Jeff Bezos Adds a Fourth Unit at 212 Fifth Avenue for a Total of $96M
https://streeteasy.com/blog/jeff-bezos-buys-apartments-212-fifth-ave/
Jeff Bezos pays $200million to get his name put on the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum for at least 50 years - after going into space once
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10464543/Jeff-Bezos-pays-200million-Smithsonians-Air-Space-Museum.html
· Jeff Bezos paid $200 million to get this name put on the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum for at least 50 years
· The donation is the largest gift ever given to the Smithsonian
· The terms of agreement does not include a 'moral clause,' that would allow his name to be removed if he displayed behavior to tarnish the museum's reputation
· Bezos blasted off into space in July 2021 - a week after the gift was agreed to
· The majority of the money will go towards the Bezos Learning Center, a new science, technology, engineering and arts (STEAM) education center
Inside Jeff Bezos' $78 MillIon Dollar Hawaii Estate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kELjWUwqllc
Inside Jeff Bezos Mansions
Jeff Bezos' $400 Million Flying Fox Yacht
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRYEcushHjc
Inside Jeff Bezos' $21,000,000 Car Collection https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu-Vy9Q6U4A
Historic Steel Bridge to be Dismantled Because it’s too Small for Bezos Superyacht to Pass
34 Wikimedia Commons GraphyArchy / Getty Images
PETER CADDLE
4 Feb 2022 0
3:22
A historic steel bridge in the Netherlands is to be partly dismantled in order to allow Jeff Bezos’ new superyacht to pass.
The Koningshaven Bridge — more commonly known as De Hef — is to be partly dismantled in order to allow Jeff Bezos’ new superyacht to pass underneath.
Located in Rotterdam, the bridge was first constructed in the 1920s and was later renovated between 2014 and 2017, after which officials reportedly claimed it would never be taken apart ever after.
However, according to an AFP report, the top of the bridge will once again be disassembled in order to allow a newly constructed superyacht owned by multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos to pass.
“It’s the only route to the sea,” the AFP reports a spokesman for Rotterdam’s mayor as saying.
The spokesman also reportedly added that the Amazon co-founder would be footing the bill for the project.
While the move has angered many in the Netherlands, the mayor’s office emphasised the economic benefits of the project, which is due to last a number of weeks, and that the national monument will be reconstructed in its current form.
Many remain unhappy regarding the decision however, with over 2,000 people responding to an event on Facebook calling on Rotterdammers to throw rotten eggs at the yacht as it sails past the iconic bridge.
“Calling all Rotterdammers, take a box of (rotten) eggs with you and let’s throw them en masse at Jeff’s superyacht when it sails through the Hef in Rotterdam,” the event’s description reads.
“Rotterdam was built from the rubble by the people of Rotterdam, and we don’t just take that apart for the phallus symbol of a megalomaniac billionaire,” it continues. “Not without a fight!”
Bezos’ new 130ft tall superyacht — which is being constructed by yacht builder Oceanco — will be the largest of its kind in the world, and is rumoured to boast a “support yacht” with a helicopter pad, something the main yacht could not apparently have built-in due to it reportedly sporting large sails.
Reports also claim that the yacht — which is titled Project 721 — will be 127 meters long, and likely cost more than half a billion US Dollars.
However, as someone who has committed $10 Billion to a fund that aims to tackle climate change, the on-and-off world’s richest man has previously gained media attention over his yachting habit.
Before travelling to the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit on his $65 million private jet, Bezos reportedly spent time relaxing with Microsoft founder Bill Gates on their respective yachts, which were situated at the time off the Turkish coast.
After arriving in Scotland for the event, Bezos went on to make a speech at the conference discussing how seeing the Earth from space — the billionaire technically became an astronaut after blasting off earlier in the year — changed his perspective on the fragility of the world.
“Looking back at Earth from up there, the atmosphere seems so thin, the world so finite and so fragile,” the soon-to-be superyacht owner said, according to the BBC. “Now, in this critical year and what we all know is the decisive decade, we must all stand together to protect our world.”
Thousands of Rotterdam Residents Plan to Throw Rotten Eggs at Jeff Bezos’ Superyacht
Joe Raedle /Getty
LUCAS NOLAN
18 Feb 2022 0
2:07
Residents of the Dutch city of Rotterdam are so unhappy with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his $485 million superyacht that many are planning to launch rotten eggs at the billionaire’s boat.
Futurism reports that residents of the Dutch city of Rotterdam are taking issue with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ superyacht which is being constructed near the city. Almost 5,000 people have RSVP’d to an event on Facebook and more than 16,000 have marked themselves as “interested” in hurling rotten eggs at the newly finished boat.
Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos provides the keynote address at the Air Force Association’s Annual Air, Space & Cyber Conference in Oxen Hill, MD, on September 19, 2018. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP) (Photo credit should read JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)
The Facebook event states: “Calling all Rotterdammers, take a box of rotten eggs with you and let’s throw them en masse at Jeff’s superyacht when it sails through the Hef in Rotterdam.”
The anger towards Bezos appears to come from the billionaire’s demands that the historic Koningshavenbrug bridge in Rotterdam, also known as the Hef, be completely disassembled and reassembled so that his $485 million superyacht, which comes with its own “support yacht,” can be taken to sea. The mayor of the city recently told Agence France-Presse that the only possible route the boat could take was through the bridge.
Bezos offered to help pay for the disassembly of the 145-year-old bridge, according to Dutch broadcast Rijnmond. But, unsurprisingly, many residents do not want a historic landmark disassembled solely to move a billionaire’s boat.
Pablo Strörmann, a Rotterdam resident and organizer of the Facebook event, told the NL Times: “Normally, it’s the other way around. If your ship doesn’t fit under a bridge, you make it smaller — but when you happen to be the richest person on Earth, you just ask a municipality to dismantle a monument. That’s ridiculous.”
Read more at Futurism here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
AMERICA IS A NATION FOR THE RICH AND 'CHEAP' ILLEGAL LABOR THAT THE RICH DEMAND
25 Facts About The Explosive Growth Of Poverty In America That Will Blow Your Mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANm7FAKuCw0
The rest of the world sees America as the wealthiest nation on the entire planet. But when we take a closer look at the hardships our population is facing, we can rapidly realize that there's a tremendous amount of financial suffering in the United States, and that's getting dramatically worse with each passing year. Today, more money goes towards the pockets of the rich than ever before. Over the past few decades, we've been witnessing the greatest event of wealth transfer in the history of our nation without even realizing it. While billionaire CEOs like Mark Zuckenberg make over a million times more than the average American worker every year, many families out there, whose parents work themselves to the bone every single day, will still struggle to find what to eat and where to sleep with their children tonight. Extreme poverty continues to grow all across the country. According to an analysis released by the University of Chicago, at least 336,000 households with children live on less than two dollars a day. That’s a group known as the ultra-poor. Amid skyrocketing housing and rent prices, at least 600,000 Americans remain in a group known as the “unhoused”. “Right now, we are still trending in the wrong direction,” explained Anthony Love, interim executive director at the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness. “When the public is told that one particular policy is going to end homelessness, what they’re expecting is that they’re going to see fewer homeless people around,” added Stephen Eide, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. What they haven’t considered yet is that housing has to come first, Eide stressed. Meanwhile, the gap between the rich and the rest of the population is worsening. On average, the top 1% of earners make 20 times more than the bottom 90% every year. The wealth disparity grows the higher up the ladder we climb. Even the mid-level one-percenters can’t reach the gigantic amounts earned by the ultra-rich. These disparities, make us question whether the US is indeed a rich nation or a nation for the rich. The answer is up to interpretation, but you can have a clearer picture about this issue at the end of this video. Today, we gathered some staggering stats that expose that poverty in the United States is wildly out of control. Here are 25 Facts About The Explosive Growth Of Poverty In America That Will Blow Your Mind. For more info, find us on: https://www.epiceconomist.com/
Workers aren’t getting bailed out
like the billionaires”: Detroit workers
livid over surging gas prices
Jerry White
workers filling up their tanks at gas stations across the United States are getting angrier over the sharp rise in fuel prices, which has cut deeply into their paychecks. Many US workers in the US regularly travel 50 miles or more one way to get to work. Gas prices jumped 18.3 percent last month and are up 48 percent since March 2021.
According to the US Labor Department, inflation hit 8.5 percent in March, the highest since 1981. On Thursday, the Department reported that wholesale prices rose 11.2 percent in March, largely due to the surge in energy prices.
Workers’ wages have largely been stagnant for years, with annual raises limited to about two percent. Despite the complaints from big business about rapidly rising wages, real average hourly earnings fell 2.7 percent between March 2021 and March 2022. This has left workers scrambling to reduce spending, work even longer hours and take on more credit card debt.
At a Speedway gas station in the working class suburb of Warren, Michigan, just north of Detroit, workers spoke to World Socialist Web Site reporters as they were filling up their tanks. The instant and universal response to the question of what they thought about rising prices was: “It sucks.”
The reporters distributed copies of the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter and discussed the statement “ A working class program to fight inflation ” with workers. The statement calls for an immediate 40 percent increase in wages to offset declining real income over the last five years, a cost-of-living escalator to index wages to rising expenses, and measures to protect retiree benefits and halt price-gouging by the oil companies.
The gas station is just south of the Stellantis (formerly Fiat Chrysler) Warren Truck Assembly Plant where thousands of workers can hardly afford to travel to and from work. One worker said, “I’ve stopped filling my tank all the way up. I just put enough in to go from Point A to Point B. In the grocery stores people are just buying the necessities because food prices are up too.”
He said workers had risked their lives throughout the pandemic making profits for Stellantis and other corporations, and that several people had died from COVID-19 at his plant. Now they were trying to force older workers to take early retirement packages so they could be replaced with so-called “Supplemental” workers who are essentially low-paid at-will employees. “After making all those profits for them, they are trying to get rid of the older workers, the ‘dinosaurs,’ so they can bring in younger workers and treat them like crap.”
“This is the second time I’m filling up my gas tank this week,” Dane, a tile and stone worker, told the WSWS. “We’ll be lucky if it doesn’t go any higher because I can’t see prices coming down too soon. I’m from Mt. Clemens, I work in Bloomfield, and I pick up my kids from schools in Warren.” This is a round trip of at least 60 miles, he said. “It’s costing me $90 a week to pay for gas.
Dane
“Biden is saying it’s Putin’s fault, but this happened way before Ukraine. The president’s approval rating is in the toilet. It’s outrageous how much profits the oil companies are making. It’s the working class that is being hit the hardest. Prices are up, but our wages aren’t. These food and gas prices need to come back down.”
Pointing to the inequality in society, he said, “I build a lot of bathrooms in wealthy neighborhoods. I would never in my life be able to afford to have one of my own. I pay attention to what is happening in the world. People are revolting because of food and energy prices. I only wonder how long it’s going to take before that happens here.”
A young worker who stopped at the station said: “There should be a price ceiling and nothing above it should be allowed. Nowadays, young workers need more than one way to make money. They can’t rely on the basic jobs that the older generation could keep for 30 or 40 years. There used to be good-paying jobs, but those are few and far apart for my generation now.”
“It’s crazy; I’m paying just too much for gas,” Chris, a pipefitter, said. “It was already going up way before the war and Biden is just using that as an excuse. I brought my old car out because I get 25 miles per gallon with it, instead of 14 or 15 with my pickup truck. It’s making noise, but I’m keeping it on the road because I would have paid $90 to fill up my truck. Workers don’t get bailouts and tax write-offs, like Bezos and the other billionaires who don’t pay any taxes.”
Chris
“Wages don’t keep up with prices,” a factory worker who stopped at the gas station with her children said. “You have to work lots of overtime to meet expenses and that takes away time with your family. Now the plants are down because of the microchip shortage, so there are no extra funds.”
Bailey, who purchases secondhand and used items for resale, said he had made two trips to the gas station today alone for work, paying $40 each time. “Every time something goes on, they blame it on COVID or this or that. This is BS. The oil companies are making billions of dollars, they’re not hurting.
Bailey
“Now they’re saying they don’t have enough workers. Well, I mean they’re still making millions of dollars, so if you offer guys a hundred bucks an hour, I bet you’ll get workers. At gas stations like this, instead of working eight hours they’re working them eighteen hours, and they’re only giving them the same amount of pay.
“My friend’s dad works in Lima, Ohio at the tank plant. They’re building tanks left and right now. He hasn’t had a day off in like three years, outside of vacation time.” Expressing concern over the danger of a wider war with Russia, Bailey said, “We should stay out of Ukraine. It doesn’t have anything to do with us.”
“Food and gas prices are going up but we’re bringing home the same amount of money,” a young worker said. “Our wages should go up by the same amount as food and gas.”
A retired Chrysler worker said, “I get $4,000 a month for my pension, but everything is going up and up. Soon enough, I’ll have to get a job and go back to work. We have to fight this. It’s pitiful. The cost of living is going to be as high as California soon.”
Another Warren Truck worker added: “The gas prices are affecting me a lot. I drive 80 miles a day and it just cost me $73 to fill up my tank. It’s like we’re giving them a bigger piece of our paychecks just to come to work. People are starting to revolt all over the world because of food and energy prices and it’s time we do that here. But we need an army of workers to stand up.”
A 29-year veteran autoworker at the truck assembly plant added, “I travel 62 miles one-way to work and the gas prices are killing me. It’s costing me $40 a day to drive, when it used to be $18. I’m driving a truck and I can’t get a new car because there aren’t any. This is killing everybody—and I think that’s what they want to do.”
Asked what he thought about Biden’s effort to blame Putin for the price hikes, he said, “Russia has legitimate concerns. I don’t believe NATO left Putin any choice. I don’t believe anything that comes from the mainstream media.
“I’ve been working seven days a week for a whole year. My body is worn out and they just scheduled me for mandatory overtime on Easter Sunday. The UAW lets this go on. The union is nothing but a big bureaucracy. All they care about is the money they are paid for signing away our livelihoods. We need to get rid of it and build something new to replace it.”
Pointing to the real causes of runaway inflation, he added, “Both parties have been printing so much money to keep the stock market going and now the dollar’s not worth the paper they print it on. It makes no difference if you have the Republicans or Democrats in power. Both parties are making the working class pay.”
The decades-long suppression of wages, backed by the UAW and other unions, has been central to US government policy, particularly since the 2008 crash, to handing over trillions to prop up the stock markets and carry out a massive transfer of wealth from the working class to the super-rich.
But the labor shortage produced by the pandemic has led to a modest uptick in wages, still far outpaced by inflation, but leading to proposals by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates, even if it threatens to drive the economy into recession. This policy, whose purpose is to terrorize workers with the prospect of mass unemployment and beat back their demands for higher wages, has widespread support in ruling circles.
