Ken Garen, CPA, Co-Founder and President, UBCC

High-Paying Trade Jobs Sit Empty, While High School Grads Line Up For University Heard on All Things Considered By ASHLEY GROSS & JON MARCUS April 25, 20184:33 PM ET Like most other American high school students, Garret Morgan had it drummed into him constantly: Go to college. Get a bachelor's degree. "All through my life it was, 'if you don't go to college you're going to end up on the streets,' " Morgan said. "Everybody's so gung-ho about going to college." So he tried it for a while. Then he quit and started training as an ironworker, which is what he is doing on a weekday morning in a nondescript high-ceilinged building with a concrete floor in an industrial park near the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Morgan and several other men and women are dressed in work boots, hard hats and Carhartt's, clipped to safety harnesses with heavy wrenches hanging from their belts. They're being timed as they w...

Cable TV’s Cord-Cutting Woes Grow, Highlighting Divergence With Netflix Charter Communications reports worsening cable TV subscribers losses, triggering selloff By Shalini Ramachandran Updated April 27, 2018 5:37 p.m. ET More customers are dropping cable TV as they turn toward streaming services like Netflix Inc., a fundamental shift in consumer behavior that was on display this week in painful earnings reports from cable and telecommunications companies. Charter Communications Inc.,-11.68% the third-largest U.S. pay-TV provider by subscribers, said Friday it lost 122,000 video customers in the first quarter, a far worse outcome than the roughly 40,000 subscriber losses Wall Street analysts expected. In the year-earlier period, Charter lost 100,000 customers. The results triggered a selloff that sent Charter shares down 12%, the stock’s largest single-day percentage decline since 2009. They follow similarly negative subscriber reports on cord-cutting this week fro...

UC Berkeley must face lawsuit alleging bias against conservative speakers By Jonathan Stempel Reuters • April 26, 2018 (Reuters) - A federal judge rejected the University of California at Berkeley's bid to dismiss a lawsuit claiming it discriminated against conservative speakers like Ann Coulter by imposing unreasonable restrictions and fees on their appearances. In a decision late Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney in San Francisco said two conservative groups could pursue claims that the school applied its policy for handling "major events" and an earlier policy for "high-profile speakers" in a manner that unfairly suppressed conservative speech. But the judge also said she was "unpersuaded" by claims by the plaintiffs that the school engaged in intentional viewpoint discrimination, and that the major events policy was too vague. She said the plaintiffs could not seek punitive damages. The Berkeley College Republicans...

Europe want to crack down on fake news. But one person’s fake news is another’s democratic dissent. By Michael Birnbaum April 25 at 5:12 PM BRUSSELS — The European Union on Thursday will unveil a strategy for fighting fake news that could be a model for Western nations, but already it has run into trouble defining the line between disinformation and dissent. The new E.U. proposals will encourage voluntary pledges from Facebook and others to highlight the sources of information they feature and to promote content from credible media outlets. The E.U. also wants to push news literacy education and to fund private fact-checking organizations that subscribe to standards of political independence and objectivity. Other countries, including the United States, are also cooperating with each other to combat fake news. France, Germany and Italy are working on national plans. But a separate E.U. effort to combat foreign interference illustrates what can go awry. The E.U...

Aging Japan: Robots may have role in future of elder care Malcolm Foster March   27, 2018 / 4:29 PM TOKYO (Reuters) - Paro the furry seal cries softly while an elderly woman pets it. Pepper, a humanoid, waves while leading a group of senior citizens in exercises. The upright Tree guides a disabled man taking shaky steps, saying in a gentle feminine voice, “right, left, well done!” Robots have the run of Tokyo’s Shin-tomi nursing home, which uses 20 different models to care for its residents. The Japanese government hopes it will be a model for harnessing the country’s robotics expertise to help cope with a swelling elderly population and dwindling workforce. Allowing robots to help care for the elderly - a job typically seen as requiring a human touch - may be a jarring idea in the West. But many Japanese see them positively, largely because they are depicted in popular media as friendly and helpful. (Click reut.rs/2IVPNAd to see a picture package about these elde...

Researcher in Facebook scandal says: my work was worthless to Cambridge Analytica By Alistair Smout, Douglas Busvine APRIL 24, 2018 / 4:02 AM / UPDATED LONDON (Reuters) - A researcher at the center of a scandal over the alleged misuse of the data of nearly 100 million Facebook users said on Tuesday the work he did was useless for the sort of targeted adverts that would be needed to sway an election. Aleksandr Kogan, who worked for the University of Cambridge, is at the center of a controversy over Cambridge Analytica’s use of millions of users’ data without their permission after it was hired by Donald Trump for his 2016 election campaign. Kogan said it was unlikely Cambridge Analytica had used the data in the Trump campaign, although he also said that its suspended CEO Alexander Nix had lied to a committee of British lawmakers about how the two worked together. Kogan said that even if the dataset he compiled was used in a political campaign, it would be little us...

China Assigns Every Citizen A ‘Social Credit Score’ To Identify Who Is And Isn’t Trustworthy Country Determines Your Standing Through Use Of Surveillance Video, Plans To Have 600 Million Cameras By 2020 April 24, 2018 at 6:56 pm BEIJING (CBSNewYork) — China is rolling out a high-tech plan to give all of its 1.4 billion citizens a personal score, based on how they behave. But there are consequences if a score gets too low, and for some that’s cause for concern, CBS2’s Ben Tracy reported Tuesday. When Liu Hu recently tried to book a flight, he was told he was banned from flying because he was on the list of untrustworthy people. Liu is a journalist who was ordered by a court to apologize for a series of tweets he wrote and was then told his apology was insincere. “I can’t buy property. My child can’t go to a private school,” he said. “You feel you’re being controlled by the list all the time.” And the list is now getting longer as every Chinese citizen is be...

Hatred of journalists on the rise worldwide, watchdog says Associated Press • April 25, 2018 PARIS (AP) — Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders says hostility toward journalists is growing worldwide, often encouraged by political leaders — even in democratic countries. The group's annual global index of media freedom released Wednesday found an overall rise in animosity toward reporters and a drop in freedoms, notably in former Soviet states but also in countries from the U.S. to the Philippines. The group says many democratically elected leaders "no longer see the media as part of democracy's essential underpinning," singling out U.S. President Donald Trump for his media-bashing. It also notes the recent killings of reporters in EU members Slovakia and Malta. The watchdog says authoritarian regimes are trying to "export their vision" that media should be compliant. It says hate speech targeting journalists is amplified on social...

Sharyl Attkisson to Make Film Debut in Doc About Free Speech by Paul Bond 6:05 AM PDT 4/25/2018 Van Jones, Cornel West and Jordan Peterson also have joined 'No Safe Spaces,' a film by comedian Adam Carolla and radio host Dennis Prager. Sharyl Attkisson, who famously left CBS News and wrote a best-selling book alleging liberal bias in journalism, will make her film debut in No Safe Spaces, a humorous documentary about political correctness at universities. Also joining the movie are liberal activist Cornel West and Van Jones, the CNN contributor who was President Obama's special adviser for green jobs. In fact, judging from a two-minute teaser trailer, filmmakers Adam Carolla and Dennis Prager assembled stars from the right and the left to speak their piece about free speech. Attkisson is seen in the trailer amid scenes of chaos at various universities claiming that "the First Amendment is under assault," while Jones speaks of college kids who...

Members of Congress Who Questioned Mark Zuckerberg Had Received $641,685 From Facebook By PHIL BAKER APRIL 24, 2018 Mark Zuckerberg's testimony before Congress made for great theater, but the questioning was not without conflicts of interest: Many of those who grilled him had received donations from Facebook. According to The Verge, since 2014 Facebook has contributed $641,685 to the members of Congress who questioned Zuckerberg. The top recipients include Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), and Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA). The hostility of the questioning did not appear to correlate with the contributions. Sen. Orrin Hatch -- who has received $15,200 in donations in the past three years, the sixth largest amount -- asked purely softball questions. Sen. Booker -- who has received $44,025 since 2014, the largest amount -- asked some of the toughest questions. While these donations are perfectly legal, perhaps committee members should be required to discl...

How Looming Privacy Regulations May Strengthen Facebook and Google April 23, 2018 SAN FRANCISCO — In Europe and the United States, the conventional wisdom is that regulation is needed to force Silicon Valley’s digital giants to respect people’s online privacy. But new rules may instead serve to strengthen Facebook’s and Google’s hegemony and extend their lead on the internet. That could begin playing out next month, when Europe enacts sweeping new regulations that prioritize people’s data privacy. The new laws, which require tech companies to ask for users’ consent for their data, are likely to hand Google and Facebook an advantage. That’s because wary consumers are more prone to trust recognized names with their information than unfamiliar newcomers. And the laws may deter start-ups that do not have the resources to comply with the rules from competing with the big companies. In recent years, other regulatory attempts at strengthening online privacy rules have ...

Global race to develop self-navigating ships leaves U.S. behind BY TIM JOHNSON April 23, 2018 05:00 AM Updated April 23, 2018 10:58 AM World's first autonomous, zero-emission 'ghost ship' The Norwegian drone vessel, christened YARA Birkeland, will be the world’s first autonomous ship. Once it enters autonomous operation, toting up to 120 20-foot containers per journey, it will pull congestion off Norwegian highways. Kongsberg WASHINGTON - The day in which unmanned “ghost ships” ply the seas laden with cargo is fast approaching. But don’t expect the drone vessels to be flying a U.S. flag. The United States is not among the global hotspots where a revolution in autonomous commercial shipping is unfolding. One needs to look to places like Norway, Finland, Singapore and China to observe the competition for unmanned shipping. A shipyard in Norway will soon begin building a 237-foot battery-powered electric container ship that will operate with nary a sa...

Amazon will now leave package deliveries in your parked car Amazon has begun delivering packages in 37 cities to Prime members who own newer General Motors or Volvo vehicles. By MAE ANDERSON April 24, 2018 at 4:31 am Updated SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Amazon’s latest perk … free delivery to your car. The Seattle company on Tuesday began offering delivery in 37 cities to Amazon Prime members who own newer General Motors or Volvo vehicles. The company will expand the number of locations as well as eligible vehicle makes and models going forward. Amazon has steadily expanded its reach into places long considered no-go zones for most people outside of the immediate family, starting with smart speakers in the home that await voice commands to come to life. Last year, Amazon launched Amazon Key which lets those who with a Wi-Fi-connected lock to unlock their front doors so that packages could be left inside. Earlier this year, the company acquired Ring, which makes Wi...