There was a simple sentence in those emails..."if it's what you say I love it"which would indicate communication about this prior to the meeting. Releasing those emails as a way to try to get in front of the NYT article was such a dumb fucking thing, it's almost not believable. I want to see emails before and after the ones that got released.
And y'all thought the Comey interview drew some viewers to C-SPAN? http://www.npr.org/2017/07/13/537037494/donald-trump-jr-asked-to-testify-on-capitol-hill-next-week That's right, Trump Jr. has been asked to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, as early as next week, and will be subpoenaed if necessary.
I don't know how people don't cringe with shame that they were, even for a second, taken in by this complete moron.
Really?? You really don't know how people are that dumb to believe that? Have you seen YouTube lately? People do flying kicks into each other's nuts for shits and giggles. They attempt to jump over moving vehicles and land on the other side, after they've had a few. We did this shit to ourselves.
This clip is worth watching: https://twitter.com/FoxNews/status/885691039624941568 This is where we are now. I don't even know what to say.
I think the words that best define the relationship between Fox News and a Fox News viewer are "hook, line, and sinker." Trump has systemically gone after every outlet with even a whiff of hostility and condemned them as fake news all the while anointing Fox as the main outlet of truth. The clip above shows why that is incredibly dangerous. He has set up an alternate reality for his supporters. That bubble doesn't get pierced easily. In the same vein, here is another scary read How A False Conspiracy Theory About The Russian Lawyer Who Met With Don Jr. Spread To Trump https://www.buzzfeed.com/salvadorhe...spiracy-theory?utm_term=.cia2P9600#.jbv2BWNmm
That bubble, when it does get pierced, will be done violently. People have invested so much of their identity and personality into this man and his ideas. He was someone who spoke the same way they do about complex issues(ignorantly and without facts, understanding, or nuance). He reached them by acting in a way they could identify with, that they understood. We can make America great again. The definition of that was up to the individual. As Fox News gaslights their willing viewers, it will be interesting to see what their pundits have to say at the end.
www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2017/07/why_can_t_americans_get_a_raise.html A bit more complex than that, I'm afraid. Aside from the fact that the majority of "foreign" labor in Maine is seasonal, and much of the "job stealing immigrant scum" evaporated during the Recession.... The need for a living wage to eliminate the need for huge social welfare programs to make up the gap between what people earn and what they need to survive, and the need to support migrants as a foundation of our culture/country and to offset the declining birth rate are separate in my mind. The living wage and the generation gap is a fascinating dilemma, because for most of their lives, my generation (Millennials) have received wealth transfer from our parents/grandparents. An estimated $30 trillion in assets is set to be inherited in the next 25 years, and for a lot of my generation those assets represent the path of least resistance to things like owning a home, investing the market or indeed, a sizable retirement fund. I know of more than a few student loans paid off with life insurance money after an elderly relative's passing. However, inheriting isn't the same as earning. As fewer Boomers work, and Millennials can't afford to support them, they will demand better wages (we are, after all, the most educated generation in the workforce as we were told that's the secret to middle class security). Nearly every employer I know of is grumbling about labor, but if you pay shit....
Why not just control immigration and drastically curtail the bullshit H1B and H2B visa programs? There are millions upon millions of people out of work who are discouraged. They would like to re-enter the labor market if the market weren't distorted by these effects? Companies who no longer were allowed to depress wages via these forces would need to increase wages in order to operate. You begin to fix multiple problems at the same time. Lower welfare rolls, increase wages, increase spending power, increase tax revenue, increase GDP.
