The military gateway to the middle class is vanishing

2:30 PM class, gateway, middle, military, vanishing No Comments

For many Americans, earning a college degree and buying a house are considered milestones on the path toward a middle-class life. For Ted White, a licensed mental health therapist and proud homeowner, neither of those steps would have been easy, or perhaps even possible, without a career in the Army.

White, 37, grew up in a working class household in Nebraska. He took advantage of the GI bill and the Army College Fund to jumpstart his civilian career after serving in the military in Germany and California from 1994 through 1998. He also credits his military service for enabling him to buy a house in La Vista, Nebraska, where he lives today with his wife and two daughters.

“The VA home loan has helped a lot,” White told The Fiscal Times, referring to a program administered by the Veterans Administration that guarantees a portion of mortgages. “That’s probably one of the biggest benefits since getting out, after the college money.”

White followed a time-honored glide path from humble beginnings to the middle class by enlisting in the military. For generations dating back to World War II, the military has provided unique opportunities to young people to see the world and develop skills and talents that proved to be highly marketable when they left the service.

“Unquestionably the military – and particularly the Army – provided a pathway out of poverty and a hardscrabble life for young people who were drafted against their will and also for young people who volunteered,” said Hugh B. Price, a former president of the National Urban League and author who has studied the socio-economic impact of military service.

“I know this from personal experience when I was growing up in Washington, D.C.,” said Price, who is in his early 70s. “It’s true of young people coming out of inner cities as well as young people living in rural areas across the country.”

Those lifelong benefits will no longer be available to thousands of young Americans if the Obama administration makes good on its plans to sharply cut the Pentagon’s budget. The Defense Department last month proposed shrinking Army troop levels over the next few years to the lowest since World War II.

The current force of 520,000 would be reduced to between 440,000 and 450,000. If across the board cuts under sequestration were subsequently restored, the Army would shrink to 420,000, according to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

In addition to raising concerns about military readiness, the move could impede economic and social mobility for thousands of young men and women at a time when President Obama has vowed to strengthen anti-poverty programs and try to close the gap between the very rich and very poor.

Jay Teachman, a sociology professor at Western Washington University, said research shows that thousands of Americans, particularly those with low incomes, reap the financial benefits from a career in the Army, so long as they receive an honorable discharge.

“Even if they don’t earn more education, they certainly earn more money,” said Teachman, who looked at the relationship between military service and income between 1979 and 2002. “They’re plucked out of communities where they might not have had the same opportunities.”

The GI Bill, introduced and signed into law in 1944, has provided those opportunities to millions of veterans by giving them the financial means to earn a college degree. The program’s popularity peaked shortly after the end of World War II, with vets accounting for 49 percent of college admissions in 1947, according to government figures. The home loan program also got its start in 1944. Many older Army vets also cite their military service as a momentum-builder for later success in the civilian world.

“Almost everything I own or do has to do with military money one way or another,” said Richard Constant, 71, a Vietnam War vet who used the GI Bill to earn an M.B.A. from Fairleigh Dickinson University. Getting that advanced degree, he said, boosted his earning potential, starting with his first job in the insurance field.

“When I was out of the Army I got a job with New York Life,” said Constant, who is retired and lives in Framingham, Massachusetts. “The guy offered me $18,000 a year, and then he sort of looked down and said, ‘Wow, you have a masters. Make that $21,000.’”

Money isn’t the only benefit earned from military service. For many who grew up without a strong family structure, the army provides discipline, training and teamwork – skills and behaviors that are highly valued in the workplace. Veterans have unique strengths, which are highly prized according to military job placement experts. They’re loyal, have a reliable work ethic, are self-disciplined and productive, and have good communication skills. (Many are technologically literate, an advantage in any company.)

Experts caution, however, that the notion of the military as an easy pathway to the middle class can be exaggerated. For example, bitter controversies over the draft and the justification for U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, Operation Desert Storm, and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars left many veterans persona non grata in the market place.

Michael E. O’Hanlon, a defense and foreign policy expert with the Brookings Institution, notes that the size of today’s military relative to the overall population of young adults is much smaller than it was back in the 1950s and early 1960s.

“So if [the military] is a jobs or training program it’s only affecting five percent of the relative demographic, whereas back in the Eisenhower days it might have been more than 20 percent,” O’Hanlon said. “In terms of the broad story that’s an important point to bear in mind.”

Moreover, many of the veterans who returned from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had problems finding work because of serious wounds or mental problems. Some veterans groups complained that employers were discriminating against veterans – fearing that they would be taking on potential problems. Unemployment among the post-9/11 era veterans was 7.9 percent in January, well above the national average of 6.6 percent and higher than the overall unemployment rate among veterans of 5.6 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A 2003 University of California-Berkeley doctoral thesis by Catherine N. Barry explored the question of whether the children of immigrants who served in the U.S. military benefited from a later-life trajectory in their education and earnings.

“An empirical investigation of post-military educational and labor market outcomes reveal that military service does not uniformly benefit veteran children of immigrants as they may have hoped,” Barry wrote.

Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Youth and other research shows that veteran children of immigrants are less likely to acquire bachelor degrees and are less likely to be enrolled in post-secondary schools than non-veterans by the ages of 24 to 32, Barry reported. But unemployment and earnings are similar between veteran and non-veteran children of immigrants.

Other experts saw the value of military service in getting ahead. The benefits of military service on future job prospects are supported by research from Charles Moskos who was dubbed the “dean of military sociologists” before his death in 2008. Moskos, who was a professor at Northwestern University, noted that rising military pay helped make the armed services competitive with some civilian jobs, promoting more of a professional atmosphere.

The reductions in troop levels proposed by Hagel and the administration will mean lower-income Americans are unlikely to make the leap to the middle class, according to Teachman of Western Washington University. “Their unemployment rates are going to be much higher,” he said. “They’re going to filling lower-income occupations.”

“I can’t see a good Plan B for these people,” he added. “They’re going to get left behind.”

Read More

Unemployed vote split down the middle

2:30 PM middle, split, Unemployed No Comments

Steve Liesman , CNBC

In an election that was supposed to be about jobs, jobs and jobs, the unemployed vote appears to be a dead heat.

In an exclusive look at how the unemployed will likely vote, CNBC found 26 percent of the public report either they or someone in their household has lost a job in the past four years.

But this group splits 48 percent to 48 percent in their presidential choice, similar to the broader population, which splits 48 percent to 47 percent for President Obama.

If the respondent was unemployed, the break is 50 percent for Obama vs. 45 percent for Republican challenger Mitt Romney. If only a person in the household lost a job (not the individual respondent), the split is 51 percent for Romney vs. 48 percent for Obama.

With a 7.9 percent unemployment rate in October, Obama stands for reelection with the highest jobless rate of any president in the post-war era.

Of the four other incumbents who ran with unemployment rates above 7 percent — Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, GHW Bush and Ronald Reagan — only Reagan won back the White House.

Significantly, while the unemployment rate under Reagan was 7.4 percent in the October before the election, it had fallen 1.4 percentage points in the prior 12 months.

Under Obama, unemployment has fallen by 1 percentage point in the past year.

The data raises several questions that can only be answered by actual election results, including whether the change in the unemployment rate is more or equally important than the level of joblessness.

It could be that the positive momentum in the rate, added to the power of the incumbency, is sufficient to keep Obama in the White House. It could equally be that the high level of unemployment is a key factor in winning Romney the job.

However, the split support among the unemployed suggests Romney was not overwhelmingly successful in winning the support of those who have personally experienced joblessness. That could be because his message on jobs was not strong enough or because other factors — race, political leaning and especially income level — were more important.

The demographics of the unemployed skew slightly less white than the broader population. But it’s hard to attribute the split among the unemployed to ethnicity.

White voters overall break 57 percent to 38 percent for Romney. White voters who have experienced unemployment break 57 percent to 42 percent for Romney, which is not a statistically meaningful difference. But it shows that Romney was not successful in gaining significantly more support among whites who have experienced unemployment compared to those who have not.

Of course, the actual election results will almost certainly differ significantly from the polls and it could turn out that unemployment is the front-burner issue it was cracked up to be. Indeed, other polls have shown that for the broader voting population, jobs is a key factor in presidential choice.

How the poll was conducted: The poll, conducted in conjuction with another survey, was based on 1,000 likely voters conducted Nov. 2-3 by Hart-McInturff, a Republican and Democratic polling organization.

Read More

Middle class, whatever it is, targeted by candidates

5:30 AM candidates, class, middle, targeted, whatever No Comments

What is the middle class, anyway? There's no official definition, but Americans and their leaders seem to know it when they see it.

And after five tough years of a recession and slow economy, there's plenty of evidence that fewer people see a middle-class life when they look in the mirror.

“You can’t define middle class, but you can ask people, ‘Do you still feel middle class?’ And more and more people don’t,” said Tim Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin.

Still, as election season heats up, that’s not stopping many politicians from promising to help the middle class, whoever they may be.

"The whole attraction of middle class … is it doesn’t mean anything," said Dennis Gilbert, a sociology professor at Hamilton College who studies class issues. "Middle class means anybody who might vote for you."

The focus on the middle class starts at the top of the ticket, where President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney have both repeatedly invoked the middle class in their quest to win the presidency next month.

Obama told voters during last week's debate that he cut taxes for middle-class families “because I believe that we do best when the middle class is doing well.”

Then he questioned whether Romney had the same dedication to the middle class.

“And at some point, I think the American people have to ask themselves, is the reason that Governor Romney is keeping all these plans to replace secret because they're too good? Is it -- is it because that somehow middle-class families are going to benefit too much from them?” Obama said, according to a transcript provided by the Commission on Presidential Debates.

Romney argued that Obama’s policies have hurt the middle class and would continue to do so.

“There's no question in my mind that if the president were to be re-elected you'll continue to see a middle-class squeeze with incomes going down and prices going up,” he said during the debate. “I'll get incomes up again.”

The traditional political focus on the middle class comes as fewer people feel like they’re still part of it. A Pew Research Center report this year found that 49 percent of people define themselves as middle class, down from 53 percent from four years ago.

“Statistically, that’s a significant shift, but beyond statistics it feels right,” said Rich Morin, a senior editor with Pew Research Center. “It’s been a tough four years.”

In fact, Morin said, Americans’ sense of how the middle part of the economic spectrum is doing is surprisingly accurate. The polling data on whether Americans feel like they are still part of the middle class matches well with the researchers’ economic data on median income in the United States, which has fallen in recent years after adjusting for inflation.

Still, experts say the term middle class has a cultural connotation that goes beyond the number on your paycheck or tax stub.

Kevin Leicht, director of the Iowa Social Science Research Center at the University of Iowa, said many Americans think of a middle-class life as being one in which you have a stable job, own your own home and occasionally buy something substantial like a new car. You also either went to college or have the aspiration of sending your children to college.

Beyond that, he said, the term middle class invokes the type of person who gets married and has kids, pays their bills on time, doesn’t get in trouble with the law and maybe goes to church.

“In the United States, it’s probably more of a cultural category than an economic one,” he said.

He thinks Americans’ affinity for the middle class also comes partly from a natural suspicion for both the richest and the poorest Americans. Audacious wealth has traditionally been frowned upon in this country, he said, while there’s also often a fear-based bias against people who are poor.

“Because a lot of us are two missed paychecks away from being in exactly the same position, we have to act like there’s something systematically wrong with people who are in that position,” Leicht said.

The sense of a shrinking middle class also comes amid evidence that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, discouraging many Americans.

“They are aware that economic inequality is growing. And a majority – a substantial majority – say it’s a bad thing,” Morin said. “Everyone aspires to be upper class, but people are aware that as more Americans move up into the upper class, more Americans are moving down, and that’s not a good thing.”

The big question now is whether Americans’ discouraged attitudes about the middle class will change if the economic recovery starts to pick up.

In general, experts say that history would show that Americans will grow more optimistic about the middle class, and the American dream, as economic conditions improve. But, they note, this recession and weak recovery has been different from any other we’ve experienced in recent decades, and the future remains uncertain.

“I’m sure a strong recovery would help, but that’s a ways off,” Smeeding said. “Our standard of living is lower now than it was in 2006.”

Readers, how do you define a middle class life and do you think you are living it? Send me an e-mail, including contact information, and and we’ll use some of your responses in an upcoming story.

Mitt Romney's campaign has released a new ad suggesting President Obama would raise taxes on the middle class. Vice President Joe Biden went on the defensive saying the president would raise taxes, but not on the middle class. The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson joins a Friday wrap-up analyzing the first presidential debate of 2012.

Read More

Green Mountain classifies Chair in the Middle has jump

11:00 PM Chair, classifies, Green, middle, Mountain No Comments

Green Mountain Coffee also removed its Chairman and lead member of their titles on Tuesday, had they say a jump in the share price margin violated trade domestic politics after forced similar share sales.

Shares of Green Mountain, which serve Keurig single coffee brewer fell nearly 4 percent in Nachborslicher trade, exacerbates the problems of the company in the course of the last week of catastrophic results report. Green Mountain has plunged 47 percent in the past four days at $4.10 billion market value.

Founder and Chairman, Robert Stiller, said the company, and lead director William Davis were forced 5.55 million sell green mountain shares on May 4 and may 7 requirements of margin call, to a time when trading by insiders through enterprise policy was banned.

"The Executive Board was informed of this trading activities, it quickly moves to investigate and deal with this issue," said Green Mountain in a statement.

Decided that Committee to submit their positions on the Board and their roles was in the best interest of the company and the shareholders for Stiller and Davis, said the Board.

Still, they are not preserved for Management Board members but future payment as directors until further notice. Asked why she isn't off came from the Board, said a spokeswoman, that the Board was certainly taken given the circumstances of 'appropriate measures'.

The Board also demanded that all outstanding margin loans Stiller and Davis until end of this year to settle.

Quiet and Davis sold their Green Mountain shares to margins to investment accounts, where she had borrowed against their businesses.

If the value of this investment falls and an investor can cover not the edge, can a broker operated force the liquidation of some of the investor.

The broker in the case Stiller was Deutsche Bank.

INTERIM CHAIRMAN

Michael Mardy, chief financial officer of Tumi Holdings Inc., to serve as interim of President was named during Hinda Miller, a Senator from Vermont, Chair of the governance and Nominating Committee.

The governance and Nominating Committee will verify the Management Board of structure and composition.

Green Mountain said margin calls matches sold 400,000 shares of Davis' brokerage account last Friday were, and were more 148.000 shares on Monday. Silent account sold 5 million shares on Monday to meet margin calls, said he.

The company said these crafts were outside the window if insider trading are admitted, but it declined to specify the data of the window. Green Mountain reported quarterly results last Wednesday.

Green Mountain accused also Davis Enterprise policy by pledging of approx. 204.000 new shares to violate his margin loan after 1 January this year. Green Mountain had revised its trade policy to ban, new margin accounts and pledges of shares in December 2011.

January 26 Stiller had more than 12.5 million shares in the margin accounts, or as security, to various financial institutions as collateral for one or more loan pledged according to a previous company file. The Stiller was more than 78 percent of the total holdings in the company at this point-just under 16 million shares.

Asked why green mountain of allows Stiller so used the spokeswoman said: "Mr Stiller and Mr. Davis their own decisions make about their personal finances."

The latest stock sale of Stiller, the Green Mountain was founded in 1981, cuts his stake in the company by a third to about 6 percent, according to data from Thomson Reuters.

(C) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2012.

Read More

IMF Director new appointments in the middle of sex charges

3:09 AM appointments, charges, Director, middle No Comments

NEW YORK - Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigned as head of the International Monetary Fund, the IMF said in a statement issued Wednesday as he faced charges of sexual games and attempted rape in New York. Silver prices settle, but sales continue to soar Pakistan looks east to 'good friend' China red tape: IRS snafu means refunds in limbo foreclosure flood may not have crested yet first thoughts: Mitt Romney's good week converting currency on Google can lead to malware why we can't pry our eyes from celeb gossip sites

"I deny with the greatest possible firmness all of the allegations that have been made against me," Strauss-Kahn said in his letter of resignation, released by the IMF.

He said the resignation came with "infinite sadness" but was needed to protect the IMF, "which I have served with honor and devotion."

"I think at this time first of my wife - whom I love more than anything - of my children, of my family, my friends."

"I think that of my colleagues at the Fund;" "together we have accomplished such great things over the last three years and more."

He said he would'nt "devote all my strength, all my time, and all my energy to proving my innovative."

The IMF said John Lipsky would'nt remain the institution's acting managing director and that its executive board will soon reveal the process of replacing Strauss-Kahn.

The hotel maid accusing Strauss-Kahn of trying to rape her "has not had a moment of peace" since their encounter made international headlines, her lawyer said Wednesday.

The woman, a 32-year-old immigrant from the west African nation of Guinea, was to testify before a grand jury sometime Wednesday about the incident at a penthouse suite at a luxury hotel in midtown Manhattan, lawyer Jeffrey Shapiro said on NBC's TODAY.

"This is a woman who is a rape victim - the victim of a physical assault - who since this has taken place and since she has reported it to security at the hotel, has not had a moment of peace." She's not been able to return home. "She's not been able to seek any help," said Shapiro, a New York City personal injury lawyer.

She has gone into hiding polyamide fears for her family's safety, he said.

The woman is a widow with a 15-year-old daughter. They moved to New York from Guinea about seven years ago, Shapiro said.

"She came from a part of the world where laws were few and far between and that readily available, at least justice wasn't to people without means," Shapiro told TODAY. "When she found out that this encounter that she had had was with a man of great power and wealth, she fears not only for herself but maybe more importantly her daughter."

Prosecutor have accused Strauss-Kahn, 62, of attacking the maid Saturday afternoon when she entered his suite at the Sofitel Hotel, apparently unaware it what occupied, to clean it.

Video: IMF chief on suicide watch at NYC jail (on this page)

Prosecutor allege Strauss-Kahn attempted to rape her and then, when unsuccessful, forced her to perform oral sex on him.

Strauss-Kahn, one of France's most high-profile politicians who what a potential candidate for president in next year's elections, through his lawyers has denied any wrongdoing. He is being held under suicide watch in a jail at Rikers Iceland on charges of a criminal sexual act, attempted rape, sexual abuse, unlawful imprisonment and forcible touching. He was denied bail on Monday and is due to reappear in court on Thursday for another bail hearing.

In court papers filed Wednesday, Strauss-Kahn's attorneys proposed posting $1 million cash bail and confining him to the home of his daughter, Camille, a Columbia University graduate student, 24 hours a day with electronic monitoring.

Strauss-Kahn "is a loving husband and father, and a highly regarded diplomat, politician, lawyer, politician, economist and professor, with no criminal record," his attorneys said in court papers.

The attorneys had proposed similar conditions at on earlier bail hearing but added the promise of home detention Wednesday. Manhattan prosecutors did not immediately comment on the bail motion. The hearing what set for 2: 15 p.m. Thursday. Another hearing had been set for Friday, the deadline for Prosecutor to indict Strauss-Kahn.

He faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted.

Shapiro said his client was told by a friend a day after the incident that the man she had accused of attacking her what Strauss-Kahn.

"She feels that she can't go home," Shapiro said, adding that his client felt "scared" and "incredulous" after learning his identity.

Shapiro dismissed suggestions that the woman had made up the charges or tried to cover up a consensual encounter.

"There which nothing consensual about what took place in that hotel room," he told TODAY.

Investigators on Wednesday cut out a piece claim of carpet in a painstaking search for DNA evidence that could corroborate the maid's, law enforcement officials said.

New York detectives and prosecutors believe the carpet may contain Strauss-Kahn's semen, spat out after in episode of forced oral sex, the officials said, speaking to the associated press on condition of anonymity.

Story: Questions, answers about Dominique Strauss-Kahn

In addition to examining the Sofitel hotel suite for further potential DNA evidence, they were looking at the maid's keycard to determine whether she used it to enter the room, and how long she was there, officials said.

' No. agenda'
Earlier, Shapiro told Reuters that after the woman "escaped from the room, she reported it to security, the New York City police were called, they interviewed her, they investigated the scene."

"She has no agenda in this other than to answer the questions that are asked of her, to tell the truth," he said.

Story: IMF chief a 'honey trap' victim? Conspiracy theories swirl

The woman, who is not a U.S. citizen but says she has a visa to work in the U.S., has a limited education and experience, but had worked hard to obtain her job as a maid at the Sofitel, Shapiro said.

Field for new IMF chief thins Strauss-Kahn released pending trial NYT: sexual 'pirates' prowled IMF for women the two faces of Dominique Strauss-Kahn essay: when powerful men cross the line

Her identity has been withheld in U.S. media publications, in accordance with standard journalistic practice. But media outlets in France, where from, Strauss-Kahn is began reporting her name Tuesday.

Among the outlets to identify the woman by name are Paris match, the Swiss newspaper Tribune de Geneve and Slate.fr, the radio station RMC according to slate.com. (Slate.fr is a French website that is editorially independent from slate, although slate does own 15 percent of it.)

Story: Essay: when powerful men cross the line

Slate.fr, citing relative group of ethnic of the accuser, said the woman was from the Fulani and a Muslim.

"She is a good Muslim." "She is really pretty, like many Fulani women, but in our culture, not accept this type we do of aggression," a cousin of the woman told slate.fr.

Story: IMF chief's arrest may speed up succession battle

The New York Times reported she was granted asylum seven years ago.

The woman phoned her older brother in New York about an hour after the alleged sexual assault and said, "somebody has done something really bad to me." "I've been attacked," Britain's daily mail reported Tuesday.

"No. family should have to go through this," the woman's brother told the newspaper. "She is a hard-working woman who is just a victim." "She is a wonderful West African immigrant who just wants to work hard."

NBC News, the associated press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Read More