The Philosopher Kings And Queens of America

The fact-free coddle-fest last night ("Fox Business gives Ben Carson a free pass in GOP debate") offered many, many hilariously false statements for your 'umble scrivener to choose from -- lies cheerfully extruded by the yard by the Fox News employees behind the lecterns, and just as cheerfully ignored by the "elegant" Fox News employees who fed them stage direction from behind the moderator desk.

So I thought today I would pick out one that will probably be missed by almost everyone else.

From Marco Rubio, the Wandering Senator, last night (emphasis added):

...

Here's the best way to raise wages. Make America the best place in the world to start a business or expand an existing business, tax reform and regulatory reform, bring our debt under control, fully utilize our energy resources so we can reinvigorate manufacturing, repeal and replace Obamacare, and make higher education faster and easier to access, especially vocational training. For the life of me, I don't know why we have stigmatized vocational education. Welders make more money than philosophers. We need more welders and less philosophers.

First, it's "fewer" philosophers, not "less".  Dumbass.

Second, the best manufacturers I know do indeed value their welders (who can pass a drug test. It's a thing)...and CNC operators...and mold-makers...who are also lateral thinkers that can evaluate weird, complex problems and work out creative solutions.  You can study both.  Dumbass.

Third, without philosophy students, Soundgarden may never have existed.  Dumbass.  (From the American Philosophical Association, "Who Studies Philosophy?")

Kim Thayil, musician (Soundgarden)

On the other hand, without a certain philosophy student, history might have been changed just enough to spare Hewlett-Packard the reign of the Destroyer of Companies:

Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and presidential candidate
Bachelor’s Degree, Stanford University, 1976

You know what?  It turns out lots of gainfully-employed people you may have heard about have studied philosophy along the way.  Lots and lots.  Here is a partial list:

Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President
Bachelor’s Degree, College of William and Mary, 1762

Fred Thompson, former senator and presidential candidate (and erstwhile actor)
Bachelor’s Degree, University of Memphis, 1964

George F. Will, journalist, author, and political commentator
Bachelor’s Degree, Trinity College, 1962

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights leader
Taught social philosophy at Morehouse College, 1961

Carl Icahn, investor and former CEO of TWA Airlines
Bachelor’s Degree, Princeton University, 1957

Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal
Bachelor’s Degree, Stanford University, 1989

Pope John Paul II
Ph.D., Jagiellonian University, 1948

Albert Schweitzer, Nobel Peace Prize winning theologian and missionary
Ph.D., University of Tübingen, 1899

Christopher Hitchens, author
Bachelor’s Degree, Balliol College Oxford, 1967

Sam Harris, author (The End of Faith) and co-founder of Project Reason<
Bachelor’s Degree, Stanford University, 2000

Elie Wiesel, author (Night)
Studied at the Sorbonne, 1948-1951

Chris Hayes, journalist, political commentator, and MSNBC host
Bachelor’s Degree, Brown University, 2001

Wes Anderson, filmmaker
Bachelor’s Degree, University of Texas at Austin, 1990

Harrison Ford, actor
Majored in philosophy at Ripon College (no degree earned), 1960-1964

Steve Martin, comedian, actor, and musician
Majored in philosophy at California State University Long Beach (no degree earned), 1963-1967

Phil Jackson, NBA coach
Bachelor’s Degree, University of North Dakota, 1967

Bruce Lee, martial artist
Studied philosophy at University of Washington (no degree earned), 1961-1964

Ayn Rand, author (The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged)
Bachelor’s Degree, Petrograd State University, 1924

So...why does Marco Rubio hate Ayn Rand and Han Solo?

Finally, I agree that we should be doing a lot more to offer every American a ladder (well, "lattice", if you want to get technical and wonky) into the middle class by strategically strengthening America's manufacturing base and offering a program of life-long career education and training starting in high school.

You know who else believe that?

Barack Obama, who campaigned on this very subject back in 2008 before he was ever elected president.  Here he is, taking specifically about Austin Polytech high school in Chicago and about which I have written from time to time:

And given the subject at hand, it's only appropriate to close out with a philosophical question of sorts:  How much more might President Barack Obama have been able to accomplish on behalf of the manufacturing sector and American school kids had he not been blocked and sabotaged Every.  Single. Fucking. Step. along the way by the party of bigots, assholes and lunatics to which Marco Rubio owes his allegiance?

