SunSeeker
SunSeeker's JournalRobert Reich: Why Musk Is Wrong About Opening America To Skilled Workers From Abroad - OpEd
When I was secretary of labor, America’s emerging big tech industry pushed to raise the cap on the number of skilled workers allowed into the United States under the H1B visa program.
I resisted the pressure, telling business that if they wanted skilled workers so badly, they should train Americans for these jobs, including their own workers. Allowing many more skilled workers into the U.S. also reduces the bargaining power of skilled workers already in America — and thereby reduces any incentive operating on other Americans to gain the skills for such jobs.
And opening America to skilled workers also reduces the incentive on foreign nations to educate and nurture their own skilled workforces. Why should they, when their own skilled workers can easily migrate to America?
The major beneficiaries in the U.S. of opening the nation to skilled workers from abroad are CEOs and venture capitalists like Musk and Sachs, whose profits and wealth would be even higher if they could siphon off cheaper skilled workers from abroad.
https://www.eurasiareview.com/30122024-robert-reich-why-musk-is-wrong-about-opening-america-to-skilled-workers-from-abroad-oped/
Trump sends thirsty DM to Elon, it somehow ends up as a Truth Social post.
In a head-scratching Truth Social post that Donald Trump may have intended as a private message to Elon Musk, the president-elect says Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has asked to meet with him.
“Where are you? When are you coming to the ‘Center of the Universe,’ Mar-a-Lago,” Trump posted on his social media platform Friday morning. “Bill Gates asked to come, tonight. We miss you and x! New Year’s Eve is going to be AMAZING!!! DJT”
The message contains an apparent reference to the Tesla CEO’s son X Æ A-Xii, whom Musk usually refers to as X. Spokespeople for Trump and his transition team did not immediately respond when asked if the message was intended as a private correspondence with Musk, who’s become a fixture at Trump’s side.
Spokespeople for Gates Ventures, the tech billionaire’s private office, also did not immediately respond when asked to confirm whether he’d requested a meeting with Trump. However, a person familiar with the talks confirmed to CNN that Gates has reached out to the Trump transition team about a possible meeting.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-bill-gates-meeting_n_676ee96fe4b0fd4ea87be2f4
Judge in Hunter Biden case sued over underage drinking party, alleged beating
Source: LA Times
Wilson alleges that one of the guests, Jackson Dorlarque, assaulted him and struck “his head and body on a curb on the Scarsi property.” From the beating, Wilson lost consciousness, sustained a traumatic brain injury, and had to be hospitalized for more than two weeks, according to the lawsuit. The suit contends that a “major” cut to Wilson’s face has left permanent scarring that “will require” plastic surgery.
Then-President Trump appointed Scarsi, 59, to the federal bench in 2020. Before assuming his lifetime appointment, Scarsi was a prominent patent and intellectual property attorney.
From his courtroom in downtown L.A., he has presided over high-profile matters, including two cases brought by special counsel David Weiss: the prosecution of Hunter Biden and a separate prosecution of a former FBI informant, Alexander Smirnov.
Recently, Scarsi gained national attention after he penned a rebuke of President Biden’s reasons for issuing a “full and complete” pardon of his son, Hunter.
Read more: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-12-17/judge-in-hunter-biden-case-sued-over-underage-drinking-party-alleged-beating
Turns out the "Hunter deserves jail" judge had an underage rager at his Pasadena mansion. I am surprised LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong let them run this story. Probably just a momentary lapse in his fascist control of the paper.
Here's an alternative link if you want to read the full story without giving LA Times the clicks:
https://www.gazettextra.com/news/nation_world/judge-in-hunter-biden-case-sued-over-underage-drinking-party-alleged-beating/article_3974a6cc-dafc-55a9-a7f1-7b7692b2e97c.html
How Reagan Ruined Everything
This is a fast-paced account of how Reagan went from pro-union Democrat to union-busting Republican and hollowed out the middle class with his trickle down economics, setting the stage for Trump.
Exit polls reveal why Trump made huge gains with blue-collar union members
Trump ran up large margins among White voters without a college degree who belong to labor unions and also significantly improved among unionized non-White workers without advanced education, according to previously unpublished results from the exit polls conducted by Edison Research and the AP VoteCast survey conducted by NORC. Those are the two major data sources measuring voters’ behavior in the election available so far.“
Look, the Democratic Party has lost their way to some extent with working class voters,” said Ted Pappageorge, secretary treasurer of the powerful Culinary Workers Union Local 226 in Las Vegas. “When we were (knocking) at the doors … it was pretty clear that Trump was winning the fight about dealing with inflation and kitchen table issues and Democrats essentially were being viewed as the party of abortion.”“To be honest, Biden has not been a credible messenger for a really long time,” Rosenthal said. “So despite the huge accomplishments, he was not communicating that. And I think it’s really difficult for a union to do that on its own. In the case of Harris, (rank-and-file union members) had no idea she cast the deciding vote on the pension bill, or she cast the vote that created tens of thousands of union jobs with the Inflation Reduction Act.”
Pappageorge said one issue essentially eclipsed everything else Biden delivered for working families and organized labor. “All of those things are important, but the No. 1 issue on the mind of working-class people, including union people, was inflation and the cost of living,” he said.
Pappageorge described Biden as “my hero” because of all of his accomplishments for working people, but he believes the president dug an insurmountable hole for the party by trying for months to emphasize the economy’s positive aspects rather than challenging companies raising prices and rents, as Harris forcefully did immediately after she entered the race. “Kamala had the best message we saw; we think her message was on point,” Pappageorge said. “If Biden had been running on Kamala’s program earlier, I think they would have reaped the benefit of that. But they didn’t. They tried to tell working class people the economy is setting records.”
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/10/politics/trump-blue-collar-workers-analysis/index.html
UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooting Suspect Lookalike Contest Held In New York City
A shooting suspect "lookalike contest" took place in New York City's Washington Square Park on Saturday — likely a comedic reference to the Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest held in the same location in October.
After New York police released a photo of a "person of interest" in the killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson on Thursday, many people on social media remarked on the individual's apparent physical resemblance to the actor.
When independent reporter Talia Jane asked the handful of contestants at Saturday's event about who organized the contest, one man joked, "The FBI."
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/unitedhealthcare-ceo-shooting-live-updates_n_675253c9e4b0a7189dd8c624/liveblog_6754b9bde4b0a7dedf083e75
Why top internet sleuths say they won't help find the UnitedHealthcare CEO killer
A high-profile violent crime typically sets social media abuzz with tips and theories from amateur internet sleuths, hunting for the alleged perpetrator.
But after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down in New York City this week without a primary suspect being identified, a rare occurrence happened in the thriving true-crime world: silence online from highly followed armchair detectives.
“I have yet to see a single video that’s pounding the drum of ‘we have to find him,’ and that is unique,” said Michael McWhorter, better known as TizzyEnt on TikTok, where he posts true crime and viral news content for his 6.7 million followers. “And in other situations of some kind of blatant violence, I would absolutely be seeing that.”
“We’re pretty apathetic towards that,” Savannah Sparks, who has 1.3 million followers on her TikTok account — where she tracks down and reveals the identities of people who do racist or seemingly criminal acts in viral videos — said about helping to identify the shooter. She added that, rather than sleuthing, her community has “concepts of thoughts and prayers. It’s, you know, claim denied on my prayers there,” referring to rote and unserious condolences. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/internet-sleuths-say-wont-help-find-unitedhealthcare-ceo-suspect-rcna183228
Republicans only won the House by 7,500 total votes in three congressional districts.
https://bsky.app/profile/sethabramson.bsky.social/post/3lchhpzsrnc2v
Watergate Prosecutor: Why Biden Was Right to Pardon His Son Hunter
I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision,” the president wrote, after spending the Thanksgiving holiday with Hunter and his family, only a few weeks from the anniversary of the tragic deaths of the president’s first wife and daughter in a 1972 car accident.
It is also worth looking at the legal facts of the case against Hunter Biden. Illegal gun possession charges are typically brought only when the gun is used to commit a crime. Hunter possessed the gun for only 11 days, never loaded a single bullet into it and got rid of it without using it. I am not excusing his behavior. It was illegal to lie on the permit form and obtain the gun, but indicting him was unfair and selective prosecution. The president was right to call it politically motivated and a “miscarriage of justice.” That is why a pardon actually serves justice in this case.
Ahead of his second term, Trump has promised to pardon all of those convicted of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Even if Biden’s pardon of his son is politically questionable, it is nonsensical to argue that it somehow opens the door for future pardons by Trump. That door was already open.
Biden’s reversal of his pledge not to pardon his son is especially understandable after Trump’s election, since the president-elect would almost certainly have sought to further politicize the younger Biden’s conviction. Remember that it was Republican members of Congress who began investigating Biden’s son to bolster Trump and weaken Joe Biden before his expected run against Trump in 2020. The younger Biden was a pawn.
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2024-12-02/president-biden-pardoned-hunter-it-was-the-right-thing-to-do
Elon Musk Buying MSNBC? A Difficult Feat, Because It Isn't for Sale
Can Elon Musk make a run at acquiring MSNBC? It would be a steep climb. One big reason: it isn’t for sale.
Last week, Comcast said it was moving forward with a plan to spin off its NBCUniversal cable networks into a separate company. That news prompted speculation that the Tesla chief executive might pursue left-leaning news channel MSNBC.
“We are looking forward to the planned spin of our cable networks, which will create a new company owned by our shareholders—none of these assets are for sale,” a Comcast spokeswoman said in a written statement.
https://www.wsj.com/business/media/elon-musk-buying-msnbc-a-difficult-feat-because-it-isnt-for-sale-3c20ed61
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