Link

We have defeated the King of Weasels, the Outsourcing Cheerleader In Chief.

Thank you Virginia, and good-bye.

"Pat Buchanan's recent article, "The Fruits of NAFTA" (see http://www.itpaa.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2199&mode=&order=0&thold=0) concludes with an interesting question:
"...why did the liberals, who paid the price of mandating all those benefits for American workers and imposing all those regulations on U.S. corporations, go along [with NAFTA, free trade and outsourcing]?" I pondered this question for some time and have a few thoughts I'd like to share with the readers of ITPAA.org "

"Now that Harris Miller has announced his candidacy for the Virginia Democratic Party's senate primary, a number of Virginia political blog sites have postings about Harris Miller's ITAA past. Here's one posted to the Virginia progressive blog, www.RaisingKaine.com...
"

"The Chair/CEO of Pacific Plastics & Engineering in Soquel, California claims it can't find qualified American employees and needs access to foreign NIV workers to remain competitive... So, the answer is another push to increase the NIV cap...

If you believe that you can fill one of the positions noted below, please contact the employers and NAM (and perhaps tell the readers at ITPAA what you said and how your application was treated.

-- The Info_Tech_Guy


"

Curious why the ITPAA, Programmer's Guild, and Hire America are small while industry-supported groups like the ITAA and Compete America are large? Rob at Zazona.com, a long time activist in the fight against labor dumping and offshoring, gives solid reasons why our struggle is a fragmented, uphill one.

The truth hurts but here it is anyway.

Rob writes:

1 - There is very little public support for an organization that tries to fight H-1B and/or outsourcing. Most people are either unaware that these are problems, or think that these things are a good thing for America. The U.S. populace has not reached a consensus on this issue. I haven't even seen a consensus that we need to organize, much less a common agreement about what issues should be addressed.

(Read More)

Well it looks like CompeteAmerica - a pro-outsourcing, labor dumping group just got competition from CompeteAmerica.(link)

Hat-tip: Bob Johnson

Rabindra Kar "The 11 "rules" below are from Bill Gates' address to the students of Mt. Whitney High School in Visalia, CA.

Each rule is followed by what (in my opinion) the appropriate response should be, from the tech workers of this country!

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

It'll get even more unfair if Bill and his fellow American CEO's have their way.
They will giove themselves fabulous compensation, lobby the government
for lower taxes, and tell their US employees that their company can't compete
without sending their jobs to lower-paid overseas counterparts. (Read More)
"

Submitted by Dave L:

American Democracy, Not Dead Yet, But Quite Sick

On the heals of the CAFTA vote, I guess I’m getting quite pessimistic about the state of democracy in this country. In fact, I could not honestly say that I live in a society that enjoys representative government anymore. I’m not sure when we lost that, but I’m pretty certain that it’s gone. The only remaining question is, how do we get it back, or can we? (Read More)

Capital can always move faster than labor. In a global market capital is nothing more than information - in this case, instructions to debit one account and credit another - and information moves almost at light-speed. Because capital creates jobs which employ labor, labor will always be at a disadvantage because the jobs can appear and disappear before labor has a chance to benefit from the capital.

The information technology revolution makes this problem worse - in effect creating a global market for a good or service. What is the global value of a car that meets American safety standards? Given the multi-national nature of auto companies, we could theoretically answer this question and better yet, predict that the cost of the good will decline with time as companies compete and become more efficient. Nevertheless it would be complicated by the constraints and costs of moving cars from where they are produced the cheapest to where they are sold at the greatest profit.

Let's consider for a moment the American standard of living. In Economics 101, one is taught that a rising standard of living is dependent upon increased productivity - and Americans are the most productive people on the planet so our standard of living should be the highest.

Well, it's not. Many Europeans live better than us. Statistically Americans rank in the top 10 when it comes to various standard of living measures such as the Human Development Index, but other countries regularly top us such as Norway, Sweden and even our neighbor to the north, Canada. I have lived in other nations around the world, and America is unlike any other. I have learned through experiencing other countries to love my own.

However, something is wrong with our economy, and I am worried about the future standard of living of my children and their children.

The ITPAA was officially founded on June 16, 2003. Here's what we have accomplished in just over four months:

Click Read More to read his letter to the ITPAA.