A very interesting article. Ending the Bracero program didn’t raise the wages of US workers. Farmers simply switched from labor to machines or switched away from crops that required lots of labor. Debra will like the nickname of the Tweeter.
By the way, the Bracero program was a fine program before it was nixed by the Dems. It provided a legal, regulated process to allow Mexican workers to safely enter the US, do jobs Americans won’t do, and safely return home. I can remember Reagan praising the Bracero program. We need to recreate something like that program. That would essentially solve our low-end immigration issue.
On high-end immigration, we really need to expand the number of intelligent, highly-productive immigrants. The country really needs more people who will
a. Earn enough to pay income taxes; and
b. Have the drive and creativity to create jobs for others.
A few days ago I joked about giving green cards and citizenship to immigrants who create businesses that employ our unemployed and our underemployed. That is actually not a bad idea at all. It may even be more politically feasible than Dad’s algebra question test for voters.
1. Pence and Mattis have told foreign leaders to ignore any nonsense from Trump and listen to them.
2. The Border Adjustment Tax (tariff) is dead.
3. Changes to Obamacare will be minor. The tax will probably be repealed. There will be a few other tweaks. No major changes. Costs to the govt. will likely increase.
4. Trump and the press will fight daily, but the battle will be over his lies and lunacy, not any major substantive matters.
5. Judicial appointments will be solid.
6. There will be periodic battles between conservative cabinet officers and the childish cultists who make up a fair share of the leadership of the White House staff.
All this will allow Trump to focus on things that are important to him:
One thing I will say about Rep. Keith Ellison, in his fight to lead the DNC, is that he was the one who predicted early that I would win!
True, that’s impressive, KBells, but Trump *retroactively* caused riots, rapes, and murders to increase with the rise of immigration into Sweden. Tough to top that kind of control over the space-time continuum.
So that’s Tomi Lahren? Oof, the histrionics! Why do we need to adopt that style? The content of the video really is good, but what are we, 12? Let Trump act that way; it’s not his “job” to consider public relations the way it is media personalities’ or spokespeople’s.
“Controlling “exactly what people think” is the job of the media, MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski boldly declared Wednesday morning.
While discussing President Trump’s entreaties to the American people to remain skeptical of the press, Bzezinski worried that if the economy turns south, Americans may end up trusting him over the media.
“And it could be that while unemployment and the economy worsens, he could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control exactly what people think,” Brzezinski said. “And that, that is our job.”
SCARBOROUGH: “Exactly. That is exactly what I hear. What Yamiche said is what I hear from all the Trump supporters that I talk to who were Trump voters and are still Trump supporters. They go, ‘Yeah you guys are going crazy. He’s doing — what are you so surprised about? He is doing exactly what he said he is going to do.'”
BRZEZINSKI: “Well, I think that the dangerous, you know, edges here are that he is trying to undermine the media and trying to make up his own facts. And it could be that while unemployment and the economy worsens, he could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control exactly what people think. And that, that is our job.”
“Today O’Keefe was interviewed on Sean Hannity’s radio show where he revealed that a major network has been “stung”
O’Keefe: In the next 48 hours, Project Veritas, like Wikileaks, will be releasing hundreds of hours of tape from within the establishment media. Our next target is in fact, the media.
Hannity: How long have you been working on this?
O’Keefe: We’ve had people on the inside come to us. Just like Julian Assange has people come to him, we’ve had people, sources come to us and give us information, and we’re going to be releasing it “Wikileaks Style” this week.”
—————-
“In other words, a closeted Trump supporter working deep inside hyper-liberal CNN just gave O’Keefe a ton of behind the scenes footage of “The Most Trusted Name In News.” My guess is we’re about to hear a bunch of establishment media puppets revealing their extreme hatred for the sitting President of the United States.”
The sides are so pitted against each other. Trump and a discouraging number of his supporters who don’t care about his lies, hyperbole, and careless speech, on one side, against the press that publishes first and asks questions later, motivated by profit and hatred of all things non-liberal (no, I don’t think they’re on a quest to defend the republic for us fawning citizens). We Christians should care most about truth.
On the question of Sweden’s crime rate: It is a popular technique, to point at another country that appears to have a problem with the thing one fears in order to make one’s point, but, I observe that Sweden doesn’t seem to appreciate being made the example. So, I did some digging and found a website, which conveniently is available in English as well as Swedish, maintained by the Swedish Council for Crime Prevention, an agency of their Department of Justice. It has reports of the statistics for every type of crime with graphs showing the ten year trend from 2006 to 2015 – presumably 2016 has not yet been compiled: https://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statistics.html. Violent assault is actually trending downwards, while the number of murders in 2015 was up at 112 cases of lethal violence, which considering that Sweden has a population of 10 million, still makes for a very low rate. The reported rape statistics did skyrocket in 2014 to 6,697 cases, then began dropping in 2015 to 5,920 cases; a similar trend of rise and fall is seen in sexual assaults. Here the report notes what I have read elsewhere:
In the Swedish system, individual reports regarding a great number of offences may affect and give rise to variations in the statistic. For instance, when a single case is reported that turns out to involve hundreds or even thousands of instances of offences committed against an individual over the course of many years, every single incident is recorded as an offence in the year it was reported. It is also important to remember that non-reporting is particularly extensive for sex offences and changes in the inclination to report can affect the number of rapes in the statistic.
The number of reported rape offences has increased over the last ten years (2006-2015). The increase can be partially explained by the entry into force of new sex offence legislation on 1 April 2005. This legislation entails, among other things, that certain acts which were previously classified as sexual exploitation are now classified as rape. The effect of the statutory change appeared in the statistics such that the number of reported offences in respect of sexual coercion and exploitation declined in the years immediately following the statutory change while the number of reported rapes increased. As from 1 July 2013, the sex offence legislation was again made tougher; among other things rape was expanded to include cases where the victim reacts passively. {Link: https://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statistics/rape-and-sex-offences.html}
I watched the one about Sweden’s youth last night with him (sort of). I can’t remember if I should give a language warning or not but it is interesting. We all tend to hate those we don’t know and once we get to know them we tend to think they are the exception or that we have nothing to fear.
They’ve learned nothing, and will now double down. Their only chance is for a moderate voice to steal it, but good luck with that since the loons run the party. Identity politics first and foremost.
“Many Democrats sing the praises of both men. Perez is a son of immigrants who went on to play a role in many of the Obama administration’s top domestic priorities. Ellison, meanwhile, is a progressive leader in the House and first Muslim elected to Congress who became one of Sanders’s top surrogates on the campaign trail. ”
“Both candidates also lead The Hill’s poll of second-choice preferences, suggesting that a lack of enmity between the two DNC factions.
Still, the frontrunners’ political differences have hardened some Democrats and liberal groups outside of the official DNC structure, frustrating the party’s attempt to move on from the fissure of the 2016 primary even as both frontrunners try to tamp down the idea of a rift.
Some Ellison allies have railed against Perez as a symbol of the establishment’s hold over the party. After Biden endorsed Perez, Sanders put out an unsolicited statement panning Perez and Biden as part of the “failed status quo.”
Other Perez supporters have expressed concern about handing the party over to the Sanders wing of the party, arguing that Ellison would move the party too far to the left.”
——————–
Clowns 🤡 to the left of me, jokers 🤹 to the right, and here we are stuck in the middle with Trump. Yikes. 😜
To her credit, my former NBC news desk friend posted this article just now on FB (with the disclaimer she couldn’t vouch for the stats. She’s lived in NYC or SF areas for 20 years)
“A poll released today found that Americans are overwhelmingly against sanctuary cities. From the Hill:
A survey from Harvard–Harris Poll provided exclusively to The Hill found that 80 percent of voters say local authorities should have to comply with the law by reporting to federal agents the illegal immigrants they come into contact with…
A majority — 52 percent — say they support Trump’s two executive orders allowing for the construction of a southern border wall, increasing the number of immigration officers by 10,000 and finding a way to revoke federal funds for sanctuary cities.”
————–
“Overall, this is a very positive poll for Trump. The one exception is the construction of a southern border wall. When this one piece of his agenda is separated from the rest, poll respondents opposed the wall 53-47.
Everything else Trump has proposed, including his temporary travel ban on immigration from 7 nations, has majority support. Support for the travel ban went as high as 60% when the question described the 7 countries that are the targets of the ban as “Muslim majority countries.”
It’s a common rhetorical tactic to depict someone with whom one disagrees as “fearful.” I won’t bother pointing out why that’s silly.
Sweden’s violent crime statistics can be difficult to parse. Yes, the definitions of some crimes have changed over the last couple decades. Countries differ in the violent crime data they record, and how they record it, and some of those differences can even be accounted for by political motivations. That’s fine. Immigrants from Muslim countries are significantly over-represented in Norway’s violent crime statistics. Norway has deliberately not followed Sweden’s lead on openness to asylum seekers, and Sweden, with growing public wariness of open policies, has recently tightened some of its immigration laws. It may be their concern is poverty, and not violence, directly. That’s fine, too. No problem if we want to depict the concern as “fear.” It doesn’t matter what we call it if it’s simply responsible interest in security. There’s nothing inherently bigoted about that.
Funny, I don’t recall them being so concerned when all these illegals traversed thru Mexico to get here, just like they didn’t care when their citizens did it. Now they just need to reverse the process and allow them to travel thru heading south. Because whether they’re Mexican or not, Mexico is a huge part of the problem, and was where they came into the US from.
“Senior envoys of President Donald Trump are likely to receive a chilly reception in Mexico on Wednesday, after the United States issued new immigration guidelines that deeply angered the southern neighbor the day before bilateral talks.
Trump’s administration on Tuesday unveiled plans to consider almost all illegal immigrants subject to deportation, and will seek to send many of them to Mexico if they entered the United States from there, regardless of their nationality.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly are due to arrive in Mexico on Wednesday afternoon for talks on security and immigration.
Mexico’s lead negotiator with the Trump administration, Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray, said there was no way Mexico would accept the new “unilateral” rules, which among other things seek to deport non-Mexicans to Mexico.””
Hwesseli, I’m sure there are people eager to be scared, like gays who frequent certain bakeries, and while Trump may be wrong about the effects of immigration, even Sweden’s statistics show an over-representation of immigrants in violent crime. That’s not disputed. May not be concurrent with immigration (yet), but still….
I’m sharing this for point #3 particularly. I’ve seen a few posts on Facebook about the troubles that some areas of Europe have had. #3 points out that the situation in Europe is much different than it is in the U.S.
.
(I’m not big on the “love conquers all” theme, as it sounds naive, but the points made are valid & worth considering.)
Wandering Views 
A very interesting article. Ending the Bracero program didn’t raise the wages of US workers. Farmers simply switched from labor to machines or switched away from crops that required lots of labor. Debra will like the nickname of the Tweeter.
https://twitter.com/aviwoolf/status/834208394831622144
I assume Milton Friedman predicted this result in advance.
LikeLiked by 1 person
By the way, the Bracero program was a fine program before it was nixed by the Dems. It provided a legal, regulated process to allow Mexican workers to safely enter the US, do jobs Americans won’t do, and safely return home. I can remember Reagan praising the Bracero program. We need to recreate something like that program. That would essentially solve our low-end immigration issue.
On high-end immigration, we really need to expand the number of intelligent, highly-productive immigrants. The country really needs more people who will
a. Earn enough to pay income taxes; and
b. Have the drive and creativity to create jobs for others.
A few days ago I joked about giving green cards and citizenship to immigrants who create businesses that employ our unemployed and our underemployed. That is actually not a bad idea at all. It may even be more politically feasible than Dad’s algebra question test for voters.
LikeLike
Things have settled down.
1. Pence and Mattis have told foreign leaders to ignore any nonsense from Trump and listen to them.
2. The Border Adjustment Tax (tariff) is dead.
3. Changes to Obamacare will be minor. The tax will probably be repealed. There will be a few other tweaks. No major changes. Costs to the govt. will likely increase.
4. Trump and the press will fight daily, but the battle will be over his lies and lunacy, not any major substantive matters.
5. Judicial appointments will be solid.
6. There will be periodic battles between conservative cabinet officers and the childish cultists who make up a fair share of the leadership of the White House staff.
All this will allow Trump to focus on things that are important to him:
LikeLike
Behold the power of Trump: he either caused riots in Sweden, or makes people lose their minds:
https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/834165899103866881
LikeLiked by 2 people
Big deal, Trump. Bush conjured up a hurricane and aimed it right at a black neighborhood.
LikeLiked by 10 people
True, that’s impressive, KBells, but Trump *retroactively* caused riots, rapes, and murders to increase with the rise of immigration into Sweden. Tough to top that kind of control over the space-time continuum.
LikeLiked by 4 people
This is your mainstream media, citizens. Next, they’ll start a Death Watch column.
Sorry if you took the ‘under’:
“President Trump Officially Won’t Be the Shortest-Serving U.S. President”
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/president-trump-officially-won-t-be-shortest-serving-u-s-n723246
LikeLike
I don’t know this “country” of which they speak.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-ways-big-cities-turn-you-liberal-converts-perspective/?utm_content=inf_11_40_2&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=fijifrost&utm_campaign=WH&tse_id=INF_9e6fc120f7ee11e6a03c354c456e1db2
LikeLike
Tomi Lahren on Sweden and the media…..
Nailed it.
LikeLike
So that’s Tomi Lahren? Oof, the histrionics! Why do we need to adopt that style? The content of the video really is good, but what are we, 12? Let Trump act that way; it’s not his “job” to consider public relations the way it is media personalities’ or spokespeople’s.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Yes, she is a bit loud, but she lives in Texas, and I think it’s required there……….. 😁
LikeLiked by 1 person
Does she work for the press or the Ministry of Propaganda?
It’s their job to report the facts, nothing more. But they just can’t do it.
https://news.grabien.com/story-brzezinski-our-job-control-exactly-what-people-think
“Controlling “exactly what people think” is the job of the media, MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski boldly declared Wednesday morning.
While discussing President Trump’s entreaties to the American people to remain skeptical of the press, Bzezinski worried that if the economy turns south, Americans may end up trusting him over the media.
“And it could be that while unemployment and the economy worsens, he could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control exactly what people think,” Brzezinski said. “And that, that is our job.”
SCARBOROUGH: “Exactly. That is exactly what I hear. What Yamiche said is what I hear from all the Trump supporters that I talk to who were Trump voters and are still Trump supporters. They go, ‘Yeah you guys are going crazy. He’s doing — what are you so surprised about? He is doing exactly what he said he is going to do.'”
BRZEZINSKI: “Well, I think that the dangerous, you know, edges here are that he is trying to undermine the media and trying to make up his own facts. And it could be that while unemployment and the economy worsens, he could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control exactly what people think. And that, that is our job.”
LikeLike
This here? This could get ugly.
Just imagine what the Trump hating media says when they think no ones recording. Well imagine no more.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-21/james-okeefe-about-smoke-cnn-tells-hannity-hes-set-release-hundreds-hours-newsroom-f
“Today O’Keefe was interviewed on Sean Hannity’s radio show where he revealed that a major network has been “stung”
O’Keefe: In the next 48 hours, Project Veritas, like Wikileaks, will be releasing hundreds of hours of tape from within the establishment media. Our next target is in fact, the media.
Hannity: How long have you been working on this?
O’Keefe: We’ve had people on the inside come to us. Just like Julian Assange has people come to him, we’ve had people, sources come to us and give us information, and we’re going to be releasing it “Wikileaks Style” this week.”
—————-
“In other words, a closeted Trump supporter working deep inside hyper-liberal CNN just gave O’Keefe a ton of behind the scenes footage of “The Most Trusted Name In News.” My guess is we’re about to hear a bunch of establishment media puppets revealing their extreme hatred for the sitting President of the United States.”
LikeLike
The sides are so pitted against each other. Trump and a discouraging number of his supporters who don’t care about his lies, hyperbole, and careless speech, on one side, against the press that publishes first and asks questions later, motivated by profit and hatred of all things non-liberal (no, I don’t think they’re on a quest to defend the republic for us fawning citizens). We Christians should care most about truth.
LikeLike
On the question of Sweden’s crime rate: It is a popular technique, to point at another country that appears to have a problem with the thing one fears in order to make one’s point, but, I observe that Sweden doesn’t seem to appreciate being made the example. So, I did some digging and found a website, which conveniently is available in English as well as Swedish, maintained by the Swedish Council for Crime Prevention, an agency of their Department of Justice. It has reports of the statistics for every type of crime with graphs showing the ten year trend from 2006 to 2015 – presumably 2016 has not yet been compiled: https://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statistics.html. Violent assault is actually trending downwards, while the number of murders in 2015 was up at 112 cases of lethal violence, which considering that Sweden has a population of 10 million, still makes for a very low rate. The reported rape statistics did skyrocket in 2014 to 6,697 cases, then began dropping in 2015 to 5,920 cases; a similar trend of rise and fall is seen in sexual assaults. Here the report notes what I have read elsewhere:
LikeLiked by 1 person
Mr. P watches this
https://www.viceland.com/en_us/show/hate-thy-neighbor
I watched the one about Sweden’s youth last night with him (sort of). I can’t remember if I should give a language warning or not but it is interesting. We all tend to hate those we don’t know and once we get to know them we tend to think they are the exception or that we have nothing to fear.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes. A short clip told me that I need to give you a language warning.
LikeLike
They’ve learned nothing, and will now double down. Their only chance is for a moderate voice to steal it, but good luck with that since the loons run the party. Identity politics first and foremost.
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/320553-ellison-holds-edge-in-dnc-race
“Many Democrats sing the praises of both men. Perez is a son of immigrants who went on to play a role in many of the Obama administration’s top domestic priorities. Ellison, meanwhile, is a progressive leader in the House and first Muslim elected to Congress who became one of Sanders’s top surrogates on the campaign trail. ”
“Both candidates also lead The Hill’s poll of second-choice preferences, suggesting that a lack of enmity between the two DNC factions.
Still, the frontrunners’ political differences have hardened some Democrats and liberal groups outside of the official DNC structure, frustrating the party’s attempt to move on from the fissure of the 2016 primary even as both frontrunners try to tamp down the idea of a rift.
Some Ellison allies have railed against Perez as a symbol of the establishment’s hold over the party. After Biden endorsed Perez, Sanders put out an unsolicited statement panning Perez and Biden as part of the “failed status quo.”
Other Perez supporters have expressed concern about handing the party over to the Sanders wing of the party, arguing that Ellison would move the party too far to the left.”
——————–
Clowns 🤡 to the left of me, jokers 🤹 to the right, and here we are stuck in the middle with Trump. Yikes. 😜
LikeLike
To her credit, my former NBC news desk friend posted this article just now on FB (with the disclaimer she couldn’t vouch for the stats. She’s lived in NYC or SF areas for 20 years)
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/our-miserable-21st-century/
It goes well with David Brooks’ column in our paper this morning.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Not surprising.
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/02/21/poll-americans-oppose-sanctuary-cities/
“A poll released today found that Americans are overwhelmingly against sanctuary cities. From the Hill:
A survey from Harvard–Harris Poll provided exclusively to The Hill found that 80 percent of voters say local authorities should have to comply with the law by reporting to federal agents the illegal immigrants they come into contact with…
A majority — 52 percent — say they support Trump’s two executive orders allowing for the construction of a southern border wall, increasing the number of immigration officers by 10,000 and finding a way to revoke federal funds for sanctuary cities.”
————–
“Overall, this is a very positive poll for Trump. The one exception is the construction of a southern border wall. When this one piece of his agenda is separated from the rest, poll respondents opposed the wall 53-47.
Everything else Trump has proposed, including his temporary travel ban on immigration from 7 nations, has majority support. Support for the travel ban went as high as 60% when the question described the 7 countries that are the targets of the ban as “Muslim majority countries.”
LikeLike
Turns out Brooks took his data from the Commentary Magazine article–well worth reading. Rickey might appreciate it as well–data!
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s a common rhetorical tactic to depict someone with whom one disagrees as “fearful.” I won’t bother pointing out why that’s silly.
Sweden’s violent crime statistics can be difficult to parse. Yes, the definitions of some crimes have changed over the last couple decades. Countries differ in the violent crime data they record, and how they record it, and some of those differences can even be accounted for by political motivations. That’s fine. Immigrants from Muslim countries are significantly over-represented in Norway’s violent crime statistics. Norway has deliberately not followed Sweden’s lead on openness to asylum seekers, and Sweden, with growing public wariness of open policies, has recently tightened some of its immigration laws. It may be their concern is poverty, and not violence, directly. That’s fine, too. No problem if we want to depict the concern as “fear.” It doesn’t matter what we call it if it’s simply responsible interest in security. There’s nothing inherently bigoted about that.
LikeLike
I read that article last night and was going to bookmark it to share here today. Thanks Michelle, because, of course, I forgot.
LikeLike
Funny, I don’t recall them being so concerned when all these illegals traversed thru Mexico to get here, just like they didn’t care when their citizens did it. Now they just need to reverse the process and allow them to travel thru heading south. Because whether they’re Mexican or not, Mexico is a huge part of the problem, and was where they came into the US from.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/mexico-says-not-accept-unilateral-u-immigration-policies-172004968.html
“Senior envoys of President Donald Trump are likely to receive a chilly reception in Mexico on Wednesday, after the United States issued new immigration guidelines that deeply angered the southern neighbor the day before bilateral talks.
Trump’s administration on Tuesday unveiled plans to consider almost all illegal immigrants subject to deportation, and will seek to send many of them to Mexico if they entered the United States from there, regardless of their nationality.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly are due to arrive in Mexico on Wednesday afternoon for talks on security and immigration.
Mexico’s lead negotiator with the Trump administration, Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray, said there was no way Mexico would accept the new “unilateral” rules, which among other things seek to deport non-Mexicans to Mexico.””
LikeLike
Thanks for posting the articles, Michelle. I am in the wrong Sunday School class to be able to comment on them.
LikeLike
An interesting article by Thomas Friedman on the five Trump Administrations:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/opinion/meet-the-5-trump-administrations.amp.html?client=safari
LikeLike
The Swedish riot was somewhat amusing. It ended around midnight. I know hockey fans who have more stamina. French farmers cause more damage.
Why are people so eager to be scared?
Relax. There’s no Swedish crime wave. Immigrants are no more violent than the average Swede.
LikeLiked by 1 person
We’re watching Roman Holiday tonight, HRW.
Have you been there?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hwesseli, I’m sure there are people eager to be scared, like gays who frequent certain bakeries, and while Trump may be wrong about the effects of immigration, even Sweden’s statistics show an over-representation of immigrants in violent crime. That’s not disputed. May not be concurrent with immigration (yet), but still….
LikeLike
I’m sharing this for point #3 particularly. I’ve seen a few posts on Facebook about the troubles that some areas of Europe have had. #3 points out that the situation in Europe is much different than it is in the U.S.
.
(I’m not big on the “love conquers all” theme, as it sounds naive, but the points made are valid & worth considering.)
http://www.preemptivelove.org/4_things_about_refugees_and_terrorism
LikeLiked by 1 person