Monthly Archives: May 2014

College, and What Degree Are You Looking For, Again?

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From Millennial Branding and their report The Multi-Generational Job Search (done in conjunction with Beyond.com), centered on a survey of “job seekers and HR professionals,” come these tidbits.

On the matter of whether going to college is, of necessity, for everyone:

[T]he majority of hiring managers (64% [2,978 respondents]) would still consider a candidate who hadn’t even attended college.

And

73% feel that college is only somewhat preparing students for the working world.

Then, this:

Liberal Arts majors (who are historically more focused on communications [and communications skills sought by 83% of respondents]) were shown to be the least likely to land a job, with only 2% of companies actively recruiting those graduates.

This against 27% looking for some sort of STEM degree and 18% looking for business majors (aside: these low numbers are an outcome of this administration’s poor economic policies, say I).

Hmm….

A Coup in Thailand

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The Thai Army has tossed the civilian government and seized control of the country, for the 19th time in the last 80 years—just about once per election cycle….

General Prayuth Chan-ocha had convened and chaired, over the preceding two days, a meeting between government and anti-government leaders at “an army facility in Bangkok,” and when that didn’t produce outcomes suitable to him, his henchmen took into custody most of the participants.

Among those detained by the army after the talks broke down were five government ministers, the leadership of the governing Pheu Thai Party and the opposition Democrat Party…as well as leaders of anti- and pro-government groups.

And then Prayuth said this over now-army controlled television:

The military has to return peace and order to the country as soon as possible and to reform [the] political and social structure to ensure fairness for every side.

Because factions and democracy are too messy for the army. Especially for an army too used to its own power in that country.

Democrats and the Benghazi Investigation

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I’ve written elsewhere about the troubling nature of the Democrats’ reluctance to actively investigate the Benghazi failure.

Now, after weeks of publicly professed angst, the Democrats have agreed to appoint members to the House Select Committee whose express purpose is to investigate that mess.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) named her members while insisting that

Democrats’ participation was the only way to assure Americans of a “fair process.”

She also claimed that Democrats must participate in order

to make [the investigation] a “fair process” and to bring “openness and transparency” to the investigation.

Elijah Cummings (D, MD), the Ranking Democrat on the Select Committee, added this:

I believe we need someone in the room to simply defend the truth.

With the Democrats approaching this insisting that Republicans are fundamentally dishonest, though, how will it be possible to trust the Democrats’ objectivity, and their own integrity, as they pretend to carry out their responsibilities on this committee and during this investigation?

Oh, and Congressman Pelosi: you keep using this term “openness and transparency.” I do not think it means what you think it means.

ER Visits Up with the Advent of Obamacare

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Stephanie Armour and Louise Radnofsky pointed this out earlier in the week in The Wall Street Journal.

Among other things, they mentioned

The median ER charge was more than $1,200 for the most frequent outpatient diagnoses in a study of over 8,000 ER visits in 2006-08….

This is right before Obamacare was enacted.

Notice that ER charge. A significant fraction of the deductibles on Obamacare health coverage plans is larger than that—ranging from $2,000 to above $10,000, depending on family size, the specific plan selected, and so on.

Since the ER charge is less than the deductible, even if these ER patients had an Obamacare plan, where is their incentive to see a doctor in his office? He’s still paying those $1,200 out of his pocket. The proud possession of a health plan is irrelevant to that.

Another Administration Overreach

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A family built a stock pond on their private property in order to provide more reliable water for their cattle.

The Johnsons believed they had done everything necessary to get permission for the pond, where the tiny Six Mile Creek runs through their property south of Fort Bridger, WY. The Wyoming State Engineer’s Office provided the permit and even stated in an April 4, 2013 letter to the Johnsons: “All of the legal requirements of the State Engineer’s Office, that were your responsibility, have been satisfied for the Johnson Stock Reservoir.”

The pond not only improved the situation for their cattle, it improved the local environment. The Johnsons noted:

Before we didn’t have ducks and geese. … Now you can see bald eagles here, we have moose come down. We have blue herons that come in every evening. Before we did this…it was basically just a little irrigation canal.

But they didn’t say, “Mother, may I?” to the EPA. The EPA is up in arms about this effrontery, and they seem to have gone so far as to make stuff up in their assault on the Johnsons, their property rights, and the property rights of American citizens in general. The EPA is charging that the Johnsons’ pond is guilty of

“…the discharge of pollutants (i.e., dredged or fill material) into the waters of the United States….”

Never mind that the only tests done—not by the EPA, curiously, but done by the Johnsons, instead—demonstrate

…that the water leaving the pond is cleaner than the water entering it.

Meanwhile, the EPA also is continuing to ignore Congress as Congressmen ask for clarification of what the EPA thinks it’s doing on this matter.

In a follow-up letter to the EPA, [Senator David (R, LA), Ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee] Vitter and his colleagues have asked for, but so far not received, clarification of the potential fines involved.

Those fines run from $75,000 per day to $185,000 per day, depending on how the rule the EPA claims to be operating is interpreted. Hence this question, among others.

But this administration, and its EPA henchmen, are above the law. They say.