Examining Presidential Candidates' Tech Agendas

Aaron Ricadela writes to mention that BusinessWeek is taking a look at the tech agendas for several presidential candidates. The amount of attention being paid to Silicon Valley especially is unprecedented with the computer industry citing contributions of $2.2 million up from just $1.2 million in the first six months of the 2004 and 2000 primary campaigns. "So even while the general election is likely to be dominated by the war in Iraq, the continued threat of terrorism, and economic issues, candidates have staked out early positions on topics dear to the tech industry, including increasing federal spending on research and development, allowing more highly educated foreign workers into the country, widening the availability of high-speed Internet service to create new markets for hardware and online services, and improving the state of U.S. math and science education."

Funny how "Tech Industry Issues"

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Gets twisted to mean "Corporate Tech Industry" instead of mere "Tech Industry" when money is involved. More H-1b visas only helps those hiring techies, it depresses the wages of the techies themselves, for instance. And of course, they look towards more closed source options as well- you don't see any of this money trying to provide policy for alternative energy or open source projects.

Mitt Romney's tech agenda

[Mononoke]

The only technological topic addressed by Mitt Romney on his recent trip to my part of Texas was this: "We've got to get pornography off the internet!"

So basically, just more "think of the children" pandering.

Watch out for Romney

[GrEp]

Romney gave me the willies when listening to his Iowa Straw Poll speech. He advocated that every computer sold in the US be installed with government spyware to protect the children.

As usual Ron Paul isn't mentioned. IMHO he is right on that as long as the justice department does it's job in enforcing RICO statues and other laws barring ISP's from coercing their customers we should be fine. The reason our telecom system is a mess is the monopoly deals the congress entered into in the 1990s. Stop all federal funding of telecom projects and true competition should normalize the market. States are more than capable of funding basic telecom to rural areas.

Re:Hmmm....

[TubeSteak]

Not that such a thing would ever be meaningfully implemented anyway

The worst part is, even if there's no meaningful implementation of their plan, there exists the very real possibility that whatever they do will be implemented poorly. And I cringe whenever I hear about creating diversity just for diversity's sake.

Some of you may have caught this Wall Street Journal article [opinionjournal.com] talking about a study (PDF) [usccr.gov] which looked at the drop out rates of minority law school students. Long story short, affirmative action didn't do those students any favors, it actually hurt them by putting them into an academic environment they were not going to succeed in.

At least in law school, the only person losing out is the student. If you pull in unqualified researchers just to meet some diversity quota, there is a real possibility that science is going to suffer.

P.S. I know all the arguments for and against 'diversity', I just think it's worth looking at the potential fallout before requiring it.

Re:Ron Paul

[mcpkaaos]

if the government prevented business from regulating the Net, then it would unfairly jeopardize their freedom...

Voted NO on allowing telephone monopolies to offer Internet access.

Does anyone else find this a little contradictory?

Re:H1-B

[db32]

So, I would be interested to see your comments on the lawfirms that give seminars on how to cheat the system to hire on H1B instead of hiring available local talent. You brush this off like its not a problem because a few Canadian friends of yours weren't part of the masses of cheap labor imported by companies doing illegal things to avoid hiring Americans.

Here is a question for you. What motivation does an American have to become a "highly skilled individual" when the tech sector has become so notorious for importing replacements and using the highly skilled individuals to train them on their way out the door.

Our shining beacon going out has precious little to do with being xenophobic. It has more to do with profit mongering whores doing sheisty things to make an extra buck. Incidentally, you even missed some big ones. Not to destroy your point but I would like to mention the guys like Einstein and Oppenheimer and such weren't here on H1B visas... You want to move here, join society, great, welcome to America, we are glad to have your contributions, you want to come here on a visa and ship your paycheck home, we have plenty of leeches that we can't deal with that are natives, we don't need more.

Personally I would rather take all the illegal immegrants that snuck across our borders and got jobs and are trying to integrate and be productive and give them all of the SSNs of the worthless welfare leeches that aren't immegrants. Then take those leeches and deport their asses instead.

Re:Hmmm....

[kmac06]

The second half is already causing problems. When I applied for an REU (research experience for undergraduates) in physics a couple years ago, I noticed that all of the applications specifically said something like "women and minorities encouraged to apply". One of the programs I didn't get in to sent me a little card and asked me to fill out my sex and ethnicity, along with something like "please fill this out so we can make sure we're not making a mistake." They didn't say it quite like that, but did openly admit that their funding forced them to give advantageous consideration to women/minorities. Whether or not this actually changed the outcome of my acceptance I don't know, but still...

Re:H1-B

[db32]

I think our entire immigration process is totally fucked. It absolutely should not take so long and so many backflips through flaming hoops to become a citizen. The real problem with illegals isn't that they are here, its that they are here and not paying taxes. I personally believe rather than building a fence, or arming guards, or any silly shit like that...we should just line up IRS workers along the border so they can hand out SSNs. "Welcome to America, here is your SSN, enjoy the services we have to offer, oh...and thank you in advance for paying your taxes."

Remember kids. Illegally entering our country gets you little more than media attention and some rednecks yelling at you. Tax evasion and you are going to jail for a long long time. Enjoy your stay. :)

Re:Hmmm....

[Mongoose Disciple]

In the short term, that's absolutely true.

In the long term, it's probably beneficial to encourage groups that typically don't go into high tech to do so, just for the purpose of changing the culture around it. Probably, there are women (for example) alive today who, based on their intelligence/aptitudes would've made great engineers, but who became housewives or chose other fields because they didn't grow up around women engineers and weren't exposed to that kind of culture. Most people make most of their choices based around what their peers are doing.

Granted, that's not the argument I've generally heard for affirmative action, and for the investment to pay off there and not bone things up worse, eventually affirmative action needs to go away so that you really are picking the best people for the job, if out of a bigger pool than you might've had to pick from otherwise.