04/10/17

Jobs Data Disappointed…Earnings Season Commences…Are Markets Becoming Nervous Over Rising Geopolitical Tensions?

By: Kent Engelke | Capitol Securities

The March jobs data disappointed even as the jobless rate dropped to the lowest level in almost a decade. Creation of non-farm and private sector jobs greatly missed its mark and the wage gains slowed. Like most, I thought the data would contain an upside surprise given the strength of the ADP data. The LPR matched expectations of 63%.

Some are blaming March’s winter storm that dumped a lot of snow over the northeast during the reference period. Others are pointing to the return of more seasonable temperatures after an unusually warm February that may have skewed earlier data.

At this juncture, the report does little to alter monetary expectations. What about profit and growth expectations?

First quarter earnings season commences this week. According to Bloomberg, there are only 83 companies that have published profit guidance of any variety, the least at this time of year since Bloomberg began compiling the data in 1999.

The number of firms reflects a decade-long trend away from guidance and the current quarter is the sharpest on record. Guidance is down 35% from a year ago and tails an average of 150 at this time in the past five years according to Bloomberg.

The general rule of thumb is bad news gets announced early rather than later, thus suggesting nothing has significantly changed since the fourth quarter and the trend is improving.

Many times I have commented about earnings estimates, as to how they have been dumbed down, partially the result of Sarbanes Oxley. I have also opined that such an environment creates an unbalanced atmosphere, defined as all are expecting greater than expected results and if such results do not occur, volatility may increase.

Volatility, since March 1st, has been virtually nonexistent. Bloomberg further states the S & P 500 has been confined to a narrow 55 point band, the lowest realized volatility for this period since 1965.

I will argue however, the volatility within the sectors of the S & P 500 has been intense as the Trump trade has all but been unwound in favor of yesterday’s must own mega capitalized growth issues.

Changing topics, what will be the ramifications of the Syrian missile strike in response to the chemical weapons attack? If all recall, under the Obama administration, an agreement was made in 2013 that Russia would chemically disarm Syria. The global response has been what most would have expected. Will Syria continue to be a geopolitical non-event or evolve into something of significance?

It is my firsthand experience that the event that becomes significant is one that no one had remotely thought was going to occur.

Commenting upon Friday’s market activity, there was little reaction to the employment data, the Syrian reprisal or the meeting between Trump and his Chinese counterpart.

The economic calendar has several inflationary and sentiment data points as well as retail sales statistics. Moreover, equity markets are closed Friday for Good Friday. Will the data influence inflationary and growth assumptions?

Last night foreign markets were down. London was down 0.14%, Paris was down 0.55% and Frankfurt was down 0.19%. China was down 0.52%, Japan was up 0.71% and Hang Sang was down 0.02%.

The Dow should open nervously unchanged on the escalation of global tensions. The 10-year is unchanged at 2.39%.

04/7/17

JOBS DATA AT 8:30 AM

By: Kent Engelke | Capitol Securities

At 8:30 am, March’s employment data will be released. Even though last week’s weekly jobless claims is not in the reference period, claims fell to a five week low and had the largest decline since April 2015. Moreover claims are hovering at levels last experienced in the early 1970s.

As with past BLS reports, I will focus on three components; the labor participation rate (LPR), hours worked and increased average hourly earnings.

There is a disconnect between the LPR and weekly jobless claims as each are suggesting different conclusions. The LPR is around lows last experienced in the mid-1970s, thus suggesting considerable slack while jobless claims is suggesting considerable tightness. I will argue there is considerable slackness given anemic wage gains and hours worked.

With the above written, however, I believe the labor report will be the catalyst that enables a 3% growth rate, job growth in small and medium sized businesses. As noted many times, 90% of the job growth from 1996-2007 was from companies employing less than 400 people.

Analysts are expecting a 180k and 170k increase in non-farm and private sector payrolls, respectively, a 4.7% unemployment rate, a 0.2% increase in average hourly earnings, a 34.4 hour work week and a 63.0% LPR.

Today is also the conclusion of the two day meeting between President Trump and his Chinese counterpart. Will there be any headline making statements?

