2013 June

3rd month of the 2nd quarter of the 24th year of the Bush-Clinton-Shrub-Obummer economic depression

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: 2022-09-18
 

  "ve hayah zah shelum ashur ki yebua be aretzenu ve ki yedrek be armenutinu ve ha qemenu aaliu shebaaah raaim ve shemenah nesiki adam (וְהָיָה זֶה, שָׁלוֹם; אַשּׁוּר כִּי-יָבוֹא בְאַרְצֵנוּ, וְכִי יִדְרֹךְ בְּאַרְמְנוֹתֵינוּ, וַהֲקֵמֹנוּ עָלָיו שִׁבְעָה רֹעִים, וּשְׁמֹנָה נְסִיכֵי אָדָם) and this shall be peace: When the Assyrian/Ashurian will come into our land, and when he will walk in our palaces, then will we raise up against him 7 shepherds, and 8 princes among men. (Micah/מִיכָה/mikah 5:4)
ve raau at aretz ashur be chereb ve at aretz nemred be fetechiah; ve ha zil me ashur ki yebua be aretzenu ve ki yederek be gedulenu (וְרָעוּ אֶת-אֶרֶץ אַשּׁוּר, בַּחֶרֶב, וְאֶת-אֶרֶץ נִמְרֹד, בִּפְתָחֶיהָ; וְהִצִּיל, מֵאַשּׁוּר--כִּי-יָבוֹא בְאַרְצֵנוּ, וְכִי יִדְרֹךְ בִּגְבוּלֵנוּ) and they will lay waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod with the keen-edged sword; and he will deliver us from the Assyrian/Ashurian when he comes into our land, and when he walks within our border (Micah/מִיכָה/mikah 5:5)
 

 
 
2013 June
UMTWRFS
            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            

 
  "His son Jack [Jack P. Morgan], in a favorite maxim, put the thought only a little differently: 'Do your work; be honest; keep your word; help when you can; be fair.'" --- John Brooks 1969 _Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street_ pg44  

 
 

 

 


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

2013 June

3rd month of the 2nd quarter of the 14th year of the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama economic depression


 
 

2013-06-01

2013-06-01
Anthony Watts
it has been 7.6 years since a category 3 or higher hurrican has landed in the USA

2013-06-01
Mike Shedlock _Town Hall_
Krugman's dishonesty and insanity
"The first problem I have with the article is Krugman knows damn well that no Austrian-minded economist on the planet supports what is commonly, and mistakenly (on purpose) referred to as 'austerity'.   Please take a look at what [many] Austrian economists want vs. what the nannycrats in Brussels delivered.   What Austrians Want: Lower taxes; Less regulation; End of Fractional Reserve Lending; Sound money; Smaller government; Work rule reform; Pension reform; Free trade.   What Brussels Delivered: Higher income taxes; Higher VAT; Proposed financial transaction taxes; More regulation; No free trade; Little if any work rule reform; Little if any pension reform; Reluctant (at best) cuts in government jobs; Reluctant (at best) cuts in government spending; No sound money; No end of fractional reserve lending; Bail-outs at [tax-victim] expense.   Krugman and others parade that mess as 'austerity'.   It's not austerity.   Rather, it's insanity on steroids, and every Austrian economist on the planet knew it would not work...   No, Paul, we do not fear Keynesianism or Monetarism will work, because theory and practice alike say neither will work.   If they did work, Japan would not be a basket case after 20 years of trying...   The average 7th grader knows that paying people to dig holes and then others to fill them back up again is economic idiocy, but the average Keynesian doesn't...   Krugman does not want to try Austrian solutions out of fear they might work.   Given the world has tried his methods and they have failed [repeatedly], what else should one believe?"

2013-06-01
_As the World Crumbles_
killing the USA economically
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "The word 'tragedy' literally means 'goat song', from the Greek 'tragos' and 'ode'." --- Mary Ellen Snodgrass 1988 _Cliffs Notes on Greek Classics_ pg81  

 
 

2013-06-02

1398-06-02: Henry Sinclair & company landed at Guysborough, Nova Scotia

2013-06-02
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
David Hunter Strother's _A Virginia Yankee in the Civil War_... warts and all

2013-06-02
Paul Homewood
this year had coldest Spring in England since 1891, 31st coldest since 1659

2013-06-02
Roger Kimball _PJ Media_
Obummer regime scandals get worse
Charles C. Johnson: Daily Caller: Lois Lerner fast-tracked approval of Obummer foundation

2013-06-02
Timothy P. Carney _Washington DC Examiner_
congress-critters subsidize businesses, then work for them

2013-06-02
Joe Miller/Elizabeth Williamson
as average Americans lose 55% of wealth, the DC-connected enter gilded age
i 4 u
Wall Street Journal
WSJ: Washington DC manor

2013-06-02
R.G. Hicks _Re-Innovating America_
STEM execs try to say the world's best STEM pros, by any measure (to paraphrase Vivek Wadhwa) aren't as good as cheap, young, low-skilled, pliant foreign labor with flexible ethics
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "Adobe, which makes the software that produces .pdf files, extimates that 50% of software sold under its name is pirated.   And lest the 90%+ piracy rates in China, VietNam, and Ukraine and 80%+ in Russia, Indonesia, and Zimbabwe leave the impression that the problem is confined to 'over there', it's worth noting that about 25% of 'business software' in the [United States of America] is unlicensed, and the same is true for up to 50% of Spain's." --- Moises Naim 2005 _Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and CopyCats Are Hijacking the Global Economy_ pp122 & 299 note122-123 (citing "Piracy Losses More Than Double" 2004-07-08 _NYTimes_ "About 36% of software installations worldwide are of pirated copies.   VietNam and China had the highest rates, with pirated versions accounting for 92% of all computer software installed in each country.   Next were Ukraine, with 91%; Indonesia, at 88%; an Zimbabwe and Russia, with 87% each.   By region, about 53% of software applications on computers in the Asia/Pacific region were pirated in 2003, compared with 70% in Eastern Europe, 63% in Latin America, 55% in the Middle East, 36% in Western Europe and 23% in North America.")  

 
 

2013-06-03

2013-06-03
_abc Univision_
senator Jeff Sessions vows to try to block immigration law perversion, support immigration reform

2013-06-03
_KTAR_
construction of US-Mexico port stalled at Tornillo-Guadalupe border bridge in Tornillo, Texas SE of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez
"By June, this was supposed to be the site of a massive new customs-and-immigration facility that would provide a fourth international border crossing to handle U.S.-bound commercial traffic from Ciudad Juarez, one of North America's biggest manufacturing hubs...   But nearly 2 years after a ceremonial ground-breaking, not a shovel of dirt has been moved south of the border.   The Mexican government has not allocated any money for its share of the work, so the bridge building is stalled -- with no time-table for completion...   'To me, it does not make any sense.', said Manuel Sotelo, truck company owner and president of the Ciudad Juarez freight truck association.   'It's one of those projects made by someone at a desk in Washington.'   Truckers hauling cargo from Ciudad Juarez say using the bridge would require them to make an hour-long drive east to the new crossing then spend another hour traveling back to cargo terminals in El Paso, Texas, to unload.   So far, the border community of Tornillo has secured no agreements with industry.   For now, it offers little but fields of cotton and alfalfa.   The scene is similar across the river in the tiny town of Guadalupe, Mexico.   Still, local officials hope that by building the crossing first, commercial traffic will come later.   They cite the success at the Santa Teresa port of entry, which was built 20 years ago in New Mexico in a similarly remote area.   About 15 years after the crossing opened, a huge industrial park that houses manufacturing giant Foxconn was built a few hundred yards from the inspection stations.   It has since attracted more businesses...   Once complete, the bridge will serve the same function as the 5 other border crossings in the Ciudad Juarez area, which currently process more than 10M cars, 700K trucks and 6M pedestrians every year." [It looks about the same distance (about 30-35 miles) from Las Cruces, NM to El Paso as from El Paso to Tornillo, along I-10 or Texas route 20.]

2013-06-03
Andy Sher _Chattanooga TN Times Free Press_
pressure mounting on congress-critters over immigration bill
Philip Elliott: Washington DC Times
Twin Cities

2013-06-03
David M. Drucker _Washington DC Examiner_
S744 lacks 60 votes to avoid filibuster
"garnering the necessary GOP votes would require amending the legislation to strengthen its border security components.   Additionally, there are senators on both sides of the aisle who don't support the current measure because of provisions other than border security who also must be appeased...   Republicans on the fence include senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, of Tennessee; Kelly Ayotte, of New Hampshire; Richard Burr, of North Carolina; Dan Coats, of Indiana; Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, of Idaho; Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, of Georgia; Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee, of Utah; Dean Heller, of Nevada; John Hoeven, of North Dakota; Mike Johanns, of Nebraska; Ron Johnson, of Wisconsin; Mark Kirk of Illinois; Rand Paul of Kentucky; Rob Portman, of Ohio; and Pat Toomey, of Pennsylvania."

2013-06-03
Angela Colley _MainStreet_
Why modern appliances don't last
Money Talks
"Here are some disturbing statistics from Consumer Reports.   In 3 to 4 years, here are the odds of an appliance breaking down: Side-by-side fridge with an ice maker - 36%.   Dishwasher - 20%.   Washing machine (front load) - 25%.   Buy one of those appliances and you have about a 1-in-4 chance of calling a repairman in the next few years...   As (MIT lecturer Daniel Braunstein) tells it, many consumer-product companies have moved their manufacturing off-shore, delegating design and engineering to contractors, which can create a conflict of interest.   A contractor, Braunstein says, might try to lure corporate customers by keeping the cost of its design and engineering services low.   'The result becomes focused on the factory's bottom line instead of the interests of the consumer.', he explains.   Trimming costs can mean taking short-cuts [and specifying low-quality materials] that negatively impact the appliance's quality...   According to reference site Homewyse, the average cost to repair an appliance ranges from $254 to $275."

2013-06-03
William Hunt
an interesting issue with ice core data

2013-06-03
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
more on staple-a-green-card
 
Carolyn Lochhead has a nice follow-up to her excellent piece of a couple of weeks ago.
 
So far these are the only 2 reports I know of that have focused on the truly disastrous "staple a green card" aspect of the senate bill [S744].   It just doesn't seem to be on people's radar.   Even the AFL-CIO op-ed criticizing the "high-skilled" parts of the bill [actually, no parts of the bill address the highly-skilled...jgo] made no mention of it.
 
It's interesting that even the analyst at the very pro-immigration MPI quoted in today's Lochhead article was surprised to see how broad the "staple" provision is, WRT both field and quality.   The zoology student who just barely graduated for his master's degree at a very ordinary state college qualified for the automatic green card just as much as the PhD in physics from MIT.
 
One minor error in the article: It says that the students don't need a job offer to qualify.   They do, but that is no restriction at all; any job in a "related field", say clerk at Radio Shack or junior high school STEM teacher, would count.   Then a few months later, green card in hand, they can go look for a job really in their field.
 
Norm
---30---

2013-06-03
Katrine Dermody _Global Post_
Germany officially drops longest word: Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz
"However, in perhaps what can be qualified as a minor win for the diction-impaired, Germany's longest word -- Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz [Rind fleisch etikettierungs über wachungs auf gaben über tragungs gesetz] -- a 63-letter long term that refers to the 'law for the delegation of monitoring beef labeling' has been officially removed from Germany's national lexicon.   GlobalPost asked a native speaker, Carla Westerheide, how to pronounce what used to be the longest word in the German language: Listen to 'How to say Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz' on Audioboo.   The word that...was originally introduced by the Mecklenburg Western-Pomeranian state government in 1999 to organize the testing of beef for mad cow disease, or BSE [bovine spongiform encephalitis].   However, now that the European Union has put the kibosh on the procedure, the need for the 6-paragraph law, and consequently the 63-letter word, no longer exists...   With the 63-letter top dog now knocked out of the top spot, the longest German word in everyday use is a term with a modest 39 letters -- Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften [Rechts schutz versicherungs gessell-schaften] -- which means 'insurance companies providing legal protection'."

2013-06-03
Neil Munro _Daily Caller_
leftists, unions, and right-wingers decry S744's negative impact on jobs

2013-06-03 (5773 Sivan 24)
Mark Trumbull _Jewish World Review_
have degree, driving cab: nearly half of college grands who have landed jobs are over-qualified
"Some 48% of the degree holders, to be precise, are in positions that the US Labor Department classifies as requiring less than a 4-year college education [which doesn't meant that a grade-school or high-school student couldn't do the jobs DoL classifies as 'requirig' a 4-year university degree perfectly well]...   'In the 3 occupations retail sales person, cashier, and waiters and waitresses there are more than 1.7M college graduates employed.', says the study by researchers Richard Vedder, Christopher Denhart, and Jonathan Robe.   Today, 15% of US taxi drivers have a college degree, up from less than 1% in 1970...   The jobless rate is currently 3.9% for workers with a college degree or higher, versus 8% for high school grads and 11.7% for people without a high school diploma...   If prosperity depends on education, it will also depend on creating jobs to make use of [that education].   Citing forecasts from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the CCAP study says the US will add about 19M college degree holders during the decade that ends in 2020, while the number of jobs requiring a bachelor's degree is expected to grow by only about 7M.   The 'over-qualified worker' is much more prevalent today than in 1970.   The share of retail clerks who had college degrees back then was less than 5%, and has risen more than 4-fold since then.   The economic value of college varies a lot by major.   The average mid-career salary for an electrical-engineering grad is currently about twice that of a person holding a degree in music [even though EE salaries have been lagging inflation for over a decade]...   An employer may not [actually need] a degree holder for a given job, but can use a degree as a 'screening device' to narrow the pool of job applicants."

2013-06-03 (5773 Sivan 24)
Mark Steyn _Jewish World Review_
the process is the punishment
"although the Commissioner of the IRS, Douglas Shulman, visited Obama's White House no fewer than 157 times, which is 156 times more than his predecessor, Mark Everson, ever visited the White House, we know that this was for legitimate Easter egg rolls, as he testified to Congress, and meetings to discuss [ObummerDoesn'tCare].   The Easter Bunny, one should note, visits the White House 2 to 4 times as often as the average IRS commissioner did before Mr. Shulman came along.   But you can't make a health care omelet without breaking Easter eggs [or breaking a few arms, apparently]: It is one of the many distinctive features of Obama-style 'health' 'care' 'reform' that, while it has not led to the hiring of a single additional doctor, nurse or hospital janitor, it did require the biggest expansion of the IRS since the Second World War.   So, when he wasn't rolling Easter eggs and advising the moppets on whether they needed to declare the luxury Belgian white chocolate balls with praline filling, he was participating in vital meetings on how many extra SWAT teams he was going to need to enforce the new colonoscopy non-compliance penalty."

2013-06-03 (5773 Sivan 24)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
abstract immigrants
Tennessean
"A hundred years ago, the immigration controversies of that era were discussed in the context of innumerable facts about particular immigrant groups.   Many of those facts were published in a huge, multi-volume 1911 study by a commission headed by senator William P. Dillingham.   That and other studies of the time presented hard data on such things as which groups' children were doing well in school and which were not; which groups had high crime rates or high rates of alcoholism, and which groups were over-represented among people living on the dole.   Such data and such differences still exist today.   Immigrants from some countries are seldom on welfare but immigrants from other countries often are.   Immigrants from some countries are typically people with high levels of education and skills, while immigrants from other countries seldom have much schooling or skills...   Too much of our current immigration controversy is conducted in terms of abstract ideals, such as 'We are a nation of immigrants.'   Of course we are a nation of immigrants [or, more specifically, descendants of immigrants].   But we are also a nation of people who wear shoes.   Does it follow that we should admit anybody who wears shoes?...   far from having a wall built around it, the welfare state is expanding in all directions by leaps and bounds...   Among other facts of life utterly ignored by many advocates of de facto amnesty is that the free international movement of people is different from free international trade in goods.   Buying cars or cameras from other countries is not the same as admitting people from those countries or any other countries.   Unlike inanimate objects, people have cultures and not all cultures are compatible with the culture in this country that has produced such benefits for the American people for so long.   Not only the [United States of America], but the Western world in general, has been discovering the hard way that admitting people with incompatible cultures is an irreversible decision with incalculable consequences.   If we do not see that after recent terrorist attacks on the streets of Boston and London, when will we see it?   'Comprehensive immigration reform' [apparently] means doing everything all together in a rush, without time to look before we leap, and basing ourselves on abstract notions about abstract people."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "diarist Robert Honyman. In the Hanover county neighborhood close to where Honyman was living, a number of gentry who had estates in the Tidewater had set up a small community near Ground Squirrel Bridge, located roughly 20 miles NW of Richmond and right on the main road of the British invasion force.   Cornwallis set up temporary head-quarters at one of the homes, known as 'The Retreat' and owned by Ann Cary, the widow of Virginia's former colonial treasurer, Robert Carter Nicholas.   Having hidden her plates and jewels in the chimney, [Ann Cary] greeted Cornwallis with trepidation.   Cornwallis was said to have 'demeaned himself with courtly consideration' of her, and he or his aides convinced a child at the home to reveal where the valuables were hidden.   The British troops pulled down the fences, seized the cattle, hogs, sheep, and chickens for their meals and left 'pieces of flesh all in a putrefying state scattered over the plantation'...   The attack on the Nicholas home would later be notable for another reason: [Ann Cary's son, George Nicholas] would play a key role in calling for an investigation into whether [Thomas Jefferson] was responsible for allowing the British to invade Virginia so easily." --- Michael Kranish 2010 _Flight from Monticello_ pg274  

 
 

2013-06-04

1989-06-04: Red Chinese government thugs attacked protesters at Tiananmen Square

2013-06-04
Anton Wahlman _TheStreet_
what both sides really mean by "immigration reform"

2013-06-04
William Spriggs _Louisiana Weekly_
black students flock to STEM fields, yet business execs push for more cheap, young, pliant, low-skilled foreign guest-workers with flexible ethics
"Morehouse... Bowie State University... are both historically Black colleges-known as HBCUs-and they graduate a disproportionate share of the nation's Black science, technical, engineering and math majors-the very majors everyone points to as the skills America will need to succeed.   And, it turns out, HBCUs are important because those fields are the back-bone of the new Black middle class.   More Blacks work in computer-related occupations than are employed as elementary and middle school teachers or postal workers.   And, like those students at Morehouse and Bowie State, Black college students are more likely to choose computer science as a major than white students.   In part because of the high share of Blacks who major in computer science and because of the large number of Black college students, there are more baccalaureate degrees awarded to African-Americans than to Asian Americans in computer science.   Now, a great challenge lies ahead.   Having found a path to the middle class through education and training, business interests are pushing hard in Congress to import temporary workers to do computer-based jobs.   This while there are still 20K-plus fewer Blacks employed as computer programmers and systems analysts since their employment peaked in 2008.   But, while those workers continue to search to get back to the high-tech jobs they trained for, we have seen businesses increase requests for H-1B visas (visas for high-tech workers).   And now the senate Judiciary committee adopted ludicrous amendments, introduced by senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) in the immigration bill, that refuse to give America's workers a first shot at these jobs.   These amendments would even allow businesses to fire American workers and replace them with temporary workers...   William Spriggs serves as chief economist to the AFL-CIO and is a professor in, and former chair of the Department of Economics at Howard University.   Bill is also former assistant secretary for the Office of Policy at the United States Department of Labor."

2013-06-04
Laura Hancock _Casper WY Star-Tribune_
backers of immigration reform play ads against S744 in Wyoming
"'This bill is amnesty first.', said former Republican presidential candidate and Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo, who reads the ad airing on two AM radio stations in Wyoming.   'It guarantees work permits for 11M illegal aliens now but only promises enforcement and border security later [... maybe].'"

2013-06-04
Ronald D. Voisin
and engineer's take on major climate change

2013-06-04
Anthony Watts
AP reports that "Richard Windsor" is wide-spread government scam to get around FOIA, fend off citizenry's messages
"It seems that the Associated press has taken notice of what CEI's Chris Horner first reported (here at WUWT and elsewhere) about the EPA's secret e-mail alias of 'Richard Windsor' and has found the same sort of off-the-books e-mails to be common in other cabinet political appointees.   Thanks to Chris for his hard work leading to the awakening of the MSM to this issue. --- Anthony"

2013-06-04
Anthony Watts
Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer satellite image of "Powerhouse" fire in CA
"Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined in red."

2013-06-04
Bob Tisdale
examining global temperatures over time

2013-06-04
Barry Rubin _PJ Media_
Obummer's out-reach efforts to Islamic terrorist organizations
"The majority of these groups and individuals promoted by the [Obummer regime] have been radical Islamists, particularly Muslim Brotherhood cadre, and more than occasionally were people involved in terrorist activity.   Actual moderate Muslims have been neglected and isolated by this project, which has helped the radicals, Islamists, and pro-terrorists gain hegemony in the Muslim community in America."
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)

2013-06-04
Karen Lugo _PJ Media_
Obummer regime's attacks on SOME free speech
"Where 'We the People' are sovereign, the press has a responsibility to investigate government, and the people have a duty to know the issues and speak their minds.   The Founders did not just see these roles as opportunities, but knew that government by popular will could only succeed if the levers of accountability were maintained and operated by vigilant citizens.   The entire concept of personal sovereignty depends upon robust and vigorous debate on the issues that impact life and liberty, and therefore often inspire the most passion.   When government usurps the authority of the people or the press to speak, a commensurate measure of individual autonomy will be compromised.   On the heels of news that the Department of Justice has been surveilling the press -- with a level of animus demonstrated against James Rosen that this DoJ is not known for applying to dangerous terror suspects -- comes an announcement that federal officials in Tennessee will suggest limits on public speech considered violative of Muslim civil rights.   Bill Killian, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, and Kenneth Moore, special agent in charge of the FBI's Knoxville Division, will be featured speakers at an event billed as 'Public Disclosure in a Diverse Society'.   The event is sponsored by the American Muslim Advisory Council of Tennessee.   This meeting has been billed as a forum where 'Killian and Moore will provide input on how civil rights can be violated by those who post inflammatory documents targeted at Muslims on social media'."

2013-06-04
_Times of India_
Meghalaya U sold over 4K PhDs for 200K to 500K rupees
"The Meghalaya police recently busted a big racket of awarding fake degrees to students from all over India, with a majority of these degrees believed to have been distributed inMaharashtra.   The Shillong-based CMJ University, which is under the scanner for awarding thousands of bogus degrees within a month of the student registering over the last three years, has many beneficiaries from Nagpur as well.   Solapur University Students Association president Satish Rajmane, who blew the lid off this huge bogus degrees racket, told TOI that the CMJ has so far awarded over 4K doctoral degrees -- majority of them in Maharashtra...   [The amount paid determined how quickly the 'degree' was granted.]   Sometimes it was as [quickly] as a month!...   The police have arrested its registrar Mrinal Kanti Deb and other officials for cheating and forgery, but failed to trace its chancellor Chandra Mohan Jha so far.   'I had filed an RTI against lecturers from Solapur University as they completely lacked knowledge about their subjects.   Moreover, their [theses] were not up-loaded on the UGC web-site which is mandatory.', Rajmane claimed.   After his complaint, the governor received about 270 similar complaints from various parts of the country.   The CMJ University was set up in 2009, and is believed to have awarded over 430 PhD degrees in last academic year while registering nearly 490 candidates for this academic year.   [The governor is, ex officio, a member of the supervisory board of all uiversities in the province.]"

2013-06-04
"Maggie" _Before It's News_
S744, House 8 Gangsters bills weak on border security... but they ignore suggestions

2013-06-04
Carol Piatt Liebau _Town Hall_
Obummer campaign manager attended White House meetings with IRS commissioner
"Cutter insists that Shulman was simply meeting about [imposition of ObummerDoesn'tCare]..."

2013-06-04
_USA Today_/_Gannett_
US citizen job applicants passed over in preference to guest-workers on E-3, F, H-1B, J, L visas
"To fill specialized jobs, technology companies sponsor H-1B visas for [low-skilled] foreign workers...   'The real truth is that much of the so-called STEM shortage is due to the policies put in place and practiced by American business.   College graduates with current training are favored over experienced employees with higher salary and benefit expectations.   Formerly long-term positions are now really temporary jobs subject to short-term cycles and needs of the business.   The bottom line here is that there are plenty of [able, willing and] qualified American workers.' -- Steve Rody..."

2013-06-04
Tom McGhee _Denver CO Post_
human trafficking trial: nurses lured to USA
"The two hatched a plot to dupe foreign nurses into coming here by claiming Adam University, a school in name only, needed nursing instructor/supervisors, Gibson said.   Unlike visas for other businesses, which are limited in number, there is no cap on the number granted to institutes of higher education.   They advertised on the Internet, showing prospects pictures of the fictional university that were actually of Teikyo Loretto.   Women who believed they would earn $72K a year at the school paid $6,500 for the visas and arrived to find there was no university.   Instead, Kalu sent them to apply for work as nurses at long-term care facilities, Gibson said.   Instead of paying the nurses, the facilities paid Kalu for the hours worked, Gibson said.   Documents he submitted to the government didn't indicate that he and Langerman were taking a large portion of their wages, which were much lower than the amounts promised.   When the scheme began attracting government attention, they revamped the payment system.   The nurses were paid directly by the facilities but were required to pay Kalu $1,200 a month or he would send a letter to DHS and they would lose their visas, Gibson said."

2013-06-04
Michael Price _AAAS Science Careers_
NIH aims to improve grant application writing of new scientists
"Applicants provide a CV and indicate which study sections they feel they are interested in.   NIH officials judge the applicants based on their research records and their likely familiarity with the field.   [Totally bogus criteria, IMO...jgo]   Despite the program's name, the point isn't so much to recruit researchers who are decidedly early in their career; rather, it's more a way of expanding NIH's universe of reviewers and skilled applicants.   'We're looking for someone who's at a place in their career where they're really ready to sit down and write competitive NIH grant applications.', Basco says.   In the 2 years it has existed, the program has brought in about 2000 new reviewers, and about 700 of those have already served at study-section meetings.   Once accepted, ECRs receive reviewer training via online tutorials and one-on-one meetings, in person or on conference calls.   Scientific review officers for NIH's roughly 225 study sections select ECRs for their committees, which meet 3 times each year...   'I got to understand more about what the 1-through-9 scores actually mean.' [said one ECR participant]."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "Within just a few years of Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo, a man who had grown up amid the gloom of the Frankfurt ghetto had emerged as a financial Bonaparte: the master of the bond market, and some ventured to suggest, the master of European politics as well...   Nathan Mayer Rothschild, founder of the London branch of what was, for most of the 19th century, the biggest bank in the world.   It was the bond market that made the Rothschild family rich -- rich enough to build 41 stately homes all over Europe, among them Waddesdon manor in BuckinghamShire, which has been restored in all its gilded glory by the 4th lord Rothschild, Nathan's 3*great-grand-son." --- Niall Ferguson 2008, 2009 _The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World_ pg79  

 
 

2013-06-05

2013-06-05
Ted Rall _Boise ID Weekly_
treasonous immigration law perversion in S744
"Unemployment is sky-high.   Sustained long-term unemployment is at record levels.   So why the hell are we importing foreign workers?...   Law-makers want foreign nationals to fill America's high-paying tech jobs.   While [millions of able and willing] Americans are out of work.   For at least 20 years, the U.S. economy has been replacing good manufacturing jobs with bad service jobs.   Salaries have fallen.   Which has depressed demand.   As things stand, there's one bright spot: the potential for the IT sector to lift us out of the rut.   To paraphrase George Orwell's 1984: If there is hope for America's unemployed, it lies with tech.   Make that: 'lied'.   Because America's tech companies are hell-bent on hiring just about anyone who is not an American citizen.   Economists say jobs aren't a zero-sum game.   But unemployment would certainly be lower if employers were forced to hire Americans who were qualified, or train them.   But they're not.   Companies 'want people to hit the ground running', Wharton management professor Peter Cappelli, author of _Why Good People Can't Get Jobs_, told USA Today, 'They don't want to train anybody.'   What bosses want is 'flexible' indentured labor.   Foreign workers fit the bill perfectly.   If foreigners get fired, they lose their visas and have to go back home.   How likely are they to ask for a raise, much less gripe about long hours or un-paid over-time? And so, even as born-in-the-USA Americans languish without jobs, sinking into poverty, Big Tech is passing them over...   'High-tech [executives] objected' to 'new protections designed to ensure American workers get the first shot at jobs'.   Thanks to the Gap-shirt-wearing billionaires of Silicon Valley, those common-sense protections have been cut out of the bill.   Nevertheless, the number of indentured foreign workers likely to be authorized by the new law has shot up to at least 300K annually.   Which firms are spending big bucks to screw American tech workers? Unbeknown to most Internet users, [privacy violating] FB is the tip of the spear [in this round] of an anti-American worker, multi-million-dollar lobbying juggernaut.   [Zuckerberg and his] insanely rich corporate allies claim they need foreigners because they can't find enough qualified U.S. citizens.   The tech giants are lying.   There are plenty of unemployed IT workers right here.   Officially, tech sector unemployment is a relatively low 3.7%.   Millions of tech-savvy Americans are out there looking for jobs.   Yet big tech doesn't want them.   'If anything, we have too many high-tech workers: More than 9M people have degrees in a science, technology, engineering or math [STEM] field [9.4M with a STEM major, and another 3M with a STEM minor], but only about 3M have a job in one.', EPI Vice President Ross Eisenbrey wrote in The New York Times.   'That's largely because pay levels don't reward their skills.   Salaries in computer- and math-related fields for workers with a college degree rose only 4.5% between 2000 and 2011.   If these skills are so valuable and in such short supply, salaries should at least keep pace with the tech companies' profits, which have exploded.'   On average, the typical unemployed U.S. tech worker is better trained than the foreign workers who are taking their jobs...   Southern Valley is one of numerous farm operations being sued by 'Americans, mostly black, who live near the farms and say they want the field work but cannot get it because it is going to Mexicans.   They contend that they are illegally discouraged from applying for work and treated shabbily by farmers who prefer the foreigners for their malleability.', reports The Times...   [Farm owners and managers] were recently forced to concede that their legally required efforts to recruit Americans for field work 'had not been made or had been intentionally not serious'."

2013-06-05
Terry Jeffrey _Town Hall_
senator Schumer: put illegal aliens who forged documents on fast path to citizenship... and other abominations of S744

2013-06-05
Ed Tibbetts _Quad-City IL Times_/_Cedar Rapids IA Gazette_
criticism of S744 ramping up

2013-06-05
Erica Werner _Town Hall_/_AP_
as opposition to S744 increases, Rubio is trying to round up support for immigration perversion bill
Fox/AP
Byron York: Washington DC Examiner
Minneapolis MN StarTribune/AP
News for Jacksonville FL/AP

2013-06-05
Maxim Lott _Fox_
critics say border apprehensions wildly exaggerated in formula behind S744
"no matter how hard border patrol officers try to find physical evidence of successful illegal crossings, they can't find everything.   'We know that this method of calculation understates the number of successful crossings, because you're excluding anyone you don't have physical evidence for.', Whitley said.   Using that method, Department of Homeland Security data already indicate a border security effectiveness rate of 84% -- close to the 90% target...   'We can't go along with a bill that says -- Hey, we have a 90% requirement for security -- when there is no way to verify whether or not the 90% is accurate.'...   Other methods of estimating border crossings show a much lower apprehension rate.   'Survey data, recidivism data, and press reports about the Vader radar system all put it in the 50% range.', Whitley said, referring to the DHS's new airborne Vader radar system which, during a test last winter in the Sonora Desert, indicated that the Border Patrol caught 1,874 people but missed 1,962 who successfully crossed...   But groups that support more immigration said that border enforcement should not be a priority in the first place...   'It doesn't make sense if you're allowing the Department of Homeland Security to judge themselves.', a GOP Senate staffer told FoxNews.com.   'They can game the system, game the statistics, and then end up meeting the requirements.'...   As of now, the 90% goal remains only that, a goal -- and the path to citizenship provisions for illegal aliens would be implemented even if the 90% target were not met...   'Let's secure the border.   And then we can get a deal worked out very, very quickly after that.   But not until the border is secure.'"

2013-06-05
Stephen Dinan _Washington DC Times_
S744 could double cheap, young, pliant foreign guest-workers with flexible ethics
CIS
"The CIS study says that when fully implemented, the Senate bill could mean 620,833 more temporary workers in the U.S.A. than right now.   In 2012 there were nearly 700K temporary workers in the country.   'Most of these temporary worker increases are just gratuitous and have no economic justification whatsoever.', said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for CIS, which pushes for stricter limits to immigration...   CIS says the biggest boosts would come from the 170K [low-skilled] workers that would be let in under the H-1B program and another 155K that would be allowed in under free trade agreements the U.S.A. has signed."

2013-06-05
Lisa Mascaro _Los Angeles CA Times_
Cornyn proposes "tougher" [but still extremely feeble] plan for border security
Burgess Everett: Politico
"Cornyn's measure would add an additional $1G a year for six years to the job of securing the border with Mexico beyond the $4.5G already in the bill for drones and other safety measures.   His measure would also double the number of new Border Patrol and Customs officers to 10K...   Cornyn also wants an exit visa system installed at all airports where customs officers are stationed -- not just the 30 busiest, as the bill currently provides [-- but still not all airports and shipping ports and landports (border crossing facilities)].   The exit visa system is designed to track [a fraction of] those who stay once their visas have expired."

2013-06-05
_WCAX_
Bernie Sanders: S744 will hurt American blue-collar and high-tech professionals
"But Sanders says a move to increase temporary visas for blue collar and high-tech foreign workers will hurt Americans.   'What we want to make certain is that at a time when this country continues to struggle economically, when millions of people are working longer hours for lower wages, when minority unemployment is just extraordinarily high, we do not want to take any action that lowers wages or increases unemployment for American workers.', senator Sanders said."

2013-06-05
Guy Benson _Town Hall_
Kathleen Sebelius: yes, I unethically urged companies regulated by me to "donate" to ObummerDoesn'tCare propaganda campaign efforts

2013-06-05
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
Allen West in 2016?

2013-06-05
John Stossel _Town Hall_
austerity myth
"European governments didn't cut!...   Some European countries tried to reduce deficits by raising taxes.   England slapped a 25% tax increase on the wealthy, but it didn't bring in the revenues hoped for.   Rich people move their assets elsewhere, or just stop working as much.   If politicians honestly want to boost their nation's economies, they should look to what happened in countries that bounced back from economic slumps.   Iceland was hit by bank collapses -- but government ignored street protests and cut real spending.   Iceland's budget deficit fell from 13% of GDP to 3%.   Iceland's economy is now growing.   Canada slashed spending 20 years ago and now out-ranks the U.S.A. on many economic indicators...   Consider this family budget: Annual Income -- $24,500; Annual Spending -- $35,370; New Credit Card Debt -- $10,870; Existing Debt ---- $167,600.   When I show that to people, they laugh and say the family is 'irresponsible'.   They are dismayed when I point out that those are really America's budget numbers, with 8 zeros removed: Revenue -- $2.45T; Spending -- $3.537T; Deficit -- $1.087T; Debt ---- $16.76T.   Then people say: 'That's terrible! We have to balance the budget.'   [Congress-critters won't even reduce the rate of increase in federal government spending to 2% per year.]...   If [other] politicians don't know what to cut, they should just accept senator Rand Paul's proposed budget.   Among other things, he would cut [not eliminate, merely reduce spending by/for] 4 Cabinet-level agencies: Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Energy and Education.   Why not? We don't need a Commerce Department.   Commerce just...happens.   Education is funded by the states.   The Energy Department gives money to politicians' cronies.   I'd go further than Paul.   Why do we need an Agriculture Department? Agriculture is done by farmers, not bureaucrats.   Why do we need a Labor Department? And so on.   All those things are better handled by a free market.   I wish we had a real free market in America."

2013-06-05
Brent Bozell _Town Hall_
Why isn't Holder going after Obummer regime's leakers of natioal security info?

2013-06-05
Jeffy Jacoby _Town Hall_
DC region booms... on other people's money

2013-06-05
Bob Barr _Town Hall_
the slow and dubious unraveling of Obummer's attorney general Eric Holder

2013-06-05
Paul Homewood
open letter to UK Secretary of State for Energy re: scientific method

2013-06-05
Anthony Watts
GA State U: fewer suspended particulates correlate with more rain in Atlanta area
Science Direct

2013-06-05
Glenn Greenwald _Manchester Guardian_
NSA has been collecting, analyzing phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily: Top secret court order requiring Verizon to hand over all call data shows scale of domestic surveillance under Obama
"The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an 'ongoing, daily basis' to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the USA and between the USA and other countries. The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk -- regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrong-doing. The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified 3-month period ending on July 19. Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered."

2013-06-05
Jason B. Jones _Chronicle of Higher Education_
On Fat-Shaming: It isn't just a thing done on Twitter by "evolutionary psychologists"

2013-06-05
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
interesting terms in southern unionist claims records

2013-06-05
Alex Neely _Demotix_
Atlanta groups rally for immigration reform, against S744, outside Saxby Chambliss office

2013-06-05 (5773 Sivan 26)
Mark Guarino _Jewish World Review_
senator Mark Kirk wants entire 18K-member gang arrested
"the Gangster Disciples, the prevailing criminal outfit operating on Chicago streets.   Senator Kirk said he wants to see all 18K members of the Gangster Disciples prosecuted in federal court and said he believes 'it's completely within the capability of the United States government to crush a major urban gang'.   He said the effort will require $30M in federal funding but is necessary to stop the killing of innocent bystanders like Hadiya Pendleton, the 15-year-old Chicago girl who was killed by Gangster Disciples in January a week after after performing in a marching band at president Obama's inauguration...   Estimates vary for how big the Gangster Disciples are in Chicago.   The largest estimate is 30,000, according to the Chicago Crime Commission.   But the gang, which dates to the 1960s, was largely dismantled in 1997 when federal prosecutors jailed more than 40 leaders in a case involving extortion and drug trafficking.   Before that, the organization included a musical promotion company, a political-action committee, and an interstate drug and gun distribution network.   Today, the Gangster Disciples are no longer single criminal enterprise but are represented through smaller, neighborhood factions that are largely leaderless and disconnected from one another."

2013-06-05 (5773 Sivan 26)
Kristen Chick _Jewish World Review_
power of Muslim Brotherhood-backed pres. Morsi expanding
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)

2013-06-05 (5773 Sivan 26)
Kristen Chick _Jewish World Review_
Egypt court sentences 32 pro-democracy workers to prison
"There are 15 Americans among the 27 people sentenced in absentia to 5 years in prison.   The only American who remained in Egypt to face the charges, Robert Becker, was sentenced to 2 years in prison along with four others, including a dual Egyptian-American citizen and a German.   11 others, mainly Egyptian employees of the organizations, were sentenced to 1 year in prison, but the sentence will be suspended.   The court also ordered the closure of the Egypt offices of the 5 organizations involved."

2013-06-05 (5773 Sivan 26)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
understanding many leftists
Town Hall
"Why the 1970s struggle to ban DDT?   Alexander King, founder of the Malthusian Club of Rome, wrote in a 1990 biographical essay: 'My own doubts came when DDT was introduced for civilian use.   In Guyana, within 2 years, it had almost eliminated malaria, but at the same time the birth rate had doubled.   So my chief quarrel with DDT, in hindsight, is that it has greatly added to the population problem.'   Dr. Charles Wurster, former chief scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund, was once asked whether he thought a ban on DDT would result in the use of more dangerous chemicals and more malaria cases in Sri Lanka.   He replied: 'Probably.   So what? People are the cause of all the problems.   We have too many of them.   We need to get rid of some of them, and (malaria) is as good a way as any.'   According to _Earthbound_, a collection of essays on environmental ethics, William Aiken said: 'Massive human die-backs would be good.   It is our duty to cause them.   It is our species' duty, relative to the whole, to eliminate 90% of our numbers.'   Former National Park Service research biologist David Graber opined, 'Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, are not as important as a wild and healthy planet...   We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth...   Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.'   Speaking of viruses, Prince Philip -- Duke of Edinburgh and patron of the World Wildlife Fund -- said, 'If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.'   The late Jacques Cousteau told The UNESCO Courier: 'One America burdens the earth much more than twenty Bangladeshes.   This is a terrible thing to say.   In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350K people per day.   It is a horrible thing to say, but it's just as bad not to say it.'...   In 1986, Lester Brown, who had been predicting global starvation for 40 years, received a MacArthur Foundation 'genius' award, along with a stipend.   The foundation also gave Dr. Paul Ehrlich, who predicted millions of Americans would die of starvation, the 'genius' award in 1990.   Note that these $300K to $400K awards were granted well after enough time had passed to demonstrate that Brown and Ehrlich were insanely wrong.   Just think: Congress listens to people like these and formulates public policy on their dire predictions that we're running out of something."

2013-06-05 (5773 Sivan 26)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
"the most transparent administration ever" ROFLOL
Town Hall

2013-06-05 (5773 Sivan 26)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
historic rescuers
Town Hall
"Victor Davis Hanson has written another outstanding and eye-opening book.   He has done that before and repeatedly, on a variety of subjects.   The subject of his latest book, _The Savior Generals_ is given in the sub-title: _How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost -- From Ancient Greece to Iraq_...   The situation of the United States of America today is similarly very dicey, both at home and abroad, both economically and militarily.   This book takes us through the history of how and why nations -- both ancient and modern— have gotten themselves into potentially catastrophic situations, and how a new leader with clearer vision, and the character and courage to do what needs to be done, has saved situations that seemed irretrievable.   Both the old leaders who failed and the new leaders who succeeded are shown as three-dimensional human beings, with both flaws and virtues, not the cartoon-like images of public figures too often encountered in current discussions in the media or even in academia.   Those who turned out to have the decisive virtues at the decisive times include some who were failures at other times and in other settings, so _The Savior Generals_ is not an exercise in hero-worship.   It is instead a lesson, based on experience over the centuries, on the need for serious, realistic and in-depth understanding in a dangerous world, where there are all too many lures into self-indulgent, short-sighted or wishful thinking."

2013-06-05 (5773 Sivan 26)
_Phys.Org_
not very surprisingly, Southern Europeans have North African genes
"previous studies suggested that Europeans and Africans share only between 1% and 3% of their genomes..."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "Early in January of 1928 it was announced that over the course of 1927 brokers' loans to speculators had shot up from $3.29G to $4.43G." --- John Brooks 1969 _Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street_ pg94  

 
 

2013-06-06

1944-06-06: D-Day

2013-06-06
William K. Alcorn _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
WW2 paratrooper remembers D-Day combat jump
"landed in a lowland flooded by the Germans near Sainte-Mere-Eglise around midnight June 5, almost drowned before the battle got started...   He said when he landed in the deep water, the wind caught his chute and was pulling him under.   He used his leg knife and cut himself free of the chute but was not yet out of trouble.   'All you could see were tracer rounds as the Germans fired at us.   A lot of guys didn't make it.', he said."

2013-06-06 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 293,021 in the week ending June 1, a decrease of 27,102 from the previous week.   There were 324,385 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.1% during the week ending May 25, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week's unrevised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,724,677, a decrease of 83,608 from the preceding week's revised level of 2,808,285.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.4% and the volume was 3,062,538.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending May 18 was 4,646,761, an increase of 68,169 from the previous week.   There were 5,970,572 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.   Extended Benefits were not available in any state during the week ending May 18...   States reported 1,760,593 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending May 18, an increase of 33,934 from the prior week.   There were 2,572,613 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;
to 129,204,324 beginning 2013-04-06.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2013-06-06
Bob Tisdale
Joe Bastardi correct about Gulf of Mexico sea surface temperature "anomalies"

2013-06-06
Roy Spencer
models vs. temperature data

2013-06-06
"timothy" _Slash Dot_
hacker exposes evidence of wide-spread grade-tampering in India
"Brian Benchoff"
"A few weeks ago, [Debarghya Das] had 2 friends eagerly awaiting the results of their High School exit exams, the ISC national examination, taken by 65K 12th graders in India.   This exam is vitally important for each student's future; a few points determines which university will accept you and which will reject you.   One of [Debraghya]'s friends was a little anxious about his grade and asked if it was possible to hack into the board of education's servers to see the grades before they were posted...   Taking a closer look at the data, he plotted all the scores and came up with a very strange-looking graph (seen above).   It looked like a hedgehog, when nearly any test with a population this large should be a continuous curve...   Nearly a third of all possible scores aren't represented in the data, but scores from 94 to 100 are accounted for, making the hedgehog shape of the graph statistically impossible."

2013-06-06
Edward Morrissey _Fiscal Times_
Obummer regime immorality problems

2013-06-06
Edwin S. Rubenstein _V Dare_
another lesson from Hart-Celler-Kennedy IANA1965: more immigrants=more poverty
"[S744] must be regarded as the 1965 Immigration Act on steroids.   The 1965 Act notoriously unleashed an era of mass immigration after a 40-year lull, and shifted the ethnic mix of new immigrants from predominantly European to Hispanic and Asian.   It is responsible for setting the US on the path to a white minority by 2040 or so...   For 2 decades following the end of World War II, poverty rates fell like a stone.   In 1947 nearly one-third (32%) of all families were officially classified as poor.   [James D. Gwartney and Thomas S. McCaleb 1985 'Have AntiPoverty Programs Increased Poverty?' _The Cato Journal_ vol5, #1]   By 1959, only one-fifth (22.4%) of persons had incomes below the poverty line.   By 1973 the fraction of American families living in poverty dropped by more than half, to just over a tenth (11.1%).   But then progress against poverty stalled -- and it has never resumed.   The poverty rate rose back into the 15% range in the 1980s and early 1990s.   The late 1990s boom, and welfare reform, pushed poverty down to 11.3% in 2000.   But it has been on an upward trajectory since then.   Poverty rates have never broken under the low set in 1973 -- 40 years ago.   Note that most of the post-war poverty decline occurred before Lyndon B. Johnson's 'Great Society' came on stream..."

2013-06-06
Jonette Christian _Bangor ME Daily News_
get immigration reform right this time
"The center-piece of this bill is blanket amnesty, not just for illegal immigrants but also for their employers.   The employers -- who recruited and built the employment chains from Mexico and colluded in multiple felonies, such as identity theft, document fraud and tax evasion -- are given complete forgiveness.   No penalties.   No fines.   And government employees who report employer violations discovered in the course of processing applications face a $10K fine, per sections 2104 and 2105.   Multiple experts have studied illegal immigration and told Congress that the linch-pin to stopping illegal immigration is strict enforcement against the employers, not amnesty.
 
Contrary to the claims of its supporters that border security comes first, the gang's amnesty starts the legalization process immediately after the Department of Homeland Security submits a plan for securing the U.S.-Mexico border and another plan to determine where fencing is needed, per section 3.   That's it.   No congressional approval, no bench-marks.   Just a plan.
 
In 1986, Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Control Act, which provided amnesty and promised border security and employment enforcement.   Six amnesties later, after multiple expansions in legal visas, we have 11M more illegal immigrants.   The gang's amnesty, by granting legal status with just a promise of eventual enforcement, is strikingly similar to the failed 1986 bill.   The critics have justified concerns.   Not surprisingly, in a recent Washington Post-ABC poll, only 18% of respondents supported the amnesty-first approach.   And yet the gang's supporters defeated every amendment so far that sought enforcement first, fearing that any change would bring down their fragile, house-of-cards compromise.
 
Not all 11M illegal immigrants are "hard-working people with strong family values" as claimed.   Illegal immigration has also given us the MS-13, one the most violent gangs in America, in addition to human trafficking, drug violence and identity fraud.   The amnesty proposal purports to nab the bad apples by performing background checks.   On 11M? The two unions representing Homeland Security employees charged with enforcing our immigration laws oppose the plan, declaring that it's unenforceable.   Meaningful background checks on this scale are impossible.   As in 1986, rubber stamping and fraud would be inevitable.
 
The plan also includes a huge increase in legal immigration, largely driven by billionaire technology companies who argue there's a dire skills shortage holding the U.S. economy back.   Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman responds: "What the business person really wants is highly (and expensively) educated workers at a manual-labor wage.   No wonder they come up short."
 
According to the Columbia Journalism Review: "Allowing more STEM immigrants, the story goes, is key to adding jobs to the beleaguered US economy.   It's a narrative that's been skillfully packaged and promoted by well-funded advocacy groups as essential to the national interest, but in reality it reflects the economic interests of tech companies and universities."   STEM refers to science, technology, engineering and math.
 
But most important are the overall numbers and how the numbers will affect our labor market, fiscal debt and long-term national goals.   According to the liberal think tank The Center for American [Regress], which supports the amnesty plan, this bill will generate 32.5M green cards in the first decade alone, which includes the 11M already here.   By comparison, between 1890 and 1950, we admitted 24M immigrants, according to the Migration Policy Institute.   In the 1960s, when the economy was strong, we admitted 3M.   Each of the 32.5M will also be entitled to sponsor any number of extended family members, which means that a whole new population will expect American citizenship in the future.
 
And who benefits from this massive expansion of workers and consumers?   According to The Sunlight Foundation, an organization working for government transparency that follows money in Congress, business lobbies spent almost $1.5G dollars since 2007 to expand immigration.   The gang's amnesty plan is their bill.
 
Let's go back to the drawing board.   Think more deeply and less passionately about this complex issue and work for true consensus.   Some form of amnesty should be considered, on a case by case basis, but we shouldn't have another sweeping indiscriminate legalization, in the absence of real reform. Let's do it right this time.
 
Jonette Christian, of Holden, is a founder of Mainers for Sensible Immigration Policy.
Beryl Lieff Benderly: Columbia Journalism Review: It doesn't add up
"...Miller and Shah are, in fact, part of a large group.   Figures from the National Institutes of Health, the National Academies, the National Science Foundation, and other sources indicate that hundreds of thousands of STEM workers in the US are un-employed or under-employed.   But they are not 'organized', and their story is being largely ignored in the debate over immigration reform..."

2013-06-06
Alexander Bolton _The Hill_
Rubio cranks up money machine against immigration reform

2013-06-06
David Bacon, Rosalinda Guillen & Mark Day _New America Media_
the price of immigration law perversion is steep
"[S744] seeks to channel that flow in a way that benefits those industries [whose executives are addicted to] cheap labor, much more than it benefits immigrant communities themselves.   The bill features guest worker programs and increased enforcement.   These measures will not stop the flow of people across the border, nor are they designed to protect immigrant rights.   But they do further transform our immigration policy into a corporate labor supply system.   This transformation has been going on since the immigration reform of 1986.   In just the past few years, the United States has deported [only] 400K people annually [about a third of the aggregate of barbarian invaders and visa over-stayers].   At the same time corporations have recruited annually [over 8M] guest-workers..."

2013-06-06
Kris Anne Hall
sheriff arrested for defending constitutionally recognized rights
Conservative Action Alerts
Tea Party Network
Post & E-Mail
Article 5 Project to Restore Liberty

2013-06-06 (5773 Sivan 28)
judge Andrew P. Napolitano _Jewish World Review_
what if laws applied to everyone?

2013-06-06 (5773 Sivan 28)
Victor Davis Hanson _Jewish World Review_
the stagnant Mediterranean
"Sometimes the ancient 'Pillars of Hercules' at the narrow mouth of the Mediterranean here at Gibraltar marked not so much a gateway to progress and prosperity as a cultural and commercial cul-de-sac...   In contrast, the Reformation and Enlightenment energized Northern European culture, safely distant from the exhausting frontline Mediterranean wars with Islam.   By the early 17th century, Northern Europeans more easily and safely reached the rich eastern markets of China and India by maritime routes around Africa."

2013-06-06
Dale _Out of Order_/_DaleToons_
leave it to leftists
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "The assets of the world's leading national monetary authorities grew from $6.8T in 1990 to $19.9T in 2004." --- Moises Naim 2005 _Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and CopyCats Are Hijacking the Global Economy_ pg134  

 
 

2013-06-07

2013-06-07
_FAIR US_
poll reveals strong preference among citizenry for immigration reform, opposition to S744 (pdf)
Immigration Reform
52% of North Carolinians oppose S744...
56% of Buckeye voters oppose S744...
57% of Montana voters oppose S744...
60% of Arkansan and Kentuckian voters oppose S744...
61% of Louisianan voters oppose S744...
72% of West Virginian voters oppose S744

2013-06-07
Harold Pease _Houston News_
no reform in S744
"S744 'dramatically increases legal immigration, while doing virtually nothing to improve border security or immigration enforcement'.   It essentially legalizes that which used to be illegal and goes far to legitimizing open borders.   If the establishment press shared with Americans what we share below the bill would have no chance of passage.   Unfortunately they do not.   Dissecting the over 800-page bill section-by-section, four concerns are readily apparent.   First, the bill 'does not secure the border or strengthen national security'.   Instead, it 'rewards law-breaking and encourages more illegal immigration'...   granting of legal status by the Department of Homeland Security 'before any measure to secure the border has been taken'.   It does not 'require a biometric exit system' to 'track aliens who enter and leave the U.S.A., per current law'.   It does not 'require any additional border fencing or completion of current border fence requirements'.   It does not require illegals 'to pay back taxes before getting legal status…it only requires...applicants to pay back taxes assessed at the time of application'.   The new bill 'does not require illegal aliens to learn English before receiving amnesty or even a green card'.   It does not 'prevent future illegal immigration, ensure fiscal sustainability of the influx of immigrants to the United States', nor does it 'end abuse of prosecutorial discretion or administrative amnesty by the Obama administration.   It does, however, increase access for illegal immigrants to the scarce jobs of U.S. workers.   Moreover, it does allow 'states to grant in-state tuition to illegal aliens—not the aliens who received amnesty, but all illegal aliens who arrive in the future'.   Second, the bill 'does not improve immigration enforcement or public safety.   Instead, it undermines immigration enforcement and is riddled with waivers and loop-holes'...   DHS is allowed to wave...'gang-related crimes and gang membership; three or more drunk driving offenses; domestic violence, stalking, child abuse, and violation of protective orders; committing crimes of moral turpitude; violating federal or state drug laws; trafficking in passports; providing fraudulent immigration services; trafficking immigration documents, including document fraud; prostitution; misrepresenting a material fact to procure visas or other immigration benefits; violating student visas; falsely claiming citizenship; and illegally re-entering the U.S.A. after deportation (which is a felony)'...   Amazingly it even creates 'criminal penalties and a $10K fine for any federal official who discloses information found in RPI [amnesty] applications in violation of the law'...   'does not prioritize the American worker at a time when 22M Americans are unemployed or under-employed [with a total jobs dearth of about 30M].   Instead, S744 hurts the American worker': It does this by tripling immigration within a decade.   In addition it 'increases the number of guest-workers by 50% over the decade after enactment'.   It enlarges the admission of additional unskilled workers each year to 200K and triples the number of [STEM] workers who may enter...   The bill also 'creates a slush fund for non-profits that help implement the amnesty.   Section 2537 authorizes DHS to award newly created 'Initial Entry, Adjustment, and Citizenship Assistance' (IEACA) grants to nonprofit organizations that help illegal aliens navigate the amnesty process.   The bill appropriates $100M for IEACA grants for the first 5 years and 'such sums as may be necessary for fiscal year 2019 and subsequent fiscal years'."

2013-06-07
Steve Goreham
off-shore wind, the enormously expensive energy alternative
Washington DC Times

2013-06-07
Dante Chinni _Wall Street Journal-
16 words change results in polls on immigration legislation
"More than 50% of Democrats and Republicans, young and old, wealthy and poor, urban and suburban, white and non-white, support an immigration overhaul that provides a pathway to citizenship -- as along as [borders and ports are secured first by fencing and guarding, illegal aliens] 'pay a [significant] fine, any back taxes, pass a security background [investigation], and take other required steps'."

2013-06-07
Niels Lesniewski, Humberto Sanchez & Philip Brasher _Roll Call_
hopefully, procedural monkey wrenches can prevent immigration law perversion
"The Nevada [power-mad Leftist's] prepared remarks said, 'I have committed to as open an amendment process as possible.', to which he added on the floor, 'I don't want to say totally open because sometimes with the procedures we have here, as with the farm bill, people throw monkey wrenches into things here and we're not able to do as we wanted to do.'...   On immigration, senators such as Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, have indicated that if the gang of 8 senators want their votes, their amendments need to be adopted.   Hatch wants to strengthen enforcement of the collection of back taxes and make benefit changes.   And while Reid and McCain both expressed confidence recently that the bill will get the 60 votes needed to end a filibuster and pass the senate, senator Marco Rubio, R-FL, said last week that the bill will struggle to pass the Senate and will fail in the House unless border security provisions are strengthened.   'We will find out soon enough.', Rubio said.   'I am pretty confident I am right.'   And then there's the case of senators dead-set against the immigration bill who will be offering numerous amendments aimed at bogging it down and exposing what they consider to be flaws.   senator Mike Lee, R-Utah, declared the bill unfixable and vowed to fight it, and senator Jeff Sessions, R-AL, on Friday declared it the product of a back-room deal.   'The special interests -- La Raza, the unions, the corporate world, the big agriculture businesses, the food processors -- they are the ones that made the agreement in this process, and the senators just sort of ratified it.   And they can't agree to a change because they promised these special-interest groups.', Sessions said.   Senate Judiciary chairman Patrick J. Leahy, D-VT, meanwhile, complained that opponents were forcing a cloture vote on June 11 just to get to the bill."

2013-06-07
Aaron Corvin _Clark county WA Columbian_
21K people in Clark county are seeking work: unemployment rate 10%; under-employment rate likely 20%

2013-06-07 (5773 Sivan 29)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
wounded... and dangerous
Town Hall
"Israel cannot be lured into complacency by Kerry's buffoonery or [Obummer's] apparent political weakness."

2013-06-07 (5773 Sivan 29)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
al-Qaeda vs. Hezbollah: which is the world's worst terrorist gang

2013-06-07 (5773 Sivan 29)
Drew de Silver _Pew_
world's Muslim population 1.6G
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "intra-plate quakes...happen away from plate boundaries, which makes them wholly unpredictable.   And because they come from a much greater depth, they tend to propagate over much wider areas.   The most notorious such quakes ever to hit the [United States of America] were a series of 3 in New Madrid, MO, in the winter of 1811-1812.   The adventure started just after midnight on December 16 when people were awakened first by the noise of panicking farm animals (the restiveness of animals before quakes is not an old wives' tale, but is in fact well established, though not at all understood) and then by an almighty rupturing noise from deep within the earth.   Emerging from their houses, locals found the land rolling in waves up to 3 feet high and opening up in fissures several feet deep.   A strong smell of sulfur filled the air.   The shaking lasted for 4 minutes with the usual devastating effects to property.   Among the witnesses was the artist John James Audubon, who happened to be in the area.   The quake radiated outward with such force that it knocked down chimneys in Cincinnati 400 miles away and, according to at least one account, 'wrecked boats in East Coast harbors and...even collapsed scaffolding erected around the Capitol building in Washington, DC'.   On January 23 and February 4 further quakes of similar magnitude followed.   [And we don't know the cause.]" --- Bill Bryson 2003 _A Short History of Nearly Everything_ pp213-214  

 
 

2013-06-08

1789-06-08: Bill of Rights proposed to congress by James Madison

2013-06-08
Peter Urban _Ames IA Tribune_/_Stephens Media LLC of Las Vegas NV_
Steve King amendment defunds Obummer's unconstitutional NIGHTMARE policy
"The House voted, 224-201, Thursday morning in favor of King's amendment to defund presidential orders that allow immigration enforcement officials to focus deportation efforts on illegal immigrants who have been convicted of [some kinds of serious] crimes.   Six Republicans opposed it while only 3 Democrats supported it...   the policies promoted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement [USCIS] director John Morton grant administrative amnesty to illegal aliens.   The amendment he offered to a Homeland Security spending bill would prohibit the so-called Morton memos."

2013-06-08
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
Do the little things matter?

2013-06-08
R.G. Hicks _Re-Innovating America_
innovation, big "I" vs. little "i" vs. big government vs. infrastructure

2013-06-08
_Free Market Project_
none of the scandalous behavior of governments should be a surprise

2013-06-08
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols _Ziff Davis_
how the NSA and your boss can intercept and break SSL communications
fake SSL certificates pirate web sites
SSL broken: hackers create rogue CA certificate using MD5 collisions
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "In industry an engineer must learn the technical and procedural processes of his company.   Industry does not expect a newly graduated engineer to be able to contribute a great deal to his assigned projects or tasks immediately.   It is generally understood that several months on the job are needed for orientation and training.   Thus, it can be said that a bachelor's degree in engineering prepares one to become an engineer in industry.   Although an engineer's formal education may end with a bachelor's degree, he is expected to continue learning the technologial details of his job as well as other scientific advances.   This is accomplished by reading the journals of his profssion and attending conferences.   He must be up to date. OTOH, one may wish to go to graduate school." --- Robert M. Glorioso & Francis S. Hill ii 1975 _Introduction to Engineering_ pg2  

 
 

2013-06-09

1772-06-09: British revenue schooner HMS Gaspee ran aground and was taken by Rhode Islanders

2013-06-09
_UPI_
senator Kelly Ayotte opposes immigration reform, supports S744
Steven Dennis & Niels Lesniewski: Roll Call
FTN CBS

2013-06-09
Kim Zetter _Wired_
NSA contractor says he blew the whistle on phone records
UPI
Seattle WA Times
Zeke Miller: Time
Chris Davies: Slash Gear
PCWorld/IDG
Mark Rogowsky: Forbes
Wallace Witkowski: MarketWatch
Joe Pollicino: Engadget/AOL

2013-06-09
James R. Carroll _Louisville KY Courier-Journal_
immigration perversion/reform takes center stage in DC

2013-06-09
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
"my people" at Brandy Station
"in my family tree, I can count a fair number who were there...   more so in gray than in blue, but represented in two Virginia (7th and 35th) units and one from Pennsylvania (3rd).   Those in the 7th Virginia Regiment and 35th Battalion Virginia Cavalry bore witness to the opening of the battle.   George M. Neese, with the horse artillery, recounted how the morning opened, as Union general John Buford tested the line near St. James Church..."

2013-06-09
Lance Wallace
AAAS Science reported on failures of climate models

2013-06-09
Werner Brozek & "just the facts"
climate pause, volatility, or decline?

2013-06-09
Marguerite Telford _Center for Immigration Studies_
Schumer-Rubio S744 would double guest-workers, worse than 2007's Bush-Kennedy S1639 (with table)
"'If it passes, the Schumer-Rubio bill could wreak havoc in U.S. labor markets, and shut out even more Americans from job opportunities, especially minorities, whether in STEM fields, agriculture, construction or health care.', said Jessica Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies at the Center.   'Most of these temporary worker increases are just gratuitous and have no economic justification whatsoever.', said Vaughan."

2013-06-09
Ginni Thomas _Daily Caller_
6 of the many big problems with S744
"'There are many interest groups involved in this bill.', she said.   'In fact, many, many, many -- except one.   I didn't find anything for Joe Q. Citizen in this bill.   I didn't find anything for the average tax-paying citizen in this bill.'...   the bill imperils national security by weakening rules for asylum seekers; out-sources government jobs to community organizers, like happened in [ObummerDoesn'tCare]; doubles the numbers of legal immigrants with green cards; contradicts Florida Republican senator Marco Rubio's ads that promise new citizens will be self-supporting; costs too much; and impedes border agents from doing their basic enforcement job."

2013-06-09
Mark C. Thies _Charlotte NC Observer_
S744 is a job-killer
"I teach Chemical Engineering (ChE) at Clemson University, where I have been a professor for 28 years.   I just finished teaching the largest Thermodynamics class of my career and this Fall will have my largest ChE Laboratory ever.   Why? It turns out that America's students are starting to get it.   They know that 53% of recent college graduates are under/unemployed, and they want a job, a good job.   So all across the Carolinas and the country, college students are moving in droves into engineering.   At Clemson, enrollment in engineering is up 60% in 5 years.   How's the job market? Good, but not great.   Our engineering students are getting offers, primarily because of baby-boomer retirements.   But salary offers have been flat since the recession began.   Groups as diverse as the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy, and the Economic Policy Institute have all expressed concern about an over-supply of high-tech workers, which is reflected in the wage stagnation...   It's hard to believe, but in this economy the Gangsters propose that every international student who earns a U.S. M.S. or Ph.D. in a STEM field be given an automatic work permit.   But the Gangsters haven't stopped there.   They've piled on by making it so that a Ph.D. in any field also gets a life-time work permit.   And no general preference is given to hiring an equally qualified American [and none for equally able and willing Americans, either].   So much for encouraging America's students to better themselves by going on to higher education.   Where's the data that support the Gang of 8's supposed high-tech labor shortage?   No one but the Gangsters and corporate hacks can find it.   Computer Science professor Norman Matloff, an expert on this issue, has been looking for a shortage for years and can't find one.   The EPI, the Wall Street Journal (April 23), and the New York Times (Feb. 7) can't find one either...   a recent Ph.D. of mine searched 1.5 years to find a low-paying post-doc position; another wants to switch jobs, but has had no luck.   The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 2.5M STEM job openings for 2010-2020, yet the number of these degrees to be earned by U.S. citizens and permanent residents is projected to exceed that number by 1.5M! Hardly a shortage...   The bill is lathered up with give-aways such that 33M permanent work permits will be given out to non-citizens over the next decade.   That's like giving all of Canada permission to move here and get a job over the next 10 years.   It's far more than the 24M immigrants that came through Ellis Island during its entire 1890-1950 period.   Our economy has been stumbling along, hardly creating the number of jobs needed to keep up with population growth.   20M Americans are unemployed [and nearly another 10M have been drive out of the work-force].   How do these guys sleep at night?...   destroying America's middle class and telling our students, 'Don't bother working hard for your engineering degree; we're going to replace you with someone who will do the job for less anyway' isn't a solution."

2013-06-09
Stacey Patton _Chronicle of Higher Education_
2013-06-09
_Warren OH Tribune Chronicle_/_AP_
millions being invested to develop MetroPark on decommissioned Voice of America site

2013-06-09
FrankJ _Honey's Bob Brinker Bee Hive Buzz_
Ron Hira and Dan Schawbel
"the immigration bill will benefit the tech industry [executives]; he said their finger-prints are all over the bill, to the detriment of American skilled workers and students.   One part of the bill which he says will have unintended consequences is the provision that foreign students can get a green card when they earn a [master's or doctor's] degree at a US university.   He made several references to US universities 'selling green cards'.   Foreign students paying full tuition would crowd out some [in-state] US students.   There will be fewer slots for PhD students from the USA if foreign students get a green card with a Master's degree.   Lynn asked if there is truth to the claim that we are training foreign students and after they earn a degree, we are kicking them out.   The guest said that argument is over-stated, there are high 'stay rates' for PhD and Master's degree recipients.   [Hira] said that there is no shortage of US students in the STEM degree fields, (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math).   He based this conclusion [in part] on the fact that wages have tended to remain flat, which they would not if there were shortages.   The current job market for STEM graduates depends on the field.   The guest made a comment that I could not get down in time...it was in response to a question by Lynn whether we actually need all these skilled foreign workers.   He said that the top 10 firms using the H-1B visas are all [cross-border bodyshopping and off-shoring firms].   He said they are used 'for cheaper indentured labor'.   The guest suggested 3 fixes: Raise the wage floor.   Make companies requesting the H-1B visas show that there is a real shortage.   Give US workers the first shot -- and a legitimate shot -- at the job.   After the break, a caller suggested that the US auction these H-1B visas and use the money to reduce debt.   Lynn shot the idea down by telling him that the companies would just collude on the maximum bid price and then she put forward the notion that it would never reach the auction stage -- lobbyists would kill the proposal.   Caller Mike also suggested that green cards should be auctioned.   Lynn deflected this by pointing out that big corporations would control the whole process with their campaign dollars, while all we have are our votes.   She was referring to the Supreme Court's Citizen United decision -- without actually mentioning it by name.   Lynn gave a brief history of the corporate tax and mentioned that the loop-hole that exists now, which allows corporations to shelter income by using foreign subsidiaries...   George from Tennessee hit a nerve when he asked Lynn if she thought the government could spend the taxes raised from Apple more wisely than Apple could spend it themselves."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "The most impressive of the Appalachians' animals was the woods buffalo, which had no counterpart in Europe.   A peaceful 'mammoth' which browsed among canebrakes and nibbled spruce and balsam buds, it was hunted to extinction in VA after 1794 and in KY by 1810.   Smaller than the plains buffalo of the western barrens, this shaggy mammoth roamed in groups of 2 or 3 -- usually a cow and her calves.   White settlers came to value its meat and hide as highly as the Indians did.   Buffalo skins covered the roof beams of pioneer settlers' lean-tos and cabins." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pg6  

 
 

2013-06-10

2013-06-10
Gary A. Olson _Chronicle of Higher Education_
controlling the message more important than truth?
"At a national conference recently, I attended a panel on crisis management conducted by officials of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security...   the narrative that everyone believes is the true account of what happened—often is not a factual rendering of what occurred.   It is, instead, the story first propagated on web sites like FB and Wikipedia, and then 'catches on'.   Truth, IOW [is not what matters].   what people believe [is what matters]...   it is wise to make every effort to use social media to disseminate a factual account before uninformed or malicious people can publish a false description of the incident.   Apparently, campus executives, like some of their counterparts in the business world, are often too slow to communicate effectively and rapidly early in a crisis, thereby allowing others to seize control of the message, and therefore of 'the truth'...   in a crisis, more people will learn about what happened from FB and Twitter than from your own press releases...   Most colleges invest substantial resources in writers, public-relations experts, and web-site designers to ensure that they can control the message..."

2013-06-10
Guy d'Astolfo _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
3-D printing/ prototyping/ additive manufacturing on exhibit at McDonough Museum of Art
"A 70-foot time line that graphically depicts the history of 3-D printing, from its development in 1984, to its rapid rise in 2010, to the present... As it springs to life and starts moving around, it melts and lays into place a stream of liquefied plastic, ceramic or metal that is fed to it via a tube. Any material that can be melted [or stuck onto existing material] can be used in 3-D printing."

2013-06-10
Kelly Ayotte _NH Union Leader_
Why I'm backing legislation to make our broken immigration system much worse
"Everybody agrees that America's immigration system is broken, threatening our security and holding back our economy. The combination of porous borders and lax enforcement has made us a magnet for illegal immigration."

2013-06-10
_NH Union Leader_
S744 is not immigraton reform
"it is not accurate to call 'broken' a system that functions largely as it was intended to function.   The crazy system we have now allows waves of unskilled immigrants to flood into the country illegally.   This is by design.   Congress could have mandated better border defenses to enforce the law; it chose not to."

2013-06-10
_PlanetMagpie_
hire US STEM talent
"PlanetMagpie, a Fremont, CA-based IT consulting & web development agency [i.e. domestic US bodyshop], has sent letters to the more than 100 [STEM executives]...   'The [executives of] TechNet member companies literally control the world's information superhighway.', said Doreyne Douglas, Vice President of PlanetMagpie.   'Companies like Google.   Yahoo.   FB.   Intel.   eBay.   It's alarming that they're seeking more guest-workers for tech jobs, when studies show that we have plenty of available STEM talent right here.'   Recent immigration legislation has called for a 60% increase to the number of H-1B visas.   More H-1Bs means more temporary workers [with unmeasured, questionable skill levels] can be brought to the USA (called guest-workers) to fill positions in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) roles.   H-1B guest-workers do not necessarily [directly] displace local workers.   But displacement happens frequently -- it's often cheaper to hire guest-workers, and regulations are not the same as they are for local hires [or US citizen pros relocated from other parts of the USA].   Right now, after [over 2 decades] of off-shoring and using H-1Bs for tech labor, the U.S.A. faces a serious problem with maintaining its own IT work-force and being able to protect its commercial and military networks from cyber-attack.   Not to mention, U.S. unemployment [including STEM unemployment] is still very high.   According to a recent Economic Policy Institute study, half of U.S. STEM graduates aren't finding STEM jobs.   They study and train to join the U.S. work-force in a [scientific or engineering] role, and then have to work in an entirely different field when they can/t find tech jobs."

2013-06-10
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
Gartner says S744 could increase IT hiring, or encourage more IT off-shoring
CIO
"Today, off-shore providers do 30% of a customer's work on-shore [using over 90% guest-workers], and 70% off-shore.   In response to the visa restrictions, off-shore firms would have to hire more U.S. workers.   But these firms may try to offset the need to hire locally by increasing the percentage of work done off-shore to 80% or even 90%, said Frances Karamouzis, a Gartner analyst.   [OTOH, guest-workers have been observed to facilitate off-shoring by providing intermediaries, liaisons, and engaging in knowledge transfer from the USA to the off-shore personnel.]..   The legislation's so-called 50/50 restriction stipulates that temporary foreign workers are limited to 50% of their U.S. work-force by 2017.   The bill replaces the current 4 level prevail wage tier level with a 3 level system, which [may] force wage increases [but mostly likely will have no effect at all]."

2013-06-10
Jonathan Chait _NY Magazine_
immigration law perversion back from the brink
"There was a moment last week when the prospects for immigration reform looked, if not grave, then at least extremely dicey.   Marco Rubio said he wouldn't vote for his own bill.   Raul Labrador, 1 of 4 Republicans negotiating a bipartisan plan in the House, ominously withdrew from the negotiations and even more ominously declared, 'What may be the story at the end of this session is that Obamacare killed immigration reform.'...   the question isn't whether Boehner will support a comprehensive [immigration law perversion] bill, but whether he will let one come to a vote...   Conservative activists [express their ideas and values] in public, and the [corrupt] party establishment tends to operate behind the scenes...   There is no doubt that conservatives will revolt against the [immigration law perversion] bill."

2013-06-10
Richard Piatt _KSL_/_Deseret News_
Utah business execs take out full-page ads for immigration law perversion

2013-06-10
Caroline May _Daily Caller_
Crossroads GPS buying $100K ad to oppose immigration reform, support S744
"Crossroads GPS announced a $100K advertising campaign in favor of the senate's immigration [law perversion] bill Monday, revealing a new ad that will run in the Wall Street Journal and Capitol Hill publications.   The ad -- signed by 53 business owners, economists, and Republicans -- pushes law-makers to move forward with immigration [law perversion]...   According to Crossroads GPS CEO Steven Law, while the legislation needs more work to protect the homeland and American workers, the country must confront immigration reform."

2013-06-10
G. Tracy Mehan iii _American Spectator_
Immigration and the "Best and Brightest"
"Matloff argues that the so-called H-1B work visa and employer sponsored green-card programs 'are bringing in workers who tend to be of lesser talent than their American peers.   Worse, they are [directly and] indirectly displacing Americans'.   'The result', says Matloff, 'is a net reduction in the country's talent level.'   Yet, the tech [executives want] to expand immigration for their benefit, claiming they simply want to bring in the 'best and the brightest' and maintain America's competitive advantage.   Indeed, Matloff dismisses this argument, citing data that 'show that most of the foreign tech workers are ordinary folks doing ordinary work'.   In one of his studies, published in a peer-reviewed journal, Migration Letters, Matloff compared native (yes, the word grates, at least for this Irish-American) U.S. engineers with immigrant engineers who first came here as students.   'In computer science, the natives, on average, had a significantly higher patenting rate than immigrants of the same age, education, and so on.', says Matloff.   'The rate for U.S. natives with only bachelor's degrees was as high as the rate for immigrants at the master's degree level.'   Also, 30-year-old natives with master's degrees are 68% more likely to work in research and development (R&D) than foreign students of the same age and education.   Matloff claims that, at the doctoral level, foreign students 'tend to earn their degrees at institutions of somewhat lesser selectivity and research prominence, again, compared to native-born students'.   Matloff cites a U.S. News and World report rating, using a scale of 1 to 5, demonstrating that the mean program rating for Americans is 3.71 versus 3.44 for those who are foreign-born.   Similar findings were made in a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research which noted, 'Among students from China, Taiwan, and South Korea, growth has been particularly concentrated outside the most highly ranked institutions.'...   'Inexplicably, the immigration bill currently under consideration by the senate [S744] would further the trend away from quality.', says Matloff.   'The proposal would, in essence, grant special green cards to all foreign students earning advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM for short) at U.S. schools-regardless of quality.'   There would be no accounting for mediocre grades, say, at an undistinguished school...   For Matloff the bottom line is that Congress 'should grant a green card to any foreign STEM worker who has a legitimate U.S. offer at or above the 90th percentile of pay in that job.   The loop-holes that allow employers to import cut-rate workers should be plugged, so that companies can't use H-1B visas to get under-paid workers.'"

2013-06-10
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
my op ed in Barron's
 
Barron's kindly ran my op-ed over the weekend.   I wasn't going to mention it here, as it makes arguments that I've made repeatedly in this e-news-letter.   However, a number of people have asked to see it, as Barron's does not display the full text on-line.
 
Thus I have posted the full text of my Barron's piece.
 
A thoughtful commentary on my article is at the American Spectator (G. Tracy Mehan iii "Immigration and the 'Best and Brightest'").
 
One small point in response to that commentary: The author says my restriction to natives "grates" on him.   I fully agree; it grates on me too, and I try to avoid it whenever possible.   As many of you probably know, I usually take the word "American" to mean U.S. citizens and permanent residents, where the citizens category includes naturalized citizens.   However, in my analysis in this case, I did indeed restrict to natives, for reasons which I describe in detail in my EPI paper.
 
Norm
---30---

2013-06-10
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
Was general David Hunter the same man in 1864 as he was in 1863?

2013-06-10
Adrienne Royer _Immigration Reform_
new state polls: voters overwhelmingly oppose amnesty for illegal aliens

2013-06-10
Neil Munro _Daily Caller_
senators' votes on S744 may be shaped by state economies

2013-06-10
Neil Munro _Daily Caller_
RINO Ayotte slammed by Schlafly for support of S744
"'Ayotte betrayed every conservative who supported her when she announced her support for this shameful bill.', Schlafly said in a Monday letter that highlighted Ayotte's anti-amnesty platform in the 2010 senate election."

2013-06-10
Rachel Alexander _Town Hall_
suspicion confirmed: academia has been shutting out non-leftist professors

2013-06-10
Daniel J. Mitchell _Town Hall_
Chile miracle shows that economic liberty is the best way to help ordinary people

2013-06-10
Michael Schaus _Town Hall_
breaking news: Paul Krugman has recently shown several tiny glimmers of sanity

2013-06-10
Seung Min Kim _Politico_
leftists take out ads opposing immigration reform

2013-06-10
Beryl Lieff Benderly _AAAS Science Careers_
be-laboring the STEM guest-work/immigration issue in the senate immigration law perversion bill (S744)
"Two conservative senators not known as strong supporters of organized labor, Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL), have issued a statement of their 'Minority Views' on the bill.   In the statement they quote the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, an AFL-CIO union with more than 80K members, stating, 'Hundreds of thousands of foreign STEM workers will enter the United States each year with the sole purpose of working in jobs that Americans would normally do.'   In addition, Grassley and Sessions add, the 700K-member Communications Workers of America, also an AFL-CIO union, has stated that the bill will 'create preferential treatment for foreign born workers...   We can spend billions to educate a STEM work-force but without employers willing to hire these U.S. STEM workers, our work is for naught.'"
Grassley makes the mistake of conflating STEM jobs with "high-skill".   In reality, some STEM pros are low-skilled and some STEM pros are high-skilled.   Some are extremely productive and some only marginally productive...jgo

2013-06-10 (5773 Temuz 02)
Lindsay Wise _Jewish World Review_
experts say there are few ways to avoid spying on-line
"The reality is that your personal information isn't just shared with the government, but also sold to third parties such as online advertisers and mobile-application developers, said Jeffrey Chester, the executive director of the nonprofit Center for Digital Democracy in Washington.   It's all there in the privacy [violation] policy you probably didn't read when you signed up for FB or Gmail."

2013-06-10 (5773 Temuz 02)
Mark Steyn _Jewish World Review_
the ability to know everything... except right from wrong
"The Small Business/Self-Employed Division had boldly gone where no IRS man had gone before -- to a conference in Anaheim, where they were put up in $3,500-a-night hotel rooms and entertained by a man who was paid $27,500 to fly in and paint on stage a portrait of Bono.   Bono is the veteran Irish rocker knighted by the Queen for his tireless campaign on behalf of debt forgiveness, which doesn't sound like the IRS' bag at all...   Here's another congressional sub-committee transcript highlight of the week.   Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois asks the attorney general if he's spying on members of Congress and thereby giving the executive branch leverage over the legislative branch.   Eric Holder answers: 'With all due respect, senator, I don't think this is an appropriate setting for me to discuss that issue.'   Kirk responded that 'the correct answer would be, 'No, we stayed within our lane and I'm assuring you we did not spy on members of congress.'   For some reason, the attorney general felt unable to say that.   So I think we all know what the answer to the original question really is.   Holder had another great contribution to the epitaph of the Republic this week.   He went on TV to explain that he didn't really regard Fox News' James Rosen as a conspirator but had to pretend he did to the judge in order to get the judge to cough up the warrant.   So rest easy, America! Your chief law officer was telling the truth when he said he hadn't lied to Congress because in fact he'd been lying when he said he told the truth to the judge.   If you lie to one of Holder's minions, you go to jail: they tossed Martha Stewart in the slammer for being insufficiently truthful to a low-level employee of the attorney general.   But the attorney general can apparently lie willy-nilly to judges and/or Congress."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "1 BTU is the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 pound of water 1℉.   Because gigantic amounts of energy are used, one nedds a large unit to talk about the world's total energy consumption; thus, we use the Q (1Q = 1018BTU).   About 15Q have been used during the past 2K years, but one-half of this was used in the last 100 years.   At the time of the Industrial Revolution the world was consuming only about 0.01Q/year; by 1960 the rate was 0.1Q/year.   Thus, we ha a 10-fold increase in total energy consumption while only doubling the world's population.   Taking into account increasing industrialization and population growth, by the year 2050 the world will have spent about 75Q if the rate of energy use increases at a 3% annual rate or 275Q at a 5% rate of increase...   the USA with 6% of the world's population accounts for about 35% of the world's energy use.   By the year 2000 the USA's share will probably drop to 25% and the world average per capita energy consumption will have increased from the present one-fifth of the USA's average to about one-third of the USA's average." --- Robert M. Glorioso & Francis S. Hill ii 1975 _Introduction to Engineering_ pp129-130  

 
 

2013-06-11

2013-06-11
Ted Barrett _CNN_
pres. Obummer pushes S744, continues to oppose immigration reform

2013-06-11
Caroline May _Daily Caller_
SEIU spends millions on ad campaign to oppose immigration reform, support S744
Wall Street Journal

2013-06-11
Paul Harris _Manchester Guardian_
pres. Obummer opposes immigration reform, supports S744

2013-06-11
Mathew J. Schwartz _InformationWeek_/_UBM_
NSA's Prism privacy violation scheme relies heavily on bodies shopped and co-operation by telecomm executives
"The leaks have highlighted how the NSA relies on an army on consultants to help it sift through the massive quantities of data it collects.   According to information released this year by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 1.2M Americans hold top-secret clearances, and 38% of those clearances are held by private contractors...   But how did Snowden access the confidential information in the first place, which includes a top secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order?   A former senior NSA official told the Post that only 30 or 40 people in the world would have had access to that data...   NSA officials might not have known the extent to which either private contractors or [systems and network] administrators were privy to highly confidential information."

2013-06-11
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
the approach to Winchester, Frederick county VA

2013-06-11
Jim Kouri _One Old Vet_
Janet Napolitano pushing amnesty for illegal aliens
"But the majority of the time spent discussing her agenda items made no mention of security deficiencies, according to a participant...   her department ended the federal program called 287G in last July.   The program allowed local law enforcement agencies to take on the role of federal immigration officers, to demand people prove their citizenship status and start deportation proceedings...   Napolitano failed to discuss the postponement of building a fence or of canceling a contract for security devices that failed to function after paying $1G, according to the Government Accountability Office.   According to a April 3 Examiner.com news story by Kimberly Dvorak, the cameras purchased for use on the U.S.-Mexican border were up-for-sale on Ebay...   'She must have thought she was speaking to a group of police academy recruits instead of professional cops, which she is not.', stated a former detective squad commander, Louis Wallner."

2013-06-11
_One Old Vet_
Obummer Chicago thug politics: abusing "pay reform" to silence Border Patrol agents on S744
Stephen Dinan: Washington DC Times

2013-06-11
_One Old Vet_
S744/HR2131 are the next ObummerDoesn'tCare
Ramsey Cox: The Hill
John Hawkins: Town Hall

2013-06-11
_One Old Vet_
a primer on S744 debate in senate

2013-06-11
_One Old Vet_
how to read CBO's scoring of S744
Heritage foundation

2013-06-11
_One Old Vet_
real costs of amnesty for illegal aliens

2013-06-11
_One Old Vet_
lessons of 1986 amnesty
Stephen Dinan: Washington DC Times

2013-06-11
_One Old Vet_
senior Dems ready to sell out constituents to save amnesty for illegal aliens

2013-06-11
_One Old Vet_
ALIPAC calling for primary challengers against GOP senators backing S744
Wall Street Journal

2013-06-11
Jan Ting _One Old Vet_
how banning 3 useful words undermines immigration reform
Tempe AZ East Valley Tribune

2013-06-11
_One Old Vet_
Charles Grassley says his constituents want border security now, legalization some time later... maybe
Matthew Boyle: Breitbart
"As Grassley notes, however, the Gang of 8 plan [S744], 'repeats our past mistakes and does very little to deliver more than the same empty promises we made in 1986.'"

2013-06-11
_One Old Vet_
Rubio says "First comes the legalization" to Univision, contradicting what he says in Zuckerberg ads
A.J. Delgado: Breitbart
Byron York: Washington DC Examiner

2013-06-11
_One Old Vet_
Democrat campaign committee ads opposing immigration reform targeted at House GOP
Seung Min Kim: Politico
Cameron Joseph: The Hill

2013-06-11
_One Old Vet_
RINO hunt: Kelly Ayotte repeatedly claimed to oppose amnesty for illegal aliens during election campaign
John T. Bennett: Town Hall

2013-06-11
_One Old Vet_
assimilation is a flash point in immigration debate
Politico
"Following the meeting, several conservative leaders -- including Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles; Al Cardenas, chairman of American Conservative Union; Carlos Gutierrez of Republicans for Immigration Reform; and Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform -- signed a statement, saying they were ready to support reform given certain conditions.   Fostering assimilation was listed as one of them."

2013-06-11
_One Old Vet_
number of Central Americans crossing Arizona border has risen

2013-06-11
_One Old Vet_
it's the assaults on Border Patrol agents that increase border "tensions"

2013-06-11
_One Old Vet_
get State Dept. out of the 2nd amendment violation business

2013-06-11
Todd Starnes _Town Hall_
DoD targeting Christian soldiers
"Representative Tim Huelskamp, R-KS, is introducing an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would prevent the Army from conducting a court martial of master-sergeant Nathan Sommers until the military first files a report for congress to review."

2013-06-11
Rick Santorum _Town Hall_
America demands truth on Benghazi

2013-06-11
Guy Benson _Town Hall_
State Dept. scandals deepen
"Benghazi... a drug ring, an endemic prostitution problem among Hillary Clinton's security detail, and pattern of alleged sexual assault in Beirut (where, BTW, our embassy astoundingly isn't up to snuff on security measures), investigations into which were manipulated or terminated by State Department higher-ups..."

2013-06-11
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
Obummer's BATFE nominee Todd Jones takes heat over intimidation of whistle-blowers
"Jones has been accused of creating a 'climate of fear' during his time as the U.S. Attorney in Minnesota according to complaints filed with the Office of the Inspector General.   He has also been accused of threatening agents within the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms...   Jones was pressed to provide details about who has been held accountable for Operation Fast and Furious.   When asked by Arizona Senator Jeff Flake what disciplinary actions have been taken against those responsible, Jones failed to provide specifics.   Jones counted those who had resigned or retired as being 'held accountable' for the operation...   Retirement comes with full benefits."

2013-06-11
Phyllis Schlafly _Town Hall_
Big Brother Obummer is watching

2013-06-11
David Middleton
DoE "green energy" loans: $26.32G divided by 2,298 jobs = $11.45M/job, and microscopic reduction in C emissions

2013-06-11
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
a southern unionist claim from Fauquier county VA... with a tie to Gettysburg PA

2013-06-11
Kyle Russell _Bidness Insider_
Columbis U law prof says Americans should quit FB and Google...and I agree

2013-06-11
Jerry Kammer _Center for Immigration Studies_
from 2002, a cautionary tale for the senate's 8 gangsters
"Confessore wrote that [Stuart Anderson] was part of a group of INS officials who 'have been operating below the media radar to make sure that a broken immigration-security system stays broken'...   Anderson's sympathies dovetailed with the work of a lobby that set out to kill student tracking.   It was the National Association of Foreign Student Advisers.   Confessore wrote that the group was not much concerned about national security.   Instead, 'they worried that a system that clamped down on fraudulent or dubious student visa applications could mean fewer foreign students, and hence perhaps fewer jobs for foreign-student advisers'."

2013-06-11
Jeffrey Lord _American Spectator_
Mark Levin is one of a thin line of defenders of the US constitution: IRS, NSA, ObummerDoesn'tCare, vehicle black boxes vindicate authors of back-to-Constitution basics

2013-06-11
Peter Kirsanow _Baltimore MD Sun_
immigration law perversion huts US citizen workers

2013-06-11
Donald A. Collins _V Dare_
Why do big government and big business snoop on US citizens, but not so much on illegal aliens and temporary visa holders?

2013-06-11
Patrick Cleburne _V Dare_
save the country from Chuck Schumer

2013-06-11
_Blue Ridge Forum_
beltway GOP pushes S744 to destroy the USA
"Laura Ingraham explained the dangers last week: 'If the House/Senate conference is likely to produce a bill we don't like, then we don't want any bill to pass the House at all.   We don't want hearings.   We don't want discussion.   We would rather have them drop the issue altogether and worry about issues that are actually important to the overwhelming majority of Americans.'   And Ingraham's conclusion: 'We will not be distracted.   No matter how often John McCain and Eric Cantor criticize the Obama Administration over the IRS scandal or Benghazi, or how many times Paul Ryan calls for serious entitlement reform, or how many filibusters are led by Mitch McConnell.   If they want our support in 2014, then they have to come through for us on immigration -- period.   Immigration is the Obama Administration's top priority, and if handled badly by Republicans, it will give the Democrats a permanent working majority.   If the Republicans can't get this right, then there is little reason for conservatives to keep voting Republican.   (Highlighting Forums throughout.)   Our bottom line today: will prominent Maryland and Virginia Republican politicians help reverse the rush to amnesty in the GOP and start speaking against this measure and its misguided proponents from both parties?   Any continued silence by GOP incumbents and major candidates simply confirms one new reality: the members of the GOP conservative base are now political orphans."

2013-06-11 (5773 Temuz 03)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
economics vs. "need"
Town Hall
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "The direct cost to a bank of a typical transaction drops by 40% when the client conducts it over the phone instead of showing up at a branch in person.   And it plummets 98% if it is done on-line..." --- Moises Naim 2005 _Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and CopyCats Are Hijacking the Global Economy_ pg135 (citing Saleh M. Nsouli & Andrea Schaechter 2002 September "Challengs of the E-Banking Revolution" _Finance & Development_ pg48; Gabriele Galati & Michael Melvin "Why Has FX Trading Surged? Explaining the 2004 Triennial Survey" 2004 December _BIS Quarterly Review_; Tom Abate 2004-12-07 "Banking's Soldiers of Fortune" _SF Chronicle_)  

 
 

2013-06-12

2013-06-12
Alexander Bolton _The Hill_
senate gangsters urge Obummer to stay on side-lines in debate over immigration perverion bill, S744

2013-06-12
Jennifer Martinez _The Hill_
tech start-up execs conspire with Norquist and Bloomberg for immigration law perversion campaign

2013-06-12
Terry Jeffrey _Town Hall_
fewer visas, more surveillance, or ???
"On 2011 Sept. 11, 19 people hijacked 4 U.S. commercial airliners after those airliners took off from airports inside the United States.   They then flew those airliners into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and a field outside Shanksville, PA.   The hijackers had certain characteristics in common.   All were young males from regions of the world that in recent decades had produced radicalized Muslims [eager to initiated force and fraud] -- and the U.S. government had given all of them visas to enter the [United States of America].   The oldest of the hijackers was 33; the youngest was 20; their average age was about 24.   One came from Egypt, one from Lebanon, two from the United Arab Emirates, and 15 from Saudi Arabia.   The staff of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States -- the 9/11 commission -- would later publish a report on how these young radical Muslim men were allowed to enter the United States and travel around our country as they prepared to murder thousands of Americans in the name of jihad.   The report said: 'The relative ease with which the hijackers obtained visas and entered the United States underscores the importance of travel to their terrorist operations.'   'Once the operation was under-way, the conspirators attempted to enter the United States 34 times over 21 months, through 9 airports.', said the report.   'They succeeded all but once.'   'Every hijacker submitted a visa application falsely stating that he was not seeking to enter the United States to engage in terrorism.', said the report.   'This was a felony, punishable under 18 U.S.C. Section 1546 by 25 years in prison and under 18 U.S.C. Section 1001 by 5 years in prison, and was a violation of immigration law rendering each one inadmissible under 8 U.S.C. Section 1182(a)(6)(c).'   What strategy did the United States pursue to protect the liberty and security of Americans from future attacks like the ones carried out inside the United States by these 19 young radicalized Muslim males from Egypt, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia?...   it did not include stopping Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old radicalized Muslim male from Nigeria, from boarding Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines Flight 253 in Amsterdam at 2009 Christmas...   A month before that flight, Abdulmutallab's father went to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria and warned our government about his son.   Our government put Abdulmutallab's name on a list called the Terrorist Identities Data-mart Environment (TIDE).   That list -- the government's master list of known or suspected terrorists -- contained about 500K names at 2009 Christmas.   But the government failed to put Abdumutallab on the somewhat smaller list called the Terrorist Screening Data-base (TSDB), which then consisted of about 400K names.   That list, according to the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center, includes 'only individuals who are known or reasonably suspected to be or have been engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of or related to terrorism'.   And even had Abdulmutallab made the TSDB by 2009 Christmas, that does not mean he would not have been stopped from boarding Flight 253.   For that to have happened, he would have needed to make it past the 'Selectee' list (which then had about 14K names) to the 'No Fly' list (which had only 4K).   Making the 'Selectee' list would have subjected him to greater scrutiny before boarding the plane.   Making the 'No Fly' would have blocked him from boarding."
So, why do the congress-critters and bureaubums belligerently refuse to run background investigations on visa appplicants?...jgo

2013-06-12
Bob Barr _Town Hall_
even if you have nothing to hide, you have something to fear
IMO, Whatsisface did not reveal anything we did not already know.   Plenty of people, time, data storage, computing power, and money to investigate honest, peaceful US citizens who support the rights to life, liberty, privacy and property; no resources at all to investigate visa applicants, fence the 8,600 or so miles of land borders, guard the borders, investigate people suspected of employing illegal aliens, track temporary visa holders well enough to find and remove them within 48 hours of the time their visas expire...jgo

2013-06-12
Armstrong Williams _Town Hall_
the college scam
"We have all heard the horror stories of crippling student debt and graduates that are lucky to land minimum wage retail jobs.   But one part of the college scam not receiving much attention is the admissions process.   No longer are good grades and good test scores enough to get you into a desirable university.   No, it takes greater resources, time, and existential insight.   These new conditions favor the affluent and unscrupulous...   That problem is the ever increasing cost of jumping through the right hoops and creating the appropriate narrative in order to gain admittance.   You can pay $30K or more a year per child to send them to a top prep school.   There they will be properly challenged, get to play a sport like lacrosse, and be offered the chance to build orphanages in Africa so their resume looks properly polished for an Ivy League school.   Unless you are in the 1%, your child is not going to such a prep school.   But there is still hope.   In public school, you can push your child to focus on one particular subject which they study in their spare time -- the more obscure the better, like the molecular biology of Surinam cockroaches.   Make her play a sport or two, enroll in every other extra-curricular, and send her on a summer trip to build a well in Guatemala.   On second thought, that does not seem like a thrifty alternative either.   Many of the paths to the best schools require unpaid internships, founding charities, academic camps, and excellence in sports.   The average child and parent are unlikely to be aware of such requirements, much less possess the resources to pursue them.   What this system has become is affirmative action for rich families [or at least moderately wealthy with plenty of key connections]."

2013-06-12
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
heading home... without knowing it
"For some great reminiscences from members of company K, 1st PA Reserves, I highly recommend captain H.N. Minnigh's book, _History of Company K, 1st (Infantry) PA Reserves_, which was republished by Thomas Publications, Gettysburg, PA, in 1998."

2013-06-12
Janet I. Tu _Seattle WA Times_
Seattle area has 4th highest percentage of STEM jobs in USA
Jonathan Rothwell: Brookings: The Hidden STEM Economy
Nancy Dahlberg: Hispanic Business: there are few STEM jobs in Miami
As of 2011, 26M U.S. jobs -- 20% of all jobs -- require a high level of knowledge in any one STEM field.   STEM jobs have doubled as a share of all jobs since the Industrial Revolution, from less than 10% in 1850 to 20% in 2010.   By limiting STEM to professional industries only, STEM jobs account for 4% to 5% of total U.S. employment.   If one uses a more inclusive approach -- a job is STEM if it requires a high level of knowledge in any one STEM field -- then the share increases to 20% of all jobs, or 26M in total.   Engineering is the most prominent STEM field; 11% of all jobs -- 13.5M -- require high levels of engineering knowledge.   This is closely followed by science with 12M.   High-level math and computer-related knowledge are less prominent but still constitute millions of jobs (7.5M and 5.4M, respectively).   Many jobs require high levels of knowledge in more than one STEM field, which is why the total (20%) is smaller than the sum of the individual STEM field percentages.
Half of all STEM jobs are available to workers without a 4-year college degree, and these jobs pay $53K on average -- a wage 10% higher than jobs with similar educational requirements.   Previous reports on the STEM economy indicate that only highly educated professionals are capable of mastering and employing sophisticated knowledge in STEM fields.   Classifying STEM jobs based on knowledge requirements, however, shows that 30% of today's high-STEM jobs are actually blue-collar positions.   Half of all STEM jobs are in manufacturing, health care, or construction industries.   Installation, maintenance, and repair occupations constitute 12% of all STEM jobs, one of the largest occupational categories...

2013-06-12
Caleb Shaw
the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation, cod-fish, seals, and fisher-men

2013-06-12
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
Clemson prof speaks out
 
Two interesting items brought to my attention today:
 
http://www.businessinsider.com/cheap-skilled-tech-workers-good-for-us-2013-6
 
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/06/09/4092273/senate-immigration-bill-a-job.html
 
The first item gives a twist to the usual free-trade argument that consumers benefit from lower prices.   A similar argument is often made to justify [abusing] vulnerable unauthorized immigrant workers.
 
Like many of the industry lobbyists' talking points, these are finely calculated to sound plausible to the target audience -- congress, the press and the populace.   But folks, it doesn't work that way, because the labor costs in question are typically small fractions of the overall cost of producing a product or service.   The benefit to the employers is big, because their profit margins are small and a small savings can translate to a large increase in profit.   But no real benefit to consumers.
 
My UC Davis colleague Phil Martin once calculated the amount of consumer "savings" accrued from growers employing unauthorized immigrant labor -- about a nickel savings on a head of lettuce!   Another economist told me that in buying a shirt made in China, one saves about a dollar.
 
Just how much does this Business Insider author think you consumers are saving on a copy of MSFT Office due to that firm's use of H-1Bs?   Maybe $2 on the Student Edition?   ($100+ retail price.)   We're taking jobs away from U.S. citizens and permanent residents so we can save $2?   I submit that most consumers would not find that swap appealing.
 
And how much money are you saving in your access to Google, due to the H-1Bs working there?   You know the answer.
 
The second item is truly remarkable in that an engineering professor is speaking out.   I know that I've had various colleagues tell me privately that they think the H-1B program is terribly destructive BUT that they don't dare speak out.
 
One of them recently told me that even though his own family member was having a hard time finding engineering work, he (my colleague) would never criticize H-1B publicly, even in a faculty meeting, as it would jeopardize his ability to get research funding from industry and government.
 
Note BTW that the engineering professor wrote in his op-ed that he is especially outraged by S744's STEM green card giveaway.   So far, I haven't seen a single politician bring this up, even those who criticize the bill's H-1B provisions.
 
What a sad state of affairs.
 
Norm
---30---

2013-06-12
Jacob Sweeney-Samuelson _Medill Reports_
H-1B visa traffickers are still under fire
"Companies ranging from MSFT Corp. to engine maker Cummins Inc. sponsor these visas for employees with the skillsets they need, presumably when there are no Americans available who meet the same requirements.   But the system has come under fire because of the emergence of firms whose only apparent purpose is to obtain quantities of H-1B visas to deploy foreigners to U.S. firms, where they gain skills and experience which, on their return home, they use to continue their work for the same companies, under-cutting U.S. aspirants for the same work.   The number of applications for H-1Bs approved for use by these [cross-border bodyshops] dramatically out-pacing the applications made by U.S. companies who actually intend to employ the workers they sponsor, according to Department of Labor data.   The share of the yearly cap of H-1Bs awarded to these out-sourcing firms has gone from 20% a few years ago to more than 60% in 2012...   Fragomen was involved in over 20K of the approximately 140K H1-B visa sponsorships filed in the first week of April when applications opened, according to Cooper."

2013-06-12
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
GOP senators who voted to advance S744, oppose reform

2013-06-12
_Warren OH Tribune Chronicle_/_AP_
trail under way of alleged would-be Cuyahoga Valley National Park bridge bomber

2013-06-12
Ann Coulter _Town Hall_
if Republicans go along with immigration reform opponents, they deserve defeat
Jewish World Review
"This line of attack has real resonance with our stupidest Republicans.   (Proposed Republican primary targets: senators Kelly Ayotte, Jeff Flake, Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio.)   Which explains why Republicans are devoting all their energy to slightly increasing their share of the Hispanic vote while alienating everyone else in America...   Why don't [leftists] waste their time trying to win the votes of gun owners?...   the Hispanic vote came in at only 8.4% of the electorate [last November]...   Eligible black voters turned out at rate of 66.2%, compared to 64.1% of eligible white voters.   Only 48% of all eligible Hispanic voters went to the polls...   In the presidential election immediately after Reagan signed an amnesty bill in 1986, the Republican share of the Hispanic vote actually declined from 37% to 30% -- and that was in a landslide election for the GOP.   Combined, the two Bush presidents averaged 32.5% of the Hispanic vote -- and they have Hispanics in their family Christmas cards.   John McCain, the nation's leading amnesty proponent, won only 31% of the Hispanic vote, not much more than anti-amnesty Romney's 27%.   Amnesty is a gift to employers, not employees...   The (pro-amnesty) Pew Research Hispanic Center has produced poll after poll showing that Hispanics don't care about amnesty.   In a poll last fall, Hispanic voters said they cared more about education, jobs and health care than immigration.   They even care more about the federal budget deficit than immigration!...   Also, note that Pew asked about 'immigration', not 'amnesty'.   Those Hispanics who said they cared about immigration might care about it the way I care about it -- by supporting a fence and E-Verify.   Who convinced Republicans that Hispanic wages aren't low enough and what they really need is an influx of low-wage workers competing for their jobs?...   pro-lifers are nearly half of the electorate... "

2013-06-12 (5773 Temuz 04)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
Obummer's definition of "smarter enforcement" is no enforcement at all
Town Hall
V Dare
"Welcome to Opposite World again.   As the U.S. senate geared up yesterday for the Gang of 8 illegal alien amnesty bill [S744] debate, president Obama goaded Capitol Hill to pass what he called 'smarter enforcement, a pathway to earned citizenship and improvements to the legal system' of immigration.   [Male bovine fecal matter.]   The White House has already bulldozed a traffic-jammed superhighway for immigration law-breakers by executive fiat.   Obama and his open-borders pals pay lip service to fairness and the rule of law for the cameras.   But behind closed doors and beyond the reach of public accountability, they've already paved the way for mass deportation waivers.   Read their actions, not their lips...   There's only one course for citizens who believe in upholding the Constitution and protecting the American dream: Stop them."

2013-06-12 (5773 Temuz 04)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
sex and the military
Town Hall
"For thousands of years, people around the world had the common sense to realize that putting young men and young women together in military operations was asking for trouble, not only for these young people of both sexes, but for the effectiveness of military forces entrusted with the fate of nations."

2013-06-12 (5773 Temuz 04)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
unnecessary tragedy
GOP USA
Town Hall
"There are more than 88K Americans on the organ transplant waiting list.   Roughly 10% of them will die before receiving an organ.   These lost lives are not so much an act of God as they are an act of Congress because of its 1984 National Organ Transplant Act, as amended, which prohibits payment to organ donors."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "The first unit for power, the horse-power, was chosen by James Watt, a great English inventor and steam engine pioneer.   Watt found that an average horse could do work at a rate of 33K foot-pounds/minute, thus defining the standard mechanical power unit.   It is interesting to note that in measuring electrical energy, power is usually expressed in terms of watts or kilowatts [or gigawatts or terawatts].   (1KW - 1.341 horse-power.)" --- Robert M. Glorioso & Francis S. Hill ii 1975 _Introduction to Engineering_ pg136  

 
 

2013-06-13

2013-06-13 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 330,933 in the week ending June 8, an increase of 37,141 from the previous week.   There were 376,610 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.1% during the week ending June 1, unchanged from the prior week's unrevised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,761,542, an increase of 19,609 from the preceding week's revised level of 2,741,933.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.4% and the volume was 3,091,216.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending May 25 was 4,515,445, a decrease of 129,863 from the previous week.   There were 5,827,210 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.   Extended Benefits were not available in any state during the week ending May 25...   States reported 1,703,458 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending May 25, a decrease of 57,135 from the prior week.   There were 2,551,539 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;
to 129,204,324 beginning 2013-04-06.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2013-06-13
Nina Easton _CNN_
did congress miss the moment on serious plans for US workers?
"But when an immigration bill arrived on the senate floor, the tech industry got the [cheap, young, pliant] foreign workers [with flexible ethics] it wanted -- for a song.   A new $1K fee, which would apply to green cards for international graduate students but not H-1B visas, would be dedicated to a STEM fund (for science, technology, engineering, and math) for schools, including some colleges."

2013-06-13
Allan Wernick _NY Daily News_
proposed immigration perversion law (S744) has a twist for visa over-stayers
Erica Pearson: naturalization fees still cheap at $680

2013-06-13
Kristina Peterson & Shelly Banjo _Wall Street Journal_
senator Mark Pryor (D-AR) leaning toward voting against immigration reform, for S744
"'A lot of the business community wants this, a lot of the agricultural community wants this.', he said.   'We have people who don't want this, but by and large most of your employers, they'd like to see this happen.'"

2013-06-13
Christopher Monckton
there has been no significant global warming for 17.33 years

2013-06-13
Ken Terry _InformationWeek_/_UBM_
GE pouring $2G into violating your medical privacy
"To reach its ambitious goals, GE is counting on a big data approach...   Similarly, he pointed out, the Caradigm joint venture, owned by GE and MSFT..."

2013-06-13
Jeremy C. Owens _San Jose CA Mercury News_
lay-offs continue in Sili Valley
Patrick May & Jeremy C. Owens: Symantec hit with lay-offs
"Symantec begins its planned lay-offs, adding to earlier job cuts...   Symantec's lay-offs add to Zynga's and NetApp's...   San Francisco social-gaming company Zynga and Sunnyvale data-storage company NetApp have also announced layoffs in the past month, totaling slightly more than 1,400 jobs lost...   The latest monthly job totals, for April, showed a loss for the South Bay, but the tech sector was not the issue: Out of a total of 1,800 jobs lost, health care lost 800 jobs, arts and entertainment shed 500 jobs and government agencies lost 400 jobs, a Beacon Economics analysis of Economic Development Department data showed.   In the San Francisco-San Mateo-Marin region, the tech sector added 800 jobs in April as part of an overall gain of 2,800 jobs...   In its May annual report, Symantec claimed 21,500 workers."

2013-06-13
_San Jose CA Mercury News_/_AP_
Ill-Begotten Monstrosities lay-offs
"said it would spend $1G reshuffling the types of jobs...   The company indicated most of the lay-offs would occur outside the U.S.A...   employed about 434K workers at the start of the year...   With such a large pay-roll, [Ill-Begotten Monstrosities] has been able to periodically lay off a few thousand workers without triggering rules that require disclosures about a 'material' change to its business.   The current round of cutbacks has affected [Ill-Begotten Monstrosities'] operations in Vermont, according to a notification that governor Peter Shumlin on Wednesday said his office received from [Ill-Begotten Monstrosities].   No numbers were provided in that notice either."

2013-06-13
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
re-considering the 2nd battle at Winchester, Frederick county VA

2013-06-13
Vince Cogliane _Daily Caller_
FBI investigating IRS have not contacted tea party people whom IRS targeted
"The ACLJ has filed suit against the IRS on behalf of 25 conservative groups, with additional groups being added in the next couple weeks, according to a spokesman.   'I have been very surprised that I have not heard from anybody and frankly, none of my clients have.   I talk to other tea party leaders on a regular basis.', said Cleta Mitchell, the lawyer largely credited with pushing the IRS abuses to the forefront.   'It's been a month and I can't see any evidence of an investigation of the IRS.', Mitchell told TheDC Thursday.   She represents nine tea party groups targeted by the IRS.   Tea Party Patriots -- a group with thousands of local chapters -- 'has not been contacted by the FBI' either, according to Jameson Cunningham, the group's spokesman...   the FBI is in no hurry to get to the bottom of the scandal..."

2013-06-13
Jim Nintzel _Tucson AZ Weekly_
immigration reform/perversion: "congress is about to change America in a more profound, permanent way right under your noses"
Mickey Kaus: Daily Caller: Wake Up!
"the [RINO] consultants, e.g. Gillespie, Rove -- who helped Mitt Romney lose the 2012 election, have taken their own failure as an excuse to push what they've wanted all along -- a business-pleasing immigration policy guaranteeing a supply of inexpensive labor from abroad and a stream of campaign donations to pay [RINO] consultants...   the big money in the immigration fight almost unanimously favors a bipartisan, legalization-first bill...   One of the more influential members of this 'donorist' class is Rupert Murdoch, which means that FOX News has for all intents and purposes switched sides, giving immigration 'comprehensivists' a monopoly in the MSM–five networks to none.   As goes Murdoch, so goes [the not very savvy] Hannity...   You'd think Rush Limbaugh -- a rare non-Fox conservative star, who understands what is at stake -- might have a good deal of time to spend on the Gang of 8 bill the day before its first test vote in the senate.   You would be wrong.   Rush talked mainly about the NSA.   If the conservative public were paying attention, the flaws and crude deceptions of the Schumer-Rubio bill would be common knowledge.   They are so obvious, especially in the border enforcement area, that even senator Rubio pretends to be dissatisfied with his own bill.   Byron York reports that many conservatives are shocked when they learn that Rubio's bill doesn't secure the border before legalization.   It doesn't! 'First comes the legalization.', as Rubio boasted yesterday.   That's been obvious for months, but now it's news.   (The border security requirements, themselves evanescent, would only prevent legalized illegals from moving to upgrade from legal status to getting green cards and citizenship.)   It's time to wake up! Conservatives, while you are (rightly) excited about NSA snooping and partisan IRS corruption, the congress is about to change America in a more profound, permanent way right under your noses...   If Senators fear losing their office if a bill becoming law–and they tend to be highly risk-aware–it often has a way of dying without any finger-prints on it (which is arguably what happened in 2007).   There's a list of senate phone numbers and e-mails.   Numbers USA has a handy page that lets you send a fax.   The Capitol switchboard is 202-224-3121."

2013-06-13
Jeff Poor _Daily Caller_
Mark Levin lays into Paul Ryan over immigration stance

2013-06-13
Jon Feere _Center for Immigration Studies_
US Judicial Conference says S744 would overwhelm federal courts

2013-06-13
Mark Medlovitz _Californians for Population Stabilization_
S744 was writtey by and for "special interests"
Butte MT Standard
"The senate Gang of 8 assembled a special-interest coalition of Big Labor, Big Agriculture, Big Business, Big Religion, prominent environmentalists, ethnic lobbies, and of course immigration lawyers, to help write the bill in secret, while excluding the concerns of our Customs and Border Protection Officers and most importantly, the American people.   For proof, remember the trite but true phrase -- 'follow the money'...   Big Agriculture (the farmers) and Big Business, including Big Software, are interested in an uninterrupted flow of cheap, compliant labor...   And last but not least, ethnic lobbies and immigration lawyers have helped to write the text of a bill from which they stand to reap so much future business.   The message the Gang of Eight has sent in S744 is crystal clear -- immigration policy and legislation is solely the domain of special interests and not the American people."

2013-06-13
Paul Nachman _Californians for Population Stabilization_
S744 won't help USA

2013-06-13
Jim Nintzel _Tucson AZ Weekly_
20 illegal aliens invaded Steve King's office
Madeleine Morgenstern: Blaze
"As [illegal aliens] descend upon Capitol Hill this week to lobby politicians over [S744], representative Steve King (R-IA) tweeted out several remarks about how illegal aliens have invaded his DC offices, and Obama's lawless executive order gives them immunity from [deportation and removal]...   He continued, 'mercy is always accompanied by repentance, and I saw no sign of repentance yesterday.   It was a demand...   if we can’t secure the doors to a congressional office building, how in the world does John McCain [R-AZ] and Chuck Schumer [D-NY] think we're going to secure the borders?'"

2013-06-13
Michael Allen _Opposing Views_
3 Republican representatives ask for help to stop immigration perversion (S744, HR2131)
Blaze (video)

2013-06-13
Jason Howerton _Blaze_
FBI director Robert Mueller admits he doesn't know much about terrorists
"Surprisingly, Mueller claimed he wasn't aware that the mosque that the Boston bombing suspects attended, the Islamic Society of Boston, was founded by a convicted supporter of terrorism.   Due to this and other reasons, Gohmert argued not enough was done to prevent the attack as the suspects' radical Islamic ties were overlooked.   'The FBI never canvassed Boston mosques until four days after the April 15 attacks.', he said.   'If the Russians tell you that someone has been radicalized and you go check and see the mosque that they went to, then you get the articles of incorporation as I have for the group that created the Boston mosque where these Tsarnaevs attended and you find out the name Alamoudi.'   Abdurahman Alamoudi, who was convicted and is currently in jail for supporting terrorism, co-founded the mosque that the two Boston bombing suspects attended in Boston, Gohmert lectured.   'And you didn't even bother to go check about the mosque?', he added.   'Then when you have the pictures, why did no one go to the mosque and say, who are these guys?'...   Mueller countered by arguing that the FBI was at the Boston mosque months prior to the Boston bombing as a part of its 'outreach efforts'...   'were you aware they were started by Alamoudi?'   'No', the FBI director finally muttered."

2013-06-13
Madeleine Morgenstern _Blaze_
70 House Republicans insisting on immigration reform
"70 House Republicans are planning a politically risky showdown with Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to try to force additional debate on an immigration bill they say will mean amnesty for illegal immigrants and have dire consequences for the country...   Any major challenge could ignite pushback from the American public that could force lawmakers to scrap the bill, as happened in the 2007 immigration effort.   The three representatives told TheBlaze that more than half of the Republicans in the House were elected after 2007, and have no concept of how strongly the public opposed the bill."

2013-06-13
Medeleine Morgenstern _Blaze_
House 8 gangsters bill is a "Trojan horse": GOP representatives detail the struggle for immigration reform
"the senate's pending immigration [perversion] bill will mean amnesty -- and that a deceptively 'good' bill in the House will get it pushed through.   'We have the really bad bill in the senate and whatss going to happen, Glenn, is that a Trojan horse -- a bill that's going to really look good and really sound good and it's going to talk about border security -- a bill that we like will get voted on and passed.', Bachmann said.   Both bills will go to a conference committee to be reconciled, where 'they'll take the good guts out of the good bill, they'll put the bad guts in the good bill, the senate will pass it, it'll come over to the House, and then [House Minority Leader] Nancy Pelosi and all the Democrats will vote for the amnesty bill, probably the committee chairs will vote for it, and we'll have amnesty.', Bachmann said.   King said the senate bill as it is written will amount to 'perpetual and retroactive amnesty'."

2013-06-13
_Warren OH Tribune Chronicle_/_AP_
Cooper Tire selling out to India's Apollo Tyres Ltd.
"Their tire brands include Apollo, Cooper, Roadmaster and Vredestein.   The deal gives Apollo access to markets in the U.S.A. and [Red China] while Cooper gets a premium price per share and some [empty, unenforceable] assurances that its domestic operations won't be gutted...   With a history dating back to 1914, Cooper currently employs nearly 13K people around the world and has manufacturing plants on 3 continents.   Its brands include Cooper, Mastercraft, Dean, Starfire, Roadmaster and others."

2013-06-13
Edwin S. Rubenstein _V Dare_
a 3rd lesson from 1965: immigration and inequality rise together

2013-06-13
Melanie Batley _News Max_
Paul Ryan says he'll attempt to defend S744: "I'll debate anyone"... er, uh, not really

2013-06-13
Bob Goodlatte _House Judiciary committee_
hearings on HR2278
"One reason why our immigration system is broken today is because the present and past administrations have largely ignored the enforcement of our immigration laws.   If we want to avoid the mistakes of the past, we cannot allow the president to continue shutting down federal immigration enforcement efforts unilaterally.   The SAFE Act will not permit that to happen.   I remain concerned that whatever enforcement provisions Congress passes will be subject to implementation by the current Administration, which fails to enforce the laws already on the books.   DHS has released thousands of illegal and criminal immigrant detainees while providing ever-changing numbers to Congress regarding the same.   DHS is forbidding ICE officers from enforcing the laws they are bound to uphold.   A federal judge has already ruled DHS's actions are likely in violation of federal law.   DHS is placing whole classes of unlawful immigrants in enforcement free zones.   DHS claims to be removing more aliens than any other administration, but has to generate bogus numbers in order to do so...   The SAFE Act shows how to avoid the mistakes of the past with regard to immigration law enforcement, especially the 1986 immigration law."

2013-06-13
Kris Anne Hall
intimidation by government functionaries as an attack on the 1st amendment
Before It's News
Bear Witness Central
Post & E-Mail

2013-06-13 (5773 Tamuz 05)
Victor Davis Hanson _Jewish World Review_
USA's vast margin of error
"The [Obummer regime] is facing scandals everywhere -- using the IRS to punish political enemies, seizing the phone records of Associated Press and Fox News reporters, monitoring phone and e-mail accounts of millions, and making up stories about what happened in Benghazi.   IOW, the sort of government overreach that hardly raises eyebrows in Russia, [Red China] and most of Africa and Latin America is felonious here in the freest society in the world.   Because of America's unique Constitution, and especially the Bill of Rights, for over two centuries Americans have taken as their birthright privacy and free expression, so that even the slightest infringement becomes cause for outrage -- and correction.   We also have wide margins of error in energy.   [President Obummer] still keeps the Keystone Pipeline on hold.   He has frozen almost all new gas and oil leasing on America's vast public lands.   Yet throughout the 2012 campaign, the president also boasted that gas and oil drilling in the United States had reached all-time highs.   Despite, not because of, the president's efforts, production rose due to a long history of protecting private property rights and ownership of subterranean resources.   The country also inherited a can-do tradition of private enterprise using innovative new technology to cut costs and increase efficiency."

2013-06-13 (5773 Tamuz 05)
judge Andrew P. Napolitano _Jewish World Review_
liberty in shambles
"When British soldiers were roaming the American countryside in the 1760s with lawful search warrants with which they had authorized themselves to enter the private homes of colonists in order to search for government-issued stamps, Thomas Paine wrote, 'These are the times that try men's souls.'   The soul-searching became a revolution in thinking about the relationship of government to individuals.   That thinking led to casting off a king and writing a Constitution.   What offended the colonists when the soldiers came legally knocking was the violation of their natural right to privacy, their right to be left alone.   We all have the need and right to be left alone.   We all know that we function more fully as human beings when no authority figure monitors us or compels us to ask for a permission slip.   This right comes from within us, not from the government.   Thomas Jefferson made the case for natural rights in the Declaration of Independence ('endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights').   The Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution to reduce to writing the guarantees of personal liberty.   ('Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of... religion... speech... press... assembly...'   'No person shall... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...'   'The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.')   And, of course, to prevent the recurrence of soldier-written search warrants and the government dragnets and fishing expeditions they wrought, the Constitution mandates that only judges may issue search warrants, and they may do so only on the basis of probable cause of crime, and the warrants must 'particularly describ(e) the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized'.   Last week, we discovered that the government has persuaded judges to issue search warrants not on the constitutionally mandated basis, but because it would be easier..."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "We have seen how the market shot up during the second half of 1928; over the same period brokers' loans increased by another $1.5G, or mroe than they had increased during the whole of 1927 -- the year of Strong's easy money!   In short, the new Fed policy was an instant and spectacular failure.   Loans from his broker now cost the speculator 8% or 9%; early in 1929 they were to cost him 12% and more.   But how could in interest rate of 8% or 12% [per] year deter a man, or woman, who fully expected to use the money to make a profit of 100% in a month or even a week?   Traditional monetary restraints were useless because they had come too late.   The speculative virus was past being checked by that medicine." --- John Brooks 1969 _Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street_ pg98  

 
 

2013-06-14: USA Flag Day

2013-06-14
Ronald D. Voisin
an engineer's take on climate #2

2013-06-14
Tom Harris
representative David McKinley (R-WV) hosted balanced panel on climate
"Last month, U.S. representative David McKinley (R-WV) hosted an unbiased climate change panel discussion in Fairmont, West Virginia.   Experts from both sides of the climate debate participated without restrictions of any kind.   McKinley's open-minded approach is one that should be copied across the United States.   Considering what's at stake—a human-induced eco-collapse if former vice-president Algore and his allies are correct, or, if skeptics are right, a waste of billions of dollars and the loss of millions of jobs as we experiment with a switch away from coal and other hydrocarbon fuels to alternative energy sources—the risks are too high to do anything less."

2013-06-14
Wesley Pruden _Washington DC Times_
immigration "reform" to gag on
"The Democrats pushing immigration [perversion] want the issue, not the reform...   There's lots for everybody to gag on, which is how senator Harry Reid, the Las Vegas bag man in charge of running the charade in the senate, is determined to preserve as many poison pills as he can.   He has to preserve as much of the stink as he can to keep the Republican gag reflex working.   The main sticking point continues to be border security, which the Democrats have been promising for decades -- and the border continues to be the sieve they want it to be...   Passing out citizenship this way is the modern equivalent of the old custom of passing out turkeys on Christmas eve.   There's always an appetite for turkey.   If there was a semblance of good faith on the part of the Democrats, they would leap to establish security on the border; this has been the promise in all the amnesty schemes, and authentic border security is as ephemeral as ever.   The bag man took pains to humiliate senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a key Republican voice on immigration matters, as the floor debate opened, by gleefully tabling his amendment to make the border secure before granting amnesty to the 11 million (or more) illegals already here.   'The so-called open and fair process' promised by the Democrat and the so-called Gang of 8 senators who wrote the bill -- 4 Democrats and four Republican wishy-washies -- 'is a farce.', Mr. Grassley told the Senate on Thursday.   'This is not the right way to start off on a very important bill.'   But that assumes there's a real attempt to get authentic reform and organize an orderly welcome for legal immigrants.   But that's a foolish assumption.   The 4 wishy-washies -- Marco Rubio of Florida, John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina -- followed the Democrats to kill the border-security amendment.   The debate was occasionally interrupted Thursday with outbursts of candor and even of conscience.   Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the chief negotiator behind the Gang of 8, said the Senate might as well pass the bill without amendments because it will take 'years and years and years' to make the border secure, so why try.   'Years and years and years' means 'never'.   Other amendments are coming, and Harry Reid will have to decide whether to keep the bill 'pure' or offend one of the key constituencies of the party, which is eager to replace the melting pot.   That pot produced the greatest country the world has ever seen, but the fashion now is the salad bowl, with competing loyalties, selfish interests and grasping ambitions...   'If the border situation is not improved in this bill, this bill won't pass.   It won't pass the senate and it has no chance in the House.   It won't become law and we're wasting our time.'   And that's just the way [president Obummer] and the Democrats want it.   They can spend the year between now and next November drowning the Hispanics in foam and froth about the evil Republicans.   It's low, mean and cynical, but that's how politics works, some of the time."

2013-06-14
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
Yahoo lobbyists should read Yahoo education on tech skills "shortages"
"It shows that Yahoo as a corporation is lobbying for more H-1Bs on the grounds of an alleged 'skills shortage' in the high-tech fields, while another part of Yahoo says, in effect, Americans should not bother to study information systems in college because it will not help them get a job...   Yahoo in 2012 was the 35th largest [abuser] of H-1B workers in the nation, filing for 512 of them, as reported here...   Yahoo Education, a news-gathering unit of the mother corporation, however, has reported that one of the college 'degrees with high unemployment' is 'information systems'.   The article is headlined 'Want a Job? Don't Bother With These Degrees'.   It lists 4 such degrees: fine arts, philosophy and religion, film and video arts, and information systems, in that order...   There is, sadly, no mention in the reporting that one of the prime causes for the high unemployment level of residents is the heavy concentration of foreign workers in the H-1B program working in the information and high-tech fields.   I wonder how long this good piece of education/labor market analysis will stay on the web."

2013-06-14
Jerry Kammer _Center for Immigration Studies_
Sanders and Sessions: odd couple of immigration law debate

2013-06-14
Joe Guzzardi _Californians for Population Stabilization_
Rubio says "legalization is not conditional"
CAPS Washington DC "Read the Bill" Rally was Tuesday June 11
CapWiz canned messages to congress-critters

2013-06-14
Somini Sengupta _NYTimes_
tech execs push to keep their special subsidies in S744

2013-06-14
Jason Howerton _Blaze_
Rush Limbaugh's theory on why some RINOs are willing to pass amnesty for illegal aliens
"'I assume that some Republicans think there is a new group of people that would become their base.   If they just got rid of these pro-lifers, if they just got rid of this religious crowd, if they just got rid of the Christians, if they just got rid of these gun nuts.'   [If they just got rid of those constitutionalists.   If they just got rid of those budget balancers.   If they just got rid of this individual liberty crowd...]"

2013-06-14
Becket Adams _Blaze_
former Nazi SS company commander was living in Minneapolis
Patrik Jonsson: Jewish World Review
"A top commander of a Nazi SS-led unit accused of burning villages filled with women and children lied to American immigration officials to get into the United States and has been living in Minnesota since shortly after World War 2...   The Galician Division and a Ukrainian nationalist organization he served in were both on a secret American government blacklist of organizations whose members were forbidden from entering the United States at the time."
This is what happens when you don't conduct proper backgroud investigations of visa applicants...jgo

2013-06-14
Madeleine Morgenstern _Blaze_
House to hold "special conference" on immigration reform/perversion July 10
"'It has always been leadership's plan to schedule a special conference meeting on immigration which is why we put one on the calendar and noticed to Members and staff this week.', communications director Nate Hodson said in an e-mail...   Thursday, when TheBlaze reported that 70 Republican members were petitioning for the special conference in a potential face-off with House Speaker John Boehner.   The group wants to invoke the Hastert Rule, a principle that requires support from a majority of the House majority to bring a bill forward.   Two congressional offices confirmed to TheBlaze that the meeting has been scheduled for July 10...   King, Bachmann and Gohmert explained their opposition to the current immigration [perversion] effort on Beck's TV program Thursday night, saying that a 'Trojan horse' bill is in the works to essentially trick the GOP into voting for amnesty for illegal immigrants and ensuring a permanent voting block for [leftists]."

2013-06-14
Frank Munger _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
retired Dept. of Energy official: Uranium Processing Facility costs outrageous
"the management of the Uranium Processing Facility at Y-12 appears to be 'out of control'.   The project could end up costing $10G or more, he said.   Wilfert said he was shocked last fall when the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semi-independent part of DoE, admitted that after spending $500M the original design was not big enough to accommodate all the equipment and would have to be redone.   'To me, that was absolutely unconscionable.', he said.   'I cannot see how that was even possible...'...   The official cost estimate of the Uranium Processing Facility is a range between $4.2G and $6.5G, and the Government Accountability Office -- in a recent briefing package prepared for members of Congress -- said the current best estimate is $6G and suggested there's a good chance that the project could end up exceeding the top end of the range."

2013-06-14
_CNBC_/_Reuters_
UMich consumer sentiment index fell from 84.5 in late May to 82.7 in early June
Chicago Tribune
Ruth Mantell: MarketWatch
"Confidence eroded most among lower-income households, which were 'more likely to report worsening overall financial prospects' than higher-income households, survey director Richard Curtin said in a statement."

2013-06-14
John DiStaso _NH Union Leader_
Jack Kimball supports immigration reform, opposes S744
"'No Republican should be supporting anything in this bill unless it calls for securing our borders as its first priority.', he wrote.   'Secondly, if passed, this bill will forever change the political dynamic of our Country for within a very short period of time it will virtually guarantee that we will not see a Republican Administration.   Why? Because the vast majority of those who will become Legalized will vote for the Democratic Party.   Further, besides adding anywhere from 11M to 15M new [letist] voters to the rolls these folks will also be able to add some of their extended family.   This will be a disaster for the Republican Party as well as our Country.', wrote Kimball.   [He urged his fellow patriots to] contact their 'representatives in congress and tell them NOT to support the Amnesty Bill as written and to demand that our borders be completely secured before any further discussion is allowed to happen on this topic.   If they ignore you then we will resolve that problem at the ballot box.'...   Ayotte, for the record, was among the [RINO] leaders of the state GOP hierarcy who called for Kimball's ouster as party chair back in 2011."

2013-06-14 (5773 Tamuz 06)
John P. Martin _Jewish World Review_
diary of Alfred Rosenberg, chief architect of Nazi ethnic cleansing policies, found near Buffalo, NY

2013-06-14 (5773 Tamuz 06)
Fred Weir _Jewish World Review_
US bounties for info to find terrorist leaders
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "We know that earth's magnetic field changes in power from time to time: during the age of the dinosaurs, it was up to 3 times as strong as now.   We also know that it reverses itself every 500K years or so on average, though that average hides a huge degree of unpredictablity.   The last reversal was 750K years ago.   Sometimes it stays put for millions of years -- 37M years appears to be the longest stretch -- and at other times it has reversed after as little as 20K years.   Altogether in the last 100M years it has reversed itself about 200 times, and we don't have any real idea why." --- Bill Bryson 2003 _A Short History of Nearly Everything_ pg219  

 
 

2013-06-15

1776-06-15: Archibald Cary & committee of 34 reported a declaration of rights, drafted by George Mason, and it was adopted by the VA convention.

2013-06-15
Bob Tisdale
model vs. data comparison: hemispheric sea ice area

2013-06-15
_UPI_
Boehner and Rubio conspired on immigration perversion, Wednesday

2013-06-15
Peter Brimelow _V Dare_
if S744 is so popular, why are they being so dishonest?
World Net Daily
"Similarly, you can tell that backers of S744, the 1K-page Schumer-Rubio immigration bill that has been rushed to the senate floor this week, are terrified that justly outraged American patriots will tar and feather them and run them out of town on a rail -- they always describe their insanely radical and grossly self-interested proposal as 'immigration reform' or, frequently, 'Comprehensive Immigration Reform'.   And, needless to say, their Main-stream Media megaphone repeats the term endlessly."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "No amount of enthusiasm or sorrow, however sincere and profound it may be, can compel a problem to be solved. Ideas occur to us when they please, not when it pleases us.   The necessary tools of engineering must be added to political, social, medical, and biological contributions to solve these problems." --- Robert M. Glorioso & Francis S. Hill ii 1975 _Introduction to Engineering_ pg162  

 
 

2013-06-16: Fathers' Day

2013-06-16
_World Net Daily_
Dana Rohrabacher criticizes immigration perversion
"'Rubio is so mixed up and so confused.   I think he has given up his rightful place to advise any of us in Washington what to do, and he's given up any right to be trusted by the American people.', he said...   'This is just a lot of weasel words that Rubio and these people are throwing in.   They're going to legalize the status of people here illegally.   Once they do that, that is an amnesty.   And once they do that, there will be no border security improvements.   It'll all be a facade.', said Rohrabacher, who warned this bill would only attract tens of millions more illegal aliens.   Also this week, the senate voted down an amendment to the immigration bill by senator Chuck Grassley, R-IA, that would require border security to be in place before any legal status is given to illegals.   All 4 Republicans in the [8 gangsters] voted against the amendment.   'That shows you exactly what the intent of the people pushing the legislation is, the fact that they couldn't put legitimate triggers into the bill so we’d be able to determine whether the more had been made more secure.   So the fact they had to vote that down in the Senate shows you that they're not serious and they're lying to us when they say otherwise.', said Rohrabacher, who vowed he will not vote for any bill that legalizes the status of anyone who came to this country illegally...   'We have been in an era of massive propaganda and pressure on each and every one of us, from the big-moneyed interests in our districts who want cheap labor to the [leftist] news media that want to further the cause of the [illiberal] left.   They've been pushing, pushing, pushing.', Rohrabacher said."

2013-06-16
Sariyd Feliciano _Empower Network_
money and wealth are not dirty words

2013-06-16
Heather Mac Donald _National Review_
does USA need more hamburger flippers?

2013-06-16
Henry B. Smith ii _Answers in Genesis_
getting archaeology correct at Ai
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "Once pollutants are dispersed by winds over a wide geographic area, natural scavenging mechanisms are often adequate to remove these pollutants from the atmosphere.   If so much pollutant is being produced that the scavenging mechanisms cannot naturally remove them, then accumulation of these pollutants in the atmosphere [or soil, or water] occur; the rate of accumulation in the rather dispersed environment is substantially less noticeable (but of no less ultimate importance) than that which occurs in localized areas such as the Los Angeles basin.   Wind even has a large effect on the amount of pollution on a single block in the city." --- Robert M. Glorioso & Francis S. Hill ii 1975 _Introduction to Engineering_ pg164  

 
 

2013-06-17

1775-06-17: Battle of Bunker Hill (and Breed's Hill)

2013-06-17
_Youngstown OH Vindicator_
site of cousin William's house to get historical marker

2013-06-17
Toni Bowers _Tech Republic_/_Ziff Davis_/_CBS_
the myth of STEM talent shortages, and H-1B visas
"...(If you squint really hard, you'll be able to read the rest of that sentence which is 'for less money than they have to pay U.S. workers.')   And, really, that's the real deal isn't it?   But if you say anything publicly about this, then you're 'anti-India;, or something along those lines.   Seems to me I'm 'pro-India' if I'm against hiring Indian folks to do work for a fraction of the cost we'd pay U.S. workers.   What possible reason could anyone have to make this assertion?   Well, try reading this report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office [GAO] (pdf) that says, although H-1B workers are supposed to be paid 'prevailing wages', that rule is rarely enforced and that oversight is 'cursory'...   'For the past decade, he's [Hira] been studying how consulting firms use temporary work visas to help American companies cut costs.   He says they use the visas to supply cheaper workers here, but also to smooth the transfer of American jobs to information-technology centers over-seas.'"

2013-06-17
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
the latest from the industry lobbyists (and Rubio)
 
The EPI paper by Salzman, Kuehn and Lowell attracted a lot of attention in the press.   Since it strongly undermined the "labor shortage" claims of the industry lobbyists, I was waiting to see how the lobbyists would respond.   One of the arguments in their response turned out to be, "Yeah, there are lots of American programmers and engineers, but they are not good enough for the employers.   Therefore we need to hire H-1Bs."
 
Now Senator Rubio and his aides are making the same argument (Rubio Doubles Down into Disaster).
 
When the lobbyists first started making such claims, I stated here in this e-news-letter that the quality issue IS an issue.   If you have the choice of hiring a weak person versus hiring no one at all, it is much better to hire no one at all.   Otherwise the weak person messes things up and slows down the entire project.   And as I discussed in my 2003 University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform article (pdf), the range of talent is quite broad.
 
That said, the industry lobbyists have NO evidence that there is a lack of quality people.   On the contrary, my own EPI paper shows that it is the foreign workers, not the Americans, who are typically of lower quality.   And my paper, in addition to reporting my own statistical analyses, cites those of other researchers, with similar results.
 
In addition, one must keep coming back to one of the central points made by Salzman et al. (and also in a third EPI paper by Daniel Costa): Wages are not going up!   If it is the case that employers only hire people of high quality (more or less true), and that there is a shortage of high quality people, then WHY AREN'T THE WAGES GOING UP?   So even though Salzman et al. didn't take quality into account, their same argument applies, and the industry's claim implode.
 
By the way, one of the industry lobbyists, in trashing the Salzman paper (the lobbyists's blog was dripping with sarcasm, so "trash" is the right verb), pointed to the figure of 80K job openings [ads] on Dice.com and said, "Do they [Salzman] et al. think we're making those numbers up?"   A preliminary analysis of the Dice data would seem to say the answer is Yes, i.e. the 80K number is greatly exaggerated.   I hope to tell you more about this within a week or so.
 
Norm
abc/Univision
Politico
New Yorker
Erick Erickson
Conant's statement on behalf of Rubio as reported by Matt K. Lewis in Daily Caller
Rich Lowry: National Review
Matthew Boyle: Breitbart

2013-06-17
Thomas D. Elias _Redding CA Record SearchLight_
Zuckerberg/Rove/Bloomberg axis: same old self-interest wrapped in the flag
Los Angeles CA Daily News
Del Norte CA Triplicate
"starving for qualified workers"   Yah, "qualified" workers.   Not, "able and willing".   Not, "bright", "knowledgeable", "creative", or "industrious".   "Qualified" wink wink nudge nudge.   While throwing up ever more barriers to US applicants and lowering intensity of recruiting.   They're "starving" so badly that the second they get another resume over the transom as it were, they send airline tickets for the candidate to fly out for an interview, and then a nice pile of cash to cover relocation expenses, and 12 weeks of new-hire training.   Oh, wait; that's what they used to do BEFORE H-1B, but not anymore.   Now, they call back only a small fraction of candidates, run then through half a dozen "trivial pursuit"/"human compiler" quizzes over the phone to find a pretext to declare all US candidates to be "unqualified", and then expect them to transport themselves for the interview and to relocate themselves, and to get no training at all
"he's following the old-fashioned political path of doing and saying and spending whatever it takes to get the votes he wants."

2013-06-17
Ross McKitrick
temperature data are strongly affected by local population growth: Encompassing Tests of Socio-Economic Signals in Surface Climate Data

2013-06-17
Steven Dennis _Roll Call_
Boehner should lose speakership if he brings an immigration bill to the floor that does not have majority GOP support
World Net Daily
Jonathan Easley: Hill

2013-06-17
_Town Hall_/_AP_
at least 6 killed in Chicago over the week-end

2013-06-17
Todd Starnes _Town Hall_
anti-immigration reform activists mob home of KS secretary of state
"a large number of the protesters were believed to be illegal aliens.   They can be seen on video chanting in Spanish, standing on Kobach's porch, front yard and drive-way and demanding that he come outside...   Video showed the protesters arriving in 4 buses -- and then marching through the neighborhood."

2013-06-17
Guy Benson _Town Hall_
Jeff Sessions: S744 is beyond repair
"Now the bill has been reviewed and there can be no dispute: it weakens current law, undermines future enforcement and puts amnesty—not enforcement—first.   So new promises of amendment 'fixes' to save the bill should be viewed with great skepticism: every time, on every issue, the promises have not matched with reality.   They promised back taxes—but the requirement isn't there; they promised tight restrictions on welfare benefits—but state and local benefits, as well as tax credits, will be available immediately and federal welfare access is granted to millions of illegal immigrants starting in 5 years; they promised to protect workers—but this bill would devastate workers by tripling the number of legal immigrants over the next decade and doubling the number of guest workers.   No small cosmetic fix can save this bill, with so many provisions clearly authored by special interests whose chief desires are lower wages and amnesty—rather than a lawful, rational system of immigration.   As the ICE officers' association warned: 'instead of cracking down on the Administration’s abuse of power, S744 places unprecedented new restrictions on interior enforcement—making the current situation much worse and much more hazardous.   It is as if S744 were explicitly written to handcuff law enforcement officials—binding their hands while giving virtually unchecked authority to executive branch officials to prevent future removals, including removals of criminal aliens.'"

2013-06-17
Cheryl K. Chumley _Washington DC Times_
Big Brother alert: cameras in cable-TV boxes monitor TV viewers

2013-06-17
_Washington DC Times_
Amnesty and English: This immigration reform dissolves the melting pot

2013-06-17 (5773 Tamuz 09)
Mark Steyn _Jewish World Review_
the digital super-state is useless when it matters
"Every time I go on his show, my radio pal Hugh Hewitt asks me why congressional Republicans aren't doing more to insist that the GOP suicide note known as 'the immigration deal' [S744] include a requirement for a border fence.   I don't like to tell Hugh that, if they ever get around to building the fence, it won't be to keep the foreigners out but to keep you guys in.   I jest, but only very slightly and only because the government doesn't build much of anything these days -- except for that vast complex 5 times the size of the Capitol [that] the NSA is throwing up in Utah to house everybody's data on everything everyone's ever done with anyone ever.   A few weeks after 2001/09/11, when government was hastily re-tooling its 1970s hijacking procedures for the new century, I wrote a column for The National Post of Canada and various other publications that, if you're so interested, is preserved in my anthology _The Face Of The Tiger_.   It began by noting the observation of President Bush's Transportation Secretary, Norman Mineta, that if 'a 70-year-old white woman from Vero Beach, FL' and 'a Muslim young man' were in line to board a flight, he hoped there would be no difference in the scrutiny to which each would be subjected.   The TSA was then barely a twinkle in Norm's eye...   And thus, the bozo leviathan blunders on.   Big Politically Correct Brother sees everything... and nothing."

2013-06-17 (5773 Tamuz 09)
Kate Irby, Ali Watkins, Trevor Graff & Kevin Thibodeaux _Jewish World Review_
many of the ways your privacy is being violated
"What you spend.   Where you eat.   Whom you call.   Where you travel.   What you Google.   What you give to charity...   They watch from the air, from cameras, from computers.   And you help them, volunteering vast amounts of information about yourself in the magnetic stripe on the back of your credit card, the SIM card in your phone, the sites you visit on the Internet...   Arranging a vacation? Someone knows where you're planning to go.   Check in with FB? It tracks all the sites you visit that have 'like' buttons or allow you to sign in with FB -- pretty much all of them.   If those Internet giants can record so much about you, who can look at this electronic diary? The government can access any e-mails, chats, searches, events, locations, videos, photos, log-ins and any information people post online with a warrant, which the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court can grant secretly...   Google received 16,407 user data requests involving 31,072 users from the U.S. government in 2012.   It granted about 90% of those requests.   MSFT, with its Outlook/Hotmail e-mail service, received 11,073 requests involving 24,565 users, at least partially granting 65% of those requests...   In 2011, the last year with available information, law enforcement agencies made 1.3M requests for subscriber information...   As many as 30K domestic [UAVs] will travel the skies above U.S. soil within 20 years, according to a report for congress by the Federal Aviation Administration."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "When the crash finally came, it came with a kind of surrealistic slowness -- so gradual that, OT1H, it was possible to live through a good part of it without realizing that it was happening, and, OTOH, it was possible to believe that one had experienced and survived it when in fact it had no more than just begun. The market did not all crash at once.   Large segments of it had been depressed for a year or more.   The 1929 boom was, in fact, quite a narrow and selective one...   As a matter of fact, a good part of the stock market had been more or less depressed all through 1929...   but if a sort of slow, partial crash, invisible except to its victims, had been occurring over a period of at least 3 years, Tuesday 1929-09-03 -- the day the market averages reached the all-time highs that were to endure for a quarter of a century -- was not a day when the public at large gave its attention to such a matter." --- John Brooks 1969 _Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street_ pp109-110  

 
 

2013-06-18

2013-06-18
Steven T. Dennis & Emma Dumain _Roll Call_
Boehner and the immigration revolt
David Sherfinski: Washington Times
Guy Benson: Town Hall

2013-06-18
Stephen Dinan _Washington DC Times_
CBO says S744 measures will only stop 25% of illegal immigration
Erik Wasson: Hill
Laura Ingraham
National Review
Jerry Kammer: Center for Immigration Studies: CBO Rorschach test
CBO report
"S744 would lower per capita GNP by 0.7% in 2023 and raise it by 0.2% in 2033, according to CBO's central estimates.   Per capita GNP would be less than 1% lower than under current law through 2031 because the increase in the population would be greater, proportionately, than the increase in output; after 2031, however, the opposite would be true.   CBO's central estimates also show that average wages for the entire labor force would be 0.1% lower in 2023 and 0.5% higher in 2033 under the legislation than under current law [but no word on how it would compare with immigration law reform]."

2013-06-18
Stephen Dinan _Washington DC Times_
Grayson says Trans-Pacific trade deal is "disturbing attack on USA democracy"

2013-06-18
Russell Berman _Hill_
GOP divisions visible on immigration reform
"[The House Judiciary committee] met to mark up the Safe Act [HR2278], a conservative proposal that would make it a crime to be 'unlawfully present' in the U.S.A. and would give new authority to state and local officials to enforce immigration laws...   Gowdy said. 'Enforcing the law strikes me as a reasonable place to begin.'"

2013-06-18
Alexander Bolton _Hill_
Reid asserts House will face "enormous pressure" to approve insane senate immigration perversion bill

2013-06-18
Robert Knight _Town Hall_
Will GOP let left steam-roll them to pass immigration perversion

2013-06-18
Jack Kerwick _Town Hall_
anyone who endorses anything remotely resembling S744 is either a fool or a liar

2013-06-18
Byron York _Town Hall_
border security is important to immigration reform

2013-06-18
Chuck Norris _Town Hall_
American heroes

2013-06-18
John Hawkins _Town Hall_
20 greatest quotes from Walter E. Williams

2013-06-18
Thomas Sowell _Town Hall_
the loss of trust
Jewish World Review
"The belated recognition of this administration's contempt for the truth, for the American people and for the Constitution of the United States, has been long over-due."

2013-06-18
David Archibald
curve-shape matching: 2 years to another 1740 extreme temperature drop?

2013-06-18
_Investor's Business Daily_
Attacks on Tea parties were directed from DC

2013-06-18
_Warren OH Tribune Chronicle_/_AP_
fewer 20-somethings leaving Ohio in search of employment
Washington DC Examiner
"young adults ages 20 to 34...   The analysis found that the state lost more than 420K young adults between 1990 and 2010 -- a drop of more than 16%.   But from 2010 July 1 to 2012 July the state gained 42,562 people in that age range, a 2% increase...   Census numbers show that just in the decade from 2000 to 2010, Ohio lost more than 65K young adults, a 2.9% drop.   That decrease was second-worst in the nation, behind only Michigan.   But in the following two years, Ohio regained almost two-thirds of that loss of young adults.   Experts say Ohio needs more graduates with the skills employers say they require to fill jobs.   While 35.5% of [Buckeyes] have a college degree, 57% of jobs in the state will require that education by 2018, according to the Lumina Foundation and the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce."

2013-06-18
Harold Vick _Cincinnati OH Enquirer_
stricter immigration standards are needed
"Illegal immigration is called that because it is illegal.   We should not forgive someone for entering our country illegally any more than I should forgive someone for entering my home illegally.   We should bring our troops home from Afghanistan and other useless foreign places and array them in depth on the Mexican border.   We would need to amend or set aside the Posse Comitatus Act.   We should keep illegals out and throw them out.   We should let people in whose skills,etc. benefit us, not accept whoever wants to come in for his benefit.   It is senseless to flood our country with low level workers while young black unemployment is at about 20%."

2013-06-18 (5773 Tamuz 10)
Bernard Goldberg _Jewish World Review_
freedom in an age of terrorism

2013-06-18 (5773 Tamuz 10)
Mona Charen _Jewish World Review_
the unmentionable injustice
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "Although the roots of policing are local, many countries today have a national police service divided into branches under a single unified command.   The [United States of America] is an extreme outlier, with more than 18K separate forces, of which 60 operate nationwide.   In many countries the police took over border control from the military.   But the more important innovation WRT organized crime was the establishment of powerful and prestigious investigative units, such as the American FBI (founded 1908) or France's Police judiciare, established in 1907.   Yet customs and police are just part of the picture." --- Moises Naim 2005 _Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and CopyCats Are Hijacking the Global Economy_ pg181  

 
 

2013-06-19

2013-06-19
Mike Shedlock _Town Hall_
too many graduates, not enough jobs
"Well, at least China's middle class is expanding, for now.   That's not something we can say here in the USA...   Are fake job offers in China that much different than the University of Phoenix placing someone with a culinary art degree in a job at McDonalds, while padding statistics as a graduate with a job in their field of study?...   Yet, we are told education is the answer, without ever addressing the questions: 'For whom?   At what cost?   In what field?'   These articles were purportedly about China.   Change the names and faces and the stories are not much different than you can find right here in the US, in Italy, in France, or anywhere else in a slow-grow global economy.   After growing at an astronomical rate for years, the cost of education is going to plunge.   Job statistics will force that outcome."

2013-06-19
Guy Benson _Town Hall_
Boehner says he will maintain "Hastert rule" on immigration reform, senate kills border fence provision in existing law
"Since 1996.   While we're on the subject of previously-required tasks that still haven't been accomplished, senator John Thune (R-SD) offered a border fence amendment that would have required the federal government to construct [ONLY] 700 miles of fencing along the southern border, which Congress overwhelmingly mandated in 2007 (the job never came close to completion).   Here's how the sequencing would work: First, 350 miles of the project would be built, followed by provisional legalization for millions.   Then, after the second half of the border fence was finished [along only about 8% of the US land borders, leaving 92% wide open], the green card process could begin.   The government would thus be forced to produce some tangible results on a dormant project before the amnesty stage began, and most provisionally-legal residents wouldn't be eligible for full legalization until the job was done.   Seems pretty reasonable.   The amendment failed 39-54.   Almost every Republican (plus 2 Democrats) voted in favor, while nearly every Democrat shot it down.   Reid and Schumer were joined by every member of the gang of 8 -- Rubio and McCain included -- and Lisa Murkowski.   McCain's vote, while predictable, was uniquely galling in light of this famous 2010 re-election ad: 'Complete the danged fence'?...   none of the gang members are willing to abide a meaningful enforcement-first trigger.   Thune's plan could have been packed full of details, and Rubio still would have voted no."

2013-06-19
Ben Grubb _Brisbane Australia Times_
Ill-Begotten Monstrisities quietly dumping about 1500 Australian STEM pros, moving work to India, Red China
"These figures rival the minimum 1200 jobs that Ford Motor announced it would cut when it exits Australia in 2016...   The redundancies add to simmering ICT job losses in Australia due to off-shoring and cuts by other giants such as HP.   Technology workers in banking and other large industries have reported being fired but only after training people in India, [Red China] or the Philippines or workers on 457 visas to do their jobs.   Government agencies have also shed IT jobs, with the Queensland Government this month announcing 1700 IT jobs are likely to go.   IBRS analyst Alan Hansell, who specialises in advising on out-sourcing of IT and the IT skills market, said...there will be fewer IT jobs for Australians.   'It's another reason why it's important to review the 457 visa program.', Mr Hansell said.   'Why bring people in on 457 visas to do IT work when Australian IT jobs are being shed?'...   At least 1300 have so far been fired in the USA, according to employee group Alliance@IBM.   IBM's total global work-force was 434,246 as of December 31.   The cuts were estimated by analysts to affect about 2% of its employees, or between 6K and 8K people globally, although Australia appears to have been hit harder...   They said many of their colleagues, including senior project managers, were asked to leave.   'These are highly skilled people...who spend their times in front of the clients.'"

2013-06-19
_Hot Air_
Allen West won't rule out primary challenge to Rubio in 2016

2013-06-19
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
Guess who's getting $70M in bonuses?

2013-06-19
Bob Barr _Town Hall_
the soft tyranny born of "trust us"
"The answer lies in our Constitution, as well as in the Federalist Papers that so eloquently explain our system of government.   As noted in Federalist 51, written 225 years ago by James Madison, the 'Father of the Constitution' (I paraphrase): 'If men were angels, we would have no need of government, but men are not angels and we therefore institute government among men to protect us from the abuses in which government inevitably will engage if left to its own devices.'   Clearly, our Founding Fathers understood the fundamental nature of government: that, as an institution, government seeks power.   They knew also that power, once obtained, tends to corrupt, hence the checks and balances built into in our constitutional republic...   As Edmund Burke understood in 1757, 'no passion so effectively robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear'.   Unfortunately, government leaders today -- as in 1776 when John Adams noted that 'fear is the foundation of most governments' -- understand this fact all too well."

2013-06-19
Jerry Rogers _Town Hall_
eating? Big brother is watching
"Members of Congress are considering amendments to the farm bill that will require the Secretary of Agriculture to monitor and restrict the food and beverages purchased through the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).   That's right -- a food surveillance program run out of the Department of Agriculture.   Food surveillance is exactly what is required in an amendment introduced by Representative Tom Marino (R-PA).   The congressman's legislation will 'require retail food stores to collect, and report to the Secretary of Agriculture, detailed information that identifies food items purchased with benefits provided under the supplemental nutrition assistance program; and to require the Secretary to compile and publish such information'."

2013-06-19
John Ransom _Town Hall_
buying habits being minutely logged
"The NSA is checking out your e-mail, Common Core standards are logging away information about your kids, and now the CFPB is tracking consumer purchases...   Oh, you don't know what CFPB stands for?...   Diane Katz"

2013-06-19
Jeff Jacoby _Town Hall_
MA senate seat debate shows 2 petulant pandering poseurs on display
"Law-making may not be rocket science, but candidates asking to be entrusted with senatorial authority ought to be willing to think and speak more seriously, and to show more respect for the voters' intelligence, than either of these petulant pandering poseurs has done in this campaign.   One of those two characters will be the next senator from Massachusetts.   If voters in a democracy get the government they deserve, what does that say about us?"

2013-06-19
Brett Bogus _Town Hall_
riots in Brazil, Turkey
"What are they protesting? Corruption, taxes, the poor quality of educational and health services, politicians earning disproportional salaries, political impunity, a poor and decaying public transportation infrastructure, and oppression...   In the United States of America, [President Obummer] has dropped almost 10 points in popularity with his most popular demographic -- young people -- due to the NSA scandal and feelings of cynicism due to unfulfilled promises of change.   What were they hoping to change? Corruption, taxes, the poor quality of education and health services, a decaying infrastructure, sale of public property, the right of people to voice grievances against the government without fear of arrest and torture in Guantanamo Bay, and the lack of transparency in government.   Instead, we've seen the persecution of whistle-blowers, fears of increased taxes to fuel more spending, no improvement in education or infrastructure, a controversial [perversion] to health-care, and even less transparency than ever before."

2013-06-19
Donald Lambro _Town Hall_
Obummer family road-trip: running away from responsibility and extravagantly spending your earnings

2013-06-19
Tim Scott (R-SC) _Town Hall_
Frederick Douglass: freedom in action

2013-06-19
Debbie Chestnut _Cumberland PA Sentinel_
re-enactors mark Confederate occupation of Shippensburg PA from 1863 June 23 through 30

2013-06-19
"This is not an immigration bill.   This is the fundamental transformatio of America...   This bill in the senate [S744]...would add another 46M new illegal aliens and immigrants into this nation in the next 20 years.   Our population in this country, from that alone, will increase 15%.   And they still will not secure the borders...   The fix cannot possibly be in Washington, DC.   If we...decide to leave you, you're finished.   And God knows you're provoking us." --- Mark R. Levin at 20 minutes after the hour

2013-06-19
Larry Elder _Investor's Business Daily_
don't let the other scandals distract you from the sluggish economy

2013-06-19
_Investor's Business Daily_
S744 is a plan to shaft USA's poor

2013-06-19
Louis Woodhill _Forbes_
what about immigration reform and fairness for the other 96.5% who are in the USA legally?
"The Gang of 8 immigration [perversion] bill (S744) currently being debated by the senate would squash the jobs prospects and wages of the American working class, crush our already-struggling middle class, increase inequality, and trap many of the immigrants themselves in a welfare state roach motel.   Other than that, it is a great idea...   Republicans are in danger of being panicked into caving in on one of the most important issues facing the nation...   There is a glaring economic fact that is being overlooked in the debate over immigration reform.   The moment that an immigrant enters the U.S.A., she or she imposes a cost on America of up to $156K.   This is because the U.S.A. has $156K in capital assets per person (BEA 'Produced Assets' numbers for 2011).   Simply by being here, an immigrant dilutes the capital available to support the rest of us, or forces us to invest more money in physical assets to maintain our standard of living.   This cost is undeniable, because it is merely the flip side of the benefit that motivates immigrants to come here in the first place.   Why would the same person with the same skills immediately start earning 32 times as much in U.S.A. as they did in Bangladesh?   Why would they be able to live in a nicer housing unit?   Why would they be able to get from place to place much faster?   All of this (and more) is because, in the U.S.A., an immigrant will have much, much more capital at his/her disposal.   Unfortunately, unless an immigrant brings $156K worth of financial or genuine human capital (e.g., an engineering degree from [the top 2% of the class at] MIT) to America with them, his or her presence here immediately makes all of our existing citizens and legal residents worse off.   An immigrant family of 4 would need to bring $624K in capital into the country with them just to allow the rest of us to break even.   And, this is before they take advantage of any 'free' services (emergency room medical care, public schools, etc.) that consume [tax-victim] expense dollars."

2013-06-19
Aaron Deslatte _Orlando FL Sentinel_
Floridians support immigration reform, oppose Rubio

2013-06-19
_UPI_
corrupt senate voted down Rand Paul's immigration reform amendment
"The Kentucky Republican's 'Trust but Verify' measure was tabled on a 61-37 vote, The Hill reported.   The amendment would have required Congress to vote on whether border security measures were being enforced before immigrants would be granted legal status, the Washington publication said.   The measure also would have required completion of a border fence in 5 years and provided that no national identification card system be established."

2013-06-19
_Gallup_
poll on immigration reform/perversion measures

2013-06-19
Margie Netzel _Norwalk OH Reflector_
senator Sherrod Brown says visa reform should press employers to hire US citizens first
Ashtabula OH Star Beacon
Ashtabula OH Star Beacon, plain text
"American jobs should be offered to 'qualified' American workers first, senator Sherrod Brown said Tuesday. Brown, D-Avon, championed the H-1B visa program to reporters, but with an amendment that would require employers to hire American workers before seeking visas for foreign workers. 'The H-1B visa program can help U.S. employers find qualified employees', Brown said, 'but we have to make sure foreign workers are not hired at the expense of American workers.'   The H-1B visa program allows businesses to recruit foreign workers to fill positions that require a specific skill set. The L-1 Visa Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act of 2013 would require businesses to first offer a position to an equally or better 'qualified' American worker before seeking a visa for a foreign worker."
Note that he does not say "able and willing" or "equally or better able US citizen".   "Qualified" is an infinitely flexible word.   Don't conflate "high-skill" with "high-tech".   Every kind of skill necessarily has a range of skill levels.   There are highly-skilled janitors and low-skilled PhD physicists.   As a matter of fact, the US Dept. of Labor classifies the vast majority of H-1B grantees as being low-skilled, but having "specialized skills"...jgo

2013-06-19
Steve Kolowich _Chronicle of Higher Education_
power stuggle between Universities and MOOCs

2013-06-19
"Washington Watcher" _V Dare_
non-leftists allow IRS abuses to divert attention from immigration perversion

2013-06-19
Thomas E. Brewton
leftists want to tell others what not to do, what to do, and how to do it... regardless of the results

2013-06-19
Ann Coulter _Town Hall_
avoid the "need" for unconstitutional warrantless spying on US citizens by using this one not-so-weird trick
"There's 'American citizen' David Coleman Headley, who conspired with Pakistani military officers to commit the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, that left more than 160 people dead. Headley's ancestors served under general George Washington -- no, I'm sorry, Headley was born 'Daood Sayed Gilani' in Washington, DC, to a Pakistani father. Like your typical American boy, he enjoyed TV's 'Happy Days' and murdering innocent people in terrorist attacks. There were the 20 'American' men from the Minneapolis area who joined a terrorist group in Somalia in 2008. I knew the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party would cause trouble one of these days! No, wait -- wrong again. We invited these foreign terrorists to immigrate here after the collapse of Somalia's government in 1991. (And what a great deal for America that was! I'm so glad Obama's doing it again with Syrian rebels.)   These hard-working Somali immigrants produced -- in the words of The New York Times -- 'the first known American suicide bomber'!   Go U.S.A.! Who could have guessed that Shirwa Ahmed would be America's first suicide bomber? (My money had been on a guy named 'Jim Peterson'.)   In addition to the first suicide bomber, the other American citizens who joined the terrorist group included Cabdulaahi Ahmed Faarax, Abdiweli Yassin Isse and Mahamud Said Omar. If you can't trust 'American citizen' Cabdulaahi Ahmed Faarax, what Americans can you trust these days? Or to quote senator Bob Casey, the mentally disabled Democratic senator from Pennsylvania: 'It's really disturbing -- Americans becoming radicalized.'   Then there were the 6 'New Jersey men' who plotted a terrorist attack on the Fort Dix military base in 2007. Using rocket-propelled grenade launchers, they estimated they could kill at least 100 soldiers. Chris Christie, then the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, said surveillance tapes showed the men watching videos of Americans being killed in Afghanistan. '(T)hey watched the blowing off of the arm of a United States Marine and the room burst out into laughter.', Christie said. 'These are the types of people we are dealing with.'   The New Jersey men were named Mohamad Shnewer, Serdar Tatar, Agron Abdullahu, Dritan Duka, Eljvir Duka and Shain Duka. Four were from the former Yugoslavia, one was from Turkey and one was from Jordan. All were illegal aliens. But we 'needed' them! As Marco Rubio's staff recently told The New Yorker, American workers 'can't cut it'. If the government can spy on Cherry Hill's Mohamad Shnewer, how can we draw the line at Fox News' James Rosen and CBS News' Sharyl Attkisson?   Then there's 'American citizen' major Nidal Hasan, who is still collecting his handsome military salary -- up to nearly $300K by now -- since being accused of a terrorist attack on Fort Hood that left 13 dead and dozens wounded. And don't forget 'American citizen' Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, accused of conspiring with his brother to bomb the Boston Marathon earlier this year. My favorite 'American citizen' is Najibullah Zazi, arrested in 2009 for plotting to bomb the New York subways. Zazi was born into a tribe in eastern Afghanistan and came to America in his teens. His ticket to entry was his father, whose ticket was, in turn, a brother living in Queens. (We have no room for Scottish bankers because we have to make room for entire villages of illiterates from Afghanistan, thanks to Teddy Kennedy's 1965 Immigration Act.)   Zazi's own step-uncle described him as 'a dumb kid, believe me', according to The New York Times. (Sorry, Scottish bankers -- that's our immigration law!)   He dropped out of high school and had an arranged marriage to his cousin in Pakistan. So Zazi is another big immigrant success story. Forget the recent Muslim immigration problem. Virtually all enemies to America have been foreigners. The only known Italian traitors in U.S. history were anarchist terrorists Sacco and Vanzetti: immigrants."
Exactly why we need to reduce immigration to manageable levels and run proper background investigations on every applicant for a visa...jgo

2013-06-19 (5773 Tamuz 11)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
the amnesty mobsters vs. the USA
Town Hall
V Dare
"The big government/big business alliance to protect illegal immigration got a lot of mileage using foolish Republicans Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan as front men.   But the true colors of the open-borders grievance-mongers always show through.   After America said no to a pork-filled security-undermining amnesty bill in 2007, the No Illegal Alien Left Behind lobbyists changed their overtly thuggish tactics.   They put down their upside-down American flags, stopped wearing their commie Che Guevara T-shirts and cloaked their radical 'Aztlan' aspirations in the less divisive rhetoric of 'reform' and 'opportunity'...   These groups do not stand for the American dream.   They are a nightmare conglomeration of George Soros-funded social justice operatives, trans-nationalists and La Raza militants who detest U.S. sovereignty.   National People's Action, which spear-heads [leftist] 'direct actions' at the private homes of their political foes and led the march on Kobach's home, is a 'community organizing' non-profit based in -- you guessed it -- Chicago.   NPA's past shakedowns have involved busing in protesters and schoolchildren (using public school buses) to invade the private property of their victims and intimidate their families.   They relish their brass knuckles with this anthem: 'Who's on your hit list NPA?   Who's on your hit list for today?   Take no prisoner, take no names.   Kick 'em in the (a—) when they play their games.'   As I first reported in 2004, NPA is funded by the Tides Foundation, the Ben and Jerry's Foundation, and the MacArthur, Ford and Rockefeller foundations.   It's also funded by your tax dollars.   My research found that the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Massachusetts Department of Education had all given tens of thousands of dollars in grants to NPA members for left-wing activism, identity politics and illegal alien benefits.   Rubio, Ryan and other Republicans who've made common cause with these welfare-state goons have betrayed fundamental principles of limited government and the rule of law."

