The Goat Pen

North Carolina school district bans Ralph Ellison's 'Invisible Man". Board members declare the book has "no literary value"

http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter- ... l-district

I guess he really will be invisible now...

Congresswoman Speier makes public the expenditures a number of Republican congressmen have rung up on the taxpayer dime while calling for food stamps to get slashed. As an example, Steve King (IA) spent almost $3600 on a six-day lavish trip to Russia.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski ... ar-to-hamm

Oh come on, DSL. They're all a bunch of hypocrites.

3600? I want his travel agent.

I was fixin to say...

$3600 isn't much. On the other hand, most of the congressmen need to stay that ass at home.

$3600 is an average crack binge for hedge.

With millions of people giving up job searches, the U.S. labor-participation rate is the lowest in 35 years....

...The hundreds of thousands of temporary workers he places in jobs are Express employees. He pays their salary, benefits, and payroll taxes and the firms that hire the workers reimburse Express for those costs plus a commission. This feature of the temporary-worker industry allows companies trying to fill job openings to do so in a way that sidesteps ObamaCare's mandates. After an on-the-job trial of several months, companies often offer the workers permanent positions.

"It's a try it before you buy it model," Mr. Funk explains. The temporary-employment business is booming now because in the fragile economy and, with ObamaCare on the way, companies are skittish about bringing on permanent hires. Some businesses, to remain below the 50-employee level, hire all their additional workers beyond No. 49 through Express. He says other CEOs are so fed up with the new rules that they have asked Express to take over the management of their entire workforce.

Express is also a good indicator of where the U.S. economy is growing and where it's still struggling. The top job growth is in cities like Nashville, Dallas, Austin, Oklahoma City and Indianapolis—cities without forced union rules, and with a pro-growth regulatory and tax climate. He says Michigan and Wisconsin are two states in the upper Midwest that have "really improved their business climate." The slowest state is still California: "They just raised their minimum wage again—it's just a killer for new jobs."

The primary jobs problem today, Mr. Funk says, is that too many workers are functionally unemployable because of attitude, behavior or lack of the most basic work skills. One discouraging statistic is that only about one of six workers who comes to Express seeking employment makes the cut. He recites a company statistic that about one in four applicants can't even pass a drug test.

"In my 40-some years in this business, the biggest change I've witnessed is the erosion of the American work ethic. It just isn't there today like it used to be," Mr. Funk says. Asked to define "work ethic," he replies that it's fairly simple but vital on-the-job behavior, such as showing up on time, being conscientious and productive in every task, showing a willingness to get your hands dirty and at times working extra hours. These attributes are essential, he says, because if low-level employees show a willingness to work hard, "most employers will gladly train them with the skills to fill higher-paying jobs."

He fears that too many of the young millennials who come knocking on his door view a paycheck as a kind of entitlement, not something to be earned. He is also concerned that the trendy concept of "life-balancing" is putting work second behind leisure.

"I guess I'm a little prejudiced to the immigrants and especially Hispanics," he says. "They have an amazing work ethic. They don't want handouts and are grateful to have a job. Our company has a great success rate with these workers." This focus on work effort is seldom, if ever, discussed by policy makers or labor economists when they ponder what to do about unemployment. To most liberals, the very topic is taboo and is disparaged as blaming the economy's victims.

When pressed to explain what Washington can do to get Americans back on the job, Mr. Funk says the first step would be to start shrinking the "vast social welfare state programs that have become a substitute for work. There's a prevalent attitude of a lot of this generation of workers that the government will always be there to take care of them. It's hard to get people to take entry-level jobs when they can get unemployment benefits, health care, food stamps and the rest."

This week during the food-stamp debate in Congress, Democrats voted unanimously against work requirements and ridiculed Republicans who suggested that the expansion of food stamps to 47 million Americans has discouraged working. The Democrats are living in a fantasy world, according to Mr. Funk. He points to Congress's decision in 2009 to increase unemployment-insurance benefits to 90 weeks or more as "a policy that held a lot of people out of the workforce until the checks stopped coming. We saw that here very clearly."

The most abused government program, he says, is disability insurance and the 14 million Americans who now collect these benefits. Express has found that over half of the disability claims brought by its workers have turned out to be fraudulent. "We win 90% of the disability cases that we challenge in court," Mr. Funk says.

Another big hurdle is the widening skills deficit. At any given time, Mr. Funk says, Express has as many as 20,000 jobs the company can't fill because workers don't have the skills required. His advice to young people who are looking for a solid career is to get training in accounting (thanks to Dodd-Frank's huge expansion of paperwork), information technology, manufacturing-robotics programming, welding and engineering. He's mystified why Express has so much trouble filling thousands of information-technology jobs when so many young, working-age adults are computer literate.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... on_LEADTop

Former Enron adviser and NYT socialist ("Gubment isn't spending enough") Nobel Prize winner, Paul Krugman, must be crying in his Corn Flakes this morning...


Angela Merkel's conservatives won a resounding victory in Germany's elections on Sunday.....
Supporters of the chancellor's Christian Democrats celebrate Sunday in Berlin after the conservative party scored its strongest showing in 20 years.

You guys don't get DSL's point. It is ok to waste government money as long as you let others also waste government money.

Gov. Haslam Decision to Turn Down Medicaid Expansion Misguided, Costly - Knoxville News Sentinel
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2013/mar/3 ... ansion-of/

Haslam appears to have looked for a way to expand coverage that would appease the right wing of his party, which reviles President Obama's health care reform law. Disappointingly, he couldn't deliver.

The ACA strips hospitals of funding for indigent care in anticipation of the Medicaid expansion. Without the newly insured patients, hospitals will absorb the cost of emergency care for low-income patients, passing much of the expense on to people with insurance. Some Tennessee hospitals will have to close, leaving communities without a medical center. The Tennessee Hospital Association projects the state stands to lose 90,000 jobs and nearly $13 billion.

Haslam no doubt scored some political points in the Legislature, but the decisions to spurn the funding will be paid by the state's hospitals, businesses, insured Tennesseans and, most importantly, the people who will not have access to health care.

Okay, the feds will fund the expansion at 100% for three years and 90% thru 2020 and the fool turns it down. Nobody outside of the TN Taliban can believe it. Republican papers all over the state, like this one, have pointed out the idiocy and cowardice of the governor turning down billions just so he can sit with the mouth-breathers and boast that he ain't taking nothing from D.C.

Some states have learned from the past, some have not. Taking money from feds always has strings/hooks attached. Washington, which wants more and more control over the states knows cranking up the printing press (which no states has) is like offering a stupid immature kid free cocaine. The dealer knows he's just created a new customer.

Great point on states not learning from the past. Lessee, there were those that refused to implement Social Security back in the 30s. Then it was Brown v Brown in the 50s...Medicare and Medicaid in the 60s. Yeah, various states vowed to block those landmark pieces of legislation (and call out the national guard, and/or secede).

And that part about giving free cocaine to kids was on the mark too.

And then comes the irony that the states turning down Medicaid Expansion are red states and nearly all, like Tennessee, are net debtors to the federal gubmint.

Ooookay....I'll put you down on the Krugman side of the ledger that sez we need MORE federal money (print more boyz) to get back on track.

Stephanie Grace: A political meltdown in Common Core

http://theadvocate.com/news/opinion/709 ... l-meltdown

It’s hard to think of a topic where the dynamic has moved quite so dramatically, particularly for Republican politicians who worked with the National Governors Association to shape the new K-12 standards, which are aimed at making the American workforce more competitive on the world stage.

With Gov. Bobby Jindal’s backing, Louisiana joined most other states in adopting Common Core; the standards debuted in classrooms this fall, and the new testing regimen is supposed to start next year.

But while Jindal and his fellow governors attracted little notice when the idea was hatched in 2009, they’re hearing plenty now....

....Contributing to the fervor, it seems, is the fact that President Barack Obama supports Common Core, and his administration has offered incentives to states that adopt the standards.

The tea party has zero ideas beyond "shut down all aspects of govt". That's their entire political ideology. If it's a govt program, it must be stopped. Don't ask questions, just kill it.

Well, shut down the govt except on social issues. In that case it's mandatory that the gubmint make sure queers can't marry, abortion is illegal everywhere, and that blacks and hispanics receive extra scrutiny when they vote.

support a program until this President says he supports it. Therefore, it must be bad.