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updated: 2019-03-14
 

"To the extent that the administration can succeed in keeping unfavorable information quiet & the public confused, the public welfare can be sacrificed with impunity to bureaucratic convenience & private gain." --- Joel Primack & Frank von Hippel 1974 _Advice & Dissent_ (quoted in K. Eric Drexler 1990 _Engines of Creation_ pg 204)

 
 

2013 February

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

 

"Few men understood the problems & tendencies of power better than the architects of the US constitution.   Their reading of history taught them that good gov't required much more than the presence of good men in public office.   Good gov't... called for effective brakes on the exercise of power.   They recognized the need for adequate authority to deal with urgent & far-reaching problems; but they were careful to surround such authority with essential restraints & constraints.   Even good men, they believed, have a tendency to use whatever power they have to shield themselves from the consequences of their errors.   Public scrutiny tends to be resisted..." --- Norman Cousins 1987 _The Pathology of Power_ pg 49

 
 
 

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

2013-02-01

2013-02-01
Roger L. Simon _PJ Media_
Chuck Hagel is less qualified to be Secretary of Defense than most of the students in my daughter's high school history honors class
"I have never seen a nomination hearing so humiliating.   (I see why people like Hagel though.   He's kind of an affable dope.   But a secretary of Defense?   Better for bartender at the golf club.)...   Why in the world would the president nominate such a person for such an important position? Well, I think we know -- he wanted a Republican ally in gutting the Pentagon, a lackey who would give him cover for his most extreme policies.   But why would Schumer betray his own co-religionists AND the country in going along with that sleazy and destructive enterprise?"

2013-02-01
Thomas E. Brewton
Obummer is the "no business" president

2013-02-01
Michael Walsh _PJ Media_
A hill to fight on, not a desk to die under

2013-02-01
Basharat Peer _New Yorker_
the Nandy affair and on-going corruption in India

2013-02-01
_International Political Forum_
Egypt - Gaza=Palestine - Israel border as seen from International Space Station
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-02

2013-02-02
Carmen Irish _Billings MT Gazette_
students competed in Big Sky regional science bowl

2013-02-02
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
Were US Volunteers enlistees making a statement regarding the great state of East Tennessee?

2013-02-02
Claudia Rosett _PJ Media_
the bigotted UN

2013-02-02
Paul Mirengoff _EIN News_
How many senate Democrats will vote against reprehensible immigration law perversion?

2013-02-02
William L. Anderson _Krugman in Wonderland_
the Fed and its role in the economy

2013-02-02
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
Seattle WA radio: H-1B and STEM green cards back in the news
 
H-1B and STEM green cards are back in news, no doubt about it.
 
The Seattle area is a case in point.   On Thursday, Seattle radio station KIRO did a segment on the topic, and this coming Monday, KUOW will do one at 12:20.
 
You can listen to the KIRO piece.   Unfortunately, it was just a wee bit unbalanced: They ran a pre-recorded statement by professor Ron Hira, a prominent critic of H-1B, for 30 seconds, and then countered it with a live interview with professor Ed Lazowska that ran nearly 6 minutes.
 
Lazowska has taken a very active, public pro-industry stance for years now.   As was mentioned several times in the broadcast, he holds the Bill and Melinda Gates Chair.   He sits on several board seats for industry firms and his department, which he chaired for a number of years, has received very generous funding from MSFT and other major industry firms.   So one would not expect him to be a critic of H-1B.   I should add that as far as I know, his support of H-1B is sincere.   But still, I would expect his statements to be more nuanced, rather than reading like a list of industry lobbyist talking points.
 
And, of course, I'd expect KIRO to strive for at least a modicum of balance in broadcasting a show on this topic.   Hopefully, KUOW, as a publicly funded radio station, will present a more informative show, with equal time for the two sides of the issue in its show on Monday.
 
The 2 speakers will be Kim Berry of the Programmers Guild on the anti side, and Maria Cardona on the pro side [so the game has already been rigged against the US STEM professionals, because we are framed in a negative light before the discussion starts... again].   Ms. Cardona heads a PR firm whose purpose appears to be to lobby for expanded tech foreign worker programs.
 
Norm
---30---
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-03

2013-02-03
"Washington Watcher" _V Dare_
amnesty for illegal aliens and the GOP's treasonous gang of 4
"Indeed, of the 45 Republicans senators, Flake, Graham and McCain, are the only ones with F Grades.   It is fair to say, that these three men have the worst voting on amnesty in the entire US senate.   (Two other new Republicans, Rob Portman and Dan Coats, have F- grades, but that's based on their votes for small amnesties in the House of Representatives more than a decade ago -- both were out of federal politics during the Bush Amnesty Wars.)   What is particularly troubling about this: all of these RINOs faced primary challengers who ran as immigration patriots.   Each time, they were able to pretend that they supported border security -- and won."

2013-02-03
_Crain's Detroit MI_
UMich consumer sentiment index up from 72.9 in late December to 73.8 in late January
St. Louis Fed
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-04

2013-02-04
_NASDAQ_
Conference Board's employment trends index down from revised 109.47 for December to 109.38 in January
Business Examiner

2013-02-04
Darren Staples _Denver Post_/_Reuters_
DNA tests confirm that remains found under parking lot are very likely those of king Richard iii
Jill Lawless: Contra Costa CA Times/AP
Fox/AP
WLS/abc/AP
CBS
the Blaze
Science Daily

2013-02-04
Jason Overdorf _Global Post_
India's war against corruption whistle-blowers
"Over the past 5 years, some 150 whistle-blowers have allegedly been harassed or jailed for exposing corruption.   As many as 20 have been killed."

2013-02-04
Donna la Framboise
UN IPCC chair on pay-roll of WWF India

2013-02-04
Alex Joffe _PJ Media_
arms in the USA: questions of trust
"There is a palpable and well-deserved loss of trust in official institutions.   The Department of Justice runs guns into Mexico for unknown reasons, loses track of them, people die on both sides of the border, and the attorney general lies to Congress about the affair."

2013-02-04
Anthony Watts
reality finally getting through to people: "There are far more polar bears alive today than there were 40 years ago"

2013-02-04
Andrew C. McCarthy _PJ Media_
a country that was serious about its national security would never put John Brennan in charge of its premier intelligence service
"Serious countries do not fund, arm and 'partner with' hostile regimes.   They do not recruit enemy sympathizers to fill key governmental policy positions.   They do not erect barriers impeding their intelligence services from understanding an enemy's threat doctrine -- in conscious indifference to Sun Tzu's maxim that defending oneself requires knowing one's enemies.   All of these malfeasances have become staples of [Obummer] policy, under the guidance of Brennan, the president's counter-terrorism guru...   The purpose of intelligence is to see what your enemy is trying to hide, to grasp how your enemy thinks, and how he cleverly camouflages what he thinks.   That, to be certain, is the only security against stealthy foes who specialize in sabotage, in exploiting the liberties that make free societies as vulnerable as they are worth defending.   Mr. Brennan, to the contrary, is the incarnation of willful blindness.   His tenure as [Obummer's] top national security advisor has been about helping our enemies throw sand in our eyes and thus enabling the sabotage."

2013-02-04
J. Christian Adams _PJMedia_
going to court over irregularities in the Allen West contest in St. Lucie county FL
Jonathan Mattise: Treasure Coast FL Palm
Jessica Chasmar: Washington DC Times
Angela Cruz: WPTV
"Motor Voter... Section 8 requires states and counties to clean up their voter rolls to ensure dead and duplicate voters aren't voting.   Eric Holder isn't so fond of enforcing Section 8 -- his DoJ spiked at least 8 investigations into states with more registered voters than people alive.   After public attention, 'Voting Section' chief Chris Herren fired off some letters to offending states, but nothing else beyond bluster has issued forth from Herren...   This is typical of Washington, DC Insiders think a legislative fix will solve a problem, the Left picks the ball up and runs, and the right quits playing the game.   Thus, it was not until Judicial Watch and True the Vote sued Indiana and Ohio for voter roll problems in 2012 that any effort was made to use the law to clean up the rolls.   Remember, when left-wing groups like Project Vote or the ACLU used the law for the prior 20 years, they only used it to stop voter roll clean-up...   Were non-citizens voting?   Were people who live in New York half of the year voting in Florida?   How many felons have been removed from the rolls in St.   Lucie county?   How many foreigners are on the rolls?   The law-suit is designed to obtain answers."

2013-02-04
Joseph Homay _Lehigh Valley PA Express-Times_
best approach to reform illegal aliens is deportation
"Immigration reform has been thrust back into our society, by the government's own preposterous antidote.   President Obama should remember these people are 'illegal' in country.   They need to be expelled to their own countries and then reapply lawfully.   Anything more desirable would be unfair and contrary to our laws, a horrible mistake.   The morons in Washington cannot be serious about giving free citizenship to up to 20M illegal aliens.   Many cannot speak English and most are unemployed.   Are the citizens of this nation supposed to 'change' because of Washington [DC's] inability to cope with persistent problems and the inexcusable blunders they conjure up and never seem to solve?   Washington people can converse daily about this illegality, but without swift and decisive acts of opposition, they will all contribute to the end of this nation, socially, financially and economically speaking.   We the people cannot and will not tolerate our laws to be shattered without repercussions to supporters, both Republican and Democrat, of this heinous abomination of impending injustice."

2013-02-04
Edwin S. Rubenstein _V Dare_
January jobs report: immigrants displaced natives at a record clip... and that's even before amnesty (tables, graph)

2013-02-04
William L. Anderson _Krugman in Wonderland_
Krugman, the friend of fraud

2013-02-04 (5773 Shebet 24)
Jonathan Tobin _Jewish World Review_
can Jewish groups criticize Hagel?
"Groups like the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee or even AIPAC are not in the business of involving themselves in partisan fights."

2013-02-04 (5773 Shebet 24)
David G. Savage _Jewish World Review_
US highways victim of politics
"the country still has a bridge repair backlog of $65G, according to the Federal Highway Administration...   According to the National Center for Pavement Preservation, a research lab for road-building materials at the Michigan State University engineering school, every dollar spent to maintain a road in the first 15 years of its life saves $6 to $14 in maintenance costs after 20 years...   Wealthy landowners, developers and business interests who benefit from new highways also write big checks to law-makers who deliver fresh pavement...   Few oppose [new] road projects, regardless of party.   They get 2 photo opportunities: one to throw the first shovelful of dirt and the other to cut the ribbon...   The Federal Highway Administration pays as much as 80% of the cost of states' major road projects but it has little say over how they spend the money."

2013-02-04 (5773 Shebet 24)
David G. Savage _Jewish World Review_
supremes to consider collection of DNA from arrestees and 4th amendment

2013-02-04
_Science Daily_
remains of England's king Richard iii confirmed
"University of Leicester geneticist Dr. Turi King confirmed that DNA from the skeleton matches that of 2 of Richard iii's family descendants -- Canadian-born furniture maker Michael Ibsen and a second person who wishes to remain anonymous...   Skeletal analysis carried out by University of Leicester osteoarchaeologist Dr. Jo Appleby showed that the individual was male and in his late 20s to late 30s.   Richard iii was 32 when he was killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485...   Trauma to the skeleton indicates the individual died after one of two significant wounds to the back of the skull -- possibly caused by a sword and a halberd.   This is consistent with contemporary accounts of Richard being killed after receiving a blow to the back of his head."
skull
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-05

2013-02-05
Jeff Tanner _Seattle WA Times_
Reduction of H-1B visas, increase of standards and fees
"As a senior programmer within Seattle area, I am totally against expanding H-1B visas.   People with H-1B visas only interview those from their own country; and they are very prejudiced against interviewing Americans (unless they are also from their own country).   As a V-dash contractor at MSFT, I had witnessed this directly.   Instead of expanding H-1B visas per year and decreasing the cost per visa, we should be reducing the number of visas and increasing the cost per visa.   By [increasing] the annual quota of H-1B visa and reducing the cost per visa, we have reduced the value of those Americans who are struggling to become engineers.   By expending H-1B visas and reducing the cost to $1K per visa, we have sold the experience of being a valued engineer to non-Americans."

2013-02-05
Anthony Watts
latest predictions are for least active sun-spot cycle since 1906

2013-02-05
Jamie Satterfield _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
resentencing hearing in corporate espionage case
"Phillips sentenced Howley and Roberts, both employees of the Greenback firm Wyko Tire Technology, to probation and community service for stealing from Goodyear its designs for technology to manufacture large tires used on mining and earth-moving equipment.   Wyko had a contract with a [Red Chinese] manufacturer to make those types of tires but lacked the technology to do so, trial testimony showed.   Roberts and Howley in 2007 visited a Goodyear plant so Howley could use his cellphone camera to take photos of production machinery used in a crucial phase of making the large tires.   A jury in 2011 convicted the pair of corporate espionage."

2013-02-05
_Billings MT Gazette_/_AP_
legislators in at least 11 states have proposed limits on use/abuse of UAVs by police
"MT... CA, OR, TX, NB, MO, ND, FL, VA, ME and OK."

2013-02-05
Mike McNally _PJ Media_
Muslim gangs calling themselves "sharia enforcers" hit Britain's streets

2013-02-05
Mark Stuertz _PJ Media_
party losership vs. the GOP
"[Pete Sessions said] 'we did all we could do.'   'No you didn't!', shouted one of the attendees.   'When you pass a budget, you need to get out there and make sure everybody knows that you passed a budget, that you did your job, and then put it on the president and the Senate.   And you need to tell them this well beforehand, that it's all on [Obummer] and Harry Reid.'...   The GOP [losership] is clueless when it comes to such tactics, incapable of developing a coordinated messaging strategy for impending confrontations.   When you see a Republican 'leader' on the talking-head shows, they react to the pre-selected media/DNC narrative of the [day or week], always playing defense.   This isn't rocket science.   The GOP could have pointed out that Obama was about to pummel the middle class with new Obamacare taxes and health insurance rate increases amounting to thousands of dollars per family annually.   They could have trumpeted the most appalling examples of profligate spending, such as the General Services Administration's [GSA's] lavish $1M Las Vegas conference that included $1,840 for 19 'regional ambassadors' vests; $3,200 for a mind reader; and $75K for a team-building 'bicycle building project'.   Identifying the administration's outrageous expenditures is simple, and voters easily grasp these outrages.   Yet House speaker John Boehner and the GOP leadership never initiated a spending-cut PR campaign.   They never attempted to make excessive government spending the issue...   Was it the strange comments of 2 candidates [out of thousands] that derailed potential Senate GOP gains? Or was it that the GOP establishment enthusiastically joining the firing squad, much to the glee of the democrats and the media?   Think of all the offensive and vile comments that spew from DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida congressman Alan Grayson, or even Harry Reid...   consider that the featured speaker at the Democratic National Convention was a disbarred lawyer and alleged rapist...   The Democrats always close ranks.   They rarely, if ever, abandon their own.   They never apologize."

2013-02-05
Joel Griffith _Breitbart_
Krugman: death panels and sales/VAT taxes is how we make this work
2010-11-14: Paul Krugman: Real Clear Politics
2010-11-14: NYTimes
2010-11-14: News Max
2010-11-15: Fox
YouTube video
YouTube video
YouTube video
Michael Savage (audio with still images, brief video)

2013-02-05
Jason Howerton _Blaze_
ICE union boss blasted Obummer regime for making US immigration law essentially unenforceable
American Patrol

2013-02-05 (5773 Shebet 25)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
prophets and losses part 1
NH Union Leader
San Angelo TX
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-06

2013-02-06
Susan Tebben _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
cattle call for teaching jobs drew a big crowd
"The line stretched from the community room at the back of the public library all the way out the front doors, with hopeful job applicants waiting to be interviewed for jobs in the 2013-2014 school year at Austintown schools...   The district recently had an opening for a third-grade job and had more than 200 people respond...   'There are a lot of people who want full time, but we explained that though we might not be able to get them in full time, they can get in the door with other positions within the district.', [district superintendent] Colaluca said."

2013-02-06
Anthony Watts & Larry Bell
climate hysterics' own words undermine their case, reveal political motives

2013-02-06
_U of IL Daily Illini_
U of IL college of engineering considering practical master's program
"For Monday's meeting of the Urbana-Champaign Senate, professor Victoria Coverstone, associate dean for graduate and professional programs, submitted a proposal for a new master's of engineering degree, which would be offered alongside an already existing master's of science program.   The new program would offer students looking for a more class-based learning experience, opposed to the research-focused program currently offered to students.   Perhaps the most distinguishing feature between the two engineering degrees offered is the lack of a thesis in the newly proposed program.   Traditionally, a masters degree in engineering leads to further research in a doctoral program.   That route satisfies the needs of mostly foreign-born students, who obtain over two-thirds of all doctoral engineering degrees awarded by U.S. universities.   Last Fall, 1,133 students were enrolled in a masters of science program in Engineering and 1624 were enrolled as Ph.D candidates.   [After half a century of excessive student visa issuance] Half of the masters students and nearly two-thirds of the doctoral students enrolled during that semester were [foreign] students."

2013-02-06
Jeff Tanner _Seattle WA Times_
invest in American workers
"As senior programmer in the Seattle area, I am totally against expanding H-1B visas.   By lifting the annual quota of H-1B visas [instead of reducing it from 130K to 1K] and reducing the cost [insteas of increasing it to cover the costs of proper background applications of applicants], we have devalued those Americans (citizen and green-card carriers) who are struggling to become engineers.   We should be reducing the number of H-1B visas, increasing the cost per visa, and putting more investment in our high schools, junior colleges and universities to blossom more engineering graduates."

2013-02-06
J. Scott Armstrong
forecasters often use unscientific computer models

2013-02-06
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
the wafflers (Confederate on day, Yankee the next)

2013-02-06
Steve Goreham
indoctrinating students with climate hysteria
Washington Times

2013-02-06
Anthony Watts
Matt Ridley elected to House of Lords

2013-02-06
Thomas E. Brewton
pres. Obummer adds ignorance of science to his ignorance of the US constitution and of economics

2013-02-06
Anthony Watts & Chris Horner
U of AZ claims Open Records Act request is "overly burdensome"

2013-02-06
Victor Davis Hanson _PJ Media_
War's paradoxes part 2: from the Peloponnesian War to "Leading from Behind"

2013-02-06
Bridget Johnson _PJ Media_
multi-lateral struggle over immigration narrative as Obummer speech nears

2013-02-06
David Truman _PJ Media_
international gangs like the Zetas are only one reason why many Americans should own and carry rifles similar to the AR-15

2013-02-06
Brandon Crocker _American Spectator_
the ObummerDoesn'tCare recession

2013-02-06
Michael LeMieux _News with Views_
BATFE vs. the US constitution

2013-02-06 (5773 Shebet 26)
Frank J. Gaffney _Jewish World Review_
see-no-jihadist, John O. Brennan, nominated by pres. Obummer to direct CIA

2013-02-06 (5773 Shebet 26)
Heron Marquez Estrada _Jewish World Review_
robot teams growing in popularity
"A telling statistic: For the first time ever, there are more varsity robotics teams than there are boys' varsity hockey teams in the state.   There are 156 high school boys' hockey teams and 180 robotics teams, up from 153 last year, according to the Minnesota State High School League.   While boys' and girls' high school basketball teams remain the most common with more than 400 teams each, no other sport or activity has grown as quickly as robotics, which began with just 2 teams in 2006 and will likely surpass 200 soon."

2013-02-06 (5773 Shebet 26)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
prophets and losses part 2
"People on both sides of tax issues often speak of such things as a '$300G tax increase' or a '$500G tax decrease'.   That is fine if they are looking back at something that has already happened.   But it can be sheer non-sense if they are talking about a proposed increase or decrease in the tax rate.   The government can only raise or lower the tax rate.   Whether the actual tax revenues that the government will collect as a result will go up or down is a matter of prophecy.   And these prophecies have been far too wrong far too often to base national policies on them.   When Congress was considering raising the capital gains tax rate from 20% to 28% in 1986, the Congressional Budget Office advised Congress that this would increase the revenue received from that tax.   But the CBO was wrong, not simply about the amount of the tax revenue increase, but about the fact that the capital gains tax revenue actually fell...   Reductions of the capital gains tax rates in 1978, 1997 and 2003 all led to increased revenues from that tax."

2013-02-06 (5773 Shebet 26)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
women in combat
"I'd like to think the goal of the military should be to have the toughest, meanest fighting force possible.   But let's look at 'gender-neutral playing field'.   The Army's physical fitness test in basic training is a 3-event physical performance test used to assess endurance.   The minimum requirement for 17- to 21-year-old males is 35 push-ups, 47 sit-ups and a 2-mile run in 16 minutes, 36 seconds or less.   For females of the same age, the minimum requirement is 13 push-ups, 47 sit-ups and a 19:42 two-mile run.   Why the difference in fitness requirements? "USMC Women in the Service Restrictions Review" found that women, on average, have 20% lower aerobic power, 40% lower muscle strength, 47% less lifting strength and 26% slower marching speed than men.   William Gregor, professor of social sciences at the Army's Command and General Staff College, reports that in tests of aerobic capacity, the records show, only 74 of 8,385 Reserve Officers' Training Corps women attained the level of the lowest 16% of men.   The 'fight load' -- the gear an infantryman carries on patrol -- is 35% of the average man's body weight but 50% of the average Army woman's weight.   In his examination of physical fitness test results from the ROTC, dating back to 1992, and 74K records of male and female commissioned officers, only 2.9% of women were able to attain the men's average push-up ability and time in the 2-mile run."

2013-02-06 (5773 Shebet 26)
Adam Chandler _Tablet Magazine_
Bob Marley's Jewish ancestry (s of Norval Marley & Cedella; gs of Ellen Broomfield)
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-07

2013-02-07 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 386,176 in the week ending February 2, an increase of 16,696 from the previous week.   There were 401,365 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.9% during the week ending January 26, unchanged from the prior week's revised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 3,720,496, an increase of 41,570 from the preceding week's revised level of 3,678,926.   A year earlier, the rate was 3.2% and the volume was 4,097,013.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending January 19 was 5,590,480, a decrease of 326,513 from the previous week.   There were 7,663,608 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.   Extended Benefits were not available in any state during the week ending January 19...   States reported 1,826,098 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending January 19, a decrease of 288,471 from the prior week.   There were 2,985,907 persons claiming EUC in the comparable week in 2012.   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;
to 128,613,913 beginning 2013-01-05.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2013-02-07
Liz Klimas _the Blaze_
pro-privacy activists fill Naperville council meeting objecting to arrest of women for opposing PG&E idiot-meter

2013-02-07
Nina Easton _CNN_/_Fortune_
Is US government throwing in the towel on bright, knowledgeable, industrious American workers?
"President Obama's proposed immigration reform should help more foreigners get good jobs in the U.S.A. But are we doing enough to help Americans get good jobs in the U.S.A.?"

2013-02-07
Christen Croley _Cumberland PA Sentinel_
widening of Panama canal may divert more cargo from Asia to east coast ports, spur creation of "inland ports"
port of Carlisle makes sense

2013-02-07
Anthony Watts & David Deming
What if fossil fuels disappeared tomorrow?

2013-02-07
Bryan Preston _PJ Media_
Los Angeles cop killer cop posted pro-Obummer, anti-2nd amendment leftist rant on the web
Madeleine Mortenstern: the Blaze
Gawker
"Sooper Mexican is following the breaking story of the former Los Angeles police officer who has gone rogue, allegedly shooting three officers and hunting others and their families after he was fired from the police force.   The suspect, Chris Dorner, posted a manifesto on the web, but media are ignoring [covering up] some of its key passages.   Dorner's rant begins with an attempt to justify his crimes, and then reveals a man steeped in typical Think [Regress], Media Matters style leftist thinking.   He supports strict gun control: 'Who in there [sic] right mind needs a f* silencer!!! who needs a freaking SBR AR15? No one.   No more Virginia Tech, Columbine HS, Wisconsin temple, Aurora theatre, Portland malls, Tucson rally, Newtown Sandy Hook.   Whether by executive order or thru a bi-partisan congress an [unconstitutional] assault weapons ban needs to be re-instituted.   Period!!!   Mia Farrow said it best. ''Gun control is no longer debatable, it's not a conversation, its a moral mandate.''   Senator Feinstein, you are doing the right thing in leading the re-institution of a national AWB.   Never again should any public official state that their prayers and thoughts are with the family.'   He is a strong Obama supporter, supports Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, and hates the NRA: 'Wayne LaPierre, President of the NRA, you're a ...'   He gets his media cues from MSFTNBC and CNN's Piers Morgan: 'give Piers Morgan an indefinite resident alien and Visa card.   Mr. Morgan, the problem that many American gun owners have with you and your continuous discussion of gun control is that you are not an American citizen and have an accent that is distinct and clarifies that you are a foreigner.   I want you to know that I agree with you 100% on enacting stricter firearm laws'   Dorner also lamented the fact that George Zimmerman was not murdered by Trayvon Martin.   NBC injected race into that story, and may have helped drive a disgraced cop over the edge.   It's pretty clear that Dorner is disturbed.   It's also pretty clear that the media and left have fueled his madness.   His writing reads like a regurgitation of media narratives he could pick up on any main-stream leftist web site or media outlet.   The same media are now censoring his manifesto.   This comes just a day after news broke that another leftist gun-man used left-wing propaganda to launch an armed attack on the conservative Family Research Council.   Most media have ignored that angle, too.   A couple of days before that, a mass killer confessed to being taught to hate white people in college.   That hasn't become a media narrative, either.   If there's no Tea Party angle and the media can't make one up, they're just not interested in reporting all of the facts.   Update: KTLA posted most, but not all, of Dorner's manifesto.   They left out all the parts in which he espouses leftist and anti-gun views.   The local media is covering up some of the motivations behind a deadly crime spree, while that spree is under-way."

2013-02-07
Michael A. Fletcher & Peyton M. Craighill _Washington DC Post_
poll: Americans expect economic pain to continue "many years"

2013-02-07
Ross Eisenbrey _NYTimes_/_EPI_
America's genius glut
Lip Stick Alley
Vox Verax
Eli Writes
Wayne Gerson: Network Schools
Beryl Benderly: AAAS Science
CS professor Norm Matloff
"According to the economist Richard B. Freeman, the [United States of America], with just 5% of the world's population, employs a third of its high-tech researchers, accounts for 40% of its research and development, and publishes over a third of its science and engineering articles.   And a marked new crop of billion-dollar high-tech companies has sprung up in Silicon Valley recently, without the help of an expanded guest-worker program.   Nor are we turning away foreign students, or forcing them to leave once they've graduated.   According to the Congressional Research Service, the number of full-time foreign graduate students in science, engineering and health fields has grown by more than 50%, from 91,150 in 1990 to 148,900 in 2009.   And over the 2000s, the United States granted permanent residence to almost 300K high-tech workers, in addition to granting temporary work permits (for up to 6 years) to hundreds of thousands more...   almost 90% of the Chinese students who earn science and technology doctorates in America stay here; the number is only slightly lower for Indians...   more than nine million people have degrees in a science, technology, engineering or math field, but only about three million have a job in one.   That's largely because pay levels don't reward their skills.   Salaries in computer- and math-related fields for workers with a college degree rose only 4.5% between 2000 and 2011.   If these skills are so valuable and in such short supply, salaries should at least keep pace with the tech companies' profits, which have exploded.   And while unemployment for high-tech workers may seem low -- currently 3.7% -- that's more than twice as high as it was before the recession."

2013-02-07
Peter Farrara _Forbes_
the worst 5 years since the Great Depression

2013-02-07
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
House judiciary committee, immigration sub-committee hearing
 
The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on immigration on Tuesday, with the first session focusing on foreign tech workers and [illegal aliens].
 
I had been expecting the usual arguments to be made, which they were, but there were definitely some quite interesting moments, some of which I'll discuss here.   Indeed, among other things, I'd like to call attention to some points that even those present at the hearing may have missed.
 
What (pleasantly) surprised me is that a couple of the congress-persons on the committee seemed worried about displacement of Americans from STEM fields, and asked questions of the panel accordingly.   Yet the 2 main panelists on tech immigration, Michael Teitelbaum and Vivek Wadha, answered the questions quite differently.
 
Michael stated, I think several times, that we must avoid having immigration policies that displace Americans from STEM and discourage talented young Americans from pursuing careers in STEM.   He also said that a bill giving green cards to foreign students in STEM would be overly broad -- while some areas of STEM may have a "tight" labor market (the word he used instead of "shortage"), other STEM fields do not.
 
(He also said avoiding such harm would necessitate not giving out any more work visas than green cards.   I would disagree in a certain sense, which I'll come back to below.)
 
Vivek, on the other hand, flatly dismissed the notion that skilled immigration policies harm Americans.   He said "Every single study" shows that skilled immigrants are net creators of jobs.   Though Vivek generally tends to speak in a grand, hyperbolic manner (in the hearing, he even said that if we bring in more skilled immigrants we will be able to produce "unlimited water"), for which I do not fault him, in this case it is not a responsible statement at all, in my opinion.
 
First of all, the main study cited by the industry lobbyists claiming a net job creation effect was so flawed that even the Wall Street Journal, a vociferous supporter of immigration in general and H-1B in particular, ran an excellent piece showing the severe methodological problems in the study [with] a few criticisms of my own.   Actually, I'll add here that the job creation effect would be almost impossible to measure.
 
But even more importantly from my point of view, Vivek himself has written about the problems that older Americans have getting jobs in the tech field.   Note carefully that he has stated that it is NOT just a matter of some older workers not having the latest skill sets; Vivek has said, correctly, that even if the American worker has the exact skill set sought by the employer, the employer will choose the younger one, as the younger one is cheaper.   Since the data show that most H-1Bs are young, the nexus is clear.   IOW, Vivek is well aware of the fact that there are indeed adverse impacts.
 
There's more in this regard.   During his testimony, Vivek held up a prop, [an idiot-phone].   Since he juxtaposed waving the prop with statements like "Immigrants are leading the charge in innovation" and "Immigrants will save us" (!), one might think that immigrants invented the [idiot-phone].   In actuality, the Android operating was invented by U.S. natives (Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears and Chris White).   I won't go into the iPhone history here, but similar statements obviously apply.
 
But put aside the question of natives vs. immigrants in the development of [idiot-phones], and consider a different aspect.   A few years ago, I was asked to talk to the chief aide of a certain politician on the Hill (which, for the record, I seldom do).   Nice guy, but he emphasized that his boss would never vote for any kind of pro-U.S.-worker reform of H-1B.   The reason, he said, was that "Mobile computing is coming on the horizon, and there will be plenty of tech jobs available for everyone."
 
Yet the effect of mobile has been diametrically opposite to what the aide envisioned: The industry is using things like Android as an excuse to hire H-1Bs!   So, a former programmer who had been forced to take non-tech work at the time I talked to the aide, has no more luck getting a tech job now, in this supposedly job-rich environment that mobile has created.
 
Once again, it is an age issue.   For instance, one of the subscribers to this e-mail list has about 15 years of experience doing sophisticated software work, and is just now putting the finishing touches on a very interesting Android app (on his own).   Yet, he is unemployed.
 
That's why I take issue with Michael's formula mentioned above.   As a demographer, he may be used to thinking in terms of equilibrium, but it just doesn't work that way here.   Most of the people getting green cards, like the H-1Bs, are under 30, and thus they crowd out the older workers.   (Not MUCH older; the person I cite above is under 40, I think.)
 
As I've pointed out before, a bill to give what have come to be called "STEM visas" to new foreign graduates of U.S. universities would thus be even worse, as that population is even more skewed to the under-30 range.   "Green cards, not work visas" makes a great slogan, but if you think it through, you'll see it too is harmful to American workers.
 
One of the most common claims we hear from the industry lobbyists these days, echoed by the politicians (several times by president Obama), is that we are forcing foreign students to leave after they graduate.   This is outrageously false.   Though out of tens of thousands of people there may be exceptions, I'm just not seeing it at all.   My department has had thousands of foreign graduate students, and I'm not aware of even a single case in which a foreign student was ever forced home.
 
Though Vivek didn't explicitly say we're forcing the foreign students to return home, he implied it in his written and verbal testimony.   Yet in fact Wadha's own survey shows otherwise.   He found that while some are indeed returning home, it's by choice (cultural preference, economic opportunities and so on).   Interestingly, committee chair Goodlatte called him on that (around 4687 seconds into the video), and Vivek was forced to agree.
 
Even more interestingly, Vivek said something which is rather big but which I'd guess was little noticed by those in attendance: He said his foreign students only want to work in the U.S.A. 2 or 3 years and then return home.   This is starkly counter to the political rhetoric we hear that "We shouldn't train the foreign students and then have them go home to work for our competitors."   For the students Vivek is describing, we are given them DOUBLE training before they go home -- first academic, then 2-3 years of valuable work experience, before they "go home and work for our competitors".
 
One comment, I think by Zoe Lofgren, provided me with some amusement.   Given the current focus on tech immigration, more and more people are talking seriously of reducing family-based immigration--not of the husband-wife, parent-child relationship but of adult silbings (the so-called Fourth Preference).   Some of the committee members insisted that family immigration not be cut (notably representative Judy Chu -- the Chinese and Korean activists have always jealously guarded the Fourth Preference), and the following comment came out:
 
For years, the industry lobbyists have been saying, "The co-founders of Google, Intel, Yahoo! etc. were immigrants, and thus we should expand the H-1B program."   Many people like me have pointed out that none of the co-founders they are referring to came to the U.S.A. as H-1Bs (formerly H-1) or foreign students [but as young children].   (There is also the point thst Andy Grove was NOT a founder of Intel, but in any case, he didn't come here under those programs either.)
 
Well, guess what -- Lofgren used that as a reason why we should not cut family immigration!
 
Norm
---30---

2013-02-07 (5773 Shebet 27)
Victor Davis Hanson _Jewish World Review_
incoherent immigration law change proposals
Albuquerque NM Journal
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-08

2013-02-08
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
this week's House hearing
 
The House judiciary Committee held a hearing on immigration on Tuesday, with the first session focusing on foreign tech workers and unauthorized immigrants.   You can view or down-load the hearing transcripts.
 
I had been expecting the usual arguments to be made, which they were, but there were definitely some quite interesting moments, some of which I'll discuss here.   Indeed, among other things, I'd like to call attention to some points that even those present at the hearing may have missed.
 
What (pleasantly) surprised me is that a couple of the congress-persons on the committee seemed worried about displacement of Americans from STEM fields, and asked questions of the panel accordingly.   Yet the 2 main panelists on tech immigration, Michael Teitelbaum and Vivek Wadha, answered the questions quite differently.
 
Michael stated, I think several times, that we must avoid having immigration policies that displace Americans from STEM and discourage talented young Americans to avoid careers in STEM.   He also said that a bill giving green cards to foreign students in STEM would be overly broad -- while some areas of STEM may have a "tight" labor market (the word he used instead of "shortage"), other STEM fields do not.
 
(He also said avoiding such harm would necessitate not giving out any more work visas than green cards.   I would disagree in a certain sense, which I'll come back to below.)
 
Vivek, on the other hand, flatly dismissed the notion that skilled immigration policies harm Americans.   He said "Every single study" shows that skilled immigrants are net creators of jobs.   Though Vivek generally tends to speak in a grand, hyperbolic manner (in the hearing, he even said that if we bring in more skilled immigrants we will be able to produce "unlimited water"), for which I do not fault him, in this case it is not a responsible statement at all, in my opinion.
 
First of all, the main study cited by the industry lobbyists claiming a net job creation effect was so flawed that even the Wall Street Journal, a vociferous supporter of immigration in general and H-1B in particular, ran an excellent piece showing the severe methodological problems in the study.   You can read the WSJ analysis [via the link in my article] where I add a few criticisms of my own.   Actually, I'll add here that the job creation effect would be almost impossible to measure.
 
But even more importantly from my point of view, Vivek himself has written about the problems that older Americans have getting jobs in the tech field.   Note carefully that he has stated that it is NOT just a matter of some older workers not having the latest skill sets; Vivek has said, correctly, that even if the American worker has the exact skill set sought by the employer, the employer will choose the younger one, as the younger one is cheaper.   Since the data show that most H-1Bs are young, the nexus is clear.   In other words, Vivek is well aware of the fact that there are indeed adverse impacts.
 
There's more in this regard.   It's interesting in that during his testimony, Vivek held up a prop, a smartphone.   Since he juxtaposed waving the prop with statements like "Immigrants are leading the charge in innovation" and "Immigrants will save us" (!), one might think that immigrants invented the smartphone.   In actuality, the Android operating was invented by U.S. natives (Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears and Chris White).   I won't go into the iPhone history here, but similar statements obviously apply.
 
But put aside the question of natives vs. immigrants in the development of smart phones, and consider a different aspect.   A few years ago, I was asked to talk to the chief aide of a certain politician on the Hill (which, for the record, I seldom do).   Nice guy, but he emphasized that his boss would never vote for any kind of pro-U.S.-worker reform of H-1B.   The reason, he said, was that "Mobile computing is coming on the horizon, and there will be plenty of tech jobs available for everyone."
 
Yet the effect of mobile has been diametrically opposite to what the aide envisioned: The industry is using things like Android as an excuse to hire H-1Bs!   So, a former programmer who had been forced to take non-tech work at the time I talked to the aide, has no more luck getting a tech job now, in this supposedly job-rich environment that mobile has created.
 
Once again, it is an age issue.   For instance, one of the subscribers to this e-mail list has about 15 years of experience doing sophisticated software work, and is just now putting the finishing touches on a very interesting Android app (on his own).   Yet, he is unemployed.
 
That's why I take issue with Michael's formula mentioned above.   As a demographer, he may be used to thinking in terms of equilibrium, but it just doesn't work that way here.   Most of the people getting green cards, like the H-1Bs, are under 30, and thus they crowd out the older workers.   (Not MUCH older; the person I cite above is under 40, I think.)
 
As I've pointed out before, a bill to give what have come to be called "STEM visas" to new foreign graduates of U.S. universities would thus be even worse, as that population is even more skewed to the under-30 range.   "Green cards, not work visas" makes a great slogan, but if you think it through, you'll see it too is harmful to American workers.
 
One of the most common claims we hear from the industry lobbyists these days, echoed by the politicians (several times by President Obama), is that we are forcing foreign students to leave after they graduate.   This is outrageously false.   Though out of tens of thousands of people there may be exceptions, I'm just not seeing it at all.   My department has had thousands of foreign graduate students, and I'm not aware of even a single case in which a foreign student was ever forced home.
 
Though Vivek didn't explicitly say we're forcing the foreign students to return home, he implied it in his written and verbal testimony.   Yet in fact Wadha's own survey shows otherwise.   He found that while some are indeed returning home, it's by choice (cultural preference, economic opportunities and so on).   Interestingly, Committee Chair Goodlatte called him on that (around 4687 seconds into the video), and Vivek was forced to agree.
 
Even more interestingly, Vivek said something which is rather big but which I'd guess was little noticed by those in attendance: He said his foreign students only want to work in the U.S.A. 2 or 3 years and then return home.   This is starkly counter to the political rhetoric we hear that "We shouldn't train the foreign students and then have them go home to work for our competitors."   For the students Vivek is describing, we are given them DOUBLE training before they go home -- first academic, then 2-3 years of valuable work experience, before they "go home and work for our competitors".
 
One comment, I think by Zoe Lofgren, provided me with some amusement.   Given the current focus on tech immigration, more and more people are talking seriously of reducing family-based immigration -- not of the husband-wife, parent-child relationship but of adult silbings (the so-called Fourth Preference).   Some of the committee members insisted that family immigration not be cut (notably representative Judy Chu -- the Chinese and Korean activists have always jealously guarded the Fourth Preference), and the following comment came out:
 
For years, the industry lobbyists have been saying, "The cofounders of Google, Intel, Yahoo! etc. were immigrants, and thus we should expand the H-1B program."   Many people like me have pointed out that none of the cofounders they are referring to came to the U.S. as H-1Bs (formerly H-1) or foreign students.   (There is also the point that Andy Grove was NOT a founder of Intel, but in any case, he didn't come here under those programs either.)
 
Well, guess what -- Lofgren used that as a reason why we should not cut family immigration!
 
Norm
---30---

2013-02-08
Anthony Watts
Rice U: plate tectonics modulates volcanic activity, which modulates climate

2013-02-08
Carly Harrington _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
patent law changes going into effect
"'People say it's a race to the patent office and that's true.', said Stephen Adams, an intellectual property attorney at Luedeka Neely Group.   The federal law represents the most comprehensive change in the U.S. patent system in more than 50 years, a huge shift for inventors and those seeking patents, he said As a result, inventors are going to want to file sooner...   If there is a dispute among applicants, an interference proceeding is held with a panel of judges to determine which applicant is entitled to the patent.   That process will be replaced with a derivation proceeding to help ensure that the first person to file a patent application is actually a true inventor.   'If you derived your idea from another invention, you're not really considered an inventor.', he said...   For instance, a former employee who had access to lab research material may file a patent application before the employer.   Under the new law, the ex-employee would be awarded the patent but the employer who actually invented it would want to start a proceeding.   The law also broadens the definition of prior art, or information used to determine originality claims."

2013-02-08
Lincoln Mullen _Chronicle of Higher Education_
learn R with Twotorials
Twotorials (requires evil MSFT Javascript)

2013-02-08
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
higher standards for guest-work visas increase off-shore costs; lower standards encourage off-shoring and cross-border bodyshopping
"The effort in the U.S. Senate to increase the H-1B visa cap may begin to deliver benefits immediately to Indian IT out-sourcing [cross-border bodyshopping and off-shoring] firms, according to Hong Kong-based CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, an equity and financial services group...   high H-1B and L-1 rejection rates by U.S. authorities.   Visa application rejections are exceeding 40% plus, it says...   High visa rejection rates means that Indian out-sourcing firms can't deliver all the visa holding personnel they [want] to customer sites in the U.S.A.   That leads to higher costs for Indian firms...   In 2010, these monthly per capita [on-site salary] costs were in the range of $6,900; they are now more than $8,100, a 17% increase.   'Local hiring is driving costs up and that process is irreversible.', wrote CLSA."

2013-02-08
John Hill _Stand with Arizona_
sheriff Joe Arpaio raided sportswear firm, arrested 27 illegal aliens using stolen/forged IDs and with outstanding warrants

2013-02-08
Emi Kolawole _Washington DC Post_
correcting the jobs mis-match: an interview with U Penn Wharton School's Peter Cappelli

2013-02-08
Becky Graebner _PJ Media_
USA's car culture is under attack, because leftists hate it

2013-02-08
Andrew Malcolm _Investor's Business Daily_
Why are DHS and the Socialist Insecurity Abomination loading up on ammunition?
Ryan Keller
2012-04-13: Lisa Derrick: FireDog Lake
Consent of the Governed
Free Republic
Jim Hoft: St. Louis Gateway to the West Pundit
"According to one estimate, just since last spring DHS has stockpiled more than 1.6G bullets, mainly .40 caliber and 9mm.   That's sufficient firepower to shoot every American about five times.   Including illegal immigrants.   To provide some perspective, experts estimate that at the peak of the Iraq war American troops were firing around 5.5M rounds per month.   At that rate, DHS is armed now for a 24-year Iraq war."

2013-02-08
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
Ross Eisenberry's article on America's wasted genius
 
Nice piece by Ross Eisenbrey today, of the "emperor has no clothes" variety.
 
Very tightly reasoned, a compelling argument to anyone with an open mind.
 
On that latter score, a journalist told me just today that all of her colleagues buy into the notion of a STEM shortage.   They ought to know better -- the Lowell and Salzman study was done under the auspices of a very prominent DC think tank, and the NIH commission's findings on the Dickensian status of lab scientists was published in the Washington DC Post, front page, above the fold -- but no, all the industry PR machine has to do is push the "Johnnie can't do math" button, and the press responds as desired.
 
One of the problems is that a typical reporter who is writing a story on H-1B will be writing gasoline prices tomorrow and mortgage defaults the day after that.   Most of them have no incentive to do the deep digging that would show the industry lobbyists' PR claims to be false.   It wouldn't even have to be that deep.   For example, a simple call to any immigration lawyer would quickly verify the point about H-1Bs being de facto indentured servants, and the point that legal prevailing wage is typically below the true market wage for the given foreign worker (due for instance with special skill sets not being accounted for).
 
A note on the "indentured" status of the foreign workers: In the legal sense, an H-1B can switch employers, but in a practical sense this is either infeasible or unthinkable.   By the latter I mean that if the H-1B is being sponsored for a green card, as is typically the case with the target population of current proposals (foreign graduates of U.S. schools), the worker does not dare switch jobs, as it would mean starting the multi-year green card process from scratch.   But even if the worker is not being sponsored for a green card, it would usually be very difficult to get the new employer and the new visa quickly enough to avoid leaving the country.
 
That's why some critics of H-1B have supported the idea of granting green cards, not work visas.   If the green cards were given instantly, right after graduation, the indentured status would not occur.   But as I've said, green cards would still have mostly the same adverse effect as H-1B.   It would depress wages by flooding the labor market -- the problem Ross cites would occur with or without indentured status -- and worse, the impact on older (35+) American workers' job opportunities would be identical, since the vast majority of new foreign grads are young.   "Green cards, not work visas" is a nice catchy phrase, but it is NOT the solution.
 
The wage suppression effect should be news to no one, least of all Congress.   Not only is it just common sense, but it was stated in the 2001 NRC report -- a report REQUESTED by Congress.
 
Ross mentions the unemployment rate having doubled, to which I'd add that unemployment rates aren't very meaningful in the first place.   Those who have been forced out of the field are now employed in some other profession -- and thus don't count as unemployed.   Also, the independent contractors are UNDERemployed, with fewer gigs than before, at lower rates.
 
By the way, EPI will be running my own article in the next couple of weeks, debunking the myth that the H-1Bs tend to be "the best and the brightest."
 
Norm
---30---

2013-02-08
Frank Morring ii _Aviation Week_
House committee chairmen say NASA may have released defense secrets to Red China
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-09

2013-02-09
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
not in the claims, and not in blue, but some of the other southern unionists of Harper's Ferry
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-10

2013-02-10
Jim Spencer _Minneapolis MN StarTribune_
Klobuchar in midst of contentious visa/economy debate: would add guest-work visas even as Americans need jobs
"The debate centers on whether there are enough Americans with skills in science, technology, engineering and math -- a cluster known as STEM...   With 1,300 foreign students in a student body of 17K, St. Cloud State has one of the country's highest concentrations of foreign students.   H-1B visas essentially bind foreign workers to a company...   Chris Fuller, a Twin Cities radio frequency engineer, worries that more visas will lead to more situations like the one he experienced when he recommended an experienced American engineer for a job at a Minnesota med tech company where he used to work.   'They never even bothered to call him' before hiring an H-1B worker, said Fuller.   'I thought if there was a qualified U.S. national, they would have to consider him.'"

2013-02-10
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
A WW1 centennial reminder
"...buttons... I was glad to find them, and they served as a reminder that the centennial of the First World War (though I can't say for sure that some aren't vintage WW2) is not too far off...not to mention, the Mexican Border Crisis, in which U.S. forces were deployed en masse, to deal with Poncho Villa."

2013-02-10
Andrew Klavan _PJ Media_
the truth about Dorner: leftism is violence

2013-02-10
Rick Moran _PJ Media_
the crisis in reduced patient access to physicians

2013-02-10
Ethan Bronner _NYTimes_
drastic changes proposed in sheister education
"The proposals are a result of numerous factors, including a sharp drop in law school applications, the out-sourcing of research over the Internet, a glut of under-employed and indebted law school graduates and a high percentage of the legal needs of Americans going un-met."
Unemployment rates for lawyers have been running 1.4% in 2012, and from 1% to 2.3% in recent years.   Unemployment rates for judges have been running 0.4% in 2012, and up to 2.9% in 2007, so this is a terrible crisis.   Immediate action must be taken to solve this glut!   That 3.6% unemploymet rate for math & computer science occupations, OTOH, indicates a terrrrible shortage...jgo

2013-02-10
George Anders _Forbes_
NASA Ames criticized for leaks to Red China
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-11

2013-02-11
Anthony Watts
gigantic lightning jets

2013-02-11
Joseph Cress _Cumberland PA Sentinel_
volunteers work to chronicle black Civil War soldiers

2013-02-11
Ellen Nakashima _San Jose CA Mercury News_/_Washington DC Post_
Cyber-spying has been targeting US businesses and intellectural property

2013-02-11
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
Richard Williams and his forthcoming book _Lexington, Virginia and the Civil War_

2013-02-11
Rodrigo Sermeno _PJ Media_
On-line piracy debate continues

2013-02-11
_PJ Media_
in memory of Chris Kyle

2013-02-11
_Judicial Watch_
government corruption that will be investigated during 2013

2013-02-11
Paula Bolyard _PJ Media_
president Obama, would you send a UAV to Cuba to kill the Weathermen?

2013-02-11
_San Jose CA Mercury News_/_AP_
California unreal estate: $1M+ home sales up last year
"San Diego-based DataQuick Information Systems said 22,529 homes sold for $1M or more in 2010, up 21% from 18,621 in 2009 and the highest since 2008, when 24,436 homes sold for $1M+.   Million-dollar sales peaked in 2005 at 54,773 and declined every year through 2009.   Overall home sales in the state, meanwhile, declined 9% to 418,578 in 2010 from 460,166 in 2009."

2013-02-11 (5773 Adar 01)
Mark Clayton _Jewish World Review_
off-shore out-sourcing increases security risks
"Problems the report cited included a desk-top computer purchased by the Army and made in [Red China] by Lenovo.   The new computer was discovered to be 'beaconing' (attempting all by itself to establish a connection) 'to a suspicious foreign entity', the report noted, citing a US Army official who revealed the 2007 incident last February...   Among US software companies, half of all development projects were headed to India and 13% to [Red China], a 2008 Duke survey found.
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-12

2013-02-12
Anthony Watts
climate hysterics stand ready to take your calls as propaganda campaign cranks up

2013-02-12
_Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
Obummer regime's NSF showers unconstitutional grants on Knoxville and U of TN
"The University of Tennessee takes its STEM (science, technology, energy and math) responsibilities seriously.   Every project on the Greater Knoxville Business Journal's top Knoxville-area National Science Foundation Grants list traces back to the state's flagship university.   The 12 projects have brought more than $144M to Tennessee to date -- and they're not finished.   Most NSF grants are distributed over a multi-year period.   The #1 grant has awarded $77.6M to date -- more than every other grant on our list combined -- and is active until 2014.   That grant establishes the National Institute for Computational Sciences 'to provide leading-edge computational support for breakthrough science and engineering research', according to the grant documents.   What does that mean? Since the start of the grant, at $65M in 2007, UT has worked with Oak Ridge National Laboraty to add 'significant computing capability' for researchers nationwide.   The effort paid off in 2009 when Kraken, the university's supercomputer funded by the grant, was named the world's fastest academic supercomputer, and third fastest overall.   An additional $10M was announced in 2010 for a second supercomputer, Nautilus."

2012-02-12
_Cumberland PA Sentinel_
criminals fail to pay $780M in restitution in PA

2012-02-12
Anthony Watts
Sea Ice News: Arctic ice increase set new record

2012-02-12
Anthony Watts
Sanders & Boxer to introduce insane "carbon tax" Thursday

2012-02-12
Ric Werme
climate hysterics agonize over theorized decreased snow-fall... while ski resorts in the area are buried under 6 meters

2012-02-12
Alec Rawls
UN IPCC reports shows inversion of scientific method when considering frequency shifts in solar influx

2012-02-12
Bryan Preston _PJ Media_
the status of the USA... rendered through pres. Obummer's fractured bizarro lens: still doubling down on his guaranteed-to-fail policies
Billings MT Gazette/AP: over-reaching

2012-02-12
Clayton E. Cramer _PJ Media_
arms, mental illness, and safety
"Thank you for inviting me to share my expertise concerning the problem of gun violence in America.   My published books and law review articles examine, among other subjects, black history, the origins of American gun culture, the judicial interpretation of both federal and state right to keep and bear arms provisions, and the history of mental health care in the United States.   My work has been cited in DC v. Heller (2008), McDonald v. Chicago (2010), and many decisions of the U.S. Courts of Appeal and state supreme courts."

2012-02-12
Norm Matloff _Bloomberg_
How foreign students hurt US innovation
"the F-1 program, as it is known, has become a profit center for universities and a wage-suppression tool for the technology industry...   To be sure, there are individual students from abroad who prove her point: the game changers.   Yet the average quality of the international STEM students is lower than that of the Americans...   National Institutes of Health, found that a severe over-supply has created a brutal job market for those who pursue doctorates in science research."

2013-02-12 (5773 Adar 02)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
random thoughts
Redding CA
St. Augustine FL
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-13

2013-02-13
_abc_/_Univision_
Same old corrupt legislators up to same old dishonesty and corrupt proposals
"To address the issue, senator Jerry Moran (R-KS) will introduce a bill on Wednesday called the Start-up Act 3.0 that would create a new entrepreneur visa for foreign-born [cheap, young, pliant labor with questionable ethics], aimed at encouraging [low-skilled] science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) immigrants to stay in the country...   The Startup Act would establish a new visa program for immigrant entrepreneurs and would give green cards to STEM graduates from American universities.   Introducing the legislation with Moran are senators Chris Coons (D-DE), Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Mark Warner (D-VA)...   Start-up Act 3.0 also makes permanent a capital-gains tax exemption for startups, creates a research and development tax credit for new companies under five years old with less than $5M in annual receipts, and rewards universities that put federally funded faculty research on the market with grant money.   Senator Warner, in an interview with ABC/Univision, compared holders of H-1B visas to 'semi-indentured servants' because the visas tie workers to particular sponsor companies...   Steve Case, the co-founder of America Online [which degraded the Internet], has lent his backing to the proposal...   entrepreneurs are looking for flexibility...   Moran and the other senators introduced similar legislation in December of 2011, but [thank goodness] it failed to gain traction."

2013-02-13
Victor Davis Hanson _PJ Media_
super bowl farmers

2013-02-13
Anthony Watts
preliminary comments on article by Hausfatehr et al. on "Quantifying the Effect of Urbanization on U.S. Historical Climatology Network Temperature Records"
"homogenization takes the well sited stations and adjusts them to be closer to the poorly sited stations, essentially eliminating good data by mixing it with bad."

2013-02-13
Anthony Watts
Luetkemeyer proposed bill to limit USA funding to UN IPCC

2013-02-13
Jerry Large _Seattle WA Times_
There is no shortage of STEM professionals' and other readers' comments related to importing cheap, young, pliant foreign tech workers with flexible ethics

2013-02-13
David Middleton
we import more petroleum, federal government allows less production and delays new permits

2013-02-13
Billy Hallowell _Blaze_
How was estimate that there are 11M illegal aliens in USA reached?
"DHS estimates there were 11.5M...in 2011 January. The Pew Hispanic Center...estimates there were 11.1M living in the U.S.A. in 2011 March... The demographers rely on what's called the 'residual' method to tease out the data. That is, they take estimates of the legal foreign-born population and subtract that number from the total foreign-born population. The remainder -- or residual -- represents those who are living in the country without legal permission.

2013-02-13
Michelle Malkin _Town Hall_
who failed Chicago

2013-02-13 (5773 Adar 03)
Grank J. Gaffney ii _Jewish World Review_
Obummer's friends of Hamas, Hagel and Brennan

2013-02-13 (5773 Adar 03)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
initiators of force, not guns
Town Hall
"Last year, Chicago had 512 homicides; Detroit had 411; Philadelphia had 331; and Baltimore had 215.   Those cities are joined by other dangerous cities -- such as St. Louis, MO, Memphis, TN, Flint, MI, and Camden, NJ -- and they also lead the nation in shootings, assaults, rapes and robberies.   Both the populations of those cities and their crime victims are predominantly black.   Each year, more than 7K blacks are murdered.   Close to 100% of the time, the murderer is another black person.   According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011, there were 279,384 black murder victims.   Though blacks are 13% of the nation's population, they account for more than 50% of homicide victims.   Nationally, the black homicide victimization rate is 6 times that of whites, and in some cities, it's 22 times that of whites.   Coupled with being most of the nation's homicide victims, blacks are also most of the victims of violent personal crimes, such as assault and robbery.   The magnitude of this tragedy can be seen in another light.   According to a Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute study, between 1882 and 1968, 3,446 blacks were lynched at the hands of whites.   What percentage of murders, irrespective of race, are committed with what are being called assault weapons? You'd be hard put to come up with an amount greater than 1% or 2%.   In fact, according to FBI data from 2011, there were 323 murders committed with a rifle of any kind but 496 murders committed with a hammer or a club...   29% of white children, 53% of Hispanics and 73% of black children are born to un-married women.   The absence of a husband and father from the home is a strong contributing factor to poverty, school failure, crime, drug abuse, emotional disturbance and a host of other social problems.   BTW, the low marriage rate among blacks is relatively new.   Census data show that a slightly higher percentage of black adults had married than white adults from 1890 to 1940.   In 2009, the poverty rate among married whites was 3.2%; for blacks, it was 7%, and for Hispanics, it was 13.2%.   The higher poverty rates -- 22% for whites, 35.6% for blacks and 37.9% for Hispanics -- are among un-married families...   Today's Americans accept behavior that our parents and grand-parents never would have accepted."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-14

2013-02-14 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 359,428 in the week ending February 9, a decrease of 29,014 from the previous week.   There were 365,014 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.8% during the week ending February 2, 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 3,640,033, a decrease of 103,381 from the preceding week's revised level of 3,743,414.   A year earlier, the rate was 3.1% and the volume was 3,984,889.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending January 26 was 5,918,156, an increase of 327,676 from the previous week.   There were 7,681,411 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.   Extended Benefits were not available in any state during the week ending January 26...   States reported 2,081,356 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending January 26, an increase of 255,258 from the prior week.   There were 3,002,475 persons claiming EUC in the comparable week in 2012.   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;
to 128,613,913 beginning 2013-01-05.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2013-02-14
Howard Nemerov _PJ Media_
status of attacks on the 2nd amendment

2013-02-14
Mark Stuertz _PJ Media_
GOP losership vs. the citizenry

2013-02-14
Clayton E. Cramer _PJ Media_
I'm glad I don't have Canadian murder rates where I live

2013-02-14
Anthony Watts
NOAA says average temperature of contiguous USA in January was 32℉

2013-02-14
Daniel Doherty _Town Hall_
Mark Levin: Obummer's long-winded, dishonest speech was reminiscent of Castro

2013-02-14
Larry Elder _Town Hall_
Dorner was another angry fatherless violent black man

2013-02-14
Cal Thomas _Town Hall_
Obummer doubling down on old failed ideas

2013-02-14
Debra J. Saunders _Town Hall_
remembering the victims of Nidal Hasan at Ft. Hood
"Kimberly Munley...fired back after major Nidal Hasan allegedly opened fire in an attack that killed 13 adults and wounded 32.   Munley was shot 3 times.   Her partner, Mark Todd, fired the shots that brought down Hasan and ended the carnage...   Shawn Manning...was hit by 6 bullets, and his wounds led him to retire from the military...   Attorney Reed Rubinstein says they are outraged at their non-combat Veterans Affairs status.   Ditto the snail's pace of military courts; three years after a public slaughter, Hasan has yet to go to trial even though he wanted to plead guilty.   Then there's the military's political correctness that allowed Hasan to remain in the Army and even be promoted to major when he should have been booted out before the shootings...   the FBI knew Hasan had been in touch with Anwar al-Awlaki...   Hasan had given a pro-Osama bin Laden lecture at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.   A colleague branded Hasan a 'ticking time bomb'.   The report concluded the FBI and Department of Defense 'collectively had sufficient information to have detected Hasan's radicalization to violent Islamist extremism but failed both to understand and to act on it'.   There is something pathetic about the military's refusal to call the attack an act of terrorism.   'The pattern of response to Fort Hood and the pattern of response to (the recent attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya) is not dissimilar.', Rubinstein said.   After both attacks, Washington [DC] tried to paper over the role of organized terrorists."

2013-02-14
Mike Shedlock _Town Hall_
"self-inflicted damage" is now the goal in UK; inflation called a "cause for optimism"
"'If you like, it is a bit of a self-inflicted goal in terms of the damage done to real take-home pay, perhaps another way of trying to implement fiscal consolidation through moving up the price level.', he said...   a report from the Resolution Foundation think tank warned that it could be another 10 years before living standards return to the levels they were at before the recession."

2013-02-14
Patrick Thibodeau & Sharon Machlis _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
top H-1B users/abusers are off-shore out-sourcers
IT World
CIO
InfoWorld
Chris McManes: IEEE/EurekAlert
"Hira believes that more H-1B visas will lead to more off-shore out-sourcing.   'The failure of Congress and the Obama Administration to close loop-holes in the H-1B program is reducing job opportunities for American high-tech workers and undermining their wages.', said Hira.   Hira believes the H-1B usage data should give pause to the law-makers..."

2013-02-14
Anthony Watts
USA temperature maps, averages: CRN vs. COOP

2013-02-14
Brad Heath _USA Today_/_Gannett_
DHS acts to boost numbers, not effectiveness at removing and deterring illegal immigration
alternate link
Town Talk
"The push came after senior ICE officials in Washington warned its regional enforcement chiefs that criminal deportations had fallen from the year before and instructed them to get the numbers back up.   'The only performance measure that will count this fiscal year is the criminal alien removal target.', David Venturella, who then supervised ICE's field offices, said in April in an e-mail to agents in Atlanta...   Bob Dane, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors tougher enforcement, said ICE 'wouldn't have to do a hail Mary to juice the numbers' if it hadn't ordered its agents to halt efforts to deport some illegal immigrants...   By the time the government's fiscal year ended in September, ICE had deported 225,390 criminal immigrants -- a record, and well above the agency's target of 210K."

2013-02-14
Michael Ledeen _PJ Media_
the Obummer doctrine and the "3 Valkyries"
"There is an Obama Doctrine, but hardly anyone wants to acknowledge it.   He favors anti-American dictators, and he couldn't care less what they do to their people.   That's the doctrine that checks out: he favored the Muslim Brotherhood over the pro-American Mubarak;   the Libyan insurrectionaries over Gaddafi, who had come to terms with the United States;   the Iranian tyrants who crushed a pro-democracy uprising;   and Assad (who, whatever Kerry and Hegel have said, is an enemy) against a revolution that at least contained pro-American elements, now suffering from Obama's betrayal.   Samantha Power wrote a fine book about Bill Clinton's historic failure to stop the Rwandan genocide.   Maybe she'll enlighten us about Obama's brief flirtation with humanitarian intervention, and his subsequent abandonment of the very idea, along with the women who were its most forceful advocates."
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)

2013-02-14
Tom Blumer _PJ Media_
a presidency not connected to reality

2013-02-14
Bryan Preston _PJ Media_
Obummer regime's anaconda squeeze on the entire US economy

2013-02-14
Mark Stuertz _PJ Media_
GOP losership seems determined to crush grass-roots "conservatives"

2013-02-14
Paul Basken _Chronicle of Higher Education_
criticism posted in response to scientific articles posted on-line can raise doubts of the quality of the work, some pseudo-scientists seek censorship
"The study, outlined on Thursday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science [AAAS], involved a survey of 2,338 Americans asked to read an article that discussed the risks of nano-technology, which involves engineering materials at the atomic scale."
Anthony Watts
Mark Steyn: National Review
Lucianne

2013-02-14
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
Mobarak web log in NYTimes
 
The other day professor A. Mushfiq Mobarak wrote a web log on the NYT.
 
His academic paper.
 
If you don't have the technical background (and even if you do), you may wish to skip the math, but read the rest.
 
Although I have problems with various aspects of the methodology and feel that Dr. Mobarak has mis-cited some of the references in his paper, I'd like to point out here a different aspect that I think is quite interesting.
 
Readers here will recall my Bloomberg piece that ran earlier this week.
 
(Unfortunately, Bloomberg changed the title.   They originally called it "Glut of Foreign Students Hurts U.S. Innovation", but later changed it to "How Foreign Students Hurt U.S. Innovation".   That new title is harsher, in my view, even if the difference is subtle.)
 
My theme was that although there are some really brilliant foreign students in CS/EE, on average they are weaker than the Americans, as detailed in my forthcoming EPI article.   The point is that I ended my piece as follows:
 
"How does the U.S. begin to fix this imbalance?   Rather than offering work visas and green cards to all foreign students attaining U.S. postgraduate degrees, legislation should focus on facilitating the immigration of top talent."
 
What is remarkable is that professor Mobarak's paper makes largely similar remarks:
 
"...from the perspective of US science education and innovation policy, visa restrictions for foreign students should not be applied uniformly or on the basis of financial means; they ought to account for student-quality differences."
 
"High-quality scholarship students are particularly valuable from the perspective of US innovation policy."
 
"That the quality of international students has a significant impact at the margin implies that US student-visa policy may be misguided if an important objective is to expand the research capacity of American universities.   Rather than relying largely on a demonstration of financial wealth sufficient to support graduate study and return home, a key criterion for issuing a visa could be indicators of student quality (easily measured by admission with scholarship to top-ranked programmes) independent of assets or incomes."
 
Our two view-points are not quite the same.   Though my op ed mentioned universities admitting foreign students if they can pay, that really was not my main point (in contrast to professor Mobarak and his co-authors).   Actually, most PhD programs in engineering generally have "full employment" of their students, so ability to pay is not an issue there.   Unfortunately, the Mobarak research uses scholarships as a proxy for quality, and this is far too coarse.
 
He uses research publications as his measure of quality of "output", a measure I've rejected for reasons I've given before.
 
Nevertheless, the bottom line is that current proposals in Congress to give "STEM green cards" to ALL foreign grad students in STEM is far too broad a measure.
 
Norm
 
PS: Some of you may recall that last October, my university moved its e-mail adminstration to Gmail.   That's fine, but it's caused problems for my e-news-letter, under which a significant minority of subscribers are not receiving my postings.   I'll try to fix this when I get a chance, but in the meantime, if you know any fellow subscribers, you may mention that they should resubscribe under an alternate e-mail address.
---30---

2013-02-14 (5773 Adar 04)
Victor Davis Hanson _Jewish World Review_
Why do people give up?
Town Hall
"In literature from Catullus to Edward Gibbon, wealth and leisure -- and who gets the most of both -- more often than poverty and exhaustion implode civilization...   For Gibbon and later French scholars, 'Byzantine' became a pejorative description of a top-heavy Greek bureaucracy that could not tax enough vanishing producers to sustain a growing number of bureaucrats.   In antiquity, inflating the currency by turning out cheap bronze coins was often the favored way to pay off public debts, while the law became fluid to address popular demands rather than to protect time-honored justice."

2013-02-14 (5773 Adar 04)
Jeff Jacoby _Jewish World Review_
the long battle of ideas that defeated slavery

2013-02-14 (5773 Adar 04)
Michael Barone _Jewish World Review_
Obummer's gangster regime
Town Hall

2013-02-14 (5773 Adar 04)
Ann Coulter _Jewish World Review_
White leftists tell blacks lies about civil rights
Town Hall

2013-02-14 (5773 Adar 04)
Enbar Toledano _Cornell HR Review_
White leftists tell blacks lies about civil rights
"In 1972, Karen Dion, Ellen Berscheid, and Elaine Walster set out to determine whether people hold 'stereotyped notions of the personality traits possessed by individuals of varying attractiveness'.   Their study provided participants with photographs of subjects previously classified as attractive, moderately attractive, or unattractive and asked them to record their impressions of each.   The results were astonishing: based only on the photographs provided, participants predicted attractive subjects would be happier, possess more socially desirable personalities, practice more prestigious occupations, and exhibit higher marital competence.   Their findings were published in an article entitled 'What is Beautiful is Good' and gave rise to an enduring theory of the same name...   Furthermore, physically attractive job candidates are also offered higher starting salaries than their less attractive peers...   Attractive employees receive more favorable job performance evaluations than their co-workers.   Even attractive college professors see an average 0.8% jump in student evaluation scores on a five-point scale.   And, in conjunction with higher evaluations, attractive employees are also more likely to be selected for management training and promoted to managerial positions...   Malcolm Gladwell discusses a greater phenomenon with respect to men's height in his book _Blink_: among CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, 58% stand six feet or taller—among the U.S. population of men as a whole, that figure is a mere 14.5%...   A longitudinal study of MBA graduates revealed that the earnings gap between attractive and unattractive employees only widens over time: for every additional unit of attractiveness on a five-point scale, men earned on average an extra $2,600 annually and women an additional $2,150 over their peers.   Another study found that 'an American worker who was among the bottom one-seventh in looks...earned 10% to 15% less per year than a similar worker whose looks were assessed in the top one-third -- a life-time difference, in a typical case, of about $230K'.   In short, attractive individuals will receive more job offers, better advancement opportunities, and higher salaries than their less attractive peers—despite numerous findings that they are no more intelligent or capable...   In primary school, attractive students are called on more often than their peers and judged more leniently for their transgressions.   In college, attractive students get more dates and are more often elected to leadership positions.   And 'lookism', as this form of bias has been termed, is perhaps most acutely observed in the work-place, where (as discussed above) attractive employees and job candidates are more often hired over their peers, more readily promoted, and paid more...   Alan Feingold found 'no notable differences' in levels of sociability, dominance, general mental health, or intelligence between attractive and unattractive people.   In fact, social skills were the only area in which attractive people were both expected to, and then actually did, exhibit an advantage—but even that correlation fell significantly short of expected values..."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-15

2013-02-15
Brett Neely _Minnesota Socialist Radio_
Klobuchar claim on foreign workers is tough to nail down

2013-02-15
Megan Boehnke _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
funds are being sought to increase numbers of U of TN STEM graduates
"The College of Engineering has been on a major growth trend in the last 5 years, upping under-graduate enrollment by 37% and doctoral students by 62%.   In the same time, faculty increased from about 130 to 137, hardly keeping up with the influx of students, Davis said...   Davis credits the HOPE scholarship with keeping top students in the state, and new emphasis on STEM education and the growing reputation of the school, which has been steadily increasing its ranking in U.S. News and World Report to its current #40.   Students entering the college have an average high school grade-point average of 4.0 and ACT score of 30.5 in math, Davis said."

2013-02-15
Roger L. Simon _PJ Media_
Benghazi -- the motion picture

2013-02-15
Bob Owens _PJ Media_
Left claims they want "national conversation" about firearms, but walk out when others start to speak
"At a meeting, 2 firearms experts came forward to speak, bringing with them 2 common Ruger 10/22 rifles that had been cleared by security.   The purpose of their presentation was to explain how the gun-control laws currently being proposed would outlaw only a gun's cosmetic features while not affecting the functionality of the firearms in any measurable way in terms of rate of fire and accuracy.   In the video, DFL legislators simply arise and exit without explanation.   They avoid learning details from the presentation about the very firearms they seek to legislate out of existence...   It certainly does appear that elected officials left the room to avoid expert testimony that would have better educated them about the issues they intended to legislate on...   Democrats claim a desire for a 'national conversation' about the role of firearms in our society, but this display stated a preference for an emotional, callous argument.   They claim to care about reducing gun violence, but faced with the prospect of learning about the firearms they would ban, the intent of the Founders, which guns they would want us to have, and the actual impact of broad laws they would pass, they refused to participate...   Taking that same common Ruger 10/22 and putting it into this Tapco stock also would qualify the plinking/hunting/target rifle as an 'assualt weapon' according to [Leftist] 'gun-control' advocates at the state and national level.   The barrel is unchanged.   The trigger and action are the same.   The firearm's cartridges are the same.   The gun shoots no faster.   It doesn't shoot with more power.   The only real base enhancement offered by these aftermarket stocks is that they are adjustable, so that they can be lengthened or shortened by a few inches so that people of varying proportions can shoot comfortably.   Do Democrats [Leftists] simply wish to disarm unusually short or tall people? Will this save lives?"

2013-02-15
Mike Cassidy _Silicon Beat_
executives using H-1B visas are giving US workers a raw deal
"No company on the top 10 list has applied for permanent residency for more than 16% of their H-1B workers, Hira's study shows, and figures in the low single digits is more common."
Ron Hira: EPI: top 10 users of H-1B are off-shore out-sourcers
"There are 2 reasons these firms hire H-1Bs instead of Americans: 1) an H-1B worker can legally be paid less than a U.S. worker in the same occupation and locality; and 2) the H-1B worker learns the job and then rotates back to the home country and takes the work [and knowledge and contacts] with him.   That's why the H-1B was dubbed the 'Out-sourcing Visa' by the former Commerce Minister of India, Kamal Nath.   Rather than keeping jobs from leaving our shores, the H-1B does the opposite, by facilitating off-shoring and providing employers with cheap, [young] temporary labor -- while reducing job opportunities for American high-tech workers in the process."

2013-02-15
Adrianne Jeffries _The Verge_
Suspicious death of US engineer working for Red China's Huawei in Singapore
"Todd's girl-friend, family and the FBI are still wondering what exactly happened.   Todd had just put in his last day as an employee of IME, a Singaporean government research institute, where he had been working on a high-powered amplifier with commercial and 'huge' military uses.   The amplifier was being co-developed with the [Red Chinese] telecom giant Huawei."
Raymond Bonner & Christine Spolar: Financial Times

2013-02-15
Betsy Rothstein _Media Bistro_
Washington DC Post dumped about 54 "IT" workers on the QT, after 2012 ad to staff up "world-class team"

"The news comes on the heels of the NYTimes, which recently offered buy-out packages to 30 employees.   That target number wasn't reached; it isn't clear how many employees were [dumped]..."
WaPo job ad
"CIO Shailesh Prakash...   Prakash says a major goal is to transform The Post's IT department into a world-class engineering team patterned after the engineering teams of technology innovators like Facebook, Google and Amazon."

2013-02-15
William L. Anderson _Krugman in Wonderland_
Krugman's alternate history

2013-02-15
Ruth Mantell _Fox_/_MarketWatch_
UMich consumer sentiment index up from 73.8 in late January to 76.3 in early February
Walter Hamilton: Los Angeles CA Times
Ruth Mantell: MarketWatch
St. Louis Fed

2013-02-15
Daniel de Bolt _Palo Alto CA_/_Mountain View CA Voice_
NASA Ames gave US defense secrets to Red China
"rocket propulsion technology was given to [Red China]...   the Justice Department has not allowed indictments backed by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's office after an investigation began in 2009...   "'I am aware of allegations our office sought authority from [the Justice Department in Washington, DC, to bring charges in a particular matter and that our request was denied.', Ms. Haag said, according to the Washington Times.   'Those allegations are untrue.   No such request was made, and no such denial was received.'"
2013-02-08: Frank Morring ii: Aviation Week: House committee chairmen say NASA may have released defense secrets to Red China
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-16

2013-02-16
Chris Horner
NOAA refuses to comply with another FOIA request
"NOAA brags on its staff's participation in and work for AMS...   the documents were also created on agency time and held by the agency, always under the agency's control...   Some employers have the right to see how their assets are being used.   Just not you.   When it comes to them...   And as Attorney General Holder promised, FOIA will not, repeat not be used as ways to withhold records.   It just won't.   Except when it is."

2013-02-16
Willis Eschenbach
The human cost of climate hysteria

2013-02-16
Jim Provance _Youngstown OH Vindicator_/_Toledo OH Blade_
Ohio "public records" laws are inconsistent in practice
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-17

2013-02-17 (5773 Adar 07)
Brian Sodoma _Las Vegas NV Review-Journal_
foreign students still want American education
"Crinson, like some of the more than 720K other international students studying in the U.S.A. these days, was curious about the opportunities in America.   He jumped at the chance to attend UNLV after visiting Las Vegas on his 21st birthday...   At UNLV, Crinson is one of about 1,300 international students studying at the school, about 5% of its overall population.   Rob Sheinkopf, UNLV director of enrollment management, would love to see more international students on campus but acknowledges that outreach isn't always easy...   In a report released last year by the Institute of International Education, which has been tracking international student data for more than 6 decades, about half of the 25 schools with the highest number of international students increased their figures by 40% or more in the past 5 years.   The report also noted that international student enrollment in the U.S.A. has climbed 32% since 2007 after seeing declines and flat activity since 2002, largely the result of post 2001/09/11 immigration policy and security concerns...   Not unlike national figures, about two-thirds of UNLV's international population comes from Asia, or a little more than 800.   More than half of that figure is from South Korea and about 244 are from China.   Nationally, Chinese international students make up more than 150K, about one-fifth of the entire international student mix.   Sheinkopf says that UNLV's hotel college is extremely popular among the Asian population, and the hope is that outreach to South Korean and Chinese graduates can yield even more students.   Engineering is the second most popular major (to hospitality) among UNLV's international students.   Sheinkopf said a Chinese engineering professor visits his homeland every summer, partly to visit family, but also to scout out students...   American universities love that international students pay out-of-state tuition, which can often time be 3 times the amount of in-state tuition...   top-tier colleges such as Harvard, Princeton or Yale typically keep their international population in the 8% to 10% range, Doe said.   For that small number of available slots, 80 to 100 countries may be represented.   She also said about 40% of those slots are reserved for kids who have what she calls 'a hook' [influence, pull, bribery]...   Indiana University had fewer than 100 under-graduate Chinese students 5 years ago, the IIE study reported.   Today, there are more than 2,200."

2013-02-17 (5773 Adar 07)
Christopher Monckton
the Sanders-Boxer carbon tax 15 times as costly as "warming"

2013-02-17 (5773 Adar 07)
Adam Voge _Billings MT Gazette_/_Casper WY Star-Tribune_
people divided over plans to build new export terminals for coal
"The quickest way to move Powder River Basin coal to Asia is through Washington and Oregon, and multiple coal producers have teamed with export and rail companies to propose shipping facilities throughout the Pacific Northwest...   On Thursday, Cloud Peak Energy Inc. signed a deal to ship up to 16M metric tons of coal a year through the proposed terminal, which isn't likely to begin construction until 2017...   Coming Monday: Over-seas coal markets are booming, while workers in the Powder River Basin struggle for job security."

2013-02-17 (5773 Adar 07)
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
thoughts on lieutenant Charles Bare Gatewood's Confederate and military roots (and a 1993 movie about Geronimo)

2013-02-17 (5773 Adar 07)
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
Christian F. Laise's ties to Berkeley county's freedmen and unionists (and Charles James Faulkner and Elisha Boyd)

2013-02-17 (5773 Adar 07)
Paul Driessen
devastating effects of carbon taxes

2013-02-17 (5773 Adar 07)
_Billings MT Gazette_/_AP_
wildlife officials seek ranchers' co-operation to save black-footed ferret
"The species was thought to be extinct until a rancher's dog found a ferret near remote Meeteetse, WY, in 1981.   Thousands of ferrets have been bred in captivity since then, and there are now an estimated 500 or so in the wild.   Wildlife officials hope to build the wild population to 3K in the next decade to get it off the endangered species list.   In particular, wildlife officials are looking for landowners with, ideally, at least 2K acres of prairie dog habitat in Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.   That amount of land is what would be needed to sustain about 30 breeding adult black-footed ferrets [about 67 acres per ferret, which eat about 10 prairie dogs per month]...   Colorado Parks and Wildlife private lands program manager Ken Morgan said a past re-introduction of ferrets in northwest Colorado didn't do well because of plague that killed off prairie dogs.   Yet testing has begun on a vaccine for sylvatic plague, and he said there are at least a few western ranchers open to helping species survive."

2013-02-17 (5773 Adar 07)
Kevin Corke _Comcast NBC_/_Reuters_
US tax-victims paid for "virtual fence" cameras which were never installed or were faulty
"cameras have been unreliable and have broken repeatedly — and that some were never installed at all...   America's Shield Initiative...   Auditors also found broken and uninstalled cameras in WA, MI, and NY state...   'Along the northern border you have cameras that don't work when it gets warmer than 70-75 degrees.   That's a real problem.', says TJ Bonner of the National Border Patrol Council.   Auditors also say IMC repeatedly substituted more expensive cameras with cheaper ones, while still billing at the higher rate.   [Since then, L-3 Communications took over IMC and has corrected some of the problems.]"

2013-02-17 (5773 Adar 07)
Heather Mac Donald _National Review_
education lessons from a Chinese family with uneducated parents
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-18: Presidents' Day

2013-02-18
Michael Cutler _Accuracy in Media_
the 8 gangsters vs. immigration reform: S744 borders on a national security nightmare

2013-02-18
Tom Nelson
cold weather, low turn-out at rally of warmist hysterics

2013-02-18
Adam Voge & Laura Hancock _Billings MT Gazette_/_Casper WY Star-Tribune_
US demand for region's coal has been suppressed, but Asian markets beckon
"Natural gas consumption for electricity generation rose almost 14% between 2008 and 2011...coal consumption dropped about 12%..."

2013-02-18
Willis Eschenbach
The Captain's Daughter
"My grand-mother and her sisters always said his name in capital letters.   He was never Dad or Daddy or anything remotely like that.   He was either 'Our Father' or 'The Captain', and you could hear the capital letters when my grand-mother said it.   She idolized him, and passed that on to her 2 daughters and us 7 grand-children.   And if she said 'I wonder what The Captain would think of what you just did' to one of us kids, we knew we were in big, big trouble."

2013-02-18
Anthony Watts
meteorite which struck down around Chelyabinsk was largest since 1908 Tunguska event
"The meteor that crashed to earth in Russia was about 55 feet in diameter, weighed around 10K tons and was made from a stony material, scientists said, making it the largest such object to hit the Earth in more than a century... nearly 500 kilotons of energy..."

2013-02-18
William L. Anderson _Krugman in Wonderland_
minimum wages and teen unemployment rates
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-19

2013-02-19
Danny Restivo _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
Girard's Robocats gear up for robotic rivals
"For more than a month, the team has brain-stormed, built and tested a robot for various assigned tasks.   They include climbing a pyramid-like jungle gym and shooting flying discs into a 3-foot-wide opening 10 feet off the ground.   Compared with the 2012 robot, which shot miniature basketballs into a hoop, the 2013 robot has created some unique problems for the designers."

2013-02-19
Victor Davis Hanson _PJ Media_
Brave New World

2013-02-19
_Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
Regal Entertainment is buying Hollywood Theaters for $191M
Roger Harris
"The deal adds 43 theaters with 513 screens...   In November It paid $91M for Great Escape Theaters, a 25-theater chain located primarily in the Midwest."
contact Roger Harris

2013-02-19
senator David Vitter & Anthony Watts
EPA region 8 admin James Martin is resigning over hidden e-mail accounts

2013-02-19
Juli Clover _MacRumors_
iPhoneDevSDK infected/infectious with Java malware

2013-02-19
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
a nation of disconnects
 
One slogan heard constantly in the Great Immigration Debate is "America is a Nation of Immigrants", a magic slogan that somehow is intended to end all debate.
 
Me, I live in a Household of Immigrants, and in fact have done so my entire life.   I'm the son of one immigrant and the husband of another.   I grew up in a household where the adults spoke one foreign language (Yiddish) and lived in another where our "official language" is Chinese.   Non-main-stream holidays, non-main-stream foods, even non-main-stream senses of humor -- hey, this has been my life.   Need I add my early childhood in Latino East LA?
 
So maybe we are a Nation of Immigrants [or Descendants of Immigrants].   But what we are becoming is a Nation of Disconnects.   I was told this morning that people on the Hill are falling all over themselves to pass huge expansions to skilled foreign worker programs (H-1B, green cards) -- all while the populace, at least those in tech work, are diametricly opposed to it.
 
This morning NPR ran a pretty good -- though of course short -- piece on H-1B.   It did have a horrible error -- it said H-1B requires employers to show they tried but failed to fill the job with an American -- but it was a good piece that was quite balanced.   But look at the listener comments!
 
The feeling is so strong that some of the listeners are actually accusing NPR of white-washing the problem!
 
Yesterday the local NPR affiliate, KQED of San Francisco, ran a show titled "What Does Silicon Valley Want From Obama's Second Term?"   The answer to the question, of course, involved immigration and tax breaks.   Well, guess what!   Almost all the listeners calling in talked about H-1B, and they were all victims.
 
For a nation that is so anxious to promote democracy throughout the world, congress' plans for H-1B and green cards, in spite of popular opposition (again, among those who are aware) has to be the Mother of All Disconnects.
 
Today's NPR piece originated from Seattle, and thus prominently featured MSFT.   As I've often said, you could tell people that MSFT takes advantage of every loop-hole in the tax code, and they would immediately believe you.   But if you tell them MSFT takes advantage of huge loop-holes in H-1B code, they won't believe you.   The industry PR machine has people mesmerized to that degree.
 
Well, that's exactly what happened yesterday on the KQED show.   The show's host, Michael Krasny, is a professor, not a journalist, and thus doesn't go for sound bites and has an academic's healthy skepticism.   And yet, he seemed to believe the Valley's [ahem, the Valley's executives'] claim to "need" H-1Bs (e.g. he bought into the false claim that "We're sending the foreign students home after graduation!") -- while at the same time being skeptical of the industry's demand for tax breaks.   Another disconnect.
 
Speaking of disconnects, Vivek Wadhwa was a guest on that KQED show, and made various statements that are directly at odds with his past stances.   For instance, one caller said he was unemployed in spite of a background with Apple, Sun Microsystems etc. and two start-ups of his own, has trouble finding work now.   Vivek replied that age is not a barrier in Silicon Valley and that it's only a question of having the latest skills.   Both statements are contrary to what Vivek has said in the past; he once wrote an entire column on problems of older tech workers, and he has explicitly stated that even if an older worker has the latest skills, he/she will be passed over for the younger one.   Remember, the overwhelming majority of the H-1Bs are young.
 
One caller said she had been laid off by Oracle and replaced by a younger H-1B at half her salary.   Vivek replied that Silicon Valley firms need "the best and the brightest", but the caller, still on the line, broke in and said, "Not true, they want the cheapest.", and repeated that the H-1B was being paid half her salary.
 
Some of you will recall that when a TI executive testified to congress in 2011, she said that there is no shortage of American engineering graduates at the bachelor's degree level.   And then a few minutes later, she said that TI is working at the K-12 level to get more kids into engineering, to alleviate the engineering shortage.   Another disconnect!   And no one at the hearing called her on this disconnect.
 
(She did claim there is a shortage at the post-graduate level, a very misleading claim as I've shown before, but the point is that if TI really does want people with post-graduate degrees, why not put its efforts into promoting advanced study?)
 
And if we are a Nation of Immigrants, why is Congress so anxious to bring harm to the immigrants' kids?   Anyone who has visited an under-graduate computer science class at any large university knows the demographics: At least half the enrollment consists of Asian-American (not Asian foreign student) kids -- Chinese, Indian, Korean, VietNamese and so on.   Most of these are children of immigrants, often from blue-collar families.   Their parents came to the U.S.A. for the classic reason -- to get better lives for their children.   One more disconnect.
 
Some years ago I was invited to "testify" on H-1B to the student mock congress at Berkeley High School.   When I arrived, the teacher said to me, "You're really brave to speak negatively about immigration here in politically liberal Berkeley."   I replied that his premises were wrong, and sure enough, the kids -- a very diverse group both racially and socio-economically -- loved me.   What's the big mystery?   This is their careers we're talking about, so of course the H-1B worries them.
 
President Obama keeps saying, "It makes no sense to send foreign students home [sic] after we've educated them."   Does he think it makes sense to impede the careers of our own young people after educating them?   One more disconnect, I guess.
 
Norm
---30---

2013-02-19 (5773 Adar 09)
Melissa Jenco & Matthew Walberg _Jewish World Review_
A mother takes on idiot-meters over privacy, security and health
"The arrests of Stahl and another prominent opponent, Malia Bendis [Kim Bendis], 40, only heightened tensions between city officials and members of Naperville Smart Meter Awareness, a group of residents that started to organize nearly two years ago.   The group now numbers about 75 volunteers, Stahl said...   Last year, the anti-meter movement fell just short of collecting enough signatures to place a question on the ballot asking residents to decide whether the devices should be removed.   They also have a pending federal lawsuit against the city alleging their constitutional right to due process has been violated...   at the council meeting Tuesday as it renewed its call for elected officials to resign and for City Manager Doug Krieger to be fired...   Opponents also have cited the risk of house fires tied to the new meters.   A small percentage of homes in other cities have experienced fires related to smart meter installation..."

2013-02-19 (5773 Adar 09)
Heather Mac Donald _National Review_
9 gangsters & Obummer are aligned for immigration law perversion

2013-02-19 (5773 Adar 09)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
Arms and pensions
Omaha NB Big Red Today
"understanding the choices of many nations' political leaders might be helped by examining the contrast between their runaway spending on pensions while skimping on military defense.   Huge pensions for retired government workers can be found from small municipalities to national governments on both sides of the Atlantic.   There is a reason.   For elected officials, pensions are virtually the ideal thing to spend money on, politically speaking.   Many kinds of spending of the [tax-victims'] money win votes from the recipients.   But raising taxes to pay for this spending loses votes from the [tax-victims].   Pensions offer a way out of this dilemma for politicians.   Creating pensions that offer generous retirement benefits wins votes in the present by promising spending in the future.   Promises cost nothing in the short run -- and elections are held in the short run, long before the pensions are due.   By contrast, private insurance companies that sell annuities are forced by law to set aside enough assets to cover the cost of the annuities they have promised to pay.   But nobody can force the government to do that -- and most governments do not."

2013-02-19 (5773 Adar 09)
Robert McCreary _Landsdale PA Knight Crier_
end the minimum wage
"...Starting in the late 1800s, a few states began to tinker with minimum wage laws.   The federal government didn't [much] step into the wages fray until the Davis-Bacon Act...in 1931...   The Davis-Bacon Act was inspired by the hiring of a Southern construction company composed of mainly black workers that was awarded the task of building a veterans' hospital on Long Island, NY.   The company that used the black labor was able to under-bid the local (white only) unions to get the job...   'The super-abundance or large aggregation of negro labor is a problem you are contronted with in any community.' [stated] representative William Upshaw ([D-GA, prohibitionist, opponent of KKK]).   Representative [Robert Low Bacon's (R-Long Island, NY)] response was '...the same would be true if you should bring in a lot of Mexican laborers or if you brought in any non-union laborers from any other state'.   'That contractor has cheap colored labor that he transports [from a lower-wage, lower cost-of-living area]...and it is labor of that sort that is in competition with white labor throughout the country.', [said] representative [Miles Clayton Allgood (D-AL)]..."
David Bernstein: Cato: the Davis-Bacon Act: let's bring Jim Crow to an end
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-20

2013-02-20
Norman Page
It's the sun, stupid. The minor significance of CO₂

2013-02-20
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
visualizing the Shenandoah valley's unionism (pie graphs)

2013-02-20
_YouTube_
Red Chinese military behind cyber-attacks on USA government and businesses

2013-02-20
Paul Homewood
KS State U prof makes temperature claims contradicted by data

2013-02-20
_YouTube_
citizenry chasten John McCain on immigration reform
Tom Curry: NBC/Comcast
Christian Science Monitor
UPI
Texoma's Home Page
CBS
Fox 2 Now/CNN
Fox video
the Blaze

2013-02-20
Emmanuel Jarry & Catherine Bremer _Fox_/_Reuters_
Titan International's CEO Maurice Taylor criticizes French for working only 3 hours a day
News Max
Auto web log/Bloomberg
Fox
Thomas Adamson: San Jose Mercury News/AP
"'The French work-force gets paid high wages but works only 3 hours.   They get 1 hour for breaks and lunch, talk for 3 and work for 3.', Taylor wrote on Feb. 8 in the letter in English to the minister, Arnaud Montebourg...   Montebourg's office said the letter was an authentic response to Paris consulting Titan as a possible buyer of U.S. group Goodyear's Amiens Nord factory in northern France...   Taylor went on to say his company plans to purchase a Chinese or Indian tire company, pay less than 1 euro per hour..."
2013-02-01: Peter Gumbel: Time: Goodyear's French Nightmare/Couchmar

2013-02-20
Norm Matlof _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
selective standards for visas
 
I've often written that the industry lobbyists are incorrect in their claims that the foreign tech workers, especially those graduating as foreign students at U.S. universities, are "the best and the brightest".   Some are indeed brilliant, but most are ordinary people doing ordinary work.
 
I've always strongly backed facilitating the immigration of those who really are the best and the brightest.   In particular, some of you may recall that I've proposed giving quick green cards to any foreign STEM student who gets a legitimate job offer at the 90th percentile of the given occupation in the given region.   (And I do mean "quick", in contrast to the proposals in congress, which would continue to result in hand-cuffed workers.)
 
That of course is starkly different from the proposals in Congress, which would grant "STEM visas" to ALL foreign grad students in STEM.   As I've shown, the average quality of the foreign grad students is no higher than, and in various senses lower than, that of the Americans.   So it just makes no sense to grant special status to the entire group.
 
Compare that to China and Intel.   Acccording to a story in today's Washington DC Post, China has a special program to attract Chinese expatriates (many of whom studied in the U.S. and are now working here) to return.   Of the 5,600 applicants, only 1K or so have been accepted.   IOW, the Chinese policy is [weakly] SELECTIVE.   What does the Chinese government know that our government (at least claims) not to know?
 
Meanwhile Intel has a fellowship program for (domestic) PhD students.
 
Intel actually doesn't hire many PhDs, but my point here is this: The fellowships are available only to students at SELECTED universities.   What does Intel know that the U.S. Congress doesn't know?
 
The Post article seems to be supportive of the proposals in Congress, but it highlights 2 post-docs at MIT.   Being at MIT, they would qualify as the best and the brightest in [many people's] book.   But does that mean we should give special visas to master's students at San Jose State?
 
Norm
---30---

2013-02-20
Jordan Weissmann _Atlantic_
America's terrible job market for young scientists -- in 7 charts
"In short, job prospects for young science Ph.D.'s haven't been looking so hot these last few years, not only in the life sciences, which have been weak for some time, but also in fields like engineering."

2013-02-20
Norm Matlof _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
web log in the Atlantic
 
I've mentioned the unconscionable situation in lab science a number of times, most recently in my Bloomberg op-ed.
 
Here is an (almost) excellent blog on that issue.
 
The posting is very good, except for its conclusion:
 
"Most these Ph.D.'s will eventually find work -- and probably decently compensated work at that.   After all, the unemployment rate for those with even a college degree is under 4%, and in 2008, science and engineering doctorate holders up to 3 years out of school had just 1.5% unemployment [between 2 and 3 times the historical full employment levels]."
 
This is HIGHLY misleading (though presumably not deliberately so).   First of all, though the PhDs may be working three years after the doctorate, the author's own data show that many are working as post-docs, at low pay.
 
And more importantly, there is the opportunity cost.   Remember, the NIH report I cited in the Bloomberg piece said the median age at starting a career after the series of post doc jobs is 37.   (Elsewhere in the document, they said 42, but I took the lower number.)   That means that the person has gone through 15 years of low pay/no pay after the bachelor's degree -- and thus has forgone 15 years of real-world salary.
 
Given that people of PhD quality are often bright, resourceful people, this means a loss of several hundred thousand dollars! Not to mention the personal costs, e.g. postponement of starting a family, neglect of family, angst over one's uncertain future, etc.
 
A glut is a glut, any way one slices it, with the unavoidable consequences that gluts bring.   And as I pointed out in my op-ed, the NIH and GAO are aware of the role of H-1B as one of the major causes of this glut.
 
Yet both major parties are anxious to exacerbate this glut, with expanded foreign worker programs.   They would give a STEM visa/green card to ALL foreign STEM grad students.
 
As I showed in my analysis this would be a huge number of people, without any regard to quality.
 
In my posting earlier today, I said,
 
"Being at MIT, [the two researchers highlighted in the article] would qualify as the best and the brightest in anyone's book.   But does that mean we should give special visas to master's students at San Jose State?"
 
This is not to imply there are no talented people coming out of San Jose State.   But if the STEM visas are aimed at facilitating the immigration of the best and the brightest, the California State University campuses, and most UCs, shouldn't be included.   Originally, a rather high-ranking official in the Obama administration stated that representative Lofgren's bill would only cover the top dozen universities in the U.S.A. -- but 12 turned out to be 200+.
 
In my post earlier today, I noted that China has a special program to lure back expatriate techies -- but it has been accepting fewer than 20% of the applicants.   In essence, that's saying that Congress wants to give red carpet treatment to foreign workers from China that the Chinese government doesn't deem of high enough quality to entice back home.   What does that say?
 
Norm
---30---

2013-02-20
Carolyn Giardina _Hollywood Reporter_
global forces behind Rhythm & Hues' bankruptcy
"Cheap labor in China and India and seductive tax incentives like British Columbia's 33% credit on local labor...   Ed Ulbrich, CEO of VFX rival Digital Domain, which went through bankruptcy in 2012 and was acquired by India's Reliance MediaWorks."

2013-02-20
_Milpitas Post_/_San Jose CA Mercury News_
average Santa Clara county home prices rising sharply
"The average sale price for a single-family home in January stood at $825,355, jumping 27.32 percent from the $648,238 of 2012 January.   The average sale price for a condo or townhome was $461,700, a whopping 43.33 percent increase from the $322,127 of 2012 January.   The average sale prices were comparable to those from 2005 January, when single-family homes sold for $812,876 on the average and condos or townhomes for $433,649.   The peak for any January came in 2008, with the average single-family home selling for $1,005,253 and the average condo or townhome for $523,566."

2013-02-20 (5773 Adar 10)
Alan Dershowitz _Jewish World Review_
will a notorious anti-Semite become the pope?

2013-02-20 (5773 Adar 10)
John Diedrich & Raquel Rutledge _Jewish World Review_
how BATFE agents lost more weapons
"the thieves [had] unfettered access to the place for 3 days, propping open the door with a shoe and returning the next day with a moving truck to finish the job...   Fearless Distributing storefront in Milwaukee's Riverwest neighborhood in October, making off with nearly $40K worth of merchandise -- maybe more..."

2013-02-20 (5773 Adar 10)
Mark Clayton _Jewish World Review_
Why pres. Obummer's executive order on cyber-security doesn't satisfy most experts
"'I had hoped, and have hoped for years, the US government would come out and say the [control systems] that run the critical infrastructure are insecure by design and must be upgraded or replaced ASAP.', says Dale Peterson, president of Digital Bond, a Sunrise, FL, industrial cyber-security company."

2013-02-20 (5773 Adar 10)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
Abraham Lincoln
"Lincoln did articulate a view of secession that would have been welcomed in 1776: 'Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better...   Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it.   Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit.'   But that was Lincoln's 1848 speech in the U.S. House of Representatives regarding the war with Mexico and the secession of Texas.   Why didn't Lincoln feel the same about Southern secession? Following the money might help with an answer.   Throughout most of our history, the only sources of federal revenue were excise taxes and tariffs.   During the 1850s, tariffs amounted to 90% of federal revenue.   Southern ports paid 75% of tariffs in 1859. What 'responsible' politician would let that much revenue go?"
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-21

2013-02-21
Martin Kaste _National Socialist Radio_
listeners and readers point out that employers bypass US STEM workers
"In the story, it was reported that employers have to show they tried to recruit Americans first.   But as it turns out, many companies bypass American applicants."

2013-02-21 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (12:30GMT) (14:30 Jerusalem)
Scott Gibbons & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
un-employment insurance weekly claims report
DoL home page
DoL OPA press releases
historical data
DoL regulations
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 346,428 in the week ending February 16, a decrease of -14,758 from the previous week.   There were 346,659 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.8% during the week ending February 9, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week's revised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 3,648,864, a decrease of 18,188 from the preceding week's revised level of 3,667,052.   A year earlier, the rate was 3.2% and the volume was 4,010,489.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending February 2 was 5,610,327, a decrease of 307,848 from the previous week.   There were 7,486,681 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.   Extended Benefits were not available in any state during the week ending February 2...   States reported 1,849,056 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending February 2, a decrease of 232,319 from the prior week.   There were 2,903,219 persons claiming EUC in the comparable week in 2012.   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;
to 128,613,913 beginning 2013-01-05.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2013-02-21
Tom Lutey _Billings MT Gazette_
2012's Montana wheat crop valued at $1.7G (with table)
"Farmers harvested 194.7M bushels of wheat from 5.5M acres in 2012.   The acres harvested were the most in a decade.   The bushels harvested were the second most since 2001.   The crop value was the most significant.   Before 2007, the highest value for Montana wheat was $693M.   Wheat and cattle, each valued at more than $1G, are the biggest single components of the Montana economy.   Their strong performance during and after the recession helped most Montana counties weather tough financial times.   That $1.7G gets divided many ways, with everyone from fertilizer and farm equipment salesmen to the local Costco getting a share as farmers pay their bills...   For example, in 2010 gross farm income for Montana agriculture of all kinds was $3.64G. After paying the bills, farmers kept $445M, according the Bureau of Economic Analysis for the U.S. Department of Commerce."

2013-02-21
Clayton E. Cramer _PJ Media_
repairing flaws in our mental health system

2013-02-21
Madeleine Morgenstern _the Blaze_
Rand Paul returned $600K from office budget to US Treasury
Louisville KY Courier-Journal
"The $600K -- about 17% of his $3.5M office budget -- is on top of another $500K Paul returned to the Treasury last year, according to CNN.   Paul said the total unspent money he's returned to the federal government amounts to $1.1M."

2013-02-21
Mike Opelka _the Blaze_
Texas teacher threatens to give students zeroes for mentioning firearms in writing assignment
"High School seniors at Denton High School were given a simple assignment in their English class: Write a paragraph about something you did over the weekend.   There was no additional direction on topics for the essay.   However, a few students who wrote about guns, including attending a gun show or going to shop for a gun, were told that they would be given a zero on the assignment if they did not change what they were writing about...   'Mr. Christian said I want you all to write a paper, write about a fun experience you had...a nice experience...   So I said, me and my mom went to Cabella's to buy a gun.   As soon as he heard the word gun, he told me to sit down.'   [He should have been corrected for saying/writing 'me and my mom went' instead of 'my mother and I went'.   Another student in the class posted to FB:] 'Today I held both the guns used in Aurora and at Sandy Hook Elementary.   Contrary to popular belief, everyone in my vicinity did not die.'"

2013-02-21
William L. Anderson _Krugman in Wonderland_
Austrians and predicted inflation: reply to John Carney

2013-02-21
Norm Matlof _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
American hiring priorities
 
Yesterday NPR ran an otherwise-excellent piece on H-1B that contained one horrible error: It stated the H-1B employers must give hiring priority to Americans (U.S. citizens and permanent residents).   The show was flooded with complaints about the error, so it ran a follow-up story today.
 
Donna Conroy was quoted, as was prominent immigration attorney Angelo Paparelli.
 
The content of the show goes right to the core of H-1B and green card issues, and as such is very relevant to the current interest on the Hill toward these issues.   Please bear with me, because I will give a full solution to the H-1B and green card abuse problems here.
 
Donna made an interesting point, though one that I think needs modification.   Here is the exchange between her and reporter Martin Kaste:
 
KASTE: Conroy used to work in IT.   Now she runs Bright Future Jobs, a group opposed to what it considers corporate abuse of work visas.   The secret, as she calls it, is this: technicalities in the law allow the vast majority of employers to skip the good faith recruiting rule.   But a lot of people make the same assumption.   I did.   And Conroy says it's time the law caught up.
 
CONROY: If everybody in America thinks that the H1-B program requires employers to seek local talent first and hire equally or better qualified Americans, then why don't we just fix the law to match what we believe is true?
 
Needless to say, congress is not going to legislate on the basis of the populace believes is true.   But maybe it could be convinced to enact what IT ITSELF believes is true.   I've seen countless letters to constituents in which senators and representatives state that H-1B employers are required to give hiring priority to Americans.   (Rob Sanchez used to have a collection of them on his web site.)   Indeed, these senators and representatives treat such a requirement as a good thing, intending to assure American workers that congress has their interests at heart.   Given that, congress should be willing to enact what they already think is there...right?
 
Of course, that is probably not going to happen, because people like Angelo (who by the way is a very nice guy) will counter as he did on the show:
 
ANGELO PAPARELLI: These hires have to happen very quickly.   The job imperatives that the customers impose are so time-sensitive, that it can't work.
 
This has been a favorite argument of the industry lobbyists -- "We are on really tight deadlines, and need to hire someone right away."   But this is at odds with the time taken to hire a programmer with the given skill sets.   An industry-sponsored study in Silicon Valley found the mean time to fill a job was 3.7 months.   (Silicon Valley Joint Workforce Initiative Study, A.T. Kearney company, 1999 May 18.)
 
But Angelo then made a much more interesting remark:
 
KASTE: Paparelli says one reason people think companies have to recruit Americans before they go to the H1-Bs is because, in fact, they are required to recruit Americans later on, when they're trying to get permanent visas, green cards for the temporary H1-B workers that they like and want to keep on.
 
PAPARELLI: So U.S. workers put on their suits and ties and their white shirts and they shine their shoes, and they go to the interview thinking that they have the opportunity that they've been longing for, only to be rejected.
 
KASTE: Paparelli calls it an empty ritual required by the Department of Labor, as it compels employers to prove a negative, to prove they can't find "qualified" [wink wink nudge nudge] workers.   The result, he says, is pointless job interviews.   And those seem to be the source of much of the frustration expressed by mid-career tech workers in places like Silicon Valley and Seattle...
 
So even the immigration attorney admits the green card process is an "empty ritual".   I'd guess some people couldn't believe their ears!   But it was nothing new.   On the contrary, after the infamous YouTube videos (see YouTube videos, Pittsburgh YouTube video, Cohen & Grigsby and prevailing wage, DoL sanctios Cohen & Grigsby, and firm replies), there were a number of immigration lawyers saying that in public; see the above files and also dramatic admission at that same site.
 
So, this frank admission has been made before, but boy, Angelo sure said it vividly.   This is kind of admission that ought to make congress hopping mad...uh, right?
 
Congress ought to be especially troubled by the coupling of Angelo's 2 statements: He doesn't want an American recruitment requirement in either the H-1B or the green card process.   He simply doesn't want employers to be required to look for Americans to fill these jobs, period, never.
 
Again, that is completely antithetical to what Congress claims to want (as seen in its letters to constituents).   In fact, it is what president Obama claimed he wanted back when he was a senator.   So congress and Obama should be happy to require H-1B employers to recruit Americans...umm, right?
 
The question then becomes, Would it do any good?   As Angelo said, the American recruitment process is an "empty ritual", or as the immigration lawyers news-letter put it in one of the files above, a "charade".
 
But things could be toughened up, a lot.   One proposal I've made is that the American recruitment requirement could stipulate that a employer wishing to hire a foreign worker is not allowed to reject a U.S. applicant on the grounds that he/she is "over-qualified".   As I've said so often, age (35+) is one of the central issues in abuse of foreign worker programs.   This new restriction should help quite a bit in that regard, though of course it's not a panacea.
 
Yet, the best solution to the abuse problems is to go right to the root causes -- employer hankering for cheap, "hand-cuffed" labor.
 
Concerning cheap, I've supported the Durbin/Grassley bill, which sets the legally required wage floor at the 50th percentile of salaries in the given occupation and given region (WITHOUT breaking things down by experience level, a key point).   The AFL-CIO (DPE) proposal would set the figure at the 75th percentile, which really makes sense: The employers claim that the foreign workers are "special" -- posses special skills, special talents or whatever -- so the employers should be willing to pay a premium.
 
This 75th percentile floor should apply to both H-1B and green cards, AND to the OPT program.   (That is, if an employer hires an OPT, the employer must pay at least the 75th percentile.)
 
That one simple change -- defining prevailing wage at the 75th percentile, NO experience levels -- would remove the vast majority of the abuse of H-1B and green cards.   One simple change! The yearly H-1B cap, the per-country green card caps, etc. would become NON-PROBLEMS, because the quotas would never even come close to filling.
 
Concerning the "hand-cuffing" -- this is extremely attractive to employers, especially in Silicon Valley, a huge incentive for them to hire foreign workers in lieu of Americans -- the solution is again very simple: Give the foreign workers full mobility in the labor market.   If the employer is afraid the worker will jump ship, all the employer has to do is what he would do to retain an American worker -- pay the worker more.
 
I have always strongly supported facilitating the immigration of "the best and the brightest", and have suggested giving quick (6 months max) green cards to those who have legitimate salary offers at or above the 90th percentile.   I mention this not only because I believe in it but also to defuse the generally phony industry claim that the foreign workers are the best/brightest.   BTW, Lynn Shotwell, one of the top industry lobbyists, told me she would support such a proposal.
 
Now take note of this: There are 2 things from the above list that president Obama could do RIGHT NOW, ON HIS OWN, by Executive Order.
 
1.   He could direct DoL to forbid employers from rejecting Americans on the grounds of being "over-qualified" in the green card process.
 
2.   He could define the EB-1 Extraordinary Ability green card category to include my 90th percentile proposal above.
 
No statutes or regs are perfect, and thus ways would be found to circumvent my recipes above.   But I believe they would solve most of the abuse problems.
 
That is assuming that congress and the president actually WANT to solve the abuse problems.   Do they?
 
Norm
---30---

2013-02-21
Craig Timberg & Ellen Nakashima _Ames IA Tribune_
experts say Red China has hacked most of DC... and media systems
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-22

1732-02-22 George Washington was born in Wakefield, at Pope's Creek, Westmoreland county VA

2013-02-22
Brian Bennett _Los Angeles CA Times_
Trumka and other union thugs laugh as they stab US workers

2013-02-22
Billy Hallowell _the Blaze_
"sandwiching" as way to temper bad news and propaganda technique is commonly used/abused in media, movies, Bible/Torah
"the use of bracketing is apparently very common today.   Employing this device in politics and written works, individuals will sandwich one theme in the middle of 2 mentions of a separate team (hence the term 'sandwich').   To frame it in more understandable terms: Bad news is placed in the middle, with good news being placed at the beginning and end of a written work.   This way, readers or listeners are showered with positive themes, fed the negative and then, again, given the more favorable information.   It's a method of buffering unpalatable ideals by sticking them in the center."

2013-02-22
Anthony Watts
snow vs. the warmist hysterics

2013-02-22
Anthony Watts & Rebekah Metzler
Obummer regime plans to circumvent lawful due process... again: regulation likely means no new coal-fired power plants will be built in the USA

2013-02-22
Christopher Monckton
UN IPCC's Rajendra Pachauri admits there's been no warming for 17 years

2013-02-22
Anthony Watts
transparency and violations of constitution and laws vs. opacity and corruption in Obummer regime's EPA

2013-02-22
Benjy Sarlin _Talking Points Memo_
former commerce secretary Carlos Gutierrez to push immigration law perversion

2013-02-22
William L. Anderson _Krugman in Wonderland_
Krugman confuses production with consumption and destruction

2013-02-22
Jeremy A. Kaplan & Judson Berger _Fox_
FBI probe of defense tech leaked from NASA stone-walled
"a 'secret grand jury' was to be convened in 2011 February to hear testimony from informants in the case, including a senior NASA engineer.   But federal prosecutor Gary Fry was removed from the case, which was then transferred from one office in the Northern District of California to another where, according to the documents, 'this case now appears to be stalled'...   'When I mentioned the tech that was compromised to the Armed Services Committee, their jaws just dropped.', a congressional source told FoxNews.com.   The sources allege that Ames Center director Simon P. Worden [Pete Worden] and Will Marshall, a British citizen, shared that moon lander project -- and the missile defense technology -- with individuals from foreign countries including [Red China], South Korea and Saudi Arabia.   'Will Marshall in particular had demonstrated far too great an interest in locating U.S. spy satellites, giving interviews to [Red Chinese] and American newspapers on curtailing U.S. space security.', reads a document that was purportedly given to the FBI."
2013-02-08: Frank Morring ii: Aviation Week: House committee chairmen say NASA may have released defense secrets to Red China
2013-02-15: Daniel de Bolt: Palo Alto/Mountain View CA Voice: NASA Ames gave US defense secrets to Red China

2013-02-22
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
concern about H-1B program in the midwest
"With the prospect of a deal on immigration, the tech [executives are] in over-drive in pushing for an H-1B cap increase.   [Their] efforts include supporting fluffy organizations to write boiler-plate letters in support of a virtually unrestricted H-1B cap.   The latest, called inSPIRE STEM, is co-chaired by former U.S. senator John Sununu (R-NH) and Maria Cardona, whose resume includes working as an advisor to Hillary Clinton in her 2008 campaign.   It is urging U.S. senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to include the provisions of the Immigration Innovation Act (I-Squared) in its bipartisan negotiations on a comprehensive immigration bill.   That bill will allow the H-1B cap to rise to 300K.   Computerworld's analysis of government data shows that a major share of H-1B visas are going to off-shore out-sourcing firms...   Lesley Toth, who wrote a column this week about how for profit colleges are taking advantage of veterans.   But it's not the only issue that concerns her.   In a piece for a Minnesota newspaper, the Mille Lacs County Times, Toth lays out the problems that returning veterans are facing...   Klobuchar's proposal, writes Toth, 'is misguided on several levels'...   An expanded version of Toth's point is made by Ross Eisenbre, the vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, in 'America's Genius Glut'."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-23: Erev Purim

2013-02-23
Anthony Watts
Over 650 snow records set in the USA this week: 92 record lows as far south as Naples, FL

2013-02-23
Jennifer Peltz _Wheeling WV Intelligencer_
If you're unemployed, don't bother to apply
Shreveport LA Times
Lowell Sun
Coeur d'Alene ID Press
York PA Daily Record
Mineapolis MN StarTribune
Manufacturing
"While New Jersey, Oregon and Washington, DC, have passed laws making it illegal to discriminate against the unemployed, New York City's billionaire-businessman mayor vetoed on Friday what would have been the most aggressive such measure in the country.   Similar proposals have stalled in more than a dozen other states and Congress...   Nationally, more than 1 in 3 unemployed workers has been looking for at least 6 months [about 26 weeks, while average duration of unemployment has recently been 35.8 weeks and as ranged from 20 to 44 weeks in recent years], according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics...   the recruiter told her she wouldn't be considered because she had been out of work for more than 3 months."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-24

2013-02-24
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
Old Dominion coffee pot

2013-02-24
J. Christian Adams _PJ Media_
Are Republican pols going along with Dem amnesty for illegal aliens gullible or stupid or treacherous?

2013-02-24
_Today News Gazette_
9 state governors stab their citizens by conspiring with India's business execs
pioneer
"The governors present on the occasion included Jack Markell from DE, Terry Branstad from IA, Jan Brewer from AZ, Mike Beebe from AR, Dannel Malloy from CT, Patrick McCrory from NC, Margaret Hassan from NH, Gary Herbert from UT, and Matt Mead from WY."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-25

2013-02-25
Bob Tisdale
once again climate models do not measure up to reality

2013-02-25
Marc Parry _Chronicle of Higher Education_
quantitative historian suggests western culture's leadership is soon to end

2013-02-25
Amanda A. Shea _Chronicle of Higher Education_
too many PhDs competing for too few teaching and research jobs in academe
"as the number of PhDs increases, their academic job prospects are diminishing.   Indeed, the number of students receiving doctorates in biology increased from 3,803 in 1981 to 8,135 in 2011, while the number of biological-science Ph.D. recipients in tenure-track positions dropped precipitously from 55% in 1973 to 15% in 2006.   Thus, a large majority of students are being trained for jobs they will never obtain.   Along with the decreasing job prospects, the time spent as a graduate student and as a post-doc is increasing.   In 2007 the average total time to degree in the United States was almost 7 years in biological sciences and nearly 10 years in medical and other life sciences, up from 6 and 8 years, respectively, in 1977.   The number of graduates in post-doctoral positions has also drastically increased along with the percentage of graduates completing more than one post-doc position.   Tellingly, the average age of a first-time National Institutes of Health [NIH] grant recipient was 42 in 2008, up from 36 in 1980.   As tenure-track faculty positions become less obtainable, many PhDs spend increasing amounts of time in a post-doctoral 'holding pattern', waiting for an academic job."

2013-02-25 (5773 Adar 15)
W.J. Hennigan _Jewish World Review_
Will US UAVs being sold to the UAE become terrorist tools?
"Under the proposed sale, revealed this week at a defense conference in Abu Dhabi and confirmed Friday, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. of Poway, CA, will sell an undisclosed number of the robotic aircraft to the UAE armed forces for $197M...   has the same physical dimensions, altitude, speed and flight endurance -- up to 35 hours -- as the original unarmed version of the Predator drone first flown by the Air Force in 1995.   General Atomics redesigned the Predator -- XP stands for 'export' -- with the sole purpose of selling it to a broader customer base, including countries in the Middle East and North Africa.   The company said it had received an export license from the State Department to share technical information about the drone, but finalization of a deal is subject to other regulatory approval.   Neither the State Department nor senator Robert Menendez, D-NJ, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, would comment on the proposed sale."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-26

2013-02-26
Joel Rosenblatt _Bloomberg_
Tata has settled wage dispute with Indian guest-workers in the USA for $30M
"U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken in Oakland, California.   The judge in April certified the case as a class, or group, law-suit for all non-U.S. citizens employed by Tata in California from 2002 Feb. 14, to 2005 June 30...   Kelly M. Dermody, a lawyer for the [guest-workers]...   Vedachalam v. Tata America International Corp., 06-cv-00963, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (Oakland)."

2013-02-26
William L. Anderson _Krugman in Wonderland_
Mark Thornton vs. Krugman on "austerity"

2013-02-26
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
being there
 
So, Yahoo! is now banning telecommuting for its workers.
 
As a frequent telecommuter myself, I can understand that some of the workers are not pleased with the new policy.   However, it illustrates what I've been saying so often over the years: Most tech work can't be off-shored effectively.   You need to talk to people on the spur of the moment, not once every 24 hours via video-conference.
 
In pushing for expanded foreign worker programs, the industry lobbyists often threaten to send work off-shore if they can't bring foreign workers here.   Aside from the obvious point that Americans lose jobs either way, it's important to note that the industry can't make good on that threat; only certain kinds of work is appropriate for sending over-seas.
 
Norm
---30---
 
Proposed Bills 2013

2013-02-26 (5773 Adar 16)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
shepherds and sheep
Town Hall
Go San Angeles TX
Contra Costa CA Times
Pittsburgh PA Tribune-Review
NH Union Leader
St. Augustine FL
"What Cass Sunstein does not tell us is what sort of creatures, other than people, are going to over-ride our mistaken decisions for us.   That is the key flaw in the theory and agenda of the left.   Implicit in the wide range of efforts on the left to get government to take over more of our decisions for us is the assumption that there is some superior class of people who are either wiser or nobler than the rest of us.   Yes, we all make mistakes.   But do governments not make bigger and more catastrophic mistakes?...   The Great Depression of the 1930s, in which millions of people were plunged into poverty in even the most prosperous nations, was needlessly prolonged by government policies now recognized in retrospect as foolish and irresponsible.   One of the key differences between mistakes that we make in our own lives and mistakes made by governments is that bad consequences force us to correct our own mistakes.   But government officials cannot admit to making a mistake without jeopardizing their whole careers...   many oppressive and even catastrophic government policies were cheered on by the intelligentsia.   Back in the 1930s, for example, totalitarianism was considered to be 'the wave of the future' by much of the intelligentsia, not only in the totalitarian countries themselves but in democratic nations as well.   The Soviet Union was being praised to the skies by such literary luminaries as George Bernard Shaw in Britain and Edmund Wilson in America, while literally millions of people were being systematically starved to death by Stalin and masses of others were being shipped off to slave labor camps.   Even Hitler and Mussolini had their supporters or apologists among intellectuals in the Western democracies, including at one time Lincoln Steffens and W.E.B. Du Bois...   Too many among today's intellectual elite see themselves as our shepherds and us as their sheep.   Tragically, too many of us are apparently willing to be sheep, in exchange for being taken care of, being relieved of the burdens of adult responsibility and being supplied with 'free' stuff paid for by others."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-27

2013-02-27
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
Don't they read...
 
After I posted my message yesterday about the e-mail problems I'd been having for some time, many of those who replied noted that the timing of my new system is fortuitious, as they had noticed that the industry lobbyists have recently begun a full-court press to get congress to expand the foreign tech worker programs.   But the fact is that the lobbyists have been working all along, implanting in the national consciousness the notions that we have a STEM labor shortage, that "Johnnie Can't/Won't Do STEM" and so on.
 
My posting here will involve various aspects of that PR machine that have risen lately.   I think many of you will be swearing at your computer screens when you read some of this.   :-)   As I've often said, it does epitomize the loss of our democracy.
 
Let's start with this one: "I Have a Dream" goes virtual!   It's not clear exactly where that is going, but you can bet it will make the press, which is likely the goal.
 
That "march" was already written up by FT, available on the CNN site.
 
Here is an excerpt:
 
**********************************************************************
 
"Our immigration laws are so inefficient.", says Prerna Gupta, a co-founder of Khush, a start-up developing intelligent music apps, and the daughter of Indian immigrants.
 
"Our country was built off the backs of immigrants and I've seen first-hand the impact that educated immigrants can have.   So as an employer, it's extremely frustrating not to be able to hire the [cheap, young, pliant] engineers we [want].", she said.
 
When Khush was getting started in 2009, they could not afford the legal fees required to get an H-1B [low-skilled] visa for one of the co-founders, a Chinese engineer who wrote the code for the app.
 
Instead, someone else had to spend months learning the code.   "It really slowed us down.", Ms Gupta said.
 
**********************************************************************
 
They couldn't afford the H-1B visa's FEES?   So how on Earth could they afford to pay the desired H-1B worker's salary?   Or were they planning for him not to draw a salary at all, which may have been the real problem?   And how would any of the proposals currently on the Hill, which she is presumably supporting, have helped her?   None that I know of has a fee waiver clause.   In spite of these oddities, the industry PR people have their poster girl.
 
Another tack is to get government at the non-federal level involved.   Of course, state governors and such have no legislative power on the H-1B issue, but it all adds up to creating an image of a ground-swell of public opinion in support of expanded H-1B.
 
In this case, the PR experts have managed to get down to the county level:
 
Next, we have the latest [propaganda] from Stuart Anderson:
 
When I first heard of his report this afternoon (from an alert reader), I thought that Anderson's timing is awful.   After all, a Washington Post article last year exposed the fact that we have a GLUT of medical researchers, in fact such a dire glut that it is dissuading America's best and brightest from pursuing careers in the field.   This was the finding of a blue ribbon commission, which also found (as I've noted here often) that H-1B is playing a major role in producing that glut.
 
So, I thought, why would Anderson conduct his study now, when the NIH has already pre-negated his findings?   Curious, I clicked on the link to his report (pdf).
 
There lies the answer.   Anderson says:
 
**********************************************************************
 
If one would poll Americans on which immigrants they would most like to see admitted to the country, it is likely cancer researchers would be at the top of the list.   Therefore, it was surprising to officials at research institutes that congress specifically excluded the fields that would have allowed foreign-born cancer researchers to gain permanent residence (green card) in the United States when the U.S. House Representatives passed HR6429, the STEM Jobs Act last year.   The bill did not pass the U.S. Senate and cancer center officials hope this will be corrected in any future legislation.
 
**********************************************************************
 
That part of the bill presumably was motivated by the NIH commission's finding that we have a glut of biomedical researchers.   IOW: Rather than NIH having pre-negated Anderson's findings, HE wants to negate THEIR findings.
 
Anderson of course doesn't mention the NIH report, saying only that the bill exclusion of the life sciences arose "as the result of anecdotes about some job difficulties experienced by graduates in some science fields".   So, a long, extensive study by a blue ribbon commission, including the president of Princeton University, with tons of data, mathematical modeling and so on, is reduced by Anderson to "anecdote" [while his chats with executives saying "it's sooo hard to recruit" is "hard data"].
 
But the gullible press will take this without question.   The NIH commission's finding had been reported in the Washington Post, front page, above the fold, but I think you'd have a hard time finding many Hill dwellers who know about it.   Don't they read the Washington Post in DC?, you might ask.   They do, but the industry PR machine is so effective that it mesmerizes people; the Post article likely just caused cognitive dissonance on the Hill, resolved in favor of the industry PR.   And though the bill did exclude the life sciences, it's likely that very few of the congress-people who voted for it were aware of that.
 
(Note BTW that it is not just the life sciences where there is a glut.   The bill was far too broad even with the exclusion.   Also, Anderson gives the usual "the unemployment rate is low" [even when it is triple the full employment level] argument, very misleading since those who are forced out of the field -- or are working as low-paid post docs -- don't count as unemployed.)
 
Which brings me to 2 interactions readers of this e-news-letter have had with Hill staffers.   One, who has a background in biomedical research, met with a staffer of a certain senator the other day, presenting data on our OVERproduction of STEM degrees.   The staffer said she had trouble getting her head around the concept, since all her visitors had said the opposite.   It doesn't seem to have occurred to the staffer that those other visitors had vested interests that colored their views.
 
I myself don't lobby.   Other than occasionally agreeing to requests that I talk to certain people on the Hill, I really don't know much of what is going on up there.
 
So yesterday I asked several people who do know the same question I raised above: Don't people in DC read the Washington Post?   All the information is out there in public, researched by reputable organizations -- the NIH, the Urban Institute, NBER and so on.   Why aren't they aware of it?
 
One of the people I asked was John Miano, whom many of you know of.   A former techie, he founded the Programmers Guild to work against the H-1B visa, and along the way became a lawyer.   He is now with the Center for Immigration Studies.
 
After I told John about the above incident, he responded with the following, which I am quoting with his permission:
 
**********************************************************************
 
I remember meeting congressman Moran's chief of staff in 2002.   He would not even allow me to discuss the possibility that there was no shortage.   He said up front that if I wanted to discuss that he was not going to listen.
 
**********************************************************************
 
This is quite a remarkable incident!   I suppose the (somewhat) charitable interpretation is that Moran meant that he'd heard the arguments claiming we don't have a tech labor shortage, had carefully weighed them, and had decided they weren't credible.   The less charitable explanation is that he was saying, in effect, "The tech industry gives us huge campaign contributions, and we're going to do their bidding."   Recall that senate Bennett and representative Davis both made explicit statements like that in public in the past.
 
The distribution list for this e-news-letter includes both techies and those interested in the topic (journalists, researchers and yes, some Hill staffers).   I often get queries from techie readers asking what they can do, in the face of this powerful industry PR machine...
 
Norm
---30---

2013-02-27
Samuel I. Outcalt
NOAA USHCN raw average annual temperature data

2013-02-27
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
the desperate 1861 April appeal by John Minor Botts
Civil War Daily Gazette: the coffee mill gun

2013-02-27
_American Chemical Society_
frost and fog fighting coating for glass

2013-02-27
_Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
Flowers Foods has bid $360M for Merita, Nature's Pride, Butternut, Home Pride, and Wonder
"Flowers Foods, based in Thomasville, GA, makes Tastykakes and bread brands including Nature's Own and Cobblestone Mill.   Hostess is also holding separate auctions for its snack cakes, which include Twinkies.   Hostess Brands Inc., based in Irving, Texas, announced in November that it was shutting down its business and selling its breads and snack cakes."
Candice Choi: San Jose CA Mercury News/AP
"A person familiar with the situation says a bid by Flowers Foods to buy Wonder and several other bread brands from bankrupt Hostess was met with no qualifying competing offers...The $360M bid by Flowers also includes Nature's Pride, Butternut, Home Pride and Merita breads, along with 20 bakeries and 38 depots.   An auction will still be held Thursday for a separate $30M bid by Flowers for Beefsteak.   The source said a competing offer for that brand was submitted by Mexico's Grupo Bimbo, which makes Thomas' English muffins and Entenmann's cakes...   Hostess has also picked opening bidders, known as a 'stalking horse', for its snack cakes.   A joint offer from two investment firms -- Metropoulos & company and Apollo Global Management -- was picked as the lead bid for Twinkies and other snack cakes.   Hostess CEO Greg Rayburn has said he expects that auction to be 'wild and wooly'.   McKee Foods, which makes Little Debbie snack cakes, was picked as the lead bidder for Drake's cakes, which include Devil Dogs, Funny Bones and Yodels."

2013-02-27
Kim Thompson _Forbes_
Excessive student, guest-work, and immigration visas are on a very fast track

2013-02-27
Steve Goreham
Happy to use energy
Washington DC Times
"For decades, environmental groups have waged war on energy...   But, actual trends and empirical data show that our planet is not in imminent danger.   Air and water pollution in the United States is at a 50-year low.   According to Environmental Protection Agency data, airborne levels of 6 major pollutants declined 57% from 1980 to 2009 even though energy usage was up 21% and vehicle miles traveled were up 93%.   International data shows that pollution is lowest in high-income nations that use high levels of energy, such as Canada and Sweden, but highest in developing nations, such as India and Indonesia.   The best way to reduce pollution in developing nations is to increase per capita incomes, not to restrict energy usage."

2013-02-27
Bob Barr _Town Hall_
Lest we forget: Lessons from the 1993 Waco massacre
"20 years ago, on 1993 February 28th, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) launched an assault on the Branch Davidian religious [home] just outside Waco, Texas.   The resulting siege ended more than 7 weeks later, on April 19, but not before claiming the lives of 80 men, women and children -- many burned to death in the final inferno that destroyed the [buildings]."

2013-02-27
Celia Bigelow _Town Hall_
Why arms ownership by females is up 77% since 2005
"A survey conducted by the National Shooting Sports Foundation found that 73% of gun dealers reported an increase in female customers in 2011, as well as the previous two years.   In 2005, just 13% of gun owners were women.   Today, that number is 23% -- a 77% increase in 7 years...   The math isn't surprising and the logic is simple: Women want to protect themselves and their family, and guns are the great equalizer between sexes in crimes against women.   The facts are there to prove it.   Over the last 10 years, as gun sales have increased, the level of crime has decreased, especially violent crime.   Statistics, provided by our very own Department of Justice, show 'total violent crime' in the last ten years decreased from 42.1% to 39.2%.   In fact, 'serious violent crime' decreased even more dramatically, down to 42.9% from 47.5% in the beginning of the decade.   Among the 'serious violent crime' data is rape and sexual assault—both of which predominantly affect women.   It is estimated that 1 in 5 women are a victim of sexual assault in America.   But, over the last decade rape and sexual assault decreased from 26.1% to 24.1%.   Robberies also decreased from 56.5% to 51.7%.   Gun sales over the last decade have jumped simultaneously.   In 2000, 41% of households reported gun ownership.   Today, that number stands at 47% -- a 15% increase, the sharpest increase among women."

2013-02-27
Michelle Malkin _Town Hall_
pres. Obummer's court jesters of "sequester"
"President Obama has been warning America that if Congress allows mandatory spending 'cuts' of a piddly-widdly 2% to go into effect this week, the sky will fall.   The manufactured crisis of 'sequestration' was Obama's idea in the first place....   NDIC shut down in 2012 June, and some of its responsibilities were absorbed by the DEA...   'waves' of illegal aliens were released this week from at least 3 detention centers in Texas, Florida and Louisiana, according to the Fort Worth Star Telegram...   The real punch line, as I've reported relentlessly, is that the catch and release of criminal illegal aliens has been bipartisan standard operating procedure for decades.   The persistent deportation and removal abyss allows hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens -- many of them known repeat criminal offenders -- to pass through the immigration court system and then disappear into the ether because we have no determined will to track them down and kick them all out of the country...   While [Janet Napolitano] shrieks about decimation of the DHS work-force, DHS workers tell me that the double-dipping of retired ICE brass -- who get back on the payroll as 'rehired annuitants' -- is rampant.   While this open-borders White House phonily gnashes its teeth over the sequester's effect on national security, its top officials are lobbying for a massive nationwide amnesty that would foster a tsunami of increased illegal immigration for generations to come.   The shamnesty beneficiaries will be welcomed with open arms, discounted college tuition, home loans and [ObummerDoesn'tCare].   And as every outraged rank-and-file border agent will tell you, DHS top officials have instituted systemic non-enforcement and sabotage of detention, deportation and removal functions.   In another emetic performance, Obama parachuted into a Virginia naval shipyard this week to decry Pentagon cuts that would gut our military.   But I repeat: The reductions in spending are CINO: Cuts In Name Only.   If the sequester goes into effect, Pentagon spending will increase by $121G between 2014 and 2023."

2013-02-27
Anthony Watts
Germany having gloomiest winter in 43 years

2013-02-27
_Washington DC Examiner_
Poland emerging as major European out-sourcing hub

2013-02-27 (5773 Adar 17)
Kristen Chick _Jewish World Review_
Muslim Brotherhood vs. individual rights
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)

2013-02-27 (5773 Adar 17)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
higher minimum wages
Town Hall
"Are people responsive to changes in price?   For example, if the price of cars rose by 25%, would people purchase as many cars? Supposing housing prices rose by 25%, what would happen to sales? Those are big-ticket items, but what about smaller-priced items? If a super-market raised its prices by 25%, would people purchase as much? It's not rocket science to conclude that when prices rise, people adjust their behavior by purchasing less.   It's almost childish to do so, but I'm going to ask questions about 25% price changes in the other way.   What responses would people have if the price of cars or housing fell by 25%? What would happen to super-market sales if prices fell by 25%?   Again, it doesn't require deep thinking to guess that people would purchase more.   This behavior in economics is known as the first fundamental law of demand.   It holds that the higher the price of something the less people will take and that the lower the price the more people will take.   There are no known exceptions to the law of demand.   Any economist who could prove a real-world exception would probably be a candidate for the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and other honors.   Dr. Alan Krueger, an economist, is chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers.   I wonder whether he advised the president that though people surely would be responsive to 25% increases in the prices of other goods and services, they would not be responsive to a 25% wage increase...   University of California, Irvine economist David Neumark has examined more than 100 major academic studies on the minimum wage.   He states that the White House claim 'grossly misstates the weight of the evidence'.   About 85% of the studies 'find a negative employment effect on low-skilled workers'.   A 1976 American Economic Association survey found that 90% of its members agreed that increasing the minimum wage raises unemployment among young and unskilled workers.   A 1990 survey found that 80% of economists agreed with the statement that increases in the minimum wage cause unemployment among the youth and low-skilled.   If you're looking for a consensus in most fields of study, examine the introductory and intermediate college textbooks in the field.   Economics text-books that mention the minimum wage say that it increases unemployment for the least skilled worker.   As detailed in my recent book _Race and Economics_ (2012), during times of gross racial discrimination, black unemployment was lower than white unemployment and blacks were more active in the labor market.   For example, in 1948, black teen unemployment was less than white teen unemployment, and black teens were more active in the labor market.   Today black teen unemployment is about 40%; for whites, it is about 20%.   The minimum wage law weighs heavily in this devastating picture.   Supporters of higher minimum wages want to index it to inflation so as to avoid its periodic examination."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-02-28

2013-02-28 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 307,589 in the week ending February 23, a decrease of 43,208 from the previous week.   There were 334,242 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.7% during the week ending February 16, a decrease of 0.2 percentage point from the prior week's revised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 3,516,563, a decrease of 152,148 from the preceding week's revised level of 3,668,711.   A year earlier, the rate was 3.1% and the volume was 3,882,527.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending February 9 was 5,764,168, an increase of 183,841 from the previous week.   There were 7,498,600 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.   Extended Benefits were not available in any state during the week ending February 9...   States reported 2,005,991 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending February 9, an increase of 186,935 from the prior week.   There were 2,904,562 persons claiming EUC in the comparable week in 2012.   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;
to 128,613,913 beginning 2013-01-05.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2013-02-28
Paul E. Almeida _Black News_/_AFL-CIO DPE_
Reprehensible immigration law perversion bill threatens jobs of African-American professionals
"The so-called Immigration Innovation (I-Squared) Act of 2013 (S169) would dramatically expand the number of visas for foreign high-tech workers.   These visas, called H-1B, are already bad public policy.   At a time of record long-term unemployment, the I-Squared bill would only make things worse.   Foreign workers holding H-1B visas displace U.S. workers.   An employer does not have to show a shortage of U.S. workers before hiring an H-1B holder."

2013-02-28
John Ranson _Town Hall_
The big Obummer goes for the big zero again
"it's been 1,401 days since the Democrat-Controlled Senate passed a budget."

2013-02-28
Mike Shedlock _Town Hall_
European economy abysmal and going to get worse

2013-02-28
Bob Tisdale
divergence of models from data: satellite-era sea surface temperatures

2013-02-28
Eve Samples _Treasure Coast FL Palm_
apply sun-shine to economic development efforts: Digital Domain
"6. DIGITAL DOMAIN DECLARES BANKRUPTCY.   Digital Domain Media Group became the state's biggest cash-for-jobs bust in September when the company's Port St. Lucie movie animation facility, Tradition Studios, laid off 346 employees days before declaring bankruptcy.   Jupiter Island resident John Textor also was removed as Digital Domain CEO.   The city spent about $40M to build and equip the 115K-square-foot studio and leased it to Digital Domain.   The city also gave the company $7.8M in cash out of a promised $10M economic development grant in exchange for a promise to create 500 jobs by 2014.   Digital Domain also was awarded $20M from the state.   This month, the City Council approved a settlement that returns the studio to the city by end of the year...   It's almost impossible for laymen to follow the money flowing out of the so-called Quick Action Closing Fund -- or, for that matter, from other pots of [tax-victim] cash tagged for economic development...   The now-bankrupt Digital Domain landed $20M from the Quick Action Closing Fund as part of its [tax-victim]-robbing $135M deal to open a movie-making studio in Port St. Lucie...   [Several state legislators have filed bills that would require more reporting.]   In 2012 alone, the state committed to $72M in incentives as part of 122 different deals around the state.   That's not including cash from local governments, which often exceeds state grants."

2013-02-28
Norm Matloff _EPI_
Are foreign students the "best and brightest"?

2013-02-28
William L. Anderson _Krugman in Wonderland_
bubbles Bernanke, the inflationist

2013-02-28 (5773 Adar 18)
Victor Davis Hanson _Jewish World Review_
American recessional
Town Hall
St. Augustine FL
"What will the world begin to look like as the global sheriff backs out of the world saloon with both guns holstered?...   Just as the world was a far better place after 1945 because of an engaged United States, so it will probably become a much worse place due to an increasingly absent America."

2013-02-28 (5773 Adar 18)
Sharon Randall _Jewish World Review_
Home is where the mountain is

2013-02-28 (5773 Adar 18)
Glenn Garvin _Jewish World Review_
the left's science deniers

2013-02-28 (5773 Adar 18)
judge Andrew P. Napolitano _Jewish World Review_
pres. Obummer's false alarmism
"In an effort to remove the hot-potato issue of excessive government spending from the 2012 presidential campaign, and calling the bluff of congressional Republicans who always seem to favor domestic spending cuts but increased military spending, president Obama suggested the concept of 'sequester' in late 2011.   His idea was to reduce the rate of increased spending by 2% across the board -- on domestic and military spending.   To his surprise, the Republicans went along with this.   They did so either because they lacked the political fortitude and the political will to designate specifically the unconstitutional and pork barrel federal spending projects to be cut, or because they thought that with the debt of the federal government then approaching $15T (it is now $16.6T and growing), any reductions in spending money the government doesn't have are preferred to no reductions.   So, instead of enacting a budget, and instead of recognizing that much of its spending is simply not authorized by the Constitution, Congress enacted the so-called 'sequester' legislation, and the president signed it into law.   The reductions the sequesters require are reductions in the rate of increased spending from those originally planned by Obama and authorized by Congress...   even if these sequesters do kick in, the [federal government] will spend more in 2013 than they spent in 2012...   he cannot just intentionally release prisoners or weaken the military or inflict maddening delays on the flying public in order to make his fearful warnings come to pass.   His job is to uphold the Constitution, to make the executive branch of the federal government work.   The president has taken an oath to 'faithfully execute' his office.   The words of the oath are prescribed in the Constitution.   The word 'faithfully' requires him to enforce the laws whether or not he agrees with them.   It also requires him to enforce the laws in such a manner that they make sense -- so that the federal government basically performs the services we have grown to expect of it."

2013-02-28 (5773 Adar 18)
Mort Zuckerman _Jewish World Review_
How we can end our modern-day economic depression
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

 
Proposed Bills 2013

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