Grieves me to see my home state of VA at the top of the list … almost 2 to 1 admin to teachers.
Ouch.
* * * * *
For state-by-state details, check out the cool interactive chart the the Friedman folks put together … everything you need to know about public schools,
According to a McClatchy-Marist poll, President Obama’s approval rating has dropped to the lowest level in more than a year … putting him underwater 45% to 48%
The pollsters opine that “At least some of the president’s fall to Earth lies in the fact that voters no longer see him in the context of an election. He has to stand alone in the eyes of voters.”
That is, it’s not a matter of better or worse than Romney … it’s a matter of doing the job effectively or not.
The poll also reports that “Obama’s personal popularity also has declined, with 48 percent of voters having favorable impressions of him and 48 percent having unfavorable impressions.
That was down from 53-44 in December. It also was the lowest since November 2011, when it was 47-49.”
Hard to believe that name-calling and whoppers would nick a guy’s nice guy image …
The poll also queried “Who has the better approach with the budget deficit?”
Flaaco just signed a contract making him the highest paid NFL player ever.
Well, kinda … more on that below.
It’s being reported that hedge fund legend John Paulson is considering leaving New York to go to Puerto Rico, where a tax loophole would let him reduce taxes on the $9.5 billion he has in his own hedge fund.
Bloomberg reports that several wealthy Americans have already taken advantage of the year-old Puerto Rican law that lets new residents pay no local or U.S. federal taxes on capital gains.
Note: The marginal tax rate for affluent New Yorkers can exceed 50 percent.
On the road this week … savoring the joys of air travel.
Stop #1: Southwest’s curbside check-in.
Guy in front of us had one of those “c’mon man” moments.
His bag weighed in at a couple of pounds over the 50# limit.
The skycap – a very nice guy – explained that he’d have to take a few things out of his bag to sneak under the weight limit or shell out 75 bucks – roughly $25 per pound – for the excess.
The guy started rifling through his bag and made weight.
Last Saturday, my son forwarded a friend’s Tweet to me:
Hmmm.
Started me thinking … Sequester announced on Friday … slow down on Saturday … coincidence?
Then, Obama announces that he’s shutting down White House tours because of the Sequester – the Presidential version of taking his bat & ball and going home.
Wait a second: I’ve seen this play before … bat & ball, Operation Shutdown.
Northern Virginia schools are closed today because of the threat of a snow storm.
So, Pizzeria Uno sent an email announcing a special “Snow Day Deal” … free meals for the school-cancelled kids … (with a matching adult paying full fare, of course).
Question: Wonder if Uno’s will get sued if some jabrone drives off a slippery road coming to score some free chow for his kid?
Despite the Administration’s dire warnings, the release of jailed criminal immigrants and the slower-than-usual TSA checks …
The Washington Post is reporting survey results indicating that 61% of folks support the Sequester’s budget cuts overall … though 60% oppose the cuts to military spending.
Said differently, folks overwhelmingly support the non-military donestic spending cuts.
Last week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was racking up Pinocchios, trying to whip up some Sequester hysteria.
He said that the world will end if the Fed’s Ed budget is cut by 2% … 40,000 will lose their jobs.
Hmmm.
His analysis was quickly debunked but, for me, it prompted a fundamental question: how is the Dept. of Education doing?
Today, let’s look at perceptions.
Bottom line: folks – you know, taxpayers – the Ed Dept’s “customers” — rate the Dept. of Education the lowest among Federal Agencies … and the agency with the sharpest decline.
Despite spending hundreds of billions of dollars over the past couple of decades, the Department of Education gets the fewest favorability nods for Americans … only 40% give it a favorable rating … and its favorability rating is falling faster than any other agency.
The Education Dept’s low ratings aren’t that surprising since the U.S. is constantly reported to be trailing other developed nations in math, science and other basic skills … and since every politician lasers in on our need to fix public education (while protecting the sanctity of the teachers’ unions).
Last week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was shrilling on behalf of the Chicken Little crowd that because of the Sequester 40,000 teachers would lose their jobs.
His claim was quickly debunked, but he left a lasting impression .. on me, at least.
“Dollars” don’t have emotional impact any more.
So, let’s start thinking in terms of full-time teacher equivalents (FTTEs).
Duncan got his estimate by assuming that an average teacher makes $70,000.
Maybe in Chicago they do.
But, according to PayScale.com the national average is in the mid-40s.
Let’s do a hard round for arithmetic convenience and call it $50,000.
Here’s what Kerry did, evaluated using the new metric full-time teacher equivalents (FTTEs) …
Maybe the President was right when he went around the country shouting that the Sequester would cause great damage.
He probably wasn’t thinking about his approval ratings, though.
The latest Gallup daily tracking poll (a 3-day moving average) reported that 47% approve of the job he’s doing as president.
Obviously, below the 50% Mendoza line.
More interesting: since it’s a 3-day moving average, the drop on March 1 must have been in the low 40s in order to drag the moving average down so precipitously.
Could be noise … or could be signal … reflecting reaction to the debunked catastrophe stories, the Woodward bruhaha, or turn-off to the non-presidential Chicken Little routine.
Yesterday, while the President was ringing Sequester Armageddon alarm bells, Annie was pitching calm and confidence.
The sun’ll come out tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there’ll be sun
Just thinkin’ about tomorrow
Clears away the cobwebs and the sorrow till there’s none
When I’m stuck with a day that’s gray and lonely
I just stick out my chin and grin and say
The sun’ll come out tomorrow
So you got to hang on till tomorrow, came what may!
The fiscal pin prick (aka, the “Catastrophic Sequester”) puts this fall’s college football season at risk … at least for the National Champions — the University of Alabama.
Apparently, the only thing that can possibly be cut from the FAA budget are the air traffic controllers at the Tuscaloosa, Alabama airport on Crimson Tide football weekends.
According to Channel 42 WIAT News:
Looming budget cuts from the Federal Aviation Administration could have an impact on the next college football season.
Budget cuts could include eliminating local air traffic controllers at the Tuscaloosa Regional Airport.
We’re told that the airport wouldn’t shut down, but pilots would fly in and out using “visual flight rules” and Birmingham’s air traffic system.
Hundreds of flights come in and out of the Tuscaloosa Airport during the football season.
This development is mind-blowing for a couple of reasons …
An aide to Duncan described it as a “rough back-of-the-envelope calculation,” derived by dividing the average pay and benefits of a teacher — $70,000 — by the amount — $2.8 billion — that needed to be cut in education programs.
But, school districts and states may find many ways to juggle funds or reduce expenses to avoid losing many teachers, which is what has happened during previous periods of financial stress.
Keep in mind that local taxes (i.e. real estate taxes) fund about 90% of teachers. … and, remember that most districts are now bloated with administrators feeding the Federal bear with paper.
Regarding the layoffs already occurring:
The Education Department for days was unable to cough up the name of a single school district where these notices had been delivered.
Then, Duncan appeared before the White House press corps and produced a name — Kanawha County in West Virginia.
But, no one in the county seemed to know what Duncan was talking about, including the education reporters who cover the school district for the Charleston, W.V., newspapers.
“There’s very little sequestration-related panic, at least on the education side of things,” one reporter said.
Our colleague Lyndsey Layton helped unravel the mystery.
She discovered that these were not layoffs, but rather “transfer notices” sent to 104 Title I teachers for reasons unrelated to the sequestration cuts.
In other words, Duncan was peddling a made-up story.
Today, a couple of big Wall Street firms announced another round of cuts:
Citigroup plans to slash 11,000 jobs and close branches worldwide as part of a broad restructuring effort it hopes will save about $1.1 billion in expenses,
JPMorgan Chase became the latest Wall Street firm to scale back in an uncertain economy, announcing plans Tuesday to save $1 billion through various costs cuts and about 4,000 job reductions.
Goldman – which has already let 3,300 employees go worldwide in the past two years – announced another round of layoffs to cut costs by a cool billion dollars
OK, so 3 companies are cutting over $3 billion in expense.
