When running into a bout of cognitive dissonance, the choices seem to be: sit and think it through; or shout slogans and ignore the contradiction. I have long held opinions on trade that border on the mercantilist. While puttering about, I spotted a box of “Royal Tea” sitting atop my refrigerator. Putting a kettle on, I got together the things I’d need, and waited for the water to boil. That’s when I started thinking about the items I’d gathered.
And the tea leaves say…
Despite the Cyrillic letters on one side and the Imperial Russian motifs (including portraits of Nicky II and his Tsarina), the tea had probably never been to Russia. It was Ceylon tea from Sri Lanka imported by way of a company in Sacramento. The kettle had been made by robots in Japan and ordered via computer. The teacups were actually crafted by Russian hands. The spoon was one of thousands stamped out en masse in China. The gas I was burning probably came out of a fracking well in this country, but not from anywhere near as close as the honey, which was collected at a maple farm two counties over. But I didn’t go there to get it. Even that was shipped in to my local store. All while I sat on my fat ass complaining how this country doesn’t make anything anymore.
I composed a quip to share with the Glibertariat, with the ending being a play on the line “It’s good to be the King.” While I cleaned up the wording and contemplated the response I’d get from known personalities, the dissonance set in. While some people far richer than I hollered about the ‘evils’ of capitalism elsewhere, I was contemplating a cup of tea. Aside from the fact that it needed more honey, the mere fact that it was in my hands at that moment was a silent testament to the good of capitalism. More specifically, the fruits of trade. I will still argue that Ricardo was wrong regarding comparative advantage (because he was), and I still hold that it is better to be the producer and seller of goods than the buyer. But these are details of nuance, separated from the base principle that it’s good to be a capitalist.
My gut instinct is to argue against international trade. But that is a response born of emotion and not rational reflection. Too many people I know tell the same story – their job went away but their family is still here. It was my tale, too. I ended up in the Civil Service because there was nothing else around. Everything was being made overseas. Why was it cheaper to ship halfway around the globe than build locally? Many here will reflexively blame government. That, too, is an emotional response. While not completely false, it carries the same danger of becoming over-simplified dogma as blaming the corporation. The company that had sent my last job overseas had been skirting bankruptcy because it had decayed into a bloated, inefficient conglomerate with scads of redundant departments duplicating the same functions. So, they had to restructure or die. Bye upstate New York, hello Mumbai. This was not the fault of the government who had chased out the other opportunities.
Did (relatively) free trade cost me a job?
Yes.
Should I be bitter?
Not unless I forget to add enough honey to this cup of tea, I wouldn’t even have tea without the same.
Sloopy couldn’t make it in this morning, so I will be defiling his links page in his absence.
First up, SPORTS update, my local team served batting practice for the Marlins. Wow, that Ozuma ball got out of there in a hurry. In much better news, the Firstros continue to embarrass the hated Rangers. Nothing will be said of the NBA. NOTHING! Also, apparently the Orioles and BoSox are having some sort of rivalry. Earl Weaver thinks the current O’s manager is a pansy.
Athletic endurance in a pill? Yes please. I will be doping and winning the local Turkey Trot. Even if they disqualify me. They can keep the medal, I’ll keep the pictures (proof!)
I am betting on Republicans crapping the bed in today’s healthcare debate. These guys could fuck up the procession at a single car funeral.
A great article about a bunch of spy organizations and their trainees (all grown men — yes it matters — you’ll see) getting taken by a con artist. It will surprise no one here, that the con has Florida ties. My doubt at the CIA’s ability is certainly coming to a middle.
Good Odin’s day, fair commenters. I bring you the freshest of links pulled from the sea and slapped down–still wriggling–on your monitors.
American flights might not cost an arm and a leg, but they’d be more comfortable with fewer appendages
As if American flights weren’t bad enough already.
Taiwan moved up six spots on the World Press Freedom Index to #45! Oh, wait. It’s just because everyone else got worse this year, not because they actually improved. For reference the US is #43 (full list here). North Korea is unsurprisingly dead last.
The following article is adapted and abridged from a term paper I submitted for a Port Logistics and Management Course back in 2015. If anyone is interested in seeing the full article or a complete list of references, just ask. For obvious structural reasons, rather than stick with my original footnote format, I will be linking directly to the references where appropriate (but not linking to the same article multiple times).
