Saturday, March 13, 2021

JOE BIDEN ORCHESTRATES AN INVASION OF 'CHEAP' LABOR - Mr. Biden is living proof that no matter how dumb you are or how wrong you have always been or how many things you have screwed up, if you are just White enough and willing to wait around long enough accomplishing nothing, the kingship will eventually be yours.

 

Charles Hurt: Welcome to the White Privilege Presidency

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden delivers remarks about the Affordable Care Act and COVID-19 after attending a virtual coronavirus briefing with medical experts at The Queen theater on October 28, 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware. Participants in the briefing include former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, Director for Science in …
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
5:43

Washington really is the last nakedly racist place in America. And the very face of this city’s institutional racism is President Biden himself.

Welcome to the White Privilege Presidency.

Mr. Biden is living proof that no matter how dumb you are or how wrong you have always been or how many things you have screwed up, if you are just White enough and willing to wait around long enough accomplishing nothing, the kingship will eventually be yours.

This is a guy who had been rejected by voters — often in his own party — in his endless quest for the presidency many times during his five decades running his mouth in Washington. It was only when a gifted political outsider needed an old White guy for a running mate that Mr. Biden’s ticket to the White House finally got punched.

Literally, Mr. Biden’s only contribution was to be White. And old. And a barnacled deadweight from Washington.

This is why it is so astonishing — though not entirely surprising — to watch Mr. Biden so monumentally screw up everything he touches now that he is supposedly in charge. Nowhere is his reckless incompetence more obvious than on the border with Mexico.

Whatever you might think of former President Trump, he earned credit for finally bringing sanity to the border. Mr. Biden is hellbent to undo all of it — entirely out of political spite.

Or, perhaps, something even worse: Fanatical partisan ideology. In other words, he wants to actually destroy America in order to keep power.

Mr. Trump was “America First.” Mr. Biden is “Mexico First.” Or “Central America First.” Anything, really, except “America First.”

His administration has spent weeks dictating all sorts of words other than “crisis” that can be used to describe the border — even as record numbers of new migrants swarm the border. It is kind of like how Democrats wanted to spend all their time arguing about what to call the China Virus instead of actually doing something to stop it.

The latest wacko diplo-speak word peddled by the administration is “irregular.”

As in: “Do not come in an irregular fashion,” admonished Roberta Jacobson, Mr. Biden’s point person on the border. During an extraordinary press conference this week, Mrs. Jacobson showed a fierce determination to prove she can be every bit as stupid as Mr. Biden has been for the past 45 years.

Parroting Mr. Biden’s campaign promise to “build back better,” Mrs. Jacobson openly admitted that “build back better” does not actually refer to “building back” America.

“President Biden has made clear from Day One that he wants to change our immigration system,” she explained. “Doing so means truly building back better because we can’t just undo four years of the previous administration’s actions overnight.”

By “actions,” Mrs. Jacobson means Mr. Trump’s success at curbing illegal immigration by effectively enforcing U.S. laws and partnering with Mexico and other governments to help end the humanitarian crisis at the border.

Included in Mr. Biden’s “build back better” program, she said, is spending $4 billion of U.S. tax money to “address the root causes of migration, including corruption, violence and economic devastation exacerbated by climate change.”

Oh, I see.

So “build back better” is not about making your life better or spending money in your neighborhood or allowing you to keep more of your money. It’s about giving massive amounts of money to violent, corrupt, and economically devastated countries in Central America.

No longer is America that shining city on a hill for people who want to obey laws and enjoy “Equal Justice Under Law.”

In addition to being the world’s police department, we are also now the world’s welfare office and housing department. Lucky law-abiding American taxpayers (also known as “suckers”).

Speaking of taxpayers, Mrs. Jacobson spent a great deal of time talking about the importance of involving various “business” interests in decisions about illegal immigration into our country.

“I don’t want to leave out the business community as a participant,” she said. Of course, this is the same “business community” desperate for cheap labor — legal or illegal. Whatever.

No concern, however, for the innocent taxpayer — except when the bill comes for the $4 billion to be spent of corrupt, violent, economically devastated countries.

Mrs. Jacobson literally never uttered the word “citizen,” except of course to express the urgent need to grant “citizenship” to the millions of illegals pouring across our border.

Her contempt for Americans was surpassed only by her arrogance.

In an effort to flaunt her prowess as an anti-American internationalist, Mrs. Jacobson repeatedly broke into fevered Spanish, like a woman speaking in tongues at a religious revival.

There was only one problem. Even her Spanish is a lie, too.

Trying to warn migrants against illegally crossing our border, she instead advised them that — indeed — our borders are open. (Apparently, she learned to speak Spanish from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.)

White House press secretary Jen Psaki was later asked about Mrs. Jacobson’s poor Spanish and whether her inability to speak Spanish correctly might contribute to the “non-crisis” on the border.

“We certainly hope not,” Ms. Psaki said, among mostly friends desperate to prop up the Biden administration. “We have the power of the media here to make sure you’re communicating effectively with the messages.”

Oh my. Finally, somebody in the Biden administration tells the truth.

• Charles Hurt is opinion editor. He may be reached at churt@washingtontimes.com.

Exclusive — House Conservatives Release Playbook on How to Fight Joe Biden’s Radical Immigration Agenda

WILMINGTON, DE - DECEMBER 28: President-elect Joe Biden delivers remarks at the Queen Theater on December 28, 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware. Biden will be inaugurated as the 46th president in a scaled-down ceremony in Washington D.C. due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on January 20, 2021. (Photo by Mark Makela/Getty …
Mark Makela/Getty Images
12:03

The Republican Study Committee (RSC) will release a nine-page document on Tuesday afternoon exposing Democrat President Joe Biden’s radical immigration agenda and recommended steps on how congressional Republicans can stop it.

The document, obtained by Breitbart News exclusively ahead of its public release, is the most consequential and in-depth GOP publication to date exposing Biden’s executive actions and legislative agenda when it comes to open borders and amnesty and a broader immigration vision. In it, the RSC—the biggest group of House conservatives on Capitol Hill with more than 150 House Republicans who consider themselves members—details in page after page exactly how extreme Biden’s actions so far have been and how detrimental the policies are to American workers.

“President Biden’s has made it a mission of his to refashion our nation’s immigration system into one that focuses on mollifying the political aspirations of the Far Left rather than those of American citizens,” the document opens. “The Biden administration has wasted no time in executing its radical vision. President Biden has signed numerous immigration-related Executive Orders (EOs) and Presidential proclamations while his administration has undertaken other troubling polices. The main thrust of these early efforts is to reverse the immigration policies of the Trump administration and pave the way for massive expansions in the number, method, and ease by which prospective immigrants, both legal and illegal, can come to or remain in the United States.”

The policy breakdown continues by noting that Biden’s proposed legislative amnesty would amnesty between 11 and 22 million illegal aliens in America—likely millions more than the talking points from swamp consultants who say, and have for years, there are only 11 million who would get amnesty.

“President Biden has also released an unprecedented legislative package, the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, containing even more liberal immigration reforms he hopes to usher through Congress,” the RSC document continues. “This legislation would build off his executive actions and Obama-era precedent to reshape the American immigration system in the Progressive image. It would grant amnesty to between 11 and 22 million people, gift billions of dollars to those Central American countries that produce the most illegal immigrants, and unwind enforcement of immigration laws. Conservatives recognize that these policies would only exacerbate illegal immigration and draw more and more men, women, and children to our border.”

The RSC document, prepared for the group’s chairman Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), represents the most significant and early GOP organizational efforts against the Biden amnesty and open borders agenda. It also comes after Stephen Miller, a former senior adviser to former President Donald Trump, met with the RSC last week in Washington, DC, and broke down the immigration concerns with the Biden Administration and congressional Democrats. Miller was joined by former immigration law enforcement officials as well who bolstered the argument. The critical document also comes on the heels of a similar six-page document from the RSC exposing Biden’s equally radical agenda when it comes to dealing with China and the Chinese Communist Party.

This immigration blueprint is broken down into three sections. The first, spanning from pages two through six, examines Biden’s dramatic executive orders in his first month in office. The second, from pages six through eight, exposes just how radical the legislation that Biden and Democrats in Congress have proposed for an amnesty really is, while on the ninth and final page the RSC document lays out a game plan for Republicans in Congress to stop the Biden immigration agenda.

In the executive actions section, the RSC document opens by noting that Biden stopped border wall construction immediately upon entering office—thereby opening the border up to entry by criminal elements who seek to do harm to Americans. The document, for its sources, cites Biden’s actual orders and proclamations, as well as key expert analysis on the orders from places such as the Heritage Foundation.

“President Biden’s first action to undermine Trump era immigration and border policies was to end the state of emergency which Trump declared along the U.S. southern border,” the RSC document states. “By issuing his Proclamation on the Termination Of Emergency With Respect To The Southern Border Of The United States And Redirection Of Funds Diverted To Border Wall Construction, President Biden began to bring all construction of the Southern border wall to a halt and started the process of redirecting work and funds specifically contracted for construction to other projects. While the legal ramifications of such actions are still being fleshed out by the current administration, it is highly unlikely that substantial progress will be made on the wall for the foreseeable future. An unsecured border is a gift to the Narcos, MS-13, human traffickers, and other criminal enterprises as it guarantees that existing routes used for the smuggling of people and drugs will remain open for the foreseeable future.”

The document continues by noting that Biden has, in addition to halting border wall construction, also related enforcement of immigration laws, creating a surge at the border of dangerous elements such as MS-13 and Barrio 18 gang members.

“Going further down the path of loosening immigration enforcement and dangerously eroding the Trump legacy, Biden issued the Executive Order on the Revision of Civil Immigration Enforcement Policies and Priorities,” the RSC document continues. “The order states that it is the new policy of the federal government to reset all policies and practices for enforcing civil immigration laws. The order also revokes President Trump’s EO 13768 titled Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States, which was one of the Trump administration’s signature EOs, allowing federal agents to deputize state and local law enforcement to assist with immigration enforcement when they found themselves stretched thin or overwhelmed. The Biden EO effectively also demands the rescission of all agency actions developed pursuant to EO 13768. With EO 13768 and its progeny gone, the day-to-day realities of immigration enforcement will fundamentally change, and states will be left with fewer resources to combat human trafficking, narcoterrorism, and multinational gangs like MS-13 and Barrio 18.”

The document continues for several pages detailing several more actions the Biden Administration has taken—either at the presidential level or at the Department or agency level—to weaken immigration enforcement and create a surge at the border that is happening right now. Then, the document examines Biden’s legislative proposals on immigration and how much worse these would make the crisis he’s already unleashed on the border.

“President Biden’s progressive immigration bill has recently been introduced in the House and Senate as the ‘U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021,’” the RSC document continues. “The bill serves as the roadmap for President Biden’s reckless and progressive image of a new immigration system. It undercuts almost every modern principle that America has engrained as a necessary part of becoming an American. The bill would establish new pathways to citizenship for immigrants and illegal aliens.”

The RSC document cites analysis from Yale University and experts like those from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) to estimate that the actual illegal alien population in America may be more than 22 million people and that Biden’s amnesty policies could attract as many as 52 million more people—legally and illegally—to the United States if enacted by Congress.

“According to a recent Yale study, using mathematical modeling on a range of demographic and immigration operations data suggests that the actual undocumented immigrant population may be more than 22 million,’” the RSC document continues. “Moreover, it has been estimated that Biden’s amnesty bill and related policies will attract 52 million more legal and illegal immigrants to the United States. Under the bill’s massive amnesty program, illegal immigrants would be able to attain ‘lawful prospective immigrant’ (LPI) status, which would last for six years and be renewable for six-year terms. LPIs would receive work authorization and Social Security Numbers. After five years, LPIs could receive a green card to become legal permanent residents. So-called Dreamers, TPS holders, and immigrant farmworkers who performed 400 workdays of agricultural labor over the past five years, as well as their spouses and children, would be eligible to receive green cards immediately under the legislation. Holders of green cards could then apply for U.S. citizenship after three years. Conservatives should note that shortening the period to citizenship would expedite the creation of new voters in advance of the 2024 presidential election. This application process would also be open to people previously deported during the Trump administration, but not during the Obama-Biden administration.”

The document continues for several more pages examining details of the radical Biden immigration proposal. Then it concludes by laying out steps Republicans in Congress can take to counter much of Biden’s agenda. Since the filibuster requires 60 votes in the Senate—and as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) told Breitbart News in a recent interview it is highly unlikely 10 Republicans would join 50 Senate Democrats to back Biden’s broad amnesty agenda—the RSC memo expects that it is certainly a possibility the broader amnesty legislation never sees full legislative consideration in Congress.

“When seeking to understand a President’s priorities, political scholars have often examined the first 100 days of the administration,” the document says. “To understand President Biden’s priorities, one need only look at the first few days. Biden released progressive proposals while at the same time canceling policies, memoranda, and orders from the Trump administration. What the Left calls ‘bold’ or ‘ambitious’ the rest of America calls radical under normal circumstances, and wildly irresponsible under the current pandemic. Undoubtably, this trend will continue throughout the Biden administration, regardless of how the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 progresses in Congress. It is possible that the measure is never considered in full in both chambers.”

As such, the RSC memo warns Republicans to expect an underhanded and dishonest effort by Biden and Democrats in Congress to split the broad bill up into piecemeal bits and parts of amnesty and open borders agenda items. That dangerous strategy, the memo notes, will be presented falsely to Republicans as “less controversial” so as to get past the Senate’s 60-vote threshold.

“Rather, less controversial pieces with enough bipartisan support to garner 60 votes in the Senate could be broken out into piecemeal legislation,” the RSC memo notes. “In pursuit of such a path, Democrats could seek to sweeten piecemeal bills by including elements that have appeal to conservatives, such as mandatory E-Verify. Democrats could additionally seek to extract elements of the bill having a greater budgetary focus and attempt to enact them through the reconciliation process with a simple majority in the Senate, a hyperpartisan strategy that conservatives should stand ready to oppose. Democrats may also try to attach elements of the proposal to so-called must pass legislative vehicles, another strategy conservatives should prepare to fight.”

Nearly 10 million US jobs lost one year after start of the pandemic

With the one-year anniversary since the start of the economic crisis triggered by the coronavirus pandemic fast approaching, new claims for unemployment benefits continued for yet another week at the historically unprecedented level of over 700,000.

Meanwhile, new infections and deaths remain at alarming levels while uncoordinated and incompetent vaccine rollouts leave the vast majority of populations unprotected even as governments absurdly talk of a return to “normalcy.”

People wait in line for help with unemployment benefits at the One-Stop Career Center in Las Vegas in May 2020. (AP)

The US economy has recovered only a little over one-half of the 22 million jobs lost during the pandemic. The official unemployment rate is 6.2 percent, but the real rate is closer to 10 percent when the 4 million people who have dropped out of the labor force, so-called discouraged workers, are counted. There are still over 20 million workers receiving jobless relief of some kind, including 4 million receiving traditional state unemployment benefits and others on emergency pandemic aid authorized by Congress.

New claims for unemployment benefits fell to 712,000 for the week ending March 6, a drop of 42,000 from the previous week, but still a very high number compared to a typical week in 2019 when between 200,000 and 300,000 would apply.

For the past year new weekly unemployment claims have exceeded the high point of the Great Recession of 2008–2009. In addition, there were also 478,000 new claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance for the week, a increase of 42,000 over the previous week. PUA was an emergency program enacted by Congress to help the self-employed and others not covered by regular state unemployment benefits.

While 379,000 new jobs were added in February, most of these were in the low-wage leisure and hospitality sector, reflecting the reckless reopening policy of the ruling class. Other sectors such as education and construction showed continued declines.

The weekly unemployment claims report came just as President Biden signed into law the coronavirus relief bill, which calls for an additional $300 per person weekly supplement to unemployment benefits and a one-time $1,400 payment to most US residents.

The weekly supplement is only one-half the amount enacted under the Trump administration in March of last year and $100 less than the $400 initially proposed by the Democrats. The much-heralded gradual rise of the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour got stripped out of the relief bill when Democrats capitulated to a procedural challenge.

Even when one figures in the exemption Congress gave to tax payments on the first $10,200 of unemployment benefits and an expanded child tax credit, the COVID relief provided by Congress is far from adequate to make good the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the stimulus is being presented as a social reform of grand and unprecedented scope, most provisions are limited to less than one year. The pandemic relief package is aimed primarily at preventing a complete collapse in consumer spending and bankruptcy of state and local governments while the Biden administration pursues its deadly reopening agenda. This involves forcing workers back into unsafe factories with the help of the unions while forcing the reopening of schools, a measure that will facilitate the spread of the virus under conditions where new, more deadly variants are emerging.

Eventually the stimulus money will have to be repaid to Wall Street through an assault on the working class of unprecedented savagery, of which the Trump administration was only a foretaste. Indeed there are clear indications that the pandemic is already being used by corporations to restructure, continuing the elimination of relatively well-paid jobs and their replacement with low-wage and contingent employment.

The inadequacy of the stimulus package becomes evident when it is seen in the context of the raging social crisis that has been intensified by the pandemic.

In Nevada, one of the states hit hardest by the economic collapse, which devastated the state’s casino gambling industry, 45 percent of residents are behind on basic bills. The statewide unemployment rate hit 30.1 percent last April, the highest for any state on record for at least the last 44 years. It still stands at 9.2 percent.

A 32-year-old waitress from Las Vegas quoted by the New York Times reported, “I feel pretty scared every day, right now, whenever I think about my bills,” adding, “Basically every morning I wake up thinking about where my help is going to come from—is it here? Is it the government? I don’t really know who is looking out for people like me.”

Another woman told the Times, “Every morning I wake up thinking about where my help is going to come from.”


Larry Scott, the chief operating officer for Three Square Food Bank, the largest in Southern Nevada, told the Times, “Stimulus money shortens the line for food from a food pantry and when it evaporates, the lines get longer again.

“We’re going to have a protracted, long, long recovery here. What the politicians should be concentrating on is more than a short-term solution. Rather than a lot of money at a short time, we should have more money over a longer period of time.”

On March 9, hunger relief organization Feeding America released its initial projections for food insecurity in 2021. Despite various inadequate federal relief programs, the situation for tens of millions of US citizens, including children, remains dire. The organization projects that 42 million people, including 13 million children, that is one out of every six, will experience food insecurity in 2021. Included in that number are 15 million people and 4 million children who could experience reduced food intake and the disruption of eating patterns.

Pointing to the extended nature of the economic crisis, the report noted, “After the Great Recession of 2007, it took 10 years for food insecurity levels to recover to pre-Recession levels. It is likely to take time for food insecurity levels to recover from this recession as well.”

According to US Census Bureau data some 10 million people in the US were behind in their rent and at risk of eviction in the middle of January. An estimated 16 million renters had little to no confidence they could pay rent in February. According to Moody’s Analytics, nearly 12 million renters would have owed an average of $5,850 in back rent as of this past January, over 4 times the $1,400 one-time stimulus payment being issued by the government.

Approximately 1 in 5 renters said they were behind in their rent in January, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget Policies and Priorities, and some 36 percent of black renters say they are behind. However, the recently signed stimulus bill does not extend the federal ban on evictions, which is set to expire at the end of March.

While the stimulus package contained another $25 billion in rental assistance, it is not enough. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, renters owed as much as $70 billion in back rent through the end of December.

The recklessness, criminality and incompetence displayed by the ruling classes of all the major capitalist countries in response to the pandemic underscore the need for the working class to intervene based on its own program, prioritizing social need, not private profit. The giant industries, including health care and pharmaceuticals, must be placed under the democratic public ownership and control of the working class based on a scientific plan to confront the crisis.

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