Saturday, May 9, 2020

U.S. STATE AND MUNI GOVERNMENTS PLAN MASSIVE CUTS TO COVER COVID-19 AS TRUMP'S GOLDMAN SACHS INFESTED ADMIN HANDED TRILLIONS TO WALL STREET CRIMINALS


US state and municipal governments plan massive austerity to meet COVID-19 budget shortfalls


8 May 2020
As the US begins “reopening the economy,” sending millions to potentially be exposed to COVID-19, a variety of state and municipal governments are announcing cuts to medical programs and education and furlough workers to make up for major budget shortfalls. Most local governments have cited unexpected costs from the COVID-19 pandemic and loss of revenue from the lockdown as causes of their budget crises.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank focused on the impact of federal and state budget policies, most states will face budget shortfalls of roughly 10 percent for the current fiscal year that ends on June 30 for most states, and more than 25 percent for the 2021 fiscal year. Since they are required to balance the budget before the end of the fiscal year, some states will be arranging to cut billions of dollars within the next few weeks.
Maryland is projected to have a drop in revenue of as much as $2.8 billion while Arkansas is estimated to have $353 million less than expected. The think tank has also noted that next fiscal year Alaska and New Mexico could lose up to $815 million and $2 billion, respectively, because they rely heavily on oil-related industries, which have taken a major hit from the recent collapse in oil prices.
Most states and municipalities have agreed to overcome the budget shortfall either partially or completely through slashing social programs, instead of raising taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations. The result puts vital programs on the chopping block as unemployment reaches as high as 20 percent.
While specifics of the cuts for many states have not yet been determined, a handful of both Democratic and Republican governors have already released plans to cut hundreds of millions from Medicaid alone. Ohio Republican governor Mike DeWine has announced $210 million in Medicaid cuts and Colorado Democratic governor Jared Polis has announced $183 million in cuts to the program. Georgia Republican governor Brian Kemp has called on all state agencies to make a 14 percent reduction across the board.
New York Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo, who has been hailed in some liberal circles for his response to the COVID-19 pandemic, has expressed a willingness to make $10.1 billion in cuts from the mid-year budget. The new budget could cut 20 to 30 percent of Medicaid funding.
Medicaid—which provides health insurance to roughly 70 million low-income adults, children and disabled—is partially funded by the federal government, and frequently experiences high enrollment during recessions. In the fiscal year of 2019, Medicaid made up just short of 20 percent of state budgets.
On April 21, the National Governors Association (NGA) sent a letter to leading Democrats and Republicans in Congress and the Senate requesting that Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (FMAP) be doubled to 12 percent. FMAP, which helps provide federal funding for state-administered programs like Medicaid, had been temporarily increased to 6.2 percent as a result of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act. The letter notes that the 2009 Recovery Act raised FMAP to 12 percent and encourages the federal government to help expand unemployment insurance, education programs and help states acquire medical equipment and COVID-19 tests.
Other states have targeted education programs to make up for the budget shortfall. California, which has a budget deficit of $54.3 billion, could cut $18 billion from schools and community colleges. Tennessee has decided to cut a $48 million literacy initiative program and a $250 million trust fund deposit for mental health programs in schools. Raises for teachers and other state employees have been cut from four to two percent for next year.
New Jersey Democratic governor Phil Murphy has announced a freeze of $920 million in appropriated 2020 fiscal year spending. The freeze would also stop $45 million in state aid to municipalities.
In a separate statement, the NGA and six other organizations representing the state and local governments called on Congress to “immediately provide robust, flexible relief.” The statement notes that the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, better known as the CARES Act, did not provide a fund to offset budget shortfalls and does not provide relief for local governments with a population below 500,000.
The United States Conference of Mayors, which cosigned the statement, has noted that only 36 out of 19,000 cities, towns and villages have a population above 500,000. They have also noted that, “Nearly 100% of cities with populations above 50,000 will see a revenue decline this year.”
The conference recently requested $2 billion “to reimburse states and localities for uncompensated care.” For comparison, the CARES Act provided $454 billion for finance guaranteed loans to big corporations.
Municipalities of virtually every size have responded to the crisis with cuts and furloughs of workers:
  • Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is proposing a $370 million reduction with hiring freezes and layoffs of part-time and temporary employees.
  • Dayton, Ohio furloughed roughly a quarter of municipal employees, and announced that more furloughs are expected in the future.
  • Detroit, Michigan cut $348 million in a recently passed budget that primarily slashed the funding for parks and recreational activities.
  • Milwaukee, Wisconsin has announced plans to furlough 260 employees and cut hours for another 500.
  • Houston, Texas has announced the possibility of furloughing all employees, except those working for the police and fire departments, to overcome a $200 million budget deficit.
New York City Democratic mayor Bill de Blasio has announced the possibility of the city furloughing essential employees to help pay for the city’s budget deficit. While New York has remained one of the global epicenters of the COVID-19 pandemic, de Blasio announced on Wednesday that without a stimulus package from the federal government “all options are on the table” for addressing the deficit.
Last month Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called on state governments to declare bankruptcy instead of receiving a bailout from the federal government. If a state declared bankruptcy it would then allow the government to tear up pension agreements with retired workers.
The introduction of massive cuts to social programs with seemingly unlimited resources turned over to Wall Street speaks to the complete irrationality of capitalism. As millions of workers across America are impacted by COVID-19 and driven into unemployment, programs that provide healthcare, education, and jobs are being destroyed.


