Members of the caravan are expected to ask for asylum Sunday. Caravan members interested in requesting asylum spent Friday and Saturday at legal orientations to understand their rights and what to expect when they enter the U.S. port of entry."...
"In 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal prosecutor said of the German media:
“Before every major aggression, they initiated a press campaign
calculated to weaken their victims andto prepare the German people
psychologically for the attack. In the propaganda system, it was the
daily press and the radio that were the most important weapons.”"...[end of article]
One of the main reasons I opposed Hillary Clinton so vehemently, was I
felt she embodied the neocon, neoliberal,
military-intelligence-indsustrial complex’s burning desire for a global
confrontation with Russia, as well as continued disastrous imperial
adventures all over the world. Many of us hoped that with her loss,
cooler heads would prevail and the American public might receive a much
needed respite from never-ending war. This has not happened.
First, we need to understand the motivation of those driving us in
this disastrous direction. Their primary motivation is pretty simple, a
desire to retain power and status. They can see the writing on the wall
when it comes to the disintegration of status quo authority and
credibility, and they fundamentally understand the need to focus on an
outside enemy in order to distract attention away from internal
failures.
Second, we need to understand where we are in the war-creating
process. We must acknowledge that very powerful interests have already decided they want this war. To
them, this isn’t about weighing facts and being reasonable, they’ve
already made up their minds. As such, we are currently in the sales
process.
Right at this very moment, we are being sold on this war by the
media, politicians, intelligence agencies, as well as various other
vested interests who benefit from imperial dominance abroad (unlike the
vast majority of us who are severely harmed by it).When you understand
that this is simply a huge sales pitch to herd the American public like
sheep into a conflict that is not in their best interests, then
everything you see and hear around you starts to make sense....
James Clapper admits he wants to throw rocks
at Russia. Why? Because in his opinion, Russia provided genuine
information to Wikileaks which was embarrassing to the Democratic Party,
and Hillary Clinton lost an election. Let’s just assume for a second
that U.S. intelligence does have proof that Putin ran the operation and
sent it to Wikileaks for the expressed purpose of helping Trump. If that
can be proven, I absolutely think it is meaningful information, and I
think the American people should be aware of it. However, would I be
willing to get into a war with Russia over it? Certainly not. Would most
Americans? I doubt it. To summarize, the American people don’t want
war, but many D.C. politicians and special interests do. This
divergence makes the situation all the more dangerous.
We need to understand that those who want this war will be absolutely
relentless. The sales pitch will not end until they get exactly what
they want. This is where all of us critical thinkers need to play a key
role. We must be prepared to diligently analyze all unsubstantiated
official claims, and push back against the war-mongers, because we know
for certain the oligarch-owned corporate media won’t. We must be
prepared to inform our fellow citizens about what’s happening so that we
don’t fall victim to a cheap sales pitch with devastating consequences.
Unfortunately, we must also be prepared for a possible deep state false
flag if the current sales tactic falls on deaf ears.
This is not to say that in the course of human events war is never
necessary. Sometimes it’s simply thrust upon you, but we’re nowhere near
that point. Moreover, the fact so many people are pushing this conflict
forward based on what is actually a pretty trivial accusation in the
grand scheme of things, should be seen as particularly problematic.
Which brings me to the most important point of all.
America cannot win a global war of such a scale if it is based on
false pretenses and in the absence of exceedingly strong public support.
This support does not exist. Will this serve as a necessary restraint
against the masters of war and their devious plans? It’s too early to
tell, but I do know that if we are unnecessarily pushed into a global
conflagration, it will not end well for us. If this is the road our
twisted status quo insists on taking us down, let us never forget who
they are and the self-serving motivations behind their actions.
Finally, let me conclude with the following observation:
Today, the invisible government has never been more powerful and less
understood. In my career as a journalist and filmmaker, I have never
known propaganda to insinuate our lives and as it does now and to go unchallenged....
Without this drumbeat of propaganda dressed up as news, the monstrous
ISIS and Al Qaeda and the Nusra Front and the rest of the jihadist gang
might not exist, and the people of Syria might not be fighting for their
lives today....
The attack on Iraq, the attack on Libya, the attack on Syria happened
because the leader in each of these countries was not a puppet of the
West.The human rights record of a Saddam or a Gaddafi was irrelevant.
They did not obey orders and surrender control of their country....
As WikLeaks has revealed, it was only when the Syrian leader Bashar
al-Assad in 2009 rejected an oil pipeline,running through his country
from Qatar to Europe, that he was attacked. From that moment, the CIA
planned to destroy the government of Syria with jihadist fanatics – the
same fanatics currently holding the people of Mosul and eastern Aleppo
hostage.
Why is this not news? The former British Foreign Office official
Carne Ross, who was responsible for operating sanctions against Iraq,
told me: “We would feed journalists factoids of sanitized intelligence,
or we would freeze them out. That is how it worked.”
The West’s medieval client, Saudi Arabia – to which the U.S. and
Britain sell billions of dollars’ worth of arms – is at present
destroying Yemen, a country so poor that in the best of times, half the
children are malnourished....The
bomb aimers in Saudi Arabia work side-by-side with British officers.
This fact is not on the evening news.
Propaganda is most effective when our consent is engineered by those
with a fine education – Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Columbia – and with
careers on the BBC, the Guardian, the New York Times, the Washington Post. These organizations are known as the “liberal media.” They present
themselves as enlightened, progressive tribunes of the moral zeitgeist.
They are anti-racist, pro-feminist and pro-LGBT.
And they love war.
While they speak up for feminism, they support rapacious wars that deny
the rights of countless women, including the right to life.
In 2011, Libya, then a modern state, was destroyedon the pretext
that Muammar Gaddafi was about to commit genocide on his own people.
That was the incessant news; and there was no evidence. It was a lie.
In fact, Britain, Europe and the United States wanted what they like
to call “regime change” in Libya, the biggest oil producer in Africa.
Gaddafi’s influence in the continent and, above all, his independence
were intolerable.
So Gaddafi was murdered with a knife in his rear by fanatics, backed
by America, Britain and France. Hillary Clinton cheered his gruesome
death for the camera, declaring, “We came, we saw, he died!”
The destruction of Libya was a media triumph. As the war drums were beaten, Jonathan Freedland wrote in the Guardian: “Though the risks are very real, the case for intervention remains strong.”
Intervention – what a polite, benign, Guardian word, whose real meaning, for Libya, was death and destruction.
According to its own records, NATO launched 9,700 “strike sorties”
against Libya, of which more than a third were aimed at civilian
targets. They included missiles with uranium warheads. Look at the
photographs of the rubble of Misurata and Sirte, and the mass graves
identified by the Red Cross.
The Unicef report on the children killed
says, “most [of them] under the age of ten.”
As a direct consequence, Sirte became a capital of ISIS.
Ukraine is another media triumph.Respectable liberal newspapers such as the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian,
and mainstream broadcasters such as the BBC, NBC, CBS, CNN have played a
critical role in conditioning their viewers to accept a new and dangerous Cold War. All have misrepresented events in Ukraine as a
malign act by Russia when, in fact, the coup in Ukraine in 2014 was the
work of the United States, aided by Germany and NATO.
This inversion of reality is so pervasive that Washington’s military
intimidation of Russia is not news;it is suppressed behind a
smear-and-scare campaign of the kind I grew up with during the first
Cold War. Once again, the Russkies are coming to get us, led by another
Stalin, whom The Economist depicts as the devil....
The drum-beaters of the Washington Post inciting war with Russia are the very same editorial writers who published the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
To most of us, the American presidential campaign is a media freak
show, in which Donald Trump is the arch villain. But Trump is loathed by
those with power in the United States for reasons that have little to
do with his obnoxious behavior and opinions.
To the invisible government in Washington, the unpredictable Trump is
an obstacle to America’s design for the Twenty-first Century. This is
to maintain the dominance of the United States and to subjugate Russia,
and, if possible, China.
To the militarists in Washington, the real problem with Trump is
that, in his lucid moments, he seems not to want a war with Russia; he
wants to talk with the Russian president, not fight him; he says he
wants to talk with the president of China.
In the first debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump promised not to be
the first to introduce nuclear weapons into a conflict. He said, “I
would certainly not do first strike. Once the nuclear alternative
happens, it’s over.” That was not news.
The CIA wants him beaten. The Pentagon wants him beaten. The media
wants him beaten. Even his own party wants him beaten. He is a threat to
the rulers of the world – unlike Hillary Clinton who has left no doubt
she is prepared to go to war with nuclear-armed Russia and China....
Without a shred of public evidence, Clinton has accused Russia of
supporting Trump and hacking her emails. Released by WikiLeaks, these
emails tell us that what Clinton says in private, in speeches to the
rich and powerful, is the opposite of what she says in public.
That is why silencing and threatening Julian Assange is so important.
As the editor of WikiLeaks, Assange knows the truth. And let me assure
those who are concerned, he is well, and WikiLeaks is operating on all
cylinders.
Today, the greatest build-up of American-led forces since World War
Two is under way – in the Caucasus and Eastern Europe, on the border
with Russia, and in Asia and the Pacific, where China is the target.
Keep that in mind when the presidential election circus reaches its
finale on Nov. 8. If the winner is Clinton, a Greek chorus of witless
commentators will celebrate her coronation as a great step forward for
women. None will mention Clinton’s victims: the women of Syria, the
women of Iraq, the women of Libya. None will mention the civil defense
drills being conducted in Russia. None will recall Edward Bernays’s
“torches of freedom.”...
In 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal prosecutor said of the German media:
“Before every major aggression, they initiated a press campaign
calculated to weaken their victims and to prepare the German people
psychologically for the attack. In the propaganda system,
"President Donald Trump called on thousands of enthusiastic supporters
during a spirited rally Saturday night in Washington Township to work
to get Republicans elected in the mid-term elections. Touting tax reform, low unemployment, tougher trade policy,
reductions in regulations and demanding stronger border security, Trump
delighted the audience who shouted their satisfaction and encouragement
throughout his 80-minute speech....
Approximately 5,500 people were inside the new 118,000-square-foot
sports building when Washington Township Fire officials cut off further
entry, leaving an estimated 5,000 people outside to watch the rally on a
giant television monitor.
Trump halted his speech for about five minutes and called for a
doctor when one person inside suffered a medical issue. Township Fire
Chief Brian Tyrell reported about 10 people needed medical assistance at
the complex at 30 Mile and Powell roads just east of M-53 but none were
serious enough to require transport to a hospital....
On infrastructure, the president unexpectedly promised repairs will be made to the Soo Locks in the Upper Peninsula.
“The Soo Locks are going to hell, you know that, right? We’re going to get them fixed up.”...
The Macomb County Sheriff’s Office reported no problems Saturday resulting in arrests.
Trump’s visit to the township, in northern Macomb County, was his
first to the county since his election victory in November 2016. He
held two campaign rallies in the county in 2016 – one during the
Republican primary campaign and the other, at Freedom Hill Amphitheatre
in Sterling Heights attended by about 20,000 people, just two days
before the November election.
The difference in votes
was 48,348 – more than three times the amount of his statewide,
13,478-vote margin. Trump beat Clinton in 19 or 24 cities and townships
in the county (votes cast by residents in the villages of Armada, New
Haven and Romeo are tabulated with neighboring communities).
Most municipalities in the northern half of Macomb County are
Republican strongholds, and GOP dominance in elected offices down to
township boards.
Before Trump took to the podium, Macomb County Public Works
Commissioner and former Congresswoman Candice Miller was the first
speaker and fired up the partisan crowd, leading the crowd in the first
“make America great again” shout.
Brian Tinnion, one of the partners at Total Sports Complex, said the
first rally attendees began arriving at approximately 9 a.m. By 10 a.m.,
about 500 were in line – six hours before the doors were scheduled to
open to the public. The crowd doubled by noon and continued to swell.
Once people cleared security before entering the sports facility,
the line to reach the portable restrooms outside was approximately 30
minutes.
Rose Ramirez, her husband and their three children drove from
Grand Rapids to attend the rally, said they arrived around 12:30 p.m.
“I just wanted the experience of being here,” she said while
relaxing as the couple’s three kids – ages 15, 12 and 10 – wore new
“American Dreamer” caps purchased at the rally."
"The Associated Press contributed to this report."
Many wore the familiar red baseball caps with white trim
emblazoned with the slogan “Make America Great Again,” as they waited to
get inside the rally at Total Sports Park in Washington Township.
“This turnout says to me that people are happy he’s our president
and that they believe in him,” said Robert Golembiewski of Petoskey,
Mich. “He’s making our country safe, creating better incomes and doing
what’s right for the people.”
Those waiting listened to the music of Kid Rock, Lee Greenwood
and Aerosmith being played over the loudspeakers, but the conversations
centered on Trump and what they said were his victories on Capitol Hill.
Ed and Racheal Schoendorff of Manchester, Mich., gave the president high marks for his time in the White House so far.
“He’s like a rock star -- he’s fulfilling promises he made as a
candidate,” said Arnold Molten of Port Huron. “It’s good to see him,
he’s like an old friend of ours.”
Total Sports Park on Powell Road between 30 Mile and 31 Mile
roads was already packed with several thousand people as even more
waited outside hoping to get in. Others stood in front of a Jumbotron
video screen, where they planned to watch the president speak.
"I think he's doing a great job," says the 61-year-old landscaper.
"A lot of people criticise him, badmouth him, say a lot of bad things about him. But you've got to give the man a chance."
On the river bank, a lyric has been sprayed on a huge, concrete bridge support.
"It took me four days to hitch-hike from Saginaw," it says. "I've gone to look for America."
The
line is from America, a Simon and Garfunkel song about young love,
adventure and optimism. According to a local promoter, Paul Simon wrote it in Saginaw in 1966.
If he came back now, he may not recognise the place.
For decades, Saginaw was a General Motors city. In 1979, the manufacturer employed 26,100 people here.
Now, just one GM facility remains, employing fewer than 500 people (a former GM plant, run by the Chinese firm Nexteer, employs around 5,000 more).
When the jobs went, the people followed. In 1960, almost 100,000 people lived in Saginaw. Now it's fewer than half that.
The population of Saginaw County has also declined, though less sharply.
(He is not alone - in August, a Republican event at a Saginaw pizzeria was cancelled after the business was threatened).
Coombs, though, will not take his sign down.
"One hundred per cent, I'm keeping it up," he says. "You're not going to scare me out of here. That's just not going to happen."
Coombs
gives President Trump a "solid eight" (out of 10) for his first year in
office. "Look at the numbers, look at the GDP," he says.
He's
disappointed the healthcare bill failed, but hopes tax cuts, passed
before Christmas, will benefit his businesses. He also thinks the
president is unfairly criticised.
"Here's the problem I really have with the left," he says.
"Every
president - I mean every president - is easy to make fun of. No matter
what he does, they will be against it, simply because it's Trump.
"They're still sore losers. They're still salty about the situation."
The
49-year-old was born in Alabama to a black mother and Arabic father
[growing up, his father spoke to him only in Arabic]. He moved to
Saginaw with his mother aged three.
"Back then, to have a baby out of wedlock was unacceptable," he says. "They would send you north."
He
spent 20 years as car salesman - "I said I'd do it for two months and I
made ten grand" - but had to stop after a motorcycle accident.
In 2008, he voted for Barack Obama. But he has an admission.
"The most racist thing I ever did," he says.
"I didn't care what his views were. I didn't care. He was black, and that was it. I didn't question it."
"I
lived in Chicago, I know what immigrants do. I understand MS-13 (a
mainly Central American gang), I understand the Latin Kings, I
understand Maniac Disciples.
"I've seen it first hand, and most of them are illegals."