Commenting upon yesterday’s market action, equities ended quietly higher while Treasuries slipped on the Fed’s intention to shrink its balance sheet. Oil ended at a monthly high. At the end of trading there were headlines about possible US reprisals to North Korea and Syria. Will escalating geopolitical tensions begin to impact trading?

Last night the foreign markets were mixed. London was up 0.20%, Paris was up 0.1% and Frankfurt was down 0.29%. China was up 0.17%, Japan was up 0.36% and Hang Sang was down 0.03%.

The Dow should open flat, but this could change radically given the significance of the 8:30 am data. Futures rebounded following the US cruise missile strike on Syria. The 10-year is up 7/32 to yield 2.32%. Crude is up about 1%.

04/6/17

WILL FRIDAY’S LABOR REPORT SURPRISE ON THE UPSIDE?

By: Kent Engelke | Capitol Securities

Equities advanced led by shares of financial companies and energy. The catalyst was the ADP Private Sector Employment Survey which greatly exceeded expectations. Data points of considerable significance include job growth for good producing industries, which include manufacturers and builders, have just had their strongest two months since 2002. Job gains for medium and small sized companies rose at the greatest pace since June.

Many times I have commented the correlation between the ADP and BLS data has declined, but the large upside surprise increases the likelihood that Friday’s estimates for the BLS statistics are perhaps low.

The ISM Non-Manufacturing Index however posted a nominally disappointing statistic, easing to the lowest level in five months. This data was largely ignored focusing instead on the bullishness of the ADP statistics.

I believe that if tomorrow’s BLS data exceeds expectations by the same amount as ADP, there will be first quarter growth estimates with a “3” handle.

Yesterday was the release of the Minutes from the March 15th FOMC meeting. In my view, much had already been disseminated given initially the general lack of market reaction.

As inferred, the last 60 minutes of trading, the Dow retraced about a 150-point gain only to close lower by 40 points. The S & P 500 declined about 0.60%. According to Bloomberg, it was the largest one day reversal in 14 months.

Some are speculating the reversal was the result of Minutes stating that equity prices are “quite high,” while others suggest it was the result of Paul Ryan commenting “tax reform could take longer than health overhaul.”

Regardless of the reason, I believe yesterday’s reversal was a direct result of the massive influence that ETFs and algorithmic trading has upon the markets where according to the SEC, 90% of the volume is the result of such activity.

What I found interesting was the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) appointed its first Chief Market Intelligence Officer who will report directly to the CFTC’s chairman.

This new position is designed to “understand, analyze and communicate current and emerging derivatives markets dynamics, developments and trends — such as the impact of new technologies and trading methodologies upon the markets to ensure market manipulation including spoofing and unbalanced trading does not occur.”

As I noted many times, about 15 months ago, an SEC commissioner stated “because of the change in trading mechanics an unbalanced playing field may have emerged, benefiting only a few.”

Generally speaking, I am against greater regulation, but in today’s new trading era, I do believe there are abuses where activity is not justified by the underlying macroeconomic or geopolitical conditions, where security analysis and macroeconomic thesis is all but disregarded for the sake of the cheapest execution.

What will happen today? President Trump will meet his Chinese counterpart today for a two day meeting. Will there be any provocative headlines? Also released today is the Challenger Job Cuts survey. This is a third tier indicator, but at times has been of some significance.

Last night the foreign markets were down. London was down 0.33%, Paris was up 0.26% and Frankfurt was down 0.15%. China was up 0.33%, Japan was down 1.40% and Hang Sang was down 0.52%.

The Dow should open quietly higher amid the Fed’s stated but well known intent of shrinking its balance sheet amid policy makers’ concerns that stocks have gotten expensive. The 10-year is off 5/32 to yield 2.36%.

03/25/17

Brilliance in the Workplace: Take the ‘Snowflake Test’ – Trigger Warning for Progressives… [VIDEO]

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton | Right Wing News

This is one marketing firm that I would definitely hire. The Silent Partner Marketing firm, headed by Kyle Reyes, has put out an uber viral ‘Snowflake Test’. And he’s got thousands of applicants lining up asking for a job and they don’t even know what they do probably. It’s just that impressive. If you are easily triggered or whining is a pastime with you, I suggest looking elsewhere for employment. This job is not for you. If you love the Second Amendment, feel that what you get, you earn and you are grounded in your faith and patriotism, then belly up to the marketing bar.

