Bill Gates Needs Your Help to Build Bridge

(Special thanks to Robin Trower)

(Photo credits/very special thanks to Life in the Shadows)

Billionaire Bill Gates Needs a Handout: Help Him Build This Bridge to Buttf*#k

Did you know that poor billionaire Bill Gates needs help from underemployed and sacked American taxpayers to pay for a bridge he wants to build? The Economic Populist explains:

“Microsoft is grabbing economic stimulus money to build an infrustructure project -- the connection of separate M$ "campuses" through construction of a tax-payer funded bridge. I'd call this a massive misappropriation of tax-payer money clearly illustrating how the public good is subverted and redefined to serve that which is good for corporations.”

(You really, really do have to give credit to the Obama administration for doling out record billions and trillions of American taxpayer stimulus bill loot to corporate welfare queens who replace American white collar professionals with imported cheap labor. )

But as the Gay Swami intones

"where there is a welfare queen and a stimulus package, there is an even more stimulating H-1B behind them."

What a racket. Here’s the formula: American taxpayers subsidize a few wealthy corporate CEOs and their lieutenants to invent privacy invasive technology (see below CNN News story) that does nothing to provide much needed healthcare to our citizens. Then, these same corporations turn around and continue their extermination plan of firing American professionals so they can import workers from India via all sorts of backroom lobbyist deals. After all, the Obama administration is flanked by no shortage of team members like Vivek Kundra with scandalous ties to India, and like Larry Summers who has been paid lucrative “speaking fees” by Indian outsourcing companies. As key Obama official Larry Summers received $255,000 from outsourcing companies RIL and TCS, are we surprised?

For a primer on “speaker fees”, see Elaine Meinel Supkis’s excellent article “Speaking Fees Are Bribes.”

Oddly, “progressive” collective outrage about our jobs being sold off to India is MIA. You know, the really fun and cool outrage, like the kind Paul Hipp or Matt Taibbi dug into about AIG… So it’s OK and hip to rip bankers a new one but the sacred, Cash Cow of Indian Outsourcing must remain a dirty little secret?


Meanwhile, are you tired of all this corruption and cronyism yet? Let’s go back to privacy invasive technology. Do you want your patient records on the internet or do you want access to healthcare? Why shouldn’t the corporations, who are pro-outsourcing, pay for their development? As a taxpayer footing the bill, shouldn’t you have a vote? Oh right. We did that already. The country voted for a president who was supposed to stand up for the people’s welfare and not corporate welfare. Check.

Despite privacy concerns among millions of Americans, CNET News reports today in “Taking your health records online” that American taxpayer dollars under the stimulus bill are being spent for corporations like Dell, Google, Microsoft, Intel, IBM and others to develop electronic health records (EHRs).These are the same corporations who have chosen to replace American jobs with foreign workers from India. Although figures for EHR spending have darted around, this recent NextGov article reveals they may not have such a clear, precise reading on the exact amount of billions we will spend on providing jobs to a majority of foreign imported workers:

“On its face, the economic stimulus package provided $17 billion to broaden adoption of electronic medical records, but a top Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society official says the ultimate amount spent could be as much as $39 billion. The difference would depend on e-records adoption rates, said Dave Roberts, HIMSS vice president for government relations.”

This MarketWatch report “High-tech layoffs climb first quarter” reveals today that despite this country’s economic depression, many of these corporations are firing Americans anyway. The big problem is, this is YOUR taxpayer money allowing these corporations to replace your jobs, at your expense. In addition, these billions of taxpayer dollars ostensibly applied to privacy invasion technology do nothing to provide medical care for the almost fifty millions of American citizens (and growing) without affordable access to healthcare. The report cites one trade group, TechAmerica, that claimed:

“Sales of software and related services have boosted employment in that segment of the industry. As a result, the tech sector actually added a net 77,000 jobs in 2008, the trade group calculated.”

But then TechAmerica (whose ominous tag line reads “Where The Future Begins") said the group was unwilling to predict a net gain in 2009, however, given the current state of the economy.

"New hiring is certainly on hold," David Thomas, TechAmerica's representative in Silicon Valley, said last week.

Why would it be “on hold”? Are these corporations who are firing American workers, which TechAmerica represents, waiting patiently for all of the newly minted, H-1B visa holders to arrive? (ht/t Rob Sanchez at jobdestruction.com):

“The USCIS has now announced that it has received enough H-1B petitions to meet the allotment of visas for 2010. Out of the 163,000 petitions that were received the first five days of filing, 65,000 will be chosen by lottery tobe issued visas. In addition another 20,000 will be accepted under the"advanced degree" exemption limit which brings the total up to 85,000. Today the USCIS will conduct an H-1B visa lottery to determine who the lucky winners are that get visas from the huge pile of petitions. Numbers for other exemptions to the cap were not announced. Last year that total combined with the cap was about 122,000 visas. Meanwhile, during the first three months of 2009 the high-tech sector in the U.S. suffered its deepest layoffs in seven years, according to a firm that tracks the jobs market. Today the USCIS will conduct an H-1B visa lottery to determine who the lucky winners are that get visas from the huge pile of petitions.”

As yours truly reported here, the U.S. Stimulus Bill Pushes E-Health Records as a means for technology corporate executive management to profit by outsourcing the development to the same corporations who are kicking American technologists to the curb by replacing them with cheap foreign labor. No wonder they call taxpayer money TARP- take a look at what your tax dollars are getting you, as Tommi Avicolli-Mecca reports in today’s Beyond Chron article “Evicting the Homeless."

Life in America. Under a tarp. Have and Have Nots.

Party on, plebes!

-2Truthy