For Valentine's Day
Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
Robert Frost

About two miles down the road is a house that is located as far north as Robert Frost ever lived.
See the picture at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2007/tidbits070905.htm

Microsoft Excel Functions and Formulas
Lesson 1: Why Do You Need Formulas and Functions?
http://www.howtogeek.com/school/microsoft-excel-formulas-and-functions/lesson1/

Microsoft Excel Functions and Formulas
Lesson 2: Defining and Creating a Formula ---
http://www.howtogeek.com/school/microsoft-excel-formulas-and-functions/lesson2/

Video:  Blindly Accepting Terms and Conditions?
http://www.howtogeek.com/181832/blindly-accepting-terms-and-conditions/

How to get business firms (including maids, yard maintenance crews, and home repair skilled workers) to stop under-reporting revenue to the IRS
"How to Get Tax Cheats to Pay Their Share," by Charles Kenny, Bloomberg Businessweek, February 10, 2014 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-02-10/how-to-get-tax-cheats-to-pay-their-share?campaign_id=DN021014

The season of W-2s and 1099s is nearly upon us. As millions of Americans gear up for the annual national agony of filing tax forms, a minority are deciding how much of their income they actually want to report. Almost $400 billion in federal revenue is lost to tax cheats each year—much of it connected with firms and individuals under-reporting the income they make from selling goods and services to consumers.

One way to deal with that problem is to encourage consumers to report how much they’ve spent and where they spent it, providing a check on the sales figures. The city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, has found a way to encourage people to accurately report that information: It pays them for it. The result has been a dramatic rise in tax revenue. It’s time to try something similar in the U.S.

The IRS’s latest estimates (for 2006) suggest that about 83 percent of all federal taxes due are paid voluntarily and on a timely basis. Another 2.4 percent are paid late or after the IRS enforces payment. That leaves close to 15 percent of federal taxes owed that are never paid—about $385 billion a year. If that $385 billion were collected, it could fund universal pre-K for 4-year-olds, double the size of both the Earned Income Tax Credit and the U.S. Air Force budget, and reduce the deficit by more than a quarter—all at the same time.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Personally I don't think the IRS has any idea how much is bought with cash for goods and services in the underground economy which USA Today once estimated at $2 trillion annually. I describe the problem at
Case Studies in Gaming the Income Tax Laws ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/TaxNoTax.htm

When the subject arises we always think of undocumented workers who work for cash as maids, roofers, dish washers, car washers, farm and garden hands, construction workers, etc. In San Antonio and other big cities, underground workers congregate seven days a week at popular street corners where employers come by in cars and trucks to negotiate wages, often below minimum wage.

But the problem is widespread in every county of the USA. My wife had to have dental surgery for which estimates ranged from $12,000 to $30,000/ The brother of one of my neighbors is a skilled dental surgeon in Concord. He agreed to do the job for $8,000 if we paid cash up front. He did a wonderful job. The guy who attached a garage to my barn did it for about half price when I agreed to pay cash up front. I seriously doubt that either one of these professionals declared their cash earnings on their income tax returns.

In any case the IRS estimate s of taxes lost to the underground economy is probably a small fraction of the tax that is really lost, including contributions to Social Security and Medicare.

One of the biggest source of underreported revenue is the underground economy for illegal drugs. I doubt that paying customers to report their illegal drug purchases will result in greatly increased reporting of such deals.

Even if IRS purchases of customer information exceed the revenues estimated to be collected from those disclosures the purchase program may save 100 times more in terms of the violations it prevents. If I could get paid by the IRS to report our transactions with a dentist and a garage builder, I suspect those service providers would not even offer me greatly discounted cash deals.

What will not work for sales of street drugs might work for maids, roofers, dish washers, car washers, farm and garden hands, construction workers, etc. Much depends upon how much the IRS will pay for such information in an effort to cool down the underground cash economy.

Joint Costs --- Direct material and labor costs going into a production process before the process splits output into separate products such as the faculty costs of teaching common core courses like writing and mathematics before students declare majors. Another example would be where a professor teaching two chemistry courses is assigned a common core basic course and an advanced course for chemistry majors. Any attempt to split her salary between chemistry majors and undeclared majors is arbitrary.
Also see http://maaw.info/JointProductsMain.htm

Overhead Costs --- fixed and variable costs are indirect in the sense that they cannot be traced to particular items of output such as top administrator salaries of the college and costs buildings, heating, cooling, and grounds maintenance. Any attempt to allocate these costs to different academic disciplines is arbitrary.
http://maaw.info/OverheadRelatedMain.htm

Activities-Based Costing (ABC) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activity-based_costing
Also see http://maaw.info/ABCMain.htm
One of the main ideas here is concept of back flushing where costs of upstream decisions like financial aid decisions regarding prospects intending to major in philosophy are given different amounts of scholarship money versus students intending to major in business. Another example would be a decision as to whether a chemistry professor versus a history professor gets an endowed chair. This affects cost allocations for years to come. Another example is where decisions in one department impact on resources needed in another department. For example, some business schools teach economics whereas other require that economics be taught in the economics department. If a business school elects to require calculus from the mathematics department it can greatly impact on the resources needed in the mathematics department.

As an accountant I can think of all sorts of reasons why computing the costs of accounting majors versus chemistry majors is an exercise in futility because of joint costs, overhead costs, and many other costs where cost allocations are arbitrary and can be performed selectively to make costs of one major in a university look higher or lower than another major. It is possible to do zero-based budgeting where estimates are made as to how much would be saved if a major or a complete department is abandoned entirely. But even here there are unknowns about lost revenues and "lost" costs.

Another complication is that colleges have to have certain disciplines to be respectable even though there are only a trickle of students choosing to major or minor in those disciplines.  For example, the the number of economics majors at a university in Mississippi trickled down to one, and the university seriously considered dropping the economics department. In many universities the number of geology majors trickled down to almost zero when not having earth science majors is a questionable move for a "university." If a university maintains a department of faculty for one or only a handful of majors the average cost per graduate appears to be very high relative to the business department having almost half the student body in that university.

"Accounting for Success"  Brenau U., a women's college in Georgia, is running million-dollar surpluses. Here's how." by Scott Carlson, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 3, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Accounting-for-Success/144351/

Step into the president’s office at Brenau University, and you find yourself surrounded by vivid maps displaying the geology of the United States in bright yellows and reds, greens and purples. Ask Ed Schrader about the maps, and he’ll explain how heat, pressure, sediments, and erosion molded this diverse landscape through the epochs. He’ll speak with all the enthusiasm that a former geology professor can bring to the subject.

But before he entered the academic world, in the late 1980s, Mr. Schrader was part of a more "cutthroat" environment: the mining industry, where he worked for corporations like Chevron and Süd-Chemie. There he learned a different kind of discipline, which he brings to the academic world now.

"We counted nuts and bolts, we dug things up for pennies and sold them for dimes," he says.

Administrators at Brenau, in a similar fashion, tally all the revenue and expenses of its colleges, determining the net revenue of each. They count, down to the penny, what it costs to graduate a business student, or a humanities student, or a nursing student. They know precisely which academic units are cash cows and which aren’t, and by how much, and they use that information to figure out how to grow strategically.

Brenau’s gross income has doubled in the past decade, from $23-million to $48-million (with $51-million projected next year). It has run million-dollar surpluses in recent years, has expanded its campus to several locations across Georgia, and is considering moving into Florida.

For Mr. Schrader, this is more than just business discipline, but a way to preserve the more fragile aspects of Brenau’s mission. At its core, Brenau is a women’s college with a liberal-arts emphasis, an endangered species these days. The university’s weekend, online, and professional programs in business, occupational therapy, and other fields help sustain the women’s college. "I have to know how many people I need to educate in nursing to pay for those graduates in English," Mr. Schrader says. "If I don’t know that, we’re subject to the whims of fate."

That might seem like plain common sense. But observers of higher education say Brenau’s close attention to revenue and costs is fairly unusual, especially among smaller colleges. "It is very much the exception that an institution understands its costs at a granular level," says Rick Staisloff, a consultant who spent more than two decades in higher-education finance. Drawing on a metaphor he often uses, Mr. Staisloff says colleges tend to look at their offices, programs, and departments as a big basket of stuff, not knowing what the individual pieces in the basket cost.

"No one asked you if you made or lost money on history, or made or lost money on business," he says. "If it all added up, that’s all people cared about."

That’s changing, Mr. Staisloff notes, for reasons that everyone in the industry knows: more pressure and scrutiny on institutions, along with more attention to the complex financial model of higher education, where richer students and richer programs usually cover losses from poorer students and poorer programs. "If you’re going to live in a world of subsidies," he says, "you should know which things are making money."

Edie Behr, an analyst in the public-finance group at Moody’s Investors Service, says colleges have had a longstanding culture of providing education without scrutinizing the costs—"an ingrained culture that is going to have to break down," she says, "because there is a need for cost containment."

"As the programs that cost more than they bring in are identified," she says, "then the question becomes, What do you do with them?"

When Mr. Schrader came to Brenau in 2005, from Shorter University, where he was president, he inherited the institution from a leader who had gotten it back on firm financial ground. Still, he says, there were lapses. The administration set budgets for departments but did not strictly enforce them. Administrators believed they were spending 5 percent of their endowment value, but were actually spending 5 percent of the year-to-year growth, he says. And the college’s financial office was a bit behind the times. The CFO did not use any sort of computerized system to track the college’s spending. If you asked him for a figure, Mr. Schrader says, "he would run to his office, dig about three feet down in a stack of papers, and come back saying, ‘Here it is.’"

Mr. Schrader hired a consultant, James F. Galbally, to act as a kind of forensic accountant, working closely with a new chief financial officer, Wayne Dempsey, who also came from Shorter. Mr. Galbally had spent 20 years at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was an associate dean overseeing finances for the dental school, and had taught in the management school and the higher-education program alongside Robert Zemsky, an expert in college management. He also spent several years as a consultant specializing in training new college presidents.

Contined in article

Jensen Comment
If managerial accounting for colleges was as simple as this article makes it sound, then I think many other colleges would be doing the same thing on a routine bases. Instead such accounting is usually very experimental. Probably the best known and expensive attempt to compute costs of majors was done at Texas A&M university.

"Texas A&M Gathers Accountability Data on New Web Site," Chronicle of Higher Education, May 18, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/texas-am-launches-new-web-site-in-response-to-demand-for-accountability/43387?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Amid calls for more accountability, Texas A&M University has unveiled a website that makes data such as graduation rates, faculty workloads, demographics and student debt easily accessible.

The site — accountability.tamu.edu — is composed of data that already was publicly available, but administrators say the effort is an unprecedented step toward ensuring public trust.

“It is unfortunate that higher education faces new questions about its impact,” said Texas A&M President R. Bowen Loftin in a news release. “We want to do everything in our power to ensure the public trust in all we do.”

Accountability was the subject of a public fight last year between the state’s two public research universities, A&M and UT-Austin, and the Gov. Rick Perry-backed conservative think tank, the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

The group’s “seven breakthrough solutions” were a series of ideas with which the group aimed to address perceived accountability issues. The universities’ regents, all of whom are appointed by Perry, embraced some of the ideas and flirted with others until the schools pushed back following media attention.

