2013 August
2nd month of the 3rd quarter of the 24th year of the Bush-Clinton-Shrub-Obummer economic depression
updated: 2022-09-18
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"Another Presbyterian missionary who traversed the Road was the reverend Philip Vickers Fithian, who in his journal described a mission tour from Philadelphia to York, Hagerstown, Martinsburg, Winchester, and other Valley of VA settlements in May and 1775 June." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pg63
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"The VA Assembly in 1744 ordered a ferry kept on the Potomac, where the road had crossed by a shallow ford from MD into VA. The at specified that it be 'On Patomack river from Evan Watkins landing opposite to the mouth of Anagochego creek to Edmund Wade's land in MD, the price of a man 3 pence and for a horse 3 pence.' Watkins's Ferry made the Potomac crossing safter and faster. Soon the growing movement southward justified a larger boat, which could transport wagons as well as horses and cattle. Ferryman Evan Watkins was kept busy from dawn to dusk poling his boat back and forth across the river. As trade grew he expanded his services and became a prosperous figure, well known to travelers along the road. He typified the ferry-men who became prominent and prosperous along the early road. Watkins and his wife Mary had settled by the Potomac about 1741. The river landing was then known as Maidstone in honor of an English town familiar to lord Fairfax, who owned the area. Watkins first built a 1-room log cabin. As his family grew, he added to it, renting beds over-night to travelers. He also built a forge to make hardware and implements and a river-front store to supply travelers. His ledger book listed ferriage rates, black-smithing charges, and prices for such refreshments as wine slings, toddies, and 'cideroyl'. Watkins's Ferry in time became Light's Ferry, then Lemen's Ferry, and Finally Williams's Ferry. Eventually the site became Williamsport, MD..." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pg69
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captain William Scott's flag for the Republic of Texas.
2013 August
2nd month of the 3rd quarter of the 14th year of the Bush-Clinton-Shrub-Obummer economic depression
2013-08-01
2013-08-01 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 279,869 in the week ending July 27, a decrease of 60,084 from the previous week. There were 312,931 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.
The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.3% during the week ending July 20, 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 2,927,554, a decrease of 126,553 from the preceding week's revised level of 3,054,107. A year earlier, the rate was 2.5% and the volume was 3,246,888.
The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending July 13 was 4,695,366, a decrease of 154,140 from the previous week. There were 5,964,451 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.
No state was triggered "on" the Extended Benefits program the week ending July 13...
States reported 1,564,517 persons claiming Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) benefits for the week ending July 13, a decrease of 49,668 from the prior week. There were 2,532,828 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;
to 129,827,178 beginning 2013-07-06.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs
2013-08-01
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
US workers found to out-perform off-shore staff
IT World
"U.S.-based workers show more initiative, are more innovative and more understanding of the business than off-shore workers, a new study that looks on sourcing services in the U.S.A. has found. These qualities are helping to boost use of domestic IT services, especially as companies move to cloud-based services, said HfS Research, an IT services research firm and consultancy. Domestic workers also work harder than off-shore staff, but not by much. The difference was 83% to 79% when responders were asked to assign attributes to their U.S.A.-based and non-U.S.A.-based staff, said the report, which was based on a survey of 235 enterprise buyers of $1G or more in revenue. In most areas associated with productivity, U.S.A.-based staff exceeded off-shore staff by wide margins in this survey. When it came to cultural and communication skills, U.S.A.-based staff was rated 82% versus 33% for off-shore staff. In taking initiative, it was 77% to 40%, and for being innovative, it was 77% to 45%. 'U.S.A.-based workers more often exhibit skills deemed most relevant to productivity in today's business environment.', the HfS Research report said. When the survey looked at specific IT services functions, the findings narrowed some, but with U.S.A.-based workers maintaining leads nonetheless. Survey takers were asked, for instance, how satisfied they were with application development work, 77% said they very satisfied and satisfied with U.S.A.-based staff, versus 61% for off-shore. For IT help desk, it was 71% to 54%, in favor of U.S. workers... He said the trend is being helped by the visa issue in the U.S.A. Indeed, U.S. domestic companies have been urging Congress to tighten the rules on H-1B use. As enterprises move into the cloud and use services such as Workday, for example, the skill requirements are 'more of a business transformational skill', Fersht, 'so there is a shift going on.' The survey found that 25% of all respondents are already tapping into U.S.A.-based services delivery."
2013-08-01
Anthony Watts
WUWT weather/climate hot sheet
2013-08-01
Chris Kanaracus _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
PA dumped Ill-Begotten Monstrosities after project ran 42 months late & $60M over budget
"The state of Pennsylvania will not renew its services contract with IBM regarding the development of a modernized unemployment compensation system, after the project reportedly has gone 42 months behind schedule and $60M over budget. In August, state officials commissioned a study from Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute, seeking 'to determine the best course of action moving forward', according to a statement released this week by Department of Labor and Industry Secretary Julia Hearthway's office... IBM landed the contract in 2006 June. The project was originally budgeted at $106.9M but the state has so far "dedicated funds approaching $170M.', according to the Carnegie Mellon study... After some design documents were finished in 2008, IBM took a large number of business analysts that had become the memory [institutional knowledge store] of the state's business requirements, off of the project: 'This decision created a significant knowledge gap as the program entered the critical application design and development phases.'... since the project's start 638 IBM contractors have worked on it, 'with the majority of the work-force having less than one year on the project and 75% having less than two years', the report states."
2013-08-01 (5773 Mechachem-Ab 25)
judge Andrew P. Napolitano _Jewish World Review_
liberty's back-lash
"Last week, Justin Amash, the two-term libertarian Republican congressman from Michigan, joined with John Conyers, the 25-term liberal Democratic congressman from the same state, to offer an amendment to legislation funding the National Security Agency (NSA). If enacted, the Amash-Conyers amendment would have forced the government's domestic spies when seeking search warrants to capture Americans' phone calls, texts and emails first to identify their targets and produce evidence of their terror-related activities before a judge may issue a warrant. The support they garnered had a surprising result that stunned the Washington establishment. It almost passed. The final vote, in which the Amash-Conyers amendment was defeated by 205 to 217, was delayed for a few hours by the House Republican [losership], which opposed the measure. The Republican [losership] team, in conjunction with president Obama and House minority [loser] Nancy Pelosi, needed more time for arm-twisting so as to avoid a humiliating loss. But the House rank-and-file did succeed in sending a message to the big-government types in both parties: Nearly half of the House of Representatives has had enough of government spying and then lying about it, and understands that spying on every American simply cannot withstand minimal scrutiny or basic constitutional analysis. The president is deeply into this and no doubt wishes he wasn't... the government is always subject to the Constitution, wherever it goes and whatever it does... How can a deliberative body of 434 current members debate an issue as monumental as whether the government is bound by the Constitution when it seeks out terrorists in just 24 minutes? Apparently, the House Republican leadership that established the absurd 24-minute rule feared a serious and meaningful public discussion in which its authoritarian impulses would need to confront the Constitution its members swore to uphold. In that 24-minute time span, millions -- millions -- of Americans' phone calls and e-mails were swept into the NSA's super-computers in defiance of the Constitution... The Amash-Conyers amendment would have required the feds to tell the court the name of the person whose communications they seek and the evidence they have against that person — just as the Constitution requires. And it would have prohibited the NSA dragnets the Constitution obviously was written to prevent. Instead we have the almost unimaginable prospect and the nearly unthinkable reality of the feds claiming that they can legally put every person in America under their privacy-invading scrutiny in order to catch a few dozen evil ones -- most of whom were entrapped by the FBI in the first place and never posed a serious danger to the public or the nation. Would we all be safer if the feds could knock down any door they wished and arrest any person they chose? Who would want to live in such a society? What value is the Constitution if those in whose hands we have reposed it for safekeeping are afraid to do so? I expect that the Amash-Conyers amendment will be back on the floor of the House soon."
2013-08-01 (5773 Mechachem-Ab 25)
Ann Coulter _Jewish World Review_
persisting myth vs. history
"Bill O'Reilly, host of the #1 cable news show, claimed on Tuesday night that the one person who tried to help African-Americans more than any other was... Robert F. Kennedy! No one laughed. I guess that's what they're teaching these days at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. (I can't wait to hear how Ted Kennedy helped eradicate drunk driving!) According to O'Reilly's Bizarro-World history, Bobby Kennedy was 'the guy who was really concerned about African-Americans' and 'who really DID SOMETHING... He went in with the federal government and he cleaned out the rat's nest that was abusing African-Americans in the South.' Although this myth has been polished to perfection by the Kennedy PR machine (requiring all Kennedy stories to illustrate either courage or adorableness), it is simply a fact that helping blacks was not the Democrats' priority. Even the ones who wanted to, such as Bobby and John Kennedy, couldn't risk upsetting the segregationists, more than 90% of whom were Democratic. The job of actually enforcing civil rights and desegregating Southern schools fell to presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. Five years after Eisenhower had shown the Democrats how its done by sending federal troops to desegregate Central High School in Little Rock, AR, president Kennedy and brother Bobby still dragged their feet in helping James Meredith enter the University of Mississippi. On 1961 Feb. 7, Meredith wrote a beautiful letter to the Department of Justice, describing his inability to enroll at the University of Mississippi. He wrote: 'Whenever I attempt to reason logically about this matter, it grieves me deeply to realize that an individual, especially an American, the citizen of a free democratic nation, has to clamor with such procedures in order to try to gain just a small amount of his civil and human rights, and even after suffering the embarrassments and personal humiliation of this procedure, there still seems little hope of success.' The full letter is worth looking up. I would venture to guess there are not many college applicants of any race who write this well today. (You know why? Because Americans don't read anymore. You watch cable news and fill your heads with nonsense...) In response to Meredith's eloquent letter, Bobby Kennedy did nothing... Remember: This was 7 years after the Supreme Court had already handed down its decision in Brown v. Board of Education -- a ruling expressly endorsed in the Republican Party platform, but not the Democratic platform, I might add. But Democrats were in the White House, so Meredith had to take his case to the Supreme Court. [Leftists] were engaging in their usual massive resistance to court rulings they don't like and neither Bobby nor John Kennedy would dare try to stop them. You will notice that the Freedom Rides and civil rights marches all took place under Democratic presidents. It was the only way to get Democratic administrations to intervene against their fellow Democrats. In 1962 June, a federal appellate court ruled that Meredith had been denied admittance to Ole Miss because of his race and ordered the university to enroll him. (At least that's how the two Republican judges voted; the segregationist FDR appointee dissented.) But one old segregationist on the court -- who had not even sat on the case -- kept issuing stays to prevent enforcement of the ruling. Only when these illegitimate stays were appealed to the Supreme Court did Bobby Kennedy's Justice Department finally weigh in, asking justice Hugo Black, the circuit justice, to lift the stays -- nearly 2 years after Meredith had written to the Department of Justice asking for its help. Needless to say, justice Black came down on Meredith's side in a matter of about 6 seconds. The full court had already decided the school segregation issue years earlier in Brown. But the state still would not admit Meredith to Ole Miss. With a showdown inevitable, president Kennedy, on the counsel of his trusted attorney general, Bobby Kennedy, wrote a letter to the segregationist Democrat governor of Mississippi, Ross Barnett. These were JFK's stirring words on behalf of the constitutional rights of black Americans, redeemed with the blood of American patriots: 'White House, 1962 September 30 To preserve our constitutional system, the Federal Government has an overriding responsibility to enforce the orders of the Federal Courts. Those courts have ordered that James Meredith be admitted now as a student at the University of Mississippi.' So basically, his hands were tied."
2013-08-01 (5773 Mechachem-Ab 25)
Victor Davis Hanson _Jewish World Review_
is populism dead?
Proposed Bills 2013
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"At nearby New Market, the Huguenot emigrant Valentin Sevier -- father of TN's early leader John Sevier -- kept a popular inn. &nnbsp; Another well-known Valley inn was Lincoln's, which was established by John Lincoln at Lacey Spring in Rockingham county after he had come to VA over the Great Road from Berks county PA, in the mid-18th century [i.e. c. 1750]. One of his 5 sons was Abraham Lincoln, grand-father of the president, who emigrated westward with 3 of his 4 brothers into KY, TN, and OH." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pg99
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2013-08-02
2013-08-02
Michael Kitchen _MarketWatch_
over-privileged in federal gov't once again allow public to be abused by their actions while exempting themselves
2013-08-02
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
call center off-shoring disclosure bill re-introduced
2013-08-02
Edwin S. Rubenstein _V Dare_
July jobs disappoint
"The U.S. labor force shrank by 35K in July; the labor force participation rate declined from 63.5% to 63.4%... the labor force participation rate for foreign-born workers (66.9%) remained well above that of native-born workers (63.4%) in July... Total employment rose by 227K, or by 0.16%; Native-born employment rose by 215K, or by 0.18%; Foreign-born employment rose by 12K, or by 0.05%."
2013-08-02
James Fulford _V Dare_
if we don't express our opposition, congress-critters will ram through amnesty for illegal aliens
2013-08-02 (5773 Mechachem-Ab 26)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
JEB Bush's crony RINOs against higher standards
Proposed Bills 2013
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"One of the first settlers of this wilderness was Jacob Castle, who moved westward from Augusta county VA, about 1746, and bought a small tract from the Indians on the Clinch river, paying for it with a butcher knife and rusty musket. He gave the area the name Castle's Woods. Insignificant as it was, it gained a minor repute as the western-most settlement along the Wilderness Road to KY. It later became the town of Saltville. [This is probably an error because Saltville is on the North Fork of the Holston, while CastleWood is straight west of it along the aforementioned Clinch river.]" --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pg119
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2013-08-03
2013-08-03
Mike Shedlock _Town Hall_
July jobs report
graphs
Proposed Bills 2013
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"William Russell represented Castle's Woods on the Fincastle county committee of Safety when it met in 1775 January... William Russell was sent by Fincastle county to Virginia's historic constitutional convention in Williamsburg in 1776, and he became one of the county's first 10 representatives to the new House of Delegates... When captain William Russell returned home after the Revolution, his wife had died, and he soon married Elizabeth Henry Campbell, sister of Patrick Henry and widow of general William Campbell, who had commanded frontiersmen in their victory over the British at Kings Mountain, SC. Elected again to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1785, he was honored by having the new county of Russell named for him." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pp122-123
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2013-08-04
1730-08-04: John Peter Zenger acquitted of sedition
2013-08-04
Ian Smith _PJ Media_
open borders, open wallets: Clinton cronies profiting from fast-tracked visas
"The allegations first reported by AP on Monday involve Mayorkas' relationship with Hillary Clinton's brother, Anthony Rodham. The relationship stretches back to the Bill Clinton days, when both were involved in trying to commute drug charges brought against the son of a major Clinton donor. Mayorkas was a California U.S. attorney at the time; Rodham was a lobbyist. Currently, Rodham is involved in a controversial business deal with another well-known name from this period -- former Clinton bundler Terry McAuliffe. The deal started with the creation of a new 'green' car manufacturer, Greentech Automotive, which has been financed through the EB-5 immigrant investment visa program. The program happens to be administered by Mayorkas' agency, USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services). Little-known until now, the 30-year-old EB-5 visa program is being ramped up by the Obama Administration to take advantage of increased demand from wealthy Chinese nationals. The idea of the 'green' car start-up was apparently such a winner that McAuliffe and Rodham brushed aside traditional bank or capital market financing and instead tapped the visa program, which promises a green card to foreigners who make a $500K investment in the U.S.A. that [might generate] 10 jobs. Rodham and McAuliffe's company, since 2009, has become the biggest EB-5 investment recipient ever. Apparently, that wasn't enough for them. Rodham, the head of the financing arm collecting the investment funds (along with big fees), apparently wrote to his old associate early this year in an attempt to fast-track more visa application approvals. According to the e-mail, the company has been approved for almost 100 Chinese investors; many more are in waiting. Judging by Mayorkas' history at the DHS thus far, Rodham came to the right man... Interestingly, last month Mayorkas gave the keynote address at the annual conference of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the pro-open borders private immigration attorneys lobby. Mayorkas is fully supportive of amnesty and open borders. He spoke last year about Obama's Congress-defying administrative amnesty program at the George Soros-funded and pro-amnesty think tank the Migration Policy Institute."
2013-08-04
Mike Shedlock
cannibalization of advertising markets
2013-08-04
P. David Hornik _PJ Media_
Israel: light to all or pariah?
2013-08-04
Robert X. Cringely
Is "cyber-insurance" AAA for our data... or yet another back-door
Proposed Bills 2013
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"Life at Castle's Woods reflected the easy-going morality of the frontier. In the first years after the Revolution, before the advent of Baptist and Methodist evangelists, house-holders commonly danced, played cards, and imbibed beer and whiskey without guilt. Sex morality was liberal, and bastardy was not uncommon. The names of Mary Culberson, Prudence Osbourn, and Abigail Beavers appear in early records as mothers of illegitimate children. Prudence Peppers had hers taken from her and placed with a family. Frances King was dismissed after trial for murdering her 'base-born child'. Other offenses were profanity, drinking on the Sabbath, 'breaking open a letter', and selling 'bad corn liquor'." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pg123
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2013-08-05
2013-08-05
Jon Brodkin _Ars Technica_
American sues Infosys for discrimination
PC World/IDG
Slash Dot
Grant Gross: IT World/IDG
"Infosys, an Indian IT software and services company with offices throughout the world, has been accused of discriminating against American job applicants. One Infosys employee who raised concerns about the company's hiring practices was repeatedly called a 'stupid American', the law-suit states. Infosys has about 15K employees in the US 'and approximately 90% of these employees are of South Asian descent (including individuals of Indian, Nepalese, and Bangladeshi descent)', the law-suit states. Infosys allegedly achieved this ratio 'by directly discriminating against individuals who are not of South Asian decent in hiring, by abusing the H-1B visa process to bring workers of South Asian descent into the country rather than hiring qualified individuals already in the United States, and by abusing the B-1 visa system to bring workers of South Asian descent into the United States to perform work not allowed by their visa status rather than hiring individuals already in the United States to perform the work'. Infosys 'used B-1 visa holders because they could be paid considerably lower wages than other workers including American-born workers', the law-suit states. The law-suit was filed Thursday in US District Court in Eastern Wisconsin by BK, an IT professional. In 2012 April, she applied for a job as 'Lead VMware/Windows Administrator' at Infosys. BK now alleges several violations of the Civil Rights Act. The suit claims BK got an interview, but Infosys officials incorrectly claimed she had no experience with MSFT's [PoE] Active Directory technology and ended up hiring a person from Bangladesh... ''While working on the assignment at Vinings, Georgia in 2008 December, Infosys employee-whistle-blower Jay Palmer claims that another Infosys employee wrote 'Americans cost $', and 'No Americans/Christians' on a whiteboard'', the law-suit states."
BizWire Express/Bright Future Jobs: this is just the tip of the iceberg
PR Web
Chloe Green: Information Age
Virtual-Strategy Magazine
eBossWatch
WatchList News
"The suit alleges BK, a VMware Certified Professional network engineer with a Master's in Information Systems, was denied a Lead VMware/Windows Administrator position at Infosys. Court documents state that during the interview, 'Infosys's representatives spent a considerable amount of time asking about other subjects, including DNS and Active Directory'. Following her in depth answers regarding DNS and Active Directory subjects, one of the Infosys interviewers, 'sighed and stated (incorrectly) that BK had no Active Directory experience'. The suit alleges 'after BK was rejected, Infosys continued to interview candidates for the position for a period of nearly 2 months' and 'ultimately hired an individual of South Asian descent'. 'High-tech companies claim they can't find Americans to fill U.S jobs, when, in fact, they are rejecting talented Americans—as this law-suit alleges.', said Conroy, director of Bright Future Jobs. Court documents also state that, 'A former Infosys employee who worked in human resources -- Linda Manning -- testified that approximately 90% of Infosys's employees in the United States are foreign-national workers and the vast majority of those workers are of Indian national origin.' The suit alleges, 'Infosys has engaged in a pattern and practice of discriminating against individuals who are American-born or not of South Asian national origin by: (a) filling a disproportionately large percentage of its work force with individuals of South Asian national origin who are brought to the United States on either H-1B or B-1 visas even when there are qualified individuals available in the United States and (b) knowingly and intentionally favoring individuals who are of South Asian national origin even in local hiring.'"
Peterson, Berk & Cross: proposed class-action complaint filed against Infosys for failure to hire, national origin discrimination
2013-08-05
Mike Shedlock _Town Hall_
5M fewer employed full-time compared with 2007; Bernanke wants 2% inflation
canonical link
Tim Wallace graph of labor force, total employed, employed full-time
Tim Wallace graph of percent employed par-time
2013-08-05
Mike Shedlock
Barnanke wants 2% inflation
2013-08-05
Mike Shedlock
5.7M truck drivers being phased out
"Please consider the Wall Street Journal report Daddy, What Was a Truck Driver? ''Ubiquitous, autonomous trucks are 'close to inevitable', says Ted Scott, director of engineering and safety policy for the American Trucking Associations. 'We are going to have a driverless truck because there will be money in it.', adds James Barrett, president of 105-rig Road Scholar Transport Inc. in Scranton, PA.'' Roughly speaking, a full-time driver with benefits will cost $65K to $100K or more a year. Even if the costs of automating a truck were an additional $400K, most owners would leap at the chance, they say... In an Australian mine, in a scorched, wretched area called The Pilbara, Caterpillar is today running 6 automated model 793f mining trucks. Stuffed with 2,650 horsepower and more than 25M lines of software code, they haul away layers of rock and dirt, up and down steep grades. Traditionally, these trucks would require 4 drivers to operate 24 hours a day."
2013-08-05
Mike Shedlock
part-time job growth trends by type of job
2013-08-05
Ed Marcum _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
Rural/Metro has filed chapter 11 bankruptcy/re-organization
Matt Keller: KGO abc San Francisco CA
Pete Carey: San Jose CA Mercury News
2013-08-05
Anthony Watts
WUWT weather/climate hot sheet
2013-08-05
Bernie Hughes _Duluth MN News Tribune_
off-shoring is killing our economy
"We've already seen the disheartening results of offshoring: loss of jobs, lower wages and that list goes on. Is the worst yet to come? Alan Blinder, Princeton University economist and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, thinks so and writes that, 'We may have seen so far barely the tip of the offshoring iceberg, the eventual dimensions of which may be staggering.' More wage lowering obviously is in the offing. More negative financial results are predicted as a result of lost job income, of taxes on that income and of the lowering of our economy as too many people will not have money to spend. Income equality, immorally, has widened in our nation. Economist Herman Daly summarized our present situation well by saying, 'The elites have figured out how to keep the benefits for themselves while sharing the cost with the poor, the future and other species.'"
2013-08-05
Ethan Rouen _CNN_
The myth of America's missing software engineers
2013-08-05
Carla Mozee _MarketWatch_
Australian stocks slip ahead of Reserve Bank rate decision
2013-08-05
Yolande Chee _CNBC_
Western Australia premier says slowing demand in Red China for ore is not disaster
Rod McGuirk: San Jose CA Mercury News/AP
"Slowing growth in [Red China] is being blamed for a lot of the industry's woes, but with gross domestic product (GDP) slowing to 7%, Barnett believes this is still a very enviable position for the world's second largest economy to be in, and he expects Australia's resources companies will continue to reap the rewards. [Red China] is Australia's largest trading partner, with 73% of China-bound exports coming from Western Australia. While commodity prices have fallen, Barnett argues that strong growth in China still under-pins growth in the mining industry, albeit not as strong as in previous years. 'Over the last 12 months, over A$100G ($89G) of mining and petroleum products were produced, and even today there is still A$177G of mining projects still under construction... So we may have passed a peak period of construction, but the industry is still growing very, very strongly.'... Australia's Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics (BREE) notes that there is still around A$268G of investment committed to resources and energy projects around the country."
2013-08-05
Ira Mehlman _Immigration Reform_
NPR destroys key argument for amnesty for illegal aliens and increased immigration
"Citing Alpert, Noguchi reports that the key reason for protracted high unemployment and depressed wages is that 'there are essentially too many people looking for work'. Rather than a short-term problem, NPR accepts Alpert's assessment that this phenomenon is likely to continue. 'The US's biggest long-term issue: an oversupply of labor.', reports Noguchi."
2013-08-05
Devvy Kidd _News with Views_
our corrupt congress-critters
"On 1993 September 29, I held a rally (along with a lot of good people helping out) on the steps of the nation's capitol in Washington, District of Criminals. Park police estimated about 4K people. The purpose was to deliver 1.763M petition signatures to the liars and thieves in the Outlaw Congress to abolish the IRS and the unconstitutional, privately owned Federal Reserve. As the day wore on, we collected another 24K signatures. All were delivered. Nothing has changed... In 2009, more than 500K Americans protested near the nation's capitol over the unconstitutional rape of we the people called Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). Nothing has changed. Decent, hard working (and retired) Americans worked very hard and got 40 'conservative' tea party candidates elected to the U.S. House in 2010. Nothing changed. Almost all of them caved at their first challenge: they voted to extend the debt limit so we the people would have more borrowed trillions borrowed whizzed away plus the interest heaped on our backs."
2013-08-05 (5773 Menachem-Ab 29)
Christa Case Bryant _Jewish World Review_
Israel's 10th-grade anti-cyber-terrorists
Proposed Bills 2013
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"In 1785, Castle's Woods was alarmed by the attack nearby on the family of Archibald Scott and his wife, Fannie Dickenson Scott. The tribesmen first killed Scott and the 3 youngest children, then stabbing the eldest child as she clung to her mother. They then abducted Fannie [Dickenson] and carried her northward. After 11 days, the wiry young woman eluded her captors and made her way through the Appalachian Mountains. After a month in the forest with no food except berries, leaves, and cane juice, she reached Castle's Woods and was slowly nursed back to health." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pg123
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2013-08-06
2013-08-06
Shona Ghosh _PC Pro_
Resistive RAM crams 1TB onto a chip
"US startup Crossbar has announced... it's achieved a 'simple and scalable' memory cell structure, consisting of 3 layers. The structure means cells can be stacked in 3D, squeezing terabytes of storage capacity onto a single chip the size of a postage stamp."
Slash Dot
2013-08-06
Mike Shedlock
Army will not suspend contracts with Al Qaeda associates, citing "due process rights"
Fox
Town Hall
"In a scathing passage of his latest report to Congress, Special Inspector General John Sopko said his office has urged the Army to suspend or debar 43 contractors over concerns about ties to the Afghanistan insurgency, 'including supporters of the Taliban, the Haqqani network and al Qaeda'... 'The Army Suspension and Debarment Office appears to believe that suspension or debarment of these individuals and companies would be a violation of their due process rights if based on classified information or if based on findings by the Department of Commerce.', Sopko said, summing up the Army's position."
2013-08-06
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
USCIS approach to data release: flood 'em with unreadable numbers
"Maybe I am being a bit paranoid, and what I regard as the deliberate obscuring of government data is, perhaps, just ineptitude... Returning to USCIS and statistics, sometimes the agency reveals nothing about its operations, as it refused for months to publish the number of denials in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and sometimes it...floods of information in an indigestible format... the bulk of legal immigrants are admitted for family reasons... There are more than 200K of these family-related petitions filed and adjudicated each year, and all this is done on I-130 forms. In many cases more than one alien relative can be included on a single form..."
2013-08-06
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
Mayorkas hearing testimony analyzed by senator Grassley
2013-08-06
Jim Steele
fabricating climate doom part 2
2013-08-06
Rod McGuirk _Minneapolis MN StarTribune_
Australian Reserve Bank cut key rate to 2.5%
2013-08-06
John Hawkins _Town Hall_
5 leftist policies that ruin lives
2013-08-06
Paul Gosar _Daily Caller_
the American people are now federal government's public enemy #1
2013-08-06
Paul Conner _Daily Caller_
Lee Bright joins 2 other election challengers to unseat Lindsey Grahamnesty
2013-08-06 (5773 Menachem-Ab 30)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
3 forgotten/hidden facts about the Ft. Hood massacre
Town Hall
"14 victims fell on 2009 Nov. 5, not 13. 13 of our U.S. military personnel died in cold blood at the deployment center. But the death toll was actually 14. Private Francheska Velez, 21, was pregnant when Hasan shot her during the first round of gunfire. At a military Article 32 hearing in 2010 (analogous to a civilian grand jury hearing), a survivor of the Fort Hood shootings testified that Velez cried out, 'My baby! My baby!' In his opening statement on Tuesday, Hasan (acting as his own lawyer) apologized to his fellow jihadists for not destroying more innocent life. The victims were all unarmed. Soldiers inside the deployment center were and are forbidden from carrying weapons -- either issued weapons or personal arms -- on base. When Hasan commenced his shooting spree by shouting, 'Allahu Akbar!', several brave men and women in uniform used chairs, tables and their own bodies to try to stop him. But it wasn't until a courageous, armed civilian police officer, sergeant Kimberley Munley, arrived on the scene with her 9mm Beretta that Hasan's rampage was interrupted. In a gunfight outside the deployment center, Munley wounded Hasan -- who was able to return fire and shot her in the hand, thigh and knee. While she lay on the ground, Hasan kicked away her weapon. Another armed civilian police officer, Mark Todd, was able to fire at Hasan 5 times and brought him down."
2013-08-06 (5773 Menachem-Ab 30)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
busybody politics
Town Hall
Proposed Bills 2013
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"Throughout the colonial years, the frontier men along the Apalachians usually wore deer-skin hunting shirts, fringed with colored cloth, together with leggings and moccasins. In the 19th century, men began to adopt the European fashion of long trousers. Frontier women wore home-made cotton or wool dresses, topped by sun-bonnets or poke bonnets." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pg124
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2013-08-07
2013-08-07
Christopher Monckton
what the AGU climate policy should have said
2013-08-07
Anthony Watts
WUWT climate/weather hot sheet
2013-08-07
Daniel Doherty _Town Hall_
Elbert Guillory says leftism has nearly destroyed black America
2013-08-07
Jonah Goldberg _Town Hall_
the isolationism myth
2013-08-07
Carol Platt Liebau _Town Hall_
Et Tu, SEC?
2013-08-07
Derryck Green _Daily Caller_
identity politics won't reduce black unemployment
2013-08-07
Grae Stafford _Daily Caller_
just how corrupt is the Obummer regime?
2013-08-07
_Daily Caller_
30 police dishonestly gave office address as residence when registering to vote
Cincinnati OH Enquirer
2013-08-07
_Billings MT Gazette_
convertible airplane/car: Glasair Sportsman
2013-08-07
Michael Walsh _PJ Media_
RINOs in wonderland
2013-08-07
Walter Hudson _PJ Media_
How the board-game "Monopoly" perpetuates myths about how capitalism works
2013-08-07
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
EB-5 gets another black eye, this time from the FBI
2013-08-07
Robert X. Cringely
Ill-Begotten Monstrosities facing some back-lash as "fulfilling customer requirements" is a weapon
Chris Kanaracus: ComputerWorld/IDG
"The state of Pennsylvania cancelled an unemployment compensation system contract that was 42 months behind and $60M over budget. Big Blue has been banned from the Australian state of Queensland after botching a $6.9M SAP project that will now reportedly cost the people of Queensland $A1.2G to fix... It is so fixated on its goals and so sure its process is the only right way of doing things, it cannot see alternatives."
2013-08-07
Matt Nesto _BreakOut_
52% of recent grads are in jobs that don't use their degrees
"It's not as if the job market is blazing hot for anyone lately, but new data shows that one key demographic group that has historically been a leader, is now badly falling behind. According to Nick Colas, the chief market strategist at ConvergEx Group, recent graduates under 25 years-old are in a particularly bad spot right now. 'It's usually college grads that do well.', Colas says in the attached video. 'They get the first time jobs, they're pretty cheap to employ, and generally have pretty high job satisfaction.' But, he says since the recession new government data shows that this unlucky group stands out in 3 key ways like never before. Over-qualified: 52% of recent grads are in jobs where a college degree is not required. Colas calls this the 'most startling' new problem and says it clearly leads to high job dissatisfaction, which itself leads to other problems. Job Hunting at Work: Almost 1 in 3 recent grads admit to looking for a new job while on the clock at their current job. 'While they're at work doing job A, they're looking for job B', he says. Huge Pay Cuts: Despite ever increasing average tuition costs for a 4-year degree ($63K public, $130K private), the pay-out when the cap and gown comes off is actually going down. In fact, Colas says recent grads now earn about $3,200 less today than they did in 2000. 'It's much less, up to 30% less in many cases.', he says. Of course, the driving factor behind this new post-collegiate hardship is a very sluggish recovery following the great recession of 2008. Another facet adding to the problem is the fact that fewer people are retiring at age 65, and are choosing to work longer to beef up their retirement nest-eggs which were slammed during the financial crisis. 'Older workers are actually the big growth area', Colas says, and 'younger workers are the ones that are really taking it on the chin'. He calls this structural employment problem 'a big change' from prior recoveries and says the findings raise an important question. 'One is, what does college prepare you to do?', he says. 'That's a big problem because colleges charge you a lot of money, but you don't necessarily get a big pay off at the end of it.'"
2013-08-07
Natasha Rhodes _US News & World Report_
why employers don't send rejection letters anymore
AOL
"1. Sheer volume... 2. Fear of being sued... 3. They put office staff in the firing line... 4. They're keeping their options open..."
2013-08-07 (5773 Alul 01)
Eytan Kobre _Jewish World Review_
Orthodox Jewish judges in NY have diverse judicial styles, but they have earned sterling reputations for integrity, fairness, and excellence in the law
2013-08-07 (5773 Alul 01)
Hannah Allam _Jewish World Review_
broad US embassy terror alert mystifies experts
2013-08-07 (5773 Alul 01)
John Stossel _Jewish World Review_
killing Giggles
Town Hall
"Global average temperature has been flat for [17 years]. But frightening myths about global warming continue... As far as hurricanes, more hit the United States in the 1880s than recently... People think Hurricane Katrina, which killed 1,800 people, was the deadliest storm ever. But the 1900 Galveston hurricane killed 10K people. We just didn't have so much media then... Government is the institution that puts itself in charge of caring for wildlife but recently sent a dozen armed agents into a Wisconsin animal shelter to seize and kill a baby deer named Giggles who was being nursed back to health there, since Giggles wasn't in the right type of approved shelter... If we let it do that, government will do to the economy what it did to Giggles."
2013-08-07 (5773 Alul 01)
Nat Hentoff _Jewish World Review_
how much do you know about he new FBI director?
2013-08-07 (5773 Alul 01)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
would they be proud?
Town Hall
"Nationally, the black four-year high-school graduation rate is 52%. In some cities, such as Detroit and Philadelphia, it's considerably lower -- 20% and 24%, respectively. In Rochester, NY, it's 9%."
Proposed Bills 2013
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"(2) if the court does not order the vicious dog to be destroyed under division (H)(1)(b) of this section, the court shall issue an order that specifies that division (D) of section 955.11 and divisions (D) to (I)..." --- Ohio Laws, Acts and Legislation
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2013-08-08
1306-08-08: king Wenceslas of Poland murdered at the behest of his brother, cruel king Boleslaw
1570-08-08: king Charles ix of France signed Treaty of St. Germain giving freedom of religion to Huguenots and ending 3rd war of religion
1648-08-08: Ibrahim, sultan of Istanbul, imprisoned and assassinated
1844-08-08: Brigham Young succeeded Joseph Smith as head of Mormonite church
1876-08-08: Thomas A. Edison patented mimeograph
1896-08-08: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings born
1899-08-08: first household refrigerator patented
1901-08-08: Ernest Orlando Lawrence born at 15 Monk Road in Bishopston, Bristol, England
1902-08-08: Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac birth-day
1937-08-08: Japan occupied Beijing
1940-08-08: Nazi Luftwaffe attacked Great Britain, beginning Battle of Britain
1942-08-08: US Marines captured Japanese air-strip on Guadalcanal
1944-08-08: US forces completed capture of Marianas Islands
1945-08-08: Soviet Union declared war on Japan
1950-08-08: US troops repelled 1st attack at 10 day battle of Naktong Bulge
2013-08-08 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 286,738 in the week ending August 3, an increase of 5,285 from the previous week. There were 320,219 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.
The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.3% during the week ending July 27, unchanged from the prior week's unrevised rate. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,954,988, an increase of 27,804 from the preceding week's revised level of 2,927,184. A year earlier, the rate was 2.5% and the volume was 3,242,883.
The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending July 20 was 4,520,948, a decrease of 174,418 from the previous week. There were 5,750,327 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.
No state was triggered "on" the Extended Benefits program the week ending July 20...
States reported 1,516,275 persons claiming Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) benefits for the week ending July 20, a decrease of 48,242 from the prior week. There were 2,412,938 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;
to 129,827,178 beginning 2013-07-06.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs
2013-08-08
Anthony Watts
WUWT climate/weather hot sheet
2013-08-08
Bryan Preston _PJ Media_
Texas lieutenant-governor Dewhurst blasted Obummer for evil mistakes on Benghazi, Ft. Hood
2013-08-08
Anthony Watts
CO2 did not and will not roast the earth
2013-08-08
Anthony Watts
high Arctic has dropped below freezing about 2 weeks early this year
2013-08-08
Mike Shedlock _Town Hall_
has QE been inflationary: Fed balance sheet vs. stock markets
2013-08-08
Jennifer Mattson _Global Post_
secure e-mail service Lavabit has shut down
"'I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit.', the owner of the Texas-based company, Ladar Levison, posted on its web-site Thursday. 'I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot.' According to the BBC, Levison is thought to have sought to block United States officials from accessing his customers' data... Levison wrote: 'This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.' Levison is appealing his case to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, hoping 'a favorable decision' will allow him to resurrect Lavabit. If not, the US government's surveillance programs could prove damaging for similar services, and the US technology sector as a whole, according to the director of civil liberties at the Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, Jennifer Granick... 'The US government, in its rush to spy on everybody, may end up killing our most productive industry.'"
2013-08-08
Eddie Gregg _Billings MT Gazette_
CT scans of dinosaur fossils yield breakthrough
"While scanning a series of 150M-year-old stegosaur fossils at Billings Clinic, he made a breakthrough step in finding a way to differentiate between male and female stegosaurs... we also found, basically the exact opposite -- we found tall, narrow, almost pointed plates, too... Using the scanner, they were able to see inside the plates and spot canals in the bones that showed the differently shaped plates both came from adult stegosaurs... Female birds and dinosaurs store up calcium deposits in their bones before they lay eggs, he explained, so finding these deposits in a stegosaur's bones could indicate its gender. 'Whether or not we see that is kind of luck of the draw.', Saitta said, because the calcium deposits would only be found if the female stegosaur died shortly before laying eggs."
2013-08-08
_Economic Times of India_
Green cards for Indians soared six-fold to 35,472 in a year
"Indians chasing the American dream have reason to cheer. In 2012, as many as 35,472 Indians with H-1B visas got green cards, up from 6K in 2011 -- accounting for more than 50% of all green cards issued to H-1B holders for all countries in the year. The data from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)... Most Indians who got green cards in 2012 came from the EB-2 category... "
2013-08-08
Dave Swindle & Claudia Rosett _PJ Media_
the UN is corrupt
2013-08-08
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
assorted examples of other countries' immigration practices
"The British government is much more sensitive to the problems caused by immigration-related marriage fraud than ours is. Further, there seems to be much better cooperation in the UK between the people who issue marriage licenses and the immigration enforcers than is the case in the United States. According to Edinburgh's The Scotsman 5 would-be grooms from Pakistan, all illegal aliens, were to be married to 5 'brides' who were variously from the UK, Romania, and the Czech Republic, when Home Office officials prevented the 'weddings' from taking place in Gretna, Scotland... The 5 grooms brought along 3 Pakistani friends, all illegals; 6 of the 8 are to be deported and the other 2 (presumably among the friends) were told to report to immigration authorities. The women were interviewed and released. Had the marriages gone through, the 5 from Pakistan would have secured legal status... I have been reading all the immigration marriage fraud articles that I can obtain for 3 years now, and have never heard of a sham marriage being prevented in the United States... [The Canadians] are showing us that it is not a good idea for a nation to sub-contract its immigration decisions to some other body... Canada, sadly, has an immigrant investor program as we do, but it has some features that are preferable to ours. For the particular program under discussion, it demands an investment of C$800K or, at the moment, US$768K, while we ask only $500K. And the minister in charge wants to double that price! Canada wins that comparison. In the American EB-5 program, the investments (often of pretty low quality) routinely go into real estate ventures like condos or office buildings and thus provide capital to usually small-scale operators, where the element of fraud is often present, as we have reported in various blogs. The financial beneficiaries of EB-5 are in the private sector, and sometimes in grubby parts of it. And the aliens often run a very real risk with their investments. In Canada, however, the investments are made in 5-year, no-interest loans to the provincial government... A lot of the Chinese wind up investing in Quebec and settling in British Columbia. So Quebec gets the money and BC (notably Vancouver) gets the people."
2013-08-08
Ira Mehlman _Immigration Reform_
What labor shortage?
"America's younger workers -- recent college graduates -- not only suffer from high unemployment, but those who can find work often wind up in jobs for which they are overqualified and earning wages that make it difficult to pay off their college educations. They also are potentially losing out in hundreds of thousands of dollars in earnings over their career, as they are starting out lower on the economic ladder than they would in a healthy economy."
2013-08-08 (5773 Alul 02)
Victor Davis Hanson _Jewish World Review_
the American pill bug
"That roly-poly bug can serve as a fair symbol of present-day U.S. foreign policy, especially in our understandable weariness over Iraq, Afghanistan and the current scandals that are overwhelming the Obama administration... News that the FBI scrutinized and then apparently forgot about unhinged Islamists such as Tamerlan Tsarnaev and major Nidal Malik Hasan sent the wrong message to terrorists... Increasingly, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan seem to be on their own with a bullying [Red China], unsure whether to bend or resist. Meanwhile, the new American pill bug curls up in hopes that the mounting dangers will just go away."
2013-08-08 (5773 Alul 02)
Ann Coulter _Jewish World Review_
Bill O'Reilly may distort or not know aspects of history, but he's still smarter than MSFTNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell
"O'Reilly said, quite correctly: 'The reason there is so much violence and chaos in the black precincts is the disintegration of the African-American family. Right now, about 73% of all black babies are born out of wedlock. That drives poverty. And the lack of involved fathers leads to young boys growing up resentful and unsupervised. And it has nothing to do with slavery. It has everything to do with you Hollywood people and you derelict parents.'... While I'm sure that was a fascinating little monograph Moynihan wrote about slavery, O'Donnell cited nothing in it that contradicted O'Reilly... It doesn't even sound like Moynihan was attributing black illegitimacy to slavery... Fortunately, all discussion did not end for Erol Ricketts, a (black) demographer and sociologist with the Rockefeller Foundation who researched the origin of black female-headed families in the 1980s. His studies showed that the black family was thriving from the late 19th century through most of the 20th century... Examining nearly a century of U.S. census reports, Ricketts found that between 1890 and 1950, blacks had higher marriage rates than whites. Until 1970, black women were more likely to get married than white women -- and that was despite the high mortality rates among black men, leaving fewer available for marriage. In 3 of 4 decennial years between 1890 and 1920, black men out-married white men. Whatever else may cause illegitimacy and its associated problems, it isn't poverty, discrimination, lack of education, unemployment or slavery. Black Americans had all those handicaps -- and yet they still had strong families and low crime rates from 1890 until the 1960s. But in the 1960s, [leftists] decided it would be a great idea to start subsidizing illegitimacy... In 1970, for the first time, the marriage rate for black women fell below 70%. But even then, a majority of black children were still living with both parents. By 2010, only 30.1% of blacks above the age of 15 were married, compared to 52.7% of whites. [Leftists] keep using the bad consequences of their policies as an argument for more of the same policies. Murder is the only crime that has been reliably tracked since 1900. From the turn of the century right up to the early 1930s, the murder rate rose steadily, with a few peaks and valleys. Then it began a noticeable decline right at the beginning of the Great Depression, remaining low until the mid-1940s, and rising again only at the end of the Depression. The converse happened during the economic boom of the 'go-go' 1980s. The homicide rate shot up in the 1970s and stayed high until the mid-1990s. Both the homicide rate and general crime rate have remained at all-time lows through the economic wasteland of the Obama years (thanks to Republican crime policies)."
2013-08-08 (5773 Alul 02)
judge Andrew P. Napolitano _Jewish World Review_
unwarranted domestic spying is a violation of privacy and dangerous to freedom
"all Americans who communicate via telephone or the Internet (who doesn't?) have had all of their communications swept up by the federal government for two-plus years. The government initially claimed that the NSA has gathered only telephone numbers and billing data. Now we know that the NSA has captured and stored the content of trillions of telephone conversations, texts and e-mails, and can access that content at the press of a few computer keys. All of this happened in the dark, with the permission of president Obama, with the knowledge and consent of fewer than 20 members of congress who were forbidden from doing anything about it by the laws they themselves had written, and based on secret legal arguments accepted by a secret court that keeps its records secret even from the judges who sit on the court... It [NSA] has leaked, for example, that as a consequence of its spying it has prevented at least 50 foreign-originated plots from harming Americans. It eventually backed off that number and declined to reveal with specificity what it independently learned and how that knowledge foiled the plots. But we do know that its colleagues in the FBI were participants in many of those plots, which means they weren't real plots at all -- just government stings going after dopes and dupes... Earlier this week, we learned that other federal agencies of alphabet nomenclature -- the DHS, the DoJ, the DoD, the DEA, the CIA, the IRS, the FBI -- all want access to the NSA's data-base, and it has shared some of it with most of them. Also this week, former DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) agents, claiming this has been going on for at least a decade, acknowledged that the DEA regularly receives raw data from the NSA and uses that data to commence criminal investigations... The whole NSA spying apparatus was sold to congress [and the public] as a limited mechanism for combatting foreign terrorists. How putting the intimate thoughts of all Americans who use telephones and the Internet under the federal microscope helps to fight foreign terrorists has never been explained in a public court -- only in a secret one. But using this extra-constitutional means to fight crime brings us closer to a Soviet-style and value-free police state. The Constitution intentionally has placed values in the path of law enforcement and national security so as to maintain our natural rights. Those values are generally articulated throughout the Constitution and specifically addressed in the Fourth Amendment. The linch-pin of those values is the natural right to be left alone. All persons -- even bad guys -- have that inalienable right, and the government may only invade that right when it can identify a bad guy and articulate the probable cause it has to believe he is committing criminal acts. The rest of us -- those for whom there is no probable cause of criminal acts -- retain that right, and it cannot be taken away from us by the supine acquiescence of congress or an unnamed judge in a secret court."
Proposed Bills 2013
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"Negro slaves were uncommon along the frontier, but a few farmers and artisans owned them. At Castle's Woods the Russells and Dickensons each had several. More commonly found were indentured white servants, who were bound by their guardians or impoverished parents to serve a master for a given period of time. Meanwhile they were to serve faithfully and 'not commit fornication nor contract matrimony during the said term...play at cards, dice, or any unlawful game'." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pg124
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2013-08-09
2013-08-09
_Illinois Review_
Luis Gutierrez says he has 40-50 Republicans lined up to vote against immigration reform
Washington DC Compost
Ian Swanson: Hill (with video)
"Gutiérrez also predicted only a handful of House Democrats would vote against legislation that included a pathway to citizenship for the nation's estimated 11M illegal immigrants."
2013-08-09
Pete Carey _San Jose CA Mercury News_
average home price exceeds $1M in Sili Valley (with graph)
"Before April this year, the only time the average price of a single family home topped $1M in the county was in March and April of 2007, right before the housing crash... And both sell for a lot -- the average price for a house in July was $1,059,404, up from $914,047 in 2012 July. Condo prices topped half a million dollars, with an average price of $524K. That's up from $436,507 a year earlier, the company said."
2013-08-09
Jamison Cocklin _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
executives of 9 steel pipe-makers have asked US Dept. of Commerce to raise import duties
"asking the federal government to raise import duties on 9 countries they suspect of illegally dumping product at artificially low prices in the U.S.A. A petition filed with the U.S. Department of Commerce early last month asked regulators to investigate South Korea, India, VietNam, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and Ukraine to determine if the countries are engaging in unfair and illegal trade practices. Nine U.S. companies filed the petition, including Vallourec Star, U.S. Steel, TMK IPSCO and the JMC Steel Group, which operates Wheatland Tube in Warren. The petition has set off one of the biggest anti-dumping cases of recent years for a segment of the U.S. steel industry that has seen a historic rise in demand as a result of the shale-gas drilling boom... In 2010, the U.S. imposed anti-dumping duties that range from 30% to 99% on Chinese steel pipes. At the time, the commerce department said prices for those pipes, otherwise known as Oil Country Tubular Goods, were 29.94% to 99.14% lower than the U.S. fair value... North America remains the largest consumer in the global market, accounting for 42% of tubular-pipe consumption."
2013-08-09
Denise Dick _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
historian uses 3D scanner to read ancestor's grave-stone
"Matt O'Mansky, left, a Youngstown State University associate professor, and Jerry Ward look at the results of a scan from the eroded tomb-stone of George Foulkes. O'Mansky is using the scanner to try to make out the words on the tomb-stone in Glenview Cemetery in East Palestine. George Foulkes (also spelled Foulks in some references), who was Ward's relative by marriage, was born in 1769 and was captured at age 11 by Native Americans while he and his siblings were tapping trees for maple syrup. His older brother was killed. Ward, who majored in history at Kent State University, researched more about Foulkes, who lived with his captors for 11 years and married a Native American woman before escaping and returning to live with whites. He married a white woman, Catherine Ullery, in 1796. Foulkes died in 1840. Catherine Ullery was the daughter of Revolutionary War veteran Henry Ullery, who was a German sea captain and Ward's sixth-great-grand-father. Henry Ullery is buried next to Foulkes. Details about Foulkes' life were carved into the gravestone upon his burial, but time and the elements have eroded much of the writing... Earlier this week, the two professors lugged a computer, generator, tripod and scanner to the cemetery to scan the stone to see if more of the etching could be read. The scanner, propped on a tripod in front of the stone, probed the stone, sending pictures back to a laptop. The first reading yielded bits and pieces of text, but O'Mansky plans another trip with different equipment to try again. O'Mansky sprayed powder onto the stone to try to aid the process, allowing it to adhere to the recesses of the etched letters."
2013-08-09
Anthony Watts
WUWT weather/climate hot sheet
2013-08-09
Neil Munro _Daily Caller_
robots vs. cheap foreign labor in Paul Ryan's district
'Without the cow-milking robots, farmers' lives are tied to their cows' milking schedule. 7 days a week, 2 or 3 times a day, every single solitary day, no breaks for Christmas, no breaks for your birthday, you have to milk those cows.', said Gregg Abts, a robot-salesman... Justin Segner, a robot salesman in Belleville, WI, who sold 9 robots last year, and expects to sell 23 of the $200K robots this year... 'There's a lot of smaller farms, 60 to 240 cow dairies, and the robot milking machine makes it possible [for them] to stay in business.', said Segner. 'It is saving the small family farms.', partly by increasing the willingness of young Americans to become farmers, he said. Demand for the robots will spike if the federal government enforces the existing immigration laws, said Steiner, who has sold 5 robots so far this year, after selling 17 in the previous 4 years."
2013-08-09
_Slash Dot_
NSA zips into action in light of revelations they've been violating nearly all US citizens' and residents' privacy... by dumping 90% of their sys admins
Reuters
2013-08-09
Anthony Watts
ACS Journal of Physical Chemistry: more effective ways to create ball-lightning in the lab
2013-08-09
Thomas E. Brewton
pres. Obummer's economic track record
Peter Ferrara: Forbes
"Since the Great Depression, there have been 11 other recessions in America before this last one. In all those recessions, the economy recovered all jobs lost during the recession an average of 25 months after the recession began. So the job effects of prior post Depression recessions lasted an average of about 2 years. But here we are today, 5.5 years, or 67 months, after the recession started, and we still have not recovered all of the jobs lost during the recession. As AEI President Arthur Brooks wrote in the Wall Street Journal last Thursday, 'In 2008, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that total non-farm seasonally adjusted employment was 138M workers. Today, it is fewer than 136M. Meanwhile, the number of Americans has grown by 12.8M. In many areas of the country, more than 1 in 5 adults who want full time employment can't find it.' In sharp contrast, president Reagan's recovery from the sharp 1981-1982 recession, which resulted from the monetary policy that broke the back of the roaring 1970s inflation, recovered all of the jobs lost during that recession within 36 months. At this point in the Reagan recovery, jobs had grown nearly 10% higher than when the recession started, representing an increase of more than 10M more jobs."
2013-08-09
Stanley Renshon _Center for Immigration Studies_
GOP's immigration leverage... really
"The basic stance of many prominent members of the GOP [losership] after the 2012 presidential election can be described as panic... That panic has now been partially check-mated by the determined stand on their principles by many GOP House members..."
2013-08-09
Dawn Kawamoto _Dice_
Ill-Begotten Monstrosities to lay off 203 in San Jose CA on Monday
"IBM plans to lay off 203 workers in Silicon Valley on Monday, as part of its $1G restructuring plan that has already resulted in over 3K job cuts. Ironically, the move comes as Big Blue is also gearing up to initiate a one-week forced furlough to many of its U.S. workers affiliated with its hardware operations..."
2013-08-09 (5773 Alul 03)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
projecting American weakness: policy of appeasement is fuel for the terrorist fire
"This week, after a 3.5 year delay, US Army major Nidal Malik Hasan was finally placed on trial for massacring 13 and wounding 32 at Ft. Hood on 2009 November 5. Hasan was a self-identified jihadist. His paper and electronic trail provided mountains of evidence that he committed the massacre to advance the cause of Islamic supremacy. Islamic supremacists like Hasan, and his early mentor al Qaeda operations chief Anwar al-Awlaki view as enemies all people who oppose totalitarian Islam's quest for global domination. Before, during and following his assault, Hasan made his jihadist motives obvious to the point of caricature in his statements about the US, the US military and the duties of pious Muslims. But rather than believe Hasan, and so do justice to his victims, the Obama administration, with the active collusion of senior US military commanders went to great lengths to cover up Hasan's ideological motivations and hence the nature of his crime. On the day of the attack, lieutenant-general Robert Cone, then commander of III Corps at Ft. Hood said preliminary evidence didn't suggest that the shooting was terrorism. Cone said this even though it was immediately known that before he began shooting Hasan called out 'Allahu Akhbar'. He called himself a 'Soldier of Islam' on his business cards... The intensity of the Obama administration's participation in this cover-up became clear in 2012 May. At that time, Congress had placed a clause inside the Defense Appropriations Act requiring the Pentagon to award Purple Hearts to Ft. Hood's victims. Rather than accept this eminently reasonable demand, which simply required the administration to acknowledge reality, Obama's emissaries announced he would veto the appropriations bill and so leave the Pentagon without a budget unless the clause was removed. Rather than define Hasan's attack as an enemy attack or a terrorist act, the administration has defined it as a case of 'work-place violence'. Following this [insane declaration], those wounded in the attack, as well as the families of the murdered are denied the support conferred on soldiers killed or wounded by enemy fire. At the first day of Hasan's trial this week, he...told the court that he conducted the attack as an act of war against the United States to advance the goals of the global jihad... The Benghazi story keeps getting more and more outrageous. Last week we learned that some two dozen CIA personnel were on the ground during the attack. The administration has reportedly scattered these operatives throughout the US and forced them to adopt new identities. They have reportedly been prohibited from speaking to the media or Congressional investigators, and subjected to monthly polygraph tests. US personnel wounded in the attack have been hidden from investigators since the attack took place... Since taking office, Obama has repeatedly claimed that he will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. But in practice, his actions have enabled Iran to vastly expand its nuclear weapons program... Obama's actions have made clear that he has no intention whatsoever of conducting military strikes against Iran's nuclear installations to prevent the regime from developing nuclear weapons... Iran has expanded its nuclear activities since Rouhani was elected 2 months ago... They are taken in by Iran because they want to be taken in."
Proposed Bills 2013
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"Nor was [Charlie Myer] particularly concerned that [Joe Benney] and I hide our every mistake behind a piece of trim. &nnbsp; On the subject of error he liked to quote [John Ruskin], who had defended the craftsman against the inhumanity of the machine by declaring that 'No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.' No misunderstandings here. One time when I asked Charlie whether or not I should install a piece of trim over oen particularly unfortunate gap that a mistake of mine had breached between a fin wall and the desk, he argued against it on the grounds trim here would be too finicky. 'It's okay for a building like this to have a few holidays.', he explained, employing a euphemism for error I'd never heard before; I suppose it has to do with taking the occasional day off from the reigning standards of workmanship, a most human thing to want to do. 'Holiday?!', Joe roared when I passed on the comment. 'I've got some news for Charlie: This building's [an effing] Mardi Gras!'" --- Michael Pollan 1997 _A Place of My Own_ pg291
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2013-08-10
2013-08-10
Pierre Gosselin
Denmark's Jyllands Posten notes possible global cooling
"featured a major 2-page article on the globe's 15-years of missing warming and the potential solar causes and implications... 'The behavior of the sun may trigger a new little ice age... Defying all predictions, the globe may be on the road towards a new little ice age with much colder winters'."
2013-08-10
Thomas E. Brewton
accelerating decline
Conrad Black: NY Sun: USA's retreat becomes fiasco in Russia as well as Egypt
2013-08-10
Brent D. Wistrom _Topeka KS Eagle_/_Wichita KS Eagle_
many anxiously await outcome of immigration policy reform/perversion
Proposed Bills 2013
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"Castle's Woods adopted use of decimal currency in 1792, along with the rest of the United States. The Russell county court prescribed the permissible prices which county taverns could charge: a warm dinner, 25 cents; breakfast, 18 cents; a half-pint of whiskey, 9 cents; a quart of cider, 9 cents; and over-night lodging 'between clean sheets', 9 cents." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pg124
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2013-08-11
2013-08-11
Tom Blumer _PJ Media_
USA's 3 worst Pravda press organizations
2013-08-11
Claudia Rosett _PJ Media_
Why is it that the USA (and Israel) do so little to stop the North Korea (and Iran) nuclear weapons programs, and accept each step along the way as the new base-line instead of turning them back?
2013-08-11
Patrick Poole _PJ Media_
Obummer State Dept. spokes-clone Jen Psaki denounced "enemies of Islam"
"A series of horrific car bombings in Baghdad yesterday have reportedly left more than 80 dead and many more injured. The attacks appeared to target festivities marking the end of Ramadan in Shi'ite neighborhoods, which prompted comment from State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, who said in an official statement: 'The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms the cowardly attacks today in Baghdad. These attacks were aimed at families celebrating the Eid al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The terrorists who committed these acts are enemies of Islam and a shared enemy of the United States, Iraq, and the international community.' (HT: Alim Haider) As horrific as these bombings are, obviously fueled by sectarian differences, it's troubling to see that the Obama administration has now put the U.S. government in the business of denouncing 'enemies of Islam'. The first reason this development is troubling is the blinding hypocrisy and deliberate selectivity of it all. As Elizabeth Harrington at CNS News reported last year, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson testified to congress last year that the violence by the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram targeting Christians wasn't religiously motivated -- one day after Boko Haram bombed a church service on Easter Sunday."
Proposed Bills 2013
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"Unlike nearby Abingdon, which became the county seat of neighboring Washington county in 1776, Castle's Woods did not attract many Scotch-Irish settlers. The largest denomination after 1788 was the Methodist, which had split off from the Anglican or Episcopal church 4 years earlier, after growing for 50 years as an Anglican reform movement. During the revival services conducted along the frontier by bishop Francis Asbury and other circuit-riing spell-binders, many frontiersmen left other sects to join the Methodists. ('I left the navy of the Lord', explained one lapsed Baptist who heeded Asbury's appeal, 'to join the army of the Lord.')" --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pp124-125
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2013-08-12
2013-08-12
Victor Davis Hanson _PJMedia_
which of the Obummer regime's scandals is the worst?
2013-08-12
Jack Dunphy _PJMedia_
a Bronx tale
2013-08-12
Bridget Johnson _PJMedia_
Obummer/Holder DoJ escalated its charges against copyright violator Aaron Swartz because objectors to intellectual property rights raised a fuss on his behalf on the net
2013-08-12
Walid Shoebat & Ben Barrack _PJMedia_
Arabic-language media implicate Muslim Brotherhood in 2012-09-11 attack on USA consulate in Benghazi
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)
2013-08-12
Anthony Watts
WUWT weather/climate hot sheet
Maxim Lott: Fox: NOAA closed 600 weather stations whose placement were causing false temperature increases
"a still-open station at Yosemite park as an example of one with heat sinks -- objects that store heat, and then release it at night. Heat sinks can cause stations located in or near them to give off useless data -- generally in the form of inflated temperatures not representative of the broader area. 'The heat sinks are a road, a building, and stacked metal pipe and beams surrounding the station.', he said. After the heat sinks were added at Yosemite, temperature readings show a curious trend: minimum night-time temperatures increased more than day-time temperatures."
2013-08-12
W.D. Reasoner _Center for Immigration Studies_
SAFE ending: HR2278
2013-08-12
Stanley Renshon _Center for Immigration Studies_
GOP's immigration leverage: the power of options
"Among the many inter-related complexities of American immigration policy are these: How many legal immigrants the country might or should admit? What should be the relative weight of family vs. skills and education in admissions priority? How are border and workplace enforcement best achieved?... to develop any really effective set of immigration policy solutions, not only do the basic elements have to be legitimate and effective, but they must...fit together in a particular way in order to really work... We need to come to some understanding of just how many new legal immigrants of all kinds the United States can accommodate and integrate. We need to come to some understanding of, and consensus on, the relative weight of family reunification, and needed education and skills should enter into the immigration admissions decisions as well. We need to develop and enforce a realistic metric of border control, workplace enforcement, and entry/exit procedures. We need to develop firm, consistent, uniformly applied criteria for persons who wish to change their immigration status. We need to develop and implement programs that help legal, bona fide immigrants become part of our national and local communities and that encourage their emotional attachment to this country in addition to economic, instrumental attachments. We need to identify and expeditiously deport those who do not enter the country legally, have broken our laws while living or working here, or have committed any kind of fraud or misrepresentation while applying for legal status."
2013-08-12
Mark Krikorian _Center for Immigration Studies_
everything Ezra Klein thinks he knows about immigration is wrong
"The Mexican immigrant population nearly tripled from 1970 to 1980, doubled by 1990, doubled again by 2000. The numerical increase over the next ten years was even greater, with the total number reaching 11.7M in 2010 -- but that represented 'only' a 50% increase from the prior census, because once the number got so large it would have been mathematically impossible for such a rapid rate of growth to be sustained. Now that 78% of Mexicans live in cities (close to our 82%)... Pew reported earlier this year that fully one-third of Mexicans say they'd move here if they could."
2013-08-12
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
4 levels of immorality within the illegal immigration business
"individual illegal aliens... employers... garden-variety coyotes... murderous and potentially murderous coyotes... snake-heads"
2013-08-12
Dan Stein _Immigration Reform_
Obummer DHS had published in June a guide for Mexicans to apply for US asylum: leftists back pro-amnesty RINOs
2013-08-12 (5773 Alul 06)
Hannah Allam & Adam Baron _Jewish World Review_
new vision of al-Qaeda discerned from US embassy closings
"The rise in prominence of Nasir al Wuhayshi, the Yemeni head of al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, under-scores the transformation of al Qaida from a relatively small group led by one charismatic man into a diffuse global organization with many branches that pursue local objectives but follow a single ideology, according to counterterrorism analysts and officials... recently when the Syrian and Iraqi branches of al Qaida -- the Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq, respectively -- wrestled for control over the fight against Syrian president Bashar Assad in an unusually public rift. They reached a deal after Zawahiri's intervention that was designed to keep the groups on their respective sides of the border. Similar internecine struggles have erupted in African and Central Asian branches, highlighting al Qaida’s growing pains."
2013-08-12 (5773 Alul 06)
Robert J. Samuelson _Jewish World Review_
the news is not free
"When I was a young reporter in the 1970s, one of my assignments was covering the troubled U.S. steel industry, which was taking a beating from new technologies (so-called 'mini-mills'), cheap imports and outdated union work rules. Thousands of steel-workers lost their jobs. Steel-making was then considered the backbone of an advanced economy. It symbolized a nation's power and technological stature. To the men who worked the mills, the vulnerability of American steel makers was entirely unexpected and, in many ways, incomprehensible. I never imagined then -- I doubt anyone did -- that newspaper reporters and editors would become the steel-workers of the 21st century... This is hardly a secret. News-rooms have become job grave-yards. Employment, which peaked near 60K, has dropped below 40K and is falling, reports the Pew Research Center. The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Oregonian and Chicago Sun-Times recently announced lay-offs. Our audiences and advertisers have fled to the Web or simply left. Newspapers' revenues from print advertising have declined from $44.9G in 2003 to $18.9G in 2012, says Pew. On-line revenues haven't filled the gap. In 2012, they were $3.4G, about triple their 2003 level... On its surveys, Pew asks respondents where they got their news the day before. In 2012, 39% answered the web, including social media, up sharply from 2004's 24%, the earliest data. Meanwhile, only 29% answered newspapers in 2012, down from 47% in 2000."
2013-08-12 (5773 Alul 06)
Mark Steyn _Jewish World Review_
Ft. Hood jihadist shrink came clean about himself; why can't we?
"On 1941 Dec. 7, the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor was attacked. Three years, eight months and eight days later, the Japanese surrendered. These days, America's military moves at a more leisurely pace. On 2009 Nov. 5, another U.S. base, Fort Hood, Texas, was attacked -- by one man standing on a table, screaming 'Allahu akbar!', and opening fire. Three years, nine months and one day later, his court-martial finally got underway. The intervening third-of-a-decade-and-more has apparently been taken up by such vital legal questions as the fullness of beard major Nidal Hasan is permitted to sport in court... The U.S. Army seems disinclined to hold anything against him, especially the 13 corpses plus an unborn baby. Major Hasan fired his lawyers, presumably because they were trying to get him off... Major Hasan has never been in combat. He is not, in fact, a soldier. He is a shrink. The soldiers in this story are the victims, some 45 of them. And the only reason a doctor can gun down nearly four dozen trained warriors (he was eventually interrupted by a civilian police officer, sergeant Kimberly Munley, with a 9 mm Beretta) is that soldiers on base are forbidden from carrying weapons. That's to say, under a 1993 directive, a U.S. military base is, effectively, a gun-free zone, just like a Connecticut grade school... Maybe this Clinton-era directive merits reconsideration in the wake of Fort Hood?... Hasan says he's a soldier for the Taliban."
Proposed Bills 2013
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"This was the Great Awakening, which the fervent preachign of Jonathan Edwards had first stirred in New England in the 1730s. George Whitefield, the great Methodist evangelist, had brought it to Pennsylvania and the southern colonies in 1739. In the next 40 years it had been spread along the Great Wagon Road by Moravian evangelists and a sprinkling of Baptists and Presbyterians. Steadily, as reaction against Great Britain and its dignified Anglican establishment deepened, the lurid evangelism of the new age spread. With dramatic shouts and gestures, 'enthusiastic' preachers depicted the terrors of hell which awaited sinners. Like a forest fire, the Great Awakening spread southward through the colonies along the road from Philadelphia. To the unsophisticated frontier dwellers, its simple Calvinism preached the clear-cut doctrine of eternal life through faith." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pg127
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2013-08-13
2013-08-13
Charlie Martin _PJ Media_
Who benefits from the public schools? What if we examine them as profit-making ventures?
"80% of New York City high school graduates required remedial classes in reading, arithmetic, or both, before they were prepared for classroom work in New York's own community colleges... New York City schools have a graduation rate of only around 65%... If only 20% of that selected population are prepared for a community college curriculum, what about the others?... New York City reports spending about $18,600 per student per year. A Cato Institute study examines the accounting, which understates or eliminates some costs, and arrives at $26,900 per student per year... Based on these figures, we now have a net income of $319,150, or $496,750 per 24-student class-room in midtown New York commercial office space, depending on which figures we use for per-student spending... So let's look a little further. New York teachers' salaries, according to their web-site, start out at about $45K a year ($52K with a master's degree) and max out at just over $100K a year. If we assume that these one-room schools attract the highest-paid teachers, that leaves between approximately $200K and $400K in net income per class-room per year, or $8K to $17K dollars per student per year. Which is to say, the gross profit percentage is near 50%. As an aside, if New York wants to start one of these schools, I'll volunteer to run it. I'll throw in an annual two-week summer tour of Europe for all the students and 6 adults as chaperones. Back of the envelope, that's about a $30K expense, and I get a tour of Europe in the bargain -- and still make $350K a year!... in New York state, school spending has increased, teachers' pay has increased, but non-teaching professionals' pay has increased faster. In Nassau county, just outside New York City, the first 30 school employees listed on the RocDocs site make more that $250K a year, with the highest salary being that of the superintendent, at $567,248... The school systems are a very successful, profit-making institution that distributes their profits to the 'stock-holders' -- the non-teaching professional staff."
One Room SchoolHouse for the 21st Century
the cosmopolitan one-room school: a modest proposal
2013-08-13
David North & Jesica Ray _Center for Immigration Studies_
motivation for hiring aliens is not a talent/labor shortage
"A former boss of mine, the late U.S. Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz, used to tell people that when there is a mismatch of workers and jobs, employers have 2 choices: they can adjust the wages offered or they can seek to adjust the work force. Routinely, he said, they chose the latter... If a university seeks a professor of Mongolian languages and literature who must have a PhD and a native's skill with that language, the university should be able to recruit over-seas; so should a zoo that needs a veterinarian really skilled with the diseases of the water buffalo... That need-and-policy mix does not make sense. While the words 'best' and 'brightest' are absolutes, as is 'unique', the industry policy remedies involve tens of thousands of persons, many with totally undistinguished master's degrees from undistinguished state colleges... Computer science professor Norman Matloff (UC-Davis) [wrote]: 'Though the United States should indeed welcome the immigration of the world's best brains are foreign students typically of that caliber?... [T]he tech industry's genius claims for these groups are not supported by available data. Compared to Americans of the same education and age, the former foreign students turn out to be weaker than, or at most comparable to, the Americans in terms of salary, patent applications, PhD dissertation awards, and quality of the doctoral programs in which they studied.' He then cites chapter and verse to prove his points... A glance at Table 2 shows that H-1B workers are more than 3 times (69.7%) as likely to be in the 25-34 age bracket as American workers generally (22.9%). At the other end of age scale, 0.1% of the H-1Bs are older than 65, while 3.8% of the U.S. work force is in that age bracket... Matloff...points out: '5 years after finishing college about 57% of [U.S.] computer science graduates were working as programmers...and at 20 years, when most were still only age 42 or so -- it was down to 19%... By contrast, 6 years after graduation, 61% of civil engineering graduates were working in the field, and 20 years after graduation the rate was still 52%.'... age-discrimination laws...if the recruitment is taking place in a distant land, then U.S. law seems not to apply, and this appears to be a major motivation for the use of non-immigrant worker programs. Young workers, of course, are less expensive -- all else being equal -- than older ones, so there is a strong economic overtone to the emphasis on youth in the H-1B using industries... 'But we have always had Mexicans', said many a Western grower as the Bracero program terminated in 1965. I was Assistant for Farm Labor to the U.S. Secretary of Labor at the time; we were encouraging growers to use resident American workers -- including southern Blacks -- and it was an up-hill struggle. The Bracero program, which started as an emergency World War II fix for some genuine labor shortages, had continued after the war, when it was no longer needed. It brought all-male seasonal workers from Mexico to harvests across the nation, but they were concentrated in California and Texas. Needless to say, their wages were lower than those that would have attracted U.S. workers to the fields. 'All of our housing consists of barracks, we do not have family housing.', was another comment, as was this one: 'But my foremen only speak Spanish.' The growers were unhappy with the prospect of southern migrant crews after decades of employing single, Mexican males. And they did not want to tell someone from Washington that they really, really did not want to hire Negroes, the term at the time. A few years earlier, while I was working for the New Jersey State Department of Labor and Industry, and when the agency's leadership was seeking to get southern New Jersey growers to switch from foreign workers (primarily Jamaicans in the H-2 program) to citizen workers from Puerto Rico, I heard the reverse twist on both tradition and language. In these cases, the foremen only spoke English and the work force had been, traditionally, black. These traditions can be quite nuanced at times. Into the 1960s the source of seasonal workers for the apple harvest in the Winchester, VA, area, and at Chazy Orchards, a very large operation in uppermost Upstate New York, were blacks from the Bahamas; they were regarded fondly by their employers, such as senator Harry Byrd i (D–VA), as news stories of the time indicated. After a while, I am happy to report, the Bahamas, as a nation, got prosperous enough to terminate the country's participation in the H-2 program (a rare if not unique event in foreign worker history) and the apple growers were seriously put-out that they had to accept a different black work force, even though it also consisted of single men, also from the British Empire, but they were from Jamaica and Barbados, not the Bahamas. That time they could not blame those nasty bureaucrats in Washington... Ethnocentric Hiring Practices... No U.S. employer could legally, while operating within the United States, hire only from a given ethnic group — but once the process moves overseas, our equal employment opportunity law seems to lose any practical significance. Sometimes rather small-scale users of the H-1B program, such as, say, a Thai physician who wants to expand his practice, will hire another Thai physician, or a restaurant owned by an Italian family will decide that it needs an H-2B chef from Italy. But what is of greater interest is when an entire industry engages in deliberate ethnocentric hiring practices. This may happen more often than I am aware, but there are two more or less prominent examples that have been reported on in the recent past. These are the Indian out-placement firms, active in computer and IT-related fields, where there is much hiring of Indian programmers and engineers. Similarly, there is the somewhat smaller pattern in which a group of charter schools, funded totally by taxpayers, but dominated by managers drawn from the Turkish-American community, hire teachers from Turkey. Over time, hundreds of millions of tax dollars have been siphoned out of the public school systems by these charters, while creating unemployment for thousands of trained, experienced, but unemployed American school teachers. These 2 hiring systems have emerged quite separately from each other, but both are made possible by the H-1B program... An article in the Wall Street Journal says these Indian outplacement firms are: '[S]taffing the [work] sites overwhelmingly with Indian expatriates, who earn significantly less than their American counterparts... Indian out-sourcing giants sponsor more than half of the [136K]... H-1B visas that the United States issues annually. Many of the [Indian] firms have as much as 80% [96%] of their staff in the United States on H-1B and other visas.' Table 3 supports the Wall Street Journal's statement about wage rates. The average wages offered by the 12 largest H-1B users in fiscal year 2012 were as follows: USA firms: $96,834; Anglo-Irish firms: $79,566; Indian firms: $61,197... In FY2011, the latest year for which we have these data, 58.0% of all H-1B beneficiaries (including new hires, and visa extensions and transfers) were from India. China accounted for 8.8% and Canada for 3.5%, being in second and third place. These data are from the second step in the process, the issuance of a petition by DHS."
2013-08-13
Mark Krikorian _Center for Immigration Studies_
asylum antics
2013-08-13
Stanley Renshon _Center for Immigration Studies_
pres. Obummer's "bipartisan" immigration sophistry part 1
"Actually, a framework for bipartisan action is NOT already in place and the reason why is that the senate discussions that gave rise to the bill have more in common with groupthink than to rigorous debate. Moreover, arguments over the 'details' have materialized with such force in part because a number of actual factual details that have emerged under-cut assurances and assertions by the bill's designers... There is however, another more basic reason that the 'details' have generated so much debate and controversy. That is because they have become a way of raising the most basic immigration issues that the Gang of 8 simply began by accepting, and didn't really debate."
2013-08-13
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
John Sandweg acting director of ICE
"Sandweg got his law degree from Arizona State University in 2002 and between then and 2009 he practiced law with a Phoenix firm and engaged in local Democratic politics. After Napolitano (then governor of the state) became DHS Secretary, he joined the department as chief of staff to the department's general counsel (an entry level position for a political appointee) and then became a senior counselor to the secretary. His (I must say loving) biography in the ASU Law School's news-letter indicates that he has been '[S]erving as a lead advisor for important programs like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals', the administration's on-going amnesty program for illegals who arrived prior to their 16th birthday. Sandweg, presumably, would not have told his alumni publication of his DACA connection were he not proud of it."
2013-08-13
Ronald W. Mortensen _Center for Immigration Studies_
Republican losership swallowing leftist line on immigration
2013-08-13
David Archibald
the USA's corn belt and the summer chill
2013-08-13
Daniel Doherty _Town Hall_
Cory Booker and Steve Lonegan win US senate primaries in NJ
2013-08-13
Guy Benson _Town Hall_
Benghazi whistle-blower's attorney says hundreds of surface-to-air-missiles intended for what? were "stolen" from US consulates by al Qaeda
David Martosko: UK Daily Mail
Susan Jones: Cybercast News Service
"'We had troops ready to deploy in Croatia to go (to Benghazi) that night of 2012 Sept. 11, to rescue Americans. We have learned that one of the reasons the administration is so deeply concerned -- we have been told there were 400 surface-to-air missiles stolen, and that they are on or about in the hands of many people, and that the biggest fear in the U.S. intelligence community is that one of these missiles will be used to shoot down an airliner.'... Why did the Obama administration delay the entry of FBI investigators into Benghazi after four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed that night? DiGenova was asked. 'Because it happened before an election.', he replied."
2013-08-13
Terence P. Jeffrey _Cybercast News Service_
federal government treasury says deficit for month of July increased by $68G, but debt stayed at $16.699396T
"The FMS said that the deficit went up $98G ($97,594,000,000) in the Monthly Treasury Statment for July, which it released on Monday. At the same time, the FMS said the debt stayed at exactly $16,699,396,000,000 in its Daily Treasury Statements, which are published every business day. The Daily Treasury Statements show the daily value of the federal government debt that is subject to a legal limit set by Congress. At the static $16,699,396,000,000 level that the Treasury reported for every day of July, the debt was just $25M below the legal limit of $16,699,421,000,000 that was set in a law passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama. If Treasury's daily statements were to declare that the government had borrowed an additional net $98G to cover the $98G deficit the Treasury declared in its monthly statement for July, the Treasury would be conceding that the government had already surpassed the legal limit on the debt -- and has been violating the law by continuing to borrowing additional money... On May 17, the first day the Treasury reported that the debt had hit exactly $16,699,396,000,000 -- and was thus just $25M below the legal limit -- Treasury Secretary Lew sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner saying he was beginning to implement what he called 'the standard set of extraordinary measures' to prevent the Treasury from exceeding the legal limit on the federal debt."
2013-08-13
Penny Starr _Cybercast News Service_
nearly 200K signed White House petition to designate Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization... again
"garnered 187,957 signatures in 30 days -- nearly double the number of signatures required for petitions to earn an official response from the [Obummer regime]... 'Muslim Brotherhood has a long history of violent killings & terrorizing opponents', the petition states. 'Also MB has direct ties with most terrorist groups like Hamas.' (The Muslim Brotherhood, which spawned the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in 1987, springs from anti-Israel, anti-American roots.)... The State Department says it 'monitors the activities of terrorist groups active around the world' and has the authority to designate groups as a Foreign Terrorist Organization or FTO 'in accordance with section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), as amended'... As of 2012 Sept. 28, the State Department has a list of 51 FTOs, including Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestine Islamic Jihad, and multiple al-Qaeda groups around the world."
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)
2013-08-13
Jeff Poor _Daily Caller_
Jeff Sessions points out that US policy for handling asylum-seekers at Mexican border are unbelievable
UK Daily Mail: surge in asylum seekers
"Sessions explained to fill-in host Cliff Sims of Yellowhammer News that oftentimes those awaiting some sort of hearing pertaining to entering the country undocumented will disappear. 'Many of them are released pending a hearing and then they just disappear into the country.', he added. 'In effect, we've brought them into the country and released them. It's just mindless and is just an example of abusing the law, IMO.'"
2013-08-13
Jerome R. Corsi _World Net Daily_
son of Muslim Brotherhood leader claims they have evidence that could put pres. Obummer in USA prison
"The claim came as the Obama administration, with the assistance of senators John McCain, R-AZ, and Lindsey Graham, R-SC, and the open involvement of the #2 man at the USA State Department, made a concerted effort to see Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt released. In an interview with the News Agency Anatolia in Turkey, Saad Al-Shater, the son of imprisoned Muslim Brotherhood leader Khairat Al-Shater, said his father 'had in his hand' evidence that will put Obama in prison. In a thinly veiled threat, Saad Al-Shater said a USA delegation [including John McCain and Lindsey Grahamnesty] was sent to Cairo by Obama to press for the release of the imprisoned Muslim Brotherhood leaders, including his father to prevent the release of explosive information."
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)
2013-08-13
Jon Feere _Center for Immigration Studies_
questions for congress-critters on immigration
Dennis Byrne: Chicago Now
"Q: How do you justify bringing in tens of millions of foreigners at a time when [we're short about 30M jobs]?... The U-6 unemployment rate is around 14%... of taxi drivers and chauffeurs, 58% are native-born; of butchers and meat processors, 63% are native-born; when it comes to construction laborers, 66% are native-born; and 73% of janitors are native-born Americans... Q: Some say we need an amnesty so that we can 'get people out of the shadows and identify them'. But federal law already requires all aliens to register with the government after 30 days. Why don't you just demand that the law be enforced instead of passing an amnesty?... Q: Since DHS has narrowed the scope of background checks for illegal immigrants applying to Obama's Deferred Action program because it couldn't handle the 500K-person case-load, what makes you think that DHS will conduct meaningful [and effective] background [investigations] on 12M illegal immigrants?"
2013-08-13
David J. Theroux _World Net Daily_
Bono says capitalism reduces poverty better than aid
Independent Institute Beacon
"Paul David Hewson [a.k.a. Bono] is the lead singer in the rock group U2, one of the most successful rock groups in history. Bono also became a major proponent of greatly expanded U.S. foreign aid and other government programs (including debt cancellation) to alleviate the dire plight in the world of HIV/AIDS, malaria, abject poverty, and other issues. Bono has further been co-founder and managing director with the venture capital firm, Elevation Partners, and he may well be the world's wealthiest musician after his investment in the FB IPO, which made over $1.5G for the firm. Bono is also a Christian (see here, here, and here). He is an admirer of the work of C.S. Lewis and used Lewis's book The Screwtape Letters in a music video for the song 'Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me', the theme song for the film, 'Batman Forever'... Just recently drawing upon his Christian faith (and possibly the economics influence of professor [George Ayittey]?), in a speech at Georgetown University, Bono altered his economic and political views and declared that only capitalism can end poverty. 'Aid is just a stop-gap.', he said. 'Commerce [and] entrepreneurial capitalism take more people out of poverty than aid. We need Africa to become an economic power-house.'"
2013-08-13
Joseph F. Cotto _Washington DC Times_
smarter women want fewer chilren
"'The study, which was conducted by Satoshi Kanazawa, a researcher at the London School of Economics, found that a woman's urge to have children decreases by a quarter for every 15 extra IQ points.'... 'Nearly 1-in-5 American women ends her child-bearing years without having borne a child, compared with 1-in-10 in the 1970s.', Gretchen Livingston and D'Vera Cohn noted in 2010. 'While childlessness has risen for all racial and ethnic groups, and most education levels, it has fallen over the past decade for women with advanced degrees.'"
2013-08-13
Dan Stein _Immigration Reform_
Jeff Sessions notes that asylum abuse stunt at borer should put the brakes on proposals for amnesty for illegal aliens
2013-08-13
Nick Corcodillos _National Socialist Television_
are job sites cheating employers and job-seekers alike?
"In the 1990s, the economy tanked and everyone in the employment business scrambled to get revenue any way they could. Big out-placement firms, normally paid enormous fees by companies ($15K a head was not unusual) to help their down-sized workers find new jobs, started charging fees to other companies that hired those same workers. Recruiting firms often started selling services to job seekers -- resume writing, coaching, even the promise of a job when they had no control over any jobs -- at the same time they were billing employers. By the time the Internet came along, everyone was primed to pay fees for everything related to employment. The new job boards were making money coming and going. Ironic, isn't it, that the hue and cry today is that there's a great talent shortage, even in the midst of the biggest talent glut we've ever seen? Could it be that the job boards and business networks -- like LinkedIn -- are not doing the job? Could it be that simple recruitment advertising has turned into a 2-faced employment system that charges for lists of jobs and lists of people, without reliably delivering jobs or hires? Indications are that this is exactly what's going on... the percentage of hires made through the boards decreased by about 50%... America's jobs crisis needs to be looked at as a failure of employers and job boards to ensure an accurate and fair employment process. Blaming unskilled and improperly educated job seekers is a fool's errand, as Wharton researcher Peter Cappelli demonstrates in his book, _Why Good People Can't Get Jobs: The Skills Gap and What Companies Can Do About It_. The talent is out there; it's just getting lost in a system that employers have permitted to supplant more sound, accurate recruiting methods and their own good judgment."
2013-08-13 (5773 Alul 07)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
are we serious about education?
Town Hall
"One of these events was an announcement by Dunbar High School in Washington, DC, that it plans on August 19th to begin 'an entire week of activities to celebrate the grand opening of our new $160M state-of-the-art school building'. The painful irony in all this is that the original Dunbar High School building, which opened in 1916, housed a school with a record of high academic achievements for generations of black students, despite the inadequacies of the building and the inadequacies of the financial support that the school received. By contrast, today's Dunbar High School is just another ghetto school with abysmal standards, despite Washington's record of having some of the country's highest levels of money spent per pupil -- and some of the lowest test score results. Housing an educational disaster in an expensive new building is all too typical of what political incentives produce. We pay a lot of lip service to educational excellence. But too many institutions and individuals that have produced good educational results for minority students have not only failed to get support, but have even been undermined. A recent example on the west coast is a charter school operation in Oakland called the American Indian Model Schools. The high school part of this operation has been ranked among the best high schools in the nation. Its students' test scores rank first in its district and fourth in the state of California. But the California State Board of Education announced plans to shut down this charter school -- immediately. Its students would have had to attend inferior public schools this September, except that a challenge in court stopped this sudden shut-down... Ben Chavis has not been found guilty of anything in a court of law. Nor has he even been brought to trial, though that would seem to be the normal thing to do if the charges were serious. More important, the children have not been accused of anything. Nor is there any reason for urgency in immediately depriving them of an excellent education they are not likely to get in their local public schools. What Ben Chavis and the American Indian Model Schools are really guilty of is creating academic excellence that shows up the public school system, both by this school's achievements and by the methods used to create those achievements, which go against the educational dogmas prevailing in the failing public schools. If it seems strange that there would be a vendetta against an educator who has defied the education establishment and thereby improved the education of minority students, the fact is that Ben Chavis is only the latest in a long line of educators who have done just that -- and aroused animosity, and even vindictiveness, as a result. Washington's former public school head, Michelle Rhee, raised test scores in that city's school system and was demonized by the education establishment and politicians. She has left. Years ago, high school math teacher Jaime Escalante, whose success in teaching Mexican American students was celebrated in the movie 'Stand and Deliver', was eventually hounded out of Garfield High School in Los Angeles. Yet, while he was there, about one-fourth of all Mexican American students -- in the entire country -- who passed Advanced Placement Calculus came from that one school. Marva Collins, who established a very successful private school for black children in Chicago, doing so on a shoe-string, was likewise the target of hostility when she was a dedicated teacher in the public schools."
Proposed Bills 2013
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"That the Spaniards were supposed to be 'pure-blooded' is, to say the least, ironic. Among the numerous groups that, by the Middle Ages, had inhabited and commingled with each other on Iberian soil were Celts, Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Visigoths, Jews, Arabs, Berbers, and Gypsies. Never the less, the disdain of a 'pure white' Spanish elite for the 'colored' masses is a deeply ingrained feature of the history of every modern Latin American nation. In Mexico, mixed-blooded mestizos were for years prohibited from owning land or joining the army or clergy. In Peru, even intellectuals believed that 'the Indian is not now, nor can he ever be, anything but a machine'. In Chile, victory in thd War of the Pacific (1879-1883) was often attributed to the 'whiteness' of the Chileans, as compared with the 'Indians' of Bolivia and Peru, the defeated nations. In Argentina, a popular writer wrote in 1903 that mestizos and mulattos were both 'impure, atavistically anti-Christian; they are like the 2 heads of a fabulous hydra that surrounds, constricts and strangles with its giant spiral a beautiful, pale virgin, Spanish America.' And throughout Latin America, land-owners preferred their daughters to marry penniless peninsulares (arrivals from Spain) rather than wealthy criollos (American-born Spaniards). The fact of being born in the Old World was supposedly good proof of being 'pure white'..." --- Amy Chua 2003, 2004 _World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability_ pp58-59
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2013-08-14
2013-08-14
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
92% of federal employees want out from under ObummerDoesn'tCare
Patrick Howley: Daily Caller: 2.8% think they should be required to join ObummerDoesn'tCare exchanges
Yasmeen Abutaleb: World Net Daily: schools try to avoid ObummerDoesn'tCare
Reuters
2013-08-14
Brent Bozell _Town Hall_
Mark Levin to the rescue
Cybercast News Service
Cybercast News Service video
"Only those happily trampling on the last vestiges of freedom will deny that our federal government as a constitutional republic has ceased to function. The president can no longer control (nor does this one want to control) the enormous and ever-expanding bureaucracy functioning as a government by fiat. The legislative branch, so corrupted, so drunk by the allure of power, so disdainful of its constituents, is unable to stop its bankrupting ways. The judiciary is perhaps the worst. The Supreme Court is openly rejecting the authority of the Constitution itself... Enter Dr. Mark Levin with his new book, _The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic_. Levin is a Constitutional scholar -- and he shines. He argues passionately that the federal government can be brought under control only if new limitations are thrust upon it by its citizenry. He proposes a Constitutional convention, not one called by Congress but one impaneled by two-thirds of state legislatures, and which would require a three-fourths margin to pass any new amendments. It is the lesser known of the two options provided by Article V of the Constitution. What should a Constitutional convention tackle? Levin offers 11 amendments for consideration, with appropriate subdivisions, each carefully researched and each designed to reduce the power of the [power-mad] state."
2013-08-14
Jeff Poor _Daily Caller_
Mark Levin notes that entrenched RINO losership may cost GOP the House in 2014
2013-08-14
Anthony Watts
the early chill in the Arctic continues
2013-08-14
Lee Gardner _Chronicle of Higher Education_
Ill-Begotten Monstrosities and universities conspire to promote privacy violation
2013-08-14
John Ransom _Town Hall_
I forgot that Barney, Barack, Rangel, Waters, Pelosi and Bernanke are exempt from our constitution and laws
2013-08-14
Bob Barr _Town Hall_
it is time to eject Chris Christie
2013-08-14
Mike Shedlock _Town Hall_
Again? Fed tapering set to bgin?
2013-08-14
Daniel J. Mitchell _Town Hall_
USA's system of government extortion of corporations is pointlessy destructive
2013-08-14
"Night Watch" _Town Hall_
Red China steps up aggression toward Japan
2013-08-14
M. Stanton Evans _Cybercast News Service_
S744's border security provisions are bogus
"By far the most important thing to know about the bill is that there is virtually no connection between the talking points used to promote it and what is in the legislation... McCain has made it clear that he doesn't know what's in the bill, even though his name is on it and he's been a vocal supporter of it... This says 3 such forgeries could get an individual in trouble, implying that two wouldn't be a problem. Asked about this strange proviso, McCain said 'I cannot tell you that it is part of the bill' though it all too plainly is (section 3707). Of course, one way to know what's in the bill would be to read it, but McCain and other busy senators (with stalwart exceptions like Alabama's Jeff Sessions, a bill opponent) typically don't do this. The non-reading problem was made more acute this time around because of the bill's enormous size -- more than 1,100 pages -- with 200 of these dumped into it late on a Friday to be called up for votes on Monday... they could ask Obama White House adviser [and former official of the National Council of La Racists] Cecilia Munoz, who presided over a boiler-room operation in the Dirksen senate office building, guiding the legislation through the Senate, drafting amendments and talking points for debaters. We may be sure Ms. Munoz and her team know what's in the bill, since not only have they read it, they all too obviously wrote it... On inspection, however, each of [the border security] provisos comes with an escape hatch that would make it de facto meaningless."
2013-08-14
Jonnelle Marte _MarketWatch_
While execs & managers shift away from full-time, long-term hires and shun the over-35 professionals, they complain that it's expensive to bodyshop
"The millennial generation tends to measure job tenure in months, not years, changing employers [frequently]. The high turn-over rate is expensive for companies -- employers estimate that it costs them $15K to $25K to replace... The cost of refilling these positions is expected to climb as millennial employees, those roughly between the ages of 18 and 34, make up a bigger share of the work-force -- and move up the ranks. Projections show 20-something workers will make up 36% of the American work-force by 2014, and 75% of the global work-place by 2025. Half of companies surveyed reported that the average salary for a millennial is between $30K and $50K, while 15% of the companies revealed that the average salary for a millennial is at least $50K... The PwC survey found that 66% of their Gen Y workers wanted to shift their work schedules. It also found that 15% of male employees and 21% of female employees would take a pay cut and fewer promotions in exchange for working fewer hours. PwC responded by encouraging teams to let some workers come in earlier or work later..."
2013-08-14
Jack Martin _Immigration Reform_
fewer legal Hispanic immigrants are applying for US citizenship
2013-08-14
Bob Taylor _Washington DC Times_
hidden discrimination in USA work-places
"Age discrimination is rampant across the United States today, but it is a hidden bias that is largely ignored by the media. Other segments of society are more difficult to discriminate against; race, gender and, even, religion. Not so with age. Put your 'Date of Birth' on a resume and it will hit File 13 without so much as a glance. Leave DoB off your resume and employers can determine your age bracket simply by reviewing your experience. Further complicating the situation is that potential employers can deny interviews to legitimate prospects without facing consequences because there are so many loop-holes available to bypass the 'age' factor. Age discrimination is also a consequence of down-sizing. Firing someone because for being too old is far easier than race or gender. All a company needs to do is create a bogus reorganization plan with job descriptions disguised as other skills. Voila, the older employee is out and a younger, less experienced new hire has a job. Translation, youth commands a lower salary. Experience be damned... Here's the irony. Saudi Arabia hired a 57 year old man because he was qualified. Since returning home in 2004, only one job interview has been offered to me in my own country. Count this person among those who quit looking... Corporate America couldn't care less about hiring capable experienced workers. Qualified active seniors are regarded as disposable members of society...except for those with means or notoriety or both... Bob Taylor is a veteran writer who has traveled throughout the world. Taylor was an award winning television producer/reporter/anchor before focusing on writing about international events and the people and cultures around the globe. He is founder of The Magellan Travel Club and his goal is to visit 100 countries or more during his life-time."
2013-08-14
Dawn Kawamoto _Dice_
Cisco dumping 4K employees
Slash Dot
Perth Australia
dice article
dice discussion
Benjamin Pimentel: MarketWatch
2013-08-14
Kris Anne Hall
convictions of the Republican losership
Conservative Action Alerts
Americans for Legal Immigration PAC
2013-08-14 (5773 Alul 08)
Christa Case Bryant _Jewish World Review_
Jihadis dig in as Egypt cracks down on terrorist sand-box in Sinai
"In one of the most brazen attacks since, Sinai militants killed 16 Egyptian soldiers in 2012 August at the junction of the Israeli, Gaza, and Sinai borders, near the Egyptian town of Rafah... The Egyptian Army said last week it has killed 60 and arrested 103 'terrorists' in the first month after Morsi's ouster. An Egyptian airstrike on suspected militants Aug. 10 killed at least 12 people in what Egyptian officials said was a reprisal for the Rafah attack. And on Aug. 9, a day after Israel briefly shut down the Eilat airport due to Egyptian intelligence that Sinai militants had anti-aircraft missiles, an airstrike rumored to have been carried out by Israeli drones killed 4 members of Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis as they were preparing to launch rockets toward Israel. According to an annual report from Egypt's Ministry of Interior, 18 anti-aircraft missiles were among a number of major illegal weapons shipments apprehended between Matrouh, near the border of Libya, and Alexandria. Also intercepted were 35 Grad rockets, more than 130 rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), various guns, and tens of thousands of bullets... Daniel Nisman of the Israel-based security consultancy firm Max Security Solutions says there are about 1,500 jihadists in Sinai, broken down into 15 to 20 cells with varying ideologies, some of which are in line with Al Qaeda. The Daily Beast reported last week that the US Embassy in Tel Aviv was among 19 embassies that closed temporarily after the US intercepted communication between Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Pakistan and a leader of Al Qaeda in Sinai... Zawahiri, who is originally from Egypt."
2013-08-14 (5773 Alul 08)
Ali Watkins _Jewish World Review_
senate intelligence committee could seek to declassify documents, but it does not
"Outspoken members of the senate Intelligence committee have said frequently that they wanted to warn the public about the National Security Agency's sweeping collection of telephone records, but that the program's highly classified nature prevented them from making public reference to the programs. That, however, is not the full story. Buried in the pages of Senate Resolution 400, which established the senate select committee on Intelligence in 1976, is a provision that allows them to try. Across those nearly 40 years, it's never been used."
2013-08-14 (5773 Alul 08)
Veronica Chufo _Jewish World Review_
religious organizations develop yet another alternative to health care insurance
"Amanda Rooker doesn't pay for health insurance. Instead, she pays a monthly share to cover other people's health bills. It's part of a medical bill sharing program called Medi-Share, which claims an exemption from federal health reform's individual mandate. Under the exemption, members of healthcare sharing ministries -- organizations where members share financial resources to pay one another's medical costs -- are not required to carry insurance by 2014 or face penalties, according to Medi-Share. Medi-Share is one of three similar, large Christian-based bill-sharing programs available in the U.S. Medi-Share covers about 13K households. Combined, the 3 groups have about 100K individual participants, said Robert Baldwin, president of Florida-based Christian Care Ministry, which oversees Medi-Share... She pays $133 a month to Medi-Share and $250 per incident per year for her medical bills. Anything over that, she can submit to the group to pay... Members can qualify for discounts if they're healthy. If they're not, they're assigned a health coach. That helps keep monthly shares down, Baldwin said... Medi-Share members are encouraged to seek treatment among the more than 600K physicians and tens of thousands of hospitals that are a part of the network to take advantage of pre-negotiated discounts, Baldwin said... Members must sign a statement of faith professing faith in Christ and agree not to engage in sex outside of traditional Christian marriage, use tobacco or illegal drugs or abuse legal drugs or alcohol. Members are not permitted to submit bills for a list of things, including abortion of a live fetus, birth control procedures and/or supplies and breast implants or reductions."
2013-08-14 (5773 Alul 08)
Melinda Wenner Moyer _Jewish World Review_
food can affect behavior even when you just look at it
"In a recent study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Robinson and his colleagues report that not only do we believe that individuals who like sweets are nicer than people who prefer savory, spicy, sour, and bitter foods, but we are actually correct: Candy and cookie lovers are more willing to help others than those who favor other flavors. Moreover, when Robinson simply gave subjects a piece of sweet candy and asked them if they would volunteer their time to help a stranger, they were more likely to say yes -- and actually follow through -- than were other individuals. OTOH, 'a bad taste in the mouth can literally induce harsh judgments about strangers', says Kendall Eskine, a psychologist at Loyola University New Orleans. In a study published in Psychological Science last year, he and his colleagues asked participants to drink a small glass of either fruit punch, Swedish bitters (an herbal supplement), or water. Immediately afterwards, he had them read and judge a handful of short narratives describing moral transgressions of varying seriousness, such as a student stealing library books or a congressman accepting bribes. The subjects who had sipped the bitters judged the vignettes more harshly than those who drank either punch or water... just tasting a food—without swallowing it—can influence behavior... thinking of them...can prime us to behave in surprising ways. After seeing pictures of organic food, people in one of Eskine's studies became harsher moral judges and were less willing to help others than subjects who saw pictures of comfort foods like ice cream or neutral foods like mustard. Because organic food is associated with healthfulness and environmental responsibility, thinking about it may make us feel self-righteous, Eskine says, and lead us to behave judgmentally and selfishly... people who briefly saw fast food restaurant logos performed subsequent reading tasks much more quickly than people who did not, even when they weren't under any time pressure. The logo-exposed subjects were also more short-sighted in their thinking, saying they would rather receive small, immediate monetary awards than wait for larger ones... frequent consumption of spicy food is not correlated to any particular personality traits."
2013-08-14 (5773 Alul 08)
John Stossel _Jewish World Review_
battle of the sexes
Town Hall
"Warren Farrell, author of _Why Men Earn More_, dug deeper into reasons why women are paid less and found that it's women who make discriminating choices. Women are more likely to choose a well-rounded life than their workaholic male peers. 'Many women say, what do I want? Do I want to make $200K a year, or do I want more personal time? Time with my children? More spiritual time?' He found that even female business owners are more likely to favor flexibility and proximity to home. Men are more likely to chase higher earnings by working longer hours, traveling farther and taking dangerous assignments. They are paid accordingly, though they may not be happier..."
2013-08-14 (5773 Alul 08)
Melissa Healy _Jewish World Review_
be fruitful... and your children will have healthier marriages
"People who grow up with lots of siblings are more likely to marry -- and to stay married -- than are only children or those who grew up with 1 or 2 siblings, a new study has found. Those of us who grew up in big families may get more practice [tolerating annoyances and frustrations]...a useful exercise for sustaining a marital relationship. We may be more skilled in creating alliances with siblings when adversity outside or elsewhere in the family mounts. [But, on the downside,] the experience of never having the house to oneself may foster a distaste for being alone... when it comes to preventing divorce in adulthood, 'the more siblings the better', concluded a group of sociologists from Ohio State University, who presented their research Tuesday at the American Sociological Association. In a sample of 57K American adults surveyed at 28 points between 1972 and 2012, the researchers found that just 4% had grown up without any siblings. Of the 80% who had married at some point during the period studied, 36% had been through a divorce. Among those who had married, each additional sibling a person had was associated with a 2% decline in his or her odds of having divorced. Only-children were not only less likely to marry than those with siblings; they were more likely to have divorced... Donna Bobbitt-Zeher, Douglas B. Downey and Joseph Merry. Research on the impact of siblings has largely found that only-children and those in smaller families fare better economically and in school... at around seven siblings, the divorce-prevention benefits of having additional siblings leveled off..."
2013-08-14 (5773 Alul 08)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
the illegal alien who murdered Vanessa Pham
Town Hall
Cybercast News Service
"who pays the price when our public guardians fail to secure our borders, refuse to deport serial criminal offenders, and enable drug-crazed menaces to prey upon innocent citizens? Meet 27-year-old Julio Miguel Blanco-Garcia. An illegal alien from Guatemala, he has lived and worked in Fairfax County, VA, for at least 11 years. The region is a notorious 'sanctuary' for immigration law-breakers where elected officials and big business look the other way for cheap labor and cheap votes... Blanco-Garcia managed to escape detention and deportation for more than a decade. In 2012 December, the Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force (which includes U.S. Marshals staff, Fairfax County police, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE], and DC fugitive operations officers) finally caught up with Blanco-Garcia... But it was too late for 19-year-old college freshman Vanessa Pham... Cops found the blade of the murder weapon, with the killer's DNA, under Pham's seat... He was convicted of larceny in 2012 April. By December, law enforcement had tied his finger-prints to Pham's murder... According to immigration activists pushing to grant Guatemala 'temporary protected status' -- a de facto amnesty program run by the Department of Homeland Security that confers permanent residency, [tax-victim] subsidies and preferential employment treatment to line-jumpers, border-crossers and visa overstayers -- there are approximately 1.7M Guatemalans in the U.S.A. A whopping 60% of them, like Blanco-Garcia, are here illegally. That's on top of the jaw-dropping backlog of 500K+ fugitive deportees who had their day in immigration court, were ordered to leave the country and then were released and absconded into the ether. And that's on top of 1M+ visa holders whom the feds have lost track of because congress [and the executive branch] never bothered to fulfill its legislative mandate to create a functioning entry-exit system -- something Washington has promised to do 6 times over the past 17 years. The horrific murder of Vanessa Pham was 100% preventable. Blanco-Garcia never should have been here in the first place. After each encounter with law enforcement, he should have been detained, deported and kept out... We spend billions of dollars on homeland security, but our government can't [or won't] even track and deport repeat convicted criminal aliens."
2013-08-14 (5773 Alul 08)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
energy manipulation
Town Hall
"Why is it that natural gas sells in the U.S. for $3.94 per 1K cubic feet and in Europe and Japan for $11.60 and $17, respectively? Part of the answer is our huge supply. With high-tech methods of extraction and with discovery of vast gas-rich shale deposits, estimated reserves are about 2.4 quadrillion cubic feet [2.4 peta-cubic feet]. That translates into more than a 100-year supply of natural gas at current usage rates. What partially explains the high European and Japanese prices is the fact that global natural gas markets are not integrated. Washington has stringent export restrictions on natural gas..."
Proposed Bills 2013
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"Wrote the reverend Peter Cartwright, a frontier Methodist circuit-rider, of a service near Cumberland Gap in the KY territory: 'There was a very great work of religion in the encampment. The jerks were very prevalent. There was a company of drunken rowdies who came to interrupt the meeting. They came with their bottles of whisky in their pockets. This large man cursed the jerks, and all religion. Shortly afterward he took the jerks and he started to run, but he jerked so powerfully he could not get away. He halted among some saplings, and although he was violently agitated, he took out his bottle of whisky and swore he would drink the damned jerks to death, but jerked at such a rate that he could not get the bottle to his mouth, although he tried hard. At length he fetched a sudden jerk, and the bottle struck a sapling and was broken to pieces and spilled his whisky on the ground. There was a great crowd gathered around him, and when he lost his whisky he became very much enraged, and cursed and swore profanely, his jerks still increasing. At length he fetched a very violent jerk, snapped his neck, fell, and soon expired, with his mouth full of cursing and bitterness... I always looked upon the jerks as a jugment of God." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pg131 (citing Herbert Asbury 1927 _A Methodist Saint: The Life of bishop Asbury_ pg253)
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2013-08-15
2013-08-15 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 280,502 in the week ending August 10, a decrease of 8,142 from the previous week. There were 317,680 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.
The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.2% during the week ending August 3, 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 2,858,818, a decrease of 100,830 from the preceding week's revised level of 2,959,648. A year earlier, the rate was 2.5% and the volume was 3,180,011.
The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending July 27 was 4,586,860, an increase of 65,906 from the previous week. There were 5,704,310 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.
Extended Benefits were not available in any state during the week ending July 27...
States reported 1,552,910 persons claiming Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) benefits for the week ending July 27, an increase of 36,635 from the prior week. There were 2,373,969 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;
to 129,827,178 beginning 2013-07-06.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs
2013-08-15
Anthony Watts
WUWT climate/weather hot sheet
2013-08-15
Anthony Watts & U of AZ
where were the plants during the Medieval Warm Period?
2013-08-15
Anthony Watts
left tries yet another lexicon shift: "global warming" -> "climate change" -> "global climate disruption" -> "carbon pollution"
Washington Times
One more fork in their long tradition of running from reality: "collectivist" -> "communist" -> "Marxist" -> "socialist" -> "social democrat" -> "fascist" -> "socialist" -> "leftist" -> "liberal" -> "progressive" -> "liberal" -> "progressive" -> "democratic"...
2013-08-15
Jared Page _KSL TV Salt Lake UT_/_Deseret Media_
immigration reforms are needed
Another deceptive propaganda piece is countered by local commenters.
2013-08-15
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
146 years ago this month: Great Combination of Barnum's School of Natural History, van Amburgh Museum & Menagerie Company, and Dan Castello's Great Circus
2013-08-15
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
an engineer defends H-1B (at first)
"X" is a software developer at "Y", one of the most famous tech firms in the world (and one of the most strident advocates for H-1B). He sent an e-mail message to an academic colleague of mine, objecting to the latter's statement that the tech labor shortage is "bogus". I asked X if I could post some of his comments, with my reactions, here to this e-news-letter, and he gave me permission to do so. (After I showed him a draft of this posting, he did request a couple of changes in his original message, which I incorporated, such as the $100 figure.) Excerpts are enclosed below.
Even for those of you who feel well-informed on the H-1B issue, I think that X, largely without realizing it, really puts some of the aspects in much sharper focus.
The assertions of X's that I found most important were that (a) in discussing possible tech labor shortages, one must consider the quality of the workers, not just the quantity, (b) firm Y simply cannot find the quality workers it needs, and (c) there is a shortage of tech workers at a price many employers are willing to pay.
Some of you may say "Aha!" to (c), and of course I will join you. It is the same point that professor Peter Cappelli of the Wharton School of Business has often made, which is that qualified workers ARE available, but employers don't want to pay the price that those workers command in the market-place.
X's comment (c) is a perfect example of the fact many employers who emphatically deny they use the H-1B program as a source of cheap labor, actually are doing exactly that. Remember, X started this conversation by insisting that we do have a tech labor shortage.
But there is much more to it, with (b) meeting up with (c). What X may not realize is that Y actually does have applicants who are qualified for X's project but who are rejected out of hand by Y's HR department, due to being over the age of 35 or so. Those applicants would come at a price that Y is not willing to pay, even though it's typically considerably less than the $100/hr figure X cites. (Note by the way that that figure would also be lower for salaried workers with benefits.)
Upon reading the above remark in my draft, X sternly admonished me that age discrimination is illegal, and that his employer Y would never engage in such shenanigans. I replied that Y does advertise jobs open only to new or recent graduates, which he conceded is true. I then explained to him that federal and state laws on age discrimination are not nearly so protective to workers as he had thought.
Concerning (a), I fully agree, and have been saying this publicly for years. Here for instance is what I said in reviewing the excellent EPI paper by Salzman, Kuehn and Lowell on April 25:
"One thing I should mention about this new EPI study is that it does not seem to take into account the quality issue. It is not the case that all STEM graduates should get STEM jobs. In the software development case, for instance, I've stated many times that hiring a weak person is worse than not hiring anyone; they just mess things up. But we do not have a shortage of high quality people either, and as I showed in my own EPI paper, the average quality of the H-1Bs (mainstream, not workers in the bodyshops) in computer science is weaker than that of the Americans."
I discussed the supreme importance of quality in detail in my University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform article (pdf).
Again, one of the strongest and most easily understood arguments showing lack of a tech labor shortage is that wages are pretty much flat. The same argument still applies after one factors in quality.
In a followup, X pointed me to this excellent commentary. The author, Tyr Chen, is running a startup in Beijing. He complains that he has interviewed a number of job applicants with great paper credentials but who cannot answer a very basic question he puts to them.
X's point was that Chen's comments show just how acute the quality problem is. Obviously I agree. But given X's repeated putdown of American engineers, it's interesting that this occurred in China (which X hadn't noticed until I pointed it out). So one might take it as yet another illustration that the foreign engineers are not necessarily as stellar as the industry lobbyists claim. But the same thing can and does occur in the U.S.A.
I personally know engineers who are struggling to find work but could easily answer Chen's question correctly.
BTW, X later also said that the issue of specific technical skills, say JavaScript or Hadoop programming, is way overblown, and that a good engineer can pick up such skills quickly. Of course, I have been saying this for years too. But the industry lobbyists say, "Employers would love to hire older Americans, but they just don't have the specialized skill sets we need."
Needless to say, I disagree with X's claim that the Indian bodyshops abuse H-1B while the mainstream firms use it responsibly. The abuse is across the board. The Indian firms abuse the program at the low end, e.g. bachelor's degree holders, while the mainstream firms abuse the program at the higher end, typically master's degree level. Abuse is abuse, folks (unless you feel that American jobs should be protected only at the low end?).
X's comments follow below. Remember, they were addressed originally to another researcher, not me.
Norm
I'm writing to you of my own accord, as an engineer with a passion for economics.
I work at firm Y as a software devleoper for [identity of project deleted]... H1-B Visa holders hired for their skills developing new systems are irreplacable.
H1-B Visa holders hired for system maintenance directly tend to be better educated, experienced, and productive than American counterparts.
H1-B Visa holders hired by consulting companies like Infosys, Wipro, Tata Consulting, Cognizant, and Patni Consulting tend to be directly recruited from over-seas, have little hope of advancement in America as temp consultants, and dramatically lower both training opportunities and wages for maintenance jobs...
1. Making new products: When you're innovating or developing a new product, you need every single member of the team on the same high level; a single unproductive engineer is just as bad in professional software development as a single unproductive research assistant is to academic research...
An employee with educational qualifications does not a quality employee make.
We have seemingly continuous "open headcount" in my division, despite our heavy recruiting and H1-B visa usage. But we turn away the vast majority of Americans we interview. Why? They don't meet our high minimum bar.
A great programmer is multiple times as productive as a good programmer, who is multiple times as productive as an average engineer; a mediocre programmer is highly detrimental. Y starts by hiring good engineers -- people who are already many times more productive than their peers -- and tries to develop them into great engineers...
Most [small firms] only have one or two "real" programmers on staff currently... Nor do they have the resources for a $100/hour engineer consultant.
---30---
2013-08-15
Victor Davis Hanson _PJ Media_
pictures do lie
2013-08-15
Bryan Preston _PJ Media_
When pres. Obummer said NSA was not "actually abusing", he was wrong
"It turns out that the NSA did abuse its authority, it hid its abuses from the FISA court, and that court doesn't even have the resources to over-see the NSA adequately and investigate allegations of wrong-doing. It even literally did listen in on phone calls."
2013-08-15
Cole Stangler _In These Times_
MBAs without borders: cheap, young, low-skilled foreign B-school bozos with questionable ethics
"American trade negotiators are carving out their own deal behind closed doors that could allow multi-national conglomerates to move white-collar employees across international borders with ease. The negotiations are part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade deal that, despite covering 40% of the global economy, remains so secretive that most members of congress have never seen the text... the TPP is not about simply boosting trade, but rather enhancing corporate power. The tariffs that exist between the 12 countries involved in the negotiations are already relatively low, and the United States already has free trade agreements with half of them—Chile, Singapore, Canada, Mexico, Peru and Australia. But in addition to removing barriers to trade, the TPP includes provisions that drastically strengthen intellectual property rights... The deal also bans 'Buy America' procurement policies and undermines food safety by easing regulations on imports to the United States. And it expands the scope of already existing investor-state tribunals -- inter-national courts charged with resolving cross-border investor disputes -- giving them the authority to over-rule domestic laws... While the language is vague, it hints at what has become a key feature of several recent free trade agreements negotiated by the United States: the creation of special visa programs that allow people in certain lucrative professions to bypass the American immigration system that other foreign workers must navigate... Some [low-skilled] workers, such as engineers and IT professionals, can hope to obtain an H-1B visa for 'specialty occupations', a topic at the source of much of the debate... But if someone who happens to work at, say, a management consulting firm in Mexico City gets a job offer from a different consulting firm in Manhattan, she can apply for a special visa created by NAFTA. That expedited NAFTA visa program, which applies only to Mexico and Canada, allows for a host of other skilled professions also covered by the H-1B visa -- accountants, engineers, lawyers and scientists among others -- to bypass the more time-consuming and demanding H-1B process."
2013-08-15
Edward Morrissey _Fiscal Times_
DC circuit court rules against arbitrary unilateral executive change in statutory provisions
2013-08-15 (5773 Alul 09)
Victor Davis Hanson _Jewish World Review_
don't know much about geography
"Even our...elites...are not too familiar with history or geography... Without awareness of natural and human geography, we are reduced to a sort of self-contained void without accurate awareness of the space around us. An ignorance of history also creates the same sort of self-imposed exile, leaving us ignorant of both what came before us and what is likely to follow... Obama's geographical confusion has become habitual... The president's geographical illiteracy is a symptom of the nation's growing ignorance of once-essential subjects like geography and history. The former is often not taught any more as a required subject in our schools and colleges. The latter has often been redefined as race, class and gender oppression to score melodramatic points in the present rather than to learn from the tragedy of the past... Closer to home, the president claimed in 2011 that the Texas had historically been Republican -- while in reality it was a mostly Jim Crow Democratic state for over a century. Republicans only started consistently carrying Texas after 1980... Our geographically and historically challenged leaders are emblematic of disturbing trends in American education that include a similar erosion in grammar, English composition and basic math skills... In the zero-sum game of the education curriculum, each newly added therapeutic discipline eliminated an old classical one. The result is that if Americans emote more and have more politically correct thoughts on the environment, race, class and gender, they are less able to advance their beliefs through fact-based knowledge. Despite supposedly tough new standards and vast investments, about 56% of students in recent California public school tests did not perform up to their grade levels in English. Only about half met their grade levels in math."
Proposed Bills 2013
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"Ardent revolutionists were convinced that many of these peace-loving burghers were king's men, or Tories. As a result, a number of leading Quaker merchants and traders were forced southward from Philadelphia to Winchester in 1777. Their experience illustrated the plight of many sectarians -- Mennonites, Amishmen, Sabbatarians, and others -- whose scruples against bearing arms resulted in their harassment or conscription during America's fight for freedom." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pg145
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2013-08-16
2013-08-16
Anthony Watts
Climate of the Past article suggests that "modern sample bias" has "seriously compromised" tree-ring temperature reconstructions
2013-08-16
Tony Brown
historic variations in temperature
2013-08-16
Anthony Watts
WUWT climate/weather hot sheet
2013-08-16
Matthew Boyle _Breitbart_
House may put off immigration bill for 9-12 months in hopes of being able to get some reform rather than perversion
2013-08-16
Steve Goldstein _MarketWatch_
UMich consumer sentiment index from 85.1 in late July to 80.0 in early August
Reuters
Federal Reserve Board St. Louis
Proposed Bills 2013
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"every 2 minutes Slim reportedly makes [or at least gets] $5K, more than the average Mexican earns in a year -- and he is popularly compared to the legendary American investor Warren Buffett. In the last few years, Carlos Slim has become an increasingly prominent figure in the [United States of America] as he continues to buy up large blocks of CompUSA, Barnes & Noble, OfficeMax, Office Depot, Circuit city, Borders, and other major US retailers. The bulk of Slim's holdings, of course, are stillin Mexico, where he controls most of Mexico's local phone service, long distance, and Internet access, not to mention half of the nation's stock market..." --- Amy Chua 2003, 2004 _World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability_ pg62
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2013-08-17
2013-08-17
David Archibald
have any of the Sili Valley execs seen the light?
2013-08-17
Anthony Watts
WUWT weather/climate hot sheet
2013-08-17
Thomas E. Brewton
critique of Federal Reserve's economic theory
Robert Higgs: Ludwig von Mises Institute: Is Macroeconomics Really Economics?
Robert Higgs: Independent Institute: recession and recovery: 6 fundamental errors (pdf)
"vulgar Keynesianism, which purports to be an economic model or at least a coherent framework of economic analysis, actually excludes the very possibility of genuine economic action, substituting for it a simple, mechanical conception—the intellectual equivalent of a baby toy... for the vulgar Keynesian there are no individual classes of laborers or separate labor markets: labor is labor is labor. If someone -- whatever his skills, preferences, or location -- is unemployed, then in this framework of thought we may expect to put him back to work by increasing aggregate demand sufficiently, regardless of what we happen to spend the money for, whether it be cosmetics or computers... in this [vulgar Keynesian] framework, it matters not what kind of investment takes place: investment is investment is investment... he gives none at all to its structure: the fine-grained patterns of specialization and interrelation among the countless specific forms of capital goods in which past saving and investment have become embodied. In his framework of analysis, it matters not whether firms invest in new telephones or new hydroelectric dams: capital is capital is capital... It does not occur to the vulgar Keynesians that too many resources have been directed into house and condo construction and that lending to [home-buyers] who cannot afford to purchase homes unless they are subsidized to do so signals an uneconomic use of resources at the expense of the taxpayers who directly or indirectly finance these subsidies."
Proposed Bills 2013
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"Members of the Society of Friends from Great Britain had been the first settlers of PA when it was founded in 1682 by William Penn, himself a leading Quaker. In England, these adherents of George Fox had been severely persecuted for opposing the Church of England and its priesthood. Claiming that no minister and no outward rite were needed to establish communion between the soul and its God, Fox taught that everyone could receive understanding and guidance toward divine truth from the 'Inward Light' supplied in his heart by the Holy Spirit." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pg145
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2013-08-18
2013-08-18
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
no available engineers in Oregon or New Mexico?
A reader mentioned this article to me, 2011 April 19: Portland OR Business Journal: "Intel Looks Outside Oregon for Workers".
He notes it's similar to a more recent article, 2013 August 16: dice.com: "Intel Misses New Mexico Hiring Quota".
Needless to say, I disagree with many of the points being made, and regard the articles as at least partly aimed at PR for expanding the H-1B and green card programs.
But I'm posting this because I'd like to hear YOUR comments, especially those of you who live in Oregon or New Mexico, and those of you who are current or former employees of Intel. I will post the comments here, without your names or other identifying information; if you don't want your comment posted even under those restrictions, please let me know.
Norm
The problem is that they have a California hiring quota and an Oregon hiring quota and a New Mexico hiring quota. They should have been recruiting from throughout the USA all along...jgo
2013-08-18
Neha Dutt _Live Punjab_
surge in Indian firms' spending on lobbying in USA
"TCS has spent a whopping $30K on lobbying... Wipro has invested $240K till July. This is quite high in comparison to last year's spending of $210K... Cognizant's lobbying investments have also touched a huge turf of $520K this year till July. Last year, its lobbying expenditure was $960K. NASSCOM has been engaged in lobbying in the US and has spent $30K between January and March this year... According to Ameet Nivsarkar, 'We are engaging with coalitions and consortiums in the US like the US India Business Council... Indian IT companies may have to bring some changes to their business models. In that case, they may have to hire more local Americans. Of course, that would not be an economical decision for the Indian IT companies. They may even have to devise ways to get more of the work off-shore."
2013-08-18
Michael Ledeen _PJ Media_
They've declared war on us, you idiots, and it's been going on for decades, now
"So there's a global war, we're the main target of the aggressors, and our [losers] don't see it [refuse to see it] and therefore have no idea how to win it... The war is easily described: there is a global alliance of radical leftists and radical Islamists, supported by a group of countries that includes Russia, at least some Chinese leaders, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua. The radicals include the Sunni and Shi'ite terrorist organizations and leftist groups, and they all work seamlessly with the narcotics mafias. Their objective is the destruction of the West, above all, of the United States."
2013-08-18
Chris O'Brien _Los Angeles CA Times_
Tech industry remains in "surprising" slump
Proposed Bills 2013
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"From the 1890s on, most Jews entered the countries of Latin America as poor peddlers. In Judith Elkin's words, with 'packs on their backs and account books in their pockets', they trudged the streets of major cities and towns, selling small itens of mass consumption such as matches, razor blades, scissors, sandals, cloth, tableware, and jewelry. Even the mountainous Andean countries were tackled by the indomitable Jewish peddler. As one foreign visitor observed in 1940: 'In Bolivia you see the Eastern Jew who does not attend courses to learn Spanish, but who speaks the dialect of the Indios. They appear in the most outlying villages, where hardly any Europeans have ever been, and manage to eke out an existence, sleeping in their wagon under the stars. Hardly a German immigrant has dared or would dare to do this... Without wishing to be ciritical, but to complete the picture, I must say that the first care of each German is to get an apartment. As far as the German is concerned, an apartment must have a bath.' Jews are no longer peddlers in Latin America today. In a matter of a few generations the Jewish communities of Latin America have transformed themselves from struggling immigrants into financially powerful businessmen and professionals. In 1994 nearly 53% of employed Jews in Mexico identified themselves as directors, managers, or administrators while another 26% identified themselves as directors, managers, or administrators while another 26% identified themselves as professionals." -- Amy Chua 2003, 2004 _World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability_ pg67
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2013-08-19
2013-08-19
Anthony Watts
so far, 2013 is a record low year for tornadoes in the USA
2013-08-19
Tony Thomas
UN IPCC AR5 expected to perpetuate some old, long-ago noted errors: tropical rain-forests in Iowa, IL, Dakotas; dry savannahs of Indonesia and VietNam
2013-08-19
Natalie Houston _Chronicle of Higher Education_
how to adjust for your dominant eye in class-rooms, meetings, presentations
2013-08-19
Roger L. Simon _PJ Media_
pres. Obummer's strange love affair with the Muslim Brotherhood
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)
2013-8-19
Grae Stafford & J. Christian Adams _Daily Caller_
in Barack Hussein Obummer/Eric Holder DoJ, enforcing constitutional laws equally is considered "high heresy" (video)
"One of the things I was brought in there to do was to simply be objective and neutral, but see, that's high heresy. They don't want people who are objective and neutral. They want people who are part of the orthodoxy, so during the Bush administration, a very small number of people were brought in and it was like an anti-body in the system. The left went absolutely wild. They had congressional hearings. They could not abide by people who were willing to enforce the law to protect everybody... They said that if you comply with the sub-poena, you're violating our directives. The problem was that there's a federal statute that says that you have to comply with the sub-poenas and if you don't it's a crime -- it's a crime, its a criminal offense to interfere -- so I just resigned my job and testified about what's going on."
2013-08-19 (5773 Alul 13)
Kristen Chick _Jewish World Review_
Kristalnacht in Egypt as at least 47 more Christian churches are burned, destroyed by Muslim Brotherhood
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)
2013-08-19 (5773 Alul 13)
Kristen Chick _Jewish World Review_
abuse of ADHD drugs increasing at universities, high schools
"Illegal consumers of ADHD medication range from high school students cramming for the SAT and ACT exams to graduate school students pulling all-nighters for a thesis. But students who don't medically require these drugs could suffer from their long-term effects, experts say. These narcotics, particularly Adderall, the stimulant of choice among students, are potent and addictive, and over time can lead to anxiety, depression and even suicide, said Granett, who has 26 years of experience as an ADHD expert and pharmacist... Last year at the University of Central Florida, nearly 10% of students reported abusing ADHD medications, said Tom Hall, director of Wellness and Health Promotion Services at UCF... In the past decade, Hall said he has seen abuse of ADHD medications increase only about 3% at UCF. A student found abusing a controlled substance, such as Adderall, violates the university's rule of conduct, and each case is subject to disciplinary action... Since the SAT became more difficult in 2005, DiGiorgio said he's seen more pressure on high school juniors and seniors to improve their test scores so they can get accepted into top universities and their intended majors... Students taking such drugs before testing don't necessarily improve their scores, DiGiorgio said, but he does see a short-term energy and confidence boost. After a few days of cramming on the drug, DiGiorgio said, these stimulants begin to work in reverse -- and his students look spent and delirious. Then, he said, 'they're like walking zombies'."
2013-08-19 (5773 Alul 13)
Mark Johnson _Jewish World Review_
technique to repair damaged DNA
"The protein, called Cas9, is found in the bacterium Neisseria meningitidis and has the ability to cut off sections of DNA. By using this technique, scientists could conceivably remove a section of a [negative] mutation. They could repair the gene or inactivate the gene altogether... The new paper cautions that scientists did encounter a problem. In some cases, the wrong section of DNA was cut, usually a section very close to the actual target."
Proposed Bills 2013
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"Founded in 1744, it had at first been called Frederick Town until renamed to avoid confusion with nearby Frederick in MD. Situated in lord Fairfax's immense Northern Neck tract, it was given the name Winchester by colonel James Wood, the first clerk of Frederick county in 1743, who came from the English town of that name. Like Lancaster and York, Winchester was a blend of English, Scotch-Irish, and German settlers. Along its main street stood buildings of English and PA Dutch architecture, inter-mingled with shops of tanners, gun-smiths, and other artisans. In the fertile countryside around the town, the planters grew wheat, tobacco, and corn. George Washington had begun his career in Winchester in 1748 as surveyor to lord Fairfax, who lived at Greenway Court nearby." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pp148-149
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2013-08-20
2013-08-20
David Brooks _Nashua NH Telegraph_
NH senators avoid citizens and STEM pros, meet with executives
2013-08-20
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
in history, it's not Bruce Catton's world anymore
2013-08-20
_Information Week_
"Innovation" Is Executive Porn: But would they know it when they saw it? Probably not.
2013-08-20
Barry D. Wood _MarketWatch_
lower pay is new "normal" in Michigan factories
"Base pay for new hires at Axle in Three Rivers is $10.50 per hour, half the going rate of 10 years ago. Workers get health care but must 'contribute' to it. They have access to a 401(k) retirement plan. Benefits and the promise of incremental pay increases may explain the huge turn-out at a company job fair on Aug. 10, which American Axle says yielded 250 'qualified' applicants... Pay levels in the parts industry have declined to below the U.S. manufacturing average... in the mid-80s employees were paid $24 per hour -- the equivalent of $40 today... Auto-related employment in Michigan is 57% lower. [Did the writer mean it was 47% of what it had been or was 57% of what it had been?] Fewer than half the 500K jobs lost over the past decade have been recovered. Median household income in Michigan has fallen to $45K, below what it was in 1999 [while the federal government and Fed have striven to boost inflation/devalue the dollar, and hence price increases]. Once the country's 11th richest state, Michigan is now 34th."
Wow! 16 are even poorer?! How many Michigan government officials are homeless and impoverished, I wonder?
2013-08-20
Chris McGuinness _Killeen TX Daily Herald_
John Carter talks to media about immigration law perversion
"mentioned his work with a bipartisan group of members to create their own immigration reform legislation... Reform includes taking into account the needs of business owners, especially in the technology industry, where many companies hire [cheap, young, pliant] employees [with flexible ethics] from over-seas to fill the sector's jobs [instead of hiring bright, knowledgeable, creative, industrious US citizens]."
2013-08-20
Anthony Watts
junk "science" from National Geographic: sea level and statue of Liberty Enlightening the World
2013-08-20
Lawrence Biemiller _Chronicle of Higher Education_
UMich develop ZMap to map the internet (more or less)... in 44 minutes
"sending brief queries to large numbers of networked computers by embedding return-address [and other] information in the original query... 'Rather than using the scanner to send probes, it could be used to broadcast a short encrypted message to every public IP address.'"
2013-08-20
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
judge sanitized jihad motive by blocking evidence at trial of Nidal Hasan
2013-08-20
Guy Benson _Town Hall_
State Dept. re-instated officials "disciplined" over Benghazi
2013-08-20
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
ObummerDoesn'tCare "navigators" seeming sketchier by the day
"Becoming a navigator only requires 20 hours of training with no background check or finger-printing requirement. IOW, criminals can easily sign up to become navigators. Now, a number of Attorneys General from across the country are sounding the alarm, pointing out that navigators with access to personal information will only expose millions of Americans to identity theft and fraud. Remember when ACORN was going to do the Census before getting busted for illegal activity and fraud on video? Yeah, this is kind of like that."
2013-08-20
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
NYPD won't answer questions about obvious gun safety violations at Bloomberg's press conference
2013-08-20
Josh Peterson _Daily Caller_
DHS has taken control of tethered surveillance blimps along USA-Mexico border
"Customs and Border Protection (CBP) spokesman Bill Brooks told the Yuma Sun that DHS took over management of the blimp system -- called the Tethered Aerostat Radar Systems -- 'earlier this summer and will manage and maintain it for the foreseeable future', reports the Associated Press... In 2010, CBP, a division of DHS, also considered arming domestic Predator drones with non-lethal weapons, according to a report obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation [EFF] through a Freedom of Information Act law-suit."
2013-08-20
Eric Owens _Daily Caller_
how to trap a UAV
"This Fall, while American grade school students [are being told] under the Obama administration's Common Core that 3 x 4 can totally be 11 as long as there's a good reason for the answer, Iranian students will learn a much more useful life skill: how to hunt for unmanned U.S. drones... it will be taught to students in Iranian high schools and the equivalents of junior high schools as well. General Ali Fazli, acting commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s Basij militia, told Etemad Daily, an Iranian newspaper, about the coursework on the 60th anniversary of a CIA-backed coup which deposed Mohammad Mossadegh, a democratically-elected prime minister. Iran has captured an American drone already. In 2011, the country seized an RQ-170 Sentinel drone in Iranian airspace. Iran's government maintains that additional U.S. drones have been caught since then, notes the Mail."
2013-08-20
Alexis Levinsor _Daily Caller_
Joe Carr challenging Lamar Alexander in the senate primary
"Carr announced his primary challenge Tuesday morning, calling Alexander 'the most [leftist] member of the delegation from Tennessee'... Last week, some tea party activists circulated a letter calling on Alexander to retire at the end of his term, saying his voting record was not conservative enough. Alexander was one of the Republicans who broke ranks to support the [senate immigration perversion bill, S744], and he helped come up with a bipartisan compromise on student loan rates."
2013-08-20
Josh Flory _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
after Middle East junket, senator Bob Corker talks economy, international affairs: but he's still clueless
2013-08-20
Tom Kaneshige _InfoWorld_/_IDG_
is Sili Valley "youth movement" merely age discrimination?
"Earlier this summer, Rowan Trollope, senior vice president and general manager of the collaboration technology group at Cisco Systems, told a crowd at a Commonwealth Club event in San Francisco that Cisco will hire 2K Millennials this year. 4 weeks later, Cisco said it will cut 4K workers on top of the nearly 8K workers it let go over the past 2 years... Older tech engineers have complained to me over the last couple of years about age discrimination and their inability to get hired. At the same time, tech companies claim to have tens of thousands of jobs begging to be filled... The average age of a Twitter employee is 30... [Since 1990], for instance, Silicon Valley [has been] awash in angry protests from techies decrying the rising practice of off-shore out-sourcing and the hiring of H-1B [guest-workers]. Tech [executives] said they needed the tech talent because of a looming skills gap; tech workers [accuse] companies of taking advantage of cheap labor and depressing salaries."
2013-08-20
_World Net Daily_
age discrimination in Sili Valley
Andrew S. Ross: San Francisco CA Chronicle
"In 2012, three high-tech companies in Silicon Valley announced they were laying off a combined 48K employees. Lay-offs continue this year, including last week's announcement that an otherwise profitable Cisco Systems was letting 4K people go... how come so many skilled IT professionals in the Bay Area are out of work? In a nut-shell, job experience in the tech industry matters far less than it once did. In fact, it can work against you. 'It's been quite a shock, coming out of a job I had for over 10 years.', said RH 49, of Sunnyvale, his resume filled with senior tech positions in multi-national companies and small startups. His most recent job lasted 2 years, and has since been out of work for the past 10 months... Mark Zuckerberg agrees. 'I want to stress the importance of being young and technical.'... Like working around the clock, seven days a week on app development, coding and web design, jobs in the strongest demand in the changing tech world. 'There's definitely a sense that companies are looking for younger and cheaper.', said Robert Withers, a career counselor at Nova Workforce Development, a federally funded career counseling organization in Silicon Valley. 'We see experienced people looking for jobs, being interviewed and not getting hired. And they're older.'... 'There's definitely age discrimination, but it's awfully hard to prove.', said Cliff Palefsky, an employment law attorney in San Francisco..."
2013-08-20
Larry Keller _Human Resource Executive_
IT worker says that India-based Infosys discriminated against her and other U.S. job applicants, misused guest-worker visas to hire workers from South Asia
"A Wisconsin woman has sued global software company Infosys, saying it has discriminated against her and potentially thousands of other rejected job applicants by hiring workers from South Asia countries with foreign worker visas at lower wages. BK is seeking class-action status for her law-suit against Infosys, which has more than 130K employees worldwide and headquarters in India. 'There aren't a lot of cases like this. It certainly raises some great issues.', says Merrick Rossein, professor at CUNY School of Law and a consultant on HR issues... BK, who has a master's degree and 17 years of varied IT experience, interviewed in 2012 April for a position with Infosys for which she says she was well-qualified. Infosys later hired somebody from Bangladesh. BK's law-suit contends that as many as 90% of Infosys's roughly 15K U.S. employees are foreign nationals, mostly from India. Yet only 4.8% of the U.S. population is Asian, and only 1% to 2% is from South Asia. The complaint notes that an IT trade group, the Association of Information Technology Professionals, said that only 2% of its membership in 2007 was of Asian ethnic origin. BK believes Infosys applicants in the United States mirror those demographics... IT companies are the largest users of guest-workers, and workers from India accounted for 64% of all H-1B petitions in the fiscal year that ended 2012 Sept. 30, according to DHS. Some 262,569 H-1B petitions were approved, and 61% of them were for computer-related occupations... The law-suit also maintains that Infosys has abused the B-1 visa program, which allows foreign workers in the country for limited business tasks such as meetings and consulting with colleagues. Infosys has allowed workers with these visas to do long-term jobs, the law-suit alleges. It's not unusual for workers holding H-1B visas to file complaints with the Department of Labor over wages and working conditions, Grunblatt says. But it is 'relatively rare' for U.S. workers to sue over alleged misuse of the program. BK's discrimination claim on top of that makes her law-suit even more novel, he says. BK's law-suit cites a theory of liability under Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Act called 'disparate impact', which is harder to prove than disparate treatment or a hostile work environment because its impact is less tangible, says Eric Meyer, partner in the labor and employment group at Dilworth Paxson in Philadelphia [but easier to prove on the basis of available statistics rather than wearing hidden cameras and audio recorders, collecting company memos and e-mail messages]."
2013-08-20
Dana Flavelle _Toronto Star_
Sears in Canada sends 245 IT jobs to Philippines, India
"Sears Canada is cutting 245 mainly head office jobs... The biggest group, comprising 138 jobs, is in Sears' information technology department... Nearly 100 affected jobs are in finance and 8 are in pay-roll, he added... With Canada’s unemployment rate at 7.2%, the loss of high-tech jobs has sparked outrage among some consumers... Most of the IT work will move to the Philippines while the finance and pay-roll work will move to India, he said... The market for outsourced IT services grew to $15G in Canada last year, according to research firm IDC Canada. Much of the work remains in Canada, but off-shore firms are winning a growing share accounting for $3G worth last year... Cost savings is the main benefit, according to 6 out of 10 employers surveyed by IDC survey for its Outsourcing Monitor in 2012 June."
2013-08-20
Cory Franklin _Political Mavens_
the pacifist and the citizen-soldier: without the valor and sacrifice of men like Bud Day, the philosophy Garry Davis dreamt of would not be possible
2013-08-20 (5773 Alul 14)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
reality versus mirages in Egypt
"Egypt existed for thousands of years before there was a United States of America. In all those millennia, Egypt has never had a free or democratic society. Nor is Egypt unique in that."
Proposed Bills 2013
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"On another farm lived Daniel Morgan, who rose from wagoner in general Braddock's army to general in the Revolution. Morgan put to use as artisans many of the Hessian mercenaries who had been taken as prisoners from the British and held in stockades near Winchester. He paid them the equivalent of $7.50 a month for their work as brick masons, carpenters, cabinet-makers, iron-smiths, and other crafts-men. In Winchester, the Philadelphia Light Horse Guards delivered the Quakers to colonel John Smith, county lieutenant of Frederick, who offered them the liberty of the town if they promised not to talk politics with towns-people... After a few local Quakers visited the prisoners, a gang of 30 armed men surrounded Bush's Tavern and demanded their removal." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pp148-149
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2013-08-21
2013-08-21
Josh Peterson _Daily Caller_
civil liberties violating tech execs offer civil liberties recommendations to Obummer regime
"The organizations also called upon the White House to support 'modernizing reforms' to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, and to promote 'policies that allow for unimpeded cross-border data flows'... Other associations signed on to the letter include Computer & Communications Industry Association, Information Technology Industry Council, Software & Information Industry Assocation, and TechNet."
2013-08-21
Willis Eschenbach
stalking the rogue hot-spot, cold-spot, wet-spot, dry-spot... a million miles from science: perfect for a direct-to-DVD movie
2013-08-21
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
the battle for and against "southern heritage"
"There is a struggle that exists (and thrives) that continues to feed misconceptions, and I can't help but cringe when I hear either argument. There are those who say that they defend Southern Heritage... but that is usually limited to a fraction of the heritage that did, in fact, make up the South. Usually, it's all about 4 years in the middle of the 19th century... In both instances, there are strange and annoying lines of thinking. Morsels of information are cherry-picked, and then sculpted, specifically to make the arguments both for and against... and then comes the broad-brush to define 19th century Southerners as a whole. Ultimately, neither does justice to the history..."
2013-08-21
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
Mexican women are taking up arms against criminals
2013-08-21
Neil Munro _Daily Caller_
wages stall in Obummer economy
"Productivity has grown by 7.7% since 2007, yet wages have grown by less than 1% during president Barack Obama's tenure, and fell for the bottom 70% of the work-force... However, Mishel declined to comment when asked if the proposed doubling of immigration would increase the supply of workers and also reduce workers' ability to demand higher wages. A Senate bill passed in July would double immigration rates, and could allow 46M new immigrants by 2033. Business-linked Republicans have also drafted bill that would increase the in-flow of immigrant workers and guest-workers. Those measures are strongly opposed by some Democrats, many of the GOP's base and some top-level members, notably Alabama senator Jeff Sessions. He's arguing that the GOP's support among all Americans would be boosted by ensuring that federal immigration policy pushes up Americans' wages and job opportunities, rather than by helping companies hire workers at lower wages... Roughly 1.3M fewer native-born Americans have jobs today than had jobs in 2000, even though their working-age population has grown by 16.4M, according to July report by an anti-immigration think tank. In contrast, 5.3M new immigrants have won jobs since 2000, while the nation's working-age immigrant population has grown by 8.8M, said the report."
2013-08-21
Guy Benson _Town Hall_
NSA can capture about 75% of net traffic
Wall Street Journal
"Libertarians will argue that the State's power to monitor citizens [reached] Orwellian heights [5 or 6 decades ago] and must be scaled back."
2013-08-21
Todd Beamon _News Max_
FISA court ruled some NSA surveillance unconstitutional in 2011
2013-08-21
Bob Barr _Town Hall_
"minor errors" at NSA are anything but
"Washington Post writer Barton Gellman reported last week that the National Security Agency violates privacy restrictions on monitoring innocent U.S. citizens thousands of times each year. This data comes not from an outside organization with an axe to grind with the powerful eaves-dropping agency headquartered just outside the nation’s capitol in Ft. Meade, Maryland. Rather, the incriminating evidence is found in an internal audit and other classified reports that, as Gellman notes, provide a level of detail and analysis of the NSA's secret spy programs that is rarely (if ever) provided to Congress, to the courts that supposedly over-see these programs, or to the American people... The government's flippant attitude, thus revealed, should concern all Americans; perhaps even more than should the thousands of annual violations confirmed by the report."
2013-08-21
Bill Hoffmann _News Max_
former FBI agent says terror attacks in USA go mainly undocumented
"There have been many jihadist attacks in the United States in recent years, although they are often not identified as such, according to former FBI agent John Guandolo, a counterterrorism expert. 'What's amazing to me is over the last several years since 201/09/11, we've had numerous acts of jihad on American soil and when I still meet with people, including law enforcement officials, they're not aware of many of these.', Guandolo told 'The Steve Malzberg Show' on Newsmax TV. '...We had a guy name Mohammed Taheri-azar in 2006 at the University of North Carolina plow over a group of students at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. In the letters to the ABC local affiliate, he said he did what he did because it's a commandment from Allah to wage jihad.' In another case, Omeed Aziz Popal, originally of Afghanistan, struck 13 pedestrians in the San Francisco Bay Area with his black Honda Pilot SUV on 2006 Aug. 30 -- killing one. 'People said they heard him saying Allahu Akbar while he was doing it.'... Fuaed Abdo Ahmed, 20, took 2 women and a man captive at Tensas State Bank in St. Joseph, Louisiana. He shot 2 of the hostages, killing 1, before state police shot him dead. But in news reports there was no mention that Ahmed had a FB photo, which appears to have been shot in Yemen, in which he poses with an AK-47."
2013-08-21
Barney Brenner _Town Hall_
article 5 invocation: is there a better way to stop government violations of the word and intent of the US constitution?
"Congress has no intention of curbing its profligate spending. Despite racing 90 mph in the wrong direction, instead of reversing course, their meager budget reductions are the equivalent of simply slowing to 70. The inevitable result of this reckless behavior –- whether triggered by a US government credit failure, a vast inflation of the currency or a repudiation of the debt -– will be economic chaos. There's a growing call coming from outside the halls of Congress for addressing this dilemma. Last week, Ohio's governor John Kasich called for an Article 5 Convention for proposing a balanced budget amendment. In the first chapter of his new book _The Liberty Amendments_, Mark Levin makes the case for the safety, propriety and necessity of this method. He notes his transition from being a skeptic of an Article 5 Convention to becoming 'a confident and enthusiastic advocate'... It takes 34 states to initiate a convention but 38 to ratify proposed amendments. Why not have an agreement, or compact, among the states where a full complement of 38 proposes the convention, approving in advance all the guide-lines, language, restrictions and obligations, thus pre-ratifying everything necessary to enact an amendment?"
2013-08-21
Ralph Benko _Town Hall_
pulling the emergency cord to stop the run-away federal freight train
"Two Marks, Levin and Meckler, notably and nobly are proposing to change the rules of modern politics and governance. Debuting at Amazon Number One (for all, not merely political, books) is syndicated radio talk show host Mark Levin's _The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic_. Sporting an average of 4.7 stars from, at the time of this writing, 153 reviews on Amazon, Levin calls for a populist suite of constitutional amendments to be initiated by the States... Meanwhile, on August 15th, on the ground and the web, a civic 'Seal Team Six' -- of operatives and activists — has constituted itself as ConventionOfStates.com. (This columnist has there enlisted as a foot soldier.) Its purpose? 'CoS seeks to call a Convention of States for a particular subject—limiting the jurisdiction and power of the federal government. This strategy would allow the states to formally consider almost all of Mark Levin's _Liberty Amendments_, giving delegates the freedom to propose the necessary amendments to stop the runaway power of Washington, DC.' CoS's president is Mark Meckler, head of Citizens for Self-Governance... Head of Citizens for Self-Governance's Convention of the States Project is the powerful and principled Michael Farris, chancellor of Patrick Henry College and chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association. They are joined by Mark Wohlschlegel ii, executive director, Laura Fennig, coalitions cirector and Jordan Sillars, communications director."
2013-08-21
Mike Shedlock _Town Hall_
Federal Reserve chair candidate update: odds shift heavily towards tweedle-dum vs. tweedle-dee
"Last week I thought it was something on the order of 50-50 (Tweedle-Dee heads we lose vs. Tweedle-Dum tails we lose) since both potential nominees are losers. I now think it's more likely a case of Tweedle-Dum tails we lose, with Larry Summers [who will do whatever Wall Street wants] playing the role of Tweedle-Dum. I changed my 50-50 lose-lose stance to a 65-35 lose-lose stance... [Janet Yellen i.e. Tweedle-Dee] has all but guaranteed she will keep the money flowing faster than Bernanke, and coupled with the above warning from Obama about asset bubbles, the odds shift heavily towards Tweedle-Dum as Obama's choice."
2013-08-21
Brett Bogus _Town Hall_
where have the Fed's gold holdings gone?
2013-08-21
Peter Schiff _Town Hall_
the GDP distractor
"A minor, but persistent under-bias in the inflation gauge used in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) may have created a wildly distorted picture of our economic health. It would be impossible to measure the economy without 'backing out', inflation... As it turns out there are a number of official inflation gauges that vie for supremacy. Most people tend to follow the Consumer Price Index (CPI) which is compiled by Bureau of Labor Statistics, a division of the Department of Labor. The CPI is regarded as the broadest measurement tool, but it has been changed many times over the years. Most famously, its formulas were loosened in the late 1990's as a result of the 'Boskin Commission' which said that the CPI over-stated inflation by failing to account for changes in consumer behavior. I believe those changes seriously undermined the reliability of the index. But the CPI itself has to contend for relevance with its stripped down rival, the 'Core CPI', which factors out food and energy, which many believe are too volatile to be accurately counted. The core CPI is almost always lower than the 'head-line' number. Another set of inflation data, the 'GDP Deflator' is compiled by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (part of the Commerce Department), and is used by them to calculate GDP. The deflator differs from the CPI in that it has much more flexibility in weighting and swapping out items that are in its sample basket of goods and services. While the CPI attracts the lion's share of the media and political attention, it is the deflator that is relevant when looking at economic growth. On a quarterly basis the two numbers are usually close enough to escape scrutiny... But if you look at a broader time horizon a very clear pattern emerges that makes a great difference in how we perceive the economic landscape."
2013-08-21
Guy Benson _Town Hall_
CNN's tapper criticized lack of accountability over Benghazi
2013-08-21
_World Net Daily_
potsherd from c. 586BCE inscribed with name Zechariah ben Benaiah found near Jerusalem Temple
"The ancient Hebrew lettering would appear to spell out part of the name of Zechariah, son of Benaiah, who, we know from 2 Chronicles 20:14, was the father of the prophet Jahaziel, who prophesied to king Jehoshaphat before he departed for war"
2013-08-21
Sharon Gaudin _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
Zuckerberg's goal of violating the privacy of 5G people could take 20 years
2013-08-21
Willis Eschenbach
double the burn rate
"to achieve the stated goal of bringing the world's poor countries all up to the energy level of Spain and Italy, all that we need is a bit more than 80% more energy."
2013-08-21
Michae A. Fletcher _Memphis TN Comercial Appeal_
median household income has fallen 4.4% since 2009 June, 6% since 2007 December
NYTimes
Fox
2013-08-21
Monica Crowley _Political Mavens_
the difference that it makes
2013-08-21
Ben Bullard _Free Republic_
support for Liberty county FL sheriff Nick Finch continues to build
Personal Liberty Digest
2013-08-21 (5773 Alul 15)
Melissa Healy _Jewish World Review_
excessive copper possibly implicated in Alzheimer's
"After 3 months, the effects were dramatic: In the mice who took in high doses of copper, the scientists observed that copper accumulated in the small blood vessels of the brain. Compared to mice on low doses of copper, the high-copper mice showed 4 times fewer levels of a protein called LRP1, which transports beta-amyloid and other debris out of the brain. They also showed abnormally high levels of beta-amyloid production and of neuro-inflammation. As they aged, the brains of mice who were fed high doses of copper had beta-amyloid levels on par with those of mice who drank low-copper water but had been bred to develop beta-amyloid at high rates."
2013-08-21 (5773 Alul 15)
Susan King _Jewish World Review_
the sad life of humorist Allan Sherman
"50 years ago, the hottest record on the radio was 'Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah', a comedic folk song performed by Allan Sherman. He wrote the tune with Lou Busch, about a boy at summer camp complaining to his parents, set to Amilcare Ponchielli's 'Dance of the Hours'."
2013-08-21 (5773 Alul 15)
Robert J. Samuelson _Jewish World Review_
Obummer regime doesn't want you to know about the economy's stubborn sluggishness
"In July, pay-roll employment [based on the Establishment survey] was 136M compared with 138M in 2007 December."
2013-08-21 (5773 Alul 15)
Victor Davis Hanson _Jewish World Review_
2 Americas: reality vs. trivia
"there is the world of reality versus that of triviality. In the vast plains of the Dakotas and the American West, thousands of men and women of all classes and colors are fracking oil and gas to create new energy for millions of homeowners and commuters -- while giving America a second chance at strategic energy independence. Yet the beneficiaries mostly ignore these elemental efforts... As we sleep, 7K miles away there are still thousands of American soldiers of all races, ages, classes and genders in godforsaken conditions fighting the Taliban to allow millions in Afghanistan the chance for an alternative to medieval theocracy and to deter terrorists. Meanwhile, back home, the nation is focused not on such existential struggles but transfixed by racial melodramas... At the end of 2 years of near-record drought in California, the fate of hundreds of thousands of acres of irrigated farmlands, which feed millions of Americans and earn billions of dollars in critical foreign exchange, hinges on a snow-filled winter in the Sierra Nevada. You might never know of that razor's edge from the state legislature. Rather than discussing new dams and canals, it debated whether transgendered youth in public schools could use the bathrooms of their choice and whether residents should [contrary to the US constitution] need a permit to buy ammunition. The historic role of government is changing before our eyes. President Obama is making the argument that the executive branch by presidential fiat can pick and choose which laws should and should not be faithfully executed -- whether [ObummerDoesn'tCare], immigration amnesties or No Child Left Behind statutes... Why is the country consumed by the trivial while snoozing through the essential?... Yet part of America's confusion about what is important and petty begins at the top... The commander in chief was playing cards while Navy Seals risked their lives to kill America's #1 enemy -- only later to use photos of himself watching live feeds for his re-election sloganeering: 'bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive!' That pretense sums up the growing void between real and trivial America."
2013-08-21 (5773 Alul 15)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
RNC chair's horrific open-borders pandering
Town Hall
"Priebus has yet to explain what exactly is 'horrific' about telling foreign [law-breakers] that they shouldn't wait for the government to eject them, and that the right thing for them to do would be to abide by our laws and go home on their own. This is an exceedingly and ridiculously polite policy suggestion, given how most other countries treat illegal line-jumpers, border-crossers, visa over-stayers and deportation fugitives... Tellingly, the RNC chair has no response to the families of all races, classes and creeds who have raised their voices against America's perilous deportation abyss, systematic non-enforcement and coddling of illegal alien DREAMers [NIGHTMAREs] who have wreaked violence and havoc on their lives. The relatives of murdered Los Angeles teen Jamiel Shaw posed a question to Priebus on Twitter after the RNC chair's remarks at the GOP event last week touting minority out-reach and diversity: 'How many Americans Have U Talked To Whose Kids were Killed by illegals?' Priebus has not answered... One day after he was released from jail for serving time for assault with a deadly weapon, this known illegal alien gang-banger was back on the streets. The feds failed to deport him. Local authorities failed to detain him. Espinoza celebrated his freedom by shooting star student athlete Jamiel execution-style in the head for carrying a red Spider-Man backpack, which the Latino 18th Street Gang thug mistook for gang colors. Jamiel's mother, Army sergeant Anita Shaw, had to travel home from serving in Iraq on her second tour of duty to join her family in burying her son... Grieving parents Anita and Jamiel Sr. and their loved ones have valiantly kept Jamiel's memory alive by supporting efforts to repeal dangerous illegal alien sanctuary laws, spotlighting lapses in detention and deportation policy, calling attention to violent illegal alien gangs targeting blacks in L.A, and opposing reckless bipartisan amnesty proposals... instead of phony promises of enforcement later for blanket amnesty now, we need immediate reform of our bloodstained, loophole-ridden, under-funded and systemically sabotaged criminal alien detention and deportation system. Pronto. Jamiel Shaw's family members are vigilant community organizers against illegal immigration. But their activism will never be hailed by Hollywood, The New York Times op-ed page, the White House or the RNC's elitist open-borders out-reach panderers. Mr. Shaw, who testified at a House GOP panel hearing on the horrific consequences of our failed deportation policies earlier this summer, warns astutely that Republicans are 'up to something' as they prepare to cut deals with open-borders Democrats in conference. I think he's right. I also believe it's no coincidence that the RNC is now publicly marginalizing those who dare to challenge the rose-colored DREAMer [NIGHTMARE] propaganda of McCain-Graham-Rubio-Ryan-Mark Zuckerberg-La Raza -- just as the forces of Amnesty Incorporated conspire behind closed doors. Question: Why won't Priebus acknowledge the horrific suffering of the Shaws and countless other families who have been harmed by illegal alien nightmares? The political timing is inconveeeenient. Innocent lives be damned."
2013-08-21 (5773 Alul 15)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
leftists/regressives vs. blacks
Town Hall
"Sometimes I wonder when black people will reject the patronizing insults of white [leftists/regressives] and their black hand-maidens... the standards of performance in sports are just about the most ruthless anywhere. Excuses are not tolerated... Seeing as blacks have demonstrated an ability to thrive in an environment of ruthless competition and demanding standards, there might be some gains from a similar school environment. Maybe we ought to have some schools in which youngsters are loaded up with homework, frequent tests and demanding, top-notch teachers. In such schools, there would be no excuses for anything. Youngsters cut the mustard, or they're kicked out and put into some other school. I'm betting that a significant number of black youngsters would prosper in such an environment, just as they prosper in the highly competitive sports and entertainment environments... This is all a part of the [leftist/regressive] agenda to hook Americans, particularly black Americans, on government hand-outs... When black Americans finally recognize the harm of the [leftist/regressive] agenda, I'm betting they will be the nation's most conservative people, for who else has been harmed by [leftism/regressivism] as much?"
Proposed Bills 2013
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"In many Jewish communities within the Pale it was typical for up to 40% of the population to be unemployed at any given time; begging was commonplace. Around 1900 an estimated 35% of Russia's Jewish population depended on relief provided by Jewish welfare institutions. Between 1881 and 1914 over 1.5M Jews left Russia for the United States." --- Amy Chua 2003, 2004 _World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability_ pg81
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2013-08-22
2013-08-22 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 279,026 in the week ending August 17, a decrease of 3,997 from the previous week. There were 311,857 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.
The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.2% during the week ending August 10, unchanged from the prior week's unrevised rate. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,876,094, an increase of 16,087 from the preceding week's revised level of 2,860,007. A year earlier, the rate was 2.5% and the volume was 3,167,174.
The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending August 3 was 4,438,656, a decrease of 148,207 from the previous week. There were 5,594,498 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.
No state was triggered 'on' the Extended Benefits program the week ending August 3...
States reported 1,501,068 persons claiming Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) benefits for the week ending August 3, a decrease of 51,842 from the prior week. There were 2,326,635 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;
to 129,827,178 beginning 2013-07-06.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs
2013-08-22
Anthony Watts
WUWT weather/climate hot sheet
2013-08-22
Anthony Watts
Helmholtz Zentrum on hind-casting climate shifts in the Pacific
2013-08-22
_Youngstown OH Vindicator_
man says: dealing drugs is the only work I could get
Dentist, editor offer career day inspiration to East Side students
2013-08-22
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
KQED show on age discrimination in tech
Today, the Forum program on KQED-FM, San Francisco's main NPR affiliate, ran a show on age discrimination in Silicon Valley.
They asked me to publicize the above link, and I am happy to do so. This is a very serious show. The erudite host, Michael Krasny, is an English professor at SFSU, and he does his homework. He researches the subject prior the show, and quality comes as a result. Interestingly, Michael also mentioned that one of his daughters is a recruiter in the tech industry.
I think you'll find listening to the archive at the above URL to be informative, and I won't repeat the contents here. But I do want to expand here on a remark I made during the show, and comment on an organization, ProMatch, that played a major role in the conversation.
One of the panelists, Suzie Wong, says that she was a victim of age discrimination in the past in Silicon Valley, but bounced back, helped by ProMatch, and is now a recruiter for eBay in the Analytics area. As you all know, I have pointed out that the H-1B work visa program fuels a large part of the age discrimination in tech, as the H-1Bs are overwhelmingly young. Since eBay had come up, and since former eBay CEO Meg Whitman has been outspoken in her support of the H-1B program, I used eBay as an example at one point during the show.
I first noted that if you go to eBay's careers page, you'll see a picture of attractive 20-somethings, and if you then go to their employee profiles page, you'll see a bunch more of young people featured. Clearly, eBay is targeting this demographic in its hiring.
I then mentioned that if you go to LinkedIn and plug "software engineer eBay" into the search engine there, you'll see people who are actually working as software engineers at eBay -- and THEY are almost all young. And interestingly, the vast majority appear to be H-1Bs.
Unfortunately, Michael misunderstood me here. In the midst of my sentence, he thought I was saying that LinkedIn targets young workers too, and he moved on to someone else. But from my POV, this is a major point. I urge all of you to try this "LinkedIn experiment" for yourselves, as it is quite dramatic. Just based on a spot check of the first few dozen people who come up, it would appear that as much as 90% of eBay's software engineer hires are H-1Bs.
THIS IS A MAJOR POINT. As many of you know, I strongly oppose what I consider the scapegoating of the Indian/Indian-American "bodyshops" (rent-a-programmer agencies) by congress, the main-stream tech industry and even some critics of the H-1B program. I've been noting that abuse of the program pervades the entire industry, absolutely including the big mainstream firms. (I am currently preparing an op-ed publication on this.) So here we have a perfect example: The Indian bodyshops are being criticized (including in provisions in the recently-passed senate bill [S744]) as hiring almost all [over 90% and in some cases over 96%] of their programmers from abroad -- and yet eBay is hiring the vast majority of their programmers (software engineers) from abroad as well. I've stated this before, and now realize that a good way to confirm it is via LinkedIn.
(I must note here that I am not blaming Ms. Wong for this, and indeed she seemed to say that she has been especially sensitive to the age issue now that she is working as a recruiter. I should also note that I personally know someone of about age 60 who is working at eBay in Analytics. That field is business, not engineering, but is still technical, thus relevant.)
Now, what about ProMatch? One of the panelists on the Krasny show was from ProMatch, and was something of a dissenting voice on the age discrimination issue. She made some good points (e.g. find a manager, not a company), and clearly ProMatch is able to help some workers. However, I feel that this begs the question of age discrimination in tech jobs.
I had a bit of contact with Nova, the parent organization of ProMatch, some years ago. I've looked at their web page, and it turns out that at least 2 of my readers have been active (as clients) in ProMatch. From all this it appears to me that ProMatch, for all its good work, primarily does NOT get people into jobs as engineers or programmers. The 2 featured Success Stories on their web page involve people in customer service and marketing, for instance, and Ms. Wong is of a similar background. One of my readers did say that he knew of one ProMatch member who got a software engineering job through the organization, but I believe that this is not typical. Of course, there are also managers.
I hope to actually visit ProMatch at some point and learn more. But I know of too many engineers and programmers who are extremely well-connected and do know how to search for work effectively but who have struggled to actually get a job. ProMatch's tips are valuable, I'm sure, but they are not the solution to the ageism pandemic in tech fields.
I noticed, by the way, the ProMatch toes the industry lobbyist party line that there is a tech labor shortage. They surveyed employers, who said there is a shortage, and that's good enough for ProMatch, ignoring the obvious "principal agent" problem at work here.
Norm
---30---
2013-08-22
Kris Anne Hall _YouTube_/_WHDT Palm City FL_/_WHDN Boston MA_
un-plug from the federal drug (text and video)
WN: ObummerDoesn'tCare's already had a disastrous preview
2013-08-22
Ann Coulter _Jewish World Review_
Arab Spring: worst soap ever
"Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had supported U.S. policy, used his military to fight Muslim extremists and recognized Israel's right to exist. So naturally, Obama told him he had to go."
2013-08-22
Roger Aronoff _Accuracy in Media_
Ft. Hood terrorist admits it was terrorism
2013-08-22
Brian Harvey _Graham Hancock_
genetic evidence for paleolithic exploration of the Americas by Europeans during the Ice Age
"Lightly pigmented skin and red hair are traits that originally appeared in humans as a result of a random mutation in the nucleotide sequence of a gene known as MC1R. According to genetic studies, the first hint of this mutation, which acted to alter the complex molecular pathways that deposit pigments in epithelial tissue, occurred approximately 100K years ago in Europe. This change in the genetic sequence of MC1R was first exhibited not in humans but in our fellow hominids, the Neanderthals who probably derived a selective advantage from the mutation by allowing them to better metabolize vitamin D from ambient sunlight in the colder, darker climate of northern Europe. It was thought at first that this mutation might have been passed down to humans through interbreeding between the species, and interbreeding may have very well happened, but it now appears that a separate mutation in the MC1R gene gave rise to fairer skin in our early human ancestors almost 60K years ago. If this is true, it is an interesting example of parallel evolution whereby the same type of mutation is selected for in separate species in order to give an advantage in similar environmental conditions. What is known is that Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals shared the continent of Europe and parts of the Middle East for at least 10K years until, finally the Neanderthals, as a separate species, seem to disappear from the fossil record approximately [7,800 to 8K] years ago..."
Proposed Bills 2013
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"Microbes, including the modern versions of cyanobacteria, supply the greater part of the planet's breathable oxygen. Algae and other tiny organiisms bubbling away in the sea blow out about 150Tgm of the stuff every year." --- Bill Bryson 2003 _A Short History of Nearly Everything_ pg303
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2013-08-23
2013-08-23
Kevin Casey _Information Week_/_UBM_
STEM execs may be responsible for creating their own "talent shortage"
2013-08-23
_WUWT_
Holocene Climatic Optimum (4K to 7K years ago), Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and Little Ice Age
CO2 Science
2013-08-23
Anthony Watts
WUWT climate/weather hot sheet
2013-08-23
Jessica Vaughan _Center for Immigration Studies_
enforcement declining despite high rates of alien crime
"For the first time since 2006, the U.S. Sentencing Commission is reporting a decline in the number of immigration cases in federal court, echoing other indications of a significant decline in immigration enforcement, despite continued high levels of illegal immigration... in 2012 there were nearly 11% fewer immigration cases sentenced in federal court... there were 3,169 fewer immigration cases sentenced in federal court last year, a decline of 10.7%, and the first decline since 2006. These offenses include some of the more serious immigration law violations, including alien smuggling, passport and visa fraud, re-entry after deportation, and unlawful presence... The Commission data show that nearly half (46%) of all federal offenders are non-citizens. In 2012, more than 9% of all murderers, 31% of all drug traffickers, 49% of all kidnappers, 31% of all money launderers, 17% of all auto thieves, and 24% of all federal-level fraudsters sentenced that year were non-citizens."
2013-08-23
Krista Franks Brock _
Conference Board LEI improved in July
"The LEI increased 0.6% in July, reaching 96 for the month. An index score of 100 reflects the economic conditions in 2004... The Coincident Index increased 0.2% in July to 106.3, while the Lagging Economic Index declined 0.2%. However, despite the Lagging Economic Index's decline, it held the highest index score -- 118.2 -- for the month of July."
2013-08-23
Greg Evensen _News with Views_
how our founders conteplated their fight for liberty
"I will pledge my life to protect these that our home stands as a shelter for when the storms arrive. It is why I lean into the wind and stand watch alone, if necessary, while the children sleep... When we hear that a blizzard is on its way, the neighbors call one another and ask if any staples are needed since we may not move for two or three days after a 24 inch drop. I will take the four wheel drive truck to the store and load bag after bag of groceries for seven households on our road. Cattle, goats, chickens, hogs and pets are looked after by many who know the value of making your own way and tending the flocks. In that regard, nothing much has changed over the past two centuries except that my truck is a bit faster than the wagon and team of horses. Prayer meetings, shared dinners, 20 or so adults crammed in around the big screen watching Green Bay play Chicago is a great event at the Evensen log cabin. As I said, we try very hard to keep life enjoyable in spite of the evil that blows in from D.C. every single day. I believe that although chores were much different and government was infinitely smaller then, our forefathers were forced to march down the same road we find ourselves on today. Control and power are money's enforcers in America as it has been at the center of all government for 5K years. Evil gravitates in the hearts of men toward the fulfillment of this lust and love of money that has caused enslavement of millions, the destruction of countless societies and the deaths of hundreds of millions of people who 'trusted' men in government to take care of them."
2013-08-23 (5773 Alul 17)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
hate-crime hoax of the year was hatched at Oberlin
Robert Shibley: Daily Caller: Fake hate crimes continue
Proposed Bills 2013
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"brigadier-general Daniel Morgan... The tall out-doors-man had been born of Welsh extraction in Hunterdon county NJ, in 1736. When he was 17 he moved to Winchester, on the Wagon Road. From there in 1755 he had drien a supply wagon northward in [general Edward Braddock's] ill-fated expedition, and from VA an MD in 1776 he led a brawling company of frontier riflemen to MA and Canada, receiving a baptism of fire in early battles along the northern front. Morgan was a natural leader. The bravery which had carried him through Indian attack and tavern brawl drew soldiers to him. He distinguished himself as a commander of riflemen in the battle of Quebc, and the Saratoga campaign, then angrily resigned his colonelcy in 1779, when the Continental Congress passed him over for promotion... the British...turned south for new conquests after seizing Philadelphia. &nnbsp; That move, which was to spread the war to towns along the lower Wagon Road, brought Daniel Morgan bouncing back into service..." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pg153
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2013-08-24
2013-08-24
Alan Keyes _Renew America_
a bucket brigade: the most simple, feasible way to restore the USA!
2013-08-24
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
library of VA panel discussion on legacy of Civil War
2013-08-24
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
Grandpap, general Richard Ewell, cousin George, and a bigger story
Proposed Bills 2013
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"Since 1989, the world has seen the proliferation of ethnic conflict, the rise of militant Islam, the intensification of group hatred and nationalism, expulsions, massacres, confiscations, calls for re-nationalization, and 2 genocides of magnitudes unprecedented since the Nazi Holocaust." --- Amy Chua 2003, 2004 _World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability_ pg123
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Sunday |
Sonntag |
Yom Rishon |
Domenica |
2013-08-25
2013-08-25
Jim Steele
fabricating climate doom: part 3 extreme weather extinctions Enron style
2013-08-25
_Free Market Project_
more convinced than ever for the need for remedial economic education
Proposed Bills 2013
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"South of Charlotte, the Great Road branched in several directions. One course led southward to Georgia, while another followed the eastward flow of the Catawba river to Charleston via Camden, which was settled by Irish Quakers in 1758 as Pine Tree Hill and later renamed for the earl of Camden, who won Americans' gratitude for opposing the Stamp Act in 1765. As Cornwallis's forces moved in-land to the Great Wagon Road, they won victories at Camden and Ninety Six, but they gathered few allies among the settlers. Besides, the cavalry forays of colonel Banastre ('Bloody Ban') Tarleton and other invaders angered the frontiersmen. When Cornwallis led his army from Camden to Charlotte in September, he found it bitterly hostile... He called [it] 'The Hornet's Nest'." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pp154-155
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Monday |
Montag |
Yom Sheini |
Lunedi |
2013-08-26
2013-08-26
_Times of India_
Wipro chairman Azim Premji wants US law to allow continued discrimination in favor of Indians, says giving US STEM workers open and equal access to US job markets would be "unfair"
"'Provisions [no longer in] the senate bill [S744] that are discriminatory and target Indian companies are out-placement bans and restrictions; attestation on recruitment of US workers; and higher wages to H-1B employees versus American employees.', Premji said in his letter. The out-placement clause makes it expensive and difficult to bring people to the US on H-1B visas for firms that already have 15% or more of their employees in the US on such visas. The worst hit are Indian IT firms, all of whom have very high proportions of their employees in the US on H-1B visas. It will also make them less competitive against rivals like IBM and Accenture, whose US employee base consists largely of American workers. The attestation clause requires companies to attest to actively recruiting American workers; not displacing American workers with H-1B visa holders; and not replacing laid-off American workers with foreign workers. 'Discriminating against Indian [cross-border bodyshops and off-shoring operations] in favour of American IT services companies, including leading companies aggressively selling into India, this is not in the interest of free trade', Premji said."
2013-08-26
Richard A. McCormack _Manufacturing News_
US gov't want's to re-define imports by USA-based firms which off-shored productions to not be counted as imports
Economic Populist
"U.S. federal agencies involved in economic data are on the verge of a major and transformative change in the way they classify companies that have out-sourced their U.S. production to foreign manufacturing contractors [off-shore out-sourcing]. The change could radically [and dishonestly] increase U.S. production statistics by classifying 'factoryless goods producers' as domestic manufacturers. Companies like Apple will no longer be considered 'wholesale traders', and their sales would be counted as U.S. production, even though none of their manufacturing is in the United States. Imports by American companies that out-source their production to foreign manufacturers also would no longer be counted as imports, thereby impacting the balance of U.S. international trade accounts... 'For the purpose of balance of payments, goods that are manufactured over-seas for U.S. companies are not going to be considered imports any more, they are going to be just U.S. production [even though they're not US production].', notes William Powers of the International Trade Commission."
Firms that Apple, and Izod are design and marketing firms which export their designs, and import finished goods. Instead of all this leger de main, we should require honesty...jgo
2013-08-26
Anthony Watts
WUWT weather/climate hot sheet
2013-08-26
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
op-ed on "scape-goating" the Indian bodyshops
I've mentioned recently that my op-ed on the :disgraceful and destructive scape-goating of the India bodyshops", by congress, the industry lobbyists and even some critics of the H-1B program would run soon. It's up now, and you can view it.
(Or plug "matloff bloomberg schumer" into [ixquick or DuckDuckGo].)
You've heard me make these points before, but I would especially urge you to conduct the "try this at home" experiment I suggest in my piece: Go to www.linkedin.com and plug "software engineer ebay" into the search box at the top of the screen. You'll see that most fit the H-1B profile: In the U.S.A. for only a few years, home country India or China (yet eBay is NOT a bodyshop), etc. Yes, eBay does hire Americans -- for marketing, clerical work and so on, but not for engineering.
The reason I use the word "destructive" above is that this rhetoric will actually harm U.S. citizens and permanent residents in the programming and engineering fields, as it will give Congress an excuse not to enact real reform. I've explained this before.
Norm
How many H-1B visas does eBay get? What proportion of their employees in the USA are not US citizens? What percentage of US citizen STEM pros refuse to go on FB or LinkedIn? What percentage of bodies shopped go on FB or LinkedIn?...jgo
2013-08-26
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
shameless EB-5 millionaires overwhelm DHS ombudsmen
"the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman; it had, the last time I looked, 32 employees, and is lodged in the Office of the deputy-secretary of DHS, not in USCIS itself. It is supposed to help -- with no fees charged -- migrants and would-be migrants who are puzzled by the often complex internal processes of the immigration system. In short, it is designed for the 'huddled masses'... According to the most recent annual report, issued earlier this summer, the office had received '441 requests for EB-5 case assistance, representing approximately 10% of this year's case-load'... In the case of the aliens it is an opportunity to buy a fistful of green cards for the investor, the investor's spouse, and all their children for half a million dollars. Bear in mind that these aliens do not have any other way of coming to America legally, or they would not be putting their money in what are clearly second- and third-rate investments. If an investment must have a green card attached to it to receive funds, it is probably not of high quality."
2013-08-26
Stanley Renshon _Center for Immigration Studies_
presidential discretion in immigration policy... deja vu
"The dilemma for real immigration reformers in congress is that that the president and the executive branch do have some degree of constitutionally mandated discretion in enforcing immigration laws... Jeffrey Anderson writing in the Weekly Standard of the president's decision not to deport young illegal aliens characterized that initiative as 'pure lawlessness'... Michael McConnell, a former U.S. Court of Appeals judge and current Stanford law professor puts his finger squarely on Congress' immigration dilemma in a Wall Street Journal article when he writes, 'While the president does have substantial discretion about how to enforce a law, he has no discretion about whether to do so.' Yes. Well of course how something is done can effect whether it is done, to an important degree. That is why there has been such strong reaction to the president's varied efforts to bend the law in the direction of his own preferred interpretations and goals."
2013-08-26
Victor Davis Hanson _PJ Media_
dog days for liberty and democracy
"Like a Hitler, Mussolini, Mugabe, or Hugo Chavez, Morsi was counting on the legitimacy from a once-in-a-lifetime largely free election, and then the use of state power, if not terror, to institutionalize his authoritarian rule... In the Middle East, an election without a ratified constitution and the rule of law is a prescription for tyranny. Instead, let us speak of 'consensual government' or 'constitutional government', and emphasize 'republicanism'. Our goal, to the degree we wish to offer advice abroad to reformers abroad, would be to encourage illiberal states to form 'representative' or 'constitutional republics', where the will of the people is expressed through representatives who themselves are subject to constitutional law. Limited or consensual government should be our sloganeering over-seas and at home. The great lesson of the Obama administration is that the abuses of democratic plebiscites abroad are not contrasted, but amplified by the increasingly lawless American model, when it uses the IRS and the Justice Department to go after political opponents, allows senior officials to lie under oath to the Congress, and fails to execute faithfully those laws passed by the legislative branch. If we are to offer America as a model, then there must be some honesty and transparency about the Benghazi, Associated Press, IRS, and NSA scandals. In the latter 20th century, we got our wish and saw much of the world adopt Western democratic trajectories. It is now our challenge in the early 21st century to ensure that they were not given a bill of goods."
2013-08-26 (5773 Alul 20)
Robert J. Samuelson _Jewish World Review_
Why pres. Obummer's delaying Fed chair pick is continuing to damage USA
2013-08-26 (5773 Alul 20)
Allysia Finley _WSJ_
Richard Vedder: why college/university costs so much
2013-08-26 (5773 Alul 20)
Mark Steyn _Jewish World Review_
ObummerDoesn'tCare means what Obummer wants it to mean
"'Comprehensive' today is a euphemism for interminably long, poorly drafted, and entirely unread -- not just by the peoples' representatives but by our robed rulers, too (how many of those Supreme Court justices actually plowed through every page of [ObummerDoesn'tCare] when its 'constitutionality' came before them?). The 1862 Homestead Act, which is genuinely comprehensive, is two handwritten pages in clear English. The 'Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act' is 500 times as long, is not about patients or care, and neither protects the former nor makes the latter affordable. So what is it about? On Wednesday, the Nevada AFL-CIO passed a resolution declaring that 'the unintended consequences of the ACA will lead to the destruction of the 40-hour work week'. That's quite an accomplishment for a 'health' 'care' 'reform' law. But the poor old union heavies who so supported [ObummerDoesn'tCare] are now reduced to bleating that they should be entitled to the same opt-outs secured by big business and congressional staffers. It's a very strange law whose only defining characteristic is that no one who favors it wants to be bound by it"
Proposed Bills 2013
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"In the 1990s the US government spent approximately $1G on democracy initiatives for the post-socialist countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union..." --- Amy Chua 2003, 2004 _World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability_ pp123-124
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Tuesday |
Dienstag |
Yom Shlishi |
Martedi |
2013-08-27
2013-08-27
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
some items on the age issue
Some items on the age issue for tech workers:
1. The San Francisco Chronicle In Silicon Valley, Age Can Be a Curse and Readers Offer Tales of Silicon Valley's Ageism.
2. One of the reader comments on my Bloomberg op-ed that went up this evening dove-tails with what I've said repeatedly:
Siloo Kapadia
"We also went to USA through the H1B program, got green cards and stayed there for a total of 20 years. A year after getting the green cards, my husband laid off. We later came to realize that this was standard practice at many IT companies. They only want you when you are young, desperate for a visa, and are willing to work for 50-60 hours per week for peanuts.
Yes, he did find a job, but at 60% of the pay and far fewer benefits. We saw the writing on the wall and left for Singapore. We are so glad we did.
Indians today have the mistaken belief that living in USA is a heaven. It is in fact, more like a hell. I urge my fellow Indians to look elsewhere for a job and life. Don't make the mistake we did."
As I've said before, regardless of whether you are a native or an immigrant, age 35 is age 35, and you begin to lose employability then. Note too that I and others have pointed out that today's H-1B is tomorrow's victim (victim of age discrimination, thus a victim of the H-1B program, which fuels the age issue).
Norm
---30---
2013-08-27
Jacqui Ogrodnik _Daily Illini_
U of IL's first NSFT I-Corps Sites program to begin Thursday (with map)
"The NSF selected the University as 1 of 3 sites in July, along with the University of Akron and the University of California, San Diego. The Sites program is a step below the NSF's national program, Taylor said. It has a less rigorous curriculum, takes less time commitment and has fewer structured teams than the national program. The program is designed to prepare the University's teams for applying to the national program... Millar said the teams learn about what it's like to be in a company by exploring management opportunities such as hiring employees, receiving funding and pitching ideas, as well as dealing with legal and financial requirements... The teams will be learning how to validate market size, customer segment and their value proposition. They will also interact with potential customers and experiment to validate those 3 things, Taylor said... Taylor said the program provides the teams with workshops and entrepreneurship courses, as well as $3K to explore the commercialization of their products."
U of IL, ICSI, UCSD, U of MD Baltimore County, VA Poly, CUNY City College, NY Polytech, GA Tech Research, Columbia, Mich State U
2013-08-27
Jerry Kammer _Center for Immigration Studies_
McCain, pitching for S744, is just a bit outside with his facts
"But he cited public support for conditions regarding payment of back taxes and English language acquisition that are not in the bill. Moreover, the Arizona Republican made another error in defending the E-Verify system, which checks on the legitimacy of [Socialist Insecurity numbers, SINs] that new workers submit to employers in some jurisdictions... He appeared at the forum with fellow [excessive and lax immigration advocate] Arizona senator Jeff Flake... 54% of those here illegally were able to pass the current pilot E-Verify program and obtain work authorization..."
2013-08-27
Stanley Renshon _Center for Immigration Studies_
pres. Obummer's administrative amnesties have a long history
"In additional to those initiatives, the administration, through a series of enforcement memos to ICE staff -- here (2010 August 20), here (2011 March 2), here (2011 August 18), here (2011 June 17), here (2011 June 17), here (2011 November 17), and here (2012 December 21) -- the administration has gradually, but determinedly created large classes of illegal aliens who are essentially able to live and work in the United States without fear of deportation. The public rational for all of these memos that narrow the focus of enforcement is the claim by now former director John Morton that, ICE 'only has resources to remove approximately 400K aliens per year, less than 4% of the estimated illegal alien population in the United States'. Therefore, setting priorities and narrowing enforcement efforts is necessary. I've never seen an explanation of what resources exactly go into that 400K per year resource limit. Nor have I seen a request from the ICE director, or the president, asking for enough resources to carry out the deportation of more than that limiting figure... when memo after memo, directive after directive, enforcement actions or the lack thereof, all point in the same direction, we can be fairly certain that immigration enforcement decisions are being made and carried out at the very highest level of the [Obummer regime] for a purpose, and it isn't to save the government money."
2013-08-27
John Rhodes _Center for Immigration Studies_
home sweet home
"The policy of interest here, however, is not economic, strictly speaking: that of reducing immigration. In the UK, 11.3% of the total population is foreign-born, and there are some estimates of almost 900K illegal immigrants... Attached to the back of vans are large bill-boards: In the UK illegally? 106 arrests last week in your area. Go home or face arrest. Text HOME to 78070 for free advice and help with travel documents. We can help you to return home without fear of arrest or detention.'... 2 things strike me as interesting: the popularity of the campaign, and the reference (twice) to 'home' on the bill-board. In my mind, both things are linked to the question of assimilation... I think that people are basically good. And I think that people are inclined to form community. Thus, when people witness and experience others dis-inclined to form community, people who deliberately remain apart, who do not assimilate, they are understandably disturbed."
2013-08-27
Katherine Telford _Center for Immigration Studies_
unethical amnesty
2013-08-27
Christopher Monckton
the 200 months of "the pause"
2013-08-27
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
What's the objective?
2013-08-27
Sital S. Patel _MarketWatch_
Raj Rajaratnam living large in federal prison
"The case ensnared several former employees, his associates and his brother Rengan Rajaratnam. The former Galleon hedge fund founder is now living in a cushy prison cell, with a personal 'manservant' according to the report. The prison, Federal Medical Center Devens located in Ayer, Massachusetts, houses the most seriously ill inmates, according to the report."
2013-08-27
Anthony Watts
WUWT climate/weather hot sheet
2013-08-27
_World Net Daily_
Ft. Hood terrorist unanimously sentenced to death
Michael Graczyk & Nomaan Merchant: Breitbart/AP
"Death sentences are rare in the military, which has just five other prisoners on death row. The cases trigger a long appeals process. And the president must give final authorization before any service member is executed. No American soldier has been executed since 1961. Hasan spent weeks planning the 2009 Nov. 5, attack, including buying the handgun and video-taping a sales clerk showing him how to change the magazine."
2013-08-27
Sarah Hofmanr _Daily Caller_
bubonic plague is still with us
"A 15-year-old boy from a mountain village in Kyrgyzstan has died from bubonic plague and 3 more have been hospitalized in the Central Asian country. Temirbek Isakunov is believed to have contracted the fatal disease from eating barbecued marmot."
2013-08-27
Garth Kant _World Net Daily_
Boehner has made himself a target of Republican wrath
"Fed up with his refusal to consider defunding [ObummerDoesn'tCare], protesters took the fight right into the back-yard of House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). A 'Pull the Plug' rally was held Tuesday afternoon at Boehner's congressional district office in Troy, Ohio... 'If he funds it, he will own it.', said Janet Porter, president of Faith2Action, adding that Obamacare must be stopped to prevent the IRS from deciding who lives and who dies. The protest was aimed at Boehner after 80 members of congress signed a letter to the speaker asking to 'defund the implementation and enforcement of [ObummerDoesn'tCare] in any relevant appropriations bill brought to the House floor in the 113th Congress'."
2013-08-27
Susan Jones _Cybercast News Service_
Ron DeSantis (R-FL) introduced bill to stop ObummerDoesn'tCare subsidies for congress and staffers
"In the senate, David Vitter (R-LA) introduced a bill earlier this year that would end the Obamacare exemption for Members of Congress and their staffs. Vitter said his bill also would eliminate a loop-hole that exempts the president, vice-president, political appointees and some congressional staff from being forced into the [ObummerDoesn'tCare] exchanges."
2013-08-27
Pete Olson _Daily Caller_
a small part of the case for impeaching Eric Holder
2013-08-27
Aaron Klein _World Net Daily_
Iran, North Korea run operations room in Syria: Russia also involved
2013-08-27
Jerome R. Corsi _World Net Daily_
suspect terrorist in attack on US consulate in Benghazi was trained in the USA
"An Egyptian terrorist who was suspected of participating in the 2012 Sept. 11, attack on the U.S. [consulate] in Benghazi, Libya, was trained in the United States, according to an Egyptian investigation. The probe being conducted by the Supreme State Security Prosecution in Egypt has named Tarek Taha Abu Al-Azm as the terrorist operative in the Jamal network responsible for directing from Egypt the Benghazi attack. Al-Azm, a former major in the Egyptian armed forces who reached the rank of captain and was put in charge of an air base for the Egyptian Air Force, traveled to the U.S.A. for military training after graduating from the Egyptian military academy as a member of the Egyptian Armed Forces Officers, according to reports published in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Watan and on the pro-Jihadi website Arabian Sword."
2013-08-27
Taylor Bigler _Daily Caller_
10 top-paid celebrities are among the worst
2013-08-27
Rebecca Hagelin _Town Hall_
public school culture
"As the new school year begins, our children will be immersed in a very different school climate from a year ago—one that's light years away from our own school years... the social and moral climate within our schools has turned an ugly corner, and poses sharp new challenges for children who are religious believers. Emboldened by the Supreme Court's decisions allowing marriage benefits for homosexuals, the left is stepping up its assault on anything and everything that recognizes traditional marriage or honors the natural distinction between males and females. Our public schools are a prime battleground; our children are in harm's way. It's up to us to make sure that our children do not become the 'collateral damage' from the left's relentless strikes against marriage and heterosexuality. Let me give you some examples of how the anti-God, anti-marriage activists will be taking their message to schools this fall. We all agree that bullying and cruelty—towards any child, not just those who experience same-sex attraction—is deeply wrong and must not be tolerated within a school community. But in many of today's public schools, you can expect that righteous indignation over bullying will be turning into campaigns to stomp out 'hetero-normativity'..."
2013-08-27
_World Net Daily_
communist corpse adopted by 45 state governments
abc/AP
Ted Siefer: NH Union Leader: communist corpse coming to Manchester class-rooms
2013-08-27
Leah Barkoukis _Town Hall_
Iranian court rejects appeal from jailed American pastor: Obummer remains silent
Patrick Goodenough: Cybercast News Service: pastor's wife challenges pres. Obummer's silence
2013-08-27
Bob Unruh _World Net Daily_
the violent Obama Boys gang
"There are 4 felony counts of first-degree assault, 4 felony counts of armed criminal action and 2 felonies for allegedly firing a gun from a vehicle and hitting people pending against a St. Louis suspect whom police identified as a member of the Obama Boyz gang... The facts in the Obama Boyz case are these: Anthony Jamal Lee, then 18, was arrested about a year ago for allegedly firing a gun out of a car and injuring several people. Police, according to local reports, said he was part of the Obama Boyz gang but did not elaborate... The office of an attorney representing Lee confirmed to WND that the case is pending in a Missouri court."
2013-08-27
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
just how big is the US federal government? (video)
2013-08-27
Christopher Monckton _World Net Daily_
Who will root out White House corruption?
"He told me of a truly remarkable resolution made by the House and concurred in by the Senate during the second session of the 85th Congress, in 1958, requiring all government employees, including officeholders, to adhere to the following Code of Ethics. 'Any person in Government service should: 1. Put loyalty to the highest moral principles and to the country above loyalty to persons, party, or Government department. 2. Uphold the Constitution, laws, and legal regulations of the United States and of all governments therein and never to be a party to their evasion. 3. Give a full day's labor for a full day's pay; giving to the performance of his duties his earnest effort and best thought. 4. Seek to find and employ more efficient and economical ways of getting tasks accomplished. 5. Never discriminate unfairly by the dispensing of special favors or privileges to anyone, whether for remuneration or not; and never accept, for himself or his family, favors or benefits under circumstances which might be construed by reasonable persons as influencing the performance of his governmental duties. 6. Make no private promises of any kind binding upon the duties of office, since a Government employee has no private word which can be binding on public duty. 7. Engage in no business with the Government, either directly or indirectly, which is inconsistent with the conscientious performance of his governmental duties. 8. Never use any information coming to him confidentially in the performance of governmental duties as a means for making private profit. 9. Expose corruption wherever discovered. 10. Uphold these principles, ever conscious that public office is a public trust.'"
2013-08-27
_World Net Daily_
should Obummer be impeached for having ordered release of thousands of illegal aliens who committed additional crimes
"the new book, _Impeachable Offenses: The Case to Remove Barack Obama from Office_. New York Times best-selling authors Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott cite ICE documents that state more than 8K criminal illegal aliens were released between fiscal years 2009 and 2011 May alone... ICE statistics cited in _Impeachable Offenses_ show the agency released 3,847 convicted criminal aliens in 2009, 3,882 in 2010 and 1,012 through part of 2011. A 2011 audit by the DHS Inspector General further found 809 recidivist Level 1 illegal immigrant criminals eligible for deportation were released from California and Texas jails in 2009. ICE defines Level 1 as the 'most egregious criminal aliens, who pose a significant public safety risk'. Offenses include homicide, kidnapping, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, threats, extortion, sex offenses, cruelty toward family, resisting an officer, illegal weapon possession, hit and run, and drug offenses accompanied by sentences of more than a year... While no specific victims were publicly identified, the CRS reported illegal immigrants released from custody between 2008 and mid-2011 were 'charged with 16,226 subsequent crimes, including 19 murders, 142 sex crimes and thousands of drunk-driving offenses, drug-crimes and felonies'... However, only 146 of those arrested during the 2011 sweeps were turned over for prosecution. Of the total arrested, 42 were identified as gang members."
2013-08-27
Pamela Geller _World Net Daily_
pres. Obummer politicizing Jewish high holy days
"The Times of Israel reported Sunday that 'President Barack Obama is set to make a pre-Rosh Hashana conference call to some 1K U.S. rabbis in which he will discuss key issues of the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the hopes that the spiritual leaders will raise enthusiasm for those talks among their congregants in their High Holiday speeches.'... Why doesn't Obama use the elaborate gala iftar dinners he hosts at the White House to encourage the Muslim world to expunge from the Quran the Islamic Jew-hatred that fuels the war on the Jews in Israel and the world? Why doesn't Obama address the genocidal rhetoric that is broadcast daily in Muslim media against the Jews? &bsp; Why doesn't Obama use his 'Muslim Outreach' to warn the Muslim world that the U.S. will withhold aid if the schools continue to teach Jew-hatred and incitement to violence?"
2013-08-27
_MarketWatch_/_UBM_/_Conference Board_
Consumer Confidence index at 81.5
"The Index now stands at 81.5 (1985=100), up from 81.0 in July. The Present Situation Index decreased to 70.7 from 73.6. The Expectations Index increased to 88.7 from 86.0 last month... Those claiming jobs are 'plentiful' decreased to 11.4% from 12.3%, while those claiming jobs are 'hard to get' declined to 33.0% from 35.2%."
2013-08-27 (5773 Alul 21)
Bernard Goldberg _Jewish World Review_
if pres. Obummer had a son he might look like...
2013-08-27
Tim Ball
how the "hottest" temperature game is played to off-set prediction failures
2013-08-27
Megan O'Neil _Chronicle of Higher Education_
drone journalism programs at 2 universities ordered shut down by FAA
"Matt Waite, of the Drone Journalism Lab at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln's College of Journalism and Mass Communications, and Scott Pham, of the Missouri Drone Journalism Program at the University of Missouri's School of Journalism, said on Monday that they were in the early stages of what will probably be a process taking months to obtain a certificate of authorization, or COA... 'a quarter of the applications we get for COAs come from academia', [said FAA spokes-clone Les Dorr]... 'It is pretty restrictive.', Mr. Waite said. 'It is sort of kind of antithetical to journalism. Unless you know how to divine a news event at a location months in advance, it really is not going to work for doing the regular kind of journalism we are familiar with.' Still, he intends to carry on with his research, and possibly conduct flights in the Cornhuskers' indoor football-practice facility."
2013-08-27
Jason B. Jones _Chronicle of Higher Education_
first impressions of 3-D printing
"My 10-year-old re-deployed money he'd been saving towards the LEGO Death Star and bought one of these instead. (The Death Star is $100 more!)... At work, I was able to get one of these print-ready in about 20 minutes... pre-heating, which with my printer can take up to an hour. Even after an hour, your model is still probably going to warp and lift up off the platform unless you make a special solution and coat the platform in it. At this price level, there’s not a lot of error correction: if the nozzle gets at all stuck somehow on the model, it's not going to stop printing, or cool off, or adjust the model. It's going to melt a hole in your model. Printing is not *quite* set-it-and-forget-it... For smaller items, there's the MakerBot Digitizer ($1500), and of course for bigger items (or people!) there's the Kinect (about $250, but also apparently fiddly). (Many more are on the way.) Otherwise, you're restricted to what you can find on sites such as the Thingiverse or to what you can create on a CAD program or something similar... you should probably start familiarizing yourself with CAD software, or an open-source modeling program such as MeshLab..."
2013-08-27 (5773 Alul 21)
Tony Capaccio _Business Week_
Martin Luther King ii address on 1963-08-28 stirred the world, and led to FBI surveillance program
2013-08-27 (5773 Alul 21)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
a truly great phony
Town Hall
"The man was indeed a very talented phony. He could convince almost anybody of almost anything -- provided that they were not already knowledgeable about the subject... One presidential gaffe in particular gives the flavor, and suggests the reason, for many others. It involved the Falkland Islands. Argentina has recently been demanding that Britain return the Falkland Islands, which have been occupied by Britons for nearly two centuries. In 1982, Argentina seized these islands by force, only to have British prime-minister Margaret Thatcher take the islands back by force. With Argentina today beset by domestic problems, demanding the return of the Falklands is once again a way for Argentina's government to distract the Argentine public's attention from the country's economic and other woes. Because the Argentines call these islands 'the Malvinas', rather than 'the Falklands', Barack Obama decided to use the Argentine term. But he referred to them as 'the Maldives'. It so happens that the Maldives are thousands of miles away from the Malvinas. The former are in the Indian Ocean, while the latter are in the South Atlantic. Nor is this the only gross misstatement that President Obama has gotten away with, thanks to the mainstream media, which sees no evil, hears no evil and speaks no evil when it comes to Obama. The presidential gaffe that struck me when I heard it was Barack Obama's reference to a military corps as a military 'corpse'. He is obviously a man who is used to sounding off about things he has paid little or no attention to in the past. His mispronunciation of a common military term was especially revealing to someone who was once in the Marine Corps, not Marine 'corpse'. Like other truly talented phonies, Barack Obama concentrates his skills on the effect of his words on other people -- most of whom do not have the time to become knowledgeable about the things he is talking about. Whether what he says bears any relationship to the facts is politically irrelevant. A talented con man, or a slick politician, does not waste his time trying to convince knowledgeable skeptics. His job is to keep the true believers believing. He is not going to convince the others anyway... One wonders how he will laugh when all his golden promises about ObummerDoesn'tCare turn out to be false and a medical disaster. Or when his foreign policy fiascoes in the Middle East are climaxed by a nuclear Iran."
Proposed Bills 2013
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"Clostridium perfringes, the disagreeable little organism that causes gangrene, can reproduce in 9 minutes. At such a rate, a single bacterium could theoretically produce more off-spring in 2 days than there are protons in the universe. 'Given an adequate supply of nutrients, a single bacterial cell can generate 280T individuals in a single day', according the the Belgian bio-chemist and Nobel laureate Christian de Duve. In the same period, a human cell can just about manage a single division. About once every million divisions, they produce a mutant." --- Bill Bryson 2003 _A Short History of Nearly Everything_ pp303-304
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Wednesday |
Mittwoch |
Yom R'vi'i |
Mercoledi |
2013-08-28
2013-08-28
Ronald W. Mortensen _Center for Immigration Studies_
what do senator Hatch and high-tech executives have against Americans?
"Hatch and the high-tech billionaires conveniently ignore the fact that: The official U.S. unemployment rate currently stands at 7.4%. A broader measure shows that unemployment is closer to 23% of the eligible workforce. Part-time jobs account for most recent employment gains. Millions of American workers have dropped out of the labor force. Wages have stagnated when they should have increased if there were truly a labor shortage. A record number of Americans are receiving food stamps."
2013-08-28
"ChemJobber"
chemistry career trajectories
"Gina Stewart, a PhD organic chemist who is now an technological entrepreneur in lawn care..."
2013-08-28
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
senator Charles Schumer responded
See Improving Visa Rules for Skilled Workers Bloomberg View.
Glad to see I got Senator Schumer's attention. :-) Made my day.
His lengthy response, of course, ignores the points I made in my piece. But that's what politicians are good at.
Note that he alludes to IEEE-USA's support of his bill.
Norm
S744 does nothing to reform the H-1B visa system... or anything else. Yes, there are deluded and corrupt people in both parties who were involved in drafting and amending S744.
In fiscal year 2012 over 135,991 H-1B visas were issued. If they were visas for the "highly skilled" that would be at least 100 times what is reasonable, and 100 times what the market supply and demand and price (compensation) support. But the H-1B visa program was never restricted to, or even aimed for, the highly skilled.
This bill helps tech executives in business and academia; it does not help the US high tech industry. It is opposed by nearly every organization of highly skilled US citizen STEM professionals. IEEE never asked us, and ignored what we wrote to them when we learned of their harmful positions.
More H-1B visas means more US citizen STEM professionals being displaced, and lower compensation for US citizens. OTOH, more H-1B visas means more guest-workers getting higher pay than they could have gotten at home, even though that pay has consistently been below local US market compensation.
But Schumer correctly describes the operation of bodyshops. Raising the fees such a tiny amount and encouraging such high percentages of a firm's employees to be guest-workers will do little that is positive.
It's time to cut the numbers of these visas, set reasonable standards, and enforce them.
2013-08-28
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
Australia pays other governments to take its refugees
2013-08-28
Donald Lambro _Town Hall_
debt limit struggle is worth having for our country's future
2013-08-28
Susan Jones _Cybercast News Service_
Jim DeMint: if defunding ObummerDoesn'tCare isn't worth fighting for, nothing is
"'The relevant question is, will Obama shut the government down in order to save his failed law? It's unfair. It's unworkable. He's given waivers to congress, waivers to big business, but not to the average American. So if the president chooses to shut the government down, it's on him. I think Republicans should fund the government, but they should not fund [ObummerDoesn'tCare].'"
2013-08-28
Eric Owens _Daily Caller_
surveillance of students in public schools went too far a long time ago
2013-08-28
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
Charles Grassley calls for inspector-general investigation into abuses by NSA
2013-08-28
Jacob Sullum _Town Hall_
Obummer's assurances about NSA surveillance oversight ring hollow
2013-08-28
Bob Barr _Town Hall_
California city tramples on contracts and right to property
>2013-08-28
Michael Tanner _Town Hall_
response to critics of recent report on illfare by state
2013-08-28
Anne-Marie Womack & Rebecca L. Harris _Chronicle of Higher Education_
How to lessen the financial and emotional burdens on PhDs in a difficult job market
2013-08-28
Charles Payne _Town Hall_
war
"A few years ago I wrote about a cornerstone of my investment thesis and that was peace in the world. Even with Iraq and Afghanistan, the world was about as peaceful as it's ever been. Moreover, there are fewer and fewer deaths during these wars. More than 1M [Gauls] died during its conquest by Julius Caesar, and almost 8K died in 3 days of fighting at the battle at Gettysburg. These days the magic number is 1K, maybe 2K when there is a clear bad guy and good reason for American involvement in war... Sadly, Syria will turn out to only be a sideshow and killing field..."
2013-08-28 (5773 Alul 22)
Nat Hentoff _Jewish World Review_
Where are the protests over murders of Christians in Libya, Nigeria, Syria and Egypt?
World Net Daily
Cybercast News Service: Coptic Christians march in front of White House
2013-08-28 (5773 Alul 22)
George Friedman _Jewish World Review_
pres. Obummer's bluff
2013-08-28 (5773 Alul 22)
John Stossel _Jewish World Review_
trains to nowhere
Town Hall
"They are important to many people, but there's no way that business would build subways or run them, they argue. Subways lose billions of dollars. Entrepreneurs would never invest in subway cars or dig subway tunnels -- there's no profit in that. But often what we 'obviously know' is not so. Most of New York's subways were actually built by private companies. Few New Yorkers even know that. Private companies dug the first tunnels and ran the trains for about 40 years. But when they wanted to raise the fare to a dime, the politicians said they had to 'protect' the public. Government took over the system, saying only 'public ownership' could guarantee affordable fares. But government doesn't do anything well. Under government management, profit disappeared and the fare rose well beyond the inflation-adjusted equivalent of what the private companies had wanted to charge."
2013-08-28 (5773 Alul 22)
Paul Greenberg _Jewish World Review_
shop-talk: What makes a columnist?
Town Hall
"What makes a great columnist? Or a not so great one? It may boil down to the difference between writing and Persuasive Writing, which is a whole different breed of feline. Schematic, calculated, synthetic. Much like the difference between writing and Creative Writing, which isn't writing so much as a college course, a 'workshop', a bore. (It was the late great Kingsley Amis, who would have made a helluva columnist himself, who once observed that everything that's gone wrong with the world can be summed up in one word: workshop.) Have you noticed? Once a qualifier is attached to any art, it's no longer an art... It's a way to reduce an ideal to a special interest."
2013-08-28 (5773 Alul 22)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
Colorado's grass-roots revolt against hoplophobes
Town Hall
Cybercast News Service
"While most Americans will be chillin' out, maxin' and relaxin' this Labor Day weekend, dedicated patriots in Colorado are hard at work preparing for a groundbreaking special election day with nationwide repercussions. George Washington would be proud. On September 10, Democratic legislator and state Senate President John Morse of Colorado Springs faces a citizen recall for his sellout to New York anti-gun special interests, for his betrayal of transparency and accountability to constituents, and for his destructive economic policies that are driving thousands of jobs away. Also up for recall: Democratic legislator Angela Giron of Pueblo. In March, Democratic governor John Hickenlooper signed his left-wing colleagues' sweeping package of gun- and ammo-control measures -- pushed not by Coloradans, but by gun-grabbing New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, the anti-Second Amendment Brady bunch and the White House. vice-president Joe Biden inserted himself into my adopted home state's legislative process, phoning up swing Democratic legislators to lobby for the bills personally."
2013-08-28
Lloyd Marcus _Daily Caller_
what would MLK ii say, today?
"I had a dream. MLK and I met for lunch. Though a bit star-struck in the presence of an American icon, I brought the eager to know Dr. King up to date on black America's progress since his tragic departure. Black out-of-wedlock births are over 70%, 3 times the level of your day. The new normal in the black community is 'baby daddy' rather than husband and father. Murder rates for blacks are up to 8K to 9K per year in America, 93% perpetrated by other blacks... Yes, Dr. King, your memory is correct. Black poverty was on the decline. But in 1965 Democrat president Lyndon Johnson launched his so-called War on Poverty which destroyed the black family by replacing fathers of black households with government, resulting in increasing black poverty ever since. Did I tell you about the epidemic of black youths dropping out of school?... Dr. King, your mastery of the English language is somewhat frowned upon today. Some would accuse you of trying to be white."
2013-08-28
Daniel Doherty _Town Hall_
MLK ii's "I have a dream" speech
full text of speech from WJLA abc
full text of speech from National Archives (pdf)
video
"His mesmerizing words and sentence structure were truly delivered extemporaneously."
2013-08-28 (5773 Alul 22)
Jonah Goldberg _Jewish World Review_
MLK ii's real message
Town Hall
"After all, the official title of the event was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The line 'I have a dream that my 4 little children will one day live in a nation where they will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character' resides in the rhetorical pantheon with 'Four score and seven years ago' and 'We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union.' But in one of the fascinating ironies that make history so compelling, King didn't plan to use the 'I have a dream' line. His prepared remarks were winding down when gospel singer Mahalia Jackson shouted to him, 'Tell them about the dream, Martin. Tell them about the dream!' -- a passage she had heard from him previously. Even after the march, A. Philip Randolph, the march's director, received more coverage than King. Randolph spoke of civil rights, too, of course. But he also emphasized more typical left-wing economic fare: 'It falls to us to demand new forms of social planning, to create full employment and to put automation at the service of human needs, not at the service of profits.'... King's dream of a colorblind society... the genius of King's appeal to an ideal of colorblindness was deeply patriotic, rooted in the foundational principles of the republic. The march was set in the year of the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, which King invoked: 'But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. 100 years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. In a sense', King continued, 'we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' In the American context, these are universal appeals. King pleaded for the fulfillment of America's classically liberal revolution. At the core of that revolution was the concept of negative liberty -- being free from government-imposed oppression. That is why the Bill of Rights is framed in the negative or designed to restrict the power of government. 'The congress shall make no law' that abridges freedom of speech, assembly, etc."
2013-08-28 (5773 Alul 22)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
a poignant anniversary
Town Hall
NH Union Leader
"At the core of Dr. King's speech was his dream of a world in which people would not be judged by the color of their skin, but by 'the content of their character'. Judging individuals by their individual character is at the opposite pole from judging how groups are statistically represented among employees, college students or political figures. Yet many -- if not most -- of those who celebrate the 'I have a dream' speech today promote the directly opposite approach of group preferences, especially those based on skin color... What was historic about that speech was not only what was said but how powerfully its message resonated among Americans of that time, across the spectrum of race, ideology and politics. A higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted in Congress for both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. To say that that was a hopeful time would be an under-statement. To say that many of those hopes have since been disappointed would also be an under-statement. There has been much documented racial progress since 1963. But there has also been much retrogression [regress], of which the disintegration of the black family has been central, especially among those at the bottom of the social pyramid. Many people -- especially politicians and activists -- want to take credit for the economic and other advancement of blacks, even though a larger proportion of blacks rose out of poverty in the 20 years before 1960 than in the 20 years afterwards. But no one wants to take responsibility for the policies and ideologies that led to the breakup of the black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and generations of discrimination... Civil rights were necessary, but far from sufficient. Education and job skills are crucial, and the government cannot give you these things. All it can do is make them available... When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was pending in Congress, my hope was that it would pass undiluted, not because I thought it would be a panacea but, on the contrary, because 'the bitter anti-climax that is sure to follow may provoke some real thought in quarters where slogans and labels hold sway at the moment'. But the bitter anti-climax that did follow provoked no rethinking. Instead, it provoked all sorts of new demands."
2013-08-28 (5773 Alul 22)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
Illiberal Leftist/ Dem/ Red/ Regressive/ Socialist/ Fascist/ Nazi/ Marxist/ Communist/ Maoist/ Collectivist "re-education" at George Mason U
Town Hall
World Net Daily
"This week begins my 34th year serving on George Mason University's distinguished economics faculty. You might imagine my surprise when I received a letter from its Office of Equity and Diversity Services notifying me that I was required to 'complete the in-person Equal Opportunity and Prevention of Sexual Harassment Policies and Procedures training'. This is a leftist agenda for indoctrination, thought control and free speech suppression to which I shall refuse to submit. Let's look at it. Ideas such as equity and equal opportunity, while having high emotional value, are vacuous analytical concepts. For example, I've asked students whether they plan to give every employer an equal opportunity to hire them when they graduate. To a person, they always answer no. If they aren't going to give every employer an equal opportunity to hire them, what's fair about forcing employers to give them an equal opportunity to be hired? I'm guilty of gross violation of equality of opportunity, racism and possibly sexism. Back in 1960, when interviewing people to establish a marital contract, every woman wasn't given an equal opportunity. I discriminated against not only white, Indian, Asian, Mexican and handicapped women but men of any race. My choices were confined to good-looking black women. You say, 'Williams, that kind of discrimination doesn't harm anyone!' Nonsense! When I married Mrs. Williams, other women were harmed by having a reduced opportunity set. George Mason's Office of Equity and Diversity Services has far more challenging equity and diversity work than worrying about the re-education of Professor Williams. They must know that courts have long held that gross racial disparities are probative of a pattern and practice of discrimination. The most notable gross racial disparity on campus, and hence probative of discrimination, can be found on GMU's fabulous men's basketball team. Blacks are less than 9% of student enrollment but are 85% of our varsity basketball team and dominate its starting 5. It's not just GMU. Watch any Saturday afternoon college basketball game and ask yourself the question fixated in the minds of equity, diversity and inclusion hunters: Does this look like America? Among the 10 players on the court, at best there might be 2 white players. In 2010, 61% of Division I basketball players were black, and only 31% were white. Allied with the purveyors of equity, diversity and inclusion are the multi-culturalists, who call for the celebration of cultures. For them, all cultures are morally equivalent and to deem otherwise is Eurocentrism. That's unbridled nonsense. Ask your multi-culturalist: Is forcible female genital mutilation, as practiced in nearly 30 sub-Saharan Africa and Middle Eastern countries, a morally equivalent cultural value? Slavery is practiced in Sudan and Niger; is that a cultural equivalent? In most of the Middle East, there are numerous limits on women -- such as prohibitions on driving, employment, voting and education. Under Islamic law, in some countries, female adulterers face death by stoning, and thieves face the punishment of having their hand severed. Are these cultural values morally equivalent, superior or inferior to those of the West? Western values are superior to all others. Why? The greatest achievement of the West was the concept of individual rights. The Western transition from barbarism to civility didn't happen over-night. It emerged feebly -- mainly in England, starting with the Magna Carta of 1215 -- and took centuries to get where it is today. One need not be a Westerner to hold Western values. A person can be Chinese, Japanese, Jewish, African or Arab and hold Western values. It's no accident that Western values of reason and individual rights have produced unprecedented health, life expectancy, wealth and comfort for the ordinary person. Western values are under ruthless attack by the academic elite on college campuses across America. They want to replace personal liberty with government control and replace equality before the law with entitlement. The multi-culturalism and diversity agenda is a cancer on our society, and our tax dollars and charitable donations are supporting it."
2013-08-28 (5773 Alul 22)
Anthony Watts & Bjorn Lomborg _Watts Up With That_
Cook's bogus, irrelevant, anti-science 97% consensus claim crumbles on examination
Proposed Bills 2013
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"The 'developing' world is famous for its crony [socialism]. What is less known is that, almost invariably, crony [socialism] arises because of the same interaction of [pseudo-]democracy, global [pseudo-]markets, and a market-dominant minority." --- Amy Chua 2003, 2004 _World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability_ pg151
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Thursday |
Donnerstag |
Yom Chamishi |
Giovedi |
2013-08-29
2013-08-29 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 277,359 in the week ending August 24, a decrease of 2,959 from the previous week. There were 312,542 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.
The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.2% during the week ending August 17, unchanged from the prior week's unrevised rate. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,821,658, a decrease of 58,419 from the preceding week's revised level of 2,880,077. A year earlier, the rate was 2.4% and the volume was 3,117,558.
The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending August 10 was 4,467,574, an increase of 28,918 from the previous week. There were 5,530,828 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.
No state was triggered "on" the Extended Benefits program during the week ending August 10...
States reported 1,511,619 persons claiming Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) benefits for the week ending August 10, an increase of 10,551 from the prior week. There were 2,273,317 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;
to 129,827,178 beginning 2013-07-06.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs
2013-08-29
_Association of American Physicians and Surgeons_
science abused for political agenda
"ambiguous statements by scientists are translated into alarmist statements by media and advocacy groups, influencing politicians to feed more money to the acquiescent scientists. In consequence, he writes, 'A profound dumbing down of the discussion...interacts with the ascendancy of incompetents.' Prizes and accolades are awarded for politically correct statements, even if they defy logic. 'Unfortunately, this also often induces better scientists to join the pack in order to preserve their status.', Lindzen adds... In normal science, models are judged by how well they agree with nature..."
2013-08-29
Johnathan Hettinger _Daily Illini_
text-book prices leading inflation: cui bono?
each student will spend $600 on books and supplies. 77.4% goes to publishers, 11.7% to authors (in 2008), 10% book-store employees, 7.2% book-store operations, 1% shipping, 3.7% book-store income... "In the last 10 years, textbook prices have risen by 57%... 'I want them to get access to the information through a variety of ways.', he said. '[When he was requiring his own books] There was too much overlap between what the students were reading and what they were hearing in class.'"
2013-08-29
Bjorn Carey
Stanford researchers describe mechanism which produces sun's magnetic field
2013-08-29
Jeremy C. Owens _San Jose CA Mercury News_
FB announced rewrite of privacy violation policies
Mike Isaac: All Things D
2013-08-29
Anthony Watts
snow-fall in South America
2013-08-29
Jack Dunphy _PJ Media_
California prisoner release to relieve over-crowding reulting in higher crime rates
2013-08-29
Bridget Johnson _PJ Media_
petition to defind ObummerDoesn'tCare has gathered over 880K signatures
"Defund it or own it. If you fund it, you're for it."
2013-08-29 (5773 Alul 25)
Victor Davis Hanson _Jewish World Review_
the Israeli Spring
Proposed Bills 2013
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"More than 1K mounted men gathered at Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga on the night of 1780-09-15, to hear a Presbyterian minister preach them into battle, as their Covenanter ancestors had done in Scotland. The frontiersmen knelt in the flickering light of burning pine knots as Samuel Doak, who had come west after [attending school] at Augusta Academy and Princeton, asked God's blessing on their cause..." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pp155-156
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Friday |
Freitag |
Yom Shishi |
Venerdi |
2013-08-30
2013-08-30
Anthony Watts
WUWT climate/weather hot sheet
2013-08-30
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
the Shenandoa river's navigation and commerce... and forward thinking
2013-08-30
Anthony Watts
media bias and malfeasance is a problem too big to ignore
2013-08-30
Willis Echenbach
accuracy, precision, and "1 watt per square metre"
2013-08-30
Michael Endler _Indormation Week_/_UBM_
sales of micro-computer systems down 9.7%
"This year's shipments to [Red China], arguably the most important developing region, are expected to decrease by more than 10% relative to 2012... By 2017, the firm anticipates increased demand for these portable devices in emerging markets such as China, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Central and Eastern Europe... both lap-top and desk-top shipments are expected to continue declining in mature markets, which include the United States, Western Europe, Japan and Canada."
2013-08-30
"Soulskill" & Dawn Kawamoto _Slash Dot_
salesforce.com to cut 200 jobs while revenues are rising
"It reportedly cut 100 jobs in October, when it merged its 'social media platform' companies Radian6 and Buddy Media."
2013-08-30
Robert N. Charette _IEEE Spectrum_
STEM skills crisis is a myth
"STEM workers at every stage of the career pipe-line, from freshly minted grads to mid- and late-career PhDs, still struggle to find employment as many companies, including Boeing, IBM, and Symantec, continue to lay off thousands of STEM workers... 277K STEM vacancies per year in the USA, 252K STEM bachelor's degree recipients, 80K STEM master's degree recipients, 20K STEM PhD recipients, 40K STEM associate degree recipients, [135K new H-1B recipients per year, between 400K & 700K present in USA at any time], and 11.4M STEM degree holders who currently work outside of STEM... According to Commerce, 7.6M individuals worked in STEM jobs in 2010, or about 5.5% of the U.S. work-force [is this the US talent pool, or the employed plus unemployed actively seeking work, or only the currently employed?]. That number includes professional and technical support occupations in the fields of computer science and mathematics, engineering, and life and physical sciences as well as management. The NSF, by contrast, counts 12.4M science and engineering jobs in the United States, including a number of areas that the Commerce Department excludes, such as health-care workers (4.3M) and psychologists and social 'scientists' (518K)... Of the 7.6M STEM workers counted by the Commerce Department, only 3.3M possess STEM degrees. Viewed another way, about 15M U.S. residents hold at least a bachelor's degree in a STEM discipline, but three-fourths of them -- 11.4M -- work outside of STEM... In 2008, the NSF surveyed STEM graduates who'd earned bachelor's and master's degrees in 2006 and 2007. It found that 2 out of 10 were already working in non-STEM fields. And 10 years after receiving a STEM degree, 58% of STEM graduates had left the field, according to a 2011 study from Georgetown University... the 2011 Georgetown University report mentioned above, by Anthony P. Carnevale, Nicole Smith, and Michelle Melton of the Center on Education and the Workforce. It estimated there will be slightly more than 2.4M STEM job openings in the United States between 2008 and 2018, with 1.1M newly created jobs and the rest to replace workers who retire or move to non-STEM fields; they conclude that there will be roughly 277K STEM vacancies per year. But the Georgetown study did not fully account for the Great Recession. It projected a down-turn in 2009 but then a steady increase in jobs beginning in 2010 and a return to normal by the year 2018. In fact, though, more than 370K science and engineering jobs in the United States were lost in 2011, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics... it just illustrates the difficulty of accurately predicting STEM demand and supply even a year or two out, let alone over a prolonged period... Many STEM jobs today are also targets for out-sourcing or replacement by automation... In engineering, for instance, your job is no longer linked to a company but to a funded project. Long-term employment with a single company has been replaced by a series of de facto temporary positions that can quickly end when a project ends or the market shifts. To be sure, engineers in the 1950s were sometimes laid off during recessions, but they expected to be hired back when the economy picked up. That rarely happens today. And unlike in decades past, employers seldom offer generous education and training benefits to engineers to keep them current, so out-of-work engineers find they quickly become technologically obsolete... The Georgetown study estimates that nearly two-thirds of the STEM job openings in the United States, or about 180K jobs per year, [the gate-keepers] will [sometimes more and other times less arbitrarily] require bachelor's degrees. Now, if you apply the Commerce Department's definition of STEM to the NSF's annual count of science and engineering bachelor's degrees, that means about 252K STEM graduates emerged in 2009. So even if all the STEM openings were entry-level positions and even if only new STEM bachelor's holders could compete for them, that still leaves 70K graduates unable to get a job in their chosen field. Of course, the pool of U.S. STEM workers is much bigger than that: It includes new STEM master's and PhD graduates (in 2009, around 80K and 25K, respectively), STEM associate degree graduates (about 40K), H-1B visa holders (more than [135K new H-1B recipients per year, between 400K & 700K present in USA at any time]), other immigrants and visa holders with STEM degrees, technical certificate holders, and non-STEM degree recipients looking to find STEM-related work. And then there's the vast number of STEM degree holders who graduated in previous years or decades... the price of labor has not risen, as you would expect it to do if STEM workers were scarce... In computing and IT, wages have generally been stagnant for the past decade, according to the EPI and other analyses. And over the past 30 years, according to the Georgetown report, engineers' and engineering technicians’ wages have grown the least of all STEM wages and also more slowly than those in non-STEM fields; while STEM workers as a group have seen wages rise 33% and non-STEM workers' wages rose by 23%, engineering salaries grew by just 18%. The situation is even more grim for those who get a PhD in science, math, or engineering. The Georgetown study states it succinctly: 'At the highest levels of educational attainment, STEM wages are not competitive [with costs of living nor with other fields].'... 'If there was really a STEM labor market crisis, you'd be seeing very different behaviors from companies.', notes Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, in New York state. 'You wouldn't see companies cutting their retirement contributions, or hiring new workers and giving them worse benefits packages. Instead you would see signing bonuses, you'd see wage increases. You would see these companies really training their incumbent workers... None of those things are observable.', Hira says. 'In fact, they're operating in the opposite way.'... In India, the director general of the Defence Research and Development Organisation, Vijay Kumar Saraswat, recently noted that in his country, 'a meagre four persons out of every 1000 are choosing S&T [science and technology] or research, as compared to 110 in Japan, 76 in Germany and Israel, 55 in USA, 46 in Korea and 8 in China'. Leaders in South Africa and Brazil cite similar statistics to show how they are likewise falling behind in the STEM race... According to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office, the U.S. government spends more than US $3G each year on 209 STEM-related initiatives overseen by 13 federal agencies. That's about $100 for every U.S. student beyond primary school. In addition, major corporations are collectively spending millions to support STEM educational programs [but not for new-hire or retained employee education and/or training]. And every U.S. state, along with a host of public and private universities, high schools, middle schools, and even primary schools, has its own STEM initiatives. The result is that many people's fortunes are now tied to the STEM crisis, real or manufactured... Companies would rather not pay STEM professionals high salaries with lavish benefits, offer them training on the job, or guarantee them decades of stable employment. So having an over-supply of workers, whether domestically educated or imported, is to their benefit. It gives employers a larger pool from which they can pick [cherry-pick] the 'best and the brightest', and it helps keep wages in check. No less an authority than Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, said as much [and so did economist Milton Friedman, and so did some of the NSF internal reports in the last half of the 1980s]."
Slash Dot
2013-08-30
Stephanie Overby _Network World_/_IDG_
off-shoring will kill 1.5M US "IT" jobs by 2017
"Approximately 1.5M IT jobs -- about half of the number that existed in North America and Europe in 2002 -- will have been eliminated by 2017, according to new research from The Hackett Group... Over that 15-year period, Hackett says 620K new IT jobs will have been produced while 1.2M will be eliminated due to productivity gains and 950K will have moved off-shore... Hackett predicts 63K net jobs will be lost this year..."
2013-08-30
Carol Marin _Chicago IL Sun Times_
American workers today gasping for air
"There is no time off when all your time is spent looking for work. Or working wherever you can, whenever you can."
2013-08-30
"ChemJobber"
pity the unemployed PhD physicists
"Over the past 10 months, particle physicists in the United States have conducted a planning exercise that culminated recently in a 9-day retreat at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, called 'Snowmass on the Mississippi' -- after the ski resort in Colorado where physicists used to gather. The grass-roots Snowmass Young Physicist Movement (YPM) conducted an on-line poll and held more than a dozen town hall meetings to find out what graduate students, post-docs, and untenured faculty members are thinking. 'For young particle physicists the issues are jobs, jobs, jobs.', says Bjoern Penning, 34, a postdoc at the University of Chicago and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois, and a co-convener of the Snowmass YPM."
2013-08-30
Ruth Mantell _MarketWatch_
UMich consumer sentiment index fell from 85.1 in late July to 82.1 in late August
more complete
Federal Reserve Board St. Louis
Proposed Bills 2013
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"The former Yugoslavia was composed of 6 states, which can be divided into 2 groups: the more economically developed northern states (Croatia and Slovenia) and the markedly poorer, less developed southern states (Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia). The Serbs were the largest ethnic group in the former Yugoslavia, numbering approximately 9.3M and comprising more than a third of the population. &nnbsp; By contrast, there were roughly 4.6M Croats in the former Yugoslavia." --- Amy Chua 2003, 2004 _World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability_ pp170-171
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Saturday |
Samstag |
Yom Shabbat |
Sabato |
2013-08-31
2013-08-31
Anthony Watts
WUWT weather/climate hot sheet
"Algae evolved more than 500M years ago, when CO2 levels were ~15-17 times higher than the present; current CO2 levels are near the lowest levels of the past 500M years."
2013-08-31
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
John Esten Cooke... but not the Cooke most would recognize
"When reading about the early 19th century's top authors (I'm defining them as such, for their ability demonstrated in their works... in that they were able to make their way into popular literature circles of the time) from the Shenandoah Valley, I find that I'm interested first in what influenced them, and next on how they embedded their own thinking (subtly or not) about the political and social movements of the time, in their works. For example, in the Encyclopedia Virginia (contemporary online version), there is a piece about John Esten Cooke. The author (John O. Beaty) states that Cooke, 'in his own works, [was] dragged by literature, and read voraciously works by Thomas Carlyle, Sir Walter Scott, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Washington Irving, among other British and American writers.'"
2013-08-31
Richard Guy
examining the hypothesis that "post-glacial rebound is a myth"
"The Governments of the United States and Canada are concerned about the ebbing water levels in the Great Lakes. For years the water levels in the great lakes and other lakes have been declining without any signs of ever returning to previous levels. The best news is that there is no hope that the water levels will ever return... Now that The State of New Jersey has discovered the land bonanza they are gaining as the sea recedes they have been looking over old survey maps to find out where the sea was back in 1776. They are proposing to claim retroactive taxes from land-owners [sea-owners?] who have occupied these lands back to those historical times. They estimate that they have accumulated 830K acres of land from the sea since 1776. The State of New York can make a similar claim as it includes long Island the Sounds and Brooklyn Shorelines. An exhibition by the New York Library in 2010 showed the mapping of the New York shore-line over three hundred years. The entire New York coast-line has gained a quarter mile of land over that period... our seas are receding as our planet expands. The sea is not rising."
Anthony Watts:
Some people asked why I should publish 'rubbish science' like this. The reason is the same that I often publish some 'rubbish science' from climatology; it deserves ridicule for the ridiculous premise of the idea. At some point, when the next ice age kicks in, we will start to see the seas recede... The new land that Mr. Guy sees is from silting deposition. For example the delta of the Mississippi river continues to grow each year for that reason. Plus, with GPS enabled altimetry systems, we can now actually measure isostasy changes.
2013-08-31
Maria Ll. Calleja et al.
prevalence of strong vertical CO2 and O2 variability in the top meters of the ocean
2013-08-31
Barry Brill
Can the UN IPCC do science? Can they keep up with new findings? Do they want to?
Proposed Bills 13
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"At least 10% of young adults, and perhaps 30% of teenagers, carry the deadly meningococcal bacterium, but it lives quite harmlessly in the throat. Just occasionally -- in about 1 young person in 100K -- it gets into the blood-stream and makes them very ill indeed. In the worst cases, death can come in 12 hours." --- Bill Bryson 2003 _A Short History of Nearly Everything_ pg314
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2013 Summer
Hal Salzman _Issues_ vol29 issue 4
what talent shortages? the evidence about the STEM talent pool
"...president's...Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. According to its analysis of the engineering work-force, the nation is currently graduating about 25K more engineers every year than find work in that field... In 2012 September, Hewlett Packard announced that it planned to lay off [dump, not temporary furlough] 15K workers by the year's end, reaching a total of 120K lay-offs over the past decade. Or consider General Electric's recent re-location of its 115-year-old X-ray head-quarters from Wisconsin to Beijing, after earlier expansion of its corporate R&D labs in India and Red China. These companies represent the general trend, in industry after industry, of locating STEM-intensive activities off-shore while shrinking their USA work-forces. IBM, for example, reduced its USA work-force by 30% and now has 4 times as many off-shore as domestic employees... It is not clear what producing another 10K engineers would do, especially as fewer engineering graduates find engineering jobs and salaries are flattening for all but a few fields... Y2K 'crisis'... The industry [executives] responded to the challenges in similar fashion as its forbears: It trained legions of capable, if un-skilled, workers in the interion (but of India, not the USA) and imported guest-workers, often by routing them through colleges that could give them the industry-relevant skills [and flexible ethics] to be employable... In fact, the [USA] graduates more than 2 times as many STEM students each year as find jobs in STEM fields. For the 180K or so openings annually, USA colleges and universities supply 500K graduates. Accepting that STEM field definitions are overly restrictive and that in even marginally related occupations there could be a productive use of workers with STEM degrees, these numbers still represent a 50% to 70% greater supply than demand... 'IT'...hires only two-thirds of each year's graduating class of bachelor's degree computer scientists. By comparison, three-quarters or more of graduates in health fields are hired into related occupations... Our interviews with engineers, technology managers, and othersin STEM fields find a broad and deep consensus that these fields are not highly attractive as careers financially nor for employment stability. In the 'IT' industry, a common view among managers and workers is that the occupation was great for their generation but the ride is now over, and they would not recommend an 'IT' or engineering career to their sons and daughters. The threat of off-shoring and an in-flux [flood] of guest-workers are paramount in their assessment of the prospects in these fields... Guest-workers provide benefits to the [executives of] companies that hire them in the form of lower wages [& pliability, & flexible ethics], but there is little evidence to suggest that they strengthen the [USA's] science, engineering, or technology work-force..."
Congressional candidate fund-raising, expenditures, and debt
USA Over-Population Clock
World + USA Over-Population Clocks
Jimbo Wales's WikiPedia on World Over-Population
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"Crossing the Carolina mountains in snow, the horsemen hastened eastward to halt a raiding force from Cornwallis's army, led by a young Scottish lieutenant colonel, Patrick Ferguson. Commanding the Americans were 4 colonels: William Campbell of Western VA, John Sevier of the Watauga region, Isaac Shelby of the KY territory, and Benjamin Cleveland of NC. These 4 took turns as leader, with the understanding that Campbell, the most experienced, would command in battle. The frontiersmen caught up with Ferguson's 1,100-man Loyalist force at Kings Mountain, a plateau at the end of a series of hills, just south of the NC border. Un-observed by British outposts, they dismounted and tied their horses before marching in 2 columns almost to the plateau's base. When Patrick Ferguson learned of their arrival, he commanded his men to begin firing. Then, as successive waves of frontiersmen reached the plateau's top, Ferguson ordered his men to repel them with bayonets. Three times the attackers were pushed from the mound... Ferguson, commanding his Loyalists on horse-back, was killed by a shot in the midst of the bloody inferno." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pp155-156
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