Tag Archives: U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Not A Surprise

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The Conservative Treehouse posted an article today about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It is a long, involved article, so I suggest you follow the link and read the entire article. The Conservative Treehouse does extensive research and reports on that research in detail, so it is very difficult to summarize their articles.

The article reports:

A fifteen year argument is finally over…. We win.  Most CTH readers probably don’t even remember the reason for the name: “The Last Refuge” upon this little corner of the internet.  However, for well over a decade we have tried to share the truth behind the financial mechanisms that run Washington DC; and the primary machine has always been a completely corrupt, deceptive and anti-American U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Against the entirety of the conservative media; and against the entirety of every organized group that ever attended CPAC; this website has attempted to educate people about the genuinely fraudulent purposes of the U.S. CoC and their President Tom Donohue.  I have written hundreds of articles over the years outlining “there are trillions at stake” and the elements of importance behind that statement.   Every single mainstream conservative voice has denied the truth; and likely most of them are probably on the CoC payroll.

The article explains the difference between an economy that enriches Wall Street and an economy that enriches Main Street. It points out the various trade deals that the Chamber of Commerce has supported enrich Wall Street at the expense of Main Street. It also notes that the economic policies of the Trump administration tend to enrich Main Street and not Wall Street (which is one reason he is hated by the Washington establishment of both parties).

The article concludes:

The U.S. stock markets’ overall value can increase with Main Street policy, and yet the investment class can simultaneously decrease in value even though the company(ies) in the stock market is/are doing better. This detachment is critical to understand because the ‘real economy’ is based on the company, the ‘paper economy’ is based on the financial investment instruments betting on the company.

Trillions can be lost in investment instruments, and yet the overall stock market -as valued by company operations/profits- can increase.

Conversely, there are now classes of companies on the U.S. stock exchange that never make a dime in profit, yet the value of the company increases. This dynamic is possible because the financial investment bets are not connected to the bottom line profit. (Examples include Tesla Motors, Amazon and a host of internet stocks like Facebook and Twitter.) It is this investment group of companies that stands to lose the most if/when the underlying system of betting on them stops or slows.

Specifically due to most recent U.S. fiscal policy, modern multinational banks, including all of the investment products therein, are more closely attached to this investment system on Wall Street. It stands to reason they are at greater risk of financial losses overall with a shift in fiscal policy.

That financial and economic risk is the basic reason behind Trump and Mnuchin putting a protective, secondary and parallel, banking system in place for Main Street.

Big multinational banks can suffer big losses from their investments, and yet the Main Street economy can continue growing, and have access to capital, uninterrupted.

Bottom Line: U.S. companies who have actual connection to a growing U.S. economy can succeed; based on the advantages of the new economic environment and MAGA policy, specifically in the areas of manufacturing, trade and the ancillary benefactors.

Meanwhile U.S. investment assets (multinational investment portfolios) that are disconnected from the actual results of those benefiting U.S. companies, and as a consequence also disconnected from the U.S. economic expansion, can simultaneously drop in value even though the U.S. economy is thriving.

Amazing.

The Biggest Lie Told In Last Night’s Debate

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Breitbart posted an article last night which detailed the biggest lie told in the Democratic debate in Iowa.

The article reports:

Blue-collar and white-collar Americans “are being clobbered, they’re being killed,” former Vice President Joe Biden claimed at the January 14 Democrat debate in Iowa.

However, unemployment is at record lows, many sidelined Americans are getting jobs, and blue-collar wages are rising at rates not seen for many years amid President Donald Trump’s new curbs on legal and illegal immigration.

The article quotes Joe Biden’s remarks:

Working-class people — where I come from in Pennsylvania, the places I come from in Delaware — I have great support. I have support across the board, and I’m not worried about taking on Donald Trump at all. And with regard to the economy I can hardly wait to have a debate with him.

Where I come from — the neighborhoods I come from — they’re in real trouble: working-class people and middle-class people. When the middle class does well, [the] working class has a way up and the wealthy do well. But what’s happening now: they’re being clobbered, they’re being killed. They now have a situation where they [believe] — the vast majority believe — their children will never reach the stage that they reached in economic security.

I love that [economic] debate because the American public is getting clobbered. The wealthy are the only ones doing well. Period. I’m looking forward to the economic debate.

The article reports the facts:

Wages for blue-collar Americans rose by 4.3 percent in 2019 — or 2.7 percent after inflation — in President Donald Trump’s tightening labor market, according to a December report by Goldman Sachs.

The wage gains come amid very low inflation of just 2.1 percent in December.

…Blue-collar wages are rising faster than white-collar salaries because of different demands from employers, said Tom Donohue, the CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “White-collar wages have been moving up over time, a bit, and the demand there, because of technology and other things, is not as high as the demand [for blue-collar skills]. … It’s a reality of the market,” he said January 9.

But Biden wants to increase the flow of foreign workers who will reduce wages for Americans.

“Biden will work with Congress to first reform temporary visas to establish a wage-based allocation process and establish enforcement mechanisms to ensure they are aligned with the labor market and not used to undermine wages,” said Biden’s plan for legal immigration. “Then, Biden will support expanding the number of high-skilled visas and eliminating the limits on employment-based visas by country, which create unacceptably long backlogs,” the plan says.

Hopefully enough Americans are familiar with the actual facts to believe this garbage.

Doing What Needs To Be Done

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Last year, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 521,090 people were apprehended as inadmissible at the southwest border of America. From January through March of this year, the total is 422,334. It is obvious that we have a problem. President Trump threatened Mexico with tariffs if they did not make an effort to close down the immigrant highway that runs through their country. The usual suspects objected–the Democrats, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and some Republicans. The President did not back down, and President Trump reached an agreement with Mexico.

Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about the agreement.

The article observes:

The Mexican government of Lopez-Obrador was desperate to reach an agreement as U.S. companies had already begun rapid supply chain preparation to avoid the tariffs scheduled to begin on Monday. Think about the scale of international investment into Mexico, done with the sole purpose of gaining access to the U.S. market.

The tariff proposal not only put U.S. investments into play, but massive international investments would be impacted.  [A recent example is a billion-dollar investment in a single BMW auto assembly plant by the German automaker]  An already tenuous Mexican economy was likely to be crushed by the consequences of President Trump’s tariff schedule. [Unrecoverably crushed]

Mexico reported yesterday they moved 6,000 national guard to their Southern Border; and they also began arresting immigration activists previously identified as participating in an effort to aide migrants traveling through the country.  However, even with that rapid action/reactionary approach by Mexico, President Trump was not impressed.

The article includes the State Department’s Press Release regarding the agreement:

The United States and Mexico met this week to address the shared challenges of irregular migration, to include the entry of migrants into the United States in violation of U.S. law. Given the dramatic increase in migrants moving from Central America through Mexico to the United States, both countries recognize the vital importance of rapidly resolving the humanitarian emergency and security situation. The Governments of the United States and Mexico will work together to immediately implement a durable solution.

As a result of these discussions, the United States and Mexico commit to:

Mexican Enforcement Surge

Mexico will take unprecedented steps to increase enforcement to curb irregular migration, to include the deployment of its National Guard throughout Mexico, giving priority to its southern border. Mexico is also taking decisive action to dismantle human smuggling and trafficking organizations as well as their illicit financial and transportation networks. Additionally, the United States and Mexico commit to strengthen bilateral cooperation, including information sharing and coordinated actions to better protect and secure our common border.

Migrant Protection Protocols

The United States will immediately expand the implementation of the existing Migrant Protection Protocols across its entire Southern Border. This means that those crossing the U.S. Southern Border to seek asylum will be rapidly returned to Mexico where they may await the adjudication of their asylum claims.

In response, Mexico will authorize the entrance of all of those individuals for humanitarian reasons, in compliance with its international obligations, while they await the adjudication of their asylum claims. Mexico will also offer jobs, healthcare and education according to its principles.

The United States commits to work to accelerate the adjudication of asylum claims and to conclude removal proceedings as expeditiously as possible.

