The Trump Family’s Long History With Immigration

 (By Tal Kopan and Curt Devine, CNN, 20 April 2017)

President Donald Trump has made overhauling the nation’s immigration system a central promise of his administration – and Tuesday he announced new efforts to get companies to “buy American (and) hire American.” But when it comes to hiring, he should know quite a bit about looking abroad.

The Trump family’s business ventures have made use of virtually every part of the US immigration system over time – including reported instances of illegal labor on two Trump-branded building projects.

Businesses run and owned by Trump and his adult children have been certified to legally hire 1,371 foreign visa workers since 2001, a CNN analysis of visa records shows. In addition, Trump-branded real estate has raised at least $50 million in foreign investor money through a program that gives foreign investors access to green cards, according to the company that did the development of the real estate.

Those permits have reflected the wide spectrum of the US immigration system.  The Trump enterprise has made use of low-skilled permits for vineyard seasonal workers, for example, and has used high-skilled visas to bring in models for its modeling agency.

Trump has telegraphed a hard-line position on immigration, and many of his administration’s hires have signaled a move to clamp down on the US immigration system. But Trump has not spoken at length about how his own business dealings influence his approach to the US immigration system. The White House has not responded to a request for comment about how Trump’s life experiences will influence his policy decisions.

Here’s a look at the ways Trump and his family have engaged with the US immigration system:

H-1B visas

How Trump businesses used it: In their business ventures, the Trumps’ businesses have received 283 H-1B visas since 2001. The high-skilled visas have been used for Trump’s modeling venture, Trump Model Management, Mar-A-Lago, the Trump Corporation and businesses associated with his hotels and resorts.

Melania Trump also used H-1B visas as a model to work in the US before she was granted a green card, according to a letter from her attorney released last year.

What it is: Often referred to as high-skilled visas, H-1Bs are “specialty occupation” permits, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services. They cover a variety of fields, including science and technology fields like computer programming, and most types require higher education degrees. Other specific categories include research related to the Department of Defense and modeling.

What the political fight looks like: H-1B visas are in high demand by powerful industries, including Silicon Valley, the medical field and academia. The demand far outstrips the supply, and powerful lawmakers like unlikely allies Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, have long sought to overhaul the program. Indian outsourcing companies are often accused of abusing the visas to take jobs away from other American employers.

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On Tuesday, Trump announced as part of his “Buy American, Hire American” initiative an executive order that calls for a review of the H-1B visa program, with the goal of reforming the program. Legislation on H-1Bs has long failed to advance on H-1Bs in Congress despite Grassley, Durbin and others’ efforts, but the administration this year took some steps to change the way the visas are distributed.

The Friday before the application cycle opened for 2017, USCIS and the Justice Department issued new guidance and policies to make it more difficult for computer programmers to gobble up the visas. While restrictionist immigration groups have sought to cut back the number of visas, as they have with virtually all forms of legal immigration, most lawmakers have sought reforms that would allow the US to attract top talent from around the world and encourage them to stay, especially in the STEM fields.

Asked about H-1B abuse during the primary, Trump said during a CNN debate in Miami: “I know the H1B very well. And it’s something that I frankly use and I shouldn’t be allowed to use it. We shouldn’t have it. Very, very bad for workers. And second of all, I think it’s very important to say, well, I’m a businessman and I have to do what I have to do.”

H-2B and H-2A visas

How Trump businesses used it: Trump businesses have received 1,024 H-2B visas since 2000, according to a CNN review of Labor records. Those visas have gone to Mar-A-Lago, Jupiter Gold Club, Lamington Farm and the Trump National Golf Club for jobs like cooks, waiters and waitresses and housekeepers. Trump Vineyards has received 64 H-2A permits since 2006, a CNN review found, for agricultural work.

What it is: H-2B visas are temporary authorizations to fill non-agricultural jobs with foreign workers. H-2A visas are specifically for temporary agriculture jobs. Employers are required to establish there are no qualified American workers to fill the positions and that hiring the workers will not affect American workers’ wages. The jobs can be either seasonal, one-time need, based on peak operations or intermittent.

What the political fight looks like: The H-2B programs are controversial but also necessary to many regional economies. The industries that use the H-2 visas, primarily agriculture and food service, also tend to draw heavily on undocumented labor when workers are unavailable legally or the system is perceived as too onerous. Employers in the H-2 program are usually required to provide certain wages, transportation and housing for workers, which can be a burden on businesses that feel they can use undocumented labor for cheaper pay. The program has also been found to be ripe for abuse, as the Government Accountability Office laid out in a 2015 report questioning the effectiveness of penalties built into the program – without which it is difficult to ensure the prevention of exploitation and abuse of workers.

Another concern for employers in the program is that the jobs must be temporary. But some agriculture industries like dairy farming require labor year round, making it difficult for them to use the program to import labor, which they have difficulty finding legally in the US.

Like other forms of immigration, several lawmakers on both sides of the aisle would like to boost the number of permits and make them easier for employers to use, in part to alleviate the demand for undocumented labor. Members of Congress, especially those from heavily agricultural districts, pay attention to the issue. But on the other side of the equation, restrictionist groups, who are represented in the administration by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, believe these guest worker programs take jobs away from Americans, and thus should be heavily curtailed.

Asked during the 2016 primary about his use of foreign workers during the 2016 primary, Trump defended his Mar-A-Lago property’s hiring to The New York Times, saying in an interview, “There are very few qualified people during the high season in the area.”

EB-5 visas

How Trump businesses used it: A project by the family company of Trump’s son-in-law and top White House adviser, Jared Kushner, called Trump Bay Street in Jersey City, New Jersey, raised $50 million, or one-quarter of its funding, from EB-5 investments, a company representative confirmed to CNN. The property uses the Trump name but was not a project managed by the Trump Organization. Kushner Companies has not otherwise made us of EB-5, the representative said, although new deals being pursued by the company have drawn scrutiny in recent weeks.

Because EB-5 investment does not require disclosure, it is also difficult to know fully how many Trump-branded properties could have benefited from it; Trump also licenses his name to properties that his company does not directly develop.

The Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment on its use of EB-5.

What it is: The EB-5 program allows foreign businesspeople and their families to apply for green cards, eventually leading to citizenship. To qualify for the program, would-be applicants must make a qualifying investment in a US enterprise and demonstrate they plan to “create or preserve” 10 US jobs, according to USCIS. The Department of Homeland Security has proposed rule changes that would increase the investment threshold over $1 million.

What the political fight looks like: The program has drawn criticism from members of Congress on the left and right, who assail EB-5 as essentially selling citizenship to wealthy foreigners – many of whom are based in China – although they acknowledge it does have value as a way to spur investment in the US and job growth. Some rural lawmakers complain that the program unfairly benefits major cities that are already economically well off.

Lawmakers that represent major metropolitan areas, like the New York delegation, have often defended the program.  EB-5 is currently tied to government funding, which expires at the end of April. Despite years of reform efforts, lawmakers have repeatedly extended the program in continuing resolutions funding the government. At a recent House Judiciary Committee hearing on the topic, lawmakers signaled they would not allow another reauthorization without reform, but with five legislative days left this month before funding runs out, leadership has moved to avoid any controversies that might slow down passing funding.

Family visas

How the Trump family used it: Trump’s family also has a personal connection to immigration, with his grandfather, mother and two wives being immigrants themselves. Melania Trump is Slovenian, but began modeling in the US with H-1B visas and was given a green card in 2001, before she married Trump. Trump self-sponsored herself for residency, according to a letter by her attorney released during the campaign. She became a US citizen in 2006.

Trump’s grandfather was himself an immigrant to the US, joining his sister from Germany in the late 1800s. Trump’s mother was an immigrant from Scotland, coming to the US in her teens to work as a domestic servant. His first wife, Ivana, was also an immigrant, coming to the US via Canada from Czechoslovakia. Ivana became a US citizen in 1988, 11 years after she married Trump.

Melania’s sister, Ines Knauss, lives in New York, but neither she, family attorneys nor the White House answered an inquiry about whether she was sponsored for a visa or residency by her sister.

What it is: In addition to business-related visas, the US offers unlimited visas for “immediate relatives,” according to the State Department. That includes spouses of US citizens, unmarried children of US citizens under 21, orphans adopted by US citizens and parents of US citizens who are at least 21 years old. There are also limited numbers of visas for more extended family.

 What the political fight looks like: Proponents of immigration reform and restrictionists alike have sought to address “chain migration,” a term used to describe the practice of bringing immigrants to the US largely based on their familial connections as opposed to the merits of what they could offer the US. Restrictionists especially have viewed the US system as too lenient, and Trump himself spoke of the need for a “merit-based” immigration system in his joint address to Congress.

Illegal labor

How they used it: There have been two incidents in which Trump-related projects reportedly used undocumented immigrants as labor.

Trump faced a lawsuit in the 1980s that accused him and business partners of withholding wages from undocumented Polish immigrants and union workers hired by a contracting company called Kaszycki & Sons to demolish the building that would make room for Trump Tower. Trump testified he did not know the workers were undocumented and blamed the contractor for hiring them.

A judge ruled in 1991 that Trump and his associates owed the workers more than $300,000 plus interest. The ruling was appealed, and the case was eventually settled under a sealed agreement, according to a source familiar with the proceedings.

Separately, The Washington Post reported in 2015 that it interviewed workers on the construction of Trump’s hotel in the nation’s capital who said they entered the country illegally, several of whom were still lacking authorization to live and work in the US. Trump’s spokespeople at the time said the company requires its contractors to comply with hiring laws and check status of employees, and denied hiring any undocumented immigrants to build the hotel.

What it is: Non-citizens of the US are not allowed to live and work in the country without proper authorization. That could be a green card, or a particular type of visa, but foreigners who live and work in the US without proper authorization – including expired visas – are considered undocumented immigrants. There’s an estimated 11 million of them in the US.

What the political fight looks like: Illegal immigration has been arguably the most contentious fight of the landscape. Trump made cracking down on it the focal point of his campaign, pledging to vastly step up border security and deportations and detentions of undocumented immigrants.

Many Democrats and moderate Republicans agree with Trump’s stated objective to deport serious criminals here illegally. But they have also called for a compromise solution that allows undocumented immigrants who have lived in the US for years, sometimes decades, raising families and contributing to their communities, to have a pathway to legalization and citizenship. Trump has said the “bad” ones need to be dealt with first.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/18/politics/trump-family-immigration-visas/index.html

JD Vance Can't Even Be Authentic In His Nerdom

 (By Hayes Brown, MSNBC, 10 August 2024)

JD Vance on July 22 in Middletown, Ohio.

 Since former President Donald Trump tapped him to be his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, has become the poster child for the Democrats’ new favorite word — “weird” — as his stiff demeanor and atrocious policy beliefs have been placed center stage. It’s in this harsh spotlight another of Vance’s traits has come to the forefront: He’s a big ol’ nerd. There have been pieces written about his devotion to the classic fantasy series “The Lord of the Rings” and the way it’s shaped his worldview. More recently, he and his wife, Usha Vance, gave interviews talking about his time playing “Magic: The Gathering,” a card game that draws heavily on fantasy tropes.

I want to underscore that these two descriptors — “weird” and “nerd” — are not synonymous. As a card-carrying nerd myself, I would have to say that Vance’s love of stereotypically geeky interests has nothing to do with his creepy tendencies. If anything, he has shown himself to be the worst kind of nerd, one who reinforces the toxic masculinity that was at one point inseparable from overarching geekdom. It is to Vance’s discredit that he will likely be unable to see how deeply his rejection of all things “woke” isolates him from a community that has come to embrace the “good weird” that doesn’t fit into his homogenized vision of America.

Let’s start with Vance’s ties to M:TG (not the GOP congresswoman from Georgia). Earlier this week, an interview with Usha Vance aired on “Fox & Friends,” aimed at helping to soften her husband’s image and defend his now infamous “childless cat ladies” comments. “He has all sorts of dorky interests that anyone of our age could relate to,” she told Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt. Those interests, Earhardt told her co-hosts, include playing the collectable trading card game.

Vance denied that it was a current interest when Semafor asked him about it Wednesday, calling it a “phase.” More interesting, though, was the reason he said he ditched the game:

The big problem with transitioning from being a 13-year-old who likes Magic: The Gathering to being a 15-year-old who likes Magic: The Gathering is that 15-year-old girls do not like Magic: The Gathering. So I dropped it like a bad habit.

He may have meant it as a laugh line, but it speaks to something very real about how gatekeeping has worked in nerd spaces. It’s true that back when Vance would have been playing, as depicted briefly in the movie adaptation of his book “Hillbilly Elegy,” the game was not exactly popular among young women. Even as of 2015, only an estimated 38% of the game’s players were female, according to one of Magic’s designers. But arguably much of that was due to the self-reinforcing habits of male players who would scoff at any girl who could possibly try to compete against them. How many of the 15-year-old girls whom Vance wrote off as having no interest would have been interested in learning how to play alongside him?

It’s only relatively recently that the game’s owner, Wizards of the Coast, itself a subsidiary of Hasbro, has realized how much of the population was being excluded from playing (and buying cards) thanks to the perceived gender norms around the game. Since then, it has moved to eliminate the sexist art that was the norm for the cards’ illustrations and tried to make the game feel more inclusive overall. It’s a shift that of course drew some backlash from the JD Vances of the world.

Beyond this specific issue, I’d argue that Vance is bad at being a nerd, given how deeply he has clearly missed the point of “The Lord of the Rings.” J.R.R. Tolkien’s seminal work was born in part out of his view of the horrors of World War I. It stresses the need for fellowship among different groups against the forces of evil and a rejection of the desire for ultimate power. As The New York Times’ David French and Jamelle Bouie have separately noted, there’s little evidence that those messages sunk in with Vance.

Vance shares that obliviousness with his benefactor, billionaire Peter Thiel, who made his fortune as an early investor in PayPal. After all, Thiel named his giant data analytics company Palantir after the all-seeing orbs that the villains use to spy on the heroes in “The Lord of the Rings.” As a reference, that’s a deep enough cut to really show off one’s geek credentials while displaying exactly zero comprehension about why Thiel’s pursuit of military contracts would be something that the story’s protagonists would frown upon.

We can see this determination to miss the values for the merchandise among many branches of nerd culture. Recently, a post on Reddit’s r/Conservative message board detailed how a group of “Star Trek” fans were appalled to hear politics brought up at a Las Vegas convention. It’s truly a mystery as to how these supposed fans missed the very transparent left-wing tilt throughout the “Trek” franchise, which is set in a post-capitalist utopia where diversity is the greatest of strengths.

Along with this purposeful blindness comes the lack of recognition from Vance and those like him that the nerds have won. Geek culture has become a pop culture Goliath. The most popular franchises in the world have realized that it matters that everyone gets to see themselves in the stories being told. For Vance and others, it’s not their interests in comic books or sci-fi that sets them apart now. What’s weird is their refusal to share that win with anyone who doesn’t fit the outdated stereotype of who and what a nerd is.

Considering who Vance has become, it’s easy to clock the kind of nerd he once was. Over the last eight years, he’s transformed himself from someone who correctly saw Trump as a threat to the country into Trump’s potential vice president. Much like with Magic, he has opted to drop his morals like a bad habit, showing that he’s more than willing to shift and change himself to try to fit in with his chosen in-group. In doing so, he’s become the kind of nerd who has chosen to punch down out of fear of being punched himself.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/jd-vance-can-t-even-be-authentic-in-his-nerdom/ar-AA1oz1An?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=DCTS&cvid=aff3a34aebf94e6ebe672a41328f1a46&ei=27

Trump's First Term Was A Sh*t Show

 Worse than inflation: Let's remember Trump's real record in office

(By Heather Digby Parton, Salon, 7 June 2024)

                                                      Donald Trump Alex Wong/Getty Images© Provided by Salon

Public opinion polls about the current presidential race are mystifying in a lot of ways. How can it be that the twice impeached, convicted felon Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party again? As inexplicable as it is to many of us, I think after eight years we have to accept that almost half the country is beguiled by the man while the other half looks on in abject horror and carry on from there. But as much as we may be dismayed by this adoration and fealty to Trump the man, it's still maddening that so many voters — including even Democrats — insist that everything was so much better when Donald Trump was president. I can't believe that people have forgotten what it was really like. By almost any measure it was an epic sh**show. 

 

One obvious explanation is that Trump lies relentlessly about his record. So after a while people start to believe him. According to Trump, we had unprecedented prosperity, the greatest foreign policy, the safest, the cleanest, the most peaceful world in human history and it immediately turned into a toxic dystopia upon his departure from the White House.  The reality, of course, was far different.

From the day after the election, Trump's presidential tenure was a non-stop scandal. Even in the early days of the transition, there were substantial and well-founded charges of corruption, nepotism and collusion with foreign adversaries. There was the early firing of Trump's national security advisor, the subsequent firing of the FBI director and eventually the appointment of a special counsel. He did manage to set a record while in the White House: the highest number of staff and cabinet turnovers in history, 85%. Some were forced out due to their unscrupulous behavior, others quit or were fired after they refused to carry out unethical or illegal orders ordered by the president. This continued throughout the term until the very last days of his presidency when a handful of Cabinet members, including the attorney general, resigned over Trump's Big Lie and refusal to accept his loss. 

Yes, those were really good times. Let's sign on for another four years of chaos, corruption and criminality.

But, let's face facts. What people think they miss about the Trump years was the allegedly great pre-pandemic economy and the world peace that he brought through the sheer force of his magnetic personality. None of that is remotely true. The Trump economy was the tail end of the longest expansion in history begun under President Barack Obama and the low interest rates that went with it. Nothing Trump did added to it and he never lived up to even his own hype:

Trump assured the public in 2017 that the U.S. economy with his tax cuts would grow at “3%,” but he added, “I think it could go to 4, 5, and maybe even 6%, ultimately.”If the 2020 pandemic is excluded, growth after inflation averaged 2.67% under Trump, according to figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Include the pandemic-induced recession and that average drops to an anemic 1.45%. By contrast, growth during the second term of then-President Barack Obama averaged 2.33%. So far under Biden, annual growth is averaging 3.4%.

Inflation started its rise at the beginning of the pandemic (Trump's last year) and continued to rise sharply in the first year of the Biden administration before it started to come back down. The reasons are complex but the fact that it was lower under Trump is simply a matter of timing. Trump's economy was good but it wasn't great even before the pandemic. He had higher unemployment than we have now, he blew out the deficit with his tax cuts and his tariffs accomplished zilch. Sure, the stock market was roaring but it's even higher now.

Unlike Trump, who simply rode an already good economy, Biden started out with the massive crisis Trump left him and managed to dig out from under it in record time. No other country in the world has recovered as quickly and had Trump won re-election there's little evidence in his record that he could have done the same. All he knows is tariffs and and tax cuts and he's promising more of the same. 

On the world stage, he was a disaster. From his ill-treatment of allies to his sucking up to dictators from Kim Jong Un to Vladimir Putin, everything Trump did internationally was wrong. He was impeached for blackmailing the leader of Ukraine to get him dirt on Joe Biden, for goodness sakes! Does that sound like a sound foreign policy decision? The reverberations of his ignorant posturing will be felt for a generation even if he doesn't win another term.

And despite the alleged peacenik's boast that he never had a war while he was president, it's actually a lie. The US had troops in Afghanistan fighting throughout his entire term despite his promise to withdraw and there was a very ugly drone war carried out throughout his term. Trump bombed Syria and assassinated Iranian leaders and did all the things American presidents had been doing ever since 9/11. His only answer today to the vexing problems that are confronting Biden in Ukraine and Israel is to fatuously declare "it never would have happened" if he were president. On Gaza, Trump's solution is "finish the problem" and I don't think there's any question about what he means by that. 

