Meaningless performance piece by Mr. Pence and Ms. Trump lacks substance. DONALD JOHN TRUMP’s appointment of anti-labor lickspittles to key Labor posts -- the most recent Eugene Scalia as Secretary of Labor -- shows the Trump Administration’s true colors. Anyone participating in this abortion of a PR event should hang their heads in shake and do penance. The nonprofit has not been adequately scrutinized before being lionized. More trumpery, dupery and nincompoopery from the Record.
Pitiful 677 word article by Steve Patterson in Florida Times-Union, St. Augustine Record, two if the nine newspapers that endorsed DONALD JOHN TRUMP in 2016:
By Steve Patterson
Posted Jul 26, 2019 at 7:30 PM
Updated Jul 26, 2019 at 7:30 PM
Florida Times-Union, St. Augustine Record,
The vice president and president’s daughter showcased job opportunities driven by a strong economy.
Vice President Mike Pence talked Friday with convicted felons about reentering the workforce as he and Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, visited Jacksonville sites that highlighted the area’s economic boom.
“God bless you both,” Pence told Charlotte Smith and Daniel McArthur after they talked about opportunities they discovered after completing the Ready4Work program run by Operation New Hope.
Pence heaped praise on the Springfield nonprofit, calling its work training for former prisoners “a model program not only in Florida but for the United States.
″...This is a ready-to-work program that has really set the pace,” he said as he sat by Operation New Hope founder Kevin Gay at a roundtable talk that included Gov. Ron DeSantis and State Attorney Melissa Nelson.
The midday visit continued a chain of appearances the two have made nationally to celebrate President Donald Trump’s Pledge to the American Worker initiative.
Organizers of the effort, which emphasizes retraining to help workers find opportunities in a changing economy, touted employers’ pledges to connect 12 million workers to good jobs.
Training former inmates matches a goal of the Trump administration to involve a broader range of Americans in a growing economy.
At a White House event Thursday, Ivanka Trump said that 74 percent of new jobs reported in the second quarter of this year involved “Americans outside of the workforce on the sidelines of our economy,” a group rich with felons.
In Jacksonville, she talked about benefits to former inmates, their families and the people living around them, after being told that recidivism among Operation New Hope graduates is only one-third the rate for other inmates released from Florida prisons.
“This is in the interests of the communities. It’s in the interests of individuals,” she said. “It’s just the right thing to do.”
Helping convicts find work isn’t inconsistent with conservative tough-on-crime policies, Pence said, adding the Trump administration wants America to be “the worst place in the world” to be caught committing serious crimes.
“But we also want America to be the best place in the world, once you do your time, to get a second chance,” he said.
Gay told the vice president that the nonprofit, which has trained ex-inmates for 20 years, is benefitting from long-term shifts in attitudes among government agencies and employers. That change has led to more training opportunities, he said, such as a 40-hour warehouse logistics course offered through the University of North Florida.
After the roundtable, Pence and Ivanka Trump headed to the Southpoint offices of Miller Electric Co., a signer of the Trump pledge.
Pence told workers there the nonprofit was the original draw of the visit, but that “with the tremendous success we’ve made... for American workers and the success here at Miller Electric, I had to come by and see all of you as well.”
The company pledged to offer job opportunities to 250 workers.
“Based on what I saw today, I think that number will go up,” Ivanka Trump said. “Business is booming.”
Miller Electric has added more than 300 new jobs since tax cuts in early 2018. Miller Electric’s apprenticeship program has also grown; 85 new individuals have joined the program in 2019.
Pence, Trump, DeSantis and newly confirmed Assistant Secretary of Labor John Pallasch met with some of the apprentices and toured parts of the new facility before the presentation, company spokeswoman Helga Christoforatos said.
DeSantis said he wants to place a greater emphasis on vocational education because “brick-and-ivy” universities are not the only path to success.
“You look at what jobs are available at places like Miller,” DeSantis said. “These core vocational skills not only provide a pathway for people to have jobs, but really [to] have jobs that can potentially pay pretty doggone good.”
Pence said wages for American workers are rising at the fastest pace in about a decade, particularly for “hardworking blue-collar Americans.”
“The forgotten men and women of America are forgotten no more, Florida,” Pence said, greeted by applause from the crowd.
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