College strikes me as a supreme waste of time anymore. Yep, I have degrees, but if I had it all to do again, I would do what my son did and immediately strike out on my own. I did that after college and never looked back. But if I had to work for someone else, Reyes would be at the top of my list. Reyes posted the full test on his Facebook page earlier this week and people can’t get enough of it. Just goes to show that they are sick of liberal, progressive bull crap.

From the Independent Review Journal:

Kyle Reyes, CEO of The Silent Partner Marketing, a marketing consulting firm in Manchester, Connecticut, was tired of interviewing “whiney, complaining” job applicants. So he did what any ingenious CEO would do.

Reyes developed a “snowflake test” designed to weed them out.

The CEO told Fox Business Network anchor Stuart Varney that after he released a video taking on “whiney, complaining” college students, he was swamped with job applications, so he came up with the screening tool.

“A snowflake is somebody who is going to whine and complain and come to the table with nothing but an entitled attitude and an inability to back their perspective.

We used it to sort of weed out the people who were inundating us with resumes and didn’t even know what we do for work.”

Sooner or later sanity was bound to win in the workplace. And this is it. I would love to utilize this test on subcontractors I use. It’s epic. The test is the best I have ever seen out there. Take time to read it and see how you would answer it. It’s enlightening. Reyes says that 60% of applicants have been eliminated through the test. And the ones he eventually chooses will be worth their weight in gold.

Reyes told Lifezette, he’s “just here to make marketing great again!” I like this guy. Heh. This is someone I could call a friend.

03/13/17

IN MY VIEW IT IS ALL ABOUT THE LABOR PARTICIPATION RATE

By: Kent Engelke | Capitol Securities

Employers added jobs at an above average pace for a second month. The 235,000 increase followed a 238,000 rise in January that was more than previously estimated and was the best back to back rise since July.

Some are discounting the rise because of the unseasonably warm weather, but the data does coincide with a surge in economic optimism following Trump’s victory.

The labor participation rate (LPR), which I believe is a good proxy of the strength of the jobs market, also rose, rising to 63.0%, the highest participation rate since December 2013. The LPR was 62.6% in November.

This data all but ensures the Federal Reserve will increase rates next week.

Commenting further on the LPR, the LPR was around 66.1% in 2008. It was on a downward trend since reaching a 45-year nadir of 62.5% in November 2015 and has remained in this zone since then. A strong case can be made that the vast majority of the drop in the unemployment rate from 10% to 4.7% was the result of the plunging LPR as there are less workers in the workforce, thus a lower unemployment rate. It is estimated that if the LPR was around 2008 levels, the unemployment rate would be about 9%.

The prime age participation rate (people aged 25-54) rose to 81.7% up from 80.6% in September 2015, which matched the lowest since 1984.

Has the trend reversed itself? The answer to this question is pivotal regarding monetary policy and interest rates and perhaps equity performance.

A case can be made that wage gains may remain modest (as was the case in both January and February’s data) because of this huge pool of labor which will permit the FOMC to maintain more of an accommodative policy than the headline data may otherwise suggest.

As noted many times and as indicative by every business and consumer sentiment survey, optimism is surging because of the election. Is this change in sentiment — aka the unleashing of animal spirits that have been caged since 2008 — going to translate into increased activity and capital formation that permits greater growth than anticipated?

If annual growth accelerates to over 3% for the first time in 10 years, the Trump administration may be viewed in the same light as General Patton, the abrasive general who was instrumental in defeating Hitler.

To place this anemic growth into perspective, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, this is the first time since record keeping commenced in 1929 that the economy did not grow at 3% or higher for one year in a 10-year stretch.

This record shattered the previous record of four year from 1930-1934.

If growth does accelerate to over 3% for a myriad of reasons, there is great potential that Main Street will outperform Wall Street.

To remind all, the last time Main Street did outperform was in 2005, the last year annual growth was over 3%. The US expanded by 3.3% during 2005.

Because of the data, fed funds futures are now suggesting a 30% chance of four interest rate hikes in 2017. Wow! This is the first time in over ten years the market is perhaps suggesting more hikes than thought on January 1.

Markets closed nominally higher on the news.

What will happen this week? The Fed meeting concludes Wednesday; there is a host of inflation data, retail sales statistics, consumer confidence and housing information as well as a key vote in the Netherlands which may further impinge globalism.

Last night the foreign markets were up. London was up 0.25%, Paris was up 0.09% and Frankfurt was up 0.07%. China was up 0.76%, Japan was up 0.15% and Hang Sang was up 1.11%.

The Dow should open flat ahead of a busy week. The 10-year is up 1/32 to yield 2.58%.

03/10/17

JOBS DATA AT 8:30 AM

By: Kent Engelke | Capitol Securities

The February BLS employment report is released at 8:30 am. Most are expecting the data to be robust for a myriad of reasons including the generational low in weekly jobless claims, the ADP employment report and the strongest consumer and business sentiment in over 15 years

Most believe this report will be the basis for a rate increase next week and some are suggesting the data could be the catalyst to a more hawkish monetary policy position.

Analysts are expecting a 4.7% unemployment rate, a 200k and 210k increase in nonfarm and private sector payrolls, respectively, a 0.3% increase in hourly earnings, a 34.4 hour workweek and a 62.9% labor participation rate (LPR).

I believe the most important components of the report will be the LPR and hourly earnings. To date, earnings growth has remained subdued, perhaps the result of a generational low LPR.

I think if the LPR and hourly earnings surprise on the upside, a considerably more hawkish monetary policy stance will evolve. By every benchmark, even if the overnight rate is increased by the consensus view of 0.75% during 2017, monetary policy will still be regarded as very simulative.

Commenting about yesterday’s market action, oil fell below $49 for this first time this year almost sending equities to its fourth consecutive decline if it were not for a late recovery. Treasuries sank a ninth consecutive day as the ECB expressed optimism on global growth and inflation. The 2-year treasury, or the instrument most sensitive to monetary policy, rose to the highest yield in seven and half years.

Last night, the foreign markets were up. London was up 0.50%, Paris up 0.52% and Frankfurt up 0.57%. China was down 0.12%, Japan up 1.48% and Hang Sang up 0.29%.

The Dow should open moderately higher ahead of the jobs data, but this could change radically if the statistics differ greatly from the consensus view. The 10-year is unchanged at a 2.60% yield, oil is up about 1%.

03/3/17

SENTIMENT INDICATOR OF FULL TIME WORKERS AT HIGHEST LEVEL IN 16 YEARS

By: Kent Engelke | Capitol Securities

Consumer comfort rose to an almost 10-year high in the final week of February on increased optimism about the economy and more favorable views about personal finances and the buying climate according to Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index. The index rose to the highest level since March 2007.

The gauge has increased in four of the past five weeks. Its gauge of “economic views” is also at the highest level since March 2007.

Perhaps most significant is the gauge measuring the sentiment of full time workers. The gauge is at the highest level in 16 years.

The accepted reason for this surge is the election of Trump and his plans for a smaller government, plans to reduce taxes and regulations, all of which to spur growth.

Wow! I must write this is not a one off survey, but is consistent with those since the election and the inauguration. To make the obvious observation, these consistent surveys do not correlate to the approval surveys.

Several weeks ago, I opined the political environment will become even more vitriolic. Unfortunately, this has come to pass. Will society begin to view Washington as only noise? The answer is dependent upon the economy.

President Obama was “well liked” and had modest approval levels. President Trump has neither, but if these “animal spirits” are being released as the sentiment surveys are perhaps suggesting, he might be viewed as Pattonesque, the abrasive WWII general who was instrumental in the victory of Germany.

General Patton was not well liked by the establishment, was constantly reprimanded, but accomplished a mission that few had the qualities to accomplish. His men loved him, but no one else.

Commenting about yesterday’s market activity, averages were modestly lower. Will the averages reverse their strong gains since the election because of monetary policy concerns? Fed funds futures are now suggesting a 88% probability of a change in interest rates at its March meeting up from about 40% at the end of last week.

The odds jumped following several Fed officials who echoed a more hawkish view. Moreover, last week’s jobless claims fell to the lowest level since March 1973. This week’s decline was the largest of the year indicating that employers are keeping dismissals at a minimum as demand remains steady.

Last night, the foreign markets were down. London was down 0.17%, Paris up 0.67% and Frankfurt down 0.02%. China was down 0.36%, Japan down 0.49% and Hang Sang down 0.74%.

The Dow should open flat. Yellen speaks today in Chicago about the economic outlook. The 10-year is off 6/32 to yield 2.50%.

01/17/17

The Top 5 Places To Work In U.S. Oil And Gas

Anadarko Petroleum and Chevron have emerged as the top two employers in U.S. oil and gas, according to a survey conducted by the job site Indeed. The top five for the industry was completed by Plains All American at #3, Occidental Petroleum at #4, and Noble Energy at #5.

Indeed said that it ranked companies based on a number of factors but generally speaking, the better the site visitor ratings and reviews a company had, the higher it ranked on the “Best Places to Work” list.

The site has 200 million unique visitors monthly, lending credibility to its findings. The reviews and ratings it collected to compile the rankings included postings from current and former employees.

These, in the case of Anadarko, Chevron, and the rest of the best, praised the companies for their corporate culture, the compensation they received, the attractive work/life balance offered by the employer, and the good working environment, including additional training opportunities.

Besides praise, however, there was also criticism. For Anadarko, the reviews quoted by Oil and Gas 360 in the release of the survey seemed to focus on the management style that the employees were not particularly happy with. For Chevron, unsurprisingly, the “Cons” side of the reviews referred to the massive layoffs – 8,000 as of last April.

According to Indeed data, the number of new oil and gas job postings had inched up at the end of 2016, after taking a dive for most of the year, with sector players struggling to adjust to the new oil price environment and focusing on cost cuts, which are more often than not incompatible with new hiring or even employee retention.

This may change if the adjustment proves successful, and it seems there is a ready pool of former workers that are ready to return. A study by the University of Houston has found that about 60 percent of laid off oil and gas employees – out of 720 respondents – are still out of work. The study is ongoing, so the figures are not final, but for the time being they look promising for those who may want to start hiring again.

Others, however, have found new employment outside the energy industry, the study’s authors said, with just 13 percent of the sample finding new jobs in oil and gas. Those that defected to other industries may not return to oil and gas when the hiring environment changes, and one of the authors notes that this could turn into a problem for oil and gas employers.

The problem, Christiane Spitzmuller goes on to say, would translate into higher recruitment and training costs. These will need to be added to higher drilling and maintenance costs as oilfield service providers get to call the shots now that oil is a bit higher and E&Ps are ramping up production.

The potential hiring problem is aggravated by sentiment among former employees. According to the University of Houston study, over 70 percent of respondents said they were nervous about the future of the industry, with some 55 percent planning to leave oil and gas for good.

This is perfectly understandable in the context of some 215,000 layoffs in U.S. oil and gas – the same could occur during the next price crash. Still, energy companies could still lure at least some employees back, if they can keep up the benefits that made Anadarko, Chevron and Plains All American “Best Places to Work.”

Link to original article: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Top-5-Places-To-Work-In-US-Oil-And-Gas.html

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

08/2/16

Hillary Says Obama “Left Behind” White America

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

On a campaign swing through the “Rust Belt” of Pennsylvania, Hillary Clinton let the truth slip out, saying that the white working class had been “left out and left behind.”

Mrs. Clinton was appearing in Cambria County, which is more than 94 percent white.

Many cities in Pennsylvania are dying coal towns that are fast becoming what a local TV station calls “coal region ghost towns.”

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, has called for more coal miners to be thrown out of their jobs. “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” she said at a town hall in West Virginia in March.

When he ran for president, Barack Obama promised to bankrupt coal plants.

This is a promise that he has followed through on. In 2012, Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, said then-EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson used executive branch rules and regulations to destroy the coal industry. “The Navy SEALs shot Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan and Lisa Jackson shot us in Washington,” Roberts said.

We reported at the time that Jackson was an environmental zealot who advocates “eco-justice.” In 2010, she had received a copy of a “Green Bible” from the liberal National Council of Churches. Obama ordered her to wage war on the fossil fuel industry in order to build a “green economy.”

Mrs. Clinton promises to continue the transition to a “green economy” with no manufacturing jobs.

While jobs are not flowing into Cambria County, drugs are. Cambria County ranked first in the overdose death rate among all Pennsylvania counties from 2007 through 2011. Many were heroin-related opioid deaths.

With major industries having been destroyed by bad trade agreements, much of Pennsylvania is now facing a “heroin epidemic,” as documented by local TV station WJAC. The number of heroin related deaths in Cambria County tripled in a year, the stationreported.

A multimillion-dollar heroin operation was just busted, resulting in 33 arrests, after a joint investigation by the FBI, the state, and county and city law enforcement. Authorities said 25 bricks of heroin were being distributed per day, primarily in the Johnstown area of Cambria County.

The implications, ignored by the media, are that President Obama, the first black president, has ignored the deteriorating condition of white America, while also turning a blind eye to the drug problem that has subsequently engulfed the region.

In stark contrast to Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump, who appears at public events with thousands of people, Hillary Clinton spoke to “a private audience” of about 200 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania last Saturday.

Ignored by most of the national liberal media were local protesters carrying signs outside that said, “HILLARY THE SNAKE,” “LOCK HER UP!” and even “JAIL OBAMA.”

The Tribune-Democrat captured the image of a sign saying, “Killary Killed Coal & Steel. Vote Trump.”

But the complaints went beyond her indifference to the plight of workers. Local resident Sharon Nagle said, “She had a private server to do our business—our State Department, foreign affairs business—on, and mixed it with her emails and then decides that she has the right to pick which ones are which. No, they’re all ours. They’re ours—not hers—and I want them back. I want to know where our emails are, and I want to know why she had a secret server to keep her business from the people who she serves and works for.”

Another local resident, David Allison, said, “Hillary is a bad choice for president. She should be in jail right now, really. It looks like there’s two standards for citizens in this country. The rest of us and the elite. They have their own set of rules.”

The Daily-American said another local resident, Wes Lauffer, characterized Clinton as a “lying, anti-American, Muslim Brotherhood crony of Obama.”

USA Today said Republican Mitt Romney won 58 percent of the vote in Cambria County in 2012, “despite the fact that registered Democrats outnumber Republicans.” The economic problems have only gotten worse since then.

What’s happening in Cambria County is also the case in other parts of Pennsylvania. The depressed conditions of Mahanoy City in Schuylkill County have led members of Jesus the Divine Word Catholic Church in Huntingtown, Maryland, to make annual mission trips to the region to help local residents. Among other things, parishioners maintain and paint homes, visit shut-ins, and hold worship services at the local Catholic Church, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta.

On one trip, 48 homes were fixed by the visiting parishioners.

Mahanoy City is a former coal town. “Mahanoy’s population peaked more than a century ago at nearly 16,000 people, four times the number living there now,” the publication Keystone Crossroads reported. “It never recovered after the coal industry collapsed.”

The situation is so bad that Mahanoy City and others are being labeled “ghost towns,” as a result of people leaving. Local TV station WNEP reports that in Mahanoy City, 26.3 percent of the homes sit vacant. “Just a block from the main street a home is selling for less than a price of a used car,” the station said.

In Shamokin, a city in Northumberland County, there is also a vacancy rate of 26.3 percent. “Afternoon traffic rarely stops on downtown blocks that increasingly see buildings for rent or for sale,” the station reported.

The investigation unit of the station, known as Newswatch 16, looked at the vacancy rates for homes in communities with more than 2,000 people. It said the top 10 were:

Shenandoah 28.9%
Shamokin 26.3 %
Mahanoy City 26.3 %
Mount Carmel 22.7 %
Ashland 22.4%
Lansford 20.8 %
Plymouth 18%
McAdoo 17.2%
Coaldale 16.7%
Frackville 16.2%

Local realtor Erica Ramus told the station that she has a hard time selling property in Shenandoah. She said she shows people downtown properties and they reply, “Why would I want to move my business to a dying old coal town?”

Trump’s campaign has spoken about the population and employment losses in Pennsylvania, promising to bring back manufacturing jobs and stopping bad trade agreements.

Trump has said the nation’s growing heroin problem can be traced to the failure to keep the southern border secure. Heroin is “pouring across” the border, he notes.

