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CNN Airs Anti-Immigrant Front Group’s ‘Pro-Labor’ Incendiary Ad

By Andrea Nill Sanchez on Aug 11, 2009 at 8:45 pm

CNN is once again airing an incendiary ad by the an anti-immigrant front group, Coalition For The Future Of The American Worker, which warns that the US government is letting in 1.5 million foreign workers a year to take jobs from the 15 million unemployed Americans. Roy Beck, Executive Director of the anti-immigrant group NumbersUSA and principal spokesperson for the Coalition, called on supporters to discuss the ad at town hall meetings and declared the need for an “immigration suspension” bill to “champion workers.” A previous version of the ad aired earlier this year. Watch it:

To begin with, the supposedly labor-friendly “Coalition” is nothing more than a self-proclaimed “umbrella group” of the country’s leading anti-immigrant organizations which includes several designated hate groups: Californians for Population Stabilization, Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), NumbersUSA, and the American Immigration Control Foundation (AICF). Several of these organizations have been classified as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. According to the Center for Community Change New Community, FAIR and AICF have both received funding from the white supremacist and racial eugenic foundation, the Pioneer Fund.

The Coalition obviously has had little interaction with the nation’s two largest labor federations which are calling for comprehensive immigration reform that provides a path to legalization for undocumented workers and recommend the creation of an independent commission to assess and determine future levels of immigration. The local AFL-CIO in Detroit — where so many American autoworkers have been laid off — recently adopted a resolution vigorously supporting the labor federations’ immigration principles.

How the Coalition arrives at the notion that the US is even accepting 1.5 million “new” foreign workers is baffling. A few months ago, when NumbersUSA trumpeted the data (then estimated at 1.6 million immigrant workers), Walter Ewing of the Immigration Policy Center picked the far-fetched estimate apart. According to Ewing, the estimate is “so full of holes as to be virtually meaningless” and consists of two broken parts: an “extravagantly inflated estimate” of 744,000 “new” Green Card holders and “the unverifiable assertion” that the US is letting in another 913,000 non-permanent foreign workers. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) statistics clearly indicate that the majority of “new” Green Card holders are not actually new immigrants, but rather students, refugees and temporary workers who have applied for an “adjustment of status” while already in the US. As for the second number, NumbersUSA doesn’t clearly define it and also fails to provide its source. All in all, legal avenues for foreigners wanting to work in the US are actually extremely restricted and green card numbers are tightly capped and limited to certain categories of persons.

This past election season, the Coalition sponsored a series of inflammatory ads that were blasted as “borderline racist” and pulled off their air by one Iowa station. While CNN refuses to air an ad criticizing the insurance industry which is actually backed by labor, the “Coalition” of anti-immigrant labor-friendly posers has its misleading ad placed on regular rotation.

Politics

Texas judge defends his racist poster showing Obama supporters as criminals: ‘I don’t consider it racist.’

By Amanda Terkel on Aug 11, 2009 at 8:30 pm

479591023333 Judge Tom Head is under fire for an offensive poster he put up on a public bulletin board in the Lubbock, TX county courthouse. The poster shows nine arrest photos of people wearing Obama t-shirts, accompanied by the text:

Did you ever see anyone arrested wearing a Bush T-shirt, or for you older folks, an Eisenhower?, Gerald Ford?, Ronald Reagan?, even Nixon?, or any political t-shirt? There MUST be a message here, but I can’t quite grasp it, or maybe I’m afraid to.

Above the pictures is a fake narration of a person waking up, putting on an Obama t-shirt, holding up a convenience store, buying drugs, and beating his wife. County commissioners have since removed the poster. But Head is standing by it, saying, “I don’t consider it racist. I still don’t.” The poster seems to have first popped up on an online conservative message board, posted by “tom2″ in Texas. “tom2″ said that he received the image and text from his nephew.

Climate Progress

The tragic hubris of the climate action delayers

By Joe Romm on Aug 11, 2009 at 7:50 pm

Let’s assume we keep listening to the siren song of the deniers and the climate action delayers who insist human-caused global warming is not a dire problem requiring deep reductions in greenhouse gases starting as soon as possible.   So we ruin our  livable climate for our children and grandchildren and countless generations after that.

