Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, December 9, 2015


Enjoy the newsbites, folks!

 
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4 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/business/economy/walmart-china-imports-job-losses.html

Imports from China by Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer and biggest importer, eliminated or displaced over 400,000 jobs in the United States between 2001 and 2013, according to an estimate by the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive research group that has long targeted Walmart’s policies.

Walmart’s Chinese imports amounted to at least $49 billion in 2013, according to the study, which was based on trade and labor data.

Over all, the United States’ trade deficit with China hit $324 billion that year.

“Walmart is one of the major forces pulling imports into the United States,” said Robert E. Scott, an economist at the institute and the study’s author. “And the jobs we’re losing are good-paying manufacturing jobs, which pay higher wages and provide better benefits.”

Some economists point out that studies like these do not properly account for the jobs that imports can create in industries like transportation, wholesale and retail.

* NO DOUBT; BUT THE OVERARCHING POINT REMAINS: WALMART IS SELLING AMERICA DOWN THE RIVER.

Walmart has long been the subject of criticism from groups like the Economic Policy Institute over its role in flooding the United States with cheap imports. Under pressure, Walmart in 2013 announced that it would increase its sourcing of American-made products by $50 billion over the next 10 years.

* F--K THE NEXT 10 YEARS. HOW'D THEY DO BETWEEN 2014 vs. 2015?

The retailer said at the time that it would buy more goods already produced in the United States, like games and paper, and help vendors in areas like furniture and textiles return production that had moved overseas. But critics quickly rebuffed the initiative as a public-relations stunt, pointing out that the $50 billion made up just a fraction of the sales growth Walmart — which has annual sales of almost $500 billion — was likely to log over the next decade.

Harold L. Sirkin, a senior partner and managing director at the Boston Consulting Group, said that America’s trade deficit with China had indeed led to net job losses. But as labor costs soared in China, that situation was reversing — and Walmart’s move was significant.

“What we’re seeing now is that more things are coming back to the U.S.,” Mr. Sirkin said. The cost to retailers of sourcing furniture and appliances in the United States, for example, was becoming comparable to the costs of importing those products from China, he said.

“Walmart’s buying American not just for the sake of America,” he said. “They’re buying American because of economics.”

* WE SHALL SEE...

* I HOPE SIRKIN IS CORRECT...

December 9, 2015 at 5:26 PM
William R. Barker said...

* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)

Tim Foley recently returned from a 10-day patrol mission through the cactus and bush-covered borderland that stretches between Mexico and the U.S. states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. He’s one of many Americans concerned about a porous border that sits just 400 yards from his home, but also among the few who has taken matters into his own hands.

* GOOD FOR TIM FOLEY! THANK YOU, TIM FOLEY!

The 56-year-old former construction worker nicknamed "Nailer" has led the Arizona Border Recon, a group of heavily armed volunteers, on expeditions to intercept undocumented border crossers and stem the flow of drugs coming through the desert for the last five years.

* BECAUSE OUR GOVERNMENT WON'T DO IT!

His group, which is not sanctioned by the government, has detained hundreds of undocumented immigrants and narco-scouts and reported them to authorities, he said.

* FRANKLY, I'D LIKE TO SEE THE INVADERS SHOT ON SIGHT - PARTICULARLY THE NARC0-SCOUTS.

Increasingly, however, he’s been concerned by the prospect of militants with the Islamic State group exploiting a weak border.

“You’ve got a war on drugs, and a war on terror, and they’re coming together -- right here, right now,” said Foley, who calls Arizona home.

Following last month’s terrorist attacks in Paris, and more recently since the last week’s San Bernardino, California, massacre, conservative-leaning voters and politicians have raised alarm over the possibility of terrorists slipping into the U.S. illegally. Immigrants from as far away as China have been crossing into the southern tip of Texas for years, but it’s only recently that a small number of Arabs has tapped into an elaborate human-smuggling pipeline. Immigration analysts said it was an unlikely path for terrorists, however, and much more likely to be used by desperate refugees fleeing war in hopes of connecting with family members already in the U.S.

* WE MUST SECURE OUR BORDERS!

“There are politicians who want to stoke fears about terrorism or are stoking fears about terrorism,” said Marc Rosenblum, deputy director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. “I don’t want to say it’s a total non-issue, but the Southwest border is not the greatest point of vulnerability in terms of national security.”

* THIS ROSENBLUM IS OBVIOUSLY PART OF THE PROBLEM.

The U.S. government has poured billions of dollars into border security...

* THE MONEY HAS NO DOUBT BEEN SPENT - BUT NOT ON "SECURITY." IF IT HAD BEEN THE BORDERS WOULD BE SECURE, NOW WOULDN'T THEY?!

Authorities have erected hundreds of miles of fencing, as well as hundreds of radar and camera towers.

* OBVIOUSLY NOT HUNDREDS OF MILES ENOUGH...

* OBVIOUSLY NOT GOOD ENOUGH FENCING...

* AND AS FOR THE RADAR AND CAMERA TOWERS... THEY'RE OBVIOUSLY NOT BEING USED EFFECTIVELY.

They've also begun using drones to survey the terrain, and there are today more than 21,000 border agents on the ground.

* WHICH, UNFORTUNATELY, REPRESENTS A GREAT COST FOR LITTLE BENEFIT SINCE THE AUTHORITIES WON'T LET THE BORDER AGENTS ACTUALLY DEFEND OUR BORDERS!

* TO BE CONTINUED...

December 9, 2015 at 7:26 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)

Whereas refugees might file asylum claims once apprehended, the possibility of being caught is likely to keep extremists searching for other ways to get in, security analysts said.

The journey across the vast expanse is an arduous and costly one, but hundreds of thousands of people each year attempt to make it. Many are from South or Central America, but the number of Chinese and Indians slipping through has surged in recent years. Smuggling agents in Asia generally charge between $12,000 and $20,000 for the whole journey, and they usually organize clients to first fly to a third-party country, like Ecuador or Venezuela. The roundabout routes are necessary as Mexico requires visas for entrants from many countries. The immigrants then typically take vehicles into Mexico before moving on to the closest border crossing into the U.S.

Mexican crime networks are suspected of being involved in the operations...

* "SUSPECTED." THAT'S RICH!

...and immigrants are often coached on what to tell border security on the other side, in the event they are apprehended without prior plans of making an asylum claim.

There's no telling how many Syrians, Iraqis and other Middle Easterners have tapped into those networks.

Fourteen Syrians were apprehended attempting to cross in 2014, the last year for which Department of Homeland Security statistics are available, and seven Iraqis. In comparison, more than 1,500 individuals from India were apprehended in 2014.

* BUT...

There might be more people from the Middle East coming through the U.S. border than those listed on the books, Naim Haroon Sakhia, a California immigration attorney, said.

* YA THINK...?!?!

Some of the prospective clients with whom he has met have been people from the Middle East or elsewhere posing as Indians, since identifying as an Indian may raise fewer red flags, he said. There are also much stronger Indian smuggling networks, Sakhia added.

“When you ask them, ‘Where is the passport?’ they say they don’t have one. When you talk to them, sometimes you suspect from the accent that they’re not Indian. Sometimes you ask them questions about places in India and they’re not aware of them,” Sakhia said. “If I feel that they have a credible claim, then I accept them as a client, otherwise I turn them down.”

There have been a few widely reported cases of Syrians making it to the U.S. Last month, three Syrian families showed up at a Texas border crossing, prompting alarm among some immigration officials and lawmakers that they might pose a security threat. As it turned out, some were Syrian Christians seeking asylum, and all of the individuals presented themselves to authorities at a border crossing. They are still being held in detention, as asylum-seekers without valid documentation are usually kept in custody until after undergoing preliminary security screening.

“They did everything right in terms of asking for help. They’ve done everything they can to not only save their own lives but the lives of their families,” attorney Jonathan Ryan, executive director of Raices (Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services), an immigrant legal advocacy group based in San Antonio, told the Los Angeles Times. “The question is, why are they continuing to be held compared to other families we are seeing released without these additional hurdles.”

* TO BE CONTINUED...

December 9, 2015 at 7:27 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)

Officials have said the threat of Islamic State group fighters slipping in through the border is a concern they take seriously. Five Pakistanis and one Afghan immigrant were detained last month while attempting to cross the border. In a statement, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey said the news was worrisome, given recent threats against the U.S. from the group - which is also known as ISIS or ISIL. But none of the individuals was believed to have been connected to terrorist organizations.

"This latest incident only reinforces the need to take our national security seriously on all fronts," the statement continued. "It's clear, our nation needs to up its game and improve border resources if we are going to protect our homeland."

Given the difficulties immigrants face crossing through the Southwest border - including the high risk of being apprehended -- immigration experts said it wouldn't be easy getting into the U.S. undetected. However, if they had the money and the means, obtaining forged documents and passing through official ports of entry with visas might be simpler, immigration analysts said.

"I think it is right after an attack like in Paris for people to be apprehensive and to take stock of our defenses," said Tom Jawetz, vice president of immigration at the Center for American Progress, a liberal Washington think tank. “But we should recognize that the border is far more secure than it has been historically, that the flow continues to be down and has been down for decades, and that we have invested [a lot into] technology, manpower and fencing.”

* THIS IS BULLSHIT, FOLKS; THERE'S ANOTHER SURGE OF ILLEGAL BORDER CROSSINGS GOING ON AS YOU READ THIS!

But according to Foley, who was preparing for his next patrol trip, smugglers have gotten more sophisticated, finding new trails for higher bidders who want to evade authorities - trails he fears terrorists might be able to exploit.

“We don’t know who they are, [many] are coming without identification. We have more than 78 nations coming through this border, so we’re just trying to help border control with another set of eyes and ears,” he said.

Foley's Arizona Border Recon has been accused of being anti-immigrant and extremist - accusations that he said he welcomes. “If getting off the couch and trying to protect your country is extreme," he said, "then call me an extremist.”

* I LIKE THIS GUY!

December 9, 2015 at 7:28 PM

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