Democrats Can Fund the World, but Not the Wall
There is nothing like a government shutdown to illustrate clearly the priorities of the two opposing sides to the standoff. On one side is President Trump, keeping a campaign promise to build a wall, to keep crime, sex-trafficking, drugs, and terrorism, not to mention the unfunded burden of illegal aliens, out of America.
On the other side are the Democrats, hell-bent on keeping 25 percent of the government closed for business rather than funding border security, a concept they wholeheartedly supported a decade ago.
Who's winning and who's losing the battle? If you watch cable news, it's clear that the president is on the ropes, having backed himself into a corner. Reality sings a different tune. How did we get here?
Donald Trump, announcing his candidacy for president in June 2015, rode down the escalator at Trump Tower and said, "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best." He went on, "They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."
These were among his first pronouncements that day and have been a constant theme of his rallies and tweets since then – including this tweet from a few days ago.
Democrats were once in favor of border security, too. Many, including Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006. This provided for, "Operational control over the entire international land and maritime borders of the United States."
Now, because it's 2019 and Trump is president, Democrats are conveniently against border security. This is a common theme of Democrats, frequently for something before they are against it. Remember John Kerry and the Iraq War?
The current fight is over a mere $5 billion in funding for a wall – or a "fence" if the term "wall" is offensive, but a physical barrier between two nations, controlling who and what traipses from one country to the other. The federal budget is $4.4 trillion, meaning wall funding represents about a tenth of a percent of the budget, a rounding error. What else are Nancy Pelosi and colleagues spending money on? How about foreign aid?
The 2019 federal budget requests nearly $27 billion in foreign aid for economic development, health, humanitarian assistance, peace and security, and other objectives. This is over half the cost of securing "[t]he entire international land and maritime borders of the United States" something Democrats were keen about in 2006.
The Secure Fence Act of 2006 budgeted $50 billion over 25 years to control America's borders. Unfortunately, Congress appropriated only $1.4 billion and forgot about the rest. The foreign aid request above was for one single year. Two years of the foreign aid budget spent instead on U.S. border security would create the type of physical borders so common in the countries we are generously supporting.
Fund the world, but not America.
It's instructive to compare the current administration to the past one, since the media treat the last administration as the Second Coming and the current administration as the Fourth Reich.
In 2012, Congress appropriated $40 billion in foreign aid, a billion more than what was requested. In 2013, the amount went up to $43 billion appropriated. The following year, 2014, $42 billion was appropriated.
Let's look at what was actually spent on foreign aid in Barack Obama's final year of 2016: $31 billion total – more than half of what America needs to insure its own "peace and security."
Countries receiving American taxpayer largess include Pakistan, $687 million, the same country that provided sanctuary to Osama bin Laden. Seven point two billion dollars went to Afghanistan, with not much to show for it other than its opium products finding their way through our unsecure southern border.
Five hundred seventy million went to Syria, a country where I thought Obama was calling for regime change. Even China received $20 million. I thought China was our geopolitical and economic adversary! A few hundred million each went to most African countries, quickly adding up to the grand total of $31 billion.
This is not to say that all foreign aid is bad, as clearly, it is not. America is the most generous nation in the world. Much of our foreign aid is lifesaving. Much of it is also wasted or filling the Swiss bank accounts of foreign thug leaders – or worse, finding its way into the bank accounts of those who appropriated the money from the U.S. Treasury.
How else to explain members of Congress living in multimillion-dollar mansions or having net worths in the tens of millions while earning a congressional salary of under $200,000 per year?
An old proverb says, "Charity begins at home." Even the Bible reinforces the idea in 1 Timothy 5:8: "Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever."
American taxpayers are footing the bill not only for foreign aid, but also for illegal immigration, which costs U.S. taxpayers $115 billion a year.
Then there is the human toll, from Kate Steinle to police officer Ronil Singh. Or the previously deported illegal alien who viciously raped a woman in New York. Or another previously deported illegal who raped a child in Philadelphia.
Don't forget illegal drugs. Heroin and cocaine aren't produced domestically and instead transit our southern border. How much Chinese fentanyl is arriving through Mexico?
The United States gives about a million dollars a year in aid to Hungary, the same country that was able to fund the construction of "a second fence on the border with Serbia to keep migrants out."
Congress is happy to give money to countries to secure their borders, but House Democrats refuse to spend a dime for the same security measures in their own country.
Shameful, but the shutdown is illustrating Democrat priorities, especially for Pelosi-Schumer Democrats. Let's have the debate. Where do taxpayers want their hard-earned money to go? To foreign countries so they can secure their borders and protect their citizens? Or should some of that money stay here, providing safety and security for Americans?
Trump will get his wall, either through an eventual budget deal or via the military on the basis of national security. The shutdown may simply be Trump's way of exposing Democrat priorities, which are not for those they are elected to represent or the constitution they swore to support and defend.
Democrats may believe that the shutdown is a way to insulate themselves against exposure of their real priorities, but the longer the shutdown goes on, the more their insulation melts away.
There is nothing like a government shutdown to illustrate clearly the priorities of the two opposing sides to the standoff. On one side is President Trump, keeping a campaign promise to build a wall, to keep crime, sex-trafficking, drugs, and terrorism, not to mention the unfunded burden of illegal aliens, out of America.
On the other side are the Democrats, hell-bent on keeping 25 percent of the government closed for business rather than funding border security, a concept they wholeheartedly supported a decade ago.
Who's winning and who's losing the battle? If you watch cable news, it's clear that the president is on the ropes, having backed himself into a corner. Reality sings a different tune. How did we get here?
Donald Trump, announcing his candidacy for president in June 2015, rode down the escalator at Trump Tower and said, "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best." He went on, "They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."
These were among his first pronouncements that day and have been a constant theme of his rallies and tweets since then – including this tweet from a few days ago.
Democrats were once in favor of border security, too. Many, including Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006. This provided for, "Operational control over the entire international land and maritime borders of the United States."
Now, because it's 2019 and Trump is president, Democrats are conveniently against border security. This is a common theme of Democrats, frequently for something before they are against it. Remember John Kerry and the Iraq War?
The current fight is over a mere $5 billion in funding for a wall – or a "fence" if the term "wall" is offensive, but a physical barrier between two nations, controlling who and what traipses from one country to the other. The federal budget is $4.4 trillion, meaning wall funding represents about a tenth of a percent of the budget, a rounding error. What else are Nancy Pelosi and colleagues spending money on? How about foreign aid?
The 2019 federal budget requests nearly $27 billion in foreign aid for economic development, health, humanitarian assistance, peace and security, and other objectives. This is over half the cost of securing "[t]he entire international land and maritime borders of the United States" something Democrats were keen about in 2006.
The Secure Fence Act of 2006 budgeted $50 billion over 25 years to control America's borders. Unfortunately, Congress appropriated only $1.4 billion and forgot about the rest. The foreign aid request above was for one single year. Two years of the foreign aid budget spent instead on U.S. border security would create the type of physical borders so common in the countries we are generously supporting.
Fund the world, but not America.
It's instructive to compare the current administration to the past one, since the media treat the last administration as the Second Coming and the current administration as the Fourth Reich.
In 2012, Congress appropriated $40 billion in foreign aid, a billion more than what was requested. In 2013, the amount went up to $43 billion appropriated. The following year, 2014, $42 billion was appropriated.
Let's look at what was actually spent on foreign aid in Barack Obama's final year of 2016: $31 billion total – more than half of what America needs to insure its own "peace and security."
Countries receiving American taxpayer largess include Pakistan, $687 million, the same country that provided sanctuary to Osama bin Laden. Seven point two billion dollars went to Afghanistan, with not much to show for it other than its opium products finding their way through our unsecure southern border.
Five hundred seventy million went to Syria, a country where I thought Obama was calling for regime change. Even China received $20 million. I thought China was our geopolitical and economic adversary! A few hundred million each went to most African countries, quickly adding up to the grand total of $31 billion.
