Ignition Interlock Devices Sniff Your Seats, Hands for Liquor: Big Brother in Your Backseat

Big Brother in Your Backseat

Update 9/5: The article link by Sarah Longwell is no longer available at The Hill's website.

Most sober, sensible and sane people would overwhelmingly agree that the best way to curb drunk driving is to keep drunks at the curb, or as far away from the steering wheel as they can get. In her article entitled Big Brother in the Backseat, Sarah Longwell, Managing Director of the American Beverage Institute, reports on a new automobile technology that would sniff the seats and hands of all drivers, sober or not - to decide if the driver is drunk.

The author writes that a  “classic bait and switch” plan to keep drunk drivers off the road from Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) called the ROADS SAFE Act "would pour $60 million dollars of taxpayer money" into developing “a new generation of in-car alcohol detectors.” Although well-intentioned, such devices could  potentially risk leaving millions of  sober and or light-drinking drivers stranded alongside strip malls, nightclubs, restaurants, homes and driveways, workplaces and roadsides all across the country. The new generation of in-car alcohol detectors would be embedded in your steering wheel to sniff your seats, hands, and who knows what else to detect traces of alcohol in your car. Once a certain level is detected, the car would not start.

But what if your hands had hand sanitizer on them? Or you just had your nails done? Or you, the driver, were not drinking but the person groping you to your right (that's not ever happened to me, not even as a teen) in the passenger seat was totally sh*tfaced? While drunk driving is a serious problem, aren't there wiser, humane and civil solutions to make use of taxpayer funds that don't demonize sober and responsible drivers? Is putting alcohol detection devices in every car an “overreach and invasion of privacy that will deprive responsible adults of their right to enjoy a drink with dinner?”

Hell yes! And this ingenious, ominous seat and hand sniffing technology in your car may even be an excellent way for a few enterprising, public-private sector “thought leaders” and insiders to turn a mighty fine, profitable return by hooking up to the cash cow auto industry, too! On your taxpayer dime, of course.

Ms. Longwell also points out that while “alcohol detectors are a good tool for getting chronic drunk drivers off our roads”, we ought to be able to fight the problem of drunk driving without treating every American like a bunch of “irresponsible” alcoholics. If such a technology is available, why not limit it to the pool of “chronic” offenders instead of millions of non-lushes who drive?

In fact, why not kick social services programs to the curb, too? Perhaps all of those successful, good old fashioned, taxpayer funded alcohol rehabilitation programs that once employed millions of psychologists and social workers with good wages and benefits in alcohol and drug abuse prevention programs that flourished during the Carter administration years just aren't as profitable as an infinite supply chain of seat and hand sniffers to be installed in every vehicle from Detroit to the Delta from now to Kingdom Come?

Somebody has to prosper, and if this well-intentioned seat and hand sniffing detector is any gage of how far humanity has evolved in the emerging public/private partnership 21^st century, drunk driving prevention, innovative technologies, and rehabilitation solutions that would be smart, humane, sensible and civil may have to take a backseat.

Party on (responsibly and safely), plebes!

-2Truthy

Pink Flamingos - Marbles Trial with Judge Divine

(Very Special Thanks to Divine and John Waters)

Ode to Truth and Truly, Timelessly Offensive Art

"Is there any cross-examination? No? A very strange defense, I must say. Gentlemen, the verdict is guilty on all ten counts of first-degree stupidity."

and

“Connie Marble, you stand convicted of assholeism!”

-Judge Divine

From the brilliant writer and time-honored King of the truly tasteless director John Waters, the 1970's era Pink Flamingos is an all-time classic. Who will mold the delicate, impressionable minds of today's youth amidst stupid Nanny Staters and Groupthinkers polluting the intertoobes, TV and cinema? Ah, we'll always have South Park...

The South Park episode "The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs" has those bad boys writing a “vulgar, disgusting book with the sole intention of getting it banned by disgusting people”, a book SO offensive that nobody can read the first page without hurling - despite it being hailed a “literary masterpiece.”

-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

FutureGen 'Old Clean Coal' Project Bags $1 Billion from DOE

 "How many billions of taxpayer dollars will we send down what is now just a hole in the ground before we recognize that pumping carbon pollution underground is nothing more than an industry pipe dream?"

