Examining Presidential Candidates' Tech Agendas

Aaron Ricadela writes to mention that BusinessWeek is taking a look at the tech agendas for several presidential candidates. The amount of attention being paid to Silicon Valley especially is unprecedented with the computer industry citing contributions of $2.2 million up from just $1.2 million in the first six months of the 2004 and 2000 primary campaigns. "So even while the general election is likely to be dominated by the war in Iraq, the continued threat of terrorism, and economic issues, candidates have staked out early positions on topics dear to the tech industry, including increasing federal spending on research and development, allowing more highly educated foreign workers into the country, widening the availability of high-speed Internet service to create new markets for hardware and online services, and improving the state of U.S. math and science education."

Comments

Conspicuously absent

[allthefish]

i find it interesting that Former Senator Mike Gravel was not mentioned in TFA. Although he's far from a mainstream candidate (much to my chagrin), he's been the oevrall biggest supporter of net neutrality among the candidates. From his official platform:


Net Neutrality aims to keep the Internet free from large companies who are using their networks to limit the amount of websites their customers can view, and the speed at which they can view them. Examples range from, being forced to use the search engines your Internet Service Providers (ISP), only being able to view streaming videos that your ISP deems acceptable, and charging a website an extra fee to maintain the usual connection speed. Senator Gravel guarantees a free and open Internet with no restricted access to any site, for any reason. He will do this by supporting legislation and regulation that keeps you in control of your Internet usage. Intelligent replies welcome, redirect flames to /dev/null

Re:Ron Paul

[moore.dustin]

Ron Paul is not for 'net neutrality' because he believes that if the government prevented business from regulating the Net, then it would unfairly jeopardize their freedom (See: Right) to do so.

Other technology votes by Paul: Source

• Trusts the Internet a lot more than the mainstream media. (May 2007)
• Voted NO on establishing "network neutrality" (non-tiered Internet). (Jun 2006)
• Voted NO on increasing fines for indecent broadcasting. (Feb 2005)
• Voted YES on promoting commercial human space flight industry. (Nov 2004)
• Voted NO on banning Internet gambling by credit card. (Jun 2003)
• Voted NO on allowing telephone monopolies to offer Internet access. (Feb 2002)

Get a clue yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

Canadian H1-B holders comprise a tiny fraction of the H1-B's issued. The big Indian outsourcing companies (Wipro, et. al.) grabbed about HALF of the available H1-B visas this year. And that doesn't comprise all of H1-B's that go to India. China is next on the list. Canada is hardly noticable.

In otherwords, the OP was speaking about MOST H1-B's.

All of the presidential candidates are trying to take us back to the dot-com bust as fast as possible, with the exception of Edwards. If you'll recall, it was in the years 2001-2003 that Congress increased the H1-B limit from the standard 65,000 to 115,000, for each of those years.

In fact, the reason why this is such a hot topic this year is because the visa's issued in 2001 are expiring this year. This is what you don't hear in the media. And the tech companies know very well that they have absolutely no chance of getting the Visa limit increased in a major election year.

So, if you want to relive the dot-com bust years, vote for Clinton or Obama. Edwards seems like the only one who isn't pwned by the high-tech lobby, and actually gives a damn for the average U.S. citizen.

Re:The one they missed is the one that counts

[taoman1]

Ron Paul is against Net Neutrality.