Ninety miles from the South Eastern tip of the United States, Liberty has no stead. In order for Liberty to exist and thrive, Tyranny must be identified, recognized, confronted and extinguished.
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Saturday, November 21, 2020
Michelle Malkin- Dominion Voting systems VP - Voter Fraud and Antifa links:
According to the Conservative Daily Podcast host Joe Oltmann, Dominion Voting Systems co-owner and inventor, Dr. Eric Coomer has made social media posts in the past directly connecting him to Antifa.
Dominion Voting is based in Denver, Colorado. Coomer graduated with a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics from the University of California, Berkeley, and began working in the elections industry in 2005 with a company called Sequoia Voting Systems as their Chief Software Architect.
In 2008, after Sequoia was acquired by Dominion, Coomer took the position as the Vice-President of US Engineering, overseeing development in the Denver, Colorado office.Coomers most recent title was Director of Product Strategy tasked with creating the “next generation” of voting products for Elections departments throughout the world. Coomer is listed as an Inventor on 12 patents registered to Dominion.
Social media sleuths captured Coomer’s alleged Facebook posts before his social media accounts were scrubbed when the election controversy involving Dominion Voting machines and software broker. Dominion Voting machines and software were linked to a “glitch,” which caused roughly 6,000 Trump votes to be credited to Biden in a Michigan county and is used in many swing states.
Doctor Doctor, Please...
Livin' lovin' I'm on the run
So far away from you
Livin' lovin' I'm on the run
So far away from you
Doctor doctor, please
Oh I'm goin' fast
Doctor doctor, please, oh, I'm goin' fast
It's only just a moment
She's turning paranoid
That's not a situation for a nervous boy
SCOTUS: Conservative Justices Now Preside Over Every Circuit Court Key To Trump’s Victory
The new circuit assignments were confirmed on Friday
SCOTUS has confirmed new circuit assignments that result in conservative justices having jurisdiction over almost all states key to Trump’s victory.
Following the death of SCOTUS Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in September, President Trump appointed Amy Coney Barrett to replace her in the courts. With a new justice in SCOTUS, there also needed to be a reshuffle of the control of the circuit courts.
Each SCOTUS justice presides over one or more of America’s 13 court circuits as a circuit justice. As SCOTUSblog explains:
A circuit justice is primarily responsible for emergency requests (for example, an application to block an execution or to allow it to go forward) from the geographic area covered by his or her circuit, as well as more mundane matters, such as requests to extend filing deadlines. However, justices can and often do refer significant emergency requests to the full court – a role that has taken on increased importance in recent years with the sharp uptick in activity on the court’s “shadow docket.”SCOTUS’s so-called “shadow docket” for the circuits is especially important in the cases relating to the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, where President Trump and his campaign team are contesting many of...
Here Are Just 10 of the Wild Conspiracy Theories the Left (and Media) Have Tarred Trump With for More Than 4 Years
The “deranged” Russian spy in the White House told the Ukraine president to drink Clorox and refuses to leave his “illegal” office until every blue mailbox filled with secret messages to “very fine” white supremacists in Prague is removed by incontinent hookers…
… and other whoppers the media trolled Donald Trump with for the past four-plus years. Speaking of trolls, so-called “fact” checkers are advised that this is satire. That is “protected speech.” Look it up.
The Left and their media wingmen have decided that after four years of believing Russian Facebook ads interfered with the 2016 election, that it’s absolutely a “deranged conspiracy theory” for the president to question the odd results of the 2020 election and the way they were produced. If the shoe had been on the other foot, the media’s candidate, Joe Biden, would be lauded for his patriotism and fortitude between his ever-diminishing bouts of clarity.
When the media turned on the big-talking and sometimes bellicose New Yorker (see Andrew Cuomo) and began reporting that he was a suspected Russian secret agent, Trump flipped it right back, dismissing them as Fake News. They rewarded the big-talking candidate with – what do they like to say now? – oh, yes, giving agency to some of the biggest whoppers ever conceived of by reporters and their buddies over at the Lincoln Project, Hillary Clinton’s rumor-factory, and the DNC.
Let’s take a rambling trip down the memory lane of the Steele Dossier fever dreams, “highly placed sources,” and Rick Wilson’s fantasies, shall we? These are the 10 Biggest Conspiracy Theories leveled against Trump. These are not in any particular order.
