TSA allowing 25 illegal aliens to attend flight school
2012-07-19
Patrick J. Buchanan _V Dare_
the chickens of globalization come home to roost for both Dems and Reps
"if one is a believing globalist. Then, whatever the result of globalization, whoever the winners and losers, that is what is best, for a globalized world is the best of all worlds. This, of course, is not patriotism talking, or the voice of wisdom born of experience. It is a recitation from the globalist catechism... Free trade, the Kennedy Round of trade negotiations, the Uruguay Round, the Doha Round, NAFTA, GATT, the WTO—what they all produced is a Magna Carta of the transnational corporation, which looks longingly to the end of nation-states and the arrival of world government."
2012-07-19
William L. Anderson
pathos of Krugman, collectivist political operative
2012-07-19 (5772 Tamuz 29)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
trashing achievements
Proposed Bills 2012
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"To abandon self-ownership is to become corrupt & servile in spirit, & for the servile & corrupt there are no great things possible. You cannot carve in rotten wood; you cannot lead to greatness those who have renounced the essence of their own manhood or womanhood." --- Auberon Herbert 1908 (reprinted in Auberon Herbert _The Right & Wrong of Compulsion by the State & Other Essays_ pg 387)
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2012-07-20
2012-07-20
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
the Brookings conference
As I mentioned yesterday, the Brookings Insitution, a major DC think tank, held a conference on H-1B on July 18. The ostensible topic was the geographic distribution of H-1Bs across the U.S.A., but it of course turned out to be a wide-ranging discussion of all aspects of H-1B.
The planned theme on geography stemmed from a report by Brookings' Neil Ruiz, Jill Wilson and Shyamali Choudhury. So far, I've only read parts of that report, and I have an e-mail query pending to Mr. Ruiz. So I will postpone my analysis of the report, and concentrate instead on the 2 panel discussions.
It's unfortunate that there was very little balance in the composition of the panels. As pointed out during the first Q&A period by David North of the Center for Immigration Studies, among 11 panelists, only one, Jared Bernstein, expressed even a semi-critical view of foreign tech worker programs. (Bernstein was negative on H-1B, positive on green cards.) Another panelist was neutral, and the rest were solidly in the pro-foreign-worker camp. I would add that there were no panelists who were working programmers or engineers.
Accordingly, most panelists had a "the employers tell us they can't find 'qualified' workers, so we can see that H-1Bs are needed" point of view.
Bernstein, the one hold-out, is clearly a very thoughtful and insightful analyst who presents his views in a remarkably cogent manner. His patience in dealing with Vivek Wadhwa (see below) was remarkable. Some readers of this e-newsletter know him personally, and respect him, I'm sure quite justifiably so. But...
Unfortunately, Bernstein was handicapped by lack of key knowledge of the workings of the H-1B program. He stated, for instance, that H-1B law requires employers to give hiring preference to Americans (U.S. citizens and permanent residents). This is false, other than for a minuscule part of H-1B law pertaining to "H-1B dependent employers".
More importantly, Bernstein bought into the false notion, common inside the Beltway these days, that use of H-1Bs as cheap labor occurs mainly through violations of the law. Wilson, also on the panel, said that American workers are protected from being under-cut by cheap foreign labor by the fact that employers must pay H-1Bs the legally defined prevailing wage. Bernstein agreed, saying most employers are law-abiding. The problem is that the legal prevailing wage is well below market wage. The industry wrote the law to benefit itself, giving the appearance of "protection" when actually giving anything but.
Thus employers can and do pay H-1Bs less than comparable Americans. Such behavior is the rule, not the exception. This loop-hole has been noted by the GAO, and indeed noted by another panelist, Vivek Wadhwa, who has written in the past that he used the loop-hole to under-pay H-1Bs when he was a tech CEO. Of course, Wadhwa, now more combative and partisan than ever (see below), kept quiet when Wilson made her "protections" remark.
My statistical analysis of employer-sponsored green card data has shown that most main-stream U.S. employers pay at or near the prevailing wage. Since the latter is below market wage, one then sees that most main-stream employers are paying their foreign workers less than they pay comparable Americans. (As I've explained before, the word "comparable" is central.) Note carefully that this data essentially excludes the Indian bodyshops, since professor Ron Hira's research has shown they rarely sponsor their workers for green cards. IOW, the problem is much more widespread than Bernstein realizes.
This is a key point. The main controversy on H-1B, after all, is whether H-1Bs are used for cheap labor. Given that the panelists were working on the basis of a fundamentally incorrect assumption to begin with (that paying below-market wages is illegal), that made meaningful discussion of H-1B nearly impossible.
Various panelists denied that H-1B was harming American tech workers. Wilson, for instance, noted that the unemployment rate in STEM is 4%. Bernstein countered that that is double the usual rate of 2%. But this still misses the point, which is that people are forced out of the field. Once they become insurance agents, say, they count in government data as employed insurance agents, not unemployed programmers. There is also the issue of software contractors who find it harder to get work (and get paid less for it). So the 4% figure is highly misleading.
Bernstein did briefly refer to the recent Washington Post article that showed most people in life science research fields eventually get squeezed out of an eventual career. The article did not mention the H-1B connection (the next article will do so, I'm told), but the NIH report certainly did. Data on post docs is poor, but the usual figure cited is that 60% of the post docs are foreign nationals. So if you want an example of a direct, large impact of H-1B on an American profession, there it is. The same is true for programming and engineering, though more complicated.
As most readers of this e-newsletter know, a major point I make is that H-1B is largely about age, meaning people under age 35. Young workers cost less than older workers, both in salary and benefits, so employers save a bundle by hiring the young. When they run out of young Americans to hire, they turn to hiring young H-1Bs. (Many, of course, go directly to the young H-1Bs.)
Wadhwa brought up the age issue, but in a new way for him. He stated that in the past he had been critical of foreign worker programs for precisely the reason I gave in the last paragraph, their effect in forcing Americans out of the field at age 35 or so, but now he has changed his mind. The older programmers are having trouble finding work, he said, not because of the presence of the younger H-1Bs but because the programmers lack up-to-date skills. This is the standard industry lobbyist line, but unfortunately for Vivek, he is on record as saying that even if an older programmer has all the modern tech skills, employers will still hire the young.
A journalist in the audience indirectly brought up the age issue as well. She noted the revolving-door aspect of the industry lobbyists' claims to need H-1Bs because the technology evolves rapidly, so that only the young qualify for jobs. She pointed out that this is a self-sustaining process, guaranteeing that we will ALWAYS "need" more H-1Bs. Unfortunately, the panel did not really understand her question, but she was right on point. I've written extensively on the skills issue before, so will just insert my sound-bite comment here: If only new graduates know new programming languages and the like, how can it be that they learned those languages from old guys like me? The journalist also correctly pointed out that today's H-1B becomes tomorrow's victim in this process.
Much has been made in the last few days about the fireworks between Wadhwa and Bernstein at Brookings. I'm sure the audience was entertained, but Vivek's behavior once again was far beyond what is acceptable in an academic/research setting. Sure, banter is fine, but Vivek once again chose to trash professor Ron Hira, calling Ron (his fellow Indian-American, by the way) "an academic nut case" and so on. Vivek repeatedly characterized all critics of H-1B as "anti-immigrant", "xenophobic" and "fringe". Bernstein objected, as did that same journalist in the audience.
But Bernstein said that "everyone", except for the people in the affected professions, supports promoting the immigration of more tech workers. Unfortunately, as a recent White House economist, his definition of "everyone" means "everyone inside the Beltway". My own experience, e.g. when I'm interviewed on radio talk shows, is that most Americans are solidly opposed to importing tech workers on a large scale. That was borne out by a 1998 Harris Poll (though I've heard the industry recently commissioned a poll with the opposite results).
See this account of my own run-in with Vivek, which in turn has links to cases in which he bullied Ron on 2 different national TV shows. I have also praised Vivek for some of the research he's done, and wish he would stick to the facts, rather than ranting and raving. One such out-burst might be excusable, but with Vivek it is pattern and practice, and I cannot understand why he keeps getting invited to serious forums such as this one.
Rude as Vivek's behavior was, I must say that MSFT's Bill Kamela was a lot worse. He repeated the claim Bill Gates has made that the software developer jobs at MSFT "start at $104K per year". Actually, the green card data show that only 6% of MSFT's software engineers being sponsored are making over $100K.
Kamela then made the bizarre claim that "MSFT knows every computer science professor in the country", and recruits through them. Needless to say, this is nowhere near true. Moreover, that claim was a non-response to the question asked of Kamela by congressional staffer in the audience. The latter, pointing out the difficulty many Americans have of moving across the country when saddled with a high-interest mortgage, asked Kamela whether Microsoft might help refinance. This was clearly aimed at older workers, not new graduates, but Kamela ignored that and gave a spiel on recruiting new grads.
In 2008 Vivek quoted David Vaskevitch, then the chief technology officer at MSFT, saying Vaskevitch "acknowledged that the vast majority of new MSFT employees are young, but said that this is so because older workers tend to go into more senior jobs and there are fewer of those positions to begin with".
I've often written that most people don't realize the "indentured servitude" attraction that foreign work programs have for employers. Losing a worker to another firm in the midst of an urgent project can be a big blow. Green card sponsorship in effect locks the foreign worker in, something even more valuable to many employers than wage savings. Wadha briefly mentioned this too.
Along those lines, North asked Kamela if MSFT would support a law that grants the foreign worker a green card WITHOUT employer sponsorship, thus eliminating the "indentured" status. Kamela said MSFT supports portability, but that it also insists that the employer sponsor the worker. Kind of contradictory, but I think Kamela's comments do make it clear MSFT wants the "indentured" status, at least for a few years. As I've said, look for more bills coming that make it appear that foreign STEM students are getting "instant" green cards but that actually ensure that the process is strung out over several years.
I was quite impressed by the moderator of the first panel, Edward Schumacher-Matos. He clearly had done his homework. He knew, for example, that the training funds that come from the H-1B employer fees go to training technicians, jobs that H-1Bs don't take. Thus the whole rationale for the user fees, to end dependence on the H-1B program, is wrong from the git go. Indeed, Sun Microsystems, in its heyday, said the same thing, as did the Dept. of Commerce. Again, go back to Vivek's comment I cited above -- employers don't want the older worker even if she has all the right skills.
I won't comment here on Vivek's claims about immigrant entrepreneurship in the tech industry, as I've explained in detail before why those claims are misleading. Ditto for his claim, and Kamela's, that most H-1Bs are "the best and the brightest". (I think Bernstein did counter that one briefly.)
Wilson brought up the issue of "diversion" in which STEM grads choose non-STEM careers, such as finance and the law, which are much more lucrative. She seemed mystified by this, but it's not mysterious at all. H-1B and similar programs have flooded the STEM job market, suppressing wage growth and thus making STEM careers unattractive. As I've mentioned many times, an 1989 NSF analysis predicted that this would occur as a result of the foreign influx, even predicting that the "diversion" would be in the direction of finance and the law.
To me, one of the most interesting statements was Bernstein's recounting his experience at the Dept. of Labor in the 1990s, when the industry was ramping up its campaign to expand the H-1B program. He said the industry was telling Labor, "Wages in our industry are going up, so the government has got to help us!" So there it is quite explicitly -- the industry admitting that H-1Bs is about saving labor costs. Some of you may recall that a memo unearthed coincidentally during the [senate confirmation hearings on the nomination of Elena Kagan to the supreme court] showed that the Clinton administration had real suspicions about the industry regarding H-1B.
The Brookings conference consisted of lots of heat but not much light, as the saying goes.
Norm
---30---
2012-07-20
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
Today's sesquicentennial moment: Civil War gets more difficult in VA... with a parallel in MS
"'...No privileges and immunities of warfare apply to lawless bands of individuals not forming part of the organized forces of the enemy nor wearing the garb of soldiers, who, seeking and obtaining safety on pretext of being peaceful citizens, steal out in rear of the army, attack and murder straggling soldiers, molest trains of supplies, destroy railroads, telegraph lines, and bridges, and commit outrages disgraceful to civilized people and revolting to humanity...'... '...Persons denying that they are citizens of the United States, repudiating the duties of citizens, by words or actions, are entitled no rights, save those which the laws of war and humanity accord to their characters. If they claim to belong to a hostile government, they have the rights of belligerents, and can neither justify claim, nor have anything more from the army. If they are found making war, without lawful organization or commission, they are enemies of mankind, and have the rights due to pirates and robbers, which it will be a duty to accord them.'"
2012-07-20
Anthony Watts
on citing sources, Demetris Koutsoyiannis and the homogenization of temperature data, plus some comments on web log review
2012-07-20
Ben Stein _American Spectator_
Wall Street owes America for misconduct -- but we owe it big time too
2012-07-20
Dana Beyerle _Gadsden AL Times_
civil rights commission to hold hearings on efforts to reduce illegal immigration: August 17 at Sheraton Birmingham hotel
Over a dozen speakers are scheduled to address the commission.
2012-07-20
Greg Johnson _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
pres. Obummer's personally insults millions of Americans in his attempt to shovel out leftist propaganda
2012-07-20 09:42PDT (12:42EDT) (16:42GMT) (18:42 Jerusalem)
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
neither Romney, Obummer nor Brookings want to discuss out-sourcing
"No one wants a real discussion on [out-sourcing -- on- or off-shore]. Not President Barack Obama, not Mitt Romney and not the Brookings Institution... Except in a few small circles, there is no interest in a thoughtful examination of the question posed by Bernstein [or any of the others]."
2012-07-20
Joe Guzzardi _Jersey Journal_
Obummer and Romney should both read the news; they're apparently not aware of devastating job destruction
2012-07-20
David Stockman & Alex Daley _Lew Rockwell_
"austerity" is not discretionary
2012-07-20
Mark J. Perry
employment in "natural" resources and mining in ND
2012-07-20
Mark J. Perry
15-year-old Amerian made break-through in testing for pancreatic cancer
Fast Company
"he's just pioneered a new, improved test for diagnosing pancreatic cancer that is 90% more accurate, 400 times more sensitive, and one-26-thousandth as expensive as existing methods."
2012-07-20
Mark J. Perry
ND vs. USA unmployment rates
2012-07-20
Mark J. Perry
individual achievement: Milton Friedman vs. pres. Obummer
2012-07-20
Mark J. Perry
Think of all the businesses that don't happen due to government regulations
2012-07-20 (5772 Menachem-Ab 01)
Joshua Mitnick _Jewish World Review_
Will Israel retaliate against people behind Bulgaria bus bombing?
"Speaking to reporters, Mr. Netanyahu said it was Hezbollah, acting as the 'long arm' of Iran, which actually carried out the attack... Gerald Steinberg, a political science professor at Bar Ilan University, says that Netanyahu has been very cautious about using force in general. The Israeli leader is likely to order a man-hunt as the government did after the assassination of Israel's delegation to the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. 'The history of Israeli responses to terror attacks like this are a very slow and carefully measured response where the perpetrators are identified, and one by one they are found.', he says."
2012-07-20 (5772 Menachem-Ab 01)
Fred Weir _Jewish World Review_
in Russia's Tatarstan republic moderate Muslims are being assassinated... by extremist Muslims
"A leading Muslim cleric was shot dead and another seriously injured by a car bomb in the mainly Muslim Volga republic of Tatarstan Thursday, in attacks that police and most experts believe were almost certainly carried out by radical Islamists. The violence threatens to shatter more than just the peace in the oil-rich central Russian region, whose majority population constitutes one of the biggest single concentrations of Sunni Muslims in Europe. The 2 victims are leading proponents of the officially sponsored brand of Euro-Islam, which preaches tolerance, democracy and acceptance of modern secular life. The republic's chief mufti, Ildus Faizov, who was hurled from his car by a powerful blast, had been leading efforts to expunge Saudi-trained clerics and extreme Salafist textbooks from local mosques and religious schools. Deputy mufti Valiulla Yakupov, gunned down on the porch of his home, was an Islamic scholar who was widely regarded as the main strategist in the fight against religious extremism."
Proposed Bills 2012
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"The question before the court & you, gentlemen of the jury, is of no small or private concern; it is not the cause of a poor printer, nor of NY alone, which you are trying. No! It may, in its consequence, affect every free man that lives on the main of America. It is the best cause; it is the cause of liberty, & I make no doubt but your upright conduct this day will not only entitle you to the love & esteem of your fellow citizens, but every man who prefers freedom to a life of slavery will bless & honor you as men who have baffled the attempt of tyranny, & who, by an impartial & incorrupt verdict, have made a noble foundation for securing to ourselves, our posterity & our neighbors that to which nature & the laws of our country have given us a right -- the liberty of exposing arbitrary power, in these parts of the world at least, by speaking & writing truth." --- Andrew Hamilton 1735-08-04 on behalf of John Peter Zenger (quoted in Alfred H. Knight 1996 _The Life of the Law_ pg 105)
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2012-07-21
2012-07-21
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
Jared Bernstein responds to my news-letter article about the Brookings conference
Jared Bernstein, whose clash at the Brookings conference with Vivek Wadhwa I reported here the other day, wrote to me later, stating that my account was inaccurate and incomplete. He graciously offered to allow me to post his message here, which I am doing below. Following it, I am enclosing my reply to him, minus a bit of personal material.
I apologize for offending Jared, which certainly wasn't my intention. I was simply giving an honest report. I still stand by that report, but I agree I could have elaborated in some places and perhaps inserted some softening disclaimers in others. I also thank a reader who sent a detailed, articulate defense of Jared along similar lines.
Jared closes his message to me by saying that he and I "are fighting a similar fight". I was pleased to see him say this, but the central point in my report on the Brookings conference was that actually there is only a small degree of commonality in Jared's and my views.
The theme that arose repeatedly in Jared's remarks at Brookings was "the Intels are the Good Guys and the Infosyses are the Bad Guys". This came up explicitly, e.g. when he cited Tata, Infosys and "Indian companies", and implicitly, in statements like "most [employers of H-1Bs] are ethical, law-abiding people" and in his support for issuing green cards instead of temporary work visas.
My central point was that the problem is industry-wide, including BOTH the Intels AND the Infosyses. Under-payment of wages of course must be gauged according to the skills of the worker, but the result is that the Intels under-pay their H-1Bs on the high end, and the Infosyses do so on the low end.
I've shown this in many ways: via my statistical analysis of the PERM data; by citing economic principles, e.g. the negative impact limits on mobility can have on H-1B wages; and anecdotally, such as the David Huber incident with Cisco.
The abuse occurs perfectly legally, due to gaping loop-holes in the legal definition of prevailing wage, in the recruitment requirements of the green card process and so on -- all in laws that the Intels wrote [or at least that the executives and their lobbyists wrote].
It is also one of the topics covered in my slide presentation (pdf).
In my posting on the Brookings conference, I noted blatant misrepresentation by the MSFT panelist regarding wages, not the first time they've done this. How can anyone regard Microsoft as among the Good Guys?
Much is made of the fact that the Infosyses are prominent near the top of the H-1B league tables, but that doesn't show the big picture. Actually, only 12% of H-1Bs are sponsored by Indian firms. (This is from a Washington Post article, and jibes with rough data analyses I've done.)
Jared is not the only one with this Intels Si!, Infosyses No! viewpoint. On the contrary, it has become the Conventional Wisdom in DC and among some academics. (Ron Hira, by the way, does NOT have this viewpoint.) It is the convenient stance to take. I could write a detailed analysis of the sequence of events that led to this stance, interesting dynamics. (I've in fact been planning such an article, actually, but haven't had time to approach any news outlets yet.)
But this Conventional Wisdom is greatly at odds with the facts, and is unconscionable scape-goating. Indian and Indian-American groups have objected to that scape-goating, as has Vivek, whom I solidly supported. Again, if the Infosyses were indeed the main abusers of the system, I'd have no problem with pointing that out, but they are in the small minority.
No question about it, the Intels project a better IMAGE than do the Infosyses. They have savvier lawyers who wear nicer suits. They are less overt in restricting American hires. As noted earlier, they hire a higher class of H-1Bs (e.g. better educated).
But the Intels are still abusing the H-1B program and green card programs, still paying below-market wages, still reducing wages and job opportunities for U.S. citizens and permanent residents, still using the programs to hand-cuff their foreign workers from moving to other firms.
Here is the bottom line: In pure numbers, far more American programmers and engineers are being hurt by the Intels than by the Infosyses. One should not conflate the sleazy image (partly real) of the Infosyses with the fact that 12% is just that -- only 12%. To ignore the 88% that are also harming American workers is just wrong.
Norm
Jared Bernstein 2012-07-20 11:52:40 +0000 to Norm Matloff
With respect, this is a very unfair and unrepresentative review of my position in the Brookings debate. The whole thrust of my argument was that the current system is quite deeply flawed. In fact, I began be describing H1-B as "an inelegant solutions to something that I'm not even sure is a problem".
It's true that at one point I misspoke and conflated the weak attestation rule of H1-B Dependency cases with the whole program. But I must have said "there's no labor market test" 20 times! In fact, on my list of flaws in my opening statement, that was #1! And fixing that was #1 on my list of fixes.
Same thing about the impact of the program on depressing wages -- that was #2 on my list!
And you completely ignored my key point which I hammered on to the point of being obnoxious -- it was my main critique of the Brookings paper: the H1-B (and L1, etc. program blocks the organic market adjustments that should occur, most importantly rising earnings! How many times did I say something to the effect of: "we don't even know if there are labor shortages here, but if we did, why would we want to jam the market signal by tweaking up labor supply through raising the H1-B cap!!??"...
[As a matter of fact, we do know that there have been STEM skills surpluses for years, and possibly through the last several decades. Ending the fraud surrounding the surplus is #1 on my list. #2 is the fraudulent claims WRT the quality of the guest-workers. #3 is the undermining of professional ethics...jgo]
It's true that I took a "mend it, don't end it" position. As I stressed—again, from my opening statement and throughout the hour -- I don't like guest worker programs in general, but I wouldn't end H1-B without fixing the broken immigration system first. We may disagree on this point, but I think there needs to be a mechanism where some workers of various skill levels can get temporary visas to work here. (For the record, I've spoken extensively with leading H1-B critic Ron Hira about this and he agrees with mend-it-don't-end-it.)
Finally, I thought I was consistently explicit when I was talking about the White House and DC politics favorable views on high-skill immigration. I wasn't at all saying that's how the public views this...
I thought I fought very hard to defend a sensible and quite critical position re temporary guest worker visas in general, and the H1-B programs in particular. Your note doesn't honestly reflect the positions I took nor the arguments I made.
Feel free to share this with your list. I know we're fighting a similar fight here and I continue to support and respect your work.
Best,
Jared
Norm Matloff 2012-07-20 09:51:03 -0700 to Jared Bernstein
Thanks for the reply, Jared, and the offer for me to share it with my list, which I'll do.
For the record, I've never advocated "ending" H-1B. I too would "mend" it. More on this below.
You did indeed say, several times, that H-1B suppresses wages. I debated whether to mention this, though, because it didn't make sense. You were perfectly OK with granting more green cards to tech workers. Obviously that would suppress wages too.
As to the labor market test, this depends on one's definitions. In the eyes of some critics, Durbin/Grassley does not do a labor market test either. To me it's not an interesting issue (again, see below), so I didn't bring it up. I agree that I should have, given that I pointed out your stating that H-1B employers must hire Americans first.
Now, here is what IS important, in my view: I think you missed my point (my fault, I think): You are in the "the Intels are the Good Guys, the Infosyses are the Bad Guys" camp. This is inaccurate scape-goating. H-1B is abused across the board, with the Intels under-paying at the high end and the Infosyses underpaying at the low end. I'd have no problem with singling out the Infosyses if they were the only abusers, but that is absolutely false, as my analysis of the DoL PERM data shows.
It's unfortunate that you regard me as extreme, Vivek's counterpart. I know some others have this view of me too, but either we are going to address the foreign tech worker issue or we won't. Pretending that the problem is limited to a politically weaker group -- the Infosyses are not without clout, but their clout is minuscule compared to that of the Intels -- is just wrong, doubly so when a minority racial/ethnic group is involved.
As a life-long liberal Democrat, I'm quite disappointed with people like Schumer and Lofgren who take that "Intels good, Infosyses bad" stance. Zoe at least knows better.
I was glad to see that you support the Durbin/Grassley bill. I have publicly endorsed it on numerous occasions. So you can see that I am with you in terms of "mend it, don't end it". (I made my own mending proposal back in 2003 in my University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform article.)
As I said in my e-newsletter posting last night, the absolutely central issue is the definition of prevailing wage, which currently enables the rampant abuse of H-1B. Durbin/Grassley would change that definition to the 50th percentile of the given occupation, with NO splitting into various experience levels. This is key, as it would go a long way to address the age issue. The AFL-CIO (DPE) proposal would be even better, setting the legally required wage to the 75th percentile.
I should also note that I have always strongly supported the notion of bringing in the best and the brightest from around the world. I've personally acted on that conviction.
But the vast majority of the foreign tech workers are NOT the best and the brightest. They're good, competent people, but not brilliant. My proposal has been that we should give an automatic green card to any foreign STEM student who gets a job offer in the 90th percentile of their occupation.
But I am strongly opposed to the "staple a green card to their diplomas", which have the same problems as H-1B: They would suppress wages (by swelling the job market) and have the same negative impact on the over-35 programmers and engineers (since most of those getting diplomas would be young).
The real value of the Post story on the life science post docs is that young Americans would have to be crazy to go into that bio research today. With 60% of the post docs being foreign, it is clear that foreign worker programs are a major cause of this. Do you really think it's OK that young Americans interested in science see it as untenable as a career? And most importantly, would things be any better if we gave those foreign post docs automatic green cards? I assume your answer is no to both these questions. If so, I hope you re-evaluate your stance on "Intels and Infosyses".
Norm
P.S.
[Here is] the transcript of the Brookings conference.
This is useful for those lacking the time to watch the videos, and for researchers who wish to do text searches.
I've fixed a couple of grammatical/usage issues and added a bit of clarification, but it's basically what I posted earlier today.
Norm
---30---
2012-07-21
_ACS_
plants clean city air more than we'd thought... so sprawl is a good thing, right?
2012-07-21
Patrick Poole _PJ Media_
Keith Ellison is trying to rewrite history on his Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR ties
Obummer is the nexus of problems
Clarion Project: Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
anti-CAIR
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)
2012-07-21
Dave Gibson _Examiner_
illegal alien charged in murder-for-hire scheme in Florida
2012-07-21
_Economist_
Scientific peer review and publishing taking a turn for the better... maybe
canonical link
Proposed Bills 2012
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"In 1993, for example, according to the data from the sample week, federal prosecutors brought criminal charges in 61% of all the drug matters brought to them by the DEA, the FBI & a handful of other agencies... We already know that 46% of all the 2,191 criminal matters disposed of during the 1st week of 1993 May were by findings of guilt. But the data show that the likelihood of such a finding was highly varied, ranging from a low of 2% for those charged with violating civil rights laws to a high of 86% for individuals charged under the immigration statutes. Finally, we also know that federal prison was the outcome in 32% of all the matters dealt with in the sample week... A prison sentence resulted from 62% of the immigration cases that were disposed of that week. At the other end of the prison scale was official corruption, 10%; organized crime, 6%; & civil rights, 2%." --- David Burnham 1996 _Above the Law_ pg 37
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2012-07-22
2012-07-22
Mary Pickett _Billings MT Gazette_
MSU Billings class of 2010 graduated with an average of $24K in student loan debt
"Students graduating from Rocky Mountain College in Billings had an average debt of about $20,100. 76% of graduates carried debt. Across the state, students receiving bachelor's degrees from public campuses in the 2009-2010 school year carried an average of $22,811 in debt. 63% had some kind of a loan. That's higher than the $19,800 national average."
2012-07-22
Nicholas Stix _V Dare_
corrupt Obummer regime's suit against sheriff Arpaio seeks to break will of patriotic immigration reform movement
2012-07-22
Paul Craig Roberts _V Dare_
the cost of the left's on-going vendetta against pres. Ronald Reagan
"the record is clear that Reagan did not cut back government or abolish the welfare state."
and it is a sad thing with terrible consequences that he did not...jgo
2012-07-22
Ed Marcum _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
turrrrible shortage of... truck drivers
"TruckGauge, an on-line provider of analysis and information on the trucking industry, predicts there will be a shortage of about 150K drivers nationally by the end of the year, and believes that new government hours-of-service rules will push the shortage to 240K by the end of 2013... Some in the industry, particularly drivers, say pay is the real cause of the driver shortage. Jim Park, a driver who blogs for Truckinginfo.com, said pay is too low and cited a study by Transport Capital Partners that concluded annual pay needs to be above $60K to attract sufficient drivers to the industry. Aubrey Allen Smith, a truck-driver advocate and blogger, maintained the driver shortage is artificial because trucking companies do not want to pay the higher wages needed to attract and retain drivers. According to the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development, the median annual wage for a tractor-trailer driver in Tennessee during 2012 was $43,330... The 3-week program at Tennessee Truck Driving School costs $4,225. On the other hand, many companies agree to repay the tuition expenses for students they hire."
2012-07-22
Victor Davis Hanson _PJ Media_
the demons of the modern rampage killer
"His dark counterparts exist in contemporary Norway, Uganda, Russia, and Latin America. I am sure there is a typology of the multifarious conditions that might prompt such demonic killers -- workplace anger, spousal revenge, school-related grudges, religious fanaticism, race or ethnic hatred, political extremism, and abject insanity that offers no exegesis at all... rampage killing is not necessarily a modern phenomenon... Killers in the 19th century often shot down innocent bystanders... The first is modern global communications. In 1957, if a disgruntled Ugandan policeman slaughtered 57, to the degree anyone in Selma, my hometown of 5K at that time, knew about it, it was at best perhaps a day or two later and in a small column in the Fresno Bee. The same was true when a deranged German shot and killed 14 in 1913. Before the telegraph and telephone, did anyone, more than 100 miles distant from the scene of a crime, know that a Romanian or Japanese or Virginian carved up a dozen in the 17th century? Today every rampage, everywhere, worldwide hits the Internet and cable news, without wider thoughtful context, and yet with great detail of the crime. The graphic story is without valuable analyses... Tonight, I wish to know nothing about him other than the information necessary to try, convict, and punish him -- and any data that might provide some sort of deterrence in preventing another such rampage."
2012-07-22
William L. Anderson
Krugman: "Turn back the clock" to an even more draconian era
2012-07-22
Mark J. Perry
Fremont CA vs. Williston ND
2012-07-2
James Ritchie _Cincinnati Business Courier_
Tata falling behind promises to hire US citizens
"TCS agreed to hire 1K people by 2012 Dec. 31, as part of a $15.5M Ohio job-creation tax-incentive package awarded in 2007. So far the headcount at the 223-acre campus is just 450. Amar Naga, director of operations for TCS in Milford, said he had hoped to hire 250 people, primarily computer experts, by next month. So far he's only found 50. 'Qualified' candidates, he said, are scarce... Bethany McCorkle, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Development, wouldn't comment on TCS, but said: 'If for some reason a company doesn't hit its target, then it would get a portion of its credit based on how many jobs it has created.'"
Proposed Bills 2012
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"As governments grow arithmetically, corruption grows exponentially." --- Ray's Law of official corruption
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2012-07-23
2012-07-23
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
illustration of the age issue
Here's a Dice.com article that illustrates the age issue well.
A quote:
Asked for experience preference, corporate hiring managers most frequently say IT pros with two to five years in the work-force, followed by those with 6 to 10 years' experience. Competition is fierce when companies are all chasing the same talent, making positions hard-to-fill.
6 to 10 years' experience. What age are we talking about? Typically this would be an age range of 28-34. This is even younger than the age 35 cut-off I use.
Nothing new, of course. I've been pointing out for years that job ads typically ask for 3-7 years of experience or whatever. But it's interesting to see some survey data, not just individual job ads.
At any rate, when you hear claims, such as above, that
Competition is fierce when companies are all chasing the same talent, making positions hard-to-fill
the way to read them is
Competition is fierce when companies are all chasing the same [cheap, young] talent [with flexible ethics], making positions hard-to-fill
The other issue brought up is training. I know that issue is popular in certain circles in DC, but as I've said many times, it is a NON-issue.
Any competent programmer can learn a new programming language or OS etc., ON HIS/HER OWN, ON THE JOB, without formal training. This used to be standard operating procedure, expected of everybody, before the advent of H-1B [as was employer investment in 2-12 weeks of training fof new-hires and 2 weeks per year for retained employees]. One wants to have a go-to person to consult with on the occasional "gotchas", but self-learning is fine.
And of course, self-learning is still standard procedure for those of us who teach software development and use it in our research. Look at the new graduates, supposed hired because "only they" know the new languages. (Dice.com is for experienced people, but the industry lobbyists frequently say only new grads have the skills they need.) As I've pointed out before, how can it be that only new grads can learn these new languages, when they are learning them from old professors like me? No one "trains" me.
Note by the way that I used the word "competent" above. It's been a while since I've made this disclaimer, so it's about time to state here that I have never advocated hiring the weak. A poor programmer not only is less productive but also actually slows down the rest of the team. As I often tell my students, I would not want to ride on an airplane whose control software was written by weak engineers.
Norm
Anonymous subscriber wrote:
Your highlighting of the age issue is right on target and I wanted to share with you a surprising admission of the age issue that came out in an interview with the corporate staffing manager at Cubic corporation (one of the largest employers in San Diego).
Here is his quote,
"But it's tough to find workers to fill high-skilled slots, said Bob Stamp, the company's corporate staffing manager. ''Most companies would ideally like to have the 'A' players, with 4 to 7 years of experience, but those are very hard to find and if you do find them, they're very difficult to pry out of their current jobs.'', he said."
This quote came out in [a San Diego Union-Tribune] article claiming that San Diego area companies can't fill thousands of positions. Interestingly enough I had applied several times for a job that I was well qualified for at Cubic and never heard a word from them.
So if I follow the logic it means that workers with more than seven years of experience are 'B' players. It's no wonder I never heard back from Cubic, because with my ~30 years of experience I must be considered (by Cubic anyway) to be an 'F' player...
The article also mentions that San Diego's costs of living are very high... but local employers don't want to pay commensurately...jgo
---30---
2012-07-23
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
...and a little more on General Order #11 on 1862-07-23
2012-07-23
Robert Spencer _PJ Media_
investigating DHS's Mohamed Elibiary... or not
2012-07-23
Anthony Watts
Krugman's corny caper
"'[D]roughts have, for the most part, become shorter, less frequent, less severe, and cover a smaller portion of the country over the last century.'"
2011-05-19: Mark J. Perry/USDA: US corn yield per acre 1866 to 2010
2012-07-23
Anthony Watts
Fool's gold (iron pyrite, iron disulfide) and carbon help maintain atmospheric oxygen levels
2012-07-23
Anthony Watts
New research in Antarctica shows CO2 follows temperature "by a few hundred years at most"
2012-07-23
Andrew C. McCarthy _PJ Media_
the goal of all Islamic supremacists is to coerce the acceptance of sharia, and they must be stopped
2012-07-23
Joe Guzzardi _Santa Barbara CA NoozHawk_
Brookings Institution confab praises guest-work visas, critics not invited
"A week before Brookings convened, the Washington DC Post wrote a lengthy feature detailing how tough it is for STEM graduates to find a career path job: Ph.D., university professorship and, eventually, their own lab. The Post summed up its findings in one quote from Jim Austin, the editor of [AAAS] Science Careers, an on-line web-zine that specializes in [science job market issues]. 'It seems awfully hard for people to find a job.', he said. 'Anyone who goes into science expecting employers to clamor for their services will be deeply disappointed.'... 'Scads and scads' of qualified people with Ph.D.s from elite institutions cannot, according to the Post, find work... First CNET, the premier tech review source, reported that during the first half of 2012, more than 50K planned job cuts were announced across the IT sector, which represented a 260% increase over the 14,308 lay-offs during the first half of 2011. The 2012 figure, a 3-year high, is 39% greater than the aggregate job cuts recorded in the 12 months of 2011. Second, the non-partisan Center for Immigration Studies and a Washington, DC, neighbor of Brookings found in its report 'Is president Obama Right about Engineers?' that there are 101K unemployed U.S.-born individuals with engineering degrees. On top of that, CIS research director Dr. Steven Camarota discovered another 68K U.S.-born individuals with advanced degrees not in the labor force as well as 489K with graduate degrees who work but not as engineers."
2012-07-23
Mark J. Perry
Three-quarters of near retirees (ages 50 to 64) have average total retirement account balances of only $26,395
2012-07-23
Mark J. Perry
many teens are too busy texting and web-surfing to drive
"The percentage of 19-year-olds in the U.S.A. who have driver's licenses dropped from 87.3% in 1983 to 69.5% in 2010... Meanwhile, the percentage of people with a driver's license who are 70 or older has increased from 55% in 1983 to 80% in 2010."
2012-07-23 (5772 Menachem-Ab 04)
Maeve Reston _Jewish World Review_
Romney international tour to emphasize unity with Israel and European allies
2012-07-23 (5772 Menachem-Ab 04)
Mark Steyn _Jewish World Review_
Obummer-sized government funds stasis and sclerosis
Proposed Bills 2012
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"I know television sit-com writers who have a hard time living with the outright idea-theft that sometimes comes with their territory, & I know idealists who joined organizations so they could fight for good causes -- only to find the organizations riddled with politics or corruption." --- Barbara Sher & Barbara Smith 1994 _I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was_ pp 135-136
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2012-07-24
2012-07-24
Paul Driessen
Western wild-fires -- horrific, devastating... and stoppable
2012-07-24
Burton Speakman _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
banks in region see surge of deposits because of shale oil and gas
2012-07-24
Paul McDougall _InformationWeek_/_UBM_
MSFT is top H-1B visa employer
"[MSFT] filed paper-work for about 4,100 H-1B workers over 2010 and 2011, according to the study, published this week by the Brookings Institution. That's about 1.26% of all applications filed during the period. IBM was second, with about 3,300 applications filed, while India-based TCS was third, with about 3,200 applications. Deloitte Consulting, with 3K applications, was fourth, and India's Wipro rounded out the top five, at 2,900. Brookings data shows that, while 70K employers applied to hire H-1B workers in 2010-11, the top 25 companies, mostly tech firms, accounted for more than 12% of the applications... the top 25 included retailer CVS and financial services giants Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase. [Over 110K H-1B visas are issued each year, according to State Department reports.]"
2012-07-24
"Philippa Martyr"
adding the words "climate change" to your grant application has become popular
2012-07-24
Paul Hsieh _PJ Media_
media under-plays defensive gun use
2012-07-24
Duane Marsteller _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_/_Tennessean_
numbers of bodies shopped increasing in shaky economy
Tennessean
"accounting for 15% of U.S. job growth in the first half of 2012, said IQNavigator Inc... In June, companies added 25K temp workers... In Tennessee, jobs in the professional/services [bodyshopping] industry -- which include temporary workers -- grew by 2,700 last month and by more than 10K in the past year. In all, some 2.5M Americans were on the pay-rolls of temp-staffing businesses [bodyshops] in June, up 10.7% from a year earlier... 'Corporate America downsized its HR capability so much that internal HR departments aren’t as capable in managing new hiring needs.', [Tobey Sommer] said... ManPOWER CEO Jeff Joerres says about 30% of the temporary employees his staffing firm has placed this year have been converted to permanent versus 45% last year."
2012-07-24
J. Christian Adams _PJ Media_
Eric Holder continues partisan efforts to block voter ID... this time in PA
2012-07-24
Andrew C. McCarthy _PJ Media_
the close connections between Huma Abedin and the Muslim Brotherhood
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Huma Abedin
Discover the Networks: Muslim World League (MWL)
Discover the Networks: Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs (IMMA)
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)
Discover the Networks: Valerie Jarrett
Discover the Networks: violence-advocating Muslims connected with the Obummer regime
2012-07-24
Michael Walsh _PJ Media_
Mike Bloomberg's suicide cult
2012-07-24
Mark J. Perry
raising minimum wage would be "economic mal-practice"
2012-07-24
Mark J. Perry
some execs refuse to hire people who use poor grammar and spelling
2012-07-24 (5772 Menachem-Ab 05)
Frank J. Gaffney ii _Jewish World Review_
"reporters" have crossed the line from investigative journalism to persecution
2012-07-24 (5772 Menachem-Ab 05)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
news versus propaganda
Town Hall
Human Events
Real Clear Politics
"Too many people in the media cannot seem to tell the difference between reporting the news and creating [and passing along] propaganda... corrections never catch up with irresponsible news broadcasts... Similar things have happened repeatedly, going all the way back to the assassination of president John F. Kennedy, which was blamed on a hostile right-wing atmosphere in Dallas, even though the assassin had a long history of being on the far left fringe... the Unabomber had a much marked-up copy of an environmentalist book by Al Gore -- the media heard no evil, saw no evil and spoke no evil. If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly. As for gun control advocates, I have no hope whatever that any facts whatever will make the slightest dent in their thinking -- or lack of thinking... Britain is a country with stronger gun control laws than the United States, and lower murder rates. But Mexico, Russia and Brazil are also countries with stronger gun control laws than the United States -- and their murder rates are much higher than ours. Israel and Switzerland have even higher rates of gun ownership than the United States, and much lower murder rates than ours. Even the British example does not stand up very well under scrutiny. The murder rate in New York has been several times that in London for more than 2 centuries -- and, for most of that time, neither place had strong gun control laws. New York had strong gun control laws years before London did, but New York still had several times the murder rate of London. It was in the later decades of the 20th century that the British government clamped down with severe gun control laws, disarming virtually the entire law-abiding citizenry. Gun crimes, including murder, rose as the public was disarmed. Meanwhile, murder rates in the United States declined during the same years when murder rates in Britain were rising, which were also years when Americans were buying millions more guns per year... too many people are too committed to a vision to allow mere facts to interfere with their beliefs, and the sense of superiority that those beliefs give them."
Proposed Bills 2012
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"Connected to the tendency of power to corrupt are yet other tendencies that emerge from the pages of the historians: the tendency of power to drive intelligence under-ground; the tendency of power to become a theology, admitting no other gods before it; the tendency of power to distort & damage the traditions & institutions it was designed to protect; the tendency of power to create a language of its own, making other forms of communication incoherent & irrelevant; the tendency of power to spawn imitators, leading to volatile competition; the tendency of power to set the stage for its own use." --- Norman Cousins 1987 _The Pathology of Power_ pp 23-24
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Wednesday |
Mittwoch |
Yom R'vi'i |
Mercoledi |
2012-07-25
2012-07-25
_EU Times_
EU turns down Israel's call to put Hezbollah on terrorist black-list after connection with bombing in Bulgaria
Dawn/Agence Presse-France
News Max
Military Photos
World News Network
"'There is no consensus for putting Hezbollah on the list of terrorist organizations.', Cypriot Foreign Minister Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, said on Tuesday. Israel's hawkish Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman made the request for black-listing the Lebanese resistance movement while sitting alongside the Cypriot minister at a news conference held after annual EU-Israel talks. 'The time has come to put Hezbollah on the terrorist list of Europe.', Lieberman urged. 'It would give the right signal to the international community and the Israeli people.' But Kozakou-Marcoullis highlighted Hezbollah's active role as a political party, stating that the EU would consider the move if there were tangible evidence of Hezbollah engaging in acts of terror."
"Israel blames Iran and the Lebanese group Hezbollah for Wednesday's suicide attack at the Black Sea airport of Burgas in which [6] Israelis and their Bulgarian driver died... But Kozakou-Marcoullis said Hezbollah was an organisation comprising a party as well as an armed wing and was 'active in Lebanese politics'... But in Israel, Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told AFP that 'for years we have been providing Europe with information on Hezbollah's direct involvement in terror attacks'."
2012-07-25
John Stossel _Town Hall_
America, the law-crazed
"The rules that bind us now total more than 160K pages. The Congressional Research Service said it was unable to count the number of crimes on the books. Yet last week the feds added or proposed another thousand pages."
2012-07-25
Jamison Cocklin _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
trade pact with Asia produces hope, fear among Ohio manufacturers
"Trans-Pacific Partnership [Agreement] aims to create a free-trade group with countries such as VietNam, New Zealand and Malaysia, among others. An early outline for the agreement calls for retaining high-quality American jobs by increasing U.S. exports to a region of expanded growth that accounts for more than 40% of global trade... Ohio, where in 2010, 27% of manufacturing jobs depended on exports to trans-Pacific markets... Heavy machinery, agricultural products and chemical equipment were a few of the products exported to Asia and the South Pacific by Ohio manufacturers, who employed 371K people to meet demand in 2010... something around $28G worth of product... Growing economies have made trans-Pacific countries the fourth largest export market for the U.S.A., with $775G worth of goods delivered in 2010, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Total exports increased by 25.5% from 2009 and account for 61% of all U.S. exports... senator Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, joined 3 other senators...'Groups essential to the success and legitimacy of any agreements are not being provided the opportunity to provide meaningful input on negotiations that have broad policy ramifications.', wrote the senators. 'The lack of transparency and input makes passage of trade agreements more contentious and controversial.'"
USTR
EFF
TechDirt
TPP Watch
America and the Global Economy
wiki pedia
2012-07-25
Clayton E. Cramer _PJ Media_
de-institutionalization, untreated madness, and mass murder
"It has been noticed for a long time that schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are genetic. Your mother doesn't drive you crazy; you inherit genes that increase your risk of developing these 2 mental illnesses. It also appears that creativity and intelligence are associated with these genes. We have many examples of very smart people whose descent into madness led to violence. Think of the Unabomber, a Ph.D. in mathematics who taught at Berkeley. Or professor Amy Bishop at the University of Alabama, accused of not only mass murder in her department, but also of the murder of her brother many years before. Or professor Ernesto Bustamante at the University of Idaho, whose mental illness led him to murder and suicide. Or Cynthia Clinkingbeard, an endocrinologist who lost her medical license because of bipolar disorder problems, and pretty well blew her chance of winning the Democratic nomination for Congress in my district because of a crazy incident involving a pistol and Staples. I can supply dozens more examples."
2012-07-25
Anthony Watts
Richard Lindzen of MIT says "climate models are flawed" at Sandia conference
2012-07-25 07:00PDT (10:00EDT) (14:00GMT) (16:00 Jerusalem)
_BLS_
longitudinal study
"Individuals born from 1957 to 1964 held an average of 11.3 jobs from ages 18 to 46. These baby boomers held an average of 5.5 jobs while ages 18 to 24. The average fell to 3 jobs from ages 25 to 29, to 2.4 jobs from ages 30 to 34, and to 2.1 jobs from ages 35 to 39 and also from ages 40 to 46... Among jobs started by 40 to 46 year olds, 33% ended in less than a year, and 69% ended in less than 5 years. The average person was employed during 78% of the weeks from age 18 to age 46. Generally, men spent a larger percentage of weeks employed than did women (84% versus 71%). Women spent much more time out of the labor force (25% of weeks) than did men (10% of weeks). The average annual percentage growth in inflation-adjusted hourly earnings was fastest when workers were in their late teens and early twenties. Of the jobs that workers began when they were 18 to 24 years of age, 69% ended in less than a year and 93% ended in less than 5 years. Among jobs started by 40 to 46 year olds, 33% ended in less than a year and 69% ended in less than 5 years... Hourly earnings grew by an average of 6.3% per year from ages 18 to 24 and 4.1% per year from ages 25 to 29. The earnings growth rate slowed to 3.2% annually from age 30 to age 34 and 3.1% annually from age 35 to age 39. From ages 40 to 46, hourly earnings grew an average of 0.9% per year."
The longitudinal study did not include any individuals born before 1957, and so says nothing about life-time employment, durations of unemployment, percentage of life-time employed in weeks or years, etc...jgo
2012-07-25
_Billings MT Gazette_/_AP_
ND oil production expected to triple by 2025
2012-07-25
Michael Ledeen _PJMedia_
CAIR strikes out in attempt to muzzle critic
Clarion Project: Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
anti-CAIR
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)
2012-07-25
Jennifer Howard _Chronicle of Higher Education_
But is it a book?
"'When you take the text of Moby-Dick and pour it into a Kindle, you strip out the bibliographic codes and you strip out the social codes.', he says. 'You lose that hermeneutic surplus of meaning that the book is.' Mr. Suarez was on a lunch-time break from his 'Teaching the History of the Book' course at the Rare Book School... When he talks about bibliographic codes, Mr. Suarez means the elements that together make up the book as object. That includes paper stock, bindings, typeface, and illustrations. Just as important, he says, are the social codes embedded in a book. A Harlequin romance has cues built in that alert a reader to what it is. (Picture a bare-chested Fabio against a Scottish highlands back-drop.) A scholarly monograph announces itself through a different set of cues... Those codes [are often removed], though, when a text escapes paper and becomes electronic... what remains is the text itself -- what Mr. Suarez calls the linguistic codes of a book... Much of the Rare Book School curriculum focuses on paper and printed materials, with courses on the history of book illustration, book binding, paleography, and descriptive bibliography... 'I'm a person who believes that born-digital materials are digital incunables.', Mr. Suarez says. ('Incunabula' is the term commonly applied to material printed in Europe before 1501.)"
2012-07-25
William L. Anderson
How far will Krugman go to suppress speech with which he disagrees?
2012-07-25
Mark J. Perry
price of natural gas at 9-year low
2012-07-25 (5772 Menachem-Ab 06)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
stubborn ignorance
Town Hall
"Academic intelligentsia, their media, government and corporate enthusiasts worship at the altar of diversity. Despite budget squeezes, universities have created diversity positions, such as director of diversity and inclusion, manager of diversity recruitment, associate dean for diversity, vice president of diversity and perhaps minister of diversity. This is all part of a quest to get college campuses, corporate offices and government agencies to 'look like America'. For them, part of looking like America means race proportionality. For example, if blacks are 13% of the population, they should be 13% of college students and professors, corporate managers and government employees. Law professors, courts and social scientists have long held that gross statistical disparities are evidence of a pattern and practice of discrimination. Behind this vision is the stupid notion that but for the fact of discrimination, we'd be distributed proportionately by race across incomes, education, occupations and other outcomes. There's no evidence from anywhere on earth or any time in human history that shows that but for discrimination, there would be proportional representation and an absence of gross statistical disparities, by race, sex, height or any other human characteristic. Nonetheless, much of our thinking, legislation and public policy is based upon proportionality being the norm... Jews are not even 1% of the world's population and only 3% of the U.S. population, but they are 20% of the world's Nobel Prize winners and 39% of U.S. Nobel laureates. That's a gross statistical disparity, but are the Nobel committees discriminating against the rest of us? By the way, in the Weimar Republic, Jews were only 1% of the German population, but they were 10% of the country's doctors and dentists, 17% of its lawyers and a large percentage of its scientific community. Jews won 27% of Nobel Prizes won by Germans. Nearly 80% of the players in the National Basketball Association in 2011 were black, and 17% were white, but if that disparity is disconcerting, Asians were only 1 percent. Compounding the racial disparity, the highest-paid NBA players are black. That gross disparity works the other way in the National Hockey League, in which less than 3% of the players are black. Blacks are 66% of NFL and AFL professional football players, but among the 34% of other players, there's not a single Japanese player. Though the percentage of black professional baseball players has fallen to 9%, there are gross disparities in achievement. 4 out of the 5 highest career home run hitters were black, and of the 8 times more than 100 bases were stolen in a season, all were by blacks... Asians routinely get the highest scores on the math portion of the SAT, whereas blacks get the lowest. Men are about 50% of the population, and so are women, but there's the gross injustice that men are struck by lightning 6 times as often as women. 24 out of the 43 U.S. presidents have been 5 feet 11 inches or taller, above our population's average height. That is not an outcome that would be expected if there were not voter discrimination based upon height. Mitt Romney is 6 feet 2 inches tall, and Barack Obama is 6 feet 1 inch."
2012-07-25 (5772 Menachem-Ab 06)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
random thoughts
"Even squirrels know enough to store nuts, so that they will have something to eat when food gets scarce. But the welfare state has spawned a whole class of people who spend everything they get when times are good, and look to others to provide for their food and other basic needs when times turn bad. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution prescribes 'equal protection of the laws' to all Americans. But what does that mean, if the President of the United States can arbitrarily grant waivers, so that A, B and C have to obey the laws but X, Y and Z do not -- as with both [ObummerDoesn'tCare] and the immigration laws? Two reports came out in the same week. One was from the Pentagon, saying that, in just a few years, Iran will be able to produce not only a nuclear bomb but a missile capable of carrying it to the United States. The other report said that the American Olympic team has uniforms made in [Red China]. This latter report received far more attention, both in Congress and in the media. People who lament grid-lock in Washington, and express the pious hope that Democrats and Republicans would put aside their partisan conflicts, and co-operate to help the economy recover, implicitly assume that what the economy needs is more meddling by politicians, which is what brought on economic disaster in the first place. (Skeptics can read The Housing Boom and Bust.) Racism is not dead, but it is on life support -- kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as 'racists'."
Proposed Bills 2012
| |
"When any essential part of a governing system becomes corrupt, it endangers all parts because it tempts officials to engage in parallel wrong actions..." --- James A. Michener 1983 _Poland_ pg 132
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Thursday |
Donnerstag |
Yom Chamishi |
Giovedi |
2012-07-26
2012-07-26 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (12:30GMT) (14:30 Jerusalem)
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 337,059 in the week ending July 21, a decrease of 118,201 from the previous week. There were 369,207 initial claims in the comparable week in 2011.
The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.6% during the week ending July 14, unchanged from the prior week's unrevised rate. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 3,333,287, a decrease of 26,780 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 3.0% and the volume was 3,752,532.
The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending July 7 was 6,034,225, an increase of 280,405 from the previous week.
Extended benefits were available in
ID,
NV, NJ,
and RI
during the week ending July 7 [note that this list is way shorter than it was just a few weeks ago as eligibilities have been expiring...jgo].
States reported 2,556,456 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending July 7, an increase of 32,093 from the prior week. There were 3,172,428 claimants in the comparable week in 2011. EUC weekly claims include first, second, third, and fourth tier activity.
[Note that the population used for calculating the "insured unemployment rate" (the divisor) changes roughly quarterly:
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;
to 125,572,661 beginning 2011-04-02;
to 125,807,389 beginning 2011-07-02;
to 126,188,733 beginning 2011-10-01;
to 126,579,970 beginning 2012-01-01;
to 127,048,587 beginning 2012-04-07;
to 127,495,952 beginning 2012-07-14, and seasonal adjustment factors were revised.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs
2012-07-26
Anthony Watts
reality check on 2012 drought and corn production in relation to droughts of the past
Wheat prices are good... for those with a crop
2012-07-26
_WUWT_
FOIA request for Mann e-mail messages at U of VA finally reaches filing of arguments
2012-07-26
Jeffrey Lord _American Spectator_
PA's capitalist revolt -- cleaning up government corruption
2012-07-26
David Bier _American Spectator_
Co-operation is what markets are for
2012-07-26
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
Adolph von Steinwehr comes to Luray
2012-07-26
David Middleton
How green was my bankruptcy?
2012-07-26
Angela Chen _Chronicle of Higher Education_
New policy lets anyone post materials on iTunesU
2012-07-26
Jill Langlois _Global Post_
pop music decreasing in sound and lyric variety over time
2012-07-26
David P. Goldman _PJ Media_
What would Egypt's Mursi have to do to get criticized and dis-invited by Obummer -- eat babies?
"So far, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Mursi has called for the release of the 'Blind Sheikh' Abdul Rahman -- the convicted mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 -- released 25 convicted terrorists from Egyptian prisons, and met with the leaders of the Gaza-based terror organization Hamas. President Obama invited Mursi to the White House in September. What would Morsi have to do to get disinvited? Eat babies? America may have to deal with unsavory governments as a matter of national interest, but an ostentatious welcome to the leader of a terrorist organization -- the Muslim Brotherhood -- who embraces as a comrade the most notorious jihadi terrorist in an American prison is an utterly reprehensible betrayal of American national security interests... It's no surprise that Mursi would embrace Hamas, which 'was founded in 1987 (during the First Intifada) as an off-shoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood'... [Hamas's Ismael Haniyeh's] objective is to eliminate border controls for people and goods between Egypt and Gaza. Egypt and Israel controlled the Gaza border to limit the supplies of weapons to terrorists... America should employ its covert resources to eradicate the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Jama'a al-Islamiya, [Hizbullah] and other violent jihadist organizations."
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)
2012-07-26
Ed Driscoll _PJ Media_
Reality in academia? What a concept!
2012-07-26
John Drew _PJ Media_
Barack Obummer's leftist ghosts of Christmas past
2012-07-26 (5772 Menachem-Ab 07)
Brian Bennett _Jewish World Review_
Congress warned that al-Qaida in Iraq is coming to USA
"The terrorist organization that was once the scourge of the U.S. occupation in Iraq and likely is responsible for more than 100 deaths in the country over the past few days has set its sights on launching attacks inside the United States, intelligence officials said. Al-Qaida in Iraq released a message earlier this week that threatened to strike at the 'heart' of the United States, and several associates of al-Qaida in Iraq have been arrested in the United States and Canada over the past two years, said U.S. officials, a sign that the terrorist affiliate has tried to establish a network inside North America... 'there are networks and recruiting efforts in the U.S. and Canada.', said Seth Jones, an expert on al-Qaida at the RAND Corp. and author of _Hunting in the Shadows: the Pursuit of al-Qaida since 2001/09/11_."
Proposed Bills 2012
| |
"Whom does the grail serve? It serves those who quest despite the odds -- for they are the champions of enlightenment." --- Laurence Gardner 2000 _BloodLine of the Holy Grail_ pg 3
| |
Friday |
Freitag |
Yom Shishi |
Venerdi |
2012-07-27
2012-07-27
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
Brookings and the "prevailing wage"
Yesterday the New York Times Economix web log featured a Q&A on H-1B with the authors of the recent Brookings Institution report. Brookings held a conference on the report about a week ago (my review of the conference in this e-news-letter).
the web log.
(BTW, if you read the blog yesterday, the Brookings people have now updated one of their answers, correcting an earlier statement that generally H-1B has a USA recruitment requirement [whereas this only applies to those firms classified as "H-1B dependent", either because they have a high percentage of "employees" on H-1B or because they have violated the rules and are in a probationary/penalty period].)
In my posting here, I will comment on the answer by the Brookings people (whom I'll just refer to below as "Brookings", for brevity) to a question as to whether "H-1B workers work at below-market rates and depress wages in the industry over all". The Brookings answer is that (a) it's against the law to pay below-market wages, but (b) some violation of the law does occur.
Of course, claim (b) is valid, though I do have to point out that the SIZES of the violations are usually very small, something like $1K per year per worker.
But claim (a) is quite incorrect. As Brookings says, correctly,
...employers hiring H-1B workers are required to pay the average wage (or higher) for the occupation and geographical area for which they are hiring. In addition, employers are forbidden to pay H-1B workers less than they pay other workers with similar skills and qualifications.
That first remark refers to what the H-1B (and green card) statute refers to as the "prevailing wage", while the statute's term for the second wage level referred to above is the "actual wage". I'll focus on the "prevailing wage" first, and then come back to the "actual wage".
The big issue is that the legal "prevailing wage" does not account for skill sets, especially high talent and so on -- exactly the reasons employers cite for hiring H-1Bs instead of U.S. citizens and permanent residents. This has been the consistent claim by employers in the press over the years, e.g. "Yes, there are plenty of American software engineers, but we need to hire a Python software engineers [with between x and y years of experience on version 9.8.7 using this and that development tool version 8.7.6], and we can't find one."
Employers would need to pay a premium for these special skills on the open market, typically 15% - 25% (more if the worker has several such skills in combination). Yet the legal "prevailing wage" does not account for this. As Brookings pointed out, the legal "prevailing wage" accounts only for occupation, geography, and (Brookings missed this one) years of experience.
Therefore: The legal "prevailing wage" is typically much less than the market wage.
You can verify for yourself that skill sets aren't accounted for in the legal "prevailing wage". Take for instance our hypothetical Python software engineer above. The "safe harbor" way (DoL term) to determine legal prevailing wage is to use the government OES data, (click on the wage search wizard). Go through the steps yourself, as if you are an employer who wants to hire an H-1B software engineer who knows Python. You'll find that while there is a category for Computer Software Engineer, there is no way for you to specify Python skills. Bottom line: You get a Python programmer for the bargain price of a generic programmer, avoiding a Python wage premium. (You can get even more of a bargain by using other ways that are allowed for determining "prevailing wage".)
As I said, you can verify this yourself, on the web. Or, if you prefer, call any immigration attorney.
This has also been noted by the GAO, and even by representative Zoe Lofgren, the most strident supporter of the H-1B program in either house of congress.
This gap between "prevailing wage" and market wage is the absolutely central issue in H-1B. It allows employers -- and again, I must emphasize, including the big main-stream U.S. firms [including and in addition to US bodyshops], not just the Indian bodyshops -- to LEGALLY under-pay H-1Bs.
BTW, this "premium skills" issue is also the heart of a number of flawed H-1B studies, such as the ones by PPIC, Zavodny, etc.
Now, what about the "actual wage"? Remember, this is defined to be the average wage the employer pays to other similar workers. And the law requires paying either the "prevailing wage" or the "actual wage", whichever is higher. So in theory, this should account for the premium skills issue. But unsurprisingly, there are lots of loop-holes here too. If you have only one Python programmer -- the H-1B himself -- then the actual wage is the H-1B's wage. Or say you have 5 Python programmers, only 2 of which are Americans; then the average can still be low.
In any case, the "actual wage" is irrelevant to the discussion, because most employers pay ONLY the "prevailing wage". See my analysis of the DoL PERM green card data.
In short: The legal "prevailing wage" is less than the market wage, and most employers pay ONLY the "prevailing wage". Therefore, most employers are under-paying their H-1Bs.
In addition, as many readers will recall, there is what I call Type II wage savings accruing from hiring H-1Bs. The above discussion concerns Type I, paying an H-1B less than a comparable American (where that qualifier does account for skill sets such as Python). Type II savings comes from hiring young H-1Bs instead of older (35+) Americans. As I've shown before, Type II brings even more savings than Type I.
Finally, Brookings never answered the second half of the reader's question: Do H-1Bs depress overall wages? This question was one of those addressed by the NRC report, commissioned by Congress in 1998. Their answer was Yes, the large H-1B population (large in the computer field) does depress wages. Given the very strong pro-employer make-up of the commission (representations from Intel and MSFT for starters), this is a very strong statement.
Norm
---30---
2012-07-27
David Chernicoff _Ziff Davis_/_CBS_
Apple to open $1G data & shipping center in Sparks, NV... with $90M in tax abatement incentives
"The abatements will reduce Apple's tax burden for these new facilities by almost 80% over the next 10 years. Studies have shown that local and state governments would collect about $16M in revenue from the Apple projects over the life of the abatements. The billion dollar investment over the next 10 years comes as welcome news to an area that has been mired in the economic doldrums. Estimates indicate as many as 41 full time jobs and 200 contract positions will become available via the Apple facilities and have over $300M in economic impact to the local community. Construction of the facility over the next 6 months (the data-center has a target date of 'end of the year') would increase the short-term impact by over $100M with more than 500 construction jobs."
2012-07-27
Thomas E. Brewton
Doing the pundit pounce
2012-07-27 03:00PDT (06:00EDT) (10:00GMT) (12:00 Jerusalem)
Emily Behlmann _Wichita KS Business Journal_
engineering project aimed at weaning execs off of H-1B visa program
2012-07-27
Steven Hansen & Doug Short _Economic Intersect_
UMich consumer sentiment index down from 73.2 in late June to 72 in early July to 72.3 in late July (with graph)
Econoday
Bloomberg
Wall Street Examiner
Los Angeles CA Times
NASDAQ
Toledo OH Blade
St. Louis Fed
2012-07-27
Mark J. Perry
US crude petroleum production at 23-year high
2012-07-27 (5772 Menachem-Ab 08)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
Muslim Brotherhood's defenders in the USA
"Wednesday John Brennan, US president Barack Obama's assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism made a quick trip to Israel to discuss Hezbollah's massacre of Israeli tourists in Burgas, Bulgaria... Brennan's amazing characterization of Hezbollah's hostile take-over of the Lebanese government as proof that the terrorist group was moderating was of a piece with the Obama administration's view of Islamic jihadists generally... from the perspective of the Obama administration, Hezbollah's Sunni jihadist counterpart the Muslim Brotherhood is downright friendly... The slogan of the Muslim Brotherhood is 'Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the path of Allah is our highest hope.'... Every day Muslim Brotherhood leaders call for the violent annihilation of Israel. And those calls are often combined with calls for jihad against the USA. For instance, in a sermon from 2010 October, Muslim Brotherhood head Mohammed Badie called for jihad against the USA."
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)
Proposed Bills 2012
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"for where the mind is, there is the treasure." --- Laurence Gardner 2000 _BloodLine of the Holy Grail_ pg 75 (see also Chp 4 "Who Were the Apostles" under Thaddeus, James & Matthew)
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Saturday |
Samstag |
Yom Shabbat |
Sabato |
2012-07-28
2012-07-25
William L. Anderson
Krugman and regressive tenets of faith
Proposed Bills 2012
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"And therefore they are called the 'hosts (TzBAVTh [tzebauth])'; & they are called victory (NTzCh) & glory (HVD). The beauty (ThPARTh [tefereth]) of the Lord (IDVD). Victory & glory are the hosts, & therefore 'Lord of Hosts'. The word 'hosts' refers to a collecting together for the purpose of warfare, but in this sense it is used simply to mean collection vessels. The 2 'hosts' or testicles are called victory & glory; oddly, the word victory also means 'juice'; & Aramaic can mean 'to spatter'. In Hebrew, it is used to mean grape juice (KJV has 'blood') in Isaiah 63:3. The word ThPARTh, beauty, is from the root PAR; however, its original meaning could have been corrupted from ThPR, to sew or join together, which is interesting since the stated function of beauty in the "Greater Holy Assembly" is to hold the male & female parts together. In the Zohar, the holy name is usually abbreviated to II' or H'; although the Bible will write it in full as IHVH, the Zohar takes holiness one step further, & only writes it in full deliberately mis-spelt as IDVD, or even IQVQ, the D being changed to Q via the 'ATh BSh' substitution code. The title 'Lord of Hosts' must originally have applied to the Ancient of Days only, but has since been transferred to God himself." --- Moshe de Leon, George T. Sassoon & Rodney A.M. Dale 1978 "The Lesser Holy Assembly" _The Kabbalah Decoded_ pg 186 folio #742
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Sunday |
Sonntag |
Yom Rishon |
Domenica |
2012-07-29
2012-07-29
Anthony Watts
new study shows half of global warming based on earth station data is artificial (site/siting)
"U.S.A. Temperature trends show a spurious doubling due to NOAA station siting problems and post measurement adjustments... A reanalysis of U.S. surface station temperatures has been performed using the recently WMO-approved Siting Classification System devised by METEO-France's Michel Leroy. The new siting classification more accurately characterizes the quality of the location in terms of monitoring long-term spatially representative surface temperature trends. The new analysis demonstrates that reported 1979-2008 U.S.A. temperature trends are spuriously doubled, with 92% of that over-estimation resulting from erroneous NOAA adjustments of well-sited stations upward."
2012-07-29
Ross McKitrick
Why the "Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature" papers failed to pass peer review
Ross R. McKitrick site
2012-07-29
Victor Davis Hanson _PJ Media_
the Road Warrior setting has arrived in California: Where's te Mel Gibson character when you need him?
"an impoverished world of the future. Tribal groups fought over what remaind of a destroyed Western world... a sort of Procopius's description of Gothic Italy circa 540CE... I am writing tonight in Palo Alto after walking among nondescript 1,500 square-foot cottages of seventy-year vintage that sell for about $1.5M-$2M and would go in a similar tree-shaded district in Fresno or Merced for about $100K... No one in the Central Valley believes that they can stop the epidemic of looting copper wire. I know the local Masonic Hall is not the Parthenon, but you get the picture of our modern Turks prying off the lead seals of the building clamps of classical temples... My own avenue was in far better shape in 1965 than it is now. Mosquito abatement districts regularly sprayed stagnant water ponds to ensure infectious disease remained a thing of our early-20th-century past. Now they merely warn us with West Nile Virus alerts. Ubiquitous 'dumps' dotted the landscape... The students I taught at CSU Fresno were far better prepared in 1984 than those in 2004 are; the more money, administrators, 'learning centers', and counselors, the worse became the class work. I finally threw out my old syllabi last month: the 1985 Greek Literature in Translation course at CSU Fresno seemed to read like a Harvard class in comparison to my 2003 version with half the reading, half the writing, and all sorts of directions on how to make up missed work and flunked exams. It wasn't just that I lost my standards, but that I lost my students who could read... I quit not just riding a bike on the rural avenues where I grew up, but walking upon them as well. Why? There is a good chance (twice now) of being bitten not just by a loose dog without vaccination, but by one whose owner is either unable to communicate or vanishes when hunted down. And then there are the official agencies whose de facto policy is that our ancestors did such a good job eradicating rabies that we can more or less coast on their fumes. 40 years ago I assumed rightly that cars parked along the side of the road were out of gas or needed repair. Now? I expect that the cars are much more reliable, but the owner of any car parked outside my house is either stealing fruit, casing the joint, using drugs, or inebriated. Last week I explained to a passer-by why he could not steal the peaches from my trees; he honestly thought not only that he could, but that he almost was obligated to... hyper-environmentalists assume that they have so much readily available power and water from prior generations at their finger-tips that they have the luxury of dreaming of returning to a pre-industrial California."
2012-07-29
Mark Curnutte _Cincinnati Enquirer_
H-1B visas bring cheap young pliant labor with flexible ethics here
2012-07-29
_Paramus Port_/_World Net Daily_
Obummer plans massive amnesty... if he gets re-elected
2012-07-29
Mark J. Perry
fracking boom drives silica sand boom in western WI
2012-07-29
Mark J. Perry
Harold Hamm on ND, where employment is increasing while USA employment continues to fall
Proposed Bills 2012
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"A mind always employed is always happy. This is the true secret, the grand recipe for felicity... In a world which furnishes so many emploiments which are useful, & so many which are amusing, it is our own fault if we ever know what ennui is, or if we are ever driven to the miserable resource of gaming, which corrupts our dispositions, & teaches us a habit of hostility against all mankind." --- Thomas Jefferson 1787-05-21 to Martha Jefferson (quoted in William J. Bennett 1997 _The Spirit of America_ pg 295)
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Latest
canonical Dilbert
Dogpile news search on "H-1B"
Monday |
Montag |
Yom Sheini |
Lunedi |
2012-07-30
2012-07-30
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
more unilateral actions by DHS
A few years ago, the Bush administration extended the "statutory" period for the Optional Practical Training [internship] provision in the F-1 student visa. It had been 12 months, but was extended to 29 months for foreign students in certain fields. I emphasize the word "statutory" here; Bush flagrantly usurped Congress' role here. The Obama administration later defended the move when it was challenged in court by the Programmers Guild.
Now the government is at it again, more extralegal policy changes.
Granted, I believe the OPT change was wrong on economic grounds, but the constitutional issues are much bigger here. Indeed, while I'll explain below that I actually agree with one of the new proposals in terms of immigration policy, I value our constitutional system even more. And for such shenanigans to come from a former constitutional law [lecturer], well, for shame.
For the record, I've been saying for years that the definition of "outstanding talent" in various aspects of U.S. immigration policy might be broadened a bit. Note carefully that I've also emphasized that the vast majority of foreign tech workers are NOT in the "best and brightest" league, but the definition probably ought to be tweaked.
As always, the devil is in the details, which are not provided in the press release. I suspect, actually, that the new definition of "outstanding researcher" they have in mind could be something truly outrageous, say "publication in an international journal or research conference". It would be a rare researcher who didn't qualify under those terms.
And no, even further expansion of OPT, indirect expansion of H-1B by giving spouses the right to work, and so on, do not make sense. Sorry to be so blunt, but this is just pandering to the special interests.
Speaking of pandering, it is disconcerting to see an official government invoke the language of those interests, notably the mantras "our broken immigration system" and "highly skilled immigrants". Sadly, the same phrases are beginning to appear in the writings of some researchers.
Finally, concerning the claims of immigrant tech entrepreneurship: Most of the "studies" on this subject have been unscientific and egregiously misleading. A common example is counting any business with at least 1 immigrant founder as an "immigrant" business. One doesn't have to be a rocket economist to see the fallacy, does one? Nor does one need a PhD in the field to see that any analysis must take into account the businesses that might have been founded by Americans who were displaced from STEM, or worse, discouraged from entering it in the first place.
Moreover, even very professional, careful analyses, such as those by professor Jennifer Hunt, have typically not taken into account the TYPE of business founded. According to work by professor AnnaLee Saxenian, a third of businesses started by Chinese-immigrant engineers are "PC wholesalers", i.e. assemblers of commodity PCs. A large number of the firms founded by Indian-immigrant engineers are in the [domestic bodyshopping, cross-bodyshopping and] off-shoring business. Neither of these types of companies should be counted. And as I've stated before, with the possible exception of IBM [no, certainly not them], no firm, domestic or foreign, has been pivotal in the technological advance of the tech industry.
Most of our immigration policy -- family, refuge and asylum, what to do about unauthorized immigrants [illegal aliens] -- is motivated by [personal financial gain and] humanitarian considerations. Different people would draw the line on such policy at different places, of course, but I believe there is a shared belief in the humanitarian principle [but vast differences over the definition of "humanitarian" in this context].
The ostensible goal of the remaining aspect of immigration policy -- employment based immigration -- is the national economic interest. Thus central issue that should be addressed is the Internal Brain Drain [US Brain Waste] caused by the large foreign influx. This Internal Brain Drain [US Brain Waste] is demonstrable, certainly clear for example in the recent Washington Post article on life science post-docs, and of course was predicted by the infamous [1986 through] 1989 NSF position paper[s].
But such a central issue won't be addressed as long as our presidential administrations (note the plural) do nothing more than pander.
Norm
---30---
2012-07-30 08:11PDT (11:11EDT) (15:11GMT) (17:11 Jerusalem)
Sam Narisi _Tech Republic_/_Ziff Davis_/_CBS_
Why HR gets in the way of hiring
"HR and IT aren't on the same page during the recruiting process. That could mean the most ideal applicants aren't being forwarded to the IT manager, or the best candidates aren't even applying to the jobs in the first place."
2012-07-30
Willis Eschenbach
new data, old claims about volcanoes
"...first it appears he has included and excluded volcanoes depending on whether they show up in his temperature record. If we look at big eruptions, eruptions with a 'volcanic explosively index' (VEI) of 6 or above, since 1750... here's the BEST [Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature] data including all relevant volcanoes, without the style of overlay that they have used that obscures the actual timing:... LAKI, 1783: Occurred near the end of the fall in temperature that it is supposed to have caused. TAMBORA, 1815: Occurred at the end of the fall in temperature that it is supposed to have caused. COSIGUINA, 1835: Occurred near the middle of the fall in temperature that it is supposed to have caused. KRAKATOA, 1883: Occurred at the end of the fall in temperature that it is supposed to have caused. SANTA MARIA, 1902: Occurred in the middle of the fall in temperature that it is supposed to have caused. NOVARUPTA, 1912: I can see why Muller omitted this eruption, which occurred just before a rise in temperature... EL CHICHON, 1982: Occurred during the fall in temperature that it is supposed to have caused. PINATUBO, 1991: This is arguably the only 1 of the 8 volcanoes that could legitimately be claimed to cause a detectable fall in temperature...a whopping fall of 0.15℃ or so."
2012-07-30
Anthony Watts
Muller on MSFTNBC: What he did NOT say was interesting
"he didn't list station quality as one of the things he ruled out."
2012-07-30
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
victims/beneficiaries of hard war
"First, I'm a Southerner and every last one of my direct/lineal Civil War era ancestors were Southern... but... not all were Confederate. Some were; some weren't; and some didn't really appear to give a hoot one way or the other... they just wanted to be left alone and let the warring parties keep to their own business. While I'm fortunate not to have lost a single direct ancestor (wounded, yes; killed, no) because of the war (at least from an immediate cause of the war, during the war years), I had plenty of distant uncles and cousins who lay a moulderin' in the ground as a result of the war. Many wore gray...some wore blue...and some were civilians (and one may have been a woman who died because of a drunk Confederate). War even devastated certain areas in which they lived… the majority being in the central Shenandoah Valley, with some just across the Blue Ridge, in Madison county...and some in western Maryland and western Kentucky. Yet, I don't see myself a victim of any of the depredations laid upon my ancestors because of some general in the Civil War. Even if I were at rock-bottom in my luck, to me, suggesting such a thing as even remotely related to my condition, almost 150 years later, is ridiculous."
2012-07-30
Paul McDougall _Information Week_/_UBM_
Cemex has signed $1G out-sourcing/bodyshopping deal with Ill-Begotten Monstrosities
"Building supplies giant Cemex, which specializes in concrete and ready-mix cement, on Monday said it will transfer a number of IT and back office functions to IBM under a 10-year deal that's worth up to $1G for Big Blue. That's also the total amount Cemex said it expects to save by out-sourcing to IBM... Under the deal, IBM will manage Cemex's IT operations at the company's head-quarters in Monterrey, Mexico, and around the globe. Covered areas include infrastructure management, and application maintenance and development. A business process out-sourcing (BPO) component of the deal calls for IBM to take over and run Cemex's finance, accounting, and human resources systems... Reuters reported that the deal would impact between 1K and 2K Cemex employees, from a total work-force of about 42K in 50 countries."
2012-07-30
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
obscure appeals board for "educational institutions" wanting to admit foreign students
"The SEVP Appeals Team...not to be confused with the three appeals units that are part of the Justice Department's Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR), or the Labor Department's similar set of administrative tribunals, or USCIS' Administrative Appeals Office (AAO)... After watching the Senate immigration subcommittee's lashing of ICE over its lax supervision of marginal educational institutions, as noted in a recent blog, I decided to see what happens when SEVP actually decides against a school's request... most DHS agencies say 'yes' to aliens and/or their employers about 95% of the time...Decisions from the Board of Immigration Appeals and AAO are printed routinely, but these [SEVP Appeals Team] decisions had to be pried out of the government via a FOIA request... There were about 36 appeals a year, against filings for new and renewed certifications of about 2K a year and a total universe of 10K licensed schools; IOW, denials appeared to be rare, which is par for the course with DHS. The review body, not unexpectedly, tended to support staff decisions, overturning only three of the 24 staff decisions in the set I read. I would have read more decisions, but either my computer or the web-site collapsed after I had finished the 24 cases which had been arrayed in alphabetical order, thus I had a more or less random sampling. This reviewing system largely followed the ultra-privacy rules of another DHS appeals body, the Administrative Appeals Office, which I have discussed previously. Happily, however, [the SEVP Appeals Team] does not hide the names of the agencies bringing the cases, as does AAO. Since this is the case, we can get a feel for what kinds of organizations are being denied licensing rights. Some of the petitioners had what might be called reminiscent names: Columbia College in Salt Lake City had no relation to the university of that name in New York, nor did Yale Academy relate to Yale University. Then there were some plain vanilla names, like International Graduate University and Kingston University. And some more interesting ones, like Big Sioux Aviation, the Illinois School of Massage Therapy, the James Albert School of Cosmetology, and the Fire School of Ministry. Most of the schools appealing the negative SEVP decisions did so without lawyers. Many of them were seeking permission to teach M-1 visa holders (i.e., vocational students) rather than F-1 academic students, and many of them had filed what must have been rather shaky applications. There were, for instance, several that simply had failed to answer questions raised by the [SEVP] staff and at least one applicant, despite prodding, would not give the government the name of the school's president."
2012-07-30
Nancy Folbre _NYTimes_
executives can cut their costs by importing cheap young pliant workers with flexible ethics or by off-shoring
2012-07-30
Mark J. Perry
US manufacturing grew 5.6% in last year, 11% in mid-west
2012-07-30
Mark J. Perry
Obummer opposed to minimum wage increase in Samoa where his political friends own businesses, due to harmful effects. Will he do the same for the USA?
2012-07-30
Mark J. Perry
prices of electricity moderated by prices of natural gas
2012-07-30 (5772 Menachem-Ab 11)
Maeve Reston _Jewish World Review_
Romney neither scared nor embarrassed to pick side in Middle East conflict
speech
2012-07-30 (5772 Menachem-Ab 11)
Warren Richey _Jewish World Review_
federal judge issued injunction against contraception mandate of ObummerDoesn'tCare
2012-07-31
Dave Gibson _Examiner_
Riverside county dispatcher killed in wreck with illegal alien repeat offender
2012-07-30 (5772 Menachem-Ab 11)
Tony Heller/Steven Goddard _Steven Goddard_/_Real Climate Science_ (un-dated article, placement based on earliest comment)s
data tampering at USHCN/GISS
Proposed Bills 2012
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"The preservation of a republican government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty; if the citizens neglect their duty, & place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; & the rights of the citizens will be violated or disregarded." --- Noah Webster 1834 (quoted in William J. Bennett 1997 _The Spirit of America_ pg 397)
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Tuesday |
Dienstag |
Yom Shlishi |
Martedi |
2012-07-31
2012-07-31
William K. Alcorn _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
American Legion post 472 membership out-growing its facilities
2012-07-31
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
Rhetorical approaches to Civil War web logging?
2012-07-31
Amanda Morrow _Global Post_
half of India hit by another electricity grid failure
Zero Hedge: pictures
Stupid Propaganda Planet/Ziff Davis/CBS
"An estimated 600M people were affected when both the northern and eastern grids collapsed after 13:00 local time. A spokesman for the Delhi Metro Rail Corp said all metro trains in the capital had come to a standstill... many traffic lights in New Delhi were out for the second day in a row... Other affected areas included the northern Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan states, and West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Jharkhand in the east... Tuesday's blackout comes a day after cities and villages across 8 states were left without power for 15 hours when the northern grid collapsed in one of the world's most widespread electricity failures."
Politics hamper infrastructure development and maintenance
2012-07-31
Matthew Vadum _PJ Media_
congressman Allen West scares crazy flaming radical leftists: It is a beautiful thing
2012-07-31
Robert Spencer _PJ Media_
Why are people in the Pentagon taking advice from CAIR terrorists, and dumping anti-terrorist advisers?
Clarion Project: Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
anti-CAIR
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)
2012-07-31
_Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
TN has worst retail sales extortion rates
Roger Harris
"Tennessee has the highest combined state and local sales tax rate with an average of 9.43%, according to the study. Arizona is the next highest at 9.12%. Rounding out the five highest states are Louisiana (8.86%), Washington (8.83%) and Oklahoma (8.68%)... States with the lowest combined sales tax rates are Alaska (1.79%), Hawaii (4.35%), Maine (5%), Virginia (5%) and Wyoming (5.18%). California and Indiana have the highest state sales tax rates -- 7.25% and 7%, respectively -- but rank 12th and 20th in combined state and local rates. Only 4 states -- Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon -- levy no state or local sales tax [since they rely on state income extortion and property extortions and other extortions and fees]."
contact Roger Harris
State and Local Sales Extortions, mid-year 2012
2012-07-31
_CNBC_/_Reuters_
US consumer confidence up slightly in July
Economic Intersect
Today On-Line
News Daily
"Consumers' labor market assessment was mixed as the 'jobs plentiful' index slipped to 7.8% from 8.3%, while the 'jobs hard to get' index also fell to 40.8% from 41.2%."
2012-07-31
Allison M. Vaillancourt _Chronicle of Higher Education_
What does "likeble" look like?
2012-07-31
Bryan Preston _PJ Media_
Ted Cruze rose to victory in US senate run-off in TX
2012-07-31
Stephen Dinan _Washington Times_
House judiciary committee reports 2K DUI, over 1,400 drug violations, 19 murders, 3 attempted murders, 142 sex crimes connected with failure to prosecute illegal aliens
Kyle Bonnell: Town Hall
The Hill
Robert Moon: Examiner
2012-07-31
John Miano _Center for Immigration Studies_
Brookings claims regarding demand for H-1B visas are not supported by their data
2012-07-31
Mark J. Perry
inflation-adjusted natural gas price for commercial & industrial purchasers
2012-07-31
Mark J. Perry
Olympics: crony socialism in sports
2012-07-31 (5772 Menachem-Ab 12)
Wesley Pruden _Jewish World Review_
Barack Obummer's Jewish problem
"The Democrats have a Jewish problem, and his name is Barack Obama. Reluctantly, many Jews, loyal Democrats by birth and tradition, have concluded that he's not The One they thought he was. With even greater reluctance, the White House has concluded that their Jewish problem is real, growing, and they better do something about it. Mitt Romney's dramatic declaration Sunday in Jerusalem that preventing Iran from building a nuclear weapon is America's "highest national security priority" and military force should not be excluded, and that he regards Jerusalem as the true capital of Israel, puts in stark relief the difference between what the two candidates think about America's only real ally in the Middle East."
2012-07-31 (5772 Menachem-Ab 12)
Paul Greenberg _Jewish World Review_
amidst the ruins
2012-07-31 (5772 Menachem-Ab 12)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
bit lies in politics
"The CBO report shows that, while the average household income fell 12% between 2007 and 2009, the average for the lower four-fifths fell by 5% or less, while the average income for households in the top fifth fell 18%. For households in the 'top 1%' that seems to fascinate so many people, income fell by 36% in those same years."
2012 July
Al Schmidt _Philadelphia City Commission_
report on election fraud & corruption
Proposed Bills 2012
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"Small wonder that after the VOC's [Vereenigde Oost-indische Compagnie's] demise, its logo came to be read as Vergaan onder Corruptie (Perished by corruption)." --- David S. Landes 1999 _The Wealth & Poverty of Nations_ pg 146 (J.S. Furnivall 1939 _Netherlands Indies_ pg 49)
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