THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Turning back the tide of information overload with a digest of the latest developments in news conservatives need to pay attention to:

† The Keystone Kops Are Enforcing U.S. Immigration Laws: High-level political appointees in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service are pressuring underlings to rubber-stamp immigrants’ visa applications, in some cases “overlooking concerns about fraud, eligibility or security.” According to an unreleased draft 40-page report by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General, one-quarter of the 254 officers surveyed said they have been pressured to approve questionable cases, sometimes “against their will,” The Daily reports:

The report does not call out any particular officials and indicates that the agency has had a problem with valuing quantity over quality since at least the 1980s.

But high-ranking USCIS officials said the pressure has heightened after the Obama administration appointed Alejandro Mayorkas as director in August 2009 during an effort to pass comprehensive immigration reform, bringing with him a mantra of “get to yes.”

Internal communications provided to The Daily indicate that the new leadership seemed to fundamentally clash with career agency employees over when to afford the benefit of the doubt, culminating in a whistle-blower investigation into a senior appointee and, ultimately, the agency-wide inspector general inquiry that produced the report. …

At least five agency veterans seen as being too tough on applicants were either demoted, or given the choice between a demotion or a relocation from Southern California – where their families were – to San Francisco and Nebraska, according to sources and letters of reassignment provided to The Daily.

Those kind of threats have caused lower-level employees to fall in line, sources said.

“People are afraid,” said one longtime manager, who requested anonymity for fear of being fired. “Integrity only carries people so far because they’ve got to pay the rent.” …

These employees’ claims are reflected in the inspector general report, which found that 14 percent of respondents had “serious concerns” that employees who focused on fraud or ineligibility were evaluated unfairly. The report also found that supervisors sometimes take cases away from an unwilling officer and assign them to someone else, against agency rules.

† College Diploma Not Worth The Paper It's Written On: Over the past decade, tuition rates have skyrocketed 72 percent, and “if the current trajectory continues, getting a college degree could soon become cost-prohibitive for average Americans,” notes The Washington Times (related article, fifth item on the page):

As tuition costs skyrocket and graduates walk away saddled with ever-rising amounts of debt, American colleges now face a choice: Remain a part of the problem, or begin contributing to a solution. …

The rethinking process has already begun at several institutions. Several years ago, Colorado Mesa University eliminated all of its deans, saving more than $500,000 each year. …

Indiana's Grace College and Seminary now offers a three-year degree program, which requires more classes per semester for students, but can cut 25 percent off post-college debt. …

Dozens of public universities have embarked on "course redesigns," overhauling the structure of many classes to reduce costs. Missouri State University, for example, plans to dramatically alter its psychology classes. By using more undergraduate assistants, digital learning, online textbooks with built-in assessments for individual students and other measures, the changes are expected to cut the university's average cost per student from $73 to $60 when the updated course is rolled out next fall.

One university that is not rethinking the cost or value of its course offerings is Columbia University, which plans to offer an Occupy Wall Street class that will require upperclassmen and grad students to go out “into the field” students to become involved with the Occupy movement and will be taught by Dr. Hannah Appel, “a veteran of the Occupy movement,” CBS Radio reports:

The course will be called “Occupy the Field: Global Finance, Inequality, Social Movement” it will be run by the anthropology department.

Appel is a staunch defender of the Occupy movement, in her blog she said that, ““it is important to push back against the rhetoric of ‘disorganization’ or ‘a movement without a message’ coming from left, right and center.”

And when they have their degree, the students taking this class can take their place in the unemployment line along with grads with bachelor’s degrees in the arts, humanities and architecture. A study by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce based on 2009 and 2010 data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey finds that recent college graduates with the highest rates of unemployment had undergraduate degrees in architecture (13.9 percent), the arts (11.1 percent) and the humanities (9.4 percent), The Washington Post reports:

The recent college graduates with the lowest rates of unemployment had degrees in health (5.4 percent), education (5.4 percent), and agriculture and natural resources (7 percent.) Those with business and engineering degrees also fared relatively well.

“People keep telling kids to study what they love – but some loves are worth more than others,” said Anthony P. Carnevale, one of the study’s authors. “When people talk about college, there are all these high-minded ideas about it making people better citizens and participating fully in the life of their times. All that’s true, but go talk to the unemployed about that.” …

Carnevale and his team have also quantified the value of various majors in terms of wages. Over a lifetime, the earnings of workers who have majored in engineering, computer science or business were as much as 50 percent higher than the earnings of those who majored in the humanities, the arts, education and psychology.

† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: According to an analysis of data from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey by Sentier Research the “recovery” has actually been harder on most Americans than the recession, The Weekly Standard reports:

[M]edian American household income has actually fallen during the “recovery.” Not only that, but it has fallen even more than it did during the recession. Gordon Green, former chief of the Governments Division at the U.S. Census Bureau and co-author of the report (with fellow Census veteran John Coder), says, “Real income fell by 3.2 percent during [the recession]. And during the recovery it went down by 6.7 percent.” So “income [has] declined twice as much in the recovery as in the recession itself.”

[I]n early 2000, Americans’ median annual household income was $55,836, in real (inflation-adjusted, June 2011) dollars. By the start of the recession (in December 2007), Americans’ real incomes had fallen 0.9 percent, to $55,309 – a decline of $527. During the recession (which ended in June 2009), their incomes fell an additional 3.2 percent, to $53,518 – a decline of another $1,791. During the first two years of the “recovery” (from June 2009 to June 2011), they fell an additional 6.7 percent, to $49,909 – a decline of another $3,609.

So, from the start of 2000 to mid-2011, the typical American household’s real income dropped nearly $6,000 – and more than 60 percent of that drop (over $3,600) came after the start of the “recovery” and thus squarely on Obama’s watch.

† The right to bear arms belongs to us all: Part II: Six years after attorneys for D.C. resident Dick Heller won a landmark Second Amendment decision, they are finally getting paid (click here for related article). U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington awarded Heller’s attorneys, led by Alan Gura $1.1 million – they had requested $3.1 million, but the District of Columbia wanted to pay them $840,000 – The BLT: Blog of Legal Times reports: 

Sullivan noted in his 65-page ruling that lawyers for the city had claimed Gura’s team shouldn’t be allowed to “enrich themselves at the expense of the taxpayers” in a time of financial crisis. The judge made it known that he, too, was cognizant of the issue.

“Sensitive to the fact that the fees in this case will be paid by the taxpayers, this Court is left with the difficult task of closely scrutinizing plaintiff’s fee petition to determine what is fair, reasonable, and just compensation for the legal services of plaintiff’s attorneys,” Sullivan wrote. …

Both sides argued to Sullivan that various matrixes and formulas should be used to determine the correct hourly rate. The plaintiffs’ team concluded that the rates should be $589 per hour for all of the attorneys except Huff, who had less experience. They argued Huff should be compensated at a rate of $361 per hour. …

Regarding number of hours worked, the plaintiff’s attorneys claimed they worked 3,270 hours over six years. Criticizing three of the attorneys – Neily, Levy and Healy – for “unacceptable” timekeeping practices, among other reasons, Sullivan found that only 2,877 hours had been “properly billed” to defendants.

Finally, Sullivan concluded that no fee enhancement would be warranted, despite the attorneys’ assertions that they had provided “superior” legal performance, and that the awards had been delayed.

† Why Shouldn’t Illegals Get Government Healthcare?: Public hospitals in NYC have been millions of dollars in unreimbursed expenses annually warehousing hundreds of “permanent patients” for years because they are illegal immigrants or lack sufficient insurance or appropriate housing (related article, seventh item on the page). “[P]atients, trapped in bureaucratic limbo, are sometimes deprived of services that could be provided elsewhere at a small fraction of the cost,” The New York Times reports:

“Many of those individuals no longer need that care, but because they have no resources and many have no family here, we, unfortunately, are caring for them in a much more expensive setting than necessary based on their clinical need,” said LaRay Brown, a senior vice president for the city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation. Under state law, public hospitals are not allowed to discharge patients to shelters or to the street.

Medicaid often pays for emergency care for illegal immigrants, but not for continuing care, and many hospitals in places with large concentrations of illegal immigrants, like Texas, California and Florida, face the quandary of where to send patients well enough to leave. Officials in New York City say they have many such patients who are draining money from the health system as the cost of keeping people in acute-care hospitals continues to escalate.

But even if Medicaid pays for some care, taxpayer dollars are ultimately being consumed by patients who could be cared for in nursing homes or other health facilities, and even at home if supportive services were available. Care for a patient languishing in a hospital can cost more than $100,000 a year, while care in a nursing home can cost $20,000 or less.

Patients fit to be discharged from hospitals but having no place to go typically remain more than five years, Ms. Brown said. She estimated that there were about 300 patients in such a predicament throughout the city, most in public hospitals or higher-priced skilled public nursing homes, though a smattering were in private hospitals.

† Art Does Not Imitate Life: The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that will strike terror in the hearts of millions of NYC renters (related article, fifth item on the page). In a Wall Street Journal op-ed New York University Law School professor Richard Epstein reports that James and Jeanne Harmon – owners of a town house on West 76^th occupied by tenants on the upper floors “who are entrenched under New York's rent-stabilization law, paying rents at only a fraction of the value of their units” – have launched “a serious constitutional challenge to rent-control and stabilization laws”:

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals blew off his suit in March, but Mr. Harmon has filed petition for certiorari in the Supreme Court, and, miracles of miracles, the high court has asked New York City and the tenants to respond. …

In broad and emphatic language, the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution provides that "no person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." Rent control collides with the last prohibition, the "takings clause."

All versions of rent-control laws share a single dominant characteristic: They allow a tenant to remain in possession of property after the expiration of a lease at below-market rents. New York even gives the tenant a statutory right to pass on the right to occupy the premises at a controlled rent to family members who have lived with them for two or more years. The tenants in Mr. Harmon's complaint pay rent equal to about 60% of market value.

Epstein notes that people nationwide were outraged over Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) taking advantage of rent stabilization by paying a total of $3,894 a month for four luxury apartments in Harlem, about half the market rent. What they were outraged over was that he hogged four affordable apartments that less wealthy NYers could have lived in. Epstein makes some very good points about the unconstitutionality of rent abatement laws, but market rates in all the boroughs of NYC would consume the entire paychecks of most of the city’s middle class families.

† All The News That’s Fart To Print: Kimberly-Clark wants to make TP sexy, and has commissioned designer Jonathan Adler to create three limited-edition toilet roll covers using bright, geometric patterns to promote a new formulation of its Cottonelle toilet paper that it says is 30 percent stronger, The Associated Press reports:

Allen Adamson, managing director of global branding firm Landor in New York, said Target Corp. has successfully brought design to a lot of consumer product categories with such lines as the housewares rethought by renowned industrial designer Michael Graves.

But it's new for toilet paper.

"It's just surprising when design finally meets toilet paper - that's sort of the final frontier," Adamson said.

Throughout the month of January, you can visit the Cottonelle Website to get the cover for a shipping charge of $1.99 plus an offer code from a package of Cottonelle toilet paper. Or you can order them for $3.99, including shipping.