Slashdot Mirror
Bernie Sanders, Presidential Candidate and H-1B Skeptic
Presto Vivace writes: The H-1B visa issue rarely surfaces during presidential races, and that's what makes the entrance by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) into the 2016 presidential race so interesting. ... ...Sanders is very skeptical of the H-1B program, and has lambasted tech firms for hiring visa workers at the same time they're cutting staff. He's especially critical of the visa's use in offshore outsourcing.
This post is a prime candidate for first!!!
To stop the smelly sand niggers from stinking up the Silicon Valley.
He makes a lot of very rational statement, but then goes for batshit insane politics that would push us back to the worst part of the soviet experiment.
Does Sanders have any chance to become president? Bush and Clinton... been there, done that, both long term disasters.
If you'd like to focus on Bernie Sanders' view on H-1B Visas, that's fine. But let's not forget that his remarks and avowed beliefs of Socialism are what really make him an interesting candidate for the Democratic Party, contrasted with the free-market, capitalist beliefs of his opponents.
Hilary would be the first woman POTUS, and Bill would be the first First Man. She's a credible candidate, if she draws sufficient primary wins 'because she's a woman, and it's time', well, so be it. You just can't help wondering if Bernie really could be an agent of change, if enough money is drawn to his campaign to thwart the 'let's elect a female' and support the 'we already did the Clinton thing' messages. Mr. Sanders has been on the front lines against the 'machine' and there's a chance some Tea Party voters could even rise to rebel against the same ol' same ol' Republican they'll put up. '
Please have respect for people with different abilities, especially children.
Just a personal opinion, so take it for whatever you think it's worth. But IMO, Sanders is more of a campaign disruptor than a serious contender for the next presidential election.
He's known as a political "Independent" but as others have already noted, he's more of a Socialist really. I see some value in him wanting to bring up the H1-B VISA issue, but primarily so it encourages the other candidates to debate it.
I also hear quite a few comments from those supposedly disillusioned with "free market capitalism", so some of these people will surely find Sanders an interesting alternative. I find that quite unfortunate though. Personally, I'm still pretty firmly convinced that free market concepts really never got a fair shake in the U.S. in the first place. So often, we're sold that label while reality is quite different. Heck, I was just debating the whole issue with a friend of mine last week about the deregulation of the power companies and the disaster that created for California. He used it as a prime example of why free markets aren't really viable or desirable. I countered that actually, that was FAR more an example of fraud than anything else -- a problem that transcends politics or the type of marketplace you're working with. In fact, much of the scamming going on with all of that was only made possible because GOVERNMENT was still expected to make payments towards keeping the infrastructure working! (They had legislation in place where government would start paying out money whenever the utilization of the power lines went above a certain percentage of their maximum capabilities. Therefore, crooked businesses like Enron would create false entries, reserving utilization that was never really happening to fake capacity limits being hit and profit from the govt. funding that was theoretically going to upgrading that infrastructure.)
Time and time again, this is what I really see happening.... People get frustrated or disgusted at something that supposedly happens because of a lack of governmental controls. But a closer look makes you realize it was only due to government interference or control in the FIRST place that the scenario was set up. The net neutrality debates would probably be another example of this. Sure, we need government to step in and tell Comcast, "No! You can't merge with Time Warner!" now. BUT that scenario was QUITE unlikely to have ever happened in the first place if broadband internet service was handled in the private sector in the first place, minus govt. regulated monopolies getting preferential treatment when the services were first getting built out.
I'm no party animal but if he runs even as a Democrat, I might vote for him. He's an old man and I think old men are more likely to speak the truth and less likely to make moral compromises. At 73 he'll be thinking of an afterlife if he believes in one. Even if he doesn't he won't care about future prospects enough to sell out for them.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Unfortunately he is a candidate in name only. He can't raise the kind of money that Hillary or any other candidate running for the democratic nomination can raise, and hence has no chance of getting the nomination. He would be better off running as a third party candidate than trying to get the democratic nomination; it will be interesting to see him eventually reveal his plan for what to do when he has fallen too far behind in the party race.
The funny thing is, he is the liberal democrat that the conservative majority in this country always try to paint every other democrat to be. I would love to see what they would do if he actually gained power beyond his seat in the Senate.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I'm a pro-H1B redneck enjoying watching you nerdlings getting you jobs taken and wages debased after decades of being called racist by your lot for daring to questioning uncontrolled immigration along our southern border.
Hows that shit sandwich taste now?
Obama has cut the budget deficit in half since 2008. (Bush left it at $1.5 trillion per year, and now it's about $750 billion). Since $750 billion is still greater than zero, the national debt continues to rise, at about half the rate that it did during the Bush administration- when, if you recall, no one seemed to be complaining about it at all.
the problem is, Bernie's "truth" is poison to a free country.
You get what you pay for..
the current zeigeist is unlike any in my lifetime. Voters are deeply troubled by our current system, which stacks the deck against ordinary people. I think they are ready for someone like Sanders.
a balanced budget would not be a good idea.
the original "No True Scottsman". There really is no way for it to exist. Sooner or later inheritance alone means somebody is going to get advantages, use them, and start locking down wealth. As soon as you introduce anti trust law you've busted the system.
Private power companies don't work because they don't add value. Power is something _everyone_ wants. When everyone wants something it makes sense for it to be run as a public utility. Adding a private element just lets someone skim 10-20% off the top is all while they cut down on safety. Anyone who thinks private companies are inherently more efficient needs to go watch Office Space again and then go check out the (rather amazing) American Postal System or look at a well funded DMV (as opposed to a DMV run for the purposes of triggering knee jerk reactions from anti-gov't types).
Sure, you have to keep an eye on what the gov't does, but we've already established we have to do the same with business (see the aforementioned anti-trust laws). That's the trouble with socialism. Free Market Capitalism claims to have principles and easy answers. That they're the wrong answers isn't really the issue. Socialists basically say: Hey, the world is _fsckin'_ complex and it takes real hard work to make things run smoothly, and then a Socialist will start blathering on about all the things you need to do to make a system work.
The way I see Free Market Capitalism is this: When have you ever had a difficult problem that got better by leaving it the fsck alone?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
No thank you!
http://saveie6.com/
He may compel Hillary to take positions that will make it harder for her to win the general election.
That is really irrelevant since Hillary has already taken all possible positions - including no position.
There is literally nothing Hillary can say or do that will affect the election at this point.
Royalty has its privileges!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Private power companies don't work because they don't add value.
That is kind of a ridiculous statement. If nothing else they can add value simply by producing power cheaper than other companies, or provide power where public utilities will not.
There are private power companies in the U.S. you know... if they "do not work" how do they exist?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is happening under the Obama admin. His people don't give 2 shits about H1B abuses (hi So. Cal. ConEd!) Sanders' actual party affiliation is Socialist. Obama is a Socialist who calls himself a Democrat so I hope you've learned your lesson here.
But (I predict) probably not.
I wish people could think for themselves... NADER didn't split the vote and cost Gore a clear victory:
1) Gore won by the most conservative count. The supreme court made a corrupt ruling and appointed Bush the winner. It is not hard to figure that one out; but if you can't see it then you are capable of supporting a democracy.
2) Nader only had a tiny portion of the vote; it didn't split the DFL a lot of his people wouldn't vote for Gore. The Communist Party of Florida had more votes than the difference in the count (see #1.) If a portion of the Nader votes went for Gore you would have still had many areas so close it was still likely a mess would have happened.
3) Computer voting was alive and causing errors before anybody even noticed them (but they rushed in some IT people to fix the massive overvote "bugs")
4) Illegal banning of voters who might be black in a really corrupt scheme that should have put somebody in jail; it was intentional. The numbers of people on that were quite significant.
5) Don't forget the ballot which cased a jewish community to vote for a nazi sympathizer. (it only takes half a popcycle stick shove that kind of ballot out of alignment.)
6) Unverified and improper military ballots were counted anyway.
7) Fake directions for election day - the usual things like telling you to vote a day late or wrong location were going around as well. That old trick still happens around the nation.
8) Crazy waiting lines purposely engineered caused some people to turn away.
9) only 1 voting day; no real time off for it... and people propagandized to not vote (except the targeted stuff for certain demographics.)
Forget about Bush's brother, state campaign manager being in charge of the whole foobar process. Don't blame Gore or Nader - everything else was all wrong. A billion dollars was spent to make both candidates seem the same so it would turn out CLOSE which makes it easier to cheat in the tiny margins. In addition, the whole thing is like the Palestinian Government where it really has no power to do anything - it is just there to appease some people into thinking there is a democracy.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The science is settled.
The H1-B program is fundamentally nuts, in ways which, although I may be wrong, I think people are not thinking about.
Let's say work visas stop now.
Companies can still hire me, as a European. I can still work for them. I just can't physically sit in an office in the USA.
So all we do is telecommute. Google hangouts, you name it. As an aside, I also by now being outside the USA pay no tax to Uncle Sam.
So if we say we end the H1-B program with an intent to stop non-Americans taking jobs in the USA, what do we do? do we now ban US companies from hiring non-Americans, or people physically outside of the USA? Christ, what about FREEDOM? this is MY money, MY company - who are you to tell me what I can or cannot do, whom I can or cannot hire? *what business is it of yours?*
And does this make even the slightest bit of sense, economically? this notion that reducing the labour pool size is good for, well, what is it good for? the economy? the people who are looking for these jobs? are we so naive to imagine that the US economy is so segregated from the rest of the world things will work in this way?
The whole programme is badshit insane, in funamental terms. It makes no sense, and the debate at it makes no sense.
shares similar views. It makes sense. There are a lot of votes in the disaffected white community. End immigration! To you transnationals, good luck in your country of origin.
an ill wind that blows no good
This idiocy has been proposed enough times someone has already done the calculations:
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
He's just pocketing the campaign money which is what he does every time. He runs every time and all he does is soak up campaign money.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
This elections Ross Perot? Or will he just fumble to make Hillary look good.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
It does if you look at it differently, as another way to erode American workers wages and benefits.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
We just need to make H1-B's expensive to employers. That will insure that corporations who are looking for motivated well educated foreigners instead of lazy "special snowflake" domestic employees will have to decide that the foreign workers are worth the extra money.
First, enforce "comparable wages/jobs" rules. Second, impose a 20% to 30% tax on wages payable by the employer of an H1-B employee. Third, remove the cap entirely. This would result in it being impossible to hire foreign engineers to save money, but they would still be hired if they were at least 30% or so more effective than domestic talent. In reality, this wouldn't help save the jobs of those whining about H-1B employees, but it would force the whiners to recognize that employers won't give them a job but will happily shell out a LOT more money to get a more qualified H-1B employee -- i.e., it has little do do with money.
I've never hired an H-1B to save money -- in fact, they cost me more money than a domestic employee. However, I'd rather have five well educated motivated developers than 15 lazy uneducated bums with degrees from "respected" U.S. universities.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Hillary Clinton isn't Bill Clinton
Uh, about that
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/30550-corporations-are-bribing-bill-instead-of-hillary#
If you're interested in watching how money influences politics, you would be smart to not only track who Hillary accepts campaign contributions from, but just as importantly who is lining Bill's pockets as well.
In looking ahead to a likely presidency from Hillary, we can take cues from the actions of the married duo during her stint as the secretary of state. While Hillary made critical national decisions that could win or cost certain major corporations millions of dollars, Bill kept a busy schedule of delivering speeches for many of these same companies, collecting hefty speaking fees for his talks.
Although it plainly ventures into unethical territory, federal rules did not preclude Bill from cozying up to these corporations. Normally, politicians and their spouses can't accept money from companies that are lobbying the government, but an exception is made for payments for speaking to the companies. Given his resume, Bill can easily fetch top speaking fees without raising the kind of red flags that other political spouses would get for being in a similar position.
Make no mistake: these aren't nebulous connections that suggest a potential for wrongdoing. The International Business Times identified 13 mega-companies that paid Bill a total of $2.5 million in speaking fees while actively - and in many cases successfully - lobbying Hillary and the US State Department in the same three-month span.
Let's look at a few specifics. Tech companies have had some of the greatest successes with the Clintons. Shortly after paying Bill $175,000 to speak, Microsoft won a $4 million contract with the US State Department. Oracle's own government contracts increased by a couple million after giving Bill a $200,000 speaking fee. Meanwhile, Dell is probably the biggest winner of all. While lobbying Hillary, Dell hired an appearance from Bill for $300,000 - not long before the State Department decided to raise its contracts with the company from $2.5 million to a startling $28 million.
Perhaps Bill's words of motivation inspired these companies to negotiate better with the State Department. Or perhaps they, like fellow companies Cisco Systems, Goldman Sachs, PhRMA and Pacific Rubiales, found that padding the Clinton bank account had some added advantages.
Debt is the most valuable thing rich people own. It's much safer to own indebtedness than other kinds of property. Police and armies protect debt for them.
--excerpt follows--
⦠the modern world has actually converted debt into wealth. Positive wealth, in the form of physical assets such as land, houses, cars, etc. is ultimately perishable, but negative wealth (i.e. debt) need not be so. In fact, it is much more convenient to own 'debt' than physical assets:
"⦠the ruling passion of individuals in a modern economy is to convert wealth into debt in order to derive a permanent future income from it -- to convert wealth that perishes into debt that endures, debt that does not rot, costs nothing to maintain and brings in perennial interest" (p.423). They explain further: (p.424) "Although debt can follow the law of compound interest, the real energy revenue from future sunshine, the real future income against which debt is a lien, cannot grow at compound interest for long. When converted into debt however, wealth discards its corruptible body to take an incorruptible one. In so doing, debt appears to offer a means of dodging nature, of evading the second law of thermodynamics, the law of randomization, rust and rot. But the idea that all people can live off the interest of their mutual indebtedness is just another perpetual motion scheme -- a vulgar delusion on a grand scale."
