Job? Where?

Sure, there are a ton of places to go looking for a job. Monster.com is a well-known one, Job.com, stuff like that. But where is the employment at? The unemployment rate is at an all-time high, 9.5% according to Google public data, 9.9% according to http://www.dol.gov/. That is terrible, don't you think? Well, the job market is different I guess, they want experience...right? Depends on the job really, but most jobs will take a less experienced worker because they can get away with paying them less for the same work a college grad would do for twice the rate. This is where the job market is killing itself, I think anyway.

Let me explain; if we have two people of the same age, same ability, but one went to a prestigious college and the other a junior college, obviously the one that went to a prestigious college is going to ask for more money, the junior college grad less. Practical really, I'm sure they both have loans that they need to pay off but I'm also sure that the prestigious college student has far more to pay than his junior college rival which would explain why they would ask for a higher salary. However, when it comes down to money coming in and money coming out a business has to look at it from a different point of view, money spent versus money made. If they are spending more money for someone who has a better education, they are out more money in the long-run than if they just spend less money for someone with less education but enough to do the job.

This is where sites like Monster.com can come in handy, allowing someone to put up their own resume, credentials, and asking pay, while prospective employers look at each one and decide on their own who to hire. Monster.com is a pretty good site, you can put your resume up for companies to view, apply for jobs with relative ease, and it probably works really well, but I found it to be difficult to navigate even with their current Beta. Job.com was easier for me to navigate and had a lot of search options to tick off so you didn't have to type in your own but you could if you wanted, applying for the job is relatively easy just like it was Monster, just click and apply. Both also have a number of articles filled with tips for marketing yourself and all around finding a job.

However, that isn't always enough, sometimes you have to actually head out and talk to the people face to face to inquire about the job. Even with these tools, jobs are still dying, along with the economy.

Which brings us to the government, remember that bailout plan? The one that pretty much tossed dirt into the hole we crawled into? Yes, that one, the one that still today I don't know why we even bothered to try it out. Money makes the world go 'round, and it sinks countries even deeper into the ground. The idea was to get the banks out of debt, banks that probably could have managed to get themselves out of debt alone, but we are a 'instant gratification' culture these days and no one wants to wait for results. So the government through billions of dollars at debt, and even today this concept still escapes me, you essentially threw imaginary money into debt, money we didn't have, still don't have, and I'm not all that convinced we will ever see again.

This was a key area of the presidential candidates for the 2008 presidential campaign, remember? Each of them told us how they were going to get us out of debt? How they were going to end the war in Iraq, even close Guantanamo Bay...well, it seems they had the right idea but were entirely too poor in their execution. The debt rose, Guantanamo is still open, and we are still in Iraq, and on top of it, we threw money we didn't have at all of it. Which would actually explain why nothing was done, little can be done with monopoly money.

More to come, I used to love my country.

Freedom for all

I guess it all started in 2001, we were approached with a new enemy, one that didn't care about domestic law or international lines. Yes, I think this is where I stopped loving my country, or soon after anyway. September 11th, 2001 marks a day that will live in infamy, a day that will be the staple of my generation, and hopefully a cue card of what to do and what not to do. Soon after September 11th we saw great change in the United States, that day brought about both great and utterly failed change. One terrible decision soon after was the signing of The Patriot Act, a contrived acronym for 'Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.' Now, this wasn't so much a terrible idea as it was a terrible execution of an otherwise decent idea, the problem came when it interfered with civil liberties and our constitutional freedoms.

The Patriot Act on paper looks good, and with the right speech writer and speaker it can even sound good, but let me outline a few of the problems with this specific act. First off, under 'TITLE I--ENHANCING DOMESTIC SECURITY AGAINST TERRORISM' there was 'Sec. 106. Presidential authority.' Which in so many words means the government can confiscate property from an alleged terrorist instead of following the Supreme Court's decision in the 'Brown vs. United States' decision that said that a declaration of war was not means enough to confiscate enemy property on domestic ground. The Supreme Court found that a declaration of war merely places two nations in a state of aggression, or war, but the means to confiscate property was under other sections of the government. This ability, the ability to confiscate foreign property on domestic grounds, well, it is a very powerful ability...and quite simply, one that I didn't think Bush should have nor have the ability to use.

Another issue falls under The Patriot Act as a whole, and that is the ability to spy on Americans. Under wire taps, specifically stated in 'TITLE II--ENHANCED SURVEILLANCE PROCEDURES,' here 'Sec. 201. Authority to intercept wire, oral, and electronic communications relating to terrorism.' and here 'Sec. 202. Authority to intercept wire, oral, and electronic communications relating to computer fraud and abuse offenses.' What the act fails to distinguish is simply, what is a terrorist? We have all seen the news stories of a fellow American getting harassed by police, or stopped at an airport terminal, even train stations. Pretty much, this violates our core Freedom of Speech, which is the ability to speak out against our government when we think the government isn't acting on our personal best interest.

This government has more than once in the past 10 years failed to act on our personal interest. The best example of this is the war in Iraq, which, in few words was an unjust war. This became a critical point of the current President election (Barrack Obama), that we would move from Iraq, which he has made great stride in doing so...however, we have to realize how this war came to be and why. And I simply cannot come up with a justifiable answer for that, there are plenty of theories; oil, finishing what daddy started, money, and even WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction). However, there were no WMDs found, and of course the counter-argument is that they disposed of all of them. Well, of course they did, I mean, why not? Right? Well, no. A year or two after the war the CIA reported that there were no WMDs found in Iraq. Again, I have no theory as to why the war was started in Iraq, all I do know is that it was a complete and utter failure.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6190720/
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/06/iraq.wmd.report/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3718150.stm
http://epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html

More to come, I used to love my country.

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