Batman Begins

2006-05-01

2006-05-01
_Dice_
Dice Report: 89,286 job ads

2006-05-01 00:41PDT (03:41EDT) (07:41GMT)
Robyn Blumner _Salt Lake Tribune_
Deny Illegal Immigrants Jobs
"There is only one way to keep poorly paid people from Latin America and Asia from smuggling themselves into the United States: Deny them a job.   We don't have to deport 11M [to 24M] illegal aliens, which, as the president suggested, would be impossible.   If the work dries up, they will leave of their own accord.   Employers are the key and everyone knows it.   It is on the jobs front that the hypocrisy of our leaders becomes so maddeningly apparent.   From 1997 to 2005, we added 4,300 agents to patrol our borders, increasing the force to 11,100 and making it appear as though the government was getting serious about a crack-down, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.   But at the same time, the number of federal immigration agents who investigated work-site compli- ance actually went down, from 240 in 1999 to 65 in 2004, according to the Government Accountability Office [GAO].   The same study found that the number of notices of intent to fine employers who had hired illegal aliens dropped to 3 in 2004.   At least 7M illegal immigrants are estimated to be working, but our immigration service could only find 3 employers hiring them."

2006-05-01
_San Antonio Business Journal_/_New Mexico Business Weekly_
AeA report on tech employment
"New Mexico's high tech industry employs 42,500 and accounts for nearly 77% of all high tech exports from the state, ranking it as the second largest high tech exporter in the nation, according to a report recently released by a national non-profit trade association.   AeA, formerly known as the American Electronics Association and which represents [executives from] all segments of the technology industry, released the findings in its annual 'Cyberstates 2006' report.   Data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that New Mexico's exports to [Red China], its largest export market, increased by 454% between 2004 and 2005, from about $40M to about $180M.   More than 90% of those high tech exports were products manufactured by Santa Clara, CA-based Intel Corp.'s giant chip manufacturing facility in Rio Rancho.   The report cites a net loss of 1,300 jobs in New Mexico's high tech industry in 2004, but adds that it still comprises 7% of the state's work-force, the 6th highest concentration of tech workers in the nation.   Nationally, high tech employment added approximately 61K jobs for a total of 5.6M workers in 2005, the first increase in tech jobs in 4 years.   U.S. high tech exports were also up by 4% for a total trade value of $199G in 2005."

2006-05-01 06:19PDT (09:19EDT) (13:19GMT)
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
Incomes and inflation accelerated in March
"Personal incomes increased 0.8% in March, the biggest gain since September, after rising 0.3% in February, the Commerce Department said...   Consumer prices rose 0.4% in March after rising 0.1% in February, as measured by the personal consumption expenditure [PCE] index.   Core prices (which exclude food and energy prices) rose 0.3%, the biggest gain since October."
BEA press release

2006-05-01 07:03PDT (10:03EDT) (14:03GMT)
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
Construction spending rose 0.9% in March

2006-05-01 07:17PDT (10:17EDT) (14:17GMT)
Greg Robb _MarketWatch_
ISM factory index rose from 55.2 in March to 57.3 in April
ISM report

2006-05-01
Simon Montlake _Christian Science Monitor_
You KNOW It's Ridiculous When Red Chinese Manufacturing Executives Whine "Labor Shortage"
"Those workers that remain in coastal cities like Dongguan, whose sprawl of tile-roof factories belch into a jaundiced sky, are demanding higher wages - and getting their voices heard.   Minimum wages are on the rise, as authorities respond to the labor shortage, setting a new floor for private employers.   This pressure on factory payrolls, coupled with rising cost of materials and energy, is starting to bite.   Retail buyers warn that textile factories in Bangladesh and India are under-cutting [Red China] and blame double-digit wage hikes here for inflating costs."

2006-05-01
Kate Moser _Christian Science Monitor_
Balance returning to new grad job market?

2006-05-01
Kelly Mills _Australian IT_
More jobs show up in April in Australia
"Job vacancies in the information technology and communications sector have risen by more than 30% since this time last year, federal government figures show.   The monthly Employment and Workplace Relations Department ICT vacancy index rose by 5.3% in the 4 weeks to mid-April, 31 per cent higher than in 2005 April.   The 3 hi-tech online recruiting sites included in the index averaged about 20,800 vacancies in those 4 weeks...   the Olivier Internet Job Index, had previously reported that opportunities in March in the sector had risen by 10.65%, seasonally adjusted, over February figures...   Despite the increase over the past 12 months, teh ICT index is still almost 58% lower than it was in 2000, during the peak of demand for tech skills."

2006-05-01
Deborah Rothberg _Channel Insider_
Study Shows Down-Side of IT Certificates
"pay for certified IT skills falls short of the pay for non-certified skills.   2006 Q1 Hot Technical Skills and Certifications Pay Index, released April 25 by Foote Partners, a New Canaan, CT, IT compensation and work-force management firm, found that pay premiums for non-certified IT skills grew 3 times faster than for certified ones in a 6-month period spanning 2005-2006...   Tracking the market value of 212 IT skills and certifications, premium pay for 103 non-certified skills averaged 7.1% of the base salary for a single skill.   This number was up from 6.8% in 2005 Q1, and 6.6% in 2004 Q1.   Pay for non-certified skills grew nearly 70% more than certifications, or 4.4% versus 2.6% respectively."

2006-05-01
Robyn A. Friedman _Florida Sun-Sentinel_
Telecomm employment up in Florida
"AeA, a Washington, DC-based trade association representing the high-tech industry [i.e. lobbying for tech executives], recently reported that Florida ranked second in the nation for high-tech industry employment.   Employment jumped by 6,700 jobs between 2003 and 2004, the latest state data available, the report stated.   The only state to add more tech jobs was Virginia.   In addition to strong employment growth, Florida also experienced an increase in both technology exports and venture-capital investments.   Tech exports, which represent 33% of Florida's total exports, grew by $1.5G in 2005, the largest increase in the nation.   Venture-capital investments in Florida also grew by 23% in 2005.   Fort Lauderdale-based IT staffing firm Protech has released the results of its second annual survey of IT professionals.   Although 71% of the 5K area technology workers surveyed reported recent salary increases, 84% said they were willing to leave their employer for a better opportunity.   The survey also showed the average technology worker in South Florida got a salary increase of 9.6% last year and that workers considered career growth the most important factor after salary in considering a job offer."

2006-05-01
David Sirota _San Francisco Chronicle_
Fighting the Hostile Take-Over
American Workers Coalition
Common Dreams
"Last month, in 3 little-noticed stories buried in the business press, the hostile take-over was on full display.   The first story was a tiny one buried on the inside pages of the Wall Street Journal about how the U.S. Treasury Department worked hand in hand with IBM to kill bipartisan pension legislation in 2003.   The bill would have outlawed pension schemes employed by IBM and other big companies that give workers less than they were originally promised.   The report noted that at the time, 'a Treasury official disclosed non-public information to IBM and failed to report expenses paid by a lobbyist for a pension-industry trade group' -- all while allowing the company to circulate documents on Capitol Hill claiming the U.S. Treasury officially was working with IBM to kill the legislation.   Clearly, the behavior ran afoul of the lobbying laws supposedly creating a boundary between business and government.   But as the Journal went on to note, 'The Justice Department didn't pursue criminal or civil charges in the matters because they didn't meet the agency's ''prosecutorial threshold''.'   The legislation was ultimately killed.   In effect, a major federal agency -- in this case the Treasury Department -- was the victim of the hostile take-over, serving as an arm of Corporate America, rather than a regulator.   A few weeks later, the well-respected trade publication Manufacturing & Technology News reported that the Bush administration continues to refuse to fully release a congressionally mandated report on the effects of out-sourcing.   Federal law required the White House to release the Commerce Department report well before the election in 2004.   But the report 'was delayed for clearance by the White House and the Republican-controlled Congress due to the controversial nature of the subject', the publication noted in an earlier story.   Put another way, the White House and its corporate benefactors who were profiting from out-sourcing didn't want to even talk about the pesky issue during the president's re-election campaign.   The only thing made public was a 12-page summary, released after the election, which 'focuses on the allegedly positive impacts for the U.S. economy of the off-shore out-sourcing'.   The original report's findings from career civil service professionals was scrubbed from this shortened summary, and instead 'quoted research conducted by organizations and individuals that have been funded by corporations that benefit from shifting jobs over-seas'.   Again, a major federal agency -- in this case the Commerce Department -- was the victim of a hostile take-over.   Now, just a week ago, Business Week reported that companies are beginning to use America's bankruptcy laws not only to avoid fulfilling their pension, wage and health-care promises to workers, but to actually wholly eliminate U.S. jobs and ship them over-seas.   You may recall that last year, every bought-off Republican and Democrat in Washington was running around trumpeting the credit-card industry-written bankruptcy bill.   They claimed that it would put an end to bankruptcy 'abuse' -- but all it did was gut bankruptcy protections for individual citizens, while deliberately preserving critical loop-holes for Big Business.   It was the hostile take-over of Congress, whereby corporate-campaign donors convinced law-makers to stiff their own constituents -- and then brag about it.   Not surprisingly, the corporate loop-holes are being exploited.   The magazine reports that Delphi CEO Robert 'Steve' Miller -- the same guy trying to cut workers' pay by 40% while preserving executives' multi-million-dollar pay packages -- 'wants to use the bankruptcy courts to drastically slash Delphi's U.S. presence, thus freeing it up to focus on its already vast over-seas production'.   Delphi would be allowed to get out of its labor contracts, and slash its U.S. work-force by more than 70% -- all while preserving (and perhaps increasing) its workforce in cheap over-seas labor markets.   Additionally, as Business Week notes, if Miller gets his way and is able to use bankruptcy laws as a means to out-source jobs, other companies are expected to follow suit."

2006-05-01
Tom Tancredo _National Review_
Imagine a Day Without Illegal Aliens
"Hospital emergency rooms across the southwest would have about 20% fewer patients, and there would be 183K fewer people in Colorado without health insurance.   ObGyn wards in Denver would have 24% fewer deliveries and Los Angeles's maternity-ward deliveries would drop by 40% and maternity billings to Medi-Cal would drop by 66%.   Youth gangs would see their membership drop by 50% in many states, and in Phoenix, child-molestation cases would drop by 34% and auto theft by 40%.   In Durango, Colorado, and the Four Corners area and the surrounding Indian reservations, the methamphetamine epidemic would slow for one day, as the 90% of that drug now being brought in from Mexico was held in Albuquerque and Farmington a few hours longer.   According to the sheriff of La Plata County, Colorado, meth is now being brought in by ordinary illegal aliens as well as professional drug dealers...   If illegal aliens stayed home -- in Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, and 100 other countries -- the Border Patrol would have 3,500 fewer apprehensions (of the 12K who try each day).   Colorado [tax-victims] would save almost $3M in one day if illegals do not access any public services, because illegal aliens cost the state over $1G annually according to the best estimates.   Colorado's K-12 school classrooms would have 131K fewer students if illegal aliens and the children of illegals were to stay home, and Denver high schools' drop-out rate would once again approach the national norm.   Colorado's jails and prisons would have 10% fewer inmates, and Denver and many other towns would not need to build so many new jails to accommodate the overcrowding.   Our highway patrol and county sheriffs would have about far fewer DUI arrests and there would be a dramatic decline in rollovers of vanloads of illegal aliens on I-70 and other highways.   On a Day Without an Illegal Immigrant, thousands of workers and small contractors in the construction industry across Colorado would have their jobs back, the jobs given to illegal workers because they work for lower wages and no benefits."

2006-05-01
Barbara Simpson _World Net Daily_
We've Been Had
"Employers -- businesses of all sizes -- [the executives, actually] have caved in to the millions of illegal invaders of this country.   They hire them, they claim it's not their job to check legality, they lobby to keep political protection and non-enforcement of employment laws already on the books, and they pay cheap wages, but pocket the difference when they charge the consumer."

2006-05-01
Michael Collins _Cincinnati Post Times Star_
Jean Schmidt
"U.S. representative Jean Schmidt is animated, outspoken and often controversial.   Boring, she's not.   Illegal immigrants are scurrying across the country's southern border 'like rats fleeing a ship', the congresswoman complained during a recent appearance before a group of Republican women in Blue Ash...   Schmidt's outspokenness is one of her greatest assets and biggest liabilities as she asks voters to send her back to Congress for a second term.   The Miami Township Republican faces former Congressman Bob McEwen and 2 other candidates in Tuesday's GOP primary.   Schmidt's supporters consider her a breath of fresh air, an unusual politician who's willing to tell it like it is regardless of who she may offend...   Schmidt also has been hounded for claiming the endorsement of the Family Research Council and 2 Republican congressmen -- Steve Chabot of Cincinnati and Tom Tancredo of Colorado.   Schmidt removed their names from her campaign web site after the congressmen said they never endorsed her.   The elections commission found Schmidt's claims of endorsements from Tancredo and the Family Research Council to be in violation of elections law but issued no penalty...   The campaign squabbling aside, what voters really want to hear about, Schmidt said, are her record, her beliefs and her vision for the district.   As if to prove her point, Schmidt fielded questions about immigration reform, the war in Iraq, the Dubai ports deal and other issues during a Northeast Women's Republican Club luncheon a couple of weeks ago in Blue Ash.   Not one person asked her about Murtha, her resume or the endorsement flap.   Those things may make good sound bites for the opposition, but they don't matter to voters...   Schmidt argues that President Bush's tax cuts should be made permanent; supports building a wall along the border with Mexico to keep illegal immigrants from entering the United States; advocates the expansion of association health plans and health savings accounts; and believes American troops should remain in Iraq until the country is stabilized and a constitution is in place."

2006-05-01 15:34PDT (18:34EDT) (22:34GMT)
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
New Fed chief, Ben Bernanke, may be misunderstood as much as Greenspan

2006-05-01
Tom O'Malley _American Workers Coalition_
Requirements to live, work and drive in Mexico
"I worked under a tourist Visa for 3 months and could legally renew it for 3 more months...   During that 6 months our Mexican and US Attorneys were working to secure a permanent work visa called a FM3.   It was in addition to my US passport...   To apply for the FM3 I needed to submit the following notarized originals (not copies) of my: 1. Birth certificate...   2. Marriage certificate.   3. High school transcripts and proof of graduation.   4. College transcripts for every college I attended and proof of graduation.   5. Two letters of recommendation from supervisors I had worked for at least one year.   6. A letter from The St. Louis Chief of Police indicating I had no arrest record in the US and no outstanding warrants and was 'a citizen in good standing'.   7. Finally; I had to write a letter about myself that clearly stated why there was no Mexican Citizen with my skills and why my skills were important to Mexico...   All of the above were in English that had to be translated into Spanish and be certified as legal translations and our signatures notarized.   It produced a folder about 1.5 inches thick with English on the left side and Spanish on the right.   Once they were completed [we] spent about 5 hours accompanied by a Mexican Attorney touring Mexican Government office locations and being photographed and fingerprinted at least 3 times.   At each location and we remember at least 4 locations we instructed on Mexican tax, labor, housing, and criminal law and that we were required to obey their laws or face the consequences.   We could not protest any of the Governments actions or we would be committing a felony.   We paid out $4K...   When this was done we could legally bring in our household goods that were held by US customs in Laredo, Texas...   We could not buy a home and were required to rent at very high rates and under contract and compliance with Mexican law...   We were required to get a Mexican drivers license.   This was an amazing process.   The company arranged for the Licensing agency to come to our Headquarters location with their photography and finger print equipment and the laminating machine.   We showed our US license, were photographed and finger-printed again and issued the license instantly after paying out a $6 fee.   We did not take a written or driving test and never received instructions on the rules of the road...   We then had to pay and file Mexican income tax annually using the number of our FM3 as our ID number.   The company's Mexican accountants did this for us and we just signed what they prepared.   It was about twenty legal size pages annually.   The FM 3 was good for 3 years and renewable for 2 more after paying more fees.   Leaving the country meant turning in the FM3 and certifying we were leaving no debts behind and no outstanding legal affairs (warrants, tickets or liens) before our household goods were released to customs..."

2006-05-01

DJIA	11,343.29
S&P 500	1,305.19
NASDAQ	2,304.79
10-year US T-Bond	5.13%
crude oil	73.70

I usually get this info from MarketWatch, which gets them from BigCharts.
 
 

2006-05-02

2006-05-02 04:50PDT (07:50EDT) (11:50GMT)
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
Lay-off announcements were down 8.1% in April
Houston Chronicle
Monsters & Critics
Reuters
CNN/Money
"Planned corporate lay-offs declined by 8.1% in April to 59,688, the lowest level in a year, according to a monthly survey of job-reduction announcements released Tuesday by Challenger Gray & Christmas.   Total job reductions so far in 2006 have amounted to 315,566, down 8.5% in the year to date..."

2006-05-02
Alan Bjerga _Wichita Eagle_
H-1B visa debate
"U.S. companies misuse visa programs to bring in cheaper foreign labor and encourage white-collar out-sourcing.   Foreign workers 'basically get their training here before they're sent back' to compete with or replace U.S. jobs, said Ron Hira, a critic of current guest-worker programs.   Wichita State is the largest, but far from the only, employer of highly skilled immigrants in Kansas.   According to a federal immigration data-base, Kansas businesses in 2004 received about 1,250 H-1Bs -- the visa that goes to highly skilled foreign guest workers.   Wichita State received about 30 visas, granted mainly for research engineers and professors.   The number of H-1Bs given nationwide is capped at 65K a year, but various exemptions end up allowing about 220K foreigners a year into the U.S.A. legally on the 6-year visa.   After Wichita State, Wichita's aerospace companies are the state's top employers of skilled foreign labor.   Cessna has about 20 engineers on H-1Bs, said human resources chief Jim Walters...   The Senate Judiciary Committee-passed bill still under debate would raise the ceiling, with exemptions included, to up to 300K workers a year...   foreign workers pose a security threat, drive down white-collar wages and often end up working in their home countries anyway [as they pave the way to off-shoring]...   'Right now there's no test on whether a corporation can't find American workers.', he said.   He also points to studies indicating that companies that out-source bring in foreign workers who don't stay.   Workers are trained in the U.S.A., then sent back over-seas to do the same work at a lower wage."

2006-05-02
Jude Sheerin _Scotsman_
Immigration Reform Threatens National Health Service Staff
"A change in immigration rules which will force many over-seas doctors to quit the UK could hit 13% of Scotland's health work-force, it was claimed today.   Up to 15K doctors, mostly from the Indian subcontinent but also from Africa, are working in British hospitals while training to become specialists.   But the government said in March that any UK or EU applicant, even if not as well qualified, must have priority over doctors from elsewhere."

2006-05-02 04:04PDT (07:04EDT) (11:04GMT)
Tom Shuford _Yahoo!_
Visas for high-tech workers can have perverse effects
USA Today
"It'd take pressure off our state education systems, which are in drastic need of reform.   For example, differential pay to attract scarce science or math teaching talent is verboten because of teacher union resistance.   But according to a 2003 report, 60% of physical science teachers in grades 7-12 had neither a major nor minor in the field.   It would also send a grim message to youngsters considering a major in science or engineering: Work hard, earn your degree in a very challenging field, and your government will suppress your salary and/or give your job to a foreigner."

2006-05-02
_Christian Science Monitor_
A guest-worker plan isn't a solution
"A later commission, headed by the late Democratic congresswoman Barbara Jordan of Texas, agreed.   Her group, which studied immigration for 6 years, rejected large-scale, low-skill guest-worker programs...   such programs depress wages, adversely affect Americans (including new legal residents), can lead to worker abuse, and present large social costs...   history shows that even a generous temporary-worker plan doesn't curb illegal immigration, and isn't temporary...   the US already offers select visas for temporary agricultural and other seasonal workers, tourists, and also highly skilled employees.   It's over-kill to add a large, new general category of workers -- especially when one considers that there's already low- and unskilled labor to be had in the USA.   Joblessness remains high for certain groups, such as high school drop-outs, African-Americans, and white teenagers.   Why aren't employers hiring them first?   Importing temporary workers simply for their willingness to accept low wages, while companies avoid paying higher wages to jobless Americans, is hardly a wise immigration policy."

2006-05-02
Jim Kouri _Post Chronicle_
Why aren't the feds perp-walking Tyson executives?: And why were so many IFCO perps released without bail already?
"when we have companies such as Tyson Foods closing plants because they expect their illegal alien workers to partake in protests, boycotts and demonstrations, why aren't the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents swarming all over their facilities?   Perhaps the reason Tyson Foods openly hires illegal aliens is that it's head honchos are tight with the Clintons and President George W. Bush...   Joe Henrickson, a former Tyson airplane pilot, admitted to transporting endless envelopes of cash from Tyson corporate offices to Governor Clinton, money that doesn't figure in the annual accounting system.   Also, Tyson Foods was fined $6M as a result of confessing their donation of at least $12K in cash and gifts to former U.S. Agricultural Secretary Mike Espy, up until his swift departure in early 1994.   A Wall Street Journal article noted that, 'Espy had been feted by Don Tyson at a football game and had outlined several regulatory decisions that seemed to benefit Tyson Foods.'   In another instance, inside information supplied by Tyson Foods chief counsellor James Blair to Hilary Clinton on a swine futures market deal enabled the First Lady to make an overnight profit of approximately $100K.   Recent records show that Tyson was a big contributer to President Bush's campaigns, as well...   Truth be told, the worksite enforcement program has been a low priority under both INS and ICE.   For example, in fiscal year 1999 INS devoted about 9% of its total investigative agents' time to work-site enforcement, while in fiscal year 2003 it allocated about 4%.   ICE officials claim that the agency has experienced difficulties in proving employer violations and setting and collecting fine amounts that meaningfully deter employers from knowingly hiring unauthorized workers...   Recruiters or referrers for a fee are required to retain the Form I-9 records for 3 years after the date of the hire.   Failure to properly complete and retain the Form I-9 subjects the employer to civil penalties ranging from $110 to $1,100.   Hardly a penalty for companies making millions of dollars in profits due to low wages paid to illegal aliens."

2006-05-02
Scott R. Short _Northern Illinois University Northern Star_
US policies flawed
"the proposed immigration bill before Congress also contains provisions to increase the number of H-1B visas issued each year and to form a new visa category, the F-4.   The H-1B visa is the main mechanism used by U.S. corporations to import cheaper foreign workers for higher-paying, high-tech jobs.   And, the new F-4 visa will basically provide green card (legal permanent residency) to an unlimited number of foreign graduate students of math, engineering, technology or the physical sciences after they graduate from U.S. universities...   thousands of U.S. citizens, some already trained in high-tech, are currently out of work...   foreigners are no smarter than U.S. citizens.   The proposed F-4 visa will be particularly devastating as it will provide U.S. corporations an endless supply of cheaper imported high-tech workers beyond their wildest dreams, via the university conduit...   We also need to move away from our misguided national education policy that has for years relied on importing foreign graduate students in lieu of training our own citizens in high-tech fields of study."

2006-05-02

DJIA	11,416.45
S&P 500	1,313.21
NASDAQ	2,309.84
10-year US T-Bond	5.11%
crude oil	74.61

I usually get this info from MarketWatch, which gets them from BigCharts.
 
 

2006-05-03

2006-05-03 07:07PDT (10:07EDT) (14:07GMT)
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
Factory orders rose 4.2% in March

2006-05-03 07:34PDT (10:34EDT) (14:34GMT)
Greg Robb _MarketWatch_
ISM services index increased from 60.5 in March to 63.0% in April
"The employment index rose to 56.5 from 54.6."
ISM report

2006-05-03
_San Jose Daily Business News_
Semiconductor Industry Lobbyists Tout S2691 to Worsen Flood of Cheap Foreign Tech Labor
Business Wire
Information Week
Yahoo!
Aviran's Place
"The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) today expressed strong support for S2691...   The bill was introduced by Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) and co-sponsored by Senators George Allen (R-VA), Wayne Allard (R-CO), Robert Bennett (R-UT), Michael Enzi (R-WY), and Trent Lott (R-MS).   [It would exempt all students with advanced degrees from US colleges and universities from annual limits on numbers of H-1B and EB visas.   Provides for huge expansions of annual limits.   It would give foreign students with work riders 2 years after graduation to secure work visas.]"

2006-05-03
Steven Greenhouse & Michael Barbaro _Lakeland Ledger_
Sweat-Shops in Jordan
UPI
"Propelled by a free trade agreement with the United States, apparel manufacturing is booming in Jordan, its exports to America soaring twentyfold in the last 5 years.   But some foreign workers in Jordanian factories that produce garments for Target, WM and other American retailers are complaining of dismal conditions of 20-hour days, of not being paid for months and of being hit by supervisors and jailed when they complain."

2006-05-03
Tom Marten _East Texas Review_
Where does it end?
"I certainly understand the problem of deporting 12M-20M illegal immigrants.   But add to that their families, which under the new proposals will allow them to join their loved one in the USA once amnesty is granted, the number increases to 30M plus.   Then add at least 400K guest workers PER YEAR and where does it end?"

2006-05-03
Diane Alden _News Max_
Say NO to Immigration Perversion
"This particular identity group, demonstrators, were aided and abetted by corporate America, by church groups who have little responsibility for the support or upkeep of migrants, by collective identity outfits like La Raza, MALDEF, LuLac or the leftist anti-war group ANSWER and the mainstream media...   Guzzardi then provides the astonishing numbers: 'In 1986 about 3M illegal aliens resided in the United States; today's total, according to Wall Street investment bank Bear Stearns, is about 20M.   Assuming that immediately after the 1986 amnesty the illegal alien count was effectively zero, then 20M have arrived during the subsequent 2 decades.'...   This might suit corporate America or the collectivist left more than it benefits America or representative democracy.   Add the secular religion of communitarianism reflected by the Bush and Clinton factions, plus the ineffectual House of Representatives, complicit leftist federal courts, the corrupt U.S. Senate and we are sunk!...   What May Day did for America was to shine a light of truth on the complicit mainstream media, including Fox News, on this effort to obtain special privileges from cringing politicians for people who are breaking the law...   the core concepts of reconquista (the 're-conquest' of the Southwest by Mexico) have spread wide and deep -- from San Francisco to Los Angeles to Milwaukee to Arkansas and beyond.   In Denver, a large banner read: 'America Is a Continent Not a Country'...   It suits the corporate-collective that people remain unassimilated, easily manipulated, poorly paid, thrown on the charity of the states and [tax-victims], and remain a separate identity group which does not bode well for becoming -- American...   the corporate-collective [is] still refusing to take responsibility and stem the human tide where and when it should -- at our borders, ports and institutional immigration framework."

2006-05-03
Manfred Rosenow _Miami Herald_
Le toca como al biblico Jacob
"Ignoro, por supuesto, si su novia tendrá otras bases de visa para venir a EU, por ejemplo, visa de profesional (visa H-1B, pero que ahora mismo también se encuentra agotada), o visa L de gerente o ejecutiva multi-nacional, o... visa Q de bailarina exótica.   A Jacob -- mi antepasado bíblico -- le tocó esperar 14 años para poder casarse y llevarse a su Raquel, pero aguantó y perseveró, con éxito completo.   A usted sólo le tocaría esperar la mitad..."

2006-05-03
Deborah Rothberg _eWeek_
Silicon Valley has best tech pay, but expenses are high, too
Extreme Tech
"Silicon Valley, Boston, and New York top the list of highest-paying metropolitan areas for technology professionals..."

2006-05-03
Steve King _Congressional Record_ pp H2088 et seq.
Comparing Statistics
 
 

2006-05-04

2006-05-04 05:30PST (08:30EST) (13:30GMT)
Subri Raman & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
un-employment insurance weekly claims report
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 277,058 in the week ending April 29, a decrease of 14,914 from the previous week.   There were 290,824 initial claims in the comparable week in 2005.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 1.9% during the week ending April 22, unchanged from the prior week.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,425,101, a decrease of 57,827 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.0% and the volume was 2,564,797."
graphs

2006-05-04
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
US seasonally adjusted initial unemployment insurance claims rose 5K to highest level of year
"There are still 1.3M people who've been out of work longer than 27 weeks who are still looking for work."
graphs

2006-05-04 05:35PDT (08:35EDT) (12:35GMT)
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
Productivity up 3.2% in 2006Q1
"The United States has enjoyed a once-in-a-generation boom in productivity in the past 4 years, averaging 3.5% rather than the 2.2% long-term trend."

2006-05-04 06:30PDT (09:30EDT) (13:30GMT)
Angela Moore & Jennifer Waters _MarketWatch_
Retail sales up 6.6% in 2006 April from 2005 April

2006-05-04 09:56PDT (12:56EDT) (16:56GMT)
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
March income data revised by BEA
"The corrected data show incomes rose 0.5% in March, not the 0.8% that the agency had reported on Monday.   The correction shows income growth was much closer to the 0.4% gain that was expected by economists."
BEA press release

2006-05-04
_Corporate Crime Reporter_
David Sirota: Despite Hostile Take-Over, Not Willing To Let Go
"Sirota documents the hostile take-over by big business of the country on every major issue that matters to every American.   He documents myths -- jury awards and lawsuit costs to the economy are out of control -- lies -- America can't afford health care coverage because it is too expensive -- pathological lies -- our government tries to stop companies from shipping jobs over-seas -- and fairy tales -- companies are forced to pay higher taxes in the United States than in most other industrialized countries...   Yes, in Sirota, we are talking about a Democratic Party partisan.   The guts of Sirota's book are ten chapters showing how corporations have used their power to tilt the playing field toward big business on taxes, wages, jobs, debt, pensions, health care, prescription drugs, energy, unions, and legal rights...   They condemn the Democratic Party -- as does Sirota -- for being corrupted by big money interests.   But they are tethered to its rotting hulk.   And they cannot let go...   After a little bit of back and forth, it becomes clear -- Sirota will support the Democratic Party -- no matter the nominee -- against the Republican -- no matter the nominee.   To Sirota, the Republican Party is the party of big business.   And the Democratic Party is the party of the people.   The way it has been.   The way it always must be.   Although as he makes clear in his book, there has been a hostile take-over of the Democratic Party by big business...   After graduating from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 1998, he worked in various Democratic Party campaigns, did a stint at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Washington, DC, was the press spokesperson for Congressman Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), and then moved to Montana, where his wife now works for governor Brian Schweitzer."

2006-05-04 10:14PDT (13:14EDT) (17:14GMT)
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
US GDP rose 4.8% in 2006 Q1: business investment up 14.3%
"The price index for domestic purchases, which includes prices paid by business and government, increased 2.7% in the first quarter after 3.7% in the 4th quarter.   Real disposable income rose 3.2% annualized.   The savings rate fell to negative 0.7%, the 4th consecutive quarter of negative savings...   Investments in equipment and software increased 16.4% after a 5% gain.   It was the fastest growth in equipment and software investment since the first quarter of 2000.   Investments in structures rose 8.6% after 3.1%...   Imports increased 13%, while exports rose 12.1%.   The trade deficit subtracted 0.8 percentage points from growth."
 

2006-05-05

2006-05-04 22:00PDT (2006-05-05 01:00EDT) (2006-05-05 05:00GMT)
Kevin McCullough _World Net Daily_
Posse Mop-Up Plan
"On the issue of immigration, there are a lot of senators and one president reaching for the mop when the nation has yet to discover the valve.   Stop the leak, and then mop up the mess.   That should be the sound, reasoned strategy to solving the immigration dilemma, so why aren't those in Washington pursuing that very strategy?   Who knows?   But time has run out.   At least that's the way Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio sees it.   And he's decided to shut the valve off as best he can locally.   Local authorities have labored under the insane practice of 'catch and release' when dealing with immigration for some time now.   Even if they make the catch they have been strong-armed into turning them over to Border Patrol.   If you're not familiar with how this works, it goes like this: Catch an illegal alien, issue a citation for violation of immigration policy, instruct alien to appear at a future court date, drive the alien to the local bus station, and -- out of [tax-victim] funds -- provide a one-way bus ticket to any destination of choice.   And, oh yeah -- good luck finding anyone willing to return for their court date...   By Border Patrol's own admission -- at best -- they are only able to catch 1 out of every 4 illegals who penetrate the border...   Crossings in his county are down 70 percent over the first 4 months of 2006.   Now, he has gone so far as to [train and] deputize 100 volunteers to help him in his task...   Top Republican strategists tell me that there is no hope of [another] guest-worker program getting passed."

2006-05-04 22:00PDT (2006-05-05 01:00EDT) (2006-05-05 05:00GMT)
Ron Strom _World Net Daily_
National ID KKKard being pushed is "number of the beast"

2006-05-05
Karen Pallarito _Health Day_
Protecting Your Medical PrivacyPrivacy links

2006-05-05 12:14PDT (15:14EDT) (19:14GMT)
Robert Schroeder _MarketWatch_
US consumer debt was up 1.4% in March
"U.S. consumers took on an extra $2.52G in debt in March but decreased their amount of credit card debt, the Federal Reserve reported Friday.   Total outstanding consumer credit in March rose by 1.4% to $2.161T, the Fed said.   Revolving debt like that on credit cards fell by $140M, the first drop since last October.   Non-revolving debt like automobile loans, meanwhile, rose by $2.66G, or 2.4%, the Fed said.   February's total consumer credit was revised to rise by $4.5G versus a previously estimated $3.3G."

2006-05-05 12:32PDT (15:32EDT) (19:32GMT)
Suzanne Gamboa _San Francisco Chronicle_/_AP_
It's Easier to Immigrate Into USA than Many Nations
Manchester Guardian
Houston Chronicle
"The Law Library of Congress study of immigration laws in 6 countries found that all but Brazil have criminal penalties for illegal entry and presence within their borders.   In 4 of the countries -- Japan, Switzerland, Sweden and Egypt -- employers can be jailed for [from] 3 months up to 3 years for hiring illegal immigrants..."

2006-05-05
Matthew A. Roberts _Post Chronicle_ (beware the hordes of pop-ups)
According to a new Zogby poll Voters Reject Creation of Additional Guest-Worker Visa programs
American Daily
"64% of Americans support the House bill, with only 30% supporting the Senate plan.   Support for the enforcement-only approach by itself also proves to be widespread, with 81% of Republicans, 72% of Independents, 57% of Democrats, and 53% of Hispanics supporting the enforcement-only House bill."

2006-05-05
_WashTech_
New Senate Bill Would Increase H-1B Cap: Author/Sponsor Has Strong Ties to Indian Lobby
"The high-tech industry called in a chit on Republican U.S. Senators this week by getting them to introduce a new stand-alone Senate bill expanding the number of H-1B visa workers allowed into the country from [85K] to more than [135K].   The bill also creates a mechanism that employers could go beyond the cap by 20% based upon need.   [Executives of high-tech firms have] made expanding the H-1B visa program [their] number one political priority in Washington DC.   The prime sponsor of the bill, senator John Cornyn of Texas, has strong ties to the Indian lobby...   The only Senator that went on the trip [to India in 2004] was John Cornyn, where he spent 6 days at a cost of $13,818 according to his Travel Disclosure form.   In a speech to business leaders, on the trip, he said that out-sourcing was inevitable and that U.S. companies save costs, which makes them more competitive.   Cornyn is not up for re-election this year, but has garnered more than $145K in campaign contributions from the computer industry according to the Center for Responsive Politics website, since 2000...   The other sponsors of the bill are Senators George Allen (R-VA), Wayne Allard (R-CO), Robert Bennett (R-UT), Michael Enzi (R-WY), and Trent Lott (R-MS)...   all of the sponsors have received sizable contributions from the high-tech industry."

2006-05-05
"A Simple Jew"
Genealogy, Yichus, and Fathers-in-Law

2006-05-05

DJIA	11,577.74
S&P 500	1,325.76
NASDAQ	2,342.57
10-year US T-Bond	5.11%
crude oil	70.19
gold	684.30
silver	13.89
platinum	1,189.10
copper	0.2183

I usually get this info from MarketWatch, which gets them from BigCharts.
 
 

2006-05-06

2006-05-06
Norm Matloff _Center for Immigration Studies_
Best? Brightest? A Green Card Give-Away for Foreign Grads Would Be Unwarranted
pdf
Immigration Daily
"radical changes to laws on high tech work visas [are] being hidden in a 300-page Senate bill that is supposed to be about illegal immigration...   Victor Johnson, associate executive director at the Association of International Educators even said so to the press, remarking 'Hopefully there's enough support in the Senate for this that we can get this through while they're arguing about the other issues....
The H-1B program has long been criticized by U.S. programmer and engineering groups as a cheap labor program that adversely impacts job opportunities for American workers.   The critics also charge that another reason industry is so keen on hiring foreign workers is that they are de facto indentured servants.   This gives employers leverage which can be used, for instance, to force foreign workers to put in long evening and weekend hours, [something American tech workers have been doing for decades].'...
The bill would create a new F-4 visa category that would lead to an essentially automatic green card for any foreign student who earns a graduate degree in engineering or the physical sciences at a U.S. university.   [There have also been proposals to allow unlimited numbers of foreign students with advanced degrees obtain H-1B visas.]...
The 'free green card' proposals also comprise a response to the academic lobby, as U.S. universities have seen their foreign applicant pools for graduate programs shrink in recent years.   Students in other countries are less interested in study here these days because the U.S. job market is poor while opportunities back home are burgeoning.   This is causing academics to panic, since their lucrative federal research funding depends on having the 'bodies' to work in the labs.   Graduate study at the PhD level is unattractive to American students because the graduate assistant stipend is so low, as is the salary premium paid to PhDs in industry....
National Association of Foreign Student Advisers...   NAFSA has pointed out in the past, most foreign students in the tech area come to the United States in the hope of working here after graduation.   If the United States did not have a liberal foreign worker program, there would be fewer foreign students and many of NAFSA's members would be out of their jobs...   foreign workers would still be subject to exploitation under [the F-4] visa, and... there is no shortage of engineers with graduate degrees to justify such a visa...
the F-4 proposal would be in addition to, rather than a replacement for, the H-1B program....
Yet salary data show clearly that there is no shortage of engineers with graduate degrees...   average starting salaries for new Master's graduates in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Electrical Engineering, adjusted for inflation... are flat, or even downward-trending.   There is simply no indication of a labor shortage at the graduate level, the central premise underlying F-4 and similar proposals.   Salaries would be rising sharply if there were a shortage.   The curves are similar for the other main fields covered by the proposed legislation...
not only has the number of jobs been roughly constant, but also the number of jobs open to Americans has been on the decline.   Furthermore, it is very significant that the proposed F-4 visa program would give a newly-graduated foreign student a full year to find work in the United States.   If there were such an acute labor shortage, as claimed by the industry lobbyists, how it could it possibly take a year to find a job?   This provision shows that the drafters of the legislation fully understand that there is no labor shortage...
natives were paid approximately 13% more than the H-1Bs.   When combined with Type II savings [choosing younger workers over older] -- around 20% when comparing a 40-year-old to a worker of age 25 -- the savings [under-payments] are even larger.   If the H-1B is being sponsored for a green card, which can take as long as 6 years, the total savings [under-payments] over that time period can be $100K or more...
But while [Intel's Patrick Duffy] made it sound like there was 'something wrong' with American students for their failure to pursue graduate studies, the American students are simply making sound economic decisions, as the NSF knew they would.   Indeed, the above statement by the NSF notes that even the best American students would see the financial advantage of opting out of PhD studies...
Some foreign PhD students are indeed the world's 'best and brightest'.   I fully support the immigration of such individuals, and have played an active role in the hiring of outstanding foreign nationals from [Red China], India, and other countries to my department's faculty at the University of California, Davis.   However, only a small percentage of all foreign PhDs are of this caliber...   Harvard economics professor Richard Freeman... agrees that 'the huge influx of foreign students and workers keeps wages and employment opportunities below what they would otherwise be.   This discourages U.S. citizens from investing in science and engineering careers...'...   foreign PhD students are disproportionately enrolled in the academically weaker universities...   [paraphrasing: 37.2% of PhD students in the top quarter of programs are foreign-born, 44.5% of students in the next quarter are foreign-born, 47.5% of students in the next quarter are foreign-born, and 50.6% of students in the bottom quarter are foreign-born.]...
Of 63 recipients of the ACM System Software Award through 2005 (this is the award most closely associated with innovation in practice), only 7 have been foreign-born...
There already exist special visa categories for those of outstanding talent, namely the O-1 visa for temporary work and the EB-1 program for green cards...   Just as having a PhD is not a sufficient condition for being of outstanding talent, it is not a necessary condition for it either.   There is very little correlation between having a PhD or a Master's and doing outstanding work in the computer field.   Even lack of a Bachelor's degree is no obstacle.   Neither Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, nor Steve Jobs [nor Steve Wozniak], founders of MSFT, Oracle, and Apple/Pixar, respectively, even [had] a Bachelor's degree [at the time they did the work which earned them fame].   Linus Torvalds developed the Linux operating system while he was an under-graduate, and does not have a graduate degree.   Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web, has only a Bachelor's degree, and it is not in computer science...
when employers exhaust the supply of young American workers, they turn to hiring younger H-1Bs in lieu of hiring Americans over 35...   David, a U.S. native, made his immigrant parents proud.   He earned a Master's degree in Computer Science, has patents to his credit, and his work was even mentioned in a major national newspaper.   He is articulate and well-liked.   Yet he has not found steady engineering work since being laid off by a major firm a couple of years ago.   This is occurring while the industry claims it cannot find enough American engineers with graduate degrees.   David has such a degree, but the problem, of course, is that David is now about 35.   IOW, the 'shortage' is of young engineers with graduate degrees..
Thus F-4 and similar proposals to give 'free' green cards to foreign nationals hired from U.S. graduate programs are tailor-made for the industry, and would amount to congressionally-sanctioned age discrimination.   This would have a major adverse impact on American programmers and engineers over the age of 35...
The NSF policy paper discussed above observed, 'A growing influx of foreign PhD's into U.S. labor markets will hold down the level of PhD salaries...'...   Note that universities are employers too.   The graduate students receive a modest stipend for their work on university research projects.   This stipend is too low to attract many American students, just as the NSF predicted.   IOW, universities are just as addicted to cheap foreign labor as is industry, not only for the low cost itself but also for docility, as the dean pointed out...   borrowing Dean Seideman's words, the F-4s would 'do everything they can' to stay employed in their field for that magic 3-year period.   That means choosing the most stable job they can find, and then 'lying low' for 3 years.   They would be reluctant to ask for raises or do anything else that might jeopardize losing their employment status...
by making it easier for foreign students to obtain internship/co-op positions, the current bill would directly reduce opportunities for domestic students to ever get into software development careers...   Instead of making it easier for foreign tech graduates to be hired in U.S. industry, Congress should make it more difficult."
John Miano "The Bottom of the Pay Scale: Wages for H-1B Computer Programmers"
Eric Weinstein "How and Why Government, Universities, and Industry Create Domestic Labor Shortages of Scientists and High-Tech Workers" NBER working draft, MIT, 1998
Norm Matloff "On the Need for Reform of the H-1B Non-Immigrant Work Visa in Computer-Related Occupations" (pdf)
Senate Judiciary committee testimony
J. Kirkegaard "Out-Sourcing and Skill Imports: Foreign High-Skilled Workers on H-1B and L-1 Visas in the United States" Institute for International Economics, 2005 December.
John Miano "The Bottom of the Pay Scale: Wages for H-1B Computer Programmers"
Dept. of Labor H-1B info
Starting Salaries by degree
NACE salary surveys
Eric Weinstein, NBER "How and Why Government, Universities, and Industry Create Domestic Labor Shortages of Scientists and High-Tech Workers"
David S. North "Soothing the Establishment: The Impact of Foreign-Born Scientists and Engineers on America" University Press of America, 1995, page 48
Norm Matloff "Best? Brightest? A Green Card Give-Away for Foreign Grads Would Be Unwarranted"

2006-05-06 02:01PDT (05:01EDT) (09:01GMT)
_World Net Daily_
Zogby poll: 81% think local police should help DHS enforce immigration laws against illegal immigration

2006-05-06 02:01PDT (05:01EDT) (09:01GMT)
John Shinal _MarketWatch_
Firms now count stock option costs; so should investors
"Beginning in the second half of 2000 and all through 2001 and 2002, sales and profits at companies that analysts had been saying were on target for years of robust growth simply disappeared.   More than 6 years after the bubble burst, the Nasdaq Composite Index is at a level that is still less than half its 2000 March high."
 

2006-05-07

2006-05-07
_Silicon India_/_American Workers Coalition_
Programmers Guild Infiltrates Silicon India Job Fair in Silicon Valley
"- On 2006 April 21, SiliconIndia held a job fair for Indian nationals, billed as the 'one stop shop for job placements in USA and India'.   The U.S. companies recruiting Indians on F1, OPT, or H-1b visas within the U.S.A., and for work in their off-shore facilities in India, including: MSFT, Intel, Yahoo, Google, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, AMD, Intuit, and Accenture [formerly Andersen Consulting before they were caught up in the Enron fraud].   In all 31 companies were present.   The Programmers Guild sent a 'Euro-American' U.S. programmer to investigate.   He reported: 'There were around 150 attendees: a Chinese guy, plus one other non-Indian other than myself among the job seekers.   I was uncomfortable, but I didn't get any overt hostility.   The accompanying lecture/seminar made no pretense of addressing non-Indians.'   Many of the employers, such as Infineon, Sunovi, and Virage Logic only had positions open in India.   Others, for example Intuit and Phillips, may have had U.S. openings, but were only recruiting for India positions at the booth.   According to industry propaganda, there is a desperate shortage of tech workers in the U.S. while a surplus of the 'best and brightest' workers in the world are in India.   Why then, are both U.S. and Indian corporations recruiting in the U.S. for positions in India?"

2006-05-07
E.J. Mundell _Health Day_
DNA Screens May Provide Nutritional Guidance
"companies marketing special 'nutrition DNA tests' aimed at pinpointing genetic trouble spots that leave a person vulnerable to vitamin deficiencies or illness...   Genelex, which markets a $395 test covering 19 nutrition-linked genes...   prices ranging from less than $100 per screen to well over $2K, depending on the range of genetic testing conducted.   Most of these tests are aimed at preventive health -- spotting a DNA-based weakness early on, so that the individual can adjust his or her diet and/or lifestyle to help ward off illness.   For example, as part of its 19-gene 'panel', the Genelex screen looks for variations in the MTHFR gene, which helps regulate the synthesis and availability of dietary folic acid...   People with the normal 2 functioning copies of MTHFR should consume the USDA recommended daily allowance of 400 micrograms of folic acid, Coleman said.   However, people with just one well-functioning copy will need twice that amount, and those with 2 'slow' copies would require 1,200 micrograms per day, he said.   'We know that in the European population, there's about 2-thirds who have at least one slow copy of this gene.', he noted.   The Genelex test also looks for genes that suggest vulnerabilities for other deficiencies such as vitamins C and D, and calcium.   The test doesn't look for vulnerability to high cholesterol, but it can shed light on a weakness for 'metabolic syndrome' (a cluster of risk factors for heart disease) and for a propensity for diabetes or inflammatory disorders, Coleman said...   'Every time a test says it can tell you everything about yourself, from nutritional deficiencies to risks for chronic disease, I'm suspicious.', said Lisa Dorfman, an adjunct professor of nutrition at the University of Miami and a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association."

2006-05-07
Michael Kinsman _San Diego Union-Tribune_
Tables were turned at this reverse job fair
"This wasn't your typical job fair in which employers set up booths and job seekers browse to see if they are a good fit.   At this 'reverse' job fair at the Metro Career Center in San Diego, job seekers 55 and older stood by while employers approached them to check job qualifications and to talk."

2006-05-07
Edwin S. Rubenstein _V Dare_
April Jobs: Hispanics Up, Non-Hispanics Down (graph)
"The household survey reports a mere 47K jobs added last month. Hispanics were the sole beneficiaries.

April employment gains/losses by racial group

Total:	+47,000	+0.03%
Hispanic:	+91,000	+0.47%
Non-Hispanic:	-44,000	-0.04%
Black:	-28,000	-0.18%

The data suggest a classic displacement of non-Hispanic, primarily unskilled minority workers, by Hispanics.

This perception is reinforced
by the April pattern of
labor force participation rates

Hispanic:	68.9%	+0.1 point from March
Non-Hispanic:	65.7%	unchanged
Black:	64.4%	-0.1 point

... In 2006 April VDAWDI [V Dare American Worker Displacement Index] rose to a record 118.3."

2006-05-07
Paul Craig Roberts _V Dare_
The Fading US Economy
"The Bureau of Labor Statistics pay-roll jobs report [the establishment survey] released May 5 says the economy created 131K private sector jobs in April.   Construction added 10K jobs, natural resources, mining and logging added 8K jobs, and manufacturing added 19K.   Despite this unusual gain, the economy has 10K fewer manufacturing jobs than a year ago.   Most of the April job gain -- 72% -- is in domestic services, with education and health services (primarily health care and social assistance) and waitresses and bartenders accounting for 55K jobs or 42% of the total job gain.   Financial activities added 26K jobs and professional and business services added 28K.   Retail trade lost 36K jobs..."

2006-05-07
Christopher R. Moylan _San Jose Mercury News_
Shortage of skilled workers is a convenient mirage
"Know any scientists or engineers who have been laid off in the last 5 years?   Most readers would be able to answer 'yes' to that question, but you'd never know it from reading op-ed pieces by local academics and senior managers from industry...   Whether the cry is for more H-1B visas or more female engineers, the goal is the same: a dramatic increase in the supply of high-tech workers.   The problem with these proposed remedies is that they address an employee shortage that does not, in fact, exist.   Thousands of highly trained scientists and engineers still roam Silicon Valley looking for work after having been cut adrift by the same types of people who now claim that they can't find anyone to hire.   And thousands more are now working in different fields at substantially lower salaries, having given up searching for an equivalent to their previous positions.   'No one I know who has looked at the data with an open mind has been able to find any sign of a current shortage.', said demographer Michael Teitelbaum in the Wall Street Journal's November 16 front-page story, 'Behind ''Shortage'' of Engineers: Employers Grow More Choosy'.   In a column titled 'A Phony Science Gap?' (February 22), the Washington Post's Robert J. Samuelson explained in detail why 'it's emphatically not true, as much of the alarmist commentary on America's ''competitiveness'' implies, that the United States now faces crippling shortages in its technological elites.'...   Do these bogus claims of a scarcity of skilled technical workers constitute a campaign to avoid having to pay market price for white-collar labor?   Yes, but there's more to it than that.   Corporations legitimately can anticipate a shortage of such workers in the future, because their own actions are setting the stage for one.   Since the early 1980s, employers have systematically eliminated most of the traditional incentives for high-tech careers.   They pay the inventors and developers of their products a fraction of what their sales and marketing representatives make.   They have eliminated pensions, individual offices and medical benefits.   They charge vacation time for company shutdowns.   And, most significantly, they have done away with job security -- a critical blunder because product-development cycles are often longer than economic cycles...   New York Times reporter Louis Uchitelle's new book, The Disposable American, documents the nationwide decrease in worker productivity that has occurred since 'Neutron' Jack Welch of General Electric popularized the repeated lay-off approach to economic down-turns [and started promoting off-shoring].   Not only are the displaced workers unproductive, but those who have been spared for the moment are also permanently less productive because of worrying about whether they will be next.   When the time comes for students whose parents grew up in the United States to choose a college major, they will remember those dinner-table conversations.   When the best students, being rational, start to desert science and engineering, businesses will have nobody to blame but themselves.   The solution will be the same one that existed before the Reagan administration, as Harvard economist Richard Freeman told Samuelson: 'If we want more (scientists and engineers), we have to pay them better and give them better careers.'"
 

2006-05-08

2006-05-08
_DM Review_
High-Tech Industry Employment Edged Upward in 2005
"AeA, the trade association representing the high-tech industry [executives], released its ninth annual Cyberstates report detailing national and state trends in high-tech employment, wages, exports, and other key economic factors...   in 2005, the high-tech industry added some 61K net jobs for a total of 5.6M in the United States.   This growth is an important first step in the turnaround of the high-tech industry...   William T. Archey, President and CEO of AeA.   'Tech industry employment only grew by 1% last year compared to 2% for the U.S. private sector as a whole...'...   the unemployment rate for electrical engineers was 1.5%, the lowest rate in 3 years.   These high-paid jobs are expected to grow significantly over the next 10 years.   Nearly 1M new computer specialists will be needed, as well as nearly 200K new engineers.   In specific sectors, the high-tech manufacturing industry added 3,300 net jobs in 2005, the first time tech manufacturing employment has increased since 2000.   Similarly, software services and engineering and tech services employment was up in 2005 for the second year in a row.   This job growth is positive news for the U.S. economy as tech industry jobs earn 85% more than the average private sector job.   Cyberstates 2006 shows that technology industry employment at the state level was mixed, where 25 cyberstates added tech jobs in 2004 and 27 cyberstates lost jobs.   Virginia was the nation's leading state by technology employment growth, adding 9,100 jobs in 2004, the most current state data available.   The report also found that after growing in 2004, venture capital investment in the technology industry fell by 5% in 2005."

2006-05-08
J. Michael Waller _Human Events_
Mexico's immigration law: Let's try it here in the USA
Free Republic
ProLiberty
Mens News Daily

2006-05-08
Alan Tonelson _Washington Times_
Immigrants and Wages
Rocky Mountain News
"the most important statistics available show conclusively that, far from easing shortages, illegal immigrants are adding to labor gluts in America.   Specifically, wages in sectors highly dependent on illegals, when adjusted for inflation, are either stagnant or have actually fallen.   Both text-book economics and common sense teach that wages are a sure-fire measure of labor market abundance or shortage.   When labor is genuinely scarce, and too many employers are chasing too few workers, businesses typically bid wages up in the competition to fill jobs.   When too many workers are chasing too few jobs, employers typically cut wages, confident that beggars can't be choosers.   Labor Department data reveal that the wage-cutting scenario is exactly what has unfolded recently throughout the economy's illegal immigrant-heavy sectors...   In the booming construction industry, illegal immigrants make up some 12% of the work force.   But from 1993 -- when median home prices began surging at a record pace -- through 2005, inflation-adjusted wages in the sector rose only 3.02%.   And from 2000 to 2005 -- the height of the boom -- inflation-adjusted wages actually fell 1.59%.   Illegal immigrants are even more prominent in food manufacturing, where they comprise 14% of the workers.   From 2000 to 2005, inflation-adjusted wages in this sector dropped 2.24%.   And in the 'animal processing and slaughtering' sub-category, where Pew research contends illegals make up fully 27% of all workers, inflation-adjusted wages fell 1.41% between 2000 and 2005...  
The wage trends in illegal immigrant-heavy industries make it clear these sectors are not facing shortages of native-born workers.   They're facing shortages of native-born workers who will accept poverty-level pay.   If the president and Congress have any interest in ensuring American immigration policy helps raise and not depress living standards, they'll tell these employers to stop the special-interest pleading and do what their predecessors throughout U.S. history have done: Raise pay high enough to attract the U.S. workers you need, and if your business models aren't good enough to accommodate living wages, invest in developing new labor-saving technologies.   Denying pauper-wage industries the crutch of a wage-depressing flood of illegal immigrants is essential for keeping the United States a high-wage, First World economy.   It is also essential for offering real economic opportunity to legal immigrants and native-born low-income Americans."

2006-05-08
George J. Borjas _National Review_
Immigrants in, Wages Down
"immigration may have depressed the wages of low-skilled workers by 5 to 8 percentage points."

2006-05-08

DJIA	11,584.99
S&P 500	1,324.66
NASDAQ	2,344.99
10-year US T-Bond	5.12%
crude oil	69.77

I usually get this info from MarketWatch, which gets them from BigCharts.
 
 

2006-05-09

2006-05-09
Bill Virgin _Seattle Post-Intelligencer_
Older Workers
"The wave of mass lay-offs, buy-outs and early retirements may have helped companies achieve some short-term expense reduction, but it also helped reduce an asset whose value is as huge as it is intangible -- the institutional memory and expertise built by those now-departed employees...   Kris Stadelman, the work-force council's chief executive, says companies will have to figure out how to clear institutional barriers such as the effect of post-retirement work on pension calculations, and to structure flexible hours and work-places to accommodate those who want one foot in retirement and one in the work-place...   Do businesses really want them around, even if they need them?   Lost in the uproar over the illegal immigration issue is another contentious fight, over how many foreign high-tech workers should be admitted to this country on H-1B visas.   Technology companies say there aren't enough qualified workers in this country, leaving them the options of importing labor or sending the work over-seas.   Every time a story on the issue of H-1B visas or off-shoring appears, we hear from middle-age and older tech workers who argue: The tech companies can find plenty of qualified programmers, software engineers and technical workers in this country.   What they can't find is cheap technical labor.   Stadelman, who has run dislocated-worker programs, has heard the same stories of technology and aerospace workers training their replacements...   Older workers face a bias, she says, because their salary and benefit costs are likely to be higher.   But so, too, may be the return on that expenditure, if the store of knowledge those workers have built is as valuable as they believe it to be.   Some businesses will decide that knowledge and the workers who hold it are valuable and make the adjustments necessary to make sure they retain both.   Some will pay the whole notion lip service, and some will decide they can get by quite nicely without benefit of such accumulated wisdom."

2006-05-09
Melissa Raines _Mount Vernon News_
Farmers Trot Out Off-Shoring Argument Abused by Tech Executives
"Many farmers in the area rely on foreign workers to keep their businesses running.   They say that the workers fill positions -- difficult physical labor, long hours and noncompetitive pay -- that many American workers don't want.   Local farmers are divided on the issue of what to do about workers who are here illegally...   The American Farm Bureau has advocated against the House bill passed last December that has no guest worker provision and no allowances for amnesty.   If the bill were to become law, all immigrants who entered the county illegally would be charged criminally, and deported.   There would be no way for workers currently here to apply to stay legally.   The ABF has said this would cripple many American farms, making them unable to compete internationally.   ABF director of public policy Paul Schlegel said Americans need to decide if they are going to buy fruits and vegetables grown by Mexicans in America, or grown by Mexicans in Mexico.   Currently, legislation provides for H-2 visas for foreign workers; these visas allow [non-immigrants] to enter the country legally to work."

2006-05-09
Nicole C. Brambila _Desert Sun_
Guest-worker programs have checkered history
"Nearly 65 years ago, the Emergency Labor Program created a guest-worker agreement between the U.S. and Mexican governments to fill the [alleged] worker shortage World War II created in the agriculture and railroad industries.   The guest-worker program the Senate has proposed is a bad sequel to what was dubbed the bracero program, a local immigration expert says.   'It's a bracero program II; that's what it is.', said Armando Navarro, a political science professor at the University of California, Riverside...   Riverside County has about 233K [illegal alien] residents.   While it's unknown how many live in the Coachella Valley, the region's agriculture and tourism industries depend on the labor - legal or not...   Navarro, coordinator of the National Allicance of Human Rights, the group that orchestrated the 500K-person protest in Los Angeles in March.   'Now it's because of pure avarice.'...   Working in the U.S. legally doesn't mean the braceros were treated fairly - then or now.   Historically, abuses riddled the bracero program - from poor and unsafe working conditions to exploitable low wages...   'The growers loved it; they made out like bandits.', [said Juan Luján,] dean of off-campus programs for College of the Desert and an adjunct Mexican history professor at California State University, San Bernardino...   The U.S. withheld 10% of all earnings [and sent them to the Mexican government] to encourage the more than 5M braceros to return to Mexico when the program ended...   A 2001 law-suit on appeal in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals seeks an undisclosed amount...   a Mexican government commission estimated the amount owed, including interest, at $500M [which seems very low]...   Navarro calls the immigration reform proposals 'a safety valve'.   While others want a guest-worker program or amnesty or both, Navarro hopes Congress won't reach an agreement.   He wants something more.   [He says] The U.S. [executives and farm-managers want] cheap labor.   [Mexicans need] jobs.   Immigration experts call it 'the push-pull factor'.   Until both countries address this, immigration will remain problematic."

2006-05-09
Mychal Massie _World Net Daily_
Truculent Criminals: illegal aliens, executives, and farm-owners and operators
"The illegals learned that they can arrogantly flaunt and openly break the sovereign laws of our country with impunity -- a feat that all legal American citizens who are incarcerated, or on parole or on probation should demand, regardless of their crimes (sarcasm intended).   What Americans learned was that the illegals are not interested in becoming Americans, assimilating into our culture, and abiding by our social constructs.   They are interested in anarchy.   They have no respect for our laws; ergo, they have no respect for our country; ergo, for those reasons alone they should be denied entry.   Unlike legal immigrants who came and still come here, these people are not here to become Americans, they are here to take...   As I shared with my radio audience, a portion of the territory they reference was included in the Louisiana Purchase -- a territory purchased by the United States in 1803 from France for $15M.   The other portion of the land referenced was obtained through the Mexican Cession under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildalgo, as a condition for ending the Mexican-American War in 1848 -- for which the United States also paid $15M.   The rest was later annexed in the Gadsdan Purchase.   But why should people, who view dishonesty as a birth-right, allow historical fact to interfere with their lies?..."

2006-05-09 (5766 Iyar 11)
Wesley Pruden _Jewish World Review_
A modest proposal: Save America first

2006-05-09 (5766 Iyar 11)
Marty Nemko _Jewish World Review_
After mass legalization: winners & losers

2006-04-09
Kevin Leininger _Fort Wayne News-Sentinel_
Legal immigrants set example of patriotism & responsibility
"Instead of promoting American diversity, the uncontrolled flood of immigrants from a single country -- Mexico -- has, in fact, created a powerful ethnic and political bloc of uncertain loyalties...   The people made citizens in Fort Wayne last week renounced foreign allegiances and swore to defend the United States against its enemies -- an oath with its roots in the American Revolution.   They also were required to study -- and be tested -- on their knowledge of English, U.S. history and the Constitution.   They also had to pass background checks, to make sure they were of 'good moral character and favorable to good order'.   And when it was over, each was given a small flag -- an American flag."

2006-05-09 11:23PDT (14:23EDT) (18:23GMT)
Myra P. Saefong _MarketWatch_
Gold futures close above $700 per ounce -- 1980s levels: silver at 23 year high

2006-05-09
Don Boudreaux _Cafe Hayek_
Who Is a No-Think Economist?
"But because 'domestic service' jobs sound so lamentable, [Paul Craig Roberts] -- who for several years now has predicted that 'free' trade is impoverishing America -- wants to report that a large percentage of newly created jobs are in 'domestic services'.   To achieve this gloomy-sounding result, Roberts classifies jobs in education and health-care as domestic-service jobs -- so careers such as teaching computer science at MIT and working as an anesthesiologist at the Mayo Clinic are in 'domestic service'...   you'd guess that manufacturing jobs are the ones that people long for, jobs that we should try to keep, jobs that are much, much better than icky and lowly service-sector jobs such as are held by physicians, lawyers, architects, college professors, accountants, bond traders, marketing executives, and professional pundits..."
"John Dewey"

Anyone examining the BLS April data can see
the sectors with the most job growth:

Financial services:	+26K	+0.31%
Health care:	+23K	+0.19%
Professional/tech svcs:	+21K	+0.29%
Manufacturing:	+19K	+0.13%
And discover the slowest growing sectors:
Retail trade:	-36K	-0.25%
Admin/waste svcs:	+5K	0.05%
Government:	+7K	+0.03%

"At least for one month, highly skilled sectors out-paced McJobs."

2006-05-09
Edwin S. Rubenstein _V Dare_
Does Immigration Stimulate or Stunt Innovation?
"Since the start of the H-1b program in the early 1990s the share of U.S. patents granted to inventors residing in the U.S.A. has declined:

Prior to 1990:	62.4%
1993:	54.1%
2003:	52.0%

To be sure, patent data are notoriously hard to interpret.   We don't know, for example, what percent of inventors 'residing in the U.S.' are, in fact, immigrants -- or how many over-seas inventors are expatriate H-1bs employed by foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies.   Equally important: the U.S. patent data doesn't distinguish between truly valuable inventions and the more numerous minor inventions, often patented on a whim.   Enter the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development.   OECD's patent data-base counts only those inventions for which patent protection is sought in 3 major markets: the United States, Europe, and Japan.   The enormous legal costs and filing fees involved in 3 separate patent applications makes this a better screen for important -- and potentially marketable -- inventions than simple patent counts.   The OECD data show U.S. inventors receive only about 34% of the important patents awarded annually -- far less than their 52% share of all U.S. patents.   But the really eye-catching figures relate to Japan.   After adjusting for population and GDP, the Japanese are far and away the most inventive people on the planet: 'In 2002, the patent-to-GDP ratio of Japan (4.0 triadic patents per billion GDP) was more than double that of the United States (1.8) and the European Union (1.8).   The number of triadic patents per million population for Japan (104) is far higher than that of the United States (64) and the European Union (36).' [OECD, Compendium of Patent Statistics 2005] Sure, the Japanese may be smarter than the average American or European.   But their hyper-creativity is borne of economic necessity rather than I.Q.   Japan, unlike Europe and the U.S.A., has steadfastly refused to import millions of unskilled workers to do the 'jobs Japanese won't do'.   Instead they've robotized many menial service jobs..."
Friendly Robotics

2006-05-09

DJIA	11,639.77
S&P 500	1,325.14
NASDAQ	2,338.25
10-year US T-Bond	5.13%
crude oil	70.69
gold	701.50
silver	14.465
platinum	1,239.30
copper	0.22475

I usually get this info from MarketWatch, which gets them from BigCharts.
 
 

2006-05-10

2006-05-10
pending immigration proposals in congress:
Frist's S2454
Hagel's S2612
Sensenbrenner's HR4437
Specter's S2611

2006-05-10
Robert Stacy McCain _Front Page Magazine_
MoveOn's Politics of Deception
"Having recently co-authored a book on this subject, I can with complete confidence assure anyone who would care to investigate that 'big money and corruption' are no more in control of the American government than at any time in the past 50 years -- and certainly no more so than during the heydays of Jim Wright, Dan Rostenkowski and Bill Clinton.   It is false that 'big corporations' are the most notable source of corruption in Washington.   Abramoff's scams and swindles were not perpetrated on behalf of MSFT or Exxon.   Rather, he lobbied chiefly on behalf of Indian tribal casinos.   Who is 'we' and how can 'we fight back and win'?   Sirota's book's proposed solution is (surprise, surprise!) to elect more Democrats and impose more liberal policies.   Right.   The event is sponsored by the American Prospect magazine and the AFL-CIO.   Don't the wealthy liberals who bank-roll the American Prospect qualify as 'big money'?   And since when is the AFL-CIO a force battling against 'corruption'...   hello?   Tom Matzzie couldn't elect a dog-catcher in the Red States.   He was one of the masterminds of the blunder-prone Kerry campaign, and an activist for the AFL-CIO, where he did nothing to halt or reverse Big Labor's disastrous membership declines.   Matzzie's incompetence is notorious.   Taking political advice from Matzzie is like taking driving lessons from Patrick Kennedy.   And finally, how do MoveOn.org members 'make a difference' -- other than gullibly sending money to the fools like Tom Matzzie who are misleading them?   The reason the politics of deceit inevitably fails is that people are not stupid.   Especially in an age when information flows freely via the Internet, you can't pass off MSFT Word documents as 1970s-era National Guard records.   You can't pretend Sirota -- a native of New Haven, CT, who grew up in Philadelphia -- cares more about the people of the 'red states' than do, inter alia, Tom Coburn or John Cornyn.   You cannot forever make the working man believe that greedy corrupt union officials are his friends, nor that his enemies are the investors and entrepreneurs who make possible a growing economy.   The politics of deceit, alas, has practicioners in both parties.   But ultimately the American people cannot be deceived forever, and no amount of hype, no amount of money, no amount of propaganda churned out by the likes of Tom Matzzie will prevent the truth from conquering the lie."

2006-05-10 11:53PDT (14:53EDT) (18:53GMT)
Myra P. Saefong & Ciara Linnane _MarketWatch_
Gold, copper, platinum slip in after-hours trading, after a lofty close

2006-05-10 12:35PDT (15:35EDT) (19:35GMT)
Greg Robb & Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee Raised Rates to 5%

2006-05-10 13:10PDT (16:10EDT) (20:10GMT)
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
With big inflow from income extortion federal government had $118.9G surplus for month of April

2006-05-10 07:44PDT (10:44EDT) (14:44GMT)
Carl Limbacher _News Max_
Lou Dobbs' Ratings Up at CNN
"Lou Dobbs Tonight averaged 817K total viewers last month - a 46% increase over April of last year, according to Nielsen Media Research.   So far in 2006, Dobbs is up 33%...   On his CNN show, life-long Republican Dobbs assails the Bush administration for doing too little to stem illegal immigration.   He rails against businesses for out-sourcing American jobs to other countries, and advocacy groups for helping illegal aliens in the U.S., and praises officials who try to enforce immigration laws."

2006-05-10
David Magnum _Capital Times_
Real leadership needed to fix troubled immigration system

2006-05-10

DJIA	11,642.65
S&P 500	1,322.85
NASDAQ	2,320.74
10-year US T-Bond	5.13%
crude oil	72.13
gold	705.70
silver	14.28
platinum	1,259.70
palladium	390.20
copper	0.2305

I usually get this info from MarketWatch, which gets them from BigCharts.
 
 

2006-05-11

2006-05-11 07:38PDT (10:38EDT) (14:38GMT)
Leslie Cauley & John Diamond _USA Today_
NSA Has Been Accumulating Massive Data-Warehouse of Americans' Phone Records
abc
Yahoo!
"The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY...   the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews...   The agency's goal is 'to create a data-base of every call ever made' within the nation's borders, this person added.   For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made -- across town or across the country -- to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others...   The government is collecting 'external' data on domestic phone calls but is not intercepting 'internals', a term for the actual content of the communication, according to a U.S. intelligence official familiar with the program.   This kind of data collection from phone companies is not uncommon; it's been done before, though never on this large a scale, the official said.   The data are used for 'social network analysis', the official said, meaning to study how terrorist networks contact each other and how they are tied together...   AT&T recently merged with SBC and kept the AT&T name.   Verizon, BellSouth and AT&T are the nation's 3 biggest telecommunications companies; they provide local and wireless phone service to more than 200M customers...   The 3 carriers control vast networks with the latest communications technologies.   They provide an array of services: local and long-distance calling, wireless and high-speed broadband, including video.   Their direct access to millions of homes and businesses has them uniquely positioned to help the government keep tabs on the calling habits of Americans.   Among the big telecommunications companies, only Qwest has refused to help the NSA, the sources said.   According to multiple sources, Qwest declined to participate because it was uneasy about the legal implications of handing over customer information to the government without warrants.   Qwest's refusal to participate has left the NSA with a hole in its database.   Based in Denver, Qwest provides local phone service to 14M customers in 14 states in the West and Northwest.   But AT&T and Verizon also provide some services -- primarily long-distance and wireless -- to people who live in Qwest's region.   Therefore, they can provide the NSA with at least some access in that area...   Historically, AT&T and the regional phone companies have required law enforcement agencies to present a court order before they would even consider turning over a customer's calling data.   Part of that owed to the personality of the old Bell Telephone System, out of which those companies grew.   Ma Bell's bedrock principle -- protection of the customer -- guided the company for decades, said Gene Kimmelman, senior public policy director of Consumers Union.   'No court order, no customer information -- period.   That's how it was for decades.', he said.   The concern for the customer was also based on law: Under Section 222 of the Communications Act, first passed in 1934, telephone companies are prohibited from giving out information regarding their customers' calling habits: whom a person calls, how often and what routes those calls take to reach their final destination.   Inbound calls, as well as wireless calls, also are covered.   The financial penalties for violating Section 222, one of many privacy reinforcements that have been added to the law over the years, can be stiff.   The Federal Communications Commission, the nation's top telecommunications regulatory agency, can levy fines of up to $130K per day per violation, with a cap of $1.325M per violation.   The FCC has no hard definition of 'violation'.   In practice, that means a single 'violation' could cover one customer or 1M...   the agency suggested that Qwest's foot-dragging might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government.   Like other big telecommunications companies, Qwest already had classified contracts and hoped to get more.   Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest's lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court.   According to the sources, the agency refused...   'They told (Qwest) they didn't want to do that because FISA might not agree with them.'"
telephone oligopoly history
"The company was founded in 1885 and over the next century became the nation's de facto phone monopoly.   At its peak in the early 1980s, it employed 1M people.   In 1984, the Bell Telephone System was broken up by a court decree.   AT&T's local operating companies -- there were 22 in all -- were grouped into 7 'regional Bells' and spun off as separate companies.   Each had monopoly control over local phone service in a specific region of the country."
Hornswoggled!: How Ma Bell & Chicago Ed conned our grand-parents & stuck us with the bill
Privacy links

2006-05-11 06:08PDT (09:08EDT) (13:08GMT)
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
Retail sales up -.5% in April
census bureau report

2006-05-11 (5766 Iyar 13)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review-
GOP and immigration
"the public's top priority on the immigration issues is controlling the borders...   53% of Hispanics supported the [Sensenbrenner] House bill...   The Democrats can solidify their base behind amnesty.   But the Republicans' base — 81% of whom are behind the tougher House bill -- are undermined, if not demoralized, by the vacillation of the Senate Republicans and the Bush administration on strong border control, apparently out of fear of alienating Hispanic voters...   It will take time to see how various new border control methods work out in practice and there is no reason to rush ahead to deal with the people already illegally in this country before the facts are in on how well the borders have been secured...   The real question is whether sweeping the illegal alien problem under the rug by calling them legal will bring in still more millions of illegals, as a previous amnesty has already done.   Nor will calling amnesty by some other name do anything more than undermine the confidence of the American people in general and the Republican base in particular...   Frankly, the Republicans deserve to lose this fall's election, after their wild spending and pandering to economic ignorance on gas prices.   But a Republican defeat would only bring in the Democrats — and the country does not deserve anything that disastrous."

2006-05-11 05:30PST (08:30EST) (13:30GMT)
Subri Raman & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
un-employment insurance weekly claims report
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 283,795 in the week ending May 6, an increase of 4,151 from the previous week.   There were 297,347 initial claims in the comparable week in 2005.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 1.8% during the week ending April 29, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,307,873, a decrease of 96,341 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.0% and the volume was 2,507,877."
graphs

2006-05-11 06:18PDT (09:18EDT) (13:18GMT)
_Cincinnati Business Courier_
Fischer Homes says sub-contractors are source of illegal aliens
"Four Fischer Homes supervisors were back on the job Wednesday after being arrested and charged with harboring undocumented workers, and the company said subcontractors were the source of illegal aliens working at its construction sites.   Nonetheless, the 4 -- Timothy Copsy, Doug Witt, William Allison and Bill Ring -- have each been charged with 'aiding, abetting and harboring illegal aliens', according to a press release from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.   They will face a preliminary hearing May 19."

2006-05-11 07:00PDT (10:00EDT) (14:00GMT)
Steve Goldstein _MarketWatch_
German & Dutch economic growth figures miss forecast: Data show weak recovery in Europe
"The German economy accelerated in the first quarter, growing 0.4% after a flat performance in the 4th quarter, the Federal Statistical Office said...   On an adjusted basis, the German economy, Europe's largest, grew 1.4% year-on-year, which the Federal Statistical Office attributed to increasing domestic demand...   The Dutch economy also grew below forecast, rising just 0.2% from the 4th quarter, though that's up 2.9% from a year ago...   Not every country disappointed, with Spain continuing its growth story, up 0.8% quarter-on-quarter and 3.5% year-on-year.   Italy's economy grew 0.6% in the first quarter, or 1.5% year-on-year, topping expectations for a 0.5% rise in Silvio Berlusconi's last quarter as prime minister."

2006-05-11 10:16PDT (13:16EDT) (17:16GMT)
Suzanne Gamboa _AP_/_Florida Sun-Sentinel_
Corrupt Senators Agree to Force Immigration Proposal on a Resistant Electorate
Christian Post
Chicago Sun-Times
abc
KDKA
Bloomberg
Boston Globe
Monsters & Critics
"Senate leaders reached a deal Thursday on reviving a broad immigration bill that could provide millions of illegal immigrants a chance to become American citizens and said they'll try to pass it before Memorial Day.   The agreement brokered by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-TN, and Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, breaks a political stalemate that has lingered for weeks while [illegal] immigrants and their supporters held rallies, boycotts and protests to push for action...   Key to the agreement is who will be negotiating a compromise with the House [i.e. how the deck will be stacked]...   Frist said the Senate will send 14 Republicans and 12 Democrats to negotiate with the House, with 7 of the Republicans and 5 Democrats coming from the Judiciary Committee.   The remaining 7 Republicans will be chosen by Frist and remaining 7 Democrats chosen by Reid.   At least one oppoenent of the compromise measure, senator John Cornyn, R-TX, will be among the remaining 7 Republicans appointed to the committee, spokesman Don Stewart said.   It would be the most comprehensive rewrite of immigration laws since the so-called Simpson-Mazzoli bill some 20 years ago...   Republicans, too, have had opposition from conservatives to the compromise proposal.   These critics consider its path to citizenship provision for illegal immigrants and hundreds of thousands of future guest workers to be tantamount to amnesty." _Daily Mining Gazette_
Government not serious about blocking illegal immigration
"With immigration reform thrust upon the nation's front pages, a few weeks ago federal agents mounted a series of raids that rounded up 1,187 illegal aliens at container plants operated by IFCO, a U.S. subsidiary of a Dutch company.   At last, it seemed, the Bush administration was getting serious about immigration law enforcement.   Alas, the raids turned out to be another exercise in foolish 'catch-and-release' enforcement.   Of those arrested, only 275 were deported immediately.   The remainder of those arrested were released in return for a promise to show up in court for a deportation hearing to be held at a later date...   Obviously the raids were more political manipulation than real law enforcement.   If the administration took immigration law enforcement seriously -- that is, if its policy were to regularly raid employers of illegal aliens and deport them -- then powerful incentives against illegal immigration would exist and it would be easier to take seriously the administration's misguided amnesty proposal."

2006-05-11 10:21:27PDT (13:21:27EDT) (17:21:27GMT)
_Las Vegas Sun_
56 Illegal Immigrants Locked in Freezer Truck
"Sheriff's deputies found 56 illegal immigrants locked inside a refrigerated trailer with no driver in sight and no way for the shivering human cargo to escape.   Two suspected immigrant smugglers from Mexico were later arrested.   An anonymous call led deputies to the trailer in a warehouse district of Laredo.   The key was in the ignition and the trailer's refrigeration was on, Webb County Sheriff Rick Flores said.   The 43 men, 11 women and 2 children had been in the truck for about 5 hours, Flores said."

2006-05-11
Michael Collins _Cincinnati Post Times Star_
Politics and Arrests of Illegal Aliens and their Employers
"A raid that led to the arrest of 81 people in Northern Kentucky's home construction industry this week was part of a nationwide campaign by the federal government to crack down on employers who hire illegal immigrants...   high-profile arrests of illegal workers and the employers who hire them also appear to be on the rise.   Some groups suggest the Bush administration is trying to get tough on undocumented workers in hopes of convincing the public of the need for immigration reform.   'We're definitely seeing (these raids) because of the current debate.', said Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations for NumbersUSA, which is pushing for tougher immigration enforcement.   Federal officials deny that the raids - including Tuesday's Boone County sweep that snared a contracting company owner, 4 construction supervisors for Fischer Homes and 76 [illegal alien] workers building houses for the company -- are in any way connected to the immigration reform debate...   Tim Counts, spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in Twin Cities, MN.   The Fischer Homes investigation began 2 years ago, Counts said.   And another recent high-profile raid, in which more than 1,100 illegal workers for IFCO Systems North America, a Houston-based pallet supply company, began with an investigation over a year ago, Counts said.   'These investigations, especially ones of this scope, take months, if not years, to develop.', Counts said...   On April 19, for example, federal agents arrested 7 current and former managers of IFCO, including one at the company's operation in Evendale, Ohio, and charged them with harboring illegal aliens for financial gain.   At the same time, agents apprehended 1,187 illegal workers at the company's plants in 26 states, including 33 in Evendale.   A few days earlier, on April 14, the operators of Baltimore's best-known sushi restaurants agreed to forfeit more than $1M and pleaded guilty to criminal charges for hiring illegal workers to maximize profits to buy new homes and luxury vehicles for themselves.   And on April 11, a federal indictment in Ohio charged 2 temporary employment agencies [bodyshops] and 9 individuals with providing hundreds of illegal workers to unwitting companies and claiming they were legal.   The employment agencies were identified as HV Connect Inc. in Philadelphia and Canton, Ohio, and TN Job Service Inc., which has offices in Philadelphia; Canton; and New Philadelphia, Ohio.   Before the latest raids, illegal worker arrests had fallen off dramatically, from 2,849 in 1999 to 445 in 2003, according to a report by the government's General Accounting Office.   In 1999, the government issued 417 'notices of intent' to fine employers for hiring illegal workers.   In 2004, federal agents issued only 3 such notices, the report said...   Jenks, of NumbersUSA, contended that the Bush administration still has no intention of enforcing work-site laws on a consistent basis.   What appears to be happening, she said, is that the administration believes a few high-profile raids will [make people think they're serious about enforcing the immigration laws,] bring attention to the demand for workers and create public sympathy for a guest-worker program that would allow illegal immigrants to remain in the country on a temporary basis.   'They know the public wants enforcement.', said Jenks, whose organization opposes a guest-worker program.   'So if they can say, ''Look, we are enforcing the law'', then their view is the public will then become more amenable to guest-worker amnesty.'...   'it is a largely discredited and unproductive approach', [one advocate for more massive immigration, both legal and illegal] said.   'Besides, it scares the heck out of the community...'"

2006-05-11 11:18PDT (14:18EDT) (18:18GMT)
Sher Zieve _Conservative Voice_
Frist Agrees to Compromise on Giving Illegal Aliens Amnesty
"The Senate is now pushing to complete its version of the bill, as groups who support illegal aliens had told them to do, before Memorial Day.   Although recent polls of US citizens show that the vast majority of the US electorate supports the House version of the bill and does not agree with Amnesty (latest polls show this majority to be 4 out of 5 American citizens), the Senate said it is determined to pass it..."

2006-05-11
Tony Phyrillas _Red State_
Politicians can't be trusted on immigration issue

2006-05-11
Lady Liberty _National Ledger_
How Quickly We Forget
"In scant days, however, our early resolve mutated into something else.   Our deep-seated hopes for the prevention another such attack from ever darkening our shores again became the fulfillment of the desires of those who value control above all else.   And our fears further enabled those seeking power to clutch it to themselves in the name of the safety we all so dearly craved...   it consisted largely of the unfulfilled and long-time wish lists of various federal law enforcement agencies."

2006-05-11
_about.com_
"Stop the Invasion" Bill-Boards Are Rising
"CBS in Dallas reports that while illegal immigration opponents in Texas aren't rushing to the streets en masse, they are making their voices heard.   Local conservatives have gotten together to put up a billboard that calls down on commuters, 'Stop the Invasion; Secure Our Borders' near downtown Dallas.   These folks aren't against immigrants.   Just illegal ones."

2006-05-11
Bruce A. Ritter _Real Truth_
Why America Cannot Solve Its Illegal Immigration Problem

2006-05-11
_Arcadia Weekly_
Los Angeles County Mayor Michael D. Antonovich Questions AFDC Going to Illegal Aliens
"Los Angeles County Mayor Michael D. Antonovich has reported that nearly 100K children of illegal aliens collected nearly $23M in Aid to Families of Dependent Children funding in Los Angeles county in 2006 January, or nearly $276M annually.   98,703 children of 57,458 undocumented parents received aid in 2006 January, for a total of 156,161.   If incorporated into a city, it would be the 6th largest city in Los Angeles County."

2006-05-11
Tom Kovach _Sierra Times_
What Gets Publicized and What Does Not
"Since 1993, when she tried to become the tzarina of government-sponsored health care, I have suspected that Hillary Clinton wanted to become the President of the United States.   Since the mid-1990s -- when one of her best friends, Judith Hope, moved from Little Rock to New York, and then suddenly became the chairman of the NY Democratic Party -- I was confident that the fix was in...   So far, the local news media has ignored my News Release about my plans to conduct an anti-Hillary demonstration.   That shouldn't surprise anyone that has followed my campaign.   I filed my FEC papers on the 23rd of January, and have sent out 7 campaign News Releases so far.   But, there has not been one mention of my campaign in the local news media.   (They also did not publicize my planned boycott of Walgreen's for supporting the 'Gay' Games.   But, they sure did publicize the illegal aliens' planned boycott of American businesses!)   So, it won't surprise me if the news media makes no mention of my plans for an anti-Hillary rally on the 23rd of May.   That is why this column is so necessary.   (The Internet is a great leveler.   That's why the UN wants to control it, and why they want to put Communist China in charge of the effort.)   Please send this column to all your friends, and encourage them to join my anti-Hillary rally."

2006-05-11
Michael R. Stephens _Clinton Herald_
Vast majority of Americans have nothing to gain from illegal immigration
"Who put the gun to the head of the illegal aliens?   No one did.   They and only they are 100% responsible for their crimes.   Making crossing our border a felony instead of a misdemeanor is the most logical attempt at controlling the problem anyone from Washington, DC, has made in 20 years."

2006-05-11
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring e-News-Letter
Highly Biased National Socialist Radio Segment & Stepped Up Lobbying by Tech Executives
"A few weeks ago a 'DC insider' told me that the industry lobbyists are much more vicious this year on the H-1B issue (and related ones like F-4) than ever.   My own observations confirm that.   It's time to fight back.   The NPR report today, for instance, is an outrage that must be addressed...   The segment consisted almost completely of interviews of H-1Bs and immigration lawyers, both groups of which claimed that the U.S. desperately needs this foreign labor.   The only exception was a short quote from Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies.   And not only did the Krikorian quote comprise only a tiny portion of the overall segment, but NPR chose to run what was undoubtedly the least powerful thing he had said during their interview of him.   The quoted him saying that H-1B interferes with 'market signals'.   I'm sure he brought up the much stronger issues of the H-1Bs being used as cheap labor, de facto indentured servitude of the H-1Bs, etc., but NPR chose to run the bland point.   (I've heard Mark speak on the radio without editing many times, and he's always excellent.)"
National Socialist Radio segment

2006-05-11
Eleanor _Sixth Column_
regarding anchor babies
 

2006-05-12

2006-05-12
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring e-News-Letter_
Leading Academic & H-1B Supporter Says There's No Engineer Shortage
"Bill Wulf is a famous computer scientist, president of the prestigious National Academy of Engineering (the engineering profession's 'Hall of Fame').   I don't know whether he has ever called specifically for an H-1B increase, but he certainly has stridently called for continuing to bring in foreign students into U.S. engineering graduate programs, claiming the U.S.' technological edge depends on them.   Even in his speech below, he tries to downplay H-1B's impact on American engineers, saying that only about 20K of 195K H-1B visas were issued during the height of the [H-1B] boom.   (That of course is very misleading, because he is excluding the computer-related H-1Bs, which in those years comprised about 50% of all H-1Bs.)   In other words, he basically spouts the industry party line.   So it is quite remarkable that he admits that there is no shortage of engineers! He says, 'starting salaries for fresh BS engineers are neither significantly moving up (ergo indicating a shortage), nor significantly declining (ergo indicating an oversupply)'.   Meanwhile industry lobbyists continue to convince gullible journalists and gullible politicians (the latter WANT to believe the lobbyists anyway) that we need more H-1Bs because there is a shortage of engineers.   Recall that his point on starting salaries at the Bachelor's level was first noticed by a BusinessWeek columnist.   I then showed that the same thing is happening at the graduate level -- starting salaries (adjusted for inflation) are flat.   Thus there is no shortage of engineers with graduate degrees either, in spite of the industry lobbyists' claims that we need to institute a new visa type for foreign students with graduate degrees, F-4."

2006-05-12 05:55PDT (08:55EDT) (12:55GMT)
Robert Schoeder _MarketWatch_
Import prices for USA up 2.1% in April
"Prices of goods imported into the U.S. rose 2.1% in April, powered by an 11.5% increase in the price of imported petroleum, the Labor Department said Friday."
BLS data

2006-05-12 06:50PDT (09:50EDT) (13:50GMT)
Greg Robb _MarketWatch_
Record exports narrowed trade deficit to $62G in March: Imbalance with Red China continued growing
"Exports increased 1.9% to a record $114.7G, while March's imports fell 0.8% to $176.7G.   The difference was even more pronounced in the goods sector.   Exports of goods alone rose 2.2% to $82.1G.   The largest increase came in exports of industrial supplies, up 6.0% to $22.0G.   Meanwhile, imports of goods alone fell 0.9% to $148.8G.   The decline was led by a drop in crude oil imports and fewer imports of autos.   The petroleum deficit narrowed 11% to $20.1G, the lowest level since last July.   The U.S.   imported 312.5M barrels of crude oil in March, or 10.1M barrels per day, compared with 291.0M or 10.4M barrels per day, in February.   The average price per barrel of oil slipped to $52.26 in March from $53.72 in February.   Always in the political spotlight, the U.S. trade deficit with [Red China] widened to $15.6G in March from $12.9G in the same month last year.   Despite the improvement in the trade deficit in the last 2 months, the U.S. bilateral deficit with [Red China] is trending higher.   The trade gap with [Red China] rose to $47.3G in the first 3 months of the year, up from $42.0G in the same period last year."

2006-05-12 07:53PDT (10:53EDT) (14:53GMT)
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
UMich consumer sentiment index fell from 87.3 in April to 79.0 in May: Biggest drop in 28 years

2006-05-12 16:45PDT (19:45EDT) (23:45GMT)
Anne Thompson _MSFTNBC_
Made in the USA
"Workers at the New Balance factory in this suburb of Boston create the sound of 'made in the USA'.   The company, striving in a world dominated by Nike, Adidas and Reebok, keeps 25% of its manufacturing in America -- the only company to make any athletic shoes here.   'Our labor costs are 10 to 12 times higher.', says President and Chief Operating Officer Jim Tompkins.   'But productivity at New Balance's 5 U.S. plants is much greater, lowering other costs.   We're able to deliver into the market in a matter of days, where our competitors are looking at a matter of weeks and sometimes months.' To speed up production, employees assemble in teams, designed to maximize output and minimize waste.   'Not so long ago, we used to make a case of shoes, 12 pairs, in 8 days.', says Lawrence, MA, plant manager Claudio Gelman.   'Now we're down to 3 hours.' Other companies are actually bringing jobs back to the U.S.A.   One is Long Island's North Fork Bank.   Even though its customer service call center in India was a bargain, there were problems.   'That amounted to a savings of about $20K a head.', says North Fork President, CEO and Chairman John Kanas.   Customers complained workers didn't know Southampton from Westhampton.   And North Fork's reputation as a neighborhood bank suffered.   So Kanas brought the jobs back to Long Island, adding $2M a year to his expenses.   'We've kept it here because of the tremendous importance of quality of that experience to us.', he says.   'And we think the trade-off for the money is worth it.' Unlike other carriers, Denver-based Frontier Airlines keeps all its work in-house, refusing to out-source its maintenance or its call centers to other companies in America or over-seas.   'Our employees here take ownership.', says Frontier CEO Jeff Potter.   'They are so committed to our customers, and I'm not sure that's something you could find off-shore.'   New Balance, Frontier and North Fork Bank have all discovered that while it is more expensive to keep work in this country, it ultimately delivers a bigger pay-off.   So much so that New Balance plans to expand its U.S. manufacturing, believing that 'made in America' still has a competitive edge."

2006-05-12 16:45PDT (19:45EDT) (23:45GMT)
Randal O'Toole _Independent Institute_
the planning penalty: how "smart growth" makes housing unaffordable

2006-05-12

DJIA	11,380.99
S&P 500	1,291.24
NASDAQ	2,243.78
10-year US T-Bond	5.19%
crude oil	72.04
gold	711.80
silver	14.235
platinum	1,318.50
copper	0.2415

I usually get this info from MarketWatch, which gets them from BigCharts.
 
 

2006-05-13
 

2006-05-14
 

2006-05-15
 

2006-05-15
Ken Thomas _AP_/_Yahoo!_
48M Liberty-Loving People Refuse to Buckle Seat Belts: Car-Makers Refuse to Make 4-Point Harnesses Widely Available

2006-05-15 10:18PDT (13:18EDT) (17:18GMT)
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
Home builders' confidence fell to 11-year low

2006-05-15
Tom Tancredo _Human Events_
Come Home, Mr. President
"In this speech, the President needs to do 3 things to accomplish his goals.   There is a road to consensus and success if the President will take it.   It is not only a path to consensus -- it is a path to success for the Republican Party in November...   make a clear break from previous speeches on the topic and come home to Republican Party principles.   He needs to stop pandering to perceived voting blocs and employer lobbies and speak to the one thing all Americans agree upon: No immigration policy is workable without secure borders...   speak to the nation as fellow citizens, not ethnic or economic groups, and tell them America will have secure borders that stop all illegal entry into our country.   He needs to announce that he will federalize the National Guard in 4 border states to provide support to the beleaguered Border Patrol.   He needs to say this will happen tomorrow morning, not next month or next year.   The second thing the President must do is explicitly separate the priority and necessity of secure borders from all other proposed federal legislation...   Secure borders are a prerequisite for any new immigration legislation, not a component to be bartered away for increased immigration numbers or new visa rules.   The third thing the President's speech should do is to avoid any mention of amnesty for illegal aliens already in the country.   No matter how cleverly he defines his 'legalized status' proposal as not being amnesty, it is still amnesty and everyone knows it.   Americans are not in a mood to negotiate the matter of 'regularization' for 12M to 20M illegal aliens -- and Newt Gingrich has pointed out the amnesty would ultimately legalize up to 36M -- until they see we have in fact achieved secure borders.   Once that is done, once our laws are being enforced, then we can begin to discuss the problem of how to deal with the millions of illegal aliens already living here."

2006-05-15
Robert Rector _Heritage Foundation_
Senate Immigration Bill Would Allow 103M Additional Legal Immigration over the Next 20 Years
"If enacted, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (CIRA, S2611) would be the most dramatic change in immigration law in 80 years, allowing an estimated 103M persons to legally immigrate to the U.S.A. over the next 20 years -- fully one-third of the current population of the United States.   Much attention has been given to the fact that the bill grants amnesty to some 10M illegal immigrants.   Little or no attention has been given to the fact that the bill would quintuple the rate of legal immigration into the United States, raising, over time, the inflow of legal immigrants from around 1M per year to over 5M per year.   The impact of this increase in legal immigration dwarfs the magnitude of the amnesty provisions.   In contrast to the 103M immigrants permitted under CIRA, current law allows 19M legal immigrants over the next 20 years...   The maximum number that could legally enter would be almost 200M over 20 years -- over 180M more legal immigrants than current law permits...   CIRA offers amnesty and citizenship to 85% of the nation’s current 11.9M [to 24M] illegal immigrants...   In the first year, 325K H-2C visas would be given out, but if employer demand for guest workers is high, that number could be boosted by an extra 65K in the next year.   If employer demand for H-2C workers continues to be high, the number of H-2C visas could be raised by up to 20% in each subsequent year.   The 20% exponential escalator provision allows the number of H-2C immigrants to climb steeply in future years.   If the H-2C cap were increased by 20% each year, within 20 years the annual inflow of workers would reach 12M.   At this 20% growth rate, a total of 70M guest workers would enter the U.S.A. over the next 2 decades and none would be required to leave...   Between 1870 and 1920, the U.S.A. experienced a massive flow of immigration known as the 'great migration'.   During this period, foreign born persons hovered between 13% and 15% of the population.   In 1924, Congress passed major legislation greatly reducing future immigration.   By 1970, foreign born persons had fallen to 5% of the population.   In the last 3 decades, immigration has increased sharply.   The foreign born now comprise around 12% of the population, approaching the levels of the early 1900s.   However, if CIRA were enacted, and [103M] new immigrants entered the country over the next 20 years, foreign born persons would rise to over one quarter of the U.S. population.   There is no precedent for that level of immigration at any time in U.S. history..."
Frist's S2454
Hagel's S2612
Sensenbrenner's HR4437
Specter's S2611

2006-05-15
Jeff Sessions
U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions Unveils Massive Numerical Impact Of Senate Immigration Bill
"the Senate immigration bill -- should it become law -- would permit up to 217.1M new legal immigrants into the United States over the next 20 years, a number equal to 66% of the total current population of the United States.   Even if the maximum levels are not reached, the increase to the U.S. population caused by S2611 will be at least 78.7M in 20 years, just over 25% of the total current population.   This lower estimate assumes that the bill's escalating caps on certain visas will not increase at all over the next 20 years; if the bill's caps are hit each year, the total number will be the higher estimate..  If the current [excessive] legal immigration level (950K a year for 20 years or 18.9M over 20 years) is excluded from the total, according to Sessions, the Senate bill could be described as increasing legal immigration by 59M to 198.2M over 20 years."
Frist's S2454
Hagel's S2612
Sensenbrenner's HR4437
Specter's S2611

2006-05-15

DJIA	11,428.77
S&P 500	1,294.50
NASDAQ	2,238.52
10-year US T-Bond	5.15%
crude oil	69.41

I usually get this info from MarketWatch, which gets them from BigCharts.
 
 

2006-05-16

2006-05-16 Robert Schroeder _MarketWatch_
US industrial production rose 0.8% in April

2006-05-16 07:03PDT (10:03EDT) (14:03GMT)
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
PPI up 0.9% in April, but core up 0.1%
census bureau data
graphs

2006-05-16 08:43PDT (11:43EDT) (15:43GMT)
Greg Robb _MarketWatch_
US housing starts fell for 3rd month: April starts at lowest level since 2004 November (graph)
"Starts fell 7.4% in April to a seasonally adjusted 1.85M annualized units. It was the largest drop in more than a year."
census bureau data

2006-05-16 15:19PDT (18:19EDT) (22:19GMT)
Ilya Garger _MarketWatch_
Nikkei fell to lowest level in 2 months: closes at 16,158.42

2006-05-16
Gad Levanon, Ken Goldstein & June Shelp _Conference Board_
Conference Board Help Wanted On-Line Data Series (pdf)
"The Conference Board Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series™ covers about 1,200 job boards in the United States.   It includes the largest job boards and most boards posting at least 500 jobs...   Some smaller boards that service specific niche markets or smaller cities are also included in the total.   The Conference Board Help-Wanted OnLine Data Series™ does not include corporate web sites that post their own openings.   The data series also does not include job boards that are limited to replicating other boards.   New job boards are added to the data source on a continuous basis.   The overall online job board industry has established itself throughout the last few years.   However, the relatively low cost of business entry in this industry means that there is still tremendous churn in the universe of job boards, especially among the smaller boards.   The industry includes a large number of very small job boards, with many of these boards joining and leaving the industry each month."

2006-05-16 16:09PDT (19:09EDT) (23:09GMT)
William L. Watts _MarketWatch_
Senate continues their insanity on immigration
How they voted
 

2006-05-17

2006-05-17
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring e-News-Letter_
MSFT claim belied by internal documents
"The industry lobbyists are masters of their craft.   The industry may or may not know how to hire 'the best and the brightest' engineers, but they sure know how to get 'the best and the brightest' PR people.   They know how to hit all of America's emotional buttons, and one of those buttons, going way back to the time that much of the auto industry became Japanese, is off-shoring.   So, ever since the first H-1B expansion legislation in 1998, one of the most effective industry propaganda points has been, 'If Congress doesn't give us enough H-1Bs to work here, we'll have to ship the work over-seas.'   This has been extremely effective.   Never mind that if a foreign worker is doing the job, that's a job not open to Americans, regardless of whether the foreign worker is here or there.   Never mind that right after Congress acquiesced to the industry's threats in 1998 and 2000 by expanding the H-1B program, the industry ramped up its off-shoring operations anyway.   Never mind that the H-1B program is actually used to FACILITATE off-shoring (an academic study, confirmed by the off-shoring firms, found that off-shoring projects typically station 1 H-1B on-shore for every 2 off-shore workers).   And... never mind that MSFT, which is now saying that it won't off-shore its development unless it can't get H-1Bs, told quite a different story in an internal slide presentation last year.   The presentation, obtained by WashTech News last year, featured a slide which made MSFT's intentions quite clear: 'Pick something to move off-shore today.'   The full presentation makes it even clearer that the issue is NOT lack of qualified Americans but is instead good old Scottish thrift, i.e. access to India's cheap labor.   Phrases like 'quality work at 50%-60% of the cost, 2 heads for the price of one', 'cost advantage of adding off-shore talent', 'leverage the Indian economy's lower cost structure', 'good fiscal decisions are mandatory', etc., are sprinkled throughout the presentation.   And though it is stated that some work needs to be done in Redmond, 'out-sourcing is not just for non-critical work'.   But all a lobbyist has to do with a member of Congress is whisper, 'We all know what happened to the consumer electronics industry -- all shipped abroad' and the congress-person will obediently agree that we 'need' H-1Bs to prevent a similar calamity in IT.   All this is bunk.   What the industry really wants with the H-1Bs is cheap labor.   As I've shown elsewhere, the overall cost savings in hiring H-1Bs is almost as much as one attains by off-shoring, and the quality one gets by having the work done on-site more than makes up for the small discrepancy."

2006-05-17 12:09PDT (15:09EDT) (19:09GMT)
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
Housing was slightly more affordable in 2006 Q1
"The housing opportunity index rose to 41.3% in the first quarter from a record low 41% in the 4th quarter, meaning that 41.3% of homes sold were affordable for a family earning the median income, the NAHB said.   A year ago, the index was at 50.1%, the last time more than half the homes were within reach of families earning the median income.   Nationally, the median price of homes sold in the first quarter fell $4K to $250K while interest rates rose to 6.39% from 6.21%.   The median household income rose to $59,600 from $58K.   Lower prices and higher incomes made slightly more homes affordable, despite the rise in interest rates, said David Seiders, chief economist for the home builders group."

2006-05-17
Curt Anderson _CNN_/_AP_
Red Chinese agent tried to buy US cruise missile
abc
Columbian
cbs
town hall
Mankato Free Press
Manchester Guardian
Sierra Times
Kansas City Star
Houston Chronicle
"A Taiwanese businessman pleaded guilty Wednesday to acting as a covert agent for the [Red Chinese] government and trying to buy sophisticated military parts and weapons, including an F-16 fighter jet engine and cruise missiles.   U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said that Ko-Suen 'Bill' Moo was one of the most significant [Red Chinese] arms dealers arrested recently   Among his attempted purchases from under-cover agents was the AGM-129 cruise missile, which has stealth technology and can carry nuclear warheads 2,300 miles, ICE said...   'This case demonstrates, in the clearest terms possible, the need to protect sensitive U.S. technology from illegal foreign acquisition.'...   Moo, 58, pleaded guilty to being a covert [Red Chinese] agent, conspiracy to broker and export U.S. defense items and attempting to pay a $500K bribe to win release from custody.   He faces up to 30 years in prison and fines of $2M at sentencing, which was not immediately scheduled.   Moo was a representative for U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin for 10 years in Taiwan and was close to military officials in Taiwan, ICE officials said.   His arrest raised concerns in Taiwan, a U.S. ally that [Red China] considers its territory, about what information he provided to Beijing."

2006-05-17
Jim Gransbery _Billings Gazette_
$15M grant aims to train rural workers
"In an effort to train workers for jobs in alternative-fuels development and production, state and national officials unveiled a project Tuesday targeting communities and colleges in central and Eastern Montana.   Called WIRED, the 3-year project is funded with a $15M grant from the U.S. Department of Labor.   The funding was announced in February.   Touting 'the vast potential of the land to produce alternative fuels', Emily Stover DeRocco, U.S. assistant under-secretary of labor, said the grants could be used to create infrastructure for high-paying jobs...   Peak and Prairies LLC of Malta is involved in developing and marketing oil-seed-based bio-lubricants.   Sustainable Systems, a Missoula renewable-fuels firm, in October bought the oilseed crush and refining plant in Culbertson.   It plans to focus on higher value biofuels, lubricants and culinary oils, such as safflower oil...   The money comes from a $500 fee placed on H1B visas [which are used to displace well-educated and highly-skilled American tech workers]."

2006-05-17
Consumers Have a Right to Know Who They are Talking To
"The Call Center Consumer Right to Know Act, S2553 would give consumers more power in the market place.   S2553 will let consumers decide if they want to be transferred to a U.S. based call center and will require call center employees to identify the city, state and country from which they are making or receiving calls.   We have lost tens of thousands of jobs to off-shoring and S2553 will help workers compete on a level playing field."

2006-05-17

DJIA	11,205.61
S&P 500	1,270.32
NASDAQ	2,195.80
10-year US T-Bond	5.15%
crude oil	68.69
gold	691.80
silver	13.24
platinum	1,316.40
palladium	383.10
copper	0.2295
natgas	$6.129/MBTU
unleadedgasoline	$1.9751/gal
reformulatedgasoline	$1.5489/gal
heatingoil	$1.9212/gal

I usually get this info from MarketWatch, which gets them from BigCharts.
 
 

2006-05-18

2006-05-18 05:30PST (08:30EST) (13:30GMT)
Subri Raman & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
un-employment insurance weekly claims report
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 308,682 in the week ending May 13, an increase of 24,109 from the previous week.   There were 275,524 initial claims in the comparable week in 2005.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 1.7% during the week ending May 6, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,234,118, a decrease of 63,618 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 1.9% and the volume was 2,443,129."
graphs

2006-05-18 07:16PDT (10:16EDT) (14:16GMT)
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
US leading economic indicators fell 0.1% in April
"The index of leading economic indicators fell 0.1% in April, with 3 of the 10 indicators improving: Vendor performance, stock prices and interest rates.   Six indicators declined.   The largest negative contributors were building permits, core capital equipment orders and consumer expectations.   The leading index rose a revised 0.4% in March...   In the past 6 months, the index is up 1.5%, with 8 of the 10 indicators showing improvement.   [France's leading economic indicators: With the increase of 0.2% in March, the leading index now stands at 126.5 (1990=100).   Based on revised data, this index increased 1.0% in February and decreased 0.1% in January.   During the 6-month span through March, the leading index increased 2.2%, and 5 of the 7 components increased (diffusion index, 6-month span equals 71.4%)...   The UK's leading economic indicators: The Conference Board announced today that the leading index for the U.K increased 0.6%, and the coincident index increased 0.2% in March...   Japan's leading economic indicators: The Conference Board reports today that the leading index for Japan decreased 0.2% and the coincident index decreased 0.3% in March.]"
Conference Baord

2006-05-18
_Numbers USA_
Status of S2611 "compromise" (S2611)

minimum number of permanent immigrants that would be allowed over the next 10 years under each of the 4 extremist senate proposals would be:

20M	Frist's bill (S2454)
25M	McCain/Kennedy bill (S1033)
31M	Senate Judiciary bill (no #)
32M	Hagel/Martinez

2006-05-18
David L. Blond _Manufacturer_
The Golden Door
"Last month, more than 200K jobs were created; none were in the manufacturing sector, however, which continued to shed jobs to the tune of another 7K positions. The continued down-sizing of the American manufacturing sector and the growth in the observable trade deficit are inter-related... Even today, after the shedding of over 3M jobs, some employers [claim to] find it difficult to get enough skilled workers at [the extremely low] wages they are willing to pay..."
 

2006-05-19

2006-05-19
"Concordia_Dis"
Tavis Smily interview of Tom Tancredo

2006-05-19

DJIA	11,144.06
S&P 500	1,267.03
NASDAQ	2193.88
10-year US T-Bond	5.05%
crude oil	69.29

I usually get this info from MarketWatch, which gets them from BigCharts.
 
 

2006-05-20

2006-05-20 04:00PDT (07:00EDT) (11:00GMT)
John Shinal _MarketWatch_
Silicon Valley faces class-action blitz over back-dating of options
"Indeed, far from fostering restraint, the government's decision to charge Milberg Weiss Bershad and Schulman with making illegal payments to clients is more likely to heat up 'the race to the court-house', as one attorney put it.   And that's bad news for the growing number of Silicon Valley technology companies that are already under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission over backdating option grants made to senior executives.   In recent weeks, Comverse Technology Inc., Vitesse Semiconductor Corp. and other tech companies have shown top executives the door after the effective dates of executives' option grants appeared to be set to maximize their cash-in values...   the blow to one of the two 800-pound gorillas of securities law will also set off a competitive feeding frenzy as smaller firms seek to get a piece of the business that Milberg Weiss, along with the firm of former Milberg partner William Lerach, has dominated for more than a decade..."
 

2006-05-21

2006-05-21
Gerald W. Bracey _Washington Post_
Heard the One About the 600K Red Chinese Engineers?
 

2006-05-22

2006-05-22
Jerome R. Corsi _Human Events_
The Plan to Replace the US Dollar
"The idea to form the North American Union as a super-NAFTA knitting together Canada, the United States and Mexico into a super-regional political and economic entity was a key agreement resulting from the 2005 March meeting held at Baylor University in Waco, TX, between President Bush, President Fox and Prime Minister Martin.   A joint statement published by the 3 presidents following their Baylor University summit announced the formation of an initial entity called, 'The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America' (SPP).   The joint statement termed the SPP a 'trilateral partnership' that was aimed at producing a North American security plan as well as providing free market movement of people, capital, and trade across the borders between the 3 NAFTA partners..."

2006-05-22
_Wired_
AT&T spied on US citizens in the USA: the un-cut evidence

2006-05-22
_World Net Daily_
Tancredo warns that USA is in _Mortal Danger_
Frosty Wooldridge review

2006-05-22
Randal O'Toole _Independent Institute_
the high price of land-use planning
"Most people know that the San Francisco Bay Area has one of the most expensive housing markets in the nation.   However, not everyone realizes that, as recently as 1970, Bay Area housing was as affordable as housing in many other parts of the country.   Data from the 1970 census shows that a median-income Bay Area family could dedicate a quarter of their income to housing and pay off their mortgage on a median-priced home in just 13 years.   By 1980, a family had to spend 40% of their income to pay off a home mortgage in 30 years; today, it requires 50%.   What happened in the 1970s to make Bay Area housing so unaffordable? In a nut-shell: land-use planning..."
 

2006-05-23

2006-05-23
_MarketWatch_
A nation that's gotten used to mass job cuts

2006-05-23
D.W. MacKenzie _Ludwig von Mises Institute_
The Myth of Functional Finance: Mises vs. Lerner
 

2006-05-24

2006-05-24 05:38PDT (08:38EDT) (12:38GMT)
Greg Robb _MarketWatch_
US durable goods orders fell 4.8% in April

2006-05-24 13:09PDT (16:09EDT) (20:09GMT)
Greg Robb _MarketWatch_
New-home sales up in April
"ales of new U.S. homes surprised economists and stayed strong in April, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday.   New-home sales rose 4.9% in April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.20M, the highest level of the year."
census bureau press release
 

2006-05-25

2006-05-25 05:30PST (08:30EST) (13:30GMT)
Subri Raman & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
un-employment insurance weekly claims report
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 277,648 in the week ending May 20, a decrease of 32,601 from the previous week.   There were 276,761 initial claims in the comparable week in 2005.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 1.7% during the week ending May 13, unchanged from the prior week.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,243,441, an increase of 15,899 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 1.9% and the volume was 2,398,134."
graphs

2006-05-25 16:10PDT (19:10EDT) (23:10GMT)
Jasmina Keleman & Jim Jelter _MarketWatch_
Jury found Enron's Kennety Lay & Jeffrey Skilling guilty
"A Texas jury found former Enron chiefs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling guilty Thursday of conspiring to hide the company's crumbling finances, defrauding investors and its own employees of billions of dollars as it careered toward bankruptcy in late 2001."
 

2006-05-26

2006-05-26
Rebecca Clarren _Salon_
Cheap Labor
"MB. With a master's degree in software design and development, 20 years experience, and a 4.0 GPA, MB, 44, hasn't been able to find full-time work since 2001.   'If I can't find work, something is up.', says Besser, who lives in suburban Portland, OR, and has worked for places like Intel.   He adds that in the past 5 years, most of his colleagues in the tech industry have left town or switched jobs.   'I get infuriated when I hear that they can't find people.'   In fact, unemployment is higher as a result of H-1B workers, according to a 2003 study for the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.   Furthermore, between 2006 and 2011, new job creation in the computer and electronic products industry is expected to drop from 1.3M to 1.1M, according to economic data produced by Global Insight, a national economic forecasting system used by the government...   Generally, industry lobbyists are quick with statistics and reports, but in this case it appears they weren't needed.   Neither MSFT nor Intel would reveal how many Ph.D.s or master's students they hired last year, and how many they need for next year.   When the companies and their lobbyists were asked what data and reports they showed Congress to convince them of the need for these new visas, they reported that they don't have any reports and statistics."

2006-05-26
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring e-News-Letter_
regarding excellent Salon article on MSFT and H-1B visa program
"The basic premise is as follows: Earlier this year Bill Gates made quite a show by personally going to DC to lobby for a higher yearly cap on H-1B visas.   Congress swooned at his feet, and so did the press.   Well-known columnist David Broder, for instance, met with Gates and was quite happy to write unquestioningly about Gates' message concerning H-1B.   A few weeks ago, I was interviewed by a writer for a DC-based national magazine, who said to me in essence, 'If Gates himself is lobbying on this, then MSFT's claim to need H-1Bs must be genuine.' Yet the author of the enclosed article in Salon.com dared to think outside the box, and take a critical look at what MSFT is really doing--and takes a critical look at how Congress will unquestioningly do whatever MSFT and the other firms want.   The following quote is priceless (though awfully depressing): 'Such ardor for Gates flows from both sides of the aisle.   When asked about reports and data presented to convince Democrats on the Judiciary Committee that the U.S. didn't have the work-force it needed to fill these jobs, Tracy Schmaler, spokesperson for the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, responded: ''Did you know Bill Gates has been pretty high-profile on this?''' This follows an equally fawning quote of Republican senator Arlen Spector, author of the Senate bill which would basically blow the lid off H-1B.   The article attributes that to the campaign contributions made by MSFT and the rest of the industry: 'Critics of the bill, mainly academics and those who represent American tech workers, say they have no voice on this issue; that Congress has been blinded by campaign contributions of big companies.   In 2004, MSFT alone spent $9.46M on lobbying and hired 16 different firms; it listed immigration as one of its top issues on lobbying disclosure forms, according to data from the non-profit Center for Responsive Politics.   That same year, computer and Internet industries spent $70.5M on lobbying.' Those are incredible amounts.   It doesn't all go to H-1B, but it sure paints an ugly picture of Congress.   Add to that the public statements I've often cited by senator Bennett of Utah and representative Davis of VA (the latter also was chair of the Republican Congressional Campaign Finance Committee) which explicitly say that Congress expands the H-1B program because of the industry's largesse.   Note that these companies say they need to hire H-1Bs because not enough Americans have PhDs.   Yet when this reporter asked the firms to tell us just how many PhDs they do hire, the companies refuse to say.   Hey, come on.   MSFT has often stated publicly how many open jobs they have, in order to bolster their case for more H-1Bs.   So why can't they tell us how many of those openings are for PhDs?   The answer, of course, is that very few of the openings are for PhDs, contrary to their claims that they need lots of H-1Bs because not enough Americans have PhDs.   This reporter shows the most accurate view yet of the utter corruption of H-1B politics.   I also especially like her finishing quote: 'There is no greater case study to understand corporate power in politics.', says Courtney of the tech workers union.   'I could give you 75 reports that prove that H-1B is a horribly flawed program that hurts American workers, but it doesn't matter.   As long as Bill Gates says there's a shortage, and that's it, thanks for playing, game over, try again next session.' This article follows on the heels of 2 major revelations (also from WashTech) about MSFT's mendacity:
1. MSFT says that it's been heroically trying to keep software development in Redmond rather than India, but will need to send work to India if it can't get H-1Bs.   Yet WashTech obtained an internal MSFT presentation that urged all MSFT managers to send as much development work overseas as possible.
2. MSFT says it needs H-1Bs because it can't find enough Americans to fill its software development jobs.   Yet WashTech learned that MSFT has ordered all of its software development contractors to take a week's furlough.   (See the full story on both of these points.) Meanwhile, as I've reported recently, starting salaries for new graduates in computer science and related engineering areas have been FLAT for a number of years, completely contradicting the argument made by MSFT and others that they need H-1Bs because U.S. universities are not graduating enough tech majors.   (See the BusinessWeek blog, for the Bachelor's salaries, and my CIS article for the Master's level) But as the reporter here so aptly points out, Congress doesn't need facts as long as it has Bill Gates.   Great article, something different. It's a pity that it isn't longer."

2006-05-26 08:11PDT (11:11EDT) (15:11GMT)
Greg Robb _MarketWatch_
UMich consumer sentiment index dropped from 87.4 level in April to 79.0 in early May to 79.1 points in late May

2006-05-26 09:08PDT (12:08EDT) (16:08GMT)
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
Inflation ate income gains in April: Core inflation up 2.1% in past year (graph)
BEA press release
 

2006-05-27

2006-05-27
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring e-News-Letter_
More on Misinformation Concerning US vs. Foreign Engineering Grads
"[The Washington Post published] an excellent op-ed in the 'the lobbyists are pulling the wool over our eyes' genre.   Unfortunately, the author seems to be unaware of why the wool-pullers are going to so much trouble.   The author does imply that the mis/disinformation campaign is being waged to ameliorate the negative view Americans have on off-shoring.   Yes, that's part of it, but there's a lot more.   First and foremost, there is the campaign by the tech industry to get Congress to increase the yearly number of visas granted under the H-1B program, which the industry wants in order to hire low-cost programmers and engineers.   In the immigration bill passed this week by the Senate, there is an enormous expansion of H-1B and the establishment of an even more disastrous new F-4 visa category.   So all of this misinformation is aimed in large part in convincing Congress that the U.S. has a shortage of engineers and programmers.   The misinformation on [Red Chinese] and Indian engineering graduates that the author refers to here is just the tip of the iceberg.   Those same lobbyists have been claiming that American kids can't do science and math as well as kids in [Red China] and India, that suddenly American computer science students have lost their programming mettle, that U.S. universities aren't doing enough tech research, etc., etc., etc.   It's all mis/disinformation.   For example, [Red China] and India don't even participate in international studies of kids' performance in these subjects, and in any case our mainstream kids are doing quite well in those studies.   But beyond that, there is academia.   Because of off-shoring, the H-1B program and so on, enrollment in U.S. university computer science programs is plummeting.   This horrifies engineering deans, for example, because in academia numbers mean money.   Even the Duke University study which the author here cites is motivated by the panic that academia is feeling as would-be computer science majors see the hand-writing on the cubicle wall and go for MBA or law degrees instead of pursuing short-lived careers in engineering."
Matloff's comments on Duke University study
Gerald W. Bracey Washington Post Heard the One About the 600,000 Chinese Engineers?

2006-05-27
_Pittsburgh Tribune-Review_
The Amero. What of the USA's sovereignty? And the sovereignty of each US citizen?
"The Amero -- replacing the American and Canadian dollars and the Mexican peso -- will be the coin of the realm of the North American Union, a looming NAFTA-like superstate composed of Canada, Mexico and the United States, according to Human Events Online.   But the Amero is not a new concept.   The Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank, published 'The Case for the Amero' in 1999.   The 3 heads of state issued a joint announcement about a 'trilateral partnership' after meeting at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, in 2005 March.   'The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America' supposedly will lead to the free-market movement of people, capital and trade across the borders...   The Council on Foreign Relations published a report in May -- 'Building a North American Community' -- calling for, among other things, redefining the borders of the 3 nations, creating a super-regional governance board and the North American Paramilitary Group to ensure that Congress does not interfere with whatever the trilateral union feels like doing."
 

2006-05-28

2006-05-28
Bill Cahir _NJ Express-Times_
Visas Vex Native Tech Workers
"Critics say the H1B program encourages U.S. employers to lay off American workers and hire foreign-born trainees who have completed their education at colleges and universities in the United States.   'Our wages have been grossly diminished.', says TC of Bloomsbury, a computer programmer who has lost her job several times in the past 6 years...   She has 2 [bachelor's] degrees, one in applied mathematics and another in statistics, and a graduate degree in computer programming...   'Although the (H-1B) program is meant to provide companies with labor unavailable in this country, no evidence exists of a worker shortage; to the contrary, the market is filled with laid off, unemployed American high tech workers.', the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that favors a moratorium on immigration, says on its web page.   Many high-tech companies don't even bother trying to hire U.S. citizens, according to FAIR...   TC complains that H-1B workers have become so common in the computing field that they now occupy supervisory positions and make hiring decisions for U.S. companies.   Foreign-born workers prefer to hire only H-1B visa holders [and others of their country-men] and discriminate against American engineers, she claims.   She fears that her son, who wants to study electrical engineering in college, won't be able to find work.   'I'm not just going to sit back and let them sell our souls and our careers.', Chester said of federal law-makers."
 

2006-05-29

2006-05-29 16:17PDT (19:17EDT) (23:17GMT)
Andrea Coombes _MarketWatch_
Privacy Violating biometrics spread in consumer products
Privacy links

2006-05-29
Rafe Needleman _CNET_
Turnhere launches the modern video studio
"If you run a small local business, it'd be worth your while to investigate TurnHere as well as SpotRunner, which produces templated video advertisements for small businesses and places them into unsold television advertising slots."
 

2006-05-30

2006-05-30
_Conference Board_
Consumer Confidence Fell
"The Index now stands at 103.2 (1985=100), down from 109.8 in April.   The Present Situation Index decreased to 132.5 from 136.2.   The Expectations Index fell to 83.7 from 92.3."
Conference Board

2006-05-30
Pat Buchanan _TownHall_
The state at war with the nation
"But along that long road to power, many shed principles and convictions as they came to relish the wielding of power for its own sake no less than the liberals of the New Deal and Great Society.   Many now in power are in reality conservative impersonators, the sort of people the conservative movement was first mounted to run out of town...   Last week, the title of Nock's classic came again to mind.   For _Our Enemy, the State_ is an exact description of a regime that seeks to convert into law a Senate amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, while authorizing trans-national companies to go abroad to bring hundreds of thousands of foreign workers here every year to displace Americans...   That proposed amnesty, and the bipartisan support it won, is a textbook example of an establishment against the people, and a state at war with the nation.   For that bill would alter the face, fate and future of America against the expressed will of the nation...   Since the Immigration Act of 1965, Americans, in every poll and referendum, have demanded reductions in immigration, an end to the invasion through Mexico, no amnesty, a resolute defense of America's borders..."

2006-05-30
Kelly Brewington _Baltimore Sun_
Skilled US citizens ignored in favor of cheap foreign labor

2006-05-30
John Sweeney _ChicagoLand Construction_
AFL-CIO on Senate's Immigration Proposal
"We are deeply disappointed that the Senate missed a historic opportunity to fix our nation’s broken immigration system in a just, meaningful and comprehensive way. We strongly believe that America deserves an immigration system that protects all workers within our borders and at same time guarantees the safety of our nation without compromising our fundamental civil rights and liberties. The bill adopted by the Senate yesterday failed to satisfy [any of] those fundamental principles."

2006-05-30
Jerome R. Corsi _Human Events_
North American Union already starting to replace the USA
"In 2005 March at their summit meeting in Waco, TX, President Bush, President Fox and Prime Minister Martin issued a joint statement announced the creation of the 'Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America' (SPP).   The creation of this new agreement was never submitted to Congress for debate and decision.   Instead, the U.S. Department of Commerce merely created a new division under the same title to implement working groups to advance a North American Union working agenda in a wide range of areas, including: manufactured goods, movement of goods, energy, environment, e-commerce, financial services, business facilitation, food and agriculture, transportation, and health.   SPP is headed by 3 top cabinet level officers of each country.   Representing the United States are Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.   Representing Mexico are Secretario de Economa Fernando Canales, Secretario de Gobernacin Carlos Abascal, and Secretario de Relaciones Exteriores, Luis Ernesto Derbez.   Representing Canada are Minister of Industry David L. Emerson, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Safety, Anne McLellan, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Pierre Stewart Pettigrew...   none of the 30 or so working agendas makes any mention of submitting decisions to the U.S. Congress for review and approval.   No new U.S. laws are contemplated for the Bush administration to submit to Congress.   Instead, the plan is obviously to knit together the North American Union completely under the radar, through a process of regulations and directives issued by various U.S. government agencies.   What we have here is an executive branch plan being implemented by the Bush administration to construct a new super-regional structure completely by fiat...   In every area of activity, the SPP agenda stresses free and open movement of people, trade, and capital within the North American Union.   Once the SPP agenda is implemented with appropriate departmental regulations, there will be no area of immigration policy, trade rules, environmental regulations, capital flows, public health, plus dozens of other key policy areas countries that the U.S. government will be able to decide alone, or without first consulting with some appropriate North American Union regulatory body.   At best, our border with Mexico will become a speed bump, largely erased, with little remaining to restrict the essentially free movement of people, trade, and capital...   Again, the CFR report says nothing about reporting to Congress or to the American people.   What we have underway here with the SPP could arguably be termed a bureaucratic coup d’etat."

2006-05-31

2006-05-31 06:37PDT (09:37EDT) (13:37GMT)
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
ADP survey suggests net increase of 122K in May
"U.S. private-sector non-farm pay-rolls increased by about 122K in May, ADP said.   'These findings suggest a deceleration of employment relative to growth experienced over the last 12 months.', said Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, the economic forecasting firm that computes the ADP index from anonymous pay-roll data provided by Automatic Data Processing [a body shop with a vested interest in having a huge idle IT labor pool]...   A separate index from [body shop] Hudson showed workers' confidence fell in May on concerns about personal finances and less anticipated hiring.   The Hudson employment index fell to 102.3 in May from 107.7 in April.   The number of workers who said they are happy at work remained at 74%, while 17% said they were concerned about lay-offs at their company, unchanged from April."

2006-05-31 (5766 Sivan 04)
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring e-News-Letter_
On ComputerWorld article on Senate immigration perversion bill
"But a group representing U.S. IT workers questioned the need for more H-1B visas.   The program is full of abuses, with many companies not paying the required prevailing wage for H-1B workers, said Ron Hira, vice president for career activities at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-USA (IEEE-USA).   This is really unfortunate, and apparently not an accurate quote of what Hira said, as it greatly mischaracterizes the problem. The problem with H-1B is not [only] that employers are not paying the 'required prevailing wage', but rather that the 'required prevailing wage' itself is NOT the realistic market wage.   The official definition of prevailing wage is riddled with loop-holes.   The employers make use of those loop-holes, so that they ARE paying the '[legally] required prevailing wage' but are paying less than the market wage.   IOW, the employers pay their H-1Bs less than market wage but do so in full compliance with the law.   This is more accurate: 'The program is basically broken and can be easily manipulated.', Hira said.   I hate to run this point into the ground, but it is absolutely fundamental.   Therefore the OMB is off base in its quote below:   In 2005, the U.S Office of Management and Budget said the H-1B program is 'vulnerable to fraud and abuse' because the U.S. Department of Labor has limited means to check the wages paid to H-1B workers, Hira noted.   It's not fraud (in most cases) [I think Dr. Matloff is incorrect, here.   It is still fraud, even if it is fraud permitted by loop-holes...jgo]; it is simply a matter of employers LEGALLY taking advantange of outrageous loop-holes.   Readers of this e-newsletter should pay close attention to this: But the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), a trade [lobbying] group for technology vendors, praised the Senate for including the H-1B provisions in the larger immigration bill.   The bill, which would allow illegal immigrants a way to gain U.S citizenship or legal status, is opposed by many Republican law-makers, and its future is uncertain.   Although the bill passed 62-36 in the Senate, a majority of the chamber's Republicans opposed it.   The H-1B provisions could be a 'bridge to compromise', said Ralph Hellman, ITI's senior vice president for government relations.   Many Republicans support the H-1B increases, and those provisions could be part of a compromise package, he said.   I believe that Hellman's assessment is accurate, sad to say.   I believe that H-1B (and the unfortunately unknown provision to establish a new visa type named F-4) is the one thing that the Senate and House agree completely on. Ever since the debate on the Senate bill began, I haven't heard a single member of the House object to the H-1B provisions, let alone F-4.   And finally, how about this one: Hellman dismissed arguments that an H-1B increase isn't needed. Opponents of the cap increase 'don't have a very strong standing in Congress', he said.   'Quite frankly, we don't think they have the facts correct.'   The fact is that you could knock on office doors on Capitol Hill all day and not find a single politician or staffer who could tell you anything about the source and veracity of the opponents' data.   All they know is that the industry wants the H-1B increase, and in the words of representative Tom Davis of Virginia when Congress enacted the last major H-1B increase, 'This is not a popular bill with the public.   It's popular with the CEOs...   This is a very important issue for the high-tech executives who give the money.'   Davis, as Chair of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, hit the nail right on the head."
Grant Gross ComputerWorld Senate immigration bill raises H-1B limit

2006-05-31 (5766 Sivan 04)
Rob Sanchez Zazona/_YouTube_
US Trades good paying jobs for Mangos

2006-05-31 (5766 Sivan 04)
Carl Hulse _NY Times_/_American Workers Coalition_
Congress hit with 10K bricks in campaign to fence US borders
"Over 10K bricks have been mailed to senate and House offices in a campaign to support the construction of a fence along the entire southern border to prevent illegal immigration...   Examples of bricks painted with messages such as 'Good fences make good neighbors' and 'Stop the invasion!' can be viewed at the web site for the Send A Brick Project."

2006-05-31 (5766 Sivan 04)
Wolfgang Gruener _TG Daily_
Intel to lay off 16K employees
"Intel CEO Paul Otellini revealed last month that Intel is about o enter the most extensive 'self re-evaluation' phase in 20 years.   Now, first indications of the impact of this process begin to surface: According to industry sources, the company may lay off or 're-deploy' up to 16K employees.   Intel is expected to announce details on 15 June.   Omid Rahmat reported about Silicon Valley rumors involving lay-offs in his blog this morning, referring to industry sources.   'Rumors are a leapin' around Silicon Valley that Intel may end up laying off 16K people, and getting rid of a bunch of marketing initiatives, Viiv the unpronounceable being rumored to be one destined for the death knell.', he writes.   Intel, of course, is one of those very few companies that never have laid off workers.   And even in the most dramatic employee reshuffle following the dot-com bust in 2002, the firm did not lay off, but rather 're-deployed' about 5K employees within the company.   Following a challenging year, 'moderating' demand for PCs and increased competitive pressure, Intel may be making more serious decisions that impact up to 16K employees and complete business units.   At the time of writing this article, it was unclear if the Intel will be announcing lay-offs or employee re-deployments."
Joe Guzzardi V Dare "MSFT and Intel -- Profit without Honor"

2006-05-31 (5766 Sivan 04)
Norm Matloff _Center for Immigration Studies_
Best? Brightest? A green card give-away for foreign grads would be unwarranted
Immigration Daily

2006-05-31 (5766 Sivan 04)
Steven A. Camarota _Center for Immigration Studies_
67% said immigration should be reduced so we can assimilate those already here, 2% believe immigration is too low
"69% said it was a good or very good idea when told it tries to make illegals go home by fortifying the border, forcing employer verification, and encouraging greater cooperation with local law enforcement while not increasing legal immigration..."

2006-05-31 (5766 Sivan 04)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
Tax Cuts and Trickle Down: Preserving a vision part3

2006-05-31 (5766 Sivan 04)
_Dice_
Dice Report: 86,370 job ads

Batman Begins

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