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updated: 2021-08-25
 

"It is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of people, wicked, condemned men, with whom you plant; and not only so, but it spoileth the plantation, for they will ever live like rogues, and not fall to work, but be lazy and do mischief; spend victuals and be quickly weary." --- Francis Bacon

 
 

2010 February

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

 

"Innumerable residents across the country are refusing to participate in the Census, beyond a simple head-count." --- Julie Foster 2000-03-22 _WorldNetDaily.com_

 
 
 

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

2010-02-01

2010-02-01
_CocoaHeads_
February CocoaHeads Meetings
CocoaHeads is an international Cocoa programmer's group. Meetings are free and open to the public. We specialize in Cocoa, but everything Mac/iPhone programming related is welcome.
Upcoming meetings:
Australia; Sydney; Thursday, 2010 February 4, 18:30.
Austria; Wien; Thursday, 2010 February 11, 19:00.
Germany; Frankfurt am Main; Monday, 2010 February 1, 19:30.
Germany; Munich; Wednesday, 2010 February 10, 19:00.
Sweden; Stockholm; Monday, 2010 February 1, 19:00.
Switzerland; Zürich; Wednesday, 2010 February 10, 19:00.
United States; MI; Ann Arbor; Thursday, 2010 February 11, 19:00.
United States; AL; Birmingham; Thursday, 2010 February 11, 19:00.
United States; CO; Boulder; Tuesday, 2010 February 9, 19:00.
United States; CO; Colorado Springs; Thursday, 2010 February 11, 19:00.
United States; OH; Columbus; Tuesday, 2010 February 9, 19:00.
United States; CO; Denver; Tuesday, 2010 February 9, 19:00.
United States; IA; Des Moines; Thursday, 2010 February 11, 19:00.
United States; NY; NY; Thursday, 2010 February 11, 18:00.
United States; PA; Philadelphia; Thursday, 2010 February 11, 19:00.
United States; CA; Sacramento; Tuesday, 2010 February 2, 17:00.
Some chapters may have yet to post their meeting for next month. Meeting times may change. Locations and more information. Also be sure to check for an NSCoder Night in your area.

2010-02-01
Colleen Lindsay _Daily Illini_
Even student newspapers are finally catching on to "porkulus"

2010-02-01
_KFGO_
US Census talk with Katherine Albrecht

2010-02-01
Larry Dignan _Ziff Davis_/_CBS_
Obama's $3.8T budget proposal: Parsing the tech priorities

2010-02-01
Ben Stein _American Spectator_
Free James O'Keefe

2010-02-01
Patricia Murphy _Politics Daily_
What Every American Should Know About the Federal Government Debt
William McKenzie: Dallas TX Morning News: Some words to the wise on federal government debt

2010-02-01 07:32PST (10:32EST) (15:32GMT)
Dean Nelson _London Telegraph_
A surge in advertisements for sham marriages is behind the huge increase in Indian student visa applications to the UK
"They were speaking after Britain was forced temporarily to suspend applications from India, Bangladesh and Nepal following a huge increase from 1,800 to 13,500 applications from the same period last year.   The suspension is an embarrassment since it comes just a year after the introduction of a new points-based system for assessing applicants.   The numbers soared in spite of growing concern over lax scrutiny on over-seas students following the arrest last April of several Pakistanis studying at British universities on suspicion of plotting terrorist attacks...   But according to Suresh Sundaram, India director of the UK-based Infozee immigration consultants, the changes have made it easier for unqualified students to acquire the required points by winning places at private colleges with lower entrance standards.   'The points system was a step forward in promoting education in the UK, but it has opened too many loop-holes...   Before it was completely in the hands of visa officers, they could reject them.   Now they can't even if they want to.', he said."

2010-02-01
Robert P. Murphy _Ludwig von Mises Institute_
The Fed as Giant Counterfeiter

2010-02-01 (5770 Shevat 17)
Mitch Albom _Jewish World Review_
An artist who never wanted to be an "idol"
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

2010-02-01 (5770 Shevat 17)
Joel Brinkley _Jewish World Review_
Residents of Gaza suffer, and Israel is not the reason
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

2009-02-01
_Dice_
Dice Report: 57,050 job ads

++ 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
 
 

2010-02-02

2010-02-01 21:01PST (2010-02-02 00:01EST) (2010-02-02 05:01GMT)
Ruth Mantell _MarketWatch_
Massive debt is squandering our children's future
"As debts rise so will interest payments, 'and every generation of Americans is going to face a larger burden', said Edmund Mantell, my child's grand-father and a professor of economics and finance at Pace University's Lubin School of Business in New York.   'We are borrowing from future generations.   Instead of transferring our wealth to them, we are transferring their wealth to us.'...   The president has proposed a $3.8T budget for fiscal 2011 that would incur a $1.3T deficit.   The budget projects that debt held by the public as a percent of gross domestic product is expected to hit a whopping 77% in fiscal 2020, up from 53% in 2009."

2010-02-02
Jason Scott _Cumberland PA Sentinel_
Local unemployment back on the rise
Cincinnati Business Courier: Cincinnati metro jobless rate hit 9.9% in December
WTAM: Food Emergency in NE Ohio
St. Louis area unemployment stayed at 9.8%
Kansas City Star: KC metro unemployment at 8.6%
Kansas City Business Journal: KC area unemployment continues climb
Gaston county NC Gazette: Unemployment up in December
Buffalo Business First: 99% of largest job markets lost jobs in 2009
state & local unemployment graphs
more graphs

2010-02-02
_PR News Wire_/_Scarborough Research_
Detroit, Providence and Las Vegas are top markets for on-line job seekers
"Nearly one-quarter (24%) of [adults who access the Internet] in each of these markets conducted an online employment search in the past month.   In contrast, Salt Lake City, UT, and Tulsa, OK are the markets least likely to have On-line Job Searchers, as 12% of Internet Users in these cities searched on-line for a job.   Nationally, almost one-fifth (19%) of Internet users conducted an online job search during the past 30 days...   Online Job Searchers are much younger than average Internet Users.   They are 47% more likely than the average Internet User to be between the ages 18-29.   The average age of Online Job Searchers is 37 compared to Internet Users average age of 43.   They are 70% more likely to be African-American."

2010-02-02
David Mercer _Daily Illini_/_AP_
Ballots to be rejected in today's election in Illinois, if voters refuse to vote for a candidate in any statewide seat

2010-02-02 06:51PST (09:51EST) (14:51GMT)
Angie Chestnut _Cypress TX Times_
Harris county department of education avoids hiring able and willing US citizens

2010-02-02
Mark S. Jordan _Mount Vernon OH News_
Ohio DoT administrators visited with county commissioners over proposed high-way, and cross-state passenger rail line
"One of the key elements Wyant discussed was the 3C 'Quick Start' Intercity Passenger Rail system for which Ohio just received federal stimulus funding.   The proposed rail system would connect Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland with a railroad system that would offer commuters an alternative for driving into those cities for work, shopping and entertainment...   In other business, Matthew Kurtz of the Knox County Department of Job & Family Services met with the commissioners for his weekly session.   Kurtz said Knox County suffered a rough December, with unemployment jumping another 0.6%, from 9.1% to 9.7%.   This means that Knox, which had previously been lower than the U.S. average, has now matched it and is rising more rapidly than the national average, which went up only 0.3% last month.   Kurtz also noted a sharp rise in the number of counties now entering the highest current category, which is 14% or higher.   The number of those counties doubled in December, with 2 counties (Highland and Ottawa) tying at 17.3% unemployment."

2010-02-02
Justin Wolfers _Freakonomics_/_NY Times_
You Can't Trust Census

2010-02-02 08:33PST (11:33EST) (16:33GMT)
_South Florida Business Journal_
CGC: Fewer employers relocating new employees
Orange county CA Register
"According to a study by global out-placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, only 7.3% of job seekers took positions in new towns during the fourth quarter, the lowest rate on record.   Relocation peaked in the second quarter of 2009, when 18.2% moved to a different town for a job.   But, it slowed to 13.4% in the third quarter and fell to 7.3% in the fourth.   Despite fewer people moving late in the year, the annual relocation rate in 2009 was 13.3%, up from 11.6% in 2008."

2010-02-02 11:32PST (14:32EST) (19:32GMT)
Scott Kilman _Wall Street Journal_
1 in 8 Americans relied on food banks in 2009
PR News Wire
Feeding America

2010-02-02 12:57PST (15:57EST) (20:57GMT)
Paul Vigna & John Shipman _Wall Street Journal_
Weak Outlook for New Hiring: Firms continue to cut real jobs while bodyshopping increases

2010-02-02
Mary Pilon _Wall Street Journal_
Earnings Gap between High School and University Grads Is Small
"The problem stems from the common source of the estimates, a 2002 Census Bureau report titled 'The Big Payoff'.   The report said the average high-school graduate earns $25,900 a year, and the average college graduate earns $45,400, based on 1999 data.   The difference between the 2 figures is $19,500; multiply it by 40 years, as the Census Bureau did, the result is $780K...   They don't take into account deductions from income taxes or breaks in employment.   Nor do they factor in debt, particularly student debt loads, which have ballooned for both public and private colleges in recent years.   In addition, the income data used for the Census estimates is from 1999, when total expenses for tuition and fees at the average four-year private college were $15,518 per year.   For the 2009-2010 school year, that number has risen to $26,273, and it continues to increase at a rate higher than inflation.   Dr. Schneider estimated the actual lifetime-earnings advantage for college graduates is a mere $279,893 in report he wrote last year.   He included tuition payments and discounted earning streams, putting them into present value.   He also used actual salary data for graduates 10 years after they completed their degrees to measure incomes.   Even among graduates of top-tier institutions, the earnings came in well below the million-dollar mark, he says...   Sandy Baum -- an emeritus Skidmore College economics professor who didn't write the promotional text -- says that $450K is actually a more reasonable estimate of the difference in life-time earnings..."

2010-02-02
_Wall Street Journal_/_AP_
Fish oil may fend off schizophrenia

2010-02-02 14:18:01PST (17:18:01EST) (22:18:01GMT)
_San Jose CA Mercury News_/_AP_
senator Dick Durbin is asking 30 leading technology, Internet and communications companies to provide detailed descriptions of their operations and human rights practices in Red China

2010-02-02
Tom Lutey _Billings MT Gazette_
Farmers upset at loss of subsidies in Obama budget proposal
"The budget released this week calls for a $10K cut in the per person direct payment available to farmers with large acreages.   Eligibility rules would also be tightened.   On farms where more than one person qualifies for aid, the loss could be significant...   Created in 1996, direct payments are annual payments unrelated to current production or market prices.   They have assured farmers a reliable source of revenue, which comes in handy when applying for farm loans.   Farmers are not obligated to grow crops to receive direct payments and can plant any crop, except fruits and vegetables, without losing benefits.   The payments are a common income source for Montana farmers growing, wheat, barley or oilseeds...   In 2006, Montana farmers collected $98.4M in direct payments, according to the Environmental Working Group's Farm Subsidy Data-base...   Obama also proposed cutting off direct payments to farmers with annual farm income of more than $500K.   The current ceiling for payment is $750K.   The president proposed a 67% increase in the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP.   If budgeted at the requested $1.2G, EQIP would provide technical, financial and educational assistance for farmers.   The proposed budget also asks for $418M for rural broadband."

2010-02-02
Mike Dennison _Billings MT Gazette_
Federal officials rejected Bresnan's application for $70M in stimulus funds to extend broad-band to rural Montana

2010-02-02
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Hysterical Warmist Toadies Chirping in the Dark
"Which is more contemptible?   Making a multi-generation career of living off public welfare, being a global-warming climatologist, or being a member of the New York Times editorial board?   On the other hand, can we blame them for being products of the sort of [leftist] educational system long advocated by President Obama's close friends and advisors Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn?"

2010-02-02
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
"Green" Jobs Stupidity

2010-02-02
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Worth Reconsidering

2010-02-02
Chuck Baldwin _V Dare_
My latest suggested reading list
"_Freedom for a Change_ by Timothy Baldwin...   _The Bastard Theory of History_ by Howard Phillips...   _Life of Washington_ by Anna C. Reed.   _Starving the Monkeys: Fight Back Smarter_ by Tom Baugh.   _Secession: How Vermont and All the Other States Can Save Themselves from the Empire_ by Thomas H. Naylor.   _War Is a Racket_ by brigadier-general Smedley D. Butler...   _Confessions of an Economic Hit-Man_ by John Perkins...   _Never Again: Securing America and Restoring Justice_ by former attorney-general John Ashcroft. I do not recommend this book...   _Boston's Gun Bible_ by Boston T. Party...   _FlyBoys: A True Story of Courage_ by James Bradley.   _Tom Malone: The Preacher from Pontiac_ by Joyce Vick...   _The Book that Made America: How the Bible Formed Our Nation_ by Jerry Newcombe.   _Posterity: Letters of Great Americans to Their Children_ by Dorie McCullough Lawson.   _Citizen HandBook: An End to the Crime of Government_ by John Conway.   _Obama: Why Black America Should Have Doubts_ by William Owens jr.   _The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the 21st Century_ by Thomas P.M. Barnett.   This is an insider's look into how the US military is being used to create 'globalization'.   If you don't believe elitists are preparing for global government, read this book...   _Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse_ by James Wesley Rawles.   _Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto_ by Mark R. Levin.   _The Complete Infidel's Guide to the Koran_ by Robert Spencer...   _Catastrophe: How Obama, Congress, and the Special Interests Are... And How to Fight Back by Dick Morris & Eileen McGann.   _Fredom and Capitalism: Essays on Christian Politics and Economics_ by John W. Robbins.   _Two Books on the Elements of Universal Jurisprudence_ by Samuel Pufendorf.   _The Rights of War and Peace_ by Hugo Grotius.   _The Law of Nations_ by Emer de Vattal.   _Discourses on Government_ by Algernon Sidney.   _Second Treatise on Government_ by John Locke...   _They Preached Liberty_ by Franklin P. Cole...   _Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, 1730-1805_ edited by Ellis Sandoz.   _America's Financial Reckoning Day_ by Charles H. Coppes.   _America for Sale_ by Jerome R. Corsi.   _The Rod: Will God Spare It?_ by J.D. Faust...   _Hitler's Cross_ by Erwin W. Lutzer."

2010-02-02
Paul Craig Roberts _V Dare_
The Global Financial Crisis Is Not Over
"The real American crisis is much worse than the financial crisis.   The real American crisis is the off-shoring of U.S. manufacturing, industrial, and professional service jobs such as software engineering and information technology.   Jobs off-shoring was initiated by Wall Street pressures on corporations for higher earnings and by performance-related bonuses becoming the main form of managerial compensation.   Corporate executives increased profits and obtained bonuses by substituting cheaper foreign labor for U.S. labor in the production of goods and services marketed in the U.S.A.   Jobs off-shoring is destroying the ladders of upward mobility that made the U.S. an opportunity society and eroding the value of a university education.   For the first decade of the 21st century, the U.S. economy has been able to create net new jobs only in domestic nontradable services, such as waitresses, bartenders, sales, health and social assistance and, prior to the real estate collapse, construction.   These jobs are lower paid than the jobs were that have been off-shored, and these jobs do not produce goods and services for export.   Jobs off-shoring has increased the U.S. trade deficit, putting more pressure on the dollar’s role as reserve currency.   When off-shored goods and services return to the U.S.A., they add to imports, thus worsening the trade imbalance.   The policy of jobs off-shoring is insane.   It is shifting U.S. GDP growth to the off-shored locations, such as China, thus halting growth in U.S. consumer incomes.   For the past decade, U.S. households substituted an increase in indebtedness for the lack of growth in income in order to continue increasing their consumption.   With their home equity refinanced and spent, real estate values down, and credit card debt at unsustainable levels, it is no longer possible for the U.S. economy to base its growth on a rise in consumer debt.   This fact is a brake on U.S. economic recovery.   Stimulus packages cannot substitute for the growth in real income.   As so many high value-added, high productivity U.S. jobs have been off-shored, there is no way to achieve real growth in U.S. personal incomes.   Stimulus spending simply adds to government debt and pressure on the dollar, and sows seeds for high inflation."

2010-02-02 (5770 Shevat 18)
Steven Emerson _Jewish World Review_
How jihadis target western youth
"Militant Islamists regard the West as 'Al-Harb, the land of war.', Harris says.   'There's... a lack of respect, a profound view that we are a happy, effete civilization.   And we are proving it -- by allowing them to recruit, we reinforce this stereotype.   We reinforce the growing impression among Somalis that the Shabaab writ runs in our backyard, not the democratic governments of the United States and Canada.'"
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

2010-02-02 (5770 Shevat 18)
R. Elazar Meisels _Jewish World Review_
Should religion and real life mix/
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

2010-02-02 (5770 Shevat 18)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
Pols in Wonderland
"The big question that seldom -- if ever -- gets asked in the main-stream media is whether these are a net increase in jobs.   Since the only resources that the government has are the resources it takes from the private sector, using those resources to create jobs means reducing the resources available to create jobs in the private sector...   Why aren't insurance companies already insuring the people and the conditions that they are now going to be forced to cover?   Because that means additional costs -- and because the insurance companies don't think their customers are willing to pay those particular costs for those particular coverages.   It costs politicians nothing to mandate more insurance coverage for more people.   But that doesn't mean that the costs vanish into thin air.   It simply means that both buyers and sellers of insurance are forced to pay costs that neither of them wants to pay.   But, because soaring political rhetoric leaves out such grubby things as costs, it sounds like a great deal.   It is not just costs that are left out.   It is consequences in general."
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

++ 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
 
 

2010-02-03

2010-02-02 18:12PST (2010-02-02 21:12EST) (2010-02-03 02:12GMT)
Robert F. _Gather_
Obama budget: Cutting 180 Border Patrol agents, fence & virtual fence funds

2010-02-03
Naftali ben David & Greg Hitt _Wall Street Journal_
Left proposes another $80G spending in "jobs" bill

2010-02-03
_Wall Street Journal_
Cellular phone, texting bans haven't curbed crashes

2010-02-03 11:46PST (14:46EST) (19:46GMT)
Alistair Barr _MarketWatch_
Bank of India to pay bonuses of more than $4G

2010-02-02 17:44:32PST (2010-02-02 20:44:32EST) (2010-02-03 01:44:32GMT)
Pete Carey & Steve Johnson _San Jose CA Mercury News_
Sili Valley tech workers have had a rough decade (with graph)
High-tech workers in the Bay Area were slammed with a 12% drop in wages in the first 9 years of the past decade, reflecting the volatile nature of pay in the valley and the collapse that followed the dot-com bubble, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday... Since the start of the decade, the six-county region now has about 25% fewer tech workers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics noted. The 544K-strong work force of 2000 dropped to 404K by 2009 June, the latest data that the bureau has. Sixty percent of the job losses after the crash occurred in 2002, it said."
Amar Mann & Tian Luo: Crash and reboot: Silicon Valley hightech employment and wages, 2000-2008: MLR (pdf)

2010-02-03
Frank Michael Russell _San Jose CA Mercury News_
Woz's Prius sometimes accelerates on its own; Sili Valley still hasn't recovered from Y2K bust and dot-com bust
Amar Mann & Tian Luo: Crash and reboot: Silicon Valley hightech employment and wages, 2000-2008: MLR (pdf)
Employment
Even before the worst effects of the Great Recession, Silicon Valley was still trying to climb back from the Y2K bust, stock market crash, and dot-com bust of 2000, according to a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.   Santa Clara County and neighboring communities had 544,387 high-tech jobs in 2000.   By 2004, that number had dropped more than 25% to 403,994.   Sili Valley partially recovered over the next 4 years, bringing the number of high-tech jobs in 2008 to 435,958.   That number, though, was still more than 19% below the total in 2000.   From 2000, when high-tech employment and wages peaked, to 2008, Silicon Valley's high-tech industries lost more than 108,400 jobs, or 19.9% of their employment.   High-tech industries in the rest of the Nation lost 6.2% of employment...   High tech's share of total Sili Valley employment dropped from 17.2% in 2000 to 14.4% in 2004.   During this 4-year period about 140,400 jobs were lost in high-tech industries in Silicon Valley, a decline of 25.8%.   About 60% of the job losses occurred in 2002...   the decline in employment in high-tech industries was 13.0% in the rest of the Nation during the 2000-to-2004 period...   Despite absorbing a loss of more than 140K jobs since 2000, the region held on to much of its core talent and industry strengths...   Employment in Sili Valley's high-tech sector recovered by only about 31,900 jobs, or 7.9%, between 2004 and 2008.   The share of total Silicon Valley jobs accounted for by employment in high-tech industries grew slightly, from 14.4% in 2004 to 14.8% in 2008.
Profits
Between 2003 and 2004, profits rose by 170% for the largest 150 companies in Silicon Valley; the next year, 2005, saw profits grow by 18% for the largest 150 companies.   These increases in profitability, though, did not translate into vigorous job growth.   The combination of productivity gains; job cuts from mergers, out-sourcing, off-shoring and abuse of guest-workers; and the high cost of living in the region caused many Sili Valley high-tech companies to focus their expansion efforts elsewhere.
Body Shopping Blossoms: Real Jobs Decline
During the 2000-to-2004 period, both goods-producing and service-providing industries in Silicon Valley experienced steep employment declines: 29.3% and 23.2%, respectively.   During the following 4 years, when aggregate high-tech employment in Sili Valley recovered, goods-producing industries grew by only 0.2% while industries in services added 13.1% to their jobs base.   Software publishers dumped employees during both periods analyzed, and increased levels of off-shore out-sourcing.   This trend appears to have reduced the number of lower paying software publishing jobs in Silicon Valley and the United States, though at the same time the number of higher paying software jobs increased in Sili Valley and the country as a whole.   Employment in Silicon Valley's software publishers industry group declined at a little less than half the rate of software publishers in the rest of the Nation during the 2000-2004 period; in the 2004-2008 period, the number of jobs in this industry group decreased slightly in Sili Valley but rose by nearly 13% in the rest of the Nation.
Income
After adjustment for inflation, average annual wages in Silicon Valley high-tech industries dropped by 15.8% (from $120,064 to $101,057) from 2000 to 2004.   Outside Sili Valley, the drop in average annual wages in high-tech industries was far more subdued: the decline was only 1.2%.   This difference -- 15.8% compared with 1.2% -- greatly reduced the wage differential between high-tech workers in Silicon Valley and those in the rest of the Nation while local costs of living remained elevated.   By 2008, Sili Valley high-tech workers were earning, on average, 60.9% more than non-Valley high-tech workers.   Like total nominal high-tech wages in Silicon Valley, total nominal wages for high tech in rest of the Nation grew during the 2004-to-2008 period, expanding by 25.9%.   Within Sili Valley, high-tech industries accounted for 27.4% of total wages paid in 2008 compared with 26.9% in 2004.   Inflation-adjusted annual average wages (in year 2000 dollars) for Software publisher employees in Sili Valley were $158,090 in 2000, $126,415 in 2004 (-20%), and $132,925 in 2008 (+5.1%).   Outside of Sili Valley, Software publiser emplyees earned $109,365 in 2000, $82,074 in 2004 (-25%), and $88,574 in 2008 (7.9%).   (In the authors' dreams! and neglecting all of the hundreds of thousands of unemployed and underemployed former software publisher employees.)
So, to recap, the average annual Sili Valley tech wage in year 2000 dollars was $120,064, dropped 15.8% to $101,057 in 2004, then climbed back only slightly to $103,850 in 2008, still down 13.5% from 2000.   Outside Sili Valley, however, high-tech workers went from average annual incomes of $63,714 in 2000, to $62,979 in 2004, to $64,539 in 2008 (excluding the many unemployed and under-employed former high-tech industry workers).
---30---

2010-02-03
Jan Falstad _Billings MT Gazette_
Economists say economic growth will be scant in 2010
"During the boom year in 2006, Montana's average income growth was 3.3%.   Then the recession hit and the earnings growth was in the negative in 2008 and 2009.   This year, Yellowstone County should see a 1.2% growth rate...   Missoula County, where labor income is expected to fall another 0.7% this year, even before factoring in the effects of the Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. shut-down.   When the U.S. economy was 'booming' [wink wink nudge nudge] in 2006, men and women shared the same 4.7% unemployment rate.   But by 2009 March, 7.5% of females were jobless, compared with 9.5% of the men."

2010-02-03
Francine Knowles _Chicago IL Sun-Times_
CGC: 71,482 lay-offs announced in January, up from 45,094 in December
Reuters
San Francisco CA Business Times
Kansas City KS Business Journal
Seattle Times
MarketWatch
Taipan Tipping Point Alert
All Head-Line News
CNN
2009 January there were 241,749. Illinois-based employers announced plans to cut 1,434 jobs last month, down 11% from 1,597 in December and down 96% from 39,713 in 2009 January.   In NY 17,060; Arkansas 12,700; Delaware 10,784; California 10,528; Missouri 1,755 (10-state mid-west region 7,089).
 
The retail industry announced plans to shed 16,737 jobs; telecommunications 14,010; pharmaceutical industry 8,170; and government and non-profit sectors 6,568.
 
According to the government's most recent report, 2.05M people were dumped in November.   Through the first 11 months of the 2009, the government counted 25.6M lay-offs.
---30---

2010-02-03
Penny Starr _Cybercast News Service_
ICE official said work-site arrests of illegal aliens is "down from previous years"
"Chaudry noted that the last ICE work site raid took place in 2009 February in Washington state."

2010-02-03
_Gerson Lehrman Group_
7 IFCO Systems managers indicted
ICE
"The indictments were handed down on 2010 January 26 [stemming from] the 2006 investigation resulting in the detention of 1,182 illegal aliens at 40 IFCO plants in 26 states...   conspiring to harbor illegal aliens employed by IFCO and encouraged and induce those illegal aliens to reside in the United States."

2010-02-03
"Fjordman" _Brussels Journal_
Geert Wilders vs. The Multi-Cultural Inquisition

2010-02-03
_Wall Street Journal_
Lancet retracted story it ran in 1998 linking measles-mumps-rubella vaccines to autism

2010-02-03
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Labor Unions are Socialism's Shock Troops
"In the huge growth of manufacturing and distribution capacity after the Civil War, industrialists, typified by steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, had one guiding principle to business success: continually to reduce unit costs; get the labor, capital equipment, and transportation costs, in Carnegie's case, per ton of steel, to the lowest possible level.   Make manufactured goods as cheap and plentiful as possible, so that everyone could afford them.   What facilitated low wages more than anything else was the tsunami of immigration that brought more than 20M poorly educated, non-English-speaking people here from southern and eastern Europe.   Big industry pushed for liberal immigration policies, because of the insatiable demand for labor to mine coal, produce coke and steel, build railroads, and to manufacture the products needed for the burgeoning United States.   Immigrants from Continental Europe, who by the 1870s greatly outnumbered those from the British Isles, came from a social and political environment quite unlike the individualism and constitutional order of England and the United States.   Not all of them were believers in socialism, but most of them viewed property owners as an oppressive aristocracy.   Thus was laid the ground work for later radical labor union and political activity."

2010-02-03
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Why Some State Budgets Cannot Be Corrected
Wall Street Journal: The Ascendancy of Government Employee Unions
View from 1776: Public Employees' Unions to Nation: Drop Dead!
View from 1776: Municipal Unions: The Boa Constrictor Strangling America

2010-02-03
Kate Brumback _Fort Worth TX Star-Telegram_/_McClatchy_
Hospital cut-backs leave illegal alien dialysis patients without their accustomed free ride

2010-02-03
Paul Craig Roberts _V Dare_
Markets fail when humans initiate force and fraud

2010-02-03 (5770 Shevat 19)
Marybeth Hicks _Jewish World Review_
Take PC out of parenting
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

2010-02-03 (5770 Shevat 19)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
Global Warmist Update
Town Hall
KUSI: Coleman's Corner
"During the 1960s and into the 1980s, the number of stations used for calculating global surface temperatures was about 6K.   By 1990, the number of stations dropped rapidly to about 1,500.   Most of the stations lost were in the colder regions of the Earth.   Not adjusting for their loss made temperatures appear to be higher than was in fact the case...   D'Aleo and Smith report that our NCDC engaged in similar deceptive activity where they have dropped stations, particularly in colder climates, higher elevations or closer to the polar regions.   Temperatures are now simply projected for these colder stations from other stations, usually in warmer climates."
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

++ 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
 
 

2010-02-04

2010-02-04 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 530,405 in the week ending Jan. 30, an increase of 28,234 from the previous week.   There were 682,176 initial claims in the comparable week in 2009.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.4% during the week ending Jan. 23, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 5,665,141, an increase of 62,784 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 4.3% and the volume was 5,806,901.   Extended benefits were available in AL, AK, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, DC, GA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, ME, MA, MI, MN, NV, NH, NJ, NM, NY, NC, OH, OR, PA, PR, RI, SC, TN, TX, VT, VA, WA, WV, and WI during the week ending January 16...   States reported 5,632,219 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending Jan. 16, an increase of 281,442 from the prior week.   There were 1,839,758 claimants in the comparable week in 2009.   EUC weekly claims include first, second, third, and fourth tier activity.
graphs
more graphs

2010-02-04
Frosty Wooldridge _News with Views_
Profound Disconnect Between US Congress-Critters and Their Constituents

2010-02-04
Ira Trembly _Insurance Networking_
Tiny IT pay hikes don't necessarily mean that happy days are here again
Information Management
"The researcher's 'Computer Economics 2010 IT Salary Report' has found that the IT organizations are budgeting to give the typical IT worker a 1.8% boost in pay...   First, how many current H-1B workers are among those who will receive wage increases?   Let's remember that this is a group of imported workers who have been brought here and paid less than the going rate for people in their positions—while also displacing American workers who might have assumed those positions.   Assuming they are among those who get these 'shoots of hope' pay increases, would the 1.8% bring them up to snuff?   Somehow, I doubt it.   Yet it might, as CE suggests, help boost their damaged morale, or that of non-H-1B workers.   Then we must ask: How much of the planned increase in IT staffing will be due to new workers coming in under H-1B?   We already know that U.S. companies are seeking to bring such workers here in at least the same volume as last year, and we know that some of our insurance and financial technology services and consulting leaders are among those clamoring for this cheap labor.   One would have to believe that H-1B workers would make up some if not all of the projected staff increases...   the tragic aftershock of this revelation is that the U.S.-born IT worker will likely see no light at the end of this tunnel.   CE provides another twist, noting, 'That most IT workers will receive raises does not mean median total compensation will rise at the same rate, or at all.   With the persistent unemployment, organizations will be able to hire new workers at rates lower than those who were laid off during the recession.   This should place downward pressure on U.S. national median IT salary levels over the coming months.'"

2010-02-04
William Busse _Maricopa county AZ Examiner_
Sheriff Arpaio steps up efforts to apprehend illegal aliens
Border Fire Report

2010-02-04
Matt Lahr & Steve King _Iowa Politics_
American jobs should go to American workers
"I have introduced legislation that the President should be 'happy to consider', right down to and including the bill's title -- New IDEA.   On 2009 September 16, I introduced HR3580, the Illegal Deduction Elimination Act (New IDEA), which will immediately reduce America's unemployment and result in the hiring of millions of unemployed Americans.   New IDEA will crack down on employers and illegal workers and level the playing field for law-abiding American employers and employees.   According to the Department of Labor, the 2009 December national unemployment rate in the United States was 10.0% and Iowa's unemployment rate was 6.6%.   There are 15.3M unemployed American citizens while the Pew Hispanic Center reports that 8M illegal aliens hold American jobs.   In Iowa alone, there are 112,700 unemployed workers while 35K illegal aliens hold jobs.   It is inexcusable for American citizens and law abiding immigrants to be jobless while law-breaking illegal aliens hold American jobs.   New IDEA clarifies that wages and benefits paid to illegal aliens are not deductible for federal income tax purposes.   So if employers hire illegal workers, the wages and benefits paid to illegal workers will be denied as a business expense, resulting in taxable income for employers."
++ HR3580; King; wages paid to illegal aliens may not be deducted from gross income

2010-02-04
Mark Krikorian _National Review_
"Temporary" Status Means Never Having to Say "Goodbye"

2010-02-04
Stu Bykofsky _Philadelphia PA Daily News_
Immigration's unspoken word
"Second, the 'path to citizenship' is unpopular, according to a new Zogby poll.   Among executives, 59% support enforcement to encourage illegal immigrants to go home, 30% support conditional legalization; 67% of small-business owners support enforcement, and 22% approve of conditional legalization.   And in union households, 58% support enforcement while 28% like conditional legalization...   He 'decided' to stay. Here's the missing word: Illegally...   All neglected that single word -- illegal -- while demanding Justicia! from the nation whose laws they willfully ignored.   Is there a Spanish word for chutzpah?   In thinking about illegal immigrants, I ask myself: 1. Did they come here voluntarily?   2. Did they know they were breaking the law?   3. Did they know there might be consequences if caught?   If the answer to all three is 'yes', and it must be, it's arrogant to demand to change the rules after you have broken the rules."

2010-02-04 10:12PST (13:12EST) (18:12GMT)
Stephen Bernard _San Jose CA Mercury News_/_AP_
NY AG filing civil charges against Bank of India and former CEO Ken Lewis

2010-02-04
Bill Snyder _InfoWorld_/_IDG_
Follow tech executives' $111M money trail in DC

2010-02-04
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Left's hypocrisy regarding freedom of religion

2010-02-04
Andrew Nusca _Ziff Davis_/_CBS_
Employees with flexible hours work harder, are more satisfied
"Cranfield management professors Clare Kelliher and Deirdre Anderson used a questionnaire to survey more than 2K employees at 3 large multi-national, Britain-based corporations."

2010-02-04
Michelle Malkin _V Dare_
The super-sized US census boondoggle: Shaping the electoral landscape

2010-02-04
Andrea Koncz & Mimi Collins _NACE_
2010 Winter Salary Offers Lower
"The Winter 2010 issue of NACE's Salary Survey shows the overall average offer to a bachelor's degree graduate is $48,351, down 2% from the average offer of $49,353 made to Class of 2009 bachelor's degree graduates. "

2010-02-04
_USCIS_
USCIS Issues Additional Information Regarding the Employ American Workers Act (EAWA) to Employers Filing H-1B Petitions
"The EAWA was enacted to ensure that companies that receive funding under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) or section 13 of the Federal Reserve Act do not displace U.S. workers.   Under this legislation, any company that has received covered funding and seeks to hire new H-1B workers is considered an 'H-1B dependent employer'.   An H-1B dependent employer must make additional statements to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) regarding the recruitment and non-displacement of U.S. workers when filing a Labor Condition Application (LCA)...   Question A.1.d. is meant to identify petitioners who received funding under TARP or section 13 of the Federal Reserve Act when the petition is filed.   USCIS understands that some businesses who received covered funding may have subsequently repaid their obligations and may not know how to respond to Question A.1.d.   (For information on whether covered funding obligations have been repaid, recipients of TARP funding should seek guidance from the Department of Treasury, or the Federal Reserve, respectively.)   If you have repaid your obligations, then answer 'No' to Question A.1.d.   If you wish to provide further information with the petition to assist USCIS in determining that your status for purposes of EAWA is correct, you may do so.   USCIS reminds you that a valid LCA must be on file with DOL when the H-1B petition (with a copy of the LCA) is filed with USCIS.   Processing delays or a denial of the H-1B petition may result if the LCA does not correspond with Question A.1.d of the H-1B petition, unless any inconsistency is explained to the satisfaction of USCIS.   For example, if the LCA includes the additional statements, but Question A.1.d is answered 'no', you can explain that you had received covered funding at the time of filing the LCA but repaid the obligation before filing the Form I-129.   However, please note that if you indicate on the petition that you are subject to the EAWA, but the LCA does not contain the proper declarations relating to H-1B dependent employers, USCIS will deny the H-1B petition.   USCIS additionally reminds employers that EAWA applies only to new hires and not to H-1B petitions seeking to change the status of a beneficiary working for the petitioning employer in another work-authorized category.   It also does not apply to H-1B petitions seeking an extension of H-1B status for a current employee to continue working for the same employer."

2010-02-04 (5770 Shevat 20)
Abe Novick _Jewish World Review_
Obama should have borrowed pages from the Sages
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

++ 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
 
 

2010-02-05

2010-02-04 19:00PST (2010-02-04 22:00EST) (2010-02-05 03:00GMT)
Eric Felten _Wall Street Journal_
"Scientists" behaving badly

2010-02-04 21:50PST (2010-02-05 00:50EST) (2010-02-05 05:50GMT)
Brynn Twait _Daily Illini_
Bumper crop, low prices hurt farmers
"The USDA's final crop production estimation reported the corn supply is 250M bushels larger than expected, said Dale Durchholz, a senior market analyst for AgriVisor...   Corn prices have dropped 15% in revenue since the report came out, he added.   Irwin said there had been a small recovery in price since the initial drop, but the price of corn was back down to $3.55 on Feb. 4.   Before the report, prices for February and March were predicted to hit a high of $4.20."

2010-02-05
Sam Diaz _Ziff Davis_/_CBS_
Salary surveyors find themselves stone-walled
"17% of the survey respondents said they are not comfortable talking about their salaries with anyone, up from 11% a year ago...   Among employees willing to talk money, 33% said they'll do so with a friend while only 25% will talk to the boss and 18% will talk to an HR rep."

2010-02-05 06:32PST (09:32EST) (14:32GMT)
_MarketWatch_
Conflicting signs from BLS on the job markets
"Instead of 7.2M jobs lost since the end of 2007, revisions to historic data now show that the toll was 8.4M [while population continues to increase]."
LaToya Egwuekwe: Geography of a Recession: YouTube
graphs

2010-02-05
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Foreign Policy Mush: Obama follows disastrous path of Carter

2010-02-05
Rob Sanchez _Job Destruction News-Letter_/_V Dare_ #2081
Student and Exchange Visitor Program: Where Exchange Students Come From, And What They Do When They Get Here

2010-02-05
Joe Guzzardi _V Dare_
By Popular Request: More On Soledad O'Brien—This Year's VDWIRA Winner

2010-02-05
Andrew Nusca _SmartPlanet_/_Ziff Davis_/_CBS_
Physicist Masahiro Hotta proves that teleportation of energy is possible

2010-02-05
Joe McKendrick _SmartPlanet_/_Ziff Davis_/_CBS_
More unemployed who have resources are trying their own scrabbling businesses

2010-02-05
_USCIS_
USCIS Provides Details on H-1B and H-2B Cap Exemptions for Work Performed in the CNMI and Guam Questions and Answers
"[To favor certain corrupt congress-critters and their relatives] Workers in H-1B and H-2B classifications who are admitted to perform labor and services in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) and Guam are exempt from the H-1B cap and H-2B cap from 2009 November 28 to 2014 December 31.   The Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008 (CNRA), Public Law 110-229, provides a special exemption to the statutory numerical limitations (or 'caps') for temporary workers in H non-immigrant classifications mentioned in Section 214(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA)."

2010-02-05 (5770 Shevat 21)
R' A. Leib Scheinbaum _Jewish World Review_
Truth Seekers and maps
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

2010-02-05

DJIA	10,012.23
S&P 500	1,066.19
NASDAQ	2,141.12
Nikkei	10,957
10-year US T-Bond	3.57%
crude oil	$71.19/barrel
gold	$1,052.80/ounce
silver	$14.83/ounce
platinum	$1,475.10/ounce
palladium	$398.25/ounce
copper	$0.17875/ounce
natgas	$5.515/MBTU
reformulatedgasoline	$1.8864/gal
heatingoil	$1.8748/gal
soybeans	$9.140 /bushel
maize	$3.565/bushel
wheat	$4.74/bushel
dollarindex	80.10
yenperdollar	89.36
dollarspereuro	1.3659
dollarsperpound	1.5638
swissfranksperdollar	1.0733
indianrupeesperdollar	46.73
mexicanpesosperdollar	13.09
MorganStanleyHighTechIndex	539.95

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
 
 

2010-02-06

2010-02-06
Tom Lutey _Billings MT Gazette_
USDA kills animal RFID plan
"Vilsack said he will turn to state and tribal veterinarians for a uniform way to track animals shipped across the country.   Tracking animals moving intrastate will be left up to each state government.   The USDA spent several years and more than $142M developing the canceled program, which would have required everyone from large cattle ranchers to backyard chicken owners to tag livestock and report the whereabouts of those animals to the government."

++ 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
 
 

2010-02-07

2010-02-06 21:10:22PST (2010-02-07 00:10:22EST) (2010-02-07 05:10:22GMT)
Lisa M. Krieger _San Jose CA Mercury News_
Stanford finds cheating is on the rise -- especially among computer science students
"Universitywide, 43% of violations at Stanford involved 'unpermitted collaboration', where students submit work that was not done independently.   About 31% involved plagiarism, using Internet-based work that was not cited.   Another 11% involved copying work; 5%, receiving outside help; 5%, representing others' work as their own and 5%, assorted violations."

2010-02-07
Teresa Watanabe _Los Angeles CA Times_
In fighting visa fraud, nothing beats the personal touch: face-to-face visits are the best way to catch fraudulent claims

2010-02-07
Thomas E. Brewton & Nathan Tabor _View from 1776_
Government's forced wealth redistribution contrasted with charity

2010-02-07
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
UN is a leftist propaganda organ, so their spreading of the warmist nonsense is not surprising
Richard Gray & Ben Leach: London Telegraph: New Errors found in IPCC report
Jonathan Leake: Times of London: Africagate: top British scientist says IPCC is losing credibility
"Robert Watson, chief scientist at Defra, the environment ministry, who chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1997 to 2002, was speaking after more potential inaccuracies emerged in the IPCC's 2007 bench-mark report on global warming.   The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020, a remarkably short time for such a dramatic change.   The claim has been quoted in speeches by Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, and by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general.   This weekend Professor Chris Field, the new lead author of the IPCC’s climate impacts team, told the Sunday Times that he could find nothing in the report to support the claim.   The revelation follows the IPCC's retraction of a claim that the Himalayan glaciers might all melt by 2035, dubbed 'Glaciergate' by commentators."

2010-02-07
Rob Sanchez _Job Destruction News-Letter_/_V Dare_ #2082
WFAA's Byron Harris on Immigration
"Not all of the workers are employed by Cimolai, which manufactures the unique steel.   Some are simply employees of an Italian steel assembly firm.   Additionally, not all the workers are from Italy, with special Italian skills; some are from Slovakia...   Byron Harris also blew the whistle on the non-English-speaking airplane mechanics that were using Trade NAFTA visas to work at San Antonio Aerospace (SAA).   Harris found out that the mechanics couldn't read the English repair manuals for the Delta and UPS airplanes they were doing maintenance on."

2010-02-07
Steve Sailer _V Dare_
Diversity is strength! It's also homicide-prone minorities in el Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula

2010-02-07
Gerard Alexander _Washington Post_
Whey are pin-headed radical leftists so condescending?

2010-02-07
Marc Parry _Chronicle of Higher Education_
USC CS prof Paul E. Debevec won Oscar for realistic images of faces

++ 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
 
 

2010-02-08

2010-02-08
Linda Halstead-Acharya _Billings MT Gazette_
Grasslands energy plans multiple wind-farms and pumping water into reservoirs to even out supplies

2010-02-08
Ria Sharma _MyNews.in_
US Tech executives spent $111M lobbying politicians
"Most of this money was used to lobby against the US Government crack-down on the H-1B Visas.   The NASSCOM lobbying did not result any wins for the Indian tech sector."

2010-02-08
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Obama Reconsiders his failed approach to war on terror

2010-02-08 05:20PST (08:20EST) (13:20GMT)
Jon Ribeiro _ComputerWorld_
India-based cross-border bodyshoppers worry that their piratical spree of destruction may be tapering off

2010-02-08 12:56:50PST (15:56:50EST) (20:56:50GMT)
Tom Hays _San Jose CA Mercury News_/_AP_
Former Intel exec Raj Rajaratnam pled guilty to insider-trading

2010-02-08
_Daily Illini_/_AP_
Caterpillar joins backers of coal power plant project
"FutureGen Alliance seeking to build the 275MW plant near Mattoon in eastern Illinois.   The U.S. Department of Energy has agreed to let coal and power companies to continue developing the project, though final approval is expected this month."

2010-02-08
Mike Dennison _Billings MT Gazette_
No bid on Montana's 570M ton state-owned Otter Creek Valley coal tract

2010-02-08
Shawn Adderly _Daily Illini_
U of IL study says driving impairs cognitive processes
"researchers at the University also believe driving impairs the driver's ability to comprehend language.   'A primary question of our research was to find out, Does driving have an impact on our ability to hold a coherent conversation?', said Ensar Becic, who graduated in 2009 with a Ph.D. in psychology and is the lead author of the article.   'Driving impairs talking', published in the journal _Psychonomic Bulletin & Review_.   Becic said that driving has a drastic impact on our ability to comprehend language, since driving requires a cognitive effort and so does constructing sentences.   Gary Dell, a psycholinguist in the department of psychology and co-author of the study, said that these conclusions make sense, as talking is a creative process.   'In general, we have to pay attention when things are not predictable.   Talking and using language is not.', he said.   'When you talk, you put together words you have never put together before.'   At the same time, Dell said driving is not a predictable process either, because it requires paying attention to the road.   Becic and Dell said that in a sense, language and driving are 2 competing processes...   The study states that drivers lose about 20% of their ability to retain and retell a story while driving."

2010-02-08
_Daily Illini_
DARS error puts squeeze on engineering students
"Some seniors in the College of Engineering are scrambling to finish credit hours they thought they had already completed and need to graduate.   The college discovered an error in how DARS audits were treating foreign language classes— some incorrectly fulfilled a social sciences and humanities requirement as well.   The college is working with students on a case by case basis to ensure that they can still graduate if this credit is the only thing holding them back."

2010-02-08
John Dodge _SmartPlanet_/_Ziff Davis_/_CBS_
Idiot Grid another disaster for privacy and security

2010-02-08
Dan Frosch _NY Times_
Aliens whine that WM replaced them with US workers; suggest that US firms should be biased against US workers

2010-02-08 15:59PST (18:59EST) (23:59GMT)
James R. Copland _Wall Street Journal_
How civial trial lawyers bought the US senate

2010-02-08
Edwin S. Rubenstein _V Dare_
Jobs tweaked up in January but American Worker Displacement soared (with graph)

2010-02-08 (5770 Shevat 24)
Martin Peretz _Jewish World Review_
Unsentimental Education
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

++ 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
 
 

2010-02-09

2010-02-09
_BLS_
Job Openings and Labor Turn-Over Survey (JOLTS) says there were 2.5M job openings, 4M hires, and 4.2M were dumped at end of December

2010-02-09
_Right Side News_/_FAIR US_
Obama Proposes Cuts to Important Immigration Enforcement Programs; Senators Push for Immigration Measures in Jobs Bill; 14 Texas Busing Companies Implicated in Illegal Alien Smuggling Scheme; Obama's Illegal Alien Aunt Remains in the U.S.A. Illegally

2010-02-09
_Food Manufacturing_
Former Agriprocessors Inc. employee gets probation for helpting hire illegal aliens at kosher slaughter-house in Postville

2010-02-09 06:57PST (09:57EST) (14:57GMT)
Robert F. _Gather_
Economics & Morals in the Immigration Age

2010-02-09
Jim Robb _Human Events_
Obama's border enforcement deceit
"I'm pretty certain that decreasing our border security funding by [$319M] in one year will make the United States less secure...   America's lousy job market deters illegal aliens more than DHS's border enforcement...   The Department of Homeland Security only claims to have 'effective control' of 697 of 1,969 miles of our southern border with Mexico.   Only 35% of this border is 'effectively controlled' and maintained by the government agency charged with protecting the nation...   35% is not a passing grade...   All told, only 894 miles of our land and sea borders are 'effectively' secured.   The United States has 8,607 miles of land and sea borders, meaning that DHS only controls about 1 out of every 10 miles."

2010-02-09 07:48PST (10:48ET) (15:48GMT)
Tami Luhby _CNN_
Unemployment insurance taxes slam businesses
"Companies in at least 35 states will have to fork over more in unemployment insurance taxes this year, according to the National Association of State Workforce Agencies.   The median increase will be 27.5%.   And employers in places such as Hawaii and Florida could see levies sky-rocket more than 10-fold."

2010-02-09
Brooke Williams _Watch-Dog Institute_/_San Diego CA Union-Tribune_
Foreign energy firms getting wind-fall of US stimulus funds and using it to buy foreign-made turbines and such
"[Red China's] A-Power Energy Generation Systems lists a vacant office in downtown San Diego as its U.S. address.   Of the more than $2G the federal government has given out to boost the economy and create green-energy jobs, more than three-quarters has gone to foreign-owned companies that dominate the global wind-power industry.   This latest finding by the Investigative Reporting Work-shop, a non-profit at American University in Washington, DC, is illustrated clearly in San Diego County, where about a dozen commercial wind developers have offices.   La Jolla is the head-quarters for Eurus Energy America, the subsidiary of a Japanese firm that received $91M in federal stimulus money for a wind farm in western Texas.   It plans to apply for more money to fund a wind project in Oregon.   EnXco, a French-owned firm with American headquarters in Escondido, has received $69.5M in stimulus money for its wind farm in Indiana.   It installed 53 German-made turbines at the site.   EnXco also is operating the Texas wind farm for Eurus...   Cannon Power Group of San Diego has received $19M to expand a wind farm east of Portland in Washington.   The company spent about half of that money overseas to pay for wind turbines it said it couldn't get stateside...   Cannon bought the turbines -- made up mostly of blades, towers and nacelles (the part in the middle that houses components such as the rotor and generator) -- from Siemens, a German company that also was the main contractor.   In all, Hardke estimated, more than 50% of the stimulus grant went to Siemens."

2010-02-09 13:40PST (16:40EST) (21:40GMT)
James Niccolai & Robert McMillan _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
PayPal has suspended transactions to/from India for a few months as they negotiate with Indian regulators

2010-02-09 15:59PST (18:59EST) (23:59GMT)
Ed Carson & Scott Stoddard _Investor's Business Daily_
Public's opinion on the economy falling in February, especially pessimistic about the federal government actions

2010-02-09 (5770 Shevat 25)
Anya Martin _Jewish World Review_
It's normal for mothers and married women to be heavier than singles
"Researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia found that an average 140-pound woman gained 20 pounds across 10 years if she had a baby and a partner; 15 pounds if she had a partner but no baby; and 11 pounds if she were childless and without a partner."
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

2010-02-09 (5770 Shevat 25)
Megan K. Stack _Jewish World Review_
Justice and his lasting horror
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

2010-02-09 (5770 Shevat 25)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
The Fallacy of "Fairness" part1
"If by 'fair' you mean everyone having the same odds for achieving success, then life has never been anywhere close to being fair, anywhere or at any time.   If you stop and think about it (however old-fashioned that may seem), it is hard even to conceive of how life could possibly be fair in that sense.   Even within the same family, among children born to the same parents and raised under the same roof, the first-borns on average have higher IQs than their brothers and sisters, and usually achieve more in life."
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

++ 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
 
 

2010-02-10

2010-02-09 22:03:03PST (2010-02-10 01:03:03EST) (2010-02-10 06:03:03GMT)
Matt O'Brien _San Jose CA Mercury News_/_Contra Costa CA Times_
Illegal immigration inched down less than 1% in 2009
"The number of illegal immigrants living in the United States dropped by [only] 1M people in 2 years, according to new estimates by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.   The government believes 10.8M illegal immigrants lived in the country in 2009 January, down from a peak of nearly 12M in 2007 [which others had estimated as high as 24M]...   Other researchers conclude the drop is not because fewer illegal immigrants are coming in, but because more are leaving."

2010-02-10
"BlackSaint" _Big Government_
Politicians of neither party understand what they've been doing to US citizens
"Politicians of neither party really understands what is happening in American!   For years we have watched our jobs being out-sourced & in-sourced, aided and abide by the ruling Political elite!   On the low end Politicians have allowed the largest invasion of any Nation, at any time, by any means, as millions of Uneducated, Illegal Aliens pour across our borders in direct volition of our Constitution Article IV Section IV against invasion, the Rule of Law & their Oath of office.   The Democrat support the massive invasion because a large Uneducated, Prolific breeding, dependent welfare class translates into Democrat votes!   The Republicans because their paymaster in the Chamber of Commerce & Business love slave labor with the benefits like Medical, Schooling, Welfare & Incarceration, Section 8 housing etc. are passed on to the tax payers!   On the high end H-1b program to take the engineering, software jobs etc. at low wages to increase business profits & the insane salaries & bonuses of the CEOs & their cronies etc.   After years of seeing their jobs disappear & standard of living deteriorate people are frustrated & angry that no one in Washington really cares about middle class tax paying, law abiding Americans or the future of this Nation!   Obama promised Hope & Change so the voters kicked out a Elitist, Arrogant, Spendthrift Republican party that was wading in the swamp of corruption!   Now after one year of Democrat rule and total control most are realizing Obama sold them a bill of goods and the Democrats are even more Elitist, Arrogant, Big spending and the swamp of corruption & debt has now turned into a sea of debt & corruption with ACORN, Unions, SEIU, Wall street, Big banks & the tax-funded Racist hate organization La Raza!   Both parties when they get total control & power get more corrupt, arrogant & worse than the British & King George that resulted in the American revolution and the shot heard around the world!   Now the good people of Mass. have fired another shot.   If the Politicians of both parties still refuse to change and keep thinking they are Kings & we are their Serfs & they & the special interest they serve, know what is best, the next shots they hear may not be as peaceful.   It is way past time the Politicians realize they are the servants & not our rulers and they exist to serve the American citizens & this Nation, not the special interest, not Mexico, not Latin American and every country in the world while ignoring and punishing Citizens by taxes, jobs and debt to support the rest of the world!   Simple truths that the Left Wing refuses to Accept!   You cannot legislate the poor into riches by legislating the wealthy into poverty.   What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.   The government cannot give to anyone anything that the government does not first take from someone else.   When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend is about the end of any nation.   You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

2010-02-10
_24-7 Press Release_
Immigration sheister admits OPT extension effectively expands H-1B visa program
"In an effort to meet the [desires] of the technology sector [executives, for unlimited amounts of cheap, young, pliant, low-skilled foreign labor with flexible ethics], the USCIS announced on 2008 April 4, a new policy allowing extensions of Optional Practical Training (OPT) for up to 29 months.   This announcement comes as a relief to thousands of US Employers, who have been shut-out of the H-1B lottery over the past several years [despite] visa numbers available for professional workers.   OPT holders, usually F-1 foreign student graduates, may now obtain an extra 17 months to find or continue employment and bridge the gap until an H-1B visa or more permanent solution becomes available.   Foreign students in the US are generally eligible for OPT work authorization upon completion of their program.   Theoretically, the OPT work permit is designed to allow the former student to gain some 'practical' experience in their field of endeavor, although the work authorization card is not technically limited to any specific type of employment.   A student on the verge of graduation usually must apply for the OPT during the last 90 days of the academic year before he completes his program, with the endorsement of the Designated School Official (DSO).   OPT has traditionally been limited to a maximum duration of 12 months...   Hanlon Law Group, P.C."

2010-02-10
Don Peck _Atlantic_
How the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama economic depression has been transforming America

2010-02-10
Frank Shostak _Ludwig von Mises Institute_
The Economic Depression Is Not Over

2010-02-10
Justin Ptak & James M. Buchanan _Ludwig von Mises Institute_
Why few economists are any good

2010-02-10
Tom Foremski _Ziff Davis_/_CBS_
Tough times continue in Silicon Valley

2010-02-10
Mark Thoma _BNET_/_Ziff Davis_/_CBS_
Why Employment Might Not Begin to Recover Until 2013

2010-02-10
_Census Bureau_
US trade deficit increased $3.8G in December, fell $315.2G in 2009
"The nation's international trade deficit in goods and services decreased to $380.7G in 2009 from $695.9G in 2008.   For December, the trade deficit increased to $40.2G from $36.4G (revised) in November. (2010 February 10)   Exports: $142.7G; Imports: $182.9G.   December exports to [Red China] ($8.4G) were a record."

2010-02-10
_The NewsPaper_
Federal judge scolded radar "speed" camera firms

2010-02-10 (5770 Shevat 26)
Ben Barnanke _Federal Reserve_
testimony to House committee on Financial Services
"Second, after reducing short-term interest rates nearly to zero, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) provided additional monetary policy stimulus through large-scale purchases of Treasury and agency securities.   These asset purchases, which had the additional effect of substantially increasing the reserves that depository institutions hold with the Federal Reserve Banks, have helped lower interest rates and spreads in the mortgage market and other key credit markets, thereby promoting economic growth.   Although at present the U.S. economy continues to require the support of highly accommodative monetary policies, at some point the Federal Reserve will need to tighten financial conditions by raising short-term interest rates and reducing the quantity of bank reserves outstanding.   We have spent considerable effort in developing the tools we will need to remove policy accommodation, and we are fully confident that at the appropriate time we will be able to do so effectively.   With the onset of the crisis in the late summer and fall of 2007, the Federal Reserve aimed to ensure that sound financial institutions had sufficient access to short-term credit to remain sufficiently liquid and able to lend to creditworthy customers, even as private sources of liquidity began to dry up.   To improve the access of banks to backup liquidity, the Federal Reserve reduced the spread over the target federal funds rate of the discount rate -- the rate at which the Fed lends to depository institutions through its discount window -- from 100 basis points to 25 basis points, and extended the maximum maturity of discount window loans, which had generally been limited to overnight, to 90 days.   Many banks, however, were evidently concerned that if they borrowed from the discount window, and that fact somehow became known to market participants, they would be perceived as weak and, consequently, might come under further pressure from creditors.   To address this so-called stigma problem, the Federal Reserve created a new discount window program, the Term Auction Facility (TAF).   Under the TAF, the Federal Reserve has regularly auctioned large blocks of credit to depository institutions..."

