Showing posts with label Abraham Lincoln. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Abraham Lincoln. Show all posts

Friday, March 18, 2011

Immigration Limbo

Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of th...Image via Wikipedia"I will prepare and perhaps my time will come."
- Abraham Lincoln


I think I am about six, seven months from my green card. Too bad they have not started work on immigration overhaul in DC yet, or they might have heard a mouthful from me already.

I can't incorporate a company. The last time I raised 100,000 dollars - for my last startup - I put the money into a bank account run by someone else on the team, an American citizen. That was not my first choice.

I have figured if I can raise some money now, I can always get someone else to do the incorporating and arrange for them to get me as the first hire at 99.9% ownership. That would be a $10,000 value for them for the simple act of incorporating.

This is such a fucked up situation to be in. This is not about not having a good idea, this is not about not having the smarts, this is not about not being able to build a team, this is not about traction or product-market fit, this is about stupid paperwork. This is a shame.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Larry Is Not Done Yet

Larry Elllison on stage.Image via WikipediaLarry Ellison is not done, if he is ever done.
Reuters: Oracle CEO claims can prove wrongdoing by new HP CEO: Hewlett-Packard Co's incoming CEO oversaw a scheme to steal Oracle's software by rival SAP AG..... Oracle seeking some $2 billion in damages ..... Then HP hired SAP's former CEO, Leo Apotheker, to replace Hurd and named former Oracle COO Ray Lane as its chairman. ..... Ellison said in a statement that Oracle intends to subpoena Apotheker, but it could not do so because the executive has been living outside the jurisdiction of the San Francisco area court that will try the case..... Apotheker is due to start work on Monday at HP ..... "A few weeks ago I accused HP's new CEO, Leo Apotheker, of overseeing an industrial espionage scheme centering on the repeated theft of massive amounts of Oracle's software. A major portion of this theft occurred while Mr. Apotheker was CEO of SAP," Ellison said .... "HP's Chairman, Ray Lane, immediately came to Mr. Apotheker's defense by writing a letter stating, 'Oracle has been litigating this case for years and has never offered any evidence that Mr. Apotheker was involved.' Well, that's what we are planning to do during the trial that starts next Monday."

Monday, July 26, 2010

The Economy: Uncharted Waters

Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother," a...Image via Wikipedia
The convulsion of the Great Recession has been the birth pang of a new kind of economy, a new kind of world. We had already been moving towards a post-industrial society, towards an information age for over a decade, but our pace had been too slow, not global enough, not as drastic as it ought to be. We are still unsure as to which directions to go. There is open talk of a double dip recession. The jobs are not here yet. It is still scary times.

After the Great Depression, America very clearly became an industrial economy. It was no longer the agriculture economy of Abraham Lincoln's time. A huge economic shift had been made. But there was pain along the way.

It is one of the failings of democracy that you need a big, bad event to get people riled up to go do something big. FDR wanted to enter the war long before Pearl Harbor happened, but he waited, and waited and waited until Pearl Harbor happened.

Why do you need a 9/11 before you realize the cause of democracy needs to be furthered across the Arab world? Why do you need a Gulf Oil Spill before even the average person starts thinking in terms of a zero emissions future? Why are intellectual extrapolations not enough? Or perhaps Hollywood is not doing its job.

I supported the Obama stimulus plan, but my criticism was and is that it was not forward looking enough. Roads and bridges are important but those are rickety swings of the industrial age. The roads and bridges of the information age are to do with the internet.

The stimulus bill was not big enough. It should have been a trillion. And it was not future oriented enough. The stimulus needed to be about turning America into a country of 75% college graduates. You can't do that with the existing colleges and so you turn the entire country into one big college. Universal broadband. Free up the spectrum, not in 10 years, but now. (India Broadband Spectrum Bids)

It was lack of vision that brought down Wall Street more than anything. Pumping more and more money into real estate is not my idea of visionary investment. They were accumulating so much money and all that needed to go somewhere. And so they came up with ever nefarious ways to put more and more money into real estate.

Wall Street was not thinking in terms of the jobs of tomorrow, the companies of tomorrow, the industries of tomorrow. It was not thinking futuristic enough. It was not thinking global enough. If it had been thinking global, it would have sunk a few trillions into global microfinance and seen returns that were better than that of the S&P 500. It would have put the money into global infrastructure projects. There were clear alignments to be sought between self interest and global interests, but they were not sought.

BusinessWeek: Lucky for Obama, U.K.'s Cameron Is Embracing Austerity First
Plugging their economies into the life-support system of central bank liquidity and massive government stimulus packages was the easy part. The tough question is how long their governments should stand in for a private sector too nervous about the future to invest and hire. With the world economy threatening to slide into a double-dip recession, both the U.S. and the U.K. are nevertheless talking about fiscal austerity. The only good news for Obama is that Cameron is going first. ..... spending cuts of as much as 40 percent ..... the U.K. doesn't want to be the next Greece. ...... bond vigilantes are driving U.K. economic policy. "Questions that were asked about the liquidity and solvency of banking systems are now being asked of the liquidity and solvency of some of the governments that stand behind those banks" ...... "The austerity debate is now not about whether fiscal tightening in advanced economies is necessary, but on when it should begin in earnest." ..... growth collapses if all of the members simultaneously abstain from spending. Too many governments curbing spending and raising taxes in parallel would snuff out the nascent recovery. ...... Consumer confidence has dipped ..... government aid can't be removed without risking a relapse. ..... With so many job cuts, Cameron could find himself coping with strike action on a scale not seen since Margaret Thatcher neutered the nation's private-sector unions. ...... The banking industry, meanwhile, is crying foul at the prospect of bonus caps and a top income-tax rate that will climb to 50 percent from 40 percent. Threats to leave for Switzerland may prove more than empty. ...... The path Cameron is charting is so arduous, and public opposition is likely to become so intense, that rating agency Standard & Poor's isn't convinced he can deliver ...... If he forges ahead, there is a real chance that Britain returns to a recession. Neither scenario is cheery—and neither is beyond imagining for the U.S.
I am for a second stimulus bill that will focus primarily on creating jobs. It was finally the massive spendings of World War II that ended the Great Depression. Bold action is necessary.

A second stimulus package would be big, it would focus on a radical freeing of the wireless spectrum with a goal of cheap, universal broadband, it would entail creating millions of new government funded jobs, likely in the education and health sectors that people can go for with short training periods.

A lot of smart people ran banks. But banks had to be bailed out. Then the stimulus happened. That was the government bailing out the government. A lot of money has gone to keep unemployment benefits rolling, to keep paying teachers and police officers and firefighters. We did not expect the private sector to take care of the bailout and the stimulus. Similarly in these times, it has to be the government that has to step in to create millions of new jobs. Just like the banks paid back, the people will too.

The deficit and the debt will have to be reigned, but now is not the time.
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Friday, June 11, 2010

Employment Authorization Card: It's Here

So my Employment Authorization Card arrived earlier today in the mail. What that means in my case is I can't go anywhere outside America for the next year. As a practical matter, I don't see me going anywhere outside New York City. There is so much to explore right here.

But ultimately I do want to have been to all parts of the world just like I have been to all parts of America. I got time. I plan on staying thin.  

Then I show up in immigration court in June 2011 and hopefully the judge waves a magic wand and turns that piece of paper into a green card. Then I become eligible for entrepreneurship. Before that I get to blog about it.

The next best thing to entrepreneurship is joining a small, early stage team. You can not be the founder, but you sure can be a founding member.

There has been more drama behind this little piece of paper than I would have liked. But I am glad to have it in my hand. Now let's go get a job.

"I will prepare and perhaps my time will come."
- Abraham Lincoln

Lady Liberty Whispers
Immigration Status
Job Search
June 3 Immigration Court Date
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