These programs exist for several reasons, and jobs are not really one of them. The market isn't really distorted by these visas, and they are damnably hard to get. My company lost a pair of Indian engineers for visa reasons, because they couldn't afford the process (nor its duration or difficulty). The counter-argument is they should have hired natural-born citizens, but where? The requirements were niche, so a global search benefited us. There might be 8 or 10 people in the world with the Ph.D and requirements for some of the things US companies try to do, and that visa program enables us to hire them. Companies abuse the policy (kind of, they are expensive and it's usually giant companies that can afford the legal resources to go through the process), but that's the fault of the individual company, not the program itself. TLDR: these programs allow us to get "good" immigrants: skills we need, people who can invest, etc. The flow in the opposite direction is laughable: how many doctors do YOU know that want to work in Australia or Korea? Also, our birth rate is declining, like most developed countries. Immigrants are the only thing that staves off that decline: we can always open the doors to more people. The illegal immigration problem is largely solved by punishing the organizations who hire these people with punitive tax rates, but that's not popular. They won't come if they can't work, in other words. Immigrants actually help the welfare system, because they pay into it and rarely withdraw from it. The data doesn't bear out that the visas are the problem, nor is it the problem of a massive influx of illegals. Perhaps in the early 1980's, but the illegals aren't coming as often, in significant numbers and they aren't staying as long. There's data that suggested this is actually the canary in the coal mine for our economy: the transitional labor decreasing signalled an incoming depression.
I'd disagree, albeit due to some anecdotal reasoning. I used to work with Oracle for years as an external contractor that would help with their main software devs that were building their database and app server products. A huge number of those developers were a result of the H1B visas, and that was done because they were much, much cheaper than US citizens. They didn't have a niche job or special set of skills or education, they were just plentiful and cheap. I don't know if the process has changed since then, but the whole reason the H1B process is under fire is because of that effect that it had on hiring "local".
This. As I hear it too the rules, if there are any, requiring the sponsering companies to pay the local prevailing wage are near non existent or not enforced in any substantial way.
So...the program does what it's supposed to, but the individual companies abuse it? Sounds like an enforcement problem, rather than the design of the program. Seems like a common theme with our immigration laws: they work, when they are enforced and when they don't companies use them to fuck people over. Meanwhile, lower taxes and slashed governmental budgets eliminate the means for enforcement, and the lobbyist/donor crowd ensures MY prestigious firm will NEVER be the target of said enforcement. Crocks of shit. Wouldn't this expose said company to breathtakingly easy lawsuits for discrimination? Is the visa considered a "benefit" of employment (ie, subject to influence wages)?
To add to that, most of the companies I've worked with have had special teams of people that do nothing but work on H1B visas, and they get very creative around the applications to help with them being approved. It's no different than the SRED (Scientific Research and Development) Credits that I've applied for with the Canadian government. You go totally nuts on wording things to pass. Hell, one year I got my race car and a year's worth of racing paid for because I labelled it a mobile R&D platform for some race car telemetry data I was writing. In reality, I spent about 2 weeks writing a simple proof of concept, wrote it up, and then they reviewed it twice, and then wrote me a cheque. What started out as a, "well, they can only say no" exercise, turned into "holy shit they approved it".
Not disputing either of your points, but ideally stronger labor protection is the need here, not elimination of the visa program. Again, we need to keep an open door for several reasons. These programs exist for a ton of international development and diplomacy work that the US ultimately benefits from. Think of all the jobs like Air Traffic Controllers that are brought over and trained here, in very specific contexts where bidding on the talent simply wouldn't work. Research hospitals, NASA and the military are organizations that require specific talent that really can't (or shouldn't) engage in a bidding war to get access to it. I can't see the H1 visa programs elimination as helping the domestic job market to the extent that's needed. We're talking about a grand total of 85,000 jobs/year for the b program: http://www.h1bvisa.info/h1b_visa_quota It's a far cry from the millions of disenfranchised workers that need help. I think the difference is actually in training, location and turnover: companies just won't invest in training citizens, because they can (and do) get fed up and bounce. After the recession, with all the jobs lost, there's no loyalty to your company anymore. It stands to reason a company will find folks who are cheaper AND they can't really leave. I also think part of that disconnect is the immigrants are more flexible with WHERE they work. Native born citizens are just less likely to relocate for work than they used to be (because job security as a concept largely evaporated in 2009), and the visas can be used to pull in workers where they are needed most. I'm all for reworking the system to benefit the people stuck in it, and it's clear we need immigrants but our system sucks. Closing the door to foreign engineers & Ph.D's and then claiming a bunch of laid off iron workers can be trained to fill the gap is nonsense. Companies abusing a policy is nothing new, and I'd wager with a few examples made and some lawsuits alleging racism/prejudice against foreign employees, those abuses could be eliminated much more quickly and effectively than revamping our immigration policy (In this political climate).