Silent Sacrifices: The Impact of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” on Lesbian and Gay Military Families

The sacrifices of the nation\u27s 65,000 lesbian, gay, and bisexual military personnel2 and the one million lesbian, gay, and, bisexual veterans, however, have only recently garnered significant attention.3 Media stories such as that of former Army Sergeant Bleu Copas, an Arabic linguist with the 82nd Airborne, illustrate the impact of the Don\u27t Ask, Don\u27t Tell law on individual service members as well as the law\u27s impact on the military\u27s personnel needs.4 Yet the impact of Don\u27t Ask, Don\u27t Tell on gay military families has garnered little public attention because few families headed by a same-sex couple, in which one partner is currently serving in the armed forces, are willing to risk a career-ending move to tell their story, let alone face the loss of familial privacy by making such a public statement

Silent Sacrifices: The Impact of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” on Lesbian and Gay Military Families

The sacrifices of the nation\u27s 65,000 lesbian, gay, and bisexual military personnel2 and the one million lesbian, gay, and, bisexual veterans, however, have only recently garnered significant attention.3 Media stories such as that of former Army Sergeant Bleu Copas, an Arabic linguist with the 82nd Airborne, illustrate the impact of the Don\u27t Ask, Don\u27t Tell law on individual service members as well as the law\u27s impact on the military\u27s personnel needs.4 Yet the impact of Don\u27t Ask, Don\u27t Tell on gay military families has garnered little public attention because few families headed by a same-sex couple, in which one partner is currently serving in the armed forces, are willing to risk a career-ending move to tell their story, let alone face the loss of familial privacy by making such a public statement

Participation of unemployment benefit recipients in active labor market programs : before and after the German labor market reforms

"Between 2005 and 2007 the German government raised a per-capita amount of around 10.000 Euros for each transition out of unemployment benefit receipt into basic social care, to be paid by the unemployment insurance. The so called 'Aussteuerungsbetrag' set strong incentives that investments in active labor market programs for unemployment benefit recipients should pay off - in terms of an exit from registered unemployment - before a transition into basic social care for needy jobseekers occurred. This raised considerable public concerns that less programs would be granted, in particular for hard-to-place workers. Our paper analyzes if these concerns were justified. We compare four cohorts, eligible for unemployment benefits at the beginning of their unemployment spell during March of the years 2003 to 2006. We conduct some descriptive analyses and estimate piecewise constant exponential hazard models to investigate the correlation between individual characteristics and transition rates into programs. The results show that transition rates into programs were in fact low across the 2005 cohort, but rather high for the 2006 cohort. The expectation that particular disadvantaged groups of unemployed would participate less in active labor market programs in the postreform period is not confirmed; their transition rates into programs were significantly higher across the 2006 cohort than in pre-reform cohorts." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))arbeitsmarktpolitische Maßnahme - Zu- und Abgänge, Hartz-Reform - Erfolgskontrolle, Aussteuerungsbetrag - Auswirkungen, Teilnehmerstruktur, Arbeitslose, schwervermittelbare Arbeitslose

Participation of unemployment benefit recipients in active labor market programs: Before and after the German labor market reforms

Im Jahr 2005 wurde im Zuge der Zusammenlegung von Arbeitslosen- und Sozialhilfe auch der so genannte 'Aussteuerungsbetrag' eingeführt, der aus Sozialbeiträgen zur Arbeitslosenversicherung finanziert wurde: Die Bundesregierung erhob von 2005 bis 2007 von der Bundesagentur für Arbeit einen Pauschalbetrag von rund 10.000 EURO für jeden Arbeitslosen, a) dessen Anspruch auf Arbeitslosengeld I erlosch und b) für den innerhalb von drei Monaten nach Auslaufen seiner Versicherungsleistung ein Anspruch auf steuerfinanziertes Arbeitslosengeld II entstand. Ziel des Aussteuerungsbetrages war es unter anderem, einen Anreiz für eine schnellere Vermittlung arbeitsloser Personen in Beschäftigung zu schaffen - denn bei einer Eingliederung des Arbeitslosen in den ersten Arbeitsmarkt vor dem Übertritt in die Grundsicherung für Arbeitssuchende entfiel der Pro-Kopf-Betrag. In Politik und Öffentlichkeit wurden jedoch auch negative Anreize dieses 'Strafbetrages' diskutiert. Befürchtet wurden sowohl sinkende Maßnahmeteilnahmen als auch verkürzte Programmdauern. Vor allem eine Förderung schwer vermittelbarer Arbeitsloser würde sich nicht mehr auszahlen, da die Amortisation einer Investition in arbeitsmarktpolitische Maßnahmen vor dem Übertritt in die Grundsicherung unwahrscheinlich sei. Unser Beitrag untersucht, ob diese Bedenken gerechtfertigt waren. Wir vergleichen dazu Kohorten, die im März der Jahre 2003 bis 2006 in Arbeitslosigkeit eingetreten sind und zu diesem Zeitpunkt Anspruch auf Arbeitslosengeld I hatten. Für diese präsentieren wir deskriptive Ergebnisse und prüfen mittels ereignisanalytischer Verfahren, ob Zusammenhänge zwischen individuellen Charakteristika der arbeitslosen Personen und deren Übergangsraten in die entsprechenden Maßnahmen bzw. in die Grundsicherung vorliegen. Ein Ergebnis der Untersuchung ist, dass die Eintritte in arbeitsmarktpolitische Programme im ersten Jahr nach der Reform tatsächlich gering waren; 2006 waren sie hingegen relativ hoch. Die Vermutung, dass vergleichsweise schwer vermittelbare Personen nach 2005 geringere Übergangsraten in die Fördermaßnahmen hatten, können wir nicht bestätigen. Denn auch die Übergangsraten dieser Personen waren in 2006 signifikant höher als vor der Reform

Effects of customer trust and online experiences in building hospitality brands

Customer trust embodies customer beliefs of actually receiving a promised service and manifestations of consumer’s confidences in an exchange parties reliability and integrity. The study is based on the fact as to how trusts criteria affect online purchase especially in regard to booking and buying the accommodations and also that accommodation providers assume that are very essential for consumers to make the online purchase. In total 150 consumers and 80 hotels owners/operators in India were examined. There are enormous discrepancies between consumers and accommodation providers were searched. Like formal guarantee of providers, security concern, refund of price paid delivery time and information about confirmation and they will switch from one brand to other due to promise breakage, less service quality, high price charged. However, these trust criteria were viewed inconsequential by the accommodation providers. It concluded with vast number of suggestions and recommendations for the accommodation providers need to include in their websites and build reputation and strong brands in the hospitality market

Teaching Programming Languages by Experimental and Adversarial Thinking

We present a new approach to teaching programming language courses. Its essence is to view programming language learning as a natural science activity, where students probe languages experimentally to understand both the normal and extreme behaviors of their features. This has natural parallels to the "security mindset" of computer security, with languages taking the place of servers and other systems. The approach is modular (with minimal dependencies), incremental (it can be introduced slowly into existing classes), interoperable (it does not need to push out other, existing methods), and complementary (since it introduces a new mode of thinking)