Washington Democrats are busy these days cooking up a Mexico policy two-fer: Gun-grabber Senators like Feinstein and Durbin are pushing the bogus complaints of Mexicans that America is to blame for their domestic troubles because of drug cartels using US-bought guns; plus, by having a hearing the Senators get to look like they are doing something about border chaos.

But even if Feinstein and the rest of the anti-gun Democrats were to close down every gun store in America, wealthy cartels will simply purchase their firearms elsewhere. Obama’s agenda is to disarm Americans, using the feckless Mexicans as an excuse.

Senator Durbin’s rather limited border chart below, displayed at a hearing on Tuesday, shows his policy prejudices: He is more concerned about American guns getting into Mexico than millions of illegal aliens breaking into this country with drugs, crime and job thievery. [Focus shifts to flow of cash, arms into Mexico, San Francisco Chronicle, March 18, 2009]

California lawmakers and the Obama administration have begun to shift U.S. border policy with Mexico, abruptly changing focus from illegal immigration to the flow of cash and weapons from the United States that is fueling a savage war between the Mexican government and powerful drug cartels.

“It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers, mayors, kidnap innocent people and do terrible things come from the United States,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said at a hearing Tuesday. “I am appalled that you can buy a 50-caliber sniper weapon anywhere and it’s not restricted to a federal firearms dealer - you can just buy it.”

NRA President Wayne LaPierre appeared on the Glenn Beck show on Wednesday and completely refuted Senator Feinstein’s claim that 90 percent of cartel weapons come from the US.

Reuters reports:

[Jefferson] Duarte [of Rice U.] and co-authors Stephan Siegel and Lance Young, of the University of Washington in Seattle, studied members of Prosper.com, an online lending site where people looking for loans are matched up with individual lenders.

Each Prosper.com loan applicant submitted a profile which included credit and work history, education level, income and an optional photograph of themselves for lender review.

More than 6,800 loan applications, 2,579 loans and 12,200 photographs from Prosper.com were used in the study.

Duarte hired a team of 25 people to rate the applicants’ trustworthiness on a scale of one to five using only the photographs of the borrowers. The team also judged the probability that the borrowers would repay a $100 (72 pound) loan.

Those judged to be trustworthy by the team were more likely to get a loan from Prosper.com lenders and tended to have a credit score about 20 points higher than those determined to be untrustworthy, the researchers found.

(more…)

Just a few days after having his office busted into by FBI investigators, Vivek Kundra is back on the job. It took just five days after he took a leave of absence for President Barack Obama to reinstate him. Once again Kundra is in charge of planning our entire national IT infrastructure. Scary thought, huh?

Here is the explanation for reinstating Kundra:

While on leave, Mr. Kundra, who had been highly praised when he was appointed on March 5, thought that his reputation was coming under a cloud, the person familiar with the situation said. So he called Mr. Kaine, who is also chairman of the Democratic National Committee. The governor then called the White House and said that if Mr. Kundra was not reinstated, his reputation would be ruined and the government would miss out on having someone with valuable skills help with its important task of making government operations more transparent.[ An Official Is Reinstated, White House Announces By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE, NYT, March 18, 2009]

According to Virginia governor and DNC chairman Tim Kaine, it was necessary to reinstate Kundra in order to save his reputation. The Democratic oligarchs sure seem to be concerned with the soiled reputation of this 34 year old Indian born bureaucrat. How come?

It’s downright comical that Kaine is praising this cronyism as an example of transparent government, because from where I sit it sounds like good old fashioned Chicago style politics mixed with slum dog corruption.

Obama’s reinstatement of Kundra seems like a very risky move considering that it’s unlikely that this story is coming to an end anytime soon. Kundra’s admission of being convicted of petty theft 13 years ago seems like just the “lid of the tandoori” considering the fraud he could potentially be involved in.

Keep in mind that Yusuf Acar reported directly to Kundra, and he is at this time in jail without bail because he is considered a flight risk to Turkey. Acar is accused of bribery and kickback schemes, and who was arrested with more than $4,500 cash inside the pajamas he was wearing when he was arrested. Supposedly Acar was swimming in so much cash he even sent $100,000 to his mother in Turkey.

If Kundra didn’t have enough problems on his own, the investigations into the Indian H-1B Sushil Bansal are just starting. Bansal is suspected of being involved in bid rigging with Acar, so the connections to Kundra are complex and will take time for the FBI to sort out.

Why would Obama risk taking a big political hit by reinstating Kundra? Perhaps Obama feels Kundra’s mission must be saved regardless of the cost. We all know that Kundra’s mission is–to outsource as many U.S. government jobs to India as possible and to bring in H-1Bs to take whatever is left–and of course to get insanely rich while doing it. One thing for sure, there is far more to this story than we have heard so far, and hopefully as the days pass more of the truth will be uncovered.

From the India Times:

CEO and founder of popular site LinkedIn Reid Hoffman urged the US Congress and the Obama Administration to remove the cap on H-1B visas, which enable foreign nationals to live and work in the United States. LinkedIn is a popular business-oriented social networking site.

“Remove the cap on H-1B visas and impose a 10 per cent payroll tax beyond the benchmark salary for each visa,” Hoffman wrote in an article “Stimulus 2.0: It’s the Startups, Stupid” in TechCrunch, a publication of The Washington Post. A day earlier in another article in The Washington Post, Hoffman made a similar argument for the next phase of stimulus policies.

Observing that the US is a country founded on immigration, Hoffman said, “We should welcome the best and the brightest as our own. Abolish the H-1B cap, and give me an economic reason for preferring local. I’ll only do foreign if I need to.”

Hoffman said, “A 10 per cent payroll tax for each H-1B visa can be reinvested in whatever it takes to get American talent up to the same level.” This has been proposed previously, but a payroll tax ensures that H-1Bs are used for skilled labour, not cheap labour.

First off, the taxes on imported labor that Hoffman is arguing for are quite a bit less than companies would pay in competitive econonmies like Singapore. I disagree strongly with Hoffman’s argument that the issue has ever been training of Americans–but even if he were right, the revenues on a $60,000/year H-1b worker would be something like $12,000 over six years. This would not even cover expenses for a 4 year IT program at a State University–let alone the true cost of education and the student’s opportunity cost of investment in their education. Hoffman is still advocating what amounts to a program that lets US companies grant green cards at far less than the value of citizenship. Such a program is inherently abusive.