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Tuesday’s opening added details to that story, but more importantly, he explained the many ways that influential Americans have been bought off by the Chinese communists to serve their nefarious ends. It’s both shameful and dangerous.
The detailed report deserves your careful attention because the threat will be with us for a long time and needs to be understood in its complexity, in particular how thoroughly the Chinese have infiltrated our institutions.
I’ve added some links to the text below:
Spare audio:
TUCKER CARLSON: There are serious long-term problems facing America, as we’ve told you about for years on this show. Thanks to outsourcing, this country no longer has the same reserve of stable middle-class manufacturing jobs we did even 30 years ago.
In coastal cities, housing has become astronomically expensive. Prices are rising far quicker than wage growth. And most tragically, an opioid epidemic kills tens of thousands of Americans every year. One of the chief reasons for that is a synthetic opiate called fentanyl that is smuggled in from abroad.
Now, these might seem like unrelated problems, but they’re not. A single theme unites them — a systematic decision by many of our country’s most powerful leaders to sell out America to China.
Those jobs that were outsourced, they went to China. Those rising home prices, all-cash Chinese buyers are a major contributor to that, though it’s almost never said out loud. Fentanyl — made in China with the knowledge and tacit approval of the Chinese Communist Party.
China is no longer simply an economic rival of the United States; it’s becoming a dangerous enemy. But instead of protecting us from this threat, an existential one, our leadership class collaborates with the other side.
Why do they do that? Simple. They’re getting rich from it. This only became clear to many people a few months ago when the most American of all sports, professional basketball — a game literally invented in a gym in Springfield, Mass. — ripped off the mask and showed the world who really controls the league.
LeBRON JAMES: So many people could have been harmed, not only financially. but physically, emotionally, spiritually.
So just be careful what we tweet and we say, and what we do, even though, yes, we do have freedom of speech. But there can be a lot of negative that comes with that, too.
CARLSON: Yeah. Just be careful with what you tweet or say because the Chinese are watching, and they pay the bills.
Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr, meanwhile, explained that there’s really no moral difference between America and communist China.
COACH STEVE KERR: It has not come up in terms of people asking me about it, people discussing it. No. Nor has our record of human rights abuses come up, either.
People in China didn’t ask me about, you know, people owning AR-15s and mowing each other down in a mall.
CARLSON: Yeah, so America has school shootings. China is on its third or fourth genocide since World War II. You know: Tomato, To-mah-to. Six dozen to one. Whatever.
Yeah, saying something like that out loud should be shocking, but it’s not really. It’s a taste of just how completely the people in charge identify with China over this country.
In some cases, they’ve literally joined China’s payroll. Former Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk, for example is a registered foreign agent who lobbies for the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation. That’s a Chinese organization with ties to the Communist Party. A former senator.
Sunday’s New York Times front-paged a curious story that demonstrates an ideological flare-up between different leftist beliefs. On one side was the traditional sob story approach toward illegal aliens, that they are suffering world citizens who should be rescued by too-rich, too-white America.
The newer, more controversial viewpoint is that only the victims or actual tribal members should be allowed to speak because non-diverse people are taking up too much space in the marketplace of ideas and opinions.
The book in question is American Dirt: A Novel, written by Jeanine Cummins, “who has a Puerto Rican grandmother,” the New York Times observes — which clearly is not sufficient for some people.
The Times published a front-page photo of the author, a person “who identifies as white and Latina.”
On Monday, the Los Angeles Times included a front-page story about the fracas, ‘American Dirt’ was supposed to be a publishing triumph. What went wrong?, noting the “angry charges of cultural appropriation, stereotyping, insensitivity, and even racism against author Jeanine Cummins.” So the mainstream media must think that Immigration Diversity is too important to have disagreements.
One complaint was about barbwire floral arrangements at a book promotion dinner because it would disrespect illegal alien invaders, or something.
The New York Times article explained how complicated it can be for the publishing business to accommodate diversity ideology — including having “sensitivity readers” on staff to catch any politically incorrect bits that might upset someone, somewhere.
“American Dirt” seemed poised to become one of this year’s biggest, buzziest books.
When it came up for auction in 2018, the novel — about a desperate Mexican mother and son who flee for the United States border after a drug cartel massacres their family — set off a bidding war and sold to a publisher for seven figures. It drew rapturous endorsements from novelists like Stephen King and Sandra Cisneros, and got glowing advance reviews from industry publications that hailed the book as propulsive and heart-wrenching.
The author, Jeanine Cummins, has said she hoped the novel would drive discussions about immigration policy, and open “a back door into a bigger conversation about who we want to be as a country.” Since then, “American Dirt” has certainly ignited a vigorous conversation — but hardly the one the author and publisher intended.
Even before the book hit shelves this past week, a growing chorus of online critics was challenging the hoopla, accusing Ms. Cummins, who identifies as white and Latina, of having exploited the experience of migrants and repackaging it as opportunistic “trauma porn” for a predominantly white publishing industry.