New York Times columnist and liberal economist Paul Krugman spelled this out earlier this week, writing: “Rising wages are a good thing, but right now they’re rising at an unsustainable pace: This excess wage growth probably won’t recede until the demand for workers falls back into line with the available supply, which probably—I hate to say this—means that we need to see unemployment tick up at least a bit.”
Just like workers in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Greece, Peru and many other countries, American workers are being driven into struggle by the ruling class attack on their living standards. Earlier this week, Newsweek warned in an article, titled, “America is heading for class warfare,” that “Nothing has revealed the class divide in the U.S. quite like runaway inflation and skyrocketing gas prices.” It continued, “As millions struggle to fill their tanks and pay their rent, sales of business jets to the rising ranks of billionaires have soared to new heights. ”
IRS Data: Democrat Billionaire Mike Bloomberg Pays Less than Half the Tax Rate Paid by Average American LOGAN CYRUS/AFP via Getty Images
JOHN BINDER
14 Apr 2022 0
3:26
Billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the failed Democrat
presidential primary candidate and former New York City
mayor, is paying less than half the federal income tax rate the
average American taxpayer pays, newly published Internal
Revenue Service (IRS) data reveals.
The revelation is part of a broad investigation by ProPublica that gives a glimpse into the tax loopholes that the richest 400 Americans utilize every year to dodge billions in federal income taxes that most Americans are required to pay.
“To make it into the top 400, each person on this list had to make an average of at least $110 million each year,” the investigation states. “A typical American making $40,000 would have to work for 2,750 years to make what the lowest-earning person in this group made in one.”
Bloomberg, ProPublica reports, “achieved one of the lowest tax rates in the top 400” richest Americans from 2013 to 2018 “partly by taking annual deductions of more than $1 billion, mostly through charitable contributions.”
During that time frame, Bloomberg paid an average federal income tax rate of just four percent — less than half the rate that the average American taxpayer, at 13.3 percent , pays every year. In fact, Bloomberg’s average rate is just 0.5 percent more than what the bottom 50 percent of income earners pay on average.
Chart via ProPublica
Bloomberg’s massive tax breaks are thanks to provisions signed into law by former Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump.
Bush’s provision came in 2003 when his administration expanded the low tax rate for long-term capital gains to also cover stock dividends. This, alone, ProPublica reports, helped save the richest 400 Americans, including billionaires Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and Sheldon Adelson, an average of $1.9 billion annually.
The Trump provision, slipped into the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act at the behest of Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), allows the owners of so-called “pass-through” companies to deduct up to 20 percent of their profits. As a result, the owner keeps an extra seven cents on every dollar of profits.
“Tax records show that in 2018, Bloomberg, whom Forbes ranks as the 20th wealthiest person in the world, got the largest known deduction from the new provision, slashing his tax bill by nearly $68 million,” ProPublica reports.
Bloomberg is not the only billionaire to get a tax boost from the provision. Treasury Department economists have found that 60 percent of the provision’s tax savings have gone to the top one percent of American income earners.
“That’s because even though there are many small pass-through businesses, most of the pass-through profits in the country flow to the wealthy owners of a limited group of large companies,” ProPublica reports.
As Breitbart News has chronicled for years , research has consistently shown that the wealthiest Americans today pay an overall lower tax rate than all other Americans. Meanwhile, American middle class wealth has dropped to a historic low .
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here .
Democrats: $625B Tax Cut for Wealthy Elite ‘Essential’ Ahead of Midterms
JOHN BINDER
Democrats say cutting hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes for mostly wealthy income-earners in coastal states is “essential” to getting reelected in this year’s midterm elections.
Leaked IRS data expose manipulation of US tax system by the ultra-wealthy Kevin Reed
The nonprofit news organization ProPublica published on Wednesday an analysis of the top 400 income earners in the US. The report reveals how much income tax the wealthy elite pay and illustrates how the US tax system is itself structured to benefit the personal wealth of a handful of individual billionaires and multimillionaires.
Based on a trove of leaked IRS data, the ProPublica report shows that it took an average of $110 million in income per year between 2013 and 2018 to enter the top 400 list. The data confirm what many already know—that the tax laws in America are structured to benefit the super-rich and that this set-up is a contributing factor in the overall growth of social inequality in the US.
Billionaires Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Elon Musk (All originals from Wikimedia Commons)
The report shows that the highest earning Americans do not pay the highest income tax. ProPublica notes, “On average, the rate of income tax that people pay does climb as incomes ascend into the top 1 percent, but when you get to the range of $2 million to $5 million, that trend stops. The group earning in this range, composed mostly of business owners and workers with extremely high salaries, paid an average income tax rate of 29 percent from 2013 to 2018. After that, average tax rates actually drop the further up in income you go.”
The analysis begins by pointing out that many billionaires “didn’t even come close” to making the top 400 list because they use write-offs to erase taxable income. “Other billionaires, like Warren Buffett, simply avoid income even as their wealth rises,” the report says.
Buffet’s average personal wealth was $70 billion across the six years of the ProPublica report— from 2013 to 2018–but his average income during that timeframe was just $27 million and he is not on the top income earners list.
The report also explains that billionaires often use the “Buy, Borrow, Die” method in which they “borrow against their wealth to avoid taxes, then their estates are able to skirt taxes after their deaths.”
While one aspect of the data published by ProPublica shows how the super-rich “work” the system to their significant advantage, the report also says “in the American system, there’s a huge difference between how we tax wages and how we tax investments. Income from financial assets is generally taxed at a lower rate.”
As in every country of the world, the extent of inequality in the US is difficult to comprehend due its sheer magnitude. The ProPublica report explains, for example, that it would take a typical American with an income of $40,000 per year “to work for 2,750 years to make what the lowest-earning person in this group made in one,” and the typical American “would have to work for 25,000 years to make $1 billion,” which was made on average by the top 11 individuals on the list.
Tech billionaires represent 10 of the top 15 income earners and most of their income came from selling stocks. Among the names on this list are Bill Gates (Microsoft, $2.85 billion), Larry Ellison (Oracle, $1.07 billion), Steve Balmer (Microsoft, $1.05 billion), Sergey Brin (Google, $1.04 billion), Larry Paige (Google, $990 million) and Jeff Bezos (Amazon, $832 million). These billionaires paid an average of 18 percent in taxes on their income over six years.
The largest group of super-wealthy income earners come from the hedge fund industry. Representing approximately one-fifth of the entire list (80 individuals), the income of the hedge fund managers comes directly from stock trades, options and the other financial instruments of their firms. While these individuals are less known to the public, the founder of Citadel, Kenneth Griffin, raked in an average of $1.68 billion per year from 2013 and 2018 and paid an effective 29.2 percent in taxes.
Founders of private equity firms were another group that ProPublica found stood out on the top 400 list. These individuals make their money by buying companies and reselling them at a profit. The top 10 income earners in this group paid an effective average tax rate of 20 percent between 2013 and 2018.
The greatest combination of highest incomes and lowest tax rates for the super-rich stemmed from those who made stock sales taxed at the lower rate that was established in 2013 during the Obama administration. The report says that since then, the “long-term capital gains rate has been 20 percent, about half the top rate on ordinary income (37 percent in 2018).”
Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates benefited from this arrangement because his average yearly income of $2.85 billion came from sales of his former company’s stock and, as the report notes, “every penny of Gates’ taxable income was eligible for the lower rate” and this was generally true for the other tech billionaires as well.
Others who also benefited from the lower dividend tax rate enacted by the Democratic Party were the Walton (Walmart) and DeVos (Amway) family heirs. The report says that “the 11 Walton descendants in the top 400 saved $371 million a year due to this tax change.”
One individual who came in for specific mention in the ProPublica report is billionaire and former mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg successfully achieved one of the lowest tax rates of anyone on the top 400 list. Bloomberg took annual income deductions of more than $1 billion, mostly through charitable contributions. The report says, “From 2013 to 2017, he also wrote off an average of $409 million each year from what he’d paid in state and local taxes.”
Although the Trump-era 2018 tax overhaul limited those deductions to $10,000, the bill introduced a new massive deduction that Bloomberg took advantage of. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was rushed through the legislative process and permitted so-called “pass through” profits to avoid taxation. For Bloomberg, this law enabled him to claim an income deduction of more the $183 million and reduce his taxes by nearly $68 million. On an average income of $2.05 billion, Bloomberg paid an effective tax rate of 4.1 percent, which is lower than the rate paid by an average American worker making $40,000 to $50,000 per year (5 percent).
While the owners and executives of tech monopolies, private equity and hedge fund businesses paid between 17 and 26 percent effective tax rates, the owners of manufacturing businesses paid on average 30 percent in taxes.
The publication of the income tax data by ProPublica comes amid a campaign for the Biden administration to push for a 20 percent minimum tax rate on all US households with net worth of $100 million or more. It is expected that this proposal will never make it to the floor of the US Senate given that Senator Joe Manchin (Democrat from West Virginia) has already said he will not support it and the entirety of congressional Republicans are opposed to it.
Certain elements within the ruling elite are concerned that the grotesque levels of social inequality—including the rigging of the tax system to nakedly benefit wealth accumulation by the ultra-rich—has primed the conditions for a social eruption in the US which threatens to overturn the entire capitalist order. A group called Patriotic Millionaires—a network of wealthy individuals who advocate raising taxes on their class—responded to the ProPublica report by saying that “it’s time to tax billionaires.”
ProPublica Reveals How Soros, Bezos, and Other Famous Billionaires Avoid Paying Taxes Democrats: $625B Tax Cut for Wealthy Elite ‘Essential’ Ahead of Midterms
JOHN BINDER
Democrats say cutting hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes for mostly wealthy income-earners in coastal states is “essential” to getting reelected in this year’s midterm elections.
In November, House Democrats passed President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better Act” which includes billions in tax breaks to the wealthiest residents of blue states. Specifically, the plan would give a tax cut to about 67 percent of the nation’s richest Americans — those earning more than $885,000 every year — costing taxpayers about $625 billion .
Under Biden’s plan, those in the top one percent would receive an average tax cut of more than $16,000 this year. The tax cuts for the wealthy would be a result of the plan’s increasing the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction cap.
Ahead of the midterm elections in November, House Democrats are warning their rich donors that they must get out and vote for them to secure the massive tax cut. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) called the tax cuts for the rich “essential” in an interview with Bloomberg News.
Chart via Bloomberg News
“We need to get that done. It’s not the only thing, but it’s a big thing,” Maloney said, who represents one of New York’s wealthiest areas — Westchester County. Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) called the tax cut “really important” for her constituency.
“If you want your state and local deductions back, you have to vote for Democrats. Republicans screwed you last time, and they’ll do it again,” Maloney said.
At the same time, a number of Democrats are blasting the effort, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME).
Sanders has said:
At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, the last thing we should be doing is giving more tax breaks to the very rich. Democrats campaigned and won on an agenda that demands that the very wealthy finally pay their fair share, not one that gives them more tax breaks.
Meanwhile, Democrats want to squeeze an extra $200 billion out of American taxpayers by mostly targeting working and middle class earners with more Internal Revenue Services (IRS) audits.
The plan ensures nearly 600,000 more working and middle class Americans earning $75,000 or less a year would be audited by the IRS. Of those new IRS audits, more than 313,000 would target the poorest of Americans who earn $25,000 or less a year.
In 2017, former President Trump had the SALT deduction capped at $10,000. Since then, Democrats have sought to deliver their wealthy, blue state donors with a massive tax cut by eliminating the cap altogether or greatly increasing it.
Biden, for instance, had sought to include tax cuts for his billionaire donors in a Chinese coronavirus relief package earlier this year. The plan was ultimately cut from the package. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), in May 2020, also tried to include the plan in a coronavirus relief package.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here .
US corporate profits, CEO pay surged in 2021 while inflation slashed real wages
Shannon Jones
The corporate assault on US workers’ living standards during the pandemic intensified in 2021. While inflation slashed living standards for most of the population, corporate profits surged to their highest levels in decades, rising 25 percent year over year to $2.81 trillion. The rise is even greater—37 percent—when taxes are factored in. This is the highest figure since records began in 1948.
Worker in an Amazon fulfilment centre (AP Photo/David McNew)
At the same time, according to a report by Compensation Advisory Partners, US CEO pay increased in 2021 by an average of 19 percent at the 50 companies surveyed, a record amount. Leading the field was Discovery CEO David Zaslav, who took in a staggering $246.6 million. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy received a pay package valued at $212.7 million, mostly from stock options.
Others cashing in included:
· Apple CEO Tim Cook, who took in $99 million last year
· Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, who received $178.6 million
· Chad Richison, CEO of Paycom Software, who was paid $211,131,206
· Lawrence Culp Jr., CEO of General Electric, who pocketed $73,192,032
· Mike Sievert, T-Mobile CEO, who received $54,914,015
· Leonard Schleifer, CEO of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, who took in $135,350,121.
Surging profits on Wall Street boosted the average employee bonus in the New York securities industry to a record $257,500 last year, according to state officials.
The statistics on corporate profits and executive pay expose the blatant profiteering by large corporations during the pandemic. Companies have been able to raise prices far beyond increases in production costs, vastly inflating profit margins.
According to a report by a watchdog group, the top 25 global oil companies reaped $237 billion in profits in 2021. Last year, oil giant ExxonMobil posted its largest profit in seven years, $23 billion, as increased oil prices added $100 billion to its sales revenues. Saudi Aramco, a major oil and gas company owned and managed by the Saudi royal family, reported $110 billion in profits last year, a 124 percent increase from 2020.
Logistics giant Amazon reported $33.4 billion in after-tax profits in 2021, up from $21.3 in 2020.
Despite COVID and chip shortages, US auto companies enjoyed a profit surge. Ford recorded $17.9 billion in after-tax profits, following a loss in 2020. GM reported $14.3 billion in 2021 earnings.
The official inflation rate was 6.7 percent last year. Inflation has accelerated in 2022, with prices rising 7.9 percent year over year in February 2022, eclipsing year-over-year wage gains of 5.1 in February and 5.6 percent percent in March.
According to Bloomberg Economics, the average American household will spend $5,200 more this year to buy the same goods and services it purchased last year. With prices on basic commodities set to rise even higher due to the war in Ukraine and US and NATO sanctions on Russia, a further assault on living standards is being prepared.
Even though real wages are declining in many sectors, Wall Street is expressing concern over the tight labor market, which has allowed workers to press for higher wages. The US jobs report for March, released Friday by the Labor Department, reported the addition of 431,000 jobs, the 11th straight month of job gains surpassing 400,000. The official unemployment rate fell to 3.6 percent in March, close to the 3.5 percent pre-pandemic rate, which was a 50-year record low.
In fact, the figure for new jobs was lower than predicted by economists, and far below the average of 600,000 over the past six months. More threatening to the ruling class are near-record highs of unfilled jobs and voluntary quits.
In remarks Friday morning after the release of the jobs report, President Biden hailed the increase in hiring, citing “Record job creation. Record unemployment declines. Record wage gains.” However, the reality is quite different for workers, whose paltry wage gains are being eaten up by rising prices for gasoline, electricity, food and other necessities.
The most significant job gains have been for workers in the retail sector and leisure and hospitality, such as hotels and restaurants. These sectors have historically paid poverty-level wages.
The resistance of workers to laboring for near-starvation wages in the midst of a deadly pandemic, and ongoing supply chain bottlenecks due to shortages of workers in key sectors such as trucking, potentially put workers in a strong position to fight for significant improvements in living standards.
In 2021, strikes took place in a number of key industries as workers sought to fight back against rising prices and the impact of decades of wage stagnation. These struggles for the most part took the form of rebellions against the trade union bureaucracies, which for decades have worked to impose brutal cuts in wages and the destruction of working conditions, in line with their transformation into corporatist appendages of the corporations and the capitalist state.
In a number of contract struggles last year, unions settled for pay raises well below the rate of inflation, including Volvo (average 2 percent annually over 6 years), Nabisco (2-2.5 percent annual raises), Kellogg’s (one-time 3 percent for “legacy” workers), and Dana Corporation (as low as 1 percent annually for top pay scales).
In each of these cases, the unions sabotaged the struggles of workers, keeping the strikes isolated and shutting them down at the point where they threatened to seriously impact corporate profits and inspire solidarity action by other workers both in the US and internationally. Workers were forced to vote without having time to adequately review the terms of the contract and were often denied the right to see the full contract language.
At Volvo and other workplaces, unions called strikes only after workers had voted multiple times by massive margins against sellout agreements brought back by union officials.
In one of the latest acts of treachery, the Steelworkers union blocked strike action by 30,000 US oil workers and rammed through a sellout deal with wage increases far below the rate of inflation, even as the oil giants continued to gouge the public with spiraling gas prices.
In recognition of the vital services of the unions in suppressing workers’ wage demands and squashing strikes, the Biden administration has made a central focus of its anti-working class policy the promotion of the trade unions, appointing a “Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment,” including national security cabinet officials. In a report issued in February, the task force made a series of recommendations to encourage unionization by government contractors, with the aim of “promoting stability” and “minimizing disruption”—that is, preventing strikes.
Fearing that low levels of unemployment will encourage workers to battle back against raging inflation by demanding significant wage increases, US financial authorities are taking measures to slow down the economy by increasing interest rates. Remarking on the fact that there are 1.8 job openings for every unemployed worker, US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said, “By many measures, the labor market is extremely tight, significantly tighter than the very strong job market just before the pandemic,” adding that it was tight to “an unhealthy level.”
After raising rates by 0.25 percent in March, the Federal Reserve is indicating support for a more substantial 0.5 percent rise in May. The central bank has already said it plans at least six more rate increases in 2022, the first increases in three years.
The last round of rate increases set off a precipitous fall in the stock market, inducing the Federal Reserve to rescind its rate hikes. Since then, the markets have become even more inflated as the US Treasury pumped trillions of dollars into Wall Street. The turn toward deflationary policies threatens to upset this financial house of cards in dramatic fashion.
Growing sections of workers are defying the pro-corporate unions, including oil refinery workers in Richmond, California, who have voted down two sellout contracts pushed by the United Steelworkers’ union and gone on strike to secure a substantial wage increase and an end to brutal overtime and unsafe working conditions. They are joined by 5,000 teachers on strike in Sacramento, California and tens of thousands of other workers with looming contract expirations. This is part of a growing movement of workers internationally fueled by inflation, inequality and the growing threat of world war.
Reports of the unrestrained profiteering by the financial elite will only further fuel workers’ anger over declining living standards and the criminal mismanagement by all sections of the political establishment of the pandemic. The impending war danger and the demands that workers finance another huge military buildup at the expense of wages and social services will heighten class tensions.
This social anger must be consciously directed against the capitalist system, its political parties, the Democrats and Republicans, as well as the pro-capitalist trade unions. The way forward requires the building of new, genuinely democratic organizations of struggle—rank-and-file committees in every factory, school and workplace—and a political movement of the working class, international in scope, to end the subordination of the productive forces to the profit drive of big business. The working class must assume direction of economic and social life based on a new, higher principle—production for human need, not profit—that is, socialism.
Biden Administration Prepares to Lift Title 42 Restrictions
Another Biden-made catastrophe in the offing.
Tue Apr 12, 2022
Joseph Klein
T he flood of illegal immigrants crossing over the southern border with Mexico into the United States is about to become a tsunami of illegal immigrants and a potential COVID-19 super spreader. That is because the Biden administration, buckling to pressure from leftwing pro-illegal immigration activists, has announced plans to lift the Title 42 entry restrictions that have been in effect since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky did President Joe Biden’s dirty work by issuing a Title 42 termination notice in which she wrote that “I find there is no longer a public health justification” for continuing to keep the Title 42 authorization order in effect.
Yet curiously there seems to be “a public health justification” for the Biden administration to request $22.5 billion in additional funding from Congress for “immediate needs to avoid disruption to ongoing COVID response efforts over the next few months.”
The Biden administration will be recklessly increasing those “immediate needs” by lifting Title 42 entry restrictions and allowing many thousands of potentially infected illegal immigrants into the United States.
The COVID-19 epidemic is not over, as government officials in Washington, D.C., including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have found out the hard way when they recently tested positive for the coronavirus.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki criticized opponents, which includes some Democrats, of increased spending for COVID-19 relief without also requiring that Title 42 continue to be applied.
“If we do not have treatments, vaccines, or tests that the American people need, Americans will die from COVID,” Psaki said during her April 7 th press briefing. If that is so, then why is the Biden administration willing to play Russian roulette with the lives of the American people by lifting the protections afforded by Title 42 while the COVID-19 pandemic rages on?
Title 42 was invoked to protect the health of the American people from illegal immigrant carriers of the coronavirus. It is still vitally needed.
Title 42 has allowed Border Patrol agents on public health grounds to immediately expel migrants who attempt to enter the country without giving them the opportunity first to claim asylum. More than a million migrants have been expelled under this program. The Biden administration continued invoking Title 42 authority, although it has trimmed back the number of expulsions since taking office. In less than a month and a half, Title 42 expulsions will be no more, unless a court puts the brakes on the Biden administration’s reckless termination decision.
Arizona, Louisiana and Missouri have sued the Biden administration to prevent the termination of the Title 42 authorization order. The lawsuit describes the use of Title 42 as “the only safety valve preventing this Administration’s disastrous border policies from devolving into an unmitigated chaos and catastrophe.” It expressed concern that the “unlawful termination of the Title 42 policy will induce a significant increase of illegal immigration into the United States with many migrants asserting non-meritorious asylum claims.”
Even with Title 42 in place, as many as 7000 illegal immigrants a day are now being apprehended by border officials, many of whom are processed and then released into communities across the United States. Once Title 42 authorization is terminated, the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has conceded that as many as 18,000 migrants could be apprehended daily after crossing the border illegally. And that startling number does not count the illegal immigrants who cross the border and manage to successfully elude apprehension.
“There are a significant number of individuals who were unable to access the asylum system for the past two years, and who may decide that now is the time to come,” said Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus.
No kidding! Word of the planned termination of Title 42 entry restrictions has spread widely among migrants seeking to enter the United States. There is already a huge backlog of so-called asylum seekers expelled under Title 42 who are waiting in Mexico to return to the United States when Title 42 is lifted. Many thousands more will be incentivized to make the trek to the U.S. from their home countries.
Human trafficking networks throughout Mexico, Central America, and elsewhere are no doubt gearing up for the huge anticipated uptick in business.
The Biden administration’s unconvincing answer is that the Department of Homeland Security will be ready to manage the increased surges of illegal immigrants resulting from the end of the use of Title 42 to restrict entry.
Border Patrol agents on the ground would beg to differ, given the administration's horrendous record so far. Some agents have already complained that the current numbers of illegal immigrants crossing the border every day are out of control. It defies any shred of common sense to believe that border agents will be able to cope with more than double the current number of daily arrivals when Title 42 entry restrictions go away.
“We’re already in a position where things are as bad as they have ever been,” said one Border Patrol agent. “To think they’re going to get worse, it’s hard to quantify that.”
The CDC has already declared that it plans to scale up a program to vaccinate the new arrivals against COVID-19. But what does this mean in practical terms?
Consider, as an example, the Pfizer vaccine, which must be taken in two doses about three weeks apart and reportedly costs $19.50 per dose. Assuming that 18,000 new illegal immigrants are apprehended each day after Title 42 is lifted, the cost to vaccinate that many individuals with just the initial dose will come to $351,000 daily, which translates to more than $128 million annually. In addition, there is the question of whether the illegal immigrants given their first dose upon apprehension will be detained until they receive their second dose three weeks later. Will they instead be released after they receive their first dose on a wing and a prayer that they will get their second dose on their own?
As for those migrants who refuse to take the vaccine, some of them may be temporarily detained while others who are immediately released will be strictly “monitored,” according to the Biden administration. Immediate expulsion will no longer be on the table for even the most strident illegal immigrant vaccine resisters!
How will the released illegal immigrants be monitored? They will receive free cell phones, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.
You cannot make this stuff up. Naïve does not begin to describe a policy that trusts released illegal immigrants to keep the cell phones on their persons at all times rather than dispose of the phones at their convenience to elude tracking. Meanwhile, the illegal immigrants will be getting free phones at the same time that American taxpayers who foot the bill will have to continue paying for their own phones.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has the right idea. He is getting buses ready to transport volunteer illegal immigrants released into border communities to Washington D.C. after Title 42 is lifted.
“Joe Biden has refused to come to the border to see the chaos that he has created by his open border policies,” Governor Abbott said. “So we are going to take the border to him by transporting the people that he is dropping off in these local communities in the state of Texas, and sending them to Washington by plane or by bus.”
Vice President Kamala Harris’s official 33-room residence on the grounds of the United States Naval Observatory should be one of the key Washington D.C. destinations for these illegal immigrants.
The Biden administration’s “Border Czar” has still not visited the southern border communities where the crisis precipitated by the Biden administration’s open border policies is getting worse by the day. Her short visit to El Paso, many miles away from where the crisis is taking place, was nothing more than a photo op. The photo op did nothing to educate the “Border Czar” about the “root causes” for masses of men, women, and children to take dangerous voyages from their home countries to cross into the United States illegally.
The answer should already be clear from past interviews with migrants from Central and South America. Many migrants are seeking a better life in the United States and have counted on President Biden to welcome them into the country despite their illegal entry. More migrants will be anxious to come to the United States with the Biden administration’s lifting of Title 42. The crisis at the hardest hit border communities will spin even further out of control.
If Vice President Harris still decides that it is not worth her time to visit these besieged communities, then the illegal immigrants boarding the D.C.-bound buses from those communities need to visit her and bring truth to power. Harris’s visitors can explain to her in person their real “root causes” for leaving their home countries and making the long dangerous trek to the United States.
Starbucks CEO Tells Pro-Union Employees to ‘Go Somewhere Else’ AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
JORDAN DIXON-HAMILTON
11 Apr 2022 0
2:25
Starbucks interim CEO Howard Schultz reportedly told pro-union Starbucks workers to “go somewhere else” during Schultz’s stop at a California store on Friday.
Madison Hall, a 25-year-old barista leading efforts to unionize a Long Beach Starbucks store, claimed this happened during a meeting with Schultz and 20 other employees regarding the store’s unionization efforts.
“If you hate Starbucks so much, why don’t you go somewhere else?” Hall said Schultz told her.
A spokesperson for Starbucks told the pro-union news website More Perfect Union that the “focus of the meeting was about ways we can improve the partner experience and the various ways we can co-create the future of Starbucks together.”
Schultz, who recently rejoined Starbucks as CEO, held similar meetings in Seattle and Chicago last week.
Starbucks Executive Chairman Howard Schultz speaks at the Starbucks Annual Meeting of Shareholders at McCaw Hall in Seattle, Washington, on March 21, 2018. (JASON REDMOND/AFP via Getty Images)
Schultz reportedly cut off Hall after she called attention to the various federal complaints the National Labor Relations Board brought against the company.
“Then he went into a long rant about the history of Starbucks and how he used to be poor,” Hall said.
“I said, ‘You say you’re not anti-union, but on July 1, 2021, [Starbucks was] found guilty of retaliation in Philadelphia,’” Hall claimed. “That was when he got super-defensive and cut me off, saying, ‘We’re not talking about this.’”
“It was very, very bad. He was getting very aggressive with me,” Hall claimed . “And then he went on another rant, and he told everyone else that he’s sorry that this was brought up, that this isn’t what [the event] was about, and he had his hand pointed towards me like I was a problem.”
In a statement, Schultz highlighted the company’s “missteps” and said the “collaborative sessions” with Starbucks employees “have not been without efforts at disruption by union organizers.”
Schultz told the New York Post :
With significant pressures leading to the fracturing of our partner and customer experiences, I’ve been transparent about our missteps and the reason for my return – to reimagine Starbucks – built on our core values and guiding principles.
“I have complete confidence that together we will restore the trust and belief of our partners and deliver an elevated Starbucks Experience to our partners and customers,” Schultz added.
Sen. Bernie Sanders: ‘Now Is The Time For Radical Action on Behalf of the Working Class’ By CNSNews.com Staff | April 11, 2022 | 5:40pm EDT
(Photo by Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(CNSNews.com) - Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020 who now chairs the Senate Budget Committee, sent out a tweet on Friday declaring that the time has come “for radical action on behalf of the working class.”
“For decades, the billionaire class and corporations have harnessed their power to enact a radical redistribution of wealth from the bottom 99% to the top 1%,” Sanders said in his tweet.
“I think now is the time for radical action on behalf of the working class in this country,” said Sanders
Pinkerton: David vs. Goliath – Five Takeaways from the Amazon Workers’ Victory Over Union-Busting Billionaire Bezos 11,421 ANDREA RENAULT/Getty
JAMES P. PINKERTON
9 Apr 2022 0
16:39
On April 1, 2022, Amazon workers in Staten Island, New York, made history. Despite all the union-busting odds stacked against them, they voted to unionize — thus creating the e-commerce giant’s first union in the United States.
For its part, the Biden administration seems to have been cautiously supportive of the Amazon unionization effort. And that’s actually a new development because, while the Democratic Party has historically been the party of organized labor, the previous two Democratic presidents were rather anti -labor.
Yes, from a rhetorical point of view, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama claimed to be friends of unionism, but in terms of actual policy — from Clinton’s support of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the opening to China to Obama’s support for Big Tech gig-work platforms—they were foes . As a result, during those two Democratic presidencies, private-sector union membership continued its long decline .
Yet it is possible that some Democrats are changing their minds again. Joe Biden’s appointees to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB, the body that oversees union elections) have been notably determined in their support of unionization, and that helped the Amazon vote and will surely help on future union votes .
Union organizer Christian Smalls (left) celebrates with Amazon workers following the April 1, 2022, vote for the unionization of the Amazon Staten Island warehouse in New York. (ANDREA RENAULT/AFP via Getty Images)
And Biden himself likes to talk the talk on being pro-union. On April 6, speaking before the North American Building Trades Unions in Washington, D.C., the president stated his labor credentials and added, “By the way, Amazon, here we come.” To listen to the roar of the crowd is to be reminded that the labor movement was once a true movement and could be again.
The AFL-CIO exultantly highlighted Biden’s comments, and the Washington Post added the headline , “President Biden appears to back broadening union push at Amazon.”
The Post ’s coverage is especially interesting to watch because the newspaper is, of course, owned by Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon. Bezos’ e-commerce colossus retains a fervently anti-union stance (with the help of, interestingly enough, many Democrats ). For its part, the Post is substantially unionized, and the author of the article cheekily described the Staten Island victory over Amazon management as “stunning.”
Yet it is also possible that Biden’s pro-union comment was just another one of his random ad libs. You know, like his past throwaways about Corn Pop , or dog-faced pony soldiers , or regime change in Russia .
President Joe Biden speaks at the North America’s Building Trades Unions Legislative Conference in Washington, DC, on April 6, 2022. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Indeed, within hours of Biden’s mention of Amazon, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was — you guessed it! — walking it back . “What he was not doing is sending a message that he or the U.S. government would be,” she insisted , “directly involved in any of these efforts.”
Did we mention that Amazon has many powerful lobbyists and influencers on its payroll, including Jay Carney , who a decade ago was Vice President Biden’s communications director? Indeed, the Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon plans to appeal the pro-union result — and Amazon can afford to hire the best lawyers, as well as Grade-A lobbyists and schmoozers.
So what’s coming next? The most epic unionization push since the 1930s? Or, the labor-union version of Biden’s doomed Build Back Better? The answer is as clear as the thoughts in the 46th president’s head.
Yet, still, union activism is on the rise, and so, as we wait to see what comes next out of the president’s mouth, here are five things to watch:
1. By historical standards, American wages have been low, and profits have been high—and so a recalibration is likely.
According to the St. Louis Federal Reserve, the share of the gross domestic product (GDP) absorbed by compensation to labor has fallen in the past half-century, from a high of almost 65 percent in 1970 to less than 60 percent today. (Labor’s percentage hit its rock bottom during the Obama years.)
A fall of five percentage points (from 65 to 60) might not seem that much, but measured against a GDP of $21 trillion, that’s about a trillion dollars. To put that another way, a trillion dollars went from the paychecks of workers to, well, a lot of places, including corporate profits. In fact, according to the same St. Louis Fed, corporate profits have been hitting record highs — up about a trillion dollars in the last decade.
One needn’t be any kind of redistributionist or socialist to see that something is out of kilter here — and things that are out of kilter often adjust back to their more familiar norm. And as for the role that unions play in capturing higher wages, it’s not a complicated point: Employees in labor unions have greater bargaining power relative to their employers, and so they typically get paid more and get treated better.
It is a simple fact, according to 2020 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that unionized workers were paid about 19 percent more than non-unionized workers. (Although a key to the success of unions as bargainers are America First trade and immigration policies, so that the company can’t be flooded with cheap imports or cheap workers, and/or can’t simply pack up and move overseas.)
2. Americans love a David-and-Goliath story.
Reacting to the mismatch between giant Amazon and the upstart Amazon Labor Union (ALU), John Logan , a professor of labor studies at San Francisco State University, exclaimed , “This is an astounding result.” He added, “With ALU, it also does seem to turn all of the conventional organizing wisdom on its head. They did it without a huge union or experienced organizers.”
Christian Smalls, aged 33, the driving force behind the Amazon Labor Union, is the the latest Young Man with a Sling. And Amazon is … well, you be the judge.
Union organizer Christian Smalls (left) holds up the results of the Amazon workers unionization vote in Staten Island, New York, on April 1, 2022. (ANDREA RENAULT/AFP via Getty Images)
According to the New York Times , in response to Smalls’ initial organizing effort two years ago:
Amazon formed a reaction team involving 10 departments, including its Global Intelligence Program, a security group staffed by many military veterans. The company named an “incident commander” and relied on a “Protest Response Playbook” and “Labor Activity Playbook” to ward off “business disruptions,” according to newly released court documents. In the end, there were more executives — including 11 vice presidents — who were alerted about the protest than workers who attended it. [emphasis added]
Goliath-Amazon made the problem worse for itself by clumsily smearing Smalls as “not smart, or articulate,” and expressing the hope that Smalls would become “the face” of the organizing movement. Careful what you wish for, Goliath!
As Smalls tweeted on April 1, “ @amazon wanted to make me the face of the whole unionizing efforts against them…. welp there you go!”
As Smalls explained in an interview with Breitbart News in May 2020, Amazon fired him from his job as a supervisor at the Staten Island warehouse after he blew the whistle on unsafe working conditions and organized a walkout of his fellow workers in protest.
“I’d been with the company since 2015,” Smalls told Breitbart News. “I was a loyal, dedicated employee — nothing more than just a father of three with a retirement date of 2053. But when they dropped the ball on our health and safety, I put my career on the line. It cost me my career, but I have no regrets.”
In response to Smalls’ grassroots union organizing, Goliath-Amazon used every union-busting tactic in the book. In fact, Amazon’s heavy-handed tactics against unions have brought not only criticism from organizers but also official chastisement from the NLRB. Regarding another union election in Bessemer, Alabama, last year — which Amazon won — the head of the union effort decried “Amazon’s intimidation and interference [which] prevented workers from having a fair say in whether they wanted a union in their workplace.” And the feds agreed, and so the election was rerun, with Uncle Sam more closely overseeing. And, while it appears that Amazon won again, the final tally is still in dispute .
In any case, nationwide, in places that are friendlier to unions than Alabama, the fight will continue. The drama of Amazon (total market capitalization $1.6 trillion ) vs. its own workers (median employee salary $29,000 ) will be irresistible to onlookers.
3. Jeff Bezos makes a great bogeyman.
As has been noted here at Breitbart News, the rich have, more often than not in U.S. history, been great targets. That is, from a political point of view, it’s better to have the fat cats on the other side — advantage, underdogs.
One person who put this into practice was Saul Alinsky, the left-wing activist from the 20th century (who should be studied today by the right, as we take on, for example, Critical Race Theory). Alinsky always counseled , “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.”
Jeff Bezos laughs as he speaks about his flight on Blue Origin’s New Shepard into space during a press conference on July 20, 2021 in Van Horn, Texas. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
So back to Bezos, the woke libertarian tycoon now spending his time hanging out with his post-marriage girlfriend and flying around in his Blue Origin space capsule.
As Chris Smalls said , “We want to thank Jeff Bezos for going to space because while he was up there we were organizing a union.” (The fact that Bezos is no longer the CEO of the company means little; for as long as he’s alive, he’ll likely be the face of the company.)
4. For all its high tech, in crucial ways, Amazon doesn’t look that different from a mass-employer of the past, and they were unionized too, albeit not without a fight.
Back on December 30, 1936, some 7,000 General Motors workers staged a sit-down strike at the Fisher Body Plant No. 1 in Flint, Michigan — and were soon joined by more than 100,000 more GM workers, spread across 17 plants. It took two months, but the GM workers won; they had their union.
Members of the nascent United Auto Workers (UAW) union during a sit-down strike in the General Motors Fisher Body Plant in Flint, Michigan in 1937. (Sheldon Dick/Getty Images)
Autoworkers wave American flags at the General Motors Fisher body plant in Flint, Michigan, on February 12, 1937, during the famous Flint sit-down strike. (AP Photo)
The wives, sisters, and sweethearts of the Flint sit-down strikers gathered to demonstrate in support of strike outside the General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan, on February 5, 1937. (AP Photo)
So now today, Amazon has an estimated 1.6 million employees, as well as an unknown number of gig-workers and contractors. These men and women work out of 305 U.S. “fulfillment centers” (that’s spun-up corporate-speak for “warehouse”) and more than 1,100 distribution centers . One can foresee many flashpoints and epic struggles all across the nation.
In fact, if one thinks about other “tech companies,” we realize that while, yes, they boast plenty of high tech, at the same time, they depend on old-fashioned low-paid gig labor. Such companies include Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Postmates, and Fiverr; collectively all gig-working outfits, they engage an astonishing 59 million Americans, more than a third of the national workforce. As an aside, there’s much to be said for the gig-work model, in terms of flexibility and opportunity, and yet at the same time, there’s a lot to be said for making sure that everyone can earn a fair wage.
5. The politics of unionization are changing.
As we have seen, the Democrats were the historic home of organized labor, even if Republicans usually held their share of working people, including blue collars. And yet, now that the Democrats have alienated so many workers on cultural issues, the GOP is stepping forward to represent them better, including on economic issues. For instance, Donald Trump won the election in 2016 largely on the basis of trade and immigration concerns, in which Trump championed the interests of workers much better than did union chiefs. More recently, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) has endorsed Amazon unionism.
At the same time, the GOP’s relationship with business has hit a rough patch. This is a familiar enough point to Breitbart News readers, and yet now the Mainstream Media are catching on; hence this April 4 headline in Bloomberg News: “Big Business and Conservatives Are Headed for Divorce.” The piece quoted Marine-turned-author J.D. Vance, running for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate from Ohio, saying that the old GOP model had, in its decadent late stage, led to many ills, including “the rise of China” and “the decimation of the American family.”
Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance speaks at a rally in Mason, Ohio, on Jan. 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean, File)
In the meantime, many Democrats, as we know, have gone woke. And while this has meant that many corporations have lurched to the left on cultural issues, it has meant that many Democrats have been pulled to the right on economic issues, in keeping with corporate wishes.
To put this new relationship another way, big business is happy to fund, and perhaps even lead, whatever trendy cultural cause comes along, and it asks only one not-so-small thing in return: Democrats de-emphasize, or even abandon, their traditional class-based politics . And the ploy has succeeded: Woke corporate bosses work smoothly with woke corporate employees and allies — mostly at the white-collar level — to advance, for example, Critical Race Theory. For companies, it’s a lot cheaper to hire a few flashy diversity “experts” than it is to pay higher wages to the people who do the actual work.
According to two fair-minded academics, Matt Grossman and David Hopkins , “Today’s liberal activists are both more comfortable working within ‘establishment’ networks and more likely to prioritize cultural over economic objectives.” So sure, hire white-collar diversitarians, and they’ll provide cover while a company outsources its production.
Indeed, on April 7, a pro-labor website, The Lever, accused the Biden administration of pulling its punches on Amazon:
Biden has also declined to use his executive authority to halt federal contracts to Amazon amid its union-busting campaign. In fact, Amazon was awarded a $10 billion contract last summer , months after the president promised on the campaign trail to “ensure federal contracts only go to employers who sign neutrality agreements committing not to run anti-union campaigns.”
So maybe Biden was ad-libbing before that labor audience.
Yet inevitably, workers will notice who truly walks with them and who only talks a good game. And that explains why, for example, Smalls dismissed the role of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) — who represents many Amazon blue collars, even as she herself is cruising the country touting hipper causes than higher wages — when she tried to share credit for the Amazon union victory.
Here’s the redoubtable Smalls on the poseur AOC : “Hell no, she don’t deserve this moment!”
For their part, Republicans are still thinking through the proper role of labor, including organized labor. As this author has argued, unions have a place in building up the middle class, making it a bulwark against wokeism. After all, it’s only workers with some surplus who have the time and resources to pay attention to what’s happening in their kids’ schools — and to show up at school board meetings and raise hell.
Meanwhile, the think-tank American Compass has published an e-book , A Seat at the Table: A Conservative Future for the American Labor Movement , in which 10 right-of-center authors make the case for including workers in organized labor. This was the argument made by, for example, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who took America to the apex of its global power in 1945, as we won World War II: a strong workforce and factories translates into a strong military and a strong country.
So that should be our goal today: a strong workforce, making things — including all the energy we need — right here in the USA. And at the same time, strong families and communities.
Such a vision is an obvious political winner, even if it is now deemed to be politically incorrect. Fortunately, FDR-type Democrats never worried about political correctness, and today, Republicans shouldn’t either. Why? Because t he party that best speaks for the working majority will never lose.
JOE BIDEN'S PROMISE TO BILLIONAIRES AND BANKSTERS: NO PROSECUTION FOR ECONOMIC CRIMES. NO TAXES AND NO LEGAL NEED APPLY to keep wages deprssed.
Big Banks, Big Pharma, Big
Tech Team Up with Biden to
Resettle Afghans in U.S.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
JOHN BINDER
27 Oct 2021 0
3:04
Big banks, Big Pharma, and giant tech
corporations have teamed up with President
Joe Biden’s administration to resettle tens of
thousands of Afghans across the United States
over the next year.
Biden’s massive Afghan resettlement operation plans to bring at least 95,000 Afghans to the U.S. for resettlement across 46 states .
The Afghans are initially flown into Philadelphia International Airport in Pennsylvania or Dulles International Airport in Virginia before temporarily living on various U.S. military bases while awaiting resettlement. Today, more than 55,000 Afghans remain temporarily living at U.S. bases in Wisconsin, Texas, New Mexico, Indiana, New Jersey, and Virginia.
This week, Biden issued a list of the multinational corporations working with his administration to help resettle the Afghans across the U.S., including JP Morgan Chase, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Bain Capital, Google, Starbucks, and a number of airlines.
The complete list includes :
· United Airlines
· American Airlines
· Delta Airlines
· JetBlue
· Alaskan Airlines
· Boeing
· Tripadvisor
· Frontier Airlines
· Air Canada
· Accenture
· Airbnb
· Bain Capital
· Chamber of Commerce
· Chobani
· Amazon
· CVS Health
· Pfizer
· FedEx
· Tyson Foods
· Tent
· Etsy
· Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher
· Goodwill Industries
· Google
· JP Morgan Chase
· ManpowerGroup
· Procter & Gamble
· Starbucks
· Walgreens
· Walmart
In addition to the corporate partnership, a new non-governmental organization (NGO) backed by former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama is working closely with the Biden administration on Afghan resettlement.
The NGO seeks to facilitate corporate commitments to refugee resettlement with the goal of funneling Afghans into American jobs.
Refugee resettlement costs taxpayers nearly $9 billion every five years. Over the course of a lifetime, taxpayers pay about $133,000 per refugee and within five years of resettlement, roughly 16 percent will need taxpayer-funded housing assistance.
Over the last 20 years, nearly a million refugees have been resettled in the nation — more than double the number of residents living in Miami, Florida, and it would be the equivalent of annually adding the population of Pensacola, Florida.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here .
ProPublica Reveals How Soros, Bezos, and Other Famous Billionaires Avoid Paying Taxes
Ralph Nader: Biden's First Year Proves He Is Still a "Corporate Socialist" Beholden to Big Business
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jTIUtjkDss
BIDENOMICS: The issue is not the survival of what the leader of the most powerful imperialist country calls “democracy.” Joe Biden really means capitalism, the profit system, which has produced a level of economic inequality that is entirely incompatible with any genuine democracy. Instead, it is generating fascist movements all over the world, which aim to abolish all democratic rights and subject the working class to the naked dictatorship of the rich. PATRICK MARTIN
Biden Withholds December Border Crossing Numbers Customs and Border Protection has circulated data internally for 10 days
Getty Images Joseph Simonson • January 24, 2022 5:20 pm
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The Biden administration has yet to release December border crossing numbers that Customs and Border Protection has circulated internally for at least 10 days, raising concerns on Capitol Hill that the White House is concealing damaging information about the severity of the border crisis.
On Jan. 14, CBP submitted the December data in a court filing . Those data revealed 178,840 migrant apprehensions in December, an increase from 173,620 in November. A spokeswoman for CBP told the Washington Free Beacon the December numbers are "scheduled to be released soon," although she did not answer why they were delayed.
Congressional Republicans have criticized the Biden administration's lack of transparency during one of the largest illegal immigration surges in recent history. They have alleged the delay is nothing more than an effort to conceal the severity of the crisis on the southern border.
"We don't have the December numbers, and it's certainly something [CBP] knows. They're just not releasing them," Rep. Chip Roy (R., Texas) told the Free Beacon . "We know it's going to be an absolutely staggering and embarrassing number, and they don't let the American people know it. If we get power back in 2023, we should have oversight hearings on Day One."
The failure to release data to the public follows a pattern set by the current White House, breaking with Democratic and Republican predecessors. Border crossing numbers are typically released in the first two weeks of the subsequent month, although November's were released on Dec. 17, 2021.
Aside from rising migrant encounters in December—a reversal of historical trends in winter months when there is typically less migration—the court documents reveal 55,626 migrants were released into the interior of the United States that month. More than 78,000 migrants apprehended by U.S. authorities were deported through Title 42, a federal provision that allows the quick removal of migrants during a public health crisis.
"Americans just want to know. If there's bad news, we as the American population can handle it, but we want to know what's going to be done about it," Rep. August Pfluger (R., Texas) told the Free Beacon . "There's just not a lot of transparent behavior when it comes to the Department of Homeland Security from the Biden administration."
President Joe Biden has overseen the largest influx of migrants at the southern border in recorded history. During the 2021 fiscal year, Border Patrol arrested more than 1.6 million migrants.
Despite those figures, Biden has failed to disclose a variety of reports that provide a fuller picture of how many illegal immigrants remain in the United States. The Free Beacon reported earlier this month the Department for Homeland Security has yet to release its annual report on the number of deportations conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2021.
Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas revealed on Jan. 12, following outcry from Republican lawmakers, that his agency was unable to locate roughly half of all the migrants released into the United States from between March 21, 2021, and Aug. 31, 2021.
Amazon, Facebook Spend Millions Lobbying Congress for More Legal Immigration, Amnesty for Illegal Aliens Rich Fury/MICHAEL TRAN/AFP via Getty Images
JOHN BINDER
24 Jan 2022 0
3:12
Two of the nation’s largest tech conglomerates, Amazon and Facebook, spent millions last year lobbying members of Congress to back legislation expanding legal immigration levels and amnesty for illegal aliens, records show.
In all of last year, Amazon spent $20.3 million on lobbying lawmakers — including on bills that would have benefited the multinational corporation’s reliance on cheap foreign labor. Facebook, similarly, spent $20.1 million on lobbying lawmakers.
Specifically, lobbying reports show, both Amazon and Facebook lobbied members of Congress to pass a huge green card giveaway scheme that would reward tech corporations for years of outsourcing American jobs to imported foreign visa workers while also allowing Indian and Chinese nationals to monopolize the employment-based green card system for at least a decade.
Amazon and Facebook also lobbied Congress to increase the process known as “chain migration” whereby newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the United States. Already, 7-in-10 legal immigrants arrive via chain migration among the roughly 1.2 million legal immigrants that are rewarded green cards every year.
Most significantly, Washington, D.C. lobbyists for Amazon and Facebook were vital in the push for President Joe Biden’s failed “Build Back Better Act” which would have provided amnesty to most of the nation’s 11 to 22 million illegal aliens as well as limitless immigration for corporations.
Tech lobbyists have enjoyed a close financial relationship with elected Republicans and Democrats in recent decades.
For instance, a review of Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show that Amazon’s top lobbyist has recently donated to the Buckeye Victory Fund — which has transferred thousands in donations to the National Republican Congressional Committee — along with Reps. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), Liz Cheney (R-WY), and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX).
Other lobbyists for Amazon have recently donated to Reps. Patty Murray (D-WA), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), and Angie Craig (D-MN), among others.
Meanwhile, lobbyists for Facebook have recently thrown cash at Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY), the National Republican Study Committee (NRSC) which is chaired by Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Sen. John Thune (R-SD), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL).
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here .
Pinkerton: Biden by the Numbers – the Data of Failure Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
JAMES P. PINKERTON
24 Jan 2022 0
7:01
By almost any reckoning this past year, President Joe Biden and the Democrats have been a failure. Here are some data points that tell the tale about Biden and his party.
5 — Donald Trump’s percentage-point advantage over Biden in a hypothetical 2024 re-match (Trump 49, Biden 44), according to a poll released by McLaughlin & Associates on January 19. Also, according to the same poll, five is the gap in the generic ballot for Congress this November (Republicans 48, Democrats 43).
7 — Inflation rate in December 2021, according to Trading Economics , which adds that it’s a “high since June of 1982.” The inflation rate in January 2021 was a 1.4 percent.
7 — Net percentage of Americans who want Anthony Fauci to resign his leadership position on Covid-19 policy (remain 46, resign 53), according to Trafalgar Group on January 20.
9 — Deficit in approval/disapproval of Biden’s handing of the coronavirus pandemic (approve 45, disapprove 54), according to AP-NORC , January 20.
12 — Number of major U.S. cities that hit all-time highs for homicides in 2021, according to ABC News. Cities include Austin, TX; Columbus, OH; and Portland, OR.
14 — Difference between the percentage of Republicans who express high enthusiasm (nine or ten on a ten-point scale) for voting in the 2022 midterm elections and the percentage of Democrats who are similarly enthused (GOP 61 percent, Dems 47 percent), according to NBC News on January 23.
18 — Job approval of Congress. Comment from Gallup Poll official Megan Brennan, “The latest five-percentage-point decline in congressional approval is largely attributed to a 10-point decline among Democrats whose frustration appears to be mounting with their party’s senators and representatives who hold majorities in both houses of Congress.” Gallup , January 21.
19 — Percentage of likely voters who strongly approve of Biden’s job performance, according to Rasmussen Reports on January 24.
32 — Percentage of Americans who cite immigration as the most important issue, up from 18 percent a year ago, according to AP-NORC on January 10.
32 — Percentage of Michiganders who have a positive view of Biden as president, according to ABC12 News (Flint, MI) on January 24. In the same poll, just 41 percent support Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) for a second term, while 49 percent want someone else.
33 — Percentage of Americans who approve of Biden’s job performance, according to Quinnipiac University on January 12.
42 — Biden’s approval rating, according to the running polling average of FiveThirtyEight .
49 — Percentage of likely voters who strongly disapprove of Biden’s job performance, according to Rasmussen Reports on January 24.
52 — Percentage of New Mexicans who wish to see someone other than Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) win this year; 39 percent wish to re-elect her, according to Cygnal on January 21.
54 — Percentage of registered voters who disapprove of the job Kamala Harris is doing as vice president, according to Fox News on January 19.
56 — Percentage of Americans who say that Republicans would do a better job on immigration, the economy, crime, border security, and national security (same number for all five issues); according to Fox News on January 23.
60 — Percentage of Americans who would probably or definitely vote for someone other than Joe Biden in 2024, according to Fox News on January 23.
72 — Percentage of Americans who think the nation is headed in the wrong direction, according to NBC News on January 23.
79 — Biden’s age. From Politico’s West Wing Playbook on January 24, concerning the White House’s fear that Biden will contract Covid: “Some current and former White House officials foresee a potential political and policy disaster if the president were to contract the virus . . . Covid protocol critics and vaccine skeptics would have a field day with Biden catching Covid and use it to further undermine trust in the administration’s efforts to combat the pandemic. The 79-year-old president would likely take at least a few days to recover—in addition to placing himself in quarantine—which could exacerbate concerns about his age and health.” According to Politico, this fear of illness for Biden “could very well scuttle his ambitions to crisscross the country more this year.”
1836 — The last year that a sitting Democratic vice president was elected to the presidency. That was Martin Van Buren. So if Kamala Harris were to attempt to succeed Biden in 2024, she would need to break a pattern that has been in place for 188 years. We might recall that in 2000, for example, Democratic Vice President Al Gore sought to succeed President Bill Clinton and lost.
1856 — The last year that a Democrat eligible to run for re-election chose to retire and was replaced by another Democrat elected to the White House. In that year, Franklin Pierce handed off to James Buchanan. So if a Democrat other than Harris were to be the party’s nominee in 2024, he or she would need to break a winless “streak” that has held for 168 years.
1968 — The last year that a Democratic president chose not to run again. That was Lyndon B. Johnson, who had become unpopular over the Vietnam War, rising crime, and campus unrest. The Democrats lost the White House that year.
2016 — The last year that an incumbent Democratic vice president was passed over for the presidential nomination. Five years ago, Vice President Biden was pushed aside for Hillary Clinton. And we know what happened that November.
91,000 — Approximate number of additional American deaths from Covid-19 during the Biden presidency, compared to the Trump presidency. ( 400,000 for Trump, 491,000 for Biden.) As Biden said to Trump doing their debate on October 23, 2020, when the death toll was around 235,000 , “Anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as President of the United States of America.”
Yes, it’s a bleak picture for Biden and the Democrats in 2022, and it looks to be bleak, too, in the future. And yet the numbers don’t lie.
THERE IS NO GREATER THREAT TO AMERICA THAN JOE BIDEN AND HIS BANKSTERS AND BILLIONAIRES!
There it is. That's the issue. To begin, you have the corrupt family Biden. They've been scamming us and our system well for almost fifty years. The man is supposedly worth over 250 million dollars. How is this possible on his salary? It's not. So where did his wealth come from? Not from being a brilliant businessman. DAVID PRENTICE
Ralph Nader: Biden's First Year Proves He Is Still a "Corporate Socialist" Beholden to Big Business
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jTIUtjkDss
Chamber of Commerce Cheers Biden’s Expansion of American Job Outsourcing for Amazon, BlackRock (blackrock is joe biden's biggest paymaster and operates out of the white house under gamer laweyr brian deese-a blackrock employee), Facebook 323 Drew Angerer/Emma McIntyre/Michael Cohen/KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP via Getty Images
JOHN BINDER
22 Jan 2022 0
3:51
The United States Chamber of Commerce is cheering on President Joe Biden’s expansion of a visa pipeline set to deliver more foreign competition against American professionals while cutting costs for the nation’s largest multinational corporations.
As Breitbart News’s Neil Munro reports , Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the expansion of the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program whereby corporations like Amazon, Facebook, and BlackRock hire foreign students over American STEM graduates at a 15 percent discount by avoiding tens of billions in FICA taxes.
Specifically, Biden expanded the OPT program to include 22 fields of study from which corporations can hire foreign students at American universities for coveted white-collar, entry-level jobs.
Those new fields of study include bioenergy, climate science, earth systems science, economics and computer science, mathematical economics, general data analytics, and research methodology.
The Chamber of Commerce, representing corporate special interests, cheered the move as “one of a series of key actions needed to address the workforce shortage crisis” even as American college students have urged the federal government to end the program.
“We welcome the Biden administration’s announcement on international STEM talent,” the Chamber’s Jon Baselice said in a statement:
Much more needs to be done to update and modernize our nation’s immigration system, and those types of changes require congressional action . The Chamber will continue to push Congress and the White House to work together and address these pressing issues, as the workforce challenges impacting many businesses today won’t be abating anytime soon. [Emphasis added]
The Chamber’s vision, as recently detailed by CEO Suzanne Clark, includes flooding the U.S. labor market with twice as much foreign competition against America’s working and middle class.
During a policy speech this month, Clark called on Congress to double legal immigration levels — which would bring anywhere from two to four million foreign nationals to the U.S. annually — and provide amnesty to most of the nation’s 11 to 22 million illegal aliens.
Such a policy would bring a foreign-born population nearly six times the size of Boston, Massachusetts, to the U.S. every year. The goal, Clark said, is to provide corporations and big businesses with as much readily available foreign labor as possible without having to compete for American workers with higher wages and better benefits.
The expansion of foreign competition against white-collar American workers is likely to hugely benefit the top employers of OPT visa workers. In 2020, Amazon ranked as the top outsourcer to foreign students for American jobs, followed by Apple, BlackRock, Facebook, Microsoft, Accenture, Oracle, Bank of America, Capgemini, Cognizant, Deloitte, Citigroup, eBay, Google, Goldman Sachs, Hewlett-Packard, Infosys, JP Morgan, McKinsey & Company, Tata Consultancy Services, Wayfair, and Yahoo, among others.
Annually, more than half a million American STEM graduates enter the white-collar workforce looking for entry-level jobs. Those prospects are crushed by foreign visa worker competition that allows corporations to import foreign nationals on cheaper salaries before securing them green cards to permanently remain in the U.S.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here .
How Billionaires Devoured The World | The Mehdi Hasan Show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAp4YCf8QDo
Profits of Doom: Globalist Elites Doubled Their Wealth During Coronavirus Pandemic
Democrats: $625B Tax Cut for Wealthy Elite ‘Essential’ Ahead of Midterms
Tax the Rich: World Economic Forum Hears Call for Global Wealth Redistribution
BIDEN CRONY JEFF BEZOS OF AMAZON SAYS HE CAN’T AFFORD TO PAY LIVING WAGES!
HERE’S WHY:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTYfJwTuP4A
Inside Jeff Bezos' $175 Million Mansion
This is because despite all its declarations, the Democratic Party is not a party of workers. It, as Biden’s transition team attests, is a party of Wall Street, big banks, Amazon , and the military-industrial complex.
Inside Jeff Bezos' $78 MillIon Dollar Hawaii Estate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kELjWUwqllc
Inside Jeff Bezos Mansions
Jeff Bezos' $400 Million Flying Fox Yacht https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRYEcushHjc
Inside Jeff Bezos' $21,000,000 Car Collection https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu-Vy9Q6U4A
Inside Jeff Bezos' $300 Million Mansions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UsHq_99lJE
Inside Jeff Bezos Mansions
Jeff Bezos' $400 Million Flying Fox Yacht https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRYEcushHjc
Inside Jeff Bezos' $21,000,000 Car Collection https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu-Vy9Q6U4A
Joe Biden Invites More Foreign Workers to Take Americans’ White-Collar Careers 502 Spencer Platt/Getty Images
NEIL MUNRO
22 Jan 2022 0
12:23
President Joe Biden’s deputies are inviting even more foreign college graduates to take U.S. white-collar jobs, just as they have opened the southern border to roughly one million blue-collar migrants in 2021.
“It is a punch to the gut” for American graduates, Rob Law, the director of regulatory affairs and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, told this Breitbart News reporter. He continued, “The government has decided that it is in the interest of their donors to get their own unlimited supply of foreign workers outside of the normal [immigration] channels. So, congratulations. If you got a STEM degree [science, technology, engineering, math], you aren’t likely to get a job in STEM, and you’re probably not getting any job that will allow you to pay off your student loans.”
The four-sided jobs giveaway will also allow many more foreign graduates into a wider variety of non-technology careers, including many jobs sought by women graduates, Kevin Lynn, founder of U.S. Tech Workers, noted. The careers being opened up to migrants include forestry, data visualization, environmental studies, and organizational psychology, he said.
“It’s an extreme overreach by agencies over the Congress, which writes the laws on immigration,” Lynn added.
The January 21 announcement was leaked to business-oriented media outlets — the Wall Street Journal and Forbes — and it seeks to implement many of the provisions in the administration’s January 2021 immigration expansion bill. The bill was blocked by public opposition, and its core provisions were then copied into the Build Back Better bill, which is also blocked.
The announcement is being applauded by business advocates for migration, including the American Immigration Council . Many investors and business groups — especially Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us investors’ group — have been lobbying similar rules that would give them more foreign contract workers.
Mark Zuckerberg, chairman and CEO of Facebook (AP Photo/Esteban Felix, File)
Current rules allow companies to keep a population of more than 1.5 million mid-skilled , non-immigrant, foreign white-collar workers in jobs sought by the large population of skilled U.S. graduates. That huge population is more than enough to prevent a tight labor market in white-collar professionals, so tilting the playing field towards the Fortune 500’s executives and shareholders.
Many of these non-immigrant, temporary workers occupy subcontracted, lower-wage, short-term gig jobs for a wide range of Fortune 500 companies that once were the first steps for U.S. graduates towards a middle-class life.
These imported mid-skill workers are held in thrall to U.S. C-suite executives by their hope of getting hugely valuable green cards for themselves and all their descendants. While they work in the hope of getting green cards, these workers have no practical legal or workplace rights and often must work under imported Indian managers who maintain Indian-style work culture — including subservience, plus sexual, caste , and racial discrimination .
The process of sponsoring foreign workers for green cards is “highly susceptible to fraud,” says a 2020 report by the Department of Labor’s Inspector General. The process “relentlessly has employers not complying with the qualifying criteria,” the report said, echoing decades of systemic fraud described by cops , federal agencies , embassy officials , and advocates for Americans . This abused workforce is managed via routine bribes and kickbacks to hiring managers.
The visa-worker system is complex, loopholed, crowded, slow, and fractured, Law said. But the uncertainties encourage foreign visa workers to keep coming for U.S. gig jobs in the hope of eventually getting the huge prize of green cards, he said. “The endgame is if you stick around long enough, eventually you’ll find an immigration attorney that will hook you up with some sort of status that will ensure that you’re here forever,” Law said.
Executives use this vast and powerless green card workforce to weaken the workplace power of the U.S. progressional class. In recent years, business scandals have shown that U.S. professionals lose arguments with the C-suite executives for decent salaries, product quality , innovative research , data privacy, information security, or for corporate compliance with federal law, including lawsuits — partly because the executives believe the green card workforce generates short-term stock-market gains for executives and their investors .
Biden’s deputies are justifying the new giveaways by saying they are good for economic growth — but they say nothing about the programs’ costs, including the damage to Americans’ wage and workplace authority. For example, Ur Jaddou, the director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency tweeted:
Biden’s deputies claim Congress gave them the power to award work permits to foreigners: “The Secretary … has broad authority to determine which individuals are authorized for employment in the United States. See INA Sec. 274A(h)(3), 8 U.S.C. 1324 a(h)(3).” That legal claim is weak , but the Supreme Court dodged the issue in 2020, critics say.
The new policy expands the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, the J-1 visa, the O-1 visa and opens a path for additional foreign graduates to ask for green cards from their homelands.
The uncapped OPT program allowing universities to trade work permits last one year or almost three years to roughly 400,000 foreign graduates each year in exchange for out-of-state tuition fees. Federal officials tell judges that the OPT work permits are just training opportunities — but they are the primary route for foreign graduates to get into the U.S. labor market and eventually win a green card.
“OPT is billed as a ‘practical training’ program [but] all it does is offer financial incentives to bypass the American workforce,” a statement from the Federation for American Immigration Reform said. “It contains no requirements to pay the prevailing wage, or any requirements to protect domestic workers … American workers — especially recent college graduates — deserve a fair chance at the jobs and wages they deserve.”
President Donald Trump constricted the OPT program, which is worth perhaps $30 billion a year, to the universities.
But Biden’s deputies are expanding the program by allowing foreign graduates to get three-year work permits for 22 additional careers . The extra careers include non-STEM careers such as “general forestry,” as well as careers sought by women graduates, such as data visualization, environmental studies, and organizational psychology.
Secondly, the administration is also expanding the Department of State’s J-1 visa program, which many nonprofits and universities now use to recruit low-wage laboratory personnel , researchers, and teachers instead of hiring Americans. The uncapped J-1 program will now be opened to businesses, allowing them to import more foreign graduates. This work program is uncapped and is justified as a non-work “cultural exchange” opportunity.
Third, Biden’s people are also lowering the standards for the O-1 “genius visa” program, which has been reserved for particularly accomplished people.
Fourth, the announcement also lowers the standards needed to win an agency exception — dubbed the “National Interest Waiver” (NIW) — from the normally high-bar facing people who ask for green cards from overseas.
The current NIW rules say that candidates need to have “ exceptional ability ,” but the language announced January 21 suggests that candidates merely have “a bachelor’s degree plus five years of progressive work experience in the field … [or] a degree of expertise significantly above that ordinarily encountered in the sciences, arts, or business.”
By lowering the standards, agency leaders can pressure the adjudicators to rubber-stamp more requests from foreign graduates, Rob law, who served as a top official in the USCIS under Trump, said. “When a denial is issued or [the adjuidicator] requests more evidence, you’re going to have an immigration attorney complain and tweet about it. And then Mayorkar and Jaddou are going to bully and belittle these adjudicators, and at that point, it’s not really worth the hassle for adjudicators to deny actually this waiver. … The law and eligibility requirements do not matter anymore. There is only one correct answer, and it’s, ‘Get to yes.'”
The Biden administration’s set of four new rules does not directly change the well-known H-1B visa program, which provides work permits to roughly 115,000 extra foreign workers each year.
The federal government does not track the number of H-1B workers. Many of the workers stay in the United States for many years before they get green cards, so the resident population has been pegged at nearly one million . But the program is open to fraud, so the many additional people — including people who illegally overstay their visas — may be working under faked or duplicate H-1B permits.
Indian Nationals on H-1B-Visas (PUNIT PARANJPE/AFP/Getty)
The population of illegal white-collar workers is also boosted by the unsupervised and uncapped B-1/B-2 program . The program allows foreign graduates to legally visit for six months of training — but they are not supposed to work. However, many of the temporary visitors do work, partly because U.S. pay rates are far above rates in their home countries.
The January 21 announcement was made one year after Biden’s deputies released their immigration-expansion bill. The bill has been stalled by public opposition in Congress, but some of the core provisions are included by the January 21 regulatory changes.
“A handful of Republicans get it and are willing to vocalize what’s going on here,” Law said. But, he added, “too many elected Republicans are still beholden to the donor class and care more about the campaign dollars than their constituents.”
“Democrats don’t look at the immigration issue from the perspective of America or any individual American,” according to Law. “They only look at it from the perspective of the alien. … There’s no view about the American national interest, the impact on wages, on housing, or anything else in American society,” he said.
Many U.S. journalists on the immigration beat ignore the controversial economics of migration and prefer to focus on the family drama of migrants at the border or trying to avoid deportation. Among journalists, “there is a complete lack of intellectual curiosity and [nearly] everybody is playing off of the same talking points that are produced by the same higher-ups,” Law said. “That’s the narrative that they run with, in lockstep.”
Migration moves money, and since at least 1990, the federal government has tried to extract people from poor countries so they can serve U.S. investors as cheap workers, government-aided consumers, and high-density renters in the U.S. economy.
That economic strategy has no stopping point , and it is harmful to ordinary Americans: it cuts their career opportunities and their wages while it also raises their housing costs .
The strategy also curbs Americans’ productivity , shrinks their political clout , and widens the regional wealth gaps between the Democrats’ coastal states and the Republicans’ Heartland states .
The economic policy radicalizes Americans’ democratic, compromise-promoting civic culture and allows wealthy elites to ignore despairing Americans at the bottom of society .
Unsurprisingly, a wide variety of little-publicized polls do show deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates.
The opposition is growing , anti-establishment , multiracial , cross-sex , non-racist , class-based , bipartisan , rational , persistent , and recognizes the solidarity that Americans owe to each other.
Democrats, Big Tech Billionaires Unite to Keep DACA Illegal Aliens in U.S. Jobs
In a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Senate Democrats including Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Alex Padilla (D-CA), and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), along with a number of House Democrats, urged the Biden administration to move forward with the regulation and expand the program to include more illegal aliens.
Amazon, this year alone, petitioned for nearly 3,000 employment-based green cards for their foreign visa workers and foreign nationals seeking to take high-paying white collar jobs. Microsoft and Google, likewise, petitioned for more than 3,300 employment-based green cards.
THE BULD CHINA GREATER BOYS
Joe Biden, in his days in the Senate, was very partial to China , as he voted against revoking China’s most-favored nation status and in 2007 opposed the idea of applying any tariffs on China despite their obvious unfair trade practices. However, it was as Vice President that he became wholly enamored with the country and its leadership. STEVE McCANN
The book is a devastating chronicle of political corruption. From Ukraine to Mexico to China , Hunter Biden's private correspondence shows how he and his family leveraged his father's position to win high-paying, low-work gigs with shady foreign actors—and how Joe's official actions at times directly benefited his family's financial backers. ALANA GOODMAN
I’d be inclined to disagree with Don except for one thing: Biden has proven to be a very adept criminal mastermind. For decades, he has funneled millions of dollars to his children and siblings and, especially, to his debauched, deviant son, Hunter.
ANDREA WIDBURG
JOE BIDEN HAS BEEN CORRUPT FOR 50 YEARS AND NOT ONE INVESTIGATION. DOESN'T THAT SHOW YOU HOW UTTERLY CORRUPT THE RULING CLASS IS?
Schweizer: ‘It’s Going to Be Business as Usual’ for Hunter’s Dealings https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2021/01/20/schweizer-its-going-to-be-business-as-usual-for-hunters-dealings /
Joe Biden, the corrupt, unaccomplished 47-year career politician, with a reputation of having been a proud segregationist , an unabashed plagiarist and liar , a resolute tale-teller , and a serial flip-flopper , is pretending to head up a radical social-democratic ticket for President of the United States that includes as his running mate the ambitious, disagreeable junior senator from California: Kamala Harris.
There it is. That's the issue. To begin, you have the corrupt family Biden. They've been scamming us and our system well for almost fifty years. The man is supposedly worth over 250 million dollars. How is this possible on his salary? It's not. So where did his wealth come from? Not from being a brilliant businessman. DAVID PRENTICE
The fact that Hunter's market value was derived from his father's position seemed to be a source of resentment for the younger Biden, even as he continued to cash in on the name. Hunter complained in texts to his daughter that he had financially supported the Biden clan for three decades and that "pop" takes a cut of "half [my] salary." Financia records and correspondence reported on by Devine indicate that money from Hunter's business accounts was used to cover Joe's AT&T bill and home
maintenance expenses and that a portion of at least one major China deal was earmarked for the elder Biden.
ALANA GOODMAN
China's Trade Surplus Soars to All Time High
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s6l8AgSG3U
RIDING THE DRAGON: The Bidens' Chinese Secrets (Full Documentary) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRmlcEBAiIs
CHINA’S OLD WHORE SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN, AMERICA’S BIGGEST WAR PROFITEER, WAS FIRST TO ENDORSE BIDEN FOR PRESIDENT. WONDER WHY???
As Glenn Bunting of the Los Angeles Times reported in 1997, Feinstein’s husband Richard Blum “has expanded his private business interests in China – to the point that his firm is now a prominent investor inside the communist nation.” In 1995, Dianne Feinstein became a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “giving her a prominent platform for her efforts to support China’s trade privileges.”
As Ben Weingarten noted in the Federalist in 2018, Feinstein’s husband has “profited handsomely from the greatly expanded China trade she supported.” The senator also “served as a key intermediary between China and the U.S. government, while serving on committees whose work would be of keen interest to the PRC.”
For 20 years, through three election cycles, Feinstein maintained on her staff a Chinese spy who would even attend consular functions for the California Democrat. One wonders what the FBI knew, when they knew it, and what they did about it, if anything.
Other politicians with China business connections include Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi , whose husband has conducted a series of deals in the Communist nation. Recall that Speaker Pelosi kept Eric Swalwell on the House Intelligence Committee even after his “PoonFang” liaisons with a Chinese spy (FEINSTEIN LONG EMPLOYED A CHINESE SPY).
Peter Schweizer’s ‘Red-Handed’ Exposes Communist China’s Silicon Valley Sympathizers Lluis Gene, Nicolas Asfouri, Britta Pedersen/Getty; Nam Y. Huh/AP
LUCAS NOLAN
22 Jan 2022 0
4:23
The New York Post recently published an exclusive excerpt of Peter Schweizer’s new book Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win , which outlines how American elites — including the Silicon Valley Masters of the Universe — purposefully aid the communist regime of China.
In his excerpt for the New York Post , Schweizer, who is a Breitbart News senior contributor, the president of the nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute (GAI), and the best-selling author of Clinton Cash and Profiles in Corruption, focuses on how money-grabbing Big Tech firms have placed the privacy of their users and U.S. national security at risk in an attempt to appease China.
The New York Post excerpt highlights some of the most egregious examples of U.S. tech giants colluding with China from Red-Handed, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking Chinese dictator Xi Jinping to name Zuckerberg’s child. The excerpt reads:
In 2015, the Obama Administration held an official State Dinner at the White House for China’s Xi. The East Room was decorated in peach and pink roses. The crowd included two hundred elite guests from the world of government and business. Among them was Mark Zuckerberg, the young-looking cofounder of Facebook, and his wife, Priscilla, who was seven months pregnant. When Zuckerberg finally got his chance to see the guest of honor face-to-face, he made an unusual request: would the communist dictator give his child his Chinese name?
Xi, understandably surprised by the request, declined, saying it was “too great a responsibility.”
Even more worrying is Google’s close relationship with China. Google opened an AI research center in China in 2017 which included “a small group of researchers supported by several hundred China-based engineers.” The same year, China announced its “artificial intelligence development plan” in which the company outlined how it would use AI to aid in the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” The Red-Handed excerpt reads:
Google’s cooperation with China on AI research occurred the same year that the Chinese Communist Party and government laid out its “artificial intelligence development plan.” A report issued by the Chinese government explains that “AI has become a new focus of international competition,” mastering that technology enhances “comprehensive national power,” and that it would lead to the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
Beijing has declared that passing the United States in artificial intelligence is a “national priority.”
“The work that Google is doing in China is indirectly benefitting the Chinese military,” Marine General James Dunford, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a U.S. Senate committee. Then he corrected himself. “Frankly, ‘indirect’ may not be a full characterization of the way it really is, it is more of a direct benefit to the Chinese military.”
Red-Handed also explains Elon Musk’s torrid love affair with the country’s communist dictatorship. After denying he would open Tesla factories in China, Musk dramatically changed his tune.
According to Red-Handed:
Then Beijing rolled out the red carpet: Chinese government–backed banks coughed up $1.6 billion in subsidized loans. And the regulatory red tape to build in China was eliminated by government authorities. “What surprised me is how little time it took for the regulatory process to get approved by the Chinese government,” explained Ivan Su, an analyst at Morningstar Inc. The enormous plant was built in less than a year.
Musk arrived in the country for the groundbreaking ceremony and met with top-ranking officials. Two days later, he was meeting with Vice Premier Li Keqiang in the private compound reserved for high- ranking visitors. “I love China very much and I am willing to come here more,” Musk reportedly told Li. The vice premier offered to make him a permanent resident in the country.
Read more excerpts from the new book “Red Handed” by Peter Schweizer at the New York Post here .
Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win reportedly contain
Rep. Bill Posey: I Pre-Ordered Multiple Copies of Peter Schweizer’s ‘Red-Handed’ Associated Press, HarperCollins; BNN Edit
REBECCA MANSOUR
18 Jan 2022 0
2:08
With official Washington on high alert for the arrival of Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer’s forthcoming investigative blockbuster Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win , Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) said he has already pre-ordered “multiple” copies of the book and encourages others to do the same.
“Like all of Peter Schweizer’s books, am sure it contains more vital information all Americans should know, but cannot find anywhere else,” wrote Posey, who represents Florida’s 8th congressional district and serves on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.
Posey added: “I order multiple copies of [Schweizer’s] books because I always want to pass them on, but don’t want to be left without a copy.
Given Schweizer’s investigative track record, it’s not surprising members of Congress are paying close attention to his upcoming revelations. Conservative Fox News host Sean Hannity said that Red-Handed’s revelations are “going to be massive.”
Furthermore, the highly anticipated book contains no unnamed sources and 1,093 endnotes totaling 81 pages of source material, making its findings easier for federal law enforcement and U.S. intelligence services to track down.
Schweizer, who is the president of the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) and the host of the Drill Down Podcast , has written six New York Times bestsellers that have exposed corruption and cronyism by both political parties.
Schweizer broke the Uranium One scandal, the insider trading scandal by members of Congress that led to passage of the bipartisan STOCK (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge) Act which President Barack Obama signed into law in 2012, and the Clinton Foundation scandal, which sparked an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win will be released by HarperCollins on January 25.
GOP Leaders on Biden’s First Year: ‘Worst Human Rights Record’ of Any Modern U.S. President 2,130 Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
ASHLEY OLIVER
20 Jan 2022 1,185
4:01
Several Republican congressmembers joined House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) at a press conference Thursday to mark President Joe Biden’s first year in office, issuing scathing remarks on a slate of crises they said were a “direct result” of his presidency.
The opening speaker, House GOP Conference chair Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), summarized that with Democrats in control in the White House and both chambers of Congress, “America has faced a year of unprecedented crisis.”
“The American people are facing an economic crisis, an energy crisis, a border crisis, an education crisis, a crime crisis, a worsening COVID-19 crisis, and a national security crisis,” Stefanik said. “These crises are a direct result of the failed leadership and the far-left socialist agenda of Joe Biden and congressional Democrats.”
Rep. Elise Stefanik speaks during a news conference with fellow House Republicans at the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Consumer prices for common goods like food, furniture, clothing, and cars are up, as Breitbart News’s John Carney has reported extensively, while overall consumer prices in 2021 saw a seven percent annual increase, the largest increase in four decades. Oil prices, too, are at an eight-year high.
Border patrol agents at the U.S.-Mexico border apprehended approximately 1.9 million illegal migrants in 2021, while an estimated half a million “got aways” evaded apprehension and are now presumably living in the U.S. illegally and unaccounted for. “We’re in the biggest crisis we’ve ever seen as far as border security goes,” said Brandon Judd, president of the Border Patrol union and a Border Patrol agent of more than two decades, during an appearance on Fox News in November.
House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) spoke about the border at the press conference, pointing to the fentanyl being transported into the U.S. illegally and subsequently cropping up as an issue in states across the country.
“Now every state in the nation is a border city and community because you’ve got drugs coming in across our border, and now fentanyl and other drugs killing people in every community in America, because Joe Biden not only stopped building the wall but sent a message all across the world, not just South and Central America, that our border is open,” Scalise said.
Other congressmembers spoke about K–12 students being subjected to remote learning, surging violent crime in urban areas, and rampant cases of coronavirus coupled with now two years’ worth of coronavirus mandates and ever-changing messaging from the Biden administration on when and how society will return to a state of normalcy.
Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL), the first Green Beret to serve in Congress, tore into Biden for national security policies — such as empowering Russia by stymieing U.S. oil and gas production while condoning Russia’s new gas pipeline — and for having what Waltz described as “the worst human rights record of any modern American presidency.”
Kevin McCarthy
Waltz cited ongoing human trafficking crimes at the U.S. border and human rights abuses in Afghanistan against women and in Xinjiang, China , against Uyghurs.
He added, “We have three years to go, but I don’t think we can realistically expect anything but more of the same … and it is a fundamentally flawed approach of America last and concessions first, and our adversaries see that as weakness and they see that as opportunity.”
The Republicans’ brutal review of the president comes as his approval ratings have been sinking across numerous polls with no sign of changing trajectory. On Wednesday, RealClearPolitics’ average of polls revealed Biden’s job approval hit 40.9 percent, a record-low for his presidency.
Write to Ashley Oliver at aoliver@breitbart.com . Follow her on Twitter at @asholiver .
The issue is not the survival of what the leader of the most
powerful imperialist country calls “democracy.” He really
means capitalism, the profit system, which has produced a
level of economic inequality that is entirely incompatible with
any genuine democracy. Instead, it is generating fascist
movements all over the world, which aim to abolish
all democratic rights and subject the working class to
the naked dictatorship of the rich.
Biden at one year: A government of mass death and political crisis
Patrick Martin
The press conference by President Joe Biden Wednesday, held to mark the end of his first year in office, was a two-hour demonstration of the social chasm that separates the White House, the corporate media, and the entire US political establishment from the actual concerns of the American population.
At the beginning, Biden spoke for several minutes before taking questions. He took no notice of the more than 2,374 Americans who had died that day from COVID-19—a staggering number, one of the worst days since the current surge driven by the Omicron variant began. He could have begun by calling for a moment of silence but chose instead not to call attention to clearest evidence of the failure of his administration.
Vice President Kamala Harris, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., stand and applaud as President Joe Biden addresses a joint session of Congress, on April 28, 2021, in the House Chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post via AP)
Whatever their political differences, the Democratic president and his Republican opponents share the same indifference to mass death. They represent and defend the interests of the American capitalist class, and the billionaires do not propose to allow consideration of human life and safety to interfere with their continued amassing of unprecedented levels of profit and wealth. That is what drives the policy of keeping open workplaces and schools in the midst of a terrible pandemic.
Biden claimed “remarkable progress” during the first year of his administration, boasting of record job creation, a drop in the official unemployment rate and a successful campaign of mass vaccinations. There was a powerful element of self-delusion in this presentation, under conditions where the vast majority of the American people are feeling the consequences of the greatest public health crisis in 100 years, in which they have lost grandparents, parents, friends, co-workers and, increasingly, children.
The president did not have the decency to mention the 475,000 Americans who were alive when he was inaugurated on January 20, 2021, but who are now dead, killed by COVID-19. Nor did he mention the hundreds of thousands more expected to die this winter as a consequence of the spread of the Omicron variant, which has driven up infections to staggering levels and begun to overwhelm the hospital system—and soon the morgues.
No one at the press conference raised the question of mass death. They might have recalled Biden’s criticism of Donald Trump, in a presidential campaign debate on October 22, 2020. He pointed to the 220,000 Americans who had died up to then of coronavirus, and declared, “Anyone who’s responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America.” The death toll today is approaching four times that level.
In that same debate, Biden postured as a defender of teachers, saying that Trump’s policy on the schools was essentially, “All you teachers out there, not that many of you are going to die, so don’t worry about it.” Today, after thousands of teachers have died, and a new COVID-19 variant has emerged that is far more contagious and dangerous to school children, Biden’s policy is Trump’s policy. “We’re not going back to lockdown,” he told the news conference. “We’re not going back to closing schools.”
When asked about the rising number of teachers’ strikes and other protests directed against the reopening of face-to-face classes in the midst of the largest ever surge of COVID-19 infections, Biden sneered that such opposition was not very significant, claiming that 95 percent of the schools are open for in-person instruction. His disdain for opposition from working people was one of his few displays of genuine emotion in the two-hour event.
The mounting US campaign against Russia was the primary focus of the news conference, with media representatives repeatedly pressing Biden for more belligerent statements in support of the unproven allegations that Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to invade Ukraine, and for more assurances of swift and massive US retaliation if he did so.
Biden said he thought Putin would invade, but when he said this was still uncertain and pointed out that an actual war between NATO and Russia had dangers, his questioners seemed dissatisfied. The negative reaction intensified when Biden tried to distinguish between a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, which would be met with all-out economic warfare, and a “minor incursion,” which might not.
Criticism of Biden for supposedly having given a “green light” to Putin to use force against Ukraine headlined news reports within minutes of the press conference, and White House aides were already issuing “clarifications” that any Russian attack on Ukraine would meet with an aggressive US response.
The most telling feature of the news conference was Biden’s confession that he did not foresee the degree to which the Republicans would seek to undermine and oppose his administration. “I completely underestimated the Republican Party,” he admitted.
What is there to “underestimate”? The Republican Party tried to overthrow the election. The entire congressional leadership went along with Trump’s pretense, extending over many weeks, that the outcome of the election was in doubt, despite Biden’s decisive victory in the popular vote and the Electoral College.
Two-thirds of Republicans in the House of Representatives voted against certifying Biden’s victory, even after the attack on the Capitol by fascist Trump supporters, which failed in its goal of taking hostages and forcing Congress to allow Trump to remain in the White House. The Republican Party is dominated by Trump, who denounces Biden as an illegitimate president. How can Biden be surprised that they oppose his policies?
Biden expressed disbelief at the degree to which the Republican Party has been subordinated to the personal authority of Trump, and the resulting unwillingness of Republican congressmen and senators to engage in the bipartisan horse-trading usual in capitalist politics. But he issued no warning to the American people about the danger to democracy posed by the transformation of the Republican Party into a fascistic movement under the dictatorship of the former president.
On the contrary, throughout the press conference, he sought to appeal to the Republicans—the very people who sought to overthrow him. He flattered Senate Republicans, praising Mitt Romney, describing Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as his friend, and invoking the name of John McCain as though this warmonger had been a saint. The only senator he disavowed by name was Bernie Sanders. In response to a provocative question from Fox News, he denied that he was trying to “pull the country so far to the left.” He continued, “I’m a mainstream Democrat. … I am not a socialist, I’m a capitalist.”
The sharpness of the political crisis broke through at one point, when Biden pointed to the rapid transformation of society under the impact of revolutionary developments in technology. “In 10 years, we’ll be living in a different world,” he said, adding there would be more change in the next decade than in the previous half century. “Can we maintain the democratic institutions here and around the world?” he asked. His answer: “It’s going to be hard.”
The world is on the precipice of radical change, the US president admits. This change will explode over the next 10 years, he forecasts. Will democracy survive? Biden scratches his head. “Who knows?” This remarkable colloquy is an indicator of underlying nervousness, even fear. Biden no doubt fears the fascist threat. But he cannot speak its name. That is because he, and the class he represents, has a greater fear: a movement from below, from the great masses of the working class, who are moving to the left, not to the right.
The issue is not the survival of what the leader of the most powerful imperialist country calls “democracy.” He really means capitalism, the profit system, which has produced a level of economic inequality that is entirely incompatible with any genuine democracy. Instead, it is generating fascist movements all over the world, which aim to abolish all democratic rights and subject the working class to the naked dictatorship of the rich.
Democrats, Big Tech Billionaires Unite to Keep DACA Illegal Aliens in U.S. Jobs
In a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Senate Democrats including Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Alex Padilla (D-CA), and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), along with a number of House Democrats, urged the Biden administration to move forward with the regulation and expand the program to include more illegal aliens.
Frazer Harrison/JIM WATSON/JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images
JOHN BINDER
1 Dec 2021 0
4:07
Democrats and billionaire executives for giant tech corporations are urging the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to keep illegal aliens, enrolled in former President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, in American jobs.
In July, Judge Andrew Hanen ordered President Joe Biden’s administration to shut down the DACA program by blocking the federal government from allowing new applicants, illegal aliens who have not previously been enrolled, onto the program’s rolls.
Months later, in September, Biden’s DHS issued a draft regulation that would effectively preserve the DACA program that has allowed more than 800,000 illegal aliens to remain in the United States and hold American jobs since 2012.
In a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Senate Democrats including Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Alex Padilla (D-CA), and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), along with a number of House Democrats, urged the Biden administration to move forward with the regulation and expand the program to include more illegal aliens.
The Democrats write :
To preserve family unity, we urge you to update the DACA threshold criteria to include individuals who had lawful status on June 15, 2012. One of the threshold criteria in the proposed rule is that DACA applicants must have “had no lawful immigration status on June 15, 2012, as well as at the time of filing of the request for DACA.” We ask that DHS to update these criteria to allow individuals who had lawful status in the United States on June 15, 2012, but subsequently lost such status by the time of their request, to qualify for DACA . This update could be accomplished by changing the above criterium to read: “had no lawful status at the time of filing of the request for DACA.” [Emphasis added]
…
We also encourage you to consider adopting additional changes to DACA eligibility requirements that would enable more Documented Dreamers to utilize the protection this program offers if the unlawful status requirement were revoked. Specifically, we urge you to consider removing the threshold criteria that require requestors to have continuously resided in the United States from June 15, 2007 to the time of filing of the request. We also support adjusting the dates in the threshold criteria to provide relief for individuals who arrived in the United States after 2007. These adjustments would help a greater number of Documented Dreamers access relief and avoid accruing unlawful status. [Emphasis added]
Likewise, executives at Amazon, Google, Cisco, the Intel Corporation, IBM, and Meta Platforms have sent a letter to DHS asking that DACA work permits be preserved and that Congress grant amnesty to DACA illegal aliens.
“DACA recipients help us innovate on behalf of customers and are a critical part of our diverse workforce,” the executives wrote. “… DACA recipients enrich our companies and the economy in different ways.”
Already, current immigration levels put downward pressure on U.S. wages while redistributing about $500 billion in wealth away from America’s working and middle class and towards employers and new arrivals, research by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has found.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has repeatedly found that amnesty for illegal aliens would be a net fiscal drain for American taxpayers while driving down U.S. wages.
Every year, 1.2 million legal immigrants receive green cards to permanently resettle in the U.S. In addition, 1.4 million foreign nationals are given visas to take American jobs, while hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens enter the U.S. annually.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here .
In the United States, migration curbs Americans’ productivity , shrinks their political clout , and widens regional wealth gaps . It radicalizes their democratic, compromise-promoting civic culture , and allows elites to ignore despairing Americans at the bottom of society .
AMAZON HAS MADE MASSIVE PROFITS DURING THE PANDEMIC, PAID NO TAXES AND YET DEMANDS EVER CHEAPER LABOR. THAT'S WHERE OPEN BORDERS JOE BIDEN COMES IN!
Amazon, this year alone, petitioned for nearly 3,000 employment-based green cards for their foreign visa workers and foreign nationals seeking to take high-paying white collar jobs. Microsoft and Google, likewise, petitioned for more than 3,300 employment-based green cards.
More than one million white-collar American jobs today are held by foreign visa workers.
THE DEMOCRAT PARTY FOR BOTTOMLESS BANKSTER BAILOUTS, BILLIONAIRES FOR OPEN BORDERS AND BRIBES SUCKING DEM POLITICIANS
Democrats: $625B Tax Cut for Wealthy Elite ‘Essential’ Ahead of Midterms
Tax the Rich: World Economic Forum Hears Call for Global Wealth Redistribution FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty
SIMON KENT
19 Jan 2022 0
3:02
The direct imposition of permanent annual taxes on the earnings of the world’s richest individuals could redistribute wealth and lift millions out of poverty, a report presented to the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Wednesday outlined.
Under the globalist proposal, supranational taxation would start at a rate of two percent on wealth over $5 million and progress to five percent on wealth over $1 billion, generating $2.52 trillion. This would be in addition to – and on top of – whatever taxes are imposed at source by individual national authorities.
That is claimed to be enough to cover the cost of two inoculations and a booster for the world’s estimated eight billion people several times over, according to analysis on 66 countries by Fight Inequality Alliance, Institute for Policy Studies, Oxfam and Patriotic Millionaires.
The group says unless heads of state and government and CEOs acknowledge the “simple, effective solution staring them in the face —taxing the rich,” people around the world “will continue to see their so-called dedication to fixing the world’s problems as little more than a performance.”
“The insane reality is that whilst billions face a daily struggle to survive during this pandemic, billionaire wealth is spiraling out of control. This cannot be right,” Jenny Ricks, global convenor of the Fight Inequality Alliance, said in a statement seen by AFP.
The tax proposal was made to coincide with a meeting of the WEF which is taking place online for the second straight year as its Davos gathering was postponed due to the spread of the Omicron variant.
Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Klaus Schwab is seen at the opening of the WEF Davos Agenda virtual sessions at the WEF’s headquarters in Cologny near Geneva on January 17, 2022. (FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images)
Klaus Schwab listen Chinese President Xi Jinping, seen on the TV screen, speaking remotely at the opening of the WEF Davos Agenda virtual sessions. (FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images)
The group said a steeper progressive tax, which includes a 10 percent levy on billionaires, would raise $3.62 trillion a year. It added that actual levels of taxation would be country specific.
Ricks told AFP the group chose a lower progressive tax that was on the “realistic side”.
A similar call for global taxes on the rich was made by Pope Francis in 2020 when he said international wealth redistribution needed to be made a priority.
Oxfam said earlier this week the world’s 10 wealthiest men doubled their fortunes to $1.5 trillion during the first two years of the pandemic, as Breitbart News reported .
The open letter to Davos participants maintained the current tax system “is not fair” before claiming the worlds’ 2,660 billionaires now have wealth around the same size as the Chinese economy.
“The world — every country in it — must demand the rich pay their fair share,” the letter says. “Tax us, the rich, and tax us now.”
No recommendation was made on exactly which globalist body would collect the taxation nor who would choose to distribute it.
Profits of Doom: Globalist Elites Doubled Their Wealth During Coronavirus Pandemic 1,169 Getty Images
SIMON KENT
17 Jan 2022 0
2:56
As the world was buffeted by a coronavirus tsunami leaving forced lockdowns, supply-chain problems, economic upheaval, and poverty in its wake, globalist financial elites “have had a terrific pandemic” according to a report released Monday.
The world’s 10 richest men have more than doubled their fortunes to $1.9 trillion, at a rate of $1.6 billion a day, over the past 12 months, proving elites have largely been spared the misery and financial ruin inflicted on so many by endless enforced lockdowns.
A confederation of charities that focus on alleviating global poverty, Oxfam said members of the globalist financial elites saw their wealth rose more during the pandemic more than it did the previous 14 years, when the world economy was suffering the worst recession since the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
These are some of the main points from Oxfam’s latest report , Inequality Kills, which has been released as global business leaders meet virtually this week for the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.
“We have a situation where 10 men hold more wealth than that of two-thirds of humanity,” Lyn Morgain, chief executive of Oxfam Australia, told Australia’s ABC news outlet.
“Not only that, but that bottom 40 percent are hanging on by a thread.”
The report highlights what the charity says are “unprecedented” levels of global inequality as coronavirus sharpens the divide between “us and them,” the “haves and have nots.”
Jeff Bezos speaks about his flight on Blue Origin’s New Shepard into space during a press conference on July 20, 2021 in Van Horn, Texas. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Meanwhile the likes of Tesla co-founder Elon Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, enjoyed the greatest year-on-year growth since records began, the report outlined.
At a time when a group of these men were using their riches to rocket into outer space, the charity said, the World Bank had projected that more than 160 million people had been pushed into poverty.
In all, 20 new “pandemic billionaires” have also been created in Asia thanks to the international response to coronavirus, according to the charity.
Forbes listed the world’s 10 richest men as: Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, former Microsoft CEOs Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, former Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, U.S. investor Warren Buffet and the head of the French luxury group LVMH, Bernard Arnault.
The Oxfam report follows a December 2021 study by the group which found that the share of global wealth of the world’s richest people soared at a record pace during the pandemic.
Follow Simon Kent on Twitter: or e-mail to: skent@breitbart.com
Democrats: $625B Tax Cut for Wealthy Elite ‘Essential’ Ahead of Midterms
Sean Gallup/Chip Somodevilla/Jeff Gentner/Drew Angerer/Getty Images
JOHN BINDER
11 Jan 2022 0
3:30
Democrats say cutting hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes for mostly wealthy income-earners in coastal states is “essential” to getting reelected in this year’s midterm elections.
In November, House Democrats passed President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better Act” which includes billions in tax breaks to the wealthiest residents of blue states. Specifically, the plan would give a tax cut to about 67 percent of the nation’s richest Americans — those earning more than $885,000 every year — costing taxpayers about $625 billion .
Under Biden’s plan, those in the top one percent would receive an average tax cut of more than $16,000 this year. The tax cuts for the wealthy would be a result of the plan’s increasing the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction cap.
Ahead of the midterm elections in November, House Democrats are warning their rich donors that they must get out and vote for them to secure the massive tax cut. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) called the tax cuts for the rich “essential” in an interview with Bloomberg News.
Chart via Bloomberg News
“We need to get that done. It’s not the only thing, but it’s a big thing,” Maloney said, who represents one of New York’s wealthiest areas — Westchester County. Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) called the tax cut “really important” for her constituency.
“If you want your state and local deductions back, you have to vote for Democrats. Republicans screwed you last time, and they’ll do it again,” Maloney said.
At the same time, a number of Democrats are blasting the effort, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME).
Sanders has said:
At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, the last thing we should be doing is giving more tax breaks to the very rich. Democrats campaigned and won on an agenda that demands that the very wealthy finally pay their fair share, not one that gives them more tax breaks.
Meanwhile, Democrats want to squeeze an extra $200 billion out of American taxpayers by mostly targeting working and middle class earners with more Internal Revenue Services (IRS) audits.
The plan ensures nearly 600,000 more working and middle class Americans earning $75,000 or less a year would be audited by the IRS. Of those new IRS audits, more than 313,000 would target the poorest of Americans who earn $25,000 or less a year.
In 2017, former President Trump had the SALT deduction capped at $10,000. Since then, Democrats have sought to deliver their wealthy, blue state donors with a massive tax cut by eliminating the cap altogether or greatly increasing it.
Biden, for instance, had sought to include tax cuts for his billionaire donors in a Chinese coronavirus relief package earlier this year. The plan was ultimately cut from the package. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), in May 2020, also tried to include the plan in a coronavirus relief package.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here .
E BIDEN'S WEALTH HAS NEARLY DOUBLED DURING HIS FIRST 12 MONTHS OF DEBACLE!
The Fed Will Buy Stocks Next Crash
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ff6m0ztf0k
“Protect and enrich.” This is a perfect encapsulation of the Clinton Foundation and the Obama book and television deals. Then there is the Biden family corruption, followed closely behind by similar abuses of power and office by the Warren and Sanders families, as Peter Schweizer described in his recent book “Profiles in Corruption.” These names just scratch the surface of government corruption.
BRIAN C JOONDEPH
Congress Are Becoming Filthy Rich From Manipulating The Stock Market & Insider Trading
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lExO6GHn8sc
Inflation is a Wealth Transfer from the Poor to the Rich
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-iNN3CN8k8
Be (Very) Afraid: World Economic Forum Expands List of Global Fears for 2022 6 FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty
SIMON KENT
12 Jan 2022 366
4:09
Cyber attacks, militarization of space, extreme weather events, ecosystem collapse, social divisions, wars and the coronavirus pandemic. These are the key worries the World Economic Forum (WEF) highlighted Tuesday as reasons to be fearful for 2022.
A report released by the Switzerland-based organization, headed by founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab, detailed the grim tidings ahead of the annual elite winter gathering of CEOs and world leaders in the ski resort of Davos.
The event has been postponed for a second year in a row because of coronavirus. WEF organizers still plan some virtual sessions next week, however its Global Risks Report 2022 makes for unpleasant reading.
It is based based on a survey of about 1,000 experts and leaders and in summary says:
WORLD OUTLOOK
The pandemic and its economic and societal impact still pose a “critical threat” to the world, the report said. Big differences between rich and poor nations’ access to vaccines mean their economies are recovering at uneven rates, which could widen social divisions and heighten geopolitical tensions.
By 2024, the global economy is forecast to be 2.3 percent smaller than it would have been without the pandemic. Commodity prices, inflation, and debt are rising in both the developed and developing worlds.
DIGITAL DISHARMONY
Attacks on critical infrastructure, misinformation, fraud and digital safety in 2022 will impact public trust in digital systems and increase costs for all stakeholders, the report said.
“We’re at the point now where cyberthreats are growing faster than our ability to effectively prevent and manage them,” said Carolina Klint, a risk management leader at Marsh, whose parent company Marsh McLennan co-authored the report with Zurich Insurance Group and SK Group.
WEF head Klaus Schwab (L) is welcomed by Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) at the start of their meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on April 16, 2018. (NAOHIKO HATTA/AFP via Getty)
SPACE RACE
The most immediate consequence of increased space activity is a higher risk of collision between near-Earth infrastructure and space objects, which could affect the orbits upon which key systems on Earth rely, damage valuable space equipment, or spark international tensions in a realm with few governance structures.
Growing militarization of space also risks an escalation of geopolitical tensions, particularly as space powers fail to collaborate on new rules to govern the realm, the report concludes.
CLIMATE THREATS
The environment remains the biggest long-term worry for all who responded to the survey.
The planet’s health over the next decade is the dominant concern, according to survey respondents, who cited failure to act on climate change, extreme weather, and loss of biodiversity as the top three risks.
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton (R) speaks to the audience next to the World Economic Forum founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab on the second day of the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 27, 2011. (JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images)
WORLD BORDERS/DIPLOMACY
The report expresses the concern lingering effects of the coronavirus pandemic, increased economic protectionism and new labour market dynamics are inhibiting migrants migrants seeking to change countries for economic refuge.
Decreasing opportunities for orderly migration and the spillover effect on remittances risk forgoing a potential pathway to restoring livelihoods, maintaining political stability, and closing income and labour gaps, the report laments.
The WEF has previously floated its answers to a world of fear by promoting varying degrees of increased societal control under the guise of the self-described Great Reset, as Breitbart News reported .
The organization still calls for immediate action in 2022 to stave off all the above threats.
“Global leaders must come together and adopt a coordinated multi-stakeholder approach to tackle unrelenting global challenges and build resilience ahead of the next crisis,” Saadia Zahidi, WEF managing director, said.
AP contributed to this report.
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