Several hours after New Zealand was hit with a series of quakes, the eastern islands of Indonesia were hit.
The U.S. Geological Survey reports a 6.2, but local officials are calling it a 6.9 earthquake. No tsunami warnings were issued.
All posts by Hutchins AAron
What Economic Recovery? Obama spouts the neccesity of higher education, but Middle Class is now officially unable to pay for it
“We’re seeing further differentiation in incomes, with the rich get richer and the poor getting poorer. Meanwhile, the middle class often claims they’re too wealthy to get student aid, yet too poor to afford college.”-Mark Kantrowitz, FinAid.org and FastWeb.com
President Barack Obama is constantly stumping for higher education as a way to recover the U.S. economy, the problem is most people in the United States can’t afford to go.
According to a CNN/Money report (based on the findings of the College Board), tuition and fees have skyrocketed 130% in the past 20 years, while incomes for the majority of U.S. workers have stayed relatively the same. By the way a recent IRS report says the same thing about U.S. incomes.
In 2008 median income was $33,000, when adjusted for inflation that means the average person was making $400.00 less than in 1988 (I knew I wasn’t crazy).
In 2008 tuition and fees averaged $6,500 per year, which is 130% more than what they were in 1988.
What happened to financial aid? Obama ran for president partly on a promise to make more federal aid available. Didn’t happen. According to the College Group, the maximum federal aid (which includes loans, which should not be considered “aid” ’cause you have to pay it back) has remained stuck at 1992 levels; only $23,000 (by the way that “aid” is limited, so if you don’t get a ‘four year degree’ in ‘four’ years, which is actually the reality for many, you don’t get anymore federal “aid”).
Two trends have developed as a result: Families hell bent on their kids getting worthless degrees (I have one, from Idaho State University) are getting deeper into debt (isn’t that part of our country’s economic problems?). The other bigger trend is that people are delaying entry into college, or just saying “forget it, it ain’t worth it”.
Here’s a sobering thought: According to Mark Kantrowitz, the cost of higher education is such that many of today’s college students will still be paying their student loans when their children are college age! That is a sure sign that college is no longer “worth it”!
What Economic Recovery? Arby’s Sold
Wendy’s/Arby’s Group sold off its Arby’s restaurant, for $430 million. The new owner is Atlanta based Roark Capital Group.
Earlier in the year it was announced that if Arby’s sales didn’t improve, the fast food restaurant would be sold. The former Wendy’s/Arby’s Group still holds 15% of Arby’s stock. The CEO, Roland Smith, says they can now focus solely on the better performing Wendy’s fast food chain.
Smith says that any closing of Arby’s stores will involve those already slated to be closed, which will happen as leases expire. The deal with Roark Capital Group will result in changes for Arby’s, including a name change.
I can tell you that here in Chubbuck, Idaho, the Arby’s store has the lowest customer traffic of any of the national chain fast food restaurants.
Idaho State University hit with sanctions, major donor says ISU President “inflexible”
“There’s something very sick at that school, and Art Vailas I think is at the core of it. I was shocked when I heard about the potential for a vote of no confidence. I talked to Art several times about it. Art is not a very good listener. He’s very stubborn. He’s inflexible. It is his way or no way because he thinks he’s right. I told him never to call me anymore.”-Jim Rodgers, major Idaho State University donor, and former chancellor of higher education in Nevada
Jim Rodgers is a major donor to ISU, and he’s not happy with what’s been happening there. The Idaho State Board of Education ended the faculty’s bargaining ability by suspended the Faculty Senate, at the request of President Arthur Vailas.
Vailas, and his administrators, have been busy trashing ISU ever since they arrived a few years ago. It’s looks like it’s part of a plan by the state to reduce ISU’s ability to provide higher education.
For one thing student tuition and fees have skyrocketed, and classes have been cut. The reason given is always lack of money, but just a few weeks ago ISU announced they were buying an old factory building that was used to make medical products (aka Ballard Medical building).
The suspension of the Faculty Senate prompted a vote by the American Association of University Professors. They voted to sanction ISU, the largest university ever to be sanctioned by the AAUP. The vote was unanimous.
Former ISU Faculty Senate Chair, Phil Cole, says AAUP sanctions should be taken seriously, because they act as a warning to potential employers, and graduate schools, that the education program at ISU is ‘suspect’, and that “there is a fundamental flaw in a university and it could collapse.”
This might be part of the State Board of Education’s plans to end ISU as a four year university (which many of the state employees at ISU believe is the intention).
Pacific Ring of Fire: New Zealand hit with earthquakes
Christchurch, New Zealand was hit by a 5.5 quake, followed by a 6.0 aftershock, then by a 4.9.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quakes hit in the afternoon, June 13.
Christchurch was hit in February by a devastating 6.3 quake.
Even when turned ‘off’ your electronic appliances still use electricity. Has Japan solved that problem?