One of the most criticized of the ideas was one that reduced a faculty member’s value to a “bottom line” financial figure, represented by a number in either red or black, by subtracting his or her salary and benefits from money brought in through teaching and research.

The document was taken down amid numerous complaints of inaccuracies in the data.

“I’m not opposed to accountability,” said Peter Hugill, a Texas A&M faculty member and state conference president of the American Association of University Professors. “I was opposed to that crazy red and black report.”

The new accountability website has no such measure.

The site provides large amounts of information in a compact format with real-time changes, said Joe Pettibon, associate vice president for academic services, in the news release.

“This is a bold step in transparency that holds the university to the highest standards regarding how we use our resources,” Pettibon said. “However, the site will always be a work in progress as information is added, updated, and improved to address what is happening in higher education and the university.”

 

The accountability site is at
https://accountability.tamu.edu/

Texas A&M University is committed to accountability in its pursuit of excellence. The university expects to be held to the highest standards in its use of resources and in the quality of the educational experience. In fact, this commitment is a part of the fabric of the institution from its founding and is a key component of its mission statement (as approved by the Board of Regents and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board), its aspirations found in Vision 2020 (approved by the Board of Regents in 1999), and its current strategic plan, Action 2015: Education First (approved by the Chancellor in December 2010).

Texas A&M Case on Computing the Cost of Professors and Academic Programs

"Treating Higher Ed's 'Cost Disease' With Supersize Online Courses," by Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 26, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Treating-Higher-Eds-Cost/130934/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Jensen Comment
In an advanced Cost/Managerial Accounting course this assignment could have two parts. First assign the case below. Then assign student teams to write a case on how to compute the cost of a given course, graduate in a given program, or a comparison of a the cost of a distance education section versus an onsite section of a given course taught by a tenured faculty member teaching three courses in general as well as conducting research, performing internal service, and performing external service in his/her discipline.

Issues in Computing a College's Cost of Degrees Awarded and the "Worth" of Professors ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#CostAccounting

"Apple's New Mac Pro," by David Poge, Yahoo Tech, January 7, 2014 ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/the-new-mac-pro-sleek-powerful-and-sooo-apple-72506916039.html

The new Mac Pro is an insanely powerful, expensive computer ($3,000 and up — way up). It’s designed for high-end tasks: video, photo and music editing, for example. Medical work. Scientific simulations. Designers who want to connect five or six screens.

And it has the most Applish design Apple has ever done. It’s an out-there, controversial, very brave trashing of everything we ever knew about desktop computer shapes.

It’s not beige. It’s not plastic. It’s not even rectangular. Instead, it’s a small, silvery-black aluminum cylinder, about 10 inches tall and 6½ inches across, completely featureless except for a panel of connectors on the back.

Ask people what they think this futuristic-looking object is, and you’ll hear a lot of “ashtray,” “vase,” “trash can” and “espresso machine.” Occasionally: “the love child of Darth Vader and R2-D2.”

In the typical obsessive Apple fashion, this computer doesn’t even have a power brick; the power transformer is concealed inside for sleeker looks. All that snakes out to the wall outlet is a single black cord. (It’s worth noting, too, that this computer is manufactured in the United States. No worries about Chinese sweatshops.)

With the slide of a lock switch on the back, you can lift the shell off of the Mac Pro, revealing the crazy sci-fi guts inside (and making it easy to install more memory).

Continued in article

"Apple's New iPad Air," by David Poge, Yahoo Tech, December 27, 2013 ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/the-pogue-review-ipad-air-65481619392.html

,Jensen Comment
This computer also has a problem of placing the shutdown key in a poor place without sufficient warning that you are about to shut the computer off. I don't know if Apple has yet provided software to provide more warning about a shutdown.

What’s the Best Antivirus and How Do I Choose One? ---
http://www.howtogeek.com/181342/whats-the-best-antivirus-and-how-do-i-choose-one/

One of my favorite comparison sites (that may not be up to date as of now) ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_antivirus_software#Microsoft_Windows
This site inspired me to install F-Secure because it also has malware protection, but that may not be the best choice for you. University faculty and staff should always check with campus tech experts on computer security.

Auntie Bev forwarded this:
The first testicular guard, the "Cup," was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974. That means it only took 100 years for men to realize that their brain is also important. 

Jensen Comment
The first hockey player (George Owen,) purportedly to use a helmet in the NHL was in the 1928-29 season. In 1979 the National Hockey League made helmets mandatory, but some teams required them decades earlier ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_helmet

I was an MBA student at the Denver University in the 1960s when college players still practiced without helmets. Before leaving for Stanford I briefly dated the widow of one of DU's top hockey players. Two years earlier her new husband took a puck to the head (no helmet) and died on the ice. Another one of my friends hit his head on the ice while playing in the NHL and died on the ice before the NHL required helmets. Before then he had many severe concussions between when he was 10 years old and when he was killed. He hated the DU policy of having to wear a helmet in games (but not practice).

The DU team in those days was 99% Canadian --- players who grew up with hockey from the time they could walk. The claim was that players did not play as well with helmets somewhat for the same hearing reasons motorcycle drivers argue against helmets.

I cannot independently verify when the "cup" was was used in hockey, and I'm not even certain it's always used these days except by goalies and baseball catchers.

"iPad Apps for the Classroom," by George Williams, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 4, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/ipad-apps-classroom/55185?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Bob Jensen's threads on tools and tricks of the trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

"A School, and a Future, for Blind Children," Knowledge@Wharton, February 6, 2014 ---
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/sabriye-tenberken/

Bob Jensen's threads on technology aids for helping disabled students learn ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped

"Schoolteacher Cheating," Walter E. Williams, Townhall, February 5, 2014 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2014/02/05/schoolteacher-cheating-n1788915?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Philadelphia's public school system has joined several other big-city school systems, such as those in Atlanta, Detroit and Washington, D.C., in widespread teacher-led cheating on standardized academic achievement tests. So far, the city has fired three school principals, and The Wall Street Journal reports, "Nearly 140 teachers and administrators in Philadelphia public schools have been implicated in one of the nation's largest cheating scandals." (1/23/14) (http://tinyurl.com/q5makm3). Investigators found that teachers got together after tests to erase the students' incorrect answers and replace them with correct answers. In some cases, they went as far as to give or show students answers during the test.

Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, identifies the problem as district officials focusing too heavily on test scores to judge teacher performance, and they've converted low-performing schools to charters run by independent groups that typically hire nonunion teachers. But William Hite, superintendent of the School District of Philadelphia, said cheating by adults harms students because schools use test scores to determine which students need remedial help, saying, "There is no circumstance, no matter how pressured the cooker, that adults should be cheating students."

While there's widespread teacher test cheating to conceal education failure, most notably among black children, it's just the tip of the iceberg. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, published by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics and sometimes referred to as the Nation's Report Card, measures student performance in the fourth and eighth grades. In 2013, 46 percent of Philadelphia eighth-graders scored below basic, and 35 percent scored basic. Below basic is a score meaning that a student is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at his grade level. Basic indicates only partial mastery. It's a similar story in reading, with 42 percent below basic and 41 percent basic. With this kind of performance, no one should be surprised that of the state of Pennsylvania's 27 most poorly performing schools on the SAT, 25 are in Philadelphia.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on professors and teachers who allow students to cheat ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#RebeccaHoward

"California Kids Go to Court to Demand a Good Education The state has 275,000 teachers. On average, two are fired annually for poor performance," by Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., The Wall Street Journal, January 28, 2014 ---
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303553204579347014002418436?mod=djemMER_h

The trial began this week in a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court aimed at bringing meaningful and badly needed change to California's public schools. The suit could have far-reaching effects in American education—in particular on teacher-tenure policies that too often work to the detriment of students.

I am among the lawyers representing nine brave schoolchildren, ages 7 to 17, in Vergara v. California. Our arguments are premised on what the California Supreme Court said more than 40 years ago: that education is "the lifeline of both the individual and society," serving the "distinctive and priceless function" as "the bright hope for entry of poor and oppressed into the mainstream of American society." Every child, the court held in Serrano v. Priest, has a fundamental right under the California Constitution to equal educational opportunities.

We will introduce evidence and testimony that the California school system is violating the rights of students across the state. While most teachers are working hard and doing a good job, California law compels officials to leave some teachers in the classroom who are known to be grossly ineffective.

Because of existing laws, some of the state's best teachers—including "teachers of the year"—are routinely laid off because they lack seniority. In other cases, teachers convicted of heinous crimes receive generous payoffs to go away because school districts know that there is slim hope of dismissing them. California law makes such firings virtually impossible. The system is so irrational that it compels administrators to bestow "permanent employment"—lifetime tenure—on individuals before they even finish their new-teacher training program or receive teaching credentials.

As a result of this nonsensical regime, certain students get stuck with utterly incompetent or indifferent teachers, resulting in serious harm from which the students may never recover. Such arbitrary, counterproductive rules would never be tolerated in any other business. They should especially not be tolerated where children's futures are at stake.

But in California, as in other states, outdated laws, entrenched political interests, and policy gridlock have thwarted legislative solutions meant to protect public-school students, who are not old enough to vote and are in essence locked out of the political process. That is why our plaintiffs decided to take a stand and bring this lawsuit asserting their state constitutional rights.

Through this lawsuit, we are seeking to strike down five state laws:

• The "last-in, first-out" or LIFO law, which demoralizes teachers by reducing them to numbers based on their start date, and forces schools to lay off the most junior teachers no matter how passionate and successful they are at teaching students.

• The "permanent employment" law, which forces school districts to make an irreversible commitment to keep teachers until retirement a mere 18 months after the teachers' first day on the job—long before the districts can possibly make such an informed decision.

• Three "dismissal" laws that together erect unnecessary and costly barriers to terminating a teacher based on poor performance or misconduct. Out of 275,000 teachers statewide, only two teachers are dismissed each year on average for poor performance. In Los Angeles, it costs an average of between $250,000 and $450,000 in legal and other costs, and takes more than four years to dismiss a single teacher. Even without these laws, ample protections exist for protecting public employees—including teachers—from improper dismissal.

By forcing some students into classrooms with teachers unable or unwilling to teach, these laws are imposing substantial harm. One of our experts, Harvard economist Raj Chetty, recently analyzed the school district data and anonymous tax records of more than 2.5 million students in a large urban school district in the Northeast over a 20-year period.

He found that students taught by a single highly ineffective teacher experience a nearly 3% reduction in expected lifetime earnings. They also have a lower likelihood of attending college and an increased risk of teenage pregnancy compared with students taught by average teachers. He also conducted a study showing that laying off the least effective instead of the least experienced teachers would increase the total lifetime earnings of a single classroom of Los Angeles students by approximately $2.1 million.

Even worse, the data show that many of the least effective teachers tend to end up in schools serving predominantly low-income and minority communities. Thus these laws are exacerbating the very achievement gap that education is supposed to ameliorate. For example, a recent study of the Los Angeles Unified School District found that African-American and Hispanic students are 43% and 68% more likely, respectively, than white students to be taught by a highly ineffective teacher. This disparity is the equivalent of losing a month or more of school every year.

The California teachers unions are opposed to the goals of our lawsuit and have intervened to help the state of California defend these harmful laws. But the unions do not speak for all teachers. We have heard from hundreds of teachers since we filed the case in May 2012. These are teachers who don't want to be treated like a faceless seniority number, and who don't want to be laid off just because they started teaching three days after the ineffective, tenured teacher next door. Some of them will testify during the trial.

College Athletes Should Drop Unionization and Declare Themselves Interns ---
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-02-06/college-athletes-should-drop-unionization-and-declare-themselves-interns

"The Psychology of Trust in Life, Learning, and Love," by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, February 3, 2014 ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/02/03/david-desteno-truth-about-trust/

Jensen Comment
At a point where laws and internal controls hit their limits, ethics, culture, and trust take over. Nothing is perfect to a degree that trust will never be violated. Much of what we teach is how reduce such violations and how to deal with them when they happen. The problem is that so many people become hardened and street smart without consciences when they harm others financially and physically. It always amazes me how many violators have no remorse other than the remorse of having been caught. We can only hope that they have no great joy and contentment when they don't get caught.

Long Video:  Inside Cornell --- Analyzing the words of psychopaths ---
http://www.cornell.edu/video/inside-cornell-analyzing-the-words-of-psychopaths
Thank you Dennis Huber for the heads up. This is one of the most interesting videos I have ever watched in my entire life.

Most of the people that I encounter online are very polite. But I do not participate in forums where I'm likely to encounter rudeness.
Bob Jensen

"Why Are People Such Jerks Online?" by David A. Pogue, Yahoo Tech, February 6, 2014 ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/why-are-people-such-jerks-online-75755672876.html

When’s the last time a total stranger walked up to you at a party and just started berating you?

“You should be ashamed of yourself. You should be fired for being such a spineless shill. Maybe they’ll replace you with someone who has a clue.”

I’m guessing that no stranger has ever spoken to you like that. Nobody except the tragically unstable would open a conversation with you, in person, with that kind of intensity.

But online, this happens all the time. If you’re a writer, you get email like that routinely. Even if you’re not a writer, you see that sort of language in the cesspools — I mean the comments areas — of many websites.

It’s a problem. The Web has the potential to eliminate our differences in geography, social class and demographic breakdown. It could be humanity’s best hope for freedom of speech. It could be an amazing, centralized forum for useful discussion, solving problems, moving forward.

Instead, all too often, it’s a place for the anonymous and insecure to take potshots. It seems to be a global incarnation of that old, sad rule: If you can’t feel good about yourself, at least you can make somebody else feel worse.

Hiding behind the Web
For many years, I’ve pondered why the Internet turns people into walking toxic spewers — people who, in real life, might be perfectly nice. (I’ve also wondered if people ever heap hatred unknowingly at people they actually know. Kind of like when you honk angrily at another driver, and then realize, as he seems to follow you all the way home, that you’ve just been a jerk to your own neighbor.)

For most of those years, I had these theories:

– On the Internet, you’re anonymous. There are no social repercussions for having a tantrum. Nobody knows who you are.

– There are thousands of other voices all around you. So you feel the need to shout because, deep inside, you worry that you won’t be heard.

– As I’ve often said, technology has become a surprisingly politicized field. A phone or tablet has become a fashion statement — a lifestyle choice — and it’s always open season for criticizing people who’ve made different choices. (See: Mac vs. Windows, iPhone vs. Android, iPhone vs. Samsung, and so on.)

– There might be a youth factor at play. Today’s youngsters spend much less time in face-to-face social interactions than their parents did. So they may not be very good at being civil because they’ve had less practice being civil. (What will happen when they seek a job? Or a spouse?)

Lately, though, I’ve collected two new data points on this question. To me, they shed more light on the “Why are people such nasties online?” question.

First data point: So far, it’s much better now that I’m at Yahoo.

During the 13 years I wrote for The New York Times, the nastygrams amounted to about 25 percent of the reader email. Yahoo Tech has only been open for a month, but so far, my readers’ email has been far more civil.

That’s not to say that people aren’t critical — you, dear readers, have plenty of good suggestions for Yahoo Tech’s improvement. But for some reason, you’ve been surprisingly constructive about it.

Example: “Hi David: The new site is entertaining and very informative. But I wanted to say that I am really tired of all the continuing CES stuff —you are sort of running it in the ground. The event is over and the articles are stale. Otherwise, keep up the good work!”

My correspondent is correct. We’re working on it. But do you see how gracefully he made his suggestion? Do you see why he’s much more likely to get action than if he’d just fired off a nastygram?

So what’s going on here? Why are Yahoo Tech’s commenters much more civil than The New York Times’ commenters?

Is it that our site is so new, visitors are cutting us some slack?

Is it that leaving feedback requires some effort, so casual drive-by insults aren’t worth making? (We’re building a great new comments system — so, for now, the only way to leave feedback on a Yahoo Tech story is to email the author.)

Continued in article

Also see The Pogue Review ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/tagged/the-pogue-review

Update on the Iowa University Law School Biased Hiring Lawsuit (after three years of delay):  46 Democrats and One Republican
"Case of Faculty Discrimination Based on Politics Teresa Wagner was qualified but anti-abortion. The law school at the University of Iowa denied her a job, so she took them to court," by Peter Berkowitz, The Wall Street Journal, February 7, 2014 ---
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304691904579346401360317462?mod=djemMER_h

On Feb. 13 in St. Paul, Minn., the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments in Wagner v. Jones. The appeal is procedurally complex. But the legal question at the heart of the original case has potentially far-reaching implications for public and private legal education. To wit, whether a state law-school may deny employment to faculty candidates because of their political beliefs.

In a trial concluded 15 months ago, Teresa Wagner accused the University of Iowa College of Law of violating her First Amendment right of free expression and 14th Amendment right of equal protection under the law when the school's dean, Carolyn Jones, refused to hire her for its legal analysis, writing and research program.

Ms. Wagner was hired initially in August 2006 and was serving on a part-time basis as the associate director of the law school's writing center when two full-time positions for legal-writing instructors opened up that fall. She became one of the two finalists for the openings.

. . .

She had impressive qualifications. Ms. Wagner had taught legal writing at George Mason University Law School in Virginia, edited three books, practiced as a trial attorney in Iowa, and written several legal briefs, including one in a U.S. Supreme Court case, Stenberg v. Carhart (2000), which struck down a Nebraska law criminalizing partial-birth abortions. The faculty-appointments committee at the University of Iowa College of Law enthusiastically recommended her appointment as a full-time instructor.

There was a catch, however. Teresa Wagner is a pro-life conservative. Her résumé showed prior employment with the National Right to Life Committee and the Family Research Council, both socially conservative organizations in Washington, D.C.

The University of Iowa's law-school faculty, like most law-school faculties, is overwhelmingly liberal. When Ms. Wagner was considered for the job, the law school had only one Republican on its 50-member faculty, according to party registration records obtained from the Iowa Secretary of State, and he had joined the faculty 25 years earlier.

. . .

She sued in federal court in January 2009. At the trial three years later, the law school's principal defense was that Ms. Wagner had "flunked" her interview when she refused to teach the "analysis" component of the class, which involves methods of legal reasoning. Ms. Wagner disputed the allegation. But the law school destroyed the videotape of her job interview, as court testimony confirmed, within a month of its decision not to hire her.

Faculty emails also contradicted the law school's allegations about her poor interview. For example, shortly after Ms. Wagner's job talk, Prof. Sheldon Kurtz, respected for his work on trusts and estates, emailed Mark Janis, chairman of the faculty-appointments committee: "Great. Lets [sic] hire her." Nevertheless, more than a dozen law professors who took the stand supported the law school's story.

Ms. Wagner convinced the jury that her rights had been violated. After the trial, on Nov. 20, 2012, the jury foreman told the Des Moines Register, "Everyone in that jury room believed she had been discriminated against." But after three days of deliberation, the jury could not agree on whether to hold Dean Jones exclusively responsible.

Presiding Judge William Pratt and his magistrate, Thomas Shields, phoned counsel to say the jury was hung and the case would be retried. However, according to court records, after thanking and discharging the jury, Mr. Shields, in an extraordinary move, called jurors back from the coatroom. Despite the trial having ended, he instructed the foreman to sign a verdict form that next to Count 1 had an "X," indicating that Dean Jones was not liable for a First Amendment violation. Later, Judge Pratt dismissed Count II, the 14th Amendment violation.

Now, with her appeal next week, Ms. Wagner is asking the Eighth Circuit to grant her a new trial.

Since the lawsuit, the law school has hired at least four faculty members who are Republicans, including former Congressman James Leach and the Republican governor's chief legal counsel, Brenna Findley, who was appointed as an adjunct professor. The hirings perhaps gave the school cover from charges of ideological bias during the Wagner affair, but taking such steps just perpetuates the idea that it's proper to subject job candidates to a political litmus test.

Instead, state boards of regents and state legislatures have a responsibility to ensure that their law-school faculties do not discriminate on the basis of political persuasion. Procedural transparency in hiring practices would be a help, beginning with the retention for a reasonable period of all relevant documents, including video recordings of interviews. Private university trustees should implement the same safeguards at their institutions.

Hiring decisions should be based on candidates' merits, including their ability to vigorously present in the classroom and criticize conservative as well as progressive views. If the Eighth Circuit protects Teresa Wagner's constitutional rights, the court will also bolster legal education in America by promoting its depoliticization.

Continued in article

"8th Circuit Oral Argument in Unsuccessful Faculty Candidate's Suit Claiming Discrimination by Iowa Law School Due to Her Conservative Views," by Paul Caron, TaxProf Blog, February 14, 2014 ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/02/8th-circuit-oral-argument.html

"U. of Iowa Staff Member Sues Law School for Discrimination," by Katherine Mangan, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 22, 2009 --- Click Here

A staff member in the law-school writing center at the University of Iowa has sued the school and its dean, saying she was turned down for teaching positions because of her conservative political views, Iowa City Press-Citizen reported. Teresa Wagner filed the lawsuit against the school and its dean, Carolyn Jones, on Tuesday in U.S. District Court. In the lawsuit, she states that in 2006, she applied for an advertised job as a full-time writing instructor, and that later, she applied for a part-time adjunct position teaching writing. She was rejected for both positions, even though she had collegiate teaching experience and strong academic credentials, the lawsuit says. She argues that affiliations listed on her résumé, including stints with groups like the National Right to Life Committee, did her in with a liberal-leaning faculty. To bolster her case, the lawsuit dissects the political affiliations of the approximately 50 faculty members who vote on law-school faculty hires; 46 of them are registered as Democrats and only one, hired 20 years ago, is a Republican, the lawsuit states. Ms. Wagner also says that a law-school associate dean suggested that she conceal her affiliation with a conservative law school and later told her not to apply for any more faculty positions. Steve Parrott, a spokesman for the University of Iowa, says the discrimination claim is “without merit.”

Liberal Bias in Academic Hiring ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#LiberalBias

"Moving Further to the Left," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, October 24, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/10/24/survey-finds-professors-already-liberal-have-moved-further-left

Academics, on average, lean to the left. A survey being released today suggests that they are moving even more in that direction.

 

Among full-time faculty members at four-year colleges and universities, the percentage identifying as "far left" or liberal has increased notably in the last three years, while the percentage identifying in three other political categories has declined. The data come from the University of California at Los Angeles Higher Education Research Institute, which surveys faculty members nationwide every three years on a range of attitudes.

