Fat Gov. Salaries and Other Things You Pay For

Posted by Jack

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK – Examples #14,012,345/346

77,000 federal employees earn more than the governor of the state in which they work.    More than 77,000 federal government employees throughout the country — including computer operators, more than 5,000 air traffic controllers, 22 librarians and one interior designer — earned more than the governors of the states in which they work.  This according to the Washington Times.   Click here for more info.

CA has at least one $822,000 worker, and we also lead the nation in high state salaries.  Nine years ago, California Democrat Gray Davis became the first U.S. governor in 82 years to be recalled by voters. The state’s 20 million taxpayers still bear the cost of his four years and 10 months on the job.  Davis escalated salaries and benefits for 164,000 state workers, including a 34 percent raise for prison guards, the first of a series of steps in which he and successors saddled California with a legacy of dysfunction. Today, the state’s highest-paid employees make far more than comparable workers elsewhere in almost all job and wage categories, from public safety to health care, base pay to overtime.   Click here for more info.

Gov. Jerry Brown today announced two appointments to the California Public Employment Relations Board.  Both jobs pay $128,109 per year and require Senate confirmation. The five-member board administers the collective bargaining laws that cover state, local and regional public employees in California.  Both are democrats.  Click here for more info.

BEST AND WORST:  According to a 2012 study by 24/7 Wall Street, California is the worst run state  taking into account debt per capita, budget deficits, unemployment, median  household income, and the percentage of the percentage of the population below  the poverty line. The best run state is North Dakota.  Read more here.   


The chart below represents how much of the state’s budget comes from the  federal government. The number is the corresponding ranking in relation to the  rest of the nation (if #1, the state receives the highest percentage of federal  funding in the nation):

State 2008 2009 2010 2011
California 26.99% (#33) 32.49% (#29) 34.48% (#33) 32.38% (#37)

 

 

 

 

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Three Year Old Searched by TSA

By Todd Starnes / FOX NEWS

A Missouri couple is furious after the Transportation Security Administration  detained their wheelchair-bound three-year-old daughter, took away her stuffed  doll, and refused to allow them to videotape agents patting her down.

“They treated her like a criminal,” said Nathan Forck. “And by extension they  were treating us as criminals.”

The TSA did not return phone calls or emails seeking comment.

The incident happened on Feb. 9th at Lambert-St. Louis International  Airport.   Forck and his wife Annie, along with their three children were heading to  Disney World for a family vacation. Lucy, their three-year-old, has Spina bifida  and is confined to a wheelchair.   The family managed to make it through the TSA checkpoint without any  problems. But as they prepared to walk to their gate, a TSA agent pulled aside  Lucy for additional screening measures.

“They specifically told me that they were singling her out for this special  treatment because she’s in a wheelchair,” he told Fox News. “They are  specifically singling out disabled people for this special scrutiny. It’s rather  offensive to me as a father of a disabled child.”

The agent said they needed to pat down Lucy and swab her wheelchair – even  though both had already gone through the checkpoint.  Forck’s wife started filming the entire episode – over the objections of the  TSA agent.   “You can’t do touch my daughter unless I record it,” she can be heard telling  the agent.

The agent replied by telling the parents “It is illegal to do that.”   “The problem is, I don’t allow anyone to touch my little daughter,” Annie  Forck said.  The Forcks refused to stop filming and soon, the young family was surrounded  by TSA agents – one specifically assigned to guard Lucy.   “It’s your worst nightmare,” Forck said. “It’s bad enough they are demanding  they want to pat down my child and didn’t want me to videotape it.”   Forck, who is an attorney, said he knew enough about the law to know it was  perfectly legal to videotape.

“That set off alarm bells,” he said.   At some point the agents confiscated Lucy’s stuffed toy, “Lamby” – reducing  the child to tears.   “She was crying for her stuffed animal which they wouldn’t let her have for  the longest time,” he said. “It’s only about a half foot long. It’s a lamb down  that talks – but she loves it.”  As TSA agents discussed what they were going to do, the video shows Lucy  weeping uncontrollably.  “I don’t want to go Disney World,” she screamed as her parents tried to offer  reassurances.

