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When I was growing up now many years ago there were no millionaires in our Australian society. Everyone was struggling to make their pay packet stretch from week to week as their children grew and were taught to respect the environment and the things we had. Recycling was part of it and my grandmother, who had gone through the 1930′s depression, would save every piece of string and paper bag that came her way.

These habits passed down to me and my siblings. We were taught to switch off lights that were not in use, to make our own clothes, do our own repairs, and most of all enjoy what we had and not go after things out of our reach. We learned to be practical and that things like vegetables are better when grown in your own garden than purchased in a shop.

Between the 1960′s and 1970′s a revolution took place. We were not really aware of it for some time but the effect on life and the economy was profound. Suddenly people learned how they could make money aside from working for it. It’s called investing in the future. Real Estate became the key to ownership and words like ‘portfolios’ entered the vocabulary.

Australia still ploughed on sifting through the shock to our ego that this country was not seen as ‘great’ by others. We became conscious of it and asked strangers from overseas what they thought of us. While they mostly had nothing but praise there were things they pointed out that hung like an albatross around our necks.

We were simply behind the times. Late night shopping had not yet arrived, and week-end trading was beyond our comprehension. There was still many things we were not privileged to know as the government kept the lid on things. But when I travelled overseas in 1979 I caught a glimpse of what was coming.

Tiny houses that matched the garage in most Australian homes was all that many had to live in around Naples and they farmed on the land around it that was no bigger than a normal size suburban block back home. In the North in places like Cannes and Monte Carlo homes were suddenly huge and people were rich beyond measure.

The beautiful wine fields in Tuscany and the snobbery of many who looked down on this traveller with her 2 children was very off-putting. Australia was a country when snobbery and wealth brought you no friends while the more money you had the less you were liked. Now it is just the opposite.

Since the turn of the Century and the Olympic Games in Sydney the country has become like those I travelled in overseas. It wealth, money, and celebrity status that now directs one’s popularity as we are in the last days. This is known to me because of my memory of reincarnation and knowledge that everyone is back who has lived before. We are facing the ultimate test and not many are in a position to pass it.

A very sad report on Australian television showed the way the Andes is being depleted of forest and how species are dying and a lot is due to illegal loggers. While governments have some control over the way the trees are logged and sold, however, the facts are that the number of trees felled are so great that a continual flow of logs down the river is so thick that one can walk from one side to the other. This is every hour, every day, every week, and every year.

This is how much humanity cares for the environment when money is at stake. Species are dying and those who depend on the forest to live are obviously in grave danger. The Chachi, also called Cayapa, are one such group and they number around 3,000 to 5,000. They are a people with their own culture, language, and religion but polluted by Roman Catholic influences. Their future is at stake because of the disappearing jungle they depend on for food and resources.

This has happened repeatedly over the globe as man takes from nature to inflate his wealth. It is often the very rich who is responsible for the devastation, although we are all to blame. It’s not just the rain forest but the oceans, deserts, and agricultural species that are all at risk of extinction.

One doesn’t usually place food products as endangered but the facts show that they are, and highly so. To begin with pollinators are already scarce in some areas and the United States has had to import bees to keep production of crops going. In many areas bees are facing an uphill battle and it’s a lot to do with climate change.

Plants that once flowered in Spring, for instance, now do so in winter. The seasons are out of kilt with the natural birth-death cycle of insects and even ants are struggling. Forests have to be in the mix as well as they depend on animals and insects for distribution and pollination of seed. Without the normal life-cycle diseases and an over-abundance of insects that carry them are now prominent.

The Zika virus is one that depends on mosquitoes to spread it the Ebola and HIV viruses must be included, although they are spread by contact and transfer of body fluids.

In general, the world has become unbalanced and there is nothing to fix it. We can’t reverse the trends and we can’t demand people stop taking from the environment while they depend on money to live. It’s a trap we have been driven into by it.

My memory of reincarnation provides me with an explanation of why this has happened as it is my opinion that everyone who has lived is now back in their body as we are in the last days. This is supported by prophecies whereby we are told that we return six times but that the seventh will be the last (Job 5:19-22) while we are also told that the graves will give up their dead (Isaiah 26:19).

This recycling fits how nature recycles and the old becomes new again. Only now we have been warned that only a few will survive the things that are coming. The visions shown to me were horrendous and have already begun. Money won’t stop it but rather it is the light under the fire that is causing it and extinction of species is the way to bring it about.

Watching a power station expelling gasses into the atmosphere from burning coal is a disgusting experience. The smell it generates is appalling and people are living nearby and working in it. The men who mine the coal are breathing in black dust that results in black lung disease. The cars we drive are little better as they pour out similar gasses into the air. Those gasses are a mixture of carbon monoxide, a super deadly gas, and carbon dioxide.

Man has believed that the earth is big enough to cope with it but what was not taken into account is the multiplying effects from the millions of similar businesses that do the same. The end result of all is money and many are dying because of it.

While Australia debates the pros and cons of climate change leading up to an election on July 2nd 2016, people are outraged that those creating enormous wealth from mining of dangerous pollutants are unstoppable. Among them are the gas companies who are causing some to suicide by their tactics. The result of their ‘work’ is releasing methane gas from rocks that is poisoning the water and the atmosphere around cities and rural properties.

There seems to be no way of stopping this invasion and governments are misled by their claims of jobs and other things that don’t always eventuate. The ones making the money are the owners of the businesses that are doing the polluting and they have little care for the environment, or so it seems.

This is not a problem for Australia alone as the same is happening world-wide and people are voicing their objections by turning away from major political parties. While voters have woken up to the big-polluters who care more about the money they make rather than the health of the planet politics is facing major challenges.

My perspective on this problem comes from memory of my reincarnation and my suspicion that everyone is back, which accounts for the huge population growth of recent times. It is also apparent that the earth can’t survive the impact of the pollution much longer, so we are in the last days. If this is the case, then there is ample proof that money is used by God to bring it about.

It is the hunger for money that drives the World Order and that puts wealth creation ahead of common sense and survival. So what are those who pollute the environment thinking? We can’t eat coal and we can’t breathe the gasses and everything else is in decline.

Over the past few years, SEO has evolved faster than the previous decade. And this has made it harder for users to keep up with most recent updates. The launch of Penguin and Panda changed the way things worked in the past. In short, the way Google used to rank website has changed a lot. But if you want to reach your objectives, make sure you avoid some common SEO mistakes.

1. Avoiding RELEVANT CONTENT

In the start, Google said that it would rank websites that have the most relevant content on its first page. This statement is still valid. What has happened is that the search engine has become a lot better at achieving the objectives. In other words, now, Google is in better position to know what is relevant and what is not.

So, what you need to do is offer content that is relevant and avoid content is not relevant to your niche. Of course, the content should be informative and unique.

2. Following Tricks

People have been using many illegal ways of cheating the search engine algorithms for traffic, exposure and backlinks. Some of these tactics can still give you a temporary edge, but they are bad for your blog or website for the long-term.

So, you should avoid using low-quality, duplicate content, keyword stuffing, questionable redirects or cloaking for traffic. It may be tempting to go for these short-cuts, but they will just hurt your ranking, and may even get you banned for good.

3. Overloading your site

It has been a common perception that photos, videos and other graphics make a website more appealing for the viewers. To some extent, this perception is true; however, there should not be too much of it or your website will take ages to load. Your viewers don’t have all day to wait for your site to load. If your blog takes longer to load than other websites, the viewers will just click away. You will not only lose viewers, you will also lose ranking against other websites.

4. Making navigation difficult

Navigation is one of the most important factors for any website. It’s important for both viewers and search engines. Ideally, your viewers should be able to get the desired information from your website in one or two clicks. This may not be an easy task for you. So, what you can do is put important content on the main page of your site. This the users will be able to get what they want more easily.

5. Misunderstanding THE BACKLINK PROCESS

You may not want to be obsessed with obtaining a lot of backlinks. Although you don’t have to have backlinks from authority websites to establish your credibility, it helps a lot. However, what you need to do is try to get backclinks in a nature fashion. But it’s not a good idea to buy backlinks. This is one of the worst mistakes that you can make.

Quality content is the key to SEO success. Content doesn’t just mean your text contents. Images must be an integral part of your content strategy. At times, single images can be far more effective than your 1000 word blog post. It also helps you improve blog post quality and performance.

Images, Infographics, Videos and all other multimedia contents on your web page will help you in increasing the user engagement on your site and makes the visitors stay on your site for longer duration which helps in reducing the bounce rate.

Not just adding images to your contents, you should also optimize those images for better SEO performance. Optimization of images must be the one important aspect of your on-page SEO process.

If you are using images in your content, there are many aspects to be considered related to SEO.

Relevancy

Using images doesn’t mean that you should fill up your content with loads of pictures. You should use it only when it is required and also you should use images that are more relevant to your content.

Placement of your images is an another important aspect. It should be placed at a relevant location in your content according to your text content.

Use original images

Originality always helps in improving your user experience and your authority. Usage of original images will be helpful in improving your SEO performance. You can create original images with a graphic designer or you can take your own photographs with a quality camera. It is the reason top White hat SEO companies employ talented graphic designers for creating quality images.

If you are not able to employ an in-house graphic designer or if you are running out of time, you can always use high quality images from the web. But the important factor to be considered is it should be copyright free.

There are many tools available for getting copyright free images without any cost. The most popular ones are Unsplash, Flicker, Freeimages.

Image Size

Images are the main source for damping your site’s speed. And site speed is a crucial factor in your SEO performance. So, you should be extra cautious in using images without compromising your page speed.

It should not also affect your image quality, you should have a correct balance between. You can achieve this by reducing the file size by compression. You can use tools like Photoshop for compression.

File name

Search engine crawlers are visually impaired, it can even interrupt a 5000 word text content, but it cannot interrupt a single image and what the image is about. It is the reason using a keyword rich file names for your images is an important aspect in image optimization.

Google bots and other search engine crawlers can read your image’s file name and if it is named with your target keyword, it gives a signal to search engines about the image topic and thus helps your SEO performance.

For example, if your image is related to selling sports shoes, rather than using the file name as “IMG_89868″ you can use it as “Black_Tennis_Shoes”.

Alt text

Similar to the file name, search engines can read Alt text of the images. Alt text is known as “Aleternative Text”, is an HTML attribute used to describe the content of images.

You should use Alt text which is relevant to your images and it should be clear and descriptive. You can use your target keywords in the Alt text but be cautious about Keyword stuffing.

If you are not focusing on Image optimization, you are missing a huge opportunity in improving your SEO performance. You can use above mentioned best practices in your on-page optimization process.

American youth currently face challenging realities along their way to adulthood. With parents working longer hours and the absence of grandparents and other community adults who used to make up support systems, the intergenerational fabric of community has been frayed. Youth development strategies aim to reweave community fabric in a new way – one that takes the supports and opportunities young people should have, and re-institutes them in the context of young people’s realities today. While many of these realities are harsh ones, we know that young people themselves want to be involved in their communities. The importance of building positive youth/adult partnerships in this process cannot be stressed enough.

The mobilization effort is based on influencing three critical elements: information, attitudes, involvement. The transformation of each of these areas, both in the public and private domains, is a necessary condition for change. For example, in the area of information, the country is currently focused on collecting primarily negative youth information, e.g., teenage births, dropouts, and juvenile arrest rate. Inspiring a 180 degree shift, we need to collect information such as: average number of hours youth participate in after-school activities, computer to youth ratio in non-school hours, and the percentage of youth who hold part-time jobs. The three elements are intertwined, for how information is gathered and communicated impacts attitudes as well as how and if people choose to become involved.

Only through broad community commitment, strong public will, and diverse partnerships can youth development take root, go to scale, and be sustained over time. Ultimately, the mobilization must be supported by partnerships among all of the systems in a community that affect young people (i.e., education, corporations, health care, juvenile justice, religious groups, and recreation). To build these relationships and establish youth development infrastructures to improve developmental paths of adolescents will take at least 10 years.

Localities currently spending their resources on efforts to “fix youth” will need to pool, redirect, and increase their financial commitment to youth development. These additional dollars will ensure all youth equal access to supports and opportunities, especially youth living in economically distressed areas.

Our information on the services young people need, and use, is still hit or miss. Communities do not know what they have or what they need. They usually have no way to tell how well services are being used and what services need to be improved.

Good information is important for youth services for exactly the same reasons it is important for everything else. Accurate, accessible standardized information lets people find the services they need and use them effectively. It lets communities manage, evaluate and improve their services and determine the need for changing them, eliminating them, or developing new ones.

Many national efforts to measure outcomes presently use deficit-driven indicators to assess young people’s condition in society, such as teen pregnancy rates, juvenile crime numbers, and percentages of high school dropouts. Although these measures are important, they do not tell the whole story about young people’s experiences. Measures that reflect positive conditions and experiences of young people are also important.

The accelerated trend of the past decade toward empowering our nation’s young people to succeed has fostered a new awareness and commitment to this most valuable resource. Some basic questions are:

- How much do we currently spend?

- How much should we spend?

Some progress has been made through new initiatives in education finance reform and services integration, providing more effective delivery of social, health and educational services for children and youth from the classroom up to the government. This document establishes an initial framework and formula for assessing the financial resources and mechanisms necessary to move American society closer to this ideal. The following were found to be potential root causes of these trends in spending:

- Devaluation of adolescents.

- Lack of consensus on youth development.

- Lack of adequate and protected funding. Funds are not protected and dedicated in the manner necessary to sustain the long-term, comprehensive process that is youth development.

We can support the move toward the ideal by:

- Seeking new types of information.

- Building on the after-school momentum.

- Making a sustainable public investment.

Youth development is an investment that must be made by each sector of the wider community – public and private. Examination of the federal-state matching, local dedicated taxes an incentives for business and philanthropy could lead to models for providing adequate and sustainable funding for youth development. National intermediaries must work to cultivate this leadership at all levels of government, and at the grassroots, by creating constituencies.

Several states are taking the lead from California, Oregon and Illinois by offering state-sponsored retirement plans that encourage or require private sector employers to participate.

The plans are referred to as auto-IRAs because eligible workers are automatically enrolled, generally within 30 days of employment. The default contribution rate is typically 3-5% of a paycheck and the employee can stop, restart or transfer plan assets depending on their needs. Referred to as “public-private partnerships” by the Pew Charitable Trust, there is no cost to the employer. Proceeds are managed by a private financial firm management for a pre-determined fee. The plans are subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) like other sponsored pension and benefit plans.

This article provides an overview of the states that currently offer savings programs, as well as those that plan to do so in the future.

OregonSaves

Oregon was one of the first states to implement a savings program for employees of small businesses who are not otherwise eligible for a workplace sponsored pension plan. Titled OregonSaves, it is a state retirement program that is available to an employer or an individual planning for the future.

OregonSaves had almost $57 million in assets as of mid-2020. Employee contributions averaged $127 to $135 per month as of that time.

Enrollment is automatic for employees, with contributions being made through payroll deductions. Each employee account is portable and can be moved from one job to another.

All Oregon employers, regardless of employee size, must facilitate the State’s program for their employees if they do not offer an employer-sponsored retirement plan. The plan is working with small employers to make the process as simple as possible.

CalSavers

CalSavers is available to California workers whose employers do not offer a workplace retirement plan, self-employed individuals, and others who want to increase their savings. Plan participants contribute to an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) that belongs to them.

California employers with more than 50 employees must register with CalSavers by June 30, 2021 if they do not already sponsor a retirement plan. Registration is available to all California employers with at least five employees.

The CalSavers program opened statewide in July 2019 and had $4.3 million in assets as of mid-2020. On average, participating employees contribute $105 to $120 monthly. Like the Oregon plan, the default savings rate is 5% of the employee’s pay and employees are automatically enrolled after 30 days of employment. They can stop, restart or transfer plan participation at any time if they change employers.

CalSavers Retirement Savings Program is designed to simplify employer participation with no employer fees, no fiduciary responsibility, and minimal ongoing responsibilities. Employers that fail to offer participation in the plan as required are subject to fines.

In May 2021, a federal appeals court in San Francisco dismissed a legal challenge to the CalSavers plan.

Illinois Secure Choice Retirement Savings Program

Illinois launched its Secure Choice Retirement Savings Program in 2018. It is a state-facilitated retirement program that is open to employees who work for an eligible employer as well as other employees who want to enroll independent of their employer. Approximately 32,000 Illinois employees saved $8.5 million in the first year of the Illinois Secure Choice program, according to state reports.

The Illinois Secure Choice account is a Roth IRA for the employee. The default savings rate is 5% of gross pay. Employees are automatically enrolled through payroll contributions after 30 days of employment. An employee can opt out at any time. Plan participants are charged a fee of 0.75% of assets per year ($0.75 for every $100 saved), which pays for program administration and operating expenses.

The Illinois Secure Choice had 5,544 registered employers as of May 2020. There are no fees for employers to facilitate the program and employers cannot make contributions to their employee accounts. Employers serve a limited role as a facilitator. As of November, 2019, employers with 25 or more employees that have been in business for two years or more are required to participate in the program. Employers that already offer an employer-sponsored retirement plan are exempt from this legislation.

New Jersey Secure Choice Savings

The “New Jersey Secure Choice Savings Act,” was signed into law in March 2019, with a two-year time frame scheduled to take effect in March 2021.

The Act requires employers that have been in business for two years and have 25 or more employees to participate in a retirement savings program administered through automatic payroll deductions. Private sector employees of businesses of any size are able to participate in the retirement savings program. Smaller or newer employers could join voluntarily. Failure to comply will result in fines to the employer.

Employees will be automatically enrolled at the leve of a 3% paycheck contribution. The annual contribution maximum is $6,000 for those under 50 years old, and $7,000 for those 50 or older.

Connecticut Secure Choice Savings Plan

Connecticut employers with five or more employees must offer a retirement plan to employees, and private employers with four or fewer employees may choose to do so. Employees are auto-enrolled within 120 days of employment, and employees must be notified of their rights within 30 days. Employers are not permitted to make contributions to the program.

The Connecticut Retirement Security Authority, a quasi-public agency, was formed in 2016 to oversee the program. The state estimates that as many as 600,000 employees may benefit from the plan.