Tag: jobs

Confidential Federal Audits Accuse Five Biggest Mortgage Firms Of Defrauding Taxpayers | Huffington Post

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The audits accuse the five major lenders of violating the False Claims Act, a Civil War-era law crafted as a weapon against firms that swindle the government…

The audits conclude that the banks effectively cheated taxpayers by presenting the Federal Housing Administration with false claims: They filed for federal reimbursement on foreclosed homes that sold for less than the outstanding loan balance using defective and faulty documents.

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Karma Matters | Peter Mehit

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Karma is the concept that what you do is done to you. You do dirt, you get dirt. You do good, good comes to you. The problem is that a lot of people want to specify their karmic reward. It doesn’t work like that. The good you do today is not instantly rewarded, or placed on account like frequent flier miles. It is distributed based on forces unknown and unseen to us. Your karmic good may not come back to you in ways you recognize, but that does not change your duty to do it. It is more faith than science but it is real and it is in operation all the time.

Recently, I’ve witnessed tea party enthusiasts recoiling in horror when Jerry Brown had the temerity to do what they say they want done, slash spending. “It’s okay to kill other people’s programs, just not mine,” they exclaim. I’ve seen progressives dismiss those concerned about the massive debt as knuckle dragging throwbacks in an attempt to keep the money flowing. What I don’t see very often is truth or constructive conversation. Budgets will be cut, pain will be felt.  It will be exquisitely bi-partisan.

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Women in America | The White House

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“This collection of data from across the Federal government offers the most comprehensive look at women in America since the 1960s,” Acting Deputy Secretary of Commerce Rebecca Blank said. “With this report, the administration can more effectively manage programs that support women and girls and America’s families, and foster the growth of the U.S. economy.”

Each page of this report is full of the most up-to-date facts on the status of women. Of particular note
are the following:

  • As the report shows, women have made enormous progress on some fronts. Women have not only caught up with men in college attendance but younger women are now more likely than younger men to have a college or a master’s degree. Women are also working more and the number of women and men in the labor force has nearly equalized in recent years. As women’s work has increased, their earnings constitute a growing share of family income.
  • Yet, these gains in education and labor force involvement have not yet translated into wage and income equity. At all levels of education, women earned about 75 percent of what their male counterparts earned in 2009. In part because of these lower earnings and in part because unmarried and divorced women are the most likely to have responsibility for raising and supporting their children, women are more likely to be in poverty than men. These economic inequities are even more acute for women of color.
  • Women live longer than men but are more likely to face certain health problems, such as mobility impairments, arthritis, asthma, depression, and obesity. Women also engage in lower levels of physical activity. Women are less likely than men to suffer from heart disease or diabetes. Many women do not receive specific recommended preventative care, and one out of seven women age 18-64 has no usual source of health care. The share of women in that age range without health insurance has also increased.
  • Women are less likely than in the past to be the target of violent crimes, including homicide. But women are victims of certain crimes, such as intimate partner violence and stalking, at higher rates than men.

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Linked In’s Reid Hoffman to Millennials – Welcome to the New Feudalism | Peter Mehit

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On a recent Tuesday, it was not a good day to be a millennial. They learned that, unlike any previous generation, they are entering their work life with an average of $22,000 of student loan debt. They were told by the HR chief of Intel that their liberal arts degrees (far and away the majority for them) are not valuable enough to stop the outsourcing of jobs offshore. One of their own, a 23 year old running a South Bay non-profit, described her struggles with debt and the bewildering number of jobs she’s held in the brief interval since graduation. All of this coming before Reid Hoffman, one of the founders of Linked In, declared that ‘…careers are dead’ and that they should expect to be employed as freelancers their entire working lives.

At a conference hosted by the Atlantic monthly, the National Journal and Allstate Insurance entitled “Millennials in the Next Economy” at UCLA, we learned some interesting facts about this generation who are 92 million strong. They are the most diverse generation ever: 40% are minorities. 28% are college graduates, making them the best educated (in terms of degrees, at least) of any previous generation, with 42% currently in school. 26% are seeking employment. Politicians should note that 72% are registered to vote and 39% believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.

But the one statistic that I found most interesting is, despite the economic collapse and the situation they find themselves in, 60% believe that they are in control of their own destinies, that their decisions will primarily decide the outcome of their lives.
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