Legislative Hurdles To National Security In The Civil Maritime Domain
The goal of this paper is to examine the potential costs and benefits of repealing the Jones Act and similar associated regulations. Not in a strictly economic sense looking at the potential trade [im]balances, but more focused on the security aspects originally envisioned by the act and how relevant they remain nearly a century later and how they could potentially be improved for a net gain for the operators, government, and taxpayers. A strictly economic consideration of the impact of rescinding the Jones Act previously published estimates a minimum net gain of approximately $700 million annually. [NOTE: This is an excellent, well-researched paper on the whole – although if anything it’s a little conservative on the economic benefits re: Alaska and Hawaii. It also makes some good points re: previous deregulation of the trucking and rail industries and economic growth that followed as examples. Recommended reading!]
Although the Jones Act is the most well-known regulation limiting players in domestic water-borne trade, it is just one of a number of over-reaching regulations, which operate in concert to limit economic opportunities and growth – while similarly acting as potential barriers to improving national security options. Upon closer consideration, legislation affecting the Jones Act alone will not in and of itself resolve some of the most pressing long-term national security considerations.
To begin with, it is necessary to define the specific characteristics of the Jones Act and the associated pieces of legislation to be discussed below.
Merchant Marine Memorial
The Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (46 USC), also known as the Jones Act. This piece of legislation is centered on domestic commercial shipping utilizing the common term of cabotage. Specifically, the Jones Act placed formal restrictions on the nature of all vessels engaged in trade on US waterways and between domestic ports. This trade can only be conducted by vessels constructed, owned, and flagged in the United States registry and all crew must be US citizens. The definition of domestic ports includes not only facilities in Hawaii and Alaska, but also the territories of Guam and Puerto Rico – although additional territories such as the Virgin Islands and Greater Marianas islands have been granted waivers. Additionally, the Jones Act grants specific rights and privileges to seamen employed by US carriers.
The Merchant Marine Act of 1936 (46 USC 27) – contrary to popular belief regarding the Jones Act – in part due to its official title, this piece of legislation formally created a National Merchant Marine service for the United States – a formal federal service auxiliary that could be called upon to support national defense for transportation/logistics purposes in time of war or critical need – while the vessels themselves were owned and operated by private interests.
The Tariff Act of 1930 (19 CFR 1466) – a subordinate portion of the overarching Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 specifically addresses limitations regarding the repair and refurbishment of Jones Act-qualified vessels. Excepting emergencies, only minor repairs are permitted in non-US shipyard facilities and operators violating this provision are required to pay a 50% tax on all work-related expenses.
The Maritime Security Program (MSP) of 1996 (46 CFR 296) – A program administered by the United States Maritime Administration (MARAD) providing funding to US flagged vessels in exchange for ensuring their availability for necessary military requirements in time of war or emergency.
The Military Cargo Preference Act of 1904 (10 USC 2631) requires all military materiel owned or procured by the military services of the United States to be transported by US flagged vessels where possible.
In the cases of most pieces of legislation, including the sample posted above, it is possible to amend portions of the regulations without discarding the full law, but in many of these cases, we have reached a position in which it is significantly more beneficial to scrap the entirety of the regulation.
2. Specific Limitations Associated with Crewing Practices on US-Flagged Vessels
A study by Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) on behalf of MARAD conducted a survey of US-flagged operators and non-US-flagged operators in order to determine the primary disparities in operating costs. The primary determination was that the largest delta in expenses came from crewing costs. Under the Jones Act, all vessels involved in cabotage and coast-wise trade must employ all US citizens. That in and of itself is not particularly surprising given that the vast majority of the cabotage trade takes place on the inland waters of the United States, including the Great Lakes. Somewhat more eye-opening is that, under the current regulations, every ship registered and flagged by the United States must demonstrate a 100% Citizen Crew Requirement, even those involved solely in international trade.
Unsurprisingly, this policy is considered by a majority of commercial carriers to be a significant barrier to flagging a ship under the United States registry. Not only is the pool of available employees significantly smaller – or shallower in this case – but the costs are vastly higher. Between cost of living expenses, standard wages, insurance rates – inflated by Jones Act protections and benefits, and union fees, the average crewing cost of a US flagged vessel is well over five times as much as a comparable non-US-flagged vessel.
