Time for classless, clueless Pelosi to go
For nearly ninety minutes, Americans of all races, ages, ethnicities, and occupations listened to President Trump highlight specific achievements of his first three years in office during his State of the Union address. For nearly ninety minutes, those same Americans watched Speaker Pelosi sit in her chair on the dais, refusing to stand up, refusing to applaud, playing nervously with her dentures, shuffling the speech copy back and forth like she was confused reading a Waffle House menu, while obstinately making faces at her caucus when President Trump spoke. And to top it off, when President Trump closed out his SOTU 2020 speech claiming that American excellence is back; that America is strong once again; she tore up the speech copy like my 4 year-old grandson after he is told he cannot watch another cartoon.
She is classless. She is unworthy and undeserving of the title The Speaker of the House of Representatives. The people of Northern California who elected her should be ashamed. The Congress should censure such classless actions.
So, I ask Ms. Pelosi: What contents of President Trump’s SOTU 2020 were so objectionable? Was it any of the numerous economic successes of the country since 2016? Completed trade deals with three world mega-powers? Seventy percent growth in the stock market? Historical low unemployment for nearly every racial or ethnic group? Historic levels of Americans in the workforce? Historical levels of Americans off of welfare-based economics? Historical levels of women entering the workforce and securing new employment? Promises of protections for religious freedoms? Promises to take care of and to celebrate hard working officers and agents of America’s law enforcement agencies… state, local, and federal? Promises to take care of Americans first by ending streaming immigration of citizens of other nations with no reasonable asylum claims? Promises to end senseless warfare placing American troops at risk? Promises to protect Americans abroad and at home by eliminating the heads of terrorist organizations responsible for killing thousands?
Or, was it the tributes to American service men and women, both fallen and alive? Tributes to emerging world leaders seeking to bring amazing, history-rich countries from socialist oppression into a modern, successful economic system where individual freedoms are valued and celebrated? Tributes to Americans who faced dire poverty, drug addiction, and homelessness, but who chose to turn their lives around as successful business owners?
Or perhaps she was consumed by a more basic reason as she sat there looking at the failed House Managers, the know-nothing Squad, and 150 other Democrat party sheep (many of whom probably yearn for the Democrat party of just a few years ago), a reason that is nothing more than a pure and utter disdain and hatred of President Trump (and his successes) after three years of wasted and failed efforts to end his presidency without cause or justification?
Ms. Pelosi’s time in Congress should be over. After years of self-dealing and profiting off of her position, her city is a cesspool of economic waste, homelessness, public drug use, and a sanctuary for illegal immigrants and criminals. As a Northern California homeowner, I have had enough. #PelosiOUT.
percent, compared with the U.S. average of 57
percent—and its highest poverty rate. Roughly
half of America’s homeless live in Los Angeles
property crime rate among major cities. California
hasn’t yet become a full-scale dystopia, of
course, but it’s heading in a troubling direction.
Report:
California ‘Entirely’ Responsible for Nation’s Rise in Homelessness
Frederic J. Brown / AFP / Getty
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 about 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.
Bernie
Sanders: ‘Of Course’ Cheap Illegal Workers Drive Down U.S. Wages
No Labor Shortage: 11M Americans Out of Work but Want
Full-Time Jobs
Middle-class
wages in progressive California have risen by 1 percent in the last 40 years,
says a study by the establishment California Budget and Policy Center.
The wage and housing problems are made worse —
especially for families — by the loss of
employment benefits as companies and investors spike stock prices by cutting
costs. The report says:
NYT Admits Fewer
Immigrants Means Higher Wages, More Labor-Saving Machines
PAUL BEDARD
- THE STAGGERING COST OF MEXICO'S OCCUPATION AND LOOTING - Should we be helping
our own instead?
Record $135 billion a year for illegal immigration, average
$8,075 each, $25,000 in NY
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/record-135-billion-a-year-for-illegal-immigration-average-8075-each-25000-in-ny/article/2635757
Pelosi’s Lack of Decorum Is A Revelation
Professor Jonathan Turley of Georgetown University Law School wrote in The Hill of the Speaker’s State of the Union behavior, “Pelosi has shredded decades of tradition, decorum and civility that the nation could use now more than ever.” He also described her with the words “petty,” “distempered,” and “inappropriate.” She failed to introduce the President properly, and then was particularly out of line when she tore up his speech after grimacing and showing petulant expressions throughout the President’s speech.
Turley asserted that she should resign from office as the Speaker as her breaches of decorum at the State of Union were the worst of all those he has criticized over the years. For Turley, it is important because decorum is a kind of unifying glue. It is the fallback M.O., the detachment whereby differences of person and policy are transcended in our republic. He might just as well have called for the entire Democrat caucus to resign and be replaced by people of honor and integrity. It is at that point that the analysis seems to fade into fantasy.
Sadly, at this time in history, Turley’s view is a case of not seeing the forest for the trees. Instead of decorum being the way unity is maintained as in the past, decorum now serves mainly as a mask covering a profound dislocation, a profound disunity. Her lack of decorum and the unconscionable, implacable hostility of the Democrats of the House and Senate reveals the extreme political animosity that presently afflicts our country.
We are faced with an incredible disunity, so intense that no appearance of unity in the form of decorum can cover it up. The grim face of that disunity appeared at the State of the Union address, and was most visible in the egregious behavior of Speaker Pelosi.
Decorum is only one aspect of unity, but can never substitute for unity. If unity of purpose, of conscience, and of our varied constituencies is not present then decorum becomes a mere cover-up. Our national motto is e pluribus unum not e pluribus decorumatum.
Decorum has morphed over the past few decades into being a mask over the truth that laws have been passed and policies enacted that have not been of the people, by the people nor for the people. Ill-conceived and destructive policies have been implemented and decorum is only the veneer of “bi-partisanship.”
The jungle rot of the past 40-50 years of identity politics, globalism (i.e., the dilution of our national sovereignty), shift in our national identity – for approximately half the citizens -- from land of opportunity to land of exploitation, out of control immigration (fueled by our ever-expanding welfare system), and the decline of education owing to circumvention of the Tenth Amendment and the leftist ideology of too many educators, have all taken place behind the closed door of “decorum.”
“Decorum” was in place when China was admitted to the WTO. This giant step towards globalism took place under Democratic initiatives that carried over into the Bush administration. This admission made it easier for multinational corporations to open new markets in the Peoples’ Republic of China, but it also made China wealthier, and enabled the tyrants heading up that country to consolidate their power. We aided and abetted tyranny thereby, but because of decorum – to maintain a veneer of gentlemanly acceptance – the utter horror of that decision was not brought to the fore. Bi-partisanship and decorum merged to create a false face of “progress.”
There was a ridiculous decorum shown by Pres. G.W. Bush when he was vilified incessantly as Hitler and insulted day and night by the Dems. Unlike Pres. Trump, he did not say a peep. He remained above the fray, determined not to stoop to the level of his critics and the mean-spirited ones who heaped scorn upon his word choice errors and scorned him publicly and incessantly as a mental midget.
Decorum was in place by upping federal invasion of local prerogatives in education with the No Child Left Behind legislation and with Race To The Top Moneys. These initiatives enabled federal leverage on state education policy via implementation of social engineering through Common Core. Not only are the educational premises of this program dubious, but students must answer 400 personal questions which go into a federal database permanently.
When this writer was growing up prior to 1973, both major parties accepted the value of every life, including the unborn. Some objected, but it was a moral norm not to abort babies although many still did so. The Republicans, believing in decorum, did not denounce Democrats relentlessly, nor did they organize protests against the Democrats at their conventions for their stand on this issue. Yes – children can be dismembered and killed because mommy lacked self-control and couldn’t stay in a vertical position, and then, feeling that a newborn will interfere with her party life or other indulgences and comforts decides to do away with the child.
Just as the cultural Marxists have aspired to destroy the American family, we see Obergefell v. Hodges allowing the marriage of two men or two women cutting against thousands of years of family identities in all tribes, nations, cultures, and continents. But decorum says there will be differences of opinion on the most controversial matters, and we must applaud politely for the rights of others with whom we disagree. How can homosexual marriage be considered a Constitutional right when it was voted down in 36 states including twice in California? Education, birth, and marriage are not governed from Washington under the enumerated powers; yet, at present, they are so governed with relatively little pushback. Why so little pushback? The answer: decorum.
Professor Turley’s concern for decorum is a call to continue the false face of a false unity and a false message to the American people. When candidate Trump called Hillary a crook, he broke all decorum since Hillary had been a First Lady, Senator, Secretary of State, and Presidential nominee of the Dems. With a resume like that, calling her a crook was deemed by many as rude and unacceptable. Yet, many of us loved that insult of her majesty, Ice Queen of Narnia. The days of decorum as a valid hiding place were coming to an end. We all know a “fish rots from the head down.” Nancy revealed herself at the State of the Union as the source of the stinking, rotten, soulless behavior of the Leftocratic House. Her “mistakes” are actually a revelation.
"The good news: some Californians are waking up. A recent PPIC poll found that increasing proportions of
Californians believe that the state is headed in the wrong direction—a figure
that exceeds 55 percent in the inland areas."
On its current course, California increasingly resembles a model
of what the late Taichi Sakaiya called “high-tech feudalism,” with a small
population of wealthy residents and a growing mass of modern-day serfs.
ifornia Preening
The Golden State is on a path
to high-tech feudalism, but there’s still time to change course.
December
20, 2019
California
Economy, finance, and
budgets
“We
are the modern equivalent of the ancient city-states of Athens and Sparta.
California has the ideas of Athens and the power of Sparta,” declared then-governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2007. “Not only can we lead California into the future
. . . we can show the nation and the world how to get there.” When a movie star
who once played Hercules says so who’s to disagree? The idea of California as a
model, of course, precedes the former governor’s tenure. Now the state’s
anti-Trump resistance—in its zeal on matters concerning climate, technology,
gender, or race—believes that it knows how to create a just, affluent, and
enlightened society. “The future depends on us,” Governor Gavin Newsom said at his
inauguration. “And we will seize this moment.”
In
truth, the Golden State is becoming a semi-
gap between
middle and upper incomes—72
percent, compared with the U.S. average of 57
percent—and its highest poverty rate. Roughly
half of America’s homeless live in Los Angeles
property crime rate among major cities. California
hasn’t yet become a full-scale dystopia, of
course, but it’s heading in a troubling direction.
This didn’t have to happen. No place on earth has more going for
it than the Golden State. Unlike the East Coast and Midwest, California
benefited from comparatively late industrialization, with an economy based less
on auto manufacturing and steel than on science-based fields like aerospace,
software, and semiconductors. In the mid-twentieth century, the state also
gained from the best aspects of progressive rule, culminating in an elite
public university system, a massive water system reminiscent of the Roman
Empire, and a vast infrastructure network of highways, ports, and bridges. The
state was fortunate, too, in drawing people from around the U.S. and the world.
The eighteenth-century French traveler J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur described the American as “this new man,” and
California—innovative, independent, and less bound by tradition or old
prejudice—reflected that insight. Though remnants of this California still
exist, its population is aging, less mobile, and more pessimistic, and its
roads, schools, and universities are in decline.
In the second half of the twentieth
century, California’s remarkably diverse economy spread prosperity from the
coast into the state’s inland regions. Though pockets of severe poverty
existed—urban barrios, south Los Angeles, the rural Central Valley—they were
limited in scope. In fact, growth often favored suburban and
exurban communities, where middle-class families, including minorities, settled
after World War II.
In the last two decades, the state has adopted policies that
undermine the basis for middle-class growth. State energy policies, for
example, have made California’s gas and electricity prices among the steepest
in the country. Since 2011, electricity prices have risen five times faster than the
national average. Meantime, strict land-use controls have raised housing costs
to the nation’s highest, while taxes—once average, considering
California’s urban scale—now exceed those of virtually every state. At the same time, California’s economy has shed industrial
diversity in favor of dependence on one industry: Big Tech. Just a decade
before, the state’s largest firms included those in the aerospace, finance,
energy, and service industries. Today’s 11 largest companies hail from the tech
sector, while energy firms—excluding Chevron, which has moved much of its
operations to Houston—have disappeared. Not a single top
aerospace firm—the iconic industry of twentieth-century California—retains its
headquarters here.
Though lionized in the press, this tech-oriented economy hasn’t
resulted in that many middle- and high-paying job opportunities for
Californians, particularly outside the Bay Area. Since 2008, notes Chapman
University’s Marshall Toplansky, the state has created five times the number of
low-paying, as opposed to high-wage, jobs. A remarkable 86 percent of new jobs
paid below the median income, while almost half paid under $40,000. Moreover,
California, including Silicon Valley, created fewer high-paying positions than
the national average, and far less than prime competitors like Salt Lake City,
Seattle, or Austin. Los Angeles County features the lowest pay of any of the
nation’s 50 largest counties.
No state advertises its multicultural
bona fides more than California, now a majority-minority state. This is evident
at the University of California, where professors are required to prove their service to “people
of color,” to the state’s high school curricula, with its new ethnic studies component. Much of California’s
anti-Trump resistance has a racial context.
State
Attorney General Xavier Becerra has
sued
the administration numerous times over
immigration
policy while he helps ensure
California’s
distinction as a sanctuary for illegal
residents have
received driver’s licenses, and
San Francisco now permits illegal immigrants
Such
radical policies may make progressives feel better about themselves, though
they seem less concerned about how these actions affect everyday people.
California’s Latinos and African-Americans have seen good blue-collar jobs in
manufacturing and energy vanish. According to one United Way study, over half of
Latino households can barely pay their bills. “For Latinos,” notes long-time
political consultant Mike Madrid, “the
California Dream is becoming an unattainable fantasy.”
In the past, poorer Californians could count on education to
help them move up. But today’s educators appear more
interested in political indoctrination than results. Among
the
income students. In wealthy San
Francisco, test scores for black students are the worst of any California county.
Many minority residents, especially African-Americans, are fleeing the state.
In a recent UC Berkeley poll, 58 percent of black expressed interest in leaving
California, a higher percentage than for any racial group, though approximately
45 percent of Asians and Latinos also considered moving out.
Perhaps the biggest demographic disaster is generational. For
decades, California incubated youth culture, creating trends like beatniks,
hippies, surfers, and Latino and Asian art, music, and cuisine. The state is a
fountainhead of youthful wokeness and rebellion, but that may
prove short-lived as millennials leave. From 2014 to 2018, notes demographer
Wendell Cox, net domestic out-migration grew from 46,000 to 156,000. The exiles
are increasingly in their family-formation years. In the 2010s, California
suffered higher net declines in virtually every age category under 54, with the
biggest rate of loss coming among the 35-to-44 cohort.
As families with children leave, and international migration slows
to one-third of Texas’s level, the remaining population is rapidly aging. Since
2010, California’s fertility rate has dropped 60 percent, more than the
national average; the state is now aging 50 percent more rapidly than the rest
of the country. A growing number of tech firms and millennials have headed to
the Intermountain West. Low rates of
homeownership among younger people play a big role in this trend, with
California millennials forced to rent, with little
chance of buying their own home, while many of the state’s biggest metros lead the nation in long-term owners. California is increasingly a greying refuge for those who bought
property when housing was affordable.
After Governor Schwarzenegger morphed
into a progressive environmentalist, climate concerns began driving state
policy. His successors have embraced California “leadership” on climate issues.
Jerry Brown recently told a crowd in China that the
rest of the world should follow California’s example. The state’s top
Democrats, like state senate president pro tem Kevin DeLeon, Los Angeles mayor
Eric Garcetti, and billionaire Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer,
now compete for the green mantle.
Their policies have worsened conditions for many
middle- and working-class Californians. Oblivious to these concerns, Greens
ignore practical ideas—nuclear power, natural gas cars, job creation in
affordable areas, home-based work—that could help reduce emissions without
disrupting people’s lives. Ultra-green policies also work against the
state’s proclaimed goal of building
more than 3.5 million new housing units by 2025. In accordance with its efforts
to reduce car use, the state mandates that most growth occurs in
already-crowded coastal areas, where land prices are highest. But in cities
like San Francisco, the cost of building one unit for a homeless
person surpasses $700,000. California’s inland regions, though experiencing
population gains, keep losing state funding for decrepit highways in favor of
urban-centric, mass transit projects—yet transit use has stagnated, especially
in greater Los Angeles.
The state, nevertheless, continues its pursuit of policies that
would eliminate all fossil fuels and nuclear power—outpacing national or even
Paris Accord levels and guaranteeing ever-rising energy prices. Mandating
everything from electric cars to electric homes will only
drive more working-class Californians into “energy poverty.” High energy prices
also directly affect the manufacturing and logistics firms that employ
blue-collar workers at decent wages. Business relocation expert Joe Vranich notes that industrial firms
account for many of the 2,000 employers that left the state this decade.
California’s industrial growth has fallen to the bottom tier of states; last year, it
ranked 44th, with a rate of growth one-third to one-quarter that of prime
competitors like Texas, Virginia, Arizona, Nevada, and Florida.
Similarly, the high energy prices tend to hit the interior
counties that, besides being poorer, have far less temperate climates. Cities
like Bakersfield, capital of the state’s
once-vibrant oil industry, are particularly hard-hit. High energy prices will
cost the region, northeast of the Los Angeles Basin, 14,000 generally high-paid
jobs, even as the state continues to import oil from Saudi Arabia.
California’s leaders apply climate change to excuse virtually
every failure of state policy. During the California drought, Brown and his minions blamed the
“climate” for the dry period, refusing to take responsibility for insufficient water storage that would have
helped farmers. When the rains returned and reservoirs filled, this argument
was forgotten, and little effort has been made to conserve water for next time.
Likewise, Newsom and his supporters in the media have blamed recent fires on
changes in the global climate, but the disaster had as much to do with green
mandates against controlled burns and brush clearance than anything
occurring on a planetary scale. Brown joined greens and others in blocking such sensible
policies.
Few climate advocates ever seem to ask if their policies actually
help the planet. Indeed, California’s green policy, as one paper demonstrates, may be
increasing total greenhouse-gas emissions by pushing people and industries to
states with less mild climates. In the past decade, the state ranked 40th in
per-capita reductions, and its global carbon footprint is minimal. Renewable
energy may be expensive and unreliable, but state policy nevertheless enriches the green-energy investments
of tech leaders, even when their efforts—like
the Google-backed Ivanpah solar farm—fail to deliver
affordable, reliable energy.
It’s not so surprising, given these enthusiasms,
leads a city with paralyzing traffic congestion,
proliferating homeless camps—would rather talk
about becoming chair of the C40 Cities Climate
Leadership Group.
Reality is asserting itself, though. Tech firms already show signs
of restlessness with the current regulatory regime and appear to be
shifting employment to other states, notably Texas, Tennessee, Nevada, Colorado, and Arizona. Economic-modeling firm Emsi estimates that several states—Idaho,
Tennessee, Washington, and Utah—are growing their tech employment faster than
California. The state is losing momentum in professional and technical
services—the largest high-wage sector—and now stands roughly in the middle of
the pack behind other western states such as Texas, Tennessee, and Florida. And
Assembly Bill 5, the state law regulating certain forms of contract labor, reclassifies part-time workers.
Aimed initially at ride-sharing giants Uber and Lyft, the legislation also extends to
independent contractors in industries from media to trucking.
At some point, as even Brown noted, the ultra-high capital
gains returns will fall and, combined with the costs of an expanding welfare
state, could leave the state in fiscal chaos. Big Tech could stumble, a
possibility made more real by the recent $100 billion drop in the value of
privately held “unicorn” companies, including WeWork. If the tech economy slows,
a rift could develop between two of the state’s biggest forces—unions and the
green establishment—over future levels of taxation. More than two-thirds of California cities don’t
have any funds set aside for retiree health care and other retirement expenses.
The state also confronts $1 trillion in pension debt, according to former
Democratic state senator Joe Nation. U.S. News & Report ranks
California, despite the tech boom, 42nd in fiscal health among the states.
The good news: some Californians are waking up. A recent PPIC poll found that
increasing proportions of Californians believe that the state is headed in the
wrong direction—a figure that exceeds 55 percent in the inland areas. And voters dislike the state legislature even more than they dislike Donald Trump. Newsom’s approval rating stands at 43
percent, placing him toward the bottom among the nation’s
governors. A conservative-led campaign to recall him is unlikely to succeed, but surveys reveal
growing opposition to the new tax hikes proposed by the legislature. There’s a growing
concern about the state’s expanding homeless population.
And a rebellion against the state’s energy policies is already
under way. Recently, 110 cities, with total population exceeding 8
million, have demanded changes in California’s drive to prevent new natural gas
hookups. The state’s Chamber of Commerce and the three most prominent
ethnic chambers—African-American, Latino, and Asian-Pacific—have joined this
effort.
Californians need less bombast and progressive pretense from their
leaders and more attention to policies that could counteract the economic and
demographic tides threatening the state. On its current course,
California increasingly resembles a model of what the late Taichi Sakaiya
called “high-tech feudalism,” with a small population of wealthy residents and
a growing mass of modern-day serfs. Delusion and preening ultimately
have limits, as more Californians are beginning to recognize. As the 2020s
beckon, the time for the state to change course is now.
Joel Kotkin is the presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University
and executive director of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His latest book
is The Human City: Urbanism for
the Rest of Us. His book on the return to
feudalism will be released next year.
Report:
California ‘Entirely’ Responsible for Nation’s Rise in Homelessness
20 Dec 20192,076
2:41
The
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reported Friday that the
nation’s homeless population rose 2.7% as of January 2019, an increase it said
was “entirely” driven by a rise of 16.4% in the state of California.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development is reporting its
third consecutive increase in its homelessness projection, based on a summary
of its annual report obtained by the Associated Press.
President Trump has been highly critical of the homeless problem
in California, and HUD said the increase seen in its January snapshot was
caused “entirely” by a 16.4% increase in the state’s homeless population.
“As we look across our nation, we see great progress, but we’re
also seeing a continued increase in street homelessness along our West Coast
where the cost of housing is extremely high,” HUD Secretary Ben Carson said.
“In fact, homelessness in California is at a crisis level and needs to be
addressed by local and state leaders with crisis-like urgency.”
…
In the January 2018 count, almost 553,000 people were counted as
homeless. That number rose to about 568,000 this year.
The number of homeless veterans, and the number of homeless
families with children, dropped.
It is not clear whether the rise in California is wholly
California’s fault. Homeless people from other states often relocate to
California, partly because the winter weather is more tolerable (though also
because of generous welfare benefits).
President Donald Trump has proposed federal intervention in
California to help solve the problem. HUD Secretary Ben Carson recently visited
the state to assess the problem.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom told Breitbart News on Thursday
evening that the homeless crisis is “an embarrassment, it is unacceptable. And
we’ve got to own it, we’ve got to own up and solve it.”
Volume 90%
However, he has pushed back against federal intervention, saying
more federal money is needed, but not federal control.
Joel B.
Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social
Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a
J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak
Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How
Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from
Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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 about 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.
Bernie
Sanders: ‘Of Course’ Cheap Illegal Workers Drive Down U.S. Wages
Andrew
Harnik/AP Photo
14 Jan 2020326
3:30
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) admits
cheaper illegal alien workers drive down wages for America’s working and middle
class but continues to support amnesty for illegal aliens, decriminalization of
the United States-Mexico border, and throwing out President Trump’s “Buy
American, Hire American” executive order.
Sanders navigated through the issue
during an interview with the New
York Times, attempting to explain his previous statements where he
has admitted that opening
the U.S. border is detrimental to the nation-state and has slammed the concept
of hemispheric open borders.
During the exchange, Sanders says
“of course” cheaper illegal alien workers hired by businesses at “$5 an hour”
will “lower wages” for America’s working class, who are often looking for
entry-level jobs.
“Yeah, if you’re being paid $5 — if
you’re being paid $5 an hour, now of course it’s going to lower wages,” Sanders
said. “Why would I hire at a higher wage?”
Later in the interview, though,
Sanders backs away from immigration’s wage-suppression impact on Americans and
focuses on a $15 minimum wage — suggesting that illegal aliens be legalized and
paid the same wage as Americans.
“All I am saying is that if for
whatever reason, I’m paying you $5 an hour, okay,” Sanders said. “You don’t
think that’s going to lower the wages that she gets?”
Legal immigration levels, where 1.2
million mostly low-skilled legal immigrants and hundreds of thousands of
foreign visa workers are admitted to the country annually, have driven the
number of foreign born workers in the U.S. to its highest level since 1996. This is in
addition to the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who enter the country
every year.
Most immigrants to the U.S.
immediately begin competing for blue-collar and white-collar jobs against millions of Americans who
want full-time employment.
No
Labor Shortage: 11M Americans Out of Work, But All Want Full-Time Jobs https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/10/no-labor-shortage-11m-americans-out-of-work-but-all-want-full-time-jobs/ …
No Labor Shortage: 11M Americans Out of Work but Want
Full-Time Jobs
Extensive research by economists
like George Borjas and analyst Steven Camarota reveals that the country’s
current mass legal immigration system burdens U.S. taxpayers and America’s
working and middle class while redistributing about $500 billion in wealth
every year to major employers and newly arrived immigrants. Similarly, research
has revealed how Americans’ wages are crushed by the
country’s high immigration levels.
For every one percent increase in
the immigrant portion of American workers’ occupations, their weekly wages are
cut by about 0.5 percent, Camarota finds. This means the average native-born
American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by perhaps 8.75 percent
since 17.5 percent of the workforce is foreign born.
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 about 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 portion 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.
Report: California’s Middle-Class Wages Rise by 1 Percent in 40 Years
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
3 Sep 2019172
6:24
Middle-class
wages in progressive California have risen by 1 percent in the last 40 years,
says a study by the establishment California Budget and Policy Center.
“Earnings for California’s
workers at the low end and middle of the wage scale have generally declined or
stagnated for decades,” says the report, titled “California’s Workers Are
Increasingly Locked Out of the State’s Prosperity.” The report continued:
In
2018, the median hourly earnings for workers ages 25 to 64 was $21.79, just 1%
higher than in 1979, after adjusting for inflation ($21.50, in 2018 dollars)
(Figure 1). Inflation-adjusted hourly earnings for low-wage workers, those at
the 10th percentile, increased only slightly more, by 4%, from $10.71 in
1979 to $11.12 in 2018.
The report admits that the
state’s progressive economy is delivering more to investors and less to
wage-earners. “Since 2001, the share of state private-sector [annual new
income] that has gone to worker compensation has fallen by 5.6 percentage
points — from 52.9% to 47.3%.”
In 2016, California’s Gross
Domestic Product was $2.6 trillion, so the 5.6 percent drop shifted $146
billion away from wages. That is roughly $3,625 per person in 2016.
The report notes that wages
finally exceeded 1979 levels around 2017, and it splits the credit between the
Democrats’ minimum-wage boosts and President Donald Trump’s go-go economy.
The 40 years of flat wages are
partly hidden by a wave of new products and services. They include almost-free
entertainment and information on the Internet, cheap imported coffee in
supermarkets, and reliable, low-pollution autos in garages.
But the impact of California’s
flat wages is made worse by California’s rising housing costs, the report says,
even though it also ignores the rent-spiking impact of the establishment’s
pro-immigration policies:
In just the last decade
alone, the increase in the typical household’s rent far outpaced the rise in
the typical full-time worker’s annual earnings, suggesting that working
families and individuals are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends
meet. In fact, the basic cost of living in many parts of the state is more
than many single individuals or families can expect to earn, even if all adults
are working full-time.
…
Specifically, inflation-adjusted
median household rent rose by 16% between 2006 and 2017, while
inflation-adjusted median annual earnings for individuals working at least 35
hours per week and 50 weeks per year rose by just 2%, according to a Budget
Center analysis of US Census Bureau, American Community Survey data.
Many workers are being paid
little more today than workers were in 1979 even as worker productivity has
risen. Fewer employees have access to retirement plans sponsored by their
employers, leaving individual workers on their own to stretch limited dollars
and resources to plan how they’ll spend their later years affording the high
cost of living and health care in California. And as union representation has
declined, most workers today cannot negotiate collectively for better working
conditions, higher pay, and benefits, such as retirement and health care, like
their parents and grandparents did. On top of all this, workers who take on
contingent and independent work (often referred to as “gig work”), which in
many cases appears to be motivated by the need to supplement their primary job
or fill gaps in their employment, are rarely granted the same rights and legal
protections as traditional employees.
The center’s report tries to
blame the four-decade stretch of flat wages on the declining clout of unions.
But unions’ decline was impacted by the bipartisan elites’ policy of
mass-migration and imposed diversity.
In
2018, Breitbart reported how Progressives for
Immigration Reform interviewed Blaine Taylor, a union carpenter, about the
economic impact of migration:
TAYLOR: If I hired a framer to do
a small addition [in 1988], his wage would have been $45 an hour. That was
the minimum for a framing contractor, a good carpenter. For a helper, it was
about $25 an hour, for a master who could run a complete job, it was about $45
an hour. That was the going wage for plumbers as well. His helpers typically
got $25 an hour.
…
Now, the average wage in Los
Angeles for construction workers is less than $11 an hour. They can’t go lower
than the minimum wage. And much of that, if they’re not being paid by the hour
at less than $11 an hour, they’re being paid per piece — per piece of plywood
that’s installed, per piece of drywall that’s installed. Now, the subcontractor
can circumvent paying them as an hourly wage and are now being paid by 1099,
which means that no taxes are being taken out. [Emphasis added]
Diversity
also damaged the unions by shredding California’s civic solidarity. In 2007,
the progressive Southern Poverty Law Center posted a report with the title
“Latino Gang Members in Southern California are Terrorizing and Killing
Blacks.” In the same year, an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times described another murder by Latino
gangs as “a manifestation of an increasingly common trend: Latino ethnic
cleansing of African Americans from multiracial neighborhoods.”
The center’s board members
include the executive director of the state’s SEIU union, a professor from the
Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and
the research director at the “Program for Environmental and Regional Equity” at
the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
Outside
California, President Donald Trump’s low-immigration policies are pressuring
employers to raise Americans’ wages in a hot economy. The Wall Street Journal reportedAugust 29:
Overall, median weekly earnings
rose 5% from the fourth quarter of 2017 to the same quarter in 2018, according
to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For workers between the ages of 25 and 34, that
increase was 7.6%.
The New York Times laments that reduced
immigration does force wages upwards and also does force companies to buy
labor-saving, wage-boosting machinery. Instead, NYT prioritizes "ideas
about America’s identity and culture.” http://bit.ly/2Zp2u2J
NYT Admits Fewer
Immigrants Means Higher Wages, More Labor-Saving Machines
.
THE INVITED INVADING HORDES: IT’S ALL
ABOUT KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED!
"In the decade following the
financial crisis of 2007-2008, the capitalist class has delivered powerful
blows to the social position of the working class. As a result, the working
class in the US, the world’s “richest country,” faces levels of economic
hardship not seen since the 1930s."
"Inequality has reached unprecedented
levels: the wealth of America’s three richest people now equals the net
worth of the poorest half of the US population."
PAUL BEDARD
- THE STAGGERING COST OF MEXICO'S OCCUPATION AND LOOTING - Should we be helping
our own instead?
Record $135 billion a year for illegal immigration, average
$8,075 each, $25,000 in NY
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/record-135-billion-a-year-for-illegal-immigration-average-8075-each-25000-in-ny/article/2635757
The swelling population
of illegal immigrants and their kids is costing American taxpayers $135 billion
a year, the highest ever, driven by free medical care, education and a huge law
enforcement bill, according to the the most authoritative report on the issue
yet.
And despite claims from
pro-illegal immigration advocates that the aliens pay significant off-setting
taxes back to federal, state and local treasuries, the Federation
for American Immigration Reform report tallied just $19 billion, making the final hit to
taxpayers about $116 billion.
State and local
governments are getting ravaged by the costs, at over $88 billion. The federal
government, by comparison, is getting off easy at $45 billion in costs for
illegals.
President Trump,
Attorney General Jeff Sessions and conservatives in Congress are moving
aggressively to deal with illegals, especially those with long criminal
records. But their effort is being fought by courts and some 300 so-called
"sanctuary communities" that refuse to work with federal law
enforcement.
The added burden on
taxpayers and the unfairness to those who have applied to come into the United
States through legal channels is also driving the administration's immigration
crackdown.
The report,
titled "The
Fiscal Burden Of Illegal Immigration on U.S. Taxpayers," is the most
comprehensive cost tally from FAIR. It said that the costs have jumped about $3
billion in four years and will continue to surge unless illegal immigration is
stopped. It was provided in advance exclusively to Secrets.
"Clearly, the cost
of doing nothing to stop illegal immigration is far too high," said FAIR
Executive Director Dan Stein. "President Trump has laid out a
comprehensive strategy to regain control of illegal immigration and bring down
these costs," said Stein. "Building the wall, enhancing interior
enforcement and mandating national E-Verify will go a long way in bringing
these ridiculously high costs under control," he added.
Over 68 often shocking
pages, FAIR documents the average $8,075 in state, local and federal spending
for each of the of 12.5 million illegal immigrants and their 4.2 million
citizen children.
Broadly, the costs
include $29 billion in medical care, $23 billion for law enforcement, $9
billion in welfare, $46 billion for education.
Just consider the cost
of teaching an illegal alien child who doesn't speak English. FAIR estimates an
average cost of over $12,000 a year, and that can reach $25,000 in New York.
Add to that welfare, health care, school lunches, and the per student price
soars.
In state costs alone,
California leads the list at $23 billion per year, followed by Texas at $11
billion, and New York at $7.4 billion.
And it also documents
the taxes paid and how they don't come close to offsetting the costs. What's
more, FAIR noted that 35 percent of the illegal population operate in an
underground economy hidden from tax collectors. And worse, employers hire
illegals and either pay them cheaply or under the table.
"The United States
recoups only about 14 percent of the amount expended annually on illegal
aliens. If the same jobs held by illegal aliens were filled by legal workers,
at the prevailing market wage, it may safely be presumed that federal, state
and local governments would receive higher tax payments," said FAIR.
Key findings pulled from
the report:
·
The staggering total costs of illegal immigrants and their
children outweigh the taxes paid to federal and state governments by a ratio of
roughly 7 to 1, with costs at nearly $135 billion compared to tax revenues at
nearly $19 billion.
·
The nearly $135 billion paid out by federal and state and local
taxpayers to cover the cost of the presence of 12.5 million illegal aliens and
their 4.2 million citizen children amounts to approximately $8,075 per illegal
alien and citizen child prior to taxes paid, or $6,940 per person after taxes
are paid.
·
On the federal level, medical ($17.14 billion) is by far the
highest cost, with law enforcement coming second ($13.15 billion) and general
government services ($8 billion) third.
·
At the state and local level, education ($44.4 billion) was by
far the largest expense, followed by general public services ($18.5 billion)
and medical ($12.1 billion).
·
The top three states based on total cost to state taxpayers for
illegal immigrants and their children: California ($23 billion); Texas ($10.9
billion), and New York ($7.5 billion).
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington
Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com
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