1. Trump Is a Russian Spy
Vladimir Putin cultivated, “supported and directed” Donald Trump years before he thought about running for the presidency. CNN kept this fiction going long after the IG’s report proved it’s a whopper.
This was the Russian hoax put forward, as we later found out, by Hillary Clinton using Russians to trump up oppo research and call it a “dossier.” The “Steele Dossier” was a series of memos told by a guy who later admitted it was drunken bar talk and sold to the media as evidence of kompromat to the gullible and unthinking Adam Schiff.
2. Trump ‘Colluded’ With the Russians To Win Trump the White House
Congressman Adam Schiff promised he had “evidence” of Trump’s “collusion” with the Russians to “intervene” in a “very close election” to propel President Trump to the White House. These claims were amplified by media, willing to believe that Trump threw the 2016 election, but unwilling to entertain the allegations of foreign interference in the 2020 election.
3.Trump Was Not Legally Elected and He Never Plans to Leave
Before the president took office, anti- and Never Trumpers declared themselves to be “The Resistance.” House Judiciary Committee member, New York Congressman Jerry Nadler, said that Trump was not a legal president and helped draw up impeachment articles before he was sworn in. Dozens of Democrats in the House boycotted his inauguration. And in 2019 Hillary Clinton proclaimed Trump an “illegitimate president.” So much for that whole peaceful transfer of power thing. The New Yorker fanned the flames of the Resistance by announcing that the president was initiating a coup and wouldn’t leave office for at least three terms.
5. Donald Trump Paid Hookers to Urinate on a Bed Because … Obama
This was another Steele whopper. His “source” must have been really drunk by this time. The story was leaked to the press that...
Congressman Adam Schiff promised he had “evidence” of Trump’s “collusion” with the Russians to “intervene” in a “very close election” to propel President Trump to the White House. These claims were amplified by media, willing to believe that Trump threw the 2016 election, but unwilling to entertain the allegations of foreign interference in the 2020 election.
3.Trump Was Not Legally Elected and He Never Plans to Leave
Before the president took office, anti- and Never Trumpers declared themselves to be “The Resistance.” House Judiciary Committee member, New York Congressman Jerry Nadler, said that Trump was not a legal president and helped draw up impeachment articles before he was sworn in. Dozens of Democrats in the House boycotted his inauguration. And in 2019 Hillary Clinton proclaimed Trump an “illegitimate president.” So much for that whole peaceful transfer of power thing. The New Yorker fanned the flames of the Resistance by announcing that the president was initiating a coup and wouldn’t leave office for at least three terms.
4. Trump Told Putin to ‘Hack’ Hillary’s Email to Win the Election
Candidate Trump in July of 2016 joked in a news conference, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 [Hillary Clinton] emails that are missing.” It was a rueful joke because the Secretary of State’s 33,000 emails, sought by the House Select Committee on Benghazi, on her personal server had been destroyed by her and her staff. Although Hillary’s email destruction gambit is often conflated with the DNC hack they are not the same thing. The hack of the Democratic National Committee’s emails, which were splayed on the web supposedly by Wikileaks, was allegedly done by Russian “GRU officers” via phishing emails. In fact, a declassified leak of a handwritten memo by then-CIA chief John Brennan revealed that it was Hillary Clinton’s campaign that began the Trump-is-a-Russian-spy story to draw attention away from her email scandal. See number one.
Candidate Trump in July of 2016 joked in a news conference, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 [Hillary Clinton] emails that are missing.” It was a rueful joke because the Secretary of State’s 33,000 emails, sought by the House Select Committee on Benghazi, on her personal server had been destroyed by her and her staff. Although Hillary’s email destruction gambit is often conflated with the DNC hack they are not the same thing. The hack of the Democratic National Committee’s emails, which were splayed on the web supposedly by Wikileaks, was allegedly done by Russian “GRU officers” via phishing emails. In fact, a declassified leak of a handwritten memo by then-CIA chief John Brennan revealed that it was Hillary Clinton’s campaign that began the Trump-is-a-Russian-spy story to draw attention away from her email scandal. See number one.
5. Donald Trump Paid Hookers to Urinate on a Bed Because … Obama
This was another Steele whopper. His “source” must have been really drunk by this time. The story was leaked to the press that...
Kayleigh McEnany to Interrupting Reporter: ‘I Don’t Call on Activists’
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany held a press briefing on Friday during which one reporter shouted questions and statements about President Trump’s refusal to concede the election.
