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Los nativistas detrás del hombre que llamó a Obama ‘mentiroso’

By Faiz Shakir on Sep 10, 2009 at 10:17 pm

El Representante Joe Wilson (R-SC) ha recibido mucha atención al llamar al Presidente Barack Obama ‘mentiroso’ anoche cuando este afirmó que los inmigrantes indocumentados no se beneficiarán de la reforma del sistema de salud. Una mayoría de comentaristas y políticos han denunciado el acto revoltoso de Wilson, aunque muchos no se han dado la molestia de mostrar la falsedad inherente de sus acusaciones. De hecho, los inmigrantes indocumentados están expresamente prohibidos de recibir cualquier beneficio de cuidado de salud bajo los proyectos de ley en el Senado y la Cámara de Representantes, y un vistazo más agudo a aquellos que impacientemente proclaman lo contrario ayuda a aclarar los orígenes nativistas de su campaña en contra la reforma al sistema de la salud.

Wilson es integrante del Comité de la Reforma Inmigratoria (HIRC por sus siglas en inglés) de la Cámara de Representantes, un grupo (compuesto en su mayoría por republicanos) que fue fundado por el ex Representante Tom Tancredo (R-CO) con el fin de detener “el crecimiento explosivo de la inmigración ilegal”, “reversar el crecimiento en inmigración legal”, y terminar con las “amnistías”. Otros miembros notoriamente anti-inmigrantes del HIRC incluyen Steve King (R-IA), quien describió la inmigración como un “Holocausto a paso lento”, y Lamar Smith (R-TX), quien compara a inmigrantes indocumentados con “armas terroristas.” Miembros del HIRC Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), y King han proclamado que los inmigrantes indocumentados recibirían beneficios de salud mucho antes del arranque de ira de Wilson. Los dos representantes republicanos, Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA) y Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV), quienes propusieron enmiendas en la legislación de la reforma en la Cámara que hubieran incluido estrictos mecanismos para verificar la ciudadanía, también son miembros activos del HIRC. Heller y Deal también han encabezado el esfuerzo para derrocar la XIV Enmienda a la Constitución estadounidense la cual automáticamente le otorga la ciudadanía estadounidense a todos los nacidos en este país.

La reacción de Wilson anoche estuvo claramente fuera de contexto, pues su indefensible ataque furioso es muestra de una dialogo más amplio que se lleva a acabo entre los miembros del HIRC y grupos anti-inmigrantes que ven el debate sobre la reforma del cuidado de la salud como otra oportunidad para promover su agenda nativista al promover el miedo, la saña, y la desinformación calculada. HIRC ahora está liderada por Brian Bilbray (R-CA)—un ex-cabildero de la Federación para la Reforma Inmigratoria (o FAIR por sus siglas en inglés), un grupo anti-inmigrante de odio, El Center for New Community informó que FAIR le pagó cerca de $300.000 por su labor en nombre de ellos entre mayo del 2002 y julio del 2005. Desde entonces Bilbray ha anunciado sus intenciones de “trabajar conjuntamente” con grupos como FAIR y el Centro para Estudios Inmigratorios (o CIS por sus siglas en inglés), otro grupo originario de FAIR que ha sido identificado como parte del “cabildeo nativista”. No causa sorpresa que los que detestan la reforma de salud en el HIRC han usado frecuentemente la “pericia” cuestionable de FAIR, CIS, y su grupo-hermano Numbers USA para promover el mito de que los inmigrantes indocumentados serian incluidos en la legislación. Otro grupo anti-inmigrante, Americans for Legal Immigration, o ALIPAC, ha ido tan lejos como de catalogar a Wilson como un “Congresista valiente” por haber vociferado la “mentira” de Obama y han aconsejado a sus miembros que se lo agradezcan personalmente.

Wilson ha co-auspiciado varias propuestas de ley de “solo inglés” y ha apoyado esfuerzos para denunciar a inmigrantes indocumentados que buscan cuidado médico de emergencia. En el 2006, él declaró que “es hora de restringir la invasión de inmigrantes ilegales.”

