SHOCKER! THIS JUST IN...

CNN Lou Dobbs - video:

Outsourcing Tech Jobs Overseas Not Automatically Good for U.S., Says Former IBM Research Director

Careers in science, technology, engineering and math, they are jobs of the future, but perhaps not for American workers. The House Science and Technology Committee today started a series of hearings on the impact of the offshoring and outsourcing of American jobs. A recent study by the University of Texas found that only nine percent of the global telecom research and design facilities announced last year were located in the United States. The need to create incentives to study science and technology was emphasized. Yet not a word was heard about making sure there are jobs for those students when they graduate. And nothing was heard about the latest issue of "Business Week" magazine which reports disturbing flaws in our economic calculations. Those flaws have result in the government overstating economic growth, understating economic slowdowns and perhaps overestimating by as much as 40 percent the reported gains in manufacturing since 2003. But the committee was warned by the former director of research at IBM, who said: "When U.S. companies build semiconductor plants in Asia rather than the U.S., that's a shift in productive capability. And neither economic theory, nor common sense, asserts that that shift is automatically good for the United States."

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OTHER NEWS...

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CNN Lou Dobbs - video:

There's a bill to increase U.S. funding for Mexico's drug war by $170 million a year.

(OH, IS THAT ALL? - jillosophy)

Mexico Requests U.S. Aid to Fight Drug Cartels

Mexico's president, Felipe Calderon, is asking the United States government for money and military assistance to help fight his escalating war against violent Mexican drug cartels. So far this year, more than a thousand Mexican citizens have been killed in drug violence in Mexico, and some of that violence has entered the United States. In the past, the two nations have blamed each other for the drug wars, with the U.S. accusing Mexico of failing to control narcoterrorists and Mexico accusing the U.S. of doing little to fight drug use and weapons trafficking. But now that Mexican president Felipe Calderon has deployed 24,000 federal troops to fight the drug cartels, the White House is preparing to open its checkbook. Since 2000, the United States has spent $343 million on military and law enforcement aid to Mexico. Contrast that to Colombia, which has received $4.4 billion from U.S. taxpayers to fight drug trafficking, or about 13 times what Mexico has received. That gap may soon narrow. A House committee has approved a 25 percent reduction in military aid to Colombia and there's a bill to increase U.S. funding for Mexico's drug war by $170 million a year.