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President Trump’s Pledge to American Workers October 29, 2019

Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics, Politiocal Philosophy, Uncategorized.
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According to K1FO News President Trump’s agenda is driving an economic resurgence.  The President’s agenda is creating more and more opportunities for American workers.

  • More than 5.3 million jobs were created between President Trump’s election and his second State of the Union Address alone.
  • June 2019 marked the 16th consecutive month that America’s unemployment rate remained at 4 percent or below.
  • In early 2019, wage growth for U.S. workers hit its fastest pace in a decade.

K!FO goes on to say, “This high-energy growth environment presents both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is that companies must find more workers with specific skill sets to fill an increasing number of open jobs. The opportunity is that with more affordable, relevant training, many American workers will now have the chance to move into better jobs that deliver bigger paychecks.”

As another step in his effort to fulfill his pledge to make America great again the President’s National Council for the American Worker was established by President Trump in 2018.  This council soon launched its flagship program Pledge to America’s Workers.  This is a program designed to lead the way in inspiring American entrepreneurs and educators toward the goal of training and equipping people with the 21st Century skills they need to succeed and our economy needs to excel.

By July the program signed on more than 20 companies and business groups.  The leaders of these various enterprises committed to hire or train more than 3.8 million workers over the next five years.  By 2019, just one year later, over 300 companies and organizations have taken the pledge.  Over the next five years this will produce a total to over 12 million new training opportunities for students and workers.

What prompted the President to move in this direction is the well-known skills gap in today’s labor force.  In an America recovering its manufacturing base with a booming construction industry, and a consumer market following the stock market through the roof employers are having a hard time finding qualified people to fill their rapidly rising number of open positions.  There seems to be a “Help Wanted” sign in front of every factory and in the window of every store, restaurant, and office.  After President Obama’s “New Normal” and in the wake of the Trump Bump there are roughly 1.3 open jobs for each unemployed worker.

According to a report by the American Action Forum (AAF) his shortage of qualified workers is projected to cost our economy $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years.  And this isn’t just a problem for one sector of the economy or a select few entrepreneurs.   According to a report by the Association for Talent Development 83% of employers reported difficulty finding workers with the right skills.  This tightening labor market provided fertile ground for President Trump’s initiative.  Some of the largest corporations in America have taken the pledge including Walmart, Microsoft, FedEx, Lockheed Martin, AT&T, the National Retail Federation, and Associated Builders and Contractors.

As Tamar Jacoby, president of Opportunity America, a think tank focused on economic mobility puts it. “It’s true that there’s been a need to really kick some employers in the pants, basically, or politely get them to volunteer to do more. You can’t fix the skills gap; you can’t train workers for jobs unless you involve the people who are going to hire them.”

Reflecting on the tight labor market that has inspired so many employers to join in President Trump’s imitative Tara Sinclair, George Washington University professor of economics said, “Employers might have been reticent before to [train workers] because it’s spending money on something, and employers want to avoid that where they can.”

As reported from several sources some of America’s largest corporations have taken the pledge and have made specific promises to hire and train thousands of Americans to compete in the economy of the future.

Lockheed Martin

Lockheed Martin (LMT) the aerospace giant announced it is investing $5 million in vocational and trade programs and pledged to create 8,000 new jobs for skilled workers over the next five years.

After visiting Lockheed’s facilities Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, advisor and co-chair of the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board said, “Through Lockheed Martin’s Pledge to America’s Workers commitment, and the booming American space industry, we are at the forefront of the changing nature of work, from the use of artificial intelligence to advanced manufacturing.”

Walmart

Walmart operates more than 5,000 stores across the U.S. and Puerto Rico.  A year after joining the pledge, Walmart (WMT), which pledged to provide training for 1 million people over the next five years, is ahead of schedule, having already trained 200,000 people.  Walmart spokesperson Kory Lundberg said, “If you are confident in doing your job, you’re going to be better at it. You’re going to be better able to take care of customers, it’s going to result in a better experience for the worker, it’s going to result in a better experience for the company.”

FedEx

FedEx (FDX) pledged to train 512,000 workers across the country over the next five years.  When he joined the pledge last year, FedEx CEO Frederick Smith, who is a member of the White House’s American Workforce Policy Advisory Board, said, “We are encouraged by the Administration’s commitment to ensuring American workers develop the appropriate skills and have access to the training needed for today’s in-demand jobs and the jobs of the future.”

Hill International Trucks

Hill International Trucks which employs more than 230 workers pledged to hire and train 50 workers over the next five years.  Hill International Trucks’ spokesperson Renee Murphy stated, “I think it’s great that the White House has this initiative, especially in our industry and it’s becoming increasingly challenging to find these skilled labor positions. So the more training and partnerships that we can have out there between businesses and schools, I think the better.”  He went on to say, “The Company is investing $95,000 per technician over the next five years.”

This is just a sampling of what’s been accomplished.  While the nation’s headlines and talking heads are consumed with the propagating a smoke screen for the on-going coup attempt President Trump and his team continue to work tirelessly to Make America Great Again.  The unprecedented accomplishments of America’s blue-collar billionaire may be buried under an avalanche of fake news but no one can hide the renaissance that’s taking place in the lives of working Americans.  And though the denizens of the swamp may think they’re making progress in the attempt to reverse the results of 2016 the landslide of 2020 should re-focus the lens of History.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, Global Studies, and Religion.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com  © 2019 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com   Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens or visit Dr. Owens Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens

 

 

 

 

Give Peace a Chance June 25, 2019

Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics, Politiocal Philosophy, Uncategorized.
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Since the oil embargo of the 1970s we’ve been told by our leaders that energy independence would free us from the never-ending cycle of Mideast wars.  Today after two and a half years of Trump’s “Drill-Baby-Drill” policies we’ve unshackled our vast resources from the climate worshiping Eco-fanatics.  And what is the result?   We’ve not only achieved energy independence we’ve become a net exporter of energy.

Yet today America is still embroiled in several wars in the Mideast.  Our troops are bogged down in the Forever War in Afghanistan.  Everyone in the world knows that sooner or later we’ll leave and the next day the Taliban rolls into Kabul as our puppets fly 747s filled with cash to Switzerland.   We still have troops in Iraq doing who knows what.  Our forces still haven’t left Syria even after the President ordered them to return home.  We provide logistical and moral support for Saudi Arabia’s devastation of Yemen.  And we have major assets of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines stationed in Qatar.

And day-by-day we ratchet up the pressure on Iran.  We’re strangling them with economic sanctions which are themselves acts of war.  We’ve cut them off from exporting oil, the life-blood of their economy, saying that anyone who buys their oil will no longer be able to do business with us.  As the world’s largest economy that shuts off the spigot and chokes the Iranian economy to near asphyxiation levels.

Which brings up the question, how far can you push someone until they push back?   And if they finally push back can we actually call that push back unprovoked aggressive action?  It was our America’s oil embargo against Japan the produced FDR’s unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor.

Using bluster, bluff, and brinksmanship are all good negotiating tactics when it comes to making vast real estate deals.  And they can also be useful in diplomacy but they can also lead to miscalculations written in blood, treasure, and tears.

Osama Bin Laden’s secret strategy was to prod America into following the USSR into bankruptcy through endless unwinnable war in the Mideast.  This succeeded in sinking the presidency of George II and giving us the eight year Obama debacle.  We’re still bleeding and paying as the Forever War drags on.  Trump turned the heat down from a boil to a simmer but we’re still firmly seated on the burner.  Now the Chinese have adopted the death by a thousand cuts strategy leading us to bankrupt ourselves in the Forever Wars of Shia versus Sunni.

And what of the push back provocations nudging us to cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war against a foe four times the size of Iraq with forty-three million more people.

The circumstances of these so-called clear cut provocations are murky at best.  Look at the recent downing of a drone by Iran.  They claimed the drone was in Iranian airspace.  We claimed it was over international waters.  Yet there are no international waters in the Straits of Hormuz.  The accepted territorial water of all countries extends 12 miles from their shore.  The straight is 21 miles wide and thus straddled between the territorial waters of Iran and Oman.  This alone should be enough to make the issue worthy of debate.

As always Pat Buchanan, the Godfather of Paleoconservatism in a recent article summed up the situation perfectly regarding the two disputes we have with Iran; nuclear weapons and supporting terrorism.

Monday, the president tweeted: “The U.S. request for Iran is very simple — No Nuclear Weapons and No Further Sponsoring of Terror!”

But Iran has no nuclear weapons, has never had nuclear weapons, and has never even produced bomb-grade uranium.

According to our own intelligence agencies in 2007 and 2011, Tehran did not even have a nuclear weapons program.

Under the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA, the only way Iran could have a nuclear weapons program would be in secret, outside its known nuclear facilities, all of which are under constant U.N. inspection.

Where is the evidence that any such secret program exists?

And if it does, why does America not tell the world where Iran’s secret nuclear facilities are located and demand immediate inspections?

And …

“No further sponsoring of terror,” Trump says.

But what does that mean?

As the major Shiite power in a Middle East divided between Sunni and Shiite, Iran backs the Houthi rebels in Yemen’s civil war, Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon, Alawite Bashar Assad in Syria, and the Shiite militias in Iraq who helped us stop ISIS’s drive to Baghdad.

Why should we go to war to ensure the energy resources needed by Japan and Europe?  Let them secure their own national interests.

War doesn’t produce prosperity.  It impoverishes those who worship at the altar of Mars.

The unprecedented prosperity flowing from the Trump program of encouraging entrepreneurship and cutting regulations is turning the 2020 election into a choice between Keep America Great and Make America Miserable Again.  A stark choice between capitalist can do-ism and socialist cradle-to-grave do for me-ism.

Peace and prosperity is the formula for four more years regardless of the media megaphone and their progressive lackeys’ witch hunts and state persecutions.

However, a war with body bags arriving and resources evaporating would inevitably birth an anti-war movement trying to recapture the left’s glory days of Vietnam.  The plummeting poll numbers would smell like blood in the water to the well-financed impeach now industry.

Mr. President don’t be lured into a war that will be your war.  It will be the ruin if not the end of your presidency.  How will it benefit Americans?  How will it make America great again?  Pull out of the Mideast.  Use the troops and resources to gain control of our own borders and let the enemies of our enemies devour each other.  Confound the disloyal opposition and the Never-Trumper fellow-travelers with the shimmering success of your policies.

Or as John Lennon said in long years past, “All we are saying is give peace a chance.”

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com  © 2019 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com   Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens or visit Dr. Owens Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens

 

 

 

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