Contact?

Left to Right: Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes; President Elect, Barack Obama; Alien; Former President, Bill Clinton; Former White House Chief of Staff & co-chair of Barack Obama’s transition team, John Podesta.

It seems UFO/space-alien stories rise to the surface of our popular culture about once a decade. Perhaps we are simply at the crest of this decade’s wave. The new spin is in the number of voices coming from inside the establishment.

In the past year several former NASA Astronauts have come forward to rather adamantly insist that alien spacecraft have visited Earth and various governments have been covering this up. Most outspokenly, Apollo 14 Astronaut, Edgar Mitchell (see video below), and Mercury-Atlas 9 / Gemini 5 Astronaut, C. Gordon Cooper (see video below).

NASA Astronaut, Gordon Cooper		NASA Astronaut, Edgar Mitchell

In May of this year Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory stated that the existence of extra terrestrial life “doesn’t contradict our faith” in an article for the Vatican paper titled “The extraterrestrial is my brother.” What does the Vatican know? or What is the Vatican preparing itself for?

President Elect, Barack Obama has tapped John Podesta to head his transition team. Podesta, the former Chief of Staff from the Clinton administration, is a known UFO buff. In October, 2002, acting as a lobbyist for the Sci-Fi channel, Podesta held a press conference to announce a freedom of information lawsuit where he stated, “It is time for the government to declassify records that are more than 25 years old and to provide scientists with data that will assist in determining the true nature of the phenomena.” Some dismissed it as a publicity stunt.

But it is worth pointing out that John Podesta was previously a member of Bill Clinton’s administration. Clinton’s Executive Order 12958 declassified many national security related materials including some documents related to UFO investigations (Edit: while blocking others) to satisfy Clinton’s own interest in events like the Roswell incident, and yet no shaking hands with the alien photo-op ever transpired… or did it?

Bravo to Bill Gates

A few weeks ago Bill Gates joined Linked[in]. It is often the network’s practice when a high profile member joins, to invite them to post a “featured question” on the site’s Q&A page. Mr. Gates did so by asking:

How can we do more to encourage young people to pursue careers in science and technology?

Before the question was closed, it received 3567 answers. Unfortunately, Bill did not mark a best answer (or even a list of good answers). My reply, which appears here (the 18th answer on page 90), emphasized that meeting our job market demand for scientist and engineers could not be met with education alone, but only by also opening up citizenship to foreign born students receiving college degrees in American Universities. My reply began:

With only 5% of the world’s population, all our talent cannot be homegrown. We desperately need to open our doors to more (I’d say “unlimited”) H-1B visas. With a shortage of engineering and scientific degrees going to American students, our Universities give more technical degrees to foreign students than domestic… yet when their student visas expire we effectively throw them out of our country. A great many of them want to stay here, and yet after giving them our most precious intellectual property, we basically give them the boot. We should be passing out citizenship at graduation ceremonies. Foreign students who earn a degree at a U.S. University in a field where America has a shortage of talent should be granted immediate and automatic citizenship. Anything less is both foolish and shameful. —bold emphasis added.

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On March 12th, Bill Gates gave an address before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology, on the topic of Competitiveness and Innovation. This address marked the committee’s 50th Anniversary.

Bill Gates’ address to Congress:

Most of the committee members were respectful and receptive to Mr. Gates’ message. Representative Ralph Hall of Texas, district 4 gave a particularly warm introductory speech. There was one quite noteworthy exception. Dana Rohrabacher, California representative, district 46, who went on a protectionist/isolationist rant, felt that if Microsoft couldn’t hire the “A students” from abroad, they should just hire “B and C students” that were American born. He felt it was Microsoft’s responsibility to create jobs for these workers too. He even made the argument that, by giving H-1B visas to foreign engineers, that we would unfairly damage the labor needs of the recipient’s home country (you can’t make this stuff up!). After this bone-head (can I say that? …yes, of course I can. It’s my blog.) went beyond his alloted time, the chair of the committee asked him to wrap it up. Incensed by the perceived insult, Mr. Rohrabacher blathered, “You know, I’ve got a, uh, I’m working at, uh, I’m one of the guys who helped Kosovo become independent, I’m on the Foreign Relations Committee…” before he was eventually shut up. California, is this guy really the best you can find to represent you?

There is a very foolish and shortsighted sentiment that H-1B visas drive down wages and/or cause US citizens to loose jobs to foreign workers. With a shortage of scientific and engineering candidates, without more (many more) H-1B visa recipients, these jobs do not then go to natural born American citizens, but rather simply go unfilled. And that highly sought candidate will instead be employed by a foreign competitor.

Bill’s address was succinct but not thin, and his follow-up answers were well informed. He covered everything from the role of philanthropy in improving education, new educational opportunities offered by the internet, US competitiveness as compared to Europe and Asia, US investment in research and development, his strong support for the America Competes Act, teaching programs that have been successful both inside and outside the US, and what effect this has had on American competitiveness and businesses ability to meet their hiring needs. It was however, the issue of H-1B visas that captured the media. Below I have pulled all of Bill’s quotes related to the subject from the more than 2 hours of footage, sans any media spin (only 9 minutes of which was his actual Congressional address).

At time marker 5:25, citing research (PDF) Mr. Gates makes the case that H-1B visas actually create more jobs here in the United States:

Today our university computer science and engineering programs include large numbers of foreign students. In fact, the Science and Engineering Indicators Report showed that 59 percent of doctoral degrees and 43 percent of all higher-ed degrees in engineering and computer science are awarded to temporary residence. But our current immigration policies make it increasingly difficult for these students to remain in the United States. At the time when talent is the key to economic success, it makes no sense to educate people in our Universities, often subsidized by US tax payers and then insist that they return home. US innovation has always been based in part on the contributions of foreign born scientist and researchers. For example, a recent survey, uh, conducted by several universities, showed that between 1999 and 2005, firms with at least one foreign born founder created 450,000 new US jobs. Moreover, as a recent study shows– for every H-1B holder that technology companies hire, five additional jobs are created around that person. But as you know our immigration system makes it very difficult for US firms to hire highly skilled foreign workers.

At time marker 7:51 he added:

I want to emphasize that, to address the shortage of scientist and engineers, we must do both– reform our education system and our immigration policies.

While the video above only contains Bill Gates’ address, and not the follow-up questions by members of the house which, as I point out, lasted much longer than the address itself, I have included a couple of noteworthy highlights. The majority of the committee’s members were sympathetic to Mr. Gates position, Mr. Rohrabacher bizarre comments above being the only exception.

Later, in response to a question by Mr. Rothman, representative for New Jersey, district 9, at time marker 10:47, Mr. Gates further made the point:

I’d also suggest that, if someone’s educated in a US University that, because of the research funding that comes out of the government, you know, you’ve basically subsidized that education, I think there should be a direct path to permanent residency.

In another exchange with the committee regarding the stature of American Universities, Mr. Gates has this to add (11:04):

The very top engineers, the US Universities still have a strong position, but as I’ve said, the majority of the students in the computer science department are foreign born. And so we educate them. We provide the world’s very best education, and the… the research funding and various things are, a… a major factor there. And then those are the students who, uh, are not allowed to stay and, and work in the country because of the limits we have.

I would like to commend Bill Gates for speaking sense in the face of all the ill-founded isolationism being advocated by some false populist shills for the labor union special interests. The tech sector is the future of the American economy, and of the world. If America is to continue to prosper, we must increase our number of scientist, engineers and mathematicians. Even if all American college graduates became engineers, we would still have a shortage. This has more to do with birthrates than anything else. The only way to close this gap is through immigration, and the low hanging fruit are those foreigners who have already been educated in our system. They are already here, they want to stay here, and when we force them to leave, they will not leave the labor market, they will simply goto work in a foreign competitor economy, taking American intellectual capital with them as we throw them out.

I started off writing a technology story, and here I am, stuck in politics again.

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RELATED LINKS:

Bill Gates’ Address in the C-Span Archives
Bill Gates’ full hearing before the Committee on Science and Technology, including pre-address comments by committee members, as well as a post address question and answer with Bill Gates, can be viewed in full at C-Span’s online archives. Available formats include both a Flash Movie and a Windows Media file (total run time is just over two hours). It can also be ordered on DVD.

Committee on Science and Technology, 50th Anniversary Address
Additionally, the address can be viewed in full from the United States House of Representatives’ website as a Real Media file.

Bill Gates unabridged written testimony as PDF
Due to time constraints, Mr. Gates agreed to give an abridged version of his address. His full testimony was entered into the record in writing, and can be downloaded in PDF form.

Microsoft website— Bill Gates, transcript from committee address
The full transcript of Bill Gates address before the Congressional committee, including all follow-up questions.

Bill Gates’ Speeches— Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Transcripts of other speeches by Bill Gates, in the archives of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Michael Bloomberg, 2008

I will begin this post with the disclaimer that I never intended my blog to be a platform for my political views. However, it is an election year, I am an American, and we live in interesting times.

My recent neglect of this blog has been in large part due to another web based side-project, Run Mike Run— My involvement, perhaps in vain, to help draft Michael Bloomberg into the 2008 United States Presidential election is not about policy positions or ideology.

Politicians seldom deliver on election year promises. It is not just the hyperbolic pandering to their base in order to deliver votes. It is the fact that most of a president’s time in office is spent addressing national and international events, as they occur.

Most voters overrate a checklist of policy positions, and far undervalue competence and applicable management experience. At the end of the day, the President is the executive manager of the world’s most powerful enterprise, the United States government. When we look back on the era of past presidents, it is rarely the legislation that was passed on their clock that we recall, but rather the crisis that occurred and whether they rose to the occasion in addressing them, that determine the success or failure of their time in office.

In the past century, only one United States President has come from the Senate and without any prior executive experience.

That was John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy, martyred in his relative youth, has reached such an exalted status in American pop-culture mythology that it is difficult for most people to judge him or the achievements of his administration with any objectivity. As an historical figure, he stands along side Elvis and James Dean as much as Reagan or Roosevelt. I will chalk Kennedy up as the exception that proves the rule, and leave it at that.

The point being, that the legislative branch of government has not historically been a proving ground for future Presidents.

There is a reason for this.

The role of the executive branch is entirely different than the role of the legislative branch, and experience in one is little indication of success in the other.

The path to the presidency has almost always been through the executive positions of Governor, high ranking General or groomed in the role of the Vice Presidency.

In fact, in the past, Senators who wished to run for President would first run for Governor of their state, proving themselves in an executive position before running for the federal executive office of the Presidency (though a couple did take these responsibilities in reverse order).

Whether Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or John McCain; all three possible major party presidential contenders are not only from the legislative branch, but none of them have ever held a single executive position in their prior careers. Neither in the public or private sector.

I have nothing, per se, against any of these candidates. Policy-wise, I agree with some of them on some things, and disagree on others.

Without any bias for policy positions or party affiliation, I fear for the future of this country under the next administration, should any of the current major party contenders win the general election. George W. Bush has run one of the most incompetent administrations in American history. To follow his failure with another incompetent administration, no matter how well intended, will be devastating. So much is at stake.

I do not know if Bloomberg will enter the race. Some say it is too late in the game. But we’re only this far into the election due to this year’s accelerated primary schedule. A billion dollars also buys a lot of time and obviates any need to fundraise. But Mike is now bumping up against his first hard deadline— the Texas ballot process. The most stringent of all state ballots, an independent presidential candidate must gather 75,000 signatures from registered voters who did not vote in either major party primary, and furthermore, no signatures can be collected before March 5th and must be submitted by May 12th. Bloomberg has met with ballot access consultants in Texas, but the true indication will be what happens on March 5th.

Even still, this does not guarantee that he will enter the race. Unlike some candidates, Bloomberg is determined not to be a spoiler. This had led to speculation that Bloomberg is really running for VP on an Obama ticket. Until Bloomberg shows his hand, I will still continue supporting the draft for an independent run. An Obama/Bloomberg ticket is a compromise I could vote for, but is far from preferred.

In another 8 years Bloomberg will be the same age as John McCain is now. Pragmatically, co-staring on an Obama ticket could be Mike’s best bet to get his own shot at the Oval Office. Want to know what else Bloomberg and McCain have in common? They both have mothers that are over 100 years old.

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RELATED LINKS:

Run Mike Run - Michael Bloomberg for President

Official Mike Bloomberg website

Official website of the Mayor’s Office of New York City

Bloomberg LP

Get Mike Bloomberg’s autobiography, Bloomberg by Bloomberg