China is retaliating against by exposing the 100%-1000% markups by US brands on items manufactured in China for pennies on the dollar.

1/x

Lululemon:

Birkenstocks

2/x

Sephora

3/x

Read 12 tweets

Bugman Hegel

@FedPoasting

Apr 4

In 2011, my papa was laid off from a Whirlpool manufacturing plant, the kind that had for so long made America great. In the wake of the financial crisis, the C-suite had decided to offshore operations to Mexico.

The plant they shuttered was a 1.2 million sq ft manufacturing plant, and overnight, 1,000 people lost their jobs. Many of whom had been working there for decades.

My papa was 57 years old when he got laid off. He had worked at that very same plant for over 30 years, and snap just like that, it was all gone.

1/6

When I was a little girl, from as far back as I could remember, my papa woke up at 3:30 am and drove the 40 minutes to the plant from the rural 1,200-person town every single day. And for 30 years, he worked what were often 10-12 hour shifts with no complaints.

I grew up a Navy brat, so I didn’t get to see my grandparents except for a few months during the summer, but I remember my papa exerting the last drop of his energy so he could spend time with us going to the creek, building us a tree house, riding horses, and playing cowboys and Indians.

Every evening, starting from when I was in grade school, my papa and I would sit in the living room and watch the History Channel, Animal Planet, and Bill O’Reilly and hee-haw together about what the Democrats were doing, as much as an eight-year-old can.

My papa and my nana had been together since they graduated high school; they got married at barely 18 and had my mom less than a year later and my aunt soon after that.

They had a small homestead, owned most of what they had outright, and they were poor, but poor doesn’t have to mean that much when you can work the land.

My nana worked as the local school’s secretary, and my papa had good benefits with his manufacturing job. They only ever went out to eat on special occasions. McDonald’s was a birthday-only type of affair. They had a one-acre garden, a few head of cattle, would can fruits and vegetables at the end of every summer, and freeze chopped okra, blueberries, meat from wild hogs and venison in an old chest freezer in the workshop.

2/6

Despite never having been on a plane and seldom ever having been outside of Arkansas, they managed to put both my mom and aunt through college and graduate school without requiring them to incur even a dime of debt. This was the 1990s.

Then at the age of 57, my papa and 1,000 of his coworkers were thrown away like a piece of trash after giving that company decades of their lives. And what were they told to do? What was their consolation prize?

Learn. To. Code.

My papa and nana were born in the 1950s in a place that was quite literally the Wild West just mere decades before their birth.

Growing up, neither of them had running water—they drew water from a well, washed up in a tin tub heated over a fire, and went to the restroom in an outhouse. They were both educated in a one-room schoolhouse and both came from families that relied on their farm’s livestock to feed themselves. People like my grandparents built this nation. They built this nation for their children.

But because the thing they sought to build wasn’t a stock portfolio or real estate portfolio, the preservation of their homes and communities was not something that Wall Street nor Washington saw as having enough value to be anything more than apathetic about blowing up.

3/6

Read 6 tweets

Bugman Hegel

@FedPoasting

Jan 31

https://twitter.com/fakegaypolitics/status/1885151698311889223

Trump had just signed the EO banning Trans people from the military two days prior.

The trans identified male was allegedly the command of the flight.

I could always be wrong, but this entire thing is starting to seem a bit like reactionary trans terrorism event.

https://twitter.com/fakegaypolitics/status/1885151698311889223

(((Female pilot))) who was commanding the flight

Btw the community notes is just wrong. The above information was provided by the actual Army flight safety investigative team.

6abc.com/amp/post/army-…

Read 7 tweets

Bugman Hegel

@FedPoasting

Jan 1

The H-1B work visa is fundamentally about cheap, de facto indentured labor. Tech industry lobbyists pitch it as a fix for labor shortages and a way to hire the world’s “best and brightest."

In practice, these claims are invalid. Most H-1Bs, even those hired from U.S. universities, are ordinary workers doing ordinary jobs, and their overall quality is often lower than that of Americans.

This program isn’t used because there are no qualified Americans. It’s about cheap, immobile labor:

Type I Wage Savings:

- Paying H-1Bs less than comparable Americans (in fully legal ways, thanks to loopholes).

- Most H-1Bs are under 30, and younger workers cost less in wages and healthcare, so employers use H-1B to avoid hiring older Americans, where “old” means 35. The key is the four-tier prevailing wage system, which effectively sets wage floors by level of “experience”—in reality, by age.

