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updated: 2016-09-16
 

"In Israel, much of the adult population are army reservists in combat units, & many of them also carry small arms, further increasing the difficulty of executing a successful terror attack.   Such measures have the advantage that they are relatively unobtrusive, having next to no consequences for the civil liberties of the citizens, who are merely better prepared for an attack that may come." --- Binyamin Netanyahu 1995 _Fighting Terrorism_ pp 27-28

 
 

2012 December

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2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31

 

"It's better to keep your mouth shut & appear stupid than to open it & remove all doubt." --- Samuel Langhorne Clemens (quoted in Richard Lederer 1991 _The Miracle of Language_ pg 127)

 
 
 

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Montag	Dienstag	Mittwoch	Donnerstag	Freitag	Samstag	Sonntag
Lunedi	Martedi	Mercoledi	Giovedi	Venerdi	Sabato	Domenica
Latest

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

2012-12-01

2012-12-01
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
Civil War web logging... content or controversy?

2012-12-01
Mike Cassidy _San Jose CA Mercury News_
Vint Cerf worries about UN moves to control Internet

2012-12-01
Christopher Monckton
18 annual warmist conspiracies: 16 years without warming

2012-12-01
Ben Lurkin _Free Republic_
Chino Hills residents protest against anchor-baby tourism operation "Asian maternity mansion"
London Daily Mail
Christian Post
CBS Sacramento CA
Jim Steinberg: Inland Valley CA Daily Bulletin
Jim Steinberg: San Bernardino CA Sun
LA Bayou Buzz
Tashi Singh: Post Chronicle
KMAS Mason county WA
Chino Hills CA Champion
Cindy Chang: Los Angeles CA Times
"One local Chinese phone book has five pages of listings for birthing centers, where women from China and Taiwan stay for a month or so before going home with their U.S.-citizen babies."

2012-12-01
Maya M. Noronha _PJ Media_
Leftist thugs vs. St. Nicholas's Aristotelian generosity
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-12-02

2012-12-02
Anthony Watts
Red China sets record for CO₂ emissions: 9G tons

2012-12-02
George Leef _PJ Media_
roots of our economic trouble

2012-12-02
Jessica Boling _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
After decades of development, and 5 years after receiving patent, engineer turns golf club into a business

2012-12-02
_Detroit MI Free Press_/_USA Today_/_Gannett_
Many unemployed in USA never collect unemployment insurance benefits
"of the roughly 11.4M who were laid off and eligible to collect that year, only about 5.7M filed claims...   From 1988 to 2011, an average 37% of those eligible passed on the benefits."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-12-03

2012-12-03
Paul Driessen
Doha, EPA, congress, UN quadruple threat to life, liberty, privacy, and prosperity

2012-12-03
Robert Brown
On certainty: truth is the daughter of time

2012-12-03
_Slash Dot_
Just say "no" to college

2012-12-03
Bob Tisdale
El Niño-Southern Oscillation Myth 1: El Niño and La Niña Events are Cyclical

2012-12-03
Brian Murphy _San Jose CA Mercury News_/_AP_
Argument over UN control of Internet rages in Dubai

2012-12-03
Chipp Knappenberger
"carbon tax" is play for power, ineffectual WRT climate

2012-12-03
Bridget Johnson _PJ Media_
corrupt leftist senate due to ratify rights-violating UN treaty on the disabilities
"'The UNCRPD should be of great concern for conservatives.', senator Mike Lee (R-UT) told PJM today.   'From American sovereignty, to parental rights, to the lives of the un-born, it could lead to limiting our individual freedoms and expanding the role of government in our lives.'...   the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which will consist of a maximum 18 'experts'.   Countries will answer to the committee on everything from statistics collection to national implementation and monitoring.   One article in the treaty states that 'children with disabilities shall be registered immediately after birth'.   Other articles stipulate that the 'best interests of the child' as determined by the state should be a primary consideration in all matters concerning the disabled...   At a press conference with HSLDA last week, former senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) called it 'a direct assault on us and our family to hand over to the state the ability to make medical determinations and see what is in the best interest of the child'...   Since the 1970s alone, the senate has approved treaties during lame-duck sessions a total of 19 times!"

2012-12-03
"may" _Lubbock TX Avalanche-Journal_
It is time to cut taxes
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-12-04

2012-12-04
Victor Davis Hanson _PJ Media_
Confessions of a confused misfit in a world of multi-cultural tribalism

2012-12-04
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
a little "sensory history" at Harper's Ferry confectionery shop

2012-12-04
Paul Driessen
Doha delegates pwned by climate hysterics

2012-12-04
Anthony Watts
California craziness explained: mercury in coastal fog from deep ocean up-welling

2012-12-04
Patrick J. Buchanan _Town Hall_
Obummer remains a devoted extreme leftist disciple of Saul Alinsky
World Net Daily
Human Events (great photo)
canonical

2012-12-04
Pamela Geller _World Net Daily_
latest acquiescence to Muslim violence in the USA

2012-12-04
Claudia Rosett _PJ Media_
UN still striving to take over Internet

2012-12-04
_Investor's Business Daily_
pres. Obummer admits economy stinks

2012-12-04
"may" _Lubbock TX Avalanche-Journal_
The American people voted for lower taxes and a smaller government

2012-12-04 (5773 Kislev 20)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
fiscal cliff notes part 1
Redding CA
PeachTree GA Citizen
Longview TX News Journal
Union Leader
Town Hall
"Debasing the value of money by creating more of it is nothing new or esoteric.   Irresponsible governments have done this, not just for centuries, but for thousands of years.   It is a way to take people's wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes.   Inflation is the most universal tax of all."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-12-05

2012-12-05
Anthony Watts & Mark Schwartz
does geo-thermal energy harvesting fracking face same regulations as oil and gas fracking?

2012-12-05
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
clarifying America's private arms culture
"Founding Fathers like George Washington understood that an armed citizenry would prevent government tyranny, which is why we have the Second Amendment.   This is a concept rapper Ice-T understands but sadly doesn't promote in his songs.   'It's legal in the United States, it's part of our constitution.   You know, that's the last defense against tyranny.', Ice-T said in a local television interview last summer.   Each year, more than 75K National Rifle Association members meet for the NRA Annual Meetings.   The majority of those people carry concealed and every year, everyone who attends that meeting goes home bullet wound-free."

2012-12-05
Michelle Malkin _Town Hall_
Xmas for Obummer bundlers: CronyLeftMas

2012-12-05
Bob Barr _Town Hall_
UN readying attack on Internet
"The 'open Internet' -- reflecting standards and protocols set by the non-governmental Internet Society -- truly is 'open'; and it is from this openness and independence from government that it derives its great power.   Make the Internet subject to control by government, either directly or indirectly through meddling international bureaucracies, and it will quickly lose its magic and its inherent power to inform.   Yet this is exactly what ITU members such as [Red China], Russia, Syria, North Korea and Saudi Arabia are attempting to accomplish in Dubai.   They must not be allowed to succeed."

2012-12-05
_World Net Daily_/_AP_
federal appeals court considering whether president Barack Obama violated the Constitution by making "recess appointments" when congress was not in recess

2012-12-05
_Chicago IL Tribune_/_Reuters_
CitiGroup to dump 11K, move more operations off-shore, pay dumped CEO Vikram Pandit $15M

2012-12-05
_Fox_
Citi adds more lay-offs on top of 11K already announced

2012-12-05
Criag Rucker
UN FCCC boss Christiana Figueres' dreams are a nightmare for the world

2012-12-05
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
If tech is so important, and talent supposedly in demand, why are IT wages flat?
IDG Norway
IT World
"'IT salaries have not really kept pace with inflation.', said Victor Janulaitis, the CEO of Janco Associates, which reports on IT wage compensation.   In 2000, the average hourly wage was $37.27 in computer and math occupations for workers with at least a bachelor's degree.   In 2011, it was $39.24, adjusted for inflation, according to a new report by the Economic Policy Institute...   Costa wrote that 'there are too many educated, experienced STEM workers who are trying to find a job; there is not a shortage of them'."
dice discussion
dice tech nation discussions
dice "tech talk"

2012-12-05
Paul Basken _Chronicle of Higher Education_
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program going international
"Over the past 60 years, the National Science Foundation's [unconstitutional] Graduate Research Fellowship Program has helped finance thousands of doctoral careers, [but only] 40 Nobel laureates.   Through it, top-ranked students get 3 years of tuition, salary, and some travel expenses...   some fellows will be offered a fourth year working at a university lab over-seas, with the costs covered by the host nation...   director of the National Science Foundation, Subra Suresh...   The grants now cost [tax-victims] well in excess of $100K apiece, and about 2K students are selected each year -- fewer than a fifth of those who apply.   The NSF doubled the number of recipients about two years ago, around the time Congress was still promising to double the NSF's budget over about 10 years.   Congress has backed away from that pledge..."

2012-12-05 (5773 Kislev 21)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
fiscal cliff notes part 2
Union Leader
San Angelo TX Standard-Times
Town Hall
"The official statistics which show plainly how wrong Barack Obama is can be found in his own 'Economic Report of the President' for 2012, on page 411.   You can look it up.   You may be able to find a copy of the 'Economic Report of the President' for 2012 at your local public library [though the 'Federal Document Depository Libraries have been made harder to get into over the last several years]...   What both the statistical tables in the 'Economic Report of the President' and the graphs in Investor's Business Daily show is that (1) tax revenues went up -- not down -- after tax rates were cut during the Bush [Shrub] administration, and (2) the budget deficit declined, year after year, after the cut in tax rates that have been blamed by Obama for increasing the deficit.   Indeed, the New York Times reported in 2006: 'An unexpectedly steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is driving down the projected budget deficit this year.'"
index of Thomas Sowell columns
Jewish World Review home page

2012-12-05 (5773 Kislev 21)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
future generations
Town Hall
"Businesses, as well as most non-profit enterprises, by law are required to produce financial statements that include all of their present and expected future liabilities.   On top of that, they are required to hold reserves against future liabilities such as employee retirement.   By contrast, the federal government gets by without having to provide transparent and honest financial statements.   The U.S. Treasury's 'balance sheet' does list liabilities such as public debt, but it does not include the massive unfunded liabilities of [Socialist Insecurity], Medicare and other federal future obligations.   A conservative estimate of Washington's unfunded liabilities for the year ending in 2011 is $87T...   Washington would have to collect $8T in tax revenue, not to pay off our national debt and have reserves against unfunded liabilities, but just to avoid accumulating more debt.   Recent IRS data show that individuals earning $66K and more a year have a total adjusted gross income of $5.1T.   In 2011, corporate profit came to $1.6T.   That means if Congress simply confiscated the entire earnings of [tax-victims] earning more than $66K and all corporate profits, it wouldn't be enough to cover the $8T per year growth of U.S. [government] liabilities."
index of Walter E. Williams columns
Jewish World Review home page
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-12-06

2012-12-06 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 498,619 in the week ending December 1, an increase of 139,678 from the previous week.   There were 528,793 initial claims in the comparable week in 2011.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.6% during the week ending November 24, an increase of 0.4 percentage point from the prior week's unrevised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 3,301,200, an increase of 465,529 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.9% and the volume was 3,696,154.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending November 17 was 4,959,240, a decrease of 224,722 from the previous week.   There were 6,575,150 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 17...   States reported 2,008,608 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending November 17, a decrease of 110,446 from the prior week.   There were 2,794,284 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

2012-12-06
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
Jackson's gone

2012-12-06
Eric Golub _Washington DC Times_
the secret weapon to avoid the fiscal cliff

2012-12-06
Eric Golub _Washington DC Times_
What the attack on Pearl Harbor and Hanukkah teach us about Syria and Iran

2012-12-06
Francine Knowles _Chicago IL Sun-Times_
planned job cuts spiked in November
"[Illinois] Employers announced 4,645 planned job cuts last month, up from 1,191 in October and up from 1,440 in 2011 November...   Through November, job cut announcements by Illinois employers are 21% ahead of the same period last year, running counter to what has happened nationally, where the number has fallen 13% to 490,806.   But in November, job cut announcements by U.S. employers increased for the third straight month...   Job cut announcements jumped 34% from 2011 November, the Challenger, Gray & Christmas report revealed."
NASDAQ
"U.S.A.-based employers in November said they planned to cut 57,081 jobs, an increase of 34% from a year earlier...   Citigroup announced 11K job cuts yesterday."
Hispanic Business
"October, when there were 47,724 lay-offs announced...   Through the first 11 months of the year, U.S. firms have announced 490,806 job cuts, 13% below the pace set in 2011, when 564,297 lay-offs were announced through November.   The food industry topped the list in November with 19,709 cuts announced, the lion's share coming from the announced liquidation of Hostess Brands, which takes with it 18,500 jobs.   This was followed by the computer sector, which included 3,313 lay-offs announced in November."
Fox
"Employers announced 57,081 job cuts last month, the highest level since May and up nearly 20% from 47,724 in October..."
MarketWatch
CBS Chicago IL
CNBC/Reuters
Business Insider

2012-12-06
John W. Schoen _CNBC_
employers to blame for alleged "skills gap"
"we have a very, very difficult time finding 'qualified' [wink wink nudge nudge] people...   If you can't find what you're looking for, try harder.   And if that doesn't work, you may have to cough up the money to train the best new hires you can find.   'We've been able to find the types of people that we want as long we are willing to invest in them...'...   Peter Cappelli, a management professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School who heads the school's Center for Human Resources... 'We've got, by far, the least apprenticeship training per capita than any other industrialized country.'...   The laws of economics suggest that if something is in short supply, prices should rise until demand is satisfied.   If a computer programmer can earn $50 an hour working for a software company, she has little incentive to accept a $25 an hour job programming a manufacturing robot.   But Krings says she just can't afford to pay the salaries that the best applicants are asking...   Like Krings, most employers apparently are unwilling or unable to pay higher wages to compete for better skills."
dice discussion

2012-12-06
_Los Angeles CA Times_
corrupt Los Angeles county sheriff Lee Baca refuses to detain illegal aliens who commit additional crimes

2012-12-06
Shikhar Balwani _Bloomberg_
Manmohan Singh has support for measure to open retail sales to non-Indian firms
"The retail policy change, which will enable over-seas retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) to own as much as 51% of stores selling more than a single brand in India, didn't require parliamentary approval to become law.   Still, Singh's government agreed to a vote to end protests that were stalling legislative business."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-12-07

2012-12-07
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
Saving work... something most of us will regret not doing... maybe

2012-12-07
Christopher Monckton
smashing the UN wall of silence
"There they all were, earnestly out-bidding each other to demand that the West should keep them in pampered luxury for the rest of their indolent lives, and all on the pretext of preventing global warming that has now become embarrassingly notorious for its long absence.   No one was allowed to give the alternative -- and scientifically correct -- view-point."

2012-12-07
Tom Lutey _Billings MT Gazette_
Beet sugar refinery expected to run into February processing this year's crop

2012-12-07
Paul Homewood
UK enduring coldest autumn since 1993

2012-12-07
Thomas Claburn _InformationWeek_/_UBM_
Apple Macs to be made in the USA
"In the quarter that ended 2012 September 29, Apple sold 4.9M Macs, far fewer than the 26.9M iPhones sold.   Even so, Cook noted that certain iPhone components, like its glass screen, are already made in the U.S.A. and shipped abroad for assembly."

2012-12-07
Steve Goreham _Washington DC Times_
insane EPA power-madness and December 7, a day that will live in infamy
WUWT

2012-12-07
Eric Golub _Washington DC Times_
Chanukah

2012-12-07
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
class action suit may shed light on abuse of H-1B visas for teachers

2012-12-07
Steve Goldstein _MarketWatch_
UMmich consumer sentiment index fell from 82.7 in late November to 74.5 in early December
Fox
Wall Street Journal
Mac Daily News
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-12-08

2012-12-08
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
Southern Unionists & Fredericksburg 150: the Willoughby/Monteith claim

2012-12-08
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
southern unionists around Fredericksburg

2012-12-08
Anthony Watts & Roger Pielke
inconvenient conclusions in a new climate and land use paper

2012-12-08
Athony Watts
wild-fires and isolated mining operations visible in even low-res cumulative satellite surveillance

2012-12-08
Mike Shedlock _Town Hall_
this employment/unemployment report looks grim
graphs

2012-12-08
Michael Vasquez _Miami FL Herald_
in many STEM careers the employment picture is lousy
"An October report by Florida's Department of Economic Opportunity boasted that Florida's on-line job postings in STEM fields were up 10% over a year ago, but those rosy numbers leaned heavily on health-care-related jobs -- an area not always categorized as STEM.   Nursing jobs were by far the most represented in the jobs report, accounting for more than 1 in 4 of the total STEM jobs identified.   A generally pro-STEM report produced this year by Change the Equation (an organization advocating improved science education) contained a sour note when it came to Florida: When healthcare was not counted, the report found Florida was 1 of 6 states with more unemployed STEM workers than available STEM jobs.   Of those 6 states, Florida had the biggest over-supply of STEM workers...   The questions about whether Florida truly needs more STEM graduates hasn't dampened state law-makers' [irrational] enthusiasm for encouraging more STEM degrees.   The tuition discount proposal from the governor's task force has a good chance of becoming law during the upcoming legislative session, according to Senate President Don Gaetz...   Among 2009-2010 school year graduates, only 49% of those with a bachelor's in biology were employed; for a bachelor's in biomedical engineering, the number rose to 83%.   In the social sciences, anthropology grads reported a 49% employment rate, while 60% of psychology grads said they were employed...   In 2009-2010, Brogan said a state analysis projected a need for 467 new industrial engineers.   Florida state schools graduated 180.   At the other end of the spectrum were mechanical engineers, of which the state needed an additional 236.   State universities more than tripled that number, graduating 847."
FETPIP state university reports
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-12-09

2012-12-09
Dan Nakaso _San Jose CA Mercury News_
US citizens of Asian ancestry hold slight edge over non-citizens in Sili Valley: but US citizen STEM professionals are being doomed by the pin-headed, corrupt congress-critters and lobbyists and execs who are determined to worsen the STEM job markets
"In Santa Clara County, for instance, non-citizen Asians held slightly more than 35% of the software developer jobs compared to citizen Asians, who represented slightly more than 26% of those positions.   In San Mateo County, non-citizen Asians held almost 33% of the software developer jobs compared to 27% of citizen Asians...   In Santa Clara County, citizen Asians held 32% of the computer programmer jobs while non-citizen Asians held 18%.   In Alameda County, citizen Asians had 25% of the computer programmer jobs compared to 12.5% of non-citizen Asians...   Last week the [clueless, corrupt] House passed the STEM Jobs Act, which eliminates the 'diversity lottery green card program' and allocates 55K new green cards to qualified foreign graduates of U.S. universities with 'advanced' degrees in science, technology, engineering and math."
Congressiona Quarterly: roll call vote

2012-12-09
Alec Rawls
Exxon reviled for producing value: Obummer praised for destruction and waste

2012-12-09
Richard Waters _CNBC_/_Financial Times_
UN efforts to control, throttle Internet and free speech
"Tariq al-Awadhi, head of the Arab states delegation, said that it made sense for internet companies to be included in the regulations since this would help force them to work together with network operators."

2012-12-09
Maria Sacchetti _Boston MA Globe_
Boston Globe publishers sue DHS for names of released criminals
"Federal officials acknowledge that, since 2008, they’ve released about 8,500 criminal immigrants who were scheduled to be deported after serving their criminal sentences, but their home countries would not take them back.   However, in January the officials rejected the Globe's formal request for the names, and again on appeal, saying the immigrants' right to privacy out-weighed the public interest in knowing their identities."

2012-12-09
Stacey Patton _Chronicle of Higher Education_
with student debt soaring and job prospects dim, some say new grad school applicants should be warned
"Some people in the packed room said that faculty and administrators are 'clueless' about the everyday realities of graduate-student debt and that graduate programs have become enablers by not limiting admissions, providing full financial support to students, and cutting down the time-to-degree span so that students finish much faster and limit their debt...   Mr. Ainsworth complained that graduate assistantships are not keeping pace with rising student fees..."

2012-12-09
Jack Stripling _Chronicle of Higher Education_
pay and perqs up for presidents of private colleges: some get money designated to cover government extortions

2012-12-09
John Hawkins _PJ Media_
for the ethically challenged: 5 moral boundaries you should not cross
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-12-10

2012-12-10
_GAO_
Key Elements of New Border Patrol Strategic Plan Not Yet in Place to Inform Border Security Status and Resource Needs (pdf)
"Within DHS, U.S. Customs and Border Protection's (CBP) Border Patrol has primary responsibility for securing the border between ports of entry, and reported that with its 18,500 agents it apprehended over 327K illegal entrants at the southwest border in fiscal year 2011.   Across Border Patrol's 9 southwest border sectors, most apprehensions occurred in the Tucson sector in Arizona.   GAO was asked to review how Border Patrol manages resources at the southwest border.   This report examines (1) apprehension and other data Border Patrol collects to inform changes in border security for the southwest border and the Tucson sector, in particular; (2) how the Tucson sector compares with other sectors in scheduling agent deployment and to what extent data show that deployments have been effective; and (3) the extent to which Border Patrol has identified mechanisms to assess resource needs under its new strategic plan.   GAO analyzed DHS documents and data from fiscal years 2006 to 2011, and interviewed officials in headquarters and five southwest border sectors selected based on cross-border illegal activity, among other things.   Results cannot be generalized across the southwest border, but provided insights into Border Patrol operations...   The number of Border Patrol agents in Tucson sector increased from nearly 2,600 in FY2006 to about 4,200 in FY2011, augmented by 9K National Guard personnel deployed periodically from 2006 June through 2008 July under Operation Jump Start.   Under SBI, US CBP expended approximately $850M on technology in Arizona such as wide-area and mobile surveillance systems, to augment Tucson sector operations.   Other infrastructure as of 2012 March included installation of 352 miles of pedestrian fencing and 299 miles of vehicle fencing along the southwest border, for a combined total of 651 miles of fencing..."

2012-12-10
Willis Eschenbach
Being on the water again, after the last few years of being boatless, has been most invigorating

2012-12-10
Benny Peiser
Doha post-mortem: some green hysterics "close to despair"

2012-12-10
Anthony Watts
solar cycle 24 still in a slump: has solar max been reached?

2012-12-10
Roger L. Simon _PJ Media_
_The Last of the Just_ in Belgium?
"A man -- seemingly by himself -- had stood up at a town hall meeting in that country and denounced the installation of 2 Islamists who had just won positions in a municipal election.   He said their election was illegal because the men were avowed adherents of Shariah law, which is in direct contradiction with Belgian civil law and the European Convention on Human Rights...   When you look at the faces of the others in the room visible on the video, you don't exactly see 'profiles in courage'.   I would wager, however, that if you asked each of them individually whether they favored equal rights for women and homosexuals, as well as separation of church and state and liberal democracy and Enlightenment principles in general (all anathema to Shariah), they would uniformly say yes.   Further I would imagine they would all be appalled at the idea of a global caliphate under Islam, and therefore the end of Belgium as a sovereign nation, the very intention of Shariah.   Still, political correctness -- leavened, to be sure, with a modicum of cowardice -- overwhelmed their good sense and allowed the decent and courageous man to leave by himself.   If you ever wondered how Hitler happened, you have part of your answer on this video."

2012-12-10
Alan Caruba
climate tyrants avoiding scrutiny
"these charlatans, intent on transferring billions from developed nations to those that have failed to keep pace...   As reported by Craig Rucker, CFACT Executive Director, '...would require developed countries like the U.S.A. to pay poor nations for climate damages supposedly resulting from extreme weather events.'...   the last money grabbing gambit failed...   those controlling the COP18 'have instituted a paperless policy, depriving delegates of daily programs and copies of negotiating instruments that keep them relatively informed'...   As for the delegates' carbon foot-print, this policy totally ignores the emissions from their jet travel, their 5-star hotels and restaurants, air conditioning, limousines, and the carbon dioxide they are all exhaling...   It is useful to know that Canada, Japan, and New Zealand have already rejected any participation in the agreements to come out of COP18...   Mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would be the kiss of death [to Red China, Brazil, India, Indonesia...].   The U.S.A. is about to under-go this madness in the form of a deluge of Environmental Protection Agency carbon dioxide regulations that will strangle the economy and kill jobs.   Unless the Congress can eliminate them via legislation, it will constitute a form of national suicide.   The United Nations isn't just involved in climate treaties.   It is seeking control over the worldwide Internet, the oceans of the world, gun control, and regulating the rights of parents to exercise control over their children's health and well-being.   If successful, the UN will lead the world back to a new Dark Ages."

2012-12-10
Jon Fortt _CNBC_
How much do tech execs have stashed over-seas? $Billions"SEC filings... Percentage-wise, MSFT's near the top of the list, with 87% of its $66.6G outside the U.S.A. Cisco not far behind at 83% of its $45G, Oracle at 80% of $31.6G, Apple at 68% of $121.3G, and Google at 64% of $45.7G."
2012-11-07: Eric Savitz: Forbes: Will tech execs' cash piles remain over-seas?

2012-12-10
Penny Starr _Cybercast News Service_
Hillary admits: Iran has been sending terrorists to Mexico, Thailand, Bulgaria

2012-12-10
Michael Ledeen _PJ Media_
corrupt government thugs know "exactly who we had to go get"
"Much of this technology was developed by the same nerds and geeks that have given us the social networks, and the tools upon which they depend.   The process is a familiar one...   Ever since, there has been great enthusiasm for the West to help freedom advocates from [Red China] and Myanmar to Iran, Libya, and Syria gain easy access to Internet networks...   In the free West, we worry about governmental and corporate penetration of our privacy.   In the tyrannies, it's often a matter of life and death.   Just ask the many Iranian bloggers are facing death sentences in Tehran's Evin prison.   At the moment, the tyrants are doing well.   A while back, a non-governmental Western organization turned on a cell phone in downtown Tehran, programmed to send out text messages designed to catch the attention of the security forces.   The cyber cops found the phone in a matter of minutes, an example of their profound concern and unusual efficiency."

2012-12-10
Alan Boone _Bangor ME Daily News_
Looney Tune politics: massive over-spending is the problem
"We hear and read a lot these days about the 'fiscal cliff'.   Pardon me, but I think I've seen this show somewhere before.   You may remember the cartoon series featuring the Road Runner (Accelerati incredibus) and his nemesis, Wile E. Coyote (Carnivorous vulgaris).   I'm reminded of a scene where Road Runner, with Wile E. in hot pursuit, runs up to the face of a sheer cliff.   He quickly paints on the cliff face the entrance to a big tunnel.   Of course, Wile E. runs smack into it and knocks himself out.   Beep, beep!   Transpose the scene to today's Washington, DC.   The Democrats (Road Runner) in the spirit of compromise (strictly for public consumption) have painted a sign saying 'Balanced Approach' on the face of our 'fiscal cliff'.   Republicans (Wile E. Coyote), ever willing to compromise and appear reasonable, run eagerly into the tunnel entrance, which of course it isn't, and get knocked out.   It's all about tax increases, with little room for serious limitations on spending, especially the entitlements, which are the real problem...   The majority in our recent election would appear to have little appreciation that we ran off the edge of the fiscal cliff some time ago.   We can almost certainly never repay our $16T (and growing) debt -- based on the debt's current trajectory and the cowardice of many politicians of both parties...   The 'entitlements' (chiefly Medicare, Medicaid and [Socialist Insecurity]) are what must be addressed..."

2012-12-10 (5773 Kislev 26)
Anna Mulrine _Jewish World Review_
DARPA's plan X for cyberwarfare: Announcing what most of us thought they should have been and were doing over the last several decades

2012-12-10 (5773 Kislev 26)
R' Avi Shafran _Jewish World Review_
The original spin on Chanukah
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-12-11

1725-12-11: George Mason iv (son of George Mason iii & Ann Thomson) was born at Doeg's Neck, Fairfax county VA

2012-12-11
_Economic Times of India_
ObummerDoesn'tCare excites Indian IT executives
"Big opportunity for Indian IT companies TOI...   [Obummer's] re-election has sparked fresh interest in [software for privacy violation] in the health-care, insurance, and medical technologies sectors of the $100G Indian information technology industry...   [ObummerDoesn'tCare (hat-tip to Herman Cain)] will impose a $2K per employee penalty on employers with more than 50 employees who fail to offer a health insurance plan."

2012-12-11
Bob Tisdale
El Nino southern oscillation myth 2: ENSO balances to zero

2012-12-11
Laurel L. Scott _Lubbock TX Avalanche-Journal_
Turkish Muslim chain of charter schools to receive $30M federal government grant
"Harmony Science Academy-Lubbock principal Mehmet Bayar... D’Ann Crowley, dean of students at HSA-Lubbock... focus on science, technology, math and engineering... other...winner...charter consortium, IDEA Public Schools... The Harmony Public Schools group was founded by the nonprofit Cosmos Foundation, Turkish professionals with ties to Texas. The first school opened in Houston in 2000 and has been consistently top-rated as Exemplary by the Texas Education Agency... Harmony Public Schools has been criticized for hiring too many teachers who are not U.S. citizens under the federal H-1B visa program."

2012-12-11
"may" _Lubbock TX Avalanche-Journal_
pres. Obummer continues to choose thievery

2012-12-11
_Dice_
H-1Bs held to laxer hiring standards than Americans

2012-12-11
Josh Flory _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
SAIC to cut about 50 jobs in Oak Ridge

2012-12-11
Bridget Johnson _PJ Media_
DHS secretary Janet Napolitano interviewed on National Socialist Television: "You're never going to [even try to control] that border."

2012-12-11
Beryl Lieff Benderly _AAAS Science_
ACS report proposes reform of graduate programs
Celia Henry Arnaud: Chemical & Engineering News
"Graduate training must prepare students for careers outside of academe...   A new method of financing graduate study is needed that does not depend on faculty members' research grants...   Departments must balance the number of students they graduate with 'genuine opportunities for them'.   Producing a surplus of graduates 'does injustice to the investments made by students' [and tax-victims through the universities]...   A large under-graduate teaching need [or, presumably, need for lab workers] is not sufficient justification for a large graduate program.'...   Post-docs 'should be treated as the professional scientists and engineers they are.'...   U.S. universities are currently 'over-producing Ph.D.s in the chemical sciences', Faulkner said."

2012-12-11 (5773 Kislev 27)
Charlie Kirk _Breitbart_
Port Washington NY public school admin campaigning for Obummer with mural

2012-12-11 (5773 Kislev 27)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
give the gift of wisdom... books
St. Augustine FL
Redding CA
Abilene TX Reporter News
"A book that fits in with the holiday spirit is _No, They Can't!_ by TV show host John Stossel...   _Mismatch_ by Richard Sanders and Stuart Taylor, Jr...   _Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama_ by Ann Coulter...   My own new book this year is an expanded and much revised edition of _Intellectuals and Society_.   Among its new features is a debunking of murky [deceptive] catch phrases like 'social justice' and 'tax cuts for the rich' that have spread so much confusion and mischief.   Four new chapters have also been added on intellectuals and race.   Among the things they reveal is how the political left promoted racism on both sides of the Atlantic during the early decades of the 20th century, even though today the left has swung to the other end of the spectrum and now claim to find racism everywhere in other people."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-12-12

2012-12-12
Linda M. Linonis _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
Akiva Academy lighting the way for Hanukkah

2012-12-12
Kristin Deasy _Global Post_
Ravi Shankar died yesterday
canonical Ravi Shankar site
My condolences to his family...jgo

2012-12-12
Martin Crutsinger _San Jose CA Mercury News_/_AP_
Fed acknowledges that unemployment rates will remain high for at least 3 more years, inflation will continue... as the Bush-Clinton-Shrub-Obummer economic depression continues

2012-12-12
Roy Spencer
NASA/U of AL at Huntsville (UAH) global temperature down slightly in November

2012-12-12
Willis Eschenbach
radiative forcing has no operational definition
"imaginary values that can never be measured or verified"

2012-12-12
Thomas E. Brewton
still playing politics with the economy: oath-breaking and fiscal cliff-diving

2012-12-12
Victor Davis Hanson _PJ Media_
20th century war paradoxes from Pearl Harbor to the Russian front to the 38th parallel

2012-12-12
Robert Spencer _PJ Media_
media sleight of hand a year after the ground zero mosque opened as Park51
"[the NY Post reported:] 'Dozens of worshipers gather at the site on Park Place Friday for prayer services -- but that's the only activity in the building.'   This is the ignominious denouement of the institution that its developer, Sharif El-Gamal, once boasted would soon be the most famous community center in the whole world'.   El-Gamal wasn't the only one boasting [so were the media]...   As both Geller and I made repeatedly clear at the height of the Ground Zero mosque controversy, we were well aware that Muslims were gathering for prayers in the Burlington Coat Factory building that had been extensively damaged in the 2001 September 11 attacks, and had no objection to that.   What we were objecting to was the planned 16-story mega-mosque that the less than solvent El-Gamal and his erstwhile partners, the unsavory and dishonest Islamic supremacists Faisal Abdul Rauf and Daisy Khan, planned to build on that site after they tore down the Burlington Coat Factory building, as that would have been a triumphal mosque built on the site of a jihad victory, like the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount."

2012-12-12
Roger Kimball _PJ Media_
Aristotle, curiosity, and the lack thereof among modern media

2012-12-12
Matt Drudge _Experimental Math_
Alarm bells sound over international test scores

2012-12-12 (5773 Kislev 28)
Reva Bhalla _Jewish World Review_
The Israeli periphery

2012-12-12 (5773 Kislev 28)
Warren Richey _Jewish World Review_
power-mad federal government wants to micro-manage Ernest Hemingway's polydactylic Key West cats, claim they're "interstate commerce"

2012-12-12 (5773 Kislev 28)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
government extorting from the poor
Tennessean
Pittsburgh PA Tribune-Review
Fayette GA Citizen
Union Leader
"One of the biggest, and one of the oldest, taxes in this latter sense is inflation.   Governments have stolen their people's resources this way, not just for centuries, but for thousands of years...   Of course, prices skyrocketed with vastly more money in circulation...   For example a $100 bill at the end of the 20th century would buy less than a $20 bill would buy in 1960.   If you put $1K in your piggy bank in 1960 and took it out to spend in 2000, you would discover that your money had, over time, lost 80% of its value...   inflation takes the same percentage from the poorest person in the country as it does from the richest.   That's not all.   Income taxes only transfer money from your current income to the government, but it does not touch whatever money you may have saved over the years.   With inflation, the government takes the same cut out of both.   It is bad enough when the poorest have to turn over the same share of their assets to the government as the richest do, but it is grotesque when the government puts a bigger bite on the poorest.   This can happen because the rich can more easily convert their assets from money into things like real estate, gold or other assets whose value rises with inflation.   But a welfare mother is unlikely to be able to buy real estate or gold.   She can put a few dollars aside in a jar somewhere.   But wherever she may hide it, inflation can steal value from it without having to lay a hand on it.   No wonder the Federal Reserve uses fancy words like 'quantitative easing', instead of saying in plain English that they are essentially just printing more money.   [Of course, now, a lot of it is 'e-money' these days.]"

2012-12-12 (5773 Kislev 28)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
our federal-government-created financial crisis
Oaklad MI Press
"I have never read a better account of our doing just that than in John A. Allison's new book, _The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure_.   Allison is the former CEO of Branch Banking and Trust, the nation's 10th largest bank.   He assembles evidence that shows that our financial crisis, followed by the Great Recession, was caused by Congress, the Federal Reserve, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and was helped along by the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama White Houses.   The Federal Reserve, under the chairmanship of Alan Greenspan, created the massive housing bubble by over-expanding the money supply.   President Bush and members of Congress, through the Community Reinvestment Act, intimidated banks and other financial institutions into making home loans to people ineligible for loans under traditional lending criteria.   They became subprime lenders.   Lending institutions made these loans, now often demeaned as predator loans, because they knew they'd be sold to government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Freddie and Fannie.   The GSEs had no problem taking this risky path, because they knew that Congress would force [tax-victims] to bail them out.   Current Fed chairman Ben Bernanke is following in the foot-steps of his predecessor by massively expanding the money supply by purchasing Treasury debt.   He is creating prime conditions for a calamity by the end of this decade.   Then there were the crony [socialists], among whom are Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Countrywide, Bear Stearns, JPMorgan Chase, General Motors and Chrysler.   These and many other companies, through the thousands of Washington lobbyists they hire, are able to get Congress to short-cut market forces...   His [John Allison's] company refused to lend money to developers who acquired land by having the government take it from private owners, euphemistically called eminent domain."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-12-13

2012-12-13 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 428,814 in the week ending December 8, a decrease of 72,117 from the previous week.   There were 435,863 initial claims in the comparable week in 2011.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.5% during the week ending December 1, 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 3,159,199, a decrease of 158,195 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.8% and the volume was 3,540,663.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending November 24 was 5,642,678, an increase of 683,477 from the previous week.   There were 7,449,508 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 24...   States reported 2,194,253 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending November 24, an increase of 185,645 from the prior week.   There were 3,048,926 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

2012-12-13
Lauren Rohr _Daily Illini_
out-of-state admissions increase as university execs chase additional revenues
"Aside from goals to increase diversity, Stacey Kostell, director of under-graduate admissions, said the added funds the University receives from out-of-state tuition rates is one of the driving forces for increases in international and out-of-state enrollment.   Since 2007, the proportion of non-Illinois students enrolled in their first year has doubled from 12% to 24% of the total entering class, according to enrollment data from the Office of Undergraduate Admissions...   While in-state freshmen have to pay $11,636 for tuition this academic year, out-of-state students pay $25,778.   And, with an additional $750 fee, the international student tuition rate is set at $26,578...   international students are not eligible for financial aid, said Daniel Mann, director of financial aid.   Although some countries provide funding for students to attend college in the U.S.A., international students must prove they are financially capable of attending the University."

2012-12-13
Brett French _Billings MT Gazette_
billionaires buying ranch-land in Montana
"Farris...and Dan Wilks...own more than 276K acres in 7 counties..431 square miles...   Ted Turner has 149K acres in Montana holdings...   Stanley Kroenke, a billionaire who is married to a WM heir, bought the 124K acre Broken O Ranch near Augusta...also owns the Cedar Creek Ranch near Ennis and the PV Ranch near Hysham...   Dan Tiegen, whose 44,500-acre family ranch north of Grass Range...   'I figured that was their business.', [one of their neighbors] said of the land buys and rumors of fracking plans.   'If they're buying up land, they can do what they want with it.'"
discussion

2012-12-13
Alec Rawls
UN IPCC AR5 report

2012-12-13
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
and yes, southern unionists also charged the stone wall at Fredericksburg

2012-12-13
Dan Watson _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
illegal aliens cost USA $113G per year

2012-12-13
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
150 years after battle at Fredericksburg: that "other guy" on the Confederate right: captain Mathias Winston Henry

2012-12-13
Kaitlin Gillespie _Spokane WA Spokesman-Review_
Invalid visa detains Interplayers Theatre's artistic director in Canada
"McColm had an H-1B visa since 1995, he said, which is issued to temporary workers with specific, highly specialized skills such as performing arts.   Of the more than 7M visas issued in fiscal year 2011, about 129K fell under that category, according to the U.S. Department of State."

2012-12-13
Aaron Koepper _Loudoun VA Times-Mirror_
schools have troubling relationships
"Applicants for the Loudoun Math & IT Academy have made 2 promises about its model school, Chesapeake Science Point Academy (CSP): its successes will be repeated and its failures won't.   CSP's troublesome and sometimes adversarial relationship with Anne Arundel County, combined with the Loudoun applicants' lack of educational experience raise questions as to whether or not the school could be successful in Loudoun...   CSP's IT/STEM curriculum, parental involvement and high standardized test scores...   It has had students place in state, national and international math and science competitions, including the International Turkish Olympiads and the Young Scientist Challenge sponsored by the Discovery Channel and 3M...   Last summer, CSP and its governing board, the Chesapeake Lighthouse Foundation, sued the county for $737K, claiming it had been denied proper funding based on the school's growing enrollment...   the school's first director, Jon Omural, was removed in 2006 March after teachers filed a union complaint alleging gender-based discrimination.   In The Washington Post story, Anne Arundel officials said an investigation found evidence of teacher harassment, changing class sizes and spotty attendance...   Fatih Kandil, one of LMITA's applicants and the founder and former principal of the Horizon Science Academy in Dayton, Ohio, became principal after the incident from 2006 to 2011.   He moved to Loudoun in 2010 for family reasons and has served as principal of the Baltimore IT Academy in Baltimore since April.   Problems continued to plague CSP during Kandil's tenure despite high academic achievement...   The school system's report also states the school 'had an excessive amount of counseling or disciplinary issues that were reported', with a common theme of sub-standard school administration.   Ali Gokce, the leader of the LMITA applicants and potential executive director for the school, said CSP's problems needn't be repeated in Loudoun...   Ali Gokce, the leader of the LMITA applicants and potential executive director for the school...   Sharon Inetas, one of the applicants working to put together the school's budget and build private sector alliances...   some opponents are also concerned about the potential nature of the school, claiming it would be the latest Gulen [Guelen] school, named after reclusive Turkish Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen [Guelen].   The opposition believes that a network of Gulen [Guelen] followers controls more than 100 charter schools...   Both Gokce and Sahin told the Times-Mirror and the public several times that religion won’t be taught in the schools.   Neither would not favor Turkish teachers in their hiring processes, but acknowledged the similarities of the schools across the country.   The...Gulen [Guelen] charter schools have often brought in teachers from Turkey using H-1B work visas...   'We won't discriminate, but we will look for teachers who we can work with.', Gokce said...   'These presumed adherents remain reticent about revealing their affiliation with Gulen [Guelen].', a state department official writes...   Ali Gokce is the executive director of the project and husband of a former employee of the Loudoun Times-Mirror."
charter school applicants face strong criticism

2012-12-13
Joeph Salerno _Ludwig von Mises Institute_
3 cheers for Emory University
"According to a recent study, only 25% of Ph.D. students complete their doctorates in 5 years and only 45% in 7 years...   If they persist in pursuing an academic career, they then face the prospect of earning a precarious living as an untenured adjunct professor, hectically shuttling between teaching assignments at different universities and earning a meager living for their trouble."
council on the future of graduate education

2012-12-13 (5773 Kislev 29)
Victor Davis Hanson _Jewish World Review_
Let the real fat cats pay their fair share
"Who exactly were the rich who, as the president said, were not paying their fair share'?   The rapper Jay-Z (net worth: nearly $500M)?   The actor Johnny Depp (2011 income: $50M)?   Neither seems to have heard the president's earlier warning that, 'at a certain point you've made enough money'...   why not additionally levy a $3 surcharge on discretionary tickets for movies, concerts and sporting events to 'spread the wealth' from multi-millionaires?   That way, LeBron James (approximate annual earnings: $53M) or Oliver Stone (net worth: approximately $50M) might at last begin to 'level the playing field'.   Is Michael Moore (net worth: approximately $50M) a one-tenth-of-one-percenter?   If so, why do mansion-living grandee movie directors like Moore and Stone need state subsidies and tax breaks to produce their films, when most states are nearly as insolvent as the federal government?...   Under the present system, the beleaguered 99% are subsidizing the abodes of Hollywood and Silicon Valley 'millionaires and billionaires' -- many of whom themselves have been railing against the 1%.   Should the government provide tens of thousands of dollars in tax breaks for a [flaming red-state] one-percenter to live in tony Palo Alto or Newport Beach when there are plenty of fine homes far cheaper and sitting empty not far away in Stockton and Bakersfield?...   Remember the revolving door that Barack Obama once promised to end?   The former head of his Office of Management and Budget [OMB], Peter Orszag, used his title and insider contacts to walk right into a Citigroup fat-cat banker's job that pays him an estimated $2M to $3M a year.   Clinton administration apparatchiks like Jamie Gorelick, James Johnson and Franklin Raines -- without much of any banking experience -- reaped millions of dollars working at Fannie Mae as it went nearly bankrupt.   If you leave government and immediately make more than $1M, why not pay a 50% surcharge on your income for 5 years -- given that 'somebody else made that happen'?   Why does Google have tax havens in the Caribbean, and why do 6-figure-income college presidents have their taxes paid by their universities?...   Next time around, Republicans might remind us of that paradox by nominating a small-business scrapper, who -- unlike millionaires such as Al Gore, John Kerry or Barack Obama -- did not go to prep school and the Ivy League."

2012-12-13 (5773 Kislev 29)
Larry Elder _Jewish World Review_
Government extortionists to "middle-class": "Bend over"
"No more extending the Bush-era tax rates for the rich.   To do so, Obama tells us, would 'cost' $700G -- over 10 years.   So this 'break' for the 'rich' 'costs' $70G a year -- or a mere [5%] of the [$1.4T] annual deficits that Obama has rung up since he became president.   This leaves us short about [$1.33T] per year -- just for the annual deficit, never mind paring down the ever-growing national debt...   The Media Research Center tells us that ABC, NBC and CBS have a distorted view of the term 'balance'.   After the election, those networks spent way more time on the issue of tax hikes than on the issue of spending cuts.   ABC, says MRC, was the worst: 'In the 3 weeks following President Obama's re-election, World News devoted more than 10 minutes, 18 seconds to talk of tax hikes and just 35 seconds to spending cuts (a 17-to-1 margin).'   So much for the balanced approach...   In 1900, government spending at all 3 levels -- local, state and federal -- amounted to about 10% of 'national income'.   Government spending today amounts to 40% -- or 50% [of 'national income', if one includes unfunded federal mandates]..."
Revised figures taken from the Federal Treasury Department federal government debt figures...jgo

2012-12-13 (5773 Kislev 29)
Bob Tyrrell _Jewish World Review_
save the "middle class"... and everyone else
"According to The Heritage Foundation's studies, median income earnings have grown since 1970 by 24%.   OTOH federal spending since 1970 has grown by 287.5%."

2012-12-13 (5773 Kislev 29)
Ann Coulter _Jewish World Review_
tax rich leftists
"I note that rich [leftists] -- who somehow manage to avoid paying high taxes themselves -- are always wildly enthusiastic about raising taxes on the middle class to keep the strivers down.   Forget the top 2%.   The top 1% of the top 1% [the top 0.01%] keep voting for higher taxes -- and then take advantage of indefensible tax loop-holes and deductions.   Get them.   Let's have a class warfare blood-bath.   Californians, for example, apparently adore high taxes.   By contrast, Texans -- and the Californians who have relocated there -- do not.   So why should residents of high-tax states be able to deduct their state and local taxes from their federal taxes?   Texas and other no- or low-tax states are being forced to subsidize the profligate states.   The 5 highest-taxed states are New York, New Jersey, California, Vermont and Rhode Island -- with California soon pulling into the lead.   The 5 least-taxed states are Florida, Alaska, Nevada, South Dakota and Wyoming.   See the pattern? You want high taxes, New York and California? Then pay them -- with no deductions for state and local taxes on your federal returns.   Billionaire [leftist] Warren Buffett keeps gassing about how he's dying to pay a higher tax rate (while employing a phalanx of lawyers to argue that he owes less in taxes than the IRS says he owes).   Buffett is taking advantage of an unwarranted tax loop-hole that allows full-time investors like himself to report their entire income as capital gains, not ordinary income.   But that's his job!   A stock-picker like Buffett is completely different from a doctor, whose job is to save lives, or a lawyer, whose job is to wreck them.   They pay the full income tax rate for what they earn doing their jobs, and then pay a lower capital gains rate on investing the money they get to keep.   Buffett's only job is to earn capital gains.   He and others like him should be paying the ordinary income tax rate like the rest of us on the money he earns from his job.   Close that loop-hole.   Almost no Republicans will be harmed in the making of this tax change.   (There's a reason senator Chuck Schumer fought so hard to save it.)   Finally, as Glenn Reynolds -- the law professor known as 'Instapundit' -- has been arguing, it's time to end Hollywood's exemption from excise taxes.   Excise taxes are taxes imposed on goods and activities, passed on to the consumer, such as alcohol and tobacco taxes.   There are excise taxes on gasoline, airlines, tanning salons, fishing and archery products, truck driving, long-distance telephone service, and on and on.   Hollywood movies used to be subject to an excise tax, but, for no reason whatsoever, rich Hollywood liberals have been relieved of excise taxes on their products since the 1950s.   Reynolds suggests that, for 'extra fun', Republicans 'could show pictures of David Geffen's yacht and John Travolta's personal Boeing 707 on the Senate floor'."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-12-14

2012-12-14
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
What happened to captain Henry's "Napoleon"?

2012-12-14
Rick Moran _PJ Media_
After the dive off the fiscal cliff, into the regulatory black-hole

2012-12-14
Rodrigo Sermeno _PJ Media_
US Chamber of Communists faces off with Dodd-Frank backers over biased trade

2012-12-14
Anthony Watts
UN IPCC AR5 draft graph doesn't fit assertions

2012-12-14
_Billings MT Gazette_/_AP_
MT board considers easing Keystone XL pipe-line

2012-12-14
Forrest M. Mims
no global trend in water vapor

2012-12-14
Thomas E. Brewton
pres. Obummer's motives for higher taxes... more unconstitutional over-spending and higher taxes

2012-12-14
James Ritchie _Cincinnati OH Business Courier_
Tata faces $1.7M "claw-back" of the $19M given to them to boost employment, because they missed hiring goals
Alexander Coolidge: Cincinnati OH Enquirer
alternate link
"Tata pledged to generate 1K jobs at its Milford office before 2013 as part of a $15.5M Ohio job-creation package awarded in 2007.   So far it has generated only 320, according to Attorney General Mike DeWine's 2012 Economic Development Compliance Report.   The report specifically references a $2.5M Rapid Outreach award for which Tata didn’t meet its commitment.   A 'notice of claw-back', which means the Ohio Development Services Agency has taken action to seek reimbursement from the company for a portion of the award funds, has been sent, according to the document."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-12-15

1791-12-15: Bill of Rights amendments 3-12 ratified by states
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-12-16

1773-12-16: Boston Tea Party

2012-12-16
Roger Knights

2012-12-16
Alex Rawls & Jo Nova
UN IPCC AR5 group trying to bury criticisms

2012-12-16
Jan Falstad _Billings MT Gazette_
Bakken boom is making big impact on Billings businesses
"Private jets lined up on the tarmac.   Rolex watches and diamonds flying out of jewelry stores.   And record sales of new trucks and cars...   western North Dakota, now pumping 600K barrels of crude oil per day, compared to 2K barrels a decade ago."

2012-12-16
Edwin S. Rubenstein _V Dare_
American job displacement continued in November, but Bernanke klings to failed Keynesian policy
"Bernanke ignores the fact that as much as one-third of average U.S. monthly labor force growth is due to legal immigration.   In effect, the Fed's expansionary policy is simply going to suck in more foreign workers from around the world...   the Household Employment Survey, used by the Federal Government to calculate unemployment rates, reported a 122K job loss in the month of November...   the U.S. labor force shrank by even more than employment—by a whopping 350K in November.   The labor force participation rate [LFPR] (percent of the working age population working or looking for work) fell to 63.6%.   That is among the lowest participation rates in 30 years...   Total employment fell by 122K, or by 0.09%; Native-born employment fell by 66K, or by 0.05%; Foreign-born employment fell by 56K, or by 0.24%...   From January 2009 to November 2012: Foreign-born employment rose 1.579M, or by 7.3%; Native-born employment fell by 0.538M, or by 0.5%.   Thus NVDAWDI was more or less steady in November, down infinitesimally from 108.0 in October to 107.8."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-12-17

2012-12-17
Roger Pielke
no global trend in hurrican land-falls

2012-12-17
Scott Carlson & Goldie Blumenstyk _Chronicle of Higher Education_
For whom is college being re-invented?
"Joseph E. Aoun, president of Northeastern University...in his Globe essay, admitted that the coming reinvention could promote a two-tiered system: 'one tier consisting of a campus-based education for those who can afford it, and the other consisting of low- and no-cost MOOCs.'...   Time quotes David Stavens, a founder of the MOOC provider Udacity, as conceding that 'there's a magic that goes on inside a university campus that, if you can afford to live inside that bubble, is wonderful.'...   MOOCs, badges -- certificates of accomplishment -- and other innovations have real potential to tackle some [problems]...   State funds per student dropped by 20% from 1987 to 2011, according to an analysis by the higher-education finance expert Jane Wellman, who directs the National Association of System Heads.   States' rising costs for Medicaid, which provides health care for the growing ranks of poor people, are a large part of the reason...   'At most institutions, students are in mostly large classes, listening to second-rate lecturers, with very little meaningful faculty student interaction.', [econ prof Robert Archibald of W&M] says...   Patricia A. McGuire, president of Trinity Washington University. 70% of her students are eligible for Pell Grants, and 50% come from the broken DC school system.   Her task has been trying to figure out how to serve those students at a college with the university's meager $11M endowment...   Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media studies and law at the U of VA...'Not only is it not about the class-room, it is certainly not just about the direct delivery of information into people's lives.   If that's all universities did, then publishing and libraries would have crushed universities a long time ago.'"

2012-12-17
_Billings MT Gazette_/_AP_
MT land board approved Keystone XL pipe-line land lease

2012-12-17
Barry Rubin _PJ Medi_
Egypt continues process of democratically adopting an anti-western dictatorship

2012-12-17
Victor Davis Hanson _PJ Media_
modern wisdom from ancient minds

2012-12-17
Evan Weese _Columbus OH Business Journal_
cross-border bodyshop and off-shoring firm Tata facing $1.7M claw-back for failure to meet hiring promises

2012-12-17
Mark Krikorian _National Review_
vicious oath-breaker Obummer's illegal amnesty for illegal aliens continues

2012-12-17
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
Obummer regime pushes for both floods and tiny flows of excessive immigration -- both legal and illegal
"Today's examples of proposed small flows -- neither one curtailed in any way by numerical limits -- relate to two extremes of the migrant population: The spouses of some of the best-paid H-1B workers (professionals); and Teenage and young adult children of crime victims (probably a poverty-stricken group).   The elite spouses, already on the road to green card status, would be allowed to work, as would the crime victims' children, who will also be put on the (easy) path to a green card.   The numbers are not alarming, but the overall tendency to open the borders, in any way possible, is...   There were 74,205 H-4 visas issued by the Department of State in FY2011, which suggests that the total population of H-4s (something the government does not bother to count) would be in the quarter of a million range."

2012-12-17
Taylor Rose _World Net Daily_
illegal aliens cost the people of Oregon $1G per year; $700 per capita
"K-12 education demands much of the money, some $575M.   goes to Supplemental English Education costs another $159M; justice and law enforcement, including policing and court costs, is $140M; while Oregon taxpayers pay $125M for health care to be provided to illegal aliens. The study also finds that illegal aliens only pay $77M in taxes, or 7.3% of the total expenditures..."

2012-12-17
Tim Montgomerie _London Times_
excessive immigration is hurting the poorest
"When UKIP voters were brought together for some independently run focus groups, it was hard to get them even to talk about Europe.   They were angry that Britain was, in their eyes, going to the dogs.   They were angry about what they saw as the incompetence and broken promises of the political class.   They were angry with big business [executives].   They saw conspiracies against their interests around every corner."

2012-12-17
Trudy Lieberman _Columbia Journalism Review_
media discover the "chained CPI" a couple decades late

2012-12-17
Bill McBride _Calculated Risk_
chained CPI
Ed O'Keefe & Dylan Matthews: Washington DC Post
"Traditionally, the CPI was considered an upper bound on a cost-of-living index in that the CPI did not reflect the changes in consumption patterns that consumers make in response to changes in relative prices.   Since 1999 January, a geometric mean formula has been used to calculate most basic indexes within the CPI; this formula allows for a modest amount of substitution within item categories as relative price changes.   The geometric mean formula, though, does not account for consumer substitution taking place between CPI item categories.   For example, pork and beef are two separate CPI item categories.   If the price of pork increases while the price of beef does not, consumers might shift away from pork to beef.   The C-CPI-U is designed to account for this type of consumer substitution between CPI item categories [under-reflecting the reduction in quality of living]...   In its final form, the C-CPI-U is a monthly chained price index with the expenditure weights varying each month.   The CPI-U and CPI-W, on the other hand, are biennial chained price indexes where their expenditure weights are updated every two years.   Within the two-year span, these indexes are fixed-weight series, where the changes in these indexes reflect only changes in prices, and not expenditure shares, which are held constant."
BLS FAQ on chained CPI
Introducing the Chained Consumer Price Index (pdf)

2012-12-17 (5773 Tebet 04)
Fred Weir _Jewish World Review_
cyber-jihad on US and Indian banks
"In the crosshairs are U.S. Bancorp, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of [India], PNC Financial Services Group, and SunTrust Banks, according to a message posted on pastebin.com by a purported Islamic hacktivist group, 'Cyber fighters of Izz ad-din Al qassam', allied to the military wing of Hamas.   All 5 were targeted -- along with Capital One, Wells Fargo, Regions Bank, and HSBC -- during the first attacks in September...   Researchers for Arbor Networks, a cybersecurity company, have isolated the attacks as coming primarily from three botnets — a network of coopted machines that have become zombie slaves to an outside operator.   One botnet in particular, called Brobot or 'itsoknoproblembro', is being used in the bank attacks.   Two other botnets, KamiKaze and AMOS, also are being used, according to Arbor Networks and Prolexic, another cybersecurity firm specializing in DDoS.   The size of the attack is enormous but not unprecedented -- in the range of 60Gb/s.   By comparison, during the 2010 December hacktivist-inspired 'Operation Avenge Assange', DDoS attacks ranged in size from 2Gb/s to 4Gb/s, indicating perhaps 3K to 7K attackers at any one moment...   'Some of this week's attacks have been as large as 60Gbps.', wrote Dan Holden and Curt Wilson, 2 Arbor Networks researchers...   Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, last month publicly blamed Iran, fingering its Quds Force, a military unit.   Iran's government has denied any involvement in the bank attacks.   Other officials contend there's little question of Iranian state backing."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-12-18

2012-12-18
Hamilton Nolan _Gawker_
Unemployment Stories volume 20
Hello from the under-class
send your unemployment experiences to gawker via e-mail here,
and submit them via the web to Hire Americans First here.

2012-12-18
_Cumberland PA Sentinel_/_AP_
3 elderly Mennonite sisters' home invaded and personally attacked in Lancaster county PA
"police say was motivated by their attacker's hatred of their peaceful Mennonite religion."

2012-12-18
_Cumberland PA Sentinel_/_AP_
calls to PA unemployment hot-line have soared since September
"Labor and Industry Secretary Julia Hearthway on Monday says the volume of calls to the centers rose to nearly 8M in September, compared to just more than 900K a year earlier.   Hearthway says October calls exceeded 11M, and in November the figure was 15.5M."

2012-12-18
David Whitehouse
examining UN IPCC AR5 figure 1.4

2012-12-18
Steve Goreham
chicken littles' latest causes
Washington DC Times

2012-12-18
Chris Horner
the roadmap less traveled

2012-12-18
Roger L. Simon _PJ Media_
Benghazi report says nothing we didn't already know, tries to cover up some

2012-12-18
Bryan Preston _PJ Media_
congressional leftists have rejected their own budget proposal

2012-12-18
Matt Ridley _Wall Street Journal_
cooling down the fears of climate changes

2012-12-18
Mark Krikorian _National Review_
media covers high black unemployment rates, but refuses to connect them with excessive immigration
"And a big front-page story by Michael Fletcher identified weak social networks as a reason for persistently high unemployment among blacks.   This was the only article that even contained the word 'immigrants', noting only that 'Recent research also shows immigrants have active networks that help new arrivals navigate the country, and trading information about jobs is an important part of that...'"

2012-12-18
_NBC_
tweak in price index would make small but significant cuts in Socialist Insecurity payments

2012-12-18
Mark Trumbull _Christian Science Monitor_
what chained CPI proposal means
Roger Runningen: Worcester MA Telegram/Bloomberg
CBS

2012-12-18 (5773 Tebet 05)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
invincible ignorance
"Places and times with the strongest gun control laws have often been places and times with high murder rates.   Washington, DC, is a classic example, but just one among many...   For the country as a whole, hand gun ownership doubled in the late 20th century, while the murder rate went down...   Britain has had a lower murder rate than the United States for more than two centuries -- and, for most of that time, the British had no more stringent gun control laws than the United States.   Indeed, neither country had stringent gun control for most of that time...   countries with stronger gun control laws than the United States, such as Russia, Brazil and Mexico.   All of these countries have higher murder rates than the United States.   You could compare other sets of countries and get similar results.   Gun ownership has been 3 times as high in Switzerland as in Germany, but the Swiss have had lower murder rates.   Other countries with high rates of gun ownership and low murder rates include Israel, New Zealand, and Finland.   Guns are not the problem.   People are the problem -- including people who are determined to push gun control laws, either in ignorance of the facts or in defiance of the facts.   There is innocent ignorance and there is invincible, dogmatic and self-righteous ignorance.   Every tragic mass shooting seems to bring out examples of both among gun control advocates."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-12-19

2012-12-19
Ernie Souchak _Illinois Pay to Play_
Rezko's friend Dr. Ronald Michael and the State Attorney's office
"ILP2P has learned that the Cook county State Attorney's Financial Crimes Unit was not only aware of Dr. Ronald Michael before $7.2M of government funds were deposited in Arcola Homestead Savings Bank, they were protecting Michael."

2012-12-19
Bob Owens _PJ Media_
revisiting the comically incompetent and unconstitutional "assault weapons" ban

2012-12-19
Ed Kemmick _Billings MT Gazette_
students at Rocky Mountain College try mock negotiations on federal government budgeting

2012-12-19
Jessica Vaughan _Center for Immigration Studies_
Why scrap the per-country caps on visas?
"Once again, the current Congress is under pressure to change fundamental parts of our immigration system in order to fix the problems created by previous Congresses that were too generous.   Special interest groups are pushing to eliminate provisions in immigration law that now help prevent green card allocations from being monopolized by immigrants from just a few countries.   If the proposed changes are approved this month by the U.S. senate (the House already approved them), then for the foreseeable future nearly all 80K employment green cards allotted annually for professional workers and their families would go to applicants from India, and applicants from most of the rest of the world probably would be delayed for at least 3 years.   Such an outcome would reward those Indian companies and workers, largely in the technology sector, who took advantage of the major expansion of the lightly supervised H-1B and L temporary visa programs over the last decade."

2012-12-19
Ira Glickstein
animated analysis of UN IPCC AR5 graph illustrates serious flaws in IPCC methods ad models

2012-12-19
Michael Walsh _PJ Media_
gun crazy ii

2012-12-19
Rodrigo Sermeno _PJ Media_
the other Obummer regime amnesty: DoJ is making sweet-heart deals with errant bankers
"In a letter sent to attorney general Eric Holder, senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) criticized the Department of Justice for its 'too big to jail' policy."

2012-12-19 (5773 Tebet 06)
Justin Salhani _Jewish World Review_
Can Syriac revive Lebanon's Christian population?
"Lebanon has not had a census since 1932, so exact figures are hard to come by, but experts usually estimate that Maronites make up about 20% of the total population today, with other Christian sects making up an additional 19% -- a huge decline from last census in 1932, which recorded Christians as a bit more than 50% of the population, with Maronites the largest of any of the 17 recognized sects.   With the end of the civil war in 1990 and a reconfiguration of the Lebanese political system, an agreement made the prime minister's office, traditionally held by a Sunni, more powerful than the presidential office, typically held by a Maronite -- a flip of the previous arrangement.   The agreement also reconfigured parliamentary representation, from 6 Christians for every 5 Muslims to a 50-50 arrangement."

2012-12-19
Philip Moeller _US News & World Report_
how chained CPI would affect Socialist Insecurity cost of living adjustments

2012-12-19 (5773 Tebet 06)
Fred Weir _Jewish World Review_
Moscow joins choir of those wishing to disarm the little people

2012-12-19 (5773 Tebet 06)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
"forward" into the past?
"The word 'forward' has been a political battle cry on the left for more than a century.   It has been almost as widely used as the left's other favorite word, 'equality', which goes back more than 2 centuries...   What these idealistic experiments all had in common was that they failed...   In the biggest of these experiments -- the Soviet Union under Stalin and Communist China under Mao -- people literally [and intentionally] starved to death by the millions.   In the Soviet Union, at least 6M people starved to death in the 1930s, in a country with some of the most fertile land on the continent of Europe, a country that had once been a major exporter of food.   In [Red China], tens of millions of people starved to death under Mao."

2012-12-19 (5773 Tebet 06)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
100%... of nothing
Lubbock TX Avalanche Journal
Pittsburgh PA Tribune-Revew
Worcester county DE Daily Times/Gannett
"there's a painful lesson to be learned from decades of political hustling and counsel by intellectuals and urban experts.   In 1960, Detroit's population was 1.6M.   Blacks were 29%, and whites were 70%.   Today, Detroit's population has fallen precipitously to 707K, of which blacks are 84% and whites 8%.   Much of the city's decline began with the election of Coleman Young, Detroit's first black mayor and mayor for 5 terms, who engaged in political favoritism to blacks and tax policies against higher income mostly white people.   Young's successors, Dennis Archer and Kwame Kilpatrick, followed his Third World tyrant policies, but neither had his verbal vulgarity.   Kilpatrick (2002-2008) went to jail and is on trial today on charges of corruption.   Mayor David Bing is making an effort to revive Detroit.   His problem is that he's not the Lord...   Detroit topped Forbes magazine's 2010 list of America's Most Dangerous Cities.   That year there were 345 homicides, but that's going to be topped with this year's 365 homicides so far...   Detroit's predominantly black public schools are close to being the worst in the nation, perhaps with the exception of those of Washington, DC.   Only 4% of Detroit's eighth-graders scored proficient or above on the most recent National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) test, sometimes called 'The Nation's Report Card'.   36% scored basic, and 57% below basic.   'Below basic' is when a student is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at their grade level.   'Basic' indicates only partial mastery.   Unbeknownst to most black parents is the fact that most black students who manage to graduate from high school cannot read and compute any better than whites 4 years younger and still in junior high school.   Here's a question for you: If we put a group of 100 students of any race having an eighth-grade level of proficiency and another group of 100 students of any race with a 12th-grade level of proficiency in college, is it reasonable to expect the first group to perform as well as the second?"

2012-12-19 (5773 Tebet 06)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
cross-road blues
E-Chords
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-12-20

2012-12-20
Burton Speakman _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
over 38K are employed in shale oil and gas fracking in Ohio
"'The IHS study shows Ohio currently has a total of 38,380 jobs related to unconventional gas and oil activity, a number expected to increase to 143,595 in 2020 and to 266,624 by 2035.', said Christina Polesovsky, associate director of the Ohio Petroleum Council...   Much of the growth in Ohio is attributable to the liquid gas, such as propane, that is being found in the Utica Shale...   The study stated that Ohio oil- and gas-related businesses contributed nearly $1.5G to the state government.   The figure is anticipated to increase to more than $6.7G in 2020 and nearly $12.7G in 2035."

2012-12-20
Jaime Daremblum _PJ Media_
pres. Obummer's Middle East mess

2012-12-20
Robert Spencer _PJ Media_
CAIR's new twit campaign to white-wash Islamic force initiators
Clarion Project: Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
anti-CAIR
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)

2012-12-20
Anthony Watts
climate sensitivity is low, but alarmists' sensitivity is high

2012-12-20
Bob Tisdale
El Nino oscillation has no trend and cannot contribute to long-term global warming

2012-12-20 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 400,422 in the week ending December 15, a decrease of 28,766 from the previous week.   There were 421,103 initial claims in the comparable week in 2011.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.5% during the week ending December 8, unchanged from the prior week's unrevised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 3,231,115, an increase of 56,406 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.9% and the volume was 3,628,343.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending December 1 was 5,402,429, a decrease of 238,637 from the previous week.   There were 7,152,130 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2011.   Extended Benefits were only available in New York during the week ending December 1...   States reported 2,096,545 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending December 1, a decrease of 97,708 from the prior week.   There were 2,941,157 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

2012-12-20
Anthony Watts
global warming is often followed by increased volcanic activity which is often followed by global cooling

2012-12-20
Lorna Thackeray _Billings MT Gazette_
over-population continues to worsen
"Montana's population finally topped the 1M mark in 2012...   North Dakota topped the list at a rate of 2.17%.   The DC was second at 2.15%...   Wyoming and South Dakota were also in the top 10, with 1.6% and 1.19% growth.   Idaho's growth rate was estimated at 0.8%.   Montana's growth rate was 0.7%.   That reflects a population increase of 7,474 people...   [Idaho now has] 1.6M people...   In terms of actual population numbers, California, with 38M people, is still '#1'.   It was followed by Texas at 26M; New York, 19.5M; Florida, 19.3M; Illinois, 12.8M; Pennsylvania, 12.8M; Ohio, 11.5M; Michigan, 9.9M; Georgia, 9.9M; and North Carolina, 9.7M.   The only 2 states to lose population during the year were Rhode Island, which lost an estimated 354 people, and Vermont, down 581.   Texas saw the largest growth, with an [net] additional 427,425 people.   California was second with 357,497 [net additional] people, and Florida came in third with [net additional] 235,306."

2012-12-20
Mark Krikorian _National Review_
Trey Gowdy new House immigration sub-committee chair

2012-12-20
Chris Lydgate _Reed magazine_
Richard E. Crandall b: 1947-12-29 d: 2012-12-20
Matt Drudge: Experimental Math

2012-12-20
Steven Hansen _NASDAQ_
the economy is bad because productivity is inadequate
"The way productivity is calculated by the economists [at BLS] -- it uses GDP components [from the BEA]...   Productivity in the...graph is calculated by dividing 'real output' by hours worked.   If a component was out-sourced, this would be considered a productivity improvement.   In my posts, I have constantly complained about this view of productivity: My view of productivity is one of an industrial engineer, while the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) are bean counters using a simple hours vs. output approach.   Although one could argue that productivity improvement must be cost effective, it is not true that all cost improvement are productivity improvements.   There is no way for a bean-counter to understand productivity.   They only understand that a product is being made cheaper, and not exactly why.   But not understanding under-lying dynamics sets you up for drawing the wrong conclusion.   From my POV, [inflation-adjusted] productivity has improved little in the USA since 2000, and this is part of the dynamic which lead into the Great Recession.   SF Fed macro-economic researcher John Fernald, comes closer to quantifying real productivity (his paper at the SF Fed (pdf)).   He utilizes a multifactor method of quantifying productivity.   Multi-factor productivity -- combines estimates of labor inputs with estimates of other factors of production, such as capital, in proportion to their importance in production.  

The [graph] above identifies 4 distinct periods of productivity growth.   10 years of productivity slow-down beginning in 1973.   A period of modest growth of productivity that continued into the mid-1990s.   A multi-factor productivity growth spurt of 1.7% per year.   A dramatic decline beginning in 2004 in the rate of growth of multi-factor productivity to about 0.5% per year, caused by labor and capital being under-utilized following the initial recovery from the 2001...   if the answer and calculation result differ, you need to go back and re-postulate and / or recalculate...   You cannot have real productivity growth without investment (tangible or intangible -- or sweat in the case of a small business) -- and this is why the multi-factor method provides a better answer...   consumer demand curve began to change somewhere around 2000 creating too much USA capacity slack (you do not invest when you have excess capacity); in the same period the free trade agreements started to take hold moving investment over-seas.   Even saying this is misleading -- productivity is not a command feature of the economy.   It follows in the aftermath of a significant technological break-through -- say the personal computer.   Adding to misery, productivity improvement implies less labor to do the same task -- how much productivity improvement do you want with employment slack...   The under-lying dynamics continue to have a downward bent.   There are recession markers still in play, and one of our alternate methods to validate our forecast is recessionary.   All in all, not a great forecast...   ECRI believes the recession began in 2012 July... Bankruptcies this Week: UFood Restaurant Group, Edison Mission Energy, GuildMaster, Imagenetix, THQ..."
St. Louis Fed graph
Normally, I'd try to avoid quoting this much of such an article, but the evil MSFT Javascript on the NASDAQ.com site scrambles it up so much that I could only read the article by bringing up the page's source code...jgo

2012-12-20
A. Gary Shilling _Bloomberg_
helping India's economic success
"Even if the latest reforms succeed, India will need to do much more to acquire the efficiency, infrastructure, foreign direct investment, free markets and deregulated, corruption-free orientation that will allow the country to move from 5% annual real growth to higher sustainable gains.   Land reform is required not only to allow foreign super-markets to become established but also to make it easier for manufacturers to set up factories...   India inherited its bureaucratic system from the British and added corruption to the formula.   The 'Licence Raj' system has been weakened since 1991, but is far from dead [while that in the USA seems to be worsening]...   [India has] 13M new labor-force entrants each year...   About 97% of children enter school, but more than half drop out before completing high school.   The literacy rate of 63% in 2006 -- the latest available data -- though an improvement from 52% in 1991, is only higher than Pakistan's 2009 rate of 55% among major countries...   An Indian call center found that it could hire only three of every 100 applicants because so few high-school and college graduates could communicate effectively in English and had basic reading comprehension skills.   Students in India's engineering colleges now number 1.5M, compared with 390K in 2000.   Yet 75% of technical graduates and more than 85% of general grads can't pass the tests for jobs in India's information-technology industry, call centers and other high-growth global sectors.   These businesses directly employ only 2.5M Indians and are constrained from more rapid growth by shortages of adequately prepared workers.   Major Indian [cross-border bodyshopping and off-shoring] companies such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Wipro Ltd. (WPRO) are increasing the length of training programs to bring newly hired graduates up to speed.   Both companies made on-site evaluations of India's 3K engineering schools.   Tata says 300 students made the cut; Wipro said 100 did.   Only 2 Indian universities rank in the world's top 500, compared with 22 in [Red China], 2 in Russia, 6 in Brazil and 154 in the U.S.A.   Higher training costs are reducing the international competitiveness of India's [cross-border bodyshopping and off-shoring] industry, which contributes $69G annually to the economy and accounts for a quarter of exports...   there [were 1M households in 2005 making more than $34K per year compared with 2.5M now]...   However, those on the bottom, with less than $3K a year, have increased from 101M in 2005 to 111M [now]."

2012-12-20
Andrei Medina _GMA News_
Pinoy guest-teachers in USA win $4.5M in damages
"A group of Filipino teachers was awarded $4.5M in damages from a class suit filed against their recruiter -- Los Angeles-based Universal Placement Inc. (UPI) and its owner, Lourdes Navarro, on Monday.   The jury cited UPI's violation of the California Employment Agency, Employment Counseling and Job Listing Act for violation of Unfair Business Practices and misrepresentation under the California Business and Professional Code.   The case, spearheaded by the Filipino Educators Federation in Lousiana (FEFL), was filed in 2010.   FEFL represents over 300 teachers...   UPI violated laws from the Philippines, Louisiana, and California with each teacher paying up to $16K to be deployed in the US...   various school districts in Louisiana...   UPI's scam reportedly begins with a selection process in the Philippines where each applicant was required to pay $5K which supposedly covered all costs.   However, the recruiter will ask for additional fees and payments after the applicant pays the initial amount.   Since most of the applicants are either deep in debt or have sold their properties to pay the initial amount, all they can do is to give in to the additional fees being asked by UPI since they won't refund the $5K.   The recruiters also pressured the applicants by threatening them that they will give their slots to another applicant if they did not pay the additional fees immediately."
David North: CIS: hollow victory

2012-12-20
_Conference Board_
Leading economic index fell in November to 95.8 following a 0.3% increase in October

2012-12-20
Tyler Durden & Lance Roberts _Zero Hedge_
Why reported price indexes seem different from reality
"As rising prices for individuals, and businesses, has negatively impacted their prosperity; reported inflation has remained at very low levels.   With the Fed pumping trillions of dollars into financial system the [observation] of much higher inflation, as the dollar is debased, has caused gold prices to soar in recent years...   The sole purpose in measuring inflation is to help businesses, individuals and government adjust their financial planning for the impact of inflation.   Inflation erodes future purchasing power, and decreases economic prosperity, if not accurately accounted for.   The accuracy of measuring inflation, and accounting for it properly, is essential to long term economic prosperity.   The original calculation of CPI, which measured the change in the cost of an identical fixed basket of goods priced at prevailing market costs each period, worked reasonably well for the intended purpose into the early-1980s.   However, as the pressure of increasing deficits weighed on political parties, the need to find solutions to reducing spending, without actually cutting spending, led to several substantial changes in the calculation of inflation.   Shortly after Clinton entered the White House the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) altered the calculation of inflation by changing the weighting of goods in the CPI fixed basket.   Then, over subsequent years, the method of weighting the under-lying components was changed from a straight arithmetic weighting method to geometric.   The primary result of the switch to a geometric weighting was a lower weighting to CPI components that were rising in price, and a higher weighting to those items dropping in price which led to lower reported inflation...   Aside from the weighting changes the BLS instituted a system of 'hedonic' adjustments.   [According to John Williams of ShadowStats] 'That new washing machine you bought did not cost you 20% more than it would have cost you last year, because you got an off-setting 20% increase in the pleasure you derive from pushing its new electronic control buttons instead of turning that old noisy dial, according to the BLS...   I have not attempted to quantify the effects of questionable quality adjustments to the CPI, but they are substantial.'   Lastly, there is 'intervention analysis" in the seasonal adjustment process.   Intervention analysis is critical to the highly volatile areas of food and energy...   The obvious problem with these manipulations is it changed the measure of inflation from a cost-of-living adjustment to a reduction-of-living[-quality] adjustment...   by artificially suppressing the rate of inflation, the future standard of living is reduced to lower levels...   The issue with 'Chained CPI', as with the current measure of CPI, is that it will further misrepresent what the average consumer is living with from day to day...   When it is known in advance that tweaking the math will create a 'permanent' reduction in the measure of inflation then it is no longer an accurate assessment of inflationary pressures in the economy."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-12-21

2012-12-21
Paul Homewood
NOAA is mixing their Ninos

2012-12-21
Benjamin Carlson _Global Post_
Chinese choose USA for schools
"In 2011 alone, nearly 90K Chinese were granted US permanent residency...   More than 45M Chinese were living abroad as of 2010 -- the highest such figure in the world.   In 2011, roughly 150K Chinese obtained permanent residence in other countries [about 60% of them in the USA]...   1 in 4 Chinese who are worth more than $16M have emigrated, and another 47% are considering emigrating...   the single biggest motivation for 80% of emigrees: to find a better education for their children...   In a recent study by Pearson and the Economist Intelligence Unit, the United States ranked 17th in test scores, literacy, and graduation rates, well behind Asian students in Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea.   But while China also has pockets of academic strength -- students in Shanghai stunned the world by ranking first on international exams last year -- many parents see the education system as undesirable for their children.   In public schools, the curriculum emphasizes rote learning, test-taking, and 'patriotic education' courses that offer a sanitized, Communist Party-approved version of history.   Intensely competitive as a rule, Chinese schools are oriented toward one make-or-break college admission exam offered at the end of high school: the 'gaokao'.   Held over 2 days, the gaokao lasts 9 hours, and is so brutally competitive that students have been known to hook themselves up to IV drip bags full of amino acids to get an edge.   And even that might not be enough for some: this year, over 9M high-schoolers competed for fewer than 7M university slots.   Those hoping to get into [Red China's] very best schools -- Peking University, Tsinghua University -- face even steeper odds, with admission rates of less than half of 1%.   That's 12 times harder to get into than Harvard...   All but a tiny handful of [Red China's] universities are still poorly regarded compared to international counterparts, where the gaokao means very little.   As a result, 70% of Beijing students believe that going abroad for college will stand them better in life."

2012-12-21
Josh Flory _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
TomCat USA staging, lighting and support systems moving plant from Mexico and TX to TN

2012-12-21
Jessica Vaughan _Center for Immigration Studies_
DHS goes to great lengths to protect provacy of illegal alien criminal, but show little compassion for his victim
"Roberto Galo...who was in the United States illegally until receiving Temporary Protected Status (TPS) more than a decade ago, was convicted of vehicular manslaughter and driving without a license.   Galo also had prior driving offenses and drives unlicensed because he failed the test 3 times...   As a matter of law, the Privacy Act of 1974 ('Privacy Act'), 5 U.S.C. § 552a [S3418/HR16373; Public Law 93-579; 88 Stat. 1896-1909; GPO S/N 052-001-004-00439-6], as amended, provides statutory privacy rights to U.S. citizens and Legal Permanent Residents (LPRs).   The Privacy Act does not cover visitors or aliens."

2012-12-21
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
Who should have higher priority in getting a green card, the inventor or the casino investor?
"To explain how we prefer the casino moguls or other investors to the inventors requires a visit to particularly convoluted portions of the immigration law, and to how they interact with the strange priorities of the [Obummer regime] (which is pro-casino mogul in this narrow setting.)...   EB-2 covers people with exceptional ability, such as the inventor, and, much further down the list there is category EB-5, for investors, people willing to put up $500K in a more or less government-screened investment.   There are numerical limits for each of these categories, about 40K for EB-2 principals and their family members, and about 10K for EB-5 investors and their family members.   But if all the EB-5 visas are not used, as has been the case in recent years, those visas become available for both EB-1 workers (really outstanding ones and their families) and the EB-2s.   So every time an EB-5 visa is issued to one of these frankly minor-league investors, a visa is denied or pushed back in terms of time for the inventor types."

2012-12-21
Patrick J. Buchanan _Human Events_
the GOP's raison d'etre
"From infancy in the 1850s, its mission was to halt the spread of slavery.   From 1865 to 1929, it was the party of high tariffs.   Mission: Build the nation and protect U.S. industry and the wages of American workers..."

2012-12-21
Ruth Mantell _MarketWatch_
UMich consumer sentiment index fell from 82.7 in late November to 72.9 in late December
NASDAQ/FXstreet
Beaumont TX Enterprise/AP
Wall Street Journal
Federal Reserve Board St. Louis
Federal Reserve Board St. Louis

2012-12-21 (5773 Tebet 08)
Suzanne Fields _Jewish World Review_
illumination from medieval manuscripts
"Jewish Museum in New York City offers an oasis for the contemplation of beauty in the Middle Ages, when a conversation could be conducted through sacred texts.   The exhibition is called 'Crossing Borders: Hebrew Manuscripts as a Meeting Place of Culture', and its website of digital images could usefully be required reading for high school students and adults, or anyone eager to see both the medium and the sacred messages of another time, another place, before the invention of the printing press revolutionized communication.   Style and substance are both important in the manuscripts, which were inscribed in the period from the end of the Roman Empire through the Middle Ages up to the beginning of the Renaissance.   There's legal commentary in Arabic with Hebrew letters from the 12th century, written by the Jewish scholar Moses Maimonides.   There's a beautifully decorated Quran from the 16th century, as well.   The whimsical unicorn of folk art appears in different manuscripts as a transformative religious symbol for suffering and redemption.   Moral fables, biblical stories, prayer books, filled with abstract art and illustrations...   cultural exchanges and practical cooperation sometimes occurred between Jews and Gentiles in both Muslim and Christian communities...   All of the works in the exhibition come from the Bodleian Library at Oxford, England, founded by sir Thomas Bodley in 1598 after he retired as a foreign diplomat for queen Elizabeth i."

2012-12-21 (5773 Tebet 08)
Clifford D. May _Jewish World Review_
Jews in the Judean desert
"More than 40K people have been slaughtered in Syria and the death toll rises daily.   The European Union does not appear to be particularly concerned.   North Korea's rulers have launched a three-stage rocket, moving closer to their goal of developing a nuclear-tipped ICBM, and they're sharing nuclear weapons technology with the world's leading sponsors of terrorism in Iran.   The EU does not seem to be worrying about that either.   Israel is considering building homes on barren hills adjacent to Jerusalem.   The EU's 27 foreign ministers said they were 'deeply dismayed'...   The area in which Israel may build covers 4.6 square miles.   For the sake of comparison, Denver International Airport is 53 square miles.   Known as E1, this area lies within a territory that has a much older name: the Judean desert...   right now both Jews and Arabs live in Jerusalem -- for the most part peacefully, with both populations growing -- while Hamas vows to forcibly expel every Jew from Jerusalem.   Such threats of ethnic cleansing also do not trouble the EU much."

2012-12-21 (5773 Tebet 08)
Paul Greenberg _Jewish World Review_
Let your people go!
"This latest outbreak of courage and principle on Congress' part is called the Magnitsky Bill -- in honor of Sergei Magnitsky, a crusading Russian lawyer who exposed a fraudulent tax scheme on the part of Vladimir Putin's oh-so-new-and-different regime.   Counselor Magnitsky's reward? He died in a Soviet -- excuse me, Russian -- prison after being tortured.   In exchange for relaxing trade restrictions on Russia, the Magnitsky Bill denies visas to any Russian officials involved in Sergei Magnitsky's torture or any other abuses of human rights -- and also prevents them from transferring their considerable assets via the American banking system.   Yikes, that must hurt Russia's new oligarchs.   No wonder they're fuming and threatening dire repercussions...   This isn't the first time Congress has taken a stand for freedom behind the Iron Curtain.   Back in another era, it was called the Jackson-Vanik Amendment.   The sainted Scoop Jackson, one of the last of the Cold Warriors, was the driving spirit behind that law.   Its terms were simple: No free trade for the Soviets without free emigration for its people, including its long-oppressed Jews."

2012-12-21 (5773 Tebet 08)
Maura Dolan _Jewish World Review_
Boy Scouts won case in 9th circus to lease public property
"The ruling stemmed from a law-suit filed by 2 couples, one lesbian, the other agnostic, who said that the city was subsidizing a group with discriminatory policies...   the leases for Camp Balboa and the Youth Aquatic Center did not pose a financial hardship to the city.   'Although they produce little to no revenue, these leases save the City money by placing the costs of maintenance and improvement upon the lessee organizations.', judge William C. Canby ii, who was appointed by president Jimmy Carter, wrote for the unanimous panel.   'The City spends nothing on the properties.'   One of the 25-year leases was for 18 acres at Balboa Park on a site that includes campgrounds, a swimming pool, an amphitheater, restrooms and showers, a picnic area and a ham radio room.   In addition to the annual $1 in rent, the lease required the Scouts to pay an annual $2,500 administration fee, bear responsibility for maintenance and administration and spend $1.7M over 7 years for capital improvements.   The other lease, for waterfront property on Fiesta Island in Mission Bay Park, required no rent but charged the Scouts with building a $1.5M aquatic center.   The center rents boats at inexpensive rates, the court said.   'Other non-profit groups receive similar terms.', the court said.   John Eastman, a constitutional law professor at Chapman University School of Law, called the ruling 'clearly the right decision'."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-12-22

2012-12-22
Jerry Kammer _Center for Immigration Studies_
National Socialist Radio bends reality on border security
"Moreover, conventional wisdom at the border is still that the number of people who avoid apprehension is 2 to 4 times the number who are apprehended...   Jared Bernstein, who wrote in 2007, when he was with the liberal Economic Policy Institute: 'I can hardly remember meeting an employer who didn't complain of a labor shortage.   But businesses claiming that we can't find the workers we need tend to leave out the other part of the sentence: at the wages we're willing to pay.'...   North Dakota's Byron Dorgan, who declared, 'The main reason that big corporations want a guest worker program is that it will drive down U.S. wages.'"

2012-12-22
Michael Kranish _Boston MA Globe_
Mitt Romney did not want to win
Your Black World
Jewish World Review/Agence France Presse
"'He wanted to be president less than anyone I've met in my life.   He had no desire to...run.', said Tagg, who worked with his mother, Ann, to persuade his father to seek the presidency.   'If he could have found someone else to take his place...he would have been ecstatic to step aside.   He is a very private person who loves his family deeply and wants to be with them, but he has deep faith in God and he loves his country, but he doesn't love the attention.'..."

2012-12-22
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
age discrimination discussed in IEEE "Institute" article
 
Hi, everyone, I hope you have been enjoying the holiday season.
 
It's been a while since I've posted to this e-news-letter, due to an exceptionally busy quarter for me.   I just turned in my course grades -- not bad, only 3 days late.   :-)   This was due directly and indirectly to reduced resources in UC these days, but hopefully not adversely impacting the quality of the courses I give.   Anyway, I've been saving up several topics to share with you here, which I'll be doing in the next few days.
 
I'll start with an item sent to me by an alert reader this morning, concerning my favorite H-1B-related topic, age discrimination in the tech industry.   This topic was covered in the IEEE's quarterly news-letter, The Institute (pdf).
 
I'll also discuss a recent piece in the Economic Times, an Indian publication... as well as a recent Reuters article.
 
The brief IEEE article, titled "Do Layoffs Target Older Workers?", has the form of a summary of reader responses to a question posed in the previous issue.   The article also cites my CNN.com op-ed.
 
I've always been baffled as to why the age issue has failed to get much traction in the H-1B debate.   Most surprisingly to me, even some of the major H-1B critics have little or no interest in the age issue.   Even the pro-foreign-tech-worker Vivek Wadhwa has said far more about age than most of the academic and other critics.
 
Around the time my CNN piece came out, I also published an op-ed for Bloomberg News.   Both this and the CNN piece were invited by the publications, and both pieces generated tons of reader comments.   Indeed, The Atlantic's Wire site chosen my Bloomberg article as one of the Five Best Monday Columns nationwide that day.
 
My point is that it's ironic that Bloomberg and CNN are so interested in the age issue while the H-1B critics are not.   (I should note that my 2 op-eds did not mention H-1B, though.)   It's my observation that part of the problem is that some of the critics are reluctant to move beyond criticism of the Indian bodyshops; bringing up the age issue would put them in opposition to main-stream firms like Google.   But also the critics may accept the industry's explanation that they don't hire the older workers due to lack of newer skill sets (a topic I'll cover below).
 
But to anyone who actually watches the industry, knows what the work involves, knows how hiring is done and so on, it is indisputable -- employers use the H-1B program as a means to avoid hiring the older workers (again, meaning age 35+).
 
Presumably some who doubt the H-1B-age connection are swayed by the industry lobbyists' claims that the older workers are unemployable, due to not having up-to-date skill sets.   In fact, when reporters ask me whether the tech area is any worse than the rest in terms of age discrimination, my answer is that the tech employers have a ready excuse: the tech field is changing so fast that the older workers simply aren't qualified for the new work.   Or worse, the employers sometimes claim that the older workers are not even mentally capable of learning the new skills (see below).   Hence the title of the above Reuters article, "Silicon Valley: Worst Place In America For Over-40 Workers?"
 
Yet I've dismissed the skills argument in umpteen ways:
 
*   in sound bite form, citing the incidents in which major employers replaced American techies with foreign ones, and forced the Americans to train their foreign replacements, showing it was the Americans who had the skills, not the foreigners;
 
*   by citing incidents in which older applicants who exactly match the requirements in a job ad don't even get a phone interview;
 
*   by citing public statements by the employers themselves, admitting to focusing on hiring the younger workers because they are cheaper;
 
*   and most importantly, by various statistical analyses.
 
I must hasten to add that I fully support employers who use lay-offs as a means of shedding less-productive workers.   (Actually, this would be far less necessary if they used better criteria in selecting whom to hire in the first place, but that's another story.)   But they are often shooting themselves in the foot by avoiding the older workers.   Granted, older workers cost more, but experience MATTERS.   Consider an article brought to my attention by another reader of this e-news-letter, the Economic Times piece cited above.
 
The title of the piece, "What's the Shelf Life of a Techie? Just 15 Years", is consistent with my comments on the subject, but sharply departs from my views by ascribing the problem to lack of skills:
 
All of these new computing models require architectures that are very different from those that went before, and what older folk learnt in their engineering schools and training programmes.
 
Mukund Mohan, CEO of MSFT's start-up accelerator programme in India, says the shelf life of certain kinds of developers has shrunk to less than a year.   "My daughter developed an app for iPhone 4.   Today, she is re-developing the app to make it smarter for iPhone 5.   Five years ago, developers were talking Symbian (the Nokia operating system).   Today, it's not very relevant.   You have to look at Android or iOS or maybe even Windows 8 to stay relevant."
 
The implication of this "even my daughter" phrasing seems to be that Mohan's daughter is a teenager.   Judging from Mohan's LinkedIn page, he is about 40, so this would make sense.   If that is indeed the point, then is he really saying that the girl is as productive than a seasoned programmer of age 35?   She's all set to march into a highly complex project involving hundreds of thousands of lines of code?
 
This is completely absurd.   Yet the PR experts know that it sells with the people targeted by the industry lobbyists -- Congress and the press.   It's easy to convince these gullible institutions (worse, as the first of them is paid off by the industry) that older techies simply can't be hired, as the technology has passed them by.
 
The iPhone apparently is the example of choice of the apologists for age discrimination in the industry today.   You may recall this quote from a Seattle Times article a few weeks ago:
 
"They want people with the newest skills.", Kirkegaard said.   "If you came out of software development eight years ago, by definition you would know nothing about how to write programming for an iPhone app."   (Jacob Kirkegaard is a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC.)
 
Kirkegaard is incorrect in assuming that iPhone programming is a standard part of today's CS curricula, and is even more off the mark in implying that older programmers are incapable of learning to write iPhone apps.   Actually, most iPhone programmers learn it on their own, either on the job or at home.
 
Even more insidious is the notion that Mohan's teenager is actually more capable of learning iPhone programming than the seasoned 35-year-old.   The Economic Times article says,
 
Technology is changing so rapidly that older engineers must put in an extraordinary amount of time and effort into new learning and also to unlearn old ones...
 
Shailesh Thakurdesai, business development manager at Texas Instruments India , says college hiring is a priority for the company because "freshers learn fast and do things differently, without the baggage of past experience"...
 
SAP's Ferose says..."We find people after 40 finding it very difficult to be relevant..."
 
The Economic Times article claims that the fundamental nature of apps has changed so much that older people have major problems adapting:
 
The past few years have seen dramatic changes in technology.   Computing is being increasingly done on mobile devices like [idiot-phones] and tablets.   These devices have lower processing power and storage capacity than PCs.   And they run on batteries that require recharging.   Hence, applications built for them must have smaller foot-prints and be highly energy efficient.
 
Computing is increasingly moving towards cloud computing, where centralized IT infrastructure and applications cater to multiple users over a network, usually the internet.   This is in contrast to the systems we have been used to for long, where we buy a licence for an application, which then resides in our local PC or server.
 
This is all an excuse, folks.   As I said, I often see older techies who exactly match an employer's job ad, only to find they don't even get a phone interview.   But let's put the skills issue in perspective.
 
There is really nothing "new" about these "new" technologies.   Android programming is done in Java, which goes back to the 1990s.   Indeed, the prime example the industry lobbyists gave in 1998 when they were pushing Congress to enact the first big increase in the H-1B cap was "Older programmers don't know the new Java language."   In essence, the industry lobbyists are still making that claim today, 14 years later.   The iPhone apps are programmed in Objective-C, which goes back to the 1980s.
 
Both languages are variants on the C language, which IS standard in university curricula and has been for at least 25 years (and Java is standard too).   The fact that the code libraries for Java etc. now do things such as sensing that the phone has rung, as opposed to say, dispatching a message through the Internet, is irrelevant.   The same basic thought processes and tools are being used as before.
 
And as to the "revolutionary" technology of cloud computing, give me a break.   This was standard in the pre-PC era.   In 1980 I was working for a firm whose name even sounded similar, Remote Computing Corporation; just change "cloud" to "remote".
 
Instead, what really counts is general programming skills.   The sharp experienced programmer will always contribute more to a project -- in reduced completion time, fewer bugs, better maintainability and so on -- than the new grad.   And the experienced programmer will learn new languages more quickly than the new grad, not more slowly, as the older guy has been through that learning process so many times.   As a geologist who traveled the world and became fluent in many (human) languages once joked, "The first 4 or 5 languages are the hardest."
 
One of the reader comments following the Economic Times article noted that Andy Rubin was about 35 when he invented Android.   I would add that James Gosling was 36 when he invented Java.
 
At risk of sounding immodest, I'll also add that though I am much older than 35, the book I wrote last year on programming in the R language has become the standard reference for coders who want to learn to program in R.   And though R now is beginning to be taught in some universities, who is teaching those young ones R?   It's generally people over 35, of course.   The R Core Development Team, consisting of about 20 people who constantly add innovations, is all over 35.   Yet R surpassed the previously most popular data science language SAS, some years ago in number of users.   Yet a glance at SAS's employment web page shows that it is typical of the software industry, such as defining a "senior" position as having five years of experience.
 
As Senator Grassley has said about the H-1B issue in general, "People should not be fooled."
 
Norm
---30---
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

 
 

2012-12-23

2012-12-23
Anthony Watts
AAAS Science says finding Higgs boson is biggest break-through of 2012
AAAS Science: Break-throughs of the year
"Denisovan Genome... the finger bone belonged to a girl with brown eyes, brown hair and brown skin who died in Siberia between 74K and 82K years ago....   the human genome is more 'functional' than researchers had believed.   Although only two percent of the genome codes for actual proteins, the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements, or ENCODE, project indicated that about 80% of the genome is active"

2012-12-23
David M. Hoffer
UN IPCC AR5 chapter 11 -- bankruptcy protection

2012-12-23
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
Filipino victims on H-1Bs won symbolic but hollow victory in US district court
"my strong guess is that the teachers -- and their legal team -- will not collect much of anything from either of the defendants: Lourdes Navarro or her placement firm, Universal Placement International Inc.   I do not have access to Ms. Navarro's financial records, but I do know that she was previously convicted of defrauding California's Medi-Cal program of $1M, has just funded an expensive legal defense in the teachers' case (as well as, presumably, in the other), and her firm's website is now dark...   the U.S. Labor Department's minuscule listing of H-1B debarred employers does not include the East Baton Rouge parish School Board as an employer that no longer can use the H-1B program.   The only school system currently on the list is that of Prince George's county, MD..."

2012-12-23
Carly Harrington _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
Michael Carroll is passionate about start-ups
"Carroll has his hand in more than a dozen companies that employ about 150 people.   Those who know the 55-year-old entrepreneur describe him as a compassionate visionary who isn't hindered by impossibilities when it comes to seeing the big picture.   His passion for startups and his willingness to share knowledge with others is what some say make him a good fit to head up a new entrepreneur center currently under renovation on Market Square and slated to open early next year...   When Carroll decided to pursue an engineering degree at the University of Tennessee, it wasn't, he acknowledged, because he had any aptitude that would suggest he would be 'a good engineering student or a happy engineer'.   He studied it because at that time engineers were the ones getting jobs.   Carroll was not an 'A' student and considered leaving the field a few times.   He was encouraged to stay by his professor who told him engineering needed people like him...   'I don't even care what the answer is.   What's the process?', Carroll said...   After he graduated, Carroll began a management training program at a company that managed all three Oak Ridge facilities of the Department of Energy.   During the class, he was asked to rank in importance certain values like risk, reward, structure, process and procedure.   'I thought that was the coolest exercise...'...   When told to compare how the order mapped to his individual needs, the answer was none.   Carroll quit...   Machine Kinetics Inc., which focuses on building mechanical engineering projects, was Carroll's first entrepreneurial venture.   Over the years, Carroll has acquired or started 18 businesses of which 14 remain.   A few new start-ups are in the works and will push that total to more than 20 within the next couple of months.   Strategic Performance Group is the one company that takes care of the business of all the other companies."

2012-12-23
Rachel Stark _Oregonian_
Halloween decoration package contained haunting message of labor abuse in Red China

2012-12-23
_Oregonian_/_AP_
ICE ran only 3K audits of employers for illegal alien employees in FY2012
"GE was fined $2K.   In fiscal year 2011, the most recent year reviewed by AP, the median fine was $11K.   The state with the most workplaces fined was Texas [where pres. Obummer has few supporters] with 63, followed by New Jersey with 37.   The lowest fine was $90 to a Massachusetts fishing company.   The highest fine was $394,944 to an employment agency in Minneapolis..."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

"More black males passed the tough entrance examination to NY's Stuyvesant HS in 1938 than in 1984, even though the black population of NY was much smaller in 1938." --- Thomas Sowell 1993 "A Look Back" _Is Reality Optional?_ pg 170

 
 

2012-12-24

2012-12-24
David M. Hoffer
UN IPCC AR5 chapter 11 -- maintaining the spin

2012-12-24
Steven A. Camarota _Center for Immigration Studies_
projecting immigration's impact on population and age distribution in the 21st century
"If immigration continues as the census bureau expects, the nation's population will increase from 309M in 2010 to 436M in 2050 -- a 127M (41%) increase.   The projected increase of 127M is larger than the combined populations of Great Britain and France.   It also exceeds the entire U.S. population in 1930.   The census bureau assumes net immigration (legal and illegal) by 2050 will total 68M.   These future immigrants plus their descendants will add 96M residents to the U.S. population, accounting for three-fourths of future population growth.   Even if immigration is half what the census bureau expects, the population will still grow 79M by 2050, with immigration accounting for 61% of population growth.   Without any immigration, the U.S. population will increase by 31M by 2050.   Though projections past 2050 are much more speculative, if the level of immigration the census bureau foresees in 2050 were to continue after that date, the U.S. population would reach 618M by 2100 -- double the 2010 population.   The immigrant (legal and illegal) share of the population will reach 1 in 6 U.S. residents by 2030, a new record, and nearly one in five residents by 2050.   The above projections follow the census bureau's assumptions about future levels of immigration, as well as death and birth rates, including a decline in the birth rate for Hispanics.   Consistent with prior research, the projections show immigration only slightly increases the working-age (18 to 65) share of the population.   Assuming the census bureau's immigration level, 58% of the population will be of working-age in 2050, compared to 57% if there is no immigration.   Raising the retirement age by one year would have a larger positive impact on the working-age share over the next 40 years than would the census bureau's total projected level of net immigration (68M)."

2012-12-24
_Washington DC Post_/_AP_
Palestinians'/Hamas's rocket attacks on Israel were war crimes, while defensive actions hit too many civilians
Seattle WA Post-Intelligencer
Ori Lewis: Reuters
San Antonio TX Express-News/Hearst
Atlanta GA Journal-Constitution

2012-12-24
_Breitbart_/_Agence France Presse_
more Jewish people living in India return to Israel
News Corp.
Raw Story
BBC
Ha Aretz/AP
"Jewish immigrants of the Bnei Menashe tribe of the Jewish community in Manipur, northeast India, wait to be reunited with family members as they arrive at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv...   More than 1,700 members of the Bnei Menashe community already live in Israel...   7,200-strong Bnei Menashe...   Michael Freund of the Shavei Israel group (meaning 'those who return to Israel' in Hebrew), which arranged their journey, said more than 7K people have sought help from the Israeli government to emigrate from India...   The community says it is one of the lost 10 tribes of Israel who were exiled when Assyrians invaded the northern kingdom of Israel in the 8th Century BC.   According to its oral tradition, the tribe travelled through Persia, Afghanistan, Tibet, China and on to India, where it eventually settled in the north-eastern states of Manipur and Mizoram."

2012-12-24
Willis Eschenbach
sailing on the moon wind

2012-12-24 (5773 Tebet 11)
Fredrick Nzwili _Jewish World Review_
Kenyan Christians fear former co-religionists are attacking churches

2012-12-24 (5773 Tebet 11)
Maura Dolan _Jewish World Review_
challenge to California ban on sexual orientation counseling going to federal 9th circus

2012-12-24 (5773 Tebet 11)
Scott Dance _Jewish World Review_
14 years after amputation, woman gets new thought-powered prosthetic
"To make it work, Chi figured patients would require surgery to replant nerve endings detached during amputation into muscle at the arm's end.   That would restore muscle stimulation at the amputation site, enabling detection of intended movements for the missing limb...   McLoughlin referred Burke to Chi, who met with her to prepare for the surgery, known as targeted muscle reinnervation.   But it turned out she didn't need the surgery.   When she later visited the lab this spring and was connected to the arm, she almost immediately was able to control it.   'It was amazing.', Chi said.   'My jaw almost hit the floor.'   Chi found that after Burke's amputation, the surgeon reattached loose nerves to the muscle that remained above where her elbow once was.   That meant that when her brain sent signals down toward the hand, instead of disappearing into her tissue, they were transferred to muscle in the rounded end of her arm...   Since then, McLoughlin and researchers have tallied up 3K hours of experience with the device, fine-tuning the technology that directs its movement.   Sensors placed around an amputated arm detect patterns in firing muscles when subjects are told to imagine making particular movements.   Once a pattern is established, it can be assigned to an action; the more complex the pattern data collected, the more lifelike the movement...   If more doctors took the extra few minutes to reattach nerves to muscle during amputation surgeries, it could make the later surgery unnecessary, Chi said.   It also would help patients avoid the phantom limb pain that can occur when nerves remain detached.   The fact that Burke didn't need it means she will get her prosthetic at least 6 months earlier than she might have otherwise...   The goal is to reduce the cost per arm to less than $30K, but it's nowhere near that now."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

"No one denies the civil rights movement a share of the credit for having advanced civil rights.   But the economic advancement of blacks, both absolutely & relative to whites, began long before the civil rights movement of the 1960s, & was due to the individual efforts of millions of black people trying to better their own lives.   Hard statistics show that this advancement did not begin in the 1960s, was not even accelerated during the 1960s, & actually began to stall during the 1970s when 'affirmative action' started." --- Thomas Sowell 1993 "Gratitude to Fat Cats" _Is Reality Optional?_ pg 175

 
 

Tuesday

Dienstag

Yom Shlishi

Martedi

2012-12-25

2012-12-25
Amity Shlaes _Bloomberg_
union bosses vs. workers, government-employee unions vs. tax-victims, and bodyshopping

2012-12-25
Susan Crawford _Bloomberg_
merger made Comcast executives stronger, US Internet users weaker
"On a gray day in 2010 February, Brian Roberts sat facing the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee's anti-trust sub-committee.   The panel was holding its first hearing on a proposed merger between 2 of the country's most powerful media companies, the cable distribution giant Comcast Corp. and the entertainment conglomerate NBC Universal...   Comcast had been gaining strength as a monopoly provider of wired high-speed Internet access in its territories, while the U.S.A. was lagging behind other countries when it came to the prices charged for and the speed and capability of this basic communications tool...   A decade earlier, the U.S.A. had led the world in Internet access, but by the time of the hearing, in most of Comcast's markets, the company was the only provider selling services at speeds sufficient to satisfy Americans' requirements.   The access Comcast sold was less useful than it could have been, however, because the network was designed to be contested among users in the same neighborhood, making speeds unreliable.   It also favored passive down-loads far more than active up-loads.   Meanwhile, in most parts of the U.S.A., the Internet access that all Americans would need within 5 years -- fiber-optic lines capable of speeds from 100 megabits to gigabits per second -- could not be purchased at all...   at the end of 2009, Verizon Communications Inc., the only nationwide company installing fiber-optic lines, had already signaled that it was planning to stop doing so...   Two enormous monopoly sub-markets -- one for wireless and one for wired transmission -- are each dominated by 2 or 3 large companies...   Comcast's [moderate]-speed Internet access had almost 16M subscribers.   (The second-largest cable provider, Time Warner Inc., had about 9M.)   Comcast dominated the markets in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and 11 more of the 25 largest U.S. cities...   The merged company would control 1 in 5 hours of all television viewing in the U.S.A."

2012-12-25
Christopher Monckton
Bethlehem and the rat-hole problem
"In the closing minutes of the final plenary of the UN's Doha climate summit, when no one else had anything further to add, I spent a few seconds telling the delegates something that the bad scientists and the malicious media have done their level best to conceal.   There has been no global warming for 16 years.   In the real world, this surely welcome news would have been greeted with cheers of relief and delight.   Since the beginning of 1997, despite the wailing and gnashing of dentures among the classe politique, despite the regulations, the taxations, the carbon trades, the wind-mills, the interminable, earnestly flatulent UN conferences, the CO₂ concentration that they had declared to be Public Enemy #1 has not stabilized.   It has grown by one-twelfth.   Yet this startling growth has not produced so much as a twentieth of a Celsius degree of global warming.   Any warming below the measurement uncertainty of 0.05 degrees celsius in the global-temperature data-sets is statistically indistinguishable from zero...   they should have been excited and delighted when they heard the news...   How does one let the other side off some hook on which they have imprudently impaled themselves, while minimizing their loss of face?   A cornered rat will fight savagely, even against overwhelming odds, because it has no alternative.   Give the rat a way out and it will instinctively take it...   Yet this dubious hypothesis, not being Popper-falsifiable, is not logic and, therefore, not science.   If a hypothesis cannot be checked by any empirical or theoretical method, it is not -- stricto sensu -- a hypothesis at all.   It is of no interest to science...   The clincher, in most diplomatic discussions, is money.   Once we have led our opponents to understand that there is simply no reason to place any credence whatsoever in the exaggerations that are now painfully self-evident in the models, we can turn their attention to climate economics...   The tiny drop in CO₂ concentration would cut predicted temperature by 0.00006℃.   This pathetic result would be achieved at a cost of $130G, which works out at $2P/℃.   Abating the 0.15 degrees celsius warming predicted for this decade would thus cost $317T, or $45K/head worldwide, or 59% of [gross global product]."

2012-12-25 (5773 Tebet 12)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
random thoughts
"...Yet the ignorant expect others to take them seriously."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

"The foundation of our empire (viz., forms of gov't) was not laid in the gloomy ages of ignorance & superstition; but at an epoch when the rights of mankind were better understood & more clearly defined, than at any other period." --- George Washington 1783 (quoted in Harry V. Jaffa 1994 _Original Intent & the Framers of the Constitution_ pg 252)

 
 

Wednesday

Mittwoch

Yom R'vi'i

Mercoledi

2012-12-26

2012-12-26
Steve Goreham
John Kerry -- who served in VietNam -- as secretary of state: global warming first, world hunger, disease, nuclear arms and wars second
Washington DC Times

2012-12-26
Anthony Watts
cool white Christmas: almost two-thirds of USA has snow cover

2012-12-26
Greg Robb _MarketWatch_
Rather than economize, corrupt federal government works hard on schemes to cook the books

2012-12-26
Tammie Gitt _Cumberland PA Sentinel_
Neighboring farmers just showed up and did what needed to be done
"Last year, a farming family lost its silo.   No one called the family to ask what they could do to help.   Neighboring farmers just showed up and did what needed to be done, said Jason Nailor of Mechanicsburg.   'It happens like that a lot.', his wife, Sherisa, said.   'It's a testament to the profession and industry itself.'...   In the past 6 years, enrollment in the agricultural science classes has increased by 35% while the FFA membership at the school has nearly doubled...   Jason said he was recently looking at land priced between $25K and $30K an acre.   'You'd never get out of the mortgage.', he said.   Plus there's the equipment cost.   When a friend told him that he bought a house for $200K, Jason told him that amount wouldn't even buy a combine."

2012-12-26
"Just the Facts"
erratic environment may be key to human evolution
"'At Olduvai Gorge...the landscape once fluctuated rapidly, likely guiding early human evolution...   key mental developments within the human lineage may have been linked with a highly variable environment'...   'grassland landscapes transitioned to closed forests over just hundreds to several thousands of years'...   'Olduvai Gorge abruptly and routinely fluctuated between dry grasslands and damp forests about 5 or 6 times during a period of 200K years.'...   'We found a correlation between changes in the environment and planetary movement.'..."

2012-12-26
_Saving Country Music_
how Nashville surprisingly tackled the talent glut in 2012
"One of the most remarkable music events of 2012 must be how Nashville and some of its biggest, most bloated and notorious corporate citizens did the inexplicable: they began to tackle the issue of the massive talent glut in American roots music.   As big record labels continue to tighten their ships, and radio companies like Clear Channel continue to buy up radio stations all around the country and nationalize programming, the ability for America's major media companies to offer true choices in content continues to diminish...   T Bone Burnett: 'there's a wealth of incredible material laying around town...   a surprising amount of really good, handcrafted, personal songs that people are willing to share with us because there's no longer a platform for them to share their music at all.'"

2012-12-26 (5773 Tebet 13)
rabbi Abraham Cooper, rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, & reverend John Huffman _Jewish World Review_
Christians targeted by governments and NGOs in about 131 countries
"In October, armed attackers, presumed to be members of Boko Haram, an Islamist terrorist group with links to al Qaeda, invaded the Tudun Wada Wuro Patuje area, entering the off-campus housing of the Federal Polytechnic State University.   The attackers called students out of their rooms and asked for their names.   Those with Christian names were shot dead or killed with knives.   Students with traditionally Muslim names were told to quote Islamic scripture.   The selection completed, at least 26 bodies were left in lines outside the buildings.   The attack was a pogrom, the victims of which were African Christians, not European Jews.   To be sure, it lacked the scale and scope of Hitler's total war against the entire Jewish people.   The Boko Haram seem content to burn churches and to maim and murder those -- including other Muslims, but especially Christians, by the scores -- who would stop the spread of their version of Shariah law in Nigeria alone...   Johnnie Carson, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, sanitized the intentions of this murderous group while giving a 'Live at State' on-line interview in September...   Threatened targets of religious hatred today include Hindus, Sunnis, Shiites, Bahais and Jews, but the most widely menaced are Christians.   A Pew Forum study last year found that Christians are persecuted -- by independent groups or governments -- in 131 of the 193 countries in the world."

2012-12-26 (5773 Tebet 13)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
Middle East "democracy"
"The human experience should have taught us that just getting rid of a particular dictatorship is only half the struggle.   We must always ask what's going to replace it.   The 1917 Russian revolution got rid of the Czars only to be replaced by the far greater brutality of the Bolsheviks under Joseph Stalin and his successors.   In China, Chiang Kai-shek's dictatorial rule was replaced by Mao Tse-tung's unprecedented barbarity, which became responsible for the deaths of 76M Chinese.   Cuba's Fulgencio Batista's dictatorship was replaced with that of Fidel Castro.   The injustices of Western colonialism in Africa were replaced with homegrown brutal dictators who murdered their citizens.   In most countries in the Middle East, the collection of human rights that Westerners know as personal liberty is non-existent...   there's little prospect for liberty and whatever the West tries to promote in terms of liberty is doomed to failure and disappointment.   The fact of the matter is that nations in the Middle East do not share the cultural and philosophical foundations of the West that created its respect for the rule of law and private property rights.   What should the West do about the gross violations of human rights so prevalent in North Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere? My short answer is: mind our own business and only intervene when there are direct threats to our national defense or economic interests.   Otherwise, what they want to do to one another is none of our business."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

"[The] family is a thousand times better charity than all our machinery.   [Physical surroundings are] nothing compared with the improvement in character & mind of the persons aided, & this is generally best effected by simple rooms, simple machinery." --- Charles Brace (quoted in John G. O'Grady 1931 _Catholic Charities in the US_ pg 381, quoted in Marvin Olasky 1992 _The Tragedy of American Compassion_ pp 128-129)

 
 

Thursday

Donnerstag

Yom Chamishi

Giovedi

2012-12-27

2012-12-27 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 440,887 in the week ending December 22, an increase of 39,458 from the previous week.   There were 497,689 initial claims in the comparable week in 2011.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.5% during the week ending December 15, unchanged from the prior week's unrevised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 3,254,214, an increase of 9,650 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.9% and the volume was 3,613,414.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending December 8 was 5,475,708, an increase of 73,279 from the previous week.   There were 7,231,771 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2011.   Extended Benefits were only available in New York during the week ending December 8...   States reported 2,100,243 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending December 8, an increase of 3,698 from the prior week.   There were 2,926,135 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

2012-12-27
Ed Runyan _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
retiring judge John M. Stuard says federal laws and regulations changed people's standards and the kinds of crimes

2012-12-27
Peter Ferrara _American Spectator_
fiscal cliff-diving
"Republicans [and the USA] will get a better deal if they stop negotiating behind closed White House doors and [insist] the Senate vote on a plan. IOW, if they follow the Constitution... &bsp; the House has already acted to avoid the fiscal cliff...   Because we live in a low information society with mainstream media that refuse to report on anything that is not consistent with the Democrat party line, the House should act today to pass again that extension of all the Bush tax cuts for everyone.   With public focus on the impending fiscal cliff, it will be impossible for partisan journalists to hide that development from the American people."

2012-12-27
Willis Eschenbach
Awe, shucks...

2012-12-27
Ruth Mantell _MarketWatch_
Conference Board: consumer confidence index down from from 71.5 in November to 65.1 in December
San Jose CA Mercury News/AP
"The Expectations Index declined sharply from 80.9 to 66.5.   The Present Situation Index increased from 57.4 to 62.8...   Those saying jobs are 'plentiful' edged down from 11.0% to 10.3%, while those saying jobs are 'hard to get declined from 37.4% to 35.6%."

2012-12-27
Joseph d'Aleo _Washington DC Examiner_
EPA's carbon regulations are not based on sound science
Watts Up with That
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

"When any man or woman goes on a dole something happens to them mentally & the quicker they are taken off the dole the better it is for them the rest of their lives." --- Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) 1933-11 (quoted in Grace Adams 1939 _Workers on Relief_ pg 11, quoted in Marvin Olasky 1992 _The Tragedy of American Compassion_ pg 154)

 
 

Friday

Freitag

Yom Shishi

Venerdi

2012-12-28

2012-12-28 (5773 Tebet 15)
R' Pinchas Winston _Torah.org_
Giving Criticism
"as the Talmud states: Rebi said: Which is the proper path that a person should choose for himself?   He should love criticism, because as long criticism is in the world, pleasantness comes to the world and evil is removed from the world...   Rebi Shmuel bar Nachmani said in the name of Rebi Yonason: Anyone who criticizes his friend for the sake of Heaven merits the portion of The Holy One, Blessed is He...Not only this, they enwrap him with a thread of kindness. (Tamid 28a)...   Jewish Law tells us that if criticism will not be accepted by a person, and maybe even make the person more rebellious, giving the criticism anyhow is a sin."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

"In acquiring a benefit, however, performing the action renders the organism better equipped to survive than it would be if it had not acted at all...   The avoidance of damage or destruction can have value-significance only where there are some other actions to acquire positive benefits which that damage or destruction would prevent." --- Harry Binswanger _The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts_ pg 146

 
 
 

Latest

canonical Dilbert
Dogpile news search on "H-1B"

Saturday

Samstag

Yom Shabbat

Sabato

2012-12-29

2012-12-29 Paul Driessen
the political super-storm that devastated NY
"Unfortunately, too many politicians continue to use the storm to advance agendas, deflect blame for incompetence and mistakes, and obfuscate and magnify future risks from building and development projects that they have designed, promoted, permitted and profited from."

2012-12-29
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
McClellan's "lock-jaw" boats

2012-12-29
"Theodore Dalrymple" _PJ Media_
the worldwide evolution of life expectancy
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

"Consciousness -- for those living organisms which possess it -- is the basic means of survival.   For man, the basic means of survival is reason.   Man cannot survive, as animals do, by the guidance of mere percepts.   A sensation of hunger will tell him that he needs food (if he has learned to identify it as 'hunger'), but it will not tell him how to obtain his food & it will not tell him what food is good for him or poisonous.   He cannot provide for his simplest physical needs without a process of thought...   No percepts & no 'instincts' will tell him how to light a fire...   Yet his life depends on such knowledge -- & only a volitional act of his consciousness, a process of thought, can provide it." --- Ayn Rand 1964 _The Virtue of Selfishness_ pg 21 (quoted in Harry Binswanger _The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts_ pg 206)

 
 

Sunday

Sonntag

Yom Rishon

Domenica

2012-12-30

2012-12-30
David M. Hoffer
UN IPCC AR5 chapter 11: Hiding the decline part 2

2012-12-30
Stephen Dinan _Washington DC Times_
pres. Obummer says immigration law perversion is a priority
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

"[T]he assumption that Americans want charity or will accept it if they have the alternative of doing for themselves simply doesn't hold up...   people still get back up & go back to work as soon as they have a chance." --- Robin Garr 1995 _ReInvesting in America_ pg 87

 
 

Monday

Montag

Yom Sheini

Lunedi

2012-12-31

2012-12-31
Anthony Watts
Think Regress not beating the drum so vigorously on climate

2012-12-31
Andrew Pollack _San Jose CA Mercury News_
federal government Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States cleared Red Chinese acquisition of DNA testing firm
"BGI-Shenzhen... acquisition of Complete Genomics...   Some scientists, politicians and industry executives had said the takeover represented a threat to American competitiveness in DNA sequencing, a technology that is becoming crucial for the development of drugs, diagnostics and improved crops.   The fact that the $117.6M deal was controversial at all reflects a change in the genomics community...   'What's to stop them from mining genomic data of American samples to some unknown nefarious end?', Elaine R. Mardis, co-director of the genome sequencing center at Washington University in St. Louis, said...   BGI is already sequencing American DNA samples with partners including Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the patient-advocacy group Autism Speaks."

2012-12-31
Steve Stecklow, Grace Li, Chyen Yee Lee & Marcus George _San Jose CA Mercury News_/_Reuters_
Red Chinese Huawei offered embargoed HP computer gear to Iran telecomm
"In October, Reuters reported that another Iranian partner of Huawei last year tried to sell embargoed American antenna equipment to Iran's second largest mobile operator, MTN Irancell, in a deal the buyer ultimately rejected.   The U.S. antenna manufacturer, CommScope, has an agreement with Huawei in which the [Red Chinese] firm can use its products in Huawei systems...   Huawei and its Iranian partner, Skycom, appear to have very close ties...   In March and April, Reuters reported that [Red China's] ZTE Corp, a Huawei competitor, had sold or agreed to sell millions of dollars worth of U.S. computer gear, including HP equipment, to Telecommunication Co of Iran, the country's largest telecommunications firm, and a unit of the consortium that controls TCI."

2012-12-31
Anthony Watts
nano- ferrous wheel motor uses atom of ruthenium as ball-bearing

2012 December
_Today's Engineer_
engineer takes up petition asking White House to investigate age discrimination in STEM fields

2012
Carolyn A. Betts & Catherine Austin Fitts _Solari_
HR3606: "JumpStart Our Business StartUps (JOBS)"
"Pre-crowd-funding, establishing a start-up business of any size is an almost insurmountable challenge for all but the most well-capitalized, financially sophisticated and highly risk-tolerant entrepreneurs.   In fact, many entrepreneurs finance their new businesses with credit card debt at outrageously high interest rates and predatory terms, because conventional bank financing of small businesses is almost non-existent.   Funding start-ups with debt increases the likelihood of failure.   Equity financing and limited leverage allows new businesses to weather economic down-turns without crushing fixed debt service expenses and to expand during good times through the reinvestment of profits.   There are many statutory requirements for crowd-funding: opponents cannot seriously portray this legislation as 'de-regulation' or elimination of investor protections in the context of small business and start-up funding.   Perhaps the cries of 'foul' by consumer advocates would be more appropriately hurled at the provisions of Title 1 of the JOBS Act, which relieves 'emerging growth companies' of up to $1B in annual revenues from many of the investor protection 'burdens' imposed by Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank, for example: Proxy solicitation requirements to gain investor approval for golden parachutes are eliminated.   Compensation disclosures are scaled back from top 5 to top three principals.   Exemption is given from CEO pay vs. performance and pay ratio disclosure (which isn't even in effect under Dodd-Frank yet).   Independent auditors are not required to issue audit attestation reports on management control over internal financial reporting.   Exemption is given from any audit rotation rules that may be issued in the future.   The SEC initial public offering review process is streamlined and emerging growth companies are permitted to file initial registration statements on a confidential basis without their going public on EDGAR until SEC comments are received.   Prohibitions of pre-IPO under-writer research reports by underwriters are lifted."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

"There should be nothing unreasonable in the events of the play; or, if there is something unreasonable, it should be outside the tragedy itself... Since tragedy is an imitation of men who are better than ordinary, we ought to imitate the good portrait painters: although they reproduce the figure of a particular person, they none the less make it, as they paint it, more beautiful than it really is." --- Aristotle _Poetics_ section 15 (translated in Aristotle, Renford Bambrough, J.L. Creed & A.E. Wardman _The Philosophy of Aristotle_ pp 425)

 
 

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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
 

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win triumphs, though checkered by failure, than to take ranks with those poor spirits that neither enjoy much nor suffer much because they live in the grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat." --- Theodore Roosevelt 1899-04-10

Movies Coming Soon
 

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