Where Are My Keys?

I could care less about the color of the sutdent's skin..

I'm more concerned with their inability to speak English in the classroom:

For the first time ever, U.S. public schools are projected this fall to have more minority students than non-Hispanic whites enrolled, a shift largely fueled by growth in the number of Hispanic children.

Non-Hispanic white students are still expected to be the largest racial group in the public schools this year at 49.8 percent. But the National Center for Education Statistics says minority students, when added together, will now make up the majority.

About one-quarter of the minority students are Hispanic, 15 percent are black and 5 percent are Asian and Pacific Islanders. Biracial students and Native Americans make up a smaller share of the minority student population.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan called the changing population a seminal moment in education. "We can't talk about other people's children. These are our children," he said.

The shift creates new academic realities, such as the need for more English language instruction, and cultural ones, meaning changes in school lunch menus to reflect students' tastes.

If children that are in this Country illegally are holding back the students that are, it's a recipe for disaster.  We're already aware of how poorly US students compare to students around the World.  Toss in the teachers having to try and "catch up" non-English speaking kids, and the English speakers suffer, furthering the cycle.

What is the most important thing on the mind of the woman who serves on a Presidential commission on educational excellence?  It ain't school:

As the school-age population has become more nonwhite, it's also become poorer, said Patricia Gandara, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA who serves on President Barack Obama's advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics.

Roughly one-quarter of Hispanics and African-Americans live below the poverty line - meaning a family of four has nearly $24,000 in annual income - and some of the poorest of Hispanic children are dealing with the instability of being in the country illegally or with a parent who is, Gandara said.

Focusing on teacher preparation and stronger curriculum is "not going to get us anywhere unless we pay attention to the really basic needs of these children, things like nutrition and health and safety, and the instability of the homes," she said.

(emphasis mine)

So we can't educate them with more prepared teachers, and better course work, we have to feed them first?  Is that really the primary job of the educational system?

The problem starts and ends with the Home.  If education, learning English, and wanting to become an American Citizen is important to everyone in the home, the child will succeed.  Unfortunately, the reality is that what I've outlined above is not a priority to non-English speaking families today.

Our rich history is overflowing with stories of immigrants that can to this Country, unable to read, write, or speak the language, who made a choice to assimilate, and do what Americans do in order to become one.

Instead, in Modern America, we don't want to hurt anyone's feelings by asking them to respect our laws, learn our language, and pull their weight.

Now we have non-English speaking students becoming the majority in our schools, they are way behind where they should be educationally, and the kids that can speak the language and are up to speed will suffer.

Yet another reason why my daughter will stay in private school, no matter the cost.

RELATED: Cabbies in Sacramento are pissed that they should have to be able to speak basic levels of English.

New Obamacare tax is delaying some tax returns..

Can't file your return until the forms (and the calculations) are ready.  Turbo Tax doesn't want to expose itself to audits and refilings, so they wait:

Some TurboTax customers are mad at Intuit, maker of the popular tax-prep software, because they've finished their returns but are unable to file. Their anger is misplaced. They should blame the Internal Revenue Service, along with the 111th Congress and President Obama for enacting and signing the tax increase with which TurboTax can't yet comply. (They could also blame George W. Bush if they're in a jocose frame of mind.)

At issue is ObamaCare's new 3.8% "net investment income tax." It took effect Jan. 1, 2013, so that taxpayers are encountering it just now as they prepare their returns for last year. In effect, it applies the Medicare payroll tax to interest, dividends and capital gains.

But it doesn't apply to all such income. If your modified adjusted gross income is under $200,000 (or $250,000 for a married couple), you don't pay the tax at all. Further, if your modified AGI is above the threshold but your noninvestment income is below it, the tax is applied on the difference between your total income and the threshold.

If that's hard to follow, here's an example: Suppose you're an unmarried taxpayer with a modified AGI of $210,000 and investment income of $20,000. Your net investment income is $10,000, the portion of your investment income above the total income threshold of $200,000. Your net investment income tax is 3.8% of this sum, or $380.