“Do you understand the definition of sedition? Do you understand any laws?” the reporter yelled as the press conference concluded.
“I don’t call on activists,” McEnany replied as the reporter kept shouting from the back of the room:
Why President Trump Must Not Give Up
The real issue now is whether America will be a banana republic or not. The integrity of the election will define the nation for years to come. Therefore, President Trump must see this fight not for his survival, but for the survival of the United States of America.
During the campaign, the liberal Democrats, including Joe Biden, have made it clear that they were not genuinely interested in discussing their real plans for the next four years if the voters handed them the power. Asked by a reporter prior to the election whether he would be packing the Court or not, Biden said he would answer the question after the election. At this juncture, one has to take seriously the Democrats' intent at face value. Whoever brazenly committed massive cheating of this magnitude in front of millions of American people will certainly have no qualms doing the same or even worse in the future. A desperate and obsessive desire for power can lead to desperate measures.
In the last two weeks, the Trump legal team has gathered enormous data and information indicating that massive cheating and fraud to steal the election have been committed. If they are highly confident in the evidence they have, then, as Jay Valentine described, it's time to call it as it is: a coup. That is a deliberate attempt to capture power through a combination of violent means (committed by the radical wing of the party) and preprogrammed, organized election fraud.
A coup is never constitutional. In fact, it is a direct attack to...
Dominion Voting 'Lawyers Up' Before Abruptly Backing Out Of Pennsylvania Fact-Finding Hearing
Dominion Voting Systems Thursday night abruptly backed out of attending a fact-finding hearing that was set for Friday morning with the Pennsylvania House State Government Committee.
At a press conference Friday morning, State Govt Committee Chair Seth Grove said the 1.3. million Pennsylvanians who used Dominion’s voting machines have been “hung out to dry and slapped in their faces.”
Pennsylvania lawmakers had scheduled the hearing with the voting machine manufacturer “to help identify and correct any irregularities in the election process,” according to the House Republican Caucus.
“It is vitally important voters have faith in the machines they use to cast their ballots. On the heels of Gov. Tom Wolf unilaterally decertifying every voting machine in the Commonwealth, we need to know whether these new machines met expectations, whether they are reliable and whether they are not subject to interference,” said Rep. Grove (R-York).
Dominion had initially agreed to attend the hearing, before it “abruptly canceled,” Grove said.
“I was impressed at what appeared to be the willingness that Dominion Voting Systems to address accusations and it would have put 1.3. million Pennsylvanians who used their machines at ease—including myself, thinking that Dominion was willing to publicly back up their product which PA taxpayers invested millions to purchase” he noted during the presser. “Unfortunately, last evening, Dominion Voting Systems lawyered up, and backed out of their commitment to the people of Pennsylvania to provide their input in a public format.”
Grove blasted the company for “retreating into the darkness,” rather than appearing at the hearing with “honesty and integrity.”
The committee chair said he wanted to know why a company with nothing to hide would back out.
“Why would a vender of public goods fear discussing their product sold to the public for the public good? If Dominion’s products were successful and operated as they were supposed to, why wouldn’t Dominion take the opportunity to publicly review its success?” Grove demanded. “How hard is it to say, ‘our ballot machines worked...
A Time To Heal, A Time For War...
To Everything, There Is A Season...
A Time To Gather Stones Together
A Time Of War
A Time To Break Down
A Time To Kill
Globalism Will Lead To Starvation, Tyranny And Finally... Death.
The 90 Miles Mystery Video: Nyctophilia Edition #479
The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #1179
You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?
It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,
from the beautiful to the repugnant,
from the mysterious to the familiar.
If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,
you could be inspired, you could be appalled.
This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.
You have been warned.
Friday, November 20, 2020
Watch This Hole-In-One Putt....
More Amazing Gifs:
More Amazing Animated Gifs HERE
Animated Gif Collection #2 HERE
Animated Gif Collection #3
Animated Gif Collection #4
Animated Gif Collection #5 -OR- Motorcycles And Bulls Don't Mix..
Animated Gif Collection #6 or Bet She Lost Some Teeth...
Animated Gif Collection #7 -OR- This Is What Happens When You Fall Asleep While Driving...
Animated Gif Collection #8 -OR- Fish: 1, Dog: 0
Animated Gif Collection #9 -OR-Out Of Control Bus -OR-
Animated Gif Collection #10 -OR- How To Launch An Oil Truck Into The Air
Animated Gif Collection #11 -OR- Man That Must Have Hurt
Animated GIF Collection #12 -OR- This Is Brutal
Animated Gif Collection #13 -OR- This Guy Was Inches From DEATH!
Animated Gif Collection #14
Animated Gif Collection #15
Animated Gif Collection #16 -OR- Make It Rain!
Animated Gif Collection #17 -OR- THIS IS NOT HOW YOU KILL THE CHINESE CORONA VIRUS!
Joe Biden Fights Dementia -OR- Amazing Gif Collection #18
Bull Ride -OR- Amazing Gif Collection #19
Pickup Truck Gets Unexpected Passenger -OR- Amazing Gif Collection #20
Motorcycle Explodes In Collision With Truck -OR- Amazing Gif Collection #21
DATA: Trump Won 95% Of Bellwether Counties, Making Biden Win Statistically Improbable
Trump campaign official Steve Cortes crunches numbers on bellwether counties, and the improbable nature of Biden's purported victory
In a video posted to Twitter on Thursday, Trump 2020 Campaign Senior Advisor for Strategy Steve Cortes took a deep dive into the 2020 election data regarding President Donald Trump’s overwhelmingly dominant performance in the United States’ bellwether counties, adding to the statistical improbability of a Joe Biden electoral victory.
“Out of 3,000 counties in this country, there are 19 that have a perfect track record since 1980 of voting for the successful presidential candidate,” Cortes noted. “Donald Trump, on November 3, won 18 out of these 19 counties. Could these bellwether counties really have gotten it wrong all at the same time?”
The corporate media has largely been unable to explain Trump’s dominant performance in bellwether counties, offering up only vague references to “more racially diverse populations” in response to the counties’ sharp contrast with a purported Biden victory.
“Let’s look at these individual counties,” Cortes continued, and took a look at Vigo County, Indiana, which has only failed to vote for the projected winner once in over 100 years.
Cortes noted that in 2008, “Obama won this swing county in Indiana by 16 percent. This election, Donald Trump almost exactly flipped that even by the number. He won it by 15 percent.”
Valencia County, New Mexico, has held a perfect track record in presidential elections since 1952.
“It’s a majority Hispanic county, working-class place,” Cortes said. “In 2008, Obama won it by 8 percent. Again, like Vigo County, it flipped it almost exactly. In 2020, Donald trump won it by...
Biden Deputy Chief of Staff Proposed Mandatory Confiscation of “Assault Weapons” as Beto Campaign Manager
A Biden campaign operative tasked as a deputy chief of staff in Biden’s supposedly incoming presidential administration called for the mandatory confiscation of “assault weapons” as Beto O’Rourke’s campaign manager.
Dillon goes on to clarify that the Beto gun confiscation plan would affect “15 to 16 million” guns, an unprecedented usurpation of private property on the part of the United States government. Beto generally avoided explaining how he’d enforce the draconian ban, alluding to tax penalties that would pile up on Americans who insist on their Second Amendment rights.
Joe Biden has shied away from a policy as outrageous as a full “assault weapon” mandatory buyback as a candidate, but his tentative Vice President, Kamala Harris, has supported a variant of it.
Biden has, however, enthusiastically supported a ban on...
John Kerry Says Great Reset is Needed to Stop Rise of Populism
Says rejoining Paris Climate Agreement is “not enough.”
Former Secretary of State John Kerry attended a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum during which he asserted that a great reset was urgently needed to stop the rise of populism.
Kerry vowed that under a Biden administration, America would rejoin the job-killing Paris Climate Agreement but that this was “not enough.”
“The notion of a reset is more important than ever before,” Kerry said. “I personally believe … we’re at the dawn of an extremely exciting time.”
The former Senator made it clear that this “reset,” which is merely a re-branding of the same new world order that has faced stiff resistance for the past two decades, is necessary to extinguish populism.
“I think Europe has to look at that with Brexit and the rising national populism — nationalistic populism,” said Kerry. “Which is really one of the priorities that we all have to address. You can’t dismiss it.”
Speaking about how Trump increased his vote in 2020, Kerry noted, “What astounds me is that as many people still voted for the level of chaos and breach of law and order and breaking the standards and … I think that, the underlying reason for that is something that everybody has to examine.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also welcomed the prospect of Biden as a “friend in the White House” to the globalists and said the two entities would work on “a new rulebook for the digital economy and the digital society.”
“The need for global cooperation and this acceleration of change will both be drivers of the Great Reset. And I see this as an unprecedented opportunity,” said von der Leyen.
