Guest Post by Steve Lamb
In a recent fit of pique, after having been attacked for weeks by U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) on various matters, including the treatment of illegal aliens at detention centers, President Donald Trump struck back. Cummings should pay attention to his own district and the conditions of the citizens who he is supposed to represent, Trump said. This exchange was followed by denouncements that President Trump is a racist. A similar situation occurred last year with Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and the President.
Certainly Trump has a point. During the long terms in Congress of both Maxine Waters (in her 15th term), who has represented South Central Los Angeles since 1990, and Elijah Cummings (since 1996) in Baltimore, conditions in the areas they represent have gone from bad to absolutely wretched. Denying this fact is a complete waste of time.
In Los Angeles, as has been widely reported since November of last year, there’s a full-blown safety, security, environmental, humanitarian and health crisis – complete with Medieval-era diseases. Homeless encampments are visible throughout the city. But if there was any doubt at the level of crisis, homelessness statistics released in June show the number of people living rough is up 16 percent in the city to an official number of nearly 60,000. Most citizens believe the official number is underreported and that the actual number may be much higher. The crisis is so great, so morally unacceptable, and so mishandled by L.A. leadership that there’s now a call to recall Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.
In Maryland, the office of Gov. Larry Hogan said homelessness had decreased nearly 10 percent, while Baltimore’s Health Care for the Homeless, an organization that works to end and prevent homelessness, said that it’s difficult to truly know the number of people experiencing homelessness in Baltimore. But according to the Health Care for the Homeless website, the organization will care for 12,000 people this year. The population of Baltimore is about 610,000.
While unemployment in Baltimore is somewhat higher than the national average, one of the most telling statistics of the health of the city is the homicide rate. Murders are up 16 percent versus last year, with 171 murders in the city; often there are multiple shootings in a day. The murder rate in Baltimore is higher than that of Guatemala and El Salvador, two countries with high murder and violence rates.
Bad situations clearly in both Baltimore and Los Angeles. However, most of these conditions must be attacked and managed by local and state governments, and it is unfair to hold the Congressional representatives directly responsible. That said, the elected representatives to Congress should be putting pressure on the federal government for resources and on local governments to apply for those resources and to push the applications as hard as is legally permissible.
But what, realistically, given globalist Neoliberalism as the default belief system of both the Republican and Democratic parties, could Congress members Waters and Cummings do about the appalling situations in their districts?
Globalist Neoliberalism demands employment go to the lowest paid workers in the world. In fact, with this belief system, the worst thing that can happen to a country is for its workers to rise in skill, education and living conditions to the point that they begin to demand higher wages, better working conditions and civic amenities.
Higher pay, better benefits and improved working conditions – things we term progress – are now the kiss of death that will get a manufacturing plant moved from Baltimore or South Central Los Angeles to Mexico, China, Vietnam or India. Under this globalist neoliberal “free trade” anti-protectionist system, workers who would be other than slaves are simply left jobless.
Under the globalist neoliberal structure, if work must be done for some reason in-country, the workers needed, in the case of low-wage work, will be imported illegally. In the case of slightly above subsistence-level work, they will be imported legally with visas that in effect make the worker the property of the employer. Those include the H-1B visa and the OPT program. The H-1B originally allowed employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations, but now has dual intent, meaning visa holders can petition for Green Cards. OPT is a temporary program that allows foreign students to work. Both programs crowd out American workers.
Waters and Cummings represent cities that were industrial hubs of America just 30 years ago. Thanks to the Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43 and Obama administrations and the globalist neoliberal policies, those areas – and others like them across the country – have been mostly abandoned by employers. Where employers are present, such as in the garment manufacturing area of Los Angeles, the labor force is largely illegal. City police and building/zoning inspectors have all been directed by policy to ignore the not-up-to-code factories and the presence of thousands of illegal alien factory workers. In many of these factories, the staff live literally on the factory floor, essentially as slaves.
None of these workers provides a multiplier to the local or national economy, as a factory worker in the same job 30 years ago would have. They do not buy or rent homes. They do not buy a new car every four years. They don’t buy back-to-school or summer clothes for their children. They don’t even make it off the factory floor to McDonald’s. They provide no money to the local government for sewers, for road maintenance, for lighting districts, for police and fire protection and for pensions. They depress local area wages. Through no fault of their own, they are a vortex of the death spiral of inner-city economies and local area governments.
