2012 November

2nd month of the 4th quarter of the 23rd year of the Bush-Clinton-Shrub-Obummer economic depression

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updated: 2016-06-28
 

  "Lean Liberty is better than Fat Slavery." --- John Ray  

 
 
2012 November
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  "The Constitution isn't perfect, but it's better than what we have now." --- John David Galt  

 
 

 

 


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

2012 November

2nd month of the 4th quarter of the 13th year of the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama economic depression


 
 

2012-11-01 USA election in 5 days

2012-11-01 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 339,750 in the week ending October 27, a decrease of 5,476 from the previous week.   There were 369,647 initial claims in the comparable week in 2011.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.2% during the week ending October 20, unchanged from the prior week's unrevised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,839,018, an increase of 23,295 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.5% and the volume was 3,199,527.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending October 13 was 5,035,367, an increase of 112,147 from the previous week.   There were 6,783,614 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2011.   Extended Benefits were only available in New York during the week ending October 13...   States reported 2,098,646 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending October 13, an increase of 45,689 from the prior week.   There were 2,945,642 persons claiming EUC 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;
to 128,066,082 beginning 2012-10-06.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2012-11-01
Tess Stynes _NASDAQ_
CGC: 47,724 planned lay-offs were announced in October, 433,725 year to date
MarketWatch
CNN
Fox

2012-11-01
Steven A. Camarota & Karen Zeigler _Center for Immigration Studies_
illegal+legal immigrants got two-thirds of new jobs during Obummer regime
Stephen Dinan: Washington DC Times
Immigration Direct
Edwin S. Rubenstein: V Dare

2012-11-01
Emily Jane Fox _CNN_
Conference Board: consumer confidence index at 72.2
Fox
MarketWatch
Wall Street Journal
"Those stating jobs are 'plentiful' increased from 8.1% to 10.3%, while those claiming jobs are 'hard to get' declined from 40.7% to 39.4%."

2012-11-01
Quin Hillyer _Center for Individual Freedom_
Obummer regime still refusing to deliver ballots in a timely manner to military and other US citizens over-seas
WKRG

2012-11-01
Steve Bousquet _Tamba Bay FL Times_
early votes + absentee ballots were over 3M in FL Wednesday
"Through Wednesday, the state said, 1,376,148 people had voted early in Florida... 1,680,432 had voted absentee."

2012-11-01
Ry Rivard _Charleston WV Daily Mail_
county elections officials concerned about state's absentee ballot contractor
"The $60K contract with Baltimore-based Scytl USA was paid with federal grant money from the U.S. Department of Defense."

2012-11-01
John Guerriero _Erie PA Times-News_
dead-line to get absentee ballots returned to election offices in PA is tomorrow, Friday 2012-11-02

2012-11-01
_Local 10_
some absentee ballots sent to Palm Beach county FL voters delayed by erroneous bar codes, postal union boss alleges
"[Errors on ballots, themselves, include] a missing header, requiring all of them to be copied by hand.   And new ballots had to be sent to about 500 people after another mis-print omitting one of the proposed amendments..."

2012-11-01
Ted Hart _Ohio Votes_/_NBC 4_
Ohio elections workers beginning to open received absentee ballots for counting
"The ballots are opened by teams of workers consisting of one Republican and one Democrat.   'We're permitted to scan the ballots in but we're not allowed to do any sort of tabulation until 7:30 on election night.', Walch said."

2012-11-01
Chris Chmielenski _Numbers USA_
20 congressional contests to watch that have immigration impact
Americans for Legal Immigration

2012-11-01
Mark J. Perry _AEI_
vintage type-writers rigged to serve as computer key-boards

2012-11-01
Mark J. Perry _AEI_
Texas oil output reached 24-year high in August, helping create 1K jobs

2012-11-01
Mark J. Perry _AEI_
food trucks serve their niche come rain or snow or winds extreme
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured." --- Thomas Paine 1791  

 
 

2012-11-02 USA election in 4 days

2012-11-02
_WTVM_/_Raycom News Network_
Libertarian party candidate Gary Johnson addresses the issues

2012-11-02
Karl Man _CBS_
Palm Beach county FL military couple stationed at Camp Lejeune, NC still have not received absentee ballots

2012-11-02
_SC State_
SC absentee ballots still being sent out
"Absentee ballots must be delivered to election officials by 19:00 Tuesday to count."
Are these election officials Insane or Incompetent!?...jgo

2012-11-02
Mary Young _Reading PA Eagle_
Berks county PA has extended deadline for absentee ballots to be received by election office to 17:00 Monday

2012-11-02
Matt Bracken _PJ Media_
only president can give, or withold, cross-border authority

2012-11-02
R' Label Lam _Torah.org_
Share This Secret with the Whole World

2012-11-02
Alexander Gray _Ludwig von Mises Institute_
ancient Spartan communism

2012-11-02
Daniel J. Sanchez _Ludwig von Mises Institute_
Keynesians' broken-window fallacy rears its ugly head again

2012-11-02
William L. Anderson
Krugman the extremist and distortionist

2012-11-02 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 17)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
Obummer and the politics of contempt
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "Tyranny is always better organized than freedom." --- Charles Pierre Peguy  

 
 

2012-11-03 USA election in 3 days

2012-11-03
David Middleton
5 degrees of separation from reality... and eleventy-gazilion joules under the sea

2012-11-03
William L. Anderson
Maybe Obummer doesn't believe in government, either
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "The less government interferes with private pursuits, the better for general prosperity." --- Martin van Buren  

 
 

2012-11-04 USA election in 2 days

2012-11-04
Yannis Markonis & Demetris Koutsoyiannis
climate variability and Milankovitch cycles with Hurst-Kolmogorov dynamics

2012-11-04
Mike Opelka & Hugh Atkin _Blaze_
60 years of campaign ads selected and edited down to 4 minutes

2012-11-04
Mark J. Perry _AEI_
contractors without permission slips turned back from storm recovery efforts in NJ

2012-11-04
Mark J. Perry _AEI_
anti-price "gouging" laws are really "pro-shortage and maximize suffering" laws

2012-11-04
Mark J. Perry _AEI_
Eagle Ford shale region supported 38K full-time jobs in 2011, could double by 2021

2012-11-04
Mark J. Perry _AEI_
too many execs care more about their reputations with customers than actually care about customers
"For example, I've written before about the Target Corporations policy of giving 5% of its income ($3M per week) to 'support communities'.   If Target cared more about its customers in the community it serves than it cared about its reputation with customers, wouldn't Target simply cut prices for its customers and give them the $3M per week in cost savings directly?   But since it cares more about its reputation with customers than it cares about its customers, Target charges higher prices so that it can then enhance its reputation with its charitable giving."

2012-11-04
Mark J. Perry _AEI_
Institute for Justice defends motel owners against unconstitutional government taking

2012-11-04
Michael Ledeen _PJ Media_
Will the MSM lose yet again? We can only hope

2012-11-04
Mary Beth Ellis _PJ Media_
from Miami U at Oxford to GOP's philosophical leader
"The national press and opposition researchers descended on campus when Ryan was elevated to the ticket.   They found little else but images of a turtlenecked Ryan in frat group shots and a grainy photo of his African American girl-friend on the cheer-leading squad.   Unable to fulfill persistent 'paul ryan shirtless' Google requests, they withdrew, missing the story of Miami's impact on Ryan, and the potential role his fellow alumni might play in the do-or-die swing state of Ohio.   Ryan graduated from Miami in 1992, taking with him a BA in economics and political science.   Within three days of his unveiling as Mitt Romney's running mate in August, Ryan was back on campus, clutching a 'lucky Ohio buckeye' handed to him by U.S. senator Rob Portman."

2012-11-04
AliceMary Leach _PJ Media_
Obummer & Holder disenfranchise US military... again

2012-11-04
William L. Anderson
Krugman the political operative
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival.   There may be even a worse case.   You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves." --- Winston Churchill  

 
 

2012-11-05: USA election tomorrow

2012-11-05
Victor Davis Hanson _PJ Media_
Sophocles in Benghazi

2012-11-05
Henry H. Bauer
Dogmatism in Science and Medicine: How Dominant Theories Monopolize Research and Stifle the Search for Truth

2012-11-05
Anthony Watts
60-year sea-level oscillation

2012-11-05
Anthony Watts
U of MA at Amherst claim: trigger for earth's last big freeze identified

2012-11-05
Audrey Williams June _Chronicle of Higher Education_
bodies shopped build strength in numbers
"About 70% of the instructional faculty at all colleges is off the tenure track, whether as part-timers or full-timers, a proportion that has crept higher over the past decade...   The University of San Francisco saw the proportion of its non-tenure-track faculty rise to 67% from 57%.   At Kean University, non-tenure-track professors now account for 78% of the faculty, up from 63%."

2012-11-05
Marc Parry _Chronicle of Higher Education_
corrupt librarians turn-coat, violate privacy of patrons
"many states passed laws requiring libraries to keep those data private.   It's considered 'good practice' to purge the records of who borrowed particular materials, she adds.   'The best way to preserve privacy is not to have a record...'"
This is much the same problem with CRM...jgo

2012-11-05 (5773 Tishrei 19)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
the left's only enemy
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "Lord, the money we do spend on Government & it's not 1 bit better than the government we got for 1/3 the money 20 years ago." --- Will Rogers  

 
 

2012-11-06: USA General Election

2012-11-06
_Polling Report_
USA citizenry continue to express disapproval of pres. Obummer and congress-critters -- both Rep and Dem

2012-11-06
Howard Mintz _San Jose CA Mercury News_
Apple leads challenge to California privacy law
"Song-Beverly Credit Card Act...   But consumer rights advocates say the law clearly applies to any credit card commerce, including in the on-line world.   And they argue on-line merchants can protect against fraud without trampling on the privacy rights of cyberspace consumers by forcing them to fork over everything from addresses to phone numbers."

2012-11-06
Anthony Watts
NASA's Curiosity has not yet found methane on Mars

2012-11-06
_WFLAFM_/_UPI_
excessive in-door humidity is a health risk

2012-11-06
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
Re: Stakes high for Sili Valley this election
 
I must say I am rather appalled to see such gullibility in the enclosed article from the Stanford student newspaper, in which the reporter accepts the notion that what Silicon Valley engineers want matches with what the CEOs are seeking.   It presumes that just because the CEOs want to bring in a large number of foreign workers, the U.S. citizens and permanent residents agree.   Yes, college journalists might be excused for sloppy thinking, but this is Stanford, one of the top universities in the world.   It's amazing that the reporter here would think that American engineers are anxious to have lots of foreign engineers come in to compete with them by working for lower pay.   I was also disappointed to see Ms. Levine buy into the industry party line that the only problem with H-1B is off-shoring.
Marianne Levine: Stanford Daily: Stakes high for Sili Valley this election
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 11
 

  "As late as 1916 half or America's engineers had never been to college at all, and debate between representatives of the 'shop culture' and the 'school culture' was often intense." --- Samuel C. Florman 1987 _The Civilized Engineer_ pg198  

 
 

2012-11-07

2012-11-07
Mathew Carr _Bloomberg_
Here it comes -- insane Obummer carbon tax to strangle US economy

2012-11-07
Doug Gamble _political mavens_
USA rest in peace
"Those of us who believe in the virtues that made this country great, self-reliance, hard work, entrepreneurship, individual liberty, responsibility, etc., are now strangers in our own country.   We will now live each day knowing that a majority of our fellow Americans have rejected these long-held beliefs in favor of massive government control over our lives.   Given 4 more years, the Entitlement Society Obama is building will be complete.   Robbed of the incentive to achieve or even work, increasing numbers of Americans will turn to the government teat."

2012-11-07
Grant Gross _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
may be push for more cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with flexible ethics, patent changes, copyright changes
NetworkWorld
"expansion of high-skill immigration programs, and expect some law-makers to push for on-line copyright enforcement provisions, although likely to be different than the controversial Stop On-line Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) that failed to pass earlier this year...   tech-savvy voters should expect a whole lot of nothing on several other issues...Thomas Lenard, president of free-market think tank the Technology Policy Institute (TPI), said in an e-mail message...   [Executives for] MSFT, Intel and Hewlett-Packard, have called for an expansion of the H-1B high-skill visa program and a loosening of restrictions on L-1 visas...   Kevin Richards, senior vice president for federal government affairs at TechAmerica...   expect the Motion Picture Association of America, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other backers of stronger copyright enforcement to push for revamped legislation in 2013...   Center for Democracy and Technology senior counsel Greg Nojeim, expect Obama to issue an executive order on cybersecurity early next year...   Expect some law-makers to push for legislation that would require mobile carriers and app makers to disclose whether they are tracking users or get permission to do so...   the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) will continue to work with privacy groups and companies to develop privacy codes of conduct...   the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which now allows law enforcement agencies to gain access to unopened emails and files stored in the cloud for longer than 180 days through a sub-poena, typically issued by a prosecutor...   The Senate Judiciary Committee has a mark-up hearing on ECPA reform this month, noted CDT's Nojeim."

2012-11-07
Anthony Watts
British STEM job candidate tells Bloomberg to shove it rather than support propaganda

2012-11-07
Anthony Watts
UN IPCC report expected to attempt to fan climate hysteria in order to have excuse to take undesirable actions

2012-11-07
Thomas E. Brewton
economics vs. leftist theories

2012-11-07
Thomas Sowell _Town Hall_
There are some widely held gross misconceptions about economics, job markets and government
"The proportion of the working age population that is not working is higher now than it has been in many years...   Unemployment was never in double digits in any of the 12 months following the stock market crash of 1929.   Only after politicians started intervening did unemployment reach double digits -- and stay in double digits throughout the 1930s.   There is nothing mysterious about an economy recovering on its own.   Employers usually have incentives to employ and workers have incentives to look for jobs.   Lenders have incentives to lend and borrowers have incentives to borrow -- if politicians do not create needless complications and uncertainties."

2012-11-07
Alan Caruba _Cybercast News Service_
USA committing suicide

2012-11-07
Thomas E. Brewton
America and its underminers

2012-11-07
Howard Lovy _PJ Media_
training US workers for nano-tech

2012-11-07
Thomas E. Brewton
2 Americas: constitutional, individual rights respecting vs. mean-spirited collectivists/leftists

2012-11-07
Javier E. David _CNBC_
Jim Rogers says get ready for for cheap money run amok with QE3
Sound Money Institute

2012-11-07
Eric Savitz _Forbes_
Will tech execs' cash piles remain over-seas?
"As of the end of September, Apple had piled up $82.6G in over-seas cash -- most of the company's overall stash of $121.3G.   As of the end of June, MSFT has $54G of its $63G in cash outside the country.   Cisco at the end of July had $42.5G of its $48.7G in cash over-seas."

2012-11-07 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 22)
John Stossel _Jewish World Review_
more corrupt government

2012-11-07 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 22)
Paul Greenberg _Jewish World Review_
the morning after

2012-11-07 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 22)
Bernard Goldberg _Jewish World Review_
Obummer won... and lost
"How could any politician win with such a dismal record?"

2012-11-07 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 22)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
our dis-enfranchised troops deserve better

2012-11-07 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 22)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
waiving freedom

2012-11-07 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 22)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
our deviant, perverted culture
Front Page Magazine
Richmond VA Times-Dispatch
Lucianne
Washington DC Examiner
Town Hall
Cybercast News Service
"I don't hold President Obama completely responsible for his unconstitutional actions.   It's the American people who are to blame, for it is we who have lost our morality and our love, knowledge and respect for our Constitution, laying the foundation for Washington tyranny.   It is all part and parcel of 'defining deviancy down', which is the term former U.S. senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan coined in 1993 to describe how we've switched from moral absolutes to situational morality and from strict constitutional interpretation to the Constitution's being a 'living document'.   Constitutional principles that do not allow one American to live at the expense of another American are to be held in contempt.   Today's Americans have betrayed the values that made us a great nation, and that does not bode well for future generations."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "When I see something like that draft-dodger Stallone taking on whole companies of NVA with his napalm arrows, I get very angry at the insult offered to my enemies & those of us who actually fought them.   It is a symbiotic relationship.   If the VC & NVA were no good, then neither were we.   If we were good (& with the exception of a few units in the last stages of the war, we were), then they must've been good too.   A couple of years ago, I talked to a triple Combat Infantryman Badge [one for each war] man, who jumped into Sicily, fought in Korea, & did 2 tours in VietNam, with Special Forces in the early 1960s, against local VC, then later as adviser to some ARVN unit, fighting NVA.   He had more respect for the VietNamese we fought than the Germans, North Koreans, or Chinese." --- Michael Lee Lanning & Dan Cragg 1994 January _Inside the VC & the NVA_ pp 269-270  

 
 

2012-11-08

2012-11-08 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 355,406 in the week ending November 3, an increase of 15,489 from the previous week.   There were 402,532 initial claims in the comparable week in 2011.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.1% during the week ending October 27, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week's unrevised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,742,581, a decrease of 94,962 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.5% and the volume was 3,210,417.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending October 20 was 5,077,231, an increase of 41,864 from the previous week.   There were 6,835,604 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2011.   Extended Benefits were only available in New York during the week ending October 20...   States reported 2,117,175 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending October 20, an increase of 18,529 from the prior week.   There were 2,953,824 persons claiming EUC 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;
to 128,066,082 beginning 2012-10-06.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2012-11-08
Christen Croley _Cumberland PA Sentinel_
local voters move to the right

2012-11-08
Victor Davis Hanson _Town Hall_
ground-hog day... only worse

2012-11-08
Mike Shedlock _Town Hall_
USA and European equities smashed, European economic growth estimates cut, crisis hits Germany

2012-11-08
Cal Thomas _Town Hall_
and thus we begin 4 more years of decline

2012-11-08
Anthony Watts
Drifting word clouds may change perceptions of climate pseudo-science

2012-11-08
_PR Web_
Sikhs fawn over pres. Obummer
"Navneet S. Chugh, Managing Director of the Chugh Firm, a Los Angeles based largest Indian law firm and president of the Santa Ana Orange County Gurdwara, said, '...There are 15M illegal immigrants in USA.   There are 300K Indians who are illegal in the USA...'"

2012-11-08
Benny Peiser
"green energy" policy threatening Europe's industrial base

2012-11-08
Larry Thornberry _American Spectator_
take down the big tent: there's no need for yet another leftist party

2012-11-08
Michael Cutler _Californians for Population Stabilization_
US citizen workers are taking a beating by government

2012-11-08
David Sherfinski _Washington DC Times_
store closed to mourn the loss of America

2012-11-08
Stephen Dinan _Washington DC Times_
Dr. Ron Paul: election results show that the USA is "far gone", "over the cliff"

2012-11-08
_Washington DC Times_
more severe and numerous violations of US constitution on Obummer regime's agenda

2012-11-08
Jessica Lipscomb _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_/_Naples FL Daily News_
ObummerDoesn'tCare likely to raise costs, result in employees' hours being cut, price increases

2012-11-08
Peter J. Wallison _AEI_
Dodd-Frank encourages crony socialism

2012-11-08
Mark J. Perry _AEI_
modern energy and horse-power
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "There were perhaps 31M people in all of Europe [during the 5th century Voelkerwanderung] and somewhere up to three-quarters of them were subjects of Rome.   In what is now Germany, there were only an estimated 3.5M Germans.   The German war bands averaged around 80K, of whom only perhaps 20K were warriors...   the Germans were Western Europeans.   They were virtually identical to the populations they conquered and with whom, in most cases, they proceeded quickly to merge...   Rome fell." --- Peter Brimelow 1996 _Alien Nation_ pp 132-133 (151-152 in pdf)  

 
 

2012-11-09

2012-11-09
Reza Hasmath _Washington DC Times_
Obummer's brethren Red Chinese thugs also retain iron grip on power

2012-11-09
_CNBC_
socialists to blame for impending French recession

2012-11-09
R' Pinchas Winston _Torah.org_
Right and Wrong

2012-11-09
Joel Gehrke _Washington DC Examiner_
Corrupt, abusive, constitution-violating TSA to spend more on uniforms than is invested in uniforms for Marines
"'While we must respect employee rights to be represented by organized labor, TSA has failed to represent the flying public and has missed the mark on improving procedures and protocols while focusing on tie tacks and tattoos.', Mica said in a statement today.   'Even though the army of TSA screeners has reached a labor agreement, it is my prediction they will never be happy while they must deal with this gigantic and often mindless bureaucracy.   Many of these hard-working TSA workers are being left in the lurch.'   TSA has about 44K employees, who voted 17,326 to 1,774 to ratify 'their first-ever collective bargaining agreement, giving them more say in what they wear on the job, the shifts they work and the time off they take, whether they can change from part-time to full-time work or back.', The Star-Ledger reported today."

2012-11-09
_CNN_
glove can help you play piano

2012-11-09
Stela Paul _American Thinker_
mass firings begin
CNBC/Reuters: Boeing lay-offs
WFMZ: Exide lay-offs
Reading PA Eagle: Berks county commission takes no delight in Exide lay-offs

2012-11-09
Loren Heal _Freedom Works_
Former Speaker Boehner get out of the way

2012-11-09
Zack Colman _Hill_
Interior Dept. wants to limit shale oil development on federally-controlled land

2012-11-09
Penny Starr _Cybercast News Service_
Obummer regime proposed 6,125 new regulations in last 90 days
World Net Daily

2012-11-09
John P. Cochran _Ludwig von Mises Institute_
"Fool's Gold" standards

2012-11-09
Mark J. Perry _AEI_
Since 2009, right to work states created 4x as many jobs as forced union states

2012-11-09
James Pethokoukis _AEI_
3 jobless "recoveries"
"Henry Siu and Nir Jaimovich...argue that jobless recoveries 'can be traced to a lack of recovery in a sub-set of occupations; those that focus on routine or repetitive tasks that are increasingly being performed by machines'..."

2012-11-09
William L. Anderson
no, military Keynesianism does not make us wealthier

2012-11-09
_24/7 Wall Street_
UMich consumer sentiment index changed from 78.3 in September to 84.9 in early October to 82.6 in late October
Statista
24/7 Wall Street
St. Louis Fed

2012-11-09
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
Lowell expects 5-fold increase in low-skill H-1b visas
 
Interesting piece, with a shocking -- and possibly accurate? -- prediction:
 
"Comprehensive immigration reform will see expansion of skilled labor visas.", predicted B. Lindsay Lowell, director of policy studies for the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University.   A former research chief for the congressionally appointed Commission on Immigration Reform, Lowell said he expects to see at least a five-fold increase in the number of [low] skilled labor visas that would provide "a significant shot in the arm for India and [Red China]".
 
"Fivefold increase"?
 
The rumors I've been hearing -- keep in mind that I'm NOT very plugged in to what happens on the Hill -- is that there is a rush to enact something right after the first of the new year.
 
I heard a further rumor, by someone plugged in to Silicon Valley, that major lay-offs will be coming in the tech industry in April.   This would certainly explain the rush among the industry lobbyists to enact something quickly.   This of course is exactly what happened with the increase in the H-1B cap in 2000 -- right before major lay-offs started.
 
(So, among many other things, an anti-lay-off provision would be highly warranted in the legislation, along the lines of the current H-1B-dependent requirements.)
 
Norm
Other countries eagerly await U.S. immigration law perversion

2012-11-09 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 24)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
a time for courage and action
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "even if some immigrants are beneficial, a very large number coming from poorer countries... may have the opposite effect." --- Julian Simon _The Economic Consequences of Immigration_ pg 342 (quoted in Peter Brimelow 1996 _Alien Nation_ pg 141 (158 in pdf))  

 
 

2012-11-10

2012-11-10
David Archibald
planets' influence on solar activity

2012-11-10
James S. Robbins _Washington DC Times_
more ballots counted than voters signed-in
"Questions also persist regarding the military absentee ballots in Palm Beach county.   Observers were banned without explanation from watching the ballots being opened.   They were permitted to observe the counting process, however there was no way to know whether the absentee ballots that were produced were the same ones that were opened, or if all the ballots were produced.   Lacking a transparent chain of custody of the military ballots it is impossible to validate that the votes cast by servicemen and women overseas are fairly and accurately being counted."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "The most valuable acquisitions in a scientific or technical education are the general-purpose mental tools which remain serviceable for a life-time." --- George Forsythe 1968 "What do do til the compute scientist comes" (quoted in Anany Levitin 2003 _Introduction to the Design & Analysis of Algorithms_ pg xix)  

 
 

2012-11-11: Veterans' Day

2012-11-11
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
Veterans
Anthony Watts
for love of country... and "Stinky"

2012-11-11
_Dearborn MI Press & Guide_
election results
"Green: Jill Stein (running mate: Cheri Honkala); Overall: 396,684; Dearborn: 262; Dearborn Heights: 129.   Natural Law: Ross Anderson (running mate: Luis Rodriguez); Overall: 34,521; Dearborn: 56; Dearborn Heights: 37.   U.S. Taxpayers: Virgil Goode (running mate: James Clymer); Overall: 3,970; Dearborn: 99; Dearborn Heights: 74.   (Note: Libertarian Gary Johnson, not on the local ballots, received 1,139,562 votes nationally.)"
Sarasota FL Herald-Tribune/AP

2012-11-11
Timothy P. Carney _Washington DC Examiner_
Oath-breaker-in-chief Obummer attacking religious liberty

2012-11-11
Leif Svalgaard
solar activity -- past, present, future

2012-11-11
_Fox_
Schumer, Grahamnesty, McCain slithering in the corrupt swamps to champion reprehensible immigration law perversion... again
Los Angeles CA Times
Politico
Wall Street Journal
Hill

2012-11-11
_Albany NY Times Union_
Cuomo admin still does not know how many foreign workers are employed -- directly and indirectly -- by the NY state government
"Now, after revamping the program and giving about 20 consulting companies exclusive contracts to supply these foreign workers, who typically hold H-1B visas, there won't be an excuse to claim ignorance.   Under the program called HBITS, as in Hourly-Based IT Services, the businesses that funnel workers to state agencies must now report the workers' citizenship status, along with their names, type of visa they hold and the visa number."

2012-11-11
Stacey Patton _Chronicle of Higher Education_
"My adviser stole my research"

2012-11-11
Robert J. Samuelson _Washington DC Post_
the American socialist illfare state
"the new study by demographer Nicholas Eberstadt, whose blizzard of numbers demonstrates... A welfare state transfers income from some people to other people [allegedly] to improve the recipients' well-being. In 1935, these transfers were less than 3% of the economy; now they're almost 20%. That's $7,200 a year for every American, calculates Eberstadt. He says that nearly 40% of these transfers [allegedly] aim to relieve poverty (through Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment insurance and the like), while most of the rest goes to the elderly (mainly through [Socialist Insecurity] and Medicare)... Interestingly, [Romney's] figure is probably low: More than 50% of Americans may already receive [hand-outs]."

2012-11-11
Glenn Cook _Las Vegas Nevada Review-Journal_
why don't we verify voter citizenship?

2012-11-11
Mark J. Perry _AEI_
3-D scanner-printer kiosks open in Japan
"World's First 3-D Printing Photo Booth to Open in Japan, where you can have your portraits taken, except instead of a photograph, you'll receive miniature replicas of yourselves.   Three sizes and prices will be available, approximately 4 inches ($262), 6 inches ($400) and 8 inches high ($525)."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "What an awful spectacle does the world exhibit at this instant... on man bestriding the continent of Europe like a Colossus, and another roaming unbridled on the ocean.   But even this is better than that one should rule both elements." --- Thomas Jefferson 1806-01-11 to Thomas Lomax (quoted in Dumas Malone _Jefferson_ vol5 pg95; Noble E. Cunningham 1987 _In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson_ pg283)  

 
 

2012-11-12

2012-11-12
Anthony Watts
EU CO2 tax on aircraft crashes and burns

2012-11-12
Pablo Gorondi _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_/_AP_
US likely to be biggest oil producer by 2020... barring Obummer regime attacks
San Jose CA Mercury News/Los Angeles CA Times
Washington DC Times

2012-11-12
M
list of conspiring "green" propagandists who influence BBC
pdf

2012-11-12
Valerie Richardson _Washington DC Times_
petitions for 23 states to secede have been filed on White House web site

2012-11-12
Thomas E. Brewton
reform of education is necessary for constitutional America to be recovered

2012-11-12
Dr. Milton R. Wolf _Washington DC Times_
800K jobs at risk from ObummerDoesn'tCare extortions
Dr. Susan Berry: Breitbart: Obummer donor dumps 1,170 employees

2012-11-12
Frank Munger _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
Cray XK7 Titan unveiled
"Titan, which features a new hybrid architecture, achieved a sustained computing capability of 17.5 petaflops -- or 17.5 million billion mathematical calculations per second -- on the Linpack bench-mark tests to qualify for the list.   The Cray machine reportedly has a peak capability of more than 27 petaflops."

2012-11-12
William L. Anderson
Krugman tries to ignore federal government debt

2012 November
top 500 fastest super-computers
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "We all know of course that we cannot abolish all the evils in this world by statute or by the enforcement of statutes, nor can we prevent the inexorable law of nature which decrees that suffering shall follow vice, & all the evil passions & folly of mankind.   Law cannot give to depravity the rewards of virtue, to indolence the rewards of industry, to indifference the rewards of ambition, or to ignorance the rewards of learning.   The utmost that gov't can do is measurably to protect men, not against the wrong they do themselves but against wrong done by others & to promote the long, slow process of educating mind & character to a better knowledge & nobler standards of life & conduct.   We know all this, but when we see how much misery there is in the world & instinctively cry out against it, & when we see some things that gov't may do to mitigate it, we are apt to forget how little after all it is possible for any gov't to do, & to hold the particular gov't of the time & place to a standard of responsibility which no gov't can possibly meet." --- Elihu Root 1913 _Experiments in Gov't & the Essentials of the Constitution_  

 
 

2012-11-13

2012-11-13
Jessica Guynn _San Jose CA Mercury News_/_Los Angeles CA Times_
more government thugs demanding more privacy violations and censorship by search engine firms

2012-11-13
Mike Blackerby _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
counter-measures to increasing thefts of HVAC equipment for the valuable metal

2012-11-13
Tom Blumer _PJ Media_
Obummer's even more dangerous (but hopefully short) 2nd term

2012-11-13
Ron Radosh _PJ Media_
academic mal-practice: prof. Grover Furr has been in the business of Stalin worship for quite some time

2012-11-13
_NY Sun_
an insult to veterans: Obummer regime doubling down on their failed 1st-term policies

2012-11-13
Arnold Ahlert _Front Page Magazine_
Pushing back against stealth jihad charter schools
"Imam Fethullah Gülen [Guelen, Gulen] and his Gülen Movement (GM) have had enormous influence in setting the increasingly Islamist agenda of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).   Much of this is due to GM's vast empire of media entities, financial institutions, banks and business organizations.   But the most critical component of this empire is educational institutions.   In Turkey, 75% of the nation's 2M preparatory school students are enrolled in Gülen institutions.   In America, GM runs the largest charter school network in the nation...   The principals and school board members of GM charter schools are primarily Turkish men.   Hundreds of Turkish teachers have been admitted to the United States using H-1B visas...   charter schools tend to purchase a substantial portion of their goods and services from Gülenist businesses...   a trio of GM schools in Georgia are currently in the spotlight because they defaulted on a $19M bond issue...   In Texas, similar allegations have been aimed at the Cosmos Foundation, a charter school operator founded a decade ago by a group of professors and businessmen from Turkey. The group, currently using the name Harmony Schools... Some of those founders, as well as school operators, and many of their business suppliers, are followers of Fethullah Gülen...   in Inver Grove Heights, MN, a substitute teacher named Amanda Getz claims the Tarek Ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA) maintained no separation between academics studied during school and Islamic studies afterward..."
"Docky Musicy asks: "Why doesn't the UN make [an international convention] that safeguards the rights and life of the ex-muslims?"
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "Freedom to many means immediate betterment, as if by magic...   Unless I can meet at least some of these aspirations, my support will wane & my head will roll just as surely as the tickbird follows the rhino." --- Julius K. Nyerere in Time 1964-04-09  

 
 

2012-11-14

2012-11-14 Jonathan Mattise _Treasure Coast FL Palm_
state government auditors arriving to review St. Lucie county's election processes

2012-11-14
Jeff Bounds _Dallas TX Business Journal_
TI to dump 1,700
Fox
CBS DFW
MarketWatch
"That's about 5% of the company's 34,759 employees..."

2012-11-14
John Perazzo _Front Page Magazine_
Valerie Jarrett's extreme leftist roots

2012-11-14
Victor Davis Hanson _Town Hall_
pre-election suppression of politically embarrassing news
"Coincidentally, right after the election we heard that Iran had attacked a U.S. drone in international waters.   Coincidentally, we just learned that new food stamp numbers were 'delayed' and that millions more became new recipients in the months before the election.   Coincidentally, we now gather that the federal relief effort following Hurricane Sandy was not so smooth, even as NJ governor Chris Christie and Barack Obama high-fived it.   Instead, in Katrina-like fashion, tens of thousands are still without power or shelter two weeks after the storm.   Coincidentally, we now learn that Obama's plan of letting tax rates increase for the 'fat cat' 2% who make over $250K a year would not even add enough new revenue to cover 10% of the annual deficit.   How he would get the other 90% in cuts, we are never told.   Coincidentally, we now learn that the vaunted [NIGHTMARE Act] would at most cover only about 10% to 20% of illegal immigrants.   As part of the bargain, does Obama have a post-election Un-Dream Act to deport the other 80% who do not qualify since either they just recently arrived in America, are not working, are not in school or the military, are on public assistance, or have a criminal record? Coincidentally, now that the election is over, the scandal over the killings of Americans in Libya seems warranted due to the abject failure to heed pleas for more security before the attack and assistance during it.   And the scandal is about more than just the cover-up of fabricating an absurd myth of protestors mad over a 2-month-old video -- just happening to show up on the anniversary of 2001/09/11 with machine guns and rockets.   The real post-election mystery is why we ever had a secondary consulate in Benghazi in the first place, when most nations had long ago pulled their embassies out of war-torn Libya altogether.   Why, about a mile from the consulate, did we have a large CIA-staffed 'annex' that seems to have been busy with all sorts of things other than providing adequate security for our nearby diplomats?   Before the election, the media was not interested in figuring out what ambassador Christopher Stevens actually was doing in Benghazi, what so many CIA people and military contractors were up to, and what was the relationship of our large presence in Libya to Turkey, insurgents in Syria and the scattered Gadhafi arms depots."

2012-11-14
Mark J. Perry _AEI_
lumber prices rising

2012-11-14
Ron Paul _Target Freedom_
farewell to congress
YouTube video

2012-11-14 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 29)
Marybeth Hicks _Jewish World Review_
civic illiteracy
"_Don't Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid: Confronting the Left's Assault on Our Families, Faith, and Freedom_...   According to surveys from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, college freshmen typically flunk a 60-question civics test with an average score of just better than 51%; college seniors flunk it with a score of around 53%.   According to the National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], our country's high schools taught less about the constitution in 2010 than they did in 2006, a trend that continues.   In fact, in 2010, only 67% of high school seniors studied our founding documents, meaning about a third don't study our government in the year before they are eligible to vote.   Based on National Assessment of Education Progress [NAEP] tests, the formal assessment exams given to students across the nation to gauge what they're learning, American students exhibit an alarming lack of proficiency in government and economics.   As of 2006 (the last year for which statistics were available when I researched the book), only 36% of high school seniors could name the government's primary source of income.   (That would be [extortion], kids.) Only 33% could explain the effect of an increase in real interest rates on consumer borrowing, and a scant 11% could analyze how a change in unemployment rates affects income, spending and production...   In 2008, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute administered a basic 33-question civic literacy test to a random sample of 2,508 American adults.   Respondents had a range of educational attainment from high school diplomas to advanced degrees...   The average score for all Americans who took this straightforward civic literacy test was 49%, or an 'F', proving the apple doesn't fall far from the civically illiterate tree."

2012-11-14 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 29)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
government ignorance of disaster economics
Town Hall

2012-11-14 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 29)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
Is demography destiny?
Town Hall
"the most successful Republican presidential candidate during [the last 50-70 years] was a man who went completely counter to [moderate leftist 'wisdom'] -- namely, Ronald Reagan, who won back to back land-slide election victories.   Meanwhile, [semi-leftist] Republican presidential candidate after [semi-leftist] Republican presidential candidate has gone down to defeat, even against Democratic presidential candidates who were unpopular (Harry Truman), previously unknown (Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton) or who had a terrible economic track record (Barack Obama)...   Republicans [should] articulate a coherent case for their principles and the benefits that those principles offer to all Americans...   the gap between black and white incomes narrowed during the Reagan administration and widened during the Obama administration...   Conversely, few policies have had such a devastating effect on the job opportunities of minority youths as minimum wage laws...   unemployment among minority youths sky-rocketed when minimum wage increases priced them out of jobs...   Labor unions push minimum wage laws to insulate their members from the competition of younger workers, and Democratic politicians are heavily dependent on union support.   For the same reason, Democrats have to go along with teachers' unions that treat schools as places to guarantee their members jobs, rather than to provide the quality education so much needed to rise out of poverty."
Meanwhile, grid-lock is the USA's friend...jgo
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "A sound mind in a sound body, is a short but full description of a happy state in this world.   He that has these 2, has little more to wish for; & he that wants either of them, will be little the better for anything else." --- John Locke 1693 _Thoughts Concerning Education_  

 
 

2012-11-15

2012-11-15 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 466,348 in the week ending November 10, an increase of 104,548 from the previous week.   There were 363,016 initial claims in the comparable week in 2011.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.3% during the week ending November 3, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week's revised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,933,855, an increase of 159,551 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.5% and the volume was 3,177,477.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending October 27 was 4,977,808, a decrease of 100,423 from the previous week.   There were 6,773,260 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2011.   Extended Benefits were only available in New York during the week ending October 27...   States reported 2,085,605 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending October 27, a decrease of 32,570 from the prior week.   There were 2,935,466 persons claiming EUC 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;
to 128,066,082 beginning 2012-10-06.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2012-11-15
Leslie Berestein Rojas _Southern California Socialist Radio in Pasadena_
visa fraud scheme abused cemetery plots to launder money
"Joseph Wai-Man Wu, 53, will serve a 10-month prison term for his role in the scheme.   His associate, attorney Kelly Einstein Darwin Giles, 49, awaits sentencing in January.   Wu -- whom ICE described as former president of the East West Law Group of West Covina -- pleaded guilty in August of last year to one count of conspiracy to commit visa fraud, one count of money laundering, and one count of obstruction of justice."

2012-11-15
Anthony Watts
Heartland Institute announced climate conference in Germany

2012-11-15
Barry Rubin _PJ Media_
lessons for the world from the latest phase of the Israel-Philistine war

2012-11-15 (5773 Kislev 01)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
principles + forethought vs. "nice losers"
NH Union Leader
St. Augustine FL
"There is not enough time to figure it out from scratch, while waiting for the ball to be snapped.   You have to have figured out such things long before the game began, and now just need to execute...   the cold fact is that minimum wage laws create massive unemployment among black teenagers.   Conversely, one of the lowest rates of unemployment among black teenagers occurred in the 1940s, when inflation virtually repealed the minimum wage law passed in 1938, since even unskilled labor was paid more in inflated dollars than the minimum wage law required.   Even during the recession year of 1949, black teenage unemployment was a fraction of what it would be in the most prosperous later years, after the minimum wage rate was raised repeatedly to keep pace with inflation.   One of the few benefits of inflation is that it can in effect repeal minimum wage laws, which politicians can do directly only by risking their reelection.   Conservative opposition to minimum wage laws is just one of the ways that conservative principles often work out to benefit those with lower incomes, more so than [leftist] principles that sound so much better as political rhetoric...   One of the secrets of Barack Obama's success is his ability to say things that will sound both plausible and inspiring to uninformed people, even when they sound ridiculous to people who know the facts...   It is not necessary to explode every single lie put out by [leftist] Democrats.   All that is necessary is to thoroughly discredit a few of their key claims, exposing them as liars."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "it is doubtful that any one personality trait is more important to an employer than the honesty of the prospective employee.   To hold otherwise is to stigmatize minorities by saying, in effect, your group is not as honest as other groups." --- Jose Gonzalez US District Court of S FL EEOC v Carolina Freight Carriers reported in "Daily Labor Report" 1989-11-27  

 
 

2012-11-16

2012-11-16
_NSF_
Science & Engineering Labor Market Conditions
"Unemployment rates, involuntarily out-of-field [IOOF] rates, and earnings should all be considered [lagging indicators]...   The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Current Population Survey data for 1983–2010 indicate that the unemployment rate for all individuals in S&E occupations ranged from 1.3% to 4.3%, which contrasted favorably with rates for all U.S. workers (from 4.0% to 9.6%) and all workers with a bachelor's degree or higher (from 1.8% to 7.8%).   The rate for S&E technicians and computer programmers ranged from 2.1% to 7.4%.   During most of the period, computer programmers had an unemployment rate similar to that of workers in S&E occupations, but with greater volatility (from 1.2% to 6.7%)...   unemployment rates for college graduates have remained relatively stable since approximately 2011 April, while they have risen for college-educated S&E workers...   Whereas general unemployment peaked at 10.5% ([about 3 times full employment levels] 2010 March), S&E unemployment rose only as high as 5.6% [about 3.5 full employment levels] in 2009 October...   The relatively difficult 2003 labor market had a greater effect on bachelor's degree holders: for individuals at various points in their careers, the unemployment rate increased by between 1.6 and 3.5 percentage points between 1999 and 2003.   Labor market conditions had a smaller effect on doctorate holders, but some increases in unemployment rates affected individuals in most years-since-degree cohorts.   Similarly, among those who said they were working involuntarily outside the field of their highest degree, labor market conditions from 1999 to 2003 had a greater effect on the proportion of bachelor's degree holders than on doctorate holders.   These rates ranged from 7% to 12% for bachelor's degree holders in 2003 versus 2% to 5% for those with doctorates.   Rates of working involuntarily out-of-field (IOF [IOOF]) for doctorate holders changed little between 1999 and 2003.   Although S&E qualifications may help workers weather recessions, they do not make them immune to the adverse labor market conditions that recessions bring.   The estimated 4.3% unemployment rate for S&E occupations in 2009 April, although low relative to other occupations, was the highest in 25 years...   Across all fields of S&E degrees, there was a 5.3% unemployment rate for bachelor's degree holders who received their degrees in the previous 5 years.   This ranged from 2.1% for those with engineering degrees to 6.7% for social science degree recipients...   A useful but more subjective indicator of labor market conditions for recent graduates is the proportion reporting that a job in their degree field was not available.   This involuntarily out-of-field (IOF [IOOF]) rate is a measure unique to NSF's labor force surveys.   At the bachelor's degree level, across all S&E fields, the IOF [IOOF] rate in 2008 was 7.9%, but it ranged from 2.4% for recent engineering graduates to 12.0% for recent graduates in the social sciences.   In all fields of degrees, the IOF rate decreases as the level of education increases, reaching a low of 1.5% for recent doctorate recipients.   The median salary for recent S&E bachelor's degree recipients in 2008 was $39,800, ranging from $30K in the life sciences to $59K in engineering.   Recent master's degree recipients had average salaries of $57K, with recent doctorate recipients earning $65K."
NSF/NBER/BLS unemployment rates by occupational groups 1983-2010 (graph)
NSF/BLS unemployment rates by occupational groups 2008 March to 2011 September (graph)
NSF/BLS U-3 vs. U-1 by S&E occupations vs all (graph)
NSF unemployment rates for S&E occupations by highest degree by years since highest degree, 1999 & 2003 (graph)
NSF S&E workers involuntarily out of field (IOOF) by degree and years since degree was earned (graph)

2012-11-16
Jere Longman _NYTimes_
US government has higher standards for ping-pong players than foreign STEM guest-workers

2012-11-16
Christopher Chabris & Daniel Simons _Wall Street Journal_
neuromyths are harmful, in class-rooms and research

2012-11-16
Rick Moran _PJ Media_
revitalizing the voluntary community

2012-11-16
da Tagliare _GodFather Politics_
Chicago teacher unionists crowd MidWest Marxism conference at NWU to map indoctrination of school-children

2012-11-16
Thomas E. Brewton
outrageous union demans may result in 18,500 jobs being eliminated

2012-11-16
R' PInchas Winston _Torah.org_
Spiritually Sensitive

2012-11-16
Shlomo Katz _Torah.org_
New Week: New Blessings vol27 #6
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends, as they themselves know better than anyone." --- Homer _The Odyssey_  

 
 

2012-11-17

2012-11-17
Stephen Dinan _Washington DC Times_
congress demands EPA's e-mail accounts being abused to skirt FOIA

2012-11-17
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
widow of a refugee

2012-11-17
William L. Anderson
Krugman says that actually PRODUCING a high standard of living is a "zombie" idea
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "Every man, woman, and responsible child has a natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- handgun, shotgun, rifle, machinegun, *anything* -- any time, anywhere, without asking anyone's permission." --- L. Neil Smith 1987 November WeaponsConvention I Atlanta, GA  

 
 

2012-11-18

2012-11-18
Abraham Rabinovich _Washington DC Times_
Israel neutralized another top Hamas terrorist

2012-11-18
Ivan Kenneally _Washington DC Times_
strong state legislatures could repeal unconstitutional ObummerDoesn'tCare

2012-11-18
Barry Rubin _PJ Media_
how to end the War of Hamas against Israel
"Given the premise that Hamas is in a permanent state of war with Israel and will attack Israel whenever it can get away with it, Israel needed to do three things.   First, Israel had to show Hamas that it cannot daily attack Israel and Israeli civilians without a cost.   Second, Israel had to show Hamas that the cost is unsustainable and that it needs to keep the peace or suffer massive losses to its governmental, economic, and military infrastructure.   This includes a personal cost to those who have taken the lead in attacking Israel and especially to those who have organized terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians.   Third, Israel had to remove from Hamas the means of making war by destroying its rockets, missiles, and other weaponry."

2012-11-18
Richard Landes _PJ Media_
Hamas's media war strategy
"1. Kill your own children.   2. Pose and photograph the corpses.   3. Blame Israel.   4. Distribute to naive Western journalists.   5. Repeat."

2012-11-18
Patrick Poole _PJ Media_
Obummer regime State Dept. official Anne Casper to conspire with Organisation of Islamic Co-Operation in Jeddah

2012-11-18
_CT Post_/_AP_
Perverts vs. familial Catholics: clash in Paris
Breitbart

2012-11-18
Mark J. Perry _AEI_
negative effects of bodyshopping in academia: more grade-inflation and lower quality of instruction and research

2012-11-18
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
Sili Valley poaching
 
I often remark that if I were to assert that, say MSFT, exploits every loop-hole it can find in the [government extortion] code, no one would be shocked.   But if I say MSFT exploits loop-holes in immigration law, the response is sometimes, "No, firms like MSFT would never engage in such sneaky behavior."   Such is the effectiveness of the PR campaigns by various vested interests (the tech industry, the American Immigration Lawyers Assocation, the universities and so on) to portray H-1B as a noble program.
 
Well, maybe the enclosed article will bring some skeptics one step closer to reality.   Here we see alleged wrongdoing not in taxes, but in hiring, right in the area in which MSFT et al/ would supposedly never engage in sneaky behavior.   Moreover, in this case, it's not use of loop-holes; it's illegal behavior.
 
IOW, Silicon Valley firms are so intent on saving in labor costs that they are willing to run the risk of violating the law.   No wonder they love the H-1B and employer-sponsored green card programs so much, under which they can save lots of money while staying fully compliant with the law.
 
Again, it's just allegation at this point, but as the article notes, other major firms admitted to it earlier.   And interestingly, Meg Whitman is specifically named in these accusations.   This is the same Whitman who was the California Republican candidate for governor recently, and who praised the H-1B program when asked at a fund raiser by a reader of this e-news-letter.
 
It should be pointed out that this is just the tip of the iceberg.   I was once told, by a government worker who was closely connected to all this, that Silicon Valley firms meet once a month to exchange salary and other hiring information.   I later learned the existence of a Silicon Valley organization named Wings, consisting of the HR directors of a number of major tech firms.   (BTW, see HR circles the wagons for an interesting related story.)   I think it's clear that such organizations do more than talk about the latest HR software tools; they seek ways to hold down labor costs, legally or not.
 
Remember too another point I've emphasized concerning H-1B and green cards: For many employers, the de facto indentured nature of the foreign workers is even more important than lower wages.   It's a big blow when an engineer leaves in the midst of a major project, and the foreign worker programs solve that by making it very difficult for the worker to leave.   Those programs similarly reduce the risk of exposing company secrets (whether deliberate or inadvertent).
 
Clearly, the anti-poaching actions have the same motivations -- to hold down wages and to hand-cuff workers who might be consisering leaving.   Hopefully those who've been mesmerized by the PR campaigns will now see that tech firms are no nobler on labor issues than they are on the [government extortion] code.
 
Norm
Howard Mintz: San Jose CA Mercury News: Feds sue eBay over secret anti-poaching deal with Intuit
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "[I]ndividuals when left to themselves are, in general, sufficiently provident & will daily better their circumstances." --- Joseph Priestly (quoted in George Rosen 1958 _A History of Public Health_ pg 173)  

 
 

2012-11-19

2012-11-19
Robert Higgs _Ludwig von Mises Institute_
regime uncertainty & regime risk vs. economic development
net private domestic fixed investment
gross private domestic investment price index
"a major reason for the incomplete recovery of private investment during the latter half of the 1930s was 'regime uncertainty'.   By this, I mean a pervasive lack of confidence among investors in their ability to foresee the extent to which future government actions will alter their private-property rights."

2012-11-19
_Fort Wayne IN News-Sentinel_
business awards and achievements
"Paragon Medical, Pierceton, founder and CEO Tobias Buck and the company were inducted into the Kosciusko county Entrepreneur and Innovation Hall of Fame on Nov. 8 in Warsaw.   Baden, Gage & Schroeder, LLC, has hired Linda K. Wellman, CPA, as a tax supervisor.   She brings more than nine years of professional tax experience to the firm.   She has more than 13 years of accounting and tax experience, taught college-level accounting courses, and served as a township trustee and assessor.   Morrison Kattman Menze partner Zachary Benedict has been awarded the Young Architect Award by the Indiana Chapter of The American Institute of Architects at their annual convention.   In addition, he received the Award of Outstanding Achievement from the College of Architecture and Planning Alumni Society at Ball State University.   PigTek Pig Equipment Group, Milford, has promoted Chris Elvidge to systems technician.   He will provide systems lay-out and installation support to customers and offer telephone and on-site support to help resolve technical issues with systems controls, communication systems and software...   Frontier Communications has added Dan Sullivan as general manager.   He will lead operations throughout the Fort Wayne market area by overseeing the FiOS network, deployment of broadband solutions and services, phone services, retail operations, and satellite TV, and he will be responsible for every aspect of the customer experience.   He has nearly 22 years' experience in the telecommunications industry."

2012-11-19
Joseph Flaherty _Wired_
best 3-D "printed"/rapidly-prototyped/additively-manufactured objects

2012-11-19
Norman Page
earth is entering a cooling phase

2012-11-19
Bridget Johnson _PJ Media_
Rubio & Jindal reach for lead position in first lap toward 2016

2012-11-19
Michael Ledeen _PJ Media_
Why the leftists keep trying to convince us that America is doomed

2012-11-19
Richard Perez-Pena _NYTimes_
MA colleges to discriminate in favor of aliens over residents of other states

2012-11-19
Brendan Kirby _Mobile AL_
deportee in USA again, working with counterfeit docs, amnestied by corrupt judge

2012-11-19
William L. Anderson
Krugman's Twinkie economic myths

2012-11-19
Daniel Costa _Economic Policy Institute_
STEM labor supply and demand

2012-11-19
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
EPI paper on MSFT
 
There is an excellent new paper from EPI on the H-1B/green card issue, by EPI researcher Daniel Costa.
 
The reason I consider this paper so important is that it focuses on MSFT.   In turn, The reason that is so significant is that, as I've often lamented, the prevailing wisdom in many DC circles is that yes, H-1B is abused, but only by the Indian "rent-a-programmer" firms.   The main-stream U.S. firms such as MSFT use H-1B responsibly, the thinking goes.
 
Yet as I've shown, the big U.S. firms abuse H-1B too (albeit with a better class of worker).   And the sad truth is that MSFT has an awful track record in terms of responsible business practices and general credibility.   I'll return to this point later, but again, it's very significant that this EPI calls out MSFT on their recent well-publicized STEM labor shortage claim.
 
I have a number of comments, and will begin with some material that I wish had been in this EPI paper.
 
Let's look at Costa's analysis of the computer science unemployment rate, in response to MSFT's claim that that rate is low.   Costa's approach here is, to my knowledge, quite novel: Instead of comparing CS unemployment to the rate for all types of jobs, Costa compares the current CS rate to the historical CS rates, especially during times of a strong U.S. economy.   He shows that the current CS unemployment is about double what it should be in that sense.
 
However, Costa should have questioned the role of the CS unemployment rate in the first place.   As I've often written, that figure is of limited interpretability, because it doesn't account for the workers who have been squeezed out of the field.   Gene Nelson once pointed it out well: The former software engineer now working as a security guard counts in unemployment data as an employed security guard, not as an unemployed programmer.   (Another reason unemployment data are misleading is that many programmers work as independent contractors.   When they are under-worked, or forced to drop their rates sharply, the unemployment data show nothing of this.)
 
Granted, Costa's argument works today, but it would have said things were just fine for software engineers in 1998 or 1999, which was not the case.   I have no security guards, but I knew of an MIT grad working packing boxes and a guy with a Harvard degree driving a school bus at the time.   IOW, the H-1B program harms people even during the good times.
 
And this is typically tied in to the age issue, which Costa doesn't directly address but which I've shown is central.   (Recall that "old" means age 35.)
 
Costa does indirectly touch the issue, though, in the following insightful point:
 
It is noteworthy that although MSFT laments its 6K unfilled job openings, it laid off at least 5K employees during the recession (Sayer 2009).   How many of these job openings are replacing employees who were laid off?
 
It's a safe bet that few if any of those laid off by MSFT were rehired off by the firm -- AND that those hired in their place were younger than those who were let go.
 
My guess is that Costa didn't want to get into the age issue, itself a good topic for a future project.   If he had included it, MSFT would say that those laid off simply don't have the newest skill sets that the firm needs.   That's a red herring, as I've shown before, but Costa likely felt his paper would be "cleaner" without addressing the age issue.
 
Yet, again, age MATTERS.   Recall MSFT's damning admission, made in an unguarded moment:
 
MSFT is [NOT] known for the high quality of its hires.   Senior Vice-President and Chief Technical Officer David Vaskevitch...acknowledges that the vast majority of MSFT hires are young, but that is because older workers tend to go into more senior jobs and there are fewer of those positions to begin with.
 
"...[F]ewer of those positions to begin with"!   Indeed.   As I've said before, I certainly don't think that every older techie should be hired (nor every young one), but the fact is that many do have up-to-date skills but MSFT and others automatically reject them as "over-qualified" (read: too expensive, both in wages and benefits).
 
I also wish that Costa had not so easily accepted the BLS projections of CS job growth, which have been shown to be unreliable before (and which I believe have been "lobbied" by the industry).
 
Costa does a good job of showing that CS wages have been flat in the last 10 years, growing only about 0.5% per year, contrary to MSFT's claim of a labor shortage.   By contrast, here in California, gas prices rose by 20%-30% in just a couple of months when a couple of refinery shut-downs caused a real shortage.   (I assume the same happened during the aftermath of Hurrican Sandy.) It's absurd to consider a 0.5% annual increase as indicative of a "shortage".
 
Costa also reports that MSFT has a 93% acceptance rate for the job offers it extends, again contradicting MSFT's claims that it can't hire people.   Costa might have added that MSFT's claimed 6K current job openings represents only about 6% of the company's work-force, a normal figure; if anything, it's smaller than what is typical.
 
Though many in DC have fallen for the blame-the-Indian-bodyshops PR campaign (both out of gullibility and out of a need to believe that companies like MSFT are acting responsibly), the fact is that there have been numerous occasions in which MSFT has shown bad faith in issues related to foreign workers.
 
First and foremost, there is MSFT's repeated misstatement that its H-1B engineers make salaries of more than $100K to start.   This has been claimed by Bill Gates, by MSFT Exec. VP/Chief Counsel Brad Smith, and MSFT Senior Director Bill Kamela.   The STEM green card data show this to be false; for software engineers, for instance, only a small percentage make $100K.
 
I won't give a litany of examples, but here is one more: At the same time MSFT was telling the nation that it would only off-shore work if it couldn't find the workers it needs in the U.S.A., it was writing internal memos saying things like "Find some to off-shore today." (See MSFT claim belied.)
 
As I wrote yesterday, none of these big American tech firms are the angels the DC crowd views them as.   I'm glad to see EPI take on MSFT.
 
Norm
---30---

2012-11-19 (5773 Kislev 05)
Paul Greenberg _Jewish World Review_
the gathering storm

2012-11-19 (5773 Kislev 05)
Steven Emerson _Jewish World Review_
"moderate" Muslims show solidarity with Hamas terrorists
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "For what treatment is there of the most shameful or grievous sort that we have not suffered since these men made their appearance in Britain? Have we not been robbed entirely of most of our greatest possessions, while for those that remain we pay taxes? Besides pasturing & tilling for them all our other possessions, do we not pay yearly tribute for our very bodies? How much better it would be to have been sold to masters once & for all than possessing empty titles of freedom, to have to ransom ourselves every year? How much better to have been slain than to go about with a tax on our heads!" --- Boadicea (quoted in Dio Cassius _Roman History_; quoted in Charles Adams 1993 _For Good & Evil_)  

 
 

2012-11-20

2012-11-20
Ted Samson _InfoWorld_/_IDG_
MSFT execs' continuing calls for more cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with questionable ethics continue to draw ire
EPI
"The Economic Policy Institute asserts that MSFT's claims of a U.S. IT labor shortage are disingenuous and self-serving...   Citing figures from the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), MSFT warned that between 2010 and 2020, the U.S. economy will produce more than 120K additional computing jobs [only 12K per year] requiring at least a bachelor's degree -- but the country's higher-education system is currently producing [40K to 70K] bachelor's degrees in computer science each year [a mere 3-6 times as many as they claim they 'neeeeed']...   Daniel Costa picked apart the company's assertion that the country doesn't have enough skilled techies to meet current or future demands.   For starters, Costa argues that college-graduation rates aren't a useful yardstick for measuring the size of the STEM talent pool.   'Less than one-fourth to less than one-half of workers in computing occupations have [or need] a computer science degree.', Costa argues, citing data from sources such as the National Science Foundation (NSF)...   the traditional full employment rate for just computer scientists and engineers -- rather than all U.S. workers across all industries -- traditionally peaks at around 2% [significantly below 2%], based on data from...BLS [between half and one-quarter of recent unemployment rates in STEM fields]."

2012-11-20
Victor Davis Hanson _PJ Media_
leftist tribalism

2012-11-20
Anthony Watts
Is the EPA running black ops?
Investor's Business Daily
more

2012-11-20
Thomas E. Brewton
Obummer's prolonged economic recession

2012-11-20
Anthony Watts
fables and facts about global temperatures

2012-11-20
_KGO San Francisco CA_
nurses striking 10 SF bay area hospitals over staffing levels, shift length, sick leave...

2012-11-20
Andrew C. McCarthy _PJ Media_
Benghazi plot continues to thicken

2012-11-20
Claudia Rosett _PJ Media_
UN slow to stop terrorist attacks on Israel from Palestine/Gaza, quick to try to stop Israeli response

2012-11-20
Bridget Johnson _PJ Media_
US House aims to make effort to stop Obummer admin's efforts to impose unconstitutional restrictions on arms

2012-11-20
Roger L. Simon _PJ Media_
Benghazi, Gaza and CNN's gullibility

2012-11-20
Amy Silverstein _Global Post_
professionals fleeing corrupt Russia
London Telegraph
"Miss Russia has some things to say about her country, and they're not what you might expect.   Natalia Pereverzeva, Russia's contestant for Miss Earth, describes her homeland as 'a beggar'.   'The chosen few people are draining away its wealth...   From it, bleeding, like from a sinking ship, engineers, doctors, teachers are fleeing, because they have nothing to live on.'...   Miss Earf Contestants (L-R) Aisha Valy of Reunion Island, Natalia Pereverzeva of Russia, and Sara Pender of Scotland pose for photographers during a press presentation of the Miss Earth beauty pageant at a hotel in Manila on 2012 November 6."

2012-11-20
_Billings MT Gazette_/_AP_
Decker Coal lay-offs loom as result of Obummer regime's policies

2012-11-20
Mark J. Perry _AEI_
text-book prices

2012-11-20
Mark J. Perry _AEI_
Texas has been top job creator since 2009 June

2012-11-20 (5773 Kislev 06)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
killing the goose
Longview TX News-Journal
Lower Hudson NY Journal News/Gannett
"The old-time legendary labor leader John L. Lewis called so many strikes in the coal mines that many people switched to using oil instead, because they couldn't depend on coal deliveries. A professor of labor economics at the University of Chicago called John L. Lewis 'the world's greatest oil salesman'...   Consumers in the private sector have the option of buying products and services from competing, non-union companies— from Toyota instead of General Motors, for example, even though most Toyotas sold in America are made in America.   Consumers of other products can buy things made in non-union factories over-seas.   But government agencies are monopolies.   You cannot get your [Socialist Insecurity] checks from anywhere except the [Socialist Insecurity Abomination] or your driver's license from anywhere but the DMV."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "After 4 years of self-gov't [Charles Lee, on 1780-04-12] declared that it would be better that America were conquered 'than to endure any longer such an odious tyranny as the capricious arbitrary gov't of an unlimited uncontrollable assembly...   Your favorite Junius says, after Lock [sic], that there cannot be a more fatal doctrine to Liberty establish'd than the omnipotence of Parliament -- & this doctrine is certainly still less dangerous in G. Britain where the Parliament consists of 3 distinct branches than in America where it consists of only 1, for from the constitution of the Senate, (as it is ludicrously calld) they must be made up of the self-same clay -- for God's sake then do not talk of Liberty until you have established the fundamental points, the limitation of the power of the Assembly & the full freedom of the Press." --- J.R. Pole 1966 _Political Representation in England & the Origins of the American Republic_  

 
 

2012-11-21

2012-11-21 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 397,671 in the week ending November 17, a decrease of 80,872 from the previous week.   There were 440,157 initial claims in the comparable week in 2011.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.3% during the week ending November 10, unchanged from the prior week's unrevised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,926,884, a decrease of 36,314 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.7% and the volume was 3,374,259.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending November 3 was 5,241,296, an increase of 244,125 from the previous week.   There were 6,728,664 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2011.   Extended Benefits were only available in New York during the week ending November 3...   States reported 2,156,363 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending November 3, an increase of 60,758 from the prior week.   There were 2,896,640 persons claiming EUC 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;
to 128,066,082 beginning 2012-10-06.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2012-11-21
Bob Barr _Town Hall_
GOP must play hard-ball on Benghazi

2012-11-21
John Ransom _Town Hall_
want more taxes? create a job: how the high-income get abused

2012-11-21
Austin Bay _Town Hall_
border war between India and Red China continues

2012-11-21
Terry Jeffrey _Town Hall_
Obummer: Catholicism is verboten in the USA

2012-11-21
Ed Morrissey _Hot Air_
Al-Qassam Brigade of Hamas bombed bus in Tel Aviv
abc

2012-11-21
Anthony Watts
EPA, e-mail, dogs, transparency, FOIA and all that

2012-11-21
Thomas E. Brewton
Keynesianism keeps us in recession

2012-11-21
John Hechinger _Business Week_
troubling excessively-increasing dean to professor ratio
"At universities nationwide, employment of administrators jumped 60% from 1993 to 2009, 10 times the growth rate for tenured faculty."

2012-11-21
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
A Confederate general's daughter embraced New England

2012-11-21 (5773 Kislev 07)
Steven Emerson _Jewish World Review_
little lives and big lies: Hamas terrorists' propaganda war

2012-11-21 (5773 Kislev 07)
Jane Huston _Health Map_
ebola can spread, air-borne, between pigs and monkeys
Damien Gayle: UK Daily Mail

2012-11-21 (5773 Kislev 07)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
hotels and hassles
Town Hall
Abilene TX Reporter News
"What many hotels seem to have in common are needless hassles.   Since most people who stay in hotels do so while traveling, and stay only a few days in a given hotel, you might think that those who run hotels would want to make it easy for someone who arrives a little tired (or a lot tired) from traveling to use the various devices they find in their hotel room.   But you would be wrong.   That thought never seems to have crossed their minds...   No amount of fancy things makes up for hassles."

2012-11-21 (5773 Kislev 07)
Scott Wise & Greg McQuade _WTVR 6 CBS_
president John Tyler's grand-son, Harrison Ruffin Tyler, preserves presidential legacy & home
"...'John Tyler was born in 1790...'... had 15 children, including [Lyon Tyler] in 1853... [Harrison Ruffin Tyler] in 1928... President Tyler died at the Exchange Hotel in Richmond in 1862 as the Civil War raged..."
Dan Amira: NY Magazine

2012-11-21 (5773 Kislev 07)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
democracy and majority rule vs. liberty
Lew Rockwell
Creators Syndicate
World Net Daily
Town Hall
"Democracy and majority rule give an aura of legitimacy and decency to acts that would otherwise be deemed tyranny.   Most people would agree that having our decisions on what television shows to watch, what kind of car we'll purchase and what we'll eat for Thanksgiving dinner made through the democratic process is tyranny.   Why isn't it also tyranny for the political process to determine decisions such as how much should be put aside out of our paycheck for retirement; whether we purchase health insurance or not; what type of light bulbs we use; or whether we purchase 32- or 16-ounce soda containers?   The founders of our nation held a deep abhorrence for democracy and majority rule.   The word democracy appears in neither of our founding documents: our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.   In Federalist paper #10, James Madison wrote, 'Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.'   John Adams predicted, 'Remember, democracy never lasts long.   It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.   There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.'   Edmund Randolph said, '...that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.'... the founders knew that a democracy would lead to the same kind of tyranny the colonies suffered under king George iii.   Our founders intended for us to have a republican form of limited government where political decision-making is kept to the minimum."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "The nationalists -- or National Whigs as they might better be called -- showed no fear or hesitation about the wholesomeness of the popular will.   They had received & had under-taken to model a gov't based on the consent of the governed.   Though in some form or phrase such consent had long stood as a principle of English constitutional doctrine, it was a distinctively American contribution to insist that consent could no longer rest on legal fiction.   American whiggery required some much more explicit procedure for the implementation of consent." --- J.R. Pole 1966 _Political Representation in England & the Origins of the American Republic_ (discussing debates over the Articles of Confederation)  

 
 

2012-11-22

2012-11-22
Anthony Watts
George Washington's 1789 proclamation of Thanks-Giving
1985 November: Richard J. Maybury: Free Market, reprinted by Ludwig von Mises Institute
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "[T]he bondage of Diocletian's tax system turned tax collectors into slave masters...   tax assessors summoned peasants to the town square, applied torture, & made children give evidence against their parents, wives against their husbands, & servants against their masters" --- Charles Adams 1993 _For Good & Evil_  

 
 

2012-11-23

2012-11-23
R' Dovid Rosenfeld
Pirkei Avos/Pirqi Abot: Facing Life chapter2 mishna15(d)
"The Torah as well as its upholders must be raised aloft and respected...   Great people are sometimes found to be, for lack of a better term, angry individuals.   They have an intensity, a sense of urgency about them.   Life is fleeting and precious; there is so much we must get done and so little time..."

2012-11-23
Anthony Watts & Ed Hoskins
graphical look at CO2 emissions

2012-11-23 (5773 Kislev 09)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
events have shown Ariel Sharon policies were mistaken

2012-11-23 (5773 Kislev 09)
David Lightman _Jewish World Review_
some federal government budget cuts may be easy
"[Unconstitutional] Medicare spending alone consumed 15.4% of the [federal government budget] in fiscal 2012, and its share is expected to grow to 19.3% over the decade.   The system's hospital trust fund, financed largely by taxes on employers and employees, is expected to be depleted by 2024.   But attempts to [allow opt-out,] cut benefits or effect major structural changes have met fierce resistance."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "It would be highly useful to gov'tal espionage to have like reports from all our book stores, all our hardware & retail stores, all our drug stores.   These records too might be 'useful' in criminal investigations...   A mandatory recording of all telephone conversations would be better than the recording of checks under the Bank Secrecy Act, if Big Brother is to have his way." --- William O. Douglas 416 US 21, 845 (1974) (quoted in Charles Adams 1993 _For Good & Evil_)  

 
 

2012-11-24

2012-11-24
Kyung M. Song _Seattle WA Times_
MSFT execs' push for more cheap, young, pliant labor with flexible ethics raises concerns and exposes loop-holes
"Researchers claim that some companies use the visas to bypass older, more expensive American job seekers.   And some economists question contentions by MSFT and other technology firms about a dearth of domestic high-tech talent.   But most troubling to critics is the fact many employers need not prove they are unable to find [able and willing] Americans before turning to foreign hires...   Several hundred Washington employers rely on the visas, many of which hire just one foreigner.   But others, including Amazon, T-Mobile, Expedia and Nordstrom, have dozens of H-1B workers on their pay-rolls.   MSFT is among the nation's heaviest corporate users of H-1B visas, accounting for 10 percent of its U.S. work-force of 57,400.   The company said it applied for an average of 850 visas each year between 2010 and 2011 for new employees on their first H-1B visa."
HillHiker mentioned that employers used to invest in training.   jt323 mentioned MSFT's perma-temp scam.   Jobs4US pointed out that "The only reason MSFT and others can't find American talent [is that] they don't want to.", asks what MSFT is doing to give Americans a fair chance to compete for jobs, and reminds us of "the 5K highly skilled Americans [MSFT] laid off" and asks why MSFT is not calling them back.   vike blue says that the quality of life for IT professionals has deteriorated.   greentugboat points out that MSFT has many resumes from able and willing American workers but that they want cheaper labor.   Swifter points out that the foreign workers "become totally dependent upon the company"... "virtual indentured servants, used to keep down the cost of technical labor".   ianmost asks about on-going litigation regarding age discrimination.   gbujarhead says: "If Karen Jones, Microsoft's deputy general counsel for human resources, expects to retain credibility both for herself and her company, she should refrain from making unbelievable statements."   Deep Sense Of Doom wrote: MSFT "is simply looking for a less entitled workforce"... "they just can't find workers at THEIR price, workers [who] won't tolerate a caning..."   topoplino says "MSFT has an internal goal of letting go 10% of its workforce every year".   Fresh Thoughts asks "does every graduate with a degree in some form of computer science from every Washington college have a job?"   girl power said: "With all the highly qualified, out of work, software scientists all across this country, MSFT and others, should not be allowed to hire cheap labor from over-seas.   MSFT and others use foreign workers to depress the market for, and salaries of, home-grown software engineers.   It is time this travesty was halted." dmrz points out that the MSFT lobbyists' proposal appears to be "bribery and corruption".   greenlake2 says "It's too bad MSFT can't put the same energy it uses to fight for H-1B visas into creating and supporting the training of software engineers right here in America."
Seattle Times biased follow-up
Jobs 4 US pointed out
open secrets
The total of contributions to candidates from MSFT Corp individuals is 2 times larger than contributions from PACs
MSFT
2012 Contributions $4,213,899
Rank: 40 of 20,484
 
LOBBYING
$5,656,000 (2012)
$7,335,000 (2011)
Ranks 49 of 4,219 in 2012
 
REVOLVING DOOR
61 out of 73 MSFT Corp lobbyists in 2012 have previously held government jobs
 
BILL MOST FREQUENTLY LOBBIED ON IN THE 112TH CONGRESS: HR942 [research credits]
 
2012 Political Campaign Contributions
candidates for president
Obummer, Barack (D) Pres $764,059
Romney, Mittens (R) Pres $189,367
Goode, Virgil (C) Pres $0
Johnson, Gary (L) Pres $0
 
DelBene, Suzan (D-WA) House $122,500
Cantwell, Maria (D-WA) Senate $81,082
 
2010 Political Campaign Contributions
Murray, Patty (D-WA) Senate $186,875
DelBene, Suzan (D-WA) House $165,675"
---30---

2012-11-24
Ed Kemmick _Billings MT Gazette_
city code-nazis go nuts over tree-house

2012-11-24
Mark J. Perry _AEI_
ineffective protective shoe tariffs
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "It is better not to use [micro-]computers than kill them by implementing COBOL -- apart from COBOL's being a deadly obsolete language.   Let me digress at this point.   The question is often asked: 'If COBOL is obsolete, then what should we do with the hundreds of thousands of COBOL programmers around the world?'.   That is a good question -- if turned the other way around.   IMO, we need not worry about the COBOL programmers, but we should train them in the new technologies.   As the computer becomes the central nervous system of companies, they should be put in a position to find work in the brain functions rather than in the leg-work of COBOL code.   I know a few ex-COBOL programmers who refused to return to COBOL even on an interim basis." --- Dimitris N. Chorafas 1986 _4th & 5th Generation Programming Languages_ pp 169-170  

 
 

2012-11-25

2012-11-25
Jim Thompson _Chillicothe OH Gazette_
Science, politics and the new segregation
"to abandon real science for the alchemy of popular myths would go against everything for which I stand."
Anthony Watts

2012-11-25
Mark Krikorian _National Review_
Even a stopped clock...
LindyBill: Silicon Investor
Diane Ravitch
Paul Krugman: NYTimes: the fake skills shortage
Adam Davidson: NYTimes: Skills don't pay the bills
"'It's hard not to break out laughing.', says Mark Price, a labor economist at the Keystone Research Center, referring to manufacturers complaining about the shortage of skilled workers.   'If there's a skill shortage, there has to be rises in wages.', he says.   'It's basic economics.'   After all, according to supply and demand, a shortage of workers with valuable skills should push wages up.   Yet according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS], the number of skilled jobs has fallen and so have their wages...   'Trying to hire high-skilled workers at rock-bottom rates', the Boston Group study asserted, 'is not a skills gap.'"
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "The sentiment that I hear from the [tax] practitioners who are out there dealing with it is, we can't figure it out...   we know if we can't figure it out, the IRS can't figure it out any better...   for the 1st time in my life [some practitioners are admitting] I'm signing a return that I have no confidence that I have the right answer, & that is real scary." --- Betty R. Jackson (quoted in Albert V. Crenshaw "A Tax System in Trouble" 1989-04-16 _Washington Post_ page H8 quoted in Charles Adams 1993 _For Good & Evil_)  

 
 

2012-11-26

2012-11-26
Cathy Reeder _Treasure Coast FL Palm_
depressed economy still lowering pet ownership
"According to the American Veterinary Medical Association's newest 5-year survey, ownership of all pets dropped 2.4% from 2006 to 2011.   Among the most popular pets, dog ownership dropped 1.9% and cats, 6.2%.   Bird ownership dropped 20.5% and companion horse ownership, 16.7%."

2012-11-26
_France 24_
India's Arcelor Mittal steel not welcome in France

2012-11-26
William L. Anderson
Krugman channels his inner crank

2012-11-26
David Malpass _Forbes_
The US constitution is being eroded; rules are needed to restrain government abuses
"In 1913 the 16th Amendment gave Congress the immense power to tax income but didn't limit Congress' ability to borrow against this stream of future revenues.   Congress then passed the debt-limit law in 1917 to facilitate debt by ending the cumbersome practice of voting on each debt issue and roll-over."

2012-11-26
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
Seattle WA Times article on MSFT
 
Good job by Kyung Song of the Seattle Times on the recent MSFT proposal to expand the H-1B and green card programs.   Ms. Song has not only produced a balanced piece, but also one that probes more deeply than most.   Interestingly, she has also managed to get MSFT and its allies to make some pretty telling comments, as I'll note below.   And at the time I write this, the article has attracted 260 reader comments.
 
As I mentioned in reviewing the recent EPI article on the MSFT proposal.
 
MSFT simply does not have a good track record in the credibility department.   EPI noted, for example, that MSFT has a 93% acceptance rate in its job offers, certainly not consistent with their claim to have difficulty hiring people.   As WashTech, a Seattle-area tech labor group has pointed out, there have been instances in which MSFT was urging its workers to "Find something to off-shore today!", while telling the press that it off-shores only as a last resort.   WashTech has also exposed a case in which MSFT was claiming it couldn't hire programmers at the same time it was quietly furloughing many of the ones it already had.
 
And as the article points out, MSFT's repeated claims that the foreign workers "make over $100K in starting salary" is flat out wrong, as seen from the government green card data.   Most are making considerably less than that.
 
I have comments on some specific passages in the article:
 
And they urge closer scrutiny for a program that "for all its image as a tool for recruiting the world's best and brightest" requires for entry nothing more than a bachelor's degree. [And, in reality, not even that...jgo]
 
MSFT and the rest of the industry have tried to play this both ways.   OT1H, they try to promote this "best and brightest" image of the foreign workers.   But OTOH, when they lobbied for the establishment of H-1B back in 1990 -- my understanding is that the statute was written for MSFT and similar firms -- they notably removed the best/brightest aspect from the old H-1 category.   The latter had been titled Aliens of Distinguished Merit and Ability, reduced to Workers in Specialty Occupations under the new category, H-1B.
 
IOW, the industry lobbyists gutted the "best/brightest" aspect of the old visa, and thus it is not surprising that most of the foreign workers today are not in the best/brightest league, as I've shown elsewhere, and as the abovementioned green card salary data illustrate.
 
Here is a fine one:
 
A sense of MSFT's foreign hires can be gleaned from an analysis of its fiscal 2011 green-card applications: 25% of them were in jobs classified by the Labor Department as entry level.   Another 61% were one step up at Level II, including marketing managers or software engineers, handling "moderately complex tasks" requiring limited judgment...
 
[MSFT's deputy general counsel for human resources] Jones contends the job labels are "misleading" because the Labor Department's definitions reflect experience, not skill levels.   Someone classified as a legal assistant, the company said, may actually be a lawyer in his or her home country.

 
Aha!   Paying a lawyer the salary of a legal assistant! &bsp; This is a perfect example of the loopholes in H-1B and EB-series green card law.   The legally-required prevailing wage in immigration law is defined by the JOB, not the worker.   Worker has a master's degree but the job only requires a bachelor's?   No problem (from the point of view of the employer, who wants to pay the foreign worker less than he/she is worth)!   The statute sets the prevailing wage for such a position at the bachelor's level.   So the employer gets a master's degree worker for the price of one holding only a bachelor's, or in this case MSFT gets a lawyer for the price of a legal assistant.   (Yes, granted, it's a foreign-trained lawyer, but definitely worth more than a legal assistant.)
 
Here's another very telling statement, this one by a researcher who has supported the H-1B program:
 
Jacob Kirkegaard, research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC, said companies like MSFT resort to foreign workers because it's expensive to leave jobs unfilled and have projects delayed when 'qualified' [wink wink nudge nudge] Americans can't be had.   H-1B visas, he said, are an expedient way to pick from an international crop of top graduates.
 
"They want people with the newest skills.", Kirkegaard said.   "If you came out of software development 8 years ago, by definition you would know nothing about how to write programming for an iPhone app [because, obviously, US software developers couldn't possibly be literate]."
 
Ah, so the life-span of a software engineer is only 8 years?   I've often pointed out that employers use H-1B to avoid hiring Americans over age 35 (the article notes most H-1Bs are under 34), but to hear Kirkegaard tell it, I should revise that downward to 30.
 
Once again, the skills issue is a red herring.   I've explained this before, pointing out for instance the cases of major U.S. firms replacing their American tech workers with foreign ones -- and forcing the Americans to train their foreign replacements.   Seems the Americans there are the ones with the special skills, not the foreigners.
 
But Kirkegaard's comment makes it even easier to illustrate why that "special skills" claim is so absurd.   Does Kirkegaard really believe that universities revise their computer science curricula every 8 years?
 
The article does contain one clunker, sad to say:
 
Nonetheless, even critics like Hira say the influx of educated foreigners can only benefit the U.S. economy.   Studies have shown that as a group, H-1B workers are exceptionally entrepreneurial and inventive, accounting for disproportionate share of patents and start-up firms.
 
The statement is false.   The per-capita patenting rate is lower than the Americans' for foreign workers of equal background.   The entrepreneurial issue is murky, unresolved to date.
 
Norm
Kyung M. Song: Seattle WA Times: MSFT push for worker visas raises concerns, exposes loop-holes

2012-11-26 (5773 Kislev 12)
Jonathan Tobin _Jewish World Review_
Obummer and Morsi: would-be dictators

2012-11-26 (5773 Kislev 12)
Jamie Harrison _Black Enterprise_
more attractive people are paid more
"According to another survey by Elle and [MSLSD], 58% of attractive female bosses got high ratings for being successful at their jobs, while only 23% of unattractive females got the same rating. 61% of attractive male bosses got high ratings for being efficient at their jobs, 41% for average-looking males and then 25% for those classified as unattractive."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "Instead of the political idea that all individuals & groups should be treated equally under the law, multiculturalism asserts the normative idea that all cultures are in fact equal.   No moral differences are allowed, for to suggest that one culture is better, more virtuous, & more excellent, & others are worse -- why, this would be 'undemocratic'.   To suggest that some cultures, values, beliefs, or ideals are more true, more healthy, or more humane -- this would be 'ethnocentric' & 'intolerant'." --- James Davison Hunter & Carl Bowman 1994 _Before the Shooting Begins_  

 
 

2012-11-27

2012-11-27
Tom Tancredo _Washington DC Times_
immigration reform requires securing borders
Heather Wilson: Merit should determine who comes and stays

2012-11-27
Patrick Thibodeau _InfoWorld_/_IDG_
House set to vote again on proposals to increase already orders of magnitude excessive STEM visas
ComputerWorld
John Shinal: MarketWatch
page2
"Lamar Smith (R-TX), the bill sponsor and head of the judiciary committee... The [new] bill allows unused STEM green cards made available in fiscal year 2013, which began Oct. 1, through 2016, to be rolled over in future years."

2012-11-27
Rosalind S. Helderman _Washington DC Post_
GOP senators propose new version of NIGHTMARE act
GOP senators propose immigration law perversion... again
David North: CIS: urgently needed amendment: proper background investigation or at least USCIS interviews of applicants

2012-11-27
Walter Starck
speak loudly and carry a broken hockey stick

2012-11-27
Matt Dixon _Jacksonville FL Times-Union_
Florida consumer confidence down
Jeff Harrington: Tampa Bay FL Times
Elvina Nawaguna: Lakeland FL Ledger
WTVY Dothan AL
"Survey research director Chris McCarty...   Overall, Florida's consumer confidence index dropped from a revised 80 in October to 76 in November on scale from 2 to 150.   The index is bench-marked at 100 points in 1966."

2012-11-27
Steve Goldstein _MarketWatch_
Conference Board: Consumer Confidence up
"Those claiming jobs are 'plentiful' increased from 10.4% to 11.2%, while those claiming jobs are 'hard to get' [fell from 39.4% to] 38.8%."

2012-11-27
Anthony Watts & Roger Pielke ii
still no evidence of increasing hurricane intensity

2012-11-27
David P. Goldman _PJ Media_
German experts say Iran close to having plutonium bomb

2012-11-27
_Breitbart_/_Agence France Presse_
Obummer regime sued for allowing unconstitutional aid to Palestinians to be diverted to terrorists
Jordan Times
Canada Free Press/Yahoo!/AFP
Tzvi ben Gedalyahu: Arutz Sheva Israel National News

2012-11-27
_Africa Review_/_Agence France Presse_
Dozens of jihadists arrived in Timbuktu, Mali to support al-Qaeda terrorists
Jihad Watch
France 24
Areeb Hasni: News Tribe
Breitbart

2012-11-27
Tom de Weese _World Net Daily_
private property ownership is the only way to eradicate poverty

2012-11-27
Robert Winnett _London Telegraph_
two-thirds of Britain's millionaires have fled excessive taxes there: revenues down about $11M

2012-11-27
_Soufan Group_
Hezbollah's growing presence in Mexico

2012-11-27
Sarah McBride _Reuters_
Age discrimination is one of Sili Valley's dirty secrets
Slash Dot

"before heading into his next interview, he shaved off his gray hair and traded in his loafers for a pair of Converse sneakers.   The board hired him.   'I don't think I would have been able to get this CEO job if I hadn't shaved my head.', says Adams, who has founded 8 venture-backed companies.   He is now chairman of the company that hired him, mobile conference-call service Socialdial, and is fund-raising for a new business.   Adams has supplemented his make-over by trading in his button-down shirts for T-shirts, making sure he owns the latest gadgets, and getting an eyelid lift."

2012-11-27 (5773 Kislev 13)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
when academics seek truth and not merely fame
Town Hall
St. Augustine FL
"What is so unusual in the academic world of today is that professor Flynn's latest book, _Are We Getting Smarter?_ is dedicated to Arthur Jensen, whose integrity he praises, even as he opposes his conclusions.   That is what scholarship and science are supposed to be like, but so seldom are...   [Arthur R. Jensen] argued for educational reforms, saying that "scholastic performance -- the acquisition of the basic skills -- can be boosted much more, at least in the early years, than can the IQ' and that, among 'the disadvantaged', there are 'high school students who have failed to learn basic skills which they could easily have learned many years earlier' if taught in different ways."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "[T]he real question is, how do we *improve* our standard of living? There is only one proven way, & that is by raising the amount of capital invested per worker.   Economic progress is achieved when business increases its profits by providing customers with better products at cheaper prices.   That requires a direct investment in capital.   Those who post-pone consumption now & invest their savings productively will be rewarded with higher consumption later." --- Mark Skousen "The Mother of All Myths" 1994 May _The Freeman_ pg 264  

 
 

2012-11-28

2012-11-28
Rand Simberg _PJ Media_
politicians' war against science
"I would prefer politicians who are conversant with science and its methods to those not, but even more I prefer politicians who are conversant with basic math, economics, and human nature, and have an aversion to wrecking the nation's economy."

2012-11-28
Jack Dunphy _PJ Media_
Los Angeles police & sheriff's office allowing internal corruption to continue

2012-11-28
Mike McNally _PJ Media_
UK leftists remove foster children from home of people who favor sane immigration policies
"The couple appear to have unimpeachable credentials as foster parents.   The husband works with disabled people and was a Royal Navy reservist for more than 30 years.   His wife is a qualified nursery nurse.   They've successfully fostered around a dozen children over a period of several years...   While the council's decision to remove the children is a chilling assault on freedom of thought and political belief, it's also dreadful policy in practical terms.   Britain is facing an adoption crisis.   In 2010, just over 3K children were adopted, out of more than 65K in the care system, with the rest shunted between foster parents or languishing in [orphanages].   The head of a leading children's charity has warned that under the draconian rules imposed by social services departments, most parents wouldn't be allowed to adopt their own children."

2012-11-28
Guy Benson _Town Hall_
Obummer and corrupt leftist senators move to muzzle debate

2012-11-28
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
"Fast and Furious" perps have yet to be penalized

2012-11-28
Michelle Malkin _Town Hall_
Obummer: killing owls, jobs, prosperity and liberty

2012-11-28
Bob Barr _Town Hall_
oath-breaking and other corrupt politics

2012-11-28
Thomas E. Brewton
Leftist Obummer ship of state speeding toward ice-bergs: investment falls

2012-11-28
David Middleton
Atlantic magazine's 5 charts about climate that should have you extremely worried about scientific illiteracy

2012-11-28
William L. Anderson
Britain and post-war France

2012-11-28
Rodrique Ngowi _San Jose CA Mercury News_/_AP_
Obummer regime pushing investors to divert backing from US citizen STEM workers to cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with questionable ethics

2012-11-28
Eric Golub _Washington DC Times_
pres. Obummer's unbalanced approach of all extortion increases and zero over-spending cuts

2012-11-28
Walter E. Williams _Town Hall_
irreconcilable differences between Americans who want to control the lives of others and those who wish to be left alone
World Net Daily
Jewish World Review
"Which is the more peaceful solution: Americans using the brute force of government to beat [and rob] liberty-minded people into submission or simply parting company?"

2012-11-28 (5773 Kislev 14)
Jonathan Rosemblum _Jewish World Review_
reality vs. political positioning

2012-11-28 (5773 Kislev 14)
Paul Greenberg _Jewish World Review_
the land of pharoahs: nostalgia for previous tyranny
"Even now the revolution that overthrew Egypt's last pharaoh is being reversed by its new one.   Across the Middle East, the bright Arab spring turns to the usual winter of stunted hopes.   This familiar process isn't confined to our own time, or just the Middle East.   It may be the natural course of modern revolutions, which still follow the pattern set by the French one, and make the American Revolution the great exception to a dismal rule -- a revolution that somehow brought liberty and order, thanks to a founding generation unmatched by revolutionaries elsewhere.   Washington, Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison... where else do you find their counterparts?   And our ever with-it intellectuals say America isn't exceptional.   Tell it to the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the tempest-tossed to whom the word for hope is still America...   the new commissars and reichsministers may be crueler than the old czars and nobles."

2012-11-28 (5773 Kislev 14)
Sharon Palmer _Jewish World Review_
Beware of "organic" junk food

2012-11-28 (5773 Kislev 14)
Sheera Frenkel _Jewish World Review_
UN envoys pandering to Hamas terrorists

2012-11-28 (5773 Kislev 14)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
_Who's The Fairest of Them All?_: a book that could have booted Obama from office should not be ignored
Fayette GA Citizen
Town Hall
"this little gem of a book exposes, in plain language and with easily understood facts, the whole house of cards of assumptions, fallacies and falsehoods which constitute the [leftist] vision of the economy...   under both Republican president Calvin Coolidge and Democratic president John F. Kennedy, high-income people paid more tax revenues into the federal treasury after tax rates went down than they did before."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "Suppose that there was no 3rd term tradition in our gov't, & none of the valid reasons (as I regard them) against a 3rd term; it would yet be true that in 1908 it would be better to have some man like [William Howard Taft] or [Elihu Root] succeed me in the Presidency, at the head of the Republican party, than to have me succeed myself.   In all essentials of policy they look upon things as I do; but they have their own ways of thought & ways of expression, & what they did & said would have a freshness which what I did & said could not possibly have; & they would be free from the animosities & suspicions which I had accumulated, & would be able to make a new start & would have a much greater chance of achieving useful work.   After 8 years in the Presidency, not only is it unwise for other reasons to re-elect a man, but it is inadvisable because it is almost certain that some one can be found with the same principles, who, from the mere fact that he is some one else, can better succeed in putting those principles into practice." --- Theodore Roosevelt to George Otto Trevelyan 1904-11-24 (quoted in Stephen Skowronek 1993 _The Politics Presidents Make_ pg 253)  

 
 

2012-11-29

2012-11-29 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 357,015 in the week ending November 24, a decrease of 46,541 from the previous week.   There were 372,640 initial claims in the comparable week in 2011.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.2% during the week ending November 17, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week's unrevised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,820,064, a decrease of 124,308 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.5% and the volume was 3,167,053.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending November 10 was 5,182,815, a decrease of 58,623 from the previous week.   There were 7,004,413 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2011.   Extended Benefits were only available in New York during the week ending November 10...   States reported 2,119,054 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending November 10, a decrease of 37,451 from the prior week.   There were 2,972,894 persons claiming EUC 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;
to 128,066,082 beginning 2012-10-06.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2012-11-29
Paul Chesser
"green energy" porkulus bankruptcies come in all sizes

2012-11-29
William L. Anderson
Are the Austrians or the Keynesians wrong?

2012-11-29
Mark J. Perry _AEI_
Bodyshopping has returned to pre-recession levels: devastation continues

2012-11-29
Mark J. Perry _AEI_
2 videos on federal government fiscal cliff-diving

2012-11-29
Mark J. Perry _AEI_
Obummer admin attacks Intrade

2012-11-29
Anne d'Innocenzio _San Jose CA Mercury News_/_AP_
retailers disappointed in November sales increases
"18 retailers on Thursday reported that November sales at stores open at least a year -- an indicator of a retailer's health -- through last Saturday were up 1.7% compared with the year-ago period..."

2012-11-29
Richard Lardner _San Jose CA Mercury News_/_AP_
electronic communication privacy legislation cleared US senate committee
"would require police to obtain a search warrant from a judge before they can review a person's e-mail messages or other electronic communications"

2012-11-29
_Cumberland PA Sentinel_/_AP_
wild coyotes milling about just outside Wrigley Field in Chicago

2012-11-29
Dan Nakaso & Leigh Poitinger _San Jose CA Mercury News_/_Contra Costa Times_
workers of Asian descent dominate Sili Valley tech
Denver CO Post
"Asian-Americans make up half of the Bay Area's technology work-force, and their double-digit employment gains came from jobs lost among white tech workers, according to an analysis by this newspaper of Census Bureau data released Thursday...   Jan English-Lueck, associate dean of the college of social sciences at San Jose State University, who is also co-founder of the Silicon Valley Cultures Project.   'Other people are being displaced.'...   Tech [executives] 'do not want to employ Americans.   They import labor from over-seas, pushing for H-1B visas.   Check the job boards.   They basically say, ''H-1B Visa.   Americans need not apply.''   For years, women, blacks and Latinos have been kept out of the tech job market.   [For the last 2 decades] white men [have been] forced to train their replacements.'   Lewis has organized protests against tech companies, demanding more transparency into their work forces...   The tech employment picture...does reflect the young and growing number of Asian-Americans 'who were raised with a very strong STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) background' and are going into high tech.   Asian-American software developers, in particular, saw huge gains all around the Bay Area: from nearly 45% of those workers in 2000 to more than 53% in Alameda county; and from nearly 50% to nearly 60% in both San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, the center of Silicon Valley.   Ryan Shelby, a 28-year-old African-American doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley...grew up on a farm in Letohatchee, AL [just off of I-65, 10 to 15 miles SW of Montgomery], where his love for engineering started by working on his father's tractor...   While 34% of African-American and Hispanic students start out in engineering across the country, only 13% leave with degrees, he said."

2012-11-29
Anthony Watts
Current scientific knowledge does not substantiate Ban Ki-Moon assertions on weather and climate, say 125 scientists

2012-11-29
Marco Rubio _CNN_
we still need answers to our questions about the 2012-09-11 terrorist attacks on the US consulate at Benghazi

2012-11-29
Thomas E. Brewton
Leftist policies speeding economic disaster

2012-11-29
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
Ill-Begotten Monstrosities on track to employ more in India than USA
Slash Dot
"Tata Consultancy Services. It employs about quarter of a million people, with about 90% of their work-force counted as Indian."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "In a few days the Congress will stand at the fork of 2 roads.   One road is all too familiar to us.   It leads ultimately to higher taxes.   It merely brings us back full circle to the source of our economic problems, where the gov't decides that it knows better than you what should be done with your earnings &, in fact, how you should conduct your life.   The other road promises to renew the American spirit.   It's a road of hope & opportunity.   It places the direction of your life back in your hands where it belongs." --- Ronald Reagan 1981-07-27 "Federal Tax Reduction" (quoted in Stephen Skowronek 1993 _The Politics Presidents Make_ pg 421)  

 
 

2012-11-30

2012-11-30
Denise Dick _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
ObummerDoesn'tCare prompts university to cap hours for part-time faculty
Note: Both the idiotorial board and the U seem to be Obummer fan-boys...jgo

2012-11-30
Anthony Watts
US tornado count well below historical norm in 2012

2012-11-30
Lisa Lambert _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_/_Reuters_
Brookings: Only 3 major US cities are showing any signs of economic recovery: Knoxville, Dallas & Pittsburgh

2012-11-30
Lou Dobbs _Fox_
KS secretary of state Kris Kobach says "Achieve Act" is a disaster

2012-11-30
Roy Beck _Numbers USA_
activists for reform blasted by Luis Gutierrez on House floor for supporting reforms once proposed by Barbara Jordan
"the U.S. House overwhelmingly voted 245-139 to kill the Visa Lottery in the multi-issue HR6429 bill which now goes to the Senate [again]...   we take great pride in having open-borders leaders make it clear to the nation that NumbersUSA indeed is working to reduce the number of foreign workers brought in to compete with jobless Americans...   The White House...wants next year to exchange STEM visas for a full-scale amnesty...   Jordan called for the end of the lottery (among other things) and for REDUCTIONS that might cut the annual new foreign worker competition in half...   [Leftist Democrats tried to change] the bill so it increased STEM visas but no longer eliminated the lottery.   That attempt failed 157 to 231."

2012-11-30
Devvy Kidd _News with Views_
censorship of web sites is worsening
"The destroyers, or Masters of the Game as I sometimes describe them, have been trying for years to take the information super highway away from we the people.   The Internet and First Amendment has been our cannon for getting out the documented truth about the treachery and treason underway to integrate these united States of America into a region of world government."

2012-11-30
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
media down-playing very high immigrant birth rates
"In 2010, births per 1K women ages 15 to 44 (the standard measure) were: Foreign-born women: 87.8; USA-born women: 58.9.   The birth rate for immigrant women is almost half again as high as it is for USA-born women."

2012-11-30
Eric Peters _American Spectator_
American Suzuki declared bankruptcy, shutting down US car dealerships

2012-11-30
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld Australia_/_IDG_
corrupt US House approved bill to hand out 55K more STEM green cards: nearly 2M US citizen STEM workers remain unemployed or involuntarily out of field
"The Republican-sponsored bill, the STEM Jobs Act (HR6429), was approved by 245-139 votes.   This bill, authored by U.S. 'representative' Lamar Smith (R-TX), creates up to 55K STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) visas annually for advanced degree foreign graduates of U.S. universities.   The White House likes the idea of STEM visas, but it wants the legislation to be part of a comprehensive immigration [law perversion] bill."

2012-11-30
R' Berel Wein _Torah.org_
We Are All the Children of Yaakov/Jaaqeb

2012-11-30 (5773 Kislev 17)
Jonathan Tobin _Jewish World Review_
What Philistines' UN move is about
"the real obstacle to a two-state solution: the inability of the PA to ever sign an accord that will accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state alongside a Palestinian state no matter where its borders are drawn."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

  "Even if one believes that governments are little better than large bands of thieves...it is in most cases incomparably better to live with 1 settled group of thieves than to run for one's life from even more violent & predatory bandits who clash & loot under anarchy.   At least when governments become the main custodians of violence at a large scale, they have some incentive to let citizens prosper, if only so they can collect more taxes.   The roving bandits & looters who compete under anarchy lack even these weak incentives to moderation." --- James Dale Davidson & William Rees-Mogg 1994 _The Great Reckoning_ pp 93-94 (referencing Richard B. McKenzie 1984 _Constitutional Economics_ & Mancur Olson _Anarchy, Autocracy, & Democracy_)  

 
 

2012 November
Abigail Tucker _Smithsonian_
"attractive" people are happier, better paid
"A handsome man is poised to make 13% more during his career than a 'looks-challenged' peer...   Homely quarterbacks earn 12% less than their easy-on-the-eyes rivals.   'Hot' economics professors -- designated by the number of chili peppers awarded on Ratemyprofes-sors.com -- earn 6% more than members of their departments who fail to garner accolades along these lines.   Hamermesh argues that there's not much we can do to improve our pulchritude.   There are even studies suggesting that for every dollar spent on cosmetic products, only 4 cents returns as salary..."
 
 

  "A Japanese population half that of the US has created half again more wealth than Americans.   The Japanese have done it by being better educated, harder working, more efficient, less violent, cleaner, & more polite than the inhabitants of other industrial countries." --- James Dale Davidson & William Rees-Mogg 1994 _The Great Reckoning_ pg 166  

 
 



 
Proposed Bills 2012


Congressional candidate fund-raising, expenditures, and debt
 

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

  "The new class is the electronic class, whose work is individualistic, often incentive rewarded, personal rather than impersonal, & related to communicatiosn that span the world.   It is a far, far better way of life." --- James Dale Davidson & William Rees-Mogg 1994 _The Great Reckoning_ pg 190  

Movies Coming Soon
 

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