JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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- English Instructor (Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe)
- Berlitz Japan, Inc. (ベルリッツ・ジャパン株式会社), Kansai
- Salary: ¥125,000 ~ ¥250,000 / Month
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- FT English Teachers for Kids - Osaka
- Kohgakusha Co., Ltd. （株式会社興学社）, Osaka
- Salary: ¥255,000 ~ ¥275,000 / Month Travel Expenses, Encouragement of Japanese learning*
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- Translator
- ZAIHON, Inc. (日本財務翻訳株式会社), Tokyo
- Salary: ¥6.0M / Year Negotiable
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TheQuestion
Pirates can be ideological and terrorists can make money, if you threaten a nation's citizens it should treat them no differently.
And if they keep paying, the pirates keep going after ships because the process works. So either way attacked nations lose, the only thing they can control is whether or not the pirates win. Not paying generates a lose-lose situation which still beats a lose-win in favor of the pirates.
I'm pretty sure not paying for hostages is about the last pressure point that you can press. Once that one is shown to fail and countries start answering pirate demands with deck guns I'm willing to bet their resolve will fade quickly.
No, their jobs just pay next to nothing. There's a difference. Only the weak and depraved turn to crime when things get difficult, I have no sympathy for criminals.
So we shouldn't use the commando squads and ships that we already pay for because it would be cheaper just to pay the millions in ransom?
A soldier is a professional that has been trained for the sole purpose of taking another human being's life when he is called to do so. Why else would a country maintain these well trained soldiers if not to use them to protect their citizens?
Never. Liberate the prisoners that you can and set the pirates ablaze. Kill them whenever and wherever possible with whatever means necessary. Station soldiers on freighters encourage citizens to carry firearms if they're going to be in risk areas. And this is the perfect place to test new weapon systems.
Posted in: U.S. weighs response to Somali pirates' hijacking of yacht with 4 Americans
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TheQuestion
As well they shouldn't. Guaranteeing somebody a job is a ticket to the kind of underperformance that is currently plagueing the state and federal government at all levels. Firings are rarely done willy nilly and if they are in a particular place of business than it should come as no surprise.
Thats how politics work, I'm sure that if the governor's opponent had won they would be sticking it to the unions that didn't support them. It's just another piece of the corruption that inherantly comes with government and unions. Both sacrifice the needs of individuals and those they supposedly serve for their own interests. Union workers are perfectly willing close down services the government has made people dependant on, they feed off of each other and throughout the U.S it's perpetuated a mediocre system.
Posted in: 70,000 protesters surround Wisconsin Capitol
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TheQuestion
And you're point? Nobody wants to be fired or have their salaries reduced (and that's not even the case here, the unions are resisting RAISES set to the inflation index) but if a business or a state is hurting for money cuts have to be made. Whether you think so or not by accepting a job you have decided to invest in the organization you work for, if the place starts failing or you get cut loose then you made a bad investment. Then you move on.
Contrary to popular belief it's not hard to find a job, it's just hard to find a good job. I quite a good paying job a while back because I couldn't stand the conditions and got a job as a security guard for a tenth of my former salary until I earned my current position that I actually like.
Neither, about the same really. It's just human nature to want more and it never stops. We always overvalue our positions from janitors to CEO's and state employees are no different, if anything their sense of entitlement is even higher than average.
That was certainly the case for my union coworkers. They paid us four times the minimum wage to sit in a back room for eight hours a day, change a lightbulb every once in a while, and maybe clean up some vomit. But every single time negotiations came up we fought tooth and nail for even more, and we laughed about it when they met our ridiculous demands half way; thinking they had gotten out easy.
Posted in: 70,000 protesters surround Wisconsin Capitol
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TheQuestion
So union workers get raises tied to inflation, need to contribute to their own pensions, and pay into their insurance plans. That hardly merits the outcry against the measure, the removal of collective bargaining was a long shot though.
But I guess union workers would rather take the layoffs.
I don't care who it is, walking away from your job is pure cowardice. If the voters wanted better wages for state employees they would have voted in democrats, they didn't.
Posted in: 70,000 protesters surround Wisconsin Capitol
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TheQuestion
Um...the U.N has always been useless, it's not exactly a new development. Those resolutions don't even carry any weight when they are passed. The only thing that has any weight is a full on sanction and only a few countries carry the economic weight to pull off something like that and they like having Israel in a well supplied, fighting position.
Posted in: U.S. vetoes U.N. resolution on Israeli settlements
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TheQuestion
If money were the problem it would have already been solved. The U.S spends on average 3 grand more per student than OECD average at the elementary, secondary, and post secondary level and a higher percentage relative to GDP. Heck, most of Europe spends half of what the U.S does on education, and pay their teachers less, and have less facilities yet they consistently outperform the U.S.
Heck, they dropped two billion dollars in Kansas City schools in 1999 as part of Missouri v. Jenkins which, at it's heart, was a noble enough case. They built top of the line computer labs, libraries, increased teacher salaries, streamlined classrooms...and test scores went down, the drop out rate rose, schools failed to meet standards and lost accreditation, and now half of their schools are closing due to underperformance and mismanagement. So money isn't the problem and there are plenty of ideas, government officials and those controlling the schools just won't go through with them.
I'm not talking about learning to read, I'm talking about reading at grade level. Many high school students in the U.S read at a fourth grade level, it is the responsibility of the teachers to ensure students are kept up to speed in their reading. If a student can't keep up he should be kept back a grade, not as a punishment for the student but so that he gains an actual understanding of the material. Instead most teachers pass them along.
When my niece and nephews stayed with me for the summer they were all underperforming in school. After 4 weeks and some mileage put on my library they were up to speed in math and reading, plus they learned how to fill out reconcile bank statements real fast (some call it child labor, I call it enrichment). I shouldn't have had to do that, if they had leaning problems that would be one thing but their schools hadn't even tried.
It's not a scapegoat they aren't solely to blame but they are to blame, the entire system is a failure from the Department of Education as a whole down to district administration, state legislation, school officials, unions, everything is messed up.
Posted in: 14 Wisconsin lawmakers flee state to block anti-union bill
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TheQuestion
Oh and county rather than country in the bit about school choice. Little fidgety on the keyboard, tax season's got me wired on Red Bull and Coffee from 6am-10pm most days.
Posted in: 14 Wisconsin lawmakers flee state to block anti-union bill
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TheQuestion
And who do your think influences the legislature through strikes, protest, and campaign contributions? The teachers unions are a pretty powerful private interest group, oh wait, I forgot. Only greedy corporations and individuals looking out for their own best interests fell into that horrible title.
The entire system of education is broken. Teachers unions block any proposed voucher programs despite their success in other countries, they resist any measure that would make it even marginally easier to remove a teacher from their post, and a disgustingly large number of students are failing to meet even the ridiculously low standards that the state and local boards of education set. Honestly, the number of students reading at grade level is abhorrent and that IS the fault of the teachers. In my own community they recently protested a proposed measure that would switch students from semesters to trimesters and increase their workloads. That got struck down. Another measure would allow students to select what school to go to within the country rather than being locked in by geography. That was also struck down. Forcing teachers to go through evaluations that could result in their firing if underperforming, struck down. Teachers unions are in it for the teachers, not the students.
Mod, please strike my post at 3:00 a.m. Hit the submit button a bit to soon and messed up my quote.
Posted in: 14 Wisconsin lawmakers flee state to block anti-union bill
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TheQuestion
Posted in: 14 Wisconsin lawmakers flee state to block anti-union bill
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TheQuestion
Teachers unions have blocked any attempt to reform the educational system in the U.S for years and the result is generation after generation of idiots that need to play catch up in college or totally lose out to foreign skilled workers.
Compared to what? No, as far as I'm concerned as long as the U.S lags behind most of Europe and Asia the entier educational system in the U.S is a collosal failure. Granted that Wisconsin does better when compared to the U.S average I say that a decent state in a failing country is still a failing state.
Yeah, it says they require an annual vote. Which makes sense, if the people in the union don't want to work in a unionized workplace they shouldn't have to and if they don't want to pay dues they shouldn't have to. They just won't get the benefits of the Union's lawyers and such in case their fired, sounds fair to me.
And I would have loved to vote out my union when I was still in one. 20%, I can't even make this crap up, 20% of my partime wages went to the union and I never once needed to use any of their services. Hell, the actually made it harder for me to make money by capping my hours per day, hours per week, and hours per pay period to 8, 30, 50 respectively and I wasn't allowed to work overtime because they wanted more fulltime workers to have it.
Posted in: 14 Wisconsin lawmakers flee state to block anti-union bill
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TheQuestion
So basically they'd still be getting pay raises at a responcible rate in an economy in which you're lucky if your salary even keeps pace with inflation. That doesn't sound anti-union, more like common sense. Wisconsin public schools suck, those teachers don't deserve a substantial pay raise anyway.
Sounds like a dream. I remember when I was a part time state employee. Every week the union took two hours but by contract I couldn't work more than thirty and most of the time I only worked ten, so twenty percent of my pay often went to the union. Plus I had to pay into the pension fund which I was ineligible for. So with several years of that crap under my belt I can say without hesitation that SEIU Local 517 can burn in hell.
Unions have a time and place, and in most instances it's neither here nor now. Teachers unions cheif among all is probably the most damaging to the U.S through its sabotage of any attempt to improve educational quality.
Posted in: 14 Wisconsin lawmakers flee state to block anti-union bill
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TheQuestion
Good, the Pratt and Whitney F135 is better than anything GE could have put out. Hell, they made it even cheaper than the F119 and provides more thrust.
Posted in: Obama, GOP budget hawks win on fighter jet engine
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TheQuestion
Glad someone has the right idea. Things would get a lot scarier if bulk freighters began firing a ma deuce at those little boats.
Posted in: Norwegian shipper: Kill pirates on the spot
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TheQuestion
Still nope, see earlier post. Worrying doesn't do much good for anything. If the world made sense and people were logical beings we wouldn't need government anyway. Can't cure the crazy, you just have to deal with what they throw at you.
Posted in: World Bank: Food prices at dangerous levels
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TheQuestion
No, still bad. You shouldn't be officially wire tapping your own citizens. I can't, and probably wouldn't, stop the CIA and FBI from doing their own cloak and dagger stuff off the record but don't try to justify it as protecting freedom.
That I'm ok with that part. I'm all for violating the rights of people in other countries, gives me a little more leverage. And it's not like the U.S doesn't do this anyway.
Can't speak for others but I didn't like either of them and I've primarily voted for third party candidates since I first registered. I take great pride in criticizing both presidents. The old one being garbage and the new one being garbage are not mutually exclusive.
Posted in: U.S. Senate votes to extend parts of Patriot Act
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TheQuestion
Nope, Walmarts ratios and return on debt and asset rates are phenomenal and so is its inventory turnover. GE's a little weird but it's returns are generally pretty good and they have their hands all up in Uncle Sam's pockets so the risk is low.
Posted in: World Bank: Food prices at dangerous levels
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TheQuestion
I worked for the IRS for a few years after college, as soon as you realize the government doesn't need to make sense the world becomes much easier to deal with. At the end of the day everything will collapse or it won't and if it does the least of my worries will be how much debt other people have.
Posted in: World Bank: Food prices at dangerous levels
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TheQuestion
And the government pays the farmers a few miles north of me to not farm to keep prices stable.
Posted in: World Bank: Food prices at dangerous levels
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TheQuestion
I guess I'm just jaded from being tailed by police and dealing with a hotel evacuation due to a bomb threat.
Oh I've got no problem with Islam but I do get a little miffed when I'm followed or put in harms way in the ordinary course of business. And to date that only has happened in Islamic states.
To be fair I've never actually been mugged in the Middle East. Europe, and specifically France, holds the most attempted muggings on my person at 12. Though it might have something to do with the aformentioned police following me, not sure.
Posted in: Mubarak quits, hands over power to military
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TheQuestion
As the story fades from prominence in the major news outlets as it undoubtedly will in the coming weeks we should all keep a close watch on this.
Being kidnapped or targeted for execution.
Never base judgment on observations of the best parts of a country, namely the resorts and well maintained tourist attractions. Best advice if you’re a foreigner in the Middle East; grow a beard, keep your eyes down, and wear what everyone else is wearing. Only place in the world my boss is afraid to run his mouth and that, in itself, is a little scary.
Posted in: Mubarak quits, hands over power to military