When they are done cursing our name, our descendents will try to understand how “a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself,” as Elizabeth Kolbert put it.  They’ll have a long time to do this since, as a major NOAA-led study concluded this year, climate change is “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe — irreversible, that is, if we don’t stop it in the first place.

The typical reasons why people and societies have historically made such tragically catastrophic blunders don’t apply to a great many opinion makers today.  Sure some are malicious or ignorant, and some, like David Broder, sultan of the status quo, are fatally uninformed about global warming.

But how you explain people who have a fair amount of familiarity with the issue and actually write regularly on the subject — but just get it so wrong again and again?  Many of these are people I’ve called the climate action delayers (CADs) — the folks who claim to believe in the science of global warming but obviously don’t, the folks who substitute their own opinion for an understanding of the actual science.

Their tragic flaw is hubris, which, as Wikipedia notes is:

a term used in modern English to indicate overweening pride, superciliousness, or arrogance, often resulting in fatal retribution or Nemesis.

A perfect example of modern-day hubris can be seen in the work of one Thomas Fuller, a delayer who writes as an “environmental policy examiner” for the examiner.com named.  He has his own label, as he wrote August 1:

As a global warming ‘lukewarmer,’ I believe that manmade CO2 will cause about 2 degrees Celsius of warming as concentrations of CO2 double during the course of this century.

That, of course, doesn’t make him a lukewarmer.  It just makes him someone who doesn’t understand or care about what science actually says.  On our current emissions path, we’re going to double CO2 concentrations not “during the course of the century” but almost certainly halfway through it — and we’re going to warm more than 4°C by century’s end:

It is hubris to blithely assert that one’s beliefs supersede the work of thousands of scientists, including hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific papers on which we base our current understanding of the danger posed by unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases.

But that isn’t the most hubristic thing Fuller has written.  On August 5, he wrote a column, “The best of times for global warming skeptics“:

Read more

Security

Tackling Afghanistan’s Opium Problem

By Peter Juul, Guest Blogger on Aug 11, 2009 at 7:30 pm

ap080425031830Yesterday the New York Times revealed that 50 Afghan drug traffickers with ties to the Taliban were on the U.S. military’s “kill or capture” list. Today the Senate Foreign Relations Committee released the report that the Times article was based on, adding further detail.

The 50 traffickers on the 367-strong target list are not subject to “targeted assassinations,” but U.S. and NATO troops do have authorization to kill or capture them if they’re encountered on the battlefield. The ruckus over the addition of drug traffickers to the kill-or-capture list points to the increased importance of the international community’s counternarcotics effort in the renewed effort in Afghanistan.

It’s become conventional wisdom that the Taliban receive large sums of money from the drug trade – the SFRC report cites military and UN estimates of between $70 million and $125 million a year in drug income. But conventional wisdom could be wrong. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the United States’ Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, has stated on more than one occasion that the Taliban’s primary source of funds are sympathizers in Persian Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar – not the illicit opium trade.

But this uncertainty over the opium trade’s role in funding the Taliban doesn’t mean the United States should give up on trying to tackle the problem. As the SFRC report shows, the Taliban use protection of the opium trade as a critical component of their establishment of a parallel government in parts of Afghanistan. In exchange for this protection, the Taliban extract taxes from opium farmers, heroin manufacturers, and drug traffickers.

Insurgents often impose taxes on populations as a means of legitimating their rule in addition to the obvious purpose of raising funds. The underlying argument runs like this: unlike the Afghan government and international forces, we, the Taliban, will let you farmers (and drug traffickers) continue to grow and trade opium as you’ve been doing. All we ask in exchange for our protection is a small tax. Read more

Politics

New Hampshire right-wing protester suggests sending ‘illegals’ home with a ‘bullet in their head.’

By Andrea Nill Sanchez on Aug 11, 2009 at 7:26 pm

The New Hampshire Republican Volunteer Coalition urged its members to make their voices heard today in Portsmouth, NH outside of a high school where President Obama was discussing health care reform. Sure enough, right-wing protesters came out not just in protest of health care, but also furiously offering the suggestion that undocumented immigrants should be sent back to their home countries with “a bullet in their head.”

“Why are we bankrupting this country for 21 million illegals who should be sent on the first bus one way back from wherever they come from. We don’t need illegals. Send them home once. Send them home with a bullet in their head the second time. Read what Jefferson said about the Tree of Liberty — it’s coming baby.”

Watch it:

Right-wing protesters have been inspiring each other by referencing this 1787 quote by Thomas Jefferson: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” One Portsmouth protester also held a sign which read “It Is Time To Water The Tree Of Liberty.”

Yglesias

Endgame

By Matthew Yglesias on Aug 11, 2009 at 6:16 pm

There’s no easy way to lose your sight:

— Over the long term, we need more and better global governance.

— “American” branding in Germany.

— Coverage of the Clinton marriage continues to be insane.

— Imagining New York City without the subway.

— Steven Walt against leaning too hard on the national security angle on climate change.

In yesterday’s thread, James Gary claimed to have “noticed Matt’s predilection for bands that sound like Romeo Void.” And, indeed, I like Romeo Void! Here’s “Never Say Never”. I’m a bit ashamed to say that I owe my affection for new wave music, this song included, primarily to Wave 103 station from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

Politics

Weekly Standard: It’s ‘likely’ that the swastika at Rep. Scott’s office is a ‘fake hate crime.’

By Amanda Terkel on Aug 11, 2009 at 6:00 pm

This morning, Rep. David Scott (D-GA) discovered that someone had spray-painted a swastika on the sign at one of his district offices. On Twitter, various right-wing observers immediately began speculating that it was a staged stunt. Now, Weekly Standard writer John McCormack has legitimized these fringe perspectives:

In recent years self-inflicted hate crimes have come into vogue among certain citizens on the right and the left.

Of course sometimes “hate crimes” are real (for example, this spring a College Democrat desecrated crosses at George Washington University with graffiti and condoms). It’s possible that a neo-Nazi actually vandalized Rep. Scott’s offices. But given the fact that the Nazi imagery so neatly dovetails with the left’s smearing of health-care protesters as fascists, isn’t it more likely that this act of vandalism was committed by one of Scott’s supporters?

Scott’s press assistant Jennifer Wright was “taken aback — but mainly amused” by the Weekly Standard’s accusation. “Personally I think it’s funny that he thinks a David Scott supporter put the swastika on the sign,” Wright told TPM, “especially given what’s been happening in the media with the Congressman.”

Update

Bill Nigut, the Southeast Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League, put out a statement calling the swastika at Scott’s office was a “frightening display of bigotry and ignorance that should not be tolerated by a democratic society.”

Health

Can Canadians Purchase Private Health Insurance Coverage?

By Igor Volsky on Aug 11, 2009 at 6:00 pm

The August Town Halls have buried any meaningful coverage of the health care debate. Groups like Freedomworks and Americans For Prosperity are generating wild rumors about the proposed health care reform and the overwhelming majority of media coverage has merely contrasted protesters’ claims with administration retorts, while failing to correct the record. The format creates the illusion of balance and, by giving equal time to a false claim, pads disingenuous arguments.

Fortunately, this report from NPR’s Sarah Varney is a respite from the norm. Rather than reprinting the claim that Canadian health care system indiscriminately rations care, Varney actually examines the Canadian health care system and concludes that it’s getting a “bum rap.” Just like Medicare beneficiaries who protest against “government health care,” protesters who use Canadian care as an example of “government interference” or rationing, will be surprised to learn that the Canadian health care system relies on both government and private insurers to provide Canadians with comprehensive coverage:

Canada has a universal health care system that’s paid for through income taxes and sales tax. All Canadians are covered, and they can see any doctor they want anywhere in the country with no copays or deductibles….And while the individual provinces and territories set their overall health budgets and administer the health plans, the delivery of medical care is private. Doctors run their own businesses and then bill the government.

As it turns out, the system works fairly well:

- Physicians in Canada earn a good living and aren’t faced with the same administrative hassles that American doctors gripe about.

- The Commonwealth Fund looked at deaths that could have been prevented with access to quality medical care in the leading 19 industrialized countries. In the latest survey, the United States ranked last and Canada came in sixth.

- When federal spending on Canadian health care declined during a recession in the 1990s, lines for non-urgent procedures — and some urgent ones — grew. In response, Canada’s government poured billions of dollars into reducing wait times in the five medical areas deemed most troublesome, including cancer care, cardiac care and joint replacement surgery. And wait times for these services has dropped: Most provinces now report those times on publicly available Web sites.

- Few Canadians go south for medical care. Canadian researchers say it’s a bit like getting struck by lighting — it’s extremely rare, but when it happens, everyone talks about it.

- Public opinion polls continue to show strong support for publicly financed, universal health care in Canada.

Varney contradicts the oft-repeated claim that Canadians can’t purchase health insurance coverage by writing that many Canadians purchase private coverage for “optometry, dentistry and outpatient prescription drugs” — services the public plan does not cover. Yet at the end of the piece, she quotes a pollster who notes that the Canadian health care system “‘is not something that everybody is completely satisfied with or complacent about.’ About half of Canadians say they would like the option to buy a private health insurance plan. Currently, that’s not allowed.”

Canadians can purchase supplemental private coverage for services that are not covered by the public plan, but cannot purchase private insurance for basic services. As CBC News points out, private health insurance is “a crucial part of the system,” and Canadians spent about $43.2 billion on private coverage in 2005. Private insurance covers “anything beyond what the public system will pay for. For instance, should you have to spend some time in the hospital, the public system will cover the cost of your bed in a ward, which usually has three other patients. If you want a private room, the extra charge will come out of your pocket, unless you have extended health coverage either through your employer or through a policy you have bought yourself.”

Basic services are covered by the government precisely because the large risk pools allow the government to negotiate cheaper rates with providers and control health care costs. The government fears, with good reason, that if Canadians can leave the purchasing pools, the government’s market power would diminish.

Politics

Right-wing global warming deniers protest Clean Energy Summit.

By Faiz Shakir on Aug 11, 2009 at 5:30 pm

Yesterday, the Center for American Progress Action Fund hosted the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas, a gathering attended by Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Harry Reid, Steven Chu, Hilda Solis, and many other experts. Unsurprisingly, right-wing protesters – many of whom are global warming deniers – also gathered at the venue. The Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson interviewed some of the protesters to get a better understanding of their views. One said President Obama is an “Anti-American Arab” who “is not a natural-born citizen.” Many others said that global warming is a hoax, that Obama is a man of divided loyalties and questionable associations, and that the country is headed toward socialist decline. Watch it:

Update

The number of activists who supported clean energy reform vastly outnumbered the deniers. “Organizers of the demonstrators who backed the energy agenda behind the conference said they counted about 275 supporters on hand.”

Yglesias

British Official Disturbed By Right-Wing Health Care Lies

By Matthew Yglesias on Aug 11, 2009 at 5:28 pm

The United Kingdom is an actual country, with millions of inhabitants and a government and so forth. It’s a close ally of the United States. It’s also a kind of weird conservative bogeyman story, in which the right first lies about how liberals want the US to adopt UK-style health care and then they follow that up by lying about how UK-style health care works. And as The Guardian explains, this is creating dilemma for British diplomats:

Slickly produced television advertisements trumpet the alleged failures of the NHS’s 61-year tradition of tax-funded healthcare. To the dismay of British healthcare professionals, US critics have accused the service of putting an “Orwellian” financial cap on the value on human life, of allowing elderly people to die untreated and, in one case, for driving a despairing dental patient to mend his teeth with superglue. [...]

The British embassy in Washington is quietly trying to counter inaccuracies. A spokesman said: “We’re keeping a close eye on things and where there’s a factually wrong statement, we will take the opportunity to correct people in private. That said, we don’t want to get involved in a domestic debate.”

Of course the idea of correcting people in private assumes that they’re actually making mistakes as opposed to just telling wild lies deliberately. The British government’s hesitance to wade into a domestic US political dispute is extremely understandable, but I see no reason the Brits should be forced to stay silent as people decide to portray them as a country of eugenics-obsessed monsters. As Tory leader David Cameron has said:

In its bricks and mortar, people and services, the NHS embodies something which is truly great about Britain. That something is equity: the spirit of fairness for all and the equal right of everyone regardless of age, background or circumstance to get the healthcare they need. [...] We should be proud that, in its sixtieth year, people are beginning to look at the Conservative Party as the party of the NHS. But we’ve got to live up to that honour.

It honestly strikes me as strange that all these bizarre health care scare stories come from friendly, well-known English-speaking countries like Canada and the UK. You would think that to get away with weird lies about the horrors of “socialism” that people would need to at least pick more obscure countries; talk about how rotten everything is in Portugal or something.

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