2013-06-19 (5773 Tamuz 11)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
unasked and unanswered
Town Hall
"Japan is a nation bereft of diversity in any activity.   Close to 99% of its population is of one race.   Whose students do you think have higher academic achievement -- theirs or ours? According to the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment [PISA], the academic performance of U.S. high-school students in reading, math and science pales in comparison with their diversity-starved counterparts in Japan.     Should companies be treated equally?   According to a Wall Street Journal op-ed (2009/09/07) by Manhattan Institute's energy expert Robert Bryce, Exxon Mobil pleaded guilty in federal court to killing 85 birds that had come into contact with its pollutants.   The company paid $600K in fines and fees.   A recent Associated Press story (2013/05/14) reported that 'more than 573K birds are killed by the country's wind farms each year, including 83K hunting birds such as hawks, falcons and eagles, according to an estimate published in March in the peer-reviewed Wildlife Society Bulletin'.   The [Obummer regime] has never fined or prosecuted windmill farms, sometimes called bird Cuisinarts, for killing eagles and other protected bird species.   In fact, AP reports that the Obama administration has shielded the industry from liability and has helped keep the scope of the deaths secret.   It's interesting that The Associated Press chose to report the story only after the news about its reporters being secretly investigated.   That caused the Obama administration to fall a bit out of favor with them.   But what the heck, the 14th Amendment's requirement of 'equal protection' before the law for everybody can be cast aside in the name of diversity, so why can't it be cast aside in the name of saving the planet? There are politically favored industries just as there are politically favored groups...     President Woodrow Wilson was a leading progressive [leftists] who believed in notions of racial superiority and inferiority.   He was so enthralled with D.W. Griffith's 'Birth of a Nation' movie, glorifying the Ku Klux Klan, that he invited various dignitaries to the White House to view it with him.   During one private screening, President Wilson exclaimed: 'It's like writing history with lightning.   And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.'   When President Wilson introduced racial segregation to the civil service, the NAACP and the National Independent Political League protested.   Wilson vigorously defended it, arguing that segregation was in the interest of Negroes.   Dr. Thomas Sowell, in _Intellectuals and Race_, documents other progressives who were advocates of theories of racial inferiority.   They included former presidents of Stanford University and MIT, among others.   Eventually, the views of [leftists who called themselves] progressives fell out of favor.   They changed their name to 'liberals' [thus besmirching both genuine progressives and genuine liberals], but in the latter part of the 20th century, the name 'liberals' fell into disrepute.   Now they are back to calling themselves 'progressives'.   I'm not arguing that today's [leftists] are racists like their predecessors, but they share a contempt for liberty, just as president Wilson did.   According to Hillsdale College history professor Paul A. Rahe -- author of _Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift_ -- in his National Review On-line (2013/04/11) article 'Progressive Racism', Wilson wanted to persuade his compatriots to get 'beyond the Declaration of Independence'.   President Wilson said the document 'did not mention the questions' of his day, adding, 'It is of no consequence to us.'   My question is: Why haven't today's [leftists] disavowed their racist predecessors?"

2013-06-19 (5773 Tamuz 11)
William G. Chrystal _Federalist_
Alexander Hamilton & immigration
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "Plants rely on the carbon dioxide and moisture in the atmosphere to produce plant cells.   About 60 * 109 tons of carbon dioxide are used annually in this photosynthesis process.   These carbon compounds are then used by animals for food and to provide both the energy and ceell-building materials require by them.   Carbon dioxide is returned to the atmosphere in the process of respiration by both plants an animals and by decay of organic matter.   Carbon dioxide is also consumed by dissolving in the oceans [and lakes and rivers] and by formation of inorganic materials such as calcium carbonate." --- Robert M. Glorioso & Francis S. Hill ii 1975 _Introduction to Engineering_ pg179  

 
 

2013-06-20

2013-06-20
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
Grassley & Brown proposed H-1B reform amendments to S744, the senate immigration perversion bill
"Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) are backing a proposed [weak, ineffectual] amendment to the immigration bill that would require employers to 'first offer a vacant position to an equally or better qualified American worker' before filling the job with an H-1B worker...   The Senate immigration bill, as initially drafted by a bipartisan group of senators, the so-called gang of 8, included U.S. worker preference in hiring.   The tech [executives] opposed it, and worked with an ally, U.S. senator Orrin Hatch (R-OH), to get the clause removed...   Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV), and Jeff Sessions (R-AL) also support the latest amendment.   If the Senate approves an immigration bill, it would then move on to the House of Representatives, which [has] its own bill[s sponsored by Trey Gowdy (R-SC) and Darrell E. Issa (R-CA)]...   India is expected to complain to World Trade Organization [WTO]...   Max Baucus (D-MT), chairman of the senate Finance committee, and Hatch, its ranking member, last week accused India of blocking the sale of U.S.A.-made IT products there and said India's trade policies 'coerce U.S. companies to transfer their technology to local industry'.   Schumer is complaining that the sale of New York dairy products are blocked in India."

2013-06-20 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 335,320 in the week ending June 15, an increase of 2,949 from the previous week.   There were 364,548 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.1% during the week ending June 8, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week's revised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,765,232, a decrease of 13,198 from the preceding week's revised level of 2,778,430.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.4% and the volume was 3,101,927.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending June 1 was 4,533,560, an increase of 18,115 from the previous week.   There were 5,818,334 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.   Extended Benefits were not available in any state during the week ending June 1...   States reported 1,683,962 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending June 1, a decrease of 19,496 from the prior week.   There were 2,533,716 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;
to 129,204,324 beginning 2013-04-06.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2013-06-20
_Warren OH Tribune Chronicle_
Rob Portman proposed amendment to S744 to prevent violent criminals from becoming U.S. citizens
"One of Portman's amendments would make anyone convicted of a felony domestic violence, stalking or child abuse charges inadmissible...   Portman's other proposal would remove discretionary authority to ensure that people convicted of a crime against children are not eligible to become a U.S. citizen.   U.S. senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, is co-sponsoring another amendment that reinstates a provision from the original immigration bill to require employers give American skilled workers the first chance at a job before it can be filled with a visa holder."

2013-06-20
Geoffrey H. Sherrington
comparing climate models... or simple math puzzle

2013-06-20
Bob Tisdale
model vs. data comparison: daily max and min temperatures and diurnal range

2013-06-20
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
southern unionist guides and scouts: the theory of clothing

2013-06-20
Ramsey Cox _Hill_
corrupt senate rejects Cornyn border security pre-requisite 54-43

2013-06-20
Leah Barkoukis _Town Hall_
Michelle Malkin says "Secure the borders"
"'the constitution says...that it is the duty of the federal government not only to provide for the common defense but to secure the states against invasion, and they've failed and failed and failed [refused and refusea and refused] to do that job.', she said"

2013-06-20
Victor Davis Hanson _Town Hall_
government dishonesty undermines democracy and liberty

2013-06-20
R.G. Hicks _Re-Innovating America_
opting for experience rather than earnings: working un-paid has become the new normal...

2013-06-20
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
did WV know what they were doing?: today is the 150th anniversary of the founding of the state of West Virginia

2013-06-20
Beryl Lieff Benderly _AAAS Science Careers_
PhD Placement Project to do longitudinal study of careers
Chronicle of Higher Education

2013-06-20
Anthony Watts
third, transient, van Allen belt detected by NASA probes

2013-06-20
Betsy Woodruff _National Review_
Tea parties for immigration reform, against S744

2013-06-20
_Investor's Business Daily_
empty promises that borders will be secured are not enough

2013-06-20
Mark Krikorian _Center for Immigration Studies_
lame Corker-Hoeven border security sham

2013-06-20
Michelle Malkin _V Dare_
uncovering the Camp Bastion cover-up

2013-06-20
Liz Klimas _Blaze_
elaborately carved 8th or 9th century BCE column found in outskirts of Jerusalem

2013-06-20
Jason Howerton _Blaze_
Jim McDermott (D-WA) asks FBI to stop posting pictures of most-wanted terrorists

2013-06-20
Becket Adams _Blaze_
Jeff Sessions points out that S744 would hammer Americans' wages for over a decade

2013-06-20
Stephen Dinan _Washington Times_
ICE agents say deal not good enough, want more interior enforcement

2013-06-20
Jon N. Hall _American Thinker_
the real threat from reprehensible immigration law perversion (S744)

2013-06-20
Thomas E. Brewton/ Elbert Guillory
freedom vs. slavery on the leftist/dem plantation

2013-06-20
Ira Mehlman _Immigration Reform_
senator Corker, remember what you said in 2007

2013-06-20
Neil Munro _Daily Caller_
CBO says S744 aids executives, investors, but not production workers

2013-06-20 (5773 Tamuz 12)
judge Andrew P. Napolitano _Jewish World Review_
fidelity to the US constitution when we need it
Reason
"The NSA is America's domestic spying apparatus.   Its budget is secret.   It will soon occupy the largest federal building on the planet.   It often hires outside contractors to do much of its work.   One of those contractors is Booz Allen Hamilton.   Booz Allen's co-chair is former Admiral John M. McConnell, who once headed the NSA.   When Snowden began his work for Booz Allen, he took 2 oaths.   The first oath was to keep secret the classified materials to which he would be exposed in his work as a spy; the second oath was to uphold the Constitution...   The government persuaded a federal judge with a perverse understanding of the values and history and language of the Constitution to sign a series of orders directing the largest telephone company in the U.S.A. and the largest Internet providers in the world to make available to the government's prying eyes all sorts of information about nearly all of us, thus allowing the feds to monitor our use of land line and wireless phones, as well as our use of emails and texts.   The numbers are staggering.   Verizon has greater than 113M U.S. customers who generate or receive more than one billion phone calls every day.   Americans text and e-mail one another using the services of MSFT, Google, Yahoo, FB and others many billions of times every day.   The judge's order was profoundly unconstitutional, as is the section of the Patriot Act that authorized it.   The Constitution requires that the government demonstrate to all judges being asked to sign search warrants specific evidence of criminal behavior contained in the things to be seized.   And it requires that the warrants themselves particularly describe the places to be searched or the persons or things to be seized..."

2013-06-20
Malcolm Moore _London Telegraph_
riot after teachers in Red China try to stop pupils cheating
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

 
"Comparative tensile and compressive strengths of brittle materials:
Acrylic plastic (Plexiglas)10,600PSI tensile17K PSI compressive (at which excessive deformation or rupture occurs);
Gray cast iron24K PSI tensile120K PSI compressive;
Alumina ceramics30K PSI tensile300K PSI compressive;
Concrete (28-day)400 PSI tensile5K PSI compressive;
Window glass10K PSI tensile500K PSI compressive."
--- Robert M. Glorioso & Francis S. Hill ii 1975 _Introduction to Engineering_ pg208
 

 
 

2013-06-21

1788-06-21: US constitution ratified

2013-06-21
Ed Whelan _National Review_
12.8% of the law school class of 2012 are unemployed
Karen Sloan: National Law Journal: employment falling for law school grads

2013-06-21
Caitlin Huey-Burns _Real Clear Politics_
weak, unenforced border security deal sways Kirk to back immigration law perversion, oppose genuine reform

2013-06-21
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
US DoL enforcement of H-1B rules is a paper tiger... just like DHS
"Regarding fraud in the program, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported a couple of years ago the incidence of fraud or technical violation in 21% of the cases it examined...   A close examination of the recent statistics on the subject shows that the Department of Labor (DOL): Denied fewer than 6% of the H1-B applications it saw in FY 2012; and Has only 31 names on its current list of debarred H-1B employers...   In 2010, CIS learned, by studying DoL spread-sheets, that the department had approved 258,381 LCAs, and denied 38,827 of them; the denial percentage of the total volume of applications was 13.1% that year.   By 2012 the volume of applications had increased by about one-fifth, but the denial rate had fallen to 5.4%."

2013-06-21
Tal Kopan _Politico_
Ann Coulter says immigration reform not possible until we have a non-leftist congress free of RINOs like Rubio, Graham, McCain

2013-06-21
Billy Hallowell _Blaze_
Coulter and Hannity excoriate opponents of immigration reform, backers of S744

2013-06-21
Paul Ryan attempts to defend S744... and repeatedly fails miserably
Mark Levin
Mark Levin
Laura Ingraham
Laura Ingraham (audio)

2013-06-21
Daniel Bier _Skeptical Libertarian_
be careful of the oranges vs. apples problem of different definitions when trying to compare violent crime rates of one country to those of another: USA vs. UK

2013-06-21
Brigham-Grette et al.
"Summer temps were about 10 degrees C warmer than today, though atmospheric CO2 was similar"
AAAS Science: From Russia with Lovely Data

2013-06-21
Peter Parisi _Washington DC Times_
amnesty amnesia and the triumph of hope over experience

2013-06-21
_One Old Vet_
non-leftists battle RINOs over lack of border security

2013-06-21
_One Old Vet_
Ted Cruz is unwilling to trade border security later for amnesty today
"Proposals to reward illegal aliens with citizenship are just more proof that Washington DC is out of touch."

2013-06-21
_One Old Vet_
a "path to permanent residency" is as bad as "another path to citizenship"

2013-06-21
J.D. Longstreet _One Old Vet_
S744 is amnesty for illegal aliens
"Again, it would appear, we have been fed another lie."

2013-06-21
_One Old Vet_
Rand Paul: S744's fatal flaw is that the broken system cannot be repaired without genuine border security
Washington DC Times

2013-06-21
John Lillpop _One Old Vet_
this Independence Day US citizens must demand freedom from foreign invasions!

2013-06-21
_One Old Vet_
I'm fighting back against backers of S744 -- and so can you

2013-06-21
Anthony Watts
table-top sized particle accelerator demonstrated at U of TX at Austin
"'We have accelerated about half a billion [500M] electrons to 2 gigaelectronvolts [2GeV] over a distance of about 1 inch.', said Mike Downer, professor of physics in the College of Natural Sciences.   'Until now that degree of energy and focus has required a conventional accelerator that stretches more than the length of two football fields.   It's a down-sizing of a factor of approximately 10K.'"

2013-06-21
Jeremy C. Owens _San Jose CA Mercury News_
privacy violators Oracle, MSFT, Salesforce to conspire
"Oracle...CEO Larry Ellison seems to have a new strategy to combat weaker earnings...   partnerships with big-time rivals, which CEO and founder Larry Ellison described as 'startling' in Thursday's conference call.   The media have been invited to a Monday news conference that will include MSFT CEO Steve Ballmer, in which the companies are expected to announce the availability of Oracle's offerings in MSFT's cloud infrastructure.   Even more startling is a reported partnership between Oracle and Salesforce, long-time rivals that chase similar customers in the software space, now that Oracle has ramped up its cloud offerings.   Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who founded the San Francisco cloud pioneer..."

2013-06-21
Selwyn Duke _American Thinker_
why leftists kill

2013-06-21
Matthew Boyle _Breitbart_
Mark Levin points out that Mitch mcConnell is "orchestrating S744 from the shadows"
"Nationally-syndicated conservative radio host Mark Levin, one of the signers of the Tea Party coalition letter calling on law-makers to prevent the Gang of 8 immigration bill [S744] from reaching the senate floor, told Breitbart News Mitch McConnell is the one pulling the strings behind the bill.   'It is obvious McConnell has been orchestrating this from the shadows.', Levin said in an e-mail.   'From encouraging Marco Rubio to join this silly Gang to smoothing the way for a vote for this monstrous bill, McConnell's pushing it.   Make no mistake, the ruling class wants to ram this down our throats, and that includes the GOP so-called leaders.'
On Tuesday, McConnell said he would not block the bill from reaching the senate floor.   McConnell also praised the Gang of 8.   'With regard to getting started on the bill, it's my intention -- if there is a motion to proceed required -- to vote for the motion to proceed so we can get on the bill and see if it we’re able to pass a bill that actually moves the ball in the right direction.', McConnell said.   'The Gang of 8 has made a substantial contribution to moving the issue forward.', McConnell added.   'So far, I'm told that the Judiciary Committee has not in any fundamental way un-done the agreement reached by the eight senators so I'm hopeful we'll be able to get a bill we can pass here in the Senate.'
What McConnell said he will do is the opposite of what Tea Partiers who signed that letter, like Levin are calling on law-makers to do.   'We urge you to vote against it and against any cloture vote to bring up the bill.', the Tea Party coalition wrote.   'Only then can a constructive, measured debate take place on how to improve America's immigration policy.'"

2013-06-21
Niels Lesniewski _Roll Call_
Harry Reid trying to ram through immigration perversion/S744

2013-06-21
Denise Magner _Chronicle of Higher Education_
PhD Placement Project: what job-placement data would be useful?

2013-06-21
_Abstracted Engineer_
EE unemployment soars

2013-06-21 (5773 Tamuz 12)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
useful idiots
"Alon's strategy for dealing with the violence is not to do his job -- deploy forces judiciously to defend the country and its citizens from our enemies.   His strategy is to pressure the government to surrender to all of the PLO's territorial and political demands."

2013-06-21 (5773 Tamuz 12)
R' Naftali Reich _Torah.org_
A Fool's Musings
"People who seek constant approval and adulation often tend to disparage and humiliate others.   Since they suffer from diminished self-worth and feelings of inadequacy, they deprecate others in an attempt to pump up their own egos."

2013-06-21 (5773 Tamuz 12)
R' Berel Wein _Torah.org_
The Instigator or the Perpetrator?
"In Judaism there is a concept that there is no excuse of agency present when a sin or crime is being committed...   If there is no agency outside of Jewish society, it appears that, generally speaking, there would be liability on both the instigator and the agent as well in such circumstances.   In any event, it certainly is inherently wrong to engage an agent to perform an illegal or sinful (they are no longer the same today) act whether in Jewish or general society, whatever the technical legal liabilities may be.   The instigator of a crime is deemed in today's society to be as guilty as the criminal who perpetrated the crime...   The rabbis of the Talmud even extended the penalties for wrongful and criminal acts committed to include those who remained silent when they should have spoken out against evil and cruelty."

2013-06-21 (5773 Tamuz 12)
R' Yaakov Feldman _Torah.org_
Ohr Yisrael: R' Salanter's Innovations (4)
"We'd need to know where we've already done well and where we've fallen short if were to achieve spiritual excellence.   That's to say, what to leave aside and what to go on with...   only someone who takes himself seriously enough to faithfully and fully consider his actions, attitudes, and motivations can ever hope to better himself."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "Advocacy has become a full-fledged global profession, with its innovators, best practices, and iconic figures -- along with lawyers, PR firms, fund-raisers, non-profit consultants, and other service providers eager to sell their skills.   For all the noble goals of many advocates, more mundane considerations -- method, competence, financial integrity, communication skills, recruitment, and so on -- have the most to do with the results they achieve.   All of which contrasts yet again with the professional culture that is characteristic of government agencies and security services.   Most of all, the advantage that NGOs bring to the table is their capacity -- in some cases, predilection -- to push the envelope, to find aggressive new ways to document the issues of concern and push for awareness and enforcement.   To a considerable extent this is because many advocates are idealists -- but so are many who choose to enter the profession of government." --- Moises Naim 2005 _Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and CopyCats Are Hijacking the Global Economy_ pg204  

 
 

2013-06-22

2013-06-22
Thomas D. Elias _Santa Monica CA Mirror_
Zuckerberg PAC: patriotic talk but same nefarious aim as others
"What that means is that Zuckerberg and allies from companies like Google, Netflix, MSFT, Yahoo, Yelp and LinkedIn, along with some of the venture capitalists who bankroll many Silicon Valley high-tech start-ups, want to bring in more workers on H-1B visas...   the H-1B program, which lets companies bring in [135K or more] workers annually for [3-9]-year sojourns, trains foreign workers who often continue in similar jobs for the same companies in their home countries after the visas expire.   So the H-1B program, they say, is essentially an outsourcing system designed to save companies money and ship American jobs over-seas.   One critic is Ron Hira, a professor of public policy at the Rochester, NY, Institute of Technology.   He told National Public Radio the other day that 'What these firms do is exploit the loop-holes in the H-1B program to bring in on-site workers to learn the jobs of Americans to then ship (jobs) offshore.   And also to bring in on-site workers who are cheaper (to) under-cut American workers' rights here.'   Stunningly, three of the four largest users of H-1B visas -- aimed at bringing in skilled workers to fill jobs for which no Americans qualify -- last year were Infosys, Wipro and Tata, all India-based high-tech firms with facilities in the U.S. H-1B workers are often paid [60%-88%] of what U.S. citizens make for the same work.   The biggest H-1B users did not answer queries about their use of the visas and the salaries they pay, but current immigration law requires that the workers get 'prevailing wages'.   However, the federal Government Accountability Office [GAO] has found that supervision is 'cursory' at best, which means companies can get away with paying far lower wages to immigrants than to citizens, because the immigrants are so happy to be here, even temporarily, and what they get is still much more than they can earn at home...   the high-tech tycoons know they'll need politicians of all stripes behind them in order to get a big H-1B increase into whatever immigration bill Congress eventually passes this year...   So to please conservatives, they've aired TV commercials in [Republican majority] states backing the Keystone XL pipeline, criticizing president Obama and his health care reform plan [ObummerDoesn'tCare] and touting the work of Republican senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, who has come under fire from fellow GOPers for helping craft an immigration [abomination].   They've also aired an ad praising Democratic senator Mark Begich of Alaska for supporting oil drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.   To please liberals, they've paid for other ads praising more pro-environmental stands.   As the Business Insider blogger Henry Blodget put it, the idea of all these ads is 'to grease senators on both sides of the aisle', even if Zuckerberg and some of his friends who normally plug [leftist] causes might be appalled by some of the messages they are sending."

2013-06-22
Brian Tumulty & Colin Gustafson _Lower Hudson Valley_
after decades of excessive immigration, Schumer wants to make it worse by carving out additional E-3 visas just for the Irish

2013-06-22
Eric Worrall
"Fallen Angels" a prescient 1991 satire of climate hysteria

2013-06-22
_One Old Vet_
S744 center-piece is amnesty for illegal aliens: Danger, Danger, Will Robinson! Calling All Tea Partiers!
Lloyd Marcus: American Thinker

2013-06-22
Rush Limbaugh _One Old Vet_
my alternative to amnesty for illegal aliens: make no changes to the laws but enforce them

2013-06-22
_One Old Vet_
promises mean nothing to political hacks like McCain
Joel B. Pollak: Breitbart

2013-06-22
_One Old Vet_
barbarian invaders increasing in 2013
Jake Tapper & Jennifer Rizzo: CNN
"'This particular year, yes, sir, we have seen an increase in attempted entries between the ports of entries.   We're actually up in terms of apprehensions, about 13%.   The reasons and modus behind that are varied, some of which is hearing sequestrations, some of which is hearing immigration reform, and some of it is hearing, you know, they just want to come and be joined with their families.', said Fisher.   The number of arrests of people illegally crossing the border were up last year too by approximately 9% -- the first increase since fiscal year 2005.   Despite this up-tick, apprehensions are still at a 40-year low and are down more than 50% than 2008, according to the Department of Homeland Security [DHS]."

2013-06-22
_One Old Vet_
Border Patrol turned coyotes sentenced
Fox

2013-06-22
_One Old Vet_
Laura Ingraham chastised Bill O'Reilly on immigration
V Dare

2013-06-22
Patrick Cleburne _V Dare_
Laura Ingraham fears Zuckerberg ad revenue may have "bought and paid for" media people on S744

2013-06-22
_One Old Vet_
Obummer cuts out hot meals for US combat troops, spends $100M on family vacation in Africa
Barbara Starr: CNN

2013-06-22
_One Old Vet_
Obummer sending 400 US troops to Egypt to crack down on citizens opposing government run by Islamic terrorists
Cheryl K. Chumley: Washington DC Times
Investor's Business Daily

2013-06-22
Sephen Dinan _Washington DC Times_
latest border security deal gives Janet Napolitano additional waivers
Breitbart
Dan Stein of FAIR US
"In the case of the fence, the legislation reads that 'nothing in this sub-section shall require the secretary to install fencing, or infrastructure that directly results from the installation of such fencing, in a particular location along the southern border, if the secretary determines that the use or placement of such resources is not the most appropriate means to achieve and maintain effective control over the southern border at such location'.   In the case of technology, the sponsors said they wanted to ensure the technology gets deployed.   They listed exact technology they wanted in every 1 of the border's sectors, including ordering 685 ground sensors, 50 towers and 73 fixed cameras be deployed to Arizona's 2 sectors.   However, the bill also gives Ms. Napolitano the power to change all of that 'if the secretary determines that an alternate or new technology is at least as effective as the technologies described in paragraph (3) and provides a commensurate level of security'...   11 Republicans have signed onto the new border security [fraud], along with 4 Democrats."

2013-06-22
Leah Barkoukis _Town Hall_
2 Face: candidate Rubio said "earned path to citizenship is basically code for amnesty"

2013-06-22
_Free Market Project_
Comprehensive? Realy?
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "oxygen is our most abundant element, accounting for just under 50% of the earth's crust, but after that the relative abundances are often surprising.   Who would guess, for instance, that silicon is the second most common element on earth or that titanium is 10th?...   There is more cerium on earth than copper, more neodymium and lanthanum than cobalt or nitrogen.   Tin barely makes it into the top 50, eclipsed by such relative obscurities as praseodymium, samarium, gadolinium, and dysprosium.   Abundance also has littel to do with ease of detection.   Aluminum is the 4th most common element on earth, accounting for nearly a tenth of everything that's underneath your feet, but its existence wasn't even suspected until it was discovered in the 19th century by Humphry Davy, and for a long time after that it was treated as rare and precious.   Congress nearly put a shiny lining of aluminum foil atop the Washington monument to show what a classy and prosperous nation we had become, and the French imperial family in the same period discarded the state silver dinner service and replaced it with an aluminum one." --- Bill Bryson 2003 _A Short History of Nearly Everything_ pp250-251  

 
 

2013-06-23

2013-06-23
Timothy Birdnow _American Thinker_
the colonization of 20th- and 21st-century USA

2013-06-23
Rick Moran _American Thinker_
Reid wants S744 "finished by recess", US citizens say it was dead and finished last month

2013-06-23
William A. Levinson _American Thinker_
some "Jewish leaders" are driving away Jews

2013-06-23
Stephen Dinan _Washington DC Times_
Dems/leftists tell Univision they've consistently opposed immigration reform

2013-06-23
Leah Barkoukis _Town Hall_
Bloomberg misappropriating tax-victim resources to help sponsor anti-2nd amendment web-sites

2013-06-23
Mike Shedlock _Town Hall_
million engineers struggling to find a job
"It's tough to find a job everywhere: in the US, in China, in Europe, and in India.   Think education is the answer?   I don't...   In reality, there are plenty of skills here, but foreign workers will work for a lot less.   Since companies can hire a programmer from India or Russia for one-third the cost of a US worker, that's what happens.   Training more engineers, here, or in China, or in India will not help.   There is a glut of high-tech talent...   If education was the answer, there would not be millions of engineers looking for jobs."

2013-06-23
Paul Jacob _Town Hall_
mass protests around the world against massive governmment failures

2013-06-23
Billy House _National Journal_
senate on glide path to pass immigration-perversion bill
"The senate is in pursuit of a bipartisan compromise on [weakening] border protections before a vote later this week on final passage of its bill, which aims to usher in the most significant immigration [perversions] in 30 years...   A vote on final passage could come Thursday...   The House Judiciary committee...is slated to mark up a [low-skilled] visa bill that would increase the number of H-1B visas available and eliminate a lottery that -- under current law -- distributes visas across various countries.   The committee is also expected to mark up legislation that would require employers to electronically verify that the people they hire are authorized."

2013-06-23
Joseph Cress _Cumberland PA Sentinel_
Why Confederates marched on the Cumberland valley

2013-06-23
Martin Espinoza _Santa Rosa CA Press Democrat_
debate over H-1B visas divides employers and workers
tapping tech talent over-seas using H-1B guest-work visas

2013-06-23
Julie Kirchner _Immigration Reform_
Corker-Hoeven amendment is a mirage
"the language of the amendment doesn't actually require DHS to deploy the technologies and resources listed.   [Nor does it guarantee the necessary appropriations will be made.]...   the amendment does not delete the language in the bill that expressly states DHS is not required to build any fencing whatsoever."

2013-06-23
Kerry Picket _Breitbart_
border security mandates are meaningless, congress can opt to de-fund at any time
"Members of congress who promise that money will be spent on efforts to secure the border conveniently withhold the fact that one congress cannot bind a future congress to appropriate funds mandated by already established laws."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "Illicit traders cannot prosper without help from governments or accomplices in key public offices.   Indeed, some governments have become traffickers themselves." --- Moises Naim 2005 _Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and CopyCats Are Hijacking the Global Economy_ pp239-240  

 
 

2013-06-24

2013-06-24
Fawn Johnson _National Journal_
Time's up; immigration law perversion won't pass this year
"Plenty of effort will be devoted to [perversion of our immigration laws] over the next month, but it will die in August, just like last time...   The House might not kill the bill outright, but the GOP players are passing the ball around until the clock runs out.   And it does just that after 5 more work weeks...   Senator Chuck Schumer, D-NY, says two-thirds of the Senate is lined up behind the immigration [law perversion] bill...   Nothing less than a miracle will get major immigration legislation through Congress this year...   The upper chamber is well on track to comfortably pass this week a sweeping bill that would legalize millions of [illegal aliens]...   But the House is slogging along on a piece-by-piece approach that does nothing but stretch out the debate until all that's left are [better ideas] ideas on work visas, local police enforcement, and electronic verification of workers...   Once Washington meets autumn, immigration falls off the priority track thanks to the reemergence of fiscal crisis...   Under this theoretical 'immigration week', the House would vote on a [reasonable] enforcement measure to give local police the authority to apprehend, investigate, and detain people suspected of residing in the country illegally.   Members would vote to mandate electronic verification of employees...   Only one of the smaller immigration bills that the Judiciary committee will have ready for the floor in early July, on high-skill work visas, has the slightest chance of getting help from Democrats.   The pro-business New Democrat Coalition has gone out of its way to praise tepresentative Darrell Issa, R-CA, and Judiciary committee chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-VA, for proposing to boost the number of [low-skill] H-1B visas available for tech firms [to bring in cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with flexible ethics], but there are parts of the bill they don't support."

2013-06-24
B.J. Small _Cumberland PA Sentinel_
Gettysburg prepares for an invasion of Civil War enthusiasts

2013-06-24
Geoffrey H. Sherrington
comparing climate models part2

2013-06-24
Lauren Fox _US News & World Report_
immigration law perversion bill S744 stuffed with pork for corrupt senators
Byron York: Washington DC Examiner
Guy Benson: Town Hall
Investor's Business Daily
"Monday night the Senate will vote on a 'border surge' amendment that would add [ONLY] 700 new miles of border fence, 20K new border security agents [some day in the distant future... maybe] and increase the use of drones and technology to secure the southern border between the U.S.A. and Mexico...   Senators Mark Begich, D-AK, and Lisa Murkowski, R-AK, who are the furthest Senators from the southern border, got a sweet deal for Alaska with provisions that would give their state access to more seasonal seafood workers.   The amendments would allow the seafood industry to hire short-term workers under the 'Summer Work Travel' visa program [itself a gross, disgusting perversion of the exchange visa] and expedite the process under which they apply for such workers...   Another northern senator added a [somewhat reasonable] provision to the bill that would allow some of the money allotted for southern border security to be transferred elsewhere.   The amendment, sponsored by senator Susan Collins, R-ME, strikes the requirement that 90% of the funds in the border plan go to the south-west border.   It also requires that the funding be allocated based on risk, with no specific amount allocated for either the southern or northern border.   'While the south-west border is much more likely to make the evening news, we must not forget about our northern border.', Collins said on the Senate floor.   'According to a report released by the GAO in 2010, the border patrol had situational awareness of only 25% of the 4K miles northern border.'   An amendment by senator Bernie Sanders, I-VT, establishes a $1.5G 'Youth Jobs Fund' that creates work opportunities for 400K poor young people between the ages of 16 and 25.   Sanders argues the legislation will protect young people from being forced out of the work-force by low-skill immigrant workers once the comprehensive immigration bill passes."

2013-06-24
Gabriella Morrongiello _Washington DC Examiner_
illegal aliens who commit other crimes face lower penalties than US citizens

2013-06-24
Bre Payton _Washington DC Times_/_WatchDog_
Tides Foundation behind push to restore voting privileges to felons in Virginia

2013-06-24
Philip Klein _Washington DC Examiner_
CBO on the uncertainty of their estimates related to S744
"'The uncertainty associated with future population flows under current law, S744 as approved by the committee, or the amendment is very great', the CBO cautioned.   And this cautionary tone was also reflected in its analysis of the earlier version of the Senate bill from last week..."

2013-05-25
Cameron Joseph _Hill_
Sarah Palin chastises Rubio for his opposition to immigration reform
"'This bill isn't about fixing problems; it's about amnesty [for illegal aliens] at all costs.'"

2013-06-24
Byron York _Washington DC Examiner_
Marco Rubio's immigration flip-flops spell political trouble
poll: GOP support for Rubio dropping
Justin Sink: Hill

2013-06-24
Bob Beauprez _Town Hall_
S744 grants Napolitano power to set aside border security

2013-06-24
_Immigration Reform_
8 gangsters killed every substantive reform amendment

2013-06-24
Adrienne Royer _Immigration Reform_
10 problems with S744

2013-06-24
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
remember when John McCain pretended to support border security?

2013-06-24
Thomas E. Brewton
inflation/devaluation of the money cannot buy a strong economy
Robert J. Samuelson

2013-06-24
Anthony Watts
Blooming idiot boxes: another "green" technology scam
"not only are Bloom Boxes functionally the same as natural gas power plants, but they are less efficient."

2013-06-24
Guy Benson _Town Hall_
S744 cloture in senate, House should chop off its head and drive a stake through its heart

2013-06-24
Alexander Bolton _Hill_
14 GOP senators object that Reid blocked votes on their amendments to S744
"At least 350 amendments have been filed to the comprehensive immigration reform bill, but the senate has held roll-call votes on only 9 of them."

2013-06-24
_UPI_
Rand Paul: Hopefully immigration law perversion is "dead on arrival" in the House

2013-06-24
Jennifer Martinez _Hill_
tech execs worry they might have to pretend to consider hiring a US citizen for a change
"In particular, tech companies have voiced opposition to an amendment by senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) that would require employers to offer a position to an ;equally or better qualified” American worker before seeking an H-1B visa for a foreign worker. The tech industry has argued that such an amendment would let the government question their hiring decisions and leave companies open to litigation. Tech companies also oppose an amendment by senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) that would prevent the Department of Homeland Security from granting any non-immigrant visa for a year if a company files for mass layoffs under a federal labor law known as the WARN Act."

2013-06-24
Nolan Nelson _Washington DC Times_
S744 amnesty for illegal aliens intentionally fails to heed lessons of 1986

2013-06-24
_Tucson News_
senate immigration perversion bill advances, local anti-reform activists protest token gestures at border security

2013-06-24
Ronald W. Mortensen _Center for Immigration Studies_
Corker-Hoeven deal is long on amnesty, short on anything good

2013-06-24 (5773 Tamuz 15)
Lee Lawrence _Jewish World Review_
prayer in schools, scriptural readings 50 years after Engel v. Vitale on 1962 June 25, and Abington School District v. Schempp on 1963 June 17, the Supreme Court declared school-sponsored prayer and Bible readings unconstitutional

2013-06-24 (5773 Tamuz 15)
Joshua Mitnick _Jewish World Review_
more natural gas found off-shore of Israel
"While focusing on exports presents the prospect of new political clout and will encourage investment in new exploration ventures, critics say it is more important to keep the gas for local use, ensuring Israel's energy security for a longer time and lowering energy costs for the domestic market.   The US faces a similar dilemma regarding its domestic natural gas finds.   There is reason for moving cautiously: Britain, Australia, and Egypt have all focused on exports, only to later find themselves saddled with energy shortages that have pushed up energy costs at home."

2013-06-24 (5773 Tamuz 15)
Lindsay Wise & Jonathan S Landay _Jewish World Review_
how governments use meta-data to map your every move

2013-06-24 (5773 Tamuz 15)
David G. Savage _Jewish World Review_
who is John Roberts? By his decisions you will know him

2013-06-24 (5773 Tamuz 15)
Mark Steyn _Jewish World Review_
G8 deciding USA under Obummer no longer matters
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "For generations the dollar had been held firmly fixed by a force that was accepted in banking circles as being equivalent to a natural law of astronomy, the gold standard -- specifically, by the Treasury's pledge to redeem dollars with gold in any quantity for all comers at $20.67 per fine ounce.   Now, with that pledge temporarily abrogated in the emergency, the dollar was free to fluctuate in the world markets at the whim of speculators, just like some humbler currency, or, indeed, like some untrustworthy common stock." --- John Brooks 1969 _Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street_ pg150  

 
 

2013-06-25

2013-06-25
"Abzats"
peer evil -- the rotten model of modern "science"

2013-06-25
Willis Eschenbach
"all that the climate models do to forecast the global average surface temperature is to lag and resize the forcing."

2013-06-25
Phyllis Schlafly _Town Hall_
Obummer's pre-K power grab
Investor's Business Daily

2013-06-25
Guy Benson _Town Hall_
anti-reform, pro-amnesty radio ad attacks Marco Rubio for not being insanely extreme enough

2013-06-25
Byron York _Town Hall_
increase in barbarian invaders adds to the controversy over immigration law
"The crux of the story is that the number of illegal crossings is rising, and in response to greater security measures in Arizona, the flow from Mexico has shifted east to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas."

2013-06-25
Mona Charen _Town Hall_
bad legislation by panic
Jewish World Review

2013-06-25
David Limbaugh _Town Hall_
a question for GOP supporters of S744: What kinds of mind-altering drugs are you consuming?
Jewish World Review

2013-06-25
Thomas Sowell _Town Hall_
random thoughts
Jewish World Review
"Edmund Burke said, 'There is no safety for honest men, but by believing all possible evil of evil men.'   Evil men do not always snarl.   Some smile charmingly.   Those are the most dangerous.   If you don't think the main-stream media slants the news, keep track of how often they tell you that the Arctic ice pack is shrinking and how seldom they tell you that the Antarctic ice pack is expanding.   The latter news would not fit the 'global warming' scenario that so many in the media are promoting...   People who refuse to accept unpleasant truths have no right to complain about politicians who lie to them.   What other kind of candidates would such people elect?     Given the shortage of articulate Republican leaders, it will be a real loss -- to the country, not just to the Republicans -- if senator Marco Rubio discredits himself, early in his career, by supporting 'comprehensive immigration reform' that amounts to just another amnesty, with false promises to secure the border.     Ever since I learned, as a teenager, that the 'Saturday Evening Post' magazine was actually published on Wednesday mornings, I have been very skeptical about words.   'Gun control' laws do not control guns, 'rent control' laws do not control rent and government 'stimulus' spending does not stimulate the economy.     It is hard to think of 2 people with more different personalities than New York's mayor Michael Bloomberg and president Barack Obama.   But they are soul mates when it comes to thinking that they ought to take a whole spectrum of decisions out of citizens' hands, and impose the government's decisions on them."

2013-06-25
Anthony Watts
pres. Obummer has been meeting with his flat-earth buddies on Keystone XL pipe-line, shows crazy climate hysteria

2013-06-25
Charlie Martin
Can we actually even tell if humans are significantly affecting the global climate?
PJ Media
"The process of 'doing science' is something you usually learn more or less by osmosis, but there are some good hints around.   One of the best is a paper from the 1964 October 16 issue of _AAAS Science_, 'Strong Inference' by John R Platt.   Let's say we have some phenomenon of interest, like global warming, or high blood sugar, or that damned yellow patch in my lawn.   We want to know why it happens.   Platt's strong inference describes the process we should use when 'doing science' as: We generate a number of alternate explanations, hypotheses, that might explain the phenomenon.   For each hypothesis, we come up with an experiment which will prove the hypothesis wrong.   That is, NOT one that 'proves the hypothesis', but one which, if successful, would disprove or falsify the hypothesis.   (Sir Karl Popper argued in his book The Logic of Scientific Discovery that this falsification was the core of scientific knowledge.)   We do the experiments.   If an experiment falsifies a hypothesis, we discard it ruthlessly.   Then we go back to (1) and try again.   A lot of times, the rub -- and the really creative thinking -- comes in from finding the right experiment.   Richard Feynmann was known for an ability to see right through a problem to a simple and elegant experiment that would disprove a hypothesis..."

2013-06-25
Willis Eschenbach
How environmental activists are destroying the environment
"First, half the people on the planet live on less than $2 and change per day.   That's why I said having your house mortgage underwater is a 'First World Problem'.   People living on $2 per day don't have house mortgages—most of them don't own houses, or much of anything beyond a few rags of clothing.   Second, only developed countries have ever cleaned up their own environment.   Only when a country's inhabitants are adequately fed and clothed and sheltered from the storms can they afford to think about the environment.   And far from cleaning up the environment as wealthy countries can afford to do, people in poor countries are very destructive to the environment.   Folks in poor countries will burn every tree if they have to, and you would too if your kids were crying.   They will eat every monkey and consume the chimpanzees as the final course, and you would too if your family were starving.   They will bemoan the necessity, they don't like doing it any more than you or I would...but they will do it...   Now, given that poverty is the greatest threat to the global environment, the inescapable conclusion is that the only way the global environment stands a chance is if poor countries can develop economically.   And that is why the anti-development, pro-expensive energy stance of the large environmental NGOs is one of the great environmental tragedies of our times."

2013-06-25
Joseph Cress _Cumberland PA Sentinel_
Mechanicsburg to mark anniversary of occupation
more

2013-06-25
_Fox_
Conference Baord: consumer confidence index rose from revised 74.3 in May to 81.4 in June
NASDAQ
CNN
UPI
Wall Street Journal
Washington DC Times
MarketWatch
Los Angeles CA Times (with weird pic at Fashion Valley Mall in SD with a "highly-skilled fashion model" posing as a shopper in the middle of it)
"The Conference Board's consumer confidence index jumped from 74.3 in May to 81.4 in June.   Consumer expectations for economic activity over the next 6 months rose from a revised 80.6 in May, first put at 82.4, to 89.5 this month.   The board's present-situation index, a gauge of consumers' assessment of current economic conditions, increased from a revised 64.8 in May, originally reported as 66.7, to 69.2...   The board's survey showed the percentage of consumers who think jobs are 'plentiful' is up from 9.9% in May to 11.7% in June.   Those thinking jobs are 'hard to get' are up slightly from 36.4% in May to 36.9% in June...   the percentage of consumers expecting the economy to produce more jobs in the next 6 months improved from 16.3% in May to 19.6% in June."

2013-06-25
_PlanetMagPie_
The USA has plenty of STEM talent
"PlanetMagpie, a Fremont, CA-based IT Consulting agency [IOW sa domestic USA bodyshop], has sent letters to the 100+ members of TechNet.org who petitioned the [Obummer regime] to increase the number of H-1B visas available to American businesses.   IOW, to themselves...   It's alarming that they're seeking more guest workers for tech jobs when studies show that we have STEM talent available right here...   displacement happens frequently -- it's often cheaper to hire guest-workers, and regulations aren't the same.   After a decade of off-shoring and using H-1Bs for tech labor, the U.S.A. faces a serious problem maintaining its own IT work-force, and in protecting its infrastructure from cyber-attack.   Worse, an Economic Policy Institute study says half of U.S. STEM graduates can't find STEM jobs.   They study to join the U.S. work-force..., but have to work in an entirely different field when they can't find tech jobs.   No surprise that TechNet.org's push has drawn fire from critics, due to its inherent self interest.   'Reshoring' is the practice of U.S. companies moving operations like manufacturing and IT back to the U.S.A. from over-seas.   Reshoring efforts are already underway in manufacturing.   They are starting in IT as well, due to security risks with over-seas firms and rising costs off-shore.   PlanetMagpie decided to take a stand.   'Given our country's precarious financial situation, and the issues off-shoring brings -- security, IP theft, rising costs -- it no longer makes sense to off-shore.   Large companies who off-shore need to stand back and look at what off-shoring has done to our country.   We sent the letters in hopes of finding a corporation with a conscience.'"
PlanetMagPie's letter (pdf)

2013-06-25
_Wall Street Journal_
job markets not yet recovered from last recesssion, nor the 2 before
more graphs

2013-06-25
Todd Starnes _Town Hall_
corrupt Obumer/Holder DoJ defunds "at-risk" youth programs over references to God
World Net Daily
"[The DoJ] also raised questions about one of the 5 elements of the Young Marines Creed -- 'Keep myself clean in mind by attending the church of my faith.'"

2013-06-25
John Hawkins _Town Hall_
5 ways some Republican pols commit political suicide
"1) Most of the Republicans backing the bill [S744] in the senate lied to their base...   2) The bill gives [leftists] everything they want while [non-leftists] get nothing...   The Rubio/McCain amnesty bill is essentially a Democrat immigration wish list...   3) Politically, this bill helps Democrats in every way possible while hurting Republicans in every way possible...   4) It misses an obvious opportunity: Whether you're talking Republican, Democrat or independent, white, black or Hispanic, male or female, straight or gay, it doesn't matter, just about every group you can find says that it wants the border secured and an end to illegal immigration.   However, one of the groups that DOESN'T WANT that to happen is the Democrat Party.   So, why not toe the line on a popular issue like border security and MAKE THE DEMOCRATS VOTE AGAINST IT?...   too many Republicans DON'T WANT TO WIN ON THE ISSUE.   Too much money is being slipped into their pockets, too many of their establishment buddies at cocktail parties want open borders, and too many corrupt businessmen want cheap workers with the American people picking up the tab.   But, they realize that admitting all of this is political death; so they lie on the campaign trail, create political disasters like this amnesty bill and then try to cast the blame elsewhere for their inability to tell the truth.   5) The bill is proof that the GOP governs just as poorly as the Democrats...   once illegals are allowed to stay here legally, none of the security promises will ever be fulfilled.   Every last Republican senator voting for that bill knows that as does every informed person who follows this issue."

2013-06-25
Bob Unruh _World Net Daily_
Supremes blast St. Johns FL River Water Management District for shake-down
"In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court today called a halt to a government shakedown procedure in Florida that required a land-owner to pay up to $150K to be allowed to develop several acres of ground."

2013-06-25
Alyssa Farah _World Net Daily_
Obummer has dropped even cursory criminal background checks in his amnesty program for illegal aliens
"Documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services abandoned the requirement for background checks late last year to keep up with the flood of amnesty applications sparked by the Obama's plan...   Judicial Watch initiated a FOIA action in 2012 October after receiving a tip from a whistle-blower at a federal law enforcement agency."

2013-06-25
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
UK to try bonded visa to discourage over-stays
"Aliens coming from six nations that have created a lot of illegal alien problems for Great Britain will need both a tourist visa and a £3K bond (about U.S. $5K).   If they leave the U.K. on time (within 6 months) they will get their money back.   This policy, over time, will produce two sets of benefits for the Brits: 1) money in the Treasury from those who have over-stayed their visas and, more importantly, 2) a handy, complete, self-financed list of all the visa-abusers."

2013-06-25
_FMQB_
Kantar Media says radio ad spending down 1.7% in 2013 Q1
"declined 0.1% from a year ago and finished the period at $30.2G...   Local Radio was off by 1% and Network Radio ad dollars was down 15.2%.   However, National Spot Radio grew by 5.7% in the quarter.   Looking at other media sectors, TV media was down by 0.3% in Q1, highlighted by a 13.5% growth in Spanish Language TV ad dollars.   Magazines were up by 0.6% in the quarter, again with Spanish language media a growth area, as Hispanic targeted magazines saw 12% growth in Q1.   Newspaper ad expenditures were down 4% in Q1, but again, Hispanic newspapers saw 1.4% growth."

2013-06-25 (5773 Tamuz 16)
Shimmy Blum _Jewish World Review_
Rand Paul and the rabbis
"If there is one impression that Senator Rand Paul may take with him back to Washington from his two-hour visit here it might well be the admiration he expressed for the chavrusa system he saw in action on a tour of the Beth Medrash Govoha (BMG) rabbinical seminary.   The idea that advanced learning can take place without the need for a lecturer or a formal classroom structure was a revelation to the senator from Kentucky, who perhaps also observed that argumentation -- an integral part of that system -- can be conducted in a spirit of friendship and cooperation.   Paul was given an impromptu lesson in the complicated laws of a Talmudic topic from a random student he encountered in the hallway and was probably not too surprised to hear from the BMG leadership that none of its 6K-plus students hail from his home state of Kentucky.   It is doubtful that the attendees at the luncheon that followed his tour ever visited Kentucky -- let alone have roots there -- yet Paul seemed at home...   Reserved and respectful, Rand Paul spent more time in Lakewood, NJ listening than talking, and put more effort into learning about his surroundings than promulgating his views."

2013-06-25 (5773 Tamuz 16)
Steven Emerson & John Rossomando _Jewish World Review_
banned Egyptian cleric Yusuf Qaradawi's out-spoken deputy visits the White House
Katie Pavlich: Town Hall
News Max
"Radical Egyptian cleric Yusuf Qaradawi is considered so radical that the United States bans him from entering the country.   Qaradawi, considered the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, has called for the killing of Jews and Americans.   That history makes the June 13 White House meeting with Sheik Abdullah Bin Bayyah all the more inexplicable.   Bin Bayyah is vice president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), a group founded by and headed by Qaradawi.   The IUMS has a long history of supporting Hamas -- a top Hamas leader is an IUMS member -- and of calling for Israel's destruction...   it was the [Obummer regime] which sought the meeting with Bin Bayyah, his web-site's account said.   'We asked for this meeting to learn from you and we need to be looking for new mechanisms to communicate with you and the Association of Muslim Scholars (another name used for the IUMS).', Gayle Smith, senior director of the National Security Council, reportedly said.   Bin Bayyah's June 13 account placed other senior officials in the meeting, including: Rashad Hussain, the U.S. special envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), National Security Adviser Tom Donilon and White House spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri.   But the account was later changed to delete the reference to Donilon's presence at the meeting."
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)

2013-06-25 (5773 Tamuz 16)
Dennis Prager _Jewish World Review_
quality, convenience, and the unmentioned price
Town Hall
"When I was in college and graduate school (late 1960s and early 1970s), my friends and I would brag to each other about the stereo systems we had just purchased...   First, nearly all of us had listened to live music.   And we wanted to approximate that experience at home...   The typical MP3 file is a recording of 128 to 192 kilobytes per second (kbps).   The typical compact disc is recorded at 1411 kbps.   One gets many times more 'information' from a compact disc than from an MP3.   When you also consider the awful earphones through which young people listen to their music, the difference is so great that even those who have never heard a quality recording can tell the difference when first hearing music on a good system.   They are amazed.   That's why it often takes just one hearing to convert many people into 'audiophiles'.   But few have that experience...   A similar movement toward mediocrity is taking place in photography...   The prices paid for convenience, in both music and photography, are excellence and beauty.   No one is at fault here.   There are no bad guys.   But people need to be aware of what is happening.   Young people are paying a price.   Phone cameras are to photography, and MP3s and cheap earbuds are to music, what texting is to writing.   They are living a convenient life.   But not a deep one.   And they don't even know it."

2013-06-25 (5773 Tamuz 16)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
the mind-set of the left part1 of 4
"At least as far back as the 18th century, the left has struggled to avoid facing the plain fact of evil -- that some people simply choose to do things that they know to be wrong when they do them.   Every kind of excuse, from poverty to an unhappy childhood, is used by the left to explain and excuse evil.   All the people who have come out of poverty or unhappy childhoods, or both, and become decent and productive human beings, are ignored.   So are the evils committed by people raised in wealth and privilege, including kings, conquerors and slave-owners.   Why has evil been such a hard concept for many on the left to accept?   The basic agenda of the left is to change external conditions.   But what if the problem is internal?   What if the real problem is the cussedness of human beings?   Rousseau denied this in the 18th century and the left has been denying it ever since.   Why? Self preservation.   If the things that the left wants to control -- institutions and government policy -- are not the most important factors in the world's problems, then what role is there for the left?"

2013-06-25
Kris Anne Hall
Scalia gave life to founders' fears in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona opinion
Conservative Alerts
web log for AZ
SCOTUS web log
"There are 3 matters that must be understood in this case: The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) requires a state to 'accept and use' a uniform federal form to register voters for federal elections.   Article 1 Section 4 Clause 1 of the Constitution (Election Clause) permits Congress to make a law or alter State voting regulations regarding the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives.   'The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing (sic) Senators.'   'Article 1 Section 2 Clause 1 of the Constitution (Voter Qualification Clause) establishes that the power rests within the States to identify the qualifications of voters within that State.'   'The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.'...   [Scalia's] 'logic' creates a contradiction within the Constitution...   James Madison speaks to this very issue: 'The definition of the right of suffrage is very justly regarded as a fundamental article of republican government.   It was incumbent on the convention, therefore, to define and establish this right in the Constitution.   To have left it open for the occasional regulation of the Congress would have been improper.' The Federalist #52..."

2013-06-25
Chuck Norris _Town Hall_
12 little-known facts about the Declaration of Independence part1

2013-06-25
John Merline _Investor's Business Daily_
ObummerDoesn'tCare data-base hub is another privacy violation nightmare
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "Fatigue fracture is a cumulatie result of a large number (often many millions) of stress applications, none of which reaches the ultimate tensile strength and, usually, not even the yield strength.   The number of fatiguee failures in engineering practice is very large, and they probably account for more than 90% of all the mechanical fractures known.   Breakage of suspension an valve springs in automobiles, propellers in ships and aircraft, steel cables in cranes and elevators, axles of railway rolling stock, and even huge rotors in steam turbines are just a few examples of fatigue failure." --- Robert M. Glorioso & Francis S. Hill ii 1975 _Introduction to Engineering_ pg216  

 
 

2013-06-26

2013-06-26
Martin Kaste _National Socialist Radio_
some tech companies find ways not to hire Americans
"Tech workers looking for jobs may think twice before looking at job ads that are targeted at Americans but actually are intended for foreigners.   Law-makers continue to wrangle over a bill that would overhaul the nation's immigration system.   One provision in this bill would allow companies to import a lot more skilled workers.   The tech industry has lobbied hard for this, despite fears among some American workers about the extra competition...   Still, making companies recruit Americans isn't the same as making them hire them.   If you talk to disgruntled tech workers much, sooner or later one of them is going to send you this video.   It shows a Pittsburgh immigration lawyer at what looks like a seminar for clients in 2007.   In the video, he's telling clients what to do when they want to sponsor one of their foreign workers for a permanent visa -- a green card.   The government requires employers to prove they looked for American workers first.   So the companies have to advertise the job.   But the lawyer tells them they don't have to advertise it too conspicuously.   'Our goal is, clearly, not to find a qualified and interested U.S. worker.', the lawyer in the video says.   He later adds, 'We're going to find a place where... we're complying with the law and hoping --and likely -- not to find qualified and interested worker applicants.'   Immigration law firms do this all the time: They show employers how to recruit Americans without actually having to hire them.   This lawyer didn't want to talk to NPR, maybe because anti-visa activists have been sending this video around for years.   It's Exhibit A in their argument that recruiting rules are a sham.   In the parts of the country where tech companies are prevalent, this kind of 'faux recruiting' is common knowledge.   But people in the industry quickly learn not to waste their time on certain job listings, says Orion Hughes, a software tester.   'A lot of us are aware of that ruse.', he says.   Hughes and others avoid the listings with overly specific requirements, such as the number of years in 'the job offered'.   That often means the employer just wants to make permanent a temporary foreign worker who's already in the job.   And if you're stubborn enough to apply anyway, Hughes says that interview is going to be awkward.   'If you want to put yourself in that manager's shoes, it's an uncomfortable situation for them.', he says.   'They will [have a] kind of a sour facial expression, and they'll go from one question to the next.   They are finding some reason to exclude you.'   Employers usually go through these motions only when they're sponsoring a foreigner for a permanent visa.   But now the Senate immigration bill would extend a similar requirement to temp workers: the foreigners on the H-1B visas which have become so common, and controversial, in lower-end tech jobs.   It's a move that seems to ignore all the ill will that's been created by hopeless job interviews.   'No one is ever hired.', says Bruce Morrison, a former Democratic congressman from Connecticut.   Morrison helped design the current work visa system, but now he's an immigration lawyer and a lobbyist.   The 'good faith' recruiting process, he says, comes with a fundamental flaw, he says.   'Which is, it doesn't start until you've already picked the person you want.', Morrison says.   'The decision whether to hire an American already happened -- and you didn't.'   Morrison's one of many experts who've given up on these recruiting rules.   But he offers a solution to the problem: Have the government charge employers a heftier fee when hiring a foreigner.   'Create the economic circumstance where it costs you a lot more to hire a foreigner.', Morrison says.   'And you'll only do it if you can't find an American who's suitable.'"
more coverage from 2007 June

2013-06-26
Nicholas Ballasy _PJ Media_
irrational Grover Norquist: flood of cheap, young, pliant labor with flexible ethics is more important than border security

2013-06-26
Guy Benson _Town Hall_
Boehner: S744 will not be brought to a vote in the House
Roll Call

2013-06-26
Brent Bozell _Town Hall_
justice delayed and ignored in trial of Ft. Hood terrorist
"Hasan went on his deadly rampage, killing 13 and wounding another 32, on 2009 Nov. 5.   By the beginning of 2010, the networks were already in 'sleep' mode."

2013-06-26
Julie Borowski _Town Hall_
freedom is under incremental attack
"Many Americans have probably read about oppressive governments in history books and thought, 'Why didn't the people stand up and stop this from happening?'   In hindsight, it just seems so obvious that the people should have noticed and protested government overstepping its bounds. But often, it is less noticeable than some people might think. Oppressive governments do not usually take away all freedom overnight. The government chips away a little freedom at a time. The slow and gradual process is done on purpose to prevent the people from rising up against the government. History shows how important it is for us to remain vigilant and know our rights."

2013-06-26
_Money News_
Minneapolis Fed president Narayana Kocherlakota expects US unemployment to remain above 7% until at least 2nd half of 2014

2013-06-26
Cheryl K. Chumley _Washington DC Times_
Sarah Palin reminds turn-coat senators Rubio and Ayotte that voters will not forget their betrayal on immigration

2013-06-26
Paul Driessen
climate hysteria's 10K commandments

2013-06-26
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
IT execs should learn an H-1B lesson from America's schools

2013-06-26
Mark Rentschler _B to B_
US ad expenditures flat in 2013 Q1
"cable TV saw a 5.2% boost [from a year ago]...   broadcast TV was down 3.7%...   local magazine ad spending fell 5.7%, b2b magazines dropped 4.1% and Sunday magazines were off by 3.7%.   National newspaper ad expenditures fell 9.2%, and local papers dropped 3.3%.   Spanish-language TV saw ad spending increase 13.5%..."

2013-06-26 (5773 Tamuz 17)
Jonah Goldberg _Jewish World Review_
immigration tussle
Town Hall
"Meanwhile, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce just released a [dishonest] TV ad campaign to promote immigration reform that features senator Rand Paul (R-KY), even though Paul has come out against the legislation because it doesn't include his border security requirements.   The Wall Street Journal's editorial board -- always a passionate supporter of maximizing immigration -- seems on the verge of a collective aneurysm as it deals with what it sees as a Republican Party giving in to nativist madness.   By comparison...the Democrats under New York senator Charles Schumer's leadership look like [demons in active volcanic caves].   It helps that president Obama is [only occasionally carping and meeting with those opposed to reform], but even so, Democrats have managed to keep nearly everyone in line.   The most vocal critic on the left has been senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who [not so] plausibly argues that the bill will disproportionately hurt the unskilled and under-educated poor.   But his support was bought with a $1.5G youth jobs program buried in the new 1,190-page revised bill, which senators had a whopping 72 hours to read before Monday's vote.   Still, Sanders' complaint -- and his abdication -- raises interesting issues.   One reason the Democrats are having an easier time is that their stakeholders can cut deals and the constituencies will go along.   Organized labor will get its carve-outs from the Democrats, as will business groups eager to work on a bipartisan basis...   the GOP is the far more populist and grass-roots party these days, and the troops are not in a mood to follow orders [especially when their livelihoods are being sold out from under thems].   Democrats are usually the ones decrying the pernicious global trends hampering prosperity for the working poor and middle class.   And yet, their biggest priority is a bill that will accelerate those trends...   Washington, including the GOP, has been betraying them -- by accident or on purpose -- for too long.   I can understand that completely.   What baffles me is why rank-and-file Democrats don't feel the same way."

2013-06-26 (5773 Tamuz 17)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
bit by bit strategy
Town Hall
World Net Daily
"This is the classic method of busybodies and tyrants; they start out with something trivial or small and then magnify and extend it.   If these people are successful in banning the use of Indian names for football teams, you can bet the rent money that won't end their agenda...   During the legislative and subsequent state ratification debates over the 16th Amendment -- which established the income tax -- the political task of over-turning the Constitution's prohibition of such tax was considerably eased by political promises that any income tax levied would fall upon only the wealthiest 3% to 5% of the population [and the highest rate would never reach 9%].   Most Americans paid no federal income tax, and those earning $500K or more paid only 7%.   In 1913, only 358K Americans filed 1040 forms, compared with today's 140M.   That's the rope-a-dope strategy.   To get the votes of the masses, politicians start out small and exploit the politics of envy by promising that only the rich will be taxed.   In 1898, Congress imposed a temporary federal excise tax on telephones as a revenue measure during the Spanish-American War.   At that time, only the rich owned phones.   Soon nearly all Americans owned phones.   Both the rich and the poor paid the telephone excise tax.   Congress repealed this 'temporary' Spanish-American War tax in 2006.   Nobel laureate Milton Friedman had it right when he said, 'Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.'   The Tax Reform Act of 1969 [created] the alternative minimum tax to raise revenue from 155 'rich' Americans who legally avoided federal income taxes by buying tax-free municipal bonds.   Today more than 4M Americans are hit by the AMT, and most of them hardly qualify as rich."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "Memory size is usually specified by the size and number of binary words that the computer can store.   For example, a machine with a 12 x 4,096 memory has 4,096, 12-bit words.   The exact definition of a word will be given later.   Computer memory systems can take on many forms, but the main-stay of most computers is the magnetic core...   Its advantages are low cost, small size, high speed, and the ability to be accessed in a random manner.   The speed of a memory is determined by the time required to change the magnetization [or other characteristic] from one direction to the other." --- Robert M. Glorioso & Francis S. Hill ii 1975 _Introduction to Engineering_ pg278  

 
 

2013-06-27

2013-06-27 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 334,978 in the week ending June 22, a decrease of 1,589 from the previous week.   There were 370,521 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.2% during the week ending June 15, unchanged from the prior week's unrevised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,787,079, an increase of 7,471 from the preceding week's revised level of 2,779,608.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.5% and the volume was 3,113,846.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending June 8 was 4,556,706, an increase of 23,146 from the previous week.   There were 5,890,083 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.   Extended Benefits were not available in any state during the week ending June 8...   States reported 1,707,109 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending June 8, an increase of 23,147 from the prior week.   There were 2,645,554 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;
to 129,204,324 beginning 2013-04-06.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2013-06-27
Bob Tisdale
model vs. data: Alaska land surface air temperatures

2013-06-27
Jerry Kammer _Center for Immigration Studies_
former immigration court judge blasts S744
Mark H. Metcalf: Des Moines IA Register
"By last count, more than 330K cases were back-logged.   This historic dysfunction offers a glimpse of things to come if the current version of reform passes...   1.2M deportation orders remain unexecuted.   The immigration courts observed this dysfunction first hand.   From 1996 through 2012, the U.S.A. permitted some 2.2M aliens to remain free before trial.   Nearly 900K of these individuals -- 39% of the total -- skipped court and disappeared.   In the shadow of 2001/09/11, things were even worse.   From 2002 through 2006, half of all aliens free awaiting trial vanished...   instead of debating how we extend the great prize of American citizenship to more of the world's bright and talented, Congress argues whether felons should be deported."

2013-06-27
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
drama vs. demographics in the S744 debate
"the real way to evaluate the problems caused by illegal immigration is quite different, and much easier to measure than the flows into the United States from Mexico...   That is the size of the illegal alien population in the [United States of America], and the question of whether it is growing, stable, or declining.   If it is more or less stable, or growing, we have, in my mind, no reason to run an amnesty that will only make matters worse.   Meanwhile, the Office of Immigration Statistics (in DHS) has been estimating the size of the illegal population for years, as can be seen here.   If and when that population is declining, and has been doing so steadily and substantially for several years, then we might consider legalizing the remaining remnants of the illegal population -- but not before.   Yes, the illicit traffic over the border is a problem, but a more significant problem is the presence, nationwide, of millions of illegal entrants, mostly with limited education, bloating the population, running down wage levels for resident low-skill workers, and, over time, running up welfare costs.   To cope with this, Congress could easily construct a 'trigger' of, say, an annual reduction of the illegal alien population by 1.5M-2.0M a year for 3 or 4 consecutive years and if and when this is achieved, then consider a legalization program."
DHS: estimates of the illegal alien population in the USA

2013-06-27
Jerry Kammer _Center for Immigration Studies_
S744 has many of the same flaws as in 1986 (E-Verify)

2013-06-27
Shelley Phillips Kimel _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
TN's top export markets
"Tennessee exported more than $31.1G worth of merchandise in 2012...   That makes it the 15th largest state for exports.   East Tennessee has 1,829 exporting companies...   The state's largest merchandise export category, according to ITA, is Transportation Equipment, which accounted for $6.0G of Tennessee's total merchandise exports in 2012.   Other top merchandise exports are Computer & Electronic Products ($4.7G), Chemicals ($4.7G), Miscellaneous Manufactured Commodities ($3.7G), and Machinery, Except Electrical ($3.0G)...   Canada remains our state's #1 export market this year, accounting for 28% of Tennessee's global trade.   Canadians picked Tennessee products to the tune of $8.6G in 2012, up from $8.3G the previously year and nearly twice as much as runner up purchaser Mexico.   This trade relationship also has other benefits to the state.   According to the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development, there are 71 Canadian companies in Tennessee, which invest $1.7G and provide 10,748 jobs.   Some of those jobs are especially close to home: Standard Aero employs 247 in Maryville and Clientlogic Corp. has 350 employees in Oak Ridge.   Mexico takes in $4.2G in Tennessee products.   Exports to our southern neighbor were up 11% last year.   Rounding out the top 5 are China, $2.2G; Japan, $1.9G and Belgium, $1.3G."

2013-06-27
Adeline Koh _Chronicle of Higher Education_
review of learning Python on Codecademy
Codecademy
Udacity

2013-06-27
Michael Grabell _Philadelphia PA Inquirer_
Bodies shopped who power corporate giants are getting crushed
Boise ID Weekly
the leftist ProPublica
Hampshire Gazette
In These Times
Minneapolis Post
"In June, the Labor Department reported that the nation had more temp workers than ever before: 2.7M.   Overall, almost one-fifth of the total job growth since the recession ended in mid-2009 has been in the temp sector, federal data shows.   But according to the American Staffing Association, the temp industry's trade group, the pool is even larger: Every year, a tenth of all U.S. workers finds a job at a staffing agency.   The proportion of temp workers in the labor force reached its peak in early 2000 before the 2001 slump and then the Great Recession.   But as the economy continues its slow, uneven recovery, temp work is roaring back 10 times faster than private-sector employment as a whole -- a pace 'exceeding even the dramatic run-up of the early 1990s', according to the staffing association...   Several temp agencies, such as Adecco and Manpower, are now among the largest employers in the United States.   One list put Kelly Services as second only to WM...   Overall, 2.1% of private-sector workers were temps in 2011...   If a company laid off a large portion of its work-force, it could make big news and leave customers feeling sour.   But if a company simply cut its temps, it was easy to write it off as seasonal -- and the host company could often avoid the federal requirement that it notify workers of mass lay-offs in advance."

2013-06-27
Mark Krikorian _Center for Immigration Studies_
some shadows!

2013-06-27
Bob Goodlatte, Kathryn Rexrode & Jessica Collins
House Judiciary committee approved low-skilled immigration bill
"The House Judiciary Committee today approved the Supplying Knowledge Based Immigrants and Lifting Levels of STEM Visas Act (HR2131), also known as the SKILLS Visa Act,in a vote of 20-14.   This bill provides American employers with access to the world's [cheapest, young, pliant, low-skilled labor with flexible ethics] by allocating green cards to foreign graduates of U.S. universities with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, increasing H-1B visas, and repealing the employment-based per-country cap.   The bill facilitates job creation by establishing a new entrepreneur visa program and strengthening the investor visa program.   The bill accomplishes these changes to our immigration system by replacing nonessential immigration programs with those that better meet our country's interests.   The bill also contains [an extremely weak] market-based approach [with humongous loop-holes to protect] American [executives].   The SKILLS Visa Act is one of several bills the House Judiciary committee has introduced and approved to help address various issues within our immigration system.   House Judiciary committee chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA), chief sponsor of the SKILLS Visa Act, praised today's committee vote.   [Goodlatte said] 'In today's global economy, our nation needs access to the world's [cheap, young, pliant, low-skilled labor with flexible ethics] to maintain our competitive edge.   Although [low-skilled] immigrants are often in demand by American employers..."

2013-06-27
Michael Snyder _End of the American Dream_
19 surveys show many are clueless sheeple, the low information public
"#1: One survey found that 56% of Americans believe that it is okay for the government to track 'the telephone records of millions of Americans' in order to keep us safe. Apparently those people have never heard of the Fourth Amendment.   #2: When Bush was president, 61% of Democrats considered NSA surveillance to be 'unacceptable', but now that Obama is in the White House, only 34% of them consider it to be 'unacceptable'.   #3: 67% of Americans support the use of unmanned drones in 'homeland security missions' inside the [United States of America]. What's next? Will there be 'security robots' that stand in the corner and watch us as we eat dinner with our families?   #4: Close to one-third of all Americans would be willing to submit to a 'TSA body cavity search' in order to fly.   #5: 20% of all government workers and 26% of all Obama supporters consider the Tea Party to be 'the biggest terror threat' that America is facing.   #6: 89.7% of Americans believe that they are eating a healthy diet. Meanwhile, approximately 36% of all Americans are obese.   #7: 29% of Americans believe that 'cloud computing' involves an actual cloud.   #8: One survey found that 42% of all Americans are unaware that Obamacare is law.   #9: The average American watches 28 hours of television every week.   #10: According to a survey conducted by the National Geographic Society, only 37% of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 can find the nation of Iraq on a map.   #11" Close to 25% of all Americans do not know that the United States declared independence from Great Britain.   #12: We are the most doped up nation in the history of the planet. As I wrote about recently, a survey conducted by the Mayo Clinic found that 70% of all Americans are on at least 1 prescription drug. An astounding 20% of all Americans are on at least five prescription drugs.   #13: According to one survey, 24% of all U.S. teens that have a sexually-transmitted disease say that they still have unprotected sex.   #14" Approximately 1 out of every 5 teenage girls in the [United States of America] actually wants to be a teenage mother.   #15" As I noted the other day, 48% of all Americans do not have any emergency supplies stored up at all.   #16: One survey found that 51% of all Americans agree with this statement: 'it is necessary to give up some civil liberties in order to make the country safe from terrorism'.   #17: According to a Bloomberg survey, only 16% of Americans believe that the Federal Reserve should be abolished.   #18: 29% of all Americans cannot recall the name of the vice-president of the country.   #19: In 2008, the American people voted to send Barack Obama to the White House.
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "Instead of distinguishing between traffickers, smugglers, pirates, coyotes, snake-heads, mules, and smurfs, we would do better to think of illicit traders in the roles they truly perform: investors, bankers, entrepreneurs, brokers, transporters, warehousers, wholesalers, logistics managers, distributors, and more. When we consider illicit traders as profit-minded, opportunistic economic agents, it becomes cear that they should have no reason to stick to just one product." --- Moises Naim 2005 _Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and CopyCats Are Hijacking the Global Economy_ pg240  

 
 

2013-06-28

1778-06-28: Battle of Monmouth NJ CourtHouse (Molly Pitcher)

2013-06-28
Joseph Cress _Cumberland PA Sentinel_
shelling of Carlisle delayed Confederate cavalry

2013-06-28
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
about Gettysburg's live Codori barn web-cam
NPS Ft. Sumter web-cam
Gettysburg Codori barn web-cam

2013-06-28
Bob Tisdale
model vs. data comparison: Australia

2013-06-28
Jerry Kammer _Center for Immigration Studies_
a critical look at some senators' claims about S744

2013-06-28
_Irish Central_
19,500 and more H-1B visas still up for grabs this year

2013-06-28
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
NYTimes photographer captures what writer denies
"The article, like the caption, largely reflected the industry's argument that there is a 'skills shortage' and a 'need' for more foreign workers.   The article quotes Doernberg 'that at 53, he looks older than he is', and goes on to say: 'youth is at a premium in his industry'.   The H-1B program, to be hugely expanded should the Senate-passed S744 become law, in effect tolerates and facilitates employers' decisions to hire younger alien workers (virtually all males and mostly Asians) over experienced American workers."

2013-06-28
John Miano _Center for Immigration Studies_
H-1B applicants pay consultant fees hoping to win jackpot

2013-06-28
Christopher Monckton
is it time to prosecute UN IPCC for fraud?

2013-06-28
Somini Sengupta _San Jose CA Mercury News_/_NYTimes_
the idled of Sili Valley
"As the senate voted on [yet another bad] immigration bill that would let Silicon Valley companies import more [cheap, young, pliant, low-skilled foreign labor with flexible ethics], some Americans remain locked in a deeply emotional argument over [the fact that] outsiders are taking jobs away from people like JD...   Silicon Valley companies, warning of an acute labor shortage, say it is too costly to retrain older workers...   what the tech [executives really want] is to depress wages and bring in more pliant, less costly temporary workers from over-seas.   If there is such a talent shortage, they ask, why aren't wages for most engineers rising faster? Labor groups have pushed for a [weak, unenforceable] requirement to [pretend to consider] equally 'qualified' Americans before hiring foreigners, a provision that the industry fiercely resisted.   There [are piles of] empirical evidence to suggest that foreign engineers [have been displacing] U.S. engineers as a whole [over the last quarter-century, to which the NYTimes and the Murk adamantly turn a blind eye, just as they turn a blind eye to the NSF report which reveals that driving down compensation to STEM pros was one of the goals all along]."

2013-06-28
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
DC awarded $49.5M ObummerDoesn'tCare contract to Infosys
IT World
Slash Dot discussion

2013-06-28
Neil Munro _Daily Caller_
immigration reform opponents out-bribed reformers 24 to 1
"Legislators received donations worth $63.2M from business and [leftist] groups in favor of an immigration rewrite, but only $2.6M from opponents of the Gang of 8 bill [S744] that passed the senate by a 68-32 vote Thursday.   The GOP-led House of Representatives is expected to take up a separate bill after the July 4 recess...   Backers of increased immigration gave a stream of donations worth $655,252 on average to the 68 senators who voted for the bill and $581,315 on average to the 32 who voted against it...   Harry Reid, got $1.93M from the bill's backers...   But the Democratic senators are under intense pressure from their Senate peers and from their leaders to back the bill -- despite its impact on low-wage Americans...   The GOP caucus voted 2 to 1 against the bill, even though they got a total of $27M in donations from the bill's backers, and only $359,945 from the bill's opponents."

2013-06-28
Niall O'Dowd _Irish Central_
repeated of call for Irish to get all of the 10,500 E-3 visas the Australians don't use up each year

2013-06-28
Ruth Mantell _MarketWatch_
UMich consumer sentiment index changed from 84.5 in late May to 84.1 in late June

2013-06-28 (5773 Tamuz 20)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
another White House play-date with Muslim Jihadis

2013-06-28 (5773 Tamuz 20)
Anita Kumar _Jewish World Review_
billions of secrets are stored in suburban DC
"The 70 staffers of the National Declassification Center are charged with deciding -- anonymously and quietly -- which of the nation's old secrets can be laid bare for the world to see...   They have a back-log of hundreds of millions of pages marked for possible declassification...   After 3.5 years, just 70M pages have been released, including the Pentagon Papers and a World War I-era recipe for secret ink.   Another 45M pages have been kept classified."

2013-06-28 (5773 Tamuz 20)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
Obummer's war of ideas
"As part of the regime's bread and circuses approach to its subjects, supreme dictator Ali Khamenei had pretend reformer Hassan Rohani win the presidential elections in a landslide two weeks ago.   Rohani has a long record of advancing Iran's nuclear program, both as a national security chief and as a senior nuclear negotiator.   He also has a record of deep involvement in acts of mass terror, including the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and wounded hundreds.   Yet rather than distance itself from Rohani the phony, the [Obummer regime] has celebrated Iranian democracy and embraced him as a reformer.   Obama's spokesmen say they look forward to renewing nuclear talks with Rohani, and so made clear -- yet again -- that the US has no intention of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power.   Rohani responded to the administration's embrace by stating outright he will not suspend Iran's nuclear enrichment activities."

2013-06-28 (5773 Tamuz 20)
judge Andrew P. Napolitano _Jewish World Review_
the truth shall keep us free
"this summer, as Americans come to the realization that their government has concocted a system of laws violative of the natural law, profoundly repugnant to the Constitution and shrouded in secrecy...   The liberty of which I write is the right to privacy: the right to be left alone.   The Framers jealously and zealously guarded this right by imposing upon government agents intentionally onerous burdens before letting them invade it.   They did so in the Fourth Amendment, using language that permits the government to invade that right only in the narrowest of circumstances.   The linch-pin of those circumstances is 'probable cause' of evidence of crime in 'the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized'.   If the government cannot tell a judge specifically what evidence of crime it is looking for and precisely from whom, a judge may not issue a search warrant, and privacy -- the natural human yearning that comes from within all of us -- will remain where it naturally resides, outside the government's reach.   Congress is the chief culprit here, because it has enacted laws that have lowered the constitutional bar that the feds must meet in order for judges to issue search warrants.   And it has commanded that this be done in secret."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "In the presidential campaign the previous year [1932] he [Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)] had vied with [Herbert Hoover] in proclaiming his devotion to 'sound money', which presumably meant the gold standard;   OTOH, in January, 2 months after his election, he had said to a journalist that if the depression continued 'we may be forced to an inflation of our currency', which sounded like just the opposite.   His intimates were all but unanimous in their agreement that he combined virtual illiteracy in monetary affairs with unshakable confidence in the superiority of his own off-hand notions about it to the accepted wisdom of the experts;   that he treated the subject of money as a casual, rather amusing game that alternately bored and fascinated him; and that the game tended to bring out his strain of sophomoric humor." --- John Brooks 1969 _Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street_ pg151  

 
 

2013-06-29

2013-06-29
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
Gettysburg and the centennial that begins in a couple of days
"People, I think, just tend to forget.   The Sesquicentennial over-shadows the fact that this coming week is also the Centennial for the tremendous reunion that took place in 1913.   There's nothing wrong with that...   it's just the way it is.   I'll be heading out on Monday morning with two objectives: being on the field where family members fought, in 1863, AND being on the field where family members sought something else in 1913 AND 1938."

2013-06-29
Anthony Watts
aging weather stations contribute to bogus high temperatures being recorded
"Albedo on the surfaces of weather station shelters changes with time, something I and the volunteers have documented with the Surface Stations project.   For example, here's a aged weather station where the whitewash coating is coming off and the bare wood is becoming exposed...   A paper published in the International Journal of Climatology finds that aging of the solar radiation screens on weather stations is causing a large positive bias in measured temperatures of 1.63℃, which by way of comparison is more than twice the global warming of 0.7 degree C recorded since the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850."

2013-06-29
Willis Eschenbach
energy storage

2013-06-29
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
recent press items
 
Readers of this e-news-letter often send me items from the press, prefacing their remarks with "You've probably seen this, but in case not..."   In most cases, the material is indeed new to me.   So please, everyone, continue to bring these things to my attention.   My posting here will discuss several recent articles or bloggings that readers havepointed me to.
 
1. NYT, "A Bill Allowing More Foreign Workers Stirs a Tech Debate", 2013 June 27
 
This article pits older American workers against immigrants, especiallythose who would come here if the current Senate bill were to be enacted.   Unfortunately, it misses the point when it says, "Silicon Valleycompanies, warning of an acute labor shortage, say it is too costly toretrain older workers like Mr. Doernberg, and that the country is notproducing enough younger Americans with the precise skills the industryneeds."   It's wrong first because in the old, pre-H-1B days, programmers and engineers routinely learned new skills on the job, no formal training needed; as I've said, if someone is not good enough to learn ontheir own, then he/she is not good enough for you to hire in the first place.
 
Second, typically the young workers don't have the skills either!   But they are cheaper, so employers are willing to have them learn on thejob.   In many cases, those young workers are H-1Bs.   This may make perfect sense economically, but it does put the lie to the industry's stated purpose for hiring H-1Bs, i.e. that there is a labor shortage.
 
What caught my eye in this article, though, was this statement: "If anything, one recent study suggests, the growth of immigrant workers in American companies helps younger American technical workers -- more of them are hired and at higher-paying jobs -- but has no noticeable consequences, good or bad, on older workers.   'In the short run, we don't find really any adverse or super positive effect on the employmentof Americans.', said William R. Kerr, a Harvard business professor who conducted the study on the work force of 300 American companies. 'People take an extremely one-sided view of this stuff and dismiss any evidence to the contrary.'"
 
Some of you may recall that I mentioned a couple of months ago that I would review Bill's paper here, and that I would first run a draft of my posting by Bill for his comments.   I kept putting it off, both due to lack of time and due to the paper's use of a rather controversial statistical technique that I did not relish explaining.   But now with the above passage, I'd better get my analysis out soon. :-)
 
2. Dice, "H-1B Reform Might Bring Unintended Consequences", 2013 June 21
 
I've long held that the organizations and activists aimed at reducing the scope of foreign tech worker programs are shooting themselves in the foot by focusing on the Indian bodyshops, basically asserting that abuse of H-1B occurs mainly in those firms, not in the main-stream companies such as Intel and MSFT.   You can tell right away that something is seriously wrong with this strategy, as it jibes completely with what the industry lobbyists say.   My point is that (a) abuse of H-1B pervades the entire industry, (b) by agreeing with the industry lobbyists, the anti-H-1B people are in essence giving congress "permission" to expand H-1B subject to some restrictions on the Indian firms, and (c) in the end, congress is not going to clamp down even on the Indian firms.   (See my earlier article for more.)
 
The importance of this Dice article is that it shows that the lobbyists for the Indian firms are confident that (c) will occur.
 
3. T.A. Frank, The New Republic, "Why [Leftists] Should Oppose theImmigration Bill", 2013 June 27
 
OT1H -- keep in mind that there is a "HOWEVER" coming later -- I basically agree with Frank, and have been making such comments for many years, including in my 1996 senate testimony.
 
My dad was an immigrant and my wife is an immigrant.   I've been living in immigrant households (foreign languages spoken, non-main-stream foods, non-main-stream holidays, non-main-stream sensibilities) my entire life, and am staunchly pro-immigrant.   But at the same time, there is no doubt that low-skilled immigration harms some of the most vulnerable members of our society, including earlier immigrants.   As a political [leftist] myself, I am irritated by the [leftists] who view amnesty for [illegal aliens] as helping "the little guy", when in fact the little guys are not only beneficiaries but also tragic victims.   I am very sympathetic to the notion of amnesty as a humanitarian act, but there also would bea lot of "collateral damage".   Note by the way that the senate bill notonly grants amnesty but also enables the future import of low-skilled labor in other ways, greatly exacerbating the problem.   And BTW, I am irritated by the obviously flawed claims of the CBO that amnesty would produce a net fiscal benefit.
 
So, I am pleased to see T.A. Frank bring up the subject for discussion.   HOWEVER, I have to counter by saying that Frank is the author of one ofthe most biased articles on H-1B I've ever seen, one in which he seriously stretched ethical boundaries, in my opinion.   (See my article about it.)
 
4. Vivek Wadhwa, "Big Laobr's Anti-Immigration Rumor Machine", 2013 June 28
 
I consider Vivek to be a friend, and tend to be tolerant of his occasional tirades.
 
As such, I wouldn't even mention this latest tirade, if not for the fact that it brings up an important point concerning the rigor of research on H-1B and related issues.
 
In the current episode, Vivek takes aim the Economic Policy Institute, calling EPI "anti-immigration".   Unfortunately, Vivek hasn't done his home-work here; EPI has released a number of pro-immigration reports, notably by Heidi Shierholz (whose work is similar to that of my colleague Giovanni Peri, who is arguably the most stridently pro-immigration economist in the nation), a book-length report by Ray Marshall, and a pro-amnesty statement by EPI president Larry Mishel.
 
It is true that EPI has done considerable work criticizing one narrow aspect of immigration -- foreign tech workers, especially by Ron Hira, an academic who over the years Vivek has taken special aim at.   (Again, see my link above.)   This Spring, EPI published at least 3 major research papers on the subject, including my own, along with anumber of smaller reports.   This has really helped bring the problems of H-1B to the attention of people in the press, who had previously been brain-washed by the industry lobbyists.
 
That seems to be the root of Vivek's sudden out-burst against the EPI, inwhich he says, "[EPI] continues to grab national head-lines for research that claims that there is no tech-talent shortage.   As stupid as this may seem to [executives] in the tech industry, EPI keeps repeating this -- despite the fact that its evidence falls apart once respected economists review its non-peer-reviewed papers.   Facts don't usually get in the way of politics, however.   It started with policy papers by Ron Hira, anassociate professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology."
 
As far as I know, no "respected economists" have criticized any of the EPI papers.   Other than a catty weblog by lobbyist [for tech executives] Robert Hoffman regarding the EPI paper by Salzman, Kuehn and Lowell, I have'tsee any criticism at all.   My colleague Peri, for instance, has been in the press a lot lately and has published a few op-eds in support of the senate bill, yet he has never criticized the EPI papers, nor has he even made claims contrary to them.   Indeed, he has for example publicly stated that low wages in STEM, kept low by immigration, give Americans incentives to not pursue STEM careers.
 
Though Vivek is definitely off-base in his remarks above, he does indirectly bring up the vital question of the quality of research inH-1B, which I will now discuss.
 
Specifically, Vivek derides the EPI papers as not being peer-reviewed.   In fact, most technical research papers on H-1B, including all of Vivek's, are non-peer-reviewed.   I agree that this is an important point -- and in my recent Barron's op-ed I made sure to tell the reader that my recent paper in Migration Letters was peer-reviewed -- there is nevertheless a lot of non-peer-reviwed research out there that is quite good.   I've cited some of Vivek's own research as being excellent.
 
And Vivek is quite wrong about EPI in that regard.   I don't know how EPI's review process works in general, but I can say that the scrutiny to which EPI put my own paper was the most rigorous I'd ever experienced in my more than 3 decades publishing research in math, statistics, computer science, electrical engineering and yes, immigration.   There were several internal EPI reviewers on my paper, and I believe there was an external one as well.
 
Having peer review is better than not having it, but peer review is no guarantee of fairness or quality.   Economists tend to be highly polarized on many issues, immigration being a prime example, and if oneof the "peers" reviewing a paper subscribes to an ideology opposite that of the author, the paper may be rejected -- or emasculated.   Conversely, sympathetic reviewers may endorse a poor-quality paper.
 
I've often cited the peer-reviewed paper by Mithas and Lucas as being of especially poor quality and lacking in impartiality. (See my criticism and another.)
 
Again, the immigration issue is polarized.   But one must insist onfairness.   And one quick test I apply on the fairness criterion is to first check a paper's bibliography.   If you look at my EPI paper, for instance, you will see citations to research that is to various degrees seemingly at odds with mine, such as Carnevale, Hunt, Kerr, Lofstrom, Mithas, Saxenian and Wadhwa.   By contrast, in Giovanni's STEM paper that is getting a lot of press, he has NO citations whatsoever of research that is negative about H-1B.   You as the consumer may feel lost in the technical details of a paper, but you can very quickly apply this simple fairness test.
 
Norm
---30---
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "For centuries [millennia] communications were very limited.   Messengers delivered information by hand, or crude communication systems were devised for short distances using drums, smoke signals, or semaphore.   A great leap forward came with the [electro-magnetic] telegraph and Morse code in 1838, as information could rapidly be sent in coded form over much greater distances.   Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1875, permitting speech itself to be transmitted, thus avoiding the need for translating the message first into letters and then into dots and dashes.   Around 1890 Marconia and Popov demonstrated through radio-telegraph experiments that wireless communication was indeed feasible over long distances, and with the invention of the triode amplifier by de Forest in 1906 the age of electronic communication was firmly established...   Now telephone, radio, and television make up only a small part of the communications traffic.   A great deal of information is sent directly from one machine to another, with no human intervention.   Computers can share data with one another, as well as monitor and control automated manufacturing proesses." --- Robert M. Glorioso & Francis S. Hill ii 1975 _Introduction to Engineering_ pg305  

 
 

2013-06-30

2013-06-30
Hugh R. Morley & Adam Offitzer _North Jersey_
Teaneck NJ- and India-based cross-border bodyshop Cognizant has big stake in increase of cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with flexible ethics
"grown from a small IT-services company spun off from Dun & Bradstreet [and Satyam] to a Fortune 500 giant with 2012 sales of $7.3G and 163K employees worldwide...   'Our growth may be hindered by immigration restrictions.'...   Cognizant spent nearly $1M on lobbying in 2012, much of it to influence legislation focused on the visa programs.   The company spent $230K on lobbying in the first quarter of this year...   New Jersey employers, with nearly 46K H-1B visas approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in fiscal year 2012, received more than any other state, followed by California, Texas and New York, agency records show...   The average jobless rate in 2012 for 'computer and mathematical occupations', was 3.6%, well [above full-employment levels for these fields], US Department of Labor figures show...   Cognizant earned about 80% of its revenue from North America in 2012, but about the same percentage of its work-force is in the Asia-Pacific area, with only 17% of the work-force located in the U.S.A., according to its SEC filings.   The immigration debate comes as Cognizant is a defendant in a 2-year-old law-suit alleging that the company worked with Molina Healthcare Inc., a California [Medicaid and Medicare processor], to replace 40 local IT workers at Molina with H-1B-holding workers brought in by Cognizant.   The suit, filed by 19 former employees of Molina, alleges that Cognizant paid 'various kick-backs and other financial incentives' to Molina's chief information officer to replace 'U.S. citizens and green card employees at Molina's with Cognizant's H-1B contractors'.   The suit also alleges that Cognizant made false statements in the application for the H-1B workers by claiming that 'there were no qualified United States citizens or residents who could perform the job functions sought for the compensation offered' when the out-sourcer knew that the incumbent employees could do the job.   'One day after the Department of Labor approved Cognizant's application for 40 H-1B workers, Molina fired approximately 40 competent programmers, managers and security analysts, who were either American citizens or green card holders in order to make room for the 40 H-1B Indian visa holders provided by Cognizant.', the suit alleges.   It claims that the incoming H-1B visa holders were paid $50K a year, without benefits, compared to $75K to more than $100K a year with benefits paid to the incumbents who were fired."
* According to State Department annual reports, 80,547 H-1B visas were issued through consular offices in FY1997, 91,360 in FY1998, 116,513 H-1B visas were issued in FY1999, 133,290 in FY2000, 161,643 in FY2001, 118,352 in FY2002, 107,196 in FY2003, 139,037 H-1B visas were issued in FY2004, 124,374 in FY2005, 135,861 in FY2006, 154,692 in FY2007, 130,183 in FY2008, 110,988 in FY2009, 117,828 in FY2010, 129,552 in FY2011, 135,991 in FY2012.   Shankar Srinivasan is "chief people officer" at Cognizant, according to Saritha Rai reporting in TechRepublic on 2012-04-03.   Bill Snyder's InfoWorld/IDG report on 2011-10-06 notes that Cognizant was "paid $72 an hour by Molina for the labor of the on-shore contractors and $26 an hour for those in India, according to Onufrock", but that Molina had previously paid its US workers "$50 per hour".   Toni Bowers reported for Ziff Davis/CBS on 2011-08-22 that displaced "IT" pros were suing former employer, Molina Healthcare, Amir Desai, and Cognizant.   Patrick Thibodeau reported 2011-07-12 in ComputerWorld/IDG that US employees were even discouraged from celebrating US national holidays and locked out of hiring and other decision-making and promotions...jgo

2013-06-30
Denise Dick _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
number of female STEM faculty increasing at Youngstown State U
"When the STEM college was established in 2007, it included 17 women among the 111-member faculty.   By 2012, that number had risen to 24 of 117 and two more will join the ranks next year.   The number of STEM students has increased although there's not dramatic change in the gender composition.   In 2007, 2,410 graduate and undergraduate students were enrolled -- 73% male and 27% female.   Last year, 2,833 STEM students were enrolled -- 72% male and 28% female."

2013-06-30
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
middle-aged engineers need not apply
 
I am enclosing the message below, with full permission and with some redaction, from a subscriber to this e-news-letter, who wrote in response to the NYT article.
 
This person is someone I trust very highly, and is not someone who uses terms like "lying" casually, or who is given to extreme language in general.   The author has worked at a number of brand-name electronics firms, and yes, does have an up-to-date skill set.
 
For you Hill staffers on the list, you ought to nail hard copies of this message to your boss' door.   Excuse my bluntness, but what congress wants to do to tech workers in this country is a crying shame, and as I've said, will ultimately be harmful to the U.S. economy.
 
Norm
 
***********************************************************************
 
Hi Norm,
 
I noticed that Intel was quoted several times in the NY Times article.
 
In my recent job search, I submitted about 50, yes 50, job applications to Intel.   They did not hire me.
 
In the end, I was hired by [major hardware firm 1], a company that has retained many older workers, and has many design centers outside of Silicon Valley across the US.   [major hardware firm 1] and a few other companies seem to be capitalizing on the longevity and loyalty of its employees.   It is not uncommon to run across engineers who have worked at [major hardware firm 1] since the 80s.
 
Interestingly, I was hired because I was experienced and could hit the ground running.   That flies in the face of the notion that older workers need training.   Many don't really need much training and have theoretical skills + experience which never go out of fashion.   Often, older workers also have business and industry contacts that are invaluable.
 
What older workers often don't have is a willingness to work for sub-standard wages.
 
I find it very interesting that Intel did not hire me.   I certainly did not need training and in the first few months on the job at [major hardware firm 1], have been doing design with state of the art tools (which I learned at the startup I was recently working at).   I'm actually upgrading design platforms because the existing team I have joined is mostly too busy to learn the latest design tools.
 
Again, I submitted at least 50 applications to Intel.   I was rejected on every single one.
 
So, in short, Intel must be lying.   Intel didn't hire me because they knew they would be taking on a legal risk trying to hire me for a sub $100K a year salary.   I certainly had the high demand skills Intel is seeking, as shown by the [well over $100K] salary I got from [major hardware firm 1]. (The going rate in my field for someone at staff level.)
 
I'd also add that not only did Intel not hire me, they did not even invite me in for an interview.   I managed to get an on site interview at [major hardware firm 2], [major hardware firm 3], and several start-ups, but not even a single phone interview from Intel, even after 50 resume applications.
 
I cannot repeat enough times that Intel is bald face lying about not being able to find engineers with the right skills.   What they can't find are engineers with the right skills who will work for $40K less than the going rate.   I suspect that they also are not interested in engineers with industry business contacts.   They probably want their engineers to be isolated and compliant.
 
It's sad to see that the press does not and will not pick up on this.

---30---

2013-06-30
Anthony Watts
NOAA has "de-modernized" the official Death Valley station to use older equipment.   Is it to make a record more likely?

2013-06-30
Jerry Kammer _Center for Immigration Studies_
former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda blasts border fence, wants more work visas for Mexicans

2013-06-30
Bill Sizemore _Hampton Roads VA Pilot_
families blame federal officials for death of SEALs SW of Kabul Afghanistan: congress to investigate
Fellowship of Minds
Fox

2013-06-30
Bert Carson
inspiration: about individuals who do the right things; Gene Chandler "As I walk through this world, nothing can stop the Duke of Earl"
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "a property of the normal distribution curve is that 68.2% of all observations fall within the range mean + or - the standard deviation.   Further, it is found that 95.4% of all obserations fall within the range mean + or - 2 times the standard deviation and 99.73% within the range of mean + or - 3 times the standard deviation.   Thus, if limits of _ or - 2 times the standard deviation are placed on the true value, approximately 95% of all the observations will fall within these limits...   For this purpose, the standard deviation for a sample of n observations is defined as the square root of [(1/(n-1))*the sum for all n of ((the value - the estimated mean of values)squared)]." --- Robert M. Glorioso & Francis S. Hill ii 1975 _Introduction to Engineering_ pp388-389  

 
 

2013 June
top 500 fastest super-computers




 
Proposed Bills 2013


Congressional candidate fund-raising, expenditures, and debt
 

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

  "Meanwhile, only about 5% of the 6M cargo containers shipped annually into the [United States of America] are ever inspected.   Between 2002 and 2004, the federal port security grant program had allocated only $515M and actually spent about $100M, far less than the US Coast Guard says is necessary." --- Moises Naim 2005 _Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and CopyCats Are Hijacking the Global Economy_ pg268 (citing OIG 2005 January "Review of the Port Security Grant Program" OIG-05-10)  

Movies Coming Soon
 

External links may expire at any time.
Neither this page, nor the opinions expressed or implied in it are endorsed by Michael Badnarik, Ron Paul, Bob Barr, Wayne Allyn Root, Warner Brothers, Gary Johnson, nor by my hosts, Kermit and Rateliff.

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
Top