Yes, that’s career advice courtesy of New York’s Michael Bloomberg: the Big Apple’s media mogul-turned-billionaire mayor who recently led an unsuccessful campaign to ban oversized sugary drinks in his city. Now after making a name for himself as the nanny of Manhattan, Mayor Bloomberg is apparently already considering another career change — this time as guidance counselor.During his weekly radio show on Friday, Bloomberg shared some words with listeners looking for career advice. It’s no secret that jobs are hard to come by nowadays, and the amount of debt brought on by unpaid college loans now surpasses what Americans owe on their credit cards. Mayor Bloomberg offered his input on the issue during last week’s show, and said students who aren’t destined for the top of the class should consider another option that’s not so costly.“The people who are going to have the biggest problem are college graduates who aren’t rocket scientists, if you will, not at the top of their class,” Bloomberg said. “Compare a plumber to going to Harvard College – being a plumber, actually for the average person, probably would be a better deal.”“You don’t spend … four years spending $40,000, $50,000 in tuition without earning income,” the mayor added.Later, Bloomberg explained that some vocational jobs — like plumbing — won’t ever been outsourced overseas or replaced by machines.“It’s hard to farm that out … and it’s hard to automate that,” he said.One day later, the mayor had similar words for the graduating class of Ohio’s Kenyon College. According to Fox News, Bloomberg told graduates on Saturday that “I know that today’s job market is not easy,” and acknowledged, “…today, if I interview a recent college grad who tells me he or she spent the summer curing cancer, bringing peace to the Middle East, and writing the Great American Novel – I’m impressed.Again, however, the mayor said dreams of being successful shouldn’t be dashed just because college isn’t in the cards. “I’m more likely to hire the person who spent his or her summer working days, nights, and weekends for an auto-body shop or a construction company in order to pay tuition or help with family bills,” Bloomberg told the crowd.According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median pay for a manual worker like a plumber in 2010 was roughly $47,000, a good $15,000 a year annually more than other occupational workers pull in. And as MSN pointed out, recent college grads aren’t guaranteed much more than hefty student loans: for 2011 graduates, the average debt went up 5.3 percent from the year before. Bloomberg, on the other hand, was estimated to be worth $27 billion as of this year. … Read More
Diplomat tells Congress Benghazi mission failed to meet critical security standards
A career diplomat told Congress on Wednesday that the US mission in Benghazi in Libya had failed to meet crucial security standards, a deficiency that may have contributed to American deaths last year. Eric Nordstrom, the regional security officer at the US Embassy in Tripoli in the months before…
Stephen Colbert’s Sister Puts a Beatdown on Mark Sanford
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Colbert Busch goes there in debate with Sanford
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Republican Mark Sanford and Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch planned to hit the campaign trail a day after a spirited debate in their race for a vacant congressional seat along the South Carolina coast.”I rocked it,” Colbert Busch said following Monday’s 75-minute debate before an audience of about 500 at The Citadel, which was telecast on C-SPAN. Sanford, a former two-term governor trying to revive a political career damaged by an extramarital affair, said he would let the pundits decide who won.With Election Day just a week away, both have separate appearances Tuesday, then appear before a Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce group on the city’s waterfront before attending a forum sponsored by the Goose Creek NAACP. During both appearances, the candidates will address attendees but won’t debate.They did debate Monday, before a lively audience where supporters frequently broke into shouts or applause.Early on, Colbert Busch, the sister of political satirist Stephen Colbert, reminded Sanford that he once used taxpayer funds to “leave the country for a personal purpose” – referring to the extramarital affair with an Argentine woman he had while governor. In general, Colbert Busch has refused to bring up Sanford’s personal past during the campaign.Continue Reading… … Read More
Russia’s tight-lipped ‘second most powerful man’ named in Time 100 Influential People
The publicity-shy former security agent has been near the top of the Kremlin hierarchy since Putin’s first election win in 2000, but was propelled to the list by the high-profile purchase of TNK-BP by the Russian state-owned giant Rosneft in a cash-plus-shares deal worth about $60 billion last month.“Igor Sechin has always been known as “the expansionist.” While others have been happy skimming profits, Sechin was always about conquest,” writes analyst Vladimir Milov in the magazine.In Time’s list Titans – or business leaders – Sechin sticks out among trendier names like SpaceX founder Elon Musk and Instagram founder Kevin Systrom. But the power he wields is incomparable.The 52-year-old former Deputy Prime Minister and Deputy Chief of the President’s Administration currently occupies no political post, and the latest Forbes list of Russia’s 200 richest men does not have his name on it (though he did make the magazine’s Most Powerful list in 2009). Yet Igor Sechin is frequently named by media insiders as an oil tycoon and the second most influential man in Russia, behind only Putin himself, and ahead of current Prime Minister Dmitriy Medvedev.The former Portuguese-language military interpreter (and alleged Sovet spy in Africa) has spent his entire political career as Putin’s aide, initially in charge of scheduling his daily meetings, as the two worked their way up from the Mayor’s office in St. Petersburg in the early 1990s.Little was publicly known about Sechin when Putin was voted in for his first term, but he became a household name when Mikhail Khodorkovsky accused him of driving the legal process against him and his oil company Yukos in 2004.Following Khodorkovsky’s imprisonment, Yukos was absorbed by Rosneft, a government company several times smaller, where Sechin had been elected as CEO just several months earlier“There was no expropriation,” Sechin explained when questioned on his involvement with Yukos in a rare interview with Wall Street Journal last year.“Yukos left a trail of not just simple violations, but of very grave criminal offenses, such as murders, torture and extortion. The cases were investigated, evidence of the motives of the murders were proved, the criminal weapons were produced.”Since 2004, Rosneft has expanded steadily to employ more than 160,000 people, while making more than $11 billion in profits last year – even before the mega-takeover of TNK-BP.Western observers have frequently portrayed Sechin as ‘Darth Vader’ to Putin’s ‘Emperor’, and the leader of the Siloviki (security forces) faction in the Kremlin. Russian Kremlinologists have presented a more nuanced portrait of an ambitious statist (Sechin has consistently opposed the privatization of government-owned assets) but a man who derives his power from the authority of his boss, rather than some shadowy operator.But whatever his role in Russia’s ruling hierarchy, the one thing that has never been in doubt is Sechin’s fierce loyalty to Putin (himself Time’s Man of the Year in 2007). Throughout their time working together, Sechin was reportedly always the first person to greet Putin when he came into his workplace, and never left before his superior.He staunchly defends Russia’s existing political order.“After the collapse of the USSR, there was instability,” Sechin told the Wall Street Journal. “Now, we have political stability, and it’s one of the highest in the world”Incidentally, the only Russian on the Time 100 list last year was opposition leader Aleksey Navalny. He is currently on trial on charges of embezzling $500,000 dollars’ worth of timber. … Read More
Ex-wife of Mark Sanford claims he trespassed
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford must appear in court two days after running for a vacant congressional seat to answer a complaint that he trespassed at his ex-wife’s home, according to court documents acquired by The Associated Press on Tuesday.The complaint says Jenny Sanford confronted Sanford leaving her Sullivans Island home on Feb. 3 by a rear door, using his cell phone for a flashlight. Her attorney filed the complaint the next day and Jenny Sanford confirmed Tuesday the documents are authentic.The couple’s 2010 divorce settlement says neither may enter the other’s home without permission. Mark Sanford lives about a 20-minute drive away in downtown Charleston.Republican Mark Sanford is trying to revive his political career that was derailed by an extramarital affair that ended the couple’s marriage. He faces Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch on May 7 as he tries to regain the 1st District congressional seat he held for three terms in the 1990s.Spokesman Joel Sawyer said the Sanford campaign had no immediate comment on the court documents.Continue Reading… … Read More
Coding boot camps promise to launch tech careers
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Looking for a career change, Ken Shimizu decided he wanted to be a software developer, but he didn’t want to go back to college to study computer science.Instead, he quit his job and spent his savings to enroll at Dev Bootcamp, a new San Francisco school that teaches students how to write software in nine weeks. The $11,000 gamble paid off: A week after he finished the program last summer, he landed an engineering job that paid more than twice his previous salary.”It’s the best decision I’ve made in my life,” said Shimizu, 24, who worked in marketing and public relations after graduating from the University of California, Berkeley in 2010. “I was really worried about getting a job, and it just happened like that.”Dev Bootcamp, which calls itself an “apprenticeship on steroids,” is one of a new breed of computer-programming school that’s proliferating in San Francisco and other U.S. tech hubs. These “hacker boot camps” promise to teach students how to write code in two or three months and help them get hired as web developers, with starting salaries between $80,000 and $100,000, often within days or weeks of graduation.Continue Reading… … Read More