Even when turned ‘off’, most of your electronic appliances are still on. That’s because most appliances now contain tiny computers to remember settings, to run clocks, to sense your remote, etc.
Actually when you turn your electronics ‘off’ you’ve actually put them in a ‘standby mode’. This standby mode accounts for about 6 percent of household electricity use.
NEC and Tohoku University have developed a semiconductor to cut that standby power usage to zero. They say it uses a magnet, instead of electricity, to operate in standby mode. Unfortunately it will be a few more years before it hits the market, but they hope it will cut overall electricity usage by 25%.
Strontium 90 in ground water & Pacific Ocean
For the first time, Tokyo Electric Power Company says strontium 90 is contaminating ground water, and the Pacific Ocean.
Water samples that were taken on 16 and 18 May, 2011, are positive for strontium. Sample testing takes three weeks for results.
Three ocean inlets were tested on 16 May. The lowest reading was 53 times safe limits. The highest, 240 times, was taken at reactor 3 inlet.
Ground water samples were taken on 18 May. The highest reading was 6,300 becquerels per liter near reactor 2.
Strontium 90 is created during nuclear fission. It has a half life of 29 years and causes bone cancer.
Idaho Education Spending Scandalous
Property taxes/fees, where I live in Bannock county, have gone up year after year, and there’s been no improvement in services, especially grade school education.
The last time I complained to the county assessor’s office (when my three kids were attending Pocatello High School) the employee told me to blame school district 25. The employee showed me a chart that proved that the largest chunk of property taxes/fees was going to the school district 25. The county employee also said that every time a levy is passed it increases the school district fee portion of the overall property tax bill.
That fee has gone up year after year, and is one of the reasons Bannock county has one of the highest property taxes/fees in all of Idaho. All of Bannock county has a population of more than 82,ooo, according to U.S. Census Bureau 2010 numbers. Compare that to Ada county, where the state capitol Boise is located, where the population is more than 390,000.
Then comes the U.S. Census Bureau report on how much each state spends on education, and surprisingly Idaho is second to last in spending (Utah is dead last).
Another surprise is that most of Idaho’s education funding comes from the state, not the counties. 66% of education spending in Idaho comes from state taxes (that’s higher than the national average of 46%). So where’s all our county school tax/fees going to?
I am now the guardian of my children’s half sister. She is attending Pocatello High School, and I’m amazed at how much the quality of education has gone down since my kids graduated (by the way, you also have to pay huge fees directly to the high school that your child attends, which is another reason to question the school district’s taxes/fees). Not only that, but I finished high school in the early 1980s, and I can tell you that nothing has improved since then, as far as the quality of education.
Only since the No Child Left Behind act (aka Adequate Yearly Progress, AYP) went into effect, has school district 25 made real efforts to improve test scores, but they’re still not doing well enough: For 2009-10, one elementary school failed AYP, all four middle schools failed and all three high schools failed. It’s interesting that school district 25 officials are blaming the failures on “economically disadvantaged students“, as well as disabled and Hispanic students. What is this a new kind of class/race warfare?
Decade after decade U.S. taxpayers have paid more and more money for crappy education that never improves! What do we get for our money? There’s been lots of paranoid new rules created: One year a high scoring student at Pocatello High School was not allowed to graduate because she dyed her hair pink (her parents sued and won)! Also, huge school administrative bodies were created through the 1980s-90s, which suck up more money than the actual education of our children! Do the kids get new books? No: When my children attended Junior High they showed me their science book, which had an intro that said “One day man will walk on the moon.”!
As a parent and local taxpayer I’ve seen the funding for schools going up year after year (that might finally be over with this bad economy), and the quality of education going down year after year. That is what makes education funding scandalous!
The U.S. IS a Police State: Schools becoming temporary prisons
What’s really scarey about the following list, is that there are a lot of parents who actually agree with increased “security” measures in schools.
1: Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has announced that school officials can search the cell phones and laptops of public school students if there are “reasonable grounds for suspecting that the search will turn up evidence that the student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules of the school.”
2: It came out in court that one school district in Pennsylvania secretly recorded more than 66,000 images of students using webcams that were embedded in school-issued laptops that the students were using at home.
3: If you can believe it, a “certified TSA official” was recently brought in to oversee student searches at the Santa Fe High School prom.
4: A few years ago a class of 3rd grade students at one Kentucky elementary school were searched by a group of teachers after $5.00 went missing. During the search the students were actually required to remove their shoes and their socks.
5: At one public school in the Chicago area, children have been banned from bringing their lunches from home. Yes, you read that correctly. Students at that particular school are absolutely prohibited from bringing lunches from home. Instead, it is mandatory that they eat the food that the school cafeteria serves.
6: The U.S. Department of Agriculture is spending huge amounts of money to install surveillance cameras in the cafeterias of public schools so that government control freaks can closely monitor what our children are eating.
