Truss The Process
September 6, 2022
A Call To Farms
Labor Day, a national holiday in the U.S. and Canada since 1894, pays tribute to working men and women. The word “labor” has additional meaning for farm operators, grocers, and, frankly, people who eat food. America’s broken immigration system means farmers can’t find enough laborers, grocers can’t get enough supply to stock their shelves, and people are paying higher food prices.
The H-2A visa program provides a legal means to bring foreign-born workers to the U.S. to perform seasonal farm labor on a temporary basis. Employers in the H-2A program must demonstrate, and the Labor Department must certify, that efforts to recruit U.S. workers weren’t successful. One of the clearest indicators of the scarcity of farm labor is that the number of H-2A positions requested and approved has increased more than fivefold in the past 15 years, from just over 48,000 positions certified in fiscal 2005 to just over 275,000 in fiscal 2020.
From 2014 to 2016, half of the more than 3 million farmworkers lacked legal immigration status – a number undoubtedly underreported. Both the Trump administration’s hostility to migrants and the pandemic exacerbated the current labor supply and resulted in higher prices or empty store shelves for consumers. Food costs are 10% higher than they were this time last year – the highest 12-month increase since May 1979. A 2022 Texas A&M University study found that having more migrant and H-2A workers related to lower inflation, higher average wages, and lower unemployment. The study also found that “more denied petitions for naturalizations are associated with larger consumer prices and higher inflation.”
Farmers are advocating for national immigration reform, which they say could ease labor shortages and lower food prices. The Farm Workforce Modernization Act has passed the House and is pending in the Senate. Farm operators believe the Act, while not without its detractors, will provide them with a stable and reliable workforce by creating a path to citizenship for undocumented agricultural workers and reforming the seasonal farmworker visa program. “At a time when labor shortages are contributing to inflation and high food prices, it’s clear that we need the Senate to pass our Farm Workforce Modernization Act to stabilize the agricultural workforce and protect America’s food supply,” said Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), the House bill’s sponsor. (NBC)
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Truss The Process
- Liz Truss, Britain’s new prime minister, has held six ministerial posts under three prime ministers, including 11 months as foreign minister. She radically changed during her political life, going from being solidly on the left, demanding the end of the monarchy, and fighting to stay in the E.U. to becoming a staunch defender of Brexit who’s tried channeling Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady herself.
- Truss’ supporters say she accepted the outcome of the 2016 referendum and got with the program. Others say she’s a weather vane, pivoting when it suits her advancement. On the plus side, Truss is a reliable NATO ally and Ukraine supporter, talking tough on Russia and Vladimir Putin. She led the charge on sanctioning oligarchs, many of whom had been living the high life in London.
- But she’s also stumbled, like saying at the start of the war she “absolutely” endorsed the idea of Britons going to fight in Ukraine. She’s unpopular in Moscow and also in Brussels, where she’s seen as an agitator and an anti-Europe opportunist who could make matters even worse in the rocky relationship between Britain and the 27-nation bloc. (WaPo, $)
Deal Or No Deal
- On Monday, a Russian court sentenced a former Russian journalist, 32-year-old Ivan Safronov, to 22 years in prison on trumped-up treason charges prosecuted with secret evidence behind closed doors. His lawyer said the hasty verdict would send a chilling effect through Russian journalism and showed that “for good, legal journalism work, you can go to prison for a long time.”
- Safronov, a former defense reporter for the Kommersant and Vedomosti dailies, maintained the case against him came from public data in his articles and alleged ties to foreigners that were not backed up by evidence. Last month, Safronov refused a deal he was offered to serve 12 years in exchange for signing a confession.
- Safronov’s 51-year-old father, also named Ivan, worked for the same paper covering military affairs. The circumstances of his death in March 2007 were suspicious, as he allegedly fell from a fifth-story window in his Moscow apartment building – suspicious given that he lived on the third floor. (WaPo ($), Guardian)
Additional World News
- Rescuers search for survivors after eight die while trying to climb Russian volcano (CNN)
- Southwest China quake leaves 46 dead, triggers landslides (AP)
- South Korea braces for ‘very strong’ typhoon, businesses curb operations (Reuters)
- Israel says ‘high possibility’ its army killed Shireen Abu Akleh (Al Jazeera)
- Chinese cities rush to lockdown in show of loyalty to Xi’s ‘zero-Covid’ strategy (CNN)
- Chilean voters overwhelmingly reject proposed leftist constitution (CNN)
- Canada mass stabbing: What we know about the Saskatchewan attack that left 10 dead and 15 injured (CNN)
“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” – Dalai Lama
What’s Up, Docs?
