Pets For Dinner

[Horace]

[jon-nyc]

[LuFins Dad]

In the meantime, more and more is coming out about the new business model of not outsourcing to third world countries, but to bring third world countries here, instead.

[Doctor Phibes]

@LuFins-Dad said in Pets For Dinner:

In the meantime, more and more is coming out about the new business model of not outsourcing to third world countries, but to bring third world countries here, instead.

Who are you calling Third World, you hillbilly?

[A Former User]

Inside of Springfield.

https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/wanderland/exotic-cat-eaters-springfield-ohio/

tl;dr

Springfield, like many similar cities, had been suffering from a declining population and economic stagnation when it joined a number of other Rust Belt cities in an effort to actively recruit immigrants to settle there. The town fathers may not have had 12,000 Haitians in mind, but that is what they got—and the results were pretty good: Contrary to the rhetoric you hear from Vance et al., employment went up, not down—and wages went up, too. In fact, Springfield handily outperformed nearby Dayton—and the country as a whole—in wage growth coming out of the COVID-19 downturn. And where population is increasing and wages are rising, some things—notably housing—will typically get more expensive. The Haitian newcomers, who are in the main legal immigrants under “Temporary Protected Status,” do use a lot of social services—those who are eligible have made heavy use of programs such as Medicaid—but they also work a lot of hours and put a lot of money into real estate, buying houses and commercial properties to start businesses of their own.

And that is where this gets politically interesting. With the Haitians working overtime—McGregor, the Pentaflex CEO, reports losing Haitian workers because he couldn’t offer them as much overtime as they wanted—and putting their money into houses, landlords who had been participating in affordable housing voucher programs widely used by the preexisting (largely white) population of Springfield began shifting to offering their properties on a market-price basis, and found Haitian renters willing to pay. From the traditional conservative point of view, the Haitian story in Springfield is, at least in part, a success: Hard-working people got jobs and put in a lot of hours and drew assets out of the subsidized welfare-state economy into the free market. Which is great if you are the ghost of Milton Friedman but a real inconvenience if you are an underemployed denizen of Springfield looking for a subsidized housing arrangement and unwilling to match the … rigorous Caribbean work ethic? … of your new neighbors.

Vance has turned Solzhenitsyn’s maxim on its head: “Let the lie come into the world, but only through me, and only if I get something good out of it.” A man who is not suffering from whatever disease of the soul with which Vance is afflicted would have a hard time even imagining wanting to be vice president—of all petty things!—that bad. A different and better sort of man would understand that bearing false witness against 15,000 poor and vulnerable people in the pursuit of political power is the same as bearing false witness against anybody else.

But I’ll give Vance the last word. Here he is on Twitter, back when Twitter was Twitter and J.D. Vance was J.D. Vance: “Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this, I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us.”

[jon-nyc]

More detail. Nice that the lady apologized. Maybe Trump/Vance can learn from her.

[LuFins Dad]

In the meantime, her daughter can’t find work because the Haitians are doing it for half the wages…

[Jolly]

It's a story.

It's got legs.

The pundits can do what they will. This sticks.

[George K]

1. The crime rate has climbed (see post #20) by a factor of two in the last two years.

2. The cost of public assistance has increased by a factor of 8 in Clark County. Post #146,

3. The pet-eating story was reported before Vance was even a twinkle in Trump's eye. Not saying it's true, but someone mentioned it 6 months ago.

[jon-nyc]

@LuFins-Dad said in Pets For Dinner:

In the meantime, her daughter can’t find work because the Haitians are doing it for half the wages…

Half the wages? Or half the absenteeism and addiction levels?

[LuFins Dad]

@jon-nyc said in Pets For Dinner:

@LuFins-Dad said in Pets For Dinner:

In the meantime, her daughter can’t find work because the Haitians are doing it for half the wages…

Half the wages? Or half the absenteeism and addiction levels?

Still going with that whole “Haitians are better people than Pennsylvania and Ohio voters” approach? Best of luck…

[LuFins Dad]

@jon-nyc said in Pets For Dinner:

@LuFins-Dad said in Pets For Dinner:

In the meantime, her daughter can’t find work because the Haitians are doing it for half the wages…

Half the wages? Or half the absenteeism and addiction levels?

And there aren’t geese pooping in the parking lot anymore! Bonus!

[Horace]

Again, one would want to know the selection bias going into the anecdotal reports of the Haitians being better workers than the locals. What % of those Haitians are working those sorts of jobs they are doing better than the locals? And what are the economic, social, and crime impacts of the rest?

[LuFins Dad]

Wow. Look at all the drug addled workers on the company’s FB page. I notice comments are disabled…

https://m.facebook.com/McGregorMetal/

The company’s website is down, too.

[Horace]

That interview was presumably done before he knew this would blow up to a national story. I am very very sure he regrets every single word he uttered.

[Doctor Phibes]

@LuFins-Dad said in Pets For Dinner:

Wow. Look at all the drug addled workers on the company’s FB page.

The one in the middle looks pretty vajazzled to me

[LuFins Dad]

By the way, I can’t speak to McGregor Metal, but I can speak Fourth Street Foods in Charleroi. They opened up a new factory exactly when the influx of Haitians arrived. With multiple passenger vans. That’s kind of unusual for a food manufacturer and distribution company. I mean, trucks? Sure. But passenger vans wouldn’t serve any function in a borough like Charleroi, where most employees provide their own transportation. Why would they need enough passenger vans to transport an entire factory’s worth of employees? Especially when they don’t have more than 2 shuttle vans at any of the other factories… And ignore the fact that the owner worked for Bartolotta’s Grocery Store as a kid and went to college in the same town as Camera Bartolotta (same age as well) and is a known friend and associate of the PA State Senator. And please ignore the fact that Bartolotta’s Family Property (owned by self same Camera Bartolotta) owns much of the residential properties being rented by the Hatian community.

[Horace]

It would be very interesting to know the wages of these Hatians and how they compare to the native workers.

[LuFins Dad]

@Horace said in Pets For Dinner:

It would be very interesting to know the wages of these Hatians and how they compare to the native workers.

I’m curious as to whether they pay FICA? I mean, they are here temporarily, right? That’s the T in TPS. Also, what about benefits?

There are conflicting stories about Medicare and EBT food stamps as well as HUD.

[LuFins Dad]

By the way, if Mr. McGregor wants 30 more Haitians, why doesn’t he hire them? I’m sure he can find 30 employees that are derelict in their duties due to the rampant drug addiction in his native staff and with all the extra days off they take, he should be able find some positions to fill… And with 15,000-20,000 hard working Haitians in the community, he should be able to hire 30 in an afternoon…