As we have exhaustively documented, “The Great Reset” is merely the latest incarnation of the agenda to centralize power into the hands of a tiny elite, disenfranchising Americans, lowering their living standards and forcing them to submit to a social credit score system that will eliminate all privacy and personal autonomy.
As we reported yesterday, legacy media outlets like the New York Times are still claiming the “Great Reset” is a “conspiracy theory” even as world leaders openly announce it.
For a full break down of what “The Great Reset” truly represents, watch the interview below.
We Are Living In A Dystopian Nightmare....
Animal Farm is an allegorical novella by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945.[1][2] The book tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. Ultimately, however, the rebellion is betrayed, and the farm ends up in a state as bad as it was before, under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon.
Lin Wood says he was ‘shocked’ by reaction of weak-kneed GOP, unwilling to expose alleged ‘election fraud’
In tweets posted Thursday, powerhouse attorney Lin Wood, one of the key figures in President Donald Trump’s 2020 legal election battle, doubled down on his assertion that President Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election in a landslide.
Moreover, he bashed Republican officials on the state and national level for not being “willing to take action to expose election fraud.”
View his tweets below:
Aid to IT Workers Displaced by H-1B Helps Big Tech Instead
Recently, the Department of Labor (DOL) announced the creation of the “H-1B One Workforce” apprenticeship program designed to help more Americans enter industries frequently occupied by H-1B visa-holders. According to the agency’s press release, the program would fund “training for middle- to high-skilled H-1B occupations within key sectors in the U.S. economy, including information technology and cyber security, advanced manufacturing and transportation…” The $150 million-dollar program, we are told, is intended “to upskill the present workforce and train a new generation of workers to grow the future workforce…”
Sounds good for U.S. workers, it would seem, especially given the present state of our COVID-crippled economy. Not exactly. Like a lot of what’s traditionally come out of the H-1B-managing agencies, it is the usual suspects who look to be the real beneficiaries here.
Details are still sparse, but plenty of red flags present themselves in the new announcement. To start, the H-1B program channels the large majority of its foreign workers into the IT industry, not transportation or advanced manufacturing. This same problem arose last year when then-secretary Alex Acosta proposed an iteration of the program that included health care training; another industry not affected by H-1B workers.
So, taxpayer-funds will be going to industries without an H-1B problem. Not a giant public-policy mismatch, but one that’s glaring enough error to question whether helping H-1B displacement is truly the motivation here.
Further, apprenticeships are meant to teach new skills to less well-off young people and are almost always geared toward the trades, not IT. So, it is young, high school grads who will be benefiting here; not the recent college grads and veteran tech-workers that get pushed out by the H-1B and which DOL’s new program is ostensibly designed to help.
Being rarely qualified for IT work, high school grads are not a good fit for the type of job opening that H-1Bs fill. For instance, when the Obama Administration created a West Virginia-based initiative designed to supply IT education to high school grads, the results were essentially zero. The allotted funds would have been better utilized had they been applied towards retraining the same young people in, for instance, advanced manufacturing.
So, non-IT American workers unaffected by the H-1B will get the most benefit from the new program and all we have here is a misnomer. Not quite. It’s more serious than that. To the extent the program fails in its design to help the proclaimed worker-shortage in IT, it helps the key narrative of industry participants that there actually is such a shortage when there is none. As UC Davis computer science professor and seasoned Big Tech-critic Norm Matloff recently said about the new announcement: “Worst of all [about it] is the implied message that we have a tech labor shortage in the first place, which no study (other than industry-sponsored ones) has ever found.”
IT labor assistance programs actually have a long pedigree. They go back to when the H-1B got its first expansion after it was created in 1990. As part of that effort, Congress demanded from industry players some sort of retraining measure to ensure Americans could eventually re-join H-1B industries. That, however, was way back in 1998, a pretty long time for there to be a shortage in any market.
So, while DOL’s new effort might make the general working public feel good, these sorts of retraining programs only perpetuate the narrative that there is an IT labor shortage. This amounts to little more than a PR-benefit seemingly designed for Big Tech. Matloff is right about the nonexistent IT-worker shortage. The U.S. has plenty of them. For instance, minority IT grads apparently far exceed their numbers in Silicon Valley and tech hubs elsewhere.
