My wife and I were listening to some of the "crazier" (as far as the MSM is concerned) ideas about the Gulf clean-up ... stuff like using straw or hair .. and she asked me "but WHY are those ideas crazier than using some chemical that's just going to make the water even more poisonious?"

"Oh, that's very simple," I replied "Nobody stands to make a fortune on hair or straw. Don't you know that the only workable solution to any disaster caused by greed is one that's going to make some crony of the greedy offender more wealthy?"

Day one without Quark, feeling a bit bummed about that. :-(

N

Published on Thursday, May 13, 2010 by The Guardian/UK

Oil Firms Ignored Warning Signs Before Blast, Inquiry Hears

by Suzanne Goldenberg

@Maxrot, I would feel better if more posters would say that the letter is BS.

All sorts of opinion here, some based on fear I think. I came over from Scandinavia on a work-visa myself. I work for an international company that was trying to establish itself in the US, and it would not have been possible to get the product-specific experience by hiring all US employees. If myself and some others had not come over, the company would have no choice but to either have just a sales office in the US, or shut down US operations completely.

I think there is a lot of generalization, even on Thom's part. Everyone I know of that have come over is well paid, on par with American workers. I'm not saying this to brag, but to make a point, that I am a lower level manager in my company, and I make more money than 95% of the US workforce. At least with my company we hire Americans when we can, and bring over people from overseas only when necessary.

You should also realise that outsourcing is a much bigger problem than the relatively few people coming into the US. It was not easy or cheap to get a visa (and later a green card). I also pay a great amount of money in Taxes/Social Security, plus all my spending is helping Americans every day.

I'm a progressive myself, and find it (due to my situation I suppose), quite contradictary that we complain about (illegal) immigrants being harassed in Arizona, and that we should offer Amnesty to them, while Thom runs out and criticize people who come to the country legally and help out the economy.

The only people I have run into in my years in the US that complained about me stealing their jobs were people that had not even gone to college, so there is no way they would get my job in the first place.

In closing, I do fully agree that there should be large investments made in the US education system, and that we should do everything we can to help the students get a degree without getting bankrupted. It is however the wrong approach to just attack the people that seek opportunity in what is supposed to be the greatest nation on earth. (or so my American wife tells me).

Hightech corporations...............................................................

are tricky too

I'm a software engineer, been in high tech since 1977. Technology at times can be very lucrative, but it absolutely requires you have to stay on top of whatever new technology is in demand. Often you won't be able to learn that "latest new thing" though your employer, and the responsibility is on you to either quit to get a job that will let you learn or learn it on your own. The getting a job with the new employer doing new technology is often much tougher than it sounds - even if the new technology was invented a year ago they always want 5 years experience with it (I'm not kidding)... Of course they want you to have done it as part of an your occupation for previous employers, so the learn it on your own doesn't count, usually your only recourse is to lie if you want the job.

I have a friend who was a great engineer with a Masters in CS/Math now living in a car in Texas as he was unable to find employment for over a year and people wouldn't touch him because if he was out of work so long that "there must be something wrong with him", he is physically crippled so he can't work in a 711 or stock shelves or do almost any manual labor, but he was very intelligent, creative, and a very hard worker. Now his home is a hammock between two trees in nowhere Texas. I know another engineer that went from a six figure salary as a senior engineer to about $25K a year as a test technician because his employer didn't let him train on new technology, then they dumped him when they phased out the product line he helped design. But hey, keep those H-1B Visas coming! Our high tech companies can't afford to retrain people, it’s better to just discard them! If you want to hear the ironic part, my friend living in a car in Texas came here on an H-1 Visa from another country and became a citizen. Welcome to the land of milk and honey.

I was just out of work for over 1.5 years, because fo the crash (thank you Goldman! and banksters), I was almost completely wiped out financially during crash and the time out of work. I went from having about 150K in the bank (and market) to now having about $12K. This is almost the same place I was in 1980 except I own no home now and have two kids in college. I have worked for most of the largest best know high tech companies at a principle engineering level. To get re-employed I finally spent the last year of my unemployment studying the new latest greatest thing (embedded Linux) at home, and then rewriting my resume to show I had done it in the last 3-4 jobs I've held as well as "invented" contracts jobs in the last 1.5 years to show I was working. Then I lied my ass off and finally got a job. I could answer the technical questions, and my resume reflected that I had done the work. Integrity is a very expensive thing when you weight it against feeding and clothing your family, but at least I am not making bombs. I am now after 6 months one of their better engineers at my new company I am earning 1/2 of my previous pay 2 years ago, but I would never have been hired if they had known what really was my history. I am sure all of the CEOs have taken a pay cut tooSealed. I think most engineers are too naive to understand this, or have the integrity to not lie to get a job.. But this is what it comes down too as a fundamental choice. I made mine.

During my unemployment, I was offered several opportunities working on weapons systems for military contractors. I chose that I would live in my car before I did that. Military contractor jobs are the only ones that you don't have to compete with H1B via holders as they can't get a clearance.

All the big companies have been moving the jobs overseas, and the jobs that are here we have to compete with lower paid H1B visa holders. The big corporations broke the unions by letting illegal aliens to do the drive wages down in the blue collars trades, and it worked like a charm. Now for the last 10 years they have been allowing wages to be held down or reduced for white collar workers by outsourcing jobs without a penalty and using H1B visas domestically. This isn't just engineering jobs, it is almost all professional jobs that take 4-8 years of college to get, you name it, and it’s probably on the list. Wonder why CEO salaries are at much greater ratios than in the 1960s? Aside from naked greed, you would have to get a greater ratio if you were driving down the labor just to stay even with what you were making.

Cisco systems moved most of its R&D jobs to India; now that Indian labor is going up they are not doing much new there but are opening in South Korea. Corporations are in search for the lowest dollar, the thing is that they can usually compete without doing this, in high tech the margins are huge, it’s not like your making hammers. IBM which has been a long holdout in keeping a lot of manufacturing domestically is now moving much of it to china. If you go to either of those companies, it looks like the UN. Two of my wives have even been foreign nationals Laughing. That's not a bad thing, to be honest almost without exception most of my best friends are from somewhere else, but it is time to STOP the government from allowing the H1B visa to be used as a tool to drive down salaries as well to fine employers a huge amount for hiring illegal aliens. These are the corporations at work to increase profits at your expense. Take care of our own first, and then allow emigration second.

There has been a class war going on for thirty years and no one bothered to tell us (okay Thom has, but it is a voice in the wilderness) no major media ever talks about this.

So to be a middle aged baby boomer at the peak of your earning career in engineering is something that takes a lot more than technical knowhow, it takes a lot of political savvy both internal and external to your company. With this musical chairs game to be in the right place to find the decreasing amount of ever smaller chairs is tough to do. But rest assured that all of our CEOs are looking out for us, just not in a way we would like.

Best of Luck all.

Yetanotherguy