Court Fines Trump $2 Million for Diverting Money From
Veterans Fundraiser to His Campaign
An honest businessman. Photo: Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images
Ajudge ordered
President Trump to pay $2 million to a group of charities on Thursday, ruling
that the president had broken the law by directing the proceeds from an event
advertised as benefiting veterans to his presidential campaign instead.
The lawsuit stems
from the wild days of the 2016 Republican primary. Because of a feud he maintained with Fox News at the time , Trump decided to skip a debate hosted by the network just before
the Iowa caucuses in January 2016, and hold his own, competing event instead —
a televised fundraiser for veterans. Shockingly enough, it turned out the event
wasn’t quite on
the level. Rather than having the foundation run the event and direct all
proceeds to the charities, as promised, Trump did something quite different. As
New York State Supreme Court Justice Saliann Scarpulla put it in her decision
on Thursday:
Mr. Trump’s fiduciary duty breaches included allowing his
campaign to orchestrate the Fundraiser, allowing his campaign, instead of the
Foundation, to direct distribution of the Funds, and using the Fundraiser and
distribution of the Funds to further Mr. Trump’s political campaign.
The lawsuit was
brought by New York State attorney general Barbara Underwood, who announced
last year that the Trump Organization would shut down amid her investigations into its well-documented chicanery.
Though Trump had said on Twitter that he would
fight the fundraiser case, his lawyers and the state have been in talks for
months to negotiate a settlement.
It’s a loss for
Trump, but $2 million is a minor blow in his universe — and the judge could
have been harsher. She decided not to impose any punitive damages on the
president, nor impose lifetime bans on him and his children from serving on the
boards of New York–based charities in the future, conditions the state had been
seeking. (Though she did put into place other restrictions involving his future
charitable endeavors.)
Company With Ties To Trump Receives Millions From Small
Business Loan Program
Jovita Carranza, head of the
Small Business Administration, addresses the press earlier this month at the
White House, as Vice President Pence and President Trump listen.
Alex
Brandon/AP
While many small businesses have found it difficult or
impossible to get one of the Small Business Administration's Paycheck
Protection Program loans, a company owned by a prominent Chicago family with
close ties to the Trump administration was able to get a $5.5 million loan
under the program, according to documents the company filed with the Securities
and Exchange Commission on Monday.
U.S. Ambassador to Belgium Ronald Gidwitz, who was appointed in
2018, was then-candidate Donald Trump's campaign finance chair for Illinois in
the 2016 presidential campaign. According to filings with the SEC, Gidwitz's
family owns the majority of Continental Materials Corp., which secured the 1%
interest loan.
Continental Materials makes heating and cooling equipment and
construction products. While it had more than $100 million in sales last year,
it qualified for the loan because it meets the Small Business Administration's
industry-specific "small business" size standards, according to
company chief financial officer Paul Ainsworth.
Still, the company's loan is much
larger than the typical PPP loan, according to a summary released by the Small
Business Administration last week. The average loan was just over $200,000, and
fewer than 1% of the loans under the program were greater than $5 million.
Ainsworth told NPR the money would be used to pay the company's
445 employees in the face of slowing demand for its products.
"We had planned to furlough people and we delayed those
plans," he said. "To the extent that we had to let people go, we're
hiring them back."
While the company may qualify as a small business under the PPP
program, there are many much smaller businesses that have been unsuccessful in
obtaining or even applying for the loans from their banks.
The business advocacy group NFIB
surveyed a random sample of the 300,000 businesses in its membership database
and found that only about 72 percent of businesses
that tried to apply for a PPP loan were able to successfully submit an application.
Continental Materials will be able to pay back the loan over two
years and may qualify for it to be forgiven.
When asked, Ainsworth said the loan is not related to any
political activities of company leaders, and he noted Ronald Gidwitz resigned
when he was appointed ambassador.
Gidwitz was confirmed to the ambassadorship by the Senate by
voice vote in June 2018. He announced his resignation from the company's board
a few days later in July, according to company SEC filings.
'Our
middle class is dying': Tucker Carlson blames 'advisers' in Trump orbit for
'tidal wave' of immigration
Fox News host Tucker
Carlson ripped some within President Trump's "orbit" for attempting
to place corporate interests ahead of American workers' welfare during the
coronavirus pandemic.
On his Tuesday night
show, Carlson critiqued Trump advisers, who he alleges crafted a temporary
suspension of immigration without addressing key concerns of the working class.
"The president is
worried about preserving American jobs," Carlson said.
"Unfortunately, and this seems to be the key, some in his orbit are not as
concerned. Their main worry is making donors happy. And if there's one thing
that donors love always, it's cheap employees. Yes, our middle class is dying
at a faster clip than ever before."
Carlson said the
suspension doesn't address the hundreds of thousands of temporary and guest
workers who vie with Americans for industrial and agricultural jobs.
The Fox News host
claimed the suspension was written by out-of-touch staff members who are
"more worried about what their friends think" of the immigration
measures instead of protecting the jobs of citizens.
Carlson noted the suspension
does not apply to a massive section of immigrants who fight with Americans for
working-class jobs.
