TECH BILLIONAIRES FOR MORE ‘CHEAP’ LABOR FOREIGNERS WILL OWN AMERICA SOON. JOE BIDEN AND KAMALA HARRIS ARE THEIR SERVANTS.
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/12/bidens-neo-fascist-tech-billionaire.html
As Biden takes office, the techies want what they paid for. Reuters reports that executives at top firms like Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft are gunning for jobs at the Departments of Defense, State, Justice, and Commerce and also eyeing influential posts at the Federal Trade Commission and beyond.
Watch–Josh Hawley: Congress ‘Bailed Out the Banks’ But Hesitant to Provide Americans with Stimulus Checks
C-SPAN
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18 Dec 20201,190
3:33
After bailing out the nation’s biggest banks, Congress is now hesitant on whether to provide Americans with a second round of stimulus checks as 24.5 million remain jobless or underemployed, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said in a speech on Friday.
During a speech on the Senate floor, Hawley blasted Congress — and specifically, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who objected to stimulus checks for Americans — for coming to the aid of Wall Street, Big Tech, and multinational corporations while arguing over whether to provide American citizens with direct relief following forced shutdowns by state and local governments.
Hawley’s plan would provide single Americans with $1,200 stimulus checks and couples with $2,400 checks. Each minor child in a family would be provided with a $500 check — the same plan was included in the CARES Act passed earlier this year.
Johnson objected to giving stimulus checks to Americans, saying he was concerned about the federal deficit, even as the spending bill would still include hundreds of billions of dollars worth of stimulus without the inclusion of Hawley’s plan.
“We bailed out the banks to such a tune that now they’ve got money left over,” Hawley said in response to Johnson. “Now we’re going to take money back because we spent so much on Wall Street and the banks in the first part of this year. That’s right.”
Working people have put America first again and again. They have come to this nation’s aid at every hour of need. It’s time the Senate put them first. Get them direct #covid relief now pic.twitter.com/u380twZK7Y
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) December 18, 2020
“Now, Wall Street is doing great. Big tech? They’re doing great. The big multinational corporations? Fantastic,” Hawley continued. “Working people? Working people are living in their cars. Working people can’t go to the doctor. Working people can’t pay their rent. Working people can’t feed their children.”
Hawley said the consideration of working and middle-class Americans “should be first … not last” when negotiating the stimulus package and asked Senators to explain to their constituents why they oppose direct relief to them.
“I just urge members of these bodies, go home and try explaining that to the people of your state,” Hawley said. “Go ahead. Just try. Try telling them why this body can bail out the banks.”
Indeed, the nation’s biggest banks were gifted billions in the CARES Act as they collected fee payments for processing loans to small businesses under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).
In April, class action lawsuits were filed against JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America for allegedly prioritizing large PPP loans by big companies with political connections ahead of small loans for small and medium-sized businesses. PPP was designed to be first come, first serve but the lawsuit claims the banks reshuffled their applications to prioritize which loans would make the most money for the bank.
There are currently 24.5 million Americans who are unemployed or underemployed, but all want full-time jobs, through no fault of their own mostly as a result of the pandemic. The economic nationalist policy has widespread, overwhelming support among Americans.
In September, a Gallup poll found that 70 percent of Americans supported a second round of stimulus checks, while polling from March by OnePoll found that 82 percent of Americans said stimulus checks should continue each month until lockdowns are completely ended.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
A new Gilded Age has emerged in America — a 21st century version.
The wealth of the top 1% of Americans has grown dramatically in the past four decades, squeezing both the middle class and the poor. This is in sharp contrast to Europe and Asia, where the wealth of the 1% has grown at a more constrained pace.
COVID-19 bill that stiffed workers full of handouts to big busines
The COVID-19 relief bill passed by Congress this week provided a pittance for workers affected by the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. But in recent days it has emerged that the bill is stuffed full of handouts to major businesses and the superrich.
Included in the combined relief and spending bill are generous tax incentives for large businesses totaling over $110 billion for liquor producers, wind energy lobbyists, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) and electric motorcycle manufacturers. The Washington Post reported that the “tax extenders” are “something of a year-end tradition” frequently added to large bills at the behest of industry lobbyists.
Speaking to the Post, Howard Gleckman, a tax policy expert at the Urban Institute, characterized them as a “gravy train for members and lobbyists.” He added that these are “classic special interest tax breaks that do not benefit the overall economy in any way.”
One extender, lobbied for by liquor and alcohol giants, Anheuser-Busch and Bacardi North America, re-ups tax cuts that first became law in 2017 but were set to expire this year without congressional approval. In an interview with the Post, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden (Oregon) defended the cuts as a way to “help small brewers and wineries.”
The extender granted to NASCAR goes back to 2004 and will help Brian France and the rest of the France family, owners of NASCAR and worth a reported $5.7 billion, to continue claiming tax breaks on their facilities through 2025. Another extender will grant a tax credit to purchasers of electric motorcycles worth up to $2,500, or 10 percent of the cost of the vehicle.
The bill also includes the so-called “three martini lunch” provision, which allows business executives to deduct their meal expenses at 100 percent, compared to the previous 50 percent, which will lead to a $5 billion reduction in tax revenue, according to the Tax Foundation. While Trump has championed this provision since April, the stimulus bill failed to include a $120 billion fund that had been lobbied by the National Restaurant Association (NRA), which reported that employment within the industry remains 2.1 million jobs below its pre-coronavirus level.
To add insult to injury, Trump threatened to veto the bill Tuesday, raising the prospect that millions of desperate people will not get any assistance at all for weeks.
While the bill is the largest in US history at nearly 6,000 pages, not a single line was devoted to protecting career federal employees from political retaliation and terminations. Two weeks before the election Trump issued an executive order which allowed him to reclassify federal employees and civil servants that work within government agencies, such as the Office of Budget and Management, allowing them to be dismissed with little cause, similar to political appointments. It is unknown how many of the 2.1 million federal workers, many of whom deal with crafting policy or giving confidential advice top officials, could be affected.
The $900 billion so-called relief bill which has been attached to a $1.4 trillion omnibus package also does not add any language to thwart a recent executive order issued by the Trump administration that strips most civil service protections from thousands of federal employees, opening them up to termination with little cause or recourse.
Far from providing direct immediate relief for the hundreds of thousands of businesses that have closed their doors, the bill earmarks $284 billion to refill the corporate slush fund known as the Paycheck Protection Program. Ostensibly created to allow small businesses to receive low-interest loans which can be turned into grants in order to retain workers, instead, the program has been seized upon by major restaurants, hotel chains, political consulting firms, and profitable companies to enrich themselves, and generate billions in fees for major banks, while laying off thousands of workers.
Meanwhile, the “relief” is a fraction of the jobless aid workers and their families received at the beginning of the year. The bill only extends federal unemployment benefits for 11 weeks at $300 a week and a one-time direct payment of $600, half of the $1,200 included in the CARES Act. Student dependents would not be eligible for the check, nor would immigrants without a social security number. The bill only renews the Centers for Disease Control eviction moratorium for just one month, until January 31, 2021.
Both vital measures are set to expire on the 26th and the 31st respectively, leaving roughly 13 million people collecting unemployment with nothing the day after Christmas, while some 19 million are facing eviction January 1, 2021. It should also be noted that the moratorium has not prevented hundreds of thousands of people from being evicted.
Despite the frenzied character of the past two weeks of negotiations, the fact is both political parties have deliberately denied unemployment aid to workers in an attempt to blackmail them into going back to work in order to generate profits.
While Congress was able to come together and nearly unanimously pass the CARES Act at the end of March, which provided some $6 trillion to the Treasury and Federal Reserve; the meager assistance for jobless workers in the form of $600-a-week unemployment payments through July and a one-time $1,200 direct payment was deemed a “disincentive” by the ruling class and hindrance to the continued extraction of surplus labor value. Hence, the deliberate delay and the demand by President-elect Joe Biden that schools be reopened, no matter what, within the first 100 days of his administration in order to force parents back on the job.
As Congress dithers over the peanuts that will be spared in order to prevent a mass social movement from below, thousands of families are wondering where they will be sleeping after being evicted despite the CDC moratorium. Speaking to CNN, Jordan Mills, along with her partner Jonathan Russel and their two-year-old daughter Valkyrie, were evicted this month even after providing a CDC declaration to her landlord and court, as well as making a payment plan with her landlord.
“People like me are still being evicted for nonpayment,” she told CNN. Mills attempted to appear at her court hearing to challenge the proceeding. However, she was unable to attend because of the cost of parking. “I couldn’t afford parking; it is all $20. I’m literally living hand to mouth. I got paid yesterday. I have $4 to my name.”
Job prospects remain slim for millions of workers whose industries have been wiped out by the ongoing pandemic. The latest initial claims from the U.S. Department of Labor revealed another historic week of job losses with 803,000 initial claims filed last week. Additionally another 397,511 claims were filed under the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, created for contracted, the self-employed and “gig” workers, bringing the total number of first-time claims above 1.2 million, which under any other circumstances would be considered catastrophic.
Over 20.3 million people are collecting some form of unemployment, a slight decrease from the previous week, reflecting the fact that several states’ funding has dried up or the jobless have used up all their eligibility. Approximately 5.44 million people are collecting state benefits, while roughly 9.2 million are collecting federal benefits through the PUA program and nearly 4.8 million are collecting through the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, which provides 13 weeks of payments for those whose state benefits have expired.
Since the initial surge in unemployment claims in mid-March following the implementation of haphazard lockdown measures, over 72 million initial claims have been filed, nearly double the 37 million claims filed throughout the Great Recession in 2008. The unprecedented levels of job loss and the social misery that accompany it, coupled with the growing realization that whatever meager assistance emerges will not be nearly enough to recover what has been lost, are driving millions of jobless workers and their families into destitution.
Exemplifying the severe and unequal character of the social crisis, while US billionaire wealth has grown by over $1 trillion since the start of the pandemic, American personal incomes fell by 1.1 percent, or $221.8 billion, in November. In Illinois, the Greater Chicago Food Depository released a report on Tuesday showing that an average of 50 percent more people in Cook County were seeking help this year compared to last year. Citing research from Feeding America, which estimates that 54 million in the US face food insecurity, nearly 270,000 more households compared to 2018 had trouble finding enough to eat.
Whatever Frankenstein monster of a bill emerges from the protracted political maneuvering and backroom deals that has delayed and denied relief for millions of people for months leading to unnecessary hardship and mass death, the inescapable fact is that the US government has no interest in safeguarding the lives and well-being of the majority of the population. The fight to save lives, end the pandemic, and provide housing and food for all begins with recognizing that workers must organize for their own interests on a shared class basis in opposition to the entire capitalist system.
Home Buying Boom Lost Steam in November As Sales Unexpectedly Fell To Slowest Pace Since June
The homebuying boom of 2020 appears to have lost some steam in November.
Sales of newly built homes fell sharply in November to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 841,000, according to data released by the Census Bureau Wednesday. That was below the estimates of Wall Street’s economists and 11 percent lower than the downwardly-revised October pace.
New home sales make up for a small part of the overall housing market but can have outsized impacts on the economy. Homebuilding is labor-intensive, requiring workers up and down the skill-ladder. New homes get outfitted with new appliances, driving sales of durable goods. Even car sales are correlated with new home sales.
A report on previously owned homes released Tuesday showed falling sales as well. Together, the reports suggest that the housing market is dimming.
Sales fell in all parts of the country, led by a 43 percent decline in the Midwest. Sales in the West fell 17.3 percent. Sales in the South, the biggest market for new homes, fell by just 1.9 percent. They were down 2.5 percent in the Northeast.
The median price of new homes for sale was $335,300, a decline from October but 5 percent above the year-ago level. Sales held up better at the higher end of prices than at the lower end, with sales of homes priced over $750,000 actually rising a bit.
Steeply rising prices may be cooling the desire of some city-dwellers to move into the suburbs in search of more space, privacy, and safety from violent crime.
Despite the slowdown in November, new home sales were up 20.8 percent year-over-year in November. Year-to-date sales are up 19.1 percent. So although the market cooled, it remains hot by historical standards.
Household income and spending declined in November, so part of the sales decline may be due to tightening financial constraints on families. Rising unemployment and layoffs may also be discouraging families from locking money up in a home purchase.
The seeming victory of Joe Biden, who has promised radical new housing policies aimed at reshaping the suburbs, may also be discouraging homebuyers. The prospect of higher capital gains taxes and higher income taxes could also weigh on demand for housing.
The monthly data on new home sales can be volatile and is frequently subject to large revisions. Most analysts would look to longer-run trends rather than assuming a major shift has occurred because of a single report. In the November report, however, the higher sales of earlier months received significant downward revisions, which may indicate that some of the strength of the housing market was exaggerated by inflated numbers.
Consumer Sentiment Tumbled in Late December
Consumer sentiment in the U.S. deteriorated in late December but remained above its November level, the University of Michigan’s survey of consumers showed Wednesday.
The biggest shift from the mid-month reading came in the current conditions gauge, reflecting the surge in infections following Thanksgiving weekend and the return of lockdowns.
The second and final December reading of the consumer sentiment index fell to 80.7 from the preliminary reading of 81.4 earlier in the month. In November, the index had fallen to 76.7.
Economists had expected a higher reading of 81.
Much of the gain compared with the prior month is due to Democrats becoming more hopeful, a shift that has outpaced Republicans turning negative.
“The improvement was due to a large and rapid partisan shift, with Democrats becoming much more positive and Republicans much more negative,” the survey’s chief economist, Richard Curtin, said.
Curtin described the partisan shift:
The largest change was in long term business prospects, as twice as many Democrats as three months ago expected a continuous expansion over the next five years (54% up from 27%), while that same favorable expectation was nearly cut in half among Republicans (32% down from 60%).
The measure of current conditions rose to 90 in the final December reading from 87 last month. This was a move down from the mid-month level of 91.8 and is 18.7 percent lower than the year ago level.
The index that measures expectations for the next six months rose to 74.6 from 70.5 in November and remained largely unchanged from the mid-month level.
The pandemic has opened up a gap between how consumers see their own current personal financial situation and their assessments of the overall economy, according to Curtin.
Curtin explained:
Trends in how consumers evaluate their own finances and how they assess changes in the national economy have followed a close association over the past half century. Since the start of the pandemic, however, a huge divide has grown across households in how they assess their own personal finances: the finances of those that continue to be employed and working at home have remained positive while those who have lost jobs and incomes have been quite negative. Growing inequalities have also been due to rising home and stock prices. In contrast, nearly everyone has reported negative assessments of current conditions in the national economy.
This is evidence for what has been described as the “k-shaped” recovery, with some consumers doing much better than others. It might also explain why consumer spending has been more resilient than expected.
Curtin says the data suggests the economic growth will be shaky for some time.
“While the rollout of the vaccine has been greeted as the beginning of the end, the end of the pandemic is still on the distant horizon in terms of a return to normalcy for consumer behavior, even among the most favored households. Precautionary motives will continue to shape both economic and personal behavior,” Curtin said.
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