“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
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-gig-economy-america-no-legal-need.html
Hundreds
of New York Times workers stage walkout to protest job cuts
By Fred Mazelis
1 July 2017
1 July 2017
Hundreds of New
York Times employees staged a brief walkout on Thursday afternoon to
protest the newspaper’s plans for major staff cuts through buyouts and layoffs.
The main focus of the demonstration was the plan to eliminate the freestanding
Copy Desk and do away with the jobs of dozens of copy editors.
The newspaper
plans to “streamline” its editing process. The elimination of a separate Copy
Desk will seriously diminish the role of copy editors in the preparation of the
final version of articles. There are currently several stages in the
preparation of copy, including one in which editors work directly with
reporters, followed by copy editing, including the choice of headlines,
fact-checking, correcting grammatical and spelling errors, and other tasks. The
Times plans to replace this with a single editor responsible for a given
article.
By
management’s own account, more than 100 copy editor positions are being
eliminated in one swoop, while applications are then being taken for about 50
positions after the reorganization of the department. This technique,
increasingly common in the corporate world, will enable the company to pick and
choose its rehired editors without regard to seniority.
The Thursday
walkout, apparently aimed by the union representing Times editorial
employees at appealing to the “conscience” of the Times owners, is only
a pale expression of the outrage felt by the copy editors and other Times
employees.
Editors and
other employees marched outside the Times’s modern office building on
Eighth Avenue in midtown Manhattan with signs declaring, “Without us it’s the
New Yrok Times,” “This sign wsa not edited,” and “Copy editors save our buts.”
Workers said that while there had been other rounds of layoffs and buyouts,
this “is something different in kind.”
Earlier this
week the copy editors had written an open letter to the paper’s executive
editor and managing editor, stating, “We have begun the humiliating process of
justifying our continued presence at the New York Times .” They added,
“We only ask that you not treat us like a diseased population that must be
rounded up en masse, inspected and expelled.” Donald McNeil, Jr., the Times
science reporter, told the New York Daily News, “If they come for the
copy editors today, they will come for the reporters later today.”
The editors’
letter stated that they were “the group that protects the institution from
profoundly embarrassing errors, not to mention potentially actionable ones.”
There is an
obvious contradiction between the Times’s editorials, on the one hand,
claiming to decry corporate callousness and indifference, and, on the other,
its treatment of its own workers. This hypocrisy is not primarily a matter of
corporate greed. It reflects the dictates of Wall Street, where stock prices
increasingly determine whether even giant firms live or die.
The Times
editorials, reflecting well-founded fear of a social explosion in the face of
growing inequality and struggles of the working class, are largely aimed at
refurbishing the liberal image of the Democratic Party. As far as its own
business decisions, however, it takes its cues from the giant banks and hedge
funds, which demand ruthless attacks on every section of the workforce, even
somewhat better-off white-collar workers such as the Times editors.
There is a
connection, moreover, between the disinterest in copyediting and the more basic
elements of news reporting. The journalistic content of the Times has
steadily declined over the years, mirroring broader processes in the bourgeois
media. The Times in particular contains almost no serious investigative
journalism, with its articles on US politics and foreign policy serving as
conduits for various state and military officials.
Moreover,
along with the entire newspaper industry, the Times has been hit by
steady declines in advertising revenue and circulation. The ongoing economic
crisis is one factor in this process, and the exponential growth of social
media and the Internet another. According to a report in the Washington Post,
newspaper jobs across the US have been slashed by more than 50 percent, from
412,000 to 174,000, in the past 15 years.
The Times
found itself forced to turn to the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, one of the
world’s wealthiest men, for a $200 million loan some years ago. Slim now is the
Times’s largest stockholder, although the newspaper remains, through its
ownership of all the Class B Stock, under the control of the Sulzberger family.
Looming over
all these developments is the financialization of the economy. In generations
past, the Sulzbergers articulated the interests and formulated policies for the
ruling class. To a great extent this was backed up by their own leading
position within the corporate establishment. Today, however, the weight of this
one still-wealthy family has been drastically reduced within the ruling class.
The Times
remains the private property of the Sulzbergers, but there are scores if not
more hedge fund multimillionaires and nouveau riche billionaires who could
easily snatch it up—if it becomes available—as Amazon chief Jeff Bezos has done
at the Washington Post. To that extent, there is a bit of truth
contained in Donald Trump’s tweets about the “failing New York Times,” as he
lashes out in hysterical fashion at his bitter political opponents within the
ruling elite.
IMMANENT COLLAPSE THE PENA-NIETO
REGIME AND FALL TO THE LA RAZA DRUG CARTELS ON AMERICAN OPEN AND UNDEFENDED BORDERS.
More significant still, a former Mexican official, Jorge Castañeda, threatened to unleash Mexican cartels onto the U.S. to retaliate for deportations of illegal immigrants and the construction of a border wall.
“Mexico in a country whose
four wealthiest
billionaires control as much wealth as the
bottom half of the population—the 65 million
that live in poverty (which includes 13 million
living in extreme poverty)—and where the
top 10 percent as a whole accounts for 67
percent of Mexico’s national wealth.”
billionaires control as much wealth as the
bottom half of the population—the 65 million
that live in poverty (which includes 13 million
living in extreme poverty)—and where the
top 10 percent as a whole accounts for 67
percent of Mexico’s national wealth.”
New York City doctor opens fire on former coworkers, killing
one
By Isaac Finn
1 July 2017
1 July 2017
Yesterday
shortly before 3 p.m. a gunman dressed in a white lab coat entered
Bronx-Lebanon Hospital in New York City and opened fire, killing one doctor and
injuring at least seven other people, five of whom are currently in critical
condition. The gunman subsequently committed suicide.
Law
enforcement has identified the shooter as Dr. Henry Bello, a former physician
at the hospital who resigned two years ago in lieu of being fired. According to
media reports Bello was fired for harassing a fellow employee.
Bello,
according to law enforcement, entered the hospital around 2:55 p.m. and
proceeded to the 16th floor of the hospital with an assault rifle concealed
under his lab coat. Sources stated that Bello than proceeded to search for a
specific employee before opening fire.
Police later
found Bello dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on the 17th floor after
attempting to commit suicide by lighting himself on fire. A woman, who has only
been identified as a fellow doctor at the hospital, was also found dead near
Bello’s body.
Bello’s life
is the all-too-common story in America of an unstable individual losing his or
her job and then, unable to recover, violently lashing out at his or her boss
and coworkers before committing suicide.
Dione
Morales, a witness to Bello being fired, told CBS New York that the
45-year-old Nigerian-born doctor “was let go because I guess they figured he
was unstable.” She also said that he had threatened the hospital.
The police
have also told the media that Bello had been arrested in the past for sex abuse
and burglary, as well as smaller criminal activity such as jumping s subway
turnstile and public urination.
It appears
that Bello was unable to find a stable living situation after losing his job.
According to senior police officials, he had five different addresses within
the last two years and was considered transient.
Workplace
shootings have become a frequent occurrence within the United States. According
to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2015 there were 417 homicides at
workplaces across the country.
A report by
the news website Mother Jones has noted that there have already been
three separate workplace shootings this year—not including the recent one at
Bronx-Lebanon Hospital—two of which occurred in June.
Bello’s
rampage comes approximately two weeks after Jimmy Lam, a 38-year-old UPS
employee, opened fire on his coworkers at a San Francisco UPS facility,
murdering three of them. Lam then took his own life as police showed up and
began to close in on him.
The frequency
of these violent incidents at schools and workplaces is a reflection of the
immense social crisis in the US—marked by mass economic inequality,
unemployment, and lack of basic social services. As a result, individuals such
as Bello are often unable to find help or develop a stable living situation as
a result of personal issues combined with extreme poverty.
"The American financial and bankster oligarchy, steeped in
criminality and parasitism, can produce only a government of
war, social reaction and repression. In its blind avarice, it is
creating the conditions for unprecedented social upheavals. It
is hurtling toward its own revolutionary demise at the hands
of the working class."
Concentration of poverty in New York City neighborhoods on the rise
criminality and parasitism, can produce only a government of
war, social reaction and repression. In its blind avarice, it is
creating the conditions for unprecedented social upheavals. It
is hurtling toward its own revolutionary demise at the hands
of the working class."
Concentration of poverty in New York City neighborhoods on the rise
By Philip Guelpa
27 June 2017
27 June 2017
Despite
being elected on a campaign slogan invoking “Tale of Two Cities,” pledging to
fight the extreme economic inequality in New York City, the mayoralty of
self-styled progressive Democrat Bill de Blasio has presided over a marked
increase in poverty and a continuing rise in the cost of housing. Far from
lessening the divide between the two “cities,” which has been growing for
decades, the segregation, both economic and geographic, between the city’s
wealthy elite and the working class, has only intensified.
The rate of poverty and the concentration of poor people living in
impoverished neighborhoods in New York City have both risen dramatically in
recent years. These are the findings of a newly released study by the Furman
Center at New York University— State of New York City’s Housing and
Neighborhoods in 2016. During the period from 2011 to 2015, 1.7 million
city residents were classified as living below the official poverty line, set
at the absurdly low level of $24,036 annually for a family of four. This
represents 20.6 percent of the population, up from 19.1 percent in the
2006-2010 time span. Other, more realistic studies have shown that nearly two
thirds of the city’s population suffer from some form of economic distress.
Thirty percent of the city’s children are officially poor.
The gap
between rich and poor continues to widen. The percentages of New Yorkers at the
upper and lower ends of the income range grew, while those in the middle
shrank. Between 2000 and 2015, households earning less than $40,000 per year
increased by nearly three percentage points; those earning more than $100,000
grew by about one percentage point, but the ones in between shrank from 36 to
33 percent. Clearly, those in the middle are predominantly falling into
poverty.
According to
the Furman Center study, the geographic concentration of people living in areas
of extreme poverty, neighborhoods where more than 40 percent of the residents
are officially classified as poor, had fallen somewhat since 2000, when it was
25.4 percent, to 19.4 percent in 2006-2010. This increased markedly, to 23.5
percent, from 2011 through 2015—a period of supposed recovery from the
financial meltdown of 2008-2009. These are only the most acute examples. Nearly
45 percent of the city’s population live in areas of either high or extreme
poverty (30-40 percent of the residents below the poverty line, respectively).
Neighborhoods encompassing 16.5 percent of the city’s population, 1.4 million
people, experienced a 10 percent increase in the rate of poverty, the study
found.
Living
conditions in these poor neighborhoods are appalling. In extreme poverty areas,
serious housing code violations were registered at five times the city average
and the employment rate was 20 percentage points lower.
Of the five
New York City boroughs, the Bronx has the highest percentage of neighborhoods
experiencing high or extreme poverty—52.6 percent.
One of the
processes driving the increase in poverty is revealed by the report’s finding
that the employment rate for the city as a whole increased by 2.4 percentage
points between 2005 and 2015. Thus, while a slightly higher percentage of the
population is working, the real value of their income is decreasing.
The Furman
Center also found that as poverty is increasing, rents are continuing to climb,
creating unbearable living conditions for a large portion of the city’s
population. These are related phenomena. As the overall cost of housing
continues to rise, relatively better off people are forced to move to poorer
neighborhoods in search of more affordable rents. This, in turn, prompts
landlords to raise rents in those areas, impacting existing low-income
residents.
As an
example, the study describes the case of East Harlem, a predominantly working
class neighborhood in northern Manhattan. In 2000, the poverty rate was 37.1 of
the population. It is now 37.5—again based on the absurdly low official poverty
line. However, the number of residents with annual incomes of more than
$100,000 has risen by more than 4 percent. Thus, while the overall percentage
of people living in poverty is increasing, the economic spread between rich and
poor is widening.
Simultaneously,
rents in East Harlem are increasing at a rapid rate, with the monthly median
rising $120 between 2015 and 2016 alone, putting extreme pressure on the
already economically stressed residents.
Citywide,
between 2005 and 2015, median gross rent increased 18.3 percent, while median
household income for renters increased just 6.6 percent.
The acute
lack of affordable housing is driving large numbers of people onto the streets.
Between 2006 and 2016, the number of city residents spending the night in
homeless shelters increased by 87 percent, to about 61,000.
The
situation is not new, but is becoming ever more severe. Despite fluctuations,
the general trend of increasing poverty and lack of affordable housing has been
continuing for decades, but has accelerated in recent years as the global
economic crisis intensifies.
The extreme
economic inequality that exists in New York City is starkly illustrated by the
fact that while nearly two thirds of the population experience some form of
economic distress, with over a third living in deep poverty, New York has the
second highest GDP of all cities in the world. And yet, despite this huge amount
of wealth that could be used to address the crises of poverty and lack of
affordable housing, the living conditions for the city’s working class continue
to deteriorate.
These
statistics and many more presented in the Furman Center report starkly illustrate
the utter failure to address the huge economic disparity between the city’s
rich and poor by both Republican and Democratic administrations. The two
parties, regardless of who lives in Gracie Mansion (the official mayoral
residence) or who controls the City Council, are the representatives of the
city’s financial and corporate elite.
All of the
myriad programs that have over the years been presented allegedly to combat
poverty, the lack of affordable housing, and resulting homelessness have been
predicated on the need to maximize the wealth of the ruling elite. These
programs have utterly failed to improve the former, while definitely
facilitating the latter. Indeed, conditions for the mass of the population have
only gotten worse.
In just one
of many examples, there was a sharp decline in the issuance of permits for
construction of new housing units in 2016, following the failure to renew the
421-a tax incentive program. That program, while greatly benefiting developers
and large landlords, had done nothing to reduce the critical lack of affordable
housing.
The working
class of New York is rapidly approaching the breaking point. Mass revolt
against increasingly unlivable conditions may erupt at any time. The anger and
frustration find no expression within the present political establishment. What
is required is the building of a party that fights for a socialist program to
expropriate the vast wealth of the city’s elite and employ it to benefit the
great majority of the population.
Chuck Todd occupies a singular position in broadcast journalism: host of the oldest program in the history of American television. Yesterday, he did something that must have Tim Russert, Lawrence Spivak and Martha Rountree spinning in their graves. H...
June 26, 2017
Chuck Todd on MTP does not ask Bernie Sanders about FBI
investigation of wife for $10 mill bank fraud
Chuck
Todd occupies a singular position in broadcast journalism: host of the
oldest program in the history of American television. Yesterday, he did
something that must have Tim Russert, Lawrence Spivak and Martha Rountreespinning
in their graves. He hosted Bernie Sanders, arguably the leader of the
American electoral left, and did not ask him about the FBI investigation
of his wife for a suspected $10 million bank fraud, nor about reports
that he and his wife are lawyering up.
Stephen Miller tweeted:
<blockquote
class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Oh
weird... Chuck Todd has Bernie Sanders on and doesn't question
him about being under FBI investigation. <a
href="https://t.co/S9WgiCvwqU">https://t.co/S9WgiCvwqU</a></p>—
Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) <a
href="https://twitter.com/redsteeze/status/878971155931160576">June
25, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
I
am sorry: this is pretending that a potentially huge story does not
exist, presumably to spare Sanders fans the pain of discovering that
their idol might not be quite the idealist they supposed he was. The
guy who once lived in a shack with a dirt floor now has 3 houses. But
instead of even acknowledging the topic exists, Todd let Bernie off that
hook. (He did press Sanders on his rhetoric of people dying if a GOP bill becomes law.)
The
point of asking Sanders about the criminal law counsel he has hired is
not the answer he would give. The only prudent answer would be that as a
matter under investigation, he cannot comment on it on advice of
counsel.
But
that would have the fact of the investigation publicly acknowledged by
Sanders on Meet the Press. That is footage that would make news for the
program, and be in the best tradition of its broadcast legacy, one of
the few remaining glories NBC News can point to. “Sanders declines to
comment on FBI investigation” would be the headline on Drudge. It would
spread via social media to Bernie’s entire fab base.
But that ain’t gonna happen, thanks to Chuck.
The
obvious comparison to all the fuss made over a nonexistent FBI criminal
investigation of President Trump’s “collusion” with Russia only
highlights the importance of Silent Chuck’s help for Bernie and the
Left.
Hat tip: Soopermexican, The Right Scoop
Sanders promotes Democratic Party at rallies opposing Republican attack on health care
By Josh Varlin
26 June 2017
26 June 2017
Over
the weekend, Senator Bernie Sanders spoke at rallies in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania; Columbus, Ohio; and Charleston, West Virginia, opposing
the Senate Republicans’ health care bill.
The
rallies each had an attendance of about 2,000 people, according to
media reports. MoveOn.org sponsored all the rallies and local
“progressive,” pseudo-left and trade union groups sponsored in
individual cities. The Kanawha Valley chapter of the Democratic
Socialists of America (DSA) cosponsored the Charleston rally, while the
Service Employees International Union District 1199 cosponsored the
Columbus rally.
The
Better Care Reconciliation Act is the Senate version of the House
Republicans’ American Health Care Act (AHCA), passed last month to
“repeal and replace” the Obama administration’s health care legislation,
commonly known as Obamacare. Both the Senate and House bills call for
savage attacks on health care for working people, including the ending
of Medicaid as a guaranteed government benefit program.
Medicaid
is the government health insurance program for the poor and disabled
jointly administered by the federal government and the states. It
currently covers some 69 million people, nearly 20 percent of the US
population. It was established in 1965, along with Medicare, the
government health insurance program for the elderly. Enactment of the
Trump administration measure will lead to the destruction of one of the
three bedrock social programs dating from the 1930s and 1960s, the other
two being Social Security and Medicare. Those programs will become the
next targets for privatization and dismantling.
Senate
Republicans plan to pass Better Care before the July Fourth
Independence Day recess, setting the stage for negotiations between the
Senate and House of Representatives and President Donald Trump’s signing
into law of a final version.
There
is immense popular opposition to the attack on health care embodied in
the legislation, which would slash Medicaid by over $800 billion and
provide tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans totaling
more than $700 billion. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that
the House version would strip 23 million people of health insurance.
Enactment of the measure would constitute one of the largest and most
blatant redistributions of wealth in American history.
A poll by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal revealed
the depth of popular opposition to the House bill, which is similar to
the Senate version. Only 16 percent of Americans thought the AHCA was a
“good idea,” while 48 percent thought it a “bad idea.” Even among
Republicans it had only 34 percent support, with 17 percent opposed.
Earlier
this year, as the House bill was moving through that chamber, town hall
meetings around the country addressed by Republican congressmen saw
constituents denounce and shout down politicians backing the bill. In
some cases, congressmen had to flee meeting halls under police
protection.
