Friday, February 21, 2020

THE DEMOCRAT PARTY IN MELTDOWN

WILL THEIR ENDLESS HISPANDERING WIN THEM THE ILLEGALS' VOTES?

Las Vegas debate reveals deepening Democratic Party crisis


Wednesday night’s presidential debate in Las Vegas, Nevada, strongly suggests that the Democratic Party is headed for a political debacle at its presidential nominating convention in Milwaukee this summer, as a half-dozen right-wing candidates gang up in an effort to deprive Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders of the nomination.
The media coverage of the two-hour debate focused on the rehearsed insults and sound bites deployed by the six candidates on the stage against each other—with the biggest blows hitting billionaire Michael Bloomberg, participating in his first debate—and on speculation about which candidates might benefit from their debate performance in the polls and in fund-raising.
From left, Democratic presidential candidates, Mike Bloomberg, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Bernie Sanders, participate in a Democratic presidential primary debate, February 19, 2020, in Las Vegas, hosted by NBC News and MSNBC [Credit: AP Photo/John Locher]
But the most important incident at the debate came at the very end, when the candidates were asked about the now increasingly likely scenario, with convention delegates divided up among four, five or even six candidates, that no candidate wins an outright majority. Should the candidate with the most delegates, albeit less than a majority, become the nominee?
Sanders said yes. All the others—Bloomberg, former Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Amy Klobuchar, and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg—said no, declaring that the “process” of the nominating convention must be allowed to play out.
This answer demonstrates two important political facts: the self-styled “democratic socialist” Sanders is viewed as the frontrunner and is expected to win the most delegates; and his opponents are prepared to join forces and engage in backroom maneuvers to block his nomination.
In acknowledging that Sanders has emerged as the leading candidate for the nomination, his rivals are admitting an incontestable fact. Sanders now leads in the national polls and in most state polls, including Nevada, where caucuses take place Saturday, and in the most important states voting March 3, “Super Tuesday,” including California, Texas, North Carolina and Virginia.
In a poll conducted for the Washington Post and ABC television network, Sanders was supported by 32 percent, compared to 16 percent for Biden, his closest rival. Bloomberg followed with 14 percent, Warren 12 percent, Buttigieg 8 percent and Klobuchar 7 percent. Sanders led among men and women, those with a college education and those without, and among Latinos, and he was a close second to Biden among African-Americans.
Most revealing was the age breakdown: among Democratic voters under 50 years old, Sanders had the support of a clear majority. Among the youth, his support approaches a landslide. These figures are a distorted reflection of a pronounced shift to the left among American workers and youth, looking for an alternative to corporate domination, gaping economic inequality, and the mounting threat of war.
Writing in the Post, Dan Balz observed, “One measure of how rapidly things are changing is this: In barely a week, the question has shifted from whether Sanders has a ceiling, based on the fact that he managed just a quarter of the vote in both Iowa and New Hampshire, to whether he can be stopped. The answer to that question could be known as early as Super Tuesday, less than two weeks away.”
In invoking the “process” required to select a nominee, the Democratic candidates are referring to the rule established by the Democratic National Committee that allows nearly 800 unelected “superdelegates” to be seated at the convention, comprised of Democratic congressmen, senators, governors and other current and former officials, as well as all the members of the DNC itself.
These superdelegates are barred from voting for a presidential nominee on the first ballot. But if no candidate wins a majority, superdelegates will vote in the second ballot, and would likely play the decisive role in selecting a nominee other than Sanders.
This is only the expression in the language of convention delegate arithmetic of a more basic political truth: it is absurd to claim, as Sanders does, that the Democratic Party can be transformed into a vehicle for “political revolution” or become the basis for building a movement for vast and progressive change in the United States.
The Democratic Party is a capitalist party, unshakably committed to the defense of the profit system and the global interests of American imperialism. That is true whether its presidential candidate is the billionaire Bloomberg, the longtime Washington operative Biden, the left-talking Senator Warren … or Sanders himself, whose talk of “socialism” is nothing more than a “left” label for policies of liberal reform modeled on those of Franklin Roosevelt, the leader of American imperialism in its heyday.
The debate itself demonstrated the basic class orientation of the Democratic Party. As usual in these affairs, but perhaps more strongly than any previous debate, nearly all significant issues of foreign and domestic policy were excluded. There were only a handful of references to the deepening social crisis in America, the harrowing conditions of life facing tens of millions of workers and youth, and the turn to police-state methods by the Trump administration.
There was virtually no discussion of American foreign policy or events taking place outside the United States. There was no mention of the mass struggles sweeping Latin America, or of the coronavirus epidemic, the mounting economic and political tensions between China and the United States, the festering conflicts in the Middle East, or the rise of the fascist far right in Europe.
Nor was there any discussion of the failed impeachment of President Trump—over charges that he held up military aid to Ukraine for its “hot war” with Russia—or of the aggressive and anti-democratic actions Trump has taken since then, including his assertion of an absolute right to intervene in any criminal investigation being conducted by the US Department of Justice.
Amid the endless mutual mudslinging and attempts to “one-up” each other, most of Sanders’ rivals on the debate stage did take the opportunity to denounce the socialist label that has been central to his rise to frontrunner status.
Bloomberg was the most brazen, sneering at attacks on capitalism, declaring that he worked hard for his $60 billion fortune, and engaging in open red-baiting, saying, “It’s ridiculous. We’re not going to throw out capitalism. We tried. Other countries tried that. It was called communism, and it just didn’t work.” The audience booed.
The two NBC News moderators who are themselves multi-millionaires, Lester Holt and Chuck Todd, incited the candidates to declare their opposition to Sanders’ “socialism,” suggesting that it would doom the Democratic Party in the November election. (Todd was a remarkable choice for a “moderator,” given that he has publicly condemned Sanders supporters as “online brownshirts.”)
In one of his rehearsed lines, Buttigieg presented himself as the happy medium between Sanders and Bloomberg, saying, “most Americans don’t see where they fit if they’ve got to choose between a socialist who thinks that capitalism is the root of all evil and a billionaire who thinks that money ought to be the root of all power.”
Warren reiterated her flat declaration that she was a capitalist, as opposed to Sanders, while professing to agree with him on many issues. Klobuchar declared, “I believe in capitalism,” while claiming that government could act as a check on corporate wealth. Only Biden missed his cue from Holt, who asked him to comment on a poll supposedly showing voter hostility to socialism. Biden replied with a bit of demagogy about taxing the wealthy but did not join in the condemnation of the “s-word.”
Sanders himself only confirmed that his “socialism” has nothing to do with an actual struggle by working people to overthrow and replace the profit system. He calls only for higher taxes on the rich, for a somewhat fairer distribution of wealth and income, while maintaining that such changes can be accomplished through the election of a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress.
When his right-wing opponents decry his reform policies as politically unrealistic, declaring that they could never be enacted under the existing two-party system, they are telling the truth, albeit from a right-wing standpoint. Sanders is seeking to delude his millions of supporters with the prospect of a revival of liberal reformism under conditions of a deepening global crisis of capitalism and a turn by the ruling classes all over the world to austerity, militarism, and the promotion of fascist and racist forces.
At one point in the debate, when challenged on the conflict over health care policy between his campaign and the officials of Culinary Workers Local 226, which collects dues from 60,000 casino and hotel workers in Las Vegas, Sanders made an abject disavowal of any criticism of the union officialdom: “I saw some of those tweets regarding the Culinary Workers Union. I have a 30-year 100 percent pro-union voting record. Do you think I would support or anybody who supports me would be attacking union leaders? It’s not thinkable.”
This statement demonstrates Sanders’ real political orientation. He seeks to build, not a genuine popular movement against capitalism, but a diversionary bulwark to block such a movement, consisting of elements of the pseudo left, the trade union apparatus, and as much of the Democratic Party establishment as he can convince to support his efforts.


Key findings in the report:
  • Shortages should not occur in a free market
  • Tight labor markets benefit marginalized groups
  • Wages have been stagnant over the long term
  • Labor force participation is down over the long term
  • Domestic industries should hire Americans
  • Natives participate in all major occupations
  • Plenty of STEM workers are available
  • Gains to the economy are not the same as gains to natives
  • Immigration is not an efficient solution to population aging
Bloomberg Pledges to Investigate ICE and End Trump Policies in Newly Unveiled Immigration Plan

By Jason Hopkins

Business and Politics Review
. . .
BLOG: IS THIS FOR REAL?!?!?

·         But Bloomberg also wraps his economic demand for more immigrants in a progressive-style cultural message.
·         Bloomberg told the San Diego Union-Tribune that amnesty “is a no-brainer — you give [a] pathway to citizenship to 11 million people.”
·         In December, Bloomberg said additional immigrants could “improve our culture, our cuisine, our religion, our dialogue, and certainly improve our economy” — but without being asked by reporters which American cultures, cuisines, religions, and dialogues do not meet his standards.


Exclusive–Mo Brooks: ‘Masters of the Universe’ Want More Immigration to ‘Decrease Incomes of Americans’
 10 Mar 2019122
3:19

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) says the “Masters of the Universe” want more legal immigration to the United States to further diminish the incomes of American working and middle-class families.

In an exclusive interview with SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Tonight, Brooks said recent demands to increase the number of foreign workers coming to the U.S. to compete against American citizens for jobs is merely an effort by corporations to deplete the earnings of Americans.
Brooks said:
I’m not a part of the Masters of the Universe crowd who thinks we ought to be bringing in all this foreign labor and the reason for it is pure economics. This is the chance for Americans and lawful immigrants who are already here who are working in the blue-collar trades, who are working in the places where wages are not as high they ought to be, this is their chance to prosper. [Emphasis added]
And to the extent you import a lot of foreign labor, then you are artificially increasing the labor supply which in turn means that you’re artificially suppressing the wages of American families who are often hard-pressed to make ends meet So I respectfully disagree that we need more foreign labor, to the contrary, I would like to see us reduce the foreign labor that comes into America so that American families who are struggling to make ends meet, particularly those of us who are earning the least amounts, would be better to take care of their own families and less likely to be dependent on the welfare. [Emphasis added]
Brooks said Democrats support for mass legal immigration is centered on the premise that increasing the number of foreign workers in the U.S. will decrease Americans’ wages, thus forcing many into poverty and becoming welfare recipients. This, Brooks said, is how Democrats create a permanent dependent class of Democrat voters.
“Don’t get me wrong, [Democrats] want to decrease the incomes of Americans so that they’re dependent on welfare,” Brooks said.
That makes them in turn likely Democrat voters and the best way to do that is to have a huge surge in the labor supply, particularly illegal aliens, that will depress their wages therefore creating more Democrats who are dependent on welfare at the same time as they bring in illegal aliens who also under Democrat doctrine will be allowed to vote and those types of voters, they’re also dependent on welfare. [Emphasis added]
“About 70 percent of illegal alien households are on welfare … plus this is a bloc of voters that seems unusually susceptible to the racial divisions that the Democrats advance,” Brooks said. “You have to look at the big picture in all of this, and to me, we should not be importing as much foreign labor as we are. We should be helping the least among us earn more and importing foreign labor that suppresses wages is not the way to do that.”
Currently, the U.S. admits more than 1.2 legal immigrants annually, with the vast majority deriving from chain migration, whereby newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the country. In 2017, the foreign-born population reached a record high of 44.5 million.
The U.S. is on track to import about 15 million new foreign-born voters in the next two decades should current legal immigration levels continue. Those 15 million new foreign-born voters include about eight million who will arrive in the country through chain migration, where newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the country.

Breitbart News Tonight broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot Channel 125 from 9:00 p.m. to Midnight Eastern (6:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m. Pacific). 
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder

 

Bloomberg shows how the Democrats have abandoned factory workers

Much of the commentary criticizing Michael Bloomberg's statement about farmers and factory workers has focused on his disparagement of the intellect of farmers.  But his disparagement of factory workers shows how the modern Democratic Party has abandoned factory workers and, more specifically, private industry labor unions.
"I could teach anybody, even people in this room, no offense intended, to be a farmer," Bloomberg said.  "It's a process.  You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn.  You could learn that."
"Then we had 300 years of the industrial society.  You put the piece of metal on the lathe, you turn the crank in the direction of the arrow, and you can have a job."
According to Bloomberg, all a factory worker did was put a piece of metal on a lathe and turn a crank in the direction of the arrow.  This description must come as a surprise to anyone who has worked in a factory, steel mill, machine shop, foundry, warehouse, coal mine, or other similar job involving physical labor.
The Democratic Party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, and Hubert Humphrey was built on a coalition of which private industry labor unions were a major component.  Trade unions such as the United Auto Workers; Steelworkers; Machinists, which represent factory workers; and Mineworkers were an integral part of the Democratic Party.  No serious candidate for the presidency would insult or disparage physical labor workers, especially workers who belonged to labor unions.
But now Bloomberg can say what he said without any criticism from the other Democratic candidates; the DNC; and, worse, from the labor unions.  In the past, Walter Reuther of the UAW, George Meany of AFL-CIO, I.W. Abel of the Steelworkers, John L. Lewis of the Mineworkers, and others would have destroyed Bloomberg's candidacy in a New York minute.  Moreover, Bloomberg would have never made such a stupid statement if he knew there would be pushback from the unions, or if the present-day unions had leaders such as Reuther, Meany, or Lewis.
Bloomberg's statement shows how the modern Democratic Party has abandoned workers and regards American workers as expendable in the global economy.  Bill Clinton's NAFTA deal that caused the loss of many American manufacturing jobs, which was supported by the establishment Republicans like Bush and Romney, is consistent with Bloomberg's views.
It is difficult to understand why private-sector unions still support Democrats.  For example, Obama and Hillary promised to bankrupt the coal industry, which resulted in the loss of over 75,000 coal miners.  Obama disallowed the Keystone Pipeline, which cost thousands of jobs to unions members such as Teamsters, plumbers, laborers, machinists, and operating engineers.  In both cases, Obama did the bidding of the environmental groups over the interests of workers in labor unions and non-union employees.
The current Democratic candidates all favor stopping fracking, and restrictions on drilling for oil and gas, and mining for coal.  The "Green New Deal" will destroy the coal, gas, and oil industries that employ many Americans at good-paying jobs.  We will again be dependent on foreign oil.  They all favor open borders with health care for illegal aliens, which will depress wages for American workers.
Bernie Sanders calls himself a socialist, which is a polite word for a communist.  Sanders would impose a single-payer health insurance plan run by the federal government.  Union workers would lose the good health plans they have negotiated.  The federal government would run most industries.  That is socialism.  It requires a strong, powerful national government that imposes its will to run the economy.   The other candidates are Bernie-Lite.  They support his goals but say it in a more pleasant but devious, dishonest manner.
The Bernie socialists will sacrifice American workers for the "climate change" gang and open borders.
The Democratic Party does not represent American workers.

BUY THE ILLEGALS’ ILLEGAL VOTES… WHO DOES IT BETTER THAN THE DEMOCRAT PARTY’S BILLIONAIRE CLASS?

 

Bloomberg Pledges to Investigate ICE and End Trump Policies in Newly Unveiled Immigration Plan

By Jason Hopkins

Business and Politics Review
. . .

 

 

Mike Bloomberg Offers ’60 Million’ Latinos: $15 Per Hour Plus Mass Migration

Michael Bloomberg is making a pitch for Latino votes with an offer of $15 per hour wages — but also a flood of new Latino migrants eager to compete for jobs, apartments, and K-12 desks in Latino communities.
“I believe we can once again be a country that welcomes immigrants, values immigrants, respects immigrants, and empowers them to pursue the American Dream,” Bloomberg said in a January 30 tweet.
The conflicting policy offer reflects shared goals of the Democrat Party’s two main leadership factions: Bloomberg and other investors who are eager for imported consumers and workers, and progressives who are eager for imported pro-government voters.


I believe we can once again be a country that welcomes immigrants, values immigrants, respects immigrants, and empowers them to pursue the American Dream. https://mikebloom.bg/36ItgSn 
Embedded video

In contrast, President Donald Trump promised a low-immigration, “Hire American” policy on Inauguration Day, helping salaries rise for millions of blue-collar Americans, including Latinos. Unemployment rates for Latinos are now at a record low, and wages are at a record high. Half of the 21.5 million working Latinos earn above $712 a week, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The median wage for Latinos is almost $18 per hour.
Bloomberg’s pitch offered a combination of government-engineered higher wages, more social status, and more opportunities for voters’ children:
Today, I’m releasing my plan to bring security and a new path forward to the 60 million Latinos who live in our country, Our path forward starts by improving economic security. By expanding the earned income tax credit, and by raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
And we’ll make sure Latino American families have health insurance. No one should ever be denied access to care.
Just as pro-amnesty President George W. Bush did in 2002, Bloomberg is also promising to spur homeownership among Latinos:
We will also increase homeownership in the Latino community by providing down-payment assistance and increasing access to capital.
But Bloomberg’s pitch to “60 million” Latinos — including at least 11 million illegal immigrants — reflects his willingness to characterize Latinos by their ethnic group instead of their American nationality:
We’ll enact comprehensive immigration reform. We will create a path to legalization and citizenship for the 11 million people living in the shadows … We will get it done.
A vast majority of American Latinos — and many Latino migrants — oppose mass migration because it will make it difficult for them to earn good wages, buy decent houses, and get a good education for their kids.
But on his website, Bloomberg’s Latino policy offers:
Mike’s plan for Latinos in the U.S. (El Paso Adelante, The Path Forward) invests in Latino communities to boost prosperity and economic security. President Trump has vilified, dehumanized and hurt the Latino community. As president Mike Bloomberg will reverse that damage by addressing hate crimes and gun violence, closing the education, wealth, and health gap between Latinos and whites, and creating pathways to citizenship for millions of Latinos in the U.S.
Clear the naturalization backlog and create a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants.
His plan will provide permanent protections for Dreamers and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders, shielding them from deportation and putting them on a pathway to citizenship. Additionally, the plan will expand immigration legal services.
Bloomberg has long supported an economic policy of stimulating Wall Street with a flood of imported consumers, renters, and workers. That flood will expand sales, raise real-estate prices, and flatline wages.
Those changes would spike stock values and transfer more of the nation’s new wealth and political power from family wage-earners to elderly stockholders, such as Bloomberg, whose estimated wealth is $60 billion.
The combination of a $15 minimum wage and the inflow of many healthy young migrants would also pressure U.S. employers to discard older, higher-paid Americans. If Bloomberg’s investor-driven visions were enacted, employers would race to sideline many employes who are older, or disabled, or uneducated, or who earn higher wages.
Like Bush, Bloomberg’s policy is focussed on the needs of investors and employers, not of American workers. “This country needs more immigrants and we should be out looking for immigrants,” Bloomberg told the San Diego Union-Tribune on January 5:
For those who need an oboe player for a symphony, we want the best one. We need a striker for a soccer team, we want to get the best one. We want a farmworker, we want to get the best one. A computer programmer, we want to get the best one. So we should be out looking for more immigrants.


Mike Bloomberg says employers & investors should be allowed to hire "the best" employees from around the world.
Usually, the best = cheapest.
After all, who believes immig laws should inconvenience investors?
PS. How many Bloomberg journos pass the test?
http://bit.ly/2T1suws 

Bloomberg: Employers Should Hire 'Best' Foreigners Instead of Americans



“We need an awful lot more immigrants rather than less,” Bloomberg told reporters in November after he filed the paperwork needed to join the Democratic Party’s primary in Arizona:
We have to go out and actually try to recruit immigrants to come here. We need immigrants to take all the different kinds of jobs that the country needs – improve our culture, our cuisine, our religion, our dialogue, and certainly improve our economy.
Bloomberg’s immigration plan says:
“The grandson of immigrants, Mike believes in the power of the American Dream,” says Bloomberg immigration agenda. It continues:
Throughout his career, he has been a passionate advocate for welcoming immigrants and fixing the broken immigration system. Immigrants make our country stronger, and Mike is focused on reclaiming America’s role as the beacon of freedom and opportunity for people from around the world.
Mike formed the pro-immigration organization New American Economy, representing more than 500 mayors and CEOs from all 50 states who are highlighting the contributions of immigrants.
Bloomberg’s New American Economy group was formed in 2013 to push for passage of the “Gang of Eight” bill, which would have boosted stockholders and also flatlined wages for at least ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The bill provided an amnesty for all illegal aliens, doubled the annual inflow of legal immigrants to two million — even as four million Americans turned 18 each year — and allowed an unlimited inflow of foreign college graduates.
“The rate of return on capital would be higher [than on labor] under the legislation than under current law throughout the next two decades,” says the CBO report, titled “The Economic Impact of S. 744.”
“The legislation would particularly increase the number of workers with lower or higher skills but would have less effect on the number of workers with average skills. … The wages of lower- and higher-skilled workers would tend to be pushed downward slightly (by less than ½ percent) relative to the wages of workers with average skills,” said the CBO report.
Bloomberg’s NEA website tries to build support for amnesty and more immigration by producing many studies. For example, a January 2020 report boasted that “New Data Shows Immigrants Make Up More Than 60 Percent of Middlesex County’s STEM Workers and Nearly Half of Business Owners.”


Michael Bloomberg: Government Should Import ‘an Awful Lot More’ Immigrants
Democratic 2020 candidate Michael Bloomberg says he will recruit “an awful lot more” immigrants “to take all the different kinds of jobs” in the U.S. economy.
The immigrants can “improve our culture, our cuisine, our religion, our dialogue, and certainly improve our economy,” Bloomberg told reporters without naming the American cultures, cuisines, religions, and dialogues that would be improved.
Bloomberg’s comments reflect the views of wealthy investors who gain stock market wealth when the government imports more workers, welfare-aided consumers, and extra renters into communities created by Americans and their children.
In his comments, Bloomberg echoed the 1960s claim that the U.S is a diverse “nation of immigrants,” instead of a country build by similar-minded settlers from Europe. “This country was built by immigrants,” Bloomberg said, without noting the role played by Americans and their children.
Bloomberg, who owns roughly $55 billion in assets, has long supported mass migration. In 2013, he joined with the owner of Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, to create the Project for a New American Economy. The group of investors and politicians pushed for passage of the Gang of Eight amnesty in 2013.
In 2019, the group is pushing for the S.386 law that would help investors by encouraging many more Indian graduates to take white-collar jobs from American graduates.
Bloomberg’s group is also pushing for legislation that would provide an endless supply of H-2A visa workers to investors in the agriculture sector. The wage-capped workers would likely displace Americans, reduce pressure on investors to buy high-tech farm machinery, and convert many agriculture towns into “company towns” dominated by a single employer.



NC GOP @SenThomTillis wants to reward India's workers who take US jobs from American graduates. He's backing @SenMikeLee's @S386 bill which gives citizenship to Indians for taking Americans' jobs. Big subsidy for US investors, big loss for NC graduates. http://bit.ly/2rp19J3 






The U.S. already imports many immigrants — roughly one million per year, even as four million Americans turn 18 and prepare to join the workforce.
“We need an awful lot more immigrants rather than less,” Bloomberg told reporters after he filed the paperwork needed to join the Democratic Party’s primary in Arizona:
We have to go out and actually try to recruit immigrants to come here. We need immigrants to take all the different kinds of jobs that the country needs – improve our culture, our cuisine, our religion, our dialogue, and certainly improve our economy.
Bloomberg — who has a personal wealth of roughly $55 billion — then blasted President Donald Trump’s campaign to block the wave of Central American migrants sparked by the establishment’s tacit support for mass migration:
I think what Donald Trump has done, of ripping kids away from their [migrant] parents, is a disgrace. I think of what we’re done, where we don’t know who we’re taking in, and we don’t help people when we’re here, is a disgrace. I think talking about deporting 11 million people is so outrageous to try to explain to your kids what that was all about. Our immigration system is broken and we’re not doing anything to fix it.
In 2013, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicted the planned “Gang of Eight” amnesty would shift more of the nation’s new wealth from workers to investors.
The flood of roughly 30 million immigrants in ten years would cause Americans wages to shrink, the report said. “Because the bill would increase the rate of growth of the labor force, average wages would be held down in the first decade after enactment,” the CBO report said.
But all that cheap labor would boost the profits and the stock market, the report said. “The rate of return on capital would be higher [than on labor] under the legislation than under current law throughout the next two decades,” says the report, titled “The Economic Impact of S. 744.”
In contrast, Trump’s opposition to Central American migrants and to amnesty bills sought by the establishment has helped to nudge up wages for blue-collar Americans, especially in the midwest battleground states, according to a November 26 report posted by Bloomberg’s news service:
Personal income growth has been surging in some political U.S. battlegrounds, including a third of the counties in Pennsylvania — which Donald Trump narrowly flipped in 2016 and may need to win re-election next year.
In the president’s first two years in office, a total of 325 counties representing nearly 6% of the U.S. population experienced their best annualized income gains since at least 1992, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News. And 127 of those are located in perennial swing states, including Ohio and Iowa.



Good news: GOP Reps. voted against wage-cuts and job outsourcing.
Bad news: GOP Reps only voted against the cuts b/c they were wrapped in a farmworker amnesty which would cut GOP jobs in 2026.
Good News: The same standoff is protecting US grads from #S386http://bit.ly/2s4Lf6I 








Bloomberg Op-Ed: Immigrant Soldiers, Workers Needed for Geopolitical Power



Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
NEIL MUNRO
26 Mar 2019891
5:25

U.S. geopolitical power needs a steady supply of fresh immigrants to serve as soldiers and workers, according to a pro-migration op-ed in Bloomberg news.

“A large working-age population serves as a source of military manpower,” says the op-edby Hal Brands, the Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. He continues:
… a relatively young, growing and well-educated population is a wellspring of the economic productivity that underlies other forms of international influence … countries with healthy demographic profiles can create wealth more easily than their competitors [and] can also can direct a larger share of that wealth to geopolitical projects as opposed to pensions and health care.
Brands acknowledges — but denounces — the reality that immigration is largely unpopular among the voters who suffer from the resulting diversity, elite disengagement, job theft, and wage loss. That turmoil helped outsider Donald Trump win the White House in 2016. Brands dismisses the public’s measured response as “draconian … xenophobia … race-based politics,” and says:
… if current trends are any indication, the U.S. could easily squander its demographic advantages [over China and Russia] by enacting draconian immigration restrictions or simply destroying its image as a country that welcomes ambitious newcomers. Conversely, if the proportion of immigrants continues to rise while the white population shrinks, xenophobia and race-based politics could become more common and more toxic.
After making these dire predictions, Brands declines to offer the public anything in exchange for the diversity, political divisions, taxpayer costs, and wage losses caused by the government policy of “refreshing the population”:
If the U.S. is to keep its demographic edge, it will have to find ways of reconciling two competing imperatives: refreshing the population through immigration while preserving social and political stability.
Brands dismisses the public’s expectation that their government serves citizens and their children, and he instead echoes the 1960s demand that Americans must give up their homeland to become a “nation of immigrants” to help beat Russian communism.
In an October 2018 article for Time magazine, Democratic Rep. Joe Kennedy explained the government-boosting origin of the “Nation of Immigrants” claim:
Few felt it as deeply as President John F. Kennedy. In his 1964 book A Nation of Immigrants, recently re-released, my great-uncle outlines the compelling case for immigration, in economic, moral, and global terms. “The abundant resources of this land provided the foundation for a great nation,” he writes. “But only people could make the opportunity a reality. Immigration provided the human resources.”
Both Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush strongly favored this cheap labor, high growth policy. In 1990, the first President Bush signed a bill doubling legal immigration, and in 2006 and 2007, George W. Bush pushed for a bill that would have further increased immigration.
In March 2019, the George W. Bush center released a video which effectively wrote Americans out of their own nation, while urging more immigration to spur national economic growth by reducing wages. “America’s story is an immigrant story,” says the video. “Now as before, American is a nation of immigrants,” says the video which refers to 280 million Americans as the “population,” “labor force,” “workers,” and even “natives.”


George W. Bush's Bush Center posts pro-migration, pro-business video which writes Americans out of American history: 'America’s story is an immigrant story,' says the video, which even describes some Americans as immigrants. http://bit.ly/2TTxfsF 

George W. Bush Center: 'America's Story Is an Immigrant Story'



Brands’ pitch, however, ignores the recent report by President Donald Trump’s economic advisors which said the nation can continue to grow without an extra supply of foreign workers.
There are “plenty of [American] workers on the sidelines able to come off” and fill jobs in the growing economy, said Rich Burkhauser, a member of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisors. Americans’ productivity is rising and more sidelined Americans are returning to the workforce as wages rise, said the report, titled, “Economic Report of the President.”
Investors and CEOs are increasingly desperate for an infusion of more foreign workers to lower the marketplace pressure for wage increases during 2019.


Goldman Sachs says Trump's tight labor-market policy (AKA 'Hire American') gave 4% raise to blue-collar/middle-class in 2018. But upper-income graduate salaries lagged - maybe b/c of 1.5 million visa-worker graduates who work for spaghettiOs & green cards http://bit.ly/2Fan4b0 

Goldman Sachs: Trump Raises Voters' Wages with Tight Labor Market



Each year, roughly four million young Americans join the workforce after high school or university. The federal government then imports roughly 1.1 million legal immigrants, refreshes a resident population of roughly 1.5 million white-collar guest workers and roughly 500,000 blue-collar visa workers, and it also tolerates about eight million illegal workers.
In 2019, because of catch-and-release rules mandated by Congress and the courts, the federal government also will likely release at least 350,000 Central American laborers into the U.S. job market, even as at least 500,000 more migrants sneak past U.S. border defenses or overstay their visas.
Overall, in 2019, the U.S. government will allow at least two million new foreign workers into the United States to compete for the starter jobs sought by the latest wave of four million U.S. graduates. The new migrants also undermine the 24 million other Americans and the roughly three million legal immigrants who have joined the workforce since 2014.
This federal policy of using legal and illegal migration to boost economic growth for investors shifts enormous wealth from young employees towards older investors by flooding the market with cheap white-collar graduates and blue-collar foreign labor.
This cheap labor economic policy forces Americans to compete even for low wage jobs, it widens wealth gaps, reduces high tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines millions of marginalized Americans, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions.
Read the op-ed here. The comments are sharply critical.


Worried about Chinese hackers? Why bother? -- Congress allows Chinese gov't officials to get jobs in US companies & R&D centers by enrolling in the OPT visa worker program. They'll also get fast-track citizenship if Congress OKs H.R.1044 & S.386 @HR1044 http://bit.ly/2UtVAmg 

Chinese Hackers Raid U.S. Universities for Submarine Warfare Secrets




Trump: Open Borders Threatens the Wage Gains of America’s Lowest-Income Workers

President Donald Trump touted the wage gains for Americans in the lowest income brackets, adding that that the open borders policies of the Democratic Party threaten those gains.

“Since the election, real wages have gone up 3.2 percent for the median American worker,” Trump said in a speech Tuesday to the Economic Club of New York. “But for the bottom income group, real wages are soaring. A number that has never happened before. Nine percent.”
Wage gains for those near the bottom of America’s economic ladder have been particularly strong this year. The lowest-paid Americans saw weekly earnings rise by more than 5 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, according to a quarterly survey of households produced by the Labor Department. Workers with less than a high-school diploma saw their wages grow nearly 6 percent.
“That may mean you make a couple of bucks less in your companies,” Trump said. “And you know what? That’s okay. This is a great thing for our country. When you talk about equality. This is a great thing for our country.”
The so-called “poverty gap”–which measures the heightened poverty rate among blacks and Hispanics compared to poverty overall–shrank to its lowest level on record last year. The racial gap in unemployment has also contracted as unemployment rates hit record lows this year. Black unemployment hit its lowest level on record in November.
Trump gave credit to the tight labor market for the improvement in wages and employment. But opening the countries borders to new workers from abroad would threaten those gains, he added.
“Our tight labor market is helping them the most,” Trump said. “Yet the Democrats in Washington want to erase these gains through an extreme policy of open borders, flooding the labor market and driving down incomes for the poorest Americans. And driving crime through the roof.”
Economic studies have shown that when the supply of workers goes up, the price that companies have to pay to hire workers goes down.
“Wage trends over the past half-century suggest that a 10 percent increase in the number of workers with a particular set of skills probably lowers the wage of that group by at least 3 percent,” Harvard economist George Borjas has written. “But because a disproportionate percentage of immigrants have few skills, it is low-skilled American workers, including many blacks and Hispanics, who have suffered most from this wage dip.”

Record 44.5 Million Immigrants in 2017

Non-Mexico Latin American, Asian, and African populations grew most

By Steven A. Camarota and Karen Zeigler on September 15, 2018


Steven A. Camarota is the director of research and Karen Zeigler is a demographer at the Center.


On September 13, the Census Bureau released some data from the 2017 American Community Survey (ACS) that shows significant growth in the immigrant (legal and illegal) population living in the United States. The number of immigrants (legal and illegal) from Latin American countries other than Mexico, Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa grew significantly, while the number from Mexico, Europe, and Canada stayed about the same or even declined since 2010. The Census Bureau refers to immigrants as the "foreign-born", which includes all those who were not U.S. citizens at birth. The Department of Homeland Security has previously estimated that 1.9 million immigrants are missed by the ACS, so the total number of immigrants in 2017 was likely 46.4 million.1
Among the findings in the new data:
·         The nation's immigrant population (legal and illegal) hit a record 44.5 million in July 2017, an increase of nearly 800,000 since 2016, 4.6 million since 2010, and 13.4 million since 2000.
·         It is worth noting that the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (CPS), released the same week but collected in March 2018, shows 45.4 million immigrants, an increase of 1.6 million over the prior year. While the CPS is smaller than the ACS, the newer survey may indicate the pace of growth has accelerated.
·         As a share of the U.S. population, the ACS (used in the remainder of this report) shows that immigrants (legal and illegal) comprised 13.7 percent or nearly one out of seven U.S. residents in 2017, the highest percentage in 107 years. As recently as 1980, just one out of 16 residents was foreign-born.
·         Between 2010 and 2017, 9.5 million new immigrants settled in the United States. New arrivals are offset by roughly 320,000 immigrants who return home each year and natural mortality of about 290,000 annually among the existing immigrant population.2 As a result, growth in the immigrant population was 4.6 million from 2010 to 2017.3
·         In addition to immigrants, there were 17.1 million U.S.-born minor children with an immigrant parent in 2017, for a total of 61.6 million immigrants and their children in the country — accounting for one in five U.S. residents.4
·         Of immigrants who have come since 2010, 13 percent or 1.2 million came from Mexico — by far the top sending country. However, because of return migration and natural mortality among the existing population, the overall Mexican-born population actually declined by 441,190.5
·         The sending regions with the largest numerical increases from 2016 to 2017 in the number of immigrants living in the United States were South America (up 233,696); East Asia (up 226,728); South Asia (up 216,495); Sub-Saharan Africa (up 149,846); the Caribbean (up 121,120); and Central America (up 71,720).6
·         Looking longer term, the regions with the largest numerical increases since 2010 were East Asia, (up 1,118,937); South Asia (up 1,106,373); the Caribbean (up 676,023); Sub-Saharan Africa (up 606,835); South America (up 483,356); Central America (up 474,504); and the Middle East (up 472,554).
·         The decline in Mexican immigrants masks, to some extent, the enormous growth of Latin American immigrants. If seen as one region, the number from Latin America (excluding Mexico) grew 426,536 in just the last year and 1.6 million since 2010 — significantly more than from any other part of the world.
·         The sending countries with the largest numerical increases in immigrants in the United States between 2010 and 2017 were India (up 830,215); China (up 677,312); the Dominican Republic (up 283,381); the Philippines (up 230,492); Cuba (up 207,124); El Salvador (up 187,783); Venezuela (up 167,105); Colombia (up 146,477); Honduras (up 132,781); Guatemala (up 128,018); Nigeria (up 125,670); Brazil (up 111,471); Vietnam (up 102,026); Bangladesh (up 95,005); Haiti (up 92,603); and Pakistan (up 92,395).
·         The sending countries with the largest percentage increases in immigrants since 2010 were Nepal (up 120 percent); Burma (up 95 percent); Venezuela (up 91 percent); Afghanistan (up 84 percent); Saudi Arabia (up 83 percent); Syria (up 75 percent); Bangladesh (up 62 percent); Nigeria (up 57 percent); Kenya (up 56 percent); India (up 47 percent); Iraq (up 45 percent); Ethiopia (up 44 percent); Egypt (up 34 percent); Brazil (up 33 percent); the Dominican Republic (up 32 percent); Ghana (up 32 percent); China (up 31 percent); Pakistan (up 31 percent); and Somalia (up 29 percent).
·         The states with the largest numerical increases since 2010 were Florida (up 721,298); Texas (up 712,109); California (up 502,985); New York (up 242,769); New Jersey (up 210,481); Washington (up 173,891); Massachusetts (up 172,908); Pennsylvania (up 154,701); Virginia (up 151,251); Maryland (up 124,241); Georgia (123,009); Michigan (up 116,059); North Carolina (up 110,279); and Minnesota (up 107,760).
·         The states with the largest percentage increases since 2010 were North Dakota (up 87 percent); Delaware (up 37 percent); West Virginia (up 33 percent); South Dakota (up 32 percent); Wyoming (up 30 percent); Minnesota (up 28 percent); Nebraska (up 28 percent); Pennsylvania (up 21 percent); Utah (up 21 percent); and Tennessee, Kentucky, Michigan, Florida, Washington, and Iowa (all up 20 percent).
Data Source. On September 13, 2018, the Census Bureau released some of the data from the 2017 American Community Survey (ACS). The survey reflects the U.S. population as of July 1, 2017. The ACS is by far the largest survey taken by the federal government each year and includes over two million households.7 The Census Bureau has posted some of the results from the ACS to its American FactFinder website.8 It has not released the public-use version of the ACS for researchers to download and analyze. However, a good deal of information can be found at FactFinder. Unless otherwise indicated, the information in this analysis comes directly from FactFinder.
The immigrant population, referred to as the "foreign-born" by the Census Bureau, is comprised of those individuals who were not U.S. citizens at birth. It includes naturalized citizens, legal permanent residents (green card holders), temporary workers, and foreign students. It does not include those born to immigrants in the United States, including to illegal immigrant parents, or those born in outlying U.S. territories, such as Puerto Rico. Prior research by the Department of Homeland Security and others indicates that some 90 percent of illegal immigrants respond to the ACS. Thus all the figures reported above are for both legal and illegal immigrants.

Mike Bloomberg: Employers Should Hire ‘the Best’ Foreigners Instead of Americans


Investor, CEO, and presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg says
he would allow investors and employers to hire the “the best”
workers from around the world instead of Americans.
BLOG: ‘THE BEST’ ARE NOT HIS ILLITERATE MEXICANS HE IS HISPANDERING TO!
“This country needs more immigrants and we should be out looking for immigrants,” Bloomberg told the San Diego Union-Tribune on January 5.:
For those who need an oboe player for a symphony, we want the best one. We need a striker for a soccer team, we want to get the best one. We want a farmworker, we want to get the best one. A computer programmer, we want to get the best one. So we should be out looking for more immigrants.
The reporter did not ask Bloomberg to define “best.” But for cost-conscious shareholders and executives, “best” is a synonym for ‘cheaper than Americans.’
“If business were able to hire without restrictions from anywhere in the world, pretty much every [American’s] occupation would be foreignized,” said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies. He continued:
Americans would have to accept dramatically lower earnings, whether they object or not. Not just landscapers and tomato pickers, [because] Indians and Chinese by the millions can do nursing and accounting. There would not be any job that would not see its earnings fall to the global average.
Bloomberg — who has an estimated wealth of $55 billion — is trying to exempt investors and shareholders from the nation’s immigration rules, said Krikorian. For Bloomberg, “immigration laws are not one of those things that should be allowed to interfere in [the growth of] shareholders’ value,” he said.
“It is obviously unprecedented — but this is not obviously different from [President] George [W.] Bush’s ideal immigration plan … [and] he is expressing a pretty standard Republican plutocrat approach to immigration,” he added.
President Bush described his “any willing worker” cheap labor plan in 2004, saying:
Out of common sense and fairness, our laws should allow willing workers to enter our country and fill jobs that Americans have are not filling. (Applause.) We must make our immigration laws more rational, and more humane. And I believe we can do so without jeopardizing the livelihoods of American citizens.
Our reforms should be guided by a few basic principles. First, America must control its borders …
Second, new immigration laws should serve the economic needs of our country. If an American employer is offering a job that American citizens are not willing to take, we ought to welcome into our country a person who will fill that job.
In December 2018, departing House Speaker Paul Ryan echoed Bush’s “any willing worker” goal, saying:
[Immigration reform needs] border security and interior enforcement for starters, but also a modernization of our visa system so that it makes sense for our economy and for our people so that anyone who wants to play by the rules, work hard and be part of American fabric can contribute.
This “any willing worker” idea encouraged Ryan to work closely — but behind the scenes — with pro-amnesty, pro-migration groups.
Many GOP legislators echo this “any willing worker” claim when they declare a “‘legal good, illegal bad,’ approach to migration,” said Krikorian. That mantra is “piously claiming that illegal immigration is bad, but is making [pro-American protections] moot by letting huge numbers of people in legally.”
In contrast, President Donald Trump won his 2016 election on a promise to shrink immigration. Since then, he has forced down illegal migration via Mexico and has largely blocked numerous efforts by business to expand the huge inflow of legal immigrants and visa workers. Trump’s curbs on the supply of foreign labor have helped to force up wages for blue-collar Americans — despite determined efforts by business and investment groups to prevent wage increases.


Almost 50% of U.S. employees got higher wages in 2019, up from almost 40% in 2018.
That's useful progress - but wage growth will likely rise faster if Congress stopped inflating the labor supply for the benefit of business. 
http://bit.ly/2SyaLg7 

Pay Raises and Training Expand in Donald Trump's Tight Labor Market



Bloomberg’s “best worker” pitch is not a problem for the Democrats’ 2020 base of “woke” progressives, said Krikorian:
He is running in the Democratic primary and there is an overlap between the plutocrat assault on national borders and the leftist assault on national borders. They come at the issue from the different starting points but they have the same enemy, which is Americans’ sovereignty. It is not obvious that his [pro-employer] immigration stance is going to be a turn-off to Democratic primary votes.. How different are the specifics of his immigration proposal from [Joe] Biden, Sen. [Bernie] Sanders or [Sen. Elizabeth] Warren?
Biden, Sanders, and Warren endorse wide-open borders as a form of charity towards unlucky foreigners fleeing from home country persecution. For example, a January 5 tweet from Biden said:
Our Statue of Liberty invites in the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Donald Trump has slammed the door in the face of families fleeing persecution and violence.
Bloomberg’s pro-employer view is coherent and likely sincere, said Krikorian.
Bloomberg aspires to a single global labor market, and everything else follows from that. A concern about improving the lot of less-skilled American workers is by definition contrary to that view because there is no such thing as an American labor market. There is only a global labor market. Domestic employers are not thinking about the consequences for people from Pennsylvania when they hire people from Tennessee, and Bloomberg wants that same approach across the entire world.
There is even an altruistic way of viewing that — which I assume guys like this have — that it improves the lot of Hondurans [and other migrants] who are coming here.
The issue is not that Bloomberg and his guys are factually incorrect. It is that their values are contrary to the values that most Americans hold – which is that we have a greater loyalty and obligation to our fellow countrymen than to foreigners. Guys like Bloomberg reject that [obligation] in principle.


A Rasmussen survey shows likely voters by 2:1 want Congress to make companies hire & train US grads & workers instead of importing more foreign workers.
The survey also shows this $/class-based view co-exists w/ much sympathy for illegal migrants. 
#S386http://bit.ly/2ZA6WIE 

Rasmussen Shows 2:1 Opposition to Cheap Labor Legal Immigration



But Bloomberg also wraps his economic demand for more immigrants in a progressive-style cultural message.
Bloomberg told the San Diego Union-Tribune that amnesty “is a no-brainer — you give [a] pathway to citizenship to 11 million people.”
In December, Bloomberg said additional immigrants could “improve our culture, our cuisine, our religion, our dialogue, and certainly improve our economy” — but without being asked by reporters which American cultures, cuisines, religions, and dialogues do not meet his standards.
Bloomberg also echoes the Democrats’ claim that the U.S is a diverse “nation of immigrants,” instead of a country built by similar-minded settlers from Europe. “This country was built by immigrants,” Bloomberg said, without noting the role played by Americans and their children.
Bloomberg has long supported greater immigration. In 2013, he joined with the owner of Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, to create the Project for a New American Economy. The group of investors and politicians then pushed for passage of the failed Gang of Eight amnesty in 2013.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicted the planned “Gang of Eight” amnesty would shift more of the nation’s new wealth from workers to investors.
The flood of roughly 30 million immigrants in ten years would cause Americans’ wages to shrink, the report said. “Because the bill would increase the rate of growth of the labor force, average wages would be held down in the first decade after enactment,” the CBO report said.
But all that cheap labor would boost the profits and the stock market, the report said. “The rate of return on capital would be higher [than on labor] under the legislation than under current law throughout the next two decades,” says the report, titled “The Economic Impact of S. 744.”
For Bloomberg, Krikorian said, U.S. “employers have no greater obligation to fellow Americans than to Hondurans [or other foreign workers] … what Bloomberg is saying is that immigration laws should not interfere with the pursuit of shareholder value [because] employers can hire anyone from anywhere at any wage, period.”


Estb. media and esp. WashPo journos cannot, or dare not, follow the $$$ in immigration politics.
For example, the WashPo article on 
@SenMikeLee's @S368 bill to expand the outsourcing of U.S. grads' jobs.
Maybe b/c the money ends up in Jeff Bezos' pocket. 
http://bit.ly/2tChhYt 

Munro: WashPost Message to U.S. Graduates -- Drop Dead





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