Type II Wage Savings:

- Hiring younger, cheaper workers to avoid employing Americans over 35, who command higher salaries.

- The primary appeal of H-1Bs, especially in Silicon Valley, is their “handcuffed” status. Sponsored workers cannot easily leave, particularly if a green card application is underway, making them extremely attractive to employers. Even supporters of H-1B, like Vivek Wadhwa, have admitted underpaying H-1Bs. Multiple studies show that H-1Bs are often paid less than similarly-qualified Americans. This is partly because H-1Bs, lacking mobility, cannot negotiate better pay.

Abuse of H-1B runs throughout the tech industry, including large U.S. firms and top immigration law firms, not just Indian “body shops.”

It also occurs in hiring foreign students at U.S. campuses.

Underpayment of H-1Bs is a documented fact, supported by congressional reports and multiple academic studies. Even staunch defenders of foreign worker programs have admitted it:

“I know from my experience as a tech CEO that H-1Bs are cheaper than domestic hires…[the] mechanism is riddled with loopholes.” — Vivek Wadhwa, former tech CEO and vocal advocate of expansion

Representative Zoe Lofgren, historically the H-1B program’s strongest ally in Congress, has also acknowledged that undercutting American wages is built into the system:

“…the average wage for computer systems analysts in [Silicon Valley] is $92,000, but the prevailing wage rate for H-1Bs in the same job is $52,000.” — Rep. Zoe Lofgren

Though Lofgren proposed a 2011 reform bill, it would not have closed major loopholes and would have added a “automatic green card” track. It also scapegoated Indian IT services, which is inaccurate and overlooks that the entire industry uses H-1B for cheap labor.

Underpayment is usually legal due to loopholes in H-1B law, not due to lax enforcement.

For instance:

The “prevailing wage” excludes market premiums for “hot” skills, so the legally required wage is lower than the true market rate.

The “actual wage” (paid to workers in the same job) can be dodged if the employer redefines jobs or if most workers in that role are also H-1Bs.

PERM data show employers routinely pay H-1Bs only at or near the prevailing wage. This underpayment pervades not just Indian “bodyshops” but also big mainstream U.S. tech firms.

Though visa sponsorship costs a few thousand dollars, employers easily recoup that by saving tens of thousands annually per underpaid foreign worker.

No credible (non-industry-sponsored) study shows a tech labor shortage.

Wages for both entry-level and experienced professionals remain largely flat. Unemployment figures don’t capture underemployment or forced career changes.

Undergraduate STEM programs produce more than enough bachelor’s graduates. The supposed shortage at the PhD level stems from the influx of foreign grad students, which depresses wages and discourages Americans from pursuing doctoral degrees—exactly as predicted by an NSF internal report in 1989. Even the NIH found that a glut of foreign lab scientists drives talented Americans away from the field.

In reality, employers hire only a fraction of domestic applicants, often discarding those deemed “too expensive” (i.e., over 35). Companies also exploit H-1Bs for offshoring facilitation, contradicting claims that visas prevent shipping jobs overseas.

Industry advocates say H-1B is needed to keep “the best and brightest” in the U.S., but most H-1Bs are not in that elite category, and Americans with experience or advanced degrees often match or exceed their innovation potential. Research shows no patenting advantage for H-1Bs, and some evidence suggests the opposite.

Green card fast-tracks won’t fix age discrimination; foreign workers would still be young and cheap relative to older Americans. Calls to keep foreign students in the U.S. so they don’t help competitors are disingenuous; many do transnational work anyway.

Except in very narrow cases, employers are not required to recruit Americans first. Inflated claims that each H-1B job “creates” additional jobs have been discredited. Meanwhile, most foreign students who want to stay, do stay.

At a minimum, the definition of prevailing wage needs to be changed in the legislation to reflect genuine market pay.

IMPORTANTLY, provisions targeting fraud/enforcement are less crucial because the main problem is legal loopholes, not illegal conduct.

THE ISSUE IS NOT FRAUD

They are trying to hide the ball by saying there needs to be reform to prevent fraud.

The LOOPHOLES are the issue, and this is something that they conveniently obfuscate and detract from.

Comprehensive study done on abuses of the program from 2003—abuses that have never actually been reformed:

heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Mich.pdf

x.com/dialectiks/sta…

x.com/dialectiks/sta… x.com/dialectiks/sta…

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