2010-02-10 (5770 Shevat 26)
Linda Shaw _Jewish World Review_
Kindness taught in school's on-line class
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

2010-02-10 (5770 Shevat 26)
Richard Z. Chesnoff _Jewish World Review_
New York Times Ombudsman: Punish father for son's "sin"
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

2010-02-10 (5770 Shevat 26)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
Black Opportunity Destruction
"Despite the fact that we were poor, most of Franklin's teachers held fairly high standards and expectations.   Today, high standards and expectations, at some schools, would mean trouble for a teacher...   A teacher's job is to teach and failure to correct a student's speech, just as failure to correct a math error, is a dereliction of duty...   The difference has nothing to do with cultural roots of black people.   The difference is that parents, teachers and others in authority over youngsters have become less judgmental, politically correct and lazy; therefore, speaking poorly is accepted.   Language is our tool of communication.   If a person has poor oral language skills, he's likely to have poor writing, reading and comprehension skills...   It is very likely that a person with poor language skills will suffer significant deficits in other areas of academic competence such as mathematics and the sciences.   It doesn't mean that the person is unintelligent; it means that he doesn't have all the tools of intelligence.   That is what's so insidious about the state of black education today; so many blacks do not have a chance to develop the tools of intelligence.   Many might have high native intelligence but come off sounding like a moron...   There are some significant challenges to being judgmental and politically incorrect and insisting on proper language.   A professor or teacher can get cursed out by students or parents.   A black student who speaks well, carries books and studies can be accused of 'acting white' and find himself shunned and assaulted by other students.   I would be interested in hearing the teaching establishment's defense of permitting poor language."
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

2010-02-10 (5770 Shevat 26)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
The Fallacy of "Fairness" part2
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

++ 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
 
 

2010-02-11

2010-02-11 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 504,661 in the week ending Feb. 6, a decrease of 28,640 from the previous week.   There were 710,152 initial claims in the comparable week in 2009.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.3% during the week ending Jan. 30, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 5,659,505, a decrease of 24,352 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 4.4% and the volume was 5,953,114.   Extended benefits were available in AL, AK, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, DC, GA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, ME, MA, MI, MN, NV, NH, NJ, NM, NY, NC, OH, OR, PA, PR, RI, SC, TN, TX, VT, VA, WA, WV, and WI during the week ending January 23...   States reported 5,447,592 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending Jan. 23, a decrease of 184,627 from the prior week.   There were 1,805,007 claimants in the comparable week in 2009.   EUC weekly claims include first, second, third, and fourth tier activity.
graphs
more graphs

2010-02-11
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Obama to kowtow to Red Chinese thugs?

2010-02-11
_Daily Illini_
3.8 earth-quake rattled Michigan, northern Illinois, Indiana and Iowa; epicenter in Kane county IL

2010-02-11
Frosty Wooldridge _News with Views_
Reducing All Immigration into the USA
"Back in Colorado, I wrote my U.S. Congressman Mike Coffman urging him to introduce a bill to reduce all legal immigration into the United States to 100K a year.   I supplied facts, figures and graphs to support my stance.   For example: we import 1.2M legal immigrants annually while we suffer 20M unemployed Americans.   Not only can we NOT employ 20M of our own citizens, how do we create jobs for 1.2M more immigrants annually with credentials only to drive a taxi or clean hotel rooms?   A sixth grader could ingest the facts and figures to see that continued mass immigration into the United States cannot be sustained from a simple jobs stand-point...   H-1B and H-2B... visas displaced 1.1M American IT workers with foreign workers in our own country!...   The United States has had zero net job growth since 2000, yet we imported 10M permanent immigrants in the same period.   Our real U.S. unemployment rate is 17.3% when we consider the discouraged workers, more than 20M...   How can they think it's 'competitive' to inject over 200K immigrants every 30 days into this country, when we suffer 20M unemployed Americans?   Another 35M Americans subsist on food stamps!   Millions more suffer foreclosed homes because they cannot pay the mortgages because they don't have jobs.   How about 13M of our children living in poverty?   How about 1.5M homeless Americans?   Where is the logic?   Where is the common sense?   What planet do they live on?"

2010-02-11
David Osterfeld _Ludwig von Mises Institute_
Class Analysis: Marxist and Austrian Perspectives

2010-02-11
Paul Poirot _Ludwig von Mises Institute_ (reprinted from 1958 The Freeman)
Is Public Housing Necessary?

2010-02-11
S.M. Oliva _Ludwig von Mises Institute_
Faith, Snow & Government

2010-02-11
Larry Elder _Town Hall_
Krugman swinging both ways: Bush deficits bad, much larger Obama deficits good

2010-02-11
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Education: What Works: vouchers and parental drive

2010-02-11
Amy Bell _Investopedia_
Careers in Crisis: 3 Industries Hit Hardest by Job Losses
The Cynical Economist
Surphace
The Cynical Economist

2010-02-11
Paul Nachman _V Dare_
MSM Reporters, Innumeracy, and the Alleged Economic Benefits of Illegal Immigration
"So here's one way to think about it: If the U.S. federal budget were $1T, and each of us approximately 308M American residents were on the hook for an equal share of it, it would amount to about $3,250 in taxes per person.   That's a quantity most adults can relate to.   (In fact, of course, the current [fiscal year 2010] federal budget is about $3.5T.   That would be about $11,375 per U.S. resident.   Of course, about $1.2T of that is borrowed i.e. punted to the next generation.)"

2010-02-11 (5770 Shevat 27)
Scott Stewart _Jewish World Review_/_StratFor_
The jihadist chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threat
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

2010-02-11 (5770 Shevat 27)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_/_StratFor_
The Fallacy of "Fairness" part3
"Most of us want to be fair, in the sense of treating everyone equally.   We want laws to be applied the same to everyone.   We want educational, economic or other criteria for rewards to be the same as well.   But this concept of fairness is not only different from prevailing ideas of fairness among many of the intelligentsia, it contradicts their idea of fairness."
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

++ 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
 
 

2010-02-12: Abraham Lincoln's birth-day

2010-02-12
Bryan Caplan _Library of Economics and Liberty_
Climbing the Meritocratic Pyramid

2010-02-12 07:32PST (10:32EST) (15:32GMT)
Rex Nutting _MarketWatch_
UMich consumer sentiment index fell from 74.4 in January to 73.7 in February

2010-02-12 07:43PST (10:43EST) (15:43GMT)
_MarketWatch_
Don't pay any attention to those silly peasants; the economy's great

2010-02-12
John Stossel _Washington Examiner_
Hurtling Down the Road to Serfdom
"governments can't plan economies without planning people's lives.   After all, an economy is just individuals engaging in exchanges.   The scientific-sounding language of President Obama's economic planning hides the fact that people must shelve their own plans in favor of government's single plan."

2010-02-12
Steve Brewer _News Cafe_
Even illegal aliens can't find jobs

2010-02-12
Maryclaire Dale _San Jose CA Mercury News_/_AP_
corrupt Obummer/Holder DoJ wants to track cellular phone locations without a warrant

2010-02-12 (5770 Shevat 28)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
Sarah Palin's friendship
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

2010-02-12 (5770 Shevat 28)
R. David Aaron _Jewish World Review_
The Divine wants you to be happy
"The Zohar, which is the Jewish mystical classic, written two thousand years ago, cautions us not to perform G-d's commandments like cows eating grass.   Doing so brings ruins upon us.   Let's try to understand what this means."
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

2010-02-12 (5770 Shevat 28)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
The Fallacy of "Fairness" part4
"While striking changes in the relative positions of different races at different periods of history undermine genetic explanations, the fact that there has been no period when their achievements have been the same undermines today's presumption that different economic or other outcomes are due to discrimination.   Whatever the innate capacity of any race, class or other group, what pays off in the real world are developed capabilities, and these have never been the same -- or even close to being the same -- for individuals or groups."
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

2010-02-12

DJIA	10,099.14
S&P 500	1,075.51
NASDAQ	2,183.53
Nikkei	10,092
10-year US T-Bond	3.69%
crude oil	$74.13/barrel
gold	$1,090.00/ounce
silver	$15.447/ounce
platinum	$1,511.10/ounce
palladium	$418.15/ounce
copper	$0.1925/ounce
natgas	$5.468/MBTU
reformulatedgasoline	$1.93/gal
heatingoil	$1.9189/gal
soybeans	$9.54/bushel
maize	$3.7325/bushel
wheat	$5.0125/bushel
dollarindex	80.33
yenperdollar	89.96
dollarspereuro	1.3612
dollarsperpound	1.5669
swissfranksperdollar	1.0773
indianrupeesperdollar	46.5
mexicanpesosperdollar	12.9340
MorganStanleyHighTechIndex	549.41

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
 
 

2010-02-13

2010-02-13
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Joseph Goebbels back at work
Federal office of, by, for warmists
"The NOAA Climate Service office, which requires requires congressional committee approval, has been under development for years and is not designed to stem controversies over the accuracy of climate data, according to NOAA officials.   It will cull existing data and programs from various Commerce offices under one roof...   Developing countries such as [Red China] have resisted efforts to cap their emissions as their industries grow more quickly and emit more than developed countries such as the United States."

2010-02-13
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Arctic temps decisively lower since 1930
Timely perspective on Arctic temperatures and sea ice from Willis Eschenbach

2010-02-13
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Federal government robbing Peter to pay pals, imposing negative drag on economy
Jed Graham: Investor's Business Daily: State Budget Woes a Drag on Growth, and Will Get Worse
"State and local government employee benefit packages are 70% more generous than in the private sector, according to a report by Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.   'The benefits are extremely generous, they are substantially underfunded and there appears to be a giant tax bill coming down the road.', said Edwards."

2010-02-13
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
From the French Revolution to Obama
Thomas F. Bertonneau: Brussels Journal: Liberalism and the Search for the Ground, Another visith with Eric Voegelin
"The mutation of classical liberalism into contemporary politically correct totalitarianism is not surprising...   The consequence of 'transforming America' (or any other Western nation) will not be the utopian dream world of the regnant radical usurpation, which remains unrealizable; it will simply be destruction in and for itself: Widespread misery compounded in equal parts of manipulative tyranny through bureaucratic regulation and the hedonistic chaos of entitlement-driven demands.   Governments will exploit carefully created divisions to squelch dissent through 'hate-speech' laws and programs of so-called anti-discrimination...   Voegelin stands ready to serve us, for one reason, because he made it an important part of his task to set definitions straight and clear up obscurities that, in the centuries since the Eighteenth, have progressively muddied public discourse."

2010-02-13
R' Nachum Shifren _News with Views_
California senate candidate responds to Muslim hooliganism

2010-02-13
David Frum _Frum Forum_
Excessive Immigration = Educational Collapse

++ 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
 
 

2010-02-14

2010-02-13 16:00PST (2010-02-13 19:00EST) (2010-02-14 00:00GMT) Mike Swift _San Jose CA Mercury News_
Blacks, Latinos and women lose ground at Silicon Valley tech companies (with graphs)

2010-02-14
Charles S. Johnson _Billings MT Gazette_/_Lee_
Denny Rehberg speaks
"He called for halving the pay-roll tax on employers and employees for 2 years; allowing a 100% annual write-off on tools and technology; eliminating the capital-gains tax to match China; lowering the 35% corporate income tax rate to 12.5% to match Ireland; and eliminating the federal estate tax, or 'the death tax', as he called it...   Rehberg faces a Republican primary challenge in A.J. Otjen, a college professor from Laurel who calls herself a 'Teddy Roosevelt Republican'.   On the Democratic side, Tyler Gernant, a Missoula lawyer, and Dennis McDonald, a Melville rancher, have already filed for the seat, and Melinda Gopher, a Missoula writer, has said she is running...   Bachmann drew loud applause when she urged Republicans to welcome into the party such groups as tea party members, constitutional conservatives and followers of U.S. representative Ron Paul, R-Texas.   'The Republican Party is starting to embrace the vibrancy and spirit and joy of all these new people.', she said, adding later, 'If we can agree 70% of the time, that's good enough for me.'"

2010-02-14
Tim Trainor _Billings MT Gazette_/_Montana Standard_/_Lee_
Butte silicon plant bucks recession, sets production records
"That's not to say that the nationwide recession didn't affect the company.   The solar-energy industry took a hit due to worldwide economic conditions.   But the flexibility and diversity of products that can be manufactured at Renewable Energy helped the Butte facility stay ahead of the curve.   And the $30M in capital outlays that improved the stability and reliability of their polysilicon-making process didn't hurt either...   Because of the decline in the solar wafer industry, REC tweaked its business plan in mid-2009.   Most of its production shifted toward high-purity silicon and silane gas, which is used in LCD screens and other electronic products.   Another material that saw demand rise was 'float-zone silicon', the company's 'highest dollar, highest quality material', Sullivan said.   It is used in the electrical systems of hybrid vehicles, and he said some of the world's largest car manufacturers had recently been on-site.   Green said the Butte facility produced much more of the 'float zone' product in 2009 than it had in previous years.   In fact, it produced more float zone than anyone else...   Much of the $30M sunk into the plant last year went into expanding the company's silane gas division.   Large, cylindrical containers are used to deliver the gas worldwide, and they must be thoroughly checked every 5 years.   Renewable Energy built loading and maintenance facilities on-site, where the tanks can be checked and repaired if necessary.   Green said 2010 looks 'promising' for the company in Butte, and he expects the $90M in facility upgrades since 2006 to pay dividends.   Production has increased by approximately 50% in the last 4 years, and Green said it should continue to increase.   He also said that upgrades in the tax increment financing district, including a proposed waste-water line, would be an asset to Renewable Energy.   He noted that securing long-term deals for electrical power, which the company buys from PPL Montana at a cost of more than $40M a year, is an upcoming challenge for the company.   Two Butte companies -- Renewable Energy Corp. and Montana Resources -- are the 2 largest power users in Montana.   The success of Renewable Energy has helped other businesses in Butte.   PraxAir, which provides raw materials such as hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen to the company, is expanding.   Anaconda Foundry Fabrication Co. Inc. supplies the tanks used to transport the silane gas.   PPL Montana and Northwestern Energy have benefited as well.   The company, which is headquartered in Norway, underwent a huge expansion of its Moses Lake, WA, facility last year.   Renewable Energy employs about 285 people in Butte.   Sullivan said recruiting skilled workers for the company's highly specialized jobs has not been difficult.   The plant has hired a number of Montana Tech grads and has been able to convince folks from around the country to relocate."

2010-02-14
_Indy Bay_
Filipino teachers form organization to counter recruiter
"Among the objectives of group are the following:   1. To help Filipino teachers and workers who are victims of trafficking, oppressive forms of recruitment and unfair labor practices;   2. To implement campaigns to pursue justice and enforce the rights of migrant teachers and workers; and   3. To advocate for the promotion of the welfare of migrant workers both in the US and in the Philippines."

2010-02-14 16:00PST (2010-02-14 19:00EST) (2010-02-15 00:00GMT)
Mike Swift _San Jose CA Mercury News_
5 Sili Valley firms refused to report statistical data about sex, race and nationality by job category of employees to the media
"Google... Apple, Yahoo!, Oracle and Applied Materials [refused].   9 [of the 15 largest companies] including Intel, Cisco Systems, eBay, AMD, Sanmina and Sun Microsystems -- agreed to allow the U.S. Department of Labor to provide it...   while the collective work force of 10 of the valley's largest companies grew by 16% from 1999 to 2005, an already small population of black workers dropped by 16%, while the number of Hispanic workers declined by 11%.   By 2005, only about 2,200 of the 30K Silicon Valley-based workers at those 10 companies were black or Hispanic.   In addition, among the roughly 5,900 managers at those companies in 2005, about 300 were either black or Hispanic -- a 20% dip from 4 years earlier.   Women slipped to 26% of managers in 2005, from 28% in 2000."

2010-02-14
Jonathan Petre _Daily Mail_
Warmist U-turn as scientist at center of row admits there's been no global warming since 1995, hockey-stick data is gone, non-anthropogenic warming has happened before

2010-02-14
Steve Sailer _V Dare_
Don Pecks Atlantic cover story on unemployment: Where's the i-word?

++ 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
 
 

2010-02-15

2010-02-15
Tom Lutey _Billings MT Gazette_/_Lee_
Crow tribal TEA partiers hold rally

2010-02-15
Paul Craig Roberts _V Dare_
America is becoming a country of serfs ruled by oligarchs
The Cynical Economist
Before It's News
Nathan's Economic Edge

2010-02-15
David Seminara _Center for Immigration Studies_
Dirty Work: In-Sourcing American Jobs with H-2B Guest-Workers

2010-02-15
Darrel Crump _Lubbock TX Avalanche-Journal_
Computer programmer shortage questioned
"This is regarding the 10% unemployment.   We have millions of illegal workers working in the United States.   Apparently the administration thinks more of the illegal aliens than the U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents.   In addition, the U.S. State Department issues thousands of foreign work visas each year for jobs from leaf blowers to computer programers.   I find it hard to believe with all the U.S. universities that we have a shortage of computer programers.   The U.S. Department of Labor approves a labor certification, Homeland Security processes the application, and the State Department issues the work visas.   The bottom line is these companies increase their margin of profit by hiring foreign workers at a lower wage than they have to pay American workers.   I have seen all of this.   I am a retired U.S. homeland security special agent.   I have notified my congressional representatives but have not heard anything in the pipe-line about solutions.   This helps with unemployment, whether you are Democrat or Republican."

2010-02-15
"Devvy Kidd" _News with Views_
congress refuses to bring home millions of jobs part 1 of 2
"I drive.   From Big Spring, Texas, where I live, to Denver and back, the number one subject of discussion is jobs.   People are very afraid; you can see it in their eyes and hear it in their voice[s]...   It is now mathematically impossible for the U.S. government to pay off the U.S. national debt.   You see, the truth is that the U.S. government now owes more dollars than actually exist.   If the U.S. government went out today and took every single penny from every single American bank, business and [tax-victim], they still would not be able to pay off the national debt.   And if they did that, obviously American society would stop functioning because nobody would have any money to buy or sell anything...   People like me fought tooth and nail against all of those treaties.   Job killers.   The destruction of our most important job sectors, agriculture, manufacturing and industrial have been destroyed by those treaties.   The Republicans had 12 years to get us out of those treaties and out of the communist controlled UN.   Instead, they did NOTHING while this nation hemorrhaged jobs by the millions...   The following are some quotes from the Washington Times 1993 December 6; they accurately reflect Sir Goldsmith's statements during the hearings, which I watched on TV: 'Global 'free' trade will force the poor of the rich countries to subsidize the rich in poor countries.   What GATT means is that our national wealth, accumulated over centuries, will be transferred from a developed country like Britain to developing countries like Communist China, now building it's first ocean going navy in 500 years.'"

2010-02-15 (5770 Adar 01)
Herb Geduld _Jewish World Review_
Lincoln and the Jews
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

2010-02-15 (5770 Adar 01)
Susan King _Jewish World Review_
"WolfMan" reflected writer's war-time Jewish experience
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

++ 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
 
 

2010-02-16

2010-02-15 19:32PST (2010-02-15 22:32EST) (2010-02-16 03:32GMT)
John Boudreau _San Jose CA Mercury News_
Activists aim to punch holes in on-line shields of authoritarian regimes

2010-02-16
Marshall Allen _Las Vegas NV Sun_
State frustrated by DHS's sluggish probe into foreign-physician program
"The Homeland Security Department probe into violations of the so-called J-1 visa waiver program is approaching its second year...   At issue is whether foreign-born doctors had been properly assigned in the Las Vegas area to serve the needy, or whether 6 Las Vegas doctors who are their employers had given them other assignments, unbeknown to the government, that would have made more money.   The head of the Nevada Health Division, Richard Whitley, said he was told that federal investigators had evidence of violations and were preparing to take the matter to a grand jury.   The investigation seems focused on the locations where the J-1 doctors were assigned by their bosses, and whether those sites were listed on the employers' applications to hire the foreign doctors, as is required...   The government probe was triggered by a 2007 Las Vegas Sun investigation that showed employers systematically abusing the J-1 program, and federal and state agencies chronically failing to provide proper oversight.   The months-long Sun investigation found that local doctors had been hiring the foreign doctors ostensibly for the under-served areas -- where federal law requires they work at least 40 hours a week for at least three years -- and then reassigning them to long hours in Las Vegas hospitals in non-under-served areas, where they could bill higher charges on behalf of their employers."

2010-02-16
_Proskauer Rose_/_Mondaq_
US finally takes action to catch H-1B work-location fraud
"Many H-1B employers and their employees have noted an increase in the scrutiny of H-1B beneficiaries by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers upon their arrival in the U.S.A.   Reportedly, CBP is particularly focused on H-1B workers in industries, such as information technology consulting, that require employees to perform much of their services "off-site" at the offices of a client.   A number of H-1B beneficiaries have told of being heavily questioned at the airport, and some have been subjected to 'expedited removal' from the U.S.A.   Expedited removal entails the immediate detention and deportation of an arriving foreign traveler, and a five year bar on return to the U.S.A.   This increased scrutiny could have a significant effect on companies that provide off-site services, and businesses that utilize these services.   Many of these reports hail from our 'home port', Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey, one of the three major international airports serving the New York City metropolitan area."

2010-02-16
Kamil Stelmach _Daily Illini_
Opportunities for under-graduates to participate in research are still readily available despite/because of universities' financial difficulties

2010-02-16 09:38:54PST (12:38:54EST) (17:38:54GMT)
Joe McDonald _San Jose CA Mercury News_/_AP_
Beijing's "Buy China" tech policy alarms trade partners

2010-02-16
Jeffrey Anderson _Washington Times_
Brick by brick, American businesses are losing their competitive edge
"Today, Mr. Johnson's grand-son, David Johnson, wonders whether that legacy has any value.   Last year, his company had high expectations of landing a sub-contract to provide brick for a school to be built at a U.S. Army base.   Despite competitive prices and federal laws intended to support American manufacturers -- not to mention common sense, Mr. Johnson thinks, given the nation's poor economy -- his company lost out to a German competitor.   The loss will be felt beyond Summitville Tiles' bottom line and could have dire effects on the already depressed region in southeastern Ohio that is clinging to economic life.   Equally troubling, when Summitville challenged the selection process, Mr. Johnson encountered a wall of silence, bureaucratic confusion and disturbing signs of contract-fixing within the U.S. Army that rewards a foreign company over a domestic one...   Ohio lost almost a half-million jobs between 2000 and 2009 -- a recession driven primarily by manufacturing losses, said George Zeller, a Cleveland-based economic research analyst...   In July, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded the $39M Fort Bragg school construction contract to Balfour Beatty Construction, a subsidiary of a British engineering firm of the same name.   The firm has more than $16G in annual revenue...   From 2000 to 2008, the Defense Department awarded [Balfour Beatty] more than $185M in contracts, according to federal government records.   In October, the firm announced an award of military construction projects totaling $449M...   A key factor at Fort Bragg, he said, was that one of Summitville's competitors, Feldhaus Klinker, a German company, supplied brick for two other projects under way at the base...   Afterward, according to multiple sources, Balfour's architect, Cathy Roche, of the Orlando, FL, firm Schenkel Shultz, told a Summitville sales representative that Feldhaus was 'pre-selected'...   Summitville had not yet quoted its price...   The documents show that in early December, after Feldhaus was selected as the brick veneer supplier, Balfour Beatty project manager Dave Goltz issued a purchase order and told a Summitville sales representative that Summitville's price was $3 per square foot higher than Feldhaus' for 100K square feet of brick.   However, a quotation from Summitville's distributor, Harwood Brick, a Florida company, shows that Summitville priced its brick at $4.58 per square foot.   That would put the German bid at $1.58 per square foot, Mr. Johnson said.   'With costs of shipping across the Atlantic Ocean and transportation to the site, that simply is not possible.', he said...   Brent Long of Choate and Kent Long of Balfour Beatty are twin brothers."

2010-02-16 (5770 Adar 02)
Marty Peretz _Jewish World Review_
Let Europe Mind Its Own Business. It Brings Nothing To The Table Save For Mischief.
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

2010-02-16 (5770 Adar 02)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
Playing Freedom Cheap
"If eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, incessant distractions are the way that politicians take away our freedoms, in order to enhance their own power and longevity in office.   Dire alarms and heady crusades are among the many distractions of our attention from the ever increasing ways that government finds to take away more of our money and more of our freedom...   The most politically effective totalitarian systems have gotten people to give up their own freedom in order to vent their resentment or hatred at other people -- under Communism, the capitalists; under Nazis, the Jews.   Under extremist Islamic regimes today, hatred is directed at the infidels in general and the 'great Satan', the United States, in particular.   There some people have been induced to give up not only their freedom but even their lives, in order to strike a blow against those they have been taught to hate.   We have not yet reached these levels of hostility, but those who are taking away our freedoms, bit by bit, on the installment plan, have been incessantly supplying us with people to resent.   One of the most audacious attempts to take away our freedom to live our lives as we see fit has been the so-called 'health care reform' bills that were being rushed through Congress before either the public or the members of Congress themselves had a chance to discover all that was in it...   Meanwhile, our freedom to make our own medical decisions -- on which life and death can depend -- was to be quietly taken from us and transferred to our betters in Washington...   what is obscene about wealth?   Wouldn't we consider it great if every human being on earth had a billion dollars and lived in a place that could rival the Taj Mahal?   Poverty is obscene.   It is poverty that needs to be reduced -- and increasing a country's productivity has done that far more widely than redistributing income by targeting 'the rich'.   You can see the agenda behind the rhetoric when profits are called 'unconscionable' but taxes never are, even when taxes take more than half of what someone has earned, or add much more to the prices we have to pay than profits do.   The assumption that what A pays B is any business of C is an assumption that means a dangerous power being transferred to politicians to tell us all what incomes we can and cannot receive.   It will not apply to everyone all at once.   Like the income tax, which at first applied only to the truly rich, and then slowly but steadily moved down the income scale to hit the rest of us, the power to say what incomes people can be allowed to make will inevitably move down the income scale to make us all dependents and supplicants of politicians.   The phrase 'public servants' is increasingly misleading.   They are well on their way to becoming public masters -- like aptly named White House 'czars'.   The more they can get us all to resent those they designate, the more they can distract us from their increasing control of our own lives -- but only if we sell our freedom cheap.   We can sell our birth-right and not even get the mess of pottage."

++ 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
 
 

2010-02-17

2010-02-17
Norm Morris _Salinas Californian_
H-1B visas allow companies to avoid hiring American workers
"In her Feb. 13 letter, Marjorie Atkinson makes a common mistake when she says corporations are allowed to give visas to people from other countries because Americans are not well-educated enough to fill the jobs...   corporations bring in people on H-1B visas to take our jobs because they're cheaper than the well-educated Americans who are here and ready to work.   I've managed these folks -- Indian, Chinese and Russian -- at companies, and know exactly what they make compared to comparably educated U.S. citizens.   A few years ago I was having difficulty getting work in the computer industry.   I knew an industry-leading company in San Jose was hiring, but no matter how many times I applied I kept getting an automated response telling me I wasn't qualified.   Finally, I took the job description, cut and pasted the exact verbiage into my résumé template and sent it back.   A day later I was told, sorry, your job experience doesn't meet the requirements!   A week later the company CEO asked an additional 40K H-1B visas be authorized by Congress, because sadly, 'no Americans are qualified for these positions'.   True.   That is, no Americans with one or more college degrees willing to work 60 hours per week with no benefits for 60% to 70% of the industry standard pay."

2010-02-17
Brett French _Billings MT Gazette_
Ted Turner ranch to host 88 brucellosis-free bison for 5 years
"Bison advocates have denounced the agencies' management of the animals, noting they've been singled out for harsh treatment while hundreds of elk, some of which are also infected with brucellosis, wander unfettered into and out of the park.   The government's General Accountability Office also found fault with the Interagency Bison Management Plan for failing to expand the area in which bison could roam outside Yellowstone."

2010-02-17
Thomas E. Brewton & S. Thomas Emerson _View from 1776_
Why Individualism Is Better than Government Power
"In those 400 years, America has given the world a lot of things: The cotton gin, the steam-boat, the telephone, the motion picture camera, the electric light (the last 3 by the same American inventor), radio (with some help from an Italian), television, nuclear power and weapons, the transistor, the microchip, the microprocessor, most of the software that runs the planet, the conquest of yellow fever, polio, measles, mumps, and dozens of other diseases, ultrasonic and magnetic resonance imaging, the movie and recorded music industries, animated cartoons, computer-generated graphics, the graphical user interface, the mouse, ethernet [and FDDI], the transcontinental railroad, etc.   American contributions to science have been just as prodigious.   The building where I worked for the last 10 years on Carnegie Mellon's main campus has been awarded seven Nobel Prizes (Herb Simon, Franco Modigliani, Merton Miller, Robert Lucas, Finn Kydland, Edward Prescott and Oliver Williamson), and that's just one of Carnegie Mellon's buildings!   Overall, Americans have won more Nobel prizes in science (let's forget about Al Gore's and Barack Obama's peace prizes and other irrelevancies) than any other continent or region.   America's great universities and our leadership in scientific research are envied the world over...   In January of 2006, I spent 10 days in and around the Indian City of Bangalore, where an entrepreneurial revolution is going on.   I visited many of the companies that were leading that rebirth of Indian capitalism, including a 15-year-old company [body shop] called Infosys.   Infosys had gone from zero to more than 50K employees in less than 15 years.   (Talk about creating jobs!)   Their ultra-modern campus in Bangalore would put MSFT's Redmond campus to shame!   ( [That shouldn't take much, since MSFT makes such low-quality produts.] I have visited both.)   I asked the founder of Infosys what accounted for the company's phenomenal success.   His answer was revealing: 'Dr. Emerson, the government got out of the way!   When we started this company 15 years ago, we had to pay 3 times the world price to buy a computer.   Today, we pay the world price.   The government got out of the way!'"

2010-02-17
Joshua Rhett Miller _Fox_
Help Wanted: "Arrogant Americans" need not apply
"An information technology staffing firm based in Rolling Meadows, IL, posted an advertisement for a technical writer that warned that an 'arrogant American' would not flourish in the position.   'Exelon is looking to provide these proposals to Chinese businesses, so someone who is respectful and understands Chinese culture is preferred.   An arrogant American will not work well in this role.', the listing read.   The ad, posted by Viva USA, an information technology consulting firm, has since been removed.   Varuna Singh, the company's development manager, told FoxNews.com it received the language from its client, Exelon Nuclear Partners, and the wording somehow got past a 'junior recruiter' who posted the advertisement on CareerBuilder.com...   Diana Johnston, an attorney for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, said a hiring decision based on national origin would be a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination by employers on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin...   Ferne Wolf, a St. Louis-based employment law attorney, said the posting 'sounds like national origin discrimination' and suggested the advertisement be brought to the attention of EEOC officials."

2010-02-17
Ron Hira _EPI_
Bridge to Immigration or Cheap Temporary Labor?: The H-1B & L-1 Visa Are Both (pdf)
"The H-1B and L-1 are very large guest worker programs, admitting 214,261 new foreign workers in fiscal year 2008 alone, a year in which the U.S. economy lost a net of 920K jobs. (U.S. Department of State 2008)   While no one knows the exact number of H-1B or L-1 holders in the United States at any one time, because the government does not track those numbers, estimates are in the range of 600K H-1Bs and 350K L-1s.
 
Nearly a decade ago, Lowell (2000) estimated that... 50% of H-1Bs become permanent residents...   According to the PERM data-base (the U.S. Department of Labor's Permanent Labor Certification Program Data-Base), H-1Bs accounted for 63% of the permanent residence applications, or 30,951 of the 49,205, in 2008.   L-1 visas accounted for only 3.6% of the permanent residence applications, and the O-1 visa, a temporary work permit for 'extraordinary ability' workers, a mere 0.2%, or 79.   Many L-1 and O-1 visa holders who are eligible for priority worker (EB-1 permanent residence) status are allowed to bypass filing the ETA Form 9089, and would not appear in the PERM data-base.   In FY2007, the distribution was similar with H-1Bs accounting for 65%, L-1s 2.6%, and O-1s 0.1%, of the permanent applications, but the overall number of permanent applications was higher at 85,112.   While H-1Bs account for about 65% of the overall PERM applications, for some employers they are an even more important source of PERM applications.   For MSFT, the number five H-1B recipient in 2008, 75% of its permanent residence applications were for individuals with H-1B visas, and for Qualcomm, 15th in H-1B rankings, the share was 98%.   L-1s, on the other hand, are a relatively low source of PERM applications for major technology firms, accounting for 11% of MSFT's and 18% for Oracle's.   Except for off-shore out-sourcing firm Cognizant, which sourced 51% of its PERM applications from L-1 visa holders, no other firm gets a significant share of its PERMs that way.
 
Som Mittal, a former executive of Hewlett-Packard India, and now president of NASSCOM, recently described why the H-1B program is so important to his member firms, 'We need for people to travel back and forth between the United States and India to consult on and complete projects.' (Herbst 2009).
 
The Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General found that specialized knowledge 'is so broadly defined that adjudicators believe they have little choice but to approve almost all petitions' (U.S. Department of Homeland Security 2006, 1).
 
With the abundant and easy availability of H-1B and L-1 visas, coupled with loop-holes that allow below-market wages, off-shore out-sourcing firms have had little reason to hire American workers.   For example, even though Tata Consultancy had more 10,843 workers in the United States in 2007, only 739 (9%) were Americans.   Why are these firms not interested in hiring American workers?   Off-shore out-sourcing firms rely on the H-1B and related L-1 programs for 3 principal reasons.   First, it facilitates their knowledge-transfer operations, where they rotate in foreign workers to learn U.S. workers' jobs.   Second, the H-1B and L-1 programs provide them an inexpensive, on-site presence that enables them to coordinate off-shore functions...   according to its own financial reporting, Infosys' on-site workers, almost all of whom are foreign guest workers, directly accounted for 46% of its revenue in its most recent quarter (Infosys 2009).
 
And according to a Tata Consultancy Services executive, H-1B workers are less expensive than comparable American workers.   Then Vice President Phiroz Vandrevala described, in an interview with an India-based business magazine, how his company derives competitive advantages by paying its visa holders below-market wages: 'Our wage per employee is 20%-25% lesser than U.S. wage for a similar employee.', Vandrevala said.   'Typically, for a TCS employee with 5 years experience, the annual cost to the company is $60K-$70K, while a local American employee might cost $80K-$100K.   This (labour arbitrage) is a fact of doing work on-site.   It's a fact that Indian IT companies have an advantage here and there's nothing wrong in that...   The issue is that of getting workers in the U.S. on wages far lower than local wage rate.' (Singh 2003).
 
Third, the H-1B and L-1 programs allow the U.S. operations to serve as a training ground for foreign workers who then rotate back to their home country to do the work more effectively than they could have without such training in the United States.   A BusinessWeek story described Wipro's use of the H-1B program this way: 'Wipro has more than 4K employees in the United States, and roughly 2,500 are on H-1B visas.   About 1K new temporary workers come to the country each year, while 1K rotate back to India, with improved skills to serve clients.' (Elstrom 2007).
 
During an earnings call with Wall Street research analysts covering the firm, Infosys' COO Kris Gopalakrishnan responded to questions about whether it has adequate visas by saying, 'It is 37% of the total visas available right now with Infosys is being used.   That means we have remaining 63% of the people having visas available to put on projects.   So it gives us a better utilization rate or—so it gives us the flexibility.   We typically get worried when it reaches 50%-55% because that means that we may not be able to find the right people with the visas to deploy on the project, so 37% is a comfortable number. (Infosys 2005)
 
These guest worker visas are so integral to the off-shore out-sourcing firms that then Indian Commerce Minister Kamal Nath called the H-1B the 'out-sourcing visa' [with an implicit meaning of 'off-shore out-sourcing visa'] in an interview with the New York Times while arguing for an increase in the H-1B cap (Lohr 2007).   It is unlikely that these firms would ever sponsor their workers for permanent residence in large numbers...
 
According to its CEO, as of 2007 August, Accenture had more employees in India than any other country, including the United States (Chatterjee 2007).   Similarly IBM has increased its work-force in India very dramatically.   From a mere 6K workers in India in 2003, its head-count rose to 74K by 2007 and is projected to reach 100K by 2010 (D'Souza 2008; McDougall 2006).   Given the continuing down-sizing of its U.S. work-force, reduced to 115K in 2009, India will likely become its largest work-force by sometime in 2010 (Lohr 2009)...   Neither of these firms appears to be using the H-1B program to bring in the 'best and brightest from abroad' and keep them here...
 
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) should provide accurate numbers on the pipe-line of guest workers and new arrivals waiting for an employment-based permanent residence visa.   These data should be detailed by: stage in the pipe-line ([F, F+OPT, H-1B, J, L], PERM, I-140, I-485); current visa status; employer; country of origin; and, employment-based preference status (EB-1, EB-2, EB-3).   Numbers matter in making immigration policy decisions, and Congress and the president need a clear understanding of the impact their policy choices will have on the labor market.   All of this information is available—it is merely a matter of will to put it together.   The USCIS should publish:
1. [FY2005-FY2020] H-1B and L-1 visa data by employer; and
2. Employment-based permanent residence applications by employer and visa origin."
class action against Tata
Tata median salaries by city
Wipro median salaries by city
Infosys median salaries by city

2010-02-17
Lisa Schmeiser _InfoWorld_/_IDG_
The painful truth about age discrimination in tech
SlashDot: Logan's Run Syndrome
"And, unfair as this seems, the more you're making, the less likely you are to be unemployed.   According to a new study at Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies, the unemployment rate for people making between $39K and $50K is 9%, and it only drops more as your income climbs: If you're making $79,100 or more, only 3.2% to 5% of the people in your income bracket have lost their jobs.   [D'uh, but if you're unemployed, your income is zero.]...   A late-1990s study by the National Science Foundation and Census Bureau found that only 19 percent of computer science graduates are still working in programming once they're in their early 40s.   This suggests serious attrition among what should be the dominant labor pool in IT.   Something has been pushing IT workers out as they hit their high-earning, low-unemployment 40s and beyond.   Is it burnout or pervasive age discrimination?   What are the culprits contributing to this 'Logan's Run'-like market-place?...   A change in the IT culture.   The Net is rife with mainframe operators and Cobol pros who will tell you that they got into IT for love of the challenge or subject.   It was passion-driven.   Now, however, IT occupations are rigorously bound by performance metrics and other management controls...   inexperienced or non-technical hiring managers tend to look at resumes with an eye for youth...   when high-tech companies began incorporating more [B-school bozos] into their upper tiers, these managers were not able to accurately assess the merits of developers with know-how: 'It is nearly impossible to judge quality work if you never did it yourself.', he says.   'The latest fad was the idiotic belief that management was generic, a skill that could be taught at school and could then be sent anywhere to do any management job.'...   The nature of the job.   The mental stage that psychologists define as 'flow' is one of sustained concentration on the task at hand and a pure focus on your attention on a project.   IOW, it's the ability to work without interruption on a task until you've found a natural stopping point.   A lot of developers strive for flow when they're working, which is why one meeting can blow an entire day's worth of work.   It takes time to get in and out of flow and to retrace your steps to the point where you can move forward...   entry-level workers aren't burnt out by experience.   They haven't had a decade of watching their work get torpedoed thanks to office politics.   'You become more cynical about the possibilities of real rewards from your hard work after being so disappointed so often in management.', says an engineer who also asked to remain anonymous."
graphs
Employment/Population ratios by age

2010-02-17
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Federal government credibility continues to plummet

2010-02-17
Richard Hoste _V Dare_
Arizona Armageddon: mixed-message J.D. Hayworth's challenge to John "McAmnesty" McCain
"On the day of Hayworth's announcement, co-founder of the Minutemen movement Chris Simcox, running at about 4%, dropped out of the Senate race and threw his support behind the former congressman.   This should prevent a splitting of the patriot vote."

2010-02-17
Paul Craig Roberts _V Dare_
On Texas's Debra Medina and the Fahad Hashmi case: Grounds for hope and despair

2010-02-17
Steve Lohr _NY Times_
Turning Patents Into "Invention Capital": Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures

2010-02-17 (5770 Adar 03)
Rabbi Doctor Asher Meir _Jewish World Review_
Entitlement vs. Charity
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

2010-02-17 (5770 Adar 03)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
The Census and the US Constitution
"The Census Bureau estimates that the life cycle cost of the 2010 Census will be from $13.7G to $14.5G, making it the costliest census in the nation's history...   The purpose of the headcount is to apportion the number of seats in the House of Representatives and derived from that, along with two senators from each state, the number of electors to the Electoral College.   The Census Bureau tells us that this year, it will use a shorter questionnaire, consisting of only 10 questions.   From what I see, only one of them serves the constitutional purpose of enumeration -- namely, 'How many people were living or staying at this house, apartment or mobile home on 2010 April 1?'...   After each question, the Bureau of the Census provides a statement of how the answer meets a federal need.   I would prefer that they provide a statement of how answers to the questions meet the constitutional need as expressed in Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution...   The Census Bureau also asks questions about race, and I want to know what does my race have to do with apportioning the U.S. House of Representatives?...   Americans need to stand up to Washington's intrusion into our private lives.   What business of government is the number of times a citizen has been married or what he paid for electricity last month?   For those who find such intrusion acceptable, I'd ask them whether they'd also find questions of their sex lives or their marriage fidelity equally acceptable.   What to do?   Unless a census taker can show me a constitutional requirement, the only information I plan to give are the number and names of the people in my household.   The census taker might say, 'It's the law.'   Thomas Jefferson said, 'Whensoever the General Government (Washington) assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.'"

++ 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
 
 

2010-02-18

2010-02-18 03:44PST (06:44EST) (11:44GMT)
Michael Kitchen _MarketWatch_
IMF to sell another 191 tons of gold
"The announcement comes after the IMF already sold 212 tons of gold to central banks.   The sales are part of a program to sell a total of 403.3 tons that was approved by the IMF's executive board last September.   The total sale will reduce the fund's gold holdings by about one-eighth...   The announcement sent gold futures to an intraday low of $1,098.10 an ounce.   Gold for April delivery was last down $14 to $1,106.10 an ounce in electronic trading on Globex...   Transactions under the previous tranche of the IMF gold-sale program consisted of a 200-ton sale to the Reserve Bank of India in October, followed by November sales of 2 tons to the Bank of Mauritius and 10 tons to the Central Bank of Sri Lanka.   The proceeds from the sale of the 212 tons amounted to almost $7.2G."

2010-02-18 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 476,730 in the week ending Feb. 13, a decrease of 30,850 from the previous week.   There were 619,951 initial claims in the comparable week in 2009.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.3% during the week ending Feb. 6, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 5,539,706, a decrease of 150,689 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 4.5% and the volume was 5,972,146.   Extended benefits were available in AL, AK, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, DC, GA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, ME, MA, MI, MN, NV, NH, NJ, NM, NY, NC, OH, OR, PA, PR, RI, SC, TN, TX, VT, VA, WA, WV, and WI during the week ending January 30...   States reported 5,797,875 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending Jan. 30, an increase of 304,748 from the prior week.   There were 1,903,779 claimants in the comparable week in 2009.   EUC weekly claims include first, second, third, and fourth tier activity.
graphs
more graphs

2010-02-18
Veronique de Rugy _Big Government_
Government employees are this recessions' fat cats

2010-02-18 10:00:51PST (13:00:51EST) (18:00:51GMT)
_San Jose CA Mercury News_/_AP_
Taiwan lap-top maker warns of labor shortages there and in Red China

2010-02-18 10:06PST (13:06EST) (18:06GMT)
Rhonda Cook _Atlanta GA Journal-Constitution_
61-year-old woman arrested for asking "Why?"

2010-02-18 13:00PST (16:00EST) (21:00GMT)
Mike Cassidy _San Jose CA Mercury News_
Friends gather to remember original Macintosh team-member Brian Howard
"'Brian was one of the sweetest people I ever worked with, incredibly smart, very modest.', says Andy Hertzfeld, a software guy who joined the team that started work on the Mac in 1979...   Howard was Apple's 32nd employee and he stayed with the company for more than 30 years.   While Apple does not track continuous tenure, Howard's was clearly among the longest at the company, which was founded in 1976.   He worked on an evolving series of Macintosh products and was named on more than two dozen patents or pending patents...   Apple hired Howard and Jef Raskin in 1978 to write technical manuals, but the pair were soon refining Raskin's vision of a low-cost, easy-to-use computer aimed at consumers.   They were initially joined by Burrell Smith and Bud Tribble and eventually by dozens of others...   Howard worked closely with Smith on early Mac hardware, hand-wiring some of the prototypes' first logic boards.   He had an uncanny ability, says Hertzfeld, now a Google software engineer, to take Smith's ideas and communicate them to the rest of the team in a clear, concise way.   Bob Bailey, a senior engineer at Apple, says he saw Howard reprise the role of translator among design teams countless times in the 25 years they worked together on the Mac line."

2010-02-18 15:36PST (18:36EST) (23:36GMT)
Greg Robb _MarketWatch_
Federal Reserve increased discount rate to 0.75%
"The Fed reported that outstanding discount window loans totaled $14.16G on Wednesday, down from $51.7G a year ago and about $111G in 2008 October."

2010-02-18
John Markoff & David Barboza _NY Times_
2 Red Chinese schools said to be tied to on-line attacks
Larry Dignan: Ziff Davis/CBS
Mara Hvistendahl: Chronicle of Higher Education
"The Chinese schools involved are Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang Vocational School...   Jiaotong has one of China's top computer science programs...   Lanxiang, in east China's Shandong Province, is a huge vocational school that was established with military support and trains some computer scientists for the military.   The school's computer network is operated by a company with close ties to Baidu, the dominant search engine in China and a competitor of Google."

2010-02-18
Patrick J. Buchanan _V Dare_
Is this how a democratic republic ends?
"Principled conservatives are resisting tax hikes because they believe government has grown too huge for the good of the country.   And if that means putting the beast on a starvation diet -- no new tax revenue to batten on -- so be it.   Cold turkey time...   Republicans will fight the taxes to the last ditch.   Democrats, having lost dozens of colleagues in the November massacre, will rebel against the cuts in social spending.   And a paralyzed government will drift closer toward the maelstrom."

2010-02-18
James Dean _Law Gazette_
MSFT to off-shore out-source general legal work to India
"The news comes as CPA outlined plans to expand its Indian workforce from 600 to 1K by the end of 2011...   MSFT has out-sourced intellectual property (IP) work to CPA since 2005"

2010-02-18
Mallory Simon & Mariano Castillo _CNN_
Software engineer who slammed plane into Austin, TX IRS offices wrote: Nothing changes unless there is a body count... I have just had enough.
No Slaves
The Smoking Gun: Joe Stack's Last Testament
Huffington Post

2010-02-18
David Cay Johnston _NYTimes_
Government extortion law, rule 1706, was cited in software engineer's suicide

2010-02-18 (5770 Adar 04)
Cal Thomas _Jewish World Review_
Who is Rashad Hussain?
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

++ 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
 
 

2010-02-19

2010-02-18 16:01PST (2010-02-18 19:01EST) (2010-02-19 00:01GMT)
_Physics Today_
Florida State University laying off tenured science professors
Doug Blackburn: Tallahassee Demagogue
Matt Nelson: Florida Trend
"He was one of 5 faculty members in his 15-person department whose positions were being eliminated as FSU decided to merge oceanography, geological sciences and meteorology in the wake of massive reductions in state revenue.   Two of his colleagues being terminated are tenured, which traditionally means their positions are secure.   Geological sciences fared even worse, losing 6 of 13 positions including 4 tenured faculty.   No positions were eliminated in meteorology."
2010-01-15: Physics Today: Recession hits some sciences harder than others

2010-02-19 05:06PST (08:06EST) (13:06GMT)
Jason Scott _Cumberland PA Sentinel_
Perry county PA's first traffic signal light now operational
"Forest county remains the only county in Pennsylvania without a traffic signal."

2010-02-18 16:30PST (2010-02-18 19:30EST) (2010-02-19 00:30GMT)
Joseph R. Perone _NJ Star-Ledger_
Newark software body shop Peri Software Solutions and owner Sarib Perisamya accused of immigration and labor law violations
7th Space Interactive

2010-02-19
Carl Braun _San Diego CA Examiner_
CPAC "Contract From America" has many TEA party activists upset because it left out immigration and other key issues
A.W. Morgan: V Dare: That Mount Vernon Statement: Beltway Right Ignores Immigration (Again), but They Still Want Your Money

2010-02-19
Chuck Baldwin _V Dare_
I wish Joe Stack had not killed himself
"After carefully reading Stack's [last testament], I am quite convinced that he was not crazy, and he was not a 'terrorist'.   However, he was angry...   It has been a long time since the average hardworking American has been represented in Washington, DC.   By and large, the politicians in DC represent only Big Money interests.   Just try talking with your congressman or senator and see how much personal interest he or she takes in anything you have to say...   Obviously, Mr. Stack had long felt the frustration of being ignored by these pimps in Washington that we know as congressmen...   My heart goes out to Joe Stack!   The sentiments expressed above are shared by millions of Americans who are also fed up with Big Brother.   We are fed up with our country being turned into a burgeoning police state, under the rubric of 'national security'.   We are fed up with the harassments of the IRS.   We know the 'war on drugs' is merely the government's way of cutting out the competition (this is exactly what more than one retired federal law enforcement agent—employed in the drug war—told me).   We know the 'war on terror' is nothing but an excuse to trample our constitutional liberties.   We are fed up with the voracious vampires known as the Federal Reserve sucking the lifeblood out of the veins of America's hard-working Middle Class.   We are tired of the CFR, CIA, and America's State Department manufacturing perpetual wars that cost trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives for the benefit of the global elite.   We are fed up with an arrogant and oppressive federal government that is strangling the life and freedom out of our states.   We all share Joe Stack's pain!   I really wish Joe Stack had not killed himself, however.   We need each other.   By taking his life, he reduced our strength.   The global elites delight in our demise.   As we grow weaker, they grow stronger.   But the fight is not over; the battle is not lost!   Rumblings of freedom's revival can be felt across the length and breadth of this nation.   The clanging of liberty's resolve can be heard in hamlets and villages from Montana to South Carolina.   There are still millions of us—from virtually every walk of life—who will not surrender our liberties without a fight!   And we have not yet begun to fight!   So, to the rest of us Joe Stacks out there: let's not fly our planes into buildings.   Let's not end our lives prematurely.   Instead, get mad; get organized; get educated; start equipping your heart, mind, and body for the battle ahead.   Let's fight; let's study; let's prepare; let's make every would-be tyrant on Capitol Hill and Wall Street know that we are not going to sit back and let them steal our country.   Let's send a message, in no uncertain terms, that if they want our pound of flesh, they are going to have to come and get it—and if they do, it's going to cost them a whole lot more than a pound of theirs!   Oh, Joe!   I wish you had not killed yourself."

2010-02-19
_ISI Emerging Markets_
EXL Services scouts for buy-outs in US
"Tata Consultancy Services has announced a 1000-people centre in Cincinnati in the US, while Wipro has announced one in Altanta."
class action against Tata
Tata median salaries by city
Wipro median salaries by city
Infosys median salaries by city

2010-02-19 (5770 Adar 05)
R' David Aaron _Jewish World Review_
Is the Divine beyond us or within us?
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

2010-02-19 (5770 Adar 05)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
Israel and the West are perpetrators of a myth that endangers the Jewish State
"Fahmi Shabaneh is an odd candidate for dissident status.   Shabaneh is a Jerusalemite who joined the Palestinian Authority's General Intelligence Service (GIS) in 1994.   Working for PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and GIS commander Tawfik Tirawi, Shabaneh was tasked with investigating Arab Jerusalemites suspected of selling land to Jews.   Such sales are a capital offense in the PA.   Since 1994 scores of Arabs have been the victims of extrajudicial executions after having been fingered by the likes of Shabaneh.   A few years ago, Abbas and Tirawi gave Shabaneh a new assignment.   They put him in charge of an anti-corruption unit responsible for investigating corrupt activities carried out by PA officials.   They probably assumed a team player like Shabaneh understood what he was supposed to do...   Shabaneh collected massive amounts of information on senior PA officials detailing their illegal activities.   These activities included the theft of hundreds of millions of dollars in international aid; illegal seizure of lands and homes and monetary and sexual extortion of their fellow Palestinians...   Recently, Shabaneh decided he had had enough.   The time had come to expose what he knows.   But he ran into an unanticipated difficulty.   No one wanted to know.   As he put it, Arab and Western journalists wouldn't touch his story for fear of being 'punished' by the PA...   Western journalists 'don't want to hear negative things about Fatah and Abbas'.   Lacking other options, Shabaneh brought his information to the Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh.   On January 29, the Post published Abu Toameh's interview with Shabaneh on our front page.   Among other impressive scoops, Shabaneh related that Abbas's associates purloined $3.2M in cash that the US gave Abbas ahead of the 2006 elections.   He told Abu Toameh how PA officials who were virtually penniless in 1994 now have tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars in their private accounts.   He related how he watched in horror as Abbas promoted the very officials he reported on.   And he showed Abu Toameh a video of Abbas's chief of staff Rafik Husseini naked in the bedroom of a Christian woman who sought employment with the PA...   Just as the mountains of evidence that Fatah officials -- including Shabaneh's boss Tirawi -- have been actively involved in terrorist attacks against Israel have been systematically ignored by successive US administrations, Israeli governments and EU foreign policy chiefs, so no one wants to think about the fact that Fatah is a criminal syndicate."
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

2010-02-19 (5770 Adar 05)
Wendell Cox _New Geography_
the heavy price of growth management in Seattle

2010-02-19

DJIA	10,402.35
S&P 500	1,109.17
NASDAQ	2,243.87
Nikkei	10,124
10-year US T-Bond	3.81%
crude oil	$79.81/barrel
gold	$1,122.10/ounce
silver	$15.95/ounce
platinum	$1543.60/ounce
palladium	$442.35/ounce
copper	$0.2111875/ounce
natgas	$5.044/MBTU
reformulatedgasoline	$2.0857/gal
heatingoil	$2.0699/gal
soybeans	$9.45/bushel
maize	$3.60/bushel
wheat	$4.8975/bushel
dollarindex	81.15
yenperdollar	91.60
dollarspereuro	1.3587
dollarsperpound	1.5448
swissfranksperdollar	1.0772
indianrupeesperdollar	46.3
mexicanpesosperdollar	12.9340
MorganStanleyHighTechIndex	565.44

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
 
 

2010-02-20

2010-02-19 16:48:24PST (2010-02-19 19:48:24EST) (2010-02-20 00:48:24GMT)
Mike Rosenberg _San Mateo county CA Times_/_San Jose CA Mercury News_
United Airlines out-sourcing leads to questions about aircraft safety
"United Airlines plans to out-source engineering work from its SFO maintenance hub to other parts of the world, but United employees and U.S. representative Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, question the impact the move will have on the quality of repair work and aircraft safety.   The company said it would lay off 50 employees, mostly engineers, later this year at its San Francisco International Airport maintenance base located next to the San Bruno Avenue exit off Highway 101.   The airline said the majority of the engineering work would move to a private consulting firm in Atlanta while some information technology jobs would be transferred to India.   Workers at the base said they were told most of the work would take place in India, with some oversight in Atlanta.   The engineers, technologists and specialists losing their jobs are part of a team that works with about 3K mechanics at the base to ensure that proper designs are applied when building and repairing aircraft there.   The engineers, mechanics and Speier said duties being done by non-airline workers off site could result in mistakes from miscommunication or inferior quality work.   With an aircraft carrying hundreds of people at a time, an error could prove disastrous...   The mechanics at the base said they will have to get used to consulting with employees at the Atlanta firm called TeamSAI Inc...   Lou Lucivero, president of the Engineers and Scientists of California union that represents 220 engineers at United SFO, said they have sent their list of concerns to the FAA and U.S. Department of Transportation.   He said he had never heard of an airline outsourcing this type of work."
2009-12-16: D.R. Stewart: Tulsa OK World
2009-12-31: Mike Mitchell Av Stop/Aviation On-Line: TWU Off-Shore Aviation Maintenance A Disaster Waiting To Happen

2010-02-20
Peter S. Goodman _NY Times_
Millions of Unemployed Face Years without Jobs (with graphs)
"Economists fear that the nascent recovery will leave more people behind than in past recessions, failing to create jobs in sufficient numbers to absorb the record-setting ranks of the long-term unemployed...   Now, she is one of 6.3M Americans who have been unemployed for six months or longer, the largest number since the government began keeping track in 1948.   That is more than double the toll in the next-worst period, in the early 1980s...   women from 45 to 64 years of age -- whose long-term unemployment rate has grown rapidly...   During periods of American economic expansion in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the number of private-sector jobs increased about 3.5% a year, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, a research firm.   During expansions in the 1980s and 1990s, jobs grew just 2.4% annually.   And during the last decade, job growth fell to 0.9% annually.   'The pace of job growth has been getting weaker in each expansion.', Mr. Achuthan said.   'There is no indication that this pattern is about to change.'   Before 1990, it took an average of 21 months for the economy to regain the jobs shed during a recession, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by the National Employment Law Project and the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-oriented research group in Washington.   After the recessions in 1990 and in 2001, 31 and 46 months passed before employment returned to its previous peaks.   The economy was growing, but companies remained conservative in their hiring.   Some 34M people were hired into new and existing private-sector jobs in 2000, at the tail end of an expansion, according to Labor Department data.   A year later, in the midst of recession, hiring had fallen off to 31.6M.   And as late as 2003, with the economy again growing, hiring in the private sector continued to slip, to 29.8M...   She does not have the money to move to a cheaper apartment.   'You have to have money for first and last month's rent, and to open utility accounts.', she said."
graphs
graphs of duration of unemployment

2010-02-20
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Should Government Extort and Abuse Inflation to Steal Your Money?
Patrice Hill: Washington Times: Induced inflation as gimmick to disguise increasing federal debt feared

2010-02-20
Charles S. Johnson _Billings MT Gazette_/_Lee_
15% of Montana motorists don't pay the government-backed protection rackets
"About 15% of Montana drivers are uninsured, or slightly higher than the national average of 13.8%, a state insurance official told a legislative committee Friday.   All of Montana's neighboring states have lower rates of uninsured motorists, said Mari Kindberg, property and casualty actuary in the state Auditor's Office.   North Dakota's rate is at 5%, South Dakota's is 7%, and Idaho and Wyoming are at 9%.   The [Extortion] and Transportation Interim Committee is studying the issue of uninsured and under-insured motorists under a 2009 resolution by senator Roy Brown, R-Billings...   'I only drive 25 to 40 miles a month.', he said.   'My latest insurance is $65 a month.   In my opinion, that's extortion.'   Texas has a pay-by-the-mile system that doesn't require an expensive on-board system, he said.   The web site of the company he mentioned requires customers to submit periodic digital photos of the [odometers] in their vehicles.   The Texas company charges 4 to 5 cents a mile for insurance, far less than he pays now, JS said.   JS urged the committee to recommend the repeal of mandatory auto insurance, contending it was driving people into poverty."

2010-02-20
_Milwaukee WI Journal Sentinel_
Act now to bolster nation's industrial base
"Just a decade ago, manufacturing industries employed 165K people in the metro area.   By the end of last year, they employed barely 115K.   Statewide, 150K manufacturing jobs have been lost since 2000.   Nationally, manufacturing employment has fallen to levels not seen since the eve of World War II.   Since 2001, more than 40K factories have been shuttered in the United States.   The steady erosion of manufacturing might has dire implications for communities across the country, particularly in the heart-land, and threatens prosperity as jobs that average more than $32 an hour evaporate.   Manufacturers still account for 70% of the nation's industrial R&D and 90% of its patents.   Yet the country's share of world R&D spending is falling.   National security depends on expertise in engineering and production, yet the nation now imports some of its key defense technology.   Manufacturing remains the economy's most efficient driver of growth.   A dollar of manufacturing demand induces $1.41 of ancillary production, according to federal statistics -- the largest spin-off effect of any industry group.   But the ground has shifted beneath manufacturers amid porous borders and a race to low-cost countries.   Scores of products once uniquely American -- cookware, shoes, televisions, furniture, leather goods and machine tools -- are now out-sourced abroad."

2010-02-20
R.B. Johnson
Bridge-Building and Structural Engineering
Youngstown State U Steel Bridge team places first, goes to nationals

++ 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
 
 

2010-02-21

2010-02-21
Carl Herman _Los Angeles county CA Examiner_
Solutions to US economy's demolition are obvious, but We, The People, must demand them

2010-02-21
Brett French _Billings MT Gazette_
Going local with seasonal jobs: Flood of local applicants means more foreign workers are staying home
"In the past locals could earn more working jobs in construction or other industries hungry for employees.   This winter, though, Big Sky Resort had its pick from 2,200 applicants for 1K winter positions and filled only about 10% of them with students from abroad...   Nearby Moonlight Basin ski resort also had more applicants than positions -- 1,300 applicants for 50 positions it needed filled this winter.   Moonlight didn't seek any international students, according to Janette May, Moonlight's marketing director.   And that's not counting the 70% return they had from last winter's employees...   Xanterra Parks and Resorts, the major concessionaire for [Yellowstone National Park], has been able to hire more Americans to fill its variety of 3,500 summer seasonal positions.   'We dropped our international numbers 30% from the previous year.', said Carrie Holder, assistant director of human resources for Xanterra in Yellowstone...   Montana's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is 6.8% -- more than 33K people -- compared with 9.7% for the nation.   In the counties surrounding Big Sky -- Gallatin and Madison -- unemployment was 6.3% and 5.1%, respectively, in December.   Those figures are not seasonally adjusted...   Holder, who started as a seasonal employee at the park 20 years ago, said the trend toward hiring more international workers in Yellowstone began in the mid-1990s.   Schieffer traces the trend back about 8 years at Big Sky...   'We have definitely depended on the international market certainly since the early 2000s and forward.'"

2010-02-21
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Speech control on college campus
Alan M. Dershowitz: FrontPageMagazine: Anti-Israel zealots disrupt ambassador's speech at UC Irvine
"There are several rights at stake in any such case.   First is the right of the speaker, who has been invited by the university to present his point of view.   Second is the right of the audience to hear his point of view.   Third is the right of audience members who disagree with his point of view to express opposition.   These rights need not be in conflict, so long as there is no effort to prevent the speaker from conveying his point of view to the audience."

2010-02-21 (10:00PST) (13:00EST) (18:00GMT)
David Adam _Manchester Guardian_
Warmists withdraw claims of rising sea levels made in article published in Nature Geoscience
"Study claimed in 2009 that sea levels would rise by 7cm to 82cm by the end of century -- but the report's author [Mark Siddall] now says true estimate is still unknown...   Nature Publishing Group, which publishes Nature Geoscience, said this was the first paper retracted from the journal since it was launched in 2007."

2010-02-21
Eric Hoover _Chronicle of Higher Education_
Need that class, desperately? The Course Concierge will see you now

2010-02-21
Harvey J. Shulman _NYTimes_
our low-tech government extortion code discourages high-tech free-lancing

2010-02-21
Dave Dutton _Career Rocketeer_
(W)age discrimination is alive and well... and what you can do about it

++ 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
 
 

2010-02-22: George Washington's birth-Day

2010-02-22 02:45PST (05:45EST) (10:45GMT)
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
Many H-1B workers get temporary jobs, study finds: Off-shore firms seek permanent residency for few H-1Bs; U.S. firms have mixed plans
"In 2008 Cognizant was approved for 467 H-1B visas and sought permanent residency for 332 people that year, for a ratio of 71%.   Cognizant received 1,839 L-1 visas, the second largest number in 2008 after Mumbai, India-based Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., which received 1,998 L-1 visas.   Cognizant applied for permanent residency for 342 of its L-1 workers.   Tata didn't apply for permanent residency for any of its L-1 workers or H-1B workers in 2008...   Various estimates put the overall number of visa holders in the range of 600K H-1B workers and 350K L-1 workers, according to Hira's new study."
Roy Mark: eWeek: H-1B visa program again under fire
Kim Berry: Programmers Guild
class action against Tata

2010-02-22
_Billings MT Gazette_/_Lee_/_AP_
Geologists model breaking of ice dam that released floods from 200 mile long, 2100 feet deep Lake Missoula, 15K to 18K years ago

2010-02-22
Charles S. Johnson _Billings MT Gazette_/_Lee_
New GOP candidate for congress blasts incumbents for violating oaths of office
"Calling himself 'a constitutional Republican', Mark French of Paradise has filed as candidate for the U.S. House seat held by fellow Republican representative Denny Rehberg and promptly accused the 5-time congressman of violating his oath of office.   'I cannot stand by and continue watching Republicans vote against the U.S. Constitution and against their own platform.', French said.   'It is absolutely unacceptable for someone to swear a solemn oath of office to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, then vote for multiple freedom-robbing and tax-increasing bills like cash for clunkers and the Patriot Act.'   French, 46, is a clinical laboratory scientist at the Clark Fork Valley Hospital in Plains.   He also manages the family's farm and ranch, where the French family produces 800 tons of certified organic hay annually and raises a small herd of beef cattle and a few milk cows.   A surprise entry into the race, French is the sixth announced candidate for Montana's only U.S. House seat...   While doing his medical internship at Duke University medical school, French met his wife, Katy, who has a chemical engineering degree from North Carolina State."

2010-02-22
Robert J. Samuelson _Real Clear Politics_
Greece and the Welfare State in Ruins
Washington Post

2010-02-22
Beryl Lieff Benderly _Scientific American_
Does the U.S.A. Produce Too Many Scientists?
alternate link
"why does it produce so many talented young researchers who cannot find a job in their chosen field of study?"

2010-02-22
"Fjordman" _Brussels Journal_
did lactose tolerance trigger the Indo-European expansion?

2010-02-22
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Recap of warmist pseudo-scientific scamming

++ 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
 
 

2010-02-23

1945-02-23: US Marines raised the flag atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima

2010-02-23
_BLS_
seasonally adjusted 182,261 were dumped in January in mass lay-offs by large firms
"Employers took 1,761 mass lay-off actions in January that resulted in the separation of 182,261 workers, seasonally adjusted, as measured by new filings forunemployment insurance benefits during the month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.   Each action involved at least 50 persons from a single employer.   Both mass lay-off events and initial claims increased from the prior month after four consecutive over-the-month decreases.   In January, 486 mass lay-off events were reported in the manufacturing sector, seasonally adjusted, resulting in 62,556 initial claims.   Both figures increased over the month -- the first increases since 2009 August for events and since September 2009 for initial claims.   (See table 1.)   During the 26 months from 2007 December through 2010 January, the total number of mass lay-off events (seasonally adjusted) was 53,739, and the associated number of initial claims was 5,425,101.   (2007 December was the start of a recession as designated by the National Bureau of Economic Research [NBER].)"

2010-02-23 09:40PST (12:40EST) (17:40GMT)
Jeffry Bartash _MarketWatch_
US consumer confidence has plunged
Conference Board
"The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index®, which had increased in January, declined sharply in February.   The Index now stands at 46.0 (1985=100), down from 56.5 in January.   The Present Situation Index decreased to 19.4 from 25.2.   The Expectations Index declined to 63.8 from 77.3 last month...   Those saying jobs are 'hard to get' rose to 47.7% from 46.5%, while those saying jobs are 'plentiful' decreased to 3.6% from 4.4%."

2010-02-23 09:42:36PST (12:42:36EST) (17:42:36GMT)
_San Jose CA Mercury News_/_AP_
Red Chinese government thugs launch another set of controls on use of the Internet

2010-02-23 10:16PST (13:16EST) (18:16GMT)
Jill Laster _Chronicle of Higher Education_
US senate considering scholarships for computer/network security

2010-02-23 12:09PST (15:09EST) (20:09GMT)
Kate Brumback _Business Week_
Numbers of illegal aliens in the SouthEast have increased
GA is estimated to have had just 35K illegal aliens in 1990, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.   They more than doubled from 2000 January to 480K in 2009 January.   NC was estimated to have 260K in 2000 January and about 370K in 2009 January.   California, which is still home to about 24% of the country's illegal immigrants, used to account for about 40%.   Five other states -- TX, NY, FL, IL and NJ -- shared another 40%.   The illegal alien population of the USA was estimated at 11.8M in 2007 January, fell to 11.6M in 2008 January and dropped to 10.8M in 2009 January.

2010-02-23
Justin Elizabeth Tabler _Front Page_
Obama's envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Confeence didn't just defend Palestinian Islamic Jihad's Sami al-Arian

2010-02-23 (5770 Adar 09)
Dennis Prager _Jewish World Review_
Most Leftists Favor Government While Most on the Right Favor the Divine and Parents
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

2010-02-23 (5770 Adar 09)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
Economic Whodunit
"Take Wall Street 'greed'.   Is there any evidence that people in Wall Street were any less interested in making money during all the decades and generations when investments in housing were among the safest investments around?   If their greed did not bring on an economic disaster before, why would it bring it on now?   As for lenders, how could they have expected to satisfy their greed by lending to people who were not likely to repay them?   The one agency of government that is widely blamed is the Federal Reserve System -- which still keeps the heat away from elected politicians.   Nor is the Fed completely blameless.   It kept interest rates extremely low for years.   That undoubtedly contributed to an increased demand for housing, since lower interest rates mean lower monthly mortgage payments.   But an increased demand for housing does not automatically mean higher housing prices.   In places where supply is free to rise to meet demand, such as Manhattan in the 1950s or Las Vegas in the 1980s, increased demand simply led to more housing units being built, without an increase in real prices -- that is, money prices adjusted for inflation.   What led to a boom in housing prices was increased demand in places where supply was artificially restricted.   Coastal California was the largest of these places where severe legal restrictions on building houses led to skyrocketing housing prices.   Just between 2000 and 2005, for example, home prices more than doubled in Los Angeles and San Diego, in response to rising demand in places where supply was not allowed to rise to meet it.   At the height of the housing boom in 2005, the ten areas with the biggest home price increases over the previous five years were all in California.   That year, the average home price in California was more than $500K, even though the average size of the homes sold was just 1,600 square feet...   Other enclaves, here and there, with severe housing restrictions also had rapidly rising housing prices to levels far above the national average.   If the housing boom was so localized, how did this become a national problem?...   Mortgages made in California were sold to nationwide financial institutions, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and to firms in Wall Street which bundled thousands of these mortgages into financial securities that were sold nationally and internationally.   A fuller account of all this appeared last year in my book _The Housing Boom and Bust_."
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

++ 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
 
 

2010-02-24

2010-02-24
Tom Lutey _Billings MT Gazette_/_Lee_
Cattle prices sizzle; beef may soon follow
"Prices for live cattle have been creeping up since early November and hit their highest point in 15 months last week.   Prices for feeder cattle less than 700 pounds locally range from $102 to $131 per hundredweight.   Grocery store prices for beef are lagging behind, but still steadily increasing.   Industry insiders say recession-minded shoppers, who turned to cheaper protein sources as the economy soured, are buying beef again.   Foreign markets are improving.   At the same time, there are also fewer cattle being prepared for slaughter, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.   The USDA reported last week that the number of cattle in feedlots fell to a seven-year low in January...   The restaurant business, a key market for beef, has struggled the past two years as recession-scarred consumers stayed home for dinner.   Publicly traded restaurants, like Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, reported sales losses of more than 11% in 2009.   Even midpriced restaurants, like Red Robin, reported sales slumps of more than 10% at locations open at least a year...   Ground beef prices have jumped 23 cents a pound since November, according to a USDA pricing report released Tuesday.   Some steak cuts are still declining in price, indicating soft demand."

2010-02-24
_Chronicle of Higher Education_
Radical leftist Van Jones appointed "distinguished visiting fellow" at Princeton

2010-02-24
Bob Adelman _New American_
The US economy looks like "L"

2010-02-24
Scott Thomson _Pierce county WI Herald_
Secure borders to stop illegal employment
"The government intentionally reports unemployment figures in obscure percentages which sound less painful.   According to Bloomberg, in real numbers that affect real people, there are approximately 30M people unemployed or under-employed.   For every individual experiencing the loss, the pain spreads exponentially.   If a father is laid off, it is easy to imagine how the whole family experiences the resulting challenges.   A closer observation will provide the wider view of how that loss affects a community and a nation.   Recent administrations proclaim that 'hard working and family oriented' people were unemployed and were 'here to do jobs that Americans won't do'.   Estimates on the numbers vary from 10M-20M 'hard working, family oriented' folks were here to take the undesirable work that we don't want.   [Reprehensible Immigration Law Perversion], supported by both presidential candidates, ignored some issues to sell us the benefits.   Do you know that the MS13, one of the most brutal of gangs, is now operating in most major urban areas?   Did you hear about the numerous hospitals that had to close their doors because they were forced to give free medical service?   How about those overburdened schools forced to provide special services for those who can't speak our language?   In the name of political correctness, we have been expected to provide for those who are here to take our jobs.   Data shows that 1 in 4 young people are unemployed.   Since the estimated number of illegal aliens is up to 2/3 of our unemployed, we should demand that the people constitutionally in charge of securing our borders fulfill their duties.   Multi-culturalism is destructive to our culture and has devastated communities.   Legal immigration encourages assimilation while illegal immigration has no commitment to our society."

2010-02-24
_Capstone Report_
The Poor Laws in England, and the USA today

2010-02-24 03:56PST (06:56EST) (11:56GMT)
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
US DoL says Peri Software Solutions Inc., under-paid its tech workers on H-1B visas and owes some $1.45M in back wages to 163 people
"Peri was approved to hire nearly 190 H-1B workers in recent years -- 120 in 2007, 64 in 2008 and 3 in 2009, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services [USCIS] records."

2010-02-24
David P. Goldman _First Things_
Obama's tax increases: The economic equivalent of barbiturates
"Today comes news that 20% of Americans are unemployed or under-employed, according to a Gallup Poll that queried 10 times the number of households involved in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Household Survey.   According to BLS numbers, 16% of Americans are unemployed or under-employed.   We also had news that the number of new homes sold in January fell by 11% to the lowest level on record (below the lowest estimate of the 35 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News before the announcement).   And yesterday the Conference Board reported that consumer confidence dropped by a remarkable 10 points to the lowest level in 10 months.   So much for the consumer recovery: The only sector of the economy showing even a dead-cat bounce is manufacturing, but that's just 15% of the work-force.   These numbers were never exceeded, except at the trough of the Great Depression, when un- and under-employment was at 25%.   And we just might get there."

2010-02-24
Alana Semuels _Los Angeles CA Times_
Tough times for the nation's under-employed
"The nation's January unemployment rate of 9.7% is bleak, but bleaker still is a report out from Gallup this week that the under-employment rate is nearly twice that.   About 19.9% of the work-force is under-employed, Gallup says, meaning they work part time but want to work full time...   The under-employed spend a third less per day than the employed, $48 per day versus $75 per day.   Only 28% of under-employed people say they can make a major purchase, such as a car or home repair, if needed.   And only 56% of the under-employed say they are able to afford basic necessities."

2010-02-24 09:19:43PST (12:19:43EST) (17:19:43GMT)
Alan Zibel _San Jose CA Mercury News_
Quango Freddie Mac lost almost $26G last year; $80G total since the unsound loan scam started to unravel
"[Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae] have already siphoned $111G from [tax-victims] to stay afloat.   That number is expected to hit $188G by 2011 Fall."

2010-02-24
Stephen Franklin _In These Times_
What Happens When the Poor Get Even Poorer?

2010-02-24 11:39:20PST (14:39:20EST) (19:39:20GMT)
Dana Hull _San Jose CA Mercury News_
Bloom Energy unveils its "Bloom Box" fuel cell
"solid oxide fuel cell.   So intense is the interest in the low-emission, power-producing technology that the company has already raised a remarkable $400M from investors...   A 400KW Bloom Box behind one of the buildings on Google's Mountain View campus has been powering a large chunk of the building's energy needs, without public notice, since 2008 July...   The commercial-scale boxes cost $700K to $800K.   They come with a 10-year warranty that includes maintenance and replacement parts, and Bloom says most customers will break even on their investment within 3 to 5 years...   Originally founded as Ion America, the company re-branded itself as Bloom Energy in 2006 September...   Fuel cells use hydrogen, natural gas, methane or other fuels to produce electricity through an electrochemical process that produces a fraction of the emissions of a typical power plant.   About 6 types of fuel cells are being developed or already are on the market, and they often are divided into two camps: 'low temperature' cells that rely on hydrogen and 'high temperature' ones that can use other fuels.   'Because they operate at high temperatures, they can accept other fuels like natural gas and methane, and that's an enormous advantage.', said Michael Tucker of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.   'The disadvantage is that they can shatter as they are heating or cooling.'   Fuel cells, including solid oxide versions, are far from new.   The U.S. Department of Energy and private companies have for years collaborated to accelerate the commercial readiness of fuel cells, with the Energy Department currently spending about $80M a year on fuel-cell research and development...   Since a byproduct of fuel cells is heat, the thermal energy will be captured and used for the [building's] heating, cooling and refrigeration."

2010-02-24
J.D. Tuccille _Civil Liberties Examiner_
Federal judge Alex Kozinski chides fellows that "4th Amendment is now gone"
"Last week, admonishing his colleagues, who had just turned away an important search-and-seizure case, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, effectively pronounced the Fourth Amendment dead.   After the court signed off on police search of an apartment without a warrant, probable cause or reasonable suspicion, Kozinski said, 'Whatever may have been left of the Fourth Amendment... is now gone.'   In the case of United States v. Lemus, police peacefully arrested Juan Hernan Lemus of Calexico, California, outside his home 'before he could fully enter the doorway and retreat into his living room'.   With Lemus in custody, and without a search warrant for the apartment, police then entered the dwelling for a look around."

2010-02-24 14:00PST (17:00EST) (22:00GMT)
Josch Fischman _Chronicle of Higher Education_
Researchers finding ways to keep heads above the "exaflood" of data

2010-02-24
Tara Lynn Thompson _Right Pundits_
Government Motors paying former CEO $3K per hour
"That, of course, doesn't include the pay package of $9M ($1.7M base salary and $7.3M in stock) GM pays for the current CEO Ed Whitacre, who apparently can't perform his job without advice from the guy he fired."

2010-02-24
Ashley Anderson _Columbus Examiner_
Ohio jobs down, taxes up
"The number of government jobs in Ohio has increased 10.5% in the past 20 years, with federal, state, and local officials in Ohio making more than any private-sector workers.   Mayer and McCleary explain that 'government workers work fewer hours, but make more money, receive better and cheaper health care, have job security, and can retire early on pensions disconnected from economic reality'."

2010-02-14
William Cormier _Just Another CoverUp_
Red China poses a clear and present danger to USA's national security
"[Red China's] ascendancy as a leading economic power was not due to Chinese ingenuity, nor are its new weapons systems that rival some of our own and threaten the West's domination of sea and air power in the Asiatic region.   They had help -- and that help came primarily from WM and the constant industrial/military espionage that has allowed [Red China] to become a global power.   [Red China's] economic strength was fostered by corporate greed and their abject (American corporations) refusal to refrain from transferring vital western technology to a nation that has constantly displayed an utter disregard for human rights...   The Chinese were essentially newcomers to large scale manufacturing and the varied logistics and management necessary to implement the skills and marketing techniques necessary for [Red China] to ascend to its current status as a global economic power-house: 'Indeed, Chinese fascination with the WM model is growing fast.   The company offers up its executives for seminars, where hundreds of Chinese retailers and officials gather to hear lectures on procurement, accounting, human resources and how to prevent theft.   Last month WM donated $1M to Beijing's Tsinghua University...'   '[Red China's] official, government-sanctioned theft of advanced-technology intellectual property is another regular feature of [Red China's] industrial policy.   In late 2002, for example, [Red Chinese] engineers attempted to steal software and hardware secrets from Sun Microsystems, NEC Electronics Corporation, and Transmeta Corporation offices in California's Silicon Valley.'..."

2010-02-14
_McCreary county KY Record_
KY candidates for US senate
"Jon Scribner is a Republican candidate from Gray...   Gurley Martin is a Republican candidate from Owensboro...   Darlene Price is a Democrat candidate from Whitley City with over 25 years of combined law enforcement and investigative experience as a decorated Captain in the U.S. Army Military Police Corps, serving both on active duty and in the reserves; A Special Agent in the U.S. Customs Service fighting on the front lines of the war on drugs; and as an investigator and security consultant/manager in the private sector.   Price earned a BS degree in Criminal Justice from Eastern Kentucky University, a Masters Degree in Secondary Education, and is completing a Juris Doctorate degree specializing in Constitutional Law.   She is the co-author of _BorderGate_.   C.M. 'Trey' Grayson is a Republican candidate from Ft. Mitchell...   Maurice M. Sweeney is a Democrat candidate from Louisville.   WHAT ARE YOUR PRIORITIES FOR KENTUCKY? FOR McCREARY COUNTY?   SCRIBNER: Jobs, interaction with the citizens.   Use of coal and natural gas.   Road construction/revitalization.   PRICE: My number one priority is to get Kentuckians back to work.   Here are two ideas that I think will help: 1.) Eliminate harmful national programs like the H-1B Visa program.   H-1B involves over five hundred thousand (500K) jobs in the U.S.A.   It allows U.S. multi-national corporations and U.S. employers to temporarily hire foreign workers, instead of U.S. workers, in specialty occupations for much lower wages than American workers usually get.   This has the effect of driving down wages on a national level.   Further, if a foreign worker in H-1B status quits or is dismissed by the sponsoring employer, the worker can then find another employer and apply for a change of status.   These jobs are ones with highly specialized knowledge including, but not limited to: architecture, engineering, mathematics, physical sciences, social sciences, biotechnology, medicine and health, education, law, accounting, business specialties, theology, and the arts -- and include some of our nation's best jobs.   The Department of Homeland Security approved about 132K H-1B visas in 2004 and 117K in 2005.   With our current unemployment rate at around 10%, this program should not exist.   I believe that this program exists only because the multi-national corporations who most benefit are also the ones who are some of the largest contributors to campaigns on Capitol Hill.   This is just one of the many painful results of the quid pro quo ('this for that') of 'crony campaign financing' that I will fight against when I reach Capitol Hill as the only candidate in this race who has refused corporate money."

2010-02-24
Jon Excell _The Engineer_
What skills shortage?

2010-02-24 (5770 Adar 10)
Steven Emerson _Jewish World Review_
Why Religious Freedom Commission is under attack
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

2010-02-24 (5770 Adar 10)
R' Avi Shafran _Jewish World Review_
The gift of the "prayer bomber"
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

2010-02-24 (5770 Adar 10)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
Global Warmist Update
"Mounting evidence suggests that claims of manmade global warming might turn out to be the greatest hoax in mankind's history.   Immune and hostile to the evidence, President Barack Obama's administration and most of the U.S. Congress sides with Climate Czar Carol Browner...   Recently, IPCC was forced to retract their glacier disappearance claim, which was made on the basis of a non-scientific magazine article...   The IPCC also had to retract its claim that up to 40% of the Amazonian forests were at risk from global warming and would likely be replaced by 'tropical savannahs' if temperatures continued to rise.   The IPCC claim was based on a paper co-authored by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), two environmental activist groups.   England's now-disgraced University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) has been a leader in climate research data.   Their data, collected and analyzed by them, have been used for years to bolster IPCC efforts to press governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions.   Climatologists, including CRU's disgraced former director Professor Phil Jones, have been accused of manipulating data and criminally withholding scientific information to prevent its disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.   Professor Jones, considered to be the high priest of the manmade global warming movement, has been in the spotlight since he was forced to step down as CRU's director after the leaking of e-mails that skeptics claim show scientists were manipulating data.   In a recent interview with the BBC, he admitted that he did not believe that 'the debate on climate change is over' and that he didn't 'believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this'.   Long denied by the [warmists], Professor Jones admitted that the Medieval Warm Period (the years 800 to 1300) might well have been as warm as the Current Warm Period (1975-present), or warmer, and that if it was, 'then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented'.   That suggests global warming may not be a manmade phenomenon.   In any case, Professor Jones said that for the past 15 years, there has been no 'statistically significant' global warming.   During the BBC interview, Professor Jones dodged several questions: why he had asked a colleague to delete e-mails relating to the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report and ask others to do likewise; whether some of his handling of data had crossed the line of acceptable scientific practice; and what about his letter saying that he had used a 'trick' to 'hide the decline' in tree-ring temperature data?   Given all the false claims and evidence pointing to scientific fraud, I don't think it wise to continue spending billions of dollars and enacting economically crippling regulations in the name of fighting global warming.   At the minimum, we should stop the Environmental Protection Agency from going on with their plans to regulate carbon emissions.   Companies should resign from the United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a lobbying group of businesses and radical environmentalists.   Dr. Tom Borelli, who is director of the National Center for Public Policy Research's Free Enterprise Project, says that BP, Caterpillar, Conoco Phillips, Marsh, Inc. and Xerox have the common sense to do so already."
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

2010-02-24 (5770 Adar 10)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
Too Many Apologies
"the point is that any apology he might make should be made to his family, who were hurt, not to the public, who might be disappointed in him, but not really hurt...   Slavery is too serious for an apology and somebody else being a slaveowner is not something for you to apologize for.   When somebody who has never owned a slave apologizes for slavery to somebody who has never been a slave, then what began as mushy thinking has degenerated into theatrical absurdity -- or, worse yet, politics.   Slavery has existed all over the planet for thousands of years, with black, white, yellow and other races being both slaves and enslavers...   This craze for aimless apologies is part of a general loss of a sense of personal responsibility in our time.   We are supposed to feel guilty for what other people did but there are a thousand cop-outs for what we ourselves did to those we did it to...   Personal responsibility is a real problem for those who want to collectivize society and take away our power to make our own decisions, transferring that power to third parties like themselves, who imagine themselves to be so much wiser and nobler than the rest of us...   The police cannot possibly maintain law and order by themselves.   Millions of people can monitor their own behavior better than any third parties can.   Cops can cope with that segment of society who have no sense of personal responsibility, but not if that segment becomes a large part of the whole population.   Yet increasing numbers of educators and the intelligentsia seem to have devoted themselves to undermining or destroying a sense of personal responsibility and making 'society' responsible instead.   Aimless apologies are just one small symptom of this larger and more dangerous attitude."
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

++ 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
 
 

2010-02-25

2010-02-25 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 452,468 in the week ending Feb. 20, a decrease of 25,767 from the previous week.   There were 605,668 initial claims in the comparable week in 2009.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.2% during the week ending Feb. 13, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 5,527,142, a decrease of 70,546 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 4.6% and the volume was 6,108,398.   Extended benefits were available in AL, AK, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, DC, GA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, ME, MA, MI, MN, NV, NH, NJ, NM, NY, NC, OH, OR, PA, PR, RI, SC, TN, TX, VT, VA, WA, WV, and WI during the week ending February 6...   States reported 5,479,942 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending Feb. 6, a decrease of 317,933 from the prior week.   There were 1,847,439 claimants in the comparable week in 2009.   EUC weekly claims include first, second, third, and fourth tier activity.
graphs
more graphs

2010-02-25
_Jackson MI Citizen Patriot_
unemployment insurance benefit extension
"between 100 and 200+ applicants for the position"

2010-02-25 10:34PST (13:34EST) (18:34GMT)
Jason Scott _Cumberland PA Sentinel_
Business ownere Jay Mowery joins race for 199th PA legislative district
"Other Republican candidates include: Carlisle attorney Stephen Bloom, Big Spring school board member Bill Piper, former Newville mayor John Gatten, J. Brian Walter, a certified engineer, Penn Township Supervisor Kenneth Sheaffer, Clerk of Court Dennis Lebo and Abe White, a Newville landscaper."

2010-02-25
Frosty Wooldridge _Before It's News_
Congress cutting American's financial throats: immigration and out-sourcing jobs: interview of Mike Folkerth
"Think about what I just said.   We have purposely shipped our critical core industry to [Red China], Japan, India, South Korea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and a hundred other places that I'm not sure I can spell, in order that these foreign nations can then send it back for the unemployed Americans to purchase...   Why do we import more than we export when we have 27M unemployed/under-employed Americans that want to go to work?   Why not make these goods ourselves?   I'm told that such activity creates jobs.   I'll do some research on that rumor and get back with you.   Okay, I'm done and it works.   Why would the greatest industrialized nation in the world allow their population to stagger to their unemployed knees while having a communist foreign nation provide us with our basic manufactured goods?"

2010-02-25
Neil McAllister _InfoWorld_
Correcting independent programmers' no-win scenario: A hostile business climate is stifling entrepreneurship in software development, and the U.S. economy pays the price
Slash Dot
Slash Dot

2010-02-25 (5770 Adar 11)
Rabbi Doctor Asher Meir _Jewish World Review_
When walking away from your mortgage is both economically sound and makes ethical sense
appeal for help from publisher of Jewish World Review

++ 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
 
 

2010-02-26

1846-02-26: Buffalo Bill Cody's birth-day

2010-02-26
Linda Halstead-Acharya _Billings MT Gazette_/_Lee_
Livingston woman provides a home for aging draft horses
"Every 3 weeks, the horses consume four 1,500-pound bales of hay.   Every day they chomp through 150 pounds of pellets.   In 15 minutes they can demolish a 50-pound bag of carrots.   Not counting vet and farrier bills, their upkeep runs $4K per horse per year, she said.   Through human eyes, there's nothing fancy about United in Light's facility.   No showy white fences.   No swanky barn.   There are just the ingredients -- plenty of food, lots of attention and good posts for rubbing -- to create a horsey retirement retreat...   As Derr walks among her aging charges, they amble toward her.   Except for one unexpected foal, Promise, the horses are all 25 or older.   The long-lived breeds typically reach 30 or even 40, Derr said.   Like Prince, they average 1 ton each and stand somewhere between 18 and 19 hands at the withers...   Although she has taken in a dozen draft horses and helped find homes for hundreds more, there are still horses waiting for refuge."

2010-02-26
Susan Long _Straits Times_/_Asia One_
When too much of a "good" thing is bad
"Philip Martin wants to state for the record that he is an avid admirer of Singapore's ability to do just what it says it will do.   Yet he has grave doubts over the Singapore Government's recent announcement that it plans to scale back on foreign workers, and has even imposed a concrete deadline to do this -- within 5 years...   During the Asian economic crisis, when unemployment reached a 10-year high, the Taiwanese government announced the ratio of foreign workers would be capped at 25%...   The number of foreign workers allowed into Taiwan will now be based on its unemployment rate, opening the door wider for some industries to import even more labour...   Now that foreign labour is seen widely as a soft option and reflexively used to fuel growth, mind children while mothers go to work and shore up the short supply of menial workers for jobs that locals do not want, is it possible to shut the flood-gates and go back to the way we were?   He is doubtful.   As history has shown, there is nothing more permanent than temporary foreign workers, thanks to the distortions and dependencies they create...   Despite the success of the US in attracting bright students who stay on after graduation to work, such a practice holds cautionary tales for Singapore, which has tried to replicate it to shore up its falling birth rate...   'For one thing, in a bid to get more, the definition of quality often slips.   For another, just because you have a college degree does not mean you are skilled.   In India, you can buy a degree pretty cheap, there are many ways to get around the system.', he says.   Then, there are also unintended consequences that lead to long-term labour market distortions.   For example, young and hungry foreign students, mostly from India and China, now form the majority of graduate students enrolled in science, engineering and technology faculties in US universities.   Desperate to get sponsored for legal immigrant visas, they go on to serve as relatively poorly paid post-doctoral researchers for five to 10 years, holding down wages and, at the same time, discouraging Americans from studying and working in science and engineering.   This trend started during the 1990s IT boom, when Congress raised the limit for H-1B visas (given to foreigners with degrees filling degree-level jobs) several times, from 65K to 195K a year [and raised them again through various 'exemptions']...   Similarly, he notes today's biggest rural-urban migration story is happening in China, and the most obvious thing the Chinese government should do is to get rid of its hukou system (residence permits which tie every person to a locale).   'However, the [Red Chinese] government says that if it did that, there might be slums and protests in cities.   It may kill the goose that lays the golden egg.   So there is no easy answer.', he notes."

2010-02-26 07:42PST (10:42EST) (15:42GMT)
Jeffry Bartash _MarketWatch_
UMich consumer sentiment index fell from 74.4 in January to 73.6

2010-02-26 11:16:57PST (14:16:57EST) (19:16:57GMT)
Christopher S. Rugaber _San Jose CA Mercury News_/_AP_
Bill Warren, pioneer of on-line job search, starts over

2010-02-26
Sunil Sharan _Washington DC Post_
The green jobs myth
"The Obama administration allocated a little more than $4 billion in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to the smart grid, an unprecedented amount for a hitherto-neglected but critical piece of our national infrastructure.   Much of this is to be spent installing close to 20M 'smart meters' over the next 5 years...   It takes one worker today roughly 15 minutes to read a single meter.   So in a day, a meter reader can scan about 30 meters, or about 700 meters a month.   Meters are typically read once a month, making it the base period to calculate meter-reading jobs.   Reading 1M meters every month engages about 1,400 personnel.   In 5 years, 20M manually read meters are expected to disappear, taking with them some 28K meter-reading jobs.   IOW, instead of creating jobs, smart metering will probably result in net job [and privacy] destruction."

2010-02-26
Michael O'Brien _Human Resource Executive_
Guest-Worker Woes

2010-02-26
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
Professor Ron Hira investigates executives' rhetoric on H-1B visas
"Hira examines, using government statistics, what specific, large-users of the H-1B, the L-1, and the permanent labor certification programs do with those programs.   He finds that the big firms that are off-shore out-sourcing firms (think of Tata) are highly unlikely to convert their H-1B and L-1 workers to permanent resident alien status.   In fact, Tata, one of India's largest corporations, in 2008 had 1,539 approved H-1Bs, and 1,998 approved L-1s, and did not seek a single permanent labor certification.   OTOH, firms with 'traditional business models', i.e., doing little out-sourcing (at least so far), such as MSFT, handle things differently.   In 2008 MSFT, the fifth largest of the H-1B users, received permission to hire 1,037 new H-1Bs, while getting labor certifications for 703 people (most of whom were then working in H-1B status).   Goldman Sachs and its thunderous bonuses, OTOH, does little to hold on to the non-immigrant workers that its chair, Lloyd Blankfein, has described as the most highly trained and talented people in the world.   The Wall Street firm got 211 H-1B visas in FY2008, and sought only 13 permanent labor certifications.   Did any of the 211 or, more likely, the 13 get those bonuses?   The government's data does not cover that point.   Hira reports that in FY2008 the country admitted more than 214K new H-1B and L-1 workers, but only about 38K of the aliens in those two classes (who had arrived earlier) were converted to permanent resident alien status via labor certifications.   (Some others, as he does not mention, presumably got green cards by marrying green card holders or U.S. citizens.)   So only a small minority of these two classes of non-immigrant workers made it into the permanent resident alien status that year, a ratio that is likely to persist."
Bridge to Immigration or Cheap Temporary Labor? The H-1B & L-1 Visa Programs Are a Source of Both
class action against Tata

2010-02-26
David Kagan _Challenger, Gray & Christmas at Work_
The Recruiting Back-Lash
"It seems like a life-time ago that our primary source of resumes was running classified ads in the Sunday employment section.   Though we had to open hundreds of envelopes at least we were guaranteed to see each resume...   [Our abuse of technolgy] has all but killed the candidate dialogue.   How many times have we heard from candidates about the dreaded 'black hole'.   You know, that not so mythical place where resumes go to die while applicants wait for a response they likely won't get.   This mythical place turns out to be our own ATS [resume parser] data-bases.   It seems obvious that we would make the best of those resumes, when in reality recruiters often overlook their ATS, and often in favor of some unproven new sourcing methodology...   the larger issue at play is how we communicate with candidates on an on-going basis.   It's also about how we keep talent engaged in a dialogue...   I've been in the trenches dealing with hundreds of resumes for each vacancy.   I know how daunting it can be but it's high time that we figure out how to use technology to communicate in a two-way dialogue and without feeding the 'black hole'."

2010-02-26

DJIA	10,325.26
S&P 500	1,104.49
NASDAQ	2,238.26
Nikkei	10,126
10-year US T-Bond	3.61%
crude oil	$79.66/barrel
gold	$1,118.90/ounce
silver	$16.50/ounce
platinum	$1,539.90/ounce
palladium	$432.40/ounce
copper	$0.204375/ounce
natgas	$4.805/MBTU
reformulatedgasoline	$2.0788/gal
heatingoil	$2.0249/gal
soybeans	$9.61/bushel
maize	$3.89/bushel
wheat	$5.1925/bushel
dollarindex	80.3799
yenperdollar	88.90
dollarspereuro	1.3618
dollarsperpound	1.5248
swissfranksperdollar	1.0741
indianrupeesperdollar	46.13
mexicanpesosperdollar	12.7976
MorganStanleyHighTechIndex	559.68

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
 
 

2010-02-27

2010-02-27
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
News and Opinions about Obama's National Socialist Health Care Perversion proposals (ObummerDoesn'tCare)
Fiscal Times
Michael Tanner: Fiscal Times; Bipartisan Indifference to Controlling Health Care Costs
Merrill Goozner: Fiscal Times: The Obama Plan
Aoife White & Elena Becatoros: Fiscal Times: Odds Are Long but Leftists Push Ahead (ObummerDoesn'tCare)

2010-02-27
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Federal aid to radical leftist indoctrination: Obama's Organizing for America

2010-02-27
Frosty Wooldridge _Before It's News_
How to Destroy America, and other speeches
"In 2003 October, I attended an immigration-over-population conference in Washington, DC, filled to capacity by many concerned Americans and leaders.   Writers, speakers, CEO's, representatives from Congress such as Tom Tancredo as well as former governors graced the podium.   African-American Terry Anderson spoke like a gathering tornado to a capacity audience.   Bonnie Eggle, mother of the national parks ranger Kris Eggle, slain by Mexican drug-runners 2 years ago on our unguarded southern border -- gave a compelling speech that left not one dry eye in the place.   Peter Gadiel, father of Jamie Gadiel, spoke powerfully on how the World Trade Center took his son and how nothing has been done since -- to stop the flow of illegal immigration into the United States.   Even with the façade of Homeland Security, according to Time Magazine, 2004 September 12, 'Who Left the Door Open?' 4K illegal aliens cross nightly in Arizona alone.   3M continue walking, crawling or tunneling across our borders this year.   Their accelerating numbers under-mine America's ability to function.   During the conference, speaker after speaker astounded the audience with facts on how fast the present administration and Congress continue dismantling the American Dream for average citizens.   Mr. Rob Sanchez of Arizona, showed how H1 B and L 1 visas have ripped 1M high tech jobs out of American worker's hands.   Another speaker told a packed audience how off-shoring and out-sourcing, fully supported by the president and congress have cost over 3M American jobs in the past 6 years.   His prediction was even more depressing: 'In excess of 3M more jobs will be out-sourced within 4 years.   Those American jobs are headed to Mexico, India, [Red China], Pakistan and Brazil.'   Moments later, former Colorado Governor Richard D. Lamm, stood up and gave a speech on 'How to Destroy America'.   The audience sat spell-bound by the 8 methods for destruction of the United States."

++ 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
 
 

2010-02-28

2010-02-28
Thomas E. Brewton _View from 1776_
Algore's Rationalizations

2010 February
Jens Hainmueller & Michael J. Hiscox _Stanford_/_American Political Science Review_ vol104 #1
attitudes toward highly-skilled and low-skilled guest-workers and immigration: rich and poor natives are equally opposed to low-skilled immigration in general (but no skill level standards exist)

++ 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
 
 

Proposed Bills 2010

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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