America’s special operations forces — the Navy Seals, the Army Rangers, Delta Force, Special Operations Command (SOCOM), Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and so forth — have been a source of pride and inspiration, as well as disappointment, to Americans for generations. These elite warriors embody the hope of many for a means of achieving decisive and swift strategic victory in a short time and at a low cost in treasure, lives and limbs.
There are indeed many historical instances of special operations forces accomplishing astonishingly difficult, daring and successful raids. Nevertheless, Mark Moyar in his new book Oppose Any Foe: The Rise of America’s Special Operations Forces, gives us a stark reality check on the track record of success and effectiveness of these forces.
Read the complete book review by Howard Hyde at American Spectator.
Thursday, June 15, 2017
Thursday, May 11, 2017
Why was FBI Director James Comey fired?
Conspiracy theorists, partisan Democrats, political junkies and other masochists are cranking out a firestorm of stories, claims and counter-claims about why, how and when President Trump fired FBI director James Comey, should have or shouldn't have. But for the "normal" citizen who wants his or her life back, IMHO the best -- and perhaps only -- document one needs is the memo that deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein wrote to his superior, recommending the dismissal. Unlike most of the chatter that is out there, it is relatively simple, straightforward, and to the point. And this is in fact the proximate case and cause for Comey's firing; a primary source.
Excerpts/Summary:
• The director was wrong to usurp the Attorney General's authority on July 5, 2016, and announce his conclusion that the case should be closed without prosecution. It is not the function of the Director to make such an announcement...[T]he FBI Director is never empowered to supplant federal prosecutors and assume command of the Justice Department.
• Compounding the error, the Director ignored another longstanding principle: we do not hold press conferences to release derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation.
• [T]he goal of a federal criminal investigation is not to announce our thoughts at a press conference. The goal is to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to justify a federal criminal prosecution, then allow a federal prosecutor who exercises authority delegated by the Attorney General to make a prosecutorial decision, and then - if prosecution is warranted - let the judge and jury determine the facts.
• Concerning his letter to the Congress on October 28, 2016, the Director cast his decision as a choice between whether he would "speak" about the FBI's decision to investigate the newly-discovered email messages or "conceal" it. "Conceal" is a loaded term that misstates the issue. When federal agents and prosecutors quietly open a criminal investigation, we are not concealing anything; we are simply following the longstanding policy that we refrain from publicizing non-public information. In that context, silence is not concealment.
• My perspective on these issues is shared by former Attorneys General and Deputy Attorneys General from different eras and both political parties.
The complete public-domain document is available, among other places, at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39866767.
Excerpts/Summary:
• The director was wrong to usurp the Attorney General's authority on July 5, 2016, and announce his conclusion that the case should be closed without prosecution. It is not the function of the Director to make such an announcement...[T]he FBI Director is never empowered to supplant federal prosecutors and assume command of the Justice Department.
• Compounding the error, the Director ignored another longstanding principle: we do not hold press conferences to release derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation.
• [T]he goal of a federal criminal investigation is not to announce our thoughts at a press conference. The goal is to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to justify a federal criminal prosecution, then allow a federal prosecutor who exercises authority delegated by the Attorney General to make a prosecutorial decision, and then - if prosecution is warranted - let the judge and jury determine the facts.
• Concerning his letter to the Congress on October 28, 2016, the Director cast his decision as a choice between whether he would "speak" about the FBI's decision to investigate the newly-discovered email messages or "conceal" it. "Conceal" is a loaded term that misstates the issue. When federal agents and prosecutors quietly open a criminal investigation, we are not concealing anything; we are simply following the longstanding policy that we refrain from publicizing non-public information. In that context, silence is not concealment.
• My perspective on these issues is shared by former Attorneys General and Deputy Attorneys General from different eras and both political parties.
The complete public-domain document is available, among other places, at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39866767.
Friday, May 05, 2017
Assessing President Rodham Clinton's first 100 days
By any objective historical measure, the achievements of President Hillary Rodham Clinton have been extraordinary. Increased budget for the EPA, re-branding of the First Amendment to ban Hate Speech, national gun registration, Supreme Court appointments and more!
Read the complete article by Howard Hyde at AmericanThinker.com [Click].
Or if you are a glutton, continue reading the extended version below:
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
By any objective historical measure, the achievements of President Hillary Rodham-Clinton have been extraordinary. Let's start with the Budget and Defense One-Two Punch: The Omnibus Budget Act of 2017, passed by Congress and signed by the president in record time, calls for beefy increases in the budgets of the administration's surrogate agencies: a 31% increase for the EPA, a 6% increase for the Department of Energy, and a 12% increase for the Department of the Interior, to name just a few. In keeping with Clinton's deeply committed principles of fiscal responsibility, all of these increases have been offset dollar-for-dollar either by reductions in spending for the Pentagon and Department of Defense, or by increases in taxes on the rich (about which more anon). "The era of using America's military to intimidate, threaten and assault the freedom-loving people of the world is over," Clinton is alleged to have proclaimed.
As for the military itself, reforms in the culture continue at an accelerated rate. Military chaplains have been instructed not to invoke the words "Christ," "Jesus," "Savior," or "Messiah", or to directly quote chapters and verses from the Bible, whether Old or New Testament, as this would make soldiers, sailors and/or airtransexuals who are Buddhist, Hindu or Zoroastrian feel excluded or worse in a hostile work environment. On the other hand, in the interest of multicultural inclusion, Muslim chaplains are permitted, even encouraged, to declaim prayers and sermons that are as traditional and/or authentic to the Religion of Peace as they judge best, regardless of any resemblance to the pronouncements of isolated and unrelated mentally-disturbed individuals who happen to act out in anti-social ways that have nothing to do with Islam (like running down pedestrians with a truck or shooting up an office party).
