A very funny cartoon

Posted at Spocko’s Brain (stated to be originally from Dr. Zaius).

More Congressional Theater: The H1B Soaps

David Sirota has written a column saying that the Dems are bragging about how they are deceiving us on the Iraq funding bill. Rather than actually govern, they are providing an illusion of it: Congressional Theater.   

But there’s yet another piece of Congressional Theater that I would like to bring to attention.

“Two American senators, Charles Grassley and Richard Durbin, have alleged that Indian outsourcing firms are using the [H1-B] visas to avoid hiring American staff.
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They have issued a letter of enquiry to nine Indian technology firms – amongst them Infosys, Wipro and L&T Infotech – asking them to provide details of how many H1-B or temporary working visa holders they are currently employing, and what percentage of their total workforce are H1-B holders.
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In the letter, which is also on the senators’ respective websites, they say they are “concerned about the impact on American workers.
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The letter goes on: “Some groups have analysed the wages paid to H1-B visa holders. They have found that the average annual salary of foreign workers is significantly lower than that of new US graduates.”

Now, I happen to know something about this. Many years ago, a senior staff member in the Congress contacted me to ask whether the H1-B visa program was being run in a responsible manner, providing needed workers while not flooding the employment market. I laughed and told him that it was rife with corruption, that I had personal knowledge of it was being used to drive down wages and replace conscientious workers with frightened, easy-to-control immigrants. I had even been told in general terms of the bribery of an immigration judge: $10,000 cash to work in the US.

So Why’d They Do It?

So why did so many Democrats — particularly those in Southern states with lots of military bases — vote for the supplemental?

The biggest reason, as has been discussed recently, is apparently this: Because while most polls show that around 70% of us want this war to end, a considerably smaller percentage — around half or less — want it done via “cutting off funds” as was done in Vietnam. (The latest CNN poll states that 60% of Americans oppose cutting off funds to end the Iraq War. Yes, yes, we know that the previous bills the Democrats proposed didn’t “cut off funds” but instead funded a safe withdrawal. But we all know how the GOP/Media spun that, don’t we?)

Worse yet, a legend has grown up that the Democrats were made to pay at the ballot box over ending the Vietnam War, even though the Democrats did well in 1974 and 1976, and Carter’s loss in 1980 had more to do with the rotten economy (which he’d inherited from Nixon and Ford), the hostage situation in Iran (which the evidence shows was likely artificially prolonged by Iran at the Republicans’ behest), and the press’ personal dislike of him than anything else.

That’s the reasoning. You can like it, you can argue with it (and I hope that I’ve shown that I am at best dubious of much if not most of it). But for Heaven’s sake please don’t let your brains melt irrevocably because of it.