Friday, January 15, 2021

PAY A LIVING WAGE IN AMERICA?!? - BUT THAT'S WHY WE HAVE OPEN BORDERS!!! - ILLEGALS KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED - WHO HAS EVER SEEN A FAST FOOD OUTLET HIRE NON-HISPANICS???

 

Fast-Food Workers Plan to Strike in 15 Cities to Demand $15 an Hour

Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
2:23

Fast-food workers in 15 cities across the United States plan to strike Friday, hoping to convince the incoming Biden administration to raise the federal minimum wage.

“The strikes, which are being organized by Fight for $15 and a Union, are demanding just that — a $15 hourly minimum wage and the right to unionize without retaliation,” Fox Business reported Thursday.

The group announced the event in a tweet Wednesday, stating, “Workers will not back down until everyone makes at least $15”:

Fight for $15’s website said essential workers “voted for a president who promised to stand with workers and deliver racial and economic justice – now it’s up to us to hold them to their word”:

The Biden/Harris transition team MUST prioritize our lives as they plan for their first 100 days:

  • $15/hr federal minimum wage

  • Rewrite the rules to make it easier to join a union

  • Racial justice in our communities

  • Healthcare we can afford

  • Hold McDonald’s and other giant employers accountable for their failure to protect essential workers on the frontlines of the pandemic

During a recent press conference, President-elect Joe Biden (D) said he has long advocated rewarding work, not only wealth, in the country, according to Breitbart News:

People in both parties now both recognize it’s time to raise the minimum wage so hard working people earn at least $15 an hour, minimum. No one, no one should work as millions are doing today, 40 hours a week at a job and still live below the poverty line. They’re entitled to at least the $15 minimum wage per hour.

However, critics have said raising the federal minimum wage would strain employers and could put some companies out of business, the Fox article continued.

“For now, at least, raising the minimum wage is currently a decision left up to each state, many of whom have plans to increase hourly pay in 2021,” the outlet said.

Meanwhile, burger-flipping robots appear to be changing the industry by offering their services to restaurants for about $3 an hour, Breitbart News reported in February.

Joe Biden Weighs Amnesty Plan for Illegal Aliens in Meeting with Open Borders Lobby

Amnesty for DACA
Eric Baradat/AFP/Getty Images
3:18

President-elect Joe Biden is laying the groundwork for an amnesty for 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living in the United States, meeting with open borders lobbying groups and sanctuary city politicians to discuss a legislative strategy.

On Thursday, Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris met with a handful of cabinet nominees, executives with open borders lobbying groups, and sanctuary city politicians about “his day one plans to introduce immigration reform legislation and protect DACA recipients,” according to a readout of the meeting.

Biden’s meeting included Xavier Becerra, his nominee to lead Health and Human Services (HHS), who as California attorney general has implemented one of the strictest sanctuary state policies in the nation — even going as far as to say the state would prosecute employers who cooperate with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

The meeting also included Los Angeles, California Mayor Eric Garcetti, who oversees a sanctuary city policy that frees back into the community hundreds of criminal illegal aliens every week from local jails.

Alida Garcia with Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us attended the meeting. As Breitbart News has chronicled, FWD.us is one of the leading pressure groups to expand the number of foreign visa workers that corporations are allowed to import to take high-paying, white-collar U.S. jobs.

Other executives with the open borders lobbying groups in attendance included:

  • Sindy Benavides, President of LULAC
  • Alida Garcia, Vice President of Advocacy of FWD.us
  • Domingo Garcia, Board Chair, LULAC
  • Maria Teresa Kumar, President & CEO of Voto Latino
  • Henry R. Munoz III, co-Founder of Latino Victory
  • Janet Murguia, President of UnidosUS
  • Nathalie Rayes, President & CEO of Latino Victory Fund
  • Tom Saenz, President of MALDEF
  • Hector Sanchez, President of Mi Familia Vota

The business lobby, which regularly seeks an expansion of legal immigration levels to widen profit margins by cutting U.S. wages, was represented by an executive with the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Biden’s advisers have already begun meeting with House Democrats to talk about a legislative pathway for an amnesty for millions of illegal aliens. Aside from an amnesty that would burden 18 million jobless Americans with increased foreign competition in the U.S. labor market, Biden is eyeing an end to President Trump’s reforms at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The plans include ending the Centers for Disease Control’s Title 42 order and Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which ensures that federal immigration officials can return border crossers to their native countries within hours and forces Mexico to house asylum applicants so they are not released into the interior of the U.S.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

Biden’s DHS Pick Oversaw Corporate Merger, Leaving Thousands Laid Off

WILMINGTON, DE - NOVEMBER 24:  Secretary of Homeland Security nominee Alejandro Mayorkas speaks after being introduced by President-elect Joe Biden as he introduces key foreign policy and national security nominees and appointments at the Queen Theatre on November 24, 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware. As President-elect Biden waits to receive official national …
Mark Makela/Getty Images
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Alejandro Mayorkas, President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), helped with a corporate merger that is leaving thousands of Americans laid off.

In 2018, multinational telecommunication conglomerates T-Mobile and Sprint sought approval from the federal government to merge in a $23 billion deal. The merger, union representatives warned, would result in more than 30,000 Americans losing their jobs and continue monopolistic trends of concentrated corporate power.

A year later, the Trump administration via the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the T-Mobile/Sprint merger. As a corporate lawyer with Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, Mayorkas was part of a team to help implement the merger by April 1, 2020.

“WilmerHale called upon the deep experience of its lawyers knowledgeable in antitrust, congressional matters, trials, state attorneys general investigations, and federal regulatory agencies to help bring the merger to fruition,” a statement from the firm reads after the merger was completed in April 2020, citing Mayorkas’ involvement.

As union representatives expected, the merger is resulting in layoffs for Americans. When the merger was finalized with Mayorkas’s help, T-Mobile CEO John Legere claimed it would be “jobs positive from Day One and every day thereafter.”

Just three months after the merger’s finalization, though, it was projected that about 1,200 to 2,000 retail locations would be closed across the United States, resulting in at least 6,000 U.S. jobs. Likewise, about 4,500 Americans are losing their jobs at Sprint’s headquarters in Kansas and T-Mobile’s headquarters in Washington.

That same month, T-Mobile executives told 400 American workers over a conference call that they would be losing their jobs, according to audio of the call obtained by TechCrunch.

Mayorkas’s involvement with the merger is the latest in his resumé to come to light following the release of financial disclosure reports. Mayorkas also worked as a corporate attorney representing the likes of Uber, Airbnb, Cisco Systems, Intuit, and the Wall Street firm Blackstone.

Previously, Mayorkas served as deputy secretary at DHS under the Obama administration, where the Inspector General (IG) at the time unveiled that he had improperly helped secure EB-5 visas for well-connected wealthy foreign nationals.

In 2015, the IG noted that Mayorkas had been reported by multiple staffers at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency for intervening in three specific EB-5 visa cases where foreign investors had been denied visas. In each of the cases, Mayorkas intervened on behalf of the foreign investors in order to appeal the decisions and secure them visas.

Likewise, a report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) found that Mayorkas ignored asylum fraud while heading USCIS, where oftentimes no asylum fraud cases were referred to the U.S. attorney’s office for years.

Biden is now seeking a fast-track Senate approval process for Mayorkas.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.


Bush, Obama DHS Chiefs Praise Joe Biden’s DHS Nominee

President-elect Joe Biden's Homeland Security Secretary nominee Alejandro Mayorkas speaks at The Queen theater, Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2020, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
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Four former homeland security chiefs have endorsed President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for homeland security because he helped deliver work permits to roughly 800,000 illegal migrants.

“We each know [nominee Alejandro] Mayorkas as a man of character, integrity, experience and compassion … he helped create and administer the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals [DACA] program,” said the January 12 Washington Post op-ed by former DHS secretaries Tom Ridge, Michael Chertoff, Janet Napolitano, and Jeh Johnson.

The DACA program provided work permits to roughly 800,000 illegal migrants during the post-2008 economic recession, even as many millions of Americans had lost jobs, wages, and homes. 

“The president-elect could not have found a more qualified person to be the next homeland security secretary,” said the four former secretaries, all of whom worked for Presidents George W. Bush or President Barack Obama — despite evidence of multiple scandals in Mayorkas’ record.

“The swampiest of the swamp,” responded John Miano, a lawyer with the Immigration Law Reform Institute, who is suing to block some of Mayorkas’ pre-2017 policies. “Bush, Obama, Biden, it’s all the same cast of characters, destroying working Americans from the beginning, and they’re now getting back into power,” he said.

Mayorkas faces a fast-track confirmation hearing on January 19 before several GOP members, including Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Mitt Romney of Utah, and Rick Scott of Florida.

When Mayorkas worked for Obama, “everything that came out of his office was to screw working Americans,” said Miano, whose lawsuits against Mayorkas’ cheap labor policies are still being passed back and forth among judges who do not want to rule against the visa worker programs. “That’s what we expect we’re going to be seeing from the Biden administration.”

The four secretaries will likely portray their op-ed as a favor to Mayorkas that can be repaid to clients by Mayorkas if he is confirmed, Miano added.

The four former DHS secretaries will have many opportunities to trade favors, in part, because they have been active supporters of the unpopular work visa programs, which allow CEOs to replace American graduates with cheap and compliant foreign workers. 

For example, Chertoff recently defended the visa worker programs that have pushed at least one million American graduates out of jobs. “I happen to believe there is a place for legal migration, and for people to be coming in temporarily with a visa to do work that Americans need to have done and that will not be done by American citizens,” he told Axios on December 18.

Until August 1, Napolitano was the chancellor of the huge Univerity of California system that opposed curbs on the award of visas and work permits to the foreign customers of the universities via the huge Optional Practical Training program that Chertoff helped to create.

Their op-ed denounced Trump’s DHS political priorities — which include the protection of Americans’ labor markets — saying, “DHS should not be beholden to a president’s political agenda; it exists for the protection of the American people on land, at sea, in the air and in cyberspace.”

The pro-migration agenda shared by the four authors and Mayorkas is being applauded by many establishment figures, including the multi-billion dollar widow of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Inc.

Migration is a boon for wealthy Americans because it moves money from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to real estate investors, and from the central states to the coastal states.

Migration also allows investors and CEOs to skimp on labor-saving technology, sideline U.S. minorities, ignore disabled peopleexploit stoop labor in the fields, shortchange labor in the cities, impose tight control and pay cuts on American professionals.

Migration also helps corral technological innovation by minimizing the employment of American graduates, undermine  Americans’ labor rights, and redirect progressive journalists to cheerlead for Wall Street’s priorities and claims.

“The fact we have all these swamp creatures supporting him,” said Miano, “should tell us that he is an agent of the establishment who will screw the average working American.”



As COVID cases surge: Sharp rise in new US unemployment claims

In the first full week of 2021 new claims for unemployment benefits increased sharply amid the rising toll of the pandemic, with adjusted first-time unemployment claims reached 965,000 for the week ending January 9.

That is the highest weekly number since last August and it was the largest week over week gain in new filings since March. The raw number of new claims surged 231,335 to reach 1.151 million last week. Economists tend to place more confidence in the unadjusted numbers, since the disruptions caused by the pandemic has made the adjusted figure, based on seasonal fluctuations, less reliable.

City workers and volunteers gather fruit to load into cars at a food distribution site, Wednesday, Jan 13, 2021, in Miami Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

New weekly claims for the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program also rose last week, increasing by 100,000 to 284,470. The PUA provides benefits to the self-employed and “gig workers” who are not typically covered by regular unemployment benefits. This follows reports that the US lost 140,000 jobs in December, the first such monthly decline since March.

In addition, the number of continuing claims for unemployment benefits rose to 5.3 million from 5.1 million, indicating a rise in the long-term jobless. It was the first time that the number had risen since November, having declined through the summer and into fall.

The Economic Policy Institute said the actual situation is even worse than indicated by official figures, estimating that 26.8 million workers have lost their jobs or seen their hours cut due to the pandemic.

These numbers continue to be historically without precedent and point to immense economic instability and the increasingly dire conditions facing wide sectors of the population. This week the US Federal Reserve reported that an estimated 20 percent of workers in the bottom one-quarter of income earners are currently without work. Workers in this category tend to be in the leisure and hospitality industry, such as restaurants and bars, that have been hard hit by the pandemic.

In typically understated language, Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard spoke of the “uneven” nature of the so-called recovery. “The damage from COVID-19 is concentrated among already challenged groups,” she said. Obliquely noting that stimulus measures have served mainly to enrich billionaires, she added, “The K-shaped recovery remains highly uneven, with certain sectors and groups experiencing substantial hardship.”

An economic analyst quoted by the Wall Street Journal remarked, “What we’re seeing in unemployment claims is a reminder that we’re likely to lose more jobs before we get to the end of this crisis.” Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton, a large accounting and advisory firm, added, “the rising unemployment class combined with the job losses in December pointed to a further deterioration in the economic picture.”

Another analyst cited by the New York Times said, “We’re in a deep economic hole, and we’re digging in the wrong direction.” The economist, Daniel Zhao, with the career site Glassdoor, noted, “The report obviously shows that the rise in claims is worse than expected, and there is reason to think that things are going to get worse before they are going to get better.”

Consumer spending, another measure of economic well-being, declined in November, the first decrease in seven months. Household income fell as well.

In a further attack on the poorest sections of the working class, the Federal Reserve has said it may allow inflation to rise above the current rate of 2 percent annually, presenting it as the only alternative to a further rise in joblessness. In fact, the inflation rate on basic necessities such as food is already much higher. The official Consumer Price Index showed an overall 3.9 percent increase in food prices in 2020. Meat, poultry and fish prices were up 4.6 percent and dairy 4.4 percent. According to a report in Bloomberg, global food prices reached a six-year high in December and are likely to keep increasing.

It has not escaped the notice of workers that throughout the pandemic the fortunes of the world’s super-wealthy have soared even as devastation is visited on the mass of the world’s population. Even the attack last week on Congress by a mob of fascists or the surge in COVID-19 deaths to over 4,000 a day could not halt the upward trend in the financial markets. The worse-than-expected unemployment figures had the same effect. The market welcomed the rise in economic hardship, calculating it makes further economic stimulus measures more likely.

The response of the US government to the economic meltdown has been to shovel more money into the coffers of big business through the purchase of corporate assets, holding interest rates near zero and providing other forms of welfare for the super-rich. This policy will be continued and indeed expanded under a Biden administration.

While the Democrats and Republicans squabbled for months over a paltry rise in unemployment benefits, they voted unanimously for a massive bailout for the rich. Rarely has the urgent need for a socialist reorganization of society been posed so starkly. The continuation of the economic and political domination of the class of billionaires promises only further and greater catastrophes both social and economic.

Meanwhile, many workers have still not received the paltry $300 weekly supplement to state unemployment benefits enacted by Congress with much fanfare in December after lengthy delays. The program will end March 14. About half of US states have not yet issued the payments. The state of Ohio, for example, says it doesn’t expect that most claimants will receive payments until the end of the month. Some 293,000 Georgia residents who exhausted PUA benefits will not get their extensions processed until near the end of January.

According to the Labor Department at least 18.4 million were on unemployment benefits on all programs combined, in late December. Only a little more than half of the 22 million jobs lost in March have been regained in the nine-month interval.

Millions are behind on their rent and could face eviction in coming months. The pandemic assistance passed by Congress in December only extended the federal moratorium on evictions until January 31. In addition, the federal relief bill only offered a minuscule $1.3 billion in rent relief for renters facing eviction, a fraction of the arrears owed.

With the deadline approaching, housing advocates are raising alarms. The New York-based Care For the Homeless (CFH) warned that the end of the moratorium will not only lead to a rise in homelessness, but further the spread of COVID-19 as families are forced into unsafe accommodations.

CFH notes, “A nationwide study published by the Journal of Urban Health shows the correlation between housing stability and public health. They looked at data from 44 states between the months of April and September 2020 and found that lifting eviction moratoriums led to increased COVID-19 incidences and mortality rates in the United States.”

It cited statistics to show that states such as Kentucky and Pennsylvania that imposed longer eviction moratoriums experience lower COVID-19 mortality rates while states like Texas, which lifted the statewide ban early, had a much higher mortality rate.

This situation calls for bold action by the working class. The Socialist Equality Party calls for emergency relief to all those who have lost income due to the pandemic, including artists, the self-employed and small business. This must be combined with the shutdown of all nonessential industry with full economic support for displaced workers until the pandemic is contained. All essential workers must be provided protection against the virus, including the supervision of workplace conditions by democratically elected committees of rank-and-file workers not controlled by the pro-corporate unions.

MARK ZUCKERBERG - I SAVED JOE BIDEN FROM THE TRUMP COUP!!! - JOE WILL SAVE ME FROM ANTI-TRUST AND HAVING TO HIRE AMERICANS!

 

Report: Facebook Execs Believe Blacklisting Donald Trump Stopped a ‘Coup’

Mark Zuckerberg Capitol Hill
Getty/Chip Somodevilla
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In a recent article, NBC News provides an insight into the moments leading up to the decision by Facebook and Twitter to blacklist President Donald Trump. One Facebook executive betrayed the depth of progressive groupthink amongst the Silicon Valley Masters of the Universe when they reported said: “We don’t have a policy for what to do when a sitting president starts a coup.”

In an article titled “How Facebook and Twitter Decided to Take Down Trump’s Accounts,” NBC News describes the scenes internally at Facebook and Twitter before the companies’ decision to permanently suspend President Donald Trump from their services. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey claims this blacklisting action was not coordinated, but nevertheless, the companies show eerie similarities in their process.

NBC News writes in its account of Facebook’s decision:

Early the next morning, from his vacation home in Kauai, Hawaii, Zuckerberg held a phone call with Sandberg, Bickert, Clegg, Kaplan and other executives. Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of integrity, was on the call, along with Neil Potts, the public policy director for trust and safety policy, and Chief Diversity Officer Maxine Williams, among several others.

Zuckerberg said he had decided that Trump’s attempts to incite violence and undermine the democratic process were grounds for an indefinite suspension. No one voiced a dissenting opinion, the people familiar with the call said.

Shortly thereafter, Zuckerberg published a Facebook post explaining that “the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.”

A Facebook executive commented on the decisions stating: “This is not normal. These are extraordinary circumstances. We don’t have a policy for what to do when a sitting president starts a coup.”

A short while later, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey discussed the best course of action with Vijaya Gadde, the company’s legal chief, and a number of other Twitter executives. Dorsey approved a permanent ban, although he would later post a series of tweets noting his worries about doing so and his power to heavily influence “the global public conversation.”

Read more at NBC News here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com


Bokhari: This Is the ‘Revenge of the Corporate Oligarchs’ Against Political Dissidents

Mark Zuckerberg Facebook creepy smile
KENZO TRIBOUILLARD /Getty
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Breitbart News senior technology correspondent Allum Bokhari, the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal the Electionappeared on Lou Dobbs Tonight on the Fox Business Network this week to discuss how Big Tech has become the political weapon of Democrats and the ruling elites.

Bokhari’s book predicted and exposed Big Tech’s plans to interfere in the 2020 presidential election, said that big tech companies were increasingly subservient to the Democrat party, in much the same way that allegedly private companies are subservient to the Communist party in China.

Transcript:

DOBBS: Joining us now, Allum Bokhari, author of DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal the Election. He’s broken a number of stories on Big Tech power – out of control power – including Google executives saying President Trump and his populist movement will be a “blip in history.” Allum, great to have you with us, and congratulations on the book, we recommend it to our audience highly. Your thoughts about Parler, and what we have seen, an unprecedented event, all of Silicon Valley and Big Tech converging to destroy this one social media company.

BOKHARI: Hi Lou, it’s great to be on. What we’re witnessing, really, is the revenge of the corporate oligarchs. It’s the culmination of a trend I’ve been covering for five years at Breitbart News, which is the merging of the political power of the Democratic party with the unchecked corporate power of big tech giants. And by forcing Parler off the internet – one of the few social networks where you could have free speech – they’ve sent a message to an American people, ‘we are not going to allow you to have free speech on the internet anymore, you’re not going to have it again, you’re not going to threaten our power or our narratives again, and anyone who tries to do it will be destroyed.'”

DOBBS: And President Trump, paying a price in the form of political persecution for challenging the establishment as well. Parler has filed a lawsuit against Amazon for denying its contract – tearing up its contract, in effect – that keeps Parler alive. Do they prevail?

BOKHARI: Hopefully they do prevail, because it’s going to be a very important case for free speech on the internet. But it’s also important that we don’t see this as just a corporation trying to squelch a competitor. They are doing that, but it’s much more than that. It’s, as I said, the Democratic party using these giant corporations as its muscle, to squelch dissent, to stamp out competing points of view. And it’s actually very similar to what the Chinese Communist Party does. It uses so-called private corporations as an arm of the state, as an arm of political power. That’s now happening in America, and I think we’re going to see a lot more of it as Democrats increasingly call for retribution against their political opponents.

DOBBS: Indeed they are. And, Allum, we hope you will come back with us soon to discuss these very important issues. Allum Bokhari, the book is #DELETED, and we recommend it to you.

Breitbart Tech will continue to report on the Masters of the Universe in Silicon Valley.