If you owe net investment income, you have to complete a single-page Form 8960 to calculate your modified AGI and the tax. But the form's brevity belies the new tax's complexity, as tax expert Tony Nitti wrote in a Forbes.com piece last month:

When we saw that this new, complex area of the law would ultimately be computed on a one-page form, we anticipated that the meat of the computation would be done off-form in worksheets provided by the instructions. And that's exactly what happened. But that shifts the onus back to us as tax advisors to make sure our inputs are correct, which means we must understand the nuances of the final regulations.

Nitti wrote that Jan. 7, the day after the IRS released its instructions for Form 8960. But those instructions are not final; they include a cover sheet that warns: "DRAFT--NOT FOR FILING." Taxpayers, tax advisers and tax-prep software developers are still awaiting the final instructions.

Hence the TurboTax users' frustration. "Form 8960 was realeased [sic] by the IRS on 1/24/14 but Turbo Tax keeps delaying it's [sic] release every week, for another week!" a user complained last week on Intuit's TurboTax AnswerXchange online forum. "I'm calling BS on this as they have had access to the draft form for months! When is TT actually going to make this form available and stop extending the dates? And why should we keep waiting for this form when other providers already have it available?"

Actually, Intuit has incorporated the form into its software. But for the moment, it won't allow users to complete a return that includes an 8960. An AnswerXchange moderator answers the query by explaining that in response to complaints from users--some of whom have switched to other tax-prep software to get the job done--"we will enable the filing of Form 8960 late on Feb. 26 (or possibly early the next morning) based on draft instructions."

But the moderator warns: "If you make the decision to file now, you may need to amend your return if the final instructions produce a tax liability different than the liability computed using draft instructions. You assume responsibility for checking for product updates to determine if the final instructions require an amended return and for paying any additional tax and interest."

But WAMK, I'm not one of those Super Rich that have an AGI over $200k.  Big deal!  If you think the $200k threshold won't be dropping year over year, I've got some lovely land to sell you in Florida.

As unemployment stays high, more people receive benefits, and Obamacare continues to not live up to expectations, more money will have to be thrown at it.  That money will come from those that have jobs, and the pool will be made wider to get as much as possible.

In other words, you're next.

Great commercial, but..

 

Did Dad provide any help, financial support, coaching, attend any competitions, offer advice along the way, too?

And yet there are still voices on the Left that think Obamacare has nothing to do with cancellations..

It doesn't get any clearer than this, yet to some, it still won't matter.  They'll still claim Obamacare had nothing to do with Big Insurance sending out cancellation notices:

The cancellations come as a result of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which says that health insurance policies that fail to offer added benefits, such as prescription drug coverage and free preventive care, can’t be sold after this year even if they’re cheaper. With the online site expected to face difficulties through November, Americans may have only weeks to find replacement coverage, and many may end up paying higher premiums.

Something else that is getting lost in this initial shuffle is the employer-paid health plans.  The Administration is trying to downplay the effect of Obamacare cancellation notices, by reminding us that around 80% of people are covered by employer plans, or Government programs, and thus not affected by the mandate.  What they neglect to mention (and what I think will be the true tsunami of Obamacare) is when smaller to medium sized companies realize that it is cheaper to give their employees a stipend (like a car allowance, or cell phone allowance) to be used toward the employee buying their own coverage on the exchanges, than it is to pay for employer provided coverage.

If that happens before Obamacare gets a large pool of young, healthy kids to join up, then the death spiral is accelerated even more.  If you think folks are pissed now, just wait.

Barack Obama, liar..

Not only is "If you like it, you can keep it" being proven false, we are also learning that the President knew millions would lose their existing coverage, and continued to mislead the American People.

We also learn that delaying the start date of Obamacare would have disasterous results on the insurance industry:

The proposal to extend the open enrollment period, which has been endorsed by 10 Democratic senators, is a reaction to the well-documented problems with HealthCare.gov in its opening month. With many people having trouble applying for insurance through the website, and the administration setting a Nov. 30 deadline for the site to be fully functional, the senators say people need more time to sign up for coverage. The enrollment period is scheduled to end March 31. The senators haven't asked for a specific new end date yet.

But expect to start hearing a significant amount of pushback from the industry, with a message focused on the fact that insurance premiums could skyrocket in 2015 if the enrollment period is extended.

"We are focused on educating lawmakers and the broader policy community about why the individual mandate and defined open enrollment periods are essential to achieving broad participation in the marketplaces," Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, a major industry lobbying group, told TPM. "Without these enrollment incentives, many young, healthy people may wait to purchase coverage until they need it, driving up premiums for everyone else."

The problem, according to the industry, is that an extended enrollment period could skew their calculations for 2015 premiums. Here's why.

Right now, insurers need to submit 2015 rates to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services between April 1 and April 30, 2014. If the enrollment period ends in March, as currently scheduled, insurers will know exactly what their customer base looks like as they make projections about their 2015 rates.

But if people can still sign up after March 31, either while or after insurers are making those calculations, it creates a few problems. Here's the big one: Most experts assume that young and healthy people -- who are crucial to making the law's finances work by offsetting the costs of sicker and older enrollees -- are more likely to wait till the last possible moment or until they get sick to sign up for insurance.

If that's true and they can't be accounted for when insurers are projecting their 2015 rates because of extended enrollment, that could lead to an older and sicker pool when those calculations for 2015 are being made. That would likely increase rates. And generally, the uncertainty about the pools could cause insurers to err on the side of caution.

"We think it's important for everyone to understand that the individual mandate is critical to making the insurance reforms work and to ensuring affordable coverage for consumers," the Blue Cross/Blue Shield Association said in a statement to TPM ."Unless everyone is covered, the reforms included in this law fundamentally do not work. An extension of the open enrollment season is effectively a delay of the individual mandate, with the same serious consequences for consumers."

The Insurance Companies are following the rules (as written by Democrats).  While the President has been happy to change/break the rules on a whim (exemptions, etc.), if it is done this time around, it will have devastating results.

Way to go, Democrats!  Way to go by ram this piece of shit through the system using parliamentary tricks, way to go by not reading what was in it, and way to go by doing it with zero Republican support.

If the GOP finds a way to somehow screw up the golden ticket for the 2014 elections (full repeal, reminding people who is responsible for their loss in coverage, premium increases, etc.), then God help this Country.

Sure was a good thing that the MSM focused on Mitt Romney cutting another kid's hair in high school, how his dog once rode on top of a car, and that he had binders full of women during the last election cycle, wasn't it?

How can this happen TWICE, @FlyFrontier?

So I fly from Denver to Merced, for a meeting in Fresno.  I have a two-hour layover at LAX.  I touch down in Merced, the bags come off, and mine is nowhere to be seen.  The good people at the gate make some calls, trying to find my missing luggage.  I call up the Frontier Summit line, and they discover my bag didn't make the transfer in Los Angeles (with no explanation of how they couldn't get it done in two hours).  The Frontier Customer Service folks put me in touch with the baggage guy in Los Angeles, who tells me he can easily get my bag from LAX to Fresno, on an American flight arriving in Fresno at 830-ish this evening.  "Just go to the American baggage claim", he says.  "You bag will be there tonight".  Keep in mind that this conversation took place at around 430 pm, giving him close to THREE hours to get the bag where it needed to be.

I roll into the Fresno airport, park the rental car, go to the baggage area, where there are no bags, and no people.  I head to the ticketing counter, find an American Airlines guy, who tells me that all bags have been claimed from that flight.  I tell him what happened, and he lets me know that there were not any bags transferred in from Frontier on this plane.

I call Frontier's Summit line for yet another conversation with another nice lady, and lose my shit.  Bottom line is, my bag isn't here, and Frontier somehow managed to screw things up two times.  I stop by Target on my way back to the hotel, pick up a shirt and toiletries, and will now sit in a meeting with a large client wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and a Target button down.

Step up your game, Frontier.  You are about to lose a long standing premium customer.  There are lots of options out there (did you know that Southwest has been offering to match my Summit status with A-list status for quite some time?), and my patience is wearing thin.  You took away the free TV, there aren't as many flight options, and now you can't even get my bag to the same city I am in.

You're on the clock.

Funny, isn't it?

A President who once campaigned against war, now threatens to go it alone.  A Secretary of State that now wants to insert himself into a Civil War, once threw his military medals over the White House wall, protesting US military involvement in a Civil War.  A political Party who once argued that a coalition of over 40 countries "wasn't enough", now thinks having our closest ally saying "no thanks" isn't a big deal.

Interesting how the further we go into Obama's tenure as President, he and the Left continue to validate nearly everything they said was wrong with the previous Administration, isn't it? (extraordinary rendition, wiretaps, drones, bringing war to sovereign nations, Gitmo, and the list goes on..)

Funny how time changes things, isn't it?

I'm not sure what the right thing to do in Syria is.  Of course I think the use of chemical weapons on one's own citizens is a horrific thing.  (On a side note, has anyone asked Rosie what she thinks?)  It's up to the President to make his case to the American People on why action there is needed.  If he makes a good case, I'll support his decision.  If he doesn't, I likely won't.  I'm not clear on what Obama's goal is here: does he want to eliminate Assad's chemical weapons, Assad himself, or both?

I don't like that the President drew a red line in the sand, watched Syria cross that line, and then turn to Congress and say "What do you guys want to do?"  POTUS and Congressional leaders should have been in discussion from the get go, in case this very event happened.  But that didn't happen.  Obama made his comments, waved to the crowd, and hit the golf course.

I do know that as Obama puffed out his chest, and then retreated, it has made whatever the task our military will be given much more difficult, and much more dangerous for those on the ground.  I'm no military genius, but it doesn't take a degree from West Point to know that you don't tell your potential target that you are targeting them.  You want to think it's business as usual, so they can't move men and munitions, and begin to form their own coalition for defense.

While we hear of other Countries not being interested on being on our "side", there are reports that Syria is building their own coalition to defend themselves from possible United States interaction.  Does POTUS and his Administration really think Iran and Russia will sit idly by as we lob smart bombs into Syria?

Truly a mess in Syria, and one that Barack Obama made worse with his ham-fistedness in foreign policy.  Notice how Hillary! is laying low throughout all of this.  She has to keep her distance if she has any chance in 2016.  If she speaks up now, questions will surely focus on what interactions she had with Syria as SOS, what she would do as President, and who dropped the ball.  Once the bombs/missiles start flying, and the success or failure of the "mission" can be determined, then we will hear from her.. 

Scary how spot on this piece is..

Obama ignores the law because there is no one to stop him:

Obama can do this not because the Constitution or law authorize it. Most definitely they actually prohibit it. He is getting away with it because there is no one who can stop him and almost no one who wants to stop him. No one, and I mean absolutely no one, in the Democrat party is in the slightest interested in reining in Obama's expansion of executive diktat because they know what few of the rest of us are awakening to: the Democrats are never going to lose that executive authority again. Let me be clear, with a promise to elucidate another day: there is never going to be another Republican president. Ever.

The media will not examine Obama's imperialist manner because they do not want to. They agree with it. The courts are literally unable to enforce their rulings contra this administration; Obama ignores them at will and without consequence. The Republicans are dominated by the Political Class and lack the numbers, influence, collective will and ideological conviction to rein in the administration even if they had the ability to do so, which they don't.

For example, immigration:

...after Congress had unequivocally rejected another piece of immigration reform, the so-called DREAM Act, that the president had supported, he simply instituted it unilaterally, as though he had the authority to declare an amnesty himself. He then did away with criminal-background checks for those to be amnestied, also on his own authority.

This is a president who knows that he does not need to make anyone "happy," that there in fact is no political base that must be appeased or pleased - where else will the base go? The president of the United States is now quite literally a dictate-er: he orders what he wishes and implements what he chooses.

There is no check or balance any longer, not even the Congress's power to control the federal purse. There is no federal purse to control. There are only years-long series of continuing resolutions and special appropriations, all funded with trillions of dollars of borrowed fiat money that no creditor anywhere in the world expects will be repaid. President Obama has a government credit card with no debt limit. The power to spend is the power to control, and that is what he is doing.

Read the whole thing, and then read this piece from George Will:

Twenty-three days before his news conference, the House voted 264 to 161, with 35 Democrats in the majority, for the rule of law — for, that is, the Authority for Mandate Delay Act. It would have done lawfully what Obama did by ukase. He threatened to veto this use of legislation to alter a law. The White House called it “unnecessary,” presumably because he has an uncircumscribed “executive authority” to alter laws.

In a 1977 interview with Richard Nixon, David Frost asked: “Would you say that there are certain situations . . . where the president can decide that it’s in the best interests of the nation . . . and do something illegal?”

Nixon: “Well, when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”

Frost: “By definition.”

Nixon: “Exactly, exactly.”

Nixon’s claim, although constitutionally grotesque, was less so than the claim implicit in Obama’s actions regarding the ACA. Nixon’s claim was confined to matters of national security or (he said to Frost) “a threat to internal peace and order of significant magnitude.” Obama’s audacity is more spacious; it encompasses a right to disregard any portion of any law pertaining to any subject at any time when the political “environment” is difficult.

Obama should be embarrassed that, by ignoring the legal requirement concerning the employer mandate, he has validated critics who say the ACA cannot be implemented as written. What does notembarrass him is his complicity in effectively rewriting the ACA for the financial advantage of self-dealing members of Congress and their staffs.

The ACA says members of Congress (annual salaries: $174,000) and their staffs (thousands making more than $100,000) must participate in the law’s insurance exchanges. It does not say that when this change goes into effect, the current federal subsidy for this affluent cohort — up to 75 percent of the premium’s cost, perhaps $10,000 for families — should be unchanged.

When Congress awakened to what it enacted, it panicked: This could cause a flight of talent, making Congress less wonderful. So Obama directed the Office of Personnel Management, which has no power to do this, to authorize for the political class special subsidies unavailable for less privileged and less affluent citizens.

If the president does it, it’s legal? “Exactly, exactly.”

Look, I get it that certain hard-core, blue-to-the-bone career Democrats will follow the President in lockstep.  That's a given.  Same goes for certain Republicans in D.C. if there was a REpublican in the White House.

What I don't understand is how so many other guy-next-door Democrats sit idly by, and let this President do whatever he chooses to do, Constitution be damned.

Obama's approval ratings continue to drop, yet nothing changes in how he governs.  When will those that are paying attention, regardless of Party affiliation begin to make some noise?

Jobs reports and the overall economy..

I posted yesterday on the low weekly IUC numbers (which came in better than analyst expectations).  Today we see the economy added only 162,000 jobs, (well under analyst expectations).  We also learn that 21,000,000 young folks are living with their parents (a record).  We also are witnessing a shift to a part-time workforce(thanks to regulations within Obamacare).

I have to remind readers from time to time that one simply cannot take one aspect of the jobs picture, and hold that up as "proof" that the economy is strong or weak.

Remember that when you see pundits and trolls today pointing to the "drop" in unemployment as an indicator the Country is headed in the right direction under Obama's policies.

The reality is that this most recent iteration of Obama's "Recovery Summer" is about as effective as the ones that came before it.  The Obama Stimulus didn't do anything, except transfer wealth from taxpayers to connected Obama cronies.  Failed experiments with connected "green" firms threw taxpayer money to poorly managed, verge of bankrupt companies.  Taxpayer money went to only hold off the inevitable in Detroit.  The President has promised us a "laser-like" focus on jobs for several years, with little appreciable results.

This Administration clearly has no idea what they are doing.

I'm so sick of these ads..

The ones that paint the white, dumb dad as being too clueless to use his cell phone, drive a car, make popcorn, you name it.  Hahahahahahahaha, dad is such an idiot!

While I'm happy to see Clorox pulled this from their website, it never should have been there in the first place.

I get that in today's uber-PC world, the only target advertisers can make fun of are middle-aged white guys.  Poke fun at a black guy?  Lawsuit.  Make fun of a woman?  Misogynist.  Who's left?  white guy.

Smarten up, advertising agencies.

Middle-aged white guy dad is a large portion of the population out there.  I get that you know we are too busy working, and paying the bills to come protest in front of your corporate headquarters, but please consider this: my daughter is watching when you portray dads as bumbling fools.

She knows I can operate a car, dial my phone, play a DVD, pop a load of laundry in the wash, iron a shirt, and somehow manage to do them all without setting the house on fire.  She knows Daddy can fix anything, is pretty handy with tools, always fixes Mom's computer, and can download stuff to her iPad.

But not all daughters have a positive male role model like my daughter does.  Please stop showing them over and over and over how stupid men are.

They may not have the same filter "skills" as you super-clever ad execs have.