<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 1935 -- 11/06/2008 >>>>>

Patrick Thibodeau's Computerworld article has some thoughtful speculations about what president elect Barack Obama may do to plug the big sucking sound made by offshore outsourcing. He correctly points out that ending tax breaks for companies who offshore jobs has been one of Obama's campaign messages. Obama never has been very clear about what types of tax breaks he will get rid of, or how he will do it. Thibodeau discussed how difficult this will be in heavily globalized high tech businesses. Implementing a new tax structure is easier said than done, especially when you have lobbyists like Abramoff and Emanuel gaming the system (fortunately Abramoff is no longer playing the K street game since he is in jail). Lots of politicians talk about taking tax breaks away from trans-national corporations in order to discourage offshoring but they are merely bloviating to appease angry voters. Keep in mind that tax benefits are just one of the many reasons companies offshore. Tweaking the tax code will not change the reality that other factors are much more important reasons companies offshore such as lower labor costs, substandard working conditions, lack of environmental controls, currency exchanges, etc. Today Obama erased any doubt about where he is headed on trade and immigration issues when he asked Rahm Emanuel to be his chief of staff. There are so many negatives about Emanuel I will just focus on two of them: immigration and NAFTA. Use google to find out more about this pit bull from the Chicago political machine. Emanuel has the distinction of being even worse on immigration than Obama, which is not easy to do! Obama's grade of "D-" from "Americans for Better Immigration" is marginally better than Emanuel's grade of "F". To find out more about both of their report cards go to: http://www.betterimmigration.com/ Here are just a few of the reasons Emanuel flunked: 2007: Cosponsored H.R. 1645 (STRIVE Act) to drastically increase foreign-worker importation by using EB green cards, H-2C, H-1B, and L-1 visas. 2005: Voted against the Tancredo Amendment to H.R. 2862 to prevent the U.S. Trade Representative from including immigration provisions in Free Trade Agreements. The Tancredo Amendment failed by a vote of 106 to 322. 2005-2006: Cosponsored H.R. 2330 to increase foreign-worker importation of unskilled workers. 2004: Cosponsored H.R. 4262 to increase the cap on H-2B so that more foreign workers could be imported. Emanuel is the embodiment of the Clinton regime, which Obama seems determined to resurrect. During the Clinton years Emanuel was a rich banker turned lobbyist who rammed NAFTA down our throats. In addition, he successfully pressured Democrats in Congress to rubber stamp Clinton's 2000 China trade deal. The links between Emanuel and President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton are far too many to cover in this newsletter. The third article included and the links it provides is a good start to get more background on Emanuel's nefarious activities. Obama is getting off to a very bad start by inviting one of the baddest actors from the Clintonista regime into his new administration. Paul Begala, a veteran of the Clinton administration, said Emanuel's style is a "cross between a hemorrhoid and a toothache." Why does Obama want to get close to a hemorrhoid and a toothache? http://blogs.computerworld.com/can_obama_reverse_job_offshoring Can Obama reverse job offshoring? http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ifiLqW0IQeDp-cdd0vmUtFqwWfdgD949JGKO0 Obama's pick for chief of staff has tough-guy rep http://www.politicswest.com/22054/papers_expose_lies_clinton_emanuel_gergen_ nafta Papers Expose Lies of Clinton, Emanuel & Gergen On NAFTA +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ http://blogs.computerworld.com/can_obama_reverse_job_offshoring Can Obama reverse job offshoring? By Patrick Thibodeau Created Nov 5 2008 - 11:15am The chart above, prepared by IT services firm Affiliated Computer Services Inc. for investors, illustrates how this company is shifting jobs overseas. (Chart PDF [1]) In the span of a few years, the offshore headcount has increased from about 25% to 35% of the company's workforce, now at about 63,000. http://www.snl.com/Cache/1001143661.PDF?D=&O=PDF&IID=4039393&Y=&T=&FID=10011 43661 And this Dallas-based company isn't moving low-level jobs overseas. It's going much deeper [2]. "To have a greater financial impact, we will be moving a higher percentage of more complex, higher paying jobs offshore, including management and application development roles," ACS President and CEO Lynn Blodgett said during an investors call last week. Other IT vendors are doing the same thing. The only difference is that most of the other vendors don't produce charts for public consumption as detailed as the one above. Outsourcing vendors across the board are moving jobs overseas to cut their own costs and stay competitive with the Indian outsourcing firms. The tools that President-Elect Barack Obama has to change this trend, especially during a recession, aren't clear. All the outsourcing vendors have government contracts. And even if state, local and federal agencies bar the use of offshore development in some of their contracts, government agencies are using the same offshore developed software modules as the private sector. Any government agency that has a support contract today with a major vendor is getting support, in one form or another, offshore. Ending tax breaks for companies that move jobs offshore has been one of Obama's strongest campaign messages. But IT vendors don't get tax breaks for doing work offshore, especially work sent over a network. Obama, instead, may look more to incentives to encourage expansion here. What will Obama do about the H-1B visa? Obama has supported [3] an H-1B visa increase and comprehensive immigration reform. But it is unclear whether he wants to shift from the temporary H-1B visa to permanent residency, Green Cards, for foreign graduates of U.S. universities. And what impact will the recession have on his views? As the above chart illustrates, Obama faces a difficult task in increasing high-paying tech jobs in the U.S. at the same time firms are moving those jobs overseas [4]. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ifiLqW0IQeDp-cdd0vmUtFqwWfdgD949JGKO0 Obama's pick for chief of staff has tough-guy rep By CHRISTOPHER WILLS 9 hours ago CHICAGO (AP) -- Rahm Emanuel combines political instincts, White House experience and a Chicago tough-guy attitude -- traits that he's likely to need as President-elect Obama's new chief of staff. His combative style as political director in the early days of the Clinton administration earned him the nickname "Rahmbo." He didn't always produce results, though. Emanuel lost that job but stayed on as a senior adviser and oversaw some of Clinton's top initiatives, including NAFTA and an assault-weapons ban. After a lucrative stint in banking, Emanuel was elected to Congress in 2002 and quickly became a major power. He wound up overseeing the party's House election efforts in 2006 and won a majority for Democrats through tireless fundraising and candidate recruitment. "He's a good tactician. He's a creative thinker. But I think what probably makes him most successful is that he has the will to follow his convictions," Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., said after the 2006 victory. Emanuel grew up in the ritzy Chicago suburb of Wilmette, the son of an Israeli doctor who moved to the United States. His brother, Ari, is a Hollywood agent and the inspiration for Ari Gold, the Type-A superagent on HBO's show "Entourage." His start in politics came after college, when he worked for Paul Simon's 1984 Senate campaign and Richard Daley's run for Chicago mayor in 1989. Then he went to work for a little-known Arkansas governor who wanted to be president. Emanuel's fundraising skills are credited with helping keep Bill Clinton's campaign afloat during some rocky times, particularly the scandal over whether he slept with Gennifer Flowers. In 1999, Emanuel left the White House for Chicago to work in investment banking. The firm he joined was soon sold and Emanuel made millions, giving him the financial security to get back into politics. When he was tapped to oversee the 2006 campaign effort, Emanuel led a record fundraising effort, bringing in far more money than four years earlier. The single biggest source of money was other members of Congress, which irritated some members who faced fierce pressure to contribute. The additional money allowed House Democrats to expand the field, going into districts that hadn't been considered competitive before. That sometimes meant recruiting more conservative candidates, an Emanuel strategy that generated some complaints. But his success in electing a Democratic majority soothed most hard feelings and confirmed Emanuel as a major force in the House -- perhaps even a future speaker. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ http://www.politicswest.com/22054/papers_expose_lies_clinton_emanuel_gergen_ nafta Papers Expose Lies of Clinton, Emanuel & Gergen On NAFTA By: David Sirota By dsirota Created 03/20/2008 - 9:29am Finally, the dishonesty is being unmasked. Finally, we see just how much we're being lied to when it comes to economic policy. Finally, we see it hasn't just been Hillary Clinton lying about her role in championing NAFTA, but we see it is the entire Clinton machine. For the last few weeks, Hillary Clinton has been claiming that she never supported the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). She has explicitly claimed "I have been a critic of NAFTA from the very beginning." Clinton's record of speeches over the last decade, of course, tells a much different story. In 1996, she toured Texas to promote NAFTA. In 1998, she visited Davos, Switzerland to thank corporations for mounting "a very effective business effort in the U.S. on behalf of NAFTA." In her memoir a few years ago, she touted NAFTA as one of her husband's big successes. And in 2004, she told reporters that "NAFTA has been good for New York and America." And yet, despite all of this evidence, Clinton has worked to confuse voters by insisting that she has always been fighting against NAFTA. As I've written in another post [1], it is a tactic reminiscent of Joe Lieberman denying he supported the Iraq War in the lead up to his 2006 election contest with Ned Lamont. And it is a tactic that Establishment shills have tried to embolden. As just one example, the esteemed David Gergen has used his television platform [2] to back up Clinton's historical revisionism - and Gergen has been cited by others as "proof" Clinton's claims are true - despite, of course, her very own words. But now with the release of Clinton's White House schedules, the veneer has been torn off, and the brazen dishonesty is finally on display for everyone to see. As Reuters [3] reports: "Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton now argues that the North American Free Trade Agreement needs to be renegotiated, but newly released records showed on Wednesday she promoted its passage...Among the thousands of details of daily life for Clinton, there was a November 10, 1993, entry -- a 'NAFTA Briefing drop-by,' in Room 450 of the executive office building next door to the White House, closed to the news media. Approximately 120 people were expected to attend the briefing, and Clinton was to be introduced by White House aide Alexis Herman for brief remarks concluding the program." ABC's Jake Tapper [4] digs even deeper, noting that at one of the meetings, Gergen "served as a sort of master of ceremonies as various women members of the Cabinet talked up NAFTA." In other words, Gergen has been on television deliberately lying for the Clinton campaign, as he was actually running these NAFTA-promoting events with Clinton. Tapper goes on to interview people who were in the room. This revelation comes just as the other appendages of the Clinton machine attempts to revise history even further. This week, Rahm Emanuel - the chief White House lobbyist who rammed NAFTA through Congress - authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed [5] praising candidates for indicting NAFTA and claiming "I share their concern for Americans who have lost their jobs to global competition." To quote my book Hostile Takeover [6], this is "the same Rahm Emanuel who penned an op-ed in the conservative Wall Street Journal pressuring Democrats to capitulate and pass the 2000 China trade deal - a move perfectly timed to help secure the critical votes that ultimately passed the deal." The facts are clear: The Clinton machine joined with K Street to manufacture the very international economic policies that are destroying the economy. And yet, this same machine now claims to have had nothing to do with those economic policies - at the very moment, the machine is pushing a NAFTA-style Colombia Free Trade Agreement in Congress [7]. We are, in short, experiencing the renaissance of "Clintonism" - an ideology that treats Americans like we are stupid and treats basic undebatable facts as commodities to be manipulated and perverted for personal gain. And that renaissance should make everyone question all the recent promises by Clinton about changing NAFTA. Had she simply acknowledged she was for NAFTA and that now she's not for NAFTA, that might give her some credibility. But, then, this is a candidate who just a few months ago laughed at a serious question about NAFTA [8], claiming "all I can remember are a bunch of charts." In other words, this is a candidate and a campaign machine that is absolutely uninterested in how these policies have devastated the middle class - and hostile to an honest discussion about those policies. So the question now is simple: Can a Wall-Street backed candidate who denies the undeniable past be trusted with the future? Source URL: http://www.politicswest.com/22054/papers_expose_lies_clinton_emanuel_gergen_ nafta Links: [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/the-clintonlieberman-con_b_90046. html [2] http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/2/27/234248/348 [3] http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN1933416820080319 [4] http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/03/clintons-1993-n.html [5] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120588246877846793.html?mod=opinion_main_com mentaries [6] http://www.amazon.com/Hostile-Takeover-Corruption-Conquered-Government/dp/03 07237354/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206024981&sr=8-1 [7] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/secret-trade-deal-can-th_b_51291. html [8] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBypp2hqxaQ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Newsletter Homepage: http://www.JobDestruction.com/shameh1b/JobDestructionNews.htm Support this Newsletter and www.JobDestruction.com by donating: www.zazona.com/Donations.htm To Be removed from this mailing list, reply to this email with UNSUbSCRIBE in the subject window - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -