Tag: idiots

Why the Lottery is a Regressive Tax on the Nation’s Poorest

Via Visual Capitalist

Every year, Americans spend a mind-blowing $70.1 billion on the lottery. That works out to an average of $630 per household, representing more money spent on gambling than on books, sports tickets, recorded music sales, video games, and the movie box office – all combined!

U.S. consumption of lottery tickets

This is according to data visualization expert Max Galka, who published a series of posts and visualizations on the economics of the lottery in his Metrocosm blog. The numbers he provides are both astounding and alarming, ultimately making a convincing case that the lottery is a regressive and inefficient tax on some of the nation’s poorest people.

Let’s start with the economics. Here’s the math on the New York Lottery, which is a starting point to understanding the inefficiency behind lottos in the first place:

New York Lottery diagram

To sum up the math:

  • 51% of each dollar goes to tax revenue: federal, state, and municipal.
  • 18% goes to covering expenses, such as advertising or retailer commissions. This is the part that makes the process inefficient.
  • 31% of each dollar actually goes to the prize money, and that basically sums up the terrible odds behind winning in the first place.

In other words, for every $3 spent on the New York Lottery, less than $1 is paid out to winners, while the other $2 is going to expenses and tax revenues.

Continue reading “Why the Lottery is a Regressive Tax on the Nation’s Poorest”

L.A. County Bans Travel to North Carolina

Hat tip Francis Marion

Via Truth Revolt

The boycott against the state of North Carolina over its refusal to allow transgenders to use bathrooms of the opposite sex has grown beyond a few celebrities and companies, and now includes whole cities.

On Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times reported that a board of L.A. city supervisors voted to “suspend all travel to the state of North Carolina for the conduct of county business unless the chief executive officer determines that the failure to authorize such travel would seriously harm the county’s interests.” 

The bill came at the request of supervisors Supervisors Hilda Solis and Sheila Kuehl, the first openly gay person to serve on the board. 

“Governments come along behind and say ‘We’ll do our part. We have power; we must use it,’ and that is what we are attempting to do today,” said Kuehl.

Solis welcomed the ban, saying that her identity as a Latina made her feel a certain affinity towards other minority groups. 

“The value is that we all stand together, because if one falls, we all fall,” said Solis.

The one “no” vote came from Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, who lambasted the measure as a “politically correct agenda.”

“The politically correct agenda is full of hypocrisy,” said Antonovich. “The corporations, (PayPal, Google) and entertainers (Bruce Springsteen), and others are calling for the boycott of North Carolina — however, they are more than happy to entertain or conduct business in countries which support and sponsor the persecution, oppression, and violence against individuals based on gender, religion, and sexual orientation.”

Earlier in the month, the city of Los Angeles already voted to stop doing official business with North Carolina.


We are Headed into a New Ice Age – But When?

Guest Post by Martin Armstrong

Water Temperature

There are numerous studies that suggest that this particular uptrend in global warming from the 1700s low has been like a reaction high and not new highs. I have discussed this with others for running the data through our models suggests that we are headed into a lower low that during the 1700s. This may be the worse downturn. If this is correct, we will see larger bouts of famine and migration patterns.Here is a chart produced from the sediment cores taken from the Norwegian coastal region. We have been in a progressively lower trend moving colder with each wave.

Sunspot_Numbers

We can see that sunspot activity is part of the uptrend during warming periods. Everything is tied together and attempting to reduce the entire trend as being caused by a single factor is very primitive to say the least.

Government lies about everything. So why do believe think that they do not lie about this when they are justifying this as the reason to raise taxes? Just follow the money. They are powerless to alter this climate of the earth. We are headed back to the historical lows and are most likely going to make new lows. Thank God I will not be here for that. I like global warming. By the time we end up at the low, that should be around 2300. So no worries. Anyone reading this will not be here either.


Campus Lunacy, Part II

Guest Post by Walter E. Williams

Professor Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He recently wrote an article titled “The hypocrisy behind the student renaming craze.” Students, often with the blessing of faculty, have discovered that names for campus buildings and holidays do not always fit politically correct standards for race, class and sex.

Stanford students have demanded the renaming of buildings, malls and streets bearing the name of the recently canonized Junipero Serra, an 18th-century Franciscan priest who was often unkind to American Indians. Harvard Law School is getting rid of its seal because it bears the coat of arms of the Royalls, a slave-owning family. This renaming craze is widespread and includes dozens of colleges and universities, including Amherst, Georgetown, Princeton, Yale and the University of California, Berkeley. The students have decided that some politically incorrect people from centuries ago are bad. Other politically incorrect people are not quite so bad if they were at least sometimes liberal; their names can stay.

Continue reading “Campus Lunacy, Part II”

WHY SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE COLLEGE GRADUATES ARE DUMBER THAN A SACK OF HAMMERS

If you ever needed more proof that a college education has become a virtual joke, check out the chart below. Higher Education should be renamed Lower Education, since the standards of excellence have been lowered so far, any moron can get a degree. With a large distribution of students, grades should resemble a bell curve. I learned that in my college Stat class. That would mean approximately 15% to 20% A’s. 

Shockingly, back in the 1960s & 1970s about 15% to 20% of students got As. Did college students suddenly get super smart over the last 15 years? Based on the chart, we’ve got some real Einsteins out there. The number of A grades has skyrocketed from 30% to 45% in the last fifteen years.

This is a fucking joke. This is the same time period in which every moron who can spell CAT has been able to matriculate into college with the trillions in student loan debt being peddled by Obama and his minions. We know for a fact, based on SAT scores, that at least 50% of kids in college aren’t intellectually capable of succeeding.

So the solution is to dumb down the curriculum and inflate grades because it is only about the money. Kids who flunk out don’t pay tuition. Our entire educational edifice of idiocy is a disaster. Kids graduating with 3.5 GPAs today aren’t half as smart as the kids graduating with 3.5 GPAs in 1980. The lack of intelligence and common sense is evident everywhere you look. The special snowflakes can be coddled and given A’s for doing C work, but that doesn’t make them prepared for the real world.

This country is so screwed and there is no way to unscrew it.

It’s never been easier to get an A in a college class (or more expensive)

DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images
College students are more likely to get an A than in the past.

Add this to the list of consequences of rising college tuition: Students getting better grades than they deserve.

A’s were the most common grade on college campuses in 2013, accounting for 45% of grades awarded to students, according to an analysis of grade data at more than 80 schools by Stuart Rojstaczer, an independent researcher, and Chris Healy, a computer science professor at Furman University. By contrast, college students were most likely to get C’s leading up to the Vietnam War, accounting for about 35% of grades awarded. The two researchers have been collecting and reporting on grade data for years. Monday’s release marks the latest version of their analysis.

Stuart Rojstaczer and Chris Healy

The researchers’ data shows how A’s have become the most common grade awarded at colleges.

Continue reading “WHY SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE COLLEGE GRADUATES ARE DUMBER THAN A SACK OF HAMMERS”

More terror: ‘Trump 2016’ in sidewalk chalk traumatizes Emory students

Via Twitchy

TRIGGER WARNING: This post contains multiple mentions of GOP candidate D—– T—- and may be upsetting to some readers.

* * *

If you’re fortunate enough that your age, career and/or life experience allow you to see beyond the “safe spaces” that enclose and protect America’s finest colleges from stranger danger, you know all about the terrorist bombings that killed nearly three dozen and wounded hundreds in Brussels, Belgium.

Those of us on the outside of that safe space and forbidden from looking in might have missed another terror incident that took place recently on the campus of Emory University in Atlanta. In a piece in today’s edition of The Emory Wheel that runs more than 1,100 words, Sam Budnyk describes the horrifying discovery of “Trump 2016” chalk drawings and the administration’s flaccid response to student concerns.

Phil Kerpen

OH NO! CHALK! https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/712428712004816896 …

Yes, chalk.

Christopher Ingraham

Somebody wrote “Trump 2016” in chalk on an Emory University sidewalk. Students report feeling “unsafe” and “afraid” http://emorywheel.com/emory-students-express-discontent-with-administrative-response-to-trump-chalkings/ …

[Editor’s note: Christopher Ingraham is a verified Washington Post reporter, and we’ve confirmed The Emory Wheel is not a parody site.]

Budnyk reports today that after around 40 students stood outside Emory’s administration building and chanted, “Come speak to us, we are in pain!” and “We have nothing to lose but our chains,” the demonstrators comforted each other in a stairwell. “I’m supposed to feel comfortable and safe,” one student reportedly confessed. “I don’t deserve to feel afraid at my school.”

Students then assembled in a board room where they continued to bare their feelings. University President James W. Wagner was unfortunate enough to join the impromptu meeting, where he was asked if Emory would “decry the support for this fascist, racist candidate” in an official campus-wide email. The president vetoed that idea, but after an hour said the university would review security footage to identify those who made the chalk drawings and press trespassing charges if the people behind them weren’t students.

Some pertinent tweets:

Ann Boger ‎@ann_boger

@_cingraham @emorywheel I’d laugh, but it’s just too sad.

BitterApplesauce ‎@bitterclinger4e

@_cingraham @AndrewStilesUSA @emorywheel maybe they can get their midterms delayed while they recover

Pauli Babba ‎@PauliBabba

@_cingraham @emorywheel safe spaces filling up quickly @ Emory U

BRRT ‎@uDiZZLEm8

@_cingraham Hopefully they don’t develop PTSD. Differing opinions can destroy lives. pic.twitter.com/KelWhuZS0y

View image on Twitter


Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Health Insurance

Guest Post by Stilton Jarlsberg

obama, obama jokes, political, humor, cartoon, conservative, hope n' change, hope and change, stilton jarlsberg, obamacare, health insurance, blue cross, hell

I’m aware that people come to Hope n’ Change for a pithy analysis of the news rather than to hear my personal woes, so let me handle the headlines first: “smoking gun” emails from Hillary have been revealed that show she committed felonies. She will get away with them.  An angry Muslim shot a policeman multiple times in the name of Allah because police enforce non-Shariah laws. Authorities assure us this had nothing to do with Islam. And finally, tomorrow will be Barack Hussein Obama’s final “State of the Union” speech, and he will tell not an iota of truth.

Aaaaaaand that’s the news. And now to turn to the lighter side…

And when I say “lighter” it’s because I wish I was currently holding one under a bong filled with weapons-grade hashish to dull my current Obamacare-inflicted woes.

On Saturday, I received a phone call from daughter Jarlsberg (in her 20’s), who was upset because she’d gone to the pharmacy to pick up her epilepsy medications (important, right?) and had her spanking new insurance card rejected at the cash register because the policy had been “terminated.” Rather than immediately go into seizures, she paid cash for the prescriptions at the uninsured price – over $300 which she doesn’t have to spare.

Continue reading “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Health Insurance”

IT’S A SAD STATE OF AFFAIRS

Whenever I see one of these stories about how little Americans have available for an emergency, my blood starts to boil. I understand that poor people making $25,000 per year are forced to live paycheck to paycheck. But when 63% of all Americans can’t handle a $500 emergency, and 46% of  households making over $75,000 can’t handle a $500 emergency, then they are just plain stupid, frivolous, and incapable of distinguishing between wants and needs. Delayed gratification is a trait almost non-existent among Americans today.

The first thing that infuriates me is the assumption that a $500 car repair or house repair is an unexpected emergency. It’s a fucking living expense. It’s not a fucking surprise. Your car will need new tires every few years. That’s $500 or more. Your hot water heater, air conditioner, roof, windows, etc. will need to be replaced. Everyone gets sick. That is not unexpected. Anyone who lives their life as if these expenses are a shocking surprise is a blithering idiot. And this country is crawling with blithering idiots.

So the majority of Americans can’t handle a $500 expense, but for the last two years there have been 35 million new cars “sold” to blithering idiots on credit or leases. Even though they have no money, they decide it’s a brilliant idea to commit to a 7 year payment of $300 to $500 per month on an asset that declines in value rapidly. Morons abound. These are the same people who must have their Starbucks coffee every day. These math challenged boobs could defer buying a Starbucks coffee every day, save the $3, and accumulate $750 of emergency savings in one year.

There are millions of brain dead Americans who are going to reap a whirlwind of consequences when this shit show implodes. They’ll be wailing and gnashing their teeth when their years of living for today catches up to them. Too fucking bad. The only way to accumulate wealth is to spend less than you make. It’s a lesson they failed to heed, and they will regret it for the rest of their pitiful lives.

Most Americans are one paycheck away from the street

Some 63% of people can’t deal with a $500 emergency

DID YOU KNOW SEARS CLOSED 562 STORES IN THE LAST YEAR AND THEY ARE STILL LOSING $450 MILLION PER QUARTER?

This bloated pig is on the butcher’s table. It’s dead pig walking. I thought they were closing 200 or so stores based on what I had read in the past. Lo and behold they have closed 562 stores, or 25% of their existing base from one year ago. Wow. That sure sounds desperate. Now for the funny part. I assume they closed their 25% worst performing stores. You would think that would result in higher sales in the remaining stores, as the reverse cannibalism affect would occur. Well these retailing geniuses managed to generate NEGATIVE same store sales of 7.5% to 9.6% at their disgustingly run down Kmart and Sears stores. Maybe their merchandise sucks and their staff is on par with their customers. 

This despicable example of a retailer has now jumped far ahead of JC Penney in the bankruptcy race. Their balance sheet says it all:

  • How could these idiots close 25% of their stores and only reduce the inventory on their balance sheet by 4%? This is a disaster in the making as this terrible Christmas season will leave them drowning in inventory.
  • They have only $294 million of cash, but owe over $700 million in debt in the next year.
  • They have NEGATIVE $1.3 billion of equity and $7.5 billion of long term debt and obligations.

If you can’t make money after closing your 25% worst stores, you are dead. Eddie Lampert is a blithering idiot who keeps doing real estate deals to keep this bloated pig afloat. I predict this sucker will be declaring bankruptcy before June of 2016. More empty anchor locations coming to a ghost mall near you.

Sears narrows loss, but revenue falls 20%

Published: Dec 3, 2015 7:14 a.m. ET

Sears Holdings Corp. narrowed its loss in the third-quarter as the company closed some stores.

Kmart same-store sales declined 7.5%, while Sears domestic same-store sales were down 9.6%, as apparel and consumer electronics sales declined.

Still, Chief Executive Eddie Lampert remains optimistic about returning to profitability “by concentrating on our best stores, rewarding our best members and pursuing our best categories.”

Sears had 1,687 stores at the end of the third quarter, down from 2,249 a year earlier.

Continue reading “DID YOU KNOW SEARS CLOSED 562 STORES IN THE LAST YEAR AND THEY ARE STILL LOSING $450 MILLION PER QUARTER?”

Good Little Maoists

Guest Post by Jim Kunstler

Sometimes societies just go batshit crazy. For ten years, 1966 to 1976, China slid into the chaotic maw of Mao Zedong’s “cultural revolution.” A youth army called the Red Guard was given license to terrorize authorities all over the nation — teachers, scientists, government officials, really just about anyone in charge of anything. They destroyed lives and families and killed quite a few of their victims. They paralyzed the country with their persecutions against “bourgeois elements” and “capitalist roaders,” reaching as deep into the top leadership as Deng Xiaoping, who was paraded in public wearing a dunce-cap, but eventually was able to put an end to all the insanity after Mao’s death.

America’s own cultural revolution has worked differently. It was mostly limited to the hermetically-sealed hot-house world of the universities, where new species of hierophants and mystagogues were busy constructing a crypto-political dogma aimed at redefining status arrangements among the various diverse ethnic and sexual “multi-cultures” of the land.

There is no American Mao, but there are millions of good little Maoists all over America bent on persecuting anyone who departs from a party line that now dominates the bubble of campus life. It’s a weird home-grown mixture of Puritan witch-hunting, racial paranoia, and sexual hysteria, and it comes loaded with a lexicon of jargon — “micro-aggression,” “trigger warnings,” “speech codes,” etc — designed to enforce uniformity in thinking, and to punish departures from it.

At a moment in history when the US is beset by epochal problems of economy, energy, ecology, and foreign relations, campus life is preoccupied with handwringing over the hurt feelings of every imaginable ethnic and sexual group and just as earnestly with the suppression of ideological trespassers who don’t go along with the program of exorcisms. A comprehensive history of this unfortunate campaign has yet to be written, but by the time it is, higher education may lie in ruins. It is already burdened and beset by the unintended consequences of the financial racketeering so pervasive across American life these days. But in promoting the official suppression of ideas, it is really committing intellectual suicide, disgracing its mission to civilized life.

I had my own brush with this evil empire last week when I gave a talk at Boston College, a general briefing on the progress of long emergency. The audience was sparse. It was pouring rain. The World Series was on TV. People are not so interested in these issues since the Federal Reserve saved the world with free money, and what I had to say did not include anything on race, gender, and white privilege.

Continue reading “Good Little Maoists”