I sent the following message about the Stimulus Package to the “Citizen’s Briefing Book” section of the Obama-Biden Change.gov site. I’ll probably send it via a couple of other directions to make sure that it gets incorporated.
With the proposed stimulus package, one goal is to put American’s back to work. But the risk is that we are going to preferentially put undocumented immigrant workers back to work. Based on recent experience we know that, wherever possible, firms will cut that corner.
How are we going to avoid the scandal of this stimulus package becoming a major global attractor of cheap undocumented workers?
You can just imagine the headline; “Massive Stimulus Package is Big Incentive for Major Firms To ‘Mistakenly’ Hire Undocumented Workers! New Workers Flood to the USA From All Over The World.”
I suggest:
1.) Unusually severe penalties for employers that utilize undocumented workers under the stimulus plan, and similar penalties for the administrators responsible for utilizing sub-contractors that hire undocumented workers. Avoid any “plausible deniability”.
2.) To help protect employers and contract administrators, the plan should “encourage” the use of American unions to the greatest extent possible. This is justified because a union roster has been, or can readily be, carefully vetted for undocumented workers. A union provides employers with an intervening point of accountability for preventing a “mistaken” rush to undocumented workers.
It’s not a coincidence that as organized labor has declined, undocumented workers have become the preferred employee. I propose that organized labor is not necessarily part of the problem, but in the case of a massive taxpayer expenditure, can honorably participate in becoming part of the solution.
Lots of bad debt losses in this market. Mortgage companies down the tube, Freddie and Fannie under duress. What we universally hear about is that the buyers are unable to pay for what they bought. Those poor credit users and credit suppliers are seeking the sympathy of our collective legislative hearts and wallets.
But wait a second. All of that credit represents money that was paid to sellers. This decade’s “ownership society” boom was not driven by easy credit. Easy credit was a facilitator. The housing boom was driven by observations of sellers consistently making money on transactions.
To the extent that there were buyers who were not properly vetted to purchase a particular property or product, there were sellers who were unjustly enriched through the resulting transaction. Given that there might be several trillion dollars worth of bad debt that prudence could have prevented, there will have been the equivalent value in seller wealth that would not have been accumulated or spent on possessions. I haven’t heard anything about these “unjust gainers”. Nobody is blaming the sellers.
I wonder what the economic growth of this decade would have been with a more prudent, call it normal, credit policy. Given that this “seller’s feeding trough” was one of the most ambitious of the Administration’s economic programs, it is a foul flavor for the Republican’s business reputation. It harkens back to the President’s own history of oil business experience. Real world understanding is what makes business so tough, and it is something that cannot be taught in the Harvard Business Charm School.
I came across an article in the June 2008 Scientific American titled “Digital Forensics: Five Ways To Spot a Fake” by Hany Farid.
The article was particularly relevant this week because of questions in the New York Times about an Iranian missile launch. In fact Mr. Farid wrote a follow-up about the image in SciAm online on July 10th “Is That Iranian Missile Photo a Fake?“.
Today in the Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Journal section, the lead article is about Gregorius Nekschot, the pseudonym of a Dutch cartoonist troublemaker. Upon review of the site I unexpectedly came across this image, inducing upon me excruciatingly painful laughter.
OK, let’s analyze this image for trickery.
These are several of my favorite phrases that I have used at the bottom of my writings on a couple of forums where I post.
I currently use this one. I found it in one of the comments on a news-blogs. Unfortunately I can’t source it. I found it during the last month or so of the Clinton presidential campaign. For whatever reason, I find it fascinatingly funny.
And then they took all the Hillary Clinton supporters’ Bibles, and gathered up their companion animals and et them in a pagan barbeque while dancing around maypoles, and basked in beeswax and honey and the blood of innocents while all through the valley the lamentations of the slaughtered could be heard.
This one is from Kurt Vonnegut’s book A Man Without a Country.
There is no reason good can’t triumph over evil,
if only angels will get organized along the lines of the mafia.
Then from Jimmy Buffett’s Party At The End Of The World.
I don’t care about “the Rapture”
When there’s native girls to capture
There’s a party at the end of the world
And just because there isn’t a good immediate alternative location to post the memory, on the same pilot forum one of the union moderators is currently using something quoted from my writing:
…. hopefully your level of future satisfaction meets your level of present expectation. I think you’re being fooled. Again.
Milt Bearden writes a commentary in The Washington Independent today titled “The Truth Is Out on CIA and Torture“. He is a 30-year veteran in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, served as senior manager for clandestine operations, and is the author, with James Risen, of “The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Final Showdown With the KGB.”
He writes about something that has bothered me throughout this presidential administration regarding its persistent secrecy with facts, and emphasis on an equivalent of the classic phrase “trust me”. Over my decades of survival, and long before this presidency, I’ve half jokingly recast the phrase “trust me” into actually being a para-phrasing of “I’m about to kill you.” As in “Trust me, I can make this landing.”
Mr. Bearden writes:
Throughout this ugly drama, U.S. leaders have assured the public that the extreme interrogation measures used on detainees have thwarted acts of terrorist and saved thousands of American lives. The trouble with such claims is that professionals who know something of interrogation or intelligence don’t believe them. This is not just because the old hands overwhelmingly believe that torture doesn’t work — it doesn’t — but also because they know that torture creates more terrorists and fosters more acts of terror than it could possibly neutralize.
The administration’s claims of having “saved thousands of Americans” can be dismissed out of hand because credible evidence has never been offered — not even an authoritative leak of any major terrorist operation interdicted based on information gathered from these interrogations in the past seven years. All the public gets is repeated references to Jose Padilla, the Lakawanna Six, the Liberty Seven and the Library Tower operation in Los Angeles. If those slapstick episodes are the true character of the threat, then maybe we’ll be okay after all.
When challenged on the lack of a game-changing example of a derailed operation, administration officials usually say that the need to protect sources and methods prevents revealing just how enhanced interrogation techniques have saved so many thousands of Americans. But it is irresponsible for any administration not to tell a credible story that would convince critics at home and abroad that this torture has served some useful purpose.
Communicating has become much more complex. I’m talking about each person’s technically accepted methods of communications, specifically referencing full use of a cell phone, instant messaging, Skype, and Facebook. Here’s my current list of characteristics that I need to remember about each of my family, friends, and acquaintances.
The extent of the Bernie Madoff gang criminal enterprise and its victims at this point are known to be outrageously large, though still undefined. What is unbelievably strange is that for 30 years Mr. Madoff’s “investors”, and for that matter the SEC, all considered a consistent 10% profit in good and bad markets to be not only “normal”, but to be the mark of a shrewd professional money manager.
Hotel Internet sucks. You’ve probably tried it. Nobody downstairs knows WTF is going on. Well, they may give you a password, and that may connect with the presidentially infamous thing called “The Internets”. But really. Since the TV also almost always sucks in hotels, I listen to the Internet radio stations. Then I fire up tab links to about 30 of my normal review web sites, and start up SKYPE. Almost always something crashes. No music, “unable to load” websites, 120 second page downloads, and SKYPE video that sounds like crap. It’s almost like the antique dial-up world, except with wireless or an Ethernet wire. Doesn’t anybody measure bandwidth loads and project the growth of bandwidth demand?
But nobody seems to understand “sizing” of the required bandwidth. Or if someone does understand bandwidth somewhat, they are not telling the hotel that six months from today they’re going to require a whole shit-load more. I’m imagining a hotel budget meeting where someone says arbitrarily, “This is how much we can spend, so this is all the bandwidth that we can buy.” 
Continuing to wonder if gotcha’s, political theater, nominee wives, pretend facts, and talking air-heads will, like before, provide a determining influence on the results of the upcoming presidential election. Or if a harsh reality has encroached far enough to distract America’s attention into critically evaluating our current operating assumptions and myths.
An audio lesson to my daughter, with help from Kitchener.
Lia’s enroute to Santorini with a couple of other girls, to be shepherded around by Georgos Petroudis, a long-time friend from the village. He’s a late middle-aged nationally recognized bazooki player of Rebetiko, and plays in one of the tavernas on the island.
Medical school starts in September, and I’ve got to get her that far. Here’s the lesson, a song by the great calypsonian, Lord Kitchener:
this player.