Further Actions

Both parties also agree that, in the event the measures adopted do not have the expected results, they will take further actions. Therefore, the United States and Mexico will continue their discussions on the terms of additional understandings to address irregular migrant flows and asylum issues, to be completed and announced within 90 days, if necessary.

Ongoing Regional Strategy

The United States and Mexico reiterate their previous statement of December 18, 2018, that both countries recognize the strong links between promoting development and economic growth in southern Mexico and the success of promoting prosperity, good governance and security in Central America. The United States and Mexico welcome the Comprehensive Development Plan launched by the Government of Mexico in concert with the Governments of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to promote these goals. The United States and Mexico will lead in working with regional and international partners to build a more prosperous and secure Central America to address the underlying causes of migration, so that citizens of the region can build better lives for themselves and their families at home.

We have a President who gets things done, even when those who should be willing to help are not.

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.

We Need To Pay Attention To What The House Of Representatives Just Passed

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There was a time in the not-too-distant past when you could trust the running of the government to the people you elected and sent to Washington. They were paid to represent you; and as long as they didn’t wander too far off the main path, the system worked. Well, those days are gone. Legislation just passed in the House of Representatives has the potential to make you a criminal just for continuing on in the normalcy of your own private life.

Yesterday The Washington Times posted an article about some of the provisions of the Equality Act just passed by the House of Representatives. Among other things, women and girls would have to allow men claiming they were transitioning to women in their locker rooms and restrooms.

The article reports:

Far from merely expanding civil rights categories, it turns any recognition of the differences between the sexes or any preference for traditional sexual morality into actionable “hate,” creating fertile grounds for lawsuits.

“It is the most dangerous bill to freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion that has ever been proposed on a national level,” says Houston Baptist University Prof. Robert Gagnon, an expert in biblical sexual morality. “It will codify into law that you are a bigot, the moral equivalent of a racist, tantamount to being a member of the Klu Klux Klan, who must be shut out of society and, wherever possible, harassed and persecuted for your beliefs.”

In other words, it will criminalize Christianity, an ongoing process that got a big boost from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling on same-sex “marriage.”

This draconian bill passed by a vote of 236-173, with 8 Republicans joining 228 Democrats. Another 16 Republicans and 7 Democrats did not vote.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has actually endorsed it. When did destroying the moral order and paving the way for more lawsuits against businesses become part of the chamber’s mission? Pouring legal acid on a marriage-and-family-based culture will not lead to a more stable society of upwardly mobile consumers. America is only as prosperous as its families are strong.

The article concludes:

Unless we reassert the primacy of natural marriage and natural sexuality, “our battle will be a losing one,” Mr. Smirak writes. “Our churches will end up essentially illegal. Sooner or later.”

MassResistance, a parents-rights group, has compiled a list of likely outcomes. Here’s a tweaked version:

1. It will undermine the civil rights movement that black Americans fought for.

2. Churches will be sued or lose tax-exempt status if they don’t accept LGBTQ behaviors.

3. Schoolchildren will be forced to learn how to engage in destructive LGBTQ behaviors [in California, it begins in kindergarten].

4. Parents who oppose this will be charged with discrimination.

5. Private colleges will lose funding, grants and scholarships.

6. Public accommodations and small businesses will be forced to allow men into women’s bathrooms and vice versa.

7. Business owners will be forced to violate their freedom of conscience.

8. Hospitals, clinics and the armed forces will be forced to offer experimental and harmful transgender treatments — including surgeries.

9. Foster and adoption agencies will be forced to close, as has already happened to Catholic Charities in several liberal cities.

10. Men will displace women in sports events (already happening).

Scenarios like the following case would become common: A Texas father has been charged in a divorce proceeding with child abuse for not “affirming” his 6-year-old son as female. The mother renamed James as “Luna” and makes him wear dresses to school. The father says James is all boy when he visits him, and goes by “James.” The Equality Act would greatly enhance the mother’s insane quest to turn their son into a girl.

The mother also seeks to terminate the father’s visitations and to “require him to pay for the child’s visits to a transgender-affirming therapist and transgender medical alterations, which may include hormonal sterilization starting at age eight,” writes Walt Heyer, a former transsexual, in the Federalist.