 

Here are the data for the new survey and the prior survey:

	2010-11	2007-8
Far left	12.4%	8.8%
Liberal	50.3%	47.0%
Middle of the road	25.4%	28.4%
Conservative	11.5%	15.2%
Far right	0.4%	0.7%

 

Gauging how gradual or abrupt this shift is complicated because of changes in the UCLA survey's methodology; before 2007-8, the survey included community college faculty members, who have been excluded since. But for those years, examining only four-year college and university faculty members, the numbers are similar to those of 2007-8. Going back further, one can see an evolution away from the center.

 

In the 1998-9 survey, more than 35 percent of faculty members identified themselves as middle of the road, and less than half (47.5 percent) identified as liberal or far left. In the new data, 62.7 percent identify as liberal or far left. (Most surveys that have included community college faculty members have found them to inhabit political space to the right of faculty members at four-year institutions.)

 

The new data differ from some recent studies by groups other than the UCLA center that have found that professors (while more likely to lean left than right) in fact were doing so from more of a centrist position. A major study in 2007, for example, found that professors were more likely to be centrist than liberal, and that many on the left identified themselves as "slightly liberal." (That study and the new one use different scales, making exact comparisons impossible.)

 

In looking at the new data, there is notable variation by sector. Private research universities are the most left-leaning, with 16.2 percent of faculty members identifying as far left, and 0.1 percent as far right. (If one combines far left and liberal, however, private, four-year, non-religious colleges top private universities, 58.6 percent to 57.7 percent.) The largest conservative contingent can be found at religious, non-Roman Catholic four-year colleges, where 23.0 percent identify as conservative and another 0.6 percent say that they are far right.

 

Professors' Political Identification, 2010-11, by Sector

	Far left	Liberal	Middle of the Road	Conservative	Far right
Public universities	13.3%	52.4%	24.7%	9.2%	0.3%
Private universities	16.2%	51.5%	22.3%	9.8%	0.1%
Public, 4-year colleges	8.8%	47.1%	28.7%	14.7%	0.7%
Private, 4-year, nonsectarian	14.0%	54.6%	22.6%	8.6%	0.3%
Private, 4-year, Catholic	7.8%	48.0%	30.7%	13.3%	0.3%
Private, 4-year, other religious	7.4%	40.0%	29.1%	23.0%	0.6%

 

The study found some differences by gender, with women further to the left than men. Among women, 12.6 percent identified as far left and 54.9 percent as liberal. Among men, the figures were 12.2 percent and 47.2 percent, respectively.

 

When it comes to the three tenure-track ranks, assistant professors were the most likely to be far left, but full professors were more likely than others to be liberal.

 

Professors' Political Identification, 2010-11, by Tenure Rank

	Far left	Liberal	Middle of the Road	Conservative	Far right
Full professors	11.8%	54.9%	23.4%	9.7%	0.2%
Associate professors	13.8%	50.4%	24.0%	11.5%	0.4%
Assistant professors	13.9%	48.7%	25.9%	11.2%	0.4%

 

So what do these data mean?

 

Sylvia Hurtado, professor of education at UCLA and director of the Higher Education Research Institute, said that she didn't know what to make of the surge to the left by faculty members. She said that she suspects age may be a factor, as the full-time professoriate is aging, but said that this is just a theory. Hurtado said that these figures always attract a lot of attention, but she thinks that the emphasis may be misplaced because of a series of studies showing no evidence that left-leaning faculty members are somehow shifting the views of their students or enforcing any kind of political requirement.

Continued in article

"Noam Chomsky Spells Out the Purpose of Education," by Josh Jones, Open Culture, November 2012 ---
http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/noam_chomsky_spells_out_the_purpose_of_education.html

State Data Lab on the Financial Causes of Failed Romances and Failed States

"Broken Promises, Broken Hearts -- on Valentine's Day?" State Data Lab, February 7, 2014 ---
http://www.statedatalab.org/chart_of_the_day/

Valentine’s Day should be a time to celebrate. But too often fights about finances cause couples to break up. Many times, one spouse does not tell the other how much they are really spending and have charged to the family credit cards.

 Unfortunately most state governments are not telling their citizens how much they are really spending and have charged to the state "credit cards."

Truth in Accounting has identified the five states have the biggest "credit card" balances. These states are California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Michigan. (See table below). These "credit card" balances represent the state's outstanding bills in excess of the assets the state has available to pay these bills. These bills include their unfunded retirement promises.

Continued in article

How Many 27-Year Olds Are Living in Their Parents' Basements?
"Highly Educated, Highly Indebted: The Lives of Today's 27-Year-Olds, In Charts A new study by the Department of Education offers up a statistical picture of young-adult life in the wake of the Great Recession.," by Jordan Weissmann," The Atlantic, January 25, 2013 ---
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/highly-educated-highly-indebted-the-lives-of-todays-27-year-olds-in-charts/283263/

What are today's young adults really like? For those who've spent too much time gazing into the dark recesses of Thought Catalog or obsessing over "Girls," the Department of Education has a new report that offers up some enlightening answers.  

In the spring of 2002, the government's researchers began tracking a group of roughly 15,000 high school sophomores—most of whom would be roughly age 27 today—with the intention of following them through early adulthood. Like myself, many of those students graduated college in 2008, just in time to grab a front-row seat for the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the economic gore fest that ensued. In 2012, the government’s researchers handed their subjects an enormous survey about their lives in the real world. Here, I've pulled together the most interesting findings.

(One important note: I've shorthanded this group as "today's 27-year-olds." But again, not all of the study participants are precisely that age.) 

1. More than 84 percent of today's 27-year-olds have some college education. Only a third have a bachelor's degree.
(See Chart)

Ever hear someone say that "a college degree is the new high school diploma"? It's not really true. But getting at least a bit of higher education is now the norm.

2. Asians are far more likely to have a bachelor's degree than blacks, Hispanics, or whites.  
(See Chart)

3. School was hard. Of those sophomores who expected to eventually earn a bachelor's degree, 34 percent did it. 
(See Chart)

But school was easier if your mom and dad had money. Of students whose parents were in the top quarter of earners, 60 percent attained a bachelor's degree or higher. Of students whose parents were in the bottom quarter of earners, only 14.5 percent pulled that off. 

4. About half of today's 27-year-olds borrowed students loans.
(See Chart)

What about other debt? About 79 percent of today's 27-year-olds owe some money, whether that's on a credit card or mortgage. About 55 percent owe more than $10,000. 

5. In 2012, college dropouts were almost three times more likely to be unemployed than college graduates.
(See Chart)

What are today's young adults really like? For those who've spent too much time gazing into the dark recesses of Thought Catalog or obsessing over "Girls," the Department of Education has a new report that offers up some enlightening answers.  

In the spring of 2002, the government's researchers began tracking a group of roughly 15,000 high school sophomores—most of whom would be roughly age 27 today—with the intention of following them through early adulthood. Like myself, many of those students graduated college in 2008, just in time to grab a front-row seat for the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the economic gore fest that ensued. In 2012, the government’s researchers handed their subjects an enormous survey about their lives in the real world. Here, I've pulled together the most interesting findings.

(One important note: I've shorthanded this group as "today's 27-year-olds." But again, not all of the study participants are precisely that age.) 

 

6. Since Obama came into office, 40 percent have spent some time unemployed.
(See Chart)

Personally, I'm shocked it's that low. Meanwhile, less than one-third have actually lost a job since January 2006. 

Continued in article

"The Government Doesn’t Know How Much Its Student Loans Cost," by Karen Weise, Bloomberg Businessweek, January 31, 2013 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-31/the-government-doesnt-know-how-much-its-student-loans-cost

Depending on whom you ask, the government either makes tens of billions of dollars on the backs of student borrowers, or more or less breaks even. The debate, which boils down to the arcana of accounting techniques, was hotly contested last year, with Democrats such as Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren decrying how the government “profits” off student loans. The controversy caused Congress to ask the Government Accountability Office to weigh in, which led to a report released today. The GAO came back with a non-answer, finding that there’s no good way to know how much the government spends or makes on funding student loans.

The GAO said it could take as long as 40 years to figure the true costs of the program because there are so many variables, from the overall interest rate environment to the number of students who take advantage of different repayment options. In the meantime, the government is stuck using estimates that can vary greatly based on several factors, most important the amount students pay in interest and what it costs the government itself to borrow. The government readjusts its models each year based on more recent data, which can lead to highly volatile results. One year the budget assumed loans taken out in 2008 made the government $9.09 per hundred dollars borrowed. The next year it estimated the very same loans cost the government 24¢ per hundred dollars.

One figure is pretty clear: how much the Department of Education spends administering the loans. That’s jumped from $314 million in 2007 to $864 million in 2012, reflecting changes in the federal program that removed banks as intermediaries and caused the number of loans directly issued by the government to increase threefold. Overall, the administration costs per borrower has stayed the same or even fallen slightly.

The overall difficulty in nailing down these estimates is an increasingly relevant problem as student debt tops $1 trillion—most of it financed by the government.

Over 75% Off-Balance-Sheet Financing by Federal and State Governments (not counting over a trillion dollars in unbooked entitlements obligations)
"Hiding the Financial State of the Union -- and the States," State Data Lab, January 24, 2014 ---
http://www.statedatalab.org/

Next Tuesday, President Barack Obama will give the annual “State of the Union” address. One of the most important issues is the Financial State of the Union. But what about the Financial State of the States?

Truth in Accounting has found that the lack of truth and transparency in governmental budgeting and financial reporting enables our federal and state governments to not tell us what they really owe. Obscure accounting rules allow governments to hide trillions of dollars of debt from citizens and legislators.

The President and many governmental officials tell us the national debt is $17 trillion, but that does not include more than $58 trillion of retirement benefits that have been promised to our veterans and seniors. In addition, state officials do not report more than $948 billion of retirement liabilities.

The charts above show 77% of the federal government's true debt is hidden and 75% of state government debt is hidden. Total hidden federal and state debt amounts to more than $59 trillion, or roughly $625,000 per U.S. taxpayer.

The five states with the greatest hidden debt include Texas ($66 billion), Michigan ($67 billion), New York ($75 billion), Illinois ($106 billion), and California ($112 billion).

Truth in Accounting promotes truthful, transparent and timely financial information from our governments, because citizens deserve to know the amount of debt they and their children will be responsible for paying in the future.

