Category Archives: DOJ, DC and inside the Beltway

Longshoreman Pres Threatens America with Destruction

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It is almost an act of war, it is a threat to everyone in America, it is insurrection…where is the White House of the Department of Justice? This threat and contract negotiations is about a year old…and Biden Harris have done nothing.

The Biden-Harris administration’s Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo admitted on Monday that she has not been concerned about a strike that could create shortages of food, pharmaceuticals and hundreds of consumer goods.

Daggett outlined a virtual nightmare for the American economy if the strike continues, threatening that dealers “can’t sell cars because the cars ain’t coming in off the ships. They get laid off. Third week, malls start closing down. They can’t get the goods from China. They can’t sell clothes,” he said. A delay in the longshoremen returning to work could take months for the nation to recover from.

“Everything in the United States comes on a ship. They go out of business. Construction workers get laid off because the materials aren’t coming in, the steel’s not coming in, the lumber is not coming in. They lose their jobs,” Daggett said, insisting that the companies would be “better off sitting down and let’s get a contract.”

 

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Meanwhile:Image

That yacht he used to own? Check it out…Image

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Did Joe know about his mafia ties?

The Justice Department, which has reportedly lost two cases against Mr Daggett, has accused him of being an “associate” of the Genovese crime family — one of the infamous “Five Families” of the US Mafia.

Charged with racketeering in 2005, Mr Daggett, took the witness stand and portrayed himself as a mob target, despite evidence against him from a turncoat Mafia enforcer saying he was under the mob’s control, the New York Times reported.

During that trial, one of Mr Daggett’s co-defendants, a renowned mobster named Lawrence Ricci, disappeared. His decomposing body was found in the trunk of a car outside a New Jersey diner several weeks later, with the killing still unsolved.

Despite his union serving as a historic symbol of the grip of organised crime on union members, as depicted in the 1954 film “On the Waterfront”, Mr Daggett was acquitted in both cases.

The union leader has previously criticised the Waterfront Commission, set up to combat Mafia control of the port, calling the allegations of mob influence “total bulls—”, and a “dark, ugly attack on Italian Americans”.

“It’s a damn tragedy for the Waterfront Commission to enjoy free rein and target Italian Americans as part of their historic anti-worker campaign. Let’s be real here. The Waterfront Commission has, for decades, claimed good jobs went to only those with so-called ‘mob ties,’” he said in 2022.

As industry goes to automation and technology from fast food the manufacturing…Daggett refuses that at our container ports…“Plus, we want absolute airtight language that there will be no automation or semi-automation, and we are demanding all Container Royalty monies go to the ILA.”

Jack Pennington

Soap Box Time: “Automation”

As everyone has heard by now my Boss is taking a hard stand on the never ending threat of automation that is infiltrating our industry, and I have heard the remarks from those that say we need to learn how to deal with it! Well I have a message for those people “kiss my fat A$$”! I got some news for those same naïve people that think it’s a good thing and by going to automation it’s going to save the consumer money, let me shed some light with some facts and history that nobody can dispute!

For instance, when the big 3 automakers decided to install robotic welders, painters, upholsterers, machinists, assemblers and countless other robots into production with the false pretense and promises that it would “remember this quote” (save the consumer money) well I ask you this question, did it cut costs of an automobile? The answer is an Easy NO! In fact, the cost of the standard car went up to pay for the robots and them being installed and thousands of workers were left jobless!

This fact goes for countless companies today Sam’s, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Walmart and many and many more have continually sold the general public on the premises that by going with automation it will save the public money, with the FACT being thousands of good tax paying jobs went away and the CEO’s and CORPORATE EXECUTIVES are getting rewarded and richer by getting raises and bonuses for making record breaking profits while your dads, moms, brothers and sisters are pushed out of work, not to mention the same retailers that sold “you the general public” on the idea that it will save you money has actually gone up on the price of groceries and supplies of all kinds!

