Well, it
looks like the makeover has begun.
Corrupt
Joe Biden, who used his office to enrich himself and his family, to say the
least, is now the foreign policy maven, particularly on China. That's the spin
from the New York Times, which has beclowned itself badly, trying to tell the
audience that something smelly is shinola.
To voters unsettled by President Trump’s
disruptive approach to the world, Mr. Biden is selling not only his policy
prescriptions but also his long track record of befriending, cajoling and
sometimes confronting foreign leaders — what he might call the power of his
informal diplomatic style. “I’ve dealt with every one of the major world
leaders that are out there right now, and they know me. I know them,” he told
supporters in December.
Brett McGurk, a former senior State Department
official for the campaign against the Islamic State, said Mr. Biden had been an
effective diplomat by practicing “strategic empathy.”
And
unlike Trump, Biden was oh so personal, as well as "not an
ideologue."
Mr. Biden made a quick “personal connection” with
the Chinese leader, even if he sometimes confounded his Mandarin interpreter by
quoting hard-to-translate Irish verse, said Daniel Russel, an aide present at
several of the meetings.
“He was remarkably good in getting to a personal
relationship right away and getting Xi to open up,” Mr. Russel said.
Had
enough? The translation, according to Peter Schweizer's Profiles in Corruption
is:
For Vice President Joe Biden, effective diplomacy
was about forming personal relationships with foreign leaders. "It all
gets down to the conduct of foreign policy being personal." The vice
president had a series of important and tense meetings with Chinese officials
on a variety of critical matters in the bilateral relationship. The trip
coincided with an enormous financial deal that Hunter Biden's firm, Rosemont
Seneca, was arranging with the state-owned Bank of China. What Hunter did
during the official visit to Beijing we cannot know for sure. Other than a few
photo ops with his father, he was nowhere to be seen.
...and...
Approximately ten days after the Beijing trip,
Hunter Biden's Rosemont Seneca Partners finalized a deal with the Chinese
government worth a whopping $1 billion. The deal was later expanded to
$1.5 billion. As of this writing, the fund's website says its investments
amount to more than $2 billion.
It's important to note that this deal was with
the Chinese government--not with Chinese company, which means that the
Chinese government and the son of the vice president were now business partners.
Now
he's Mr. Congeniality, the perfect opposite of President Trump who confronts
China rather sternly on issues. To the Times, that's a bad thing. To the
average 'hey fat' out in the American heartland as Biden puts it, Trump's
diplomacy is actually standing up for the interests of Americans.
It's
also a disgusting double standard. Trump is no China hater - he does his best
to cut the best deal possible for main street America by driving a hard bargain
the Chinese know they have no choice but to accept. Any time Trump says
something concilatory to the Chinese, it's denounced as sucking up to
dictators, while any time Joe does it - pocketing the profits, which any
non-ideologue is adept at doing - he's Mr. Personality.
As
Mickey Kaus well observed:
When Trump does it it's coddling dictators, with Biden it's Strategic
Empathy! @michaelcrowley is at least a bit skeptical. https://t.co/Pnc9SqxAk4
— Mickey Kaus (@kausmickey) July
6, 2020
Here's
the problem with this kind of 'personal' diplomacy. It is very personal indeed
to Joe, given the wealth it has brought is family members. It's also very
dangerous, given that every string and hook China's oligarchs can get into him
makes him an even bigger sock puppet than he already was. Combine with the
world's dodgiest players considering Biden a non-entity (Osama bin Laden
considered Biden a fool) and the picture is a very ugly one for America's
interests.
Here's
the second problem: This apparent media makeover for Joe, painting him as the
great personal-touch diplomat who can get along with everyone is clearly the
new party line being promoted in the press, and we can expect to see lockstep
echoing of this embarassing face-lift. The JournoList talking points have gone
out and now the shots are fired. As those shots went out, attempting to boost
Joe while taking down Trump, the Chicoms themselves have been very active, too.
Just days ago, according to a report in the Daily Caller, the Chinese
investment firm that made Hunter a very rich man has quietly removed Hunter's
name as a board member. That's to help Joe win his presidential bid for sure,
which ought to make voters very wary given whose interests are being boosted.
Worse still, the Caller reports, they allowed him to keep his sizable stake in
the company - worth milions at least. No wonder he's comfortably ensconced in
the Hollywood Hills these days, bored and playing 'artist,' dodging release of
his financial statements to an Arkansas judge over a babydaddy case with a
stripper looking for child support. No wonder he apparently settled with the
woman and swept the whole thing off the front pages.
Now
the makeover is on, with the media ignoring the pocket-lining entirely -- the
New York Times makes simply no mention of it -- and the cash spigots still
going.
The
whole thing -- pocket-lining and media coverup is a disgusting double-load
of corruption that anyone with a brain can see right through. The GOP must keep
the heat onto this issue because it's being distorted beyond recognition.
Photo illustration by Monica
Showalter with use of images
by Gage
Skidmore, via Flickr // CC
BY-SA 2.0, Acaben,
via Wikimedia Commons // CC
BY-SA 2.0, PxFuel public domain,
and SKopp
via Wikimedia Commons // public domain
We're not buying Joe Biden's 'tough on China' Act
By Ken Blackwell
Joe
Biden is running away from his record as the "pro-China" candidate so
quickly that his defenders in the liberal press can't make heads or tails of it. Ordinary
Americans are equally confused.
Biden
spent over three decades opening American markets to Chinese goods, ignoring
China's abhorrent human rights record, and dismissing the challenge posed by
our greatest rival for global leadership. The "made in
China" era coincided with the closure of tens of thousands of American
factories, stagnant working-class wages, and the loss of America's ability to
produce essential goods domestically — a vulnerability that took on incredible
significance when we learned that we were dependent upon China to produce the
medical equipment needed to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
This
disaster was facilitated by politicians of both parties, and no one was
more gung ho than Joe
Biden, poster child for the globalism that reigned supreme until the
2016 presidential election, which Donald J. Trump won by campaigning on a
platform diametrically opposed to the "open markets and open borders"
philosophy of the D.C. establishment. In the White House, President
Trump became the first American leader in decades to take a firm stand against
China's malfeasance and demand a genuinely fair and reciprocal trade deal for
American workers.
While
Joe Biden was the vice president of the United States, conversely, he was downplaying the consequences of
China's rise — even as his own family tried to get rich through
deals with Chinese state-owned companies.
How
is it possible, then, that Biden has suddenly tried to recast himself as the
"tough-on-China" candidate in the 2020 race?
Biden's
campaign even ran an ad claiming the
president had "rolled over for the Chinese" in response to the
coronavirus that Beijing unleashed on the world. It's one of the
most poorly executed flip-flops in American electoral history, coming just
months after Biden called President
Trump's life-saving ban on most travel
from China "hysterical xenophobia."
No
one is buying it. Everyone knows about President Trump's record of
success in bringing China to the negotiating table through strategic
counter-tariffs. The "Phase One" trade deal that was inked
earlier this year represents the first major trade concessions from China in a
generation. Even the fanatical free-traders who actually liked Biden's
globalism see right through his new façade. The libertarians at the
Cato Institute, for instance, published an article
acknowledging that Biden's reversal is "futile" and "inherently
lacks credibility."
Even
the intellectual left is aghast at Biden's fake toughness on
China. The Atlantic called it "utterly
futile" and "pointless — even dangerous." The New
York Times published an op-ed all but begging Biden to drop the
act.
If
even his own supporters are rolling their eyes at Biden play-acting as a China
skeptic, why are he and his team even bothering to attempt the deception?
The
answer is simple. Americans have finally woken up to the economic
and national security threat posed by China. The coronavirus pandemic made that
threat impossible to ignore. No one wants to go into this November
as the "pro-Beijing" candidate.
Unfortunately
for Joe Biden, he's been the "pro-Beijing" candidate throughout his
political career, and there's a decades-long record to prove it.
Ken Blackwell served as mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio treasurer, and a
U.S. ambassador to the U.N. He currently serves on the board of
directors for Club For Growth.
Image: Marc Nozell via Flickr.
Hollywood is importing Chinese censorship to
the United States
by Zachary Faria, Commentary Fellow |
|
August 11, 2020 07:31 AM
Hollywood likes to hold
itself out as a progressive pioneer of social justice, but a new report
highlights how the desire to get films into the Chinese market leads major film
studios to violate their own social justice dogma. In fact, it often leads them
to import the values of the Chinese Communist Party — the organization with the
highest body count in human history.
The report by PEN America, a
nonprofit organization that promotes free expression in literature, examines a
collection of films that bowed to Chinese censorship in order to get access to
the Chinese movie market. China allows 34 foreign films
to be released in the country each year, and in 2018, quarterly revenue from
China surpassed the United States for the first time. Before the pandemic, it
was projected that revenue from China in 2023 would reach $15.5 billion.
Some Chinese censorship
is minor, propaganda that can only be caught by alert viewers. Paramount cut
the Taiwanese flag from Tom Cruise’s jacket for the Top Gun sequel,
while the DreamWorks film Abominable (a collaboration with
China’s Pearl Studio) featured the nine-dash line, a propaganda map asserting
China’s control of the South China Sea.
Hollywood studios will
often run afoul of the tenets of social justice they often push in the U.S.
Marvel notably whitewashed a major Tibetan
character in Doctor Strange to avoid offending the Chinese
government. Studios ranging from Warner Brothers to Paramount to Twentieth
Century Fox have either removed scenes of same-sex kissing from films or had
them removed by China when the films aired. A complaint from a religious group
in the U.S., on the other hand, would only draw mockery.
The most troubling
takeaway from the report is not that individual scenes are being censored or
self-censored but that studios have decided to base major film decisions on
China, sometimes even unprompted. Marvel infamously brought in
Chinese regulators during the filming of Iron Man 3 to ensure
the movie stayed inbounds and added extra scenes to the Chinese version of the
film showing Chinese doctors saving Iron Man’s life.
The days of Hollywood
backing human rights in its work have disappeared. The 1997 film Seven
Years in Tibet, portraying China’s 1950 invasion of Tibet, led to the
blacklisting of director Jean-Jacques Annaud until his groveling apology 12
years later. Film star Brad Pitt was also penalized for the movie, which likely
helped bar World War Z from a Chinese release.
Change is not a lost
cause. The industry’s biggest stars have the power to push for it, as when
Quentin Tarantino refused to sign off on a re-cut of Once Upon a Time in
Hollywood to appease Chinese censors. But if Hollywood’s other
influential voices are unwilling to even stand up for their own creative
freedom, why would they take a stand on behalf of the human rights of people
they will never even meet?
After Feinstein was elected to the Senate in
1992, Blum continued profiting off their ties to China. A the same time, the
freshman lawmaker was pitching herself as a “China hand” to colleagues, even
once claiming “that in my last
life maybe I was Chinese.” HARIS ALIC
Ted Cruz Describes Joe Biden's 'Sophisticated
Corruption'
Cortney O'Brien
"Remember simpler times when corruption was
just $10,000 in a paper bag handed secretly under a table in a smoky bar in Washington?"
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) reminisced on Sunday.
"Corruption sadly has gotten much more
sophisticated in Washington," Cruz continued in his conversation with
Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh. "With Joe
Biden there is just a lot of questions about his family enriching themselves in
order to get policy decisions from Joe Biden."
A lot of this year's impeachment trial focused on
Hunter Biden and his conduct in Ukraine, where he sat on the board of a corrupt
gas company. They paid him $1 million a year.
"I don't know about you but I've never had a
Ukrainian gas company call me up and say, 'Hey come serve on our board of
directors,'" Cruz said. "That's kind of out there."
Which is strange, Cruz noted, because Hunter
didn't speak Ukrainian and the only thing he probably knows about gas is that
he routinely filled up the gas tank in his car. They only cared who his daddy
was.
Cruz then repeated President Trump's claim that
Hunter got greedy and asked for $1.5 billion from China when he accompanied his
dad on a trip to Beijing in 2013. According to Trump and others, Hunter
negotiated a deal to create a joint-investment fund between his company,
Rosemont Seneca, and a Chinese state-run bank. Wanting influence with the vice
president, they reportedly gave him the money.
President Trump: "China should start an
investigation into the Bidens because what happened in China is just about as
bad as what happened with Ukraine. So, I would say that President Zelensky, if
it were me, I would recommend that they start an investigation into the
Bidens."
"They've gotten sophisticated in this
shakedown," Cruz said of the Bidens.
The senator alleged that Biden's weak position on
China has tainted his foreign policy agenda. Murtaugh asked Cruz to expand on
Biden's history of siding with China and dismissing the CCP as a threat on the
2020 campaign trail, all of which has earned him the nickname, "Beijing
Biden."
"The Chinese Communist Party's vision for
the future is global domination," Cruz said. "Unfortunately, Joe
Biden isn't even aware that a battle is waging. After decades in Washington, he
has dismissed China over and over again and has allowed his family to make
money off their tyranny and deception. The United States can prevail in this
contest of nations so long as we have a president — like President Trump
— who is willing to stand up to China and hold them accountable."
Biden also accused President Trump of being
"racist" and "xenophobic" when he banned travel to and from
China in January when we first learned of the coronavirus. The former VP would
backtrack on those remarks and eventually come to find that Trump was right. It
was one of Biden's signature flip flops.
"In what universe is Joe Biden going to be
able to do stand up with strength, with fortitude, and combat China?" Cruz
wondered.
Hong
Kong Police Fire Tear Gas, Water Cannon at Protesters
24 May 2020108
HONG KONG
(AP) — Hong Kong police fired tear gas and a water cannon at protesters in a
popular shopping district Sunday, as thousands took to the streets to march
against China’s move to impose national security legislation on the city.
Pro-democracy
supporters have sharply criticized a proposal, set to be approved by China’s
rubber-stamp parliament this week, that would ban secessionist and subversive
activity, as well as foreign interference, in the semi-autonomous Chinese
territory.
The
pro-democracy camp says the proposal goes against the “one country, two
systems” framework that promises Hong Kong freedoms not found in mainland
China.
Crowds of
demonstrators dressed in black gathered in the Causeway Bay district on Sunday,
chanting slogans such as “Stand with Hong Kong,” “Liberate Hong Kong” and
“Revolution of our times.”
The
protest was a continuation of a monthslong pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong
that began last year and has at times descended into violence between police
and protesters.
Police
raised blue flags, warning protesters to disperse, before firing multiple
rounds of tear gas. They later fired a water cannon at the demonstrators.
At least
180 people were arrested, mostly on charges of unlawful assembly, police said.
They also
said that some of the protesters threw bricks and splashed unidentified liquid
at officers, injuring at least four members of the police media liaison team.
They warned that such behavior is against the law and that police would pursue
the matter.
Earlier
in the afternoon, prominent activist Tam Tak-chi was arrested during the
protest for what police said was unauthorized assembly. Tam said he was giving
a “health talk” and was exempt from social-distancing measures that prohibit
gatherings of more than eight people.
The bill
that triggered Sunday’s rally was submitted at the opening of China’s national
legislative session on Friday. It would bypass Hong Kong’s legislature and
could allow mainland agencies to be set up in the city, sparking concern that
Chinese agents could arbitrarily arrest people for activities deemed to be
pro-democracy.
Speaking
at an annual news conference during the legislative session, Chinese Foreign
Minister Wang Yi said Sunday that Hong Kong affairs were an internal matter for
China, and that “no external interference will be tolerated.”
“Excessive
unlawful foreign meddling in Hong Kong affairs has placed China’s national
security in serious jeopardy,” Wang said, adding that the proposed legislation
“does not affect the high degree of autonomy in Hong Kong.”
“It does
not affect the rights and freedoms enjoyed by Hong Kong residents. And it does
not affect the legitimate rights and interests of foreign investors in Hong
Kong,” he said.
U.S.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called the proposal “a death knell for the high
degree of autonomy” that Beijing promised the former British colony when it was
returned to China in 1997.
Chris
Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong prior to its handover to China,
lamented what he called “a new Chinese dictatorship.”
“I think
the Hong Kong people have been betrayed by China, which has proved once again
that you can’t trust it further than you can throw it,” Patten said in an
interview with The Times of London.
Patten is
leading a coalition of at least 204 international lawmakers and policymakers
who are decrying the proposed legislation. In a statement, the coalition called
it a “flagrant breach” of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, a 1984 treaty
that promised Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy even after the handover of Hong
Kong to China in 1997.
President
Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, said it appeared that
China was violating the 1984 treaty.
“And I
can’t see how Hong Kong remains the Asian financial center if the Chinese
Communist Party goes through and implements this national security law and
takes over Hong Kong,” O’Brien said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
“That
would be a tragedy for the people of Hong Kong, but it will also be very bad
for China,” he said.
Bernard
Chan, a top-level Hong Kong politician and delegate to the National People’s
Congress in Beijing, defended the national security legislation pushed by
China, saying it was written into Hong Kong’s Basic Law — the city’s
mini-constitution — but never enacted.
Chan
expressed concern that Hong Kong would inevitably face economic hardship given
trade frictions between the U.S. and China.
“I think
we are definitely the collateral damage being dragged into this thing. But
then, I don’t think there’s any alternatives,” he said.
“But with
or without this law, honestly, the U.S. and China are always going to be
continuing this loggerhead for quite some time to come,” Chan said. “China will
remain as a threat to the U.S. in terms of the … world economic dominance.”
___
Associated Press journalist Dake Kang in Beijing
contributed to this report.
A GLIMPSE
INTO THE GLOBALIST AGENDA OF A NATION RULE BY AND FOR THE RICH AND WALL STREET.
THIS REQUIRES OPEN BORDERS FOR ENDLESS HORDES OF ‘CHEAP’ LABOR TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED
AND FINISH OFF THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS.
Rep. Mo
Brooks (R-AL) says the “Masters of the Universe” (HIGH TECH BILLIONAIRES) want more legal immigration
to the United States to further diminish the incomes of American working and
middle-class families.
So
why do the citizens of blue hells not rebel? That is the question -- Anton and
Hanson and Jenkins, like so many of us, know they must.
Maybe
that’s part of it. I do think that the movement in the direction of feudal,
tyrannical governance is being aided by the influx of millions of illegal
immigrants from places where this kind of government is the norm.
Is
Feudalism Our Future?
By Clarice Feldman
It’s
increasingly clear that one-party polities are corrupt, badly managed and serve
the interests only of those at the top and their courtiers. I think that if Biden
and Harris win, the entire country will devolve to a kingdom
of state and regional duchies composed
of often semi-hereditary rulers in the pay of the rich, donor
class, the clerisy (media scribblers, complaisant judicial appointees and
academic rent seekers who promote favored policies and shut out the
dissenters), an impoverished, smaller, and powerless middle class and a vast
layer of muzzled, docile poor serfs. They will rule by fiat (often
inconsistently and illogically) as they have been in dealing with COVID-19. Because they can, the
Constitution to the contrary notwithstanding.
In a
lengthy essay, Michael
Anton details why he thinks the leftist dream (which, in
essence is a feudal form of tyranny) is within reach if Trump loses. I urge you all to read in its
entirety this thoughtful article at your leisure. At best, I can only highlight
some of the many salient points he makes.
1. Since
the 1960s policies and practices have enriched the ruling class and “erode
our natural and constitutionally guaranteed rights and liberties” as they
degraded our culture and dishonored our heritage.
2. At
present the office of the presidency is seriously weaker than the unitary
executive described in the Constitution intended as an entrenched bureaucracy
undermines, flouts and disobeys the president at every turn if he dares to
advance policies “unpopular with the deep state.”
3.
The benign phrase “public-private partnership” is no less than “the use of
state power to serve private interests” and the relationship is one in which
the senior partner is always big business.
4. Congress,
he argues “is a joke.” Our government is run by “The cogs and lickspittles in
the bureaucracy, led by a small elite in corporations, above all in Big Tech
and finance, will determine all important policies, foreign and domestic.”
5. The
COVID lockdowns and mandates engineered by governors and mayors without laws to
permit them based on “expert” lies continue even as we know the virus is
definitely not the plague we were told it would be.
He argues
that should Trump lose we can expect increasingly anti-democratic governance
“committed to social engineering and grievance politics” and a continued
undermining of virtue and promotion of vice.
Anton
talks about the undermining of the right to self-defense and the outrageous
prosecution of Kyle Rittenhouse, who in Kenosha did just that against three
attackers whose marauding had been encouraged by the Wisconsin governor’s
and local mayor’s refusal to enforce the laws to maintain order.
Attorney
Lin Wood, who successfully sued on behalf of Robert Jewell and Nick
Sandmann and who this week volunteered to
represent Kyle Rittenhouse (the hero of Kenosha) for
defamation says we are facing a revolution and need to prepare ourselves for
the fight.
Lin Wood @LLinWood
(1) Republicans are talking “policy differences” while focusing on upcoming
election. They are not taking the current situation serious or they are just
plain stupid. They need to face truth that our country is under attack.
(2) The
former President, Barack Obama, is calling for sustained protests. The leader
of the resistance movement, Hillary Clinton, is saying that we should not
accept the results of the next election.
(3) The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, is describing our President, @realDonaldTrump,
as an enemy of the state. Many radical members of Congress are openly calling
for the overthrow of our government.
(4) 1 + 1 + 1 = Revolution.
#FightBack
5:55 AM · Aug 29, 2020
The Duchy of Newsom as the Template of the New Order
No
better example of what Anton describes as our future can I find than the
sad state of California under the governorship of Gavin Newsom. I’ve written
elsewhere of the Green New Deal disaster he helped birth and which now plunges
much of his state into darkness and
misery.
Victor David Hanson has written extensively on what has
brought his home state so rich in natural resources to its knees. Here’s but one of his latest
reports. It begins (and then extensively
documents): “Power outages, fires, water shortages, rising taxes,
crumbling and congested highways, dismal schools, lawlessness…”
At the Wall
Street Journal, Holman Jenkins, Jr. notes that California politicians
obsess about things like “climate change” they are powerless to do anything
about while ignoring serious problems they could do something about if only
they had the skills and will to govern. In that one-party state there is simply
no accountability for failure of vision and execution:
Unfortunately, the people running the state, including Joe
Biden’s prospective veep, have been mostly meme-chasing, pose-striking
calculators. Their only career plan: nurse their standing with Hollywood green
activists, trial lawyers and public-sector unions. In a one-party state,
there is no serious clash of policy prescriptions. That’s how Kamala Harris
could reach middle age with a giant vacancy in her résumé where one would
normally find some connection to policy ideas.
If the state is to dig out of its deepening hole, it will
need something else. It will need, you know, ideas. In fact, only a revolution
of ideas can save it from the path it’s on. And the first idea is easy to see.
The state will have to wake up from the sheer ludicrousness of devoting so much
of its politics to a problem its politics can’t fix at the expense to those it
can.
So why
do the citizens of blue hells not rebel? That is the question -- Anton and
Hanson and Jenkins, like so many of us, know they must.
My
online friend “The Infamous Ignatz” sees it in psychological terms:
I don't think the people living in urban blue hells want to
live in hell, but irrationality on a mass scale is made up of millions of
little individual irrationalities collectivized.
An irrational person has a very, very difficult time
choosing the rational option because it involves so many self-negating
decisions, not least of which is stopping the magical thinking and the blaming
of others for the problem.
That's why I equate irrational society with personality
disorders. It's not that people in urban hellscapes aren't miserable, they just
don't see any way out. For those outside looking in, American cities' electoral
habits fit Einstein's apocryphal definition of insanity better than anything I
can think of.
What makes it even more incurable and persistent is the
very people the voters think they are hiring as their therapists not only come
themselves from the ranks of the disordered but they have very powerful
incentives making sure the patient never gets well.
Maybe
that’s part of it. I do think that the movement in the direction of feudal,
tyrannical governance is being aided by the influx of millions of illegal
immigrants from places where this kind of government is the norm. It gained force when
civics education was dropped in schools in favor of less significant subjects,
and the hollowing out of our higher education institutions, including law
schools, which since the 1960s have increasingly become there-oughta-be-a-law
schools which encourage future judges and law clerks to imagine themselves as
legislators and executives. Nor can we forget the role being played by the
tech giants, who are using IT as a weapon for social control and the
destruction of privacy. In any event, November will have us in the fight of
our lives. Be prepared.
Exclusive–Mo
Brooks: ‘Masters of the Universe’ Want More Immigration to ‘Decrease Incomes of
Americans’
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/03/10/exclusive-mo-brooks-masters-universe-want-more-immigration-decrease-incomes-americans/
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) says
the “Masters of the Universe” (HIGH TECH
BILLIONAIRES) want more legal immigration to the United States to further
diminish the incomes of American working and middle-class families.
In an exclusive interview with SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Tonight, Brooks said
recent demands to increase the number of foreign workers coming to the U.S. to
compete against American citizens for jobs is merely an effort by corporations
to deplete the earnings of Americans.
Brooks said:
I’m not a part of the Masters of the Universe crowd who thinks we
ought to be bringing in all this foreign labor and the reason for it is pure economics. This is the chance for Americans and lawful immigrants who are already here who are working
in the blue-collar trades, who are working in the places where
wages are not as high they ought to be, this is their chance to prosper. [Emphasis added]
And to the extent you import a lot of foreign labor, then you are
artificially increasing the labor supply which in turn means that you’re
artificially suppressing the wages of American families who are often hard-pressed to make ends meet So I
respectfully disagree that we need more foreign labor, to the contrary, I would like to see us reduce the foreign labor that comes into
America so that American families who are struggling to make ends meet, particularly those of us who are earning the least
amounts, would be better to take care of
their own families and less likely to be dependent on the welfare. [Emphasis added]
Brooks said Democrats support for mass legal immigration is
centered on the premise that increasing the number of foreign workers in the
U.S. will decrease Americans’ wages, thus forcing many into poverty and
becoming welfare recipients. This, Brooks said, is how Democrats create a
permanent dependent class of Democrat voters.
“Don’t get me wrong, [Democrats] want to decrease the incomes of
Americans so that they’re dependent on welfare,” Brooks said.
That makes them in turn likely Democrat voters and the best way to
do that is to have a huge surge in the labor supply, particularly illegal
aliens, that will depress their wages therefore creating more Democrats who are dependent on welfare at the same time as they
bring in illegal aliens who also under Democrat doctrine will be allowed to
vote and those types of voters, they’re also dependent on welfare. [Emphasis
added]
“About 70 percent of illegal alien households are on welfare …
plus this is a bloc of voters that seems unusually susceptible to the racial
divisions that the Democrats advance,” Brooks said. “You have to look at the
big picture in all of this, and to me, we should not be importing as much
foreign labor as we are. We should be helping the least among us earn more and
importing foreign labor that suppresses wages is not the way to do that.”
Currently, the U.S. admits more than 1.2 legal immigrants
annually, with the vast majority deriving from chain migration, whereby newly
naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the
country. In 2017, the foreign-born population reached a record high of 44.5 million.
The U.S. is on track to import about 15 million new foreign-born voters in the next
two decades should current legal immigration levels continue. Those 15
million new foreign-born voters include about eight million who will arrive in
the country through chain migration, where newly naturalized citizens can bring
an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the country.
Breitbart News Tonight broadcasts live on SiriusXM
Patriot Channel 125 from 9:00 p.m. to Midnight Eastern (6:00 p.m.-9:00
p.m. Pacific).
John Binder is a reporter for
Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
TRUMPERNOMICS:
Billionaires’
wealth surged in 2019
28
December 2019
As the second decade of the 21st century comes to a close,
its most salient feature—the plundering of humanity by a global financial
oligarchy—continues unabated.
Amidst trade war and the growth of militarism and
authoritarianism on the one side, and an eruption of international strikes and
protests by the working class against social inequality on the other, the stock
market is hitting record highs and the fortunes of the world’s billionaires are
continuing to surge.
On Friday, one day after all three major US stock indexes
set new records, Bloomberg issued its end-of-year survey of the world’s 500
richest people. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index reported that the oligarchs’
fortunes increased by a combined total of $1.2 trillion, a 25 percent rise over
2018. Their collective net worth now comes to $5.9 trillion.
To place this figure in some perspective, these 500
individuals control more wealth than the gross domestic product of the United
States at the end of the third quarter of 2019, which was $5.4 trillion.
The year’s biggest gains went to France’s Bernard Arnault,
who added $36.5 billion to his fortune, bringing it above the rarified $100
billion level to $105 billion. He knocked speculator Warren Buffett, at $89.3
billion, down to fourth place. Amazon boss Jeff Bezos lost nearly $9 billion
due to a divorce settlement, but maintained the top position, with a net worth
of $116 billion. Microsoft founder Bill Gates gained $22.7 billion for the year
and held on to second place at $113 billion.
The 172 American billionaires on the Bloomberg list added
$500 billion, with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg recording the year’s biggest US
gain at $27.3 billion, placing him in fifth place worldwide with a net worth of
$79.3 billion.
It is difficult to comprehend the true
significance of such stratospheric sums. In his 2016 book Global
Inequality, economist Branko Milanovic wrote:
"A billion dollars is so far
outside the usual experience of practically everyone on earth that the very
quantity it implies is not easily understood… Suppose now that you inherited
either $1 million or $1 billion, and that you spent $1,000 every day. It would
take you less than three years to run through your inheritance in the first
case, and more than 2,700 years (that is, the time that separates us from
Homer’s Iliad) to blow your inheritance in the second case."
The vast redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the
top of society is the outcome of a decades-long process, which was accelerated
following the 2008 Wall Street crash. It is not the result of impersonal and simply
self-activating processes. Rather, the policies of capitalist governments and
parties around the world, nominally “left” as well as right, have been
dedicated to the ever greater impoverishment of the working class and enrichment
of the ruling elite.
In the US, the top one percent has captured all of the
increase in national income over the past two decades, and all of the increase
in national wealth since the 2008 crash.
The main mechanism for this transfer of wealth has been the
stock market, and the policies of the US Federal Reserve and central banks
internationally have been geared to providing cheap money to drive up stock
prices. The cost of this massive subsidy to the financial markets and the
oligarchs has been paid by the working class, in the form of social cuts, mass
layoffs, the destruction of pensions and health benefits, and the replacement
of relatively secure and decent-paying jobs with part-time, temporary and
contingent “gig” positions.
Since Trump was inaugurated in January of 2017, pledging to
slash corporate taxes, lift regulations on big business and dramatically
increase the military budget, the Dow has surged by 9,000 points. This year,
Trump and the financial markets applied massive pressure on the Fed to reverse
its efforts to “normalize” interest rates. The Fed complied, carrying out three
rate cuts and repeatedly assuring the markets it had no plans to raise rates in
2020.
This windfall for the banks and hedge funds was supported
by the Democrats no less than the Republicans. In fact, Trump’s
economic policy has been given de facto support by the Democratic Party all
down the line—from his tax cuts for corporations and the rich to his attack on
virtually all regulations on business. Even in the midst of impeachment—carried
out entirely on the grounds of “national security” and Trump’s supposed
“softness” toward Russia—the Democrats have voted by wide margins for Trump’s
budget, his anti-Chinese US-Mexico-Canada trade pact and his record $738 billion
Pentagon war budget.
This has included giving Trump all the money he wants to
build his border wall and carry out the mass incarceration and persecution of
immigrants.
Trump’s pro-corporate policies are an extension and
expansion of those pursued by the Obama administration. It allocated
trillions in taxpayer money to bail out the banks and flooded the financial
markets with cheap credit, driving up stock prices, while imposing a 50 percent
across-the-board cut in pay for newly hired autoworkers in its bailout of
General Motors and Chrysler. Obama oversaw the closure of thousands of
schools and the layoff of hundreds of thousands of teachers, and enacted
austerity budgets that slashed social programs.
Two of those running for the 2020 Democratic presidential
nomination are billionaires—Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg. The latter, with
a net worth of $56 billion, is the ninth richest person in the US. He entered
the race as the spokesman for oligarchs outraged over talk from Bernie Sanders
and Elizabeth Warren of token tax increases on the super-rich.
The oligarchs are not frightened by Sanders and Warren—two
longstanding defenders of the American ruling class, who seek to mask their
subservience to capital with talk of making the oligarchs pay “their fair share,”
a euphemism for defending their right to pillage the population. The
billionaires are frightened by the growth of mass opposition to capitalism that
finds a distorted expression in support for the phony “progressives” in the
Democratic fold.
Between them, Bloomberg and Steyer have already spent $200
million of their own money in an effort to buy the election outright.
The impact of the policy of social plunder is seen in the
deepening of a malignant social crisis in country after country. In the US, society
is marching backwards, as the crying need for schools, hospitals, affordable
housing, pensions, the rebuilding of decrepit roads, bridges, transportation,
flood control, water and sewage, fire control and electricity grids is met with
the official response: “There is no money.”
The result? Three straight years of declining life
expectancy, record addiction and suicide rates, devastating wildfires and
floods, electricity cut-offs by profiteering utility companies. And a climate
crisis that cannot be addressed within the framework of a system dominated by a
money-mad plutocracy.
Not a single serious social problem can be addressed under
conditions where the ruling elite—through its bribed parties and politicians,
aided by its pro-capitalist trade unions and backed up by its courts, police
and troops—diverts resources from society to the accumulation of ever more
luxurious yachts, mansions, private islands and personal jets.
Where social reform is impossible, social revolution is
inevitable. The solution to the impasse is to be found in the growth of the
class struggle. The movement of workers and youth all over the world—from mass
strikes in France to strikes by autoworkers and teachers in the US, protests in
Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador and Brazil, strikes and mass demonstrations in Lebanon,
Iran, Iraq and India—reveals the social force that can and will put an end to
capitalism.
The watchword must be—in opposition to the Corbyns, the
Sanders, the Tsiprases and their pseudo-left promoters—“Expropriate the super-rich!”
ALL
BILLIONAIRES ARE DEMOCRATS. ALL BILLIONAIRES WANT OPEN BORDERS FOR MORE CHEAP
LABOR AND NO CAPS ON IMPORTING CHINESE AND INDIANS TO WORK OUR TECH JOBS CHEAP.
Obama’s State
of Delusion ... OR JUST ANOTHER "Hope & Change" HOAX?
”The
delusional character of Obama’s State of the Union
address on
Tuesday—presenting an America of rising living
standards and
a booming economy, capped by his declaration
that the
“shadow of crisis has passed”—is perhaps matched
only in its
presentation by the media and supporters of the
Democratic
Party.”
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/01/oxfam-richest-one-percent-set-to.html
“The general
tone was set by the New York Times in its lead editorial on Wednesday, which
described the speech as a “simple, dramatic message about economic fairness,
about the fact that the well-off—the top earners, the big banks, Silicon
Valley—have done just great, while middle and working classes remain dead in
the water.”
OBAMANOMICS:
The report
observes that while the wealth of the world’s 80 richest people doubled between
2009 and 2014, the wealth of the poorest half of the world’s population (3.5
billion people) was lower in 2014 than it was in 2009.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/01/oxfam-richest-one-percent-set-to.html
In 2010, it
took 388 billionaires to match the wealth of the bottom half of the earth’s
population; by 2013, the figure had fallen to just 92 billionaires. It fell to
80 in 2014.
THE OBAMA
ASSAULT ON THE AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS
“The goal of
the Obama administration, working with the Republicans and local governments,
is to roll back the living conditions of the vast majority of the population to
levels not seen since the 19th century, prior to the advent of the eight-hour
day, child labor laws, comprehensive public education, pensions, health
benefits, workplace health and safety regulations, etc.”
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/01/oxfam-richest-one-percent-set-to.html
“In response
to the ruthless assault of the financial oligarchy, spearheaded by Obama, the
working class must advance, no less ruthlessly, its own policy.”
New Federal Reserve report
US
median income has plunged, inequality has grown in Obama “recovery”
The yearly income of a typical US household dropped by a
massive 12 percent, or $6,400, in the six years between 2007 and 2013. This is
just one of the findings of the 2013 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer
Finances released Thursday, which documents a sharp decline in working class
living standards and a further concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich
and the super-rich.
THE DEMOCRAT PARTY’S BILLIONAIRES’
GLOBALIST EMPIRE requires someone as ruthlessly dishonest as Hillary Clinton or
Barack Obama to be puppet dictators.
1. Globalism: Google
VP Kent Walker insists that despite its repeated rejection by electorates
around the world, “globalization” is an “incredible force for good.”
2. Hillary Clinton’s Democratic
party: An executive nearly broke down crying because of the candidate’s loss. Not
a single executive expressed anything but dismay at her defeat.
3.
Immigration: Maintaining
liberal immigration in the U.S is the policy that Google’s executives discussed the
most.
Why the rich favor the Democrats
By Peter
Skurkiss
There's little doubt that today's Democrat Party
is the party of the rich. Actually, that's an
understatement. Far more than billionaires are involved. A better
expression of reality would be to say a fundamental core of Democrat coalition
is the managerial class, also known as the elite. These are the
people who run the media, Hollywood and the entertainment industry, the big
corporations, the universities and schools, the investment banks, and Wall
Street. They populate the upper levels of government
bureaucracies. These are the East and West Coasters.
The alliance of the affluent with the Democrat
Party can be seen in the widely disproportionate share of hefty political
donations from the well-to-do going to Democrats and a bevy of left-wing
causes. It's also why forty-one out of the fifty wealthiest
congressional districts are represented by Democrats.
BLOG: DEMS LOVE SOCIALISM FOR ILLEGALS TO KEEP
THEM COMING AND BREEDING ANCHOR BABIES FOR WELFARE AND SOCIALISM FOR BANKS.
TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF IT!
Bernie Sanders is an
exception. But he's an anomaly viewed as dangerous to the party,
which is why he's being crushed by the Democrat establishment.
Why do the wealthy align with the
Democrats? The answer may seem counter-intuitive, but it is really
quite simple. It's surely not ideals or high-minded
principles. Nor is it ignorance. Rather, it boils down to
raw self-interest.
In his book, The Age of
Entitlement: America Since the Sixties, Christopher Caldwell notes
that rich Americans think themselves to be as vulnerable as
blacks. They are a relatively small minority of the
population. They fear being resented for their wealth and power and of
having much of that taken from them. Accordingly, the wealthy seek
to protect what is theirs by preventing strong majorities from forming by using
the divide and conquer principle.
As R.R. Reno writes when reviewing
Caldwell's book: "Therefore, the richest and most
powerful people in America have strong incentives
to support an anti-majoritarian political system." He goes
on: "Wealthy individuals shovel donations into elite institutions that
incubate identity politics, which further fragments the nation and prevents the
formation of majorities."
Some of the rotten fruit of the wealthy taking
this approach include multiculturalism, massive immigration of diverse people,
resistance to encouraging assimilation, racial strife, trying to turn
white males into pariahs, and the promotion of gender
confusion. Through it all, society is bombarded with
the Orwellian mantra that "diversity is strength," as if
repeating it often enough can make it so. It is also why patriotism
and a common American culture are so disparaged today. Those from
the upper strata of society project the idea that if you're a flag-waving
American, you must be some kind of retrograde mouth-breathing
yokel.
The wealthy as a groups are content to dissolve
the glue that holds the U.S. together. And it is all done to enhance
and preserve their power, wealth, and influence. This is why they so
hate Donald Trump. He strives to unite people and the country,
although you'd never know that that is what the president is
doing if you live in the media
bubble. Trump's MAGA agenda is an anathema to the
managerial class.
To quote Reno one final time:
The next decade will not
be easy. But it will not be about what preoccupied us in the
sixties, and which Caldwell describes so well. Rather than the
perils of discrimination we are increasingly concerned with the problem of
disintegration — or in Charles Murray's terms, the problem of "coming apart."
Trump and the GOP he is molding are the vehicles
to restore and strengthen national solidarity. Trump said at the Daytona 500,
"No matter who wins, what matters most is God, family, and
country." That is not the Democrat agenda. As
seen in Democrat politicians, their policies, and the behavior of their major
contributors, the aim is to further weaken the social and national bonds in
America. There is a lot at stake here. If solidarity
wins, the Republic can survive and prosper. If the Democrats
and their wealthy cohorts do, then the middle class withers, the Republic
dies, and the rich and their managerial class get to rule the
roost. That is what it comes down to.
ALL BILLIONAIRES ARE DEMOCRATS. ALL
BILLIONAIRES WANT WIDER OPEN BORDERS, AMNESTY AND HELL NO TO E-VERIFY!
In addition, establishment Republicans are no
better than Democrats at stemming the flow of illegal immigration because big
businesses reap the benefits of this cheap labor
without incurring any of the social costs.
This is why
the SEIU supports blanket amnesty for illegal aliens.
Democrats:
The Party of Big Labor, Big Government...and Big Business
By Antonio R. Chaves
There
is a widespread perception that the Democrat Party is the party the working
class and the Republican Party is the party of big business. Even
though Republicans on average received slightly more from corporate employees
prior to 2002, the overall difference between both parties from 1990 to 2020 is
statistically insignificant (Table 1). In fact, Democrat
reliance on big labor gradually shifted toward big business following the
involvement of solidly Democrat corporate giants in 2002, and from 2014 to
2020, Democrats consistently surpassed Republicans in corporate donations
(Tables 1 & 2).
Based
on data compiled by Open Secrets, Soros Fund Management, Fahr LLC (Tom Steyer),
and Bloomberg LP ranked among the top ten for political contributions that gave
over 90% to Democrats. In sharp contrast, the right-leaning Koch
Industries made the top ten only in 2014. In nearly all other years,
Koch ranked well below the top twenty.
Whether
or not this trend is long-term, there is no denying that large corporations on
average no longer lean right. But what does it mean to be "the
party of big business"? Donations are not definitive
evidence. What ultimately matters is what politicians do once they
get elected.
Many
liberals believe that big government is needed to "rein in" big
business and that in the absence of federal intervention, corporations will
"run roughshod" over the average American. Many liberals
also believe that corporations are the main beneficiaries of laissez-faire
economics and that free-market conservatives who want to scale back regulations
are somehow "in the pocket" of big business.
In
reality, the opposite is true: big business and big government
go
hand in hand because government meddling in the economy
encourages rent-seeking by businesses that
can afford to pay
for
the lobbyists. This crony capitalism grew exponentially as
a result
of New Deal regulations that squeezed out competitors
during
the 1930s. Establishment politicians and well
connected corporations
are beneficiaries of the myth that big
government
and big business are adversaries because it hides
their
unholy alliance.
In
all fairness, neither party has had a monopoly on the dispensation of corporate
welfare: the TARP funds that propped up financial institutions deemed "too
big to fail" during the Great Recession were released by the Bush
administration. In addition, establishment Republicans are no better than
Democrats at stemming the flow of illegal immigration because big
businesses reap the benefits of this cheap labor
without incurring any of the social costs.
If
both parties are playing this game, what is the basis for labeling the Democrat
party "the party of big business"? What policies from
Republicans support small business?
Free-market
conservatism benefits small businesses because the government does not pick the
winners and losers by means of subsidies, tax breaks, and cumbersome
regulations. You will not see policies like these coming from
Washington in a major way because proposals for shrinking the federal
government rarely see the light of day in Congress.
Based
on data collected by Gallup and Thumbtack, red states far outscore blue states
in small business friendliness (Table 3). This may be why less
affluent Americans are fleeing states that score abysmally like California, Illinois, New York, and Hawaii. This might
also be why small business–owners are more likely to vote Republican.
The
Trump administration has been good for businesses of all sizes mainly due to
the unprecedented rate at which it scaled back stifling regulations. This may be
why some of the president's highest approval ratings now come from
small businesses.
Donald
Trump set himself apart from the ruling class when he latched onto the
third-rail issue of illegal immigration and called out the corporate darling Jeb Bush (AKA
"Low Energy Jeb") for his lack of grassroots support. This
may explain in part why Bain Capital, the firm co-founded by Mitt Romney,
switched teams and contributed solidly Democrat in 2018. In 2012,
Democrats accused Bain Capital of destroying jobs by systematically dismantling
the companies it bought off. Times have changed...
Small
businesses generate well over half of all new jobs. Most
importantly, many are family-owned, have strong ties to their communities, and
provide upward mobility for millions of Americans who never attended
college. The Democrats' undermining of this quintessentially
American institution is shameful and disqualifies it as the "party of the
working class." Contributions from big labor do not count
toward "labor-friendliness" because mega-unions care more about
recruitment than about the welfare of working Americans. This is why the SEIU
supports blanket amnesty for illegal aliens.
Democrats
fed up with the corporate status quo are now choosing their own
anti-establishment candidate, not realizing that socialism is just a more
impoverished version of the crony capitalism they are
rejecting. Many Sanders-supporters are also morally shallow because
they want to harness the power of the state to muscle in on the wealth of
Americans who borrowed responsibly and worked hard to pay their bills.
After
the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin said, "This Constitution ... is
likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in
despotism ... when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic
government." If Democrats implement the dystopian policies of California
on a national level, their corporate allies will do fine. It is
small business–owners and working-class Americans with nowhere to flee who have
the most to lose. Be careful what you wish for.
To view the tables below, click the links.
Table 1: Top contributors to Democrats and Republicans as compiled
by Open Secrets.
*The red lettering highlights a funding
advantage for Republicans. The blue lettering highlights a funding
disadvantage for Republicans.
**Based on a T-test, the difference is
insignificant at P = 0.46
Table 2: Top ten contributors to Democrats and Republicans by category
(union, corporate, and ideological) as compiled by Open Secrets:
*In 2008 Goldman Sachs donated 74% to
Democrats. All other groups in this column donated between 40 and
69% to both parties. This column does not differentiate between
giving equally to both parties and giving 70–79% to Democrats or Republicans.
**This number includes the "City of
New York." Although it is officially listed as
"other" by Open Secrets (not corporate, union, or ideological), I was
personally informed by someone from the organization that Michael Bloomberg was
the main source of this funding.
Table 3: Small business scores states scored by Thumbtack ranked
according to their Democratic advantage by Gallup:
*GPA scores are based on the following
numerical equivalents: A = 4, B = 3, C = 2, D = 1, F = 0, A+ = 4.3, A- = 3.7,
etc.
** Not scored.
***Mean GPA ± standard error. Based on a
T-test, the difference is significant at P = 0.00001.