There is one major counter to this policy, and it does provide an interesting contrast to the current civil regulations.Both the US Navy and US Coast Guard allow (and have allowed since their inception) non-citizens to serve in enlisted roles throughout their surface forces. This practice has multiple benefits not limited to providing an accelerated path to citizenship for qualified legal permanent residents (aka the kind of legal immigration we should continue to encourage), in addition to providing a steady source of ready, willing and able seamen to fill critical billets on all surface vessels.
Although this has been a longstanding practice in the sea services (and likewise all the other military services), there has never been an outcry against volunteer non-citizen permanent resident service members taking away jobs and pay from citizens. Traditionally permanent residents have strong ties to their communities locally wherever they are stationed – and the salary they receive would traditionally not leave the country aside from the case of remittances sent overseas in support of family. Accordingly, it is difficult to envision any real loss of capital were all other Merchant Marine jobs opened to qualified, eligible, non-citizens and the Citizen Crew requirement for US flagged vessels rescinded.
2. Continued Specific Limitations Associated with Crewing Practices on US-Flagged Vessels
An additional consideration in terms of lowering overall crew expenses is to re-examine the insurance requirements and labor union policies enforced by the Jones Act and similar pieces of legislation. As in many other industries over the past few years, the evolving nature of operations has reduced the need for the union coverage and assistance. Since the advent of the law – and increasingly rapidly in part due to containerization (beginning in the early ’50s) and more recent safety features introduced, the environment aboard vessels at sea has grown considerably safer and less hazardous on the whole – while specific vessel-types and operations obviously remain inherently risky by the nature of their locations and missions. On a ship as anywhere else in our progressively more wired world, the optics of hazardous operations or personnel accidents are nearly instantaneously visible to newsrooms and shareholders alike – increasing the incentive to prioritize crew safety over equipment and profits. Under the Jones Act however, a crewman retains the right to sue the carrier employing them – a practice which has raised insurance rates for US-flagged carriers far above the international average.
Northeast Marine Pilot boat docked in Newport, RI
One response to this may be found in a report made by the Cedar River Group on behalf of the Washington State Legislature. This report was commissioned to examine the cost differentials to the state between state employees covered by the Jones Act working on Washington State Ferries and those other state employees covered by state Industrial Insurance. The case of Washington state is unique compared to the other states operating state ferry systems (including Texas, North Carolina, Oregon, Alaska, and New York) because Washington alone has chosen not to invoke sovereign immunity and can therefore be sued by Jones Act eligible employees. In a detailed summary, the numbers presented demonstrate that covering Jones Act eligible seamen by state Industrial Insurance would save the state money over the court costs and lawsuits brought under the Jones Act, but would also benefit the employees by providing insurance benefits in a far timelier manner than following the long wait associated with a lawsuit. While the total dollar amount a seaman will receive may be less, the utility of receiving regular payments in a timely manner is far higher.
While this solution would not currently be relevant to a private firm engaged in similar operations, the numbers do provide a valuable, practical, realistic sampling to use for comparison. This is the sort of precedent that could be used to demonstrate adequate coverage and model updated insurance costs should the Jones Act be revised to better meet current national requirements. It must be noted however, that all the forecast estimates were based on pre-existing cases and developed prior to full passage and implementation of the Affordable Care Act – a key variable which will require additional review.
I gotta be honest with you. I usually hate the NBA playoffs. They’re predictable and nobody plays defense. But this year…damn. That Celtics-Bullets game last night was something. And I get to follow it up tonight by watching the Pens-Caps and Rockets-Spurs matchups in games that will be really important in how those series develop.
Anyway, there’s your sports update. Oh, yeah. Racist assholes exist in Boston and they go to sporting events. Whodathunkit, right? How about everybody that’s ever been to a sporting event in Boston knew it. Actually, anybody that’s ever been to a bar in Boston knew it.
Let me think here…ooh, I’ve got it. “Cock holster!”
Stephen Colbert unleashes a vicious verbal attack on President Trump, including the use of a homophobic slur. I wonder why he didn’t Godwin. These people usually Godwin when they go this berserk. Also, can you imagine the rage on the left and accusations of racism had there been 1/4 the invective hurled at Obama by a TV host? The amount of shit filled-pants could fill FedEx field.
Hello, my name is UnCivilServant, and I have a problem with Plastic Crack – I simply don’t have enough time to assemble and paint the thousands of dollars worth of miniatures I’ve acquired. But that is not important right now. What’s important is that the latest entry in the long-running Warhammer 40k video game series Dawn of War has recently dropped. The first entry was released way back when I was still in college, and I own the whole set. It was the gateway by which I took up the tabletop game. Entries came out fairly regularly until Dawn of War II: Retribution. After which things went quiet, and the publisher THQ went bankrupt. Not because of Dawn of War, but because the people running the company were a bunch of gits.