Politics

Right-wing group sponsoring Republican doctors rally supports privatizing Medicare.

By Lee Fang on Sep 10, 2009 at 6:15 pm

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a right-wing group that filed an amicus brief supporting Rush Limbaugh in his fight to keep his medical records private amid charges of doctor-shopping to obtain pain medication, was present with a booth at the FreedomWorks rally on Capitol Hill today. AAPS is sponsoring another event this afternoon with Republican leaders, including Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) and Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA). ThinkProgress caught up with an AAPS staffer, who explained that the group not only opposes health reform, but also supports privatizing Medicare:

Q: So you prefer a privatization of Medicare?

AAPS: Of Medicare? [...] Yes. We don’t think it’s very efficient at all.

Watch it:

The AAPS booth was busy making “homemade” protest signs and passing out invitations to a National Republican Campaign Committee reception at the NRCC’s fundraising offices in DC. View the invitation the AAPS handed out here.

Yglesias

Endgame

By Matthew Yglesias on Sep 10, 2009 at 6:12 pm

Whiskey, please:

— Marybeth Peters testifies on the Google Books settlement.

— David Balto testifies on the Google Books settlement.

— New Republic editor in chief Martin Peretz thinks Van Jones is literally a Communist.

— Carbon tax is a tough sell even in France.

— Bus Rapid Transit in Cleveland proves to actually be really slow.

— Joe Wilson is Your Preexisting Condition.

Still hyping Saturday’s Ladyhawke / Ida Maria show. Here’s “Queen of the World”.

Economy

Bailed Out Banks Get Into The Payday Lending Business

By Pat Garofalo on Sep 10, 2009 at 5:30 pm

paydayiiPayday lending — in which a customer is given a cash advance on his/her next paycheck — has traditionally been confined to largely unregulated non-bank lenders. However, the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune reported yesterday that payday lenders “have a powerful new ally in their quest for respectability: big banks”:

A few of the nation’s largest banks — including Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp, Wells Fargo & Co. of San Francisco, and Fifth Third Bancorp of Cincinnati — are now marketing payday loan-type products, with triple-digit interest rates, to their checking account customers.

These banks are making a strong case for creating a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) in a couple of ways. The first is that loans of this sort should come under some sort of regulation, even if they remain largely in the non-bank sector. Typical payday loans have interest rates of 400 percent or more. While not quite that high, the big banks are charging $10 per $100 borrowed, which translates into a 120 percent annual interest rate.

These exorbitant rates are what makes payday lending profitable — and ensures that the borrowers who use them have to keep coming back for more. As the Center for Responsible Lending found, 76 percent of payday loan volume (and $3.5 billion in annual fees) is due to “churning,” which is repeat borrowing by customers who paid off their loan, but because of the interest, require another loan before their next paycheck. Sky-high interest rates and the way in which loans of this sort are marketed and sold would come under the purview of the CFPA.

Second, as the Consumer Federation of America pointed out, the banks in question are “using their national bank charters to avoid state usury laws,” which in many states cap the amount of interest that can be charged for a payday loan. But as envisioned by the Obama administration, the CFPA would set a floor for regulation that would not preempt state law. The CFPA would ensure a minimum level of protection, but wouldn’t prevent states from rightly applying their own usury laws to national banks.

Legislation creating the CFPA, along with the rest of the administration’s regulatory reform agenda, is currently sitting in Congress, waiting to be acted upon. But while it sits, the banks are getting right bank to business, taking on record amounts of risk and finding creative ways to subvert interest rate restrictions. Incidentally, all three of the banks using these payday-type loans received TARP money, though U.S. Bancorp has since repaid the government. Wells Fargo still has $25 billion in TARP funds outstanding.

Related Posts

Yglesias

The Case for (a Moderate Amount of non-Accelerating) Inflation

By Matthew Yglesias on Sep 10, 2009 at 5:28 pm

Chris Hayes has a policy paper out for New America trying to drive an idea that’s been discussed a fair amount in academic circles but doesn’t seem to have gotten much political purchase, namely that we need some more inflation in the United States over the medium-term:

totaldebtandinflation19802009large-1

The idea is basically that if we could sustain a five or six percent inflation rate for a period of years, that would make it much easier to work off the debt overhangs—both in the public and private sectors—that otherwise threaten to hobble the economy for years. You would need, of course, to try to be sure that this doesn’t spiral into accelerating inflation. But the point is to move beyond the kind of anti-inflation hyper-vigilance that came into vogue after the Great Inflation of the 1970s. That mentality was an understandable reaction to what had happened, but the fact that an out-of-control wage-price cycle is a bad thing doesn’t mean that inflation should always be kept as low as possible. A moderate amount of inflation could do a great deal to help us.

Climate Progress

Obama to speak at U.N. special session on global warming; Todd Stern testifies “Nothing the U.S. can do is more important for the international negotiation process than passing robust, comprehensive clean energy legislation as soon as possible…. President Obama and the Secretary of State, along with our entire Administration, are committed to action on this issue.”

By Joe Romm on Sep 10, 2009 at 5:15 pm

Obama’s (first) big speech on global warming is going to come sooner than expected.

And all the nonsensical media reporting on how the administration is supposedly backing away from a sense of urgency on the climate issue — urgency on passing the clean air, clean water, clean energy jobs bill and getting a global deal — should be dispelled by reading today’s House testimony from our top climate negotiator, Todd Stern (here, excerpted below).  Every word in that testimony is signed off on by the administration, so when Stern presses Congress for a bill ASAP and says Obama is committed to action, that comes from the White House.

E&E News PM reports:

President Obama will speak on global warming later this month during a special U.N. summit in New York where world leaders will try to jump-start talks on a deal that succeeds the Kyoto Protocol.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs today confirmed Obama’s role in the Sept. 22 event that comes on the eve of general debate in the 64th session of the U.N. General Assembly.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called presidents and prime ministers together for the climate meeting in an attempt to “mobilize the political will and vision needed to reach an ambitious agreed outcome based on science at the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen.”

Obama’s role in the U.N. session is sure to spark widespread international attention, especially after eight years of resistance to significant steps on climate change under former President George W. Bush’s administration.

Obama is expected to appear alongside a handful of other government leaders and climate activists during a morning session that opens the U.N. climate meeting.

I think he’ll still need to give a more political speech before the Senate vote. When will that vote be? A key administration witness testified in front of a House Committee today that it really needs to be before a certain big international climate conference in Europe this December:

Read more

Politics

GOP’s Post-Speech Talking Point: Obama’s Address Was A ‘Partisan Pep Rally’

By Igor Volsky on Sep 10, 2009 at 5:04 pm

During last night’s address to a joint session of Congress, President Obama made one final effort to win-over Republican support for passing comprehensive health care reform by the end of the year. He repackaged his campaign health care plan into a smaller $900 billion package, embraced Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) high-risk pool proposal (sort of) and even opened the door to malpractice reform. But Republicans, who seemed to think last night’s speech was a town hall event, managed to interpret Obama’s address as a “partisan pep rally”:

ERIC CANTOR: “Something that I was taken aback by was the partisan nature of the speech.”

KARL ROVE: “This was not an exceptionally good speech. It was gratuitous and bitterly partisan.”

LINDSEY GRAHAM: “I quite frankly was offended by the whole tone. I thought it was a partisan pep rally instead of a chance to bring the country together.”

Watch a compilation:

The Wonk Room has more.

