Employment

"Our exhibit, Shaping America, explores how the machinists and tool builders of this region's 'Precision Valley' influenced the course of American history, helping drive rapid industrialization, the emergence of the United States as a world power, and the development of our consumer culture. The Tool Revolution tells the story of innovators in Windsor, Vermont, in the 1840s at the forefront of the push to create interchangeable parts and the American System of Manufacturing. more »

"However, by limiting the definition of the student debt problem to those borrowers who are behind or in default, the literature assumes that the remaining thirty-three million borrowers are doing just fine. This perspective is deeply flawed. First, it is certainly not acceptable to write off the financial futures of eleven million people. Second, by defining down what it means to “struggle” to include only those in immediate, documented financial distress, these commentators are ignoring the broader reality of debt-financed higher education. For every borrower who misses a student loan payment or defaults on a debt, there is another borrower who is struggling to buy a home, start a business, or save for retirement due to the burden of their student loans." Seth Frotman, the man who has resigned from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. more »

Rose Madeline Mula writes: The mimeograph machine was another diabolic duplicating device. If we didn't want to get purple ink all over ourselves, instead of using a ditto master, we typed a mimeograph stencil. This was a blue sheet over a stiff backing on which we typed without a typewriter ribbon so that the keys cut through the stencil. If we made a mistake, we coated it with a special white glop, waited for it to dry, and then tried to cut the correct symbols through the glop. Good luck. When the typing and glopping were finished, we wrapped the stencil around the black-ink coated drum of the mimeograph machine and cranked out the required copies. The big advantage of this method was no purple-stained clothes and body parts. We did, however, wind up with black-stained clothes and body parts. more »

"CBP and U.S. Border Patrol developed a methodology for prioritizing future barrier deployments along the entire southwest border, which included input from Border Patrol officials, data on illegal entry traffic, and analysis of operational and engineering feasibility for each potential location. However, the strategy did not include analysis of the costs associated with deploying barriers in each location or segment, which can vary depending on topography, land ownership, and other factors. Without assessing costs, consistent with leading practices for capital decision making, CBP does not have complete information for prioritizing locations to use its resources in the most cost-effective manner."  more »