Criticism intensified on Tuesday, after Oprah Winfrey anointed the novel as her next book club pick, in a splashy joint appearance on “CBS This Morning” with the author, whom Ms. Winfrey said she hoped to interview near the border for her book club program.
It was an extraordinary convergence of forces: Industry hype meets charges of cultural appropriation meets one of the most combustible political issues in America today, immigration.
And that was before a photograph from a lavish book promotion dinner last spring, showing a faux-barbed-wire floral decoration, began circulating on Twitter, where it was vilified as “border chic.” So was a resurfaced tweet from last fall in which Ms. Cummins cheered a fan’s manicure inspired by her book’s cover, complete with more barbed wire.
The controversy lands at a moment when debates about race and representation are front and center across the cultural and political landscape, from the Academy Awards, which faces yet another #OscarsSoWhite outcry, to the National Football League, where the number of minority head coaches is falling, to the Democratic presidential primary, where the most diverse field of candidates in history has narrowed to a nearly all-white group.
It also falls right into the roiling argument over art and cultural appropriation — how the stories of marginalized people should be told and who should be given the platforms to tell them. Social media has elevated more voices, but also brought greater scrutiny to the decisions of businesses and tastemakers like Ms. Winfrey who are trying to build broader audiences.
Opinions are hardly monolithic. When the white painter Dana Schutz drew fire for “Open Casket,” a painting of Emmett Till included in the 2018 Whitney Biennial, some black artists denounced her for exploiting black pain, demanding the work be removed or even destroyed. Others defended the artist’s right to take on any subject.
The literary world has been wrestling with the same questions, particularly in the young adult sector, where authors and publishers now routinely rely on sensitivity readers to help defend against potential racial and cultural blind spots. (Continues)
The great headline switch perpetrated by the New York Times on Tuesday got a lot of attention on Fox News because the phrase went from positive and accurate (“Trump Urges Unity vs. Racism”) to niggling and political (“Assailing Hate but Not Guns”).
The big surprise was that the hopelessly liberal Times could pen an upbeat headline about President Trump at all.
Tucker Carlson discussed the flap with Mark Penn, a long time Washington insider who once worked as pollster and advisor for the Clintons. Penn recalled that he could never get a headline changed for the Clintons, but Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a “phenomenon” in terms of media power to be able to get that switch.
Spare audio:
TUCKER CARLSON: Well, it took the New York Times, a daily newspaper published in New York City, less than a day to end a bold new experiment yesterday, running an objective headline.
This morning the paper’s print headline summarized the President’s speech in El Paso and Dayton this way, quote, “Trump urges unity versus racism.” That’s what the President did. You saw it, so the headline was fine. It described what happened.
But online, the left went crazy, even crazier than usual. Cory Booker, apparently still running for President, accused the New York Times of somehow putting lives at risk. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — the pampered moron that she is — said the paper was enabling white supremacy through cowardice. So of course, the paper caved.
Later versions of the article were headlined, “Assailing hate, but not guns.”
Mark Penn is a former adviser of Bill and Hillary Clinton. He joins us tonight.
Mark, I’m worried because I think every country, this one particularly, deserves two sides that are both sane and capable of rational conversation. If you believe that the New York Times is carrying water for right wingers or white supremacists, you’re delusional, I think.
MARK PENN: Well, look, you could think that either headline was okay. But the process of the headline that was factually correct and frankly, was unifying after these horrifying events would then be complained about by one political faction and changed. That is an astounding development in journalism. I’ve never seen it; maybe it’s happened before.
Why don’t they just run the headlines before AOC before they run them down and not get into the situation? I’ve never seen anything like this. I mean, that would be the way to go to avoid this kind of trouble. Is that journalism today? I don’t think so.
CARLSON: Well, so isn’t the appropriate response — well, I know I’ve been in it for 28 years, I know the appropriate response, which is like, “Up yours. It’s our paper. We will write the headlines we want. And we’re going to tell the truth, whether you like it or not.” Whatever happened to that attitude?
PENN: Well, and that was the old New York Times that I knew. I used to complain when I was working with Hillary and Bill about the headlines all the time, I never got one changed.
Maybe I got a paragraph six graph down changed, but you know, they were the paper of record. They said how they saw it. And that was that.
To actually bend after it is printed to a political faction is to cave in a way that I think will haunt them for some time to come.
CARLSON: So what’s changed? Is it social media?
PENN: Well, what’s changed is, one, there is social media, but regardless of the social media, the paper wanted to please a constituency, and they weren’t willing to stand behind their own headline, and were then willing to change it for that constituency. That is incredible.
CARLSON: It is incredible. It is incredible. So I mean, you’ve been in Washington an awfully long time and known a lot of people in power here. Have you ever seen anybody under 30 with this much political power as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?
