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updated: 2024-06-14
 

"low family income continues to impede post-secondary participation for some A+-eligible students." --- Leslie M. Galbreath 2007-05-11 "Tracking Public-Post-Secondary Enrollment Patterns of Missouri A+ Program-Eligible Graduates" pg 223 (237 in pdf)

 
 

2009 December

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

 

"Inland waterways carry about one-sixth of the nation's intercity freight, at a cost per ton-mile that is about half that of rail and one-tenth that of trucks. " --- Edwin S. Rubenstein 2009-01-12 "The Twin Crises: Immigration and Infrastructure" _The Social Contract_ pg48 (50 in pdf)

 
 
 

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

2009-12-01

2009-12-01
Ianthe Jeanne Dugan _Wall Street Journal_
Working Two Jobs and Still Under-Employed
"when he lost his job he was thrust into a netherworld of part-time gigs...   'I thought it would be temporary.'...   Mr. C is part of a growing group of under-employed -- people in part-time jobs who want full-time work or people in jobs that don't employ their skills.   Since the recession began 2 years ago, the number of people involuntarily working part-time jobs has more than doubled to 9.3M, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, the highest number on record...   Robert Reich...took an 8% pay cut last week, along with the rest of the Berkeley faculty...   the government's broadest measure of labor underutilization -- known as the U6 -- has more than doubled in the two years since the recession began to 17.5%, and it is up from 12% just a year ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.   This means that nearly one in five people are either unemployed, involuntarily working part-time or 'marginally attached' -- they want jobs but haven't searched in at least a month.   It also counts 'discouraged workers' who have stopped searching."

2009-12-01
David Weidner _MarketWatch_
Wall Street's fuzzy math and quirky indices

2009-12-01 07:20PST (10:20EST) (15:20GMT)
Roy Beck _Numbers USA_
hundreds of thousands of additional Americans could be working a year from now if the federal government merely cut visa quotas

2009-12-01
Joe McKendrick _Ziff Davis_/_SmartPlanet_/_CBS_
Harvard: data-basing medical records increases costs

2009-12-01
_Work-Force Management_
Special Report on Body Shopping

2009-12-01 (5770 Kislev 14)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
Random Thoughts: "Brilliance", Biden, Baseball
Orange county CA Register
Gaston Gazette

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-02

2009-12-02 03:00PST (06:00EST) (11:00GMT)
Patrick Thibodeau _Computer World_/_IDG_
increasing demand for extremely under-priced H-1B visas

2009-12-02
Jonathan Oosting _Michigan Live_
Metro Detroit unemployment rate remains highest in nation at 16.7%
Hazel Trice Edney: NNPA/Seattle Medium: Black Joblessness Becoming Showdown Between Black Leaders and Black President
Robert Evatt: Tulsa World: Tulsa OK unemployment surged to 7.5% in October; highest in 29 years
Tracy Clemons: MSFT/GE/NBC 29: Charlottesville VA Unemployment at 5.3% Better Than State; Danville at 11.2% was highest; Albemarle county one of lowest at 5%
Robert Carreira: Douglas AZ Dispatch: Cochise county unemployment stabilized at 7.5% in October
G. Scott Thomas: San Jose CA Business Journal: Silicon Valley unemployment rate 11.9%
Alan Wolf: Technology Marketing/Raleigh News & Observer/McClatchy: Research Triangle jobless rate at 8.9%
V. Dion Haynes: Washington Post: DC region unemployment at 6.2% NSA
G. Scott Thomas: Albuquerque NM Business Weekly: Albuquerque's unemployment rate at 7.8%; El Centro, CA 30%; Yuma, AZ 23.5%
Cincinnati Business Courier: Cincinnati metro unemployment rate rose to 9.6% in October; Lexington-Fayette 8.4%; Louisville-Jefferson county 10.3%
James Pilcher: Cincinnati Enquirer: Ohio unemployment rate jumped to 10.5%
Ted Evanoff & Tom Spalding: Indianapolis Star: Indiana's jobless rate crawled up to 9.8%
Diane Stafford: Kansas City Star: KC unemployment rate fell to 8.4%
Dayton Business Journal: Dayton unemployment rate climbed to 12.4% in October
Ann Belser: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Pittsburgh region unemployment rate rose to 8.3% in October
Joe Napsha: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Pittsburgh region unemployment rate highest in 23 years
graphs

2009-12-02 12:52:27PST (15:52:27EST) (20:52:27GMT)
Daniel Wagner _San Jose CA Mercury News_/_AP_
Households without bank accounts are on the rise: It is a beautiful thing
Ronald D. Orol: MarketWatch: FDIC: 9M U.S. households have no bank accounts
"A quarter of American households lack access to full banking services, while roughly 9M of those households have no checking or savings accounts at all, according to a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. survey released Wednesday.   In addition to the 9M U.S. households without bank accounts, [there are] an additional 21M households with roughly 43M adults with [only] checking accounts..."

2009-12-02 12:02PST (15:02EST) (20:02GMT)
Ronald D. Orol _MarketWatch_
Bankruptcies and foreclosures in GA: with 4% of banks has had 17% of bank failures
"So far this year, 21 Georgia banks have failed, more than in any other state.   Georgia -- with 3% of the nation's population and 4% of its banks -- has been home to 17% of the 124 U.S.A. bank failures so far this year.   Georgia also had more than its shares of bank failures last year...   The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. reported last week that the number of distressed banks in the U.S.A. rose to 552, the highest level in 16 years.   In Georgia and other states, more bank failures are expected...   Green and 311 other Georgian bankers are struggling to survive.   Along with 25 other community banks in the state, Green's bank has raised more capital, including some from the government.   Today, Mountain Valley has $24M in capital...   'Georgia was and is a fast growing state.', Brannen said.   'It is among the 6 fastest growing states in the country with 120K new people moving to Atlanta every year.'   The unemployment rate in Georgia has doubled during the recession from 5.1% to 10.2%, matching the national average.   In addition, the state has always had a large number of community banks for historic reasons.   Until 1996, community banks were prohibited from opening branches outside their home county.   Georgia has 159 counties...   According to the FDIC, U.S. banks insured by the agency set aside $62.5G in reserves in the third quarter, the fourth quarter in a row that U.S. bank loss provisions surpassed $60G."

2009-12-02
Tom Lutey _Billings MT Gazette_
Farmers get seat at table with Burlington Northern Santa Fe RR to negotiate rates
"Negotiators say they've actually cut the cost of shipping grain from Shelby by $8,580 per 110-car shuttle and lowered the anticipated price increase in other Hi-Line communities."

2009-12-02
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Buncombe-Babbling Ben Bernanke

2009-12-02
Walter E. Williams _Patriot Post_
The Pretense of Knowledge
"Neither you nor the U.S. Congress has the complete knowledge to know exactly what's best for you.   The difference is that when individuals make their own trade-offs, say between purchasing health insurance or investing in a business, they make wiser decisions because it is they who personally bear the costs and benefits of those decisions...   It is not society that bears the burden; it is some flesh and blood American worker who finds his earnings taken by Congress to finance the health needs of another person.   There is absolutely no moral case, much less constitutional case, for Congress forcibly using one American to serve the purposes of another American, a practice that differs only in degree from slavery, which we all should find morally offensive.   Whether it is health care, education, employment or most other areas of our lives, I ask you: Who has the capacity to master all the complexity to make choices on behalf of others?   Each of us possesses only a tiny percentage of the knowledge that would be necessary to make totally informed decisions in our own lives, much less the lives of others.   There is only one reason for the forcible transference of decision-making authority over important areas of our private lives to elite decision-makers in Congress and government bureaucracies.   Doing so confers control, power, wealth and revenue to society's elite.   What's in the best interests of individual members of society, such as a person who'd rather launch a landscaping business than purchase a health insurance policy, ranks low on the elite's list of priorities."

2009-12-02
Steve King _C-SPAN_
Great speech on job markets, excessive immigration, illegal aliens (pp H13457-H13463 in the congressional record)
 
"The things that I saw in front of my eyes were not catch and release into the United States, but catch near the border and release at the border and direct them to go back to Mexico.   No further questions asked.   We just have your prints and we have your digital photographs.   Anecdotal evidence says 37 to 38 times a unique individual -- when I go back and look at the data, the data supports numbers that go up to 28 times that we process the same individual.   That's part of the records...
 
And we have to take this insult that there's jobs that Americans won't do.   Americans do every job...   But at the time, 25 or 30 years ago, you had to know somebody to get a job to work in the packing plant, and the job paid about the same as a school teacher made then.   Today, that same job is usually held by someone whom we suspect is illegal, and it pays about half of what a teacher is making.
 
So what we've seen is we've seen an over-supply of labor that has poured into these jobs because people can go in and do these jobs without being particularly literate or particularly educated, but you can't do it without being particularly ambitious.
 
Here we are with the President of the United States tomorrow having his jobs summit at the White House.   And there you will see a collection of Keynesian economists, the kind of brains that brought about all these things that I've talked about, from TARP funding to the nationalization of the investment banks and AIG and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and General Motors and Chrysler and $787G and an economic stimulus plan; the kind of brains that decided we should tax all the energy consumed in America and tell America that we're going to create green jobs; the kind of people that can't draw a distinction between the private sector and the public sector; people that don't understand that it's the private sector that produces all of the new wealth that's necessary -- in fact, all of the wealth that's necessary to make this society work -- and that out of that wealth that comes from the private sector is skimmed, the funding that goes into the government machinery.
 
It has been so convoluted over the last generation or so that economists can go through a college education and go off and get their master's and really not have much exposure to where the new wealth comes from...
 
there's a distinction between the private sector -- the productive sector of the economy -- and the public sector of the economy -- the parasitic sector of the economy, the sector of the economy that comes from government that taxes production and punishes production and regulates production until it defeats the very spirit of the entrepreneurs that start the companies that create the jobs...
 
Now where does wealth come from? It comes from the production of goods and services, first, that are essential to the survival of mankind and, second, to the production of goods and services that improve the productivity of those goods and services that are essential to the survival of mankind.
 
So if it's food, clothing and shelter, the things that we must have if we're going to live, if you produce those things, you're at the foundation of the new wealth.   If you produce those things that make us more efficient in producing those essentials for life, you're at the second level of the economy.   The third level is the disposable income that comes that's in excess to the necessities that are required to replace your capital investment and the necessities that are required to continue the production of the necessities of life...
 
And then you have people like those who have been appointed by the President, hired by the President, and the President himself, who sit back, get this thoughtful look on their face, and they think, Let me see, if I could borrow a few hundred billion dollars from the [Red Chinese] and promise to pay interest on that few hundred billion dollars, then I could drop this money in and I could do a few hundred billion dollars' worth of patronage -- patronage jobs that will call for more political loyalty and the government jobs that are temporarily created by the taxation and the borrowing that takes place.   Never mind about 4 years from now or 8 years or a decade or two or a generation from now.   We'll just borrow that money now and drop this into the economy and give this big, giant economic chain letter a spin...
 
I think when we encounter people that are in this country illegally, whether they're working or whether they aren't, we have an obligation when we encounter people unlawfully present in the United States to take them back and put them where they're lawfully present.   All we're doing is putting people back into the condition they were in before they broke the law.   Deporting someone who's violated immigration law in the United States is the equivalent of catching--let's just say you catch a bank robber and he's got the money and you say, Hold it, you're going to have to give up the money and I'm going to take you outside the door of the bank and turn you lose again.   That's the equivalent of deportation...
 
Not only do we need to use all levels of law enforcement; we need the 287(g) program to be refurbished again to what it was before it was distorted by the Secretary of Homeland Security...   There are several Federal court cases that support the authority and the jurisdiction of local law enforcement to enforce Federal immigration law...
 
the open borders people don't want to enforce immigration law.   They want to see a greater number of people come into the United States, and they want to empower themselves politically with the masses of those that are here illegally...
 
This problem is the growing problem of unemployment in America: the pressure on our economy -- the pressure on our economy that's watching us lose, over the last month, 190K jobs.   We lost 190K jobs last month that were eliminated by the downward spiral of our economy.   During the same period of time our Federal Government saw fit to approve permanent work permits -- those are green cards -- for legal immigrants of 75K per month.
 
Now, if you look at these numbers, these numbers work like this: there are approximately, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, 8M illegals working in the United States.   I think the number is greater than that.   These numbers can be verified, I believe, by solid analysis.   It's not under that unless the suppression of the economy has reduced that number marginally over the last few months, and it may have actually dropped as far as 7M.   But their number is 8M.
 
The second number is 75K.   We issued in October of this year, the Federal Government, 75K working permits for immigrants; 75K new illegal immigrant workers in just one month.   Seventy-five thousand.   That's an actual rate of 900K new working legals in the United States of America while we're losing 190K jobs a month.   This works out to be, on an annual basis -- and I'm just extrapolating over the last month because we don't know what the future is going to bring, Madam Speaker -- but I extrapolate this.   We lost 190K jobs last month.   That's 2.28M jobs lost at that rate.   Those jobs gone, disappeared.   But at the same rate, 900K jobs taken up by legal immigrants, not to count the illegal immigrants that are there.
 
So we had a net annual loss of jobs of about 1.1M, 380K net loss of jobs as a result of the 900K green cards.   We have 8M -- perhaps as low as 7M -- but 8M illegal workers in America.   You add that to the number, and you have a pressure on this economy that is just an awesome thing to think that we have a President of the United States that declared that his stimulus plan was going to, Madam Speaker, he said -- and I'm almost embarrassed to repeat this -- save or create 3.5M jobs by September of 2010.   I believe that's the date that he gave in that.   Save or create 3.5M jobs by 2010 September, if we just put another $787G into the economy, which some of that happened...
 
Just for the State of Iowa, on this web site, recovery.gov/transparency, for the jobs that were created in western Iowa, alleged by the White House's web site, they spent $862,498 per job created.   Now, get that, $862,498 jobs per job created in western Iowa, created a lot of these jobs in nonexistent congressional districts.
 
We have 5 congressional districts in Iowa.   Some of these jobs were alleged to have been created -- these are the district numbers -- Seventh, Eighth, 16th, 17th, 19th, 24th, and 31st Iowa Congressional Districts, jobs created at the cost of $862,498, and that leaves off the double-aught district of the State of Iowa.   That's zero-zero.   That's double goose egg.   That's non-existent, if you could put non-existent there without a decimal point and carry it out to infinity.   There they spent $114K to create 5 non-existent jobs.
 
This is what's going on with these Keynesian economics on steroids while they're propping up immigration, while we have Americans that need jobs, want jobs, line up for jobs.   While this is going on, we have this kind of fuzzy math accounting and a complete misunderstanding of where wealth comes from, a complete misunderstanding of the foundation of our economy.   And I know John Maynard Keynes had some ideas, and I know he has got followers, and I know FDR was one of them.   But Keynes was also the guy who said back in the 1930s, I can solve all of your unemployment in America.   Just take me to an abandoned coal mine, and I will go out and drill a bunch of holes out there, and I will bury American cash in there, and then I will fill that coal mine up with garbage...and turn the entrepreneurs loose to go dig the money up out of the holes that were drilled in the bottom of the coal mine that was filled with garbage.
 
That was Keynes' idea, and I know he was sounding facetious, but, giving a little bit for his sense of humor and for his sense of accuracy, because we have spent a lot of money in this country, dug holes and filled them back up figuratively without putting the money in it, just put money in the hole.
 
Do Americans want jobs? Absolutely they do, Madam Speaker.   And here's what's taking place: Day labor centers are now seeing natural born Americans, United States citizens, line up at the day labor centers right next to illegals, competing for jobs that illegals were supposedly doing that Americans wouldn't do.   Here is an article in my hand, USA Today, December 1 -- that's yesterday -- titled 'Unemployed U.S.-born workers seek day-labor jobs'.   It quotes a professor at the University of California-Los Angeles, Abel Valenzuela, Jr. -- he is a professor of urban planning...
 
Americans are lined up to get jobs in day labor gatherings right alongside groups of illegals who have, some of them, decided to go back home because of the lack of opportunity here.   The unemployment rate is 10.2%.   7M to 8M working illegals, as I said.   That's about 15.7M unemployed, and Madam Speaker, if you add to the list of that 15.7M legitimate workers in America who are unemployed and, by definition, are looking for a job, there is another 5.5M or more who have exhausted their unemployment benefits who don't quite fit the definition that are looking for a job.
 
There are more than 20M Americans that want a job today.   The American work-force, of 154.4M of our total work-force, there are over 70M Americans of working age who are not working.   Over 70M.   We could tap into a work-force of more than 70M people of working age that are just simply not working because the wages don't pay enough, the benefits don't pay enough.   Maybe they're independently wealthy.   Maybe they're in between jobs, but they're all hirable if you make a good enough offer...
 
All we have to do, Madam Speaker, is hire 1 out of 10 of the Americans who are of working age and not in the work-force, put them into those jobs, and we could easily replace -- by hiring 10% of the non-working Americans of working age, we could replace every illegal in America, according to these numbers, that are produced by the Pew foundation.   If it's double that, like I think it is, then we hire 20%, 2 out of 10 of Americans.   We're looking at more than 20M Americans that are looking for work.   I think this is an easy solution for us.   And by the way, we are wiping out 900K jobs a year because of legal immigration, green cards that we're granting at the rate of 75K per month.   That number I believe is 780K so far this year.
 
Federal records show that before the recession began, the Federal Government issued 830K green cards in the previous year.   Last year, during the first year of the recession, the government granted 875K new green cards, and we're at the pace to go to 900K or more this year.   There were 900K jobs granted to people who were -- at the time the card was advanced -- not Americans, while Americans are lined up 20M deep.   We're wiping out almost 1M jobs a year because of the legal immigration, and we know that there are 7M to 8M or more jobs that are taken by illegals, and we know that if we enforce the job -- if we enforce a law for every illegal that's removed from a job, it opens up a job slot for an American to step into.
 
Madam Speaker, any sane nation would go after this enforcement.   They would adjust their immigration policy to reduce the legal immigration because of the recession that we are in.   Here is what's going on in this chart, Madam Speaker.   The work-force enforcement free-fall -- what we've seen happen is, the unemployment has gone up 58% overall.   At the same time that's happened, here is the enforcement that has gone down.   Department of Homeland Security administrative arrests are down 68%; criminal arrests are down 60%; criminal indictments are down 58%, almost reflecting the same; criminal convictions are down 63%.   This whole level is down roughly 60% or a little bit more in the enforcement of our immigration laws, while unemployment is up almost the same thing, almost 60%.
 
yes, I know everybody has a dream, but everybody can't live in the United States of America.   That is the bottom line.   We can't help the world if we sink the life-boat.   That's what will happen.
 
I'm for a tighter labor supply, Madam Speaker.   I'm for the kind of labor supply that will allow that person who grows up in this country or comes legally to this country to go to work and earn a living and be able to claim a salary and benefits package that they can live on, that they can raise a family on.   And yes, today it takes two workers in a family to make this happen.   Mom and dad to raise the kids, working together and making ends meet as best they can...
 
my New IDEA Act.   The acronym is this: The New Illegal Deduction Elimination Act.   It brings the IRS into this so that the IRS -- it clarifies to the IRS that wages and benefits are not deductible for income tax purposes.   It allows the IRS to do the audit and deny the business expense of wages and benefits paid to illegals..."
Emily Bazar: USA Today: Unemployed U.S.-born workers seek day-labor jobs
John Derbyshire: Natinal Review
Numbers USA

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-03

2009-12-03 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (12:30GMT)
Scott Gibbons & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
un-employment insurance weekly claims report
DoL home page
historical data
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 460,989 in the week ending November 28, a decrease of 78,263 from the previous week.   There were 535,730 initial claims in the comparable week in 2008.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.6% during the week ending November 21, a decrease of 0.3 percentage point from the prior week.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 4,787,291, a decrease of 296,052 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.7% and the volume was 3,652,990.   Extended benefits were available in AL, AK, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, DC, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, ME, MA, MI, MN, MO, NV, NH, NJ, NM, NY, NC, OH, OR, PA, PR, RI, SC, TN, TX, VT, VA, WA, WV, and WI during the week ending November 14...   States reported 3,859,553 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending November 14, an increase of 265,300 from the prior week.   There were 777,393 claimants in the comparable week in 2008.   EUC weekly claims include first, second, and third tier activity.
graphs
more graphs

2009-12-03
Kathleen Madigan _Wall Street Journal_
50,349 planned lay-offs in November
Nick Olivari: Reuters/Forbes
UPI
Minyanville
Charles Sherry: Examiner
Sydney Morning Herald
Washington Post
Diane Stafford: Kansas City Star
Francine Knowles: Chicago Sun-Times
Dennis Jacobe: Gallup
Tom Abate: San Francisco CA Chronicle
Anna Maria Andriotis: Smart Money
Jan Norman: Orange County Register
Clyde Middleton: The Patriot Room
"Employers announced 50,349 planned job cuts in November, which is the lowest monthly total since 44,416 were announced in 2007 December, according to the report by global out-placement consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.   55,679 job cuts were announced in October, and 181,671 for 2008 November.   Since July 1, employers have announced an average of 69,252 job cuts per month.   In contrast, the average monthly job-cut total from January through June was 149,446.   Illinois, job cut announcements fell 33.2% last month to 1,832 from 2,742 in 2008 November and down 52.6% from 3,863 in October."

2009-12-03
Roy Beck _Numbers USA_
Backers of amnesty for illegal aliens think US citizens deserve to be unemployed

2009-12-03
Dee de Pass _Minneapolis MN Star-Tribune_
"job summit"
"Robert Christensen, a Working America member from St. Louis Park, agreed. &nbp; 'I would tell Obama: No more out-sourcing of jobs.'"

2009-12-03 09:14PST (12:14EST) (17:14GMT)
Andria Cheng _MarketWatch_
Same-store sales fell from last year in November
"Overall, sales fell 0.3%, reversing the gains seen in September and October, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers.   The trade group had cut its November forecast twice to a sales increase of 3% to 4%.   To be sure, retailers and analysts said it'll be fair to look at combined November and December results.   ICSC forecast December sales to rise 2% to 3%, which would hold up its projection of a 1% rise in holiday sales, ICSC's chief economist, Michael Niemira, told MarketWatch.   Analysts said strong on-line sales also will reflect in the December number."

2009-12-03 09:14PST (12:14EST) (17:14GMT)
John Stossel _Fox_
Who Creates Jobs?
"When government sets simple rules that everyone understands and then gets out of the way, free people create jobs.   Hong Kong demonstrates this.   Last century, Hong Kong was third world poor.   50 years ago, its citizens' average income was under $700 (in today's dollars) per year.   Today, it's $43,800.   Hong Kong got rich because Hong Kong's rulers, stuffy British bureaucrats, practiced what I'll call 'benign neglect': they enforced rule of law -- kept people from stealing from each other, or killing each other -- but then sat around and drank tea.   They left people alone, and free people, left alone, created prosperity.   America's founders did the same thing.   The Constitution announced that American would be a country of limited government.   That provided the simple and understandable rules that allowed America to grow into the richest country ever."

2009-12-03 12:00PST (15:00EST) (20:00GMT)
Marc Parry _Chronice of Higher Education_
Credit for learning outside of academia
"The Council for Adult and Experiential Learning announced this week that it plans to design a virtual center that will help colleges assess prior learning, an evaluation process that can involve student portfolios or tests...   The project has a $175K grant from the Lumina Foundation for Education and a number of college partners, including Valdosta State University and the State University of New York's Empire State College."

2009-12-03
_Tulsa OK Beacon_
New Louisiana bribe advances senate's national socialist health care perversion bill

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-04

2009-12-04
Newt Gingrich
Why Gohmert's plan is better than a bail-out
"Representative Louie Gohmert (R-TX) has proposed a very important [extortion-cut] alternative to the Pelosi-Paulson big-government bail-out plan...   In this citizen-empowerment model, you the customer pick the winners and losers and you have the power to decide where to spend your money and which innovations fit your values the most...   For the $350G second bail-out installment Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is going to request, every American [tax-victim] could have a 2-month tax holiday from both income [extortion] and the [Socialist Insecurity]-Medicare (FICA) [extortion]...   As speaker of the House, I helped balance the federal budget for 4 consecutive years and to pay off $405G in federal debt.   That was the first time since the later 1920s (70 years) that the federal government had four consecutive years of a balanced budget.   We balanced the budget by controlling spending, reforming welfare and trimming bureaucracies while cutting taxes for the first time in 16 years to increase economic growth and therefore increase government revenues from a bigger economy with lower taxes rather than weakening growth by trying to get more revenues through higher taxes in a smaller economy.   As a fiscal conservative committed to balancing the federal budget, I would not normally recommend a tax holiday on this scale.   However, when the alternative is a Pelosi-Paulson spending increase that is Washington-centered, politician-controlled, and bureaucratically micromanaged, the Gohmert plan is a dramatically better approach that will produce far more freedom, much less corruption, and return power and control back to the American worker."

2009-12-04
Mark Lieberman _Fox_
BLS employment/unemployment report
graphs
"Health and education have been the only sources of any sort of job growth in recent months, adding about 32K jobs a month over the past year, so adding 40L jobs in November was not much of a stretch.   The big gains in professional and business services -- 86K jobs -- came from [bodyshopping]...   Manufacturing firms shed 41K jobs in November, equaling the 3-month average; the information technology sector dropped 17K jobs, exceeding its three month average.   Financial firms and the leisure and hospitality sector also dropped as many jobs as they have in each of the last 3 months."

2009-12-04 12:07PST (15:07EST) (20:07GMT)
Owen Thomas _NBC SF Bay Area_
Infosys bosses harass employees for celebrating ThanksGiving
Scott Budman
"In a law-suit filed Monday in Alameda County Superior Court, Awasthi, an India-born American citizen, says her bosses at Infosys's Fremont, CA office mocked her for observing American holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas and refused to pay her over-time according to California law.   'Every time the lay-off news comes, they're happy.', she says.   'They say this is good for us, those jobs will be out-sourced.'"

2009-12-04
Shawn Mallow _WizBang_
Take Our Jobs. Please!

2009-12-04
Thomas Sowell _Investor's Business Daily_
How Congress Ignored Warnings And Stiff-Armed Reform Of GSEs

2009-12-04

DJIA	10,388.90
S&P 500	1,105.98
NASDAQ	2,194.35
Nikkei	9,082
10-year US T-Bond	3.48%
crude oil	$75.47/barrel
gold	$1,168.80/ounce
silver	$18.496/ounce
platinum	$1,449.70/ounce
palladium	$376.85/ounce
copper	$0.20084375/ounce
natgas	$4.572/MBTU
reformulatedgasoline	$1.975/gal
heatingoil	$2.0268/gal
dollarindex	75.78
yenperdollar	90.51
dollarspereuro	1.4847
dollarsperpound	1.6429
swissfranksperdollar	1.0188
indianrupeesperdollar	46.29
mexicanpesosperdollar	12.49
MorganStanleyHighTechIndex	556.83

I usually get this info from MarketWatch.
 

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-05

2009-12-05
John Miano _Center for Immigration Studies_/_Right Side News_
The Bashers of Americans

2009-12-05
Peter Brimelow _V Dare_
Putting Americans back to work with an immigration moratorium
World Net Daily

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-06

2009-12-06
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Cost of CO and CO₂ caps

2009-12-06
Christopher Leonard & Mae Anderson _AP_
Jobless professionals vie for holiday sales survival jobs
"Retailers report a surge in applications this year from professionals who had never applied for such jobs before.   'You'll find Wall Street stock brokers and small business owners trying to find temporary retail jobs during the holidays.', said Ellen Davis, vice president of the National Retail Federation.   The pay is low, the jobs temporary.   And the work is hardly equal to their experience or expertise."

2009-12-06
Vic Napier _Tucson AZ Examiner_
New unemployment numbers and the future of the economy
"the numbers of long term unemployed will likely increase, and that many will never go back to traditional jobs.   Companies will likely hire temps over permanent workers..."
graphs

2009-12-06
Constantine Curris _Chronicle of Higher Education_
How to Stop the Red Queen's Race in Compensation to College and University Executives

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-07

2009-12-07
_FAIR US_/_Right Side News_
Update on US immigration legislation

2009-12-07
Ira Mehlman _Town Hall_
Obama Administration's Phantom Immigration Enforcement Policy
"According to DHS's own reports, very little of our nation's borders (Southwestern or otherwise) are secure, and gaining control is not even a goal of the department.   DHS claims to have 'effective control' over just 894 miles of border.   That's 894 out of 8,607 miles they are charged with protecting.   As for the other 7,713 miles?   DHS's stated border security goal for FY2010 is the same 894 miles.   The administration's strategic approach to interior and worksite enforcement is just as chimerical as its strategy at the border, unless one considers shuffling paper to be a strategy.   DHS data, released November 18, show that administrative arrests of immigration law violators fell by 68% between 2008 and 2009.   The department also carried out 60% fewer arrests for criminal violations of immigration laws, 58% fewer criminal indictments, and won 63% fewer convictions."

2009-12-07 11:17PST (14:17EST) (19:17GMT)
Marie J. Parente _Milford MA Daily News_
The counted, uncounted, and discounted
"Governor Deval Patrick adopted 2 executive orders that appear to advise all agencies to adapt their missions to 'The New Americans Agenda', an advisory report that encourages the granting of drivers licenses and in-state college tuition to undocumented student immigrants.   Here we go again.   Some people just can't deal with the word 'illegal'.   This attitude aids and abets the never-ending invasion by illegal aliens who expect the same laws they ignore to grant them 'more'...   The public gallery was overflowing with undocumented students.   Hundreds of undocumented students and advocates lined the halls of the Legislature...   I looked toward the gallery and said, 'I am impressed.   If I were living in your country without legal papers, I would be hiding under a bush.   Certainly, I would not be in your state government's capital demanding money...   Have you signed up for Selective Service yet?   You are required by federal law to do so.'...   Failure to register is a felony...   'Our constituents are struggling to send their children to college.   Massachusetts is a member of a consortium of states that engage in tuition remission reciprocity.   We grant their students discounted tuitions in certain core disciplines and those states reciprocate offering our students the same benefit.'   According to the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education, current average in-state tuition and mandatory fees at state universities total $9,704 per year, compared with out-of-state tuition of $22,157.   Average in-state tuition at state community colleges is $4,305 compared with out-of-state tuition of $10,811...   No one is saying they can't go to college.   They have to pay for it.   Yes, just like legal students from outside our consortium do.   Federal law (USC8s1623) precludes tuition remission for undocumented students based on residence...   It seems to me if they can send $657M to their 'home countries' they should reimburse us for the public benefits they consumed as well."

2009-12-07
Timothy Taylor _Minneapolis MN Star-Tribune_
America is not the job-creating machine it was
"Back in the 1970s and 1980s, unemployment used to decline fairly quickly after the end of a recession.   In the year after the end of the 1973-1975 recession, unemployment dropped by a percentage point.   In the year after the 1981-1982 recession, unemployment dropped by 2.5 percentage points.   But after the 1990-91 recession, unemployment stayed high for 16 months after the end of the recession; after the 2001 recession, unemployment stayed high for 20 months after the end of the recession.   Why the change? One likely reason is that in recessions of the 1970s and 1980s, unemployment often took the form of temporary lay-offs -- manufacturing or construction workers, say, were laid off during the recession, but then returned to work at the same employer, or at least in the same industry.   But in more recent recessions, the unemployed workers are permanently separated from their employer."

2009-12-07
Marianne Kolbasuk McGee _Information Week_
Body shoppers demand more programmers with "flexible ethics" to be involved in medical privacy violation schemes

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-08

2009-12-07 21:38:33PST (2009-12-08 00:38:33EST) (2009-12-08 05:38:33GMT)
Steve Hunyar _San Diego CA News Room_
e-mail messages show unscientific behavior among climate warmists 2009-12-08
Kelly Evans & Sarah E. Needleman _Wall Street Journal_
Older Workers Being Dumped
"The number of unemployed workers ages 55 to 64 has nearly tripled since the recession began, to about 1.6M of the nation's 15.4M unemployed as of November, according to the Labor Department.   By comparison, the number of jobless workers of all ages has roughly doubled.   The share of people age 55 to 64 who are employed -- which has been trending down for the past 18 months -- sank to 59.9% in November, an 8-year low for that month and down from 60.3% in October.   The rest either want jobs and can't find them or aren't able or interested in working...   While it is difficult to quantify just how many Americans are retiring earlier now amid weak job prospects, recent work from two Wellesley College economists, Courtney Coile and Phillip B. Levine, suggests the effect is large.   In a new working paper, they estimate 378K workers will be pushed into retirement as a result of the weak labor market -- almost 50% more than will end up working longer because of stock-market losses...   The U.S. [Socialist Insecurity Abomination], which was established [during, and prolonged] the Great Depression under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, saw a 21% surge in applications for retired worker benefits for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30.   Only about 15 percentage points of that was expected from a surge in baby boomers and working women reaching retirement age, according to Stephen Goss, the agency's chief actuary...   That effect is already being felt by food pantries, homeless shelters and people like Guy Kelley, director of the Merrimack Valley Community Service Corps based in Lawrence, MA, who said he has a waiting list of 15 to 20 applicants for the 50 or so slots in his 'foster grand-parent' program, which pays a meager hourly stipend of $2.65...   Among 55- to 64-year-olds, unemployment was 7% in November, up from 6.6% in October, despite a decline in overall unemployment."

2009-12-08
Patrick J. Buchanan _Town Hall_
Why Import Excess Workers Now?: Halting immigration would be an instant economic stimulus
San Jose CA Mercury News
"But no one, it seems, advanced the one obvious idea that would have the most immediate and dramatic impact -- a moratorium on all immigration into the United States...   In the last year, 1.5M new immigrants have come to take up residence and been issued work permits.   Probably twice as many jobs have been taken by these folks as the 650K the Obamaites claim were saved or created by their $787G stimulus package.   How do Democrats justify this?   How can they justify bringing in another 1.5M immigrants in 2010 and another 1.5M in 2011, when 25M Americans they are supposed to represent are unemployed or under-employed?"

2009-12-08
Guy Campanile _CBS_
Job Markets Are a Long Way from Recovery

2009-12-08
Paul Fain _Chronicle of Higher Education_
Felonious State University selected Eric J. Barron, director of NCAR, as next president

2009-12-08
_Guest-Worker Fraud_
An History of India's Excuses for Excessive Immigration to the USA

2009-12-08
Ira Stoll _Seeking Alpha_
Arnold King & Nick Schulz _From Poverty to Prosperity_
"Crossing the border from Latin America into [the United States of America] appears to make the productivity of a low-skilled worker 10 to 20 times higher, based on the wage differential...   in Houston, the U.S. [construction] industry was using Mexican agricultural workers who were illiterate and didn't speak English.   They were not any different than the agricultural workers who were building similar high rises in Sao Paolo, say.   And yet they were working at four times the productivity.   More differences as a result of borders: The book reproduces a chart of per capita GDP in 1997 that places North Korea at $700, South Korea at $13,590.   Communist China's GDP was $3,130 per capita, while Taiwan's was $14,170.   [The difference?]   Property rights, the rule of law, a government that isn't [as] intrusive...   the authors get out and do some reporting, interviewing professors who have thought about these issues, including 4 Nobel laureate economists: Robert Fogel, Robert Solow, Douglass North, and Edmund Phelps.   One consensus that emerges among both the Nobel laureates and the others interviewed for this book is that Friedrich Hayek was a giant.   And not only because they are concerned, as Richard Ebeling warned the other day, that recent expansion of government means that we are on a 'new road to serfdom'."

2009-12-08
Gerald Warner _London Telegraph_
Warmist druids at Copenhagen know they are on a losing wicket and it shows
"the thousands of parasites -- politicians, safely bought scientists, civil servants, myth-compliant journalists and other free loaders have duly converged on the Danish capital.   But, for the Climate Moonies, it has turned into a Barmecide feast.   Even they know that something is wrong.   They are frothing and foaming at the mouth more hysterically than ever -- but the world is not listening."

2009-12-08
Willis Eschenbach _Watts Up with That_
The smoking gun of data from Darwin Zero distorted by climate warmists

2009-12-08
Vikas Bajaj _NY Times_
Slow pace of innovation in India generating anxiety

2009-12-08 (5770 Kislev 23)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
Jobs or Snow Jobs?: Plus the shift from perm to temp
Town Hall
Patriot Post
Front Page Magazine
National Review
Real Clear Politics
Deseret News
"What does it take to create a job? It takes wealth to pay someone who is hired, not to mention additional wealth to buy the material that person will use...   transferring wealth is not creating wealth...   Politicians who mandate various benefits that employers must provide for workers gain politically by seeming to give people something for nothing.   But making workers more expensive means that fewer are likely to be hired.   During an economic recovery, employers can respond to an increased demand for their companies' products by hiring more workers -- creating more jobs -- or they can work their existing employees over-time.   Since workers have to be paid time-and-a-half for over-time, it might seem as if it would always be cheaper to hire more workers.   But that was before politicians began mandating more benefits per worker.   When you get more hours of work from the existing employees, you don't need to pay for additional mandates, as you would have to when you get more hours of work by hiring new people.   For many employers, that makes it cheaper to pay for over-time.   The data show that over-time hours have been increasing in the economy while more people have been laid off.   There is another way of reducing the cost of government-imposed mandates.   That is by hiring temporary workers, to whom the mandates do not apply.   The number of temporary workers hired has increased for the fourth consecutive month, even though there are millions of unemployed people who could be hired for regular jobs, if it were not for the mandates that politicians have imposed."

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-09

2009-12-09
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
making things concrete
Recently, President Obama called for granting fast-track green cards to foreign students studying STEM fields at U.S. universites.   That view has become au courant in DC these days -- the H-1B program in general has problems but those who come here as foreign students are the "good" H-1Bs.   As I've often written, I strongly disagree with this POV.
 
Though I do support facilitating the immigration of "the best and the brightest", only a tiny fraction of the foreign STEM students are in that league.   Most are hired simply because they're cheaper.   Even if they were to be given quick green cards, they still would be cheaper, because they're younger.   A fast-track green card program would basically be just as harmful as an H-1B expansion.
 
Obama's remarks were particularly disappointing because they were supported by one of his advisers, Jared Bernstein.   Bernstein was formerly at EPI, a pro-labor think tank that has been critical of the H-1B program.
 
I've been very appreciative of EPI but I have to wonder whether all that number crunching has made them lose sight of life as lived by what the Chinese call the 老百姓, "the old 100 surnames", meaning the common people.
 
So, I'm enclosing below redacted messages from 2 readers of this e-news-letter, posted here with their permission.   Here is a concrete glimpse of how H-1B and employer-sponsored green card programs impact the 老百姓.
 
Thanks again for your work on the H-1B issue.   I am again unemployed, 3 months so far.   My last gig was with [big-name firm].   I designed and developed a complex UNIX based reporting system by myself for them.   There were about 90 people on the team, I was one of the 4 American developers the rest were Indian H1B's or in India.   I made too much money $58/hr.   They did offer me the $30/hr before I left but I would have had to break my contract and go with an Indian firm which would have set me up for a law-suit.   Once again I developed on a 20-1 level with the H-1B's but all that the management cared about was bring down the cost of the salaries...
 
My interviews as of late have been extremely hostile.   One response was that I was all over the place.   I'm actually very proud to have walked into very different problem solving areas and have survived 24 years until now.
 
Career Highlights:
Strong business skills coupled with strong technical skills.   Design and development at the product level.   Successful designed, developed and delivered 15 complex UNIX or Java based systems myself.   Successfully designed, developed and delivered 3 Windows/DOS based applications myself.   Successfully lead teams of up to 12 people in design, development and delivery of another 5 UNIX based systems.
 
[e-mail message from my reader to NYT columnist David Brooks:]
 
As a long-time fan of your political commentary, I am now writing to you from the heartland of the vast, unemployed, uninsured and highly skilled American labor pool (Stanford educated, B.S. in [field deleted], from M.I.T., Ph.D. [field deleted] from the University of Colorado, [number deleted] publications).   Please, explore the impact of H1b visas on careers like mine before promoting a relaxation of visa regulations.   The H-1b system allows an influx post-doctoral labor at such a scale, that the free-market system adjusts by the simple laws of supply and demand, i.e. too many, so the salaries and longterm career prospects remain quite dismal.   Fourteen years post-Ph.D. I was just reaching the $65K per year mark as an instructor at [name deleted] University, when I lost my research funding, necessary for my continued employment.   The competition for those funds is directly proportional to the numbers of scientists applying, and there are so many now that the rule of thumb is you must apply for 10 grants before you land 1.   If that one doesn't come in time, you are out of luck.
 
I [do] not intend to imply that Mr. Bernstein's views are necessarily those of EPI.
 
As I said earlier, I'm highly appreciative of the fact that EPI has been so supportive of those of us who are critical of STEM foreign worker programs.   EPI president Larry Mishel has given me the following statement to share here:
 
EPI's views on temporary worker programs (see [former secretary of Labor] Ray Marshall's book Immigration for Shared Prosperity) strongly condemns the current system and recommends establishing a commission to determine labor flows.   Ray Marshall labels temporary worker programs as involving indentured servants and says all workers should have full legal rights.   This proposal has become generally accepted by the the entire labor movement and the immigrant rights community that is fighting for comprehensive immigration reform [i.e. union bosses and illegal alien organizations fighting for reprehensible immigration law perversion].   Doing otherwise jeopardizes our ability to achieve shared prosperity.
 
Though this statement focuses on guest worker programs, I believe that EPI also shares my concern regarding fast-track green proposals.
 
Norm
---30---

2009-12-09
Robin Harris _Ziff Davis_/_CNET_/_CBS_
RFID identity theft made simple

2009-12-09
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
3rd world's self-defeating demands
"In Copenhagen Treaty negotiations, poorer nations are demanding massive transfer payments from the United States and other developed nations...   Were such a transfer agreement to be made, it would be hard for poorer nations to collect.   The costs of proposed climate regulations, coupled with transfer payments to poorer nations, will push us back toward our levels of production prevailing in 1875.   Our ability to pay, other than in depreciating fiat dollars created on the New York Federal Reserve Bank's books, will dwindle...   The lawyers and accountants, of course will have a field day, but their green-house-gas activity will produce nothing that [we want to buy or that] other nations want to buy from us.   Production of tangible, exportable goods will decline in the United States because of higher costs arising from green regulations and from elimination of whole swaths of activity (e.g., coal mining, dairy farming, and half of today's electric power generation).   As a consequence many products formerly produced in the United States will no longer be available without increasing our imports.   Where will we get the funds to pay for increased imports and for transfer payments to poorer nations?   Ultimately international trade has to be a two-way street."

2009-12-09
Jennifer Gonzalez _Chronicle of Higher Education_
Negotiators Tussle Over Government's Proposal to Measure 'Gainful Employment' of Graduates

2009-12-09
Bret Stephens _Wall Street Journal_
Psychological profile of the climate warmist

2009-12-09
Matt Taibbi _Rolling Stone_
Bail-outs for friends of Obama

2009-12-09
Larrey Anderson _American Thinker_
Revenge of the Computer Experts: Examining the Climate Warmists' Programs

2009-12-09
_News Track India_
Indian government tightens rules on business visas
"The Centre has tightened the norms to issue business visas to foreign nationals, as it has been noticed by the Government that a number of foreign nationals coming for execution of projects/contracts in India have come on Business Visa instead of the Employment Visa."

2009-12-09 (5700 Kislev 17)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
We've Been Had by the Climate Warmists
"Last year, my column 'Global Warming Rope-A-Dope' started out: 'Americans have been rope-a-doped into believing that global warming is going to destroy the planet.   Scientists who have been skeptical about man-made global warming have been called traitors or hand-maidens of big oil.'   New evidence proves that climatologists and environmental policy advocates have not only fed us lies, engaged in scientific and academic fraud but committed criminal acts as well..."

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-10

2009-12-10
Mike Dennison _Billings MT Gazette_
Rural telecomm executives fearing competition object to $70M federal subsidy of Bresnan Communications
"'Bresnan's request for federal broadband stimulus dollars to build a duplicate (broadband) network on top of Montana's existing network is 100% waste.', the ad said.   Governor Brian Schweitzer last month said Bresnan's proposal to build a new, 1,880-mile fiber-optic network that links Montana's 7 Indian reservations should be the state's 'top priority' for federal broadband stimulus funds...   Evan Barrett, the governor's chief economic adviser, said Wednesday that the Bresnan proposal should increase 'quality, affordable Internet services' for many rural areas in Montana, including Indian reservations.   'Is the service being provided now cost-effective and affordable?', he asked.   'We've heard from a lot of users that it is not.   We believe, the more the merrier, in terms of reaching the objective of affordable, quality services.   Competition is what our interest in this thing has been.'"

2009-12-10 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (12:30GMT)
Scott Gibbons & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
un-employment insurance weekly claims report
DoL home page
historical data
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 664,865 in the week ending December 5, an increase of 204,703 from the previous week.   There were 759,531 initial claims in the comparable week in 2008.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.1% during the week ending Nov. 28, an increase of 0.5 percentage point from the prior week.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 5,373,871, an increase of 591,085 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 3.4% and the volume was 4,493,526.   Extended benefits were available in AL, AK, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, DC, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, ME, MA, MI, MN, MO, NV, NH, NJ, NM, NY, NC, OH, OR, PA, PR, RI, SC, TN, TX, VT, VA, WA, WV, and WI during the week ending November 21...   States reported 4,178,780 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending Nov. 21, an increase of 327,729 from the prior week.   There were 729,256 claimants in the comparable week in 2008.   EUC weekly claims include first, second, and third tier activity.
graphs
more graphs

2009-12-10
_US DoL_
Employment projections 2008 to 2018

2009-12-10 06:51PST (09:51EST) (14:51GMT)
Greg Robb _MarketWatch_
trade deficit shrank 7.6% from $35.7G in September to $32.9G in October

2009-12-10
Martin Cohen _Times Higher Education_
Beyond debate?: Climate warmist PR and fear-mongering

2009-12-10
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Green-Job Mirage
Pete Geddes & H. Sterling Burnett: Washington Times: "green" jobs could cost more than they create

2009-12-10
_Guest-Worker Fraud_
Congresses, Bush41, Clinton, Bush43, Obama all deserve blame for this economic depression

2009-12-10
Matthew Vadum _Town Hall_
ACORN exposed

2009-12-10
Jeff Young _Chronicle of Higher Education_
New Project Promotes Remote Science Labs Despite Skepticism

2009-12-10 13:30PST (16:30EST) (21:30GMT)
Charles Breiterman _Numbers USA_
Federal Government Against Its Own Citizens

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-11

2009-12-11
Paul McDougall _Information Week_/_UBM_
Body shops only a little slower in stocking up on foreign labor for FY2010
Moira Herbst: BusinessWeek

Top H-1B Visa Abusers

Wipro	1964
MSFT	1318
Intel	723
Ill-Begotten Monstrosities	695
Patni	609
Larsen & Toubro Infotech	602
Ernst & Young	481
Infosys	440
UST Global	344
Deloitte	328

Tata median salaries by city
Wipro median salaries by city
Infosys median salaries by city

2009-12-11 06:41:42PST (09:41:42EST) (14:41:42GMT)
_San Jose CA Mercury News_/_AP_
Red Chinese tech protectionism

2009-12-11
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
The New Socialism: Cap & Trade

2009-12-11 07:30PST (10:30EST) (15:30GMT)
Greg Robb _MarketWatch_
UMich consumer-sentiment index increased from 67.4 in November to 73.4 in early December

2009-12-11
Barry Napier _Canada Free Press_
When will warmist fakers give up and come clean?
"there are clashes already about who should pay what in the coming massive pay-out to the Third World...   Today, they say richer countries have been asked to increase the pledges to tackle climate change (or, 'The Canute Complex').   Frighteningly, despite fraud and bad-science, the Summit wants to finalise this draft deal next week!   If readers still can't see the hand of Marxism in this, I'll eat my hand-made, ethnically-designed, all-wool hat!...   The already ridiculous demands for CO₂ cuts have now changed to 25%-45% by 2020.   It is not wrong to say the Summit has, from day one, moved the goalposts to bring about permanent world changes.   Before the Summit they got pledges of up to 18%.   The newer demand would immediately cripple countries financially.   But, as the aim is to reduce all countries to the same level of poverty, that's okay."

2009-12-11
_WestSide Story_
TX governor Perry blasted federal government for cuts in funding of programs to deal with illegal aliens

2009-12-11 08:02:15PST (11:02:15EST) (16:02:15GMT)
Ken McLaughlin _San Jose CA Mercury News_
in 3 days ICE arrested only 280 of the illegal aliens who have other criminal convictions in California

2009-12-11
Virgil Goode _Town Hall_
It is time for a moratorium on immigration
"Even if we completely stopped illegal immigration tomorrow, the government still issues 75K permanent work visas and approximately 50K temporary work visas every month.   These 125K jobs should go to Americans first...   nearly one out of every six workers is foreign born.   This is the highest number since the early 1920s, at which point Congress significantly reduced immigration levels...   Immigrants only accounted for 5% of the work-force when Kennedy's bill passed.   Since the economic crisis began over a year ago, there's been no discussion about reducing total immigration levels and we've allowed over 1.5M new legal foreign workers in the country."

2009-12-11

DJIA	10,471.50
S&P 500	1,106.41
NASDAQ	2,190.31
Nikkei	10,108
10-year US T-Bond	3.54%
crude oil	$69.87/barrel
gold	$1,119.40/ounce
silver	$17.084/ounce
platinum	$1,422.70/ounce
palladium	$362.15/ounce
copper	$0.1958125/ounce
natgas	$5.163/MBTU
reformulatedgasoline	$1.8351/gal
heatingoil	$1.9085/gal
dollarindex	76.572
yenperdollar	89.23
dollarspereuro	1.4623
dollarsperpound	1.6241
swissfranksperdollar	1.0342
indianrupeesperdollar	46.20
mexicanpesosperdollar	12.842
MorganStanleyHighTechIndex	553.36

I usually get this info from MarketWatch.
 

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-12

2009-12-12
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Leftists have only a nodding acquaintance with economic reality

2009-12-12
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Closing the Barn Door: mal-regulation of financial institutions
Ronald D. Orol: MarketWatch

2009-12-12
Alfred Blanchard _Santa Maria CA Times_
50% of local gangsters are illegal aliens
"For many years, Santa Maria has been plagued by gang-related violence, with the last most memorable and spectacular demonstration having been in the middle of the day just last month.   Several gang members terrorized Santa Maria streets with a high-speed chase that included shots fired at officers.   If I am not mistaken, our tax dollars go toward police protection, but as of late, I do not feel protected.   Each sworn officer, including our own police chief and mayor, took an oath to uphold the laws and protect the citizens, yet gang violence continues to spin out of control, jeopardizing the lives of the innocent.   During the Nov. 3 City Council meeting, Santa Maria's police chief admitted that over 50% of the known gang membership is comprised of illegal aliens.   This should come as no surprise to any resident who has seen our city handed over to foreign criminals.   These reprobates have heard Santa Maria is a sanctuary city, and the gang members have no fear of authority.   If our mayor and police chief steadfastly refuse to protect law-abiding citizens, what is to become of Santa Maria?   Our city streets belong to our children and hard-working families, not low-life criminals who use intimidation and violence to keep residents in fear."

2009-12-12
David J. Bellamy _Pajamas Media_
one must ignore 200 years of observations to be a climate warmist

2009-12-12
_Pittsburgh Tribune-Review_
Employers & Illegal Aliens: Stop the perversion

2009-12-12
Rob Sanchez _V Dare_/_Job Destruction News-Letter_
Demand for H-1B visas is increasing

2009-12-12
Paul Greenberg _Town Hall_
What is Hanukkah?
Mechon Mamre

2009-12-12
R' Tzvi Freeman
Ask the Rabbi: Were the Maccabees barbarians? Were the Greeks barbarians?

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-13

2009-12-13
Ed Nielsen _Blue Ridge Now_
Defeat National Socialist Perversions of Health Care (ObummerDoesn'tCare, Medicaid, Medicare...)
"Socialism is hallmarked by government take-over of major industries.   What's happened already in our banking and auto industries?   What's being proposed in our health care industry?   Socialism can thrive only where its subjects rely totally on their government.   Our government is doing everything in its power to bring this about.   Spending is through the roof, which must inevitably lead to a bankrupt nation -- citizens will have nowhere to turn except Uncle Sam.   Taxing the producers will drive down employment with the same result.   Expanding on that last point, insurance companies and any employer who does not provide health care coverage to his employees will be heavily taxed under UHC.   Take no comfort that government-provided health care will not be mandatory, or that illegal aliens and abortions will not be covered.   If UHC passes, that'll change quickly.   We need to do all we can to stop this disaster in the making.   Once UHC is enacted, it'll be here to stay."

2009-12-13
Mike Dennison _Billings MT Gazette_
Bresnan Communications' fiber-optic plan questioned

2009-12-13
Susan Olp _Billings MT Gazette_
Cub Scouts build dream castles

2009-12-13
Lorrie Goldstein _Toronto Canada Sun_
Climate warmists in Copenhagen saying "Don't confuse us with the facts. The 1st world must be made to suffer."
"Never mind facts.   Never mind reality.   Never mind that in last year's exhaustive environmental survey by The Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and The Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University, Canada finished with the world's 12th best environmental record out of 192 countries -- including almost 50 that don't even compile enough credible data to be assessed.   Judged on 25 environmental factors, including climate change, Canada achieved an aggregate score of 86.6 out of 100 on the study's Environmental Performance Index, ahead of Germany (land of the useless wind turbines) in 13th place, the Moonbat's U.K. in 14th, and, oh, look, 14 places ahead of Denmark, whose capital is Copenhagen, site of the latest UN carbon dioxide-spewing festival of indignation on the dangers of spewing carbon dioxide."

2009-12-13
Steven A. Camarota & Karen Jensenius _Right Side News_
High Unemployment, High Under-Employment, Illegal Aliens, and Native US Citizens
graphs

2009-12-13
Tom Howard _Billings MT Gazette_
More executives ditch privacy and cash and checks for kkkards

2009-12-13
Rob Rogers _Billings MT Gazette_
US education system going down the tubes, after all: Latin being eliminated as part of budget cuts and shortage of qualified teachers
Latin

2009-12-13
J.R. Dunn _American Thinker_
Consequences of the exposure of the climate warmists' deceits

2009-12-13
Michelle Malkin _Investor's Business Daily_
Hollywood and Howard Zinn's Marxist Indoctrination Project

2009-12-13
Cora-Ann V. Pestaina _Immigration Daily_
USCIS grappling with ability of a foreigner to create a US corporation, then have the corporation sponsor him

2009-12-13
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Leftists still desire totalitarianism

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-14

2009-12-14
Don Lee _Baltimore MD Sun_
Hyper-credentialism worses with economy
Los Angeles Times

2009-12-14
_Baltimore MD Sun_/_AP_
Today in history: 1799-12-14 George Washington died at age 67
"True education makes for inequality; the inequality of individuality, the inequality of success; the glorious inequality of talent, of genius; for inequality, not mediocrity, individual superiority, not standardization, is the measure of the progress of the world." --— Felix Emmanuel Schelling

2009-12-14 03:02PST (06:02EST) (11:02GMT)
Patrick Thibodeau _Computer World_/_IDG_
H-1B visa abuse by US firms holds steady: some Indian bodyshops cut back
"First, some of the big India IT services cut back on their H-1B use during the softening job market.   For instance, Infosys Technologies Ltd. received only 440 visas in the fiscal year that began 2008 Oct. 1 and ended on 2009 Sept. 30.   In the prior fiscal year, it received more than 10 times that number, or 4,559.   And while Wipro Ltd. led the FY2009 list with 1,964 visas, that number is still down more than 25% from the 2,678 visas it got the year before.   Secondly, U.S. firms, despite cutbacks in their own staffs and an overall decline in IT employment, continued to hire people using H-1B visas.   That list includes MSFT, Intel and IBM's India operation."
Tata median salaries by city
Wipro median salaries by city
Infosys median salaries by city

2009-12-14 05:30PST (08:30EST) (13:30GMT)
Cecilia Kang _Washington Post_
H-1B quotas still not exhausted, but corrupt and dishonest Silicon Valley executives continue to push to increase numbers

2009-12-14
Jeff Blumenthal _Philadelophia Business Journal_
executives & management at International Personnel Resources charged with visa fraud

2009-12-14
Ara Trembly _Insurance Networking_
Bad News for USA -- Number of H-1b applicants remains high
"According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), U.S. companies are still requesting H-1B visas at about the same rate as last year, allowing these companies to hire lower-paid foreign workers, despite the fact that many U.S.-based workers could fill those same jobs.   Incredibly, this is happening at the same time when many of these same companies are actually laying off their current employees."

2009-12-14 15:43PST (18:43EST) (23:43GMT)
Ross Eisenbrey _EPI_/_The Hill_
Low-Skill H-1B immigration has numerous down-sides

2009-12-14
Patrick Thibodeau _Computer World_/_IDG_
data-base of H-1B employers for FY2009

2009-12-14
_Right Side News_/_FAIR US_
Immigration legislation news update

2009-12-14
James Rosen _Fox_
How Minimum Wage Affects the Job Hunt for the Marginally Employable

2009-12-14
Amy Alkon _Mens News Daily_
If The Feds Won't Enforce Immigration Laws, Ohio Will

2009-12-14
Wayne Allyn Root _Independent Political Report_
If... you may be a socialist

2009-12-14
Doug Tsuruoka _Investor's Business Daily_
Western executives, investors have been moving R&D and other assets to Red China

2009-12-14
_Investor's Busines Daily_
Climate warmists goal was always about moving wealth and power away from the USA, UK, Canada and Europe to Red China, India, South America and Africa
"Copenhagen: When an over-blown environmental conference culminates with Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad lecturing the West on virtue, color it another shake-down.   The United Nations' Copenhagen Climate Conference is going fast into melt-down.   It may be because it's not about climate anymore, but fitting a noose on the world's productive economies and extracting wealth transfers.   Poor countries have gone from defending their right to economic development as a reason for exemptions to emissions cuts to claiming a 'legitimate' right to vast wealth transfers from the West to prevent emissions.   They call it 'climate justice'...   Having manipulated the foreign aid racket for decades, the African officials knew just what buttons to push..."

2009-12-14
Mike Mandel
Society of American Business Editors and Writers TeleTraining

2009-12-14 07:48PDT (10:48EDT) (14:48GMT)
Julie Meloni _Chronicle of Higher Education_
Talking about Copyright in the class-room

2009-12-14 07:48PDT (10:48EDT) (14:48GMT)
_News Max_
non-leftists abandoned McCain... after McCain abandoned non-leftists

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-15

1791-12-15: Bill of Rights amendments 3-12 ratified

2009-12-15
Phyllis Schlafly _Town Hall_
Who Has the Solution for Unemployment?

2009-12-15 07:56PST (10:56EST) (15:56GMT)
Isaiah J. Poole _Our Future_
Why not "Cash for US jobs"?

2009-12-15
_Montgomery county IN Paper 24-7_
Unemployment rate for older workers hits record level
"The number of unemployed individuals age 55 and older rose to 2.082M in November, up 54% from 2008 November and the most since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started keeping records for specific age groups."

2009-12-15
_Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services_
National Socialist Health Care Perversion (ObummerDoesn'tCare)

2009-12-15 (5770 Kislev 28)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
This holiday season, give the gift of wisdom
"Dick Morris _Catastrophe_...   Angelo Codevilla _The Character of Nations_...   'While it is unimaginable to do business in China without paying bribes, to offer one in Japan is the greatest faux pas...   The reason why inhabitants of the First World should keep the Third world in mind is that habits prevalent in the countries that became known as the Third World are a set of human possibilities that any people anywhere can adopt at any time.   As Argentina showed in the twentieth Century, falling from the First World to the Third can be easy and quick.'...   _Choosing the Right College_ published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute...   [Thomas Sowell] _The Housing Boom and Bust_ and _Applied Economics_..."

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-16

2009-12-15 18:00PST (2009-12-15 21:00EST) (2009-12-16 02:00GMT)
Patrick Thibodeau _Computer World_/_IDG_
Some congress-critters want to increase already excessive H-1B visas and weaken already low-ball requirements for investment visas

2009-12-16
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
Miano v. Wadhwa, and "loyalty"
 
(Sorry for my relative absence of late.   I've got two pressing projects going.   But I hope within the next few days to post my analyses of 2 major reports that have been released lately.   Also, there are a couple of you whom I promised private feed-back on your analyses.   I have yet to deliver, but haven't forgotten and will respond soon.)
 
Recently Vivek Wadhwa, the former CEO who has been quite critical of H-1B but nevertheless has been promoting the immigration of tech professionals, wrote a column that was pretty indendiary even by his standards.   John Miano, founder of the Programmers Guild and currently a fellow with the Center for Immigration Studies, then wrote an equally-pointed blog posting in response to Vivek.   I'm enclosing both postings below.
 
I'm also going to discuss an article about immigrant techies deciding to leave the U.S.A. and return home.   Vivek is quoted, and it ties in with some of his previous writings.   In my view, as you'll see, it also ties in with John's comments in some ways, so I'll discuss it too.
 
Indeed, my posting here will concentrate on that third article.   I'll let John and Vivek fight out themselves in print below, though I will once again object to the word "xenophobe"; people who are having trouble getting work in their field while the government is bringing in people to compete with them (and indeed under-cut their wages) have a right to be upset without being called xenophobes.   Actually, I wouldn't have used John's wording, "American bashers", either.
 
At any rate, I'll move straight to discussing the third article.   The WSJ posts a notice asking that the article not be distributed, but you can currently view it here.
 
The thrust of the article is that many immigrant professionals are finding it difficult to get good jobs here, and are considering returning to their home countries.   Most of the ones profiled in the article are naturalized U.S. citizens or permanent residents.   Vivek, quoted in the article, says he expects 100K expat Indians, the so-called NRIs, to return to India in the next five years.   My comments here will be along quite different lines from what I usually address.
 
First, let me briefly say that I think Vivek's number and the overall theme of the article are exaggerated.   One sees articles like this on occasion, and though they make good press, and many people do consider returning home, the fact is that most people are going to stay here.   They have put down family roots, or their spouses have good jobs here, or they've actually investigated and found that opportunities for people like them (read: over age 35!) are limited back home, they like the social freedom here (politics is not of interest to many techies) etc.
 
I've mentioned before that the real trend is that fewer tech people will come to the U.S.A. in the first place, in the coming years.   The number who go back is actually the less interesting figure.
 
Nevertheless, many will indeed go back, and there is something about them that I want to talk about.   Let me begin with two quotes:
 
"By giving the foreign engineers and programmers fast-track green cards, we solve the H-1B problem, because THEY become US." -- Paul Donnelly
 
"America is not really a country.   It's just a place where people come to make money." -- Chinese immigrant engineer, quoted by John Derbyshire.
 
Well, only a few of you will know who Donnelly is, and almost none of you know who Derbyshire is, so let me introduce them.
 
Paul Donnelly is a former staffer with the Congressional Commission on Immigration Reform in the 1990s.   His former boss in Congress, Bruce Morrison, basically authored the legislation that established the H-1B program in 1990.   Paul later worked for IEEE-USA, an organization that had long been critical of H-1B but was under heavy pressure by the IEEE parent organization to support skilled immigration.   Paul got IEEE-USA to endorse a fast-track green card proposal.   I strongly disagree with that notion, but the important point here is Paul's phrasing in the quote above.
 
Derbyshire is a programmer, mathematician and author of books about mathematicians.   He's married to a Chinese immigrant, and is a speaker of Chinese.   Except for the part on authorship of math biography, Derbyshire's background is interestingly similar to my own, but in general his views are radically different from mine.   He's very conservative politically, and is from my viewpoint a bit of a China basher.   He presented the Chinese immigrant he quoted above as being typical.   Bluntly, he views Chinese immigration as a security risk.   I must say before continuing that I very strongly disagree with that notion.   But putting the security issue aside, but one can talk in some sense of social loyalty, as I'll explain.
 
Donnelly's and Derbyshire's points of view here are antithetical.   Donnelly is saying that immigrants become "part of the family", while Derbyshire is saying that, at least in the Chinese case, they do not.
 
Again, I think Derbyshire's portrait is greatly over-drawn, and I'm hardly a jingoistic, rah-rah America, European culture rules type.   I'm a native, but I grew up in an immigrant household (dad from eastern Europe), and if you were to visit my own home, you'd actually find it to be the typical immigrant household -- different language, different food, different view-points, etc., and I've been quite active in the Chinese immigrant community.
 
But that said, if many skilled immigrants of whatever nationality do go back home, one must question the wisdom of policies under which they immigrated here in the first place.
 
First of all, one of the industry lobbyists' favorite lines is, "We've educated these people, and if we don't keep them here, they'll return home and work for our foreign competitors."   That one has always especially rankled me.   The foreign competition idea doesn't bother me, and I on the contrary welcome the development of tech industries among Third World countries.   And if the lobbyists are really worried about this as they claim, then the logical policy would be to not educate them here in the first place.   The lobbyists would of course oppose this.   So would I, but my point is that the lobbyists are not sincere.   Most importantly, as professor AnnaLee Saxenian has shown, even those who do stay here participate to a remarkably high degree in the development of 'foreign competitors', by investing, providing consulting advice and so on.
 
So, if many are going to go home after all, the lobbyists' own arguments become turned against them.
 
But viewing things in a broader sense, I return to the two quotes I placed at the outset of this posting.   Though the industry lobbyists describe the issue is merely one of bringing in (what they claim is) needed labor, I think the vast majority of us view immigration in Donnellian terms -- we want THEM to become US.   We do want them to become part of the family.   We do want the U.S.A. to be a nation, populated by people who may be diverse in various ways but who do feel a keen sense of nationhood [polityhood?].
 
And though I've always disagreed with Peter's Brimelow's view of immigration as a big threat to that sense of nationhood [polityhood], I think we can all agree that the granting of a green card, and certainly of naturalization, does imply a certain commitment.   Jumping ship at the first sign of economic trouble was not supposed to be part of the deal.
 
Norm
2009-12-15: John Miano: The American-Bashers Revisited

2009-12-16
D.R. Stewart _Tulsa OK World_
AA mechanics say unsupervised off-shore air-line maintenance facilities may pose safety risks
"A 2008 September report by the Department of Transportation's Office of Inspector General found that 9 major U.S. air-lines outsourced 71% of their heavy air-frame maintenance checks to third-party providers in 2007.   That's up from 34% in 2003."

2009-12-16
Steve Forbes _Forbes_
In-credit-able!
"The private sector was quite capable of generating players that could have performed Fannie's and Freddie's roles.   And because they wouldn't have had Uncle Sam's moral-hazard safety net, they would have been infinitely more cautious, even with the Fed creating floods of liquidity and the credit rating agencies forgetting their raison d'etre.   Yet Congress is determined to keep these beasts alive and under government sway.   Washington is also taking over the student loan market."

2009-12-16 12:11:02PST (15:11:02EST) (29:11:02GMT)
Andrea Gusty _KTVA_
Illegal aliens caught constructing F-22 hangars at Elmendorf AFB
"This summer the Air Force started a multi-million dollar effort to build new F-22 hangars on Elmendorf Air Force Base.   The contractor hired for the steel work was Steel System Erectors out of California.   An investigation has reviled the company employed [illegal aliens] and allowed them access to a national security site.   A 'critical infrastructure site essential to national security'."

2009-12-16
Roy Mark _eWeek_
Gutierrez bill would increase already vastly excessive numbers of H-1B visas

2009-12-16
George S. LeMieux
LeMieux Introduced Balanced Budget Amendment; Senator Says Washington Spending Out of Control
+ SJRes22; LeMieux; balanced budget amendment
"Our nation is more than $12T in debt, which means every family in the United States is responsible for about $100K.   Federal spending shows no signs of slowing.   For the government's fiscal year that concluded on September 30, we ended with $1.4T in new debt.   In the first two months of this fiscal year, we've accumulated $296G in new debt and we spent $565G -- double what we took in...   Congress does not have the will to balance the budget."

2009-12-16 (5770 Kislev 29)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
Collusion Against Our Youth
"I've grown somewhat weary writing about the devastating effects of minimum wage laws but the Wall Street Journal's 'Black Youths Miss Out on Good Job News' (2009 Dec. 4) warrants another try.   Today's overall teenage (16-19) unemployment rate, at 25%, is the highest since World War II.   Black teenage unemployment, at 50%, is also the highest since World War2...   Was racial discrimination in 1948 greater or less than racial discrimination today? In 1948, the unemployment rate for white 16-17 year olds was 10.2% while that for blacks was 9.4%.   Among white 18-19 year-olds, unemployment was 9.4% and for blacks it was 10.5%.   During that period, not only were the unemployment rates similar, black teenagers were either equally as active as whites in the labor force or more so...   Moreover, the minimum wage subsidizes racial discrimination.   After all, if you must pay $7.25 an hour to whomever you hire, you might as well hire people you like the most, even if they are of identical skill."

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-17

2009-12-16 16:12PST (2009-12-16 19:12EST) (2009-12-17 00:12GMT)
Karl Rove _Wall Street Journal_
Another D- president gives himself a B+

2009-12-17 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (12:30GMT)
Scott Gibbons & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
un-employment insurance weekly claims report
DoL home page
historical data
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 555,344 in the week ending December 12, a decrease of 107,393 from the previous week.   There were 629,867 initial claims in the comparable week in 2008.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.9% during the week ending December 5, a decrease of 0.2 percentage point from the prior week.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 5,176,122, a decrease of 222,989 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 3.3% and the volume was 4,378,273.   Extended benefits were available in AL, AK, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, DC, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, ME, MA, MI, MN, MO, NV, NH, NJ, NM, NY, NC, OH, OR, PA, PR, RI, SC, TN, TX, VT, VA, WA, WV, and WI during the week ending November 28...   States reported 4,226,300 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending November 28, an increase of 45,922 from the prior week.   There were 994,188 claimants in the comparable week in 2008.   EUC weekly claims include first, second, and third tier activity.   [Several figures previously published are being modified, recently.]
graphs
more graphs

2009-12-17
Charlie Smith _Greenwood MS Commonwealth_
woman won $150K suit against WM for age discrimination in firing

2009-12-17
Randal C. Archibold _NY Times_
Hired by DHS but working for Mexican drug cartels
"But, early last year, after just a few months as a customs inspector, he was waving in trucks from Mexico carrying loads of marijuana and illegal immigrants.   He pocketed some $200K in cash that paid for, as far as the government could tell, a $15K motorcycle, flat-screen televisions, a laptop computer and more...   paid off by a Mexican smuggling crew that included several members of his family, intended to work for smugglers all along...   he had researched just how much prison time he might get for his crimes and believed, as investigators later reported, that he could do it 'standing on his head'..."

2009-12-17
Don Surber _Daily Mail_
Blizzard at global climate warmist confab in Copenhagen (with video)
"I knew that the Copenhagen conference would be a time to break out the shovels. I just didn't realize that they would be snow shovels."

2009-12-17
Ed Orum _AOL_
Unemployment pushing 50% in Detroit

2009-12-17
Frank Langfitt _National Socialist Radio_
High-Tech Dreams Evaporate for Former Furniture Workers in NC

2010-12-17
_Lake County FL Fiscal Rangers_
Drastic Hikes in Florida Unemployment Insurance Start 2010 January 1, Reducing Funds for Other Agencies
Birmingham AL Business Journal
"Florida's unemployment compensation tax rates range from 1.18% up to 5.4%, based on an employer's history of laying off workers.   The tax rate is currently applied to a wage base of $8,500 per employee.   Florida employers are also required to pay unemployment compensation taxes to the federal government.   Federal unemployment tax is 6.2% on employee's annual wages with a 5.4% tax credit if the state program meets federal requirements and does not have any outstanding federal loans.   Currently, Florida employers pay 0.8% in federal unemployment taxes.   Florida's Unemployment Compensation Trust Fund uses automatic triggers to increase or decrease an employer's unemployment compensation taxes based on the trust fund's balance.   When it reaches a low of 4% of taxable pay-rolls it automatically triggers a tax increase and when it reaches 5% of taxable pay-rolls it automatically triggers a tax decrease on Florida employers...   In 2009, employers at the minimum rate paid $8.40 per employee.   This will increase to $100.30 per employee starting 2010 January 1."
FL DoR: Florida Unemployment Insurance Rates to Rise; Law Protects Businesses, Workers by Keeping Unemployment Fund Stable
FL DoR: Your Extortion Rate
"When a new employer becomes liable for the tax, the rate is 0.0270 (2.7%) and will stay that until the employer has reported for 10 quarters.   The account will then be rated by dividing the total benefits charged to the account by the taxable payroll reported for the first 7 of the last 9 quarters immediately preceding the quarter for which the rate is effective.   The one exception would be employers liable by succession and who choose to accept the tax rate of the previous employer, along with the responsibility of paying any outstanding amounts due.   At that time, a tax rate will be calculated using the employment record and the rating factors, which are built into the Unemployment Compensation Law.   The maximum tax rate allowed by law is 0.0540 (5.4%), except for employers participating in the Short Time Compensation Program.   Rate notices are mailed to all contributing employers each year.   You may appeal your tax rate within 20 days from the date of notification (date printed on Form UCT-20, Unemployment Compensation Tax Rate Notice).   The minimum and maximum tax rates effective 2011 January 1 are as follows (based on annual salary up to $7K per employee): Minimum rate: 0.0103 or $72.10 per employee; Maximum rate: 0.0540 or $378 per employee."

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-18

2009-12-18
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Playing Nice with Those Who Have Declared Us to Be Enemies
Obama admin opposes sanctions against Iran
JackBoots at Home, Olive Branches Abroad
Barack Obama and Woodrow Wilson

2009-12-18
Chris Kanaracus _PC World_/_IDG_
Oracle Shed Nearly 1,300 Jobs in its FY2010Q2

2009-12-18
Moumita Bakshi Chatterjee _Hindu Business Line_/_Press Trust of India_
H-1B applications still 800 short of FY2010 caps

2009-12-18
_Numbers USA_
Congress-critters on Reprehensibe Immigration Law Perversion bill

2009-12-18
Jason Scott _Cumberland PA Sentinel_
West Perry Middle School crowns geography champion: Eighth-grader Sarah Goulet outlasts 10 other finalists and earns chance to compete in state competition

2009-12-18

DJIA	10,328.89
S&P 500	1,102.39
NASDAQ	2,211.69
Nikkei	10,142
10-year US T-Bond	3.54%
crude oil	$74.42/barrel
gold	$1,111.50/ounce
silver	$18.496/ounce
platinum	$1,449.70/ounce
palladium	$376.85/ounce
copper	$0.20084375/ounce
natgas	$5.78/MBTU
reformulatedgasoline	$1.89/gal
heatingoil	$1.96/gal
dollarindex	77.84
yenperdollar	90.43
dollarspereuro	1.4323
dollarsperpound	1.6102
swissfranksperdollar	1.0432
indianrupeesperdollar	46.91
mexicanpesosperdollar	13.00
MorganStanleyHighTechIndex	564.17

I usually get this info from MarketWatch.
 

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-19

2009-12-18 16:32PST (2009-12-18 19:32EST) (2009-12-19 00:32GMT)
Chris Cowperthwaite _WNCN_/_NBC 17_
Debate over illegal aliens attending NC community colleges
"'Since it is against federal and state law to hire an illegal alien, educated or not, what's the purpose of offering an illegal alien a college education?', asked James Johnson, president of NC Fire.   'When an illegal takes a citizen's job, and the citizen is unemployed the social services cost will be very high.', added Ron Woodard, director of NC Listen."
Randy Dye
ALIPAC: NC meeting on admitting illegal aliens to NC community colleges was rigged
Roberta Carol: Charlotte News & Observer
"Regarding the Dec. 19 article 'Board told to let illegals study', I am not aware of any statewide poll by any group that determined that a majority of North Carolina citizens wish to provide any benefits to illegal immigrants.   I had previously personally written to the State Board of Community Colleges stating my opposition to the admission of illegal immigrants who cross our borders in violation of our laws.   Why should they be rewarded in any way when they indicate their willingness to evade our legal processes? &nbp; A community college system belongs to the citizens who support it."
Beth Gorman: Charlotte News & Observer
"As a tax-paying citizen, I am outraged a decision was made allowing illegal aliens to attend college (Dec. 19 news story 'Board told to let illegals stay').   I don't care if these kids were brought here by their parents.   I don't care if these kids are smart.   What I do care about is the message this sends back to Mexico and other countries about crossing our borders illegally.   It is a clear message that anyone can come here illegally and be taken care of all the way through college.   Illegal aliens are costing this country and state billions of dollars.   Our unemployment rate is over 10% and yet the government wants to further educate illegal aliens so these people can compete for American jobs.   I would like to see all illegal aliens deported along with their families.   It is past time to finish the border fence, beef up our border guards and with the help of our military make this country safe."

2009-12-19
_Kansas City InfoZine_
$4.5M settlement to 90 individuals in EEOC age bias suit against Allstate
"more than 90% of the agents subjected to the hiring moratorium were 40 years of age or older."
EEOC hearing info

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-20

2009-12-20
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
PE/AFL-CIO, CAP, political machinations
 
A number of people have brought to my attention the new report by the Department for Professional Employees (DPE) of the AFL-CIO, titled "Gaming the System: Guest Worker Visa Programs and Professional and Technical Workers in the U.S.A." (pdf).
 
Before I discuss the report, it's important to present the background.   DPE has been deeply concerned about H-1B and related programs for many years.   In fact, they were involved before I started writing about H-1B in 1993.   They have always had a first-rate staff; I would mention Jack Golodner and Mike Gildea in particular, but everyone has been excellent.   They have consistently been on top of this issue, and have been far superior to the other widely-recognized tech professional influence on the Hill, the blow-hot-and-cold IEEE-USA.
 
However, DPE is only a small part of the mainly blue-collar AFL-CIO, and the latter has never strongly supported DPE on the H-1B issue.   The AFL-CIO has indeed publicly expressed its concern on H-1B, and has even on occasion sent its representatives to testify in Congress about the program, but has never exerted much of its clout on the matter.
 
On the contrary, in 2000 the AFL-CIO took actions diametrically opposed to the interests of DPE.   It engaged in negotiations with the tech industry for a deal in which the AFL-CIO would support an INCREASE in the H-1B cap in exchange for the industry's supporting legalization for [illegal aliens].   See the article by labor activist David Bacon.
 
The issue of amnesty for illegals continues to be big with the AFL-CIO today, as they see these workers as a large group of potential union members (pdf).   This is natural, as the AFL-CIO needs to act on the greater good of its members, but clearly it can clash with the interests of engineers, programmers and other professionals.
 
Indeed, DPE itself supports amnesty in its report.   Again, my point here is not to comment on whether amnesty is a good idea, but rather that it is in political conflict with genuine reform of H-1B.
 
Currently a number of "select" organizations are working out a proposal for comprehensive immigration reform.   These include the AFL-CIO and the Center for American Progress (CAP).   Sadly, the Programmers Guild was not invited, nor was their input solicited for the DPE report
 
The CAP is a think tank formed by former high-ranking officials in the Clinton administration.   It recently put out its own report, "Prosperous Immigrants, Prosperous Americans".
 
The report is also posted on the DPE web page, though it's unclear to what extent, if any, DPE endorses it.   CAP's report advocates an extremely liberal foreign worker policy, basically exactly what the industry wants, and CAP also endorses amnesty for illegals.   Neither of these positions is surprising, given the background of the report's author, Marshall Fitz, as described at the end of the report:
 
Marshall Fitz is Director of Immigration Policy at American Progress.   Before holding his current position he served as the director of advocacy for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, where he led the education and advocacy efforts on all immigration policy issues for the 11K-member professional bar association.   He has been a leader in national and grass-roots coalitions that have organized to advance progressive immigration policies.
 
Fitz has been one of the key legislative strategists in support of [reprehensible immigration perversion] and has served as a media spokes-person on a broad array of immigration policy and legislative issues.   He has appeared on national and regional television and radio stations including [MSFT/GE/NBC], CNN, BBC, C-SPAN, and NPR; been quoted extensively across the spectrum of international, national, and local publications; and presented at national conferences and universities on immigration matters.   He has also advised numerous members of Congress on immigration policy, politics, and strategy and helped draft major legislation. He currently serves on the boards and steering committees of other national organizations focused on immigrant rights and immigration policy.
 
Marshall is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and served on the Virginia Law Review.   After graduation he clerked for Judge Bruce M. Selya on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.   In the following years he practiced immigration law in Washington, D.C. at Hogan & Hartson, LLP.
 
In plain English: He's an immigration lobbyist.   And a prominent one.
 
The Democratic Leadership Council, similar to CAP and formed years ago by Bill Clinton himself, also supports liberal tech worker visa policies. See their report, "Brain Freeze" (pdf)
 
As I sometimes mention, I'm a lifelong Democrat, but the Democratic Party has been just as bad on foreign tech worker issues as the Republicans.   It's interesting that the two main people in Congress who genuinely share my views on H-1B are non-Democrats, Republican senator Grassley and Independent [Socialist] senator Sanders.
 
The current line among most Democratic politicians I've heard comment on the H-1B issue is that the only reform needed is to ensure better compliance with the law, via more money for enforcement, stiffer penalties for violations, etc.   As I've written before, this is, not coincidentally, the industry line too.   The industry lobbyists love to have the discussion focus on enforcement, as it distracts from the real issue, the loop-holes (see below), which of course the industry put into the law in the first place.
 
And as I've also written, enforcement is NOT the main area in which H-1B needs to be reformed.   Violations do sometimes occur, yes, but they are only a small part of H-1B abuse.   Most of the abuse is LEGAL, due to huge loop-holes, especially in the legal definition of "prevailing wage".
 
Even if somehow a perfect 100.0% compliance record could be achieved, it would not help U.S. citizens and permanent residents get the tech jobs that now go to H-1Bs.   Better enforcement would make the employers of H-1B dot their i's and cross their t's in the procedures, and in some cases would make them pay a bit more, but the wages would still be well below market level because of the loop-holes.   In cases in which a DoL audit on prevailing wage has resulted in the department ordering employers to give workers back pay, the typical payment has been a few thousand dollars per worker.   These violations are probably not deliberate.   By contrast, making use of the loop-holes can save the employer 10 times that amount or more.   So, even with 100.0% compliance, the jobs then would still go to the H-1Bs instead of to the Americans.
 
This brings me to my deep disappointment with the DPE report.   DPE's blurb summarizing the report explains,
 
"Gaming the System: Guest Worker Visa Programs and Professional and Technical Workers in the U.S.A." is a major new report from DPE that supports the goal of rational, comprehensive immigration reform.
 
The guest worker visa programs of the United States are a flash-point in the debate over immigration. With fallible reporting and no unified government over-sight, U.S. guest worker visa programs are overly complicated, lack accountability, have lax tracking enforcement, and exemplify why U.S. immigration policy needs reform.
 
"Gaming the System" provides background on the much discussed H-1B visa and the impact this program and those like it have had on 2 distinct sectors: education and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
 
As you can see, the focus is exactly where it should NOT be -- enforcement issues.   This is where the industry and the Democratic Party want the focus, and as explained above, this would be of no help to American workers.   Instead, the DPE report is actually harmful, as it gives Congress an excuse to take the wrong action.
 
To be sure, the DPE report has a wealth of material, very useful to a researcher or activist who is new to the field (though it unfortunately omits some of the most important issues and references).   It even mentions loop-holes (though very briefly and with the ones cited being minor).   I was pleased to see that David Huber's testimony is in there.   The report's coverage of the impact of H-1B on science post docs is excellent.   But no one on the Hill will read the actual report -- they'll just read the executive summary, or more likely, just rely on the word of others that the report focuses on enforcement.
 
What is most disappointing is that the DPE report does not endorse the excellent Durbin/Grassley bill, either by name or by including the bill's features in DPE's recommendations.   That says a lot.
 
Norm
---30---

2009-12-20
James Janega _Chicago Tribune_
Soldiers' jobs eliminated while they were deployed

2009-12-20
Steve Lohr _NY Times_
More programs to sucker young into digital field

2009-12-20
_CBS_/_60 Minutes_
Wilmington, Ohio's economic recession [Wilmington is between Cincinnati and Washington Court House along US22, SW of Columbus, OH.]

2009-12-20
Jim Kouri _News with Views_
Regressives/Leftists push again for amnesty for illegal aliens

2009-12-20
Don Harris _Arizona Capitol Times_
Debate over illegal aliens and immigration hasn't changed much since 1965

2009-12-20
Phyllis Schlafly _Creators Syndicate_
How Young Engineers and Our Economy Are Betrayed

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-21

2009-12-21 03:00PST (06:00EST) (11:00GMT)
Jamie Eckle _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
Ron Hira of Rochester Institute of Technology challenges the conventional wisdom on off-shoring
"When a country out-sources what it is good at, building up the capabilities of the country it trades with, it can be worse off.   I think that's precisely what's going on right now with software and engineering off-shoring.   And companies are even offshoring innovation and R&D, something that would have been unthinkable even a few years ago.   By doing so, America is under-cutting its technological and economic future."

2009-12-21 03:00PST (06:00EST) (11:00GMT)
Patrick Thibodeau _Computer World_/_IDG_
USCIS says they'll strengthen H-1B enforcement

2009-12-21
Michael Cutler _News Blaze_
Response to "Work Visa Program is Rife With Problems"
"please note that the visa fraud discussed in the news report has been allegedly ongoing for a decade...   Clearly our nation had opened its doors to those who meant us such harm and yet, even with those lessons behind us, nothing was done to address this serious vulnerability.   The terrorist attacks of 2001 September 11 could not and would not have happened had our government kept out the 19 terrorists who also employed visa fraud and immigration benefit fraud as a means of entering our country in preparation for the attacks...   Certainly the situation at the borders is outrageous, but it is also estimated that some 40% of the illegal aliens in our country did not run our nation's borders but were actually admitted into the United States via the inspections process and then, in one way or another, those aliens we had admitted into our country violated the terms of their admission by overstaying their visas, accepting unlawful employment or committing and then being convicted of committing serious crimes.   I also raised the issue of how easily aliens were able to game the immigration system by gaining visas through fraud."
Mark Morris: Kansas City Star: Work visa program is rife with problems
Kansas City Star: Human Trafficking in America

2009-12-21 09:16:46PST (12:16:46EST) (17:16:46GMT)
Bradley S. Klapper _San Jose CA Mercury News_/_AP_
WTO says Red China is unfairly restricting import of CDs and DVDs from the USA
"Washington pushed forward with a new case accusing [Redd China] of manipulating the prices for key ingredients in steel and aluminum production.   Monday's [appellate verdict] came down decisively against Beijing's policy of forcing American media producers to route their business through state-owned companies."

2009-12-21
_Fitsnews_
366K jobs lost in SC?

2009-12-21
George Booth _Cleveland OH Examiner_
Leftist political machine spinning out of control

2009-12-21
Dwight L. Schwab _San Francisco CA Bay Area Examiner_
What now with national socialist health care perversion going to conference committee?
"Many Democrats have hoped for this sort of uniformed dependency for years...   It would have been an ideal time to introduce new and tougher immigration enforcement.   If Congress could find the time in all these spending programs being considered to stop for a moment and look at this problem, there might be many billions available with a sensible immigration reform bill."

2009-12-21
_Pittsburgh Tribune-Review_
What is "moderate" when it comes to immigration?
"With an advocate for illegal aliens staking out the far-left extreme of the immigration reform debate, the Obama administration's upcoming proposal will reveal much about what 'moderate' and 'bipartisan' mean to this White House."

2009-12-21
Devvy _News with Views_
Why haven't these legislators been indicted?

2009-12-21
_U of Florida_
Some temp workers not stuck in bodyshops and earn more than regular employees

2009-12-21
Brent Batten _Naples News_/_ALIPAC_
Illegal alien murdered teen for speaking English, in Immokalee, Florida

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-22

2009-12-22
Ed McGarvey _Gant Daily_
Will Grandma get run over by leftists on Christmas Eve?
"For over 100 years Democrats have been fighting for a socialized Medicine.   With a 100% partisan vote, they have accomplished it.   Before Christmas the Senate will have a bill passed.   They keep saying how important it is, yet it does not take effect for 4 years.   Once it merges with the House in committee, all the garbage will be back in.   We will fund abortion.   We will give free health-care to illegal aliens, yet you and I will have to pay up to 100% more for what we have already and the coverage will be limited.   Just as Democrat leaders gave hundreds of millions of dollars to States with the hold-out votes the Democrats have plans to give free medical Insurance to all illegal aliens for their vote.   60% of Americans oppose any form of healthcare overhaul that has been proposed, yet they passed it.   During the early morning at 1 am over the weekend so that we who oppose such take-over of health-care by the government could not call our Senators to complain they passed such bills.   Not only is it a disgrace to turn our country into a Socialist Communist style government where the government owns businesses, banks but all those who fought hard against communism during the past 50 years have been shown politicians are evil ruthless crooks who lie steal and scam you...   In the end 30M uninsured will remain so, stated in Report by the Congressional Budget Office."

2009-12-22
Ken McCalip _Santa Maria CA Times_
AgJobs bill is significant locally
"Polls in the United States show citizens want their national sovereignty protected, that 77% of Americans [believe] employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens should be punished, that 66% favor temporary workers be required to return home, and that 69% [believe] that illegal aliens should be prosecuted and deported."

2009-12-22
Lynn Stuter _News with Views_
Traitors, every one

2009-12-22
_Japan Times_
Visitors urge Japan to be nice to foreigners, but uphold standards

2009-12-22
_USCIS_/_PR News Wire_
USCIS finally reached FY2010 base H-1B cap: unlimited number of exemptions still available

2009-12-22
Stephen Vargas _NY Examiner_
Generous US citizens ruled by several remarkably uncharitable individuals
"The United States has been among the most compassionate and humane countries in terms of its treatment of immigrants.   The U.S. allows more legal immigrants to enter the country than all other nations in the world combined.   The United States accepts and grants more visas to asylum seekers than any nation in the world and the country annually allocates hundreds of thousands of family, student, and H-1B work visas to foreign nationals.   The Immigration Act of 1990 increased the number of visas by 40% to 700K and temporary permits for seasonal labor and students exceeded 1.2M in 2008.   Between 500K and 1.4M immigrants have been naturalized annually since the passing of the Act.   United States citizens are also charitable individuals.   Giving has remained slightly higher than 2% of annual GDP.   According to Giving USA, charitable donations in the United States peaked at $314.07G in 2007.   In 2008, despite the looming threat of a long-term economic recession, charitable contributions exceeded $307G; the decrease in contributions was the first since 1987.   Approximately 75% of contributions are given by individuals, with charitable bequests, corporate giving, and foundation grant-making accounting for approximately 7%, 5%, and 13% of charitable contributions in 2008, respectively.   The top recipients of charitable contributions are religious congregations and organizations, which receive approximately 35%...   He also expressed a desire to prevent skilled workers and non-ethnic minorities from receiving stimulus funds, targeting white males in the process.   'I am concerned that these jobs not simply go to high-skilled people who are already professional or to white male construction workers.', Reich said in 2009.   Despite Reich's alleged concern for the under-privileged, he was not willing to contribute to the betterment of society by donating earnings to help those he expressed pity for.   Reich was exposed as a hypocrite in 2002, when he ran for governor of Massachusetts.   His tax return revealed he earned more than $1M but contributed 0.2% of his income, $2,714, to charity."

2009-12-22 06:01PST (09:01EST) (14:01GMT)
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
US GDP revised down to 2.2% growth in 2009Q3: Real GDP down 2.6% in the last year

2009-12-22 06:10PST (09:10EST) (14:10GMT)
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
aggregate income, consumer spending up a smidgen
"After inflation, after-tax disposable incomes rose 0.2% in November for the third straight month.   Real disposable incomes had fallen for much of the recession, but are now up 2.3% compared with 2007 December, with much of the increase due to tax cuts and government transfer payments...   Inflation-adjusted real spending increased 0.2% in November after a 0.4% gain in October...   With disposable incomes rising as fast as spending, the personal savings rate was steady at 4.7% in November."

2009-12-22 09:47PST (12:47EST) (17:47GMT)
_Jacksonville FL Business Journal_
Florida state legislators to hold job summit in Orlando, January 14 & 15

2009-12-22
Kristinn Taylor _Big Government_
TEA party patriots: Keep on fighting the abuse
"To paraphrase Winston Churchill after Dunkirk, we shall fight in the Capitol, we shall fight in our home-towns, we shall fight in the state-houses and town councils, we shall fight in the streets, we shall never surrender."

2009-12-22
Ronald W. Mortensen _Center for Immigration Studies_
Amnesty for illegal aliens without justice

2009-12-22 11:26:30PST (14:26:30EST) (19:26:30GMT)
_San Jose CA Mercury News_/_AP_
Red Chinese thugs expand controls over internet

2009-12-22
J. Stephen Wilson _Albuquerque Examiner_
Proposals for H-1B visa program reform

2009-12-22
J.D. Longstreet _Right Side News_
Americans are angry at government

2009-12-22
Paul Belien _Europe News, Denmark_
Governments vs. the People: Population Replacement

2009-12-22
Russ J. Alan _Renew America_
Jobs lost in 2009 by state

2009-12-22 12:52PST (15:52EST) (20:52GMT)
Edward B. Colby _Wicked Local West Roxbury MA_
Brad Williams running for state senate

2009-12-22
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
HR3590 Has an Odor Too Rotten To Ignore, Even by Leftist Columnists
Dana Milbank: Washington Post

2009-12-22
_CBS_/_Washington Post_
Of $45M in bonuses AIG executives promised to return, out of over $165M paid out by the firm after it had a red ink year and was bailed out by the government, only $19M has been paid back

2009-12-22
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
The "Science" Mantra
"Science is one of the great achievements of the human mind and the biggest reason why we live not only longer but more vigorously in our old age, in addition to all the ways in which it provides us with things that make life easier and more enjoyable.   Like anything valuable, science has been seized upon by politicians and ideologues, and used to forward their own agendas.   This started long ago, as far back as the 18th century, when the Marquis de Condorcet coined the term 'social science' to describe various theories he favored.   In the 19th century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels distinguished their own brand of socialism as 'scientific socialism'.   By the 20th century, all sorts of notions wrapped themselves in the mantle of 'science'.   'Global warming' hysteria is only the latest in this long line of notions, whose main argument is that there is no argument, because it is 'science'.   The recently revealed destruction of raw data at the bottom of the global warming hysteria, as well as revelations of attempts to prevent critics of this hysteria from being published in leading journals, suggests that the disinterested search for truth -- the hallmark of real science -- has taken a back seat to a political crusade...   When a business accused of fraud begins shredding its memos and deleting its e-mails, the media are quick to proclaim these actions as signs of guilt.   But, after the global warming advocates began a systematic destruction of evidence, the big television networks went for days without even reporting these facts, much less commenting on them.   As for politicians, senator Barbara Boxer has urged prosecution of the hackers who uncovered and revealed the e-mails!   People who have in the past applauded whistleblowers in business, in the military, or in Republican administrations, and who lionized the New York Times for publishing the classified Pentagon papers, are now shocked and outraged that someone dared to expose massive evidence of manipulations, concealment and destruction of data -- and deliberate cover-ups of all this -- in the global warming establishment.   Factual data are crucial in real science.   Einstein himself urged that his own theory of relativity not be accepted until it could be empirically verified.   This verification came when scientists around the world observed an eclipse of the sun and discovered that light behaved as Einstein's theory said it would behave, however implausible that might have seemed beforehand."

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-23

2009-12-22 18:52PST (2009-12-22 21:52EST) (2009-12-23 02:52GMT)
Alistair Barr _MarketWatch_
Red Chinese thugs opposing free trade

2009-12-22 22:00PST (2009-12-23 01:00EST) (2009-12-23 06:00GMT)
Karen Lee Ziner _Providence RI Journal_
HR4321 sparks new debate in RI

2009-12-23 07:00PST (10:00EST) (15:00GMT)
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
New home sales fell 11.3% in November
"October's sales pace was revised lower to 400K from the 430K earlier reported.   Sales were down 9% from last November.   Through the first 11 months of 2009, 349K homes had been sold, down 24% from the same period a year ago."
census bureau report

2009-12-23 07:00PST (10:00EST) (15:00GMT)
Robert Schroeder _MarketWatch_
UMich consumer sentiment index rose from 67.4 in November to 72.5 in late December
Federal Reserve Board St. Louis
Federal Reserve Board St. Louis

2009-12-23
John Lasker _Toward Freedom_
How big tech corporations out-source labor on US soil
"Like a lot of American corporations that made mind-boggling profits over the last few decades, the MSFT, IBM and Cisco technology companies have abandoned their own citizen work-force to exploit foreign workers.   But this isn't happening in some far off sweat shop, this out-sourcing is happening right on American soil.   In this case, corporate power, channeled through high-paid lobbyists and fat campaign contributions, strong-armed elected officials into passing laws that surreptitiously squash the labor rights of both US citizens and foreign workers alike.   How these IT companies got away with this begins with a US visa named the H-1b.   The visa was created in the early 1990s so US companies could hire foreign nationals with college degrees for up to 6 years of service [plus unlimited extensions].   Foreigners began to apply en masse, and now, nearly 2 decades later, 600K are working in the country via the H-1b.   According to Gene A. Nelson, PhD, who wrote _An American Scam: How Special Interests Undermine National Security with Endless 'Techie' Gluts_, it was MSFT founder Bill Gates who pushed and paid Washington the greatest to pass the H-1b visa law.   Gates accomplished this by perpetuating a myth that America was facing a looming shortage of IT pros, scientists and engineers.   Gates' myth, states Nelson, [garnered] MSFT an extra $73G in profits between 1991 to 2005.   Nearly all MSFT H-1bs are paid a salary that's far below the prevailing wage for their position and skill.   Some critics estimate that out of the 600K H-1bs in the US, a third are being used by IT companies for cheap labor.   'The H-1b benefits many of the economic elite at the expense of the middle class.', wrote Nelson.   'The resultant labor gluts (caused by the H-1b) depresses wages and benefits, enhancing employer profitability.'"

2009-12-23
Mickey McCarter _Homeland Security Today_
Reprehensible Immigration Law Perversion bill (HR4321) offers new protections for illegal aliens

2009-12-23
Thomas E. Brewton & Mike Porcari _View from 1776_
Is Algore on a collision course with reality?
OISM Warmist Review (pdf)

2009-12-23
Rob Sanchez _V Dare_/_Job Destruction News-Letter_
Reprehensible Immigration Law Perversion bill (HR4321) and "The Commission"
"The Gutierrez bill means more foreign workers and less jobs for Americans.   There are so many things to dislike about this bill that I'm not going to go into them in detail because many others like FAIR and NumbersUSA have done in depth analysis of the bill.   Surprisingly the FAIR analysis didn't even mention H-1B while NumbersUSA greatly understates the impact of HR4321 on H-1B...   there is a potential that H-1B could have no upper limit.   Let me state that another way -- H-1B could have no limits to the number of visas so employers can hire as many as they want!...   The loop-holes NumbersUSA says are being closed won't make a dime's worth of difference to American workers who will be replaced by hoards of new H-1Bs that will be coming to the U.S.A...   it acknowledges that Americans will be displaced -- but it doesn't set an acceptable level of displacement, so the commission can do whatever they deem fit."
------ HR4321; Ortiz, Conyers, Serrano, Rangel, Pastor, Stark, Gutierez, Waxman, Becerra, Frank et al.; Reprehensible Immigration Law Perversion (a.k.a. CIRA SAP)
GPO version of HR4321 (pdf)

2009-12-23 (5770 Teves 06)
Steve Sailer _V Dare_
Crime Rates of Immigrants

2009-12-23 (5770 Teves 06)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
Black Education
"Only 3% of Detroit's fourth-graders scored proficient on the most recent National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) test, sometimes called 'The Nation's Report Card'.   28% scored basic and 69% below basic.   'Below basic' is the NAEP category when students are unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at their grade level.   It's the same story for Detroit's eighth-graders.   4% scored proficient, 18% basic and 77% below basic...   Washington, DC, for example spends over $15K per student, has class sizes smaller than the nation's average, and with an average annual salary of $61,195, its teachers are the most highly paid in the nation...   the educational performance of many white kids is nothing to write home about; it's just not the disaster that black education is.   Many black students are alien and hostile to the education process.   They have parents with little interest in their education...   Students who have chosen education as their major have the lowest SAT scores of any other major.   Students who have an education degree earn lower scores than any other major on graduate school admission tests such as the GRE, MCAT or LSAT.   Schools of education, either graduate or undergraduate, represent the academic slums of most any university.   They are home to the least able students and professors."

2009-12-23 (5770 Teves 06)
Mark J. Perry _AEI_
Manufacturing's Death Greatly Exaggerated
2010-01-06: acknowledging Walter E. Williams reference in his column
FRED Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: manufacturing employment

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-24

2009-12-24 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (12:30GMT)
Scott Gibbons & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
un-employment insurance weekly claims report
DoL home page
historical data
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 561,902 in the week ending Dec. 19, an increase of 6,492 from the previous week.   There were 719,615 initial claims in the comparable week in 2008.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.1% during the week ending Dec. 12, an increase of 0.2 percentage point from the prior week.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 5,385,774, an increase of 193,030 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 3.4% and the volume was 4,594,820.   Extended benefits were available in AL, AK, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, DC, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, ME, MA, MI, MN, MO, NV, NH, NJ, NM, NY, NC, OH, OR, PA, PR, RI, SC, TN, TX, VT, VA, WA, WV, and WI during the week ending December 5...   States reported 4,368,107 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending Dec. 5, an increase of 141,807 from the prior week.   There were 1,482,317 claimants in the comparable week in 2008.   EUC weekly claims include first, second, and third tier activity.
graphs
more graphs

2009-12-24 06:27PST (09:27EST) (14:27GMT)
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
Durable goods, capital equipment orders were up in November
"Orders for durable goods rose a seasonally adjusted 0.2% in November, held back by a massive 32.6% drop in aircraft bookings.   Excluding transportation goods, orders rose 2%...   Orders for core capital equipment goods -- a gauge of business capital investment -- jumped 2.9%...   Through the first 11 months of 2009, durable-goods orders were down 21.6% compared to the corresponding period in 2008.   Since June, orders are up 3.8%."
Census bureau reports

2009-12-24 07:47PST (10:47EST) (15:47GMT)
Michael Kitchen _MarketWatch_
Unemployment up to 5.2%, prices down, spending up in Japan

2009-12-24
Jennifer McKee _Billings MT Gazette_/_Lee_
Incomes of congressional staffers rising rapidly
"Between 2007 and 2008, the average wage for Montana workers went up 3.4%, from $32,224 to $33,305, according to numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics...   In 2008, the House of Representatives voted to increase the money each member gets to pay their staffs by 9%, although it's up to each representative to decide on the amount of raises for individual employees.   That sum also includes expenses like office supplies and travel, but nonetheless it's still almost three times higher than the rate by which Montana and the rest of the nation's workers saw their wages climb, according to numbers from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics...   In 2006, representative Denny Rehberg, R-MT, paid Erik Iverson, his then chief of staff, just more that $128K.   The next year, that jumped to $159,828, almost a 25% raise.   Rehberg gave his deputy chief of staff, Robert J. Martin, a 14.5% raise in that same period.   In 2006, [senator Max Baucus] paid Maureen Rice, his administrative manager, almost $85K.   The next year, he bumped that up 8.5% to $92,249.   In 2008, he gave Rice an 18% raise, bringing her pay to $108K.   In 2007, senator Jon Tester, D-MT, paid his Helena-based state director Bill Lombardi $109,997.   He gave Lombardi a 17.5% raise that year, bumping Lombardi up to $129,266...   Baucus' total office budget was just more than $3M, an amount that also includes travel.   The Senate sets a salary cap of $169,459...   The Senate most recently voted to increase its office staff budgets by 3.4%, a smaller raise than the one the House passed the year before, but still ahead of the 2.4% increase in the national average wage American wage earners saw between 2007 and 2008, according to federal statistics...   Montana's rank-and-file state workers... agreed through their unions to no raises for 2 years for many workers to help the state balance its budget in the middle of the recession.   State workers who made $45K or less got a one-time $450 bonus."
LegiStorm

2009-12-24 16:55:04PST (2009-12-24 19:55:04EST) (2009-12-25 00:55:04GMT)
Pete Carey _San Jose CA Mercury News_
H-1B visas see slow demand but finally reach base limits, though unlimited exemptions remain to be tapped
discussion forum
alternate forum

2009-12-24 14:15:59PST (17:15:59EST) (22:15:59GMT)
Jad Mouawad _San Jose CA Mercury News_/_NY Times_
Oil refiners face tough market after years of boom
"The business of oil refining is mired in a deep crisis, with five refineries having shut down this year, including plants in Delaware, New Jersey, California and New Mexico.   Gasoline demand, which many analysts had long expected to keep rising for decades, is down sharply in the recession.   And refiners are increasingly convinced that even after the economy recovers, demand will not grow much in coming years because of the rise of alternative fuel supplies and the advent of tougher efficiency standards for automobiles.   The recent closings signal the end of a period from roughly 2004 to 2008, when demand soared, refineries operated near capacity and profits swelled.   For drivers, that meant gasoline prices at $3 or $4 a gallon, especially when hurricanes knocked out refining capacity on the Gulf Coast.   For refiners, this gilded period turned out to have been an anomaly...   The number of refineries in the United States fell to about 150 in recent years from more than 300 in 1982.   At the same time, the nation's refining capacity grew by about 13%, as companies expanded their most efficient refineries.   But the shutdowns are now coming so fast that the United States is losing capacity as refiners struggle to match their output to falling demand.   Some energy experts have said that gasoline consumption most likely peaked in 2007, when it reached 9.7M barrels a day, and will not rise to that level again.   Government mandates for ethanol, meanwhile, are expected to grow through 2022.   Biofuel supplies, which were negligible a few years ago, are set to reach 15G gallons in 2012 and 36G gallons in 2022.   As production grows, ethanol and other biofuels displace gasoline and diesel; at many gasoline pumps ethanol is now 10% of the blend, and the ethanol industry is pushing to raise the percentage."

2009-12-24
Ruffin Prevost _Billings MT Gazette_/_Lee_
Holy day feasts weren't so easy for pioneers (with picture of Buffalo Bill Claus)
"One year, when planning a Christmas visit, Cody sent word ahead of his special dinner request: fried chicken."

2009-12-24

DJIA	10,520.00
S&P 500	1,126.48
NASDAQ	2,286.00
Nikkei	10,537
10-year US T-Bond	3.79%
crude oil	$78.05/barrel
gold	$1,104.10/ounce
silver	$17.44/ounce
platinum	$1,467.90/ounce
palladium	$389.65/ounce
copper	$0.20578125/ounce
natgas	$5.655/MBTU
reformulatedgasoline	$1.9820/gal
heatingoil	$2.0356/gal
dollarindex	77.785
yenperdollar	91.65
dollarspereuro	1.4361
dollarsperpound	1.5949
swissfranksperdollar	1.0320
indianrupeesperdollar	46.66
mexicanpesosperdollar	12.8835
MorganStanleyHighTechIndex	581.16

I usually get this info from MarketWatch.
 

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-25

2009-12-24 23:11PST (2009-12-25 02:11EST) (2009-12-25 07:11GMT)
Chris Oliver _MarketWatch_
Red Chinese 2008 GDP revised up to $4.6T
"Following the revision, the services sector accounted for 41.8% of GDP, up from 40.1% in 2008, it said.   The size of agriculture relative to the overall economy fell to 10.7% from 11.3%."

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-26

2009-12-26
Jeannine Aversa _Washington Post_/_AP_
Widespread unemployment may last a decade or more
Yahoo!
"Economist David Levy, chairman of the Jerome Levy Forecasting Center, says the country faces a new era of chronically high unemployment, averaging 8% or more over the next decade."

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-27

2009-12-27
Michael Cutler _News with Views_
Greenspan called for lower wages and standard of living for America's highly-skilled workers
"it has been reported that of some 94 terrorists who had been identified as operating in our country in the decade leading up to the attacks of 9/11, some 59 of those individuals had used immigration fraud and/or visa fraud as a means of entering our country and/or embedding themselves within our country, enabling them to hide in plain sight... The terrorist attacks of 2001 September 11 could not and would not have happened had our government kept out the 19 terrorists who also employed visa fraud and immigration benefit fraud as a means of entering our country in preparation for the attacks..."

2009-12-27
Michael Cutler _The Reality Check_
visa application process should serve as first line of defense
"That section of law goes on to list a fairly inclusive list of categories of excludible aliens including those who are infected with dangerous communicable diseases, those who have been convicted of committing felonies, those who have engaged in smuggling and human trafficking, etc.   Then we come to the section of this law that apparently deal with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab...   When the father of an alien is so concerned as to the potential that his own son may be involved in terrorism, it would appear to be reasonable and prudent to take the concerns of that worried parent into account...   Furthermore, although an alien may have been granted a visa to enter the United States, the actual entry of that alien into the United States is still a matter to be determined by the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) inspector at the port of entry at which the alien applies for admission into the United States.   Furthermore, the father of the alleged terrorist in this case, Umaru Abdul Mutallab has been identified as having recently retired as the chairman of one of the most important banks of Nigeria.   Clearly this adds immeasurably to the credibility of the source of the information concerning the terror suspect.   Yet, apparently, nothing was done to add the suspect's name to the much touted 'No Fly' list...   our nation has actually expanded the Visa Waiver Program to now include some 35 countries even as the citizens of our country have witnessed a steady erosion in our expectations of privacy and freedom, all in the name of 'national security'...   The problem is, as I have often noted, where 'Discover America' is concerned, al-Qaeda has already discovered America!   The visa issuing process needs to be more than a mere formality!..."

2009-12-27
Art Hovey _Lincoln NE Journal Star_
Retiring ICE official has been on both sides of immigration fence

2009-12-27
Nat Harwell _CovNews_
New Year's slogan

2009-12-27
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Wall Street and the Global-Warmist Scam Artists: Keep Your Eyes on the Money

2009-12-27
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
probability of severely damaging inflation is too great to ignore

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-28

2009-12-27 18:30PST (2009-12-27 21:30EST) (2009-12-28 02:30GMT)
Eve Tahminciouglu _NBC Miami_
9 Hardest-Hit Professions of 2009

1. Architects
2. Carpenters
3. Production supervisors and assembly workers
4. Pilots
5. Computer software engineers: Computer software engineers continued to be impacted by the offshoring of programming jobs.   The profession saw a 10% decline in jobs to 970K by the third quarter of this year, down from more than 1M positions in 2008.   But on the horizon, demand from businesses and government agencies to have the newest technology is expected to drive growth in both computer and mathematical occupations.   The BLS expects the sector to add 785,700 new jobs through 2018, growing twice as fast as the average for all professions.   'It is anticipated that computer specialists will account for the vast majority of this growth, increasing by 762,700 jobs.', the agency reports.
6. Mechanical Engineers
7. Construction workers
8. Tellers
9. Book-keeping, accounting and auditing

2009-12-28 06:11PST (09:11EST) (14:11GMT)
Barbara Kollmeyer _MarketWatch_
holiday retail sales up 3.6% from last year
Baltimore MD Business Journal
Wall Street Journal

2009-12-28 07:13PST (10:13EST) (15:13GMT)
William Spain _MarketWatch_
Extra day boosts holiday retail sales: without the extra day, the season's growth could have been down by 2% to 4%

2009-12-28 11:41PST (14:41EST) (19:41GMT)
Patrick Thibodeau _Computer World_/_IDG_
Middlesex County NJ Superior Court Judge James Hurley ordered firms that register domains and provide hosting services -- GoDaddy Inc., Network Solutions, Comcast Cable Communications Inc. and DiscountASP.Net, to disable 3 sites, ITgrunt.com, Endh1b.com, and Guestworkerfraud.com in response to a libel suit by Apex Technology Group Inc., based in Edison, NJ
"Apex said it is also seeking 'contact details of the individual who posted this legal agreement without permission since we are the copyright owner of the legal document'."
H-1B Bodyshop vs. U.S. First Amendment: The Case Of "Tunnel Rat"
Roy Mark: eWeek
Liam Eagle: Web Host Industry Review
Tech Dirt

2009-12-28
Don E. Sears _eWeek_
H-1B enforcement may increase in 2010, but don't hold your breath

2009-12-28
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Leftist warmists turn to judicial activism

2009-12-28
Thomas E. Brewton & Jeff Lukens _View from 1776_
Drifting into Darkness: The Choice Between Prosperity and Decline
alternate link
"In the 1600s, the ships that brought the first settlers to our shores, and tools for tilling the soil they brought with them, were not much more advanced than those used by people thousands of years before.   In the relatively short time since their arrival in the New World, there has been an explosion in technology and the standard of living for ordinary people.   Communications, for example, were revolutionized first by the telegraph, then by telephone, then radio, then television, and now by the Internet and the computer.   In that same time, the average length of life has been doubled, and the quality of life has been greatly enhanced.   Homes, heating, cooling, clothing, transportation, food, education, and medicine have quickly advanced as well.   While people around the globe have benefited and other countries have contributed, the American spirit of innovation and free enterprise has been a driving force behind much of the change.   And that change has flowed primarily from the fruits that come from the individual freedoms that the Founders understood and turned loose...   Today, many in Washington wish to over-turn what they see to be out-moded notions of Constitutional law.   We hear of conferring new, artificial rights not granted by the Creator, but by other men.   The 'right' to government-sponsored health care is only the latest example.   And in the end, it is nothing more than a ruse intended to empower the state and deny everyone his or her true inalienable rights."
Jeff Lukens

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-29

2009-12-28 18:31PST (2009-12-28 21:31EST) (2009-12-29 02:31GMT)
Jason Scott _Cumberland PA Sentinel_
There is still time to choose an electric supplier as PPL rates go up 30% for average residential user
"All of the state-licensed competitive electric generation suppliers reported by the state Public Utility Commission and the Office of Consumer Advocate have prices lower than the 10.448 cents per kilowatt hour default service rate PPL has said it will charge next year -- a 29.7% bump for average residential customers.   The company estimates monthly bills will increase on average about 18.4% for small businesses and 36.1% for mid-sized businesses...   ConEdison Solutions of Valhalla, NY, has a fixed one-year term price of 9.38 cents per KWh.   To put that into perspective, a monthly generation and transmission bill for 500 KWh would cost $46.90.   At the PPL rate, that same bill will total $52.24.   Over the course of the year, that customer could save more than $64.   If you use 1KWh per month, the ConEdison bill would be $93.80, while PPL totals $104.48 -- an annual savings of more than $128.   Dominion Energy Solutions from Pittsburgh has a fixed one-year price from 2010 January through December of 9.403 cents per KWh, which translates to $47.02 per month for 500KWh users and $94.03 for 1MWh users.   The company also offers a plan that charges 8.99 cents through 2010 March and 9.49 cents from 2010 April through December, but that program has a $50 early cancellation fee attached to it.   MXenergy, a Houston, Texas-based company, also has a fixed price through 2010 December with no early cancellation fee.   Its rate is 9.52 cents, which equates to $47.60 for 500 kWh users and $95.20 for 1MWh users...   Direct Energy, based in Pittsburgh, has three different programs available at this time.   The first is a one-year term that has a price of 8.99 cents for the first 3 months and 9.49 cents for the next 9 months.   The monthly rates would be $44.95 and $89.90 for 500 and 1MWh users, respectively, for 3 months.   The next 9 months would cost $47.45 and $94.90.   The early cancellation fee is $100 for that plan.   The second plan is a 3-year term with a fixed price of 9.99 cents, or $49.95 per month for 500 KWh users and $99.90 for 1MWh users.   To cancel early, customers would need to pay $300.   There is also a renewable wind plan for a year that includes prices of 10.99 cents for the first 3 months and 11.49 cents for the next 9 months.   The fee to cancel that plan early is $100.   As of Dec. 18, the fixed price for a year at Liberty Power Holdings, based in Fort Lauderdale, FL, was 9.45 cents per KWh.   A two-year term was set at 11.41 cents.   Interested parties are encouraged to call Liberty Power for details about early cancellation fees and current rates.   Rates may change daily, the company has said.   The final residential supplier is Community Energy, a wind supplier from Wayne.   The price of this service would be added to your current electric supply.   Customers would pay current supplier charges plus 2.5 cents per KWh, or $2.50 for each 100 KWh block.   The minimum purchase is two 100 KWh blocks, increasing generation bills by at least $5 per month."

2009-12-28 18:36PST (2009-12-28 21:36EST) (2009-12-29 02:36GMT)
Rick Ackerman
Decline of US Manufacturing

2009-12-29
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
ComputerWorld-related
Computerworld has been covering H-1B and related issues quite thoroughly since 1999.   The editor at that time was skeptical when he saw the industry lobbyists screaming that there was a tech labor shortage, as his wife couldn't get a job as a teacher even while the Boston-area papers were claiming a teacher shortage.
 
Here I'll comment on 2 items, one by [former] ComputerWorld editor-in-chief Don Tennant and the other a new article in the publication.   (To save time, I'm just including URLs, which is just as well as there are interesting links on these sites.)
 
I've praised Tennant in this e-news-letter for being open-minded in spite of having, I surmise, come in to the H-1B topic with biases in favor of the program.   I believe he originally bought into the "best and brightest" claims of the industry lobbyists, which as I've shown before apply only to a very small percentage of foreign tech workers.   (See my earlier comments comment1 and comment2).
 
In a recent pair of blog postings... Tennant wonders why he hears of workers in the tech field advising their children not to pursue tech careers.   After all, Tennant says, even a generous accounting would find that only 35% of IT workers are H-1Bs, which leaves 65%, i.e. plenty of jobs.
 
I'll use that 35% figure here for ease of exposition (it's an over-estimate for many reasons).   But Tennant is missing the point in several different ways:

• That 35% doesn't include FORMER H-1B workers who now have green cards.   To be sure, I've always said they should be protected just like the natives, but the point is that if there had not been a H-1B program most of them would not be in the current labor market.
   
• The 35% figure is large in terms of its dampening effect on IT wages.   Some of you may recall that even the mainly pro-industry NRC report in 2000 made the same observation.
   
• The 35% figure is large in that it enables employers to shun the older (age 35+) American workers.   (Which renders irrelevant Tennant's comment about jobs opening as baby boomers retire.)
   
• IT is a very, very broad field.   Only a minority of IT jobs are typically filled by computer science graduates (the field Tennant cites), but H-1Bs almost exclusively work in such jobs.   IOW, the impact on CS grads of the H-1B program is much more acute than on IT jobs as a whole.

2009-12-29 09:23PST (12:23EST) (17:23GMT)
Courtney Schlisserman & Bob Willis _BusinessWeek_/_Bloomberg_
Conference Board's Consumer Confidence indices give mixed picture
Conference Board
"The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index®, which had increased in November, rose again in December.   The Index rose from from 50.6 in November to 52.9 (1985=100).   The Expectations Index increased from 70.3 last month to 75.6.   The Present Situation Index, however, declined from 21.2 in November to 18.8."

2009-12-29
Robert Jones _Santa Maria CA Times_
Employers need to pay full costs for illegal aliens & guest-workers

2009-12-29
Martin Hutchinson _Prudent Bear_
Will the 2010s be another bear decade?
"The 2000s were a pretty good decade for Bears.   The Standard and Poor's 500 Index is down 24% in nominal terms from December 1999 or approximately 30% when dividends and inflation are taken into account.   4 of the years were Bear triumphs -- 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2008."

2009-12-29 (5770 Teves 12)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
Unhealthy arrogance
"The only thing healthy about Congress' health insurance legislation is the healthy skepticism about it by most of the public, as revealed by polls.   What is most unhealthy about this legislation is the raw arrogance in the way it was conceived and passed...   In short, this is not about improving the health of the American people.   It is about passing something -- anything -- to keep the Obama administration from ending up with egg on its face by being unable to pass a bill, after so much hype and hoopla.   Politically, looking impotent is a formula for disaster at election time...   The only rational explanation for such haste to pass a bill that will be slow to go into effect is to prevent the public from knowing what is in this massive legislation that even members of Congress are unlikely to have read.   That is also the only reason that makes sense for postponing the time when Obamacare goes into action after the next presidential election."

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-30

2009-12-30
Jon Stokes _Ars Technica_
Bodies shopped and those seeking reform of H-1B visa program unite against shut-down of discussions
"Yahoo! and Comcast were ordered to turn over the identity of one of the activists, who had apparently been using a specific Comcast IP and Yahoo! e-mail address to correspond with Apex.   Facebook was ordered to give up personally identifying information for pseudonymous administrator of ITGrunt.com, information that includes 'account application forms and billing address and name information'.   The 3 sites' "hosts" (DiscountASP.NET, GoDaddy.com, Network Solutions, and Domains By Proxy -- the court appears to have conflated hosting and DNS providers) were ordered to pull the sites off-line...   Coverage of the controversy and of the newest ruling has appeared at Indian IT blog Techgoss.com, and the site's director has expressed support for the free speech rights of the anti-H-1B activists to BrightFutureJobs.com.   Of course, the alignment of South Asian IT workers and anti-H1B activists on this issue isn't so much a kumbaya moment as it is a case of shared interests.   It's allegedly common for the American-based [and India-based] H-1B sweat-shops who exploit Indian workers to themselves be run by Indians, where the latter use their social networks to attract H-1B employees before attempting to establish a one-sided relationship of the kind that's legally enforceable in India but not in the USA.   In this case, Apex, an Indian-run IT shop, was trying to identify and silence an Indian commenter (Panjak Jain) on an Indian bulletin board (DesiCrunch.com); the anonymous American anti-H-1B activists got caught in the middle by publicizing the comments, and the activists were then asked by Apex to surrender Jain's contact information, which they got by corresponding with him..."

2009-12-30
Dave Gibson _Norfolk VA Examiner_
Two illegal aliens charged with murder in sanctuary city Virginia Beach
"Both shooting victims were also illegal aliens...   local ABC affiliate WVEC showed that the police chief was at least [indirectly] culpable in the tragedy when they reported that 'Chief Jacocks says the policy of not reporting illegals until after 3 DUI charges was his idea.   He hoped it would let illegal immigrants feel comfortable if they were involved in an accident.'"

2009-12-30 08:00PST (11:00EST) (16:00GMT)
Mehul Srivaastava & Moira Herbst _Business Week_
local governments are wooing Indian bodyshops such as Tata, Wipro, and Infosys, but the job gains are a drop in the bucket: 13K TCS employes in USA, 1300 of them Americans
"To show off a 196K-square-foot office park in the Cincinnati suburb of Milford to executives from Tata Consultancy Services, India's biggest tech company and a thriving part of the Tata Group conglomerate.   To sweeten the deal, Strickland threw in $19M in tax credits and invited the TCS crew to a state dinner at the governor's mansion.   'The economy is difficult.', Strickland says.   'I will go wherever I can to find jobs.'   TCS said yes, and in November Strickland showed up at the sprawling wooded campus for a ceremony to mark the hiring of the 300th employee at what has become the corner-stone for TCS's North American efforts.   Tata has hired some 250 graduates of Ohio State University, the University of Cincinnati, and other nearby schools.   Soon the facility may employ as many as 1K Americans doing back-office and technology out-sourcing for U.S. health-care companies [privacy violation] and local governments...   going, hat in hand, to the same bunch that have been responsible for hundreds of thousands of jobs going over-seas.   Dallas, Atlanta, Minneapolis, and Tallahassee have all been actively courting Indian tech outfits.   Wipro Technologies (WIT) in March inaugurated a center in Atlanta, which now has 350 employees -- nearly 300 of them Americans, including senior managers recruited from U.S. tech rivals.   Infosys Technologies (INFY), meanwhile, is planning an operation in Dallas to target some of the $52G the U.S. government will spend on out-sourcing work in 2010...   'One reason they are doing this is for public relations.', says Ron Hira, an expert on offshoring at Rochester Institute of Technology...   Surya Kant, North America president for TCS... Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata and India's Commerce Minister Anand Sharma at the Nov. 25 White House state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh."
class action against Tata
Tata median salaries by city
Wipro median salaries by city
Infosys median salaries by city

2009-12-30 08:35PST (11:35EST) (16:35GMT)
_MarketWatch_
US ITC rules against Red China in steel-tube dumping

2009-12-30
Mariana Alvarado _Arizona Daily Star_/_Scripps_
DHS to make another desultory attempt to track presence of limited categories of guest-workers

2009-12-30 (5770 Teves 13)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
Modern Day Lunacy

2009-12-30 (5770 Teves 13)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
Old Boxing Matches and Mores

2009-12-30

DJIA	10,428.05
S&P 500	1,115.10
NASDAQ	2,269.15
Nikkei	10,546
10-year US T-Bond	3.83%
crude oil	$79.36/barrel
gold	$1,096.20/ounce
silver	$16.845/ounce
platinum	$1,460.00/ounce
palladium	$408.85/ounce
copper	$0.20915625/ounce
natgas	$5.572/MBTU
reformulatedgasoline	$2.0406/gal
heatingoil	$2.1093/gal
dollarindex	77.867
yenperdollar	91.65
dollarspereuro	1.4331
dollarsperpound	1.6168
swissfranksperdollar	1.0351
indianrupeesperdollar	46.60
mexicanpesosperdollar	13.0820
MorganStanleyHighTechIndex	578.10

I usually get this info from MarketWatch.
 

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009-12-31

2009-12-31 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (12:30GMT)
Scott Gibbons & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
un-employment insurance weekly claims report
DoL home page
historical data
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 557,155 in the week ending Dec. 26, a decrease of 8,088 from the previous week.   There were 717K initial claims in the comparable week in 2008.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.9% during the week ending Dec. 19, a decrease of 0.2 percentage point from the prior week.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 5,090,652, a decrease of 254,815 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 3.4% and the volume was 4,572,637.   Extended benefits were available in AL, AK, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, DC, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, ME, MA, MI, MN, MO, NV, NH, NJ, NM, NY, NC, OH, OR, PA, PR, RI, SC, TN, TX, VT, VA, WA, WV, and WI during the week ending December 12...   States reported 4,448,914 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending Dec. 12, an increase of 191,669 from the prior week.   There were 1,567,930 claimants in the comparable week in 2008.   EUC weekly claims include first, second, third, and fourth tier activity.
graphs
more graphs

2009-12-31
Mike Mitchell _Av Stop_/_Aviation On-Line_
TWU Off-Shore Aviation Maintenance A Disaster Waiting To Happen

2009-12-31 15:45PST (18:45EST) (23:45GMT)
_Investor's Business Daily_
The Year America Lurched Left

2009-12-31
Mike Mandel
Finalists for Economic Statistic of the Decade

++ S887; Durbin, Grassley; H-1B and L-1 visa program reform
Status of S877
+++ S2804; Sanders; Employ Americans: prohibit firms who lay off large numbers of capable US citizens from making use of guest-work visas
more of what congress-critters are up to
 
 

2009
Dave Miller _Apologetics Press_
John Quincy Adams on Islam

2009 December
Steven A. Camarota _Center for Immigration Studies_
Zogby poll of likely voters reveals differing views between congregations and preachers on immigration (with graphs and tables)
"Most members of religious denominations do not feel that illegal immigration is caused by limits on legal immigration, as many religious leaders do; instead, members feel it's due to a lack of enforcement.   Catholics: Just 11% said illegal immigration was caused by not letting in enough legal immigrants; 78% said it was caused by inadequate enforcement efforts.   Mainline Protestants: 18% said not enough legal immigration; 78% said inadequate enforcement.   Born-Again Protestants: 9% said not enough legal immigration; 85% said inadequate enforcement.   Jews: 21% said not enough legal immigration; 60% said inadequate enforcement.   Unlike religious leaders who argue that more unskilled immigrant workers are needed, most members think there are plenty of Americans to do such work.   Catholics: 12% said legal immigration should be increased to fill such jobs; 69% said there are plenty of Americans available to do such jobs, employers just need to pay more.   Mainline Protestants: 10% said increase immigration; 73% said plenty of Americans available.   Born-Again Protestants: 7% said increase immigration; 75% said plenty of Americans available.   Jews: 16% said increase immigration; 61% said plenty of Americans available.   When asked to choose between enforcement that would cause illegal immigrants to go home over time or a conditional pathway to citizenship, most members of religious communities choose enforcement.   Catholics: 64% support enforcement to encourage illegals to go home; 23% support conditional legalization.   Mainline Protestants: 64% support enforcement; 24% support conditional legalization.   Born-Again Protestants: 76% support enforcement; 12% support conditional legalization.   Jews: 43% support enforcement; 40% support conditional legalization.   In contrast to many religious leaders, most members think immigration is too high.   Catholics: 69% said immigration is too high; 4% said too low; 14% just right.   Mainline Protestants: 72% said it is too high; 2% said too low; 11% just right.   Born-Again Protestants: 78% said it is too high; 3% said too low; 9% just right.   Jews: 50% said it is too high; 5% said is too low; 22% just right."

2009
Oscar Peters _SlideShare_
reasons for family business failures
"65%-80% of businesses around the world are family business."

2009
_Transparency International_
2009 Corruption Perceptions Index
corruption index table

2009
William L. Anderson _Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics_ vol12 #2 pp47-59
Say's Law and the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle (pdf)

2009 December
Robert P. Murphy _Freeman_
The Depression You've Never Heard Of: 1920-1921
"From FY1919 to FY1920, federal spending was slashed from $18.5G to $6.4G -- a 65% reduction in one year.   The budget was pushed down the next 2 years as well, to $3.3G in FY1922.   On the monetary side, the New York Fed raised its discount rate to a record high 7% by 1920 June...   To be sure, the 1920–1921 depression was painful.   The unemployment rate peaked at 11.7% in 1921.   But it had dropped to 6.7% by the following year, and was down to 2.4% by 1923."
 

Proposed Bills 2009

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

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Neither this page, nor the opinions expressed or implied in it are endorsed by Michael Badnarik, Ron Paul, Bob Barr, Wayne Allyn Root, Warner Brothers, Gary Johnson, president Donald Trump, nor by my hosts, Kermit and Rateliff.

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