U.S. no longer has a space program. When asked what it would take for us to get back to the Moon, it was billions of dollars and 24 years.

When we sent a man to the Moon, government was not quite as big and cumbersome. It took 8 years and x million dollars to get there.

After experiencing government funded projects up close with both PennDOT and DCNR, I can assure you that any government project will take 3x as long and cost 10x as much.

Note that it correlates with the 24 year number.

The things I saw were beyond hideous. A simple mile of walking trail was costing $100,000 vs. $10,000 if done privately.

 

ARE YOU KIDDING ME ?!?!? third graders write song about the 99 Percent ?

Recall a few weeks back, the hullabaloo over the third graders in Virginia who had “written” a song all about the “99 Percent”?

As I pointed out at the time, the lyrics are such that a third grader would never come up with them on their own, let alone the subject matter (which sounds like it came straight out of an OWS encampment.)

And so now the “facilitator” who came in and orchestrated the whole thing has admitted he wrote it.  And as I predicted, he was financed, at least in part, with taxpayer funds.  Isn’t it nice to know the Marxist running the public schools have no qualms about using taxpayer funds to teach your kids to be communists?

This is but one MORE reason for closing down the Department of Education  and passing a constitutional amendment requiring an absolute separation of Education and State.   IOW, privatize the whole damned thing and get government out of the damned classroom.

–submitted by Longshadow

http://forum.darwincentral.org/viewtopic.php?p=889146#p889146
Re: School Defends “Occupy” Song For 8-year-olds

by Elmo Zoneball » Sun Jan 15, 2012 11:46 am

Elmo Zoneball wrote:Smoking gun:

How do third graders write lyrics about the “1 percent”/”99 percent” when they haven’t learned what “percent” is? I doubt third graders have studied % yet, as they’d have to understand division and fractions before they understand %.

Moreover, the lyrics are written from the POV of an adult who lost his fortune, not from the POV of children. IOW, it’s written in the first person, whereas children would devise lyrics appropriate from their first person point of view e.g., “I don’t get to eat breakfast anymore” or “I don’t have any toys” or they would write lyrics about adults, in which case they would write it in the third person (“He/They lost their fortune, etc.”) not “I lost all my money.”

The school administration is lying about who wrote the lyrics. This is overt anti-capitalist wealth envy propaganda being fed to impressionable grade-school students, probably paid for with taxpayer funds to fund the Marxist “facilitator” (more correctly: “manipulator”) who led this political indoctrination exercise.

And now for “the rest of the story”:

This week, Paul Reisler, the founder and artistic director of Kid Pan Alley, the Virginia-based nonprofit group that runs the songwriting workshops, acknowledged in a statement that he inserted phrases such as “1 percent” into the lyrics.

[snip]

The group, which receives private and public funding, including from parent-teacher organizations, has been leading workshops in various school systems in Virginia and elsewhere in the country for about 11 years. Schools can choose to pay for workshops, each usually about a week long and costing several thousand dollars, in which students write songs and then perform them for parents and others.

“The reason most principals participate is they think it benefits kids in two or three different ways,” said Phil Giaramita, a spokesman for the Albemarle schools. “It’s a form of creative writing, as if writing poetry or book reports or something else. It helps students think through ideas and how to present ideas. And it teaches collaboration.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/occupy-third-grade-a-song-that-uses-protest-rhetoric-creates-furor-in-virginia/2012/01/11/gIQAtEkZsP_story.html

The public school collectivists wants this shit in school because it advances the socialist agenda to which they subscribe, and adding insult to injury, they are making taxpayers fund their Marxist indoctrination of other peoples’ children.