"They ended collecting *so* much information, that they couldn't analyze it all:"
Which is precisely the problem in the US right now. Or at least was immediately after 9/11, when the Government outsourced data collection to private companies as documented by No Place to Hide.
The solution isn't necessarily to end Welfare, but at the same time we probably shouldn't increase Welfare without revamping the system to eliminate fraud.
Yes, but that's not the same as cutting funding on it, which was what I replied to.
Obviously the programs being funded should actually work. Why would you fund them if they didn't?
Police do not prevent crime. They investigate crimes, identify and arrest suspects, and feed the criminal justice system. The threat of punishment is what prevents crime, not being caught by a policeman that summarily let's you go. Do you really think a car thief would stop stealing cars if we eliminated jails and just put more police on patrol? The only ounce of truth to your argument is that improving the likelihood of getting caught probably does decrease crime. Simply adding police does not result in linear gains on this end though.
You're not really seeing the forest from the trees.
Obviously it's not police alone. Crime is a multi-faceted problem caused by many issues (poverty, education, abusive environment, policing, justice system, etc.), but all other things being equal increased police force DOES reduce crime.
A comment about linear gains...that was kinda my point. Investing in preventive programs doesn't have to produce linear gains, because they are usually preventing problems that are MUCH costlier than the investment in the preventive programs.
You bandy the word neo-con about pretty loosely. Lots of folks, Democrats included, would like to see government spending decrease. To circle back to Welfare for a moment, I would prefer to teach people how to fish rather than giving them a fish. Obviously giving them shelter, clothing, and food is necessary for some time, but the goal should be to make people self reliant and responsible. The current Welfare system does little to improve a person's situation and is more focused on preventing it from declining. A truly progressive society would try to lift up the downtrodden, help them a get a job and become a productive worker in society. That's why so many people hate government programs.
The problem is that when people are talking about cutting government spending on social programs, it's not just the "ineffective" welfare program(s) that get cut.
My wife works at a non-profit in NYC that specializes in issues relating to problem youth (education, juvenile justice system, home situation, childhood poverty, etc. etc.) and deals with the New York State (NYS) and City (NYC) budget decisions a lot. NYS and NYC fund all kinds of community programs that you describe as "progressive" (and a lot of them are). Most of them work better than the actual welfare program, usually because they're more targeted and smaller in scale.
When budget cuts happen, THOSE programs get cut first regardless of their effectiveness. That's how it always happens.
In any case, that wasn't really my point. The real point was that most social programs, even those with issues, are preventive in nature and produce cost reductions in the long run. Programs should obviously always be improved and the programs that truly do not benefit anyone should be eliminated.
Increasing spending on a broken system only loses us all more money and doesn't fix the problem
Well, yes. Framing the budget discussions in this manner would be great. Most people don't. All they spout is "Government spending bad. No spending good.", just like the comment I was responding to did.
He set up his investment advisory business in a manner that it wasn't subjected to the same sort of regulatory oversight as mutual funds and even hedge funds are while operating in much the same way.
But I agree that enforcing regulations already in affect is a bigger problem than lack of regulation.
Taxing consumption as a whole unduly affects poor people, because a larger percentage of their income goes to necessary consumption (food, clothes, transportation, etc.) than rich people. It would hit the poorest people the hardest.
That's why taxing consumption is not a good idea. As a whole.
However, taxing unnecessary (or luxury) consumption, like the proposed tax on iTunes downloads, doesn't have the same negative effect.
"Go ahead, tax the rich. And, as in the case of NYC, they are moving out in droves."
Do you have any data to back that off, or are you just inventing facts to support your ideology?
The rich are moving out? I sure as hell haven't noticed. In fact, Manhattan real estate market for upscale (as in multi-million) homes is still very healthy. Meanwhile the real estate market in the burbs for working class homes is not. It's the poor and middle class people who can't afford to live in New York City. It's been this way for a LOOOONG time, but it's getting increasingly worse in recent times.
As for the rest of your post, a lot of the social/welfare program funding is cost effective, because it's preventive in nature.
For example, funding healthcare makes sense, because it improves the general health of the population reducing the need for REALLY expensive healthcare options (ER visits, hospitalization, etc.) and reduces the rates of serious illnesses (diabetes being #1 in NYC right now). It also reduces business losses by reducing the amount of sick days.
Funding the police prevents crime, which is MUCH cheaper than housing criminals in prisons.
It's exactly the same for practically every single social program that's government funded. It's a fairly simple cause and effect formula. You don't even have to think really hard about it. You just have to think.
I'm really sick and tired of hearing people complain about governments spending money on welfare programs. It's typically coming from neo-cons and other free markets advocates who don't seem to understand, or conveniently omit mentioning, the fact that most government funded welfare and social programs are cost effective on the long run.
I really don't understand the rationale of these people. You want governments to cut costs, but yet you advocate policies that would increase costs in the long run. What is it that you really want? I have a pretty good idea, but I still want to believe that people are fundamentally good, so I'm trying to not think about it.
Private right of action got stripped out of it due to complaints from the direct marketers. That was strike one. With so much spam it's completely unreasonable to expect anyone to enforce the law. Crowdsourcing the enforcement through private right of action would've worked. And the direct marketers knew it...
The second strike was that the bill didn't anticipate the success of botnets and Russian organized crime. The law doesn't do jack s*** about that problem.
I think, if I had broken the bot control communication encryption, instead of doing anything public about, the first thing I'd do is to set up a logger bot in my lab and record everything until I have enough evidence to expose the bot overlords.
I'd set up a direct, live feed to the data to FBI, the Interpol, Spamhaus and possibly some of the major ISPs, so that they could do what they do better.
I wouldn't try and interfere with the bot before that.
"A big part of the problem with the H1B program is that the visas are tied to one employer."
This is not quite accurate.
While the visa is tied to one employer, once you have one visa it's relatively easy to transfer it to another employer. Visa transfers are not subject to the annual quotas, and they don't need to go through the full H1-B visa application process so it takes much less time to complete than the initial H1-B visa application process.
You can also have multiple H1-B visas, although I have never heard of anyone who actually did that.
"When someone on an H1-B (I was, for 6 years) is laidoff, they are immediately "out of status" and technically required to pack up and leave. The 'visa' remains valid. So can go back to their home country, find another sponsor and return."
You're correct that H1-B visa holders are immediately out of status, if they lose the job they were sponsored for.
However, from what I can remember last time I looked into this, there is a USCIS memo about the grace period during which the H1-B visa holder can seek for other employment while still staying in the country. Basically it's saying that even though the law is black and white (and works the way you described it), actual policy by USCIS doesn't follow the law to the letter and does allow the H1-B visa holders to stay in the country for a short period of time while arranging for a transfer of the H1-B visa.
Another thing is that you don't technically need a brand new H1-B visa to switch jobs, if you've been laid off. You can get away with transferring the existing visa to another employer. The process is much faster than the actual application process and is not subject to the annual visa quotas. You're, however, still subject to the 3+3 year limit on the visa.
It really is incredible how none of the Governmental programs in this country have ANY oversight whatsoever.
The H1-B program has all the safeguards that would make it work just fine in the program regulations, but nobody is enforcing them. No wonder companies (both on the buy and sell side) are abusing it then.
That's the way it is in the United States as well.
It is ILLEGAL to hire H1-B visa holders for less than the prevailing wage. H1-B visa holders are also required to have at least a Bachelor's degree in a related field to the job they're being sponsored for.
The fact that some companies blatantly violate the H1-B visa program regulations and exploit their workers in no way takes away from the H1-B visa program itself.
It does, however, show how things always go wrong when the Government fails to enforce their regulations. Funny how that seems to happen more and more often these days (e.g. cranes collapsing in NYC, etc. etc.).
That's the thing about voting. You get to vote regardless of whether someone thinks you have The Right Information about whatever topic.
But that's not how democracy was supposed to work.
From what I remember from my history books, the way it was supposed to work that all eligible citizens (women, children and slaves not allowed...) were supposed to gather around, debate furiously for a while and then vote only after they were informed about the topics at hand.
