The latest 1,305-page draft House appropriations bill for 2018 uses a bureaucratic trick on page 732 to help employers cut wages for foreign H-2B seasonal workers — and indirectly, also cut wages for American workers.

“Republicans in Congress still haven’t got the message that voters sent last November,” said Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations for NumbersUSA. She continued:

Americans elected President Trump because they are tired of the elites in Washington being more concerned with big-business profits than with regular American workers being able to make a living wage.  Wages [for Americans] in the top H-2B occupations [landscaping and hospitality] have been stagnant or declining for years, and this bill will make them worse.

Under current rules, employers can only apply for H-2B seasonal workers if they cannot hire Americans for the jobs, and they must promise to pay H-2B workers American-level wages when they ask the Department of Labor for H-2B visas.

The new language would help employers minimize wages for H-2B workers by allowing them to cite the results of skewed “private wage surveys” of local wages. The results of the surveys would be cited in the H-2B request instead of the actual “prevailing wage” rates for local Americans working the free market for labor.

This rule, if adopted, would also hit Americans because employers use their resident population of roughly 125,000 H-2B workers to deflate any bidding war for American seasonal workers. The rule would also hurt Americans because wages for each company’s full-time American staff are informally tied to the wages paid to the seasonal workers.

According to the bill text:

In the determination of prevailing wage for the purposes of the H–2B program, the Secretary shall accept private wage surveys even in instances where Occupational Employment Statistics survey data are available unless the Secretary [of Labor] determines that the methodology and data in the provided survey are not statistically supported.

“Basically, an employer can create a biased wage survey, base the [promised] wage for his H-2B workers on it, and submit the application to the Department of Labor,” said Jenks. “Unless the labor department analyzes every employer’s private wage survey to see if it is statistically valid (which it won’t), the employers can effectively lower wages.”

The process feeds back on itself because lower-H-2B wages reduce market-rate wages for Americans, so cutting the real “prevailing wage,” Jenks said. Also, when companies use H-2B workers to hold down prevailing wages, fewer Americans apply for the jobs — so helping companies claim they can’t find Americans to do the work. “Employers have been using H-2B workers to lower wages industry-wide for years — this lets them do it faster.”

The appropriations committee is chaired by New Jersey GOP Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen.

The legislation also breaks a bureaucratic link, dubbed, “corresponding employment,” which requires employers to pay their American employees the same wages as H-2B workers.

The bill also kills off the “three quarters” rule which forces employers to pay their H-2B workers as if they worked 75 percent of the time. “The three-quarters rule is there because we’re talking about seasonal jobs,” said Jenks.  “So, for example, if a resort brings in a bunch of H-2Bs to clean rooms in the summer, but the rooms aren’t all full all the time for whatever reason, the employer still has to pay the H-2Bs something.”

Congress is being pressured by employers to loosen and expand the H-2B program because President Donald Trump was elected on a campaign promising to end the pro-foreigner policies set by former President Barack Obama. In the last few months, Trump’s deputies have resisted demands by lobbyists and Congress for importing more foreign workers. The process was made clear by a recent Detroit News article about employers hiring H-2B for resort work on Mackinac Island, in Michigan.

… the [policy] shift hurt Mackinac Island, which has depended on foreign workers to fill summer jobs for decades. Businesses need more workers than can be attracted from the fewer than 500 people living on the island and 11,000 residents of surrounding Mackinac County.

The result has meant overtime or no days off for some existing workers and higher prices for vacationers. “It’s been a nightmare,” said Joe Lieghio, whose family and investors own eight restaurants and 28 hotels in Mackinaw City. “They take the jobs that the Americans don’t want.”

Lieghio’s hotels and restaurants this year got 160 foreign employees, or about 60 percent of the H-2B workers they normally employ.

Like many other establishment reporters and outlets, reporter Michael Gerstein did not press the Mackinac employers about their policy of not offering higher wages raises and other benefits to attract young and old Americans who are now working elsewhere in the state.

In addition, Trump’s Department of Justice has fined a company for hiring H-2B instead of Americans,  and Labor Department officials are reportedly asking companies to justify their claims that they need to import H-2B workers.

The H-2B appropriations legislation is overseen by House Speaker Paul Ryan, who has used his power in 2015 and 2017 to dramatically increase the annual supply of new H-2B workers imported by companies and by the labor brokers which rent the H-2B workers to other companies. For example, he and his business-friendly deputies pushed John Kelly, then the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to print up an additional 15,000 H-2B visas in 2017.

Many GOP and Democratic politicians pushed back against the wage-reducing program.

In May, Kelly told a House appropriations committee:

One of the things, and I have my working class root background that keeps reminding me that some of these individuals —not necessarily in Alaska — but many, many of these individuals are victimized when they come up here, in terms of what they’re paid and all the rest of it, so we’re working with Labor, Department of Labor, to come up with an answer to this, but we really do need a long-term solution, so we’ll work with the Senate and with Congress, within the industry, this year, and again, I’ll have my staff when they return from Labor and we get some protocols in place, we’ll likely increase the numbers for this year, perhaps not by the entire number that I’m authorized, but we really do need, I’m really looking forward to working with you Senator, and the whole Congress, to get a longer-term solution to this.

Read more about the H-2B program here.

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton said on Monday that “staff changes at the White House” have made it impossible for him to see President Donald Trump to present his plan for withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal.

Bolton published his five-page plan in its entirety at National Review, offering it as what he described as a “public service,” because he can no longer secure a meeting with the president.

“Although he was once kind enough to tell me ‘come in and see me anytime,’ those days are now over,” Bolton lamented.

According to Bolton’s introduction, he was asked by former White House strategist and Breitbart News Executive Editor Stephen K. Bannon to draw up a “game plan” for exiting from the Iran deal in late July. Bannon made this request because President Trump was unable to obtain such a game plan from his advisers, despite repeatedly stating that he wanted one.

Bolton states that producing a plan to “exit Obama’s failed nuclear deal” was “quite easy,” and wonders exactly who is in control of Iran policy in the Trump White House since he and Bannon can’t seem to get a paper President Trump desperately wants to read onto his desk.

“If the president is never to see this option, so be it. But let it never be said that the option didn’t exist,” he writes.

The plan published by Bolton is an outline that could be “readily expanded to a comprehensive, hundred page playbook if the Administration were to decide to leave the Iran agreement.”

The document describes the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA, as a “threat to U.S. national security interests, growing more serious by the day.”

Bolton hammers “the JCPOA’s vague and ambiguous wording; its manifest imbalance in Iran’s direction; Iran’s significant violations; and its continued, indeed, increasingly, unacceptable conduct at the strategic level internationally” to argue that the deal is not in America’s interests, but acknowledges that withdrawal must be done carefully to satisfy the terms laid out in the document.

Among the steps he advises taking are declassifying U.S. intelligence that would highlight “Iran’s unacceptable behavior around the world,” convincing the international community that the deal is a liability to their security interests as well, and outlining the worst mistakes made by the Obama administration when the deal was negotiated—mistakes so serious that, as Bolton points out, Obama was afraid to properly submit his deal for ratification to the Senate as a treaty.

Bolton recommends looping North Korea into the discussion by outlining its ties to Iran. He advises a “greatly expanded diplomatic campaign” in Europe and the Middle East following Trump’s announcement that the JCPOA is null and void, which sounds like it would include abundant reminders to Middle Eastern nations that Iran is their active and determined enemy.

A white paper of unassailable thoroughness and integrity would also be prepared to justify American withdrawal from the JCPOA. Bolton recommends thoroughly documenting the shadowy activities of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and exposing the seedy “underbelly” of its business activities, especially its ties to North Korea. That would make for a very thick white paper because the Revolutionary Guard is up to a great deal of no good. One can see why Bolton compares expanding his five-page outline into 100 pages or more to brewing a cup of instant coffee.

The Bolton plan emphasizes rebuilding the “counter-proliferation coalition” that was “squandered by the previous Administration,” by getting the old band of European and Persian Gulf allies plus Israel back together for another round of sanctions on Iran. Bolton recommends making a courtesy call to Russia and China, but clearly does not expect them to be on board. This could leave the counter-proliferation coalition in the same position it holds with respect to North Korea, where tough sanctions are easily circumvented by a few powerful patrons of an outlaw nation, although Russia and China might be hard-pressed to replace what Iran would lose from new U.S. and European sanctions.

Among the screws Bolton recommends putting to Iran are ending U.S. visas, denying Iranian aircraft and ships landing and docking rights, supporting the democratic opposition to the theocracy, and announcing American support for Kurdish nationalists, as well as other oppressed minority groups in Iran. Supporting the Kurds would keep Turkey from signing on to Bolton’s plan, but since U.S. troops were just obliged to exchange fire with Turkish-supported rebels in Syria, keeping Turkey happy is growing more difficult anyway.

Taken in sum, Bolton’s recommendations would shake up the entire diplomatic order created by the previous administration, decisively ending Obama’s bizarre pivot to Iran and drawing some very solid lines in the Middle East. That probably won’t sit well with Obama holdovers in the Trump administration. Unfortunately, the opinion of Obama holdovers appears to matter far more than President Trump’s voters expected.

That the totalitarian left has invaded the U.S. Congress should be as simple to see as black and white as the sore-loser Democrats have whipped out Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s playbook in the Trump era.

Like when the mass-murdering Russian tyrant was consolidating power and purging enemies with false charges, secret police, violent goons and most of all show trials, the Democrats continue to mimic the communist despot who seems to be an inspiration to the majority of them, especially in the House of Representatives.

Led by chief inquisitor Adam Schiff, the Dems have convened kangaroo court tribunals over allegations that President Trump and his associates colluded with the Kremlin to bend Hillary over and put the boots to her last November.

Despite the lack of evidence – which never bothered Stalin either – the calls for investigations continue and the latest one is over Trump’s pardon of aging patriot and former Maricopa County, AZ sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Never mind that the POTUS has the unlimited ability to grant pardons (see: Bill Clinton and Marc Rich) but the Democrats are fanatics who have no respect for the rule of law and even less for the U.S. Constitution.

Dems demand hearing over Trump’s pardon of Sheriff Joe Arpaio https://t.co/cFu8BYiVb6 http://pic.twitter.com/wbTVNVf7vW

— The Hill (@thehill) August 30, 2017

According to The Hill “House Dems call for hearing on Trump’s Arpaio pardon”:

House Democrats are pushing for Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) to call an oversight hearing of President Trump’s controversial pardon of former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

In a letter signed by ranking member Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and 16 other members, Democrats argued that “although the President has wide constitutional authority to issue pardons, there is also ample precedent for our Committee to review pardons as controversial as this one.”

Trump issued the pardon late last Friday as Hurricane Harvey moved toward the Texas Gulf Coast. Democrats slammed Trump for announcing the pardon as a then-Category 4 storm approached the U.S.

Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt earlier this year for ignoring a judicial order that required him to end the practice of detaining racially profiled individuals for presumed immigration violations.

The former sheriff was set for sentencing on Oct. 5 and was facing a maximum penalty of six months in jail. Democrats and civil rights organizations slammed Trump’s pardon of the former law enforcement official, calling Arpaio’s policing policies racist.

“The pardon sends an unequivocal message that institutionalized racial profiling as practiced by Sheriff Arpaio is acceptable,” House Democrats wrote in their letter this week.

“The pardon is disrespectful to the rule of law in general and to the federal courts in particular; and the President issued the pardon in complete absence of any advisory role by the Department of Justice,” it added.

?CONYERS & HOUSE JUDICIARY DEMS URGE @REPGOODLATTE TO TAKE UP #TRUMP’S PARDON OF SHERIFF JOE #ARPAIO.?

1/ http://pic.twitter.com/UENwh8cy1W

— House Judiciary Dems (@HouseJudDems) August 30, 2017

But of course, it would be the batty John Conyers behind this latest abuse of power.

For God’s sake, Conyers is 88 FREAKING YEARS OLD! And like the other useless septuagenarians and octogenarians who belong in nursing homes instead of in Congress – BOTH parties are guilty – he should have long ago been put out to pasture.

One BIG reason why things are so screwed up today – the lack of TERM LIMITS.

This would be a winning issue for Trump if he would just be able to get his mind wrapped around it.

Calling for a Constitutional amendment would be a massive hit with the public who are sick of these worthless bloodsuckers who are able to spend decades feeding on taxpayers like leeches.

Most of them seem to be Democrats too and like Conyers, he’s still mired in the 1960’s battle for civil rights even after the United States had a two-term black president.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) suggested that President Donald Trump pardoned former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Friday because Trump is a part of the KKK.

“I’m not surprised Trump pardoned racial profiler Arpaio,” she tweeted. “White Nationalists, KKK, & Duke celebrated Trump’s election b/c he is one of them!”

I’m not surprised Trump pardoned racial profiler Arpaio. White Nationalists, KKK, & Duke celebrated Trump’s election b/c he is one of them!

— Maxine Waters (@RepMaxineWaters) August 26, 2017

After Charlottesville, Waters called the White House the “white supremacists’ house.”

She has also been leading the charge to impeach Trump, saying that she is “not running for anything except the impeachment of Trump,” revealing she and other Democrats are “organizing” to bring Trump down, and leading crowds in “impeach 45” chants