Founder’s Corner

Dear First Name:

From time to time I enjoy indulging in a rant about the cult of neoliberalism. Specifically, I like to point out it’s an extreme libertarian ideology that leads to the impoverishment of the productive classes — wage earners and even salaried professionals — while giving rise to a new order of plutocrats that have rigged the game to maximize their wealth.

By off-shoring manufacturing jobs, flooding the labor market with an abundant supply of cheap labor, and displacing workers with employment visa programs like the H-2A, L-1 and H-1B these plutocrats have been able to inflate earnings per share, maximize profits while deflating wages, and ratchet up job insecurity among working men and women. But neoliberalism isn’t the only “ism” America’s workers should be concerned about.

Neoconservatism is another Hobbesian worldview “ism” its adherents have been inflicting on the American political scene for decades and with similar disastrous consequences. What neoliberalism is to prices and markets, neoconservatism is to idealpolitik and America’s role in the world. Neocons are out to maximize U.S. hegemony over and despite the legitimate claims of less powerful countries. It is the antithesis of the concept realpolitik which is a system of politics or principles based on practical rather than moral or ideological considerations.

Neoconservatism is strongly associated with former president George W. Bush’s administration. Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, and Richard Perle – its most prominent ideologues – all served in Bush’s cabinet and played a prominent role in promoting and planning the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Invading Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein and spread “democracy” provided numerous opportunities for external actors to profit. Michael Lind, a political writer at Tablet Magazine, explains it in a recent piece:

“Involving the United States in foreign civil wars and regional conflicts that have no direct bearing on American national security means bigger budgets for the Pentagon, State Department, CIA, and other agencies; more funding for defense contractors and NGOs with government contracts; more resources for academic security studies programs; more importance for members of Congress on military and foreign affairs committees and subcommittees; more celebrity and more book contracts for foreign affairs correspondents, and so on.”

Federal agencies, defense contractors, and NGOs profited handsomely from the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The economic costs were borne by the American taxpayer and future generations of taxpayers. And there was the human toll; thousands of U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians died in the conflict.

The war created a huge refugee crisis eagerly taken advantage of by NGOs handling the refugee resettlement. Interestingly, when the flow of refugees begins to drop, NGOs such as Church World Services, United States Council of Catholic Bishops, Lutheran Immigration Resettlement Services and others actually lobby Congress to raise the numbers. And corporations like Walmart and Chobani were also pleased to receive an influx of refugees who they deem quiescent and whose expectations are easier to manage than those of U.S. citizens.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya are all examples of what I like to call the invade and invite paradigm, an outgrowth of the merging of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. As bad as Iraq was, Afghanistan was a far greater tragedy in terms of money squandered and lives lost. And just like we witnessed with Iraq, the Biden Administration brought in 76,000 Afghans and paroled them into the U.S. as operations in Afghanistan began to wind down. Once again, corporations like Walmart, UPS, and Amazon were pleased to welcome a new stream of refugees to the country.

Perhaps the best term to describe neoliberals and neoconservatives is “globalist.” Political columnist, and Youtuber Auron MacIntyre tweeted recently: “The people who rule America don’t see it as a country. They see it as a staging area for their global empire.”

Globalists are busy applying the same invade and invite template to the conflict in Ukraine. Rather than follow in the footsteps of Teddy Roosevelt who brought the Russians and Japanese together to hammer out a peace treaty in 1905, the Biden administration is doing all it can to prevent peace talks.

Once again, all the usual actors are profiteering off this proxy war. The cheap labor lobby is collaborating with the globalists and appears to have convinced the Administration that one way to topple Vladimir Putin’s regime is to steal his scientists and other STEM workers. So the Biden Administration has requested Congress work on legislation that allows any Russian national with an advanced STEM degree to receive special work visa privileges to enter the U.S., even without an employment offer which is the norm for obtaining a work visa.

Considering that IT workers are highly paid in Russia, It’s a silly maneuver, especially after factoring in the cost of living. Sure, some will leave due to the current sanctions, but the U.S. won’t be their destination. They view it as violence prone, depressing, and rife with work-life balance issues. Temporarily, they’ll run away to countries like Turkey until the hostilities end.

The Communists in Russia appear to be a different story. Viktor Kamenshchikov, a Communist Party member who served as a deputy at the Vladivostok Duma in the administrative center of the Primorsky region in Russia’s far east was arrested attempting to illegally cross into the U.S. from Mexico.

Not to be deterred by a lack of open hostilities, the globalists are quick to glom onto any opportunity to inject cheap and exploitable labor into the U.S. Case in point is the COMPETES Act. The Act was a Senate bill intended to increase investment in industry and labor to make America more competitive vis-a-vis China.

As the COMPETES Act companion bill wound its way through the House, Representative Jerry Nadler (D-NY) made sure to add provisions that would open the floodgates for more “high-skilled” immigrants – especially those coming from China and India to obtain PhDs in STEM at U.S. universities. The bill is now in conference as members in the Senate and House hash out their differences.

Last week, a who’s who of former foreign policy and defense officials sent a letter to Congress calling on them to include the immigration provisions that were passed in the House version of the bill.

The letter repeats the tired and bogus old saw that for the U.S. to retain its STEM supremacy and defeat the Chinese Communist Party’s ambitions for STEM dominance, the U.S. needs to open the doors wide and allow anyone with a STEM degree to immigrate here. One of the immigration provisions in the bill is the removal of numerical quotas and country caps for foreign students with STEM PhDs.

This will shut more Americans out of STEM fields and facilitate technology transfer to China and India, for example, Yau Shing-Tung, a Fields Medal winner in Mathematics retired from Harvard University only to move back to China because he wants to grow the next generation of Chinese talent in mathematics. So much for rewarding him a Green Card.

As you scroll down to the signatories, you’ll notice many are former government officials – the vast majority worked in Defense. Former CEO and Chairman of Lockheed Martin, Norm Augustine even signed on to the letter!

One name that really stands out is Michael Chertoff, former secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under the Bush administration, and responsible for creating a special work authorization program for international students with STEM degrees called STEM OPT.

Decades ago, Bill Gates was upset Congress didn’t pass immigration legislation that would’ve increased the number of H-1B visa workers. So, his lobbyist concocted a scheme, but they needed an influencer to make it succeed.

Enter Chertoff. Gates invited him to a cocktail party at the home of the then owner of the Washington Nationals baseball team. It was there Microsoft’s lobbyist convinced Chertoff to expand the already established OPT work authorization program for international students and make it a source for STEM workers.

Microsoft could now source foreign labor through universities under the STEM OPT pipeline which would extend work authorization permits from one year to up to 29 months. Unsurprisingly, OPT is now the country’s largest guest worker program.

Chertoff is again back and lobbying congress to allow an infinite number of foreign nationals with PhDs to immigrate into the country. This will of course further depress STEM wages for domestic graduates and endanger America’s intellectual property/trade secrets.

The above actions are what we’ve come to expect from America’s globalists, which is this — the citizenry be damned!

Several states including Pennsylvania held primary elections this week and a theme appears to be emerging. Globalists are out and populists (America First) are in. Candidates that spoke to issues of working men and women fared well and those who affiliated themselves with globalists did poorly. So, hope is springing in from the ballot box!

In closing, be sure to check out the latest video from Elyssa. She effectively states in two minutes and thirty seconds what I could only hope to do in my 1,500-plus word scree.

In solidarity.