Thursday, January 01, 2004
Clark spouts nonsense
So, the political silly season has begun in right ernest and Wes Clark has joined in the outsourcing-bashing bandwagon, a real shift from his opinions not so long ago. This transcript I picked up off Wes Clark's blog and it's such priceless garbage mostly.
You know- the issue is globalism - H1-B visas are the visas that are given to these very smart, computer literate experts from the Indian Institute of Technology who come into the country. They often work at reduced wages to the native... to American citizens, and then they leave and they take back their skills, and they take back what they've learned here and start businesses at home.
H-1B visas are given to IIT-ians?? Hmm, that's rich. I suppose no non-Indian works in the U.S., General?
So here's what I will do. In the first place, I believe in 'Buy American'- not only hardware, but software. Everything that's associated with national security we will procure in the United States. (APPLAUSE) Our financial industry, our utility industries, virtually every aspect of American life is controlled in some way by information technology. And we simply can't afford to have that developed abroad in other countries, because you can't tell what's in it. It works but you don't know whether it's got these so called trap doors and other things that could sabotage it at some point. So the essential stuff is, buy American hardware and software. We need to relook the H1-B visa. I'm all in favor of bringing people into this country, but only at fully competitive wage rates. (APPLAUSE) Not bringing people in to take jobs from Americans. (APPLAUSE continuing) And when they come here, I'd like them to stay and become American citizens... I met a man in Manchester the other day from India, he's a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, he came here, started a software company, married an American woman, they're running a serires of Nursing Homes - I congratulate him. It's the American dream. It's a success story. And we're glad to have him. So we want 'em to come but we want them to stay and be with us and put that creativity to work here and keep it in our economy.
I promise you as president of the United States, we'll put America back to work and we will produce - we won't just service, we will produce- and we'll make the finest products in the world in everything from energy technology, to environmental technology, to new automobiles, to battery chips, generators, software, hardware, jet planes and whatever else there is, and we'll be proud to see on our products, Made in the USA.
Great rhetoric. What about cost, General? Sure, you'll have everything made in the U.S., but how will you respond when costs start to climb and Wal-Mart isn't that cheap anymore? Price-controls perhaps? And how are you going to convince big financial corporations to develop software at higher cost? And maybe someone should tell him that the 6-year cap on the H1-B visa was imposed not by the Indian govt, but the U.S. govt?
Regular readers of this blog know I am a big fan of Wes Clark, but that doesn't mean I have to put up with his nonsense as well. I can only hope that this is nothing but the political claptrap he thinks will win him the nomination and the presidency. For a guy who has taught Economics, he should know better.
You know- the issue is globalism - H1-B visas are the visas that are given to these very smart, computer literate experts from the Indian Institute of Technology who come into the country. They often work at reduced wages to the native... to American citizens, and then they leave and they take back their skills, and they take back what they've learned here and start businesses at home.
H-1B visas are given to IIT-ians?? Hmm, that's rich. I suppose no non-Indian works in the U.S., General?
So here's what I will do. In the first place, I believe in 'Buy American'- not only hardware, but software. Everything that's associated with national security we will procure in the United States. (APPLAUSE) Our financial industry, our utility industries, virtually every aspect of American life is controlled in some way by information technology. And we simply can't afford to have that developed abroad in other countries, because you can't tell what's in it. It works but you don't know whether it's got these so called trap doors and other things that could sabotage it at some point. So the essential stuff is, buy American hardware and software. We need to relook the H1-B visa. I'm all in favor of bringing people into this country, but only at fully competitive wage rates. (APPLAUSE) Not bringing people in to take jobs from Americans. (APPLAUSE continuing) And when they come here, I'd like them to stay and become American citizens... I met a man in Manchester the other day from India, he's a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, he came here, started a software company, married an American woman, they're running a serires of Nursing Homes - I congratulate him. It's the American dream. It's a success story. And we're glad to have him. So we want 'em to come but we want them to stay and be with us and put that creativity to work here and keep it in our economy.
I promise you as president of the United States, we'll put America back to work and we will produce - we won't just service, we will produce- and we'll make the finest products in the world in everything from energy technology, to environmental technology, to new automobiles, to battery chips, generators, software, hardware, jet planes and whatever else there is, and we'll be proud to see on our products, Made in the USA.
Great rhetoric. What about cost, General? Sure, you'll have everything made in the U.S., but how will you respond when costs start to climb and Wal-Mart isn't that cheap anymore? Price-controls perhaps? And how are you going to convince big financial corporations to develop software at higher cost? And maybe someone should tell him that the 6-year cap on the H1-B visa was imposed not by the Indian govt, but the U.S. govt?
Regular readers of this blog know I am a big fan of Wes Clark, but that doesn't mean I have to put up with his nonsense as well. I can only hope that this is nothing but the political claptrap he thinks will win him the nomination and the presidency. For a guy who has taught Economics, he should know better.
