Brought to You by G.E. & American Express - We're in the White House, Let's Destroy More Jobs

closed.jpg
Such is this week's White House jobs agenda.

You're not going to believe this. Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness want to make it easier to let people enter the nation as a jobs program. This time the agenda is masked as tourism.

Somehow that will create jobs, especially those career building maids and taxi drivers tourism jobs. If our immigration system was more open, clearly tourists would flock to the U.S. with such great adventures like taking a tour of America's abandoned factories and homes.

 

 

This latest claim that somehow our immigration system is reducing tourism dollars is a sham. This is all about revising the U.S. Visa system. This is yet more spin,labor economic fiction to get more foreign guest workers into the country. Foreign guest workers are used to displace U.S. workers.

Even worse, while these same cats offshore outsource your job, they are promoting retraining, trying to claim Americans just don't have the skills. Gee wiz, they had the skills just a few years ago, before you fired them and shipped their job to China!

That's our jobs program. People who already have the skills, can pay for a certificate to say they can work in manufacturing now. What a joke! We have lost millions of jobs due to bad trade deals, and this is the response, to train Americans in some community college when those very Americans already have the skills.

Here is a quote from Obama's weekly address:

The good news is, when it comes to job-creation and economic growth, there are certain things we know we can do. Now, government is not – and should not be – the main engine of job-creation in this country. That’s the role of the private sector. But one thing government can do is partner with the private sector to make sure that every worker has the necessary skills for the jobs they’re applying for.

On Wednesday, I announced commitments by the private sector, colleges, and the National Association of Manufacturers that will make it possible for 500,000 community college students to get a manufacturing credential that has the industry’s stamp of approval. If you’re a company that’s hiring, you’ll know that anyone who has this degree has the skills you’re looking for. If you’re a student considering community college, you’ll know that your diploma will give you a leg up in the job market.

Ok, so you're going to have to pay for the skills you already have to apply for a non-existent job that you do not have....because they moved manufacturing....to China. Folks, there used to be something called on the job training and place your bets people in China are not having to pay to learn a skill on the promise of a potential job.

Even worse, it is well documented that immigration is used to displace U.S. workers, in particular high technology workers. So, what does Obama want to do? Why flood the market with more immigration, more H-1B Visas, more L-1 Visas and even turn our higher educational system into a glorified green card ATM. This will guarantee more worker displacement, especially in jobs which can support a family. We already have massive age and sex discrimination in these fields.

By year-end we also will have looked at and made recommendations on building and improving systems for national competitiveness, including R&D investment, tax policy, visa reform and high-skilled immigration, as well as applying business concepts (like the Lean Six Sigma approach) to regulatory processes. Some of these ideas, by their nature, require bipartisan legislation and therefore may take longer to move forward, but they are all critical.

This is what happens when one puts G.E. in charge of jobs. G.E. has been a notorious offshore outsourcer of U.S. jobs. You even get brazen lies like this:

Train workers for today's open jobs. There are more than two million open jobs in the U.S., in part because employers can't find workers with the advanced manufacturing skills they need.

Many economists, experts, analysts have shown this is not the case. There is no worker shortage. There is no structural employment problem. What we have is an employer problem.

Just unbelievable, they are pushing the very agenda items which has lost Americans not only millions of jobs, but their income, and sent more and more into poverty.

Next time you hear America needs to be competitive, realize this is a corporate public relations buzz phrase to mean more labor arbitrage, more outsourcing, more wage repression and more bad trade agreements. In other words, competitive just means these multinationals want to run amok around the globe, squeezing workers and destroying middle classes like a vacuum hose in your pocket.

Jobs? Nah, they ain't interested in those, at least not in the United States.

The only people who do not realize there is a jobs crisis are those who need to join a 12-step program. Yet the denial and refusal to implement policies that would actually create jobs is ongoing.

If you wish to be ill, watch this video of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. I kid you not. Literally they are presenting lobbyist spin as fact and not blinking an eye....to the President of the United States.