At the same time, the ruling class has utilized 
the pandemic to organize a transfer 
of trillions of dollars to the financial markets 
through the Federal Reserve. The total assets
on the balance sheet of the US central bank 
rose this week to more than $6.7 trillion, up 
from less than $4 trillion before the pandemic 
hit. Every day, the Fed is spending $80 billion 
to buy up assets from banks and 
corporations to fuel the market rise.

Depression USA

9 May 2020
Yesterday, the US Labor Department released its April unemployment report, revealing a level of joblessness that is without historical precedent. On the same day, the stock market rose sharply, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average finishing up more than 450 points, or nearly two percent. Wall Street continues not only to feast on death, as the toll from the coronavirus continues to grow, but to profit from the mass social misery that the pandemic has produced.
The Labor Department report recorded a drop of employment of 20.5 million people. Not only is this the largest monthly collapse in history, it exceeds the previous record more than 10 times over. The official unemployment rate increased from under 4 percent to 14.7 percent, far above anything seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
As bad as these numbers are, they significantly underestimate the scale of the social dislocation. The April report is based on estimates calculated during the middle of last month, so they do not take into account the millions of people who have lost their jobs over the last three weeks. Some 33.5 million have filed for unemployment claims since the beginning of state and federal lockdowns seven weeks ago.
According to the report, moreover, 6.4 million additional workers have left the labor force entirely and are not counted as unemployed, bringing the labor force participation rate to its lowest level since 1973. Another 11 million workers reported that they were working part time because they could not find full-time work, an increase of 7 million people since before the pandemic.
When all factors are taken into account, something in the area of one third of the work force is out of work.
Mass joblessness is impacting nearly every sector of the working class. Employment in the leisure and hospitality sector was the most extreme, falling by nearly 50 percent, or 7.7 million people. There were 2.1 million job losses in business and professional services, 2.1 million in retail, 1.3 million in manufacturing and 1 million in construction.
Stunningly, amidst an expanding pandemic, there were 1.4 million job cuts in health care. And under conditions of an enormous social crisis, there were 650,000 job cuts in the social assistance sector.
The report notes, moreover, that mass unemployment has impacted workers of all races and genders. The unemployment rate among adult men soared to 13.0 percent, adult women to 15.5 percent, and teenagers to 31.9 percent. The rate was 14.2 percent for whites, 16.7 percent for blacks, 14.5 percent for Asians and 18.9 percent for Hispanics.
While a large number of the job cuts are categorized as “temporary,” a growing proportion are permanent, as corporations begin to implement mass layoffs. Indeed, there were two million permanent job losses in April. This, taken by itself, would be the largest increase in unemployment in post-World War II American history.
Tens of millions of workers live paycheck to paycheck and rely on credit cards and other forms of debt to make up for the difference between their income and their expenses. Household debt rose by 1.1 percent in the quarter ending March 31, to $14.3 trillion, a new record. This does not take into account the piling on of debt by tens of millions of people as the economic crisis intensified in April and into May.
With no savings and no government assistance, workers are turning in record numbers to food banks, which are running out of basic goods. A report by the Hamilton Project earlier this week found that 41 percent of families with children under the age of 12 are experiencing food insecurity—that is, they are unable to afford enough to eat.
The ruling class has no policy to deal with the social catastrophe. On Friday, the Trump administration declared that the jobs that have been destroyed “will be back and they’ll be back soon.” He added that “we’re in no rush” to pass a bill that would provide some assistance. The administration’s top economic advisor, Larry Kudlow, said that talks over further “stimulus” measures are “in a lull right now.”
As for the Democrats, while mouthing phrases about additional aid, they are haggling over minor measures that they know will never be passed by Congress. Both parties display a combination of indifference, bewilderment and reaction in the face of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Their proposals in response to this crisis make the US in the era of Herbert Hoover appear almost philanthropic.
Mass social immiseration is, in fact, a deliberate policy, supported by the entire political establishment. It is aimed at creating conditions in which: 1) the ruling class can force a return to work even as the pandemic continues to spread throughout the United States; and 2) workers will be compelled to accept sharp reductions in wages and benefits and an increase in exploitation to pay for the massive handout to the super-rich.
To pressure workers to endanger their lives by returning to work, the majority of the population is being systematically starved of resources. Six weeks after the passage of the CARES Act—the massive boondoggle to the corporations adopted unanimously by the Democrats and the Republicans—the majority of Americans have not received their $1,200 “stimulus” check.
States are going bankrupt and beginning to implement brutal austerity measures. A report from the Economic Policy Institute earlier this month found that 50 percent more people are unemployed than have even been able to file for unemployment benefits—the result of overburdened application systems and onerous restrictions. Millions who have filed for benefits have not received anything.
The approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States are excluded from receiving any benefits. Millions of workers in the “gig economy,” while supposedly able to qualify for federal assistance, face impossible barriers to obtaining it. In the state of Illinois, for example, these workers will be able to start applying only on May 11, and they will not have any possibility of getting assistance for several weeks thereafter.
At the same time, the ruling class has utilized 
the pandemic to organize a transfer 
of trillions of dollars to the financial markets 
through the Federal Reserve. The total assets
on the balance sheet of the US central bank 
rose this week to more than $6.7 trillion, up 
from less than $4 trillion before the pandemic 
hit. Every day, the Fed is spending $80 billion 
to buy up assets from banks and 
corporations to fuel the market rise.
The enrichment of the oligarchy through rising share values is premised on mass impoverishment and an intensification of the exploitation of the working class. The profits and wealth of the corporate-financial elite have been saved at the expense of society.
Two agendas stand opposed to each other. One is the defense of the financial oligarchy, which means both an expansion of the pandemic, with all the horrific consequences this will bring, and a further immiseration of the population. The other agenda is that of the working class, which wants to fight the pandemic, save lives and defend the interests of the vast majority of the population.
The fight against the pandemic is not just a medical question. It is a political struggle to mobilize the working class against the Trump administration, the entire political establishment and the capitalist system it defends.

IN THE FACE OF THE AMERICAN DEPRESSION GEORGE W BUSH DECLARES U.S. MUST KEEP THE HORDES OF 'CHEAP' LABOR INVADING TO KEEP WAGES DEPESSED

At the same time, the ruling class has utilized 
the pandemic to organize a transfer 
of trillions of dollars to the financial markets 
through the Federal Reserve. The total assets
on the balance sheet of the US central bank 
rose this week to more than $6.7 trillion, up 
from less than $4 trillion before the pandemic 
hit. Every day, the Fed is spending $80 billion 
to buy up assets from banks and 
corporations to fuel the market rise.


As Breitbart News reported, Hawley detailed in the interview how Republicans like former President George H.W. Bush’s ‘New World Order’ agenda and Democrats have helped to create a corporatist economy that disproportionately benefits the nation’s richest executives and donor class.

Depression USA

9 May 2020
Yesterday, the US Labor Department released its April unemployment report, revealing a level of joblessness that is without historical precedent. On the same day, the stock market rose sharply, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average finishing up more than 450 points, or nearly two percent. Wall Street continues not only to feast on death, as the toll from the coronavirus continues to grow, but to profit from the mass social misery that the pandemic has produced.
The Labor Department report recorded a drop of employment of 20.5 million people. Not only is this the largest monthly collapse in history, it exceeds the previous record more than 10 times over. The official unemployment rate increased from under 4 percent to 14.7 percent, far above anything seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
As bad as these numbers are, they significantly underestimate the scale of the social dislocation. The April report is based on estimates calculated during the middle of last month, so they do not take into account the millions of people who have lost their jobs over the last three weeks. Some 33.5 million have filed for unemployment claims since the beginning of state and federal lockdowns seven weeks ago.
According to the report, moreover, 6.4 million additional workers have left the labor force entirely and are not counted as unemployed, bringing the labor force participation rate to its lowest level since 1973. Another 11 million workers reported that they were working part time because they could not find full-time work, an increase of 7 million people since before the pandemic.
When all factors are taken into account, something in the area of one third of the work force is out of work.
Mass joblessness is impacting nearly every sector of the working class. Employment in the leisure and hospitality sector was the most extreme, falling by nearly 50 percent, or 7.7 million people. There were 2.1 million job losses in business and professional services, 2.1 million in retail, 1.3 million in manufacturing and 1 million in construction.
Stunningly, amidst an expanding pandemic, there were 1.4 million job cuts in health care. And under conditions of an enormous social crisis, there were 650,000 job cuts in the social assistance sector.
The report notes, moreover, that mass unemployment has impacted workers of all races and genders. The unemployment rate among adult men soared to 13.0 percent, adult women to 15.5 percent, and teenagers to 31.9 percent. The rate was 14.2 percent for whites, 16.7 percent for blacks, 14.5 percent for Asians and 18.9 percent for Hispanics.
While a large number of the job cuts are categorized as “temporary,” a growing proportion are permanent, as corporations begin to implement mass layoffs. Indeed, there were two million permanent job losses in April. This, taken by itself, would be the largest increase in unemployment in post-World War II American history.
Tens of millions of workers live paycheck to paycheck and rely on credit cards and other forms of debt to make up for the difference between their income and their expenses. Household debt rose by 1.1 percent in the quarter ending March 31, to $14.3 trillion, a new record. This does not take into account the piling on of debt by tens of millions of people as the economic crisis intensified in April and into May.
With no savings and no government assistance, workers are turning in record numbers to food banks, which are running out of basic goods. A report by the Hamilton Project earlier this week found that 41 percent of families with children under the age of 12 are experiencing food insecurity—that is, they are unable to afford enough to eat.
