Friday, December 23, 2016

OBAMA-CLINTON-TRUMPERNOMICS: SERVING THE SUPER RICH OFF THE BACKS OF THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS

A law professor's warning: we are closer to oligopoly than at any point in 100 years

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/23/14052804/oligopoly-tim-wu

Updated by Jeff Stein  Dec 23, 2016, 


Christopher Furlong / Getty Images News

In the early 1900s, the biggest monopolists of the day had virtually complete control of their markets. Standard Oil. US Steel. The American Sugar Refining Company.
Today we don’t so much have single companies dominating an entire industry as much as a handful of extremely powerful ones. Over the past few decades, the number of markets consolidated by a few mega-companies has skyrocketed, according to Columbia law professor Tim Wu.
“It’s almost like global warming: You can just look out and say, ‘The economy is way more concentrated,’ for almost any given thing,” says Wu, a former senior adviser to the Federal Trade Commission, on the latest interview of The Ezra Klein Show. Wu has written widely on the problem of America’s burgeoning oligopoly — or the control of major industries by a handful of companies. “You go industry by industry, count the numbers of players there are — and it’s just much more concentrated.”
Wu points to the beer industry as a perfect example. “People may not realize this, but domestically, there are two companies that sell 75 percent of the beer in the United States — Molson Coors and Anheuser Busch, both owned by foreign companies,” he says. “That is an industry that used to have five or six actors and now has two.”
On the one hand, it’s better that there’s at least some competition in these areas than none at all. But because antitrust laws in the middle of the 20th century were written to deal with solitary monopolies, our government is also less equipped to respond to the current threat.
“One hundred years ago you tended to have one big fat trust ... so we wrote the antitrust law to deal with that problem,” Wu says. “Today we usually have something more like the big two, the big three, or the big four. Antitrust is less good at dealing with that kind of situation.”
On the latest episode of The Ezra Klein Show, Wu and Klein also discuss how Wu came to coin the term “net neutrality,” Wu’s time clerking for the Supreme Court, and his newest book, The Attention Merchants, which is about how new technologies were designed to zap our concentration.
A lightly edited transcript of the portion of their conversation about rising oligopoly and antitrust legislation follows. (You can listen to the episode above, or subscribe to the show on iTunes.)
America’s markets are more consolidated than any point since the early 1900s
 Tim Wu.
Ezra Klein
I want to talk about how monopolists can and do interact with new technologies, particularly technologies where the boundaries of it are confusing and uncertain for some time — so it’s not clear if they’re a monopolist.
There’s always this argument that Google has a monopoly over the search market — but is Google in the search market? Or is Google in competition with Facebook, in which case they’re not a monopolist?
These questions of monopolies are becoming pretty central to a segment of the left — you see it with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, [former Labor Secretary] Robert Reich, Matt Stoller in the Atlantic. How would you urge people to think of the question of monopolies right now?
Tim Wu
I would urge them to go back to the Progressive Era, the 1910s, and realize we’re in a very similar state of affairs, where the levels of concentration are at historically high levels. And that’s married with historically high profits.
The right way to think about this is to understand that we have allowed the economy to become concentrated to a degree we haven’t seen since the early 20th century. And to understand the interest in doing something about it is a very natural reaction to economic power.
People wonder why there hasn’t been wage growth. Maybe it’s because the markets are so consolidated that they don’t feel the need to pay anybody because employers aren’t competing enough. It’s the time to be concerned about this issue.
Ezra Klein
When you say the economy hasn’t been this concentrated since 1910, what’s the measurement you’re using?
Tim Wu
Well, you would use the HHI measurement — the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index. You draw a line and say, “These are all the industries that compete in this market,” and you figure out how large they are. And then you sum the squares of their market share and compare it to this index. So we have ideas of what counts as highly concentrated and what’s medium concentrated.
A lot of industries’ HHI indexes have gotten higher and higher and higher. It’s almost like global warming; you can just look out and say, “The economy is way more concentrated,” for almost any given thing.
Let’s look at beer. People may not realize this, but domestically, there are two companies that sell 75 percent of the beer in the United States — Molson Coors and Anheuser Busch, both owned by foreign companies. That is an industry that used to have five or six actors and now has two. If you look at airlines, it’s the same story. You go industry by industry, count the numbers of players there are, and it’s just much more concentrated.
One difference between now and 100 years ago is that 100 years ago you tended to have one big fat trust. Like one steel trust, one sugar trust. One company controlling everything. So we wrote the antitrust law to deal with that problem.
Today we usually have something more like the big two, the big three, or the big four. Antitrust is less good at dealing with that kind of situation.
How should the government break up monopolies?
CEO's Of AT&T And Time Warner Testify On Merger To Senate Judiciary CommitteeCEOs of AT&T and Time Warner testifying about a possible merger on Capitol Hill in December 2016. Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Ezra Klein
I think people’s intuitions about whether an anti-merger lawsuit should go forward are typically connected to their sentiments of the companies being discussed.
Comcast is pretty unpopular with the public. So when it comes up that they want do a major merger, people think, “Fuck that, no merger.” But you do have a company like Google, which people do like, which in its market is probably more powerful.
But people’s intuition is that Google is “a good company,” that they’re trying to invent cool stuff. So that’s a question for you: How much are arguments about antitrust about companies versus how much are they about ideal functionings of markets applied irrespective of how we feel about them?
Tim Wu
You have put your finger on the central question that has obsessed antitrust for the last 100 years.
It is essentially a battle between the economists and the lawyers. The economists do believe we should have no sense of right and wrong, but that it’s about economic performance. The champion of this view was [conservative legal scholar] Robert Bork, and his basic argument was that a lot of what looks like evil or malicious conduct — the so-called “bad guys” — may be very economically efficient and therefore good for the economy. So [to Bork] antitrust lawyers should get out of the business of calling good or evil.
The opposite tradition I’d associate with [Supreme Court Justice] Louis Brandeis, who took the antitrust law not as merely an economic tool — though it was that — but a promotion of certain values he thought were central to the American public, like decentralization and a certain kind of virtue in business. Brandeis believed business could be a profession and pursued in a virtuous way. He also thought that the whole goal of the American Republic was to inculcate virtue and good character in people.
So that is the question. And it manifests itself in a merger like AT&T with Time Warner — how do you decide that? Is it just about the numbers and what happens to customers, or is there a deeper concern about whether this company is predatory, a Standard Oil of its time, run by a ruthless monopolist?
In the law — in the doctrine — Bork has won. If you hung out at an FTC meeting or a merger review meeting, you wouldn’t have people saying, “This is an evil company that needs to be stopped.” You’d have arguments about the numbers.
In the end, it’s the lawyers that make the final call. And I think they have intuitions that shade their views. Maybe that’s why Google has gotten a pass and AT&T and Comcast have the egg thrown in their face.
Is there a Trumpian danger in giving the government discretion to punish unpopular companies?
Trump Holds Summit With Technology Industry LeadersPhoto by Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Ezra Klein
But what do you think? I try to track emergent arguments in politics, and this feels like a big one. Are you saying that the central demand of this movement should be — in a completely rules-based way, that no market should have more than three players with more than X share of the market? Which one of those theories do you think is right?
Tim Wu
I’m on the side of Brandeis, and I don’t agree with Robert Bork.
My views are nuanced here. I don’t believe in a flat rule — that an industry reaches 65 percent concentration and is automatically broken up. There was a bill in Congress and a series of 1950s economists who believed in a series of automatic trip wires to break them up. It was called “no-fault” deconcentration.
I think that’s a fairly crude device. Antitrust and private power have such a big effect on our daily lives that it’s too important to be left to the economist and the raw numbers. The influence of how we are as a people and what we are as a country — particularly in sensitive sectors like the media — it’s wrong to think we can run the math and get the right answers.
The founders were concerned about concentrated power in all aspects; they didn’t have concentrated private power. You need an eye on this question, and the character of the firm should matter.
We should do more breakups. Sometimes they have incredibly salutary effects. The company doesn’t like it, but we should never forget that we’re not talking about a person here. We’re not dismembering an individual — that would be immoral!
Some of these dismemberments led to some of the most incredible economic growths and innovations int he history of the United Staes — whether AT&T, Standard Oil — there are moments where big breakups had important consequences for this country. We shouldn’t be afraid to pull the trigger. And you need a mix of economic and moral-driven, maybe political, sense of what this company is doing to us as a country.
Ezra Klein
What are some companies that if broke them up we’d have more innovation and more growth?
Tim Wu
I’ll give you my criteria. You need to look for a monopolist who has been in charge of an industry for a very long time with no signs of competition. We’re talking about stagnant industries.
I’m less excited about breaking up companies under growth that just got there and are doing things. Google in 2010, 2011, was still on the make and innovating wildly. Think of someone who has been there for a very long time — someone like Microsoft and the monopolies it’s had for some time over [Microsoft] Office. It would have been better for the company at the time. It’s a little late now to come back and break them up.
The airline industry — we might consider retroactively breaking up parts of it. We allowed American Airlines and US Airways (to merge) — the effects have been so pernicious for customers, the profits are through the roof, that it’s clearly an error. We need to say, “We blew that.”
There’s been a long story of hospital mergers. They’re not famous, but the price of care after the merger goes up, and the mortality rates also go up. More people die, and they cost more. Those mergers were a mistake.
We should not be afraid to use that power when it’s called for.
Ezra Klein
Let me ask a question about the trip wire approach versus the impressionistic/moralistic approach to company breakups.
The moralistic approach feels like an invitation to crony capitalism. If the decision is made based on the sentiments of the political class toward these companies, that’s an incentive to invest dramatically in lobbying.
Look at Trump. He wants to use anti-trust — not because he is concerned about consolidation in industry, but as a method of punishment and hurting your industries. If companies have this much to fear from the government not liking them, I could really imagine taking us further down that dangerous path.
Tim Wu
Those are arguments Bork made. But Justice (John Paul) Stevens made it a different way. He had this phrase, “Anti-trust is like the law of the Wild West. Sometimes the sheriff feels like you should go pistol-whip a few bad guys.”
I share with you a belief in the rule of law as opposed to political whims and enemies lists. The question is how far you’re erring. I’m not saying politicians should sit around and say, “My phone bill is outrageous let’s break up AT&T.”
The balance has gone too far into a purely economic driven, “what are the numbers,” kind of story. The trip-wire approach is completely insensitive to whether that would be good. It requires judgment calls and we shouldn’t be pretending that we don’t have judgements.
People look at Amazon and the anti-trust people look at it and say, “They have lowered prices.” How can we break them up if they’ve accomplished one of the main goals of this law, which is to keep prices down for customers?

AMERICA: NO LEGAL NEED APPLY

REPORT: The assault to finish off the American 

middle-class is NOT over


The report noted that many illegals don't have jobs or have difficulty in landing good jobs because of local laws. However, it identified several states that have begun easing employment laws so that illegals can get a job.


Trump names billionaire corporate raider Icahn to slash regulations on business

Trump names billionaire corporate raider Icahn to slash regulations on business

By Patrick Martin
23 December 2016
In appointing billionaire corporate raider Carl Icahn to a high-profile advisory role—in charge of slashing government regulations on Wall Street, the oil monopolies and other giant corporations—Donald Trump has once again underscored the radically right-wing character of his administration’s domestic economic and social policy.
Icahn will not assume a formal role and will not become a government employee, allowing him to avoid a Senate confirmation hearing and the disclosure of his vast assets, including those which stand to benefit directly from the policies he advises Trump to adopt.
These include two oil refineries about 
which Icahn has had repeated conflicts 
with the Environmental Protection 
Agency. According to press reports, Icahn played a major role in selecting Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a bitter opponent of regulations on the fossil fuel industry, to head the EPA under Trump. Share prices for Icahn’s CVR Energy have risen by 67 percent since the election, netting him an additional $600 million.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Icahn would have effective veto power over the naming of a successor to Mary Jo White as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the principal regulator of Wall Street. “He is playing a central role in selecting the next chairman,” the newspaper wrote. “Interested candidates have reached out to him, and he is interviewing others at the request of Mr. Trump...”
Icahn is a longtime business crony of Trump, having lent him money when he was in financial difficulties. Last February, he purchased the assets of Trump Entertainment Resorts when it emerged from bankruptcy reorganization. Trump did not profit greatly from the sale, since his role with the company has been limited to licensing the use of his name. Icahn then smashed a strike by casino workers at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, closing the facility in September.
The appointment signals a commitment to across-the-board deregulation of corporate America, not just Wall Street and the energy monopolies. A statement from Icahn issued by the Trump transition team declared, “Under President Obama, America’s business owners have been crippled by over $1 trillion in new regulations and over 750 billion hours dealing with paperwork… It’s time to break free of excessive regulation and let our entrepreneurs do what they do best: create jobs and support communities.”
What Icahn does best, however, is destroy jobs and devastate communities, demonstrated most recently in Atlantic City.
The 80-year-old billionaire began his career as a corporate raider in the late 1970s. He used junk bonds, newly pioneered by Michael Millken (later a convicted swindler), and other financial innovations to develop the technique of seizing control of companies using borrowed money and then selling off the company’s assets to pay the resulting debts, leaving himself with any profits. In the course of this asset stripping, tens of thousands of workers lost their jobs, health benefits and pensions.
Icahn became a household name in 1985 with his takeover of Trans World Airlines (TWA), which was the target of two separate takeover bids, one by Frank Lorenzo, notorious as a union-buster at Continental Airlines, the other by Icahn. The Air Line Pilots Association and the mechanics union (International Association of Machinists—IAM) supported the bid by Icahn, deeming his 26 percent pay cut for pilots and 15 percent cut for mechanics “superior” to Lorenzo’s demand for a 50 percent cut.
While Lorenzo offered a higher price, the TWA board chose Icahn’s bid because, as the New York Times wrote at the time, “the union agreements were worth much more to the board of directors since they would strengthen the airlines’ profitability and ensure labor peace for three years.”
Icahn’s asset stripping and the deepening crisis of the airline industry led TWA to bankruptcy and liquidation in 1992, with the loss of all the workers’ jobs. Icahn, however, became a billionaire. He used his reputation as an absolutely ruthless opponent to practice what became known as “greenmail.” Once he had targeted a corporation by buying up a sizeable block of stock, the company would pay him a premium to go away.
Icahn went on to take—and sometimes dump—sizeable stakes in companies ranging from tech giants Apple, eBay and Dell; to auto suppliers such as Lear and Federal-Mogul; pharmaceutical and biotech firms; minimum-wage retailers like Family Dollar; and entertainment properties such as Netflix and casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. He bought a sizeable piece of American International Group, the huge insurer, after it was bailed out by the US Treasury in the 2008 crash.
Icahn is the seventh billionaire, counting Trump himself, to take a prominent position in the new Republican administration. He joins asset-stripper Wilbur Ross, Amway heiress Betsy DeVos, TD Ameritrade heir Todd Ricketts, hedge fund boss Vincent Viola and World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon.
This line-up is comprised of financial 
speculators, wreckers of industry and 
profiteers from pyramid schemes. Their 
business activities are not connected, even 
indirectly, to the development of the 
productive forces and creation of new 
technologies and products. They are 
plunderers, benefiting either from their own 
semi-criminal operations or from those 
carried out by more senior members of their 
immediate families, from whom they 
inherited or stand to inherit great wealth.
Icahn is the wealthiest, and certainly the most notorious, of Trump’s assembly of billionaires. His net worth reached a high point of some $24 billion in 2014, when he was No. 25 on the Forbes 400 list of the world’s richest individuals. A run of bad investments has dropped him to an estimated $17 billion, and No. 65 on this year’s list. Nonetheless, his current net worth is equal to the wealth of all of the other Trump appointees combined, bringing the total to more than $34 billion. This vast sum represents a greater concentration of riches by far than in any previous government in Washington.
Over the past several days, Trump has announced a handful of other nominations, all consistent with the ultra-right character of his administration. He appointed Peter Navarro, a business professor at the University of California at Irvine, to head a new National Trade Council.
Navarro is a longtime Democrat, having run unsuccessfully for mayor of San Diego and for a congressional seat. He advocates a virulently anti-Chinese policy on trade, similar to that of the AFL-CIO bureaucracy. Navarro and Wilbur Ross worked together on Trump’s trade policy during the campaign, and Trump issued a statement saying that Navarro “has presciently documented the harms inflicted by globalism on American workers, and laid out a path forward to restore our middle class.”
Other new appointments include a trio of right-wing press spokespersons. Sean Spicer, the top liaison between the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, will be White House press secretary. Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager, will be counselor to the president. Fox News commentator Monica Crowley will be press representative for the National Security Council.
The ultra-right character of the new administration was underscored by a report that Representative Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, tapped to head the Office of Management and Budget, spoke to a chapter of the John Birch Society during the summer, praising the group and encouraging it to continue its work.
Another nominee, Representative Ryan Zinke of Montana, nominated for secretary of the interior, told voters during his 2014 campaign for Congress that Hillary Clinton was “the real enemy…the Antichrist.”


DID THE DEMOCRAT PARTY FINISH OFF 

AMERICA?


“Throughout this period, the trade unions transitioned from their alliance with the Democratic Party on the basis of ferocious anti-communism into outright instruments of the corporations and the state. They have and continue to collaborate in the “orderly shutdown” of factories and mines, after pushing through wage and benefit cuts on the bogus pretext of “saving jobs.”


AMERICA: NO LEGAL NEED APPLY


REPORT: The assault to finish off the American 

middle-class is NOT over


“The report noted that many illegals don't have jobs or have difficulty in landing good jobs because of local laws.”

“However, it identified several states that have begun easing employment laws so that illegals can get a job.”

TRUMPERNOMICS:


"The collection of billionaires, bankers, CEOs, generals and social 

arch-reactionaries that will comprise his cabinet and White House 

inner circle is pledged to remove all constraints on the ability of 

the rich to plunder American society for their own personal gain 

and profit."


"The economists found that the pre-tax share of national 

income received by the bottom half of the US population has 

been cut nearly in half since 1980, from 20 percent to 12 

percent, while the income share of the top one percent has 

nearly doubled, from 12 percent to 20 percent."


The United States of Inequality

The United States of Inequality

By Andre Damon
20 December 2016
Earlier this month, economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, leading experts on global inequality, released a groundbreaking study on the growth of income inequality in the United States between 1946 and 2016.
While the economists’ earlier studies made substantial advances in documenting inequality in the United States, the most unequal developed country in the world, this is the first survey claiming to “capture 100 percent of national income,” including the impact of taxation, social programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, and income from capital gains.
The result is a fuller picture of social inequality in the United States than any previous attempts. The conclusions are staggering, revealing that over the course of the past four decades there has occurred one of the most rapid upward redistributions of income in modern history.
The economists found that the pre-tax share of national income received by the bottom half of the US population has been cut nearly in half since 1980, from 20 percent to 12 percent, while the income share of the top one percent has nearly doubled, from 12 percent to 20 percent. “The two groups have basically switched their income shares,” the authors note, “with 8 points of national income transferred from the bottom 50 percent to the top 1 percent.”
The study documents a sharp change between 1946-1980 and 1980 to the present. In the first period, the pre-tax incomes of the bottom 50 percent of earners more than doubled, growing by 102 percent, while the incomes of the top 1 percent increased by only 47 percent and the top 0.001 percent by 57 percent.
Since 1980, however, the incomes of the bottom 50 percent of earners have stagnated at about $16,000 a year (in current dollars), while the incomes of the top 1 percent have grown by 205 percent, and the top 0.001 percent by 636 percent.
After accounting for the impact of various tax credits and social programs, the economists found that the incomes of the bottom half of income earners increased by 21 percent since the 1980s. They note, however, that none of this increase has gone into disposable income. Rather, it is almost entirely the result of increased health care payouts from Medicare, which has simply been absorbed by the pharmaceutical giants and insurance companies engaged in price-gouging for vital health care services.
The principal factor in the surge in income inequality, particularly since 2000, has been the growth in “capital income,” that is, the stock market. The inflation of stock market bubbles has been the primary form through which the ruling class and its political representatives have engineered a massive transfer of wealth.
The figures contained in the report by Piketty, Saez and Zucman reflect historical transformations in the structure of American capitalism and class relations in the United States. The colossal growth of social inequality is bound up with the decay of American capitalism and decline in its world economic position.
Historians have often remarked that during its early days, the United States was the most socially egalitarian region of the Western world. The growth of monopolization and finance capital in the latter part of the 19th century transformed America into a land of “robber barons” at one pole and workers and immigrants whose living conditions were exposed in such works as Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives, published in 1890, and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle of 1906.
But along with these processes came the growth of the workers’ movement, which, largely through the efforts of socialists, fought to organize the American working class across its myriad ethnic, religious and regional divisions. The Russian Revolution of 1917 gave new impetus to these struggles, including the militant labor actions of the 1930s that led to the formation of the industrial unions.
The American ruling class, alarmed by the prospect that American workers would follow the example set by the Bolsheviks, and having at its disposal the economic might of the world’s largest and most advanced industrial economy, set out on a program of social reform exemplified by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, which introduced Social Security and curbed the worst abuses of Wall Street.
The United States emerged from the Second World War as the dominant global power, commanding more than 50 percent of world economic output. By the late 1960s, however, the economic domination of American capitalism began to decline, as the economies of Europe and Asia were rebuilt. A series of economic and political crises culminated in the combination of economic stagnation and inflation of the 1970s.
The US ruling class responded by embarking on a policy of class war, deindustrialization and financialization. With President Jimmy Carter’s appointment of Paul Volcker to head the Federal Reserve in 1979, the US central bank threw the United States into a manufactured recession. After coming to power in 1981, Ronald Reagan launched a full-scale social counterrevolution, initiated by the breaking of the PATCO air traffic controllers’ strike and firing and blacklisting of the strikers. Similar policies were pursued by the ruling classes throughout the world.
The trade unions played a vital role in facilitating this offensive, isolating and betraying every attempt at resistance by the working class throughout the 1980s and incorporating themselves into the structure of corporate management and the state. By the end of the decade, the unions had transformed themselves, for all practical purposes, into arms of the companies and the government. The bureaucratic elites that dominated them devoted all their efforts to suppressing and sabotaging working class struggle.
Every subsequent administration, Democratic and Republican alike, has pursued policies that promote social inequality, including successive rounds of financial deregulation, repeated tax cuts for corporations and top income earners, the slashing of social programs, and the elimination of workplace protections.
After the 2008 financial crisis, the Obama administration accelerated these processes. The White House continued and expanded the bank bailouts initiated under the Bush administration and helped funnel trillions of dollars to Wall Street through the Federal Reserve’s “quantitative easing” programs, while working, as in the 2009 auto restructuring, to slash wages.
Under the incoming administration of President-elect Trump, the offensive against the working class will sharply intensify. The election of Trump represents something new. He has staffed his cabinet with billionaires, far-right, pro-business ideologues, and generals—all of them dedicated to the impoverishment of the working class and the ever more violent suppression of popular opposition.
But Trump does not emerge from nowhere. He is not some aberration. Rather, he is the noxious culmination of the decay of American capitalism, growth of unprecedented levels of social inequality and collapse of American democracy.
These same processes have created the objective foundations for socialist revolution. In the mid-1990s, when the Workers League in the US and the sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in the rest of the world began to transform themselves from leagues into parties, adopting the name Socialist Equality Party, we recognized the immense revolutionary significance of “the widening gap between a small percentage of the population that enjoys unprecedented wealth and the broad mass of the working population that lives in varying degrees of economic uncertainty and distress.”
The past two decades have confirmed this prognosis. The fight against social inequality requires the building of a new political leadership, embodied in the SEP, to organize and unify the struggles of the working class on the basis of a revolutionary program. The capitalist profit system must be replaced with a society based on equality, international planning and democratic control of production—that is, socialism.


AMNESTY AND OPEN BORDERS.... It's all about keeping wages depressed!

FIXING AMERICA’S UNEMPLOYMENT CRISIS:
How many jobs in your community are held by foreign born?

"Excerpt: The United States is currently paying up to $1.6 billion a year in unemployment insurance benefits to unemployed illegal alien workers."

"You can’t survive on what the jobs are paying."


"You can’t survive on what the jobs are paying."


"You can’t survive on what the jobs are paying."


"You can’t survive on what the jobs are paying."


SOARING POVERTY AND UNEMPLOYMENT  UNDER OBAMA’S OPEN

 

BORDERS POLICIES.


http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/10/millions-of-americans-legals-unemployed.html



OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS-TRUMPERNOMICS:


THE FINAL TRANSFER OF AMERICA’ ECONOMY TO THE SUPER RICH!

 

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/09/barack-obama-and-his-crony-bankstershow.html



THE GREAT DEPRESSION IS JUST AROUND THE/ALL CORNERS!


Amnesty plan would cost taxpayers $1.2 trillion



Hillary Clinton's plan to bring 11 million illegal aliens "out of the shadows" would cost American households an immediate tax increase of $1.2 trillion, or $15,000 per household, according to a study by the National Academy of Sciences.




Thousands suffer as dangerous cold blankets US Midwest

Thousands suffer as dangerous cold blankets US Midwest

By our reporters 
19 December 2016
Bitter cold afflicted thousands of men, women and children in the Midwest and Great Plains over the weekend as temperatures and wind chills dropped to record lows. 
Thousands were left in a desperate search to seek warmth and safety from the cold. Hardest hit were the homeless, who in many cases had very few options, with some forced to sleep in packed shelters or seek help from friends.
More than three dozen record lows were set over the weekend while temperatures hit 20 to 30 degrees below zero Fahrenheit in some areas. While such temperatures are not that unusual in the US Midwest, the cold has caused enormous suffering and hardship under conditions of continued widespread homelessness and with broad layers of the population living in substandard housing, often without utilities.
The impact has been particularly severe in 

large urban centers, where chronic high 

levels of unemployment and homelessness 

strain an already substandard social safety 

net.

A WSWS reporting team visited a warming center at the Team Wellness Center near Eastern Market in Detroit. Despite high levels of homelessness and poverty in the city, the administration of Democratic Mayor Mike Duggan has opened only a handful of warming centers. This under 
conditions where thousands are homeless and
tens of thousands more are living in homes 
lacking basic amenities such as heat, 
electricity or running water.
Team Wellness provides mental health and other healthcare services in the central Detroit area. The center was distributing donated food baskets when the WSWS reporters arrived.
Kim Luce, a care coordinator for Team Wellness Center, said, “Members are coming in to get warm and are asking for blankets. We are also having a coat drive.
“There are homeless people who come here 
and people living in homes without running 
water or electricity. I have a couple of people 
who have had their electricity cut off. There 
are older people, young mothers with children
 who sleep together to keep warm. We have 
people who live in abandoned homes.”
She spoke about the claims that Detroit is being “revitalized.” “It is kicking downtown, but as soon as you step outside of downtown, it is desolate. It is scary.
Houses are burnt. Houses are vacant. You can’t survive on what the jobs are paying.”
Antonio Walker, age 45, told the WSWS, “This place has kept me warm and safe. I got frostbitten last year when I was homeless.”
“I don’t wish homelessness on another man or woman. I know what it is like to eat out of a trash can. If you have to survive, you will do it.”
Teresa, age 57, said, “I am here for a food basket, and I can really use it. All I receive is food stamps. No cash assistance. It is an every day struggle to survive.
“I was in a car accident in 2011 and now I am disabled. No one will hire me. I get subsidized rent, but even the $50 a month they charge me is difficult to pay because I don’t have any cash income.
“There are quite a few people in situations similar to mine. Even when you are working, the wages don’t pay the bills. I had worked my way up to earning $16.50 an hour, but the starting pay is only $7.50. Can you imagine that! People are in need.”
Tracy Sullivan said, “I came here to get a Christmas box. I don’t have a furnace right now at my house. I am doing the best I can without it. It has been really cold. I have been using a stove and a space heater, and that is so dangerous. I also have to take care of a granddaughter.”

BLOG: ASK RAHM EMANUEL WHAT 
HE HAS DONE IN CHICAGO FOR 
ILLEGALS!!!
As freezing temperatures forced Chicago’s homeless population to seek shelter, the administration of Chicago Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel opened only one warming center on Chicago’s west side at the Garfield Center. According to Chicago’s Homeless Count Survey, 5,889 homeless lived in Chicago in 2016, likely a significant underestimation of the real number.
A WSWS reporting team visited the warming center to speak to those seeking shelter. The center closed at 5pm, after which everyone inside, including children, were forced to seek alternative forms of shelter.
Lloyd, who became homeless in June, told the WSWS, “I got here at six this morning. Before that it was nine. Every now and then they’ll give you a lunch. But they usually only feed the women and children.
“It’s supposed to be 24 hours but it closes at five. You always get a different excuse every time. It has yet to be open for 24 hours.
“I’m going to the shelter after this that only holds 72 people. It’s packed.”
He added, “I’ve been homeless since June. The Chicago Housing Authority never switched me over and gave me new housing. It’s been rough.”
Shortly afterwards, volunteers from the Salvation Army arrived and began handing out soup and coffee to mostly mothers and children.
Kevin, asked by the WSWS team for how long he had been homeless, responded, “Too long. It’s the cost. It’s too high, the housing. Rent, single rooms only, they’re all too high. That’s why I left before. I went down to Texas for four years. I came back, everything was good up until 2001 when that economic thing was going on.”

BLOG: ASK EMANUEL WHAT HE HAS 
DONE FOR HIS AND OBAMA'S CRONY 
BANKSTERS!
When asked if he thought Emanuel, along 
with the rest of the Chicago politicians, were 
doing enough to help the homeless during the
cold months, he said, “I’ve been homeless 
over 10 years. It’s been rough. I don’t think 
they’re doing too much of anything to help the
homeless people.
“I’ve seen quite a few people get hurt in the winter time. They come in with frostbite, gangrene and all kinds of stuff. It’s rough here.
“There are few shelters around to keep people off the street but they could be doing more, especially with all these empty houses. If it was me, I would set up some kind of program where people can stay in a building and while they’re staying there they can be fixing it at the same time.
“The shelters are overcrowded. They’re getting worse and worse because they closed up a lot of mental centers and you got a lot of mentally ill people coming around because they don’t have anywhere else to go. So you got a mixture of people that got education and half of the other people have mental issues and drug problems and alcohol problems.”
A homeless worker, Jermaine, told the WSWS: “I work, I just don’t get enough work to make ends meet. I stack skids for a living. Today is the first I’ve ever been to 10 S. Kedzie, but I think the warming center closes at five and I think that’s kind of early because it’s going to be real cold after five. I’ll probably sleep by a friend’s tonight.”
He added, “I’m exhausted. My thing is, you have all these politicians and people wanting to get into office and all of these promises and with all these taxes being raised, where is all of this money going to? Where are the jobs? There shouldn’t be any reason for anyone not to be working.
“Everyone should have a job. For example, if I had some power to pull some strings, I would get people from different communities together and come clean the trash in the vacant lots. That’s a job in itself and that’s something that could be done everyday. There are solutions to these problems. It’s just, whoever is in power, they want it to be this way.”


HEROIN!

MEXICO INVADES, LOOTS AND EXPANDS ITS HEROIN 

MARKETS IN AMERICA’S OPEN AND UNDEFENDED 

BORDERS

JUDICIAL WATCH:
“The greatest criminal threat to the daily lives of American citizens are the Mexican drug cartels.”

Much more here:


“Mexican drug cartels are the “other” terrorist 

threat to America. Militant Islamists have the 

goal of destroying the United States. Mexican 

drug cartels are now accomplishing that 

mission – from within, every day, in virtually 

every community across this country.”



TRUMP SIGNALS OBAMA’S  CRONY BANKSTERS THAT 

BETTER LOOTING IS AHEAD.



The chief motivating factor behind the rise on Wall Street is 

the understanding that the incoming Trump administration 

will not only carry out policies to benefit the financial elites, 

but that responsibility for implementing this agenda will be 

in the hands of some its foremost representatives.



AMERICA DIES YOUNG, POOR AND 

ADDICTED!


A Nation Commits Suicide


AMERICA’S STROLL TO CIVIL WAR II

The emphasis on class warfare, open borders, secularism, and multiculturalism at the expense of Americanism by not only the Democratic Party, but by their cohorts in the media and universities has led to a very divided America with each having a separate vision for the United States. The Left as represented by the Democratic Party seeks an open-border stateless America where anyone who sets foot on our soil is free to practice their branch of identity within our borders and with no allegiance to American sovereignty.


TRUMPERNOMICS: Serving the Rich, the 

Greedy and the Crooked.

TRUMP’S CABINET OF STOOGES, 

LOOTERS and CRONIES


Puzder’s nomination is of a piece with Trump’s other cabinet choices. Betsy DeVos, an enemy of public education, has been selected to head the Department of Education. Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon known for his antipathy towards government “interference” in housing regulation, has been nominated as the Housing and Urban Development Secretary.


ANDREW PUZDER:

ENEMY OF THE AMERICAN WORKER and ADVOCATE FOR OPEN BORDERS

TRUMP'S OPEN BORDERS AND AMNESTY/ NON-ENFORCEMENT POLICIES WILL HELP KEEP THE HAMBURGER INDUSTRY WELL STOCKED WITH "CHEAP" LABOR ILLEGALS.... The America people will then be forced to pay the REAL cost of all that staggeringly expensive labor



“Yet Andrew Puzder, the chief executive of the company that operates Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, has been chosen by President-elect Donald Trump as labor secretary.”



“Mr. Puzder, however, has been adamantly opposed to a meaningful increase in the federal minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour. Mr. Trump has said he could stomach an increase to $10, which is still abysmal.”



“Here is the record at those restaurants. When the Obama Labor Department looked at thousands of complaints involving fast-food workers, it found labor law violations in 60 percent of the investigations at Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, usually for failure to pay the minimum wage or time and a half for overtime.”


OPEN BORDERS: The Democrat Party’s Weapon of Mass Destruction on the American Worker



http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-la-raza-mexican-crime-tidal-wave.html


"Los Angeles saw all crime rise in 2015: violent crime up 19.9 percent, homicides up 10.2 percent, shooting victims up 12.6 percent, rapes up 8.6 percent, robberies up 12.3 percent, and aggravated assault up 27.5 percent,"Landry said.”


TRUMP FOLDS TO LA RAZA MEX FASCIST MOVEMENT
Says the “WALL” will now be only “NO TRESSPASSING” signs posted every hundred miles!
“He's showing more empathy for illegal aliens than he is for American citizens.  Shouldn't it be the concerns of Americans he should be considering first, before the feelings of illegals?  These people are taking taxpayer money and American jobs, some committing crimes, and many are not assimilating and speaking English, and Trump wants them to stay?”

SHOCKING REPORT!
THE STAGGERING ILLEGAL INVASION: INVADE, MURDER, RAPE, BREED ANCHOR BABIES FOR WELFARE and VOTE DEM FOR MORE!
The report was apparently completed in May, leading some to suspect that the Obama administration did not want it released for fear that it would bolster Donald Trump’s call for a border wall.

This new report, whose full text the Center for Immigration Studies has now obtained, estimates that nearly half of illegal aliens slip through the southern border undetected.

TRUMP VOWS TO KEEP OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERS LOOTING
MNUCHIN: THE  FORECLOSURE  MACHINE!

The FDIC paid OneWest $1 billion, which Stein said went to “billionaire investors … to cover the close of foreclosing on working class, everyday American folks.”
“But the bank came under fire for its foreclosure practices as housing advocacy groups accused it of being too quick to foreclose on struggling homeowners. In 2011, dozens of demonstrators descended on Mnuchin's $26.5 million home in he wealthy Bel Air neighborhood to protest OneWest's eviction tactics, according to the Los Angeles Times.”

TRUMPERnomics:

AFTER OBAMA-CLINTONIMCS, THE LOOTING OF AMERICA BY THE RICH TO CONTINUE UNDER THEIR OWN, DONALD TRUMP
TRUMP FILLS THE “SWAMP” WITH CRONY BILLIONAIRES!
"Far from Trump’s demagogic claims that he would 'drain the swamp,' the corrupt nexus between Wall Street and Washington is tighter than ever."

OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS is now the new TRUMPERnomics!
TRUMP VOWS TO SERVE THE RICH WITH SUPER OBAMA-CLINTONIMCS!
There is a vast chasm between this empty populist rhetoric and the personnel that Trump has selected to populate his government. The speech followed a series of cabinet picks, including billionaire asset strippers, Wall Street bankers, and dedicated opponents of financial and corporate regulations, public education and Medicare and Medicaid, to lead the Treasury, Commerce, Education and Health and Human Services departments.

TRUMP  IMPOSES  OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS:  Cut Federal Pensions and Medicare to Cover Tax Cuts For the Super Rich
"Trump is not the initiator of this class war against working people. It has been underway for decades, beginning in earnest with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and continuing under every succeeding administration, including the eight-year tenures of Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The colossal redistribution of wealth and income from the bottom to the top of American society reached record proportions under Obama, whose legacy of falling living standards and worsening economic crisis for tens of millions of workers was a decisive factor in the victory of the fascistic demagogue and con artist Trump."
ONE OF THE MOST DISTURBING BOOKS OUT THERE ON MEXICO’S INVASION, OCCUPATION AND LOOTING of CALIFORNIA
MEXIFORNIA: The Shattering of the American Dream

MILLIONS of JOBS and BILLIONS in WELFARE and they commit most of the MURDERS
SANCTUARY CITIES AND STATES:  AMERICA FALLS TO LA RAZA SUPREMACY!
“What we're seeing is our Congress and national leadership dismantling our laws by not enforcing them. Lawlessness becomes the norm, just like Third World corruption. Illegal aliens now have more rights and privileges than Americans. If you are an illegal alien, you can drive a car without a driver's license or insurance. You may obtain medical care without paying. You may work without paying taxes. Your children enjoy free education at the expense of taxpaying Americans.” 

TO COVER TAX CUTS FOR THE SUPER RICH, TRUMP VOWS TO STRIP MEDICARE

It is obvious that this scheme will mean a drastic decline in health care for the elderly and disabled and result in increased poverty and disease and premature death for millions of people. This is precisely what corporate America, which considers health care for the elderly and poor an intolerable drain on its profits, intends.

70% OF ILLEGALS GET WELFARE!
“According to the Centers for Immigration Studies, April '11, at least 70% of Mexican illegal alien families receive some type of welfare in the US!!! cis.org”
CIS

THANKSGIVING 2016 THE LAST BEFORE THE REVOLUTION

STAGGERING ADDICTION and POVERTY IN AMERICA


 LOS ANGELES: Mexico’s Second Largest City, First Place for Billion Dollar Mexican Welfare, Number 1 for Mexican Murder and Western Gateway For the LA RAZA Mexican Drug Cartels
WHY ARE ILLEGALS ABOVE THE LAW?
SANCTUARY CITIES and SANCTUARY STATE of CALIFORNIA: The LA RAZA welfare state on our backs!

BUILDING THE MEXICAN CARTELS IN THE AMERICAN BURBS!

 

MEXIFORNIA (Formerly California) NOW UNDER NARCOMEX CONTROL


Suspected Illegal Alien Marijuana Farmers Held Workers Hostage: ICE



MEXIFORNIA.... welcomes Mexico's DRUG CARTELS... but first register to vote DEM!
THE STAGGERING  COST OF AMNESTY: non-enforcement is another form of AMNESTY!
Legals to pay trillions for open borders and Mexico’s looting
Between one-quarter and one-third of the 1.5 million new arrivals in 2014 were illegal aliens, meaning that a conservative estimate is that 1,000 illegal aliens a day are moving to the United States.
LA RAZA FACISM:
Ethnic Cleansing By Mexicans Occupying California…. Where Mexico loots first!

THE FACE OF MEXICAN FASCISM:
ANTONIO “Taco Runt” VILLARAIGOSA
 DECLARES MEXIFORNIA’S SURRENDER TO LA RAZA SUPREMACY
“Taco Runt” is a member of the Mexican Fascist Movement of M.E.Ch.A. and a racist (yes, Mexicans think of themselves as a unique “race”) LA RAZA supremacist.
He is proud of the fact that he FAILED California’s State Bar test more than any other illiterate Mexican on earth and that qualifies him to operate California’s Mexican Welfare State for LA RAZA. 

MEXICO’S CITY of SANTA ANA, in the ORANGE COUNTY, California should secede and join Mexico.
It is not an American city.
HOW MANY CITIES OR STATES SHOULD SECEDE TO MEXICO?

MEXIFORNIA: LA RAZA-OCCUPIED AND LOOTED

LA RAZA MEX ETHNIC CLEANSING IN CALIFORNIA…. of legals.


SANTA ANA SURRENDERS TO LA RAZA FASCIST MOVEMENT

 

Another California City Waves the Mexican Flag


ATTORNEY GENERAL IN LA RAZA-OCCUPIED MEXIFORNIA … a state where half the murders are by mexican gangs!

LA RAZA FASCIST XAVIER BECERRA – HIS CAMPAIGN BRIBES  AND THE MEX DRUG DEALER


 It didn’t stop Becerra, a prominent Latino rights  advocate who has served in Congress since 1993, from pushing for the dealer’s release at the request of his father, Horacio. The elder Vignali, a rich Los Angeles businessman, contributed thousands of dollars to Becerra’s various campaigns and a favor was in order. 


THE DEMOCRAT PARTY

HELL BENT ON FINISHING OFF THE AMERICAN WORKER!



"At one point she hailed the “record profits” of the auto companies. She did not mention that these profits came at the expense of the jobs, wages and retirement benefits of thousands of auto workers, decimated under the terms of the auto bailout organized by the Obama administration."

  

THE TWISTED ROAD TO REVOLUTION CAME DOWN WALL STREET

FIRST


OBAMA –CLINTONOMICS FOR THE SUPER RICH


"Between 2002 and 2015 annual earnings for the bottom 90 percent of Americans rose by 

only 4.5 percent, while earnings for the top 1 percent grew by 22.7 percent, according to the

Economic Policy Institute. Under the Obama administration, more than 90 percent of 

income gains since the so-called “recovery” began have gone to the top one percent."

 



 “Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes.  This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan THEAMERICAN THINKER.com

 

 

THE GIG JOB ECONOMY…. To keep wages DEPRESSED


As Barack Obama invites hordes to jump our borders jobs, welfare offices and voting booths…. WHAT IS LEFT FOR THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS HE HATES SO MUCH?

 

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-gig-economy-america-no-legal-need.html


ALARMING!


HERITAGE FOUNDATION:

AMNESTY WILL ALLOW 100 MILLION MORE ILLEGALS



Illegals are a crime tidal wave as it is!

THE CONSPIRACY:


The Democrat Party and the Mexican Fascist Party of LA RAZA…. Partnered to finish off white American middle class.


HOW MEXICO KILLED AMERICA FROM BORDER to OPEN BORDER…. By invitation of the Democrat Party

 

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/10/how-mexico-killed-america-from-border.html



THE MASSIVE CYBERATTACK EXPOSES AMERICA’S GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION, BANKSTER LOOTING AND THE SURRENDER OF U.S. BORDERS TO NARCOMEX.


http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/10/alert-more-massive-cyberattack-shuts.html



 

WARNING!


VERY GRAPHIC IMAGES OF AMERICA UNDER LA RAZA MEX OCCUPATION:


 

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/10/america-la-raza-mexicos-wide-open.html




THE DEMOCRAT PARTY’S SURRENDER OF OUR BORDERS TO LA

RAZA, AND THE MEX DRUG ONS.


Even though it has gone virtually unreported by corporate media, Breitbart News has extensively documented the Clintons’ longstanding support for “open borders.” Interestingly, as the Los Angeles Times observed in 2007, the Clinton’s praise for globalization and open borders frequently comes when they are speaking before a wealthy foreign audiences and donors.

 


OPEN BORDERS:


HOW THE BANKSTER-FUNDED DEMOCRAT PARTY NEARLY DESTROYED THE GOP, THE AMERICAN WORKER and then AMERICA!




 

 

MEXICANS JUMP AMERICA’S OPEN & UNDEFENDED BORDERS  AMNESTY

 


"Even though it has gone virtually unreported by corporate media, Breitbart News has extensively documented the Clintons’ longstanding support for “open borders.” Interestingly, as the Los Angeles Times observed in 2007, the Clinton’s praise for globalization and open borders frequently comes when they are speaking before a wealthy foreign audiences and donors."


 AMERICA’S ECONOMIC ARMAGEDDON – The Impact of Obama-Clintonomics



MURDER, RAPE, LOOT and VOTE DEM FOR MORE!
EACH ILLEGAL WILL COST THE AMERICAN PEOPLE $640,000 and then they go breed anchor babies for more!


THE LA RAZA MEXICAN LOOTERS: Invade, Occupy, Loot and bred anchor babies for 18 years of gringo-paid welfare

HISPANIC FAMILY VALUES: Mexican flag wavers loot the stupid gringo for billions!

Mexico’s massive looting in our open borders:

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2009/07/hispanic-family-values-or-runaway.html


Under Obama-Clintonomics, the rich became VERY rich and we got the tax bills for their bailouts and crimes!

OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS:
IT WORKS!   BUT ONLY FOR THE SUPER RICH!!!
"The same period has seen a massive growth of social inequality, with income and wealth concentrated at the very top of American society to an extent not seen since the 1920s."
"He (Trump) is able to get a hearing because millions of people are being driven into economic insecurity and poverty while the rich and the super-rich continue to amass obscene levels of wealth. He is able with some success to divert mass discontent along reactionary nationalist and racialist channels precisely because what passes for the “left” in American politics, anchor by the Democratic Party, has moved ever further to the right, culminating in the Obama administration which has presided over endless war and an unprecedented redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top of the economic ladder."

A NATION IN BORDER MELTDOWN:

MILLIONS OF JOBS TO ILLEGALS AND BILLIONS IN WELFARE


MEXICO WILL DOUBLE AMERICA’S POPULATION
IMMIGRANT SHARE OF ADULTS QUADRUPLED IN 232 COUNTIES

"More than 728,000 illegal immigrants have been shielded from being deported and granted work permits through President Barack Obama’s 2012 executive amnesty 

 

program, according to the Migration Policy Institute."


OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS FOR THE RICH:
On behalf of bankster-owned Barack Obama, Yellen vows to the rich and crony banksters that they will be protected and subsidized with no strings bailouts during the next looming economic meltdown around the corner from elections.
“In fact, these policies have already produced financial and asset bubbles that are unsustainable, and there are increasing signs of financial instability and crisis. There are growing warnings that the spread of negative interest rates is leading to a new financial meltdown even worse than the disaster that struck eight years ago.”
"The same period has seen a massive growth of social inequality, with income and wealth concentrated at the very top of American society to an extent not seen since the 1920s."

"The decline in homeownership is one sign of the deep social crisis in the United States. As rents and housing costs have soared, spurred on by financial speculation that has enriched the ruling elites, incomes and jobs for most Americans have shriveled."

 


AMERICA'S ROAD TO REVOLUTION



 “Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes.  This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan THE AMERICAN THINKER.com


Trump’s Labor Department Pick: Put Americans Last

By Mark Krikorian

The Corner at National Review, December 8, 2016

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/442884/trump-labor-secretary-immigration


Excerpt: Trump’s pick for Labor secretary is perhaps the worst person imaginable for that role: Andrew Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants, the parent company of fast-food chains Carl’s Jr., Hardee’s, and others. He is one of the nation’s most outspoken business voices for Gang of Eight-style immigration policies. He didn’t just sign an open letter once as a favor to a friend; he’s been a high-profile champion of amnesty and huge increases in immigration and guestworkers. This op-ed in Politico, timed to coincide with the launch of the Gang of Eight effort in 2013, could have been written by Jeb Bush. Here he is at AEI in 2013 making the case for importing more low-skilled workers. Here he joins with the Bloomberg-Murdoch Billionaires for Open Borders outfit and Grover Norquist in an effort to “push 2016 presidential candidates and congressional Republican leaders to support immigration reform this year.” There’s plenty more.

Now, Trump has been waffling and contradictory on the worker side of immigration (among other things) all along – I’ve written about it here, here, and here, for instance. Nor is it the case that Trump’s simply a liberal con man – Sessions could be one of the best Attorneys General we’ve ever had, Price and DeVos are solid conservative picks, and there’s every reason to think his Supreme Court nomination will be sound.

Let's Stop Paying Illegal Aliens to Stay in the U.S.: Unemployment Insurance

By David North
CIS Blog, December 7, 2016
http://cis.org/north/lets-stop-paying-illegal-aliens-stay-us-unemployment-insurance
Excerpt: The United States is currently paying up to $1.6 billion a year in unemployment insurance benefits to unemployed illegal alien workers.
Why should we pay these workers to, in effect, stay in the United States even after they have lost their jobs here, jobs that were obtained only through the violation of U.S. laws?
It is a good question, and one that has been rarely asked to date — but dealing with this topic would give the Trump administration an opportunity to reduce the illegal alien population by simply stopping these payments.