PENN: No. It’s not political power. You see, Pelosi is right. Pelosi runs the House, but when it comes to media power, right, and the influence across our culture and society, she is a phenomenon that is really quite powerful. I mean, she could change a headline on the New York Times.
CARLSON: Yes. I mean, it’s like a child with a firearm. It’s just — she is scary. I’m glad I’m not a Democratic leader. I’m glad I’m not Nancy Pelosi. It’s probably the first time I ever thought this. I mean, how would you like to have to deal with that? I almost feel sorry for Pelosi – – almost. Mark Penn, great to see you.
Not that long ago, assimilation was expected of immigrants. It seemed a fair deal that when foreigners came here to live permanently, they should learn English, be loyal to America and adopt our values of liberty and equality.
But now, tribalism has risen to such a fever pitch among leftists that such basics are now considered an affront to foreigners who expect to live here with no attitude adjustment from say, hostile Mexico or jihadist Pakistan. In fact, we citizens are expected to receive diverse unfriendlies with no complaint — like Obama’s wholesale import of unscreened Syrian muslims — otherwise we are meanie racists.
Leftists expect America to be a passive welfare office for the poor billions of the planet — and how can depressed poverty-stricken people be expected to assimilate??
Tucker Carlson had some remarks about the media smackdown of Tom Brokaw a couple days back.
Interestingly, one sub-topic of assimilation is the place of English in this country, and it polls strongly: a Rasmussen/ProEnglish survey from last April determined that 81 percent of Americans believe that English should be the official language of the United States. A Frank Luntz poll from July found that nearly two-thirds of respondents believe immigrants should be able to hold a basic conversation in English.
Of course, immigrants who don’t speak English are crippling their potential for economic success.
A 2017 Rasmussen poll found most voters still think immigrants should adopt American culture.
Here’s Tucker discussing the general issue of assimilation with Federalist writer John Daniel Davidson:
Here’s an audio version, just in case…
TUCKER CARLSON: Tom Brokaw was long one of the most respected men in America. He anchored the “NBC Nightly News” for 22 years. He’s 78 years old now. He ought to be enjoying a happy retirement, fly-fishing every morning. Instead, Tom Brokaw just made a terrible mistake. He expressed an unauthorized opinion in public. Can’t do that.
During a live television show, Brokaw said that assimilation is good and that immigrants should try to learn English.
TOM BROKAW: I also happen to believe that the Hispanics should work harder at assimilation. That’s one of the things I’ve been saying for a long time. You know, that they ought not to be just codified in their communities, but make sure that all of their kids are learning to speak English and that they feel comfortable in their communities.
CARLSON: Well, not so long ago, those words would have passed pretty much unnoticed. Democrats like Bill Clinton and Barbara Jordan said it all the time and if you don’t believe it, go to Google right now and look up Barbara Jordan on immigration. Whoa.
And they said it for a pretty simple reason, English unites the country, obviously, and now around the world, it is also the language of business and science and culture. It’s clearly a good thing for everyone in America — immigrant or not — to learn English as quickly as possible, but no, you’re not allowed to have that opinion anymore even if you’re Tom Brokaw.
So the activist group Latino Victory, whatever that is, accused Brokaw of quote unquote “white supremacist ideology.” An NYU journalism professor called Carolina Moreno announced that actually, it’s Americans job to quote “try harder to assimilate into a global society.” And then some kid at Vox called Dylan Matthews suggested that Brokaw with sympathetic to quote “pure racial animus.”
Even after Brokaw apologize profusely, the cowards on his old show over at NBC denounced him for his thought crime. Watch this.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A former long-time anchor of this broadcast is in the news tonight for comments he made Sunday on “Meet The Press.” The criticism was widespread and almost immediate.
NBC NEWS ANCHOR STEPHANIE GOST: Lester, tonight an NBC News spokesman tells me quote, “Tom’s comments were inaccurate and inappropriate. And we’re glad he apologized.”
CARLSON: Well, he’ll be getting paid a lot at NBC to say stuff like this. John Daniel Davidson is a senior correspondent at “The Federalist,” and he joins us tonight. So John, look, my bottom line hope is that you could live in a country where you could have a conversation about assimilation and English and whether or not they’re important.
The response to Tom Brokaw makes it absolutely impossible for any decent person to have any opinion on this at all, and it makes it impossible to solve our problems if we can’t have a conversation about it.
JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON: Well, exactly. It’s like you say, it used to be an unremarkable thing to talk about the melting pot as an American ideal. The idea that from many, we are one and we come together from all different countries, all different backgrounds and we become Americans.
And of course, language is one of the things that binds us together as Americans. But there are other things that bind us together as Americans, too. And that’s not to say that because we have a melting pot that you have to abandon all aspects of your own culture. Those cultural aspects feed into the American life and the American culture that we have and make it richer and make it better and that shouldn’t be controversial, and it shouldn’t be scandalous to suggest that learning English is part of assimilating and it’s part of what immigrants should strive for. Continue reading this article
Unlawful foreigners are still fleeing from President Trump’s America, we learn from Saturday’s Washington Post. And the liberal scribblers think the situation hearkens back to slavery times, as shown by the headline, “A Modern Underground Railroad” referring to the path that once led slaves to freedom in Canada.
