Categoría: historia
Estados Unidos anuncia su salida de la Unesco
Estados Unidos anunció su retiro de la Organización de Naciones Unidas para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura (Unesco, por sus siglas en inglés).
La medida, que fue comunicada este jueves a la directora general de la organización, Irinia Bukova, se hará efectiva a partir del 31 de diciembre.
Según el Departamento de Estado estadounidense, la intención de EE.UU. es establecerse como “observador permanente” de Unesco.
Mayor información en: bbc
Read more at: reuters
Los detenidos en la operación contra la organización del referéndum
La Guardia Civil ha entrado en sedes de la Generalitat, organismos públicos y empresas en las que se prepara la consulta del 1 de octubre
La Guardia Civil ha detenido este miércoles a al menos 14 personas por su supuesta participación en la organización del referéndum ilegal del 1 de octubre, la mayoría altos cargos del Ejecutivo catalán. Entre los detenidos en nueve sedes oficiales de la Generalitat se encuentra el número dos de Oriol Junqueras en la Conselleria d’Economia, Josep Maria Jové. Este es el cometido actual de los principales arrestados.
JOSEP MARIA JOVÉ, secretario general de Economía y Hacienda
Además de número dos de Oriol Junqueras en el Departamento de Vicepresidencia, Economía y Hacienda, Jové es también un peso pesado dentro de Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), donde preside el Consell Nacional. Tras ejercer como asesor en el sector público y privado, su carrera política despegó ya durante el Gobierno tripartito. Entre 2005 y 2010, desempeñó el cargo de Políticas Sectoriales en los departamentos de Presidencia y Vicepresidencia.
En la última crisis de Gobierno, en la que saltaron varios consejeros por su negativa a llegar hasta el final del proceso soberanista y se incorporaron otros inequívocamente independentistas, Jové se incorporó en un núcleo duro de coordinación política integrada por solo cuatro miembros: el presidente de la Generalitat, Carles Puigdemont; el vicepresidente, Oriol Junqueras, y el secretario del Gobierno, Víctor Cullell. Como número dos de Junqueras, tiene también bajo su responsabilidad el área de procesos electorales, una vez esta fue traspasada del Departamento de Gobernación a Vicepresidencia.
LLUÍS SALVADÓ, secretario de Hacienda
Junqueras confió a otro miembro de peso de ERC el desarrollo de una de las áreas clave para el proceso independentista: la Agencia Tributaria de Cataluña (ATC). Secretario general adjunto de ERC desde 2011, Salvadó se deshizo del anterior cerebro de la llamada Hacienda catalana, Joan Iglesias, y decidió dar un empujón al organismo con el plan de que asuma la gestión de todos los tributos que se generan en Cataluña.
Su tarea no era fácil: Salvadó debía hacerse cargo de una agencia en estado precario que había desarrollado menos competencias que otros organismos autonómicos e irla dotando de contenido con la plena asunción de la gestión de los impuestos propios y cedidos y la recaudación de multas. Para ello implantó un programa informático capaz de procesar masivamente impuestos para superar la obsoleta plataforma E-spriu y amplió la plantilla de la ATC, de 350 a más de 700 personas.
También tuvo que lidiar con el escándalo que protagonizó el exsenador Santi Vidal, que afirmó que la ATC tenía todos los datos de la ciudadanía de forma ilegal, lo que motivó una auditoría de la Agencia Catalana de Protección de Datos. Su último proyecto, la gestión de las retenciones y cotizaciones sociales de las administraciones catalanas (incluidos los Ayuntamientos) provocó un choque con el Gobierno central, que entendía que esa intermediación era ilegal.
XAVIER PUIG FARRÉ, responsable de la Oficina de Asuntos Exteriores
Puig entró en la Administración catalana en 2012 a través del Centro de Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologías de la Información (CTTI) de la Generalitat, donde estuvo en las áreas de Innovación y posteriormente ocupó cargos de dirección. En mayo de 2016 pasó al Departamento de Asuntos Exteriores, Relaciones Institucionales y Transparencia, donde se hizo cargo del departamento informático.
Entre sus funciones están las de garantizar que las actuaciones en materia tecnológica estén de acuerdo con los “objetivos estratégicos y operativos” de la consejería de dirige Raül Romeva. Puig ha compaginado esas responsabilidades con la actividad docente en escuelas de negocios.
JOSUÉ SALLENT I RIBES, Centro de Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologías de la Información (CTTI)
Su inicio en la Administración catalana se remonta a septiembre de 2010, cuando dirigió el Centro de Seguridad de la Información de Cataluña (CESICAT). Allí estuvo apenas siete meses, cuando pasó a la empresa privada. Desde septiembre de 2016 es director de Estrategia e Innovación del Centro de Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologías de la Información (CTTI) de la Generalitat.
DAVID FRANCO MARTOS, Centro de Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologías de la Información (CTTI)
Empleado del Centro de Telecomunicaciones y Tecnologías de la Información (CTTI) desde 2005, está adscrito como gestor de proyectos del Departamento de Trabajo, Asuntos Sociales y Familia. Uno de sus encargos, según fuentes del Gobierno catalán, era la preparación de la Agencia Catalana de la Protección Social, que debía ser el embrión de una eventual Seguridad Social Catalana.
JOAN MANEL GÓMEZ, Centro de Seguridad de la Información de Cataluña
Vinculado al Centro de Seguridad de la Información de Cataluña (CESICAT) desde 2010, donde estuvo en las áreas de riesgo y seguridad, Gómez tiene encomendadas labores de desarrollo del voto electrónico y el encargado de coordinar el plan de acción de la Generalitat para implementar el voto electrónico de los catalanes residentes en el extranjero.
DAVID PALANQUES SERRANO, Departamento de Trabajo y Asuntos Sociales
Profesor de la Universidad de Barcelona, está adscrito actualmente al Departamento de Trabajo, Asuntos Sociales y Familias.
JOAN IGNASI SÁNCHEZ, departamento de Gobernación
Es asesor del gabinete del Departamento de Gobernación, dirigido por la consejera Meritxell Borràs (PDeCAT) que convocó un consurso para licitar la compra de urnas. Sánchez fue también concejal del grupo municipal de Convergència i Unio del Ayuntamiento de Sabadell.
FRANCESC SUTRIAS GRAU, director de Patrimonio de la Secretaría de Hacienda
En el Ejecutivo de Carles Puigdemont, Sutrias es director general de Patrimonio, dentro del Departamento de Vicepresidencia, Economía y Hacienda que lidera Oriol Junqueras. Anteriormente, había sido concejal de ERC en Rubí. Abogado de formación, se ha dedicado sobre todo al ámbito de la vivienda y el urbanismo.
NATALIA GARRIGA IBÁÑEZ, directora de Servicios de la Secretaría General de Vicepresidencia
Licenciada en Derecho, fue durante el tripartito jefa del gabinete técnico de la Secretaría de Coordinación Interdepartamental, responsable técnica en la Dirección General de Coordinación Interdepartamental. En 2016 fue gerente en el Instituto Catalán de las Empresas Culturales, hasta que pasó al cargo actual.
PAU FURRIOL FORNELLS, abogado y miembro de ERC
Abogado y militante de ERC desde 1962. Ha sido presidente de la sectorial de Justicia, de la Comisión de Garantías y ha formado parte de la sectorial de Politica Económica y Financiera del partido.
JOSEP MASOLIVER, Fundación PuntCat
Es responsable técnico y de proyectos tecnológicos de la Fundación PuntCat y especialista en seguridad informática.
MERCEDES MARTÍNEZ SANTOS, empresa Fox Box Publi Alternativa
Apoderada de la empresa Fox Box Publi Alternativa SL, que presuntamente estaría vinculada con material electoral del referéndum ilegal del 1 de octubre.
ROSA MARÍA RODRÍGUEZ CURTO, empresa T-Systems
Actualmente ejerce como directora General de Servicios de la empresa T-Systems
En: elpais
Ver: Tres los detenidos en libertad tras negarse a declarar ante la Guardia Civil
Cronología del 20-S, el día en que se ha acelerado la crisis catalana
Mercosur suspende membresía de Venezuela
Los cancilleres de los países fundadores del Mercosur aplicaron la cláusula democrática de la organización y suspendieron la membresía de Venezuela alegando que el Gobierno de ese país rompió el hilo constitucional.
Este sábado (5.8.2017), el canciller brasileño, Aloysio Nunes, informó desde Sao Paulo, que los Estados fundadores del Mercado Común del Sur (Mercsour) –Argentina, Brasil, Paraguay y Uruguay– habían optado por cancelar indefinidamente la membresía de Venezuela, que se había unido a ese bloque en 2012. Nunes habló de una “suspensión de naturaleza política, por consenso; una sanción grave de naturaleza política contra Venezuela”. Los ministros de Exteriores del Mercosur aplicaron la cláusula democrática del organismo –el Protocolo de Ushuaia– alegando que el “hombre fuerte” de Caracas, Nicolás Maduro, ha roto el hilo constitucional de Venezuela.
Aunque la cláusula en cuestión permite la aplicación de sanciones económicas a los países en los que se arremeta contra el Estado de derecho, Nunes subrayó que “no está prevista una sanción comercial”, sino una medida de “aislamiento político”. Analistas de la crisis venezolana dudan que esta medida u otras de carácter comercial ejerzan presión efectiva sobre Maduro para obligarlo a retornar a la vereda democrática. La razón: el comercio entre Mercosur y Venezuela ya ha caído un 66,7 por ciento desde su ingreso en 2012, al pasar de un volumen total de 9.742 millones de dólares a 3.240 millones a cierre de 2016, según un informe de la consultora privada Abeceb publicado este mismo 5 de agosto.
De acuerdo a los datos del reporte de Abeceb, en el último lustro las exportaciones del Mercosur hacia Venezuela descendieron un 63,8 por ciento, de 7.761 millones de dólares a 2.807 millones; mientras que las importaciones desde el país caribeño sufrieron un desplome aún mayor, del 78,14 %, de 1.981 a 433. Las cifras ofrecidas por Abeceb muestran que el retroceso de la actividad comercial se produjo principalmente en los últimos dos años, debido a la crisis económica vivida en el país, que según las previsiones de la consultora provocará este año una caída del PIB de más del 10 por ciento.
