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WASHINGTON - Maryland public high school students had the highest success rate on Advanced Placement tests in 2012, according to figures released Wednesday by the College Board.
Virginia came in fifth, behind New York, Massachusetts and Florida. The previous year, Virginia students had the third highest success rate on the tests, which help students prepare for college and can lead to college credit.
In Maryland, 29.6 percent of public high school students received a score of 3 or higher. The figure for Virginia was 27.2 percent.
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21 Şubat 2013 Perşembe
Winning Mega Millions Ticket Claimed In Md.
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WASHINGTON - A Mt. Airy grandmother of two, who wishes to remain anonymous, has claimed the $26 million Mega Millions jackpot.
"I am still in denial," the woman says in Maryland Lottery news release. "I even drove by the store the next day to see if it was real. One look at the parking lot with all the news vans and I knew it was true."
The 48-year-old retiree says she plans to buy a beach house.
To win the jackpot, she matched all five numbers, plus the Mega Ball. She will take home $12.6 million after taxes.
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"I am still in denial," the woman says in Maryland Lottery news release. "I even drove by the store the next day to see if it was real. One look at the parking lot with all the news vans and I knew it was true."
The 48-year-old retiree says she plans to buy a beach house.
To win the jackpot, she matched all five numbers, plus the Mega Ball. She will take home $12.6 million after taxes.
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Universal Orlando Dropping Health Care For Part-Time Workers, Citing Obamacare
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Universal Orlando will drop health insurance coverage for part-time workers starting in 2014, when a new insurance rule will go into effect under Obamacare, the Orlando Sentinel reports.
Universal currently offers part-time employees low-premium coverage with limited benefits that are capped below the level allowed by Obamacare.
The plan costs about $18 a week for coverage that will pay up to $5,000 per year in hospital stays, according to the Sentinel. About 500 part-time Universal employees are currently covered under the plan.
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Universal currently offers part-time employees low-premium coverage with limited benefits that are capped below the level allowed by Obamacare.
The plan costs about $18 a week for coverage that will pay up to $5,000 per year in hospital stays, according to the Sentinel. About 500 part-time Universal employees are currently covered under the plan.
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This New Law Will Ensure You Pay More For Online Purchase
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In another brilliant move aimed at destroying the few table scraps of economic freedom which remain in the Land of the Free, a bipartisan group of esteemed lawmakers in the United States Congress has introduced the Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013.
Remember the golden rule of legislation: the more noble the name of the law sounds, the more disastrous its results. This one is no exception.
Generally speaking in the United States, retailers must collect state and local sales tax at the point of sale. When you walk into a Main Street shop in Anytown, California, you’ll pay the sticker price PLUS hefty city and state sales taxes that can easily be 10% or more.
But if you purchase goods through the mail from a company in, say, Nevada or Oregon, either through the mail or online, no sales tax is charged. This goes back to a 20+ year old US Supreme Court decision which exempted out of state companies from collecting sales tax.
Well, according to the intellectual luminaries in Congress, local retailers are at a disadvantage, effectively having to charge 10%+ more for their products than an out-of-state retailer.
And by God, they’re going to do something about it. After all, it’s just not ‘fair’ that mom and pop retailers on main street have to charge sales tax, while mom and pop retailers on the Internet do not.
The Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013 aims to level the playing field by requiring online retailers to collect some sort of sales tax from their customers. Needless to say, if the bill is passed, it will be the customer who ends up paying the price.
The thinking on this is completely absurd.
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Remember the golden rule of legislation: the more noble the name of the law sounds, the more disastrous its results. This one is no exception.
Generally speaking in the United States, retailers must collect state and local sales tax at the point of sale. When you walk into a Main Street shop in Anytown, California, you’ll pay the sticker price PLUS hefty city and state sales taxes that can easily be 10% or more.
But if you purchase goods through the mail from a company in, say, Nevada or Oregon, either through the mail or online, no sales tax is charged. This goes back to a 20+ year old US Supreme Court decision which exempted out of state companies from collecting sales tax.