Bob Jensen's threads on the sad state of governmental accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory02.htm#GovernmentalAccounting

"The Seven Best Tax Free Investments," 24/7 Wall Street, February 6, 2014 ---
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2014/02/06/the-seven-best-tax-free-investments/?utm_source=247WallStDailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=FEB62014A&utm_campaign=DailyNewsletter

1. Tax Free Retirement Funds (such as Roth IRAs and Workplace 401Ks)(
2. Fixed Annuities (usually set up as tax free from insurance companies. Not all fixed annuities are tax free)
3. Death Benefits
4. Municipal Bonds
5. Harvesting Tax Losses (to offset capital gains)
6. Gifting
7. College Investing

Jensen Comment
There are advantages and disadvantages in all of these categories such as having to die or enduring the pains of having tax losses to harvest. Municipal bonds have lower returns relative to risk, and it is advisable to have diversified municipal bonds such as a municipal bond mutual fund. Inflation risk is common in tax free investments which makes them more attractive to senior citizens than to younger investors. Professional advice should be sought out before investing in tax-free retirement funds, because there are many things to consider other than tax avoidance and tax deferrals. There are other alternatives used by wealthy people for tax avoidance and tax deferral, e.g., by forming trusts ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrevocable_trust

Keep in mind that cash interest and cash dividends are exempt from Federal taxation but capital gains on the tax-free investments are not tax free on the Federal tax returns. The opposite is the case more me in New Hampshire. Unlike the seven states that have no personal income taxes whatsoever, New Hampshire and Tennessee impose taxes on "tax-free" interest and dividends that are not retirement fund payouts. But these states do not tax the capital gains.

One of the best tax free alternatives available (to poor and wealthy people) is to have employer health insurance programs that shield some income from income taxes.

For half of the USA taxpayers who pay no income taxes, tax free alternatives are not a priority, and perhaps some tax deferrals are bad choices.

The above article considers only legal ways to avoid or defer taxes. There are also alternatives that are not legal but are as common as mud such as engaging in the $2 trillion underground cash economy. Sadly, the IRS is not very good at detecting underground economy cheaters ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/TaxNoTax.htm
Some people are not even aware that they are cheating. For example, I have a retired friend who makes a substantial income from restoring antique cars. It never dawned on him that his "hobby" profits are taxable.

Bob Jensen's personal finance and financial literacy helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers
Financial literacy should be in the common core of higher education. One benefit might be a lower divorce rate in the USA.

10 Often Overlooked Tax Breaks That Could Save You Big-Time ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/overlooked-tax-breaks-2014-2

Bob Jensen's taxation helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#010304Taxation

"Welcome Relief for Homeowners, Until the Tax Bill Arrives," by Shaila Dewan, The New York Times, February 4, 2014 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/05/business/economy/lenders-see-write-off-while-underwater-homeowners-face-stiff-taxes.html?_r=1 

Come tax time, JPMorgan Chase will be able to write off the $1.5 billion in debt relief it must give homeowners to satisfy the terms of a recent settlement.

But the homeowners who receive the help will have to treat it as taxable income, resulting in whopping tax bills for many families who have just lost their homes or only narrowly managed to keep them.

They are not alone. A tax exemption for mortgage debt forgiveness, put in place when the economy began to falter in 2007, was allowed to expire on Dec. 31, leaving hundreds of thousands of struggling homeowners in financial limbo even as the Obama administration has tried to encourage such debt write-downs.

Congress routinely allows tax breaks to expire and then reinstates them, usually retroactively, as it did last year. But the stakes are high for families dealing with large declines in their home values, and reinstatement of the tax breaks is more uncertain because of a movement in Congress to broadly overhaul the tax code, which, despite its long-shot prospects in an election year, could end up eclipsing smaller tax issues.

“Frankly, I’m worried because this should have gotten done before the end of the year and we’ve got families that have to make decisions now,” said Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan, who is the sponsor of a bill that would extend the mortgage tax break.

The tax exemption was intended to help homeowners who are underwater — that is, who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. According to the real estate data service CoreLogic, there are still more than 6.4 million households underwater.

Typically, if someone lends you money and later says you do not have to pay it back, the I.R.S. counts the amount forgiven as income, except in cases of bankruptcy or insolvency.

Short sales, in which a bank agrees to let homeowners sell their homes for less than they owe (a common way of avoiding outright foreclosure), are a form of canceled debt, as are loan modifications that reduce the amount owed.

Loss of the exemption is a financial body blow to homeowners already struggling to make ends meet. “I’m in a hole here — I’m trying to work my way out,’” said Eric Heil, 50, a hospital imaging technician who said a divorce and reduced income were forcing him to sell the house he has owned for 18 years in Parma, Ohio. “And the government’s going to say you have to pay taxes on it?”

Mr. Heil owes $250,000 on his mortgage, and has found a buyer willing to take the house for $150,000. The bank has agreed. But if Congress does not extend the exemption, he will be forced to count the $100,000 difference as income. That would mean a $28,000 tax bill, and Mr. Heil has no idea how he would afford it.

The number of people using the mortgage debt relief exemption has increased every year, reaching almost 100,000 in 2011, the most recent year for which the I.R.S. has figures. That number could be far greater in 2013, when there were more than a quarter-million short sales, according to Daren Blomquist of RealtyTrac, who estimates that those families received an average debt reduction of roughly $37,000. If the exemption had not been in place, that would have translated to an extra $9,250 tax bill for those in the 25 percent bracket.

Many homeowners are so deeply underwater that they require much more help. Under a separate mortgage settlement involving the five largest lenders, more than 90,000 homeowners received debt relief averaging $109,000 each.

"A Booming Business Based on Plagiarism," by Lawrence Biemiller, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 5, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/quickwire-a-booming-business-based-on-plagiarism/50197?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Turnitin.com has conducted a “research study” of its own effectiveness in discouraging plagiarism, and perhaps not surprisingly it reported on Wednesday that it’s doing a great job.

“Colleges and universities using Turnitin reduced unoriginal writing by 39 percent over the course of the study,” the company said. The report is vague, however, about whether there was a lot of plagiarism to start with, or just a little. All it says for sure is that there’s less now.

What’s more interesting is that students at some 1,000 American colleges and universities where the plagiarism-detection service is in use submit 3.8 million assignments a year to Turnitin’s library, which in the past five years has added 55 million papers from American colleges. By any standard, that’s a whole lot of writing—and a whole lot of licensing revenue for Turnitin’s owner, iParadigms, which in 2012 said worldwide revenue reached $50-million.

The report also says, by the way, that instructors who use the site to grade papers digitally spend about 30 percent less time on grading than they would if they were grading on paper. So the eight million papers in the study that were digitally graded, the company claims, saved instructors a total of 91 years’ worth of grading time.

For good measure, the company also says that submitting papers digitally saved nearly 20,000 trees.

Bob Jensen's threads on plagiarism ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm

The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2014 to 2024 ---
Congressional Budget Office
February 4, 2014

Jensen Comment
Especially note Page 127 regarding the Affordable Care Act impact on employment in the USA.

The Affordable Care Act will also reduce the number of fulltime workers by more than 2 million in coming years, congressional budget analysts said in the most detailed analysis of the law’s impact on jobs. The CBO said the law’s impact on jobs would be mostly felt starting after 2016. The agency previously estimated that the economy would have 800,000 fewer jobs as a result of the law. The impact is likely to be most felt, the CBO said, among low-wage workers. The agency said that most of the effect would come from Americans deciding not to seek work as a result of the ACA’s impact on the economy. Some workers may forgo employment, while others may reduce hours, for a equivalent of at least 2 million fulltime workers dropping out of the labor force.

Jensen Comment
Although before the ACA was passed President Obama and and House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi promised that the ACA would create millions of new jobs. Now that this does not appear to be the case in 2014. President Obama and his allies MSNBC and  the New York Times try to put a positive spin on this by saying this will allow many people to drop out of the work force by retiring early (before becoming eligible for Medicare). But what they fail to mention is that the loss of 800,000 jobs because of the ACA is hardly a good thing for people needing work. Many of these jobs will be lost when smaller businesses with 50-100 employees scale back the workforce to 50 or less so as not to have to pay the stiff penalty for not providing health insurance to employees. How can you put a favorable spin on this.

Of course most of this document is devoted to good news and bad news items apart from the ACA.

The federal budget deficit has fallen sharply during the past few years, and it is on a path to decline further this year and next year. CBO estimates that under current law, the deficit will total $514 billion in fiscal year 2014, compared with $1.4 trillion in 2009. At that level, this year’s deficit would equal 3.0 percent of the nation’s economic output, or gross domestic product (GDP)—close to the average percentage of GDP seen during the past 40 years.

As it does regularly, CBO has prepared baseline projections of what federal spending, revenues, and deficits would look like over the next 10 years if current laws governing federal taxes and spending generally remained unchanged. Under that assumption, the deficit is projected to decrease again in 2015—to $478 billion, or 2.6 percent of GDP. After that, however, deficits are projected to start rising—both in dollar terms and relative to the size of the economy—because revenues are expected to grow at roughly the same pace as GDP whereas spending is expected to grow more rapidly than GDP. In CBO’s baseline, spending is boosted by the aging of the population, the expansion of federal subsidies for health insurance, rising health care costs per beneficiary, and mounting interest costs on federal debt. By contrast, all federal spending apart from outlays for Social Security, major health care programs, and net interest payments is projected to drop to its lowest percentage of GDP since 1940 (the earliest year for which comparable data have been reported).

The large budget deficits recorded in recent years have substantially increased federal debt, and the amount of debt relative to the size of the economy is now very high by historical standards. CBO estimates that federal debt held by the public will equal 74 percent of GDP at the end of this year and 79 percent in 2024 (the end of the current 10-year projection period). Such large and growing federal debt could have serious negative consequences, including restraining economic growth in the long term, giving policymakers less flexibility to respond to unexpected challenges, and eventually increasing the risk of a fiscal crisis (in which investors would demand high interest rates to buy the government’s debt).

After a frustratingly slow recovery from the severe recession of 2007 to 2009, the economy will grow at a solid pace in 2014 and for the next few years, CBO projects. Real GDP (output adjusted to remove the effects of inflation) is expected to increase by roughly 3 percent between the fourth quarter of 2013 and the fourth quarter of 2014—the largest rise in nearly a decade. Similar annual growth rates are projected through 2017. Nevertheless, CBO estimates that the economy will continue to have considerable unused labor and capital resources (or “slack”) for the next few years. Although the unemployment rate is expected to decline, CBO projects that it will remain above 6.0 percent until late 2016. Moreover, the rate of participation in the labor force—which has been pushed down by the unusually large number of people who have decided not to look for work because of a lack of job opportunities—is projected to move only slowly back toward what it would be without the cyclical weakness in the economy.

Beyond 2017, CBO expects that economic growth will diminish to a pace that is well below the average seen over the past several decades. That projected slowdown mainly reflects long-term trends—particularly, slower growth in the labor force because of the aging of the population. Inflation, as measured by the change in the price index for personal consumption expenditures (PCE), will remain at or below 2.0 percent throughout the next decade, CBO anticipates. Interest rates on Treasury securities, which have been exceptionally low since the recession, are projected to increase in the next few years as the economy strengthens and to end up at levels that are close to their historical averages (adjusted for inflation).

Deficits Are Projected to Decline Through 2015 but Rise Thereafter, Further Boosting Federal Debt

Assuming no legislative action that would significantly affect revenues or spending, CBO projects that the federal budget deficit will fall from 4.1 percent of GDP last year to 2.6 percent in 2015—and then rise again, equaling about 4 percent of GDP between 2022 and 2024. That pattern of lower deficits initially and higher deficits for the rest of the coming decade would cause federal debt to follow a similar path. Relative to the nation’s output, debt held by the public is projected to decline slightly between 2014 and 2017, to 72 percent of GDP, but then to rise in later years, reaching 79 percent of GDP at the end of 2024. By comparison, as recently as the end of 2007, such debt equaled 35 percent of GDP (see the figure below).

