Thursday, December 3, 2020

40 STATES FILE ANTITRUST AGAINST JOE BIDEN'S MINISTER OF PROPAGANDA MARK ZUCKERBERG - THE LITTLE RUNT SAYS JOE WILL PROTECT HIM LIKE HE DOES HUNTER'S BRIBES SUCKING

 

Report: 40 States Will File Antitrust Lawsuit Against Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg frowning
Getty/Chip Somodevilla
2:16

A recent report claims that a group of at least 40 states led by New York is set to file an antitrust lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook as early as next week.

recent report from CNBC states that sources believe that a lawsuit could be filed against social media giant Facebook as early as next week. A group of 40 states led by New York have been investigating Facebook for possible antitrust violations and plans to file a lawsuit against the company, according to four sources.

The lawsuit would be the second major case taken against a major tech firm this year following the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Google in October. Over 40 states reportedly plan to sign on to the Facebook lawsuit one source said, but would not provide the list of states.

Breitbart News reported earlier this week that authorities were preparing as many as four more cases targeting Google or Facebook by the end of January 2021. The lawsuits reportedly focus on whether the tech giant abused their power in the internet economy, focusing on Google’s position in the search and advertising industry and Facebook’s dominance in the social media market.

Both companies have denied using their power in an anti-competitive manner, saying that they operate in extremely competitive markets and that their services benefit consumers. Despite ongoing antitrust investigations and lawsuits, Facebook and Google are both on a spending spree to buy rivals and tech startups.

Facebook has faced criticism from both Republicans and Democrats in Congress, as well as President Trump and Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden. Democrats allege that the social media giant has been too free in the speech it allows on its platform, while many Republicans point out the social media site has often suppressed conservative voices. Facebook claims that it aims to support free speech while limiting “hate speech” and harmful content.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com

Facebook and Google Are Buying Up Rivals Despite Antitrust Action

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg closeup
Anthony Quintano/Flickr
2:24

Despite ongoing government antitrust investigations and lawsuits, tech giants Facebook and Google are continuing to finalize deals to purchase rival companies.

Axios reports that despite an antitrust lawsuit filed against Google by the DOJ and reports of addiitonal incoming government antitrust lawsuits, tech giants such as Facebook and Google are continuing to finalize deals to purchase smaller rivals. On Monday, Facebook announced that it has purchased a customer service chatbot startup called Kustomer for $1 billion, the same amount the company paid for the photo-sharing app Instagram in 2012.

Axios states that the new deal is just another sign that the largest tech companies in the world will not stop buying smaller companies despite facing enormous antitrust scrutiny worldwide. Google is also awaiting approval for the acquisition of the health and fitness tracking device manufacturer Fitbit for $2.1 billion. Facebook also plans to acquire the animated image sharing service Giphy for $400 million.

The Justice Department and 11 states filed a major antitrust case against Google in October in which they accused the company of using anti-competitive practices to improve its position in the online search market. The FTC is also reportedly set to bring an antitrust case against Facebook.

Breitbart News recently reported that authorities are preparing as many as four more cases targeting Google or Facebook by the end of January 2021, these lawsuits would come shortly after the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit filed against Google last month. The lawsuits reportedly focus on whether the tech giant abused their power in the internet economy, focusing on Google’s position in the search and advertising industry and Facebook’s dominance in the social media market.

Both companies have denied using their power in an anti-competitive manner, saying that they operate in extremely competitive markets and that their services benefit consumers. Read more at Breitbart News here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com

AMERICA: NO LEGAL (American) NEED APPLY!!!

 

“Joe Biden’s transition is absolutely stacked with tech industry players,” noted Protocol, an online publication that covers technology.

                                                      ALEXANDER NAZARYAN

Tech industry elites have endorsed Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden, citing their opposition to President Trump’s efforts to prioritize Americans for high-paying tech jobs in the United States. JOHN BINDER

 

“Today’s ruling is great news for Americans, and for the ability of the U.S. to remain the top destination for talented individuals,” said a statement from FWD.us, an advocacy group created by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and other West Coast investors.

 

Sen Kamala Harris is a product of Silicon Valley's billionaires and will enforce their agenda in DC.

Eg, she's an author of the S.386 bill that allows the Fortune 500 to hire more white-collar workers from India for jobs needed by America's college grads https://t.co/gKCuD9DH5z

— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) August 12, 2020

 

NAFTA JOE HAS PART OF THE OBAMA-BIDEN-HOLDER TEAM THAT SABOTAGED AMERICA’S BORDERS TO FLOOD OUR JOBS WITH ‘CHEAP’ LABOR ILLEGALS.

 

DURING THE SO-CALLED OBAMA ‘RECOVERY’ TWO-THIRDS OF ALL JOBS WENT TO FOREIGNERS AND ILLEGALS. BIDEN HAS DECLARED THAT THESE NUMBERS ARE NOT HIGH ENOUGH. NO WALL STREET COMPANY SHOULD HAVE TO HIRE AMERICAN!

 

REVEALED: Joe Biden's chief of staff Ron Klain worked on behalf of Silicon Valley executives and their interests, which include providing tech corporations with an endless supply of H-1B foreign visa workers and more free trade. https://t.co/UCYg4U7lXK

 

Analysis conducted in 2018 discovered that 71 percent of tech workers in Silicon Valley, California, are foreign-born, while the tech industry in the San Francisco, Oakland, and Hayward area is made up of 50 percent foreign-born tech workers. Up to 99 percent of H-1B visa workers imported by the top eight outsourcing firms are from India. JOHN BINDER

 

Likewise, the Biden-Harris plan for national immigration policy — which seeks to drive up legal and illegal immigration levels to their highest levels in decades — offers a flooded labor market with low wages for U.S. workers and increased bargaining power for big business that has long been supported by Wall Street. JOHN BINDER

Judge Blocks Donald Trump’s H-1B Reforms

Matt Perdie

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5:38

A judge on Tuesday blocked President Donald Trump’s reforms of the H-1B visa worker program that allows Fortune 500 CEOs to sideline many American professionals and new graduates.

“Breaking: Judge White, Northern District of California, sets aside both the [Department of Labor] and [Department of Homeland Security] H-1B regulations,” said a tweet by the business groups’ lawyer, Paul Hughes. “These regulations sought to destroy the H-1B program.”

“Today’s ruling is great news for Americans, and for the ability of the U.S. to remain the top destination for talented individuals,” said a statement from FWD.us, an advocacy group created by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and other West Coast investors.

Judge Jeffrey White argued Trump’s rules were illegal because officials had not spent enough time collecting and responding to comments from companies and workers who would be impacted by the change: “Defendants failed to show there was good cause to dispense with the rational and thoughtful discourse that is provided by the [Administrative Procedure Act’s] notice and comment requirements … the Court sets aside the Rules.”

Trump’s two rules raised the wages that would be paid to 85,000 new H-1B visas by companies, tightened skill requirements for foreigners seeking specialized jobs, and reduced the duration of visas given to companies that import H-1Bs for lease to other companies.

The administration can appeal the decision by the San Francisco judge — but likely won’t get a positive answer before January 20, said John Miano, a lawyer with the Immigration Reform Law Institute.

REVEALED: Joe Biden's chief of staff Ron Klain worked on behalf of Silicon Valley executives and their interests, which include providing tech corporations with an endless supply of H-1B foreign visa workers and more free trade. https://t.co/UCYg4U7lXK

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) November 15, 2020

Biden’s deputies are unlikely to appeal the judge’s decision, said Miano. His campaign was heavily supported by the Silicon Valley firms that use H-1B workforces to minimize the hiring of the ordinary Americans who can learn and then quit to create innovative products.

The resident population of foreign H-1Bs in the United States jobs is at least 580,000. But the resident total may reach one million partly because many H-1B are allowed to stay and work for many years.

The H-1Bs are widely used to fill lower-level, mid-skill jobs in many Silicon Valley and Fortune 500 companies. They are also used to fill many of the gig-worker contract jobs that are now outsourced by Fortune 500 companies — but which were once used to hire and train the nation’s workforce of American professionals. Many foreign workers are eager to take these jobs at low wages in the hope of winning the valuable green cards dangled by the employers.

The judge’s decision is a big loss to every U.S. skilled graduate who is stuck in their national labor market flooded with unemployed American graduates and foreign visa workers, Miano said:

It basically impacts every college-educated person. Any college-educated person is now in a job where they can be replaced by foreign workers — or not even get hired. We have basically exported hiring for the tech-industry to third parties. Now, U.S. graduates are going to [online recruiters in] India to apply for jobs in the United States.

Trump’s deputies — and Trump himself — delayed approval of the new rules for so long that pro-reform deputies did not have time to complete the full notice and comment process before posting the rules, Miano said.

Trump would have won reelection if he had made the visa-worker issue into a campaign theme in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and other states, Miano said.

He would have won in a landslide. He didn’t. If I was writing a Donald Trump [TV] ad, I’d sit there and say, “You know,  when the [Tennesee Valley Authority]  was replacing American workers, Donald Trump stepped in to stop it, and the only reason the TVA was trying to replace Americans with foreign workers is because Joe Biden voted to make it legal.” We didn’t see anything like that.

The speech and vehemence of the judge’s decision show many judges are eager to join the establishment’s resistance to Trump, he said.

“He went Maximum No,” said Miano, even though he could have delayed a final decision until Trump’s deputies finished considering the comments they sought and received after posting the emergency rules. “He could have said ‘Okay, you know, it’s an emergency, but I don’t think it had met the standards, so what we’ll do is let you go, remand it in place to do the required notice and comment,” said Miano.

Disney’s executives stopped advertising on Tucker Carlson’s television show as he repeatedly urged President Donald Trump to shut down their pipeline of H-1B visa workers into the white-collar jobs that would otherwise go to Americans. https://t.co/2XCb4R5Hqq

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) June 21, 2020

The judge’s decision to strike down Trump’s wages rules preserves the prior wages that help CEOs hire cheaper foreign labor, said Miano. But those older wage rules were set without any comments from American employees who were and are hurt by the existing wage rules, he said.

Many judges bend over backward to quickly help business groups preserve visa worker programs that have been created in complete disregard of the regulation-writing rules or the lack of national emergencies. he said. “Those cases are flying through the courts,” said Miano, who has been shunted from one slow judge to another slow judge over the last five years as he tries to end two business-backed regulations that flood the labor market for U.S. college graduates.

“We’re approaching six years. Sue [President Barack] Obama, you go through the hoops. Sue [President George W.] Bush, you go through the hoops. Sue Trump, and they jump for you. Clearly, something has been different,” he said.

Big Tech and Big Law dominate Biden transition teams, tempering progressive hopes

Alexander Nazaryan administration takes office in January.

WASHINGTON — For six years, Brandon Belford worked as an economic policy adviser to President Barack Obama in the White House and federal agencies. He moved to the Bay Area when Donald Trump became president, part of a massive flight of Obama officials from Washington to Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Hollywood. He took high-ranking positions with Apple and then Lyft, where he is currently the ride-sharing company’s chief of staff.

Now Belford is back, as part of one of the “transition teams” named by President-elect Joe Biden to restock a federal government that has been battered after four years of Trump by hiring new officials and advising the incoming administration on what its first governing steps should be. 

Those steps could be timid, judging by the composition of those teams, where Obama-era centrism prevails. That has some progressives worried that Biden represents nothing more than a return to normal, at a time when many of them believe the nation is ready to embrace policy ideas well to the left of center. 

“The status quo is killing us,” says former Bernie Sanders press secretary Briahna Joy Gray, who now hosts a podcast called “Bad Faith.” 

Belford is joined by dozens of other Democratic operatives who have spent the past four years working at prestigious law firms and think tanks. On these “agency review teams” are high-ranking executives from Amazon, partners at white-shoe law firms like Covington & Burling and enough experts from D.C. center-left think tanks — including six from the Brookings Institution alone — to fill a center-left think tank.

Progressives knew this was coming. “I am very concerned about the role Uber executives would play in this administration,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez D-N.Y., told Yahoo News. Even though she also effusively praised the appointment of Ron Klain as the incoming White House chief of staff, Ocasio-Cortez vowed that corporate America would not “pull the wool over our eyes” when it came to crafting the Biden presidency.

Some have put it less bluntly. “Biden’s transition team is full of wealthy corporate executives who are completely disconnected from the struggles of the working class,” complains left-leaning activist Ryan Knight, whose Twitter handle is @ProudSocialist. 

App-based drivers from Uber and Lyft protest in a caravan in front of City Hall in Los Angeles on October 22, 2020 where elected leaders hold a conference urging voters to reject on the November 3 election, Proposition 22, that would classify app-based drivers as independent contractors and not employees or agents. (Photo by Frederic J. BROWN / AFP) (Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)More

He was presumably referring to the two dozen agency review team officials who come from law firms like Arnold & Porter. Or to the 40 or so members of the Biden transition who are current or recent lobbyists.

The agency review teams are not exactly settling into their cubicles just yet. For one, President Trump has not yet conceded the election, and the transition has been hindered in part by Republican operatives at the General Services Administration. And agency review is an enormously complex process, one that actually began months ago. The transition teams are supposed to ensure a “smooth transfer of power,” in large part by making sure that capable officials are ready to get to work in their respective agencies the moment Biden lifts his hand from the Lincoln Bible.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, one member of the Biden campaign working on agency-related matters says teams were primarily tasked with surveying the landscape of the federal bureaucracy. She says that the transition teams would make some hiring recommendations, but only as a secondary function.

With a single exception, the agency review team members mentioned in this article did not respond to requests for comment.

One with a typically impressive biography is that of Aneesh Chopra, who served as the U.S. chief technology officer for Obama before starting his own medical data logistics company, CareJourney. Now he is on the transition team for the U.S. Postal Service, where he will presumably work to undo the alleged damage by another logistics maven: Trump appointee Louis DeJoy.  

Of course, most progressives are glad that there’s a Biden transition to speak of, instead of a second Trump term. But they also recognize their own role in the Democratic candidate’s victory.

“Everyone fell into line and did everything they could to get Joe Biden elected,” says Max Berger, a progressive activist who worked for Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign and Justice Democrats, the group that helped elect Ocasio-Cortez to the House in 2018. 

Berger recognizes that progressives will be a “junior partner” to the establishment Democrats with whom Biden has been ideologically and temperamentally aligned for a good half-century. They want to be partners all the same, not just the loyal opposition.

Many are cheered by some of the agency review teams. For one, they are notably more diverse, a stark contrast to Trump’s reliance on white males for so much of his advice. On the transition team for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is Jedidah Isler, the Dartmouth professor who in 2014 became the first Black woman to earn a doctorate in astrophysics from Yale. The transition team for the Small Business Administration includes Jorge Silva Puras, a political leader in Puerto Rico who also teaches entrepreneurship at a community college in the Bronx. 

“The presence of labor officials throughout many of the groups is notable,” says David Dayen, executive editor of the American Prospect. In the Department of Education team, for example, are several executives from the American Federation of Teachers.

He called the Federal Reserve and Treasury teams “all-stars,” a sentiment shared by other progressives interviewed for this article. On the Treasury team is Mehrsa Baradaran, a progressive economist who has written on the racial wealth gap. She is also on the Federal Reserve team, along with Reena Aggarwal, a corporate governance expert.

Progressive strategist Elizabeth Spiers says the finance-related teams are not “not quite Elizabeth Warren levels of aggressiveness but also not stuffed with finance people.” Biden’s advisers appear to have learned the lessons of his former boss. During Obama’s first year, he relied on banking executives to help quell the financial crisis. They did so in ways that steered the new president away from progressive proposals, such as nationalizing those very same banks

There is not a single current executive from Citibank or Goldman Sachs on any of the transition teams. Bank of America has also been shut out. JPMorgan can boast a single toehold in the agency review process: Lisa Sawyer of the Pentagon team. A spokesman for JPMorgan told Yahoo News that the bank was “following the appropriate election laws” and that Sawyer was “not on an agency review team that will touch any banking issues.”

“I think the Biden administration is going to be surprising to progressives in some ways and disappointing in others, and the agency review teams reflect that,” Dayen says. During the summer, the American Prospect published a lengthy exposé about Biden’s foreign policy advisers’ lucrative foray into corporate America. Many are set to return to the highest echelons of official Washington. 

“I have to be cautiously optimistic,” says Waleed Shahid, communications director for the Justice Democrats. 

Relatively young progressives like Shahid are less likely to wax romantic about the way things were in Washington. They are less interested in experience than conviction. But for many in Biden’s camp, a lack of experience was among the several fatal flaws of the Trump years.

“Everyone — right or left — has made the mistaken assumption for years that governing is easy,” says “The Death of Expertise” author Tom Nichols, who teaches at the Naval War College and is an ardently anti-Trump Republican.

“After having a bunch of nitwits and cronies loose in the government,” Nichols wrote in an email, “I think a lot of people on the left are really giving in to the assumption that as long as you’re not Trump, or not a complete idiot, anyone can do it.”

Given the title and theme of his book, Nicholas cautioned against that approach. “It’s a childish and silly approach to government, but it’s a bipartisan problem,” he told Yahoo News.

While progressive may not see their stars like Sens. Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren occupying the Treasury Department, they do very much hope that a Biden presidency amounts to more than a third Obama term. It was unaddressed economic inequality, they believe, that bred the populist resentment that gave Trump an opening in 2016. The coronavirus has only made that inequality worse. That will only increase populist resentment, they worry, to be exploited by a Trump acolyte — or perhaps Trump himself, again — in 2024.

Addressing that inequality, for now, falls to transition team officials like Mark Schwartz of Amazon and Ted Dean of Dropbox, as well as Arun Venkataraman of Visa and David Holmes of defense contractor Rebellion Defense, in which Eric Schmidt of Google is an investor. Many of these officials are veterans of the Obama administration or Democratic offices on the Hill. 

“There is a lot of corporate influence there,” says Maurice Weeks, co-founder of the Action Center on Race and the Economy. “And that is troubling.” But he is encouraged by the presence of “hard-core progressives” like Sarah Miller, a former Treasury deputy who is both an anti-Facebook activist and the executive of the American Economic Liberties Project, which seeks to curb corporate power. She is now on the Treasury transition team.

In some ways, the difference is between former Obama officials who, like Miller, went on to become activists and those who moved on to become rich. The latter did only what many government officials had done before them. But at a time of mass unemployment, a stint at the corporate law firm Latham & Watkins (three transition team members) may not seem as impressive as it may have when Obama was president.

“We don’t just want to rewind the clock by four years,” Weeks says.

For many progressives, Trump was a singular threat to important institutions of the federal government, but rebuilding those institutions is simply not as important as rebuilding entire communities shattered by economic, social and racial inequalities. 

It doesn’t help matters that, today, tech giants are distrusted by conservatives and progressives alike. Firms that were run out of Palo Alto garages now chafe at antitrust laws like the railroad companies of a century ago. 

And like those companies, they know how to use their influence. In 2019 alone, two of the biggest and most influential technology firms — Amazon and Facebook — each spent $17 million on “government affairs,” better known as lobbying.

Ocasio-Cortez’s reference to Uber may have been a subtle warning to the incoming administration: The brother-in-law of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is Tony West, who worked for the Department of Justice under President Bill Clinton and is now the chief counsel at Uber. Jake Sullivan, another top Biden adviser, also worked for Uber

The company recently won a major victory in California with Proposition 22, a successful response to legal efforts to make Uber drivers and other “gig workers” employees, not contractors. That’s exactly the kind of labor policy, Ocasio-Cortez says, the Biden administration must avoid.

Many top Obama staffers went to Silicon Valley in 2017. They could be returning to Washington with a new appreciation for free market capitalism at a time when “socialism” is no longer a dirty word. 

“Joe Biden’s transition is absolutely stacked with tech industry players,” noted Protocol, an online publication that covers technology.

That’s exactly what worries Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, which tracks what Trump has called, without much affection, “the swamp.” He notes that the transition team for the Office of Management and Budget appears to have borrowed rather avidly from Silicon Valley, with team members hailing from Lyft, Airbnb and Amazon.  

The budget office wields an “enormous amount of power,” says Hauser, including in both how congressionally appropriated money is doled out and how certain rules are implemented. Though it had a supporting role in Trump’s impeachment drama over foreign aid, OMB is otherwise obscure, making it a perfect site for covert exercises of federal power. 

Hauser also didn’t like the prevalence of Big Law talent on the Department of Justice team, which signaled to him that the Biden administration could go soft on corporate malefactors. 

Watching the transition, Gray, the former Sanders adviser, recalled an old saying: “The fish rots from the head.” The head, in this case, is Joe Biden, of whom Gray has long been a skeptic.

“He’s a fundamentally conservative man,” Gray says. She reasons that if Biden was “unmoved by the largest protest movement in American history” to endorse Medicare for All, he can’t be trusted to do much for conservative causes like a $15 minimum wage and the Green New Deal.

Still, she believes that Biden can be made to hear the voices of progressives — if, Gray says, they are loud enough. She points out that there is widespread support for progressive legislation like the $15 minimum wage in Florida, even though Trump won the state. 

Biden easily won Oregon, but a push to legalize small amounts of drugs, known as Measure 110, was even more popular than he was.

She sees that as evidence that progressive ideas are more popular than Biden himself. “Progressives should never stop screaming that reality from the rooftops,” Gray told Yahoo News. And she vowed to keep fighting, even with Trump gone and a Democratic president in the Oval Office once again. 

“I don’t accept resignation,” she said.

Cover thumbnail photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

 

Sen Kamala Harris is a product of Silicon Valley's billionaires and will enforce their agenda in DC.

Eg, she's an author of the S.386 bill that allows the Fortune 500 to hire more white-collar workers from India for jobs needed by America's college grads https://t.co/gKCuD9DH5z

— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) August 12, 2020

 

Kamala Harris Raked in Cash from Big Tech During Democrat Primary

Rich Polk/Getty Images for LACMA

13 Aug 2020180

1:58

During the 2020 Democrat presidential primary, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) was bestowed with the most billionaire donations of the nearly 30 candidates who ran for the nomination.

In the primary, Harris secured more donations from billionaires than any other Democrat running, according to a November 2019 analysis by Forbes. Before dropping out in early December 2019, Harris raked in donations from at least 46 billionaires.

A number of Harris’s donations came from executives and employees of big tech corporations, as Breitbart News reported at the time.

By August 2019, seven Facebook executives and employees had donated $1,000 or more to Harris’s campaign, nearly 20 Google executives and employees had donated more than $1,000, four Twitter executives and employees had donated more than $1,000, and 71 Amazon executives and employees had donated anywhere from $5 to $2,000.

Notably, Harris took donations from Impossible Foods president Dennis Woodside, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, and Salesforce chairman Marc Benioff.

Despite a lack of enthusiasm and support among primary voters, Harris’s campaign was propped up by a base of elite coastal donors, with less than 40 percent of her funding coming from small-dollar donors giving $200 or less as of October 2019.

On Tuesday, Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden confirmed Harris as his vice presidential pick. In a statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called Harris a “champion for hardworking families everywhere.”

 

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.



AP writer Kelli Kennedy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, contributed to this report.

Sen Kamala Harris is a product of Silicon Valley's billionaires and will enforce their agenda in DC.

Eg, she's an author of the S.386 bill that allows the Fortune 500 to hire more white-collar workers from India for jobs needed by America's college grads https://t.co/gKCuD9DH5z

— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) August 12, 2020

2020 ElectionImmigrationPoliticsH-1B VisasJ-1L-1Mike PompeoOutsourcingU.S-India Outsourcing Economyvisa workers

  

State Dept. ‘Guts’ Donald Trump’s Curbs on Fortune 500’s Visa Workers

 

NEIL MUNRO

 

The state department is allowing Fortune 500 companies to freely import H-1B visa workers for jobs needed by American voters, despite President Donald Trump’s June 22 Executive Order barring nearly all visa workers.

“They have totally eviscerated the requirements” of Trump’s E.O., said John Miano, a lawyer with the Immigration Reform Law Institute. “There is no doubt about it — whoever created this is thumbing their noses at President Trump,” he said, adding, “you can bet that the guys who did this are voting for [Joe] Biden.”

‘This is an insult to the President of the United States, it is an insult to working men and women of the United States,” said Kevin Lynn, the founder of U.S. Tech Workers.

There are less than 90 days to go in the election. How can he persuade Americans he’s keeping any of this 2016 promises if he allows the State Department to nullify and gut the E.O. he signed to protect Americans from [outsourcing by Fortune 500 companies]? More than that — I think it is beginning to make Trump look stupid in front of the voters. He needs to call in Pompeo and talk to him about his job prospects because [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo does not seem to give a hoot about Americans’ job prospects.

The exemptions are “expansive,” admitted Greg Siskind, a lawyer who is working to widen the pipelines of foreign doctors into U.S. hospital chains. “They are backing off … that could be good news for thousands of you guys,” he told his clients.

On August 3, Trump met with Lynn and several employees of the Tennesee Valley Authority to announce he would block the outsourcing of their jobs to H-1B workers imported by three staffing companies. Trump said:

It doesn’t work that way. As we speak, we’re 

finalizing H1-B regulations so that no 

American worker is replaced ever again.  H1-Bs

should be used for top, highly paid talent to 

create American jobs, not as inexpensive labor 

program to destroy American jobs.

On June 22, Trump signed another Executive Order to close down the pipeline of white-collar H-1B, J-1, and L-1 workers, as well as the pipeline of H-2B manual laborers. The E.O. is expected to temporarily bar the arrival of perhaps 80,000 H-1Bs, plus thousands of J-1s and L-1s, while hundreds of thousands of new graduates and fired professionals look for jobs. Trump also directed his agency deputies to write new regulations that would reduce the Fortune 500’s widespread use of visa workers as cheap labor replacements for American voters.

Trump’s intervention to save U.S. white collar jobs is very popular among millions of American voters whose futures are threatened by the Fortune 500’s preference for docile and cheap visa workers. The CEO’s workforce policy keeps at least 1.3 million foreign graduates in U.S. jobs, even amid the dramatic economic crash caused by China’s coronavirus.

The official unemployment rate for U.S. tech grads has jumped to 4.4 percent, according to an industry association. But the calculation does not count the many U.S. tech grads who were forced into lesser careers by the many visa workers in the U.S.-India Outsourcing Economy.

But the State Department’s June 12 bulletin provides a long list of many easy exemptions for Fortune 500 companies and their Indian staffing subcontractor. The document says Trump’s directions:

 … include exceptions, including an exception for individuals whose travel would be in the national interest, as determined by the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, or their respective designees.  The list below is a non-exclusive list of the types of travel that may be considered to be in the national interest, based on determinations made by the Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs, exercising the authority delegated to him by the Secretary of State.

Pompeo is the Secretary of State. Carl Risch is the Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs.

The list of exemptions is very wide:

Travel by technical specialists, senior level managers, and other workers whose travel is necessary to facilitate the immediate and continued economic recovery of the United States … The petitioning employer has a continued need for the services or labor to be performed by the H-1B nonimmigrant in the United States.

Miano is an expert on visa worker laws and studied the long list of exemptions:

The first one on the list is what they needed to do to get the visas in the first place … Number 2, any of them can do that, no problem … Number 3 is totally meaningless — anyone can do that … ‘Financial Hardship’ for an employer is so loosey goosy that anyone can meet that … ‘Critical Infrastructure’ is basically anything.

Lynn was less formal;

This is effing b….. Who the f… came up with these exceptions? … You can drive a Mack truck through this …. The exemptions basically cover anyone on an H-IB or a J-1 or an L-1 …. Boom! They’re in … with all the exemptions, there is no EO — they’ve eliminated the EO through the exemptions.”

One of the most notable exemptions are for visa workers who have jobs at government agencies, usually via Indian-run staffing companies:

… individuals, identified by the Department of Defense or another U.S. government agency, performing research, providing IT support/services, or engaging other similar projects essential to a U.S. government agency.

The document also provides exemptions to foreign workers who have taken jobs from Americans in “critical infrastructure,” such as the TVA jobs blocked by Trump:

The applicant’s proposed job duties or position within the petitioning company indicate the individual will provide significant and unique contributions to an employer meeting a critical infrastructure need.  Critical infrastructure sectors are chemical, communications, dams, defense industrial base, emergency services, energy, financial services, food and agriculture, government facilities, healthcare and public health, information technology, nuclear reactors, transportation, and water systems.

“The people who are doing this are ignoring the president,” said Miano. “I can only guess at their motivations, but we can say it is Deep State acting independently.”

“In a close election, with time running out, with [2016] expectations not met … Trump needs things to go smoothly from now till November, and this list clearly he has people in the  State Department sabotaging him,” said Miano.

“When word of this gets out to the public that every E.O. he writes is not worth the paper it is written on,” said Lynn.  “Because through exceptions, they become get nullified by the Deep State, he loses the voters’ trust and confidence.”

He added: “What good is a State Department that becomes the tool of corporations that want to displace Americans, when tens of millions of Americans are under extreme financial duress?”

The State Department did not respond to emails from Breitbart News requesting comment.

Sen Kamala Harris is a product of Silicon Valley's billionaires and will enforce their agenda in DC.
Eg, she's an author of the S.386 bill that allows the Fortune 500 to hire more white-collar workers from India for jobs needed by America's college grads 
https://t.co/gKCuD9DH5z

— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) August 12, 2020

2020 ElectionImmigrationPoliticsH-1B VisasJ-1L-1Mike PompeoOutsourcingU.S-India Outsourcing Economyvisa workers

 

Wall Street Praises Kamala Harris as Joe Biden’s VP: ‘What’s Not to Like?’

Wall Street executives are praising Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden’s choosing Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) as his running mate against President Trump, feeling they dodged a bullet from a progressive insurgency.

In interviews with the Wall Street JournalCNBC, and Bloomberg, executives on Wall Street expressed relief that Biden picked Harris for vice president on the Democrat ticket, calling her a “normal Democrat” who is a “safe” choice for the financial industry.

Morgan Stanley Vice Chairman Tom Nides told Bloomberg that across Wall Street, Harris joining Biden “was exceptionally well-received.”

“How damn cool is it that a Black woman is considered the safe and conventional candidate,” Nides said.

Peter Soloman, the founder of a multinational investment banking firm, told Bloomberg he believes Harris is “a great pick” because she is “safe, balanced, a woman, diverse, what’s not to like?”

As the Journal notes, many on Wall Street see Harris is another conscious decision by the Democrat establishment to stave off populist priorities to reform Wall Street:

To some Wall Street executives, Ms. Harris’s selection signals a more moderate shift for the Democratic Party, which its progressive flank has pushed to the left in recent years. [Emphasis added]

“While Kamala is a forceful, passionate and eloquent standard-bearer for the aspirations of all Americans, regardless of their race, gender or age, she is not doctrinaire or rigid,” said Brad Karp, chairman of law firm Paul Weiss, who co-led a committee of lawyers across the country who supported Ms. Harris during the primary. [Emphasis added]

Marc Lasry, CEO of Avenue Capital Group, called Harris a “great” pick for Biden. “She’s going to help Joe immensely. He picked the perfect partner,” Lasry told CNBC.

Executives at Citigroup and Centerview Partners made similar comments about Harris to CNBC and the Journal, calling her a “great choice” and “direct but constructive.”

Founder of financial consulting firm Kynikos Associates Jim Chanos was elated in an interview with Bloomberg over Harris joining Biden on the Democrat ticket:

“She’s terrific,” said Chanos, founder of Kynikos Associates. “She’s got force of personality in a good way. She takes over a room. She certainly has a charisma and a presence which will be an asset on the campaign.” [Emphasis added]

Harris is no stranger to praise from Wall Street executives. In the 2019 Democrat presidential primary, Harris won over a number of financial industry donors, even holding a fundraiser in Iowa that was backed by Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.

While criticizing “the people who have the most” in Democrat primary debates, Harris raked in thousands in campaign cash from financial executives from firms such as the Blackstone Group, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and Wells Fargo.

This month, the New York Times admitted the “wallets of Wall Street are with Joe Biden” in a gushing headline about the financial industry’s opposition to Trump:

Financial industry cash flowing to Mr. Biden and outside groups supporting him shows him dramatically out-raising the president, with $44 million compared with Mr. Trump’s $9 million.

Harris’s views on trade and immigration, two of the most consequential issues to Wall Street, are in lockstep with financial executives’ objective to grow profit margins and add consumers to the market.

On trade, Harris has balked at Trump’s imposition of tariffs on foreign imports from China, Mexico, Canada, and Europe — using the neoliberal argument that tariffs should not be used to pressure foreign countries to buy more American-made goods and serve as only a tax on taxpayers.

Likewise, the Biden-Harris plan for national immigration policy — which seeks to drive up legal and illegal immigration levels to their highest levels in decades — offers a flooded labor market with low wages for U.S. workers and increased bargaining power for big business that has long been supported by Wall Street.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

 

 

Sold Out: How High-Tech Billionaires & Bipartisan Beltway Crapweasels Are ScrewingAmerica's Best & Brightest



By Michelle Malkin and John Miano

Mercury Ink, 480 pp.

Hardcover, ISBN: 1501115944, $16.80

http://smile.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1501115944/centerforimmigra

Kindle, 10644 KB, ASIN: B00VBW3SYQ, $14.99

Book Description: The #1 New York Times bestselling author and firebrand syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin sets her sights on the corrupt businessmen, politicians, and lobbyists flooding our borders and selling out America’s best and brightest workers.

In Sold Out, Michelle Malkin and John Miano reveal the worst perpetrators screwing America’s high-skilled workers, how and why they’re doing it—and what we must do to stop them. In this book, they will name names and expose the lies of those who pretend to champion the middle class, while aiding and abetting massive layoffs of highly skilled American workers in favor of cheap foreign labor. Malkin and Miano will explode some of the most commonly told myths spread in the media like these:

Lie #1: America is suffering from an apocalyptic “shortage” of science, technology, engineering, and math workers.

Lie #2: US companies cannot function without an unlimited injection of the most “highly skilled” and “highly educated” foreign workers, who offer intellectual capital and entrepreneurial energy that American workers can’t match.

Lie #3: America’s best and brightest talents are protected because employers are required to demonstrate that they’ve made every effort to hire American citizens before resorting to foreign labor.

For too long, open-borders tech billionaires and their political 
enablers have escaped tough public scrutiny of their means and 
motives. Sold Out is an indictment of not only political corruption in Washington, but also the journalistic malpractice that enables it.
It’s time to trade the whitewash for solvent. American workers 
deserve better and the public deserves the unvarnished truth.

Tech Elites Endorse Joe Biden to Secure More Foreign Workers for U.S. Jobs

JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

20 Sep 202021

3:23

Tech industry elites have endorsed Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden, citing their opposition to President Trump’s efforts to prioritize Americans for high-paying tech jobs in the United States.

Twenty-four winners of the Turing Award, considered the Nobel Peace Prize for computer science, have endorsed Biden on the premise that the former vice president will allow the tech industry to import more foreign workers, specifically those on H-1B visas, to fill coveted U.S. jobs.

The list includes Google executive Vinton Cerf, Pixar executive Ed Catmull, Facebook executive Yann LeCun, and Alphabet executive John Hennessy.

“Information technology is thoroughly globalized. Academic computer science departments attract talented students, many of whom immigrate and become American inventors and captains of industry,” the executives and industry insiders wrote in their endorsement of Biden:

We celebrate open source projects, the lifeblood of our field, as exemplars of international collaboration. Computer Science is at its best when its learnings and discoveries are shared freely in the spirit of progress. These core values helped make America a leader in information technology, so vital in this Information Age. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris listen to experts before setting public policy, essential when science and technology may help with many problems facing our nation today. As American computer scientists and as US citizens, we enthusiastically endorse Joe Biden for President and Kamala Harris for Vice President. [Emphasis added]

Since mass unemployment hit the U.S., spurred by the Chinese coronavirus crisis, Trump signed an executive order halting a number of visa programs including the H-1B visa. Likewise, the Trump administration is eyeing H-1B visa reforms that would more effectively weed out the business model of outsourcing that has allowed American workers to be replaced by foreign H-1B visa workers.

In August, billion dollar tech corporations such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter signed onto a U.S. Chamber of Commerce lawsuit against Trump’s executive order — arguing that they have a right to import foreign workers to fill U.S. jobs.

Unlike Trump, Biden has promised to increase the number of foreign H-1B visa workers that tech corporations will be able to import every year. The practice is a boon to tech executives.

There are about 650,000 H-1B visa workers in the U.S. at any given moment. Americans are often laid off in the process and forced to train their foreign replacements, as highlighted by Breitbart News. More than 85,000 Americans annually potentially lose their jobs to foreign labor through the H-1B visa program.

Analysis conducted in 2018 discovered that 71 percent of tech workers in Silicon Valley, California, are foreign-born, while the tech industry in the San Francisco, Oakland, and Hayward area is made up of 50 percent foreign-born tech workers. Up to 99 percent of H-1B visa workers imported by the top eight outsourcing firms are from India.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

 

 

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