Yglesias

Public Health Insurance Keeping America Afloat

By Matthew Yglesias on Sep 10, 2009 at 4:44 pm

Igor Volsky notes that notwithstanding rampant conservative fearmongering about “government-run” health insurance, it’s only America’s existing government run programs that are saving us from a total insurance catastrophe. Look at the new census data:

coveragechart-1-1

The private system is slowly but surely failing, and only public programs are preventing lack of health insurance from spiraling out of control. But those demographic groups that are eligible for public sector health insurance are in okay shape: “In fact, the uninsurance rate declined significantly for Americans under 18 and over 65 — the two groups who are eligible for government-sponsored coverage (CHIP or Medicaid).”

Climate Progress

Energy and Global Warming News for September 10: Nukes will be part of Senate energy bill, Boxer says

By Climate Guest Blogger on Sep 10, 2009 at 4:40 pm

File this under Duh!

Nukes Will Be Part of Senate Energy Bill, Boxer Says

Barbara Boxer, the chairwoman of the Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works, said today “there will be a nuclear title in the bill,” reports our colleague Siobhan Hughes at Dow Jones Newswires.

While nuclear power may not be the make-or-break issue for the Senate bill””the health care debate probably takes that honor””it is a crucial part of attracting Republican support for new energy measures. Whether it’s enough is still anybody’s guess.

Led by Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, Senate Republicans have been clamoring for more federal support for nuclear power. Indeed, Sen. Alexander doesn’t miss a chance to tout nuclear power as an emissions-free power source on par with wind or solar power.

Ms. Boxer didn’t elaborate on her comments, Dow Jones notes. Previously, she’d said that a higher cost for carbon-which would make coal-fired plants less attractive and nuclear plants more attractive-would do the trick. More support for nuclear power could take many shapes such as expanded federal loan guarantees or the inclusion of nuclear power in renewable-energy standards.

Yes, the nuclear title will mostly be MDT (Money Down the Toilet) stuff, but other than the taxpayers actually doling out $10 billion (or more!) per plant, I can’t see many nukes being built no matter what is in the nuclear title because they just cost too damn much (see “Nuclear Bombshell: $26 Billion cost “” $10,800 per kilowatt! “” killed Ontario nuclear bid“) — no matter what EPA and some other models say.  Nukes appear to be the minimum price for admission for some moderate Democrats and a few Republicans (“Lamar Alexander (R-TN) calls nuclear “the cheap clean energy solution,” renews GOP call for 100 new nukes, which would cost some $1 trillion“) — particularly McCain.

I take this as a good sign that Boxer is it really trying to start with a bill that could ultimately be passed.  I’d also expect a modified ‘price collar’, which could be both a useful addition to the bill and a key way to get more votes, depending on how it is written.

I don’t, however, think you are going to see nuclear power included in the renewable energy standard — but you might see an addition to the standard that goes beyond the renewable and efficiency standard and includes low carbon energy.

Read more

Politics

Dirty coal group’s 14th forgery impersonated American veterans.

By Brad Johnson on Sep 10, 2009 at 4:30 pm

American Legion forgery

Congressional investigators have discovered that the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity’s (ACCCE) astroturfing effort has impersonated American military veterans in a forged letter sent to Congress. Thirteen other forgeries purporting to be from organizations representing blacks, Hispanics, women and senior citizens. This latest letter, sent in June to influence a swing Democratic legislator on his vote on the American Clean Energy and Security Act, impersonates a local American Legion official in Rocky Mount, VA:

The letter, sent to the office of Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA), asks Perriello to “make sure the Waxman-Markey bill includes provisions to promote American energy independence, while protecting already cash-strapped constituents from increases in electricity prices.” It concludes, “Thank you for listening to concerns of vets in your district.”

Yesterday, Alstom joined Duke Energy, Alcoa, and First Energy by abandoning the scandal-ridden organization, as “questions that have been raised about ACCCE’s support for climate legislation.”

Download the forged letter.

Update

Real veterans of the Iraq War explain their support for the American Clean Energy and Security Act in this new advertisement from VoteVets.org:


Update

,Today, over 150 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars — real ones — visited the White House and the Congress to argue that “climate change legislation is absolutely critical.”

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