Outside the Alexandria Safe Zone*

For the last several months my wife and I had begun to dare to hope that our tiny foothold back into the world of relative economic security would last.

Sadly it has not.  

Effective immediately I am unemployed again  Lost one of my two, low-wage "paper route" jobs -- this one is going to hurt because this was the one with an income that actually amounted to anything and provide my family with health insurance.  

So once again we are cast out.

For those keeping score at home, this is the fifth time I've been laid off from a job in the last six and a half years.

I must confess it's taking a toll.  

As we speak, Blue Gal is once again saddled up and doing battle with formidably inept staff of the Illinois health care exchange.  So far this morning she has had to repeatedly go over line-staff's heads and verbally correct their records, which they pretty thoroughly fucked up the last time we were in this place, and which they never bothered to correct because, uh, reasons.  Also Governor Hedgefund has already made it very clear that he think the poors of this state have had it far too good for far too long which is why he and his staff are working tirelessly to monkey-wrench or eradicate virtually every program for the poor, the elderly, the disabled, children and the unemployed.

Thank goodness BG is a meticulous record-keeper and has more patience on her worst day than I have on my best.

Over the years, I have gotten very philosophical about being fired.  Very good at it.  I always begin a job with enthusiasm. I always give it all that I have, cheerfully, and when I have a little down time, I check out what my colleagues are up to and usually end up helping them out as well.

But when it comes to keeping a job, in the end I know none of that will weigh in my favor in the slightest, so I have become an acute observer of the small details with which each termination is carried out, noting their similarities and differences.  A superannuated writerly habit, which would be useful if I lived in a universe where it is possible for me to make a living with my pen.

But I don't live in that universe.  

And after ten years behind this keyboard (ten years this month, actually), while many readers have been incredibly kind and supportive and generous, the one thing of which I am absolutely certain is that I will never make anything close to a "living" by doing this thing I love and and that I do exceptionally well.  However, after five layoffs in just over six years, it is equally obvious that I cannot make a living doing many of the other things that I do exceptionally well, which leaves me with...what?

Old writer's habits, mostly.  And so, as the terminators once again call me in and close the door and go through the motions, I already know many things.

I know that by the the time HR shows up, nothing is negotiable. I know that I am dealing with an errand boy sent by grocery clerks to collect a bill.  That is all.   

Every decision about the terms of my termination have already been made, far away and without me. On three occasions, the terminator has been close to tears, reassuring me that my work has been exemplary (it always is)  that if there were any way they could keep me they would.

I know that it is pointless to ask why certain paste-eaters, apple polishers and various other forms of human ballast are keeping their jobs while I am being let go.  No one sitting in that room is going to answer that question.  

I know that the terminator is doing a distasteful job.  That I'm probably the fourth of fifth on their list and that firing someone is shitty work,  But I also know that next month, and next year, the person sitting across from me will have a job, and insurance, and a roughly predictable future and I will not. So I'm polite, because what's the use of arguing with some gofer from the Shawnee Land and Cattle Company?

I know that my colleagues are going to be well and truly freaked out by my firing, because if it can happen to me, then the plague is inside the perimeter and no one is safe.  Well, no one but certain paste-eaters, apple polishers and various other forms of human ballast who will have a job, and insurance, and a roughly predictable future until the end of days.

And because not many years ago I worked every day steeped in the facts and figures of labor markets and economic development, I also know what my odds are of ever coming back from this.  I know that that just two or three layoffs in six years on a resume is nearly always a career death sentence, especially if you're over, say, 45.  Which I am.  

I know that at some point, it stops mattering how brilliant or capable you are, or how hard you try, or how many doors you knock on, or how much you could contribute.  Your time is over and if you are not part of a Club, you are on your own and out in the cold from now on.

So imagine my delight when I cracked open my digital New York Times to find the Most Unaccountable Paste Eater in American Journalism making his daily bread by once again decrying the Lack of Accountability, among the Poors:

...

