03-09-2013
Obama's Wall Street and the Looting of America
THERE ARE NOW 40 MILLION ILLEGALS IN OUR COUNTRY, WHICH ARE IN OUR JOBS, JAILS or WELFARE.
“While 43.6 million Americans live in poverty, the richest men of finance sure are getting pissy.”
OBAMA, THE BANKSTER OWNED LA RAZA DEM
“The response of the administration was to rush to the defense of the banks. Even before coming to power, Obama expressed his unconditional support for the bailouts, which he subsequently expanded. He assembled an administration dominated by the interests of finance capital, symbolized by economic adviser Lawrence Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.”
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OBAMANOMICS: Soaring Profits for Wall Street, Soaring Crimes of Bankster Donors, Soaring Foreclosures and Soaring Unemployment for Americans (Legals)…. STILL CALLING IT “CHANGE”???
Importing Poverty: Immigration and Poverty in the United States: A Book of Charts
By Robert Rector The Obama administration has also cut worksite enforcement efforts by 70% , allowing illegal immigrants to continue working in jobs that rightfully belong to citizens and legal workers.
THE ENTIRE REASON THE BORDERS ARE LEFT OPEN IS TO CUT WAGES! By and large, the new jobs created pay much less than those lost during the crash. According to Friday’s figures, average hourly earnings for production workers have risen by only 2 percent over the past year, a figure wiped out by rising prices.
"We could cut unemployment in half simply by reclaiming the jobs taken by illegal workers," said Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, co-chairman of the Reclaim American Jobs Caucus. "President Obama is on the wrong side of the American people on immigration. The president should support policies that help citizens and legal immigrants find the jobs they need and deserve rather than fail to enforce immigration laws." Obama and Justice Sotomayor Vow to Illegals to SABOTAGE E-verify!
VIVA LA RAZA SUPREMACY?
THE OTHER SIDE OF OBAMAnomics: HIS WALL STREET CRONIES ARE DOING WELL! The corporate cash hoard has likewise reached a new record, hitting an estimated $1.79 trillion in the fourth quarter of last year, up from $1.77 trillion in the previous quarter. Instead of investing the money, however, companies are using it to buy back their own stock and pay out record dividends.
February employment report masks depth of US jobs crisis
By Andre Damon
The number of jobs in the US grew by 236,000 in February, and the official unemployment rate fell to its lowest level since 2008, according to the Labor Department’s latest jobs report released Friday.
The media jumped on the jobs total—significantly higher than the 165,000 that had been predicted—to proclaim an economic turnaround, while the Obama White House said the report indicated that “the recovery that began in mid-2009 is gaining traction.”
In reality, the jobs gained are a drop in the bucket compared to those lost during the recession. In the downturn that started in 2008, the US economy lost 8.9 million jobs, and if previous economic trends had continued, another 5.9 million jobs would have been added. Since the end of 2009, the economy has added only 5.7 million jobs.
At February’s rate of job growth, the US economy would not get back to the pre-recession level of unemployment until 2017. By and large, the new jobs created pay much less than those lost during the crash. According to Friday’s figures, average hourly earnings for production workers have risen by only 2 percent over the past year, a figure wiped out by rising prices.
In addition to paying lower wages, an increasing number of new jobs are part time. Compared to late 2007, 5.8 million fewer people in the US are now working full time, but 2.8 million more are working part time. The share of people working part-time has grown from 16.9 percent at the start of the recession to 19.2 percent today.
Even as payrolls increased in February, a significant number of people simply stopped looking for work and dropped out of the labor force. With 130,000 people dropping out of the workforce, the labor force participation rate fell to 63.5 percent, the lowest level in over three decades.
The percentage of the population that is employed fell from 63.3 percent in February 2007 to 58.5 percent in February 2010. This figure has stayed essentially unchanged at that level since then, with the latest figure coming in at 58.5 percent.
Long-term unemployment has likewise increased significantly in the most recent report. The percentage of unemployed people who have been out of work for more than half a year hit 40.2 percent in February, up from 38.1 in January. At the end of December 2007, this figure stood at 17.4 percent.
The latest jobs report came after a surprise drop in the United States’ gross domestic product in the fourth quarter of 2012, which was revised up to a growth of only 0.1 percent. The combined economies of the advanced industrial countries in that quarter shrank by 0.2 percent.
The US public sector once again shed jobs in February, losing 10,000 positions. Since June 2009, 742,000 state, local, and federal jobs have been eliminated, half of those in public education.
The slashing of government jobs is only likely to intensify with last week’s passage of $1.2 trillion in ‘sequester’ job cuts. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the imposition of the sequester will result in 750,000 job losses, and significantly increase the unemployment rate.
Friday’s US jobs report appeared the same day the DOW Jones Industrial average hit the highest level in its history. The corporate cash hoard has likewise reached a new record, hitting an estimated $1.79 trillion in the fourth quarter of last year, up from $1.77 trillion in the previous quarter. Instead of investing the money, however, companies are using it to buy back their own stock and pay out record dividends.
Corporations have sharply increased dividend payments to investors. TheNew York Times reported Friday that S&P 500 companies are expected to pay over $300 billion in dividends this year, a sharp increase over last year’s payout of $282 billion. American corporations bought back $117.8 billion in their own stock last month, the highest total on records going back to 1985.
“Corporations are flush with cash and that cash sitting in the corporate coffers is earning next to nothing,” Rob Leiphart, an analyst at Birinyi, told the Times . “Companies have to do something with it.”
The rise in corporate stock buy-backs harkens back to the period prior to the 2008 crash. As the Times noted, “Similar buyback activity occurred the last time stocks hit record highs. During the housing boom that ended in 2007, S&P 500 companies ramped up their share buybacks to what were the highest levels in history.”
After four years of “recovery,” the US economy is nowhere near its pre-recession level of unemployment. Instead of investing in production, major corporations, flush with cash and with their stock at record levels, are paying out dividends and inflating their own stock values.
These actions work to further enrich the financial elite, which has seen its wealth increase dramatically with the rise of the stock market. This is made possible in large measure by the US Federal Reserve’s vastly expansionary monetary policy, which is throwing $85 billion a year into financial markets and ultimately into the coffers of the super-rich.
The unprecedented combination of mass unemployment, falling wages and an influx of free money from the Federal Reserve has led to a boom in corporate profits, which have set records for three years in a row. In the third quarter of 2012, corporate profits as a percentage of the total economy were 14.2 percent, the highest level on record going back to 1950, while the share of national income that went to workers, 61.7 percent, was at its lowest level in nearly five decades.
THE LOOTING OF AMERICA POVERTY RISES AS WALL ST. BILLIONAIRES WHINE! These guys profited from puffing up the housing bubble, then got bailed out when the going got tough. (Please see The Looting of America for all the gory details.) Without taxpayer largess, these hedge fund honchos would be flat broke. Instead, they're back to hauling in obscene profits. While 43.6 million Americans live in poverty, the richest men of finance sure are getting pissy. First Steve Schwartzman , head of the Blackrock private equity company, compares the Obama administration's effort to close billionaires' tax loopholes to "the Nazi invasion of Poland." Then hedge fund mogul David Loeb announces that he's abandoning the Democrats because they're violating "this country's core founding principles" -- including "non-punitive taxation, Constitutionally-guaranteed protections against persecution of the minority, and an inexorable right of self-determination." Instead of showing their outrage about the spread of poverty in the richest nation on Earth, the super-rich want us to pity them? Why are Wall Street's billionaires so whiny? Is it really possible to make $900,000 an hour (not a typo -- that's what the top ten hedge fund managers take in), and still feel aggrieved about the way government is treating you? After you've been bailed out by the federal government to the tune of $10 trillion (also not a typo) in loans, asset swaps, liquidity and other guarantees, can you really still feel like an oppressed minority? Looting of America for all the gory details.) Without taxpayer largess, these hedge fund honchos would be flat broke. Instead, they're back to hauling in obscene profits. The world changed. Before the bubble burst, these people walked on water . Their billions proved that they were the best and the brightest -- not just captains of the financial universe, but global elites who had earned a place in history. They donated serious money to worthy causes -- and political campaigns. No one wanted to mess with them.
• What do these guys actually do that earns them such wealth?
How dare we ask such questions! How dare we consider targeting them for special taxes? How dare we even think about redistributing THEIR incomes... even if at the moment much of their money comes directly from our bailouts and tax breaks?
It's true that the billionaires live in a hermetically sealed world. But that doesn't mean they don't notice the riffraff nipping at their heels. And they don't like it much. So they've gotten busy doing what billionaires do best: using their money to shield themselves. They're digging into their bottomless war chests, tapping their vast connections and using their considerable influence to shift the debate away from them and towards the rest of us.
We borrowed too much, not them. We get too much health care, not them. We retire too soon, not them. We need to tighten our belts while they pull in another $900,000 an hour. And if we want to cure poverty, we need to get the government to leave Wall Street alone. Sadly, their counter-offensive is starting to take hold.Billionaires are symbols of American individual prowess and virility . And if we try to hold them back or slow them down, we're on the road to tyranny. Okay, the game is rigged in their favor. Okay, they got bailed out while the rest of us didn't -- especially the 29 million people who are jobless or forced into part-time work. But what matters most is that in America, nothing can interfere with individual money-making. That only a few of us actually make it into the big-time isn't a bad thing: It's what makes being rich so special. So beware: If we enact even the mildest of measures to rein in Wall Street billionaires, we're on the path to becoming North Korea. For the last thirty years we've been told that making as much as you can is just another way of advancing the common good . But the Great Recession erased that equation: The Wall Streeters who made as much as they could undermined the common good. It's time to balance the scales. This isn't just redistribution of income in pursuit of some egalitarian utopia. It's a way to use public policy to reattach billionaires to the common good. Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009.
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Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses
BY TIMOTHY P CARNEY
Editorial Reviews
Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?
Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers. In Obamanomics , investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics.
Congressman Ron Paul says, “Every libertarian and free-market conservative needs to read Obamanomics .” And Johan Goldberg, columnist and bestselling author says, “Obamanomics is conservative muckraking at its best and an indispensable field guide to the Obama years.”
If you’ve wondered what’s happening to America, as the federal government swallows up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts deficit exploding “stimulus packages,” this book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam. Ultimately, Obamanomics boils down to this: every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich, and those somebodies are friends of Barack. This book names the names—and it will make your blood boil.
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Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?
Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers.
Investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics. In this explosive book, Carney reveals:
* The Great Health Care Scam—Obama’s backroom deals with drug companies spell corporate profits and more government control
If you’ve wondered what’s happening to our country, as the federal government swallows up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts deficit exploding “stimulus packages” that create make-work government jobs, this book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam. Ultimately, Obamanomics boils down to this: every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich, and those somebodies are friends of Barack. This book names the names—and it will make your blood boil.
*Praise for Obamanomics
“The notion that ‘big business’ is on the side of the free market is one of progressivism’s most valuable myths. It allows them to demonize corporations by day and get in bed with them by night. Obamanomics is conservative muckraking at its best. It reveals how President Obama is exploiting the big business mythology to undermine the free market and stick it to entrepreneurs, taxpayers, and consumers. It’s an indispensable field guide to the Obama years.”LA Times columnist and best-selling author
“‘Every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich.’ With this astute observation, Tim Carney begins his task of laying bare the Obama administration’s corporatist governing strategy, hidden behind the president’s populist veneer. This meticulously researched book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how Washington really works.”The Case Against Barack Obama
“Every libertarian and free-market conservative who still believes that large corporations are trusted allies in the battle for economic liberty needs to read this book, as does every well-meaning liberal who believes that expansions of the welfare-regulatory state are done to benefit the common people.”
“It’s understandable for critics to condemn President Obama for his ‘socialism.’ But as Tim Carney shows, the real situation is at once more subtle and more sinister. Obamanomics favors big business while disproportionately punishing everyone else. So-called progressives are too clueless to notice, as usual, which is why we have Tim Carney and this book.”Meltdown and The Politically Incorrect Guide ™ to American History
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· Hardcover: 256 pages
· Publisher: Regnery Press (November 30, 2009)
· Language: English
· ISBN-10: 1596986123
· ISBN-13: 978-1596986121
OBAMA, THE BANKSTER OWNED LA RAZA DEM
“The response of the administration was to rush to the defense of the banks. Even before coming to power, Obama expressed his unconditional support for the bailouts, which he subsequently expanded. He assembled an administration dominated by the interests of finance capital, symbolized by economic adviser Lawrence Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.”
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THE REASON OBAMA BROUGHT IN GEITHNER, BUSH’S ARCHITECT FOR BANKSTERS’ WELFARE, WAS TO SIGNAL HIS BANKSTER DONORS THERE WOULD BE NO CHANGE!
“Rattner’s evident involvement in the scheme underscores the criminal character of the Wall Street financiers who the Obama administration put in charge of destroying the jobs and living standards of auto workers. Selected by Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers—who were both deeply involved in the deregulation of the finance industry and the Wall Street bailout”
Here’s what Obama did for GM and against the workers:
The crisis in the auto industry—provoked by the 2008 financial breakdown and the plunge in auto sales to the lowest per-capita rate since World War II—was used by Wall Street and the US government to destroy jobs and wages and transform the industry into a lucrative investment for the same speculators who provoked the catastrophe.
* wsws.org
A union-free America. Growth down a little, employment down a lot. Profits and productivity up, wages flat. Health-care costs up for workers, down for employers. The return of a thriving middle class? Dream on.
After the elections: Behind the Democratic debacle
4 November 2010
Only a day after the midterm elections, the US media quickly coalesced around a narrative, accepted by everyone in the political establishment, that the victory of the Republican Party was a popular repudiation of the supposedly left-wing policies of the Obama administration. In his press conference on Wednesday, Obama himself adopted this analysis, pledging to work closely with the Republican Party, find some compromise on tax cuts for the wealthy, and improve his relations with corporate America.
Underlying this claim are two premises, both of which are false: 1) that Obama has carried out an anti-corporate program during his first two years; and 2) that the population as a whole has used the election to give a rousing affirmation of capitalism and big business. These premises are not only absurd, they clash with the basic facts.
In the flood of political commentary, no one in the mainstream media has suggested a far more plausible explanation: After coming to power by posing as the tribune of “hope” and "change you can believe in," Obama, through his pro-corporate and pro-war policies, has succeeded in alienating and politically demoralizing large sections of the population that had voted for him.
The event that secured Obama's election was the spectacular collapse of Wall Street in September of 2008, which shattered whatever was left of the credibility of the Bush administration and deeply discredited the capitalist system itself. Obama came into office with an overwhelming mandate for radical reform.
The response of the administration was to rush to the defense of the banks. Even before coming to power, Obama expressed his unconditional support for the bailouts, which he subsequently expanded. He assembled an administration dominated by the interests of finance capital, symbolized by economic adviser Lawrence Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
The administration opposed any constraints on executive compensation and rejected out of hand sanctions against or the prosecution of those responsible for the economic catastrophe. Over the past two years, the wealthiest individuals have vastly expanded their share of the national income and the largest banks are expected to hand out record compensation packages.
The economic crisis has led to a jobs crisis unlike anything seen since the Great Depression. The administration has rejected any government hiring programs. Throughout the crisis, Obama has endlessly repeated the claim that employment levels are a “lagging indicator.”
After bailing out Wall Street, Obama oversaw the forced bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler, demanding that workers accept deep cuts in jobs, wages and benefits. As a result, profits for the auto giants have soared while the assault on auto workers’ wages has become the model for wage-cutting in every economic sector and in every part of the country.
The consequences can be seen in the collapse of support for the Democratic Party in the industrial Midwest, the site of half the seats lost by Democrats in the House of Representatives. In Michigan, a center of the auto industry, the Republicans swept state and local offices, amid a turnout of only 45 percent. In Detroit, which had voted for Obama overwhelmingly in 2008, barely one in five voters showed up at the polls.
The principal domestic program for which Obama is associated is the overhaul of the health care system. The bill was entirely tailored to the interests of insurance companies and giant corporations. For the sake of “bipartisanship,” Obama abandoned anything that hinted of progressive reform, including the “public option.” Elderly voters, in particular, quite correctly saw the entire measure as a step toward cutting Medicare benefits and rationing care, resulting in a significant electoral swing to the Republican Party, which recorded an 18 percent advantage among voters over 60.
Joseph Kishore
2020 Democrats Won’t Criticize Biden’s Time as VP for Fear of Attacking Obama Legacy
Patrick Smith/Getty Images
NATE CHURCH
17 Jun 2019 5,537
3:14
Joe Biden’s rivals in the race for the 2020 Democrat presidential nomination are attacking him from all angles, save one: Biden’s time as Barack Obama’s vice president.
“People are very nostalgic for that time,” an activist
told Politico . Among liberal voters, the Obama administration is inextricably entwined with pre-Trump nostalgia. Years after his presidency, Obama remains extremely popular with his base. That is good news for Joe “
Malarkey ” Biden, who is riding that goodwill toward the Oval Office.
“It’s going to be challenging for progressives to attack that legacy,” said chief executive Yvette Simpson, of the “Democracy for America” PAC. “Because Obama not only is and was so popular, but people are very nostalgic for that time, particularly after a few years of Trump.”
Cory Booker has called a crime bill that Biden helped write in 1994 “awful” and “shameful.” Bernie Sanders has gone after Biden for his support of the Iraq War and NAFTA, while Elizabeth Warren has criticized him as “on the side of the credit card companies.” None of them, however, seem willing to contest any matter from his actual White House tenure, despite Politico noting the left has plenty of issues with the Obama administration’s legacy:
For years, left-wing activists have disapproved of the Obama administration’s management of the economic crash, opioid crisis, immigrant deportations, and ill-fated attempts to compromise with Republicans. But many believe it would be political suicide for progressive presidential candidates to question Obama’s record at length, even in the service of defeating Biden.
Sean McElwee, the co-founder of the left-wing think tank Data for Progress, had an arch response: “The biggest weaknesses Biden has, for the most part, are not things he did in the Obama administration,” he said. “Luckily for progressives, Joe Biden is literally 150 years old, which means he has a half-century of a career otherwise to attack.”
Adam Green, co-founder of Progressive Change Campaign Committee — which recently endorsed Warren over Biden — simply does not think Joe is right for the job. “It’s perfectly consistent to say that President Obama righted the ship and aimed it in a better direction,” he claimed, “but now we have an opportunity to move the ship much further and much faster toward progress.”
“The person to do that is clearly not Joe Biden,” Green added, “as he moves backwards on issues ranging from the Hyde Amendment to NAFTA to a ‘middle ground’ on the existential climate crisis.”
Meanwhile, Biden has drawn a sought-after demographic into his fold: black Americans who supported his “buddy Barack.” Yvette Simpson, head of the progressive Democracy for America PAC acknowledged the risk of alienating that demographic. “Biden’s early advantage among African-Americans has more to do with Obama than Biden. And if you attack that, you start to alienate those voters,” she said.
“Biden is winning, or at least is ahead, because nobody has made the argument that Obama’s policies are the reason that Democrats lost in 2016,” said Matt Stoller, a former Senate Budget Committee aide under Bernie Sanders. “They’re not challenging the fundamental narrative that Joe Biden is running on, which is that Obama did a good job and we need to get back to that.”
“I’ve been bugging the campaigns about it,” he said, but “they’re like, ‘Yeah, yeah, we know, but we don’t have a way to do it.'”
THE BANKSTER BOYS WHO SABOTAGED THE AMERICAN WORKERS AND BORDERS TO FLOOD AMERICA WITH “CHEAP” LABOR MEXICANS
Joe Biden Refers to ‘Buddy’ Barack Obama Seven Times in 1/2 Hour Speech
6 May 2019231
2:47
Former Vice President Joe Biden leaned heavily on the legacy of his old running mate, President Barack Obama, during a campaign appearance on Saturday.
Prior to the rally, the campaign aired a video of Obama praising Biden in 2017 and awarding his own vice president a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
“I heard you playing the tape of my buddy,” Biden said, speaking to the audience in Columbia, South Carolina, and apologized, “My buddy… I shouldn’t be so casual — President of the United States Barack Obama!”
During his campaign speech, Biden recalled the 2015 racist church shooting in South Carolina, when Obama attended the funeral and sang “Amazing Grace” to the congregation.
“I watched my buddy Barack stand up there, I watched him talk, and he talked about we have to find that Amazing Grace,” Biden said,
Biden also referred to Obama’s Charleston eulogy for the slain, as he spoke about employment discrimination.
“As Barack says, when two equally qualified people, one Jamal and one John, they both apply for a job, and John gets the job?” he said. “That’s the reality in America.”
Biden reminded supporters that he and President Obama were the ones who passed Obamacare, as he talked about the continuing struggle for affordable health care.
“How can you maintain your dignity when you look over at your child and he needs health care and he has a preexisting condition?” he asked. “You couldn’t afford it before Barack and I wrote … Barack passed the Affordable Care Act.”
Biden also reminded the audience that he complimented Obama for passing Obamacare in 2010, alluding to the moment that he was caught on a hot mic calling it a “big f-ing deal.”
“I know I complimented the president when I, when we passed the Affordable Care Act, I said this is a big deal or something to that effect,” he said as the crowd laughed.
Biden also spoke about cutting short his plans to run for president in 2016, despite the difficulty of watching his son Beau die of cancer.
“Only person I could confide in was my friend – and he is my friend – Barack Obama, I told him about everything that was going on, because I knew I could trust him completely,” he said.
At another point in his speech, Biden interrupted his campaign message with more praise for Obama.
“By the way, he’s a hell of a guy, I worked with him for eight years, I watched him, he has enormous integrity, and nobody I’ve ever worked with was smarter, and he is a decent, decent, decent man,” Biden said. “And folks, I think he was one of the best presidents we’ve ever, ever had.”
CRONY CAPITALISM
Barack Obama created more debt for the middle class than any president in US
history, and also had the only huge QE programs: $4.2 Trillion.
OXFAM reported that during Obama’s terms, 95% of the wealth created went to the top 1% of the world’s wealthy.
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ----Karen McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER
PATHOLOGICAL LIAR BARACK OBAMA MOCKS TRUMP
Obama orchestrated the greatest transfer of wealth to the rich in U.S. history!
THE WALL STREET BOUGHT AND OWNED DEMOCRAT PARTY
SERVING BANKSTERS, BILLIONAIRES and INVADING ILLEGALS
THE CRONY CLASS:
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.”
American Workers Wouldn’t Stand A Chance With Bygone Joe Biden
Source: (Christopher DeVargas/Las Vegas Sun via AP)
When President Trump promised to bring back American manufacturing, he wasn’t just talking about union workers. He was describing an economic agenda that benefits all workers.
According to the latest figures from the Labor Department, the manufacturing sector just posted its biggest wage gains in over a decade — a clear sign that the President’s economic policies are making a real difference for working families.
The employment cost index, which measures employee wages and benefits, rose by 0.9 percent for the manufacturing sector in the first quarter of 2019, with salaries and wages increasing by a full percentage point — even faster than the value of job-related benefits.
The last time manufacturing wages rose so much in a single quarter was in 2008, when wages also rose 1.0 percent between January and March.
Those wage gains are impressive, but they’re not surprising. Over the past two years, America has experienced an historic economic boom marked by the lowest unemployment rate in half a century, fueled by a pro-growth agenda that includes major middle-class tax cuts, deregulation, and targeted counter-tariffs to protect American workers against unfair trade practices by foreign competitors.
As a direct result of this effective economic strategy, labor productivity is also increasing at a faster rate than it has in almost 10 years.
Between the surging value of American workers and the fact that there are now more job openings than job seekers, last quarter’s wage gains were practically inevitable.
As remarkable as our recent economic progress has been, however, the Democrats want to eliminate President Trump’s policies and replace them with a radical agenda that would return us to the lethargic economy of the Obama years.
Democrat presidential frontrunner Joe Biden, for instance, is reviving decades-old liberal appeals to labor unions, declaring that his economic agenda will champion big labor.
“I make no apologies: I am a union man, period,” Biden told members of the Teamsters union, arguing that “the American middle class was built … by unions.”
While it’s true that unions played a key role in America’s economic development a century ago, circumstances have changed dramatically since Franklin Roosevelt’s day. Industries that used to be dominated by unions, such as manufacturing and construction, are increasingly dependent on non-union labor, necessitating a more comprehensive approach to economic policy that looks out for the interests of all workers.
President Trump adopted just such an approach, focusing his efforts on unleashing the potential of American workers and businesses by removing government-imposed impediments such as high tax rates and unnecessary regulations, rather than trying to use the federal government to pick winners and losers.
As a result, wages are growing
significantly faster for nonunion workers in goods-producing industries — in the manufacturing sector, for instance, wages increased 1.1 percent for nonunion workers last quarter, but only 0.4 percent for unionized employees.
While Trump’s innovative economic agenda is designed to improve the lives of all American workers by sparking private sector growth, Biden and his fellow Democrats are stuck in an outdated way of thinking that views certain kinds of workers as more important than others. That’s exactly why the 2020 election is about more than just determining who wins the presidency — it’s about defending our newfound prosperity from those who seek to take it away.
Across the board, American workers are winning thanks to President Trump’s economic policies. Biden’s pro-union agenda is just an outdated relic of a bygone era. Workers wouldn’t stand a chance with bygone Joe Biden.
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1993 Joe Biden Said NAFTA Would Help U.S. Chrysler Workers – Years Later They Were Laid Off
AP Images
3 May 2019976
3:19
Former Vice President and Senator Joe Biden (D) was one of the earliest cheerleaders for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which helped to eliminate nearly five million U.S. manufacturing jobs.
During a Senate floor speech in November 1993, Biden said that NAFTA would, specifically, increase jobs and production for American workers employed at Chrysler’s Newark, Delaware plant by opening up the Mexican market.
“Chrysler expects to sell 5,000 more cars to Mexico from their Newark, DE, plant by the end of the decade,” Biden said. “Without NAFTA, Chrysler will have to manufacture more cars in Mexico to meet the requirements of pre-NAFTA laws.”
Years later, in 2007, those American workers at the Newark Chrysler plant were laid off as the plant closed down. At the it’s height, about 5,700 American workers were employed there. When the plant closed, around 700 to 1,100 Americans were left without jobs.
Many of the U.S. workers blamed the unfair foreign competition that they had been subjected to because of free trade and multilateral agreements like NAFTA, which made it easier for corporations to readily outsource American jobs to Mexico.
“Everybody here is mad, upset, the whole gamut of emotions,” a 15-year employee told the Associated Press at the time. “People feel like they got the carpet yanked from underneath them. They feel like there’s really nothing out there for them after this. The economy is really bad, so it’s a hard thing.”
“Half of Congress is buying foreign cars,” another longtime Chrysler worker said. “They should be mandated to buy American cars. If they don’t, how patriotic is that?”
Offshoring production to Mexico has proven cheaper for corporate executives. Where American workers earn $30 an hour, Mexican workers earn about $3 an hour in comparison — a 90 percent cut to wages that has expanded the profit margins of hundreds of former American manufacturers.
Though Biden has routinely claimed that NAFTA created jobs in Delaware and the U.S., NAFTA helped to eliminate nearly 17,000 American jobs due to soaring trade deficits and China’s entering the World Trade Organization (WTO) in his home state. NAFTA, alone, eliminated about 1,200 American jobs in Delaware due to the U.S.-Mexico trade deficit.
As Breitbart News has chronicled , decades-long free trade deals, NAFTA, and China’s entering the WTO eliminated nearly five million manufacturing jobs across the country since 1994. Free trade advocates, like Biden, claimed at the time that NAFTA would create a million U.S. manufacturing jobs in the first five years.
Instead, nearly a million American jobs have been certified by the federal government as being lost directly due to NAFTA, according to data gathered by Public Citizen. These are only the U.S. jobs that the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program recognizes as being lost to free trade and does not indicate the actual number of jobs lost.
This week, Biden defended his support, once again, of NAFTA, job-killing free trade negotiations, and his opposition to tariffs on cheap foreign imports.
“I’m proud of my record,” Biden told local media in Iowa.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder .
Flashback–Joe Biden in 2007: Job-Killing NAFTA ‘Not the Problem’
30 Apr 2019189
4:46
In 2007, then-Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) defended the job-killing, pro-outsourcing North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) years after voting in support of the free trade deal that ultimately helped lead to the elimination of nearly five million U.S. manufacturing jobs.
During a December 2007 interview with SentinelSource.com
Biden said:
My problem is … I voted for NAFTA. NAFTA in my state created more jobs than it lost jobs coming out of my state . And you can argue that, on balance, it probably created more American jobs than it lost . [Emphasis added]
…
There was dislocation. Some jobs got lost. Some jobs got created. But, again, NAFTA wasn’t the problem . The problem became when you go beyond what these guys are going, [the Bush administration] and it’s attitude — it’s attitude about … and it’s an intellectually indefensible attitude. [Emphasis added]
In Biden’s home state of Delaware, though, NAFTA helped to eliminate nearly 17,000 American jobs due to soaring trade deficits and China’s entering the World Trade Organization (WTO). NAFTA, alone, eliminated about 1,200 American jobs in Delaware due to the U.S.-Mexico trade deficit.
Biden said, in the same interview, that the U.S. must be engaged in “open trade” while calling himself a “fair trader.”
“This isn’t about saying you can’t … we should not be investing in other parts of the world, this is not saying we should not have open trade,” Biden said. “It just says we should have free and fair trade. I mean, literally, fair trade. And that means you get held to the same standard.”
As Breitbart News has chronicled , decades-long free trade deals, NAFTA, and China’s entering the WTO eliminated nearly five million manufacturing jobs across the country since 1994. Free trade advocates, like Biden, claimed at the time that NAFTA would create a million U.S. manufacturing jobs in the first five years.
Instead, nearly a million American jobs have been certified by the federal government as being lost directly due to NAFTA, according to data gathered by Public Citizen. These are only the U.S. jobs that the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program recognizes as being lost to free trade and does not indicate the actual number of jobs lost.
For example, free trade with Mexico, alone, has eliminated at least 700,000 American jobs, and states in the Rust Belt have been hit the hardest. Those states and the number of American workers impacted include:
14,500 American workers displaced in Wisconsin 43,600 American workers displaced in Michigan 2,600 American workers displaced in West Virginia 26,300 American workers displaced in Pennsylvania 34,900 American workers displaced in Ohio 34,300 American workers displaced in New York 6,500 American workers displaced in Iowa 24,400 American workers displaced in Indiana 34,700 American workers displaced in Illinois
Most famously, the state of West Virginia has been enormously crippled by free trade and multilateral trade deals like NAFTA. One former steel town in West Virginia lost 94 percent of its steel jobs because of NAFTA, with nearly 10,000 workers in the town being displaced from the steel industry.
“They talk about creating all these jobs,” an American worker told The Independent
This week, Biden defended his support, once again, of NAFTA, job-killing free trade negotiations, and his opposition to tariffs on cheap foreign imports.
“I’m proud of my record,” Biden told local media in Iowa.
Despite declaring himself a defender of American union workers, Biden’s first fundraiser for his 2020 presidential primary campaign was hosted by a slew of wealthy donors, including attorney Steve Cozen, whose law firm specializes in helping corporations bust up labor unions, as Breitbart News’s Matt Boyle reported .
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder .
WALL STREET, GLOBALIST, BILLIONAIRES and the OPEN BORDERS ADVOCATES FINISH OFF MIDDLE-AMERICA.
Ryan asked how much longer will the working-class not matter “because it’s becoming impossible for them to keep their nose above water.”
“Where’s the social compact that we used to have between corporations and their workers? Where’s the social contract between the government and our workers? ” asked Ryan. “I mean, it’s like the worker — there’s always an excuse that the worker is going to get hammered, that they’re going to lose their pensions, they’re going to lose their jobs, they’re going to have to move. Meanwhile, corporations, in this instance, General Motors got $157 million in tax cut just last year. I mean how much longer are we going to do this to where the worker doesn’t matter? And I hope this is a real wake-up call for us to say, workers, white, brown, black, gay, straight, working-class people have got to come together because it’s becoming impossible for them to keep their nose above water anymore.” REP. TIM RYAN
GENERAL MOTORS DUMPS THOUSANDS OF WORKERS AND CLOSES PLANTS - Stockholders celebrate!
"It identifies socialism with proposals for mild social reform such as “Medicare for all,” raised and increasingly abandoned by a section of the Democratic Party. It cites Milton Friedman and Margaret Thatcher to promote the virtues of “economic freedom,” i.e., the unrestrained operation of the capitalist market, and to denounce all social reforms, business regulations, tax increases or anything else that impinges on the oligarchy’s self-enrichment."
“The yearly income of a typical US household dropped by a massive 12 percent, or $6,400, in the six years between 2007 and 2013. This is just one of the findings of the 2013 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances released Thursday, which documentsa sharp decline in working class living standards and a further concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich and the super-rich.”
"The American phenomenon of record stock values fueling an ever greater concentration of wealth at the very top of society, while the economy is starved of productive investment, the social infrastructure crumbles, and working class living standards are driven down by entrenched unemployment, wage-cutting and government austerity policies, is part of a broader global process."
"A defining expression of this crisis is the dominance of financial speculation and parasitism, to the point where a narrow international financial aristocracy plunders society’s resources in order to further enrich itself."
Flashback–Biden Cozied Up to General Motors CEO Mary Barra: ‘GM is Alive!’
26 Apr 2019387
4:42
Following former President Obama’s billion-dollar American taxpayer bailout of multinational automaker General Motors (GM), then-Vice President Joe Biden (D) cozied up to CEO Mary Barra, who has since laid off thousands of American workers and outsourced their jobs to Mexico and China.
Throughout the 2012 presidential election cycle, Biden routinely claimed that “General Motors is alive” following the Obama administration’s $11 billion taxpayer bailout of the company in 2009.
Years after the bailout, Biden and officials with the Obama administration not only touted Barra’s leadership at GM but invited her to the State of the Union Address in 2014 and took photo-ops with the executive.
Today, Barra is overseeing the layoff of thousands of American workers as GM shifts and increases production in Mexico and China. Barra’s mass layoff effort is stopping production at four of its U.S. plants, including Detroit-Hamtramck and Warren Transmission in Michigan, Lordstown Assembly in Ohio, and Baltimore Operations in Maryland.
While GM was bailed out by U.S. taxpayers, the Obama-Biden scheme came with no commitments for the corporation to stop outsourcing Americans’ jobs overseas.
In 2011, Hoover Institution at Stanford University research fellow Paul Gregory noted that despite the Obama-Biden bailout for GM, the company continued outsourcing American jobs abroad. A 2011 report detailed GM had less than 75,000 jobs left in the U.S. while employing more than 122,000 foreign workers overseas. At the time, nearly two-thirds of GM’s workforce was located abroad.
Rather than stopping GM’s outsourcing, the Obama-Biden scheme focused much of their attention on subsidizing and promoting electric, plug-in cars like the Chevy Volt. Last year, Barra announced that production for the Volt, as well as the Chevy Cruze, would end.
General Motors CEO Mary Barra talks about the company’s Corvette Stingray with Vice President Joe Biden during a tour of the North American International Auto in Detroit, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2014. Biden said the U.S. auto industry’s resurgence since the 2009 federal bailout provides a strong basis for a Motor City recovery. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)
General Motors CEO Mary Barra talks with Vice President Joe Biden during a tour of the North American International Auto in Detroit, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2014. Biden said the U.S. auto industry’s resurgence since the 2009 federal bailout provides a strong basis for a Motor City recovery. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)
Last month, Barra closed the Lordstown plant, a decision expected to result in the layoff of more than 8,000 American workers in the area, and allegedly blamed the United Auto Workers (UAW) for the plant’s closure. Closing the Lordstown plant resulted in the immediate layoff of about 1,600 American workers and since 2017, GM has laid off about 4,500 American workers in Ohio. Another 900 American workers in supporting industries have been put of out work as well.
After all four plant closures, GM’s Barra is expected to have laid off 14,700 of its workers in the U.S. and Canada.
As Breitbart News has chronicled , American workers and UAW officials have debunked Barra’s claim that the union is at fault for the Lordstown plant closure. Details emerged this month revealing that the UAW accepted nearly $120 million a year in concessions to keep the Lordstown plant open. When workers and UAW officials heard of Barra’s announcement last year, they say they were stunned.
“We did everything they want,” longtime GM worker Sonja Smith told Bloomberg News
Simultaneously, UAW officials have voiced support for Trump in his effort to reopen the Lordstown plant and keep open GM’s other three plants slated for closure by Barra.
Experts have called on Trump to implement a 25 percent auto tariff to protect American auto worker jobs and the U.S. auto industry from Chinese domination. Likewise, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), vying for the Democrat nomination for president, has told Trump to immediately ban GM from receiving federal contracts for their outsourcing, offshoring, and mass layoff scheme.
While GM lays off thousands of American workers this year, its production in Mexico and China is ramping up. Specifically, GM is looking to manufacture an electric Cadillac in China and continue manufacturing its Envision compact vehicle in China.
The made-in-Mexico Chevrolet Blazer will soon arrive in U.S. markets. Last year, GM became the largest automaker in Mexico as it has cut jobs in America and increased production in Mexico.
Offshoring production to Mexico has proven cheaper for GM executives because American workers earn about $30 an hour while Mexican workers earn about $3 an hour, a 90 percent cut to wages that widens the corporation’s profit margins. Meanwhile, Barra continues to earn a salary of about $22 million.
Biden’s first fundraiser for his 2020 presidential primary campaign was hosted by a slew of wealthy donors, including attorney Steve Cozen whose law firm specializes in helping corporations bust up labor unions, as Breitbart News’ Matt Boyle reported .
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder .
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