Category Archives: Public Service, Civics, Government, Activism

Shorter careers than athletes

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CSMonitor: Faced with foreign competition and an ever-faster pace, many engineers are dropping out of a once-safe field.

In 2000, near the end of the high-tech boom, industry CEOs convinced Congress to nearly double the number of H-1B visas, allowing up to 195,000 skilled workers from India and elsewhere into the US. Some engineers contend that those CEOs kept many of those H-1B workers while cutting higher-paid US citizens.

“About 80,0000 engineers were unemployed a few months ago. If you take out the H-1Bs who came in, you’d have jobs for all of them,” the IEEE-USA’s Bryant says. The organization is lobbying Congress to lower the number of H-1B issued.

Connecting The Dots…

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The Philadelphia Inquirer: New woe as jobless aid ends.

The NYTimes: Dividend Tax Cut: Winners and Losers. via Garret.

CommonDreams.org: Corporate Personhood Is Doomed (boy that title is a little too optimistic…). via Garret. via a great MetaFilter thread.

Democracy Unlimited: First Local Government in the United States Refuses to Recognize Corporate Claims to Civil Rights. via Garret.

The Founding Brothers struggled with where to draw the line between Federal and State governance. They probably couldn’t foresee the rise of Corporations competing with the Federal government and States for rights. It’s an evolution that’s been slow and subtle over the last 100 years or so. Probably due from our transformation from a farming to an industrial economy. Simple generalizations slamming Republicans won’t do. But if the Dems want a platform – I’m with Garret – this is it. They won’t go for it however. No one bites the hand that feeds them.

And hey – if you didn’t catch the drift – go check out Garret’s site. He’s knocking on a door I’d like to see opened up by other webloggers. Common you Dem webloggers… this is what you should be talking about.

Founding Brothers

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To understand the news of today, you gotta have an appreciation for the history of the past. Founding Brothers by Joseph J. Ellis is a terrific book for just that. You get what feels like genuine insight into the politics and relationships of the revolutionary generation. By sharing the conflicts that occured between Franklin, Washington, Hamilton, Burr, Madison, Jefferson and Adams, Ellis sheds light on their characters and principals. It’s not the fairy tale they teach in school. It’s a drama with the weight of the world on their shoulders. The book simultaneously brings the founding fathers down to earth and at the same time grows your respect for them. No longer semi-deities they are people who knew their actions would and could have consequences far reaching beyond their time. An educational and fun read.

Founding Brothers Is Timely

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I’ve been reading Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph J. Ellis and can’t believe how timely it is. The book focuses on six moments in the early history of the nation and the main actors in them. You get a real sense of who the Founding Fathers were, what they cared about, their characters, their principals. It’s a fun read. Really it is.

One thing they cared passionately about was the balance of power. Their views ranged widely. Paint them in the widesest strokes and you have those that believed in strong federal government with emphasis on economic and foreign policy and those that believed in strong local (state) government.

It’s that tension that has more or less defined American politics for the past two hundred years.

Consider that dynamic when you read the next two stories:

At the NYTimes – Cities Urge Restraint in Fight Against Terror.

And in a bill that will probably be overturned (make your bets), a local government in the United States to eliminate corporate claims to civil and constitutional privileges. via dangerousmeta.