The ruling class has no policy to deal with the social catastrophe. On Friday, the Trump administration declared that the jobs that have been destroyed “will be back and they’ll be back soon.” He added that “we’re in no rush” to pass a bill that would provide some assistance. The administration’s top economic advisor, Larry Kudlow, said that talks over further “stimulus” measures are “in a lull right now.”
As for the Democrats, while mouthing phrases about additional aid, they are haggling over minor measures that they know will never be passed by Congress. Both parties display a combination of indifference, bewilderment and reaction in the face of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Their proposals in response to this crisis make the US in the era of Herbert Hoover appear almost philanthropic.
Mass social immiseration is, in fact, a deliberate policy, supported by the entire political establishment. It is aimed at creating conditions in which: 1) the ruling class can force a return to work even as the pandemic continues to spread throughout the United States; and 2) workers will be compelled to accept sharp reductions in wages and benefits and an increase in exploitation to pay for the massive handout to the super-rich.
To pressure workers to endanger their lives by returning to work, the majority of the population is being systematically starved of resources. Six weeks after the passage of the CARES Act—the massive boondoggle to the corporations adopted unanimously by the Democrats and the Republicans—the majority of Americans have not received their $1,200 “stimulus” check.
States are going bankrupt and beginning to implement brutal austerity measures. A report from the Economic Policy Institute earlier this month found that 50 percent more people are unemployed than have even been able to file for unemployment benefits—the result of overburdened application systems and onerous restrictions. Millions who have filed for benefits have not received anything.
The approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States are excluded from receiving any benefits. Millions of workers in the “gig economy,” while supposedly able to qualify for federal assistance, face impossible barriers to obtaining it. In the state of Illinois, for example, these workers will be able to start applying only on May 11, and they will not have any possibility of getting assistance for several weeks thereafter.
At the same time, the ruling class has utilized 
the pandemic to organize a transfer 
of trillions of dollars to the financial markets 
through the Federal Reserve. The total assets
on the balance sheet of the US central bank 
rose this week to more than $6.7 trillion, up 
from less than $4 trillion before the pandemic 
hit. Every day, the Fed is spending $80 billion 
to buy up assets from banks and 
corporations to fuel the market rise.
The enrichment of the oligarchy through rising share values is premised on mass impoverishment and an intensification of the exploitation of the working class. The profits and wealth of the corporate-financial elite have been saved at the expense of society.
Two agendas stand opposed to each other. One is the defense of the financial oligarchy, which means both an expansion of the pandemic, with all the horrific consequences this will bring, and a further immiseration of the population. The other agenda is that of the working class, which wants to fight the pandemic, save lives and defend the interests of the vast majority of the population.
The fight against the pandemic is not just a medical question. It is a political struggle to mobilize the working class against the Trump administration, the entire political establishment and the capitalist system it defends.


THE BUSH CRIME FAMILY HAS BEEN ASSOCIATED WITH EVERY WAVE OF WALL STREET PLUNDER FOR THE LAST 50 YEARS.

THEY STARTED TWO WARS TO PROTECT THEIR SAUDIS PAYMASTERS (WHO DO YOU THINK FUNDED THE BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY?) AND HAVE SABOTAGED OUR BORDERS AND HOMELAND SECURITY FOR ENDLESS HORDES OF ‘CHEAP’ LABOR.

 

As Breitbart News reported, Hawley detailed in the interview how Republicans like former President George H.W. Bush’s ‘New World Order’ agenda and Democrats have helped to create a corporatist economy that disproportionately benefits the nation’s richest executives and donor class.

 

 

House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties   Audible Audiobook – Abridged

 

How did the Bushes, America's most powerful political family, become gradually seduced by and entangled with their Saudi counterparts?
Why did the Bush administration approve the secret airlift of 140 Saudis, including two dozen relatives of Osama bin Laden, just after September 11? Did one of the Saudi royals on the planes have any advance knowledge of the attacks?
What specifically chosen words did George W. Bush say on national television during the 2000 election campaign to trigger Muslim support? How did Saudi-funded Islamic groups propel Bush to victory in Florida, thus winning him the presidency?
The answers to these questions lie in a largely hidden relationship between the House of Bush and the House of Saud that began in the mid-1970s. An amazing weave of money, power, and influence, it takes place all over the globe and involves war, covert operations, and huge deals in oil and defense industries. But, most horrifyingly of all, the secret liasion between these two great families helped trigger the Age of Terror and give rise to the tragedy of 9-11.

Reviewed in the United States
Verified Purchase
This book will test you. When you wonder aloud why Congress doesn’t get anything done, foreign wars continue without reason and deficits are so high, most are unable to see the cause. Unger doesn’t explain it all but he explains the relationship between money and power better than any book I’ve read to date.

The storyline of the book takes you through how the rich Saudi ruling class and really a group of Texan oilmen bonded over business. When you read about the genesis of the relationship in the 70s during the first part of the book, it looked merely like the cozy insider-only type of stuff that is common in the fabric of corporate America and most human relationships.

But the nuance Unger uncovers with his hawk-like ability to pull minutiae from rivers of source material outlines a darker agenda. His fact finding mission lays bare a Saudi elite trying to nudge the levers of power in Washington. And with this insight, Unger explains the nearly invisible pattern in which money buys powers in America. Unger’s work uncovers so many conspicuous connections amongst so many smart, ambitious men that coincidence is ruled out as the cause. Complicity makes the case here as well as any outsider like Unger can.

But the circumstantial nature of this book cannot be completely swept away. Unger has grokked the nefarious nature of this relationship but is missing the proverbial smoking gun. There is no ipso facto ‘A funded B which lead to C relationship’ outlined in the book. The closest we get to this as a reader is when the Bin Laden family and other Saudi royals are ferried out of the country while the FAA has all airspace on lockdown, a fascinating story that makes the TSA’s security theatre we endure at every airport comically irksome.

Recommending this book is easy, but to whom I would make that recommendation is difficult. If you sometimes watch/read the news with an open mind and wonder, “How did we get to this place?”, then I’d put this book on your list. If you’re knowledge of the middle east and current events is low, try paying attention to that news first, watch for the patterns and then read this to learn the connections. Most importantly though, any citizen trying to understand the ways in which money buys power in the modern nation-state needs to read this book.

 

 

Josh Hawley: Abolish the World Trade Organization in Wake of Coronavirus

Samuel Corum/Getty Images

5 May 2020414
3:45
Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) says the World Trade Organization (WTO) should be abolished in the wake of the Chinese coronavirus.
In an op-ed for the New York Times, Hawley credits the WTO with helping to empower “China’s rise” while weakening American workers:

BLOG: BUSH'S VISION OF 'NEW WORLD ORDER' HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING BUT HIS CARLYLE GROUP/HALLIBURTON WAR MACHINE AND SAUDIS BIG OIL WHICH HIS FAMILY STARTED TWO WARS AGAINST THE IRAQIS TO ADVANCE.
But in the early 1990s, with America’s principal adversary gone, Western policymakers were in a messianic frame of mind. President George H.W. Bush promised a “new world order” of “open borders, open trade … and open minds,” a new international system based on liberal values to bring peace to the world. He and other internationalists wanted a new economic system to match. [Emphasis added]
Take the World Trade Organization. Its mandate was to promote free trade, but the organization instead allowed some nations to maintain trade barriers and protectionist workarounds, like China, while preventing others from defending themselves, like the United States. Foreign agriculture won concession after concession, while American farmers struggled to get fair access to markets.Meanwhile, the W.T.O. required American workers to compete against Chinese forced labor but did next to nothing to stop Chinese theft of American intellectual property and products. [Emphasis addd]
Under the W.T.O.’s auspices, capital and goods moved across borders easier than before, no doubt, but so did jobs. And too many jobs left America’s borders for elsewhere. As factories closed, workers suffered, from small towns to the urban core. Inflation-adjusted, working wages stagnated and upward mobility flatlined. [Emphasis added]
Enough is enough. The W.T.O. should be abolished, and along with it, the new model global economy. The quest to turn the world into a liberal order of democracies was always misguided. It always depended on unsustainable American sacrifice and force of arms. And its companion economic order has, in a similar vein, succeeded mostly in weakening American workers and industry. [Emphasis added]
The U.S., Hawley writes, ought to “seek new arrangements and new rules” to restore the nation’s economic sovereignty — which includes returning to the economic system before the WTO’s creation, where reciprocal trade “protected our national interests and the nation’s workers.” Hawley writes:
That means returning production to this country, securing our critical supply chains and encouraging domestic innovation and manufacturing. It means striking trade deals that are truly mutual and truly beneficial for America and walking away when they are not. It means building a new network of trusted friends and partners to resist Chinese economic imperialism.
Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was enacted and China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO), nearly five million American manufacturing jobs have been eliminated from the American economy — 3.4 million of which are due to U.S. free trade with China. The mass elimination of working- and middle-class jobs and depressed U.S. wages due to NAFTA and China’s entering the WTO have coincided with a more than 600 percent increase in trade deficits.
Of the 3.4 million American jobs lost due to free trade with China, about 2.6 million — or about three-fourths — were lost in the crippled manufacturing industry. U.S. trade deficits with China have eliminated American jobs in all 50 states.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

 

Bush Center Slams Trump: We Want More Migration

1 AP Photo/Seth Wenig
3 May 202022
7:11
The economics director at President George W. Bush’s advocacy center slammed President Donald Trump’s popular, pro-American immigration policy.
The May 1 slam came just before Bush posted a May 2 video urging national unity in the coronavirus crash that has pushed more than 25 million Americans out of jobs.
“The most important thing to remember in this is that we don’t want [Trump’s] temporary policy to become permanent immigration policy,” economic director Laura Collins said a video posted on the center’s Twitter account. She continued:
We know immigrants are good for the economy. We know they’re good for our culture. We know they’re in this fight with us together, and we’re going to meet them working with us side by side in any recovery after the pandemic is over.
Trump’s April 22 immigration policy says the economic needs of American employees are more important than the immigration preferences of foreigners. His policy temporarily trims the annual inflow of legal immigrants and directs agencies to review visa worker programs in 30 days.
Polls show the public — including recent immigrants — is overwhelmingly aligned with Trump in prioritizing jobs for Americans over welcomes for legal immigrants.
The visa worker programs targeted by Trump are extremely important to the Fortune 500. In response, the companies’ lobbyists and progressives allies have quickly launched a hard-nosed lobbying campaign and a soft-focus PR campaign to protect the programs and mass migration.
The Bush center has joined the #AllofUS campaign.


Immigrants and native-born Americans have always been on the same team driving American innovation and economic growth. It will take #AllOfUS, working together, to restore the United States. https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/diversity-inclusion/495352-jose-andres-naacp-and-others-launch-pro 

Jose Andres, NAACP and others launch pro-immigrant coronavirus



Congress now accepts 1 million legal immigrants per year.
It also allows companies to keep roughly 2 million cheap and complaint foreign visa-workers in U.S. jobs. The 2 million workforce includes roughly 1.5 million foreign white-collar visa workers, plus roughly 400,000 foreign blue-collar guest workers, in professional or seasonal jobs needed by roughly 26 million unemployed Americans.
Collins touted the corporate PR campaign, dubbed #AllofUs, in her video slamming Trump’s pro-employee policy.


.@LVTCollins explains how it will take #AllOfUs, immigrants and native-born Americans, to defeat COVID-19. And once our nation emerges from quarantine, it will take all of us working together to restart our economy.

“The stated objectives of this executive order were to preserve medical supplies in a pandemic for American immigrants already here and to preserve job openings in any recovery for American workers that can be first in line,” Collins said her video posted May 1.
She continued:
Unfortunately, this executive order is not going to accomplish either of those objectives.
First of all, the virus affects all of us equally. It doesn’t care who we are, or where we’re from. Current travel restrictions and quarantine protocols in place, protect us from viral spread regardless of where we’re from. And so there’s not really a need to prevent more people from coming in in terms of slowing down viral spread. We know the virus is here and it’s spreading. And what we’re doing is working.
However, Collins’ main focus is the economic worry that Trump’s reform may permanently reduce the unending inflow of foreign workers, consumers, and renters preferred by CEOs and investors. She said:
We know immigrants are good for the economy. We know immigrants don’t compete with native-born Americans for jobs. And we know that before the pandemic, there were millions of unfilled jobs in the United States.
If we assume that in any recovery, all those jobs come back, every American that wants a job will have the ability to fill the jobs that were there. We’re still going to have shortages and we’re going to need immigrants there to help fill those jobs.
We simply don’t have a labor force at full employment, big enough to fill all the jobs in the economy.
Immigrants — like the birth of Americans’ children — help grow the economy. They expand the labor force, boost retail sales, spike real estate values, fuel the stock market, and expand the number of companies. A growing economy can be good for all — but it is especially good for wealthy people who can invest in company stocks.
Yet every annual wave of immigrants also causes much economic harm to the roughly 220 million Americans (and recent legal immigrants) who work for a living, or who are educating themselves to take jobs in a few years.
Every new wave of legal immigrants and illegal migrants competes for existing jobs and force down Americans’ wages. The arrivals also expand poverty, reduce pressure on investors to buy productivity-boosting machines, drive up the price of good housing, and add congestion to K-12 schools and universities.
Immigrants, and especially visa workers, also push Americans out of careers and technological research, and they distort Americans’ politics by expanding cultural diversity and identity politics.
Over the last 30 years, since George Bush’s father signed a 1990 bill roughly doubling immigration, the government’s massive inflow of immigrants has kept Americans wages almost flat (until 2018) and so has turbocharged the U.S. stock market.
The establishment’s immigration policy has worked with free trade to shift much wealth from middle-class employees and the heartland states towards the stock market and the major coastal cities.
Trump was elected in 2016 to help reverse the establishment’s economic policy.
Since  2017, he has mostly stopped illegal migration, and he pushed wages up for blue-collars in 2018 and 2019. He has also trimmed legal immigration, and his April 22 policy sets the stage for incremental, significant reductions in the visa worker programs, such as the little-known B-1 and OPT visa programs.
Business lobbies strongly oppose reductions in immigration and visa workers.


Public opinion has shifted strongly against mass migration, so a bipartisan front of #AllofUScare billionaires is using

Christian & patriotic themes to help preserve their supply of wage-cutting workers & rent-raising consumers. https://bit.ly/2VUqCXo 

'All of Us Care' Billionaires Defend Migration Using Christianity, Patriotism



Collins’ pro-migration views reflect George W. Bush’s pro-business leaning and his 2001 push to allow U.S. employers to bypass Americans and instead hire any willing workers from anywhere on the globe. The 2001 Twin Towers attack stopped Bush’s “Any Willing Worker” plan.
Collins insisted, “We know immigrants don’t compete with native-born Americans for jobs.”
But the Center for Immigration Studies reported in August 2018:
If immigrants “do jobs that Americans won’t do”, we should be able to identify occupations in which the workers are nearly all foreign-born. However, among the 474 separate occupations defined by the Department of Commerce, we find only a handful of majority-immigrant occupations, and none completely dominated by immigrants (legal or illegal). Furthermore, in none of the 474 occupations do illegal immigrants constitute a majority of workers.
For example, companies provide the reward of green cards to roughly 50,000 foreign visa-workers each year after those foreign workers have taken technology jobs from Americans via the H-1B and other visa programs.


Business groups warn the Trump administration: 'Extend work permits for our foreign visa-workers or we'll have "hundreds and thousands" of open jobs for unemployed American voters.'#H1Bhttps://bit.ly/2YlijWd 

Fortune 500 to Agencies: Help Keep U.S. Jobs Filled with 200,000-plus Visa Workers



Follow Neil Munro on Twitter @NeilMunroDC, or email the author at NMunro@Breitbart.com.


Exclusive–Jeff Sessions: Why Bring Foreign Workers to U.S. When 30,000,000 Americans Are Jobless?


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4 May 20204,746
3:07
United States Senate candidate Jeff Sessions says there is no shortage of American labor, calling out lawmakers and their “corporate friends” for supporting a continued flow of foreign workers to the U.S. to take jobs in the midst of mass unemployment.
In an exclusive interview with Alexander Marlow on SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Daily, Sessions said it is critical that lawmakers defend the interests of unemployed Americans who have been laid off due to forced business closures spurred by the Chinese coronavirus crisis.
LISTEN:
“We have 30 million unemployed … We don’t have jobs in the United States,” Sessions said. “There are no jobs now. We’ll lay off more people this week then we did last week.”
“Why would we bring in foreign workers to take jobs when we don’t have jobs for the American people,” Sessions asked. “What theory is it that they’re operating under when they try to justify such a policy position? It’s certainly not in the interest of the American people. It’s in the interest of their corporate friends and some ideology that they adhere to … so I do think that it’s time for this Congress to deliver on its promises that the president made in the campaign.”
Sessions said more Republican lawmakers must be stepping up to the plate to take on China, holding the communist regime accountable for wrecking the U.S. economy. A select committee in the House and Senate, Sessions said, ought to be formed to determine the truth behind China’s role in spreading the coronavirus to the world.
“Where are the rest of the Republicans? Where are they? I mean this is a big issue,” Sessions said. “This party owes it to the American people to defend our interests — American interests. And I don’t think there’s been near enough action.”
“I would think the first thing we need to do is to rally the people who understand the significance of this and have what I call for, is a select committee to study this pandemic and how it started,” Sessions continued. “We did that after the attack on Pearl Harbor … where House and Senate appoint select members of congress … and the charge is what did China know and what did they do, when did they act on it or not, and did they lie about it? The world needs to know.”
As Breitbart has reported, existing U.S. legal immigration law greatly benefits China. Visa programs such as the EB-5 visa for wealthy foreign investors, the F-1 student visa, and J-1 visas allow about 180,000 Chinese nationals to enter the country every year in addition to the 60,000 to 70,000 Chinese nationals who secure green cards annually.
There are nearly 500,000 Chinese students in the U.S. in any given year — more than any other nation — taking seats in university classrooms and looking to eventually obtain Optional Practical Training (OPT) authorization to take entry-level jobs in white-collar professions.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.


Josh Hawley: GOP Must Defend Middle Class Americans Against ‘Concentrated Corporate Power,’ Tech Billionaires

JOHN BINDER

The Republican Party must defend America’s working and middle class against “concentrated corporate power” and the monopolization of entire sectors of the United States’ economy, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) says.

In an interview on The Realignment podcast, Hawley said that “long gone are the days where” American workers can depend on big business to look out for their needs and the needs of their communities.
Instead, Hawley explained that increasing “concentrated corporate power” of whole sectors of the American economy — specifically among Silicon Valley’s giant tech conglomerates — is at the expense of working and middle class Americans.
“One of the things Republicans need to recover today is a defense of an open, free-market, of a fair healthy competing market and the length between that and Democratic citizenship,” Hawley said, and continued:
At the end of the day, we are trying to support and sustain here a great democracy. We’re not trying to make a select group of people rich. They’ve already done that. The tech billionaires are already billionaires, they don’t need any more help from government. I’m not interested in trying to help them further. I’m interested in trying to help sustain the great middle of this country that makes our democracy run and that’s the most important challenge of this day.
“You have these businesses who for years now have said ‘Well, we’re based in the United States, but we’re not actually an American company, we’re a global company,'” Hawley said. “And you know, what has driven profits for some of our biggest multinational corporations? It’s been … moving jobs overseas where it’s cheaper … moving your profits out of this country so you don’t have to pay any taxes.”
“I think that we have here at the same time that our economy has become more concentrated, we have bigger and bigger corporations that control more and more of our key sectors, those same corporations see themselves as less and less American and frankly they are less committed to American workers and American communities,” Hawley continued. “That’s turned out to be a problem which is one of the reasons we need to restore good, healthy, robust competition in this country that’s going to push up wages, that’s going to bring jobs back to the middle parts of this country, and most importantly, to the middle and working class of this country.”
While multinational corporations monopolize industries, Hawley said the GOP must defend working and middle class Americans and that big business interests should not come before the needs of American communities:
A free market is one where you can enter it, where there are new ideas, and also by the way, where people can start a small family business, you shouldn’t have to be gigantic in order to succeed in this country. Most people don’t want to start a tech company. [Americans] maybe want to work in their family’s business, which may be some corner shop in a small town … they want to be able to make a living and then give that to their kids or give their kids an option to do that. [Emphasis added]
The problem with corporate concentration is that it tends to kill all of that. The worst thing about corporate concentration is that it inevitably believes to a partnership with big government. Big business and big government always get together, always. And that is exactly what has happened now with the tech sector, for instance, and arguably many other sectors where you have this alliance between big government and big business … whatever you call it, it’s a problem and it’s something we need to address. [Emphasis added]
Hawley blasted the free trade-at-all-costs doctrine that has dominated the Republican and Democrat Party establishments for decades, crediting the globalist economic model with hollowing “out entire industries, entire supply chains” and sending them to China, among other countries.
“The thing is in this country is that not only do we not make very much stuff anymore, we don’t even make the machines that make the stuff,” Hawley said. “The entire supply chain up and down has gone overseas, and a lot of it to China, and this is a result of policies over some decades now.”
As Breitbart News reported, Hawley detailed in the interview how Republicans like former President George H.W. Bush’s ‘New World Order’ agenda and Democrats have helped to create a corporatist economy that disproportionately benefits the nation’s richest executives and donor class.
The billionaire class, the top 0.01 percent of earners, has enjoyed more than 15 times as much wage growth as the bottom 90 percent since 1979. That economy has been reinforced with federal rules that largely benefits the wealthiest of wealthiest earners. A study released last month revealed that the richest Americans are, in fact, paying a lower tax rate than all other Americans.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder