Something about the apparently random street murder of Silicon Valley tech executive Bob Lee seems to have overturned a crawly rock in San Francisco's political scene, suggesting a brewing power struggle on the horizon.
On the one hand, we have a very vocally angry Silicon Valley tech community speaking out about the out-of-control crime situation in the city with the very valued and talented Lee's untimely death from some night creature who crawled out from some sewer or encampment and stabbed him to death, quite possibly in a drug-addled haze. That's expected if you live in a place full of bums and criminals, but Lee didn't live in a place full of bums and criminals. He had actually fled the city for Florida based on its engulfing crime, and came back only for a brief business trip.
On the other hand, we have a soggy, entrenched political establishment seeking to assure that there's really no crime problem at all. This is evident enough in the "crime is down" coverage seen in the political establishment's house organ, the San Francisco Chronicle, and in the surreal statements of the city hall power establishment, which is rooted in special interests, particularly the most powerful one, the homeless industrial complex. I wrote about that here. San Francisco currently spends about as much on homeless "services," as it actually does on police, and by some studies such as the one cited below, actually more.
Not surprisingly, as per Thomas Sowell's observation, you can have all the poverty you want to pay for, and San Francisco pays a lot.
The Hoover Institution's Lee Ohanian has noted:
Spending $1.1 billion on homelessness is just the latest installment in San Francisco’s constant failure to sensibly and humanely deal with an issue that it chronically misdiagnoses and mismanages about as much as is humanly possible. Since fiscal year 2016–17, San Francisco has spent over $2.8 billion on homelessness, and the city’s politicians remain seemingly baffled, year after year, as the number of homeless in the city skyrocket, as opioid overdoses kill more than COVID-19, and as the city has become nearly the most dangerous in the country. https://www.hoover.org/research/why-san-francisco-nearly-most-crime-ridden-city-us.
Since 2016, the number of homeless in San Francisco has increased from 12,249 to 19,086, which comes out to about $57,000 in spending per homeless person per year. With a total population of about 860,000, roughly 2.2 percent of San Francisco residents are homeless, which is over 12 times the national average. There is little doubt that as San Francisco spends more, homelessness and its impact on the city worsens.
Do the homeless get that $57,000 being spent on them? Of course not. The princelings of the NGO establishments got that money -- for themselves. That's what's made them politically powerful, enough to call the shots at city hall.
Meanwhile, the tech barons keep the city afloat through their taxes paid which in turn pays for the city's homeless services -- which fuels the homelessness. The taxes they pay are the highest in the nation, (which naturally, the Chronicle claims don't matter to the tech companies, but is unlikely to be true). We also know that they're not happy now that the crime that coincides with the growth of the homeless-industrial complex has spiraled into their tech talent base. It's not just Lee's murder, though that's not small. It's that ordinary tech workers don't want to return to the offices. The tech firms have leases in those buildings and need to utilize that paid-for space. The workers don't want to return and many have fled to friendlier, less crime-infested climes in Texas, Washington state, and Florida. That's leaving San Francisco with a lot of empty office space -- about a 30% vacancy rate -- which is one of the country's highest -- and a 30% drop in tax revenues, given that the city finances itself by a huge margin through property taxes.
The collision of political interests happened when one of the city's criminals preyed on tech royalty Bob Lee.
Then we started seeing posts like this, from tech-baron-of-tech-barons, Elon Musk:
And this not-so-disguised shot at the San Francisco Chronicle with all its bogus claims about crime being down based on misread statistics:
And this simple brutal one:
Those sound like shots across the bow.
And of course, Musk is a bugbear to the left, but he's the biggest bear in the tech establishment
Over at city hall, the political establishment is knee-deep in the NGOs and depends on them to mainstain their political power. But they also depend on the tech barons for money to pay the NGOs.
The tech barons are mad and based on Musk's tweets, now seem to be looking to get rid of them. They're on the warpath. They were the moneybags behind the ouster of far-left district attorney Chesa Boudin last year. Now based on this string of events, they may be getting ready to storm the deep-blue fortress. Lee's death may have been the starting point, and Musk's recent tweets may be the accelerator.
Image: Wikipedia // public domain
A Homeless Village Is Growing on Apple’s Silicon Valley Property
LUCAS NOLAN
According to recent reports, a growing homeless encampment has been set up on dozens of acres of undeveloped land in the heart of Silicon Valley owned by tech giant Apple.
VICE News reports that despite Apple committing billions of dollars to fix California’s housing crisis, an encampment of homeless people living in RVs, shacks, and tents has taken over dozens of acres of undeveloped land owned by Apple in the center of Silicon Valley.
Between 30 to 100 homeless people have reportedly set up camp on the property owned by Apple in North San Jose. The area covers about 55 acres according to the local CBS affiliate KPIX. Some current residents of the site say that they feel they can be left alone there, despite the area’s proximity to PayPal’s corporate headquarters and other office buildings.
Before the start of the coronavirus pandemic, around 6,000 homeless people lived in San Jose with fewer than 1,000 beds available to them. It’s common for homeless people living outdoors and in vehicles across the Bay Area to be moved from place to place by security and police, those staying on the Apple property have largely been left alone according to Renee Corona who has lived in an RV on the property for nearly two years.
Corona, who receives disability payments but cannot afford to live in San Francisco where she was raised, stated: “This is an area where you’re secluded from the city. I don’t think a lot of people knew about this.” She added: “I’m grateful that they don’t kick us out. I just want to say thank you. They don’t bother us.”
San Jose City Council member David Cohen, whose district includes the property, told VICE News that his office is trying to schedule a meeting with Apple to discuss the site. “We’re setting up a meeting so that I can begin to talk to them about what we might be able to do to help the people who are living there, and to figure out some plan for offering services,” Cohen said.
Read more at VICE News 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
THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO IMPORTED INDIANS BE THE BOATLOADS FOR DECADES!
Report: Facebook to Cut Thousands of Jobs in Latest Corporate Downsizing
Reuters
February 22, 2023
(Reuters)—Facebook-parent Meta Platforms Inc is planning a fresh round of job cuts in a reorganization and downsizing effort that could affect thousands of workers, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.
The company did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Last year, the social media giant said it will let go of 13% of its workforce, or more than 11,000 employees, as it grappled with soaring costs and a weak advertising market.
Meta plans to push some leaders into lower-level roles without direct reports, flattening the layers of management between top boss Mark Zuckerberg and the company's interns, the Washington Post reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.
(Reporting by Eva Mathews in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)
Analysis conducted last year reveal that 71 percent of tech workers in Silicon Valley are foreign-born, while the tech industry in the San Francisco, Oakland, and Hayward area is made up of 50 percent foreign-born tech workers.
Despite his Wall Street, big business, Big Tech, and billionaire donations, Biden has attempted to portray himself as a small-town fighter from Scranton, Pennsylvania
By failures of border security, a lack of the enforcement of our immigration laws from within the interior of the United States and huge numbers of visas for high tech workers, the lives and livelihoods of Americans and their children, are being stolen by America’s corrupt political elite who are doing the bidding of those who provide them with huge “Campaign Contributions” (Orwellian euphemism for bribes) pursue legislation that is diametrically opposed to the best interests of America and Americans.
MICHAEL CUTLER
Zuckerberg’s FWD.us Claims No Amnesty Ensures Midterm Defeat for Democrats
NEIL MUNRO
The Facebook-funded FWD.us investor advocacy group is touting the claim that Democrat turnout will drop in 2022 if the party cannot pass an amnesty through Congress.
But that claim is toothless, in large part because recent polls show that many Americans of Latino ancestry are increasingly voting for the GOP, precisely because GOP leaders oppose the amnesty-amplified wave of cheap labor into their communities.
The claim is being made by pro-migration groups, including the leaders of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) which denounced the Senate’s parliamentarian’s decision to exclude the parole amnesty for 6.5 million illegals from the draft Build Back Better spending plan.
NDLON declared Thursday night:
Democrats’ excuses for their failure, for their incompetence, and for their insincerity will be the ammunition used by xenophobes in the Republican Party to retake control of the federal government in upcoming elections. Inaction on immigration legalization risks further propelling Trumpism in every possible way … No more excuses. Where there is a will, there is a way.
The NDLON group represents illegal migrants, most of whom work for very low wages, and none of whom can vote in U.S. elections.
Rep. Lou Correa (D-Calif.) is making the same claim, according to Bloomberg, which reported that he “warned that Democrats would face wrath from voters in the 2022 elections if they don’t secure a citizenship path”
But the NDLON claim is being echoed by the politically powerful investor class, who use imported workers, consumers, and renters to spike the value of their Wall Street investments.
Todd Schulte is the president of the FWD.us advocacy group for investors, which gets about $30 million a year from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to push for more migration. On Thursday night, he tweeted:
Schulte’s deputy also pushed a hard line:
Unsurprisingly, FWD.us has a hidden agenda in the amnesty debate.
The establishment media extensively cover the proposed parole amnesty for 6.5 million illegal migrants. But the media largely ignores two other proposed changes to immigration laws that would deliver huge benefits to West Coast investors who created the FWD.us advocacy group in 2013.
For example, the BBB legislation would allow the White House to provide green cards to millions of favored migrants, including perhaps three million “chain migrants” selected by recent immigrants. This open-doors policy would provide investors with millions of new profit-generating consumers, renters, and workers.
The BBB legislation would also allow President Joe Biden’s pro-migration deputies to sell green cards to at least one million migrants who have taken many of the Fortune 500 jobs sought by skilled U.S. college graduates. This change would allow Fortune 500 companies to hire many more foreign graduates with dangled offers of fast-track green cards. These workers are usually imported via the visa worker programs, such as the H-1B and Optional Practical Training program.
But those two benefits for the Fortune 500 investors may be dropped if the Democrat senators cannot also get their amnesty for illegal migrants.
On Friday, an advocacy group for corporate-funded immigration lawyers urged Congress to keep pushing the green card giveaway, even after the amnesty was nixed:
“The corporate guys are riding on perceived sympathy for the illegal alien population in order to get their immigration giveaways,” said Robert Law, the director of regulatory affairs and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies. He continued:
The Hispanic population knows immigration is a pocketbook issue for them as well, and mass illegal immigration — plus legal immigration — hurts the economic opportunities of Hispanic Americans or the black community, or any people who typically are competing at the lower end of the economic spectrum.
The Senate’s debate referee has not issued any judgments on the two green card proposals.
Zuckerberg’s FWD.us network of coastal investors stands to gain from more cheap labor, government-aided consumers, and urban renters. The network has funded many astroturf campaigns, urged Democrats to not talk about the economic impact of migration, and manipulated coverage by the TV networks and the print media.
FWD.us’also spotlights many family dramas amid the inflow of border migrants. This focus helps keep reporters from recognizing the huge pocketbook impact of the establishment’s economic policy of mass migration. The resulting family-drama coverage also keeps many young progressives from noticing that the extraction migration policy drives up their rents and cuts their salaries.
The breadth of investors who founded and funded FWD.us was hidden from casual visitors to the group’s website sometime in the last few months. But copies exist at other sites.
Biden’s Chief of Staff Worked on Behalf of Big Tech for Endless H-1B Visas
JOHN BINDER
Democrat Joe Biden has chosen Ronald Klain to be his chief of staff should he enter the White House in January. Klain worked on behalf of Silicon Valley executives and their interests, which include providing tech corporations with an endless supply of H-1B foreign visa workers and more free trade.
Klain, who was made Biden’s incoming chief of staff this week, served on the executive council of TechNet — a firm that promotes the interests of Silicon Valley’s tech corporations in Washington, D.C. Klain served on the council alongside executives from the Oracle Corporation, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Google, Visa, Apple, and Microsoft.
TechNet, most recently, joined a lawsuit against President Trump’s reforms to the H-1B visa program that sought to prioritize unemployed Americans for jobs rather than allowing businesses to continue importing foreign workers.
TechNet is one of the groups that has filed an amicus brief to oppose the new regulations on H-1B visas. https://t.co/ofY4GJ2sVR
— U.S. Tech Workers (@USTechWorkers) November 12, 2020
Trump’s seeking to force businesses to hire Americans over importing foreign visa workers is an affront to Silicon Valley’s tech corporations, those represented by TechNet, who advocate for an endless flow of H-1B foreign visa workers.
There are about 650,000 H-1B visa workers in the U.S. at any given moment. Americans are often laid off and forced to train their foreign replacements, as highlighted by Breitbart News. More than 85,000 Americans annually potentially lose their jobs to foreign labor through the H-1B visa program.
Analysis conducted in 2018 discovered that 71 percent of tech workers in Silicon Valley, California, are foreign-born, while the tech industry in the San Francisco, Oakland, and Hayward area is made up of 50 percent foreign-born tech workers. Up to 99 percent of H-1B visa workers imported by the top eight outsourcing firms are from India.
TechNet’s listed immigration goals include allowing corporations to dictate the annual level of legal immigration to the United States and the elimination of per-country caps that would effectively let India and China monopolize the U.S. green card system.
The group’s goals on trade are in direct opposition to President Trump’s economic nationalist agenda that has imposed tariffs on foreign imports from China, Canada, Europe, and other parts of the globe.
TechNet’s trade goals include reducing “tariff and non-tariff barriers to information, communications, and advanced energy technology products, services, and investments” as well as “protections for the free flow of data across borders…”
While Biden has vowed to flood the U.S. labor market with more foreign workers to compete against Americans for jobs, he has shied away from questions on whether he will eliminate tariffs on foreign imports that were imposed by Trump. Such elimination of tariffs would be a boon to multinational corporations that offshore their production and jobs overseas only to import their products back into the U.S. market, often with no penalties for doing so.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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