The health of society is primarily determined by the habits and virtues of its citizens. In many parts of America there are no minimally agreed upon standards for what it means to be a father. There are no basic codes and rules woven into daily life, which people can absorb unconsciously and follow automatically.

Reintroducing norms will require, first, a moral vocabulary...

Imagine my untrammeled joy at reading the undisputed motherfucking king of Pathological Both Siderism earning that sweet, sweet New York Times dollar by lecturing everyone in Murrica on the horrors of not being judgmental:  

These norms weren’t destroyed because of people with bad values. They were destroyed by a plague of nonjudgmentalism, which refused to assert that one way of behaving was better than another. People got out of the habit of setting standards or understanding how they were set.

Imagine the heights of rapture to which I ascended when I read David Brooks -- who has never taken ownership or responsibility for a single syllable of the pro-war, hippie-punching, revisionist schlock he peddles to pay the rent -- demanding that "people" be held responsible for, uh, "stuff".

...

Next it will require holding people responsible. People born into the most chaotic situations can still be asked the same questions: Are you living for short-term pleasure or long-term good? Are you living for yourself or for your children? Do you have the freedom of self-control or are you in bondage to your desires?

Next it will require holding everybody responsible. America is obviously not a country in which the less educated are behaving irresponsibly and the more educated are beacons of virtue. America is a country in which privileged people suffer from their own characteristic forms of self-indulgence: the tendency to self-segregate, the comprehensive failures of leadership in government and industry. Social norms need repair up and down the scale, universally, together and all at once

...

One of the few upsides to ten years of futilely documenting the fictions and frauds of David Brooks in epic detail,  is that when Mr. Brooks writes -- 

People sometimes wonder why I’ve taken this column in a spiritual and moral direction of late.

-- I don't have to wonder.  Not for a minute.

Because I know that every time he has tried to sell his brand of toxic waste using facts or math or history, Mr. Brooks has gotten his ass sawed off and handed back to him on the good china.  So, in the back nine of his immensely profitable career, Mr. Brooks has taken refuge in the con man's oldest and most reliable redoubt.

The pulpit.

But of course, my opinions are just those of a recently unemployed, middle-aged liberal who has never had so much as a letter printed in the New York Times.  A tired, recently unemployed, middle-aged liberal. Very tired. with some serious thinking to do about what to do next, so you might not hear from me for a few days.

So let me leave you with a sampling from all the prominent people on Twitter who, if they knew I existed, would think I am out of my mind:

@nytdavidbrooks on R. Putnam confirming @charlesmurray's thesis in Coming Apart, the book to read instead of Piketty http://t.co/MGRdFXuWrN
— Niall Ferguson (@nfergus) March 10, 2015

.@DavidBrooks420 has been writing some good stuff recently. This post on the cost of moral relativism is gold: http://t.co/lGVdaWFK9J
— Jeff Hart (@JeffHart120) March 10, 2015

Truthtelling: David Brooks on the Relentless, Vicious Cycle of Family & Moral Breakdown. http://t.co/gFOGKGHzvU @ChadSeiter
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) March 10, 2015

•@nytdavidbrooks Classic is back, and boy is he good today: http://t.co/XDmD8518cB
— W Bradford Wilcox (@WilcoxNMP) March 10, 2015

This link @nytdavidbrooks column of moral renewal is an endorsement. Not surprisingly. http://t.co/r3EMDJzhDu
— Charles Murray (@charlesmurray) March 10, 2015

@nytdavidbrooks at his best: The Cost of Relativism http://t.co/A3lBVINqJ4. More on big issues @charlesmurray tackled in Coming Apart.
— John David Dyche (@jddyche) March 10, 2015

.nytdavidbrooks is often too liberal, but he hits the nail on the head with this column. via @nytimes http://t.co/oAM6IjLP6Z
— Matt Blunt (@MattBlunt) March 10, 2015

Brooks makes the case for spiritual and moral revival: The Cost of Relativism http://t.co/Ie46J1G3jS
— Brent Nelsen (@BrentNelsen) March 10, 2015

*The Alexandria Safe Zone from The Walking Dead:

The Alexandria Safe-Zone, or just Alexandria, is a few blocks of cleared streets in Alexandria, Virginia, about six miles from Washington, D.C. When Rick Grimes' survivor group arrived, Douglas Monroe stated that the community had existed for less than a year. To date, this is the longest lasting location the survivors have lived in, with a lifespan of almost three years.

