Denver Public Schools Recruiting Illegals to Teach (+video)

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Photo Credit: KUSA

Photo Credit: KUSA

Long before Alejandro Fuentes Mena became a fifth grade teacher, he was an undocumented immigrant from Chile.

“I came to the United States when I was four years old,” Fuentes Mena said.

In August, he started at the Denver Center for International Studies at Ford Elementary School as part of effort by Denver Public Schools administrators to be the first school district in the nation to actively seek out teachers people who were initially brought to the United States illegally.

“These young men and women bring extraordinary talent to our classroom,” Tom Boasberg, DPS superintendent, said. “We have many, many kids whose stories are like Alejandro’s.”

DPS is working with Teach for America to bring in people with an official status of “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” as determined by the federal government. Part of the requirements for DACA status is that a person must have been brought to the United States under the age of 16 and have a clean criminal record. Even with DACA status, they are still not recognized as legal citizens, but they are allowed to work.

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Obama Economic Adviser: The Great Moderation is Over, if it Ever Existed

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Photo Credit: AP / Carolyn Kaster

Photo Credit: AP / Carolyn Kaster

The so-called “Great Moderation” of low economic volatility between the mid-1980s and the financial crisis of 2008 was not as great as it seemed, and the future likely won’t be as pleasant, according to President Obama’s top economic adviser.

Jason Furman, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said in a speech in Washington on Thursday that “the Great Recession certainly does reveal serious limitations of the concept of a great moderation,” and that the U.S. economy shouldn’t be expected to return to a pattern of relatively smooth growth now that the banking crisis is in the past.

The “Great Moderation” was a term coined by economists James Stock, another current member of the CEA, and Mark Watson in a 2003 paper. It was meant to describe the decline in volatility in macroeconomic indicators such as gross domestic product growth and inflation since Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker brought the high inflation rates of the 1960s and ’70s to an end.

In 2004, Ben Bernanke, then a Fed governor under Chairman Alan Greenspan, popularized the term in a speech that attributed the smoothing out of the business cycle to better monetary policy by the Fed — although Bernanke also acknowledged that luck may also have played a significant role, and that luck might run out in the future.

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GM’s Barra Got Email in 2011 About Steering Problems

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Photo Credit: CNBC

Photo Credit: CNBC

The Congressional committee investigating the long-delayed the recall of millions of vehicles equipped with a faulty ignition switch, released a flurry of internal General Motors documents Friday showing what it described as “failures within the system” that allowed critical safety issues to go unaddressed.

Exactly why the ignition switch problem went unresolved for as much as a decade has spurred a series of investigations by the Department of Justice, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and both houses of Congress. During two Capitol Hill hearings last week, GM CEO Mary Barra was repeatedly criticized for failing to offer clear answers about the ignition switch problem.

One of the documents released Friday showed that while in her previous job as GM’s global product development chief, Barra was kept clearly in the loop about a separate recall issue involving steering problems on the Saturn Ion and other GM products.

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SHE’S OUT! Kathleen Sebelius Resigns as Secretary of HHS After ObamaCare Fiasco

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Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

After holding tight to her position as Health and Human Services Secretary for five years, Kathleen Sebelius resigned earlier this evening.

Sebelius became a household name in the fall for her role supervising the troubled rollout of the Healthcare.gov website and the general failure of President Obama’s signature healthcare law thus far.

The White House announced that tomorrow Obama will nominate Syliva Mathews Burwell, the director of the Office of Management and Budget to succeed Sebelius – a name that few know today, but will certainly come to recognize once she takes over.

According to reports, Sebelius was not forced out and chose to resign on her own recognizance. That said, her decision to leave coincides with a major push by the Obama administration to move past the early failures of the healthcare law, especially in light of the upcoming midterm elections wherein the law will feature prominently.

One of her last acts as HHS Secretary was to testify before the powerful Senate Finance Committee wherein she touted that 7.5 million people had enrolled in private insurance plans – half a million more than the original CBO projections.

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Nancy Pelosi: I’d Rather Pass Amnesty Than Be Speaker (+video)

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Photo credit: Reuters

Photo credit: Reuters

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said she would rather pass amnesty legislation than get her gavel back.

“It’s the biggest thing that we can do, and that’s why I’ve said to the speaker, to the press, to these groups, I would rather pass [a] comprehensive immigration reform bill than win the elections in November,” Pelosi told Politico. “There’s nothing we could accomplish in winning that would be as big as passing immigration reform.”

Politico noted that Pelosi has been traveling the country promoting immigration reform legislation and said she hoped a bill could pass by June or July…

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Gowdy: Lerner ‘Did a Lot of Talking for Someone Who Wants to Remain Silent’

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

By Melanie Hunter.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) – at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee business meeting on Thursday – said he counted “17 separate factual assertions” Lois Lerner made in her opening statement before invoking the Fifth Amendment when she was subpoenaed to testify last year on the congressional probe of the IRS scandal.

“Mr. Chairman, I counted 17 separate factual assertions by Ms. Lerner – not those three little sentences that my colleagues like to cite – 17 separate factual assertions. That is a lot of talking for somebody who wants to remain silent. That’s a lot of talking,” Gowdy said.

“If you honestly believe that you can make 17 separate factual assertions and still invoke your right to remain silent, then please tell me what waiver is. Please tell me what constitutes waiver if saying 17 separate factual things does not,” Gowdy added.

Thursday’s meeting was convened to consider a resolution to hold Lerner, former IRS director of exempt organizations, in contempt of Congress.

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Photo Credit: AP / Lauren Victoria Burke

Photo Credit: AP / Lauren Victoria Burke

Republicans Raise ‘Disturbing Concerns’ About Cummings’ Contacts With Lois Lerner’s Office

By Susan Jones.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee says the public “deserves a full and truthful explanation” for the actions of its ranking member, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), whose staff “surreptitiously contacted the IRS” about a conservative group that was seeking tax-exempt status — and was subjected to inappropriate scrutiny.

Cummings never told committee Republicans about his contacts with the IRS concerning the group True the Vote. In fact, he has denied any such contact.

In a letter to Cummings on Wednesday, Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and other committee Republicans said Cummings’ inquiries about True the Vote may have prompted additional IRS scrutiny of the group.

The letter also notes that Cummings’ email communications with the IRS “raise disturbing concerns about your possible motivations for opposing this investigation and your unwillingness to lend your support to efforts to obtain the testimony of former IRS Exempt Organizations Director Lois G. Lerner.”

Committee Republicans also question whether the IRS had “improperly shared protected taxpayer information” with Cummings’ staff.

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Rush Limbaugh: CBS ‘Declared War On The Heartland Of America’ (+audio)

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Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh is not happy with CBS’ hiring of comedian Stephen Colbert to replace David Letterman as host of “The Late Show.”

“CBS has just declared war on the heartland of America,” Limbaugh said on his radio show Thursday. “No longer is comedy going to be a covert assault on traditional American values [and] conservatives. Now, it’s just wide out in the open. What this hire means is a redefinition of what is funny and a redefinition of what is comedy.”

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‘State-Snatched’ Girl Prompts Move In Congress

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

A proposal in Congress that would block federal tax dollars from states with policies that “conflict with personal liberty” is one strategy in an effort to assist Massachusetts parents who lost custody of their teen daughter to the state because of a psychiatrist’s disputed opinion.

Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas, who is considering introducing a bill, is joining with the nonprofit legal advocacy group Liberty Council, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and Republican state Rep. Marc Lombardo to call for the release of 15-year-old Justina Pelletier from Massachusetts state custody to the care of her parents.

They are also calling for further investigation into the influence of psychiatrists’ opinions that result in state removal of children from their families.

“I find certain state policies involving individual and personal medical decisions to be disconcerting,” Stockman said. “It is my firm belief that we should not provide federal dollars, through NIH grants, to states that maintain policies that conflict with personal liberty.”

Stockman said Thursday that taxpayer dollars also “should not be spent on research performed upon people without their consent.”

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House Passes Ryan Budget

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

The House on Wednesday passed a GOP budget blueprint that promises a balanced federal ledger in 10 years by making sweeping cuts across the federal budget and eliminating health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

The 219-205 vote on the nonbinding framework takes a mostly symbolic swipe at the government’s chronic deficits. Follow-up legislation to actually implement the cuts isn’t in the cards. Twelve Republicans opposed the measure, and not a single Democrat supported it.

The plan by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., would cut more than $5 trillion over the coming decade to reach balance by 2024. The sharpest cuts would come to health care programs for the poor and uninsured, food stamps, and array of domestic programs, including Pell Grants, education, and community development grants.

The follow-up legislation is likely to be limited to a round of annual spending bills that will adhere to a bipartisan budget pact enacted in December.

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Companies Say No to Having an HR Department

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Photo Credit: Tim Robinson

Photo Credit: Tim Robinson

Sometimes the only thing worse than having an HR department is not having one.

When LRN Corp., which helps companies develop ethics and compliance programs, restructured a few years ago, the 250-employee business abolished most job titles and department names. It also did away with its human-resources department, which had dealt with recruiting and compensation issues, among other things.

“We wanted to force the people issues into the middle of the business,” said David Greenberg, Los Angeles-based LRN’s executive vice president.

Companies seeking flat management structures and more accountability for employees are frequently taking aim at human resources. Executives say the traditional HR department—which claims dominion over everything from hiring and firing to maintaining workplace diversity—stifles innovation and bogs down businesses with inefficient policies and processes. At the same time, a booming HR software industry has made it easier than ever to automate or outsource personnel-related functions such as payroll and benefits administration.

Some workers say they feel the absence of an in-house HR staff acutely, especially when it comes to bread-and-butter HR responsibilities such as mediating employee disputes and resolving pay problems. LRN and other companies that are going it alone say they are working out the glitches as they go.

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