See: The MSM Monitor Looks Into the Mirror
That clear it up for you a bit?
"Hanging on to hope online; One laid-off worker sees Web course as way out" by Peter S. Goodman, New York Times | April 5, 2009
Why am I not surprised?
Yup, the answer is on-line, America (see flashback below)!!!
COLUMBIA, S.C. - Nearly a year after he was laid off from his job as a window installer, Raymond Vaughn is still out of work, still scanning job listings on the computer, and still sending resumes into a seemingly indifferent void.
But Vaughn now has another activity, one aimed at getting out of his chronically meager financial straits: He is studying for a career in medical billing through an online course.
Why didn't I think of that? It's free, right? Right?
For several hours each morning, Vaughn sits at a desk in the modest rented house he shares with his fiancee, memorizing medical procedures and absorbing detailed drawings of the human anatomy. He takes quizzes online, making progress toward the diploma that will, the school promises, set him up to work from home, processing bills for insurance companies while earning as much as $50,000 a year. "That sounded all right to me," he says.
He passes evenings on the couch, a pack of Newport cigarettes on the coffee table and the TV remote in hand, surveying a world mired in distress. He flips between action movies and news channels, absorbing a discomfiting tableau of cinematic violence and real-life economic deterioration - job cuts, holdups at a local automated teller machine, taxpayer-financed bonuses for disgraced Wall Street chieftains.
He takes note of the reports that South Carolina has the second-highest unemployment rate in the nation - 11 percent in February, behind only Michigan. He seethes as he hears that his state's Republican governor, Mark Sanford, is preparing to reject $700 million in federal aid aimed at generating new jobs, arguing that spending more now will simply add to public debt in the years ahead.
"How can somebody who's never been broke say with any confidence what someone needs who's struggling?" Vaughn asks. Everywhere, he hears talk of recession, as if the same reality that has defined most of his 43 years has finally caught up with the rest of the nation.
"For me, it's always been a recession," Vaughn says. "I've always struggled to find work and pay my bills. And now we're hearing recession this, recession that, and I'm like, yeah, now that it's hitting the rich people, it's officially a recession. They've got to give up eating in those fancy restaurants with their $100 chicken dinners, and now they're stuck eating Church's with me."
He still draws a $221-a-week unemployment check, and he still depends on the generosity of his fiancee, whose wages from her job as a secretary at a hospital pay the bills....
Can the Globe ever find a truly unemployed American, or.... ?
See: Patchwork Employment
Prospects have been especially bleak for African-American men like Vaughn, who lacks a college degree and has long earned his living with his hands.
I'm no racist, but the divisive, agenda-pushing papers couldn't find a white guy with the same problems (with worthless history degree)? I got a phone.
Born and raised in the Jamaica, Queens, section of New York City, Vaughn has spent the past 17 years in South Carolina, moving here to escape the often-violent streets of his youth. Nationally, less than 60 percent of black men age 20 and older were employed in February, the lowest share since the government began tracking such data in 1972, and down from 66 percent a year earlier.
Vaughn joined the recession's victims last May when he was laid off from his job installing and repairing windows and doors, where he had earned $11.50 an hour and had health insurance.
In December, he lined up among hundreds of other people at the state fairgrounds, applying for the few listings at a job fair. The most promising possibility was for a position as a technician at an air-conditioning company. It paid $3 an hour less than his last job. He never got that job, and soon the company resorted to layoffs. He says he has applied for more than 50 jobs since, including posts as a welder, an auto mechanic, and a painter....
Back in February, he was granted an interview at a factory that makes industrial adhesives, yet his very need for a job emerged as an impediment to getting one: The company ran a credit check, discovered his checkered history, and turned him down, he says. "They told me things had looked good until the credit check," he says.
Welcome to AmeriKa's 21st-century POLICE STATE, dude!!!!
Vaughn's credit history stands as a crude composite of the national experience. It is sprinkled with deals that went awry, transactions not sufficiently understood, assurances accepted without critical scrutiny, and purchases made in anticipation of income that never arrived.
Seven years ago, he bought a mobile home, agreeing to a mortgage that he says was supposed to be $653 a month for the home and the land, he says. When a bill came for an extra $200 a month, he walked away, convinced he had been cheated. Two years ago, he ran up $200 worth of charges on a Visa card that he failed to pay. "It was basically gas and whatnot," he says.
The guy was IRRESPONSIBLE and yet the Jew banker paper is MAKING EXCUSES FOR HIM? Now I have SEEN IT ALL!!!!!!
In January, an e-mail message landed in his inbox from something called the US Career Institute, based in Colorado, which offered to train him online for "an exciting, professional career" in medical billing. He bought in, enrolling for $69 a month, attracted by the thought of a middle-class paycheck. Does he know anyone who has pulled this off?
I opened mine and it was the conficker virus!!!!
And it COSTS about $20 a week, huh? That's about half my grocery bill.
"No, but I called and checked it out," he says. "Basically, they said their school is accredited. Their school has weight. It's not like the school is frowned upon."
Called and checked it out with who?
He discussed it with his fiancee, and she supported the idea, figuring that healthcare is a growing field. He says this in the tone of voice of a man whose aspirations have been dashed more than once, now trying to convince himself of the truth of something dubious; a man who has sent out so many job applications and received so few replies, happy to have finally found mail in his inbox painting a promising future that is supposedly just waiting there for someone just like him.
Awwww, every story has a HAPPY ENDING, huh?
Yup, JUST HOPE, America, and everything will be fine.
Pay no attention to the suffering of others or the looting above you, as long as YOU GETS YOURS!!!! That's the INSPIRATIONAL MESSAGE the Globe delivered for you today!
--more--"
(Blog author sits here and shakes his head at the shit the New York Times shovels. I will never read them again, and am happy the Globe is shitting the bed)
FLASHBACK:"Job search firms draw attention, but not all see their benefit" by Nicole C. Wong, Globe Staff | February 1, 2009
In this tight labor market, some people are paying for the inside track.
With thousands of Massachusetts residents being laid off each week, some companies that help job hunters land work - after they shell out fees ranging from $10 to more than $6,900 - are benefiting from an influx of customers. But the companies, whose services range from providing simple job listings to the phone numbers of hiring managers, are getting mixed reviews from human resources professionals and clients....
WTF? I can't afford that!
Some HR specialists and customers say the services these companies offer aren't worth the money. In fact, the number of complaints customers filed with the Better Business Bureau against job listing and advisory services has nearly doubled in the past four years....
Some HR specialists say many of the resources that companies provide can be found for a lot less money - or even free. Job seekers can often get free help with resume writing and other components of job hunting from counselors at government-funded community centers. And much of the advice and services these companies offer is available at public libraries or online.
"Most often when people get jobs through networking, they're getting jobs through their own personal connections," who will vouch for their character and work, said Kathy Robinson, a Boston career counselor who previously worked in HR at an Internet start-up, a software company, and Gillette Co. "It's usually a friend of a friend."
Yeah, like it HAS ALWAYS BEEN!
--more--"
So monster.com, et al, are RIP-OFF OUTFITS, huh? Just as I suspected (and I hate their commercials).
So where, oh where, can an American find a job (had to get it from my local as the Globe ignored the item)?The WEB?!!!