Dentro de Mercosur, los principales exportadores hacia Venezuela en 2016 fueron Argentina y Brasil, con el 52 por ciento y el 45 por ciento de las ventas totales, respectivamente, mientras que las de Paraguay y Uruguay apenas representaron el 2 por ciento y el 1 por ciento, respectivamente. En cuanto a las importaciones, Brasil fue con diferencia el mayor comprador de bienes venezolanos, con el 96 por ciento del total; en tanto que Argentina supuso el 3 por ciento; Paraguay, el 1 por ciento y Uruguay, un porcentaje cercano al 0 por ciento. Los alimentos totalizaron más de la mitad de las exportaciones de Mercosur hacia Venezuela, y de 2012 a 2016 descendieron un 53,7 por ciento.
Por otro lado, los productos más demandados a Venezuela por los socios del bloque comercial, con casi dos terceras partes, fueron los relacionados con los combustibles y lubricantes –especialmente el petróleo–, que en los últimos cinco años experimentaron un retroceso del 83,7 por ciento.
En: DW
Contra el ecumenismo del odio
El Vaticano critica a los fundamentalistas xenófobos e islamófobos en un artículo de la revista de los jesuitas visado por el propio Papa y por el secretario de Estado
![](http://blog.pucp.edu.pe/blog/nortenciogua/wp-content/uploads/sites/404/2017/08/1500649128_844852_1500649266_noticia_normal_recorte1-300x156.jpg)
El papa Francisco, entre Ivanka (izquierda) y Melania Trump (derecha), en una audiencia en el Vaticano el 24 de mayo pasado. ALESSANDRA TARANTINO (REUTERS)
¿Quién se acuerda de Charles Maurras? Murió hace más de 60 años mientras cumplía cadena perpetua por complicidad con el enemigo alemán durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Fue extraordinaria su influencia intelectual sobre las derechas más extremas europeas, incluidas las españolas, a través de su partido antisemita, ultra y monárquico, Action Française, sobre todo entre las dos guerras mundiales. Igual de extraordinaria fue su tormentosa relación con la Santa Sede, que terminó con su excomunión y las de su seguidores y con la inclusión de un puñado de sus escritos y de la propia revista que dirigía en el Índice de Libros Prohibidos.
El tiempo de las excomuniones y del Índice de los Libros Prohibidos queda lejos, olvidado ya. Roma ya no hace cosas así, al menos desde el Concilio Vaticano II. Pero si las hiciera, no hay duda de que ahora tendríamos algo parecido a un caso Maurras a propósito de las turbulentas ideas y propuestas políticas del presidente Trump y más concretamente de su consejero estratégico Steve Bannon,un príncipe de las tinieblas que inspira las políticas más extremistas de la actual Casa Blanca, como el muro con México y el muslim ban o prohibición de entrada en EE UU a ciudadanos de seis países musulmanes.
Steve Bannon es católico, mientras que Donald Trump nació en una familia presbiteriana. La religiosidad personal de ambos es más que dudosa, como le sucedía a Maurras, hasta el punto de que fue el agnosticismo del escritor francés el que le condujo a la condena eclesial. Bannon se ha divorciado dos veces a pesar de la indisolubilidad del matrimonio católico, y de Trump se desconoce si practica o si tiene siquiera alguna idea religiosa. Pero en ambos cuenta la religión como visión política del mundo, y ahí es donde el Vaticano tiene algo que decir y lo ha dicho, uniendo además en una misma crítica al catolicismo integrista y al fundamentalismo evangelista que tan buen servicio les ha rendido al Partido Republicano para ganar en las elecciones presidenciales.
Aunque el mensaje es bien claro, en cuanto a quien lo emite y a lo que dice, la vía escogida por el Vaticano es sutil e indirecta. Ha sido la revista de los jesuitas Civiltà Cattolica la que lo ha transmitido, a través de un artículo, titulado ‘Fundamentalismo evangélico e integrismo católico en Estados Unidos, un ecumenismo sorprendente’, firmado por su director, el italiano Antonio Spadaro, y por el protestante argentino Marcelo Figueroa. Un católico y un protestante denuncian precisamente la colusión de católicos y protestantes extremistas estadounidenses en un mismo pensamiento al que califican de “ecumenismo del odio”. Según el diario italiano La Repubblica, el papa Francisco en persona, el secretario de Estado Pietro Parolin y el secretario para las Relaciones con Estados Unidos, Paul Richard Gallagher, han corregido y visado el artículo.
El papa Francisco rechaza la narrativa del miedo y de la inseguridad, sobre la que Trump y su derecha alternativa construyen muros ideológicos
La primera característica de esta desviación teológica es el maniqueísmo, un “lenguaje que divide la realidad entre el Bien absoluto y el Mal absoluto”, cuestión en la que los autores citan al propio presidente Trump y que sitúa a los inmigrantes y a los musulmanes entre las amenazas al sistema de vida de Estados Unidos.Una segunda característica que denuncian Spadaro y Figueroa es el carácter de Teología de la Prosperidad que comparten los dos extremismos católico y evangelista. Su evangelio para ricos, difundido por organizaciones y pastores multimillonarios, predica una idea autojustificativa de que “Dios desea que sus seguidores tengan salud física, sean prósperos y personalmente felices”. La tercera característica es una defensa muy peculiar de la libertad religiosa, en la que extremistas católicos y protestantes se unen en cuestiones como la oposición al aborto y al matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo o la educación religiosa en la escuela, y propugnan un sometimiento de las instituciones del Estado a las ideas religiosas e incluso a la Biblia muy similar al que inspira al fundamentalismo islámico.
Esta visión del mundo proporciona una justificación teológica a la guerra y alienta la esperanza religiosa con la expectativa de un enfrentamiento apocalíptico y definitivo entre el Bien y el Mal. Las afinidades con la idea islamista radical de la yihad son bien claras. El artículo denuncia la web de extrema derecha Church Militant, que atribuye la victoria de Trump a las oraciones de los estadounidenses, propugna la guerra de religiones y profesa el llamado dominionismo, que es una lectura literalista del Genésis en la que el hombre es el centro de un universo a su entero servicio. Los dominionistas consideran anticristianos a los ecologistas y observan los desastres naturales y el cambio climático como irremediables signos escatológicos de un final de los tiempos apocalíptico, que no hay que obstaculizar, sino todo lo contrario.
No es posible comprender esta fuerte arremetida del Vaticano contra la extrema derecha estadounidense sin recordar la intervención de Steve Bannon en una conferencia celebrada en el Vaticano en 2014, en la que denunció la secularización excesiva de Occidente y anunció “la proximidad de un conflicto brutal y sangriento, (…) una guerra global contra el fascismo islámico”, en la que “esta nueva barbarie que ahora empieza erradicará todo lo que nos ha sido legado en los últimos dos mil o dos mil quinientos años”. También hay que situarlo en el marco de tensiones entre la Casa Blanca y el Vaticano a propósito de Oriente Próximo, especialmente tras el primer viaje de Trump en el que pretendió conectar con las tres religiones, islam, judaísmo y catolicismo, pero terminó convirtiéndose en un reforzamiento de la alianza con Arabia Saudí y un estímulo al enfrentamiento con Teherán, con consecuencias inmediatas en el bloqueo a Qatar.
El pontífice no solo discrepa de sus propuestas sobre ecología, inmigración o impuestos, sino que rechaza su estrategia en favor de Riad
Curiosamente, Spadaro y Figueroa defienden las raíces cristianas de Europa, pero con una argumentación inversa a la que se escuchaba en tiempos de Ratzinger, de la que ha desaparecido el supremacismo cristiano y blanco. “El triunfalismo, la arrogancia y el etnicismo vengativo son exactamente lo contrario del cristianismo”, aseguran. El artículo termina recordando que el papa Francisco combate la narrativa del miedo y la manipulación de la inseguridad y de la ansiedad de la gente, evita la reducción del Islam al terrorismo islamista y rechaza la idea de una guerra santa contra el islam o la construcción de muros físicos e ideológicos. Con la denuncia del ecumenismo del odio, el Vaticano sitúa a Steve Bannon y Donald Trump en un infierno ideológico análogo al que abrió las puertas a Maurras en 1927, ahora hace justo 90 años, en el que se encuentran condenados los políticos que utilizan la religión para dividir en vez de unir a los seres humanos.
En: elpais
NAACP Issues Warning to People of Color and Women Traveling to Missouri
The NAACP has responded to Missouri‘s recent legislation on discrimination by issuing a travel warning for the state. The advisory calls for travelers to utilize “extreme caution” in the state due to the likelihood of “discrimination and harassment,” CBS News reportedTuesday. Rod Chapel Jr., president of the state’s NAACP chapter, has described Republican Governor Eric Greitens’ recent legislation as “the Jim Crow bill,” a reference to the segregation tactics of the South.
The state’s legislation will make lawsuits alleging discrimination much more difficult to win, as victims will now have to present proof that discrimination was the main reason for a defendant’s actions. Previously, suits required proof that bias was a contributing factor. The bill also bars employees from suing any individual for discrimination, meaning only the company itself can be named in a suit.
“The advisory means each individual should pay special attention while in the state of Missouri and certainly if contemplating spending time in Missouri,” the NAACP said in a statement. The NAACP added that the advisory was put into place to make Missourians and visitors aware of “looming danger” in the state, which has a “long history of race, gender, and color-based crimes.” The travel advisory will be sent to the national NAACP board for ratification in October after being voted into adoption last week.
According to a report from the Kansas City Star, the advisory is the first of its kind from the civil rights group. “People need to be ready, whether it’s bringing bail money with them, or letting relatives know they are traveling through the state,” Chapel said. In 2015 alone, 100 hate crimes were reported in Missouri.
The NAACP highlighted a number of recent and troubling incidents in their statement, including the death of Tory Sanders in May. Sanders, a Tennessee resident, ran out of fuel in Charleston, Missouri after taking a drive to “clear his head.” The 28-year-old father of eight called his mother and asked if police could help him, the Riverfront Times reported in May.
Ultimately, Sanders’ interaction with cops included what they characterized as a “mental break.” Sanders’ aunt, Natasha Nance, said he told his mother on a phone call from jail that officers were “trying to kill” him. Sanders reportedly collapsed while officers attempted to restrain him and was later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.
Read the NAACP’s (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) full statement on the Missouri travel advisory here.
In: complex.com
A reporter pressed the White House for data. That’s when things got tense.
Wednesday’s White House news briefing began not with press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders but with senior adviser Stephen Miller, whose nationalist immigration positions have been highly influential in the administration. Miller was at the lectern to discuss the Raise Act, legislation crafted by Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.) and introduced by President Trump earlier in the day.
During his brief stint addressing the White House press corps, Miller got into two serious arguments with reporters, an impressive if not surprising accomplishment. One, with CNN’s Jim Acosta, included accusations of Acosta having a “cosmopolitan bias” in his thinking about immigration. (Worth noting: Acosta is the son of immigrants.) But the other, a dust-up with the New York Times’ Glenn Thrush, was more significant.
Before getting into that, though, it’s worth isolating part of Miller’s introduction to the topic, the sentence that formed the crux of his rhetoric in defense of a bill that will slice legal immigration in half if it is enacted into law.
“You’ve seen over time as a result of this historic flow of unskilled immigration,” Miller said, “a shift in wealth from the working class to wealthier corporations and businesses, and it’s been very unfair for American workers, but especially for immigrant workers, African American workers and Hispanic workers, and blue-collar workers in general across the country.”
That line does two things that are essential to Miller’s sales pitch. First, it blames income inequality — assuming that money headed to “wealthier corporations” means to those corporations’ owners — on increased immigration. Second, it highlights the effects on black, Hispanic and immigrant workers in particular.
There has been research that links increased income inequality to immigration. A 2015 paper by a trio of researchers found just such a link. But assuming that link, it’s clearly not the only — or even the primary — driver of income inequality. A graph created by those researchers makes clear that the inequality (as measured with the Gini coefficient) would be nearly as high without the effects of immigration.
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Image: https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2017/08/Screen-Shot-2017-08-02-at-4.30.41-PM.png&w=1484
The effect of immigrants, the researchers say, is “modest.” But Miller presents the “shift in wealth” as being a “result” of the flow of unskilled immigrants. In other analyses of that increased gap, immigration isn’t mentioned.
Miller’s suggestion that those most affected by this shift are other communities of color, meanwhile, is a classic tactic aimed at appealing to working-class Americans and nonwhite voters by blaming immigrants for their problems. (Hillary Clinton did something similarduring a debate in the 2008 primaries.)
When Miller began to take questions, Thrush asked him very specifically for data to back up his points.
THRUSH: First of all, let’s have some statistics. There have been a lot of studies out there that don’t show a correlation between low-skilled immigration and the loss of jobs for native workers. Cite for me, if you could, one or two studies with specific numbers that prove the correlation between those two things, because your entire policy is based on that. …
MILLER: I think the most recent study I would point to is the study from George Borjas that he just did about the Mariel Boatlift. And he went back and reexamined and opened up the old data and talked about how it actually did reduce wages for workers who were living there at the time.
And Borjas has, of course, done enormous amounts of research on this, as has the — Peter Kirsanow on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, as has Steve Camarota at the Center for Immigration Studies, and so on and so on.
We’ll jump in here first to note that Miller offered no statistics but did point to one study.
That study from Borjas looked at the migration of more than 100,000 Cubans into Florida in 1980. Borjas found that wages among the least-educated workers in Miami dropped 10 to 30 percent as a result of the influx. Borjas’s study was a direct rebuttal to a 1990 study by David Card, which found “virtually no effect” on wages or unemployment rates, even among the Cuban immigrant community that was already in the area.
Borjas’s study was itself soon rebutted, as the National Review noted, with researchers pointing out that he didn’t account for other demographic shifts in the area that may have had a significant effect on wages.
Miller also notes two other individuals, one of whom works for the staunchly anti-immigration Center for Immigration Studies — and then implies a surfeit of other data with a casual “and so on, and so on.”
THRUSH: What about the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine? …
MILLER: One recent study said that as much as $300 billion a year may be lost as a result of our current immigration system, in terms of folks drawing more public benefits than they’re paying in.
Thrush raises a recent study showing that immigrants don’t take the jobs of native-born Americans, with the exception of teenagers who didn’t finish high school, who saw a drop in hours of work.
Miller responds by noting that the study also found that new immigrants cost nearly $300 billion a year more in government spending than they pay in taxes — though that’s the far end of a spectrum of estimates that starts at $43 billion. By the second generation, immigrant families add a net of $30 billion a year.
Then things got tense.
MILLER: But let’s also use common sense here, folks. At the end of the day, why do special interests want to bring in more low-skill workers? And why, historically …
THRUSH: I’m not asking for common sense. I’m asking for specific statistical data. How many …
MILLER: Well, I think it’s very clear, Glenn, that you’re not asking for common sense. But if I could just answer — if I could just answer your question …
THRUSH: Common sense is fungible, statistics are not.
MILLER: … I named — I named — I named the studies, Glenn.
THRUSH: Let me just finish the question …
MILLER: Glenn. Glenn.
THRUSH: Tell me the …
MILLER: I named the studies. I named the studies.
Again: He named one study. At this point, it got personal.
THRUSH: I asked you for a statistic. Can you tell me how many — how many …
MILLER: Glenn. The — maybe we’ll make a carve-out in the bill that says the New York Times can hire all the low-skilled, less-paid workers they want from other countries and see how you feel then about low-wage substitution. …
You know, maybe it’s time we had compassion, Glenn, for American workers. President Trump has met with American workers who have been replaced by foreign workers.
THRUSH: Stephen, I’m not questioning any of that. I’m asking …
MILLER: And ask them — ask them how this has affected their lives.
