MAGA for African-Americans

Shortly after the election I wrote a post that discussed how Trump's "America First" aka "MAGA" movement would be extremely beneficial for African-Americans, particularly those without college degrees:

All those black folks with higher wages than before thanks to the idea of bringing jobs BACK. Black folks stand to win with less illegal immigration and even legal immigration. Black folks stand to win with an America first ideology that brings back or creates manufacturing jobs that can employ those persons not particularly suited for jobs requiring advanced education.

It will be rather interesting if during the presidency of a Republican (in name only?) black unemployment drops significantly.

Not only has Black unemployment dropped, to allegedly historical lows, but we have direct evidence that increased scrutiny of illegal aliens employed by companies has netted many black jobs:

About 800 employees of the main Cloverhill Bakery on the Northwest Side and the company’s bakeries in Cicero and Romeoville lost their jobs when the audit found many were hired after presenting fake or stolen IDs.

Eight what?

In May 2017, the Trump administration sent letters to about 800 employees, saying they weren’t authorized to work in the United States, records examined by the Chicago Sun-Times show.

Those Hispanic employees didn’t return to work, leaving the bakery desperate to fill their jobs. So the company turned to another placement agency, Metro Staff Inc., and it provided Cloverhill with workers screened through the government’s “E-Verification” program. Most of those new employees are African American.

So while the first black president pussy footed around with this company and got SQUAT for black people in Chicago that voted for him. Trump got over 500 (they said most of the 800 not all, so I can only say over 500) black folks in Chicago jobs and you won't hear so much as a "thank you" from any of the talking heads.

Ed French, owner of Elgin-based Metro Staff Inc., says his company became the main provider of workers for the bakery and that about 80 percent of them are black. According to French, workers at the bakery were paid slightly less before his company was hired two and a half years ago — with wages up by about 25 cents an hour, to just above minimum wage.

640 black folks hired AND got more pay than they would have had.

This for a population that voted Democrat by over 90%.

Sheeeeeeeeet.

And what do these mofos do with this gift?

But Okwusa says Cloverhill soon ran into problems. In a memo to the company, Okwusa, who is African American, wrote that the black workers “displayed a higher turnover rate of over 40 percent and a lower efficiency rate than their Hispanic co-workers.”

Now I would hope that this turnover rate is due to going to a better job but I've seen this story before and it's unlikely AND doesn't explain the lower efficiency rate. This kind of behavior is why folks end up not wanting to hire black folks.

At the end of the day, at least for Chicago African-Americans, Trump delivered the goods. If we [continue] to fail when these opportunities are opened to us, then we have no one else to blame but ourselves.

Continuing:

A Hispanic woman who formerly worked at the bakery says the ICE audit cost her husband his job. But she says she didn’t feel tension between Hispanic and black workers because, “In the time that I worked there, honestly, I didn’t see any black workers. They came later.”

They had no intentions on hiring black folks.

Black workers couldn’t communicate well with Spanish-speaking Mexican workers and supervisors, according to Lane, who blames the company for the resulting confusion.

“When I first started, and when they first put me in as a packer, I asked the question, ‘Do they speak English?’ ” she says. “And they said: ‘Everybody.’ But when I went to communicate with them, no one spoke English.”

Shouldnt happen in America. But just you wait black folks. If things continue as they have been soon you too will be deemed unqualified to work because you don't speak Spanish.

State Enforced Transgenderism

I'm old. I'm old enough to remember when all that homosexuals said they wanted was to be left alone. I remember when they said that they only wanted the government out of their bedrooms. I remember when they said that all they wanted was the right to be with their loved ones in the hospital. I remember when they said they only wanted the same tax benefits as other "couples". I remember when they said that how does allowing homosexuals to marry have any affect on your life?

Now I see "My Two Dads" being read at school. I see Christian bakers being told they have no rights that a homosexual ought recognize.

I see states and cities passing laws that you can't call a male and male if said male is sick in the head and thinks he's a female.

And now:

On Friday, Ohio parents were denied custody of their daughter for not being supportive enough of her alleged transgenderism...

Hamilton County Judge Sylvia Sieve Hendon granted custody to the girl's maternal grandparents, who are open to transgender hormone therapy. The teenager has been living with them since 2016.

In a sane world, the case would have been thrown out, the child returned to her parents and told that once she is of age (usually 18) she can leave home and do whatever she wants (and can afford) with her body.

But we don't live in a sane world. We live with state enforced transgenderism.

Incentivising Behavior

One of the arguments against welfare is that it encourages idleness. After all, if you can do nothing and receive income, why would you work? Most of us are not wired to accept that kind of existence. However there are a lot of people who will do whatever they have to to remain on the government teat, which is really your wallet. The NY Times recently ran an article that showed an example of this issue.

A few miles away in another wooded suburb, Emilia DiCola, 28, an aspiring opera singer who scrapes by with gigs at churches and in local theaters, has no such complaints. She qualifies for Medicaid — free government health insurance that millions more low-income Americans have gained through an expansion of the program under the Affordable Care Act.

She's an aspiring what? Why should the taxpayer subsidize her dreams of becoming an opera singer rather than doing whatever [else] she can to not be on the government teat?

Though roughly the same age, Ms. DiCola has followed a different course. She dropped out of the Manhattan School of Music in 2009 after her freshman year because she couldn’t keep up with the tuition. Now, to supplement the scant income she gets from singing gigs, she drives for Uber and Lyft a few nights a week, sometimes more, in Boston. She earned about $15,000 last year, making sure she stayed under the threshold to qualify for Medicaid.

“I feel like it’s no different from what corporations do all the time, taking advantage of tax breaks and that sort of thing,” Ms. DiCola, a soprano who talks animatedly about Verdi and Puccini, said of being on Medicaid. “Frankly, if they’re allowed to do it, why shouldn’t I?”

"Making sure she stayed under the threshold to qualify for Medicaid."

Incentivizing behavior.

Then there's this comment about corporations. One big difference between this chick and the vast majority of corporations: They create jobs (The quality of which is not a topic of discussion here). This woman's life goal creates no productive jobs. Meanwhile...:

“I’m totally happy to pay my fair share,” she said, “but I’m also paying someone else’s share, and that’s what makes me insane.”

Ms. Hurd finished college at the University of Massachusetts, with her parents paying for it, and has a master’s degree in communications, which she got tuition-free while working in admissions at Southern New Hampshire University. She’s been working about 30 hours a week at the outlet mall and a small remodeling firm while looking for a job with good benefits in communications or marketing.

Her husband, Matt, started his contracting business a few years ago and is finishing his undergraduate degree with the help of a loan. They bought a 1750s farmhouse just before they married; Ms. Hurd returned to work when their son, Harry, was eight weeks old.

This is what pisses people off. It's one thing to provide help for those who have fallen on hard times. But when people choose to be unproductive, specifically to stay on the government teat, that is unacceptable. What this DiCola person needs to be told is:

Glad you want to be an opera singer but see here, you drive that Uber till the wheels come off. You do part time school to get a degree in something that pays or learn a trade and get off the government teat.

A Nation Of Sitting Ducks

So we have another school shooting. The usual suspicious politicians are saying the usual things and the people are sitting ducks.

Consider this. This guy entered the school grounds and went to at least 5 classrooms shooting at will, meeting no resistance whatsoever and when he was done he walked away and went to McDonalds and Walmart before he was arrested. I saw a report, among many that discussed how teachers locked the doors to the classrooms and waited.

A nation of sitting ducks.

I didn't know that at one time in America, students were taught to handle guns

So then at what point did schools become not only gun free but a place where basic shit like self defense is verboten and people hide behind doors and wait and hope for other men with guns to come rescue them? That is a pretty huge cultural shift.

Policy makers know full well that enabling people to act on the spot will save lives. Witness the proliferation of defibrillators that have been installed in many schools and office buildings. Why are they there? They are there because we know that in an emergency situation, time is of the essence. If we empower the people in the vicinity to render aid then they are more likely to survive until the medical professionals arrive. Yet when it comes to personal safety, the ability to defend oneself, which is the fundamental essence of the second amendment, this fact based knowledge goes out the window.

Had cruz met resistance after making himself known as a threat, far less people would have been killed or injured. As a matter of fact, it is likely that if Cruz knew that he would most definitely meet deadly resistance should he embark on his mission, he may have decided not to go through with the act.

How is it that the American public sees it as a virtue to be socialized into believing it is a good thing to be a helpless potential victim waiting on big daddy government to help them rather than being an individual capable of helping themselves?

I remember in the gym where I work out, going to a room with Chinese Butterfly knives to train with. The number of people who were shook at the sight of these training weapons (they were blunt) surprised me. Never mind that every dumbbell in the gym was a deadly weapon, these folks were shook. I was told I couldn't bring these items back because people felt threatened.

And that's the root of this problem. We have people making decisions based on their emotions and their inability to deal with the risks of a free society. If they feel threatened or uncomfortable, someone else must change their behavior. It's someone else's responsibility to make me feel safe. It is someone else's responsibility to coddle my emotional state. Someone, anyone, must do something so that I do not have to do anything.

Cabbie Learns The Lesson of Immigration Restriction

"It is only at the end that you understand..."

-Emperor Palpatine, Return of The Jedi While Trump gets blasted for making statements about illegal immigration that was common among Democrats until it wasn't, People on the ground continue to live with the results of the non-functioning occupation government that is inhabiting Washington DC. One of the reasons that one restricts immigration is to control population growth. In California they are seeing serious water supply problems. No one there wants to admit it, but part of their problem is the millions of people that are in the state who should not be who use water resources.

Another reason for immigration restriction is to protect jobs and wages for people who are already here. As anyone who has taken pre-economics knows, if you increase the supply of a good or service, then it's value in the marketplace drops. Why should I pay a vendor 50 bucks for a product when there are 12 others who are willing to sell the same product for $5? I was bitten by this very issue when I had a business doing web design and digital video. When ISPs started offering free website design tools and services to my potential clients in return for their monthly bill, I could not compete. Similarly, when iMovie and iDVD made it relatively easy for my potential clients to make their own DVDs, then my services, using Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro were no longer competitive (for the market I was in). I eventually figured out that I was paying my clients to do work for them. I closed up shop for more profitable ventures in casinos. And when you make more money in a casino then you would doing a "real job" you know there is a serious problem.

The point being here that cheap rivals undermine the economy for all competitors with devastating consequences. Meet the suicidal taxi driver.

On Monday morning, Doug Schifter, a livery driver in his early 60s, killed himself with a shotgun in front of City Hall in Lower Manhattan, having written a lengthy Facebook post several hours earlier laying out the structural cruelties that had left him in such dire circumstance. He was now sometimes forced to work more than 100 hours a week to survive, he said; when he had started out in the 1980s, a 40-hour week was fairly typical. He blamed politicians — mayors Michael R. Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo — and their acquiescence to the rich for permitting so many cars to flood the streets. He blamed the Taxi Commission for the fines and hassles it imposed...

He had lost his health insurance and accrued credit card debt and he would no longer work for “chump change,’’ preferring, he said, to die in the hope that his sacrifice would draw attention to what drivers, too often unable to feed their families now, were enduring...

Implicit in his testament was the anger he felt over the de-professionalization of his life’s work. Mr. Schifter had driven more than five million miles throughout his tenure, through five hurricanes and 50 snowstorms. He had chauffeured celebrities and worn a suit. He was not driving a car to supplement the income he was getting from his crepe business and he was not trying to make a little extra money for a gym membership. He was not a participant in the gig economy; he was a casualty of it.

I see personal vehicles being used as taxis all over the place. In fact, if I see a Camry on the road I almost always assume it is a taxi, particularly if it is driven by a non-white male. I would say that I am right 60% of the time. Now you may be wondering what this has to do with immigration. Well in NY, where this event took place, the taxi business is essentially an immigrant work business. The reason why businesses like unrestricted immigration is that it creates an excess of workers. This excess drives down wages. Suddenly a job that could support a family can't. And then you have politicians that will call you lazy because you won't work yourself to death for diminishing wages.

While Uber has sold that “disruption” as positive for riders, for many taxi workers, it has been devastating. Between 2013 and 2016, the gross annual bookings of full-time yellow-taxi drivers in New York, working during the day when fares are typically highest, fell from $88,000 a year to just over $69,000. Medallions, which grant the right to operate a taxi in New York City, were now depreciating assets and drivers who had borrowed money to pay for them, once a sound investment strategy, were deeply in debt. Ms. Desai was routinely seeing grown men cry and she had become increasingly concerned about the possibility that they would begin taking their lives.

Notice that Uber is claiming a "positive for riders". This is like the fake "net neutrality" argument. Riders get "cheap" fares like internet customers get cheap streaming. There is absolutely no discussion of the disruption to the people who were previously making a decent living being taxi drivers. No, all that matters is that riders get cheap rides (and that Uber makes it's cut off each ride). Many failed to understand that the medallion system served two purposes: It kept salaries up by creating scarcity of product (taxis) and reduced congestion, particularly in Manhattan.

For decades there had been no more than 12,000 to 13,000 taxis in New York but now there were myriad new ways to avoid public transportation, in some cases with ride-hailing services like Via that charged little more than $5 to travel in Manhattan. In 2013, there were 47,000 for-hire vehicles in the city. Now there were more than 100,000, approximately two-thirds of them affiliated with Uber.

The situation in the taxi industry is a portrait of what happens when a country is flooded with people. Now replicate this situation in construction. Replicate this in IT. Add the coming advances in AI. But it is only at the end that this guy comes to realize that his livelihood was destroyed by government policies that favored businesses that want plentiful and cheap labour. The same businesses that go all in to tell you how Trump is evil incarnate for suggesting policies that would have kept this guy's income at a level where he would not have been so desperate.

Uber is making money. The dealerships leasing these vehicles are making money. The NYSDMV is making money off the registration and inspection fees (higher for TLC vehicles) and the garages providing brakes, tires and oil changes are making out like bandits.

You want open borders and unlimited workers? You got it. Don't say you weren't warned.

Side note: You see that Via ride for $5 to travel in Manhattan? Let me explain how bad this is. Given the traffic in Manhattan and the time it takes to get to a location, a driver charging $5 per manhattan ride needs at least 20 minutes to complete a transaction. That's $15/hour at best. This same person can learn Blackjack basic strategy for Hit 17, use a 1-3 bet spread and make far more than $15/hour spending his time at Empire City or Resorts world casinos. It is literally and financially better to gamble in the NYC area casinos than to work with Via. This is how bad the "gig economy" is.