Rick Perry vs World

22 January 2007

Give me your tired, your poor...oh heck, just give us your overly educated

High-tech companies and other businesses are planning a full-court press to get Congress to increase the yearly allotment of H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers.

The current cap of 65,000 visas was met months before the start of the current fiscal year, leaving thousands of applications unanswered and companies without needed workers, proponents said.

"There is a very serious shortage of qualified tech workers. Because of that, companies have to recruit wherever they can," said Jeff Lande, senior vice president of the Information Technology Association of America, which represents more than 300 companies.

"There are many flaws in the H-1B program," including weak prevailing wage guidelines and limited enforcement mechanisms, said John Meredith, president of IEEE-USA, a unit of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.

"It depresses wages for American workers. It hurts the visa holder as well, because some of the workers are taken advantage of," he said.

Wow. Even electrical engineers have their own special interest group to try to inflate their wages. Awesome place, this America.

Posted by Evan @ 01/22/07 10:02 PM | Comments (0)

DMN:

Mayors from Texas border cities carried a united message to federal officials Wednesday: don't fence us off from Mexico.

After being largely ignored in last year's pre-election frenzy, they found a receptive audience and signs that a full 700-mile barrier may never come to pass.

The mayors were united, predicting the fence wouldn't get built.

"Mexico's our neighbor," Laredo Mayor Raul Salinas said. "You don't treat neighbors like that."

I'll support a fence for Mexico as soon as they start building one on the Canadian border.

Posted by Evan @ 01/22/07 09:57 PM | Comments (0)

WashTimes writes up the debut of The Politico:

The Politico debuts tomorrow in print, online and on the air.

The newspaper will publish 30,000 copies to be distributed free of charge three days a week while Congress is in session, and one day a week during recess. The Web site, which also will be free, plans to be rich in video and is aimed at readers across the country.

"Will it be the only destination [for political news]? No, but there's no reason we can't be at the top of the list," Mr. VandeHei said.

Mr. VandeHei and Mr. Harris have persuaded an all-star cast to join them in a bet on the future of journalism. Since arriving at the Politico in November, the two have plucked Mike Allen from Time magazine, former Bloomberg News political writer Roger Simon and Ben Smith from the New York Daily News.

"There's no claim to the status quo as it existed," Mr. Harris said. "The urgent task is the same: defining what the future is for this business. This was an opportunity to start something from scratch, to hire people in pretty significant numbers and to define a journalistic product from the beginning."

The Politico will draw most of its advertising dollars from issue ads funded by interest groups targeting lawmakers. Robert Allbritton, chairman of the parent company, said he expects the venture to turn a profit in 18 to 24 months.

Mr. Morton said it will be interesting to see which Capitol Hill publication attracts more advertisers. "Are they just going to all start sharing ever-smaller pieces of a fairly static advertising environment?" he asked, noting that the continued prosperity of interest groups and lobbying firms is fortunate for political publications. "That's the part of advertising that's growing."

Roll Call and the Hill Newspaper did not respond to requests for comment.

The market for political news has been growing over the past few years, methinks, and will continue to grow. Roll Call would've been best equipped to try to take advantage of this, but didn't. Politics is the newest national soap opera.

And I bet there are plenty of potential ad dollars, if they do the site as well as Roll Call.

Posted by Evan @ 01/22/07 09:48 PM | Comments (0)

2010 begins

Well, okay, gubernatorial cycle 2010 has already begun. Kinda like how the 2008 presidential race began sometime in 2004.

Professors Carnahan and Taylor have some speculation over on their blog:

Michelle thinks that Lt. Governor David Dewhurst will win the '10 gubernatorial nomination quite easily, simply because of his connections and money. That, and she thinks that Dewhurst will convince State Senator Dan Patrick to run for Lt. Governor as part of some sort of grand unification theory. Nuh uh. Nope. I am neither convinced of that, nor inclined to agree with her assessment. I not only think that Patrick will run for Governor, I think that in a multi-candidate field (which I will bet at least the garbage, if not the rent, that it won't include U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison), he could potentially do to Dewhurst what he did to the Senate District 7 GOP Primary field in 2006.

Also worth noting:

... the likely prospect of a GOP loss of the White House in 2008 (I place the likelihood at 70% or higher) and a failure to recapture Congress (I place those odds at 50-50).

I may get a chance to post some thoughts when I'm not at work.

Posted by Evan @ 01/22/07 02:18 PM | Comments (1)

19 January 2007

Perry sits down with Congressional Dems

Todd Gillman in the Dallas News details how the Guv and Texas' Congressional Dems had a sit down.

An aide quipped that the comfortable chair reserved for the governor should have been labeled "hot seat," though Mr. Perry and the lawmakers agreed afterward that the meeting was cordial. It's time to work together, they said, to boost highway funding and address other issues of broad concern. They said the meeting helped build relations scarred by years of mistrust.

"I made commitments to be working with these folks to make for a better Texas," said Mr. Perry, who arrived for the 8 a.m. meeting with Ms. Johnson and received a warm greeting from the lawmakers waiting in Mr. Ortiz' office. Several exchanged hugs and backslaps with him.

"Here's how excited I was about it," the governor said afterward, striding out to a waiting SUV. "I told 'em, I said you get that transportation money up to where we're not a donor state anymore, I'm gonna become a Democrat again."

Now that's something that can get bipartisan support!

Of course, equitable transportation funding is probably something we should look to our senators for -- it's easier for them to hold a bill up by insisting that Texas be treated fairly.

Posted by Evan @ 01/19/07 04:41 PM | Comments (0)

What constitutes retaliation?

Karen Brooks, DMN:

Two years ago, Mr. Craddick gave Mr. Pitts a plum assignment heading the appropriations committee, where he can wield great influence over the state budget. Capitol observers expect Mr. Pitts to be relegated to the backbench now.

About the challenge, Mr. Craddick says he "didn't take any of that personally," and he promised not to retaliate against members who opposed him.

"We're just looking at what people have asked for, and where we think they fit," Mr. Craddick said. "You can't have 149 people on appropriations."

Mr. Pitts said Thursday night that he has asked to be returned as appropriations chairman "because of my experience."

"I'm really worried about lack of experience on appropriations because of the big issues this session," Mr. Pitts said.

The headline reads "Craddick: No retaliation." I'd say that leaving Pitts on Appropriations at all would be a lack of retaliation, or even giving him reasonable committee assignments. Bringing him back as Appropriations chair is pretty much unthinkable. The Speaker has to rely on his Chairman of Approps...it's hard to imagine that they'd have the level of trust necessary to work together.

Posted by Evan @ 01/19/07 01:05 PM | Comments (0)

18 January 2007

Party fighting for the sake of warfare

There are some folks trying to stop in impending crowning of Florida Senator Mel Martinez as Chairman of the Republican National Committee.

It's a strange group of nativists, fans of Michael Steele, anti-illegal immigrationists, and people just disgruntled by the fact that the White House dictated the pick. Note: some of these people fall into more than one camp.

Hotline's blog reports that English First has purchased banner ads opposing Martinez. Meanwhile, various folks, eg Paul Burka, have noted that Texans are leading the charge.

It seems like an awfully silly fight. If I recall my history correctly, whoever wins the GOP nomination will probably replace Martinez with his/her (although I can't think of any female candidates running) own RNC Chair.

So, keeping in mind that the pick was likely to only stick around for about a year, what are the two main jobs of the RNC Chair? 1) Be a public face for the party, 2) Raise money.

I'd have been quite happy with Michael Steele. But like it or not, the White House has traditionally made the pick. Regardless of the merits of the White House picking the RNC Chair, now isn't a particularly good time to try to reform the process so that the grassroots make the pick.

Mel Martinez is certainly not out of the party's mainstream, despite the depictions of some who disagree with him on immigration. He'll be a great public face for the party, and he has a track record as a good fundraiser.

Therefore, it seems to me that the actions of RNC delegates Denise McNamara and Bill Crocker, as well as state party chair Tina Benkiser, only serve to make the party look bad. So why make quixotic stands? We aren't the party of Howard Dean. Hehe.

Posted by Evan @ 01/18/07 07:34 PM | Comments (0)

I guess I'm not a new media triumphalist

I've been meaning to post this for awhile, so here we go. You may recall Joe Rago, who wrote the "The Blog Mob: Written By Fools To Be Read By Imbeciles" article for the Wall Street Journal. Afterwards, he appeared on Hugh Hewitt's radio show:

You're 24? 22? 23?

JR: 23.

HH: Okay, you're 23 years old. The Wall Street Journal allows you to set forth with a piece of writing that was mocked, in large part, across the blogosphere, for its many inaccuracies, satirized by people like Tigerhawk and Ace of Spades, and yet you're defending mainstream media's accumulated institutional culture that screens for originality, expertise and seriousness. Does your piece represent that tradition?

JR: Yes, I think it does.

HH: And so, what was original in your piece?

JR: I mean, what was original is that everyone is...you know, Time Magazine says the person of the year is everyone. What was original was that everyone seems to have acquiesced to the idea that technology and blogs are going to sort of revolutionize media and make it completely new, and I just don't see the evidence for it.

HH: And what's your expertise in blogs?

JR: The expertise, in this case, is criticism. It's the exercise of judgment and taste.

HH: Joe, you're 23.

JR: Sure.

HH: Can you be expert in anything? And I'm serious here.

JR: I think I can write a thoughtful article, even though I'm 23.

Apparently, at age 23, he can also win a debate even when his constitutional law professor opponent controls the flow and direction of the argument.

Criticisizing someone's age is a pretty sure sign that you're losing the debate.

Blogs are just a cheap form of publication. As Chris Anderson pointed out in The Long Tail, lots of things in the long tail are terrible, but sometimes there are niches of wonderful stuff.

So, I'm not much of a blog triumphalist. Most suck, but some are wonderful. Many of the best are from "old media" journalists, but not all. Glenn Reynolds deserves his place, and locally, one could read Kevin Whited's link blog alone (he wouldn't call it that) and have a much brighter knowledge of world affairs.

I'll have more comments on this soon, you'll probably see why.

Posted by Evan @ 01/18/07 06:58 PM | Comments (1)

Inauguration

If you want to read the prepared text of Perry's inauguration address, the DMN legislature blog has reprinted it.

Meanwhile, some people are upset over Ted Nugent's actions while performing during the inauguration festivities. Personally, if we were going to get into the Guv's celebrity friends performing, I'd have rather had a Russell Crowe screening.

Posted by Evan @ 01/18/07 06:39 PM | Comments (0)

WilcoWise

Welcome WilcoWise, a group of Republicans living in Williamson County. That's north of Austin -- Cedar Park, Round Rock and Georgetown, for those of you who aren't from Central Texas.

They have a post up purporting to have Craddick's choices for House committee chairs. Who knows, but it at least appears to be reasonable speculation.

Posted by Evan @ 01/18/07 06:21 PM | Comments (0)

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