Bittersweet

I highly approve of Al Franken's new pitch. Minnesota's Hennepin College has run a terrific manufacturing training program for many years: so successful that, before the Great Recession, they used to have job fairs where the roles were reversed, and employers would line up to compete for the favors of graduating students.

I used to be very involved in this sort of enterprise. Then came the Great Recession, and cutbacks, and not for the first time did I discover too late that when thinks get tight, it does not matter how competent or brilliant or hardworking or ingenious or innovative I am. I was out on my ass, with my job held open to provide a soft landing place for someone with clout. My complex, big-budget and highly-visible projects were handed over to some of my less competent former coworkers who could not figure out how to make the little wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round. They called me, in states of increasing panic, asking me what they should do as various components started to fly apart.

Because I was personally invested in these projects -- because I thought they could demonstrate how the wise and properly managed investment of public monies could be of tremendous public benefit -- I took the first five or six calls and gave them my best advice (I also asked what the Hell they done with all the meticulous project notes I had left behind so that future project managers could cope with precisely these situations. I was told, uh, um, er, we...kinda...lost them.)

Because I am not a chump, and because still had dreams of not going broke losing my condo, I put forth the radical idea that they would hire me as a consultant to save them from disaster. They knew I could do it. They knew that probably no one else but me could do it, and for much less than what they were already pissing away on a brace of useless consultants who were being kept around to stroke the boss's ego. Millions of dollars and the organization's reputation was on the line. But bringing me back just to fix what no one else could fix would have meant rubbing the boss's nose in his own incompetence, and so bringing me back became a bridge too far.

And so I got to watch "my" projects crash and burn. The taxpayer lost millions of dollars. People who make a living selling the idea that the public sector can't do shit got another arrow in their quiver.  The concept we were trying to prove got a crippling punch to the throat.  And six years later my career has not risen from the dead.  

So I highly approve of Senator Franken's initiative.

But it is bittersweet.

First They Came For The Internet CEOs -- UPDATE

In which Andrew Sullivan continues to fizz up his Pot-'n-Pope-'n-Stuff blog by equating Brendan Eich losing his job to...The Inquisition.

 

Think I'm kidding?

But none of this is ever enough for Inquisitions – and it wasn’t enough in this case. His mind and conscience were the problem. He had to change them or leave. 

-- Andrew Sullivan, 04/06/14

Well, if people losing their jobs for reason that are perfectly legal but do not meet Mr. Sullivan's moral approval is the same as being tortured and executed by the Catholic Church for heresy, then this is the unsanctified ground in which millions of them are buried:

I ought to know -- in my time I have not only helped many of the unfortunate souls who have been chopped up and cast out by America's free and unregulated labor market, but have also been buried alive in unemployment's grave of at the hands of some petty Torquemadas on several occasions.

The last time I faced that particular Inquisition was in 2009, and I'm still interred in the tomb into which they shoveled me.  It's an economic potter's field I share with lots of nice people.  Like Tara Dublin.

Working for the Forever Weekend

The reality of life in the Brave New Economy of the 21st Century. 

In March, of the 192,000 jobs created, 30,000 were in food services. Restaurants and bars have added 323,000 workers over the past year, but Dublin is earning a fraction of what she used to make.

"The first time I came home and saw a foreclosure notice taped to my front door and my sons saw it, that was a really bad day," Dublin says.

This is nothing to do with "hard work"; this is to do with a massive public policy failure. Our Rulers have rejected an America of opportunity, preferring instead an America of Scroogery...

Over at Slate, Jamelle Bouie visits the same material I covered a few days ago:

Role Reversal

If conservatives are upset about Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich’s resignation, why aren’t they concerned with protecting ordinary Americans? 

...