Some critics of Clinton's budget have suggested that she is merely trading the externally-facing military for the domestically-facing para-military, noting that much of the increases to the agencies is earmarked for "energetic and proactive enforcement" of regulations, and that procurement requests for weapons and ammunition for the EPA's various SWAT teams has already increased since passage of the budget.
The First Amendment, while untouched on the parchment, has undergone a refreshing re-branding under the Clinton administration. "Hate groups, hateful individuals and hate speech will no longer be permitted to hide behind the Bill of Rights, like terrorists using civilian children as human shields" (also alleged but not disputed). Accordingly, all universities that accept federal funding, or that accept students who have taken federal student loans or grants, have been advised to follow the leadership of the University of California at Berkeley in setting standards for who may be allowed to speak on campus. Needless to say, Milo Yanapoulis, David Horowitz, Ann Coulter and other speakers deemed to be "beyond the pale" have been barred from trespassing on University property, whether for a scheduled event or otherwise. Groups like the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the American Freedom Alliance have been officially designated as "Hate" groups by the Department of Homeland Security and its Secretary, Keith Ellison. They, and dozens of "Tea Party" and "patriot" groups which oppose the administration's agenda, have lost their tax-exempt status. "Lois Lerner was too lenient," one staffer remarked off the record. "We are cracking down for real this time." Political filmmakers like Dinesh D'Souza, Trevor Loudon and dozens of others, have been hit with lawsuits and/or prosecutions, on grounds ranging from libel to sedition. If the recent judgment against Mark Steyn for Defamation of a Nobel Laureate (original language restored, for those familiar) is any indication, other conservatives who cross the "red line" will be in for a stressful time indeed.
Gun violence should be seeing a substantial reduction under the Clinton administration, now that the national gun registry database is actively integrating records from state-level sales and other sources, and with mandatory universal enrollment required of all firearm owners before years' end. The administration is said to be consulting closely with Gavin Newsom and other authors of California's extraordinary firearm legal regimen. When asked whether the president intends to completely gut the Second Amendment, White House press secretary Michael Bloomberg answered "Not at all, once we understand that the right to bear arms was never intended to be a blank check for rogue vigilantes but always and only applicable to members of the militia -- the state militia -- then there is no conflict between this administration's policies and the Constitution." The secretary did not directly answer whether registration was only the first step toward confiscation, but at least one source close to the administration has said candidly off the record that "The die is cast; before the end of the first HRC term, we'll have all of their guns". When asked what about those gun owners who would not be willing to give up their guns regardless of cost to themselves, the same staffer shrugged, "Then they will pay that cost."
The rich will soon finally be paying their fair share once the new income tax rate of 57.38% on those earning $100,000 or more (public-sector employees exempted) goes into effect, retroactive to January 2017.
While comprehensive immigration reform is still stalled in competing bills and committees in both houses, Clinton's executive directives that have effectively ordered the border patrol and ICE to stand down while multiplying the quota of "Syrian" "refugees" tenfold (distributing them and their welfare checks among failing small towns in "red" states, ostensibly as a favor to boost the local economy) and increasing the budgets of "Sanctuary" entities, ensures that America will lead the world in multicultural, borderless and globalist compassion for years to come, if not generations.
Clinton's impact on the judicial branch has been nothing short of breathtaking. In just three months, 937 circuit judges -- about 30 percent of the total -- have been replaced by Clinton appointees. Sources close to the President acknowledge that their template is the Ninth Circuit; judges most aligned in jurisprudential philosophy are favored for these appointments.
But of course, the crown jewel is the Supreme Court, which, due to the untimely death of Justice Antonin Scalia and the precipitous retirement in February of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, gave Clinton her golden opportunity at the very opening of her term, to railroad through her picks for the next generation. As a result, Elizabeth Warren is on track to become the first Native American Woman Chief Justice, with Loretta Lynch not far behind (with the competing double-credential of First Black Woman -- which will triumph?). And of course, those pesky challenges to the constitutionality of the administration's agenda from Freedom of Speech to Gun Control will all be DOA.
Clinton's achievements are all the more remarkable considering how few public appearances she has made (only 2 in the entire month of April), feeding continued speculation about her health.
Everyone knew that Donald Trump had zero chance against the credentials, congeniality and organization deployed by the Clinton campaign. Even so, we all remember the surreal moment when all of the networks -- even CNN! -- had declared Trump to be the winner, with an astonishing 306 to 232 electoral college votes. But of course, efficient re-counts in Ohio and Pennsylvania set the record straight and gave Clinton 38 of her duly earned points back, clinching the deal at a surprisingly close but decisive 270 - 268.
And of course, Obamacare is on the point of being repealed and replaced...with a single-payer system run exclusively by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), in close consultation with the Veterans Administration and the Bureau of Indian Affairs: "America (finally) Cares."
(End of nightmare fantasy; We now return you to your regularly-scheduled life.)
Regardless of any failing of the Trump administration, "bullet" is far too feeble a word to describe what we as a nation have dodged.
Read the complete article by Howard Hyde at AmericanThinker.com [Click].
Or if you are a glutton, continue reading the extended version below:
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
By any objective historical measure, the achievements of President Hillary Rodham-Clinton have been extraordinary. Let's start with the Budget and Defense One-Two Punch: The Omnibus Budget Act of 2017, passed by Congress and signed by the president in record time, calls for beefy increases in the budgets of the administration's surrogate agencies: a 31% increase for the EPA, a 6% increase for the Department of Energy, and a 12% increase for the Department of the Interior, to name just a few. In keeping with Clinton's deeply committed principles of fiscal responsibility, all of these increases have been offset dollar-for-dollar either by reductions in spending for the Pentagon and Department of Defense, or by increases in taxes on the rich (about which more anon). "The era of using America's military to intimidate, threaten and assault the freedom-loving people of the world is over," Clinton is alleged to have proclaimed.
