Tuesday, November 24, 2015

ON THE STATE LEVEL ALONE, CALIFORNIA HANDS INVADING ILLEGALS $30 BILLION PER YEAR IN SOCIAL SERVICES.... IT TAXES LEGALS TO PAY FOR IT!


How Friendly Is Your State To Businesses? See the Rankings

Last week, the Tax Foundation released its State Business Tax Climate Index for 2016. This annual report ranks all fifty states (plus D.C.) on how hospitable their tax systems are to businesses.
Many factors affect a business’s ability to succeed, including prudent tax policy. While improvements to other important business factors, such as the workforce or in transportation, can take years to accomplish, improvements in tax policy can take place relatively quickly.
The Tax Foundation index uses five different taxes as criteria in producing the rankings: individual income taxes, sales taxes, corporate income taxes, property taxes, and unemployment insurance taxes. Each state’s composite score reflects how well each system conforms to the key components of proper tax policy: broad bases and low rates.
Where does your state rank?


The Daily Signal is the multimedia news organization of The Heritage Foundation.  We’ll respect your inbox and keep you informed.


TF_2016_STBTCImap
Here are some of the highlights:
  • Wyoming is the most business-friendly state for the fifth straight year, with South Dakota, Alaska, Florida, and Nevada rounding out the top five. None of these states has an individual income tax. Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nevada additionally have no corporate income tax, and Alaska has no sales tax.
  • New Jersey once again scored the worst, stifling business activity with its punitive 5.91-percent property tax (the worst in the country after New Hampshire, but New Hampshire goes without income and sales taxes), dual inheritance and estate taxes (Maryland is the only other state that taxes both), and badly structured individual income taxes. New York, California, Minnesota, and Vermont followed New Jersey in the bottom five.
  • Illinois boasted the biggest improvement from last year, jumping eight spots from 31st to 23rd. Lawmakers raised Illinois’ individual and corporate rates temporarily in 2011 in order to address the state’s mounting fiscal crisis. These increases, which had given Illinois one of the highest corporate tax rates in the country, were allowed to expire on schedule in 2015.
While other factors certainly play a role, lower tax burdens generally foster economic growth and wealth creation by attracting new businesses, and, by extension, investment capital and jobs. Evidence shows that states at the top of the business tax climate index experience higher economic growth and lower average unemployment than states at the bottom. States should strive to improve upon their rankings to make themselves a more attractive place for businesses.

ON THE STATE LEVEL ALONE, MEXIFORNIA PAYS OUT $30 BILLION YEARL IN SOCIAL SERVICES TO ILLEGALS. NOT A SINGLE LEGAL VOTED TO BE MEXICO'S WELFARE OFFICE.

COUNTIES PAY OUT EVEN MORE WITH LOS ANGELES COUNTY LEADING. L.A. COUNTY PAYS OUT MORE THAN A BILLION PER YEAR IN WELFARE TO ILLEGALS. IT'S THE DEMOCRAT PARTY AND MEXICO'S ANCHOR BABY BREEDING FOR WELFARE PROGRAM.

HALF THE MURDERS IN CA ARE ALSO BY MEXICANS.


"The Times reported this month that by one federal benchmark, California's poverty rate of 23.4% is tops in the nation, taking the high cost of housing into account. And since 2006, median wages declined 6.2% in the state while wages increased 4.8% for the top 10%."

Column

Rosy jobs numbers blind us to the bleak reality of the 'real economy'



Once again, the employment numbers in California look pretty good.
And once again, those numbers are deceiving.
All you have to do is look at the case of Martin Saldana.
In February, I watched Saldana walk out of the Boeing C-17 plant in Long Beach for the last time. Demand for the military transport plane had dried up after 25 years of production, and a workforce of thousands had dwindled to a few hundred following one wave of layoffs after another.
Saldana, then 51, got choked up the day he walked away.
The Air Force veteran with a love of aeronautics had been on the job for 29 years, working in various capacities on the assembly line. He'd had it good in his union job, making close to $40 an hour with benefits, and he knew it would be tough to match that deal anywhere else.
"I've been fortunate for the last 29 years," he said at the time, "and now I'm going to get a taste of the real economy."
Ten months later, it's an even fouler taste than he'd imagined.
Saldana's priority was to stay in aeronautics or go to work for a railroad company. He'd always had a passion for trains. But air and space jobs in Southern California have evolved from blue-collar assembly work to more technical positions in rockets, satellites and drones. And as for the railroad, Saldana had already missed the cut on five job applications before he even left Boeing.
"Status: Not qualified," said one blunt rejection letter he shared with me.
Saldana didn't panic in the early stages of life after Boeing. He'd cleared about $13,000 in severance pay and believed he'd land something solid, even if it came with a pay cut.
A couple of halfway decent prospects came up, but Saldana has shared custody of two kids, and the hours would have run him into scheduling conflicts.
Before long, the picture dimmed. Saldana was strong and able, but he began to fear that his age and even his Boeing salary were working against him. A new employer might balk, fearing that Saldana would bolt as soon as he found something closer to what he used to make.
He saw a lot of emails containing the words "we regret to inform you."
"A lot of this is done online. You don't talk to a live person. You're really lucky to get a phone interview," said Saldana.
"I would say I've been to like 40 job fairs … not to mention the countless workshops I've been to."
He thinks he got close at Gulfstream, but then came the bad news.
He was in the hunt at Northrop Grumman, but that didn't work out.
When nothing clicked, he signed up for unemployment, but that eventually ran out.
Along the way, Saldana said he did more shopping at 99 Cent Only stores and fell behind in his child support payments, and now he's worried about whether he can make his December mortgage payment.
"It belittles me because that's not how I was brought up," said Saldana, whose father worked at StarKist tuna and helped his son with the down payment on the Carson house he lives in.
If he sold the house, Saldana says, "my parents would roll over in their graves. I'm better than that, but I'm doing my best. I'm trying to keep my head above water, but it's like standing in the pool and the water is right up to my chin."
Finally, though, someone threw Saldana a lifeline.
Early last month, a temp agency lined him up with a job in aerospace. It pays only about one-third what he made at Boeing, with no benefits, but Saldana jumped at it.
He now sandblasts aircraft landing gear parts at a plant in Torrance, from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m. six days a week, with no guarantees from one week to the next. But at least it's work, he says, and he's hoping the adage is true about needing to have one job in order to find another.
"I was in the middle class. Upper middle class, I would say, and now I've fallen into I guess the upper lower class," he said.
And he's not alone, of course.
Saldana stays in touch with other former C-17 employees, and most of them who've found work are making far less than they used to.
Ron Magee, a Saldana colleague I wrote about in January, had 34 years at Boeing when he was laid off. He told me he still hasn't found a job, he's now on disability with multiple health issues, and he was forced to sell the house he intended to retire in.
When you see news that unemployment in California has dipped to 5.8%, said Chris Hoene of the California Budget & Policy Center, it's not as rosy as it sounds.
"There are more and more sectors in which people are being paid less than they were before … or they're having to work several jobs," said Hoene.

The Times reported this month that by one federal benchmark, California's poverty rate of 23.4% is tops in the nation, taking the high cost of housing into account. And since 2006, median wages declined 6.2% in the state while wages increased 4.8% for the top 10%.

Hoene said temp agencies, which take a cut when they find a job for a client, represent a trend from full-time work to part-time work that benefits everyone but the employee. Some people, like Saldana, end up tapping unemployment and Medi-Cal and applying for food stamps.
"One way to think about it is that the corporate sector is shifting the responsibility for taking care of its workers to the public sector," said Hoene.
Saldana still has some prospects in play. There's another railroad job he heard about, and he's looking beyond planes and trains to anything that gets him back on top of his bills.
One day soon he'll go back to where he used to work for 29 years, to where he always felt camaraderie and the fullest sense of the pride that comes with being able to provide for family. The few remaining Boeing workers are putting the finishing touches on the last C-17, and when it flies away, Saldana intends to bear witness to the end of an era.
steve.lopez@latimes.com

L.A. tops nation in chronic homeless population

Los Angeles city and county have the most chronically homeless people in the country, and nearly all of them sleep on the streets, according to figures released Thursday by the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department.

L.A.'s chronically homeless population has grown 55%, to 12,536, since 2013, accounting for almost 15% of all people in that category, HUD reported. More than one-third of the nation's chronically homeless live in California, the agency added.

L.A.'s spike outpaced New York City's one-year increase, the second largest, 3 to 1, the report said. The number of chronically homeless people nationwide remained basically flat, rising 1%, the report said.

"We have a long way to go," HUD Secretary Julian Castro said during a conference call with reporters.

The spread of long-term homelessness in L.A. County has alarmed communities from Sylmar to San Pedro, where residents complain that their quality of life is threatened by crime and trash from unsightly encampments.

"I have found out that my homeless neighbors can move in and set up their shelters on the sidewalk outside of my house," San Pedro resident Elaine Jenkins told the City Council during a hearing this week on the homeless crisis. "They can drag up old mattresses, sofas and spread trash everywhere. They can use the streets as their public restroom."

The nationwide numbers came as a disappointment to HUD, which had extended a goal of ending chronic homelessness from the end of the year to 2017.
"We are aggressively pursuing every tool, including actively engaging our state and federal partners, to help save lives with El Niño on the horizon," Mayor Eric Garcetti said in a statement.
The government classifies disabled people who go without housing for a year, or who land in the street several times over three years, as chronically homeless. These individuals are the most vulnerable and visible among the ranks of the homeless. They are also the most expensive and the most difficult to dislodge.
Some bounce back and forth between ambulance trips, hospital jailings or mental health confinements. Outreach workers can spend months coaxing them out of the street life to which they have adapted, and counseling, substance abuse treatment and case management can be required for months or even years to keep them in housing.
The HUD data was largely derived from a street count conducted over three days last January. Castro and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert A. McDonald joined Garcetti in taking part in the skid row count. Los Angeles city and county figures exclude statistics from Pasadena, Long Beach and Glendale, which administer their homeless programs separately.

Castro blamed the agency's failure to reach its target on rising rents and federal funding cutbacks.
"The U.S. is experiencing an affordable housing crisis and shrinking federal budgets," Castro said. "These resource constraints have slowed down the progress."
Mike Neely, a commissioner with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, said the city had fallen behind on building affordable housing.
"We're working very hard to get these units developed, but man," Neely said. "Who is taking up all the units are the millennials, the middle-class and upper middle-class individuals."
The City Council this week declared a shelter crisis, and laid plans for expanding its winter shelter program and for authorizing people who live in their cars and RVs to sleep in church parking lots.
Garcetti ruled out an immediate declaration of a state of emergency, which some council members had sought. Garcetti said he was waiting for more information from the city attorney.

Subject to council approval, an emergency declaration would empower the mayor to requisition resources and issue orders that he deems "necessary for the protection of life and property," according to a report from City Atty. Mike Feuer's office. The city twice declared emergencies in the 1980s to provide shelter to homeless people.
The mayor could also call on the governor and the president to issue emergency proclamations for Los Angeles, but officials said that requesting more state and federal funding to address the homeless problem was a long shot. The city attorney said his office had not found one instance of a presidential declaration in response to a "chronic, ongoing situation such as the homeless crisis."


California’s working poor grow poorer


Eva Montes, right, picks up food aid after a day of picking grapes for $9.25 an hour. “Sometimes, you don’t earn enough to buy things for what the children need for school, or food for the house” Montes said. Credit: Pauline Bartolone for CALmatters



Several times a month in Earlimart, Tulare County, food aid is distributed to families living below the federal poverty limit in the afternoon to make it more convenient for those getting off work. Credit: Pauline Bartolone for CALmatters

EARLIMART, Tulare County >> After a day of picking grapes for $9.25 an hour, Eva Montes waits in line for food aid in the parking lot of the Veterans Memorial building in Earlimart, a community of 8,537 people.
“You can’t make enough money for what you spend,” Montes says in Spanish while waiting with other farmworkers for her number to be called. Today she’ll take home a box of bagged greens and other produce distributed by a local non-profit.
“Sometimes, you don’t earn enough to buy things for what the children need for school, or food for the house, or personal expenses … like house payments or bills.”

Montes is part of a growing economic problem in California: Low-wage workers are getting poorer, and there are more of them.
There were about 354,800 Californians working full-time and year-round in 2013 living under the federal poverty limit, according to the nonprofit California Budget and Policy Center. That’s 3.1 percent of California’s full-time workforce, double the rate it was 35 years ago.
“A low-wage worker today earns less than a similar worker would a generation ago,” said Luke Reidenbach, policy analyst with the center, which researches how state policy affects low- and middle-income Californians. “Even as the economy grows, that’s not resulting in an increase of their hourly wages, and so over time the value of their wages has eroded.”

Pay for California’s bottom 20 percent of wage-earners has declined by 11.3 percent since 1979, when adjusted for inflation, according to the center.
Other research has tried to calculate the tax cost of California’s working poor. UC Berkeley Labor Center, a liberal-leaning research group, estimates low-wage California workers and their dependents received $14.3 billion a year in cash assistance, health care, food stamps and tax credits between 2007 and 2012.
The California Department of Health and Human Services doesn’t have its own estimate on how much the state spends on public assistance for working people and declined to comment on the accuracy of the labor center’s estimate.

Looking at another measure that takes public assistance benefits and regional costs of living into account, almost 8 in 10 Californians considered poor by the government’s standards in 2012 lived in a family where someone worked, according to the nonprofit, nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.
“At the very least, we would expect work to lift people out of poverty,” Reidenbach said.
These economic trends are part of what has ignited a movement among labor and policymakers to raise the minimum wage beyond California’s scheduled $1 increase to $10 an hour on Jan. 1.


Researchers say the new $10 minimum is expected to bump a family of three with one full-time, year-round worker above the federal poverty limit. But others say when regional living expenses are considered, a family of three living in the Los Angeles region, the San Francisco Bay Area and other expensive parts of the state will have trouble making ends meet on one person’s minimum wage job.
Who Are the Working Poor?

Overall, more low-wage workers are older than they were in 1979, although on average they are younger than the workforce as a whole, according to the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

More than half of today’s low-wage workers in California are Latino, according to the labor center, and 40 percent were born outside the United States. As a whole, the share of the working poor that had some college education is 9 percent more than it was a generation ago. The majority of low-wage workers, 53 percent, have only a high school education or less.
Increasingly, the working poor live in urban areas, where they work as cashiers, cooks, waitresses, maids, gardeners and nursing aides.
Fausto Hernandez Garcia, 56, of Los Angeles is one of them. He searches for cardboard and scrap metal on his days off to supplement the $9 an hour he is paid at a car wash. He claims he’s not always paid for the hours he works.

Juan Valentin, 26, of Stockton says he, his wife and his two young children are “living by the day,” scraping by on his $10.50-an-hour job at a bagged lettuce company. His savings are only enough to buy a dress for his 5-year-old daughter, he said.
Kazoua Yang, 23, is paid $9.25 an hour as a cashier at a grocery store in Fresno. Before her boyfriend got a steady job, their family of three needed food stamps and qualified for Medi-Cal.
“Part of this problem is the quality of low-wage work,” Reidenbach said. “It’s not just about effort; it’s not just about family conditions; it’s about whether or not the jobs that are available to people are paying enough to allow them to make ends meet.”


Forecasting more low-wage jobs

The top five occupations that are projected to grow the highest number of jobs by 2022 will be low wage — under $12 an hour, according to California’s Employment Development Department. That includes personal care aides, retail workers, and food prep and service staff.
According to the UC Berkeley Labor Center, some of those workers may need public assistance. The labor center says more than half of fast-food workers and nearly half of home care and child care workers rely on some form of public assistance.

“When jobs don’t pay enough for people to survive and support their families, it means we have a lot of (taxpayer) money targeted into those working families,” said Ken Jacobs of the labor center.
The struggles of the working poor have received new attention at the state Capitol; anti-poverty committees have formed and this past legislative session, another minimum wage increase was proposed, as well as bills to ease the burden of bankruptcy, wage garnishment and to remove a cap on cash assistance.

Now, two competing state ballot proposals to raise the minimum wage to $15 statewide, one by 2020 and the other by 2021, are trying to qualify for the 2016 election.
Meanwhile, 15 local governments from San Diego to Emeryville in the San Francisco Bay Area have voted to raise the minimum wage to as high as $15 an hour over the next five years.
The California Business Roundtable, a Sacramento-based lobbying group for large employers in the state, hasn’t yet taken a position on raising the minimum wage.

“We’re taking our time,” said Robert Lapsley, president of the business roundtable, which says its membership doesn’t employ a lot of low-wage workers.
Lapsley said the business community understands there’s a large “underclass” in California, and it’s still evaluating its role in reducing poverty. “We have to be able to figure out a way to provide some balance.”
Lapsley said the state — not individual cities — needs to take the lead in figuring out the right approach to raising the minimum wage, including accounting for regional economic differences.

“What may be good in one spot in terms of $15 does not necessarily apply in another spot,” he said. “L.A. has a much higher cost of living even (compared) to Northern California.”
Lapsley says policy discussions about raising the minimum wage so that one worker’s earnings could keep a family out of poverty is “the wrong debate.” Instead, he said, the focus should be on strengthening the state’s manufacturing sector and creating higher-paying jobs that low-wage workers can move into.
“A minimum-wage job has always been the role of an entry-level position into the workforce,” Lapsley said. “(Those jobs are) to help get people initially trained and then move into a … different job so that they have a long-term future.”


Farmworkers on the food line

The Rural Foundation for Community Advancement organizes food giveaways several times a month in Earlimart. Produce is given on “vegetable day”; the rest of the time, it’s packaged goods. Organizers make sure the event takes place in the late afternoon.
“If we give it from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., we catch everybody that’s coming from work,” said Domingo Trevino, vice president of the nonprofit foundation. “Even if they’re working, they’re barely surviving.”
Forty-four percent of workers in the southern Central Valley earn a low wage, the highest percentage among all California regions, according to UC Berkeley.

Food aid from the Fresno-based Community Food Bank serves an average of 285,000 people monthly in Fresno, Madera, Kings, Tulare and Kern counties. The food bank is funded through a mix of taxpayer dollars and private donations, including from Wal-Mart.
“It has moved from being supplemental (food) assistance, so just a couple days, to individuals really reliant on it for weeks at a time,” says Natalie Caples, program director of the food bank.
Maria Veronica Manriquez joined dozens of others in Earlimart on a hot day to wait for some of the food bank giveaways. Manriquez’s husband is a seasonal agricultural worker, and the family earns between $16,000 and $24,000 a year. The mother of two said she recently had to stop working to take care of a sick child and is now receiving food stamps.

“To survive here, you have to both work,” Manriquez said. “When only one person works, it is more difficult.
“They need to raise the wages, not the (price) of products,” said Manriquez, noting the high cost of eggs. “It’s not enough for us … that’s the truth.”
CALmatters is a nonprofit journalism venture dedicated to explaining state policies and politics.



OBAMA-CLINTONomics: Their cronies loot…


 “This is Obama’s new “middle class,” working for half the wages of their grandparents and barely keeping one step out of a homeless shelter.”

 
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/01/perpetrating-obamanomics-at-michigan.html               

 
"Corporate profits are at their highest share of GDP since World War II, while the portion of national economic output going to labor has fallen to the lowest postwar level." 

THE OBAMA DOCTRINE:

BUILD A DICTATORSHIP BY DESTROYING THE AMERICAN

MIDDLE-CLASS.

HIS CRONY BANKSTERS DESTROYED TRILLIONS IN HOME

EQUITY, HIS ILLEGALS HAVE BUILT A TRILLION DOLLAR LA

RAZA WELFARE STATE ON OUR BACKS…. AND ALL JOBS GO TO

NON-AMERICANS!




Income inequality grows FOUR TIMES 

FASTER under Obama than Bush.

 

 “By the time of Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, the Democratic Party had completely repudiated its association with the reforms of the New Deal and Great Society periods. Clinton gutted welfare programs to provide an ample supply of cheap labor for the rich (WHICH NOW MEANS OPEN BORDERS AND NO E-VERIFY!), including a growing layer of black capitalists, and passed the 1994 Federal Crime Bill, with its notorious “three strikes” provision that has helped create the largest prison population in the world.”

US poverty rate and income growth stagnated in

2014
By Niles Williamson
19 September 2015

The US Census Bureau released its annual income and poverty report this week which showed that median household income and the national poverty rate held steady between 2013 and 2014.

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/09/millions-of-jobs-for-illegals-along.html

The report found that 14.8 percent of the country’s population lived in poverty in 2014, statistically unchanged from a year prior. Blacks had the highest poverty rate in 2014 at 26.2 percent, which was a one percentage point increase over 2013. Among children and teenagers under the age of 18, approximately 15.5 million, or 21.1 percent, lived in poverty.


OBAMANOMICS: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses…and Muslim Dictators

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2012/11/obamas-crony-capitalism-obama-was.html


OBAMA-CLINTONomics and the final death of the American middle-class

"Obama expanded the Wall Street bailout, handing trillions of dollars to the criminals who wrecked the economy. He then utilized the financial meltdown to restructure the auto industry on the basis of brutal pay cuts, setting a precedent for the transformation of the US into a low-wage economy."



"In the midst of the deepest slump since the Great Depression, the administration starved state and city governments of resources, leading to the destruction of hundreds of thousands of education and public-sector jobs and the gutting of workers’ pensions. Obama’s Affordable Care Act set in motion the dismantling of employer-paid health insurance and massive cuts in the Medicare insurance system for the elderly."


OBAMA-CLINTONomics is a simple device - Serve the super rich and pass the cost of their looting and Wall Street crimes on to the backs of the last of the American middle-class!

"Of course, the wealth of the financial elite cannot come from nowhere. 

Ultimately, the continual infusion of asset bubbles is the form taken by a massive transfer of wealth, from the working class to the banks, investors and super-rich. The corollary to rise of the stock market is the endless demands, all over the world, for austerity, cuts in wages, attacks on health care and pensions."


“As a result, the share of wealth held by the richest 0.1 percent of the population grew from 17 percent in 2007 to 22 percent in 2012, while the wealth of the 400 richest families in the US has doubled since 2008.”


THE OBAMA ASSAULT ON OUR PENSIONS

BIGGER PROFITS FOR HIS WALL STREET DONORS IF PENSIONS ARE SLASHED

 http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-obama-doctrine-destroy-american.html


“Feinberg, who as the Obama administration’s “pay tsar” rubber-  stamped multimillion-dollar executive bonuses to Wall Street  banks bailed out with taxpayer funds, will now be given power to slash workers’ benefits at his discretion.”


Top 1 percent own more than half of world’s wealth

By Patrick Martin 
14 October 2015
A new report issued by the Swiss bank Credit Suisse finds that global wealth inequality continues to worsen and has reached a new milestone, with the top 1 percent owning more of the world’s assets than the bottom 99 percent combined.
Of the estimated $250 trillion in global assets, the top 1 percent owned almost exactly 50 percent, while the bottom 50 percent of humanity owned collectively less than 1 percent. The richest 10 percent owned 87.7 percent of the world’s wealth, leaving 12.3 percent for the bottom 90 percent of the population.
The Credit Suisse report focused not on the top 1 percent, but on a slightly smaller group, the 0.7 percent of adults with assets of more than 1 million US dollars. This figure includes both financial assets and real assets, such as homes, small businesses and other physical property.
The report’s eye-catching “Global Wealth Pyramid” divides the human race into four categories by wealth: 3.4 billion adults with net assets of less than $10,000; 1 billion with net assets from $10,000 to $100,000; 349 million with net assets from $100,000 to $1 million; and 34 million with net assets over $1 million.
The lowest category comprises 71 percent of all adults and owns only 3 percent of total wealth; the next-poorest group comprises 21 percent of adults and owns 12.5 percent of the wealth; above this is a group comprising 7.4 percent of adults and owning 39.4 of the wealth; and finally the top layer, 0.7 percent of adults owning 45.2 percent of the wealth.


SENATOR TED CRUZ ON BORDER SECURITY - AS OBAMA'S LA RAZA PARTY BASE OF ILLEGALS HAS EXPANDED THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS' HEROIN MARKET BORDER TO OPEN AND UNDEFENDED BORDER


Of course, given that the Obama administration has virtually stopped all of its deportation procedures, with only some exceptions for certain criminal aliens, it is hard to imagine what “irreparable injury” all of these illegal aliens will suffer, since they have, in all practical terms, been granted “lawful presence” already even without the president’s official amnesty plan in place.
 
It is true that the preliminary injunction prevents the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from issuing work permits to illegal aliens, but even that is probably not that significant for many of them, because employers all over the country know that the administration has no interest in enforcing federal law barring employers from hiring illegal aliens.

 
           

This Op-Ed is part of Conservative Review's continuing effort to bring you breaking, premium commentary from the best and the brightest minds from around the country, writing on the issues you care about.


In light of last week's gruesome terrorists attacks on Paris and continuing threats from ISIS, now more than ever the American people need to be reassured of their safety at home. As leaders and presidential candidates debate how to manage the crisis of Syrian refugees, immigration policy, and offer their plan for tackling terror from Islamic extremists, in an exclusive op-ed to Conservative Review, Senator Ted Cruz lays out a bold plan to secure the borders, restore the rule of law, and reform legal immigration in a way that protect Americans.
 

 



Make sure to check out some of the latest and greatest features from our other authors:
Paris Jihad: It's Immigration, Stupid – Daniel Horowitz
6 steps Congress can take to address the Islamic refugee program.

LISTEN: Levin: Why Aren't We Talking About How to Win? – CR Wire
"WWIII has started, like I said 16 months ago." – Mark Levin

The Obamacare Death (Spiral) March – Chris Jacobs
Another insurance market company announces it’s in trouble.

Someone Tell Hillary: It's Radical Islam, Stupid – Amanda Carpenter
Would someone, at some point, ask Hillary Clinton what the first "I" in ISIS stands for?


 

Obama’s Unilateral Immigration Amnesty Plan Gets to the Supreme Court
On Friday, the U.S. Justice Department filed a 35-page petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review Texas v. U.S., the case filed by 26 states against President Obama’s immigration amnesty plan.
 
The government is appealing a preliminary injunction that stopped implementation of Obama’s amnesty plan, which was issued by a federal district court and upheld by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Nov. 9.
 
In an odd coincidence, Donald Verrilli, the solicitor general, filed the petition on the one-year anniversary of Obama’s speech to the nation on Nov. 20, 2014, where he announced his unprecedented, unilateral action to violate federal immigration law and provide lawful status and work permits to as many as five million illegal aliens.
The government’s petition asks the Supreme Court to take up the case, despite the fact that this is only a preliminary injunction. No permanent injunction has been issued, and no trial has yet been held. But Verrilli claims that review is needed now because of the “great and immediate significance” of the president’s amnesty plan and “the irreparable injury to the many families affected by delay in its implementation, and the broad importance of the questions presented.”
 

Of course, given that the Obama administration has virtually stopped all of its deportation procedures, with only some exceptions for certain criminal aliens, it is hard to imagine what “irreparable injury” all of these illegal aliens will suffer, since they have, in all practical terms, been granted “lawful presence” already even without the president’s official amnesty plan in place.
 
It is true that the preliminary injunction prevents the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from issuing work permits to illegal aliens, but even that is probably not that significant for many of them, because employers all over the country know that the administration has no interest in enforcing federal law barring employers from hiring illegal aliens.
 
What Is the Government Arguing?
 
The government makes the same losing arguments to the Supreme Court that it made to the Fifth Circuit, all of which were disposed of by the court of appeals in a very thorough, well-written opinion. Verrilli claims none of the states even have standing to sue the federal government because any costs they incur from illegal aliens being granted lawful presence are just “voluntary.” This is almost a farcical argument, given the enormous education, health care, and law enforcement costs imposed on the states with the influx of huge numbers of illegal aliens into their communities.
 
Verrilli also makes the over-the-top claim that this injunction is “unprecedented” and “in violation of established limits on the judicial power.” Thus, “if left undisturbed, that ruling will allow States to frustrate the federal government’s enforcement of the Nation’s immigration laws” (emphasis added). Given how far outside the “established limits” of the president’s executive power under the Constitution the immigration amnesty plan is, claiming that it is the courts—and not the administration—acting outside the scope of their constitutional powers is almost insulting.
 
And it is quite audacious to accuse the courts of frustrating the administration’s “enforcement of the Nation’s immigration laws” when the whole policy of this president is to frustrate enforcement of our immigration laws.
 
As the Fifth Circuit pointed out, it was the president himself who said that because Congress refused to amend our immigration laws to suit his interests, he had to “change the law” himself. That is a far cry from enforcing our current immigration laws as passed by Congress and signed into law by this or a prior president.
 
The Administrative Procedure Act
 
The government also reiterates the unsuccessful arguments made in the lower courts that the states have no claim under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the federal statute governing the issuance of new regulations and rules by government agencies.
 
The solicitor general continues to claim that Jeh Johnson, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, had “ample authority to issue” the “guidance” that implemented the president’s amnesty plan, including not just giving illegal aliens “lawful presence” status in the U.S. so they cannot be removed or deported, but also providing them with work permits.
 
Verrilli argues that the immigration amnesty plan and Johnson’s “guidance” should be exempt from all notice and comment requirements under the APA because otherwise “it threatens far-reaching consequences by constraining needed flexibility to adapt enforcement policies to changing circumstances and priorities.” To the contrary, the whole point of the APA is to force federal agencies like DHS to provide notice and an opportunity for the public to comment on major changes in rules, regulations, and policies.
 
The APA doesn’t stop agencies from having the flexibility needed to adapt to “changing circumstances and priorities,” but it makes sure they don’t do so in secret on an arbitrary and capricious basis without the public and individuals who will be affected by these changes having a chance to influence the agency. This is vitally important, since the purpose of the executive branch is to serve the best interests of the public as a whole, something that does not always seem to be the objective of this administration.
 
On Nov. 23, the Texas solicitor general, Scott Keller, sent a request to the Supreme Court asking for an extension of time to respond to the Justice Department’s petition until Jan. 20, 2016. Keller cited “pressing deadlines” in numerous other Texas cases before the Supreme Court, including oral argument in Evenwel v. Abbott, a redistricting case, which is scheduled for Dec. 8.
 
There is one thing that the government gets right: This is an important case that is vital to the future of this country, although certainly not in the way the administration claims. This case is about the rule of law and the constitutional limits on the power of the executive branch. So the Supreme Court may very well take the case. If they do, we have to hope that they uphold the injunction and don’t allow the president to act as an unchecked monarch who can change whatever laws he doesn’t like at will.

HOW BARACK OBAMA and HILLARY CLINTON'S CRONY BANKSTERS DESTROYED THE GLOBAL ECONOMY - Financial parasitism and the destruction of democracy

Financial parasitism and the destruction of democracy

THE DOCTRINE OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY: OPEN

BORDERS, NO E-VERIFY, NON-ENFORCEMENT OF LAWS

PROHIBITING THE EMPLOYMENT OF ILLEGALS, AND

BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN WELFARE FOR INVADING

MEXICANS.... Keeping wages depressed keeps the paymasters of

the Democrat politicians happy and generous$$$$$.



OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: The orgy of financial speculation on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms is one side of the vast upward redistribution of wealth in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, which has been facilitated by the infusion of cash into the global financial system by the US Federal Reserve and other global central banks.

Apple, the world’s largest company, has spent $30.22 billion on share buybacks so far this year. During the same period, the company spent only about $6 billion on research and development, and less than $12 billion paying its workers. This includes US retail employees, whose base pay is $13 per hour, and assembly workers in China making only $1.50 per hour.

Financial parasitism and the destruction of democracy

24 November 2015
On Monday, US drug maker Pfizer Inc. announced its plans to buy rival Allergan Plc in the third-largest corporate merger in history.

The new company, which would keep the Pfizer name, would be the world’s largest drug maker. As a result of the deal, known as an “inversion” because the smaller Ireland-based Allergan would buy the larger US-based Pfizer, the new company would pay a tax rate of 17–18 percent, compared to the 25.5 percent Pfizer paid last year.

The merger brings the total valuation of global mergers and acquisitions announced so far this year to $4.2 trillion. Mergers activity in 2015 is set to surpass that of any other previous year, including the $4.38 trillion record set in 2007, just before the outbreak of the global financial crisis.

In announcing the merger with Allergan, Pfizer CEO Ian Read said that the deal would “create a leading global pharmaceutical company with the strength to research, discover and deliver more medicines and therapies to more people around the world.”

Reality is the exact opposite. Financial documents released as part of the merger make clear that the resulting company plans to carry out a massive cost-cutting campaign. The company expects to implement some $2 billion in cost savings, including $660,000 in research and development funding, with the remainder of the cuts likely to come from layoffs and other consolidations.

The fundamental purpose of the wave of mergers is to find new ways to funnel money into the pockets of financial investors who are demanding ever greater returns. It is one expression of the financial parasitism that pervades the global economy.

Earlier this month, Birinyi Associates reported that US companies spent $516.72 billion buying back their own shares in the first three quarters of this year, the highest level since 2007. That figure is equivalent to the gross domestic product of Argentina, a country with 45 million people.

Apple, the world’s largest company, has spent $30.22 billion on share buybacks so far this year. During the same period, the company spent only about $6 billion on research and development, and less than $12 billion paying its workers. This includes US retail employees, whose base pay is $13 per hour, and assembly workers in China making only $1.50 per hour.

Apple is far from the exception. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that the largest US corporations have in recent years spent more money buying back their own shares than hiring people or building factories. The effect of the share buy-backs is to boost corporate stock prices, in the process inflating the pay of top executives, whose compensation has been increasingly tied to stock “performance.”

An unpublished Bank of America research note cited by Bloomberg noted, “For every job created in the US this decade, companies spent $296,000 buying back their stocks.”

After years of near-record profits, US corporations are sitting on a cash hoard of some $1.4 trillion. But far from using these funds to expand productive investment, global corporations are spending it on share buy-backs, mergers and acquisitions and executive pay raises.

The effect of this process is to further constrict real economic output. US manufacturing grew at the slowest pace in two years last month according to figures released Monday, while the latest monthly jobs report, praised by commentators as “stellar” and “off the charts,” showed that the US added exactly zero jobs in the manufacturing sector in October.

The orgy of financial speculation on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms is one side of the vast upward redistribution of wealth in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, which has been facilitated by the infusion of cash into the global financial system by the US Federal Reserve and other global central banks. Since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the world’s central banks have undertaken some $12.4 trillion in asset purchases, and have cut interest rates on 606 separate occasions, according to the Bank of America research note cited above.

The vast accumulation of wealth by the financial elite is predicated on the continuous reduction of the share of social resources going to the working class. Workers’ incomes have stagnated for decades throughout North America and Europe, and in many countries they are significantly lower than they were before the financial crisis. In the United States, for instance, the income of a typical household fell by 12 percent between 2007 and 2013, according to the Federal Reserve’s survey of consumer finances.

As a result of these processes, the top one percent of the population has accumulated 95 percent of all income gains since 2009, while the wealth of the 400 richest individuals in the US has more than doubled. The growth of social inequality has likewise fueled a growth of opposition to the capitalist system and the domination of the financial elite over all aspects of society.

This does much to explain the hysterical response by the ruling classes of Europe and North America to the November 13 terror attacks in Paris, which were seized upon in France and Brussels to implement sweeping and far-reaching attacks on basic constitutional rights, allowing the police to arrest and seize the possessions of anyone, and to ban assemblies and demonstrations. In the United States, the Paris attacks have been used to renew calls for the criminalization of encrypted communications.

It is worth noting that, despite the supposedly earth-shattering and paradigm-changing attacks in Paris, which have led some of the world’s oldest “democracies” to abandon principles that they claim to have upheld for nearly two centuries, the global markets seem unfazed. In the 10 days since the Paris terror attacks, stock prices have risen in almost every country. The French CAC is up by 1.69 percent, the US Nasdaq is up by 3.5 percent and the German DAX is up by 3.59 percent.
“Finance capital strives for domination, not freedom,” noted the Russian revolutionary Lenin, quoting the socialist economist Rudolf Hilferding. As in the periods before the First and Second World Wars, the ruling classes increasingly see an open turn to police-state forms of rule as the surest means to ensure the protection and expansion of their wealth.

Andre Damon


Lawless!

The Obama Administration’s Unprecedented Assault on the Constitution and the Rule of Law


November 17, 2015

 The Heritage Foundation, Lehrman Auditorium


 214 Massachusetts Ave NE
Washington DC 20002-4999


http://www.heritage.org/events/2015/11/lawless

Overview: In Lawless, George Mason University law professor David E. Bernstein offers a scholarly and unsettling account of how the Obama Administration has undermined the Constitution and the rule of law. He documents how the President has presided over one constitutional debacle after another – from Obamacare to unauthorized wars in the Middle East to attempts to strip property owners, college students, religious groups, and conservative political activists of their rights, and more.

Respect for the Constitution’s separation of powers has been violated time and again. Whether in amending Obamacare on the fly or signing a memorandum legalizing millions of illegal immigrants, the current Administration ignores not only Congress, but also the Constitution’s critical checks and balances.

In Lawless, Professor Bernstein shows how the Constitution as well as the President’s own stated principles have been betrayed. In doing so, serious and potentially permanent damage has been done to our constitutional system and repairs must be addressed by the next President of the United States.


Obama to Wannabe Illegals: Do as I Say, Not as I Do
By Mark Krikorian

 CIS Blog, October 30, 2015

http://cis.org/krikorian/obama-wannabe-illegals-do-i-say-not-i-do

In response the surge of Central Americans sneaking into Texas in the summer of 2014, the Obama administration launched an ad campaign in the sending countries earlier this year to stem the flow. The radio and TV spots assert that "there are no permits for the people trying to cross the border without papers" and promise "the immediate deportation of those trying to cross the border without documents."

None of it is true. There are permits for illegal-alien minors and families. Formally known as Notices to Appear but known colloquially in Spanish as permisos, they require the aliens to present themselves to immigration authorities by a certain date, until which they have temporary legal status. That gives them time enough to travel to join their relatives and disappear into the existing illegal population. And disappear they do, since, despite the tough promises, virtually none of them are deported, immediately or otherwise.

So it should come as no surprise to read today's AP report, which begins this way:




Once again, President Obama is looking to defy Congress in implementing its immigration reform proposals. This time, his administration is looking to also defy a federal court to achieve it. A judge sitting on the 5th Circuit in Texas issued an...



NO PRESIDENT HAS HAD MORE CONTEMPT FOR LEGALS, OUR LAWS AND BORDERS THAN MEXICO'S LA RAZA SUPREMACIST, BARACK OBAMA!

NOT ONLY DOES OBAMA FUND THE MEX FASCIST MOVEMENT OF LA RAZA "The Race"
BUT IT OPERATES OUT OF THE AMERICAN WHITE HOUSE UNDER LA RAZA V.P. CECILIA MUNOZ!


Obama set to defy federal court on amnesty

By Rick Moran


Once again, President Obama is looking to defy Congress in implementing its immigration reform proposals.
This time, his administration is looking to also defy a federal court to achieve it.
A judge sitting on the 5th Circuit in Texas issued an injunction last June against the administration's regulatory plans to legalize millions of aliens in the U.S. illegally.  The injunction was upheld by a federal appeals court in Louisiana, and the president's plan is now stalled while the administration works through the federal court system.
Except now there are plans afoot to change the regulations pertaining to green cards that would accomplish almost everything the president can't get from Congress or the courts.  A leaked memo from DHS outlines four plans the administration is considering.
Ian Smith of the Immigration Reform Law Institute:
The internal memo reveals four options of varying expansiveness, with option 1 providing EADs to “all individuals living in the United States”, including illegal aliens, visa-overstayers, and H-1B guest-workers, while option 4 provides EADsonly to those on certain unexpired non-immigrant visas. Giving EADs to any of the covered individuals, however, is in direct violation of Congress’s Immigration & Nationality Act and works to dramatically subvert our carefully wrought visa system. 
As mentioned, the first plan the memo discusses basically entails giving EADs to anyone physically present in the country who until now has been prohibited from getting one. A major positive to this option, the memo reads, is that it would “address the needs of some of the intended deferred action population.” Although DHS doesn’t say it expressly, included here would be those 4.3 million people covered by the president’s DAPA and Expanded DACA programs whose benefits were supposed to have been halted in the Hanen decision. On top of working around the Hanen injunction, this DHS plan would also dole out unrestricted EADs to those on temporary non-immigrant visas, such as H-1B-holders (their work authorizations being tied to their employers) and another 5 to 6 million illegal aliens thus far not covered by any of the President’s deferred action amnesty programs. By claiming absolute authority to grant work authorization to any alien, regardless of status, DHS is in effect claiming it can unilaterally de-couple the 1986 IRCA work authorization statutes from the main body of U.S. visa law. While DHS must still observe the statutory requirements for issuing visas, the emerging doctrine concedes, the administration now claims unprecedented discretionary power to permit anyone inside our borders to work. 
Get a load of what the DHS bureaucrats think about illegals working in the U.S.:
The anonymous DHS policymakers state that a positive for this option is that it “could cover a greater number of individuals.” In a strikingly conclusory bit of bureaucratese, they state that because illegal aliens working in the country “have already had the US labor market tested” it has been “demonstrat[ed] that their future employment won’t adversely affect US workers.” The labor market, in other words, has already been stress-tested through decades of foreign-labor dumping and the American working-class, which disproportionately includes minorities, working mothers, the elderly, and students, is doing just fine. Apparently, the fact that 66 million Americans and legal aliens are currently unemployed or out of the job-market was not a discussion point at the DHS “Retreat.” 
Smith concludes: "Bottom line: The memo foreshadows more tactical offensives in a giant administrative amnesty for all 12 million illegal aliens who’ve broken our immigration laws (and many other laws) that will emerge before the next inaugural in January 2016."
I'm not sure that judge in Texas will let the administration get away with this.  When the government began handing out green cards anyway in defiance of the injunction, the judge, Andrew Hanen, threatened to arrest the lot of them for contempt.  He forced the government to recall the green cards immediately.  There will be no circumventing the law in his court.
But the plans may be untouchable because they don't directly stem from the series of executive orders currently being adjudicated.  Of course, any plan to blanket the country in work permits for illegals will be challenged in court.  But eventually, the administration may find a friendly judge who gives it the go-ahead.
Once again, President Obama is looking to defy Congress in implementing its immigration reform proposals.
This time, his administration is looking to also defy a federal court to achieve it.
A judge sitting on the 5th Circuit in Texas issued an injunction last June against the administration's regulatory plans to legalize millions of aliens in the U.S. illegally.  The injunction was upheld by a federal appeals court in Louisiana, and the president's plan is now stalled while the administration works through the federal court system.
Except now there are plans afoot to change the regulations pertaining to green cards that would accomplish almost everything the president can't get from Congress or the courts.  A leaked memo from DHS outlines four plans the administration is considering.
Ian Smith of the Immigration Reform Law Institute:
The internal memo reveals four options of varying expansiveness, with option 1 providing EADs to “all individuals living in the United States”, including illegal aliens, visa-overstayers, and H-1B guest-workers, while option 4 provides EADsonly to those on certain unexpired non-immigrant visas. Giving EADs to any of the covered individuals, however, is in direct violation of Congress’s Immigration & Nationality Act and works to dramatically subvert our carefully wrought visa system. 
As mentioned, the first plan the memo discusses basically entails giving EADs to anyone physically present in the country who until now has been prohibited from getting one. A major positive to this option, the memo reads, is that it would “address the needs of some of the intended deferred action population.” Although DHS doesn’t say it expressly, included here would be those 4.3 million people covered by the president’s DAPA and Expanded DACA programs whose benefits were supposed to have been halted in the Hanen decision. On top of working around the Hanen injunction, this DHS plan would also dole out unrestricted EADs to those on temporary non-immigrant visas, such as H-1B-holders (their work authorizations being tied to their employers) and another 5 to 6 million illegal aliens thus far not covered by any of the President’s deferred action amnesty programs. By claiming absolute authority to grant work authorization to any alien, regardless of status, DHS is in effect claiming it can unilaterally de-couple the 1986 IRCA work authorization statutes from the main body of U.S. visa law. While DHS must still observe the statutory requirements for issuing visas, the emerging doctrine concedes, the administration now claims unprecedented discretionary power to permit anyone inside our borders to work. 
Get a load of what the DHS bureaucrats think about illegals working in the U.S.:
The anonymous DHS policymakers state that a positive for this option is that it “could cover a greater number of individuals.” In a strikingly conclusory bit of bureaucratese, they state that because illegal aliens working in the country “have already had the US labor market tested” it has been “demonstrat[ed] that their future employment won’t adversely affect US workers.” The labor market, in other words, has already been stress-tested through decades of foreign-labor dumping and the American working-class, which disproportionately includes minorities, working mothers, the elderly, and students, is doing just fine. Apparently, the fact that 66 million Americans and legal aliens are currently unemployed or out of the job-market was not a discussion point at the DHS “Retreat.” 
Smith concludes: "Bottom line: The memo foreshadows more tactical offensives in a giant administrative amnesty for all 12 million illegal aliens who’ve broken our immigration laws (and many other laws) that will emerge before the next inaugural in January 2016."
I'm not sure that judge in Texas will let the administration get away with this.  When the government began handing out green cards anyway in defiance of the injunction, the judge, Andrew Hanen, threatened to arrest the lot of them for contempt.  He forced the government to recall the green cards immediately.  There will be no circumventing the law in his court.
But the plans may be untouchable because they don't directly stem from the series of executive orders currently being adjudicated.  Of course, any plan to blanket the country in work permits for illegals will be challenged in court.  But eventually, the administration may find a friendly judge who gives it the go-ahead.


Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/11/obama_set_to_defy_federal_court_on_amnesty.html#ixzz3qSG6XCr3
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook


Obama’s Secret Destruction of Our Immigration System

 By Arnold Ahlert

 Canada Free Press, November 4, 2015

A newly-leaked memo from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reveals the Obama administration is seeking to sidestep a federal court injunction that suspended portions of the president’s amnesty-based initiatives known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). In short, Obama is determined to impose his transformational agenda on the nation by any means necessary.

According to the Hill, the document outlining the administration’s attempt to thumb its nose at the rule of law was prepared at a DHS “Regulations Retreat” last June, four months after a preliminary injunction was initially imposed by Texas Judge Andrew Hanen and subsequently left in place by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The Fifth Circuit’s final ruling on that injunction, either confirming or reversing it, is expected to occur in a matter of days.Apparently the Obama administration couldn’t care less.
. . .
http://canadafreepress.com/article/76535

TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED AND BUILD THEIR LA RAZA "The Race" MEXICAN ILLEGAL PARTY BASE, THE DEMOCRAT PARTY HAS RUTHLESSLY ASSAULTED THE AMERICAN WORKER, OUR LAWS ON HIRING ILLEGALS AND OUR BORDERS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED.

"The U.S. now ranks at, or near, the top of developed countries for income inequality. Job creation has lagged far behind population growth. Automation has erased some jobs, but corrupt, inept government leadership is responsible for the deplorable job- deficit-low wage situation." 

"The federal government encourages the massive illegal and legal immigration that plays a huge role in job scarcity and income suppression for American workers. To paraphrase Milton Friedman, a viable economy cannot exist with open borders and unrestricted immigration. An oversupply of workers willing to work for less pay, the outsourcing of jobs, and visa-immigrant hiring allow companies to replace American workers with immigrants for reduced labor and benefit costs."



Income inequality has risen during the last several decades to heights last seen in the 1920s. Most of the income growth has gone to a small fraction of the population, the ultra-rich elites, while real wages for the bottom 90 percent ...

The Causes of Income Inequality

Income inequality has risen during the last several decades to heights last seen in the 1920s. Most of the income growth has gone to a small fraction of the population, the ultra-rich elites, while real wages for the bottom 90 percent has been stagnant since the 1980s. The U.S. now ranks at, or near, the top of developed countries for income inequality. Job creation has lagged far behind population growth. Automation has erased some jobs, but corrupt, inept government leadership is responsible for the deplorable job- deficit-low wage situation.    

Trade agreements are one cause of job and wage reduction. Over the last twenty years, we’ve amassed $10 trillion in trade deficits and exported 12 million manufacturing jobs, forcing workers to move into lower-wage service jobs. Government brags about the free trade agreements, CAFTA, NAFTA, KORUS, and TPP. But the “free” applies only to the foreign trading partners, which manipulate their currencies, pay sweatshop workers low wages, manufacture under environmentally-toxic conditions, and restrict U.S. imports. We hand over our technology, good-paying jobs, product labeling, and safety guarantees -- all to enrich multinational corporations and foreign industry. Industrial research and development have been decimated as companies move overseas or outsource jobs, leaving the nation a future of little technological innovation. The U.S. is left with hollowed-out industries and service jobs. 
The federal government encourages the massive illegal and legal immigration that plays a huge role in job scarcity and income suppression for American workers. To paraphrase Milton Friedman, a viable economy cannot exist with open borders and unrestricted immigration. An oversupply of workers willing to work for less pay, the outsourcing of jobs, and visa-immigrant hiring allow companies to replace American workers with immigrants for reduced labor and benefit costs. A well-known example is that of Disney IT workers who were forced to train their cheaper immigrant replacements. It is no coincidence that the rise in immigration has occurred simultaneously with the rise of the welfare state. People unemployed, or in low-wage and part-time jobs, rely on government subsidies. The result is larger national debt, more corporate wealth, and declining wages.

ObamaCare influences, and will influence to greater degrees, the lowering of incomes for Americans as healthcare costs rise. Higher premiums and deductions for health insurance are being shifted to employees, reducing benefits and wages. Medical care costs already have risen much faster than wages, leaving many struggling to pay for necessities. Ever-higher deductions mean that people can’t afford to use the insurance they are forced to buy because they can’t even pay the deductions.        

Another contributor to job deficiency and wage stagnation is the increased regulation and taxation of small businesses instituted by Obama’s executive orders, EPA overreach, and ObamaCare. Small businesses traditionally have created two-thirds of new jobs annually. The bright spot in the economy, small businesses have created 78.7 percent of new jobs since the recession. Today, faced with these government anti-business policies, small businesses are closing their doors at a faster rate than new businesses are opening. The small businesses that remain open often don’t expand because of Obamacare and government regulations.

Income inequality is greatly impacted by the Federal Reserve’s policies of money-printing and zero interest rates, which have led to the funding of the financial and corporate markets while ignoring the needs of smaller businesses. The money supply and cheap lending has gone to the government, large corporations, and Wall Street, leaving the rest of the economy to sputter along with little capital and fewer jobs. The Fed’s policies of crony capitalism favor big business and big banks over that of smaller entities and are responsible for the increasing number of big business deals such as Walgreen's purchase of Rite Aid.


DEATH OF THE AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS

This government-driven, crony-capitalist economy defined by job scarcity and wage stagnation is the reason college graduates are burdened by $1.3 trillion debt, living with parents, can’t afford to marry or buy homes, and working as waitresses and bartenders. Job scarcity and low wages are the reasons we’re becoming a nation of renters rather than homeowners. They are the reasons that 51 percent of workers earn less than $30,000 a year. They are the reasons for the demise of the middle class and the burgeoning welfare rolls, the modern-day equivalent of slavery.    

Income inequality and its devastating consequences are seldom mentioned on the nightly news. The media and bogus government statistics paint rosy pictures about economic recovery, and government masks the bad economy with welfare so that we don’t see Great Depression bread lines. But the only recovery has been in the Federal Reserve’s inflated stock market, not in the main street economy, where 94 million working-age adults are unemployed and 47 million are on some welfare program. The “Made in America” displays weekly touted by ABC news are the few exceptions, rather than the rule, in an American economy of boarded-up stores and factories.    
The political implications of income inequality are most evident in the increasing rise and entrenchment of career politicians, supported by big donor funding and media favoritism. The integrity of the electoral process is endangered as election propaganda, funded by big money and hyped by corporate media bias, become more prominent in spreading lies, distortions, and innuendos to the voting public. Unrestricted campaign funding has given the moneyed elites first access to elected officials. At the same time, private-sector unions, small businesses, and citizens find their influence dwindling or irrelevant. This crony capitalism, resembling dictatorships and communist oligarchies, seriously threatens our democracy because money, power, and media control are consolidated in the hands of a few at the top. Voter apathy prevails, as voters feel increasingly powerless to change the course of events. 

The United States, a once great economic powerhouse and the largest creditor nation, has become the largest debtor nation, and is fast becoming a banana republic. Past and present elected authorities and public officials have stripped bare our industries, put the nation under a mountain of debt, and turned the U.S. into a welfare depository. Government leaders have intentionally failed to protect our borders, jobs, and freedoms. These public “servants” and the wealthy elites have garnered riches for themselves, and purposely impoverished citizens and future generations. The greatest threats to our economy and national security are not foreign countries or terrorists; they are the enemies inside, corrupt government leaders and the money masters they serve. 
Income inequality has risen during the last several decades to heights last seen in the 1920s. Most of the income growth has gone to a small fraction of the population, the ultra-rich elites, while real wages for the bottom 90 percent has been stagnant since the 1980s. The U.S. now ranks at, or near, the top of developed countries for income inequality. Job creation has lagged far behind population growth. Automation has erased some jobs, but corrupt, inept government leadership is responsible for the deplorable job- deficit-low wage situation.    

Trade agreements are one cause of job and wage reduction. Over the last twenty years, we’ve amassed $10 trillion in trade deficits and exported 12 million manufacturing jobs, forcing workers to move into lower-wage service jobs. Government brags about the free trade agreements, CAFTA, NAFTA, KORUS, and TPP. But the “free” applies only to the foreign trading partners, which manipulate their currencies, pay sweatshop workers low wages, manufacture under environmentally-toxic conditions, and restrict U.S. imports. We hand over our technology, good-paying jobs, product labeling, and safety guarantees -- all to enrich multinational corporations and foreign industry. Industrial research and development have been decimated as companies move overseas or outsource jobs, leaving the nation a future of little technological innovation. The U.S. is left with hollowed-out industries and service jobs. 
The federal government encourages the massive illegal and legal immigration that plays a huge role in job scarcity and income suppression for American workers. To paraphrase Milton Friedman, a viable economy cannot exist with open borders and unrestricted immigration. An oversupply of workers willing to work for less pay, the outsourcing of jobs, and visa-immigrant hiring allow companies to replace American workers with immigrants for reduced labor and benefit costs. A well-known example is that of Disney IT workers who were forced to train their cheaper immigrant replacements. It is no coincidence that the rise in immigration has occurred simultaneously with the rise of the welfare state. People unemployed, or in low-wage and part-time jobs, rely on government subsidies. The result is larger national debt, more corporate wealth, and declining wages.

ObamaCare influences, and will influence to greater degrees, the lowering of incomes for Americans as healthcare costs rise. Higher premiums and deductions for health insurance are being shifted to employees, reducing benefits and wages. Medical care costs already have risen much faster than wages, leaving many struggling to pay for necessities. Ever-higher deductions mean that people can’t afford to use the insurance they are forced to buy because they can’t even pay the deductions.        

Another contributor to job deficiency and wage stagnation is the increased regulation and taxation of small businesses instituted by Obama’s executive orders, EPA overreach, and ObamaCare. Small businesses traditionally have created two-thirds of new jobs annually. The bright spot in the economy, small businesses have created 78.7 percent of new jobs since the recession. Today, faced with these government anti-business policies, small businesses are closing their doors at a faster rate than new businesses are opening. The small businesses that remain open often don’t expand because of Obamacare and government regulations.

Income inequality is greatly impacted by the Federal Reserve’s policies of money-printing and zero interest rates, which have led to the funding of the financial and corporate markets while ignoring the needs of smaller businesses. The money supply and cheap lending has gone to the government, large corporations, and Wall Street, leaving the rest of the economy to sputter along with little capital and fewer jobs. The Fed’s policies of crony capitalism favor big business and big banks over that of smaller entities and are responsible for the increasing number of big business deals such as Walgreen's purchase of Rite Aid.

This government-driven, crony-capitalist economy defined by job scarcity and wage stagnation is the reason college graduates are burdened by $1.3 trillion debt, living with parents, can’t afford to marry or buy homes, and working as waitresses and bartenders. Job scarcity and low wages are the reasons we’re becoming a nation of renters rather than homeowners. They are the reasons that 51 percent of workers earn less than $30,000 a year. They are the reasons for the demise of the middle class and the burgeoning welfare rolls, the modern-day equivalent of slavery.    

Income inequality and its devastating consequences are seldom mentioned on the nightly news. The media and bogus government statistics paint rosy pictures about economic recovery, and government masks the bad economy with welfare so that we don’t see Great Depression bread lines. But the only recovery has been in the Federal Reserve’s inflated stock market, not in the main street economy, where 94 million working-age adults are unemployed and 47 million are on some welfare program. The “Made in America” displays weekly touted by ABC news are the few exceptions, rather than the rule, in an American economy of boarded-up stores and factories.    
The political implications of income inequality are most evident in the increasing rise and entrenchment of career politicians, supported by big donor funding and media favoritism. The integrity of the electoral process is endangered as election propaganda, funded by big money and hyped by corporate media bias, become more prominent in spreading lies, distortions, and innuendos to the voting public. Unrestricted campaign funding has given the moneyed elites first access to elected officials. At the same time, private-sector unions, small businesses, and citizens find their influence dwindling or irrelevant. This crony capitalism, resembling dictatorships and communist oligarchies, seriously threatens our democracy because money, power, and media control are consolidated in the hands of a few at the top. Voter apathy prevails, as voters feel increasingly powerless to change the course of events. 

The United States, a once great economic powerhouse and the largest creditor nation, has become the largest debtor nation, and is fast becoming a banana republic. Past and present elected authorities and public officials have stripped bare our industries, put the nation under a mountain of debt, and turned the U.S. into a welfare depository. Government leaders have intentionally failed to protect our borders, jobs, and freedoms. These public “servants” and the wealthy elites have garnered riches for themselves, and purposely impoverished citizens and future generations. The greatest threats to our economy and national security are not foreign countries or terrorists; they are the enemies inside, corrupt government leaders and the money masters they serve. 


Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/11/the_causes_of_income_inequality.html#ixzz3qSBDYQVs
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Obamacare open enrollment: A widening health care disaster for workers

Obamacare open enrollment: A widening health care disaster for workers

3 November 2015
“All of Obama’s policies have been geared toward increasing social inequality. … The claim that the health care overhaul is an oasis of progress in this desert of social reaction is simply a lie”— World Socialist Web Site, March 22, 2010


Open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) began November 1 for plans taking effect January 1. The coming year will be the third in which the ACA, signed into law by President Obama in March 2010, will be operational. The World Socialist Web Site’s assessment five years ago that the “reform” commonly known as Obamacare would usher in a frontal assault on the health care available to working people is being richly confirmed.
The ACA has nothing in common with universal health care. That was merely the slogan initially advanced to disguise a corporate-designed scheme to dramatically shift health care costs onto the working class.
The central component of the scheme, the “individual mandate,” requires that individuals and families without health insurance through their employer or a government program such as Medicare or Medicaid obtain insurance or pay a tax penalty. Low-income people can qualify for modest tax subsidies to go toward premiums.
The uninsured are required to purchase coverage from private, for-profit insurance companies on the health care “exchanges” set up under the law. This vastly increases the market for private insurance firms without placing any real restraints on the prices they charge—a formula for windfall profits.
By the government’s own forecast, enrollees will face a 7.5 percent average premium rate increase in 2016. Other sources project rate hikes in excess of 20 percent. A recent study showed that many insurers are requesting double-digit rate increases next year and state insurance commissions are approving them.
A frenzy of mergers in the health care industry will fuel further premium increases. In the space of a few weeks in July, Aetna Inc. and Humana Inc. merged in a $37 billion deal, and Anthem Inc. agreed to acquire Cigna Corp. for $54 billion. As a result, the five largest health insurers in the US were consolidated into three.
Drug makers Allergan and Pfizer are in the advanced stages of talks to merge and form the world’s largest pharmaceutical company, valued at $330 billion. The price of top brand name prescription drugs are already surging, having increased by 12.9 percent in 2013, the last year for which data is available.
Last week the giant drug store chain Walgreens announced a deal to take over one of its main competitors, Rite Aid, creating a mega-chain to compete with CVS for total domination of the market.
Premiums and drug costs are only one aspect of the burden to be borne by those purchasing coverage under the ACA. The average deductible for the lowest tier “bronze” plans on the exchanges was $5,200 in 2015, and the prevalence of such “high-deductible” plans is sure to expand in 2016. This means that aside from mandated “essential services,” such as certain forms of wellness care and screenings, no medical care is covered until the entire deductible is paid out of pocket. Co-payments for doctor visits and other services are also required.
Research published in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association looked at 135 health plans in 34 state marketplaces available during last year’s open enrollment period. The study found that as of April 2015, 18 plans in nine states lacked in-network specialists for at least one specialty. These included obstetricians/gynecologists, dermatologists, cardiologists, psychiatrists, oncologists, neurologists, endocrinologists, rheumatologists and pulmonologists.
What all of this means is that a substantial portion of the 12 million people who have purchased coverage on the health care exchanges will be forced to self-ration medical care due to economic necessity. Workers and their children will forego doctor visits, prescriptions for life-saving medicines will go unfilled, needless suffering and deaths will occur.
This appalling state of affairs is not an unfortunate byproduct of the ACA. By design from its inception, the legislation has been crafted to cut costs for the government and corporations and boost the profits of the health insurers, pharmaceutical corporations and health care chains.
According to the big business parties and their corporate sponsors, Americans are living too long and health care costs are sucking up too much of the national wealth. There is a calculated drive to lower life expectancy for working people.
That is why the introduction of Obamacare has been accompanied by a concerted drive to restrict access to basic medical tests—that is, to ration health care for workers. In recent months, official bodies have called for reducing or delaying mammograms, pap smears, prostate tests and other standard screening procedures.
One indication of the catastrophic implications of the assault on health care is a recent study showing that since 1998, the death rate for middle-income white Americans age 45-54 has risen sharply, resulting in half a million deaths, comparable to the 650,000 Americans who have lost their lives from AIDS since 1981. Researchers point to suicides and substance abuse, driven by increasing financial stress, as the main contributing factors. The ACA will only increase the number of such tragedies.
The implications of Obamacare go far beyond those buying insurance on the ACA exchanges and extend to all segments of health care. The legislation is serving as a model for the assault on employer-sponsored health care coverage as well as the bedrock government-run programs Social Security and Medicare.
Today, approximately half of all Americans receive their health care coverage through their employers. Employer-paid health benefits was an important social gain wrested from the corporations by the struggles of workers in the aftermath of World War II and has been central in raising the living standards of working class families.
But the workings of Obamacare aim to destroy these gains. As Ezekiel Emanuel, a close ally of Obama and key architect of the ACA, predicted in 2009: “By 2025, few private-sector employers will still be providing health insurance.” These plans will give way to vouchers handed out to employees to purchase coverage on insurance exchanges, either those set up under the ACA or others.
In the current contract struggle of US autoworkers, the drive by the auto companies and their union partners to dismantle the “cradle-to-grave” medical coverage won by autoworkers and retirees is in line with the Obama administration’s policy of shifting health care costs to workers.
The recent budget deal between Obama and congressional Republicans rolls back a significant provision in the ACA, the requirement that businesses with more than 200 workers automatically enroll their employees for health insurance. And while employers are basically absolved of responsibility for providing insurance, fines for individuals for not obtaining insurance will rise substantially in 2016—to $695, or 2.5 percent of income, whichever is higher.
Paul Ryan, the newly elected speaker of the House of Representatives, has advocated transforming Medicare into a voucher program and partially privatizing Social Security. That he is now presented as a “moderate” unifying force by the ruling elite and the media is an indication of how far to the right the political establishment in America has veered. The foundations are already being laid for the dismantling of Medicare and Social Security.
As the real content of Obamacare becomes clear to millions of workers and middle class people, who suddenly discover that they cannot get access to drugs or doctors and standard medical procedures are no longer covered by their insurance plans, there will be an explosive growth of social opposition.
The third year of the Affordable Care Act is the occasion to call the reactionary legislation by its rightful name: a health care counterrevolution. The only rational and progressive solution to the health care crisis in America is to replace the privately owned and controlled system with socialized medicine, in which the health care industry is nationalized, restructured, and placed under the democratic control of a workers government. This will make possible the provision of quality health care for all as a basic social right.
Kate Randall

"Amazon became a byword this year for savage treatment of 

employees. Bezos joins several others in the top 15 notorious 

for low-wage exploitation, including four heirs to the Wal-

Mart retail empire, James, Alice, Christy and Samuel Robson 

Walton, and Phil Knight, chairman of Nike Inc., whose $24.4 

billion fortune is extracted from his international network of 

sports apparel-producing sweatshops."


OBAMA-CLINTONomics is a simple device - Serve the super rich and pass the cost of their looting and Wall Street crimes on to the backs of the last of the American middle-class!


"Of course, the wealth of the financial elite cannot come from nowhere. Ultimately, the continual infusion of asset bubbles is the form taken by a massive transfer of wealth, from the working class to the banks, investors and super-rich. The corollary to rise of the stock market is the endless demands, all over the world, for austerity, cuts in wages, attacks on health care and pensions."


“As a result, the share of wealth held by the richest 0.1 percent of the population grew from 17 percent in 2007 to 22 percent in 2012, while the wealth of the 400 richest families in the US has doubled since 2008.”

OBAMA-CLINTONomics and the final death of the American middle-class

"Obama expanded the Wall Street bailout, handing trillions of dollars to the criminals who wrecked the economy. He then utilized the financial meltdown to restructure the auto industry on the basis of brutal pay cuts, setting a precedent for the transformation of the US into a low-wage economy."

"In the midst of the deepest slump since the Great Depression, the administration starved state and city governments of resources, leading to the destruction of hundreds of thousands of education and public-sector jobs and the gutting of workers’ pensions. Obama’s Affordable Care Act set in motion the dismantling of employer-paid health insurance and massive cuts in the Medicare insurance system for the elderly."

Wealth of America’s super-rich grows to $2.34 trillion

By Nick Barrickman 
3 October 2015
The wealth of the 400 richest Americans 
continues to soar, according to the results of 
the new Forbes 400 list, published annually 
by the business magazine of the same name. 
At $2.34 trillion, the total net worth for the multi-billionaires on the list set new records, displacing last year’s all-time high of $2.29 trillion.

 
OBAMA-CLINTONomics: MELTDOWN!

Did their crony banksters ultimately destroy the global economy?





Richest one percent controls 

nearly half of global wealth

 

In 2009, the total net worth of the Forbes 400 was $1.27 trillion. Today, nearly six years into the so-called economic “recovery” fostered by the Obama administration, the wealthiest Americans have nearly doubled their hoard. The total wealth of the richest 400 Americans managed to reach new heights even while financial markets have been roiled by tumultuous swings.

The Forbes report notes that in 2015, “It was 
harder than ever to join the 400. The price of 
entry this year was $1.7 billion, the highest

it’s been in the 33 years that Forbes has

racked American wealth.” Forbes makes note

that the wealth threshold was so high this year that 145 billionaires failed to make the list.
While a majority of billionaires have prospered, their wealth underwritten by the massive government bailouts of financial institutions and near-zero interest rates from the Federal Reserve, a significant fraction of the wealthy elite have lost ground in the turbulent stock markets of recent months.
The ratio of winners and losers among the billionaires was ten to one last year, but this year was much closer to 50-50. Forbes noted that the top three position-holders on the list, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett and Oracle’s Larry Ellison, each saw a drop in their total net worth of at least 5 percent in the last year. This did nothing to threaten the position of Gates, number one at $76 billion, or Buffett, number two at $62 billion, but Ellison’s third-place position, with $47.5 billion, left him “only” $500 million ahead of the fourth-place multi-billionaire, Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com.
The majority of those on the Forbes list were associated with some form of financial speculation, or with computer software and the Internet. According to the industry breakdown supplied by Forbes, its 400 include 126 engaged in investment, real estate and finance, 81 from computer technology and media, 36 from food and beverage, 32 from retail and fashion (including five members of the Walton family, owners of Wal-Mart), 31 from oil & gas, 20 from health care, 19 from miscellaneous services (including six members of the Pritzker family, owners of Hyatt Hotels), and 19 from sports and gaming.
This left only 35 listed as making their fortunes in manufacturing, automotive, construction, and logistics. The largest manufacturing fortune is the $7.4 billion of Harold Kohler, whose company makes toilets and other plumbing fixtures. Perhaps that is symbolic, given the state of manufacturing in the United States, once the world leader in industry, but no longer.
The growth of financial parasitism has underwritten the wealth of many on the Forbes 400. In 1982, the first Forbes 400 list saw figures directly involved in finance making up only 4.4 percent of the total wealth on the list. As of today, this group now makes up more than 21 percent of billionaires on the list.
Former Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, who has held the number one spot on the Forbes 400 for 22 years, has less than 13 percent of his fortune in stock in the company he founded. According toForbes, the majority of Gates’ wealth is bound up in Cascade, the software mogul’s investment firm, which specializes in “investing in stocks, bonds, private equity and real estate.”
Besides the well-known super-rich of Silicon Valley like Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin (with $33.3 billion and $32.6 billion, respectively) and Mark Zuckerberg, founder of the social media web site Facebook, the seventh wealthiest man in America with $40.3 billion in total assets, there are numerous other newly minted Internet billionaires, including the owners and co-owners of Uber, Airbnb, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Twitter, SnapChat, GoPro and GoDaddy.com.
Jeffrey Bezos, owner of the online retailer Amazon, saw the largest gain in wealth for the year, making $16 billion in 2015, placing his total net worth at $47 billion and catapulting him to fourth place. Nearly half of Bezos’ gains came within a single day last July, when his company announced gains in the second quarter, leading to a speculative frenzy which bid up stock values for Amazon by over 18 percent.
Amazon became a byword this year for savage treatment of 

employees. Bezos joins several others in the top 15 notorious 

for low-wage exploitation, including four heirs to the Wal-

Mart retail empire, James, Alice, Christy and Samuel Robson

Walton, and Phil Knight, chairman of Nike Inc., whose $24.4 

billion fortune is extracted from his international network of 

sports apparel-producing sweatshops.
While safeguarding the ill-gotten wealth of the Forbes billionaires remains an ironclad principle of both the Republican and Democratic parties, working people throughout the US continue to suffer the brunt of attacks on their living standards. A US Census report released earlier this month shows that 14.8 percent of the US population lives in poverty; a figure that is unchanged from a year earlier. The Census findings show that 6.6 percent of the population lives in “deep poverty,” or less than half of the already unrealistically low official poverty line in the US.