Monday, February 22, 2021

GAVEN NEWSOMS MEXIFORNIA - SPECIAL INTERESTS KLEPTOCRACY AT WORK.... Just not for you!

 

Average Los Angeles County Gas Price Goes Up for 33rd Time in 34 Days

Hazy dusk nightfall above Pasadena and Downtown Los Angeles.
Getty Images
1:28

The average price of a gallon of gas in Los Angeles County went up for the 33rd time in 34 days on Monday, increasing by 1.2 cents to $3.650.

The average price has increased by 30.2 cents over the past 34 days, including 1.7 cents on Sunday alone, according to data from the American Automobile Association (AAA) and Oil Price Information Service obtained by City News Service.

NBC News Los Angeles reported that the price of gas in Los Angeles County is at its highest since December 20, 2019.

In Los Angeles County, the average price is 9.8 cents more than a week ago, 27.6 cents more than last month, and 7.8 cents more than last year.

In neighboring Orange County, the average price of a gallon of gas is 10.1 cents more than a week ago, 27.7 cents more than last week, and 12.1 cents more than last year.

California has historically had some of the highest gas prices in the nation. According to the AAA state gas price averages, the average price for a gallon of regular gasoline in California was $3.573, the highest in the nation.

Big Tech, Koch Network Cheer Biden’s Amnesty to Flood U.S. Labor Market

Unemployed-Americans-640x480
Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images
4:25

Big tech’s lobbying arm and the Koch brothers’ network of donor class organizations are cheering on President Joe Biden’s amnesty plan that would pack the United States labor market with more foreign visa workers for business to hire over American graduates and professionals.

This week, Biden’s amnesty plan was introduced in Congress by Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) as Democrats look to increase foreign competition in the U.S. workforce while more than 17 million Americans are jobless.

Among other things, the plan would:

  • Put nearly all illegal aliens in the U.S. on an eight-year path to citizenship
  • Provide $4 billion in foreign aid to Central America
  • Expand the U.S. labor market with more foreign visa workers
  • Expedite green cards for foreign relatives, otherwise known as “chain migration”
  • Potentially add 52 million foreign-born residents to the U.S. population
  • Eliminate per-country caps, ensuring India monopolizes employment green cards
  • Increase the Diversity Visa Lottery program where visas are given out randomly
  • Provide green cards to foreign students who graduate in advanced STEM fields
  • Bring already deported illegal aliens back to the U.S. to provide them amnesty

For Amazon, millions of newly legalized illegal aliens, foreign visa workers, and chain migrants who would be added to the U.S. labor market as a result of the plan are a boon to multinational corporations’ profits.

“Today’s immigration reform bill marks an important step in reducing the green card backlog, creating a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers & making our immigration system more efficient,” Amazon officials wrote in a statement. “We look forward working [with] the administration and Congress to advance these proposed solutions.”

Specifically, aside from providing Amazon with more foreign visa workers to hire, the plan includes a green card giveaway that would create a green card system where only H-1B foreign visa workers are able to obtain employment-based visas by creating a backlog of seven to eight years for all foreign nationals.

The process would reward outsourcing firms and tech corporations for the decades of outsourcing American jobs to H-1B foreign visa workers.

Executives with the Libre Initiative, a Koch-funded organization, also praised the Biden amnesty plan as “an important first step” to securing the green card giveaway for corporations that they have also long lobbied for.

“There is broad support for proposals like a permanent solution for Dreamers, workforce visa reform, removing per-country caps, efficient border security measures and much more,” Daniel Garza with the Libre Initiative wrote in a statement:

Lawmakers should seize the opportunity and demonstrate that partisan gridlock will not keep the American public waiting another 30 years for congress to enact sensible, permanent solutions. We look forward to working with lawmakers to ensure that we can get nonpartisan, sensible solutions past both chambers and enacted into law.

Todd Schulte with FWD.us, a group that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg created to lobby on behalf of tech corporations, called the amnesty plan a “critical moment for immigration policy” and a “substantial step forward.”

“Congress has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform a long-failed and too easily weaponized immigration system,” Schulte wrote in a statement. “The time is now and we will seize this moment.”

Despite the business lobby’s insistence that there is a labor shortage, millions of Americans are out of work today and hundreds of thousands of U.S. graduates enter the labor market every year looking for white-collar professional jobs with competitive pay and good benefits.

Already, the U.S. admits about 1.2 million legal immigrants every year. Another 1.4 million foreign visa workers are brought in annually to take American jobs, many in white-collar professions. The latest data reveals that nearly 6-in-10 workers in Silicon Valley, California — the tech industry’s hub — are foreign-born.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here

Tech Workers Flee San Francisco

ALANA MASTRANGELO

Employees of tech companies in San Francisco, California, can’t leave the city fast enough, fleeing for the potential tech hubs of tomorrow such as Austin, Texas, and Miami, Florida. One former San Francisco exec said: “what else can God and the world and government come up with to make the place less livable?”

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has been fielding inquiries from top executives in the tech world, such as Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, according to a report by NBC News.

The report added that the mayor has also met with former Google Chairman and Clinton lackey Eric Schmidt, and the chairman of Palantir, Peter Thiel, among others.

“There is absolutely no doubt that a big part of the reason why they are moving is that they feel that there is an inhospitable environment for regulation and taxation,” said Suarez.

Miami is not the only city experiencing this type of migration, as tech employees from San Francisco are fleeing to other states offering them better opportunities as well.

Tech workers living in San Francisco had once believed that the high rent, high taxes, long commute to work, and rude neighbors were worth it if they could live in “the epicenter of a boom that was changing the world,” reported SFGATE.

But now, in the wake of the pandemic, tech workers can’t flee the city fast enough, as spending months working remotely in other towns has shown them that the quality of life can be higher elsewhere.

“Tech workers and their bosses realized they might not need all the perks and after-work schmooze events. But maybe they needed elbow room and a yard for the new puppy. A place to put the Peloton. A top public school,” noted SFGATE.

And so they fled to more affordable places, like Georgia, and states with no income taxes, like Texas and Florida. The report added that the number one choice of relocation for people leaving San Francisco is Austin, Texas.

John Gardner, the founder and CEO of the remote personal training startup Kickoff — who fled San Francisco for Miami Beach — told SFGATE that he can’t help but wonder, “what else can God and the world and government come up with to make the place less livable?”

As for Mike Rothermel, a designer at Cisco who moved from the Bay Area to Boulder, Colorado, the tech worker said that he and his wife moved into a $1.3 million house that he “only saw on video for 20 minutes.”

“It’s a mansion compared to SF for the same money,” added Rothermel.

Justin Kan, who co-founded Twitch, tweeted to his followers in August last year, asking them where he should move.

“We’re selling our house and moving out of SF. Where should we go and why?” asked Kan.

We're selling our house and moving out of SF. Where should we go and why?

— Justin Kan (@justinkan) August 17, 2020

“Come to Austin with us. Growing tech ecosystem and Texas is the best place to make a stand together for a free society,” responded Joe Lonsdale, a co-founder of software company Palantir.

Come to Austin with us. Growing tech ecosystem and Texas is the best place to make a stand together for a free society.

— Joe Lonsdale (@JTLonsdale) August 17, 2020

“You start to feel stupid,” said Sahin Boydas, the founder of a remote-work startup, of living in San Francisco. “I can understand the 1% rich people, the very top investors and entrepreneurs, they can be happy there.”

Boydas and his family ended up moving to Austin, where they were able to buy a five-bedroom home on an acre of land for the same price they were paying for their three-bedroom apartment in Cupertino, California.

‘We’re going to get a cat and a dog,” he said. “We could never do that before.”

Boydas also noted that his bills are lower, too, such as the water bill, trash bill, and the cost of dining out at a restaurant with his family — adding that he didn’t even know that there were no income taxes when he moved.

“I run payroll for myself, and when I saw zero, I called the accountant like there’s an error — there’s no tax line here,” said Boydas. “And they were like, ‘Yeah there’s no tax.'”

The report added that there are currently 33,000 members in a Facebook group called “Leaving California,” as well as 51,000 members in its sister group, “Life After California.” In the groups, people share photos of moving trucks, and links to property listings in new cities.

“When people decide to leave San Francisco, they usually don’t know where they want to go, they just want to go,” said Terry Gilliam, the founder of both Facebook groups.

Bear Kittay, the co-founder Good Money, echoed those sentiments, and even acknowledged that some people may find themselves relocating to “a place that is more conservative.”

“The things that make this city ill are not within my control to change,” said Kittay of San Francisco.

“A lot of people are choosing to go to places where there’s opportunity,” he added. “And maybe it’s a place that is more conservative and there can be an integration of dialogue.”

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.


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