Tech leaders stump for Lieberman

In some early maneuvering for the 2004 election, a group of technology executives and venture capitalists said Wednesday that they believe Sen. Joseph Lieberman is the best choice for president.

The group of 12 business leaders includes venture capitalist John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers and Handspring CEO Donna Dubinsky, both of whom endorsed the Connecticut Democrat when he was campaigning on the Democratic Party ticket with Al Gore in 2000.

"Among presidential candidates, Joe Lieberman is the leading champion of innovation and technology for all Americans," Doerr said in a statement. "Joe Lieberman gets it. He is a leader with high intellect, integrity and faith who truly understands how our innovation economy works. Opportunity and technology are at the center of Joe's economic revival plan to create jobs."

Doerr--whose legendary firm has invested in companies such as Sun Microsystems and Intuit, as well as less successful start-ups such as WebMD and teen site Kibu.com--was part of Lieberman's fund-raising network three years ago and is a reliable contributor to the Democratic Party.

Doerr appears on Mother Jones magazine's "Mother Jones 400" list of top political contributors, giving about $500,000 to Democratic Party causes during the two years before the 2000 election. In 2001 and 2002, Doerr gave a combined total of about $200,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Other Lieberman endorsers included Henry Samueli, chairman of Broadcom; Dan Scheinman, a vice president of Cisco Systems; and John Freidenrich of the Bay Partners venture capital firm.

"Joe Lieberman understands that encouraging innovation is the key that will unlock our country's economic future," said Handspring's Dubinsky. "He's been a tireless advocate for high tech as senator, and will continue those efforts as president."

Lieberman, a centrist Democratic, has received a life rating of 100 percent from the Information Technology Industry Council, which compiles lists of technology votes in Congress with an emphasis on trade. But in a 2000 Wired News scorecard that looked at broad attempts to regulate Internet activity and commerce, Lieberman received just 38 percent, the fifth-worst ranking.

In the run-up to the 2000 election, Lieberman sided with the tech industry on lifting the cap on H1-B visas, extending the moratorium on Internet taxes, extending the research and development tax credit, and promoting antispam legislation. But his views on censorship--mandating V-chips, labeling videos, rating videogames--were more controversial, and Lieberman's campaign was caught spamming earlier this year.

Other Democrats hoping to unseat President Bush in 2004 include Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, Al Sharpton, former Illinois Sen. Carole Moseley-Braun, and Vermont Gov. Howard Dean.

Seems like there is conspiracy to smear the US IT Workforce

The only reason why jobs are leaving the US is because of the high value of the US Dollar versus that of other currencies such as the rupee or yuan.

Further, most of the jobs I have personally seen taken by H1-Bers were mundane jobs such as, build engineer, IT technician, junior programmers. Most that I have worked with possessed only a BS degree.

For the most part the design and management was done by US IT workers. And by design I mean everything from programming achitecture, user-interface, database structure... and so on.

The out-sourcing and H1B effect is to reduce the number of full-time starting positions. It does not create opportunity in the US.

Further it perpetuates a second myth, that the US is losing it's technological competitiveness.

Most IT work (programming, design, development) is learned on the job. This is evidenced by the large number of developers that do not possess Computer Science degrees or who have been in the business since before the widespread adoption of modern programming techniques (Object Oriented Programming, IDE's and alike).

For the most part what I read in the press seems to be based lobbyist hype. Lobbyist hype that is geared toward fooling Congress into thinking we need more IT workers.

Although it is possible for H1-b worker to switch jobs. I have never seen an H1-ber do this. I have worked with about 100+ h1b workers in the last 10 years, not 1 ever switched. At the same time I have seen about half my US co-workers switch jobs.