Health
coverage for tens of millions of working people has already been eroded
by Obamacare, which slashes health costs for corporations and the
government while increasing out-of-pocket costs and reducing benefits
for consumers. Now Trump and the Republicans are going significantly
farther in denying people access to health care.
Sanders
and his faction within the Democratic Party are well aware of the
explosive anger in the working class and among broad sections of the
middle class over the attack on health care. That is why, under
conditions where the Democratic Party establishment is pleading with the
Republicans for a reactionary “compromise” and is too petrified of the
potential for mass political unrest to call for public protest, Sanders
is seeking to get ahead of the situation and make sure that social
opposition is channeled once again behind the Democratic Party, where it
can be stifled and dissipated.
At
the beginning of his Pittsburgh speech, Sanders stressed the
reactionary character of the Republican bills: “Let me be as clear as I
can be—this so-called ‘health care bill’ passed in the House last month
is the most anti-working-class piece of legislation passed in the House
of Representatives in the modern history of this country. And the Senate
bill in some respects is even worse.” He went on to describe the
legislation as a “massive transfer of wealth from working families to
the very, very rich.”
But
the perspective Sanders advanced was anything but a call for mass
social and political protest. Instead, the stated goal of his rallies
was “to put pressure [on] senators in those states—specifically, Senator
Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Senator Rob Portman of Ohio and Senator
Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia—and Senate Republicans at large to
vote against the legislation.”
The
bankruptcy of this approach is underscored by the fact that Toomey was
part of the 13-senator “working group” that drafted the Republican bill
in secret. In his speech, Sanders addressed Toomey directly, pleading
with him to vote “no.”
This
is an attempt to derail and demoralize working-class opposition by
diverting it into futile efforts to pressure the bribed political
representatives of big business. It is of a piece with Sanders’
endorsement of Hillary Clinton, the favored candidate of Wall Street and
the CIA, in the 2016 elections, and his so-called “political
revolution” to “transform” the Democratic Party.
Sanders
and other speakers promoted his bill for “Medicare for all.” The
Vermont senator knows full well that such a measure will never be passed
by Congress, having no chance of acceptance by either of the two
capitalist parties. Moreover, Sanders supports Obamacare, which involves
a $700 billion cut in Medicare spending. He backed Clinton for
president, despite her explicit opposition to an extension of Medicare
to the entire population.
Just
two weeks ago in his keynote speech to the “People’s Summit” in
Chicago, Sanders touted the California Senate’s passage of a
single-payer health care bill as evidence of the supposed success of his
“political revolution” in shifting the Democratic Party to the left. On
Friday, however, California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, a
Democrat, effectively killed the bill, blocking it from coming to a vote
in the state’s lower legislative chamber.
Even
if Medicare for all were implemented nationally, it would be woefully
inadequate to meet the needs of working people. The program has already
been significantly privatized, and Medicare recipients are forced to pay
private insurers for expensive supplemental insurance plans to cover
essential medical services and prescription drugs.
Perhaps
the point most underscored by the rallies is how bare-bones health
coverage already is for working-class Americans. Most of the
speakers—including health care professionals and spokespeople for
Planned Parenthood and other organizations—spoke about the ongoing
health care crisis in the United States, including the opioid epidemic,
inadequate access to mental health services, difficulties in accessing
contraceptives, and the high rate of uninsured and underinsured
Americans. Nevertheless, the speakers generally argued that Obamacare
was a progressive “step in the right direction.”
This
proved a difficult circle to square for the speakers, especially
Sanders. After all, if Obama’s Affordable Care Act was a progressive
reform, why are working class people facing such a health care
catastrophe?
Both
the Obamacare status quo and the Republican proposals entail immense
suffering for workers and a further decline in their standard of living.
The only way to guarantee adequate health care for everyone is the
socialization of health care: the removal of profit considerations and
the placing of the health care industry under public ownership and the
democratic control of the working class.
This
can be achieved only through a complete political break with the
Democratic Party and all of its promoters, including Sanders, and an
independent political movement of the working class for socialism.
June 24, 2017
Bernie and Jane Sanders lawyering up for FBI fraud investigation
Just
when Bernie and Jane Sanders thought they had it made as the icons of
the American left, along comes a mean old Republican to spoil it with
accusations so serious that the FBI is investigating. In a long and
sympathetic article, Politico Magazine explains:
Jeff
Weaver, Sanders' longtime top political adviser who heads Sanders'
political organization, Our Revolution, confirms to Politico
Magazine that Bernie and Jane Sanders have lawyered up. The couple has
retained Rich Cassidy, a well-connected Burlington attorney and Sanders
devotee, and Larry Robbins, the renowned Washington-based defense
attorney who has represented I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and disgraced
former Rep. Bill Jefferson, to represent Jane Sanders in the matter.
Now,
President Donald Trump's Justice Department is handling an
investigation that will proceed at the discretion of a U.S. attorney of
Vermont that Trump has yet to appoint.
Jane is portrayed as a victim. The story is going to be that enemies of Bernie are hounding poor Jane:
"I
made it clear I didn't want him to run," she told me at their campaign
headquarters at the time, "but if he decided to, I would be behind him
100 percent."
The Snidely Whiplash villain in this piece comes from conservative aristocracy. LawNewz:
The investigation stems from an Jan. 10, 2016 letter sent to the then-U.S Attorney for Vermont, Eric S. Miller.
The law firm diGenova & Toensing LLP, [that would be Joe diGenova
and Victoria Toensing – ed.] representing local parishioners, contend
that Burlington College President Jane Sanders engaged in fraud when her school purchased land from a Catholic diocese.
In
2010, the now-defunct Burlington took out a bank loan to make the deal,
but that required a minimum commitment of $2.27 million in grant and
donations. The letter, authored by Bracy C. Toensing, said she supplied evidence saying they had $2.6 million in the needed money.
But it didn't turn out to be the case, Toensing said.
"At
the end of fiscal year 2001 (six months after closing on the loan), Ms.
Sanders had collected only $279,000 in donations, which was less than
25 percent of the $1.2 million Ms. Sanders guaranteed to the bank that
she would have collected in that year," he wrote.
Politico elaborates:
Backed by six exhibits and a dozen documents, the four-page letter described
how Jane Sanders had "orchestrated" the purchase of 33 acres along Lake
Champlain in Burlington, Vermont's largest city, where her husband had
minted his populist political brand as mayor. The deal closed in 2010,
when the senator's wife was president of Burlington College, a tiny,
obscure, nontraditional school that always seemed to be struggling for
students and funds. The letter alleged that to secure a $10 million loan
and execute her grand plan to expand the college, Jane Sanders had
falsified and inflated nearly $2 million that she'd claimed donors had
pledged to repay the loans.
Sanders
had "successfully and intentionally engaged in a fraudulent scheme to
actively conceal and misrepresent material facts from a federal
financial institution," the letter alleged. It pressed for a federal
investigation into potential bank fraud.
The media ignored the letter, but the FBI didn't.
Here is how the deal fell apart.
When
Jane Sanders made the offer to the Roman Catholic Diocese, Burlington
College was nearly broke – with an annual budget just below $4 million.
In order to finance the property, Sanders secured a $6.5 million loan
from People's United Bank in the form of a tax exempt bond purchase, and
the Catholic Church agreed to carry a $3.65 million second mortgage on
the property. Sanders told both institutions that Burlington college had
$5 million in likely donor pledges and $2.4 million
in confirmed pledges to be used to pay off the debt.
But wait – that was just for the property!
What Jane Sanders didn't plan for was the $6 million or so required to actually build out the campus on the property to include green space, athletic fields, lecture halls, and walkways. Oops!
Disaster…
Sanders' original claim of $2.4 million in confirmed donor pledges was quickly reduced to $1.2 million according to documents filed in the first fiscal year after the purchase – yet in records obtained by VTDigger, Burlington College received only $279,000. Despite
hopes by Sanders and college trustees that they could boost enrollment
and expand the student body, nothing changed – and the school failed at
raising the money to satisfy it's loans.
And then Jane Sanders was fired, with a $200,000 severance package.
In
order to try and avoid bankruptcy, Burlington college sold off pieces
of the 33 acre property to a local developer – which allowed the
institution to pay off some of the debt Jane Sanders had accumulated,
however in April 2016 the bank called it's loan – and on May 28th, the
college closed it's doors after 44 years in operation.
Joe Patrice offers a defense of sorts for Jane Sanders:
You
can have confirmed, contractual deals for $1.2 million and only
actually receive $279,000. Those are two completely different things.
One could argue that only actualizing about a quarter of the total
committed says something about the trajectory of the college's finances,
but that's a much more nuanced argument than these two sentences
suggest.
A
third donor had offered a $1 million bequest, to be paid upon her
death. Instead, the college's loan application counted it in funds to be
paid out over the next few years.
Um…
welcome to accounting. This account sounds shady, but – without
vouching for any specific accounting principles – recognizing revenue in
installments even if it's coming in a lump sum is perfectly acceptable.
Again, that's not saying it was the appropriate way to account for this
request, but the way this report reads makes counting funds over time
seem like an insane tactic when it's just not.
Um...people do go to prison over accounting decisions on recognizing revenue and misleading shareholders, regulators, or lenders.
For
the moment, Jane Sanders probably is less worried about being convicted
by a Vermont jury than she and Bernie are about paying for those
lawyers. For all their posturing against greed, Bernie and Jane are
thrilled with the financial consequences of Bernie's campaign. They
rushed out and spent more than their reported net worth on a third house
last August like some seven-figure jackpot lottery winners. Saving and
financial planning are not their strong suit, which is why people like
Bernie and Jane should never be put in charge of anything, even a little
hippie college.
I
have known ambitious leftists like them – affluent, but with modest net
worths – and almost without exception, they feel underprivileged when
it comes to wealth, no matter how comfortable they may appear. Envy is
the fuel of their radicalism, and they resent people who have more than
they do. Deep down, they want the same stuff.
Paying
for lawyers can ruin the net worth of a couple like Bernie and Jane.
We'll know that the case is serious when they launch a legal defense
fund.
WARREN IS AN ADVOCATE FOR NO-
STRINGS AMNESTY FOR 40 MILLION
LOOTING MEXICANS WHO HAVE VOTED
DEM FOR MORE!
Sander's fraudulent claims to be leading a “political
revolution” against the “billionaire class” were designed to
corral popular anger and promote illusions in the
Democratic Party, one of the two parties of the American
corporate-financial aristocracy, as a party representing the
interests of working people.
"Democrat Elizabeth Warren, who parlayed
her brief tenure as a rubber-stamp banking
regulator during Obama’s first term into a
Senate seat."
Hey Bernie! Welcome to the millionaire’s club!
By Tom Hall
13 June 2017
13 June 2017
Personal
finance disclosure forms submitted by Bernie Sanders, and widely
reported in the media, reveal that Sanders’ income was more than $1
million last year. This figure includes both his $174,000 annual salary
as a senator and $858,750 from book royalties, including a nearly
$800,000 advance for a book, Our Revolution, about his 2016 presidential primary campaign.
The threshold for the wealthiest 1 percent by annual income
in the United States is $389,436, according to the Economic
Policy Institute. Sanders’ income would put him somewhere
in the top one-fifth of one percent, according to US Census
data.
The
wealth of the average US senator and representative has skyrocketed in
recent years, earning Congress a reputation as a “millionaire’s club.”
In 2014, the average personal wealth across both houses of Congress
surpassed $1 million for the first time in history, with the median net
worth of the Senate surging from $2.5 to $2.7 million.
However,
few members of Congress are able to amass as much wealth in a single
year as Bernie Sanders did last year. Opensecrets.org shows that
Sanders’ book royalties alone would been the third-highest outside
income in the Senate in 2014, the last year for which the site has
figures. At $1.2 million, first place that year went to fellow
“progressive” Democrat Elizabeth Warren, who parlayed
her brief tenure as a rubber-stamp banking
regulator during Obama’s first term into a
Senate seat.
Opensecrets.org’s records show that, for years, you
have been forced to subsist on income levels at or
around the threshold of the top 1 percent, in the
low-to-mid six figures. This, no doubt, is what you
had in mind during a primary debate last year
when you described yourself as “one of the poorer
members of the United States Senate.”
have been forced to subsist on income levels at or
around the threshold of the top 1 percent, in the
low-to-mid six figures. This, no doubt, is what you
had in mind during a primary debate last year
when you described yourself as “one of the poorer
members of the United States Senate.”
But 2016 was a turning point in your career. The $1 million
payday you received last year is payment for services
rendered during your intervention in last year’s Democratic
primaries. Your fraudulent claims to be leading a “political
revolution” against the “billionaire class” were designed to
corral popular anger and promote illusions in the Democratic
Party, one of the two parties of the American corporate-
financial aristocracy, as a party representing the interests of
working people.
And
while you attracted considerable interest from left-leaning workers and
young people with your false claims to be a socialist, you rejected
basic socialist measures such as the nationalization of key industries,
endorsed American imperialism’s wars of conquest, and defended a
truculent nationalism which pitted American workers against their
brothers and sisters internationally.
Your
intervention was all the more crucial as the Democratic Party was
preparing to nominate Hillary Clinton, who was widely and deservedly
hated as a stooge of Wall Street and the military. You threw your
support to her in the Democratic National Convention and presented her
candidacy as a continuation of your so-called “political revolution.”
You declared that electing Clinton was an urgent necessity to defeat
Trump, in spite of the fact that her pro-war, anti-working class agenda
was no less reactionary than Trump’s.
But
your work was not yet done. When this produced a debacle for the
Democrats in the November election, you were elevated to a more
responsible position within the Democratic political hierarchy,
working closely with Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, whose
election campaigns have received tens of millions of dollars in funding
from Wall Street. You crossed the country stumping for Democrats
with the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, former Obama
cabinet member Tom Perez.
You have even emerged as a de facto leader
of a wing of the Democratic Party concerned that the party’s focus on
the right-wing campaign over Russia against Trump at the expense of
posturing over social issues could open the door to the emergence of a
mass popular movement outside the control of the Democrats, a potential
threat to capitalism. Nevertheless, you have supported the Democrats’
unsubstantiated accusations of Russian collusion with Trump, which are
designed to force a confrontation with the world’s second largest
nuclear power.
In
your campaign to corral social opposition behind the Democrats, you
have received the crucial aid of the middle class, pseudo-left
organizations which function as satellites of the Democratic Party. They
all presented as good coin your calls for a “political revolution” and
either endorsed your candidacy, as in the case of Socialist Alternative
and the Democratic Socialists of America, or, like the International
Socialist Organization, issued mildly worded tactical criticisms of your
decision to run as a Democrat rather than continuing the charade of
running statewide in Vermont as an “independent.” As with your own
campaign, their goal was to prevent the emergence of a genuine socialist
movement within the working class capable of challenging American
capitalism. Many of them made the trek to Chicago this weekend to hear
you speak at the People’s Summit, an annual gathering of what passes for
the Democratic Party’s “left.”
The
pseudo-left is also being handsomely rewarded for their services to
capitalism. Last year, the Ford Foundation announced that it was
donating $100 million to Black Lives Matter; it has since cashed in
through such investments as a “black debit card” and other projects
promoting black capitalism.
Last
year’s million, you have reason to hope, will be the first of many.
Given the explosive character of the political and economic conditions
in the United States, and the broad hostility workers feel towards both
the Trump administration and his Democratic opponents, the ruling class
will very likely continue to value your political services.
THE SMELL OF MONEY:
Senator Bernie Sanders Takes the Crooked Road For Obama’s Crony Banksters for KILLARY KROOKED KLINTON
Much more here:
http://hillaryclinton-whitecollarcriminal.blogspot.com/2016/10/sandsers-and-clinton-closet-republicans.html
“The response to the publication of these speeches by so-called “socialist” Bernie Sanders exposes
the utterly fraudulent character of his entire presidential bid.
While he postured during the Democratic Party primaries as a proponent
of a “political revolution” against the “billionaire class,” Sanders now
functions shamelessly as a sideshow for the Clinton
campaign, browbeating his (now much smaller) audiences with admonitions
to vote for the preferred candidate of the “billionaire class” he
claimed to oppose.”
FOLLOWING THE CRIMES OF BILL AND HILLARY CLINTON BECOMES AMERICA’S ROAD TO REVOLUTION
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/10/bill-and-hillary-clintons-global.html
Transcripts released by WikiLeaks of Clinton speeches to Wall
Street bankers, for which she received six-figure paychecks,
show her praising the recommendations of the 2010 Simpson-
Bowles deficit-reduction commission, which called for sweeping
cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; the elimination
of 200,000 federal jobs; a tax on employees’
"Hillary Clinton is a known liar, a criminal of monstrous proportions; others have gone to prison for crimes she has committed over and over: lying to Congress, lying to the FBI, violating national security laws by which she was bound as Secretary of State, etc. It's a long list."
Clinton, the candidate favored by most of Wall Street and the corporate elite and large sections of the Republican Party establishment, is seeking to assemble something akin, within the framework of the US political setup, to a grand coalition between the Democratic Party and the Republican leadership.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/10/clinton-preparing-bipartisan-government.html
Transcripts released by WikiLeaks of Clinton
speeches to Wall Street bankers, for which
she received six-figure paychecks, show her praising the recommendations of the 2010 Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction commission, which called for sweeping cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; the elimination of 200,000 federal jobs; a tax on employees’ health benefits; and huge cuts in income taxes for the wealthy and corporate taxes.
“But what the Clintons do is criminal because they do it wholly at
the expense of the American people. And they feel thoroughly
entitled to do it: gain power, use it to enrich themselves and their
friends. They are amoral, immoral, and venal. Hillary has no core
beliefs beyond power and money. That should be clear to every
person on the planet by now.”
Wikileaks exposes Obama’s bankster-infested
administration!
BARACK OBAMA …… the banksters’ RENT BOY!
“Citigroup’s
recommendations came just three days after then-President George W.
Bush signed into law the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which allocated
$700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue the largest Wall Street banks.
The single biggest beneficiary was Citigroup, which was given $45
billion in cash in the form of a government stock purchase, plus a $306
billion government guarantee to back up its worthless mortgage-related
assets.”
MUCH MORE HERE:
“As
president, Obama not only funneled trillions of dollars to the banks,
he saw to it that not a single leading Wall Street executive faced
prosecution for the
orgy of speculation and swindling that led to the financial collapse
and Great Recession, and he personally intervened to block legislation
capping executive pay at bailed-out firms.”
“So
when Clinton was hobnobbing with Goldman Sachs CEO Blankfein in 2013,
while investigations of wrongdoing by Goldman and the other Wall Street
banks were still ongoing, she was consorting with a man who belonged in
prison.”
CRONY BANKSTER LOOTING OF AMERICA
THEIR GOLDEN AGE OF PLUNDER IS NOT OVER!
NO PRESIDENT IN HISTORY SUCKED IN MORE BRIBES FROM BANKSTERS NOR INFESTED HIS ADMIN WITH BANKSTER CRONIES MORE THAN OBAMA!
And while the Obama administration worked systematically
to bail out the banks and make the financial oligarchy richer
than ever, shielding the architects of the Great Recession
from criminal prosecution, it did impose fines for some of
the banks’ grossest swindles, including the sale of worthless
subprime mortgage-backed securities, the rigging of key
global interest rates such as the London Interbank Offered
Rate (Libor), drug money laundering, illegal home
foreclosures and other illicit activities.
BARACK OBAMA , HIS CRIMINAL
BANKSTERS AND THE LA RAZA
MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS….
There’s more than one way to destroy America’s white middle class!
HSBC laundered hundreds of millions
and perhaps billions of dollars for drug
cartels responsible for the deaths of tens
of thousands of people over the past
two decades. The bank transferred at least
$881 million of known drug trafficking
proceeds, including money from the Sinaloa
Cartel in Mexico, which is known for
dismembering its victims and publicly
displaying their body parts.
THE CRIME DUAL OF HILLARY &
BILLARY, THE “HOPE & CHANGE”
HUCKSTER OBAMA
"But the Clintons personify this corruption just as much as
Trump, even if they made use of a different mechanism and
on a somewhat smaller scale. They amassed a fortune
exceeding $150 million in the decade after Bill Clinton left
the White House, mainly through six-figure fees for
addressing corporate and Wall Street audiences. Barack
Obama will shortly take a similar path, reaping his reward
from the financial aristocracy whose interests he safeguarded
so assiduously over the past eight years."
THE DEMISE AND ULTIMATE DESTRUCTION of HILLARY CLINTON
"Hillary Clinton is a known liar, a criminal of monstrous proportions; others have gone to prison for crimes she has committed over and over: lying to Congress, lying to the FBI, violating national security laws by which she was bound as Secretary of State, etc. It's a long list."
Clinton, the candidate favored by most of Wall Street and the corporate elite and large sections of the Republican Party establishment, is seeking to assemble something akin, within the framework of the US political setup, to a grand coalition between the Democratic Party and the Republican leadership.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/10/clinton-preparing-bipartisan-government.html
Transcripts released by WikiLeaks of Clinton speeches to Wall Street bankers, for which she received six-figure paychecks, show her praising the recommendations of the 2010 Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction commission, which called for sweeping cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; the elimination of 200,000 federal jobs; a tax on employees’ health benefits; and huge cuts in income taxes for the wealthy and corporate taxes.
“But
what the Clintons do is criminal because they do it wholly at the
expense of the American people. And they feel thoroughly entitled to do
it: gain power, use it to enrich themselves and their friends. They are
amoral, immoral, and venal. Hillary has no core beliefs beyond power and
money. That should be clear to every person on the planet by now.”
Wikileaks exposes Obama’s bankster-infested
administration!
BARACK OBAMA …… the banksters’ RENT BOY!
“Citigroup’s
recommendations came just three days after then-President George W.
Bush signed into law the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which allocated
$700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue the largest Wall Street banks.
The single biggest beneficiary was Citigroup, which was given $45
billion in cash in the form of a government stock purchase, plus a $306
billion government guarantee to back up its worthless mortgage-related
assets.”
MUCH MORE HERE:
“As
president, Obama not only funneled trillions of dollars to the banks,
he saw to it that not a single leading Wall Street executive faced
prosecution for the
orgy of speculation and swindling that led to the financial collapse
and Great Recession, and he personally intervened to block legislation
capping executive pay at bailed-out firms.”
“So when Clinton was hobnobbing with Goldman Sachs
CEO Blankfein in 2013, while investigations of
wrongdoing by Goldman and the other Wall Street banks
were still ongoing, she was consorting with a man
who belonged in prison.”
CRONY BANKSTER LOOTING OF AMERICA
THEIR GOLDEN AGE OF PLUNDER IS NOT OVER!
NO PRESIDENT IN HISTORY SUCKED IN MORE BRIBES FROM BANKSTERS NOR INFESTED HIS ADMIN WITH BANKSTER CRONIES MORE THAN OBAMA!
And while the Obama administration worked systematically
to bail out the banks and make the financial oligarchy richer
than ever, shielding the architects of the Great Recession
from criminal prosecution, it did impose fines for some of
the banks’ grossest swindles, including the sale of worthless
subprime mortgage-backed securities, the rigging of key
global interest rates such as the London Interbank Offered
Rate (Libor), drug money laundering, illegal home
foreclosures and other illicit activities.
THE SMELL OF MONEY:
Senator Bernie Sanders Takes the Crooked Road For Obama’s Crony Banksters for KILLARY KROOKED KLINTON
Much more here:
http://hillaryclinton-whitecollarcriminal.blogspot.com/2016/10/sandsers-and-clinton-closet-republicans.html
“The response to the publication of these speeches by so-called “socialist” Bernie Sanders exposes
the utterly fraudulent character of his entire presidential bid.
While he postured during the Democratic Party primaries as a proponent
of a “political revolution” against the “billionaire class,” Sanders now
functions shamelessly as a sideshow for the Clinton
campaign, browbeating his (now much smaller) audiences with admonitions
to vote for the preferred candidate of the “billionaire class” he
claimed to oppose.”
FOLLOWING THE CRIMES OF BILL AND HILLARY CLINTON BECOMES AMERICA’S ROAD TO REVOLUTION
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/10/bill-and-hillary-clintons-global.html
Transcripts released by WikiLeaks of Clinton speeches to Wall
Street bankers, for which she received six-figure paychecks,
show her praising the recommendations of the 2010 Simpson-
Bowles deficit-reduction commission, which called for sweeping
cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; the elimination
of 200,000 federal jobs; a tax on employees’
"Hillary Clinton is a known liar, a criminal of monstrous proportions; others have gone to prison for crimes she has committed over and over: lying to Congress, lying to the FBI, violating national security laws by which she was bound as Secretary of State, etc. It's a long list."
Clinton, the candidate favored by most of Wall Street and the corporate elite and large sections of the Republican Party establishment, is seeking to assemble something akin, within the framework of the US political setup, to a grand coalition between the Democratic Party and the Republican leadership.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/10/clinton-preparing-bipartisan-government.html
Transcripts released by WikiLeaks of Clinton
speeches to Wall Street bankers, for which
she received six-figure paychecks, show her praising the recommendations of the 2010 Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction commission, which called for sweeping cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; the elimination of 200,000 federal jobs; a tax on employees’ health benefits; and huge cuts in income taxes for the wealthy and corporate taxes.
“But what the Clintons do is criminal because they do it wholly at
the expense of the American people. And they feel thoroughly
entitled to do it: gain power, use it to enrich themselves and their
friends. They are amoral, immoral, and venal. Hillary has no core
beliefs beyond power and money. That should be clear to every
person on the planet by now.”
Wikileaks exposes Obama’s bankster-infested
administration!
BARACK OBAMA …… the banksters’ RENT BOY!
“Citigroup’s
recommendations came just three days after then-President George W.
Bush signed into law the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which allocated
$700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue the largest Wall Street banks.
The single biggest beneficiary was Citigroup, which was given $45
billion in cash in the form of a government stock purchase, plus a $306
billion government guarantee to back up its worthless mortgage-related
assets.”
MUCH MORE HERE:
“As
president, Obama not only funneled trillions of dollars to the banks,
he saw to it that not a single leading Wall Street executive faced
prosecution for the
orgy of speculation and swindling that led to the financial collapse
and Great Recession, and he personally intervened to block legislation
capping executive pay at bailed-out firms.”
“So
when Clinton was hobnobbing with Goldman Sachs CEO Blankfein in 2013,
while investigations of wrongdoing by Goldman and the other Wall Street
banks were still ongoing, she was consorting with a man who belonged in
prison.”
CRONY BANKSTER LOOTING OF AMERICA
THEIR GOLDEN AGE OF PLUNDER IS NOT OVER!
NO PRESIDENT IN HISTORY SUCKED IN MORE BRIBES FROM BANKSTERS NOR INFESTED HIS ADMIN WITH BANKSTER CRONIES MORE THAN OBAMA!
And while the Obama administration worked systematically
to bail out the banks and make the financial oligarchy richer
than ever, shielding the architects of the Great Recession
from criminal prosecution, it did impose fines for some of
the banks’ grossest swindles, including the sale of worthless
subprime mortgage-backed securities, the rigging of key
global interest rates such as the London Interbank Offered
Rate (Libor), drug money laundering, illegal home
foreclosures and other illicit activities.
OBAMA-CLINTON-TRUMPERnomics:
The Massive Transfer of Wealth to the Super Rich Ratcheted up!
The American financial and bankster oligarchy, steeped in criminality and parasitism, can produce only a government of war, social reaction and repression. In its blind avarice, it is creating the conditions for unprecedented social upheavals. It is hurtling toward its own revolutionary demise at the hands of the working class.
"Nearly 30 percent of the illegal immigrant children the U.S. is
holding in its dormitories have ties to criminal gangs, the
government revealed Wednesday, suggesting that the Obama-era
surge of Central Americans has fed the country’s growing problem
with MS-13 and other gangs."
AMERICA: WALL STREET, THE DEMOCRAT
PARTY, THE GOP and LA RAZA SAY NO
LEGAL NEED APPLY!
“The percentage of foreign-born workers in the
U.S. labor force has more than tripled over the
last four decades and while the U.S. represents
just 5 percent of the world’s population it attracts
20 percent of the world’s immigrants, according
to a new report.”
Open
the floodgates of our welfare state to the uneducated, impoverished,
and unskilled masses of the world and in a generation or three America,
as we know it, will be gone.
Those
most impacted are middle class and lower middle class. It is they whose
jobs are taken, whose raises are postponed, whose schools are filled
with non-English speaking children that absorb precious resources for
remedial English, whose public parks are trashed and whose emergency
rooms serve as the local clinic for the illegal underground.
holding in its dormitories have ties to criminal gangs, the
government revealed Wednesday, suggesting that the Obama-era
surge of Central Americans has fed the country’s growing problem
with MS-13 and other gangs."
AMERICA: WALL STREET, THE DEMOCRAT
U.S. labor force has more than tripled over the
last four decades and while the U.S. represents
just 5 percent of the world’s population it attracts
20 percent of the world’s immigrants, according
to a new report.”
Limiting Foreign Student Entries
in Sanctuary Jurisdictions
Potential Federal Government Response to California’s SB 54
WASHINGTON (June 22, 2017) – A
new report from the Center for Immigration Studies examines the
administration's option of limiting foreign student entries and
immigration activities in "sanctuary" jurisdictions as
a potential federal response to state and local obstruction of
immigration enforcement. This could be especially important if
California's SB54 – with its stringent anti-cooperation requirements –
is passed and signed into law. SB54 has been approved by the Senate and
is currently before the Assembly.
If SB54 blocks the Cal State and California Community College systems' required cooperation with ICE, DHS may be forced to decertify them for purposes of admitting foreign students.
Andrew Arthur, the Center's Resident Fellow in Law and Policy and author of the report, stated, "If the State of California prevents schools from satisfying their obligations under federal immigration law, then DHS needs to consider whether those schools should be allowed to maintain their certifications to accept foreign students."
View the entire report at: http://cis.org/Limiting-Foreign-Student-Visas-in-Sanctuaries
Foreign student visas are available only to people who will be attending schools certified by the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), a component of the ICE National Security Investigations Division. By regulation, SEVP-certified schools must designate school officials to regularly provide information to ICE to verify that the foreign students are maintaining their status while in the country, and to notify ICE when those students are not.
This requirement ensures that the government has essential data on those students necessary for national security and immigration-enforcement purposes. This is especially important given the fact that, as DHS recently reported, almost three percent of all foreign students whose authorized status was supposed to end in FY 2016 are suspected of overstaying and illegally remaining in the United States.
If SB54 blocks the Cal State and California Community College systems' required cooperation with ICE, DHS may be forced to decertify them for purposes of admitting foreign students.
Andrew Arthur, the Center's Resident Fellow in Law and Policy and author of the report, stated, "If the State of California prevents schools from satisfying their obligations under federal immigration law, then DHS needs to consider whether those schools should be allowed to maintain their certifications to accept foreign students."
View the entire report at: http://cis.org/Limiting-Foreign-Student-Visas-in-Sanctuaries
Foreign student visas are available only to people who will be attending schools certified by the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), a component of the ICE National Security Investigations Division. By regulation, SEVP-certified schools must designate school officials to regularly provide information to ICE to verify that the foreign students are maintaining their status while in the country, and to notify ICE when those students are not.
This requirement ensures that the government has essential data on those students necessary for national security and immigration-enforcement purposes. This is especially important given the fact that, as DHS recently reported, almost three percent of all foreign students whose authorized status was supposed to end in FY 2016 are suspected of overstaying and illegally remaining in the United States.
Contact: Marguerite Telford
202-466-8185, mrt@cis.org
202-466-8185, mrt@cis.org
AMERICA’S BLUDGEONED YOUTH:
Homeless, Hopeless and Addicted….
Will they start the revolution?
"Public education as a whole came under brutal attack as part
of the Obama administration’s effort to shift the burden of
the financial crisis onto the backs of the working class."
AMERICA’S YOUTH STARVE
FOR EIGHT YEARS BARACK OBAMA AND HIS HAREM OF CORRUPT DEM POLS HAVE SABOTAGED OUR BORDERS TO EASE TENS OF MILLIONS OF ILLEGALS INTO OUR JOBS, WELFARE OFFICES AND VOTING BOOTHS.
What is left for Legals is only the tax bills for La Raza's looting!
The new reports show that in addition to “traditional” coping strategies of skipping meals and
eating cheap food, these teens and pre-teens are increasingly forced into shoplifting, stealing,
selling drugs, joining a gang, or selling their bodies for money in a struggle to eat properly.
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS pounds America’s youth as they build a border to border Mexican welfare state on our backs!
AMERICA’S YOUTH STARVE
…… ILLEGALS SUCK IN BILLIONS IN WELFARE… they also get our jobs!
The
new reports show that in addition to “traditional” coping strategies of
skipping meals and eating cheap food, these teens and pre-teens are
increasingly forced into shoplifting, stealing, selling drugs, joining a
gang, or selling their bodies for money in a struggle to eat properly.
AMERICA STUDENTS STARVE:
Report on the impact of OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS-TRUMPERNOMICS
THE GIG JOB – In America, No Legal Need Apply
"Possibly
most affected by this shift in the economy is the Millennial
generation, those aged 18-30. The report notes that more than half of
those under age 25 participate in independent work, not just in the
United States but throughout the European Union as well."
June 22, 2017
Government says 30% of children caught at border have ties to violent drug gangs
By Rick Moran
Government
officials revealed during testimony before the Senate Judiciary
Committee that 30% of children captured at the border have ties to M-13
and other violent drug gangs.
The
Obama administration knew of the problem but claimed by law, they had
to admit the refugees regardless of their ties to violent criminal
gangs.
Nearly
30 percent of the illegal immigrant children the U.S. is holding in its
dormitories have ties to criminal gangs, the government revealed
Wednesday, suggesting that the Obama-era surge of Central Americans has
fed the country’s growing problem with MS-13 and other gangs.
Federal
officials refused even to guess at the true scope of the problem,
telling the Senate Judiciary Committee that they can give only small
snapshots of what they see. But they said the devastation on communities
across the country is clear: killings and chaos, particularly among
other immigrants — both legal and illegal.
The
Border Patrol identified 160 teens who were known or suspected gang
members when they first showed up at the border, but whom the Obama
administration said it had to admit under U.S. law.
Meanwhile,
a spot check this month of 138 teens being held by the federal Health
and Human Services Department identified 39 with gang ties. Four of them
were forced into cooperating with the gangs and 35 joined voluntarily,
according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
“It
is well-known that MS-13 actively targets and recruits children as
young as 8 years old,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican and
chairman of the Judiciary Committee who called Wednesday’s hearing.
“While
their illegal status and Central American heritage are a key factor in
MS-13’s targeting, without a doubt the failures of the current system
for handling these children is also to blame,” he said. “The current
system is fraught with abuse, systematic errors and a lack of effective
cooperation.”
He
was stunned that no agency could say how many “UAC,” as the government
dubs unaccompanied alien children, have been recruited.
The agencies point to one another and to federal laws, saying their hands are tied.
Agencies
are reviewing Obama-era interpretations of the law, but it seems
incomprehensible that this loophole can exist. It seems clear that M-13
and other gangs are using the children and US policy on dealing with
unaccompanied minors at the border to engage in gang activity on
American soil.
Officials
said MS-13 is involved in some drug dealing and does engage in human
trafficking, but its real money-making operation is extortion. The gang
threatens families — including American citizens — with violence against
relatives back in Central America unless those in the U.S. pay them
off.
Gang members in the U.S. take directions directly from gang commanders in El Salvador, authorities say.
Kenneth
A. Blanco, acting assistant attorney general in the criminal division
at the Justice Department, also said immigrants who fail to report
crimes to local police are often not afraid of being deported by federal
authorities, but rather fear retaliation from the gang members and
other criminals who live in their neighborhoods.
He said witnesses’ names become public, making them targets for retribution.
“That
really, in my 28 years, has been the fear they have of calling the
police. Not so much the other way around,” he said. “They’re really
scared of these people.”
That
runs counter to the argument made by Democrats and some local police
chiefs that illegal immigrants refuse to report crimes because they fear
entanglement with federal deportation agents.
These
kinds of "below the radar" policies cost lives. That should be the
bottom line in creating and implementing any immigration and refugee
policy regardless whether it affects adults or children. That 30% of
children who we've been told only want to come to America to get away
from gang violence, are themselves, engaged in gang activity is a clear
and present danger to Americans and illegal immigrants alike.
That
the government has known of this problem for years and allowed it to
continue is the height of stupidity and bureaucratic incompetence.
Federal ‘OPT’ Program Rewards Companies For Hiring 330,000 Foreign College Grads in 2016
The federal government quietly helped and rewarded companies and universities which hired roughly 330,000 cheap foreign graduates in 2016 instead of hiring American graduates, many of whom are deep in debt.
The little-known “Optional Practical Training” program has grown from 91,140 new
foreign job-seekers in 2009 to 329,158 new job-seekers in 2016,
according to data provided by the Department of Homeland Security. That
is almost a four-fold increase in seven years — and the program is
growing even larger in 2017.
There
is no cap on the OPT program, which quietly and semi-automatically
gives work permits lasting up to three years when requested by foreign
students who graduate from U.S. universities and colleges. Companies are
not required to even interview Americans before hiring OPT graduates —
and they get tax breaks for hiring foreigners over Americans.
“The
government is enticing employers to hire foreigners instead of
Americans … it is ridiculous,” said Mark Krikorian, director of the
D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies. Even the middle-class
Americans who have downplayed the impact of cheap-labor immigration on
blue-collar Americans should be alarmed by the government’s
discrimination against their own college-graduate children, he added.
In
2014, the OPT program provided work permits to 249,998 foreign
graduates, according to the data provided to Breitbart News by the
Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the program. Two years
later, the number of new foreign graduates entering the program had
risen by 32 percent up to 329,158.
The
program provides a one-year work permit to all graduates. It also
provides an extra one-year permit to graduates who work in a so-called
high-tech “STEM” job. In 2016, officials working for former President
Barack Obama extended the STEM permits from one year to two years. If
only 20,000 of the 51,672 STEM workers from 2015 used Obama’s one-year
extension, they would have increased the 2016 total from 329,158 up to
350,000.
That
350,000 estimate for 2016 means that the government is offering work
permits to one foreign graduate for almost every two of the 800,000
young Americans who graduate from college each year with high-skilled
degrees in business or medicine, science or software, math or physics.
The OPT program will likely grow to 500,000 foreign workers in 2020 unless it is killed by a pending lawsuit.
Under
the new transparency rules established by DHS secretary John Kelly, DHS
officials also provided Breitbart with the initial OPT numbers for
2017. That data showed the OPT program in the first half of 2017 by
giving work permits to 255,412 foreign students, including 57,315
high-skill technology graduates. That half-year number for 2017 is
larger than the 2014 total.
These
high numbers likely understate the scale of the OPT outsourcing
program, because the federal government also allows foreign students to
get a one-year work permit via the “Curriculum Practical Training”
program before they graduate into the OPT program. If 100,000 students
used that CPT program in 2016, then the combined CPT and OPT programs
delivered almost 450,000 white-collar American jobs to foreign students
and graduates in 2016.
The
annual inflow of new foreign OPT workers is now roughly three times
larger than the annual inflow of 110,000 H-1B white-collar contract
workers. However, the H-1B program offers longer visas to foreign
workers, so it keeps a larger population of roughly 650,000 foreign white-collar workers in the United States, compared to roughly 35o,000 OPT workers.
The H-1B visas help
companies hire foreign white-collar workers to take the place of the
experienced American professionals who need decent salaries to help
support and educate their children.
Who is impacted?
Many
American college graduates are threatened by OPT, partly because the
program allows foreign students to take any job, but also because the
government grants three-year work permits to students who take “Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Math” jobs — but those STEM jobs are very
expansively described. They include:
dairy science… horticultural science… environmental studies … natural resources conservation … urban forestry … artificial intelligence … computer graphics … solar energy … naval science … cyber/electronic operations and warfare … nutrition sciences … sustainability studies … child psychology … archaeology … medical science … veterinary physiology … business statistics … management science.
The OPT program is also a threat to upward mobility because
it is increasingly being used to outsource community college technician
jobs — such as nursing — which are the primary upward path for
Americans born into lower-income families. The DHS list of STEM jobs also includes more than 50 types of technical jobs, including:
Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering Technology/Technician … solar energy … welding … industrial production … quality control … automotive engineering … [and] biology.
College grads have done better than American blue-collar workers since the 2009 crash, but recruiters say graduates overestimate their market value, and researchers say salaries remain low in 2017:
Wages for college graduates across many majors have fallen since the 2007-09 recession, according to an unpublished analysis by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce in Washington using Census bureau figures. Young job-seekers appear to be the biggest losers … “It has been like this for the past five, six years now,” said Ban Cheah, a research professor at Georgetown who compiled the data. “It’s a little depressing.”
Many recent graduates were hurt long-term by the slump, according to a 2014 Pew rstudy:
In a recent report, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York went deeper and looked at underemployment among recent grads (defined as people aged 22 to 27 with at least a bachelor’s degree). The Fed researchers used data from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics to examine whether employed grads were in jobs that typically required a college degree, what those jobs paid, and whether they were working full- or part-time. They found that in 2012, about 44% of grads were working in jobs that didn’t require a college degree — a rate that, while about what it was in early 1990s, increased after the 2001 and 2007-09 recessions. Only 36% of that group were in what the researchers called “good non-college jobs” — those paying around $45,000 a year — down from around half in the 1990s. The share of underemployed recent grads in low-wage (below $25,000) jobs rose from about 15% in 1990 to more than 20%. About one-in-five (23%) underemployed recent grads were working part-time in 2011, up from 15% in 2000.
Other reports emphasize negative and positive prospects for recent college grads as the nation emerges from a decade-long slump.
Critically,
the OPTs compete with new American graduates and nudge down the
Americans’ starting salaries — which can have a huge impact on their
lifetime earnings, say salary experts:
“Maximizing your first salary is really important because it determines your salary for the rest of your life,” says Matt Wallaert, chief scientist at GetRaised.com … “Your final salary is heavily dependent on your starting salary,” agrees Glenn Hiemstra, the founder of Futurist.com,
Moreover, many U.S. graduates are defaulting on college loan debts owed to the U.S. government because they cannot find well-paying jobs.
Joseph
Palos, a high-tech graduate from Cornell University, formally objected
to the OPT program in 2015. ”Companies don’t want to hire Americans and
they abuse… OPT to hire cheap immobile labor instead of hiring anyone
over the age of 35, especially in software or tech areas,” he wrote to a
federal agency, according to a report in ComputerWorld.
Which companies hire OPTs?
Most universities and colleges hide useful data about their OPT programs from their American students, the tuition-paying parents and the voting public.
But a Breitbart search of the data revealed that Penn State posted a list of companies which hire OPT and other foreign graduates. The companies include accounting firms Deloitte & Touché LLP plus Ernst
& Young, LLP, as well as Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and the GE Global
Research Center in New York. Other OPT employers included Advanced
Micro Devices in Sunnyvale, Calif., Intel in Arizona, Motorola in
Florida, Nokia in Texas, and Microsoft in Washington State, plus Cadbury Schweppes in New Jersey, Glaxo Smith Kline in Philadelphia, Hyatt Hotels in Washington D.C., Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, Penske Logistics in Ohio, and the Environmental Systems Research Institute in Redlands, Ca.
The
Penn State list also includes many universities, many of which can keep
cheap OPTs on the payroll for several years by converting them into
H-1B employees. There are no limits on universities’ hiring of H-1Bs.
There’s
not much reason to blame the companies for hiring OPTs, said Krikorian.
By reducing employers’ taxes and subsidizing OPT employees’ pay with a
chance to win green cards, “the government is encouraging these
employers to hire foreign workers,” he said.
Who supports the OPT program?
Unsurprisingly, the semi-secret OPT program has intense behind-the-scenes support in Washington.
First,
the OPT program — like the similar H-1B and H-2B programs — are
strongly supported by business groups because they provide very cheap,
compliant and disposable workers:
When a job is given to an OPT worker, neither the worker nor the employers have to pay Social Security or Medicare taxes. That tax break cuts the company’s salary costs for that foreign worker by roughly 23 percent.When a foreign students seeks a job, Americans lose bargaining power to get decent wages for that jobs. Nationalwide, the extra inflow of immigrant labor annually transfers roughy $500 billion from employees to employers, accordin to data in the 2016 report on immigration by the National Acadeimes of Sciences.The OPT jobs put the foreign graduates on the first step towards citizenship, which is a hugely valuable deferred bonus student studemt her overseas fmaily and their descedents in perpetuity. In effect, the federal government provides OPT workers a free lottery ticket for the prize of citizenship if they work for the pay and conditions set by the employer. But this is also a huge hidden subsidy for employers who hire foreigners instead of Americans because it allows employers to pay foreigners with hope of citizenship, while Americans must be paid in dollars.Also, the OPT employers is heavily dependent on the employer to put him or her the next step on the path to citizenship, ensuring a compliant attitude despute low-pay and long hours. The next step is usually a H-1B visa, which requires the employer to ask the govrenment for the visa.The OPT program adds a small but useful addition to the number of native-born and immigrant consumers who buy products in hte U.S. economy.
Universities
strongly favor the OPT program because it allows them to effectively
sell government-supplied, no-cost work permits to the foreign students
who pay higher than normal tuition fees — providing there is no
political pushback from their own indebted graduates and their worried
parents.
The annual inflow of foreign students adds $2.8 billion in economic activity, and 400,000 jobs to the economy, says the NAFSA advocacy group, wich is led by university officials. Few politicians are willing to openly disagree with the universities in their district.Universities market themselves to foreign customers as way-stations to citizenship. For example, Dartmouth University highlighted employment statistics for foreign graduates, saying 71 of 79 foreign graduates got work permits and jobs in 2015, and 79 of 86 got work permits and jobs in 2014.A growing percentage of foreign students are using the OPT work permits. The percentage rose from 21.5 percent in 2014 up to 24.5 percent in 2016, according to DHS data.
The OPT and CPT programs allow a growing number low-grade “diploma mill” universities to provide work permits to foreign workers in exchange for tuition. The scale of the new industry was described by Buzzfeed in 2016: “With little fanfare and virtually overnight, Nothwestern Polytechnic has become one of the country’s largest importers of international students — 95% of whom are Indian. Last year, 9,026 foreign students had active visas to attend NPU, according to federal immigration data — that’s more students than the entire undergraduate population of Harvard, and an increase of 350% from two years earlier, when Northwestern had just 1,200 … Northwestern Polytechnic’s 9,026 foreign students would make up the ninth-largest body of international students in the country, according to IIE numbers — above Michigan State University and just below UCLA.”Education-industry officials have downplayed the number of OPT approvals for several years. For example, the New York-based Institute of International Education estimated 67,804 OPT job-seekers in 2009, and 147,498 OPT seekers in 2016. In contrast, DHS estimated the numbers at 91,140 in 2009 and 329,158 in 2016.
Progressives
strongly favor the OPT program, partly because it is backed by their
prestigious allies in the Internet industry and by university groups,
but also because it levels the status of foreigners and Americans.
In June 2017, a pro-immigration columnist for the New York Times, who formerly worked at the Wall Street Journal, argued that Americans rightly belongs to foreigners, not Americans, saying:
I’m the child of immigrants and grew up abroad, I have always thought of the United States as a country that belongs first to its newcomers — the people who strain hardest to become a part of it because they realize that it’s precious; and who do the most to remake it so that our ideas, and our appeal, may stay fresh.That used to be a cliché, but in the Age of [President Donald] Trump it needs to be explained all over again. We’re a country of immigrants — by and for them, too. Americans who don’t get it should get out.
GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan backs programs that allow low-tech business to import cheap foreign workers instead
of hiring U.S. workers. “We need to have an immigration system that is
wired for what our economy needs … so let’s find out where those gaps in
our labor markets are and have our immigration system wired for that,”
Ryan said in 2016.
President Barack Obama declared in 2014 that Americans do not have the right to favor their fellow citizens over foreigners, saying:
Sometimes we get attached to our particular tribe, our particular race, our particular religion, and then we start treating other folks differently. And that, sometimes, has been a bottleneck to how we think about immigration. If you look at the history of immigration in this country, each successive wave, there have been periods where the folks who were already here suddenly say, ‘Well, I don’t want those folks’ — even though the only people who have the right to say that are some Native Americans.
Under
Obama’s lax border policies, roughly 550,000 additional illegal aliens
flew or walked into the United States in 2016, while only a tiny
percentage of the 11 million resident illegals were sent home.
This
bipartisan open-border viewpoint is part of the law and played a large
role in Obama’s policies. For example, from 2011 to 2016, Obama used a
loophole in federal law to allow more than 300,000 unskilled
migrants from Central American to live and work in the United
States, despite the harmful impact on the kids’ schools and local crime
rates.
Economic and Political Impact
These
pro-immigration views held by progressives and business-minded
Republicans means that the federal government now imports one million
legal immigrants each year to compete for jobs against the 4 million
Americans who graduate from schools or colleges each year.
The
federal government also imports more than 1 million temporary contract
workers, including roughly 110,000 H-1B workers per year. That rapid
rise of the secret OPT program — plus likely rises in other semi-secret L
and B-1 visas — suggest that the government allows companies and universities to keep an army of more than 1.6 million foreign contract-workers in the United States.
Most
of those foreign contract workers are white-collar professionals, while
fewer than 100,000 are legal temporary agricultural workers, according
to the left-of-center Economic Policy Institute.
This flood of foreign labor spikes profits and stock values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees, drives up real estate prices, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, and sidelines marginalized Americans and their families. The flood also fragments Americans’ civic society into competing identity groups, sometimes dubbed social “diversity.”
This
social conflict also distorts Americans’ politics, allowing the
inauguration of New York real-estate magnate Donald Trump on January 20,
2017.
Since
then, despite massive bipartisan pressure from politicians and industry
groups eager for cheap labor, Trump has declared his policy to be “Buy
American, Hire American.” He has scuttled the cheap-labor Trans-Pacific
Partnership program, sharply reduced illegal immigration, slowed the
growth of contract workers programs, started reforming the H-1B
white-collar outsourcing program, and eliminated the ‘DAPA’ amnesty for
four million illegals.
Because
of pressure from progressives in the media and the Democratic Party,
Trump has also preserved some of Obama’s open-borders rules, such as the
2012 ‘DACA’ policy which delivers work permits to roughly 765,000
younger illegals.
So
far, Trump and his deputies have done little publicly to curb the
fast-growing OPT program — even though it discriminates against the
children of politically influential college-graduates. “You would think
that when their own college-educated kids are being discriminated
against, it would get attention,” said Krikorian.
However,
in December 2016, the Department of Education disbarred the
accreditation organization which validated the NPU’s educational claims.
In March 2017, Trump’s DHS stopping issuing OPT or H-1B approvals to foreign students from the diploma-mill colleges which rely on that accrediting organization.
However,
Trump’s officials will soon need to deal with the legality of the
“crony capitalist” OPT program, said lawyer John Miano, who is suing the
federal government on behalf of the Washington Alliance of Tech Workers.
His lawsuit shows how OPT was created by regulators in 1992 and then
expanded in 2002 without any action by Congress or an agency regulatory
process. The legal claim is strong, he said, because “we have the government making law via regulation… [what is] the largest guest worker program” in the nation.
But
without strong public pressure on legislators, the corporate and
university pressure for the OPT program will likely deter the Trump
administration from accepting a courtroom defeat over OTP, Miano said.
“I don’t expect the Trump administration to say ‘We can’t defend it’ … [but] we don’t know what they are planning to do.”
Follow Neil Munro on Twitter @NeilMunroDC or email the author at NMunro@Breitbart.com
Below are four images of the Penn State list of companies that hired OPT or “Academic Training” foreign graduates. Many of the companies and universities also hire H-1B workers.
New education regulations will make colleges much more vulnerable financially and legally. Some colleges could be forced to shut down.
THE ENTIRE REASON WE HAVE OPEN BORDERS IS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED.
70% OF ALL ILLEGALS END UP ON WELFARE
The Seattle Minimum Wage Study Is Utter B.S.
http://fortune.com/2017/06/27/seattle-minimum-wage-study-results-impact-15-dollar-uw/
4:45 PM ET
For
decades, conservative ideologues have insisted that raising the minimum
wage will hurt, not help, low-wage workers. Mandating higher wages will
cost jobs, the old canard goes, and the obvious solution is to let the
free market function unfettered.
This argument received a significant bump from a recent study by
the University of Washington (UW) looking at the impact of the minimum
wage increase in Seattle, where in 2014 the city council voted to phase
in a $15 wage over the next few years.
The
UW study appeared to show that the 2015–2016 wage floor increase from
$11 to $13 per hour, one phase on that journey to $15, caused low-wage
workers’ annual pay to go down, not up, and overall low-wage jobs to
also go down.
Free-market fanatics around the country flung praise at the study, and serious publications like the Washington Post deemed it “very credible.” But fortunately for working people, it turns out the study’s findings are far from that.
RELATED
The
research has significant flaws—most glaringly that its data excludes
40% of the Seattle workforce. It also stands in contrast to a massive
trove of actually credible studies showing that raising the minimum
wage is a boon for working class families and the communities they live in.
For
instance, a team led by Michael Reich, an economics professor at
University of California-Berkeley, looked at the impact of the Seattle
wage increase on the food industry over the same period and found that
wages did in fact go up for restaurant workers, and that employment wasn't affected. These findings were, they claim, “in line with the lion’s share of results in previous credible minimum wage studies.”
Reich
and his colleagues have done a significant portion of this research ,
recently studying cities with the highest minimum wage laws in the
country, including Chicago, San Francisco, and Oakland. They've
consistently found that higher wages boost worker pay and haven't led to
either job loss or a slowdown in economic growth.
Employers see big benefits, too. Workers stay on the job longer, reducing turnover and training costs. They’re also significantly more productive, according to researchers studying wage increases in the United Kingdom.
There are big benefits for broader society as well. Poverty goes down, as does reliance on public assistance programs—one of the few things both Democrats and Republicans can agree is a net positive. Also improved are infant health and adult mental health outcomes, including a significant reduction in depression. (At a time when one in six Americans pops an anti-depressant every day, this seems particularly important.)
If
so much research shows significantly raising the minimum wage has a
major net-positive impact, what’s the story with the UW study?
One of the major limitations of the study, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) points out,
is that the data it analyzed excluded business with multiple locations,
such as chain restaurants and big box retailers. So the 40% of
employees they left out work at places like McDonald's, Best Buy, and other stores that rely heavily on the low-wage workers who got the actual boost. That is a highly significant oversight.
The
UW study also draws what the EPI calls "implausible findings." Since
high-paying jobs went up during the period that low-paying jobs went
down, the study implies that the minimum wage hike created better jobs
for the rich at the expense of the poor. But this explanation fails to
take into account the overall robustness and gentrification of Seattle's
economy—a much more reasonable explanation for the disparity.
Given
these flaws, it's no wonder that UW's findings diverge greatly from the
broader body of research on this topic, much of which the UW
researchers themselves cite.
Raising
the minimum wage—at the city, state, or federal level, where it remains
an unlivable $7.25 an hour—is still a reliable solution to the scourge
of inequality. Research should continue to look critically at its
impact, but so far the only credible research gives the policy a big
thumps up.
Josh Hoxie is director of the Project on Opportunity and Taxation at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-editor of Inequality.org.
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