America Faces No Greater Threat Than Joe Biden and the Democrat Party. Their Assault to Our Borders Is As Great As Their Assault to Free Speech and Free Elections
Saturday, June 13, 2020
TRUMPERNOMICS - THE FIRST PRIORITY IS PROTECTING WALL STREET
"As with the fight against police violence, the fight against the pandemic is at the same time a fight of the entire working class against the financial oligarchy and the capitalist profit system."
As pandemic surges, White House presses ahead with back-to-work campaign
13 June 2020
It is now indisputable that the campaign by the White House and major corporations to prematurely reopen businesses has led to a surge in COVID-19 infections throughout the United States.
Between June 6 and 9, there was a 36 percent increase in the average number of new cases in the US, according to a leaked report by the Centers for Disease Control. At 27,221, yesterday saw the highest number of new cases since May 21. Globally, new cases surged to a new record, at more than 140,000.
Twenty-one states have reported an increase in new cases this week, including sharp increases in Arizona, Florida, Texas, Utah, North Carolina, and California. Already, Arizona’s hospitals are nearly at capacity.
At the present daily death rates, which have hovered around 1,000 per day, there will be over 200,000 coronavirus deaths in the country by the end of the summer.
However, the increases in cases will inevitably bring with it an increase in deaths. Just as the White House’s belated response to the pandemic led, according to one study, to the loss of over 50,000 lives, the premature return to work and the abandonment of all efforts to contain the disease will lead to tens or hundreds of thousands of additional deaths.
Despite the disastrous surge throughout the country and internationally, the White House, governors and business executives are insisting that there will be no return to emergency measures to contain the disease.
The US “can’t shut down the economy again,” Treasury Secretary Mnuchin said Thursday, echoing the declaration by President Donald Trump last month that “whether it’s an ember or a flame … we’re not closing our country.”
Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, a Republican, declared a second emergency lockdown was “not under discussion.” California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, pledged to continue with the reopening of the economy, even though we “anticipate an increase in the total number of positive cases.”
Texas last week reported three consecutive days of record numbers of patients hospitalized with COVID-19. On Friday, restaurants were given permission to expand their dining rooms to nearly full capacity. Governor Greg Abbott made clear he had no intention of putting business restrictions back in place.
Florida’s Department of Health on Friday reported a record high of 1,902 new cases of coronavirus. Despite these numbers, Governor Ron DeSantis unveiled a plan to restart public schools at “full capacity” in the fall.
These statements are echoed in the press. In an editorial Friday, the Wall Street Journal bluntly declared, “More infections are inevitable as states reopen,” but that “there is no alternative to opening.”
Denying the obvious, National Economic Council (NEC) Director Larry Kudlow insisted on Friday, “There is no emergency. There is no second wave.” Coming from the man that declared in February that the United States had “contained” the pandemic “pretty close to airtight,” such statements are meaningless.
The declarations by Kudlow and Mnuchin have only one aim: to reassure Wall Street that, no matter what, there will be no disruption of the back-to-work campaign, and workers will be forced to work or face being fired.
From the beginning of the pandemic, every action taken by the ruling class has been dictated by the interests of Wall Street. After taking no measures to safeguard the lives of the population, the Trump administration, with the backing of the entire political establishment, engineered the largest government bailout of the rich in history.
Trillions have been turned over to the corporations and banks, and the Federal Reserve has made clear that the money spigot will remain open indefinitely.
The infusion of cash into the stock market requires the ever-greater extraction of surplus value from the working class. Once the bailout was secured, all measures to contain the spread of the pandemic, from lockdowns to mandatory social distancing measures at workplaces, were simply abandoned as encumbrances on profit-making.
The campaign to force a resumption of production has led workplaces, such as meatpacking facilities, food processing centers, and other manufacturing facilities, to emerge as centers of transmission, putting workers on a collision course with companies determined to resume production.
But opposition by workers to these unsafe conditions is rapidly growing throughout the country. Hundreds of meatpacking workers in Logan, Utah demonstrated Wednesday afternoon to demand the closure of their facility, where more than 20 percent of the total workforce tested positive. Philadelphia sanitation workers protested in front of City Hall Tuesday morning to demand protective equipment, access to regular testing for COVID-19 and hazard pay bonuses.
The impact of the return-to-work campaign will intersect with the enormous social crisis produced by mass unemployment and austerity, as the ruling class seeks to use the crisis to restructure class relations and increase exploitation.
The policy of the ruling class must be countered through the organized resistance of the working class. This requires the formation of independent rank-and-file safety committees in every workplace to oversee and enforces measures that are necessary to safeguard workers’ health and lives.
The development of such organizations must be connected to the mobilization of the entire working class against the Trump administration. As the wrote on May 22, “The fight against the pandemic must be waged not only on the medical front, but on the political front as well. The struggle against COVID-19 is inseparable from the broadest possible fight against the criminal policies of the Trump administration and its supine enablers in the Democratic Party.”
The consequences of these criminal policies are now emerging throughout the country.
Over the past two weeks, hundreds of thousands of people have marched to protest the brutal police murder of one man: George Floyd. The Trump administration is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands and will be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands more. As with the fight against police violence, the fight against the pandemic is at the same time a fight of the entire working class against the financial oligarchy and the capitalist profit system.
WSJ: Business Groups Fighting Trump’s Visa Reform Want ‘Carve Out’ Loopholes
Business groups are still fighting President Donald Trump’s draft plan to create jobs for Americans by temporarily closing three pipelines of foreign visa workers, the Wall Street Journalreported on June 11.
“Senior officials at the White House, the Department of Homeland Security and the Labor Department have been working for several months on the recommendations, which they plan to bring to the president for final signoff as soon as this week, the people familiar with the talks said,” according to the WSJ, which added:
Administration officials said the president hasn’t yet signed off on the plan, adding that it could change as senior aides continue to discuss the matter.
[…]
The administration is also considering a broader carve-out allowing employers to hire [visa workers] if they can prove they can’t hire Americans for a given job.
The reform would temporarily block the pipelines which deliver H-1B and L-1 professionals and J-1 seasonal workers to many employers, including Disney and T-Mobile. The three programs keep roughly 700,000 foreign white collar and 100,000 foreign blue collar workers in jobs throughout the United States — even as millions of Americans are looking for good jobs in the coronavirus crash.
But corporate lobbyists, CEOs, and investors — plus their allies in the White House — have already delayed and narrowed the visa reforms by four years.
“I will end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program,” Trump said in March 2016. “No exceptions.” He followed up on Inauguration Day by promising a “Hire American” economic policy.
Multiple sources say the business groups are now pushing for exemptions and loopholes that would preserve the many pipelines that keep roughly 1.3 million foreign graduates in jobs needed by U.S. graduates.
Business groups leak Trump's draft visa reform plan.
The Fortune 500 wants to preserve its labor pipeline (now 1.3+ million) to bypass American professionals & heartland states.
But US voters strongly prefer US hiring.
Biz says Trump to decide Thurs.#H1Bhttps://bit.ly/37giHYq
Business Leaks Donald Trump's Sweeping Visa Reform Job Plan
For example, officials are not planning to tighten the B-1 pipeline, which companies use to import white collar workers under the guise of training programs.
The Journal reported officials are “considering a broader carve-out allowing employers to hire immigrants if they can prove they can’t hire Americans for a given job.”
“If that’s included, the entire exercise will be meaningless, just window-dressing,” said a tweet from Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies. He added:
Also, if the order includes “incentives” for hiring Americans in lieu of suspending visas, it will be B.S. Congress included empty political ass-covering like that in [the H-1B law]. The only incentive that can work is simply not to be able to hire the foreign workers in the first place.
Another possible loophole would preserve the pipeline of visa workers by creating small incentives for companies to hire Americans, Krikorian said.
But business groups strongly support the labor pipelines for both management and financial reasons.
The flood of extra workers helps raise stock values by dropping the nationwide price of professional skills, especially among subcontractors.
It also delivers a compliant and disposable white collar labor force to the coastal executives at Fortune 500 companies and many healthcare companies. This gig worker labor force of modestly skilled workers minimizes the need for executives to hire and manage independent American professionals.
But the executives’ discriminatory exclusion of American graduates and professionals shrivels the innovation needed by the nation to counter the growing threat from government-backed Chinese companies. This exclusion is also creating an increasing population of educated but downwardly mobile and alienated young men and women.
The draft plan includes a time limit. But if Trump establishes the new rules, he will likely be unwilling to annoy voters by ending the reforms.
Several professional and reform groups are pushing to establish the reforms. They include NumbersUSA, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the American Workers Coalition, and U.S. Tech Workers.
Self-reliant American professionals are learning that they must fight together to keep the white collar jobs needed by themselves and their children, said Kevin Lynn, founder of U.S. Tech Workers. He continued:
A lot of professionals feel their careers are protected by their experience and their credentials. But that is not true. Corporations don’t respect professionals. They don’t respect loyalty, so modern professionals are expendable. But I’ve watched professionals getting involved — calling Congress, organizing and doing letter campaigns, doing email campaigns, doing billboards — and they were victorious.
For example, he said, U.S. and immigrant professionals organized to block the S.386 bill that would have dramatically expanded the citizenship incentive for Indian graduates to take low-wage white collar jobs in the United States.
The bill “was supposed to fly under the radar — no problem. It didn’t. Tech workers have learned to fight,” he said.
The inflow of India's visa-workers creates a huge 'bonded labor' workforce that empowers Fortune 500 CEOs & shrivels professionalism, say US/India tech-professionals.
"We’ve lost our competitive, innovative advantage because of it," says US manager. #H1Bhttps://bit.ly/2XdF5gI
Fortune 500 CEOs Use H-1B Visa Workers to Grow Bonded-Labor Workforce
Mass layoffs continue as 1.5 million file new US unemployment claims
12 June 2020
Last week workers filed more than 1.5 million new US jobless claims as job-cutting continues in the midst of the still raging coronavirus pandemic. Through the week ending May 30, 20.9 million workers were drawing unemployment benefits, down only slightly from April.
The new claims push the total number of those filing for unemployment benefits over the last 12 weeks to 44.1 million. It is now being predicted that weekly claims will not drop below 1 million until July. Before the pandemic, the previous record for weekly claims was 695,000 in October 1982. While new claims fell in a number of states, they rose sharply in California, (29,000) Massachusetts (17,000) and Maryland (9,000)
An additional 706,000 people filed initial claims under Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a separate program that expands eligibility to the self-employed and independent contractors, among others. About 10 million workers are currently receiving financial aid through the program.
A woman looks at signs at a store in Niles, Ill., Wednesday, May 13, 2020. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
The latest weekly figures come as serious concerns persist over the validity of figures showing a drop in the unemployment rate in May to 13.3 percent from 14.7 percent in April. The fall in the unemployment rate contradicted the expectations of economists.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) admitted that its May and April figures seriously understated the true rate of unemployment, by 3 percent in May and a whopping 5 percent in April. The BLS said the problem was due to a data collection “error.”
Questions have also been raised over the striking discrepancy between the BLS figure of 20.9 million unemployed and the weekly jobless claims report, which shows that a total of 30 million are claiming continuing unemployment benefits in all programs.
The persistent high level of new unemployment claims demonstrates that even as workers laid off due to the pandemic are being recalled, the economy continues to bleed jobs, as companies stagger under the continuing impact of the COVID-19 crisis.
The public sector has been particularly hard hit as tax revenues dry up. State and local governments cut 571,000 jobs in May after cutting 1 million jobs in April. One expert predicted that state and local governments would cut 3 million jobs as a consequence of budget shortfalls. Education will be hardest hit, both K-12 and higher education.
Alaska Air said it plans 3,000 job cuts after it burns through the $992 million in federal bailout money that requires it to maintain jobs through the end of September. The airline said job cuts will likely begin in October. According to Fortune Magazine, global airlines have announced 70,000 job cuts, and more will take place in the US in the fall.
Meanwhile, many of those filing for unemployment benefits are still waiting for payment on their claims. A survey by ZipRecruiter found that one-third of claimants who lost their jobs due to the pandemic are still waiting for their money. The survey was done between June 1 and June 4.
The idea floated by President Donald Trump that the recession triggered by the pandemic would be V- shaped, with a quick recovery, is being increasingly discredited. US economic output is predicted to fall by 6.5 percent through the end of 2020.
On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell played down the idea that a full recovery is in the offing. “I think we have to be honest, that it’s a long road,” he said, pointing to the serious impact the pandemic is having on wide sectors of industry. “It could be some years before we get back to those people finding jobs.”
The Federal Reserve is now predicting that unemployment will still be at 9.3 percent by the end of 2020, near the high recorded in the 2008-2009 recession. Powell noted, “This is the biggest economic shock, in the US and the world, really, in living memory.”
He said that many job cuts will be permanent. “My assumption is that there will be a significant chunk, well into the millions,” He added there will be many “who don’t get to go back to their old job, and, in fact, there may not be a job in that industry for them for some time.”
Wells Fargo noted the continued high level of unemployment claims indicates “that layoffs have clearly spread well beyond” the industries directly impacted by the pandemic and state lockdowns. It pointed to cuts in manufacturing, administration and professional service companies.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the economy added 2.5 million jobs in May after losing 22 million jobs in March and April. The additional hiring mainly reflected workers being recalled to their previous jobs after being laid off due to the pandemic.
Meanwhile, the BLS is continuing to fend off suspicions that it has played fast and loose with the unemployment figures.
According to a note appended at the bottom of its May report, the BLS said unemployment numbers reported in May represented a 3 percent undercount due to errors in data collection, making the actual unemployment rate 16.3 percent. A similar “error” in April undercounted the total unemployed by 5 percent, making the real total a shocking 19.7 percent. The “error,” if that is what it was, is by far the largest in the history of the BLS.
The unemployment numbers are collated from tens of thousands of interviews by data collectors. The BLS says interviewers wrongly classified some unemployed workers as employed but “absent from work" due to “other reasons,” when they really should have been listed as temporarily laid off due to pandemic-related workplace shutdowns. This misclassification affected nearly a million workers in May.
Questions remain over why if, as the BLS states, the collection error came to its attention in March, it persisted through May.
In addition, economists were struggling to explain the discrepancy between the 21 million reported as unemployed by the BLS and the 30 million that continue to collect jobless benefits. They pointed to several factors, including the above-cited data collection error as well as the possibility that some of the 10.3 million “gig economy” workers collecting benefits under the temporary expansion of unemployment benefits were not counted in the unemployed totals.
Economists also pointed to the low response rate in May as an area of concern when evaluating the accuracy of the numbers. Only 67 percent of households responded to the survey in May, which is significantly lower than the typical 80 percent response rate before the pandemic. Fewer people being sampled means that the figures are based overall on a less representative sample of the population.
Adding to suspicions, an independent report by human resource provider ADS showed that the economy lost 2.76 million jobs in May instead of adding 2.5 million, as stated by the BLS.
BLS Commissioner William Beach, appointed by Trump to head the agency in 2019, denied allegations the data had been fudged and said that such allegations stem from an “enormous ignorance” of how the BLS operates.
Whatever the truth about possible tampering—and there is every reason for suspicion—the relatively favorable unemployment numbers gave a boost to the Trump administration, which was reeling from crisis in the midst of mass protests over police violence and continuing opposition by workers to the premature reopening of the economy even as COVID-19 infections were on the rise in many areas. The positive employment report for May also helped boost stock prices, which soared on the news.
The figures were also cited by Republican members of Congress as an argument for not extending the $600 weekly supplement to unemployment benefits enacted in April as a result of the pandemic.
While winding down assistance to the unemployed, the Trump administration, Congress and the Federal Reserve have committed to taking all necessary measures to prop up the stock market, pledging unlimited amounts of cash and zero interest rates.
Business Leaks Donald Trump’s Sweeping Visa Reform Job Plan
President Donald Trump will decide by Thursday whether to suspend the visa worker laws that now allow Fortune 500 companies to import their own compliant workforces instead of hiring Americans, says a leading immigration lawyer for major U.S. companies.
The information was leaked because opponents want Congress and companies to launch a last-minute campaign against the draft Executive Order, said Greg Siskind, an immigration lawyer based in Memphis, TN.
“What we are told is that Trump is planning on making a decision, a final decision, on the scope of this proclamation by June 11,” he said in a Facebook chat. “That’s two days from now.”
The pending Executive Order will temporarily bar the inflow of H-1B, L-1s, and H-2B seasonal manual workers, plus some categories of J-1 workers, said Siskind. It will also order new regulations to limit the use of foreign workers who are imported via the H-1B and Occupational Practical Training (OPT) programs, he said.
The policy will allow American voters to choose in November if they want to keep the curbs, Siskind said.
“In 147 days, there’s an election, and if [Joe] Biden gets elected, I can promise you that the order would be — probably on the first day — be rescinded,” Siskind said.
But Trump used the same issue to help win the 2016 election. “I will end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program,” he said in March 2016. “No exceptions.” He followed up on Inauguration Day by promising a “Hire American” economic policy.
Numerous polls show that Americans want to like legal immigrants. But those polls also show most Americans strongly prefer that every American has a job before the government invites more legal immigrants, especially amid the coronavirus crash.
The H-1B program keeps at east 600,000 foreign workers in white-collar jobs throughout the United States, including many Fortune 500 companies. The little-known multi-year L-1 program keeps hundreds of thousands of foreign workers in a wide mix of white-collar and blue-collar jobs, ranging from gas stations to Google, usually on home-country salaries. For example, India’s L-1 workers can be paid a little over the U.S. minimum wage, even if they are engineers.
The order is being opposed by the White House advisers who support business groups. The advisers quickly blocked a similar reform that was promised by Trump on April 20. “A lot could change,” Siskind told a Facebook audience.
Overall, companies employ roughly 1.3 million white-collar vias workers instead of American graduates. The huge population also allows subcontractors to import and hide a large population of illegal immigrant white-collar workers for gig work with Fortune 500 firms.
Business groups strongly support the visa worker programs for both financial and management reasons.
The flood of extra workers helps raise stock values by dropping the nationwide price of professional skills, especially among subcontractors. It also delivers a compliant and disposable white-collar labor force to the coastal executives at Fortune 500 companies and many healthcare companies. This gig worker labor force of modestly skilled workers minimizes the need for executives to hire and manage independent American professionals.
But the executives’ discriminatory exclusion of American graduates and professionals also shrivels the innovation needed by the nation to counter the growing threat from government-backed Chinese companies. This exclusion is also creating an increasing population of educated but downwardly mobile and alienated young men and women.
The inflow of India's visa-workers creates a huge 'bonded labor' workforce that empowers Fortune 500 CEOs & shrivels professionalism, say US/India tech-professionals. "We’ve lost our competitive, innovative advantage because of it," says US manager. #H1Bhttps://bit.ly/2XdF5gI
Siskind’s description matched a statement by another immigration lawyer, Charles Kuck. Kuck posted:
The rumored Presidential proclamation would temporarily suspend entry of certain non-immigrant workers for a period that might be as long as 180 days (through the election and end of the year). This proclamation proposes to impact high-skilled individuals outside the U.S. seeking to enter on H-1B and L-1 visas, as well as H-2B temporary seasonal workers and certain J-1 exchange visitor participants.
The proclamation purports to announce a temporary ban on non-immigrant worker entries but will NOT announce or describe other substantive policy changes that we expect will follow in draconion regulatory proposals.
The proclamation will have a number of exceptions, supposedly to be announced by agency guidance.
The proclamation will likely come the last two weeks in June, but it could be as early as June 15. The April 22 proclamation temporarily suspending immigrant visa entries stated that the 50th day thereafter (June 12) would mark the expected timeline for deciding if the terms of that proclamation should be extended or modified to include non-immigrants.
Separately, the administration envisions a series of rule-makings, beginning perhaps as early as July, on H-1B, OPT, and H-4.
The J-1 program imports roughly 100,000 seasonal workers for resorts, hotels, and vacation camps. The order will stop the Summer Work Travel program and the inflow of workers for jobs as camp counselors, interns, and trainees, said Siskind.
The policy likely will not stop the hiring of foreign laboratory workers under the J-1 program, despite massive underemployment by U.S. biology graduates.
The biggest change, Kuck said, would be the withdrawal of President Barack Obama’s decision to provide work permits to the spouses of Indian H-1B employes who are waiting for the delivery of approved green cards. That population includes at least 100,000 spouses, many of whom have been hired by Indian managers for entry-level software jobs in Fortune 500 jobs. “The BIG CHANGE would be publication, at last, of the regulation rescinding the H-4 spousal work authorization rule,” he wrote.
“It’s got to go to court immediately,” Siskind said.
The reform will not deal with TN, B-1, O-1, or the E visas, said Siskind. Those visas may provide a workaround for people seeking jobs, he said.
The possible cutback of the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program is the primary concern for FWD.us, the advocacy group created by Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and other wealthy West Coast Investors. The OPT, and the parallel Curricular Practical Training (CPT) program, annually provides up to 500,000 work permits to lower-wage foreign graduates for many of the Fortune 500 jobs needed by U.S. graduates.
The draft change would eliminate the three-year work permit given to foreign graduates who get technology jobs, said Siskind.
The OPT and CPT work programs were created mainly by prior presidents, not Congress. They offer tax incentives to companies that move jobs and wealth from heartland states to the wealthy coastal states, which are dominated by Democrats and their elite business allies.
Cheap labor is important for investors because it helps cut payroll costs and raises profits, so boosting apparent values on Wall Street.
The Executive Order would limit the ability of Indian outsourcing companies to provide gig workers for Fortune 500 firms and likely force companies to raise salary levels, said Siskind. The limits would be set by narrowing the legal definition of jobs that can be done by H-1B workers and by raising the salary requirements, he said.
“Nothing has been determined or issued yet,” said a tweeted warning from Andrew Moriarty, the deputy director federal policy for FWD.us. He continued:
OPT is still intact, and the Admin will need to do real work to dismantle this critical program. But anti-immigrant advocates have targeted OPT for years, and the threat is real.
The review process was launched on April 22, when Trump announced modest curbs on legal immigration.
Trump’s polls are shaky going into the 2020 election, pressuring him to revive and implement his 2016 promises. Polls suggest that the proposal is likely very popular.
Candidate Trump promised in 2016 to roll back the visa worker programs. But Pres. Trump & his deputies have done almost nothing to slow the Fortune 500's determined efforts to replace American graduates with a no-rights, compliant foreign workforce.#H1Bhttps://bit.ly/2Y8bOUU
A woman looks at signs at a store in Niles, Ill., Wednesday, May 13, 2020. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
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