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Tuesday, July 5, 2011

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  • nogc_noproblem
    08-28 11:12 PM
    A pair of gloves

    A young man wanted to purchase a gift for his new sweetie for Valentine's Day. As they had not been very long, it was very difficult decision. After careful consideration he decided a good gift would be a pair of gloves. Accompanied by his sister, he went to the store and bought the gloves. His sister purchased a pair of panties at the same time.

    The clerk carefully wrapped both items but in the process got them mixed up. The sister was handed the gloves and the young man got the panties.

    The young man mailed his Valentine's Day gift with the following note:

    "This special Valentines Day gift was chosen because I noticed you are in the habit of not wearing any when we go out in the evenings.

    These are a lovely shade, the lady I bought them from showed me the pair she had been wearing for the past three weeks and they were hardly soiled. I had her try yours on for me and they looked quite lovely.

    I wish I was there to put them on you for the first time; no doubt, other hands will come into contact with them before I have a chance to see you again.

    Just think how many times I'll be kissing them in the future. I hope you'll wear them Friday night for me.

    Love, Cuddle Bear

    p.s. The sales lady says the latest style is to wear them folded down with just a little fur showing."





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  • vbkris77
    03-25 12:49 AM
    As a matter of fact, any one if trained properly can do any job..
    So the requirement of basic education can be challenged for any position.. But Can CIS get in the way of running business decisions?? If any company (including consulting) wants to hire staff, shouldn't they have a say in who should be in their office?? If a staffing company policy is to only hire Post graduates, can CIS stop them? Isn't this too much intervention by government?

    Another point is Why this intepretation is different for non-consulting companies? If Cisco can mandate an FTE on H1B to be Masters, how come a consultant working for same Cisco need to prove that the position requires Masters?? What they are doing is wrong.. If some litigation lawyer can find a racially motivated pattern, they will be in big trouble.. Just my thoughts...





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  • ita
    07-14 11:24 AM
    Wll support campaign for EB3 . Please let this happen.
    Appreciate all the comments on how the initiative(s) won't work. But at the same time if they can in some way suggest what will work that will be great.
    I'm sure not doing anything will be not be a right thing .
    I do agree we have to make noice. Let's work on how to make effective noise.
    My thoughts are running on Letter/Call campaigns.
    Don't know anything about what should be done effectively.Else I would be posting it here.
    But for sure I'll support initiative(s) for EB3-I.

    Thank you.





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  • alterego
    07-14 01:12 PM
    Well, why is there 33% quota for EB1,2 and 3 in the first place. They could have very well made it 100% for Eb1 and if there was any spill over, EB2 gets them and then finally EB3! Because, US needs people from all categories.

    Now all that I am saying is there should be some % on the spill over that comes from EB1.

    If there are 300,000 applicants in EB2 and if the spill over from EB1 is 30K every year, you think it is fair that EB2 gets that for over 6-7 years without EB3 getting anything? That is not fair and if that's what the law says, it has to be revisited. I am saying give 75% or even 90% to EB2 and make sure you clear EB3 with PD as old 2001 and 2002. That is being human. They deserve a GC as much as an EB2 with 2007 (and I am not saying that EB3 2007 deserves as much as an EB2 2007).

    Bottom line, EB3 (or for that matter any category) can't be asked to wait endlessly just because there are some smart kids in another queue! We can come up with a better format of the letter; we can change our strategy to address this issue; we do not have to talk about EB2 and mention only our problems. We want EB3 queue to move.

    "Should" has no place in this. That is your opinion. A lot of things should happen in my view, that does not mean they are the law. It would be rather presumptous of us to tell the US legislators or Gov't how things "should" be.

    The laws are made the way they are for a reason, that is what US lawmakers consider to be in the best interest of their country. As for the spillover question, what is clear is that the real shaft was on Eb2I for the past 2 yrs, when all the spillover was erroneously going to EB3ROW. Eb3I was nor is in contention for those numbers. Sadly for EB3I, the country is oversubscribed and that too in a lesser priority category.