------
Daly H. and J. Cobb, 1994, _For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment and a Sustainable Future_, Beacon Press, Boston
Any claim of there being "thousands" of anything not accompanied by even one example is invalid. Fail.
Oh, well, if we start counting omissions, we can get really far. There are no laws defending blonds or red-heads against discrimination by brunettes either. Can a politician proposing to ban discrimination based on hair-color to our thick books be confident of your vote?
How about folks, whose name begins with "Mi*"? There is not a law anywhere in the world (!) explicitly protecting us — how do you sleep at night knowing of this ongoing travesty?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Persons who care about putting the heat on tech companies to demand more women in tech should see the correlation. I'm certain that if these companies were faced to confront the shortage they bemoan about, without the enabling of H-1B visas, they would have hit on the notion of pushing for more women in the pipeline long before 2014. Just sayin'.
and is decreasing the deficit, but somehow I doubt you are actually interested in the truth.
for the injuries that are inflicted on them too. I mean, if they would just do what the aggressors wanted, none of the punishment would have been necessary.
where your friends lied their asses of to get their little war and insulted the patriotism of anyone that dared to point out that the entire thing was bullshit.
is not a substitute for admitting that you are wrong.
caused by bushes failures do you feel that you can legitimately place on other people.
That would be funny in a sitcom, but not in the real world where the grownups have to continuously clean up after those spoiled children.
is this an attempt to have some sort of democrat primary this year?
Therefore, in my opinion, he just guaranteed he will not get elected.
The One Percent will not support it.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
That's twice. The first was telling the press that he was busy, he had work to do. Now he questions H1B's. He's 2 and 0. Bernie, just may go Obama on Hilary,(again), if she can't get in front of this contrived enforced resession.
Sanders is very skeptical of the H-1B program, ...
Huh???? It ain't about skepticism, and if Sanders, a congressional critter, and supposedly with a law degree, still CANNOT figure out that it is AGAINST THE FRIGGING LAW!!!! American workers cannot be replaced unless it is proven that no qualified workers can be found, AND SINCE THEY ARE in the effing position to begin with, that goes against the law.
Which is why the next two videos are soooo fundamental and sooo important: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
So all those SEC filings I've perused over the years, all those GAO reports, and various other books and reports and filings on deferred income and hedge fund managers and hedge fund people and private equity types is all lies?????
I think not, mofo! So how's about putting up or STFU! And to those ignorant of forensic finance, the super-rich and the hedge fundsters and private equiteers routinely give themselves "loans" from their offshore monies, which means they transfer their money back themselves in not taxable form, since their so-called "interest" they pay is not only non-taxable, but is really just transferring more money offshore!
that is why we keep on calling out morally bankrupt losers like you every time you insult our intelligence by trying to pretend that you do not bear responsibility for all of the death and destruction.
The Executive:
1) Writes the budget. The budget defines how money is spent. How much money is spent has just a little bit to do with the national debt
2) Signs or vetoes legislation. Presidents say "I will veto this bill if it does/does not do X" all the time.
3) Is the leader of his party, and largely dictates his party's agenda. Even as a lame duck, Obama can cut off campaign money for Dems running for reelection next year if they aren't "team players" on the budget.
The president has more power and influence over the budget than entire committees or leaders of the respective chambers. That's not quite the polar opposite of "no power", but it's pretty close.
The shutdown was caused by the veto, not the passing of the bill. The passing of the bill was valid and would have resulted in a working government, then Clinton took an action that caused the government to shut down.
I don't see why it matters so much to you. What does it matter who you blame for the shutdown? It was a good thing, not a bad thing.
Learn to love Alaska
No, it is not. Two blonds can have a brunette child, for example.
So cite one, where the accusation was based on the supposed victim(s) hair-color.
I will not respond again until you offer a valid link — you've made enough unsubstantiated claims already.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
That's like calling Libertarians moderate republicans. The Clintons have burned more democrats than republicans. They are sociopaths hiding behind the jackass mascot.
Also no one is going to vote in a post stroke 70+ something old white woman with internationalist ties. You can say what you want about Paul or Omalley, but both of them are least pro American (not saudi/israeli fanboys) - i think. Though I have seen some ads for Paul supporting Israel, that's pure campaign - i think.
Comment removed based on user account deletion