Donald Trump's Historical Exploitation of Polish Immigrant Workers Revisited

In recent months, billionaire television celebrity and real estate dealmaker, plutocrat and 2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump has been scapegoating immigrants and claiming that immigrants are somehow responsible for the loss of union wage jobs for U.S.-born citizen workers during the last 40 years.

Yet, when Donald Trump built his Trump Tower in Manhattan in the late 20th-century, much of the construction and demolition-related work was apparently done by exploited, undocumented, low-wage immigrant workers from Poland. As the 1992 book by former Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett, Trump: The Deals and The Downfall, recalled:

"...Though Trump Tower was to be Donald [Trump]'s most lavish project, he decided at the very outset to try to cut costs in clearing the site, selecting a demolition contractor with no heavy demolition experience simply because it had agreed to do the job at Trump's suggested $775,000 price.

"The contractor, William Kaszycki, was able to submit so low a bid because most of his workers were illegal Polish aliens working at rates one-half to one-third those of union scale. Kaszycki's wife recruited the workers in Poland...On Trump's job 200 of them worked 12 to 18-hour shifts with no days off or overtime and slept in groups of eight in a slum apartment or motel room...

"...Kaszycki and Trump were jointly sued...by labor lawyers seeking the welfare fund payments for the Polish workers that were never paid...U.S. District Court Judge Charles Stewart finally found that the Trump Organization and the president of the union...had `a tacit agreement to employ the Polish workers and deprive them' of union benefits, concluding that `the Trump defendants knowingly participated in the fiduciary breach.' Stewart determined that $325,000 in welfare payments had been improperly withheld--and fined the Trump Tower corporate entity over a million dollars...'

Australian Anti-War Activist Joan Coxsedge's November 28, 2015 Letter

(The following letter from Australian anti-war and Latin American solidarity activist Joan Coxsedge—who is also a former member of the Victoria state parliament--originally appeared in an Australian-Cuban solidarity group’s newsletter)

“November 28, 2015

“Dear Comrades,

“Hello everyone. Christmas is coming at us from all directions, with the commercials ramping up their hard sell campaign earlier than usual persuading mug shoppers to spend more than they can afford for ‘things’ they don’t need, who are then faced with a credit card debt long after their christmas trees have been dumped in the rubbish bin. Normal for this time of the year, except these aren’t normal times.

“Peace on earth and goodwill to all men has always sounded sexist and phoney, but today the slogan has never felt more inappropriate. I’m thinking of the desperate people trying to survive in Beirut, Baghdad, Palestine, Damascus and all the other places caught up in terror. And the cold-blooded butchery in Paris that shocked, horrified and outraged us at the waste of young lives. ISIS, ISIL, Daesh - whatever their name - have no heart or head, just tentacles that act in fury and barbarity. A time of killing in hotels, cafes, concert halls, on aeroplanes, anywhere and everywhere.

“Terrorism terrifies and people are terrified, knowing that more violence is on the way. But this current form of terrorism didn’t come out of the blue. It’s roots go back a long way, centuries ago, to waves of western imperialism. It’s called Blowback.

“Where did these ISIS attackers come from? There’s a temptation to blame religion or race to avoid more solid areas of investigation.

“ In the 1960s and 70s we had the US/Saudi backed World Muslim League whose job was to wipe out secular nationalism and communism in the Arab world in order to protect corrupt Gulf Arab emirates and the Saudi kingdom and the west’s interests in oil and power. The League’s assault on Afghanistan destroyed its communist republic long before Soviet intervention, and paved the way for the creation of the ‘mujahideen’ whose core contained a violent element that became al-Qaeda.

“ Crucially, the US-run wars in Iraq and Libya and Syria turned them into playgrounds for the ‘jihardis’, a scheme spelled out in a 1997 document called the Project for the New American Century, dreamed up by the repugnant team of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle to establish a US empire to rule the world. September 11, 2001 gave them the green light.

“ Iraq was their jumping-off point to destroy the Middle East. All of it bankrolled by the World Trade Organisation and the IMF.

“So it’s hard to feel Christmassy when I think of my friends in Iraq and Libya, both of which I visited in happier times. It makes my blood boil when I hear Libya described as a Gaddafi-run military dictatorship when it used to be one of the world’s most democratic states.

“Four years have gone by since Gaddafi was butchered, heralding the beginning of Libya’s decline into chaos.

“ In 1967, Gaddafi took over one of the poorest nations in Africa but by the time he was killed he had transformed Libya into Africa’s richest with the highest Human Development Index, the lowest infant mortality rate and the highest life expectancy. Under Gaddafi, Islamic terrorism was non-existent.

“ In 2009, the US State Department called Libya ‘an important ally in the war on terrorism’. Bloody hypocrites.

“Today Libya is a failed state, with the South a haven for ISIS and the North for migrant trafficking, all of it happening amidst a backdrop of widespread rape, assassinations and torture.

“ Iraq’s collapse began in 1990-91 with Gulf War 1 and has continued unabated, with 4 million Iraqis displaced and half-a-million registered as refugees.

“ Syria’s crisis is also gargantuan with half the population displaced and refugees numbering at least five million, Its finances in tatters.

“Rich powers turn up with smug faces and pledge a lot of money to UN agencies but when it comes to fulfilling these pledges their ink runs dry. But not when it comes to arms sales. Despite the complex array of conflicts in the region, Obama has agreed to an unprecedented splurge in US armaments, with Saudi Arabia getting the lion’s share of $49 billion and $800 million ‘aid’ fort ‘moderate rebels’ in Syria and Kiev, while millions of children go hungry.

“ ‘We live in pitiless times’, said Vijay Prashad, who suggests we should read Leila Sebbar’s La Seine Etait Rouge, a searing novel about the French government’s murder of hundreds of pro-Algerian protesters in Paris in October 1961. One more history buried under a mountain of cliches and lies, and forgotten.

“ Out of the blue, a blast from the past. A recent news item appeared in a weekday edition of The Australian about the reappearance of Michael Hand in the US State of Idaho. Hand had been a partner with Frank Nugan in the notorious Sydney-based Nugan Hand Bank, an ‘unbank’ that never did any banking nor hired any bankers. In 1980, a rifle blast blew off the head of what was purported to be that of Frank Nugan - although the NSW Attorney-General’s Department believed it was the body of a missing Italian drug dealer - and exposed the massive fraud at the heart of his empire. At the same time, Michael Hand took off like a rocket from his Sydney hideout, leaving behind his clothes, passport, wallet and credit cards and vanished into thin air - until now.

“Getting out before details emerged that Nugan Hand was a CIA centre for a huge clandestine network involving US Generals, admirals, and CIA men, including former CIA chief William Colby, who were involved in drug-running, tax evasion, money-laundering, gun-running and secret arms deals. It had the explicit and implied authority at the highest levels and in intelligence jargon was a ‘conduit’ to buy off Australian politicians, trade union officials and journalists, some of whom were probably unaware of the source of favours and disinformation.

“At the time I was puzzled that the CIA with its vast resources used the same handful of people over and over again. The answer was detailed in a civil court action in Florida by two American journalists injured in a bombing in Nicaragua. The 300-page indictment showed that Nugan Hand’s crimes were only a small part of a long trail of international racketeering, assassinations, torture and even wars carried out by a team that was formally assembled by Vice-President Richard Nixon in 1959 after the fall of Cuban dictator Batista.

“The anti-Castro terrorist group was supplemented by an assassination unit as part of a broader scheme to bump off foreign leaders, the same team being controlled by Theodore Shackley. In 1972, Shackley became the CIA’s head of Western Hemisphere Activities and was part of the criminal conspiracy that orchestrated the violent coup against Allende in Chile and installation of General Pinochet (Australian ASIS personnel took part) and two years later was up to his neck in the demise of the Whitlam Government.“And so the tangled web goes on and on.

“This is just a taste of their crimes. But Cuba survived.

 Viva!

“Joan Coxsedge, “

`Ballad To Claudia Jones'--(lyrics by Label Nibur)

Label Nibur lyrics:

There's a woman who walks this mighty land
With aa queenly grace goes she
In her struggles she never stands alone
For look at her company.

Harriet Tubman is at her side
"Good cheer, Claudia," cries she
"The slavers also wanted my head
But our brave people still fought free."

John Brown is with her wherever she goes
And his voice rings clear as a bell
"I died to uphold the spirit of equality
Defend it till the freezing of Hell."

And the martyred Nat Turner is here with her too
Staunch Nat with never a doubt
"I staggered the slavers of my day, Daughter,
Defeat yours and knock them out."

And giant and tall against the wall,
Denmark Vessey speaks out his mind
"I defeated the cruel masters of my day, Daughter,
Finish off their modern kind."

Fred Douglass and Garrison are here with her too,
And the people of every land
Stand shoulder to shoulder with Claudia Jones
She speaks...and they understand.

Black Male Worker `Seasonally Adjusted' Unemployment Rate Increases To 9.9 Percent In November 2015

The official “seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for Black male workers over 20 years-of-age increased from 9.2 to 9.9 percent between October and November 2015; while the number of unemployed Black male workers over 20-years-of-age increased by 59,000 (from 806,000 to 865,000) during the same period, according to the “seasonally adjusted” Bureau of Labor Statistics data. In addition, the “seasonally adjusted” number of Black male workers over 20 years-of-age who still had jobs decreased by 84,000 (from 7,965,000 to 7,881,000) between October and November 2015; while the “seasonally adjusted” number of Black male workers over 20 years-of-age in the U.S. labor force decreased by 26,000 (from 8,772,000 to 8,746,000) during the same period.

Between October and November 2015, the official “seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for all Black workers in the United States (youth, male and female) increased from 9.2 to 9.4 percent; while the total “seasonally adjusted” number of all jobless Black workers increased by 39,000 (from 1,787,000 to 1,826,000) during the same period. In addition, the “seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for Black youths between 16 and 19 years-of-age was still 23.7 percent in November 2015; while the “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Black female workers over 20 years-of-age was still 8 percent during that same month.

Between October and November 2015, the official “seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for Latina female workers over 20 years-of-age increased from 6.4 to 6.7 percent; while the “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for all Latino workers (youth, male and female) in the United States increased from 6.3 to 6.4 percent during the same period. In addition, the “seasonally adjusted” number of unemployed Latina female workers over 20 years-of-age increased by 44,000 (from 682,000 to 726,000) between October and November 2015; while the total number of all unemployed Latino workers in the United States increased by 20,000 (from 1,660,000 to 1,680,000) during the same period..

The “seasonally adjusted” number of Latino male workers over 20 years-of-age in the U.S. labor force decreased by 89,000 (from 14,460,000 to 14,371,000) between October and November 2015; while the “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Latino male workers over 20 years-of-age increased from 5.1 to 5.4 percent during the same period. In addition, the “seasonally adjusted” number of unemployed Latino male workers over 20 years-of-age increased  by 38,000 (from 733,000 to 771,000) between October and November 2015; while the number of Latino male workers over 20 years-of-age who still had jobs decreased by 128,000 (from 13,727,000 to 13,599,000) during the same period. And the official “seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for Latino youth between 16 and 19 years-of-age was still 16.7 percent in November 2015.

The official “seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for white youths between 16 and 19 years-of-age was still 13.5 percent in November 2015; while the official “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for all youths (Black, Latino, white and Asian-American) between 16 and 19 years-of-age in the United States was still 15.7 percent during that same month. In addition, the “seasonally adjusted” number of youths between 16 and 19 years-of-age in the U.S. labor force decreased by 15,000 (from 5,587,000 to 5,572,000) between October and November 2015.

The “seasonally adjusted” number of  unemployed Asian-American workers in the United States increased by 37,000 (from 316,000 to 335,000) between October and November 2015; while the unemployment rate for Asian-American workers increased from 3.5 to 3.9 percent during the same period, according to the “seasonally adjusted” data.

The official “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for white female workers over 20 years-of-age in the United States increased from 3.9 to 4 percent between October and November 2015; while the official “seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for white male workers over 20 years-of-age was still 4 percent in November 2015. In addition, the “seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for all white workers (youth, male and female) was still 4.3 percent in November 2015; while the “seasonally adjusted” number of unemployed white female workers over 20 years-of-age increased by 30,000 (from 2,143,000 to 2,173,000) between October and November 2015. And the number of white male workers over 20 years-of-age in the U.S labor force decreased by 112,000 (from 64,579,000 to 64,457,000) during the same period, according to the “seasonally adjusted” data.

In November 2015, the “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for all female workers over 16 years-of-age in the United States was still 4.9 percent;; while the official “seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for all female workers over 20 years-of-age increased from 4.5 to 4.6 percent between October and November 2015. In addition, the total number of unemployed female workers over 20 years-of-age increased by 49,000 (from 3,211,000 to 3,260,000) during the same period, according to the “seasonally adjusted” data.

The official “seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for all male workers over 16 years-of-age in the United States increased from 5.1 to 5.2 percent between October and November 2015; while the official “seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for all male workers over 20 years-of-age was still 4.7 percent in November 2015. In addition, the “seasonally adjusted” number of all unemployed male workers over 16 years-of-age in the United States increased by 41,000 (from 4,282,000 to 4,323,000) between October and November 2015; while the number of male workers over 20 years-of-age who still had jobs decreased by 89,000 (from 76,852,000 to 76,763,000) during the same period.

Between October and November 2015, the total number of officially unemployed workers in the United States increased by 29,00 (from 7,908,000 to 7,937,000), according to the “seasonally adjusted” data; and the “seasonally adjusted”” unemployment rate for all U.S. workers (male, female and youth) was still 5 percent in November 2015.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ December 4, 2015 press release:

“….The unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.0 percent was unchanged at 5.0 percent…Mining and information lost jobs…The number of unemployed persons at 7.9 million, was essentially unchanged…

“The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 2.1 million in November and has shown little movement since June. In November, these individuals accounted for 25.7 percent of the unemployed...

"The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) increased by 319,000 to 6.1 million in November...These individuals, who would have preferred full-time employment were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job...

“In November, 1.7 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force…These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey...

“Among the marginally attached, there were 594,000 discouraged workers in November, little changed from a year earlier….Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them….

“Employment in mining continued to decline in November (-11,000), with losses concentrated in support activities for mining (-7,000). Since a recent peak in December 2014, employment in mining has declined by 123,000.

“Information lost 12,000 jobs over the month. Within the industry, employment in motion pictures and sound recording decreased by 13,000 in November...

"Employment in other major industries, including manufacturing, wholesale trade, transportation and warehousing, financial activities, and government changed little over the month...

"In November, average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees, at $21.19, changed little..."

UK Anti-War Movement Protests Against UK Military Inervention In Syria

Donald Trump's Late 1970's Hotel Commodore Tax Break and Democratic Party Connections Revisited

2016 Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump, ironically, was apparently aligned politically with Brooklyn's Democratic Party machine organization during the same period when he was given a big tax break for his Hotel Commodore real estate project by New York City's local government; which was then managed by local Democratic Party politicians on behalf of special real estate interests (like the Trump family firm) and special corporate and Wall Street interests. As the 1992 book by former Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett, Trump: The Deals and The Downfall, observed:

"With Stanley Steingut as [NY State] assembly speaker and [Abraham] Beame as [NYC] mayor, the ancient and insular wing of the Brooklyn [Democratic] party long identified with the Trump family was now the most powerful Democratic faction in state and city politics...

"On May 20, 1976, the [New York City] board [of estimate], which met in the upper floor of {new York's] City Hall, unanimously passed the [Hotel] Commodore deal...The private parties hadn't put a dime on the table, while the public sector had delivered a gigantic and exclusive tax break...Trump had been handpicked by bureaucrats and politicians to become the solitary recipient of an unprecedented give away, stretched so far into the future that it was statistically likely to outlive even its [then-] 30-year-old beneficiary...No other Manhattan hotel would ever receive so selective and grand a subsidy...

"...Without the guarantee Fred [Trump II] wound up giving his son, Donald [Trump] would have had no Commodore mortgage...Fred [Trump II] was his silent partner in the Commodore project...

"Donald [Trump]...went from paying $42,386 in taxes in 1977 to paying none in 1978 and 1979. He escaped tax liability in 1979 on at least $3.4 million in earnings with a carefully structured package of real estate losses and interest payments..." 

Australian Anti-War Activist Joan Coxsedge's November 3, 2015 Letter

(The following letter from Australian anti-war and Latin American solidarity activist Joan Coxsedge—who is also a former member of the Victoria state parliament--originally appeared in an Australian-Cuban solidarity group’s newsletter)

“November 3, 2015

“Dear Comrades,

“I hope your horse came home. One two-legged creature I hope doesn't is Abbott, yapping away on the other side of the world while his mortal enemy Malcolm smooches voters with populist policies. But both hate unions and support `free trade' and share a love affair with nuclear, including storing nuclear waste, when no country anywhere has been able to safely and permanently dispose of such nuclear excreta. It's an industry that's rotten to the core and threatens our health and our very survival.

“Nuclear is not the answer to climate change. Why choose a dirty, corrupt, unsustainable non-solution when we have sunshine and wind in abundance that should be developed and harnessed to provide our energy needs?

