Category Archives: Technology

UPDATE III (1/18): In US Government, Error That Could’ve Triggered Attack On North Korea Goes Unpunished. Oh, Well.

Foreign Policy, Government, Homeland Security, Technology, The State, War

“Temporarily reassigned” to other duties. That’s the fate—the punishment—of a government employee who, by mistake, “activated a missile launch warning” that “stirred panic across Hawaii over the weekend.”

Preparedness never killed anyone, but what if the US had annihilated North Korea based on a false emergency alert of a ballistic missile headed for Hawaii?

Yet an error that could have triggered a deadly attack on North Korea goes unpunished. In the private sector; you’d be fired.

There is little accountability in government, because it is a body that writes the rules it applies to itself.

And so many Americans want more government control!

Name, shame and fire the responsible government employee at the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency.

… The error occurred when, in the midst of a drill during a shift change at the agency, an employee made the wrong selection from a “drop-down” computer menu, choosing to activate a missile launch warning instead of the option for generating an internal test alert … The employee, believing the correct selection had been made, then went ahead and clicked “yes” when the system’s computer prompt asked whether to proceed …

MORE.

UPDATE I: In reply to Facebook thread: What would we do without the statist voice of reason?! It’s not like the US didn’t destroy Iraq after Colon (sic) Powell’s slide show at the UN. Then Libya. But it’s all “ridiculous story telling” to the statist incapable of learning to distrust the US State.

UPDATE II (1/15):  You know those countries on which America drops bombs—only ever for their own good? Ever thought of what their citizens experience just before such a “righteous” payload is dropped? In Hawaii, Americans got a taste of that. But maybe not, since no lessons or learning curve is ever cultivated.

UPDATE III (1/18): Readers thought the comment above was “the only decent take I’ve heard.” Agree, not because it’s me.

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NEW COLUMN: Why Tax Breaks Won’t Stop High-Tech, H-1B Human Trafficking

IMMIGRATION, Labor, Multiculturalism, Outsourcing, Taxation, Technology

“Why Tax Breaks Won’t Stop High-Tech, H-1B Human Trafficking” is the current column, now on WND.com. An excerpt:

“If the tax reform bill goes through, do you plan to increase your company’s capital investment?”

The question was posed to a sizeable group of CEOs at The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council, in the presence of White House economic adviser Gary Cohn.

A pitiful show of hands failed to wipe the smirk off Mr. Cohn’s face. But at least the knaves were candid. Tax cuts for American big businesses are unlikely to move corporations to deploy that capital to raise the wages of the little guy, the worker.

The repatriation deal planned for fat-cat multinationals is particularly sweet. But don’t expect the “one-time tax rate of 12 percent on cash returns and five percent on non-cash for corporate money repatriated from overseas” to spur investment in the U.S.

Ideally, policymakers would prefer, as Business Insider quips, for companies to “reinvest in their core businesses, as this holds the most direct bearing on economic expansion.” All the president’s men certainly preach it.

But President Trump’s plan to grant the multinationals, tech titans included, a tax holiday, is more likely to see capital used to tinker with share prices. Repurchasing shares, a share buyback, will boost stock prices and benefit large shareholders.

Where a multinational also traffics in human labor, globally—as do the likes of Apple, Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle, Qualcomm, etc.—a lower tax rate on their repatriated earnings is unlikely to redound to American computer programmers and engineers.

In the event these tax holidays encourage American high-tech to “reinvest in their core businesses”—it will not be an investment in employing American talent, which will continue to be replaced apace with foreign workers.

For accretion in employment among Americans to occur, the president would have to turn off the H-1B (and other visa) spigots. He has not.

Multinationals consider the world their labor market. High-tech traitors will continue to replace the worker bees of American STEM—science, technology, engineering and mathematics—with reliably mediocre, culturally aggressive, foreign workers.

And not necessarily because foreign workers are cheaper. Importing workers from India calls for enormous in-house bureaucracies to handle immigration applications and renewals, attendant litigation, and family importation and resettlement packages for tribes of new arrivals (also known as chain migrants). This isn’t necessarily cheaper than employing your local lass or lad.

The H-1B visa racket is, however, a taxpayer-subsidized, grant of government privilege. Duly, profits remain private property.  The costs of accommodating an annual human influx are socialized, borne by the bewildered community. …

… READ THE REST.  “Why Tax Breaks Won’t Stop High-Tech, H-1B Human Trafficking” is the current column, now on WND.com.

James Damore Confronts The Hags of High Tech (& Loses)

Affirmative Action, Business, Feminism, Gender, Political Correctness, Technology

NEW COLUMN: “James Damore Confronts The Hags of High Tech (& Loses)” is the current column, now on Townhall.com. An excerpt:

Of the many men who toil in high-tech, few are as heroic as James Damore, the young man who penned the manifesto “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber.” In it, Damore calmly and logically exposed the tyrannical ideological edifice erected to perpetuate the myth that, in aggregate, women and men are identical in aptitude and interests, and that “all disparities in representation are due to oppression.”

 …

… In high-tech, almost nothing is as politically precious as a woman with some aptitude. There’s no end to which companies will go to procure women and help them succeed, often to the detriment of technically competent men and women who must do double duty. Their procurement being at a premium, concepts such as “sucking it up” and soldiering on are often anathema to coddled distaff.

A woman in high-technology can carp constantly about … being a woman in high-tech. Her gender—more so than her capabilities—is what defines her and endears her to her higher-ups, for whom she’s a notch in the belt.

While male engineers—and, indubitably, some exceptional women—are hired to be hard at work designing and shipping tangible products; women in high tech, in the aggregate, are free to branch out; to hone a niche as a voice for their gender.

Arisen online and beyond is a niche-market of nudniks (nags): Women talking, blogging, vlogging, writing and publishing about women in high-technology or their absence therefrom; women beating the tom-tom about discrimination and stereotyping, but saying absolutely nothing about the technology they presumably love and help create.

Young women, in particular, are pioneers of this new, intangible, but lethal field of meta-technology: kvetching (complaining) about their absence in technology with nary a mention of their achievements in technology.

The hashtag “MicrosoftWomen” speaks to the solipsistic universe created by females in high-tech and maintained by the house-broken males entrusted with supporting the menacing matriarchy. Are these ladies posting about the products they’ve partaken in designing and shipping? Not often. Women in high-tech are more likely to be tweeting out about … being women in high-tech. Theirs is a self-reverential and self-referential universe. …

… Read the Rest. The complete column, “James Damore Confronts The Hags of High Tech (& Loses),” is now on Townhall.com.

This column can be read also on Unz Review,  Daily Caller, American Thinker, and others, where The Mercer Column usually appears. And it’s always posted, eventually, on IlanaMercer.com, under Articles. Please share.

UPDATED II (4/24): Why The H-1B Visa Racket Should Be Abolished, Not Reformed

Business, Free Markets, IMMIGRATION, Labor, libertarianism, Paleolibertarianism, Technology, Welfare

“Why The H-1B Visa Racket Should Be Abolished, Not Reformed” is the new column, trending on Townhall.com. An excerpt:

Billionaire businessman Marc Cuban insists that the H-1B visa racket is a feature of the vaunted American free market. This is nonsense on stilts. It can’t go unchallenged.

Another billionaire, our president, has ordered that the H-1B program be reformed. This, too, is disappointing. You’ll see why.

First, let’s correct Mr. Cuban: America has not a free economy, but a mixed-economy. State and markets are intertwined. Trade, including trade in labor, is not free; it’s regulated to the hilt. If anything, the labyrinth of work visas is an example of a fascistic government-business cartel in operation.

The H-1B permit, in particular, is part of that state-sponsored visa system. The primary H-1B hogs—Infosys (and another eight, sister Indian firms), Microsoft, and Intel—import labor with what are grants of government privilege. Duly, the corporations that hog H-1Bs act like incorrigibly corrupt rent seekers. Not only do they get to replace the American worker, but they get to do so at his expense.

Here’s how:

Globally, a series of sordid liaisons ensures that American workers are left high and dry. Through the programs of the International Trade Administration, the Export-Import Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the International Monetary Fund, and other oink-operations, the taxpaying American worker is forced to subsidize and underwrite the investment risks of the very corporations that have given him the boot.

Domestically, the fascistic partnership with the State amounts to a subsidy to business at the expense of the taxpayer. See, corporations in our democratic welfare state externalize their employment costs onto the taxpayers.

So while public property is property funded by taxpayers through expropriated taxes; belongs to taxpayers; is to be managed for their benefit—at least one million additional immigrants a year, including recipients of the H-1B visa, are allowed the free use of taxpayer-supported infrastructure and amenities. Every new arrival avails himself of public works such as roads, hospitals, parks, libraries, schools, and welfare.

Does this epitomize the classical liberal idea of laissez faire?

Moreover, chain migration or family unification means every H-1B visa recruit is a ticket for an entire tribe. The initial entrant—the meal ticket—will pay his way. The honor system not being an especially strong value in the Third World, the rest of the clan will be America’s problem. More often than not, chain-migration entrants become wards of the American taxpayer.

Spreading like gravy over a tablecloth, this rapid, inorganic population growth is detrimental to all ecosystems: natural, social and political.

Take Seattle and its surrounding counties …

… READ THE REST. “Why The H-1B Visa Racket Should Be Abolished, Not Reformed” is now trending on Townhall.com.

UPDATE (4/22): A poignant observation on Townhall.com, where the column is now trending:

Carry ann • 4 hours ago

This article is spot on. The insane importation of h1b workers from India by Microsoft and Amazon has changed the Seattle area beyond recognition. The author’s contention that each visa is just a meal ticket to move the whole clan over is spot on. Everywhere you look in this area, trees are being cut down to make room for more development. All new homes now have 3 levels, with a finished basement intended for the grandparents who moved here to take care of the grand kids while both parents work, since Obama also allow the spouses of H1bs to work. Indians are taking over all the jobs in this area. Every new home buyer is either Indian or Chinese, both move the whole clan over. All the schools here are now at least 50% Asian, some are 90% Asian, esp. the elementary schools.
We need a 20 year moratorium on immigration, not just the H1b but its close cousins, H2b, H3, H4, J1, OPT, L1 and the EB5 all need to be cancelled for 20 years. Immigration is the colonization tactic of the 21st century. The US is being colonized by the third world. Most of the Mexicans and Asians are wildly liberal and vote Democrat, esp. the Indians. Republicans are dead if they continue to allow this stream of migration. They need to wise up in a hurry and stop this third world invasion.

UPDATE II (2/24):

On Ricochet.com, Jamie Lockett responds:

“Wouldn’t the real libertarian response to this be an immigration system unregulated by government and depended on economic necessity?”

MY REPLY: “A clear-thinking libertarian addresses reality. Would I like to see a world governed by private property? Indeed. Until that happens—if—I am obliged to address the reality I addressed in the column and call out the bluff of the H-1B visa by pointing to the existence of the 0-1 visa. I am not advocating for these systems; I’m illustrating how the immigration industry—corporations, lawyers, lobbyists and other clientele—stick it to American workers. I hope you are not suggesting that instead of addressing reality, I pontificate about my purist preferences.”

Robert McReynolds, aka JamieLockett: “Well, I don’t think I could of said it any better really.”