It used to be that the Democratic Party at least had a wing that stood for the needs of American citizen employees. That ended with the election of Bill Clinton to the White House. Clinton and his Blue Dogs decided they were not going to lose any elections as Democrat Jimmy Carter had to Republican Ronald Reagan. They would not be outspent. Devoid of any ideas, but with the will to power, they sold out to globalist corporations, eventually primarying and crowding out all truly Progressive Democrats who didn’t agree 100 percent with the globalist corporate agenda.
This is why Democrats in the House and Senate are seemingly more concerned about the plight of illegal alien workers hundreds or thousands of miles from their districts, than their own citizens. Their donors have told them what they are allowed to be concerned about. They are allowed to be concerned about the donors’ low-wage workers, not citizens who need jobs paying living wages.
Calling President Trump a racist against this backdrop is of course cynical. Trump is a lot of things – callous, rude and crass – but he is not a racist. But also cynical is Trump raising these inner-city conditions with no well-thought-out series of programs to address the destruction of American cities and the working class by globalist Neoliberalism.
In fairness, the President has attempted to close the U.S.- Mexico border to illegal crossers and raise tariffs. But, that’s not enough. Trump needs to walk across the aisle and reach out to ALL of the American people on a program to re-employ American workers and rebuild American cities through protectionist policies that place the needs of American citizen workers ahead of the wants of globalist pirate capital.
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The Dems don’t have to fix anything in the cities. The votes belong to them no matter what. Free shit and grievance politics at their best.
Yes, Mr. Lamb, we need to throw more money at the problem because of the countless success stories from doing so.
“Bad situations clearly in both Baltimore and Los Angeles. However, most of these conditions must be attacked and managed by local and state governments . . . .”
The local and state governments on Massachusetts and California are a big part of the problem. The local government, in both cities, is largely comprised of the very people that are the problem.
The situation in LA is the direct result of importing tens of millions of Mexicans into California. Mexicans cause Mexican civilization. If you want European civilization in LA, by necessity, you must send the Mexicans back to Mexico – or nothing can ever change there. Without their expulsion, over time, the American southwest will, by necessity, adopt the white supremacist governmental structure of Latin America – where ethnic Europeans manage the whole zoo, because they are the only ones that can actually do it.
Baltimore is an African colony. Africans cause African civilization, if one can call it civilization. If you want European civilization in Baltimore, you must get rid of the blacks, They are incapable of even maintaining a fully built city they have occupied. Short of removing blacks from Baltimore, nothing can change there. The only real question is ‘what do we do with them?’
Actually.
Its the people living there. Waiting for the city or state to fix things is what dumbass liberals do.
buying Greenland is the best idea by far the Trump has had (not a high bar in my humble opinion) Getting anything for usd is a good idea and Greenland does not have to many of those pesky humans.
I want White and black Heritage-Americans to be first in All things American.
Those that wish to be Naturalized shall wait until needed.
All others need not apply or take a single step in a northerly direction.
American needs to stop ALL immigration for a minimum of 50 years in order to heal.
Here’s a program that might work. Tanks and troops(guard or regular army) posted at the boundaries of these bad areas, no one in or out without a thorough search and vetting.
I suggest Lake County, Illinois set up the checkpoints asap to keep the rabble from Chicago out.
The U.S. gov in concert with state and local operators have willfully created the programs which led to the destruction of American cities and the principle requirement to repair the damage done would be the dismantling of governments so responsible.
Screw all this political and racial blah blah bullshit …!
Baltimore has one huge problem and it’s a lack of high paying blue collar jobs that was the tax base !
Bring back the heavy industry shipyards steel mills and other industries like GM and get them running 3 full shifts 24/7 365 ! We had to keep furnaces hot over Christmas . Now that will give us a tax base that pays teachers keeps infrastructure in top shape . Hi tech ships planes and trains cars and trucks built by people paid enough to own and enjoy the fruits of their labor otherwise you got what you have now , a wealthy oligarchy with a group of well paid minions (government employees) see how well socialism works for the top and the connected few the rest get to work till they drop and as for Amazon better hope you don’t need to piss while at work or your pay scale drops
Y’all had me until: “That said, the elected representatives to Congress should be putting pressure on the federal government for resources and on local governments to apply for those resources and to push the applications as hard as is legally permissible.”
Fuck you and the big government intervention horse you rode in on.