A tip from Business Insider …
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Archive for May, 2013
Uh-oh: Obama’s job approval goes underwater …
May 31, 2013The media’s spin has been that the tri-scandals haven’t impacted President Obama’s job approval ratings.
Oops.
The RealClearPolitics poll-of-polls now has the President below the Mendoza line at 48.1% approval …
,,, and, with 48.4% disapproving, Obama is now underwater.
Source: RCP
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Is John Hancock rolling over in his grave?
May 30, 2013You remember John Hancock, right?
He is memorialized for his large and stylish signature on the United States Declaration of Independence … so much so that the term “John Hancock” became, in the United States, a synonym for “signature”.
According to Wikipedia – the people’s encyclopedia –…
The traditional function of a signature is evidential of:
- The provenance of the document (identity)
- The intention (will) of an individual with regard to that document
For example, you signed your 1040 tax return – either physically or digitally, right?
Did you read the fine print?
Under penalties of perjury, I declare that I have examined this return and accompanying schedules and statements, and to the best of my knowledge and belief, they are true, correct, and complete.
Hmmm.
Do the same requirements and penalties apply to Federal officials?
Here are some head-scratching examples to the contrary …
IRS: Why did the Tea Parties even apply for 501(c)4 status?
May 30, 2013Many aspects of the IRS – Tea Parties bruhaha have me head scratching.
Clearly, the IRS was targeting conservative groups. That’s a no-brainer.
But, I ask, why did the groups apply for 501(c)4 status in the first place?
Reading the IRS regs and a letter from the IRS to Senator Hatch, organizations can “self-declare” to be 501(c)4.
Source: Original letter
Here’s why this has me head-scratching …
Gotcha: Fund managers charging more … for earning you less.
May 29, 2013Burton Malkiel – one of my thesis advisers at Princeton – has long touted index funds since individual stock movements are are tough to predict and since index funds outperform most actively managed funds.
He details his case in todays’s WSJ editorial “You’re Paying Too Much for Investment Help”
Here’s the essence of Malkiel’s argument …
Flashback: Remember the last “Basketball Goodwill Tour”?
May 29, 2013I got an email yesterday announcing …
Nice idea, but reminded me of 2011 when we posted:
Georgetown’s “goodwill” basketball game vs. China ends in brawl … no kidding
Flashing back …
According to SI:
A wild brawl broke out between Georgetown and a Chinese men’s basketball team Thursday night, putting an immediate end to a supposed goodwill game that coincided with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to the country.
The benches cleared and fights erupted all over the court with about 9½ minutes left in the fourth quarter.
Georgetown is in China on a 10-day trip which has been cited by the U.S. State Department as an example of sports diplomacy that strengthens ties between the two countries.
Question (after viewing the video): With a population of 1.3 Billion (with a “B”), don’t you think the Chinese should be able to fill a high school gym for a game against the Hoyas?
What privacy? Apparently teens don’t care …
May 29, 2013
Thanks to social media, today’s teens are the first to have a complete record of their whole lives — their thoughts, their actions, and their friends.
Eric Schmidt — Google chairman and ex-CEO — worries, however, that they’ll be the first who’ll never be allowed to forget their mistakes.
Schmidt says: “People are now sharing too much.”
More specifically, privacy pundits say that it just takes your name, zip code and birth date to ID you and start linking your online and offline personal data … forever.
Now, Pew has published a research study re: teen’s online habits .
Here are the Pew results …
Uh-oh: Jurassic Government
May 28, 2013Everybody knows Jurassic Park – the 1993 science fiction adventure film in which a team of genetic scientists create a wildlife park of cloned dinosaurs.
When the security systems go haywire, the dinosaurs go uncontrollably wild.
Jonathan Turley is a left-leaning law prof at George Washington University …. a frequent legal analyst on CNN … not to be mistaken as a Tea Party kinda guy.
He had a weekend op-ed in the Washington Post that’s a must read.
Titled “The rise of the fourth branch of government “, the article’s central thesis:
The growing dominance of the federal government over the states has obscured more fundamental changes within the federal government itself:
It is not just bigger, it is dangerously off kilter.
Our carefully constructed system of checks and balances is being negated by the rise of a fourth branch:
An administrative state of sprawling departments and agencies that govern with increasing autonomy and decreasing transparency.
That is, the government agencies have gotten so big and sprawling that they have substantially more power over our lives than the 3 Constitutional branches of government … and they are, for all practical purposes, unmanageable and largely out-of-control.
Hmmm.
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Here are some highlights and stats from Turley’s article …
Prediction: Calls to spend billions on crumbling bridges …
May 24, 2013Six years ago (August 1, 2007), the I-35W Mississippi River bridge in Minneapolis — an eight-lane, steel truss arch bridge that handled 140,000 cars daily – collapsed during the evening rush hour, killing 13 people and injuring 145.
The NTSB cited a design flaw as the likely cause of the the catastrophic failure.
Last night, a section of a bridge along Interstate-5 in Washington State collapsed.
Here’s the good news and the bad news …
IRS: Why no mention of the NTEU connection?
May 24, 2013Did you know that the “frontline” IRS employees involved in the IRS scandal are unionized?
Yep.
Members of NTEU – the National Treasury Employees Union.
So what?
First, like most government employee unions, the NTEU is all for bigger government and fatter retirement benefits.
So, it’s no big surprise that the union endorsed Obama for President.
Nothing shady there … strictly legal … and consistent with the employees’ interests.
But, here’s where things get interesting …
Disruption: Automating knowledge work …
May 24, 2013In the old days, folks fretted (or dreamed) about the effect of computerized automation in factories and ATMs replacing bank tellers.
According to a recent McKinsey report:
Physical labor and transactional tasks have been widely automated …
Now, advances in data analytics, low-cost computer power, machine learning, and interfaces that “understand” humans are moving the automation frontier rapidly towards “knowledge work”..
Developments in how machines process language and understand context are allowing computers to search for information and find patterns of meaning at superhuman speed.
Here are a couple of examples …
Gotcha: Man, that was a fast yellow light …
May 23, 2013Might not be your imagination.
In some locales, city-fathers are shortening the duration of yellow caution lights – you know, going from green to red.
Why?
Simple. To increase the odds that you get ticketed by a red light “safety” camera.
According to a News 10 TV report, in Tampa, the yellow light duration was reduced by a fraction of a second at intersections with red light cameras.
The result: red light tickets and their accompanying revenue more than doubled.
Red light cameras generated more than $100 million in revenue last year in approximately 70 Florida communities,
What’s the impact on traffic safety?
Apple’s taxes: Why the Fed’s argument is simply silly …
May 23, 2013This week, Apple CEO Tim Cook was hauled in to DC to testify about Apple’s low corporate tax rate …
Cook explained that Apple makes a lot of money outside the U.S. … selling products that are made outside the U.S. under licenses held by foreign subsidiaries and sold in non-U.S. countries.
Said simply, no part of that income is earned in the U.S. either thru the development, manufacture, sales, or distribution of the products.
None.
But, our wise Senators think that Apple should pay U.S. corporate income taxes on that money any way.
Why?
Because Apple was legally formed in the U.S. and has it’s Corporate headquarters in the U.S.
Here’s the code-breaking question to ask …
Flashback: What happens when a tax-evader runs the IRS?
May 22, 2013I’m a bit surprised that this retro-snit hasn’t come up in the current IRS flap …
Think back to early, 2009.
Newly annointed President Obama nominated Tim Geithner to be Secretary of the Treasury.
During his confirmation hearings, Geithner ran into an “issue”.
It was revealed that Mr. Geithner, he failed to pay payroll taxes on income he received from the International Monetary Fund in 2001, and then repeated the error in the three subsequent years, despite explicit disclosures and instructions from the IMF, and with the help of an accountant.
According to the WSJ:
Apologizing to the committee, Geithner took responsibility for what he called “careless” and “avoidable” mistakes while insisting they were unintentional.
He acknowledged signing an IMF statement at the time that he understood he had been reimbursed to pay those self-employment taxes, adding that he should have read the statement more carefully.
In his testimony, he laid blame on his TurboTax software
Why is this important?
NetTrax: What’s the fundamental difference between designer shoes and cars?
May 22, 2013From an online retailing perspective it’s simple …
Once you buy a car you’re probably out of the market for awhile
… but once you buy a pair of designer shoes, you’re probably going to buy more of them.
Why does that matter to an online retailer?
IRS: Lerner gets 4 Pinocchios … and pleads a fifth.
May 21, 2013OK, now we’re starting to make some progress.
Lois Lerner is the head of the exempt organizations division of the IRS.
She’s the one who answered a planted post-speech question — by “apologizing” for the IRS targeting conservative groups.
Her public statements regarding the IRS fiasco has earned her 4 Pinocchios from the left-leaning Washington Post.
More on that later.
Now, it’s being reported that she’ll plead the 5th Amendment at a Congressional hearing on Wednesday. Source
Here’s a link to the Post’s analysis : A bushel of Pinocchios for IRS’s Lois Lerner.
Quick summary: Liar, liar … pants on fire.I know, innocent until proven guilty …
English translation: GUILTY !
Perp walk, anybody?
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Kudos: Michelle’s commencement speech rocks …
May 21, 2013I haven’t been a big Michelle Obama fan.
Never recovered from her “first time I’m proud to be an American” snit … and totally turned off by her hypocritical lifestyle of the rich & famous routine.
Biggest deal: I’ve oft said that she and her husband have squandered an opportunity to talk frankly to black kids in a way that only they can.
They’ve got the cred to push family values, individual responsibility and the importance of education.
Except for a few lines in a few speeches, they’ve come up prtetty empty.
That is, until last week when the First Lady gave a great commencement address at Bowie State University.
She encouraged the graduates to promote the importance of education in the black community.
According to the Washington Post, she layered a tough-love cultural commentary with statistics … one in three African American students drop out of high school … only one in five African Americans between the ages of 25 and 29 have a college degree.
Here are a couple of the high impact sound bites from her speech:
Rx: How to start fixing the IRS …
May 20, 2013OK, here’s my diagnosis – the Dx — and my short-term prescription – the Rx.
First, the Dx …
Of course, the Tea Party and other conservative groups were targeted for political purposes.
Any claim of “efficiency procedures” or “inadvertent error” are simply ridiculous.
Of course, folks high up the food chain were involved … setting the broad mission (with Mob-like deniability) — “punish your enemies” –- and condoning the actions by failing to stop them them when they became well known.
So, what to do?
Here is how I’d get started righting the ship … the Rx:
Nums: Scandals important, but O’s rating is up … say, what?
May 19, 2013The term “Teflon president” is being re-calibrated.
Here’s a head-scratcher:
Despite the Benghazi, IRS and AP scandals, CNN reports that Obama’s job approval ratings have bumped up.
That’s despite the parallel findings that respondents think the 3 scandals are important, that they are indeed scandals, and that they think that the GOP-led Congress is handling the matter correctly.
Here are some details …
IRS: An “efficiency initiative” that resulted in horrible “customer service” … say, what?
May 18, 2013I was in the car on Friday morning and tuned the radio to the Congressional testimony of the Treasury IG and Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller.
In a word: frightening.
First, the IG seems like a straight arrow. HIs answers were direct, structured and fact-based.
He dished the bad news, but wouldn’t take the GOP bait to condemn beyond his specific findings.
Then, there was this clown.
Let’s put this situation in perspective and then drill down …
Nums: Will the scandal hurt the IRS’s image?
May 17, 2013Trick question since the public’s perception of the IRS is already pretty low
According to A Pew survey, the Internal Revenue Service, now under intense scrutiny for singling out conservative groups, is one of the least-popular federal agencies.
Specifically. the IRS ranks 11th out of 14 agencies (the 13 listed below plus the Homeland Security Department) in terms of public perception of their performance.
Only 47% of people surveyed said they had a “very” or “mostly” favorable opinion of the IRS.
Hmmm.
That pesky 47% number.
I guess that folks who don’t pay income taxes think that the IRS lightening everybody else’s wallets is way cool.
The IRS is the second-lowest among the 13 agencies people were asked about.
The only agencies ranking lower were Eric Holder’s Justice Department (38% excellent or good), the Social Security Administration (36%) and Arne Duncan’s Education Department (33%).
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ABC: IRS Official in Charge Targeting Now Runs ObamaCare Division
May 16, 2013Definitely from the ‘you can’t make this stuff up” file …
ABC News is reporting …
The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.
Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012.
But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed.
House Speaker John Boehner expressed “serious concerns” that the IRS is empowered as the law’s chief enforcer.
“Obamacare empowers the agency that just violated the public’s trust by secretly targeting conservative groups,” Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind.,
added.“Even by Washington’s standards, that’s unacceptable.”
Sen. John Cornyn even introduced a bill, the “Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act of 2013,” which would prohibit the Secretary of the Treasury, or any delegate, including the IRS, from enforcing the Affordable Care Act.
“Now more than ever, we need to prevent the IRS from having any role in Americans’ health care,” Cornyn, R-Texas, stated.
“I do not support Obamacare, and after the events of last week, I cannot support giving the IRS any more responsibility or taxpayer dollars to implement a broken law.”
Seriously, you just can’t make this stuff up …
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Stop right there, professor … proof of citizenship, please !
May 16, 2013Unfortunately, this has become an annual event. A summer initiation of sorts.
Once again, I was detained for questioning by government officials.
This year was unusually unnerving.
No, it wasn’t by rogue IRS agents in Cincinnati targeting an alleged conservative blogger.
I was suspected of crossing a border to illegally access government-provided services.
Here’s the story …
Turning around the turnaround: JC Penney goes back to the future …
May 15, 2013In one svelte move, JC Penney launched near-total, point-by-point repudiation of ex-CEO Ron Johnson’s attempt to turn the retailer into a chain of Apple stores.
Let’s dissect this one …
What’s going at Business Insider?
May 14, 2013I understand that Henry Blodget is probably still hacked that he got nailed for pumping Internet stocks before the bubble burst … and got barred from ever working on Wall Street again.
So, I assume, he’s probably just over-compensating to balance life’s scales an increase the odds of getting into heaven.
But, gimme a break…
Here’s a screenshoot of a recent Business Insider home page headlining:
- It’s a good idea to cut everybody in America a check
- A Today Show host got engaged
- A vision of NBA stars without tatoos
- Corporate logos with subliminal messages
May just be me, but doesn’t read though as either “business” or “insider” …
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Bored at work? Here’s why …
May 14, 2013Interesting tidbit in a Business Week article What’s Wrong With the U.S. Job Market?
Punch line: the “cognitive content” of tasks performed by employed college graduates peaked in 2000, has dropped fairly steadily since, and is approach all-time lows.
Here’s more …
Gotcha: IRS admits to targeting “Patriots” … turns attention to ObamaCare enforcement.
May 13, 2013Just in case you missed the news last Friday, the IRS publicly admitted that it targeted conservative groups during the 2012 election … and then shielded itself behind a George Castanza defense.
Here is the WSJ summary of the IRS disclosure:
Yesterday,an Internal Revenue Service official disclosed for the first time, and by way of apologizing, that the agency that wields the taxing power of the federal government had targeted conservative groups for special scrutiny during the 2012 election season.
A spokeswoman acknowledged that the agency had flagged groups with the words “tea party” or “patriot” to have their tax returns inspected.
In addition, the agency was targeting groups raising “issues regarding government spending, government debt or taxes”, or … how to ‘make America a better place to live’. WSJ update
She added the tax inspections were carried out entirely by low-level workers in Cincinnati without any direction from Washington.
Here’s my take on the IRS revelations:
First, a couple of weeks ago Obama bristled at the thought that some (many ?) folks don’t trust the government.
What does the jabrone expect if his administration turns its bulldogs on its political opponents?
Can you imagine the outcry if George Bush had told the IRS to key word search “Muslim”, “Islamic”,”Progressive” or “choice” and then said to go get ‘em.
All hell would have broken loose.
Second, about the “don’t blame me, it was somebody in my organization” defense …
Nums: THE way to look at the employment numbers …
May 10, 2013In a couple of the past week’s posts we’ve been exploring the employment down mixing from full-time to part-time jobs.
I personally think that it is one of the most important – and least reported trends in the economy.
Flashback to last Friday … the BLS headline was that 165,000 jobs were added in April and the unemployment rate dropped to 7.5%
That news flash elicited giddy re-reporting … e.g. Business Insider’s “STOCKS GO WILD AFTER AWESOME JOBS REPORT” … “awesome” and all caps,
Yep, total employment went up 165,000 jobs … that’s true
But, here’s the rest of the story …
Nums: More on the rise of part-time work …
May 10, 2013Yesterday we posted “Connecting the dots: ObamaCare may be creating jobs!”
The punch line: many companies are reported to be down mixing their work forces by reducing full-timers to part-time status … and hiring additional part-timers to fill their needs.
Today, let’s look at some macro numbers.
Total employment dropped 8.2 million during the recession.
5.3 million of those 8.2 million jobs have been recovered … but total employment is still down 2.9 million from its pre-recession peak.
Note that total employment is up 1.4 million since President Obama’s Inauguration in January 2009.
Keep that number in mind … 1.4 million.
Things get more interesting with a little drilling down …
Jobs: A generation lost ?
May 9, 2013Editorial in the WSJ today titled Meet Generation Jobbed …
Punch line: With youth unemployment and underemployment at persistently high levels, “our kids are starting to look and sound like Europe’s smart kids—despondent and resigned.”
Here are the facts underlying the conclusion …
NetTrax: You’re leaving cookie crumbs on the net … lots of them
May 8, 2013What happens when you click to a web site?
Short answer: you have new cookies installed on your computer or have old cookies modified … whether you know it or not … and you then spew crumbs all over the Internet … letting companies track you, profile you, and hard sell you stuff.
Here’s a visual of what a couple of clicks can do … each dot represents a site or company that can grab your information … just because you innocently clicked.
Later we’ll explain the graphic and what’s going on.
First some background on web tracking …
Pssst: What’s your zip code?
May 6, 2013Ever wonder why the gun-chewing cashier asks you for your zip code?
I naively assumed the store was just doing some kind of geo-survey … trying to figure out where their customers were coming from … how far they were driving to shop their store.
Silly boy.
CNN reports that ”Every time you mindlessly give a sales clerk your zip code at checkout, you’re giving data companies and retailers the ability to track everything from your body type to your bad habits.”
Whoa, Nellie.
Here’s what’s happening …
Connecting the dots: ObamaCare may be creating jobs!
May 6, 2013You read that right.
The obvious has become evident to me …
The BLS reported that employment rose by 165,000 in April, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 7.5 percent,
Hmmm.
Memory jogged back to last week’s post re: the increasing number of part-timers:
Obvious question: how many of the 165,000 were part-timers?
According to the Fed’s data base, part-time employment increased by 229,000.
If true, that means that full-time employment dropped.
Hmmm again.
What’s going on?
Ouch: Columbia b-school prof blasts academic research …
May 3, 2013The blog InDecision posted the “presidential address” given at the conference of the Society for Consumer Psychology by Columbia Professor Michel Tuan Pham.
In his preamble, he bluntly questioned both the “external and internal relevance” of the research that he and his colleagues publish.
First, his perspective on external relevance …
Nums: The April jobs report … Sequester creates jobs?
May 3, 2013Here’s the headline: “Non-Farm Payrolls Rise More Than Expected, Up by 165,000 in April; Unemployment Rate Drops to 7.5%”.
I guess that the Sequester – rather than inhibiting job growth – actually spurred job growth.
Not really.
But, it means team Obama will have to re-write its press release for today.
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Reminder: April ADP’s number was 159k … 30k below the consensus forecast … and, ADP revised March down by about 20k jobs..
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Nums: Is predictive analytics winning battles, not wars?
May 3, 2013Peggy Noonan has a piece in the WSJ today that I almost skipped.
You know, another “Is Obama a Lame Duck?” piece.
Buried in the column was a riff about predictive analytics that caught my eye.
It pointed out one of the downsides of predictive analytics … the craft of crunching big data bases to ID people, their behaviors and their hot buttons.
Here’s what Noonan had to say …
Nums: The cable news race …
May 2, 2013As reported by Drudge …
I’ve started to tire of O’Reilly, but he still holds a commanding lead.
Constantly amazed that Stewart & Colbert get classified as news shows … though frequent surveys say that many people do use them as their primary news source.
No surprise that MSNBC continues to get hammered in the ratings.
Kinda sad that that CNN continues to slip … key shows running even with Al Sharpton’s show … ouch.
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Nums: Who approves of Obama more – poor folks or rich folks?
May 2, 2013Interesting results from the Weekly Economist-YouGov Survey …
Headline: Obama gets a 47% approval rating (below 50%) and a 47% disapproval rating … dead heat.
But … looking at the “top & bottom boxes – strongly approve, strongly disapprove – he underwater by 16 percentage points.
Numbers get more interesting diving into the details:
By region … no surprise that Obama does best in the Northeast – about even on top & bottom boxes …. he does worst in the South – no surprise – and the West (a mix of West Coast liberals and and gun toting open-country folks).
Things get way more interesting by age and income …
Nums: The shift to part-timers …
May 2, 2013In a prior post, we reported that middle income jobs were disappearing … apparently down mixing to lower income jobs.
Here’s more …
The NY Times reports that about 7.6 million Americans working part-time jobs are doing so reluctantly, and would rather have a full-time job … that’s about 3 million more than there were when the recession began at the end of 2007.
Most of the part-time jobs are in retail and food service … where companies are throttling full-time employment in advance of ObamaCare penalties.
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Nums: How many murders in Chicago since Newtown?
May 1, 2013My eye caught a headline “Another murder near Obama’s home”.
The gist of the story:
A man was killed and another was wounded in a shooting early Tuesday in Hyde Park,
It’s the second shooting to happen near President Barack Obama’s home in neighboring Kenwood in about a week.
Last week 15-year-old Cornelius German was gunned down in the 5000 block of South Evans, less than a mile away from Obama’s house.
That got me wondering: how many murders have there been in Chicago since the Newton massacre.
Apparently, enough other folks ask the same question, so Slate has developed an infographic that provides a tally of murders by city since Sandy Hook.
The answer: 96 Murders in Chicago since Newtown.
Think about that for a second … then continue reading.
Bummer: The middle class plight … in 2 charts.
May 1, 2013Pew released a sobering report last week: An Uneven Recovery, 2009-2011
The central conclusion: the rich have gotten richer and the middle class has gotten crushed.
Upper and lower income groups have both increased by about 5 percentage points of the population mix.
In other words, the percentage of middle class folks – earning from 2/3s to twice the median income – has dropped by 10 percentage points.
What’s going on?
The Homa Files 