Category: employment

Joseph Heller is Spinning in His Grave

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Admiral Ted “Twig” Branch is the head of Naval Intelligence, but for the past 2 years, while at this position, his clearance has been suspended, and so he cannot read, review, or discuss classified material:

For more than two years, the Navy’s intelligence chief has been stuck with a major handicap: He’s not allowed to know any secrets.

 Vice Adm. Ted “Twig” Branch has been barred from reading, seeing or hearing classified information since November 2013, when the Navy learned from the Justice Department that his name had surfaced in a giant corruption investigation involving a foreign defense contractor and scores of Navy personnel.

 Worried that Branch was on the verge of being indicted, Navy leaders suspended his access to classified materials. They did the same to one of his deputies, Rear Adm. Bruce F. Loveless, the Navy’s director of intelligence operations.

 More than 800 days later, neither Branch nor Loveless has been charged. But neither has been cleared, either. Their access to classified information remains blocked.

 Although the Navy transferred Loveless to a slightly less sensitive post, it kept Branch in charge of its intelligence division. That has resulted in an awkward arrangement, akin to sending a warship into battle with its skipper stuck onshore.

 Branch can’t meet with other senior U.S. intelligence leaders to discuss sensitive operations, or hear updates from his staff about secret missions or projects. It can be a chore just to set foot in colleagues’ offices; in keeping with regulations, they must conduct a sweep beforehand to make sure any classified documents are locked up.

What the f%$# is wrong with the military?

The guy is forbidden by to do his job, and as opposed to doing the sane thing, and transfer him to a new post where he can do his job, you cripple a crucial department.

The idea that anyone in the Pentagon would allow this to happen for more than 2½ years is an indication that the bureaucracy and the general officer corps have become a dysfunctional carrerist dystopia.

Smedley Butler was right.  It’s a racket.

Outing Freeloaders is a Good Thing

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UAW local 412 in Warren, MI has decided to publish the names of covered employees who have opted out of the Union:

A local United Auto Workers chapter in Warren is singling out workers who decide to opt out of the union.

In a recent UAW Local 412 newsletter obtained by The Detroit News, a list of 43 workers “who choose not to pay their fair share” was published alongside “conditions” that will apply to workers who opt out and no longer pay — or partially pay — union dues.

Listed conditions for “ex-UAW members” range from rudimentary things such as not being allowed to attend union functions or vote in local elections, to having to “pay all unpaid dues and/or dues in arrears as well as an initiation fee” if one decides to rejoin the union.

Singling out workers who decide to leave the union isn’t unprecedented, but it’s seen by some as an intimidation tactic to deter others from leaving — and pressure those who have left to rejoin.

My heart bleeds for those scabs ……… Not.

Politics in Sweden is Odd

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The newly elected liberal coalition in Sweden is looking at reinstating military conscription, reversing a decision by the center-right government in 2010 to abolish the practice:

Sweden’s former centre-right government scrapped compulsory military service in 2010, but the current Social Democrat-Green coalition has said it is considering reintroducing the concept.

And a new survey carried out by major pollsters Ipsos on behalf of the Dagens Nyheter newspaper suggested on Monday that 72 percent of Swedes would throw their support behind conscription.

Only 16 percent of respondents said they believed it was a bad idea.

People are also making the argument that this could provide staffing for non military needs:

………

The foreign minister told a meeting of senior politicians and military chiefs, attending the annual Sälen Society and Defense conference, that the government needs to examine all viable options to resolve present and future manpower needs and recruitment challenges faced by the Swedish armed forces.

Wallström said that a reconstructed national service model could bolster the military’s capacity to not only conduct core defense tasks, but would also deliver military support to assist civilian agencies dealing with emergencies such as natural disasters, search-and-rescue missions and environmental clean-up.

This is not something that I would expect from a, “Social Democrat-Green coalition,” though I approve.

I think that a draftee army is likely to be more receptive to civilian control, and less likely to go along with a coup.

Well, It’s a Start

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In order to fund health benefits for 911 first responders, the fees for H1B visas have been doubled, and the software houses in India who abuse the program are unamused:

The United States is set to pass a bill named the “9/11 Health and Compensation Act” and Indian IT companies are mad as hell about it.

The bill delivers funding to compensate those whose lives were impacted by the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York. To keep those dollars flowing, the Bill has changed the amount businesses must pay to secure an H1-B or L1 visa to bring workers into the USA.

Indian IT companies use those visas a lot, to bring people from India to work in the USA. Use of such visas has become an issue in the US presidential election, as some candidates seek to curb use of the permit in order to promote employment of local workers. Critics of H1-B visas also argue that they are used to keep wages low, as by bringing in foreign workers it becomes possible to give them a modest pay bump to cope with the cost of living in the US without paying them the same wage as permanent residents or citizens.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the H1-B, Congress will on Friday double the cost of using one to US$4,000, with the increase funnelled into funds for the victims of 9/11.

India’s large IT concerns, which are among the heaviest users of H1-Bs, are livid because the fee increase will push up their costs. So livid that when Barack Obama called Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to thank him for help negotiating the Paris climate change agreement, Modi pointedly “shared with President the concerns of the Indian IT industry and professionals on the proposed legislation in the U.S. Congress relating to H1B and L1 visas.”

The H1B program is about letting people in who cannot be found in the US.

The Indian IT firms, as well as large IT firms in the US, use it to cut their labor costs, both by hiring cheap slave labor, and by pushing down wages for domestic workers.

I think that this fee should be closer to $40,000 than it is to $4,000.

Companies should never save money by bringing in H1B and L1 visas.

As to Tata and Infosys and the rest of the Indian software firms, they can take the implicit subsidy to their business model that comes from the H1B program and shove it up their ass.

Well, This Explains a Lot

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It turns out that some police departments reject candidates for being too smart:

A man whose bid to become a police officer was rejected after he scored too high on an intelligence test has lost an appeal in his federal lawsuit against the city.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld a lower court’s decision that the city did not discriminate against Robert Jordan because the same standards were applied to everyone who took the test.

“This kind of puts an official face on discrimination in America against people of a certain class,” Jordan said today from his Waterford home. “I maintain you have no more control over your basic intelligence than your eye color or your gender or anything else.”

He said he does not plan to take any further legal action.

Jordan, a 49-year-old college graduate, took the exam in 1996 and scored 33 points, the equivalent of an IQ of 125. But New London police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27, on the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training.

Whistleblowers are not ordinary people.  “Good Germans” are ordinary people.

My guess is that the cops found that a high score was too tightly correlated to people who would make waves or turn whistleblower.

Crap, the Fed is Going to Go all Neanderthal Now

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You see, we have pretty good news for October on the job front, which means that the Federal Reserve is now much more likely to raise rates:

Hiring at American companies shifted into higher gear in October, helping to lift wages and clearing the path for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates next month.

The 271,000 jump in payrolls reported by the Labor Department on Friday was much more robust than expected and suggested that economic growth had enough momentum to allow the central bank to begin its move away from the ultralow, crisis-level interest-rate policy it has been following for seven years.

Along with altering the landscape for policy makers in Washington and traders on Wall Street, the strength in the labor market, if it persists, is expected to shift the political debate as the 2016 presidential campaign heats up.

While there is still a possibility the Fed could hold back, the underlying solidity evident in the latest jobs report will strengthen the hand of monetary policy hawks who have long favored an increase in short-term rates. At the same time, it should reassure Janet L. Yellen, the chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, and a majority of her colleagues at the central bank that the economy can handle modestly higher borrowing costs without stress.

“It was pretty much everything you could ask for in a jobs report,” said Michelle Meyer, deputy head of United States economics at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “Not only was the headline number strong, but there were upward revisions for prior months, the unemployment rate fell and wage growth accelerated.”

I don’t know when the Fed will raise rate, but I am almost certain that when they do, it will be too soon.

The cultural imperative of central banks, including the Fed are such that they always err on the side of mindless inflation concerns.

Why Videotaping Cops Needs to Be Universal

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Roid Rage

Does anyone out there think that Richland County Senior Deputy Ben Fields would have been fired if his assault hadn’t been caught on video tape?

The South Carolina Sheriff’s deputy captured on video forcefully removing a student from class has been fired, the local sheriff said Wednesday, less than a week after the incident at Spring Valley High School first came to the public’s attention.

 Richland County Senior Deputy Ben Fields was already suspended after videos of him flipping and tossing a black female student across a classroom went viral online.

 Fields was told of his firing late Wednesday morning

 “What he should not have done is throw the student,” Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said. “Police officers make mistakes too. They’re human and they need to be held accountable, and that’s what we’ve done with Deputy Ben Fields.”

 Lott said he wouldn’t describe Fields as remorseful, but rather sorry it all happened.

Of course he is sorry that it all happened.

He’s lost his job.

BTW, in addition to being a school resource officer he was a football and strength training coach:

………

 Fields said in during his deposition for a federal lawsuit filed against him that he is a competitive power lifter, saying it is a “sport,” where you “try to lift as much as you can at one time.”

 In his deposition, Fields says he does not take steroids, but has not been tested for steroids in the past. He said he has taken supplements, including Creatin, to help build muscles.

(emphasis mine)

Yeah. We believe him when he says that he’s not juicing. (not)

If his behavior had not been caught on video, this steroid addled loon would still be abusing school children.

For all of the wanktastic tirades against police accountability by the FBI director, the problem is not cameras, it’s bad cops and a culture that coddles and protects them.

Yes

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Are InfiniLaw Schools Scamming Students and the Federal Government?

H/T Atrios, who also pithily notes both that the not-for-profit schools are hip deep in this sh%$ as well.

He further notes that law professors are overpaid, and that the suggestion that they would make money hand over fist if they went back to the private sector is specious.

If you do the math, associates are expected to Bill about 1800 hours a year, which given the rule of thumb that you need to work somewhere between 1⅓ and 1½ hours for each billable hour is a soul destroying work environment.

Do the math.  That is  48-54 hours a week, year in and year out.

The people who are teaching future lawyers are doing so because they don’t want that life.

This is why you have so many top flight lawyers are so eager to become judges.

The USAF Supports Witch Burning

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I’m beginning to think that sees itself as a branch of Oral Roberts University.

In the latest episode of stupidity in the service, or at least the latest episode that doesn’t involve the over priced and under performing F-35, the Air Force has fired a dental technician for being a witch.

In an even bigger f%$# up, the person that they fired was a Hindu, the 3rd largest religion on the face of the earth:

Deborah Schoenfeld says she was harassed at a Fort Meade, Md., dental clinic for her Hindu faith and then fired when she complained about it.

 The Military Religious Freedom Foundation is representing a former Air Force contractor who says she was fired from a dental clinic at Fort Meade, Maryland, after complaining that her co-workers discriminated against her because she was Hindu. She claims they then accused her of being a witch.

 Group founder and president Mikey Weinstein wrote in a letter to officials: “We have spoken with witnesses at the clinic under your command who have universally confirmed that, not only did this horrid harassment take place, but ever since the execution of her punishment for failing the religious test imposed by the leadership of Epes Dental Clinic, a particular offending party has effusively celebrated her replacement by a Catholic woman by saying publicly that ‘It’s good to see we got an angel, since last time we had the devil.’”

 ………

 Reached by Air Force Times, Deborah Schoenfeld said that her co-workers at the Epes Dental Clinic harassed her over her Hindu faith, claiming she was satanic for wanting to practice yoga and meditating.

 Speaking on condition of anonymity, two of her former co-workers confirmed Schoenfeld’s account to Air Force Times and said that other employees at the dental clinic are devoutly Christian and deeply suspicious of Hinduism. One of them confirmed that she was referred to as a “Hindu witch.”

 One co-worker, who Schoenfeld said prayed for her to find Jesus, told her that meditation summons demons, adding that “all the soldiers who are doing meditation and yoga to help their PTSD, they are getting infected also,” Schoenfeld said.

When her requests for help through the chain of command went nowhere, she filed a formal complaint on Sept. 2, Schoenfeld said. That day, she was fired for allegedly using profanity against a co-worker, although she was not allowed to know who had accused her of doing so, she said.

This is something that is counter to the discipline and good order of the military, and yet it continues.

The  USAF in particular has problems with this, which is unsurprising, since their academy is a neighbor of the Talibaptist organization “Focus on the Family” in Colorado Springs.

The Fed Does the Right Thing for Reasons that Are Totally Opaque to Me

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For some reason, central bankers are always too quick to raise interest rates.

It’s some sort of bizarre monetary dick swinging.

Everyone predicted that the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates, even though the workforce participation rate is the lowest that it has been since 1978.

It turns out that “everyone” was wrong:

One of the longest economic expansions in American history remains so fragile that the Federal Reserve said on Thursday it would postpone any retreat from its stimulus campaign.

Janet L. Yellen, the Fed’s chairwoman, described the decision as a close call and said the central bank still expected to raise interest rates later this year. The Fed has kept its benchmark interest rate close to zero since late 2008, when the nation’s economy was at the depths of crisis.

“The recovery from the Great Recession has advanced sufficiently far and domestic spending has been sufficiently robust that an argument can be made for a rise in interest rates at this time,” Ms. Yellen said at a news conference.

But, she said, “heightened uncertainties abroad,” including the Chinese economy’s weakness, had persuaded the bank to wait at least a few more weeks for fresh data that might “bolster its confidence” in continued growth.

The Fed’s decision, announced after a two-day meeting of its policy-making committee, had been widely expected by investors in recent weeks.

I’d try to explain this,but I do not have a f%$#ing clue as to why this happened, and if I did try to figure this out, all that I would get is a headache.

Pass the Popcorn

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Please Implicate Rupert ……… Pretty Please?

Mark Hanna, who used to work security for Rebecka Brooks, the former (and current) head of Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper publishing in the UK, has promised to blow the whistle on her:

The former head of security for Rebekah Brooks has said he will blow the whistle on Rupert Murdoch’s UK newspapers, the day after it was confirmed she had been re-hired as chief executive of News UK.

 In a video uploaded to YouTube, Mark Hanna, who was acquitted last year along with Brooks and her husband, Charlie, of plotting to pervert the course of justice, claims he was “extremely close” and trusted by executives at News International and he now wanted to show how “underhanded” they had been.

Hanna was the director of security at the company, now known as News UK. Unlike Brooks, who received a payout of more than £16m after resigning from News Corp in 2011 and has been reinstated, Hanna was made redundant after the trial and received £30,000 from the company.

 “I am now standing up against those that sit back and treat us all with contempt – the Murdochs and Brooks of the world,” Hanna said in a two-minute video released on Friday.

 Hanna, who is unemployed and living on benefits, said the decision by Murdoch to reinstate Brooks four years after the phone-hacking allegations and the closure of News of the World had infuriated him and many others.

………

He claims that during the trial at the Old Bailey he sat with Brooks, Andy Coulson, Ian Edmondson, Clive Goodman, Charlie Brooks, Cheryl Carter and Stuart Kuttner and witnessed what went on behind the scenes.
“To me, her previous director of group security, this is Murdoch’s middle finger being shoved right in my face after standing trial with her, and others, in what was classed as the trial of the century during which it was widely accepted that I should never have been involved.”

I really don’t expect anything to happen to any of the people at News UK, at least not while the Tories are running the government. They are too close to Murdoch, as evidenced by the fact that Andy Coulson, who was deputy editor of the News of the World during the phone hacking, went on to be Tories Communication Director, and then Cameron’s Director of Communications after he won election.

If Coulson becomes a disgruntled ex employee whistle blower, it could get ……… inconvenient ……… for Prime Minister Cameron.

Remember the Loon Who Wanted the Government to Assassinate Law Professors Who He Disagreed With?

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A law professor who published an inflammatory article urging attacks on law professors and “Islamic holy sites” and who has been dogged by accusations of misrepresenting his academic and military credentials has resigned from the US Military Academy at West Point, the Guardian has confirmed.

US military academy official William Bradford argues that attacks on scholars’ home offices and media outlets – along with Islamic holy sites – are legitimate

Although West Point hired William C Bradford on 1 August, a spokesman said the prestigious undergraduate institution where the US army educates its future officers parted ways with the controversial academic on Sunday, the day after the Guardian published an article highlighting Bradford’s proposals to treat US scholars as “enemy combatants”.

“Dr William Bradford resigned on Sunday,” army lieutenant colonel Christopher Kasker, a West Point spokesman, told the Guardian on Monday. Bradford had taught five lessons for cadets in a common-core law course, from 17 to 27 August.

The West Point resignation marks the most recent academic departure for the controversial Bradford, following a decade’s worth of apparent exaggeration of his service record and academic career.

It remains unclear how thoroughly West Point vetted Bradford before hiring him.

………

Bradford has had a checkered academic career. In 2004, he quit a job teaching at the Indiana University School of Law after allegations emerged that he had exaggerated his military service, portraying himself inaccurately as a Gulf War veteran, an infantryman and a recipient of the prestigious Silver Star, an award for gallantry in action.

The army provided Bradford’s releasable service history to the Guardian on Monday. Bradford was commissioned into the army as a second lieutenant – the same rank West Point cadets hold upon commissioning – in 1995 and served the majority of his six-year service in military intelligence in the army reserve. He neither deployed nor earned any awards.

In 2005, the Guardian has learned, Bradford took a visiting professorship at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, teaching property law. A former student who wished to remain anonymous said Bradford’s behavior included “doing push-ups in class [and] making students stand and give answers in a military-like manner”.

Bradford, the former student said, ended up leaving his class – and ultimately the college – without grading the final exam.

Seriously?  This guy was employed at West Point?

Whoever is responsible for his hiring put “Wingnut Welfare” over both academic integrity as well the good order and discipline in the armed forces.

They need to be fired, and whatever security clearance that they might have needs to be replaced by a Cap’n Crunch decoder ring.

Why I Love Taking Mass Transit to Work

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Today, commuting was a little bit f&$@ed up.

The Metro train was constantly stopping between stations, and finally discharged everyone to go to another train.

Why is this so wonderful?

If I were driving, this sort of sh&@would happen at least as often, but the feline option, saying, “F&$@ this, I’m taking a f&$@ing nap,” would not be available to me because I would be driving a car.

I took a nap on my commute, and it was good.

Posted via mobile.

This is the Best Job Ever!!!!

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If you love cats, and you’ve considered running away to join the circus, then the fact that a Cat Circus Looking for a Tour Assistant is like ……… well ……… catnip:

Has your dream always been to run away with a cat circus? Then here’s the job for you! Samantha Martin and the Acro-Cats are looking for a tour assistant to travel cross-country with a troupe of trained cats (plus a groundhog, a chicken and a few rats) as they purr-form at venues in cities across the United States.

Job Requirements:

1. Animal care experience – Daily, weekly and monthly cat care duties – including but not limited to general and advanced cleaning and care/welfare of animals and their living environment.

2. Out-going personality, a keen sense of humor, the ability to roll with the punches, a flexible schedule, a high comfort level engaging with crowds of cat lovers, open to new experiences, lots of fun and craziness. We travel in a tour bus and share RV/hotel rooms.

3. Physically fit – able to lift and transport up to 50 lbs of show props and animal carriers from tour bus to stage and back.

4. Theater experience a plus – purr-form front and back of house duties, stage management, operate the light and sound, and help on stage with animals and prop placement.

5. Work with volunteers – wrangle and train volunteers who help with the shows.

Pay varies by show and includes per diem. No cat allergies. MUST LOVE CATS!
Serious applicants only. This job is a LOT of work and time on the road, but also the opportunity of a lifetime.

BTW, it appears that this is on the level, as you can see at their web site, which puts the lie to that old cliche “As difficult as herding cats.”

Pay Them More Money, You Stupid F%$#ing F%$#s!

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It appears that are having a problem finding and keeping experienced cooks:

Behind the swinging doors of restaurant kitchens around the country, things are getting a bit more chaotic. It’s not the sort of thing diners would not have noticed, because it’s happening behind the scenes, out of view. Orders are still coming in, and plates are still coming out. But there’s a growing problem that chefs and restaurateurs are talking about more these days.

Good cooks are getting harder to come by. Not the head kitchen honchos, depicted in Food Network reality shows, who fine-tune menus and orchestrate the dinner rush, but the men and women who are fresh out of culinary school and eager.

The shortage of able kitchen hands is affecting chefs in Chicago, where restaurateurs said they are receiving far fewer applications than in past years. “It’s gotten to the point where if good cooks come along, we’ll hire them even if we don’t have a position. Because we will have a position,” Paul Kahan, a local chef, told the Chicago Tribune last week.

It’s also an issue in New York, where skilled cooks are an increasingly rare commodity. “If I had a position open in the kitchen, I might have 12 résumés, call in three or four to [try out] in the kitchen, and make a decision,” Alfred Portale, the chef and owner of Michelin-starred Manhattan restaurant Gotham Bar and Grill, told Fortune recently. “Now it’s the other way around; there’s one cook and 12 restaurants.”

Gee, why is it so tough to find good cooks?

Maybe it’s this:

One of the clearest obstacles to hiring a good cook, let alone someone willing to work the kitchen these days, is that living in this country’s biggest cities is increasingly unaffordable. In New York, for instance, where a cook can expect to make between $10 and $12 per hour, and the median rent runs upward of $1,200 a month, living in the city is a near impossibility. As a result, people end up living far from the restaurants where they work. Add to that how late dinner shifts can end, causing people to arrive home well into the night.

Top it all off with the fact that culinary school graduates are often working through significant amounts of debt, and the burden can be insurmountable.

It’s markets, baby.

You cannot find cooks to underpay and abuse because ……… Oh, I don’t know ……… Maybe there are fewer illegal workers out there to depress wages:

And then there’s another subtle but significant change happening across America that doesn’t bode well for the restaurant industry. After years of steady inflows of Mexican immigrants, who have proved both eager and talented cooks, the trend is reversing itself. The number of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States has leveled off over the past decade (it peaked eight years ago in 2007). By 2012, net migration to Mexico was already zero, or even negative, meaning that more Mexicans were moving out than moving in.

So you want your employees to go heavily into debt at cooking schools, you want to work them mercilessly, and you don’t want to pay them well, and now the guys that you can use the threat of La Migra to keep them in line have gone home.

The pay sucks, and they are treated like crap, so people are not flocking to the profession,

You find the same thing in other fields where this has happened, like, for example, airline pilots.

We have been eating our seed corn in terms of skilled professionals for over a generation, if we are finding it hard to find new guys, the solution is not more gastarbeiters (H1B, L1A, etc.), it is to strengthen worker rights, strengthen union rights, and raise the minimum wage.

I Have Never Heard of Something like This in Academe Before

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One of the bigger clusterF%$#s in academe recently has been the hiring, and subsequent “un-hiring” of Steven Salaita, a professor of literature with a focus on American Studies at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.

During Operation Cast Lead, he was rather “emphatic” on the Twitter machine regarding military operations in Gaza, and as a result of pressure from the legislature and the alumni, his offer was rescinded.

It was a done deal, and Salaita had already resigned his prior (tenured) position when the offer was revoked.

In the ensuing kerfuffle,  it was discovered, it was discovered that the Chancellor, who was the bag man for this sordid affair, was conducting business over her personal email with the specific goal of evading Illinois open record laws.

After all this came out, a new president came in, and started cleaning house.

The Chancellor, Phyllis Wise, offered her resignation, but the trustees rejected her resignation, and instead fired her, which cost her a significant retention bonus and a paid sabbatical year:

University of Illinois trustees Wednesday rejected a $400,000 bonus payment for outgoing Chancellor Phyllis Wise, backpedaling on a resignation deal made last week and instead choosing to begin dismissal proceedings against her.

The unanimous decision to reject Wise’s resignation came six days after she announced she would step aside just ahead of the revelation that she had been using a personal email account to hide discussions of sensitive and controversial issues from the public. The deal had been recommended by new U. of I. President Timothy Killeen.

But the terms of her resignation, including the bonus intended to acknowledge four years in the job, were roundly criticized by Gov. Bruce Rauner and others, and the board’s three-member executive committee decided Wednesday to take the more contentious — and legally risky — path of firing Wise for cause instead.

The board will next provide Wise with “a statement of the reasons” for firing her and will hold a dismissal hearing, according to a letter U. of I. board Chair Edward McMillan sent Wise after Wednesday’s meeting. Until then, Wise will be assigned as an adviser to the U. of I. president on biomedical affairs and continue to draw her salary of $549,069. She will retain her tenured faculty appointment, as the dismissal applies only to her administrative role. The board Wednesday appointed Dean Barbara Wilson as the acting interim chancellor.

………

Killeen said discussions about Wise’s resignation began early last week when she was presented with the findings of an investigation into her deliberate use of a personal email account to hide information. Killeen said he did not “directly” ask Wise to resign and that she “indicated interest or willingness” to do so. She publicly cited “external issues” as the reason after a tumultuous year at the state’s flagship public campus.

………

U. of I. on Friday released about 1,100 pages of emails that showed Wise and other campus administrators used personal email accounts in an attempt to circumvent state public records laws, a violation of university policy. The emails were related to three of the university’s most significant and controversial decisions from the past year: the decision to withdraw a job offer to professor Steven Salaita, the hiring of felon James Kilgore and the proposal to open an engineering-based medical school on the Urbana-Champaign campus.

………

Rosenstein said he had disagreed with how Wise handled the situation with Salaita, whose job offer was withdrawn last year after he wrote dozens of critical and sometimes profane comments on Twitter about Israel and its military policies. And Rosenstein said he was further disturbed by the content of some of the emails that Wise tried to keep private.

First, let me say that I think that Wise deserved to be fired, if just for the aggressive evasion of open record acts.   (The James Kilgore thing is a typical bullsh%$ tempest in a teapot.  He’s an adjunct who has done his time)

On the Salaita matter, it is clear that just everything was handled badly, but I get the sense that she was less the boss on this than she was the bag-man, and she was also the sacrificial lamb.

As Atrios so pithly put it,  “I hate the phrase “Thrown Under A Bus, but it certainly applies here. Thanks for doing our dirty work, no thanks for making us look bad, piss off.”

Modern American Business Stupidity Writ Kansas Size

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Rather unsurprisingly, after a campaign of wage cuts, benefit cuts, and demonization, teachers are fleeing the sinking ship that is Kansas:

Teachers can’t hotfoot it out of Kansas fast enough, creating a substantial shortage expected only to get much worse. Why?

Well, there’s the low pay. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average teaching salary in 2012-2013 (the latest year for which data were available, in constant 2012-2013 dollars), was $47,464, lower than the pay in all but seven states (Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota and West Virginia), though not by much in most of them.

Last year, job protections were cut by state lawmakers, who have also sought to reduce collective-bargaining rights for public employees.

Then there’s the severe underfunding for public education by the administration of Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, so much of a problem that some school districts closed early this past school year because they didn’t have the cash to keep operating. This story by Huffington Post, quoted Tim Hallacy, superintendent of Silver Lake Schools, as saying:

“I find it increasingly difficult to convince young people that education is a profession worth considering, and I have some veterans who think about leaving. In the next three years I think we’ll have maybe the worst teacher shortage in the country — I think most of that is self-inflicted.”


………

And there’s more. According to the Topeka Capital-Journal,  the Kansas Board of Education decided in July to allow six school systems — including two of the largest in the state — to hire unlicensed teachers to ease the shortage. (Let the irony sink in for a minute.)  Specifically, the newspaper reported:

The measure will waive the state’s licensure regulations for a group of districts called the Coalition of Innovative Districts, a program that the Legislature established in 2013 based on model legislation from the American Legislative Exchange Council.


………

Peter Greene, a teacher who writes the Curmudgucation blog, described it this way:

Kansas has taken a bold new step in making their schools Even Worse…. Kansas has entered the Chase Teachers Out of The State derby, joining states like North Carolina and Arizona in the attempt to make teaching unappealing as a career and untenable as a way for grown-ups to support a family. Kansas favors the two-pronged technique. With one prong, you strip teachers of job protections and bargaining rights, so that you can fire them at any time for any reason and pay them as little as you like. With the other prong, you strip funding from schools, so that teachers have to accomplish more and more on a budget of $1.95 (and if they can’t get it done, see prong number one). The result is predictable. Kansas is solidly settled onto the list of Places Teachers Work As Their Very Last Choice. It’s working out great for Missouri; their school districts have teacher recruitment billboards up in Kansas. But in Kansas, there’s a teacher shortage.

Obviously, Sam Brownback is, for lack of a better term, bat sh%$ insane, and he is determined to turn the state of Kansas into Mogadishu, and even by the standards of Republicans, this is rather exceptional.

However, there is a bigger picture, because this reflects a crucial part of American business culture.

Specifically, it is an article of faith in American business these days that managing any sort of endeavor these days must necessarily involve making your employees as miserable as possible.

It’s destroying the country, not just Kansas.

H/t Atrios.

Yes

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Is the Supposed STEM Shortage a Myth Used to Serve Tech Companies Labor Policies?

This has been another episode of simple answers to simple questions.

The slightly longer version of this, as Erik Loomis notes, is that when companies like Qualcomm are calling for a massive expansion in the H1B Gastarbeiter (guest worker) program because of an alleged shortage of skilled workers, while at the same time laying out thousands of skilled workers with US citizen or Green Card status, it is clear that they are trying to engage in labor arbitrage to drive wages down.

There is no STEM shortage.

It has never showed up in any data, and when you talk to tech firms, it becomes clear that they see the Gastarbeiter programs as a way of ensuring that an endless stream of low wage and compliant workers don’t require them to pay a fair market price for skilled workers.

H/T Atrios.

Out F%$#ing Standing!

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I have been out of work for the past few months, and tomorrow I start a new job at Nozilizer, a company that makes No2 based sterilizers.

As is my wont, I am not going to be blogging about this new job, because this is a way for me to end up on unemployment list.

Even better, it is less than a 10 minute walk from the Lexington Market Metro stop, so I won’t be using my car to commute.

Time for a hearty “Boo Yah!“