The exchange went on in this vein for a while, with Miller ultimately pointing not to statistical data showing a need for the policy but to general statistics about unemployment.
Ultimately, Miller again asked Thrush to set aside his request for data and to consider common sense.
“The reality is that if you just use common sense — and, yes, I will use common sense,” Miller said, “the reason why some companies want to bring in more unskilled labor is because they know that it drives down wages and reduces labor costs. Our question as a government is, to whom is our duty? Our duty is to U.S. citizens and U.S. workers, to promote rising wages for them.”
That raised an obvious question, which other reporters subsequently jumped on: Why do Trump’s private businesses continue to seek visas allowing them to hire immigrants for low-wage jobs?
“I’ll just refer everyone here today back to the president’s comments during the primary, when this was raised in a debate,” Miller replied, “and he said: ‘My job as a businessman is to follow the laws of the United States. And my job as president is to create an immigration system that works for American workers.’ ”
It’s just common sense.
![](http://blog.pucp.edu.pe/blog/nortenciogua/wp-content/uploads/sites/404/2017/08/Only-a-poem-300x157.jpg)
Emma Lazarus Poem at Statue of Liberty. Image: http://patriotretort.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Only-a-poem.jpg
In: washingtonpost
Camino a la Independencia : El Acta de Lima (Perú)
Franklin Pierce
How bosses are (literally) like dictators
Americans think they live in a democracy. But their workplaces are small tyrannies.
![](http://blog.pucp.edu.pe/blog/nortenciogua/wp-content/uploads/sites/404/2017/07/Amazon-300x199.png)
Some Amazon warehouse workers have complained about being pushed beyond their abilities by their bosses. Boston Globe / Getty
Updated by
Jul 17, 2017, 8:20am EDTConsider some facts about how American employers control their workers. Amazon prohibits employees from exchanging casual remarks while on duty, calling this “time theft.” Apple inspects the personal belongings of its retail workers, some of whom lose up to a half-hour of unpaid time every day as they wait in line to be searched. Tyson prevents its poultry workers from using the bathroom. Some have been forced to urinate on themselves while their supervisors mock them.
About half of US employees have been subject to suspicionless drug screening by their employers. Millions are pressured by their employers to support particular political causes or candidates. Soon employers will be empowered to withhold contraception coveragefrom their employees’ health insurance. They already have the right to penalize workers for failure to exercise and diet, by charging them higher health insurance premiums.
How should we understand these sweeping powers that employers have to regulate their employees’ lives, both on and off duty? Most people don’t use the term in this context, but wherever some have the authority to issue orders to others, backed by sanctions, in some domain of life, that authority is a government
We usually assume that “government” refers to state authorities. Yet the state is only one kind of government. Every organization needs some way to govern itself — to designate who has authority to make decisions concerning its affairs, what their powers are, and what consequences they may mete out to those beneath them in the organizational chart who fail to do their part in carrying out the organization’s decisions.
Managers in private firms can impose, for almost any reason, sanctions including job loss, demotion, pay cuts, worse hours, worse conditions, and harassment. The top managers of firms are therefore the heads of little governments, who rule their workers while they are at work — and often even when they are off duty.
Every government has a constitution, which determines whether it is a democracy, a dictatorship, or something else. In a democracy like the United States, the government is “public.” This means it is properly the business of the governed: transparent to them and servant to their interests. They have a voice and the power to hold rulers accountable.
Not every government is public in this way. When King Louis XIV of France said, “L’etat, c’est moi,” he meant that his government was his business alone, something he kept private from those he governed. They weren’t entitled to know how he operated it, had no standing to insist he take their interests into account in his decisions, and no right to hold him accountable for his actions.
Over time, national governments have become “public,” but in the US workplace governments remain resolutely “private”
Like Louis XIV’s government, the typical American workplace is kept private from those it governs. Managers often conceal decisions of vital interest to their workers. Often, they don’t even give advance notice of firm closures and layoffs. They are free to sacrifice workers’ dignity in dominating and humiliating their subordinates. Most employer harassment of workers is perfectly legal, as long as bosses mete it out on an equal-opportunity basis. (Walmart and Amazon managers are notorious for berating and belittling their workers.) And workers have virtually no power to hold their bosses accountable for such abuses: They can’t fire their bosses, and can’t sue them for mistreatment except in a very narrow range of cases, mostly having to do with discrimination.
Why are workers subject to private government? The state has set the default terms of the constitution of workplace government through its employment laws. The most important source of employers’ power is the default rule of employment at will. Unless the parties have otherwise agreed, employers are free to fire workers for almost any or no reason. This amounts to an effective grant of power to employers to rule the lives of their employees in almost any respect — not just on the job but off duty as well. And they have exercised that power.
Scotts, the lawn care company, fired an employee for smoking off duty. After Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) notified Lakeland Bank that an employee had complained he wasn’t holding town hall meetings, the bank intimidated her into resigning. San Diego Christian College fired a teacher for having premarital sex — and hired her fiancé to fill her post. Bosses are dictators, and workers are their subjects.
American public discourse doesn’t give us helpful ways to talk about the dictatorial rule of employers. Instead, we talk as if workers aren’t ruled by their bosses. We are told that unregulated markets make us free, and that the only threat to our liberties is the state. We are told that in the market, all transactions are voluntary. We are told that since workers freely enter and exit the labor contract, they are perfectly free under it. We prize our skepticism about “government,” without extending our critique to workplace dictatorship.
The earliest champions of free markets envisioned a world of self-employment
Why do we talk like this? The answer takes us back to free market ideas developed before the Industrial Revolution. In 17th- and 18th-century Britain, big merchants got the state to grant them monopolies over trade in particular goods, forcing small craftsmen to submit to their regulations. A handful of aristocratic families enjoyed a monopoly on land, due to primogeniture and entail, which barred the breakup and sale of any part of large estates. Farmers could rent their land only on short-term leases, which forced them to bow and scrape before their landlords, in a condition of subordination not much different from servants, who lived in their masters’ households and had to obey their rules.
The problem was that the state had rigged the rules of the market in favor of the rich. Confronted with this economic situation, many people argued that free markets would promote equality and workers’ interests by enabling them to go into business for themselves and thereby escapesubordination to the owners of capital.
No wonder some of the early advocates of free markets in 17th-century England were called “Levellers.” These radicals, who emerged during the English civil war, wanted to abolish the monopolies held by the big merchants and aristocrats. They saw the prospects of greater equality that might come from opening up to ordinary workers opportunities for manufacture, trade, and farming one’s own land.
![](http://blog.pucp.edu.pe/blog/nortenciogua/wp-content/uploads/sites/404/2017/07/GettyImages_117582492-300x200.jpg)
Marchers in Burford, England, celebrate the “levellers,” who sought to overthrow monopolies in the 17th century. Tim Graham / Getty
In the 18th century, Adam Smith was the greatest advocate for the view that replacing monopolies, primogeniture, entail, and involuntary servitude with free markets would enable laborers to work on their own behalf. His key assumption was that incentives were more powerful than economies of scale. When workers get to keep all of the fruits of their labor, as they do when self-employed, they will work much harder and more efficiently than if they are employed by a master, who takes a cut of what they produce. Indolent aristocratic landowners can’t compete with yeoman farmers without laws preventing land sales. Free markets in land, labor, and commerce will therefore lead to the triumph of the most efficient producer, the self-employed worker, and the demise of the idle, stupid, rent-seeking rentier.
Smith and his contemporaries looked across the Atlantic and saw that America appeared to be realizing these hopes — although only for white men. The great majority of the free population in the Revolutionary period was self-employed, as either a yeoman farmer or an independent artisan or merchant.
In the United States, Thomas Paine was the great promoter of this vision. Indeed, his views on political economy sound as if they could have been ripped out of the GOP Freedom Caucus playbook. Paine argued that individuals can solve nearly all of their problems on their own, without state meddling. A good government does nothing more than secure individuals in “peace and safety” in the free pursuit of their occupations, with the lowest possible tax burden. Taxation is theft. People living off government pay are social parasites. Government is the chief cause of poverty. Paine was a lifelong advocate of commerce, free trade, and free markets. He called for hard money and fiscal responsibility.
Paine was the hero of labor radicals for decades after his death in 1809, because they shared his hope that free markets would yield an economy almost entirely composed of small proprietors. An economy of small proprietors offers a plausible model of a free society of equals: each individual personally independent, none taking orders from anyone else, everyone middle class.
Abraham Lincoln built on the vision of Smith and Paine, which helped to shape the two key planks of the Republican Party platform: opposition to the extension of slavery in the territories, and the Homestead Act. Slavery, after all, enabled masters to accumulate vast tracts of land, squeezing out small farmers and forcing them into wage labor. Prohibiting the extension of slavery into the territories and giving away small plots of land to anyone who would work it would realize a society of equals in which no one is ever consigned to wage labor for life. Lincoln, who helped create the political party that now defends the interests of business, never wavered from the proposition that true free labor meant freedom from wage labor.
The Industrial Revolution, however — well underway by Lincoln’s time — ultimately dashed the hopes of joining free markets with independent labor in a society of equals. Smith’s prediction — that economies of scale would be less important than the incentive effects of enabling workers to reap all the fruits of their labor — was defeated by industrial technologies that required massive accumulations of capital. The US, with its access to territories seized from Native Americans, was able to stave off the bankruptcy of self-employed farmers and other small proprietors for far longer than Europe. But industrialization, population growth, the closure of the frontier, and railroad monopolies doomed the sole proprietorship to the margins of the economy, even in North America.
The Industrial Revolution gave employers new powers over workers, but economists failed to adjust their vocabulary — or their analyses
The Smith-Paine-Lincoln libertarian vision was rendered largely irrelevant by industrialization, which created a new model of wage labor, with large companies taking the place of large landowners. Yet strangely, many people persist in using Smith’s and Paine’s rhetoric to describe the world we live in today. We are told that our choice is between free markets and state control — but most adults live their working lives under a third thing entirely: private government. A vision of what egalitarians hoped market society would deliver before the Industrial Revolution — a world without private workplace government, with producers interacting only through markets and the state — has been blindly carried over to the modern economy by libertarians and their pro-business fellow travelers.
There is a condition called hemiagnosia, whose sufferers cannot perceive one half of their bodies. A large class of libertarian-leaning thinkers and politicians, with considerable public following, resemble patients with this condition: They cannot perceive half of the economy — the half that takes place beyond the market, after the employment contract is accepted, where workers are subject to private, arbitrary, unaccountable government.
