The NBA acts quickly and decisively

NBA Suspends Clippers’ Owner Donald Sterling For Life, Imposes $2.5 Million Fine

Excerpt:

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver announced Tuesday Clippers owner Donald Sterling will be suspended for life and fined $2.5 million following racist remarks he made in a recorded audio clip. Silver spoke to the press at an 11 a.m. news conference from New York, stating he will “do everything in my power” to force the sale of the Clippers. “The hateful opinions voiced by that man are those of Mr. Sterling. The views expressed by Mr. Sterling are deeply offensive and harmful. That they came from an NBA owner only heightens the damage and my personal outrage,” Silver said. “I am banning Mr. Sterling for life from any association with the Clippers association or the NBA. Mr. Sterling may not attend any NBA games or practices, he may not be present at any Clippers facility, and he may not participate in any business or decisions involving the team.”

Comment: Today I gave my "A Christian Response to Racism" speech at Toastmasters

Real median income stagnates

Men Who Work Full-Time Earn Less Than 40 Years Ago

Excerpt:

The real median income of American men who work full-time, year-round peaked forty years ago in 1973, according to data published by the U.S. Census Bureau. In 1973, median earnings for men who worked full-time, year-round were $51,670 in inflation-adjusted 2012 dollars. The median earnings of men who work full-time year-round have never been that high again.

Comment: In February of 1973 (when I basically began my career*, my salary was $ 9,600. Per this CPI calculator that would be the equivalent of $51,090.38 in 2014 dollars.)
---- *Timeline:

• June 1971: Graduated from college (University of Cincinnati)
• Summer 1971: Campus Crusade for Christ training at Arrowhead Springs California
• 1971-72 school year: CCC at University of Buffalo
• Summer '72: Pastoral internship
• Fall '72: My abortive attempt at seminary school (Chattanooga, Tennessee)
• February '73: Hired by IBM and moved to Tampa Florida

Behind Pfizer's bid for AstraZeneca - flee high US Corporate taxes

Pfizer's Tax Takeover - Spend $100 billion abroad rather than pay 40% at home.
Excerpt:

U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. wants to buy AstraZeneca, and not just for its pipeline of cancer drugs. Acquiring the British company would also give Pfizer shareholders welcome relief from a U.S. corporate tax rate that is among the world's highest. Instead of paying punitive rates to return its money to the U.S., Pfizer figures it can get a better return paying $100 billion or so to buy a foreign company. .... Pfizer's presentation also noted the deal would be "structured to achieve an efficient tax structure." Mr. Read noted the "negative impact" of the U.S. tax code, which would be "problematical" if applied to the money AstraZeneca now earns in the U.K. That's because the combined state-federal corporate income tax rate in the U.S. is nearly 40%, compared to the 21% rate in the U.K. Though Pfizer is a U.S. company, more than 70% of its cash—amounting to more than $35 billion—is sitting overseas. To bring it back home would expose shareholders to the punitive U.S. rate. Instead, Pfizer aims to use some of that cash pile to finance the merger, and Mr. Read also plans to domicile the new combined holding company in the U.K., though its headquarters would remain in New York. Can anyone blame him? We call the U.S. business tax rate "among" the world's highest because, outside of places like North Korea that don't allow private business, it's nearly impossible to find a more punitive rate than the 40% inflicted in the U.S.

Comment: Secret .... corporations are not the ultimate payers of income taxes ... people are.

The Apple stock split and even lot trading

Who Cares What Apple's Stock Price Is?
Excerpt:

... if the split doesn't have any economic impact, why bother? I've seen two explanations. One is that doing this will probably get Apple included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Who cares about round lots? Historically, "trading commissions for odd lots are generally higher on a percentage basis than those for standard lots," and I suppose someone somewhere is still being charged extra to trade odd lots. But in the real world, it costs $9.99 to trade one or six or 100 or 10,000 shares of any stock; that is the price to trade stock, it has nothing to do with lots.4 Your cost to buy 100 shares of New Apple for $8,000 is the same as your cost to buy 14 shares of Old Apple for $8,000: $8,009.99. But round lots do matter, for market structure reasons. Odd lots -- orders of fewer than 100 shares -- are treated differently under the Securities and Exchange Commission's national market rules. They are not part of the national best bid or offer, and are not "protected orders" under Regulation NMS ...

The higher the dollar price of a stock, the more odd-lot trades there will be, and the wider the spread will be.8 So high dollar prices pretty directly take money from investors and give it to high-frequency traders. Now, like so many of the concerns that people have with high-frequency trading, this is a pure issue of market structure. The SEC could solve it in various ways, perhaps by getting rid of Regulation NMS entirely, or more simply by "protecting" odd lots. This recent BlackRock white paper calls for the latter solution

Comment: Interesting. Most of my trades are odd-lots. Image source

Byron Smith and Bernhard Goetz

Little Falls trial has echoes of unlikely vigilante Bernhard Goetz
Excerpt:

He'd had enough. It was time to draw that line in the sand. He had been victimized before. So, when it happened again, he was armed and ready and took action. Yet, the question remains whether he went too far and crossed the line from self-defense to deliberate criminal intent. I am not talking here about Byron Smith, the 65-year-old Little Falls, Minn., homeowner on trial in the fatal shootings of two teenagers who broke into his home on Thanksgiving Day two years ago. I'm talking about Bernhard Goetz, the white, nerdy-looking, bespectacled calibration-machine expert who shot and wounded four black teenagers who he said were about to rob him on a New York City subway train Dec. 22, 1984.

Neighbors, friends, say Smith was frightened and scared after burglaries
Excerpt:

Brian-Paul Crowder and Bill and Georgia Anderson testified Friday afternoon, that Byron Smith was concerned, frightened and scared after an Oct. 27, 2012 burglary at his home, which the Andersons said had not been the first. Smith, 65, is being tried on two counts of first-degree murder for shooting Nick Brady, 17, and Haile Kifer, 18, multiple times after the two broke into his Little Falls home.

Comment: More. The 2nd week of the trial continues tomorrow. Clearly Smith went too far, but in my own view, 1st degree murder will not be the verdict

"For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts [and] murders ... "

Accused Killer Jeffrey Chapman Wants 'Murder' Neck Tattoo Removed Before Trial

Excerpt:

A murder suspect who has the word "murder" tattooed on his neck is hoping to have the tattoo removed as he fears it will prejudice him in front of a jury. Jeffrey Chapman is accused of murdering Damon Gailart in 2011 in Kansas and is worried that the tattoo would have a negative impact at the trial. Prosecutors said they were not opposed to Chapman removing or covering his tattoo, but Barton County police department said they would not transport the suspect to a tattoo parlour for the removal process. Under Kansas law, tattoo artists are only allowed to practise in licensed facilities, which also rules out a professional coming to visit Chapman in jail where he is currently held in custody. "Mr. Chapman's tattoos are not relevant to any material facts and Mr Chapman asks for the court to exclude any mention of his tattoos at trial and further to be allowed to cover them up in an appropriate manner," court documents said. "The fact that he has 'murder' tattooed across his neck is irrelevant to the State's case and extremely prejudicial to Mr Chapman if introduced at trial or observed by the jury." State prosecutors said Chapman could simply cover the tattoo with "clothing, a bandage or other means compliant with jail policy".

Comment: Options: Beard ... high collar ... Neck (cervical) braces (I've got a lot of experience with these!) Snarky remark: Looks like a pleasant young man!

Full quote:

For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.” (Matthew 15:18-20)

Minnesota's Ancient Trees

To get your arms around history, consider the ancient trees

Excerpt:

The Rockwood Oak is located on a trail near Wirth Lake, just east of Theodore Wirth Parkway between the Olson Highway and Glenwood Avenue. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to find it, that it’d blend into the sylvan background, but I really shouldn’t have been. The Rockwood Oak looks, compared to its neighbors, almost impossibly ancient. In 2011, it was damaged in the tornado, as were a great number of the trees in the area, a small part of the vast swath of wreckage of that storm. The damage to the Rockwood Oak manages to make it look even more grizzled and primeval, stooped over, blackened with age, covered in bulbous forms on the trunk. It looks at once vulnerable and completely impervious to the passage of time.

When the sapling that would grow into the Rockwood Oak pushed its way through the ground by a lake around 1700, Rockwood’s great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was a teenager on a farm somewhere far, far away from the Upper Mississippi River. When the tree finally dies, Rockwood himself may well have been gone for well over a century. There are oak trees in the United States that are almost 1,500 years old. Who knows how many more centuries it may have in it.

Minneapolis Heritage Tree Program

Location: Rockwood Oak

Comment: My own oak tree story. When my Dad died in 1999, I bought an oak tree for the back yard. It was planted in Summer 2000. it will be a great tree someday ... but boy it is a slow grower.

Yawn

About a guy who seems to think I am someone important (which I am not) and has misrepresented me: His comment in this post of his ...

Excerpt:

To All: Sharper Iron (SI) posted a Filing today on the Woman Preaching at NIU. As one could expect, Aaron Blumer and Jim Peet create ways to allow for and legitimize NIU having a woman preaching in chapel. One example reminds one of Dave Doran's Second Defintion for "Separation" in Academic Contexts teaching to essentially escape the force of Scripture. Peet wrote, "NIU is not a church." Blumer wrote, "Is a Bible college a church?" Both Blumer and Peet reject that this was a chapel preaching service, to instead as Blumer calls it, "address the organization...inspiring lecture." No surprise here from the pseudo- fundamentalist SI.

Comment: My full comments are here. On NIU ... never been there. I am neither a defender nor a critic. Outside of my orbit of interest.  Been close once. Wanted to go there when K and I drove around Lake Superior but we mapped it out and it was hours away. On the man and his comments about me. He has a serious inferiority complex. I mentioned him once before on my blog. On pseudo-fundamentalism (I'm not even sure what that means ... but see this link for my entire view on "prefixes"). Image is a cat yawning. Source.. Having had many cats ... a cat yawning and a cat about to cough up a hairball ... look very much alike! Just saying!

How BUD wins with the distribution business

The 10 Biggest Brewers in America

Excerpt:

... the brewer is beholden to the distributor. Though some of the brewers on this list -- Craft Brew Alliance, for one -- operate brew pubs where they can cut out the middleman, distributors remain vital to the long-term growth story of U.S. breweries. This reality forms the basis of a pretty strong competitive advantage for Anheuser-Busch InBev. At 500 wholesalers -- 17 of which are owned outright -- the company's U.S. distribution network is much larger than that of Boston Beer. Does it pay to own 17 wholesalers in markets like Boston, New York, Denver, and Los Angeles? You bet. Consider this gem from the company's annual filing: "Revenue per hectoliter derived from sales through own distribution tends to be higher than revenue derived from sales through third parties." It's just one more way Anheuser-Busch wins with distribution.

Comment: A nice 3.7% dividend

Sliced Apple - 7 to 1 Stock Split

Apple expands buybacks by $30 billion, OKs seven-for-one stock split

Apple Expands Capital Return Program to Over $130 Billion - Board of Directors also Approves Seven-for-One Stock Split

Excerpt:

The Board of Directors has also announced a seven-for-one stock split. Each Apple shareholder of record at the close of business on June 2, 2014 will receive six additional shares for every share held on the record date, and trading will begin on a split-adjusted basis on June 9, 2014.

Comment: Kathee to me ... "Well now we can maybe get to 100" (We have 11 pre-split shares). Image source. Investors happy ... see aftermarket trading below (Up $ 41):

$ 1 Million enough for retirement?

Why even $1M may not be enough for retirement

Excerpt:

"Thirty years ago, $1 million was a huge amount of money," says Haitham "Hutch" Ashoo, CEO of Pillar Wealth Management, in Walnut Creek, Calif. "Today, given today's lifestyles and costs, it isn't so much money." Why not? "It translates into $40,000 to $50,000 (annually) in sustainable revenue," says Joe Heider, regional managing principal for Rehmann Financial Group in Westlake, Ohio. "That is not that much money on an annual basis." Heider says that 10 to 12 years ago, when people earned a lot more on their investments, $1 million could generate $70,000 to $80,000 a year in retirement income. But with interest rates as low as they are, that's not really feasible. Still, that's not to say that no one could live on savings of $1 million. Not everyone will need that kind of cash in their retirement kitty, financial planners say. It all depends on your lifestyle — the one you're living now, and the one you want to live in retirement. It also depends on your investment returns, taxes and inflation. "I think it depends on how much money you're going to spend," says Tim Courtney, chief investment officer at Exencial Wealth Advisors in Oklahoma City. "A million is not like $1 million 20 years ago or 30 years ago. If you're wanting to spend $50,000 a year or less from your investment portfolio, $1 million will probably get it done for you. "If you want more than that, $1 million is not going to provide that for you," he says. Otherwise, you run the risk of depleting your savings before you die. "Everything is relative," says Clarence Kehoe, executive partner in the accounting firm Anchin, Block & Anchin in New York City. "For some people, I would think $1 million would be more than enough. For other people, I can tell you some of these clients spend more than $1 million in a year. It depends on the person, their lifestyle and what they are used to."

Comment: Our  target is a bit beyond this. Hope to retire approx. December 2015.

Organize your neighborhood: NextDoor

NextDoor - Referral

Comment: So far we've reached 29% of the 76 homes in Forster's Preserve. In May I'm going to do a big push: Balsam, Deerwood, and Evergreen. Hoping to reach 50%.

About Nextdoor

Use the above referral link, and receive a $ 25 Amazon gift certificate (I will receive one as well).

Forsters is one of 4 Plymouth NextDoor neighborhoods: Map below:

Cobalt Condos

Today's condo viewing (open house - drop in)

Cobalt - Unit 310
Observations:

• Nice location - 45 SE University
• Lund's Grocery on 1st floor - private entrance to store from main lobby of condo w privacy fob.
• Across the street and overlooks Chute Square park
• Stacked washer and dryer off hallway
• 2 bed / 2 bath
• Needs paint (and in my view) and refresh on carpeting in bedrooms
• Hardwood in kitchen and living
• Kitchen very nice with high end appliances and granite 
• 1 parking spot with unit
• Last sold for  $440,900 in January 2007
• Negatives: custom beds in both bedrooms (built-ins). Not our style. Also built-in custom desk in master bed room  

New Mailbox

Jim Dahlheimer from Homewise Repair installed our new mailbox today. We bought an Avalon at Menards. Lower photo is from January. A new 45° support was also installed. We had lost that more then 10 years ago to a snow plow. Numbers to be installed tomorrow. Existing wood needs to be scraped and painted.

Bodyguard for El Presidente Echeverría

In 1969, through a seemingly unusual sequence of events, in a jam-packed plaza, in an unruly crowd, at a Mexican presidential campaign event, I came face to face with Luis Echeverría. Concerned for his safety, I was enlisted to extricate the candidate to safety.

1. American Airlines campus sales representative - Not an typical student job
1. In my Junior and Senior year at University of Cincinnati
2. Paid $ 50 per month = approx. $ 300 per month in today’s dollars
3. What did I do?
1.  Booked charter flights for students to fly back to NYC for holidays
2. Worked with the athletic department for flights for the football team
3. Booked an “Arts” charter to NYC for Broadway & off-Broadway plays
4. The Student Union was my office
5. Also recruited (really “tried to recruit” candidates for stewardess) f. I can attest that “you would make a great American Airlines stewardess” is not an effective pickup line! 
6. An unusual benefit: 2 free 1st class passes annually … anywhere AA flew - my first trip was Christmas 1969 … to San Diego to scuba dive. I had a one day excursion to Tijuana
2. Tijuana – Not an ordinary American tourist destination
   1. For beaches: Acapulco, Cabo San Lucas, or Puerto Vallarta,
   2. For Aztec or Mayan ruins: Morelos
   3. For natural wonders: Mazatlán
   4. For Spanish colonial history: Mexico City.
   5. For Mexican traditions (of say tequila, mariachi music and charros): Guadalajara
   6. Tijuana:
      1. Tijuana Zebra: donkey painted like a zebra
      2. VW bugs as taxis
      3. The origin of Caesar salad @ Hotel Caesar’s
      4. Slums
      5. Denture clinics (more than 50)
      6. Bullfighting (Bullring by the Sea)
      7. Inspiration for Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass (the Lonely Bull & Tijuana Taxi)
      8. Now also known for the Tijuana crime Cartel
   7. To Tijuana:
      1. Bus from San Diego
      2. Through the San Ysidro border crossing
         1. One of the busiest border crossings in the world
         2. On foot
         3. Over the Tijuana River
      3. And into the sprawling city of more than 1 Million people
3. Luis Echeverría – Not an uncommon Mexican politician
   1. The 50th President of Mexico
   2. From 1970-1976
   3. B 1922 … still alive / In 1969 he would have been 47 years old
   4. He was campaigning for President:
      1. PRI party - Institutional Revolutionary Party
      2. July 5th 1970
      3. 86% of vote
4. An unusual, fortuitous meeting
   1. Avenue of Revolution the main tourist route
   2. Running parallel the Avenue of the Constitution
   3. I ate in a genuine Mexican restaurant:
      1. My 2 year of HS Latin and 2 years of HS Spanish had not prepared me well for the immersion into Mexican culture
      2. Not seated at an individual table but with 2 mexicans
      3. Common bowl of salad w flat bread
   4. West of Avenue of the Constitution – the Parque Teniente Guerrero
   5. Parque Teniente Guerrero or Park warrior Lieutenant
      1. Oldest park in Tijauna
      2. Really the heart of the city
   6. Drawn there because a large assembled crowd
      1. Banners & placards
      2. And there Luis Echeverría was publically campaigning for President
   7. I worked a seam and pushed to the center of the activity and
   8. Came shoulder to shoulder with the next President of Mexico – cream colored guayabera – an embroidered linen shirt
   9. If ever been to a US campaign event … completely unlike that - Where the President or candidate is insulated from the public by a security detail
   10. Call it fortuitous, chance or luck, I was just left of center of the focus of activity
   11. The crowd became rambunctious and his security detail became secure and the enlisted me to rush El Presidente to safety
   12. I was joined to a phalanx of men:
       1. A row in front of the candidate
       2. And a row behind (I was in the rear)
       3. Who hurriedly moved him to a secure place

Comment: Outline of my Toastmaster's speech from 2 weeks ago and also tonight

The Chicago Railroad bottleneck

Freight Train Late? Blame Chicago

Excerpt:

Shippers complain that a load of freight can make its way from Los Angeles to Chicago in 48 hours, then take 30 hours to travel across the city. A recent trainload of sulfur took some 27 hours to pass through Chicago — an average speed of 1.13 miles per hour, or about a quarter the pace of many electric wheelchairs. With freight volume in the United States expected to grow by more than 80 percent in the next 20 years, delays are projected to only get worse. The underlying reasons for this sprawling traffic jam are complex, involving history, economics and a nation’s disinclination to improve its roads, bridges and rails. Six of the nation’s seven biggest railroads pass through the city, a testament to Chicago’s economic might when the rail lines were laid from the 1800s on. Today, a quarter of all rail traffic in the nation touches Chicago. Nearly half of what is known as intermodal rail traffic, the big steel boxes that can be carried aboard ships, trains or trucks, roll by or through this city.

Winter Took its Toll on the Achilles’ Heel of American Railroads

Excerpt:

CSX Corp.chief executive Michael Ward insisted today that the railroad operator is not running out of capacity, even as analysts questioned the continuing costs, delays and fallout from the great rail tie-ups and tangles of the first quarter. “You don’t build the church for Easter Sunday,” Mr. Ward said in an interview after his first quarter earnings call. “We have plenty of capacity for all the growth you can foresee — but not for one of the coldest and snowiest winters in history.” Normally in Chicago, you have either cold winters or snowy winters, he told the analysts. “It’s highly unusual the winter is both,” he said. But in what has become a railroad mantra lately, he said there had been twenty-five significant snowfalls during the third coldest winter ever in Chicago this year. And Chicago happens to be the Achilles’ Heel of the rail system — a major bottleneck where all the major railroads converge. Problems there have a “cascading impact” on the rest of the network, Mr. Ward said.

Here's the long-term solution:

Plan floated for $3 billion Chicago rail bypass

Excerpt:

Under the plan, a six-track, freight-only rail line would be built between Coal City, Ill., and Wellsboro, Ind., in a portion of the right-of-way that transit officials hope to acquire for the proposed Illiana Expressway. The line could be extended farther west later. The $3 billion structure faces all kinds of obstacles, not least among them the fact that the Illiana Expressway still is just a dream. But the idea of getting private investors to put up money that would be repaid by railroads paying charges to use the tracks does have a certain big-picture beauty to it. That would make the line something like a public utility.

Coldwater Creek to fold

Coldwater Creek files bankruptcy, to close all stores

Excerpt:

Women's clothing retailer Coldwater Creek Inc. on Friday filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after failing to find a buyer said it plans to close its stores by early summer.

Coldwater Creek joins other retailers to seek protection from creditors in recent months as consumers keep a lid on spending.

The company said it plans to wind down its operations over the coming months and begin going-out-of-business sales in early May, before the traditionally busy Mother's Day weekend. Coldwater Creek said it has 365 stores and employs about 6,000 people.

Comment: My wife's goto store for clothing.

About Stock Symbols - The Single Character Symbols

The Ticker Symbol

Historical components of the DJIA

Interesting to me:

• "C" formerly was Chrysler
• Surprised no one has requested "J", "U", "W"
• Who would think "Y" would be Alleghany Corporation?!

Ditch XP ... fast!

Microsoft Windows XP support ends Tuesday: Why users need to upgrade -- now

Excerpt:

Microsoft will end support for the persistently popular Windows XP on Tuesday, and the move could put everything from the operations of heavy industry to the identities of everyday people in danger.

An estimated 30 percent of computers being used by businesses and consumers around the world are still running the 12-year-old operating system. "What once was considered low-hanging fruit by hackers now has a big neon bull's eye on it," says Patrick Thomas, a security consultant at the San Jose, Calif.-based firm Neohapsis.

Microsoft has released a handful of Windows operating systems since 2001, but XP's popularity and the durability of the computers it was installed on kept it around longer than expected. Analysts say that if a PC is more than five years old, chances are it's running XP.

While users can still run XP after Tuesday, Microsoft says it will no longer provide security updates, issue fixes to non-security related problems or offer online technical content updates. The company is discontinuing XP to focus on maintaining its newer operating systems, the core programs that run personal computers. The Redmond, Wash.-based company says it will provide anti-malware-related updates through July 14, 2015, but warns that the tweaks could be of limited help on an outdated operating system.

Comment: Whenever Microsoft releases a patch for Windows 7 or 8, malicious hackers will look at the patch and consider whether it telegraphs an XP vulnerability. Options:

• Windows 7: A solid operating system. 
• Windows 8:1: Probably better (I'm not keen on touching a laptop screen all the time - messy - but one can use in keyboard & mouse mode too!)
• The non-Microsoft options: Mac OS (matches Apple hardware); Linux (works great on older desktops ... sometimes doesn't install well on laptops because of specialized drivers for the screen); IOS (IPAD) (someone said that the IPAD is analogous to a microwave in a kitchen. Not the oven or range top but can cook with it). Or Android (for a tablet)

For the Peets: Windows 7 at work. MacBooks at home + an Ipad. 

The Myth of 77%

The '77 Cents on the Dollar' Myth About Women's Pay

Long Excerpt:

But every "full-time" worker, as the BLS notes, is not the same: Men were almost twice as likely as women to work more than 40 hours a week, and women almost twice as likely to work only 35 to 39 hours per week. Once that is taken into consideration, the pay gap begins to shrink. Women who worked a 40-hour week earned 88% of male earnings.

Then there is the issue of marriage and children. The BLS reports that single women who have never married earned 96% of men's earnings in 2012.

The supposed pay gap appears when marriage and children enter the picture. Child care takes mothers out of the labor market, so when they return they have less work experience than similarly-aged males. Many working mothers seek jobs that provide greater flexibility, such as telecommuting or flexible hours. Not all jobs can be flexible, and all other things being equal, those which are will pay less than those that do not.

Education also matters. Even within groups with the same educational attainment, women often choose fields of study, such as sociology, liberal arts or psychology, that pay less in the labor market. Men are more likely to major in finance, accounting or engineering. And as the American Association of University Women reports, men are four times more likely to bargain over salaries once they enter the job market.

Risk is another factor. Nearly all the most dangerous occupations, such as loggers or iron workers, are majority male and 92% of work-related deaths in 2012 were to men. Dangerous jobs tend to pay higher salaries to attract workers. Also: Males are more likely to pursue occupations where compensation is risky from year to year, such as law and finance. Research shows that average pay in such jobs is higher to compensate for that risk.

While the BLS reports that full-time female workers earned 81% of full-time males, that is very different than saying that women earned 81% of what men earned for doing the same jobs, while working the same hours, with the same level of risk, with the same educational background and the same years of continuous, uninterrupted work experience, and assuming no gender differences in family roles like child care. In a more comprehensive study that controlled for most of these relevant variables simultaneously—such as that from economists June and Dave O'Neill for the American Enterprise Institute in 2012—nearly all of the 23% raw gender pay gap cited by Mr. Obama can be attributed to factors other than discrimination. The O'Neills conclude that, "labor market discrimination is unlikely to account for more than 5% but may not be present at all."

These gender-disparity claims are also economically illogical. If women were paid 77 cents on the dollar, a profit-oriented firm could dramatically cut labor costs by replacing male employees with females. Progressives assume that businesses nickel-and-dime suppliers, customers, consultants, anyone with whom they come into contact—yet ignore a great opportunity to reduce wages costs by 23%. They don't ignore the opportunity because it doesn't exist. Women are not in fact paid 77 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men.

Comment: Our family: My wife makes more than I do (I was out of the business world for 18 years (2 years for graduate school and 16 years of vocational ministry). When I was in  the ministry, among my siblings, my sister made the most (working for American Airlines). See also As Obama Spotlights Gender Gap in Wages, His Own Payroll Draws Scrutiny and CBS: WH 'Roughed Up By Its Own Pay Equity Rhetoric'