Tidbits
Political Quotations
To Accompany the October 12, 2015 edition of Tidbits
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2015/tidbits101215.htm
Bob Jensen at
Trinity University
Election Information ---
http://www.rockthevote.com/get-informed/elections/
Cross-Over Gaming Primary Elections: Voting for a Sure Loser Rather
Than a Candidate That Might Win in a Race to the Botton
Cross-Over Gaming Primary Elections: Voting for a Sure Loser to Knock
Out Winning Candidates
Based upon a comment I heard on CBS News there are signs that the poll
support and crowds supporting Donald Trump are largely members of the Democratic
Party intent on messing up the Republican Party primary outcomes. These Trump
supporters have no intent to vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 general election
if he should be nominated. Something similar may be happening among the
supporters of Bernie Sanders who are really Republicans in sheeps' white wool.
The USA system of selecting nominees in primary elections that precede general
elections possibly are becoming a vicious game.
Election Gaming "Fraud" in Primary Elections in the USA:
Making Sure Your General Election Opponent is a Real Loser
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudulentElections.htm
FlackCheck.org ---
http://www.flackcheck.org
Headquartered at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the
University of Pennsylvania, FlackCheck.org offers resources that help students
"recognize flaws in arguments in general and political ads in particular"
Bloggingheads.tv (political commentary ---
http://bloggingheads.tv/
OpenSecrets (money and politics blog) ---
https://www.opensecrets.org
Only those who
will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
T.S. Eliot
Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters.
Margaret Wheatley,
We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life
that is waiting for us.
Joseph Campbell
If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.
George S. Patton
Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude
you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly
on your shoulder.
Henry David Thoreau
Supreme Court Justices
Get More Liberal As They Get Older
Oliver Roeder ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/supreme-court-justices-get-more-liberal-as-they-get-older/
Unlike most taxpayers
The False
Income-Inequality Narrative: The focus on divvying up existing wealth
instead of creating more for everyone hurts the very people the left says it
wants to help.
Jason I. Riley ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-false-income-equality-narrative-1443569867?mod=djemBestOfTheWeb
Trust in the Media is
at An All Time Low
The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza is troubled by a new Gallup poll finding:
“Just four in 10 Americans say they have a ‘great deal’ or a ‘fair amount’ of
trust in the media to report the news fairly and accurately. . . . That matches
historic lows the media also ‘achieved’ in 2012 and 2014.” For this he blames
“partisans—whether in politics or in the media—who have a vested interest in
casting the press as hopelessly biased.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/09/28/trust-in-the-media-is-at-an-all-time-low-thats-a-terrible-thing-for-all-of-us/?mod=djemBestOfTheWeb
In the USA 2014 was the
least violent year in decades following a steady decline in violent crimes
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/09/29/2014-was-the-least-violent-year-in-decades/
Jensen Comment
It's difficult or impossible to rank what factors caused the most decline.
Economic recovery is probably a major helper in reducing crime. Technology
certainly played a role, especially video surveillance everywhere. The
Freakonomics conclusion that increasing abortion rates among poverty women had
an eventual payoff in lowering violent crime rates. Gun enthusiasts like to
claim that pistol-packing is a preventative. Much of the violent crime is
domestic-abuse crime, and there's no explanation of why that is down other than
the impact of a better economy and reduced unemployment. Most certainly steady
improvements in DNA testing and forensic science in general contributed heavily
to the long-term decline in violent crime.
Climate Change Is So Bad That the US and China Agree on
It ---
http://www.wired.com/2015/09/climate-change-bad-us-china-agree/
This 1 chart shows the incredible increase in the
number of millionaires in China ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-number-of-millionaires-in-china-2015-9
“If only there
was a ‘coon of the year’ award…” Anthea Butler lamented
University of Pennsylvania Religion Professor wanting to nominate Ben Carson ---
http://www.mediaite.com/online/u-penn-professor-calls-ben-carson-coon-of-the-year-on-twitter/
Read some of her student comments ---
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1551168
Obama Falls for the Clock Hoax Hook, Line, and Sinker
And once the boy has his clock (returned from
the Dallas Police) , he plans to take President Barack Obama up on his
invitation to bring it to Washington.
http://irvingblog.dallasnews.com/2015/09/ahmeds-celebrity-tour-goes-global-as-family-heads-to-qatar.html/
Jensen Comment
Buy (not build) an alarm clock that ticks
Rig it up to look like a bomb
Be praised in the media as a genius
Get invited to the White House
And become a millionaire in a new kind of American Dream
Gallup’s decision
to get out of the (USA presidential election polling)
horse-race game comes after two consecutive elections in which its results were
way off. Gallup’s final generic congressional ballot in 2010 had Republicans
winning by 15 percentage points; they won by 7 points. ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/gallup-gave-up-heres-why-that-sucks/
Jensen Comment
One problem with election polling in general is that samples are often drawn
from populations that are not in a steady state regarding how they will vote in
election booths. Choices can change right up to pulling the lever. And sampled
respondents are often not truthful about how they intend to vote such as
cross-over voting in primary elections in order to destroy the best opposition
candidate.
The differences
between Shia and Sunni Muslims ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-differences-between-shia-and-sunni-muslims-2015-10
Politicians are
taking over late night TV — and that's bad for everyone ---
Chris Tagnotti ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/politicians-are-taking-over-late-night-tv-and-thats-bad-for-everyone-2015-9
Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million donation to
Newark public schools failed miserably — here's where it went
wrong
Abby Jackson, Business Insider,
September 25, 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerbergs-failed-100-million-donation-to-newark-public-schools-2015-9
Connecticut has
roughly half of what it needs to pay future retirement benefits for its workers,
meaning the home to scores of hedge funds and some of the country’s wealthiest
towns is wrestling with financial distress rivaling that of Kentucky or
Illinois.
Aaron Kuriloff and Timothy W. Martin ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/connecticut-americas-richest-state-has-a-huge-pension-problem-1443996813?mod=djemCFO_h
The Afghan Taliban just made its biggest gain in 10
years — here's where they are ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-afghan-taliban-just-made-its-biggest-gain-in-10-years-heres-where-they-are-2015-9
Jensen Comment
President Obama hates war so much he prefers to walk away in unconditional
defeat that leaves a power vacuum and turmoil.
"When the chain of
command is politicized or corrupt, it's very hard for them to generate combat
motivation in the ranks." In a draft paper touching on the problems America has
training and equipping foreign fighters, Biddle notes that the US aim of having
a professionalized allied force seldom jives with the goals of ruling elites in
Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Thomas Watkins and Guillaume Decamme
---
http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-taliban-takeover-in-kunduz-echoes-is-rout-of-mosul-2015-9
Jensen Comment
If Obama defeated Assad in Syria he would not know what to do to keep it from
becoming a corrupt terrorist state like Afghanistan and Libya.
It looks like the
'Obama Doctrine' is failing ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/r-across-arc-of-conflict-obama-doctrine-shows-signs-of-failure-2015-9
Government Muzzling Research and Research Reporting:
Elizabeth Warren's Intellectual Purge
“President Obama has let Elizabeth Warren veto presidential appointments, and
the power rush seems to have gone to her head,” notes a Journal editorial. “Now
the Massachusetts Senator has forced the resignation of a Brookings Institution
economist because he dared to report that new financial regulations will cost
investors.” The widely-respected Robert Litan committed the sin of reporting
that the Labor Department’s new fiduciary rule could cost those investors up to
$80 billion.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/elizabeth-warrens-intellectual-purge-1443657591?mod=djemMER
WSJ columnist Gordon Crovitz weighs in on Sen.
Elizabeth Warren’s political assault on think-tank scholar Robert Litan. “Ms.
Warren’s inquisition isn’t about ethics but about suppressing cost-benefit
analysis, which until the Obama era was a bipartisan approach to identifying
regulations doing more harm than good,” writes Mr. Crovitz.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-cross-elizabeth-warren-1443997019?mod=djemMER
What Putin Really, Really Despises is the Leftist Movement in Europe and the
USA: To Him Tens of Millions Refuges Fleeing to the West Will Create
Turmoil and Belatedly Put an End to the West's Leftist Movements
So Ukrainian experience gives reason for skepticism
about Putin’s claim that Russia is intervening in Syria to help Europe with its
refugee problem. The politics might well be exactly the opposite. Having found a
powerful ally in its quest to end European integration, the European far right
has followed Moscow’s lead on the Ukrainian conflict. But the natural subject of
Putin’s allies in Europe is immigration. By supporting the Assad regime, Russia
helps to produce the refugees that drive European politics rightward. Syrian
refugees who arrive in Europe must be treated humanely and according to law. At
the same time, European leaders might consider the possibility that Russian
policy in Syria is aimed toward the
transformation of the country into a refugee
factory. In Ukraine, Russian intervention generated two million refugees among
precisely the people Moscow claimed it was protecting. In Syria, it has been the Assad regime, which Russia has now supported, that has been responsible for the
vast majority of the refugees.
Time Magazine, September 30, 2015 ---
http://time.com/4054941/putin-russia-syria/?xid=newsletter-brief
Jensen Comment
Or to put it more simply if your own economy is awful you can look relatively
better by dragging down the prosperous (think Norway, Sweden, Germany, and the
USA) economies with a "Refuge Making Machine" But think what might happen
if one day one of those refugee families with lots of kids tries to cross the
Russian border?
If I
win the Syrian refugees admitted to the USA are going back.
Donald Trump ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-migration-crisis-syrian-refugees-politics-migrants-election-2015-10
This is not realistic. Here's what will really happen Trump or No Trump ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PzT8vEvYPg&feature=share
Germans Having Second
Thoughts About Refugees After Major Riots ---
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2015/10/01/germans-having-second-thoughts-about-refugees-after-riot-violence-n2059909?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=
Denmark, which
earlier this year slashed benefits for asylum seekers, said Monday it is making
it more difficult to acquire citizenship in the Scandinavian country
---
http://news.yahoo.com/denmark-tightens-citizenship-requirements-160033061.html
Global International Migration Flows ---
http://www.global-migration.info/
We'd rather be obese on
benefits than thin and working.
Janice and Amber Manzur
John Hill,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11347454/Mother-and-daughter-weigh-a-total-of-43-stone-and-get-34k-a-year-handouts-but-refuse-to-diet.html
Moocher Hall of Fame ---
https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/the-moocher-hall-of-fame/
Election Gaming "Fraud" in Primary Elections in the USA:
Making Sure Your General Election Opponent is a Real Loser
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudulentElections.htm
Table of Contents
Funding Losers
Communications Juggernauts in Crossover Voting Frauds
Funding Opponent Scandals
The Week In Congress ---
http://theweekincongress.com/
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
The model minority is losing
patience: Asian-Americans are the United States’ most successful minority,
but they are complaining ever more vigorously about discrimination, especially
in academia
The Economist, October 3, 2015
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21669595-asian-americans-are-united-states-most-successful-minority-they-are-complaining-ever
"Almost half of American households don't pay
federal income tax," by Martin Matishak, The Fiscal Times via
Business Insider, October 9, 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/almost-half-of-american-households-dont-pay-federal-income-tax-2015-10
Mitt Romney, the 2012
Republican presidential nominee, did irreparable damage to his campaign when
he asserted that the 47 percent of Americans dependent on government who
don’t pay federal income taxes would back President Obama “no matter what.”
