RSN: Marc Ash | A US-Iranian War – What Does Putin Want?

04 January 19 It's Live on the HomePage Now: Reader Supported News RSN: Marc Ash | A US-Iranian War – What Does Putin Want? Marc Ash, Reader Supported News Ash writes: "It’s time for Americans to grow up and smell the coffee. The president of the United States answers, to an unprecedented extent, to the president of the Russian Federation." READ MORE Bernie Sanders. (photo: Bastiaan Slabbers/Getty Images) Can the Bernie Sanders Campaign Alter the Course of the Democratic Party? Ryan Grim, The Intercept Grim writes: "In 2016, Shaun Navarro was a dock worker in Oxnard, California. Calling himself a 'standard liberal,' he casually followed the presidential campaign — supportive of Bernie Sanders, but convinced Hillary Clinton was a strong candidate too." EXCERPT: Navarro got a job doing customer service for Amazon. (More employees of Walmart give to the Sanders campaign than any other company, followed by Amazon workers.) READ MORE Trump wine. (photo: Getty Images) So Trump Employs Undocumented Immigrants at His Properties and Nobody Really Cares? Jack Holmes, Esquire Holmes writes: "When ICE raided some chicken plants in Mississippi last year, they rounded up nearly 700 undocumented immigrant workers. They did not arrest the managers or corporate executives who systematically employed them." This fits a pattern, according to The New York Times: between March 2018 and 2019, the feds prosecuted 112,000 people for illegal entry or re-entry, but charged just 11 employers for hiring some of these same people. Before anti-immigrant rhetoric descended into full-on propaganda about crime and MS-13, there was a lot of talk about undocumented immigrants taking jobs from American citizens. In Mississippi, citizens did take some of the vacated jobs. (There's also the related charge that undocumented workers drag down wages, which is unproven but at least does not boil down solely to uncut racial grievance.) But the persistent refusal to enact penalties on people who choose to employ undocumented immigrants suggests these are not the most pressing concerns for decision-makers. The people who travel hundreds or thousands of miles to get to the U.S. are desperate for decent work, and feel it's worth the risk of deportation. It's employers who are primed for a change in incentive structure, yet they are rarely, if ever, punished. It's enough to make you think this is not, nor has it never been, about the plight of the American worker. It's a regime where workers can be simultaneously exploited by employers and demonized by political elites, ground up by the great American machine. As usual, the President of the United States is a flag-bearer for all these most base instincts. It's tempting to see hypocrisy as a quaint relic of the Before Times, a dead concept in the era of post-truth politicking. (We are, after all, in a moment in which the president's allies are casting him as an International Corruption Crusader while he's orchestrating the Great American Heist.) But pointing this out can still serve as a reminder that none of these folks ever cared about this stuff. Donald Trump, you see, has always employed undocumented immigrants—at many of his properties, on many of his construction projects. He has no issue with these people except when it's convenient fodder for a rage spasm to get The Base going. The latest example arrived on the last day of 2019 via the Washington Post. Nearly a year after the Trump Organization pledged to root out undocumented workers at its properties, supervisors at the Trump Winery on Monday summoned at least seven employees and fired them because of their lack of legal immigration status, according to two of the dismissed workers... Two of the fired workers ... said they thought the company had held off on firing them until after the year’s work was complete, taking advantage of their labor for as long as possible. Both had worked at the winery for more than a decade. That seems like the whole arrangement in a nutshell. Extract cheap labor from people—in this case, allow them to finish the grape harvest—then discard them as soon as it's convenient to do so. In general, the property relies on immigrant labor from Mexico in the form of seasonal workers who arrive on legal visas, according to the Post, but there are also year-round undocumented workers. They are among some 49 undocumented people the Post alone has spoken with, who worked at 11 different Trump properties across four states. For years now, the president has traveled the country railing against immigrants as violent criminals and imploring people to "Buy American, Hire American," while he profited from undocumented labor in systematic fashion. In July 2018, his Mar-a-Lago property announced it was seeking 61 foreign workers on a legal basis. Hire American for thee, but not for me. This goes all the way back to the '80s, of course, when Trump had hundreds of undocumented Polish immigrants building Trump Tower. He paid them as little as $4 an hour—and always well below union wage—because that's why people like Donald Trump employ people without papers. He ultimately settled a lawsuit around the workers' treatment. It's fitting that the people who made his flagship project possible would fit the theoretical description of the people he has built a political career smearing as criminals. (In practice, he is referring to brown immigrants.) But it also fits because Trump is merely a particularly garish emblem of the post-Reagan plutocrat class, where greed is good and other people—whether they're undocumented workers or they own a small contracting business—are just marks waiting to get fleeced. That hustle now extends to the angry and isolated people who show up to his rallies in search of community and solidarity against The Other. They will not mind that he's profited so handsomely off undocumented labor, because it's about the performance of demonstrating who's a Real American with a say in how this country is run. Also, anything he does is excusable on the basis that Democrats do it, too, or anybody who's smart would do it, or everybody does it. Now there's some truth to that: the president is indeed one of a huge number of employers who uses undocumented labor with zero consequences. READ MORE Former White House counsel Don McGahn. (photo: Greg Nash) House Lawyers Press Court to Enforce Subpoena Against Trump Aide John Kruzel, The Hill Kruzel writes: "Lawyers for the House Judiciary Committee on Friday urged a federal appeals court to enforce a subpoena against former White House counsel Don McGahn, saying the aide’s testimony could give Democrats a basis for new impeachment articles against President Trump." READ MORE Maintenance worker. (photo: Lucas Jackson/Reuters) 2019 Was One of the Decade's Worst Years for Job Cuts in the US Gina Heeb, Business Insider Heeb writes: "US employers announced the highest number of job cuts in four years in 2019 even as the economy maintained a historically low unemployment rate, according to a new report." READ MORE Fidel Castro. (photo: NYT) Suleimani Killing the Latest in a Long, Grim Line of US Assassination Efforts Ed Pilkington, Guardian UK Pilkington writes: "The US government is no stranger to the dark arts of political assassinations." READ MORE Off-shore wind turbines. (photo: Getty Images) Denmark Sets Record by Sourcing Nearly Half Its Power From Wind Energy Kate Ng, The Independent Ng writes: "Almost half of Denmark’s electricity consumption was harnessed from wind energy in 2019, setting a new record." The country’s grid operator Energinet announced on Thursday that just over 47 per cent of energy was generated by wind turbines, up from 41 per cent in 2018. Power generated by wind turbines at sea increased to 18 per cent last year from 14 per cent in 2018, while onshore wind accounted for 29 per cent. Denmark is a world leader in renewable energy and is way ahead of its nearest rival Ireland, which generated 28 per cent of its energy from wind in 2018. Wind energy is the second largest form of power generation capacity in Europe, producing 14 per cent of electricity in the European Union, according to data by wind energy advocacy group, Wind Europe. The largest wind farm in Denmark and Scandinavia, Horns Rev 3, was opened in August and supplies power to 425,000 Danish homes. The offshore wind farm is based in the North Sea and contributed to Denmark’s higher wind energy production. Denmark plans to launch an even bigger wind farm called Kriegers Flak in the Danish Baltic Sea in 2021 and is also working on three further offshore wind projects, reported renewable energy news site Recharge. The country’s left-wing coalition government raised their climate targets in July and aim to reduce emissions by 70 per cent by 2030. READ MORE Contribute to RSN Update My Monthly Donation