For those of you unfamiliar with Warhammer, here is a quick exposition dump of backstory. In the beginning, there was a company that made miniatures for fantasy roleplaying games. Citadel looked at their books and went “We need to find a way to sell more miniatures.” Someone had the idea of writing a ruleset to fight tabletop battles with their miniatures. And thus Warhammer Fantasy Battles was born. People who wanted to have bigger armies would have to buy more miniatures, and most of their existing stock could be worked into the product line. At some point around here, Citadel changed their name to Games Workshop but kept the brand for some of their products, like paint.
So they looked at their books and said: “We need to find a way to sell more miniatures.” Someone had the idea of “Let’s do more Warhammer, but IN SPACE!” And so Warhammer 40,000 was born. Being the eighties, there was a lot of cocaine-fueled insanity included, including outright rip-offs of other works given a new coat of Citadel paint, and it was good. Over the years they fed the Space Dwarfs to the Space Bugs and introduced the Space Weaboo Communists, but it developed an aesthetic distinct and yet familiar.
So they looked at their books and said: “We need to find a way to sell more miniatures.” Someone had the idea of licensing their totally original and not a shameless amalgam of ideas to these newfangled video game producers. After all, gamers were the same geeks who buy their main product lines, so there was money to be had. And if there is anything Games Workshop likes, it’s money. Dawn of War was not the first of these titles. But it is a contender for having the most entries. It depends on how you count expansions and DLCs.
Let’s get to talking about this particular entry.
I open it up and find out that the opening cinematic was used as the announcement trailer. Disappointing, but it’s still fun to watch an Imperial Knight knock a Wraithknight off its feet like a linebacker that took a wrong turn and broke a referee in half. And then it asks me to either sign in to or create a Relic account. Being an antisocial git, I refuse and see if there’s a way to ignore it. Fortunately, this proved to be optional, and it hasn’t asked me again. Finding out there was a tutorial, I decided to start there. I always play the tutorial missions as it gives me an idea of the developer’s attitudes. We start out telling some Blood Ravens to wander about.
After bossing around the generic, nameless tactical and scout marines for a bit, I get told to summon Gabriel Angelos to the battle. Gabe first appeared way back in the original Dawn of War. Where he proceeded to make an awful mess of things that the Imperial Guard had to come in and clean up. To be fair, he did try to make things right, but he got beat down by the mess he made. But since he was the last Captain left not interred in a Dreadnought or self-demoted to the chaplaincy, he became Chapter Master by default. Anyway, we teleport him in and he arrives wearing a shiny suit of Cataphractii armor – and he’s freaking huge! Now Cataphractii armor is bulky, but this is not Cataphractii big, he’s the size of an original XBox. Compare him to the regular tactical marines:
I mean his head is bigger than their helmets. He’s supposed to be able to wear that same armor.
I thought maybe this was part of the new visual direction for the game. Make the hero units bigger so they stand out. But here’s the Eldar hero:
She’s the same size as the rest of her people.
Maybe the artists Relic hired mistook Gabe for an Ork. Orks do allot authority by size, so it’s perfectly reasonable for Gorgutz to be three times the height of the boyz around him.
This Git – Gorgutz
Since I brought them up, let’s talk about the Space Elves and Space Orks. The Eldar are like politicians, they lie and change sides so much that no one trusts them. They’ve even been known to lie when the truth would have worked better. They also have a tendency to get eaten by a Chaos god after they die, so it evens out. The Orks are the exact opposite. They are direct – engineered for fighting they’re happy to fight anybody, including each other. There is one batch of Orks stuck on a Daemon world that gets resurrected each morning to fight an eternal battle against the native inhabitants. They’ve gone to Orky heaven.
A thousand words in and I now get to the game proper. Outside of the fact that Gabe is fuckoff huge and somehow able to make giant leaps in Cataphractii armor (a suit which in the tabletop has the special rule “Slow and Purposeful”), I haven’t yet really had much to complain about. The first real irritant was in finding that you get one active campaign at a time. To start from scratch you have to delete the existing one. But there is not much reason to do so, since you can replay levels at will, and your advances are independent of the campaign. Indeed you can even get them through skirmish and multiplayer games. This still irritates me. It means that if you have a computer shared between more than one person, they don’t get to keep separate save games and thus separate progress. I don’t personally have this problem now, but I remember when I did.
Anyway, on to the campaign. The next irritant is that it is only one unified campaign that rotates between factions. It had started with the cycle “Space Marine – Ork – Eldar” but on chapter seven, it skipped Space Marine and went to Ork. So I’m not even sure if there is a pattern. You can’t play just a Space Marine campaign or just and Ork campaign. The story bounces around between the factions and you have to play the other guys to unlock the next mission for your chosen group. Fortunately, it doesn’t pretend to be anything but linear. Despite being called a “Campaign Map” in the game, here is what pops up:
The units depicted change by which faction the selected mission is for.
Each of those flags is either a mission color coded to the faction or a cinematic. It’s not so bad since they admit it’s linear and don’t try to pretend otherwise. The interface remains consistently meh as we progress through the mission briefing to choosing which elite units we’ll be able to deploy.
I have no idea where this room is.
The screen is not terribly intuitive, and it took a while to figure out how to unlock the other elite options for each faction. Definitely a place for improvement. We’re finally to the gameplay proper. Base building is back, but there is a dearth of defensive turrets. And they screwed up the cover system. I didn’t want to complain about the bubble system, but there’s not even an in-game excuse for capturable cover locations. Earlier incarnations had dynamic cover systems where objects on the field could be used depending on where the enemy was. Now you have to capture a cover point, and it soaks up some incoming ranged damage. Anything else on the battlefield is just there to obstruct movement. Bolt shells will fly through it without a problem – for the shooter at least.
The basics are stock standard RTS mechanics, with the attempts to be “more tactical” in terms of unit special abilities. The problem is the actual fights degrade into blobs of combatants. Figuring out who was in the correct position to use a special ability tactically is not terribly straightforward, so it ends up being hero abilities and items like jump packs for mobility assists. Personally, I don’t take umbrage at it, as even in earlier iterations I found that problems went away when locally overwhelming numbers were applied to the enemy positions.
Why yes, I am an Imperial Guard player in tabletop 40k, why do you ask?
The story is well, no more or less deep than other Dawn of War titles. The voice acting is middle of the road to decent. The change in voice actors for Gabe from the previous game is the most noticeable. But it’s not that the new guy is doing anything wrong, he just doesn’t sound right. In all, the game is just all right. The worst thing I can say about it is that it was too easy to get up and walk away. There have been times where I’ve had to call into work on the day after a release because I got hooked and could not rip myself away. There was no risk of that here. Given the addictiveness of other entries, this is a bit of a letdown. A low mark in the franchise, but not beyond salvation.
I give it seven of ten skulls for the skull throne.
I’m on my way to the dentist after this, so hopefully these won’t be quite as bad as having dental implements jammed in your mouth.
This will not be me
The Stupid party is on its way to unreservedly fucking up their first and second priorities. The second being a great example of Trump stumbling into being less wrong than the Legislative branch for horrible (to libertarians) reasons.
GE fixes flaw in power grid software that could allow any script kiddie to shut down sections of a grid. Safe software is kind of like safe cryptography, if the good (and not explicitly bad) guys aren’t allowed to mess with it, only bad guys will know how to break it.
Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Of all the great adventures that humanity can embark on in the near future, none has captured the popular imagination quite like space exploration. Since before the time that humanity launched the first artificial satellite, we have dreamed of what it might be like to set foot on other worlds. Where dreams lead, however, the bureaucrats are sure to be lurching close behind. Passing judgment and crafting policy has long been the pleasure of the professional statist. In man’s adventure into space, such a creature was given a rare gift: A virgin field, unframed by any law save those of nature. Before even the first V-1 was launched, there were those who contemplated both exploration and policy. Theodore von Kármán, one of the founders of Aerojet, an early rocket company, had this to say in 1942, just after the incorporation of the company, “Now, Andy, we will make the rockets – you must make the corporation and obtain the money. Later on you will have to see that we behave well in outer space…After all, we are the scientists but you are the lawyer, and you must tell us how to behave ourselves according to law and to safeguard our innocence.[i]” There were, at that time, no laws on the books to describe allowable action, inactions, and responsibilities that would accompany space flight. But in the next two decades, such a field would develop. Andrew Haley would be one of the main crafters of space law[ii], even coining a term for it, ‘metalaw.’
The laws that would be crafted were largely a creation of their time when the UN was paralyzed between cold warriors. As such, they are imbued with a certain neutrality and compromise. The most famous and overarching of these regulatory documents was the 1967 ‘Outer Space Treaty.’ This treaty laid down some basic conventions which are still honored today, such as Article V forbidding the placement of WMD’s in orbit, on the Moon, or in any sort of stationary platform or satellite. There are gaps, though; the treaty mentions WMD’s but not conventional weapons, so in theory, orbital bombardment is still allowed. Another gap in the treaty, one that is becoming increasingly relevant, is the use of resources in space. At the time the treaty was written, the idea of commercial entities who could perform their own launches or exploit resources was inconceivable. Now there are at least eighteen competing commercial space companies. That’s only counting ones working on launch vehicles. There are many other companies that specialize in other areas and more being created every day. That would come as a grand surprise to the many bureaucrats who were stuck in a binary view of policy, who could never imagine advances beyond what they saw before them. Even more pressing today: the treaty does not allow any nation to claim territory in space. The moon, asteroids, and all other stellar bodies are seen as communally owned and for the benefit of all mankind[iii]. That might come as news to the several space mining companies that are looking to exploit the potential trillions of dollars of precious metal and rare earth elements that are locked in the numerous asteroids in the solar system[iv].
Indeed, as much the way that regulators were unable to predict the rise of disruptive technology online or in new media, they were equally unable to foresee the rise of a whole industry based around the idea of exploiting the resources present in the solar system and beyond. In attempting to placate the powers of the time, they left no room for innovators to build on the fantastic possibilities of space exploration. This has meant that those who wish to dream of riches from beyond the world must go to antiquated documents written in a time before we had even set foot on the moon. Even when the push against regulation comes, one must also wonder how hard the early pioneers of space exploitation will try to close the door behind them in order to throttle competition. In a truly free market, companies would not have to go hat in hand to the national regulators to get launch permission, then comb the international laws looking for a loophole to exploit in their quest for mineral exploitation. Rather, it would only be a matter of capital investment and an entrepreneurial spirit that would lead the way. Of course, as the race for asteroid wealth increases pace it is certain that some enterprising person will find a way around the laws, even if it means approaching their state looking for succor to reach around international regulations.
Space is big, but governments currently control the sky that separates us from heavenly riches. There will undoubtedly come a time when the exploitation of space resources becomes a common practice. It is important for the allies of economic liberty to push for the reforms needed to open up a truly free market, so when that success comes, it will be that much harder for the bureaucrats to take the credit for the success that their laws would have nearly strangled in the crib.
________________________________________________ [i]Andrew G. Haley (1963) Space Law and Government, page xii, Appleton-Century-Crofts [ii] Daniel Lang and Brendan Gill (December 29, 1956) The Talk of the Town, “Metalaw”, The New Yorker, p. 19 [iii] Jennifer Frakes, (2003) The Common Heritage of Mankind Principle and the Deep Seabed, Outer Space, and Antarctica: Will Developed and Developing Nations Reach a Compromise? Wisconsin International Law Journal, 21, at 409 [iv] Webster, Ian “Asterank” Asterank
My gut instinct is to argue against international trade. But that is a response born of emotion and not rational reflection. Too many people I know tell the same story – their job went away but their family is still here. It was my tale, too. I ended up in the Civil Service because there was nothing else around. Everything was being made overseas. Why was it cheaper to ship halfway around the globe than build locally? Many here will reflexively blame government. That, too, is an emotional response. While not completely false, it carries the same danger of becoming over-simplified dogma as blaming the corporation. The company that had sent my last job overseas had been skirting bankruptcy because it had decayed into a bloated, inefficient conglomerate with scads of redundant departments duplicating the same functions. So, they had to restructure or die. Bye upstate New York, hello Mumbai. This was not the fault of the government who had chased out the other opportunities.
There is one major counter to this policy, and it does provide an interesting contrast to the current civil regulations. Both the US Navy and US Coast Guard allow (and have allowed since their inception) non-citizens to serve in enlisted roles throughout their surface forces. This practice has multiple benefits not limited to providing an accelerated path to citizenship for qualified legal permanent residents (aka the kind of legal immigration we should continue to encourage), in addition to providing a steady source of ready, willing and able seamen to fill critical billets on all surface vessels.