But let’s grant that Sullivan and the National Review are right. That Eich’s forced resignation is an attack on speech, and that this is an ugly bout of bullying against someone who hasn’t expressed his views in the context of his job. If that’s true, then Eich is just the highest profile victim of a status quo that threatens countless workers.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act might protect workers from discrimination on the basis of their race, color, religion, sex, age, or national origin, but almost everything else is fair game for private employers who want to get rid of workers. Not only can you be fired for your political views—for sporting the wrong bumper sticker on your car, for instance—or for being “sexually irresistible” to your boss, but in most states (29, to be precise), you can be fired for your sexual orientation or gender identification, no questions asked.

Overall, the large majority of Americans have at-will employment, which means that—outside of protected classes such as race or religion—they can be fired for any reason at all. For someone like Eich, this isn’t a huge deal: He will survive his brush with joblessness. The same can’t be said for millions of low-income workers who face termination lest they give their bosses their complete obedience.

For a taste of what this looks like, and if you’ve never worked a retail job, you should read former Politico reporter Joseph Williams on his time in a sporting goods store. For a pittance of a paycheck, he consented to constant searches, unpaid labor, and borderline wage theft. It’s a precarious existence, made worse by the fact that saying the wrong thing at the wrong time—either on the job or off it—could result in you losing your job, with no recourse.

...

As a final note, Mr. Sullivan would like you to know that he feels just awful for everyone who gets screwed over by a bad boss, it's just that he's never been moved to sling around words like "heretic" and "Inquisition" on behalf of shoe clerks and secretaries because, as Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the most privileged of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."

It’s awful that individuals are fired for being gay with no legal recourse all over the country. But if we rightly feel this way about gays in the workplace, why do we not feel the same about our opponents? And on what grounds can we celebrate the resignation of someone for his off-workplace political beliefs? Payback? Revenge? Some liberal principles, in my view, are worth defending whether they are assailed by left or right.

Someone please tell Andrew that in our free and unregulated world of mandatory unpaid overtime, at-will employment, daily workplace stop-and-frisk, HR departments sifting the internet for anything incriminating, random drug testing, lie detectors, and "other duties as assigned", for millions of working stiff out there, there is no "off-workplace".  You are effectively on the job all the time, and if you don't like it, there are seven other hungry, desperate applicants lined up and ready to take your place.

Yowza!  Yowza!  Yowza!

UPDATE:

For those unfamiliar with his work, Young Conor Friedersdorf was Mr. Sullivan's former protege and current keeper-of-the-sorta-Libertarian-flame at The Atlantic.  We have spoken of him here before.  Last week, Young Conor penned a long post about the horrors of the chilling effect which may be unleashed from "[judging a] CEO...not just by his or her conduct in the professional realm, but also by political causes he or she supports as a private citizen".

Young Conor worries that:

...whatever you think of gay marriage, the general practice of punishing people in business for bygone political donations is most likely to entrench powerful interests and weaken the ability of the powerless to challenge the status quo.

and that:

If that attitude spreads, it will damage our society.

I think it demonstrates a great generosity of spirit that The Atlantic allows a 12-year-old who appears to have never held a real job in the real world to freely opine about his worries that if this CEO injustice is allowed to stand, someday it might lead to the spread of the pernicious idea that someone can be sacked for something that has shit all to do with their job!

Which could, in turn, cause entrenched power to grow even Moar Powerful!

Golly!

Well should that dark day ever dawn, maybe someone will start a support group for those poor souls:

Burial Rites of the Unemployed Tribesmen of North America

It is a strange thing to be studied, ethnographically catalogued and academically theorized upon like a member of a dying tribe of exotic nomads slouching towards a sad but somehow inevitable extinction.

Probably good for my soul.

I have considered writing a lot more about the experiences of the long-term unemployed and underemployed, labor markets and suchlike stuff (about which I know quite a bit) but as I am not at at D.C. think tank, or a major DC/New York publication, outside of my role as part of a doomed demographic, I do not actually exist.

Are There No Workhouses?

The New York Times tells a sadly familiar story

...

It has been a painful slide. A five-year spell of unemployment has slowly scrubbed away nearly every vestige of Ms. Barrington-Ward’s middle-class life. She is a 53-year-old college graduate who worked steadily for three decades. She is now broke and homeless.

Ms. Barrington-Ward describes it as “my journey through hell.” She was laid off from an administrative position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2008; she had earned about $50,000 that year. With the recession spurring employers to dump hundreds of thousands of workers a month and the unemployment rate climbing to the double digits, she found that no matter the number of résumés she sent out — she stopped counting in the thousands — she could not find work.

“I’ve been turned down from McDonald’s because I was told I was too articulate,” she says. “I got denied a job scrubbing toilets because I didn’t speak Spanish and turned away from a laundromat because I was ‘too pretty.’ I’ve also been told point-blank to my face, ‘We don’t hire the unemployed.’ And the two times I got real interest from a prospective employer, the credit check ended it immediately.”

For Ms. Barrington-Ward, joblessness itself has become a trap, an impediment to finding a job. Economists see it the same way, concerned that joblessness lasting more than six months is a major factor preventing people from getting rehired, with potentially grave consequences for tens of millions of Americans.

The long-term jobless, after all, tend to be in poorer health, and to have higher rates of suicide and strained family relations. Even the children of the long-term unemployed see lower earnings down the road.

The consequences are grave for the country, too: lost production, increased social spending, decreased tax revenue and slower growth. Policy makers and academics are now asking whether an improving economy might absorb those workers in time to prevent long-term economic damage.

“I don’t think we know the answer,” said Jesse Rothstein, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley. “But right now, I think everybody’s worst fears are coming true, as far as we can tell.”

Soon after we first talked in October, Ms. Barrington-Ward left her sister’s house in Ohio, where she had crashed for six weeks, and went back to Boston and filed her bankruptcy paperwork. She contacted a headhunter. “I’ve got to get a job,” she said. “I just have to.” She had two job interviews lined up and her fingers crossed.

Long-term joblessness — the kind that Ms. Barrington-Ward and about four million others are experiencing — is now one of the defining realities of the American work force.

...

Except for gender and being homeless, Ms. Barrington-Ward's story is nearly identical to my own, right down to our ages.

When Ms. Barrington-Ward and I got on the Big Career Escalator years ago, we believed certain things to be true because we could see them in operation all around us.  Usually, honest labor had value.  Tangible value.  So did persistence.  So did excellence. And even if you were kneecapped by bad breaks or bad times or bad people, after you got banged up and bounced downhill once or twice, you got up again and worked your way back into the labor force.

Of course you could get a job -- a real job -- if you set your mind to it.   

Of course you could.

But while we were very busy working those hard, long hours -- while we were excelling at what we did -- someone set fire to all the rules and burned all the maps.  

Suddenly, no, you cannot get back into the workforce.  

No, we will not tell you why.  

Try as hard was you like.  Beat your brains out until it finally becomes clear that you will never have a full-time job with bennies again.

Never.

Never.  Ever.

That's the new reality: the quiet, lethal, zombie apocalypse no one prepared you for and which swarms over you and takes you down by sheer weight of numbers.  Which, by the way, leads us to the other ironic difference between Ms. Barrington-Ward's situation and my own: the fact that my last full-time job was helping people exactly like Ms. Barrington-Ward find work.  

I spent a long time building a righteous portfolio as a economic development and labor force expert.  Over the years I helped thousands of people find work, either directly by helping them think through their options, rework their resumes, learn interviewing skills and find internships and training, or indirectly by setting up and funding programs to get unemployed people like Ms. Barrington-Ward back into decent sustainable work.

I worked with the whole, sad rainbow of the unemployed:  kids in tough neighborhoods, young adults without prospects, ex-offenders, single mothers, and the suddenly and unexpectedly jobless like Ms. Barrington-Ward.

So like the physician who gets a bleak medical diagnosis, I am intimately versed enough in the arcanum of labor market data to be in a unique position to understand just how bad things are and how bad they are likely to remain for years to come.

My former profession has blessed me with the knowledge that there really are ways to solve the problem of long-term unemployment and underemployment that would give the millions like Ms. Barrington-Ward back their dignity and economic autonomy.

My understanding of political reality has cursed me with the knowledge that as long as we live in a culture that treats poverty and unemployment as signs of moral depravity, none of those solutions has a prayer of being realized.

Good luck to you, Ms. Barrington-Ward.

Good luck to all the Ms. Barrington-Wards, everywhere.

How To Make Yourself Unemployable

UR Doin it Right!