"The new
moratorium on immigration will last for 60 days," Carlson said. "The
ban will apply only to individuals seeking permanent residency into this
country."
Carlson said Trump's
ban, which could be extended after the two-month period ends, does not apply to
hundreds of thousands of temporary and guest workers who vie with Americans for
industrial and agricultural jobs.
"The purpose of
this tidal wave of immigration has nothing to do with what advocates of
immigration claim immigration is for," added Carlson. "These visas do
not improve American society in any way. We have no moral obligation to give
them. There is no mention of guest workers on the Statue of Liberty."
“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
While many small businesses haven't been able
to get one of the federal government's Paycheck Protection Program loans, a
Chicago company with close ties to the White House has.
Continental Materials Corporation is majority owned by the family of Ronald
Gidwitz, who is now the U.S. ambassador to Belgium. During the 2016 election
campaign, Gidwitz was the Trump campaign's Illinois finance chair. The heating
and cooling company, which had sales of more than $100 million last year, got a $5.5 million loan at 1% interest . That’s much larger
than the typical PPP loan, which is usually just over $200,000.
Trump: New York AG
‘Deliberately Mischaracterizing’ $2 Million Settlement ‘For Political Purposes’
1 Comments November 8, 2019 Updated:
November 8, 2019
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President Donald Trump accused New York Attorney
General Letitia James of “deliberately mischaracterizing” the details of a $2
million settlement reached on Thursday.
New York Judge Saliann Scarpulla ruled that
Trump must pay $2 million as part of a
settlement he, the Trump Foundation, and James’s office reached in a lawsuit
alleging Trump misused his charitable foundation during the 2016 campaign.
Scarpulla said Trump let his campaign
hold a foundation fundraiser in January 2016 and used it “to further Mr.
Trump’s political campaign.”
The foundation received $2.8 million
from the fundraiser and the money “did ultimately reach their intended destinations,
i.e., charitable organizations supporting veterans,” Scarpulla ruled.
Instead of the entire $2.8 million
that James’s office pushed for, Scarpulla ordered Trump to pay $2 million. She
also declined a statutory penalty of $5.2 million that James’s office wanted
the president to pay.
James celebrated the ruling on
Wednesday.
“We’ve secured a court order forcing
President Trump to pay $2M in damages after admitting to illegally using the
Trump Foundation to help him intervene in the 2016 presidential election and
further his own political interests. No one is above the law,” she said in a
statement.
In another statement, she wrote, “The
court’s decision, together with the settlements we negotiated, are a major
victory in our efforts to protect charitable assets and hold accountable those
who would abuse charities for personal gain. My office will continue to fight
for accountability because no one is above the law—not a businessman, not a
candidate for office, and not even the President of the United States.”
Scarborough then launched into his own
conspiracy theory:
But I think we all will be absolutely
fascinated when we finally figure out what Vladimir Putin has on Donald Trump and why Donald Trump has surrendered the
Middle East, helped ISIS, helped Iran, helped Russia, helped Turkey, helped all
of our enemies and betrayed all of our allies. You know, a lot of people think that it’s – he
has compromising pictures or something happened in a hotel in Russia years ago.
No. It goes back to money. It’s always about money.
GET
THIS BOOK!
Bailout
of US corporations expands while workers see little relief
Two weeks after the passage of the $2.2 trillion coronavirus
pandemic corporate bailout bill, grotesquely misnamed the CARES Act, it is
clear that it was only the initial shot in the funneling of countless trillions
of dollars to the corporate-financial aristocracy that rules America.
While billions have already flowed to the corporations and
banks, the limited provisions of the act that were touted by both parties as a
boon to working people hit by the shutdown of much of the economy have yet to
kick in, and for millions they likely never will.
The act includes $454 billion as a Treasury backstop to
enable the Federal Reserve to provide some $4 trillion in cheap loans
to major corporations and banks, meaning the real scale of the
bailout—thus far—is more than $6 trillion.
The vast bulk of the money allocated goes to covering any losses
suffered by major corporations and fueling a new surge in the stock market.
That it has succeeded, at least for the present, in lifting the markets is seen
in more than 10 percent surge in the Dow over the past several trading days.
This has occurred in the midst of an ever-rising toll of death and suffering
from the pandemic and grim projections by bankers and economists of a
depression-level contraction in the economy and a catastrophic growth of
unemployment.
The expanding scale of the bailout and euphoria on the financial
markets, alongside the economic and social catastrophe facing the broad mass of
the population, demonstrates that the interests of the ruling class and those
of the working class are diametrically opposed. The response of the
ruling elite and its two political parties to the crisis has from the onset
been single-mindedly focused on defending the economic interests of
corporate-financial oligarchy, no matter the cost in human life.
In just the last several weeks, the Federal Reserve Board has
announced at least 12 major measures to rescue the financial markets and backstop
big business. These include:
· Two emergency interest rate cuts, bringing the benchmark lending
rate back down to near-zero
· A pledge to purchase at least $500 billion in Treasury
securities and $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities and to continue the
program for “as long as needed”
· Nearly unlimited sums in short-term loans to 25 large financial
institutions that control the market for repurchase agreements, or repos,
including $1.5 trillion in the days following the announcement
· Foreign exchange swap lines, the purchase of short-term loans to
US corporations in the commercial paper market, short-term loans to 24 large
financial institutions, and, for the first time ever, direct purchases of
corporate bonds and direct loans to corporations.
The Wall Street Journal quoted Jean Boivin, head of BlackRock Investment
Institute, as saying, “The amount of measures taken in a short amount of time
is surreal and unprecedented.”
“It’s kind of crazy how they’ve almost done as much in this week
as they did in several months in 2008,” JPMorgan’s chief US economist Michael
Feroli said last month. “Now they do have the advantage of just being able to
dust off [former Fed Chairman] Bernanke’s playbook.”
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell gave a blanket
guarantee of unlimited funds to corporate
America, telling the “Today” show this week,
“Where credit is not flowing, we have the
ability in this unique circumstance to step in
and provide those loans.”
Now both the Trump administration and the Democrats have
committed to provide an additional $250 billion to the so-called “Paycheck
Protection Program.” That is the Orwellian name given by the two parties to the
$350 billion program ostensibly established to provide government-backed loans
to small businesses, many of which face bankruptcy as a result of the shutdown
of much of the economy, and save the jobs of their workers over the next eight weeks . (That this is
farcically inadequate, even if implemented in full, in the midst of the
greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, is self-evident).
The program is designed to provide a windfall for the big banks,
which actually extend and administer the loans that are backed by the Small
Business Administration (SBA). This ensures that Wall Street receives billions
of dollars in fees and other charges.
On the eve of the official launching of the program last Friday,
the law was amended, under pressure from the banks, to double the interest rate
from 0.5 percent to 1.0 percent. Now the banks are demanding that the Fed buy
any loans they extend to small businesses so as to remove them from their
balance sheets. This will allow them to more freely engage in financial
speculation and parasitic activities such as stock buybacks.
Moreover, the great bulk of the money will go not to mom-and-pop
groceries, gas stations or eateries, but rather to large corporations that are
included in the program. Thus, for example, the program was amended to include
billion-dollar restaurant and hotel chains.
Small businesses desperate for cash are finding it difficult if
not impossible to actually find lenders who will provide the loans, even if
their applications are approved by the SBA. Banks, intent on maximizing
profits, are turning down applications right and left.
Citigroup is refusing to participate. Bank of America is not
accepting applications from companies that have borrowed from other banks.
Wells Fargo says it has already reached “capacity.”
Hundreds of thousands of businesses have applied under the
program, but to date only a handful have received any money.
Meanwhile, congressional Democrats are pressing the Trump
administration to expand the $50 billion bailout of the airlines included in
the CARES Act. This is, supposedly, another “jobs-saving” effort. Delta, for
its part, has already laid off thousands of its employees.
There are no real restrictions in the law on how the
corporations use the money they are given by the government. No one should
doubt that the airline carriers, which spent some $16 billion over the past
three years to purchase their own stock—in order to further enrich their top
executives and major investors by driving up the stock price—will use their
bailout money to do more of the same.
The Trump administration, for its part, is reportedly
considering such additional “stimulus” measures as a payroll tax cut—which
would starve Social Security of funding—a capital gains tax cut, 50-year
Treasury bonds and a waiver that would relieve businesses of liability for
employees who contract the coronavirus on the job.
Trump has moved to negate even the token congressional oversight
of the bailout program mandated in the law. On Monday, he named a White House
lawyer and Trump loyalist, Brian Miller, as inspector general of the Treasury
Department’s $350 billion small business (“Payroll Protection Program”), and on
Tuesday he removed Glenn Fine as head of the Pandemic Response Accountability
Committee, tasked with monitoring the entire $2.2 trillion program. Trump
replaced him with a “senior policy adviser” at US Customs and Border
Protection, Jason Abend.
Workers are finding that the promised relief from the bailout
law—which accounts for only a small fraction of the total cost of the
measure—is uncertain if not entirely illusory.
The New York Times reported Monday that many Americans will not receive the
promised relief check of $1,200, plus $500 for each child, until August or
September. As many as 10 million low-income, childless adults who are eligible
for the stimulus payment program may receive nothing because they have not
filed tax returns. Millions more, including undocumented workers, prisoners,
students and adult dependents are excluded.
As for the $250 billion expanded jobless benefit part of the law,
which is supposed to extend state benefits for 13 weeks and add $600 a week in
federal funds for up to four months, workers are finding it all but impossible
to apply. Multiple state unemployment websites have crashed under the crush of
millions of applicants, and scenes of hundreds of workers lining up, in the
midst of a pandemic lockdown, to apply in person are proliferating around the
country.
Trump
pardons ruling class criminals
President Donald Trump issued 11 pardons or commutations of
sentence on Tuesday, choosing to expunge the lawbreaking records of billionaire
financier Michael Milken, the one-time “junk bond king,” and billionaire real
estate magnate Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., former owner of the San Francisco 49ers
professional football team.
He also pardoned former New York Police Commissioner Bernard
Kerik, convicted of tax fraud and perjury, and commuted the 14-year jail term
of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, impeached and then convicted on
multiple corruption counts, including attempting to sell the Senate seat of
Barack Obama after Obama’s election to the presidency in 2008. Blagojevich, a
Democratic congressman before his election as governor, was released from
prison immediately on Trump’s orders, and declared himself a “Trumpocrat” in
the 2020 election.
Former Illinois Governer Rod Blagojevich arrives home in Chicago
on February 19, 2020, after his release from prison [Credit: AP Photo/Charles
Rex Arbogast]
Trump’s actions in relation to Milken and De Bartolo are a clear
demonstration of class justice, in which billionaires are effectively above the
law. As one news report noted, there are only 600 billionaires in the United
States, very few of them face trial and conviction, let alone jail time, and
Trump has now pardoned three of them, including last year’s clemency for media
mogul Conrad Black—author of a fawning pro-Trump volume—who served nearly two
years in prison for fraud and embezzlement.
Milken was one of the most important actors in the
financialization of the US economy, devising “junk bonds”—high-risk,
high-return corporate securities that became a spearhead in the employer
offensive against the working class throughout the 1980s and beyond. Hedge
funds and private equity firms used junk bonds to finance leveraged buyouts of
companies and proceed to loot pension funds, slash wages and benefits, and
squeeze every penny of profit out of what frequently became empty shells.
In the process, Milken himself amassed a huge fortune, including
a then unprecedented income of $550 million in 1987, while running a unit of
Drexel Burnham Lambert, a second-tier Wall Street firm that rocketed to
prominence in that decade. These operations were portrayed in such books
as Den of Thieves and
films like Wall Street , whose lead character, Gordon Gekko, was modeled after Milken’s
partner-in-crime Ivan Boesky .
After pleading guilty to 10 counts of financial fraud in 1990,
Milken served less than two years at a “Club Fed” luxury prison for the rich.
He paid fines and restitution of $600 million, which barely made a dent in his
multi-billion-dollar fortune. Trump’s pardon message paid tribute to Milken’s
endowment of various medical charities and cancer research and hailed him as
“one of America’s greatest financiers.”
De Bartolo was charged with paying a $400,000 bribe in $100
bills to Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards, a Democrat, in return for state
government approval of a riverboat gambling project in which he had invested.
Edwards went to prison, while De Bartolo served no time but had to transfer
ownership of the 49ers to his sister. His nephew now runs the franchise. The
National Football League inducted De Bartolo into its Hall of Fame despite the
criminal conviction.
Blagojevich and Kerik are lesser figures in terms of wealth, but
gained national prominence in capitalist politics. Blagojevich was recorded in
a wiretap soliciting bribes and campaign contributions from the Service
Employees union and various wealthy individuals interested in his selection of
a successor to Obama in the US Senate.
Kerik is a longtime crony of Rudy Giuliani, now Trump’s personal
lawyer and political fixer. He was the driver and bodyguard for Giuliani during
his campaign for mayor of New York City, and Giuliani eventually elevated him
to police commissioner, where he was widely rumored to be receiving bribes from
organized crime families.
Despite this atrocious reputation, Kerik was actually chosen by
President George W. Bush to head the Department of Homeland Security, but had
to withdraw after corruption allegations surfaced. In 2009 he pled guilty to
charges of tax fraud and lying to investigators and spent three-and-a-half
years in federal prison.
All four men had high-level sponsors lobbying Trump personally
for clemency, including billionaires Sheldon Adelson, Tom Barrack, Ron Burkle,
Nelson Peltz, Richard LeFrak and Rupert Murdoch for Milken, Giuliani and
convicted war criminal Eddie Gallagher for Kerik, and Trump son-in-law Jared
Kushner for Blagojevich. The De Bartolo empire is based in northeast Ohio,
giving Trump an electoral incentive for that pardon.
The remaining seven pardons and commutations include a
Republican political operative, David Safavian, convicted in the Jack Abramoff
corruption scandal, a Cuban-American businesswoman from south Florida convicted
in a massive Medicare fraud scheme, and two other corporate executives
convicted on fraud and tax charges (one a significant Trump campaign donor).
Trump also pardoned three minority women convicted of nonviolent
or white collar crimes, to serve as window dressing, but no minority men. As
one account of the pardons and commutations noted, Trump has pardoned only one
African American man in more than three years in office, and the beneficiary of
that pardon had been dead for 72 years when it was issued: the late boxer Jack
Johnson, whose conviction by an all-white jury took place more than a century
ago.
The timing of the pardon and commutation decisions was
significant from a number of standpoints. They had clearly been delayed until
after Trump himself was acquitted in the Senate trial on impeachment charges
brought by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, in order to
avoid giving his political enemies additional ammunition.
And they come as part of a broader political offensive launched
by Trump in the wake of impeachment, including firing or removing officials who
testified in the impeachment inquiry or opposed his actions in delaying US
military aid to Ukraine, the action that sparked his impeachment, and demanding
that charges be quashed against his own associates arising from the
investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
The pardons were issued only two days before Judge Amy Berman
Jackson is to impose a sentence on Roger Stone, a longtime Trump crony, for
lying to Congress and the FBI and witness intimidation in a case that stems
from the investigation by Mueller into alleged Russian interference in the 2016
US presidential election.
After federal prosecutors last week recommended a jail sentence
of seven to nine years for Stone, Attorney General William Barr intervened and
overturned the recommendation, proposing instead that the judge take a far more
lenient approach.
All four prosecutors resigned from the case in protest of Barr’s
action, and a petition calling for Barr’s resignation and opposing White House
interference in the handling of federal criminal cases has been signed by more
than 2,500 former federal prosecutors and other former officials of the
Department of Justice.
Trump has attacked Judge Jackson on twitter several times in the
past two weeks, leading the chief judge of the District of Columbia District
Court, Beryl Howell, to issue a statement declaring that “Public criticism or
pressure is not a factor” in judges’ rulings or sentencing decisions. The
Federal Judges Association, an informal lobby of more than 1,000 jurists,
scheduled an emergency meeting for Wednesday, although the meeting was called
off at the last minute without explanation.
Judge Jackson is to sentence Stone today, but she seemed to bow
to White House pressure by declaring in advance that she would not give effect
to any sentence until the motion by Stone’s attorneys for a new trial had been
adjudicated. In other words, Stone will not go to prison soon, if at all.
In the meantime, Trump’s pardons have sent a clear message that
he is prepared to dole out similar treatment to Stone, former campaign manager
Paul Manafort, retired Gen. Michael Flynn, and other Trump allies who have pled
guilty to crimes like fraud and perjury.
In response to media attacks and even a mild critical remark
from Attorney General Barr, who said Trump’s tweets were making his job more
difficult, Trump has renewed his declarations that he is “the chief law
enforcement officer of the country,” with unlimited power to intervene in the
criminal justice system as he pleases.
In the wake of the impeachment debacle for the Democrats, Trump
is asserting quasi-dictatorial powers, defying any effort to set limits on the
power of the executive branch.
Trump
Exempts Fortune 500’s Visa Workers from Immigration Curb
LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP/Getty
Images
21 Apr 2020 1,661
6:34
President
Donald Trump has exempted the Fortune 500’s international labor supply from his
order for a temporary immigration shutdown .
“This order will only apply to
individuals seeking a permanent residency,” Trump said in an April 21
press conference at the White House. He said:
It would be wrong and unjust for
Americans laid off by the virus
to be replaced with new immigrant labor flown in
from abroad. We must first take care of the American worker —
take care of the American worker. This pause will be in
effect for 60 days, after which the need
for any extension or modification will be evaluated by
myself and a group of people, based on economic
conditions at the time.
…
[It] will not apply to
those entering on a temporary basis. As we move forward, we’ll
examine what additional immigration-related measures should be
put in place to protect U.S. workers. We want to protect our U.S.
workers and I think as we move forward, we will become more
and more protective of them … The last thing we want to do is
take American workers’ jobs.
Thee white-collar reporters did not ask
Trump why he exempted the corporate visa workers from taking jobs away from
other white-collar Americans. One reporter, however, asked him if he is using
the coronavirus epidemic to fulfill a campaign promise to reduce legal
immigration.
“I want our citizens to get jobs — I don’t
want them to have competition,” Trump responded, adding that the policy
document is being drafted for signature, likely on Wednesday.
“The decision not to block guest worker
programs — for now — is a concession to the backlash from business groups who
assailed the White House on Tuesday,” reported a New York Times article.
“President Donald Trump’s new executive
order banning immigration to the United States will apply narrowly to those
seeking permanent immigration status, a senior administration official said on
Tuesday,” said a Reuters report. The
report added, “Other workers such as those on so-called H1-B visas would
be covered in a separate action, the official said.”
The rollback of the expected curbs on visa
programs will be a huge disappointment to the many American graduates who say
they have been pushed out of Fortune 500 jobs and careers by the alliance of
U.S. investors, managers, and foreign visa workers.
Many advocates for American graduates & workers cheered when Trump
announced his temporary immigration shutdown.
So Trump will come under increasing
pressure during the 2020 campaign to fulfill his 2016 promise to curb the H-1B
visa. That pressure will come from millions of swing-voting graduates who see
good jobs disappearing all around them — and see the major companies employing
roughly 1.5 million white-collar visa workers.
In fact, his promise of the 60-day review
is his invite to millions of swing-voting American graduates to rally against
the visa worker programs during the 2020 presidential election.
The college graduate protest will be spiked
by the continued economic turmoil and the routine inflow of foreign visa workers.
For example, Trump’s federal government is on track to allow U.S. companies to
import 85,000 new H-1B workers during the next several weeks.
Fortune 550 companies, smaller companies,
and universities keep a population of roughly 1.5 million visa workers in U.S.
jobs, and they also use those workers to transfer many additional jobs to
corporate allies in India and other countries.
The NYT article
did not include any detail about the draft directive, which may split the
difference between business demands and the public’s support for a shutdown of
immigration and of many visa worker programs.
But the article included comments from
advocates for the nation’s powerful and wealthy technology companies.
Business groups had exploded in anger on
Tuesday at the threat of losing their access to foreign labor .
…
“This is both a political act to demagogue
and distract from his awful handling of the Covid-19 crisis and lack of
testing,” said Todd Schulte, the president of FWD.us , a technology group that advocates for
immigration, “and it is also a policy effort by hardliners to use this crisis
to enact their awful, decades-old wish list to radically slash immigration.”
…
Jason Oxman, president of the Information
Technology Industry Council, a tech industry trade group, said in a statement
earlier on Tuesday that “the United States will not benefit from shutting down
legal immigration.”
The members of Oxman’s group include Accenture , Adobe, Apple, Facebook , Google, Microsoft , IBM , and PWC. Many of these Fortune 500
companies sideline American graduates to hire foreign visa workers via programs
such as the H-1B and Occupational Practical Training
program.
The ITI group also includes some of the
Indian-run outsourcing companies that import many visa workers from India. The
Indian-run companies include Cognizant and Tata Consultancy Services . Indian-run companies supply visa
workers to many banks, insurance companies, utilities, auto manufacturers, and
many other companies.
Oxman’s April 21 statement said :
Some of the most recognizable and dynamic
American technology companies were started by immigrants, and today’s
immigrants to the U.S. are valuable members of the U.S. technology
industry workforce … the United States will not benefit from shutting down
legal immigration. Tech workers – whether from the United States or another country
– are playing an essential role in America’s response to COVID-19. They will be
vital to the U.S. economic recovery and must remain part of the workforce. We
urge President Trump not to endanger the country’s economic recovery by closing
its economy to the rest of the world.
Trump's migration suspension will protect wages, esp. for
blacks & Latinos, says WH press secretary.
That might mean easy action against the abuse of B-1
visitor-not-worker visas.
DHS Allows Agricultural
Guestworkers to Stay Indefinitely
By Preston Huennekens
ImmigrationReform.com
Big Business Complains of Labor Shortage, High Wages While 22M
Americans Out of Work
19 Apr 2020 950
7:20
Big business and Big Agriculture is complaining
of labor shortages and high wages while the Chinese coronavirus crisis has
spurred mass unemployment with at least 22 million Americans out of work.
While
unemployment among Americans climbs to
record levels, with now at least 22 million out of work in the last four weeks,
employers who hire H-2A and H-2B foreign visa workers continue to complain that
the United States is facing a labor shortage and that wages are too high.
Executives
with the American Farm Bureau Federation, one of the leading cheap labor
lobbying organizations, are backing a
reported plan to federally lower wage rates for
imported H-2A foreign visa workers that are brought into the U.S. to work on
farms:
Paul
Schlegel, vice president of public affairs at the American Farm Bureau
Federation, said it’s important to address the [Adverse Effect Wage Rate] at
a time when labor-intensive produce farms have lost much of their markets due
to COVID-19. [Emphasis added]
“The closing
of restaurants, hotels and tourism is forcing farmers to plow under their
fields to cut their losses,” Schlegel said. “Asking farmers to pay
artificially high wages at a time when their own income has largely evaporated
due to the COVID-19 pandemic is not right.” [Emphasis added]
The plan
under consideration by the Agriculture Department would allow farmers to pay
H-2A foreign visa workers wages below existing rates. The wage reduction policy
would be coupled with the State Department’s fast-tracking of
H-2A foreign visa workers into the U.S.
American
Farm Bureau Federation executives praised the
Agriculture Department for issuing visa waivers to more readily fast-track H-2A
foreign visa workers, calling it “critically important.”
As federal
data shows , H-2A
foreign visa workers make up only about ten percent of the total U.S. crop farm
workforce and the program is already used by
farmers to pay imported foreign workers less than their American counterparts.
The H-2A
visa program has no numerical limit. Last year, U.S. farmers hired roughly
250,000 H-2A foreign visa workers.
Gaston
Marquevich, the CEO of Generation Farms — one of the largest crop growers of
carrots and sweet onions on the East Coast — told TheStreet.com that
his corporation has successfully imported foreign workers in the middle of the
crisis:
Yeah, I
think there is an issue, of course. There are many issues. One of the
issues is a labor shortage . So, we started to work a conversation a month
ago. So, but yeah, right in time when this COVID-19 came to us. So we normally
use, in between Florida and Georgia, we normally use 1,200 employees as labor.
So, we applied to the aid program. So normally, the program takes three
months, and the last two or three year was taking like six months because all
of this and then changes on the immigration policies , rules. [Emphasis
added]
So we’ve
been very, very stressed about getting all the employees in place to allow us
to pick up the crop from the ground. So we connect, a month ago, we contact the
USDA team, the team that works with the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, and they
basically have been very flexible, very cooperative with us, and they count on
the USCIS in California. So in California, they contact the U.S. embassy in
Monterey and finally we get 500 employees in Florida and 450 in
Georgia. So we don’t have the 1,200 that normally we use, but we are okay with
it the 950 right now . [Emphasis added]
On April
6, USA Today published the
grievances of a local California agriculture reporter who argued that farmers
are struggling “to find workers” despite mass unemployment:
A crippling
labor shortage has affected nearly every corner of California agriculture . Increased
competition for workers continues as wine grape growers lose labor to
commercial cannabis growers — who can offer higher wages, stable employment and
better working conditions because of how lucrative the crop is. [Emphasis
added]
These
complaints have also been echoed by the employers of H-2B foreign visa workers,
whereby more than 66,000 foreign nationals are imported every year to take
seasonal, nonagricultural jobs. The State Department, in the midst of the
coronavirus crisis, is allowing employers to fast-track these foreign workers
by waiving certain visa requirements.
Still, big
business has claimed they are struggling to hire folks to take jobs. In a
Bloomberg News report, an attorney for H-2B visa employers said that
while millions are out of work, his clients still need imported foreign labor:
The holding
pattern “shows the lack of understanding the government has of how the H-2B
program is essential to the economy,” said Jeff Joseph , an
attorney with Joseph & Hall in Aurora, Colo., who represents companies that
employ H-2B workers. Some industries are operating as usual “regardless of the
pandemic,” he said, and need workers going into the summer and fall. [Emphasis
added]
“Without
clear, transparent information from the government on how long this shutdown is
going to last, those people still need the workers,” he said, adding
that his clients that employ H-2B workers —including resorts, landscaping
companies, and outdoor-adventure operators—haven’t been laying off workers .
[Emphasis addd]
Less than a
month ago, Maryland seafood processors complained that
they needed more H-2B foreign visa workers even after Acting Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Chad Wolf promised businesses an additional
35,000 foreign workers to hire:
Jack Brooks,
co-owner of J.M. Clayton Seafood Co. in Cambridge , and
president of the Chesapeake Bay Seafood Industries Association, said he
expects a worker shortfall, despite the government’s action . [Emphasis
added]
Initially,
the Department of Homeland Security doled out 33,000 work visas, which are in
effect for six months beginning April 1. With the added 35,000 visas,
the total still falls well short of the 100,000 slots that U.S. employers
nationally had sought to fill . [Emphasis added]
While big
business and Big Agriculture ask for more foreign workers, a number of leading
conservative voices have asked President Trump’s administration to pause
immigration to the U.S. — a plan supported by
nearly 80 percent of Americans, according to the latest Ipsos poll.
Former
Sen. Jeff
Sessions and Laura Ingraham have
said the nation’s unemployment totals should be eased by
stopping increased labor market competition against unemployed Americans via
legal immigration.
Such a pause
to immigration would come after
four decades of the U.S. admitting 525,000 to 1.8 million legal immigrants
annually. The U.S., at current legal immigration levels, admits more
legal immigrants than any other country in the world and has done so for more
than two decades.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on
Twitter at @JxhnBinder .
US farm relief program hands billions to agribusiness while millions
lack food
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced
plans on Friday, April 17, for a farm relief program. Funded largely through
the CARES Act, the $19 billion package will be used to funnel funds to
corporate farms while providing little assistance for the vast majority of
small or working farmers.
Like other government programs to help farmers, most of this
money will end up in the hands of agribusiness. The majority of farmland is
owned by farms grossing over $500,000 in sales, a figure that demonstrates the
demise of the American family farm. In total, $16 billion will be handed
directly to farmers, of which $9.6 billion goes to the livestock industry. This
funding will be given largely as reimbursements for “losses” and will not be
contingent upon providing food to those in need.
The remaining $3 billion will be used to purchase $100 million
each of produce, meat and dairy that will be distributed to food banks,
nonprofits and community and faith organizations every month. This is a paltry
sum, amounting to just 27 cents a day for every food insecure person, a figure
that will only decline as America’s now 22 million unemployed seek assistance.
It will also provide funds to distribute 1,000,000 meals a week
to children in “a limited number of rural schools.” How this would actually be
done given the wide dispersion of such students, many of whom rode buses for an
hour or more to reach their schools, is unclear.
This bailout is intended to offset financial losses from the
collapse of distribution systems during the pandemic. While grocery stores are
having difficulty keeping their shelves stocked, much of the food in the
pipeline is packaged in bulk quantities for institutional buyers such as
restaurants and schools.
The closure of restaurants, schools and other institutional
buyers has resulted in farmers destroying millions of pounds of food as their
distribution chains are disrupted. This is not because there is no demand, but
because transitioning to retail packaging is too costly. It is cheaper to
destroy food than to repackage it and send it elsewhere.
This mass destruction of crops and dairy products comes at a
time when millions of Americans have lost their jobs and are now turning to
food banks to feed their families. Some food banks are reporting an increase in
demand as high as 300 percent. Lines of cars in
the thousands have been reported queuing up at food
banks across the country.
But even if all the available food was sent to food banks, they
lack the necessary resources and equipment to handle such an expansion in
supply. A study of food banks in San Diego County, California, found that in
2015 less than half of food banks had enough refrigerator space and only 54
percent had enough freezer space to service people in need. If food banks
around the country did not have enough storage space before the pandemic, there
is no reason to believe that they are prepared to handle a huge rise in demand
or supply.
Feeding America, one of the largest organizations representing
food banks, estimates that an additional $1.4 billion is needed to cover the
increasing operating costs of food banks, an insignificant amount compared to
the $2 trillion granted to bail out the banks and corporations.
Whether or not food banks and charities can handle a massive
influx is not issue for the capitalist class and the state that protects it.
They do not care whether people receive enough food, as long as the
agricultural industry remains profitable and the pretense of aid is maintained.
There is not even mention in the legislation of providing
agricultural and food processing workers with aid. Without proper protective
equipment, these workers are at great risk, and migrant workers in particular
are threatened with destitution without income support.
Farm laborers earn between $15,000 and $24,499 a year, according
to official figures, with a quarter living below the poverty line. Already
working and living in horrid conditions, these workers face privation during a
global health crisis. Suffering similarly horrendous conditions, meat packing workers
are kept on the job while the virus is allowed to tear through their plants. It
has already taken several lives and infect ed hundreds of workers. These
workers need aid far more than the capitalists who exploit them.
The ruling class has made it clear with this relief program that
it only cares about protecting profits at the expense of workers. Kenneth
Sullivan, CEO of the meatpacker Smithfield Foods, said, “We have to operate
these processing plants even when we have COVID. If we don’t, we sadly won’t
have food.”
This is a falsehood. Tens of millions of pounds of food are
being destroyed while the USDA estimates that 2.4 billion pounds of meat sits
in cold storage—enough to cease all meat packaging for several weeks until
protective measures are put in place.
An estimated 3.7 million gallons of milk are dumped every day,
enough to provide all 37 million food insecure people with two quarts a week.
There is plenty of food to last while measures are taken to protect workers,
both citizen and immigrant. The claim that workers must die to keep production
flowing is a nefarious lie.
What the working class needs is not a haphazard dumping of goods
into food banks and charities, but an adequate income so that all working
people can afford to buy food, and an adequate supply so that the food is
available to those who want it.
This should be combined with a coordinated effort to reorganize
food supply chains to meet social needs. The vast resources of the state and
private industry must be placed under the control of the working class, with a
coordinated and scientific plan for the safe harvesting and distribution of
agricultural goods.
The retooling of currently unused supply chains is a necessary
and far from impossible task. Restaurants, schools and hotels must have their
cold storage resources reconverted into temporary distribution centers for
those in need. One restaurant in Baltimore, Maryland, called La Cuchara, has
already repurposed its supply chain to create a makeshift grocery store. The
widespread capacity for converting existing resources is apparent.
But such changes must be made to feed the working class, not to
benefit the capitalists who would sacrifice millions of workers to the virus to
keep their profits flowing.
Analysis:
Less than 10 Percent of Immigration Affected by Trump Order
132
Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
22 Apr 2020 1,214
3:08
Less than ten percent of the total number of green cards
rewarded annually to foreign nationals will be affected by President Donald Trump’s
executive order temporarily pausing a sliver of legal immigration to the United
States.
On Wednesday, Trump signed an
executive order pausing employment-based
and extended family green card categories for 60 days. The order is much
narrower, according to Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, than originally intended.
Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) Director of
Research Matt O’Brien told Breitbart News in a statement that Trump’s order
will likely only slow about 5,000 to 80,000 green card applications — less than
ten percent of the roughly 1.2 million green cards that are given to foreign
nationals every year.
O’Brien said the at least 60-day delay for these green card
applicants may go unnoticed to many attempting to enter the U.S. as standard
visa processing has already been disrupted due to the Chinese coronavirus
crisis.
“There are a larger number of temporary visa applicants who
could be nominally affected by any moratorium,” O’Brien said. “However, since
air, land, and marine travel across U.S. borders is virtually shut down anyway,
it’s difficult to say whether these folks will even notice a temporary pause in
the processing of their visa applications.”
During a segment on Wednesday, Carlson said Trump’s original
draft of the executive order “would have suspended several guest worker
programs, the ones that prevent qualified Americans from getting jobs” but that
the draft was later gutted down to only include a small group of
employment-based and extended family green card applicants who are not yet in
the U.S.
“Every year, 180,000 new H-1B visas are awarded, and more than
200,000 are extended for a longer period. These are not for people picking
grapes or lettuce. These are for people making good wages in white-collar
jobs,” Carlson said. “Currently, there are about 470,000 active beneficiaries
of this program … suspending that program for a year would open up a massive
number of jobs at a time when we desperately need them because we have so many
unemployed more than ever.”
“The final version … does not restrict any foreign workers at
all,” Carlson said. All of them are free to keep coming here and taking
American jobs, including high-paying American jobs.”
Carlson said a number of officials with the White House,
Department of Labor, and the Council of Economic Advisors warned against
pausing foreign worker visa programs, concerned about the backlash from
multinational corporations like Apple.
“They argued that the unemployment benefits in the coronavirus
stimulus bill were so generous, that American citizens would refuse to go back
to work,” Carlson said. “So we have to bring in more foreigners. Welfare for
you. Real jobs for foreign nationals.”
John
Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder .