There's Nadine Mentor, who was laid off immediately after bringing in an uncommonly lucrative deal for Citigroup.

Here from the actual article "Nadine Mentor, 29, had just landed in New York--and found out, she says, that she'd bagged one of the biggest gets of her career at Citigroup a role for the bank leading a bond offering, valued at as much as $400 million, for the U.S. Virgin Islands. The deal was worth potentially more than $500,000 in fees"

While 400 million for a bond offering sounds impressive it is by no means close to being an uncommonly lucrative deal. Cities in the US and around the world regularly have bond offerings in the billions that go though citi. Any highway bond or stadium bond will be larger than that. And depending on the group she belongs too she might not be bringing enough of these mid size/large size deals. Oh and never mind that Citi is in major trouble and who would want them right now to underwrite the bond issuing.

Then Amy Bartoletti, also at Citi, who saw a demonstrably less qualified man (making the same salary) first promoted over her and then kept on while she was axed for being "too expensive."

Again from the actual article "artoletti contends that she and her male counterpart made the same base salary, $175,000, and that she is more qualified than he."

Just because they have the same base salary does not mean they take home the same amount. Because Kate does not know, Wall Street workers make most of their salary from Bonuses and commissions. So in reality she might be going home with a million a year while he goes home with 350,000. Depending on the structure for their department he might actually be bringing in more per dollar of total compensation. For example she is paid a million for 50 million while he is getting paid 750,000 and bringing in 45 million and with out the certificate. So not only is he bringing in more per dollar of salary he has more room for growth on passing. Plus he has showed that he wants to move up in the company.

After some valid reasons why they where let go we have Kate saying I just love the juxtaposition there. Why would older men and new dads be any less likely to suffer loss of mojo, you ask? Oh, shush. Gender is irrelevant! I would high-five Raghavan for the funny if I weren't too busy squeezing my stress ball and taking deep breaths.

How about we don't know if there where new dads fired for a drop in productivity before. But what we do know is that these jobs are not 40 hour a week jobs but more like 60 to 80 hour a week jobs. And a new dad has much more leeway in being able to work these types of hours without complaint. That does not mean a complaint might not be warranted just that they do not do so. And since one of the new moms in the story complained that she had to share her nursing area (that seems to be just for her from the story) with another (single in number) employee that practices Islam it seems reasonable that she demanded more than others with knowledge, position and income production.

Oh and just because females where laid off in higher numbers that means nothing. Most of the layoffs where going to come from mortgage departments as one writer already said they are female heavy so it is logical they will be hit harder. Just like in the overall layoffs in this nation it is men that took the brunt because they make up the contractors and construction crews.

Public schools are not failing, public schools in poor urban districts and poor rural districts are failing. Public schools in middle and upper class districts are doing just fine and give educations equal too or better than all but the most elite private schools.

The fixes to this problem are not exactly easy either in politically or culturally.

The first step has to be a change in the founding formula so the money for the middle and upper class districts is spread around. To use a very crude example a district can be made up of quarter million dollar houses can pay 3 percent towards education 7,500 dollars while on the other end you have Detroit where the houses are worth 7,500 so to be at the same level of funding the tax rate would have to be 100 percent. This is politically the hardest to push though.

The next step is to put in national guidelines. No I am not talking about NCLB tests. What I am talking about is there needs to be a national standard of what it means to be a high school grad. Diplomas need to mean a basic compenecy in English, Math, Civics, and Science. Every thing else can be left to the states. Again this will be hard to accomplish politically.

The biggest challenge overall though is next and that is a change in the culture. This goes for both the teachers and administrators to parents and kids. We need to stop age based promotion. This is a failure to the kid they will never catch up and being left behind is the best thing for many despite the blow to their "self esteem". What is worse being held behind in the second grade or not being able to read at 22? Stop with the 0 tolerance it does nothing to actually make a safer school. Stop pretending that kids are either college bound or prison bound. If the kid is not college bound help him go into a trade, enough trades make more than many college grads.