There is yet another potential mismatch problem with the new announcement. As Matloff points out, workers seem to be promised “modern skills through relatively short-term training programs”, however, the jobs which H-1B-visa holders take up generally require a bachelor’s degree—although certainly not one from a top school; not even a middling one. With this timing mismatch, therefore, it’s difficult to see how DOL’s new program could effectively fill those jobs with ”retrained’ American apprentices.” They simply won’t be fully qualified.
But, again, this likely isn’t the point. Big Tech wants foreign workers, not U.S. ones, because their jobs are tied to their visa. Such guaranteed pliancy is coveted by the industry. They’ve even admitted as much.
Big Tech also wants to avoid U.S. workers because they are generally older. Foreign, mostly Indian, H-1B-holders are younger, and younger workers are always less expensive.
As already noted, it is certainly high time for DOL to first evaluate the way it approaches retraining programs before it pushes forward with the same old, same old. We’ve heard about the H-1B’s displacement and wage-levelling effects on the IT industry going all the way back to the 1990s. A working paper published last year by the National Bureau of Economic Research still finds these dispossessing effects occurring. For instance, it found no broad offsetting benefits to the program nor that it fills real American tech-sector shortages as intended. It suggests in sum that the program’s basically a handout to the trillion-dollar tech industry.
The best restitution to affected U.S. IT workers, therefore, might be to scale the H-1B program back or eliminate it entirely. Oddly enough, right after this program was launched, DOL, along with DHS, announced regulatory reforms to the H-1B that are the most extensive and worker-friendly we’ve ever seen. Even more reason perhaps to remove the H-1B pretense from DOL’s new grant announcement.
Dale L. Wilcox is executive director and general counsel at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative effects of mass migration.
Recently, the Department of Labor (DOL) announced the creation of the “H-1B One Workforce” apprenticeship program designed to help more Americans enter industries frequently occupied by H-1B visa-holders. According to the agency’s press release, the program would fund “training for middle- to high-skilled H-1B occupations within key sectors in the U.S. economy, including information technology and cyber security, advanced manufacturing and transportation…” The $150 million-dollar program, we are told, is intended “to upskill the present workforce and train a new generation of workers to grow the future workforce…”
Sounds good for U.S. workers, it would seem, especially given the present state of our COVID-crippled economy. Not exactly. Like a lot of what’s traditionally come out of the H-1B-managing agencies, it is the usual suspects who look to be the real beneficiaries here.
Details are still sparse, but plenty of red flags present themselves in the new announcement. To start, the H-1B program channels the large majority of its foreign workers into the IT industry, not transportation or advanced manufacturing. This same problem arose last year when then-secretary Alex Acosta proposed an iteration of the program that included health care training; another industry not affected by H-1B workers.
So, taxpayer-funds will be going to industries without an H-1B problem. Not a giant public-policy mismatch, but one that’s glaring enough error to question whether helping H-1B displacement is truly the motivation here.
Further, apprenticeships are meant to teach new skills to less well-off young people and are almost always geared toward the trades, not IT. So, it is young, high school grads who will be benefiting here; not the recent college grads and veteran tech-workers that get pushed out by the H-1B and which DOL’s new program is ostensibly designed to...
Sounds good for U.S. workers, it would seem, especially given the present state of our COVID-crippled economy. Not exactly. Like a lot of what’s traditionally come out of the H-1B-managing agencies, it is the usual suspects who look to be the real beneficiaries here.
Details are still sparse, but plenty of red flags present themselves in the new announcement. To start, the H-1B program channels the large majority of its foreign workers into the IT industry, not transportation or advanced manufacturing. This same problem arose last year when then-secretary Alex Acosta proposed an iteration of the program that included health care training; another industry not affected by H-1B workers.
So, taxpayer-funds will be going to industries without an H-1B problem. Not a giant public-policy mismatch, but one that’s glaring enough error to question whether helping H-1B displacement is truly the motivation here.
Further, apprenticeships are meant to teach new skills to less well-off young people and are almost always geared toward the trades, not IT. So, it is young, high school grads who will be benefiting here; not the recent college grads and veteran tech-workers that get pushed out by the H-1B and which DOL’s new program is ostensibly designed to help.
Being rarely qualified for IT work, high school grads are not a good fit for the type of job opening that H-1Bs fill. For instance, when the Obama Administration created a West Virginia-based initiative designed to supply IT education to high school grads, the results were essentially zero. The allotted funds would have been better utilized had they been applied towards retraining the same young people in, for instance, advanced manufacturing.
So, non-IT American workers unaffected by the H-1B will get the most benefit from the new program and all we have here is a misnomer. Not quite. It’s more serious than that. To the extent the program fails in its design to help the proclaimed worker-shortage in IT, it helps the key narrative of industry participants that there actually is such a shortage when there is none. As UC Davis computer science professor and seasoned Big Tech-critic Norm Matloff recently said about the new announcement: “Worst of all [about it] is the implied message that we have a tech labor shortage in the first place, which no study (other than industry-sponsored ones) has ever found.”
IT labor assistance programs actually have a long pedigree. They go back to when the H-1B got its first expansion after it was created in 1990. As part of that effort, Congress demanded from industry players some sort of retraining measure to ensure Americans could eventually re-join H-1B industries. That, however, was way back in 1998, a pretty long time for there to be a shortage in any market.
So, while DOL’s new effort might make the general working public feel good, these sorts of retraining programs only perpetuate the narrative that there is an IT labor shortage. This amounts to little more than a PR-benefit seemingly designed for Big Tech. Matloff is right about the nonexistent IT-worker shortage. The U.S. has plenty of them. For instance, minority IT grads apparently far exceed their numbers in Silicon Valley and tech hubs elsewhere.
There is yet another potential mismatch problem with the new announcement. As Matloff points out, workers seem to be promised “modern skills through relatively short-term training programs”, however, the jobs which H-1B-visa holders take up generally require a bachelor’s degree—although certainly not one from a top school; not even a middling one. With this timing mismatch, therefore, it’s difficult to see how DOL’s new program could effectively fill those jobs with ”retrained’ American apprentices.” They simply won’t be fully qualified.
But, again, this likely isn’t the point. Big Tech wants foreign workers, not U.S. ones, because their jobs are tied to their visa. Such guaranteed pliancy is coveted by the industry. They’ve even admitted as much.
Big Tech also wants to avoid U.S. workers because they are generally older. Foreign, mostly Indian, H-1B-holders are younger, and younger workers are always less expensive.
As already noted, it is certainly high time for DOL to first evaluate the way it approaches retraining programs before it pushes forward with the same old, same old. We’ve heard about the H-1B’s displacement and wage-levelling effects on the IT industry going all the way back to the 1990s. A working paper published last year by the National Bureau of Economic Research still finds these dispossessing effects occurring. For instance, it found no broad offsetting benefits to the program nor that it fills real American tech-sector shortages as intended. It suggests in sum that the program’s basically a handout to the trillion-dollar tech industry.
The best restitution to affected U.S. IT workers, therefore, might be to scale the H-1B program back or eliminate it entirely. Oddly enough, right after this program was launched, DOL, along with DHS, announced regulatory reforms to the H-1B that are the most extensive and worker-friendly we’ve ever seen. Even more reason perhaps to remove the H-1B pretense from DOL’s new grant announcement.
Dale L. Wilcox is executive director and general counsel at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative effects of mass migration.
Recently, the Department of Labor (DOL) announced the creation of the “H-1B One Workforce” apprenticeship program designed to help more Americans enter industries frequently occupied by H-1B visa-holders. According to the agency’s press release, the program would fund “training for middle- to high-skilled H-1B occupations within key sectors in the U.S. economy, including information technology and cyber security, advanced manufacturing and transportation…” The $150 million-dollar program, we are told, is intended “to upskill the present workforce and train a new generation of workers to grow the future workforce…”
Sounds good for U.S. workers, it would seem, especially given the present state of our COVID-crippled economy. Not exactly. Like a lot of what’s traditionally come out of the H-1B-managing agencies, it is the usual suspects who look to be the real beneficiaries here.
Details are still sparse, but plenty of red flags present themselves in the new announcement. To start, the H-1B program channels the large majority of its foreign workers into the IT industry, not transportation or advanced manufacturing. This same problem arose last year when then-secretary Alex Acosta proposed an iteration of the program that included health care training; another industry not affected by H-1B workers.
So, taxpayer-funds will be going to industries without an H-1B problem. Not a giant public-policy mismatch, but one that’s glaring enough error to question whether helping H-1B displacement is truly the motivation here.
Further, apprenticeships are meant to teach new skills to less well-off young people and are almost always geared toward the trades, not IT. So, it is young, high school grads who will be benefiting here; not the recent college grads and veteran tech-workers that get pushed out by the H-1B and which DOL’s new program is ostensibly designed to...
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