OBAMA’S ONLY JOBS PLAN IS CALLED AMNESTY!
“The universal line promoted by both big business parties and the mass media is that job-creation is synonymous with the elimination of all restrictions on corporate profit-making. This is an extension of the poppycock, repeated endlessly by Obama, that the private sector is the true engine of job growth. This claim is belied by some stubborn facts: for example, the fact that over the course of the first decade of the 21st century, the US private sector generated no net increase in jobs. Today, the American private sector is keeping unemployment near 10 percent by sitting on a cash hoard of several trillion dollars and refusing to use it to hire workers.”
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THERE IS A REASON WHY MOST OF THE FORTUNE 500 ARE GENEROUS DONORS TO THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA, and why the U.S. CHAMBER of COMMERCE is as much for OPEN BORDERS, AMNESTY and NON-enforcement as OBAMA and MEXICO! It’s about keeping wages depressed!
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Wsws.org
Obama’s jobs fraud
22 January 2011
The Obama administration on Friday announced the appointment of Jeffrey Immelt, the chief executive officer of energy giant General Electric, to head the new White House Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.
The announcement is a further demonstration that the Obama administration is a government by, for and increasingly of the corporate and financial elite. Immelt, whose pay is about $15 million a year, is one of the country’s most highly compensated executives. His appointment follows on the heels of the selection of multimillionaire William Daley—commerce secretary under Bill Clinton and most recently a top executive at JPMorgan Chase—to be White House chief of staff.
Immelt’s task at the misnamed council on jobs will be to increase US corporate profits and exports. The proclaimed goal of the Obama administration to double exports in five years—an aim that Obama reiterated in announcing Immelt’s selection—is to be achieved by slashing the wages and benefits of US workers while driving up their productivity, combined with trade war measures against American capitalism’s international rivals, particularly China.
The council, Obama said in a pre-announcement statement, would be focused on “finding new ways to encourage the private sector to hire and invest in American competitiveness.” Speaking at a GE plant in Schenectady, New York later in the day, Obama declared that the challenge was “to do everything we can to make it easier for folks to bring products to market, and to start and expand new businesses, and to grow and hire new workers.”
The universal line promoted by both big business parties and the mass media is that job-creation is synonymous with the elimination of all restrictions on corporate profit-making. This is an extension of the poppycock, repeated endlessly by Obama, that the private sector is the true engine of job growth. This claim is belied by some stubborn facts: for example, the fact that over the course of the first decade of the 21st century, the US private sector generated no net increase in jobs. Today, the American private sector is keeping unemployment near 10 percent by sitting on a cash hoard of several trillion dollars and refusing to use it to hire workers.
Obama once again claimed that the basic problem with the American economy is that the working class is living beyond its means. It is necessary, he said, to “go from an economy that was powered by what we borrow and what we consume” to one geared to production.
The demand for reduced consumption does not apply to the wealthy, who, thanks to a deal worked out last month between the Democrats and Republicans, have received a massive windfall in the form of an extension of Bush-era tax cuts. Obama did not mention this in his comments in Schenectady, but he did take the opportunity to praise a number of corporate tax cuts that were included in the package as an example of his administration’s efforts to create jobs.
The selection of Immelt won immediate praise from other banking and corporate executives as well as the US Chamber of Commerce. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said he “fully supports” Immelt and the creation of the new council.
Among the reasons Dimon was pleased was Immelt’s opposition, in 2009, to any caps on executives receiving bailout funds from the government. “It’s in the best interest of the citizens of the country for Jamie Dimon to run JPMorgan,” Immelt declared at the time. “He’s worth more than $500,000” a year.
GE itself exemplifies the administration’s aim of increasing profits by reducing wages. On Friday, the company announced a significant increase in profits in 2010 over the previous year. In 2007, it was able to push through a new contract, with the support of the unions, which reduced wages for new-hires by $10 an hour.
The attempt to portray an unabashedly pro-corporate agenda as a “jobs program” is also designed to obscure the fact that the Obama administration has pursued a deliberate policy of maintaining high unemployment as a means of forcing workers to accept wage cuts and other concessions. From the beginning of his term in office, Obama has rejected any government hiring program and the administration has now put an end to even the limited “stimulus” measures adopted early on.
The other side of the administration’s campaign to increase exports is the ratcheting up of pressure on China. The selection of Immelt came at the tail end of a state visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao. During the trip, Obama added to the demand that Beijing revalue its currency new demands that it lift all restrictions on US corporate investments in and exports to China. Immelt has in the past voiced strong criticisms of the policy of the Chinese government, and GE has significant commercial interests in the country.
Obama utilized Hu’s visit as an opportunity to hustle for contracts in behalf of US corporations. At a joint press conference following a White House meeting with US and Chinese business leaders, Obama turned to Hu and declared: “We want to sell you all kinds of stuff. We want to sell you planes. We want to sell you cars. We want to sell you software.”
Since the November midterm elections—which, due to widespread disillusionment over Obama’s right-wing policies, produced a victory for the Republican Party—the administration’s courtship of corporate executives has assumed an ever more naked character.
In addition to the choice of Daley and the extension of tax cuts for the wealthy, the selection of Immelt comes less than a week after a new executive order calling on all government agencies to review existing regulations. Any such regulations, Obama wrote in an opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal, must be evaluated on a “cost-benefit” basis, following extensive prior discussion with businesses.
The deregulation drive has had immediate consequences. The Journal reported Thursday that the Labor Department is withdrawing a proposal on noise in the workplace “that could have forced manufacturers to install noise-reducing equipment.” And the Food and Drug Administration has retreated from plans to tighten rules on the approval process for medical devices.
Also on Thursday, First Lady Michelle Obama lavished praise on retailer Walmart for its participation in a phony healthful foods initiative. “When I see a company like Walmart launch an initiative like this, I feel more hopeful than ever before,” she declared. The Washington Post noted, “The announcement amounted to a very public display of affection for a company that had long been a thorn in the side of Democrats.”
(ACROSS THE NATION, MANY OF THESE MASSIVE STATE DEFICITS ARE CAUSED BY THE STAGGERING COST OF THE MEXICAN OCCUPATION. IN CA THAT COST IS $20 BILLION PER YEAR, AS THE STATE OPERATES DEFICITS OF $28 BILLION PER YEAR!)
The prostration of the Obama administration before corporate America comes as the social crisis in the United States intensifies. The federal government is moving decisively toward austerity, with major cuts in social programs to be announced this year. State governments throughout the country are facing massive budget deficits that will be addressed by slashing education, health care and other basic social services, while laying off tens of thousands of workers, cutting wages and slashing pension benefits.
Twenty six months after the eruption of the financial meltdown in 2008, the American ruling class and the Obama administration are exploiting the crisis to permanently restructure class relations in the US, increasing the wealth of the financial aristocracy on the basis of the impoverishment of tens of millions of working people.
Joseph Kishore
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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
Why the new jobs go to immigrants
By David R. Francis
Wall Street cheered and stock prices rose when the US Labor Department announced last Friday that employers had expanded their payrolls by 262,000 positions in February.
But it wasn't entirely good news. The statisticians also indicated that the share of the adult population holding jobs had slipped slightly from January to 62.3 percent. That's now two full percentage points below the level in the brief recession that began in March 2001.
Why the apparent contradiction? Reasons abound: population growth, rising retirements. But one factor that gets little attention is immigration.
In the past four years, the number of immigrants into the US, legal and illegal, has closely matched the number of new jobs. That suggests newcomers have, in effect, snapped up all of the new jobs.
"There has been no net job gain for natives," says Andrew Sum, an economist at Northeastern University.
In the US, President Bush calls for giving millions of illegal immigrants a kind of guest-worker status as a legal path to US citizenship. So far, no specific legislation to implement his suggestion has been put before Congress.
Meanwhile, US border patrols spend millions of dollars a year trying to keep illegals out. And yet, they keep coming, evidently little discouraged by recession or the 9/11 attacks. In the past four years alone, the number of immigrants ran some 2.5 million to 3 million, of which about half were illegal.
They come for jobs, of course. And the Bush administration makes barely any effort to enforce current law. In 2003, a total of 13 employers were fined for hiring undocumented employees.
In fact, neither Republicans nor Democrats have promoted enforcement of immigration law prohibiting the hiring of illegal immigrants, says Mr. Sum, head of Northeastern's Center for Labor Market Studies.
What employers really want in many cases by hiring immigrants is to hold down wage costs, experts say.
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FAIRUS.org
steinreport.com
The study finds that employers favor immigrant workers - particularly illegal aliens - because they work for lower wages, do not demand health care and other benefits, and because businesses can avoid paying payroll taxes.
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January 21, 2011
New Report Draws Direct Link Between Immigration and Unemployment for American Workers
by Ira Mehlman
While unemployment in the United States remains stubbornly high (officially 9.4%, but actually closer to 17% when discouraged workers and people relegated to part-time work are factored in), the picture for immigrants is much brighter. According to a forthcoming report from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, some 1.1 million legal and illegal immigrants entered the U.S. labor force between 2008 and 2010. Over the same period, employment for American workers declined by 6.26 million jobs.
In an interview with Reuters, the author of the study, Andrew Sum, makes it clear that the hiring boom for new immigrants - about 35% of whom are in the country illegally - has come directly at the expense of American workers. "Employers have chosen to use new immigrants over native-born workers and have continued to displace large numbers of blue-collar workers and young adults without college degrees," states Sum.
The study finds that employers favor immigrant workers - particularly illegal aliens - because they work for lower wages, do not demand health care and other benefits, and because businesses can avoid paying payroll taxes.
The majority of immigrant workers who entered the U.S. labor force between 2008 and 2010 took jobs that could be done by unemployed American workers. These include jobs in construction, hotels and food services, retail trade, sanitation and cleaning.
The report amounts to a devastating indictment of America's political leadership that has allowed millions of American workers and their families to suffer by maintaining immigration policies that prevent them from gaining access to jobs in their own country.
MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com
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