Category Archives: Employment

May 12, 2012

Even a PhD Couldn’t Keep This Man Off Food Stamps

Posted on May 12, 2012 by ifnm| Leave a comment

After the recession took hold in 2007, the rate of PhD holders who’ve filed for government assistance more than tripled to 33,655 by 2010, according to data collected by Austin Nichols, a senior researcher with the Chronicle’s Urban Institute.

Tony Yang is getting beaten to a pulp.

He’s not wanted by mobsters nor is he another Cybercrime bully. The former University of California doctoral student (c/o ’09) just says that’s what it feels like each quarter when he wraps up an adjunct teaching gig and goes home without a permanent job offer.

“It can be very tough on the pysche,” he told the Chronicle of Higher Education. “The darkest moment had to be when I finished my dissertation. I turned it in and there (was) no job … So when I graduated, the first thing I had to do was file for unemployment.”

As a kid, his family supplemented their income with food stamps. Decades later, he found himself in the same position, applying for welfare to get by when his doctoral degree wasn’t enough to bring home a steady paycheck.

After the recession took hold in 2007, the rate of PhD holders who’ve filed for government assistance more than tripled to 33,655 by 2010, according to data collected by Austin Nichols, a senior researcher with the Chronicle’s Urban Institute.

Other graduates of continuing education weren’t far behind. Of the nation’s 22 million master’s degree holders, nearly 360,000 applied for food stamps by 2010 – also triple the rate before the recession.

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Posted in Education, Employment

May 10, 2012

Elizabeth Warren dances with lies by Ann Coulter

Posted on May 10, 2012 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Soon, however, the preponderance of the evidence suggested she wasn’t even 1/32nd Cherokee. The census records for 1860 list the allegedly Cherokee great-great-great-grandmother, O.C. Sarah Smith Crawford, as “white.” Also, Warren’s family isn’t listed in the Cherokee registry. (Unlike Democrat voter rolls, to be on the Cherokee list, proof is required.)


Elizabeth Warren

Elizabeth Warren, who also goes by her Indian name, “Lies on Race Box,” is in big heap-um trouble. The earnest, reform-minded liberal running for Senate against Scott Brown, R-Mass., lied about being part-Cherokee to get a job at Harvard.

Harvard took full advantage of Warren’s lie, bragging to The Harvard Crimson about her minority status during one of the near-constant student protests over insufficient “diversity” in the faculty. Warren also listed herself as an Indian in law school faculty directories and, just last month, said, “I am very proud of my Native American heritage.”

Except, oops, she has no more evidence that she’s an Indian than that buffoon out of Colorado, Ward Churchill.

The Boston Globe immediately leapt to Warren’s defense, quoting a genealogist who found a marriage license on which Warren’s great-great-uncle scribbled that his mother, Warren’s great-great-great grandmother, was a Cherokee. This is not part of the official marriage license. (If I scribble “Kenyan” on Obama’s birth certificate, does that make it true?)

But let’s say it’s true. That would make Warren a dotriacontaroon — 1/32nd Cherokee. That’s her claim to affirmative action bonus points? You don’t know what it’s like to be 1/32nd Cherokee, to never have anyone to talk to, spending so many evenings home alone, wondering if there was some other 1/32nd Cherokee out there, perhaps looking at the same star I was.

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Posted in Affirmative Action, Democrats/Progressives, Education, Employment, Radicals

Outsourcing Computer Technology

Posted on May 10, 2012 by ifnm| Leave a comment

U.S. universities have educated enough Indians and Chinese to fill every high-tech job American firms have to offer. The false claim that only drudgery jobs are outsourced is laughable. It is just one more example of an entire industry slipping away from the grasp of America.

As the U.S continues to outsource its jobs and move production offshore, manufacturing is not the only industry that’s being damaged. University of California professor Norm Matloff warns that outsourcing and H-1B visas, which bring foreign workers into U.S. firms, are destroying the U.S. software engineering profession. Computer science departments have been stymied, because they are heavily dependent on research and faculty funds from the very firms whose outsourcing practices are destroying the occupation in America.

Falling enrollments mean fewer faculty positions and graduate students. Despite their funding being threatened by fewer enrollments, most computer science professors are unwilling to contradict their corporate benefactors’ erroneous claims that outsourcing is good for America.

Instead, the professors acknowledge that programming is a lost occupation for Americans and claim that there is still a future for American students in designing computer systems—a field dubbed “computer software systems architecture.” Matloff, a computer science professor himself, does not agree with this. He points out that it is impossible to design computer systems without having years of programming experience. If you lose programming, you lose the base for the occupation, and all the rest goes offshore as well.

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Posted in Business, Employment, Outsourcing

May 7, 2012

2.2 Million Go On Disability Since Mid-2010; Fraud Explains Falling Unemployment Rate

Posted on May 7, 2012 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Since mid-2010, precisely at the time millions of US citizens used up all of their 99 week of unemployment insurance, disability claims have risen by 2.2 million. Those on disability are not counted in the workforce and are not considered unemployed.

The number of workers receiving Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) jumped 22 percent to 8.7 million in April from 7.1 million in December 2007, Social Security data show. That helps explain as much as one quarter of the decline in the U.S. labor-force participation rate during the period, according to economists at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley.

The participation rate — the share of working-age people holding a job or seeking one — was 63.8 percent in March after falling to a three-decade low of 63.7 percent in January. Disability recipients may account for as much as 0.5 percentage point of the more than 2 point drop since the end of 2007, the economists calculate, and that contribution could grow when some extended unemployment benefits expire at the end of this year.

“How we measure and understand what’s going on in the economy can be influenced by the degree to which various public- support programs are available and being used,” said Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan in New York. “With a rising number of disability beneficiaries, there are both lower unemployment rates and lower participation rates.”

More than 99 percent of all SSDI beneficiaries remain in the program until retirement age, David Greenlaw, a managing director in New York at Morgan Stanley, wrote in a March research note, citing government data. The program provides an average of $1,111 in monthly income to eligible workers with a physical or mental impairment that will last at least 12 months or result in death, according to Social Security.

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Posted in Employment, Entitlements, Fraud, Social Security

The U.S. & the World with Patrick J. Buchanan: Chapter 3 of 5 (Video)

Posted on May 7, 2012 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Pat Buchanan talks about manufacturing and free trade in the U.S. He also explains the consequences of NAFTA and the productivity of jobs.

Video linked here.

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Posted in Business, Employment, NAFTA, Outsourcing, Pat Buchanan

May 2, 2012

U.S. Puts Limits On Employee Background Checks To Protect Minorities

Posted on May 2, 2012 by ifnm| Leave a comment

“It’s going to be much more burdensome,” said Pamela Devata, a Chicago employment lawyer who has represented companies trying to comply with EEOC’s requirements. “Logistically, it’s going to be very difficult for employers who have a large amount of attrition to have an individual discussion with each and every applicant.”

Is an arrest in a barroom brawl 20 years ago a job disqualifier? Not necessarily, the government said Wednesday in new guidelines on how employers can avoid running afoul of laws prohibiting job discrimination.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s updated policy on criminal background checks is part of an effort to rein in practices that can limit job opportunities for minorities that have higher arrest and conviction rates than whites.

“The ability of African-Americans and Hispanics to gain employment after prison is one of the paramount civil justice issues of our time,” said Stuart Ishimaru, one of three Democrats on the five-member commission.

But some employers say the new policy — approved in a 4-1 vote — could make it more cumbersome and expensive to conduct background checks. Companies see the checks as a way to keep workers and customers safe, weed out unsavory workers and prevent negligent hiring claims.

The new standard urges employers to give applicants a chance to explain a report of past criminal misconduct before they are rejected outright. An applicant might say the report is inaccurate or point out that the conviction was expunged. It may be completely unrelated to the job, or an ex-con may show he’s been fully rehabilitated.

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Posted in Affirmative Action, Business, Employment, Government, Political Correctness

Too Busy for A Summer Job? Why America’s Youth Lacks Basic Work Skills

Posted on May 2, 2012 by ifnm| Leave a comment

It was once common to see teenagers mowing lawns, waiting tables, digging ditches, and bagging groceries for modest wages in the long summer months. Summer employment was a social equalizer, allowing both affluent and financially strapped teenagers to gain a foothold on adulthood, learning the virtues of hard work, respect and teamwork in a relatively low-stakes atmosphere.

Do today’s kids make terrible entry-level workers? That’s a question much on employers’ minds as graduation season kicks off and young adults begin their first full-time jobs. We’ve all heard the stories: assistants who won’t “assist,” new workers who can’t set an alarm, employees who can’t grasp institutional hierarchies.

Bosses who toiled in the pre-Self Esteem Era salt mines have little patience for these upstarts. A popular advice columnist had some choice words last week for a young employee who dismissively waved her sandwich at a superior requesting back-up during a critical meeting; the young woman explained that she was on her lunch break and was merely “setting boundaries” with a “disrespectful colleague who sorely needs them.” Moreover, she noted, being “errand girl” wasn’t in her job description.

It’s easy to laugh off these anecdotes, but there are some complex reasons for the lack of familiarity with work norms. For one thing, many twenty-something adults have never held a menial summer job, once considered training wheels for adult life in the American middle class.

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Posted in Culture, Employment

April 28, 2012

Job Creators Fighting Back by John Stossel

Posted on April 28, 2012 by ifnm| Leave a comment

“Somebody who wants to compete with us can’t because we can afford to hire the guys that can read this stuff and to keep us in compliance with the law. They can’t.” Brad Anderson, former CEO of Best Buy.

[Note: This article was originally posted on December 21st, 2011. The IFNM website was attacked by hackers and many articles are now gone from the archives. As a public service, IFNM is now reposting said articles.]

Some politicians claim that politicians create jobs.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says, “My job is to create jobs.”

What hubris! Government has no money of its own. All it does is take from some people and give to others. That may create some jobs, but only by leaving less money in the private sector for job creation.

Actually, it’s worse than that. Since government commandeers scarce resources by force and doesn’t have to peddle its so-called services on the market to consenting buyers, there’s no feedback mechanism to indicate if those services are worth more to people than what they were forced to go without.

The only people who create real, sustainable jobs are in private businesses — if they’re unsubsidized.

Some CEOs are upset that people don’t appreciate what they do. So they formed a group called the Job Creators Alliance.

Brad Anderson, former CEO of Best Buy, joined because he wants to counter the image of businesspeople as evil. When he was young, Anderson himself thought they were evil. But then he “stumbled into a business career” by going to work in a stereo store.

“I watched what happens in building a business. (My store,) The Sound of Music, which became Best Buy, was 11 years (old) before I made a dollar of profit.”

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Posted in Business, Employment, Government, Law & Courts

‘I wish we’d left Benefits Britain long ago’: Hard working dad of 12 who emigrated to Australia is thriving

Posted on April 28, 2012 by ifnm| Leave a comment

They have far stricter immigration policies, he said and devote an entire day to their war dead rather than just two minutes of silence. Mr Jones also warned that if the Government continue to ignore the people of Britain, last summer’s riots could become a regular fixture on Britain’s streets.


New start: David and Jackie Jones and their 12 children have only been in Brisbane, Queensland, for two weeks but are already reaping the benefits of the Aussie way of life

A father of 12 who moved his family to Australia says he wishes he’d left ‘benefits Britain’ long ago.

David Jones, his wife Jackie, 43, and their children aged from four months to 18 have only been in Brisbane, Queensland, for two weeks but are already reaping the benefits from the Aussie way of life.

Mr Jones says he has had six job interviews and is due to start work as a machine fitter shortly.
The family also say they have also been overwhelmed by the welcome they have received from complete strangers.

Speaking to The Sun, Mr Jones said: ‘They (Australians) just seem to have a completely different outlook on life. People don’t expect something for nothing. They work for what they get and they value their leisure time.’

Mr Jones hit the headlines in 2010 for refusing to live on benefits despite the financial strain of providing for so many children.

The 42-year-old from Barrow, Cumbria, instead chose instead to make up the extra money by working gruelling 12-hour night shifts in paper mill Kimberly-Clark.

This brought in about £38,000 a year, with a further £5,000 in overtime and bonuses. The family also received child tax credits and child benefit of £617 a month.

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Posted in Australia/Oceania, Employment, Entitlements, Europe, Immigration

Fox Veers Left, Hires Jesse Jackson’s Daughter

Posted on April 28, 2012 by ifnm| Leave a comment

If this hiring trend continues, Fox runs the risk of alienating its conservative audience to the point that they will look elsewhere for their news, and eventually end Fox’s long run as the top cable news network.

The Washington Examiner is reporting that the supposed bastion of conservative news, the Fox News Channel, has veered a little further to the left by hiring Jesse Jackson’s eldest daughter, Santita, who is a Chicago talk-radio personality.

Jackson will join a growing legion of left-wingers at Fox that includes Jehmu Greene and Sally Kohn. Greene is the former president of the Women’s Media Center, which was founded by Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem, and Kohn is a former senior strategist for the Soros-funded Center for Community Change.

Fox’s moves to beef up its liberal lineup continue to confound conservatives who see no need for the top-rated cable news network to give liberals even more of a voice than they currently have. They already have MSNBC and CNN, along with the rest of the mainstream media.

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Posted in Democrats/Progressives, Employment, Journalism, Radicals, Republicans/Neo-Cons