Thread: Course Correction? (Trump Goes Rogue)

http://american-rattlesnake.org/2016...se-correction/

Despite the stream of propaganda spewed by the legacy media, the biggest fear the public had of a Trump administration had nothing to do with Vladimir Putin’s Russia or a white nationalist uprising. In fact, the main worry of Trump supporters was that his presidency would simply be business as usual. In other words, a White House dominated by globalist rope-sellers and corporatist retreads who do not care about American identity. The idea of perpetual debt, unceasing third world immigration, and a continuation of pointless military interventions in Middle Eastern backwaters is something we all feared would come to pass...

And what are your opinions on this?

I know, it's kind of perplexing to know what Trump is going to try to do---when he is just part of a team. Some of these problems may work themselves out, since a lot of the Trump voters are newly awakened to political action.

Originally Posted by Captainron

And what are your opinions on this?

I know, it's kind of perplexing to know what Trump is going to try to do---when he is just part of a team. Some of these problems may work themselves out, since a lot of the Trump voters are newly awakened to political action.

Yes, I'd like to hear opinions on it.

To me, it's his biggest mistake so far. Surprisingly, Vox probably had the best analysis of this:

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politi...ew-immigration

It's not the most important factor in immigration enforcement, and we dodged a bullet when McCaul wasn't named DHS, but this is still one of the worst decisions the President-elect has made. Aside from supporting E-Verify, there's nothing to distinguish this guy from Tom Perez-beyond his pro-business philosophy. He was endorsed by the National Immigration Forum, Frank Sharry's outlet, which is a huge red flag.

No offense, but I don't think Vox is our type of outlet. I remember during the campaign when I would google often every day for "trump in the news", there was never a pro-Trump article I could post for Trump.

Just give the guy a chance. He owns hamburger joints for crying out loud in major metropolitan areas one of the lowest pay-scale operations in the country by their nature so of course they're looking for workers happy to work at those wages.

Everyone has to remember, it is not the obligation of business to raise your wage or keep your job for you. It's yours and regulations that prevent foreign labor competition inside our own market.

Andy Puzder didn't vote to allow 1.4 million legal immigrants into the United States. Your Congresscritters did, INCLUDING our dear Jeff Sessions. That's right, Jeff Sessions voted for those massive legal immigration bills every single year he was in the United States Congress. They all did. So all the foreign labor that's here that fast food operators use were admitted by our people, Republicans, and a lot of Democrats, in the US Congress, and they were signed into law by every President, Republican and Democrat, every year, every time, without a whimper from anyone except NumbersUSA.

So now that everyone knows it's gone way too far, how do you fix it? Well, someone who owns businesses in those lower wage businesses will know how to do that. They will know, for example:

1. Americans grumble on the job too much. Okay, if that's true, then stop grumbling on the job. Be an appreciative happy worker while you're there. Then give proper notice when you find a better job and depart gracefully, perhaps bring some friends down and introduce them to your boss to interview to replace you for a smooth transition.

2. Turnover. Okay, I'm sure that is true and will be even truer as we create more new good jobs and bring our industries back home generating millions of new jobs, so how do these lower wage businesses survive? Existing workers need to be a network, a pipeline, for other good Americans looking for this type of work until something bigger opens up, and introduce them to your boss when you're ready to depart. Get the illegal aliens out and put younger people in those jobs. Youth unemployment is really really high, talk to the younger people and tell US what are the issues, is it transportation, is it day care, what is it? Tell your employers what the issues are without grumbling.

3. Absenteeism. Get the work ethic back to America. This will happen somewhat automatically with the excitement of better days, better times, a good future out there to work towards. These jobs are not dead end jobs when we have a great economy, they are stepping stops to better jobs. But when a nation is depressed as we are, and good jobs aren't there, these lower wage jobs seem like dead end jobs so some Americans look down the pike and see no better days, no more money, no improvement, nothing to work towards. This is the responsibility of management in these industries to face the fact that you will never have long-term full-time work forces in your low wage business, so you need to turn this into a positive for your workers, and don't blame them or criticize them for moving on, establish that as your role in our economy, to train workers on how to work, and yes earn, but how to work, how to follow instructions, how to produce, how to serve customers, how business functions, teach them so they know they are the beneficiaries of this experience and if they do well while they are there, then when a better job opens up, you understand that, wish them well, congratulate them and encourage them to recommend your place of business to a friend or relative to apply to take your spot.

4. Relocation Assistance. One of the big problems in our labor market is the disproportionate number of unemployed in certain areas and a labor shortage in others areas. Businesses need to do better on relocation costs, drawing from a larger recruiting area and hiring unemployed people in say Detroit to work in businesses in say San Diego, and pay for their relocation expenses and have mentors that will help them find their way to housing, day care, and other information they will need.

