Dispatches

U.S. IS STILL AT ‘FULL EMPLOYMENT,’ ‘CRISIS AT BORDER’ APPEARS TO HAVE LITTLE IMPACT ON NATIVE WORKERS. The American economy gained 303,000 jobs in March, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported (4/5). The US needs 90,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth, Kevin Drum noted at jabberwocking.com (4/5), which means that net job growth clocked in at 213,000 jobs. The headline unemployment rate ticked back down to 3.8%.

There was an odd racial cast to the unemployment numbers in March, Drum noted. The 3.5% unemployment rate for White workers didn’t change at all, but it spiked up 0.8 percentage points to 6.4% for Black workers. At the same time it was down 0.5 points to 4.5% for Hispanic workers and 0.9 points to 2.5% for Asian workers. Those are extremely large changes for a single month.

“On an annualized basis, average weekly earnings were up a whopping 8% from February,” Drum wrote. “Even accounting for [March’s] inflation spike, that comes to 2-3% in real terms. Not bad.”

That brought Drum to the question: How much are “illegal” immigrants paid on average compared to native-born Americans? As you can imagine, this is not an easy question to answer. It’s not as if the BLS has a handy hourly wage time series for undocumented workers. They’re undocumented!

The best answer Drum could find comes from a paper written in 2018. After cutting through the math and converting from log points, they conclude that when you compare workers with similar education, illegal immigrants make about 22% less than native workers. This is largely due to lack of bargaining power; English fluency; and limited job opportunities (i.e., the need to stay away from occupations that carry a risk of being discovered).

“Note, however, that this an average for all illegal immigrants, most of whom have been in the country for many years. It’s very likely that recent immigrants make less, which suggests that the typical recent border crosser probably makes about 30% less than a similarly educated native born, Drum wrote.

“What does this mean for the theory that illegal immigrants are stealing jobs away from native-born workers? On the one hand, they’re taking very poorly paid jobs that probably don’t attract natives in the first place. On the other hand, 30% is a big incentive for employers to choose an illegal immigrant over a native. It’s hard to draw a conclusion from this.

“So that leaves us to rely on other measures, most of which point to little effect from illegal immigration. The participation rate of the native-born population remains above its pre-pandemic trend:

“The unemployment rate of native-borns is 4.0% and the wages of the poorest tenth have continued to rise in real terms. Taken together, all of this suggests that the recent surge of illegal immigration has had very little impact on the jobs of native borns. Probably none at all.”

IMMIGRANTS ARE PRETTY LAW-ABIDING PEOPLE. With all the right-wing claims that crime has been surging with the invasion of immigrants crossing the southern border, Kevin Drum noted (4/4), he was browsing around at studies of crime committed by immigrants and came across this from the Heritage Foundation: “Increased Illegal Immigration Brings Increased Crime: Almost 2/3 of Federal Arrests Involve Noncitizens.”

Heritage said a 2021 Department of Justice report revealed that 64% of federal arrests in 2018 involved noncitizens, despite them comprising only 7% of the population at that time.

“Shazam! Noncitizen immigrants comprise 64% of all federal arrests!” Drum mused.

“Well … no,” Drum added, explaining that number includes federal arrests for immigration offenses—which, by definition, are limited to immigrants. The number of immigrants arrested for ordinary federal criminal offenses in 2018, the final year of the DOJ report, was 9.8%, and has been declining since 1998.

A recent study of incarceration rates of men aged 18-40 (both citizen and noncitizen) that goes back more than 100 years shows that, for the past half century, the incarceration rate of Latino immigrants has been lower than that of native borns. In the most recent year studied, incarceration rates for first-generation immigrants were a full quarter lower than for native borns.

SUPERMAJORITY OF MERCEDES-BENZ WORKERS IN ALABAMA FILE FOR UAW VOTE. Alleged union-busting that Mercedes-Benz autoworkers in Vance, Ala., accused the car company of in a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board has not weakened the resolve of pro-union employees, a supermajority of whom now support a union election, according to the United Auto Workers.