After
telling his family he supported Mr Trump, his sister and mother stopped
speaking to him. Some black people, he says, called him an "Uncle Tom, a
sell-out".
And, like Rick Coombs, he thinks Mr Trump is treated unfairly.
"If
you are the person in a room who everyone hates, you could actually
give someone a million dollars - and they'll complain you didn't wrap it
right."
Saginaw is a sprawling, un-pretty city.
Unloved, unneeded homes
have been razed. Buildings - such as the red-brick railway station,
closed since 1986 - lie derelict. And graffiti is common.
There are, however, signs of life.
The
old Bancroft Hotel is now home to "luxury" apartments, a coffee shop,
and a cocktail bar. Twenty-four brownstone homes have gone up by the
river.
There are boutiques, craft breweries, and murals on street
corners.
One piece of graffiti that used to say "Saginasty" now reads
"Saginawesome".
Jim Hines, a 62-year-old doctor who lives in Saginaw, thinks the city's future is "bright".
Dr
Hines has delivered thousands of babies, owns a medical practice, and
spent four years in the Central African Republic, running two hospitals.
He
also rides a Harley, has flown planes since he was 16, and - if that's
not enough - wants to become the next governor of Michigan.
Dr Hines grew up in a poor family in Warsaw, Indiana - he met his
wife, Martha, in the pizza place where he washed dishes - and is a
long-time Republican.
The party will choose their candidate in August, before the state-wide election in November.
He
says he is an underdog - early polling suggests the same - but he takes
inspiration from another underdog, now sitting in the White House.
"I'm not bashful in my support of Donald Trump," he says.
"Am I going out campaigning saying 'Hey, I'm Trump-like, vote for me?' No.
"But I am an outsider, I am a businessman, I want to put people first."
Dr
Hines, a Christian, is not put off by the president's crudeness -
"It's
not how I would express myself, but I think he speaks from his heart" -
or his tough line on immigration.
"I
think there's a lot of optimism," he says. "There wasn't so much before
Trump. It was like 'Saginaw is kind of dwindling away'."
In
Tony's Original Restaurant - a cosy, old-fashioned diner - a group of Dr
Hines' supporters has come to meet the media (a local TV station is
also here).
They are anti-abortion, low-tax people. Judy Anderson,
a 73-year-old retired nurse, "had to study and think" before voting for
Mr Trump.
But, one year on, she is proud of what he's done - even if she doesn't like his tweets.
"The companies being taxed less are rewarding their employees, left and right," she says. "And that's a positive thing."
On the next table, Sue Lynn, 63, also admires the president. But her language is more colourful; more Trump-like.
"Broadcast, print and online journalists are to beginning using an
automated fact-checking system that quickly alerts them to false claims
made in the press, on TV and in parliament.
It is being developed by researchers at the Full Fact organisation in
London with $500,000 (£380,000) of funding from charitable foundations
backed by two billionaires: the Hungarian-born investor George Soros,
and the Iranian-American eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.
The software, which was demonstrated to the Guardian, scans
statements as they are made by politicians and instantly provides a
verdict on their veracity. An early version relies on a database of
several thousand manual fact-checks, but later versions will
automatically access official data to inform the verdict. The
researchers are co-operating with the Office of National Statistics on
the project.
The Full Fact program will be first tested in the UK but will also be
deployed in South America and Africa, where Kenya’s presidential
election campaign has been beset by fake news such as bogus BBC and CNN news reports using fabricated polls to overstate the prospects of President Uhuru Kenyatta.
In London, Full Fact is working withChequeado, an Argentina-based fact-checking organisation, and Africa Check, which operates in several sub-Saharan countries, including Nigeria and South Africa.
“It is like trying to build an immune system,” says Mevan Babakar,
project manager at Full Fact in London. “As more information goes out
into the world that is wrong, what we don’t have is the means of pushing
back against that.”
The early version of the software scans the subtitles of live news
programmes, broadcasts of parliament, the Hansard parliamentary record,
and articles published by newspapers. It tracks millions of words
sentence by sentence until it identifies a claim that appears to match a
fact-check already in its database.
The Guardian witnessed a real-time demonstration during a health
debate in parliament. Words spoken by the politicians were underlined if
they matched an existing fact-check. For example, the claim that “in
the last six years of the last Labour government, 25,000 hospital beds
were cut” flags a fact-check from the database that states: “Correct,
the number of overnight beds in the English NHS actually fell by
slightly more – about 26,000 – between 2003-04 and 2009-10”.
Another claim, that 10,000 more NHS nursing training places had been
made available is also flagged: “Incorrect. This figure refers to the
government’s ambition for additional places by 2020 on nursing,
midwifery and child health courses”.
The developers want to expand the program so that it carries out its
own fact-checks by using databases of statistics and verified
information. Work is also under way to give Twitter and Facebook users
the chance to fact-check their social media feeds, where the large
majority of the worst fake news has been distributed.
“This is an important investment in the future of fact-checking,”
says Stephen King, the Omidyar Network’s global lead on governance and
citizen engagement. “These tools will expand the reach and impact of
fact-checkers around the world, ensuring citizens are properly informed
and those in positions of power are held accountable.
“If we go straight to the public it will pit us against people
wanting quick answers who won’t be satisfied because we can’t always
make the answers small,” she said. “It is to help the journalist better push back, for example by challenging politicians at a press conference rather than going back to their desk and researching the claims. This
way you can challenge the claim straight away. That is really important
for public debate.”
The fledgling system is not without its problems; sometimes it flags
up a fact-check that isn’t relevant, for example. The challenge for the
programmers is to get the software to understand the fuzzy logic and
idiom used so often in speech.
Neither is Babakar comfortable with the idea that the system
separates the true from the false, especially since “fake” has become
associated with information people dislike rather than which is
objectively false.
“I have a problem with the word truth because that means different
things to different people,” said Babakar. “I think things are correct
or incorrect. A truth can be personal. People may say crime is rising
because it is in their area but the national average may be falling.”
The software’s aim is not to offer people conclusions, but instead provide “the best available evidence”, Babakar says."
Sen.
Rob Portman (R-Ohio) initiated the six-month investigation after
several Guatemalan teens were found in a dilapidated trailer park near
Marion, Ohio, where they were being held captive by traffickers and
forced to work at a local egg farm.
The report concluded that administration “policies and procedures were inadequate to protect the children in the agency’s care.”HHS
spokesman Mark Weber said in a statement that the agency would “review
the committee’s findings carefully and continue to work to ensure the
best care for the children we serve.”
The report was released
ahead of a hearing Thursday before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on
Investigations, which Portman co-chairs with Sen. Claire McCaskill
(D-Mo.). It detailed nearly 30 cases where unaccompanied children had
been trafficked after federal officials released them to sponsors or
where there were “serious trafficking indicators.”
“HHS places
children with individuals about whom it knows relatively little and
without verifying the limited information provided by sponsors about
their alleged relationship with the child,” the report said.
The
Senate investigation began in July after federal prosecutors indicted
six people in connection with the Marion labor-trafficking scheme, which
involved at least eight minors and two adults from the Huehuetenango
region of Guatemala.
One defendant, Aroldo Castillo-Serrano, 33,
used associates to file false applications with the government agency
tasked with caring for the children, and bring them to Ohio, where he
kept them in squalid conditions in a trailer park and forced them to
work 12-hour days, at least six days a week, for little pay.
Castillo-Serrano has pleaded guilty to labor-trafficking charges and
awaits sentencing in the Northern District of Ohio in Toledo.
The
FBI raided the trailer park in December 2014, rescuing the boys, but
the Senate investigation says federal officials could have discovered
the scheme far sooner.
In August 2014, a child-welfare caseworker attempted to visit one of
the children, who had been approved for post-release services because of
reported mental-health problems, according to the report.
The
caseworker went to the address listed for the child, but the person who
answered the door said the child didn’t live there, the report added.
When the caseworker finally found the child’s sponsor, the sponsor
blocked the caseworker from talking to the child.
"VanSickle is a
reporter for the Investigative Reporting Program, a nonprofit news
organization at the University of California at Berkeley."
.........
In the fall of 2013, thousands of unaccompanied children began showing up at the southern border.
Most risked abuse by traffickers and detention by law enforcement to
escape dire problems like gang violence and poverty in Central America.
As
detention centers struggled to keep up with the influx, the Department
of Health and Human Services began placing children in the custody of
sponsors who could help them while their immigration cases were
reviewed. Many children who did not have relatives in the United States
were placed in a system resembling foster care.
Responding
to the report, the Department of Health and Human Services said it had
taken measures to strengthen its system, collecting information to
subject potential sponsors and additional caregivers in a household to
criminal background checks.
Mark
Greenberg, the agency’sacting assistant secretary of the
Administration for Children and Families, said it had bolstered other
screening procedures and increased resources for minors.
“We
are mindful of our responsibilities to these children and are
continually looking for ways to strengthen our safeguards,” he said."
................ Translation/comment: This is called
"overwhelming the system" and gets predictable results for all concerned, ie misery, poverty, and disease.This is exactly what the entire open borders, globalist US political class has been working toward for decades. American citizens, if they must exist, are enslaved for the purpose of forcing continuous low wages globally. A wink is also given to the world's
tyrants and dictators who know they're free to continue their brutal ways, which include forcing
out all the people they don't want because US taxpayers will be forced
to pay their expenses. US elections are meaningless. George Soros runs the US.
.........
"Like most other American high school students, Garret Morgan had it
drummed into him constantly: Go to college. Get a bachelor's degree.
"All
through my life it was, 'if you don't go to college you're going to end
up on the streets,' " Morgan said. "Everybody's so gung-ho about going
to college."
So he tried it for a while. Then he quit and
started training as an ironworker, which is what he is doing on a
weekday morning in a nondescript high-ceilinged building with a concrete
floor in an industrial park near the Seattle-Tacoma International
Airport.
Morgan and several other men and women are dressed in
work boots, hard hats and Carhartt's, clipped to safety harnesses with
heavy wrenches hanging from their belts. They're being timed as they
wrestle 600-pound I-beams into place.
Seattle is a forest of construction cranes, and employers are clamoring for skilled ironworkers. Morgan, who is 20, is already working on a job site when he
isn't at the Pacific Northwest Ironworkers shop. He gets benefits,
including a pension, from employers at the job sites where he is
training. And he is earning $28.36 an hour, or more than $50,000 a year,which is almost certain to steadily increase.
As for his friends from high school, "they're still in
college," he said with a wry grin. "Someday maybe they'll make as much
as me."
But
high school graduates have been so effectively encouraged to get a
bachelor's thathigh-paid jobs requiring shorter and less expensive
training are going unfilled. This affects those students and also poses a
real threat to the economy.
"Parents want success for their
kids," said Mike Clifton, who teaches machining at the Lake Washington
Institute of Technology, about 20 miles from Seattle. "They get stuck on
[four-year bachelor's degrees], and they're not seeing the shortage
there is in tradespeople until they hire a plumber and have to write a
check."
In a new report,
the Washington State Auditor found that good jobs in the skilled trades
are going begging because students are being almost universally steered
to bachelor's degrees.
Among other things, the Washington
auditor recommended that career guidance — including choices that
require less than four years in college — start as early as the seventh
grade.
"There is an emphasis on the four-year university track"
in high schools, said Chris Cortines, who co-authored the report. Yet,
nationwide, three out of 10 high school grads who go to four-year public
universities haven't earned degrees within six years, according to the National Student Clearinghouse.
At four-year private colleges, that number is more than 1 in 5.
"Being
more aware of other types of options may be exactly what they need,"
Cortines said. In spite of a perception "that college is the sole path
for everybody," he said, "when you look at the types of wages that
apprenticeships and other career areas pay and the fact that you do not
pay four years of tuition and you're paid while you learn, these other
paths really need some additional consideration."
There
are already more trade jobs like carpentry, electrical, plumbing,
sheet-metal work and pipe-fitting than Washingtonians to fill them, the state auditor reports. Many pay more than the state's average annual wage of $54,000.
Construction,
along with health care and personal care, will account for one-third of
all new jobs through 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
There will also be a need for new plumbers and new electricians. And,
as politicians debate a massive overhaul of the nation's roads, bridges
and airports, the U.S. Department of Education reports
that there will be 68 percent more job openings in
infrastructure-related fields in the next five years than there are
people training to fill them.
"The economy is definitely
pushing this issue to the forefront," said Amy Morrison Goings,
president of the Lake Washington Institute of Technology, which educates
students in these fields. "There isn't a day that goes by that a
business doesn't contact the college and ask the faculty who's ready to
go to work."
"There's
that perception of the bachelor's degree being the American dream, the
best bang for your buck," said Kate Blosveren Kreamer, deputy executive
director of Advance CTE, an association of state officials who work in
career and technical education. "The challenge is that in many cases
it's become the fallback. People are going to college without a plan,
without a career in mind, because the mindset in high school is just,
'Go to college.' "
It's not that finding a job in the trades, or even manufacturing,
means needing no education after high school. Most regulators and
employers require certificates, certifications or associate degrees. But
those cost less and take less time than earning a bachelor's degree.
Tuition and fees for in-state students to attend a community or
technical college in Washington State, for example, come to less than
half the cost of a four-year public university, the state auditor points out, and less than a tenth of the price of attending a private four-year college.
People
with career and technical educations are also more likely to be
employed than their counterparts with academic credentials, the U.S. Department of Education reports, and significantly more likely to be working in their fields of study.
Young
people don't seem to be getting that message. The proportion of high
school students who earned three or more credits in occupational
education — typically an indication that they're interested in careers
in the skilled trades — has fallen from 1 in 4 in 1990 to 1 in 5 now, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
Washington is not the only state devoting attention to this.
California is spending $200 million
to improve the delivery of career and technical education. Iowa
community colleges and businesses are collaborating to increase the
number of "work-related learning opportunities," including
apprenticeships, job shadowing and internships. Tennessee has made its
technical colleges free.
At
the federal level, there is bipartisan support for making Pell grants
available for short-term job-training courses and not just university
tuition. The Trump administration supports the idea.
A quarter of states last year reduced their own funding for
postsecondary career and technical education, according to the National
Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education.
The branding issue
Money
isn't the only issue, advocates for career and technical education say.
An even bigger challenge is convincing parents that it leads to good
jobs. "They remember 'voc-ed' from what they were in high school, which is
not necessarily what they aspire to for their own kids," Kreamer said.
The
parents "are definitely harder to convince because there is that stigma
of the six-pack-totin' ironworker," said Greg Christiansen, who runs
the ironworkers training program. Added Kairie Pierce, apprenticeship
and college director for the Washington State Labor Council of the
AFL-CIO:
"It sort of has this connotation of being a dirty job. 'It's
hard work — I want something better for my son or daughter.'"
Of the $200 million that California is spending on vocational education, $6 million is going into a campaign
to improve the way people regard it. The Lake Washington Institute of
Technology changed its name from Lake Washington Technical College, said
Goings, its president, to avoid being stereotyped as a vocational
school.
These perceptions fuel the worry that, if students are
urged as early as the seventh grade to consider the trades, then
low-income, first-generation and ethnic and racial minority high school
students will be channeled into blue-collar jobs while wealthier and
white classmates are pushed by their parents to get bachelor's degrees....
Jessica
Bruce followed that path, enrolling in college after high school for
one main reason: because she was recruited to play fast-pitch softball.
"I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life," she
said.
She never earned her degree and now, she's an apprentice
ironworker, making $32.42 an hour, or more than $60,000 a year, while
continuing her training. At 5-foot-2, "I can run with the big boys," she
said, laughing.
As for whether anyone looks down on her for not having a bachelor's degree, Bruce doesn't particularly care.
"The misconception," she said, "is that we don't make as much money." And then she laughed again."
