My column, "Winds of Change in the Post Obama Workplace", appears in the February issue of the AICPA's Career Insider newsletter.
>On December 29, 2008 then President-elect Obama announced his choice of Hilda Solis as Secretary of Labor. On January 6, the first session of the 111th Congress convened. Wasting little time, three days later the House of Representatives passed the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (FPA) and the Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA), two important changes to workplace regulation. Because of the economy’s parlous condition, there had been speculation during the campaign as to the priority President Obama would give to these and other labor-supported proposals. The House has hastened to pass them, perhaps to test the President’s mettle.
>Besides the FPA and the PFA, some of the workplace-related bills discussed during last year’s campaign were changes to labor law under the Employee Free Choice Act; increases and indexing of the minimum wage; the Healthy Family Act; and extensions to the Family and Medical Leave Act. The list is controversial, and the changes will affect accounting industry firms and employees.
Read the whole thing here.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Black Republicans Just Say "No" To Socialism
I just received the following from Frances Rice of the National Black Republican Association:
In a moment that will live in infamy, President Barack Hussein Obama fostered upon America a gigantic Socialist Stimulus Bill that will plunge America deeply into the failed Euro-socialist psychosis.
Obama conjured up images of the Great Depression to intimidate the US Congress into voting for his $787 billion pork-laden stimulus bill that was crafted in the dead of night by liberal Democrats and read by no member of Congress before they voted the next day. Now, economists are revealing that Obama's Depression analogy is historically false and fearmongering at its worse. History shows that FDR's New Deal blocked recovery and plunged our nation into a deeper recession. What really got us out of the Great Depression was World War Two.
Click below to read the article "The Real Lessons of the Great Depression" by Michael Barone.
http://townhall.com/columnists/MichaelBarone/2009/02/14/the_real_lessons_of_the_great_depression
Click below to read the article "Obama's Rhetoric Is the Real 'Catastrophe'" by Bradley R. Schiller.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123457303244386495.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
When Democrats voted for that bloated stimulus bill to reward their special interests and fund every kooky item on their socialist agenda, they sold out America for a bag full of our tax dollars -- their 30 pieces of silver. No Republican in the US House of Representatives voted for that bill. In the US Senate, only three moderate Republicans voted with the Democrats to saddle our future generations with a massive budget deficit.
Obama's cruelest slap was on the face of black Americans. Buried in the bowels of that big government spending bill is a poison pill that kills welfare reform. Welfare money will no longer be used for job training, child care or transportation. Instead, the money will now, once again, be just a government handout that keeps black children trapped in generational poverty. Uncle Sam has replaced the father in the homes of poor blacks because you cannot get a welfare check if there is a man in the house. Democrats have been running black communities for the past 40 years. The socialist polices of the Democrats have created a culture of dependency on government handouts and turned black communities into economic and social wastelands. Socialism is a moral and economic cancer that destroys families, communities and nations.
Hidden deeply in the stimulus package is funding for social engineering programs that can become the seeds for Obama to become our first American dictator. An Obama supporter put up a sign that says: "One Nation Under Obama". That sign is a chilling look into the world of Obama where America is no longer "One Nation Under God".
For the 233 years of our nation's existence, our rights came from God, not man. The Declaration of Independence signed on July 4, 1776 declares: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
In the year 2009, we find ourselves faced with a serious question. Will we, the people of the United States of America, consent to having Obama as our god and leave it to him to dictate what rights we will have?
With the fawning media refusing to hold Obama accountable, Congress in control of Democrats and Obama poised to appoint extreme left-wingers to the US Supreme Court, there will be no check on Obama's power – except we, the people.
While telling us to be "civil", Obama uses fear and intimidation to silence his critics and seize unprecedented power over our lives and every aspect of our entire economy – our banks, automotive industry, airlines, food, drugs, education system, public health, energy production, science, and media broadcasts. Obama wants to plant our nation's feet so firmly in the concrete of dead-end socialism that America will never recover and never again be the land of the free.
Will we fight for our freedom, using the non-violent means of Republican Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., or will we cower like cowards out of fear of being called "racist" or "divisive" and allow our country to be turned into a failed socialist nation?
Will we follow the courageous example of civil rights heroine Rosa Parks who refused to sit on the back of the segregated bus, or will we sit like sheep with our heads bowed on the back of Obama's socialist bus?
We, as American citizens, have three powerful tools we can use o fight against Obama's socialism – our money, our time and our vote.
Money Talks. We can cancel our subscriptions to liberal newspapers and magazines. We can make our lives a "TARP FREE ZONE" by refusing to put our money in banks or buy products from manufacturers that take TARP Two money. We can donate to Republican candidates and Republican organizations. Be creative in deciding how to use your money to fight for the soul of America.
Time Chalks. We can participate in "No To Socialism" protest rallies in our cities and our nation's capitol. We can write letters of protest to President Obama and our members of Congress. We can chalk up time as volunteers with our local Republican Party organizations.
Voters Walk. We can refuse to vote for any Democrat running for Congress in 2010 because doing so keeps liberal Democrats in control of Congress. In 2012, we can refuse to vote for a Democrat to be our president.
Wake up America. Fight for what is right. Just say NO to Socialism!
Click here for more information about the National Black Republican Association
In a moment that will live in infamy, President Barack Hussein Obama fostered upon America a gigantic Socialist Stimulus Bill that will plunge America deeply into the failed Euro-socialist psychosis.
Obama conjured up images of the Great Depression to intimidate the US Congress into voting for his $787 billion pork-laden stimulus bill that was crafted in the dead of night by liberal Democrats and read by no member of Congress before they voted the next day. Now, economists are revealing that Obama's Depression analogy is historically false and fearmongering at its worse. History shows that FDR's New Deal blocked recovery and plunged our nation into a deeper recession. What really got us out of the Great Depression was World War Two.
Click below to read the article "The Real Lessons of the Great Depression" by Michael Barone.
http://townhall.com/columnists/MichaelBarone/2009/02/14/the_real_lessons_of_the_great_depression
Click below to read the article "Obama's Rhetoric Is the Real 'Catastrophe'" by Bradley R. Schiller.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123457303244386495.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
When Democrats voted for that bloated stimulus bill to reward their special interests and fund every kooky item on their socialist agenda, they sold out America for a bag full of our tax dollars -- their 30 pieces of silver. No Republican in the US House of Representatives voted for that bill. In the US Senate, only three moderate Republicans voted with the Democrats to saddle our future generations with a massive budget deficit.
Obama's cruelest slap was on the face of black Americans. Buried in the bowels of that big government spending bill is a poison pill that kills welfare reform. Welfare money will no longer be used for job training, child care or transportation. Instead, the money will now, once again, be just a government handout that keeps black children trapped in generational poverty. Uncle Sam has replaced the father in the homes of poor blacks because you cannot get a welfare check if there is a man in the house. Democrats have been running black communities for the past 40 years. The socialist polices of the Democrats have created a culture of dependency on government handouts and turned black communities into economic and social wastelands. Socialism is a moral and economic cancer that destroys families, communities and nations.
Hidden deeply in the stimulus package is funding for social engineering programs that can become the seeds for Obama to become our first American dictator. An Obama supporter put up a sign that says: "One Nation Under Obama". That sign is a chilling look into the world of Obama where America is no longer "One Nation Under God".
For the 233 years of our nation's existence, our rights came from God, not man. The Declaration of Independence signed on July 4, 1776 declares: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
In the year 2009, we find ourselves faced with a serious question. Will we, the people of the United States of America, consent to having Obama as our god and leave it to him to dictate what rights we will have?
With the fawning media refusing to hold Obama accountable, Congress in control of Democrats and Obama poised to appoint extreme left-wingers to the US Supreme Court, there will be no check on Obama's power – except we, the people.
While telling us to be "civil", Obama uses fear and intimidation to silence his critics and seize unprecedented power over our lives and every aspect of our entire economy – our banks, automotive industry, airlines, food, drugs, education system, public health, energy production, science, and media broadcasts. Obama wants to plant our nation's feet so firmly in the concrete of dead-end socialism that America will never recover and never again be the land of the free.
Will we fight for our freedom, using the non-violent means of Republican Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., or will we cower like cowards out of fear of being called "racist" or "divisive" and allow our country to be turned into a failed socialist nation?
Will we follow the courageous example of civil rights heroine Rosa Parks who refused to sit on the back of the segregated bus, or will we sit like sheep with our heads bowed on the back of Obama's socialist bus?
We, as American citizens, have three powerful tools we can use o fight against Obama's socialism – our money, our time and our vote.
Money Talks. We can cancel our subscriptions to liberal newspapers and magazines. We can make our lives a "TARP FREE ZONE" by refusing to put our money in banks or buy products from manufacturers that take TARP Two money. We can donate to Republican candidates and Republican organizations. Be creative in deciding how to use your money to fight for the soul of America.
Time Chalks. We can participate in "No To Socialism" protest rallies in our cities and our nation's capitol. We can write letters of protest to President Obama and our members of Congress. We can chalk up time as volunteers with our local Republican Party organizations.
Voters Walk. We can refuse to vote for any Democrat running for Congress in 2010 because doing so keeps liberal Democrats in control of Congress. In 2012, we can refuse to vote for a Democrat to be our president.
Wake up America. Fight for what is right. Just say NO to Socialism!
Click here for more information about the National Black Republican Association
Wealth, Not Politics, Drives Declining Birth Rate: Lessons for Immigration
A thought occurred to me: might the declining birth rates in Europe result from socialist ideology? I went to the web and extracted per capita gdp from the CIA Fact Book and the Freedom Index from the Heritage Foundation (the freest countries are Hong Kong and Singapore; the least free Cuba, Zimbabwe and North Korea; the US is sixth--overrated in my opinion since the bailout and the Patriot Act). I also obtained a list of fertility rates from Wikipedia.
I entered the data into an SAS program. SAS is a statistical program that social scientists use to analyze basic statistics.
What I found is that there is a hyperbolic graphic relationship between gdp per capita and birth rate. The variables can be linearized by taking the natural logarithms. There is also a weaker curvilenear relationship between overall freedom and birthrate. However, the direction of causality appears to flow from income to political freedom to birthrate (for the effect on birthrate, not for the development of high income, which reflects a different processs).
The political freedom variable is negative and significant when correlated with birthrate: more freedom is associated with lower birth rates. However, that relationship is blown away by gdp per capita. When both gdp per capita and freedom are included in a regression, the freedom variable has zero effect while the gdp per capita variable has a huge effect. The r squared or measure of fit is pretty strong for gdp, in the area of .6. That is, 60% of the variability in countries' birth rates is due to economic output.
This would seem to have some lessons for immigration. In countries, like France, where immigrants are not able to easily commingle with the general population and remain low income, the foreign culture would likely grow in influence over time because of the immigrants' lower income level. In contrast, where the immigrants are integrated into society and so acquire the same economic productivity over a few generations, they are likely to adopt the same fertility rate (and one might suppose the same culture in other ways).
Education that encourages and celebrates ethnic differences rather than the "melting pot" theory can give way to divergent economic outcomes as people of a poorer culture cling to their poverty-inducing habits. This would result in higher birthrates and social conflict between the slower-growing but more affluent majority group and the faster-growing but less affluent immigrant group.
It would seem that the educational system ought to take seriously its obligation to encourage the adoption of skills by which all children can equally become economically successful. Then factors like birth rates will not become threatening to the majority culture, as they have in culturally exclusionary Europe.
Europe's problem is that they have adopted a politically correct approach to immigration without dropping their snobby cultural attitudes. If you want to have immigration, you should be practical and open minded, not snobby and exclusionary.
I entered the data into an SAS program. SAS is a statistical program that social scientists use to analyze basic statistics.
What I found is that there is a hyperbolic graphic relationship between gdp per capita and birth rate. The variables can be linearized by taking the natural logarithms. There is also a weaker curvilenear relationship between overall freedom and birthrate. However, the direction of causality appears to flow from income to political freedom to birthrate (for the effect on birthrate, not for the development of high income, which reflects a different processs).
The political freedom variable is negative and significant when correlated with birthrate: more freedom is associated with lower birth rates. However, that relationship is blown away by gdp per capita. When both gdp per capita and freedom are included in a regression, the freedom variable has zero effect while the gdp per capita variable has a huge effect. The r squared or measure of fit is pretty strong for gdp, in the area of .6. That is, 60% of the variability in countries' birth rates is due to economic output.
This would seem to have some lessons for immigration. In countries, like France, where immigrants are not able to easily commingle with the general population and remain low income, the foreign culture would likely grow in influence over time because of the immigrants' lower income level. In contrast, where the immigrants are integrated into society and so acquire the same economic productivity over a few generations, they are likely to adopt the same fertility rate (and one might suppose the same culture in other ways).
Education that encourages and celebrates ethnic differences rather than the "melting pot" theory can give way to divergent economic outcomes as people of a poorer culture cling to their poverty-inducing habits. This would result in higher birthrates and social conflict between the slower-growing but more affluent majority group and the faster-growing but less affluent immigrant group.
It would seem that the educational system ought to take seriously its obligation to encourage the adoption of skills by which all children can equally become economically successful. Then factors like birth rates will not become threatening to the majority culture, as they have in culturally exclusionary Europe.
Europe's problem is that they have adopted a politically correct approach to immigration without dropping their snobby cultural attitudes. If you want to have immigration, you should be practical and open minded, not snobby and exclusionary.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Break Out the Champagne--New York Times Stock Sinks to $3.65/Share
Previous Close: $3.77 (2/17/09)
Open: $3.78
Bid: NA
Ask: NA
Day's Range: $3.65 - $3.83
52 Week High: $21.14 (4/25/08)
52 Week Low: $3.65 (2/18/09)
Markets do work. Too bad we didn't sell short. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger seems to be mismanaging his inherited firm into the ground. The Times reports that Carlos Slim Helú has lent the firm $250 million to help it pay off debts in light of flagging readership. The Times stock sold on the market is non-voting. Only the Ochs Sulzbergers, who advocate inheritance taxes for everyone but themselves, have voting stock.
The question is not so much when the Times will fold, but rather, whether anyone will care (other than Mr. Helú and the Ochs Sulzbergers) when it does. (H/t Howard S. Katz.)
Open: $3.78
Bid: NA
Ask: NA
Day's Range: $3.65 - $3.83
52 Week High: $21.14 (4/25/08)
52 Week Low: $3.65 (2/18/09)
Markets do work. Too bad we didn't sell short. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger seems to be mismanaging his inherited firm into the ground. The Times reports that Carlos Slim Helú has lent the firm $250 million to help it pay off debts in light of flagging readership. The Times stock sold on the market is non-voting. Only the Ochs Sulzbergers, who advocate inheritance taxes for everyone but themselves, have voting stock.
The question is not so much when the Times will fold, but rather, whether anyone will care (other than Mr. Helú and the Ochs Sulzbergers) when it does. (H/t Howard S. Katz.)
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