Trump's labor record was abominable, his assaults on civil rights and civil liberties were horrific and he did nothing positive on health care. There was the Muslim ban, family separations, the grotesque response to the George Floyd protests and the rollback of hundreds of environmental regulations. And then there was January 6.

Trump, who called himself the greatest jobs president in history, was the first president since Herbert Hoover during the Great Depression to depart office with fewer jobs in the country than when he entered. He can say that doesn't count because of the pandemic but so much of that was his fault that it actually is. It was his crucible and he failed miserably.

His administration had disbanded the pandemic office and failed to replenish the stockpiles of medical supplies so we already started out ill-prepared. He denied the crisis at first, and we learned from Bob Woodward's interview that he knew very well how deadly it was, he lied, he put his son-in-law and some college buddies in charge of logistics. He pushed snake oil cures and disparaged common sense public health measures because they threatened his desire for a quick economic revival despite the fact that Americans were dropping dead by the thousands every single day. And, as always, he blamed everyone else for his problems. COVID killed far more Americans than other peer nations and it was due to Trump's failed leadership. 

For all these reasons, anyone who looks back on the Trump years as a golden time when everything was so much better isn't remembering the reality of those four awful years. There are worse things in life than inflation.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/worse-than-inflation-let-s-remember-trump-s-real-record-in-office/ar-BB1nOxnr?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=241a30e25bca448281df2e5e79b4795b&ei=24

The Biggest ‘Greedflation’ Study Yet Looked At 1,300 Corporations. Many Were Lying To You About Inflation.

 (Story by Ryan Hogg, Fortune.com, 8 December 2023)

As they rolled their eyes at the frustratingly familiar sight of price markups on grocery store aisles, the shopper of 2022 might have wondered whether corporations were doing everything they could to keep prices down as inflation hit generational highs. The answer now appears to be a resounding no. 

A joint study by the think tanks IPPR and Common Wealth found profiteering by some of the world’s biggest companies forced prices up significantly higher than costs during 2022.

Greedflation

Inflation soared across the globe last year, peaking near 11% in the Eurozone and above 9% in the U.S.

The source of that high inflation has become a well-trodden line. Analysts have typically laid the blame on supply chain bottlenecks created by excess demand during the COVID-19 pandemic and exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The war also increased energy prices, leading to further rises in inflation as suppliers factored in higher transport and running costs.

While this obviously contributed to rising prices, the report finds that company profits increased at a much faster rate than costs did, in a process often dubbed “greedflation.”

Profits for companies in some of the world’s largest economies rose by 30% between 2019 and 2022, significantly outpacing inflation, according to the group’s research of 1,350 firms across the U.S., the U.K., Europe, Brazil, and South Africa.

Inflation: What goes up doesn’t always come down

In the U.K., the research found that 90% of profit increases occurred among just 11% of publicly listed firms. Profiteering was more broad in the U.S., where a third of publicly listed firms were responsible for most of the increase in profits.

The biggest perpetrators were energy companies like Shell, ExxonMobil, and Chevron, who were able to enjoy massive profits last year as demand moved away from Russian oil and gas. 

Food producers including Kraft Heinz realized their own profit surges. The war in Ukraine rocked global grain supplies and fertilizer prices, significantly increasing the cost of food, which remains sticky. 

The findings add to a growing body of research seeking to highlight the role of major businesses in forcing up inflation last year. 

A June study by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) found that 45% of Eurozone inflation in 2022 could be attributed to domestic profits. Companies in a position to benefit most from higher commodity prices and supply-demand mismatches raised their profits by the most, the study found.

CEOs of the world's biggest companies consistently sounded the alarm on inflation as a significant barrier to growth. Many blamed rising input costs on their own price hikes. However, lots of those CEOs appear to have instead used the panic of rising costs to pump up their balance sheet.

In April, Société Générale economist Albert Edwards released a scathing note saying he hadn’t seen anything like the current levels of corporate greed in his four decades working in finance. He said companies were using the war in Ukraine as an excuse to hike prices in search of profits.

“The end of Greedflation must surely come. Otherwise, we may be looking at the end of capitalism,” Edwards wrote. “This is a big issue for policymakers that simply cannot be ignored any longer.”

Prices coming down

Inflation is now beginning to regulate in most major economies and coming closer to most Central Banks’ targeted 2%. Some companies that previously passed rising costs onto customers to continue making a profit have now sought to repay them with price cuts.

Last week, Ikea stores owner Ingka’s deputy CEO said the company would be spending $1.1 billion to absorb inflation and bring down the prices of goods in its stores.

“People have thin wallets, but they still have needs, dreams, and frustrations,” Juvencio Maeztu told Fortune.

In November, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon suggested the era of high inflation in the U.S. was over, and shoppers may soon begin to experience a contraction in prices—known as “deflation”—in company stores.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/the-biggest-study-of-greedflation-yet-looked-at-1-300-corporations-to-find-many-of-them-were-lying-to-you-about-inflation/ar-AA1lcmku?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=6fbb3fd382af417fa0e50f8798e3f4a6&ei=39

Is 'wokeness' responsible for US and European heat waves? Absolutely.

 With record temperatures steam-pressing the United States and much of Europe, Africa and Asia, many in my Science-Is-A-Hoax Facebook group have posed a sensible question: Is "wokeness" to blame for these heat waves?

As a white man with access to the internet and an unwillingness to care about anyone besides myself, I can tell you the answer is, indisputably, yes. Liberal wokeness is causing temperatures to rise and forcing me to leave my Hummer idling in the driveway with the AC on and the doors open in an attempt to cool the air around my house.

President Joe Biden and his windmill-hugging liberal minions will tell you the soaring temperatures have something to do with “climate change” or “global warming” or “humanity’s unwillingness to stop destroying the planet, thereby guaranteeing its own extinction.”  Well, if you believe that, I have a coastal bridge to sell you! (FULL DISCLOSURE: Bridge is currently underwater and will require minor heightening and repairs.)

On Tuesday, the National Weather Service, which notoriously attempts to influence conservatives with left-wing concepts like “facts” and “data,” forecast “dangerous heat” across the country, ranging from the high 90s to triple digits. 

In a heat advisory, the Weather Service wrote: “Take extra precautions if you work or spend time outside. When possible reschedule strenuous activities to early morning or evening. Know the signs and symptoms of heat exhaustion and heat stroke.”

You don’t get to tell me what to do, you Marxist meteorologists. I’m an American, and if I want to go out in the backyard and dump used motor oil in the pond while breathing in the welcoming smoke of my neighbor’s tire fire, I will do so without knowing the signs and symptoms of heat exhaustion, thank you very much. Commies.

Now back to why wokeness is to blame for the heat, and for everything I don’t want to be forced to care about.  Wokeness is an effort to get a person like me to treat people who aren’t exactly like me with some level of basic human decency, usually through onerous requests like respecting their identity or faith, not making offensive jokes at their expense or having to make almost immeasurably small adjustments to the way I speak or live my life.

It could involve a person saying, "I use he/him pronouns and would appreciate you using them when you refer to me," and me saying, "That would require me to be considerate, and I can't do that because my brain is busy figuring out new ways to 'own the libs' on Twitter."

Or it could involve a teacher giving my child the historical context of racism in America so he can grow up with a full understanding of our nation's complicated past, when I would prefer that teacher stick to the teachings of Sean Hannity, who once said: "The U.S. is the greatest, best country God has ever given man on the face of the earth.“

When confronted with wokeness, I have two options: Listen, understand and do my best to make another person’s life better (HAH!); or get extremely angry and vent about it online.

Obviously, I always choose the second option, which is bad for global temperatures because getting angry online causes my brain to start functioning, and the friction involved in firing dormant synapses generates SERIOUS heat.

Now imagine how many of me there are in this country and around the world and how much heat our brains are cranking out when we get angered by woke-ism. Is that enough to explain why the United Kingdom shattered its previous high-temperature records on Tuesday, with one village in eastern England hitting 104.5 degrees Fahrenheit?

No, not quite. The other woke-induced issue contributing to these heat waves is the voluminous hot air released by Republican politicians and right-wing pundits when they are angry about wokeness, which is all the time.

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin recently released a weather-changing blast of hot air when he blamed school shootings like the one in Uvalde, Texas, on wokeness: “We stopped teaching values in so many of our schools. Now we’re teaching wokeness, we’re indoctrinating our children with things like CRT, telling some children they’re not equal to others, and they’re the cause of other people’s problems.”

Nikki Haley, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and possible GOP presidential candidate, spiked the room temperature in Fox News’ studio Tuesday, saying America needs to "get rid of all this woke stuff” and start fighting for “normal people.” 

Do you see the harm you’re doing to the environment, you woke warriors? You’re causing people like Haley to warm the earth’s atmosphere with fired-up comments suggesting you’re not normal. Should she have kept that thought to herself and never admitted she had it to anyone, anywhere, ever? Yes. But you folks in the “let’s all take the infinitesimally small measures necessary so everyone can be their true selves” crowd forced Haley to say it out loud in a billowing puff of hot air and now WE HAVE FLIGHTS GETTING CANCELED BECAUSE AIRPORT RUNWAYS ARE MELTING!!

Shame on all of you for trying to force us normals to think about someone other than ourselves. You woke-ists have nobody but yourselves to blame for these heat waves.  Either that or I typed this column outdoors by the tire fire without knowing the signs and symptoms of heat exhaustion.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/is-wokeness-responsible-for-us-and-european-heat-waves-absolutely/ar-AAZMHNs?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=c99e491693c84d17b89a2463959b05a6 

School Shootings: One Of My Students Asked If I’d Stand Between Them And A Gunman. Here’s What I Said.

 (By Amanda Mayes, Huff Post, 30 May 2022)

 “Ms. Mayes? If a gunman came in here, would you protect us? Would you stand between us and the gunman?”  It was about two months into my third long-term substitute teaching position at my high school alma mater. I returned when my high school mentor was diagnosed with cancer. When he came back in remission, I stayed to continue to build and shape the community that had given me a sense of self in my formative years.

This group of students was still new to me, but I adored them. Sure, they had their moments when they would rather be sucked into a phone screen than discuss the ramifications of gerrymandering, the intricacies of supply and demand, or the Gilded Age.

But teenagers deserve more credit than we ever give them.

They are kind, intelligent, insightful and bold. I was supposed to be their teacher, but I learned so much about myself and the world from them. When they are of age to vote, they will ignite this world with compassion. We do not deserve them, especially when we continuously fail to protect them.

That day, I was running my first active shooter drill.

When I sat in these same desks and walked down these same halls six years earlier, the only scenarios we rehearsed were for tornadoes, fires, and asking a special someone to prom.

But this is the new normal. My students were restless. It was a planned drill ― not always a given, as some drills are enacted without warning. But the notice did little to calm nerves and suppress the reality that we must rehearse for the possibility of our own deaths.

I reviewed my lesson plan, glared at the finicky overhead projector, took a sip of coffee, and waited. No one knew when the principal’s voice would come over the intercom, triggering the drill.

The drill came and went, and melted into the new normalcy of a modern school day, with full knowledge that our paper-thin classroom walls were no match for automatic weapons fire.

But this is not normal. This should not be normal.

We ask our teachers to do so much — to be educators, caregivers, counselors, nurses, peacekeepers, custodians, disciplinarians. And now we ask them to be human shields.

When I stumbled into teaching, it had not crossed my mind that I would have to grapple with my own mortality and weigh the worth of my life against those of my students, despite growing up in this era. I was in third grade when Columbine stunned the world of education. I was in 11th grade when the Virginia Tech shooting happened.

“Yes. Yes, of course I would,” I told the teenager who had asked if I would protect my students.

I made the decision to sacrifice myself to save my students should an active shooter enter my classroom. Part of teaching is believing in the future and believing in a better future. My students must survive to make that future a possibility.

But it is not a decision I should have to make.

With each new mass shooting, the arguments against common-sense gun restrictions appear like clockwork:

“If we armed the teachers, this wouldn’t happen.”

I am an educator. A mentor. A helper. A guide. A light. I will not be relegated to a role of perpetuating this American culture of violence. I will not be complicit in the weaponization of myself and my fellow teachers.

“This is the price we pay for our Second Amendment freedoms.”

Why have many in this country decided that owning weapons outweighs the safety and lives of our children and teachers? How many dead students and dead teachers is your “freedom” worth to you? How high are you willing to set the price to defend an amendment that has been outpaced by technology? How is worrying about being shot at school or a movie theater or a grocery store freedom? Your paranoia and misguided belief that “courage is a man with a gun in his hand” has corrupted the original intent of an antiquated amendment.

We accept reasonable limitations to our other rights. Why is this such a struggle with the right to bear arms?

“Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.”

It is beyond time to limit access to tools used to kill more efficiently. Why are you so terrified of your neighbor that you need an assault rifle? Or feel the need to conceal and carry when you do your weekly grocery shopping? This is a reflection of you — of your need for false power, of your suspicions, of your cowardice — not a reflection of the society you purportedly fear. An AR-15 or other military-grade weapon serves no purpose other than that of destruction.

“This is an act of a mentally ill person.”

Stop equating mental illness as a requisite for murder. Start supporting mental health care. Start normalizing discussion about mental health. Start considering the mental health of those affected by gun violence.

“Now is not the time for politics. Now is the time to send thoughts and prayers.”

Thoughts and prayers comfort those left behind. They also assuage the consciences of those who plan to do nothing, who will continue to support the status quo because it is comfortable, familiar, and politically expedient.

These days I occasionally teach political science as an adjunct at a college. Every classroom I enter triggers the same process: Check the door. Take note of how it locks. Plan how to cover the windows. Find potential barricades. Make a plan. Rehearse.

This process is more difficult at a college because the classroom is not mine. It is used by several faculty members throughout the day. Desks arrangements may be reconfigured. The blinds may be opened or closed. Keys may be misplaced. A first aid kit may have vanished to another room.

Each time the classroom could be different, which necessitates quickly generating a new plan. I have lost sleep running different scenarios in my mind to be prepared for the next day.

Creating a plan in case of an active shooter is second nature now. It is part of the process. Along with preparing my lecture notes and stashing my best dry erase markers, I think of ways to save the lives of my students.

This should not be normal.

Instead of asking teachers to take on the impossible, to accept the reality that they could die doing their job, ask yourself: Who would have to be gunned down in your life for you to act?

Yes. I will sacrifice my life for the lives of my students. But do not let this become my reality the next time I teach.  Do not let my life and the lives of my students fade into statistics.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/teachers-school-shootings-uvalde-texas_n_6293d1c7e4b05cfc269bee94?ncid=APPLENEWS00001

School Shootings: The GOP’s Only Answer To School Shootings Didn’t Help In Uvalde, Texas

(By Alex Yablon, Slate, 25 May 2022)

 In the recent annals of American political rhetoric, there have been few more consequential statements of ideology than NRA chief Wayne LaPierre’s post–Sandy Hook truism that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”  The line has gone from crisis PR spin to Republican Party dogma. But while the “good guy with a gun” mantra has the ring of tough guy common sense, the empirical evidence suggests armed cops and civilians do less than nothing to deter mass shooters.

Look no further than Texas Republicans’ responses to this week’s mass shooting in the small town of Uvalde, the deadliest at an elementary school since Sandy Hook. Speaking to Newsmax, Attorney General Ken Paxton, the top law enforcement and public safety officer in the state, said: “We can’t stop bad people from doing bad things. … We can potentially arm and prepare and train teachers and other administrators to respond quickly. That, in my opinion, is the best answer.”

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Of course, this is Texas. It’s not like potential good guys with guns were thin on the ground in Uvalde. Law enforcement actually engaged the shooter before he got into the elementary school. Indeed, as the Austin American-Statesman reported, it was actually a school guard—a good guy with a gun—who confronted and failed to prevent the shooter’s entry. For years, though, Texas has encouraged teachers to pack heat. In the wake of a 2018 shooting at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation that encouraged schools to do exactly what Ken Paxton now demands. It mattered little back then that Abbott was responding to killings at a school that already had two armed guards and a plan to put guns in the hands of teachers.

As Republicans like Abbott and Paxton double down on the same pro-gun proliferation response to every mass shooting, evidence accumulates that weapons are rarely effective means of deterring or stopping mass shootings.  Last year, a group of public health scholars published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association examining 133 school shootings from 1980 to 2019. An armed guard was present in about a quarter of the incidents in the study. Those schools actually suffered death rates nearly three times higher than schools without armed guards. Similarly, a 2020 review of gun policy research by the RAND Corporation think tank found no evidence that the presence of more guns had any effect on gun violence. Criminologists at Texas State University found that unarmed staff or the shooters themselves are far more likely to bring a school shooting to an end than someone with a gun returning fire.

So-called good guys with guns fail to effectively deter or end mass shootings for a variety of tactical and psychological reasons.  For one thing, it’s actually very hard to shoot straight in a situation like a mass shooting. RAND analysts have found that even highly trained NYPD officers only hit their intended target in 19 percent of gunfire exchanges. Winning a gunfight with a shooter only becomes more difficult when the perpetrator carries a semi-automatic rifle like an AR-15, as the Uvalde suspect and many others have done. These weapons have a much longer range and are far more accurate than the kinds of pistols typically used by police and civilian concealed carriers, allowing shooters to keep responders far enough away that their own weapons will be of little use. The Uvalde gunman, for instance, managed to overpower two officers whom he encountered on his way to the elementary school.

In the most extreme cases, a single gunman with a semi-automatic rifle can stymie an entire SWAT team for hours: Back in 2015, a single gunman assaulting a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood with an AK-style rifle held off police for the better part of a day before surrendering.  The idea that armed guards and teachers could deter shootings in the first place presumes mass shooters behave rationally, weighing risks, when in fact the opposite is true. As the JAMA authors noted, “many school shooters are actively suicidal, intending to die in the act, so an armed officer may be an incentive rather than a deterrent.”  Considering the long odds of taking down a determined shooter equipped with an assault rifle, armed police and bystanders sometimes have difficulty motivating themselves to actually engage at all, as happened so infamously in the Parkland shooting when two sheriff’s deputies apparently hid from the gunman.

So Republicans’ preferred response to mass shootings operates in the realm of fantasy. The standard-issue liberal response—to ban guns in a country where they outnumber people—is at this point not much more realistic. That’s not to say there is no way to prevent a lot of mass shootings, however.  Civil gun seizure orders, known as “red flag” laws, are a promising but underutilized means of preemptively intervening when gun owners show signs they will hurt themselves or others. If a gun owner makes a threat or behaves dangerously—committing violent misdemeanors or torturing animals, for example—“red flag” laws allow family, school workers, medical professionals, and law enforcement to petition a judge for an emergency temporary order confiscating the dangerous person’s weapons.

The laws function like more commonplace personal restraining orders. Many states created civil gun seizure procedures in the wake of the 2018 Parkland shooting (though not Texas), and the NRA even offered limited support for the measures. A 2019 case study of California’s law, passed in the wake of the 2014 Isla Vista shooting, found the orders were used in 21 cases where gun owners had made credible threats of mass shootings. It’s at least conceivable that this law prevented other possible atrocities.

Good guys with guns fail to stop bad guys with guns in the moment because mass shootings are rare, surprising, and unpredictable events. Red flag laws are effective because mass shooters are, by contrast, pretty predictable: They almost always display clear warning signs that they are a danger to society and themselves. The Uvalde shooter was no exception: According to friends, he engaged in self-harm, shot a BB gun at strangers, and expressed a desire to kill. He also posted frequently on social media about his desire for guns. If Texas had the appropriate legal machinery in place, the people in the shooter’s life who had been so alarmed by his behavior might have had an opportunity to act before it was too late.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/gop-school-uvalde-shooting-response-guys-with-guns.html