7: A teenager in suburban Dallas was recently forced to take a part time job after being ticketed for using bad language in one high school classroom. The original ticket was for $340, but additional fees have raised the total bill to $637.
8: It is not just high school kids that are being ticketed by police. In Texas the crackdown extends all the way down to elementary school students. In fact, it has been reported that Texas police gave “1,000 tickets” to elementary school kids over a recent six year period.
9: A few months ago, a 17 year-old honor student in North Carolina named Ashley Smithwick accidentally took her father’s lunch with her to school. It contained a small paring knife which he would use to slice up apples. So what happened to this standout student when the school discovered this? The school suspended her for the rest of the year and the police charged her with a misdemeanor.
10: A little over a year ago, a 6 year old girl in Florida was handcuffed and sent to a mental facility after throwing temper tantrums at her elementary school.
11: In early 2010, a 12 year old girl in New York was arrested by police and marched out of her school in handcuffs just because she doodled on her desk. “I love my friends Abby and Faith” was what she reportedly wrote on her desk.
12: There are actually some public schools in the United States that are so paranoid that they have actually installed cameras in student bathrooms.
13: Down in Florida, students have actually been arrested by police for bringing a plastic picnic knife to school, for throwing an eraser, and for drawing a picture of a gun.
14: The Florida State Department of Juvenile Justice has announced that it will begin using computer software to predict crime by students and will place “potential offenders” in specific prevention and education programs.
15: A group of high school students made national headlines a while back when they revealed that they were ordered by a security guard to stop singing the national anthem during a visit to the Lincoln Memorial.
16: In some U.S. schools, armed cops accompanied by police dogs actually conduct surprise raids with their guns drawn. YouTube video shows police officers aiming their guns at school children on the floor.
17: Back in 2009, one 8 year old boy in Massachusetts was sent home from school and underwent psychological evaluation because he drew a picture of Jesus on the cross.
18: This year, 13 parents in Duncan, South Carolina were actually ticketed for cheering during a high school graduation.
What Economic Recovery? Proof that it’s gotten worse since Obama became President
The following list is not necessarily blaming Obama for the economic problems, it’s just showing how things have gotten worse since he became President.
1: In January 2009, the official U.S. unemployment rate was 7.6 percent. Today it is 9.1 percent.
2: When Barack Obama took office, the number of “long-term unemployed” in the United States was approximately 2.6 million. Today, that number is up to 6.2 million.
3: When Barack Obama first became president, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States was $1.83. Today it is $3.79. This also affects the price of almost everything else that we buy.
4: In April 2009, the average U.S. household spent approximately $201 on gasoline. In April 2011, the average U.S. household spent approximately $369 on gasoline.
5: According to an article in the Daily Mail, the cost of a Memorial Day cookout was 29 percent higher this year than it was last year.
6: When Barack Obama was sworn in, there were nearly 32 million Americans on food stamps. Today, there are more than 44 million on food stamps.
7: According to the U.S. Census, the number of children living in poverty has gone up by about 2 million in just the past 2 years.
8: When Barack Obama took office, the U.S. national debt was 10.6 trillion dollars. Today it is 14.3 trillion dollars.
9: The federal government has borrowed 29,660 more dollars per household since Barack Obama signed the economic stimulus law two years ago.
10: During Barack Obama’s first two years in office, the U.S. government added more to the U.S. national debt than the first 100 U.S. Congresses combined.
11: The combined debt of the major GSEs (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Sallie Mae) has increased from 3.2 trillion in 2008 to 6.4 trillion in 2011. Thanks to George W. Bush, Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress, U.S. taxpayers are standing behind that debt.
12: Under Obama, the U.S. trade deficit continues to grow. The trade deficit was about 33 percent larger in 2010 than it was in 2009, and the 2011 trade deficit is expected to be even bigger.
13: Only 66.8% of American men had a job last year. That was the lowest level that has ever been recorded in all of U.S. history.
14: Just since August, 2 million more Americans have left the labor force.
15: In 2010, more than a million U.S. families lost their homes to foreclosure for the first time ever, and that number is expected to go even higher in 2011.
16: The U.S. real estate crisis just continues to get worse. During the first three months of this year, less new homes were sold in the U.S. than in any three month period ever recorded.
17: The U.S. dollar has fallen by 17 percent compared to other major national currencies since 2009.
18: Faith in the U.S. dollar and in U.S. Treasuries is rapidly declining. The mainstream news is not reporting on it much, but right now the Chinese are rapidly dumping U.S. government debt. That is not a good sign.
19: When Barack Obama first took office, an ounce of gold was going for about $850. Today an ounce of gold costs about $1500.
20: Americans seem to be more pessimistic about the economy than ever. According to a brand new poll, 61 percent of Americans believe that they will not return to their “pre-recession” lifestyles until at least 2014.