Category Archives: jobs

Maybe It’s Time

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Banks fear a growing number of employees are unwittingly exposing valuable information to hackers or in some cases leaving digital clues that make a breach possible.

And

Several banks are also increasingly testing whether their employees unintentionally leave them susceptible to hackers by falling prey to “spear-phishing” attempts, in which criminals lure recipients to click on links.

And

Weeks after JP Morgan Chase & Co was hit with a massive data breach that exposed information from 76 million households, the country’s biggest bank by assets sent a fake phishing email as a test to its more than 250,000 employees. Roughly 20% of them clicked on it, according to people familiar with the email.

There’s no excuse for employees, in this day and age, being so gullible or so careless.

If employees are going to continue to be willfully irresponsible, maybe it’s time for employers to get hard-nosed in the workplace: company equipment is for company business exclusively, including during lunch or other breaks. With firing being the default sanction for misuse.

Full stop.

A Difference in Philosophy

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British Prime Minister David Cameron is…discussing…the British requirements for continued membership in the European Union with the rest of the leadership of the EU. One of the points of contention is the degree of welfare participation migrants from mainland EU should receive while in Great Britain. Cameron wants to

curb[] welfare benefits for other EU citizens working in the UK for four years.

EU leaders have voiced strong opposition to his plan, saying it would breach the fundamental principle of free movement of people within the bloc.

The EU leaders’ objection, of course, is nonsense. A benefits freeze would leave migrants free to come and go as they please; the British position is a benefits freeze, not a movement restriction. The only thing being frozen would be the migrants’ ability to freeload off the British taxpayer.

Cameron also points out that a benefits freeze would help reduce migration to the UK. Well, duh. Reducing the incentives to come where the freeloading is easy certainly reduce the amount of movement in that direction.

The difference between Cameron and the European leaders is the difference between a measure of self-determination and individual responsibility on the one hand, and Government Knows Better on the other.

Hopefully, It’s a Start

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The Libre Initiative is a conservative organization funded by a donor network organized by the Koch brothers, that pair of Left-wing bêtes noire.

This organization is

[a]ctive in nine states, including Colorado, Nevada and Virginia, Libre, which means free in Spanish, is an effort to organize Latinos around free-market political ideas.

It’s also helping Hispanic immigrants learn English and

offering recent immigrants practical services such as English-language courses, tax-preparation seminars and driver’s license classes….

It’s helping these folks fit into their new nation.

They’ve been doing this sort of thing since 2011, and they represent an excellent start. But. This sort of thing needs to be greatly expanded, with lots of other Conservative organizations taking part, and it needs to be an ongoing effort, not just an election year ploy. The Libre Initiative clearly is more than a ploy. Where are the others?

A Thought on Immigration

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Greg Ip has a piece on demographics in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal.

Next year, the world’s advanced economies will reach a critical milestone. For the first time since 1950, their combined working-age population will decline…and by 2050 it will shrink 5%. The ranks of workers will also fall in key emerging markets, such as China and Russia. At the same time the share of these countries’ population over 65 will skyrocket.

There are two competing factors that dominate those statistics: people are living longer, in particular in retirement, and women are bearing fewer children over their lifetimes. As Ip put it,

[C]ompanies are running out of workers, customers, or both. In either case, economic growth suffers.

The solution to this, of course, is immigration. Blocking immigration because—pick a reason—means we won’t have the labor force we need for, among other things, saving our retirement safety net in substantially its current form or privatizing it.

We’ll have to get our immigration kit in order promptly, though, and be prepared actively to compete for them, much as our private enterprises already have to compete for employees.

By 2050, the world’s population will have grown 32%, but the working-age population (15 to 64 years old) will expand just 26%.

The competition will sharpen:

Among advanced countries, the working-age population will shrink 26% in South Korea, 28% in Japan, and 23% in both Germany and Italy….

That competition cannot be based on how many goodies our government can hand out; our existing and unaffordable Progressive/Democrat welfare state is the outcome of that. No, our competitive advantage is, and must be, centered as it always has been, on our individual liberties and the opportunities our freedoms create.

This is a national security matter, too. Absent a growing, vibrant labor force, we won’t have the economic wherewithal to fund a capable military establishment, much less equip it with the technology required to stay globally dominant—or even strong enough to defend us.

Certainly, we need to secure our borders, and we need to do an efficient, prompt job of vetting those we let in. And those we let in do need to either be satisfied with green cards/work permits, or they need to assimilate into American culture as part of their gaining citizenship.

But we must have those immigrants, just as we’ve needed—and gained—them at critical junctures throughout our history.

Political Experience

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As the terrorist threat becomes ever more apparent—Paris, for instance—political experience in a Presidential candidate would seem to be at a premium, according to political…pundits. I agree: given the US’ role in the world, even after President Barack Obama’s seven-year retreat, a retreat actively supported by the Democratic Party, political experience is highly important. Especially with the damage done by that retreat, political experience is highly important. So is an ability to learn policy issues and rationally to form policy and adjust it as empirical data flow in.

Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is often touted as unbeatable in the Democratic primary campaign—she is—and she’s just as often touted (a few too early polls notwithstanding) as virtually unbeatable in the general election. Her political experience is the support for that unbeatability.

Let’s see, then, what are some highlights of her political experience?

  • HillaryCare
  • Bimbo Eruptions
  • For the Iraq War before she was against it (sound familiar?)
  • Successfully passed three Senate bills: created a historic site, named a post office, named a stretch of highway
  • For Keystone XL before she was against it
  • Foreign government “contributions” to her (and her husband’s and daughter’s) Clinton Foundation while sitting in the Secretary of State’s chair
  • Communications security and classified material handling while sitting in the Secretary of State’s chair
  • Libya
  • Benghazi

Clinton has remained steadfast in all of these, save for her flip-flopping on Iraq and Keystone. Especially, she has remained steadfast on Obamacare (née HillaryCare), security matters, Libya, and Benghazi.

She should run on her political experience. The Republican Presidential candidate should run on her political experience.