    Write this letter if you must, but it will cause the EB3 community to lose credibility with a lot of people, including the executive branch. They do not respond well to illogical letters and those that second guess their right to set the laws as they wish. It will turn out to be a massive distraction and turn into a joke.

    The focus of the EB3 community should be squarely on visa recapture. Technically that will help EB3I the most. Those affected most stand to gain the most as well. Failing this, I am not sure anything you guys do will make an iota of difference.



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  • Macaca
    12-29 08:01 PM
    It is thus crucial for socially-engaged activists, even if they do not subscribe to religion personally, to enter the terrain of religious discourse and contest and critique the claims of those who speak in its name and deploy it as a tool to promote hatred against what are defined as the religious and national 'other'.

    Efforts to improve relations between India and Pakistan, and Hindus and Muslims in South Asia, can hardly make any headway if this indispensable task continues to be so sorely neglected.


    How Terrorism Still Looms Over Asia (http://the-diplomat.com/2010/12/29/how-terrorism-still-looms-over-asia/) By Luke Hunt | The Diplomat





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  • inskrish
    01-07 01:41 AM
    Recently during Diwali celebration, one boy fired a rocket and it killed more than six people in Tamil Nadu. Offcourse this rocket was made in Sivakasi and it was an accident. It was a fire cracker. A simple fire cracker can make big accidents like this.

    But whole world is crying that Hamas fired 7000 rockets and killed innocent civilians and Isrealis are defending thier nation by killing thousands. What a crap man.

    If you are comparing the Sivakasi rocket with the Hamas's rocket, I can only sympathize with you. You certainly need to learn a lot--atleast the definition of 'Rocket' or 'Terrorists'.



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  • abcdgc
    12-27 02:02 AM
    It is my reading that if India performs surgical strikes on the terrorist camps in Pakistan, Pakistan will not be able to do anything because according to Pakistan, there are no terrorist camps, so how can someone bomb a camp if that camp doesn't exist.

    I think US has told Gilani and Zardari not to respond if India conducts 1-2 surgical strikes. But Kaayani wants to respond. That's why Musharraf is making public statements saying that - if India strikes, "Democratically elected" President & PM will take steps to respond. Musharraf is putting the onus to respond on Zardari and Gilani. They do not want to respond. But Kaayani will order a response anyways, without a go ahead from Zardari and Gilani. There is only 1 stading institution in Pakistan - its army. We have to dismatle Pakistani army and ISI, otherwise it will continue to breed & foster more terrorist.





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  • Macaca
    12-28 07:29 PM
    Flashy Office Space, Advertising India�s Allure (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/business/global/28sizzle.html) By VIKAS BAJAJ | New York Times

    A massive futuristic office complex is rising from a patch of spare, arid land here near the southern Indian city of Chennai. Six butterfly-shaped buildings dock like spacecraft to two long metal-latticed terminals.

    About 12,000 people already work at the campus, being built by India�s largest technology company, Tata Consultancy Services. It eventually will have space for 24,000 of Tata�s nearly 180,000 employees.

    Meanwhile Infosys, one of Tata�s biggest competitors, has added a corporate campus for 15,000 employees with buildings that resemble the Parthenon, the Coliseum and the Louvre�s glass pyramid. Infosys plans to build an additional 10 million square feet of custom office space by mid-2012, at various sites, adding 25,000 workers to its current 122,000.

    It is all part of a construction spree by India�s outsourcing companies, which are growing at a breakneck pace after the lull caused by the global financial crisis in 2008 and 2009.

    But the building boom is about more than making room for more workers.

    The outsourcing giants, which include Wipro and others, hope that architectural sizzle can help them compete for the nation�s top software programmers, while also burnishing their reputations with overseas clients and prospective customers.

    In this nation where world-class high-tech companies co-exist with urban slums and rural poverty, employers like Tata, Infosys and Wipro have set out to create avant-garde, environmentally smart corporate sanctuaries.

    And even if some architects and critics complain about the wisdom and taste of the efforts, the executives behind the building boom say their ambitious projects put a modern face on Indian business.

    T. V. Mohandas Pai, a director at Infosys, which has 15 campuses around India, said his company�s eclectic mix of designs from all over the world reflected this nation�s inclusive sensibility. �One singular thing is monotonous,� he said. �In India, we are a colorful people.�

    Like China a decade earlier, India appears to be at that phase of economic development where buildings are meant to help advertise the nation�s arrival on the world stage. But unlike China, where the government and state-owned corporations took the lead, private companies in India have headed the charge � not the government, which struggles to execute even basic construction projects.

    And within India�s business world, technology companies have been more adventurous than others, perhaps because of their outsize financial success and their need to hire tens of thousands of workers to write software for foreign clients. State and federal governments are aiding the effort by offering these companies generous tax incentives and choice pieces of real estate to build big campuses.

    Competition for employees is intense, because while India produces about 500,000 engineers every year, most colleges provide such poor education that the industry says that just a quarter of graduates are employable. But among those most qualified � typically graduates of elite places like the Indian Institutes of Technology and Birla Institute of Technology and Science � as many as 18 percent leave for other jobs every year. The outsourcing companies see lavish, environmentally friendly campuses as a way to help attract and retain the best and brightest workers.

    With their manicured lawns, power generators and lakes, the campuses are a noticeable improvement on most engineering colleges, which suffer from India�s standard infrastructure deficiencies � blackouts, water shortages and poor maintenance.

    �I prefer a big campus,� said Aditya Mathur, a software engineer, 23, who joined Wipro a year ago, and now works at a four-year-old office in Gurgaon, south of New Delhi, as a software tester. �The facilities are better in a big campus.�

    Tata Consultancy Services � or T.C.S., as the company is known � is spending $200 million on its Siruseri campus and has hired the Uruguayan-born Canadian architect Carlos A. Ott, who designed the opera house on the Place de la Bastille in Paris. The company is also building big campuses in Ahemdabad, Pune, Calcutta and Hyderabad.

    But some critics say that too many of the industry�s new complexes are intended to make a big splash without much thought of how they will function and fit into the local surroundings.

    �It is a haphazard reaching for something that will quickly make a statement about the place being world class,� said Himanshu Burte, an architecture critic who writes frequently for Indian newspapers.

    But Rahul Mehrotra, a prominent architect who has designed an office building for Hewlett-Packard in Bangalore, the city at the heart of India�s technology industry, argued that rather than being outr�, too many Indian tech campuses had a hackneyed feel, evoking the sprawling suburban campuses of Silicon Valley or American companies like Google and Apple.

    �The architecture in these cases symbolizes the fact that these are places of outsourcing, not cutting-edge research,� said Mr. Mehrotra, who lives in Mumbai and Boston.

    Mr. Pai of Infosys said he was unconcerned about such criticism. He said the people who mattered to the company � employees and customers � raved about its buildings, particularly those that resembled landmarks like the Coliseum at its new campus in the city of Mysore. �They like the fact that it�s so diverse,� he said.

    Infosys probably set the standard for ambitious corporate campuses in India more than a decade ago. Many other companies grew helter-skelter wherever they could find space. But Infosys started building large complexes, beginning with its first campus on the southern edge of Bangalore, its home city, in 1995, just a few years after India started to open its economy to the rest of the world.

    That first campus, which, after many expansions, can now accommodate 24,000 people, was considered cutting-edge for creating an ordered oasis of lawns and lakes in the midst of the urban chaos that envelops most commercial areas in India. The complex also established the company�s quirky style � with a glass pyramid for an auditorium and a building that resembles a washing machine � and helped set a benchmark for big campuses in the technology industry.

    Mr. Pai, who determined the overall layout of the campuses with the company�s chairman, N. R. Narayana Murthy, said Infosys was determined to make every new campus �better than our last campus.�

    Their rules include the tenet that no two buildings should look alike. Another audacious goal is that every campus should become a �carbon sink� in the next five years. In other words, trees, lakes and other natural features should absorb more carbon than is generated by the campus.

    Some other firms, like Wipro, tend to be more understated, opting for standard-looking office buildings. But even these companies have trademark causes. Wipro prides itself on minimizing the use of power and, especially, water. It recycles water and creates lakes to harvest the rain. At one of its campuses in Bangalore, a training center appears to float on one of these reservoirs.

    T.C.S., based in Mumbai, has long had significant operations in and around Chennai, the city formerly known as Madras, which is on the Bay of Bengal. But N. Chandrasekaran, chief executive of T.C.S., said the company previously had too many buildings arbitrarily sprinkled around that region.

    The new Siruseri campus, 18 miles south of Chennai, is meant to help consolidate some of those outposts and give employees a sense of place and pride of ownership. �We had multiple buildings and we felt that we should have a campus where employees will feel empowerment, will feel good about working,� he said �and at the same time we have a place to host clients.�

    For at least some employees, the plan seems to be succeeding.

    Deenathajalan Sugumar, who works in production support, recently moved to the new T.C.S. campus in Siruseri from a smaller building in Chennai. He gushed about the campus, even though he now commutes by a company bus for more than an hour every day, more than double his previous travel time.

    �It�s my home,� Mr. Sugumar, 24, said. �It�s my company.�


    The Outsourcing Battle (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/12/28/business/global/20101228-sizzle-ss.html) New York Times



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  • navin2004
    05-24 09:04 AM
    http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/05/23/dobbs.may24/index.html?section=cnn_topstories


    This is an excerpt from the above article.

    "Illegal aliens are more important to this Congress than securing our borders and our ports, more important than those legal immigrants who have waited in line and who follow the law. The Senate has added to the litany of lunacy that makes up what it calls reform: Illegal aliens would only have to pay back taxes on three of the past five years, they will not be prosecuted for felonies such as identity theft or purchasing or using fraudulent Social Security cards, and unlike millions of visa holders who have to leave the country to have them renewed, they may simply remain in the United States while this Congress and this president give away all the benefits and privileges of American citizenship."





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  • axp817
    03-26 03:38 PM
    If they continue to see in 140 filings by a company that there has been more 140's filed then people on payroll

    That is precisely why smaller companies choose to revoke the 140 when an employee leaves them while the 485 is still pending.

    It isn't always to "get back" at the employee.

    That being said, UN, I would love to hear your thoughts on this situation,

    Person leaves employer X (140 approved, more than 180 days since 485 filing, etc.) and joins employer Y on EAD (under AC21).

    Employer X revokes 140 so as to not run into any issues like you pointed out. Nothing personal against the employee, just business.

    That person after a while decides to go back to employer X (485 is still pending) under AC21.

    Does the USCIS look at that as okay to do? Or do they question the employer's intentions since the employer had earlier revoked the 140.

    Thanks in advance for sharing your opinion on this.



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  • Macaca
    12-28 06:29 PM
    China's Sudan Predicament (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-lauria/chinas-sudan-predicament_b_801655.html) By Joe Lauria | Huffington Post

    The age of ideology in China may soon be ending. Caught between its longstanding opposition to independence movements worldwide and its expanding economic interests, Beijing finds itself remarkably choosing to court a separatist government in south Sudan.

    The south is scheduled to vote on January 9 on independence from Khartoum after 43 years of civil war that left more than 2 million people dead. The referendum is still uncertain amid fears of a new war. But if the vote goes ahead, the south is overwhelmingly expected to break the continent's biggest nation in two.

    China has long had substantial investments in all of Sudan, the most of any foreign country. It has a 40% stake in the oil industry and 60% of Sudan's oil is exported to China. To protect those interests Beijing has supported Khartoum in the U.N. Security Council over separatist movements in Darfur and, until recently, in the south.

    That was consistent with China's opposition at the U.N. to separatist movements elsewhere in the world, such as in Kosovo and East Timor. The aim has been to give no encouragement to Taiwan and its own restive minorities in Tibet and Xinjiang. Those independence movements are watching what China does abroad. Taiwan, notably, was among the first countries to recognize Kosovo.

    Until early this year, China steadfastly opposed southern independence in Sudan too. But China saw the writing on the wall in Juba and was faced with a choice: either risk emboldening its domestic independence movements or its oil investments in the south, where 80% of the country's petroleum is found.

    "Khartoum had insisted that they alone were the interlocutor on oil for a long time and the Chinese respected that," said Fabienne Hara, an Africa specialist at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. Khartoum awarded China's four oil concessions. But by 2007 the south Sudanese realized they needed China if they were to become independent and the Chinese realized they might soon need an independent south Sudan too, if the oil went with it. "It is pragmatism. I don't think anyone believes that the referendum process can be stopped," Hara said.

    China opened a consulate in Juba, the south's capital, a normally unusual move for Beijing in a place that wants to break away. Chinese Communist Party officials routinely visit the south. Southern leader Salva Kiir has twice visited China.

    But Beijing must walk a fine line between courting the south and not alienating the north. It still has major business there, including arms sales and infrastructure projects. Li Baodong, China's U.N. ambassador, told me that Beijing is clearly trying to stay on good terms with both sides.

    "We respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of this country, any argument amongst themselves, that's their internal affairs and we are not getting into it," Li said. "Whatever the choice the people make, we will respect that."

    Oil revenue is currently shared 50-50 between north and south under the 2005 peace deal that set up the referendum. It is pumped from the south through the north in a 1,000-mile Chinese-financed pipeline to a Chinese-built refinery in Port Sudan on the Red Sea, where it is shipped.

    How to share this oil in an independent south Sudan is still one of the trickiest questions the two sides, under the mediation of Thabo Mbeki, are trying to work out. Other issues under discussion are the border, sharing water and what to do with Abeyi. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir warned of war if these issues aren't worked out by Jan. 9.

    The south would likely enrage Khartoum if it were to find a way to get the oil out bypassing the north altogether. With Chinese help, this may one day happen.

    Kenyan officials have been studying a pipeline and refinery project from south Sudan to the port of Lamu on the Indian Ocean coast. The Kenyan Transport Ministry has sought bids for the project. According to China Daily, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and Chinese President Hu Jintao discussed China's commitment to build the $16 billion project last May in Shanghai. China is conducting a feasibility study, according to Kenyan media.

    I asked Ali Karti, the Sudanese foreign minister, about how his government would react to such a project. "We have our own oil," he said, adding, "That project will never be built."

    Adopting a Western business mentality, in which profit and economic growth are often the only tenets, has launched China into a head-on collision with some of its traditional policies, said Dru Gladney, an expert on Chinese minorities at Pomona College in California.

    China has always portrayed itself as a leader of developing countries, but its own rapid development has changed its relationship with the developing world, he said. "Encouraging a so-called separatist movement is one that is going to complicate that position very much," he said.

    "It is a delicate issue for China. It is a very important development that China is seriously considering going against its 50-year long policy of non-intervention," Gladney told me.

    China has apparently calculated that it can suppress its own separatists while courting separatists in Sudan, he said. "Chinese separatists are going to recognize that China first and foremost is very pragmatic, that its development and national self-interest is clearly taking precedence over ideology in China today."

    "They may take some encouragement from it, but I don't think they really will take it that China is changing its position on separatism, especially within China," Gladney said.

    He expects Beijing to crack down on separatists at home while making deals with them abroad. "It's whichever cat catches mice and in this case the cat that supports a separatist, Christian group will catch more mice for China," Gladney said.





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  • pmb76
    07-14 04:29 AM
    IV core,

    Pani's letter completely undermines IV's initiatives. IV has to move in one single direction not in 10. If this guy wants to send a letter he should not be allowed to send it using IV's banner. Please request this guy to either stop this letter campaign or NOT use IV's name. I do not understand how jokers like Pani are tolerated by IV. IV must disown this guy and his dangerous campaign.



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  • Refugee_New
    01-06 02:41 PM
    Yes, they definitely have...Hamas should stop using school kids as human shield before complaining. Heres link for you - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elyXQ6g-TJs

    You just go and see this video. Sent by some tamil media.

    http://kalaiy.blogspot.com/2009/01/you-tube.html





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  • sledge_hammer
    12-17 04:14 PM
    I too will post something funny :)

    <object width="340" height="285"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/3VJrXo5zGNk&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/3VJrXo5zGNk&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="340" height="285"></embed></object>



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  • rsdang
    08-22 11:56 AM
    One hand on steering wheel, one hand out of window.

    - Sydney



    One hand on steering wheel, one hand on horn

    - Japan



    One hand on steering wheel, one hand on newspaper, foot solidly on accelerator...

    - Boston



    Both hands on steering wheel, eyes shut, both feet on brake, quivering in terror

    - New York



    Both hands in air, gesturing, both feet on accelerator, head turned to talk to someone in back seat

    - Italy



    One hand on horn,

    one hand greeting,

    one ear on cell phone,

    one ear listening to loud music,

    foot on accelerator,

    eyes on female pedestrians,

    conversation with someone in next car



    - Welcome to India!

    :D





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  • gcisadawg
    12-22 06:23 PM
    So tomorrow if I loose a job and kill someone considering responsible for it is justifiable? Where is the gray area?

    Dude, if you havent heard about it, it is already happening.
    http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/15/a-sad-day-in-silicon-valley/

    One the serious note, you didn't get the crux of my post. Read my previous reply to another poster.



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  • validIV
    06-25 01:46 PM
    I couldn't agree more. My first home is almost fully paid off. Peace of mind is a great thing.

    I will be happy owning one home. And hope to repay it off quickly so i dont have any BANK to answer to. Having a peace of mind that one day when i pay off the home nobody can kick me off my home for any reason is PRICELESS to me.

    It's not for my grandkids. Its for my wife and my kids when I retire.


    Owning 10 homes so that you can donate to your grandkids may be PRICELESS to you. I wish you the best.





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  • rbharol
    04-07 04:37 PM
    Is IV core planning to get in touch with Compete america to find what they
    think about this bill and what is their plan of action?





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  • sanju
    12-17 04:32 PM
    I told you guys.. This site name should. Now

    This guy seems seems to be an agent of some other site that wants us all to track fake data of others GCs, instead of working to eliminate the problem. Is thats why he is always putting labels on this forum?


    .





    Macaca
    05-29 08:22 PM
    The Newest Lobbying Tool: Underwear (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/28/AR2007052801091.html) By Cindy Skrzycki (http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/email/cindy+skrzycki/), Tuesday, May 29, 2007

    It was inevitable. In the Internet age, interest groups seeking influence in Washington are joining presidential candidates in discovering a new electronic tool to press their agenda: YouTube.

    "Send your underwear to the undersecretary'' urges the actress in the Competitive Enterprise Institute's stinging 66-second anti-regulatory video posted on YouTube, a free video-sharing site that is a subsidiary of Google. The video blames a 2001 Energy Department rule for an energy-efficiency standard that it says has made new models of washing machines more expensive while getting laundry less clean.

    The underwear video illustrates what other advocacy groups are finding out: YouTube is a cheap, creative way to get a message to a potentially vast audience. This slow migration is in addition to more traditional lobbying approaches, such as direct mail, Web sites and scripted phone calls to federal officials.

    "This is the next step,'' said Missi Tessier, a principal with the Podesta Group, a Washington lobbying firm. She said her company is working on a YouTube piece pushing for more federal funding for basic research for one client, the Science Coalition, a group of research universities. "We are always trying to find ways to get our message out.''

    Concerned Families for ATV Safety, which wants to keep children off all-terrain vehicles, turned to YouTube to lobby for more federal oversight at the agency and congressional level. One of the parents produced the video and posted it May 18.

    "We decided to put it on to raise awareness about how dangerous the machines are,'' said Carolyn Anderson of Brockton, Mass., who lost a son in an ATV accident and is a co-founder of the group.

    Some of the presidential candidates already have calculated that YouTube postings will reach the same younger audience that regularly visits social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. A few federal agencies have taken the plunge, too.

    Officials at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy said it expects its YouTube messages to be ridiculed, laughed at, remade and spoofed. And they are. Its anti-drug message is also reaching the right demographic.

    The Consumer Product Safety Commission realizes that YouTube would be a great way to broadcast product recall and safety messages, though it has not produced a video for it.

    "There are a tremendous amount of people who use that Web site,'' said Scott Wolfson, an agency spokesman. "But we worried about the integrity of the message being changed by users.''

    The YouTube audience hardly seems like a demographic that would be interested in washing-machine efficiency. Still, the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute, which opposes energy-saving fluorescent bulbs and increasing the gas mileage of cars and trucks, has 43 videos on the site. Many of them are snippets of speeches and testimony with few user "hits."

    And then there's the underwear video.

    "We figured we would try a very fast, inexpensive campaign that would go viral," said Sam Kazman, general counsel at the CEI and head of its Death by Regulation project. The video went up May 16 and had 1,306 hits in the first week, a respectable showing, especially considering the subject matter.

    Kazman said the campaign cost virtually nothing. He wrote the script and one employee did the acting and another filmed it.

    The CEI Web site links to the video and to a June Consumer Reports magazine article that rated top- and front-loading washing machines for energy efficiency and performance. The magazine found that since the Energy Department issued an efficiency rule in 2001, the performance of various machines has varied widely.

    "Not so long ago, you could count on most washers to get your clothes very clean," the article says. "Not anymore. Our latest tests found huge performance differences among machines. Some left our stain-soaked swatches nearly as dirty as they were before washing. For best results, you'll have to spend $900 or more.''

    Kazman, who said he owns a 21-year-old Whirlpool washing machine, took this as confirmation that predictions his group made in 2001, that the rule would wreck a "low-priced, dependable home appliance," have come true.

    The manufacturers of home appliances, energy-efficiency groups and regulators who are being mocked in the video disagree.

    Celia Kuperszmid Lehrman, deputy home editor at Consumer Reports, said the underwear campaign takes the ratings out of context. "We support energy standards for washing machines,'' she said. "There are alternatives that will wash as well as older machines. They cost more to buy but not to operate."

    "I think it's obnoxious; I don't think this dog barks,'' said Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project in Boston, a coalition of industry, consumer, environmental and state interests.

    DeLaski, who was involved in the negotiations that led to the 2001 rule, said it was expected at the time that prices would go up but that consumers would save on utility bills.

    "That's a regulation working pretty damn well," he said, adding that consumers can expect to save $80 annually on utility bills with the new models.

    Michael McCabe, a senior engineer at the Energy Department, said that nine out of 10 models Consumer Reports tested are in the price range the department predicted when it issued the rule, an extra $250.

    On the underwear front, Kazman said he sent his own (clean) underwear to the Energy Department. The department said the mailbox of Undersecretary Dennis R. Spurgeon is still empty.

    Kazman blamed the late delivery on another government policy, which subjects packages to irradiation.





    mariner5555
    04-22 03:52 PM
    this is from schiller ..an economist ..I am sure he knows more about housing than others ..I guess this is a worse case scenario (if not the worst).

    http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080422/economy_shiller.html?.v=2
    ----
    Economist cautions housing slump could exceed drop of the Great Depression, require bailouts

    NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) -- An influential economist who long predicted the housing market bubble cautioned Tuesday that the slump in the U.S. housing market could cause prices to fall more than they did in the Great Depression and bailouts will be needed so millions don't lose their homes.

    Yale University economist Robert Shiller, pioneer of the widely watched Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index, said there's a good chance housing prices will fall further than the 30 percent drop in the historic depression of the 1930s. Home prices nationwide already have dropped 15 percent since their peak in 2006, he said.

    "I think there is a scenario that they could be down substantially more," Shiller said during a speech at the New Haven Lawn Club.

    Shiller's Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index is considered a strong measure of home prices because it examines price changes of the same property over time, instead of calculating a median price of homes sold during the month.

    Shiller, who admitted he has a reputation for being bearish, said real estate cycles typically take years to correct.

    Home prices rose about 85 percent from 1997 to 2006 adjusted for inflation, the biggest national housing boom in U.S. history, Shiller said.

    "Basically we're in uncharted territory," Shiller said. "It seems we have developed a speculative culture about housing that never existed on a national basis before."

    Many people became convinced that housing prices would increase 10 percent annually, a notion Shiller called crazy.



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