Tag Archives: Chamber of Commerce

Changing Something That Was Not Being Used For Its Original Purpose

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On Tuesday, The American Thinker posted an article about the Executive Order by President Trump to impose a $100,000 annual fee on H-1B visas. This is a step toward protecting American workers. Originally the H-1B visa was intended to help U.S. companies fill rare, high-skilled roles when American expertise was unavailable. Instead, it has become a way for corporations to import cheap labor rather than pay |Americans fair wages.

The article reports:

President Donald Trump’s two recent executive orders, one imposing a $100,000 annual fee on H-1B visas and the other launching the “Gold Card” fast-track residency program, represent the most significant immigration reforms in decades.

They flip the incentive structure that has for years favored multinational corporations and global outsourcing firms over American workers, while also tackling long-ignored national security risks.

As a policy, open borders is one area where Democrats and many Republicans agree. Democrats want new voters, while the Chamber of Commerce and Wall Street Journal Republicans want cheap labor. President George W. Bush, backed by Senator John McCain, in 2007, pushed for “comprehensive immigration reform,” a euphemism for amnesty, for millions of illegal aliens, which fortunately failed a US Senate vote.

Enter President Trump, the only president in my lifetime who has recognized that America has a sovereign border. Even President Reagan failed to repair our dysfunctional immigration system. He signed an amnesty bill into law, which NPR heralded as “a Reagan legacy,” and it unsurprisingly turned California from a red to a blue state. No wonder NPR loved it.

The Chamber of Commerce is no longer a friend of the American worker. They support corporate profit margins over American workers. They were also supporters of the Common Core curriculum that has helped lower the test scores of American students.

The article notes:

This approach addresses two issues simultaneously. First, it monetizes efficiency by having applicants pay for expedited processing instead of taxpayers funding an overcrowded immigration system. Second, it makes sure that those who skip ahead are likely to be job creators and investors, not liabilities. As CBS News reported, Trump explained: “We’re going to have great people coming in, and they’re going to be paying.”

Such programs are common. Portugal offers a Golden Visa program that requires a five-year investment in monetary assets for residency, which is less direct and efficient compared to Trump’s proposal.

For conservatives cautious about unrestricted immigration, this presents a strong bargain: America gains capital instead of bearing costs.

Unsurprisingly, Big Tech is unhappy. Venture capitalists argue that the $100,000 H-1B fee could hurt America’s competitiveness, but this overlooks how the current system has suppressed domestic innovation by discouraging Americans from pursuing STEM careers. Genuine innovation thrives when American students and workers believe they can compete fairly.

Foreign governments have also expressed concern, especially India, which depends heavily on exporting workers to the U.S.

Not everyone in America wants to ‘put America first.’

An Obvious Conflict Of Interest

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Senator Mitch McConnell does not like tariffs. He does not like them on China where they are levied in an attempt to level the playing field on trade, and he does not like them on Mexico where they are being levied in an attempt to stop the flow of illegals and drugs over our southern border.

Unfortunately, the meme below is not a joke:

An article posted at Breitbart today explains the problem. Senator McConnell is married to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.

In the article, Peter Schweizer explains why that is important:

Schweizer highlighted Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who is married to McConnell, as illustrative of what he described as widespread political conflicts of interest between sitting American officials and foreign governments.

“The Chao family are deeply embedded commercially and financially with the Chinese government,” explained McConnell. “The Chinese government essentially set them up in the shipping business. Their ships — these are large cargo ships that transport a large amount of goods around the Pacific.”

Schweizer added, “The Chinese government is financing the building of these ships for the Chao family business. They provide crews for these chips, and they provide contracts to ship steel and other products around the Pacific.”

The Foremost Group is a shipping business founded by James Chao, Elaine Chao’s father. The Chao family business primarily revolves around China, necessitating “deep ties to the economic and political elite in China,” according to a Sunday-published New York Times report.

“[The Chao family’s shipping business] started out in the early 1990s with just a couple of vessels, a couple of large cargo ships,” said Schweizer. “They now have, by some estimates, 35 or 36, many of those built by the Chinese government. The estimates are that hundreds of millions of dollars in financing is done by the Chinese to build these ships, and that they give them preferential treatment.”

Schweizer explained, “Business in China is done with a political purpose. The China State Shipbuilding Corporation is controlled by the government, by the Communist Party, and they do business deals with people in the West with the expectation that they will get things in return.”

That is called a conflict of interest. So what is Senator McConnell’s problem with the Mexican tariffs? Many Republicans have aligned themselves with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce which supports our porous southern border as a source of cheap labor. There has never been a border wall because Republican business men who contribute to political campaigns want cheap labor and Democrats want future voters.

Regulations Have Consequences

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The Washington Free Beacon posted an article today about the impact of regulations on business franchises put in place during the Obama administration.

The article reports:

An industry study found that the Obama administration’s crackdown on franchising has cut hundreds of thousands of job openings and dealt a $33.3 billion blow to the economy each year dating back to 2015.

A report put out by the International Franchise Association and a Chamber of Commerce found that the Obama administration provoked an “existential threat” to the franchise model in which small business owners operate under the umbrella of a national corporate brand. The Obama administration departed from decades of precedent when the National Labor Relations Board held that parent companies could be held liable for labor violations committed by franchisees. The report estimated that the new joint employer standard set curtailed expansion in the industry, leading to between 142,000 and 376,000 lost job opportunities—a 2.55 to 5 percent reduction in the workforce.

“All of this economic cost was predictable and avoidable,” IFA spokesman Matthew Haller said. “Franchise owners have incurred significant losses.”

The article details the Trump administration’s response to the study:

The Trump NLRB has turned to rulemaking to solidify the previous joint employer standard, which only held parent companies liable if they were directly involved in a violation. A previous decision overturning the Obama agency ruling was dismissed after an ethics official said Trump appointee William Emanuel should have recused himself because his old law firm handled joint employer cases. Bird and Haller said the effects of the regulation would not immediately reverse the damage caused by four years of uncertainty, but would be a first step to helping the industry begin creating new job opportunities and expand existing hiring.

“There is the opportunity to this [Trump NLRB] regulation to remove much of that source of fear and to remove the uncertainty—that is the minimum first step to recovering and removing these costs,” Bird said.

The report featured 77 one-hour interviews with lawyers, franchisees, and franchisors of all different sizes across the country. IFA has submitted the report to the NLRB as part of the public comment period for the rule proposal. The agency will begin reviewing these comments and all replies by Feb. 11.

Hopefully the ruling make during the Obama administration can be overturned and more people can go back to starting franchise businesses.

 

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.

There Are Very Few People Who Actually Want To Clean Up Washington

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Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about the uniparty that current controls Washington, D.C. The uniparty is made up of the professional republicans and the professional democrats. Their common enemy is Donald Trump.

The article reports:

The same UniParty dynamic is visible in the way the FBI/DOJ and aggregate intelligence community were weaponized against Donald Trump – with Democrats and Republicans participating in the unlawful processes.   Now, in the downstream consequence phase, we see a UniParty defense approach to block Trump from revealing what happened.

I’m not sure people fully completely understand this dynamic within “spygate”.  It was not a targeting operation by democrats; republicans were just as complicit. The ongoing goal to eliminate candidate and president Trump is *not* partisan.

Which brings me to the current state of the advisers around the executive.  Remember, there are trillions at stake here – and the downstream benefactors are both Republicans and Democrats who make up the UniParty.

Within the UniParty dynamic, in order to retain full financial benefit, the political class need to align with Wall Street priorities.  That alignment means the UniParty needs to eliminate Main Street priorities that are adverse to their interests.

The article concludes:

Border controls and immigration enforcement are adverse interests to the UniParty. Additional cross party alignment to benefit Wall Street surrounds: •budgets and massive government spending; •government controlled healthcare retention; •government controlled education (common core); •and most importantly the removal of any national economic and trade policy that would threaten the structure of the multinationals.

On all of these issues the Democrats and Republicans have identical outlooks, common interests and mirrored legislative priorities. It is not coincidental that US Chamber of Commerce President Tom Dohonue also outlined these issues as primary priorities for his massive lobbyist spending.

There are trillions of dollars at stake; and we must never discount how far the Big Club participants will go to ensure the White House counselors are shaping their advice toward those objectives.

There are no MAGA lobbying groups in Washington DC advocating for policies that benefit economic nationalism. On this objective President Donald Trump stands alone.

We don’t need a third party in Washington DC, we actually need a second one.

This is a pretty good explanation as to why the promises that Republican Congressmen running for office made were broken–as long as President Obama was in power, they were safe promises–he was not likely to sign any law they passed that differed from Democrat ideas. When President Trump was elected, the Republicans had to put up or shut up. They chose to shut up in order to maintain their big donors and people they are beholden to other than the American voters. With a  few exceptions, we haven’t had Republican leaders in Congress since Newt Gingrich, and the establishment did a pretty good job of marginalizing him. If the Republican party continues on its current path, it will no longer exist in five years.

Misplacing The Blame

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For years the Republicans told us that if they controlled the House of Representatives and the Senate, they would repeal ObamaCare, defund Planned Parenthood, and build a border wall. We gave them the House and the Senate. Then they said they couldn’t do what they said because they didn’t have the Presidency. So we gave them the Presidency. We were so naive. When they knew their votes on these matters would not be vetoed, they broke the promises they made to the voters and voted against repealing, defunding, and building.

On Thursday Breitbart posted an article about some recent comments by Tucker Carlson.

The article reports:

Fox News host Tucker Carlson said in an interview Thursday that President Donald Trump has succeeded as a conversation starter but has failed to keep his most important campaign promises.

“His chief promises were that he would build the wall, de-fund Planned Parenthood, and repeal Obamacare, and he hasn’t done any of those things,” Carlson told Urs Gehriger of the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche.

“I’ve come to believe that Trump’s role is not as a conventional president who promises to get certain things achieved to the Congress and then does,” said Carlson, whose new book Ship of Fools is a New York Times bestseller.

I like Tucker Carlson. I enjoy his TV show, but I think he is totally wrong on this. Republicans in Congress also made these promises. They had the votes to keep all of these promises, pass the laws needed, and send the bills to President Trump for his signature. I don’t think the problem is President Trump. I think the problem is Republicans in Congress that have reneged on their promises because of the groups that are funding their campaigns. Opensecrets.org is the website that tracks campaign donations. If you want to know why we don’t have a border wall, look at the expenditures of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. They are a group that likes the cheap labor of a porous border. The contribute heavily to Republican lawmakers. That is one reason there is no border wall. There won’t be as long as the Congressmen who receive money from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are in office. If you want to know why Planned Parenthood is still getting government money, look at the campaign donations they make. How much money is the healthcare lobby pouring into Congress? The problem is not President Trump.

Somehow The Logic Of This Escapes Me

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The Daily Caller is reporting today:

Mexican presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) called for mass immigration to the United States during a speech Tuesday declaring it a “human right” for all North Americans.

“And soon, very soon — after the victory of our movement — we will defend all the migrants in the American continent and all the migrants in the world,” Obrador said, adding that immigrants “must leave their towns and find a life in the United States.”

He then declared it as “a human right we will defend,” eluniversal.com reports.

While the election is not until July 1, Obrador is by far the frontrunner.

So if someone were to move into his house without his permission, he would support their right to do that?

The article further reports:

Fox’s Tucker Carlson noted Thursday that Obrador has previously proposed granting amnesty to Mexican drug cartels. “America is now Mexico’s social safety net, and that’s a very good deal for the Mexican ruling class,” Carlson added.

We cannot be Mexico’s social safety net–we are not doing a very good job of being our own social safety net.

So what is behind the idea of sending everyone to America for free stuff? It’s called the Cloward-Piven Strategy. An article in The Federalist Papers posted on July 5, 2014, explains the strategy:

In 1966  Richard Cloward and Francis Fox Piven, Columbia university professors introduced a political strategy in in an article entitled ‘The Weight Of The Poor: A Strategy To End Poverty’.

The article outlined a strategy to overload the system and create so much poverty that the United States would become a social-welfare state with economic and political power concentrated at the top with far fewer freedoms than we enjoy today/

That is part of what is going on. The rest has to do with party politics–the Democrats see illegal immigrants as future Democrat voters. The Republicans are bought and paid for by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where big businesses support the influx of cheap labor. The average American is not currently represented by the people in Congress, and if unbridled illegal immigration continues, we are going to lose the freedom and wealth we do have.

A Really Bad Idea

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Yesterday One America News posted an article about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce‘s suggestion that the gasoline tax be raised to pay for an infrastructure bill. No. That is a really bad idea. American’s just got a tax cut, now the Chamber of Commerce essentially wants to take that tax cut away.

The article states:

The right-leaning U.S. Chamber of Commerce says a federal gas tax of 25-cents per gallon could raise more than $370 billion over the next ten years.]

It’s been a while since the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was right-leaning–they support amnesty for illegals, common core, and other things that are definitely not right-leaning.

Consider what 25-cents a gallon would mean to the average working person. That could mean between $50 and $100 a month depending on the amount of driving they do and the mileage their car gets. The abrupt rise of gasoline prices leading up to 2008 was a small part of what caused the housing bubble to burst–people who were scraping by to pay their mortgages suddenly got hit with $100 plus a month in added fuel expenses for gas and oil and could not pay those expenses. Is the Chamber of Commerce trying to slow down the growing economy by adding a new tax? It sure seems that way.

If Congress needs money for infrastructure, they need to find a place to cut spending to pay for it.

A Difficult Balance

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Tonight I had the privilege of hearing two very knowledgeable speakers on the subject of immigration in America–Jim Robb, Vice President of Operations at Numbers USA and Ron Woodard, Director of NC Listen. It was a very informative evening, but I left with a realization that at some point in the near future, America was going to have to balance the interests of Americans with the desire to help immigrants. Right now we are not balancing those two things–our current immigration and refugee programs (or lack of them) are hurting Americans and need to be reevaluated.

One aspect of this problem is illustrated by two graphs at the non-partisan Center for Immigration Studies website:

centerforimmigrationThere is something seriously wrong with this picture.So what is going on? There are two groups who are happy with the current situation–for very different reasons. Democratic politicians want to create a permanent dependent class that will continue to elect Democrats in order to get government handouts. It was President Lyndon B. Johnson who stated as he worked to pass his expansive ‘Great Society‘ program, “”I’ll have those n—–s voting Democratic for the next 200 years.” The other group is the Chamber of Commerce. This group has put the idea of cheap labor above the welfare of Americans. Businessmen who support excessive immigration in order to pay workers less (both legal and illegal immigrants) in order to make a bigger profit are not ethical and do not have the best interests of American workers in mind. I think both the Democratic Party and the Chamber of Commerce have lost their way.

Sane immigration policy is possible. It begins with closing the borders to all but legal immigrants who have passed thorough background checks, tracking people who have overstayed their visas (a group that would include the 911 hijackers), and deporting anyone who is arrested, caught driving under the influence, or commits any illegal act. Sane immigration would also include the U.S. Government determining who immigrates to the United States–not the United Nations. Right now the United Nations totally controls the American refugee program. We need to reclaim our sovereignty and our country’s borders.

Common Core In North Carolina

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The article below was written by the Chairman of the Common Core section of the Watchdog Committee of the Coastal Carolina Taxpayers’ Association, Kim Fink:

The NC Legislative Study Committee on Common Core has recommended a repeal and replace piece of draft legislation that will be up for a vote in the short session of the General Assembly.

Obviously, this has the proponents of nationalized education digging in their heels with all sorts of dooms day scenarios that a repeal would cause.  The Big Business, Big Government and Chamber of Commerce advocates are spending allot of money on radio and TV advertising, trying to build public support to put pressure on legislators not to repeal Common Core.  Since this is an election year, money talks.  There are two sides to every issue, and the compliant, and complacent Media has made it difficult to get the opposition opinion out.  I pray that our legislators have done their own homework and will support the repeal of Common Core in NC.

Common Core is copyrighted, it cannot be altered by state or local school authorities.  The schools can Add 15% content, however, they will not be tested on that content.  Cursive writing is an example of what NC has “added” that is being used to demonstrate how “flexible” these standards are.  The combination of taxpayer-funded bribes, ( like Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind waivers), outright deception (like globally benchmarked standards that has yet to be seen, or proven) and rampant bullying by the Educrats leaving most teachers fearing retaliation for complaining, is truly alarming. 

Dr. Sandra Stotsky (member of the standards committee that wouldn’t “sign off” on them) has stated that the texts and analysis are used to guide students’ thinking toward a pre- determined outcome.   The new buzz word will be consensus, and building towards a global community. 

This is NOT the America I was educated in.

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