When Biden took office, one of his first acts was the elimination of our border security. Like a power-hungry dictator, Biden simply decided to ignore our immigration laws. His catastrophic border policy resulted in untold millions of unidentified foreign citizens from around the world pouring into our country. Its impact is now being felt in cities across the country. The worst is yet to come. PETER LEMISKA - AND WE'RE ALREADY THERE!!!
Tuesday, March 5, 2019
PHONY SOCIALIST BERNIE SANDERS PROMISES MORE OF THE SAME BUT CAN'T DELIVER ANYTHING BUT EMPTY PROMISES
STARING IN THE FACE of AMERICA’S UNRAVELING and the ROAD TO REVOLUTION
“It will more likely come on the heels of economic dislocation and dwindling wealth to redistribute.”
“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 kind of people needed for violent change these days are living in off-the-grid rural compounds, or the “gangster paradise” where the businesses of drugs, guns, and prostitution are much more lucrative than “transforming” America along Cuban lines." BRUCE THORNTON
There can be no resolution to any social problem confronting the population in the United States and internationally outside of a frontal assault on the wealth of the financial elite.
*
The political system is controlled by this social layer, which uses a portion of its economic plunder to bribe politicians and government officials, whether Democratic or Republican.
Sanders launches his campaign with a blast of demagogy
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders kicked off his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination with rallies on Saturday in Brooklyn, New York and on Sunday night in Chicago. At both rallies, he delivered speeches presenting a Sanders presidency as the most ambitious effort to reform American society since the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt, more than 80 years ago.
Sanders’ speech was an exercise in political demagogy, because there exists no relationship between even the limited reforms he envisages and any realistic strategy for their implementation.
Sanders promised to “finally create an economy and a government which works for all of us not just the 1 percent.” He continued, clearly referring to the presidency of Donald Trump, “The underlying principle of our government will not be greed, hatred, and lies…. It will not be tax breaks for billionaires, and efforts to throw millions off the health care that they currently have. This campaign is going to end all of that.”
Sanders claimed that under his
administration, “We will no longer tolerate the
greed of corporate America… greed which
has resulted in this country having more
income and wealth inequality than any other
major country on earth.”
The candidate outlined a series of socioeconomic reforms, including guaranteed health care for all under a single-payer plan; a $15 an hour minimum wage; creating 13 million decent-paying jobs through a program to rebuild US infrastructure; quality, affordable childcare; tuition-free public colleges and universities and a reduction in student debt; raising Social Security benefits; and transforming the energy system away from fossil fuels as part of an effort to fight climate change.
These proposals will no doubt attract considerable popular support, just as Sanders did in the 2016 campaign, when he received more than 13 million votes in Democratic primaries and caucuses.
Missing from his speech were the words “capitalism,” “private property,” “profit system,” “imperialism” and the notorious S-word, "socialism."
Sanders invokes a “political revolution.” But this “revolution” will supposedly be achieved under the leadership of the Democrats, the oldest modern capitalist party, and will not touch the institution of private property that is the bedrock of capitalist inequality.
Revolutions, fundamentally, involve the transfer of political power from one class to another. However, Sanders does not call for the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalists. Instead, the septuagenarian will give speeches and the citadels of the ruling elite will presumably crumble like the walls of Jericho.
Does Sanders really believe that in America, the heart of world reaction, the world’s most ruthless capitalist oligarchy will simply give way to this “political revolution” and hand over trillions of dollars in social benefits to the working class, without a shot fired?
No, he does not. And therein lies his dishonesty. In New York, Sanders invoked his own biography, declaring, “I know where I came from.” By rights, he should have acknowledged where he has ended up: from humble beginnings, he has become an expert in demagogy and a purveyor of illusions.
Sanders appeals to the deeply-felt sentiments of hundreds of millions of workers and young people. He works to channel these sentiments into a political program that cannot achieve anything he promises.
In 2016, Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton, who he had been repeatedly exposed as a Wall Street stooge, betraying the aspirations of his supporters and setting the stage for the fascistic Donald Trump to become president.
Once again, as he begins his campaign for the presidential nomination in 2020, Sanders is attempting to divert all political opposition into the blind alley of the Democratic Party, even as this party itself opposes him and has no intention of implementing anything he proposes.
Sanders’ speech draws heavily on the “Second Bill of Rights” proposed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his State of the Union Address in 1944. Seeking to appease the militancy of a working class that would not accept the return of Depression-era conditions when World War II came to an end, Roosevelt declared:
"We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. 'Necessitous men are not free men.' People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
"In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed."
Roosevelt proposed a series of vaguely-defined economic reforms that included the "right" to "a useful and remunerative job," the "right to earn enough," the "right of every family to a decent home," the "right to a good education," and the "right to adequate medical care."
But, even at the zenith of the United States’ power, at the very end of World War II, Roosevelt's vision of a somewhat more humane version of American capitalism was dead in the water. Roosevelt died in April 1945, and the war was followed by a wave of political reaction that culminated in McCarthyism. Twenty years were to pass before, in the mid-1960s, President Lyndon Johnson's administration, under pressure from the mass civil rights movement and riots in major American cities, introduced his Great Society program. This was a heavily watered-down version of Roosevelt's "Second Bill of Rights," whose reforms fell far short of the social democratic measures that were commonplace in Western Europe.
In any event, the brief episode of capitalist reformism during the Kennedy-Johnson years soon gave way to the vicious social counterrevolution over which both Democratic and Republican presidents have presided for the past 40 years. The result has been the degeneration of the United States into an oligarchical society, characterized by staggering levels of wealth concentration in the richest 10 percent, while the remaining 90 percent experience economic hardship and outright poverty.
Sanders never gives a single explanation for how any of this came to pass. The policies he is denouncing are those that have been the stock-in-trade of the Democratic and Republican parties for decades. And these policies have been, and are, characteristic of capitalism throughout the world in a period of relentless assaults on the working class.
Sanders has no explanation for any of this because there is only one explanation: The one Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels gave in the Communist Manifesto: that capitalism impoverishes the masses for the enrichment of the capitalists. That capitalism is the cause of war, inequality and every social evil Sanders claims to oppose.
But Sanders does not support ending capitalism. He is appealing to the aspirations of his supporters only to betray them.
Socialism can be achieved only through the mass mobilization of the working class to conquer state power, as part of a revolutionary movement of the international working class, and to carry out the expropriation of the capitalist class and the establishment of public ownership over the means of production. This is the perspective that the Socialist Equality Party fights for.
Trump Touts Legal Immigration System for ‘Our Corporations’ at Expense of American Workers
During the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) this weekend, President Trump broke from his past opposition to the country’s mass legal immigration system, instead touting a legal immigration system that benefits “our corporations.”
While Trump mentioned he wanted to end the process known as “chain migration,” where newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the country, and the Diversity Visa Lottery, which admits 55,000 random foreign nationals from around the globe to the U.S. every year, the president said he supported admitting more foreign workers to take coveted American jobs to help the big business lobby and corporate interests.
“We need an immigration policy that helps all Americans thrive, flourish, prosper. We need an immigration policy that’s going to be great for our corporations and our great companies,” Trump said. “We need an immigration policy where people coming into our country can love our country and love our fellow citizens.”
“And now, we want people to come in, we need workers to come in but they’ve got to come in legally and they’ve got to come in through merit,” Trump said.
Over the last two months, Trump has regularly touted his support for admitting more foreign workers to the country to compete against America’s working and middle class for jobs, a reversal from his commitment in 2015, 2016, and 2017, where he vowed to reduce overall legal immigration levels to boost the wages of U.S. workers.
Trump was once so supportive of reducing the current unfettered foreign labor competition that American workers have been subjected to through legal immigration levels that he pledged to halt all immigration until the country was at full employment.
“Before any new green cards are issued to foreign workers abroad, there will be a pause where employers will have to hire from the domestic pool of unemployed immigrant and native workers,” Trump’s 2015 immigration policy papers stated.
Trump’s shift from a wage-boosting legal immigration system to one that benefits corporations and their shareholders concides with recent big business lobby influence over his White House, at the behest of advisers Jared Kushner and Brooke Rollins.
As Breitbart News reported, an alliance of mostly globalist organizations and business groups have had access to the White House to discuss the national legal immigration policy. These groups include Koch Industries, the George W. Bush Center, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).
Increasing legal immigration would cut the job prospects of the at least 13 millionworking-age Americans who are either unemployed, not in the labor force but want a job, or who are working part-time jobs but want a good-paying full-time job.
Out of those 13 million Americans who are available for U.S. jobs, about 6.5 million are unemployed. Of those unemployed, close to 13 percent are American teenagers who are ready for entry-level U.S. jobs — the exact jobs that low-skilled foreign workers generally tend to take.
About 1.6 million Americans are not in the labor force at all, but they want a job, including about 426,000 discouraged American workers who are demoralized by their job prospects. Also, there are 5.1 million Americans who are working part-time jobs but who want full-time jobs. More than 1.4 million of these U.S. part-time workers said they had looked for full-time jobs but could not find any.
Mass immigration, whether legal or illegal, puts downward pressure on Americans’ wages, researchers have repeatedly noted.
Every one percent increase in the immigrant composition of an American workers’ occupation reduces their weekly wages by about 0.5 percent, researcher Steven Camarotta has found. This means the average native-born American worker today has their weekly wages reduced by perhaps 8.5 percent because of current legal immigration levels.
In a state like Florida, where immigrants make up about 25.4 percent of the labor force, American workers have their weekly wages reduced by perhaps more than 12.5 percent. In California, where immigrants make up 34 percent of the labor force, American workers’ weekly wages are reduced by potentially 17 percent.
Likewise, every one percent increase in the immigrant composition of low-skilled U.S. occupations reduces wages by about 0.8 percent. Should 15 percent of low-skilled jobs be held by foreign-born workers, it would reduce the wages of native-born American workers by perhaps 12 percent.
Those benefitting from increasing legal immigration levels are corporate executives, Wall Street, real estate investors, big business, and multinational conglomerates that would enjoy a flooded labor market with reduced wages, more workers, added residents who need housing, and additional consumers to buy their products.
The mass importation of legal immigrants — mostly due to President George H.W. Bush’s Immigration Act of 1990, which expanded legal immigration levels — diminishes job opportunities for the roughly four million young American graduates who enter the workforce every year wanting good-paying jobs.
In the last decade alone, the U.S. admitted ten million legal immigrants, forcing American workers to compete against a growing population of low-wage foreign workers. Meanwhile, if legal immigration continues, there will be 69 million foreign-born residents living in the U.S. by 2060. This would represent an unprecedented electoral gain for the Left, as Democrats win about 90 percent of congressional districts where the foreign-born population exceeds the national average.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
“Socialism appeals to me”
Sanders rally attendees speak on socialism, Democratic Party
By George Marlowe and Marcus Day 5 March 2019
On Sunday, US Senator Bernie Sanders continued his initial series of campaign rallies at Chicago’s Navy Pier, following Saturday’s event in Brooklyn, as he again seeks the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Sanders unsuccessfully sought the party’s nomination in 2016, subsequently endorsing Hillary Clinton, the arch-candidate of Wall Street and big business.
The Chicago Tribune estimated that over 12,000 attended. The rally attracted diverse social layers, including many young people who have been increasingly radicalized in recent years: large numbers of high school and college students, along with young workers. Significant numbers of professionals and other sections of both the lower- and upper-middle class attended as well.
Reporters for the World Socialist Web Site spoke with attendees, encountering wide interest in a socialist perspective. Many of those we spoke with were attracted to Sanders’ criticisms of social inequality, “the billionaire class” and other social ills. A number were either skeptical of or openly hostile to capitalism and the Democratic Party, while expressing illusions in the possibility of reforming either. As the WSWS has noted, the promotion of such illusions is a central aim of Sanders’ campaign.
Jesus
Jesus is 22 and from the Chicago suburbs. He said he had gone to college for two years, studying to become a teacher, before having to quit and work full time at a factory in order to support his family.
He said he had been following the wave of teachers strikes in the US over the past year. “With all the effort they put into teaching students, you’d think they’d get paid more.”
He said that he hadn’t given socialism much thought until recently, which he described as Sanders’ proposals to “use taxes for the people not for the corporations, which makes a lot of sense. I think socialism but with capitalism together is the perfect idea for this country. A complete full market and no regulations is really bad. I feel like the Democratic Party has to change, otherwise they’re going to lose a whole generation, again.”
The WSWS reporter explained, however, that genuine socialism and structuring society to meet the needs of the majority of the population are incompatible with the extreme levels of social inequality under capitalism and the monopolization of wealth and political power by the rich. Jesus agreed. The reporter also explained that the Democratic Party was the oldest capitalist party in modern history, a party of Wall Street and imperialism, and had long put forth various “radical” sounding figures as safety valves in order to trap and smother social opposition.
Asked his thoughts on the previous administration of Democratic President Barack Obama, Jesus responded angrily, “The first two years of his presidency, they had control of both houses [of Congress]. He could have done way more, but they didn’t. And Obama deported way more people than Trump. And then he made the whole DACA thing at the end [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the tenuous legal status for young immigrants], which he knew would get vetoed by a Republican president.
“It’s kind of infuriating, you know? He wasn’t really hope and change.”
Jesus added that he was strongly opposed to the attacks on immigrants. “These people don’t do anything but give to this country,” he said, “and they always live in fear because they might get deported. I think it’s pretty disgusting.”
Alexis and Oliver
Alexis is a 21-year-old student from Chicago who studies political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He spoke of his left-wing views and the need for young people to fight for a better world. “I’m pretty leftist,” he said. “This is as close to the collapse of capitalism I’m going to get. I’m doing everything in my power to make the world a better place. The younger generation needs to be mobilized against a system they deem unfair. I definitely want this president out of office.”
Alexis came to the rally with Oliver, who is 19, from Quincy, Illinois, and also studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “The most important issue to me is the environment,” Oliver said. “A close second is healthcare, education and inequality. The system should never have allowed this level of inequality.” Oliver added, “I’m not a fan of the Democratic Party, but it may be a better of the two options.”
Reporters explained to Oliver, however, that the politics of “lesser evilism” has resulted in disasters for the working class every election cycle and a further shift to the right, including under the previous Obama administration. Oliver nodded his head and said, “I’m interested in learning more.”
Alexis agreed and also spoke out on his differences with the Democratic Party, noting, “I generally disagree with the Democratic Party.” He added, “Socialism appeals to me. A lot of left politics becomes coopted by the Democratic Party and because of the cooption we are never able to realize the ultimate goals that we seek. I think that’s very dangerous because it prevents any progress. I think we need to radically depart from capitalism.”
Young people also came from the economically depressed city of Rockford, Illinois. The city had one of the highest unemployment rates in the country after the financial crisis of 2008. Thousands of good-paying industrial jobs have been destroyed in the Rockford area, only to be replaced with low-wage jobs, including at the Rockford United Parcel Service (UPS) air hub, where workers make as little as $13 an hour.
Simon is an 18-year-old high school student from Rockford. He spoke of the economic devastation the city has faced. “I’ve grown up here my entire life,” he said. “It is the epitome of the ‘Rust-Belt’ city. It’s really depressing. There’s a drug issue there. There’s a lot that needs to be fixed. A lot of industrial jobs have left. At the Belvidere Assembly Plant they started laying off 1,400 workers.”
Recently Fiat Chrysler announced that it would eliminate an entire shift at its Belvidere plantnear Rockford and lay off nearly 1,400 workers, something which the United Auto Workers union is doing nothing to stop.
Simon and Andrew
Andrew, a 20-year-old worker and friend of Simon’s from Rockford, spoke of the impact of the layoffs. “Rockford is a community that had its roots in industry. There’s a lot of small manufacturing and a lot of workers are struggling,” he said.
“My cousin works at Belvidere Assembly,” he added. “The majority of people employed in the last six years are going to get laid off. It’s a horrible situation. There’s families that get their entire income from the Belvidere Assembly Plant. There’s fathers and mothers that work there together. What are they going to do come May? They’re going to get laid off and have no income. I guess they will get unemployment, but unemployment will only do so much.”
Simon spoke about his desire for free college education. “When Bernie started to run and started talking about free college education for everyone, that is one thing that really struck me,” he said. “Student loan debt is horrible. I’m a senior at Rockford East, and it’s really stressful and so complicated. It’s such a terrible system. If education was free and universal, it would provide equal opportunity for all.”
Andrew noted that he could not afford college. He said, “I’m not actually in college right now. Financial issues for college is a big thing. If college was free, I would definitely take advantage of it and further my knowledge.”
Louis
Louis is also 22 and is a college student studying communications in Chicago. “I’ve heard a lot about Sanders, but just wanted to come out and hear what he had to say. I thought he made a lot of good points in his first run.”
Louis listed a number of issues he was concerned about, including “inequality financially, our presence in the political realm, violence in our neighborhood. Police brutality definitely needs to be addressed. But I think if we address those things head on they can change.”
He said that he did not consider himself a Democrat. “I personally don’t put myself in a political party.”
Louis said that he had not given much thought to socialism previously, and said he thought that there were ways to address social problems within “each belief system, whether capitalism or socialism.”
However, when a reporter explained that there was an objective conflict within society, between a reactionary financial oligarchy and the working class which produces all of society’s wealth, he agreed, adding, “I agree with everything you just said. I strongly believe the working class is the whole heart of America, and the world.”
Jake is a 23-year-old, originally from Cincinnati, Ohio. “I’m a sales manager in Chicago. Universal healthcare is a big issue for me. Social issues have been quite relevant to me as well. I know Bernie doesn’t go as far on a lot of issues, as far as socialism, that I want though.
“Healthcare matters to me because living should be a human right,” he noted. “We should care about other human rights. The rise of insulin costs is abhorrent. I have four people in my family that have diabetes. Luckily, they are all fortunate enough to be able to afford it. But I’ve heard the horror stories. Nobody should die from a treatable disease. It’s disgusting that a black market for insulin has to even exist. I am young enough and fortunate enough to get insurance from my father. I haven’t gotten any major health issues at this point—and I don’t have to in the near future. But what if my dad lost this job?”
Danny and Jake
Danny is a friend of Jake and a worker in Chicago as well. He contrasted the spending on war with spending on social programs in the United States. “The Pentagon misplaced $7 billion and they don’t know where it went,” he said. “And they can’t afford healthcare? I think saving people’s lives affordably is more important than invading other countries and destroying lives.”
Both Jake and Danny also spoke about Sanders’ tacit support for the Trump administration’s efforts to oust the Maduro government in Venezuela, which could create a violent civil war. “We should not be involved in that,” Jake said. “That’s nonsense,” Danny added.
Jake also spoke about other issues that were important to him, including education and the recent strikes of teachers. “The other big issues that matter to me are education—public vs. private. I’ve been following the teacher strikes and I have friends who are teachers in California. My friends were in the Los Angeles teacher strike. Teachers need to be paid a lot more. Education solves a lot of root problems. I’m also really concerned about income inequality.”
Jesus
Alexis and Oliver
Simon and Andrew
Louis
Danny and Jake
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