Free Republic

SEATTLE - The former CEO of two Bellevue tech firms was sentenced Friday to more than seven years in federal prison for a sophisticated visa fraud scheme that cheated workers out of their wages and cheated the government out of over $1 million in taxes. Pradyumna Kumar Samal, 50, a citizen of India, then used the illegally obtained cash to enrich himself and fund a luxurious lifestyle, court records show. Samal was arrested in August 2018 when he arrived on an international flight at Sea-Tac Airport and has been in custody ever since his arrest. At the sentencing hearing U.S....

Uber will refuse to comply with a new bill passed in California Wednesday that says they must reclassify their drivers as employees rather than contractors, arguing that drivers aren’t core to its ride-share business model. Known as AB-5, the bill requires companies in the state - such as Lyft and Uber - to treat workers as employees by providing them with the full benefits and protections the designation necessitates. Under the motion’s terms, the title of employee must be issued to any worker the company exerts control over in terms of performance of their task, or if the role carried...

Feminists on social media have started a campaign called "give your money to women," or "Giveyourmoneytowomen" on Twitter. The point of the campaign is that, according to its creators, men benefit from numerous privileges, including the patriarchy and earning more money than females. For that reason, men should literally give money to women for no other reason than that they are female. Here are just some of the tweets being bandied about on social media:

Ever heard of Electronics for Imaging? We hadn't either until this morning, but it's apparently a multimillion dollar, multinational, public corporation based out of Fremont, California. And the United States Department of Labor just caught EFI red-handed in an investigation, which found that "about eight employees" were flown in from India to work 120-hour weeks for $1.21 per hour. EFI apparently thought it was okay to pay the employees the same wages they'd be paid in India (in Indian rupees). Here's the unbelievably crazy sounding quote EFI gave to NBC's Bay Area affiliate: "We unintentionally overlooked laws that require even...

My wife and I are in our mid fifties. We are grandparents. We have tried to play by the rules. Yesterday, I came home from lunch to find his and her notices in our mailbox from the IRS. The fiends have recalculated our income from a few years back and now suddenly want over 21,000 dollars in fees and penalties. They don't even audit you anymore. They just recalculate and demand payment. This is how they operate. So if this thing is worked out, we will pay five hundred bucks a month to the IRS for most of our remaining...

The Texas Board of Education gave preliminary approval Thursday to dropping algebra II as a requirement for high school students to graduate, over the objections of critics who say the state is watering down its academic standards.The board opted not to toughen a major overhaul of graduation and curriculum requirements that were unanimously approved by the state Legislature in May and designed to give students the flexibility to focus on career and vocational training—not just college prep courses. …

Dr. Helen Smith: American society has become anti-male. Men are sensing the backlash and are consciously and unconsciously going "on strike." They are dropping out of college, leaving the workforce and avoiding marriage and fatherhood at alarming rates. The trend is so pronounced that a number of books have been written about this "man-child" phenomenon, concluding that men have taken a vacation from responsibility simply because they can. But why should men participate in a system that seems to be increasingly stacked against them? As Men on Strike demonstrates, men aren't dropping out because they are stuck in arrested development....

Less than half of Americans -- 47% -- are satisfied with their jobs, according to a 2006 survey of 5,000 households released Friday by the Conference Board. The dissatisfaction is growing. Last year marked the first time a majority of respondents have said they're unhappy at work, according to the occasional survey from the private research organization. Twenty years ago, about 61% of workers were happy with their jobs. In 2005, 52% were satisfied. ...The happiest workers are those over 55, those who make more than $50,000 a year, those who put in more than 50 hours a week on...

Throughout almost all of human history, women who bore children actually took care of their own children. Imagine that!

There's an old adage about Italian immigrants that's not far from the truth. It goes something like this: They soon discovered that not only were the streets not paved with gold; but, that they were expected to pave them. I will forever remain in awe and so proud of the courage, determination, sacrifices and just plain old fashioned hard work of our immigrant ancestors. Those courageous, determined heroes who came to a strange world without knowledge of the language and in most cases, with very little money. Not only did they survive, in spite of enormous prejuduce, but they prospered!...