Free Republic

Forget the stuttering he does as the video begins as he laments how no one in Washington is doing their job except him.Who knew the sort of comedic talent Obama turned out to be. He's funny making quotes about how hard he works, doing his job, but the funny part ends up solely as self defecating humor.

Despite recent layoffs, teachers still have greater job security than workers in private businesses. While employment in education declined by 2.9% between September 2008 and July 2011, according to BLS data, overall private-sector employment declined by 4.4%. Moreover, from 2005 through 2010 the unemployment rate for public school teachers averaged 2.1%, versus 4.1% for private school teachers and 3.8% for occupations that some consider comparable, such as computer programmers and insurance underwriters.

Ezra Klein and a variety of other thoughtful liberal bloggers have been pointing to an Economic Policy Institute analysis that they claim demonstrates that Wisconsin’s public employees, even after adjusting for benefits and hours worked, face a “compensation penalty of 5% for choosing to work in the public sector.” Unfortunately, when you get under the hood, the study shows no such thing. Klein links to an executive summary to support his claim, but reading the actual paper by Jeffrey H. Keefe is instructive. Keefe took a representative sample of Wisconsin workers, built a regression model that relates “fundamental personal characteristics...

Unwind. Unplug. Relax. Not words you hear often in Washington, where overwork is not only accepted but embraced. Just take the Metro home on a Friday night at, say, 9 p.m. and notice the fair share of people carrying briefcases, loosening ties and incessantly checking their BlackBerrys. Washington -- or at least political Washington -- is a 24/7 work culture. But does that mean people here are overworked? Depends, said Lois Backon, vice president of the New York-based Families and Work Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization that studies the changing workplace. "Overwork," she explained, "is when people feel stressed...

Los Angeles County officials accused recycling facilities Thursday of scamming the public out of $15 million a year by shortchanging people who redeem glass, plastic and aluminum containers. Inspectors visited hundreds of recycling centers throughout the county and found that they were underpaid almost 20 percent of the time -- a disturbing rate that will lead to more inspections. Weights and Measures Director Cato Fiksdal said the recycling rip-off undermines public confidence in the whole effort to reduce landfill waste. "People must have trust in the integrity of the weighing process if our recycling efforts are to succeed," he said....