Now, let me take you through the provisions, only
one of which — the break for the Trumps, the
Kushners and their ilk — has attracted meaningful
public attention.
one of which — the break for the Trumps, the
Kushners and their ilk — has attracted meaningful
public attention.
The CARES Act Sent You a $1,200 Check but Gave Millionaires
and Billionaires Far More
The stimulus checks were meant to get average Americans
through the lockdown, but those $1,200 payouts were small change compared with
the billions in tax breaks the CARES Act handed out to the country’s
wealthiest.
by Allan Sloan June 8, 5 a.m. EDT
President Donald Trump hands pens to Treasury Secretary
Steven Mnuchin, left, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, center, after
signing the CARES Act on March 27. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
Do you want to see how legislation that was supposed to be a
bailout for our economy ended up committing almost as much taxpayer money to
help a relative handful of the non-needy as it spent to help tens of millions
of people in need? Then let’s step back and revisit parts of the Coronavirus
Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act and look at some of the numbers involved.
The best-known feature of the CARES Act, as it’s known, is
the cash grant of up to $1,200 per adult and $500 per child for households
whose income was less than $99,000 for single taxpayers and $198,000 for
couples. These grants are nontaxable, which makes them even more valuable. Some
159 million stimulus payments have gone out, according to the IRS.
The income limits suggested that the plan benefits the people
most in need, those most likely to spend their stimulus payments and thus help
the economy. The rhetoric conveyed the same: “The CARES Act Provides Assistance
to Workers And Their Families” is how the Treasury’s website puts it. There
were no grants to more-fortunate people, who for the most part aren’t in
financial distress and are less likely than the less-fortunate to spend any
money that Uncle Sam sent them.
But when I began looking at details of the legislation, I
realized that several of its provisions quietly provided benefits that were
worth much more than $1,200 to some upper-middle-class people who didn’t
qualify for stimulus payments. Some other provisions provided vastly bigger
benefits to the rich, to corporations and to a relative handful of ultra-rich
folks.
So let me show you five provisions of the legislation that
benefited the upper middle class (including yours truly); the families of
Donald Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner; high-income people who make
large charitable donations; and Boeing and other corporations that are showing
losses; as well as indirectly benefited people who have substantial investments
in U.S. stocks.
These five provisions that help the well-heeled will cost the
Treasury — which is to say, U.S. taxpayers — an estimated $257.95 billion for
the 2020 calendar year. That’s nearly as much as the estimated $292.37 billion
price tag for the stimulus grants to regular folks. The numbers are from
Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation, the official scorekeeper of the
financial impact that legislation has on the Treasury. (I used those figures to
calculate the spending for the 2020 calendar year rather than for 10 federal
fiscal years because I’m interested in today’s impact, not the projected
long-term impact.)
I’m writing this now, more than two months after the CARES
Act took effect, as a cautionary tale. That’s because with massive unemployment
upon us and the fall elections drawing near, there’s a temptation for Congress
and Trump to produce legislation that will help needy people a bit but help the
non-needy a lot more by doing things like reducing capital gains taxes.
Now, let me take you through the provisions, only one of
which — the break for the Trumps, the Kushners and their ilk — has attracted
meaningful public attention.
Eliminating Required Distributions From Retirement Accounts:
$11.72 billion
People ages 72 and up who have IRAs or 401(k)s or other
“defined contribution” retirement accounts must take federally taxable required
minimum distributions from them every year. (Some states also tax these
distributions.) People who inherit such accounts are also required to take
annual distributions, regardless of their age.
The required distribution amount is based on year-end age and
account balances. For example, if you were 75 at year-end — as I was — your RMD
for this year is 4.37% of your year-end 2019 retirement account balances. If
you were 76, it’s 4.55%.
But this year, thanks to the CARES Act, I don’t have to take
any retirement distributions at all.
Not having to take distributions matters a lot to some
people. For instance, if I took my full RMD this year, which I don’t plan to
do, it would be one of my larger income sources. And I would have to pay
federal and state income tax on it, regardless of whether I spent the money or
saved it.
I’d like to tell you how many people the JCT expects to
benefit from this year’s RMD waiver; how much their distributions would have
totaled and what the tax rate on them would have been; and how many people the
JCT expects to take distributions this year even though they’re not required to
take them. Alas, the JCT doesn’t disclose this information and declined to
share it with me.
But even though I don’t have specific numbers, it’s clear
that most of the benefit from this year’s RMD waiver goes to well-off people.
Why? Because people who need retirement account money to live on are going to
take distributions, and people who don’t need the money are unlikely to take
distributions.
The reason for the no-RMD provision is that the stock market
was sinking rapidly in March, when the CARES Act was being discussed. The
Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, for example, fell by 30.8% from the end of
2019 through its low for 2020 (at least so far) on March 23, a few days before
Trump signed the CARES Act legislation. Congress didn’t want to penalize
retirees by forcing them to sell stock during a market crash.
So if someone with a 4.37% required distribution had money in
an S&P 500 index fund, our investor would have had to withdraw 6.32% of the
fund’s balance (4.37 divided by 69.2) rather than 4.37% of it if the investor
took the distribution on March 23. That would have hurt our investor’s future
financial security.
If the market fell by 50% through year-end, which in the
scary days of March seemed to be a distinct possibility and could still happen,
our theoretical investor would have to cash out 8.74% of the account if RMDs
were still required.
There were other ways to deal with this problem, such as
letting people take a pass on their first $15,000 of RMDs, rather than giving a
big break to the likes of me and a far bigger break to people with far larger
retirement accounts than mine. But Congress and Trump didn’t do that.
Charitable Deductions: $4.83 billion
Normally, people who itemize deductions on their federal tax
return can deduct no more than 60% of their adjusted gross income for
charitable contributions. But for this year, the limit is 100% of AGI.
The Tax Policy Center, whose research helped inform this
article, estimates that about two-thirds of the people who donated more than
60% of their AGI in past years had incomes of less than $100,000. But although
such people accounted for the bulk of those making such large contributions
relative to their income, the TPC says, “Most of the value of the deduction
goes to just a small number of the very wealthy.”
The theory behind raising the limit this year is that it will
encourage people to make larger donations than they otherwise would. But I
can’t imagine how this provision — like the provision allowing people who take
the standard deduction to subtract $300 from their taxable income for
charitable contributions — is going to significantly increase donations to
charities trying to help people cope with COVID-19.
The $4.83 billion JCT number for this provision’s cost to the
Treasury includes tax savings for both individuals and corporations.
Pass-Through Entities: $140.61 billion
Now, we come to the huge item that benefits the likes of
Trump and Kushner, their families, other wealthy real estate types, hedge fund
investors and all sorts of ultra-high-income people, who derive large amounts
of money from partnerships, LLCs and other so-called pass-through entities.
As you’ll see in a bit, this big-time break provides a
big-time benefit to a relative handful of people.
Now that it’s a fait accompli, this provision is belatedly
getting a lot of media attention. So I’ll spare you most of the details about
how it allows the ultra-wealthy to use paper losses to offset income that was
taxed in previous years, when tax rates were higher than they are now, and get
refunds based on those old, higher rates.
Suffice it to say that the JCT estimates that about 82% of
these benefits — let’s call it $115 billion — will go to about 43,000 taxpayers
with $1 million or more in annual income. That’s an average of about $2.68
million each.
The new proposed stimulus package passed by the Democratic-controlled
House of Representatives — the HEROES (for Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus
Emergency Solutions) Act — would repeal this provision. However, its prospects
for passage in the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has called
the HEROES Act a “totally unserious effort,” seem remote. He and other Senate
Republicans insisted on making the break for pass-through entities part of the
CARES legislation. It’s hard to imagine them allowing any new bailout
legislation to reverse that benefit. I’m sure Democrats realized this but
wanted to go on record as opposing the pass-through break.
The HEROES Act would also repeal the $10,000 limit on
deductions for state and local income and real estate taxes, which Republicans
included in the 2017 tax cut legislation to reduce the cost to the Treasury of
the big cuts they gave to corporations and ultra-high-income people. (Not
coincidentally, the cap hurt people in high-income, high-tax blue states.) It’s
hard to imagine this provision becoming law, either.
Now, let’s look at two corporate tax breaks inserted in the
CARES Act. One lets corporations increase their interest deductions; the second
lets them use tax losses from 2018, 2019 and this year to get immediate,
substantial refunds rather than having to wait until they show future profits
that offset those losses.
The people who benefit most from these corporate tax breaks,
of course, are the corporations’ owners. (Workers, in theory, benefit to some
extent, as well.)
By increasing companies’ cash flows and reported earnings,
these breaks help the share prices of corporations whose stock is publicly
traded and help increase the value of privately held corporations.
Stock ownership by individuals is concentrated among
higher-income people.
Corporate Interest Deductions: $12.09 billion
One of the reforms of the 2017 tax act was reducing the
amount of interest that corporations could deduct on their federal tax returns.
The idea was to reduce the attractiveness of debt, which is subsidized by
taxpayers and carries big risks to corporate owners as well as employees. (For
examples, see the recent bankruptcies of Neiman Marcus and J. Crew, which were
burdened with debt, part of it incurred to pay fees and distributions to the
buyout firms that had taken them over.)
The CARES Act undid part of the 2017 act by increasing the
deductible level to 50% of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and
amortization from the previous 30%.
Like some of the other provisions that we’ve looked at, this
doesn’t involve a lot of money relative to the numbers that we’re dealing with.
But it’s symbolic. And the people benefiting the most from it because they have
major investments in stocks aren’t likely to be worrying about how to pay for
food or avoid losing their homes.
Corporate Loss Treatment: $88.70 billion
This does the same kind of thing for corporations that the
pass-through provision we discussed earlier does for LLCs and partnerships and
such. But it hasn’t attracted anything like the same attention that the
pass-through giveaway has gotten because it doesn’t involve names like Trump
and Kushner.
Until now, corporations that had losses last year and this
year could carry them forward to offset taxes for future years, but they
couldn’t apply them to get refunds of taxes paid in previous years.
Corporations can now apply losses from this year, last year
and 2018 to income from the previous five years. That’s going to be a big deal
for companies — can you say Boeing? — that are likely to show losses.
What’s more, these companies can get refunds of up to 35% of
the losses they carry back to 2017 and earlier years, even though the corporate
tax rate is now only 21%. The rationale is that because the corporate tax rate
was 35% before 2018, companies should be able to get refunds today based on
what they paid then, not on what they’d be paying now.
So this pays off on multiple levels: The beneficiaries not
only benefit today from current and recent losses rather than having to wait
until they have profits in the future, but they get a much bigger bang for the
buck.
Our country is suffering through major, major problems. We’ve
got more than 100,000 people dead from COVID-19, unemployment levels not seen
since the Great Depression, and protests and civil unrest in cities and towns
across the country. We’re appropriately adding trillions of dollars to our
national debt to try to forestall an economic meltdown. Let’s just hope that
further federal aid goes to those who really need it. And doesn’t go to those
who don’t.
Court Fines Trump $2 Million for Diverting Money From
Veterans Fundraiser to His Campaign
An honest businessman. Photo: Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images
Ajudge ordered
President Trump to pay $2 million to a group of charities on Thursday, ruling
that the president had broken the law by directing the proceeds from an event
advertised as benefiting veterans to his presidential campaign instead.
The lawsuit stems
from the wild days of the 2016 Republican primary. Because of a feud he maintained with Fox News at the time, Trump decided to skip a debate hosted by the network just before
the Iowa caucuses in January 2016, and hold his own, competing event instead —
a televised fundraiser for veterans. Shockingly enough, it turned out the event
wasn’t quite on
the level. Rather than having the foundation run the event and direct all
proceeds to the charities, as promised, Trump did something quite different. As
New York State Supreme Court Justice Saliann Scarpulla put it in her decision
on Thursday:
Mr. Trump’s fiduciary duty breaches included allowing his
campaign to orchestrate the Fundraiser, allowing his campaign, instead of the
Foundation, to direct distribution of the Funds, and using the Fundraiser and
distribution of the Funds to further Mr. Trump’s political campaign.
The lawsuit was
brought by New York State attorney general Barbara Underwood, who announced
last year that the Trump Organization would shut down amid her investigations into its well-documented chicanery.
Though Trump had said on Twitter that he would
fight the fundraiser case, his lawyers and the state have been in talks for
months to negotiate a settlement.
It’s a loss for
Trump, but $2 million is a minor blow in his universe — and the judge could
have been harsher. She decided not to impose any punitive damages on the
president, nor impose lifetime bans on him and his children from serving on the
boards of New York–based charities in the future, conditions the state had been
seeking. (Though she did put into place other restrictions involving his future
charitable endeavors.)
Trump suffered another legal setback on Monday, when a federal appeals court ordered him to produce eight
years of his personal and corporate tax returns, in a case likely headed for
the Supreme Court.
Company With Ties To Trump Receives Millions From Small
Business Loan Program
Jovita Carranza, head of the
Small Business Administration, addresses the press earlier this month at the
White House, as Vice President Pence and President Trump listen.
Alex
Brandon/AP
While many small businesses have found it difficult or
impossible to get one of the Small Business Administration's Paycheck
Protection Program loans, a company owned by a prominent Chicago family with
close ties to the Trump administration was able to get a $5.5 million loan
under the program, according to documents the company filed with the Securities
and Exchange Commission on Monday.
U.S. Ambassador to Belgium Ronald Gidwitz, who was appointed in
2018, was then-candidate Donald Trump's campaign finance chair for Illinois in
the 2016 presidential campaign. According to filings with the SEC, Gidwitz's
family owns the majority of Continental Materials Corp., which secured the 1%
interest loan.
Continental Materials makes heating and cooling equipment and
construction products. While it had more than $100 million in sales last year,
it qualified for the loan because it meets the Small Business Administration's
industry-specific "small business" size standards, according to
company chief financial officer Paul Ainsworth.
Still, the company's loan is much
larger than the typical PPP loan, according to a summary released by the Small
Business Administration last week. The average loan was just over $200,000, and
fewer than 1% of the loans under the program were greater than $5 million.
Ainsworth told NPR the money would be used to pay the company's
445 employees in the face of slowing demand for its products.
"We had planned to furlough people and we delayed those
plans," he said. "To the extent that we had to let people go, we're
hiring them back."
While the company may qualify as a small business under the PPP
program, there are many much smaller businesses that have been unsuccessful in
obtaining or even applying for the loans from their banks.
The business advocacy group NFIB
surveyed a random sample of the 300,000 businesses in its membership database
and found that only about 72 percent of businesses
that tried to apply for a PPP loan were able to successfully submit an application.
Continental Materials will be able to pay back the loan over two
years and may qualify for it to be forgiven.
When asked, Ainsworth said the loan is not related to any
political activities of company leaders, and he noted Ronald Gidwitz resigned
when he was appointed ambassador.
Gidwitz was confirmed to the ambassadorship by the Senate by
voice vote in June 2018. He announced his resignation from the company's board
a few days later in July, according to company SEC filings.
'Our
middle class is dying': Tucker Carlson blames 'advisers' in Trump orbit for
'tidal wave' of immigration
Fox News host Tucker
Carlson ripped some within President Trump's "orbit" for attempting
to place corporate interests ahead of American workers' welfare during the
coronavirus pandemic.
On his Tuesday night
show, Carlson critiqued Trump advisers, who he alleges crafted a temporary
suspension of immigration without addressing key concerns of the working class.
"The president is
worried about preserving American jobs," Carlson said.
"Unfortunately, and this seems to be the key, some in his orbit are not as
concerned. Their main worry is making donors happy. And if there's one thing
that donors love always, it's cheap employees. Yes, our middle class is dying
at a faster clip than ever before."
Carlson said the
suspension doesn't address the hundreds of thousands of temporary and guest
workers who vie with Americans for industrial and agricultural jobs.
The Fox News host
claimed the suspension was written by out-of-touch staff members who are
"more worried about what their friends think" of the immigration
measures instead of protecting the jobs of citizens.
Carlson noted the suspension
does not apply to a massive section of immigrants who fight with Americans for
working-class jobs.
"The new
moratorium on immigration will last for 60 days," Carlson said. "The
ban will apply only to individuals seeking permanent residency into this
country."
Carlson said Trump's
ban, which could be extended after the two-month period ends, does not apply to
hundreds of thousands of temporary and guest workers who vie with Americans for
industrial and agricultural jobs.
"The purpose of
this tidal wave of immigration has nothing to do with what advocates of
immigration claim immigration is for," added Carlson. "These visas do
not improve American society in any way. We have no moral obligation to give
them. There is no mention of guest workers on the Statue of Liberty."
“Our
entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike,
has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world
hell-holes.
This
is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” --- Karen
McQuillan
While many small businesses haven't been able
to get one of the federal government's Paycheck Protection Program loans, a
Chicago company with close ties to the White House has.
Continental Materials Corporation is majority owned by the family of Ronald Gidwitz, who is now the U.S. ambassador to Belgium. During the 2016 election campaign, Gidwitz was the Trump campaign's Illinois finance chair. The heating and cooling company, which had sales of more than $100 million last year, got a $5.5 million loan at 1% interest. That’s much larger than the typical PPP loan, which is usually just over $200,000.
Trump: New York AG
‘Deliberately Mischaracterizing’ $2 Million Settlement ‘For Political Purposes’
Share
President Donald Trump accused New York Attorney
General Letitia James of “deliberately mischaracterizing” the details of a $2
million settlement reached on Thursday.
New York Judge Saliann Scarpulla ruled that
Trump must pay $2 million as part of a
settlement he, the Trump Foundation, and James’s office reached in a lawsuit
alleging Trump misused his charitable foundation during the 2016 campaign.
Scarpulla said Trump let his campaign
hold a foundation fundraiser in January 2016 and used it “to further Mr.
Trump’s political campaign.”
The foundation received $2.8 million
from the fundraiser and the money “did ultimately reach their intended destinations,
i.e., charitable organizations supporting veterans,” Scarpulla ruled.
Instead of the entire $2.8 million
that James’s office pushed for, Scarpulla ordered Trump to pay $2 million. She
also declined a statutory penalty of $5.2 million that James’s office wanted
the president to pay.
James celebrated the ruling on
Wednesday.
“We’ve secured a court order forcing
President Trump to pay $2M in damages after admitting to illegally using the
Trump Foundation to help him intervene in the 2016 presidential election and
further his own political interests. No one is above the law,” she said in a
statement.
In another statement, she wrote, “The
court’s decision, together with the settlements we negotiated, are a major
victory in our efforts to protect charitable assets and hold accountable those
who would abuse charities for personal gain. My office will continue to fight
for accountability because no one is above the law—not a businessman, not a
candidate for office, and not even the President of the United States.”
Scarborough then launched into his own
conspiracy theory:
But I think we all will be absolutely
fascinated when we finally figure out what Vladimir Putin has on Donald Trump and why Donald Trump has surrendered the
Middle East, helped ISIS, helped Iran, helped Russia, helped Turkey, helped all
of our enemies and betrayed all of our allies. You know, a lot of people think that it’s – he
has compromising pictures or something happened in a hotel in Russia years ago.
No. It goes back to money. It’s always about money.
GET
THIS BOOK!
Peter
Schweizer, author of “Secret
Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family
and Friends,”
Bailout
of US corporations expands while workers see little relief
Two weeks after the passage of the $2.2 trillion coronavirus
pandemic corporate bailout bill, grotesquely misnamed the CARES Act, it is
clear that it was only the initial shot in the funneling of countless trillions
of dollars to the corporate-financial aristocracy that rules America.
While billions have already flowed to the corporations and
banks, the limited provisions of the act that were touted by both parties as a
boon to working people hit by the shutdown of much of the economy have yet to
kick in, and for millions they likely never will.
The act includes $454 billion as a Treasury backstop to
enable the Federal Reserve to provide some $4 trillion in cheap loans
to major corporations and banks, meaning the real scale of the
bailout—thus far—is more than $6 trillion.
The vast bulk of the money allocated goes to covering any losses
suffered by major corporations and fueling a new surge in the stock market.
That it has succeeded, at least for the present, in lifting the markets is seen
in more than 10 percent surge in the Dow over the past several trading days.
This has occurred in the midst of an ever-rising toll of death and suffering
from the pandemic and grim projections by bankers and economists of a
depression-level contraction in the economy and a catastrophic growth of
unemployment.
The expanding scale of the bailout and euphoria on the financial
markets, alongside the economic and social catastrophe facing the broad mass of
the population, demonstrates that the interests of the ruling class and those
of the working class are diametrically opposed. The response of the
ruling elite and its two political parties to the crisis has from the onset
been single-mindedly focused on defending the economic interests of
corporate-financial oligarchy, no matter the cost in human life.
In just the last several weeks, the Federal Reserve Board has
announced at least 12 major measures to rescue the financial markets and backstop
big business. These include:
· Two emergency interest rate cuts, bringing the benchmark lending
rate back down to near-zero
· A pledge to purchase at least $500 billion in Treasury
securities and $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities and to continue the
program for “as long as needed”
· Nearly unlimited sums in short-term loans to 25 large financial
institutions that control the market for repurchase agreements, or repos,
including $1.5 trillion in the days following the announcement
· Foreign exchange swap lines, the purchase of short-term loans to
US corporations in the commercial paper market, short-term loans to 24 large
financial institutions, and, for the first time ever, direct purchases of
corporate bonds and direct loans to corporations.
The Wall Street Journal quoted Jean Boivin, head of BlackRock Investment
Institute, as saying, “The amount of measures taken in a short amount of time
is surreal and unprecedented.”
“It’s kind of crazy how they’ve almost done as much in this week
as they did in several months in 2008,” JPMorgan’s chief US economist Michael
Feroli said last month. “Now they do have the advantage of just being able to
dust off [former Fed Chairman] Bernanke’s playbook.”
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell gave a blanket
guarantee of unlimited funds to corporate
America, telling the “Today” show this week,
“Where credit is not flowing, we have the
ability in this unique circumstance to step in
and provide those loans.”
Now both the Trump administration and the Democrats have
committed to provide an additional $250 billion to the so-called “Paycheck
Protection Program.” That is the Orwellian name given by the two parties to the
$350 billion program ostensibly established to provide government-backed loans
to small businesses, many of which face bankruptcy as a result of the shutdown
of much of the economy, and save the jobs of their workers over the next eight weeks. (That this is
farcically inadequate, even if implemented in full, in the midst of the
greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, is self-evident).
The program is designed to provide a windfall for the big banks,
which actually extend and administer the loans that are backed by the Small
Business Administration (SBA). This ensures that Wall Street receives billions
of dollars in fees and other charges.
On the eve of the official launching of the program last Friday,
the law was amended, under pressure from the banks, to double the interest rate
from 0.5 percent to 1.0 percent. Now the banks are demanding that the Fed buy
any loans they extend to small businesses so as to remove them from their
balance sheets. This will allow them to more freely engage in financial
speculation and parasitic activities such as stock buybacks.
Moreover, the great bulk of the money will go not to mom-and-pop
groceries, gas stations or eateries, but rather to large corporations that are
included in the program. Thus, for example, the program was amended to include
billion-dollar restaurant and hotel chains.
Small businesses desperate for cash are finding it difficult if
not impossible to actually find lenders who will provide the loans, even if
their applications are approved by the SBA. Banks, intent on maximizing
profits, are turning down applications right and left.
Citigroup is refusing to participate. Bank of America is not
accepting applications from companies that have borrowed from other banks.
Wells Fargo says it has already reached “capacity.”
Hundreds of thousands of businesses have applied under the
program, but to date only a handful have received any money.
Meanwhile, congressional Democrats are pressing the Trump
administration to expand the $50 billion bailout of the airlines included in
the CARES Act. This is, supposedly, another “jobs-saving” effort. Delta, for
its part, has already laid off thousands of its employees.
There are no real restrictions in the law on how the
corporations use the money they are given by the government. No one should
doubt that the airline carriers, which spent some $16 billion over the past
three years to purchase their own stock—in order to further enrich their top
executives and major investors by driving up the stock price—will use their
bailout money to do more of the same.
The Trump administration, for its part, is reportedly
considering such additional “stimulus” measures as a payroll tax cut—which
would starve Social Security of funding—a capital gains tax cut, 50-year
Treasury bonds and a waiver that would relieve businesses of liability for
employees who contract the coronavirus on the job.
Trump has moved to negate even the token congressional oversight
of the bailout program mandated in the law. On Monday, he named a White House
lawyer and Trump loyalist, Brian Miller, as inspector general of the Treasury
Department’s $350 billion small business (“Payroll Protection Program”), and on
Tuesday he removed Glenn Fine as head of the Pandemic Response Accountability
Committee, tasked with monitoring the entire $2.2 trillion program. Trump
replaced him with a “senior policy adviser” at US Customs and Border
Protection, Jason Abend.
Workers are finding that the promised relief from the bailout
law—which accounts for only a small fraction of the total cost of the
measure—is uncertain if not entirely illusory.
The New York Times reported Monday that many Americans will not receive the
promised relief check of $1,200, plus $500 for each child, until August or
September. As many as 10 million low-income, childless adults who are eligible
for the stimulus payment program may receive nothing because they have not
filed tax returns. Millions more, including undocumented workers, prisoners,
students and adult dependents are excluded.
As for the $250 billion expanded jobless benefit part of the law,
which is supposed to extend state benefits for 13 weeks and add $600 a week in
federal funds for up to four months, workers are finding it all but impossible
to apply. Multiple state unemployment websites have crashed under the crush of
millions of applicants, and scenes of hundreds of workers lining up, in the
midst of a pandemic lockdown, to apply in person are proliferating around the
country.
Trump
pardons ruling class criminals
President Donald Trump issued 11 pardons or commutations of
sentence on Tuesday, choosing to expunge the lawbreaking records of billionaire
financier Michael Milken, the one-time “junk bond king,” and billionaire real
estate magnate Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., former owner of the San Francisco 49ers
professional football team.
He also pardoned former New York Police Commissioner Bernard
Kerik, convicted of tax fraud and perjury, and commuted the 14-year jail term
of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, impeached and then convicted on
multiple corruption counts, including attempting to sell the Senate seat of
Barack Obama after Obama’s election to the presidency in 2008. Blagojevich, a
Democratic congressman before his election as governor, was released from
prison immediately on Trump’s orders, and declared himself a “Trumpocrat” in
the 2020 election.
Former Illinois Governer Rod Blagojevich arrives home in Chicago
on February 19, 2020, after his release from prison [Credit: AP Photo/Charles
Rex Arbogast]
Trump’s actions in relation to Milken and De Bartolo are a clear
demonstration of class justice, in which billionaires are effectively above the
law. As one news report noted, there are only 600 billionaires in the United
States, very few of them face trial and conviction, let alone jail time, and
Trump has now pardoned three of them, including last year’s clemency for media
mogul Conrad Black—author of a fawning pro-Trump volume—who served nearly two
years in prison for fraud and embezzlement.
Milken was one of the most important actors in the
financialization of the US economy, devising “junk bonds”—high-risk,
high-return corporate securities that became a spearhead in the employer
offensive against the working class throughout the 1980s and beyond. Hedge
funds and private equity firms used junk bonds to finance leveraged buyouts of
companies and proceed to loot pension funds, slash wages and benefits, and
squeeze every penny of profit out of what frequently became empty shells.
In the process, Milken himself amassed a huge fortune, including
a then unprecedented income of $550 million in 1987, while running a unit of
Drexel Burnham Lambert, a second-tier Wall Street firm that rocketed to
prominence in that decade. These operations were portrayed in such books
as Den of Thieves and
films like Wall Street, whose lead character, Gordon Gekko, was modeled after Milken’s
partner-in-crime Ivan Boesky.
After pleading guilty to 10 counts of financial fraud in 1990,
Milken served less than two years at a “Club Fed” luxury prison for the rich.
He paid fines and restitution of $600 million, which barely made a dent in his
multi-billion-dollar fortune. Trump’s pardon message paid tribute to Milken’s
endowment of various medical charities and cancer research and hailed him as
“one of America’s greatest financiers.”
De Bartolo was charged with paying a $400,000 bribe in $100
bills to Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards, a Democrat, in return for state
government approval of a riverboat gambling project in which he had invested.
Edwards went to prison, while De Bartolo served no time but had to transfer
ownership of the 49ers to his sister. His nephew now runs the franchise. The
National Football League inducted De Bartolo into its Hall of Fame despite the
criminal conviction.
Blagojevich and Kerik are lesser figures in terms of wealth, but
gained national prominence in capitalist politics. Blagojevich was recorded in
a wiretap soliciting bribes and campaign contributions from the Service
Employees union and various wealthy individuals interested in his selection of
a successor to Obama in the US Senate.
Kerik is a longtime crony of Rudy Giuliani, now Trump’s personal
lawyer and political fixer. He was the driver and bodyguard for Giuliani during
his campaign for mayor of New York City, and Giuliani eventually elevated him
to police commissioner, where he was widely rumored to be receiving bribes from
organized crime families.
Despite this atrocious reputation, Kerik was actually chosen by
President George W. Bush to head the Department of Homeland Security, but had
to withdraw after corruption allegations surfaced. In 2009 he pled guilty to
charges of tax fraud and lying to investigators and spent three-and-a-half
years in federal prison.
All four men had high-level sponsors lobbying Trump personally
for clemency, including billionaires Sheldon Adelson, Tom Barrack, Ron Burkle,
Nelson Peltz, Richard LeFrak and Rupert Murdoch for Milken, Giuliani and
convicted war criminal Eddie Gallagher for Kerik, and Trump son-in-law Jared
Kushner for Blagojevich. The De Bartolo empire is based in northeast Ohio,
giving Trump an electoral incentive for that pardon.
The remaining seven pardons and commutations include a
Republican political operative, David Safavian, convicted in the Jack Abramoff
corruption scandal, a Cuban-American businesswoman from south Florida convicted
in a massive Medicare fraud scheme, and two other corporate executives
convicted on fraud and tax charges (one a significant Trump campaign donor).
Trump also pardoned three minority women convicted of nonviolent
or white collar crimes, to serve as window dressing, but no minority men. As
one account of the pardons and commutations noted, Trump has pardoned only one
African American man in more than three years in office, and the beneficiary of
that pardon had been dead for 72 years when it was issued: the late boxer Jack
Johnson, whose conviction by an all-white jury took place more than a century
ago.
The timing of the pardon and commutation decisions was
significant from a number of standpoints. They had clearly been delayed until
after Trump himself was acquitted in the Senate trial on impeachment charges
brought by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, in order to
avoid giving his political enemies additional ammunition.
And they come as part of a broader political offensive launched
by Trump in the wake of impeachment, including firing or removing officials who
testified in the impeachment inquiry or opposed his actions in delaying US
military aid to Ukraine, the action that sparked his impeachment, and demanding
that charges be quashed against his own associates arising from the
investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
The pardons were issued only two days before Judge Amy Berman
Jackson is to impose a sentence on Roger Stone, a longtime Trump crony, for
lying to Congress and the FBI and witness intimidation in a case that stems
from the investigation by Mueller into alleged Russian interference in the 2016
US presidential election.
After federal prosecutors last week recommended a jail sentence
of seven to nine years for Stone, Attorney General William Barr intervened and
overturned the recommendation, proposing instead that the judge take a far more
lenient approach.
All four prosecutors resigned from the case in protest of Barr’s
action, and a petition calling for Barr’s resignation and opposing White House
interference in the handling of federal criminal cases has been signed by more
than 2,500 former federal prosecutors and other former officials of the
Department of Justice.
Trump has attacked Judge Jackson on twitter several times in the
past two weeks, leading the chief judge of the District of Columbia District
Court, Beryl Howell, to issue a statement declaring that “Public criticism or
pressure is not a factor” in judges’ rulings or sentencing decisions. The
Federal Judges Association, an informal lobby of more than 1,000 jurists,
scheduled an emergency meeting for Wednesday, although the meeting was called
off at the last minute without explanation.
Judge Jackson is to sentence Stone today, but she seemed to bow
to White House pressure by declaring in advance that she would not give effect
to any sentence until the motion by Stone’s attorneys for a new trial had been
adjudicated. In other words, Stone will not go to prison soon, if at all.
In the meantime, Trump’s pardons have sent a clear message that
he is prepared to dole out similar treatment to Stone, former campaign manager
Paul Manafort, retired Gen. Michael Flynn, and other Trump allies who have pled
guilty to crimes like fraud and perjury.
In response to media attacks and even a mild critical remark
from Attorney General Barr, who said Trump’s tweets were making his job more
difficult, Trump has renewed his declarations that he is “the chief law
enforcement officer of the country,” with unlimited power to intervene in the
criminal justice system as he pleases.
In the wake of the impeachment debacle for the Democrats, Trump
is asserting quasi-dictatorial powers, defying any effort to set limits on the
power of the executive branch.
Trump
Exempts Fortune 500’s Visa Workers from Immigration Curb
21 Apr 20201,661
6:34
President
Donald Trump has exempted the Fortune 500’s international labor supply from his
order for a temporary immigration shutdown.
“This order will only apply to
individuals seeking a permanent residency,” Trump said in an April 21
press conference at the White House. He said:
It would be wrong and unjust for
Americans laid off by the virus
to be replaced with new immigrant labor flown in
from abroad. We must first take care of the American worker —
take care of the American worker. This pause will be in
effect for 60 days, after which the need
for any extension or modification will be evaluated by
myself and a group of people, based on economic
conditions at the time.
…
[It] will not apply to
those entering on a temporary basis. As we move forward, we’ll
examine what additional immigration-related measures should be
put in place to protect U.S. workers. We want to protect our U.S.
workers and I think as we move forward, we will become more
and more protective of them … The last thing we want to do is
take American workers’ jobs.
Thee white-collar reporters did not ask
Trump why he exempted the corporate visa workers from taking jobs away from
other white-collar Americans. One reporter, however, asked him if he is using
the coronavirus epidemic to fulfill a campaign promise to reduce legal
immigration.
“I want our citizens to get jobs — I don’t
want them to have competition,” Trump responded, adding that the policy
document is being drafted for signature, likely on Wednesday.
“The decision not to block guest worker
programs — for now — is a concession to the backlash from business groups who
assailed the White House on Tuesday,” reported a New York Times article.
“President Donald Trump’s new executive
order banning immigration to the United States will apply narrowly to those
seeking permanent immigration status, a senior administration official said on
Tuesday,” said a Reuters report. The
report added, “Other workers such as those on so-called H1-B visas would
be covered in a separate action, the official said.”
The rollback of the expected curbs on visa
programs will be a huge disappointment to the many American graduates who say
they have been pushed out of Fortune 500 jobs and careers by the alliance of
U.S. investors, managers, and foreign visa workers.
Many advocates for American graduates & workers cheered when Trump
announced his temporary immigration shutdown.
Business & investors, of course, oppose any shutdown of their
foreign-graduate pipeline. #H1B https://bit.ly/3cDouJ0
Pro-American Activists: Trump's Temporary Immigration
Halt Is 'Awesome'
So Trump will come under increasing
pressure during the 2020 campaign to fulfill his 2016 promise to curb the H-1B
visa. That pressure will come from millions of swing-voting graduates who see
good jobs disappearing all around them — and see the major companies employing
roughly 1.5 million white-collar visa workers.
In fact, his promise of the 60-day review
is his invite to millions of swing-voting American graduates to rally against
the visa worker programs during the 2020 presidential election.
The college graduate protest will be spiked
by the continued economic turmoil and the routine inflow of foreign visa workers.
For example, Trump’s federal government is on track to allow U.S. companies to
import 85,000 new H-1B workers during the next several weeks.
Fortune 550 companies, smaller companies,
and universities keep a population of roughly 1.5 million visa workers in U.S.
jobs, and they also use those workers to transfer many additional jobs to
corporate allies in India and other countries.
The NYT article
did not include any detail about the draft directive, which may split the
difference between business demands and the public’s support for a shutdown of
immigration and of many visa worker programs.
But the article included comments from
advocates for the nation’s powerful and wealthy technology companies.
Business groups had exploded in anger on
Tuesday at the threat of losing their access to foreign labor .
…
“This is both a political act to demagogue
and distract from his awful handling of the Covid-19 crisis and lack of
testing,” said Todd Schulte, the president of FWD.us, a technology group that advocates for
immigration, “and it is also a policy effort by hardliners to use this crisis
to enact their awful, decades-old wish list to radically slash immigration.”
…
Jason Oxman, president of the Information
Technology Industry Council, a tech industry trade group, said in a statement
earlier on Tuesday that “the United States will not benefit from shutting down
legal immigration.”
The members of Oxman’s group include Accenture, Adobe, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, IBM, and PWC. Many of these Fortune 500
companies sideline American graduates to hire foreign visa workers via programs
such as the H-1B and Occupational Practical Training
program.
The ITI group also includes some of the
Indian-run outsourcing companies that import many visa workers from India. The
Indian-run companies include Cognizant and Tata Consultancy Services. Indian-run companies supply visa
workers to many banks, insurance companies, utilities, auto manufacturers, and
many other companies.
Some of the most recognizable and dynamic
American technology companies were started by immigrants, and today’s
immigrants to the U.S. are valuable members of the U.S. technology
industry workforce … the United States will not benefit from shutting down
legal immigration. Tech workers – whether from the United States or another country
– are playing an essential role in America’s response to COVID-19. They will be
vital to the U.S. economic recovery and must remain part of the workforce. We
urge President Trump not to endanger the country’s economic recovery by closing
its economy to the rest of the world.
Trump's migration suspension will protect wages, esp. for
blacks & Latinos, says WH press secretary.
That might mean easy action against the abuse of B-1
visitor-not-worker visas.
White House Says Immigration Suspension Will Protect
Wages
DHS Allows Agricultural
Guestworkers to Stay Indefinitely
By Preston Huennekens
ImmigrationReform.com
https://www.immigrationreform.com/2020/04/16/guestworker-agriculture-dhs-h2a-immigrationreform-com/
Big Business Complains of Labor Shortage, High Wages While 22M
Americans Out of Work
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
19 Apr 2020950
7:20
Big business and Big Agriculture is complaining
of labor shortages and high wages while the Chinese coronavirus crisis has
spurred mass unemployment with at least 22 million Americans out of work.
While
unemployment among Americans climbs to
record levels, with now at least 22 million out of work in the last four weeks,
employers who hire H-2A and H-2B foreign visa workers continue to complain that
the United States is facing a labor shortage and that wages are too high.
Executives
with the American Farm Bureau Federation, one of the leading cheap labor
lobbying organizations, are backing a
reported plan to federally lower wage rates for
imported H-2A foreign visa workers that are brought into the U.S. to work on
farms:
Paul
Schlegel, vice president of public affairs at the American Farm Bureau
Federation, said it’s important to address the [Adverse Effect Wage Rate] at
a time when labor-intensive produce farms have lost much of their markets due
to COVID-19. [Emphasis added]
“The closing
of restaurants, hotels and tourism is forcing farmers to plow under their
fields to cut their losses,” Schlegel said. “Asking farmers to pay
artificially high wages at a time when their own income has largely evaporated
due to the COVID-19 pandemic is not right.” [Emphasis added]
The plan
under consideration by the Agriculture Department would allow farmers to pay
H-2A foreign visa workers wages below existing rates. The wage reduction policy
would be coupled with the State Department’s fast-tracking of
H-2A foreign visa workers into the U.S.
American
Farm Bureau Federation executives praised the
Agriculture Department for issuing visa waivers to more readily fast-track H-2A
foreign visa workers, calling it “critically important.”
As federal
data shows, H-2A
foreign visa workers make up only about ten percent of the total U.S. crop farm
workforce and the program is already used by
farmers to pay imported foreign workers less than their American counterparts.
The H-2A
visa program has no numerical limit. Last year, U.S. farmers hired roughly
250,000 H-2A foreign visa workers.
Gaston
Marquevich, the CEO of Generation Farms — one of the largest crop growers of
carrots and sweet onions on the East Coast — told TheStreet.com that
his corporation has successfully imported foreign workers in the middle of the
crisis:
Yeah, I
think there is an issue, of course. There are many issues. One of the
issues is a labor shortage. So, we started to work a conversation a month
ago. So, but yeah, right in time when this COVID-19 came to us. So we normally
use, in between Florida and Georgia, we normally use 1,200 employees as labor.
So, we applied to the aid program. So normally, the program takes three
months, and the last two or three year was taking like six months because all
of this and then changes on the immigration policies, rules. [Emphasis
added]
So we’ve
been very, very stressed about getting all the employees in place to allow us
to pick up the crop from the ground. So we connect, a month ago, we contact the
USDA team, the team that works with the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, and they
basically have been very flexible, very cooperative with us, and they count on
the USCIS in California. So in California, they contact the U.S. embassy in
Monterey and finally we get 500 employees in Florida and 450 in
Georgia. So we don’t have the 1,200 that normally we use, but we are okay with
it the 950 right now. [Emphasis added]
On April
6, USA Today published the
grievances of a local California agriculture reporter who argued that farmers
are struggling “to find workers” despite mass unemployment:
A crippling
labor shortage has affected nearly every corner of California agriculture. Increased
competition for workers continues as wine grape growers lose labor to
commercial cannabis growers — who can offer higher wages, stable employment and
better working conditions because of how lucrative the crop is. [Emphasis
added]
These
complaints have also been echoed by the employers of H-2B foreign visa workers,
whereby more than 66,000 foreign nationals are imported every year to take
seasonal, nonagricultural jobs. The State Department, in the midst of the
coronavirus crisis, is allowing employers to fast-track these foreign workers
by waiving certain visa requirements.
Still, big
business has claimed they are struggling to hire folks to take jobs. In a
Bloomberg News report, an attorney for H-2B visa employers said that
while millions are out of work, his clients still need imported foreign labor:
The holding
pattern “shows the lack of understanding the government has of how the H-2B
program is essential to the economy,” said Jeff Joseph, an
attorney with Joseph & Hall in Aurora, Colo., who represents companies that
employ H-2B workers. Some industries are operating as usual “regardless of the
pandemic,” he said, and need workers going into the summer and fall. [Emphasis
added]
“Without
clear, transparent information from the government on how long this shutdown is
going to last, those people still need the workers,” he said, adding
that his clients that employ H-2B workers—including resorts, landscaping
companies, and outdoor-adventure operators—haven’t been laying off workers.
[Emphasis addd]
Less than a
month ago, Maryland seafood processors complained that
they needed more H-2B foreign visa workers even after Acting Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Chad Wolf promised businesses an additional
35,000 foreign workers to hire:
Jack Brooks,
co-owner of J.M. Clayton Seafood Co. in Cambridge, and
president of the Chesapeake Bay Seafood Industries Association, said he
expects a worker shortfall, despite the government’s action. [Emphasis
added]
Initially,
the Department of Homeland Security doled out 33,000 work visas, which are in
effect for six months beginning April 1. With the added 35,000 visas,
the total still falls well short of the 100,000 slots that U.S. employers
nationally had sought to fill. [Emphasis added]
While big
business and Big Agriculture ask for more foreign workers, a number of leading
conservative voices have asked President Trump’s administration to pause
immigration to the U.S. — a plan supported by
nearly 80 percent of Americans, according to the latest Ipsos poll.
Former
Sen. Jeff
Sessions and Laura Ingraham have
said the nation’s unemployment totals should be eased by
stopping increased labor market competition against unemployed Americans via
legal immigration.
Such a pause
to immigration would come after
four decades of the U.S. admitting 525,000 to 1.8 million legal immigrants
annually. The U.S., at current legal immigration levels, admits more
legal immigrants than any other country in the world and has done so for more
than two decades.
US farm relief program hands billions to agribusiness while millions
lack food
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced
plans on Friday, April 17, for a farm relief program. Funded largely through
the CARES Act, the $19 billion package will be used to funnel funds to
corporate farms while providing little assistance for the vast majority of
small or working farmers.
Like other government programs to help farmers, most of this
money will end up in the hands of agribusiness. The majority of farmland is
owned by farms grossing over $500,000 in sales, a figure that demonstrates the
demise of the American family farm. In total, $16 billion will be handed
directly to farmers, of which $9.6 billion goes to the livestock industry. This
funding will be given largely as reimbursements for “losses” and will not be
contingent upon providing food to those in need.
The remaining $3 billion will be used to purchase $100 million
each of produce, meat and dairy that will be distributed to food banks,
nonprofits and community and faith organizations every month. This is a paltry
sum, amounting to just 27 cents a day for every food insecure person, a figure
that will only decline as America’s now 22 million unemployed seek assistance.
It will also provide funds to distribute 1,000,000 meals a week
to children in “a limited number of rural schools.” How this would actually be
done given the wide dispersion of such students, many of whom rode buses for an
hour or more to reach their schools, is unclear.
This bailout is intended to offset financial losses from the
collapse of distribution systems during the pandemic. While grocery stores are
having difficulty keeping their shelves stocked, much of the food in the
pipeline is packaged in bulk quantities for institutional buyers such as
restaurants and schools.
The closure of restaurants, schools and other institutional
buyers has resulted in farmers destroying millions of pounds of food as their
distribution chains are disrupted. This is not because there is no demand, but
because transitioning to retail packaging is too costly. It is cheaper to
destroy food than to repackage it and send it elsewhere.
This mass destruction of crops and dairy products comes at a
time when millions of Americans have lost their jobs and are now turning to
food banks to feed their families. Some food banks are reporting an increase in
demand as high as 300 percent. Lines of cars in
the thousands have been reported queuing up at food
banks across the country.
But even if all the available food was sent to food banks, they
lack the necessary resources and equipment to handle such an expansion in
supply. A study of food banks in San Diego County, California, found that in
2015 less than half of food banks had enough refrigerator space and only 54
percent had enough freezer space to service people in need. If food banks
around the country did not have enough storage space before the pandemic, there
is no reason to believe that they are prepared to handle a huge rise in demand
or supply.
Feeding America, one of the largest organizations representing
food banks, estimates that an additional $1.4 billion is needed to cover the
increasing operating costs of food banks, an insignificant amount compared to
the $2 trillion granted to bail out the banks and corporations.
Whether or not food banks and charities can handle a massive
influx is not issue for the capitalist class and the state that protects it.
They do not care whether people receive enough food, as long as the
agricultural industry remains profitable and the pretense of aid is maintained.
There is not even mention in the legislation of providing
agricultural and food processing workers with aid. Without proper protective
equipment, these workers are at great risk, and migrant workers in particular
are threatened with destitution without income support.
Farm laborers earn between $15,000 and $24,499 a year, according
to official figures, with a quarter living below the poverty line. Already
working and living in horrid conditions, these workers face privation during a
global health crisis. Suffering similarly horrendous conditions, meat packing workers
are kept on the job while the virus is allowed to tear through their plants. It
has already taken several lives and infect ed hundreds of workers. These
workers need aid far more than the capitalists who exploit them.
The ruling class has made it clear with this relief program that
it only cares about protecting profits at the expense of workers. Kenneth
Sullivan, CEO of the meatpacker Smithfield Foods, said, “We have to operate
these processing plants even when we have COVID. If we don’t, we sadly won’t
have food.”
This is a falsehood. Tens of millions of pounds of food are
being destroyed while the USDA estimates that 2.4 billion pounds of meat sits
in cold storage—enough to cease all meat packaging for several weeks until
protective measures are put in place.
An estimated 3.7 million gallons of milk are dumped every day,
enough to provide all 37 million food insecure people with two quarts a week.
There is plenty of food to last while measures are taken to protect workers,
both citizen and immigrant. The claim that workers must die to keep production
flowing is a nefarious lie.
What the working class needs is not a haphazard dumping of goods
into food banks and charities, but an adequate income so that all working
people can afford to buy food, and an adequate supply so that the food is
available to those who want it.
This should be combined with a coordinated effort to reorganize
food supply chains to meet social needs. The vast resources of the state and
private industry must be placed under the control of the working class, with a
coordinated and scientific plan for the safe harvesting and distribution of
agricultural goods.
The retooling of currently unused supply chains is a necessary
and far from impossible task. Restaurants, schools and hotels must have their
cold storage resources reconverted into temporary distribution centers for
those in need. One restaurant in Baltimore, Maryland, called La Cuchara, has
already repurposed its supply chain to create a makeshift grocery store. The
widespread capacity for converting existing resources is apparent.
But such changes must be made to feed the working class, not to
benefit the capitalists who would sacrifice millions of workers to the virus to
keep their profits flowing.
Analysis:
Less than 10 Percent of Immigration Affected by Trump Order
22 Apr 20201,214
3:08
Less than ten percent of the total number of green cards
rewarded annually to foreign nationals will be affected by President Donald Trump’s
executive order temporarily pausing a sliver of legal immigration to the United
States.
On Wednesday, Trump signed an
executive order pausing employment-based
and extended family green card categories for 60 days. The order is much
narrower, according to Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, than originally intended.
Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) Director of
Research Matt O’Brien told Breitbart News in a statement that Trump’s order
will likely only slow about 5,000 to 80,000 green card applications — less than
ten percent of the roughly 1.2 million green cards that are given to foreign
nationals every year.
O’Brien said the at least 60-day delay for these green card
applicants may go unnoticed to many attempting to enter the U.S. as standard
visa processing has already been disrupted due to the Chinese coronavirus
crisis.
“There are a larger number of temporary visa applicants who
could be nominally affected by any moratorium,” O’Brien said. “However, since
air, land, and marine travel across U.S. borders is virtually shut down anyway,
it’s difficult to say whether these folks will even notice a temporary pause in
the processing of their visa applications.”
During a segment on Wednesday, Carlson said Trump’s original
draft of the executive order “would have suspended several guest worker
programs, the ones that prevent qualified Americans from getting jobs” but that
the draft was later gutted down to only include a small group of
employment-based and extended family green card applicants who are not yet in
the U.S.
“Every year, 180,000 new H-1B visas are awarded, and more than
200,000 are extended for a longer period. These are not for people picking
grapes or lettuce. These are for people making good wages in white-collar
jobs,” Carlson said. “Currently, there are about 470,000 active beneficiaries
of this program … suspending that program for a year would open up a massive
number of jobs at a time when we desperately need them because we have so many
unemployed more than ever.”
“The final version … does not restrict any foreign workers at
all,” Carlson said. All of them are free to keep coming here and taking
American jobs, including high-paying American jobs.”
Carlson said a number of officials with the White House,
Department of Labor, and the Council of Economic Advisors warned against
pausing foreign worker visa programs, concerned about the backlash from
multinational corporations like Apple.
“They argued that the unemployment benefits in the coronavirus
stimulus bill were so generous, that American citizens would refuse to go back
to work,” Carlson said. “So we have to bring in more foreigners. Welfare for
you. Real jobs for foreign nationals.”
Trump
Exempts Fortune 500’s Visa Workers from Immigration Curb
189LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP/Getty Images
21 Apr 20201,661
6:34
President
Donald Trump has exempted the Fortune 500’s international labor supply from his
order for a temporary immigration shutdown.
“This
order will only apply to individuals seeking a permanent
residency,” Trump said in an April 21 press conference at the White House. He
said:
It
would be wrong and unjust for Americans laid off by the virus
to be replaced with new immigrant labor flown in
from abroad. We must first take care of the American worker —
take care of the American worker. This pause will be in
effect for 60 days, after which the need
for any extension or modification will be evaluated by
myself and a group of people, based on economic
conditions at the time.
…
[It]
will not apply to those entering on a temporary basis. As we
move forward, we’ll examine what additional immigration-related
measures should be put in place to protect U.S. workers. We want to
protect our U.S. workers and I think as we move forward, we
will become more and more protective of them … The last
thing we want to do is take American workers’ jobs.
Thee
white-collar reporters did not ask Trump why he exempted the corporate visa
workers from taking jobs away from other white-collar Americans. One reporter,
however, asked him if he is using the coronavirus epidemic to fulfill a
campaign promise to reduce legal immigration.
“I
want our citizens to get jobs — I don’t want them to have competition,” Trump
responded, adding that the policy document is being drafted for signature,
likely on Wednesday.
“The
decision not to block guest worker programs — for now — is a concession to the
backlash from business groups who assailed the White House on Tuesday,” reported a New York Times article.
“President
Donald Trump’s new executive order banning immigration to the United States
will apply narrowly to those seeking permanent immigration status, a senior
administration official said on Tuesday,” said a Reuters report. The report added,
“Other workers such as those on so-called H1-B visas would be covered in a
separate action, the official said.”
The
rollback of the expected curbs on visa programs will be a huge disappointment
to the many American graduates who say they have been pushed out of Fortune 500
jobs and careers by the alliance of U.S. investors, managers, and foreign visa
workers.
Many advocates for
American graduates & workers cheered when Trump announced his temporary
immigration shutdown.
Business &
investors, of course, oppose any shutdown of their foreign-graduate pipeline. #H1B https://bit.ly/3cDouJ0
Pro-American
Activists: Trump's Temporary Immigration Halt Is 'Awesome'
So
Trump will come under increasing pressure during the 2020 campaign to fulfill
his 2016 promise to curb the H-1B visa. That pressure will come from millions
of swing-voting graduates who see good jobs disappearing all around them — and
see the major companies employing roughly 1.5 million white-collar visa
workers.
In
fact, his promise of the 60-day review is his invite to millions of
swing-voting American graduates to rally against the visa worker programs
during the 2020 presidential election.
The
college graduate protest will be spiked by the continued economic turmoil and
the routine inflow of foreign visa workers. For example, Trump’s federal
government is on track to allow U.S. companies to import 85,000 new H-1B
workers during the next several weeks.
Fortune
550 companies, smaller companies, and universities keep a population of roughly
1.5 million visa workers in U.S. jobs, and they also use those workers to
transfer many additional jobs to corporate allies in India and other countries.
The NYT article did not
include any detail about the draft directive, which may split the difference
between business demands and the public’s support for a shutdown of immigration
and of many visa worker programs.
But
the article included comments from advocates for the nation’s powerful and
wealthy technology companies.
Business
groups had exploded in anger on Tuesday at the threat of losing their access to
foreign labor .
…
“This
is both a political act to demagogue and distract from his awful handling of
the Covid-19 crisis and lack of testing,” said Todd Schulte, the president
of FWD.us, a technology group that advocates for
immigration, “and it is also a policy effort by hardliners to use this crisis
to enact their awful, decades-old wish list to radically slash immigration.”
…
Jason
Oxman, president of the Information Technology Industry Council, a tech
industry trade group, said in a statement earlier on Tuesday that “the United
States will not benefit from shutting down legal immigration.”
The members of Oxman’s group include Accenture, Adobe, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, IBM, and PWC. Many of these Fortune 500
companies sideline American graduates to hire foreign visa workers via programs
such as the H-1B and Occupational Practical Training program.
The
ITI group also includes some of the Indian-run outsourcing companies that
import many visa workers from India. The Indian-run companies include Cognizant and Tata Consultancy Services. Indian-run
companies supply visa
workers to many banks, insurance companies, utilities, auto manufacturers, and
many other companies.
Some
of the most recognizable and dynamic American technology companies were started
by immigrants, and today’s immigrants to the U.S. are valuable
members of the U.S. technology industry workforce … the United States
will not benefit from shutting down legal immigration. Tech workers – whether
from the United States or another country – are playing an essential role in
America’s response to COVID-19. They will be vital to the U.S. economic
recovery and must remain part of the workforce. We urge President Trump not to
endanger the country’s economic recovery by closing its economy to the rest of
the world.
Trump's migration
suspension will protect wages, esp. for blacks & Latinos, says WH press
secretary.
That might mean easy
action against the abuse of B-1 visitor-not-worker visas.
White
House Says Immigration Suspension Will Protect Wages
Todd
Schulte’s FWD.us group was created by West Coast investors, including Mark
Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, to help pass the 2013 “Gang of Eight” wage-cutting
amnesty bill.
Many
polls show that American voters like — and want to like — immigrants. But the
polls also show that the public strongly objects to companies hiring foreign workers before American employees. For example, an August
2017 poll reported that 68 percent of Americans
oppose companies’ use of H-1Bs to outsource U.S.-based jobs that could be held
by Americans.
Administration
officials are touting the draft policy as a boost to blue-collar wage earners
but apparently not to white-collar graduates:
FLASHBACK:
Then-Senator Barack Obama in 2006: “huge influx” of immigrants “threatens to
depress further the wages of blue-collar Americans and put strains on an
already overburdened safety net.” https://books.google.com/books?id=k85pcYttpW0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=audacity+of+hope&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjA0ZyBoI_ZAhUjwFkKHYmCC0UQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=%22the%20number%20of%20immigrants%22&f=false …
The
Audacity of Hope
FLASHBACK:
Senator Bernie Sanders in 2015: “You think we should open the borders and bring
in a lot of low-wage workers, or do you think maybe we should try to get jobs
for those [American] kids?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf-k6qOfXz0 …
Bailout of US corporations expands while
workers see little relief
Two weeks after the passage of the $2.2 trillion coronavirus
pandemic corporate bailout bill, grotesquely misnamed the CARES Act, it is
clear that it was only the initial shot in the funneling of countless trillions
of dollars to the corporate-financial aristocracy that rules America.
While billions have already flowed to the corporations and
banks, the limited provisions of the act that were touted by both parties as a
boon to working people hit by the shutdown of much of the economy have yet to
kick in, and for millions they likely never will.
The act includes $454 billion as a Treasury
backstop to enable the Federal Reserve to
provide some $4 trillion in cheap loans to
major corporations and banks, meaning the
real scale of the bailout—thus far—is more
than $6 trillion.
The vast bulk of the money allocated goes to covering any losses
suffered by major corporations and fueling a new surge in the stock market.
That it has succeeded, at least for the present, in lifting the markets is seen
in more than 10 percent surge in the Dow over the past several trading days.
This has occurred in the midst of an ever-rising toll of death and suffering
from the pandemic and grim projections by bankers and economists of a
depression-level contraction in the economy and a catastrophic growth of
unemployment.
The expanding scale of the bailout and euphoria on the financial
markets, alongside the economic and social catastrophe facing the broad mass of
the population, demonstrates that the interests of the ruling class and those
of the working class are diametrically opposed. The response of the
ruling elite and its two political parties to the crisis has from the onset
been single-mindedly focused on defending the economic interests of
corporate-financial oligarchy, no matter the cost in human life.
In just the last several weeks, the Federal Reserve Board has
announced at least 12 major measures to rescue the financial markets and
backstop big business. These include:
·
Two emergency interest rate cuts,
bringing the benchmark lending rate back down to near-zero
·
A pledge to purchase at least
$500 billion in Treasury securities and $200 billion in mortgage-backed
securities and to continue the program for “as long as needed”
·
Nearly unlimited sums in short-term
loans to 25 large financial institutions that control the market for repurchase
agreements, or repos, including $1.5 trillion in the days following the
announcement
·
Foreign exchange swap lines, the
purchase of short-term loans to US corporations in the commercial paper market,
short-term loans to 24 large financial institutions, and, for the first time
ever, direct purchases of corporate bonds and direct loans to corporations.
The Wall
Street Journal quoted Jean Boivin, head of BlackRock
Investment Institute, as saying, “The amount of measures taken in a short
amount of time is surreal and unprecedented.”
“It’s kind of crazy how they’ve almost done as much in this week
as they did in several months in 2008,” JPMorgan’s chief US economist Michael
Feroli said last month. “Now they do have the advantage of just being able to
dust off [former Fed Chairman] Bernanke’s playbook.”
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell gave a blanket
guarantee of unlimited funds to corporate
America, telling the “Today” show this week,
“Where credit is not flowing, we have the
ability in this unique circumstance to step in
and provide those loans.”
Now both the Trump administration and the Democrats have
committed to provide an additional $250 billion to the so-called “Paycheck Protection
Program.” That is the Orwellian name given by the two parties to the $350
billion program ostensibly established to provide government-backed loans to
small businesses, many of which face bankruptcy as a result of the shutdown of
much of the economy, and save the jobs of their workers over the next eight weeks. (That
this is farcically inadequate, even if implemented in full, in the midst of the
greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, is self-evident).
The program is designed to provide a windfall for the big banks,
which actually extend and administer the loans that are backed by the Small
Business Administration (SBA). This ensures that Wall Street receives billions
of dollars in fees and other charges.
On the eve of the official launching of the program last Friday,
the law was amended, under pressure from the banks, to double the interest rate
from 0.5 percent to 1.0 percent. Now the banks are demanding that the Fed buy
any loans they extend to small businesses so as to remove them from their
balance sheets. This will allow them to more freely engage in financial
speculation and parasitic activities such as stock buybacks.
Moreover, the great bulk of the money will go not to mom-and-pop
groceries, gas stations or eateries, but rather to large corporations that are
included in the program. Thus, for example, the program was amended to include
billion-dollar restaurant and hotel chains.
Small businesses desperate for cash are finding it difficult if
not impossible to actually find lenders who will provide the loans, even if
their applications are approved by the SBA. Banks, intent on maximizing
profits, are turning down applications right and left.
Citigroup is refusing to participate. Bank of America is not
accepting applications from companies that have borrowed from other banks.
Wells Fargo says it has already reached “capacity.”
Hundreds of thousands of businesses have applied under the
program, but to date only a handful have received any money.
Meanwhile, congressional Democrats are pressing the Trump
administration to expand the $50 billion bailout of the airlines included in
the CARES Act. This is, supposedly, another “jobs-saving” effort. Delta, for
its part, has already laid off thousands of its employees.
There are no real restrictions in the law on how the
corporations use the money they are given by the government. No one should
doubt that the airline carriers, which spent some $16 billion over the past
three years to purchase their own stock—in order to further enrich their top
executives and major investors by driving up the stock price—will use their
bailout money to do more of the same.
The Trump administration, for its part, is reportedly
considering such additional “stimulus” measures as a payroll tax cut—which would
starve Social Security of funding—a capital gains tax cut, 50-year Treasury
bonds and a waiver that would relieve businesses of liability for employees who
contract the coronavirus on the job.
Trump has moved to negate even the token congressional oversight
of the bailout program mandated in the law. On Monday, he named a White House
lawyer and Trump loyalist, Brian Miller, as inspector general of the Treasury
Department’s $350 billion small business (“Payroll Protection Program”), and on
Tuesday he removed Glenn Fine as head of the Pandemic Response Accountability
Committee, tasked with monitoring the entire $2.2 trillion program. Trump
replaced him with a “senior policy adviser” at US Customs and Border
Protection, Jason Abend.
Workers are finding that the promised relief from the bailout
law—which accounts for only a small fraction of the total cost of the
measure—is uncertain if not entirely illusory.
The New
York Times reported Monday that many Americans will not
receive the promised relief check of $1,200, plus $500 for each child, until
August or September. As many as 10 million low-income, childless adults who are
eligible for the stimulus payment program may receive nothing because they have
not filed tax returns. Millions more, including undocumented workers,
prisoners, students and adult dependents are excluded.
As for the $250 billion expanded jobless benefit part of the
law, which is supposed to extend state benefits for 13 weeks and add $600 a
week in federal funds for up to four months, workers are finding it all but
impossible to apply. Multiple state unemployment websites have crashed under
the crush of millions of applicants, and scenes of hundreds of workers lining
up, in the midst of a pandemic lockdown, to apply in person are proliferating
around the country.