Michelle Cretella, executive director of the American College of Pediatricians, describes the pediatric community’s encouragement of sex change and hormones for children as “institutionalized child abuse.”

The Equality Act would federalize such abuse, and religious faith won’t be a shield. Judges will see to that.

The bill is far more dangerous than most people know. It’s about time they knew — and told everyone they can, especially lawmakers.

This bill is the death knell for the family-based society that is America. If your Representative voted for it, please vote him or her out of office.

If It Walks Like A Duck And Quacks Like A Duck…

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The New York Post posted an article about the crisis at our southern border yesterday written by its editorial board. The Democrats are saying that there is no emergency at the border and that it is a ‘made up crisis.’ The facts show otherwise.

The article reports:

More than 76,000 migrants crossed the southern border illegally last month, the highest number in 12 years. So much for all those media “fact checks” arguing that there’s no emergency to justify President Trump’s wall.

Immigration officials say the number is only going to increase, creating what Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan warns is “a border security and a humanitarian crisis.”

Why are they coming in such vast numbers? Because smugglers have put them wise to how to take advantage of recent court decisions to claim asylum and remain here indefinitely.

They’re coming (mainly from Guatemala) in ever-larger groups, mostly families as opposed to individuals. They’ve been told that if they cross the border illegally, they only need cry “asylum.” And adults traveling with children have a better chance to stay.

The article explains why the migrants are coming:

Consider: Officials say the biggest “pull factors” for migrant families are court settlements that not only bar deportations without lengthy proceedings, but also prevent the detainment of families for more than 20 days.

After that period, families must be allowed to settle here while their cases wind their way through immigration court.

In other words, once they make it across the border, we can’t reject them and we can’t hold them. That situation, McAleenan warns, is “unsustainable.”

The article then reminds us that it is up to Congress to fix the broken immigration laws. As much as Congress may resent the President using his emergency power to build the wall, the blame for the crisis falls on Congress. The blame falls on those Republicans, bought and paid-for by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in search of cheap labor, and the Democrats, who want illegal aliens to vote. Both sides need to be voted out of office. Otherwise we will lose what is America. We cannot sustain this level of immigration and remain the republic our Founding Fathers created. We have only to look to Europe to see the consequences of allowing mass migration.

 

This Makes My Heart Hurt

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Yesterday Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air about the spending bill the President signed this morning.

The article notes:

Forty-eight hours before the government would have shut down, Congress produced the conference report containing the seven remaining funding bills for the FY2019 budget. And less than 20 hours after producing the 1,159-page monstrosity, both the House and the Senate are expected to pass the bill. Perhaps members will take a nap with it under their pillow to absorb it by osmosis.

It’s not a good bill, and even if it were, how would anyone know? I am sure some members of Congress assigned various sections of the bill to staff members in the hopes of getting most of it read, but this is no way to run a country.

Meanwhile, the President is charged with defending our borders. We have had and continue to have thousands of people forming caravans to break into our country. Any public official who took an oath to defend our Constitution has an obligation to defend our borders. I really don’t understand why that is so difficult to understand. Well, yes I do–it’s about money and voters. When the Democrats look at illegal aliens, they see Democrat voters. Illegal aliens are already allowed to vote in local elections in some cities and states. When Republicans look at illegal aliens, they see cheap labor. Since much of the campaign money for Republicans comes from PAC’s related to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (made up of corporations that support cheap labor), Republicans are not inclined to seal our borders.

So what impact does illegal immigration have on those of us who are ordinary citizens? In June 2018, Numbers USA reported:

A recent report by the Migration Policy Institute, entitled Chilling Effects: The Expected Public Charge Rule and Its Impact on Legal Immigrant Families’ Public Benefits Use, revealed that 10.3 million out of the 22 million foreign nationals in the U.S. receive benefits from at least one welfare program funded by taxpayer dollars. Additionally, 54.2% of foreign national children, age 17 and younger, are granted welfare benefits. The data also showed that 46.3% of foreign national welfare recipients are adults, age 18 to 54, and 47.8% are older than 54.

MPI examined a leaked draft of an executive order that would deny green cards to individuals who use public benefits, or have relatives who do. The report goes on to explain how the Trump Administration’s Public Charge Rule would reduce the number of foreign nationals on welfare, cause a decrease in immigration levels, and make it more difficult for foreign nationals and their dependents to be eligible for welfare benefits.

A website called nokidhungry.org reports that 17.9 percent of American children under the age of 18 are living in households that experienced limited or uncertain availability of safe, nutritious food at some point during the year. (Source: Feeding America). That number is a disgrace when you consider the amount of money we provide to poor families in this country, but it also illustrates the fact that we cannot afford to support more low-income families–particularly if they are not American citizens.

It is pathetic that Congress could not support preserving our country. Thank God we have a President who is willing to fight to preserve America.

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.

The Numbers–Do They Actually Matter?

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On January 6th, The Conservative Tribune posted an article about illegal immigration.

The article reported:

According to an Economist/YouGov survey, a jaw-dropping 93 percent of Americans believe that illegal immigration is a problem.

“A wide-ranging Economist/YouGov survey gauged the level of concern Americans have on the issue to find that only 7 percent of the overall public say illegal immigration is ‘not a problem’; 2 percent of Republicans, 7 percent of independents and even 12 percent of Democrats agree with the statement,” The Washington Times reported.

There are differences in how serious people believe the immigration problem is, but those who shrug off illegal immigration are few and far between.

“40 percent of Americans overall say illegal immigration in the U.S. is a ‘very serious problem’; 73 percent of Republicans, 38 percent of independents and 15 percent of Democrats agree,” The Times explained.

“22 percent overall say illegal immigration is a ‘somewhat serious problem’; 19 percent of Republicans, 21 percent of independents and 26 percent of Democrats agree,” the paper summarized. Another 24 percent of Americans said that it was a “minor problem.”

At the same time, the Economist/YouGov survey revealed some inconvenient results for liberals.

When respondents were asked if they trusted Republicans or Democrats to deal with border security, a higher percentage — 31 percent — said “Republicans.” Meanwhile, 62 percent thought Congress should compromise with the president to end the government shutdown.

It seems as if most Americans are aware of the problems associated with illegal immigration regardless of what the media is trying to tell us. A border wall is a good idea. However, we also need to do something about America’s very broken immigration system. Our current immigration laws have been exploited by major corporations to replace American workers with cheaper workers. This has been done not only on the low end of the pay scale, but also on the higher end.

On June 3, 2015, The New York Times reported:

Instead, about 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.

Of course that was legal immigration, but it was a typical case of a corporation using a bad law to its advantage.

I don’t know if the wall will actually be built. It should be. The wall is opposed by Democrats (present and future voters–many illegals are currently voting in our elections) and Republicans (U.S. Chamber of Commerce members who support illegal immigration because it depresses wages in the lower sectors of the economy and increases their profits). We have reached a point where our representatives not only do not represent us–they have forgotten to represent the best interests of America.

Blaming The Other Guy When You Are Not Willing To Talk

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The Daily Caller reported today that the Democrats refused to negotiate with President Trump on the wall and then blamed President Trump for the government shutdown that is the result of unsuccessful negotiations.

The article reports:

Democratic leaders walked away from the negotiating table Thursday in the midst of a government shutdown over funding for border security, a senior White House official tells The Daily Caller.

The government partially shut down shortly before Christmas after President Donald Trump refused to sign an appropriations bill that did not contain his requested $5 billion for border wall funding. Since then, Republicans and Democrats — who will take control of the House in the New Year – have been looking to strike a deal to reopen the government.

…The new development all but confirms that the government will remain shut down through the New Year — until Democrats take over the House and current House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi gets confirmed as Speaker. House Republicans confirmed on Thursday that there are no votes scheduled for the remainder of the week.

Pelosi promised that when she assumes the speakership, she will put forth appropriations legislation that does not include any of the president’s demands.

Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have repeatedly sworn not they would not budge on funding for Trump’s border wall.

There are actually very few people in Washington who want a border wall. However, there are many people throughout America who want the wall. So what is the disconnect about? It’s about money and votes. The Democrat Party sees illegal immigrants as people who will eventually become citizens and Democratic voters. The Republican Party sees illegal immigrants as a cheap source of labor for their corporate sponsors. One of the major lobbying groups and campaign contributors is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce–a group that loves cheap labor. Unfortunately neither political party is willing to address the danger to Americans caused by an open border.

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.

Much-Needed Change Is Coming

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The Conservative Treehouse posted an article today about the changes being made to America‘s trade policy.

The article notes:

For those who follow closely the strongest argument against the U.S. trade and economic policies of the past 30 years has been the outcome. We don’t need to guess what the pro’s and con’s of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce position is, we are living them. We don’t need to guess what the Wall Street economy delivers, we are living through them.

For the past 30 years the U.S. has lost jobs, wages have been depressed, and the middle-class has suffered through the implementation of economic trade policy that destroyed the U.S. manufacturing base. None of this is in question – the results stare us in the face – yet the Wall Street and multinational corporate club(s) [U.S. CoC chief among them] now demand a continuance of the same.

It seems logical that if something is not working it needs to be changed. Somehow that has escaped Wall Street and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Actually, one wonders if the current program is working for the interests of Wall Street and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The article further states:

The truth is, well, two points: •Point #1 – the media don’t want to know; they are committed to selling the prior policy. •Point #2 – there’s almost no-one within the professional economic punditry class who have ever given thought to what happens during the space between two fundamentally different economic policies as executed.

What happens in the space between taking the U.S. economy off the path of ‘service-driven-globalism’, and reasserting the economy back to a balanced ‘production-based national economy’? None of the key participants within the larger discussion have ever contemplated this dynamic.

The article explains why Wall Street does not support changing trade policy:

When Main Street economic principles are applied Wall Street will initially lose. There’s no way for this not to happen. Most of Wall Street is built on the Multinational platform of economic globalism. Weaken the grip of the multinational corporations and financial interests on the U.S. economy and Wall Street will drop… this is not difficult to predict. This is also necessary.

U.S. stocks, centered around U.S. domestic companies, will go up. U.S. stocks, centered around multinational companies, will go down.

As Secretary Wilbur Ross, U.S.T.R. Robert Lighthizer and U.S. President Trump have previously affirmed, they are going to restore the U.S. manufacturing and production economy -OR- lose office trying.

The U.S. Steel and Aluminum tariffs are just one component of the larger economic issue. Bringing back U.S. production on those sectors is vital to the infrastructure of a manufacturing and production economy.

Additional steps will come from exits of NAFTA and renegotiated trade deals with ASEAN nations, China and Europe. We either have a stable broad-base economy, or we follow the former path and eventually lose the country.

President Trump was chosen to lead America out of the economic mess of the prior eight years. It is interesting to see the amount of opposition he has encountered doing this.

Why Should We All Have To Play By The Same Rules?

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On Friday The Washington Free Beacon posted a story about a group in Colorado that was working toward a $12 an hour minimum wage.

The article reports:

Colorado Families for a Fair Wage, which obtained the signatures needed to place a measure requiring a $12 minimum wage on the November ballot, paid many of its petition handlers less than $12 an hour, according to paperwork filed with the state and obtained by in the Washington Times.

“According to a circulator and wage report filed with the Colorado Secretary of State’s office by proponents of increasing the minimum wage, 24 of the workers collecting signatures to get on the ballot were paid less than $12 an hour,” the Times reported. “The report was obtained Keep Colorado Working, the opposition campaign, in an open records request.”

Colorado Families for a Fair Wage is a coalition of liberal groups, including prominent labor unions, such as the AFL-CIO and American Federation of Teachers. The group denied the allegations that it failed to pay its employees adequate wages following the Washington Times report, blaming “clerical errors” in campaign filings for the gap in pay.

“Every person working on the minimum wage ‘$12 by 2020’ ballot initiative has earned a minimum of $12 an hour and more because it’s crucial that the paychecks of Colorado working families can cover housing, food and other basics, campaign manager Patty Kupfer said in a release. “We included pay policy language in our office policy document to specifically ensure that every worker would earn at least $12 an hour.”

The group said it will file amended paperwork with the secretary of state’s office to reflect that it paid all of its workers at least $12 an hour.

How embarrassing. Either they paid their workers less than the minimum wage they were working toward or the people they paid the proposed minimum wage were not competent enough to do their job right. Either way it’s embarrassing.

There is something being overlooked here, and I don’t know why. The minimum wage was never intended to support a family or an individual living on their own–it was intended to provide a gateway into the workforce to enable people to learn the real basic job skills–showing up on time, respecting authority, being curteous, and other basic fundementals. So what happened? Unions discovered that if the minimum wage increased, the unions could bargain for higher wages for their members. Note that the Colorado Families for a Fair Wage includes prominent labor unions. Because much of the American public does not understand the purpose of the minimum wage, the fact that raising the minimum wage significantly will put small businesses out of business and cause employees to lose hours or jobs is not considered by most people.

There is also the aspect of illegal immigration. As long as America has thousands of illegal immigrants who are willing to work under the table for below minimum wage, raising the minimum wage is going to do more harm than good. One of the problems in the battle to close our borders to illegal immigration is that the U. S. Chamber of Commerce is a major campaign contributor to politicians (particularly Republicans). The Chamber of Commerce is an organization of businessmen. These businessmen like the fact that illegal immigration is a source of cheap labor. As long as the Chamber of Commerce continues to pour money into political campaigns, our illegal immigration problem will continue. That is the way Washington currently works. Until people are elected to office at all levels who are not part of the current system and not interested in becoming part of the current system, illegal immigration will continue and because unions contribute heavily to Democratic campaigns, the minimum wage will probably be raised past the point where it makes economic sense. That is where we are.

Energy Policy From Someone Who Doesn’t Understand Economics

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Just for the record–I do not support dirty air or dirty water. I simply believe that extreme environmental policy does little to help the environment and a lot to damage the economy. Considering the fact that the American Gross Domestic Product went down in the first quarter of this year, now is not the time to take any action that will have a negative impact on the American economy. Evidently our President does not share that belief.

On Wednesday the Los Angeles Times reported that the U. S. Chamber of Commerce is warning that President Obama’s proposed environmental policies could cost the economy tens of billions of dollars in lost investment and millions of jobs.

The article reports:

Although the size of the proposed reduction has yet to be announced, the chamber’s report estimated that such a rule could result in an average annual drop of $51 billion in economic output and 224,000 fewer jobs every year through 2030, with the Southeast feeling the biggest pinch.

The chamber said the numbers were based on modeling from the economic research firm IHS, using assumptions that the regulation would set a 42% reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030 from 2005 levels — an aggressive percentage that is close to a target previously cited by President Obama.

Today the Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel posted an article on the impact of the environmental policies announced by President Obama.

Here is a list of some of the consequences:

For example, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently released a study showing that the rule will cost consumers in our region $3.3 billion per year in higher electricity prices.

Another study done by NERA Economic Consultants predicted the rule will cost consumers between $13 billion and $17 billion per year. Yet another study released by the Heritage Foundation predicts the rule will cost a family of four $1,200 per year by 2023.

The article also points out the questionable impact of these changes on the environment:

The rule is expected to reduce carbon dioxide levels in the U.S. by 970 million tons by 2030. Although that sounds like a lot, it is essentially meaningless in the global scale of things.

While the EPA has us busy destroying jobs and our economy in the name of global warming orthodoxy, the rest of the world will increase carbon emissions by 4.7 billion tons over the same time period.

For those keeping score, that means other countries will collectively increase carbon emissions by 6 tons for every ton reduced by Americans under the EPA rule. So much for saving the planet.

The EPA’s new global warming rule is a lose-lose proposition for energy consumers and workers. It represents the worst kind of regulation in that it has enormous and painful costs and essentially no benefit.

We really need an administration that considers the impact of its actions on the average American. This legislation is not good for everyday Americans working hard to support their families.

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