Category Archives: Labor

Will Biden Listen to the Science? by Ron Paul

Posted on November 16, 2020 | Leave a comment

If Biden does listen to the science, there will be no national lockdowns or face mask mandates. From Ron Paul at ronpaulinstitute.org:

Former Vice President Joe Biden has not been officially declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election, but that has not stopped him from forming a coronavirus task force. The task force is composed of supporters of increased government control.

One idea Biden and his task force are considering is a four to six weeks nationwide lockdown. However, supporting a nationwide lockdown would violate Biden’s campaign pledge to “listen to the science.” The evidence regarding lockdowns is so overwhelming that even the World Health Organization (WHO) has been forced to admit the truth: lockdowns do more harm than good.

Lockdowns result in more instances of depression, suicide, domestic violence, and alcohol and drug abuse. Lockdowns also cause people to not go to hospitals or doctors’ offices, leading to people dying because they failed to obtain medical assistance in a timely manner.

Biden also is working with governors, mayors, and other state and local officials to create a de facto national mask mandate. Biden has also declared he will mandate mask wearing in all federal buildings and for people traveling interstate. A mask mandate for interstate travel could mean you will be required to wear a mask on airplanes, trains, and even when driving in your own car if you cross state lines.

Yet again, Biden is ignoring the science. In this case the science has demonstrated that most masks are ineffective at preventing the spread of a virus. Medical science also shows that wearing a mask for extended periods of time can cause health problems. For example, mask wearing interferes with proper breathing. Long-term mask wearing may also cause serious dental problems. Ironically, major victims of mask mandates include low-wage workers Biden and his fellow progressives claim to care so much about. Many of these workers are required to wear masks on the job.

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Hammer and Scorecard: Big Tech’s Drive to End Democracy, by Matthew Ehret

Posted on November 15, 2020 | 1 comment

Computerized voting fraud is far easier to implement and much harder to detect than the standard vote fraud techniques Democrats have employed for decades. From Matthew Ehret at strategic-culture.org:

On the evening of November 5, the President of the United States delivered remarks from the White House relaying the evidence of a massive vote fraud conducted by the same intelligence community-Wall Street- Big Tech alliance that had been actively organizing for his overthrow for 4 years. Despite the truthfulness of his remarks which growing evidence of vote counting computer software fraud has only validated, the mainstream media from NBC, CNN, NPR and MSNBC made the unprecedented move of censoring the President in mid speech for the protection of the minds of viewers.

Among his many offenses to the consciences of the press, the president stated “If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.” (The full censored speech which can be read here.)

But what does that mean? What are illegal votes?

As the president lays out in that censored speech and in other locations over this past week, illegal votes means just that: votes garnered for one candidate or subtracted from another candidate through illegal means. The typical forms such illegal votes tend to take may be: 1) mail-in votes that arrived past legal deadlines and yet were counted anyway or had their time stamps changed by postal workers, 2) votes from dead people, 3) absentee votes from people who had moved from the states in registering their votes. There are others of course.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Crime, Cronyism, Government, Labor, Media, Politics

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Consolidation Is Killing Jobs In The U.S. Shale Industry, by Tsvetana Paraskova

Posted on November 7, 2020 | Leave a comment

If Biden is in fact crowned king of America, the oil industry he wants to abolish is a harbinger of a looming Greatest Depression. From Tsvetana Paraskova at oilprice.com:

The long-awaited consolidation in the U.S. shale patch is well underway, with several high-profile multi-billion-dollar deals announced in the span of just a few weeks.

Analysts say that the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) frenzy was inevitable; smaller oil firms with manageable debts are trying to survive the pandemic-driven industry downturn, and bigger players are looking to add top-quality assets to their portfolios.

What is also inevitable during this consolidation drive in the U.S. shale patch is the loss of U.S. oil industry jobs as companies combine to reduce fixed cost and administrative expenses and benefit from synergies.

Granted, the oil industry had already started shedding jobs at a fast pace as early as in March, when oil prices crashed in the pandemic, and the brief but very ill-timed Saudi-Russia spat over OPEC+ policies further crushed the market. The U.S. industry has already lost thousands of jobs in the upstream and oilfield services sectors because companies curtailed production at oil prices lower than break-evens and slashed capital spending for this year and next.

While signs have emerged that the worst for employment and rig counts could be over, the M&A mania is leading to another wave of job losses in the U.S. oil sector. However, many of those layoffs could take place in corporate functions and support services. As firms announce deals, they are also announcing layoffs at the new entities. Those redundancies add to an already high number of jobs lost due to the pandemic-inflicted crisis.

Analysts and the market welcomed the latest U.S. oil deals as win-win transactions and perfect fits for the pairs involved. But there is a loser in those mergers and acquisitions—the oil industry jobs.

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Why New York City Is In Trouble – 114,041 Public Employees With $100,000+ Paychecks Cost Taxpayers $14.6 Billion, by Adam Andrzejewski

Posted on September 29, 2020 | Leave a comment

And Bill De Blasio wants a federal bailout! From Adam Andrzejewski at forbes.com:

Mayor Bill de Blasio is aggressively pushing for a $12.4 billion federal bailout— because New York City faces an unprecedented $7 billion budget deficit over the next two years.

Last week, in a public relations stunt, the mayor announced a one-week unpaid furlough of himself and 494 employees within his office — a taxpayer savings of a paltry $860,000.

So, how did the city get so deep into trouble?

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com dug into the skyrocketing city payroll. In 2016, there were 76,166 employees with pay exceeding $100,000. By 2019, there were more than 114,000 — a 50-percent increase in six-figure earners.

In 2019, plumber helpers earned $172,988; thermostat repairmen made up to $198,630; regular laborers hauled away $213,169; electricians lit up $253,132; and plumbers pocketed up to $286,245.

School janitors ($256,000) out-earned the principals ($154,000). Four deputy mayors made over $241,641 each and 5,998 city employees out-earned New York governor Andrew Cuomo ($178,000).

The city has 331,520 full-time equivalent employees – up from 297,349 in 2014.

However, 592,432 people pulled a paycheck at some point last year at a total cost of $29.5 billion. (This included base salary, overtime, and “other pay,” but not healthcare or pension benefits. Those perks add 30-percent.)

Office of the Mayor – $52 million payroll cost

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s base salary was $258,541 plus free rent at Gracie Mansion and regular police-escorted trips to the gym – even as he closed schools, restaurants, and gyms.

First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan made $278,980 and three deputy mayors earned between $241,641 and $246,124. Even de Blasio’s executive chef Feliberto Estevez cooked up $124,285.

First Lady Chirlane McCray, de Blasio’s wife, works within the Office of the Mayor as a volunteer. However, fourteen city employees aid McCray with salaries that cost taxpayers $2 million per year.

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The 21st Century Is Marked By Crisis and Political Division, by Bill Bonner

Posted on September 13, 2020 | Leave a comment

We’re twenty percent into the 21st century and it hasn’t been a great start. From Bill Bonner at rogueeconomics.com:

Week 26 of the Quarantine

In this bright future, you can’t forget your past.

– Bob Marley

SAN MARTIN, ARGENTINA – What a colossal flop!

We’re talking about the 21st century. A failure in almost every way.

We now have 30 million people on unemployment – nearly 20% of the labor force.

We have a budget deficit of nearly 20% of GDP.

And, despite already spending $2 for every $1 they collect in taxes, the feds are planning to spend more.

We have phony “conservatives” waving the flag… and real radicals trying to tear it down. On both sides are more and more loonies, locked and loaded…

Even many of our own dear readers are ready to go to war with each other. This is from yesterday’s mailbag:

Hey Dude, we are at WAR! Trump leads the Win-the-War Party! The Neo Repubs are the “What? Me, worry?” Party. And you are like the pet dog nipping at the heels of the soldiers marching past!

No matter the cost, we must win the war against socialism and the Ds. There is time enough to purify ourselves after we win! If we lose, it will be a “thousand years” before our experiment is tried again… Meanwhile it is your obligation to support those who are fighting, regardless of technique and strategy… TRUMP!

Nasty Themes

It is hard to figure out how an administration that declares a moratorium on rent collection, stifles free trade, and runs a deficit of 20% of GDP could save us from socialism… But in this great 21st-century future, wonders never cease.

This week, in this “new normal,” we’ve been trying to remember what the “old normal” was like. And was it really better? Or is it just us?

We recalled what it must have been like when we were born. Of course, it was a very different world back then.

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Posted in Banking, Business, Collapse, Cronyism, Currencies, Debt, Economy, Government, Labor, Medicine

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COVID Financial Pain ‘Much, Much Worse’ Than Expected, Warns Harvard Study, by Tyler Durden

Posted on September 11, 2020 | Leave a comment

Some of us expected Covid’s financial pain to be very bad indeed, but that certainly wasn’t the mainstream media line. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

New findings from a survey by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, published by NPR News on Wednesday, reveal low-income minority households have experienced the most financial hardships in the virus-induced recession.

The pandemic heavily impacted Black and Latino households across America’s four largest cities (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston) with massive job loss or reduction in hourly wages or a decline in working hours.

The survey, conducted from July 1 through Aug. 3, found Latino households (77%) and Black households (81%) in the Greater Houston area incurred “serious” financial problems.

Houston

As for the three other major cities, the survey showed 73% of Latinos in New York City experienced severe financial hardships, 71% of Latinos in Los Angeles, and 63% in Chicago. Black households in New York City (62%), Los Angeles (52%), and Chicago (69%) also reported severe financial distress because of the downturn.

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The Covid-19 Catastrophe, by Antony Davies and James R. Harrigan

Posted on September 5, 2020 | Leave a comment

The cure has been far worse than the disease. From Antony Davies and James R. Harrigan at aier.org:

It has been five months since the American people were told they would be under house arrest for three weeks to “flatten the curve.” Under the guise of protecting us from Covid-19, America’s politicians completed one of the greatest nonviolent power grabs in US history, pushing the lockdowns well beyond the initial three-week prediction, thereby taking control of 330 million lives.

To justify this, they shifted the goal posts from flattening the curve, to halting transmission of the coronavirus entirely. Some even talked about maintaining lockdowns, at least in part, until a vaccine is developed. That could take years.

Quelle surprise.

How did it come to pass that a nation of 330 million was effectively imprisoned, with virtually every sector of the economy shut down either in part or in total? The answer to this question is as clear as it was wrong: In the early days of Covid-19, politicians and experts lined up to tell us that, if we did nothing, up to 2.2 million Americans would die over the balance of 2020.

As of late August, there have been fewer than 170,000 Covid-19 deaths in the United States. If the 2.2 million projection was accurate, then the US lockdown saved in the neighborhood of 2 million lives. But at what cost?

In early March, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that the economic output of the United States economy over the period 2020 through 2025 would total $120 trillion. Just four months later and because of the Covid lockdown, the CBO reduced its projection by almost $10 trillion. That $10 trillion difference is income Americans would have earned had the lockdown not happened, but now won’t.

Economists outside the CBO have estimated this loss at almost $14 trillion. For perspective, the median US household earns $63,000. A $10 trillion loss is equivalent to wiping out the incomes of 30 million US households each year for more than five years.

Our desire to keep people safe, no matter the cost, has already resulted in 10 million Americans being unemployed. By the time things have returned to normal, the total price tag, just in terms of lost incomes and adjusted for inflation, will have exceeded the costs of all the wars the US has ever fought, from the American Revolution to Afghanistan – combined.

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The Economy Continues To Unravel Despite All Stimulus Measures, by Brandon Smith

Posted on September 5, 2020 | Leave a comment

You don’t get a lot of production out of an economy when producers have to lock themselves up, fire their employees, and close their businesses. Who knew? From Brandon Smith at alt-market.com:

Since the pandemic lockdowns were first implemented in the US I have been more concerned with the government and central bank response than the virus itself. As I have noted in past articles, the pandemic restrictions and subsequent economic and social crisis events they help to create will cause far more deaths than Covid-19 ever will. Not only that, but the actions of the Federal Reserve continue to con the American public into believing that there is some kind of “plan” to stop the crash that THEY engineered.

The only agenda of the Fed is to increase the pain in the long term; they have no intention of actually preventing any disaster.

This is evidenced in comments by voting members of the Fed, including Neel Kashkari who recently argued for the enforcement of hard lockdowns for at least six weeks in the US, all because the US savings rate was going up. Meaning, because Americans are saving more in order to protect themselves from economic fallout, Kashkari thinks we should be punished with an economic shutdown that would force us to spend whatever we have been able to save.

Do you see how that works?

Fed members and government officials demand hard lockdowns, depleting public savings and destroying small businesses. Then, the public has to beg the Fed and the government for more and more stimulus measures so that they can survive. The people and the system become dependent on a single point of support – fiat money creation and welfare. Yet, the evidence suggests that this strategy is failing to do much of anything except stall the inevitable for a very short time.

If the goal was really to reduce the pain of the pandemic as much as possible, then the strategy should be to keep the economy as open as possible and let the virus run its course.  By initiating lockdowns, all we are doing is extending the economic damage over the span of years instead of months.  We can deal with the comparatively minimal deaths associated with the virus; we cannot handle the disaster that is about to befall the financial system.

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How Corporate Tyranny Works, by Chris Hedges

Posted on August 26, 2020 | Leave a comment

Most major corporations today are closer to socialism than capitalism, and they have no compunction about teaming with governments to destroy their enemies. From Chris Hedges at consortiumnews.com:

Those, like environmental lawyer Steven Donziger, who fight the corporate control of our society on behalf of the vulnerable find the institutions of power unite to crucify them.

Steven Donziger. (Still from video by Amazon Watch and Frente de Defensa de la Amazonía)

The persecution of the attorney Steven Donziger is a grim illustration of what happens when we confront the real centers of power, masked and unacknowledged by the divisive cant from the Trump White House or the sentimental drivel of the Democratic Party. Those, like Donziger, who name and fight the corporate control of our society on behalf of the vulnerable see the judiciary, the press and the institutions of government unite to crucify them.

“It’s been a long battle, 27 years,” Donziger said when I reached him by phone in his apartment in Manhattan.

Donziger, who has been fighting polluting American oil companies for nearly three decades on behalf of indigenous communities and peasant farmers in Ecuador, has been under house arrest in Manhattan for a year. He will go to trial in federal court in New York on Sept.  9 on contempt of court charges, which could see him jailed for six months. Ever since he won a multibillion-dollar judgment in 2011 against the oil giant Chevron, the multinational has come after him personally through litigation that threatens to destroy him economically, professionally and personally.

“Our L-T [long-term] strategy is to demonize Donziger,” Chevron wrote in an internal memo in 2009, as reviewed by Courthouse News.

(Still from video by Amazon Watch and Frente de Defensa de la Amazonía)

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Glitzy Convention Conceals Emerging One-Party Tyranny, by Mike Whitney

Posted on August 24, 2020 | Leave a comment

The Democrats are continuing to ignore the white working class voters they ignored in 2016. They shouldn’t be surprised if the outcome in 2020 is the same as in 2016. From Mike Whitney at unz.com:

Here are a few takeaways from the Democratic Convention:

  1. The Democrats are running on the same platform they ran on in 2016.
  2. The Democrats put style above substance, flashy optics above ideas or issues.
  3. The Democrats think that hollow tributes to “diversity” and “inclusion” will win the election.
  4. The Democrats have abandoned white, working class voters opting instead for people of color.
  5. The Democrats have learned nothing from Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016.

In 2016, Democrat front-runner, Hillary Clinton lost the election because she failed to see her support was eroding in the key Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Trump won all three states with a measly 77, 651 votes total. All three states were expected to go Democrat but flipped to the GOP due to Clinton’s support for free trade and immigration policies that cost jobs and imposed unwelcome demographic changes on the working people of those states. The Democrats and Hillary have never accepted the factual version of how the election was lost. Instead, they fabricated a conspiracy theory about Trump colluding with Russia. Although the Mueller Report proved that the claims of meddling were baseless, Clinton and the Dems continue to trot them out at every opportunity. On Tuesday at the convention, Hillary again reiterated the lie that Trump stole the election. She said:

“Vote like our lives and livelihoods are on the line, because they are. Remember: Joe and Kamala can win 3 million more votes and still lose. Take it from me. We need numbers so overwhelming Trump can’t sneak or steal his way to victory.”

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