Continued in article

Note that declines in deficits are still increases in debt as long as they remain spending "deficits.". This is not as bad for a government controlling the money printing presses as it is for entities (citizens, towns, counties, state, and businesses) that cannot print money to avoid bankruptcy.
Bob Jensen's threads on the sad state of governmental accounting and the $100 trillion of debt that is off balance sheet ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm

Meanwhile pray for heavy rains and snow in the Southwest, especially Nevada and Colorado. Years of drought could destroy any lingering optimism in this CBO budget forecast.

Please don't shoot the messenger!

California's Drought in Two Terrifying Charts ---
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-02-05/californias-drought-in-two-terrifying-charts?campaign_id=DN020614

"Generational Mobility in the United States," by Nobel Laureate Gary Becker, Becker-Posner Blog, February 2, 2014 ---
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2014/02/generational-mobility-in-the-united-states-becker.html

"Social Mobility and Income Inequality," by Judge Richard Posner, Becker-Posner Blog, February 2, 2014 ---
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2014/02/social-mobility-and-income-inequalityposner.html

"11 Facts About Starbucks That Will Blow Your Mind," by Ashley Lutz and Mike Nudelman, Business Insider, February 4, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/starbucks-facts-2014-2014-2 

Jensen Comment
Another fact is that Starbucks actively supports raising the minimum wage. However, in part this could be due to the fact that some of the mom and pop small coffee shops across the USA will be put out of business, thereby destroying the competition. Over half the business firms that pay minimum wage are very small locally owned and operated small businesses rather than the big chains that generally provide wages above the minimum level and health care except for those like Walgreens that dropped health care just before the ACA commenced. Although I support President Obama's initiative to raise the minimum wage to $10.10, it is sad that so many mom and pop businesses will give way to the big chains.

The claim that always blows my mind is that Starbucks pays more for employee health care (for full time workers) than it spends on coffee that it sells.

Starbucks Tax Avoidance by Shifting Profits Offshore --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-P3tovVapI
Using legal ploys to minimize taxes is not unethical but the public outcry over Starbucks' tax evasion prompted Starbucks to make some voluntary tax payments.

From US News in 2014
Best Online Degree Programs (ranked) ---
http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education

Best Online Undergraduate Bachelors Degrees --- http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/bachelors/rankings
Central Michigan is the big winner

Best Online Graduate Business MBA Programs --- http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/mba/rankings
Indiana University is the big winner

Best Online Graduate Education Programs --- http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/education/rankings
Northern Illinois is the big winner

Best Online Graduate Engineering Programs --- http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/engineering/rankings
Columbia University is the big winner

Best Online Graduate Information Technology Programs ---
http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/computer-information-technology/rankings
The University of Southern California is the big winner

Best Online Graduate Nursing Programs --- http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/nursing/rankings
St. Xavier University is the big winner

US News Degree Finder --- http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/features/multistep-oe?s_cid=54089
This beats those self-serving for-profit university biased Degree Finders

US News has tried for years to rank for-profit universities, but they don't seem to want to provide the data.

David Giles Econometrics Beat Blog ---
http://davegiles.blogspot.com/

Common Accountics Science and Econometric Science Statistical Mistakes ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsScienceStatisticalMistakes.htm

Jensen Comment
Big box mall stores are nearly all hemorrhaging because on the growth in online shopping. I went into the huge Concord Mall this week and it's becoming more and more like a tomb. Only two tiny food court food providers remain in the food court. The restaurants are gone, including Burger King and the Chinese take out. Some of the smaller stores are having going-out-of-business sales next to empty stores.. Three large anchor stores (Sears, JC Penney, and Bon-Ton) are hanging on for a time but the cashiers are mostly reading novels.

The big malls may never come back due to many advantages of online shopping, especially from Amazon. Firstly, there's the element of convenience and two-day delivery of online shopping. Secondly there are price advantages on most items. Thirdly, there's the cost of carrying inventory in mall stores, including multiple sizes for clothing, shoes, appliances, etc. Fourthly, there are enormous shoplifting losses in mall stores. Fifthly, there are security risks in malls, including credit card copiers, phone snatching, and car jacking. In the cities teen gangs are fearsome in some malls.

And the list of mall problems goes on and on, including an exceptionally bad winters in parts of the USA that are not accustomed to bad winters. I sit beside the fireplace and order what we want from Amazon and watch the downloaded movies. Erika and I have not been to a movie theater in years.

I loved to walk up and down the aisles of bookstores in malls. Are there any bookstores left in malls except for a miniscule inventory of books in gift shops?

One problem with making the shift to online shopping for big chains like Sears and JC Penney is that there are enormous economies of scale where Amazon now has the advantage in terms of variety of products for sale, variety of partner vendors, and enormous distribution centers built for efficient picking and shipping of orders by Amazon. To compete even LL Bean is constantly having sale prices on virtually everything and free shipping.

Malls probably won't completely disappear, but only some smaller ones may survive in most towns. The big malls will probably still prosper near USA borders such as the Lone Star Mall in San Antonio that caters to wealthy shoppers from south of the Rio Grande and the Bangor Mall that caters to Canadian shoppers from the Eastern Provinces. Big malls are still good places to launder money. But this type of business is probably not enough to save the really big box-store chains like Sears, JC Penney, Macy's, Bon Ton, and (sigh) even some Sam's Wholesale Clubs (see above).

Big Box lumber stores like Home Depot and Lowes will carry on because of merchandise that does not ship well from online vendors such as lumber, roofing materials, dry wall, fencing, plumbing supplies, garden supplies, garden houses, etc. But it may be that some of the competitor stores may fold. For example, how long can both Home Depot and Lowes survive side-by-side? One of them will have to give up, and it may be a Home Depot in one town and a Lowes store in another town.

"Credit Card Utilization and Your Credit Score," by Laura Adams, Money Girl, January 30, 2014 --- Click Here
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/money-finance/credit/credit-card-utilization-and-your-credit-score?utm_source=MG20140130&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=moneygirl

"A Starring Role at Sundance for Columbia Business School," by Amy S. Choi, Bloomberg Businessweek, January 22, 2014 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-23/a-starring-role-at-sundance-for-columbia-business-school

Pursuing an MBA doesn’t typically provide the dramatic tension in an independent film, but Columbia Business School takes a star turn in Infinitely Polar Bear, which made its debut at Sundance this week. The autobiographical film by Maya Forbes, which already garnered an award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, chronicles the struggles of a family whose father has bipolar disorder and whose mother enters Columbia’s MBA program to rescue the family’s finances.

The Stuarts—mom Maggie (Zoë Saldana), dad Cam (Mark Ruffalo), and kids Faith and Amelia—endures economic hardship, high jinks, emotional roller coasters, and tender moments as Maggie heads off to Columbia while her family stays behind in New England.

“My mother was a real role model for me, ultimately,” Forbes told the Los Angeles Times. “She was really stuck, and she was not going to have it. She wanted us to go to great schools, and she just wanted a better life.”

Story: Yes, Sundance Has Movies, Too

She succeeded. Forbes followed her mother, Peggy, into the Ivy League, attending Harvard University as an undergrad. Writing for the Lampoon gave Forbes the gumption to go to Hollywood, which led to a writing gig on the Larry Sanders Show, she told the Hollywood Reporter. Many years, Emmy nominations, a friendship with Mark Ruffalo, and a chance meeting with JJ Abrams later, Infinitely Polar Bear is being lauded as one of the darlings of Sundance.

Story: Business School in 2013: Revolution, Sexism, and MOOCs

"B-School Admissions Cheating Scandal Ratted Out In China,"  By Christina Larson, Bloomberg Businessweek, January 24, 2014 --- 
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-24/b-school-admissions-cheating-scandal-ratted-out-in-china
 

In China it’s common to get spam messages on your mobile phone—including advertisements promising to boost your graduate-school admissions test scores and secure placement in MBA programs. Reporters at CCTV decided to take one spammer up on the “academic” offer in January–and then uncovered one of the largest organized test-cheating rings yet discovered involving a Chinese B-school.

Stories about corruption in higher education in China are depressingly common. Last fall, a high-ranking admissions officer at Beijing’s prestigious Renmin University – often called the Harvard of China – was apprehended at an airport trying to flee the country with a fake passport. State media soon reported that he had been accused of trading admissions spots for bribes, sometimes as much as 1 million yuan (about $165,000). In 2012, another professor at Renmin University, Cao Tingbing, leapt to his death from a high-rise building amid unconfirmed rumors of another admissions corruption scandal.

China’s graduate schools are not immune to admissions irregularities. Recently CCTV reporters followed spam messages to uncover a big one, as revealed in a broadcast last week. When an under-cover reporter first visited the so-called Zhihengzhi Training Center in Beijing, he saw files describing plans for test-takers to wear wireless earpieces through which they would hear test answers dictated. Graduate school admissions tests are administered at pre-arranged times in examination rooms monitored by a university.

Story: Can B-School Students Talk About Gender? Yes, and Here's How

Because communication devices, such as mobile phones and laptops, are not allowed in testing rooms, such a scam could only work with the cooperation of one or more universities. CCTV reporters discovered that Harbin Polytechnic University, which runs a graduate MBA program, was cooperating with Zhihengzhi Training Center.

Continued in article

"University community reacts to diversity statistics from Committee:  Various minority organizations, administrators discuss racial issues, discrepancies based on recently released statistics about cases reported, brought to trial," by Cameron Feller, Cavalier Daily, April 14, 2009 ---
http://www.cavalierdaily.com/news/2009/apr/14/university-community-reacts-to-diversity-statistic/

The 2008-09 Honor Committee released statistics last week about the demographics of cases reviewed during its term. Although the data dealt specifically with cases reported, accused and brought to trial, the information also lends itself to several discussions about some students’ concerns pertaining to the University’s honor system and diversity.

Reporting

One of the most obvious areas of interest within the statistics were the numbers that dealt specifically with reporting. According to the statistics, a total of 64 cases were brought before the past Committee. Of these cases, 27 reports were brought against white students, 21 against black students, 11 against Asian and/or Asian-American students, four against Latinos and four against students of unknown race.

“When I saw [the statistics], I was a little bit surprised at the disproportionate number of minority students reported compared to [white] students,” said Vice Chair for Investigations Mary Siegel, a third-year College student.

“Looking at these numbers, there are almost as many [black] students reported as [white] students, which is not at all proportional [to the actual number of students enrolled at the University],” Siegel said.

These concerns with respect to reporting extend beyond just Committee members, however.

“In terms of data collection, I can’t help but be startled by the discrepancy,” African-American Affairs Dean Maurice Apprey said.

Another alleged discrepancy is the ratio of cases brought against males to those brought against females. The statistics show that 48 males were reported of committing an honor offense, whereas only 18 females were reported.

Some members of the University attribute such statistical discrepancies to spotlighting, which is when certain minorities — such as blacks, athletes and Asians — are reported at a much higher rate than white students for reasons like standing out in the room more, as well as some reporters’ inherent biases.

“From a psychology point of view, sometimes you are going to look at what’s different in the room,” said Black Student Alliance President-elect Lauren Boswell, a third-year Architecture student.

Siegel said she hopes to help explore the reasons behind allegedly biased reporting by speaking to reporters more frequently than the current system allows.

“I think the first place we have to start is reporters and ask them why they suspected this person of an the Committee offense,” Siegel said. “If there seems to be a pattern, then the Committee can try and correct that pattern.”

Currently reporters of an alleged honor offense are involved in the first interview during the investigations process and then during a rebuttal, but are removed from the investigations process, Siegel said. Removing the reporter from the process ensures that his or her bias does not play a part in investigations, Siegel added, but does not ensure that there are not any biased motivations behind the initial report.

Accusations and Trials

After students are reported of having committed an alleged honor offense, the case is taken up by the Investigative Panel, which is comprised of three rotating Committee members, and examined to see if an honor offense occurred. If the panel believes an offense occurred, the student is formally accused and is brought to trial.

According to the statistics excluding last weekend’s trials, 35 students were formally accused of committing an honor offense by the I-Panel, 13 of whom were black. Twelve white students were accused and 10 Asian and/or Asian-American students also were brought to trial. A total of 29 trials, including last weekend’s trials, occurred during the past Committee’s term. Of the 11 white students brought to trial, six were found not guilty, whereas 14 of the 19 black students brought to trial were found not guilty. A total of 32 males, meanwhile, were brought to trial, nine of whom were found guilty. Comparatively, four of the 11 female students brought to trial were found guilty.

After looking at the statistics, several Committee members said they believe that any bias present in the beginning of the honor trial process is lost during the process.

“Once a case comes into the system ... these students are being found guilty at the same rate” regardless of race, 2007-08 Committee Chair Jess Huang said.

Fourth-year College student Carlos Oronce, co-chair of the Minority Rights Coalition, disagreed, however.

“I challenge the notion that students of different color are on par with white students” after trials, Oronce said, noting that though Committee members have told him a “balance” eventually exists, his own data analysis yields different conclusions. He explained that his conclusions are based on a study done six years ago; the Committee has yet to do a similar study since.

“You’ll see that there’s something like a 6 percent difference in guilt rate between [white] students and black students,” Oronce said. “Six percent comes off to me as a huge difference.”

Oronce added that he believes that a more formal study needs to be done to accurately see and analyze the alleged disparities. Siegel also said she believes the Committee “needs to look at ways to correct these imbalances” regardless of whether the imbalances come into play during the actual investigation and trial process.

Representation, Recruitment and Retention

Several members of the University community also have expressed concern about representation within the actual Committee itself in regards to diversity.

“I think if you look at the Committee and support officer pools, they are admittedly not very diverse,” said Committee Chair David Truetzel, a third-year Commerce student. La Alianza Chair Carolina Ferrerosa, a fourth-year College student, agreed, noting that one of her organization’s major concerns is increasing diversity within the Committee.

“We would like to see more of a push” to get more minority representatives on the Committee, and make sure that “the Committee is realistic when it looks in the mirror,” Ferrerosa said.

Members and non-members alike hope that by increasing minority representation within the Committee, other diversity issues can be addressed, like increasing outreach and personal relationships between minority contracted independent organizations and the Committee.

Vice Chair for Education Rob Atkinson, a third-year College student, said he already has had several meetings aimed at improving education efforts with some of these groups. He added that he feels it is important to create a personal relationship between these groups and the Committee before more formal relationships can be developed.

“We want to take into account the concerns or views of the different communities when we reach out to those communities,” Atkinson said. Reaching out to these groups, Truetzel added, will help ensure that all students feel like the system belongs to them, no matter their race or gender.

“When you lack diversity ... you don’t have diversity of thought, diversity of ideas,” Truetzel said.

Apprey, meanwhile, agreed that increasing minority representation on the Committee could lead to “healthy conversation, healthy debates” and could help promote “further cultural competence” and understanding.

To help increase representation, the Committee has taken steps to improve recruitment and students attracted to joining the Committee. BSA President-elect Boswell noted that the Committee has made an effort to help promote recruitment among the black student community, holding two honor education classes during both the fall and spring semesters this academic year that encouraged members of the black community to join the Committee.

Boswell said that first-year students in the black community often are approached by a lot of different programs focused on black students their first semester to create “a sense of family and place here” at the University. It is therefore sometimes difficult, however, to attract first-year students that are minorities within the Committee and other organizations during their first semesters, Boswell said. By holding an education class during the spring, Boswell said, the Committee “got outstanding turnout for minorities.”

The Committee and BSA also held a study hall that discussed both the Committee and UJC. Although Boswell said she thought it was a success, she hopes in the future that it will become more “casual” so that students will feel comfortable enough to have personal conversations.

Despite these efforts, there are still many things the Committee can do to encourage minorities to participate in the honor system, Boswell said. Even though the Committee attends The Source, the black community’s activities fair, Boswell said she does not know if it is “the most effective way” to help recruitment.

Oronce said consistent outreach efforts to these different communities, rather than just right before elections or the beginning of the year, could prove helpful for recruitment or maintaining relationships.

In addition to issues of recruitment and representation, Oronce said that many minority students end up quitting the Committee because they feel uncomfortable and marginalized. Boswell added that officer pool meetings can be isolating as students generally sit with their friends. Though she said this might be found in any organization, she also noted that it is imperative that the Committee makes sure every minority student feels comfortable and included if they wish to maintain diversity.

“This past year, there has been a move towards getting a group that is more representative,” Huang said.

Oronce also said he believes that “this year is definitely a lot better than last year” in terms of representation within both the Committee and the support officer pool, but that there is still room for improvement.

“Once we fix our problems internally, we will be in a better place to discuss” some of these other issues of diversity and the Committee, Siegel added.

FAC and DAB

The Committee’s educational outreach efforts are not limited to students. Within the Committee, the Faculty Advisory Committee and the Diversity Advisory Board were created to help address issues with faculty members and diversity organizations. The FAC chair meets with faculty members once a month to discuss faculty concerns and teach aspects of honor, while the DAB works with Honor to increase Honor relevancy and understanding with diverse groups.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on cheating ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm

Twitter Has Weak User Growth Amidst the Competition
"Brutal Exchange Between Dick Costolo And Wall Street Analysts Sums Up All Twitter's Problems," by Jim Edwards, Business Insider, Business Insider, February 6, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/dick-costolo-and-wall-street-analyst-questions-on-user-growth-2014-2 

Twitter's first ever earnings call was savaged by Wall Street as investors drove the stock down 17% or more when people saw how few new users had joined the social media platform.

Twitter actually delivered robust financial numbers in revenues and earnings per share, beating analysts' estimates.

But when everyone saw the user growth — and a decline in the level of their engagement in timeline views (people looking at their tweet streams, basically) — shareholders headed for the exits.

It got worse an hour later on the conference call with analysts.

One analyst suggested that he didn't believe Twitter's growth could ever accelerate in the U.S. again.

Another suggested that users were trying Twitter and then rejecting it.

Twitter reported 241 million users, adding only 9 million more since the last quarter. Only 1 million users were added in the U.S.

CEO Dick Costolo was asked repeatedly what he was doing to turn the numbers around. At one point, one analyst (we didn't catch his name but will update this post later when the transcript comes out) hinted that he didn't believe it was possible for Twitter to reach 200 million Americans even over the course of a decade.

The analyst suggested that Costolo assumes U.S. user growth had gone up by 3 million instead of the actual 1 million reported: "Even if you triple the current growth, it will take you 12 years to get to 200 million domestic users. Can you get there?"

Costolo replied: "We have a plan to make a broader audience to get Twitter to understand more broadly. We've seen success on preliminary steps on that, we believe the cumulative effect of changes we make over the course of the year ... will result in changing the slope of the growth curve. We have every confidence that will happen. What exactly the slope of that growth curve will look like and when it will occur we cannot guess at."

That's Twitter's problem — most growth curves in social media are viral or organic, and follow a predictable "hockey stick" pattern of fast growth followed by a plateau. Costolo now believes he can turn his plateau back into a hockey stick.

A second analyst then asked whether Costolo would reveal a longstanding mystery about Twitter that the company has repeatedly declined to address: "How many people come on the platform, try Twitter, and then leave? ... that seems to be the problem."

Costolo replied: "We're not going to speak specifically to any specific numbers of new user retention."

He explained that Twitter was aware that new users had difficulty figuring out the best ways to use Twitter, and the company was working on making it easier so that they "get it" instantly: "It's not just 'get it' in the first weeks or months on Twitter, it's 'get it' on the first day on Twitter ... so that's a focus."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/dick-costolo-and-wall-street-analyst-questions-on-user-growth-2014-2#ixzz2sY06WKez

Plato's Allegory of the Cave --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave

Two Animations of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave: One Narrated by Orson Welles, Another Made with Clay ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/02/two-animations-of-platos-allegory-of-the-cave.html

Wall Street’s Math Wizards Forgot a Few Variables
What wasn’t recognized was the importance of a different species of risk — liquidity risk,” Stephen Figlewski, a professor of finance at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University, told The Times. “When trust in counterparties is lost, and markets freeze up so there are no prices,” he said, it “really showed how different the real world was from our models.
DealBook, The New York Times, September 14, 2009 ---
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/wall-streets-math-wizards-forgot-a-few-variables/

Bob Jensen's threads on CDOs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm

John Cleese --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cleese

"John Cleese Has a Serious Side," Harvard Business Review Interview, February 6, 2014 ---
http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/02/john-cleese-has-a-serious-side/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29&cm_ite=DailyAlert-020714+%281%29&cm_lm=sp%3Arjensen%40trinity.edu&cm_ven=Spop-Email

Jensen Comment
John Cleese also moved (to Monaco I think) admittedly because of England's taxes on the 1%.

MIT's Guide to Picking Locks ---
http://www.openculture.com/2014/02/learn-to-pick-locks-with-the-mit-guide-to-lock-picking-1991.html

"Solar Thermal Technology Poses Challenges for Drought-Stricken California:  Reducing water consumption at solar thermal plants raises costs and decreases power production," by Kevin Bullis, MIT's Technology Review, February 2, 2014 --- Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/523856/solar-thermal-technology-poses-challenges-for-drought-stricken-california/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20140203

California’s ambitious goal of getting a third of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2030 is being tested by its driest year on record, part of a multiyear drought that’s seriously straining water supplies. The state plan relies heavily on solar thermal technology, but this type of solar power also typically consumes huge quantities of water.

The drought is already forcing solar thermal power plant developers to use alternative cooling approaches to reduce water consumption. This will both raise costs and decrease electricity production, especially in the summer months when demand for electricity is high. Several research groups across the country are developing ways to reduce those costs and avoid reductions in power output.

Solar thermal power plants use large fields of mirrors to concentrate sunlight and heat water, producing steam that spins power-plant turbines. Utilities like them because their power output is much less variable than power from banks of solar panels (see “BrightSource Pushes Ahead on Another Massive Solar Thermal Plant” and “Sharper Computer Models Clear the Way for More Wind Power”).

The drawbacks are that solar thermal plants generate large amounts of waste heat, and they consume a lot of water for cooling, which is usually done by evaporating water. Solar thermal plants can consume twice as much water as fossil fuel power plants, and one recently proposed solar thermal project would have consumed about 500 million gallons of water a year.

Continued in article

"Lake Mead is shrinking -- and with it Las Vegas' water supply," CBS News," January 30, 2014 ---
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/lake-mead-is-shrinking-and-with-it-las-vegas-water-supply/

When you head out on Nevada's Lake Mead, the first thing you notice is a white line. That's where the water used to be.

What did this look like a decade ago?

"This was all underwater," said Pat Mulroy, the general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. "I mean boats were everywhere. There was a whole marina here."

Mulroy said that the drought began 14 years ago. Satellite photos show the Colorado River, which feeds Lake Mead, is drying up -- so the lake is rapidly shrinking. Islands are growing, and boats are floating far from where they once we

"It's a pretty critical point," Mulroy said. "The rate at which our weather patterns are changing is so dramatic that our ability to adapt to it is really crippled."

Lake Mead was created by the Hoover Dam in 1935. It provides water for 20 million people in southern Nevada, southern California and Arizona. Since 2000, the lake has lost 4 trillion gallons of water. 

The bathtub ring is going to get bigger. Lake Mead is expected to drop at least another 20 feet this year. If it does that could trigger automatic cuts to the water supply for Nevada and Arizona.

That would hit Las Vegas hard. Ninety percent of the area's water comes from the lake. At least one of the city's two intake pipes could soon be above water. So to save the water supply Nevada is rushing to build a third intake even deeper.

Concrete slabs are being lowered 650 feet underground where a massive drill is creating a three-mile-long tunnel, one inch per minute. The project should be finished next year and costs $817 million.

"We're really scrambling to make sure that this intake is done in time before we lose our first intake," said J.C. Davis, the project's spokesperson. "Without Lake Mead, there would be no Las Vegas." 

Despite its wasteful reputation, Las Vegas actually reuses 93 percent of its water. It's paid homeowners $200 million to rip up their thirsty lawns. The city added 400,000 people last decade but cut its water use by 33 percent.

"All of us are in it together, and all of us are either going to survive this or all of us are going to feel the consequences," Mulroy said.

The consequences of a western resource in retreat.

Jensen Comment
I read where some Souchi hotels have yellow water coming out of the faucets. Maybe California should consider this more efficient way of recycling water.

"The Secret of Southern New Hampshire University's Success," by John Pulley, Campus Technology, January 29, 2014 ---
http://campustechnology.com/articles/2014/01/29/the-secret-of-southern-new-hampshire-universitys-success.aspx?=ct21

. . .

LeBlanc comes across as a nice guy in an interview, but he is a disruptive force. In just a few years, the president of Southern New Hampshire University has transformed a relatively unremarkable New England institution into the fastest growing not-for-profit online educator in the country -- and one of the biggest. SNHU's College of Online and Continuing Education (COCE) enrolls 25,000 students in 36 states, generates annual revenues of $200 million and has double-digit profit margins.

SNHU has succeeded in the online space by leveraging technology and providing well-constructed courses and Amazon-like customer service to mostly older students at a cost they can afford. Tuition and fees for SNHU's online BA is about one-third of what students pay to earn the same degree at the university's leafy brick-and-mortar campus, not including housing and meals. The main campus and its virtual counterpart have a symbiotic relationship. The former provides credibility to the online operation. The latter distributes profits to its alma mater in the form of royalty payments.

LeBlanc is at the crest of a gathering IT-enabled wave of disruptive innovation that will put half of all universities out of business in 15 years, predicted Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor, author of The Innovative University and a friend of LeBlanc. Christensen's work provided the principles and philosophical underpinnings that LeBlanc has exploited to create a new business model for delivering education at SNHU. A true believer, LeBlanc continues to innovate. What's next? Creating a new model that will blow up the current one, of course.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
SNHU, along with the University of Wisconsin, was one of the one of the early programs to offer competency-based credits for courses. Of course it also offers traditional credits for onsite and online courses.

Accounting students might enjoy writing purchase versus lease cases that entail research across different regions of the USA. A Cadillac ELR priced at $76,000+ can be leased for about $700 per month. Of course if you have to ask you can't afford it either way.

Sounds Like a Lot of Money for a Glorified Chevy Volt having a 37-mile Range on a Fully Charged Battery (less than 20 miles in cold weather)
"Early Buyers Will Get A Free Charging Station With Cadillac's $76,000 Electric Car," by Stephen Edelstein, Business Insider, January 29, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/free-charging-station-with-electric-cadillac-2014-1

Jensen Comment
The Cadillac ELR luxury coupe and the Chevy Volt have two advantages over the popular Tesla electric cars. Firstly, Tesla does not have a network of dealers for repairs and maintenance in all 50 states. Secondly, Tesla does not have a hybrid gas engine to take over when the batteries poop out.

Technology reports show that the cold-temperature battery poop-out problem is not likely to be overcome anytime soon. The Cadillac ELR is an expensive gasoline car alternative for cold climates --- which now seems to include North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and other parts of the south. The Tesla also faces a low highway clearance problem that will never work in driveway snow drifts. Perhaps in the north the Tesla should come equipped with a snow shovel.

I wonder if the Cadillac dealers in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont will sell one ELR --- possibly to a buyer who can afford a $76,000+ summer car. The market for these electric and hybrid-electric cars is more for commuters facing commutes of 50 miles or less in warm climates. Tesla does a bit better on range, but without a gasoline engine backup drivers must fear becoming stranded with pooped out batteries.

I read where parking garages with charging stations are facing an increased problem of vandals pulling the plugs on electric cars while the owners are elsewhere. Of course when gasoline was over $5 per gallon, drivers faced the possibility of having their fuel siphoned off.

In any case, accounting students might enjoy writing purchase versus lease cases that entail research across different regions of the USA.

"The Effects of AACSB Accreditation on Faculty Salaries and Productivity," by  David W. Hedrick, Ellensburg, Steven E. Henson and John M. Krieg, and  Charles S. Wassell, Jr., Journal of Education for Business, 85: 284–291, 2010 Copyright C Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0883-2323 DOI: 10.1080/08832320903449543

"California Kids Go to Court to Demand a Good Education The state has 275,000 teachers. On average, two are fired annually for poor performance," by Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., The Wall Street Journal, January 28, 2014 ---
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303553204579347014002418436?mod=djemMER_h

The trial began this week in a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court aimed at bringing meaningful and badly needed change to California's public schools. The suit could have far-reaching effects in American education—in particular on teacher-tenure policies that too often work to the detriment of students.

I am among the lawyers representing nine brave schoolchildren, ages 7 to 17, in Vergara v. California. Our arguments are premised on what the California Supreme Court said more than 40 years ago: that education is "the lifeline of both the individual and society," serving the "distinctive and priceless function" as "the bright hope for entry of poor and oppressed into the mainstream of American society." Every child, the court held in Serrano v. Priest, has a fundamental right under the California Constitution to equal educational opportunities.

We will introduce evidence and testimony that the California school system is violating the rights of students across the state. While most teachers are working hard and doing a good job, California law compels officials to leave some teachers in the classroom who are known to be grossly ineffective.

Because of existing laws, some of the state's best teachers—including "teachers of the year"—are routinely laid off because they lack seniority. In other cases, teachers convicted of heinous crimes receive generous payoffs to go away because school districts know that there is slim hope of dismissing them. California law makes such firings virtually impossible. The system is so irrational that it compels administrators to bestow "permanent employment"—lifetime tenure—on individuals before they even finish their new-teacher training program or receive teaching credentials.

As a result of this nonsensical regime, certain students get stuck with utterly incompetent or indifferent teachers, resulting in serious harm from which the students may never recover. Such arbitrary, counterproductive rules would never be tolerated in any other business. They should especially not be tolerated where children's futures are at stake.

But in California, as in other states, outdated laws, entrenched political interests, and policy gridlock have thwarted legislative solutions meant to protect public-school students, who are not old enough to vote and are in essence locked out of the political process. That is why our plaintiffs decided to take a stand and bring this lawsuit asserting their state constitutional rights.

Through this lawsuit, we are seeking to strike down five state laws:

• The "last-in, first-out" or LIFO law, which demoralizes teachers by reducing them to numbers based on their start date, and forces schools to lay off the most junior teachers no matter how passionate and successful they are at teaching students.

• The "permanent employment" law, which forces school districts to make an irreversible commitment to keep teachers until retirement a mere 18 months after the teachers' first day on the job—long before the districts can possibly make such an informed decision.

• Three "dismissal" laws that together erect unnecessary and costly barriers to terminating a teacher based on poor performance or misconduct. Out of 275,000 teachers statewide, only two teachers are dismissed each year on average for poor performance. In Los Angeles, it costs an average of between $250,000 and $450,000 in legal and other costs, and takes more than four years to dismiss a single teacher. Even without these laws, ample protections exist for protecting public employees—including teachers—from improper dismissal.

By forcing some students into classrooms with teachers unable or unwilling to teach, these laws are imposing substantial harm. One of our experts, Harvard economist Raj Chetty, recently analyzed the school district data and anonymous tax records of more than 2.5 million students in a large urban school district in the Northeast over a 20-year period.

He found that students taught by a single highly ineffective teacher experience a nearly 3% reduction in expected lifetime earnings. They also have a lower likelihood of attending college and an increased risk of teenage pregnancy compared with students taught by average teachers. He also conducted a study showing that laying off the least effective instead of the least experienced teachers would increase the total lifetime earnings of a single classroom of Los Angeles students by approximately $2.1 million.

Even worse, the data show that many of the least effective teachers tend to end up in schools serving predominantly low-income and minority communities. Thus these laws are exacerbating the very achievement gap that education is supposed to ameliorate. For example, a recent study of the Los Angeles Unified School District found that African-American and Hispanic students are 43% and 68% more likely, respectively, than white students to be taught by a highly ineffective teacher. This disparity is the equivalent of losing a month or more of school every year.

The California teachers unions are opposed to the goals of our lawsuit and have intervened to help the state of California defend these harmful laws. But the unions do not speak for all teachers. We have heard from hundreds of teachers since we filed the case in May 2012. These are teachers who don't want to be treated like a faceless seniority number, and who don't want to be laid off just because they started teaching three days after the ineffective, tenured teacher next door. Some of them will testify during the trial.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
I read where Venezuela made it impossible to fire workers. Do you think this is a factor in the 40% absenteeism rate? In Chicago a handful of schools now fire teachers for excessive absenteeism. This has led to significantly reduced absenteeism relative to schools that still refuse to fire teachers for excessive absenteeism.

Venezuela has some other dubious experiments. The male prisoners run the prisons and, thereby, gave rise to many prisoners preferring to be in prison than being on the outside. They eat well, pack guns, have women on demand, and come and go at will. Does it come as any surprise that crime rates are very high in Venezuela?

Video:  This Is How McNuggets Are Made --- http://newsletters.businessweek.com/c/1158310/432f990d4411617f/8

Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials

• Bob Jensen's Video Tutorials and Other Helpers --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideosSummary.htm 
  (Includes video tutorials on Camtasia, MS Access, MS Excel, Managerial Accounting, and Accounting Theory)
   
• Accounting for Derivative Financial Instruments --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/caseans/000index.htm
   
• Accounting for Fraud --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm
   
• Accounting Theory --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory.htm
   
• Electronic Commerce and Computing Security --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce.htm
   
• XBRL and OLAP --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm