Politicians (And Their Corporate Paymasters) Are Like Diapers

(Special thanks to Lynard Skynard)

“Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing often and for the same reasons.”
-Mark Twain


Ode to the Stinking Bums

Mark Twain was half right in his assessment about politicians. But these infantile politicians are completely dependent upon an unfit, parental unit of greedy and most often sociopathic private sector of corporate and investment elites, who purchase and control these odious, stinking bums. Who is monitoring the architects on this War on America’s Middle Class? Oh right. There is a designated “Middle Class Czar”, Joe Biden. HA!

Over the weekend, General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner was asked to resign by the Obama administration, citing the auto manufacturer’s efforts under his watch as “unsatisfactory.” For all the criticism of whiny American union members with their audacious requests for decent pay and benefits adjusted to the cost of living, note how the bucks keep trickling up to the top, courtesy Joe Taxpayer, while our corporate and political elites are selling off American jobs to the third world. Let’s not forget who precisely comprises Obama’s Economic Advisory board of private sector investors who stand to profit most wildly through this Great Wealth Redistribution Scheme by exterminating America’s educated middle class. When will America start monitoring and making accountable this stealth ilk?

As Rob Oak at the Economic Populist reports here, GM’s people are being squeezed by the steady hand of the Obama administration.

Power to the People or to the Plutocracy? But why should an auto industry CEO be asked to step down and not a bank CEO? It wasn’t so long ago where yours truly reported here on William Greider’s speculation that Wall Street’s AIG bailout would “bring down one or both political parties, take your choice.” Back in Septemeber, 2008, recall Hank Paulson, who breathlessly insisted "We need this to be clean and quick." Hmm. Why would that be? Because the U.S. Senate Bill was secretly designed to help foreign banks.

Once it finally becomes obvious that the fishy Goldman Sachs & Friends Wall Street Bailout was designed to eradicate America’s white collar middle class and is the ultimate transference of wealth and power grabbing by and for a few insiders, this distinctly American diaper of a TV Reality show will already be in the can.

Where is the righteous indignation and outrage? Add to that a few well-placed Wall Street Goldman Sach$ insiders and it is clear to see why the Motor City is being taken over by a few elites leading this War on America’s Middle Class. Isn’t the Wall Street Bailout Bill designed to sell American white collar jobs to India? Who wasn’t in a better position than Hank Paulson’s insider protégé, Neel Kashkari (pronounced cash - carry) of Goldman Sachs to pave the way?

General Motors will however receive “adequate working capital” over the next 60 days to produce reorganization plan acceptable to the administration- not to mention Wagoner’s $20 million retirement package reward.

In the meantime, for all of Obama’s rhetoric of “taxing the rich”, his plan is targeting the working middle class instead of requiring the upper 3% to pay thru their hubris stuffed nostrils. This bracket is, after all, comprised of the worst abusers of economic exploitation. So far, the Obama administration is succeeding in creating a monumental class war of uniting the poor and the wealthy against the middle class in America.

Heck of a job, Barry and Timmeh. But this wasn’t what the “Yes We Can” enthusiasts had really opted for.

Or was it?

Either way, it is sickening to know that parting CEOs like GM’s Rick Wagoner whom our president politely kicked out of the company still get to walk away with $20 million while its workers struggle to keep their jobs and some semblance of a living wage to support themselves and their families in America’s aggressive race to the, odious, stinking bottom.

Party on, plebes!

-2Truthy

2Truthy's Happy Friday Hour with Neil Young: Cough Up the Bucks

"Where did all the money go/ where did all the cash flow/ cough up the bucks, cough up the bucks..."

-Neil Young

Neil Young's new album Fork In The Road is due out April 7.

Click here for "Cough Up the Bucks" and enjoy Mr. Weird's hilarious take on your average, every day, decked out to the nines corporate raider roaming around in a mega-stretch limo ride while singing and talking into his Blackberry as he checks out stock reports on his laptop.

Happy Friday, Loserettes!

2Truthy

Outsourcing Dicks Now Outsourcing Dickwear

Breaking News

Washington - Still think your brand new, shiny, happy people-faced government administration isn’t out to screw YOU?

300 workers from Alabama condom factory Alatech Healthcare Products are about to get the sack because YOUR friendly government pricks have a stiffie for pimping YOUR jobs to the third world.

As the last U.S.-based supplier of condoms for global HIV/AIDS prevention programs, Alatech could be forced to shut its doors because the federal government sent the work to cheaper suppliers in Asia who claim they will produce the global ream-wrappers for 2 cents vs. Alatech’s 5 cents.

Okay. Maybe working in a rubber plant isn’t the most exotic job, but somebody has to do it.

But China will make them? Last year, 2Truthy reported shocking details here about how China recycles used condoms into hair bands which spread the same sexually-transmittable diseases that condoms were originally meant to prevent. No WONDER Alatech’s one-eyed-trouser snake covers cost a lousy 3 cents more!

Company President Larry Povlacs said Alatech provided durable condoms at USAID's request and was never asked to address any complaints about that style. He said *insert shcok here* that USAID simply wanted the cheapest product without regard for his workers in Dothan and Eufaula, Ala.

"I'm faced with telling people that I've worked with for 30 years that they may no longer have a job," Povlacs said.

Shortly after Congress omitted the “buy American” language for the program in its latest spending bill, USAID quickly signed new contracts with three foreign suppliers and dropped Alatech altogether. The new contractors are in China, South Korea and Malaysia.

Povlacs said he is working with lawmakers to get "buy American" language restored in next year's spending bill, and company officials are meeting with USAID this week. A spokesman for Rep. Bobby Bright, a Democrat whose district is home to Alatech, said he also is exploring other avenues to help the firm.

-2Truthy

The French Are Revolting and So Are Americans, If They Won't Be, Too!

FROM THE DESK OF QUINCY

Hello Everybody, it's me.

QUINCY.

I really do hope you all enjoy the above scene from one of my most favorite movies!

Two very shocking stories appeared today regarding more fat and nasty corporate overlords feasting at the trough as they slash jobs from citizens, er, make that peasants --- who are now, yes, revolting. It’s all the rage, of course, for U.S. politicians to personally profit by selling out the lives of America’s educated middle class professionals as 2Truthy already reported here How Our Politicians Buy Foreign “Friends” to Sack American Workers.

The first story today involves Patrick Thibodeau’s report in this Computerworld article that IBM “may be getting set to make its largest single workforce reduction thus far this year” and hand over 4,000 U.S. jobs to India. Other estimates mark the number of American jobs lost in this reduction to India at 5,000. But what I don't understand is why an already fat boss from IBM would ever want to take jobs away from his neighbors who need them, so first I called up Mel to ask him and he said:

"Quincy, they're not like you and me. They would rather watch American corpses pile up in the streets than SACRIFICE (Mel said to put the word "sacrifice" in caps so I did) their Hawaiian hookers."

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I fall asleep every night and never forget to thank The Hog on High for my wonderful adopted family here at 2Truthy’s place. I never have to worry about where my next feed will come from or if the swimming pool will be filthy – not that I care if it’s filthy, since I grew up in a Pig Sty and our differences about cleanliness can tend to vary.


Anyway, in another story today, the French sure know how to grab headlines, leaving their U.S. counterparts to rotate on a spit when it comes to battling against the mean corporate windbags to demand their jobs back. In exciting news from the City of Lights, a group of unidentified, extremely polite French workers burned a whole bunch of tires and then marched on the presidential palace where that short guy lives with Mick Jagger’s old squeeze and held a manager of U.S. manufacturer 3M hostage Wednesday as anger mounted over job cuts and executive bonuses!


I guess this is what is meant when they say the French are “stuck up”… only for all the bravado affixed to the U.S. tough guy stereotype, American workers couldn’t shoot the basement worm with a Grizzley 50 Big Boar if they even tried…


But thousands of miles away, as detained hostage 3M manager Luc Rousselet endured the second day of captivity at a plant in Pithiviers, south of Paris, the considerate, kind and civilized French mob made sure that the 3M manager was treated like a prince. Rousselet assured an AP reporter "everything's fine" and that workers planned to bring him “mussels and French fries” for dinner - sans the requested french bread, brie and a couple of bottles of Vintage 1985 Chateau Margeaux -- but hey, not bad for hostage dining.


So then the really, really angry French decided to march over to the presidential palace and a light up a huge bonfire of tires because a German auto parts factory in Clairoix, northeast of Paris, plans to totally shut down in 2010, which might explain where the angry French mobs got the idea to burn tires for their protest.


And other people in Europe, too, are starting to get pissed off at these big, fat windbags so make sure to read the WHOLE article, everybody!


Vive le France!


QUINCY

The Cash Cow of Indian Outsourcing

The Cash Cow of Indian Outsourcing
- Americans Must Demand a Moral Bailout-


“Our elites are imploding. Their fraud and corruption are slowly being exposed as the disparity between their words and our reality becomes wider and more apparent. The rage that is bubbling up across the country will have to be countered by the elite with less subtle forms of control. But unless we grasp the "societal play of forces that operates beneath the surface of political forms" we will be cursed with a more ruthless form of corporate power, one that does away with artifice and the seduction of a consumer society and instead wields power through naked repression.”
-Chris Hedges

Last week’s outrage over the AIG bonus scandal offered a few social engineering insights into what kind of corruption and corporate crimes the media will and will not promote. Note that while Arianna Huffington, Limbaugh AND Drudge feigned outrage over AIG, not a word was uttered on Obama’s amoral federal CIO appointment of Vivek Kundra, who either through sheer negligence or corruption knew nothing or everything about criminal dealings within his agency and yet was reinstated by Obama anyway:

“Nevermind that, aside from this economic depression when white collar American jobs are being handed over to cheap foreign labor outsourcing firms/H-1Bs, that a direct report to Vivek Kundra was arrested at the D.C. Office of the CTO on bribery and money laundering charges but today Obama has announced that he is reinstating Vivek Kundra.”

JOBS and not THE ECONOMY. In other words, by keeping citizens perpetually focused on “The Economy”, the hope is to keep them distracted from the millions of American jobs being sold to Indians. But our moral collapse, as Hedges notes,“ is as terrifying, and as dangerous, as our economic collapse” and the U.S. media are feverishly gatekeeping the Cash Cow of Indian outsourcing as they too, seek fame and profit. As I've said before, "It's Not the Economy, Stupid. It's YOUR JOB!"



When was the last time the media went full-tilt-boogie on demanding that the Obama administration stop handing American jobs to Indians? While “ordinary” American citizens are plied with too much complex economic stimulus package information that they will never, ever understand, what’s not to get about our president and his greedy, hubris stuffed corporate advisory team handing over our jobs to the third world?

As I wrote less than one year ago when Bush was president, The Neo-Frat Boy Corporate State now embraced by Obama is actively dismantling our freedoms and destroying the lives of millions of U.S. citizens. While the Obama administration steps up its human slave trade commitment with India and pledges to kill off America’s white collar middle class, when do the plebes rise up and demand a new corporate code of conduct that puts Americans first?

Chris Hedges has written another excellent essay entitled America Is in Need of a Moral Bailout where he once again cites the sociopathy that defines corporate America and how we, the plebes, have idly stood by while these elites “have trashed our universities, turning them into vocational factories that produce corporate drones and chase after defense-related grants and funding.” And what do these elites do when they’re not contaminating the halls of higher learning? Why, they dabble in treating human beings as commodities on the slave trade auction block. Is it any wonder that the “moral nihilism” so prevalent in this country is idolized by the media whores who gatekeep corporate America’s sickening little Cash Cow Secret, Indian outsourcing? So where are the American journalists? Hedges writes:

“Our press, which should promote such intellectual and moral questioning, confuses bread and circus with news and refuses to give a voice to critics who challenge not this bonus payment or that bailout but the pernicious superstructure of the corporate state itself.”

But keeping silent on the Cash Cow of Indian outsourcing and killing off America’s white collar middle class is JOB ONE for the Obama administration and its gatekeeping media whores (some whom used to report and wrote a book on this fascist, ethnic American cleansing until getting a wh$f of the trough)…

Sshhh…The war on America’s educated middle class by the Tech lobby is supposed to be a secret…In this Computerworld article India Inc. gets White House meeting on H-1B Visas, Patrick Thibodeau reports that a “delegation from one of India's largest business groups visited Washington last week” and that this meeting would have gone entirely unreported here had it not been for reports in the Indian news media. Thibodeau notes the Obama administration’s vehement supporters of the amoral practice of treating human beings as commodities to trade like slaves on the auction block so that a few global elites can profit:

“The White House has given some signals that it might support an increase in the annual visa cap — primarily via the appointment of officials who have advocated cap increases in the past, such as Janet Napolitano, the former governor of Arizona and now secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. And in meeting with Summers, the delegation from India found itself with the White House organization that may be most likely to support an H-1B increase. One of the NEC's deputy directors is Diana Farrell, an Obama appointee who has been a strong supporter of offshore outsourcing. Prior to taking her job at the NEC, Farrell was a director at management consulting firm McKinsey & Co., which has argued in reports — some authored by Farrell — that offshore outsourcing creates savings that are reinvested by companies.”

One big, fat, fascist GroupThink Tank. The Great American Skilled Labor Shortage Myth has spawned another Great Lie: that Silicon Valley corporate executive management are the “best and brightest” when in fact, most of these cultish Groupthinkers enter beneath the golden ropes of corporate cultural nepotism, riding in through the backdoor with east coast investment bank credentials and/or with t$es to the beltway firmly in hand. These sociopaths hate educated Americans and want to lord over Indian workers here like rajas on elephants. Many Indian and Tech lobby venture capital backed start-ups list such banks as Citibank, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley etc. as investors, so it comes as no surprise that the GS crew (Paulson, Geithner, Summers etc.) are cozy with Obama’s venture capital advisors. These morally bankrupt elites advising Obama are all within bounds of their mutual admiration society of like-minded sociopathic technocrats or Neo-Frat Boy corporate fascists running this administration and destroying America’s white collar middle class. Add to this the fascist’s media playground, HuffPo, which is also a recipient of $25 million in venture capital to manipulate the masses and voila! Kool-Aid Stand Central to dispense “news” as the Diva of Dope buries any news of the American educated middle class holocaust. Instead, we read chatter about “racism” and “sacrifice.”

And about that quaint notion of “morality”? Hedges describes below how the American halls of higher learning have been systematically ridded of the smartest people in the room, being hijacked by corporate sociopaths and military power:

“And at Penn State, where I was located at the time, the university had joined itself at the hip with corporate and military power. Put differently, corporate and Pentagon money was now funding research projects and increasingly knowledge was being militarized in the service of developing weapons of destruction, surveillance and death. Couple this assault with the fact that faculty were becoming irrelevant as an oppositional force. Many disappeared into discourses that threatened no one, some simply were too scared to raise critical issues in their classrooms for fear of being fired, and many simply no longer had the conviction to uphold the university as a democratic public sphere."

Thibodeau’s article raises great concern for American citizens as he describes the powerful Indian Lobby:

“India's top IT trade group, the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), called the H-1B hiring restrictions set by Congress on financial services firms that receive federal bailout funds an issue of "extreme concern."

Animals without borders. Clearly, based upon the above, the Indian Lobby views their own citizens as animals without borders and fiercely wants educated Americans to be viewed on the same lowly, amoral plane as described by Nasscom. FTS! What the U.S. needs now more than ever is to demand a new social contract between corporations and America’s white collar professionals and to replace these sociopathic GroupThink Tanks and hateful, corrupt CEOs with a moral public trust.

As the Neo-Frat Boy fascists kill off America’s middle class, what are Americans doing about it? The real dopes are the ones on the Left who fall for all of this “sacrifice” and “hope” bs. In 1967, Theodor Adorno wrote an essay called "Education After Auschwitz." He argued that the moral corruption that made the Holocaust possible remained "largely unchanged" and that "the mechanisms that render people capable of such deeds" must be made visible.


Perhaps the greatest threat to restoring a social contract based upon civility and morality to American citizens are American citizens… who allow themselves the haughty distractions of faux-outrage over THE ECONOMY while ignoring the Cash Cow of Indian outsourcing as they laugh back at the faux-news tee-vee heads who used to (justifiably and hilariously) ridicule Bush. But now that the Neo-Frat Boys control Obama, these same haha newzers are dispensing saccharine laced, tee-vee Kool-Aid that screams “Americans don’t have a right to a job” (got that, Colbert and Stewart?) while their pals, the Neo-Frat Boys carry on with looting and shooting the American middle class.

Funny, ain’t it?

-2Truthy

2Truthy's Outrageous Happy Friday with The Grateful Dead

(Special thanks to The Grateful Dead)

-FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN-

2Truthy’s Weekly Round-up

Prayers and heartfelt sorrow for the family of Natasha Richardson, whose sudden death this week due to a tragic ski accident leaves her many loving friends and family, including her two dear, young sons and husband Liam Neeson to mourn and remember her life, her work and life together.

The Week of Outrageously Righteous and Fake Outrage, All Around!

As LWOH has reported, the outrage over the AIG Bonus Scandal blanketed the news cycle this week and ushered in cries of outrage, faux and not-so-faux alike. Below are a few of this week’s highlights that offered - if nothing more – an entertainment-worthy perspective on the current state of the nation’s political zeitgeist.


***When all the outrage is extinguished and the smoke finally clears, let’s say in less than four more years – One World Bankers, a few corporate overlords and enterprising politicians will have successfully looted America’s white collar middle class. For all of the political, bipartisan outrage against Wall Street bankstas and Obama’s economic team spreading like wildfire this week, the only article that peeked behind the curtain was written by Paul Craig Roberts, who dared to ask this week Was the Bailout Itself a Scam?


***The amazing Paul Hipp rocks out the AIG bonus/banksta scandal here with this brilliant performance. More Paul Hipp!




***Cries of AIG bonus scandal outrage from David Sirota included the demand for Timothy Geithner’s resignation. Fair enough. But will making a token sacrificial lamb out of the head of Mr. Geithner really stop the war on America’s middle class? As I have said before, "IT'S NOT THE ECONOMY, STUPID. IT'S YOUR JOB!" Imagine what the media could do to reinforce the notion that if the nation is going to have a Depression, let's demand our jobs stop being outsourced and insourced! (This jostling and jeering over these bankstas like a distracted Roman populace at the Coliseum is only half of it; it needs to be focused on the corporate greedsters killing white collar jobs for Americans.) Back to Geithner: would cutting off the head of this snake stop the whole den of investment banker vipers from killing off America’s white collar middle class? Rob Oak at The Economic Populist explains:

“While I am thrilled there is increasing focus on derivatives, structured finance, I'm not so sure focusing in on individuals will get to the bottom of this Ponzi scheme. We have structured financial products all over, everyone was in on this game, not just AIG.”

***Sarah Palin shocked over Obama’s “degrading” Special Oympics bowling joke on his Jay Leno appearance. Not so fast…Yours truly watched Obie on Leno and it was funny, albeit in a not-so-politically-correct kind of way and yes, I laughed, -- as did many (I think I’m sure) of others who may not perhaps ever be accused of being afflicted with a profound sense of arrested development when it comes to humor. It was an innocent moment where Obie disparaged his own (not someone else’s) humble bowling skills and not any handicapped individual. Sure, it’s debatable as to whether the Special Olympics organization (defined as a group of handicapped people) should take mighty offense, but isn’t that a bit like saying you can’t make fun of native Detroiter, Madonna, when she slings around that dreadfully fake British accent? Come on. I’d even go so far as to say that this misplaced outrage over Obie’s innocent bowling alley skills faux-pas was just as ridiculous as
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.
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***Ben Bernanke on 60 Minutes using the false analogy of this nation’s tanked economy to “a house burning down” – which leaves me to part with this Mary Jane Joke:

Mary Jane burnt down the barn one day, and her mother said "Mary Jane! You're in big trouble when your father gets home!"
And Mary Jane just laughed and laughed, because she knew her father was in that barn.

Oh, the outrage!

Happy Friday, Loserettes!


-2Truthy

Paul Hipp Rocks Out The AIG Bonus Scandal

Free Money in the USA
(Very special thanks to the “ridiculously talented” Paul Hipp)

Had enough AIG bonus scandal outrage yet? Tired of asking what did Congress really know about AIG? Turn up the volume and kick back to the fabulous Paul Hipp and really feeeeeeeel the outrage!

Nevermind that, aside from this economic depression when white collar American jobs are being handed over to cheap foreign labor outsourcing firms/H-1bs, that a direct report to Vivek Kundra was arrested at the D.C. Office of the CTO on bribery and money laundering charges but today Obama has announced that he is reinstating Vivek Kundra. Anyway.

Outraged that so many Obama administration appointees are either corrupt or incompetent but somehow, like a Den of Vipers, all keep sticking around anyway? With so many millions and counting educated Americans being kicked to the curb by the same corporations that We, the Taxpayer have bailed out, you'd think Obama could find a few plebes cut from a different mold with integrity to replace these mofos...If you're still outraged over the fact that as American white collar jobs keep being handed to foreign workers and yet, our elitist, corporate run government has said jack shit about this dirty little problem nor what they will do to stop it, here's something interesting to ponder: Rattlesnakes are distinctly American serpents.

Note these exciting, remarkable comparisons:

*The sex of a rattlesnake is not easy to determine.


*If a rattlesnake has just been killed by cutting off its head, it can still bare its fangs and bite. The heat sensory pits will still be functioning, and the warmth of a hand will activate the striking reflex. The head cannot strike, but it can bite and inflict venom. The reflex no longer exists after a few minutes, or as long as an hour or more if it is cools, as rigor mortis sets in.

*Rattlesnakes, like other snakes, periodically shed their skin. When the new skin underneath is formed, the snake rubs its snout against a stone, twig, or rough surface until a hole is worn through. After it works its head free, the snake contracts its muscles rhythmically, pushing, pulling, and rubbing, until it can crawl out of the old skin, which peels off like an inverted stocking. Each molt produces a new rattle.

For more gems like the video above, visit versatile actor, singer and songwriter Paul Hipp at his website here.

-2Truthy

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Old Weir Bridge

Killarney, Ireland

"Where is your green?" My Irish mother would ask each St. Patrick's Day.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

-2Truthy

AIG Bonus Scandal Spurs Obama Administration "Outrage"

Send in the Mobs
(Sing along to lyrics below)

WASHINGTON — Isn’t this rich? Despite being bailed out with more than $170 billion of U.S. taxpayer money from the Treasury and Federal Reserve, the American International Group plans to reward the executives of AIG’s Financial Products division at least $100 million in bonuses and “retention pay.” The New York Times reports this shocking news that President Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner have approved the multi-million dollar, windfall pay-off to reward the same clowns in AIG’s “business unit” who brought the company to its knees last year.

Goldman Sach$ alumnus turned Treasury Secretary Geithner says he finds the pay-off “distasteful”, conceding that U.S. taxpayers will just have to eat it up and spit out, anyway. A.I.G.’s government-appointed chairman, Edward M. Liddy also emphasized that in order to retain these million dollar “best and brightest” clowns in the Financial Products division, they “also agreed to reduce their salary for the rest of 2009 to $1” – Wow! Now there’s a teaser incentive guaranteed to keep these financial wizards sticking around to fire on all pistons --- in a hush-hush kind of way. The multi-million dollar bonus/retention plan also signals that U.S. citizens shall be treated to more reaming and scheming as this int$mate ins$der club loots the middle class, and Do it Their Way.

Send in the Mobs
by 2Truthy

Isn’t is rich?
Why don’t they care?
Kicking folks out of their homes
Made them all millionaires…

Where are the mobs.

Isn't it bliss?
How they approved

Liar Loans for their loot
To the Caymens it moved...

Where are the mobs?

To take down these slobs.

Just when I'd stopped buying Brazilian Cherrywood floors,
Finally knowing interest rates were starting to soar
Making my entrance again to ditch my deadbeat loan
Sure of my (credit) lines...

No one was home.

Don't you love farce? Isn’t it strange.
That the bond insurance they bought
Put crappy loans in “AAA” range.
And where are the mobs
To take down these slobs

Don't bother, they're here.

Isn’t it rich

Isn't it queer?
They’ll still have a house and a car and a career.

But where are the mobs?

To take down these slobs…

Well, maybe next year.

Party on, plebes!

-2Truthy

H-1B CEO Busted in Federal Bribery Sting: FBI Raids Obama Appointee's Office

FBI Raid Arrests 2 at Obama Appointee’s Office

WASHINGTON - FBI agents on Thursday arrested two men in a bribery sting and searched the city's technology office, recently led by President Obama's recently appointed computer chief, Vivek Kundra.


