Everybody Knows

(Very Special Thanks to the Amazing Leonard Cohen)

Silicon Valley -- Everybody knows. Wander around the halls of this valley's once great corporations and VC funded, neo-frat boy start-ups and you will find all you need to know about the causes for rising rates of American unemployment and underemployment. Whether it's Sun or Adobe, these "best and brightest" bean-counter powered executives have sold out the livelihoods of US engineers along with product/service quality for a quick cash-out to India under the ruse of a US skilled great labor shortage. And yet, US cheap labor junkies are STILL heading for the Hill to buy off another round of politicians to supply them with their fix while Obama  plans a summit on job creation next month.

LWOH readers know that  yours truly has written extensively on the wholesale sell-out of US white collar jobs and has provided the solutions with which to correct the problem of rising unemployment/underemployment by reforming CEO cheap labor lobby practices. It's not rocket science. Sometimes, my dear, a banana is just a banana...

In this excellent 2007 article by Alison Overholt at Fast Company entitled The Labor Shortage Myth, the author debunked the thesis that "When boomers start to retire, the theory goes, we'll see a job boom" by asserting "Too bad it won't happen." Overholt suggests that CEOs have manufactured the myth of a US labor shortage where none will exist, and cites this Wharton study by Peter Capelli, as yours truly has previously discussed:

"The labor-shortage alarmists underestimate the capability of younger generations. Peter Cappelli, another Wharton professor and director of the school's Center for Human Resources, notes that even though boomers outnumber busters overall, "the cohort of college grads didn't shrink. We've just pulled more kids up into the system," he says. Some 930,000 bachelor's degrees a year were conferred at the height of the boomers' run through college -- while the smallest graduating class for busters produced 1.16 million grads. Now college-educated members of the "Echo Boom," a group close in size to the boomers themselves, are starting to enter the workforce. No evidence there of a shrinking skilled labor pool."

In addition to Capelli's thorough research, he has been one of the most consistent yet dismissed scholars on the war on America's educated middle class. Overtholt references the following quote:

"But the coming labor shortage? The job boom? They're myths, kept alive mostly because they allow employers easy solutions. "A lot of companies got whacked around in the 1990s when the economy heated up and the labor market tightened. They learned it's easier to lobby for more Indian engineers on H-1B visas than to address their own retention policies and training programs," Cappelli says."

(Note that "easy" solutions = "cheap imported labor.") Fast forward to post ARRA 2009, and the promised jobs stats don't shake out, either.

Everybody knows. Millions of educated Americans are now unemployed and underemployed due to the flood of imported cheap workers that do not need to be here. We have been played by cheap labor junkies and it's time to throw them out. The H-1B temporary work visa program has kept workers in the US when they should have been sent back years ago. Now, Compete America, the cheap labor lobby (see above link)  wants MORE of them? What is the matter with the people of this country? This is nuts.

Overholt's article inspired the visionary scenario into what CEOs across the country might do to bring back the millions of professionals they kicked to the curb by sending back the millions of temporary visa holders whom our unemployment statistics prove corporate America no longer needs. She queries the "pro-worker" reality that educated boomers (and their kids) need those jobs back here:

"With retiring age being pushed off and Social Security at risk, will labor conditions turn pro-worker at any point in the future?"

How to heal this problem? Like the crack whore it is, Corporate America and their lusty political enablers are addicted to imported cheap labor like a sex rehabilitation client is to a daily quickie with the Swedish therapist. Sending millions of temporary work visa holders home so that our citizens can get back to work may not be a sexy topic,  but it can no longer be ignored or swept under the carpet as "politically incorrect." As yours truly reported here, in 2007 Bill Greider also predicted that the US would have to  ostensibly stop the great American jobs giveaway:

"At the moment, there's a great yawn about all this, but one day when everything collapses, people will ask: Why didn't we do anything about this?"

Indeed, Overholt got it right about corporate America's dependencies on "demographic crutches":

"The real solution, of course, is more difficult. It requires companies to invest in the right technologies and in their own employees in order to stay ever more productive. It's not as sexy as a demographic crutch. It just happens to be the right answer."

So let's help Obama with his jobs summit next month by demanding that the cheap labor junkies detox from their fixes of imported labor by sending them back and getting educated Americans back to work again. This H-1B/green card  visa scam has been propped up by the lie of an American skilled labor shortage myth. Now we are in a depression, and US citizens  need jobs. This is no longer a secret.

Everybody knows.

 

-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

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

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

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

Too Big to Poach: Anti-trust Probe or Trojan Horse?

-The Gallic "Race to the Bottom" Wars-
(Photo credits Wikipedia)

Silicon Valley, CA -- Veni, Vidi, Vici! Once upon a time, the Roman empire was hellbent upon buying off the Gauls with the cheap promise of Roman citizenship (or so they thought) -- not unlike the modern day practice of neo-frat boy, feudal lords in hot pursuit of cheap, foreign replacements via dirty H-1B visa and monopolistic hiring practices that begot an entertaining anti-trust probe.

Cecelia Kang of The Washington Post explores in this San Jose Mercury News article a few highlights into the Big Brother State’s monopolistic hiring policies, however carefully maneuvering around the wartime propaganda on American tech professionals known as “The Great Labor Shortage Myth”… One courageous commenter, “Justula” sums up the direct effects of how a few uncivil rulers are bringing down the empire:

“It confirms for me the whole job hunting system in the Valley is rigged to keep the club open only for a select few. I never bought into the Web 2.0 everybody's welcome philosophy when so many elitists run them.

I remember when Silicon Valley was a place anybody could make it. That's what it was like when I started here in the mid 80's. If a company asked for 5 things and you only knew 3, that was okay because they'd be more delighted to let you learn on the job. And they did that because their competitor across was doing it too.

Then came the MBA's in the dotcom era's and ruined it. Google accentuates the negative even more lately when in its Web site it proclaims to hire "only the best and brightest." Now we see this garbage beyond round manhole covers.

I used to feel tremendous depression when interviewing at Silicon Valley tech firms and having Simon Cowell's evil twin telling me I was technically incompetent despite programming since I was 8 years old just because I couldn't solve puzzles that weren't even about software. Then I started speaking to other people who also were being treated poorly by some of the very companies you name here in the South Bay.” --Justula

Competition for the tech industry’s legendary “best and brightest” has always been fierce and not always civilized. As high technology warriors and their families would profit from a constant patrolling of their noble talents by hungry competitors seeking to enrich their armies via recruiting them, there’s a long, predatory tradition in the tech industry of raiding each others philandering troops perceived to possess advanced war machines of cerebral supremacy.

But over time, growing tired, old and fat whilst sucking on the imperial tit of Joe Taxpayer to subsidize their own expanding military and political investment strongholds, several leaders of the Silicon Valley of Rome forged an ingenious pact called “Don’t Poach, Don’t Tell” to squelch the rampant swiping. Consequences of the clan’s pact, however, hastened the empire’s downfall, as the imperial plotsters never questioned terms like “anti-trust” or “unfair competition” or, Hail Caesar help them, “DOJ.”

Kang explains how these pacts or agreements amongst giants is said to be “industry-wide,” with a few names that have already surfaced, including Google, Yahoo, Apple and Genentech. The pact would underscore the empire’s survival by failing to conquer their competitive lust for top business and engineering talent at bargain basement prices:

“Google has long been known for its exhaustive recruiting process to find people who fit into its culture and create innovative Web technologies. In 2005, Microsoft sued Google for hiring away Kai-Fu Lee, Microsoft's vice president for Web Interactive services, to head Google's operations in China.”

As the Seventh Circle of Silicon Valley’s neo-frat boy, ruling tech factions could somehow be assured their competitors wouldn’t constantly be sniffing at each other’s armor, a mutual non-poaching pact made perfect sense -- as long as they could repel small groups of rebels who persisted in hurling insults and rocks at the periphery of their mighty columns.

In addition, The Deal Pipeline reports that the Department of Justice is investigating a possible pact between top U.S. tech companies not to poach each other's top executives. If true, it would be a violation of the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

But cutting out competitors, hurting consumers and rendering the “best and brightest” gladiators to vassal bargaining status inspired Obama's antitrust chief at the Justice Department, Christine Varney, to step in to ostensibly clean the clock or the “effects” of this otherwise fast-ticking feudal lord system that has the potential of dooming the tech nobility’s collusive pact to suppress the wages of the empire’s entire cavalry:

“Of course, such collusion would get a corporate officer into big trouble with the antitrust authorities — restraint of trade and all that — so that option is out. Or is it?”

But Emperor Obama’s cohorts know how to entertain the U.S. rabble. Victory for American professionals or the H-1B imported cheap labor lobby? What will the outcome of this anti-trust probe actually bring for native born troops seeking to advance their corporate rank? Will they continue to be sacked for cheap imported labor or would the ruling slow down the unnecessary recruitment for cheap workers from abroad? Will American workers benefit from a full bore anti-trust probe or is this the silver lining for the cheap import labor lobby?

In addition to Varney’s probe, would Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor be waiting in the trenches to potentially make veritable toast out of native born soldiers whose leaders have profited after years of sacking them to buy cheap labor with rewards of American citizenship? As the New York Times reports:

“Antitrust suits against companies for restraining the movement of skilled employees are by no means unprecedented. In 2001, for example, in a federal appeals court decision written by Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court nominee, the court upheld a complaint by a group of oil geologists and petroleum engineers who sued Exxon and other oil companies for colluding in hiring decisions and thus suppressed wages.”

Moral of the story? In the end, the cheap labor lobby wars never ended and the once noble empire of Silicon Valley, established by law abiding, scholarly rulers and loyal, hubris-free armies with actual engineering degrees from top U.S. schools and not the insufferable and scheming, post-empire MBA asshats – was left to mark the site of its odious and historic Race to the Bottom Massacre, leaving behind its trademark piles of splintered, cyber skulls and bones.

R.I.P., Empire.

-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

Middle Class Czar Joe Biden Hosts Exclusive "Stripped Dignity" Panel

Click here for lyrics to yours truly's “Everybody is a Czar”

-2Truthy
(Special thanks to Sly and the Family Stone)

Middle Class Czar Joe Biden on Stripping American Dignity

Washington – Vice President Joe “Middle Class Czar” Biden hosted a live webcast today with a panel of scholars to discuss the demise of American middle class citizens. Biden is chairman of the White House Task Force on Middle Class Families, established by President  Barack Obama earlier this year. The task force was created “to ensure the administration’s economic recovery effectively raises the living standards of middle-class families and those aspiring to be in the middle class.” The site invites questions for the Czar, and LWOH has a few below. (Yours truly likes Joe Biden and hopes he will succeed by using his gilded pulpit to not only give himself something self-important to do but to actually get results for the greater good of the non-hubris class...some of whom might actually take his Czar position in all of its grand regalia seriously.)

During the speech, Biden observed that “people have been stripped of their dignity” but insisted that the administration is not interested in redistributing wealth. (h/t Sam Stein.) Hmm. Is he talking about more labor arbitrage to”level the playing field” by reducing middle class incomes for educated citizens to cap at the paltry $40,00 per year range instead of doing the smart thing by reinstating the 91% tax rate and relieving us of U.S. corporate cheap labor junkies? Queried the Middle Class Czar:

"We aren't talking about income redistribution," he said. "We are talking about a fighting chance to make a decent income... it's about fairness. It is about simple fairness. It is about an equality of opportunity. At least that's what we are searching for. We are searching for that Holy Grail. How do we establish that level playing field?"

Back to the pressing questions for the Middle Class Czar. Let's start with electronic health records (EHRs) and the Democrats' curious refusal to bring Single Payer to the table and worse, their lust for sticking it to middle class Americans via a cost prohibitive mandated health insurance scam that will, in the words of Obama, stop middle class Americans who don't have insurance because they can't afford it from “gaming the system.” Why is the Obama administration so hell bent on forcing Americans to buy unaffordable health insurance and to subsidize the same corporate technocrats who pander to the cheap labor lobby that refuses to hire educated Americans in favor of cheap imported labor? Read more on this research from yours truly in this recent article Electronic Health Records (EHRs) No Cure-All.)

There's a gold rush in them thar hills, and a few technocrats smell a big, fat taxpayer-funded bonanza at the insufferable elitist BBQ pit – at the expense of the jobs and health of educated America's beaten down middle class. The creation and taxpayer subsidization of half-baked venture backed technologies is nothing new, but when it comes at the expense of health and jobs for middle class Americans, its forced expansion into the domain of health care providers has raised concern from some of the nations finest physicians and organizations. Indeed, the shake down on the nation's physicians is so mighty that even the Huffington Post's “Investigative Fund” has teamed with American University's Investigative Workshop in today's post entitled Stimulus fuels Gold Rush for Electronic Health Systems. (h/t Fred Schulte.)

What could Biden really do to represent middle class Americans? As U.S. taxpayers bankroll or subsidize private electronic medical records technology firms (many whose employees and contractors are not U.S. citizens but imported workers), a few elementary questions for Czar Biden include: “So, to the tune of an estimated $50 billion, where is our Single Payer health care bill?” And “Does Biden represent the portfolio class of corporate technocrats whose business plans revolve around kicking America's educated white collar middle class to the curb via offshoring/onshoring U.S. jobs to foreign workers?” Naturally, the next question is “What are you doing to stop these corporations from importing cheap labor so Americans can get back to work to pay for this craptastic, cost-prohibitive mandated coverage?” Finally “Since most doctors don't want these EHRs, why are you meddling?”

Of all the pressing needs that middle class Americans face today, access to a non-mandated, universal health care system and good paying jobs for its citizenry displaced by imported workers are most critical. Both issues are intrinsically related. Now that the Huffington Post's tentacles have finally gripped the ongoing research of yours truly regarding the stealth taxpayer funded EHRs diverting money from universal health care coverage for all, the corporate sponsored nature surrounding the “health care debate” appears to have much more to do with taxpayer funded, private corporate welfare sponsored growth than preserving health and avoiding financial ruin via a much overdue Single Payer health care system.

Schulte describes the voracious corporate sales push to hustle the same physicians that American middle class citizens depend upon to provide them health care here:

“A super group of major tech firms has banded together and hit the road with what they call a "stimulus tour" to boost sales. So far, the tour, which includes officials from Microsoft, Dell and Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions, has played in more than 30 cities. It stops at local convention centers and hotels, where it holds seminars for doctors. Those who attend receive a "customized stimulus analysis of how much money your practice could earn in federal incentives."

Perhaps Czar Biden, in his role of middle class protectorate can explain how to bust up the toga party between this taxpayer funded, consumer driven private health care medical industrial complex and its evil twin, the American job sacking machine (h/t to EndH1B.com) to restore community and civility to our country's broken, for-profit government run by neo-frat boy corporate elites. Until Biden proves otherwise, that's the group our Middle Class Czar appears to represent.

-2Truthy

Obama Picks White Collar Job Killer Queen Janet Napolitano as New DHS Kahuna

(h/t Rob Sanchez at Zazona/Job Destruction News)

There is a war on America’s white collar middle class raging on, and the president-elect is as busy as Santa’s elf-elect-in-chief while he lines up his cabinet with the equivalent of Drano ® to pour into the employment pipeline of every last job opportunity for white collar Americans in this country (sans the few elites with backstage passes to the trough.)

Borrowing shamelessly from Rob Oak’s blog post title at the Economic Populist on president-elect Obama’s choice to head up the Department of Homeland Security, Oak cite’s truthful stats and facts behind the billion dollar question as to why the DHS is actually in charge of selling out America’s white collar jobs:

“Great huh! The post which is supposed to be concerned about national security, border security will once again be used instead as a cheap labor conduit pool against the United States worker. Damn the statistics, damn the facts, let's just put the biggest corporate cheer leader for cheap labor in a critical position and undermine United States Science and Technology Professionals!”

Patrick Thibodeau’s excellent Computerworld article points out how DHS is in charge of kicking educated American white collar professionals to the curb in favor of hiring imported, cheap workers from India under the corporate mafia sponsored myth of a Great American Labor Shortage. Thibodeau writes:

“The person thought to be President-elect Barack Obama's leading choice to be secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, has been a strong advocate of increasing H-1B visas -- a stance that could turn out to be a lightning-rod issue during her confirmation.
In testimony, speeches and a letter sent last fall to congressional leaders, Napolitano, a two-term governor, has left a clear trail of support for increasing the H-1B visa cap to address what she has argued is a shortage of "skilled workers.”

As yours truly reported last year when Barack Obama ran against Hillary Clinton, he correctly exposed her ties and allegiance to the India Lobby to profit from the brokering of our jobs to foreign citizens. (Note: my post referenced an Obama oppo research source link that is no longer available – not surprising, now that Hillary is onboard the good ship Obama as Secretary of State, is it?) I guess all that profiteering amongst elites at the expense of the American white collar worker is looking mighty fine to the new boss in chief, too.


There is no shortage of “skilled workers”, but a shortage of job opportunities for the growing millions of educated white collar professionals who are already unemployed, underemployed and this trend is growing at an accelerated rate. Meanwhile, wealthy corporate elites like Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt lobbied for more imported, cheap labor in Washington last week with the usual “oh poor, poor students” disingenuous, cynical and sleazy mischaracterization of how companies like his have no conscience or concern for millions of educated, white collar American professionals their companies deliberately choose to not hire with this deliberately incomplete, villous and twisted propaganda pitch:

“the current policy of forcing foreign students unable
to get a visa to go back home is "bizarre -- it's disgusting."

Outsourced and imported cheap labor has only succeeded in making a few elites at Intel, Microsoft, HP, Cisco and Google along with a host of investment professionals very wealthy creatures of habit, and look at where the market has been of late? These elites have relied on the practice of hiring and lording over third world workers instead of Americans without any concern for what this does to our citizens who have studied, worked hard and played by the rules to find themselves now persona not gratis to the hubris class that Schmidt enjoys his members only privilege. What Schmidt carefully omitted in his loathsome condemnation of American professionals seeking employment is the fact that over the last fifteen years, white collar workers have been increasingly struggling with a net loss of white collar job opportunities and diminishing incomes and benefits, not a surplus. Now that the country is in a recession, the need to employ Americans first and set accountable limits on the number of dubiously “skilled” foreign workers has never been greater.


For anyone still in denial over the carefully calculated, bipartisan, corporate sponsored and DC sanctioned determination to eliminate white collar job opportunities for Americans, watch the above video for a good look at what your president-elect and his Google-if-ied cronies and beltway bandits BFF's have in store for you.

-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