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Unexpected!

Corporate Fuckery

Yeah, I bet nobody saw this coming:

Walmart confirmed this week that it had paused hiring employees with H-1B visas in the wake of President Donald Trump’s reforms to the program.

“Walmart is committed to hiring and investing in the best talent to serve our customers, while remaining thoughtful about our H-1B hiring approach,” the company confirmed to multiple outlets.

I wonder why… oh yeah:

Trump imposed a $100,000 fee on H-1B applications in September, saying the program “created to bring temporary workers into the United States to perform additive, high-skilled functions, but it has been deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor.”

But fear not, Walmart:

Without an extension, the restriction will be lifted 12 months after the effective date of the proclamation, which is September 21, 2025.

…which means that Walmart will start re-importing their  slave labor  H-1B workers on September 22, 2026.

Anyone care to bet against this happening?  No?

Gosh, such cynicism.

Thursday Landscapes

Travels

In last week’s post about breakfast additives, Mrs. TrueBrit made the following comment:

One full English breakfast from the Farm Shop, Boscastle (you know where I mean, Kim).  One large mug of proper Cornish Tea. Done.

Just to let everyone else in on the joke, here’s the aforementioned Farm Shop & Cafe:

And down below in the valley, Boscastle itself:

…where Mr. and Mrs. TrueBrit and I once spent a quiet, intimate weekend together, so to speak.

Nazzo Fast, Guido

Foreign Affairs, Politics, Subsidies

I’m not so sure that this is a good idea.

President Donald Trump told reporters on Sunday that his administration is considering importing beef from Argentina to lower its price at home and help Argentina stabilize its struggling economy, which he described as being in critical condition.

Dear  King  God-Emperor Donald:  Those are both laudable goals, i.e. to help a loyal ally and simultaneously help U.S. consumers who are being flattened by stratospherically-high beef prices at home.

However, I can’t help but think that you should also consider trying to ease the crushing burden of federal regulations that beef farmers — actually, all farmers — have to deal with, regulations that are a legacy of the Leviathan State you’ve inherited.  That will lower their cost of production, and should make beef less expensive.

Lowering beef prices through imports will simply make our beef farming less profitable — not that it’s all that profitable to begin with — and frankly, I care more about our farmers than about the Argies.

After all, it’s Make America Great Again, not Make Argentina Great Again.  With all due respect to Señor Presidente Milei, he has to deal with problems of his country’s own making, just as we have to beat back the Commies Over Here.  We can and should help him, but not at our own expense.

Just a thought.

Nazzo Fast, Guido (Part 2)

Foreign Affairs

I also have reservations about this one.

President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed a rare earths and critical minerals deal Monday at the White House.

On the surface of it, this is a Good Thing in that it very much loosens the stranglehold that the fucking ChiComs have on rare earth production, which they have signaled as a boycott threat in dealing with the U.S.

However, I note with some displeasure the comment also made after the signing:

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum praised the deal.

“Critical mineral independence is essential to our national security, and thanks to @POTUS, America is finally prioritizing the resources essential to our defense, technology, and energy sectors!”

That statement is quite true… but there are a couple of home truths we have to deal with here.

The first is that when it comes to rare earth reserves, the United States has the largest such in the entire world, much larger than the next two or three countries combined.

The second home truth is that while we have all the rare earth minerals we need, we are prevented from producing it because of the raft of ecological and NIMBY regulations and barriers hamstringing its mining.

So it’s all very well to sign agreements with countries like Australia, but that’s not actually “mineral independence”, is it?  Lest anyone forget, the Australia of today is far from the Australia of, say, post WWII.  Now their government is a bunch of frigging Commies — politically speaking, OzPM Albanese is at about the same level as Nancy fucking Pelosi, their diplomats are just as bad — and I don’t trust Commies of any stripe, furriners especially.

Of course, I mean no disrespect to my several Oz Readers, because judging from the tone and temper of their many emails to me, I gather that they (and many other Strylians) have an even deeper loathing for their Lefty government types than I do.  But these politicians, lest we forget, have nevertheless been elected by the populace, so my Oz readers are in the distinct minority.

From a global realpolitik  perspective, of course we should strengthen our ties with nations like Australia who are threatened by ChiCom expansion plans.  But let’s also tread carefully all the same, because in the end, Commies are Commies and there’s no telling how they may behave in future.

Nazzo Fast, Guido (Part 3)

Foreign Affairs, Military, Trumpism

The problem with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky) is that he’s a firm believer in this Constitution Nostra.  In a way, he’s like the Constitution Goblin that sits on our shoulder whispering, “Show me where in the Constitution it says you can do that”.

As he does now.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) claimed President Donald Trump’s military strikes against suspected drug boats were not legal.

Host Kristen Welker said, “President Trump has authorized military strikes against suspected drug boats in the Caribbean, as you know, so far more than 20 people, senator, have been killed in six different strikes. Do you believe that these strikes against these suspected drug boats are legal?”

Paul said, “No, they go against all of our tradition. When you kill someone if you’re not in war, and not in a declared war you really need to know someone’s name, at least. You have to accuse them of something and you have to present evidence. All of these people have been blown up without us knowing their name and without evidence of a crime. For decades and if not centuries when you stop people at sea in international waters or in your own waters you announce that you’re going to board the ship and you’re looking for contraband, smuggling or drugs. This happens every day off of Miami, but we know from Coast Guard statistics that about 25% of the time the Coast Guard boards a ship there are no drugs. So if our policy now is to blow up every ship we suspect or accuse of drug running, that would be a bizarre world in which 25% of the people might be innocent.”

And I agree with him.

In the first place, these are not Venezuelan Navy ships that our boys are sending off to that Big Drydock In The Sky;  they’re privately-owned.  And yes, they may have been sponsored by that godless Commie VenPres Maduro, but we don’t really know that, do we?

Me, I’d rather have the Navy board a ship when intercepted, and if they find evidence of drugs — like, sacks of cocaine powder in the hold — they should thank the ship’s crew politely, get off the ship… and then blow it the shit out of the water.

I don’t agree with this part of ol’ Rand’s little diatribe, though:

“The other thing about these speed boats is they’re 2,000 miles away from us. If they have drugs they’re probably peddling drugs to one of the islands of Trinidad or Tobago off Venezuela.”

Don’t care where the destination of the drugs may be:  la coca  is illegal in pretty much every country on earth — oh, and by the way, just because the drugs may be headed for Trinidad or Tobago, that doesn’t mean that those islands are their final destination:  they might just be a stop over, en route to the U.S. (and probably are, being just part of the distribution network).

I also suspect that the “25%” of the time statistic is because the drug runners see the USN or USCG ships coming, and dump the contraband overboard — which is fine because whatever, the drugs aren’t going to reach their destination.

I know why The Donald is doing this:  it’s to create a negative incentive for drug smuggling, a way to persuade these assholes to find another way to earn a living.  It might work;  but it’s not legal.

And we’re not (yet) at war with Venezuela, last time I looked, and given the craven nature of Congress as it stands right now, I doubt very much whether they’d give the go-ahead to nuke Caracas, tempting though that prospect might be.

It’s a tough problem, but I’m not sure that bombing ships out in the middle of the ocean is the correct one.  Rand Paul doesn’t;  and I think in this case, he has the right of it.

I am prepared to hear opinions to the contrary, of course.