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Federal Judge Calls BS On Homeland Security's 2008 STEM 'Emergency'
theodp writes: In 2008, the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security enacted 'emergency' changes to Optional Practical Training (OPT) to extend the amount of time foreign STEM graduates of US colleges could stay in the country and work ("to alleviate the crisis employers are facing due to the current H-1B visa shortage", as Bill Gates explained it in 2007). More than seven years later, U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle has found that the government erred by not seeking public comment when it extended the program, and issued a ruling that could force tens of thousands of foreign workers on OPT STEM extensions to return to their home countries early next year. Huvelle has given the government six months to submit the OPT extension rule for proper notice and comment lest it be revoked. From the ruling (pdf): "By failing to engage in notice-and-comment rulemaking, the record is largely one-sided, with input only from technology companies that stand to benefit from additional F-1 student employees, who are exempted from various wage taxes. Indeed, the 17-month duration of the STEM extension appears to have been adopted directly from the unanimous suggestions by Microsoft and similar industry groups." Microsoft declared a new crisis in 2012, this time designed to link tech's need for H-1B visas to U.S. children's lack of CS savvy.
The problem isn't too many programs, it is too many mishandled expenses. I'd wager, that is run as well as a company with accountability, all the programs you seem to hate could run twice as well for the same cost.
There is nothing wrong with assisting those with needs. The very idea is fundamental to a government, which should have the very explicit goal of "protecting its citizens." These protections go from international threats (wars, treaties, etc.) to protecting citizens from other citizens and themselves. Social programs are a mix of the later. As a society, we produce so much and throw away so much, that having an entirely working populace isn't needed, so people are out of jobs. Social programs are suppose to work to fill in that gap so that their lives don't get to the point where they must commit crimes to be able to live. This is a failing of the current system, as it isn't good enough. Right money spent in the wrong way, usually decided by the trends (War on Drugs, No Child Left Behind, etc) instead of reasoned analysis.
In an ideal nation, every individual would be guaranteed enough support to at least be at the minimum standard of living, so just above or at the poverty line. As an alternative to just handing out money, the government made the EBT cards, which is pretty awesome. I do agree they shouldn't pay for nicotine products and the like, but there is no reason it shouldn't care for medical goods like asprin, bandaids, or cough syrup. The price of food fluctuates by region just as much within a region over time, so having a percentage over the bare minimum cost of calories per person in the family makes sense, and a person good at budgeting would be able to afford more or better products. Honestly, it would be nice if they gave an extra credit exclusively for fruits and vegetables to enforce better eating habits.
With such systems, day to day life for an individual can be managed, but there are also medical emergencies. Relying on emergency rooms for treatment is more expensive than preventative measures in the long run, which is a point where our system fails. It would be great if dental cleaning is offered every few months and cheap plastic lens glasses as well. For the record, prescription lenses are so expensive since only a hand full (2 or 3) own all the different brands, so they act like the diamond companies and create an artificial price point to keep them expensive. In a similar manner, insurance companies (mal-practice and medical) and medical companies in general work to keep the prices higher than they need to be to create greater profits, so most of the money from social programs gets wasted feeding into the accounts of those that don't need it.
It would be great if the congress required an at-cost + 5% for services that everyone needs. If a companies fails, they can be taken to court over it by the state.
That aside, as a generally Christian nation, we should all "Love thy neighbor."
Economy is so bad, they just changed how GDP is calculated. Q1 went from -2% to positive because of it, couldn't allow for another recession so they changed it.
>> People who are still in their early careers don't realize how vulnerable they become when they get older.
As a 52 year old software developer I get what you are saying. The trick is to be in the right industry. All the young guns are mostly doing only web and web-related stuff because they think its cool. Just avoid that whole thing.
What helps is that those guys seem to be pretty much clueless when it comes to bare metal stuff like embedded systems and device drivers etc because it seems even in CS degrees these days they don't teach anything as low-level as C, let alone assembler or how computers actually work any more. It seems most of those guys are completely out of their comfort zone around any language/environment that doesn't have a garbage collector, isn't in a VM or container, can't be scripted and doesn't come with a massive app framework that includes giant libraries of helper functions to do all the actual heavy lifting.