As these corporations spin, they have doubled their investments overseas:

Seven publicly traded U.S. corporations represented on President Barack Obama’s advisory council for jobs and competitiveness -- including General Electric Co. (GE) and Intel Corp. (INTC) -- have devoted a growing pool of their non-U.S. earnings to investments in other countries.

As a group, multinational companies with current or former chief executive officers on Obama’s jobs council have, over the past four years, almost doubled the cumulative amounts they’ve reinvested overseas, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

By doing so, companies may be able to take advantage of faster-growing markets or lower production costs, and they can defer U.S. income taxes on profits from overseas sales. Underscoring the difference between corporate interests and the national interest, they’re also investing money elsewhere that could be helping the U.S. economy, said former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

As noted by Virginia representative Wolf:

GE created a lot of jobs last year. They were not in America. Those jobs need to come home to America.

In fact Wolf and Senator Warner are trying to offer a real job creation incentive in the United States, a loan to hire Americans:

The loan program would offer up to $5,000 for each new manufacturing or technology job created in targeted areas. The loan would have to be repaid if that job is not maintained for at least five years.

That is the way to create jobs. One must tie everything, tax incentives, profits, costs, even being able to operate in the United States at all...to a job, for citizens of this nation. There are many other policies one could do to create jobs. They could ban the offshore outsourcing of federal and state contracts. Ban the use of guest workers by the federal and state government. They could confront China on currency manipulation, stop intellectual property theft.

Fundamentally they must put Americans first for jobs and yes through legislation. Our government could create a WPA program. This is a direct jobs program, no middle man, where U.S. workers build public works, for the United States. America's infrastructure is crumbling and these are investments. The economic return of infrastructure, (new roads, bridges, rail, water, sewer, electrical grid, damns and so on), can be seen in the United States from 1933 to 1980. Yet now our system is falling apart. China, on the other hand, set to be the globe's largest economy, is investing billions in their own infrastructure. We need a targeted direct jobs program, executing on public works projects known to give the most bang for the buck economic return, with strong Buy American and Hire America stipulations. We must invest in the American people and rebuild the United States.

What is the world coming to when the President of the United States insults the American people with some snow job they do not have the skills. We've always had the skills. What we do not have is a government by and for the American people.

Meta: 

Comments

Even the Hill is demanding jobs right now

The Hill Brent Budow wrote a scathing op-ed demanding jobs from team Obama and this Congress. Don't let the GOP off the hook, they are even worse, if that is possible at this point.

Tourism

Interestingly, foreign tourists such as Japanese who used to flock to San Francisco no longer want to come here at all to see San Francisco.

Why?

Because the entire area has been turned into a 3rd world cesspool by the invading hordes of 3rd worlders who came to the bay area because of the IT jobs they wanted to steal from Americans. They come in, clean out, and go home. And while they are here, they do nothing to maintain the area and become a blight. San Francisco is a hellhole now and no one in their right mind wants to visit it.

So, the idea that brining in more people will help tourism is a lie - the opposite has already been proven to be true.

A true San Franciscan

Residents of San Francisco all complain bitterly, but a hellhole? Nah.

Anonymous: if you think you're in a hellhole there in San Francisco, try Los Angeles ... or Fresno ... or Bakersfield ... or El Paso ... or Denver ... or ...

Companies ruined or almost ruined by Indian labor

Adaptec - Indian CEO Subramanian Sundaresh fired.
AIG (signed outsourcing deal in 2007 in Europe with Accenture Indian frauds, collapsed in 2009)
AirBus (Qantas plane plunged 650 feet injuring passengers when its computer system written by India disengaged the auto-pilot).
Apple - R&D CLOSED in India in 2006.
Australia's National Australia Bank (Outsourced jobs to India in 2007, nationwide ATM and account failure in late 2010).
Bell Labs (Arun Netravalli took over, closed, turned into a shopping mall)
Boeing Dreamliner ES software (written by HCL, banned by FAA)
Bristol-Myers-Squibb (Trade Secrets and documents stolen in U.S. by Indian national guest worker)
Caymas - Startup run by Indian CEO, French director of dev, Chinese tech lead. Closed after 5 years of sucking VC out of America.
Circuit City - Outsourced all IT to Indian-run IBM and went bankrupt shortly thereafter.
ComAir crew system run by 100% Indian IT workers caused the 12/25/05 U.S. airport shutdown when they used a short int instead of a long int
Deloitte - 2010 - this Indian-packed consulting company is being sued under RICO fraud charges by Marin Country, California for a failed solution.
Dell - call center (closed in India)
Delta call centers (closed in India)
Fannie Mae - Hired large numbers of Indians, had to be bailed out. Indian logic bomb creator found guilty.
GM - Was booming in 2006, signed $300 million outsourcing deal with Wipro that same year, went bankrupt 3 years later
HSBC ATMs (software taken over by Indians, failed in 2006)
Intel Whitefield processor project (cancelled, Indian staff canned)
Lehman (Spectramind software bought by Wipro, ruined, trashed by Indian programmers)
Medicare - Defrauded by Indian national doctor Arun Sharma & wife in the U.S.
Microsoft - Employs over 35,000 H-1Bs. Stock used to be $100. Today it's lucky to be over $25. Not to mention that Vista thing.
MIT Media Lab Asia (canceled)
PeopleSoft (Taken over by Indians in 2000, collapsed).
Polycom - Former senior executive Sunil Bhalla charged with insider trading.
Qantas - See AirBus above
Quark (Alukah Kamar CEO, fired, lost 60% of its customers to Adobe because Indian-written QuarkExpress 6 was a failure)
Rolls Royce (Sent aircraft engine work to India in 2006, engines delayed for Boeing 787, and failed on at least 2 Quantas planes in 2010, cost Rolls $500m).
SAP - Same as Deloitte above in 2010.
Skype (Madhu Yarlagadda fired)
State of Indiana $867 million FAILED IBM project, IBM being sued
State of Texas failed IBM project.
Sun Micro (Taken over by Indian and Chinese workers in 2001, collapsed, had to be sold off to Oracle).
UK's NHS outsourced numerous jobs including health records to India in mid-2000 resulting in $26 billion over budget.
United - call center (closed in India)
Virgin Atlantic (software written in India caused cloud IT failure)
World Bank (Indian fraudsters BANNED for 3 years because they stole data).

I could post the whole list here but I don't want to crash any servers.

wow, that's quite a list!

How about Accenture? Didn't they fail on a > $2B contract with the FBI and were offshore outsourcing the work?

Microsoft is a combo, not only have they labor arbitraged their engineers and software developers but their culture, even in the 1990's was more about business bullying than innovation.

Apple, well, say what you will and even if they stole half of it, they at least do innovate much better. We could list a host of companies that innovate better than Microsoft, even Intel innovates better than Microsoft (another company notorious for labor arbitrage).

Bankers

The corporations and gov't are run by the bankers. The bankers don't want American workers working.

Why?

Because in the late 1990s America's professionals created one of the greatest economic booms in US history. People were paying cash for cars and houses. The US and CA gov'ts had huge tax surpluses. That's right - there was no need for the bankers in the late 1990s.

And that is why the bankers have manipulated us into this mess - to keep us in debt. With prosperous Americans, the bankers are out of business.

That is why all the gov't does is talk. We will never see legislation saying put American workers first because the bankers simply will not allow it to happen. If that ever happens, you will see another 90s-style economic boom in the USA.

Exporting production infrastructure?

My impression is that the 90s boom was possible only because we still had infrastructure to export. We may someday see another boom, I suppose, (although maybe not in my lifetime!), but it won't be 1990s style.

It's already tied ... up!

"One must tie everything, tax incentives, profits, costs, even being able to operate in the United States at all...to a job, for citizens of this nation." -- Robert Oak

It would require ruthless political pragmatism of the sort practiced by FDR, but first you would need the FDR situation. You would need decisive elections resulting not just in a behind-the-scenes one-party government-as-usual, but in actual up-front and open one-party dominance. Either that, or, you would need a president from neither party who could wield a bully pulpit against them both (the Ross Perot approach, except Perot never reached the White House).

It would mean UN-tying or at least de-prioritizing, everything in the way of the multitude of other ostensible objectives, such as, (to give one major instance) the 'ideal' of 'free' trade, or, (to give one minor instance) the Cuba embargo. To some extent, environmental goals would probably have to be compromised. Every type of economic preference for the sake of social goals, other than full employment, would have to be subject to discard. Strikes could not be tolerated or else would have to be quickly resolved.

Ideologues of all kinds would be angered. The media would howl day and night, systematically misrepresenting all full-employment efforts. The SCOTUS would likely become involved, contributing to a constitutional crisis (just as happened with FDR).

I am not opposing Robert Oak's suggested policy criteria ... just reflecting on the reality of Washington's habit of tying economic policy to every socio-political or ideological goal EXCEPT full employment.

Everything is already 'tied', that is, everything is held hostage to one overriding uncompromisable demand or another.

Everything is tied to altruistic globalism or to 'the national interest' -- in either case, a matter of survival not merely of the nation but of humanity. Or, everything is tied to misguided pseudo-libertarian economic ideology or to moralizing imperatives for social policy -- in any case, principles not subject to compromise.

Tax and budget issues, for example, are all to be fought out on ideological grounds! Never mind that such a thing has never happened in the history of democratic politics.

 

Underneath the guise of anti-politics politics, there is no principle to be found.

 

Underneath the supposed unity of a nation fighting a 'War on Terror' or the ultimate Cultural War, saving humanity from itself and leading the 'free world' out of the wilderness, the people are hopelessly divided against themselves.

 

So, yes, it makes perfect sense -- put the people to work. There's really no sane alternative.
 

Dan Rather "gets it" on STEM, tech, immigration

This is some great stuff, Dan Rather with statistical facts, just called out the Obama administration pushing for more foreign guest workers in STEM. It is complete BS and not only by the jobs vs. those graduating, but add in all of those forced out of the field and there is no shortage of technical people in the U.S.

article here.

No great danger of inflationary wage spiral

Not even a danger of an inflationary wage spiral! There is much too big a backlog to fill -- it'd be a long time before we would actually come close to exhausting our domestic skilled labor or professionals supply.

It's more of the multiple 'preference' systems to which Obama and many others in Washington are so deeply committed, based maybe on rhyme but no reason. Republicans are half-right about letting markets function without government interference -- they probably actually think that in the name of non-interference, H1B visas should be eliminated but employers should be free to bring in professionals and even unskilled labor with no paperwork required, as long as there is no track to citizenship. That approach enhances the bully power of employers.

It's the clumsy attempt of the U.S. to play the neo-mercantilist game, even though it locks us into a losing position every time.

But There's Instant Citizenship for US Born Kids

That's the thing these cheap labor people always conveniently forget.

I don't want a permanent multi-generational underclass of foreign workers here like they have in the Middle East. But that's the type of system we'd have to have here to cheap foreign labor supply whose size we could control. As it is now, we'd have to import 10 million people each generation while our own population grows rapidly from all the new immigrants' citizenship children and all their descendants.

I also don't want a permanent underclass of unemployed and underemployed Americans -- especially if said underclass grows to mammoth proportions, as exists in various 3rd World countries. That's what we are going to have, if we don't stop the outsourcing and cheap foreign labor and start concentrating on our kids getting a decent education and a decent job.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce does

Exporting Jobs, importing poverty. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce literally gets time on CSPAN, which is disgusting. But even worse, they get to run Obama's jobs program (G.E. Amex, Intel and so on are "members" of this lobbyist organization).

That's the problem, but DK promoting economic fiction, although with a host of special interest groups doesn't help.

No, you cannot keep increasing the labor supply with everything else statistic and expect that not to be a further drag on the economy.

Literally you will see fiction, pure and simple, trying to claim all of this helps the economy.

Well, if you're a slave labor employer it helps the economy because one has an unlimited supply of cheap labor and from the statistics, it looks like a hell of a lot of unskilled labor to boot.

Agreed - But How Could President Be So Wrong?

I saw this article over at Huffington Post earlier today before reading your comment.

It was a first rate job, both in facts and presentation. Too bad Rather's on an obscure network. This article made me curious about what else he's been working on since leaving CBS.

But I have to wonder -- how could a president --any president -- make statements that are so wrong. Doesn't he have a staff of researchers who verify what people tell him before he agrees to makes appearances or before his speechwriters compose speeches for him?

Or is it possible his staff did their research, realized they'd been snookered but went along and passed along the many erroneous assertions because they sounded good?

I don't know what to think. I'm sure appalled by it all and extremely grateful that Dan Rather wrote this up.

Anybody who didn't read the article at Huffington Post, go read it now. It's definitely an eye opener.

How could a president, any president, be so wrong?

That's a good question!

My guess is that presidents get their AM intelligence briefing, and that's reality to them, at least for a day. Everything else is all about perceptions.

Also, I sometimes ponder over how right Jimmy Carter was when he talked about energy and resource conservation ... and how little appreciation the public showed him for that. Or, another example, when G.H.W. Bush suggested a modest 50¢ per barrel tax on oil imports -- what a difference that might have made over time! Neither Bush nor Carter was allowed a second term.

I don't know what to think either, but I can't stop myself from thinking. It's some kind of addiction.

How Could a President Be So Wrong?

Either Obama is corrupt as hell but smart, or he's dumber than a box of rocks. But he is being feed this snow job, fiction by his chosen "economics team". Literally, I went over that meeting, they say with a straight fact bold faced economic lies....seriously, the President is sitting right there in the meeting.

So, either he is really not aware of economics, reality, facts, or he is simply doing the Money Party (aka Michael Collins buzz term) latest demands.

But we're hearing Obama regurgitate corporate lobbyists "talking points" which are usually spin, repeatedly. They write those "talking points", hand them to "politicians" to "say" when the Populist is outraged at the latest middle class screw job agenda.

The latest is "technological advances" are the reason "productivity has soared" such as those evil ATM's now causing massive unemployment.

Obama's No John McCain

That is, he's not someone we'd imagine as president would never grasp the economic issues, really, and never gain a sense of which arguments had merits and which ones did not. (At least that was my perception of McCain and I believe that was how many others saw him and was a chief reason he wasn't elected).

I don't know what his math/stats skills are and how much he can grasp of economic arguments -- do you? I myself am one of those people who have college level plus reading comprehension yet could not solve a simple equation if my life depended on it (and there was a whole class of us liberal arts majors at my school like that, so I know I am not alone). I doubt Obama is so lopsided in his abilities.

Also he's never said anything about the 99ers.

I vote avoidance. I vote a conscious effort not to acknowledge and respond to our economic and jobs emergency which is a blight on his presidency that will never be removed. In fact I believe that his wilfull ignorance[, refusal to disclose the truth about the current economic emergency and stubborn inability to take effective action about jobs (bracketed material added)] will dog his reputation more once he is out of office than it does today.

Oddly enough no one seems to hold him accountable now. I suppose partly because just about everybody in Congress, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, is playing "see no evil" like him.

TR in the 1907 Panic

Teddy Roosevelt faced a choice like Obama's in April of 2009 when the 12 Banksters were summoned to the White House. In 1907,TR smacked them around and insisted that
the Robber Barrons invest, build and pump the markets. What a difference a century
and a real president can make.

As you recall, Obama opined, "I'm the only one protecting you from the folks with the torches and pitchforks out there." That day, Obama's effective Presidency ended.

Burton Leed

Bring on the Pitchforks!

See if these boys can't find a cell at Lewisburg where Jimmy Hoffa did his time. Let these criminals do their time in a real prison, not a tennis club.

Frank T.