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updated: 2021-05-19
 

"The use of temporary workers may be particularly attractive to organizations with high fringe-benefit costs.   [Donald Mayhall and Kristin Nelson, The Temporary Help Supply Service and the Temporary Labor Market (Salt Lake City, UT, Olympus Research Corporation, 1982 December 14).]   One of the more pronounced trends in labor costs over the last several years has been the increase in the relative importance of employer-paid benefits.   For example, between 1981 June and 1985 December, wages increased 27.0%, but total compensation costs, including employer costs for employee benefits, rose 29.2%.   [Employment Cost Index-1985 December, BLS News Release, 1985 January 28.   The trend of larger increases in benefits than wages reversed in 1985, when wages were up 4.4%, compared with 4.3% for total compensation.]   Traditionally, temporary employees [are paid] fewer benefits than permanent employees and therefore lower benefit costs." --- Max L. Carey & Kim L. Hazelbaker 1986 April "Employment growth in the temporary help industry" _Monthly Labor Review_ pg 38

 
 

2011 March

U	M	T	W	R	F	S
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31

 

"Analysis of the Bureau's 1984 industry occupation matrix indicates that office occupations accounted for more than one-half of total employment in personnel supply services, industrial occupations, almost three-tenths, and medical occupations, about one-tenth.   Only a small proportion of the employment was in engineering and technical fields.   The magnitude of employment in the latter occupations, however, may be much greater than the data would imply because many establishments that furnish temporary help in engineering and technician occupations apparently are frequently classified in the engineering and architectural services industry rather than in the temporary help industry.   [Data on the number of workers supplied by job shops are not available, but some industry observers estimate that it may have been as high as 150K in 1985.]...   Customers usually are very specific about requirements for assignments." --- Max L. Carey & Kim L. Hazelbaker 1986 April "Employment growth in the temporary help industry" _Monthly Labor Review_ pg 38

 
 
 

captain William Scott's flag for the Republic of Texas.

2011-03-01

2011-03-01
_Dice_
Dice Report: 75,648 job ads

2011-02-28 19:59PST (2011-02-28 22:59EST) (2011-03-01 03:59GMT)
Ron Rogers _Cumberland PA Sentinel_
NFL launching longitudinal studies on concussions and other health issues of players

2011-03-01
_Pittsburgh PA Post-Gazette_
3rd man sentenced in illegal alien bodyshopping scheme
Pittsburgh PA Tribune-Review
Brian Bowling: Pittsburgh PA Tribune-Review
Roman Litt was sentenced on Monday to 4 years and 8 months in prison, plus 3 years of probabion, for conspiracy and money laundering.   Roman Litt, 66, and his brother, Alexander Litt, 46, of Miami, had pleaded guilty in September.   Last month, Roman Kucher, 41, was sentenced to 33 months in prison for his role in the businesses.   His father, Gregory Kucher, a former Pittsburgher, is serving a 51-month sentence.   They founded ARRA Corp., in Cincinnati in 1998 and established 'franchises' in Columbus, Cleveland and Pittsburgh.   Mikhail Litt, a NY real estate attorney, testified that his father had walked away from the business in 2006 due to concerns over its legitimacy.   The illegal aliens worked for up to 20 hours a day with no over-time pay or benefits, and were charged $150 per month for housing in $600 per month apartments shared by 4 to 8 people, for transportation to and from work, and a $1.50 per hour royalty for working.

2011-03-01
Gina Miller _Dakota Voice_
2012 presidential possibilities
"I shudder to think that we could end up with Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee or Newt Gingrich...   Haley Barbour... was a lobbyist who was hired by the Embassy of Mexico to lobby Washington for a 'pathway to citizenship' for illegal aliens, otherwise known as amnesty, by those of us who shun euphemisms...   Donald Trump...has donated a great amount of money to Democrat politicians, much more than he has to Republicans, according to donor records.   He also gave $50K this past December to Rahm Emanuel's Chicago mayoral campaign... Mr. Trump's campaign donations include Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, Arlen Specter, Dick Durbin, Charlie Rangel, Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter...   I was happy to see a report that Herman Cain won a Tea Party straw poll at the American Policy Summit, which was held in Arizona and organized by the Tea Party Patriots."

2011-03-01
Seth McLaughlin _Washington Times_
Flood of illegal alien labor makes life more difficult for minority citizens
Suzanne Gamboa: Forbes/AP
Macon GA Telegraph
San Francisco CA Chronicle

2011-03-01
Eric Peters _American Spectator_
"E-Z" Money vs. anonymous cash: Destroying privacy and "legal tender" on toll roads

2011-03-01
John M. Mason _Seeking Alpha_
Will the financial industry dance alone?

2011-03-01
William Norman Grigg _Freedom in Our Time_
They Call That Scam "Sharia"

2011-03-01
Giulio Meotti _Arutz Sheva Israel National News_
spokes-people of the Muslim Brotherhood
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)

2011-03-01
John Lemuel _Chronicle of Higher Education_
Expectations and measures for academic achievement

2012-03-01
Shikha Dalmia _Reason_
Long live the American dream: Why India and Red China have nothing on America
"Americans, hit first by out-sourcing and then a recession...   Conventional wisdom holds that America's global competitiveness is driven by geniuses flocking to its shore and producing breath-taking inventions.   But America's real genius lies not in tapping genius—but every scrap of talent up-and-down the scale...   India's literacy rate is 66%.   [Red China] puts its at 93% -- but between 2000 and 2005, [Red China's] illiterate population grew by 30M...   Vivek Wadhwa has shown that, contrary to conventional wisdom, not only does America graduate comparable number of engineers to India and [Red China] -- American engineers are vastly superior."
OTOH, the USA is wasting over 1M STEM workers...jgo

2011-03-01 (5771 Adar1 25)
Paul Greenberg _Jewish World Review_
The Arab Revolt
"This time the Arabs are rebelling against their own hodgepodge of kings, dictators, autocrats, demagogues and all of the above.   The crumbling old pillars of the region, long rotten from within, are falling one by one. Or at least trembling."

2011-03-01 (5771 Adar1 25)
Dennis Prager _Jewish World Review_
8 Reasons Not To Be Optimistic about Egypt
"1. Countries almost never go straight from dictatorship to liberty...   2. When pro-American dictators are overthrown, far more repressive anti-American tyrants usually replace them...   3. Islamists have a near-monopoly on passion in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world...   4. Neither liberty nor tolerance has roots in the Arab world...   5. People have been trained to depend on the state...   6. The American media have been hiding the bad guys...   7. Getting closer to Iran...   8. Egypt is saturated with hatred of Jews and Israel...   Against these eight powerful reasons, we read about individual Egyptians who are sick of dictatorship and yearn for freedom.   Such wonderful people also lived in Cuba in 1959, and in Iran in 1979.   They usually end up in prison."

2011-03-01 (5771 Adar1 25)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
Left still blind to evil -- but this time the stakes are far greater: Global jihadists have predicted correctly that Western leftists will not learn the lessons of history. Instead of acknowledging their previous mistakes, they will again white-wash and embrace those whose goal is nothing short of destroying civilization

2011-03-01 (5771 Adar1 25)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
Is Democracy Viable?
Investor's Businss Daily
"After Russia's czars were replaced by the Communists, the government executed more people in a day than the czars had executed in half a century.   It was much the same story in Cuba, when the Batista regime was replaced by Castro and in Iran when the Shah was replaced by the Ayatollahs.   It is not inevitable that bad regimes are replaced by worse regimes.   But it has happened too often for us to blithely assume that over-throwing a dictator means a movement toward freedom and democracy...   Freedom and democracy cannot be simply conferred on anyone.   Both have preconditions, and even nations that are free and democratic today took centuries to get there."

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-02

1836-03-02: Texas Declaration of Independence

2011-03-01 20:18:54PST (2011-03-01 23:18:54EST) (2011-03-02 04:18:54GMT)
_San Jose CA Mercury "News"_/_AP_
Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen was paid $12.2M in 2010, including $909,583 in salary
Barbara Ortutay: Business Week
abc

2011-03-02
_JD Supra_
US employee filed suit against Infosys for visa fraud for abuse of B-1 visas

2011-03-02
Lorna Thackeray _Billings MT Gazette_/_Lee_
February temperatures 10 degrees below normal; snow-fall above

2011-03-02
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Federal Reserve risks the status of the dollar

2011-03-02
Josh Keller _Chronicle of Higher Education_
Under pressure, SC colleges put expense reports on-line

2011-03-02
"Washington Watcher" _V Dare_
Democrats Don't Care That Immigration Hurts Minorities -- Should Republicans?
"I have been very critical of the GOP, but there's definitely at least a dime's worth of difference on immigration issues.   The subcommittee's Democratic members (with career Numbers USA's grade): ranking Democrat and sole white member Zoe Lofgren (F-); Sheila Jackson Lee (F-); Maxine Waters (F); Pedro Pierluisi (non-voting member from Puerto Rico, so he does not have a grade, but trust me, it would be an F- if he could vote.) They are all under the ranking Democrat in the Judiciary John Conyers (F).   Several years ago, when NumbersUSA testified, Sheila Jackson Lee said she would send her F- grade to her mother to put on the refrigerator.   In contrast, here are the Republicans' grades: Chairman Elton Gallegly (A); vice chairman Steve King (A+); Ted Poe( B+); Louie Gohmert( A-); Mike Ross ( C+).   All of whom serve under Judiciary Chair Lamar Smith (A)...   Lamar Smith has been emphatic that all immigration legislation be focused on jobs.   The first 2 hearings were on E-Verify and Work-Force Enforcement.   Yet before tackling important issues such as legal immigration or birth-right citizenship, which Steve King would likely have addressed, the Republicans still felt they must discuss the problems that immigration causes minorities.   For the TK DATE hearings, they invited two African Americans with very impressive credentials: Frank Morris, president of Progressives for Immigration Reform, a former Dean at the 'Historically Black' College Morgan State University and former president of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, and Carol Swain, a law professor at Vanderbilt University who has written extensively on white nationalism and immigration.   Additionally, the GOP invited one Hispanic: George Rodriguez, president of the San Antonio Tea Party.   He had previously been in charge of an organization called Juan Seguin Society in honor a Texas Patriot who fought against Mexico in Texas' War of Independence."

2011-03-02
Peter Ferrara _American Spectator_
They're All Detroit Leftists Now

2011-03-02
senator Marco Rubio
Senator Rubio Votes For A Balanced Budget Amendment
"With a national debt exceeding $14T and a budget proposal from the White House to add even trillions more, we need every tool at our disposal to seriously confront our fiscal crisis.   While today's amendment did not pass, we will keep working until the requirement that Congress pass a balanced budget is enshrined in our Constitution."

2011-03-02
Jennifer Rohn _Nature_
Give post-docs a career, not empty promises

2011-03-02
William L. Anderson
Trains, Planes, and Krugman
George Will: Why leftists love trains

2011-03-02 (5771 Adar1 26)
Haley Sweetland Edwards & Garrett Therolf _Jewish World Review_
Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh blames U.S.A., Israel for "destabilizing the Arab world"

2011-03-02 (5771 Adar1 26)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
Public Employee Unions
Lew Rockwell
"I value freedom of association, and non-association, even in ways that are not always popular and often deemed despicable.   I support a person's right to be a member or not be a member of a labor union.   From my view, the only controversy regarding unions is what should they be permitted and not permitted to do...   public employee wages and benefits often average 45% higher than their counterparts in the private sector...   Employers in the private sector have a bottom line.   If they overcompensate their employees, company profits will sink.   The company might even face bankruptcy...   No such bottom line exists in the government sector.   Politicians have every reason to grant benefits to their political allies, in this case public employee unions.   They don't pick up the tab; it's unorganized [tax-victims] who face higher taxes."

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-03

1865-03-03: battle of Natural Bridge, Florida

2011-03-03 05:30PST (08:30EST) (13:30GMT)
Scott Gibbons & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
un-employment insurance weekly claims report
DoL home page
DoL OPA press releases
historical data
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 351,076 in the week ending Feb. 26, a decrease of 30,029 from the previous week.   There were 471,256 initial claims in the comparable week in 2010.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.4% during the week ending Feb. 19, a decrease of 0.3 percentage point from the prior week.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 4,325,502, a decrease of 262,110 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 4.3% and the volume was 5,597,500.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending Feb 12 was 9,236,041.   Extended benefits were available in AL, AK, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, DC, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, ME, MA, MI, MN, MO, NV, NJ, NM, NY, NC, OH, OR, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, VA, WA, WV, and WI, during the week ending February 12.   States reported 3,653,267 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending Feb. 12, a decrease of 32,094 from the prior week.   There were 5,685,912 claimants in the comparable week in 2010.   EUC weekly claims include first, second, third, and fourth tier activity.   [Note that the population used for calculating the "insured unemployment rate" changes
to 132,623,886 beginning 2007-10-06;
to 133,010,953 beginning 2008-01-05;
to 133,382,559 beginning 2008-04-05;
to 133,690,617 beginning 2008-07-05;
to 133,902,387 beginning 2008-10-04;
to 133,886,830 beginning 2009-01-03;
to 133,683,433 beginning 2009-04-04;
to 133,078,480 beginning 2009-07-04;
to 133,823,421 beginning 2009-10-03;
to 131,823,421 beginning 2009-10-17;
to 130,128,328 beginning 2010-01-02;
to 128,298,468 beginning 2010-04-03;
to 126,763,245 beginning 2010-07-03;
to 125,845,577 beginning 2010-09-25;
to 125,560,066 beginning 2011-01-15.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2011-03-03 05:58PST (08:58EST) (13:58GMT)
Jeffry Bartash _MarketWatch_
2010Q4 productivity increased by 2.6%

2011-03-03 10:11PST (13:11EST) (18:11GMT)
Jim Turner _Treasure Coast FL Palm_/_AP_
Tom Rooney bill would require feds to deport criminal aliens at end of their jail/prison sentences

2011-03-03
_Fox_/_AP_
World food prices at 20-year highs

2011-03-03
Joseph Schuman _AOL_
Job market convalescence could take a long time

2011-03-03
Jim Hightower _Colorado Springs CO Independent_
All we export these days is our future
"our corporate chieftains have made us number one in exporting America's most precious goods -- our jobs, factories, technologies, and middle-class opportunities.   With unemployment and underemployment devastating millions of families in our country, perhaps you've assumed that U.S. corporations aren't hiring these days.   Nonsense, they added 1.4M jobs last year alone -- over-seas, that is.   For example, more than half of Caterpillar's new hires in 2010 were in foreign countries.   Many more of this industry giant's jobs are headed offshore in the near future, for Caterpillar, which was once an iconic American brand, has recently invested in three new plants in [Red China].   It'll not only manufacture tractors and bulldozers there, but it will also begin to ship its design work and technology development jobs to [Red China].   Likewise, DuPont, once proud of its U.S. work-force, has slashed its number of American employees in recent years, while increasing its Asia-Pacific workforce by more than half."

2011-03-03
Erica Grieder _More Intelligent Life_
The Curious Journey of the Creators of Curious George
Contemporary Jewish Museum: Curious George Saves the Day: The Art of Margret and H.A. Rey

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-04

2011-03-04
Herman Cain _American Spectator_
In Defense of American Exceptionalism

2011-03-04
Michael Wines _NY Times_
Red China plans to increase military spending 12.7% this year

2011-03-04
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
NBC nightly news on H-1B, then and now
V Dare
 
Back in 1998, when Congress was considering (and ultimately approving) the first increase in the H-1B cap, the NBC Nightly News ran a very balanced piece on the issue.   They interviewed both industry lobbyists and critics (including me).   I'm enclosing it at the end of this message.
 
This evening, by contrast, the show ran a completely one-sided report, claiming that the long wait for green cards and the filling of the H-1B cap is making the U.S.A. lose brilliant entrepreneurs by the plane-load.   Not a single critic was interviewed or even cited.
 
Vivek Wadhwa was interviewed in the piece, mourning what he considers to be a great talent loss.   Unfortunately, he didn't mention that he agrees with us critics that H-1B is about cheap labor.   He has said, for instance,
 
I was one of the first [CEOs] to use H-1B visas to bring workers to the U.S.A.   Why did I do that?   Because it was cheaper.   (CIO article.)
 
Vivek should be credited for being so frank.   But he has used that frankness to illustrate his point that we need a fast-track green card program for the foreign workers.   This would take them out of the de facto indentured servitude of the long green card process, thus removing the yoke that enables under-paying them and enables their displacing of the American workers.
 