“It also shows the moral bankruptcy of our ‘leaders’ that having turned Australia into a quarry, they now tell us our future lies in filling up the holes with other people's lethal rubbish for later generations to manage.

“Fukushima. It’s against international law to dump radioactivity into the sea, but Fukushima's highly radioactive water has been flowing out of the complex into the Pacific Ocean for four years straight and no one knows how to stop it.

“Homo sapiens is out of control, shrinking the space for every other form of life. Constant growth means more people buying more things that can only be achieved through the increased exploitation of the planet's natural resources, a system that is destroying Mother Earth and all the things we love: the mountains, the trees, the animals, the flowers and the diversity of people. Between 30 and 50 percent of all known species are expected to be extinct by 2050 if current trends continue. People power needed, not apathy, which we have in abundance, like rampant corruption.

“ Just one country has a genuinely sustainable economy. Cuba. Cuba has met the basic needs--food, housing, health and education--for all its citizens in an ecologically sustainable manner and has revitalized community-based economic development through a combination of worker owned co-ops, small private enterprises and star-owned businesses.

“While most Cubans do not have the materialistic lifestyle of people in wealthy nations, they are also immune to the extreme poverty, misery and death that plague the capitalist model. And at the latest UN vote, only two supported the US blockade of Cuba, the US and Israel, with no fence-sitters. Trust the US of A to treat Cuba with respect? Not bloody likely.

“News flash in and flash out of our consciousness catering to our diminishing attention-span thanks to the proliferation of electronic devics frying our brains, especially young brains. Already fading from view, the merciless attack on the Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital at Kunduz in the early hours of October 3 by a US gunship armed to the teeth with the most up-to-date weaponry, killing more than 22 people--some burned to death in their beds while conscious--injuring dozens more and with an unknown number of patients and staff still missing.

“ US military authorities were given precise GPS coordinates only four days before the attack and as shells rained down MSF staff frantically called US officials in Kabul and Washington. `Collateral damage' and a`mistake' said the Pentagon blaming the Afghan government. A `bombing gone wrong' said America's corporate media, desperately trying to bury the issue.

“People on the ground knew better. That the US military has been targeting hospitals and ambulances

deliberately for decades and painting a red cross on the roof of a hospital is an invitation to be bombed. Hideous enough to attack a hospital but to attack it with weapons designed to slaughter as many people as possible is almost beyond comprehension.

“If a medical facility protected under international humanitarian law run by a charity that won the Nobel Peace prize can be destroyed, then no one is safe. Obama knows this is a war crime which might explain why he has refused MSF's demand for an independent investigation into the atrocity.

“Tony Blair is an unprincipled, lying yob and a leaked memo proves it. He gave George Bush an unqualified pledge to sign up to the Iraq War a year before the invasion when he was telling British voters `we're not proposing military action.' He also agreed to convince a skeptical public that Saddam had `Weapons of Mass Destruction.,' when there were none, acting as a frontman for Washington before any decision by the House of Commons or the British Cabinet.

“A war that has spread and spread and keeps spreading…all the way to Syria, but a conflict engineered far away directly aimed at Iran and beyond. Moscow knows that the collapse of Syria as a functioning nation-state will lead to a chain reaction that will affect countries along Russia's borders and then everything within them.

“ Now we hear that the US has sent a ‘small number’ of Special Operations Forces into Syria, a `shift' not a `change'. And an A321 Russian airliner has crashed 22 minutes after taking off from Sharm El Sheikh after splitting in two and killing all 224 on board. Islamic State has claimed responsibility. Many questions remain.

“Globalization of trade and central banking has propelled private corporations to positions of power and control never before seen in human history. The financial center of global capitalism is so highly concentrated that less than a few thousand people dominate and control $100 trillion of wealth, less than 0.0001 percent. They are the transnational capitalist class (TCC), the capitalist elite of the world who dominate nation-states through international `trade' agreements and transnational state organizations such as the World Bank, the IMF and the Bank for International Settlements. Hundreds of private military contractors now play a vital role in TCC security in the evolving 21st century's nightmarish world.

“ The 99 percent of us without wealth and private police forces face a looming threat of overt

repression and complete loss of human rights and legal protections. This is a fight for our survival. Unless we collectively challenge the Empire, we face a future evolving into a new dark age of neo-feudal totalitarianism unlike anything we have ever seen. So fight we must, joining millions of others around the world.

“Joan Coxsedge”