Admit it; you've always wondered how to mix that perfect, permanently unemployed cocktail haven't you? How to make sure most potential future employers wouldn't touch you with a barge pole.

Well The Savvy Intern has some advice:

According to a survey of 300 hiring professionals conducted by Reppler, a social media monitoring service for managing online presence, a job candidate’s social network is thoroughly examined during the hiring process by 91 percent of employers and recruiters.
...

So what can job seekers learn from this? First, realize that the importance of a professional online image will help enhance your first impression when applying for a job. It cannot be stressed enough that even one picture, tweet, or exaggeration about your skills can deteriorate your personal brand.

Second, since Facebook is the number one most utilized social network (followed by Twitter), employers may want to inspect that your social skills and personality will match their corporate culture. If that were the case, you should use good behavior and judgment of your words and persona online as if you were working in a professional setting.

So for those trying this recipe out at home, remember the very best way to make yourself an employment pariah is as follows:

1. Be over 45
2. Be unemployed already. And,
3. Use non-corporate-approved language on Teh Internets.

USA!USA!

Breaking: Gambling Discovered!

Shock expressed!

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

84% of workers planning to look for new job: poll

BY FRANCINE KNOWLES Business Reporter Jan 5, 2011 12:48AM

Workers can’t wait to dump their employers: 84 percent of respondents to a survey say they plan to actively look for a new job this year.

That’s up from 60 percent who said they planned to do so last year. Only 5 percent said they intend to stay in their current position.

The survey was done by Manpower subsidiary Right Management. “It’s staggering,” said Joanne Stroud of Right Management.

Senior leadership within organizations is largely to blame, Stroud said. While many workers have gone without salary increases for two to three years and are now doing the job of one to two people, they see and hear less from senior leadership about the vision for the future and how they see the company evolving and reshaping themselves, she explained.
...

Wouldn't it be just awesome if we could run our governments more like businesses?

I'd bet they'd run a lot better if only they had the Invisible Fist of the Marketplace jammed to the elbow up their collective asses.

Ah, but of course they already do.

Never mind.

Your Friday Podcast

As always, peering deep into America's Zombietainment Industrial Complex to answer Tom Waits' musical question: "What's he building in there?"



Related links:

• Anderson Cooper's interview with a Texas Birther, is here.

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A Lesson For You Kids Out There

Why not just start at the top?

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Desiree Rogers named CEO of Johnson Publishing
Plans expansion for Ebony, Jet mags and cosmetics line
Comments

August 11, 2010
BY SANDRA GUY sguy@suntimes.com

Desiree Rogers, President Obama's former White House social secretary, said Tuesday after being named CEO of Johnson Publishing Co. that she intends to expand Ebony and JET magazines' licensing and website presences, and grow the Fashion Fair cosmetics line.

Linda Johnson Rice, daughter of the company's founder who held the CEO title, will remain as chairman. The two women are good friends.

Rogers has no publishing experience, though she worked for a company 20 years ago that owned newsstands, and said she understands the workings of distribution, wholesaler relationships and positioning magazines to sell.

"I've been a generalist all of my career, focused on taking brands to the next level and integrating all of a company's functional expertise under one roof to move forward," she said.
...

While doing my weekly unemployment diligence, I used my mad interweb search skillz to scour USAJOBS, Illinois WorkNet, Career Builder and Monster dot Com for this ad:

"Generalist Wanted to 'take brand to the next level'.
Must be expert in Microsoft Cliche 7.0".

Didn't find it.

And then I remembered that there is a Club

And I am not in it.

Unemployed.

Again.

A year and a half ago, I was kicked to the curb after almost 10 years from a job I was doing spectacularly well -- and into which I was pouring 80-100 hours a week -- so that others who were in greater political favor could be spared.

I was let go a few weeks before my tiny pension was vested. A fight ensued over that. My small "victory" was bitterly Pyrrhic. I'll tell you about it someday.

I remember stopping at a Radio Shack on the way home to watch the impeachment of Governor Rod Blagojevich live.

Turned out, Blago and I lost our jobs on the same day.

This time around I have been remaindered from an organization that I was hired to help turn around. Which I did. Ferocious economy and all, I brought it back from deep in the weeds where it had gotten lost. Got its key numbers back up into the range of respectability. Rebuilt damaged relationships and internal discipline. Restored its good name in places where it had gotten tarnished. Hacked the kudzu off of the web site and got it looking sweet again.

In general, I made organizationally straight what had once been crooked, and while it never paid enough to cover my nut, it did slow the slide into penury while I tried to stitch together enough such gigs to keep the wolf from the castle door.

But others were in charge of the budgets, and they were not paying such careful attention, and so what was going to be a tough, lean, belt-tightening year next anyway turned into a catastrophe. It did not have to be so, but now it is, and so once more into the teeth of the Great Recession I go.

And this time around it is General Stanley McChrystal with whom I share a termination-date.

I know the ins and outs of the issues facing the labor force very well. Better than most -- from the for-public-consumption bad news delivered via Yahoo News to the heartbreaking personal accounts that show up everywhere these days (One selection from Andrew Sullivan's "The View From Your Recession" feature):

...I am a 58 year-old male, and my white hair proves it. I was laid off an executive position in a real estate company in January 2009. I directed international marketing programs and was responsible for over $200 million in transactions. But I have been unable to find work, even well below my former position. I am told that I appear too smart, too qualified. I have applied for many, many jobs - jobs I could do in my sleep.


Playing by the rules, I post and scour Monster and Career Builder to no avail, not even an interview. When I see a job that particularly fits my skills, I break the "rules" and contact the employer directly and consistently. Still, no job. The State of Florida has a service to help the unemployed. When I met with my counselor, she was shocked that with my resume I didn't have a job. As we pursued opportunities, she finally suggested that I dumb down my resume. That proved a bit difficult. I was in charge of a large development marketing operation. My former company was extremely successful (until the financial world changed and mortgages disappeared).


How do I feel? I cry. From there it is anger, then depression. As I like to say, I lost my job that January, and lost my pride by June. I have now lost hope...

to the technical and policy literature on the subject -- I am well-versed and I know that in so many ways I am a lucky guy: my situation is not in any way unique, and I am blessed to have more tools at my command and more supportive people in my corner than many millions of my fellow unemployed Americans.

I have no idea what comes next. Probably going to have to start over and re-invent my career for (Pauses to count. Shakes head in disbelief. Counts again.) the eighth time, which, to be frank, is starting to lose its charm.

Three things I am pretty sure of.

First, the topics I cover on this site are going to change a little in terms of emphasis. I have always covered  the subjects of work, organizational behavior and the root causes of (and possible cures for) middle class anomie, so expect more of that.

Second, based on my own, exhaustive-if-exotic research it is clear that absent a patron, a spouse who can carry more than their share of the weight for a long time, a clean, well-lighted place at a profitable publication, a Wingnut Welfare gig, a call from "The Daily Show" begging me to help hang onto The Funny, or a sinecure in academe, in these parlous times there is no chance that writing will ever pay the bills. Not even close.

Third, I'm done working in a strategic or planning role for people in the thrall of the latest management fad, or hustlebuck consultant, or political fantasy that -- when you strip away all the knowing winks and aromatically bovine byproduct buzzwords -- means they're making one ruinous decision after another based on magical thinking and the notion that 2+2 does not equal 4. It doesn't work in politics, government, education or business and following the Pied Pipers who tell you it does only ever leads to tears.

I'll hire on to do any of the many things I do very well, up to and including helping to mop up up the mess left over from their last, disastrous assignation with snake oil salesmen.  I'll even help chart courses out of dangerous waters and into better futures, but to do that I have to seek, speak and act on the truth, and if you don't want the truth, quit pretending that you do, and quit penalizing people who hand it to you on a silver platter.

Because 2 + 2 does equal 4.

Every single time.


UPDATE:  In a feat of pitch-perfect timing, I just returned from some intense oral surgery which I had scheduled before I knew I was going to be "at liberty".  And I'll tell you, if you ever want to take your mind off of looming disaster, may I recommend having a nice man pound away at a tooth for an hour with what strongly resembled tin snips and a coal chisel. 

Sometimes there is nothing to do but laugh.

Hydrocodone take me away... :-)

Your pal,

driftglass