Obama beating Bush’s meager attempt during his two terms to deport illegal aliens because cheap labor helped increased profits. Bush increased enforcement in 2008 to unsuccessfully help Republicans win in 2008.
America is the only major country that allows children from illegal aliens to become citizens automatically. Reagan started the process on a massive scale to help corporations increase profits, especially those connected with food production. Caesar Chavez, leader of the Farm Workers strongly opposed Reagan’s plan to flood the USA with illegal Mexicans.
NAFTA and a provision won by Bill Clinton on corn exports to Mexico to lend them $50 billion dollars led to the loss of farm jobs in Mexico, the basis for food and income for many Mexicans, led to the flood of illegal immigrants to the USA.
The 14th Amendment was humanely passed to allow the children of slaves to become citizens. The current concern is legitimate, but not the racist approach taken by the Republicans. These concerns are deep seated because they have strongly affected the wages of the bottom half of Americans as legal aliens affected the salaries and employment opportunities of professional workers such as engineers and scientists.
Ten Fold Increase in H-1B Visa Application Fee Sends Out Big Howl The Wall Street Journal reported today that the border protection law signed in law includes a provision to make it more expense to apply for an H-1B visa to bring a foreign temporary worker into the country. The visa application increase from $320 to $2,320 is sitting up a howl by outsourcing companies based in India is projected to pay $200 million of the $600 million cost of extra border security.
Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) was the chief sponsor of this provision.
The two tax cuts by Bush, mainly for the very wealthy, but publicized as a tax break for all Americans. Bush removed funding from the states at the same time which raised taxes in the states that could pass them. So the majority of Americans ended up paying more taxes before the so-called tax cut for all Americans. He had to pass it by a reconciliation process which allowed only a ten year lifetime for the tax cut so it is ready to expire this year.
Even though Bush included some other freebies for the rich by having a no estate tax holiday for the wealthy who die in 2010 and IRA conversions of any amount to a tax free Roth account with up to three years to pay them. The wealthy jumped in even though they would have to pay the tax at the current tax rate which could be as high as 36-39 percent.
Even though both liberal and conservatives economists agree that the tax cuts should be allowed to lapse, some Democrats are stupidly worried about letting it lapse because of the 2010 elections in November. These rich people are not supporting the economy anyway in a meaningful manner so let the tax lapse.
Very rarely mentioned is that only 4 percent of college graduates are unemployed! This means that lack of spending by them is primarily fear that they might lose their jobs. Even during the Bill Clinton good economy in the late 1990s, almost all the excess spending was done by the top 20 percent.
The bottom 80% spent the same as before the boom because they were robbed of decent wages by the largely Republican policies starting with Nixon and hugely accelerated by Reagan. They did this by shipping jobs overseas by providing heavy subsidies. Reagan paid half the price for building auto factories in Canada and Mexico, for example.
If the Democrats don’t play hardball, the Dems will lose lots of seats. Need to be as mean and deceptive as Republicans and need to repeat the same messages many times as the Republicans do to penetrate the distracted Thick Heads of American voters.
David Rosenberg, the former star analyst for Merrill Lynch, said on Wealth Track www.wealthtrack.com that we will likely get deflation so like everyone else he is heavy in corporate bonds which started being accumulated over a year ago by the so-called "smart" investors. He is only 20 percent in stocks.
I suspect we will have a bond meltdown because everyone including the stupid individual investors are going into bonds. The loses by bond holders if the economy unexpectedly improves because of an improvement in confidence will be enormous I am cautiously optimistic and will continue to stay in stocks. I don't like to be part of a herd. It is just my nature for good or bad.
Jim Kawakami, August 16, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com
Sacramento Bee Older Baby Boomers Record Divorce Rate … As she and her husband drove home after celebrating their 25th anniversary on the coast, Tracy Bryan realized with a shock that being married to him was not how she wanted to grow old.
"We had grown and changed," said Bryan, now 53, whose divorce from her college sweetheart was final in 2008. "I changed what I wanted out of life."
As baby boomers approach retirement age looking forward to many more long, healthy years of life, the number of couples calling it quits after decades of marriage is on the rise.
Born between 1946 and 1964, boomers already have a divorce rate triple that of their parents. And now they're pioneering a new trend in splitting up: the so-called "gray divorce" phenomenon of couples going their separate ways after 20 or more years together. … http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/08/15/99207/baby-boomers-lead-new-wave-of.html
Criminal Illegal Aliens Targeted for Deportation, Ricardo Velasquez walked into the Mecklenburg County jail in North Carolina on Tuesday night charged with raping children ages 7 and 8. After a fingerprint scan and a few taps of the computer, the accused assailant was further identified: as an illegal immigrant from South America. Velasquez, 40, still must be tried on his criminal charges in the United States, but more than likely, he won't leave custody until he boards a plane for his native Ecuador.
The Obama administration has said it is on track to remove a record number of illegal immigrants this year, buoyed by an increased emphasis on finding and deporting aliens who, like Velasquez, pass through the nation's jail system after having been convicted or accused of crimes.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement now lists its top deportation priority as those undocumented immigrants convicted of the most dangerous crimes - murder, rape, assault and major drug offenses. …
Last year, nearly 390,000 illegal immigrants were removed. Critics of the ongoing deportation program say the numbers tell only part of the story. Despite the focus on violent criminals, the majority of the removals handled by ICE still are noncriminals or immigrants accused of lesser infractions such as traffic violations and misdemeanors. … http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/08/15/99203/obama-steps-up-deportations-of.html
U.S.-born children of immigrants are at center of debate
Whether to deny citizenship to U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants is the new battleground in the rekindled immigration debate between those who oppose illegal immigration and those who favor an immigration overhaul. As the debate swirls, the respected Pew Hispanic Center in Washington on Wednesday released a new study saying that at least four million children born in the United States belong to undocumented parents. | 08/12/10 07:14:59 By - Alfonso Chardy
'Game of chicken' coming in Congress over Bush tax cuts
Congressional incumbents, already nervous about increasingly unpredictable November elections, are facing a potentially make-or-break political decision: Whether to vote on extending expiring Bush era tax cuts before the election. The answer is likely to reverberate all over the campaign trail. | 08/11/10 18:04:00 By - David Lightman and Margaret Talev
Recovery Likely to Take Years Because of Republican Financial Crisis … Historically, recoveries unfold like this: the economy slows, a dip in inflation follows, and the Federal Reserve lowers lending rates. Banks follow suit. Lower borrowing costs entice businesses to expand and consumers to take out loans for cars and houses. It all propels the economy out of contraction and back into growth.
This time, however, the U.S. economy is emerging from a financial crisis, the largest since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Banks still aren't lending, consumers aren't spending, and employers aren't hiring enough to make the recovery hum.
That's normal for a recovery from a massive financial crisis, said Carmen Reinhart, a University of Maryland economist who co-authored the book "This Time is Different," which chronicled financial crises over 800 years. What these crises share in common, she and Harvard economist Ken Rogoff conclude, is a huge debt build-up sparks the crisis and takes years to work off.
"Debt overhangs are not things you work out of very quickly, and that is sort of the ball and chain we are dragging around here," Reinhart said. She likens the U.S. recovery to the lost decade of the 1980s for debt-ridden Latin American nations, and the 1990s in Japan.
"Were going to be paying for this in terms of lower growth in the future, the near future," she said.
Home purchases are one measure of how out of whack things remain. The Fed's benchmark lending rate has been between zero and a quarter of a percentage point for almost two years. That's helped to bring mortgage rates on 30-year fixed loans down to the lowest level in decades, 4.49 percent for the week of August 2.
Yet the National Association of Realtors recently reported that its index of pending home sales in June was down 19 percent from a year earlier, at a level not seen since 2001. Low rates aren't attracting buyers — or buyers aren't able to obtain credit because of tighter lending standards. There are almost 4 million homes on the market nationwide, equivalent to a nine-month supply. … http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/08/11/99027/wanted-something-to-make-a-slow.html
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