Read more: http://www.myfoxdc.com/story/21284073/tsa-detains-3-year-old-in-wheelchair#ixzz2LSiKEpzp

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Obama Makes Another Mistake – The $9 minimum Wage

By Jack Lee

Minimum wage hikes hurt the poor – not help them.  How many times do we have to go over this?   Almost anyone who has passed a high school government class should know how this works, when you raise the minimum wage it raises the cost of everything else.  This is one of the ways we get inflation.   The working guy never wins from inflati0n.  However, in the very early stage of a minimum wage hike we see the poorest workers get hammered first and worst.   Their hours are either cut back, or they get laid off,  or they are tasked to do more (more productivity) because those wages must be in line with the profit margin.   In some cases of cut backs this will mean their health insurance is cancelled because they are not getting in enough hours.   An expensive minimum wage has a direct impact of reducing the available number of jobs in the workforce…starting with those on the bottom rung.  it’s always been like that and why Obama can’t figure this out is shocking!

The only people who like the minimum wage increase are the big Unions who have a contract with their employers to keep a certain parity spread with the prevailing minimum wage.  Minimum wage goes up 10%, then high end hourly wages in the union often go right up 10% too, and that keeps the parity spread.

So, Obama is not really helping anyone by boosting the minimum wage, except for the unions who helped pay to get him elected.   The poor Obama is supposed to be helping will most definitely get hammered just like the always do.  Every single time this wage goes up, we drop more jobs from the labor force.  And often times this results in automation so employers won’t have to deal with a costly employee anymore…ever.  Jobs lost.   And how does all this help the struggling entry level worker?  Better ask Obama, because I sure don’t know.

This is a little off topic, but it’s too bad we have so many slavish devotee’s in the news media or else more people would be hearing about the downside to minimum wage hikes.

If Barry keeps up his financial blunders I’m thinking he will go down in history as America’s worst president.  He sure is racking up a long list!   Hey, while we’re talking money, uh, does anyone want to buy some of my Solyndra stock… cheap?


Related articles   http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/02/obamas_minimum_wage_increase_fallacy.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/merrillmatthews/2013/02/19/its-not-just-the-minimum-wage-its-also-the-health-insurance-mandate/

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865573603/The-great-minimum-wage-debate-how-Obamas-proposal-to-increase-the-minimum-wage-will-impact-the.html


 

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Changing Demographics, Lack of Planning, Bad Candidates, Bad Performance . . .

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UPDATE FOR PS READERS

We’re glad you found us and if this is your first trip to PS let me explain our mission.  We’re a free speech podium where we welcome all points of view.  Tina and I post regularly on issues of the day and we encourage you to submit your comments.   If we disagree you may be challenged to defend your position, but it’s done in the spirit of getting as much information out on a topic as may be needed to form an intelligent opinion.

Would you like to submit something more than your comments?  If so, put it in comments and title it “For Submission”.  We’ll take a look at it and if it meets our journalistic standards it will appear here on page 1.

    NOTE TO TINA G: You need to send Jack an email ASAP!!!!
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Women in Combat

by Jack Lee

There’s no rule forbidding women from playing in the NFL, but we don’t see women on the playing field because of the competitive selection process, it’s nothing personal.  Women are physically different from men.  That’s reality and political correctness is going to change that reality. 

I’ve seen quite a few women who look like men and deliberately so, but no matter how much that ”butch” woman may like a man, she’s still not a man and lacks the physical attributes (especially in upper body strength) that average male has that makes him far better equipped to physical needs in the NFL or even in combat.   Granted, it’s unfortunate that women are not in any number of other male dominated sports earning the big bucks men do, but it’s not because of an infringement on their human rights!   A man measuring 5′ 2″ is not going to be playing in the NBA  and a one legged guy is not going to play pro-soccer…this is just reality.

Women in combat:

While the majority of jobs in the armed forces are 100% open to men and women there are some which women are not physically suited for and the infantry is one of them.  It’s a medical fact that women’s bodies begin to degrade under prolonged combat stress much faster than their male counterparts.   In a few days of field combat a women’s physiology is already starting to break down and within a very short time after that, it’s to the point that they are no longer an effective combat force.   In combat the first thing a women encounters is the lack of adequate female hygiene and discomfort begins and takes a toll on performance.  The required combat load is so heavy it breaks down ankles, tears at tendons and stressed the spine to the point of intolerable pain.

USMC Officer, Katie Petronio writes, “Infantry is one of those fields we need to leave alone.”   Petronio was just back from Afghanistan last year — where she worked shoulder to shoulder with infantrymen — when she heard people arguing that it was a violation of rights to restrict women from combat.  “The rights advocates missed the point,” she said.

