Children are our most valuable natural resource.
Herbert Hoover
Tweet of the Day
Refugee kerfufle: I noted the Tsarnaevs entered on tourist visas. Friedman points out 60M tourist visits a year..https://t.co/cbCg7INHZJ
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 25, 2015
The fearmongers on the Syrian refugee crisis do their Kabuki dance. It's like the Scouts' lost quarter skit. https://t.co/eClYKyGI4w
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 25, 2015
Republicans seem unsure of how to handle @realDonaldTrump.His biggest weaknesses: unelectable,untested,thin-skinned. https://t.co/GcalFxekWf
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 25, 2015
@realDonaldTrump is like a stubborn crazy old uncle who forwards debunked email hoaxes and claims to have seen uncorroborated things on TV.
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 26, 2015
Now that Cruz has pulled within 2 points of Trump in Iowa, how long do you think it'll take before Trump talks about Cruz' Canadian birth?
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) November 26, 2015
Image of the Day |
| via Libertarian Catholic |
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| via Political Insider |
Libertarianism Defined
Trump's Biggest Idiotic Gaffes Pt. 1 And More
Hall of Shame: The Unprovoked Chicago Police Murder of Laquan McDonald
The shooting appears just after 5 minutes into the video. The 17-year-old victim is clearly veering away from the policeman in question before Van Dyke shoots him 16 times, less than 30 seconds on the scene and 6 seconds after emerging from his car. At no moment did the unarmed McDonald approach Van Dyke.
Facebook Corner
(follow-up to yesterday's IPI discussion of the KY governor-elect's proposal to switch new employees to a defined contribution plan vs. pensions--and how KY, like IL, had shortchanged the pension system over the past decade, exacerbating the funding base)
No, I finally figured out what [discussant] was objecting to, and all the rest of you are wrong. In my response, I assumed that he was objecting to the claim that the pension haven't been fully-funded since FY2002, which is the core point. He was really objecting to the blurb statement "Officials shortchanged the plan for more than a decade. ", although his first comment about 2001 and 2002 is entirely irrelevant to the blurb, and he seems to be assuming an employer match constituted the necessary employer contribution. If you read the entire article, you would know the main point was around the recessions--which is especially key because of a double whammy of a shrinking pension fund and poor contributions. I'm not sure how Kentucky did this--it could be they deferred funding to later years like Illinois did.
However, a major point is that stock market yields, despite recent gains, have been anemic since 2000; on an inflation-adjusted basis, the S&P and Nasdaq are actually down. When your model calls for 7.5% investment gains, you're in a world of hurt. I believe that private pension plans use a more conservative 4% return. What basically this means in practice is the employer needs to kick in more to compensate for inadequate gains. Think that states, in recessionary times with shrunken tax revenues, are actually going to kick in more? Not likely given the nature of political whores. I do think the quoted authority is wrong when he tacitly assumes that the issue is simply employer contributions are the reason KY's pension plans are in trouble--I think it has more to do with a bloated retiree base and anemic economic growth since 2000. Certainly missing contributions hurt, but [discussant's] point that KY kicked in certain years vs. others is not material to the major point..
(responding to a pensioner troll arguing this is how politicians "stole" their retirement)
No, it's not "stolen"; it was deferred. The obligation doesn't go away. It was never successfully financed in the first place. The political whores never financed a retirement that potentially meant half-pay or more for up to 3 decades or more, even longer than their active work career. The private sector generally phased out of pensions starting in the 1980's based on the financing. The problem here is that public sector governments have started seeing contributions multiply, in some places tripling or quadrupling in just over a dozen years; it's to the point of crowding out essential services.
(Drudge Report). Retired Marine Kicked Off Flight For Being Overweight.
It's incredible how many flight attendants, like in this case, don't know how to resolve the most basic problems. It reminds me of the time I had been assigned one of those immovable seats in front of a plane bulwark. The asshole in front of me reclined his seat right into my personal space. I was all but immobilized; I couldn't even stretch out my arms. So I pushed back, and it went back and forth until he flagged the no-nonsense Nazi stewardess who was insistent that the asshole had an absolute right to invade my personal space--and explicitly threatened to have me deplaned. Luckily one of her saner colleagues found a tiny person willing to trade seats with me. I was not happy that they didn't make the SOB switch seats--after all, the fact that my row's seats couldn't recline made the problem worse, but it's insane that he had a right I didn't have and lacked common courtesy.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Eric Allie via IPI |
Aretha Franklin, "Something He Can Feel". This concludes my retrospective of the Queen of Soul through the 1970's and is a logical stopping point for my annual holiday music hiatus. There are a few hits in the 1980's I want to cover when we resume the series after New Year's.