This is not to say that all foreign aid is bad, as clearly, it is not. America is the most generous nation in the world. Much of our foreign aid is lifesaving. Much of it is also wasted or filling the Swiss bank accounts of foreign thug leaders – or worse, finding its way into the bank accounts of those who appropriated the money from the U.S. Treasury.
How else to explain members of Congress living in multimillion-dollar mansions or having net worths in the tens of millions while earning a congressional salary of under $200,000 per year?
An old proverb says, "Charity begins at home." Even the Bible reinforces the idea in 1 Timothy 5:8: "Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever."
American taxpayers are footing the bill not only for foreign aid, but also for illegal immigration, which costs U.S. taxpayers $115 billion a year.
Then there is the human toll, from Kate Steinle to police officer Ronil Singh. Or the previously deported illegal alien who viciously raped a woman in New York. Or another previously deported illegal who raped a child in Philadelphia.
Don't forget illegal drugs. Heroin and cocaine aren't produced domestically and instead transit our southern border. How much Chinese fentanyl is arriving through Mexico?
The United States gives about a million dollars a year in aid to Hungary, the same country that was able to fund the construction of "a second fence on the border with Serbia to keep migrants out."
Congress is happy to give money to countries to secure their borders, but House Democrats refuse to spend a dime for the same security measures in their own country.
Shameful, but the shutdown is illustrating Democrat priorities, especially for Pelosi-Schumer Democrats. Let's have the debate. Where do taxpayers want their hard-earned money to go? To foreign countries so they can secure their borders and protect their citizens? Or should some of that money stay here, providing safety and security for Americans?
Trump will get his wall, either through an eventual budget deal or via the military on the basis of national security. The shutdown may simply be Trump's way of exposing Democrat priorities, which are not for those they are elected to represent or the constitution they swore to support and defend.
Democrats may believe that the shutdown is a way to insulate themselves against exposure of their real priorities, but the longer the shutdown goes on, the more their insulation melts away.
Dems
Have No Arguments Left For Opposing Border Security
https://townhall.com/columnists/markserrano/2019/01/04/dems-have-no-arguments-left-for-opposing-border-security-n2538512
Watch: Pelosi Jokes About Paying $1 for Trump’s Border Wall
0:48
Thursday at a press conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) joked that she might pay a dollar for President Donald Trump’s proposed wall on the U.S. Mexico border.
When asked if Democrats would spend “even a dollar” for a wall, Pelosi said, “A dollar? A dollar? Yeah, one dollar.”
The reporter asked, “How high are you willing to go? Are you willing to spend —”
Breitbart TV
Pelosi interrupted, “No, you said a dollar, you said a dollar. That’s not your question, you said a dollar, I’m answering your question.”
She added, “The fact is, a wall is an immorality.”
PAUL KRUGMAN
The disintegration of California, a Mexican satellite welfare state of poverty, crime and high taxes
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/04/paul-krugman-look-at-california-under.html
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy congratulates Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. [Credit: C-Span]
Democrat Elizabeth Warren enters US presidential race
Pelosi’s great “achievement” in her first stint as Speaker was the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, aimed at shifting much of the burden of paying for health insurance from businesses and the government onto the backs of workers.
In 2007, she worked closely with her top aides, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Majority Whip James Clyburn, to block any efforts to impeach President George W. Bush and ensure an unending stream of funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
PAUL KRUGMAN
The disintegration of California, a Mexican satellite welfare state of poverty, crime and high taxes
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/04/paul-krugman-look-at-california-under.html
"Chairman of the DNC Keith Ellison was even spotted wearing a shirt stating, "I don't believe in borders" written in Spanish.
According to a new CBS news poll, 63 percent of Americans in competitive congressional districts think those crossing illegally should be immediately deported or arrested. This is undoubtedly contrary to the views expressed by the Democratic Party.
Their endgame is open borders, which has become evident over the last eight years. Don't for one second let them convince you otherwise." Evan Berryhill Twitter @EvBerryhill.
US House Democrats reaffirm right-wing program of austerity, bipartisanship
The 116th Congress opened Thursday with a nearly unanimous vote by the Democrats in the House of Representatives reaffirming their commitment to austerity by adopting a rules package which includes a “pay as you go” provision, requiring any increased spending on social programs or tax cuts to be offset by equivalent budget cuts or tax increases. The Democrats took control of the House for the first time in eight years following November’s midterms while the Republicans increased their majority in the Senate.
The new rules were moved by Democratic Representative Nancy Pelosi who was re-elected to the position of Speaker of the House earlier in the day, giving her effective control of its legislative agenda. Pelosi became the first woman to be elected Speaker when she held the position from 2007 to 2011. As Speaker, she is now second in line of succession for the presidency behind Vice President Mike Pence.
Pelosi’s great “achievement” in her first stint as Speaker was the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, aimed at shifting much of the burden of paying for health insurance from businesses and the government onto the backs of workers. In 2007, she worked closely with her top aides, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Majority Whip James Clyburn, to block any efforts to impeach President George W. Bush and ensure an unending stream of funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hoyer and Clyburn have been returned to those positions for the 116th Congress.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy congratulates Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. [Credit: C-Span]
Pelosi’s re-election as Speaker was welcomed by President Donald Trump Thursday during an afternoon press conference called to pressure the Democrats on funding for his proposed wall along the US-Mexico border, in which he expressed his hope that they would work together on infrastructure and “so much more.” Trump has forced a partial shutdown of the government, now approaching the third week, with 800,000 federal employees either furloughed or working without pay, over his demand for $5 billion to fund the construction of the border wall.
The House passed two bills on Thursday which would reopen the government. However, the bills, modeled on legislation passed by the Republican-controlled Senate last year, must win Senate passage again in the new legislative session. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he will not allow action on the House legislation because Trump has already declared he will not sign it since it does not include his demand for border wall funding.
While Pelosi told NBC News in an interview Thursday morning that it was an “open question” if Trump could be criminally indicted while in office or should be impeached, she has maneuvered over the last two years to suppress any efforts among House Democrats to move for impeachment. Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer met publicly with Trump at the White House last month in an effort to strike a deal on immigration reform where they assured the president that they supported increased border security but sought a rhetorical climbdown on his part in relation to the wall.
“I think it’ll be a little bit different than people are thinking,” Trump quipped about his relationship with Speaker Pelosi while flanked by Border Patrol union officials Thursday.
Indeed, her first speech as Speaker was an olive branch to the right-wing within her own party as well as to the Republicans in Congress, singling out for praise Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and calling for bipartisanship, meaning an even further shift to the right by the Democratic Party.
Pelosi was elected in a carefully orchestrated vote Thursday afternoon with the support of all but 12 Democratic representatives. The vote came after weeks of horse-trading and backroom deals in which Pelosi had to agree to a four-year term limit to win over a dozen members, mainly on the right wing of the Democratic caucus, who had threatened to block her election.
Among those who voted for Pelosi were Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, both members of the pseudo-left Democratic Socialists of America faction of the Democratic Party. That they both cast their votes for Pelosi’s right-wing promise of bipartisanship, and Tlaib for a rules package which commits the House to austerity, shows that their association with socialism is entirely false, meant only to misdirect youth and workers who are looking for a genuine alternative to capitalism, and trap them within the Democratic Party.
Newly elected CIA Democrats made up a significant portion of those who did not vote for Pelosi, opposing her from the right, including former CIA officers Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Afghan war veteran Max Rose of New York.
Despite the much touted “historic” character of the newly sworn-in Congress, which will see the most female and minority representatives seated in US history, all of them go to Washington, D.C., as representatives of the capitalist class and enemies of the working class. The growing number of women, African Americans, Muslims and other minorities will do nothing to push Congress to the left.
The majority of members of Congress are millionaires and those who are not are vetted to ensure they will serve the interests of the rich and are increasingly drawn directly from the military-intelligence apparatus. The non-millionaires entering Congress for the first time will find their fortunes rising quite rapidly. The median Congressperson had a net worth of at least $1.1 million in 2015, and the figure has only continued to rise.
According to the latest data analyzed by Open Secrets, Speaker Pelosi had an estimated net worth of $100 million in 2013. Among her declared property holdings that year were a 59,000 square foot warehouse in San Francisco, worth between $5 and $25 million, and a vineyard in Napa Valley, also declared at $5 to $25 million. According to one admiring media profile, her main skill as a Democratic Party leader was as a fund-raiser, having raked in $728 million for Democratic congressional candidates since 2002.
Democrat Elizabeth Warren enters US presidential race
On New Year’s Eve, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts announced the formation of an exploratory committee to prepare a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. The formation of the committee is the main preliminary to launching a campaign, allowing Warren to raise money, hire staff and build a campaign organization.
Warren joins four lesser-known candidates who have already declared their intention to run, including former representative John Delaney of Maryland, former Obama housing secretary Julian Castro, West Virginia state senator Richard Ojeda and multimillionaire Andrew Yang.
The entry of the first major candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination is the beginning of a political fraud that will unfold over the next 673 days, until November 3, 2020. The Democratic Party will pretend to offer a progressive alternative to the politics of racism, reaction and militarism espoused by President Donald Trump. Its allies in the media, the trade unions and the pseudo-left groups will seek to present this reactionary party of big business as the advocate and defender of working people.
Some three dozen Democrats are reportedly mulling presidential campaigns, including as many as 10 senators, four governors, four members of the House, four mayors or former mayors, two billionaires (Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer) and former vice president Joe Biden, considered the front-runner if he enters the race.
The list is less an embarrassment of riches than an embarrassment, full stop. It demonstrates not the vigor of the Democratic Party, but its sclerotic character. The two leading candidates, Biden and Sanders, are 76 and 77 years old, respectively. This matches the three top leaders of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, who are 78, 79 and 78. Warren herself will be 71 on Election Day. Not a single candidate is identified with a significant social reform. Not a single candidate has any genuine connection to the struggles of working people.
Judging by the four-and-a-half-minute video released by Warren as she made the announcement, her campaign is aimed at securing the “left” lane in the contest for the Democratic nomination, displacing Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who has not yet announced his intentions but shows every sign of preparing to run again.
The video, narrated by Warren, portrays her
as an untiring fighter against corporate greed
and the wealthy, who are portrayed, for good
reason, as having robbed the American
people blind. Graphs and charts show the
decline in incomes for working-class families
—referred to always as the “middle class”—in
contrast to the accumulation of wealth at the
top of American society.
The video, for all its populist pretensions, is notably silent on the role of the Democratic Party in the growth of economic inequality, particularly the Obama administration’s bailout of the banks and its decision to block any efforts to punish the Wall Street speculators who triggered the 2008 global financial collapse. Obama is mentioned only for his role in appointing Warren to set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the toothless agency established after the financial collapse to provide a pretense of reform.
The video makes no reference at all to the Trump administration’s savage persecution of immigrants, including the ban on visitors from Muslim countries, the forcible separation of children from parents seeking asylum, the mobilization of federal troops to the border or the ongoing confrontation over Trump’s demands for a border wall.
While the language of Warren’s criticism of Wall Street is radical-sounding, the practical measures she proposes do not touch the fundamentals of the profit system. Along with several cosponsors, she introduced a bill last summer, the Accountable Capitalism Act, aimed at promoting a political swindle of the first order: the claim that the capitalist system, based on the exploitation of the labor of tens of millions of workers for the profit of a handful of capitalists, can be made “accountable” and “fair” for working people.
The bill would compel every corporation worth more than $1 billion to seek a federal charter—all US corporations currently operate under state charters, frequently issued by the state of Delaware, a notoriously lax regulator—under which measures similar to the German system of “co-determination” would be required. This would include placing “representatives” of the employees, usually union officials, on the boards of directors, limiting stock buybacks and other methods of enriching executives and big shareholders, and restricting corporate political contributions.
Aside from the obvious perks for the unions, the major purpose of the bill was to set out a case for capitalism and divert the rising support for socialism among working people and rank-and-file Democratic Party voters, who, according to polls published last year, preferred socialism to capitalism by a significant majority. That Warren would embrace such a perspective is no surprise, given her background as a longtime Republican who voted for Nixon, Ford, Reagan and George H. W. Bush, and has always supported conventional conservative “free market” economic policies.
Warren switched to the Democratic Party only in the mid-1990s, after her appointment to a tenured position at Harvard and after her focus on bankruptcy law led to rising prominence as an expert on the exponential rise in personal bankruptcies among working people. She wrote several best-selling books on the impact of declining incomes and rising health care costs on the budgets of working families, before coming to national attention as the chair of a committee appointed by Congress to oversee the Wall Street bailout.
After Obama nominated her to head the CFPB, and Republicans blocked the nomination with a filibuster, Warren launched her political career, returning to Massachusetts and defeating Republican Senator Scott Brown in 2012. She won reelection easily in November and her reelection campaign staff has now transitioned to her presidential operation.
Despite her tub-thumping attacks on Wall Street, Warren has been a patsy for big business in every serious crisis. She firmly supported the bailout of the auto industry, in which the Obama administration demanded a 50 percent cut in starting pay for all newly hired workers, escalating the spread of two-tier wage systems throughout manufacturing. She appeared at a conference of “left” Democrats in Detroit in 2014 and made no mention of the bankruptcy being imposed on Detroit by the Republican state government with the support of the Obama White House, in which a Democratic bankruptcy lawyer, Kevyn Orr, was installed as emergency financial manager and effective dictator over the city. Orr ruthlessly carried out his assigned task of imposing budget and pension cuts.
Entirely absent from Warren’s campaign video and her statement announcing the formation of an exploratory committee is any reference to foreign policy. In that, as well as her anti-billionaire demagogy, she might appear to be following the example of Sanders in 2016, who said little or nothing about foreign policy and made no appeal to popular antiwar sentiment against the notoriously hawkish Hillary Clinton.
But Warren has been preparing a substantive foreign policy position of an entirely conventional, pro-imperialist character. This began with obtaining a coveted seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2017, followed by trips to the war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan with Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, adamant advocates of US military intervention abroad.
Warren gave a major foreign policy speech in November at American University in Washington in which she cited the need to end “unsustainable and ill-advised military commitments” around the world, including an end to the war in Afghanistan and a reduction in the resources devoted to the Pentagon. Echoing the recent Pentagon revision of its national defense posture, which declared that great power competition, not terrorism, was now its central focus, she said that “after years as the world’s lone superpower, the United States is entering a new period of competition.”
The Democratic senator criticized some specifics of the Trump administration’s foreign policy, saying, “In some cases, as with our support for Saudi Arabia’s proxy war in Yemen, US policies risk generating even more extremism.” She called for stepped-up sanctions on Russia for its alleged intervention in Ukraine and “meddling” in US elections, and attacked the Trump administration for its denial of climate change and its pullout of the Paris climate agreement.
This was followed by an article published in the January-February issue of Foreign Affairs, the principal journal of the US national security establishment, in which she espouses a criticism of globalization that frequently dovetails with that of Trump. In one passage, after hailing the “victory” of the United States in the Cold War, she writes that after this, “Policymakers were willing to sacrifice American jobs in hopes of lowering prices for consumer goods at home and spreading open markets abroad.” She continues: “They pushed former Soviet states to privatize as quickly as possible despite the risk of corruption, and they advocated China’s accession to the World Trade Organization despite its unfair trading practices.”
Warren warns that the focus on the “war on terror” has undermined US military capabilities for fighting more powerful rivals, and distracted Washington’s attention away from pressing challenges in Asia, Europe and Latin America (she cites Venezuela as a particular concern).
There is not a hint of an appeal to popular antiwar sentiment, but rather the voicing of concerns, similar to those of Trump, that Washington must focus on China and Russia and rebuild its manufacturing and technology base against supposed inroads from abroad.
In other words, Warren offers a warmed-over
liberal imperialism, with a bit of anti-Wall
Street demagogy to disguise what is a firm
commitment to the defense of US corporate
interests and strategic positions around the
world.
OPEN BORDERS FACILITATE AMERICA’S RACE TO THE BOTTOM
“Cheap labor” is anything but cheap.
January 2, 2019
For decades the United States government, on all levels, has betrayed its own citizens, promoting open borders policies that have come to undermine national security, public safety, public health, and jobs and wages for American workers.
The massive influx of alien children who lack English language proficiency also has a profound impact on the education of American kids. Increasingly schools across the United States are forced to provide costly ESL (English as a Second Language) services draining funds that could and should be used to provide quality education for American children. Additionally, as autism rates soar and with it the growing need for special services and early intervention for such learning challenged children, money that should be spent on those vital programs that could help so many of those children live better and more productive lives is being used, instead, to fund those ESL programs for illegal aliens and frequently the children of illegal aliens who do not speak English in their homes.
When early intervention is withheld from at-risk students, the results are frequently catastrophic, yet with all of the emotional arguments posed by the immigration anarchists who call for compassion for illegal aliens, their calls for compassion utterly disregard the plight of American children.
Open borders policies permit huge numbers of foreign workers to enter the United States and displace American workers, not because American’s “won’t do these jobs” as claimed by the duplicitous politicians, but because these foreign workers are willing to accept lower wages and worse conditions than would the American workers whom they displace.
We can all think back to the days when we were growing up and sought our very first jobs to provide us with some spending money, enabling us to put our foot on the bottom rung of the economic ladder.
We often encountered the conundrum of not being able to get a job without a reference. In order to get a reference we had to have a previous employer vouch for us. This made getting that very first job all the more difficult and, at the same time, all the more important.
I remember my first job, when I was 14 yeas old, working during my summer vacation in a Kosher delicatessen, a short bike ride from home in Brooklyn where I washed dishes, fried potatoes and served hot dogs at the counter, waited on tables and delivered sandwiches to the women who spent hours at the nearby beauty parlors.
It was exciting and empowering to be earning money instead of asking my parents for an allowance. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, that job also provided me with an education in life lessons, teaching me to be responsible, punctual and take instructions from an employer. That job also taught me the value of money, I was far less likely to squander money when I had to work so hard to earn it.
Finally, that job provided me with that important first reference that helped me get other jobs in the future as I climbed the economic ladder to a successful life.
Many of my friends also worked in nearby restaurants. Brooklyn has no shortage of great places to eat, often small “mom and pop” restaurants and everyone of those establishments routinely hired teenagers and college students who were desperate to earn money.
Today most of those jobs in all too many local restaurants and other businesses are not taken by teenage American kids, but but illegal aliens, thereby shutting out Americans.
Consequently, these American kids are often unable to get that first job that would mean so much to them and provide them with important life lessons including a sense of self-worth and empowerment.
Unable to find legitimate employment, some kids, particularly in the poor neighborhoods, resort to committing crimes to get their hands on some money to take a girl on a date or make purchases. This often puts these teenagers on a trajectory that does not end well for them or for their communities, or for America.
Illegal alien day laborers often displace construction workers, resulting in massive unemployment for American and lawful immigrant workers, boosting the profits of their employers who hire them “off the books” and pay them extremely low wages.
The open-borders/immigration anarchists are quick to invoke arguments about the need for compassion. The reality is that there’s no compassion in the exploitation of vulnerable foreign workers nor is there compassion in the destruction of wages and jobs for Americans.
Now with the legalization of marijuana in many cities and states across the United States the issue not being raised in the media is that inasmuch as many companies test their employees for illegal drugs, it is likely that those who are encouraged to smoke marijuana will lose their jobs, perhaps leading to the globalists claiming that not only are lazy Americans not willing to take physically demanding jobs, and too dumb to take hi-tech jobs but are now too stoned to take any jobs.
The displacement of American workers is not limited to the economic bottom rung jobs. America has been increasingly importing computer programmers and other hi-tech workers from India and other countries to displace Americans.
The Democratic Party used to act in the interests of American workers and, as a part of their efforts to protect the jobs and wages of Americans, opposed the importation of foreign workers. Today, the Democratic Party no longer represents American workers and, in fact, has come to betray American workers and their families. Today’s Democratic Party insists on raising the minimum wage to $15.00 per hour to achieve “wage equality.” This works out to an annual wage of slightly more than $30,000. The question that is never asked, particularly by the mainstream media is: “with whom would these workers become equal?”
It would be one thing if they insisted on a $15.00 minimum wage to help America’s working poor. But to tout that wage as a means of achieving “wage equality” should give all Americans cause for pause.
As I noted in an article I once wrote about the veiled attack on the middle class,
The Wage Equality Deception, Alan Greenspan the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, invoked the notion of wage equality way back on April 30, 2009 when he testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship that was, at that time, chaired by Chuck Schumer.
The subject of the hearing was “Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2009, Can We Do It and How?” Greenspan's prepared testimony included this assertion:
But there is little doubt that unauthorized, that is, illegal, immigration has made a significant contribution to the growth of our economy. Between 2000 and 2007, for example, it accounted for more than a sixth of the increase in our total civilian labor force. The illegal part of the civilian labor force diminished last year as the economy slowed, though illegals still comprised an estimated 5% of our total civilian labor force. Unauthorized immigrants serve as a flexible component of our workforce, often a safety valve when demand is pressing and among the first to be discharged when the economy falters.Some evidence suggests that unskilled illegal immigrants (almost all from Latin America) marginally suppress wage levels of native-born Americans without a high school diploma, and impose significant costs on some state and local governments.
Greenspan must not have gotten the memo- when America’s poorest workers suffer wage suppression they are likely to become homeless and, indeed, across the United States, homelessness has increased dramatically. This not only creates chaos in the lives of the homeless and their children, but imposes severe economic burdens on cities that have to cope with this disaster.
Greenspan went on to state the United States must accede to Bill Gates’ demand for more H-1B visas as Gates noted in his testimony at a previous hearing, that we are "driving away the world's best and brightest precisely when we need them most."
Where I come from, “the world’s best and brightest” are AMERICANS! This is what is commonly referred to as “American Exceptionalism.”
Greenspan supported his infuriating call for many more H-1B visas by the following “benefits” for America and, as you will see, the last sentence of his outrageous paragraph addresses the notion of reducing “wage inequality” by lowering wages of middle class, highly educated Americans whom Greenspan had the chutzpah to refer to as “the privileged elite”!
Consider this excerpt from his testimony:
First, skilled workers and their families form new households. They will, of necessity, move into vacant housing units, the current glut of which is depressing prices of American homes. And, of course, house price declines are a major factor in mortgage foreclosures and the plunge in value of the vast quantity of U.S. mortgage-backed securities that has contributed substantially to the disabling of our banking system. The second bonus would address the increasing concentration of income in this country. Greatly expanding our quotas for the highly skilled would lower wage premiums of skilled over lesser skilled. Skill shortages in America exist because we are shielding our skilled labor force from world competition. Quotas have been substituted for the wage pricing mechanism. In the process, we have created a privileged elite whose incomes are being supported at noncompetitively high levels by immigration quotas on skilled professionals. Eliminating such restrictions would reduce at least some of our income inequality.
Generally, the prospect of high-paying jobs incentivized American students to go on to college and acquire costly and time-consuming educations to be qualified to take those exciting and well-paying jobs. If wages for high-tech professionals are slashed, those jobs will no longer be attractive to Americans.
Greenspan, Schumer and their cohorts are
determined to create a $15.00 per hour “standard
wage” to be paid to all workers irrespective of
education or the nature of their jobs. This is called
Communism!
determined to create a $15.00 per hour “standard
wage” to be paid to all workers irrespective of
education or the nature of their jobs. This is called
Communism!
Many have said that the Democrats want to import immigrants who will vote for their candidates.
What is often overlooked is that the downward economic spiral caused by the massive influx of cheap alien labor pushes ever more beleaguered Americans to vote for the Democrats who promise to help the hapless, financially strapped Americans for whom, no matter how hard they may strive, the “American Dream” has become an unattainable dream.
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