Dear teenage boy at the skate park...

Jeanean Thomas  |  Twitter  |  October 10, 2015

Dear teenage boy at the skate park...

ISIS is attacking the U.S. energy grid (and failing)

By Jose Pagliery | CNN Money | October 16, 2015

The Islamic State is trying to hack American electrical power companies -- but they are terrible at it.
U.S. law enforcement officials revealed the hack attempts on Wednesday at a conference of American energy firms who were meeting about national security concerns.

Investigators would not reveal any details to CNNMoney -- or cite evidence of specific incidents."ISIL is beginning to perpetrate cyberattacks," Caitlin Durkovich, assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at the Department of Homeland Security, told company executives.

But they did say the attacks by the Islamic State have been unsuccessful. Terrorists are not currently using the most sophisticated hacking tools to break into computer systems and turn off or blow up machines.

"Strong intent. Thankfully, low capability," said John Riggi, a section chief at the FBI's cyber division. "But the concern is that they'll buy that capability."

Indeed, hacking software is up for sale in black markets online. That's often how mafias acquire the cyberweapons they use to break into companies and steal giant databases of information they later sell to fraudsters.

The FBI now worries that the Islamic State or its supporters will buy malicious software that can sneak into computers and destroy electronics. An attack on power companies could disrupt the flow of energy to U.S. homes and businesses.

And it's not just Islamic extremists. There's an equal threat from domestic terrorists and hate groups, according to Mark Lemery. He's the "critical infrastructure protection coordinator" who helps coordinate defenses against attacks in Utah. But again, the worries are tempered.

"They'd love to do damage, but they just don't have the capability," Lemery said. "Terrorists have not gotten to the point where they're causing physical damage."

Officials made clear that the greater concern is attacks from other countries. Riggi said malware found last year on industrial control systems at energy companies -- including pumps and engines -- were traced to the Russian government.

Besides, the likelihood of a hack taking out the entire U.S. energy grid -- or even a section of it -- is extremely low. The grid isn't as uniform and connected as people might believe. Currently, it's a chaotic patchwork of "grids," each with different types of machines and software that don't smoothly coordinate or communicate.

That jumble actually works to the nation's advantage, energy company executives said. It would take a large, expensive team of highly technical spies to understand the layout of computers and machines at an energy company. Then it takes stellar hackers to sneak in. And even if they do manage to flip a switch -- which companies maintain has never happened here in the United States -- the attack might only take out electricity fed to a tiny portion of land, maybe a section of a city. An entirely different type of attack would be needed to carry that over to the next power plant.

Experts attending GridSecCon, held by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, seemed cautious but hopeful.

When energy industry representatives asked Riggi how the FBI knows who's hacking -- whether it's a government or independent hacking group -- he said American spies that are monitoring computer networks are quick to share information with law enforcement.

"We've had pretty good success actually," Riggi said. "Since the FBI is an intelligence agency, we rely on the help of CIA and NSA. We compare information with the NSA."

Principal holds up student election results because winners not diverse enough

By Todd Starnes  |  FoxNews.com  |  October 20, 2015

There’s a big election controversy at a California middle school after the principal discovered that not enough black or Latino students were elected to office.

Principal Lena Van Haren’s decision to withhold the results of the student government elections angered parents and students at Everett Middle School in San Francisco.

“It’s not okay for a school that is really, really diverse to have the student representatives majority white,” she told the San Francisco Chronicle. “The easy thing would have been to announce the results and move on. I intentionally did not choose the easy way because this is so important.”

According to the newspaper, there were no “English learners” among the winners. I’m assuming that’s what they’re calling kids who don’t speak a lick of English these days.

Black and Latino students were underrepresented as well.

There were no allegations of voter intimidation or voter fraud. There were no reports of hanging chads. And there were no incidents involving ballot boxes that malfunctioned. So what was the problem?

The problem, it appears, is that the principal didn’t like who got the most votes. In other words – too many white kids got elected.

Cancer patients died waiting for care at troubled veterans’ hospital, probe finds

By Lisa Rein | The Washington Post | October 20, 2015

Some patients with bladder and prostate cancer died waiting for care, and medical treatment for almost 1,500 others was delayed because of short-staffing and mismanagement of urology care at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Phoenix, a new investigation has found.

Senior officials at the medical center, the center of a national scandal last year over fudged wait times, did little to respond to a severe staffing shortage as recently as April 2015, investigators for the Department of Veterans Affairs inspector general found.

Their solution? They canceled appointments for 3,200 urology patients, some of them for crucial follow-up tests, and never rescheduled them. And many veterans had no idea they couldn’t see a doctor until they showed up for their appointment.

“The Urology Service was not able to manage the volume of patients in need of either diagnostic evaluation, treatment, or routine follow-up related to multiple urological conditions,” the report by John Daigh, Jr., assistant inspector general for health-care inspections, said. The delays placed patients at “unnecessary risk for adverse outcomes.”

Seven patients died after delayed treatment and lapses in the quality of medical care they received in Phoenix, investigators wrote.

Seven problems that deserve investors’ attention

By Henry K. Hebeler  |  MarketWatch  |  August 4, 2015

Charles Krauthammer has written an excellent book titled "Things that matter." I agree with most of his points except the one on the “F word.” That said, perhaps he or someone should follow up with an equally popular book called "Things that shouldmatter." Here are suggestions for the table of contents:

The national debt. It's well over $18 trillion, and that's only the current value and growing exponentially. The Congressional Budget Office has calculated the present value of our unfunded obligations — such as commitments to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, CHIP, government pensions, etc. — total somewhere between $47 trillion and $205 trillion. These are patiently waiting their turn to show up in the national debt.

State debts. States, like the Federal Government, have built in their own laws and commitments for the future which they cannot fund. Never mind that this will be a problem for future elected officials. State and local commitments for pensions are way out of line. It takes an eternal optimist to buy the bonds of Illinois or Chicago. States, unlike the federal government can't print money to make the payments.

Funding the interest on debt. Debt interest is now about one-seventh of the total U.S. budget and will grow as the national debt and/or interest rate grows. Federal Reserve funds are far too little if Russia or China would elect to cash in their U.S. debt holdings. The Federal Reserve and banks have reserves to cope with a modest run on the banks, but a wholesale call for cash on the national debt would be a serious security issue.

Personal debt. The average household has over $15,000 in credit card debt and a $150,000 mortgage. Graduating college kids have accumulated over $1 trillion student debts, and even bankruptcy won't erase these. Borrowing on employer savings bonds has increased to the point where more money is being withdrawn than deposited. Over a quarter of 401(k)s have loans against them. And the government is encouraging even more debt by maintaining virtually zero interest rates on its bonds, making it easier to get reverse mortgages, and encouraging people to spend more, not save. Meanwhile, industry and commerce cheers for even more spending.

Large pension fund files plan to cut retiree benefits under new law

By Michael A. Fletcher  |  The Washington Post  |  October 6, 2015

Nearly 300,000 former truckers and their families would suffer significant losses under a proposal that uses a controversial new law to cut once sacrosanct pension benefits.

The huge Central States Pension Fund, which administers retirement benefits for some former and current Teamster truckers, said the reductions are the only way to save the plan from insolvency.

“A realistic rescue plan is needed now,” said Thomas C. Nyhan, executive director of the Central States Pension Fund. “The longer we wait to act, the larger the benefit reductions will have to be.”

Under the proposal, pensions for Central States’ 407,000 participants would be cut by an average of nearly 23 percent. But the pain would be distributed unevenly. Some participants, including the disabled, would not be subject to reductions. Older retirees would generally receive smaller cuts, while those who worked for defunct companies that did not keep pace with their pension funding obligations would face steeper reductions.

The proposed cuts were detailed in a plan submitted to the Treasury Department late last month. In it, Central States said the reduced number and increased age of its participants have left it paying out $3.46 for every dollar it takes in. The result is that the plan is disbursing $2 billion more in benefits than it takes in through employer contributions each year.

Officials say the pension plan was hurt by significant membership losses after the trucking industry was deregulated in the 1980s. Central States also suffered catastrophic investment losses during the stock market crash that accompanied the Great Recession. Since then, its investments have returned about 13 percent a year, but that has not been enough to return it to sound footing. Without changes in its benefit formula, the pension plan is on course to be insolvent by 2026, Nyhan said.

School cancels 'America Day'

By Todd Starnes  |  FoxNews  |  October 5, 2015

Patriotic teenagers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming showed up to class Wednesday waving American flags in defiance of educators who canceled “America Day” over fears it might upset students who don’t consider themselves to be American.

Administrators at Jackson Hole High School pulled the plug on “America Day” – citing concerns that celebrating the USA would alienate some of their young people, the Jackson Hole Daily reported.

Activities Director Mike Hansen said that a number of students did not feel American and felt “targeted and singled out by this day.”

I wish I could say what happened in Jackson Hole was an anomaly. However, there are many other public schools engaged in similar anti-American behavior.

“America Day” was part of a homecoming tradition at the high school. Students would show up to class either waving American flags or wearing red, white and blue clothing.

“Many different students could have felt singled out,” Hansen told the newspaper. “We’re trying to be inclusive and safe, make everyone feel welcome.”

Principal Scott Crisp echoed those concerns, telling the newspaper that they wanted the homecoming activities to “bring our students together holistically as a student body.”

You’d expect that kind of academic hog wash in Berkeley, California – but Jackson Hole, Wyoming?
The newspaper reported that a number of juniors and seniors protested “political correctness” by showing up to school wrapped in American flags.

And at least one Son of Liberty flew Old Glory from his diesel truck – which I’m sure drew the ire of environmentalists.

“It’s homecoming week and our school administration thought it was too ‘offensive’ to have an America Pride Day,” parent Ted Dawson wrote on Facebook. “Where have we gone so wrong! I don’t care what race or religion you are, you live here, benefit from the schools, enjoy tax benefits or whatever – your (sic) an American or at least you better be.”

I just turned 35, and here's what I've learned about money so far

By Holly Johnson  |  Business Insider  |  October 2, 2015

Earlier this year, I turned 35. After what seems like a whirlwind, I am not only the mother of a preschooler and first-grader, but 10 years into my marriage as well. 

How did this happen?

I have to be honest; I don't know.

It seems like just yesterday I was an awkward teenager in high school. And just last week I was struggling to get by and saving for our wedding.

How could it possibly have been more than six years since my oldest daughter was born? And more than four since I introduced my oldest child to her sister in the hospital?

It seems like it all went by in the blink of an eye. Before I really had the chance to enjoy it, it was gone.

What turning 35 taught me about money

It doesn't seem possible, yet here I am, fighting middle age and wondering where the time went. Fortunately, all that time wasn't a waste. While we are making huge financial strides now, we made plenty of mistakes, too. And along the way, we learned plenty of lessons that have shaped the way we think about money. Here are a few of those lessons and realizations.

How Bernie Sanders would transform the nation

By David A. Fahrenhold  |  The Washington Post  |  October 1, 2015

In the America that Bernie Sanders wants to create, tuition would be free for every student at every public college.

Which, of course, is another way of saying that the government would pay for it. To do that, the Democratic presidential candidate would spend $750 billion over 10 years and raise the money with a new tax on Wall Street trades.

And with the government paying for college, colleges would run by government rules. Sanders’s rules. For one thing, Sanders thinks student centers are a waste of government money. He would make sure they did not get any more of it.

If he becomes president, Sanders would spend an enormous amount of money: $3.27 trillion. At the very, very least.

He is not just a big-spending liberal. His agenda is not just about money.

It’s also about control.

The biggest pieces of Sanders’s domestic agenda — making college, health care and child care more affordable — seek to capture these industries and convert them to run chiefly on federal money.

Sanders thinks this would consolidate areas now shaped by a confusing mix of federal rules, state laws and the private market, and make these systems cheaper and more efficient.

The risk is that this authority would expand the federal bu­reaucracy, which has sometimes struggled to make itself run cheaply and efficiently.

Sanders said voters would welcome the change. Even if it means Americans must turn to the federal government to oversee new sectors of their lives. He bristles at the idea that this might be considered an intrusion.

Financial planning is beyond investments, retirement plans

By Sarah O'Brien  |  CNBC  |  September 27, 2015

Long before David Mendels became an advisor, he saw the importance of financial planning no matter what a person's age is.

He was in his 20s when a married couple he knew from college were killed in a private plane crash. While their death was devastating enough for loved ones, the agonizing part was that they had a 3-year-old daughter.

Each half of their extended family wanted to do the right thing by taking custody of the young girl. The situation had the potential for much ugliness among in-laws, until it was discovered the couple had created a will only days before their death. In it the wife's brother was named as their daughter's guardian. And at that point, because the young parents' wishes were clear, all arguing stopped.

"If you are parents of small children, I don't care if you don't have two nickels to rub together," said Mendels, a certified financial planner and director of planning at Creative Financial Concepts. "You have to have a will and name someone to be a guardian for your children. You have to take care of your kids," he explained.

Having a will is just one aspect of financial planning that depends on where you are in life. And, as illustrated above, financial planning is about more than investments and retirement savings.

Study: Millennials make unrealistic retirement plans

By Fred Imbert  |  CNBC  |  September 28, 2015

Think retirement will be a cakewalk, millennials? Think again.

Seventy percent of millennials said they think they will spend less than $36,000 per year in retirement, according to a new survey by the Insured Retirement Institute and the Center for Generational Kinetics. Meanwhile, the average annual expenditures for people ages 65 to 74 were more than $46,000 in 2013, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found.

Unrealistic retirement expectations exist among millennials. The study found that 15 percent of millennials believe that winning the lottery is a viable retirement strategy, while 11 percent expect to be "gifted" money for retirement.

"If that's a strategy, then millennials need some education," Jason Dorsey, chief strategy officer at Center for Generational Kinetics, said in a conference call. The center is a research firm that specializes in age-based data.

The survey of 1,110 adults ages 18 to 65 was conducted in early August.

Dorsey added that many of the misconceptions millennials have about retirement have to do with the circumstances they face as well as with their view that retirement may not be an option.

"Even if they are thinking about retirement, they may not have the capital to save for it," said Charles Sachs, wealth advisor at Private Wealth Counsel in Miami.

Millennials' negative perception of the stock market is a byproduct of them having lived through the Great Recession, Sachs said.

Only 26 percent of people under 30 own stocks, according to a BankRate.com survey.

Why Have Elections?

By Thomas Sowell  |  RealClear Politics  |  September 15, 2015

In a country with more than 300 million people, it is remarkable how obsessed the media have become with just one -- Donald Trump. What is even more remarkable is that, after six years of repeated disasters, both domestically and internationally, under a glib egomaniac in the White House, so many potential voters are turning to another glib egomaniac to be his successor.

No doubt much of the stampede of Republican voters toward Mr. Trump is based on their disgust with the Republican establishment. The fact that the next two biggest vote-getters in the polls are also complete outsiders -- Dr. Ben Carson and Ms. Carly Fiorina -- reinforces the idea that this is a protest.

It is easy to understand why there would be pent-up resentments among Republican voters. But are elections held for the purpose of venting emotions?

No national leader ever aroused more fervent emotions than Adolf Hitler did in the 1930s. Watch some old newsreels of German crowds delirious with joy at the sight of him. The only things at all comparable in more recent times were the ecstatic crowds that greeted Barack Obama when he burst upon the political scene in 2008.

Elections, however, have far more lasting, and far more serious -- or even grim -- consequences than emotional venting. The actual track record of crowd-pleasers, whether Juan Peron in Argentina, Obama in America or Hitler in Germany, is very sobering, if not painfully depressing.

The simple reason you’ll probably never retire comfortably

By Catey Hill  |  MarketWatch  |  September 23, 2015

America: At the rate you’re going, you may never get to ditch your 9-to-5 job.

In the past year alone, 15% of Americans dipped into their retirement fund to pay for an emergency, according to a nationally representative survey of more than 1,000 adults in the U.S. by personal finance site Bankrate.com released Wednesday— that’s 30 million Americans, if you extrapolate the survey data onto the entire U.S. population.

Other studies reveal a similar predilection towards tapping into the retirement well too soon. Nearly one in four workers ages 20 to 60 have either taken a loan or early withdrawal from their retirement fund, according to the 16th annual Transamerica Retirement Survey of Workers, released in May. And a study published this year in the journal “Contemporary Economic Policy” revealed that more than 15% of taxpayers under 55 withdrew money from their retirement accounts early in 2010 alone.

Many workers are tapping their retirement funds for emergencies for one simple reason: They don’t have an emergency fund. Nearly one in three Americans has no emergency savings at all, according to a survey released by Bankrate this year — the highest rate in the five years Bankrate has been doing the survey. What’s more, fewer than one in four has more than six months of income (that’s what many experts consider an ideal amount of emergency savings) in their emergency fund.

“Americans are woefully under-saved for emergencies — and lacking that cushion, they far too often resort to [tapping] their retirement accounts,” says Greg McBride, the chief financial analyst for Bankrate.com.

Add to that the fact that it’s highly likely you’ll experience an emergency or at least an unforeseen expense in a given year — a survey released last year by American Express found that this happens to nearly half of Americans — and you can see why so many people are dipping into the retirement well.