- U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, appointed to the bench by Donald Trump in 2020, sided with Trump’s legal team and will appoint a special master to sift through nearly 13,000 documents and items the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago on August 8, and identify any that might be protected by attorney-client or executive privilege. Cannon gave the government and Trump’s legal team until September 9 to jointly submit a list of people she could appoint as a special master, who would probably need top-secret security clearance.
- Cannon said the appointment was necessary “to ensure at least the appearance of fairness and integrity.” What’s astounding is that the DOJ already set aside any documents that may be attorney-client privileged, and any executive privilege belongs to the president currently in office.
- Even Bill Barr, Trump’s former head of the DOJ, said Trump had no authority to remove documents belonging to the government when he left office. Officials tried for 16 months to get all the documents back, and were lied to by Trump lawyers who swore in response to a May subpoena that everything had been returned. (WaPo ($), NBC)
Emmy For Your Thoughts
- Barack Obama won an Emmy Award on Saturday to go with his two Grammys. That means he’s halfway to an EGOT – the special category of entertainers who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony. So far, just 17 people have done it.
- Obama won the best narrator Emmy for his work on the Netflix documentary series, “Our Great National Parks.” Obama previously won Grammy Awards for his audiobook reading of two of his memoirs, “The Audacity of Hope” and “A Promised Land.” Michelle Obama won her own Grammy for reading her audiobook in 2020.
- Also receiving Creative Arts Emmys Saturday were Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, David Attenborough, and Lupita Nyong’o. The late Chadwick Boseman won an Emmy for outstanding character voiceover for the Disney+ and Marvel Studios animated show “What If…?” (CBS)
Additional USA News
- US election conspiracies find fertile ground in conferences (AP)
- Las Vegas reporter killed in stabbing outside his home (Axios)
- John Sullivan departs post as U.S. ambassador to Russia (WaPo, $)
- Initial Tests Showed Arsenic in Water at N.Y.C. Housing Complex (NYT, $)
- More than 80 million people are under flood watches today, from Alabama to Maine (CNN)
- Chance of California power outages up as heat wave worsens (ABC)
- Newsom departs from his liberal image with controversial wins at the Capitol (LAT, $)
A Cool Journey
- A 44-year-old Brazilian fisherman who can’t swim managed to survive 11 days without food or water in an upturned freezer after being stranded at sea. Romualdo Macedo Rodrigues was sailing off the coast of French Guiana in early August when his wooden boat started taking on water. A freezer happened to be onboard the rapidly sinking boat and Romualdo climbed into it, hoping it would float.
- Brazilian media reported that Romualdo and his floating freezer traveled 280 miles from where his boat sank before being spotted and pulled from the sea by the crew of another vessel off the coast of Surinam, which borders French Guiana. His dramatic rescue was even captured on video. A skinnier, severely dehydrated, and disoriented Romualdo was given water and soup for the journey back to shore. He had escaped a tragic death, but he couldn’t escape being arrested for not having the correct travel documents, and spending 16 days in a Paramaribo jail. (CNN, The Mirror)
Additional Reads
- The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse (Guardian)
- 51-year-old French woman in critical condition following shark bite incident in Hawaii (CNN)
- Why do we celebrate Labor Day? So Grover Cleveland could own the left. (WaPo, $)
- CNN Exclusive: Scientists make major breakthrough in race to save Caribbean coral (CNN)
- Kiwi Farms: Cloudflare blocks controversial online forum citing ‘imminent threats to human life’ (CNN)
- The Brooklyn deli owner winning TikTok’s heart – one ‘Ocky’ recipe at a time (Guardian)
- Pope Francis beatifies his predecessor John Paul I (Guardian)