But American slaves of the 19th century were victims of a brutal system; today’s illegal aliens trying to reach Trudeau’s permissive Canada are thieves who illegally entered America to rip off jobs and benefits.
Worse, the person chosen to characterize the sob story of fleebag illegal aliens is Omer Malik, a “19-year-old native of Afghanistan.”
American soldiers are still dying in Afghanistan, but the young Afghan man profiled is motivated only to get a better deal on free stuff in the nation to the north. Why isn’t he defending his own country from the Taliban rather than angling for the best welfare system?
Unfortunately, mass illegal immigration has ruined normal patriotism and replaced it with overwhelming greed from Central America to Afghanistan. The most energetic thing young men in the Third World can manage these days is to flee to somewhere wealthy to steal First World jobs.
That’s not going to work: America cannot be the flophouse for millions of dissatisfied Third Worlders.
The sappy Washington Post article was reprinted in Stars and Stripes:
CHAMPLAIN, N.Y. — Omer Malik knew he had to slip into Canada to avoid President Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
But the 19-year-old native of Afghanistan needed a friend to help guide him. He found that friend in a 66-year-old former French teacher, one of a number of people here in the Adirondack region who believe it’s their duty to comfort and support those fleeing Trump’s vision for America.
As Malik dragged his suitcase toward the Canadian border, Janet McFetridge gave him two bags of potato chips, a knit hat and — what she considers her most important gift — a hug. Then she yelled across the thicket of cattails and flowering grasses that separated them from Quebec.
“Hello,” she called, alerting a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer that Malik was about to illegally cross the border to claim asylum. “We got someone here.”
McFetridge is part of a loosely assembled network of progressive activists, faith leaders and taxi drivers who have mobilized to help undocumented immigrants cross the northern border. To some, they’re selfless do-gooders ushering people to better lives. To others, they’re perpetuating a problem that has debilitated Canada’s immigration system.
For centuries, residents note, towns in the Champlain Valley have been a path to security, serving as an escape route for people fleeing slavery, the Vietnam War draft and Central American wars. Now, when it comes to immigration, this GOP-friendly part of New York has become a hub of the resistance.
“We view this as our Underground Railroad,” said Carole Slatkin, an advocate who has helped immigrants traveling through Essex, New York, a town that was part of a major route for enslaved people. “While no one is being flogged, and no one is being sold, there is this sort of modern-day equivalent of feeling like people are in danger.”
Advocates say they try not to give direct advice to the immigrants, instead helping them find a place to rest or supplies to ease their journey. But the image of U.S. citizens supporting immigrants who make the trip is controversial in Canada, threatening long-standing, cross-border camaraderie.
“To me, it’s just being abusive,” said Paul Viau, mayor of the township of Hemmingford, a Canadian farming community along the border. “There are people who sympathize with [the immigrants] and people who have a harder time with it. But no one appreciates that someone would pack them up and bring them to the border at an illegal crossing.”
Last year, as the Trump administration began enacting stricter policies against undocumented immigrants, Canada processed more than 50,000 asylum claims. That is more than double the claims made in 2016, according to Canadian government statistics.
Many of those immigrants have been crossing at unauthorized locations, such as here on Roxham Road.
Although the flow of asylum seekers into many Canadian provinces has slowed this year, there has been no letup into Quebec. From January through June, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police apprehended 10,261 people crossing the border illegally there. Last year, the police apprehended 18,836 people.
The arrivals have sparked a backlash from segments of Canada’s political system. In late June, Toronto Mayor John Tory warned that the influx of asylum seekers had overwhelmed that city’s ability to care for them.
“We have a problem, and we need help,” Tory told Canadian reporters in a plea for more emergency housing.
In Quebec, the leader of its nationalist party, Jean-François Lisée, has suggested constructing a wall along the southern border of the province. (Continues)
Who would have thought that national sovereignty would get a plug from the Gray Lady — on its front page, no less.
Sunday’s front page featured a photo of Venezuelans headed south to Brazil, where officials “have begun questioning the wisdom of open borders.”
The interior article reported on the turmoil created by thousands of Venezuelans fleeing socialism (without the word being mentioned) on nearby Brazil. Violent crime and drug dealing are up. Homeless, hungry foreigners crowd Brazilian streets, where they line up for free food distributed by the military. (Reuters reported in February that the average weight lost by Venezuelans last year was 24 pounds.) Communicable disease is a growing problem, along with lowered wages for all because of an excess of workers.
The symptoms may sound familiar to Americans.
It’s curious how the Times never considers that borders and sovereignty might be advantageous for the United States, particularly when millions of poor people south of the Rio Grande are determined to move here.
The Times article was reprinted by WRAL.com, so click away for the whole story:
PACARAIMA, Brazil — Hundreds turn up each day, many arriving penniless and gaunt as they pass a tattered flag that signals they have reached the border.
Once they cross, many cram into public parks and plazas teeming with makeshift homeless shelters, raising concerns about drugs and crime. The lucky ones sleep in tents and line up for meals provided by soldiers — pregnant women, disabled people and families with young children are often given priority. The less fortunate huddle under tarps that crumple during rainstorms.
The scenes are reminiscent of the waves of desperate migrants who have escaped the wars in Syria and Afghanistan, spurring a backlash in Europe. Yet this is happening in Brazil, where a relentless tide of people fleeing the deepening economic crisis in Venezuela has begun to test the region’s tolerance for immigrants.
This month, the governor of the northern Brazilian state of Roraima sued the federal government, demanding it close the border with Venezuela and provide additional money for her overburdened education and health systems.
“We’re very fearful this may lead to an economic and social destabilization in our state,” said the governor, Suely Campos. “I’m looking after the needs of Venezuelans to the detriment of Brazilians.”
The tens of thousands of Venezuelans who have found refuge in Brazil in recent years are walking proof of a worsening humanitarian crisis that their government claims does not exist.
They also constitute an exodus that is straining the region’s largely generous and permissive immigration policies. Earlier this month, Trinidad deported more than 80 Venezuelan asylum-seekers. In Colombian and Brazilian border communities, local residents have attacked Venezuelans in camps.
During the early months of this year, 5,000 Venezuelans were leaving their homeland each day, according to the United Nations. At that rate, more Venezuelans are leaving home each month than the 125,000 Cuban exiles who fled their homes during the 1980 Mariel boat crisis and transformed South Florida.
If the current rate remains steady, more than 1.8 million Venezuelans could leave by the end of this year, joining the estimated 1.5 million who have fled the economic crisis to rebuild their lives abroad.
As Venezuelans began resettling across Latin America in large numbers in 2015, for the most part they found open borders and paths to legal residency in neighboring countries.
But as their numbers have swelled — and as a larger share of recent migrants arrive without savings and in need of medical care — some officials in the region have begun to question the wisdom of open borders.
Campos said she took the “extreme measure” of suing the federal government because the influx of Venezuelans led to a spike in crime, drove down wages for menial jobs and set off an outbreak of measles, which had been eradicated in Brazil.
At least 93 people were killed during the first four months of this year, already exceeding the 83 violent deaths recorded last year, Campos said. And law enforcement officials say drug trafficking in the region has increased as destitute Venezuelans have been drafted into Brazilian smuggling networks.
The population of Boa Vista, the state capital, ballooned over the past few years as some 50,000 Venezuelans resettled here. They now make up roughly 10 percent of the population. At first, residents responded with generosity, establishing soup kitchens and organizing clothes drives.
By last year however, local residents in Pacaraima, the border town, and Boa Vista, the state capital, which is 130 miles from the border, felt overwhelmed.
[. . .]
The U.N. recently asked international donors to donate $46 million to address the crisis during the remainder of this year, but so far it has secured only 6 percent of that goal. Mercedes Acuña, 50, said she felt blessed to have been among the first admitted into a shelter. She arrived in Brazil two months ago, rail thin, after an anguishing period during which she joined an ever-growing mob in the capital, Caracas, picking apart garbage for bits and pieces of discarded food.
Acuña said she had nothing but gratitude for the Brazilians who have helped her, but she has come to agree with those who say it’s time to shut the border.
“I realize we’re all in need,” she said. “But their country is being invaded.”
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf’s announcement that ICE agents would soon be arresting illegal aliens in her city was not met with total approval, as she may have hoped. The Los Angeles Times’ Tuesday edition front-paged the headline “Oakland mayor is chided for ICE warning” — the open-borders rag seemed torn about the blatant call for supporting the lawless and noted, “Schaaf faced a sea of angry calls over her message.”
Although Oakland is often thought of as a black city, 25 percent of residents are hispanic according to the 2010 Census, putting them within three points of black Oaklanders at 28 percent. So Schaaf may be pandering to one part of her diverse base but not another: black Americans do not favor the mass immigration as recent polling has indicated. The mayor may have done herself some damage in that quarter.
From a public safety viewpoint, Schaaf stepped in it big time. Her top priority is supposed to be keeping Oakland safe, but she is clearly interested in the well being of only one group — the illegal aliens. The real danger of unlawful foreigner crime was discussed on Monday by Don Rosenberg whose son was killed by an illegal alien:
On Saturday night, residents of Oakland received an urgent message from Mayor Libby Schaaf.
Schaaf said she had heard from multiple sources that immigration agents would be conducting enforcement operations “starting as soon as within the next 24 hours” and urged those here illegally to take precautions.
The message stunned many. On Monday, some of that surprise turned to confusion and anger as large-scale immigration sweeps did not materialize.
Schaaf’s action has sparked debate about what role politicians and city governments should play in spreading information — both confirmed and unconfirmed — about possible federal immigration sweeps.
Like many California cities, Oakland has declared itself a sanctuary for those here illegally, and officials there have vowed to fight President Trump’s promised immigration crackdown. Tensions have heightened in recent weeks as administration officials have talked about targeting California for increased immigration enforcement. Trump last week also said he was thinking of withdrawing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from the state, predicting it could cause a wave of crime.
While Schaaf said she was trying to help those who might be arrested, some advocates said it had a different impact.
“The main reaction that people have had has been fear, unfortunately,” said Eleni Wolfe, immigration program director at Centro Legal de la Raza, an Oakland-based advocacy group. “It’s terrifying to hear about the potential of increased enforcement action, and unfortunately that’s the main message that they heard.”
Across California, leaders said they find themselves in a difficult position as they fight federal law enforcement actions. Typically, they said, local and federal officials work in concert. But on immigration, they are at odds.
“Broad pronouncements about raids in a city and across a region generate an enormous amount of fear and…generally don’t help families understand exactly what they need to do to protect themselves and their loves ones,” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said.
On the other hand, the former prosecutor said, providing specific information about how, when and where ICE might be engaged could lead to charges of obstruction of justice.
[ . . . ]
Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates for stricter immigration enforcement, echoed that statement, saying it was the policies of sanctuary cities that are “creating the need for ICE to go into these communities.”
Schaaf’s statement, he said, was “a deliberate move to create a sense of hysteria,” he said.
The New York Times had an interesting cultural analysis about automation in Sweden, where the workers appear not to fear they will be made unemployed by smart machines. Americans, by contrast, are suspicious about the effects of automation according to a recent Pew poll, with more than 70 percent admitting they worried about job loss, social disruption and worsened economic equality.
The Times put the story on its front page December 28, including a photo of a modern miner using a remote control to run a loading machine.
Socialism looks like a good fit with the automated future if governments adopt the program of a guaranteed basic income, as recommended by Martin Ford, the author of Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future. The lefty countries are already set up to distribute free stuff, so the transition to a robot economy with cash for all would be no big deal. Certainly the Swedish miner Persson was agreeable and comfortable with the change. Still, the Times reporter seems to have become a little beguiled by Swedish socialism.
Yet as Sweden absorbs large numbers of immigrants from conflict-torn nations, that support may wane. Many lack education and may be difficult to employ. If large numbers wind up depending on government largesse, a backlash could result.
“There’s a risk that the social contract could crack,” said Marten Blix, an economist at the Research Institute of Industrial Economics in Stockholm.
That’s one way to describe the civil war that’s brewing.
The Times story was reprinted in the Anchorage Daily News:
GARPENBERG, Sweden — From inside the control room carved into the rock more than half a mile underground, Mika Persson can see the robots on the march, supposedly coming for his job here at the New Boliden mine.
He’s fine with it.
Sweden’s famously generous social welfare system makes this a place not prone to fretting about automation — or much else, for that matter.
Persson, 35, sits in front of four computer screens, one displaying the loader he steers as it lifts freshly blasted rock containing silver, zinc and lead. If he were down in the mine shaft operating the loader manually, he would be inhaling dust and exhaust fumes. Instead, he reclines in an office chair while using a joystick to control the machine.
He is cognizant that robots are evolving by the day. Boliden is testing self-driving vehicles to replace truck drivers. But Persson assumes people will always be needed to keep the machines running. He has faith in the Swedish economic model and its protections against the torment of joblessness.
“I’m not really worried,” he says. “There are so many jobs in this mine that even if this job disappears, they will have another one. The company will take care of us.”
In much of the world, people whose livelihoods depend on paychecks are increasingly anxious about a potential wave of unemployment threatened by automation. As the frightening tale goes, globalization forced people in wealthier lands like North America and Europe to compete directly with cheaper laborers in Asia and Latin America, sowing joblessness. Now, the robots are coming to finish off the humans.
But such talk has little currency in Sweden or its Scandinavian neighbors, where unions are powerful, government support is abundant, and trust between employers and employees runs deep. Here, robots are just another way to make companies more efficient. As employers prosper, workers have consistently gained a proportionate slice of the spoils — a stark contrast to the United States and Britain, where wages have stagnated even while corporate profits have soared.
“In Sweden, if you ask a union leader, ‘Are you afraid of new technology?’ they will answer, ‘No, I’m afraid of old technology,'” says the Swedish minister for employment and integration, Ylva Johansson. “The jobs disappear, and then we train people for new jobs. We won’t protect jobs. But we will protect workers.”
It was nice to see the Los Angeles Times recognize the negative effect of self-driving cars and trucks which will cause severe job loss, as shown by a front-page story on Wednesday.
A lot of reporting over the last few years has had too much fan-boy wonderment at the rapid growth of admittedly amazing technology. But the automation gizmos are being designed to replace millions of workers: tech designers and business owners win, and workers lose.
The self-driving sector is now engaged in something of a gold rush. There is huge money involved on who prevails in the marketplace, and the big players in the automotive and tech companies don’t want to be left behind.
As a result of the haste, safety may not be given proper attention by Washington because nobody in Congress wants to see China or any other competitor overshadow American technology. The Times article refers vaguely to a hearing which must be the September investigation which I reported: Senate Hearing Paves Way for Self-Driving Trucks. The Teamster representative Ken Hall was the only one who discussed safety much, noting:
For instance, I have yet to hear a serious discussion about how we will make sure an 80,000 pound automated truck will be able to maneuver around a warehouse or drop yard and not injure the countless workers also occupying that same space. Or how we would make sure that the rules governing a driver’s training requirements would be updated the moment one of these new vehicles is put on the road. And we haven’t gotten to the largest issue of them all, the potential impact on the livelihoods and wages of millions of your constituents.
My optimistic self hopes that 80,000-pound self-driving trucks will not be loosed on the public highways any time soon — a software malfunction could be catastrophic. A reasonable (and hopefully long-term) introductory step would be the “platooning” strategy where a human driver pilots one truck with a small number of other vehicles hooked up electronically to the leader.
Furthermore, as the article points out, the political blowback will likely be severe when the public begins to see society transformed in a way nobody asked for, and the driving environment looks to be just an early harbinger of change. Many jobs are liable to face a die-off or at least be affected by the automation revolution. The Oxford study that got everyone’s attention in 2013 predicted that nearly half of occupations in the US were likely to be automated within the next 20 years. Yet Washington remains asleep to the danger, as demonstrated by Treasury Secretary Mnuchin’s clueless remark last spring that big automation was 50 or 100 years away.
There’s not a lot that can done to stop the harmful effects, because capitalism and invention go hand in hand. But ending immigration would be a prudent step, since it makes no sense for America to continue importing workers when machines will be doing many of the jobs in a few years, because:
Automation Makes Immigration Obsolete
This is one of the better articles from a mainstream newspaper about the difficult automated future:
A driverless truck is seen at a garage in San Francisco in May 2016. Such autonomous big rigs already are being tested on the roads. The Teamsters warn millions that of truck-driving and related jobs are threatened. Economists see a political backlash brewing.
In its race to embrace driverless vehicles, Washington has cleared away regulatory hurdles for auto companies and brushed aside consumer warnings about the risk of crashes and hacking.
But at a recent hearing, lawmakers absorbed an economic argument that illustrated how the driverless revolution they are encouraging could backfire politically, particularly in Trump country.
It was the tale of a successful, long-distance beer run.
A robotic truck coasted driverless 120 miles down Interstate 25 in Colorado on its way to deliver 51,744 cans of Budweiser. Not everyone at the hearing was impressed by the milestone, particularly the secretary-treasurer of the Teamsters, whose nearly 600,000 unionized drivers played no small role in President Trump’s victory last year.
Driverless vehicles threaten to dramatically reduce America’s 1.7-million trucking jobs. It is the front end of a wave of automation that technologists and economists have been warning for years will come crashing down on America’s political order. Some predict it could rival the impact of the economic globalization and the resulting off-shoring of jobs that propelled Trump’s victory in the presidential election.
“This is one of the biggest policy changes of our generation,” said Sam Loesche, head of government affairs for the Teamsters. “This is not just about looking after the health and welfare of America’s workers, but also their livelihoods.”
Washington isn’t ready for it. The Trump White House already has indicated it sees it as some future administration’s problem. Silicon Valley remains in shock over Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin’s remark in the spring that economic fallout from this type of automation is 50 to 100 years off and “not even on my radar screen.”
“I don’t think anybody there is thinking about this seriously,” said Martin Ford, author of “Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future.” “They are still looking at this as futuristic and not having an impact and not politically toxic. … Once people start seeing the vehicles on the roads and jobs disappearing because of them, things will quickly become very different.”
The arrival of that reckoning is getting accelerated by Washington’s bipartisan excitement for self-driving technology, one of the few policy issues advancing. New Trump administration regulations don’t require industry to submit certain safety assessments, leaving it voluntary. And legislation — already approved in the House and expected to pass in the Senate — strips authority from states to set many of their own safety guidelines.
Objections raised by the National Governor’s Assn. and the National Council of State Legislatures don’t seem to be slowing things down. Consumer groups are dismayed.
In Minneapolis, the local Muslim reaction over the murder of Australian woman Justine Damond by a Somali immigrant policeman has taken on a familiar theme — the old “backlash” dodge which attempts to make the Somalis into the victim.
Portraying Minnesota Somalis as the injured party is a heavy lift, largely because of their years-long record of violence, jihad and non-assimilation. In 2009 (when the Somali population of the state was only 32,000), the AP reported that the Rise of Somali Gangs Plagues Minneapolis. In the same year, Shirwa Ahmed (a 2000 graduate of Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis), traveled to Somalia to blow up himself and 29 others in Mogadishu.
Last September Somali refugee Dahir Aden stabbed 10 persons in a St. Cloud shopping center while shouting Allah. Making local people fear a jihad attack while browsing in the mall will not convince them trust Muslim immigrants.
So if indeed there is a backlash against Somalis in Minnesota, an argument can be made that they brought on distrust and ill feeling themselves, by their years of violence, jihad and hatred of the US — which Americans have recognized as a threat.
When Mohamed Noor joined the Minneapolis police force and was assigned to patrol the city’s southwest corner, the Somali community there — the nation’s largest — threw a party for him to celebrate.
He was the first Somali American officer to serve in Minneapolis’s fifth precinct and one of fewer than a dozen Somali American officers in the department. His presence on the squad brought Somali activists some pride and reassurance at a time of Islamophobia in America and nationwide racial tension stoked in part by shootings of black people by white police officers.
Now that same Somali community is bracing for a backlash against Noor that has already begun.
On Monday, multiple media outlets named Noor as the officer who fatally shot an unarmed Australian woman in the city’s popular Fulton neighborhood over the weekend, an incident that has grabbed global attention and thrust Minneapolis into yet another uproar over police violence….
The report stoked fear among Somalis in the Twin Cities, who have worked for decades to become part of the city’s fabric. There are now Somalis on the police force, the city council and in the Minnesota House of Representatives. But the largely Muslim population of Somali Americans in the region still face Islamophobia and innuendo about terrorism.
“They fear this will be just another event used to create animosity toward the Somali community,” Mohamud Noor, executive director at the Confederation of Somali Community in Minnesota, told The Post.
Already, hateful posts criticizing Islam and sharia law are filling social media in response to the police shooting. Several far-right blogs featured sensational headlines that blamed the officer’s ethnicity for the deadly use of force. Continue reading this article
The story about ultra-wealthy Silicon Valley types buying land where they can hunker down raises immediate questions — what the heck do the tech rich have to fear anyway? They are on top of the world with wealth and influence, plus they can afford to buy a house in Palo Alto.
As it happens, the tech elites fear public fury over the jobless future they have created with automation and artificial intelligence.
The original long article in the New Yorker (Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich, Jan. 30, 2017) meandered around, but the point boiled down to this:
The fears vary, but many worry that, as artificial intelligence takes away a growing share of jobs, there will be a backlash against Silicon Valley, America’s second-highest concentration of wealth. (Southwestern Connecticut is first.) “I’ve heard this theme from a bunch of people,” Hoffman said. “Is the country going to turn against the wealthy? Is it going to turn against technological innovation? Is it going to turn into civil disorder?”
Below, Tesla cars are assembled in Fremont California by robots. Automotive manufacturing once supplied jobs for millions of Americans, but now the industry is largely automated.
There’s not a whole lot to be done about the automated future beyond survival prepping, but Washington could at least end immigration, which is being made obsolete by advanced technology.
Tech entrepreneurs fearful artificial intelligence will displace so many jobs there will be a revolt against those responsible
Billionaires in the world’s tech capital Silicon Valley are reportedly preparing for the apocalypse by buying underground bunkers, guns, ammo and motorcycles.
Fearful that artificial intelligence will displace so many jobs that there will be a revolt against those responsible for the technology, the are entrepreneurs readying themselves for doomsday like scenarios. Continue reading this article
The howls were loud, multilingual and self-righteous from the liberal city when its lawbreaking sanctuary policy was knocked down by the new president on Wednesday, as a noisy gaggle formed up on the City Hall steps to make loud demands in Spanish about their bogus “right” to live here illegally.
In an upside-down liberal view of reality, Mayor Ed Lee asserted that sanctuary made the city safer: “We stand by our sanctuary city because we want everybody to feel safe and utilize the services they deserve, including education and health care.”
Illegal alien sanctuary was not safe for Kate Steinle and the Bologna family however.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday seeking to end sanctuary cities, that, in his words, “harbor illegal immigrants.”
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday seeking to end sanctuary cities, that, in his words, “harbor illegal immigrants.”
The president promised to cut federal funding to cities that don’t comply.
But Mayor Ed Lee says San Francisco stands firm. It will continue to protect its sanctuary city laws that have been in place for the past 27 years.
“We stand united that a safer city is a city that doesn’t allow its residents to live in fear,” he said following the announcement.
Meanwhile, dozens of immigration advocates took to city hall chanting “an organized community will never be deported.” Continue reading this article
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It was nice to see the Los Angeles Times recognize the negative effect of self-driving cars and trucks which will cause severe job loss, as shown by a front-page story on Wednesday.
