JDPFu.com 2025

10 Open Source Software that you need

Ok, the USA is a nation of immigrants. My grandparents were not born in this country, yet both of my parents were able to go to college and almost all of their children did as well. Many of my cousins also went to college too. A few of my siblings have advanced degrees. Not bad for a family living in small-town North Dakota, if you ask me. I like immigrants with this caveat – legal immigrants. In fact, I worked for a company that was founded by a foreigner that hired both foreigners and US citizens. To my knowledge, each was in the USA legally and I have no reason to think they were not. I count them among my friends. These people were Egyptian, Israeli, Turkish, Chinese, Australian, Swedish, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Indian and from the USA.

But there are a few problems. Some would-be immigrants have been taking advantage of our country’s good nature. Our free public education for anyone, our free medical care for anyone in need, our country’s capitalistic ideals and our historical love for immigrants (US citizenship is available to anyone born on USA “soil”).

Now onto the thoughts … what ought to be changed to remove the incentives for illegal immigration and honestly to make that immigration difficult or impossible.

• Change the citizenship requirements such that only children born of parents (2) here legally are automatically USA citizens. Children born from a single citizen can stay, but only become citizens upon turning 18 and passing the normal citizenship exam. Children born here my illegal immigrants are exported with the parents to the parent’s country of origin.
• Remove the health care incentive. Triage is provided to all, but once stabilized, illegal immigrants are deplored to their country of origin.
• Remove the education incentive. If you aren’t here legally – parents and children, public education at any level is denied. That’s primary, secondary, and colleges, period. English as a second language classes are removed from all public institutions. Private schools are free to do as they like, of course, provided that no public funds are provided for those programs.
• Remove the ability to be employed illegally. Fine heavily any company who employs anyone here illegally. Make the law have a penalty clause, say $50k per person (inflation adjusted) and have a significant amount of the penalty be turned over to any non-government person, here legally, to encourage disclosure of illegal immigrants or anyone who has overstayed their visa.
• Remove the ability to rent or sell property to illegal immigrants or anyone who has overstayed their visa. Fine heavily any company or person who provides housing to anyone here illegally. Make the law have a penalty clause, say $50k per person and have a significant amount of the penalty be turned over to any non-government person – here legally, to encourage disclosure of illegal immigrants or anyone who has overstayed their visa.
• Remove the ability for illegal immigrants to own a US-based company or do business from inside the USA with our companies. No bank accounts with addresses outside the USA, no PO Boxes. This will be a difficult element to craft so that foreign businesses aren’t penalized, but people in the country illegally are prevented from gaining access to our banking system.
• Remove the ability for illegal immigrants to have a State provided drivers license or other identification documents. Fine countries that provide diplomatic paperwork beyond the “normal” number required for a diplomatic purpose. International drivers’ licenses are probably fine, unless abused.
• Remove the ability for money earned in the USA to be sent easily out of the country. Tax at least 25% of cash sent overseas that is sent outside the banking system by non-corporate accounts when 1 side isn’t a USA-based company.
• Any illegal uncovered by any government entity must be deported. If they are found committing a crime – immediate deportation and the laws of their country for the crime should be applied, provided it is a crime in the US state too. Anyone not here illegally should be rewarded for turning in someone here illegally.
• Bill for services to originating countries. The countries that help their people illegally get into the USA should be sent a bill for every hospital visit, every prescription drug, and every hour of public schooling provided. If they refuse to pay for the use of our infrastructure services, we freeze their banking accounts and apply tariffs against trade with those countries products.
• The current ability for citizens to sponsor their family for immigration needs to be carefully revisited.
• Requirements for immigration should include the ability to write and speak English to some defined level, perhaps speak at a 1st grade level and write at a 4th grade level? Language is our culture and different languages fracture our combined culture. Sadly, I’m afraid we need a law that states English is the official language for all government paperwork.
• Enact the [[FairTax]] system. This method of revenue generation hits anyone here illegally with additional consumption taxes since they wouldn’t receive the rebate meant to offset taxes for food every month.

Ok, what happens with all of these items deployed? Housekeeping, lawn care, and other menial jobs now cost more. As wages for these jobs increase, more and more legal immigrants and lower end households will take those jobs. When a lettuce picker earns the same as a truck driver, we’ll know that lettuce is properly priced. Teenagers will also learn about hard work – I washed dishes and my friends worked detasseling corn. Hard work both, but wages will increase due to the removal of the underclass that are illegal immigrants.

I’m realistic. The people here illegally already need to become legal or leave. With the road blocks listed above, folks here illegally will have a very hard time and anyone that gets caught housing/employing will . There needs to be a way for them to stay, but it must not be easy. Based on the age of the person, their wife, and number of children, a scale – not progressive – needs to be determined whereby they pay their back social security taxes, their back Medicare taxes, their back income taxes and all other taxes (state, import, etc.). The path should be towards legal immigration, not rewarding folks who are already here that broke the law when they entered. Basically, these payments should be high enough to encourage folks already here to leave and come back legally, within the quota for their country.

Some of these ideas are really terrible, even scary. There has to be a better way, but we need to make it difficult and unprofitable for anyone or any other country to support illegal immigration into our country. Perhaps some other thoughts will hit me over the next few days.

Summary: legal immigrants help our country and reinvigorate our capitalistic society. We like legal immigrants. Illegal immigrants are a drain on our society and destroy the belief in fair play that our country stands for. Jumping out of line isn’t fair.

We aren’t at war today, but soon, we will be from the inside.

Boortz has some interesting thoughts on immigration too

Being elected President of the USA is serious, not a popularity contest like in High School. This seal reminds me of the honor required for this government office, in particular.

1. Taxation – [[Fair Tax]]
2. War on Terrorism – how do you negotiate with people that want you dead? You don’t.
3. [[Term Limits|TermLimits]]
4. Energy Policy – [[Thoughts On Energy]] Ethanol is a waste; Coal, Solar, Wind with government incentives; why isn’t drilling happening in ANWR, Alaska? Popular Mechanics Article
5. [[Campaign Contributions]] – if you can’t vote in an election, then you shouldn’t be allowed to give money
6. Health Care – More competition; posted costs for all work; less government interference; shopping across state lines and small biz/individuals placed into the same insurance "Group" so they don’t get screwed by insurance rates.
7. Immigration – Fair is fair; no reward for breaking laws
   [[Thoughts on Immigration]]
   *[[Shortage of HiTech Workers in USA?]]
   **[[Saxby Update on Immigration August 2007]]
8. [[Education]] – School Choice
9. Abortion – ProLife/ProChoice
10. Tort Reform – loser pays to prevent lawsuit abuse

remember the milk

• Manage tasks quickly and easily.
• Get reminded anywhere
• Locate your tasks
• Share tasks – work together

Some ideas for things to do after my contract ends at at&t:

[ ] Travel a little
[ ] Mooch off family when the money runs out!
[ ] Scrub the house clean
[ ] Clear the "back 40" of stumps
[ ] Practice PS2 and PS3 Gaming
[ ] Learn new job-related skills
[ ] Take some fun college classes
[ ] Learn Spanish
[ ] Learn Japanese
[ ] Redecorate the house
[ ] Become Entrepreneur
[ ] Create "secret project A"
[ ] Create "secret project B"
[ ] Create "secret project C"
[ ] Create "secret project D"
[ ] Market A, B, C, D and make $$$$
[ ] Catch up on Reading for fun
[ ] Catch up on reading for investments
[ ] Become a better stock investor
[ ] File for unemployment
[ ] Update Resume
[ ] Update living will, estate plan, power of attorney
[ ] Fix my WindowsXP PC that's been broken since 2006
[ ] and finally - look for a new job in 4-12 months, if needed

[x] Sleep
[x] Rest, Relax, Recoup
[x] Get healthier

Ok, I upgraded my Quicken from 2006 Deluxe to 2008 Premium. I do this mainly to get access to new and better stock tracking tools.

• I feel ripped off.
• 2008 is slower
• 2008 doesn’t appear to have anything in it that 2006 didn’t already have.
• 2008 fonts are larger and I can’t find a way to make them smaller
• 2008 wastes screen real estate for no reason I can figure out.
• News story updates still don’t work.

A newby to Quicken will probably like the new look and feel, it feels easier and simpler. I’ve been using Quicken since 1990 – heck, I can probably find a text-only DOS version laying around here that does what I need.

I’m sold, use Netbeans 6+ for Ruby on Rails development.
A good book on the subject (get the 2nd edition)

I came across this reading something on Hillary Clinton … here
"Personalize it"

Saul Alinsky’s rules of power tactics, excerpted from his 1971 book "Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals"

1. Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
2. Never go outside the experience of your people.
3. Whenever possible go outside the experience of the enemy.
4. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
5. Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.
6. A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
8. Keep the pressure on.
9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
10. Maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.
11. If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.
12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

My last day at at&t is/was 11/15. Sometimes you have to take big steps to move forward in life. I’ve decided to take this opportunity to do just that.

I won’t be able to say goodbye to most of the folks I’ve enjoyed working with these last 8+ years – first at BAPCO, BTSI, BTG and finally at&t. We’ve had some opportunities to excel and some fairly easy projects over that time.

As most of you know, I always worked to make it better or fix the process and finally, to endure it.

There are simply too many people to thank in AT&T and the telecom industry as a whole who helped me learn enterprise architecture, Telcordia systems and together we were successful in designing and deploying projects. Special ‘’SHOUT-OUT’’ to RonB, HarryMc, KeithF, almost all the cB Segment teams and a number of folks who have left already. Also I can’t forget the IDS, GPS and TechNet teams – thanks Ward, SteveMc and MarkS! Lunch guys, I’ll miss you too!

Please, throw me an email or connect with me via LinkedIn. It will be appreciated.

Should that email address stop working (spam is really bad), try guessing addresses using my name and/or initials and/or common UNIX accounts. You’ll probably find an aliases that will work.

Again, thanks to you all and feel free to look me up!

My plans for after AT&T Todos]].

Webgen