 

Biden’s Admin Lost 291,000 Unaccompanied Migrant Children

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Remember when the Democrats launched a huge attack on President Trump for disconnecting families/children of illegal migrants? Well…hold on…seems things are bubbling to the surface that the Biden administration and that pesky Border Czar, Kamala don’t care about who they lost….noting that an estimated 290,000 children have been exploited, trafficked or are in a forced labor condition.

Where is the joy now Kamala? Where is the child safety of these unaccompanied children? Inspector General Joseph Cuffari did the investigation and is shouting for immediate action. That ‘border bill’ that was killed and blamed on Trump never addressed the matter of the chaos and scandals at the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

DHS Secretary Defends Response to 20-Year-High Surge of Unaccompanied ...

38 Senators wrote a letter about this chaos and failure…radio silence from the FBI, DHS, HHS and the White House. Note the Department of Justice such as it is…does not care either. Human Rights? nah….

READ THE INSPECTOR GENERAL REPORT HERE

Table 1. UCs transferred to ORR, FYs 2019-2023 FY UCs released to ORR FY 2019 67,987 FY 2020 15,128 FY 2021 120,859 FY 2022 127,057 FY 2023 117,789 Total 448,820

Source: DHS OIG analysis of ICE data

According to OPLA officials, ICE ERO has no authority over UCs beyond managing their immigration cases. Therefore, even if ICE were to identify UCs in unsafe conditions, the agency has limited authority to respond. ICE personnel at two field offices affirmed this and explained they had identified UCs in unsafe conditions but were unable to intervene. One ICE officer expressed concern with not being able to take action in a case involving a UC whose sponsor claimed the UC was in an inappropriate relationship with her husband.

Also included in the report is this text:

We issued this management alert as part of an ongoing audit of ICE’s ability to monitor UCs who were released from DHS and HHS custody between FYs 2019 and 2023. The objective of our ongoing audit is to determine ICE’s ability to monitor the location and status of UCs once released or transferred from DHS and HHS’ custody. As part of our audit, between October 2023 and May 2024, we: • Interviewed more than 100 officials from ICE ERO, OPLA, Homeland Security Investigations, and the Center for Countering Human Trafficking, as well as external stakeholders from DOJ and HHS. The interviews included meetings with ICE field offices located in Miami, Los Angeles, St. Paul (Minnesota), Philadelphia, San Diego, Baltimore, Houston, Dallas, New York, and Chicago. • Reviewed relevant laws, reports, and policies, such as the Homeland Security Act of 2002, Immigration and Nationality Act, appropriations acts, prior DHS and HHS OIG reports, and internal ICE policies and handbooks. Additionally, we reviewed and analyzed multiple memorandums of agreement between DHS and HHS regarding UCs. • Reviewed and analyzed ICE data to determine the number of UCs ICE released to ORR from FY 2019 through FY 2023, UCs not served NTAs to date, and UCs who did not appear in court. We conducted this work pursuant to the Inspector General Act of 1978, 5 U.S.C. §§ 401-424, and in connection with an ongoing audit being performed according to generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require we plan and perform our audit work to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. Additional information and recom

Biden Secretly Altered U.S. Nuclear Strategy

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Note there is no mention of Iran and it’s advance toward a viable delivery of the weapon. Just a couple of weeks ago –>

CNN — 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday said that Iran’s breakout time – the amount of time needed to produce enough weapons grade material for a nuclear weapon – “is now probably one or two weeks” as Tehran has continued to develop its nuclear program.

The assessment marks the shortest breakout time that US officials have ever referenced and comes as Iran has taken steps in recent months to boost its production of fissile material.

“Where we are now is not in a good place,” the top US diplomat said at the Aspen Security Forum Friday.

“Iran, because the nuclear agreement was thrown out, instead of being at least a year away from having the breakout capacity of producing fissile material for a nuclear weapon, is now probably one or two weeks away from doing that,” he said.

“They haven’t produced a weapon itself, but that’s something of course that we track very, very carefully,” Blinken added.