As for the military itself, reforms in the culture continue at an accelerated rate. Military chaplains have been instructed not to invoke the words "Christ," "Jesus," "Savior," or "Messiah", or to directly quote chapters and verses from the Bible, whether Old or New Testament, as this would make soldiers, sailors and/or airtransexuals who are Buddhist, Hindu or Zoroastrian feel excluded or worse in a hostile work environment. On the other hand, in the interest of multicultural inclusion, Muslim chaplains are permitted, even encouraged, to declaim prayers and sermons that are as traditional and/or authentic to the Religion of Peace as they judge best, regardless of any resemblance to the pronouncements of isolated and unrelated mentally-disturbed individuals who happen to act out in anti-social ways that have nothing to do with Islam (like running down pedestrians with a truck or shooting up an office party).
Some critics of Clinton's budget have suggested that she is merely trading the externally-facing military for the domestically-facing para-military, noting that much of the increases to the agencies is earmarked for "energetic and proactive enforcement" of regulations, and that procurement requests for weapons and ammunition for the EPA's various SWAT teams has already increased since passage of the budget.
The First Amendment, while untouched on the parchment, has undergone a refreshing re-branding under the Clinton administration. "Hate groups, hateful individuals and hate speech will no longer be permitted to hide behind the Bill of Rights, like terrorists using civilian children as human shields" (also alleged but not disputed). Accordingly, all universities that accept federal funding, or that accept students who have taken federal student loans or grants, have been advised to follow the leadership of the University of California at Berkeley in setting standards for who may be allowed to speak on campus. Needless to say, Milo Yanapoulis, David Horowitz, Ann Coulter and other speakers deemed to be "beyond the pale" have been barred from trespassing on University property, whether for a scheduled event or otherwise. Groups like the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the American Freedom Alliance have been officially designated as "Hate" groups by the Department of Homeland Security and its Secretary, Keith Ellison. They, and dozens of "Tea Party" and "patriot" groups which oppose the administration's agenda, have lost their tax-exempt status. "Lois Lerner was too lenient," one staffer remarked off the record. "We are cracking down for real this time." Political filmmakers like Dinesh D'Souza, Trevor Loudon and dozens of others, have been hit with lawsuits and/or prosecutions, on grounds ranging from libel to sedition. If the recent judgment against Mark Steyn for Defamation of a Nobel Laureate (original language restored, for those familiar) is any indication, other conservatives who cross the "red line" will be in for a stressful time indeed.
Gun violence should be seeing a substantial reduction under the Clinton administration, now that the national gun registry database is actively integrating records from state-level sales and other sources, and with mandatory universal enrollment required of all firearm owners before years' end. The administration is said to be consulting closely with Gavin Newsom and other authors of California's extraordinary firearm legal regimen. When asked whether the president intends to completely gut the Second Amendment, White House press secretary Michael Bloomberg answered "Not at all, once we understand that the right to bear arms was never intended to be a blank check for rogue vigilantes but always and only applicable to members of the militia -- the state militia -- then there is no conflict between this administration's policies and the Constitution." The secretary did not directly answer whether registration was only the first step toward confiscation, but at least one source close to the administration has said candidly off the record that "The die is cast; before the end of the first HRC term, we'll have all of their guns". When asked what about those gun owners who would not be willing to give up their guns regardless of cost to themselves, the same staffer shrugged, "Then they will pay that cost."
The rich will soon finally be paying their fair share once the new income tax rate of 57.38% on those earning $100,000 or more (public-sector employees exempted) goes into effect, retroactive to January 2017.
While comprehensive immigration reform is still stalled in competing bills and committees in both houses, Clinton's executive directives that have effectively ordered the border patrol and ICE to stand down while multiplying the quota of "Syrian" "refugees" tenfold (distributing them and their welfare checks among failing small towns in "red" states, ostensibly as a favor to boost the local economy) and increasing the budgets of "Sanctuary" entities, ensures that America will lead the world in multicultural, borderless and globalist compassion for years to come, if not generations.
Clinton's impact on the judicial branch has been nothing short of breathtaking. In just three months, 937 circuit judges -- about 30 percent of the total -- have been replaced by Clinton appointees. Sources close to the President acknowledge that their template is the Ninth Circuit; judges most aligned in jurisprudential philosophy are favored for these appointments.
But of course, the crown jewel is the Supreme Court, which, due to the untimely death of Justice Antonin Scalia and the precipitous retirement in February of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, gave Clinton her golden opportunity at the very opening of her term, to railroad through her picks for the next generation. As a result, Elizabeth Warren is on track to become the first Native American Woman Chief Justice, with Loretta Lynch not far behind (with the competing double-credential of First Black Woman -- which will triumph?). And of course, those pesky challenges to the constitutionality of the administration's agenda from Freedom of Speech to Gun Control will all be DOA.
Clinton's achievements are all the more remarkable considering how few public appearances she has made (only 2 in the entire month of April), feeding continued speculation about her health.
Everyone knew that Donald Trump had zero chance against the credentials, congeniality and organization deployed by the Clinton campaign. Even so, we all remember the surreal moment when all of the networks -- even CNN! -- had declared Trump to be the winner, with an astonishing 306 to 232 electoral college votes. But of course, efficient re-counts in Ohio and Pennsylvania set the record straight and gave Clinton 38 of her duly earned points back, clinching the deal at a surprisingly close but decisive 270 - 268.
And of course, Obamacare is on the point of being repealed and replaced...with a single-payer system run exclusively by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), in close consultation with the Veterans Administration and the Bureau of Indian Affairs: "America (finally) Cares."
(End of nightmare fantasy; We now return you to your regularly-scheduled life.)
Regardless of any failing of the Trump administration, "bullet" is far too feeble a word to describe what we as a nation have dodged.
Thursday, May 04, 2017
Calexit: Make Our Day
California's progressives' project to secede from the union, a.k.a. "CalExit" has suffered a setback since one of its leaders has decided to move permanently to Russia. Oh, and that California leaving the Union would be a huge boost to Republican domination of the 49 remaining United States of America.
As much as a CalExit would create great hardships for my family (turning us into refugees) as well as for hundreds of my closest friends in the most dynamic if besieged conservative intellectual community in the country, part of me can't help but goad them on. Go for it! Make our day! Take your precious Marxist-progressive race-class-gender-Gaea identity experiment to its logical conclusion so that the world can see once for all what happens to a prosperous country when it embraces this philosophy with zero possibility of effective dissent. Let's see how long it takes for California to turn into Argentina or Venezuela, once great and aspiring players on the world stage.
Read the complete article by Howard Hyde at: AmericanThinker.com.
As much as a CalExit would create great hardships for my family (turning us into refugees) as well as for hundreds of my closest friends in the most dynamic if besieged conservative intellectual community in the country, part of me can't help but goad them on. Go for it! Make our day! Take your precious Marxist-progressive race-class-gender-Gaea identity experiment to its logical conclusion so that the world can see once for all what happens to a prosperous country when it embraces this philosophy with zero possibility of effective dissent. Let's see how long it takes for California to turn into Argentina or Venezuela, once great and aspiring players on the world stage.
Read the complete article by Howard Hyde at: AmericanThinker.com.
Friday, March 31, 2017
Obamacare Replacement: Waiting for Godzilla
The for-now-defunct American Health Care Act (AHCA) had a lot to recommend it. But was it the only possible option? Why can't we take a radically different approach, instead of responding to one massive social engineering scheme with another radioactive sea monster that we must commission to stomp us without recourse?
Read the complete article by Howard Hyde at: AmericanThinker.com.
Read the complete article by Howard Hyde at: AmericanThinker.com.
Monday, March 20, 2017
Repeal (and don't replace) TEFRA 1706
...and every other law that subjugates American entrepreneurs under bureaucrats.
With the election of Donald Trump and Republican majorities in the House and Senate, we have an unprecedented opportunity to roll back the worst economy-killing laws and regulations of the Obama and Bush eras. Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, and the Keystone pipeline top the list, but there are dozens if not hundreds more that no one outside specific industry niches has even heard of, which cumulatively are equally if not more destructive. Congress and the president need to take an axe to all of them.
Read the complete article at: AmericanThinker.com.
For a more in-depth discussion, here is an excerpt from my book Escape From Berkeley: An EX liberal progressive socialist embraces America (and doesn't apologize) (2016):
H-1B Visa Blues
American high-tech workers have to compete with Indians, whether they are here or in India; Russians, whether they are here or in Russia; Chinese, whether they are here or in China. It is plausible that they are a greater benefit to the U.S. economy working here where they generate additional jobs for Americans. In particular, it seems absurd to kick people out of the country after they have just graduated from one of our prestigious STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and/or Mathematics) degree programs.
But is the H-1B Visa program the right way to do this?
The H-1B Visa program permits highly educated foreign professionals such as computer programmers and engineers to work in the United States for a limited time period. Ann Coulter has likened this program to indentured servitude because the foreign worker is not at liberty to quit a job he or she doesn’t like without losing the residency permit with it and having to start over from his/her home country. This essentially fosters a lose/lose proposition for both the foreign immigrant worker and the American who is obliged to compete against him/her; the employers have the employees and prospective candidates over a barrel .
Michelle Malkin and John Miano have made a substantive contribution to this discussion with their book Sold Out: How High-Tech Billionaires and Bipartisan Beltway Crapweasels Are Screwing America’s Best and Brightest Workers, singling out the H-1B program and its advocates for criticism and deconstruction.
As an American IT professional myself with a front-row seat to the issues that Malkin and Miano talk about, I could hardly be more receptive to their point of view. Malkin and Miano are 100% correct to point out that there is not now, nor has there ever been, a shortage of qualified native-born American workers and graduates in the STEM fields. And they have done a first-rate job of investigative journalism, exposing corruption, fraud and abuse in the programs.
Yet Malkin and Miano’s analysis and conclusions are not completely satisfactory. There are plenty of factors other than and larger than just immigration or the H-1B program which could be exerting a decisive influence on the outcomes that we agree that we deplore, such as American workers being coerced into training their cheap foreign replacement workers just before being laid off . There are hundreds of regulations that have turned our entire economy into one giant bureaucratic socialist post office, screwing ALL of us, not just techies. But there are no references in the book to Dodd-Frank, Sarbanes-Oxley or TEFRA (about which more below). These are not trivial omissions; to strain for a metaphor, it’s like blaming the speedboat wake for capsizing your sailboat while ignoring the tsunami behind the speedboat, caused by illegal offshore nuclear weapons testing.
America Has No Competitive Advantage in Bureaucratic Governance
Persons interested in what public policies have screwed American high-tech workers should take a hard look at Section 1706 of the Tax Equity and Fairness Reform Act (TEFRA) of 1986 (any time you see the word “fairness” in the title of any legislative project, be afraid; be very afraid). It was this act that put corporations under threat of having their independent contractors reclassified as employees by the IRS, with all the back pay and benefits that that implied, unless they met very stringent multi-point criteria of independence. As a result, corporations cut back severely on engaging cowboys like me and my colleagues unless there was a third-party agency buffer in between (taking a cut of between 10% and 33% of the hourly rate), driving a wedge between the cost to the client and the benefit to the consultant. That, probably more than foreign competition, killed the independent American programmer. Insane geniuses may break through, but mere “A-minus” techies are toast.
This one law has had a devastating impact on this sector of the economy, yet few prominent people have written about it, Steve Forbes (in 1998) being one notable exception:
New York Times journalist David Cay Johnston nailed it when he wrote in 2010:
Their dead hands live on.
