Semi-Daily Journal

There's student-affordable apartments available inland, particularly on the flight path off of Miramar.

A bit loud when I was there in 1997, but affordable.

I lived there from 1991-2000. Believe it or not there was a depression in San Diego from 1991-1994 and prices were dirt cheap. You could buy a 3 bedroom townhome next to the campus for $120k, apartments were $6-700 a month, and you couldn't find people to rent rooms because of competition. It's amazing what a difference a few years makes. Those same condos now go for $320k, apartments $1300-2000 and up.

Maybe it will be a good thing if the republicans get back into power in California, then the economy will get trashed again, unemployment will shoot up, and housing prices will become reasonable again. I think I just invented a rational reason to vote for the Governator.

Hmm, I guess a few other things have changed in San Diego since I left. For starters, it used to be affordable to live in places like North Park, Hillcrest, or maybe even the slums of Mission Hills. Then the commuting plan was pretty simple: walk or ride your bike to UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest, and take the convenient (but *not* wireless-enabled) FREE shuttle to campus. For me, it was
55 minutes from door to lab, compared to 25 minutes if you drove. You did have to get there early to make sure you got a seat, and you could get stuck having to take the (horribly slow) city busses on occasion, but the commute was not the big incentive to leave San Diego.

The big incentive was having kids, and then realizing that you absolutely would not send them to the incredibly decrepit elementary school near you. You then got to choose between paying for private school, or moving out somewhere to the east where the schools were basically okay. If you did the latter, though, your commute then required a car and housing prices were already pretty shocking in 1998. And El Cajon sure ain't La Jolla for prettiness or sea breezes.

You won’t have to vote for the Governator. Either party can do the job quite nicely all by themselves.

A major source of unemployment in Silicon Valley is the replacement of American tech workers (particularly IT) by cheap, docile, H1B/L1 visa labor. When John Popescu (an out-of-work-programmer) asked governor Gray Davis (at the public debate on the recall) "I can't compete with programmers on H-1B and L-1 visas, and with offshore programmers. Do you have a comment on that?" Davis ducked the question with the usual Democrat platitudes: “We extended unemployment benefits.” This is no use to Popescu since he is now permanently unemployable in the IT field. Then there is: “We funded worker training in biotech.” So Davis wants Popescu to take a $12/hr job as a lab technician. Having no shame whatsoever, Davis even tried the Clintonesque “I feel your pain” routine by saying the gov “felt badly you’re no longer employed.” In fact there is a whole lot Davis could do for Popescu and the hundreds of thousands like him. He could issue an executive order banning the granting of state contracts to companies that abuse the H1B program. Davis could also jaw-bone the state and federal legislatures to put in more worker protections to the H1B/L1 visa law. Davis could do all this, but he doesn’t. Like Hebrew National he has to answer to a higher authority. Only his higher authority is tech industry CEOs who help fund his campaign.

The Republicans are no better of course. Actually worse. But we don’t expect any better from them, as we know they are stooges for their cronies in industry. The Democrats are supposed to be the workers party.

The universities too are part of the gang-bang of the American tech worker. They continue to crank out hordes of computer science grads to join the ranks of the unemployed. Even in 2000 only about half of the CS grads got to work in CS. Answering the help line doesn’t count as working in CS.

That's not really fair; Davis didn't want the guy to take a $12/hr lab tech job. He wanted the guy to spend several years (and thousdands of $$) getting bio training, and *then* take a $12/hr job as a lab tech. This assumes, of course, that most of the lab tech jobs aren't replaced by machines, or that the biotech industry figures out how to offshore them (if engineers can be had for $5-8/hr US in many countries, presumably bio majors are no more expensive).

so, your suggestion essentially is that Davis should "jawbone" the feds to change immigration policy, and figure out some way to deny state contracts to companies who "abuse" the program, knowing that without a change in federal policy, there would be no way to show "abuse"? I guess Davis could have paid lip service to some policy completely out of his control.