Biden Admin Taps School Board Association Honcho For Post In Wake Of Infamous Letter
Appointment is the latest indication of the Biden administration’s collaboration with the group
Chuck Ross • October 25, 2021 3:30 pmThe Department of Education earlier this month tapped the president of the National School Board Association to serve on a federal board that tracks student progress, the latest indication of the Biden administration’s collaboration with the group that compared parents to domestic terrorists.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on Oct. 13 appointed National School Board Association president Viola Garcia to the National Assessment Governing Board, which develops the tests used to track student achievement across the country. Garcia was behind a Sept. 29 letter urging President Joe Biden to have the FBI monitor school board meetings for potential violence. The Department of Justice formed a task force on Oct. 4 consisting of the FBI and Justice Department’s national security and civil rights divisions, sparking outrage from parents groups who say the administration is trying to stifle parents who oppose mask mandates and left-wing curricula.
Garcia’s position on the board could raise questions about whether the appointment was linked to her advocacy work at the National School Board Association. Emails reported by the Washington Free Beacon show Garcia coordinated with the Biden White House and Department of Education in the weeks before releasing the controversial letter. "These are troubling times. NSBA has been engaged with the White House and the Department of Education on these and other issues related to the pandemic for several weeks now," Garcia wrote in an Oct. 2 email obtained by the group Parents Defending Education.
The National School Board Association apologized for the letter on Friday, saying there was "no justification" for the language comparing parents to terrorists. Other emails showed that some National School Board Association directors were upset with Garcia for issuing the letter without the board’s input. One director said that the letter’s reference to parents as domestic terrorists inflamed tensions at local school board meetings.
Garcia’s tenure on the governing board began on Oct. 1, according to a Department of Education press release.
Congress established the National Assessment Governing Board in 1988 to set policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the so-called Nation’s Report Card. Part of the board’s mission is to draft the questions used on the assessment and to use the results of the test to propose policies to the Department
https://freebeacon.com/campus/white-house-knew-about-letter-that-compared-parents-to-domestic-terrorists
White House Knew About Letter That Compared Parents to Domestic Terrorists
National School Board Association collaborated with Biden administration, emails show
Chuck Ross • October 21, 2021 1:45 pmThe country's largest school board association collaborated with the Biden White House before sending a controversial letter calling on the FBI to investigate parents as potential domestic terrorists, according to previously unreported emails.
The emails, obtained by Parents Defending Education through public records requests and reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, reveal that the National School Board Association's president and CEO sent the letter to Biden on Sept. 29 without approval from the organization's board. The letter said that the acts of some parents at school board meetings across the country could be considered "a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes."
The emails also show that the White House asked the association for examples of threats against school board members days before Attorney General Merrick Garland created a task force of officials from the FBI and the Justice Department to determine how to prosecute alleged crimes at school board meetings.
The letter makes clear that the White House was aware of the letter before it was released, while raising questions about whether the White House colluded with the association on the letter to prompt federal action. The letter has sparked allegations that the Biden administration is trying to stifle dissent among parents who oppose mask mandates and the teaching of critical race theory at America's schools. School board meetings have become battlegrounds for factions of parents torn on those issues. Parents in some districts have organized recall efforts to remove school board members who support mandates or radical curricula.
The emails also show that members of the National School Board Association's board of directors voiced frustration that officials sent out the letter without their approval.
One director at the association said that the letter had "reawakened hostilities" that were just beginning to subside.
"Many of us have been put in a position now of explaining or defending this action of our association as we are asked by members of our community if we consider them domestic terrorists for showing up to our meetings and expressing their opinions," John W. Halkias, a director from the association's Central Region, wrote on Oct. 1.
Halkias said that he and other board members would not have likely approved the letter, which he said "used terms that were extreme, and asked for action by the Federal Government that many of us would not request."
Viola Garcia, the president of the association, and Chip Slaven, the CEO, disclosed in other emails to the board that they had been in consultation with the White House and the Department of Education regarding an alleged rise in cases of irate parents showing up to school board meetings.
Slaven wrote on Sept. 29 that he and Garcia sent their letter to Biden "concerning threats to public schools and school board members." He said that "in talks over the last several weeks with White House staff," the administration had "requested additional information on some of the specific threats."
"So the letter also details many of the incidents that have been occurring," Slaven wrote.
Garcia wrote in an email to the board on Oct. 2 that the association had been engaged with the White House and Education Department "for several weeks" on the school board protests.
"We felt compelled to say something when we started hearing about the threats, harassment, and acts of intimidation at school board meetings," she wrote.
Garcia and Slaven did not respond to requests for comment.
It remains unclear whether the White House pressured the Department of Justice to create the school board task force. Garland testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday that he did not speak to the White House about his memo creating the school board task force. But he did say it is likely that White House and Justice Department officials discussed the association's letter raising concerns about school board meetings.
https://freebeacon.com/campus/white-house-knew-about-letter-that-compared-parents-to-domestic-terrorists/
Schools Should Stop Teaching ‘White Privilege’ as a Fact, Says Education Secretary Zahawi
White privilege and other tenets of leftist ideology should not be taught in school as “fact”, Britain’s recently installed Education Secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, has pronounced.
Responding to the Parliament’s education select committee report on how the white working class has been disadvantaged in British education, Mr Zahawi said that “contested theories” need to be contextualised with countervailing opinions in schools.
In his response to Parliament, the Education Secretary wrote that schools must not “promote partisan political views” and should not “teach contested theories and opinions as fact”, including “contested views on ‘white privilege'”.
“Political issues relating to racial and social justice can be taught about in a balanced and factual manner, just as pupils are often taught about a range of different views on other topics,” Mr Zahawi wrote.
The Iraqi-born education secretary said that the Department of Education should take measures to ensure that young pupils are not “inadvertently being inducted into political movements when what is required is balanced”.
Some have argued that promoting Critical Race Theory ideas is a breach of political neutrality laws and is a potential violation of the 1996 Education Act, which states that schools must provide “a balanced presentation of opposing [political] views”.
Zahawi also warned that by teaching white privilege as a fact, schools may be violating the requirements of the Equality Act of 2010.
“The Department should issue clear guidance for schools and other Department-affiliated organisations receiving grants from the Department on how to deliver teaching on these complex issues in a balanced, impartial and age-appropriate way,” he wrote.
In June, the education select committee’s report found that the white working class in Britain has been one of the most disadvantaged demographics in the country’s education system.
The report found that just 16 per cent of working-class white children continued onto higher education last year, the lowest of any demographic apart from gipsy/Roma and Irish-background travellers. The white working-class is also by far the largest group to be disadvantaged, with 982,950 white students being eligible for free school meals in 2020, compared to the next biggest group of 139,720 Asian students.
The committee said that terms such as white privilege can be “alienating to disadvantaged White communities, and it may have contributed towards a systemic neglect of White people facing hardship who also need specific support”.
The committee suggested that tax-payer funded charities, which promote such divisive ideologies, may be in violation of the law, and therefore may be subject to losing government funding.
The children’s charity Barnardo’s was specifically singled out after it published a blog post entitled, “White Privilege – Guide for Parents” last October.
“For the one in five Barnardo’s service users who are Black, Asian or minority ethnic, the colour of their skin is an additional factor that negatively affects them and their families in a multitude of well-documented ways,” the guide claimed.
The charity continued: “Helping children and those who nurture them, to understand what white privilege really means will not only prevent future generations from growing up to ignore race as an issue – but to be actively anti-racist through their actions.”
In April, Conservative MP Tom Hunt called for education institutions and charities which push white privilege to be stripped of their funding, saying: “We need to help all disadvantaged children whether they are white black or Asian.”
Teachers unions have attempted to push back against stopping such indoctrination, with Natalie Arnett of the National Association of Headteachers saying, according to The Telegraph: “We need to trust schools to have the conversations with pupils that are right for their contexts and communities. Simplistic diktats like this from central government are unhelpful.”
The move from Secretary Zahawi was hailed by others, however, including education campaigner Chris McGovern, who told talkRADIO: “We’ve got a problem in this country, it’s white underprivileged.”
“Three cheers for the immigrant community, but they are doing quite well,” Mr McGovern added.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
THE GLOBALIST DEMOCRAT PARTY IS FOR ABORTION, ANCHOR BABY BREEDERS FOR 18 YEARS OF WELFARE AND BOTTOMLESS BAILOUTS FOR BANKSTES.
Brooks: ‘I’m Not Quite Sure I See’ Goal of Refining Reconciliation Bill Being Supporting Working Class and Those Without College Degrees
On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks argued that the reconciliation bill should push “money to people without college degrees who are in the working class,” but right now, he doesn’t see that being the approach to what gets taken out of and left in the package.
Brooks said, “Some choices, I think, are quite unfortunate. They’ve put at risk the size of the child tax credit, which I think is the single best thing in the whole bill, which really does reduce childhood poverty to a great degree. Some choices they could wander into could be very good choices. They’ve lost the core of the climate change. But senators like Ron Wyden, Democrat from Oregon, is talking about a carbon tax, and that would solve a lot of things at once. It would help reduce carbon emissions, but also raise revenue to pay for this stuff. And so, I still think a lot is under negotiation. And what I’m looking for is, is there a theme to what they leave in and what they take out? Do they have an overall theory of the case? In my view, we’ve spent the last 40 years funneling money to rich people with college degrees. We should have a big spending bill that funnels money to people without college degrees who are in the working class, and that would be my theme, decide what [comes] and goes. Right now, I’m not quite sure I see it.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
BIG SPIKE IN SHOPLIFTING, THIEVES GET MORE BRAZEN, POVERTY DANGER AHEAD WARNING
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4BMXf2G6h8
Walgreens Closes Five Bay Area Stores amid Shoplifting Surge
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2021/10/black-lives-loot-walgreens-closes-five.html
VIDEO
WATCH: Ulta Beauty Ransacked During Store Hours in Chicago
https://www.breitbart.com/crime/2021/09/28/ulta-beauty-ransacked-during-store-hours-chicago/
BLACK VIOLENCE IN AMERICA
THE MURDER, MAYHEM AND LOOTING THAT IS SO MUCH A PART OF THE BLACK SUBCULTURE ACROSS AMERICA
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2021/08/black-violence-in-america-murder-mayhem.html
11 Suspects Sought In $100K Handbag Heist At Palo Alto Louis Vuitton Store
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzIkiCOuQNE
Video shows suspected thieves sprinting out of California Neiman
Marcus with designer handbags
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1ctqHXAcXM
Brazen shoplifting video in San Francisco becomes issue in California recall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAIcsHh8vso
Brazen, Serial Shoplifter Appears In Court As DA Vows To Crack Down On Retail Thefts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvvnsvVJrdE
Busting an Organized Shoplifting Ring
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYFvtPM2su4
Vicky Nguyen Gets Inside Look At Retail Theft Rings | TODAY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97x6bLB5RhM
San Francisco locals react to rampant shoplifting, break-ins | Fox News Digital Original
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU6o2MIuMQc
Target Cuts Store Hours in San Francisco Due to Shoplifting Surge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NNjdF0cCuQ
Group steals $30K from store in seconds | FOX6 News Milwaukee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S2pX-VRZXc
Major Arrest In $1 Million Apple Store Thefts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0SCIkKgu7A
Apple Store Robbery Suspects Arrested
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT9Jc7lB_Zo
Pricey Heist Lasts 34 Seconds, Ends With $200K Jewelry Stolen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09aI0HAqtBM
Jewelry heist captured on video at Avenues Mall store
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6goU5Fj_b8
Credit Card Thieves Caught on Tape Using Skimmers | Nightline | ABC
News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAP7sVh4smc
Man Trapped Inside of Store After Serial Thieving Spree | I Survived a Crime | A&E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmLUEQUd6pQ
Walgreens Closes Five Bay Area Stores amid Shoplifting Surge
Michael M. Santiago/Getty
13 Oct 20210
3:21
The ongoing shoplifting surge has forced Walgreens to close five more San Francisco stores as local law enforcement continues to do next to nothing to curtail the problem.
In a statement to SF Gate, Walgreens spokesman Phil Caruso confirmed “organized retail crime” has strangled San Francisco stores.
“Organized retail crime continues to be a challenge facing retailers across San Francisco, and we are not immune to that,” Caruso said. “Retail theft across our San Francisco stores has continued to increase in the past few months to five times our chain average.”
“During this time to help combat this issue, we increased our investments in security measures in stores across the city to 46 times our chain average in an effort to provide a safe environment,” he added.
Asha Safai, San Francisco Board of Supervisor for District 11 admitted to feeling “devastated” over the closure a Walgreens store that has “been a staple for seniors, families and children for decades.”
“I am completely devastated by this news – this Walgreens is less than a mile from seven schools and has been a staple for seniors, families and children for decades. This closure will significantly impact this community,” he tweeted.
Safai told SFGate that the shoplifting had crippled the store’s bottom-line and endangered the staff and customers to an unhealthy degree.
“This is a sad day for San Francisco,” Safai said. “We can’t continue to let these anchor institutions close that so many people rely on.”
Shoplifting has skyrocketed in San Francisco recently, likely a result of Proposition 47, which dictates stealing would not be a felony in California if the item stolen did not exceed $950.
The damage has been felt across a range of business outlets.
In May of this year, The San Francisco News described the situation as being “out of control,” noting that 17 Walgreens have had to close in the past five years due to rampant shoplifting in the city.
17 Walgreen locations in San Francisco have closed their doors within the last five years according to a report from the SF Chronicle. Ten of these closures transpired from 2019 to this year with the last Walgreens store to close its door as of this writing, back on March 17. The cause of the closures is due to rampant shoplifting and looting that has transpired at Walgreen locations in the city believed to be perpetuated by an organized crime ring.
On Thursday, May 13 a hearing was held by the Board of Supervisors with retailers, the SFPD, the district attorney’s office, and probation departments. Brendan Dugan, director of organized retail crime and corporate investigations, believes that San Francisco is at the center of organized retail crime. He brought up a state bust in the Bay Area from last year in which $8 million in stolen merchandise was confiscated from five suspects. The merchandise came from CVS, Target and Walgreens stores from all across San Francisco.
The lack of enforcement made shoplifters so nonchalant and casual they would often steal in broad daylight while awestruck customers documented the crime on their iPhones, allowing for some viral internet moments.
CrimeEconomyLaw and OrderCaliforniaSan FranciscoshopliftingWalgreens
At one point in the video, the female suspect appeared to stomp on the woman’s head multiple times.
VIDEO: NYC Woman Beaten, Stomped in Head During Alleged Robbery
https://www.breitbart.com/crime/2021/10/13/video-nyc-woman-beaten-stomped-head-alleged-robbery/
13 Oct 20210
2:06
Police have released video of two people’s alleged attack on a woman in Brooklyn last week that resulted in her being taken to the hospital unconscious.
The individual was believed to still be in the hospital as of Wednesday, one week after it happened, PIX 11 reported.
Police said the incident occurred at approximately 3:15 a.m. on October 6 on Powell Street in the Brownsville area.
Surveillance video showed the moment a man and woman approached the 30-year-old woman. The female suspect appeared to punch her in the head, causing her to fall headfirst into a fenced planter:
The female suspect then appeared to continue hitting the woman as she lay on the ground, which knocked her unconscious, according to authorities.
The male suspect reportedly took the woman’s purse, two cellphones, cash, and a neck chain, while the other suspect kept hitting her, police stated.
At one point in the video, the female suspect appeared to stomp on the woman’s head multiple times.
Police told Pix 11 the attack was not random, and they believe it was the result of an earlier encounter between the victim and the female suspect.
“The woman was rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment of trauma to her head and face, authorities said. She is expected to survive,” the outlet reported.
A Rasmussen poll released in August in partnership with the National Police Association (NPA) found 70 percent of American voters believe crime is “out of control,” while 22 percent disagreed.
“A majority of those polled believe poor policy has to do with this year’s increase in violent crimes, including the elimination of cash bail requirements in some jurisdictions,” Breitbart News reported.
“Seventy-three percent of voters say letting accused violent criminals out of jail without bail while they wait for trial increases violent crime. Fourteen percent disagree, and 13 percent are not sure,” the outlet said.
At Least 23 Shot Friday Into Sunday Morning in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Chicago
At least 23 people were shot, three of them fatally, Friday into Sunday morning in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s (D) Chicago.
ABC 7 / Chicago Sun-Times reported at least 23 people were shot during a time-frame beginning Friday and ending at 3:49 a.m. Sunday.
There were three shooting fatalities, the first of which occurred at approximately 12:30 a.m. Saturday, when a 35-year-old woman was “shot in the face after her boyfriend’s gun accidentally went off.” The fatal incident occurred at a party “in the 3700-block of South Wood Street.”
The second shooting fatality of the weekend occurred about 10:40 a.m,, when a 31-year-old man “in the 1200-block of West 73rd Street” was shot numerous times. He was rushed to a hospital after being shot, and was pronounced dead.
The weekend’s third shooting fatality was discovered around 3:15 a.m. Sunday “in the 4400-block of West Monroe Street.” The victim was a 29-year-old man whom police found lying on the ground with gunshots to the chest.
Breitbart News noted at least 22 people were shot, four fatally, last weekend in Mayor Lightfoot’s Chicago.
HeyJackass.com pointed out that 42 people have been shot and killed in Chicago thus far in October alone, and another 240 have been shot and wounded.
There have been nearly 660 shooting fatalities in Chicago this year.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
JOE BIDEN = CLOSET REPUBLICAN STAGING HIMSELF AS A POPULIST WOKER
Legal and illegal migrant labor is commonplace and beneficial for business, partly because it minimizes the emergence of a wage-boosting tight labor market among American restaurant workers — or among their white-collar peers.
CALIFORNIA ONE THIRD OF U.S. JOBLESS, REAL ESTATE NIGHTMARE OR
DREAM, INVESTING STRATEGY, OIL PRICES
Chris Hedges | It's Not The Poor Who Make Revolution
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA67xdufl5U
Megan McArdle Discusses How America's Elites Are Rigging the Rules - Newsweek/The Daily Beast special correspondent Megan McArdle joins Scott Rasmussen for a discussion on America's new Mandarin class.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/03/obamas-wall-street-and-looting-of.html
PATRICK BUCHANAN: OBAMA’S ASSAULT ON AMERICA BEGINS AT OUR BORDERS
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/06/patrick-j-buchanan-when-obama-turned.html
OBAMA-BIDENOMICS FOR THE RICH
Study: Elite Zip Codes Thrived in Obama Recovery, Rural America Left Behind
4:49
Wealthy cities and elite zip codes thrived under the slow-moving economic recovery of President Obama while rural American communities were left behind, a study reveals.
ITS WORSE THAN I SAID, WEALTH GAP DEEPENS, STOCK BROKERS SELL TRADERS DATA + CARGO CRISIS UPDATE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWypJ3fVH6Y
Goodbye Middle Class: 50 Percent Of All U.S. Workers Made $34,612.04 Or Less Last Year
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScyKgUtyqV0
RECESSION? ONLY FOR THE RICH. FOR THE REST OF US IT IS CLEARLY A DEPRESSION!
ARE YOU FEELING THE RECESSION? ECONOMIST WARN IT'S HERE NOW, PANIC BUYING, HOME PRICES OUT OF REACH
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmXD-BePT7A
The Great Resignation: Why Millions Of Workers Are Quitting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hKXEEUElO8
Why Are Millions Of Americans Quitting Their Jobs And Not Getting New Ones?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5NkrkQltUQ
Ryan Grim: 4.3 Million Workers Just Told Their Bosses To Shove It
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JIpEi8nh4k
GOODBYE MIDDLE CLASS - U.S. WORKERS ARE BROKE - SERIOUS FINANCIAL PROBLEMS - SURVIVING ON LOW WAGES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M_nq1aMZ9M
Zillow STOPS Buying. Housing Crash NEXT?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdCK9RKng1Q
THE ECONOMY WILL HIT A WALL, LEGENDARY INVESTOR WARNS, NEXT FINANCIAL CRISIS
HOME FLIPPERS BEWARE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-i5BfUNa6w
Idaho feels impact of drug trafficking from border
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFiTwBf6HwI
Gov. Abbott blasts Biden's 'catastrophic open border policies' for migrant crisis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXTlDlhWfHM
IS THE BIDEN REGIME AS 'LAWLESS' AS THE BANKSTER REGIME OF BARACK OBAMA, JOE BIDEN AND ERIC HOLDER?
Gingrich accuses Biden administration of 'rejecting' reality
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VikaR607-C4
America's Fate: Oligarchy or Autocracy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS-7Cymfg_I&t=346s
CALIFORNIA JOBLESS SURGE, AMERICAN AIRLINES ON LIFE SUPPORT, ECONOMIC COLLAPSE NEWS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kKxUeHdjQg
CALIFORNIA IN MELTDOWN
UNCERTAIN TIMES AHEAD AS ECONOMIC DESTRUCTION CONTINUES - INFLATION GETS
WORSE - RESTAURANTS CLOSING
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz2cOBcNG8o
FINANCIAL ENDGAME FOR UNPREPARED AMERICANS - ECONOMIC NIGHTMARE IS NOW
REAL - FED WILL NOT SAVE YOU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHNa239EDvg
Neofascist seizure of America’s state governments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJnzA-ZvXt8
Biden Dismantles the Ban on Hiring Illegal Immigrants
By Mark Krikorian
National Review, October 15, 2021as's memo is more than just the latest in a series of anti-immigration-enforcement directives by this administration. Rather, it represents the Left’s rejection of the very *concept* of illegal employment.
THIS FUCKER LAWYER MAYORKAS FIGHTS TOOTH AND NAIL AGAINST E-VERIFY AND CAN'T OPEN HIS MOUTH WITHOUT MORE LIES COMING OUT ABOUT BIDEN'S INVASION.
REALITY IS THAT NAFTA JOE BIDEN HAS ALWAYS FOUGHT AGAINST THE AMERICAN WORKER!
Biden’s border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas, has already spent much of 2021 helping the CEOs and shareholders to re-inflate the cheap-labor bubble that hurt millions of Americans.
Since January, he has admitted at least 800,000 working-age migrants, and rolled back enforcement of U.S. labor law in abusive workplaces. The huge inflow has boosted the number of no-English speaking workers in Virginia and elsewhere.
Restaurant Execs: Less Migration Forces More Respect for American Employees
106File/Getty Images
18 Oct 20210
9:41
The shortage of migrants and willing Americans is forcing food-industry CEOs to treat their employees with more respect and dignity, says the personnel chief at one of the nation’s largest restaurant firms.
“You’ve got to be receptive to feedback,” Rick Badgley at Brinker International which owns the Chili’s Maggiano’s Little Italy restaurant chains, told an industry conference on October 13. He continued:
The workforce that we’re dealing with now has high standards, high demands, and high expectations. Make sure you’re investing the time to listen, listen to your team members, they have invaluable feedback for you.
Employees “have very distinct and really easy-to-follow motivators,” said Badgley told attendees at the conference, which was organized by food-delivery firm Doordash:
What we’ve experienced at the macro level down to the restaurant level, is that they [most] want flexibility with what has happened with what we call now the gig economy, the side hustle …
[And] compensation is important to everybody. What we’ve found through surveys and talking to our frontline employees, is that we need to align their compensation with their monthly bills.
Many food-industry companies hired workers under “at will” contracts where the employees do not know how many hours they will be scheduled to work each day. The contracts leave them with little ability to work other jobs, or even to arrange regular babysitting for their kids.
“Traditionally in restaurants, it was: ‘Hey, this is the job. If you want these hours, great; if not, we’ll find somebody else,’” Christopher Floyd, owner of a food-industry recruitment firm told the New York Times. “Now employers have to say, ‘You have the qualities we’re looking for; maybe we can work out a more flexible schedule that works for you.’
Customers dine at the Greek restaurant Molos in Weehawken, New Jersey on February 6, 2021, amid the coronavirus pandemic. (KENA BETANCUR/AFP via Getty)
Badgley’s recommendation comes amid widespread dissatisfaction by American restaurant workers, according to a September report by Black Box Intelligence, a firm that tracks the restaurant sector:
Most people agree higher pay is the main reason employees are leaving for other industries. Another driver is a need for a more consistent schedule and income. 51% of workers chose to work in restaurants because of flexibility, but beyond that flexibility, employees want some sense of consistency in terms of what their schedule might be and their income as a result.
“We don’t like to say this much, but it has long been the practice of many restaurants to hire staff as inexpensively as possible and provide them with the fewest benefits that they can, often by restricting their hours so they don’t qualify as full-time employees,” said Bret Thorn, the senior food & beverage editor for Nation’s Restaurant News. “We all know this,” he added:
I guess that can be a good business plan when the labor pool is deep, which it’s not now and I doubt will be for the foreseeable future, but it’s also cruel, and a growing number of people who have worked in restaurants now see that they can do better, and that they deserve better.
Legal and illegal migrant labor is commonplace and beneficial for business, partly because it minimizes the emergence of a wage-boosting tight labor market among American restaurant workers — or among their white-collar peers.
In August, for example, federal officials charged 19 co-defendants for allegedly running “an organized criminal enterprise from July 2003 to Aug. 10, 2021, that smuggled Mexican, Guatemalan, and El Salvadoran nationals who were not authorized to live or work in the United States.” The ring supplied many workers to at least 45 restaurants across the midwest.
In Detroit, River Bistro chef Maxcel Hardy prepares a Caribbean shrimp dish at his restaurant. The city allows chefs and prospective restaurant owners to realize their dreams at a lower financial cost than other places, like New York, according to chef Hardy. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)
Nonetheless, the poor wages and working conditions are a step up for many poor migrants, partly because they know that U.S. jobs may allow them to successfully launch their children into the United States.
“My parents came to the United States in the 1960s from Mexico … in search of a better life,” said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) told an October 15 meeting with progressive lobbyists:
They weren’t blessed with a lot of formal education. My dad only had the opportunity to go to school for the first grade before stopping to work to help the family. My mom, we said, was the lucky one. She had a chance to finish elementary school, before doing the same. But they came to United States with a tremendous work ethic and big dreams. For 40 years, my father helped provide for our family by working as a short-order cook. And if you’re wondering what that means, if you’ve ever been out for breakfast, think of who’s scrambling eggs and flipping pancakes when you place an order. That’s what my dad did for 40 years. For the same 40 years, my mom used to clean houses. So, needless to say, it’s hard work, honest work, and and on those modest incomes they raised three of us.
But all that cheap labor made restaurant jobs miserable for many millions of poor Americans — and now they do not want to come back to the industry which treated them so badly.
In effect, exploitative executives drained their labor pool in the easy decades before Trump and the cor0navirus burst their cheap-labor bubble in 2020. Joblist.com, a job-finding site, reported in July 2021:
38% of former hospitality workers report that they are not even considering a hospitality job for their next position. These workers are transitioning out of the industry in search of a different work setting (52%), higher pay (45%), better benefits (29%), and more schedule flexibility (19%). Over 50% of former hospitality workers who are looking for other work say that no pay increase or incentive would make them return to their old restaurant, bar, or hotel job.
When industry executives raise wages to new hires, they also must raise the wages of their existing employees. The Wall Street Journal reported in August:
Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. said in May that it was lifting its pay for hourly positions to an average of $15 an hour, amounting to an average raise of around $2 for front-line workers … The chain, which owns and operates its nearly 2,900 locations, made sure the raises included a premium for experienced employees within each role, and gave raises that averaged around $2 an hour to hourly managers and commensurate raises to salaried managers.
“Labor is substantially costing more now,” Hudson Riehle, the research director at the National Restaurant Association, told the Doordash conference:
You can see [on a chart] the average hourly earnings growth there coming out of the great recession …. currently running in excess of 6%. And for a typical restaurant operation, labor accounts about a third of the restaurant industry sales dollar. Food and beverage purchases [are] another third, and pre-tax income [profit] is generally just 3 to 6 percent. So there isn’t a lot of room of maneuverability for the operator to maintain their pretax profit margins. Consequently, margins are substantially under pressure in the industry for those operators that have survived.
Unsurprisingly, industry executives and stock-market analysts are pleading with Biden to re-inflate the cheap-labor bubble.
Guests dine at the Los Angeles Conservancy in Los Angeles, California. (Amanda Edwards/Getty)
“We need immigration in our industry to have enough team members,” Domino’s Pizza’s CEO Ritch Allison told CNBC on October 15. Migrants “who want to work hard, want to stay with the business for a long period of time, can end up being owners and entrepreneurs,” he explained.
CNBC’s investment advisor, Jim Cramer, echoed the CEO’s demand for more imported workers:
Ritch Allison started, I think, a conversation that we’re all going to have to talk about. We don’t have population growth in this country. … But more importantly, he’s saying, we cut off immigration. We stopped it, but the great thing about our country is immigrants come in, they become drivers. Next thing you know they own a Domino’s, then they own several places. That’s ending. We literally have to start thinking about an immigration policy that involves taking in people.
Biden’s border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas, has already spent much of 2021 helping the CEOs and shareholders to re-inflate the cheap-labor bubble that hurt millions of Americans.
Since January, he has admitted at least 800,000 working-age migrants, and rolled back enforcement of U.S. labor law in abusive workplaces. The huge inflow has boosted the number of no-English speaking workers in Virginia and elsewhere.
But the near-term pressure is forcing food-industry CEOs to be nice to their American employees — and also to raise productivity and automate their workplaces.
“What are operators to do in an environment where they can’t find enough labor?” said Riehle. “They obviously raised the time that those workers … are working,” said.
“Consumers are seeking more technology in their restaurant experience,” he added. “They’re looking for it mainly in the ordering and payment making it easier to improve service to increase convenience … as well as expedite the experience.”
“We don’t see it getting any easier in the near future,” said Badgley, adding:
We are dealing with immigration laws. We’re dealing with the headwinds of wage inflation. We’re dealing with birth rates that are lower, we’re dealing with different generational demands, all of these things are upon us.
“What’s going on in the industry today … is historic.”
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Inflation is Surging as Wages are Falling - People are Unprepared
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu9Ad7Y3SZE
Commentary
Biden’s Border Predicament
By Mark Krikorian
National Review, July 5, 2021
Excerpt: Asylum is the loophole that renders moot the entire body of immigration law. There is no possibility of regaining control over immigration without either detaining all asylum-seekers until they receive a decision, and deporting those who don’t qualify, or making them wait in Mexico for their hearing date. The Biden administration refuses to do either, and so the border crisis the president created by ending Trump’s Remain in Mexico program will continue.
Study finds 90 percent of Americans would make 67 percent more without last four decades of increasing income inequality
25 September 2020
A new study from the RAND Corporation, “Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018,” written by Carter Price and Kathryn Edwards, provides new documentation of the profound restructuring of class relations in America over the last 40 years.
The study, which looks at changes in pre-tax family income from 1947 to 2018, divided into quintiles of the American population, concludes that the bottom 90 percent of the population would, on average, make 67 percent more in income—every year (!)—had shifts in income inequality not occurred the last four decades.
In other words, any family that made less than $184,292 (the 90th percentile income bracket) in 2018 would be, on average, making 67 percent more. This amounts to a total sum of $2.5 trillion of collective lost income for the bottom 90 percent, just in 2018.
Furthermore, the study concludes, that had more equitable growth continued after 1975 (a date they use as a shifting point), the bottom 90 percent of American households would have earned a total of $47 trillion more in income.
Given that there were about 115 million households in the bottom 90 percent of the US in 2018 population (out of a total of 127.59 million in 2018), that would mean that each of these households would, on average, be $408,696 richer today with this lost income.
To reach these conclusions, the authors break down historical real, pre-tax, income into different quintiles of the population (bottom fifth, second fifth, third fifth, fourth fifth, highest fifth). Looking at the period between 1947 and 2018, they divide the years based on business cycles (booms and busts of the economy).
Growth in Annualized Real Family Pre-tax, Pre-Transfer Income by Quantile from RAND, “Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018,” by C. Price and K. Edwards.
Their data quantitatively expresses the restructuring of class relations that began at the end of the post-WWII boom. Facing intensified economic crisis, automation, and global competition, the US ruling class undertook an aggressive campaign of deindustrialization, slashing wages and clawing back benefits won in the previous period by explosive struggles of the working class, while simultaneously funneling money to financial markets, expanding the wealth and income of both the upper and upper-middle class.
As the data shows, while the bottom 40 percent of American households made significant percentile increases to their income, relative to the top 5 percent, for the 20 years between 1947 and 1968, in the 40 years from 1980 to the present, this trend was reversed. In 1980-2000, the bottom 40 percent of the population experienced a net income gain significantly below that of the top 5 percent. It must be noted that because these are percentile increases, the absolute differences between the gains of the rich versus the poor is far larger.
Furthermore, not included in this data is wealth. In the last 40 years, and especially the last 10 to 20 years, the stock market has become the principal means through which the top 10 percent of the population has piled up historic levels of wealth.
Significantly, the data from 2001 to 2018 shows a sharp slowdown in income gains for all sections of American society as per capita GDP growth slowed and US capitalism experienced a historic decline. However, while the income of the top 5 percent of the population may have only grown by about 2 percent between 2008 and 2018, the wealth of the top percentiles of the population exploded. For example, according to data from the Federal Reserve of St. Louis, the wealth of the top 1 percent of the population increased from almost $20 trillion in the first quarter of 2008, just before the worst of the financial crisis, to almost $33 trillion at the beginning of 2018.
By using the data, the authors come up with a set of counterfactual incomes based on what would be the different income brackets in 2018 without a shift in income distribution. The top 1 percent, instead of making on average $1,384,000 would make $630,000. The 25th percentile, instead of making $33,000 would make $61,000.
Data source: RAND; Graphics by Marry Traverse for Civic Ventures; as published in TIME Magazine
The authors of the study also make several other important observations by breaking down their data on the basis of location, education, and race.
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