-Dan Howells, Greenpeace

Old Clean Coal was a dirty old soul
And a dirty old soul was he;
He tried to filter and pipe CO2 down a hole
And instead it blew up a tree.
Every fiddler has a carbon credit to piddle
Some carbon credit swaps had he;
Oh there's none so rare, as polluted air
With Clean Coal for all Mattoon Illinois to see.

-2Truthy

WASHINGTON, DC – President Obama gave a $1 billion enhance on Thursday to FutureGen, a “beleaguered” alliance aimed at curbing carbon dioxide pollutants created by burning coal to produce electrical power thorough an experimental, federally funded carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) project for Mattoon, Illinois. In a sudden shift of events this week, Mattoon dropped out of the project citing that it was “not in their best interest”. Mattoon was expected to serve as host of the experimental, jobs-creating, coal-fired power plant that would test whether carbon pollutants could be stored underground. The move is said to leave federal energy officials “scrambling to find a new site to store the pollutants.”

Is 'clean' coal really clean? If not, can carbon capture and sequestration technology (CCS) eventually be perfected to make coal become a leading American energy alternative at home and for export  abroad?

Jeff Biggers at the Washington Post explains What a Load 'Clean' Coal' is below:

“Clean coal: Never was there an oxymoron more insidious, or more dangerous to our public health. Invoked as often by the Democratic presidential candidates as by the Republicans and by liberals and conservatives alike, this slogan has blindsided any meaningful progress toward a sustainable energy policy.”

He makes a compelling case against ever counting on coal mining becoming safe and clean for humans and the environment here:

“Orwellian language has led to Orwellian politics. With the imaginary vocabulary of "clean coal," too many Democrats and Republicans, as well as a surprising number of environmentalists, have forgotten the dirty realities of extracting coal from the earth. Pummeled by warnings that global warming is triggering the apocalypse, Americans have fallen for the ruse of futuristic science that is clean coal. And in the meantime, swaths of the country are being destroyed before our eyes.

Here's the hog-killing reality that a coal miner like Burl or my grandfather knew firsthand: No matter how "cap 'n trade" schemes pan out in the distant future for coal-fired plants, strip mining and underground coal mining remain the dirtiest and most destructive ways of making energy.”

In his excellent article entitled Obama: The Making of a Clean Coal President, David Sassoon profiles both sides of the clean coal argument. While CCS “fits the limitless growth model like a glove, with the technology expected to double the size of the fossil fuel industry from its current size”, he speculates it will need two decades of government support to grow. In other words, the technology just is not there yet. A Department of Energy roadmap published late in the Bush administration (2007) projected that commercial-scale application of CCS would NOT be possible before 2030, saying:

"As a technology and a research discipline, carbon sequestration is in its infancy."

But the very real economic imperative of capitalizing on the abundance of  U.S. coal and patently owning 'clean' coal technology can not be underscored in these insecure economic times, as Sassoon explains that the Democrats are looking to the legacy energy industries which have another advantage:

“They play powerfully inside a global economic system built on the assumption of limitless economic growth, and which is in dire need of boost in the wake of the US mortgage crisis. The coal supply remains a commodity that needs to be mined, shipped, exported and traded — a BTU bonanza for the nations that have it in abundance like the U.S., Russia, China, India and Australia.

Further, with China already leading the world in the export of solar and wind hardware, CCS offers the prospect of being an exportable big ticket advanced technology that even the Chinese will want to buy.”

So until 2030, President Obama may well believe – fervently and unconditionally – that government investment in clean coal technology is essential for our domestic economic growth and global climate sustainability.  Fair enough. You might call the phantom 'clean' coal the Skunkworks of polluting DIRTY coal development or the Manhattan Project of pollutants... But if all goes well, and at least until 2030 - it looks like we're stuck with plenty of DIRTY coal, and the choice of continuing to burn it and keep polluting the planet.

So what's next? Eli Kintisch from Science Insider explains below:

"Now, with $1 billion in stimulus funds, DOE has announced FutureGen 2.0—with decidedly less-aggressive goals. The project will retrofit an existing plant that burns the coal as solid coal—the old-fashioned way, pulverized into fine powder. But it will do so in burners full of rich oxygen, so the coal is burned more fully and produces a nearly pure stream of CO₂ and water vapor—making the CO₂ easier to collect and store than in traditional plants.

So instead of focusing on new technology for brand-new plants, the move emphasizes the need for understanding the decidedly less-sexy chore of creating retrofits for the coal plants that run today."

In the meantime, will dirty coal plants here and in countries around the world be fined for polluting? Will China, for example, be purchasing plenty of carbon credits in the near term? If we really care about the environment, dirty coal is not the way to go.

-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

Dick Cheney Gets His First Heart

Because he never had one. 

Contrary to Dick Cheney's wishes, they inserted a device heart into his body today. 

What could Dick Cheney ever do with one of those useless things? 

Let's see how this plays out. Either the heart will take over and give him emotions or he'll blacken it and turn it into a lump of coal.

Stay tuned.

-2Truthy

Buh-Bye Big Oil, Hello Big Algae

Burning Algae: America's Green Crude Revolution

BP's Gulf of Mexico Disaster and America's Own Private Dead Sea

Hillary Clinton said “never waste a good crisis.” I have no idea how extensively invested or not the Secretary of State and the former president are in biofuels, but if they are, no one can ever accuse the former first couple of not being red-blooded, astute and enterprising agents of personal and political change. Only a dope would miss out on lucrative alternative energy investments, even if they're longterm. And that goes for current and ex-politicos alike. Besides, nobody ever said that holding high office led to the poor house, although maybe it should to keep them honest. But to read articles like this that would suggest a despicable cause and effect link to the BP disaster and President Obama's investments, for example, you'd think that no one with financial portfolios should ever make a buck. (Again, this is not to say that if someone deliberately turned the Gulf of Mexico into one big, gigantic toilet, they shouldn't meet Lucifer's own bitch, Mother Nature in the shower for one infinitely timeless, long, hot soak of acid rain with a shark-tooth coated loofah scrub. Forever.)

Could BP's monumental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico potentially deliver a timely, silver lining payday for at least a few investors and transitional enterprises experienced in reaching into government coffers to fund private R & D start-ups and partnerships? Leaving Big Oil for Big Algae may be a sign of the times, ushering in shifts of investments and new investors from unlikely sectors alike.

Take technology billionaire Bill Gates who backed Sapphire Energy, an algae start-up based in San Diego. Gates now has a distinct interest into using the power of pond scum to replace fossil fuels, quite possibly not unlike his legendary hiring practices of substituting cheap workers for educated Americans. In 2008, Bruce Bigelow at Xconomy reported that Gates backed the alternative fuels company which didn't at the time want to “get caught up into the hype”:

"Sapphire Energy has not provided many details about its technology since CEO Jason Pyle stepped into the limelight six months ago to announce the San Diego startup has developed a revolutionary process for turning pond scum into high-octane gasoline.

“I have no intention of being secretive,” Pyle told me at the inaugural networking meeting of the newly formed San Diego Biotechnology Network, or SDBN. But after seeing the effects of the boom-and-bust cycle in two recent tech bubbles, Pyle says, “My goal is to maintain a serious and thoughtful approach in a frothy market. I don’t want Sapphire to get caught up in that hype.”

Certainly, keeping a young company's secret sauce under wraps is almost as common as venture backed start-ups with ties to the Beltway who know how to secure government subsidized handouts that stick U.S. taxpayers with the bill for their own lucratively free lunches. But now that BP's unprecedented environmental disaster down in the Gulf of Mexico is said to render the once bio-diverse ocean ecosystem into a dead pool that will, however, create an abundance of algae, will BP's coincidental accident in the Gulf of Mexico successfully transition into corporate America's own private algae farm?

Could algae be the new black when it comes to energy fuels? Is Sapphire Energy - which also hosts a former BP executive on its management team, president Cynthia “C.J.” Warner, be the real deal? 

Commenter “Pappa Daddy” says not so much below:

“Sapphire Energy sounds like a scam. Sapphire says their “green crude” is chemically identical to gasoline. (Sirens going off!!!) GASOLINE is made up of varying chains of hydrogen and carbon. How does something chemically identical to gasoline not produce CO2 as a by-product? Any chemical engineers out there? As we’ve seen recently with the Maddow investment scam, because someone has money does not make them a good investor…or because Bill Gates knows software doesn’t make him a chemist.

These companies are currently in business to milk up government funding and then disappear (or grab subsidies and disappear). There will be US government grants and loans pissed away soon under the new administration to anyone who sounds like they know anything about renewable energy. Banks are not going to loan these people money. The only place they will be able to get it is from our fearless leaders in government. There is NOT ONE independently verifiable algae fuel production facility on Earth. If there is please point it out and tell me where I can buy some “green crude”. Even a long-term pilot plant would do.

That mental retard Rep Inslee from Washington state is a supporter of Sapphire. You can find his incoherent speech on the House floor on youtube.”

Others conclude that the algae market, while promising, is “fairly far off” from making a dent into replacing fossil fuels for capital intensive reasons and consequently would even be a lousy stock for public investors:

“Algae has great promise for producing liquid fuels in sufficient quantity to replace petroleum, and it can do so without using excessive water or farmland. That potential, however, is fairly far off. The technology is capital intensive and far from commercialization, a combination almost certain to make investors in the public stocks poorer rather than richer. If and when fuel made from algae is available in significant quantity to make a dent in our thirst for fossil fuels, it will probably have been developed by companies that public investors cannot currently buy. Stock market investors should wait until this industry matures from its current infancy to something closer to adolescence. Buyers of the current batch of infant companies are likely to suffer the fate of other new parents: many sleepless nights.”

-2Truthy

GE Kicks Off Ecomagination Tour

GE Disrobes Ecomagination Challenge

San Francisco – GE (NYSE: GE) Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt announced today a “$200 million open innovation challenge that seeks breakthrough ideas to create a smarter, cleaner, more efficient electric grid, and accelerate the adoption of more efficient grid technologies.” Immelt unveiled the “GE Ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid” to a handpicked crowd of venture capitalists and others interested in participating in a “global commitment to build innovative clean energy technologies”. Will GE's stealthy move to partner with venture capitalists and foreign outsourcing firms create more jobs for American citizens? LWOH readers will recall this last post about GE's backshoring plans here.

Today's announcement reveals that the enterprising “global challenge invites technologists, entrepreneurs and start-ups to share their best ideas and come together to take on one of the world's toughest challenges - building the next-generation power grid to meet the needs of the 21st century." The challenge is said to be one of the "largest ever" and is open immediately at www.ecomagination.com/challenge.

“The Challenge, launched in collaboration with leading venture capital firms Emerald Technology Ventures, Foundation Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byer and RockPort Capital, and Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief, Wired magazine, is part of GE’s ecomagination initiative, a global commitment to build innovative clean energy technologies and will help fund the most promising ideas. Proposals are sought in three, broad categories: Renewables, Grid and Eco Homes/Eco Buildings.”

The announcement also explains below “Select Challenge” entrants who will be offered the opportunity to develop a commercial relationship with GE through:

• Investment: the $200 million capital pledge of GE and its partners will be invested globally into promising start-ups and ideas
• Validation: evaluate entrant’sbusiness {sic} strategy through in-depth discussions with GE's technical and commercial teams
• Distribution: explore partnership opportunities with GE to scale a business and create global reach
• Development:: leverage GE‘s technical infrastructure and GE Global Research Centers to accelerate technology and product development
• Growth: explore opportunities for utilizing existing GE customer to take Challenge products to market
  

The $200 million commitment "will help bring these new ideas to market by providing businesses and individuals with theopportunity {sic} to secure growth capital through GE investment and/or investment by participating venture capital firms. It is open to anyone aged 18 years or older and all legally formed entities.” Imagine that.

Click to read more about how GE is harnessing the power of special partnerships here.

-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

The Gay Swami's Happy Friday Hour with Paul McCartney!

(Click on Image to Enlarge)

Happy Birthday Wishes to Sir Paul McCartney! Turn up the volume!!!

Welcome back to The Gay Swami Times. Click here for previous issues. Since we can no longer count on our New Jersey “web developer” Sanjay, to send us timely copy without holding it ransom, we're down to recycling images (such as the one above).

In our previous issue entitled MAN-CRUSHINOMICS 101: Keep Your Hands on Your Puts and Keep Your Man-Crush Closer, we examined the otherworldly field of MANCRUSHINOMICS where our nation's leading politicians and “thought leaders” plumb and thumb the depths of the highest rollers in the land who turn the otherwise scholarly field of economics UPSIDE DOWN. From the Beltway to the board room, these casino capital derivatives beasts have their fraternal fingers all over the place.  Omm...

Today, infinite lifetimes of celebratory congratulations go out to dreamy Sir Paul McCartney on the 68^th anniversary of his birth in this current life.

Sir Paul is The Gay Swami's most favorite, hands-down Beatle! Sir Paul was in the news, most recently appearing at the White House to rock Barry and serenede Michelle (he sang “Michelle) while all HELL was (and still is) breaking loose in the Gulf of Mexico!

But don't worry, because many lifetimes of prayers are with swoony and heavenly Al Gore to be taking care of business to clean up the black hole in the Gulf.

In honor of celebrating Sir Paul's special day, click on the video above to hear The Gay Swami's most favorite “Paul song” with the Beatles, Fixing a Hole!

Happy Man-Crush Friday!

-THE GAY SWAMI

Heads on a Plane - Southwest Finds Dead Heads

Land of the Free (Trade), Home of the (Slave/Black Market Trade) Brave?

Heads on a Plane!

Tails from the Crypt

Little Rock – A Southwest Airlines employee discovered what was described as 40-60 human heads inside an improperly packaged shipment bound for a Ft. Worth facility of medical researcher Medtronic. Although the practice of utilizing and shipping human body parts for medical instruction and research is common, a company official remarked that it is “rare for a shipment to be seized.”

Skullduggery or just more glorious black market monkey business as usual in the  loophole ridden, Neo-Frat Boy Corporate States of America? We don't know, but a coroner had this to say:

"We've come to the conclusion that there is a black market out there for human body parts for research or for whatever reason," said Pulaski County coroner Garland Camper. "We just want to make sure these specimens here aren't a part of that black market and underground trade."

Whether dead or alive, human trafficking apparently isn't just limited to the LEGALIZED practice of living H-1B, F and L visa holders responsible for driving down wages and taking jobs from American citizens via the importation of cheap foreign labor, either! The article states that dealing in human body parts is LEGAL, too! Is America the ultimate Holy Land of Skullduggery?

“Federal law generally prohibits the sale of human body parts, although suppliers can be reimbursed for expenses in cases of legitimate medical education or research.

"It is a lucrative business. There is money to be made," Camper said. "We're hoping that this isn't the case."”

Don't worry. Just remember to keep your heads – and any other body parts belonging to your body's temple even closer.

Party on, plebes!

-2Truthy

Schumer Call Center Bill to Reduce Outsourcing

Schumer Call Center Bill to Stem Job Outsourcing: Will it Boost Insourcing?

New York – The New York Daily News reports Democratic NY State Senator Chuck Schumer is proposing 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. The bill would also require companies to inform their customers when their calls are transferred out of the U.S. and to which specific country they are being transferred to. Is this bill that is also requiring foreign call centers to disclose their specific country due to a major decline in quality and service for U.S. citizens?

"1.6 billion calls are being transferred to call centers, often without the customer's knowledge," Schumer said.

Although outsourcing proponents claim that initial savings of up to forty percent occur with sending U.S. jobs overseas, some assert that companies “could see productivity losses of up to 60 percent when the full cycle of application development is outsourced, leading to longer development times."

In other words, giving U.S. jobs to cheap foreign workers is not locally sustainable – neither economically or from a competency/quality of services perspective. While India has been the largest recipient of U.S. jobs both there and here, no wonder we are seeing jobs vanish for our locals. But mounting and unprecedented job losses for American citizens have prompted U.S. policy makers to address the employment needs of their American constituents (ahem, voters) to halt the bleeding of jobs to foreign countries.

Is this bill, however, priming the pump for “backshoring”?

What good is it if U.S. companies like NCR, GE, and Dow bring their call center and/or development and manufacturing operations back home when they support foreign outsourcing companies and imported workers from India instead of American workers? Could Senator Schumer be taking a page right out of Ohio governor Ted Strickland's playbook?

Is Schumer's bill truly addressing the employment needs of American workers by penalizing U.S. businesses for handing jobs to workers in other countries or will this bill prompt an increase in the already unsustainable numbers of IMPORTED workers under student and labor F-1 and H-1B visa programs to continue taking jobs away from American graduates and professionals and driving down local wages and compensation plans?

Where is the equivalent bill to stop the influx of IMPORTED Indian outsourcing companies like Wipro, Tata and Infosys along with workers from India to take jobs from Americans in  professions like health care, electronic healthcare records, information technology and the legal profession? As the article notes:

"On their part, India’s top outsourcing companies Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, Wipro and HCL have already started setting up development centres in locations such as Atlanta and Michigan. While TCS aims to double its foreign workforce from 10,000 currently to 20,000 over next five years, Infosys and Wipro could see non-Indians account for 10-15% of their total employee base in next 3-5 years, from around 5% currently." 

-2Truthy

Happy Memorial Day: From the Desk of Quincy

 FROM THE DESK OF QUINCY

“Barack Obama: Wasn't he supposed to turn the water into wine, not Texas tea?”

-Quincy

Happy Memorial Day, Everybody!

I hope you are all having a nice day remembering the soldiers who defended the United States of America. Serving one's country is an honor and a privilege, especially if you make it out of there alive.

I tried to enlist in the armed services but got disqualified because I am, you know, a PIG. I'm an actual PIG and our distinct minority faces all kinds of discrimination way, way beyond Gays in the military with DADT (Don't Ask Don't Tell). What many people don't know is that being a PIG means automatic disqualification from all kinds of public outings and opportunities you normally take for granted, like go-kart racing and especially employment. Try applying for Maître d' at the Boom Boom Room and you're not only (rather rudely) shown the door, but banned from ever dining there.

Last month, I found myself at a Fellini-esque crossroads, trying to decide what to do with my life. Should I take an Introduction to Photoshop class at the local community college or clandestinely and bravely serve my country? After being approached by a camouflage pants wearing military recruiter (well, that's what he said he was) in the SafeWay parking lot, I was encouraged to enlist after looking at the exciting pamphlet about all the places I could go – kind of like Dr. Seuss, only with attitude. Anyway, this was not to be. Besides, after my previous tour of duty on a stealthy, highly classified mission, you might say I was already overqualified.

But then the dreadful day in late April came, when BP's blowout preventer failed and caused the Gulf of Mexico to turn into the Black Sea.

On account of this, my plans to spend this Memorial four day weekend at Mr. And Mrs. Crisp's Ft. Myers beach front condo were scotched after the historic, man made disaster down in the Gulf of Mexico. The smell is beastly, and the mood of the locals is worse. The gusher is STILL gushing, and nobody knows how to really fix the mess.

That's why I was tapped by the State Department to go down to Houston this week to root out the culprits behind this non-stop, vicious and voracious volcano of black gold, Texas tea. Not only are wild PIGS highly experienced in rooting out farm profits, but we're also creatures willing to get down into the dirty muck of rooting out inconspicuous feral animals and blowhards guilty of poaching everything sustainable for the rest of those in the sty.

It won't be easy, since everybody involved is either a big fat liar and/or incompetent, but somebody has to help investigative journalist Mr. Greg Palast skewer a few rolling carcasses on a spit. As he wrote in his article Smart PIG: BP's OTHER Spill BP has a history of “cheaping out”:

“By not properly inspecting the pipeline for over a decade, BP failed to prevent that March 2006 spill which polluted Prudhoe Bay. And cheaping out on remote controls for their oil well blow-out preventers appears to have cost the lives of 11 men on the Deepwater Horizon.

But then, failure to implement proper safety procedures has saved BP, not millions but billions of dollars, suggests that the company's pig is indeed, very, very smart.”

You can say THAT again, Mr. Greg Palast! This guy really, really knows what he's talking about.

I'm heading out now to join friends for an afternoon barbecue. Later on, in remembrance of Dennis Hopper, we plan to pop open a few Red Tail Ales and watch one of the best movies ever made, Easy Rider.

Have a happy Memorial Day!

-QUINCY

Steve Jobs, Foxconn Suicides and Bringing Jobs Home

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Is Steve Jobs Robbing Americans of Jobs, While Simultaneously Robbing the Chinese of Their Youth?

Don Sears at eWeek reports that after 11 attempted suicides in 2010 of Chinese factory workers at its Foxconn subsidiary facility in Southern China, planned pay raises for worker salaries are expected to jump by 20 percent. “Exactly when these raises of workers who build products for Apple, HP, Dell, Sony and others will take place has not been announced.”  Sears explains:

“The Foxconn factory is located in the Shenzen province of Southern China and employs about 420,000 workers in this facility. Earlier this week, a worker ended his life by jumping off the factory building, and another worker who tried to slit his wrists survived.”

The new Foxconn "pay-to-delay suicide pact" between the Asian outsourcing electronics manufacturer and their young workers raises the question:

Hey Stevie, why not just keep the jobs here for U.S. teens who need JOBS instead, you know? Why stay on the same old auctioning human life off to the lowest bidder planet when the U.S. needs a boost? (h/t Mish.)

Click here for Fake Steve's new spin on the Foxconn suicide epidemic.

Happy Friday, Loserettes!

-2Truthy

Obama and Geithner Entry Level Man-Crushinomics: The Gay Swami Times

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Obama and Geithner Entry Level Man-Crushinomics Exclusive: The Gay Swami Times

MAN-CRUSHINOMICS 101: Keep Your Hands on Your Puts and Keep Your Man-Crush Closer

Welcome back to The Gay Swami Times for our first-ever tutorial special MAN-CRUSHINOMICS 101: Keep Your Hands on Your Puts and Keep Your Man-Crush Closer issue where we investigate the sublime and sometimes plunging depths of the highest rollers in the land who have their manly fingers all over the place. Our exhilarating Man-Crushinomics journey takes us to the pulse of Washington and Wall Street's long-term capital portfolio lusting, pay-to-play casino derivatives beasts dripping in lifetimes of infinite pleasure trysts.  A mysterious inner-sanctum where technocratic man-crush e-dicts and rigged casino economics rule!  Click here for previous issues.

In this breathtaking special issue, our BROMANCE detector alert has been raised to an all-time high as new reports surface in the White House that Barack Obama and “embattled” Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner...they have a thing, goin' on...Cue up “Me and Mrs. Jones” and then sing “Me and His Cahones”!!!

Although no juicy specifics about the purported Barry on Timmy man-crush were uncovered, uber Brahman (note: to the ladies only) David “Axe” Axelrod revealed that Geithner's “looming large” persistent presence might have something to do with Timmy's mystical abilities at imposing pleasing, nocturnal “stabilization” and “stress tests” (sorry, no details yet available) that are reported to work very, very well:

“Indeed, the president's support for his Treasury secretary has been unwavering. (Axelrod would laugh at rumors that Geithner was about to get the boot: "Don't these people realize they have a man-crush on each other?") And Obama's loyalty has been repaid with results. Geithner's stabilization plan is now widely regarded as having worked -- mainly thanks to the once-derided "stress tests" that he imposed on the banks, which showed the world that their circumstances weren't as dire as many feared and let them raise the requisite capital to get back on their feet.”

Yes, the magic of entry level MAN-CRUSHINOMICS is like pulling a rabbit out of a hat, and anything else from exotic, secret and taboo places! What results are these that are said to work? Although you can't see, taste or smell any of them (much less understand what the hell they are) SOMEBODY can...Ask TimBama.

In another exciting expose, we thank Cenk Uygur for his wonderfully manly exclusive video (above) further detailing Barry and Timmy's “peas in a pod” like attraction!

Ommmmmm...

-THE GAY SWAMI