No gnashing of teeth ,,, no “the sky is falling”
Just “times are tough … we’ve gotta do it.”
No so on the Sequester front … apparently the torch has officially been passed from the 12-21-12 Doomsday crowd to Team Obama …
Today was another day of .hysteria … and silly rhetoric.
Allegedly, Obama said that – because of the Sequester – an already closed agency would have to be shuttered.
It started when old Benedict become the first pope in over 600 years to resign.
Before the College of Cardinals could puff out some white smoke, the Italians flocked to the ballot boxes to do some damage.
Headline in the Washington Post: “Berlusconi revives political career in chaotic Italian election”
More from the Post …
“Silvio Berlusconi, the three-time Italian prime minister, onetime cruise ship singer,billionaire playboy and perpetual criminal defendant who was all but counted out of Italian political life when a debt crisis forced his resignation in 2011, shocked the country Monday by shooting back into a position of influence. Even by the chaotic standards of Italian politics, the resurgence of Berlusconi’s People of Liberty party has cast the Italian government into confusion.
It referenced rants on “Steven Brill’s epic cover story for Time on why healthcare costs so much.”
The paragraph that set them off from the Brill article should – according to Business Insider — “legitimately get anyone’s blood boiling.”
By the time Steven D. died at his home in Northern California the following November, he had lived for an additional 11 months. And Alice had collected bills totaling $902,452. The family’s first bill — for $348,000 — which arrived when Steven got home from the Seton Medical Center in Daly City, Calif., was full of all the usual chargemaster profit grabs: $18 each for 88 diabetes-test strips that Amazon sells in boxes of 50 for $27.85; $24 each for 19 niacin pills that are sold in drugstores for about a nickel apiece.
There were also four boxes of sterile gauze pads for $77 each. None of that was considered part of what was provided in return for Seton’s facility charge for the intensive-care unit for two days at $13,225 a day, 12 days in the critical unit at $7,315 a day and one day in a standard room (all of which totaled $120,116 over 15 days). There was also $20,886 for CT scans and $24,251 for lab work.
As for why we can have a system where diabetes-test strips are sold for $18/each in one place, while Amazon sells a box of 50 for $27.85, see this, great piece by Sarah Kliff on the lack of price controls in the US.
My opinion: Apparently these guys have never heard of “absorption costing” or bothered to really ask “why is healthcare so costly?”
A simple analysis … and interesting historical perspective.
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These days — with conventional mortgage rates running about 4% — a $1,000 monthly Principle & Interest (P&I) payment gets you a 30-year loan of about $210,000.
Assuming a 10% downpayment, that’s a $235,000 home.
IMPORTANT: That doesn’t take into account real estate taxes (usually between 1% and 1.5% of a homes value) … or insurance (a grand or two annually) … that are usually added to your monthly payment and held by the lender in an escrow account.
Here’s a chart that gives you a quick way to estimate the mortgage amount over a range of interest rates … assuming a $1,000 per month P&I payment.
Just take the interest rate that you can get (on the horizontal axis), draw a vertical line, and ricochet it off the blue line to estimate the corresponding mortgage amount.
Of course, as interest rates go up, the corresponding mortgage amount goes down.
If you’ve got a budget bigger than $1,000 per month, just divide your budget by 1,000 and multiply times the mortgage amount corresponding to the $1,000 payment charted above.
For example, if your monthly P&I budget is $2,000, just double the mortgage amount on the chart …. $210,000 (@4%) times 2 gets a $420,000 mortgage … which gets a $465,000 house, assuming a 10% down payment.
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The 30-year trend in “how much house?” is pretty interesting …
MBA grads pay at business schools in Europe and Asia increased dramatically in the past couple of years.
Adjusted for local purchasing power, European and Asian MBAs have essentially caught up to U.S. MBAs.
To avoid distortions between countries, the pay levels are stated in “international dollars” that have been adjusted for purchasing power parity.
The researchers attributed the pay growth in Europe to the growing demand for MBAs in Europe and the geographic proximity of highly ranked European programs to the key labor markets they serve.
