Remember When Information Technology Was Hot, Hot, Hot?

I came across a very telling article recently while cleaning out some old piles of my journalism. In January, 1999, I co-authored a piece, "IT careers for sale," that appeared in Computer User magazine. The subhead stated: "If you have computer skills and a pulse, recruiters want you on the IT front lines."

Remember when information technology (IT) was hot, hot, hot? Clinton and Gore were in office in those days, and the overheated dotcom boom was still underway.

Here is how the article began:

Chances are, you've gotten their calls. And their emails. And their faxes, postcards and letters. You've seen their big "Now Hiring!" signs hanging on the sides of buildings. You've read their billboards, heard their radio commercials, even felt their earnest handshakes and gotten their business cards at professional association social gatherings.

Lately, you may even have noticed their pitches in a most unlikely place: On monthly statements from some of your credit card companies.

It's a recruiters' jungle out there, and you, friend, are the big game they are stalking, even if you don't want to be hunted.

Blame it on demand versus supply. There are now many more information technology jobs than there are computer professionals to fill them. The Information Technology Association has estimated that one in 10 computer-related jobs currently is going begging--that's almost 350,000 vacancies.

Desperate companies are searching far and wide, recruiting on the Internet, on college campuses, at rock concerts and in distant lands. They are offering referral bonuses, signing bonuses and bigger bounties to outside recruiters. Some even are raiding their competitors' talent--or at least being accused of it...."

Sadly, those days likely are long gone now. But that seems to be how the American economy works: in cycles of boom and bust.

A decade later, in troubled 2009, if you have computer skills and a pulse, you likely are unemployed, underemployed or in fear of losing your job very soon.

It may be time now to recruit yourself and turn your computer skills and job experiences into self-employment. If you still have a job or need more income, you can start something on the side and test the waters of small business. If you are unemployed and standing now with others in long lines to compete for one, two or a few jobs, it may also be time to recruit yourself and create your own job.

It's not easy, but if you have computer skills and a pulse, you can do it. You might even have to do it if the economy doesn't pick up soon.

Operators, unfortunately, are not standing by.

--Si Dunn

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Stimulating New Jobs: Where's the Leadership?

New York Times columnist Frank Rich got it exactly right when he stated:

"As the nation’s anger rose last week, the president took responsibility for what’s happening on his watch — more than he needed to, given the disaster he inherited. But in the credit mess, action must match words. To fall short would be to deliver us into the catastrophic hands of a Republican opposition whose only known economic program is to reject job-creating stimulus spending and root for Obama and, by extension, the country to fail. With all due deference to Ponzi schemers from Madoff to A.I.G., this would be the biggest outrage of them all."

Anger did rise, and it's still boiling up. There should be more job-creating stimulus spending now and more focus on the "real" people in the American economy: workers, mid-level and low-level managers, small-business owners and entrepreneurs starting new companies.

Yes, the appalling problems in the upper levels of the American economy must be fixed. At the same time, it is vital to deal with the difficulties, challenges and economic emergencies now facing people below the rank of "Master of the Universe." Specifically, emergency focus now should be given to Main Street and rural America, as well.

Where are the Congressional and White House leaders who can cut through the bailout noise and be stronger--and louder--advocates for the millions of Americans struggling in the heartland? These layoff victims need jobs now and can't find any, and thousands of small businesses who could hire them are unable to get crucial loans.

"Congress and the White House Team Up to Tackle Middle America's Deepening Crisis" -- that should (but won't) be tomorrow's big headline.


-- Si Dunn

Senator Tom Coburn Shows His Strength ... as a Job Killer

By Si Dunn

In the movies, the good guys almost always win.

But Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn proved recently that the bad guys can win, too, after he took a look at the proposed $246 million tax break for movie production companies.

Instead of investigating and understanding how the tax break could save and create jobs, he simply saw vicious pork and proposed an amendment to strip it out of the Senate's stimulus bill.

Unfortunately, a number of other prominent U.S. Senators, primarily Republican, also demonstrated their ignorance of the movie business and how its health is vital to the American economy.

The vote was 52 in favor of Coburn's amendment and 45 opposed. Only a simple majority was needed to pass the amendment.

Sen. Coburn and the others who opposed the tax break should now congratulate themselves on efficiently killing off thousands of movie production jobs, post-production jobs and jobs at film manufacturing companies and film suppliers.

THE END

How One Dollar Can Help the Stupid Economy

By Si Dunn

Most of us can't battle layoffs. We can't bail out banks or corporations or sectors of the economy. Some of us think we can't do anything except stock up on canned goods and water and hide in the attic or basement until the current bad times blow over.

Two hot news flashes for the attic hiders and basement bunker-ites: (1) Things are gonna be bad for a long time; and (2) things are gonna be even worse if you try to hide from the recession.

No, you can't battle layoffs. You can't bail out banks or corporations or economic sectors. But you can help a few people save their jobs. And, in doing so, you will help lighten the load for their families and their families' families.

Tip a waitress or waiter or your barber an extra dollar today. Put an extra dollar in the church collection plate. Buy a birthday card or get-well card from a little, locally owned gift shop. Donate an extra dollar to a charity or a school fundraiser. Add an extra dollar to your kids' allowance or your grandkids' birthday envelope--and forget the usual admonitions to save it. They'd rather spend it anyway.

If there is something inexpensive you have been wanting to buy for your house or your car or your yard or your favorite hobby, buy it now. But don't spend every penny at your local big-box retailer that can still afford to undercut every Mom-and-Pop shop in your town. Go to the little shop in your neighborhood, instead, and willingly pay a dollar more than you would at the big shrine at the edge of town.

Your individual dollar makes no big difference to Wal-Mart or AIG or Bank of America. But to somebody trying to earn a living with a bicycle repair shop or a hair salon or a one-truck lawn service or a tiny hardware store, that dollar can have direct impact on keeping the doors open and keeping at least one person or a small handful of people employed and working.

If each of us keeps doing a little bit--a dollar here, a dollar there--to help out, the recession can be shorted and many jobs and households at the heart of our economy can be saved. But we will have to sustain the effort and keep doing it for a long time.

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Undecided? Just Take a Harder Look Around You

By Si Dunn

My mind was made up long ago. I wanted Hillary Clinton to win, and I wanted Barack Obama to be Vice President. I was hung up on the narrow notion that experience trumps almost everything else.

When Hillary lost, it took me a while to warm up to Barack Obama. But the more I watched him and listened to what he has to say, the more I realized that the man is the leader we need for these greatly troubled and hugely challenging times.

John McCain has served his country with honor and distinction. But now is not the time for Republican solutions, particularly narrow-minded neoconservative solutions. The Republican Party has splintered into factions and completely lost its compass. It may take years to rebuild itself, or it may spin off into two or more political parties.

At a time when Americans are fearful for their familiess, their jobs, their retirement savings, their homes and the very future of this great nation, the current Republican leadership keeps railing about tax cuts, socialism, abortion and 1960s radicals.

As a result, John McCain and Sarah Palin seem to be harping at us from other dimensions and other planets. They want us all to just sit on our little piles of money (if we still have any) and not let any of it get (horrors!) spread around.

Government? Hey, don't need it. Taxes? Evil! Don't need 'em. Change? The economy is fundamentally sound, you betcha. Especially if the wealthy get to keep their tax cuts forever and ever, amen. Iraq? There is only one victory, and that is the victory where we stay there for up to a hundred years and keep blowing up people and goats and things until somebody important says: "Okay, okay, you win! Thank you very much!"

We need experience and leadership in Washington. But more importantly, we need someone with the ability and courage to tell us that we have to make a few sacrifices and do a few things to help our nation out over the next few years. That may include paying a few taxes to help fund government services. And it may include--horror of horrors!--spreading a little of our money around to help our less-fortunate neighbors.

After 9/11, George Bush looked out over a nation angered and ready to fight back. Americans were motivated and eager to do their part for a war effort. Our fearless leader seized that moment and told us all to go out and...shop.

Huh? Fight Al-Qaeda and the Taliban with American Express? Just party hardy and pretend they don't exist? Have the difficult and painful lessons of World War II already been forgotten?

Now we are in a major economic crisis, and the Republicans are raging against government spending--the very spending that they exploded to unbelievable levels. Yet government spending on infrastructure and other job-creation programs may be almost the only tool left for resuscitating the economy.

The Republicans have had their time and opportunities for economic and social experiments, and they have made an utter mess of things. Now they want four more, or even eight more, years to create an even bigger disaster.

Just look around and take a hard look this time. Our nation is in peril on several fronts, and the party that has lead us to the precipice now wants your permission to take us all over the cliff to complete ruin.

Stand up, fight back and say "Hell, no! We won't go!" to the Republican Party in its present, bastardized form.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden can lead us away from that precipice and toward better and more sensible times. And they'll ask for--and need--our help.

Many of us are ready to be be part of the solution, even if it means making some personal and financial sacrifices on behalf of our country. We are patriotic Americans, not just mindless shoppers looking for the next sale on tax cuts.

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McCain-Palin Ticket Is Now Imploding, Right Along with the Economy

By Si Dunn

Hey, it's your stupid economy, Republican leadership.

Your promises of more tax cuts and more "market solutions" now are falling on deaf ears as terrified voters suddenly realize they are facing what one prominent retail analyst has warned will be the “worst Christmas shopping season in a century."

Layoffs are surging. Families are losing their homes, their health care and their savings. And many large and small businesses are toppling into the massive financial wreckage you created by overdoing deregulation, then encouraging (and allowing) too much risk and greed.

You can't save yourselves now with wild-ass claims that Barack Obama is a terrorist or that overturning Roe v. Wade will create 20 million new jobs.

The uncommitted voters are waking up, taking a long, hard look at the vacuity of your platform and fleeing in terror toward the Democrats. Or, they are just fleeing. Either way, you ain't gonna get their vote, Jack. And you're gonna lose big-time among the contested seats in the Senate and House, as well.

Ordinary people finally are figuring out--after years of partisan gridlock--that "divided we fall." The momentum is shifting toward one-party rule again, and this time, the Grand Old Party will be marched outside the velvet rope.

The McCain-Palin ticket has bailed out of Michigan, and it's now starting to get its butts kicked in the polls in Ohio, Virginia and a few other key "battleground" states.

In desperation, the GOP is sending its Swift Boats out to attack. But all they are doing is colliding with each other and smashing into big walls of voter rejection and fatigue. William Ayers? Who cares? What about my job, my savings, my house, my Christmas?

Obama-Biden may not be the best governance team on the planet. But compared with the bizarre and twisted package the Republicans have put forth, they are far and away the best and the brightest for these troubled times.

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