What terrible economic harm, what gross injustice, what egregious violation of the civil or private property rights of Americans has been remedied by this legislation (or, for that matter, 99% of the 1.5 million pages of the Federal Register)? All it has done is make the market less flexible, less creative and more regimented. Thousands—perhaps millions—of Americans have had their opportunities to become entrepreneurs cut off at the knees by this single law, yet no one seems even to know that it exists.
In other words and more broadly than just one clause buried in a single 30-year-old statute, what is probably more consequential to American high-tech workers—or any other Americans, for that matter—than immigration and the H-1B program, is the unprecedented burdensome and counterproductive regulatory environment under which businesses, especially banks, operate in the United States today.
In a free market, companies compete against each other on the basis of satisfying customers with the highest quality products and services at the lowest cost, which they can only accomplish by the most effective deployment and management of productive and satisfied employees and contractors. Companies that engage in myopic business practices, like hiring two “cheap” workers at $30 per hour only to discover that they are less productive combined than a single “expensive” worker who commands $50 per hour, will be severely punished in the marketplace and go out of business if they don’t change their practices. Put another way, the $50-per-hour worker is the one who provides the lower labor cost to the employer or client if he or she is more than twice as productive as two workers who “only” demand $30 per hour apiece. And multiple studies have demonstrated actual differentials of up to ten times the productivity between seasoned master programmers versus rookie coders. Such a dynamic would tend to reward American technologists who pioneered virtually all of the technologies that we depend upon today and are known for their creative initiative, risk-taking and out-of-the-box thinking.
But in a market where companies are forcibly focused on compliance with government regulatory agencies, such market dynamics and feedback mechanisms diminish to the vanishing point. The autonomy and decision-making authority of smaller organizational units is curtailed in favor of obedience to protocols and pre-established rules and workflows. Decentralized autonomy gets crushed by centralized autocracy . Softer multi-dimensional qualitative distinctions, like English communication skills, personal initiative, cultural affinity with colleagues and customers, willingness to take risks, creativity, etc., get overwhelmed in the management calculus by one-dimensional metrics such as hourly wage rates. Customers, contractors, managers and employees alike all see their range of options shrinking along with their incomes.
If we were to terminate the H-1B program tomorrow without addressing the destructive force of government interference in the market, the worst economic injuries to American high-tech workers—as well as all other American workers—will yet remain. Greater interference in the market by government agencies like the Department of Labor, to scrutinize companies’ hiring decisions and wage rates, will almost certainly do more harm than good. In any case, arguing for more government intervention, as Malkin implicitly does when she says such things as, “The toothless Labor Department has little authority to stop them,” is not a conservative, free-market position .
Freemen Can’t Compete with Slaves, so Maybe We Should Free the Slaves
A counterintuitive improvement to the H-1B program’s corrupting effects might actually be to give visa holders greater freedom than they currently have to quit or change employers without losing their residency status. Workers who have more choices are not as captive to their current employers and therefore exert less downward pressure overall on market wages, salaries and benefits. Giving them greater freedom might even liberate their repressed creative and risk-taking energies, making them more like what Americans pride themselves on being.
Ending indentured servitude in America doesn’t necessarily mean turning foreign workers away.
“Cheap Labor” and “Greed”
“Big business just wants cheap labor,” say some immigration critics. Well, that’s news, isn’t it? Actually, everyone wants cheap labor, at least when they are paying for it, and everyone wants their own labor to be as expensive and in high demand as possible. Indeed, from time immemorial it has been the classical art of the politician to simultaneously promise high milk prices to the dairy farmer (the seller) and low milk prices to everyone else (the buyers), while hoping nobody notices the inherent contradiction.
With the election of Donald Trump and Republican majorities in the House and Senate, we have an unprecedented opportunity to roll back the worst economy-killing laws and regulations of the Obama and Bush eras. Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, and the Keystone pipeline top the list, but there are dozens if not hundreds more that no one outside specific industry niches has even heard of, which cumulatively are equally if not more destructive. Congress and the president need to take an axe to all of them.
Read the complete article at: AmericanThinker.com.
For a more in-depth discussion, here is an excerpt from my book Escape From Berkeley: An EX liberal progressive socialist embraces America (and doesn't apologize) (2016):
H-1B Visa Blues
American high-tech workers have to compete with Indians, whether they are here or in India; Russians, whether they are here or in Russia; Chinese, whether they are here or in China. It is plausible that they are a greater benefit to the U.S. economy working here where they generate additional jobs for Americans. In particular, it seems absurd to kick people out of the country after they have just graduated from one of our prestigious STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and/or Mathematics) degree programs.
But is the H-1B Visa program the right way to do this?
The H-1B Visa program permits highly educated foreign professionals such as computer programmers and engineers to work in the United States for a limited time period. Ann Coulter has likened this program to indentured servitude because the foreign worker is not at liberty to quit a job he or she doesn’t like without losing the residency permit with it and having to start over from his/her home country. This essentially fosters a lose/lose proposition for both the foreign immigrant worker and the American who is obliged to compete against him/her; the employers have the employees and prospective candidates over a barrel .
Michelle Malkin and John Miano have made a substantive contribution to this discussion with their book Sold Out: How High-Tech Billionaires and Bipartisan Beltway Crapweasels Are Screwing America’s Best and Brightest Workers, singling out the H-1B program and its advocates for criticism and deconstruction.
As an American IT professional myself with a front-row seat to the issues that Malkin and Miano talk about, I could hardly be more receptive to their point of view. Malkin and Miano are 100% correct to point out that there is not now, nor has there ever been, a shortage of qualified native-born American workers and graduates in the STEM fields. And they have done a first-rate job of investigative journalism, exposing corruption, fraud and abuse in the programs.
