The more than 2,200-page spending bill — and signed by President Trump — gave the Pentagon its biggest spending increase in 15 years, a top GOP priority. But it also included full funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, despite Trump’s initial proposal to cut its funding from $465 million to $15 million.
.. More than 60 percent of Republicans in the House and the Senate voted for the legislation, a sign that the GOP might be returning to its big-spending ways of early last decade.
Back then, amid a major ramp-up in defense spending at the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Republicans accepted big increases in domestic spending as well and created a new entitlement within Medicare. GOP leaders at the time exploded the earmark system, allowing even the lowliest rank-and-file lawmakers to direct millions of dollars to pet projects in their districts. Republicans believed the big spending helped shore up their incumbents’ standing back home.
.. Now, the Republican-led decision to bust those caps for the next two years raises the specter that the tough talk on deficits applied only when Democrats held the White House.
“Had the 2016 election gone a different way and we had a Democratic president, and we controlled the House and Senate, I can’t imagine us being in a situation where we would vote tonight or tomorrow for a bill that’s going to add $2 trillion in debt,” Corker said.
Mark Zuckerberg: Privacy a concept from the past (2010)
I remember reading a book on Facebook in 2010 or so. I remember distinctly quote from Mark Zuckerberg that “privacy is the concept from the past”. Then, a couple years later I read he bought houses surrounding his house to ensure his own privacy.Lost any respect I had for the guy in that moment. I really hope FTC will force FB to stop most of their unfair practices.
Everything wrong with Fox News in one video
Fox News HATED the idea of Obama talking to foreign dictators. Guess how they feel about Trump doing it???
3 Trump properties posted 144 openings for seasonal jobs. Only one went to a US worker.
“America First” doesn’t seem to apply to the president’s own businesses.
.. The H-2B visa program allows seasonal, non-agricultural employers — like hotels and ski resorts — to hire foreign workers when they can’t find American ones. The Trump administration temporarily expanded this guest-worker program in 2017 while restricting other avenues of legal immigration, including the H-1B program for high-skilled workers.
.. The Trump Organization is exactly the kind of company that relies on the H-2B visa program for low-skilled workers.
.. two Trump properties in Florida (including Mar-a-Lago) and one in New York from the start of 2016 through the end of 2017. In that period, hiring managers said they were able to find and hire only one qualified American worker — a cook — for 144 open positions for
- servers,
- cooks,
- housekeepers, and
- bartenders.
.. He said Mar-a-Lago is just using the program how other employers use it: as a way to avoid paying higher wages or offering more benefits to attract American workers.
.. several labor economists in the state who were nonetheless puzzled that hotels or clubs would have such a hard time finding any service workers to hire.
.. “It doesn’t make sense,” said Tobias Pfutze, an economics professor at Florida International University in Miami. “I haven’t heard anything about there being a labor shortage. The service labor market here is very flexible.”
.. with a well defined peak season between the months of October and May of every year. The period during which the foreign national’s services are needed is not unpredictable, subject to change or considered to be a vacation period for our employees who are hired on a permanent basis.
.. Employers are required to pay the average local wage for the advertised position. Mar-a-Lago offered
- $10.33 per hour for housekeepers,
- $13.43 for cooks, and
- $11.88 for servers (no tips).