Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Do you know the way to Bangalore?
Don't put aside those dreams of dot-com zillionaire glory, but in the meantime, oh my geek brothers and sisters, remember that we, like most Americans, work for a living, as salaried employees or hourly contractors, and everything the Republicans are doing, from overtime rules to workplace safety to tax rates to moving jobs offshore, are designed to screw Americans who work.Indian elephants: My editor threatened to lock me in a networking closet with Al Franken and Bill O’Reilly if this column gets even remotely political, but this item is too good to pass up. It seems the Republican National Committee is such a staunch believer in outsourcing that it used a firm in Maharashtra, India, to create its database of approximately 165 million registered voters. Technically, the RNC hired a Seattle-area consultant, which then apparently outsourced the job to Compulink Systems in India. I tried to reach the GOP-ers for comment but had no luck — I guess they had other things on their plates.
For the record: The Demos’ voter database was developed by a company, Plus Three, based in a distant suburb of New Delhi, India, called Washington, D.C. It’s an open source app — but that’s probably just a cynical attempt to lock up the Linux vote.
They expect your votes, but they won't even give you a job. Fire 'em from theirs. "Question Authority," indeed.