The union announced that more than 5,000 workers at the company’s nonunion plant have filed a petition with the NLRB in favor of an election, with the workers aiming for a vote by early May, Julia Conley noted at CommonDreams (4/5).

“It’s time for change at Mercedes,” said the UAW. “It’s time for justice in Alabama. It’s time for Mercedes workers to stand up. That’s why Mercedes workers have filed for their vote to join the UAW, and to win a better life.”

The announcement comes weeks after Volkswagen employees in Chattanooga, Tenn., filed for a union election that’s expected to be held April 17-19.

Both union votes are the result of aggressive campaigning by the UAW, including union president Shawn Fain, in the wake of a historic “stand-up strike” that pushed the Big Three automakers to agree to new contracts for about 150,000 workers late last year.

After the victory, Fain announced the launch of the largest union organizing drive in US history, aiming to welcome 150,000 more workers at nonunion auto plants into the UAW.

Over 10,000 autoworkers in recent months have signed union cards, and the UAW said that employees at more than two dozen facilities are also organizing.

Mercedes’ two US plants in Alabama and South Carolina are its only facilities in the world where workers are not represented by a union. Workers in Vance say they want better healthcare, retirement security, safety protocols, and paid sick days.

Jeremy Kimbrell, a measurement machine operator at Mercedes, said the union vote is part of an effort to ensure carmakers no longer view Alabama as a state where workers can be compensated unfairly.

“We are standing up for every worker in Alabama,” said Kimbrell. “At Mercedes, at Hyundai, and at hundreds of other companies, Alabama workers have made billions of dollars for executives and shareholders, but we haven’t gotten our fair share. We’re going to turn things around with this vote. We’re going to end the Alabama discount.”

The growing pro-union movement across the South represents “huge stakes,” said Lauren Kaori Gurley, a labor reporter for the Washington Post. The UAW has faced resistance from right-wing politicians across the South for decades as it has attempted to unionize factories.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R), said (4/4) that the UAW’s efforts are a “threat from Detroit” that “has no interest in seeing the people of Alabama succeed.”

Ivey’s comments indicated that the governor “thinks so little of Alabama workers, that we’re only good for cheap labor,” Kimbrell told AL.com.

ECONOMY HAS DONE BETTER UNDER DEMOCRATS FOR 75 YEARS, REPORT FINDS. Josh Bivens of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute took a look at economic performance back to 1949, Meteor Blades noted at Daily Kos (4/4). What did Bivens find?

“There is a pronounced Democratic advantage in nearly every measure of macroeconomic performance. Positive indicators like growth in gross domestic product, income, jobs, and wages are faster, while negative indicators like unemployment, inflation, and interest rates are lower.”

Bivens also quotes from a 2016 peer-reviewed study in the American Economic Review—“Presidents and the US Economy: An Econometric Exploration” by Alan S. Blinder and Mark W. Watson:

“The US economy has performed better when the president of the United States is a Democrat rather than a Republican, almost regardless of how one measures performance … The superiority of economic performance under Democrats rather than Republicans is nearly ubiquitous: it holds almost regardless of how you define success. By many measures, the performance gap is startlingly large.”

Not only does the economy perform better under Democratic presidents, the gains from economic growth are distributed more equally even when researchers exclude most government safety net and income support payments. Bivens notes that data are so obvious that “it is striking that public opinion polling has consistently shown that voters rate Republicans more highly as the party that is better at managing the economy.”

Indeed striking. And not a little of the blame for this unconformity of data and opinion falls on the mainstream media.

Better doesn’t mean perfect, of course. It’s not as if there aren’t still gaps in economic well-being. Chronic problems in that realm need serious attention. But if the history Bivens lays out is any guide, it won’t be Republicans who come up with solutions.

As any economist will tell you, Bivens included, presidents don’t have anything close to total control over the economy, and luck plays a role in economic outcomes. But luck can’t be assigned all the credit when the performance record covers three-quarters of a century.

Since 1949, the beginning of Harry Truman’s first elected term, during Democratic administrations, combined job growth in the public and private sectors has averaged 2.5% a year and just over 1% during Republican administrations. Calculate that based on today’s workforce, and this would mean 2.4 million more jobs created every year when Democrats are president.

The top five presidents for jobs created (in raw numbers) since 1949, in order, are Bill Clinton (18.6 million), Ronald Reagan (16.5 million), Joe Biden (15.4 million), Jimmy Carter (9.8 million), and Barack Obama (8.9 million).

Here’s another Bivens elaboration:

“Real personal income excluding transfers per capita (annual % growth) is a measure of market incomes, excluding the effect on personal incomes of tax changes or public benefits (like Social Security). Again, to the degree that Republican rhetoric reflected actual results, there should be a Republican advantage in generating greater growth in market-driven incomes. Yet again the Democratic advantage is large in this category, with market-driven personal incomes rising at almost double the pace of growth compared with times when Republicans hold the presidency.”

Bivens concludes:

“The matching of economic policy decisions and real-time economic performance is far from perfect. Some presidential administrations enact smart policies and run into bad luck, and others enact short-sighted policies and are blessed with good luck. Some might even get the results their policy decisions deserve. One would expect that the large role of chance would (almost by definition) cut uniformly across the partisan composition of presidential administrations. And yet the Democratic advantage in economic performance by partisan control of the presidency is striking.”

RFK JR. OFFICIAL ADMITS GOAL IS TO ELECT TRUMP. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s platform in the 2024 presidential race centers on promoting an “honest government,” a “clean, healthy environment,” and the protection of civil liberties—but his New York State director recently boiled down the Independent campaign’s true goal at a meeting with Republican voters: ensuring former President Donald Trump wins the election, Julia Conley noted at CommonDreams (4/8).

Speaking at an April 4 meeting, Rita Palma first checked to make sure there were “no Biden voters in the house” before telling her audience that her “No. 1 priority” is to ultimately take electoral votes away from President Joe Biden.

“The Kennedy voter and the Trump voter,” said Palma, “our mutual enemy is Biden.”

States including New York, California, and “most of the Northeast” are likely to vote for the Democratic president, she continued, but if Kennedy, whom Palma referred to as Bobby, is on the ballot in New York, the campaign could help “get rid of Biden.”

She urged the assembled GOP voters to give their “vote to Bobby and at least get rid of Biden and give those 28 electoral votes to Bobby rather than to Biden, thereby reducing Biden’s 270 [electoral votes].”

Palma, who was hired by Kennedy’s campaign after she canvassed for Trump in 2016 and 2020. “If nobody gets to 270 [electoral votes], then Congress picks the president, so who are they gonna pick if it’s a Republican Congress? They’ll pick Trump, so we’re rid of Biden either way.”

Political observers have noted in recent months that Kennedy has drawn support from right-wing billionaires, but Palma’s blunt description of her plan to “block Biden from winning the presidency” left critics stunned as the video of the event circulated on social media April 8.

“Whole thing is an epic fraud. Kennedy is spouting Russian propaganda, is now openly betraying the country,” said political strategist Simon Rosenberg, referring to the candidate’s recent comments about Russia’s claim that it aims to “de-Nazify” Ukraine.

“RFK Jr.’s campaign is saying the quiet part out loud,” Matt Corridoni, spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, told CNN. “As the saying goes, when people show you who they are, believe them: RFK Jr.’s campaign isn’t building a plan or a strategy to get 270 electoral votes, they’re building one to help Trump return to the Oval Office.”

CAMPAIGNERS CHEER FCC PLAN TO RESTORE NET NEUTRALITY RULES. Open internet advocates welcomed the Federal Communications Commission's plan to vote on reestablishing FCC oversight of broadband and restoring net neutrality rules on April 25, Jessica Corbett noted at CommonDreams (4/3).

"The pandemic proved once and for all that broadband is essential," said FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel, who announced the restoration effort in September, shortly after the US Senate confirmed Anna Gomez to a long-vacant seat on the five-member commission. The following month, the pair joined with Commissioner Geoffrey Starks to start the rulemaking process.

"After the prior administration abdicated authority over broadband services, the FCC has been handcuffed from acting to fully secure broadband networks, protect consumer data, and ensure the internet remains fast, open, and fair," Rosenworcel explained. "A return to the FCC's overwhelmingly popular and court-approved standard of net neutrality will allow the agency to serve once again as a strong consumer advocate of an open internet."

The three Democratic commissioners aim to reverse a deeply unpopular rollback that happened under former Republican President Donald Trump by reclassifying broadband as a public service under Title II of the Communications Act and preventing internet service providers (ISPs) from blocking legal content, creating fast lanes, and throttling speeds.

"We've been fighting for this moment since Trump's FCC threw out strong Title II rules and abandoned net neutrality back in 2017—and really for nearly 20 years since net neutrality first came under threat," Free Press Action co-CEO Craig Aaron said of the upcoming vote. "We welcome and celebrate the FCC's decision to move ahead and make sure that internet users will again be protected against harms by big phone and cable companies like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon."

NEW BIDEN PLAN WOULD PROVIDE STUDENT DEBT RELIEF TO MILLIONS. President Joe Biden announced a plan to help tens of millions of Americans burdened with educational debt.

Biden announced his new plan at Madison Area Technical College in Madison, Wis., less than a year after the US Supreme Court struck down his previous program, which would have provided relief to 40 million borrowers by canceling up to $20,000 in debt per person, Julia Conley noted at CommonDreams (4/8).

The president’s new plan would wipe out the entire debt amount held by about 4 million people, give debt relief of at least $5,000 to 10 million borrowers, and reduce the undergraduate and graduate student debt of 23 million people whose interest would be eliminated.

The plan would allow millions of young people to “finally get on with their lives instead of their lives being put on hold,” said the president.

Student debt is “not just a drag on them, it’s a drag on our local economies,” Biden said in Madison. “When you can’t afford to buy a home, start that small business, chase that career that you’d been dreaming about for a long time.”

Aissa Canchola Bañez, policy director of the Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC), said in addition to bringing “tens of millions of borrowers one step closer to realizing the life-changing impact of student debt cancellation,” Biden’s announcement “also offers a roadmap for how this administration should deal with a hostile Supreme Court majority captured by right-wing special interests.”

“Call the high court’s bluff by aggressively using the full power of the law and delivering for working people,” she said. “For too long, student debt has blocked homeownership, inhibited savings, limited career opportunities and economic mobility, and choked at the promise of entire generations. Taken together, the Biden administration’s actions are setting a path to a debt-free, brighter economic future for more than 30 million Americans.”

Americans who now owe more in student debt than the amount that they originally borrowed due to interest would have up to $20,000 in interest wiped out. People who make less than $120,000 per year could have all of their interest canceled.

People who took out federal loans for undergraduate degrees and began repaying them more than 20 years ago would have their debt automatically canceled. The same would apply for people who began repaying their graduate degree loans more than 25 years ago.

People who attended colleges that have since lost their certification or their eligibility to participate in federal student aid would have their debt wiped out, and Americans who are particularly burdened with other necessary expenses could apply to have their debt canceled.

The program “will change lives,” said US Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) as she pledged to continue her push to “cancel student debt fully.”

Andrew O’Neill, legislative director for progressive advocacy group Indivisible, noted that combined with the $146 billion in relief Biden has already provided to about 4 million borrowers through executive actions and other measures, “more than 30 million folks will now get relief from Biden’s programs.”

The Biden administration said it expected Republicans to file legal challenges, which could prevent the new provisions from going into effect by the time Americans choose between Biden and former President Donald Trump in November.

PROGRESSIVES UNVEIL 10-POINT AGENDA TO ‘PREVENT FASCIST TAKEOVER.’ A coalition of national progressive advocacy groups released a list of 10 policy objectives that it believes President Joe Biden should embrace to consolidate support for his high-stakes electoral rematch against presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, Jake Johnson reported at CommonDreams (4/8).

The platform—released by Our Revolution, Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), and the State Democratic Party Progressive Network—frontloads the threat that Trump and the fascist movement at his back pose to basic freedoms and democracy itself.

“The 2024 presidential election presents a challenge for progressives to preserve and amplify our voice while fighting the most dangerous threat to U.S. democracy in our nation’s history,” reads the platform’s introduction. “Our best strategy to advance both goals is to become state and national Biden delegates at the state and national Democratic Party conventions, and to elect Joe Biden for a second term. Throughout this process, we must advocate for a progressive policy agenda that builds and expands upon progressive elements of President Biden’s original Build Back Better (BBB) plan.”

“With our support and voice,” the document adds, “progressives may persuade and enable President Biden to achieve more progressive policy objectives during his second term and prevent a fascist takeover.”

The first plank of the agenda urges Biden and the Democratic Party to “develop and repetitively use more aggressive messaging against and educate the public about the dangers of fascism including exposing and condemning Project 2025, the fascist blueprint for a second Trump administration.”

It also calls for more concrete policy changes such as filibuster reform, term limits for Supreme Court justices, and the passage of robust voting rights legislation in the face of l arge-scale Republican attacks on the franchise.

Other planks of the agenda include working to end the privatization of public goods such as housing and healthcare, using “all means available” to raise the long-stagnant federal minimum wage and slash poverty, raising taxes on billionaires and corporations, overturning the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, canceling student debt and establishing tuition-free public college, expanding Medicare benefits, declaring a climate emergency, and conditioning U.S. aid to Israel.

The groups said they plan to submit the policy agenda to the Democratic Party Platform Committee ahead of the Democratic National Convention in August.

“We intend this to be a unifying effort, urge the second Biden administration to fulfill the 10 policy objectives outlined in these proposals, and invite the Democratic presidential campaign to engage in dialogue with us to achieve unity and progressive electoral support around them,” the progressive coalition said (8/8).

REPUBLICAN ‘FREEDOM CAUCUS’ SENDS RANSOM NOTE ON KEY BRIDGE FUNDING. President Joe Biden hasn’t submitted an emergency supplemental request for federal funds to repair the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge, but the House ‘Freedom Caucus’ is already taking the funding hostage, Joan McCarter noted at DailyKos.com (4/5).

The extremists laid out their official position Friday, ahead of Biden’s trip to Baltimore to visit the site of the deadly bridge collapse and meet with officials and victims’ families. The hard-liners insist that any federal money only be used on bridge repairs, but are also demanding a White House policy reversal on an issue that has nothing to do with the bridge.

Biden was in Baltimore April 5 to reaffirm his commitment to the people of Baltimore. Ahead of the trip, the White House issued a fact sheet detailing what the Biden administration has done so far and what it will take to restore the Port of Baltimore, calling it “essential to the regional economy and the national supply chain.” Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young also sent a letter to key House and Senate committee chairs asking for authorizing language for “a 100 percent Federal cost share for rebuilding the bridge.”

The House maniacs, as usual, don’t want to pay for it. They’ve been demanding the curtailing of disaster relief since the devastating 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster and insisting that any funding for recovery has to be taken out of other spending. In 2018, 179 Republicans voted against Hurricane Sandy relief, and in 2019, they held up a critical aid package for weeks that would help Puerto Rico and communities devastated by wildfire and extreme weather.

Of course, when it comes to emergency assistance to red states, that opposition fades.

As the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake pointed out in 2022, “only three of 18 House Republicans from Florida voted for the larger Sandy bill, but every one of them voted for the 2017 bill that included aid for their home state.” So much for fiscal discipline.

This time around—with aid going to the blue state of Maryland—the Freedom Caucus members are pulling out that old playbook, again insisting that any federal money has to come from cuts to other programs, and that “burdensome regulations” protecting workers and the environment be set aside when it comes to rebuilding.

Out of far-right field, they are also demanding that the administration reverse a temporary hold on liquified natural gas export approvals, dubiously arguing that it, “like the Baltimore harbor closure, has severe implications for foreign trade.” Republicans have been banging on about this for months, largely because the hold affects one red state: Speaker Mike Johnson’s home state of Louisiana.

Johnson has even tried to condition aid to Ukraine on lifting the export pause, laughably arguing on Fox News that “We want to have natural gas exports that will help unfund Vladimir Putin’s war effort.”

The White House quickly shut that argument down.

From The Progressive Populist, May 1, 2024

Populist.com