LOL, The new cure for the economy is to join the circus.

Don't even ask!

State fairs offer many people badly needed jobs

By NOMAAN MERCHANT, Associated Press Writer Nomaan Merchant, Associated Press Writer, from this post here [link]

FALCON HEIGHTS, Minn. – A year's worth of failed job leads prepared Richard Briggs for anything, including night shifts as a Minnesota State Fair custodian.

For $8.50 an hour, the out-of-work financial analyst vacuums and cleans bathrooms in fairground buildings. Briggs, 38, said he's "something of a curiosity" among his co-workers.

"You know, they don't hire financial analysts to clean the sidewalks," Briggs said.

A crippled economy has sent droves of unemployed and underemployed people to fairs nationwide, with many reporting record numbers of applicants to tear tickets, serve food and clean up after crowds.

Iowa's state fair closed most of its hiring weeks earlier than usual. Colorado's fair is finished hiring but was still getting more than 50 people a day trying to apply as the fair opened last week. In Indiana, about 2,300 people — at least twice as many as usual — applied for 800 open positions.

"And the nice thing about it for us is that we got, I guess you could say, many overqualified candidates," said Andy Klotz, a spokesman for the Indiana State Fair.

In Minnesota, more than 10,000 people applied for the fair's 3,000 jobs. At the same time more people were applying, fair vendors intent on keeping costs down were requesting far fewer employees than in years past.

And, more experienced fair workers were returning. The fair had room for just 1,250 new employees, about one-third the number of last year.

Briggs lives in the Twin Cities suburb of Mendota Heights with his wife and two stepchildren. He lost his job last September, and he's found few openings in the financial sector since. Over dinner in June, his wife suggested he apply for a job at the Fair, which he hadn't attended since childhood.

"It'll get you out of the house, and you'll be busy for 12 straight days," Briggs remembers her saying.

After a visit to the State Fair's employment center, he got an offer. Though the family still has his wife's income as a regulatory analyst, Briggs said his fair paycheck has given their budget "some breathing space."

"We have a mortgage to pay and mouths to feed," he said.

As the fair opened its 12-day run last week, Josh Chaika was working a day shift as a custodian.

Chaika, 27, signed up to work for the first time this year. He has a part-time job for 30 hours a week, but when he saw a newspaper advertisement for fair jobs, he decided to apply because he "just needed the extra cash."

He was surprised when he heard about the size of the waiting list.

"I didn't think it would be that tough," he said.

Jerry Hammer, the general manager of Minnesota's fair, said it's not always like this.

"I've seen other years where we're telling staff to go home and tell your friends and neighbors" workers are needed, he said.

The Minnesota State Fair still attracted a large number of teenagers and 20-somethings. Jessica Schoenleber got a job tearing tickets on one of the fair's parking lots. The 23-year-old from nearby Roseville wanted to make some money before she moves to New Zealand this fall.

"This was more like short-term, high intensity and a lot of fun," Schoenleber said of the job.

The high demand for state fair jobs is occurring at time when attendance is up as more people cut back on travel and look for attractions close to home. Minnesota set a first-day record Thursday with more than 114,000 attendees.

"We seem to be one of those sectors of the economy that we're doing quite well," said Jim Tucker, CEO of the International Association of Fairs and Exhibitions. "Not only are we not down, we're up."

Briggs, the financial analyst-turned-custodian, says he's not ashamed of his new job, even if he seems overqualified.

"It's fun to be outdoors, and it's fun to see the results of your work," Briggs said. "Being a financial analyst, at least in the situation I was in, no matter what kind of report you try to produce ... there was always a way around it, whereas you know when you don't empty the garbage or something."

"It might not pay much but it will help with travel expenses to get you to your job at Burger King."

Honestly though. if you are stupid enough to find hopes in this media bullshit you only need a can opener and a few cans of dog food to survive. There were no jobs yesterday, there are less today and tomorrow there will be even less but.... these assholes will be kind enough to sell you hopes for what? A friggin job that comes to your county once or twice a year and that needs the support of now jobless people to survive on. How stupid are you???

R.I.P Jason Nellis!!!

So sorry!

Jury rules against Minn. woman in download case

By STEVE KARNOWSKI, Associated Press Writer Steve Karnowski, Associated Press Writer

MINNEAPOLIS – A replay of the nation's only file-sharing case to go to trial has ended with the same result — a Minnesota woman was found to have violated music copyrights and must pay huge damages to the recording industry.

A federal jury ruled Thursday that Jammie Thomas-Rasset willfully violated the copyrights on 24 songs, and awarded recording companies $1.92 million, or $80,000 per song.

Thomas-Rasset's second trial actually turned out worse for her. When a different federal jury heard her case in 2007, it hit Thomas-Rasset with a $222,000 judgment.

The new trial was ordered after the judge in the case decided he had erred in giving jury instructions.

Thomas-Rasset sat glumly with her chin in hand as she heard the jury's finding of willful infringement, which increased the potential penalty. She raised her eyebrows in surprise when the jury's penalty of $80,000 per song was read.

Outside the courtroom, she called the $1.92 million figure "kind of ridiculous" but expressed resignation over the decision.

"There's no way they're ever going to get that," said Thomas-Rasset, a 32-year-old mother of four from the central Minnesota city of Brainerd. "I'm a mom, limited means, so I'm not going to worry about it now."

Her attorney, Kiwi Camara, said he was surprised by the size of the judgment. He said it suggested that jurors didn't believe Thomas-Rasset's denials of illegal file-sharing, and that they were angry with her.

Camara said he and his client hadn't decided whether to appeal or pursue the Recording Industry Association of America's settlement overtures.

Cara Duckworth, a spokeswoman for the RIAA, said the industry remains willing to settle. She refused to name a figure, but acknowledged Thomas-Rasset had been given the chance to settle for $3,000 to $5,000 earlier in the case.

"Since Day One we have been willing to settle this case and we remain willing to do so," Duckworth said.

In closing arguments earlier Thursday, attorneys for both sides disputed what the evidence showed.

An attorney for the recording industry, Tim Reynolds, said the "greater weight of the evidence" showed that Thomas-Rasset was responsible for the illegal file-sharing that took place on her computer. He urged jurors to hold her accountable to deter others from a practice he said has significantly harmed the people who bring music to everyone.

Defense attorney Joe Sibley said the music companies failed to prove allegations that Thomas-Rasset gave away songs by Gloria Estefan, Sheryl Crow, Green Day, Journey and others.

"Only Jammie Thomas's computer was linked to illegal file-sharing on Kazaa," Sibley said. "They couldn't put a face behind the computer."

Sibley urged jurors not to ruin Thomas-Rasset's life with a debt she could never pay. Under federal law, the jury could have awarded up to $150,000 per song.

U.S. District Judge Michael Davis, who heard the first lawsuit in 2007, ordered up a new trial after deciding he had erred in instructions to the jurors. The first time, he said the companies didn't have to prove anyone downloaded the copyrighted songs she allegedly made available. Davis later concluded the law requires that actual distribution be shown.

His jury instructions this time framed the issues somewhat differently. He didn't explicitly define distribution but said the acts of downloading copyrighted sound recordings or distributing them to other users on peer-to-peer networks like Kazaa, without a license from the owners, are copyright violations.

This case was the only one of more than 30,000 similar lawsuits to make it all the way to trial. The vast majority of people targeted by the music industry had settled for about $3,500 each. The recording industry has said it stopped filing such lawsuits last August and is instead now working with Internet service providers to fight the worst offenders.

In testimony this week, Thomas-Rasset denied she shared any songs. On Wednesday, the self-described "huge music fan" raised the possibility for the first time in the long-running case that her children or ex-husband might have done it. The defense did not provide any evidence, though, that any of them had shared the files.

The recording companies accused Thomas-Rasset of offering 1,700 songs on Kazaa as of February 2005, before the company became a legal music subscription service following a settlement with entertainment companies. For simplicity's sake the music industry tried to prove only 24 infringements.

Reynolds argued Thursday that the evidence clearly pointed to Thomas-Rasset as the person who made the songs available on Kazaa under the screen name "tereastarr." It's the same nickname she acknowledged having used for years for her e-mail and several other computer accounts, including her MySpace page.

Reynolds said the copyright security company MediaSentry traced the files offered by "tereastarr" on Kazaa to Thomas-Rasset's Internet Protocol address — the online equivalent of a street address — and to her modem.

He said MediaSentry downloaded a sample of them from the shared directory on her computer. That's an important point, given Davis' new instructions to jurors.

Although the plaintiffs weren't able to prove that anyone but MediaSentry downloaded songs off her computer because Kazaa kept no such records, Reynolds told the jury it's only logical that many users had downloaded songs offered through her computer because that's what Kazaa was there for.

Sibley argued it would have made no sense for Thomas-Rasset to use the name "tereastarr" to do anything illegal, given that she had used it widely for several years.

He also portrayed the defendant as one of the few people brave enough to stand up to the recording industry, and he warned jurors that they could also find themselves accused on the basis of weak evidence if their computers are ever linked to illegal file-sharing.

"They are going to come at you like they came at 'tereastarr,'" he said.

Steve Marks, executive vice president and general counsel of the Recording Industry Association of America, estimated earlier this week that only a few hundred of the lawsuits remain unresolved and that fewer than 10 defendants were actively fighting them.

The companies that sued Thomas-Rasset are subsidiaries of all four major recording companies, Warner Music Group Corp., Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group, EMI Group PLC and Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment.

The recording industry has blamed online piracy for declines in music sales, although other factors include the rise of legal music sales online, which emphasize buying individual tracks rather than full albums.

One thing about Nebraska....

One thing about Nebraska is their lack of general consequence. They have no government and no standards to practice by.

I always hated Massachusetts for the fact that people could rob insurance companies & doctors, always thought it was foul but here...

Now I understand why those laws were put into place.

In Nebraska a doctor doesn't even have to complete a task or do his job because there is no system. No regulation, no requirement. Nothing to incite them to honor the trade.

I have seen about 70 people die in four years out here and I think it's mostly "let em go boys!", like cattle

In Massachusetts people have one law & one respect. Here people can thrive or die, but....

Here there is no real law!
Not for everyone anyway.

This post is different "Cyclone strands millions in India and Bangladesh" God please bless them?

KOLKATA, India (Reuters) – Millions of people in India and Bangladesh remained marooned without food or water on Friday, four days after cyclone Aila hit them, and authorities said disease was becoming a serious problem.

The cyclone killed at least 275 people, but officials say the toll could mount due to epidemics in the aftermath.

Cyclone Aila hit parts of coastal Bangladesh and eastern India Monday, triggering tidal surges and floods and destroying hundreds of thousands of homes.

It caused extensive damage to rice and other crops but officials say they were still assessing the losses.

In the communist-ruled Indian state of West Bengal, at least 5.1 million people were displaced, with more than one million people stranded in Sundarban islands alone, most of them without any food or water, officials said.

At least 100 people have died in the eastern state.

"The situation is alarming and we need a lot of help to combat the outbreak of water-borne diseases," Kanti Ganguly, a senior West Bengal minister, told Reuters Friday.

Heavy rains triggered by the cyclone raised river levels and burst mud embankments in the Sundarbans delta, causing widespread flooding and triggering landslides.

The Indian Air force air-dropped supplies to remote islands in the Sundarabans Friday, and people scampered to grab packets of pre-cooked food, water and medicines, witnesses said.

"We are carrying out sorties every day and we have been able to cover some remote places today," Mahesh Upasani, a defense ministry spokesman, said in Kolkata, capital of West Bengal state.

In Bangladesh, more than three million people have been hit by the cyclone, and cases of diarrhea have broken out, due to an acute scarcity of drinking water.

The death toll from cyclone Aila in Bangladesh touched 175 after 15 bodies were found Thursday, mostly in southwestern Satkhira district, local officials and aid workers said on Friday.

Officials said hundreds of people were missing in the 15 affected districts, mostly on the coasts, where survivors desperately need food and drinking water.

The cyclone also killed a large number of cattle, adding to the woes of farmers still trying to get back on their feet after cyclone Sidr in November 2007 killed 3,500 people in coastal districts.

(Additional reporting by Ruma Paul; Writing by Bappa Majumdar; Editing by Bill Tarrant)