Blinken said the policy of the US is to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and that the administration would prefer to stop that from happening through diplomacy.

Over a year ago a top US Defense Department official said that Iran could now produce “one bomb’s worth of fissile material” in “about 12 days.”

The Biden administration engaged in more than a year of indirect negotiations with Iran aimed at reviving the Iran nuclear deal, from which the US withdrew in 2018 under the Trump administration.

Those efforts collapsed in late 2022, as the US accused Iran of making “unreasonable” demands related to a probe by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a UN nuclear watchdog, into unexplained traces of uranium found at undisclosed Iranian sites. In the months that followed, the administration maintained that the Iran nuclear deal was “not on the agenda.”

President Biden has reportedly altered the U.S. strategic nuclear plans toward opposing China’s burgeoning nuclear arsenal and preparing for possible nuclear coordination between China, Russia and North Korea.

According to a report Tuesday evening in The New York Times, the highly classified “Nuclear Employment Guidance” was altered in March without any public announcement.

“The document, updated every four years or so, is so highly classified that there are no electronic copies, only a small number of hard copies distributed to a few national security officials and Pentagon commanders,” the Times reported.

Congress is expected to be notified of the changes in unclassified form before Mr. Biden’s term in the White House ends in January.

But, The Times reported, two separate top officials have received permission to refer to the changes in public speeches, albeit only in “carefully constrained, single sentences.”

“The president recently issued updated nuclear-weapons employment guidance to account for multiple nuclear-armed adversaries,” said Vipin Narang, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology nuclear strategist who served in the Pentagon.

“In particular,” he added, the guidance reacted to “the significant increase in the size and diversity” of China’s nuclear arsenal.

Pranay Vaddi, the National Security Council’s senior director for arms control and nonproliferation, referred to the document in June, saying it emphasizes “the need to deter Russia, the PRC and North Korea simultaneously,” using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.

Pentagon officials have warned for years about a nuclear-arsenal breakout from China.

Although Beijing has had nuclear weapons since the 1960s, for decades it had only a minimal deterrent force that barely measured up to the arsenals of Britain and France, much less those of the U.S. or the Soviet Union/Russia.

But the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, Air Force Gen. Anthony Cotton, testified to Congress in February that the size and rapid pace of Beijing’s nuclear buildup is “breathtaking.”

Current Chinese strategic stockpiles are estimated to be around 500 warheads and will increase to as many as 1,500 by 2030, with the most dramatic move being the building of more than 300 intercontinental ballistic missile silos in western China.

The war in Ukraine has Added to the Food Crisis/Inflation in the U.S.

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It is well known that Russia had been stealing Ukrainian cargo ships loaded with wheat and other food commodities and then reselling as their own. When it comes to the supply chain related to food, transportation and inflation, neither Biden nor Harris have bothered to report this crisis much less punish Russia for such actions.

But let us understand what Ukraine supplies to not only Africa but to the global inventory and supply in the first place…adding to the shortages in total.

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How could the war in Ukraine impact global food supplies?

Both Ukraine and Russia are some of the world’s largest food exporters. How could global food be impacted?

By: Hannah Ritchie
March 24, 2022

Ukraine has been one of the world’s largest contributors to the World Food Programme – the UN agency that provides food aid to countries in crisis. The Head of the WFP – David Beasley estimates that it provides 40% of its wheat.

The war has now reversed this flow: the WFP is now working to provide Ukrainians with the supplies they need in this crisis.

The war in Ukraine could have profound impacts on global food supplies, with far-reaching consequences for hunger and food security across the world. But it doesn’t have to – there is time to react and to contain a larger crisis.

In this article, I present the data we need to understand the scale of their contribution, and which countries are most reliant on Ukraine for their food supplies.

Ukraine and Russia are among the world’s largest exporters of cereal crops and oils

Ukraine and Russia both play a major role in global food markets. They are net exporters of several of the leading cereal crops: wheat, maize (corn), and barley. Both are also dominant exporters of sunflower oil, one of the world’s dominant vegetable oils. Some countries – such as India – rely heavily on imports of sunflower oil for domestic food supplies.

In the charts I show their contribution to global food exports (how much is traded between countries); and global food production.

The charts show that in 2019 around one-quarter of global wheat exports come from Ukraine and Russia. One-fifth of global maize, and barley too. They are the source of nearly two-thirds of traded sunflower oil, with Ukraine alone accounting for almost half of global exports.

Which countries are most reliant on food imports from Ukraine and Russia?

The potential impacts of reduced food outputs from Ukraine and Russia will not be felt equally everywhere. Some of the most vulnerable are countries that import directly from these countries.

But it will not be contained to these direct importers. Food prices are rising, which means that all countries that are net importers of these commodities could feel significant impacts.

To identify the countries that are most vulnerable – and might need assistance in the months ahead – I have brought together country-by-country import data from these key crops. In the data explorer below you can see the global situation for a range of commodities and metrics.

You can see which countries import the most wheat, maize, barley or sunflower oil; which countries import from Ukraine and/or Russia; and how dependent they were on imports for the domestic supply.

We can see, for example, that many countries across the Middle East and North Africa rely heavily on wheat imports from Ukraine and Russia; they supply more than two-thirds of imports in Egypt, Libya and Lebanon. For maize, the reliance on Ukraine and Russia has a larger geographical reach with countries across East Asia and Europe also importing a large share from them.

To maintain consistency between production, domestic supply and import metrics I have sourced all of the underlying data for these calculations from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. It is all based on physical units i.e. tonnes of crops.

Joe’s Most Jobs Added is Officially Declared a Fraud

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Even former President Obama in his speech at the DNC declared that same thing….millions of jobs created. Ehhhh not so much. When Joe Biden was in fact running for a second term, he often declared he created more jobs than any other president in history. What about Kamala….did she ever question the numbers as she has an under graduate degree in political science and economics. Nah…so the truth is the numbers are a fraud, a lie. Add this lie, a big lie to the many others we have been told and as such, likely more lies to come.

In just one year by the way…

source

From MarketWatch:

The U.S. added 818,000 fewer jobs than previously reported from the spring of 2023 to the spring of 2024, indicating the labor market began to cool off earlier and faster than it appeared at the time.

The government’s revised estimate of employment growth showed the economy gained about 2.1 million jobs from April 2023 to March 2024. Originally the increase in employment during that span was put at 2.9 million.

The updated employment figures mean the economy created an average of 173,000 jobs a month during the period in question instead of 242,000 under the old estimates.

The lower number of new job created gives further impetus for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates in September as widely expected. The central bank is required under the law to keep inflation low and employment high.

With inflation gradually slowing toward the Fed’s 2% target, the bank has put greater weight on the health of the labor market in considering when to reduce high U.S. interest rates.

The Fed jacked up a key short-term rate to a 23-year peak in 2022 and 2023 to quell the highest inflation in 40 years.

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In part from the New York Times:

The U.S. economy added far fewer jobs in 2023 and early 2024 than previously reported, a sign that cracks in the labor market are more severe — and began forming earlier — than initially believed.

On Wednesday, the Labor Department said that monthly payroll figures overstated job growth by roughly 818,000 in the 12 months that ended in March. That suggests employers added about 174,000 jobs per month during that period, down from the previously reported pace of about 242,000 jobs — a downward revision of about 28 percent.

The revisions, which are preliminary, are part of an annual process in which monthly estimates, based on surveys, are reconciled with more accurate but less timely records from state unemployment offices. The new figures, once finalized, will be incorporated into official government employment statistics early next year.

The updated numbers are the latest sign of vulnerability in the job market, which until recently had appeared rock solid despite months of high interest rates and economists’ warnings of an impending recession. More recent data, which wasn’t affected by the revisions, suggest job growth slowed further in the spring and summer, and the unemployment rate, though still relatively low at 4.3 percent, has been gradually rising.