Month: December 2017

I Do Not Like the H-1B Visas, but this Is Wrong

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I am not a fan of the H-1B, and associated L-1A visa programs.

I think that their primary purpose is to depress wages through labor arbitrage.

That being said, the visa does have a path to permanent residency and Donald Trump is looking at making this a truly sadistic process:

The Department of Homeland Security is considering new regulations that would prevent H-1B visa extensions, according to two U.S. sources briefed on the proposal. The measure potentially could stop hundreds of thousands of foreign workers from keeping their H-1B visas while their green card applications are pending.

The proposal, being drafted in memos shared between DHS department heads, is part of President Donald Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American” initiative promised during the 2016 campaign.

The administration is specifically looking at whether it can reinterpret the “may grant” language of the American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act to stop making the extensions. The act currently allows the administration to extend the H-1B visas for thousands of immigrants, predominantly Indian immigrants, beyond the allowed two three-year terms if a green card is pending.

“The idea is to create a sort of ‘self- deportation’ of hundreds of thousands of Indian tech workers in the United States to open up those jobs for Americans,” said a U.S. source briefed by Homeland Security officials.

 The problem with H-1B visas is not the (usually) South Asian programmers, it’s Google, and Facebook, and Tata, and Infosys, and IBM, not the poor schlubs who work under near slavery conditions for those companies.

Year End Summary: Bank Failures

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There were 8 commercial bank failures, and 11 credit union failures.

This is the fewest number of commercial bank failures least since 2007 (3 that year, over 20 in 2008).

I am not sure how much of this is better economic times or better regulation, and how much is the fact that there are a lot fewer banks because of consolidation.

I have no if this means anything at all, but I’ve been following this since mid-2009, so I will continue to do so.

(on edit)
My bad, there were fewer commercial bank failures last year, 5, though there were more credit union failures, 15.

Another Sign of the Apocalypse

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In Ottowa, a New Year’s concert was canceled, and a hockey game was moved indoors because it was too cold for Canadians.

“Too cold for Canadians,” there was a phrase I never expected to say:

First no hockey, now no music. Ottawa has declared that it’s officially too cold – even for Canadians.

Heritage Canada has announced that a New Year’s Eve concert planned for Ottawa has been cancelled because of an extreme cold weather warning.

The party’s cancellation on Friday came after the federal government also moved an outdoor hockey tournament indoors and away from a C$5.6m (£3.3m) temporary ice rink installed on Parliament Hill.

The forecast overnight low for the nation’s capital on Sunday is -29C [-20°F] , nearly 20 degrees [36°F] colder than the seasonal average. Public skating and a fireworks show on the city’s Parliament Hill will go ahead as planned on Sunday night, but Heritage Canada warned revellers have been warned to dress for the weather and “prepare accordingly to prevent frostbite and other injuries”.

My suggestion would be for Canadians to watch the fireworks on TV.

I Approve

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Generally, when you hear lawmakers lauding a bipartisan initiative.

In this case, the decision by the House Judiciary Committee to unanimously clamp down on H1B mills appears to be the exception to this rule, though I’m thinking that there may be some mischief in the carve outs for companies like Facebook and Google:

Bipartisanship on the divisive issue of immigration is a rarity in Congress, but that is what happened when the House Judiciary Committee unanimously approved legislation making it harder for Indian outsourcing companies to bring high-skilled foreign workers to the U.S.

At the same time, the bill eases rules on some U.S. high-tech firms that use H-1B visas, putting political distance between Silicon Valley and Indian outsourcers as President Donald Trump condemns the program as rampant with abuse and a source of unfair competition to American workers.

The new rules apply only to companies that are heavy users of the program, or “H-1B dependent.” Lawmakers changed the definition of “H-1B dependent” to make sure technology companies that hire hundreds of foreigners every year, such as Facebook Inc., weren’t affected.

In turn, the House bill, the Protect and Grow American Jobs Act, has infuriated Indian outsourcing companies and the Indian government, according to someone who advises the government.

Nasscom, an information technology trade group in India, argues the measure “unfairly and arbitrarily” targets a handful of companies “while imposing no new requirement on the vast majority of companies that use the visas to do the … exact same things,” according to a statement from the group’s president, Rentala Chandrashekhar.

The new rules would require that firms either pay workers more–as much as $135,000 a year—or prove they tried to recruit Americans. The bill requires that no Americans are laid off by either the outsourcing firm or the clients that they serve for the entire length of the visa. It also authorizes Labor Department investigations and raises fees.

………

The legislation also would put Indian firms such as Infosys Ltd. and Tata Consulting Services Ltd. at a disadvantage against a handful of competitors, such as International Business Machines Corp. and Accenture Ltd., even though they also employ a large number of foreign workers and use a similar business model. That is because those companies have many divisions, which keeps the portion of their overall workforce using H-1B visas low and their firms from being defined as “dependent.”

The devil, as always, is in the details.

Cue Jimmy McMillian

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Retail has been vanishing in New York City, it ain’t because of online retail, it’s because the rent is too damn high because commercial real estate in the city has become infested with hedge fund investors who have been jacking up the the rent.

It’s not like they have a choice. The way that this sort of investment works is that they have short term (around 5 years) interest only mortgages, and if they cut rents, then they cannot refinance at the end of the term, because the valuation is directly related to the rents that they charge:

Walk down almost any major New York street – say Fifth Avenue near Trump Tower, or Madison Avenue from midtown to the Upper East Side. Perhaps venture down Canal Street, or into the West Village around Bleecker, and some of the most expensive retail areas in the world are blitzed with vacant storefronts.

The famed Lincoln Plaza Cinemas on the Upper West Side announced earlier this week that it is closing next month. A blow to the city’s cinephiles, certainly, but also a sign of the effects that rapid gentrification, coupled with technological innovation, are having on the city.

Over the past several years, thousands of small retailers have closed, replaced by national chains. When they, too, fail, the stores lie vacant, and landlords, often institutional investors, are unwilling to drop rents.

They are actually unable to drop rents, because, as I have noted a above, they sustain losses on a property better than they can a drop in rents.

A recent survey by New York councilmember Helen Rosenthal found 12% of stores on one stretch of the Upper West Side is unoccupied and ‘for lease’. The picture is repeated nationally. In October, the US surpassed the previous record for store closings, set after the 2008 financial crisis.

The common refrain is that the devastation is the product of a profound shift in consumption to online, with Amazon frequently identified as the leading culprit. But this is maybe an over-simplification.

“It’s not Amazon, it’s rent,” says Jeremiah Moss, author of the website and book Vanishing New York. “Over the decades, small businesses weathered the New York of the 70s with it near-bankruptcy and high crime. Businesses could survive the internet, but they need a reasonable rent to do that.”

Part of the problem is the changing make-up of New York landlords. Many are no longer mom-and-pop operations, but institutional investors and hedge funds that are unwilling to drop rents to match retail conditions. “They are running small businesses out of the city and replacing them with chain stores and temporary luxury businesses,” says Moss.

In addition, he says, banks will devalue a property if it’s occupied by a small business, and increase it for a chain store. “There’s benefit to waiting for chain stores. If you are a hedge fund manager running a portfolio you leave it empty and take a write-off.”

Seriously, there is nothing in this world that financialization cannot destroy.

It takes a lot of work to destroy retail in New York City, but the hedge funds seem to have found a way.

Swatting Has Its First Fatality

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This has been going on for such time, and now a man has been shot dead it Wichita in response to a false police report:

The alleged “swatter” behind Thursday’s police killing of a Wichita, Kansas, man has been arrested.

Tyler Barriss, a 25-year old from South Los Angeles, was taken into custody Friday night, according to the local ABC News affiliate. (ABC also notes that “Glendale police arrested a 22-year-old man with the same name for making bomb threats to KABC-TV” back in 2015.) NBC News, speaking to unnamed local “sources” in LA, says that Barriss “had been living at a transitional recovery center.”

Barriss is alleged to have a called in a lengthy threat to Wichita police on Thursday night after a Call of Duty game in which two teammates got into an altercation over a $1.50 wager. Screenshots posted to various Twitter accounts show the dispute escalating. Shortly thereafter, the Wichita police received a call alleging that someone at that address had killed his father, taken his family hostage, poured gasoline around the home, and was ready to light it on fire. Cops descended on the area and cordoned it off. When 28-year old Andrew Fitch opened the front door of his home to see why all the lights were flashing outside, he was shot and killed.

A Twitter account called “SWAuTistic” took credit for the swatting, but then just as quickly denied any responsibility for the death. On Thursday night, after the shooting, SWAuTistic wrote, “I DIDNT GET ANYONE KILLED BECAUSE I DIDNT DISCHARGE A WEAPON AND BEING A SWAT MEMBER ISNT MY PROFESSION.” His Twitter account was suspended soon after.

The man claiming to be behind SWAuTistic gave an interview on Friday to the YouTube show “Drama Alert,” in which he explained what allegedly happened. According to this account, SWAuTistic was “sitting in the library” and “minding my own business” when he was contacted by an irate Call of Duty player who had just gotten in a dispute with another player. The first player wanted the second player “swatted.” Would SWAuTistic take care of it?

………

The alleged “swatter” behind Thursday’s police killing of a Wichita, Kansas, man has been arrested.

Tyler Barriss, a 25-year old from South Los Angeles, was taken into custody Friday night, according to the local ABC News affiliate. (ABC also notes that “Glendale police arrested a 22-year-old man with the same name for making bomb threats to KABC-TV” back in 2015.) NBC News, speaking to unnamed local “sources” in LA, says that Barriss “had been living at a transitional recovery center.”

Barriss is alleged to have a called in a lengthy threat to Wichita police on Thursday night after a Call of Duty game in which two teammates got into an altercation over a $1.50 wager. Screenshots posted to various Twitter accounts show the dispute escalating. Shortly thereafter, the Wichita police received a call alleging that someone at that address had killed his father, taken his family hostage, poured gasoline around the home, and was ready to light it on fire. Cops descended on the area and cordoned it off. When 28-year old Andrew Fitch opened the front door of his home to see why all the lights were flashing outside, he was shot and killed.

A Twitter account called “SWAuTistic” took credit for the swatting, but then just as quickly denied any responsibility for the death. On Thursday night, after the shooting, SWAuTistic wrote, “I DIDNT GET ANYONE KILLED BECAUSE I DIDNT DISCHARGE A WEAPON AND BEING A SWAT MEMBER ISNT MY PROFESSION.” His Twitter account was suspended soon after.

The man claiming to be behind SWAuTistic gave an interview on Friday to the YouTube show “Drama Alert,” in which he explained what allegedly happened. According to this account, SWAuTistic was “sitting in the library” and “minding my own business” when he was contacted by an irate Call of Duty player who had just gotten in a dispute with another player. The first player wanted the second player “swatted.” Would SWAuTistic take care of it?

This sh%$ really needs to step.

Holy Crap

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The Spotlight Team at the Boston Globejust issued a clarification, or maybe you would call it a reassertion, that Yes, Virginia, “The median net worth of black Bostonians really is $8.”

It was a fact that they turned up in their story on race in Boston:

The $8 detail in the Globe’s Spotlight series on race in Boston is not a typo.

The median net worth for non-immigrant African-American households in the Greater Boston region is $8, according to “The Color of Wealth in Boston,” a 2015 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Duke University, and the New School.

This Spotlight seven-part series — which began Sunday — tackles the city’s most vexing question: Does Boston deserve its racist reputation?

And to answer just that question, the Globe Spotlight Team analyzed data, launched surveys, and conducted hundreds of interviews. The Color of Wealth in Boston report, which is part of a five-city study looking at wealth disparities among communities of color, was one piece of information that Spotlight examined.

………

The household median net worth was $247,500 for whites; $8 for US blacks (the lowest of all five cities); $12,000 for Caribbean blacks; $3,020 for Puerto Ricans; and $0 for Dominicans (that’s not a typo either.) The sample size for Cape Verdeans was too small to calculate net worth, the report said.

This is mind boggling.

Man, This is Lame

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As if wedding planning isn’t hard enough.

Britain’s Prince Harry and his American fiancée, the actress Meghan Markle, have told aides they want former U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, whom the young couple has grown close to, invited to their May 19 wedding.

But the government of Prime Minister Theresa May reportedly senses a diplomatic scandal in the making, the British newspaper the Sun reported, and would prefer the former U.S. first couple not make a high-profile appearance on British soil before current president Donald Trump — himself presumed absent from the guest list — comes for an official visit.

There are concerns among senior Foreign Office and 10 Downing St. officials that another perceived national snub will make it impossible for Theresa May to meaningfully engage with Trump, the paper reported in what it called a Christmas Day exclusive.

A senior government source reportedly told the Sun: “Harry has made it clear he wants the Obamas at the wedding, so it’s causing a lot of nervousness. Trump could react very badly if the Obamas get to a royal wedding before he has had a chance to meet [Queen Elizabeth],” the paper reported.

The reason that Donald Trump hasn’t met the Queen is because a state visit would be a complete clusterf%$#, and inevitable the protests, and the inevitable over-reaction by the British constabulary, would be an embarrassment for all involved.

This sort of spectacle would almost certainly be a political disaster for the Tories as well.

This perfect storm of lame amuses me.

Nice Response

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Recently, the Washington Post had a “major” expose revealing that one “Alice Donovan” was a Russian plant feeding to the online publication CounterPunch, and some other largely unnamed publications.

Strongly implied in the Post story is that CounterPunch was a willing tool of the Russian state security apparatus.

After being fielding inquiries from the Post, CounterPunch decided to look at her work for them.

What they determined is that the reality, for them at least, was pretty anodyne:

  • They published one of her articles in 2016, and that was a generic article on cyber-warfare, which had first been published in Veterans Today. (Dead link)
  • In 2017, after the elections they published 3 generically left leaning stories on Syria which they published, one supporting Maduro in Venezuela, and a commentary condemning Erdoğan, which they chose not to run. 
  • “Alice Donovan” was a serial plagiarizer, which they should have picked up on.

Their conclusion is pretty spot on:

In sum, we published five stories by Donovan. One was apolitical. Four could be considered critiques of US foreign policy during the Trump administration. None mentioned Hillary Clinton (or Vladimir Putin for that matter).

 Based solely on what we’d just reviewed was there any reason at the time to suspect that Alice Donovan was anything other than what she appeared to be: an occasional contributor of topical stories? Not as far as we could tell. The stories weren’t pro-Russian polemics and they didn’t read like awkward Google-translations of the Russian language. The most controversial thing that could be said about them was that some stories attempted to present a particular Syrian view of the war, a perspective rarely heard in the US media.

………

None of this, however, is an exculpation for our own blunders. Somewhere along the line we blew it. We let a plagiarist and a possible troll onto CounterPunch. Were there warning signs that we missed? Sure. Should we have been alert to the awkward phrases in some of the articles on Syria that didn’t read like the original Donovan piece? No doubt. But recall that we had published more than 5,000 articles between the first and second Donovan stories. We should have picked up on the lifted passages in the “Escalation in Syria” story because there was a link that took us directly to the piece that was plagiarized. We should have become suspicious about Donovan after the New York Times story ran in September. Those are on us.

I agree with that conclusion: they need to drop some coin on editors, because her plagiarism, and by that I mean straight cut and paste, should have been easy to spot after a few submissions.

They need some copy editors.

As to the Post, if this does seem to be making a mountain out of a molehill.

The final word goes to CounterPunch though, “If Donovan’s intent was to destroy ‘our democratic values’ by committing crimes against journalism, she’ll need to swing a lot harder to surpass the damage done by Judith Miller.”

Cheer the Orioles

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The Baltimore Orioles posted a rather innocuous Tweet wishing everyone a happy Kwanzaa.

The flying monkey crowd proceeded to have a butt-hurt hissy fit.

The team’s response was to tell the racist Neanderthals to go Cheney themselves:

A common love of the Orioles is what brings everyone together on this page. We’re happy to have a diverse fan base of the best fans in the world. If you cannot show respect for others, kindly unfollow us. There is no room for hate or bigotry on our social media or in our ballpark

— Baltimore Orioles (@Orioles) December 26, 2017

As a Red Sox fan, I cheer the Orioles today.

Yeah, This is Concerning

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It appears that the Executive Director of Intelligence Community Whistleblowing and Source Protection has been removed from his post with the intent of termination.

This is THE guy in the intelligence establishment responsible for protecting whistle blowers:

The chairman of the the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is demanding to know why an employee in charge of whistleblower outreach was removed from his workplace “pending a tribunal.”

“I just learned that Dan Meyer, the Executive Director of Intelligence Community Whistleblowing and Source Protection, was placed on administrative leave and escorted out of his offices pending a tribunal before senior executives to consider his proposed termination,” wrote Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, in a letter sent November 29 to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Wayne Stone, the acting director of Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community.

The intelligence community inspector general is tasked with conducting audits across the intelligence agencies and independently responding to whistleblower retaliation complaints.

The watchdog office has been involved in independent reviews of the Boston Marathon bombing, as well as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

It has also recently been embroiled in a turf war fraught with competing personalities and visions on how to provide resources for potential whistleblowers, as reported in an investigation by Foreign Policy. Dan Meyer, the man in charge of outreach to whistleblowers, had his duties and privileges revoked, and now he has been kicked out of his office pending an investigation.

It appears that the conflict started at around the time when Meyer wanted to inform contractors of their whistleblower rights.

Considering the rather checkered history of government contractors, particularly in the context of state security, my guess is that this is connected to this effort.

The Doctor’s Daughter Played the Doctor’s Daughter on the Doctor’s Daughter, and Then Married the Doctor, and Had a Daughter

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BBC America has been running a Dr. Who marathon.

I just saw the episode The Doctor’s Daughter, which had Georgia Moffett starring as Jenny the daughter (clone) of the Doctor.

Ms. Moffet is the daughter of the 5th Doctor, Peter Davison. (Davison is his stage name, his birth name is Moffatt)

She co-starred with David Tennant, who played the 10th Doctor.

Tennant and Moffett later had a daughter (2 actually, as well as 2 sons).

This is profoundly weird.

Bitcoin Jumps C. Cegaladon*

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Long Island Iced Tea Company renamed itself, “Long Blockchain” and its stock exploded:

The Long Island Iced Tea Corporation is exactly what it sounds like: a company that sells people bottled iced tea and lemonade. But today the company announced a significant change of strategy that would start with changing its name to “Long Blockchain Corporation.”

The company was “shifting its primary corporate focus towards the exploration of and investment in opportunities that leverage the benefits of blockchain technology,” the company said in a Thursday morning press release. “Emerging blockchain technologies are creating a fundamental paradigm shift across the global marketplace,” the company said.

The stock market loved the announcement. Trading opened Thursday morning more than 200 percent higher than Wednesday night’s closing price.

Remember when everyone added dotcom to their company names JUST BEFORE IT ALL IMPLODED in the late 1990s?

Yeah, that.

*The largest shark, and likely largest predator fish ever. It died out some 1.5 million years ago. The Genus is still in dispute, between either Carcharodon (Great White) or Carcharocles (broad toothed Mako). So in jumping C. Megalodon, you have jumped the biggest shark ever.

Not a Surprise

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The head of the Pakistani Air Force has announced that they will be shooting down drones in their airspace, including US ones:

Pakistan Air Force (PAF) chief Sohail Aman said here on Thursday that he has ordered his force to shoot down any drones, including those of the US, if they violate the country’s airspace.
The announcement was made public about two weeks after a US drone strike targeted a militant compound in Pakistan’s tribal region near the Afghan border, killing three militants.

Pakistan had always condemned drone strikes on its soil but had never said they would shoot down the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). “We will not allow anyone to violate our airspace. I have ordered PAF to shoot down drones, including those of the US, if they enter our airspace, violating the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Air Chief Marshal Sohail Aman told an audience in Islamabad.

If he meant that US missile strikes on militant positions were a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty, then these violations have been occurring since 2004. The CIA was responsible for all US drone strikes in Pakistan until November 30, 2017.

Such is the price of unilateralism.

It works, until it’s can’t

Erdoğan Wants to Return to the Ottoman Empire. That Appears to Include the Genocides.

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Recep Tayyip Erdoğan just issued a decree that grants immunity for extra-judicial violence against anyone deemed to have participated in the coup, or its “continuation”.

The term “continuation” appears to be defined as, “Anyone and anything that Erdoğan considers a threat to his power”, which bodes ill for opposition parties, and the Kurds, and other ethnic minorities in Turkey.

How to deal with the transformation of a NATO ally to this is profoundly unsettling.

One Can Only Hope

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Could someone explain to me why banks becoming utilities is a bad thing?

The head of Ecobank in the UK, Edward George is filled with dread at the prospect.

The idea of this happening fills me with hope:

………

Well, one of the big challenges facing banks is that they’re in danger of becoming utilities. The big problem about utilities and why a lot of people don’t want to invest in them is that they have no real growth potential. With a utility, you start providing service over a certain network and you’re kind of stuck there. Where’s the value at? And the problem for the banks would be if the banks become somehow passive repositories of cash but all of the value-add is taken by the Fintechs: selling the service, paying interest here, making a margin here, left, right and centre, etc… So the idea has to be that there must be a value share, and that is the way to go forward.

Innovators out there, the banks themselves, have to come up with services whereby both sides can gain from it. It may just be that for example the bank benefits from having the hard currency coming to the bank account. Fair enough. Then the fintech can make their margin elsewhere. It might be that the fintech and the bank agree to split the fees 50 per cent. There can be many other things, but what they can’t be is just the finTech saying “Oh, yeah, I’ll use those bank accounts, but I’m going to take all of the value myself”, and vice versa. You can’t have the bank just saying “I’m not going to work with you,” because we need to work with the fintechs.

Basically, he is afraid that banks will lose their ability to make up the rules of the game so that they can profit by cheating the rubes.

I’m hoping that his concerns prove true.

H/t Naked Capitalism.