Just as a point of reference, I missed this episode of The Daily Show. A friend of mine who is a Vietnam War veteran sent me this link.
Rev. Joe’s Random Thought # 1,234
…yeah I know you did not ask!
Definition of a politician: An individual who spends inordinately large sums of money to get elected to a job for which they are not qualified. Should they achieve this dubious goal the likelihood is that they will live up to the expectations of incompetence and/or corruption.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Wealth Gap (HBO)
Lawsuit Claims Obama Discriminated Against American Workers.
The CF continues. Apparently the Obama administration is in bed with InfoSys. To quote from the article from Computerworld in this link Court case offers a peek at how H-1B-fueled discrimination works :
“The passage of the Affordable Care Act brought with it a burst of IT spending and hiring. The District of Columbia, for instance, hired offshore outsourcing firm Infosys for $49.5 million to build its Healthcare Exchange.
The India-based Infosys brought in H-1B visa holders to work on the government project. And of the approximately 100 Infosys employees working on the healthcare project, only three were American, according to a civil lawsuit filed in federal court.”
Just to be clear the discrimination they are referring is against citizens of the United States in the IT field.
To quote from another article Lawsuit: Tech Company Hired to Build D.C. Obamacare Website Discriminated Against Americans Continue reading “Lawsuit Claims Obama Discriminated Against American Workers.”
A Definition of Politics
I heard a really great definition of politics this morning on NPR, “Politics is about controlling the flow of money.”
Politics is, of course, about power. Frequently the flow of money is what it comes down to. Those in power receive more resources or are taxed less, and those who are not in power receive fewer resources or more of the burden.
This IT worker had to train an H-1B replacement
The H1-B program is such a cluster fuck visited on the American worker that cluster fuck is not a strong enough term. I’m in IT and I have been watching this disaster for years.
I was contracting at large financial firm. I begin noticing a large number of young Indians coming in as contract workers. Contracting is a very common method in IT. Companies like because they can staff up and staff down as needed. I used to like because the companies generally compensated well for the insecurity of a contracting positions, and I did not mind moving around to different jobs. To get back to my position at the financial firm. When I saw all the Indians coming in I knew my days were numbered, and they were. They found a pretense to terminate my contract nine months early. It was my second contract at this firm, and they had actually given me more money to come back for a second contract. Additionally, they had given me an 18 month contract when normal they did not go over a year. They seemed to like my work. My consulting firm later told me that they were bringing in the Indians at $25/hour less than I was receiving. I can promise you I was not getting rich. This was at a time long past the glory days of contracting.
This particular consulting firm ended up going out of business as they could not compete with the cheap off-shore labor either. And this was one of the older and bigger consulting companies. Now days, when a consulting company calls you about a contract if you are talking to an American it is a miracle. If the consulting company is not Indian it is even more of a miracle. You have to give the Indians credit. Many of the Indian companies have used the minority preferences given by our laws to gain an advantage. Essentially this has allowed Indian firms to corner this market in preference to American firms.
Who do I blame? I do not blame individual Indians, but I do blame Congress and our President who are in cahoots with our corporations who only care about profit and cheap, cheap labor. It is something I have ranted about for years. Congress briefly played lip service to all the complaints, but I do believe the problem is even worse than it was before.
To read about one of these horror stories, go to This IT worker had to train an H-1B replacement at Computerworld.com
Just in case you do not know what a H1-B Visa — click the link for the Wikepedia article on same.
Oklahoma Tea Party Candidate Supports Stoning Gay People to Death
Any wonder I do not want to live in Oklahoma…
Click hyperlink below to read story on Slate.com
Oklahoma Tea Party Candidate Supports Stoning Gay People to Death
Theodore Roosevelt — Socialist
Theodore Roosevelt was frequently called a Socialist. The primary reason being that he had an extraordinary sense of fair play. He sided with labor when he thought that the just thing to do, and against capital when he thought they had overstepped their bounds.
I have on occasionally been called a Socialist, generally by folks totally ignorant, at least of the true meaning of socialism. But that criticism includes a vast majority of the right leaning media.
I love Teddy’s response to being called a Socialist:
“Because of things I have done on behalf of justice to the workingman, I have often been called a Socialist. Usually I have not taken the trouble even to notice the epithet. I am not afraid of names, and I am not one of those who fear to do what is right because someone else will confound me with partisans with whose principles I am not in accord. Moreover, I know that many American Socialists are high-minded and honorable citizens, who in reality are merely radical social reformers. They are oppressed by the brutalities and industrial injustices which we see everywhere about us. When I recall how often I have seen Socialists and ardent non-Socialists working side by side for some specific measure of social or industrial reform, and how I have found opposed to them on the side of privilege many shrill reactionaries who insist on calling all reformers Socialists, I refuse to be panic-stricken by having this title mistakenly applied to me.”
If socialism is really defined as not letting the privileged run over the less fortunate, then I am Continue reading “Theodore Roosevelt — Socialist”
Another Teddy Roosevelt quote for our times
“These men demanded for themselves an immunity from governmental control which, if granted, would have been as wicked and as foolish as immunity to the barons of the twelfth century. Many of them were evil men. Many others were just as good men as were some of these same barons; but they were as utterly unable as any medieval castle-owner to understand what the public interest really was. There have been aristocracies which have played a great and beneficent part at stages in the growth of mankind; but we had come to the stage where for our people what was needed was a real democracy; and of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of a plutocracy.“
and bonus one… funny how little progress we have made, or perhaps have reverted back to those times of Robber Barons.
“Men who understand and practice the deep underlying philosophy of the Lincoln school of American political thought are necessarily Hamiltonian in their belief in a strong and efficient National Government Continue reading “Another Teddy Roosevelt quote for our times”
Paul Krugman on Climate Change Deniers
A famous Carl Sagan quote definitely applies to Paul Krugman’s editorial in today’s New York Times.
“In science it often happens that scientists say, ‘You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,’ and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.”
Mr. Krugman’s editorial, Points of No Return, describes how if you are not a climate change denier it will get you excommunicated from the Republican Party.
From the editorial:
“Think of it this way: Once upon a time it was possible to take climate change seriously while remaining a Republican in good standing. Today, listening to climate scientists gets you excommunicated — Continue reading “Paul Krugman on Climate Change Deniers”