The yoke Vivek speaks of is indeed real (though his conclusions on the remedy are incorrect, as I will explain shortly).   I recently ran into a nice example of the yoke when I was reading The Big Short, by Michael Lewis, a fast-paced account of some traders who got rich by anticipating the financial crash of 2007-8.   One of the traders, Michael Burry, decided (long before he started buying CDSs) that a firm named Avant! was greatly undervalued, so he bought its shares.   Lewis writes (my emphasis added):
 
...even if [Avant!'s] executives went to jail (as they did) and the fines were paid (as they were), Avant! would be worth a lot more that the market assumed.   MOST OF ITS ENGINEERS WERE CHINESE NATIONALS ON WORK VISAS, AND THUS TRAPPED -- there was no risk that anyone would quit before the lights were out.
 
Of course, anyone in the industry knows that H-1B/green card process traps the workers, resulting in their exploitation, but it was interesting to see that even Burry, at the time an MD doing his residency at Stanford, knew it.   Yet Congress doesn't have a clue.
 
So, Vivek's pitch for fast-track green cards sounds plausible, but the problem is far more complicated than that--due to the age issue:
 
Vivek also agrees with me that there is rampant age discrimination in the tech industry.   But WHERE do the employers get all those young people to hire instead of the old (age 35+)?   Answer: The H-1B program, in which the vast majority of tech workers are young.  
 
The fast-track green card programs, often described by the sound bite, "Staple a green card to every U.S. diploma in STEM earned by a foreign student", would by definition have mainly the YOUNG as beneficiaries.   IOW, fast-track green cards would not solve the core problem with H-1B at all.
 
Of course I've discussed this with Vivek, and though he doesn't make the H-1B/age connection in his essay above, the person he quotes there, professor Clair Brown, has made the connection (reproduced by permission of professor Brown).
 
As I reported recently, I've seen indications that Congress wants to move on the fast-track green cards soon.   Big mistake.
 
That old NBC report follows below.   It's funny to read it now.   Cindy Yu, the college freshman who assumed in 1998 she'd have her pick of jobs by the time she graduated, presumably did graduate in 2002, right in the midst of the dot-com bust, and a time when over 100K H-1Bs were still hired.   I wonder how she fared.   Given that she was presented as evidence that the industry lobbyists were right in their shortage claims and "need" for H-1Bs, I wonder if she wound up as a victim of the H-1B program in the end.
 
Norm
 
Jonathan Alter: NBC: Older workers: tired or wired?: Age discrimination is a growing issue in high-tech industry
 
Is there a labor shortage in the high-tech industry?   The answer may affect the hiring practices of America's most profitable companies.
 
In this [not-so] booming American economy, graduation season is a great time to be young and in the job market.   In fact, you don't even need to graduate to start a hot career.
 
"I won't be looking for a job," says Cindy Yu, a college freshman.   "They'll be coming after me when I graduate.   Ms. Yu is already working part-time in the high-tech corridor in Richardson, TX, near Dallas, where dozens of telecommunications firms are eagerly recruiting students.
 
Jack Walters, of MCI (Ms. Yu's employer) says the job market here in Richardson is hot.   They could increase three-fold the engineers they're graduating in the local area and the market-place would pick them up.   [This despite data showing that we've been producing as many as 3 times the numbers of STEM workers as we've been employing in STEM jobs over the last several decades.]
 
Harris Miller, a computer industry lobbyist for the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) [which represents top executives who employ STEM workers], says there is a dramatic shortage nationwide.   "There are 350K openings for these high tech workers today.", he says.   "Every Sunday the newspaper is filled with dozens of columns of help wanted ads."
 
But appearances may be deceiving.
 
"Employers say they're desperate but look at the facts.", says Norman Matloff, who teaches computer science at the University of California Davis.   "They hire only 2% of their applicants whether they're a large company or a small one.   Does that sound desperate to you? Of course not."
 
A new report from the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the largest association of high tech engineers, says that "the pool of available talent should be sufficient for years to come".
 
So which is it? Shortage or surplus?   High-tech types who have passed the ripe old age of 40 say it's a matter of your age -- and your wage.
 
Take Ted Sumner, 47, who took a voluntary buy-out after 20 years.   He had risen through the ranks at Motorola because he heard the market was hot.
 
"I started looking in October and, gee, this is June.   The job market ain't hot for me.", he says.   "And don't let anyone tell you that it is."
 
Sumner has nine patents to his name and a family to support.   He finally got his first job offer this week, for slightly less than he was making before.
 
How bad is the problem for people Sumner's age?
 
"I don't see people in Silicon Valley or route 128 in Boston walking the streets saying 'will program for food because I'm an older worker'.", says the ITAA's Miller [though seversl have along route 128, and in NY and Boston and Sili Valley].
 
Maybe not, but is it possible that the industry is pretending there is a labor shortage to keep wages down and profits up?
 
Bob Lerman, labor economist at American University, says it is possible.   "Between 1988 and 1997, there was a rapid rise in employment but no rapid rise in salaries.", says Lerman.   "It means there was no shortage.   They were able to hire enough people."
 
This means that computer programmers and systems analysts have surprisingly short careers.   Indeed, within 20 years of graduation, more than four in five end up doing something else.
 
To fill the ranks, lobbyists for the high-tech industry are pushing Congress to nearly double the number of special visas already granted to a quarter of a million high-tech workers from over-seas.   Some of them have hard-to-find skills; but most don't.
 
"The main thing is to depress the wages of the rest of the people.", says Kumar Babu, who runs a software company.   Babu is a naturalized citizen, but thinks the foreign nationals are mostly brought in because they work cheaply.
 
"Paying them $20K for 2 years is an extremely good deal for them.", says Babu.   "If you got somebody from here it would probably cost you $100K for 2 years."
 
Even in the computer age, labor is still the most important business ingredient: "If we don't have enough skilled people it's like running out of iron ore in the industrial revolution.', says Miller.
 
"If they went to Congress and said, 'there's a shortage of cheap labor and here's what we want' at least they'd be honest.   But they're not being honest.", says Matloff.   "They're saying there's a shortage of labor -- period -- in this field, and that's wrong."
 
College kids see the high-tech boom and are majoring in computer sciences at double the rate of just 3 years ago.   They represent another surge of workers with rosy prospects in high-tech America -- at least for now.
---30---

2011-03-04
Kristen Russo _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
Fire in Michigan "headliner" factory idles Chevy Cruze poduction line in Lordstown, OH

2011-03-04
David Skolnick _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
Tax liens, foreclosures and vacancies plague Youngstown

2011-03-04 05:08PST (08:08EST) (13:08GMT)
Bill Poovey _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_/_AP_
TVA plan calls for more electricity to be generated using nuclear energy rather than coal

2011-03-04 06:25PST (09:25EST) (14:25GMT)
George Andreassi _Treasure Coast FL Palm_
proposed factory to make parts for wind- and hydro-electric turbines may bring 600 jobs to Martin county FL

2011-03-04 06:35PST (09:35EST) (14:35GMT)
Emery P. Dalesia _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_/_AP_
Alcoa says contested dams along Yadkin river in NC generated $8M in profits

2011-03-04
Andy Hogue _Lone Star Report_
Simpson and Rodriquez file anti-body-scanner, anti-grope bills
Stephen C. Webster: Raw Story
Aman Batheja & Andrea Ahles: Miami FL Herald
Aman Batheja & Andrea Ahles: Fort Worth TX Star-Telegram/McClatchy
Raven Clabough: New American
Phillip Suderman: Washington DC Examiner

2011-03-04
Gene C. Fant _Chronicle of Higher Education_
Snooty academics turn their noses up at STEM experts

2011-03-04
Jeff Lukens _View from 1776_
Will we be equal to the challenge?

2011-03-04
_US News & World Report_/_NSF_
Artifacts on islands off California coast suggest occupation 12,200 to 11,400 years ago

2011-03-04
William L. Anderson
Is Krugman trying to murder economic logic?

2011-03-04 (5771 Adar1 28)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
The world is actually now a far more dangerous place. Why is the USA's foreign policy still out of step?
"Iranian officials, Hizbullah and Hamas terrorists and other Iranian agents have played pivotal roles in the anti-regime movements in Yemen and Bahrain.   Their operations are the product of Iran's long running policy of developing close ties to opposition figures in these countries as well as in Egypt, Kuwait, Oman and Morocco.   These long-developed ties are reaping great rewards for Iran today."

Proposed Bills 2011

2011-03-04

DJIA	12,160.40
S&P 500(SPX)	1,321.15
NASDAQ(COMP)	2,784.67
Nikkei	10,694
10-year US T-Bond(UST10Y)	3.49
crude oil(CLJ11)	$104.42/barrel
natgas(NGH11)	$3.778/MBTU
reformulatedgasoline(RBH11)	$3.026/gal
heatingoil(HOH11)	$3.049/gal
gold(GCJ11)	$1,428.60/ounce
silver(SIK11)	$35.33/ounce
platinum(PLJ11)	$1,845.22/ounce
palladium(PAF11)	$814.80/ounce
copper(HGH11)	$0.2796875/ounce
soybeans	$13.75/bushel
maize	$7.22/bushel
wheat	$8.1125/bushel
dollarindex(DXY)	76.385
yenperdollar(USDYEN)	82.31
dollarspereuro(EURUSD)	1.3991
dollarsperpound(GBPUSD)	1.6266
swissfrancsperdollar	0.9252
indianrupeesperdollar	44.98
mexicanpesosperdollar(MXN)	12.0025
MorganStanleyHighTechIndex	701.63

I usually get this info from MarketWatch.
 

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-05

2011-03-05
Edwin S. Rubenstein _V Dare_
February Jobs: Statistical Noise, Better Data, Long-Run American Worker Displacement Continues

2011-03-05 06:00PDT (09:00EDT) (13:00GMT)
Mary Ann Milbourn _Orange county CA Register_
How bosses recruit
"Among the resources that were listed, 'Internet job board' was the top source for finding new workers.   Job boards were favored by 287 or 22% of the 1,712 small business owners who responded.   And what job board do they go to? Craigslist.   Newspapers were the second source with 125 -- 10% -- using a local publication.   The biggest response was 'other' with 384 respondents -- 29% -- citing this category.   Word of mouth, employee referrals and networking were among the most common responses in this category.   But in this day of Internet applications and online resumes, there was one answer that came up surprisingly often: walk-ins.   (Remember, these are small businesses.   Almost half of the respondents -- 46% -- said they had 1 to 4 employees.)... 43% hadn't hired in the last 24 months..."

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-06

2011-03-06: Fall of the Alamo
The Alamo.org
WikiPedia on the battle
WikiPedia on the mission
Donald Burger's Alamo site
Jack Landman's Alamo site
Trish Bennett's Alamo site
Lone Star Junction on the siege and battle
Lone Star Internet

2011-03-06
Jan Falstad _Billings MT Gazette_
Heath Oil Shale Formation may create oil boom in central Montana

2011-03-06
"knowledgeiskeyy" _College Confidential_
Fraudulent Engineering Shortage Rhethoric Is Not New in the USA
1952-09-17: Henry T. Healds

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-07

2011-03-07
Rob Rogers _Billings MT Gazette_/_Lee_
Montana to increase quality of educational performance data
"The study, conducted by the Data Quality Campaign -- a Washington, DC-based group that advocates using better data to increase student performance -- graded states on two 10-point check-lists."

2011-03-07
Amy Nolan _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
U of TN-linked firm to launch venture capital fund
"Fund-raising is scheduled to be complete March 31, but may be extended through June 30.   A minimum $5M must be raised, and individual units are priced at $50K."

2011-03-07 09:46PST (12:46EST) (17:46GMT)
Carly Harrington _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
Regal and AMC jointly launch movie distribution company Open Road Films

2011-03-07
Jason B. Jones _Chronicle of Higher Education_
Let students build stuff

2011-03-07 13:52PST (16:52EST) (21:52GMT)
Alistair Barr _MarketWatch_
Raj Rajaratnam trial to begin Tuesday (with table)
"Rajaratnam faces 14 counts of securities fraud and conspiracy.   Since he was arrested in 2009, Rajaratnam has maintained he's done nothing wrong.   Another 45 people have been charged since the government's insider-trading investigation kicked into high gear in 2009 August.   30 of those have been convicted and 6 have been sentenced.   Federal prosecutors have 90 hours of recorded calls in which Rajaratnam spoke with other people -- allegedly about material, non-public information."

2011-03-07
Josh Fischman _Chronicle of Higher Education_
U of KY's Technology Leadership Center will be run from IA
Cheryl Truman: Lexington KY Herald-Leader

2011-03-07
_Economic Times of India_
Tougher US visa norms hurting Indian IT firms
"Checks indicate that H-1B/L-1 visa rejection rates have doubled from 4% to [a mere] 8% for larger companies.   Rejection rate is even higher for smaller companies.   A CEO of an Indian [bodyshop] indicated that they lost up to 1% QoQ growth in the second half of..."

2011-03-07
_Chronicle of Higher Education_
Average faculties by field and rank at 4-year colleges and universities in 2010-2011 academic year

2011-03-07
Daniel Massey & Aaron Elstein _Crain's NY_
management split in bank owned by SEIU: CEO walks

2011-03-07
Robert P. Murphy _Ludwig von Mises Institute_
What's wrong with government debt (with graph)

2011-03-07
William L. Anderson
Say What?
"going to college might not provide the automatic financial boost for individuals that it once did, and he gives some examples.   Unfortunately, Krugman approaches the entire subject from a purely administrative point of view, as though an economy were something run by a political board of directors.   In fact, most of Krugman's columns and articles do rest upon the viewpoint that an economy is something to be administered by the state, and in that point, it hardly differs from what used to be the case in the former U.S.S.R. and [Red China].   The U.S.S.R. used to have the highest per capita ratio of Ph.D.s... but the economic results were less-than-satisfying."

2011-03-07 (5771 Adar2 01)
Issam Ahmed _Jewish World Review_
At funeral of Pakistan's only Christian cabinet member, PM refuses to mention why he was assassinated
"About 1K mourners, including the top diplomats and the US ambassador, today attended a Roman Catholic funeral for Shahbaz Bhatti.   The former head of the Ministry of Minorities was Pakistan's sole Christian minister and the second Pakistani official slain in as many months for opposing the country's blasphemy laws."

2011-03-07 (5771 Adar2 01)
Debra J. Saunders _Jewish World Review_
How the Obama Justice Department is making miserable the lives of former government employees
"Last month, the web-site Politico reported that the Department of Justice dropped its representation of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his former deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and other defendants in a law-suit filed by convicted al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla and his mother.   The Department of Justice continues to represent Defense Secretary Robert Gates, but no longer the Bushies.   Padilla, you may recall, is an American citizen who was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in 2002; authorities claimed that he was plotting to set off a radioactive 'dirty bomb'.   After the Bush administration designated Padilla as an "enemy combatant," he was held in a South Carolina Navy brig for 44 months.   Padilla was not convicted for plotting a U.S. terrorist attack -- largely because the case against him was built on information gleaned during harsh interrogations.   But in 2007, Padilla was convicted for 'conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim persons in a foreign country' and 'material support for terrorism'.   A judge sentenced him to 17 years in prison.   From his cell, Padilla now is suing Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and others on the grounds that his 'enemy combatant' status, military detention and the harsh interrogations -- the use of stress positions, sleep deprivation and threats -- were unconstitutional."

2011-03-07 (5771 Adar2 01)
Mark Steyn _Jewish World Review_
No, not terrorism, but a "tragic event"
"According to Bismarck's best known maxim on Europe's most troublesome region, the Balkans are not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier.   Americans could be forgiven for harboring similar sentiments after the murder of 2 U.S. airmen in Germany by a Kosovar Muslim.   Remember Kosovo? Me neither.   But it was big at the time, launched by Bill Clinton in the wake of his Monica difficulties: Make war, not love, as the boomers advise.   So Clinton did -- and without any pesky UN resolutions, or even the pretense of seeking them.   Instead, he and Tony Blair and even Jacques Chirac just cried 'Bombs away!' and got on with it.   And the Left didn't mind at all -- because, for a modern Western nation, war is only legitimate if you have no conceivable national interest in whatever war you're waging...   A decade on, Kosovo is a sorta sovereign state, and in Frankfurt a young airport employee is so grateful for what America did for his people that he guns down U.S. servicemen while yelling 'Allahu akbar!'.   The strange shrunken spectator who serves as president of the United States, offering what he called 'a few words about the tragic event that took place', announced that he was 'saddened', and expressed his 'gratitude for the service of those who were lost' and would 'spare no effort' to 'work with the German authorities' but it was a 'stark reminder' of the 'extraordinary sacrifices that our men and women in uniform are making...'   The passivity of these remarks is very telling.   Men and women 'in uniform' (which it's not clear these airmen were even wearing) understand they may be called upon to make 'extraordinary sacrifices' in battle.   They do not expect to be 'lost' on the shuttle bus at the hands of a civilian employee at a passenger air terminal in an allied nation.   But then I don't suppose their comrades expected to be 'lost' at the hands of an army major at Fort Hood, to cite the last 'tragic event' that 'took place' -- which seems to be the president's preferred euphemism for a guy opening fire while screaming 'Allahu akbar!'.   But relax, this fellow in Frankfurt was most likely a 'lone wolf' (as senator Chuck Schumer described the Times Square Bomber) or an 'isolated extremist' (as the president described the Christmas Day Pantybomber).   There are so many of these 'lone wolves' and 'isolated extremists' you may occasionally wonder whether they've all gotten together and joined Local 473 of the Amalgamated Union of Lone Wolves and Isolated Extremists, but don't worry about it: As any Homeland Security official can tell you, 'Allahu akbar' is Arabic for 'Nothing to see here.'"

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-08

2011-03-07 20:39:15PST (2011-03-07 23:39:15EST) (2011-03-08 04:39:15GMT)
Lisa M. Krieger _San Jose CA Mercury "News"_
Genetic analysis points to southern African bushmen as closest to earliest humans
"Marcus Feldman. 'They don't use metal.   They live in the toughest kind of environment, with very little water.   Their hunting tools are minimal; they have a very-low-calorie diet.'   But Feldman, who led the team with geneticist Brenna Henn, also said that 'they are total geniuses in the bush'.   'Over tens of thousands of years, we lost the skills they have, that they teach their children.', he said.   'We developed a totally different set of values -- with evolution through agriculture -- that bypassed these people.'...   [Researhers used the theory that] older original populations have greater genetic diversity, while newer populations have far less...   saliva specimens from 95 members of the Hadza and Sandawe tribes of Tanzania and the click-speaking Khomani Bushmen of South Africa...   The team compared this DNA with 21 samples from more extensively studied tribal peoples such as the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania, and the Yoruba of western Africa.   The DNA was also compared with that of a group from Tuscany, Italy, for contrast.   Scientists found that the greatest genetic variation was seen in the Bushmen..."

2011-03-08
Jerome Kowalksi _JD Supra_
Many lawyers' jobs may be replaced by computers
"The New York Times recently reported that 'Armies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software'.   In fact, the computer software the Times reported about is not only dramatically cheaper -- the software is actually 5% of the cost of lawyers performing the same task -- the software does an incredibly more thorough and, yes, more thoughtful and insightful job."

2011-03-08 13:56PST (16:56EST) (21:56GMT)
Ruth Mantell _MarketWatch_
Moving for a job is risky

2011-03-08
William L. Anderson
This is fiscal responsibility?

2011-03-08 (5771 Adar2 02)
Nancy Bartley _Jewish World Review_
High court reaffirms public's right to government records
"The Navy argued that the information Milner wants, data about the storage and safety of munitions at Naval Magazine Indian Island, which is in Jefferson county, should fall under the personnel rules and practices exception.   [Why not the national security option is mysterious...jgo]   Milner specifically requested maps and data showing how far apart potentially explosive munitions are stored...   Milner, 59, a Lake Forest Park electrician and a long-time peace activist, began making public-disclosure requests after participating in a 1986 protest over the delivery of Trident missiles at the Bangor submarine base in Kitsap County.   He noticed signs on the train into the base identified the cargo as explosive and was puzzled when a news report quoted a Navy official saying no explosives were on the train.   Milner asked the American Civil Liberties Union how to make a FOIA request, and the documents he got in return proved the news report wrong.   He became hooked on holding government agencies accountable by requesting public records.   Seattle attorney Mickey Gendler defended Milner when he was arrested after blocking a train in a peace protest in the 1980s.   It was Gendler's partner Mann who took the Indian Island case -- pro bono."

2011-03-08 (5771 Adar2 02)
Nancy A. Youssef & Warren P. Strobel _Jewish World Review_
With Obama still deciding on military options, pro-Gadhafi forces appear to take the initiative

2011-03-08 (5771 Adar2 02)
Frank J. Gaffney & Warren P. Strobel _Jewish World Review_
King of the Hill on "The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community's Response"
"the Muslim Brotherhood is not just somebody else's problem; its ours.   It operates in some seventy countries worldwide, including the United States.   In each, it adapts its methods to suit the local conditions.   Where practicable, the MB uses violence to achieve its goals; where not, its uses stealth.   But the Ikhwan's goals are the same in every case.   Indeed, they are the same as those embraced by Islamists everywhere, including al Qaeda:   By definition, they are dedicated to the global triumph of shariah, a politico-military-legal program that is unalterably totalitarian and supremacist in character and wholly incompatible with this country's Constitution...   virtually every prominent group that purports to speak for that community is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood or sympathetic to its agenda.   This is not a matter of speculation; it has been established by the Department of Justice in federal court in connection with the Holy Land Foundation trial, largest terrorism financing prosecution in U.S. history.   Particularly dispositive is the Brotherhood's strategic plan which the prosecution introduced into evidence uncontested in that trial.   After declaring the mission of the Ikhwan in America to be 'destroying the Western civilization from within...by their [that is, our] hands and the hands of the believers', this document describes such groups as the Muslim Students Association, the Islamic Society of North America and the progenitor of the Council on American Islamic Relations, the Islamic Association of Palestine, as 'our organizations and organizations of our friends'."
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)

2011-03-08 (5771 Adar2 02)
Cal Thomas _Jewish World Review_
Time to rethink Arab arms sales

2011-03-08 (5771 Adar2 02)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
Meet the spiritual warriors who defend women where feminists -- and "liberated" men -- fear to tread: Violence in Muslim-Jewish marriages

2011-03-08 (5771 Adar2 02)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
Union Myths
"Unions are for unions, just as corporations are for corporations and politicians are for politicians...   There are limits to how long unions can siphon off money from businesses, without facing serious economic repercussions.   The most famous labor union leader, the legendary John L. Lewis, head of the United Mine Workers from 1920 to 1960, secured rising wages and job benefits for the coal miners, far beyond what they could have gotten out of a free market based on supply and demand.   But there is no free lunch.   An economist at the University of Chicago called John L. Lewis 'the world's greatest oil salesman'.   His strikes that interrupted the supply of coal, as well as the resulting wage increases that raised its price, caused many individuals and businesses to switch from using coal to using oil, leading to reduced employment of coal miners.   The higher wage rates also led coal companies to replace many miners with machines.   The net result was a huge decline in employment in the coal mining industry, leaving many mining towns virtually ghost towns by the 1960s.   There is no free lunch.   Similar things happened in the unionized steel industry and in the unionized automobile industry.   At one time, U.S. Steel was the largest steel producer in the world and General Motors the largest automobile manufacturer.   No more.   Their unions were riding high in their heyday, but they too discovered that there is no free lunch, as their members lost jobs by the hundreds of thousands.   Workers have also learned that there is no free lunch, which is why they have, over the years, increasingly voted against being represented by unions in secret ballot elections...   government workers represented by public sector unions.   While oil could replace coal, while U.S. Steel dropped from #1 in the world to #10, and Toyota could replace General Motors as the world's leading producer of cars, government is a monopoly.   Nobody is likely to replace the federal or state bureaucracies, no matter how much money the unions drain from the [tax-victims].   That is why government unions continue to thrive while private sector unions decline.   [Tax-victims] provide their free lunch."

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-09

2011-03-09
Don Bauder _San Diego CA Reader_
Are American engineers in short supply or surplus?
"Back in 1950, almost 31% of working Americans had manufacturing jobs.   Now the figure is below 10%.   Many analysts put the blame on American companies that sent such jobs to low- and slave-wage nations during the off-shoring wave that picked up momentum in the 1980s and hasn't stopped.   Controversy rages."

2011-03-09
Darshan Gopi _Daily Illini_
Chris Gardner speaks at UI, encourages students in their own pursuit of happiness

2011-03-09
Josh Fischman _Chronicle of Higher Education_
Leslie G. Valiant won Turing award

2011-03-09
Tomas Claburn _Information Week_/_UBM_
Apple released iOS 4.3 and Xcode 4
Thunderbolt (video)

2011-03-09
Beryl Benderly _Science_
Straight-talk with students about career prospects

2011-03-09 (5771 Adar2 03)
Paul Greenberg _Jewish World Review_
The uses of anti-Semitism

2011-03-09 (5771 Adar2 03)
Kristen Chick _Jewish World Review_
In Egypt's Tahrir Square, women attacked at rally on International Women's Day

2011-03-09 (5771 Adar2 03)
Edmund Sanders _Jewish World Review_
Revealed: Palestinians' risky gambit for statehood

2011-03-09 (5771 Adar2 03)
Andrew Silow-Carroll _Jewish World Review_
Say what?: A new study of how American Jews use Hebrew and Yiddish tells us who we are. Nu?

2011-03-09 (5771 Adar2 03)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
Hand-outs, morality, and common sense
"the last decade's path of congressional spending is unsustainable.   Spending must be reined in, but what spending should be cut?...   Estimated federal [extortion] revenue for 2011 is $2.2T and federal spending is $3.8T leaving us with a $1.6T deficit.   The budget could be balanced simply by taking more of our earnings, making us greater congressional serfs.   True protection requires an amendment limiting congressional spending...   We need a rule that combines our Constitution with simple morality and plain common sense.   I think it immoral for Congress to forcibly take one American's earnings and give them to another American to whom they do not belong...   We might ask ourselves whether acts that are clearly immoral and despicable when done privately are any less so when done by Congress.   Close to two-thirds of the federal budget, so-called entitlements, represent what thieves do: redistribute income...   our nation went from 1787 to 1979 and during that interval produced some of the world's most highly educated people without a Department of Education.   Since the department's creation, American primary and secondary education has become a joke among industrialized nations.   What about the Department of Energy; how much energy has it produced? From our founding in 1787 to 1965, our nation went from a Third World status to building the world's mightiest first-class cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit and Philadelphia without the benefit of Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).   After HUD was created in 1965, many of our formerly great cities are in decline.   No one is saying that HUD is responsible for the decline, but neither was HUD responsible for their rise...   federal spending as a percentage of GDP was about 3%, as it was from 1787 to 1920 except during war...   today's massive federal spending that tops 25% of GDP.   A good part of that generation is still alive.   Before they depart, they might do their share to help us have a federal government exercising only constitutionally enumerated powers."

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-10

2011-03-10 05:30PST (08:30EST) (13:30GMT)
Scott Gibbons & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
un-employment insurance weekly claims report
DoL home page
DoL OPA press releases
historical data
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 406,096 in the week ending March 5, an increase of 52,147 from the previous week.   There were 459,523 initial claims in the comparable week in 2010.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.5% during the week ending Feb. 26, unchanged from the prior week.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 4,442,438, an increase of 97,576 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 4.3% and the volume was 5,538,966.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending Feb 19 was 8,772,818.   Extended benefits were available in AL, AK, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, DC, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, ME, MA, MI, MN, MO, NV, NJ, NM, NY, NC, OH, OR, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, VA, WA, WV, and WI, during the week ending February 19.   States reported 3,600,522 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending Feb. 19, a decrease of 52,745 from the prior week.   There were 5,527,451 claimants in the comparable week in 2010.   EUC weekly claims include first, second, third, and fourth tier activity.   [Note that the population used for calculating the "insured unemployment rate" changes
to 132,623,886 beginning 2007-10-06;
to 133,010,953 beginning 2008-01-05;
to 133,382,559 beginning 2008-04-05;
to 133,690,617 beginning 2008-07-05;
to 133,902,387 beginning 2008-10-04;
to 133,886,830 beginning 2009-01-03;
to 133,683,433 beginning 2009-04-04;
to 133,078,480 beginning 2009-07-04;
to 133,823,421 beginning 2009-10-03;
to 131,823,421 beginning 2009-10-17;
to 130,128,328 beginning 2010-01-02;
to 128,298,468 beginning 2010-04-03;
to 126,763,245 beginning 2010-07-03;
to 125,845,577 beginning 2010-09-25;
to 125,560,066 beginning 2011-01-15.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2011-03-10 07:33PST (10:33EST) (15:33GMT)
Greg Robb _MarketWatch_
Trade deficit increased 15.1% in January

2011-03-10 07:55PST (10:55EST) (15:55GMT)
John Hazard _Ziff Davis_/_CBS_
Tech CEOs visit DC to lobby for tax changes, higher numbers and lower standards for H-1B visas
"The executives will meet with a range of government officials, including, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Austan Goolsbee, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling and Office of Management and Budget Director Jack Lew. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz were also on the schedule."

2011-03-10
Kristen Russo _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
unemployment up in Mahoning valley
David Skolnick: Mahoning valley population down

2011-03-10 14:17:43PST (17:17:43EST) (22:17:43GMT)
Mike Cassidy _San Jose CA Mercury "News"_
Soaring food and fuel prices crush Sili Valley working class

2011-03-10 (5771 Adar2 04)
Steven Emerson _Jewish World Review_
Mohammedans constitute 80% of DoJ's list of terrorism convictions
"Though Muslims represent about 1% of the American population, they constitute defendants in 186 of the 228 cases DoJ lists...   Al-Qaida is involved in the largest number of prosecutions, representing 30% of the 228 terror cases involving an identified group.   Hizballah-affiliated defendants are involved in 10.5% of the cases and Hamas is part of 9%.   Pakistani-based Lashkar-e-Tayyiba was involved in 6.5% of the cases...   The cases listed by DoJ are divided between those involving direct support for terrorist plots or organizations, and those where investigations 'involved an identified link to international terrorism' but the resulting indictments and complaints involved charges such as fraud, immigration violations, firearms, drugs, false statements and obstruction of justice.   Among all cases, an Islamist connection was found in at least 46%.   An almost equal percentage, however, involved cases listed by the DoJ as terror-related, but in which there was insufficient information to determine whether a person was tied to an Islamist cause.   In many, it was unclear why the case was included on a list of terror-related prosecutions.   The list emphasizes international terror, so domestic extremist groups like the Hutaree militia and eco-terrorists are not included.   30 of the terror cases listed, or about 13%, involve home-grown Islamist terrorists.   As the DoJ statistics cover cases prosecuted through 2010 March, a series of homegrown Islamist terrorist plots thwarted in the last year are not included.   For example, Jordanian Hossam Smadi pleaded guilty in 2010 May to attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction to blow up Fountain Place, a well-recognized skyscraper in downtown Dallas.   In September of 2009, Smadi parked a vehicle loaded with what he thought was a live bomb underneath the building.   After moving several blocks away from the building, he used a cell phone to detonate the explosive device.   Smadi was unaware that the device, provided by the FBI, was inert."

2011-03-10 (5771 Adar2 04)
Cal Thomas _Jewish World Review_
Hunting for terrorists, not witches

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-11

2011-03-11 07:04PST (10:04EST) (15:04GMT)
Ruth Mantell _MarketWatch_
UMich consumer sentiment index fell from 77.5 in February to 68.2 in March
Robert Johnson: MorningStar
Reuters/London Times
Louisville KY Courier-Journal/Gannett
NY Post/Bloomberg
Federal Reserve Board St. Louis

2011-03-11
_Billings MT Gazette_/_AP_
Montana unemployment rate rose to 7.5%

2011-03-11
William L. Anderson
Krugman dumbing down economics

2011-03-11 (5771 Adar2 05)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
How Netanyahu can out-maneuver Obama's latest threat to Israel
"The most effective way to defend Israel against Obama is to boldly assert, defend and implement a unilateral Israeli plan...   For the past year and a half Netanyahu's policy for dealing with Obama's animosity has been to try to appease him by making incremental concessions.   Netanyahu's rationale for acting in this manner is twofold.   First, he has tried to convince Obama that he really does want peace with the Palestinians.   Second, when each of his concessions are met with further Palestinian intransigence, Netanyahu has argued that the disparity between Israeli concessions and Palestinian rejectionism and extremism demonstrates that it is Israel, not the Palestinians that should be supported by the West.   To date Netanyahu's concessions have included his acceptance of Palestinian statehood and the two-state paradigm for peace; his temporary prohibition on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria; his undeclared prohibition on Jewish building in Jerusalem; his undeclared open-ended prohibition of Jewish building in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem after his temporary building ban expired; his agreement to drastically curtail IDF counter-terror operations in Judea and Samaria; his move to enact an undeclared abatement of law enforcement against illegal Arab construction in Jerusalem; and his decision to enable the deployment of the US-trained Palestinian army in Judea and Samaria...   the Palestinian narrative...blames the absence of peace on Israel's refusal to surrender all of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem...   [Netanyahu] may end IDF counter-terror operations in Palestinian cities in Judea and Samaria.   Such a move would involve compromising all of the IDF's military achievements in the areas since 2002 when it first targeted the Palestinian terror factories from Hebron to Jenin during Operation Defensive Shield...   Since Obama came into office, he has consistently demonstrated that no Israeli concession will convince him to support Israel against the Palestinians...   the Palestinians' intransigence shows they are not interested in peace...   Obama and his European counterparts don't care about achieving peace.   Like the Palestinians, all they want is more Israeli concessions...   tell the truth about the nature of the Palestinians, their rejection of Israel, their anti-Americanism and their support for jihadist terror.   At the same time, Netanyahu must speak unambiguously about Israel's national rights to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, our required security borders, and about why US national security requires a strong Israel."

2011-03-11 (5771 Adar2 05)
Steven Emerson _Jewish World Review_
Compelling Testimony, Political Theater at Radicalization Hearing

Proposed Bills 2011

2011-03-11

DJIA	12,044.40
S&P 500(SPX)	1,304.28
NASDAQ(COMP)	2,715.61
Nikkei	10,254
10-year US T-Bond(UST10Y)	3.4
crude oil(CLJ11)	$101.16/barrel
natgas(NGH11)	$3.89/MBTU
reformulatedgasoline(RBH11)	$2.99/gal
heatingoil(HOH11)	$3.03/gal
gold(GCJ11)	$1,421.80/ounce
silver(SIK11)	$35.94/ounce
platinum(PLJ11)	$1,781.70/ounce
palladium(PAF11)	$814.80/ounce
copper(HGH11)	$0.26421875/ounce
soybeans	$13.3450/bushel
maize	$6.6425/bushel
wheat	$7.1875/bushel
dollarindex(DXY)	76.71
yenperdollar(USDYEN)	81.88
dollarspereuro(EURUSD)	1.3902
dollarsperpound(GBPUSD)	1.601
swissfrancsperdollar	0.9329
indianrupeesperdollar	45.24
mexicanpesosperdollar(MXN)	11.9159
MorganStanleyHighTechIndex	676.63

I usually get this info from MarketWatch.
 

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-12

2011-03-12
Paul Driessen _Town Hall_
Welcome to the Third World
"The United States is reaping imaginary bounties from its $814G 'stimulus' spending orgy.   It hemorrhaged $223G in red ink during February alone -- on its way to a projected 2011 deficit of $1.5T, the Congressional Budget Office reports.   Over 13.7M Americans remain unemployed; another 8.3M are involuntarily employed only part-time; black unemployment stands at 15.3%; and gasoline prices have hit $4 per gallon, foretelling more rough waters ahead for the still fragile US economy."

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-13

2011-03-13
Tom Lutey _Billings MT Gazette_
global agricultural market swings create big winners and losers
"'The guy at the bank told me they ate more red ink in 2009 than they had in 20 years because guys put $1K-a-ton fertilizer on $4 a bushel wheat.', Wolenetz said.   'I guess what we have to start focusing on is what to do so we don’t get caught sideways.'...   The new economy, it turns out, could turn its head like a rattle-snake.   The lesson Wolenetz learned was to play the futures markets and lock in prices he could live with not only for grain, but also for fertilizer.   In the new economy, everything can be bought on contract 2 years ahead of time...   The number of people on SNAP in Yellowstone county jumped by more than 6K, in the last 5 years and about 40K statewide, according to state records.   Food inflation contributes to the need.   The last time wheat and corn prices tripled or quadrupled as they're doing now, it was 2008 and the cost of foods associated with grain rose sharply.   Bread and cereal prices increased 11.7% by year's end, the highest jump in almost 30 years.   The once-4-inch thick boxes of cereal slimmed to less than half that size, then increased in price...   Economist Linda Young doesn't see the demand for food going down.   The Montana State University professor sees it going up, as developing countries acquire wealth and an appetite for protein.   The 'protein push' she said can be seen not only in the buying habits of countries with improved economies like China and South Korea, but also in demand for high protein feed to fatten the cattle, pigs and poultry that are ever-increasing in demand.   'The largest increase in demand is for feed grains due to increases in incomes and thus for meat in many parts of the world and thus a protein push.', Young said...   'It just seems like the trend in China and India is their lower classes turning into middle classes and when people have money, what's the first thing they want?', Enos asked.   'They don't want a car, they don't want a house, they want to eat good.'"

2011-03-13
Elise Franco _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
Science Fair competition, phase 2
"These students competed Saturday at Youngstown State University's Beeghly Center in the Lake-to-River Science Day -- a regional tournament for students in grades five through 12 who scored high enough in their local school fair to move on to the next level...   107 students from public, private and parochial schools qualified to compete in the event, and 54 of those are eligible to compete May 7 in the state science fair in Columbus...   Rodabaugh said each student must choose a category, create a hypothesis, then test and retest the hypothesis...   Mostella said his sister often reads while listening to music, something he said is distracting.   To put his hypothesis to the test he studied groups of girls and boys and found that girls have an easier time reading with music on than boys."

2011-03-13
Eleanor Turek _Daily Illini_
U of IL hosts 51st annual Engineering Open House
"genetic engineering...   UIUC graduate and currently employee of Caterpillar Inc., demonstrates an excavator simulator in the Mechanical Engineering lab...   computer engineering...   Mechanical Engineering, built a jet engine out of a turbo charger for a car with the Registered Student Organization Spoolin' Illini...   Illinois Electric Vehicle club..."

2011-03-13
_Economic Times of India_
HP pledges $1M for education programme in India
"IT major Hewlett-Packard (HP) today announced that it has donated $1M in support of a new Education Innovation Challenge Fund (EICF) led by a consortium of education organisations in India.   'The Education Innovation Challenge Fund is meant to motivate institutions and students to think out-of-the-box for solutions and ideas that are both collaborative and creative in furthering STEM education in India.', HP director of Global Education Programmes, office of Global Social Innovation, Jeannette Weisschuh said in a statement...   Pratham Education Foundation CEO and president Madhav Chavan, Akshara Foundation chairman Ashok Kamath and Education Initiatives managing director Sridhar Rajagopalan are serving as advisors for establishment of this fund with an NGO that can run and manage it."

2011-03-13
Aaron Glantz _Pittsburgh PA Post-Gazette_
Asians flood Sili Valley
San Francisco CA Bay Citizen

2011-03-13
Jack Stripling _Chronicle of Higher Education_
Executive of flag-ship state univerities want the tax-victims and legislators to keep the cash flowing and not interefere

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-14

1879-03-14: Albert Einstein (son of Hermann Einstein & Pauline Koch) was born in Ulm, Wuertemberg, Germany: History.com m: Mileva Maric
Jimbo Wales's WikiPedia
Citizenship: Wuerttemberg/Germany (until 1896); Stateless (1896–1901); Switzerland (from 1901); Austria (1911–12); Germany (1914–33); United States (from 1940)
simple wikipedia
NASA
Craig Hill: Daily History
Biography
Scientific Web ***

2011-03-14 04:54PDT (07:54EDT) (11:54GMT)
Jim Turner _Treasure Coast FL Palm_
Over 500 apply for work on Indian Street Bridge
"James Bryant, a Stuart resident who worked on the Roosevelt Bridge and the Stuart and Jensen Beach causeways, said he expected to see more people in line for the $72M federally-backed project because of the lack of construction jobs available on the Treasure Coast.   'This is what you have to do all day, try to find something.', Bryant said.Archer Western is looking to fill at least 60 positions.   Additional jobs will be filled by smaller sub-contractors...   The long-sought and controversial bridge is a 1.96-mile project that will include a half-mile crossing of the South Fork of the St. Lucie River, linking Indian Street in Stuart with 36th Street in Palm City.   The bridge is to have a 55-foot clearance."

2011-03-14
Patricia Mazzei _Miami FL Herald_
A Florida state senate committee relaxed a proposed bill requirement that all employers use a federal computer system to verify the immigration status of new hires
"The condition, a favorite among tea-party types who supported governor Rick Scott, faced stiff opposition from big business, agricultural interests and [illegal alien] advocates who questioned e-Verify's effectiveness."

2011-03-14
Davdi Kravets _Wired_
Man sues over attempts to grope/ X-ray him at airport and being detained without search warrant
"in December he was hand-cuffed and held for about 90 minutes by the Transportation Security Administration at the Richmond International Airport after he began removing his clothing to display on his chest a magic-marker protest of airport security measures.   'Amendment 4: The right of the people to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated.', his chest and gut read.   The University of Cincinnati student didn't want to go through the advanced imaging technology X-ray machines that are cropping up at airports nationwide.   Instead, when it was his turn to be screened, he was going to opt for an intrusive [groping] -- and remove most of his clothing in the process."

2011-03-14
Natalie Houston _Chronicle of Higher Education_
Apple apps for academia

2011-03-14 (22:00GMT)
Lary Elliott _Manchester Guardian_
Germany is making money by manufacturing good products

2011-03-14
Beryl Benderly _Science_
The Chemistry of Recession

2011-03-14
William L. Anderson
Gee, think the bail-out might have had something to do with this?
"the bailout actually strengthened the 'bad banks' at the expense of the good ones.   Many forget that a capitalist system is one of profits AND losses.   Losses are important because they send important signals to entrepreneurs to move resources in a different direction."

2011-03-14 (5771 Adar2 08)
Nancy Bartley _Jewish World Review_
Prayer service held at public school for success on tests
"A Baltimore elementary school principal used prayer services to prepare pupils for recent statewide tests.   For 2 years, prayer services have been held at Northeast Baltimore's Tench Tilghman Elementary/Middle School as the Maryland School Assessments, a standardized test for children in the third through eighth grades, neared.   Fliers promoted the most recent event, on March 5, as a way to 'come together, as one, in prayer and ask G0d to bless our school to pass the MSA'...   Dating back to the 1960s, the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled prayer in public schools unconstitutional.   Two landmark cases, in 1962 and 1963, established the current prohibition on state-sponsored prayer in schools.   Moreover, while state-run schools cannot inhibit religion, they cannot promote it or hold prayers that are sectarian in nature.   The only prayer that is constitutional is private, voluntary student prayer that does not interfere with a school's educational mission.   The 30-minute, voluntary prayer service this month at Tench Tilghman came after Saturday classes the school prepare for the Maryland School Assessments.   The flier, which included images of praying hands and cited common Christian Bible verses, was distributed to staff to circulate to the school's 400 students and their families.   Yon was asked by parents at the school to hold the Saturday classes, as well as the prayer service, according to Gittings.   He said Yon 'was doing what she thought was right'."

2011-03-14 (5771 Adar2 08)
Mark Steyn _Jewish World Review_
Now even cowboys are dependent on Washington

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-15

2011-03-15 07:35PDT (10:35EDT) (14:35GMT)
Kevin Derby _Sunshine State News_
proposed law would allow tax-victims to explicitly designate 10% for federal debt reduction
State Column
Talk Radio News
Fox News Latino
Jacksonville FL Times-Union

2011-03-15 07:47PDT (10:47EDT) (14:47GMT)
Cynthia Manning & Jennifer Scott _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
Career center seeks employers for Spring job fair at Pellissippi State Community College

2011-03-15
Ben Wieder _Chronicle of Higher Education_
Rescue robots being deployed in Japan

2011-03-15 16:36PDT (19:36EDT) (23:36GMT)
Jeremy Beck _Numbers USA_
Why does the U.S. restrict work visas? To protect American workers
"There is no shortage of STEM workers in the U.S.A. In fact, RAND studies show a crisis of surplus workers.   But don't take RAND's word for it, just ask NBC's expert witness Vivek Wadhwa, who co-authored a study for Duke University that also found no worker shortage.   It is a pity that NBC didn't ask Wadhwa why he thinks foreign workers are important to the U.S. economy despite these findings.   As professor Norm Matloff of the University of California at Davis points out in his H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring E-News-letter, Wadhwa himself has said, 'I was one of the first [CEOs] to use H-1B visas to bring workers to the U.S.A.   Why did I do that? Because it was cheaper.'...   According the the U.S. Government Accountability Office's 2011 report, a majority of H-1B visa holders fall into the lowest ('Entry Level') of four skill categories; only 6% of H-1Bs fall under the highest ('Fully Competent') level.   The U.S.A. actually has an unrestricted 'O visa' for aliens 'with extraordinary ability or achievement'.   [But even those apparently have low standards.]   In 2009, 58,566 O visas were granted to these persons, their spouses, and their assistants...   a closer look reveals that immigrants have virtually identical entrepreneurial rates as native-born Americans, and the '25% of startups' argument is a disingenuous one.   Which brings us to...   Brain Drain, [Brain Waste], and Ageism.   In Fiscal Year 2009, more than 110K new H-1Bs were granted despite a loss of 245,600 jobs in the high-tech industry (Hira, Economic Policy Institute [and annual reports from the State Department]).   It should be no surprise that, while the U.S.A. is still producing enough skilled graduates to fill U.S. jobs, many students are switching career paths as they see STEM jobs either go to imported workers or get shipped over-seas.   On the flip side, the H-1B program provides employers with a steady stream of younger workers to replace older workers.   In the computer field, new graduates make $20K - $60K less than their older counterparts.   Professor Matloff says, 'It is perhaps not a coincidence that civil engineers (who compete with fewer H-1B visa holders) have much longer careers than programmers, even though they have similar skill sets.'...   In 1998, back before the dot.com bubble burst, NBC produced this story: 'Older workers: tired or wired? Age discrimination is a growing issue in high-tech industry.'   Age discrimination is still a growing issue, but one that has apparently slipped off of NBC's radar."

2011-03-15
_Thy Black Man.com_
42% of Millionaires Say $7M Not Enough to Feel Rich
Gerri Willis: Fox
Al Lewis: Denver CO Post/Dow Jones
"In a recent survey conducted by Fidelity Investments, 4-in-10 respondents claim that they would have to have at least $7.5M in the bank in order to feel rich.   The survey asked one thousand millionaires if they feel wealthy; over 42% of them said they did not."

2011-03-15
"Sally Racket" _Chronicle of Higher Education_
People with PhDs are also being worn down by the dysfunctional US job markets

2011-03-15 (5771 Adar2 09)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
3 massacred children
"Following the massacre of the Fogel family, Netanyahu took to the air-waves, speaking to the hostile world.   Ruth Fogel was in the bath-room when the Palestinian terrorists pounced on her husband Udi and their three-month-old daughter Hadas, slitting their throats as they lay in bed on Friday night in their home in Itamar.   The terrorists stabbed Ruth to death as she came out of the bath-room.   With both parents and the new-born dead, they moved on to the other children, going into a bed-room where Ruth and Udi's sons Yoav (11) and Elad (4) were sleeping.   They stabbed them through their hearts and slit their throats.   The murderers apparently missed another bed-room where the Fogels' other sons, 8-year-old Ro'i and 2-year-old Yishai were asleep because they left them alive.   The boys were found by their big sister, 12-year-old Tamar, when she returned home from a friend's house 2 hours after her family was massacred...   Maybe the Prime Minister's Office thought the pictures would shock the world.   Maybe Binyamin Netanyahu thought the massacre of three little children would move someone to rethink their hatred of Israel.   That was the theme of his address to the nation Saturday night.   Netanyahu directed most of his words to the hostile world.   He spoke to the leaders who rush to condemn Israel at the UN Security Council every time we assert our right to this land by permitting Jews to build homes.   He demanded that they condemn the murder of Jewish children with the same enthusiasm and speed.   He shouldn't have bothered.   The government released the photos on Saturday night.   Within hours, the social activism web-site, My Israel, posted a short video of the photographs on YouTube along with the names and ages of the victims.   Within 2 hours YouTube removed the video.   What was Netanyahu thinking? Didn't he get the memo that photos of murdered Jewish children are unacceptable? If they're published, someone might start thinking about the nature of Palestinian society...   the murder of the Fogel children and their parents was greeted with jubilation in Gaza.   Carnivals were held in the streets as Hamas members handed out sweets."
Dennis Prager: The other tsunami
Edmund Sanders: Israel vows to expand settlements after family is murdered
David Suissa: A challenge to the "peace" camp
12-year-old survivor blames Obama

2011-03-15 (5771 Adar2 09)
Frank J. Gaffney _Jewish World Review_
Breakthrough for a taboo-buster

2011-03-15 (5771 Adar2 09)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
The "Re-Development" Hoax
"Why are so many people who are opposed to development nevertheless in favor of 're-development'? The short answer is that development involves decisions made in the market by large numbers of people in the general population, in their own personal interests, while re-development involves taking decisions out of the hands of the population at large and putting the power to make those decisions in the hands of elites...   developers would not even exist if there were not vastly larger numbers of people ready to buy or rent what they build.   All these people who make the developers' work economically viable vanish into thin air in political rhetoric that is focused on the developer and his 'greed'.   The people who are against development dare not come right out and say in plain English that they want other people's desires squashed by the government, so that the desires of the small, self-congratulatory elites can prevail, while housing prices sky-rocket because of the restricting on building...   Re-development imposes the supposedly superior wisdom and virtue of an elite on the rest of us...   By bull-dozing low-income neighborhoods and replacing them with upscale malls and condos, local political leaders get more tax money into their coffers, offering more opportunities for them to do things that enhance their chances of being re-elected.   A politically successful redevelopment project enables those who promoted it to show 'before and after' photos of the neighborhood that has been bulldozed and replaced by shiny new buildings, tree-lined vistas and clearly upscale new housing.   This is easily portrayed as a welcome new addition to the community, both aesthetically and economically.   In reality, what re-development does is transfer wealth from one place to another place, with no net addition to the wealth of the country as a whole...   Between restrictions on development and the destruction of existing low-income housing by redevelopment, low-income and even moderate-income people are forced out by high housing costs.   Often this process takes the form of ethnic cleansing.   Blacks, for example, have been driven out of communities up and down the San Francisco peninsula, including East Palo Alto, which was once 61% black, and is today only 17% black."

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-16

2011-03-16
David Skolnick _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
governor John Kasich discusses proposed Ohio budget cuts
"Governor John Kasich's budget proposal calls for significant cuts, 50% over a 2-year period, to local governments that will put financially struggling Mahoning Valley counties, cities, villages and townships in an even more challenging position. Kasich's plan to balance the state's 2-year budget, with an expected $8G deficit, calls for a 25% reduction in Local Government Fund revenue to counties and communities effective July 1 of this year, and an additional 25% cut in 2012 July 1. That proposal would save the state $555M over 2 years."

2011-03-16
Matt Murphy _Brockton MA Enterprise_
Fidelity Investments to move 1,100 from Marlborough, MA to Merrimack, NH & Smithfield, RI; hiring 100 in Ireland
Bob Oakes: WBUR: Fidelity to move 1,100 jobs out of MA
Martin Luttrell & Elaine Thompson: Worcester MA Telegram & Gazette
Banking Business Review
NECN/AP
Todd Wallack: Boston MA Globe
Brad Petrishen: Metro West Daily News
"Since the start of the recession in 2008, Crowley said Fidelity's worldwide work-force has shrunk from 44K to 37K, including 8,400 jobs in Massachusetts...   In 1996, the [MA] state Legislature passed a law that allowed mutual fund companies to calculate their corporate taxes by using a single sales factor, offering companies like Fidelity a tax break in exchange for increasing its work-force by 5% for 5 years.   After meeting the job creation goals to qualify for the tax benefit from 1996 to 2001 by increasing its workforce to roughly 13K employees early this decade, Fidelity continues to benefit from the tax code despite shedding thousands of jobs over the past several years.   'That speaks to the fact that in Massachusetts we have passed tax breaks with very little bargaining power.', Eldridge said.   'If we're going to give a company tax breaks to create jobs and they don't create jobs, we should get our money back, and at the very least MA should stop giving Fidelity more money.'   Representative Steven Levy, a Marlborough Republican, said state government should stop giving tax breaks to individual corporate sectors and focus on reducing the overall cost of doing business in MA so that the state can compete with its neighbors."

2011-03-16
Raymond L. Flynn _Worcester MA Telegram & Gazette_
Time for education tax credits

2011-03-16 11:04:39PDT (14:04:39EDT) (18:04:39GMT)
P.J. Hufftutter _San Jose CA Mercury "News"_/_Los Angeles CA Times_
food price rise expected to accelerate
"prices of wheat, corn and other staples soaring...   The U.S. Labor Department reported Wednesday that wholesale food prices jumped 3.9% in February over January, the highest monthly increase in 37 years...   'You're seeing some ingredients up 40%, 50%, 60% over last year.', said Ephraim Leibtag, an Agriculture Department economist."

2011-03-16
Isaac Sweeney _Chronicle of Higher Education_
adjunct dumped for essays about being bodyshopped?: black-listing is a serious concern
colleges and adjuncts who are stuck with each other for economic reasons

2011-03-16
William L. Anderson
Krugman joins the "Broken Window Fallacy" crowd

2011-03-16
Marlene Cimons _US News & World Report_/_NSF_
More plastics linked to "estrogen-poisoning"
"Plastics manufacturers replaced bisphenol A (BPA) following public concerns that the estrogenically active compound could leach out of baby bottles and other popular consumer items.   But researchers recently released a study showing that the vast majority of BPA-free plastic products still contain other estrogenically active chemicals that also can seep out, even when new.   Moreover, the ordinary stresses of dishwashing, microwaving and exposure to sunlight worsen these effects, according to the research...   A team of scientists from the University of Texas at Austin, the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University and the two companies—PlastiPure and CertiChem—tested more than 450 BPA-free consumer products and found that, before stressing, 92% of them readily leached other estrogenically active (EA) compounds.   Furthermore, after microwaving, dishwashing and sunlight exposure, more than 95% of products showed rising levels of EA.   Their study was published recently online in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives."

2011-03-16 (5771 Adar2 10)
Joshua Mitnick _Jewish World Review_
Israel's seizure of arms shipment highlights rising unease about Iran
"Israel Tuesday seized the merchant ship 'Victoria' 200 miles off its coast, asserting that it had a 'solid basis' of suspicion that the vessel was ferrying arms shipments from Iran to Hamas in the Gaza Strip that were 'intended to hit Israel'.   The ship, which originated in Syria and was sailing to the Egyptian port of Alexandria, was diverted to the Israeli port of Ashdod following the takeover, which was met with no resistance from the crew.   Israel's naval commander said that the shipment contained land-to-sea missiles of 'strategic importance' to Gaza and accompanying Farsi-language manuals."

2011-03-16 (5771 Adar2 10)
John Riley _Jewish World Review_
Ground Zero mosque redux

2011-03-16 (5771 Adar2 10)
Alex Rodriguez _Jewish World Review_
How a tenet of Islamic law could save the life of American crime victim
"Aziz Ahmed was supposed to die.   In 2006 he used a meat cleaver to kill a friend he thought had been sleeping with his wife.   He confessed and was sentenced to be hanged.   But last month Ahmed won his freedom; not because his confession was recanted or fresh evidence was presented, but because of a wad of cash.   He paid the victim's family $9,400 and walked out of prison a free man.   The slain man's relatives said they would use the money to buy the widow a cookware shop in this dusty farm town in Punjab, near the Indian border.   'We're not bitter about this at all.', said Mohammed Nasir, brother of the victim, Ghulam Sarwar.   'This money will take care of Ghulam's wife and children.'   What outsiders might describe as 'blood money' is a tenet of Islamic law sanctioned by Pakistani jurisprudence and used, by some estimates, in up to 60% of homicide cases here.   The practice is called diyat, and it could be the means by which the United States and Pakistan extricate themselves from a dangerous diplomatic row that has strained relations between the two governments.   Washington and Islamabad are locked in a stand-off over the case of Raymond Davis, the 36-year-old CIA contractor facing murder charges in the deaths of two Pakistani men in the eastern city of Lahore in late January.   Davis says he was the victim of a robbery attempt and shot the men after one of them pulled out a pistol.   Authorities in Lahore say Davis' self-defense claim doesn't hold up and plan to put him on trial."

2011-03-16 (5771 Adar2 10)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
Continuing Stubborn Ignorance
"Article I, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution reads: 'All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other Bills.'   Our Constitution grants the president absolutely no authority to raise or lower taxes.   The president is permitted to propose tax measures or veto them.   Congress can ignore proposals and override vetoes.   The Constitution grants Congress the final and ultimate say on taxes.   The same principle applies to spending.   A president cannot spend one dime that Congress does not first appropriate...   Of course, if you're a congressman, not being held accountable is what you want.   Adding to the political deception in Washington is the notion that nearly 60% of the federal budget is off limits for spending cuts, the so-called non-discretionary spending such as [Socialist Insecurity], Medicare and Medicaid.   Congress has the constitutional authority, through a simple majority vote, to change whatever laws associated with those 'non-discretionary' spending programs.   As an example, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Flemming vs. Nestor (1960) there are no 'accrued property rights' to a [Socialist Insecurity] check.   That means Congress can do anything it wishes with [Socialist Insecurity] and that includes means-testing payments, raising eligibility age, reducing payments, increasing 'contributions' or eliminate the program altogether.   The same applies to any of the other so-called non-discretionary spending programs...   I have a one-time fix to give us some breathing room to make reforms.   The federal government has huge quantities of wasting assets -- assets that are not producing anything, 650M acres of land -- almost 30% of the land area of the United States.   It owns 80% of the land in Nevada, 70% in Alaska, 60% in Idaho and 50% in California and Oregon.   I would be willing, and I suspect many others, to make a deal with Congress whereby I forsake all [Socialist Insecurity] and Medicare benefits for, say, 50 acres of land in Alaska."

2011-03-16 (5771 Adar2 10)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
Blacks and Republicans
"The black population of San Francisco is less than half of what it was in 1970, and it fell another 19% in the past decade...   Blacks are being forced out of San Francisco, and out of other communities on the San Francisco peninsula, by high housing prices.   At one time, housing prices in San Francisco were much like housing prices elsewhere in the country.   But the building restrictions -- and outright bans -- resulting from the political crusades of environmentalist zealots sent housing prices sky-rocketing in San Francisco, San Jose and most of the communities in between.   Housing prices in these communities soared to about 3 times the national average.   The black population in 3 adjacent counties on the San Francisco peninsula is just under 3% of the total population in the 39 communities in those counties.   It so happens that these are counties where the voters and the officials they elect are virtually all [leftist] Democrats...   In California, a substantial black population has simply been forced by economics to vacate many communities near the coast and move farther inland, where the environmental zealots are not yet as strong politically, and where housing prices are therefore not yet as unaffordable...   The same is true of the effects of minimum wage laws on the high rate of unemployment among black youths.   Again, the facts are undeniable, and the Democrats cannot change their policy, because they are beholden to labor unions that advocate higher minimum wages.   Yet another area in which Democrats are boxed in politically is their making job protection for members of teachers' unions more important than improving education for students in the public schools.   No one loses more from this policy than blacks, for many of whom education is their only chance for economic advancement.   But none of this matters so long as Republicans who want the black vote think they have to devise earmarked benefits for blacks, instead of explaining how Republicans' general principles, applied to all Americans, can do more for blacks than the Democrats' welfare state approach."

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-17

2008-03-17 Tata opened its "North American Headquarters" in Milford, Miami township, Clermont county, Ohio, just east of Cincinnati, saying they were going to be employing 1000 or more local citizens.   In exchange, state and local governments gave them about $19M in incentives in the form of land grants, tax breaks, etc.   So far, they have refused to report how many of their 400+ hires are actually US citizens, and thus whether or not they are violating their agreement.

2011-03-17 03:27PDT (06:27EDT) (10:27GMT)
James Kirley _Treasure Coast FL Palm_
One-day count of homeless people gives lower number than last year
"On Jan. 29, the group counted 1,683 homeless people in all three Treasure Coast counties, a 22% decrease since 2010 January.   Fewer people were found in each of the individual counties, despite a deepening economic recession, high home foreclosure rates and 12% to 14% unemployment."

2011-03-17 05:30PST (08:30EST) (13:30GMT)
Scott Gibbons & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
un-employment insurance weekly claims report
DoL home page
DoL OPA press releases
historical data
DoL regulations
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 372,370 in the week ending March 12, a decrease of 37,313 from the previous week.   There were 434,424 initial claims in the comparable week in 2010.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.4% during the week ending March 5, a decrease of 0.2 percentage point from the prior week.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 4,276,916, a decrease of 183,553 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 4.1% and the volume was 5,393,589.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending Feb 26 was 8,953,610.   Extended benefits were available in AL, AK, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, DC, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, ME, MA, MI, MN, MO, NV, NJ, NM, NY, NC, OH, OR, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, VA, WA, WV, and WI, during the week ending February 26.   States reported 3,541,942 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending Feb. 26, a decrease of 58,580 from the prior week.   There were 5,885,754 claimants in the comparable week in 2010.   EUC weekly claims include first, second, third, and fourth tier activity.   [Note that the population used for calculating the "insured unemployment rate" changes
to 132,623,886 beginning 2007-10-06;
to 133,010,953 beginning 2008-01-05;
to 133,382,559 beginning 2008-04-05;
to 133,690,617 beginning 2008-07-05;
to 133,902,387 beginning 2008-10-04;
to 133,886,830 beginning 2009-01-03;
to 133,683,433 beginning 2009-04-04;
to 133,078,480 beginning 2009-07-04;
to 133,823,421 beginning 2009-10-03;
to 131,823,421 beginning 2009-10-17;
to 130,128,328 beginning 2010-01-02;
to 128,298,468 beginning 2010-04-03;
to 126,763,245 beginning 2010-07-03;
to 125,845,577 beginning 2010-09-25;
to 125,560,066 beginning 2011-01-15.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2011-03-17 03:03PDT (06:03EDT) (10:30GMT)
Marc Schenker _Examiner_
Anthony Weiner weaseled, squirmed, ducked, scapegoated when challenged by Hannity and Bachmann

2011-03-17
Edwin Mora _Cybercast News Service_
84% of illegal aliens caught in 2010 never prosecuted

2011-03-17 13:48PDT (16:48EDT) (20:48GMT)
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
law-suit charges that Infosys job ad rejects older workers
IDG Norway
IT World
CIO
"One Infosys job posting set a 'maximum experience' requirement of 15 years, and another set a limit of 25 years.   [He] filled out the on-line forms but his applications 'were immediately and automatically rejected' because he didn't satisfy the maximum experience requirements, according to his law-suit...   'Simply doing the math, 25 years' experience boxes out anyone who is over 40.', said John Roberts, an attorney at Arseneault Whipple Fassett & Azzarello in Chatham, NJ...   Monster Worldwide was also named in the law-suit.   A spokesman for the jobs site said that 'all the processes therein were designed and controlled by Infosys and hosted on Infosys web-site'.   The law-suit contends that Monster should have known that 'maximum experience' requirements 'constituted a de facto age limit'...   According to U.S. labor data, the recession hit older tech workers hard.   For computer professionals, age 55 years and older, the unemployment rate jumped overall from 6% to 8.4% from 2009 to 2010.   For men it was 8% and for women, 9.4%."

2011-03-17
Robert Curry _View from 1776_
The Scottish Enlightenment and America's Founding: Understanding Madison

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-18

2011-03-18
Matthew Kalman _Chronicle of Higher Education_
Hebrew University of Jerusalem released on-line archive of work of Albert Einstein
Reuters
Einstein archives on-line

2011-03-18
Dale Heberlig _Cumberland PA Sentinel_/_Lee_
Shippensburg amendment to zoning to allow "no impact home-based businesses" rejected
"As [Sam Wiser] and council president Andrea Lage pointed out, those types of home businesses currently do not comply with borough code.   Councilman W. Edward Goodhart, himself a no-impact home business operator, said, 'There are a lot more of these businesses than you realize.'   He operates a computer software business from his home.   Borough manager Earl Parshall said no-impact home businesses came to his attention through a complaint about one such business.   He told council the zoning ordinance calls for those businesses to be shut down unless the amendment is approved."

2011-03-17 23:09PDT (2011-03-18 02:09EDT) (2011-03-18 06:09GMT)
_Chicago IL Sun-Times_
Illegal alien charged with voting in 9 elections beginning in 2003

2011-03-18
Beryl Benderly _AAAS Science Careers_
An Internal Brain Drain/Brain Waste
"The data, on the other hand, indicate that those admitted are no more able, productive, or innovative than America's homegrown talent, he said.   In fact, Matloff went on, the nation is 'wasting the innovation' that Americans could create because they are being driven from technical and scientific fields by the influx of foreigners.   'There are a lot of good people who are displaced.', he said.   In the tech field, this does not occur because of talent, education, productivity or ability but with age, and ultimately with pay, he stated.   Employers prefer to bring in young foreign workers who are cheaper in preference to employing experienced Americans who are more expensive.   In a number of tech companies, a majority of workers are foreign-born while many Americans being displaced 'are of good quality'.   Over 20 years ago, he noted, experts predicted that encouraging immigration would discourage citizens from entering these fields.   'It's an issue of money...   It's all due to an over-supply of people' created by immigration policies, he said.   The issues applies to both the IT industry and scientific research, he added.   One result is that young American 'would have to be crazy to go into lab science today.', he said...   'Many people in academe game the system and are very good at becoming machines to make many publications.', he said.   And 'founding a company is not the same thing as innovation.', he continued, citing a study showing that a third of the tech companies founded by Chinese immigrants are simply wholesaling or assembling PCs.   Many Indian immigrant firms, meanwhile, are involved in out-sourcing.   Matloff emphasizes that he does not oppose immigration."

2011-03-18
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_

"the H-1B program... brings workers to prosperous companies at a 15%-20% discount from market wages, and allows industry to repeatedly hire young foreign workers (below age 35) and to push aside older, equally-skilled, but more expensive, American workers...   As to the 'best and brightest' argument, Matloff, a statistician, presented a series of regression analyses to make his point, saying that once one had, through this technique, sorted out extraneous factors, the H-1B workers turned out to be pretty much like the rest of us, some brilliant, many average."

2011-03-18
Jack Martin _Stein Report_
Norm Matloff: Why We Need to Fix the Skilled Immigration System
"the H-1B program could be redesigned to actually identify the best and brightest foreign graduates and thereby lower any discrimination against US workers.   During his talk, an executive of a high-tech firm (who is of Indian heritage) commented that she had found that her US high-tech employees were on average much more productive than her H-1B high-tech employees...   setting a minimum wage standard for new H-1B hires at the median wage for all new similar hires would go a long way towards relieving the unfair competition."

2011-03-18 12:24PDT (15:24EDT) (19:24GMT) (22:24 Jerusalem)
Larry Elliott & Julia Kollewe _Manchester Guardian_
German finance minister says too many Gastarbeiter were allowed in
"Wolfgang Schäuble [says] problems of integrating Turkish guest-workers have grown with third generation...   Wolfgang Schäuble said Germany had expected its 3.5M Turkish minority to integrate better in the decades that followed the wave of immigration.   'We made a mistake in the early 1960s when we decided to look for workers, not qualified workers but cheap workers from abroad, Turkey.', said Schäuble.   Some people of Turkish origin had lived in Germany for decades and did not speak German, he said.   'When we decided 50 years ago to invite workers from Turkey, we expected that their children would integrate automatically.'...   Chancellor Angela Merkel's plain-speaking finance minister was adding to comments she made last year, claiming multiculturalism had been a disaster for Germany.   More recently her new interior minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich, stoked the debate by saying that Islam did not belong in Germany.   The foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, has also spelled out the new, tougher message from Berlin, declaring that children of immigrants should learn German before the language of their parents and grandparents."

2011-03-18 12:56:52PDT (15:56:52EDT) (19:56:52GMT)
_San Jose CA Mercury "News"_/_AP_
after his earlier appointment to cabinet post was challenged, Mark Kvamme gets job-creation director post; James Leftwich new director of Ohio Department of Development
Joe Vardon: Columbus OH Dispatch
WDTN
John Michael Spinelli: Columbus OH Government Examiner
Business Week
Med City News
Mark Naymik: Cleveland OH Plain Dealer
Canton OH Repository
WXIX Fox 19 Cincinnati OH
Dayton OH Daily News/Cox

2011-03-18
Stephen Goldsmith _Wall Street Journal_
Leftist government is obsolete

2011-03-18
Kelly Jackson Higgins _Information Week_/_UBM_
RSA SecurID Customers Fear Fallout From Targeted Attack On Security Firm

2011-03-18 14:55PDT (17:55EDT) (21:55GMT)
David Levinsky _Burlington County NJ Times News_/_Philadelphia
NJ state legislators move to cut off funding for colleges that enroll illegal aliens
"This fiscal year, NJ budgeted $850M in aid for colleges, including $714M for state schools and $134.8M for county colleges."

2011-03-18 16:06:46PDT (19:06:46EDT) (23:06:46GMT)
reverend Lucy Kolin _Inside the San Francisco CA Bay Area_/_San Jose CA Mercury "News"_
leftist SEIU associates attack banks for mortgage mess SEIU helped create
Contra Costa CA Times

2011-03-18
Jason B. Jones _Chronicle of Higher Education_
TinEye may help track images back to their sources

2011-03-18
Douglas French _Ludwig von Mises Institute_
The myth of the TSA Union: Creating a More Stable, Professional and Productive Workforce

2011-03-18
William L. Anderson
Jobs programs and the stratified society

Proposed Bills 2011

2011-03-18

DJIA	11,858.52
S&P 500(SPX)	1,279.21
NASDAQ(COMP)	2,643.67
Nikkei	9,207
10-year US T-Bond(UST10Y)	3.27
crude oil(CLJ11)	$101.07/barrel
natgas(NGJ11)	$4.17/MBTU
reformulatedgasoline(RBJ11)	$2.95/gal
heatingoil(HOJ11)	$3.02/gal
gold(GCJ11)	$1,416.10/ounce
silver(SIK11)	$35.06/ounce
platinum(PLJ11)	$1,723.40/ounce
palladium(PAM11)	$731.20/ounce
copper(HGK11)	$0.27125/ounce
soybeans	$13.44/bushel
maize	$6.7325/bushel
wheat	$7.27/bushel
dollarindex(DXY)	75.654
yenperdollar(USDYEN)	80.756
dollarspereuro(EURUSD)	1.4159
dollarsperpound(GBPUSD)	1.6220
swissfrancsperdollar	0.8725
indianrupeesperdollar	45.12
mexicanpesosperdollar(MXN)	12.045
MorganStanleyHighTechIndex	653.95

I usually get this info from MarketWatch.
 

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-19

2011-03-19
_Cumberland PA Sentinel_/_AP_/_Lee_
Stagnant salaries mean inflation hurts more than in late 1970s/early 1980s
San Jose CA Mercury "News"
"In 1981, banks would pay nearly 16% on a 6-month CD [10% on thrift plan savings, and 5.5% on checking account balances].   And workers typically got pay raises to match their higher living costs.   No more.   Over the 12 months that ended in February, consumer prices increased just 2.1%.   Yet wages for many people have risen even less -- if they're not actually frozen."

2011-03-19
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
talk at ISIM
 
Yesterday I gave a talk at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of International Migration, hosted by B. Lindsay Lowell, a prominent researcher on immigration.   It was held at the university's law school, marking the second time in a year that I've given talks at law schools, one of my favorite speaking venues, though I don't think there were many law students at either talk.   At any rate, I wish to thank Lindsay for the opportunity to have a very stimulating exchange of ideas.
 
The PDF file for my presentation.   Lindsay will also be posting a video on the ISIM web page, which should be very valuable as it will show the questions and answers, always a key part of any talk, as well as my extemperaneous comments.
 
I'll wait for that video to make detailed comments, but I did want to mention now the question asked by a woman from the Migration Policy Institute, an organization that promotes expansive immigration policies.   I had emphasized that the under-payment of H-1Bs is due to loop-holes in the law, rather than [what I consider to be] fraud.   She asked if fixing the loop-holes would be enough for me, as opposed to reducing the H-1B and green card quotas.   Jack Martin of FAIR also asked whether I felt that the latter should be reduced.   (See also Martin's blog report below.)
 
I'm not sure I did a good job of answering either questioner.   My basic point was that if the loop-holes were to be truly plugged, the quota issue would become secondary.   Plugging the loopholes would solve the cheap labor problem, and without cheap labor, the employers would have very little interest in H-1B and green cards, thus rendering the quota issue essentially moot.
 
[Linked] below are 3 pieces covering my talk.   The first is by Beryl Benderly of Science Careers Magazine, which is affiliated with Science Magazine.   The second is by CIS's David North, a former Assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Labor and long-time immigration researcher.   The third is Jack Martin's blog.
 
Norm
Beryl Benderly: AAAS Science careers web log: An Internal Brain Drain/Brain Waste
David North: Center for Immigration Studies: Professor Matloff Busts "Best and Brightest" Ballyhoo for H-1B Workers
Jack Martin: Stein Report: Norm Matloff: Why We Need to Fix the Skilled Immigration System

2011-03-19 Perla Trevizo _Chattanooga TN Times Free Press_
GA and TN could soon join AZ, MS, OK, SC, & UT in requiring all employers to use E-verify

2011-03-19
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Leaning on a weak reed: government
James Freeman: Wall Street Journal: Mega-Banks and the Next Financial Crisis

2011-03-19
_Reason_
Lanny Friedlander, founder of Reason magazine, died today
Kansas City Star
Paul Greenberg: New Bern Sun Journal
Patriot Post
Jewish World Review

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-20

2011-03-20
Tom Lutey _Billings MT Gazette_
Rising dough: Bakers paying more as Fed inflation, global events push wheat prices higher

2011-03-20 Denise Dick _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
Regional spelling bee took 69 rounds and nearly 5 hours: Ritz, Lee and Winters were the last 3 standing

2011-03-20 03:08PDT (06:08EDT) (10:08GMT)
Hilary Bentman _Doylestown PA Intelligencer_
Bucks and Montgomery county regional spelling bee went 16 rounds: Iyer, Radziul and Hall were the last 3 standing

2011-03-20
Martha Woodall & Claudio Gatti _Philadelphia PA Inquirer_
Guelen charter-school network with Turkish links draws federal attention
"Fethullah Gulen is a major Islamic political figure in Turkey, but he lives in self-imposed exile in a Poconos enclave and gained his green card by convincing a federal judge in Philadelphia that he was an influential educational figure in the United States.   As evidence, his lawyer pointed to the charter schools, now more than 120 in 25 states, that his followers -- Turkish scientists, engineers, and businessmen -- have opened, including Truebright Science Academy in North Philadelphia and another charter in State College, PA.   The schools are funded with millions of [tax-victim] dollars.   Truebright alone receives more than $3M from the Philadelphia School District for its 348 pupils.   Tansu Cidav, the acting chief executive officer, described it as a regular public school...   federal agencies -- including the FBI and the Departments of Labor and Education -- are investigating whether some charter school employees are kicking back part of their salaries to a Muslim movement founded by Gulen known as Hizmet, or Service, according to knowledgeable sources.   Unlike in Turkey, where Gulen's followers have been accused of pushing for an authoritarian Islamic state...   [The DoL/DoE investigation] is focused on whether hundreds of Turkish teachers, administrators, and other staffers employed under the H-1B visa program are misusing [tax-victim] money."

2011-03-20 09:30PDT (12:30EDT) (16:30GMT)
_London Daily Mail_
since 2009 USCIS has issued 18,654 and rejected 5,639 U visas to illegal alien crime victims -- a 77% approval rate

2011-03-20
Jeffrey R. Young _Chronicle of Higher Education_
academics and executives express paranoid fears of unbridled communication on the net

2011-03-20
_NJ.com_/_AP_
Sixing Liu charged with spying for Red China

2011-03-20
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
White House New Left and their like-minded colleagues abroad are still showing their brass knuckles affinity for initiating force and fraud

2011-03-20
Leonad Cassuto _Chronicle of Higher Education_
as the high unemployment rate for new Ph.D.'s illustrates, we can't separate what's happening in graduate programs from the troubles faced right now by universities generally
"Lots of professors still view non-academic professions as a distant second choice for graduate students, and that's unrealistic as well as unfortunate.   If we are to welcome Ph.D.'s to venture outside of academe, we have to prepare them for that possibility inside as well as outside our class-rooms.   Next month I'll report on another effort that seeks to do just that."

2011-03-20 14:46PDT (17:46EDT) (21:46GMT)
Dave Gibson _Examine_
Border Patrol: 1.4M entered the U.S. illegally in 2010... media ignore it

2013-03-20
Dan Sorkin
WW2 posters

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-25
Jake Tapper _abc_
GE made $14.2G in profits, paid no federal taxes, and got a $3.2G refund in 2010
Christopher Helman: Forbes/abc: GE and Exxon paid no US income extortion in 2009
David Kocieniewski: NYTimes/St. Louis MO Post-Dispatch
"Since 2002, the company has eliminated a fifth of its work force in the United States while increasing overseas employment.   In that time, GE's accumulated off-shore profits have risen to $92G from $15G."
GE response
"Since 2009, GE has announced the creation of more than 6,300 new U.S. manufacturing jobs, which will bring to nearly 50K the number of GE employees working to produce American-made goods the company sells around the world as part of its $17G-per-year in U.S. exports."
GE tax FAQ (pdf)
"[GE] paid over $14G of income taxes to governments around the world over the past 5 years."

2011-03-25
Zach Benoit & Paul Ruhter _Billings MT Gazette_/_Lee_
Students demonstrated science skills

2011-03-25
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Socialist/Keynesian attempts at human conditioning

2011-03-25
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Inter-generational behavior modification: the corruption of expectations over the last 50 years

2011-03-25
Robert Knight _Washington Times_
Clash for America's soul: From battle-field to school-yard, the left is marching to a sacrilegious drum

2011-03-25
Jerry Kammer _Center for Immigration Studies_
Immigration courts are over-loaded
"the nation's 270 immigration judges, whose courts are clogged with 350K cases per year.   Dana Marks, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, offered a glimpse of what that means at the local level.   'In Los Angeles, each judge has about 2,500 matters pending.', she said.   'In Chicago, it's about 3K.'"

2011-03-25
John Ribeiro _PC World_/_IDG_
Wipro delaying fulfillment of Atlanta GA employment promises
"Wipro said in August last year that it was setting up a center in Atlanta, recruiting [young, cheap] talent [with flexible ethics] within the U.S.A. in order to provide near-shore services to their customer...   Wipro said last year that it planned to employ 500 staff at the Atlanta center by the third year of operation.   The company said it would use the training center in Atlanta to provide both technical and soft-skills training to its employees in Georgia, and also planned to sponsor higher education degrees for up to 40% of its employees.   The company reported revenue of 64.10G rupees (US$1.36G at the exchange rate at the end of the quarter) for the quarter ended September 30, up 36% over the same period last year.   But profits grew only marginally, by 1.3%, to 8.22G rupees."
Wipro median salaries by city

2011-03-25 (5771 Adar2 19)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
New self-donated stem cell technique may help heal hearts
"The procedure also reduced the size of hearts swollen by previous heart attacks, a condition called cardiomyopathy or simply heart failure.   The reduction was up to 25%, while current therapies including medication and pacemakers typically reduce the size by only about 5%, he said.   The reduction in swelling increases the heart's ability to pump blood, he said.   By implication, it almost certainly improves the patient's health, although that was not directly measured in the small, early study.   In the study, stem cells were taken from the patient's own bone marrow and injected by catheter into scar tissue in the patient's heart caused by an earlier heart attack."

2011-03-25 5771 Adar2 19)
R' David Aaron _Jewish World Review_
Meat your morality

2011-03-25 5771 Adar2 19)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
Understanding the third terror war
"Wednesday bombing was not a stand-alone event.   It was part and parcel of the new Palestinian terror war that is just coming into view.   As Israel considers how to contend with the emerging onslaught, it is important to notice how it differs from its predecessors.   On a military level, the tactics the Palestinians have so far adopted are an interesting blend of state-of-the-art missile attacks with old fashioned knife and bomb-in-the- briefcase attacks.   The diverse tactics demonstrate that this war is a combination of Iranian-proxy war and local terror pick-up cells.   The attacks are also notable for their geographic dispersion and for the absence thus far of suicide attacks."

Proposed Bills 2011

2011-03-25

DJIA	12,220.59
S&P 500(SPX)	1,313.80
NASDAQ(COMP)	2,743.06
Nikkei	9,536
10-year US T-Bond(UST10Y)	3.44
crude oil(CLK11)	$105.55/barrel
natgas(NGJ11)	$4.37/MBTU
reformulatedgasoline(RBJ11)	$3.0445/gal
heatingoil(HOJ11)	$3.05/gal
gold(GCJ11)	$1,426.20/ounce
silver(SIK11)	$37.05/ounce
platinum(PLJ11)	$1,745.60/ounce
palladium(PAM11)	$750.40/ounce
copper(HGK11)	$0.2765625/ounce
soybeans	$13.44/bushel
maize	$6.7325/bushel
wheat	$7.27/bushel
dollarindex(DXY)	76.242
yenperdollar(USDYEN)	81.41
dollarspereuro(EURUSD)	1.4081
dollarsperpound(GBPUSD)	1.6019
swissfrancsperdollar	0.9195
indianrupeesperdollar	44.64
mexicanpesosperdollar(MXN)	11.9955
MorganStanleyHighTechIndex	677.56

I usually get this info from MarketWatch.
 

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-26

2011-03-25 19:12PDT (2011-03-25 22:12EDT) (2011-03-26 02:12GMT)
Janet Begley _Treasure Coast FL Palm_
3rd Tea Party rally attracted 5K to Indian River county fair-grounds
"Last year, 4,500 came out to Holman Stadium for a similar event, protesting what they called fiscal irresponsibility on the part of federal government."

2011-03-26
Thomas H. Maugh ii _Los Angeles CA Times_
15.5K year old pre-Clovis artifacts in Texas supports earlier immigration theories
Katherine Harmon: Scientific American
Heather Pringle: AAAS Science
"Archaeologists had previously found several sites, such as the Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Pennsylvania and the Paisley Caves in Oregon, that appeared to predate the Clovis culture and its distinctive fluted spear points, but the paucity of artifacts from those sites made such a conclusion highly controversial.   All of those sites together produced perhaps 800 artifacts total, but the new Buttermilk Creek site north of Austin has produced nearly 16K pieces -- all of them buried beneath Clovis remains and thus older...   archaeologist Michael Waters of Texas A&M University, who reported his team's new find in the journal Science.   'This shows that people were in the Americas at least 2,500 years before Clovis, allowing plenty of time for the Clovis culture to develop here.'...   The earliest Clovis-type remnants are about 13K years old.   Similar implements have never been found in Asia...   Monte Verde in southern Chile, which dates to about 14,500 years ago..."
Peter Wood: Chronicle of Higher Education: Failed hypotheses in academe and beyond

2011-03-26
Susan Olp & Casey Riffe _Billings MT Gazette_/_Lee_
Clancy teen won state spelling bee

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-27

2011-03-27
Tom Lutey _Billings MT Gazette_/_Lee_
Many who don't qualify for aid still struggle to get adequate nutrition
graph/map

2011-03-27
Robert Curry _View from 1776_
The Scottish Enlightenment and America's Founding: Locke and the Declaration of Independence

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-28

2011-03-27 21:34PDT (2011-03-28 00:34EDT) (2011-03-28 04:38GMT)
Brynn Twait _Daily Illini_
U of IL tuition increasing by another 6.9% (with tables)
Engineering under-grad tuition increasing by $407, fine arts $347.   Engineering graduate tuition increasing by $400, journalism $360.   "At Urbana, 54% of under-graduate students pay full tuition and fees, and 14% pay nothing at all through grants and aid, Knorr said...   'a student receiving a National Merit Scholarship receives only $500 per year -- a paltry $2K total that will barely offset 2% of the final college sticker price.'   Knorr.   He said the 6.9% increase was determined by looking at the Higher Education Price Index.   University officials looked at the index's average for the last 4 years, which was 2.7%.   The proposed tuition increase will be 2.7% spread over 4 years.   This increase will amount to a $718 increase for the Urbana campus, which makes base tuition for residents $11,104 per year."

2011-03-28
Kristin Gill _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
white-nose fungus may soon be attacking bats in Ohio
"White-Nose Syndrome, which leaves a fungus on the nose and wings, has already killed more than 1M bats in the northeastern United States including Pennsylvania and Indiana, as well as parts of Canada...   first detected near Albany, NY, in 2006...   There are 15 species of bats in Ohio, according to the Ohio Division of Wildlife, and all are susceptible to the syndrome.   The tiny creatures, which weigh about 0.3 ounces, can eat up to 4,500 insects in a single night and colonies eat millions of pounds a year.   A mass bat extinction could have major implications on local ecosystems."

2011-03-28
Paul Sonne, Steve Stecklow, Marc Champion, Christopher Rhoads, Nicholas Casey & Loretta Chao _Wall Street Journal_
Products of US firms aid blocking free political speech on the net
"McAfee Inc., acquired last month by Intel Corp., has provided content-filtering software used by Internet-service providers in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, according to interviews with buyers and a regional reseller.   Blue Coat Systems Inc. of Sunnyvale, CA, has sold hardware and technology in Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar that has been used in conjunction with McAfee's web-filtering software and sometimes to block web-sites on its own, according to interviews with people working at or with ISPs in the region...   Palo Alto Networks Inc...promises to give Bahrain more blocking options and make it harder for people to circumvent censoring.   Netsweeper Inc. of Canada has landed deals in the UAE, Qatar and Yemen, according to a company document.   Websense Inc. of San Diego, CA...has sold its web-filtering technology in Yemen...   Lately the State Department has spent more than $20M to fund software and technologies that help people in the Middle East circumvent Internet censorship that is sustained by Western technology...   There are no special export restrictions on web-filtering technology."

2011-03-28 06:29PDT (09:26EDT) (13:26GMT)
Greg Robb _MarketWatch_
Disposable income fell as prices jump, data show: U.S. PCE inflation index up 0.4% (1.6% since a year ago), most since 2008 July; spending up 0.3%; savings rate fell to 5.8% in February; Personal taxes increased 0.2% after jumping 4.6% in January
BEA reports on consumer spending
BEA PCE price index comparison/formula WRT CPI

2011-03-28
Paul McDougall _Information Week_/_UBM_
Satyam assets frozen as Indian government attempts to collect $137.6M in extortion
"Satyam was acquired by telecom out-sourcer Tech Mahindra for $422M."

2011-03-28 13:00PDT (16:00EDT) (20:00GMT)
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
Infosys wants whistle-blower Palmer's lap-top in B-1 visa abuse law-suit
IDG Norway
Network World
CIO

2011-03-28
James C. Cooper _Fiscal Times_
CBO says Obama admin under-stated deficit by $2.3T

2011-03-28
Jonathan S. Tobin _Commentary_
Krugman's fantasy is that radical leftists are being persecuted on college campuses
William L. Anderson

2011-03-28
Ben Wieder _Chronicle of Higher Education_
correlating "corruption" and software piracy
Sys-Con

2011-03-28
Tony Blankley _Washington Times_
The rapid spread of Middle East turmoil rivals Europe's renaissance

2011-03-28
_Cumberland PA Sentinel_/_Lee_
2 Mexicans plead guilty to counterfeiting in Pittsburgh, PA

2011-03-28
Edwin Mora _Cybercast News Service_
Obama says his admin doesn't want to deport illegal aliens; they want them to succeed

2011-03-28
"Washington Watcher" _V Dare_
model legislation to challenge birthright citizenship

2011-03-28
_Real Clear Politics_
Senator Rand Paul points out that Obama does not understand or refuses to comply with Constitutional checks and balances

2012-03-28
_Rasmussen_
81% of Americans know someone unemployed and actively seeking work

2011-03-28 (5771 Adar2 22)
Peter Cary & Nancy A. Youssef _Jewish World Review_
Pentagon spends billions to fight road-side bombs, with little success, so far
"[The Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO)] has ballooned into a 1,900-employee behemoth and has spent nearly $17G on hundreds of initiatives.   Yet the technologies it's developed have failed to significantly improve U.S. soldiers' ability to detect unexploded roadside bombs and have never been able to find them at long distances.   Indeed, the best detectors remain the low-tech methods: trained dogs, local handlers and soldiers themselves...   Center for Public Integrity and McClatchy..."

2011-03-28 (5771 Adar2 22)
Paul Greenberg _Jewish World Review_
Rommel drives on deep into Egypt
"One by one, the dispatches would pile up on the floor while I hastily searched for a clear pattern.   There wasn't one.   There wouldn't be till the history was written, the pieces of the puzzle forced together, glossed over, properly falsified in a secretary of state's memoirs, the blood washed away and the medals pinned on the corpses.   In medias res, in the middle of the action, the fog of war provides decent cover, like a shroud..."

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-29

2011-03-29
Alok Jha _Manchester Guardian_
Red China poised to publish more scientific papers than USA
James Carder: Inside Ireland
Knowledge Speak
Douglas Stanglin: USA Today/Gannett
Richard Allen Greene: CNN
London Telegraph
Sydney Morning Herald
Jakarta Globe
David Shukman: BBC (with graph)

2011-03-29 05:00PDT (08:00EDT) (12:00GMT)
Mary Ann Milbourn _Orange County CA Register_
3.2 unemployed workers for every OC job ad on-line

2011-03-29 07:01PDT (10:01EDT) (14:01GMT)
Kathleen Madigan _Wall Street Journal_
Conference Board says consumer confidence index fell from a revised 72.0 in February to 63.4
Las Vegas NV Sun
Anne d'Innocenzio: AP/Knoxville TN News Sentinel/Scripps
Jere Downs: Louisville KY Courier-Journal
abc
MarketWatch
"Those claiming business conditions are 'good' increased to 15.1% from 12.4%, while those claiming business conditions are 'bad' decreased to 37.0% from 39.3%.   Consumers’ appraisal of the job market, however, was slightly less favorable than in February.   Those saying jobs are 'hard to get' edged up to 44.6% from 44.4%, while those stating jobs are 'plentiful' dipped to 4.4% from 4.9%."

2011-03-29 08:40PDT (11:40EDT) (15:40GMT)
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
Srinivasa Chennupati sentenced to 6 months in prison + 3 years supervision for submitting H-1B applications for non-existent jobs
"Chennupati created a second business as a head-hunter to match employers in the U.S. with potential employees in India who would receive H-1B visas.   In 2008, the company legally filed 10 H-1B petitions.   In 2009, the business filed for 19 additional H-1B visas, 11 of which were fraudulent, according to court records."

2011-03-29
Jeffrey Lord _American Spectator_
Republicans divided

2011-03-29
W. James Antle iii _American Spectator_
Red Ink Rumble

2011-03-29
W. James Antle iii _American Spectator_
Rand Paul comments on US involvement in Libya
video and transcript

2011-03-29
RiShawn Biddle _Amercan Spectator_
Return of the one-room school-house

2011-03-29
Ralph R. Reiland _American Spectator_
Wrecking the USA

2011-03-29
James Bowman _American Spectator_
Braving the Distinctions

2011-03-29 09:00PDT (12:00EDT) (16:00GMT)
Chris Chmielenski _Numbers USA_
H-1B visa fraud
"The [Numbers USA] member, who wishes to remain anonymous, used to work for both Oracle and Hewlett-Packard and was an integral part of the companies' abuses of the H-1B visa program. He recruited high-tech workers from Latin America and Asia, and then worked with immigration lawyers who capitalized on the various loop-holes within the program... The H-1B visa program is riddled with fraud. First, the 65K annual cap is a bit deceptive since there are another 20K annual visas awarded to individuals with a U.S. masters degeree and higher and an uncapped amount for government agencies, non-profit organizations, and universities [and, in the end, over 110K are issued each year]. Second, there are legal loop-holes that enable employers to [game] the 'prevailing wage' requirement thereby paying foreign workers less than what they would pay an American worker... 'We processed their visa applications through law firms that coached us in alternately concealing or emphasizing certain information, or outright lying, to support the false arguments that no one with the requisite skills and education could be found in the local labor markets, so that the applications would be approved. Foreign workers' interest was always to permanently move to the U.S.A. with an entourage of relatives.'"

2011-03-29 10:37PDT (13:37EDT) (17:37GMT)
_Atlantic_
extreme leftists Schumer and Boxer caught trying to falsely paint Republicans and Tea Party as "extreme" in attempt to keep extravagant federal spending increasing
Jennifer Steinhauer: NY Times
Salon
Susan Ferrechio: San Francisco CA Examiner
Washington DC Examiner
John McCormack: Weekly Standard
Jeffry Bartash: MarketWatch

2011-03-29
_Economic Times of India_
Infosys faces charges of H-1B and B-1 visa misuse, age discrimination

2011-03-29
"Anonymous Attorney" _V Dare_
Fork In The Road? Whistleblower Adams, AG Holder, And The End Of Race-Blind Justice

2011-03-29
Michelle Malkin _V Dare_
Project GunRunner: Obama's Stimulus-Funded Border Nightmare

2011-03-29
_Miami FL Herald_
Tuition at Florida state colleges and universities may increase 5% or 30%
Joe Millberg: Treasure Coast FL Palm: College tutition increases used to fund administrators' exhorbitant salaries

state	average in-state tuition
VT	$12,463
NH	$11,969
NJ	$11,667
PA	$11,370
IL	$10,975
WV	$5,049
UT	$4,923
FL	$4,886
LA	$4,727
WY	$3,927

2011-03-29
Mara Lee _The Network Journal_
New grads look in vain for jobs

2011-03-29 (5771 Adar2 23)
Frank J. Gaffney _Jewish World Review_
The "anti-Pete King" hearing
Washington Times
"At the very moment the threat posed to USA interests by the toxic Islamist organization known as the Muslim Brotherhood is becoming ever more palpable, [Dick Durbin] seems determined to suppress Americans' understanding of that menace."
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)

2011-03-29 (5771 Adar2 23)
Cal Thomas _Jewish World Review_
A gift for the obvious

2011-03-29 (5771 Adar2 23)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
The Syrian Spring
"The Sunni jihadist movement which spawned al-Qaeda and Hamas is expected to emerge as the strongest political force after the parliamentary elections in September."

2011-03-29 (5771 Adar2 23)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
Department of Injustice
Charlotte NC Observer
Ted Nugent: Washington Times
"The 2009 eighth-grade scores in Ohio were: In math, 54% of whites and 14% of blacks tested proficient; 54% of whites were proficient in reading while 13% of blacks were; in science, 43% of white and 6% of blacks tested proficient; and in writing, 38% of whites tested proficient compared with 13% for blacks.   This black/white education gap remains through high school completion, as seen by huge score differences in college entrance exams taken during the senior year...   problems are masked by fraudulent grades followed by fraudulent diplomas.   Grades are meant to convey information to students, parents and the outside world about academic performance.   If a student is given A's and B's, when academic performance is really at the D and F levels, the student, his parents and employers are misled."

2011-03-29 (5771 Adar2 23)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
Voting with their feet
Detroit News
"In general, people are voting with their feet against places where the [leftist], welfare-state policies favored by the intelligentsia are most deeply entrenched...   Both whites and blacks are leaving California, the poster state for the [leftist], welfare-state and nanny-state philosophy.   Whites are also fleeing the big northeastern [leftist], welfare states like Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, as well as the same kinds of states in the midwest, such as Michigan, Ohio and Illinois."

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-30

2011-03-30
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
"If only you knew Python..."
 
There have recently been several articles in the press similar to the one enclosed below, claiming that Silicon Valley employers just can't find engineers to hire.   Meanwhile, there will be a hearing on H-1B in the House on March 31.   These signs are the ear-marks of possible legislation coming down the line.
 
So, something could be in the works, either on H-1B or on fast-track green cards.   Please recall that the latter is just as harmful as the former for reasons I've given in the past.
 
I must say that the article below really takes the cake, though.   I don't think I've ever seen anything so out of sync with reality.   The reader is led to believe that a new graduate, presumably bachelor's level, can be hired at Google at $100K, if only he/she knows Python (or PHP or Ruby [or Ruby on Rails], but Python is big at Google in particular, where the inventor of Python works).   Such a deal...
 
The article says that most universities don't teach these languages.   That may be true technically, but the key word here is "teach"; most computer science students do pick up one of those 3 languages on their own, often as the language used in a course (used, not taught -- you learn it yourself, like any self-respecting geek).   I have many students, both under-graduate and graduate, who use Python for all their personal (i.e. non-school) programming, and a number of them know the language even better than I do, in spite of its being my own language of choice.
 
I certainly have my students use Python, and I have a fairly extensive tutorial on the language [but any experienced C or Pascal programmer can pick up most of it in just a few hours].
 
Let's bring this down to earth, folks.   Google plans to hire 6K this year, about 2K in the U.S.A.   That's quite a lot, but it pales in comparison to the fact that the Google received 75K CVs in just one week.   Clearly, in the end, Google will be hiring only a tiny percentage of its applicants, as usual for them and for any other firm, as I've shown before.   (Note: None of these figures is engineering-specific.)
 
I hope it is also just as clear that knowing Python will NOT get one that $100K job at Google fresh out of school.   Google will reject the vast majority of Pythonistas that apply, and many of those it does hire will NOT know Python.   Again, nothing special about Google; they're all like that.
 
So Python is just a red herring.   But I'll bet either this article or one like it will be cited in testimony at the House hearing on Thursday.
 
Norm
Claire Cain Miller & Jenna Wortham: Silicon Valley Hiring Perks: Meals, iPads and a Cubicle for Spot

2011-03-30
Lorna Thackeray _Billings MT Gazette_/_Lee_
Tough winter is not over yet in NE Montana
"No one in northeastern Montana can remember another winter like it -- long, cold and with snow-fall 70 or 80 inches above normal...   The school's major annual fundraiser, Schmeckfest, scheduled for last Friday, had to be postponed to Monday and then postponed again until this Thursday.   Fast hopes that postponements won't mean fewer people will attend the festival featuring an all-you-can-eat German smorgasbord, silent and live auctions and local entertainment.   Usually, Schmeckfest draws 800 to 900 people and raises $40K to $50K, Fast said...   It will take temperatures above 40 degrees for several days in a row to start the snow melting...   the probability of flooding on the Milk this spring is high all the way from Harlem to Nashua.   Fransen said the worst of it could be between Saco and Hinsdale.   Glasgow should be OK, but the Corps of Engineers is building its levees around Nashua higher.   Timing is hard to predict.   For now, Beaver Creek in Phillips County remains out of its banks.   If the melt picks up later this week, combined with more snow and rain expected Wednesday night, small-stream flooding in southern Phillips and Valley counties could expand."

2011-03-30
Julie Scelfo _NY Times_
Children taking wood-working classes

2011-03-30
_Bright Futures Jobs_/_Wired for Change_
US firms holding job fairs in India instead of the USA

2011-03-30
Rob Sanchez _Job Destruction News-Letter_ #2144/_Programmers Guild_
House Judiciary, Immigration sub-committee hearing
V Dare The House Judiciary is having a hearing [1] on H-1B Thursday, 2011/03/31. The subject line of the hearing is: "Visas: Designing a Program to Meet the Needs of the U.S. Economy and U.S. Workers".
 
Details about who will be attending the meeting was only made available this week.   The witness list includes the following people:
 
Donald Neufeld: Associate Director of Service Center Operations, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).   Neufeld is known because of an infamous memo he wrote that is often referred to as the "Neufeld Memo".   His memo generated lots of hype from H-1B opponents who thought it was a silver bullet to reign in bodyshops who they erroneously blame as the major source of the H-1B problem and its abuses.   The memo also received plenty of flak from bodyshops that don't want any tampering with their H-1B fix.   Lobbyists from high tech and the medical industry moved quickly to squelch the memo with heavy duty lobbying -- they were even granted their own hearings which they used to maintain their honey pot of cheap labor.   Many H-1B opponents think that Neufeld is a friend of American workers but that is probably wishful thinking.   Most likely he is a government bureaucrat who will advocate for the enforcement of any regulation, which is helpful and what a bureaucrat should be doing, but enforcement of the H-1B regulations does little good because the law is so full of loop-holes.
 
Bo Cooper: Attorney at Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP.   Cooper is an industry lobbyist and another pitiful example of Washington DC's revolving door.   He used to be a General Counsel at the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) but now shills for the cheap labor lobby. This quote from a 2006 Congressional testimony says it all: "The primary problem relating to H-1B visas is that demand for those visas far outweighs the supply."
 
Bruce A. Morrison [4]: Chairman, Morrison Public Affairs Group. In 1989 representative Bruce Morrison (D-CT) was one of the architects of H-1B.   If you want to know who to blame for H-1B, Morrison and his media spin doctor Paul Donnelly are 2 of the top villains.   Unfortunately both of them are coming out of the grave-yard to lobby for immigration policies that put the screws to American workers.   Morrison has managed to infiltrate organizations like the IEEE and the hospital industry, which helps to explain why there is no viable opposition to the H-1B visa program.
 
Ron Hira, Ph.D: Associate Professor of Public Policy, Rochester Institute of Technology.   Ron Hira makes a lot of sense on H-1B and he is a media darling whenever a TV show or newspaper wants an opinion on H-1B.   Many H-1B opponents think of Hira as a hero because they only listen to his arguments on H-1B and because of his obvious ethnicity.   Unfortunately Hira supports instant green cards and refuses to acknowledge the age discrimination factor as it relates to H-1B visas.
 
So, what is this hearing REALLY all about?
 
Expect all of the witnesses to list the evils of the H-1B program, especially its negative effect on foreigners who want nothing more than to live and work in the USA (while stealing your jobs).   The only ones that might mention the harm H-1B does to American workers would be Neufeld or Hira.   After the anti H-1B talk listen carefully for their pitches in favor of instant green cards because if there is a hidden agenda of the hearing it will be for instant green cards for business owners or college graduates (maybe one of them will even call for stapling green cards on diplomas!).   Norm Matloff and I have been warning all of you that there is a new push for instant green cards so this may be the bottle breaking ceremony across the bow of the Titanic.
2011-03-31: House judiciary committee hearing: Designing a Program to Meet the Needs of the U.S. Economy and U.S. Workers
2010-03-26: V Dare: Friday meeting at USCIS to discuss H-1B and medical bodyshops and Neufeld memo
2006-08-31: Testimony of Mr. Bo Cooper, former General Counsel, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Global Personnel Alliance
V Dare: Scandals and Vice in EB-5 Visa Program
Morrison Public Affairs Group
Dr. Norm Matloff On NPR Discussion Of H-1Bs
Dr. Norm Matloff On NBC Nightly News On H-1B, Then And Now

2011-03-30 08:10:43PDT (11:10:43EDT) (15:10:43GMT)
Mike Swift _San Jose CA Mercury "News"_
FTC orders 20 years of extremely weak consumer privacy protections against Google's long-standing extreme violations
Jim Puzzangheera: Los Angeles CA Times/Knoxville TN News Sentinel/Scripps/McClatchy
"Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a privacy advocacy group.   'For the next 20 years, Google needs a hall monitor, because you really can't trust it's going to come clean on privacy.'...   The federal order won't result in users seeing changes in Google products.   Rather, it is designed to make sure Google develops its software products with consumer privacy in mind, said Mark Eichorn, assistant director of the FTC's Division of Privacy and Identity Protection...   Google also failed to disclose adequately that consumers' frequent email contacts would become public by default with Buzz, the FTC said.   The agency investigated in response to a complaint filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center in 2010 February, shortly after Buzz was launched. Besides the formal complaint by EPIC, there were thousands of complaints from Google users."

2011-03-30
Erica Dolson _Cumberland PA Sentinel_/_Lee_
Cold to continue, snow possible

2011-03-30
Peter Schmidt _Chronicle of Higher Education_
federal judge dismissed Turkish Coalition's suit against U of MN for telling students web-site about Armenian holocaust is "unreliable"

2011-03-30
Jay D. Homnick _American Spectator_
The Bully's Pulpit

2011-03-30
John Kennedy _Palm Beach FL Post_/_Treasure Coast FL Palm_
$66.5G Florida House budget cuts funding of schools, services, jobs, and government employees' pay; increases tuition 5%
"The House budget committee approved a $66.5G state spending plan Wednesday that would reduce the state's workforce by 5,245 jobs, pull $710M from public employee pay-checks and cut Florida schools by $1.1G...   The House cuts Florida classroom spending by $463 per-student, while also approving 5% college and university tuition hikes, with university-tuition authorized to rise by as much as 15% if approved by the system's Board of Governors."

2011-03-30 11:52PDT (14:52EDT) (18:52GMT)
_Dayton OH Business Journal_
CGC: announced lay-off plans for 41,528 in March
Toledo OH Blade
Fox Charlotte NC
Fierce Pharma
UPI
Recruiting Trends
Seeking Alpha
Wall Street Journal
Orange county CA Register
Atlantic
CNN
Fox
Reuters
Orlando FL Sentinel
Atlanta GA Journal-Constitution
130,749 job cuts were announced through 2011Q1.
pharmaceutical industry: 960 in March; 3,385 this year to date (compared to 26,165 last year)
government + non-profits: 19,099 (41,929 over 2011Q1)
non-profits: 16,380 over 2011Q1
automotive: 7,728 over 2011Q1
telecommunications: 4,552 over 2011Q1
aerospace and defense: 7,278 over 2011Q1

2011-03-30
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
More Union Thuggery
Wall Street Journal: Unions threatening businesses that stay neutral in the state's budget battle

2011-03-30
Marco Rubio _Wall Street Journal_
Why I Won't Vote to Raise the Debt Limit... Again: The time to start cutting spending is now

2011-03-30 (5771 Adar2 25)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
Obama speech was full of rhetoric and bereft of logic... again
Marysville CA Appeal-Democrat/Freedom
"It is the old [leftist] illusion that you can measure out force with a teaspoon, not only in military operations micro-managed by civilians in Washington, like the VietNam war, but also in domestic confrontations when the police are trying to control a rioting mob, and are being restrained by politicians, while the mob is restrained by nobody...   The old saying, 'When you strike at a king, you must kill him.', is especially apt when it comes to attacking a widely recognized sponsor of international terrorism like Colonel Qaddafi.   To attack him without destroying his regime is just asking for increased terrorism against Americans and America's allies.   So is replacing him with insurgents who include other sponsors of terrorism...   Too often in the past, going all the way back to the days of Woodrow Wilson, we have operated on the assumption that a bad government becomes better after the magic of 'change'...   Those who expected his election to mark a new "post-racial" era may be the most disappointed.   He has appointed people with a track record of race resentment promotion and bias, like Attorney General Eric Holder and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.   Disappointing? No.   Disgusting? Yes.   The only disappointment is with voters who voted their hopes and ignored his realities."

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

2011-03-31

2011-03-31 03:01PDT (06:01EDT) (10:01GMT)
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
senator Charles Grassley calld for investigation of L-1 visa abuses
"Grassley on Tuesday released a letter to Charles Edwards, the DHS inspector general, asking him to dust off a 2006 inspector general report about the visa program and find out why the report's recommendations 'were never implemented'."

2011-03-31 05:30PST (08:30EST) (13:30GMT)
Scott Gibbons & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
un-employment insurance weekly claims report
DoL home page
DoL OPA press releases
historical data
DoL regulations
"This week's release reflects the annual revision to the weekly unemployment claims [AND] seasonal adjusted factors.   The historical [raw numbers and] factors from 2006 forward have been revised.   The calendar year 2011 factors...   The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 354,301 in the week ending March 26, a decrease of 156 from the previous week.   There were 412,710 initial claims in the comparable week in 2010.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.3% during the week ending March 19, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 4,111,925, a decrease of 165,167 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 4.0% and the volume was 5,207,496.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending March 12 was 8,770,443.   Extended benefits were available in AL, AK, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, DC, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, ME, MA, MI, MN, MO, NV, NJ, NM, NY, NC, OH, OR, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, VA, WA, WV, and WI, during the week ending March 12.   States reported 3,588,816 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending March 12, a decrease of 38,838 from the prior week.   There were 5,891,783 claimants in the comparable week in 2010.   EUC weekly claims include first, second, third, and fourth tier activity.   [Note that the population used for calculating the "insured unemployment rate" changes
to 132,623,886 beginning 2007-10-06;
to 133,010,953 beginning 2008-01-05;
to 133,382,559 beginning 2008-04-05;
to 133,690,617 beginning 2008-07-05;
to 133,902,387 beginning 2008-10-04;
to 133,886,830 beginning 2009-01-03;
to 133,683,433 beginning 2009-04-04;
to 133,078,480 beginning 2009-07-04;
to 133,823,421 beginning 2009-10-03;
to 131,823,421 beginning 2009-10-17;
to 130,128,328 beginning 2010-01-02;
to 128,298,468 beginning 2010-04-03;
to 126,763,245 beginning 2010-07-03;
to 125,845,577 beginning 2010-09-25;
to 125,560,066 beginning 2011-01-15.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2011-03-31
Marc Kovac _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
Ohio legislature has enacted SB5 to limit collective bargaining by government employees
"In total, the legislation was subject to 13 hearings and 60 hours of testimony from 200-plus witnesses, said representative Joe Uecker, a Republican from Clermont County and chairman of the committee that considered the bill...   'You guys are very focused on the 350K state, municipal and local public employees.', said representative Bill Coley, a Republican from Middletown.   'And our side of the aisle is equally concerned about those employees.   But we're all concerned about the over 500K Ohioans who don't have a job.   And we have to right the ship of state to get our costs in control.'"

2011-03-31
_Youngstown OH Vindicator_
Ohio DNR officials confirm that white nose fungus has attacked bats in Ohio
"Officials with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife confirmed the first case in hibernating bats in an abandoned mine in Wayne National Forest in Lawrence county.   The site has been gated and protected from public access as it is suspected that humans can carry the disease from cave to cave...   Of the more than 1,300 bats hibernating at the Lawrence County mine, 69% were little brown bats, 21% were Indiana bats, 10% were tri-colored bats and there were smaller numbers of big brown bats and northern bats."

2011-03-31 11:38:14PDT (14:38:14EDT) (18:38:14GMT)
Daniel Estrin _San Jose CA Mercury "News"_/_AP_
Israeli and Palestinian starts VC fund for tech start-ups on the West Bank

2011-03-31 12:14:44PDT (15:14:44EDT) (19:14:44GMT)
Mike Cassidy _San Jose CA Mercury "News"_
Medvedev hopes to create tech business hot-spot in Russia: Skolkovo

2011-03-31
W. James Antle iii _American Spectator_
Boehner: No Deal

2011-03-31
Matt Krantz & Barbara Hansen _USA Today_/_Gannett_
CEO pay increased 27%, worker pay increased 2.1%
alternat link
abc
Tucson AZ Citizen
Kastner, Kim Executive Compensation Web Log

2011-03-31
Seth Lipsky _American Spectator_
Who Is Afraid of America's Constitution? The Radical Left
"the Constitution threatens the whole [leftist] project -- and at a crucial time...   the 'change' that President Obama was referring to in his famous campaign cry turns out to be a vast [anti-constitutional] expansion of government and of federal power.   The only place the federal government gets any of its powers is [from the people as set down] in the Constitution.   And in its plain language the Constitution [delineates that the people granted the] the federal government only limited powers."

2011-03-31
Bob Mercer _Black Hills SD Pioneer_
SD regents adopt 6.9% tuition and fee increase at state universities

2011-03-31
Linda Conner Lambeck _Hartford CT Courant_
CT state university board voted to increase tuition at state colleges by 2.5%

2011-03-31
_San Angelo TX Standard Times_
tuition to increase up to 9.9% at Angelo State U

2011-03-31
Scott Kilman _Wall Street Journal_
Food prices are rising
Journal & Courier
Fort Worth TX Star-Telegram
Seattle WA Post-Intelligencer
Augusta GA Chronicle

2011-03-31
Rob Sanchez _V Dare_/_Job Destruction News-Letter_
Saudi Arabia's Khalid Aldawsari shows Terrorists Are Still Exploiting U.S. Student Visa System
"There's one sure way to make sure that terrorists don't kill people in the United States: prevent them from entering our country.   Once they cross our border, the odds of preventing them from going on killing sprees drop dramatically.   In [the 2001/09/11 attacks], terrorists such as Mohammed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi used student visas.   Before that, Eyad Ismoli of Jordan, one of the bombers convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, used a student visa.   Student visas are easy for terrorists to obtain.   They give legitimacy and the freedom to set up operations with impunity...   Considering the repeated instances in which student visas have been used by terrorists, it would be reasonable to assume that the U.S. would restrict the number of foreigners who could get student visas -- especially to people from known terrorist strongholds like Saudi Arabia...   Khalid Aldawsari...was allowed into the U.S. on an F-1 student visa in 2008.   And, in case you missed the news several weeks ago, he was busted by the FBI because he made the mistake of buying dangerous chemicals with a credit card...   Background checks were either eliminated or expedited in order to reduce the time and expense normally required to make sure that foreign students didn't pose security risks."

2011-03-31 (5771 Adar2 25)
Melanie Phillips _Jewish World Review_
The West is now an open goal for our enemies

Proposed Bills 2011
 
 

Proposed Bills 2011

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World + USA Over-Population Clocks
Jimbo Wales's WikiPedia on World Over-Population
 

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