Well, according to the intellectual luminaries in Congress, local retailers are at a disadvantage, effectively having to charge 10%+ more for their products than an out-of-state retailer.
And by God, they’re going to do something about it. After all, it’s just not ‘fair’ that mom and pop retailers on main street have to charge sales tax, while mom and pop retailers on the Internet do not.
The Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013 aims to level the playing field by requiring online retailers to collect some sort of sales tax from their customers. Needless to say, if the bill is passed, it will be the customer who ends up paying the price.
The thinking on this is completely absurd.
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Legislation Seeks To Lower Projected Returns For Pension System Investments
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Republican lawmakers are pushing a bill to cut the expected rate of return on Maryland $38 billion pension investment portfolio — a move that would effectively add billions of dollars to the state’s pension liabilities. The move to reduce what the GOP considers an unrealistic 7.75% rate to something like the corporate rate several points below that drew strong opposition from the State Retirement Agency at a hearing Tuesday.
Another bill backed by county governments to expand the 14-member Board of Trustees of State Retirement and Pension System by adding a county representative was opposed by the state teachers union at the House Appropriations Committee hearing.
The Truth in Pension Accounting Act
HB387 , the Truth in Pension Accounting Act, seeks to address the 7.25% rate of return the pension system has earned in the last 10 years by lowering the current pension rate of 7.75% to echo the interest rate dictated by the Internal Revenue Code for corporations and private pension plans. Currently, state and local governments get to choose their own rates of return, which average 8%.
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Another bill backed by county governments to expand the 14-member Board of Trustees of State Retirement and Pension System by adding a county representative was opposed by the state teachers union at the House Appropriations Committee hearing.
The Truth in Pension Accounting Act
HB387 , the Truth in Pension Accounting Act, seeks to address the 7.25% rate of return the pension system has earned in the last 10 years by lowering the current pension rate of 7.75% to echo the interest rate dictated by the Internal Revenue Code for corporations and private pension plans. Currently, state and local governments get to choose their own rates of return, which average 8%.
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20 Şubat 2013 Çarşamba
What's in a name?
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Town Manager Musante, SB Chair Stephanie O'Keeffe, Pat Kamins at yesterday's meeting
"Permit," "license," or "business certificate" -- call it what you will, but the success of the much needed rental housing bylaw coming out of the endless meetings of the 'Safe & Healthy Neighborhoods' working group comes down to that simple concept.
Rental registration and licensing go together like auto registration and licensing. Can you imagine the problems if anyone, regardless of license, could drive a car simply because the vehicle was properly registered?
Member Pat Kamins (a mid-sized local landlord) sarcastically asks his fellow members to think about businesses in Amherst "that require licenses or permits that can be revoked if their customers act inappropriately."
Well first of all, think about all the businesses that are not in Amherst because their customers could act inappropriately: Strip bars, porn shops, head shops, etc.
In fact, the Board of Health crushed the 'Smoking Ban in Bars Revolt' (by the more rowdy bars) a dozen years ago by threatening to revoke food handling permits for not enforcing the smoking ban. Since alcohol licenses are tied to food handling permits, the bars quickly caved.
The rest, as they say, is history. And the town is immeasurably better for it.
Crowd of 20 showed up for last night's meeting Safe & Health Neighborhoods working group
Town Manager Musante, SB Chair Stephanie O'Keeffe, Pat Kamins at yesterday's meeting
"Permit," "license," or "business certificate" -- call it what you will, but the success of the much needed rental housing bylaw coming out of the endless meetings of the 'Safe & Healthy Neighborhoods' working group comes down to that simple concept.
Rental registration and licensing go together like auto registration and licensing. Can you imagine the problems if anyone, regardless of license, could drive a car simply because the vehicle was properly registered?
Member Pat Kamins (a mid-sized local landlord) sarcastically asks his fellow members to think about businesses in Amherst "that require licenses or permits that can be revoked if their customers act inappropriately."
Well first of all, think about all the businesses that are not in Amherst because their customers could act inappropriately: Strip bars, porn shops, head shops, etc.
In fact, the Board of Health crushed the 'Smoking Ban in Bars Revolt' (by the more rowdy bars) a dozen years ago by threatening to revoke food handling permits for not enforcing the smoking ban. Since alcohol licenses are tied to food handling permits, the bars quickly caved.
The rest, as they say, is history. And the town is immeasurably better for it.
Crowd of 20 showed up for last night's meeting Safe & Health Neighborhoods working group
Party Permit?
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Meadow Street Mayhem last Spring
The Safe & Healthy Neighborhood working group is furiously formulating a rental registration and permitting system bylaw for approval at the Annual Spring Town Meeting, to deal with that age old blight on Amherst residential neighborhoods -- the Party House.
One of the other ideas being worked on (hopefully not too hard) is a joint effort of the town and UMass to have students pre-register off campus parties. Presumably if a party gets out of hand, the police will be a tad more accommodating because at least the party hosts had registered the event.
But if police are called to the atypical rowdy party going full blast and the hosts have not registered the event, then police will be a little harder on the perpetrators, and have one more charge to add to the roster.
The latter will of course be the norm.
Some states have tried to "tax" illegal marijuana over the years by requiring dealers to pre purchase "tax stamps" for their contraband. If cops bust a dealer without the stamps then officials can seize their personal property, or something like that.
It doesn't work very well. Amazingly.
Kind of like trying to keep guns out of the hands of pernicious perps. Whatever rules you impose on the vast majority of law abiding citizens will be ignored by the wackos or hard core criminals.
And it only takes one of them to do astounding damage.
With "party registrations" Chief Livingstone recently told the Amherst Zoning Board, "I'm guessing we're heading in that direction". But he was quick to add it should be overseen by the Dean of Students office because he didn't think the students would voluntarily come to the Amherst Police Department to register their event.
Safe bet.
Sober Shuttle for one 2/17 1:22 AM
Perhaps a reason why the 'Sober Shuttle' in downtown Amherst seems to be having a hard time attracting a whole lot of student ridership: the presence of a uniformed UMPD officer.
Early Sunday morning the 1:20 AM shuttle had only one rider and the 2:00 AM shuttle, if it did show up, would have had zero.
Meadow Street Mayhem last SpringThe Safe & Healthy Neighborhood working group is furiously formulating a rental registration and permitting system bylaw for approval at the Annual Spring Town Meeting, to deal with that age old blight on Amherst residential neighborhoods -- the Party House.
One of the other ideas being worked on (hopefully not too hard) is a joint effort of the town and UMass to have students pre-register off campus parties. Presumably if a party gets out of hand, the police will be a tad more accommodating because at least the party hosts had registered the event.
But if police are called to the atypical rowdy party going full blast and the hosts have not registered the event, then police will be a little harder on the perpetrators, and have one more charge to add to the roster.
The latter will of course be the norm.
Some states have tried to "tax" illegal marijuana over the years by requiring dealers to pre purchase "tax stamps" for their contraband. If cops bust a dealer without the stamps then officials can seize their personal property, or something like that.
It doesn't work very well. Amazingly.
Kind of like trying to keep guns out of the hands of pernicious perps. Whatever rules you impose on the vast majority of law abiding citizens will be ignored by the wackos or hard core criminals.
And it only takes one of them to do astounding damage.
With "party registrations" Chief Livingstone recently told the Amherst Zoning Board, "I'm guessing we're heading in that direction". But he was quick to add it should be overseen by the Dean of Students office because he didn't think the students would voluntarily come to the Amherst Police Department to register their event.
Safe bet.
Sober Shuttle for one 2/17 1:22 AM
Perhaps a reason why the 'Sober Shuttle' in downtown Amherst seems to be having a hard time attracting a whole lot of student ridership: the presence of a uniformed UMPD officer.
Early Sunday morning the 1:20 AM shuttle had only one rider and the 2:00 AM shuttle, if it did show up, would have had zero.
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