Sequestration will cut less than 3% of Federal spending … about the amount that was granted to Hurricane Sandy states in the whisk of a pen.
Still, President Obama had to broadcast dire consequences in front of a group of firemen … who will have to be laid off, probably causing small children to die in fires.
The chart plots the level of the Federal minimum wage against the number of percentage points that the teenage unemployment rate is over the all-inclusive unemployment rate.
Implicitly, the analysis assumes that the bulk of minimum wage jobs go to teens … and, measuring the differential (instead of the gross rate) normalizes to the overall state of the economy.
The conclusion is stark: when you raise the minimum wage you lose jobs.
Period.
But, some folks argue that economic life is better for the minimum wagers who retain their jobs.
Marker’s Mark Bourbon may have made the single dumbest marketing decision ever.
They decided to stretch short supplies of Maker’s Mark by diluting it … by literally adding water.
The company must have been inspired by either:
(a) millions of teenage boys who replenished their dad’s whiskey bottle by adding water after taking a swig, or
(b) Chris Rock’s hilarious minute-long bit on ‘Tussin … which is guaranteed to make you chuckle.
.
If you run out of ‘Tussin, no problem.
Just put some water in the bottle and shake it up.
Just like that … mo’ ‘Tussin … mo’ ‘Tussin
* * * * * OK, back to the Maker’s Mark story …
By now everybody has probably heard that Maker’s Mark bourbon got themselves into a bit of a mess.
The primary cause: runaway sales.
Why’s that a problem?
Well, bourbon whiskey takes a few years to age … and a couple of years ago, Maker’s Mark management bet the under on future demand and didn’t start enough MM flowing through the distilling process.
So, Maker’s Mark can’t meet the market demand.
They can ramp up production, but the new brew won’t be ready for 6 years.
So, what did the jabrones decide to do … and why is it a problem?
When I was a kid, the local school board would biennially warn that football, the band, the honors program and hot lunches would be cut unless a levy was passed to boost real estate taxes.
I remember that – even as a kid – it sounded like a bunch of bull.
Sometimes the levies passed. Sometimes they didn’t.
Regardless of the vote, the stadium lights still glowed bright on Friday nights, the smart kids still got their honors courses, and the cafeteria kept serving up hot slop.
Today’s equivalent of football, band, honors and lunches is Obama’s dire warning that there will be dire consequences if sequestration happens.
Just for openers, the White House says it has no choice but to put the following on the chopping block:
On the horizontal axis is the trend of the variable – getting better or getting worse.
For example, housing is low, but the trajectory is good..
Capital expenditures are fair to midling … with a weak trend.
Overall, Fidelity’s view is fairly good.
Draw your own conclusions … for the individual variables and the gestalt.
* * * * * Position in the Business Cycle
Another Fidelity chart depicts a typical business cycle in stages – recovery, expansion, and contraction … and plots their view of where the U.S. economy is now.
First, I have to admit that I was part of the vast majority of Americans who didn’t watch Obama’s State of the Union address this week.
About 37.75 million viewers watched President Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address, which was aired live across 14 broadcast and cable networks.
That was down 12% from last year’s speech, and down 21% from Obama’s first State of the Union in 2010.
No, I wasn’t watching the LA police torch Christopher Dorner.
I was watching a Castle re-run … and, proud of it.
I am a bit disappointed that I missed Obama refrain his signature line that his free-spending on a smorgasbord of whacky programs “won’t add one dime to the deficit”
Yeah, right.
The GOP was quick to pounce with a commercial showing Obama spin that whopper several time over the years.
In the old days, I didn’t know that the Girl Scouts mission was building “courage, confidence, and character”.
I thought that they were just a highly efficient cookie distribution outfit … good marketing, highly effective sales force, and low cost delivery system.
Well, the Girl Scouts aren’t resting on the laurels.
Girl Scouts of the USA has revamped its business approach, taking innovative measures to broaden customer access and overall appeal.
These girls will stop at nothing to make their sale.…
The Homa Files 