“It would just keep me up at night when I’d heard these bleeps or opinions,” Petronio said. “I felt if I didn’t do anything about it that my silence was consent and if this would’ve have passed, I wouldn’t have done my due diligence in getting my point across.”

She was compelled to write what became a widely cited article in the privately published Marine Corp Gazette titled “Get Over It! We Are Not All Created Equal.”  In that article she wrote… “By the fifth month into the deployment, I had muscle atrophy in my thighs that was causing me to constantly trip and my legs to buckle with the slightest grade change,” she wrote. “My agility during firefights and mobility on and off vehicles and perimeter walls was seriously hindering my response time and overall capability. It was evident that stress and muscular deterioration was affecting everyone regardless of gender; however, the rate of my deterioration was noticeably faster than that of male Marines and further compounded by gender-specific medical conditions.” She lost 17 pounds on an already lean body.

“Can women endure the physical and physiological rigors of sustained combat operations,” she wrote, “and are we willing to accept the attrition and medical issues that go along with integration?”

Even though she was a standout Bowdoin athlete and could bench press 145 pounds and squat 200 pounds, was ranked 4th out of a class of 52 in Officer Candidate School and excelled at Marine Corps fitness tests, Petronio’s deployment in combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan took a brutal toll on her 5-foot-3-inch body.

I think we can agree that integration of women into the military service is perfectly acceptable so long as they are competent in their selected role. Performance is all that matters, especially in combat where soldiers lives often depend on their weakest link. Even if a women could meet the physical standards, which has never been shown to be the case, what about sexual harassment, moral and unit cohesion? Can you see the potential for problems here and with sexual assaults or gender specific special treatment that might create jealousy? Do you think soldiers place themselves at high risk to defend the female soldier or their assigned position? Common sense tells us these answers.

The military demands readiness and pregnancy can sure affect the deployability of a unit when they have a disproportionate number of women or is understaffed thanks to women on pregnancy leave. And what about abuse by enemy? Today our enemy is radical Islam and prisoners are at grave risk of torture, but misogynistic Islamic societies are willing to abuse, rape and torture women prisoners without much restraint. When women are integrated into a combat unit, it’s easy to lose sight of the unit’s objectives and focus on protecting their women from a barbaric and cruel enemy.

Women can have a role in the military and thanks to high technology deployed on the battlefield, technical expertise and decision-making skills are increasingly more valuable than simple brute strength. Women can participate effectively at the command level, but not effectively at the field level and that’s just a reality some people can seem to grasp, even in the Pentagon.

It’s true that career advancement in the military is aided with combat experience, but this is based on logic as it should be. Advance should not be influenced political correctness for fear of being called sexist.  However, it’s fair and it’s right that advancement is based on proven experience and ability…period.

The bottom line…. women are unsuited for field combat, they are a liability not an asset.  Use them where they can do something appropriate to their talents and abilities, but keep them out of direct combat or we will be taking uncessary risks for the sake of politics.

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The Truth About Gun Violence in America

    President Obama is trying to curb murders and violence with a universal background check and a ban on assault weapons?  Good luck with that one Barry!

There’s no excuse for the president to mislead the American people on gun violence.   Study after study concludes that gun registration, gun background checks and gun bans have virtually no effect on the illegal use of guns by criminals.   I’m going to make reference to some of those studies below.  But, when it comes to liberals like Obama, never mind the facts, it’s politically correctness that matters most.   For them, it’s all their long held fear and hatred of guns that keeps them obsessed with destroying the 2nd Amendment.   They could care less about facts or even real solutions for solving violence in America…they only care about seizing guns and placating the idiots that support them.   This is a travesty to every thinking American regardless of your politics or if you own a gun.   You don’t deserve to be treated this way and this article has many of the facts you will need to refute these gun-grabbers, who will only be making matter worse if they have their way.

I want to address this straight to the President, on the off chance some it may actually reach him, but just as importantly I’m writing this for our local (liberal) legislators to consider.   I know, I know, they are probably just as intransigent and unreachable as Obama,  but I have to try!   Please feel free to follow along with me and lets go over the facts and forget mere opinions:

 

Dear Mr. President,  we’re not buying what you’re selling.  I’m talking about your goofy ideas for new gun control laws.  We know the facts Mr. President.  We know that during 2002-03,  17 million background checks resulted in only 154 people prosecuted for trying to buy a firearm illegally…154 in the whole USA, Mr President!  How are universal background checks going to help lower the gang killing, the armed holdups, or crazies shooting people with illegally obtained weapons?

Mr. President, your own federal Justice Department investigation said the “vast majority” of background denials under the federal check system were issued to people who are not “a danger to the public because the prohibiting factors are often minor or based on incidents that occurred many years in the past.  As examples of such, agents stated that denials have been issued due to a 1941 felony conviction for stealing a pig and a 1969 felony conviction for stealing hubcaps.  The same investigation audited 200 background check denials and found that 8% of denied applicants were not prohibited from lawfully possessing a firearm.  During 2008, applicants appealed about 19% of the 70,725 background check denials issued that year. Of these, about 23% were later overturned and the applications approved.  Mr. President, how do these statistics add up in any way to curbing gun violence?   

Mr. President do you not know that California already has a universal background check in effect and yet some of the most violence prone cities anywhere are right here in California?   California’s statewide homicide rate didn’t flinch a bit when the state legislature passed a plethora of gun-ban laws, including banning all kinds of so-called assault weapons, large capacity magazines among other things.   All California accomplished was to make a lot of otherwise honest citizens into criminals because they might be out technical compliance.  

Your home town of Chicago has some of the toughest gun laws in the country, yet they also have the highest murder rate in the nation.   Washington D.C is no safer….and D.C. has a law that says handguns are prohibited.  And what about the facts that so-called assault weapons play a tiny role in homicides, they are barely 1.5% of the homicide statistic.  What does that tell you Barry?  It’s tells us you don’t have a clue about how to lower murder rates.   Your legislation proposal is in a word… stupid.  And only stupid people could possibly fall for it. 

Here are some helpful facts Mr. President, read them if you dare:

In 2012 Chicago had 512 homicides; Detroit had 411; Philadelphia had 331; and Baltimore had 215.  Those cities are joined by other dangerous cities—such as St. Louis, Memphis, Tenn., Flint, Mich., and Camden, N.J. — and they also lead the nation in shootings, assaults, rapes and robberies.  Both the populations of those cities and their crime victims are predominantly black.  Each year, more than 7,000 blacks are murdered, mostly by blacks.  That’s the ugly truth NOBODY in the leftwing media wants to speak about because it will offend to many within their own ranks. 

Black Victims:

  • Close to 100% of the time, the murderer is another black person.
  • According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011, there were 279,384 black murder victims.
  • Though blacks are 13% of the nation’s population, they account for more than 50% of homicide victims.

Nationally, the black homicide victimization rate is six times that of whites, and in some cities, it’s 22 times that of whites.

Coupled with being most of the nation’s homicide victims, blacks are also most of the victims of violent personal crimes, such as assault and robbery.

The magnitude of this tragedy can be seen in another light. According to a Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute study, between 1882 and 1968, 3,446 blacks were lynched at the hands of whites.

What percentage of murders, irrespective of race, are committed with what are being called assault weapons?  You’d be hard pressed to come up with an amount greater than 2%. In fact, according to FBI data from 2011, there were 323 murders committed with a rifle of any kind but 496 murders committed with a hammer or a club.

The feds can’t do much about hammers, clubs, fists or pistols, but by exploiting public ignorance, they might have a bit of success getting an “assault weapon” ban that will have little impact on violent crime.

There it is Mr. President… you have been put on record with the facts.  And to our readers who have been following along, I say, please…please… contact your Representatives’ in Congress.  Send them your opinions or this article.  Demand they address the REAL problem with violence where it exists!   Tell them… these foolish and dangerous attempts to erode our Constitutional freedoms must stop!  Challenge them to do something about it NOW or tell them to get out of the way and let somebody in there who can!   We’re not going to take it anymore – we demand action.  

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The Great Divide in Society Threatens Our Future

by Jack 

When you think about the divide between the have and have not you naturally think in terms of wealth, however there’s another divide and it’s far more serious to our future. 

A scientific study by Stanford University researcher and professor of pathology and developmental biology, Gerald Crabtree, shows a pronounced decline in our collective brain power. Crabtree’s study says our intelligence curve started to go down several thousand years ago with the invention of tools that impartially extended the lives of the clever and the not-so-clever. I’ve always thought dumb was on the rise, but now a Stanford research project has confirmed it.

Humans are slowly accumulating genetic mutations that will have a deleterious effect on both our intellect and emotional stability. The reason, he believes, is the relative lack of selective pressure during the past 3,000 years. He begins boldly:

I would wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000 BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions, with a good memory, a broad range of ideas, and a clear-sighted view of important issues. Furthermore, I would guess that he or she would be among the most emotionally stable of our friends and colleagues.

It’s an intriguing point. I’ve recently been re-educating myself about ancient Greek history,and I’ve been newly amazed about the breadth and depth of the philosophy and ideas propounded by people thousands of years ago.

Crabtree calculates that between 2,000 to 5,000 genes are likely required to maintain optimal intellectual acuity and emotional well-being. Extending his theory, it’s likely that we’ve each accumulated at least two harmful mutations during the intervening millennia.   According to Crabtree:

It is also likely that the need for intelligence was reduced as we began to live in supportive societies that made up for lapses of judgment or failures of comprehension. Community life would, I believe, tend to reduce the selective pressure placed on every individual, every day of their life.

After reading Crabtree’s paper the first two questions that came to mind were, if we’re getting dumber how would we know? And, “…so why aren’t smart people breeding more?”

Despite the best efforts of our government to protect everyone from everything, we seem to be leading the world in terms of dangerous dumbness. I think there’s a nexus here, perhaps with all our safety nets we’re making it too easy for the dumb not to become a Darwinian statistic?

 The headlines are filled with all sorts dumbness, “SWAT team raids wrong house”,  “Burglars tunnel into doughnut shop, miss bank”  and this gem…”Residents of an Ohio town found themselves running for cover yesterday, when their neighbors unwittingly sprayed their homes with bullets while target shooting with AK-47s.” See what I mean? We didn’t really need that study to tell us we’re in trouble now did we?

Unfortunately, the people among us that engage in stupid behavior also tend to be the most likely to have babies (immediate gratification types with no accountability for their actions).  Which comes back to one of my first thoughts,  is it really that tough for smart people to find a match so they too can have babies?   I suppose it doesn’t help that smart people tend to be somewhat quirky and socially awkward with the opposite sex. But, it’s difficult not to be awkward when todays role models think a drunken menage a trois is perfectly acceptable behavior.  These people could be a sports hero or a politician, and Holltwood types…forget it, they are the poster children for stupid, reckless behavior.   But, it’s especially disconcerting when it’s our leaders in Washington are the ones lowering the bar, both mentally and morally.

Ironically, as all this dumbness is going on right when we’re in an age of unprecedented access to so much education,  thanks in part to the internet. You would think the internet would be a grand tool to raise our collective brain power exponentially, right?  Not reall.   Rather than profiting from this information bonanza, we’re using it more for playing games, for porn addicts, or tweeting or twitting…even the bright kids fall prey to these abuses.   As a result of centuries of dilluting the ol gene pool, our current society is suffering from a sort of arrested development.

What I’ve learned from Crabtree’s research can be summed up like this: The village idiots are breeding like rabbits and the geeks aren’t.  Some day soon the idiots are going to represent such large portion of us that even the most brilliant and wealthy givers won’t be able to support them.  Hey, wait a sec, that sounds just like the majority of people in California.

There’s our great divide and it can’t be solved by anything Occupy Wall Street has to offer or the liberals in Washington.

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POST SCRIPTS IS BACK ON!

WE ARE BACK!!!  It’s been way too long and we sincerely apologize for our sudden departure though it was through no fault of our own.  Tina and I were suddenly locked out of posting new articles and it took days for us to find out this was due to a system wide software failure.  All the Er blogs went down and corporate was having puter troubles too.  Was it a Chinese cyber-attack?  Who knows, we only know the system crashed and burned.  Worse, we had no way to use PS to notify you that the blog system was breaking down.   That part was really frustrating and we thank you for your calls and emails of concern. 

We tried to get the ER to publish a notice to tell you, but I think they were more concerned about getting the online edition working right.   So, for those of you that we could reach by email, we notified you personally, but the rest of our friends were kept waiting in the dark…just like us.  We had no idea when it would be fixed and we were at the complete mercy of the I-T Dept.   Why it took so long is now a moot point, the important thing is we’re back and we have all new blog software, yippee!!!!  Hopefully it’s better than that glitz prone junk we were using, that was the worst.  

I know…this was a really strange deal and again, we apologize, but hopefully the new site will be better for all concerned and we’ll [all] get back into the swing of things.

We’ve got a lot to say and many new and exciting stories coming your way.  I’m busy typing away with my two typing fingers right now, working on the next post!  Stay tuned, oh and drop us a comment and let us know what you want to read.  We’re always looking for new material! 

 

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