Yet Malkin and Miano’s analysis and conclusions are not completely satisfactory. There are plenty of factors other than and larger than just immigration or the H-1B program which could be exerting a decisive influence on the outcomes that we agree that we deplore, such as American workers being coerced into training their cheap foreign replacement workers just before being laid off . There are hundreds of regulations that have turned our entire economy into one giant bureaucratic socialist post office, screwing ALL of us, not just techies. But there are no references in the book to Dodd-Frank, Sarbanes-Oxley or TEFRA (about which more below). These are not trivial omissions; to strain for a metaphor, it’s like blaming the speedboat wake for capsizing your sailboat while ignoring the tsunami behind the speedboat, caused by illegal offshore nuclear weapons testing.
America Has No Competitive Advantage in Bureaucratic Governance
Persons interested in what public policies have screwed American high-tech workers should take a hard look at Section 1706 of the Tax Equity and Fairness Reform Act (TEFRA) of 1986 (any time you see the word “fairness” in the title of any legislative project, be afraid; be very afraid). It was this act that put corporations under threat of having their independent contractors reclassified as employees by the IRS, with all the back pay and benefits that that implied, unless they met very stringent multi-point criteria of independence. As a result, corporations cut back severely on engaging cowboys like me and my colleagues unless there was a third-party agency buffer in between (taking a cut of between 10% and 33% of the hourly rate), driving a wedge between the cost to the client and the benefit to the consultant. That, probably more than foreign competition, killed the independent American programmer. Insane geniuses may break through, but mere “A-minus” techies are toast.
This one law has had a devastating impact on this sector of the economy, yet few prominent people have written about it, Steve Forbes (in 1998) being one notable exception:
Congress should repeal a particularly pernicious tax law that was enacted in 1986. The statute makes it unnecessarily difficult for computer programmers to operate as independent contractors because Congress and the IRS felt these contractors have more opportunity to cheat than individuals who are employees of regular businesses. The IRS thus treats these individuals as if they were engaging in tax scams and tries to shut them down. Corporate employers figure it is cheaper in the long run for these freelancers to become full-time employees than it would be to fight the IRS over whether they “qualify” as independent contractors.
Why were programmers singled out over a decade ago for this extreme treatment [my emphasis]? Because in those days they lacked the lobbying clout of doctors and lawyers. Talk about discrimination. This prohibition aimed at high technology should go the way of Prohibition.
In this high-tech age—when computer programmers are in short supply (don’t forget the Year 2000 problem) and when Congress may liberalize immigration laws to lure foreign programmers to our shores—this ban on programmers’ becoming individual entrepreneurs is absurd.
More and more Americans are getting the entrepreneurial itch. Why won’t Congress let them scratch? Operating on their own, many of these programmers would be more productive and inventive. The wealth of the nation would increase—and, as a result, tax receipts would be higher.
New York Times journalist David Cay Johnston nailed it when he wrote in 2010:
The law, known as Section 1706 of the 1986 Tax Reform Act, made it extremely difficult for information technology professionals to work as self-employed individuals, forcing most to become company employees.
Many software engineers and other such professionals say that the law denies them the opportunity to become wealthy entrepreneurs and that it makes it harder to increase and refine their skills, eventually diminishing their income.
Harvey J. Shulman, a Washington lawyer who represented companies that supported the desires of software engineers to be independent contractors, estimated that the law currently affects at least 100,000 such people.
“This law has ruined many people’s lives, hurt the technology industry, and discouraged the creation of small, independent businesses critical to a thriving domestic economy,” Mr. Shulman said in an interview Thursday. “That the law still exists—even after its original sponsors called for its repeal and unbiased studies proved it unfairly targeted a tax-compliant industry—shows just how dysfunctional and unresponsive Democratic and Republican Congresses and our political system have been, even on relatively simple issues.”
The law was sponsored by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of New York, as a favor to I.B.M., which wanted a $60 million tax break on its overseas business.
Their dead hands live on.
What terrible economic harm, what gross injustice, what egregious violation of the civil or private property rights of Americans has been remedied by this legislation (or, for that matter, 99% of the 1.5 million pages of the Federal Register)? All it has done is make the market less flexible, less creative and more regimented. Thousands—perhaps millions—of Americans have had their opportunities to become entrepreneurs cut off at the knees by this single law, yet no one seems even to know that it exists.
In other words and more broadly than just one clause buried in a single 30-year-old statute, what is probably more consequential to American high-tech workers—or any other Americans, for that matter—than immigration and the H-1B program, is the unprecedented burdensome and counterproductive regulatory environment under which businesses, especially banks, operate in the United States today.
In a free market, companies compete against each other on the basis of satisfying customers with the highest quality products and services at the lowest cost, which they can only accomplish by the most effective deployment and management of productive and satisfied employees and contractors. Companies that engage in myopic business practices, like hiring two “cheap” workers at $30 per hour only to discover that they are less productive combined than a single “expensive” worker who commands $50 per hour, will be severely punished in the marketplace and go out of business if they don’t change their practices. Put another way, the $50-per-hour worker is the one who provides the lower labor cost to the employer or client if he or she is more than twice as productive as two workers who “only” demand $30 per hour apiece. And multiple studies have demonstrated actual differentials of up to ten times the productivity between seasoned master programmers versus rookie coders. Such a dynamic would tend to reward American technologists who pioneered virtually all of the technologies that we depend upon today and are known for their creative initiative, risk-taking and out-of-the-box thinking.
But in a market where companies are forcibly focused on compliance with government regulatory agencies, such market dynamics and feedback mechanisms diminish to the vanishing point. The autonomy and decision-making authority of smaller organizational units is curtailed in favor of obedience to protocols and pre-established rules and workflows. Decentralized autonomy gets crushed by centralized autocracy . Softer multi-dimensional qualitative distinctions, like English communication skills, personal initiative, cultural affinity with colleagues and customers, willingness to take risks, creativity, etc., get overwhelmed in the management calculus by one-dimensional metrics such as hourly wage rates. Customers, contractors, managers and employees alike all see their range of options shrinking along with their incomes.
If we were to terminate the H-1B program tomorrow without addressing the destructive force of government interference in the market, the worst economic injuries to American high-tech workers—as well as all other American workers—will yet remain. Greater interference in the market by government agencies like the Department of Labor, to scrutinize companies’ hiring decisions and wage rates, will almost certainly do more harm than good. In any case, arguing for more government intervention, as Malkin implicitly does when she says such things as, “The toothless Labor Department has little authority to stop them,” is not a conservative, free-market position .
Freemen Can’t Compete with Slaves, so Maybe We Should Free the Slaves
A counterintuitive improvement to the H-1B program’s corrupting effects might actually be to give visa holders greater freedom than they currently have to quit or change employers without losing their residency status. Workers who have more choices are not as captive to their current employers and therefore exert less downward pressure overall on market wages, salaries and benefits. Giving them greater freedom might even liberate their repressed creative and risk-taking energies, making them more like what Americans pride themselves on being.
Ending indentured servitude in America doesn’t necessarily mean turning foreign workers away.
“Cheap Labor” and “Greed”
“Big business just wants cheap labor,” say some immigration critics. Well, that’s news, isn’t it? Actually, everyone wants cheap labor, at least when they are paying for it, and everyone wants their own labor to be as expensive and in high demand as possible. Indeed, from time immemorial it has been the classical art of the politician to simultaneously promise high milk prices to the dairy farmer (the seller) and low milk prices to everyone else (the buyers), while hoping nobody notices the inherent contradiction.
Saturday, February 04, 2017
Berkeley Free Speech Movement Redux
"I’m proud to say that American students are united on one issue, and that’s the First Amendment privileges of Freedom of Speech, the right to advocate, discuss, at any time and any place as long as it doesn’t disturb classes and interfere with traffic."
-Art Goldberg, Berkeley Free Speech Movement leadership member, 1964, commenting on the fact that that student groups that didn’t normally speak to one another, such as the Youth for Goldwater and the Young Socialist Alliance, were forming a coalition for purposes of coordinated action on at least one issue.
If Mr. Goldberg's words were true, then it would redound to the honor of the BFSM and all who participated in it. Yet the leadership of the Democratic party today, many of whom were inspired if not actually trained at Berkeley fifty years ago, seem strangely silent about the activities of black-clad ninja thugs burning, rioting and disturbing the peace for the sole purpose of preventing one voice from being heard.
[Photo credit: Breitbart.com]
Look at the iconic photo on the cover of the book "Escape from Berkeley" below. Note the well-dressed and groomed young men and women, the men in jackets and ties, the women in modest and respectable clothing.
Now compare that to the scenes of near-mahem on the streets of my hometown today. Isn't this the antithesis of what the Free Speech Movement stood for? Isn't this a stain on the honor of those who led it? This is not a (Vietnam) war protest; there is no draft, no war crimes, not even a Jim Crow law to denounce (which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. insisted upon doing by non-violent means). Then why don't they defend their honor and denounce the criminal anarchy?
Ayn Rand was less sanguine about the supposed virtues of original Berkeley rebellion, not decades after the fact, but while it was ongoing. In 1965 she wrote: "The so called the student 'rebellion,' which was started and keynoted at the University of California at Berkeley, has profound significance, but not of the kind that most commentators have ascribed to it. And the nature of the misrepresentations is part of its significance....As in any movement, there is obviously a mixture of motives involved: there are the little shysters of the intellect who have found a gold mine in modern philosophy, who delight in arguing for arguments sake and stumping opponents by means of ready-to-wear paradoxes—there are the little role players who fancy themselves as heroes and enjoy defiance for the sake of defiance—there are the nihilists who, moved by a profound hatred, seek nothing but destruction for the sake of destruction—there are the hopeless dependents who seek to 'belong' to any crowd that would have them—and there are the plain hooligans who are always there, on the fringes of any mob action that smells of trouble [my emphasis]." (The Cashing-in: The Student Rebellion)
Special edition copies individually serial-numbered and signed by the author are available HERE.
Praise for "Escape from Berkeley":
“Escape from Berkeley strikes at the heart of so much of the emotional and deeply flawed utopian narrative that the left clings to and reveals, step by thoughtful step, how the truth can only lead away from the left and toward the light. A political coming-of-age story that is entertaining, engaging, and essential.”
Dr. Karen Siegemund, Chaiman, American Freedom Alliance and Founder/Director of Rage Against the Media
“Howard Hyde grew up amidst the inner sanctums of the liberal movement and tells his story as a truly exciting adventure thriller. He leads you to the answer of why conservatives must vanquish the lies of the misguided leaders of a movement that can only tear down what our founding fathers built for us.”
Jim Lehr, PhD, Science Director, The Heartland Institute
“Having escaped a culture that found lying to be a convenient tool for promoting an agenda, I can testify that ‘Escape from Berkeley’ is a courageous stand for Truth.”
Nonie Darwish, author, “Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Sharia Law”
“A heartfelt and highly literate journey from political correctness to the moral high ground.”
Evan Sayet, bestselling author of “The KinderGarden of Eden: How the Modern Liberal Thinks”
"An uplifting story of Howard's real-life escape from Berzerkeley’s lunatic leftist politics. Hyde writes history - but not dry history. He writes a personal story - but it doesn't feel insular in the least, because current readers, absorbing the book's engaging prose, looking around at 2015 America, will be moved to say, "Uh oh, here we go again". But Hyde's most readable book also gives reason for hope that the escape path still exists. It's called freedom.
Bill Saracino, Member, Editorial Board, California Political Review
"Like James Burnham and Whittaker Chambers, and more recently Thomas Sowell and David Horowitz, Howard Hyde has made a transcendent voyage from far left to conservative. Personal and political, his book is ultimately a valuable lesson and political economics and how the left's destructive ideology is killing America."
Lawrence Sand, President, California Teachers Empowerment Network
"This book is fun to read and is especially suggested for those born in the 1990's and later.
Howard Hyde's escape from Berkeley was an ideological escape. He threw off the chains of dogmatic leftism that infects most of the inhabitants of Berkeley. He follows many others before him such as George Orwell, Whittaker Chambers and David Horowitz who underwent a right traveling ideological conversions. This book is fun to read and is especially suggested for those born in the 1990's and later. Hyde explains events that otherwise would be mysterious to young people educated in our left leaning schools. This book is fun to read, especially for those of us who spent time in Berkeley."
Norman Rogers, Physicist, AmericanThinker.com contributing author, UC Berkeley Class of '65.
-Art Goldberg, Berkeley Free Speech Movement leadership member, 1964, commenting on the fact that that student groups that didn’t normally speak to one another, such as the Youth for Goldwater and the Young Socialist Alliance, were forming a coalition for purposes of coordinated action on at least one issue.
If Mr. Goldberg's words were true, then it would redound to the honor of the BFSM and all who participated in it. Yet the leadership of the Democratic party today, many of whom were inspired if not actually trained at Berkeley fifty years ago, seem strangely silent about the activities of black-clad ninja thugs burning, rioting and disturbing the peace for the sole purpose of preventing one voice from being heard.
[Photo credit: Breitbart.com]
Look at the iconic photo on the cover of the book "Escape from Berkeley" below. Note the well-dressed and groomed young men and women, the men in jackets and ties, the women in modest and respectable clothing.
Now compare that to the scenes of near-mahem on the streets of my hometown today. Isn't this the antithesis of what the Free Speech Movement stood for? Isn't this a stain on the honor of those who led it? This is not a (Vietnam) war protest; there is no draft, no war crimes, not even a Jim Crow law to denounce (which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. insisted upon doing by non-violent means). Then why don't they defend their honor and denounce the criminal anarchy?
Ayn Rand was less sanguine about the supposed virtues of original Berkeley rebellion, not decades after the fact, but while it was ongoing. In 1965 she wrote: "The so called the student 'rebellion,' which was started and keynoted at the University of California at Berkeley, has profound significance, but not of the kind that most commentators have ascribed to it. And the nature of the misrepresentations is part of its significance....As in any movement, there is obviously a mixture of motives involved: there are the little shysters of the intellect who have found a gold mine in modern philosophy, who delight in arguing for arguments sake and stumping opponents by means of ready-to-wear paradoxes—there are the little role players who fancy themselves as heroes and enjoy defiance for the sake of defiance—there are the nihilists who, moved by a profound hatred, seek nothing but destruction for the sake of destruction—there are the hopeless dependents who seek to 'belong' to any crowd that would have them—and there are the plain hooligans who are always there, on the fringes of any mob action that smells of trouble [my emphasis]." (The Cashing-in: The Student Rebellion)
[Click cover photo to view book]
[Click cover photo to view book]
Special edition copies individually serial-numbered and signed by the author are available HERE.
Praise for "Escape from Berkeley":
“Escape from Berkeley strikes at the heart of so much of the emotional and deeply flawed utopian narrative that the left clings to and reveals, step by thoughtful step, how the truth can only lead away from the left and toward the light. A political coming-of-age story that is entertaining, engaging, and essential.”
Dr. Karen Siegemund, Chaiman, American Freedom Alliance and Founder/Director of Rage Against the Media
“Howard Hyde grew up amidst the inner sanctums of the liberal movement and tells his story as a truly exciting adventure thriller. He leads you to the answer of why conservatives must vanquish the lies of the misguided leaders of a movement that can only tear down what our founding fathers built for us.”
Jim Lehr, PhD, Science Director, The Heartland Institute
“Having escaped a culture that found lying to be a convenient tool for promoting an agenda, I can testify that ‘Escape from Berkeley’ is a courageous stand for Truth.”
Nonie Darwish, author, “Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Sharia Law”
“A heartfelt and highly literate journey from political correctness to the moral high ground.”
Evan Sayet, bestselling author of “The KinderGarden of Eden: How the Modern Liberal Thinks”
"An uplifting story of Howard's real-life escape from Berzerkeley’s lunatic leftist politics. Hyde writes history - but not dry history. He writes a personal story - but it doesn't feel insular in the least, because current readers, absorbing the book's engaging prose, looking around at 2015 America, will be moved to say, "Uh oh, here we go again". But Hyde's most readable book also gives reason for hope that the escape path still exists. It's called freedom.
Bill Saracino, Member, Editorial Board, California Political Review
"Like James Burnham and Whittaker Chambers, and more recently Thomas Sowell and David Horowitz, Howard Hyde has made a transcendent voyage from far left to conservative. Personal and political, his book is ultimately a valuable lesson and political economics and how the left's destructive ideology is killing America."
Lawrence Sand, President, California Teachers Empowerment Network
"This book is fun to read and is especially suggested for those born in the 1990's and later.
Howard Hyde's escape from Berkeley was an ideological escape. He threw off the chains of dogmatic leftism that infects most of the inhabitants of Berkeley. He follows many others before him such as George Orwell, Whittaker Chambers and David Horowitz who underwent a right traveling ideological conversions. This book is fun to read and is especially suggested for those born in the 1990's and later. Hyde explains events that otherwise would be mysterious to young people educated in our left leaning schools. This book is fun to read, especially for those of us who spent time in Berkeley."
Norman Rogers, Physicist, AmericanThinker.com contributing author, UC Berkeley Class of '65.
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