Obviously you can't gather 200 million people together to vote once a week, so we have representative democracy these days. But nevertheless, a working democracy requires informed citizenry. None of the modern democracies have that and as a result our way of democracy really isn't working all that well for the benefit of the citizens.
I've wondered about doctors and lawyers, who have federal laws that prohibit them from disclosing data about their clients.
If you read the fine print, most privacy regulations have disclaimers that allow the data to be disclosed if required by authority figures.
Where the DHS confiscations get on a REALLY murky area is in what DHS does with the data. The policy pretty much says they can do whatever the hell they want with it, incl. disclosing it further to pretty much anyone they please. Not only that, but there's not a whole lot in that policy that talks about data retention after (or if) they return the equipment to you. Can they get to keep it? How is it kept? What security procedures are in place so that others don't get to the data?
You didn't, however, travel to US from a country liks Pakistan, Afghanistan or the Middle East and I suppose you don't look like an Arab.
Otherwise, trust me, your experience would've been VERY different.
The Washington Post has been writing quite a few articles about the treatment of business travelers (American citizens all) that frequently travel to the "terrorism hotspots".
Slashdot Mirror
"They ended collecting *so* much information, that they couldn't analyze it all:"
Which is precisely the problem in the US right now. Or at least was immediately after 9/11, when the Government outsourced data collection to private companies as documented by No Place to Hide.
The solution isn't necessarily to end Welfare, but at the same time we probably shouldn't increase Welfare without revamping the system to eliminate fraud.
Yes, but that's not the same as cutting funding on it, which was what I replied to.
Obviously the programs being funded should actually work. Why would you fund them if they didn't?
Police do not prevent crime. They investigate crimes, identify and arrest suspects, and feed the criminal justice system. The threat of punishment is what prevents crime, not being caught by a policeman that summarily let's you go. Do you really think a car thief would stop stealing cars if we eliminated jails and just put more police on patrol? The only ounce of truth to your argument is that improving the likelihood of getting caught probably does decrease crime. Simply adding police does not result in linear gains on this end though.
You're not really seeing the forest from the trees.
Obviously it's not police alone. Crime is a multi-faceted problem caused by many issues (poverty, education, abusive environment, policing, justice system, etc.), but all other things being equal increased police force DOES reduce crime.
A comment about linear gains...that was kinda my point. Investing in preventive programs doesn't have to produce linear gains, because they are usually preventing problems that are MUCH costlier than the investment in the preventive programs.
You bandy the word neo-con about pretty loosely. Lots of folks, Democrats included, would like to see government spending decrease. To circle back to Welfare for a moment, I would prefer to teach people how to fish rather than giving them a fish. Obviously giving them shelter, clothing, and food is necessary for some time, but the goal should be to make people self reliant and responsible. The current Welfare system does little to improve a person's situation and is more focused on preventing it from declining. A truly progressive society would try to lift up the downtrodden, help them a get a job and become a productive worker in society. That's why so many people hate government programs.
The problem is that when people are talking about cutting government spending on social programs, it's not just the "ineffective" welfare program(s) that get cut.
My wife works at a non-profit in NYC that specializes in issues relating to problem youth (education, juvenile justice system, home situation, childhood poverty, etc. etc.) and deals with the New York State (NYS) and City (NYC) budget decisions a lot. NYS and NYC fund all kinds of community programs that you describe as "progressive" (and a lot of them are). Most of them work better than the actual welfare program, usually because they're more targeted and smaller in scale.
When budget cuts happen, THOSE programs get cut first regardless of their effectiveness. That's how it always happens.
In any case, that wasn't really my point. The real point was that most social programs, even those with issues, are preventive in nature and produce cost reductions in the long run. Programs should obviously always be improved and the programs that truly do not benefit anyone should be eliminated.
Increasing spending on a broken system only loses us all more money and doesn't fix the problem
Well, yes. Framing the budget discussions in this manner would be great. Most people don't. All they spout is "Government spending bad. No spending good.", just like the comment I was responding to did.
Depends on the tax rates. Obviously an oppressive tax would, but a small one probably wouldn't.
It's debatable.
He set up his investment advisory business in a manner that it wasn't subjected to the same sort of regulatory oversight as mutual funds and even hedge funds are while operating in much the same way.
But I agree that enforcing regulations already in affect is a bigger problem than lack of regulation.
Taxing consumption as a whole unduly affects poor people, because a larger percentage of their income goes to necessary consumption (food, clothes, transportation, etc.) than rich people. It would hit the poorest people the hardest.
That's why taxing consumption is not a good idea. As a whole.
However, taxing unnecessary (or luxury) consumption, like the proposed tax on iTunes downloads, doesn't have the same negative effect.
"Go ahead, tax the rich. And, as in the case of NYC, they are moving out in droves."
Do you have any data to back that off, or are you just inventing facts to support your ideology?
The rich are moving out? I sure as hell haven't noticed. In fact, Manhattan real estate market for upscale (as in multi-million) homes is still very healthy. Meanwhile the real estate market in the burbs for working class homes is not. It's the poor and middle class people who can't afford to live in New York City. It's been this way for a LOOOONG time, but it's getting increasingly worse in recent times.
As for the rest of your post, a lot of the social/welfare program funding is cost effective, because it's preventive in nature.
For example, funding healthcare makes sense, because it improves the general health of the population reducing the need for REALLY expensive healthcare options (ER visits, hospitalization, etc.) and reduces the rates of serious illnesses (diabetes being #1 in NYC right now). It also reduces business losses by reducing the amount of sick days.
Funding the police prevents crime, which is MUCH cheaper than housing criminals in prisons.
It's exactly the same for practically every single social program that's government funded. It's a fairly simple cause and effect formula. You don't even have to think really hard about it. You just have to think.
I'm really sick and tired of hearing people complain about governments spending money on welfare programs. It's typically coming from neo-cons and other free markets advocates who don't seem to understand, or conveniently omit mentioning, the fact that most government funded welfare and social programs are cost effective on the long run.
I really don't understand the rationale of these people. You want governments to cut costs, but yet you advocate policies that would increase costs in the long run. What is it that you really want? I have a pretty good idea, but I still want to believe that people are fundamentally good, so I'm trying to not think about it.
Increased regulation causing the State budget shortfalls? How is making decisions on tax rates regulation?
You might also want to read up on a certain Mr. Madoff, who took full advantage of a regulatory vacuum. This is the world you want?
Private right of action got stripped out of it due to complaints from the direct marketers. That was strike one. With so much spam it's completely unreasonable to expect anyone to enforce the law. Crowdsourcing the enforcement through private right of action would've worked. And the direct marketers knew it...
The second strike was that the bill didn't anticipate the success of botnets and Russian organized crime. The law doesn't do jack s*** about that problem.
I once had a manager, a very good one, who told me his job is to remove any obstacles I may have so that I can do what I do best.
I think that was a great way of summarizing what great managers do day-to-day to help their teams be successful.
If that's true, they are simply going to blacklist a bunch of websites. I heavily doubt cnn/bbc/etc will ever negligently be put on that list.
They are doing something very similar in Finland. The biggest difference is that ISPs aren't required to filter based on the blocklist, yet.
An unnamed police officer (yes, apparently a single person) is in charge of what goes on the list and what comes off the list.
They recently put w3c.org on the list.
Obviously it was a mistake, but nevertheless it quite nicely demonstrated that any site can end up on the list.
I think, if I had broken the bot control communication encryption, instead of doing anything public about, the first thing I'd do is to set up a logger bot in my lab and record everything until I have enough evidence to expose the bot overlords.
I'd set up a direct, live feed to the data to FBI, the Interpol, Spamhaus and possibly some of the major ISPs, so that they could do what they do better.
I wouldn't try and interfere with the bot before that.
That's not the reason.
The reason is to transfer wealth to companies making e-voting equipment or software.
"A big part of the problem with the H1B program is that the visas are tied to one employer."
This is not quite accurate.
While the visa is tied to one employer, once you have one visa it's relatively easy to transfer it to another employer. Visa transfers are not subject to the annual quotas, and they don't need to go through the full H1-B visa application process so it takes much less time to complete than the initial H1-B visa application process.
You can also have multiple H1-B visas, although I have never heard of anyone who actually did that.
"The government should impose some sort of punishment on companies and/or the individuals that take advantage of the system"
The sanctions for H1-B visa fraud already exist. From what I remember they're actually rather strict. The US Government is not enforcing them.
There is no overhaul required. All that needs to be done is for USCIS to actually do its job and enforce the regulations of the H1-B program.
"And with a 20% fraud rate, the H1B program needs an overhaul."
No, it doesn't. Instead it needs oversight.
How exactly does the transformation from a script kiddie to a security EXPERT happen?
A book on that, I'd pay to read. I'm a sucker for case sturies on business mistakes.
"When someone on an H1-B (I was, for 6 years) is laidoff, they are immediately "out of status" and technically required to pack up and leave. The 'visa' remains valid. So can go back to their home country, find another sponsor and return."
You're correct that H1-B visa holders are immediately out of status, if they lose the job they were sponsored for.
However, from what I can remember last time I looked into this, there is a USCIS memo about the grace period during which the H1-B visa holder can seek for other employment while still staying in the country. Basically it's saying that even though the law is black and white (and works the way you described it), actual policy by USCIS doesn't follow the law to the letter and does allow the H1-B visa holders to stay in the country for a short period of time while arranging for a transfer of the H1-B visa.
Another thing is that you don't technically need a brand new H1-B visa to switch jobs, if you've been laid off. You can get away with transferring the existing visa to another employer. The process is much faster than the actual application process and is not subject to the annual visa quotas. You're, however, still subject to the 3+3 year limit on the visa.
It really is incredible how none of the Governmental programs in this country have ANY oversight whatsoever.
The H1-B program has all the safeguards that would make it work just fine in the program regulations, but nobody is enforcing them. No wonder companies (both on the buy and sell side) are abusing it then.
Small Government makes all things right, eh?
This is my comment to you Seth.
Fuck off.
And anyone who modded that "insightful", that goes for you too.
Kinda. He had a partner.
Saddam Hussein was responsible for everything Bin Laden wasn't.
That's the way it is in the United States as well.
It is ILLEGAL to hire H1-B visa holders for less than the prevailing wage. H1-B visa holders are also required to have at least a Bachelor's degree in a related field to the job they're being sponsored for.
The fact that some companies blatantly violate the H1-B visa program regulations and exploit their workers in no way takes away from the H1-B visa program itself.
It does, however, show how things always go wrong when the Government fails to enforce their regulations. Funny how that seems to happen more and more often these days (e.g. cranes collapsing in NYC, etc. etc.).
That's the thing about voting. You get to vote regardless of whether someone thinks you have The Right Information about whatever topic.
But that's not how democracy was supposed to work.
From what I remember from my history books, the way it was supposed to work that all eligible citizens (women, children and slaves not allowed...) were supposed to gather around, debate furiously for a while and then vote only after they were informed about the topics at hand.
Obviously you can't gather 200 million people together to vote once a week, so we have representative democracy these days. But nevertheless, a working democracy requires informed citizenry. None of the modern democracies have that and as a result our way of democracy really isn't working all that well for the benefit of the citizens.
I've wondered about doctors and lawyers, who have federal laws that prohibit them from disclosing data about their clients.
If you read the fine print, most privacy regulations have disclaimers that allow the data to be disclosed if required by authority figures.
Where the DHS confiscations get on a REALLY murky area is in what DHS does with the data. The policy pretty much says they can do whatever the hell they want with it, incl. disclosing it further to pretty much anyone they please. Not only that, but there's not a whole lot in that policy that talks about data retention after (or if) they return the equipment to you. Can they get to keep it? How is it kept? What security procedures are in place so that others don't get to the data?
The problem is the government has brainwashed the people.
It's not the Government.
It's the completely toothless media that rather bombard us with reality TV than actually inform us about what the hell is going on.
The current administration has been abusing and exploiting the situation by systematically keeping more and more information secret.
Good for you.
You didn't, however, travel to US from a country liks Pakistan, Afghanistan or the Middle East and I suppose you don't look like an Arab.
Otherwise, trust me, your experience would've been VERY different.
The Washington Post has been writing quite a few articles about the treatment of business travelers (American citizens all) that frequently travel to the "terrorism hotspots".