Mark Zuckerberg’s Zuck PAC launches to reform US immigration law

Today, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg launched his political action committee called FWD.us to rally tech business leaders to reform American immigration law.

Zuckerberg is joined by executives at Dropbox, Paypal, Airbnb, Netflix, LinkedIn and Yahoo. These tech leaders believe the United States is failing to address its innovation gap by allowing the immigration system to languish. Indeed, the United States is a magnet for the type of highly skilled workers needed by Silicon Valley. FWD.us is lobbying the US government to both secure the country’s borders and to streamline the process for admitting skilled workers for the tech sector.

On traditional immigration challenges, FWD.us is also looking to the government to provide a pathway to citizenship initiative for giving status to illegal immigrants.

The FWD.us website is built on the NationBuilder platform and integrates Facebook API tools for tracking and communitizing its supporters.

What do you think of the initiative? Is this a logical move for the US tech sector? Should Zuckerberg be getting more or less involved in politics?

Tim Hudak shirks ideology for expediency

From today’s Toronto Star,

Opposition parties are backing a push from Ontario’s chief electoral officer for limits on advertising by interest groups such as the anti-Tory Working Families coalition of unions.
 
Noting that such “third-party” advertising tripled to $6.7 million between the 2007 and 2011 provincial elections, Greg Essensa said in his annual report that the legislature needs to set up an independent body to study a cap on spending and contributions, among other things.
 
“We would like to see stronger parameters around third party advertising,” Progressive Conservative MPP Lisa MacLeod said Monday, echoing calls from party leader Tim Hudak last year.

The Ontario PCs should not be looking at reining in free speech just because they are losing the free speech fight. To be sure, unions need better disclosure of how they are spending worker dues especially if those dues are going to political causes. Unions should also be made to allow a mechanism to allow members to opt out of their dues should this money be going towards causes any particular member does not support.

The National Citizens Coalition raises money given voluntarily by thousands of Ontarians to advocate on their issues. If political parties are the only ones given the right of free and unfettered speech during elections, this makes our society less democratic.

Do not abandon your principles, Mr. Hudak. We need more ideas during elections, not fewer.

Elizabeth May on Margaret Thatcher and Hugo Chavez

Margaret Thatcher passed away today at the age of 87. Here is Elizabeth May’s statement acknowledging the death of the Britain’s greatest peacetime Prime Minister,

Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green Party of Canada,

“Margaret Thatcher took strong positions. Among them people forget her science-based concern about the climate crisis. One of the few political leaders with a science background, she founded the Hadley Centre and supported the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. While her anti-regulation, pro-privatization agenda did long-term damage to the environment, her climate awareness is tragically not shared by her ideological successors.”

What did Elizabeth May say when Hugo Chavez die? Not much, but here is tweet and news story she retweeted,

Here is the rabble news infographic that she links.

Elizabeth May’s schtick besides climate change has been about her views on democracy in Canada — specifically what she characterizes as the erosion of it. Now, retweets are not necessarily endorsements, but May recently wrote the Queen about the robocalls scandal and the Rabble infographic includes a quote from Jimmy Carter praising Chavez for his democratic ideals while includes quotes from Elections Canada on those robocalls.

Stephen Harper has not been evidenciarily linked to the robocalls scandal in Guelph and to date the only evidence that exists is that which has resulted in a charge against one young campaign worker, Michael Sona.

Elizabeth May takes the opportunity on the day of Margaret Thatcher’s passing to speciously link Thatcher to her issues while condemning Thatcher for privatization.

Meanwhile, May holds up Chavez as a paragon of democracy in order to attack Stephen Harper as a “real dictator”.