Leftist millionaires show a total inability to think beyond nursery level

Below is a media release from a group calling itself the Patriotic Millionaires.  It's typical leftist abuse of language.  They are just rich leftists who want to sound good

They write under the heading "Patriotic Millionaires on the $15 Minimum Wage in IL: “Our State Will Thrive” but make the simplest assumptions about what will happen.  They just seem to expect that all low income earners will suddenly get more money.

That many of the poor will lose their jobs and get zero dollars as employers transfer their activities to other jurisdictions does not seem to have entered their baby minds.  That others will lose their jobs as employers automate more also does not cross their stunted minds.

And many businesses are economically marginal -- particularly in the hospitality sector -- so a sudden increase in their labor costs will simply send them over the edge into liquidation -- throwing employees who were glad to have a job into unemployment.

And most new entry-level jobs will simply not be created.  Many entry level jobs exist BECAUSE the low federal minimum wage makes the business activity concerned worthwhile.  The potential employer who might have created a job will do his sums using the $15 wage and do something else instead.

Far from helping the poor, this is an attack on jobs for the poor.  The poor often need their jobs badly and find it hard to find new ones so this is a really heartless attack by ignorant rich people on poor and needy people who are powerless to answer back

The Trump boom is creating jobs for everyone at every level but the State of Illinois is doing its best to disqualify many of its citizens from participating in that boom. It has made jobs at the lower end of the boom illegal

Note that the job destruction starts right now, even though the $15 hours don't cut in fully until 2025.  Businessmen have to plan ahead and it is the $15 level that Illinois businessmen will plug into their planning spreadsheets


Springfield, IL – Today, Governor J.B. Pritzker signed into law a bill that would raise the state's minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, making Illinois the first midwestern state, and fifth state overall, to bring its minimum wage to $15 an hour. In response, Michael and Joan Pine, Patriotic Millionaires and Illinois residents, issued the following statement:

"Just two years after former Gov. Rauner vetoed similar legislation, Illinois' working families will finally get the boost they deserve.

So long as the federal minimum wage does not keep up with increases in the costs of goods and rising inflation, it will be necessary for states to step in. By Gov. Pritzker making a living wage one of his first priorities, he has shown a commitment to the working class and the businesses that service them. An increase in wages means more money for Illinois families to spend at their local businesses. As a result, our state economy, which relies on consumer spending, will thrive."

Email Sam Quigley at sam@patrioticmillionaires.org

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Do We Really Need So Many Foreign Tech Workers?

Americans don't usually think of technical professionals as "guest workers," yet at any one time, there are more than a half-million foreigners holding tech jobs in the U.S. They are here thanks to the H-1B visa program. H-1B, so the official spiel goes, addresses an alleged shortage of "highly skilled" Americans to fill jobs "requiring specialized knowledge."

Growing evidence, however, points to companies' using the program to replace perfectly qualified American workers with cheaper ones from elsewhere. A new report published by the Atlantic Council documents the abuses. The authors are Ron Hira, a political scientist at Howard University, and Bharath Gopalaswamy, director of the Atlantic Council's South Asia Center.

Among their criticisms:

—Virtually any white-collar job can be taken by an H-1B visa holder. About 70 percent of them are held not by what we consider tech workers but by teachers, accountants and salespeople, among others.

(Denver Public Schools employs teachers on H-1B visas. During a strike, the district actually threatened to report participating foreigners to immigration authorities. It later apologized.)

"By every objective measure," Hira and Gopalaswamy write, "most H-1B workers have no more than ordinary skills, skills that are abundantly available in the U.S. labor market."

U.S. colleges graduate 50 percent more students in engineering and in computer and information science than are hired in those fields every year, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute.

—Employers don't have to show they have a labor shortage to apply. They don't even have to try recruiting an American to fill the job.

Cutting labor costs is clearly the paramount "need." In Silicon Valley, computer systems analysts make on average just over $116,000 a year. But companies can hire H-1B workers at a lower skill level, paying them only about $77,000 a year to do the same work, the report says.

And it's not unheard-of for companies to ask American workers to train the H-1B workers taking their jobs. "60 Minutes" featured Robert Harrison, a senior telecom engineer at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center. Asked whether training his replacement felt like digging his own grave, Harrison responded:

"It feels worse than that. It feels like not only am I digging the grave but I'm getting ready to stab myself in the gut and fall into the grave."

Why does this program continue without serious reform? Mainly because its big boosters include such marquee tech names as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Bloomberg and Eric Schmidt. Big Tech has showered think tanks with funding to brainwash Americans into believing that their country is starving for tech expertise.

Are there rare tech skills that justify companies' looking abroad? There are, but that's the purpose of the O-1 visa. About 10,000 are granted each year to individuals with "extraordinary ability or achievement."

I asked Hira whether we need H-1B at all.

"I think there's a place for the H-1B program," he responded. "The O-1 is a cumbersome process that requires a lot of paperwork, both in preparation and review. But we need to raise the standards of the H-1B program so that the quality and skills of the workers are much higher."

Also, we should substantially raise the wages paid to H-1B workers and make employers show that they tried to recruit Americans and offered them positions. Other guest-worker and green-card programs have that requirement.

Finally, put in force an effective means of enforcement. Right now, compliance is driven by whistleblowing. A random auditing system would far more efficiently find abuses.

Apparently, the argument that "tech jobs need filling" has, in many cases, oozed to "we want cheaper foreigners." The H-1B program demands a major overhaul.

SOURCE 

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White Nationalism Is a reflection of the Left's Identity Politics

Constitutional conservatism has always rejected this ploy in favor of Liberty for all

On Wednesday, it was learned that federal investigators had arrested a U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant on weapons and drug charges last Friday. Lt. Christopher Paul Hasson, a self-identified white nationalist, had been stockpiling weapons in his Silver Spring, Maryland, apartment in preparations for his plan to instigate a race war. The charges referenced Hasson as “a domestic terrorist” who intended to “murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country.” In his own words, Hasson was “dreaming of a way to kill almost every last person on the earth.”

Hasson had created a specific hit list of “traitors” that included congressional Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, as well as Leftmedia personalities such as MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and CNN host Don Lemon.

In a 2017 letter to “a known American neo-Nazi leader” following the deadly violence at the infamous racist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Hasson wrote that he was “a long time White Nationalist, having been a skinhead 30 plus years ago before my time in the military. I fully support the idea of a white homeland… We need a white homeland as Europe seems lost. How long we can hold out there and prevent niggerization of the Northwest until whites wake up on their own or are forcibly made to make a decision whether to roll over and die and stand up remains to be seen.”

Thankfully, the authorities arrested Hasson before he attempted to follow through on his murderous plot.

What examples like Hasson serve to expose is the underlying evil behind identity politics, whether it comes in the form of white nationalism or in more widely accepted forms like Black Lives Matter or the Women’s March. The evil of identity politics is fomenting rabid tribalism. It is the antithesis of constitutional conservatism, which espouses the God-given dignity, rights, and Liberty of each individual over that of any one identity group. An individual should be judged by actions and ideas, not identify-group classification.

The hatred of others based upon their immutable characteristics is not a conservative or politically right-wing perspective, even though the mainstream media often erroneously conflates the two — often with the help of the hate-baiting Southern Poverty Law Center. Instead, it is an expression of identity politics. (One party in America specializes in this, and it’s not Republicans.)

By its very nature, identity politics highlights tribal grievances (real or imagined) and then uses these grievances to vilify and blame another targeted group as the “problem.” It seeks to pit groups against each other by preaching the flawed Marxist ethic of oppressor vs. oppressed, creating overly simplistic paradigms like bourgeois vs. proletariat or rich vs. poor. In Hasson’s case, that manifested as sociopathic white nationalism, and there’s nothing remotely “right wing” about it.

SOURCE 

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Just How Far Left Are Democrats Going?

Gallup finds a stark and staggering leftward shift in the opinions of rank-and-file Democrats

We’ve spent much of the last two years chronicling how far and fast Democrats are moving to the extreme left. But don’t take our word for it — take the word of average Democrats.

In a new Gallup survey, “Understanding Shifts in Democratic Party Ideology,” the organization attempts to discern an answer to what average Democrat voters think on a range of current issues. What researchers found is staggering, though it confirms what we’ve written for years:

As Gallup has previously reported, the percentage of Democrats nationally who identify as politically liberal has been increasing. This has occurred in three distinct phases: 1) 2001-2006, when the percentage was trending steadily upward; 2) 2007-2012, when liberalism held steady near 40% for several years in a row and 3) 2013-2018, when liberalism resumed its upward trajectory.

The percentage of Democrats identifying as politically liberal averaged 32% in the first period, 39% in the second and 46% in the third. At the same time, the percentages identifying as conservative and moderate fell equally.

Though all identity groups within the party have moved left, the starkest shift has been among college-educated whites — a testament to the stranglehold “progressives” have on the higher-education system because, Gallup notes, “the percentage of all college graduates (including postgrads) increas[ed] by 13 points.” Just 34% of that cohort identified as “liberal” in the early 2000s. Now it’s 54%. The shift is on issues running the gamut, too. Whether it’s gun control, climate change, or abortion, rank-and-file Democrats are moving left.

Democrat politicians have exploited and driven this shift. Remember a dozen years ago when the likes of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Chuck Schumer supported border security and opposed same-sex marriage and single-payer health care? Heck, Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (sponsored by then-Rep. Schumer), and implemented “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Now, not only have those same politicians — and the entire party — shifted, but they utterly vilify anyone who hasn’t adopted the radical new positions of open borders, forcing bakers to serve same-sex weddings, and Medicare for All. In fact, the latter is practically a litmus test for the 2020 presidential field.

Pondering the fallout of this shift, National Review’s David French writes, “Any study of the political polarization in the 21st century has to account for the fact that it is extraordinarily difficult to achieve any kind of national consensus when one side is rapidly and constantly changing its demands. … The terms of the debate changed. The goalposts shifted.”

Indeed they have, and yet, somehow, leftists are even more angry than they were before all their victories. In any case, even with Donald Trump in the White House and the Senate under GOP control, Gallup’s findings portend trouble ahead for the cause of Liberty.

SOURCE 

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Supreme Court Delivers Unanimous Victory for Asset Forfeiture Challenge

States are bound by the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against excessive fines and fees when they seek to seize property or other assets from individuals charged or convicted of a crime, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Wednesday.

It's a decision that hands a major victory to critics of civil asset forfeiture, and it opens another avenue to legal challenges against that widely used (and often abused) practice by which states and local governments can seize cars, cash, homes, and pretty much anything else that is suspected of being used to commit a crime.

The case before the Supreme Court, Timbs v. Indiana, involved the seizure of a $42,000 Land Rover SUV from Tyson Timbs, who was arrested in 2015 for selling heroin to undercover police officers. He pleaded guilty to his crimes and was sentenced to one year of house arrest and five years of probation. On top of that, the state of Indiana seized his 2012 Land Rover—which he had purchased with money received from his late father's life insurance payout, not with the proceeds of drug sales—on the ground that it had been used to commit a crime.

Timbs challenged that seizure, arguing that taking his vehicle amounted to an additional fine on top of the sentence he had already received. The Indiana Supreme Court rejected that argument, solely because the U.S. Supreme Court had never explicitly stated that the Eighth Amendment applied to the states.

On Wednesday, the high court did exactly that.

"For good reason, the protection against excessive fines has been a constant shield throughout Anglo-American history," wrote Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the opinion. "Excessive fines can be used, for example, to retaliate against or chill the speech of political enemies," she wrote, or can become sources of revenue disconnected from the criminal justice system.

Indeed, some local governments do use fines and fees as a means to raise revenue, and that has created a perverse incentive to target residents. After the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, a federal investigation into the city government found that 20 percent of its general fund came from criminal fines. And Ferguson is not alone in relying heavily on revenue from fines. Making clear that the Eighth Amendment applies to the states will make it far easier to challenge unreasonable fines and fees—including not just asset forfeiture cases, but also situations where local governments hit homeowners with massive civil penalties for offenses such as unapproved paint jobs or Halloween decorations.

Some of those cases are already getting teed up. As C.J. Ciaramella wrote in this month's issue of Reason, a federal class action civil rights lawsuit challenging the aggressive asset forfeiture program in Wayne County, Michigan, that was filed in December argues that the county's seizure of a 2015 Kia Soul after the owner was caught with $10 of marijuana should be deemed an excessive fine.

More broadly, Timbs is a good reminder of how ridiculous the argument in favor of civil asset forfeiture really is. During oral arguments in November, Indiana's solicitor general got boxed into a corner by Justice Stephen Breyer, who managed to twist the government's lawyer into arguing that Indiana should be allowed to seize vehicles for as small an offense as driving 5 mph over the speed limit, which literally elicited laughter in the courtroom.

After Wednesday's ruling, there's a better chance that more civil asset forfeiture cases will be laughed right out of court for being what they obviously are: unconstitutional, excessive punishments that don't fit the crime.

SOURCE 

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