…now that we’re in the fifth year of it.
Real gross domestic product—the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States—decreased at an annual rate of 1.0% in the first quarter according to the “second” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the fourth quarter, real GDP increased 2.6%.
It might not get better soon:
Personal consumption—which captures spending on goods and services—fell a seasonally adjusted 0.1% from March[.]
The fight over school lunches intensified Tuesday as first lady Michelle Obama defended her signature school-nutrition program during a meeting with school officials and decried efforts in Congress to allow schools to delay the program.
“Now is not the time to roll back everything we have worked for,” Ms Obama said[.]
Part of the fight, presently, is over a House proposal to waive the school “nutrition” program’s requirements for those schools that can’t afford to comply. Part of the fight is over puny servings that leave the student hungry—and so just as distracted from learning as if he had eaten a sugar-laden lunch. Part of the fight is over who should pay for the mandated lunching system, even by those schools able to “afford” those costs.
But none of the fight is over whether States should determine for themselves what their schools should be doing in their cafeterias. Worse, none of the fight is over what the parents should be doing about their children’s nutrition.
Whose responsibility are the kids, after all? Certainly not the schools’. Certainly not the State governments’. Most especially not the Federal government’s.
The parents are responsible for their own children. If their kids aren’t getting adequate lunches at school, and that argument is a reasonable one, then the parents should be sending their kids to those schools with sack lunches that are balanced and nutritious and with appropriate (the parents’ definition, not government’s) serving sizes. And an enjoyable treat—which may be a sugar bomb, it may be an extra piece of fruit, it may be…. That treat should be determined by what the responsible parents have been teaching their kids, from the cradle, about healthy as well as fun eating. That treat should not at all be influenced by a government intruding into a family’s lunch table.
Greater parental involvement won’t help much in improving the nutrition of children from poverty-stricken (true poverty, not the Federal Poverty Guideline defined poverty) homes, whose only real meal too often comes from the school they attend. But those children aren’t helped, either, by a Federally-mandated one-size-fits-all law that requires schools in well-to-do districts to supply what those children’s well-to-do parents should be supplying. Nor are those children helped who are in school districts that can’t afford yet another costly Federal mandate and so must sacrifice education on the Church of Nanny State’s altar of “appropriate” school lunches.
However, limiting an overreaching, private resource-grasping (can you say taxes?) Federal government will leave more resources in the private economy where they belong. From that better private economy, family, friends, church, charity, et al., will be much better equipped to help the children in those truly poverty stricken families, and by being local being able to apply resources directly and more efficiently to those most needing the help.
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….
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.
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.