2Truthy's Happy Friday Dance Hour: Groove Is In The Heart

 (Special Thanks to Dee Lite - Back by Popular Demand) 

2Truthy's Whirlwind Weekly Roundup

Obama Dresses Down Chamber, GOP Congressman Loses Shirt  for Dressing Down on Craigslist, AOL Bags Arianna, Hizzoner Rahm's 4 Letter Word and Mubarak Out

Thumbs Up to President Obama. While Ralph Nader, this country's most formidable consumer and civil rights advocate ripped Obama a new one for his Chamber of Commerce speech on Monday here, (h/t Dandelion Salad) we must applaud the president for giving it the good old college try by prodding those ungrateful, transnational bound American oligarchs who, you know, love lots and lots of heaping government U.S. taxpayer subsidies but could do a WHOLE LOT more to “reform” unsustainable outsourcing and insourcing hiring practices by stopping the influx of cheap labor that discriminates against American citizens:

“As you know, it's not always profitable in the short-term for you to invest in basic research. That's why government has traditionally helped invest in this kind of science, planting the seeds that ultimately grew into technologies from computer chips to the internet." 
 

Obama then explains to these merciless ingrates how the benefits should go to U.S. workers as he appealed to their "spirit of patriotism" and "sense of mutual regard and common obligation" that has carried us before in harder times:

“If the government is going to invest in innovation, that innovation should lead to new jobs and manufacturing on our shores. Now is the time to invest in America." 

Arianna Huffington Sells Out to AOL. Who knew? The author of PIGS AT THE TROUGH knows how to bring home the bacon. Six years after the diva celebrity of pop-politico “progressive” blogozine tabloid journalism hit the nets with her signature Huffington Post, it's about time she cashed in on that thing which rapidly spiraled down into a filthy lucre driven censorship pit. Who cares if she stealthily exploited the Left and lured millions and millions of unwashed, faithful, hopeful, left-leaning, downstairs commenters along with many upstairs bloggers and investigative journalists like Al Giordano who offered up their bloggy goodness FOR FREE who might not be getting a cut of her ba-ba-ba-booty? What – did they think the author of PIGS AT THE TROUGH was The Good Witch of the North or The Easter Bunny or something?

Rahm Emanuel Says He'll Lead Chicago's “New Economy”. And he will because Hizzonner Rahm is the guy who tells it like it fucking IS, bitches! He said “I know Chicago is up to facing the truth”. Aside from his ambitious and worthy plans to clean up crime (code for “the ghetto”), here's the next rare town hall meeting question: What will he truthfully do to clean up the cheap labor lobby and put that 4 Letter Word JOBS thing on rails for educated middle class unemployed/underemployed citizens?

Married GOP Congressman Dude Loses His Shirt (Seat) Over Shirtless Pictures on Craigslist. Since the married, upstate New York Republican Congressman's dirty sexy shirtless photo was allegedly directed at a LADY, this story naturally has less legs. Must have been a slow news week for this one to hit wires, but then, this morning's biggest news to bust the pipes...something about an Egyptian dictator...

Mubarak is OUT! No more Pharaoh Phodder now for millions of Egyptians or let the good times roll!

Happy Friday, Loserettes!

-2Truthy

Bill Clinton Blames Unemployed Americans for "Skills Mismatch"

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

“Of course it is absurd to claim America has a skills shortage. We have sky high unemployment rates, across the board, relative to their past rates, with highly skilled and educated people.”

-Robert Oak, The Economic Populist

Blame Employers for the Jobs Crisis, and Blame their Public-Private Political Enablers, Too

Neo-Feudal Valley, USA – While there are not enough jobs for  educated Americans and the Republican controlled Chamber of Commerce is taking it in the shorts for outsourcing American jobs, click on the above video link and watch good old Democratic Bill Clinton hammer the rickety old saw that educated American citizens are unemployed because they have a “skills mismatch” with corporations! Yes, the same corporations who are of course, even trained to deliberately NOT hire Americans in favor of cheap imported labor from India and China.  Simon Lomax and Miles Weiss report here that while “Clinton’s campaign against poverty in poor countries is making room this year for programs to aid unemployed Americans”, the former president makes the bogus following claim:

“The “biggest problem” that stands in the way of boosting employment is a “skills mismatch” in the U.S. economy. This means the jobs that are being opened don’t have qualified people applying for them. If job-specific training were provided to 5 million unemployed workers, the jobless rate would fall to around 7 percent.”

As Bill's Indian lobby buds and he himself know full well, the biggest problem that stands in the way of boosting American employment is a “moral character mismatch” between millions of educated Americans of good character and horribly sociopathic pigs who choose to feast at the trough on cheap imported labor. Skills mismatch, MY ASS! Beating the drum about some mythical “skills mismatch” is neo-feudal state speak for greasing the skids for more age and local discrimination, slave wages, labor arbitrage and more immigration at a time when there are not enough jobs for our own citizens.

Our friend Rob Oak at the Economic Populist takes us for a comprehensive stroll through the land mines of this war on America's educated middle class with his mother of all “skilled labor shortage myth” posts entitled Blame Employers for the Jobs Crisis. 

Oak provides detailed articles, charts, graphs and links that debunk the lies and propaganda from the perpetrators waging genocide on America's educated citizenry. In particular, he includes the above must-watch video clip with Bill Clinton on Dylan Ratigan's show where Clinton makes the shocking claim that while 5 million job openings exist, millions of educated American citizens who need them are NOT educated or skilled enough to be hired by most U.S. corporations and are in need of “training.” Indeed, the long-arm of Clinton's good intentions seems to stretch globally, just not locally.

What WOULD possibly possess former president Bill Clinton to claim that while 5 million job openings exist, millions of educated American citizens who need them are NOT skilled enough to hire? Since when is it suddenly academia's responsibility to train the already educated American unemployed workforce for corporations at the very expense of unemployed educated Americans? Could there be some underlying profit motive there? Not only do corporations not want to hire Americans or pay them decent salaries and healthcare, they are hellbent with replacing them with cheap foreign imported workers. Could The Cash Cow of Indian Outsourcing and Clinton family ties to the India lobby (h/t Rob Sanchez) who have made Billary very wealthy Connecticut “farmers” and the cheap labor itch have something at all to do with the LIE that there is an American skilled labor shortage?

Included in his post is a new website and database from the AFL-CIO which allows you to see who is exporting jobs by zip code. How are your friendly local companies holding up? In addition to many technology companies (ahem, including the nation's supreme sociopathy pit, Hewlett-Packard) I even found a bread company in my zone that apparently can't find qualified Americans to work for them. A bread company! With so many people locally out of work, local companies continue to discriminate.  Oak writes:

“Those of us in STEM know what skills shortage really means. It means enabling more outsourcing, more foreign guest workers and more immigration. There is no skills shortage, there never was a skill shortage. There is a shortage of good employers who do not discriminate, age discriminate, ship jobs to India, China, Brazil and treat their workers like cannon fodder. There also is a shortage of jobs, pure and simple. Put U.S. workers first. Demand these employers quit their inane, harsh, wage repressing, discriminatory labor practices.”

Where exactly is Clinton's explanation of what these mysteriously missing skills are that Americans are supposed to be lacking? Anyone who starts a job in a company is trained, period. Never mind this horseshit excuse of educated Americans not being qualified and that somehow only an inexperienced, dubiously and unverifiable, cheap foreign worker magically shows up with all the right “trainability” because they overwhelmingly always don't.

Rob Oak is right. Corporations are to blame for not hiring educated Americans. And if corporations stopped discriminating against educated American citizens of all ages and started hiring them instead of importing cheap foreign workers, politicians and former presidents would be relieved of making excuses for them. But they would also be relieved of a few zillion ruppees, too, that keep them all fat and happy down on the farm.

Rob Oak doesn't hesitate to call it like it is when it comes to this ruse from Clinton about educated Americans needing “training” as he offers this excellent comment below:

“As a techie, I can tell you a main STEM skill is the never ending ability to learn and self-teach. You'd be dead in the water without that ability for technology changes every 6 months. That said, acting like people cannot learn new skills on the job, when the entire United States learned skills on the job to become the biggest military machine in history and win the war...

just infuriates me. I mean come on, the entire planet is currently addicted to iphones and facebook. All of that requires learning new skills...i.e. the younger crowd is all thumbs, literally. Think they cannot learn some skilled manufacturing trade if they can figure out how to text at 80wpm with just their thumbs? What is wrong with these corporations and politicians?”

After reaping so much wealth, it is a shame that the Clintons would still choose not to stop this war on America's educated middle class, many of whom supported them. As yours truly has previously reported, Follow the Drinking Gourd.

Party on, plebes!

-2Truthy

Chuck "Chop Shop" Schumer Itches for Cheap Labor Lobby Cure

(Very Special Thanks to Redbone)

U.S. Itches to Match Indian Outsourcing Wages to Third World Levels

Rash of Cheap Slave Labor Spreads to U.S. like Posion Ivy

Scratching News

Contact with sap from poison ivy, oak, and sumac causes a rash in most people. While the majority of skin rashes are a threat to individuals who come into contact with them, they are not dangerous to others unless they are caused by an infectious disease - such as shingles or scabies. Or the dreaded clap.

But poison ivy, like the deadly U.S. cheap labor lobby that uses educated U.S. citizens as human slave trade bargaining chips with third world hustlers requires prompt treatment to remedy relief to its helpless and unwitting victims. How did the United States devolve into embracing horrific slave labor practices? According to this No Slaves article, India thinks displacing American workers is "trade" and the U.S. is "protectionist". When there are not enough jobs for U.S. citizens, isn't it time to protect U.S. workers? 

Poison ivy is unusually similar to the hubris disease, in how its inhospitable, parasitic hosts skulk around dark places, hoping to continue their assault and avoid the watchful eyes of vigilant rangers wielding potent sprays and machetes to eradicate the disastrous, locally unsustainable effects on the local body politic. There are effective treatments for poison ivy and the unsustainable Neo-Frat Boy Corporate State. (Don't miss the video.)

In this Financial Times article entitled US matches Indian call centre costs, workers “are becoming as cheap to hire in the US as they are in India.” This should come as no surprise, as the H-1B visa is the ultimate rash that the Neo-Frat Boy corporate state has spread to inflict educated American citizens and replace them with cheap imported workers who are hired by foreign outsourcing companies here. So what are our “thought leaders” and legislators doing to eradicate the poison ivy patch aka the Neo-Frat Boy corporate State's disastrous, imported third world slave labor policies?

As U.S. Politicians like Ted Strickland continue to lure foreign outsourcing companies to their states on the U.S. taxpayer dime, others like Senator Chuck “Chop Shop" Schumer recently introduced a bill  that would tax businesses for transferring U.S. based call center jobs to foreign countries by charging them 25 cents for every service call placed abroad. With millions of educated Americans available, why are foreign outsourcing companies moving their operations to the U.S.? Will Schumer's bill discourage more labor arbitrage and foreign outsourcing companies from moving their operations to the U.S.?

The FT article explains:

“The move to expand operations in the US also comes as protectionist rhetoric against outsourcers rises in Washington. Last week, Charles Schumer, a US senator, described Indian IT outsourcing companies unflatteringly as “chop shops”, a term referring to places where stolen cars are dismantled for their parts.”

Stolen cars, stolen jobs, whatever. But this is tough talk from Schumer, if nothing more than tough talk. Who will put the brakes on it? The antidote, of course, to treating this rash of cheap labor arbitrage is for Indian outsourcing companies to just entice more U.S. politicians to pony up American taxpayer money to “lure” foreign outsourcing companies to  their states and continue their race to the bottom where it can thrive right here in the Poison Ivy Patch of America.

Somebody is feeling the looooove. More stinging Man-Crushinomics on steroids?

Party on, plebes!

-2Truthy

2Truthy's Happy Friday Hour with Cathy Richardson and Starship: Follow the Drinking Gourd

(Very Special Thanks to Cathy Richardson & Jefferson Starship)

Watch this excellent account of the amazing song Follow the Drinking Gourd, the last coded song from the Civil War's Underground Railroad, written by Peg Leg Joe.

Please Call Your Senators to Support American Workers

Neo-Feudal Valley, USA -- Slavery? Labor Arbitrage? No jobs? Two advanced degrees but can't even get a job sewing doilies? Kids with college degrees still living in your basement? Who's cooking up this No Americans Need Apply economy to wipe out America's educated middle class?

Business Insider cites 22 statistics that prove the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence. Since there is no major (or any) MIDDLE CLASS LOBBY to fund journalists who support jobs for educated American workers, the article takes a predictable this is inevitable tone while the best part can be found in the comments section. But we don't need a weather man or corporate sponsored economists like Robert Reich to know which way the neo-frat boy corporate state's narcissistic sociopaths are blowing U.S. taxpayer money on privatization schemes that suck the public till for their personal gain at the expense of America's educated middle class by selling out jobs to cheap third world imports when there are not enough jobs for our own citizens.

In a post entitled Obama=Bush=Clinton=Global Labor Arbitrage, our friends at No Slaves explain that displacing American white collar workers with H-1B visa holders does not create jobs. It loses jobs. Got that, teabaggers and fleabaggers?

What to do?

No Slaves has  issued this timely request Please Call Your Senators to Support American Workers with an amendment sponsored by Senators Sanders, Grassley, Harkin and Tester to block companies from hiring foreign guest workers when firing competent and hard working U.S. workers:

“The Amendment is S.AMDT. 4438, introduced to the Small Business Lending Fund Act of 2010 bill number H.R.5297."

Below is their plea to save U.S. jobs.

COMPANIES LAYING-OFF THOUSANDS OF AMERICAN WORKERS DON’T NEED GUEST WORKERS

Please Support the Sanders-Grassley-Harkin Employ America Amendment to the Small Business Lending Bill.

Since the recession started in December of 2007, over 7 million Americans have lost their jobs and the unemployment rate has nearly doubled. In total, 15 million Americans are officially unemployed, another 8.8 million Americans are working part-time only because they cannot find a full-time job, and more than one million workers have given up looking for work altogether.

With the unemployment rate still unacceptably high and millions of people looking for a job, we have a responsibility to ensure that companies do not use temporary visa programs to replace American workers with cheaper labor from overseas.

Therefore, during the consideration of the Small Business Lending bill, we will be offering the attached amendment that would prohibit companies which have announced mass lay-offs over the past year from hiring guest workers, unless they can prove that their overall employment will not be reduced as a result of these lay-offs .

At a time when millions of Americans are out of work, the notion that we need to import labor from abroad because there are not enough qualified, willing or able American workers in this country rings hollow.

Recently, some of the very companies that have hired tens of thousands of guest-workers from overseas have announced large scale lay-offs of American workers. The high-tech industry, a major employer of H-1B guest workers, has announced over 330,000 job cuts since 2008. The construction industry, a major employer of H-2B guest-workers, has laid-off 1.9 million workers since December of 2007.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, signed into law last February, included a provision to prevent companies receiving assistance through the Troubled Asset Relief Program from replacing laid-off American workers with guest-workers from overseas.

The Employ America Act expands upon this provision to prevent any company engaged in a mass lay-off of American workers from importing cheaper labor from abroad through temporary guest-worker programs. Those companies that are truly facing labor shortages would not be impacted by this legislation and could continue to obtain employer-sponsored visas. Only companies that are laying-off a large number of Americans would be barred from importing foreign workers through guest worker programs.

No Slaves also adds: "You can locate your Senator and CALL THEIR OFFICE to support this critical amendment here. Please tell your Senators to support U.S. workers and pass this amendment, intact!

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, wanting to offshore outsource your job, is already gearing up to fight this common sense amendment. They will stop at nothing in their quest to continue firing U.S. workers and replacing them with cheaper foreign guest workers and outsourcing.”

Follow the Drinking Gourd and do your part to restore civility to our hijacked democracy and local socioeconomic sustainability. It's Not the Economy, Stupid. It's YOUR JOB!

Happy Friday, Loserettes!

-2Truthy

Privitization No Cure-All for New Jersey

New Jersey's Neo-Frat Boy Corporate State Privatization Agenda: SELL OUT U.S. Middle Class

Hackensack, NJ – The Hubris Disease is swarming into New Jersey.

Armed with think-tank mumbly-jumbly speak, indecipherable presentations, graphs and spreadsheets, Economic Hitmen go into third world countries and offer all kinds of infrastructure and social services goodies on the promise that the impoverished countries pay back the astronomical loans. Once these third world countries predictably default, multinational elites under the banner of 'government' (don't ask “whose government”, for it's en vogue these days to have no ties or allegiances to your own) swoop in and pick off the fixin's. Emm, good, says the corpulent, self-described, “inleague” band of banking and beltway black crows as they unconscionably plunder the plebes from Honduras to Haiti to Hoboken to Hackensack. Ethics and morals? Those are for mugs.

Which lands us today in New Jersey, where plans to sell off the public trust via privatization are on a roll.

NorthJersey.com reports that Governor Christie's faulted privatization plan includes a task force recommendation for higher fees, selling off the Trenton War Memorial which includes an 1,800-seat concert hall to a private contractor and worse services for New Jersey “residents”, among several other sell-off schemes. Note that the article references New Jersey taxpayers as “residents” and not citizens. Hardly surprising, as the State's massive “best and brightest” non-citizen population is from India on H-1b work and L-1 student visas to take U.S. jobs when the New Jersey (and U.S.) unemployment rate for American citizens is soaring, and would explain the neo-linguistic framing from “citizen” to “resident”.

Joel Stein reports on this curious convergence of "best and brightest" cheap imported labor from India and the demise of his hometown in this pithy Time Magazine article My Own Private India which raises the question: If Indians are truly the “best and brightest” as corporate America's billionairre CEO's like Bill “Vista Rocks” (haha) Gates desperately insists and the state of New Jersey is flooded with them, why is the Garden State now blighted with run-down “strip malls” and wallowing smack-dab in the red? Wasn't the vast importation of millions of (dubiously) skilled cheap workers supposed to create MORE prosperity and jobs for American citizens and bolster Main Street? HA! And why are Microsoft's products and services quality a laughing stock when compared to successful corporations like Apple – which most coincidentally, imports very few Indian workers? But why blame the workers, whether “temporary” or perm for corporate management's policies? With respect to Microsoft, it may indeed be no small coincidence that lousy management and locally unsustainable hiring practices were directly responsible for elevating Microsoft's tanked status.

Stein's article isn't a referendum on any specific culture's culpability in New Jersey's demise, much less against any of the hardworking people there from India who continue to make contributions to the local economy. It IS a wake-up call, however, for all ethnic, non-corrupt, ethical and moral New Jersey “residents” (both U.S. citizens and non-citizens) to take a closer look at the Great American Labor Shortage Mythmaker's unsustainable and destructive socio-economic polices that are destroying all middle class, multi-cultural communities across America. Despite Stein's tongue-in-cheek observation of these convergent cheap labor and declining socioeconomic forces with migration patterns, his article received moronic and divisive, yet predictable “xenophobe” and “racist” accusations when he in fact lauded the much deserved Indian cuisine and its role in improving the local foodie scene while he mocked the non-creativity of his fellow native Edison, New Jersians. 

I don't know whether Stein's Time piece was deliberately intended to throw down the counterproductive race card gauntlet by caste-ing around for divide and conquer victory, but political and neo-media entertainment elitist hacks with India Inc. lobby agenda$ pitting neighbor against neighbor is as old as Methuselah. This “I Got Mine Mine” ilk knows no cultural boundaries outside the inner sanctums of their man-crushes, and both Time Magazine and the enterprising HuffIPO have no shortage of willing propaganda tools.

Will the State of New Jersey end up a casualty in this war on America's middle class where corporate and political insiders sell out our jobs to the cheap labor lobby? Shouldn't other States' leaders work to stimulate job opportunities for American citizens and not foreign companies and imported labor? The NorthJersey.com article says the task force also cited New Jersey’s 18 career centers (that currently are set up to help the unemployed with job training and searches) could be privatized as well.

When it comes to good jobs, is privatization good and sustainable for the citizens of New Jersey and those of other states?

Privatization = Unsustainable numbers of outsourced or insourced workers and labor arbitrage to displace and degenerate earnings for American citizens and disproportionately generate profits for those in the upper One Percent income bracket.

One commenter had this to say below about “privatization not being a cure-all” regarding Christie's woeful plan:

“New Jersey Governor Christie's task force has suggested there are savings in privatizing state services. Unfortunately this can come at the expense of the very same public who expects savings. The easy example for this former Pennsylvania resident is auto inspections. Pennsylvania used a completely private state inspection system. Any time I took a vehicle to a Pennsylvania mechanic for anything an old chestnut was brought out with the mechanic saying it the law, you have to fix this, whether or not the fix was really needed. I was glad when, on moving to New Jersey, I found that the State ran the inspections and if I kept the vehicle in proper shape it would pass inspection without my having to submit the vehicle to someone who had a financial interest in denying me the inspection certificate. So my questions are how credible are the suggested savings, and who is really benefiting? I do not expect the public will be benefiting.”

If Stein's Time piece underscores anything, it is the adage to never underestimate the stupidity of the American people. Certainly, India Inc. isn't, and Stein indeed credits them with that much.

Party on, plebes!

-2Truthy

University Professors Now Outsourcing Grading to India

(Tech Support: Foamy the Squirrel)

Taking U.S. Jobs is like Stealing Candy from a Baby

Cheap and Degrading News

Virginia -- It's time to change the non-biodegradable nappy on this stinking bum of Indian outsourcing.

LWOH previously reported on the unsustainability of teacher assistant graders and jobs to India.The Star reports today that a George Washington University professor is outsourcing paper grading and commenting to India because he is “unhappy with the tedium of grading papers.” In what has been described as a race to the bottom, the professor nonetheless defends the anti-U.S. academic worker practice of outsourcing grading papers ( a job that U.S. college student and teaching assistants depend upon) to India here:

“Our intent is not to cheapen or degrade the learning and teaching equation,” the professor told the Star. “We think there is a better model. We never outsource the responsibility, we’re just outsourcing the activity."

Oh, the tedium! The professor would appear to believe for some reason that India is entitled to take jobs away from Americans and that funneling every last (except his own?) job including student academic jobs to India is fine rather than American citizens doing the work to sustain their livelihoods and rebuild our local economies. To the contrary of the professor's above assertion, ridding U.S. students of jobs does cheapen and degrade not only learning but the entire socioeconomic fabric of our local communities. Quoth the professor:

“As long as outsourcing meant for the last 30 years only the flight of blue-collar jobs, that was okay. The moment it extends to knowledge work, immediately people get defensive. The idea that EduMetry can’t mark an English Composition 101 paper is ludicrous.”

Why would he possibly think it's fine and dandy like stealing candy to just keep flushing U.S. jobs to India? And shame on every American citizen for being “defensive” to want our jobs and jobs for our kids. How “ludicrous” is that?

Like stealing candy from a baby, the professor appears to embrace the unsustainable practice of taking jobs from U.S. citizens and giving them instead to India as mere child's play by comparing outsourcing U.S. student jobs to sticking your infant in a daycare center! Yes! He actually joked  that U.S. university students who need those jobs to help pay for their educations and further their own academic experiences (most of their parents' jobs are outsourced to India)  also “should be fair game”:

“I like to half-jokingly point out that a mother is outsourcing childcare to a daycare provider. If you can entrust the care of your infant to a third person, any form of outsourcing should be fair game.”

Fair game? Haha. Get the joke? Taking jobs from American citizens when they need to work is indeed child's play!

Stealing jobs from Americans, in fact, is as easy as hopscotch, jump-rope and skipping. Our Congress critters and soiled cheap lying labor lobby sociopaths are ridding educated Americans of their jobs, and, if this entitled professor knows one thing about anything, he apparently knows that that. So why not extend the whole Indian cyber-kinder class all the way up to outsourcing this esteemed professor's hallowed job and relieve him of his binky along with the “tedium” in employing those dreadful U.S. students to grade his papers so he can have an extended, big fat nap while our country goes to hell? Whether or not this professor and his ilk would possibly have a vested interest in discriminating against U.S. students who need those jobs or whether outsourcing them means more profits for their universities or more nap time for the professors, this latest five-finger discount on U.S. students' jobs coming from Academia ought to be the final wake up call for America.

Give this man a Happy Meal and send him back to the unending, humility and shameless-free third world romper room twelve time zones away where nirvana and race-to-the bottom collide.

Party on, plebes!

-2Truthy

British Petroleum (BP) Whistleblower Leaks 'Profits Before Safety' Engineering Practices

BP's Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Disaster 

Did BP Cut Corners By Hiring H-1B's?

Click here for UPDATE: The Meaning of Gluttony...

Has British Petroleum (BP) Cut Corners By Hiring H-1B's? Yes. Here is a current list of many job openings at BP for H-1B's, complete with salary listings. (Note that this list does not include any reference to the large numbers of Indian body shops in the U.S. that they may be contracting imported workers from as well.)

In this shocking Truthout report, Jason Leopold uncovers a former BP contractor turned whistleblower who was hired to supervise the company's databases who had raised concerns in 2008 over BP's failure to maintain crucial safety and engineering documents related to one of the firms other deepwater production projects in the Gulf of Mexico (don't miss the comments.) The contractor had feared the engineering document “shortfalls” related to Atlantis "could lead to catastrophic operator error" and that BP's own internal communications even showed that company officials “were aware of the issue.” Although Leopold's article does not indicate if any of the positions related to BP's disastrous rig explosion were given to H-1B visa holders (or if the whistleblower him or herself is an H-1B visa holder), it does expose the company's profits over people and safety issues that are increasingly linked to disastrous, locally unsustainable economic hiring practices where American corporations are trained to cut corners on how NOT to hire American workers.

Who is behind the orchestrated sell out of American jobs to cheap, dubiously “skilled” labor responsible for corporate America's rising numbers of compromised products and services spilling into heightened security and deadly safety breeches? Despite the growing millions of educated American engineers now unemployed/underemployed, BP has an appetite for cheap imported, “best and brightest” foreign workers to do the work that the corporate sponsored, American job killing tech lobby propaganda pit TechNet claims Americans actually support! And if you buy that whopper, I've got a collapsed bridge in India to sell you.

Among many positions advertised for non-Americans, BP is looking for an H-1B to Market Sector Analyst - Offshore Rigs to contribute “to BP's bottom line and is in the midst of implementing a new Strategy...” and  an SPU Data and Information Manger, Gulf of Mexico. Need a job but you're not from India? Get over yourselves! In the Neo-frat boy corporate state of America, No Americans Need Apply. (So much for local labor and oil sustainability from leading corporate persons like BP.)

The former BP contractor who worked for the oil behemoth and noted the engineering document safety gaps claimed in internal emails and other documents obtained by Truthout reveal he first raised these concerns back in 2008:

“The whistleblower, whose name has been withheld at the person's request because the whistleblower still works in the oil industry and fears retaliation, first raised concerns about safety issues related to BP Atlantis, the world's largest and deepest semi-submersible oil and natural gas platform, located about 200 miles south of New Orleans, in November 2008. Atlantis, which began production in October 2007, has the capacity to produce about 8.4 million gallons of oil and 180 million cubic feet of natural gas per day.

It was then that the whistleblower, who was hired to supervise the company's databases, discovered that Atlantis had been operating without a majority of the engineer-approved documents it needed to run safely, leaving it vulnerable to a catastrophic disaster that would far surpass the massive oil spill that began last week following a deadly explosion on a BP-operated drilling rig.”

It was later determined that the documents described as “as built” drawings “need not be complete or accurate and, furthermore, are irrelevant to a hazard analysis BP was required to complete.”

An engineer with Apex Safety Consultants last year into BP's engineering documentation practices related to the subsea Atlantis components records revealed they lacked final approval:

“Last May, Mike Sawyer, an engineer with Apex Safety Consultants who evaluated BP's database and looked into the whistleblower's allegations, concluded that of the 2,108 P&IDs BP maintained that dealt specifically with the subsea components of its Atlantis production project, 85 percent did not receive engineer approval. Even worse, 95 percent of Atlantis' subsea welding records did not receive final approval, calling into question the integrity of thousands of crucial welds on subsea components that, if they were to rupture, could result in an oil spill 30 times worse than the one that occurred after the explosion on Deepwater Horizon last week.

He said the safety shutdown logic drawings on Atlantis, a complex computerized system that, during emergencies, is supposed to send a signal to automatically shut down the flow of oil, were listed as "requiring update."

But if corporate state persons like BP hire cheap imported and outsourced labor to cut corners and continue to bar educated American engineers from jobs, who does care about local jobs and oil sustainability when the cost cutting corporate overlords are at the switch? One commenter noted:

“This horrific disaster in the Gulf of Mexico should be the last nail in the coffin for offshore drilling! Yes, we will probably have to continue to use conventional energy until we catch up with clean energy. But, we don't have to imperil the oceans to do it.”

It's time for Americans to demand corporations and their sleazy political enablers STOP putting corporate profits before local people's jobs and our safety. As is true for other countries, it's time for America to clean up our local environment and our local hiring practices by stopping the flood of cheap imported labor and to hold who is responsible for the lack of sound, quality engineering practices at BP accountable.

BP's latest horrific Gulf of Mexico disaster should be the last nail in the coffin to the horrific American job outsourcing and insourcing cheap foreign visa labor hiring practices used to kick Americans in our towns across the country to the curb.

Party on, plebes!

-2Truthy

A Plague for 'A' Students Who Missed the 'C' Corporate Boat

“The Mayflower was full of C students. Their idea was that, given freedom, responsibility, rule of law and some elbow room, the average, the middling, and the mediocre could create the richest, most powerful country ever.”

-P.J. O'Rourke

This post is addressed to my friend Rob who left a very insightful comment on my post The Politics of Ocean Trash and Educated Middle Class Trash.

Hi Rob,

Thanks for the P.J. O'Rourke article entitled A Plague of 'A' Students Why it’s so irksome being governed by the Obami. Even if he isn't suggesting that ALL 'A' students are a bunch of anal retentive rote learners and arrogant assholes (like the "Obami" people) while ALL 'C' students (like the Tea Party people) are somehow more agile and virtuous, he sure knows how to assign and define the overrated 'A' in arrogant and asshole here:

“The U.S. tax code was written by A students. Every April 15 we have to pay somebody who got an A in accounting to keep ourselves from being sent to jail.

Now there’s health care reform—just the kind of thing that would earn an A on a term paper from that twerp of a grad student who teaches Econ 101.

Why are A students so hateful? I’m sure up at Harvard, over at the New York Times, and inside the White House they think we just envy their smarts. Maybe we are resentful clods gawking with bitter incomprehension at the intellectual magnificence of our betters. If so, why are our betters spending so much time nervously insisting that they’re smarter than Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement? They are. You can look it up (if you have a fancy education the way our betters do and know what the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary is).”

If, say 'A' stands for Asshole, then 'C' stands for Corporate Asshole? Faux dichotomy? Why do I find my literary hero's (yes, I'd have SEVERAL beers with P.J.) descent into the polarizing fray of One Big Money Party left/right politics so off-putting? Perhaps I can explain.

I was an avid, major fan of P.J. O'Rourke's writing back in his lefty-leaning National Lampoon days (he was never a Democrat) well before his much deserved success allowed him to crash the gates of “God's heavenly country club” (reference to Parliament of Whores). When I was a college freshman, he and Doug Kenney (one helluva funny writer, too, R.I.P.) gave a speech (hilarious, capital “H”) ) at a Midwestern college campus that challenged us to *think* about how horribly stupid it was for us to give power to politicians who hadn't our best interests at heart by, for example, making outrageously stupid laws against smoking dope (while they lit up a doobie on stage). Always the libertarian, that P.J., to whit, my favorite P.J.ism's:

"Giving money and power to the government is like giving car keys and whisky to teenage boys."
"When politics are used to allocate resources, the resources all end up being allocated to politics."
"Politics is the business of getting power and privilege without possessing merit.  A politician is anyone who asks individuals to surrender part of their liberty -- their power and privilege -- to State, Masses, Mankind, Planet Earth, or whatever.  This state, those masses, that mankind, and the planet will then be run by ... politicians."
"God has no role to play in politics except to make sure politicians go where they belong.  To hell."

The above sentiment is perfectly fine for those who, like P.J. have already “arrived” and can afford all the necessary socioeconomic survival entrapments such as luxury gated-community homes, beefy Pinkerton protectors, a couple of Teslas and maybe a Fisker in the multiple car garage, great private schools for the kids, all the non-GMO food you can eat, access to the best doctors and finest whiskey, hookers, etc. But for the everyday plebes who are NOT privy to insider stock tips, timely stock option payouts, never-ending book deal royalties, Caymen accounts, dividends and trust fund dipping, not so much.

Contrary to O'Rourke, I would argue that resources end up being “allocated to politics” because they are inevitable for civil societies to function, as is the case for a few necessities like well-funded public schools, a single payer health care system, food and consumer safety commissions, sturdy roads and bridges...all the stuff that makes for good civic and social community infrastructures. But P.J.'s peeps are already set, and can afford the luxury of walling off themselves with moats and private security detail from the public at large. To them, there is no community other than one INSIDE the country club gates. I'd really like to see O'Rourke apply his masterful writing chops instead to the socioeconomic ills of outsourcing/insourcing and the perps who profit from it. But he's a Cato Man, now, and that wouldn't pay for Swiss Alps ski trips and Bora Bora winter swim junkets, now would it?

This is where your Sarah Palin comment comes in and ties neatly with your P.J. article link.

Palin, like O'Rourke, has also found her place at the table of the One Big Money Party movers and shakers inside the gate. Unlike P.J., who IS very, very smart – Palin, IMO, is more like one of those “C” students who sailed over on the Mayflower as described in the above quote. Personally, I admire and typically prefer associating with smart people, as long as they REALLY ARE smart and not faking it and are not insufferable, arrogant, and full of themselves – like so many blowhardy poseurs we see on the left. BTW, I don't hate Sarah Palin or for her not being 'A' class material; I just can't stand the fact that there are millions of very smart and not-so smart women and men in this country who have watched their jobs, health care access and homes pulled away from them by a bipartisan One Party of Money club that pay her to divert attention away from the looting culprits who are redistributing the wealth up and away from the educated middle class. In fact, Palin has an almost charming carelessness about the fact that she isn't ivy 'A' student class material. This is the point O'Rourke drives home in his article. He rightly points out that the ivies are churning out a bunch of arrogant 'A' rote holes incapable of critical thinking. This point is valid. But what he handily OMITS and didn't say is that our corporations are the ones responsible for hiring these creeps in the first place, for to do so would be to violate the Cash Cow of Indian outsourcing and every other cheap labor lobby allegiance that sustains his country club set. Palin and Obama both support offshore drilling. (Whatever your position on offshore drilling, so much for P.J.'s 'A' vs. 'C' student faux dichotomy.) They all dine at the same trough.

Like O'Rourke, Palin is a media/celebrity tool of the One Big Money Party who also never calls out the biggest threat to our local communities which is the neo-frat boy corporate state's (conservative and lefty) agenda or “blueprint” to divide local communities against themselves in their race to the bottom while they destroy our educated middle class by literally giving our jobs to third world imports. (I know you know this.) They too, both know this is where the cash cow lies to keep them and their precious cargo forever in Gucci loafers and handbags until Kingdom Come.

I appreciate and understand your comment about Sarah Palin, but I can't help but view her as anything but the “average” American female just trying to make it in the fu#ked up kleptocracy that this country has become. To the contrary, she is privileged. Maybe she wasn't always, and I certainly do not begrudge her for hitting the high life. That's what America is supposed to be all about. But until she starts calling out the corporations for anti-American worker legalized slavery ala H-1B, rampant age discrimination loopholes that favor corporations and labor arbitrage, she is nothing but another dangerous high profile champion of the have and have not caste system that she will prevail upon. She is a neo-frat boy corporate tool. For example, when was the last time you heard her (or P.J.) say it's time for corporate America to stop outsourcing/insourcing our jobs? When was the last time you heard her advocate a program that would put all displaced, older professionals back to work who had their jobs given away to H-1Bs so that they can afford to pay for the cost-prohibitive, confiscatory mandated health insurance mafia protection money? Nary a peep.  I can not defend her, nor any  politician or media royal who guard that gate.

Palin, like O'Rourke, has a huge media megaphone to get the word out but all they are doing for the most part with it is advancing the agenda of the neo-frat boy corporate state. And it's getting so boring that even the Obami left's Jon Stewart and Colbert are down with the program. For all the “good” they do, put them all on a big, One Big Money Party bipartisan boat down the River Styxx.

Speaking of boats...

About O'Rourke's 'C' student Mayflower pilgrims? Let's get The Straight Dope. Those Mayflower 'C' students were beer drinking jocks and cheerleaders who planned to dock down off the warm coast of Florida but instead landed on the icy shores of Plymouth Rock because they were too shitfaced to navigate the boat. And when it comes to mapping and high seas navigation skills, I want an expert steering my boat. (Nothing against beer, but I never especially liked most jocks and cheerleaders, either, for what it's worth.)

No anal retentive, “brisk apple-polishing” pilgrims and 'A' students on-board that Pilgrim Rock boat, you betcha.

 

-2Truthy

Did Bill Clinton Fart in Our Face?

FROM THE DESK OF QUINCY

 "I did everything but fart in his face!"

-Former President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton

 Farting Around With Bill Clinton

 "Words matter!" Bill Clinton Says!  He's right. Just because white collar middle class jobs are being flushed down the Tech Lobby's cheap labor toilet, unemployment is kissing 20% and rising, more nuclear plants are being built, home foreclosures are on a roll, the militarization of local police (h/t Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque) and practically everybody can't afford health care in the U.S., nobody has to go around blowing up stuff and packin' heat or passing  off  hot air in the media, either.

Clinton basically says that there are absolute nuts out there who might take what you say the wrong way, and so he is a little worried that everything you say makes people do what you say. People can even take what you say literally as well as figuratively, too. (Just like having somebody fart in your face.) Mostly, he's right except it kind of reminds me of the prominent biblical passage I am not my nutters' keeper. 

Remember when Bill Clinton got all snippy with journalist Bill Greider during his Rolling Stone interview when Greider asked him about the disastrous economic impact of NAFTA on America's working class where Clinton told him  "You are a faulty citizen. You don't mobilize or persuade, because you only worry about being doctrinaire and proud," and lumped him in with "bitchy and cynical" liberals"?  And then when Clinton later told Taylor Branch: "I did everything but fart in his face"? Well, Mr. David Sirota does,  here.

Our general policy at LWOH is not to go all scatological, but without any Adult Supervision around, I  can't help but recall the famous words of a famous former president (who 2Truthy voted for) who is now telling people to watch what they say. Do you think he is being too much like Mary Poppins, you know, like a Nanny Stater to stop free speech? Here is what he said:

"And I am not trying to muzzle anybody. But one of the things that the conservatives have always brought to the table in America is a reminder that no law can replace personal responsibility. And the more power you have and the more influence you have, the more responsibility you have."

It's a good thing I don't have any influence, or else I would be muzzled. Yuck. But Clinton has ACTUAL  influence, so what I want to know is why didn't somebody wash his mouth out with soap when he said that? (The last time I saw a horse get muzzled on my old North Carolina Pig farm, he hoofed Farmer Kenny in the nuts with such a wallop that he NEVER ever pulled that on the old mare again.) And just because the former president said he almost farted in Bill Greider's face doesn't mean he actually DID it, only now I am forever left with the image - possibly even more damaging to the whole blogosphere's collective psyche  than his horrible role in selling out U.S. white collar jobs to India. Anyway, in both cases, he should apologize and make every effort to clean up his potty mouth AND give the jobs back to U.S. citizens.

I mean, if some schizzy fat guy in New Jersey decides to pour gasoline on his old Buick and blow it up in his driveway and I wrote something last year about a creepy dream I had where some fat guy in New Jersey blew up his old Buick after pouring gasoline on it in his driveway, that bat-shit whacko's behavior is no reason to slam MY BACON.

OK, I'm going out bowling now with the Crisps. 

Have a great week, everybody!

QUINCY

The Politics of Ocean Trash and Educated Middle Class Trash

                              

“Plastic Soup” Found in Atlantic Ocean, “Plebian Soup” Found Across Middle Class America

 Challenging the Neo-Frat Boy Corporate State's Throwaway Culture

In addition to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch discovered a decade ago, researchers have now identified another pile of floating garbage in the Atlantic. Although you can't see these unsightly, harmful plastic threats to ocean and human life from your bedroom window (like Sarah Palin can see Russia), striking similarities to America's educated middle class being tossed over rails on the Good Ship Job Outsourcing/Insourcing abound. How did America, at one time considered the Star of the Sea when it came to protecting environmental and citizens rights – sell out our safety and jobs and how can corporate America be rehabilitated?

First, let's look at the unsustainability of the Plastics Industry and the Politics of Ocean Trash (h/t David Rosenfeld at DC Bureau) as “Big Plastics” continue to wreak damage across the globe's oceans. A researcher explains:

“The debris is harmful for fish, sea mammals - and at the top of the food chain, potentially humans - even though much of the plastic has broken into such tiny pieces they are nearly invisible.

Since there is no realistic way of cleaning the oceans, advocates say the key is to keep more plastic out by raising awareness and, wherever possible, challenging a throwaway culture that uses non-biodegradable materials for disposable products.

"Our job now is to let people know that plastic ocean pollution is a global problem - it unfortunately is not confined to a single patch."

Check. Time to clean up our oceans, develop packaging alternatives/methods and redefine current industries that harm the environment and local human capital pools. I recently purchased a bottle of aspirin and a toothbrush, noting that the aspirin bottle was at least three times the size it needed to be to hold the sixty tablets. How many plastic, unbiodegradable aspirin bottles have I purchased and thrown out in my lifetime? (Personally, I rarely use the stuff but you get the point.) But a return to the days of the Apothecary could go quite the distance in vastly reducing the amount of plastic used to manufacture unnecessary bottles. Instead of using plastic bottles for drugs (both prescription and non-prescription), the pharmacist would dispense the medications into the customer's reusable metal or glass containers with each purchase. But this might be a good sustainable idea – one that would increase the demand and employment opportunities for more pharmacists, too -- but one that would surely throw an anchor on Big Plastic's Good Ship Polluting for Profit. (The toothbrush packaging practically required gardening shears to pry open the excessively thick, heavy plastic tube encasing.) Why is that?

The “Big Plastics” industry must reinvent its business model to explore sustainable packaging delivery systems just as Corporate America's Cheap Labor Junkie Lobby must rehabilitate itself from its unsustainable dependence on cheap imported labor.

Next, let's look at the damage U.S. corporations are doing to our local economies from America's divestment of local human capital resources caused by corporate America's unsustainable H-1B visa hazard (h/t Bill Snyder at InfoWorld) and compare the “Politics of Ocean Trash” to the “Politics of “Outsourced, Educated Middle Class American Trash” that are unsustainable. Over 45 million educated, middle class citizens (who have earned at least one degree from our nation's leading universities) have been tossed over the rails by the Neo Frat Boy Corporate State so that cheap labor can take their jobs (h/t Mayday at NoSlaves) and are now floating along the unemployment lines or are underemployed and uninsured. The same educated middle class citizens, who, like the floating plastic garbage are “hard to spot from the surface and spun together by a vortex of currents” as the media (both MSM and “access” bloggers/wannabes) keep the Cheap Labor Lobby out of view. The similarities are striking, in that both the Plastics Industry Lobby and the Neo-Frat Boy Corporate State's Outsourcing Educated White Collar Jobs Lobby have the same goal: ignore the ills to our environmental and local social ecosystems while a few greedy insiders profit.

To achieve sustainable investment and human labor practices, our democracy must demand the Neo-Frat Boy Corporate State undergo a thorough house cleaning and take both a moral and business model inventory of all the destructive past and current products and solutions responsible for destroying our ecosystem and local socioeconomic infrastructures. In the meantime, we have plastic trash decomposing at Sea and middle class educated trash decomposing on Our Town and a Neo Frat Boy Corporate State that digs it and their bought faux news media outlets that bury it. Who will save the oceans from socially irresponsible corporate “leaders” treating our seas like their own personal toilet? Who will save educated middle class Americans from being thrown away from the workforce like trash?

With all of the protests the media keep hyping, and speaking of Sarah Palin – When was the last time we heard her rally her audience for cleaning up the Cheap Labor Junkie Lobby's addiction to cheap “skilled” labor? Or cleaning up the oceans?

C'mon, Sarah – KRILL, BABY! KRILL!

.

.

.

I hear crickets chirping.

Party on, plebes!

-2Truthy

What Is UN-Hip: Robert “Third-World” Reich Propaganda

“There's Only So Much Oil in the Ground”

-Tower of Power

“There's Only So Many Jobs to Go Around”

-2Truthy

“Take a long-term view and most new immigrants to the U.S. will be working for many decades.”

-Robert Reich

Yours truly wrote yesterday of The Unsustainability of Cheap Labor and Cheap Oil. Evidentially, Robert Reich didn't get the memo, as his latest HuffPo manifesto “Why More Immigrants Are an Answer to the Coming Boomer Entitlement Mess” once again takes a pass at restoring civility to American society. Robert “Third World” Reich has outdone himself in his latest propaganda incarnation that gives the middle extended finger high salute to middle class American citizens who have been and continue to be hustled out of their jobs, savings and homes so a few insiders can profit by selling out U.S. jobs to cheap imported labor. What a comfort to know that there are Very Serious People in think-tank mode to cover up the tracks for their corporate/political paymasters to pump up the propaganda to those dreadful, pitiful, pathetic plebes and rally the base who Very Serious People have no use for. In addition to America's love fest with cheap labor, its wicked kissing cousin is cheap oil. Why is Obama Drilling? (h/t Frank Ackerman.)

When it comes to cheap labor, it's all about importing and legitimizing slaves, baby! That's What Is Hip.

True to Reichian form, his commanding propaganda pitch today omits any reference to exporting white collar jobs, but most notable includes the following masterful sentence in all of its glaring simplicity that sums up the very serious economist's determination to hammer the plebes with myths destructive to America's middle class citizenry:

“Take a long-term view and most new immigrants to the U.S. will be working for many decades.”

Ya think? Wow. Is that some deep shit, or what?

Translation: Get over yourselves, middle class Americans. Who cares if we export white collar U.S. jobs? Imported workers (blue and white collar) will be our new slaves and dammit, “they'll be working for many decades” to take any white collar job from you we haven't already exported AND your kids' jobs WHILE we level (downgrade) American middle class incomes to a whopping near-minimum wage, assholes. Here's your civility, suckaz!

Reich uses immigrants as a straw dog to divert attention away from the  economic harm to the middle class caused by the cheap labor lobby's unregulated immigration and unnecessary visa programs. Isn't it even slightly obvious to Reich that the current paradigm of importing workers to the U.S. for decreasing job opportunities and finite, dwindling resources is unsustainable? How many different times and ways can the economist's economist hammer these stupid middle class educated Americans about the economic wonders of importing people to take jobs American citizens can do when they need them? What a fu*#ing brilliant idea! And if Americans aren't smart enough to look back over the past two decades and see how well that whole thing worked out, what good are they?

Robert Reich consistently writes like he is the indomitable One Big Money Party's go-to guy for putting the academic techno-gloss on the Great Labor Shortage Myth pig. Reading Robert Reich's anti-American citizen middle class propaganda output is like wallowing around a medical toxic waste dump, where he presides over a two decade old steaming heap of U.S. job killing, economist-speak garbage that fooled the plebes up until the last bubble where swine from sea to sea cashed in not on innovative output but by killing jobs for educated American citizens. Who pays this guy and how many ready to plumb stock options is he sitting on from Wall Street's venture capital neo-fat boy technocracy portfolio to spew such toxic waste? (When does HuffPo and hangers on pull up to the IPO trough?)

But we'll always have Reich, to head this All Star Caste to Omit Solutions for Getting Americans Back to Work and bash American boomers with bad branding and scornful buzz about entitlement (what the hell do THEY deserve, their social security and Medicare? Who do they think they are?) Why doesn't Reich drag out the hogs who rigged the deregulation and cheap labor lobby levers, continue to stash their cash in the Caymans and other offshore “investments” and rig the stock option payday paper for all this innovate, “green” vaporware and social media “solutions” that produce job nada for U.S. citizens? And how about tapping into the infinite, endless billions of military occupation and war spending to pay for all these whiny boomers who can't possibly afford Obama's mandated, cost-prohibitive insurance mafia plan?

Nah. That would bring sustainability and civility to U.S. local economies and restore America's middle class, when the portfolio class wants to cash out very, very quickly at the trough in what may be Empire's last bubble. What Is Hip.

Party on, plebes!

-2Truthy