What can we do about this? Americans are used to complaining about how government regulation restricts our freedom. So we should recognize that such complaints apply, with at least as much force, to private governments of the workplace. For while the punishments employers can impose for disobedience aren’t as severe as those available to the state, the scope of employers’ authority over workers is more sweeping and exacting, its power more arbitrary and unaccountable. Therefore, it is high time we considered remedies for reining in the private government of the workplace similar to those we have long insisted should apply to the state.
Three types of remedy are of special importance. First, recall a key demand the United States made of communist dictatorships during the Cold War: Let dissenters leave. Although workers are formally free to leave their workplace dictatorships, they often pay a steep price. Nearly one-fifth of American workers labor under noncompete clauses. This means they can’t work in the same industry if they quit or are fired.
And it’s not just engineers and other “knowledge economy” workers who are restricted in this way: Even some minimum wage workers are forced to sign noncompetes. Workers who must leave their human capital behind are not truly free to quit. Every state should follow California’s example and ban noncompete clauses from work contracts.
We should clarify the rights that workers possess, and then defend them
Second, consider that if the state imposed surveillance and regulations on us in anything like the way that private employers do, we would rightly protest that our constitutional rights were being violated. American workers have few such rights against their bosses, and the rights they have are very weakly enforced. We should strengthen the constitutional rights that workers have against their employers, and rigorously enforce the ones the law already purports to recognize.
![](http://blog.pucp.edu.pe/blog/nortenciogua/wp-content/uploads/sites/404/2017/07/GettyImages_3109113-300x222.jpg)
A Manchester clothes mill, 1909. This is not the world Adam Smith envisioned when he championed free markets. Topical Press Agency / Getty
Among the most important of these rights are to freedom of speech and association. This means employers shouldn’t be able to regulate workers’ off-duty speech and association, or informal non-harassing talk during breaks or on duty, if it does not unduly interfere with job performance. Nor should they be able to prevent workers from supporting the candidate of their choice.
Third, we should make the government of the workplace more public (in the sense that political scientists use the term). Workers need a real voice in how they are governed — not just the right to complain without getting fired, but an organized way to insist that their interests have weight in decisions about how work is organized.
One way to do this would be to strengthen the rights of labor unions to organize. Labor unions are a vital tool for checking abusive and exploitative employers. However, due to lax enforcement of laws protecting the right to organize and discuss workplace complaints, many workers are fired for these activities. And many workers shy away from unionization, because they prefer a collaborative to an adversarial relationship to their employer.
Yet even when employers are decent, workers could still use a voice. In many of the rich states of Europe, they already have one, even if they don’t belong to a union. It’s called “co-determination” — a system of joint workplace governance by workers and managers, which automatically applies to firms with more than a few dozen employees. Under co-determination, workers elect representatives to a works council, which participates in decision-making concerning hours, layoffs, plant closures, workplace conditions, and processes. Workers in publicly traded firms also elect some members of the board of directors of the firm.
Against these proposals, libertarian and neoliberal economists theorize that workers somehow suffer from provisions that would secure their dignity, autonomy, and voice at work. That’s because the efficiency of firms would, in theory, drop — along with profits, and therefore wages — if managers did not have maximum control of their workforce. These thinkers insist that employers already compensate workers for any “oppressive” conditions that may exist by offering higher wages. Workers are therefore free to make the trade-off between wages and workplace freedom when they seek a job.
This theory supposes, unrealistically, that entry-level workers already know how well they will be treated when they apply for jobs at different workplaces, and that low-paid workers have ready access to decent working conditions in the first place. It’s telling that the same workers who suffer the worst working conditions also suffer from massive wage theft. One study estimates that employers failed to pay $50 billion in legally mandated wages in one year. Two-thirds of workers in low-wage industries suffered wage theft, costing them nearly 15 percent of their total earnings. This is three times the amount of all other thefts in the United States.
If employers have such contempt for their employees that they steal their wages, how likely is it that they are making it up to them with better working conditions?
It’s also easy to theorize that workers are better off under employer dictatorship, because managers supposedly know best to govern the workplace efficiently. But if efficiency means that workers are forced to pee in their pants, why shouldn’t they have a say in whether such “efficiency” is worthwhile? The long history of American workers’ struggles to get the right to use the bathroom at work — something long enjoyed by our European counterparts — says enough about economists’ stunted notion of efficiency.
Meanwhile, our false rhetoric of workers’ “choice” continues to obscure the ways the state is handing ever more power to workplace dictators. The Trump administration’s Labor Department is working to roll back the Obama administration’s expansion of overtime pay. It is giving a free pass to federal contractors who have violated workplace safety and federal wage and hours laws. It has canceled the paycheck transparency rule, making it harder for women to know when they are being paid less for the same work as men.
Private government is arbitrary, unaccountable government. That’s what most Americans are subject to at work. The history of democracy is the history of turning governance from a private matter into a public one. It has been about making government public — answerable to the interests of citizens and not just the interests of their rulers. It’s time to apply the lessons we have learned from this history to the private government of the workplace. Workers deserve a voice not just on Capitol Hill but in Amazon warehouses, Silicon Valley technology companies, and meat-processing plants as well.
Elizabeth Anderson is the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women’s studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk About It) (Princeton University Press, 2017).
In: vox