In regard to the problem of high-potency marijuana that has been unleashed by Obama’s failure to enforce federal anti-marijuana statues, Trump has indicated that he will reverse course, order enforcement, and crack down on emerging marijuana businesses that profit by poisoning the minds of young people.

Cliff Kincaid

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected].View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid.

07/30/16

Democrats Abandon Workers to Trump

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

Donald J. Trump was in my hometown of Toledo, Ohio on Wednesday night, speaking to a crowd of working class Americans who have been watching their jobs go overseas. His success with these voters has been recognized by, of all people, the left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore, who suggested in an article titled “Five Reasons Why Trump Will Win” that Trump has found the key to victory in November.

Moore declared, “I believe Trump is going to focus much of his attention on the four blue states in the rustbelt of the upper Great Lakes—Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.” That article appeared on July 21. Trump was in Scranton, Pennsylvania, before he went to Toledo.

Trump has found the potential key to victory because he realizes that the Democratic Party has given up on these workers, who were once considered to be their main constituency. These workers have become even more alienated from their jobs, as Marx predicted, because their jobs no longer exist. And according to Trump, it’s because the Democrats—especially the Clintons—embraced bad trade agreements like NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Smart liberal journalists smell the coffee. “Donald Trump’s Working-Class Appeal Is Starting To Freak Out Labor Unions” was the headline over an article in The Huffington Post. But because the unions are endorsing Mrs. Clinton, the Trump candidacy has the potential to drive a huge wedge between the well-paid union leaders and the workers they claim to represent.

“Hillary Clinton has supported virtually every trade agreement that has cost this country millions of jobs and is on the exact opposite side from rank-and-file union workers whose jobs she has destroyed,” Trump says. “Clinton has helped negotiate the [Trans-Pacific Partnership] and is its biggest booster—there is no doubt she would enact it if given the chance—yet more betrayal of union voters whose jobs would vanish as a result of this deal.”

At the rally in Toledo, aired by Right Side Broadcasting, Trump talked about the jobs disappearing from Toledo. He hammered the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which would give countries like Communist Vietnam special trade benefits. He talked about how the Chinese are taking advantage of the United States. This is a story that has been developing for years in Toledo. “In Blue-Collar Toledo, Ohio, a Windfall of Chinese Investments” was the headline over a New York Times story in 2013. The extraordinary story, about a city known as the Glass Capital of the World, or Glass City, was now buying glass from China for an extension to the Toledo Museum of Art because it could be made there more cheaply.

The story went on, “Over the past seven years since the museum project was completed, ties between Toledo and China have grown numerous. Chinese companies have paid more than $10 million in cash for two local hotels, a restaurant complex and a 69-acre waterfront property.”

One article even suggested that Toledo, Ohio, may go down in American history as the first major U.S. city to be owned by China.

Trump is appealing to workers who are losing their jobs to Mexico, China and Obamacare. His denunciations of Obamacare get as much applause as his criticism of bad trade deals. Trump asks the audience about those being forced from full to part-time work because of the impact of Obama’s health care scheme and many hands go up. There’s also the issue of the rising premiums that make insurance difficult to afford. Trump reminds people that the premiums are scheduled to rise again.

Adam Taxin of Right Side Broadcasting interviewed two young ladies from Toledo about the campaign. They should have been excited about the first woman presidential nominee of a major political party. Instead, they cited Hillary Clinton’s lies on Benghazi and saw through former President Bill Clinton’s romantic speech about her at the Democratic National Convention.

Right Side Broadcasting specializes in political news, video and live streaming coverage of political events. As the name implies, it claims to be on the “right side of history.”

Whatever the ultimate truth of that boast, one thing is certain: Right Side Broadcasting on YouTube is giving viewers an intimate look at the grass-roots support at Trump for president rallies. It shows the crowds so that viewers can actually see the packed arenas and enthusiastic support: “Ever wonder what the crowds look like at Donald J. Trump rallies? We show you what the mainstream media won’t.”

When even Michael Moore is starting to see the handwriting on the wall, you begin to understand the appeal of the “Trump Train” and how it can crush Clinton-Kaine.

Cliff Kincaid

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid.