Obama's Plan to Skyrocket Electricity Prices

If you like paying more for gasoline, you will undoubtedly love the upcoming electricity price increases that Barak Obama wants to implement.

I don't make this stuff up--it's his own words.



If you're thinking about energy prices, you may want to ask the president what his plans would be for gasoline prices...

Want to Make Money? Don't go to Harvard, go to Prison!

When I taught in China, every one of my students wanted to go to Harvard so they could make a lot of money in the future.  They were wrong.  As Allysia Finley shows in her article that is almost too absurd to believe how prison guards in California have a more advantageous position financially than the typical Harvard alum.

The job might not sound glamorous, but a brochure from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations boasts that it "has been called 'the greatest entry-level job in California'—and for good reason. Our officers earn a great salary, and a retirement package you just can't find in private industry. We even pay you to attend our academy." That's right—instead of paying more than $200,000 to attend Harvard, you could earn $3,050 a month at cadet academy.

It gets better.

Training only takes four months, and upon graduating you can look forward to a job with great health, dental and vision benefits and a starting base salary between $45,288 and $65,364. By comparison, Harvard grads can expect to earn $49,897 fresh out of college and $124,759 after 20 years.

As a California prison guard, you can make six figures in overtime and bonuses alone. While Harvard-educated lawyers and consultants often have to work long hours with little recompense besides Chinese take-out, prison guards receive time-and-a-half whenever they work more than 40 hours a week. One sergeant with a base salary of $81,683 collected $114,334 in overtime and $8,648 in bonuses last year, and he's not even the highest paid.

Sure, Harvard grads working in the private sector get bonuses, too, but only if they're good at what they do. Prison guards receive a $1,560 "fitness" bonus just for getting an annual check-up.

Most Harvard grads only get three weeks of vacation each year, even after working for 20 years—and they're often too busy to take a long trip. Prison guards, on the other hand, get seven weeks of vacation, five of them paid. If they're too busy racking up overtime to use their vacation days, they can cash the days in when they retire. There's no cap on how many vacation days they can cash in! Eighty officers last year cashed in over $100,000 at retirement.

If you say "Well, that's California, they've always been a little off" you aren't being realistic.  In 2010, 76 correctional sergeants in Wisconsin received at least $100,000 in pay.  Every one of these officers made at least $20,000 in overtime alone!  The highest paid correctional officer made $162,676 in salary and $102,168 in overtime for a combined salary of over $250K!

Looking back on it, t's no wonder why there were so many police and fire fighters protesting with the teachers in Madison over the last few months: they don't want the same thing to happen to them.  And why wouldn't they be so angry about the thought of paring their salaries back?  Who wants to make less than $100K per year?

GAMECHANGER

The Maciver Institute, a conservative public policy think tank, has compiled all of the publicly available information on state employees online for the average citizen to peruse.   

If you want to look at the site--which you should--it is at www.wisconsinopengov.org .  On this site you will be able to search for employees and their compensation plans, see the highest paid employees (already looked and it's David C Villa at $560,461) and salaries of employees since they began working for the government.

I would encourage you, next time you see someone in the news saying that they can't afford to pay the extra for healthcare and pension, look up their name on this web site and see if they're telling the truth.

Budget Math - The Middle Class Will Be Taxed

Bill Whittle has excellent videos.  They are just excellent.  Here he explains how simple math shows that we cannot simply "tax the rich" out of our deficit.  He goes on to explain that even if you taxed individuals making more than $250K per year at 100% and take all the profits of the Fortune 500 companies in the US there would not be enough money to cover one year's worth of government spending at current rates.  Bottom line: class envy will not save us.

Replacing Heads With Hearts

"Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area - crime, education, housing, race relations - the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them."

~Thomas Sowell 

J: This is an excellent point to make. Sowell in his book The Vision of the Anointed gives many examples of this situation where the heart or feelings about certain social phenomena were elevated higher than the mind or reason to the detriment of an entire social class.

Beginning Again

For the second time, I am beginning to blog again concerning various topics of socio-politil-economic interest. As of my last blog post, many new things have happened in and around the world from this prolonged recession, political wishing from both sides of the aisle in Washington, and a new possibility of hope and change.

With all of these interesting things happening, I am excited to begin again!

If you're new here, Welcome. If you're returning after a long absence, Welcome back.

And so it begins...