• Unemployment among post-9/11 veterans still running heavy

    By Bill Briggs, NBC News contributor

    The unemployment rate among younger veterans continues to outpace the share of out-of-work civilians with nearly one in 10 ex-service members from the Iraq and Afghanistan eras hunting for jobs, according to figures released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    Younger male veterans are dragging a collective unemployment rate of 9 percent, compared to 7.6 percent in February 2012. Younger female veterans, who have faced far stiffer challenges grabbing civilian paychecks, posted an unemployment rate of 11.6 percent last month versus 7.4 percent at this time last year, the BLS said. 


    In raw numbers, 203,000 post-9/11 veterans were unemployed in February. One year ago that number totaled 154,000. Their overall unemployment rate was 9.4 percent in February. The U.S. unemployment rate last month was 7.7 percent, the Labor Department reports.

    “The problem of veteran unemployment should be seen as a national disgrace,” said Cleve Geer, national commander of AMVETS, a nonprofit veterans' organization.

    Many of those men and women possess — literally — battle-hardened skills, if not the ability to work under fire, yet some employers seem unable or unwilling to transfer those strengths into civilian jobs, veterans groups say.

    “It’s hard for me to believe that a guy can drive a truck in combat but he can’t drive one on the highways. I mean, what the hell is that all about?” said John E. Hamilton, commander in chief of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. “You’ve got a (medical) corpsman out there in field with Marines doing everything short of open-heart surgery but he can’t be an EMT when he gets home. Are you kidding me?”

    Yet the veteran-jobless rate soon may spike as sequestration forces federal agencies to hack budgets.

    “That's definitely sending shockwaves around our community,” said Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq War veteran and founder and CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a nonprofit advocacy group representing more than 200,000 members.

    “One third of our members work in government some place. A lot are at the TSA, the Pentagon, and Homeland Security, working as civilians,” Rieckhoff said. “We also have a lot working in the contracting space.”

    'Everybody's worried'
    Among the 20 U.S. companies that hire and retain the most veterans — as ranked by G.I. Jobs — seven of those businesses cater strongly or even entirely to military personnel or federal agencies, including Booz Allen, a management consulting firm that holds contracts with the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Transportation.

    “Those (contracting) jobs for veterans are definitely going to be cut back some,” said Bob Tanner, a federally employed systems analyst and former Marine corporal who served in Iraq. He was unemployed from August 2006 until February 2007 after leaving the military. “There’s still a huge gap (in veteran-versus-civilian employment). But I think that gap is going to continue to grow if there’s a lot of layoffs.”

    Added Rieckhoff: “In our population, everybody’s worried.”

    In late February, however, his organization partnered with Futures Inc. and Cisco to launch an online employment tool called Career Pathfinder, which Rieckhoff vows, “can be the fuel injection that gets us to deeper impacts.” The free site helps translate specialized military skills to civilian jobs. It provides thousands of active job listings from employers who want to hire veterans as well as resume-building help and a career-mapping tool.

    For months, though, the employment landscape has become increasingly laced with online tools meant to connect veterans to jobs, including VetNet, rolled out last November by Google and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s “Hiring Our Heroes” program. Is this the innovation that finally breaks the stubborn logjam?

    “We hope so. It’s definitely got tremendous potential," Rieckhoff said.

    The blueprint, he added: “is taking what normally happens at a career job fair and using technology to do all that at greater scale. If you think about the overall numbers (of post-9/11 veterans), you’re talking about a couple hundred thousand people who are unemployed. So if we can get a couple thousand employed from this program, we can make a real dent.” 

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  • Top corporations lobby Supreme Court to support gay marriage

    By Lawrence Hurley and Aruna Viswanatha, Reuters

    WASHINGTON -- More than 200 businesses on Wednesday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a federal law that restricts the definition of marriage to heterosexual unions, in one of corporate America's most prominent efforts to support same-sex marriage.

    The companies signed on to a friend-of-the-court brief in Windsor v. United States, a high-profile case challenging the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). They ranged from technology giants Microsoft Corp and Google Inc to Wall Street financiers such as Citigroup Inc and Goldman Sachs Group Inc to vineyards and yogurt makers in California.

    Thomson Reuters Corp, which owns the Reuters news agency, also supported the submission.

    The companies want the Supreme Court to void a key provision in the federal law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. They largely stayed away from constitutional arguments attacking the law and instead focused on the business nuisance the law created.

    DOMA forces employers to treat employees with same-sex spouses differently from those with opposite-sex partners, the companies said, depriving gay employees of certain healthcare and retirement benefits that may be on offer. The law also creates headaches for human resources officials, they said.

    "HR departments would tell you it is a disaster trying to deal with DOMA when you are a large employer, because you have these employees who are legally married, but now you've got to put them in a different box for W-2s, for ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act), for retirement benefits, and it's really vexing," said Sabin Willett in an interview. Willett wrote the brief for his law firm, Bingham McCutchen, which handled the matter pro bono.

    Separately, lawyers representing another group of employers, including some of the same companies, said they planned to file a brief on Thursday in a related case that questions a California law, known as Proposition 8, banning gay marriage.

    The two cases are to be argued before the Supreme Court on March 26 and 27. A decision is expected by the end of June.


    While corporate America has long offered domestic partnership benefits and made efforts to attract gay employees, the filing seemed to represent a new step in an effort to promote the issue.

    "It is old news that big business is friendly to lesbian and gay unions," said Yale law professor William Eskridge, who has argued on behalf of gay rights. "But there has never been a business brief quite like this one with so many signatories on such a landmark issue," he said.

    A group of prominent Republicans, including former advisers to President George W. Bush, are also expected to file a brief challenging the California law, adding heft to backers of gay rights.

    The arguments appeared directed at Justice Anthony Kennedy, as a moderate and potential swing vote, to show the kind of wide support that exists, Eskridge said.

    'HURTING BUSINESS'

    The brief grew out of a previous effort to represent business interests in another case challenging the DOMA law, according to Willett.

    That case brought together some 70 companies that felt courts may not have understood the full business impact of the law.

    "When people talk about DOMA, they usually, and rightly so, focus on its impact upon human beings ... but people may not realize, and courts may not realize, this thing is hurting business, too," Willett said.

    In the brief filed on Wednesday, the companies argued that DOMA "requires that employers treat one employee differently from another, when each is married, and each marriage is equally lawful."

    DOMA does not create any uniformity nationwide, they said, because 12 states either authorize same-sex marriage or recognize marriages that have been performed in other states.

    That creates a burden for employers, particularly those who do business nationally, they added.

    The law also forces companies to discriminate, sometimes in contravention of their own internal policies and local laws, when dealing with healthcare plans and other benefits, the companies said.

    In briefs already filed in support of restricting marriage to heterosexual unions, business interests have not been represented. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has not taken a stand on the issue.

     

    Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

  • Google launches new site to guide veterans into civilian work force

    By Bill Briggs, NBC News contributor

    Google is aiming its search-engine horsepower at homecoming veterans, launching Thursday what may be the largest online hub to help men and women exiting the military as American armed forces draw down.

    Called VetNet, the site offers veterans three distinct “tracks” to plot and organize their next life moves – from “basic training” which aids job hunters to “career connections” which links users to corporate mentors and other working veterans to “entrepreneur” which offers a roadmap to starting a business.


    To arm the new site with some heavy-hitting experts, Google partnered with three leading nonprofits in the veteran-employment space: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Hiring Our Heroes program, the Institute for Veterans and Military Families, and Hire Heroes USA.

    “We asked: What else can we be doing with our technology to help these folks transition home?” said Carrie Laureno, founder of the Google Veterans Network, the company’s employee-volunteer community which seeks to make Google a military-friendly work environment.

    “We wanted to really move the needle in the right direction. And working with our three partners, we asked: What can we do together to help you reach more people?” Laureno said. “How do we help these millions of people who are in this situation get the resources they need (to land civilian jobs) in a much easier, more straightforward way that’s ever been possible before?”

    After clicking a button to connect with VetNet, users gain access to a weekly snapshot of “what’s happening” in the veteran-employment arena as well as to a ready group of business advisers and to an ongoing array of virtual “hangouts” that train people on basics from resume writing to making “elevator pitches” or that allow veterans to hear insights from leaders in retail, transportation, retail and entrepreneurship, Laureno said.

    The venture drew a favorable review Thursday from a key congressional member.

    “I am especially pleased to see companies like Google and their partners take the initiative to bring together these various resources to help veterans navigate the employment opportunities together,” said Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.

    Click here for more military-related coverage from NBC News.

    “I am confident their combined efforts will be especially helpful to those who may not know where to start their job search. This is the least we can all do for our veterans who have served our nation so honorably,” Miller said in an email.

    Miller’s words hint at the fresh irony of post-war life for thousands of ex-service members: Their initial challenge is not a lack of help; it is the over-abundance of nonprofits seeking to guide veterans from their once-super-structured schedules and tight packs of buddies to the wide-open, ultra-competitive job market.

    According to an April 2012 study by the Center for a New American Security, more than 40,000 nonprofit groups now exist in this country with missions focused on filling the various needs of active-duty troops, veterans and their families.

    That giant-yet-fragmented bundle of organizations — while striving to do well by veterans — must also battle for the same funding dollars. And that jostling hasn’t fostered a cohesive landscape for veterans to navigate as they begin their new career journeys, Laureno said. Given that mish-mash of helping hands, some veterans simply don’t know where to go first. 

    “I’ve heard occasionally people (in the veteran-helping field) use the word ‘competitors.’ They are competing for funds. They are competing for awareness. They are competing to be in the spotlight,” Laureno said. “It’s also a well-documented issue in this community that there are some people, just like anything else, who got involved because wanted to help but that emerged as sort of looking for press.

    “The founding partners here are not of that ilk. These are partners who have stuck with their original mission, who are focused on getting the help out to the people who need it, and who recognize that technology can help them take that help to a completely different level than ever before possible,” she added.

    Google and VetNet are hoping to attract new partners from that sea of 40,000 groups. But they’re still hammering out the best ways to assess prospective collaborators — and their larger intensions — before they are invited to join, Laureno said.

    “That’s one of the biggest challenges all of us are facing in this issue, and that’s why there has been this proliferation of 40,000-plus (veterans organizations),” she said. “We are going to need to have a some sort of vetting process. That is something the partners are working on right now: What will be the criteria they use to judge who comes on board and who doesn’t?

    “Anyone who would like to get involved, who has effective services, and who is willing to make the commitment to providing them on this platform who will be supportive of the community, they’re all welcome,” she added. “But if somebody wants to advertise on a one-off basis about their particular program, this probably isn’t the right place for them.”

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  • Blind driver takes Google car for a spin

    A video released by Google shows Steve Mahan, who is 95 percent blind, behind the wheel of its experimental self-driving car.

     

    By Dan Carney, msnbc.com contributor

    A blind guy driving a car? That was the latest step in Google's two-year-old program to develop a self-driving car.

    A video released last week on YouTube shows Steve Mahan, who is almost totally blind, behind the wheel of a Toyota Prius, running errands to Taco Bell and the dry cleaners.

    "Look Ma, no hands, and no feet!" Mahan says as the car steers autonomously along a carefully planned route. "This is some of the best driving I've ever done."

    Google announced its self-driving car project in 2010, building on research started by a Stanford University that won a $2 million Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency challenge.

    Although the Google demonstration followed a preplanned route, it shows the potential for such cars to work without extensive preparation, said spokesman Jay Nancarrow. But he said the company was not prepared to detail the vehicle's capabilities and limitations.

    Autonomous cars outfitted with radar and laser sensors like the Prius would be liberating to people such as Mahan, who cannot drive on his own. “Where this would change my life would be to give me the independence and the flexibility to go to the places I both want to go and need to go, when I need to do those things,” Mahan said after his day in the car, which took place in January.

    Even those without vision loss could benefit from the automation of driving because  computer-controlled cars would be able to drive in close formation to increase the traffic capacity of existing roads, said Google project leader Sebastian Thrun. This would save Americans 4 billion hours of wasted time and 2.4 billion gallons of gasoline, he estimated.

    Thrun spoke at the TED conference last year about his personal motivation to develop a self-driving car. “As a boy I loved cars,” he said.  “When I turned 18 I lost my best friend to a car accident. Then I decided I would dedicate my life to saving 1 million people every year."

    Tangi Quemener / AFP/Getty Images

    Junior, a 2006 Volkswagen Passat, heavily modified and robotized by a team of Stanford University, crosses the finish line in first place of the DARPA Grand Challenge on Nov. 3, 2007, in Victorville, Calif.

    His effort started with Stanley, a Volkwagen station wagon outfitted with sensors, which in 2005 was the first vehicle to complete DARPA’s challenge course.

    “Since then our work has focused on building cars that can drive anywhere by themselves,” he said.

    “Our cars have sensors with which they magically can see everything around them and make decisions about every aspect of driving. It is the perfect driving mechanism. We’ve driven in cities, like in San Francisco here. We’ve driven from San Francisco to Los Angeles on Highway 1.  And even crooked Lombard Street in San Francisco.”

    Another video shows the Google autonomous Prius ripping through a snaking course of orange cones in a parking lot. This capability suggests the autonomous car need not proceed at the pace of a driver's ed student. 

    Finally drivers would be able to focus on things they’ve already shown are more important to them than watching the road, like talking on the phone, texting friends, checking Facebook, eating and personal grooming. Maybe they could watch the YouTube video of the blind guy in the driver's seat.

     

  • 'Romney' means defecate? Candidate facing a Santorum search problem

    By Bob Sullivan, Columnist, NBC News

    It appears that Mitt Romney now has a Rick Santorum Internet-age problem.

    Recall that Web users who search for "Santorum" using a tool like Google are immediately confronted with a parody site that offers a faux definition of the word "santorum" which is not suitable for work or polite conversations.  Within the past few weeks, enterprising Romney-haters have pulled off the same trick, albeit at a slightly less tasteless level.

    Searching for Romney using Google now yields a page defining the term Romney as "to defecate in terror" within the first five links or so, reports Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand.com.  (Go ahead, try it for yourself).

     

    Clicking on the site brings visitors to a Web site called "SpreadingRomney.com" which echoes the SpreadingSantorum.com site.  The page repeats the definition and links to a story about Romney's ill-fated family vacation that include a lengthy trip with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car.

    "I don’t recall seeing it recently, so it appears to be a new gain,"  Sullivan wrote in a blog post about it.

    The rise is unusually meteoric, and almost certainly signifies a concentrated effort to game Google's ranking system. In fact, Sullivan uncovered a page at DemocraticUnderground.com encouraging people to "Google Bomb" the SpreadingRomney site.

    (Geeks would say this technique isn't, strictly speaking, a Google bomb. But it certainly must feel like one to the Romney camp).

    The site launched on Jan. 10, site creator Jack Shepler told Sullivan. He also said he's not affiliated with any campaign, and created the site just to be funny, "and to make a point."

    It got a boost when msnbc's Rachel Maddow mentioned it during her show two days later, but that hardly justifies the high Google ranking. SpreadingSantorum has been around for years, has attracted thousands of links the old-fashioned way, and the site offers real points of debate about gay rights debate.  SpreadingRomney.com is hardly more than a blank page, yet still managed to fool Google and Microsoft's Bing. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

    We've discussed earlier how political entities can trick search engines, and why Google seems to let this go on as a form of political speech.

    Sullivan supports that concept, but the quick rise of SpreadingRomney.com might be changing his mind a bit.

    "For this site to leap-frog ... others, it creates all the same issues that Google initially encountered with real Google bombs, the impression that anyone can fire off a linking campaign and make it into the top results for anything," he said. "Certainly Google should take a harder look at why its algorithm rewarded a site with so little substance to it."

     

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