The Covid Bill, as anticipated, has turned into a massive anticipatory bi-partisan celebration of the excellent new post-Trump era. Breitbart explains:
Coronavirus Package Allows Feds to Import More Foreign Workers as 17.8M Americans are Jobless
A spending bill, labeled as a relief package for Americans during the Chinese coronavirus crisis, will allow federal bureaucrats to import more foreign workers to take blue-collar jobs in the United States – even as 17.8 million Americans remain jobless.
A provision slipped into the more than 5,590-page spending bill allows the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Labor Department to import more foreign labor competition against Americans at their discretion.
Specifically, the bill gives DHS the ability to “increase the total number” of H-2B foreign visa workers who can be brought into the U.S. to take blue-collar, nonagricultural jobs that would otherwise go to working class Americans.
...
When comparing the wages of H-2B foreign workers to the national wage average for each blue-collar industry, about 21 out of 25 of the industries offered lower wages to foreign workers than Americans.
In the construction industry, wage suppression is significant, with H-2B foreign workers being offered more than 20 percent less than their American counterparts. In the fishing industry, foreign workers were offered more than 30 percent less for their jobs than Americans in the field. In the meatpacking industry, foreign workers got 23 percent less pay than Americans.
Hey, here's your $600--take it and shut up. Fake elections, fake relief. Go figure.
Nothing about this bill is illegal. And yet it is the result of a process so blindingly corrupt it makes me think Washington should be burned to the ground.
ReplyDeleteAgain, very little money, a pittance, as you point out, goes to the "little people." The big bulge goes to bigger fish: the NY subway, colleges, schools, and all the other grifters, which probably includes banks and Wall Street. I understand too some billions are included for bankrupt blue states, like IL & NY.
I was speaking with a friend who works for the federal government, in a budget capacity. Oddly, he's very conservative. I moaned that the national debt was $28 trillion. This made him chuckle. He said when you factor in all the unfunded liabilities, Medicare & the like, that debt is approaching $200 trillion.
"If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." I take comfort in this. I take no joy in saying so, but America is going to get what it has coming, and sooner rather than later, given the lay of the land.
Reading the summaries, I literally had the song from Dick Tracy movie in mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=580iA_bOnvo - not sure if the links work here, but have fun.
DeleteHe won't, but I would love to see him veto it. There are so many things in it the bill that start to undo his presidency. Restricting where the wall can be built. H2-B visas. Family members of illegal immigrants get stimulus checks and since they didn't get them the first time, they get retroactive benefits -- $1,800 per family member. $3.2 Billion for low income access to broadband internet (remember the Obama phones? I predict Biden Broadband).
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, Trump's one weakness is spending.
Andy S.
He has to veto it for those reasons.
DeleteHave you forgotten that one of Trump's first acts was a substantial across-the-board cut to the federal budget? He was soundly defeated by the uniparty.
I'm not suggesting Trump is a fiscal conservative, but he did try.
Can't say anymore 'this is what the country voted for'
ReplyDeleteIt’s nominally covid relief. It’s really just a special interest bill just like 99% of all bills.
ReplyDeleteIt’s not the cost, but America first? Puhhleaze.
Obviously if he vetoes it then it will be overridden, based on the current support from the Senate and House. For that reason alone he should hold a signing ceremony/press conference and then tell everyone he can't, in good conscience, sign the bill into law. He should read aloud the 10 most egregious giveaways while comparing them to to what the 'deporables' are getting in this same bill. Then stand up and pull a 'Nancy' - rip it in two and drop the 2 halves on the desk and walk out the door!
ReplyDeleteRich, exactly what I was thinking but make it more than 10. Cut the pork out and you could give each person $2500 or more.
DeleteMB
"Then stand up and pull a 'Nancy' - rip it in two and drop the 2 halves on the desk and walk out the door!"
DeletePerfect.
Hopefully he vetos it on principal, regardless of the override waiting in the Senate.
ReplyDeleteMake them spit in our faces twice and let it shove us a little closer to the cliff. Let's go already!
The world is so upside down right now I find myself wholeheartedly agreeing with AOC's (as of this writing) two most recent tweets.
ReplyDeleteThere is room for us (nationalists - populists) and the Left (globalist - populist) to unite in a third party. Maybe not AOC, but we can ally with the likes of Glenn Greenwald.
DeleteWhilst our differences are great, the common enemy (the deep state) is dangerous enough to unite us.
Pertinent to your hope of a new populist alliance, see
Deletehttps://newdiscourses.com/2020/12/university-woke-mission-field-dissident-womens-studies-phd-speaks-out/ :
"I have a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies, but I’m not woke anymore. I write under a *pseudonym* because, if my colleagues were to find out about my criticisms of this field, I would be unable to find any employment in academia. That someone who critiques the axioms of a field of study feels compelled to write under an assumed name tells you everything you need to know, about the authoritarianism underpinning this ideology....
A diverse spectrum of liberals, libertarians, conservatives, and all others who, to put it bluntly, want the American *constitution* to continue to serve as the basis for our society, have to *team up*, to prevent this ideology from destroying our country...."
"Women's studies"
DeleteHow quaint! To have any cachet now she'd have to renounce being a she and get into queer or trans studies.
I guess so.
DeleteAlso pertinent to the struggles of folks like her, is the outfit Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, at https://www.thefire.org/ , founded 1998.
I know a lot of people will think this nihilistic, but I'm beginning to think that the solution is to allow the Dems to control the WH and both houses of Congress. Let them go whole hog and burn SCOTUS to the ground, add D.C. and Puerto Rico as states, kill the filibuster, open the borders. The whole enchilada (sorry). When things get as bad as they can get with --no possible political remedies--this country will either die a well-deserved death, or our half of the populace we will be motivated to move on to the next evolutionary step. In the mean time, the greatest risk is China taking advantage of our turmoil to use some of their excess unmarriageable young men to in a war of conquest.
ReplyDeleteWhat an insane turn of events. After the left's 50 year march through the institutions, it is amazing the alacrity with which our final collapse was catalyzed. Our survival as a nation probably depends upon whether Trump can pull a rabbit out of his hat in the next four weeks.
I agree 100%. With no Obama, we never would have gotten Trump. So too now - with no Kamala, we won't get out 1776.
DeleteIn my judgement, the greater (more likely) risk is, that the DS will be able to lock in a perm. Dem majority.
DeleteSo. yeah, Trump must pull a rabbit out of his hat.
@PD Quig
DeleteI'm more and more in agreement with this line of thinking. America is technically bankrupt & congress has time to send billions to Egypt, Israel, Pakistan, money to study gender inequality in statues. Are they mad? The contempt congress shows for workers who produce the wealth they squander can't be measured. Taxation without representation...You've heard the phrase.
Occam's Razor
ReplyDeleteCongress really doesn't care what the American people think about their spending.
If Congress wanted the American people to know what they are doing,
--they would debate the bill in open session
--the bill would be 50 pages long, not 5000
--the bill would be considered before the week before Christmas
--dozens of unrelated special deals wouldn't be dropped into the package
--Covid relief would be separate and transparent
--Congress would take more than four hours to deliberate before voting