On March 5, Obama named D.C. Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Vivek Kundra as the federal government's Chief Information Officer (CIO). Funny timing...Kundra's last day was March 4. He was in charge of technology in the District since 2007, and has also been a consultant to Obama since he won the election. Kundra has now taken a leave from his position until further details become known of the FBI's investigation into Kundra's Washington, D.C. IT offices.


A private contractor and an employee of the D.C. Office of the Chief Technology Officer Administration were both arrested in a federal bribery sting, involving Sushil Bansal, President and CEO of BPO outsourcing firm Advanced Integrated Technologies Corporation (AITC) receiving $350,000 in .Net Development Support and Peoplesoft Consulting Support contracts from the D.C. Office of the Chief Technology Office.

A direct report to Kundra, Yusuf Acar, 40, an employee of the D.C. Office of the CTO was also taken into custody by FBI agents at his home in Northwest D.C. FBI agents found $70,000 in Acar's Northwest D.C. home when they arrested him Thursday morning.


Government records show Bansal is not a U.S. citizen and holds an H-1B visa, which is given to foreign workers in “specialty occupations” most notably the technology sector. And what “specialty occupations” might U.S. corporations and government agencies need to fill right now, with millions of white collar technology professionals losing their jobs to cheap foreign workers? For starters, knowing how and who to contact in Washington’s pay-to-play culture appears to still be en vogue around the Hill.


Bansal’s company, AITC has also received contracts from the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles. In 2008, he also received the Entrepreneur of the Year Award from the Association of Indians in America, according to AITC's Web site. According to Bansal’s bio on the website, prior experience to founding his “fast growing IT consulting firm” involved working in several IT project management capacities implementing financial systems, including the Department of Homeland Security, the organization that dedicates itself to replacing American white collar professionals with cheap labor from India:

“He also worked with AMS-CGI and SAIC and provided IT consulting and project management services to the Department of Defense, US Navy, Department of Homeland Security, the Commerce Department, the Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Agriculture, the Federal Communications Commission, and several other civilian federal agencies.”

While millions of American computer science and IT professionals are losing their jobs due to corrupt and greedy cheap labor lobby hiring policies that our government officials seem to sanction, we can also thank pompous and out of touch journalists like Tom Friedman for promoting the inhumane meme that this “bunch of losers” known as American citizens are not worth hiring. (For a superb analysis on the Great American Labor Shortage Myth, read Citizen Carrie’s The Ross School of Outsourcing, where this “Detroit housewife” mops the floor with the butt end of the William Davidson Institute and Tom Lantos professor of business administration at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business.")



President Obama has pledged to make transparency and government acquisition a priority, and appointing CIOs who pander to the corporate driven status quo agenda and cheap labor lobby at the expense of millions of unemployed and underemployed American technology professionals is not the best practice for Obama to seize this opportunity - unless of course, he also has some serious$ skin in the game. Is it too much to ask that this president starts choosing to make the right appointments for the sake of American citizens who worked so hard to build this great country by demanding a political and business culture of integrity, trust and credibility from his agency leaders and cabinet? Will this administration dwarf the previous one in its corrupt, pay-to-play culture?


Corporate America Code Blue…Meanwhile, American technologists, many with advanced degrees - are being told they need to be retrained -- but it is the CEOs and vc’s who need the retraining. It is high-time to deliver anti-sociopathic training skills and seminars to corporate, academic, and beltway “thought leaders” who have, since the nineties, been responsible for ruining the lives of millions of computer science and IT professionals. This ruse of a “skilled labor shortage” has been well-documented.


Let’s hope Obama’s team takes a few house cleaning tips from our friend, Citizen Carrie, who, in her aforementioned post, offers a detailed account of the inhumane hiring practices geared to kick Americans to the curb in favor for cheap, imported labor and provides a few suggestions to cure this sick house of corporate America’s love of the cheap labor lobby infected with the Hubris Disease.

-2Truthy

CNBC Spins Anti-American Worker Sentiment, Spreads Fear Mongering

"The CFR (Council on Foreign Relations, New York City) is the American Branch of a society which originated in England and believes national directives should be obliterated and one-world rule established. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years, and was permitted in the early 1960's to examine its papers and secret records... I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known."
-Dr. Carroll Quigley, Professor of International Relations, Georgetown University Foreign Service School, Washington, D.C., author of the epic "Tragedy & Hope", advocate of one-world government and personal mentor of President William Clinton who acknowledged Professor Quigley during his 1992 presidential inauguration speech.


American Masochists, Morons and the Mean-Spirited Media

When will Obama reverse his campaign pledge to sell out what’s left of American white collar jobs? America Loses 23,000 Jobs Every Day and no, this is not something that will be corrected or stopped by a G20 summit nor some Brookings Institution’s expert analysis on what has in fact turned out to be the glorious failure of global outsourcing/insourcing and “free-trade” policies for American white collar workers.

But even the current job-loss figures mask the degree of pain among American workers. A broader measure, which includes people who want a job and have given up looking and those working part time but who want full-time work, rose nearly one percentage point, to 14.8 percent.

"I think what it shows is neither the government nor many economists have a grasp yet of how bad the economy really is right now," said Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group. "We can't get our arms around what's going on."

Will the so-called “progressives”, pseudo-patriotic hillbillies and elitist wannabes in this country finally remove the KICK ME PLEASE sign from their backs and stand up to our corrupt government officials and greedy corporate “thought leaders” who are profiting by outsourcing/insourcing American jobs? What part of duped by elitist fratboys do these people not get? As corporate America slashes American workers in exchange for cheap foreign labor, people of other countries taking our jobs and watching American earnings drop are thrilled to pieces and LOL’ing over the idiotic U.S. population who approves handing over jobs to the third world by“sacrificing” their own jobs and the economy. Oh, the masochism. If it weren’t so tragically hip to hate thy neighbor as thyself, maybe the supposedly slightly smarter party, the Democrats, might start trying to fix this problem instead of being part of it.

Rob Oak at NoSlaves.com explains in this excellent post entitled When Up Against the Wall on Facts….Play the Race Card the fundamental divide between a mean-spirited and/or misinformed U.S. population which supports the inhumane practice by the U.S. to import cheap, global labor who then proceed to “play the race card” in an attempt to advance “immigration” exploitation policies. Is this segment of the population merely misinformed or are they delighted to watch Americans (and even themselves) be permanently pink-slipped by cheap foreign labor?

Oak describes how exploitative H-1B visa and labor arbitrage practices are separate from immigration “of any kind” and how they are destroying American lives and our economy “when new workers are not hired in addition to” (based upon true need) “but in place of American citizens.” Also included in the post is a CNBC video of Vivek Wadwha and Ron Hira, debating the Grassley-Sanders amendment. Wadwha “literally comes on this segment, with incredible fear mongering, mis-categorizes temporary foreign guest worker Visas as immigrants and also implies all of America are a bunch of xenophobes” if they don’t want to lose their jobs!

“CNBC is actively trying to promote people as something to trade, as if global labor arbitrage is OK. No, it’s not a good thing, even for a national economy. CNBC spins putting U.S. workers first for jobs in their own country is un-American (putting your own countrymen first is un-American?). CNBC completely misstates Senator Grassley by claiming he demands foreign born workers should be fired first. That is not what Sen. Grassley is saying! He is referring to temporary guest workers, these are H-1B and L-1 guest workers which is not the “foreign born”. CNBC get your facts straight and stop the fear mongering! Putting a national workforce first in it’s own domestic economy is a national principle that should not even be debated. Putting U.S. citizens as first in line for jobs in their own country is critical to stop the displacement of U.S. workers with cheaper foreign labor. I believe the world decided trading people was morally wrong a long time ago. Displacing U.S. workers for cheaper labor, facilitating age discrimination, encouraging offshore outsourcing of U.S.”

People in Europe are asking themselves why some Americans would ever support this sell out of American white collar jobs. What the hell are American “progressive” talking heads (like this anti-American worker agenda driven lot on the CNBC video) and “new media” wannabes’ subscribers doing for work or eating or smoking these days? It seems the Left, by spreading the fear mongering meme of “racism” against any citizens who want jobs is pining to one-up the mindless blowhards on the Right to take home the fear mongering Oscar. This is nuts. Why does the Left support such masochism? What are TV and the vaunted, viral “New Media” spreaders getting out of supporting the white collar job sell of America’s middle class jobs?

And, calling all TV liberals like Jon Stewart and the undisputed, all-time king of news haha, Stephen Colbert…the two who, hands down, do the funny best: but what have these two done at all to highlight the sheer delight from the Left of this wholesale sell out of white collar American jobs to the third world? So far, they both have steered clear of doing what they both do best, which would be, in this case, to ridicule and expose the actual corporate hustlers and politicians who are kicking the American white collar middle class to the curb. They know who the pro-have/have-not, elitist corporate overlord class and the beltway are. But, as Colbert said a while back, “Sumner Redstone signs my paycheck.” For all of Obama’s talk of policies to create new jobs, albeit shovel ready -- who are these new jobs his policies are supposed to be created for?

If political “change we can use” comes from the bottom up, even the Left (whether driven by masochistic impulse or moronic, mean-spirited motivations) has no shortage of bottom feeders on deck to support these neo-fascists. But for this country’s One Big Money Party of L/R media whores, their paymasters and the idiots who subscribe to them, the National Kool-Aid Party has only just begun!

As the infamous, fabulously wealthy corporate criminal, Martha Stewart would say, “it’s a good thing.”

Party on, plebes!

-2Truthy

The New F***ing Citibank!

The New F***ing Citibank - watch more funny videos

When the smiley face of Fascism comes, it will be dressed up in tight cashmere vees from Lisa Kline Men, controlling every bottom feeder’s banking business intimately as a well worn undergarment clings to a hungry belly standing in a long line, awaiting rations.

–Mel Toast

(Special thanks to the FOD Team, Eric Appel and Seth)

Oh, the banks will be nationalized? I can hardly wait. Let’s not forget to thank Chris Dodd and Barney Frank for wiping out the savings of retiring baby boomers, since these two pushed the Community Reinvestment Act which made banks extend loans to individuals who had no possible means to repay. But that's all water under the shopping cart.

Even so, this push to nationalize the banks is being used by the Masters of the Universe as the ultimate “let’s give this powerless citizenry another wedgie” in their gymnasium locker room of tricks designed to distract and loot what’s left of the middle class in America. Distracting the American public has got be such a fu*#ing riot for these boys, I swear I can almost hear the frothy cackle of their towel snapping laughter in my sleep.

For all of their greed and profit hording, they know better than anyone that reinstating regulations which were gutted during the Bush Administration (previously in place since the Great Depression to prevent unorthodox lending and profiteering) is essential. By deregualting, this gave bankers the license to steal. It's that simple. By the way, are there billions of dollars in the stimulus bill to investigate, round up and prosecute white collar criminals from the private and public sectors responsible for robbing the bank? They know better than anyone else that by restoring the job opportunities they stole from its citizens so that they could turn their cheap tricks with third world hustlers will build up and restore the wealth of this country again through the production of tangible goods and services right here.

With so many M&As going on, maybe the large unemployment lines, the nationalized bank lines and bread lines to nowhere can all merge, killing three birds with one stone.

Oh yes, these Very Important People – these Masters of the Universe are working very hard to suck the freedoms, the access, the hard won privileges from the despised middle class have it all figured out. Service – and Sacrifice -- with a smile.

Cordially,

Mel Toast

Just an Old Fashioned Love Song

h/t tip to N. Hoffman for “I Hold Your Hand in Mine”
by
Tom Lehrer

Tom Lehrer is my hero. I grew up listening to him and thought I had heard them all until this hilarious video ended up in my inbox. Some of his writing is SO over the top! Apparently Ol' Tom was a BIT angry! Enjoy.

Happy Friday!

-2Truthy

Study Finds Universal Health Care Would Cost Less Than Bailouts

How wrong Emily Dickinson was! Hope is not “the thing with feathers”. The thing with feathers has turned to be my nephew. I must take him to a specialist in Zurich.
-Woody Allen

Last month LWOH reported on the stimulus bill’s costly national e-health records (EHRs) designed to monitor personal patient data. Microsoft launched its Healthvault beta program in 2007 and has now partnered with Kaiser Permanente and the American Heart Association, among others, to create a database accessible by patients and authorized care providers. Earlier this year Google launched its own health records beta, Google Health to store online personal patient data. Why is the government spending billions of dollars on EHRs when a new study finds universal health care would cost less than bailouts?

This week, President Obama announced that the economic stimulus package he championed will release $155 million for 126 new health centers in certain parts of the country, enough, he said, “to provide basic care to 750,000 Americans and to create 5,500 jobs.” Great. U.S. citizens need jobs.

Today, an interesting article by Julekha Dash appeared in the Baltimore Business Journal that looks at the prospects for software development firms “seeing dollar signs” to benefit from the government’s e-health records first round of $19 billion spending plan to “modernize IT medical technology”:

“Many firms say they plan to hire more people, create new products and invest more in marketing to grab a slice of the federal government’s spending plan that is part of the $787 billion stimulus package signed Feb. 17. Most of the spending will be in the form of incentives to encourage hospitals and physician practices to adopt electronic health records.”

Although Obama says jobs will be created, neither he nor anyone from his Economic Advisory Board has yet to say whether he will renege on his campaign promise to support H-1B increases and make EHRs a hire Americans job campaign. Note that the two biggest EHR developers, Microsoft and Google, are also two of the biggest proponents of outsourcing/insourcing foreign workers and labor arbitrage.

But didn’t the Obama administration say that, or at least when it came to the banks -- government stimulus bill money would not be appropriated to organizations who hire foreign workers?

Of particular note, the article states that the federal money in the stimulus bill will go directly to health care providers, NOT to technology firms, which is interesting considering the fact that IT development isn’t typically the first line of business for health care providers. Why not give the loot directly to the software companies who could then solicit and compete in the open market for business directly from the healthcare providers who would seek to deem it necessary? I suppose if the American healthcare providers don’t use their in-house IT staff but contract the work explicitly to American and not foreign firms like Microsoft and Goggle, among others, it wouldn’t matter if these firms who have legally hired foreign workers do the work. What will these health care providers do with the all of this first round of $19 billion handed to them? It really does seem a bit demanding to burden healthcare providers who are presumably in the business of healthcare -- to take on the extra, tangential and disparate roles of screening, recruiting and managing costly and complicated IT projects that they, by training, would seem to know little or nothing about. And, with taxpaying physicians and their patients footing this billion dollar bill, do they have any choice but not to take it?

The article suggests that the longarm of Obama’s Economic Advisory Board (including a Google investor and Oracle senior executive) is coming down hard on doctors to push this through to “make health care providers” aware of the importance in “reducing” potential medical errors:

“Still, software developers say the federal government’s spending will make health care providers more aware of the importance of electronic health records. Advocates of the technology say storing health data online allows physicians to receive faster information on a patient’s medical history, thereby reducing the potential for medical errors.”

Putting the cart before the horse? Wouldn’t that initial round of $19 billion be much better spent in kicking off actual, national healthcare access in all states and not privacy invasive software projects to help the near 50 million Americans without insurance?

As for the claim that EHRs will “reduce” medical errors, I might even go as far to argue that medical errors have the potential to increase due to an overflow of complicated IT data and devices. I do maintain that human job stresses that medical personnel occasionally face have, for the most part, very little to do with information technology processes. When a doctor sews up a patient after an appendectomy and forgets to take out the sponge, privacy invasive EHRs help how? To be sure, updated and accurate medical records play a vital role in any smoothly run healthcare setting, and healthcare facilities from small physicians’ offices to hospitals utilize them as they already exist.

Dash also notes some challenges of the stimulus bill EHR spending:

“Competition will be stiff as heavyweights Google and Microsoft have developed products that store medical records online. And even as software executives feel optimistic, some are taking a wait-and-see approach before they make any new hires. Salar’s Johnson said he wants to see how the federal funds will be allocated before adjusting the sales forecast of the $2 million firm.”

Hmph. Will EHRs go the way of another Y2K boondoggle or will this push to put all personal patient data online be a much needed economic kick-start to reforming pro-American technology hiring practices? With Microsoft leading the way, at least someone stands to profit.

-2Truthy

Mammograms Are Bad For You

Mammograms Are Bad for You. CT Scans Appear to be Really bad.

I was diagnosed with cancer and have had no choice but to undergo both procedures to determine the level of the disease. Although physicians will tell you that the radiation is minimal and not to worry, extensive studies have determined otherwise.

Chris Gupta offers a comprehensive compilation of data that expose the “great mammography deceit” which began in the early 1970’s. I tell my friends to ask their doctors instead for the much safer thermal and infrared imaging technologies, and funny thing…the doctors tell them mammography is the “gold standard” and refuse to offer alternate forms of screening. Read Gupta’s terrific research into learni$g why.

The following report below is printed in its entirety from a handy little newsletter called Natural News. For those women who have questioned whether mammograms are the problem or the solution to fighting cancer, new studies reveal that it may be time to rethink the annual mammogram. –t.t.

Americans Exposed to Atomic Bomb Levels of Radiation through Medical Imaging, CT Scans, Mammograms
-Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor-

(NaturalNews) A new report released by the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement reveals that Americans' exposure to radiation has increased more than 600 percent over the last three decades. Most of that increase has come from patients' exposure to radiation through medical imaging scans such as CT scans and mammograms.Most patients have no awareness of the dangers of ionizing radiation due to medical imaging scans. Virtually no patients -- and few doctors -- realize that one CT scan exposes the body to the equivalent of several hundred X-rays (http://www.naturalnews.com/023582.html), for example.

Most women undergoing mammograms have no idea that the radiation emitted by mammography machines actually causes cancer by exposing heart and breast tissue to dangerous ionizing radiation that directly causes DNA damage.Even low doses of radiation can add up to significant increases in lifelong cancer risk. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (2007) found that survivors of the 1945 atomic bombs unleashed on Japan during World War II still faced significant increases in lifetime cancer risk. And the levels of radiation to which these particular study subjects were exposed is equivalent to receiving only two or three CT scans, explains an ABC News story (http://abcnews.go.com/Health/CancerPreventionAndTreatment/story?id=6996192&page=1).

Read the rest of this Natural News article here.

-2Truthy

Microsoft Cuts Temporary Contractor Pay

A wise pet coordinator at the local Humane Society once said, “There are no bad dogs, just bad masters.”

Or, as the old expression goes, a good workman never blames his tools.
Blame it on a bad economy, or blame it on the granddaddy of outsourcing and profits over people, but Microsoft is blaming its pay cuts for the temporary workers it hires on the bad economy.

Todd Bishop at Tech Flash explains:

“Microsoft, citing the "realities of a deteriorating economy," will reduce by 10 percent the amount it pays employment agencies for many of its temporary workers -- and cut by 15 percent the target billing rate for future temporary work.”

Bishop adds that this decision is expected to influence the tech job market and may require the agencies “to reduce their already slim profit margins or cut worker pay.” Some say they will even need to do both. The decision affects temporary workers in existing Microsoft assignments who will either need to “accept pay cuts or take their chances in an increasingly difficult economy.”

Meanwhile, the Seattle based Washington Alliance of Technology Workers is unable to help the struggling local technology professionals. President Les French cites the distinct problem of trying to organize temporary workers under the frequency with which they change jobs, saying that it is “like hitting a butterfly with a BB gun.” French explains

"When Microsoft hires a full-time employee, it's a lot different than when they contract an agency to provide the worker on a temporary basis. They're relieved immediately of a lot of legal obligation, and certainly there's a buffer between them and any organizing effort. So the organizing effort has to be with the temporary agency. Then again, you still have to meet the requirements of defining the business unit -- who's in it, whose nose is going to be counted. ... You can't really nail down the unit or the group that you're trying to organize."

Hope is the bread of the poor. Should the board of Microsoft ever decide to opt for humane hiring practices -- such as recruiting local professionals for full time work with non-slave labor compensation plans --- nevermind. That would have to be when hell freezes over. In the meantime, keeping billionaire CEOs and fawning sycophants honest is no doubt a menial task, but somebody has to do it, whether it is unions or tech groups or non-co-opted journalists or ‘honest’ politicians. But if Microsoft is the poster boy for technology labor arbitrage, professionals in the field can expect to see this temp worker, low wage rent-a-tech programming business model flourish that benefits the upper 3% of corporate executives at the expense of local communities.

-2Truthy

Foreign Companies Will Lie To Win American Contracts

R.I.P. American White Collar Workers

The Washington Alliance of Technology Workers has published an excellent article entitled Foreign Companies Will Lie to Win American Contracts (Part IV) by
Rawlein G. Soberano, Ph.D. who questions why our government is going out of its way to displace educated American professionals in favor of foreign nationals. As LWOH has written about India’s culture of corruption here and here, Indian outsourcer Satyam, has left a host of other Indian outsourcing providers vulnerable to defend their accounting practices. Or so it would seem.

In the midst of this economic depression, Citigroup recently announced that it is outsourcing ALL of its IT business staff and services to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a large outsourcing company based in India with US corporate offices located in Cincinnati. Citi employs over 12,000 contractors where over 90% are H-1B and L-1B visa workers. (Is it safe to say that Citi has been “outsourced” to India for some time now?)

The state of Ohio lured Citi ostensibly on the promise by Tata that it would create white collar jobs. Soberanto reports

“In late 2007, Tata received an $18 million, 8-year tax abatement from Clermont County and the State of OH to relocate their US headquarters to OH and "create" 1,000 jobs in Clermont County within a 3-year period. Tata has not yet fulfilled the terms of the tax agreement to fulfill the state tax abatement - "their corporate HQ is only 30% occupied, parking lots are empty and the future expansion plan is in limbo. However, Citigroup moved its R&D and development to OH 5 years ago. This group is among all IT departments being outsourced to Tata, closing down its IT operations in Cincinnati/Northern KY and moving them to Tata US HQ in Clermont County.

And where exactly are those jobs that Tata negotiated with the state of OH in exchange for $18 million of tax breaks?

“Tata has internally transferred 450 jobs that already exist from Northern OH to Clermont County and was supposed to create only 550 new jobs to meet state tax abatement requirements. Tata claims these 550 "newly created" jobs will be high-level software development jobs but has not advertised them in the local and state community media. This means that OH state government financed up to $27,000 per job for Tata to create 550 IT jobs that are already there. The outsourcing deal with Citigroup that is under Fed Govt. review further implies that more OH jobs will be transferred to Tata and not be newly created jobs as the original state tax abatement implies.

How is Ohio supposed to benefit when 1,000 jobs are retained in the state from Tata transfers to a total of $18 million for 8 years but no new jobs are actually created in the state? This month, Obama’s economic advisory team will meet with Tata, Satyam, Wipro, Resourcesoft, Megasoft, Infosys, Global Cynex, etc. “to make sure any job program he comes up with does not stop the white collar bleed to India and take away the one-sided benefits that have flown their way to date at American workers' expense.”

In the meantime, why are Ph.D.s like Gene Nelson working as security guards while Obama has pledged to import more foreign workers to take American jobs during this Depression? Does “BHO” care about what American citizen supposed to do for work?

All Slaves on board? Thanks to this wholesale sell off of American jobs to India and outsourcing/insourcing’s effects on labor arbitrage, how long will it be before the average IT worker in America is capped at earning a whopping $15 hr?

Sarah Johnson reports in this CFO Magazine article that outsourcing service providers are shaving as much as 15% off existing contracts in order to retain their customers. One research firm notes that vendors have become “more flexible” in their pricing and are accepting lower margins on agreements.

“They're waiving some of their clients' start-up costs or amortizing those costs over the length of the contract. In some cases, they're extending credit and payment terms. What's more, service providers are agreeing to renegotiate existing contracts so that they don't lose business — a growing concern for an industry whose rapid growth earlier this decade has slowed in recent months.

But Peter Allen, a partner and managing director for TPI, an outsourcing advisory firm, shines a cautionary glint of light:

"Clients are tending to ask themselves whether the lowest-price approach doesn't introduce unacceptable levels of operational risk and business resilience comes at a price, and these recent events accentuate the importance of paying that price.

Now, the million rupee question becomes: Will Obama follow the Bush administration’s policy of killing what’s left of white collar jobs for Americans? Will he stand up to protect US white collar workers from Citigroup for their blatant, discriminatory hiring actions by outsourcing companies, such as Tata, when the Federal Govt.'s financial bailout assistance is provided to benefit the likes of Citigroup Financial?

-2Truthy