jgo Resume	jgo Reading Room
jgo Econ Data	jgo Econ News Bits
jgo's Links	jgo's Glancing Encounters with the Movie Biz
jgo's Work in Progress
Kermit's home page
Bottom

updated: 2018-06-20
 

"Rebellion aganst tyrants is obedience to God." --- Benjamin Franklin & Thomas Jefferson

 
 

2013 March

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

 

"He who tampers with the currency robs labor of its bread." --- Daniel Webster 1837-03-15

 
 
 

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

2013-03-01

2013-03-01
Anthony Watts
dust's global adventure: Saharan and Asian dust and biological particles reach California, affecting US rain-fall

2013-03-01
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
Logan Osburn throws in the towel but later tries to back-track

2013-03-01
Anthony Watts
compilation of articles from 1970s showing global cooling hysteria

2013-03-01
William L. Anderson _Krugman in Wonderland_
Joseph Salerno on Bubbles Bernanke

2013-03-01
Tom Nelson
Keystone pipe-line passed environmental review; eco-fascists are outraged
"would have little impact on climate change, State Department analysis says"

2013-03-01
Betsy McKay _Wall Street Journal_
man with anti-biotic resistant tuberculosis caught entering USA near McAllen, Texas, after traveling from Nepal through 13 countries (with graph)

2013-03-01
Gregory Ferenstein _TechCrunch_
H-1B guest-workers are neither better nor brighter than US workers

2013-03-01
Denis Jamison _Washington DC Post_
George Washington and the fight for freedom

2013-03-01
Ruth Mantell _Fox_/_MarketWatch_
UMich consumer sentiment index up from 73.8 in late January to 76.3 in early February to 77.6 in late February
CNBC
alternate CNBC
MarketWatch
St. Louis Fed

2013-03-01
Beryl Lieff Benderly _AAAS Science Careers_
live from DC, STEM immigration perversion
"So is the National Science Board's authoritative report, Science and Engineering Indicators 2012, as well as preceding volumes in the biennial series, wrong in its finding that the nation produces three times as many STEM degrees as there are STEM jobs? Is the American Chemical Society's (ACS's) survey showing 'record highs in the unemployment rates' of newly graduating chemists at all degree levels also mistaken? Presumably, we also should not trust Bureau of Labor Statistics data showing unusually high jobless rates for engineers. What about recent tech company layoffs that, in the words of IEEE's publication The Institute, 'eliminate thousands of jobs'? And are the many experienced American engineers who are having such great difficulty finding new work just imagining things?... Maybe you didn't catch Harvard Law School immigration expert Michael Teitelbaum's testimony at a recent congressional hearing that 'the evidence does not support claims of generalized shortages of STEM workers in the US work-force.'... In fact, Senator, the nation's supposed skill shortage is so overblown that one engineer who recently said he's 'looking for work' is Adam Steltzner. Can't place the name? He's the 'Elvis Guy' with an engineering physics Ph.D. who helped lead the team that designed last summer's thrilling Curiosity Mars lander... You want to know why experts think so many of America's high-performing math and science students—who, research shows, are both numerous and among the 'best and brightest' in the world—do not endeavor to spend long, penurious years preparing for science and technology careers?   Maybe it's the stunted career prospects available in the over-crowded labor market that have caused an 'internal brain drain' of talented Americans from science and technology to other, more rewarding careers. Or maybe it's the fact that tech companies are often loath to hire—or even retain—Americans older than 35 or 40 that encourages students to pursue non-STEM careers. Or perhaps there's another cause: public universities that deal with budget cuts by seeking international students, who pay high out-of-state tuition, in place of lower-paying in-state Americans."
It would be an excellent reform to admit only the genuine geniuses, those who actually have high levels of skill and knowledge... for a change...jgo

2013-03-01 (5773 Adar 19)
Anna Mulrine _Jewish World Review_
How US military plans to carry out its part in Obummer's "pivot to Asia"

2013-03-01 (5773 Adar 19)
Fred Weir _Jewish World Review_
Why the chasm between the USA and Russia is hard to bridge

2013-03-01 (5773 Adar 19)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
Obummer's war on academic standards part 3 of 3: Lessons from Texas and the growing grass-roots revolt

2013-03-01
Maureen Scott _Renew America_
pres. Obummer (and his friends) the architect of destruction
Free Republic
Lubbock TX Avalanche-Journal
Shalom in the Wilderness
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-02

1836-03-02: Texas Declaration of Independence

2013-03-02
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
teachable moment on TechCrunch
 
My recent EPI paper was reported in an article in TechCrunch, a tech web log.   The reader comments provide an important "teachable moment", which I'll describe below.   I'll also report an ironic aftermath to an age discrimination law-suit in the tech field.   All of this will vividly ilustrate the salient issues concerning H-1B and green cards.   But bear with me, and I will first discuss some context.
 
Congress regularly holds hearings on H-1B.   You can read my reviews of some recent ones (these are in reverse chronological order, for 2013 February, 2011 October and 2011 April).
 
Whether the choice is deliberate or not, the selection of witnesses for these hearings tend to be heavily weighted toward the industry point of view, only occasionally inviting a mild critic of H-1B or one who is perceived as holding the "safe" view that the "Intels" use H-1B responsibly while the "Infosyses" abuse the program.   Ron Hira is perceived that way, for instance, though he definitely does not hold that view.   That view is wrong, as I've shown statistically and otherwise, but it would seem that for congressional testimony it is the "safe" view.
 
I have to interject at this point that I was invited to testify to the House Immigration sub-committee in 1998.   I did accept the invitation, and did testify.   But I later declined two subsequent invitations to the same committee.   I simply felt it was not worth my going through 2 full travel days (California to DC and back), to speak for 5 minutes to a committee that has already made up its mind.
 
In declining the invitations, I did suggest that the committee invite American (U.S. citizen and permanent resident) programmers and engineers who believe they had been harmed by the H-1B program.   The committee did do this a couple of times in that period, but to my knowledge neither the House or Senate has done so since then.   That lack is a real loss to the democratic process.   Doesn't Congress want to hear from the victims?
 
Even more interesting would be testimony from the other group of victims -- the H-1Bs themselves.   Granted, in the hearing held last month, there was a representative of Immigrant Voice, an organization of H-1Bs that lobbies congress to speed up the green card process.   But that representative is certainly not going to emphasize the cheap labor nature of the H-1B program; his job was to get congress to speed up the green card process.   He did make a brief allusion to the "hand-cuffed" nature of the foreign tech workers, but his overriding theme was, "We foreign tech workers are saving the U.S. economy with our skills."   (That's a paraphrasing, though Vivek Wadhwa actually said this explicitly at the same hearing.)
 
Unless Congress is going to have witnesses testify with paper bags over their heads, it will not hear from the real "immigrant voice", i.e. the H-1Bs themeselves, explaining their plight.   If you were in their shoes (as a number of readers of this e-news-letter have been), you wouldn't risk speaking out either.
 
There have been occasional out-bursts.   Back in 2000, Murali Devarakonda, a member of the Board of Directors of the Immigrant Support Network (similar to today's Immigrant Voice) said, "This is legal human rights violation in America...   You [as an H-1B] are an indentured servant, a modern-day slave..." on TV (Straight Talk, a weekly television program produced by the Santa Clara county Democratic Club).   My guess is that Murali's organization was not pleased with Devarakonda's blurted remark, coming as it was as a board member.
 
Well, it turns out that the TechCrunch piece on my EPI paper is providing a rare window into the life of H-1Bs.   A large number of the reader comments are from former or current H-1Bs (though there seems to be the usual immigration lawyer or 2 or their proxies), and though many of them resent my doing the EPI research, most do agree with my conclusions:
 
1.   They agree that most of the H-1Bs are not "the best and the brightest", but instead are ordinary people doing ordinary work.
 
2.   They agree that the H-1Bs are typically used by employers as cheap labor.
 
3.   They agree that the H-1Bs are typically used by employers as "hand-cuffed" labor, unable to switch jobs, a huge attraction for the employers.   (H-1Bs do have the right to change jobs, of course, but in practical terms it's difficult, and unthinkable in the case of green card sponsorees.)
 
4.   They even agree that many Americans go into law or finance instead of tech, because tech pays too little.
 
Most read only TechCrunch's summary of my paper, not the paper itself, so they don't realize that that wage discrepancy between law/finance and engineering is due to H-1B cheap labor.   They also say H-1Bs are hired for skill shortages, again oblivious to the findings of my paper.   But many, I believe most, of the former/current H-1B posters, do agree with my main points.   Here is a typical comment, from one JPS Bajwa:
 
"US workers may be more skillful and brighter than the immigrants but output wise and cost wise the latter are definitely better..."
 
(ellipsis in the original).   I'm not sure what "output" means, but the poster's point is clear.
 
Ironic that the H-1Bs are agreeing with me?   Not at all.   Recall that Vivek -- now a vociferous proponent of expansive policies regarding foreign tech workers -- also agrees with me on the above points.   He has even admitted to hiring H-1Bs as cheap labor himself when he was a CEO.   (Vivek, BTW, writes for TechCrunch.)
 
What IS ironic is that many of those H-1Bs will discover when they reach age 35 or so, with green card or natualized citizen status, that it is harder for them to get a tech job; they will be perceived by employers as too expensive--relative to you-know-who.   Then THEY will be Americans (if they have naturalized), and the shoe will be on the other foot.
 
They will find, as my former-H-1B readers have, that even if they have the exact skill set in the employer's job description, they do not even get so much as a phone call.   This is the reality, contrary to the industry lobbyists' claim that H-1Bs are hired in lieu of older Americans because the latter lack up-to-date skills.   Vivek has said that too, that the older worker with the desired skill set won't be hired, on the basis of perceived cost.
 
Which brings me to an age discrimination suit brought against Best Buy in 2005 (pdf).
 
One of the plaintiffs was Xianmin Shane Zhang, a software engineer, laid off at age 43.   He appears to be the one of the same name (both Chinese and his English name Shane) on LinkedIn with a degree from the University of Houston, etc.   Also, he appears likely to have come to the U.S. as a foreign student, fitting the usual pattern of undergrad degree in China followed by grad work in the U.S.A.   I'll assume these things below.
 
I should state at the outset that I am not saying Zhang is not among "the best and the brightest" -- he was a physics major at a top school in China -- but his case is an interesting one for a couple reasons.
 
First, it shows my above point: Today's H-1B is tomorrow's victim.   To tech employers, age 35 is age 35, whether you are a U.S. native, a naturalized citizen or permanent resident, and you are liable to be laid off, with difficulty getting a new job.   (Zhang got a contracting job about a year after being laid off.)
 
This is quite significant in light of the industry claims that it hires H-1Bs because older Americans don't have up-to-date skills.   I've refuted that claim elsewhere, but for the sake of argument, suppose it's true.   Then why does congress want to give foreign students special green cards?   In 10-15 years [or 2-3 years if you believe some of the execs' claims], their skills would be out of date too.
 
The second point of interest about Zhang is what he's doing now: He runs an off-shoring company!   This is the supposedly-evil act that is always cited by those who say that the "Intels" use H-1B responsibly while the "Infosyses" abuse the program.   Those same people point out that the "Intels" hire foreign students NOT for off-shoring work.   Yet here we have a former foreign student opening his own off-shoring firm.
 
Here I must remind the reader that I have constantly defended the "Infosyses" (as has Vivek), not because I think off-shoring is good, but because I regard the singling out of these firms as scapegoating.   Abuse of H-1B is just as widespread among the non-off-shoring firms.   And to an American techie experiencing difficulty finding a job in tech, it makes no difference whatsoever whether a job is shipped abroad or filled with an H-1B in the U.S.A. -- either way, that job is not available to the American.   And needless to say, I don't blame Zhang for utilizing the comparative advantage he has, i.e. his access to labor in [Red China].
 
Yet, Zhang's case illustrates the fact that giving green cards to foreign students can lead to off-shoring as well.   Anecdotally I believe this is common, though I have no data.   This of course also goes to the "entrepreneurship" the industry lobbyists claim for the former foreign students.   Opening an out-sourcing firm hardly qualifies as the innovative action claimed by the lobbyists.
 
Norm
---30---

2013-03-02
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
unionist woman (Letitia Follin) was wife of one of Mosby's rangers (James W. Strother), son was union cavalryman (Lewis A. Strother)
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-03

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

2013-03-03
Denise Dick _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
statewide rhetoric/drama tournament
results of competition at Canfield HS

2013-03-03
Travis Kellar _Cumberland PA Sentinel_
PA Capital Area Science and Engineering Fair
"more than 300 students from 50 schools in the 7 counties surrounding Harrisburg...   15 categories and 2 divisions -- Junior for grades 7 and 8, and Senior for grades 9 through 12...   180 science and engineering professionals will judge the projects...   projects are research-based and follow the scientific method, she said some of the projects are beginning to have applications outside of the science class-room..."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-04

2013-03-04
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
federal grand jury in Texas indicted Dallas-based bodyshop, Dibon Solutions, for abusing H-1B visas for low-cost work-force
"Dibon Solutions of Carrollton, Texas only paid Visa-holding employees when there was work...   The company is described as family owned.   Named in the grand jury indictment Are Atul Nanda, Jiten 'Jay' Nanda, Siva Sugavanam, Vivek Sharma, Rohit Mehra, and Mohammad Khan...   The multi-count indictment also includes wire fraud for using e-mail to execute the scheme."

2013-03-04
Bob Tisdale
memo to lead authors of NCADAC Climate Assessment report

2013-03-04
Jeffrey R. Young _Chronicle of Higher Education_
"band-width divide" (and hardware divide) could bar many from on-line courses
"Only about 66% of American adults have broad-band access at home, according to a survey last year by the Pew Internet & American Life Project [and for many it isn't very 'broad']... And many Internet companies are considering moving away from all-you-can-use plans for high-speed Internet at home. Which means that massive open online courses are 'free' only as long as you can afford to get to them."

2013-03-04
Willis Eschenbach
warmist hysteric got frost-bite

2013-03-04
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
unionism: tallying Shenandoah valley against the rest of VA based on restitution claims

2013-03-04
Anthony Watts
mysterious "electron stash" found among earth's van Allen belts
"a relatively long-lived zone of high-energy electrons stored between Earth's Van Allen radiation belts...   The outer belt contains extremely high-energy electrons, while the inner belt is comprised of energetic protons and electrons.   The belts have been studied extensively since the dawn of the Space Age, because the high-energy particles in the outer ring can cripple or disrupt space-craft.   Long-term observation of the belts have hinted that the belts can act as efficient and powerful particle accelerators; the recent observations by the Van Allen Probes—a pair of space-craft launched in 2012 August -- now seem to confirm this.   Shortly after launch, the space-craft activated their Relativistic Electron-Proton Telescope (REPT) instruments to measure particles within the belts and their immediate environs.   The instrument immediately detected on 2012 September 1, the presence of a stable zone of high-energy electrons residing between the belts.   This donut-shaped third ring nestled between the belts existed for nearly a month before being obliterated by a powerful shock-wave of particles emanating from center of the solar system."

2013-03-04
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
professor X's visit to company Y
 
A computer science academic whom I've known for years has in the past bought the industry party line as to a tech labor shortage.   Recently, however, he has observed people he knows who work in industry in his research specialty who have been struggling to find work.   These are people in their 30s and 40s.   One is currently employed but in a firm that is likely to fold, while another has just finished an advanced degree, having returned to school after years of success in industry.
 
This academic, X, is in his 70s, and yes, still quite active in teaching and research.   He recently visited one of the most prominent Silicon Valley firms, and reports that:
 
"Most of their employees seem to be the age of my grand-kids, a few the age of my kids and none close to my age."
 
Clever phrasing -- and absolutely accurate.   I've visited this company a number of times, and it resembles a giant dorm room, in age and ambience.
 
This is exactly the standard Silicon Valley pattern: Limit hiring to new or recent graduates, freezing out the people over 35, and then claim there is a "shortage" of qualified people.   Once again, the young are cheaper, both in salary and benefits, so the driver here is money.
 
X went on to say that the managers in X's firm told him that in his particular specialty, the firm needs to hire PhDs.   This is unusual, including for this firm, which hires very few PhDs in general.   But the reason he quoted was quite telling:
 
"MS awardees do not have the experience."
 
The word "awardees" already connotes new graduate [in this context], but the phrase "do not have the experience" says it all -- the firm doesn't want to hire EXPERIENCED people, as they are too expensive.   A [freshly-earned] PhD then serves as [a substitute for] experience, while not being too expensive.
 
Of course, H-1B directly ties into this.   The data show that most of the H-1Bs are young, especially true in the computer field.   This is why the various proposals in Congress are focused on the new foreign graduates of U.S. universities -- they're young.
 
The other tie to H-1B is that it makes PhDs cheap.   Remember, this was the explicit goal of the old NSF internal memo that proposed bringing in a lot of foreign students in doctoral programs -- to reduce the salary premium for having a doctorate.
 
Very few firms hire many doctorates in the computer field, but the same principle of course applies at the master's level, where a lot of hiring is done.
 
I recently proposed that legislation (or even executive order) ban employers sponsoring foreign workers for green cards from rejecting American applicants for being "over-qualified", i.e. too old/experienced.   I later discovered that I was somewhat in error, as case law already forbids this.
 
Yet there must be a loop-hole in the details somewhere, or at least some kind of understanding.   Just look for example at this LinkedIn entry in which Intel overtly restricts jobs to new or recent graduates.   Years ago, I saw an Intel internal memo using the acronyms NCGs and RCG for this, and I've been told that HP has the same set-up.   I was recently asked how the companies can get away with this, apparently flouting age discrimination laws.   I don't know the answer, but I've seen many American engineers with exact matches to a firm's job description, yet not even getting a phone call after applying.   So there must be loop-holes somehow in the ban on rejecting the "over-qualified" during a green card process.
 
One way or the other, it ain't right.
 
Note by the way that on the above web page, Intel says it won't sponsor foreign workers at the bachelor's level for a visa.   This is what TI told Congress in 2011, saying they have plenty of American applicants for engineering positions at that level.   So why don't the American's go on for an advanced degree, the TI rep was asked.   The answer, as you can see from the NSF memo, from the research work of Clair Brown at UCB, from the Tony Carnevale remark ("You'd have to be crazy..."), from the NRC report etc., is that it just doesn't pay to do so.   And in turn, that is due to the influx of foreign students.
 
IOW, contrary to the industry lobbyists' claim that H-1B is the SOLUTION to the problem, it is the CAUSE of the problem.
 
Norm
---30---

2013-03-04
Steve Goreham
house-cats have more emissions impact than the Keystone XL pipe-line
Washington Times

2013-03-04
Dana Blanton _Fox_
70% support building the Keystone XL pipe-line ASAP
2013-03-05: Aaron Blake: Washington DC Post
2013-03-05: Christian Coalition of America

2013-03-04 (5773 Adar 22)
Jeff Jacoby _Jewish World Review_
Europe's Hezbollah cowardice

2013-03-04 (5773 Adar 22)
Kristen Chick _Jewish World Review_
Egyptians suspicious of Obummer regime's support of Muslim Brotherhood
"'There is a genuine feeling by many that either there's something that the USA is too chicken to say, or that there is indeed a deal made between the Brotherhood and the US over the future of the region and thus the US is being accommodating accordingly.', says Bassem Sabry, a writer and critic of the Muslim Brotherhood."
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)

2013-03-04 (5773 Adar 22)
Mark Steyn _Jewish World Review_
court eunuchs of the Obummer media have turned on their own
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-05

2013-03-05
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
today's House hearing
 
yet another congressional hearing on "high-skilled" immigration.
 
Recall that the other day I said
 
----------------------------------------------------------------
 
Whether the choice is deliberate or not, the selection of witnesses for these hearings tend to be heavily weighted toward the industry point of view, only occasionally inviting a mild critic of H-1B or one who is perceived as holding the "safe" view that the "Intels" use H-1B responsibly while the "Infosyses" abuse the program...
 
[In declining the House committee's] invitation to me to testify some years ago, I did suggest that [they] invite American (U.S. citizen and permanent resident) programmers and engineers who believe they had been harmed by the H-1B program.   The committee did do this a couple of times in that period, but to my knowledge neither the House or Senate has done so since then.   That lack is a real loss to the democratic process.   Doesn't Congress want to hear from the victims?
 
----------------------------------------------------------------
 
[Today's] hearing epitomizes this, and in fact looks far worse, in the sense that it is extraordinarily deceptive.
 
Of the 4 witnesses, 3 are viewed as very pro-H-1B.   The fourth, Bruce Morrison, representing IEEE-USA, is the deceptive case.
 
For those not in the know, Morrison wrote the H-1B law when he was a congressperson back in 1990.   In recent years, he has been a lobbyist.
 
Typical DC revolving door, right?   But it's worse than that, far worse, as follows.
 
Back in the 1990s, IEEE-USA was at the forefront of criticism of the H-1B visa.   It gave congressional testimony, often spoke publicly on the issue, and so on.   A Hill staffer who had been critical of H-1B was invited as a key-note speaker to an IEEE-USA convention.
 
In 1998, the year in which the first H-1B increase was ultimately enacted, among other things the organization set up an outstanding web-site -- the Misfortune 500.   This consisted of profiles of 500 well-qualified engineers who were having trouble getting work in the field, right in the midst of the [so-called] Dot Com Boom.
 
But there was a sudden change in 2000.   IEEE, which is the IEEE-USA parent organization, put huge pressure on IEEE-USA to back off concerning the H-1B issue.   The parent organization is dominated by industry people [executives] and academics [executives and administrators], who have major vested interests in bringing foreign workers to the U.S.A., and it basically threatened IEEE-USA with dissolution if they kept up with their opposition to H-1B.
 
IEEE-USA, of course, responded as desired.   The Misfortune 500 site was dismantled, and the staffer who had put it up was reassigned (ostensibly temporarily, but of course it was permanent).   The organization did continue to say that H-1B had problems, but they started a "green cards, not temporary visas" campaign.
 
Now, as any reader of this e-news-letter knows, I believe that green cards are just as harmful as H-1B.   A major component of H-1B abuse is to hire young H-1Bs in lieu of older (35+) Americans.   Most of the current EB-series green card sponsorees are young, and this would be even more so under the proposals currently in congress, which deal with new university graduates.   I'll return to this later in this posting, after I discuss the truly outrageous aspect:
 
Morrison's written statement for tomorrow's hearing says:
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
I am here today in my capacity as a representative of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc... [The organization] represents over 206K engineering, computing and technology professionals and students...
 
The IEEE-USA represents electrical, electronics and computer engineers.   While 80% are native born, 20% are immigrants.   Student chapters abound, with their mixture of "grown-up here" and "came from abroad" students.   But there is a consensus among the membership...
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
IEEE-USA has been making such statements for years now, that the organization represents its members' views on the foreign worker issue.   Yet to my knowledge, the organization has NEVER polled is members on this issue.
 
I know that around 2000, several members tried to get the organization to conduct such a poll.   That request was flatly refused.   A number of my readers are IEEE-USA members, and I do not believe any has ever been asked his/her opinion on this issue.
 
People join IEEE-USA for various practical reasons, e.g. a generous insurance program [, journals], not because they support more green cards.   I submit that the overwhelming majority of IEEE-USA members have no idea that Morrison is pushing green card policy in their name.
 
I hereby make my own request:
 
Some of my readers of this e-news-letter are current or former officials/staffers in IEEE-USA.   At least one other reader is close friends with Bruce Morrison.   If my statement above that IEEE-USA has never polled its membership on this issue is incorrect (or if any of my other statements is incorrect), then please let me know, and I will immediately issue a correction in this space.
 
BUT...if no such poll has ever been conducted, I urge Bruce Morrison NOT to claim in tomorrow's hearing that his recommendations have the approval of the "206K members".   To make such a claim would be outrageous.
 
Now, back to the age issue.   Here I will reproduce part of a posting I made here back in 2006:
 
----------------------------------------------------------------
 
A few days ago IEEE-USA President Ralph Wyndrum created quite a stir among activists when he was quoted in a Datamation article as follows:
 
Ralph Wyndrum, president of the IEEE-USA, a non-profit organization that describes itself as promoting the advancement of technology, says many out-of-work IT professionals have themselves to blame -- not foreign workers.
 
Wyndrum was said to believe that engineers are laid off simply because they don't have up-to-date skills.   (Who Would the H-1B Visa Cap Increase Help?, Sharon Gaudin, Datamation, 2006 April 7)   An uproar ensued, with people replying that they had been in a continuous process of upgrading their skills throughout their careers.   They had been laid off not because of out-of-date skills but simply because employers shun older engineers (they are too expensive, etc.).
 
Wyndrum replied that he had been quoted out of context, and pointed to the the new Innovation Institute established by IEEE-USA.   The Institute, according to Wyndrum, (IEEE-USA Starts Training Institute for U.S. Workers Patrick Thibodeau, ComputerWorld, 2006 March 29), "is part of IEEE-USA's larger effort to help engineers maintain relevant skills and minimize the risk of losing their jobs to off-shore workers."   That sounds great -- until one sees IEEE's intended audience: "The ideal student, said Wyndrum, would be a young advanced-degree holder who is already considered to be among the most prolific of a company's product developers and patent holders."   Notice the word "young"!
 
Whose side is IEEE-USA on?   Given Wyndrum's background -- he's a former AT&T executive -- the answer seems clear.
 
----------------------------------------------------------------
 
The points in the written testimonies for the hearing tomorrow are pretty much the usual misleading stuff ("Unemployment rates are low." [even if they are 2-3 times worse than full employment levels], "All that needs to be done is beef up enforcement [though the statutes and regulations are intentionally toothless].", "The main abusers of H-1B are the Indian off-shoring firms," etc.).
 
However, there is one new idea in there -- from none other than Bruce Morrison.   The idea is to auction off green cards to employers.   IOW, employers would compete with each other to sponsor a foreign worker for a green card, by bidding for the privilege.   Interesting idea, but again, remember the age issue is major, and this would do nothing about that.   Morrison doesn't give any details, but you can bet that if such a policy were to be implemented, the winning bid -- remember, just a one-time fee -- would be much less than the employer saves by hiring the foreign worker instead of any older American.   Yes, under perfect competition it theoretically should even out, but for lots of reasons this would not be the case here.
 
In any case, the big story here is what appears to be an unconscionable misrepresentation by Morrison.   Congress is not likely to take up his green card bidding idea, but the [thing they are most likely to remember] from his [misleading] testimony is "America's electrical engineers support expanding the green card program."
 
Norm
Let me clarify:   US STEM workers -- physicists, biologists, biophysicists, chemists, biochemists, taxonomists, geneticists, astro-physicists, software architects, software engineers, systems analysts, data-base analysts, data-base designers, data-base administrators, computer programmers, systems operators, systems administrators, network engineers, architectural engineers, mechanical engineers, industrial engineers, aerospace engineers, civil engineers, nuclear engineers, etc. -- by and large oppose the addition of green cards to the already excessive student, guest-work, and LPR visa programs...   Bruce Morrison and IEEE do NOT speak for me...jgo

2013-03-05
Craig Loehle
the scale of dichotomous thinking in the climate debate

2013-03-05
Anthony Watts
U of VA plugs new "open science center" while blocking scientific inquiry when it comes to climate

2013-03-05
_Slash Dot_
U of CA Davis study concluded that H-1B guest-workers are neither best nor brightest

2013-03-05
Grant Gross _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
corrupt tech execs ask for more low-skilled, cheap, young, pliant labor

2013-03-05
Willis Eschenbach
_Scientific American_ turns anti-science, advocating blocking the scientific method

2013-03-05
David Middleton & Joe Nocera
government anti-scientist's misguided crusade against the Keystone XL pipe-line

2013-03-05
_MarketWatch_
Harris poll: 10 companies with worst reputations
10 companies with best reputations
Harris inter-active
PR News Wire/UBM
"Apple records the highest score in the RQ's history, and is top-ranked in 4 of the 6 key dimensions of reputation: Social Responsibility -- Whole Foods; Emotional Appeal -- Amazon.com; Financial Performance – Apple; Products & Services -- Apple; Vision & Leadership -- Apple; Workplace Environment -- Apple.   Interestingly, Amazon.com, which has no storefront and very limited human interaction, scores highest in the Emotional Appeal dimension -- this is the core strength of its reputation.   In terms of supportive behavior, customers report considerable confidence in Amazon.com and several other companies: In the future, Americans would 'definitely' purchase products & services from Amazon.com (71%), Kraft Foods (70%), and the Coca-Cola Company (64%).   Americans would 'definitely' recommend to others products & services from Amazon.com (64%) and Kraft Foods (57%).   In the future Americans would 'definitely' invest in stock from Amazon.com (34%), [corrupt] MSFT (23%) [those aren't employees; they're perma-temps], and the Coca-Cola Company (23%).   Americans would 'definitely' recommend to others to invest in stock from Amazon.com (46%), the Coca-Cola Company (25%), and [evil] MSFT (24%) [low quality goes in before the name goes on]...   For the first time in RQ history, Johnson & Johnson did not rank in first or second place...   Hewlett Packard's slowly eroding reputation has been injured by negative perceptions on Ethics and Vision & Leadership dimensions, and its brand is beginning to feel the damage.   Moreover, a dozen companies visible in 2011 did not appear this year at all, including 3M, Intel Corporation, SC Johnson, Unilever, FB, Pfizer, State Farm Insurance [Like a Bad Nightmare, SF Is Still There], The Allstate Corporation [no, of course we're not paying them their pensions, because, you see, our agents aren't really our agents; they're 'free-lancers', 'independent contractors' (wink wink)...], Shell, Monsato, American Airlines, and Delta Airlines...   The 2012 RQ survey shows the reputations of [Bank of India, formerly Bank of America], Goldman Sachs and AIG in an equally challenging place.   The general public believes that [Bank of India] has been more concerned with operational and financial [perversions like dumping American STEM workers and violating customers' privacy] than with [serving] customers..."

2013-03-05
_California Border Security Crusaders_
protect our borders face off against union lobbyists for illegal aliens (with pictures)

2013-03-05
Chuck Norris _Town Hall_
10 reasons I wish George Washington were still alive (part 3)

2013-03-05
_Treasure Coast FL Palm_
NuCO₂ Inc. sold to Praxair for $1.1G
"The Martin County-based company sells beverage-grade carbon dioxide and has about 162K customer locations and 900 employees.   NuCO₂ is the largest provider of fountain drink carbonation."

2013-03-05
Stephen Dinan _Washington DC Times_
e-mail message from White House Visitors office reveals that goal is to make "sequester" as painful as possible for the citizenry
"Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service [APHIS] official Charles Brown said he asked if he could try to spread out the sequester cuts in his region to minimize the impact, and he said he was told not to do anything that would lessen the dire impacts...   The White House had to fend off questions Tuesday about the Homeland Security Department's decision to sign a $50M contract for new uniforms for airport screeners, just days before the sequesters."

2013-03-05 (5773 Adar 23)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
government budget politics
Redding CA: Cynical president shapes "cuts" into a weapon
Tennessean: Obummer obviously wants public to be alarmed
Pittsburgh PA Tribune-Review
Town Hall
"Imagine a government agency with only two tasks: (1) building statues of Benedict Arnold and (2) providing life-saving medications to children.   If this agency's budget were cut, what would it do? The answer, of course, is that it would cut back on the medications for children.   Why? Because that would be what was most likely to get the budget cuts restored.   If they cut back on building statues of Benedict Arnold, people might ask why they were building statues of Benedict Arnold in the first place.   The example was deliberately extreme as an illustration.   But, in the real world, the same general pattern can be seen in local, state and national government responses to budget cuts.   At the local level, the first response to budget cuts is often to cut the police department and the fire department.   There may be all sorts of wasteful boondoggles that could have been cut instead, but that would not produce the public alarm that reducing police protection and fire protection can produce.   And public alarm is what can get budget cuts restored.   The Obama administration is following the same pattern.   The Department of Homeland Security, for example, released thousands of illegal aliens from prisons to save money -- and create alarm...   Republicans in the House of Representatives have offered to pass legislation giving President Obama the authority to pick and choose what gets cut -- anywhere in the trillions of dollars of federal spending -- rather than being hemmed in by the arbitrary provisions of the sequester.   This would minimize the damage done by budget cuts concentrated in limited areas, such as the Defense Department.   But it serves Obama's interest to maximize the damage and the public alarm, which he can direct against Republicans.   President Obama has said that he would veto legislation to let him choose what to cut.   That should tell us everything we need to know about the utter cynicism of this glib man...   Only in Washington is a reduction in the rate of growth of spending called a 'cut'."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-06

2013-03-06
Declan McCullagh _CNET_/_Ziff Davis_/_CBS_
corrupt Sili Valley execs stymied for now on plan to get more cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with questionable ethics: will have to wait on reprehensible immigration law perversion
Kenneth Corbin: CIO/IDG

2013-03-06
Anthony Watts, Gerd Wendler, Blake Moore & Kevin Galloway
Alaska temperatures of 2012 were coldest in 40 years

2013-03-06
Ryan Keller _Examiner_
DHS has bought nearly 3K mine-resistant armored vehicles, still adamantly refuses to secure borders, seek out and deport illegal aliens
Andrew Malcolm: Investor's Business Daily
2012-04-13: Lisa Derrick: FireDog Lake
Consent of the Governed
Free Republic
Jim Hoft: St. Louis Gateway to the West Pundit

2013-03-06
Kat Hicks _Town Hall_
abc poll: Americans support federal government spending cuts

2013-03-06
John Stossel _Town Hall_
"sequester" is not even a cut

2013-03-06
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
appointed police chiefs tend to favor violation of 2nd amendment, while elected sheriffs tend to favor widespread ownership and carry of arms
"Ever wonder why police chiefs from big, crime ridden cities are always chosen to testify before the senate about gun control while sheriffs are often ignored?   Police chiefs are appointed.   They simply serve as politicians and mouth pieces for their city councils and [leftist] mayors.   This is the case in anti-self defense Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington DC, Milwaukee etc.   Sheriffs OTOH are elected and represent the voices of the people they serve.   On Monday Milwaukee county sheriff David Clarke, the sheriff who sent out a public service announcement encouraging residents to learn how to use a firearm in order to protect themselves, sent a letter to senator Lindsey Graham apologizing on behalf of his constituents for the 'embarrassing' behavior of Milwaukee police chief Edward Flynn at a recent subcommittee hearing.   Flynn shilled for more gun control just like Baltimore county police chief James Johnson did during a gun violence hearing back in January."

2013-03-06
Kevin Glass _Town Hall_
Why Rand Paul is filibustering nomination of John Brennan as CIA director
"Senator Paul was joined 3 hours into his filibuster by senator Mike Lee (Utah) and senator Ted Cruz (Texas)..."

2013-03-06
Brent Bozell _Town Hall_
spare the budget armageddon hype (especially when discussing microscopic changes in rates of increase of spending)

2013-03-06
Bob Barr _Town Hall_
radical leftist MoveOn.org is still moving in the wrong direction

2013-03-06
Ken Blackwell _Town Hall_
pres. Obummer drops his "family friendly" mask

2013-03-06
Ben Shapiro _Town Hall_
the malicious president tries to make America pay... and pay and pay and pay

2013-03-06
Kevin Tampone _Central NY Business Journal_
NY consumer sentiment index 69.9 for February
"Upstate New York's overall consumer sentiment index was 69.9 in February, up 1.6 points from the previous month, but behind New York state's 77.3 and the metro New York City area's 82.4. The state's index was up 2.8 points from January and the New York City area's rose 4.4 points."

2013-03-06
Matt Bigler _CBS San Francisco CA_
cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with flexible ethics are a focus of Sili Valley CEO conspiracy

2013-03-06
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
the battle of the Alamo as considered by Virginians at the time
"As a related aside, I can't help but spend a little time 'talking-up' Sam Houston.   After all, he had beginnings in the Valley (having been born at Timber Ridge, in Rockbridge County), and… AND… was a Southern Unionist.   I'm especially reminded of Houston's remarks regarding his refusal to swear allegiance to the Confederacy..."

2013-03-06
Eric Veronikis _Penn Live_
exchange students locked out of basement dorm room... after protesting against their employer/landlord
"The 8 people living in the basement paid Chueng $65 per week, deducted out of their minimum wage pay-checks, totaling $2K per month to reside in the sub-floor of the house, he said."

2013-03-06
Mike Gaffney _Wicked Local_/_Saugus MA Advertiser_
insane MA school board approve Guelen charter school
"The Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education narrowly approved an application from Pioneer Charter School of Science II to open in Saugus, over the objections of several educators and elected officials who questioned the school's hiring and business practices...   expressed concern about the school's history of hiring teachers from overseas with H-1B visas, as well as the similarities between the PCSS-II application and a document describing the educational model of the Harmony Public Schools in Texas that reports have linked to the highly secretive and controversial Fethullah Gulen community...   schools under the Harmony umbrella used [tax-victim] dollars to benefit the Gulen movement by giving school-related bids to companies run by people who follow the Turkish cleric Gulen."

2013-03-06
Catherine Rampell _NYTimes_
with positions to fill, employers wait for perfection instead
"the bigger problem seems to be a sort of hiring paralysis...   'After they call you back after the sixth interview, there's a part of you that wants to say, That's it, I'm not going back.' said PS...   received 8th- and 9th-round call-backs for positions at 3 different companies.   Two of those companies, as it turned out, ultimately decided not to hire anyone...   An HR professional himself, Mr. A has been looking for work since 2011 August, and has been frustrated to find himself the 'silver medalist' for a couple of jobs after 6 separate rounds of interviews totaling 10 to 20 hours for each position, not including prep work and transportation time.   For both of those jobs, though, there still has been no gold medalist.   After 8 months, they remain unfilled, with the companies intermittently posting a job ad, taking it down, and then posting it again."

2013-03-06 (5773 Adar 24)
Frank J. Gaffney ii _Jewish World Review_
Brennan's backing of shariah could cost American lives

2013-03-06 (5773 Adar 24)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
the coddling of college hate crime hoaxers
Town Hall

2013-03-06 (5773 Adar 24)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
Mandated wages and discrimination
Town Hall

2013-03-06 (5773 Adar 24)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
economic mobility
Town Hall
"Opportunity is just one factor in economic advancement.   How well a given individual or group takes advantage of existing opportunities is another...   The very same attitudes and behavior that landed a father in a lower income bracket can land the son in that same bracket.   But someone with a different set of attitudes and behavior may rise dramatically in the same society.   Sometimes even a member of the same family may rise while a sibling stagnates or falls by the wayside.   Ironically, many of the very people who are promoting the idea that the 'unfairness' of American society is the reason why some individuals and groups are not advancing are themselves a big part of the reason for the stagnation that occurs...   Most working Americans who were initially in the bottom 20% of income-earners, rise out of that bottom 20%.   More of them end up in the top 20% than remain in the bottom 20%.   People who were initially in the bottom 20% in income have had the highest rate of increase in their incomes, while those who were initially in the top 20% have had the lowest.   This is the direct opposite of the pattern found when following income brackets over time, rather than following individual people.   Most of the media publicize what is happening to the statistical brackets -- especially that 'top 1%' -- rather than what is happening to individual people.   We should be concerned with the economic fate of flesh-and-blood human beings, not waxing indignant over the fate of abstract statistical brackets.   Unless, of course, we are hustling for an expansion of the welfare state."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-07

2013-03-07 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 333,389 in the week ending March 2, an increase of 23,198 from the previous week.   There were 368,433 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.8% during the week ending February 23, an increase 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 3,589,315, an increase of 52,854 from the preceding week's revised level of 3,536,461.   A year earlier, the rate was 3.2% and the volume was 3,988,890.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending February 16 was 5,401,893, a decrease of 362,275 from the previous week.   There were 7,387,649 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.   Extended Benefits were available only in Alaska during the week ending February 16...   States reported 1,780,626 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending February 16, a decrease of 225,365 from the prior week.   There were 2,929,210 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

2013-03-07
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
tracking down the history of Winchester VA's GAR post

2013-03-07
Bridget Johnson _PJ Media_
Rand Paul injects life via nearly 13-hour filibuster
"'I will speak until I can no longer speak.   I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court.', Paul began."

2013-03-07
Victor Davis Hanson _Real Clear Politics_
beautifully medieval California
Live Leak
PJ Media

2013-03-07
Anthony Watts
Warmists lying for the cause... and profits

2013-03-07
Anthony Watts
BP throws in the towell on solar photo-electricity

2013-03-07
Darrell DeLaMaide _MarketWatch_
It's time for congress to make sure that no one is above the law, including congress-critters
"Attorney general Eric Holder, the 'top U.S. law-enforcement official', finally admitted this week that bank executives truly are above the law and may commit crimes with virtual impunity.   Appearing before the senate judiciary committee, Holder acknowledged under questioning by Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the ranking member, that the mega-banks are too big to jail.   'I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them.', Holder said."

2013-03-07
judge Andrew P. Napolitano _Town Hall_
the right to self-defense

2013-03-07 (5774 Adar 25)
_Impeach Obummer Today_
impeach Obummer, McConnell, Boehner, Gutierrez, Reid, Pelosi and Cantor today

2013-03-07 (5774 Adar 25)
Victor Davis Hanson _Jewish World Review_
California mordida
Real Clear Politics
St. Augustine FL
Town Hall
San Jose CA Mercury News
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-08

2013-03-08
Paul Driessen
4 crises caused by warmists
"Influence peddling...   Politicized [pseudo-science], markets and ethics...   Climate eco-imperialism impoverishes and kills...   Ready-made excuse for incompetence..."

2013-03-08
Anthony Watts
Stanford study of costs of energy storage
"The best way to reduce a battery's long-term energetic costs, he said, would be to improve its cycle life -- that is, increase the number of times the battery can charge and discharge energy over its life-time.   'Pumped hydro storage can achieve more than 25K cycles.', Barnhart said.   'That means it can deliver clean energy on demand for 30 years or more.   It would be fantastic if batteries could achieve the same cycle life.'   None of the conventional battery technologies featured in the study has reached that level.   Lithium-ion is the best at 6K cycles, while lead-acid technology is at the bottom, achieving a mere 700 cycles."

2013-03-08
Anthony Watts
comparing graphs of ice core-based temperature data

2013-03-08
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
CS enrollments increased 30% last year
"new under-graduate computer science majors at schools in that category grew nearly 23% from the 2010-2011 academic year to the 2011-2012 academic year.   The 2011-2012 academic year also marked the third straight year in which the percentage increase in bachelor's degrees awarded hit double digits.   In U.S. computer science departments, the year-over-year increases were 19.8% overall and 16.6% among those departments that participated in the survey this year and last year, according to the CRA...   In the 2011-12 academic year, women accounted for 12.9% of the students graduating with bachelor's degrees in computer science, up from 11.7% in the 2010-11 academic year.   But in computer engineering, the percentage of female recipients of bachelor's degrees decreased from 11.8% to 10.6% during the same time frame.   The survey also found that more students are completing Ph.D. programs.   The number of doctoral degrees granted in all computer-related disciplines rose 8.2% year over year, from 1,782 in the 2010-2011 academic year to 1,929 in the 2011-2012 academic year.   The pool of under-graduate students represented in the CRA survey is 67,850.   Of that number, 56,742 are in computer science."

2013-03-08 (5773 Adar 26)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
Rotten to the Communist Core: Federal government's invasive student tracking data-base
"Washington meddlers are already on the ground and in our schools gathering intimate data on children and families...   health-care histories, income information, religious affiliations, voting status and even blood types and home-work completion.   The data will be available to a wide variety of public agencies...   invasive individual student-level data collection...   education technology gurus were salivating at the prospects of information plunder.   'This is going to be a huge win for us.', Jeffrey Olen, a product manager at education software company CompassLearning...   The company is already aggressively marketing curricular material 'aligned' to fuzzy, dumbed-down [Communist Corpse] math and reading guidelines...   Fed Ed is not about excellence or academic achievement.   It's about control, control and more control [i.e. POWER]."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-09

2013-03-09
Kristin Bednarski _Clermont county OH Sun_
U of Cincinnati East Campus holds manufacturing summit at Manufacturing and Technology Center

2013-03-09
_Free Market Project_
fuedalism in modern times
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-10

2013-03-10
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
historical interpretation of "United States Colored Troops" in places where they were not
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-11

2013-03-11
Don J. Easterbrook
reality check of temperatures for the past 11,300 years
"Without any original data to assess, how can we evaluate the validity of the conclusions?   The only way is to check the conclusions against well-established data from other sources.   As Richard Feynman eloquently described the scientific method, once hypotheses (conclusions) are set out, their consequences can be checked against experiments or observations.   If a hypothesis (conclusion) disagrees with observations or experiments, it is wrong.   It doesn't make any difference how beautiful the hypothesis (conclusion) is, how smart the author is, or what the author's name is, if it disagrees with data, experiments, or observations, it is wrong.   Period.   So let us apply this method to the conclusions of this paper and test them to see if they are right or wrong."

2013-03-11
Halimah Abdullah _CNN_
Executives of tech giants and private prisons are big players in immigration law perversion

2013-03-11
Jamie Eckle _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
master's students in information security don't wait for degree to get jobs

2013-03-11 (5773 Adar 29)
Morgan Housel _Jewish World Review_
gaining from financial destruction
Motley Fool
"The only thing worse than suffering through a period like the last 5 years is suffering and not learning anything from it.   To me, there are three imperative investment lessons from the last 5 years.   That 'markets reward those who stick it out' is one of them...   History is clear on this: Hold stocks for a long time, and your odds of making money are very high.   Since 1871, there have been only four periods when an investor purchasing stocks didn't make money in real (inflation-adjusted) terms over a 10-year period: 1908, 1929, the late 1960s and the late 1990s.   If you purchased stocks once a month, every month, since 1871, 87.8% of your purchases would be profitable 10 years out, even adjusted for inflation.   The 4 brief periods that left you in the red after a decade were invariably followed by above-average returns.   Stocks rose despite the aftermath of a civil war, 2 world wars, a flu pandemic, terrorist attacks, droughts, presidential assassinations, depressions, recessions, crippling debts, bank runs, high inflation, deflation, oil embargoes and a dozen bubbles.   Through it all, the market rewarded those who stuck it out.   It is the same story time and again.   It was no different this time, and it will likely be no different next time...   During the 21K or so trading days between 1928 and today, the Dow Jones went from 240 to 14K, or an average annual return of 5% (not including dividends).   If you missed just 20 of the best days during that period, annual returns fall to 2.6% -- which is to say, half of the compounded gains took place on 0.09% of days."
Theoretically, but rarely possible in practice...jgo

2013-03-11 (5773 Adar 29)
Mark Steyn _Jewish World Review_
Great reasons why Obummer has affection for drones
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-12

2013-03-12
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
the state of "United States Colored Troops" historical interpretation (monuments and markers): poll

2013-03-12
David Middleton
oil production on federal government lands fell again in 2012

2012-03-12
Anthony Watts
US government gave thorium nuclear reactor designs to Red China: Gorebots go nuts over mere mention of thorium reactors for USA

2013-03-12
Anthony Watts
solar proton storm seen in carbon 14 increase in tree rings for years 774-775CE

2013-03-12
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
A closer look at those "United States Colored Troops" monuments and markers (with map)

2013-03-12
_KGO San Francisco CA_/_AP_
Twinkies brand going to Metropoulos & company and Apollo Global Management for $410M

2013-03-12
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
polls on H-1B
 
Back in 1998, IEEE-USA (which had not yet done its U-turn on the foreign tech worker issue), commissioned a Harris Poll on the issue of H-1B expansion.   It was a fair, proper poll, with respondents being presented with the views of both sides of the issue.   The results were overwhelmingly AGAINST expansion of the work visa.
 
By contrast, recently 2 polls had just the opposite results: a Field Poll in California, and a Zogby Poll nationwide.   The former was commissioned by the Sacramento Bee, while the latter was done for TechNet, an industry lobbying firm that pushes for expansion of foreign tech worker programs.
 
When asked for details of the Field Poll, its director, Mark Dicamillo immediately gave me the link to their report (pdf).
 
I asked Zogby for details yesterday, and have heard nothing as of the time I write this.
 
So, did the American populace radically change its views on foreign tech worker programs since 1998?   That seems extremely doubtful.   Economic conditions are terrible now compared to 1998, with the news being full of surveys showing that large numbers of new college graduates (not specific to tech) aren't getting jobs; I really doubt that the populace is in the mood to bring in more white collar workers.   Every time there is a radio talk show on the H-1B topic, almost all the callers are negative (see a recent example in the Bay Area).
 
So if the views of the populace didn't change, why did the 2 recent polls come out so differently from the one in 1998?
 
The first answer is obvious: The pollsters didn't give the respondents any context.   In stark contrast to the Harris Poll, neither the Field Poll nor (apparently) the Zogby Poll presented arguments from the pro and con sides of the H-1B issue.
 
The second answer is also fairly obvious: The Field Poll asked just one H-1B question, amidst an OCEAN of questions on amnesty for unathorized immigrants [illegal aliens].   This is known as the "anchor effect" -- the message sent to the respondents, or at least received by them, was, "While you may have concerns about giving amnesty, you certainly would support giving visas to engineers with advanced degrees, wouldn't you?"
 
Then what about the Zogby Poll?   This one is the most important, in my view, as it illustrates what I've been saying for years: The industry lobbyists (which, remember, includes not only the industry itself but others with major vested interests, such as the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the university lobby) have been engaging in an all-out campaign to implant in the consciousness of the U.S. public that we have a STEM labor shortage.
 
There have been countless articles on this in the press, for instance.   These come directly or indirectly from the lobbyists, who meet with newspaper editorial boards, provide lavish "education packets" for journalists, and so on.
 
Just in the last week or so, the Board of Supervisors of Santa Clara County (i.e. San Jose etc.) passed a resolution in support of expanding H-1B, and Mayor Ed Lee of San Francisco signed on the March on Innovation, the latest industry lobbying effort.   This did not happen spontaneously.
 
All this does WORK.   The Zogby Poll found, according to TechNet [which sponsored and probably helped design it], that "A majority (63%) of Americans believe that the U.S. faces a shortage of high skilled workers and that immigration policy should encourage highly skilled workers to stay in the country (63%)."   The fact that those 2 numbers came out identical is cause and effect, and shows just how effective the industry's PR campaign has been.   (I'm surprised the numbers were not even higher.)   Get people to believe we're not producing enough STEM graduates, and of course they will be open to remedying that "shortage" with foreign workers.
 
I've been getting a lot of calls from the press in the last few months, and when one asks what we should do about the tech labor shortage, I ask in response, "Wait a minute.   Why are you so sure there is a shortage in the first place?"   The answers have all been interesting.   One of the most remarkable was, "They don't teach us to question in J school" (!), but the most important was one I got just last week.   That reporter's answer was, "We must have a shortage, because Obama said so in his speech"!   We don't seem to have many Edward R. Murrows these days, or even many Woodwards and Bernsteins.
 
In Gillian Tett's book on the financial crash of 2008, she aims to answer the classic question, "What did they know, and when did they know it?"   Was it greed?   Was it denial?   Or was it just plain stupidity?
 
But most interestingly, Tett starts by citing the work of social scientist.   Before becoming a journalist, Tett earned a PhD in social anthropology, and
 
"...one of the writers I studied who made a big impact on me was Pierre Bourdieu, an anthropologist-cum-sociologist...   In his seminal work 'Outline of a Theory of Practice', Bourdieu observed that the way that elites tend to control a society is not simply by controlling the physical means of production (money and other resources), but also by influencing the cultural discourse, the way that society talks about itself..."
 
This is remarkably similar to the language I've been using over the years (repeated earlier in this post), that the industry lobbyists have been engaging in "an all-out campaign to implant in the consciousness of the U.S. public that we have a STEM labor shortage".   I've found that among members of the press, for instance, it's just taken for granted that we have such a shortage; people just "know" it.
 
Augustus Fragomen, probably the most prominent immigration lawyer in the U.S.A., once wrote that the AILA "commissions academic studies to support our positions".   The public doesn't realize this, and don't think to ask whether a certain outcome for a study had been "purchased"; they trust universities.
 
They trust the tech industry too; the Zogby Poll found that.   I've noticed this too.   I've mentioned before that one can assert that Intel aggressively uses every loop-hole in the tax code, and everyone will say, "Of course", but if one says that Intel is just as aggressive in exploiting loop-holes in immigration law, well, "No, Intel wouldn't do anything like that."
 
TechNet notes that the Zogby Poll also found that "Nearly 43% of Americans believe the next major technology or innovation product will come from China while 30% believe it will come from the United States..."   To my knowledge, there haven't been ANY major technologies or products from China as of yet, so how do the respondents "know" that Next Big Thing will come from China?   The answer is the same one the reporter gave: Obama (more or less) said so in his speech.
 
Quite apart from the H-1B issue, isn't this all a little scary?   If people with hidden agendas can mess with our minds (especially the journalists), genuine democracy is impossible.
 
Norm
---30---

2013-03-12
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
We should remember the Bracero program... and shudder
"There's a regular alphabet soup of such programs, including, among others, the H-1B, H-2A, H-2B, J-1, L-1, L-2, and Q-1, and in all of them the alien worker's legal status in the United States is tied directly to the employer's whims.   If a worker loses favor in the eyes of his employer, the worker can be plunged into illegal alien status.   Guess what kind of attitude that creates among those indentured workers! They work like crazy and never complain about anything!...   The program was managed by the U.S. Department of Labor, and it was from a job within the Department, Assistant to the Secretary of Labor for Farm Labor, that I watched the dismantling of the program after congress (thank goodness) failed to renew it, effective 1965 January 1.   I was the young political appointee whose task was to help push growers into using American workers, or to help make the transition to the H-2 (later H-2A) program, which had stricter rules than the bracero program.   I was there for about 2 years.   There were a number of negative consequences of the program, some more obvious than others.   Farm labor wages stagnated at low levels for decades; braceros became the favored workers of growers, particularly in the West, to the detriment of U.S. workers.   American workers, both black and white, were subtly pushed out of farm work.   The braceros were routinely underpaid and badly treated.   These were all pretty obvious. Less obvious was the fact that U.S. growers happily adjusted their practices to a surplus of cheap, easily transferrable workers (though the growers rarely admitted this).   Wasteful labor-use practices grew up [and became entrenched]...   Western growers, particularly, resisted the mild regulations that went with (and go with) the H-2A program."

2013-03-12 (5773 Nisan 01)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
intellectuals and race part 1
Redding CA
NH Union Leader
Fayette GA Citizen
Town Hall
"A hundred years ago, the fact that people from different racial backgrounds had very different rates of success in education, in the economy and in other endeavors, was taken as proof that some races were genetically superior to others...   It was not a bunch of fringe cranks who said things like this.   Many held Ph.D.s from the leading universities, taught at the leading universities and were internationally renowned.   Presidents of Stanford University and of MIT were among the many academic advocates of theories of racial inferiority -- applied mostly to people from Eastern and Southern Europe, since it was just blithely assumed in passing that blacks were inferior.   This was not a left-right issue.   The leading crusaders for theories of genetic superiority and inferiority were iconic figures on the left, on both sides of the Atlantic.   John Maynard Keynes helped create the Cambridge Eugenics Society.   Fabian socialist intellectuals H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw were among many other leftist supporters of eugenics.   It was much the same story on this side of the Atlantic.   President Woodrow Wilson, like many other Progressives, was solidly behind notions of racial superiority and inferiority.   He showed the movie 'Birth of a Nation', glorifying the Ku Klux Klan, at the White House, and invited various dignitaries to view it with him...   Yet some racial or ethnic minorities have owned or directed more than half of whole industries in many nations.   These have included the Chinese in Malaysia, Lebanese in West Africa, Greeks in the Ottoman Empire, Britons in Argentina, Indians in Fiji, Jews in Poland, and Spaniards in Chile -- among many others...   China in the 15th century was more advanced than any country in Europe.   Eventually Europeans overtook the Chinese — and there is no evidence of changes in the genes of either of them.   Among the many reasons for different levels of achievement is something as simple as age.   The median age in Germany and Japan is over 40, while the median age in Afghanistan and Yemen is under 20.   Even if the people in all four of these countries had the same mental potential, the same history, the same culture -- and the countries themselves had the same geographic features -- the fact that people in some countries have 20 years more experience than people in other countries would still be enough to make equal economic and other outcomes virtually impossible.   Add the fact that different races evolved in different geographic settings, presenting very different opportunities and constraints on their development, and the same conclusion follows.   Yet the idea that differences in outcomes are odd, if not sinister, has been repeated mindlessly from street corner demagogues to the august chambers of the Supreme Court."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-13

2013-03-13
Charles Payne _Town Hall_
contemporary examples: mensch Sal vs. jerk Bloomberg

2013-03-13
John Stossel _Town Hall_
frack to the future
"Stopping fracking is the latest cause of the silly people.   They succeeded in getting scientifically ignorant politicians to ban fracking in New York, Maryland and Vermont."
In 1750, some soldiers led by George Washington, on their return from an expedition and having run out of food supplies, stopped near the Tug river, to roast in the Burning Spring some dried bison they had left there on the outward journey...jgo

2013-03-13
Bob Beauprez _Town Hall_
A red tape tower -- Over 20K pages of ObummerDoesn'tCare regulations... so far

2013-03-13
Bob Barr _Town Hall_
Paul Ryan budget proposal is praise-worthy
"On the Democratic side of the aisle, however, there is no interest whatsoever in taking such a constructive approach...   Instead of wailing and gnashing of fiscal teeth, Congress and the President ought to be heaving a sigh of relief and heaping kudos on the former vice-presidential nominee, for doing what they collectively and separately have failed to accomplish.   The young Congressman from Wisconsin actually put together a thoughtful, substantive and comprehensive budget.   But, of course, Washington does not operate with the same logical, problem-solving approach as a business; according to which a proposal would be viewed as a starting point from which to construct a final solution...   [It suggests] a rate of increase in federal spending at a historically healthy 3.4% -- the plan envisions robust federal outlays more than sufficient to avoid economic calamity.   Indeed, rather than a miserly budget plan causing America's children to languish in bread lines, Ryan's budget proposes federal spending of $41T over the next decade -- hardly a draconian approach to budgeting."

2013-03-13
Daniel J. Mitchell _Town Hall_
everything you need to know about the Paul Ryan budget (with graph)
"Two years ago, he put forth a budget that limited spending so that it grew 2.8% per year.   Last year, he put forth a budget that limited spending so that it grew 3.1% per year.   Now, spending will climb 3.4% per year.   At this rate, it won't be that long before the GOP budget and Obama budget converge."

2013-03-13
Michelle Malkin _Town Hall_
Obummer's nominee for secretary of illegal alien labor
"The Beltway is buzzing over President Obama's likely nomination of Thomas E. Perez as the next head of the U.S. Department of Labor.   But when Americans find out whom Perez has lobbied for most aggressively over the course of his extremist leftwing social justice career, they'll be wondering which country Obama's pick really plans to serve...   The son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Perez was a former special counsel for the late illegal alien amnesty champion senator Ted Kennedy.   During the Clinton years, Perez worked at the Justice Department to establish a 'Worker Exploitation Task Force' to enhance working conditions for...illegal alien workers.   While holding down his government position, Perez volunteered for Casa de Maryland.   This notorious illegal alien advocacy group is funded through a combination of taxpayer-subsidized grants (totaling $5M in 2010 alone from Maryland and local governments) and radical liberal philanthropy, including billionaire George Soros' Open Society Institute.   That's in addition to more than $1M showered on the group by freshly departed Venezuelan thug Hugo Chavez's regime-owned oil company, CITGO."

2013-03-13
Ben Shapiro _Town Hall_
what can/should Israel do?

2013-03-13
Madeleine Morgenstern _Blaze_
Laurie Dhue to report on unconstitutional illegal government privacy violations in "Surveillance State"
"What information the government collects, they keep -- including in a massive Utah facility slated for completion earlier this year, Dhue said."

2013-03-13
Mytheos Holt _Blaze_
racism rampant in Obummer/Holder DoJ "voting rights" section

2013-03-13
Becket Adams _Blaze_
exodus from California

2013-03-13
Janice L. Kephart _Center for Immigration Studies_
REAL ID and driver licenses for illegal aliens

2013-03-13 (5773 Nisan 02)
Ken Dilanian _Jewish World Review_
Are coming cyber-attacks more dangerous to USA's security than al-Qaeda?
"For the first time, the growing risk of computer-launched foreign assaults on U.S. infrastructure, including the power grid, transportation hubs and financial networks, was ranked higher in the U.S. intelligence community's annual review of worldwide threats than worries about terrorism, transnational organized crime, and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction...   national security adviser, Tom Donilon, complained of 'cyber intrusions emanating from [Red China] on an unprecedented scale' and said [Red China-based] digital attacks on U.S. businesses and institutions had become 'a key point of concern' for the White House...   438 people were convicted of terrorism-related charges in American courts between 2001 and 2010...   more than 140 attacks on Wall Street over the last 6 months.   Last August, he added, a computer intrusion at Saudi Aramco, the Saudi Arabian national oil and gas company, destroyed data on more than 30K computers...   The overall budget for the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies has grown sharply over the past decade and now is about $75G."

2013-03-13 (5773 Nisan 02)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
educational rot
Fayette GA Citizen
Russellville AR Courier News
Town Hall
"Schools of education, whether graduate or undergraduate, tend to represent the academic slums of most college campuses.   They tend to be home to students who have the lowest academic achievement test scores when they enter college, such as SAT scores.   They have the lowest scores when they graduate and choose to take post-graduate admissions tests -- such as the GRE, the MCAT and the LSAT.   The California Basic Educational Skills Test, or CBEST, is mandatory for teacher certification in California.   It's a joke.   Here's a multiple-choice question on its practice math test: 'Rob uses 1 box of cat food every 5 days to feed his cats.   Approximately how many boxes of cat food does he use per month? A. 2 boxes, B. 4 boxes, C. 5 boxes, D. 6 boxes, E. 7 boxes.'   Here's another: 'Which of the following is the most appropriate unit for expressing the weight of a pencil? A. pounds, B. ounces, C. quarts, D. pints, E. tons.'   I'd venture to predict that the average reader's sixth-grader could answer each question.   Here's a question that is a bit more challenging; call your eighth-grader: 'Solve for y: y - 2 + 3y = 10, A. 2, B. 3, C. 4, D. 5, E. 6.'   Some years ago, the Association of Mexican American Educators, the California Association for Asian-Pacific Bilingual Education and the Oakland Alliance of Black Educators brought suit against the state of California and the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, charging that the CBEST was racially discriminatory.   Plaintiff 'evidence' was the fact that the first-time passing rate for whites was 80%, about 50% for Mexican-Americans, Filipinos and Southeast Asians, and 46% for blacks.   In 2000, in a stroke of rare common sense, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit found CBEST not to be racial discriminatory.   Poor teacher preparation is not a problem restricted to California.   In Massachusetts, only 27% of new teachers could pass the math test needed to be certified as a teacher.   A 2011 investigation by Atlanta's Channel 2 Action News found that more than 700 Georgia teachers repeatedly failed at least one portion of the certification test they are required to pass before receiving a teaching certificate.   Nearly 60 teachers failed the test more than 10 times, and one teacher failed the test 18 times.   They also found that there were 297 teachers on the Atlanta school system's payroll even though they had failed the state certification test 5 times or more...   With but a few exceptions, schools of education represent the academic slums of most any college.   American education could benefit from slum removal, eliminating schools of education."

2013-03-13 (5773 Nisan 02)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
intellectuals and race part 2
NH Union Leader
Town Hall
"there is at least some hope of rational thought -- and perhaps even some constructive efforts to help everyone advance.   Even such a British patriot as Winston Churchill said, 'We owe London to Rome' -- an acknowledgement that Roman conquerors created Britain's most famous city, at a time when the ancient Britons were incapable of doing so themselves.   No one who saw the illiterate and backward tribal Britons of that era was likely to imagine that someday the British would create an empire vastly larger than the Roman Empire -- one encompassing one fourth of the land area of the earth and one-fourth of the human beings on the planet.   History has many dramatic examples of the rise and fall of peoples and nations, for a wide range of known and unknown reasons.   What history does not have is what is so often assumed as a norm today, equality of group achievements at a given point in time...   Disparities among groups are not set in stone, in this or in many other things.   But blanket equality of outcomes is seldom seen at any given time either, whether in work skills or rates of alcoholism or other differences among the various groups lumped together as 'whites'."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-14

2013-03-14 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 315,356 in the week ending March 9, a decrease of 20,324 from the previous week.   There were 340,102 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.7% during the week ending March 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 3,474,738, a decrease of 136,324 from the preceding week's revised level of 3,611,062.   A year earlier, the rate was 3.1% and the volume was 3,862,329.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending February 23 was 5,619,860, an increase of 217,967 from the previous week.   There were 7,424,041 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.   Extended Benefits were available only in Alaska during the week ending February 23...   States reported 1,917,158 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending February 23, an increase of 136,532 from the prior week.   There were 2,875,795 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

2013-03-14
Jessica Meyers & Michelle Quinn _Politico_
are guest-work visas a necessity or a vehicle for cheap labor?
"Critics insist the H-1B system goes against U.S. interests not because it's too limited but because it's too broad.   Their ammunition: Indian off-shore companies who make up the bulk of H-1B visa holders [and domestic firms like MSFT, Oracle, Google, Yahoo, FB... known to abuse them].   Work done by out-sourcing firms 'is unlike the work done by technology companies such as Google and MSFT who use these visas to hire engineers for research and product development; work that can generally be considered specialized in nature', Systems in Motion founder Neeraj Gupta will tell Senate staffers Thursday, according to testimony obtained by Politico.   Gupta, who worked as an executive at an off-shore company that made use of the H-1B program, said the system has become a way to bring in cheap labor."

2013-03-14
Anthony Watts
Matt Ridley's "Greening the Planet"
Paul Feine & Alex Manning: Reason
mov file
flv file
mp3 audio
YouTube

2013-03-14
Charles Passy _MarketWatch_
sales of Irish whiskey up 400% since 2002
"in the American spirits market -- up nearly 400% since 2002 and 22.5% in the past year alone, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States."

2013-03-14
J. Cristian Adams _PJMedia_
IG reports leftist hiring blitz in DoJ elections office

2013-03-14
Declan McCullagh _CNET_/_Ziff Davis_/_CBS_
Sili Valley execs united in press for more cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with flexible ethics

2013-03-14 (5773 Nisan 03)
Victor Davis Hanson _Jewish World Review_
from "affirmative action" to "diversity"

2013-03-14 (5773 Nisan 03)
judge Andrew P. Napolitano _Jewish World Review_
What if nanny is a thug?

2013-03-14 (5773 Nisan 03)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
intellectuals and race part3
"The theory of genetic determinism which dominated the early 20th century led to many harmful consequences, ranging from racial segregation and discrimination up to and including the Holocaust.   The currently prevailing theory is that malice of one sort or another explains group differences in outcomes.   Whether the lethal results of this theory would add up to as many murders as in the Holocaust is a question whose answer would require a detailed study of the history of lethal outbursts against groups hated for their success.   These would include murderous mob violence against the Jews in Europe, the Chinese in Southeast Asia, the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, and the Ibos in Nigeria, among others.   Class-based mass slaughters of the successful would range from Stalin's extermination of the kulaks in the Soviet Union to Pol Pot's wiping out of at least a quarter of the population of Cambodia for the crime of being educated middle class people, as evidenced by even such tenuous signs as wearing glasses.   Minorities who have been more successful than the general population have been the least likely to have gotten ahead by discriminating against politically dominant majorities.   Yet it is precisely such minorities who have attracted the most mass violence over the centuries and in countries around the world."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-15

2013-03-15
_Business & Legal Resources_
Florida bodyshop to pay $27,750 for discrimination against American job applicants

2013-03-15
Jan Falstad _Billings MT Gazette_
Heath shale not as productive as Bakken
"And Montana's other big energy hope -- using CO₂ to coax oil out of the old Bell Creek field in southeastern Montana -- has been delayed...   'The last wells are coming in at 15 or 20 barrels a day.   At $4M to $6M a well, that doesn't cost out.', said independent oil man Tom Hauptman of Billings...   Central Montana Resources chief executive Kevin Beiter said his company is heavily invested in the Heath, having spent north of $75M drilling 14 wells in Petroleum, Garfield and Rosebud counties...   About 33 Heath wells have produced oil and about a dozen are currently pumping, said Montana Board of Oil and Gas director Tom Richmond."

2013-03-15
Patrick Thibodeau _CIO_/_IDG_
congress-critters hear from US bodyshop CEOs who oppose H-1Bs
ComputerWorld
"Among those invited to present at this meeting was Brian Keane, the CEO of a new IT services company, Ameritas Technologies.   It opened its first services center in Baton Rouge, LA, in July.   At its opening, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal said the center, with its average salary of $63K, will 'create more opportunities for our sons and daughters in Louisiana'.   It plans to have a staff of 300 by 2016.   Ameritas is hiring local college graduates, most of whom have a computer science degree and some with physics and programming skills.   The company puts these new employees through a technical training boot camp to expose them to programming skills needed by businesses.   It is very similar to the kind of training that occurred in the 1990s before offshore workers arrived, Keane said.   'The primary use of H-1B visas is to help companies move IT work off-shore to countries like India, China and Russia.', Keane said at the meeting.   Over-seas companies are also paying lower wages to H-1B workers in the U.S.A., 'so they can charge lower prices than equivalent U.S. competitors using U.S. citizens as their work-force', he said...   The widespread use of this visa in the last decade has prompted U.S. firms to eliminate entry level training, which has also discouraged students from entering the field.   'If these out-sourcing firms were not bringing in the entry level [workers], or they didn't have such a big pool of H-1B visa people available, then I think it opens the doors to making IT an attractive occupation once again, which I think is so important for an innovative economy.', Keane said, in an interview."

2013-03-15
Carmen Irish _Billings MT Gazette_
Billings Central High Science Olympiad students prepare for national competition
"After constructing eight different magnetic project vehicles, Lyle's Olympiad team bested 41 other Montana high school teams that participated in the Magnetic Levitation competition at the 28th annual Montana Science Olympiad held Nov. 20 at Montana State University.   For the event, competitors constructed magnetically levitated vehicles with battery-powered motors that turn two propellers to move the robot vehicle down a magnetic track.   Students were judged, in part, on how fast the vehicle traveled and the vehicle's weight.   The Central High team, with 14 students, placed first overall, including winning 2 gold medals, 4 silvers and 2 bronzes, ultimately garnering the state title and the opportunity to compete in the National Science Olympiad tournament at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, this Spring."

2013-03-15
Mark Thies _Greenville SC News_
immigration plan brings bad news
"It appears Lindsey Graham has forgotten that his job is to represent all Americans -- not just Big Business and ethnic-advocacy groups like La Raza.   The Gang of Eight's 5-page proposal for immigration reform [immigration law perversion] is full of unpleasant news for tens of millions of Americans, including the jobless, students and [tax-victims].   Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the Graham proposal is its impact on America's Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) workers and students.   It's hard to believe, but in this fragile economy of 8.4% state unemployment, where 15.8% of South Carolinians and 20M Americans are looking for a full-time job [and, a 31M job dearth as compared with historical employment/population ratios], Graham claims that we now have a labor shortage.   With 53% of recent college graduates under/unemployed, Graham and the gang brazenly propose that every foreign student who earns a U.S. master's or doctorate degree in a STEM field be automatically given a permanent work permit.   But data, both nationally and at Clemson, refute Graham's labor-shortage claims.   For example, the National Association of Colleges and Employers, which tracks STEM salaries of new graduates, reports that overall engineering starting salaries have been flat since 2010, with a tiny 0.3% increase.   Similar trends exist for more experienced workers.   In fact, according to Professor Norman Matloff (EPI Briefing Paper #356, Feb. 28), no study other than those sponsored by industry has ever confirmed a shortage!   Industry's continual claims that there are too few Americans in STEM fields -- and that U.S. citizens are less talented than their foreign counterparts -- have been refuted by several recent studies.   Graham also says that we have a 'brain drain', because engineers educated here are returning to their home countries.   Yet according to Ross Eisenbrey in The New York Times, almost 90% of Chinese and Indian students who earn STEM PhDs stay here.   Ross comments (and based on my 28 years [as a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering] at Clemson University I concur) that if a student is talented enough to be wanted by industry, they are essentially guaranteed to get a work visa."

2013-03-15
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands has more tourist births than indigenous births

2013-03-15
Konrad Lawson _Chronicle of Higher Education_
getting started with a GitHub repository

2013-03-15 (5773 Nisan 04)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
time to opt out of creepy data-mining rackets
"Last week, I reported on the federal government's massive new student-tracking data-base, which was created as part of the nationalized [Communist Corpse] standards scheme.   The bad news: GOP [losership] continues to ignore or, worse, enable this Nanny State racket (hello, Jeb Bush).   The good news: An independent grassroots revolt outside the Beltway bubble is swelling.   Families are taking their children's academic and privacy matters out of the snoopercrats' grip and into their own hands.   You can now down-load a Common Core opt-out/disclosure form to submit to your school district, courtesy of the Truth In American Education group...   the national [Communist Corpse] student data-base was funded with Obama [porkulus] money.   Grants also came from the [leftist] Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (which largely underwrote and promoted the top-down Common Core curricular scheme).   A division of conservative Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. built the data-base infrastructure.   A non-profit startup, 'inBloom, Inc.', evolved out of the strange-bed-fellows partnership to operate the invasive data-base, which is compiling everything from health-care histories, income information and religious affiliations to voting status, blood types and home-work completion...   a February Department of Education report on its data-mining plans that contemplates the use of creepy student monitoring techniques such as 'functional magnetic resonance imaging' [fMRI==fNMR] and 'using cameras to judge facial expressions, an electronic seat that judges posture, a pressure-sensitive computer mouse and a biometric wrap on kids' wrists'...   School districts and state governments are pimping out highly personal data on children's feelings, beliefs, 'biases' and 'flexibility' instead of doing their own jobs imparting knowledge -- or minding their own business...   Edu-tech nosy-bodies are using the [Communist Corpse] assessment boondoggle as a Trojan horse to collect and crunch massive amounts of personal [private] student data for their own 'social justice' or money-making ends...   Google, for example, is peddling its Gmail platform to schools in a way that will allow it to harvest and access families' information and preferences -- which can then be sold in advertising profiles to marketers.   The same changes to federal student privacy law (known as FERPA) that paved the way for the [Communist Corpse] tracking scheme also opened up [personal] private student information to Google."

2013-03-15 (5773 Nisan 04)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
intellectuals and race part 4
"Among the many irrational ideas about racial and ethnic groups that have polarized societies over the centuries and around the world, few have been more irrational and counterproductive than the current dogmas of multi-culturalism.   Intellectuals who imagine that they are helping racial or ethnic groups that lag behind by redefining their lags out of existence with multicultural rhetoric are in fact leading them into a blind alley.   Multi-culturalism is a tempting quick fix for groups that lag by simply pronouncing their cultures to be equal, or 'equally valid', in some vague and lofty sense.   Cultural features are just different, not better or worse, according to this dogma.   Yet the borrowing of particular features from other cultures -- such as Arabic [Indian] numerals that replaced Roman numerals, even in Western cultures that derived from Rome -- implies that some features are not simply different but better, including numbers.   Some of the most advanced cultures in history have borrowed from other cultures, because no given collection of human beings has created the best answers to all the questions of life."

2013-03-15 (5773 Nisan 04)
"Nicola on IT"
XCode build with configuration setting files (.xcconfig)
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-16

2013-03-16
_Fox_
corrupt senators eye very slightly higher visa fees to pay for border security, other parts of immigration bill, while avoiding proper background investigations of visa applicants
Sara Murray: Wall Street Journal

2013-03-16
Marcia Heroux Pounds _Florida Sun-Sentinel_
visas in huge demand for cheap, young, pliant foreign students
"In 2011-2012, South Florida employers made more than 7K requests for the visas, according to a Brookings Institution study...   In South Florida, employees working on acquiring a visa include computer workers, financial specialists, business operations specialists, social scientists and marketing professionals, Brookings said.   Dan Cane, founder of Modernizing Medicine in Boca Raton, recruited his lead mobile engineer from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.   But he was from Romania, so Cane's firm sponsored him for an H-1B visa in 2010."

2013-03-16
Megan Boehnke _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
Fracking progressing at U of TN
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-17

2008-03-17: Tata office opened in Milford, OH; Where are the 1K US citizens they promised to employ by 2010?

2013-03-17
Willis Eschenbach
Energy, "resources", money, and technology

2013-03-17
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
_Lexintgon VA and the Civil War_ by Richard Williams

2013-03-17
Clayton E. Cramer _PJ Media_
wrong battle, wrong enemy
"I get very frustrated with the number of Republican congressmen unwilling to put up a serious fight against the Democrats.   Yes, some of them really stand for nothing, and some of them have been corrupted by the knowledge that if they don't support amnesty for illegals, they won't get agribusiness support at the next election.   But a lot of congressmen are facing this harsh reality: LIVs are a big part of the electorate, even in fairly safe Republican districts.   If you start saying things that are contrary to conventional wisdom (you know, like the fact that murder rates are less than half of what they were in 1980, and assault weapons are used in a tiny fraction of 1% of U.S. murders), you will quickly become a kook to the LIVs.   It is not at all surprising that when Republican congressmen have to choose between the 30% of voters who are grossly misinformed or the 5% of voters who can actually tell you what the Kelo decision found or how much deficits increased after Democrats took over Congress in 2006, many members of Congress have no choice but to go with the ignorant ones."

2013-03-17
Alvaro Vargas Llosa _Town Talk_/_Gannett_
seize this opportunity to reform/pervert immigration policies
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-18

2013-03-18
Ashley Parker _NYTimes_
Sex bias seen in visas for cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with flexible ethics
"'We know the H-1B program is rife with fraud and abuse, so it's still unclear where exactly these visas are going and what they are being used for.', Mr. Grassley said.   'It would be a real shame if the H-1B program was also shutting women out of hi-tech fields and hurting families.'"

2013-03-18
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
a Virginia southern unionist, and guide for... Buford, Kilpatrick, and Merritt

2013-03-18
Audrey McAvoy & Oskar Garcia _Seattle WA Times_/_AP_
defense contractor gave info to Red Chinese on defense plans and nuclear weapons systems
Joel Gehrke: Washington DC Examiner
"Benjamin Pierce Bishop, 59, appeared in court Monday to face one count of communicating national defense information to a person not entitled to receive it and one count of unlawfully retaining national defense documents and plans.   He was arrested March 15...   Bishop gave information to the woman, a 27-year-old Chinese national, after meeting her at a conference on international military defense issues...   he told the woman about the deployment of U.S. strategic nuclear systems and about the ability of the U.S. to detect other nations' low- and medium-range ballistic missiles...   The woman was in the U.S. on a J-1 visa..."

2013-03-18
J. Christian Adams _PJMedia_
What you need to know about Obummer's nominee for Secretary of Labor, Tom Perez: the most extreme leftist nominee
"Today, [president Barack Hussein Bummer] issues a challenge to Republican Senators: in nominating Tom Perez as Labor secretary, he implies that Senate Republicans don't have either the guts or organizational skill to stop what would become perhaps the most radical left-wing cabinet member in history.   Whether the president is right about GOP senators remains to be seen.   As they say, I wrote the book on Tom Perez.   My New York Times best-seller _Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department_ is largely a catalog of the rancid racialism over which Perez has presided.   The New Black Panther case is one small part.   But so are the 8th-grade trans-vestite law-suits in New York, and so are the race quotas in New York City.   PJ Media has been covering Perez in a way that no other outlet has for the last 3 years: his wars on peaceful Catholic pro-life protesters, his dishonesty under oath, and his over-ruling of career DoJ lawyers in the South Carolina Voter ID case are but three more from a long list of radical transgressions.   Make no mistake -- that's why [Obummer] appointed him...   Chavez once had Citgo make a payment to Perez's illegal alien advocacy group Casa de Maryland."

2013-03-18
Rachel Alexander _Town Hall_
What's hidden behind the bureau-speak of the Obummer regime's Communist Corpse
"The curriculum replaces the classics with government propaganda...   The math standards...would put many students two years behind those of many high-achieving countries.   For example, Algebra 1 would be taught in 9th grade, not 8th grade for many students, making calculus inaccessible to them in high school."

2013-03-18
Jerry Kammer _Center for Immigration Studies_
NYTimes extremely distorted editorial position on immigration part 1
"As the Los Angeles Times reported, the marchers stood 'amid a sea of American and Mexican flags'.   The Mexican flags didn't make it into the NYTimes.   Neither did the flags of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, which were also abundant in the streets...   The editorial board...was blind to evidence that didn't fit its bias...   In 1981, for instance, as Congress began the long and often raucous debate that finally produced the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, a Times editorial observed that: 'Uncounted millions cross our porous borders in search of a better life.   Like prior immigrants, many enrich our land with industry.   But their numbers are so great that they also strain community resources and threaten the jobs and well-being of those who preceded them.'...   IRCA failed in its promise to combine a one-time-only amnesty with worksite enforcement that would stop future illegal immigration.   While the amnesty went ahead, enforcement was reduced to farce.   Workers with easily obtainable bogus documents pretended to be legal, and employers pretended to believe them.   Instead of containing illegal immigration, IRCA became the engine of its roaring expansion as many who received amnesty moved across the country and established networks that attracted millions more who came illegally.   By 2007, the population of illegal immigrants nationwide was estimated at [10M to 24M]...   In 1982, Jack Rosenthal won a Pulitzer Prize for editorials in the Times that included this fundamental question about immigration policy: 'Who should decide which foreigners are allowed into the [United States of America], the foreigners or the [United States of America]? In a responsible society, the question would answer itself.   But that's not the way things now work in the United States.'...   The dissenters included several dozen Democrats who voted for a proposal to kill the entire program.   That effort was sponsored by North Dakota's Byron Dorgan, who declared, 'The main reason that big corporations want a guest worker program is that it will drive down U.S. wages.'"
part 2: all the news that can be twisted

2013-03-18 (5773 Nisan 07)
Morgan Housel _Jewish World Review_
biases that make you a bad investor
"Confirmation bias, or starting with an answer and then searching for evidence to back it up.   If you start with the idea that hyper-inflation is imminent, you'll probably read lots of literature by those who share the same view.   If you're convinced an economic recovery is at hand, you'll probably search for other bullish opinions.   Neither helps you separate emotion from reality...   Recency bias...letting recent events skew your perception of the future...   Backfiring effect.   When presented with information that goes against your viewpoints, you not only reject challengers, but double down on your original view...   Anchoring, or letting one piece of irrelevant information govern your thought process...   Framing bias, or reacting differently to the same information, depending on how it's presented...   Skill bias...when education and training cause confidence to increase faster than ability...   Hindsight bias...   Only after the fact do all the puzzle pieces make sense.   That's why bankruptcies outnumber billionaires.   Pessimism bias, or under-estimating the odds of something going right...   Illusion of control, or thinking that your decisions and skill led to a desired outcome, when luck was likely a big factor.   If you've ever made money day trading and patted yourself on the back for a job well done, you're probably a victim of the illusion of control.   Escalation of commitment, or the classic 'throwing good money after bad'...   Risk perception bias, or attempting to eliminate one risk but exposing yourself to another, potentially more harmful, risk."

2013-03-18 (5773 Nisan 07)
Alana Samuels _Jewish World Review_
people are contracting with private detectives more often as police try to shed work-load
"New Jersey alone lost 4,200 officers from 2008 to 2011, according to the Policemen's Benevolent Assn., which tracks the state's most recent data.   As police focus more on responding to crime rather than preventing it, private detectives and security firms are often taking on the roles that police once did, investigating robberies, checking out alibis, looking into threats...   The U.S. private security industry is expected to grow 6.3% a year to $19.9G by 2016, according to a study by security research group Freedonia Group Inc...   Nationally, employment in local government jobs, which includes police departments, has dropped 4% since 2009 (this sector excludes education jobs).   Many states didn't start cutting police budgets until the scope of their budget problems became evident, in 2009.   Employment in investigation and security services, on the other hand, started ticking up in early 2009, and has grown 5.1% since then, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-19

2013-03-19
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
female STEM workers testify that vast majority of H-1B grantees are male
Matt O'Brien: San Jose CA Mercury News
Seattle WA Times/Contra Costa CA Times
"Karen Panetta, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Tufts University, said that more than 8-out-of-10 of the visas used by off-shore out-sourcing firms are held by males.   'That's outrageous.', she said.   Off-shore firms use about half of the H-1B visas.   Panetta, who also served as director of the IEEE's Women in Engineering Committee, was especially critical of the H-1B visa overall, and said it was being used to replace American workers with lower wage workers...   [Women constitute about 26% of the US STEM 'work-force', 28% of H-1B recipients.]...   data requested by the Bay Area News Group provided the scope of the imbalance: The U.S. Office of Immigration Statistics recorded 347,087 male H-1B visa holders entered the country during the 2011 fiscal year compared to 137,522 women.   [H-1B visa holders can enter and leave multiple times.]"

2013-03-19
Bill Sizemore _Hampton Roads VA Pilot_
Red Chinese national who worked at NASA Langley arrested at Dulles airport for carrying undeclared data storage and other electronic devices
Minneapolis MN StarTribune/AP
representative Frank Wolf: Space Ref
WVEC
Maggie Lange: Gawker
WTVR/CNN
UPI
Eric Niiler: Discovery
Stephanie Lambidakis: CBS
Tamara Dietrich: Stripes/Hampton Roads VA Daily Press
Richard Pollock: Washington DC Examiner
Peter DuJardin: Hampton Roads VA Daily Press
"U.S. representative Frank Wolf, R-VA, said at a news conference Monday that [Bo Jiang] was employed by the National Institute of Aerospace, a Hampton-based NASA contractor.   On its web-site, the institute calls itself a non-profit research center formed by a consortium of universities including Old Dominion University, the College of William and Mary and the University of Virginia.   Wolf reiterated an allegation he made 2 weeks ago: that Jiang was put on the contractor's pay-roll at the direction of NASA officials in an apparent attempt to circumvent restrictions that Congress has placed on the hiring of certain foreign nationals by the federal space agency.   Wolf said he has been told that NASA spent more than $200K for Jiang's work over the past 2 years.   He said that NASA Langley conducts research on unmanned aerial vehicles and other technologies with civilian and military applications that might be of interest to [Red China]...   Jiang, 31, received a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from ODU in 2010.   According to an FBI affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Norfolk, Jiang had made a trip to [Red China] carrying a lap-top computer belonging to NASA believed to contain 'sensitive information'...   Mr. Jiang -- who is reportedly affiliated with an institution in [Red China] that has been designated as an 'entity of concern' by other U.S. government agencies -- was arraigned in federal court in Norfolk"

2013-03-19
Jonathan Mattise _Treasure Coast FL Palm_
Joe Negron proposed law would guarantee public a voice at government meetings, but lacks teeth
"Technically, the right for the public to weigh in at meetings doesn't exist in statute or the Florida Constitution. Two 2010 court decisions bolstered that fact after local government boards refused to take public comment."

2013-03-19
Samuel Greengard _BaseLine Magazine_
executives are misusing H-1B visas

2013-03-19 (5773 Nisan 08)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
Gifted hands: neuro-surgeon Benjamin Carson
Town Hall
"At one time young Ben Carson had the lowest grades in his middle school class, and was the butt of teasing by his white class-mates.   Worse yet, he himself believed that he was just not smart enough to do the work.   Fortunately for him, his mother, whose own education went no further than the third grade, insisted that he was smart.   She cut off the television set and made him and his brother hit the books -- books that she herself could scarcely read.   As young Ben's school work began to catch up with that of his class-mates, and then began to surpass that of his class-mates, his whole view of himself and of the wider world around him began to change.   He began to think that he wanted to become a doctor...   he overcame those obstacles with the help of a truly heroic mother and the values she instilled in him...   Virtually everything was against young Ben Carson, except for his mother's attitudes and values.   But, armed with her outlook, he was able to fight his way through many battles, including battles to control his own temper, as well as external obstacles.   Today, Dr. Benjamin Carson is a renowned neurosurgeon at a renowned institution, Johns Hopkins University.   But what got him there was wholly different from what is being offered to many ghetto youths today, much of which is not merely futile but counter-productive."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-20

2013-03-20
Charles Payne _Town Hall_
DC economics
Aaron M. Renn

2013-03-20
Ken Blackwell _Town Hall_
successful pro-economic-growth policies

2013-03-20
Austin Bay _Town Hall_
Obummer quietly vindicates Reagan's strategic defense initiative

2013-03-20
John Stossel _Town Hall_
the blob that ate children's minds
"The Blob includes the teachers unions, but also janitors and principals unions, school boards, PTA bureaucrats, local politicians and so on.   They hold power because the government's monopoly on K-12 education eliminates most competition.   Kids are assigned to schools, and a bureaucracy decides who goes where and who learns what.   Over time, its tentacles expand and strangle attempts to reform.   Since they have no fear of losing their jobs to competitors, monopoly bureaucrats can resist innovation for decades...   The Blob insists the schools need more money, but that's a myth.   America tripled spending per student since I was in college without improving student achievement.   In Los Angeles, they spent half a billion dollars to build the most expensive school in America...thousands of new dollars per student.   The school is beautiful, but how's the education? Not so good.   The school graduates just 56% of its students.   Three schools in Oakland that Ben Chavis started aren't as fancy, but the students do better.   They get top test scores.   And Chavis doesn't just take the most promising or richest students, as teachers unions often claim competitive schools do.   Chavis' schools take kids from the poorest neighborhoods.   So what does the education Blob decide to do? Shut his schools down.   School board members don't like Chavis.   I understand why.   He's obnoxious.   Arrogant.   He probably broke some rules.   For example, he's accused of making a profit running his schools.   Horrors! A profit!   If he did profit, I say, so what? He still got top test results with less government money.   Good for him!   But the Blob doesn't like success that's outside its monopoly.   It doesn't matter that Chavis has now resigned from the school's board.   Oakland may still close his schools.   Think about that.   As measured by student achievement, his schools are the best.   But the Blob doesn't care.   And the Blob has the power of government behind it...   New York City gave the United Federation of Teachers a charter school of its own.   The union boss called it an 'oasis'.   But what happened? Today, the teachers union school is one of New York's worst.   It got a 'D' on its city report card.   Only a third of its students read at grade level.   And the school still lost a million dollars.   Yet it's the union's model school! I assume they tried their best, staffed it with some of their best teachers.   The union knew we were watching.   But with union rules, and the Blob's bureaucracy, they failed miserably."

2013-03-20
Daniel Doherty _Town Hall_
UK to establish Orwellian "new press regulations"
"Charles C.W. Cook reports: '[L]ondon, once the undisputed center of the free world, has fallen to the dull charms of cheap censorship.   For the first time since 1711, it seems that the state will regulate the media.   Those famous words that open the First Amendment, ''Congress shall make no law'', written by men whose commitment to British liberty was so unshakable that they broke with the crown in order to preserve it explicitly in the republic that they had made, are the last vestige of a classical-liberal order that once looked impregnable...   Only America retains ironclad prohibitions that remain unbroken by the vandals.'   It certainly seems that way.   But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the gun grabbers, the civility police, and government bureaucrats won't try to de-legitimize our so-called 'living' [i.e. murdered] Constitution.   If anything, what unites the libertarian and conservative movements (and there is much that does) is that both schools of thought recognize that the principles enshrined in the U.S. Constitution are timeless.   Indeed, they apply to all mankind in all times -- including our own.   The language of the Bill of Rights is explicit; there is no room for 'compromising' or 'negotiating'.   And frankly, to lose any of our God-given rights -- as conservative author Eric Metaxas recently phrased it when speaking about religious liberty in particular -- is to lose America."

2013-03-20
Elisabeth Meinecke _Town Hall_
10 myths about guns, debunked

2013-03-20
Dave Burton
regarding anti-coal propagandizing

2013-03-20
Alexander Besant _Global Post_
1,600 students and 100 parents caught cheating on national exam in Bihar, India
Amarnath Tewary: BBC
"Approximately 1.3M students [from 4K schools] across Bihar, one of India's poorest states, [took] the exams...   Bihar is one of India's poorest states.   It has an illiteracy rate [of] 64%..."

2013-03-20 (5773 Nisan 09)
George Friedman _Jewish World Review_
US-Israeli relations
Town Hall

2013-03-20 (5773 Nisan 09)
Shan Li _Jewish World Review_
children of war veterans receive survivors benefits
"More than $40G annually is being paid out to soldiers and survivors of the Civil War, the Spanish-American War in 1898, both World Wars, the Korean War, the VietNam War, the Gulf War, the Iraq war and the war in Afghanistan, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.   Two children of Civil War veterans -- one in Tennessee and the other in North Carolina -- are each receiving $876 a year.   An additional 10 are getting benefits, averaging about $5K a year, connected to the 1898 Spanish-American War.   The spouses of soldiers who die in wars can qualify for life-time benefits, while children who are under 18 can also receive payments.   Kids who are disabled before the age of 18 may also get those benefits extended through their entire life."

2013-03-20 (5773 Nisan 09)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
Will president Obummer really nominate billionaire Chicago gal pal Penny Pritzker to head his Commerce Department?
Town Hall
"Most notoriously, Pritzker headed up sub-prime lender Superior Bank.   Even after it went under in 2001 and left 1,400 mostly poor and minority customers destitute, Pritzker was pushing to expand its toxic subprime loan business.   As I've reported previously, Pritzker and her family escaped accountability by forking over a discounted $460M settlement over 15 years after the bank collapsed.   One of the [Obummers'] oldest Chicago friends and an intimate confidante of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Pritzker served as a top national finance chairwoman and bundler for the 2008 presidential campaign.   She is an heir to the Hyatt Hotel and Pritzker family fortunes.   According to Forbes, her grandfather and his sons also created the industrial conglomerate Marmon Holdings, which the family sold to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway for $4.5G.   To protect her family's multi-billion-dollar fortune, Pritzker's enterprises park their money in the very same kind of offshore trusts Obama attacked GOP rival Mitt Romney over.   But Obama lapped up nearly $800M in campaign and inaugural funding raised by Pritzker.   A former Pritzker tax lawyer pioneered tax-avoidance strategies for the family, which allowed them to pay $9M in taxes instead of $150M in estate taxes after patriarch A.N. Pritzker died.   As Forbes notes: 'There are now 11 Pritzkers on the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans.'   Nice lawyering if you can get it."

2013-03-20 (5773 Nisan 09)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
a real term limit
Dallas TX Morning News
Town Hall
"What are advocates of term limits trying to accomplish?   If they are trying to keep government from being run by career politicians, whose top priority is getting themselves re-elected, then term limits on given jobs fail to do that.   When someone reaches the limit of how long one can spend as a county supervisor, then it is just a question of finding another political office to run for, such as a member of the state legislature.   And when the limit on terms there is reached, it is time to look around for another political job — perhaps as a mayor or a member of Congress.   Instead of always making re-election in an existing political post the top priority, in the last term in a given office the top priority will be doing things that will make it easier to get elected or appointed to the next political post.   But in no term is doing what is right for the people likely to be the top priority.   Those who favor term limits are right to try to stop the same old politicians from staying in the same old offices for decades.   But having the same career politicians circulating around in the same set of offices, like musical chairs, is not very different...   Recently, California's Senator Dianne Feinstein gave a graphic demonstration of what can happen when you have been in office too long.   During a discussion of senator Feinstein's proposed legislation on gun control, Texas' freshman senator Ted Cruz quietly and politely asked 'the senior senator from California' whether she would treat the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment the same way her gun control bill was treating the Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to bear arms.   Senator Feinstein never addressed that question.   Instead, she became testy and told senator Cruz how long she had been in congress and how much [she thought] she knew...   much -- if not most -- of that is experience and expertise in the arts of evasion, effrontery, deceit and chicanery.   None of that serves the interest of the people...   we need to make political careers virtually impossible.   There are many patriotic Americans who would put aside their own private careers to serve in office, if the cost to them and their families were not ruinous, and if they had some realistic hope of advancing the interests of the country and its people without being obstructed by career politicians...   The whole point of presenting new ideas is to start a process that can make their realization possible in later years."

2013-03-20 (5773 Nisan 09)
Ty Kiisel _Forbes_
you are judged by your appearance
"Tall people get paid more money: A 2004 study by Timothy Judge at the University of Florida found that for every inch of height, a tall worker can expect to earn an extra $789 per year.   That means two equally skilled coworkers would have a pay differential of nearly $5K per year, simply because of a 6-inch height differential, according to the study.   Fat people get paid less: Obese workers (those who have a Body Mass Index of more than 30) are paid less than normal-weight co-workers at a rate of $8,666 a year for obese women, and $4,772 a year for obese men, according to a George Washington University study that cited data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth in 2004.   And other studies indicate obese women are even more likely to be discriminated against when it comes to pay, hiring and raises.   Blondes get paid more: A 2010 study from the Queensland University of Technology studied 13K Caucasian women and found blondes earn greater than 7% more than female employees with any other hair color.   The study said the pay bump is equivalent to the boost an employee would generally see from one entire year of additional education.   Workers who work out get paid more: According to a study in the Journal of Labor Research, workers who exercise regularly earn 9% more on average than employees who don't work out.   The study from Cleveland State University claims people who exercise three or more times a week earn an average of $80 a week more than their slothful co-workers.   Women who wear makeup make more: Not only do people judge beauty based on how much makeup a woman is wearing, make-up adorned women also rank higher in competence and trustworthiness, according to a study funded by Procter & Gamble, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston University, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.   A study in the American Economic Review said women who wear make-up can earn more than 30% more in pay than non makeup wearing workers.   Handsome people are paid handsomely: A Yale University study from Daniel Hamermesh finds employers pay a beauty premium to attractive employees.   The beautiful workers earn an average of roughly 5% more, while unattractive employees can miss out on up to almost 9%, according to the study.   If you're too pretty, it's a pity: Generally speaking, attractive people make out when it comes to salary and hiring.   But what about the exceedingly attractive among us?   If you're an attractive man, don't sweat it because you always enjoy an advantage, according to a 2010 study that appeared in the Journal of Social Psychology.   However, women rated as very attractive face discrimination when applying to 'masculine' jobs."

2013-03-20 (5773 Nisan 09)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
_Intellectuals and Race_ by Thomas Sowell
Walter E. Williams
"During the early 20th century, there were mass migrations of blacks from the South.   Both the black-owned _Chicago Defender_ and the Urban League offered published advice to their less tutored brethren, such as: 'Don't use vile language in public places.'   'Don't throw garbage in the back-yard or alley or keep dirty front yards.'   'Do not carry on loud conversations in street cars and public places.'   Jews, Germans and Irish made similar appeals to acculturate their ill-mannered cousins.   These efforts produced positive results over the years...   My own conclusion is that black people waged a successful civil rights struggle against gross discrimination.   It's white and black [leftists], intellectuals, academics and race hustlers who have created our greatest hurdle."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-21

2013-03-21 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 299,143 in the week ending March 16, a decrease of 18,383 from the previous week.   There were 319,498 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.7% during the week ending March 9, unchanged from the prior week's unrevised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 3,437,345, a decrease of 64,575 from the preceding week's revised level of 3,501,920.   A year earlier, the rate was 3.0% and the volume was 3,815,580.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending March 2 was 5,369,007, a decrease of 250,853 from the previous week.   There were 7,284,741 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.   Extended Benefits were available only in Alaska during the week ending March 2...   States reported 1,780,843 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending March 2, a decrease of 136,315 from the prior week.   There were 2,852,383 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

2013-03-21
Anthony Watts, Kendra McLauchlan, Joseph Craine, Joseph Williams, & Elizabeth Jeffers
nitrogen: toxic pollutant and life-giver

2013-03-21
Henry A. Stephens _Treasure Coast FL Palm_
Indian River county FL sheriff's office purchase of 20 patrol cars for over $800K (over $40K each) has been approved
"Sheriff Deryl Loar got the county commission's approval this week to spend up to $800K on 20 new 6-cylinder patrol cars, as he replaces the same number of existing cars that have more than 125K miles...   Loar said he has 165 marked patrol cars, with 53 of them due for replacement because of high mileage.   Records show Loar bought his last cars in 2010, 25 Ford Crown Victorias, at $561,580.   An additional $253,632 worth of special police equipment -- light bars, video systems and radios -- kicked the bill up to $815,212...   Loar conceded many motorists might not think 100K miles is time for a new car...   'you don't go from 0 to 80 miles an hour several times a day.', Loar said."

2013-03-21
Neil Munro _Daily Caller_
Rubio hired leftist immigration sheister to draft immigration perversion bill
"The lawyer, Enrique Gonzalez, is a partner at the nation's largest immigration firm whose future depends on the outcome of Gonzalez's closed-door work.   Rubio hired Gonzalez in January, when he was a partner at the Coral Gables, FL, office of Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy...   Critics say both measures would reduce wages and employment prospects for American middle-class college graduates...   Schumer's top immigration aide is also an immigration lawyer, whose career will be shaped by the law he is helping to write.   Leon Fresco previously worked at Holland & Knight, where he 'represented corporations in...corporate immigration matters', according to EB5info.com, a web-site on immigration law.   Rubio joined the senators' group after he dropped his own calls for the passage of several small-scale immigration reforms, and abandoned his demand for a so-called 'trigger' that would freeze the awarding of visas and green cards until enforcement measures were actually implemented."

2013-03-21
Neil Munro _Daily Caller_
job ads, law-suit show that US executives and hiring managers are discriminating against Americans
"The ads use key-words -- typically 'OPT' [optional practical training to work for up to 29 months after graduation], 'CPT' [curricular practical training to work while enrolled in USA] or 'H-1B' -- to attract the attention of guest-workers, while deterring applications by unemployed American professionals who normally search for conventional key-words, such as 'software engineer', 'nurse', 'writer' or 'lawyer'.   'It's discrimination.', said Donna Conroy, the executive director of Bright Future Jobs, a non-profit trying to aid U.S. workers...   'I've thousands of ads like those in my collection.', said John Miano, a New Jersey lawyer former programmer and board member of the Programmers Guild, which lobbies on behalf of info-tech workers.   In some out-sourcing companies, he said, 'almost every last one of their technical employes are on H-1B or other visas'...   When asked by TheDC for a break-down of employees' citizenship or race, Tata's flack evaded the question...   But the H-1B program visa rules allow companies to annually import large numbers of guest-workers under the H-1B program, even if many Americans are ready and willing to do the same work...   In fiscal year 2012, Obama's deputies provided 134,780 H-1Bs to U.S.-based companies, up from 99,591 in 2011, according to the industry magazine, _ComputerWorld_."

2013-03-21
David Phelps _Minneapolis MN Star Tribune_
Carlson Dynasty gets a new "leader"
among board members is retired former Control Data Corp. & Ceridian chairman & CEO Lawrence Perlman

2013-03-21
Anthony Watts
Greenland ice melt over-estimated due to error in algorithm used to process satellite data
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-22

2013-03-22
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
plan to hike phony-baloney H-1B cap to 300K dead; 130K phony-baloney cap still to be feared
InfoWorld
The US State Department reported that 110,367 new/initial H-1B visas were issued through consular offices in FY2009, 117,409 in FY2010, 129,134 in FY2011, while USCIS reported that they approved 86,300 new/initial H-1B applications in FY2009, 76,627 applications in FY2010, 106,445 in FY2011, and 134,780 in FY2012...jgo

2013-03-22
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
look who's writing the immigration perversion/"reform" bill
 
I often mention that H-1B and green card law is full of loop-holes, the most obvious being the legally defined prevailing wage, which is typically well below the true market wage of the worker.
 
But have you ever wondered HOW the loop-holes get in there?   Careless oversight in drafting the laws?   Of course not.   They are deliberately inserted.   More on this below.
 
But first, an update on the bill that senator Grassley revived on Monday from previous congresses with senator Durbin.   As many of you will recall, I've always endorsed the bill, as I considered its prevailing wage reform the key to fixing H-1B.   (Note by the way that this would apply to ALL employers of H-1Bs, contrary to a misreport by Computerworld.)
 
Durbin did not sponsor the latest bill, because, as reported by Politico on Tuesday:
 
"Durbin did not sign on this time because of his negotiating role [as a member of the Gang of Eight], a staffer said. But he will 'strongly support' the bill, which restructures temporary work visa programs by boosting enforcement, altering wage requirements and attempting to prioritize American workers."
 
However, yesterday the Washington Post reported:
 
 "Durbin, who has been a lone voice in the room on the issue, is likely to back down, according to people familiar with the talks, because he has gotten his way on other points, such as a path to citizenship for the estimated 11M [8M to 24M] illegal immigrants living in this country.   A Durbin spokesman declined to comment, stressing that negotiations were continuing into the night Wednesday and that nothing was final."
 
Today I was told today, though, that Grassley is dropping his bill, due to the refusal of the Gang to consider his reforms.   I'll come back to Grassley in a moment.
 
But where do loop-holes come from?   The answer is that the stork brings them   :-)   execpt that the "stork" here is the industry lobbyists.  You all know about the lobbyists, but you may not realize the level of detail they often get involved in during the drafting of the bill.   The Politico article quoted Robert Hoffman, one of the most powerful lobbyists, for instance, and indeed, he was involved in weakening the Durbin/Grassley bill in a past congress.
 
Even after a bill is enacted, the lobbyists' work is far from done.   They then lobby the executive branch of the government, to make sure the regulations that implement the new statute are to their favor.
 
So the lobbyists to a large degree are primary factors in the shaping of a law and its implementation.   In some cases, they literally write the law!   And such a case appears to be occurring right now:
 
"The devil is in the details.". and Rubio's lawyer consultant, Enrique Gonzalez, is from the largest immigration law firm in the nation, Fragomen.   If the name sounds familiar to you, it's for good reason; Fragomen was the firm involved when network engineer David Huber replied to a job ad by Cisco, apparently for a job Cisco actually intended to fill with a foreign worker.
 
If you have an interest in H-1B, this video is a must-view.
 
Then read the details here.
 
Then finally, keep reminding yourself that all of this is perfectly legal, as I said at the time and was confirmed by a later DoL audit.   (See all the files with names beginning "Fragomen" in http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/ here.)
 
The video is a must-view also because Huber has a long, impressive CV, including things such as a multimillion dollar project at NASA.
 
So, yes, "Durbin is the lone voice in the room."; he really has no voice.   Gonzalez and Rubio are the ones in the room with strong voices.
 
So Rubio's consulant, the former Fragomen lawyer Gonzalez, will make sure that nothing goes wrong.   Every detail of every proposed provision will be scrutinized by Gonzalez, and by Hoffman, to ensure that employers maximize their access to cheap, immobile labor, and immigration lawyers maximize their income.   And of course then on the House side there is [un-representative] Lofgren, who is still an immigration attorney, though not practicing.
 
No wonder much of the world wonders why the U.S. is encouraging their countries to become democracies.
 
Norm
---30---

2013-03-22
Bill Straub _PJ Media_
Patrick Leahy says committee will miss planned date for immigration law perversion bill

2013-03-22
Craig Loehle
NOAA decadal, century scale rain-fall trends estimates found to be wildly incorrect

2013-03-22
Carmen Irish _Billings MT Gazette_
students compete in 2013 science expo
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-23

anniversary of Patrick Henry's "Liberty or Death" speech

2013-03-23
Joe Newby _Examiner_
retired US army captain warns taht DHS is preparing for war against USA citizens

2013-03-23
Paul Homewood
colder winters trend continues in UK

2013-03-23
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
the loyal ladies of Clear Spring
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-24

2013-03-24
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
a bigger story behind grave #418 at Custer National Cemetery

2013-03-24
Harichandan Arakali & Tony Munroe _Fox_
India's IT bodyshops create "mini CEOs"
Reuters UK
US Daily
IT & Telecomm Digest
"India's IT [bodyshoppers] are promoting 'mini CEOs' capable of running businesses on their own, while trimming down on the hordes of entry-level computer coders they normally hire as they try to squeeze more profits out of their staff...   Dozens of industry aspirants who were recruited on campus by #4 player HCL Technologies recently protested outside its offices in several cities.   They were offered jobs in 2011 before graduating last year but have not yet been given joining dates -- or pay-checks...   Just 20% of the 5K-6K campus recruits offered HCL jobs in 2011 have been taken on board since graduation last summer...   'We're moving towards a situation like the developed economies, where we're asking the people to be more deep.', said Sujitha Karnad, who heads human resources at Tech Mahindra...   India's IT [bodyshopping] industry grew in large part because of the availability of cheap skilled labor, an advantage that is eroding as wages and other costs in India rise...   Traditionally, about 30% of Indian IT services industry staff are on the bench at any given time...   In the December quarter, about 70% of Infosys staff and less than 65% at #3 provider Wipro were deployed on billable projects.   At Tata Consultancy Services, the largest Indian IT services company, the figure was 72%, within what Ajoyendra Mukherjee, its human resources head, calls the comfort range of 70% to 74% utilization...   Mercer LLC expects industry salaries to grow 12% this year, the same as in 2012.   As India's economy diversifies, graduates have more attractive career options, including at multi-nationals with a growing India presence, such as Google Inc, which means IT vendors must fight to stay attractive.   'We see IT companies as a back-up.', said S.S. Jayaram, a final-year engineering student in Bangalore who says he chose a job in India with Mu Sigma Inc, a fast-growing U.S.A.-based data analytics company, over offers from IBM and TCS."
Thus confirming that the bodies shopped were not the "best and brightest", but cheap, young, pliant labor...jgo
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-25

2013-03-25
_Global Post_/_Agence France-Presse_
Hong Kong court refuses legal permanent residency status to 20+ year guest-workers; must find new job within 2 weeks of leaving last or leave
"Vallejos won a High Court ruling in 2011 granting her the right to request permanent residency status, which most foreigners can seek after seven years' stay but which is denied to the city's 300K foreign domestic helpers...   Pro-government figures had warned that the city of 7M would be swamped by up to 500K new immigrants [compared with the USA's 2.4M per year influx in the mid-2000s], including the maids' children and spouses, if the appeal was allowed."

2013-03-25
Tim Ball
desertification, recovery, over-population, and limitations of limited grazing... and climate

2013-03-25
Stan Robertson
dispelling warmist myths

2013-03-25
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
Don't ignore that which is contrary...

2013-03-25
_U of Gothenburg_
climate models still are not good enough to "predict" what has already happened

2013-03-25
Scott Reynolds Nelson _Chronicle of Higher Education_
the soul of invention
"Technology shifts gears.   The workers who control it need to learn how to shift gears, too [to control those shifts]."

2013-03-25
Jason Maoz _Jewish Press_
a void not filled
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-26

2013-03-26
Joe Kaufman _PJ Media_
largest Muslim group known to be operating in USA features terror in flagship publication

2013-03-26
Konrad Lawson _Chronicle of Higher Education_
forks and pull requests in GitHub
getting started
More evidence that we've dropped back to banging rocks together as compared with the more sophisticated software library management systems of the mid-1980s...jgo

2013-03-26
Neil Munro _Daily Caller_
immigration lobbies spent $1.5G since 2007
"A loose alliance of business and political groups has spent almost $1.5G since late 2007 to rewrite the nation's immigration law according to a new report.   The flood of money hired 3,136 lobbyists at 678 lobbying groups to pass 1 or more of 987 small or large bills, said the March 25 report from the Sunlight Foundation...   meetings of experienced immigration lobbyists are crowded with new advocates who know little about immigration law...   Those groups include Federation for American Immigration Reform [FAIR US] and NumbersUSA, which want to scale back the annual inflow of roughly 1M new immigrants...   OpenSecrets says that NumbersUSA spent $600K in lobbying in 2012.   That's less than 10% of the $8M spent by one company, MSFT Corp., which is trying to up its employment of professional guest-workers under the H-1B program."

2013-03-26 (5773 Nisan 15)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
Cyprus melt-down & confiscations: Can it happen here?
NH Union Leader
Fayette county GA Citizen
Pittsburgh PA Tribune-Review
Memphis Tennessean
"The economic repercussions of having people feel that their money is not safe in banks can be catastrophic.   Banks are not just warehouses where money can be stored.   They are crucial institutions for gathering individually modest amounts of money from millions of people and transferring that money to strangers whom those people would not directly entrust it to.   Multi-billion dollar corporations, whose economies of scale can bring down the prices of goods and services — thereby raising our standard of living -- are seldom financed by a few billionaires.   Far more often they are financed by millions of people, who have neither the specific knowledge nor the economic expertise to risk their savings by investing directly in those enterprises.   Banks are crucial intermediaries, which provide the financial expertise without which these transfers of money are too risky...   There are more sophisticated ways for governments to take what you have put aside for yourself and use it for whatever the politicians feel like using it for.   If they do it slowly but steadily, they can take a big chunk of what you have sacrificed for years to save, before you are even aware, much less alarmed.   That is in fact already happening.   When officials of the Federal Reserve System speak in vague and lofty terms about 'quantitative easing', what they are talking about is creating more money out of thin air, as the Federal Reserve is authorized to do -- and has been doing in recent years, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars a month.   When the federal government spends far beyond the tax revenues it has, it gets the extra money by selling bonds.   The Federal Reserve has become the biggest buyer of these bonds, since it costs them nothing to create more money.   This new money buys just as much as the money you sacrificed to save for years.   More money in circulation, without a corresponding increase in output, means rising prices.   Although the numbers in your bank book may remain the same, part of the purchasing power of your money is transferred to the government.   Is that really different from what Cyprus has done?"

2013-03-26 (5773 Nisan 15)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
"me too" Republicans
NH Union Leader
"Many ideas presented as 'new' are just rehashes of old ideas that have been tried before -- and have failed before...   These are Republicans who think that the key to winning elections is to do more of what the Democrats are doing...   Romney was as mushy a moderate as Senator John McCain was before him -- and as many other Republican losers in presidential elections have been, going all the way back to the 1940s.   The only Republican candidate who might fit the charge of being a complete conservative was Ronald Reagan, who won 2 landslide elections...   the Republicans have some hope of winning over are unlikely to be enthralled to the NAACP, and many of them may see through such race hustlers...   You might think that a Republican Party that talks about individualism would try to appeal to individuals...   But that [more principled and creative] approach requires a lot more thought than apparently went into this report.   Polls and focus groups are not a substitute for thought."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-27

2013-03-27
_U of GA_
modified Pyrococcus furiosus eats CO₂ makes 3-hydroxypropionic acid as acrylics feed-stock

2013-03-27
Jonathan Mattise & Eric Pfahler _Treasure Coast FL Palm_
governments continue to give away tax-victim funds to execs who promise to employ local citizens... but don't

2013-03-27
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
Southerners and their "inner battles"

2013-03-27
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
with "Copperhead" movie coming... when will there be a movie which addresses divided Southern sentiments?

2013-03-27
Christopher Monckton
life as a target

2013-03-27
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
whose thumb is on the scale?
 
(I consider this posting to be one of the most important ones I've written, so please bear with me.)
 
I've long supported the H-1B reform bills authored by senator Chuck Grassley.   They were co-authored in past congresses by senator Dick Durbin, and the current version, S600, is co-sponsored by senator Sherrod Brown.   Thus I was very pleased a few days ago to find that the IEEE-USA, of which I've been critical, has now endorsed the Grassley bill.
 
Though I wish IEEE-USA would be more proactive with its membership on this issue, I must say the organization's endorsement of the Grassley bill seems to have hit home.   A long-time advocate of expansion of H-1B and similar programs, Stuart Anderson, has a piece slamming the bill in Forbes.
 
(To see the varied roles Anderson has played in H-1B over the years, plug "stuart anderson site:heather.cs.ucdavis.edu" into [ixquick].)
 
Here is the core issue Anderson is so worked up about: Currently, the "prevailing wage", a term referring to the legally required wage paid to H-1Bs and green card sponsorees, is broken down into 4 experience levels, I through IV.   This system was enacted in the 2004 legislation, which in my opinion was one of the most harmful bills in the history of H-1B, because it is the prime enabler of H-1B-related age discrimination in the industry.
 
A brief review: Employers accrue wage savings by hiring H-1Bs in 2 forms.   What I call Type I wage savings involves hiring H-1Bs more cheaply than Americans of the same age, education, skills and so on, while Type II involves hiring young H-1Bs instead of older (age 35+) Americans.   Both types bring large savings, but Type II savings are even large than those of Type I.
 
I'll make my usual disclaimer: I do NOT advocate forcing employers to hire poorly-qualified workers -- but again point out what Vivek Wadhwa accurately said -- if the 2 more workers are "well-qualified", employers will hire the younger/cheaper one, and in many cases, the latter is an H-1B.
 
This is then closely tied to the 4-level prevailing scale.   For instance, if an employer wishes to hire a young H-1B, at Level I or II, the wage is compared only to other YOUNG workers.   That makes it legal; the employer can claim he is not under-paying the H-1B, when in fact he is getting major savings by avoiding the older Americans.
 
The Grassley bill would solve this quite cleanly, by removing the experience levels from the calculation of prevailing wage.   It indirectly addresses Type I savings as well.
 
This is why I have supported Grassley from the beginning, in fact even pre-Grassley.   I made the proposal back in 2003, in my University of Michigan law journal article, and in turn I got the idea from WashTech, a Seattle-based IT worker organization.   (Also in the law journal article, I made a proposal addressing the de facto indentured servitude issue, which was quite similar to the one proposed now by senator Moran.)
 
Anderson charges that the Grassley bill would amount to the government "putting its thumb on the scale".   I disagree, for the reasons I gave above, but I'd also point out that currently, the Stuart Andersons of the world are the ones with their thumbs on the scale.   (I'll also issue a challenge to Anderson's crowd later in this posting.)   Here's why:
 
A few weeks ago a journalist asked me some technical questions about the experience levels.   He had asked a major, household name tech company, which I'll refer to here as ILoveLoopholes.com, about why the vast majority of the firm's H-1Bs were hired at Levels I or II.   Didn't that mean that the firm is paying the H-1Bs below-average wages?
 
ILoveLoopholes.com replied, quite correctly, that experience levels are just that -- descriptions of the degree of experience.   Accordingly, an engineer with a master's degree from MIT with 2 years of work experience would still be in Level II.   But of course that is exactly the problem!
 
On the open market, that hypothetical worker with an MIT master's and 2 years experience, would command far, far more than the average salary in Level II.   Even for bachelor's graduates of MIT with no work experience (other than internships), the going rate is well above $100K in Silicon Valley, the region Anderson analyzes; for the hypothetical worker, it would be much more than that.   Yet Anderson says the worker should be paid only $93K.
 
IOW, the one with his thumb on the scale is Stuart Anderson.   The Grassley bill would get Anderson's thumb away from the scale, by removing the experience levels.
 
Now, if Anderson really does think experience levels are important, I have supported an alternative: Keep the experience levels, but set the legally-required wage to the 75th percentile within the given experience level for the given occupation and region.
 
As Paul Almeida of DPE has pointed out, the employers claim to hire H-1Bs because those workers have SOMETHING SPECIAL -- maybe a rare, "hot" skill like Android programming, maybe a degree from a top school, etc.   If so, on the open market, the employers would have to pay a major premium for this, as the MIT example illustrates.   Currently, the law sets the prevailing wage level at only the AVERAGE wage.   IOW, the employers are getting (what they claim to be) ABOVE-AVERAGE workers for only AVERAGE prices.   Talk about having a thumb on the scale!
 
Accordingly, setting the prevailing wage at the 75th percentile within the given experience level would be eminently reasonable.   Ostensibly, this would be a variation on the Grassley bill that Anderson ought to agree with.   What do you say, Stuart?
 
Norm
 
I agree in part and disagree in part.   Yes, the execs are gaming the "prevailing wage" "requirement" and definitions.   Yes, job candidates who appear to be "equal" otherwise can compete based on compensation and working conditions.   A younger/cheaper candidate can win out over even a brighter, more creative, more industrious older candidate.   Sometimes that's good and sometimes it's bad.   Back in the days of racial discrimination it allowed people to get onto the career ladder despite employers' desires to exercise their biases; it made it economically infeasible.
 
I actually would prefer 10 categories instead of only 4, to better (however imperfectly) reflect the range of knowledge, ability and experience, and so that we'd be comparing apples to apples.   Academic credentials don't suffice.   Years of experience is an only slightly better indicator; if you've hung on longer you've probably but not necessarily built up some contextual knowledge even if it's not necessarily the kinds of knowledge which would show up in a final exam or certification.
 
Some new grads from Pequa-Sopchoppy Tech out-shine the MIT grads with 2 years of experience.   I've seen one or two bright high school students who could do so.   PhD recipients from "reputable" (e.g. top 20) universities with 5 years of experience are often, OFTEN out-shone by bright students at "lesser institutions" (e.g. below the top 50) who are still in the process of working their ways to a bachelor's degree.   Academic credentials and institution reputation are cheap, sloppy and often misleading standards.
 
The main problem I see with any "prevailing wage" standards is that they're totally unenforceable; short of draconian measures loop-holes will always and unavoidably exist and people will make use of them.   Unless you like totalitarianism in job markets they will keep popping up like whack-a-moles...jgo

2013-03-27
Jenifer Mattson _Global Post_
spam-blocker Spamhaus under DDOS attack... mostly by spam-server Cyberbunker

2013-03-27
Kris Anne Hall
ObummerDoesn'tCare: Who runs your life?
10th amendment center

2013-03-27 (5773 Nisan 16)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
Are we equal?
"Are women equal to men?   Are Jews equal to gentiles?   Are blacks equal to Italians, Irish, Polish and other white people?   The answer is probably a big fat no, and the pretense or assumption that we are equal -- or should be equal -- is foolhardy and creates mischief.   Let's look at it.   Male geniuses out-number female geniuses 7-to-1.   Female intelligence is packed much closer to the middle of the bell curve, whereas men's intelligence has far greater variability.   That means that though there are many more male geniuses, there are also many more male idiots.   The latter might partially explain why more men are in jail than women."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-28

2013-03-28
Michael Liedtke _San Jose CA Mercury News_/_AP_
Steve Jobs's first boss, Nolan Bushnell: Very few would hire Steve today
"Qualified" vs. "able and willing"...jgo

2013-03-28
Kelly Chuipek _Daily Illini_
U of IL student/entrepreneurs win Lemelson prizes
students created device to call your phone when plants need to be watered
"Students Eduardo Torrealba, Bradley Sanders, Trevor Hutchins and Michael Clemenson and recent master's graduate Austin Lyons finalized the product Jan. 4."
Champaign-Urbana IL News-Gazette
2011-05-09: Baylor Proud: 3 students awarded NSF graduate research fellowships

2013-03-28 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (12:30GMT) (14:30 Jerusalem)
Tom Stengle & 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 315,657 in the week ending March 23, an increase of 14,706 from the previous week.   There were 323,373 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.6% during the week ending March 16, 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 3,379,090, a decrease of 82,403 from the preceding week's revised level of 3,461,493.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.9% and the volume was 3,699,473.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending March 9 was 5,455,757, an increase of 86,750 from the previous week.   There were 7,158,470 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.   Extended Benefits were available only in Alaska during the week ending March 9...   States reported 1,906,324 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending March 9, an increase of 125,481 from the prior week.   There were 2,812,666 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

2013-03-28
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
which proposals would work, which wouldn't
 
After I made my posting [yesterday] regarding the Anderson critique of the Grassley bill, I received e-mail from some people who felt that some of it was unclear.   So, I've revised it, adding some explanatory comments in some spots.
 
Judging from the comments, I see that many people, even those who follow the topic closely, are not clear on what the basic problems are, and how the various proposals would or would not fix them.   "You can't tell the players without a scorecard.", and this posting is aimed at serving as your H-1B/green card scorecard.
 
THE PROBLEMS
 
The basic problems are actually very easy to state:
 
1.   Salary savings: Employers use H-1B and green cards (yes, AND green cards, due to Type II savings) as a way to save on labor costs.   I've always delineated two types of cost savings accruing to hiring a foreign worker: Type I savings, in which the employer hires a foreign worker more cheaply than a comparable American (same age, education level, skill set and so on), and Type II savings, in which the employer hires a young foreign worker in lieu of an older (35+), thus more expensive American.
 
As I explained in my posting earlier today, both Type I and II savings are enabled by the legal definition of prevailing wage, the legally required wage:
 
*       Type I is enabled because prevailing wage is merely the AVERAGE wage in a given experience level, occupation and region; since the employers claim to be hiring H-1Bs who are ABOVE-AVERAGE, e.g. because they have some "hot" skill like Android programming that commands a premium wage in the open market, that means they are often underpaying their foreign workers.
 
*       Type II is enabled because the prevailing wage takes into account experience level.   The young foreign worker is compared only to young American workers, not to the occupation in general.   Thus, legally speaking, the employer is not underpaying the foreign worker, even though the employer's intention is to save money by hiring the young foreigner in lieu of the older American.
 
In my posting today, I mentioned an example brought up by a major U.S. firm (a real company, a household name, though I kept it anonymous), in which a worker with a master's degree in engineering from MIT with 2 years of work experience would still count as only Level II.   This is an example of Type I wage savings.
 
Another example I've mentioned before was brought up by none other than representative Zoe Lofgren.   She is the most vociferous supporter of H-1B in congress, yet even she noted to Computerworld that the average wage for computer systems analysts in her district was $92K, while the legal prevailing wage was only $52K.   This is probably a mixture of Type I and Type II wage savings.
 
2.   "Hand-cuffed" workers: An employer suffers a big hit if an engineer leaves for another company in the midst of an urgent project.   Thus employers would like to "hand-cuff" their workers, prevent them from leaving.   They can't do that with Americans [except by restoring cultural habits of mutual respect, which at this point would be difficult], but they CAN do so with foreign workers who are being sponsored for a green card, and to some extent even for other foreign workers (say, who hope to be sponsored for a green card).   THIS ABUSE IS VERY COMMON, especially in Silicon Valley, and for many employers it's even more attractive than the salary savings.
 
By the way, the employer is required to pay the higher of the prevailing and the actual wage, the latter being the average pay of "similar" workers in the same firm.   This too has various loop-holes, and in any case it's irrelevant, as my analysis has shown that most employers pay at or near the prevailing wage.   So, the legal definition of prevailing wage is key.
 
SOLUTIONS AND NONSOLUTIONS
 
So, among the various proposals made, which would work, and which wouldn't?   I'll start with the good ones, then bring up others.   (Note: Just because I cite some aspect of a bill as being beneficial, it doesn't necessarily mean I like the bill's other provisions.)
 
The good:
 
1. The Grassley Bill: By eliminating the experience levels from the calculation of prevailing wage, this bill would go a long way to solving the Type II salary savings problem.   It would define prevailing wage as the 50th percentile salary OVERALL in the given occupation (again, NOT using experience level), for the given region.   [AFL-CIO] DPE has made the same proposal, but at the 75th percentile, even better, but Grassley would work well.
 
2.   The Moran bill: This would do a lot to solve the handcuffed-worker problem, and the Type I problem.   It would take the green card process entirely out of the employer's hands.   The worker would be fully free to move around the labor market.   I won't go into the details here as to how this would be done under Moran, but it is rather similar to a proposal I made in the past.   Unfortunately, Moran's green card process would be in addition to the current process (a problem, as noted below), rather than replacing it, but it is far better than the other green card proposals.
 
The bad/ugly:
 
1.   The bills that set up "STEM visas": These are basically end runs around the H-1B cap.   Many of them would have even fewer restrictions than H-1B, and some would have no cap.   Net result -- MORE foreign workers than before.   And by targeting new foreign graduates with advanced degrees, these bills would worsen the age discrimination problem, since the new grads are mostly young.   Also, by targeting this population, these bills would even further reduce the salary premiums for advanced degrees, thus giving Americans even less incentive to pursue graduate work.   IOW, these bills would MAKE THINGS WORSE.
 
2.   The bills that target the Indian [cross-border bodyshopping and off-shoring] firms: There are 2 problems with these bills.   First, as I've shown, abuse of H-1B pervades the entire industry, not just the bodyshops.   Second, the current clients of the bodyshops would STILL want to hire cheap, temporary labor, and there would be lots of other ways to do this.   The most obvious way is to hire the foreign temps directly; the Intels could form their own in-house bodyshops, rather than renting from the Infosyses as they do now.   (Siemens and IBM already have them.)   Another, much less obvious but very doable approach, would be to hire minimally trained students holding the STEM visas!
 
If you haven't read [the KQED commentary] yet, [and more important, the submitted comments] you will find it quite illuminating in this regard.   And of course, the bills would insert some loop-holes into the legislation for the Indian bodyshops anyway.
 
Note BTW that a GOOD bill would not need to address the issue of the H-1B cap.   With proper solutions to the Type I, Type II and hand-cuffing issues, the cap would never be reached, not even close.
 
Norm
 
Note, BTW, that all this talk about subjective "qualifications" and ages and "prevailing wage" is dancing around the fringes.   Only a net reduction in influx -- in the numbers of student, guest-work, and LPR visas -- would effectively reduce the abuses, encourage more recruiting intensity, encourage relocation and training of US applicants, and allow the US STEM occupations and US economy to recover.   Only a bill which reduced legal and illegal immigration to manageable -- vettable, trackable -- levels would be a GOOD bill...jgo

2013-03-28
Anthony Watts
Michael Sivak at UMich: cold cities use more energy than warm cities
"Dr Sivak has calculated that climate control in the coldest large metropolitan area in the country -- Minneapolis -- is about [3.5 times as] energy demanding [as] the warmest large metropolitan area -- Miami.   Dr. Sivak calculated this difference in energy demand using 3 parameters: the number of heating or cooling degree days in each area; the efficiencies of heating and cooling appliances; and the efficiencies of power-generating plants...   Heating degree days (HDDs) and cooling degree days (CDDs) are climatological measures that are designed to reflect the demand for energy needed to heat or cool a building.   They are calculated by comparing the mean daily outdoor temperature with 18℃.   A day with a mean temperature of 10℃ would have 8 HDDs and no CDDs, as the temperature is 8℃ below 18℃.   Analogously, a day with a mean temperature of 23℃ would have 5 CDDs and no HDDs.   Based on a previous study, Dr Sivak showed that Minneapolis has 4376 heating degree days a year compared to 2423 cooling degree days in Miami."

2013-03-28
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
ordinary people, doing ordinary jobs
 
This post will concern [this Bloomberg article].
 
But first, a brief clarification on something I said yesterday, Stuart Anderson, a long-time advocate of H-1B expansion, had objected to the Grassley/Brown bill, which would eliminate a break-down by experience level in computing the legally-required wage, known as the prevailing wage.   In my posting, I explained why this action (eliminating the experience levels) should be taken.   But I also said that if Stuart thinks the experience levels should be retained, then we should require the 75th percentile within an experience level, to reflect the industry lobbyists' claim that the H-1Bs are hired because they are above-average, say in skill sets.   This would address what I call the Type I problem.
 
A couple of people pointed out to me that the so-called experience levels are not actually calculated on the basis of experience.   Instead, a complicated formula is used on wage distributions, which in the end is supposed to serve as an approximation to amount of experience.   So, in the end, the DoL comes up with a SINGLE WAGE NUMBER that defines a given experience level for a given occupation in a given region.   An example would be Stuart's $93K figure for Level II electrical engineers in Silicon Valley.
 
I had been aware of this, but the implication hadn't hit me: The 75th percentile I discussed would be the 75th percentile of a single number, i.e. the 75th percentile in a distribution with zero range!   So, for this to work, DoL would have to use real experience numbers, not indirect formulas.
 
Now, to the Bloomberg article at the above URL.   Nicely done, but there is an emperor-has-no-clothes aspect to it.   Its star witness, Ms. Martinez Mortola, "manages customer support" and has "a master's degree in engineering management".   Isn't something wrong with this picture?   Presumably Martinez Mortola is doing a fine job, but what is so special about her work and her degree?   As I often say, the vast majority of H-1Bs are ordinary people doing ordinary work.
 
There are many Americans who could do Martinez Mortola's job quite well.   Indeed, if her visa doesn't come through, her boss Garrett Johnson probably WILL hire an American.
 
Or maybe not.   A cynical view would be that the Americans who could do the job are not new graduates like Martinez Mortola, and thus would cost Johnson more money than he wants to pay.   In this scenario, he'd just call USC back and say he needs another new grad who has OPT status.   (Optional Practical Training, part of the F-1 student visa.)
 
I've often mentioned that although the job market for new CS graduates is currently good, the operative phrase is "new graduates"; people 10 or 15 years out of school are much less welcomed.   That's the dirty little secret, as Vivek Wadhwa has put it.
 
Consider the Intel job ad, titled "2013 Software College Grad," at LinkedIn:
 
"Job Description
 
By applying to this prescreen, you are expressing interest in potential College Graduate opportunities with Intel.   To qualify as a College Graduate, you must have graduated or will graduate within 18 months from today's date.   Intel invites people of all ages currently enrolled in an academic institution (or graduated within the last 18 months) to apply..."
 
Intel has had such a policy for years -- I once was shown an internal Intel document on it -- and it is common elsewhere.  
 
I've talked to many employers who quite sincerely believe they're not abusing the H-1B program.   But when I ask them, "Couldn't you find a U.S. citizen or permanent resident who could do the job well, but is not a new graduate?", they reply, "Oh, sure, but they would be too expensive."   I then pounce on them, saying, "Aha!   For you, H-1B is about cheap labor after all!"   Actually, I'm much more polite than that   :-)   but they get the point, and so should you.
 
As Vivek has pointed out, it is not fundamentally about skill sets, because even when an older applicant has an exact match of skill sets, the employer will turn to the younger applicant, who is much cheaper.
 
A few years ago, one employer wrote to me in an outrage over my writings on H-1B.   He insisted he could not fill a current opening, and attached a document with his complete applicant file to show it.   He then said, "Look at that first one on the list.   He has exactly what I want, but look how much money he expects!"
 
IOW, we don't have a shortage of STEM workers; we have a "shortage" of workers at the price employers would like to pay.   Peter Capelli of Wharton has pointed this out many times.
 
I've also talked to many H-1Bs who insist they are fairly paid.   But when I asked if they could get a higher salary if they had full freedom of movement in the market-place, say after they get their green cards, they immediately agree.   I then point out, "So you are under-paid after all."
 
Again, it's not just salary suppression that makes that "hand-cuffed" status of many foreign workers so attractive to employers.   The latter want workers who can't leave them in the lurch in the midst of urgent projects.   The employers don't have this leverage with American workers, hence the keen preference for hiring foreign workers.
 
Another interesting facet of the above Intel ad is this:
 
"BS-level candidates must possess permanent, unrestricted right to work in the United States without sponsorship from a company."
 
This is similar to the Texas Instruments testimony in a 2011 House hearing that I often cite.   TI said that they have plenty of American job applicants at the bachelor's degree level, but not at the advanced degree level.   That completely contradicts the standard industry lobbyist mantra that "American kids don't study engineering, they can't do math etc."   What it does say, as I've pointed out before, is that the wage premium for an advanced degree is too small to make graduate study financially worthwhile.   And the smallness of that wage premium is in turn due to the glut of foreign students, just as the 1989 NSF document forecast.
 
Norm
---30---

2013-03-28
Barry Rubin _PJ Media_
king Abdullah of Jordan warns Obummer against backing Muslim Brotherhood
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)

2013-03-28
Josh Flory _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
SAIC cutting $350M per year
"it plans to cut annual costs by $350M, including cuts to its administrative staff and a reduction of its facility footprint by 30%... The Post said SAIC has already trimmed some 800 indirect employees, a strategy that has had an impact in East Tennessee. SAIC in December said it would eliminate about 50 workers in Oak Ridge."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-29

2013-03-29
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
outrageous example
 
It turns out that there is more to the story -- worse, not better -- about SendHub's foreign worker that I mentioned earlier today, in http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/UnfilledJobs.txt
 
Recall that my posting was commenting on a Bloomberg article... Here is what I wrote:
 
***************
 
...the Bloomberg article...[is] nicely done, but there is an emperor-has-no-clothes aspect to it.   Its star witness, Ms. Martinez Mortola, "manages customer support" and has "a master's degree in engineering management".   Isn't something wrong with this picture?   Presumably Martinez Mortola is doing a fine job, but what is so special about her work and her degree?   As I often say, the vast majority of H-1Bs are ordinary people doing ordinary work.
 
There are many Americans who could do Martinez Mortola's job quite well.   Indeed, if her visa doesn't come through, her boss Garrett Johnson probably WILL hire an American.
 
Or maybe not.   A cynical view would be that the Americans who could do the job are not new graduates like Martinez Mortola, and thus would cost Johnson more money than he wants to pay.   In this scenario, he'd just call USC back and say he needs another new grad who has OPT status.   (Optional Practical Training, part of the F-1 student visa.)
 
***************
 
It does indeed seem that Martinez Mortola is on OPT status.   OPT is allowed for 12 months in general, and 29 months for STEM students (not for management degrees, apparently), Martinez Mortola's LinkedIn page says that she finished her USC degree in 2012.   If that was in June, her 12-month OPT will be ending this June, just like the article implies.
 
As you can see above, in my posting I emphasized that this case illustrates the fact that the vast majority of H-1Bs are ordinary people, doing ordinary work.   [This] link below shows an example of what Martinez Mortola does at SendHub (remember, her name is Cristina):
 
***************
 
Cristina - SendHub Support
 
Jan 21, 2013 06:42AM PST SendHub Agent
 
Hi!
 
Thank you for reaching out with questions - we'll be happy to help.
 
The Free plan includes 500 messages perm month.   Messages you send and receive will be discounted from your 500 available messages.
 
We hope this helps.   Please let us know if you have more questions, and thanks for checking out SendHub!
 
SendHub Support
 
***************
 
Are there really no Americans qualified to say, "The Free plan includes 500 messages per month.   Messages you send and receive will be discounted from your 500 available messages"?   That is absolutely ridiculous.
 
If you plug "Cristina SendHub" into Google, you'll get lots of similar hits, plus this one about her party skills:
 
(Too bad Rob Sanchez isn't writing about H-1B anymore; he'd love this one. :-) )
 
The reporter, who did a good job with the article other than missing the glaring incongruity, was obviously fed Martinez Mortola's case by one of the industry lobbyists.   Ironic that they picked such a poor example.
 
Meanwhile, it turns out that Martinez Mortola's boss, SendHub co-founder Garrett Johnson, is exceedingly well connected on Capitol Hill.   Before founding SendHub, he was an aide to senator Lugar and authored a bill on start-up visas.   He went straight from there to starting SendHub, and since that time has been widely quoted in the press on expansion of H-1B and other foreign worker programs.
 
Oddly, though, I see no Careers section on SendHub's web page.   This is from a rapidly-growing company that that is desperate to hire?   Johnson told KCBS on March 6 that 90% of SendHub's job applicants are "immigrants".   (He means hope-to-be immigrants.)   No surprise, if the company won't even advertise on its own web page, and merely relies on the foreign-student grape-vine to get the word out.
 
I don't mean to pick on Ms. Martinez Mortola.   But this situation is for-crying-out-loud outrageous.   Is there ANY member of congress, or president Obama for that matter, who believes that this type of job should be given to an H-1B instead of a U.S. citizen or permanent resident?   Mind you, I don't approve of giving most engineers or scientists H-1B visas either, but to me this case shows how corrupt the legislative process has become.
 
Norm
---30---

2013-03-29
John W. Goodwin ii & Danny Restivo _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
$36K statue stolen from cem., sold as scrap for $25.50 as Obummer economic depression continues

2013-03-29
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
an evening with historian James I. Robertson, part 1

2013-03-29
Joan Lowy _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_/_AP_
UAV sellers admit their products are used to violate privacy
"Law enforcement is expected to be one of the bigger initial markets for civilian drones...   In congress, representative Ed Markey, D-MA, co-chairman of the House's privacy caucus, has introduced a bill that prohibits the Federal Aviation Administration from issuing drone licenses unless the applicant provides a statement explaining who will operate the drone, where it will be flown, what kind of data will be collected, how the data will be used, whether the information will be sold to third parties and the period for which the information will be retained...   'The thought of government drones buzzing overhead and constantly monitoring the activities of law-abiding citizens runs contrary to the notion of what it means to live in a free society.', senator Charles Grassley, R-IA, said at a recent hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee...   [UAVs] can be equipped with high-powered cameras and listening devices, and infrared cameras that can see people in the dark.   'High-rise buildings, security fences or even the walls of a building are not barriers to increasingly common [UAV] technology.', Amie Stepanovich, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Council's surveillance project, told the senate panel."

2013-03-29
Gina Sewart _Chronicle of Higher Education_
in age of growing government, dead economy, academics mistakenly consider getting government grants the key to "entrepreneurship"
"Given reports that fewer recently minted life-sciences PhDs are landing full-time academic jobs while more are spending an increasing number of years as postdocs, it may be time to consider some alternatives.   One alternative is to create your own job.   If you are a graduate student or a post-doctoral fellow working on a project that has potential commercial value (i.e., it could result in a product that someone will buy), consider turning the project into your first job.   How? First, disclose your idea to your university's technology-transfer office.   The personnel there can help you determine whether your idea has merit, and whether it can be protected by patents, trademarks, or copyright.   If you are conducting your research at a university, the university probably has ownership rights; and if your idea is a good one, the university may file for intellectual-property protection on its own dime.   Fortunately for you, it is obligated by U.S. law (under the Bayh-Dole Act, aka the Patent and Trademark Law Amendments Act) to share the proceeds with inventors, who typically receive 25% to 35%.   You still need that first job, however, and other legislation can help.   Each federal agency with an extramural research budget exceeding $100M is required to spend 2.5% of that budget on the Small Business Innovation Research program.   The SBIR program finances high-risk research of potentially significant commercial value.   SBIR recipients must be U.S.-based, for-profit small businesses with fewer than 500 employees, including subsidiaries.   They must also be at least 51% owned and controlled by one or more people who are citizens of, or permanent resident aliens in, the United States.   11 federal agencies participate in the program.   Program solicitations can be found here; the SBIR Gateway also provides a handy searchable data-base for open solicitations...   Phase I SBIR awards range from about $75K to $150K and typically last for 6 to 12 months.   The average odds of winning [a grant] are 1 in 8...   SBIR awards allow a small business to earn profits (typically about 7% of the total award).   Phase II awards can reach $1M and last 1 to 2 years...   Some states offer small grants (about $3K) just for submitting an application—that’s enough to cover the cost of incorporation and corporate-tax-return preparation.   Other states, like Kentucky, match Phase I grants dollar for dollar."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-30

2013-03-30
Willis Eschenbach
pit-falls of data smoothing
"Steve offered me space on ClimateAudit as a guest author.   What follows below is one of those pieces.   A second thing I appreciate about Steve is that he pushed me repeatedly to get off of Excel and move to the computer language 'R'.   R is far and away the finest computer language I’ve ever learned, and I'm hardly a novice.   My first computer language was Algol in 1963.   Since then I’ve learned Fortran, LISP/LOGO, C, C++, several dialects of Basic including Visual Basic, Pascal, Hypertalk, Datacom, Assembly Language, VectorScript, and a couple of the Mathematica languages.   I could not have done a tenth of the work I've done using any other language except Mathematica, and the learning curve for Mathematica was so steep I got nosebleeds.   Plus R is free, friends, free, and it's cross-platform, and it has hosts and hosts of packages for all kinds of special purposes.   I can only pass on Steve's excellent advice, learn R, you won't regret it.   Let me digress quickly and give a quick example of just one the many reasons why R is superior."

2013-03-30
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
An evening with historian James I. Robertson, part 2
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

2013-03-31

2013-03-31
Anthony Watts
London Daily Mail takes on the Cosmic Camel Cor...er, uh, Committee on Climate Change (graph)

2013-03-31
_KGO abc San Francisco CA_/_AP_
tech firms increasing perks to recruit and retain
"Apple's ring-shaped, gleaming 'Spaceship Headquarters' will include a world class auditorium and an orchard for engineers to wander.   Google's new Bay View campus will feature walkways angled to force accidental encounters.   Facebook, while putting final touches on a Disney-inspired campus including a Main Street with a B-B-Q shack, sushi house and bike shop, is already planning an even larger, more exciting new campus.   More than ever before, Silicon Valley firms want their workers at work.   Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has gone so far as to ban working from home, and many more offer prodigious incentives for coming in to the office, such as free meals, massages and gyms...   walls you can draw on, ping pong tables, Lego stations, gaming arcades and free hair-cuts...   'When you look at how some of these companies operate, they're in effect, sweat shops...   They want 80, 90, 100 hours of work.   In order to even make that tolerable, of course you have to offer hair-cuts and food and places to sleep or else people would have to go home.', he said."

2013-03-31
Rick Moran _PJ Media_
David Stockman warns of extended economic depression: "Great Deformation, arising from a rogue central bank"

2013-03-31
Farah Stockman _Boston MA Globe_
H-1B visas usher in cheap replacements for US workers
 
Proposed Bills 13
 
 

 
Proposed Bills 2013

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