5. Pride. Society needs to stop criticizing these jobs. They are important jobs. And there are a lot of them. Don't look down on someone who works in a restaurant or other lower wage industries. Don't raise your kids or teach them or even comment that these are dead end jobs "flipping burgers". No, these are important jobs as all jobs are, with usually great businesses and companies, be positive and prideful when you a friend or a family members gets a job offer from one of these companies. It's a job, it's a stepping stone, a beginning of a better life.

6. Change the Hats. Redesign the hats. Young people don't like them. They feel like they're clowns. Their friends make fun of them. Get a more distinguished design for head-wear that looks cool or eliminate it altogether.

Just some ideas to think about.

These are types of issues that someone who owns these type of restaurants and operations will already know and can help solve when the rules are fixed. You can't blame a business person for following the rules. If Congress is admitting 1.4 million legal immigrants a year, most of them are going straight to work in low wage businesses. And doing so legally. The problem isn't the businesses who hire them, the problem is the Congress who let them in.

"immigration hawks" can solve immigration problems, but other expertise is needed to solve the business problems that led to it as well as the new business problems that will be created when we fix the immigration problem. I think Andy Puzder will have that experience to deal with both of those problems. At least he's giving up a lot to try and help US in that capacity by serving as our Secretary of Labor.

There's an ole saying, "don't kick a gift horse in the mouth", and I think that applies to this situation.

[QUOTE=Shapka;1530426]To me, it's his biggest mistake so far. Surprisingly, Vox probably had the best analysis of this:

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politi...ew-immigration

Trump Expected to Tap Labor Secretary Who Prefers Foreign Labor to American Workers

Trump Expected to Tap Labor Secretary Who Prefers Foreign Labor to American Workers

AP

by JULIA HAHN8 Dec 2016Washington D.C.5931

President-elect Donald J. Trump is expected to name as his Labor Secretary fast food executive Andy Puzder, who stands diametrically opposed to Trump’s signature issues on trade and immigration — which won him the election.

Puzder is the chief executive of CKE Restaurants, which includes Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s.

Advocates for American wage-earners say that Puzder as Secretary of Labor is alarming because he will be in charge of enacting policies that directly impact American workers, whom Puzder believes are “unwilling” to do certain jobs. Puzder has suggested that available U.S. jobs should instead be filled by imported foreign labor.

Puzder has even gone so far as to suggest that he prefers foreign laborers to native-born American workers because foreign nationals are more grateful and have a better “attitude.”

“The fact is that there are jobs in this country that U.S. citizens, for whatever reason, are reluctant or unwilling to perform,” he said in a 2013Politico op-ed in which he advocated for expansionist immigration policies.

As the Washington Post reported, Puzder suggested that flipping burgers is one such job Americans simply won’t do:

“Andrew Puzder, head of the California-based Hardee’s fast-food chain, said his business is a good fit for immigrants because they are willing to start at the bottom and work up…

“Immigrants appreciate what America offers,” Puzder said during a recent visit to Washington to lobby for immigration reform. “They are not taking jobs from Americans, because there are not sufficient Americans applying for jobs. Maybe they feel they have better options.”


Acclaimed Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald was critical of Puzder’s logic in a piece titled, “Does America Need More Hamburger-Flippers?” Mac Donald wrote:

Isn’t the argument for importing low-skilled immigrants that they take jobs that Americans won’t do? Farm labor is almost certainly one of those hard-to-fill jobs, but it’s news to me that working a fast-food counter is another — unless perhaps that niche becomes dominated by Mexican or Central American immigrants. A black kid from Watts is going to have a hard time getting hired at a Carl’s Jr. in South Central L.A. where all the employees speak to each other in Spanish.



Polling data suggests that Puzder’s desire to import foreign workers to fill U.S. jobs stands opposed to the desires of the American electorate.

Indeed, a 2014 poll from Kellyanne Conway’s polling company found that by nearly a 10-1 margin, Americans believe that companies should raise wages and improve working conditions for workers already here – rather than importing new foreign labor from abroad to fill American jobs.

Yet, during a 2013 AEI panel, Puzder seemed to express his preference for foreign workers over native-born Americans. Puzder said that his California labor force, which has a high percentage of foreign-born workers, is comprised of “hardworking, dedicated, creative people that really appreciate the fact that they have a job. Whereas in other parts of the country you often get people who are saying, ‘I can’t believe I have to work this job.’ With the immigrant population you always have a “Thank-God-I-have-this-job” kind of attitude, so you end up with a real different feeling. Now that’s a gross generalization… but I think it’s probably accurate.”

Last year, Puzder even joined forces with Michael Bloomberg, Bob Iger, and Rupert Murdoch’s open borders lobbying firm, the Partnership for a New American Economy, to call for “free-market solutions” to our immigration system.

“America should be a destination for hard-working immigrants from all over the world. Our economy will benefit from that,” Puzder wrote, perhaps unaware of the fact that the U.S. already has the world’s most generous immigration system– admitting one million plus foreign nationals on green cards; one million guest workers, dependents, and refugees; and half a million foreign students each and every year.

Puzder has been equally vocal about his support for immigration amnesty.

In 2013, Puzder lamented that the federal government’s current immigration policy is unfair to “undocumented workers who are lured to the country by the prospect of employment, [but] then must live in the shadows.”

Similarly, in a 2015 op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal’s open borders opinion pages, Puzder declared that “every candidate should support a path to legal status” for all illegal immigrants “willing to accept responsibility for their actions”.

In a July 2016 Wall Street Journal op-ed co-authored with Stephen Moore, Puzder insisted that the President-elect’s plan to enforce U.S. immigration law and repatriate the illegal population is “unworkable.”

“[Many undocumented immigrants] live in fear of being deported, losing what they’ve built and being separated from their families,” Puzder separately told reporters during a 2015 conference call with top GOP donors. “Our values indicate we should be the party of immigration reform.”

By “immigration reform” Puzder was referring to a widely-used progressive euphemism that means amnesty and flooding the labor market with foreign workers. Indeed, as Puzder himself explained in 2013, “comprehensive immigration reform” should include “a robust legal immigration program, including incentives for highly educated people to come to the U.S. and a guest worker program; a pathway to adjusted status for those here illegally now; and special relief for the children of undocumented immigrants.”

“The reality is that the government is not going to enforce the law effectively now against those who are here unlawfully,” Puzder wrote in 2013. The United States, Puzder reasoned, simply lacks “the will” to enforce U.S. immigration law:

There are more than 11 million illegal immigrants in our country. Many have families, homes, jobs and children who are American citizens. We simply are not going to take them from their homes, put them in prisons, load them on buses and take them back over the border. Nor will we enact draconian measures that drive them from their homes or their jobs and force them to “self-deport.” As a nation, we lack both the will and the resources to implement such policies.



More recently, Puzder has argued that “deportation should only be pursued when an illegal immigrant has committed a felony or [has] become a ‘public charge’.”

However, President-elect Trump himself explained why only enforcing some aspects of U.S. immigration law would be unfair to American workers. During his immigration speech delivered in Phoenix, Arizona, Trump said:

Immigration law doesn’t exist just for the purpose of keeping out criminals. It exists to protect all aspects of American life – the worksite, the welfare office, the education system and much else. That is why immigration limits are established in the first place. If we only enforce the laws against crime, then we have an open border to the entire world.”



In his 2016 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Puzder also described himself as a “free trader” who “oppose[s] punitive tariffs.”

Many have credited Trump’s pro-American worker stance on trade as part of the reason he was able to break through the left’s “blue wall” in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

As MSNBC’s Chris Matthews explained on election night, Trump won, in large part, due by running against the Washington establishment’s position on trade and immigration:

The fact that we don’t have an immigration system that we enforce: business wants the cheap labor, Democrats want the jobs and the votes. Nobody’s gotten it together. In terms of trade… just drive through Michigan, drive through Wisconsin, and you’ll see places that are hollowed out…Trump said, ‘You know what, I think I can run against this stuff.’ … It was a legitimate campaign on those issue.



It remains to be seen whether Puzder will abandon his former open borders positions on these issues and will take up Trump’s pro-American worker platform on trade and immigration, which won him the election.

http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presid...rican-workers/

I agree. This guy is a horrible choice! I couldn't imagine anyone worse for the job.

It remains to be seen whether Puzder will abandon his former open borders positions on these issues and will take up Trump’s pro-American worker platform on trade and immigration, which won him the election.

LOL!! If he hadn't, assuming those were his views to begin with, Trump wouldn't have nominated him for Secretary of Labor.

Restaurants have dropped their prices to make up for the loss of net expendable income. When you have to drop prices to stay in business, you have to cut costs and increase productivity, that can only go so far in the United States without an economic reset, until then you have to find ways to cut costs and that's one of the reasons the restaurant industry and many other low wage soft item businesses have been so enamored with cheap foreign labor.

You fix the economy, rebuild our manufacturing base, all incomes rise, all net expendable income grows and people can afford properly priced items that support American Workers, including restaurants and other lower wage businesses. This isn't rocket science, this isn't anything new or innovative, it's been the American Economic System since our country was founded.