Tag Archives: Labor

Who Is Writing The Democrat Party Platform?

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Bernie Sanders is not the Democrat presidential candidate. He might have been, but the Democrat political establishment has blocked his nomination twice with backroom deals. However, the proposed party platform seems to have a lot of his ideas included. The Democrats blocked his nomination because they felt that his ideas were too far out of the mainstream for him to be elected, so now they are sneaking his ideas into a platform that very few people will actually read. Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about that platform.

The article reports:

The proposed Democrat platform would expand asylum for migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, freeing them into the interior of the nation while they await their hearings. Gallup research from 2018 finds that nearly 160 million migrants around the world would move to the U.S. if given the opportunity — five million of which are located in Central America.

Likewise, the plan ends construction of the border wall, halts deportations for illegal aliens, ends all travel bans on national security-risk nations, China, Europe, Brazil, and Iran, ends agreements between the U.S. and Central America to reduce illegal immigration, and ends most federal detention of illegal aliens.

The plan also calls for:

    • Restarting DACA for young illegal aliens
    • Restraining DAPA for the illegal parents of DACA illegal aliens
    • Rescinding Trump’s “national emergency” at the border
    • Increasing refugee resettlement
    • Gives Obamacare to DACA illegal aliens
    • Forces Americans to subsidize welfare-dependent legal immigration
    • Expands the scandal-plagued U visa program
    • Restarts employment-based green card system

The massive expansion of illegal and legal immigration — in addition to the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens and more than 2.5 million legal immigrants and foreign workers added to the U.S. population every year — would come as more than 35 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed.

This is not a recipe for American success. This is a recipe for creating a permanent underclass of people who will be forever dependent on the government and eventually bankrupt the country (see Cloward-Piven Strategy). Every illegal alien that enters the country depresses the wages of Americans in low-skilled jobs. A country needs to have control of its borders in order to protect the rights and futures of those who live there.

Who is writing the Democratic Party platform, and what is their goal?

Experts Amazed–Again

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CNBC is reporting the following today:

Employment stunningly rose by 2.5 million in May and the jobless rate declined to 13.3%, according to data Friday from the Labor Department that was far better than economists had been expecting and indicated that an economic turnaround could be close at hand.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been expecting payrolls to drop by 8.33 million and the unemployment rate to rise to 19.5% from April’s 14.7%. If Wall Street expectations had been accurate, it would have been the worst figure since the Great Depression.

As it turned out, May’s numbers showed the U.S. may well be on the road to recovery after its fastest plunge in history.

Experts are shocked. The mainstream media is disappointed. The Democrats are disheartened.

The workforce participation rate for May was 60.8. In April, it was 60.2. In March, it was 62.7, and in February it was 63.4. You can see the impact of the shutdown in that rate, and you can also see the hope for the future in that rate.

The current riots will not help anyone. However, oddly enough, where people choose to rebuild when the riots end, there will be jobs. Hopefully those jobs will go to the people in the neighborhood (who generally are not responsible for the rioting and looting). We will recover from the shutdown and the riots. Hopefully it will happen more quickly than the experts seem willing to believe.

I Totally Don’t Understand This

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Yesterday Breitbart News reported a puzzling comment by House Majority Whip James Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat. Representative Clyburn was being interviewed on Fox Business Network by Neil Cavuto. The article includes part of the transcript of that interview.

The article reports:

NEIL CAVUTO: As you’ve been seeing with Michael Bloomberg, he’s been jumping in the polls on the heels of his very expensive, pricey ad buys if you include $125 million slated for Super Tuesday. Could you, would you back him?

REP. JAMES CLYBURN: I’m going to back whoever our nominee is — Absolutely.

CAVUTO: Even with the things he’s said about African-Americans? Does that bother you?

REP. CLYBURN: Not as much as what Trump has said about African-Americans. Anytime that I go to the polls, I’m considering positives and negatives on all candidates and I try to go with the one whose positives outweigh the negatives.

CAVUTO: Let’s leave the words aside, whether you like his style or not, tweets or not, or comments or not, he’s delivered the goods for a lot of African-Americans. Does he not with record-low unemployment levels?… You don’t think that’s something that’s constructive?

REP. CLYBURN: No, because it’s not true. I’m saying that the African American unemployment is not the lowest it’s ever been unless you count slavery… We were fully employed during slavery. So, it all depends how you measure this up.

This is how blind hatred affects judgement.

On February 7, 2020, CNS News reported:

Trump loves to boast and exaggerate, so it’s easy to throw out little “Pinocchio” ratings when Trump claims we have the lowest black unemployment rate in American history, since it’s only been measured since 1972. But it’s literally the lowest ever measured in American history. What the fact-checkers are doing is littering achievements with asterisks, trying to distract from the undeniable fact that unemployment is at record lows for blacks, Hispanics, women, the disabled and undoubtedly other groups Democrats claim to champion.

This is the link to the Bureau of Labor Statistics website page that has all of the unemployment statistics. You can explore that page for pure numbers. We should all celebrate the fact that the Trump economy has been good to all Americans of all backgrounds.

Ignoring The Economic Implications

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Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about some recent comments by Senator Elizabeth Warren about immigration. Senator Warren is either unaware of the impact of unskilled immigrant workers on American workers’ wages or she is simply ignoring the facts.

The article reports her comments:

We need a pathway to citizenship for the people who are here and here to stay. They are our neighbors; they are our brothers and sisters. They are here. We need a path — not just for DREAMers — but also a path for grandmas, and for little kids, and for people who came here to work on farms, and for students who overstayed their visas. We need a path that is fair and achievable. Bring people out of the shadows. It is good for all workers, and we need to get them into our unions. [Emphasis added]

The article notes:

Similarly, Warren is promising to expand legal immigration levels, which are already at historically record-high rates. About 1.2 million mostly low-skilled legal immigrants are admitted every year, not including the hundreds of thousands who arrive on temporary visas to compete against Americans for jobs.

…Research by analyst Steven Camarotta has found that every one percent increase in the immigrant portion of American workers’ occupations reduces their weekly wages by about 0.5 percent. This means the average native-born American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by perhaps 8.5 percent because of current legal immigration levels.

While Warren seeks to increase foreign competition against American workers in the labor market, President Donald Trump has pursued policy initiatives to decrease competition, increasing U.S. wages and giving American workers leverage over businesses.

I would like to see people who came here illegally ‘come out of the shadows.’ They need to have some sort of way that they can work to support themselves. However, I don’t want people who came here illegally to be put ahead of people who are going through the legal process to become citizens. That is simply unfair. I am willing to let people who come here illegally have access to legal employment, but I think people who came here illegally should be put in line to become citizens–at the end of the current line. Breaking the law should not result in special privileges.

The Trump Economy Is Doing Very Well

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CNBC posted an article yesterday about the economy under President Trump.

The article reports:

The total number of workers hired rose to a new high in April, according to Labor Department data released Monday. But despite this, the amount of available jobs still vastly outnumbers unemployed workers.

Hirings increased to 5.9 million for the month, a gain of 240,000 from March, the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) indicated. The hiring rate rose to 3.9%, an increase of one-tenth of a percentage point. The total hirings was the most recorded in the data series’ history going back to December 2000.

On the openings front, the gap between vacancies and available workers continued to be huge.

The article explains:

“In sum, the labor market remains strong and poised for continued solid job growth,” Ward McCarthy, chief financial U.S. economist at Jefferies, said in a note. “Despite the 21.4 [million] private sector jobs that have been generated to-date this cycle, the private business sector continues to generate a very strong demand for labor that is evidenced by the very large number of job openings that business wants to fill. The biggest threat to job growth is available supply, not demand for labor.”

Separations increased by 70,000 to 5.58 million, a rate of 3.7%, which was unchanged from March.

The JOLTS data lags other employment indicators by a month but is nonetheless watched closely by the White House and the Federal Reserve as an indicator of labor market slack. A large number of available workers compared with job openings would indicate a tight market in which wages should be rising.

The current economy has created wage increases and job opportunities for the middle class, which languished under President Obama. Unemployment among minorities is lower than it has ever been and wages are increasing for minorities. This is a success story the media is working very hard to ignore.

A Wall For Thee But Not For Me

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Hot Air posted an article yesterday about some recent comments by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. It seems that walls work in other places, but they don’t work in America when President Trump wants them.

The article reports:

Baier (Bret Baier of Fox News)pressed on this point, asking Hoyer about border barriers that have already been built: “Would you remove those existing barriers because you say they don’t work?”

“No, no,” Hoyer replied.

“So they work there?” Baier asked. Hoyer rambled for a bit about people living along the Rio Grande and eventually, Baier asked him again, “So they work some places.”

“Obviously they work some places,” Hoyer said as if it hadn’t taken three minutes of concerted effort to get him to admit the obvious.

Not only do they work in some places, America has helped finance them in some places.

Some places in the world where border walls are used for security:

India and Pakistan

Morocco and Algeria

Israel and the West Bank

Cyprus

Northern Ireland

Saudi Arabia and Yemen

Saudi Arabia and Iraq

Turkey and Syria

Kenya and Somalia

The list is courtesy of The Washington Examiner.

So even some Democrats know that walls work, and the amount of money requested to build a wall is a totally insignificant part of the budget, so what is this about? Do not be fooled. The establishment Republicans do not want the wall any more than the Democrats do. To the Democrats, open borders represent future voters. To the Republicans, open borders represent cheap labor for their corporate sponsors who belong to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. There is also the added aspect of the Washington establishment finally getting a victory over President Trump. The only way Americans are going to ever have a voice in Washington is if they clear out ALL of the establishment politicians in both parties. Term limits might be a really good place to start.

Some Economic Numbers

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The Independent Journal Review is reporting today that initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 216,000 for the week ended Dec. 22. The article states that initial claims have now fallen in three of the last four weeks and are just above the 49-year low of 202,000 reached in the week ended Sept. 15.

The article reports:

After several years of near-steady falls, claims trended higher between mid-September and mid-December, prompting concern the U.S. economy was losing a step.

It remains unclear how much of that increase was related to the difficulty government statisticians have in adjusting the claims data for seasonal swings. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims increasing to 217,000 in the latest week.

The latest claims data “signals improvement in the labor market relative to a few weeks ago, but softening in conditions relative to a few months ago,” said Daniel Silver, an economist at JPMorgan.

The four-week moving average of initial claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends as it irons out week-to-week volatility, fell 4,750 to 218,000 last week.

The workforce participation rate is steady at slightly less than 63 percent in recent years. It will be interesting to see if it begins to climb in the coming months.

The Pot Calling The Kettle Black

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The problem with class envy is that it gets old and boring after a while. All of us would like to make more money, but that doesn’t mean we have to resent the people that do. If someone makes their money honestly, we should celebrate their success–not try to take it away from them.

Well, not everyone sees it that way. The Washington Free Beacon posted an article today about AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. Mr. Trumka has been criticizing CEO pay, stating, “Runaway CEO pay isn’t just bad for our economy, it’s bad for the morale of working families, too. All workers, from the executive suite down to the shop floor, contribute to making a company successful. But these corporations are buying into the myth that the success of a corporation is the result of its CEO alone.”  He is absolutely entitled to his opinion, but do his words sound a little different when you realize that he earns more than eight times what the average American worker earns.

The article reports:

According to the Center for Union Facts, Trumka brought home a gross salary of $264,827 in 2010, plus another $18,513 in additional compensation, to represent his union. The union leader has earned well over $200,000 every year since he was promoted to Secretary Treasurer in 2003.

In 2011, Trumka earned $293,750.

Unions have been major contributors to democrat political campaigns. In the 2010 mid-term elections, the AFL-CIO gave almost a million dollars, 93 percent of those donations going to Democratic candidates.

Mr. Trumka’s statement might carry more weight if he practiced what he preaches.

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