A few years later, that
estimate needs to be revised.
On Tuesday, The Tax Policy
Center, a joint effort by the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution,
said the number of households that don’t pay federal income taxes fell to
45.3 percent. But that figure is still roughly 5 percentage points higher
than the center’s 2013 estimate of 40.4 percent.
The uptick doesn’t mean more
folks have moved off the tax rolls. Rather, the surge from 2013 is largely
thanks to better data tracking tools, according to the Center's Roberton
Williams. “Those additional non-payers were there all the time -- we just
failed to count them,” he said in a blog post.
That said, the Center still
projects that the percentage of non-payers will fall over time, just more
gradually than previously thought.
“We now estimate that 40
percent of tax units won’t pay tax in 2025, higher than our previous
projection of about one-third,” Williams said.
While the Center, the
Treasury Department and the Joint Committee on Taxation all try their best
to give a proper estimate of the amount of non-payers, their figures
shouldn’t be accepted as gospel truth, in part because some people don’t
file returns or may have had taxes withheld during the calendar year.
Williams stressed that
just because people don’t pay federal income taxes doesn’t mean they don’t
contribute in some way. In fact, a majority of them work and therefore are
on the hook for payroll taxes. They also pay local sales tax and state taxes.
Jensen Comment The drop in the percentage of
households not paying any income tax is due mostly to the drop in unemployment
rates rather than tightening of tax laws. The biggest single item taking away
tax obligations is the earned income tax credit for lower income families. Since
it is a payout credit many of these taxpayers take home cash like in a negative
income tax system advocated by conservative economist Milton Freedman years ago.
Since many states peg their state income tax
obligation to the federal income tax paid, the taxpayers are usually off the
hook as well for state income taxes. Of course there can be some exceptions.
"America Is in Danger of Being
Ruled by the Mob," by Victor Davis Hanson, Newsweek, October 4, 2015
---
http://www.newsweek.com/america-danger-being-ruled-mob-379436
The constitution of the
Roman Republic was designed as a corrective to democracy. Specifically, it
was hoping to protect against the excesses of Athenian-style direct
democracy.
About twice a month in
Athens, citizens voted into law almost anything they wished. About six to
seven thousand citizens would squeeze into a hillside amphitheater known as
the Pnyx and were swayed by demagogues (“people leaders”) into voting for or
against whatever the cause de jour was. Our term “democracy” comes from the
Greek dêmos-kratos, which means “people-power.”
In furor at a rebellion, for
example, Athenians once voted to kill all of the adult male subjects of the
island of Lesbos—only to repent the next day and vote again to execute just
some, hoping that their second messenger ship rowed fast enough across the
Aegean to catch the first bearing the original death sentence.
In a fit of pique, the
popular court voted to execute the philosopher Socrates, fine the statesman
Pericles and ostracize the general Aristides. Being successful, popular,
rich, or controversial always proved to be a career liability in a democracy
like the one that ruled Athens.
The Romans knew enough about
mercurial ancient Athens to appreciate that they did not want a radical
democracy. Instead, they sought to take away absolute power from the people
and redistribute it within a “mixed” government. In Rome, power was divided
constitutionally between executives (two consuls), legislators (the Senate
and assemblies) and judges (Roman magistrates).
The half-millennia success
of the stable Roman republican system inspired later French and British
Enlightenment thinkers. Their abstract tripartite system of constitutional
government stirred the Founding Fathers to concrete action.
Americans originally were
terrified of what 51 percent of the people in an unchecked democracy might
do on any given day—and knew that ancient democracies had always become
more, not less, radical and thus more unstable. For all the squabbles
between Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton and Madison, they agreed that a republic,
not a direct democracy, was a far safer and stable choice of governance.
The result was a potpourri
of ways to curb the predictable excesses and fits of the people. An
Electoral College reserved commensurate power to rural states rather than
passing off the presidential vote into the hands of the huge urban
majorities.
States could decide their
own rules of voter participation—with the original understanding that owning
a modicum of property might make a citizen more rooted and engaged. Senators
were appointed by state legislatures to balance the popular election of
House members.
Many of these checks on
popular expression were later overturned by plebiscites or the courts, but
they reflected the original 18th-century worries over a supposedly unchecked
mob.
We often think that a Bill
of Rights was designed to protect Americans from monarchs and dictators. It
certainly was. But the Founders were just as terrified of what that the
majority of elected representatives without restraint might legally do on
any given day to an individual citizen.
Madison’s constitutional
guarantees seem to have anticipated what politically correct campus
administrators currently would like to do to the rights of students accused
of race/class/gender thought crimes.
Transitory manias are also
common in democratic society. In 1942, furious Americans wanted Japanese
citizens in detention camps immediately; in 2015, climate change advocates
have been begging the federal government to silence global warming “deniers”
by charging them with racketeering crimes.
Our election primaries
showcase how the popular impulses of the people can create a sudden herd
mentality. In 2012, slick advertising, bombastic televised debating and the
Internet variously created and then destroyed leading Republican candidates
like Michelle Bachman, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Rick
Santorum. A good one-liner or a cool infomercial made each of those
candidates the fad or the cad of the month.
Continued in article
Is the European Union falling
apart?
Europe's highest court just rejected the 'safe harbor' agreement used by
American tech companies ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/european-court-of-justice-safe-harbor-ruling-2015-10
EU Strikes Back Over Snowden
Leaks, But the Elimination of the Safe Harbor Agreement Makes it Difficult for
USA Companies to Do Business in Europe ---
http://readwrite.com/2015/10/07/europe-eu-privacy-nsa-court
Jensen Comment
This is an illustration of how Snowden's good intentions paved the road to Hell.
How to Mislead With Statistics
"The ‘Wage Gap’ Myth That Won’t Die: You have to ignore many variables
to think women are paid less than men. California is happy to try," by Sarah
Ketterer, The Wall Street Journal, September 30, 2015 ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-wage-gap-myth-that-wont-die-1443654408?mod=djemMER
When it comes to
economically foolish laws, California is second to none. A good example is
the California Fair Pay Act, which Gov. Jerry Brown is expected to sign in
coming days.
This bill, which the
California senate unanimously passed in August, is a state version of the
Paycheck Fairness Act that the U.S. Congress rejected in 2014. Like its
national counterpart, it is an aggressive attempt to eradicate a wage gap
between men and women that is allegedly due to discrimination in the
workplace. But this wage gap is illusory, and the legislation will have
unintended consequences, including for women.
The Fair Pay Act will
prohibit employers from paying men and women different wages for
“substantially similar work.” At first glance, this prohibition might appear
reasonable: Government data for 2014 show that women in California earn, on
average, 84 cents for every dollar earned by men. (Nationally, women earn
about 79 cents for every dollar earned by men.)
But a closer look reveals a
different picture. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) notes that its
analysis of wages by gender does “not control for many factors that can be
significant in explaining earnings differences.”
What factors? Start with
hours worked. Full-time employment is technically defined as more than 35
hours. This raises an obvious problem: A simple side-by-side comparison of
all men and all women includes people who work 35 hours a week, and others
who work 45. Men are significantly more likely than women to work longer
hours, according to the BLS. And if we compare only people who work 40 hours
a week, BLS data show that women then earn on average 90 cents for every
dollar earned by men.
Career choice is another
factor. Research in 2013 by Anthony Carnevale, a Georgetown University
economist, shows that women flock to college majors that lead to
lower-paying careers. Of the 10 lowest-paying majors—such as “drama and
theater arts” and “counseling psychology”—only one, “theology and religious
vocations,” is majority male.
Conversely, of the 10
highest-paying majors—including “mathematics and computer science” and
“petroleum engineering”—only one, “pharmacy sciences and administration,” is
majority female. Eight of the remaining nine are more than 70% male.
Other factors that account
for earnings differences include marriage and children, both of which cause
many women to leave the workforce for years. June O’Neill, former director
of the Congressional Budget Office, concluded in a 2005 study that “there is
no gender gap in wages among men and women with similar family roles.” Time
magazine reported in 2010 that in 98% of America’s largest 150 cities,
including my hometown of Los Angeles, single women under 30 actually earned,
on average, 8% more than their male counterparts.
Ms. O’Neill and her
husband concluded in their
2012 book, “The
Declining Importance of Race and Gender in the
Labor Market,” that once all these factors are
taken into account, very little of the pay
differential between men and women is due to
actual discrimination, which is “unlikely to
account for a differential of more than 5
percent but may not be present at all.”
What California’s Fair Pay Act will do,
however, is make the state, already notorious
for regulation and red tape, a more difficult
place to do business. Companies must now ensure
that every penny of wage differential between
the men and women they employ is attributable to
bona-fide differences in education, training,
experience, quantity or quality of work, and so
on. Referring to the countless factors at play,
Harvard economist Claudia Goldin has said “it’s not checkable.” Yet even attempting to do so will only
add to companies’ already substantial
regulatory-compliance budgets.
Some of these factors—quality of work, for
instance—are inevitably subjective, yet trial
lawyers will swoop in to turn every conceivable
pay difference into a lawsuit. Employers who
cannot “prove” objectively that one employee’s
work was better than another’s may face costly
penalties. Many will surely pay to settle these
lawsuits instead of taking them to court.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
It will be interesting to see how this law plays out in tenure decisions at the
most prestigious universities in California. For example, my 2012/2013 version
of the Hasselback Directory shows that 27% are women in Stanford's accounting
program. The proportions appear to be no better or even worse in the other
highly prestigious accounting programs in California universities.
It will take years to track the
impact of the Fair Pay Act in California's universities, but evidence may mount
up more quickly in the outcomes of lawsuits in universities. This probably
sounds sexist, but the tenured women I've worked with as a colleague in four
universities across 40 years of my full-time faculty career tended to work as
hard or harder than the men in the classroom but not as hard at research and
publishing in accounting research journals. Of course times have changed in
recent years. and we see a rise in the proportions of women authors in our top
accounting research journals.
The tenured women in very
prestigious accounting programs tend to rival the men in research and
publication even if they are more of a minority in those prestigious programs. I
think that greater focus on teaching by tenured women comes in colleges and
universities that are not in the Top 25 universities in the the US News
rankings.
My point is that
the Fair Pay Act in California may impact how prestigious universities grant
tenure and performance pay based upon tradeoffs between research versus
teaching. In prestigious universities outstanding research performance is now
a necessary condition for tenure. Litigation following the Fair Pay Act may
make outstanding research less necessary for outstanding women teachers.
Will I be in
trouble for thinking like this? Almost certainly!
Bob Jensen's threads on the
history of women in the accounting profession are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#Women
"Democratic Economists vs.
Elizabeth Warren," by James Freeman, The Wall Street Journal, October
2, 2015 ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/democratic-economists-vs-elizabeth-warren-1443785001
. . .
At least some
Democrats are resisting Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s purge of the liberal
intelligentsia. This week Ms. Warren succeeded in forcing the resignation of
respected scholar Robert Litan from the Brookings Institution after he
revealed that a new Labor Department regulation could cost investors
billions. Now five Democratic economists have authored a letter to protest
Warren’s bullying. Robert Lawrence of Harvard’s Kennedy School and Bowman
Cutter of the Roosevelt Institute are among those writing “to express our
concern over our colleague Bob Litan’s treatment at the hands of the
Brookings Institution and Senator Elizabeth Warren.” Also signing the letter
are Everett Ehrlich, Joseph Minarik and Hal Singer.
Continued in
article
"Global Tech Firms Brace for Tax
Rules: OECD recommendations aim to stop multinational companies from
avoiding billions in taxes, by By Sam Schechner, The Wall Street Journal,
October 5, 2015 ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/global-tech-firms-brace-for-tax-rules-which-could-create-new-disputes-1444046462?mod=djemCFO_h#livefyre-comment
PARIS—Multinational
companies are girding for new rules designed to force them to pay greater
corporate income taxes in more countries where they operate, setting up
potential clashes between Silicon Valley giants and European governments
angling for tax revenue.
The Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development on Monday issued a series of
recommendations aimed at stopping large companies in many industries from
avoiding paying hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes every year through
baroque structures that are legal, but have come under increasing political
pressure, particularly in Europe.
The new rules could
eventually redirect to European government coffers billions of euros in non-U.S.
profits earned by companies such as Facebook Inc. and Google that are
funneled to tax havens such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. The rules
could also hasten structural change at some of the world’s biggest
technology companies, including Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc.
Continued in
article
Gasoline Taxes by State
http://www.exxonmobilperspectives.com/2015/04/28/gasoline-taxes-and-the-price-at-the-pump/?utm_source=Outbrain&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Perspectives_Full_Site_Mobile
While electric car owners contribute $0 toward bridge and road maintenance
(except in Oregon)
From the Scout Report on September 25,
2015
Looking at Greece's Debt Crisis in Light of
Another Syriza Victory
Greece election: Alexis Tsipras hails 'victory of the people'
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34307795
Greece's Debt Crisis Explained
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/business/international/greece-debt-crisis-euro.html
Alexis Tsipras
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/alexis-tsipras/
How Greece's prime minister rose from high school activist to high politics
http://www.businessinsider.com/profile-of-greek-prime-minister-alexis-tsipras-2015-7
Eurozone vs. EU: What's the difference?
http://money.cnn.com/video/news/economy/2015/04/23/eurozone-versus-european-union-explained.cnnmoney/
Greece's Ex-Finance Minister Tells All
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/03/the-greek-warrior
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on October 1, 2015
Vegas fights to buy its own electricity
http://www.wsj.com/articles/vegas-casinos-fight-to-buy-their-own-electricity-1443999633?mod=djemCFO_h
Three big casino companies that run glittering resorts
on the Las Vegas Strip are trying to break free from Nevada’s electric-power
monopoly, NV Energy. Hoteliers including Wynn
Resorts Ltd., MGM Resorts International and Las
Vegas Sands Corp. say they could cut millions of dollars from their
electric bills if they could buy power directly from solar farms or
power-plant owners.
Jensen Comment
This may be a question of who pays the fixed cost of electric power monopolies
that have heavy fixed costs due to power line investments and investments in
maintaining power generating capacity for peak demand. Big power users like
casino-hotels want marginal cost-based pricing
where they pay little toward the high fixed costs of power monopolies. Nearly
all states where solar power is becoming plentiful have similar problems of
maintaining power generating capacity for nights and cloudy days. Some like
California and Vermont are cutting back on in-state power generating capacity
and relying more on the out-of-state grid capacity. California now draws over
half its power from out-of-state, and Vermont like much of New England in
general plans to rely more and more on Quebec Hydro to feed the grid.
In doing so, however states give up pricing regulation power and become more
dependent upon power sources over which they have little control.
The politics of power will soon become down and dirty as more and more heavy
power users obtain technology (with somewhat heavy investment) to generate all
of their power needs on and off peak. This will leave power monopolies (public
or private) inside a state with a higher proportion of small users (think family
homes and small businesses). Many of those smaller users will generate some of
their own power like my friend down the road who has a single solar panel to
heat a water tank. However, he still relies on the power company for other power
needs such as running appliances in his home, including his hot water tank at
night and own cloudy days.
Eventually the big power users like casino-hotels will not be sharing power
generating capacity costs and even power line costs with the small users who
still rely on the power company monopolies. As a result the power company
monopolies will either have to charge a lot more to the small users or make
those small users vulnerable to out-of-state pricing whims of the grid. Once
Quebec Hydro has more and more pricing power for our grid the deals may get
worse and worse for our New England states.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_%E2%80%93_New_England_Transmission
Capacity Accounting ---
http://maaw.info/CapacityRelatedMain.htm
Electric Power Company Dilemma: Those Pesky Capacity Costs
"Frank Wolak: How to Keep Green Policies from Crashing the Electricity Grid
As California embarks on “cap and trade,” Stanford researchers employ advanced
trading games to head off nasty surprises," by Edmund Andrews, Stanford
University Graduate School of Business, May 13, 2015 ---
Click Here
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/frank-wolak-how-keep-green-policies-crashing-electricity-grid?utm_source=Stanford+Business&utm_campaign=7df5032836-Stanford-Business-Issue-63-5-31-2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b5214e34b-7df5032836-70265733&ct=t%28Stanford-Business-Issue-63-5-31-2015%29
. . .
The games also highlight what is perhaps the
biggest long-term conundrum tied to regulatory mandates for solar and wind
power: a pricing dynamic that sends spot-market electricity prices crashing
to almost zero at times when sunlight and wind are abundant, which can make
it hard for other electricity providers that are essential during periods of
peak demand to recover their fixed costs.
Price crashes have already become a serious issue
in Germany, where government-supported mechanisms have propelled renewables
to the point that, during a few hours of the year, renewables are the
nation’s largest source of electricity. Germany has actually experienced
negative spot prices on days in the summer when solar output is high and
electricity demand is relatively low. Negative prices also occur in US
electricity markets with substantial renewable energy shares, such as
California and Texas.
Continued in article
Question
In the realm electric power, what is a "levelized cost?"Hint
The Economist: Wind
and solar power are even more expensive than is commonly thought ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/free-exchange-sun-wind-and-drain-2014-7#ixzz38bOmPFSx
. . .
But whereas the cost of a solar panel is easy to
calculate, the cost of electricity is harder to assess. It depends not only
on the fuel used, but also on the cost of capital (power plants take years
to build and last for decades), how much of the time a plant operates, and
whether it generates power at times of peak demand.
To take account
of all this, economists use "levelised costs"--the net present value of all
costs (capital and operating) of a generating unit over its life cycle,
divided by the number of megawatt-hours of electricity it is expected to
supply.
The trouble, as Paul Joskow of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology has pointed out, is that levelised costs do not take
account of the costs of intermittency. Wind power is not generated on a calm
day, nor solar power at night, so conventional power plants must be kept on
standby--but are not included in the levelised cost of renewables.
Electricity demand also varies during the day in
ways that the supply from wind and solar generation may not match, so even
if renewable forms of energy have the same levelised cost as conventional
ones, the value of the power they produce may be lower. In short, levelised
costs are poor at comparing different forms of power generation.
To get around that problem Charles Frank of the
Brookings Institution, a think-tank, uses a cost-benefit analysis to rank
various forms of energy. The costs include those of building and running
power plants, and those associated with particular technologies, such as
balancing the electricity system when wind or solar plants go offline or
disposing of spent nuclear-fuel rods.
The benefits of renewable energy include the value
of the fuel that would have been used if coal- or gas-fired plants had
produced the same amount of electricity and the amount of carbon-dioxide
emissions that they avoid.
Mr Frank took four sorts of zero-carbon energy
(solar, wind, hydroelectric and nuclear), plus a low-carbon sort (an
especially efficient type of gas-burning plant), and compared them with
various sorts of conventional power. Obviously, low- and no-carbon power
plants do not avoid emissions when they are not working, though they do
incur some costs.
So nuclear-power plants, which run at about 90% of
capacity, avoid almost four times as much CO{-2} per unit of capacity as do
wind turbines, which run at about 25%; they avoid six times as much as solar
arrays do. If you assume a carbon price of $50 a tonne--way over most actual
prices--nuclear energy avoids over $400,000-worth of carbon emissions per
megawatt (MW) of capacity, compared with only $69,500 for solar and $107,000
for wind.
Nuclear power plants, however, are vastly
expensive. A new plant at Hinkley Point, in south-west England, for example,
is likely to cost at least $27 billion. They are also uninsurable
commercially. Yet the fact that they run around the clock makes them only
75% more expensive to build and run per MW of capacity than a solar-power
plant, Mr Frank reckons.
To determine the overall cost or benefit, though,
the cost of the fossil-fuel plants that have to be kept hanging around for
the times when solar and wind plants stand idle must also be factored in. Mr
Frank calls these "avoided capacity costs"--costs that would not have been
incurred had the green-energy plants not been built.
Thus a 1MW wind farm running at about 25% of
capacity can replace only about 0.23MW of a coal plant running at 90% of
capacity. Solar farms run at only about 15% of capacity, so they can replace
even less. Seven solar plants or four wind farms would thus be needed to
produce the same amount of electricity over time as a similar-sized
coal-fired plant. And all that extra solar and wind capacity is expensive.
A levelised playing field
If all the costs and benefits are totted up using
Mr Frank's calculation, solar power is by far the most expensive way of
reducing carbon emissions. It costs $189,000 to replace 1MW per year of
power from coal. Wind is the next most expensive. Hydropower provides a
modest net benefit.
But the most cost-effective zero-emission
technology is nuclear power. The pattern is similar if 1MW of gas-fired
capacity is displaced instead of coal. And all this assumes a carbon price
of $50 a tonne. Using actual carbon prices (below $10 in Europe) makes solar
and wind look even worse. The carbon price would have to rise to $185 a
tonne before solar power shows a net benefit.
There are, of course, all sorts of reasons to
choose one form of energy over another, including emissions of pollutants
other than CO{-2} and fear of nuclear accidents. Mr Frank does not look at
these. Still, his findings have profound policy implications. At the moment,
most rich countries and China subsidise solar and wind power to help stem
climate change.
Yet this is the most expensive way of reducing
greenhouse-gas emissions. Meanwhile Germany and Japan, among others, are
mothballing nuclear plants, which (in terms of carbon abatement) are
cheaper. The implication of Mr Frank's research is clear: governments should
target emissions reductions from any source rather than focus on boosting
certain kinds of renewable energy.
Bob Jensen's threads on cost and managerial accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory02.htm#ManagementAccounting
"A Tale of Two Schools, One Building: I
taught at a New York City charter, upstairs from a school where the neglect of
students is tragic," by Nicholas Simmons, The Wall Street Journal,
October 6, 2015 ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-tale-of-two-schools-one-building-1444169615?mod=djemMER
Over the past three school years, I
unintentionally participated in a tragic
educational case study on the west side of
Harlem. I worked in the same building as the
Wadleigh Secondary School, at which 0% of
students in grades six through eight met state
standards in math or English. That isn’t a typo:
Not a single one of the 33 students passed
either exam, though many of the questions are as
straightforward as “What is 15% of 60?”
Two
floors above Wadleigh, I taught math at Success
Academy Harlem West, a public charter school.
The students there eat in the same cafeteria,
exercise in the same gym and enjoy recess in the
same courtyard. They also live on the same
blocks and face many of the same challenges. The
poverty rate at Wadleigh is 72%; at Harlem West,
it is 60%. At both schools, more than 95% of
students are black or Hispanic. About the only
difference is that families at Harlem West won
an admissions lottery.
Yet for our students, the academic year ended in
triumph: 96% were proficient in math—compared
with 35% citywide—and 80% scored at the advanced
level. In reading and writing, 75% of our
students were proficient, compared with 30%
citywide.
This was not easy. My students do not have easy
lives. Many are in households in which no
English is spoken, or have moved in and out of
homeless shelters. Others shoulder the primary
responsibility of raising younger siblings. Yet
we set high expectations. Our school day runs
from 7:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m., and teachers spend
evenings and weekends speaking with families
about their children’s progress. This blueprint
works. Rigorous, well-designed and joyful
schools can overcome the challenges of poverty.
Last month, instead of
acknowledging the astounding lack of learning at
schools such as Wadleigh, New York City Mayor
Bill de Blasio proposed a hodgepodge of feel-good programs. He will create new
Advanced Placement courses that students from
Wadleigh won’t be prepared to take. He will
enlist “literacy specialists” to try to counter
chaotic classrooms and poor instruction. In
short, he will do nothing effective.
I often think about those
Wadleigh students, navigating unruly hallways
and classrooms. They hold the same promise as my
students, but of those who move on to high
school,
fewer than 10%
graduate with the skills to complete
college-level work. What if those Wadleigh
students had attended the public school only two
floors above them?
New York City has the
resources to create world-class public schools
for all students. The Big Apple spends $20,331
per pupil. That ranks No. 2 among the 100
largest school districts in the U.S.,
according to 2012-13
census data.
The problem is that in New York the needs of
adults supersede those of children. My
colleagues finished summer vacation on Aug. 3,
underwent two weeks of professional development
and welcomed back students on Aug. 17. The
district’s unionized teachers were required to
arrive one day before the school year began on
Sept. 9.
Harlem West almost didn’t
open in 2011. Mr. de Blasio, then the city’s
public advocate, opposed my school’s move into
the building on the grounds that it would cramp
Wadleigh. “I believe in my heart there is time
and the opportunity to protect what is here,”
Mr. de Blasio said. That’s the mentality of city
officials, who want to “protect” the entrenched
interests of a system in which
only 19% of black students
in district schools are working on grade level.
On Wednesday, families across New York City will
rally in Cadman Plaza, Brooklyn, march across
the Brooklyn Bridge to City Hall, and call on
our leaders to tackle this crisis. Excellent
public schools shouldn’t be a privilege enjoyed
only by those lucky enough to win an admissions
lottery; they should be the standard. The city
has the resources—now it needs the will.
Jensen Comment
NYC already has a world class public school system since virtually all the kids
earn A or B grades and a few can actually read.
Wow: 97% of Elementary NYC
Public Students Get A or B Grades ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/30/education/30grades.html?hpw
Finding and Using Health Statistics ---
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/nichsr/usestats/index.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on economic statistics and databases ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#EconStatistics
How often do policy
holders find their (medical) insurance companies bargaining their bills up,
rather than down?
"The Maddening World of Hospital Pricing: "How much does this cost?"
shouldn't be a stumper," by A. Barton Hinkle, Reason Magazine,
October 5, 2015 ---
https://reason.com/archives/2015/10/05/the-maddening-world-of-hospital-pricing
For David Fleming, whose
14-year-old son Aiden needed sewing up after a laser-tag accident in June,
the answer was $1,897... And $2,526.34... And $3,455.68... And $2,881.
And...
The first amount was the
original bill from Henrico Doctors' Hospital. But then Fleming's insurance
company, Coventry, pointed out that it has an agreement with the hospital
that sets the contracted rate for the service at $4,221. In other words, his
insurance company already had agreed to pay more than Fleming was billed.
Suddenly he was being asked
to pay the balance of his $4,000 deductible. Along with a percentage of
charges over the deductible. And a percentage of a physician's charge -
minus the square root of his son's birth date when multiplied by his age
plus 3.7... Or at least that's how it looks to anyone who's not employed
full time in hospital billing and coding.
Fleming is no babe in the
woods when it comes to health care. He heads up Donate Life, an organization
devoted to increasing the frequency of organ and tissue donation. But he
couldn't get his mind around the idea that he owed more for three stitches
with insurance than without it. The problem, says Aetna, which bought
Coventry in 2013, is the lack of generally common contractual language
stipulating that the insurer will pay the "lesser of" a billed or
contractually agreed-to rate. Henrico Doctors and its owner, HCA, declined
to comment.
Fleming has been persistent.
He's been arguing over the bill almost since the incident happened. And he
has gotten some satisfaction. After a lot of to-and-fro, Henrico Doctors has
agreed to accept a lower payment and let the matter go.
So, good for Fleming. But
his story raises a lot of questions. For instance, what about other people
in similar circumstances? How often do policy holders find their insurance
companies bargaining their bills up, rather than down?
The bigger question relates
to hospital price transparency generally: Why isn't there any?
Call a half-dozen hospitals
or urgent-care clinics and ask what they would charge for three stitches.
You'll have better luck collecting hen's teeth. They won't tell you. Not
only that, they'll tell you that they can't tell you, even if you ask for
the cash price without insurance.
Continued in article
$4,878 Room and Board Charge for One Night in the Hospital: Those meals
must've been fantastic
"This $55,000 Bill Is The Perfect Example Of Our Broken Hospital System,"
by Lauren F. Friedman, Business Insider, December 30, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/redditors-appendectomy-cost-5502931-2013-12
See a copy of the bill itself (note how the charge for aspirin is now hidden)
Jensen Comment
Cost Accounting Student Assignment: Backflush the line items on this bill
to identify possible components and justify the charges
Hint: Don't forget hospital bad debts and executive salaries and subtle
kickbacks to doctors.
For example, it's common for physicians in the Emergency Room to recommend at
least one night at $10,000 in ICU when a $4,878 room for one night would
probably suffice. This recently happened to my wife.
Bob
Jensen's universal health care messaging ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
"The Harvard Contest That’s Trying to Improve
Health Care Delivery," Harvard Business Review, October 2, 2015 ---
https://hbr.org/2015/10/the-harvard-contest-thats-trying-to-improve-health-care-delivery
. . .
Altogether there were 19,965 visitors to the
Challenge website who
wrote 2,671 comments and provided 478 applications.
These applications came from 29 different countries
and 43 U.S. states. Approximately 60% were from
for-profit companies, while the remaining 40% were
from not-for-profit organizations.
More than three-quarters of the applicants were
focused on provider-facing innovations, as opposed
to those that directly addressed payors or patients.
Of the provider innovations, 38% were aimed at acute
care or hospitals, 14% on self-care, 10% on
physician offices, 10% on telemedicine, 8% on home
health care, and 20% on multiple or other
settings.To narrow down the
478 applications to
18 semi-finalists, we
assembled a panel of 50 judges with wide experience
in the field. The judges evaluated the applications
based on potential impact, evidence of success, and
the strength of the dissemination plan.
Four finalists
were ultimately selected. A winner will be selected
in April 2016. (Click
here to receive updates
about this competition and the next Health
Acceleration Challenge, which will begin in the
spring.)
The
four finalists represent a mix of for-profit and
not-for-profit organizations, provider- and
patient-facing innovations, and clinical and
operational solutions. Each addresses a different
problem in the health-care-delivery value chain and
offers a unique approach that has been tested in the
marketplace.
Bloodbuy.
This Dallas-based company
offers technologies that connect hospitals and blood
centers nationwide to ensure the efficient flow
of lifesaving blood products to patients in need. By
providing on-demand access to a diversified base
of premier blood centers, Bloodbuy ensures that
hospitals avoid overpaying for blood products
or encountering supply shortages. At the same time,
Bloodbuy enables blood centers to reach and serve a
broader base of hospitals and blood centers across
the country, thereby increasing inventory turns,
eliminating waste, and accelerating growth.
Continued in article
Bob
Jensen's universal health care messaging ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
Trucker News and Health ---
http://www.truckersnews.com/
Bob
Jensen's universal health care messaging ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on
medicine ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2-Part2.htm#Medicine
The Atlantic: Health: Family ---
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/category/family/
Bob Jensen's Tidbits Archives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbitsdirectory.htm
Bob
Jensen's Pictures and Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
Summary of Major Accounting Scandals ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accounting_scandals
Bob Jensen's threads on such scandals:
Bob Jensen's threads on audit firm litigation and negligence ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm
Current and past editions of my
newsletter called Fraud Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Enron ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm
Rotten to the Core ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm
American History of Fraud ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudAmericanHistory.htm
Bob Jensen's fraud
conclusions ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on
auditor professionalism and independence are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001c.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on
corporate governance are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm#Governance
Shielding
Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
·
With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review
(TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier
·
With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors Jagdish
Gangolly and Paul Williams
·
With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of Accountancy
Ignores TAR
·
With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research into
Undergraduate Accounting Courses
Shielding
Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
By Bob Jensen
What went
wrong in accounting/accountics research? ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most
Accountants ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW:
1926-2005 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm
Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and Statistics
---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So
Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the vegetable nutrition paradox)
that probably will never be solved
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews
Bob
Jensen's economic crisis messaging
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm
Bob
Jensen's threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Bob
Jensen's Home Page ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/