Archive for April 2009
Weekly Immigration Wire: Swine Flu Infecting Immigration Debate
by Nezua, TMC MediaWire Blogger
It’s no shock that those long-opposed to All Things Immigrant are using the Swine Flu outbreak—which has mostly affected Mexicans at this point—to ratchet anti-immigrant rhetoric up to an irresponsible level. It’s disappointing though, especially because the last few weeks saw more rational dialogue emerging in media coverage. This week’s Wire examines the voices talking about immigration both in the media and on the ground, from those recycling age-old “eliminationist” rhetoric to those who put their own bodies on the line to fight for inclusive justice.
In AlterNet, Joshua Holland uses history to contextualize virulent statements hurled by anti-immigrant pundits like Michael Savage. Holland deftly debunks numerous anti-immigrant, right-wing myths using a historical lens: By tying the source of contagion to immigrants, today’s pundits are echoing age old patterns that “contributed to a series of pogroms in which thousands were burned alive” in 14th Century Europe. Just what are today’s pundits saying? Savage asks “Could this be a terrorist attack through Mexico?” Michelle Malkin, Bill O’ Reilly and Neil Boortz agree: “[W]hat better way to sneak a virus into this country than give it to Mexicans?” shrieks Boortz.
While Colorado lawmakers aren’t using such frantic hyperbole, they are doing nothing to dispel the state’s reputation as heavy-handed when it comes to immigration enforcement. On Monday, the Democratic-controlled state legislature introduced a non-binding Joint Memorial that requests the use of DNA technology and expanded local police powers to “identify, arrest, and detain” immigrants. If granted, the request would allow the state to use “biometric identification—like DNA tracking—and federal databases to create in enforcement dragnet,” according to Erin Rosa of The Colorado Independent. Rosa also reports on scary developments in enforcement technology that attempt to mend the gap between the federal government’s lack of reform and the needs of each state.
Not all harsh enforcement measures result from a lack of federal legislation. A Republican-led Congress passed a law in 1996 restricting the ability of immigrants to challenge the legality of their deportation,” as Rochelle Bobroff and Harper Jean Tobin report for New America Media. The measure is pointedly cruel: It allows courts to proceed with deportation even if an asylum-seeker will be endangered upon their explication. Though there is a provision that the courts can use to rule otherwise, this law represents yet another policy that needs to be revisited when the White House negotiates humane and effective reform.
Writing for AlterNet, Frank Sharry reports on the divide deepening between moderate Democrats, who are “ready to tackle common sense reform” and Republican “hardliners.” “While Democrats seem to be making headway,” Sharry writes, “The Republican Party continues to be dogged by Minutemen hard-liners who oppose practical solutions.”
The political gap is growing, as other groups draw together. RaceWire’s Michelle Chen reports on the Black Immigration Network, “the first national network concerned about immigration issues and racial equity issues surrounding both African Americans and immigrants of African descent.” This Network is important because it bridges historical tensions between the two communities. And as Chen makes clear, there are people who exploit such divides to their own benefit.
The effects of the Iraq war, while a much quieter subject in today’s news cycle, are still playing out. AlterNet’s Nina Berman tells the tragic story of Iraqi refugees who are struggling in the poor U.S. economy and lack adequate help to get ahead. Omar Ibrahim is one such refugee who came to Texas in 2008. He is still jobless and family back in Iraq doesn’t quite understand. “They know that America is a dream,” Ibrahim says, “but it is a bad dream.”
Finally, in an inspiring show of activism, Public News Service’s Mary Kuhlman reports on two nuns who engages in civil disobedience at a Chicago ICE detention facility to draw attention to the fight for human (immigrant) rights. Obama’s 100th day marked their “tipping point,” after more than two years of prayer vigils. They needed to try something different. The nuns’ agenda? Making it possible for detained immigrants to see religious workers. Immigrants, many of them asylum seekers, are isolated even from their families. In this particular case, the women’s actions paid off.
At play today in our immigration debate are warring philosophies of who a “people” are and what we owe each other for simply belonging to the same human family. On one side, frothing, fearful punditry stoke division and hostility. And on the other, fearless and brave activists champion for our better natures. It is no small battle.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration. Visit Immigration.NewsLadder.net for a complete list of articles on immigration, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy and health issues, check out Economy.NewsLadder.net and Healthcare.NewsLadder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Pulse: Days of Swine and Poses
Yesterday, Senate Republicans prioritized human life over anti-abortion grandstanding and confirmed Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as Secretary of Health and Human Services. When the world totters on the brink of a pandemic, slow-walking the future health secretary begins to look unseemly.
As Dana Goldstein reports in TAPPED:
Of course, it was all an act, though some conservative activists suspect that swine flu was just a ruse to guilt-trip Republicans into confirming Sebelius. Seriously.
Wendy Wright, of the conservative group Concerned Women for America, told the Washington Independent that “If there’s even a hint that [Department of Homeland Security] is manipulating the health situation to push a political appointee through, well, it almost defies imagination that they’d be willing to that.”
Some costs of the Republican war on science became evident this week as the U.S. declared an state of emergency over swine flu. John Nichols of the Nation recalls that the Republicans cut $420 million for pandemic preparedness from the stimulus bill on the grounds that public health spending had nothing to do with economic recovery:
Senate Republicans led by Maine Senator Susan Collins attacked the public-health spending and successfully eliminated it from the Senate version of the stimulus. Collins complained at the time to CNN that: “There’s funding to help improve our preparedness for a pandemic flu. There is funding to help improve cyber security. What does that have to do with an economic stimulus package?”
Collins read the stimulus legislation, and the threat, wrong. So, too, did Senate Democratic leaders, who compromised with her wrongheaded demands in order to secure support for a watered-down stimulus plan.
If you’ve been watching the stock market lately, or talked to a travel agent, you know exactly what pandemic preparedness has to do with the economy. Airline and manufacturing stocks were especially hard-hit by flu fears this week, not to mention pork bellies.
Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania announced yesterday that he was becoming a Democrat. As Jonathan Stein and Nick Bauman explain in Mother Jones, the far-right caused Specter’s defection. The longtime Pennsylvania senator broke with the Republicans not on principle, but because preliminary polling data showed that he couldn’t win a primary challenge by far-right Republican, Pat Toomey.
In theory, the Democrats now have a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority, but not until the winner of the Minnesota senate race, Al Franken, is seated. As Brian Beutler notes at TPMDC, there are enough divisions in the Democratic caucus to reduce a super-majority to mere majority on many important votes. Specter has a reputation as a moderate Republican and few expect the party switch to radically affect his votes. However, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid now has leverage over Specter, because Reid now controls Specter’s committee assignments.
Finally, in TAPPED, Ezra Klein argues that the Democrats are wise to continue asserting their right to pass healthcare through budget reconciliation–and therefore with a simple majority–if no healthcare bill is passed before the October 15. Let’s call it the Don’t Drop Dead Date. Hopefully, the prospect of reconciliation will spur Republicans to cooperate on healthcare reform, because the alternative is being left out all together.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care. Visit
Healthcare.newsladder.net for a complete list of articles on healthcare affordability, healthcare laws, and healthcare controversy. And for the best progressive reporting on the Economy, and Immigration, check out Economy.Newsladder.net and Immigration.Newsladder.net.
This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Audit: Curbing Credit Card Abuses
by Zach Carter, TMC MediaWire Blogger
While the bank lobby continues to hold significant clout in Congress, President Barack Obama entered the fray on behalf of consumers Thursday, demanding that lenders put an end to abusive fees and predatory interest rates.
Writing for Air America, former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich highlights parallels between credit card problems, which are just now starting to take a serious toll on bank balance sheets, and the subprime mortgage meltdown that triggered today’s economic crisis. In both cases, Reich notes, banks used a vast array of traps to trick people into high-interest loans they couldn’t afford. Now that credit card loans are also going bad and eating up bank profits, lenders have deployed another set of fine-print gimmickry to gouge borrowers and make up for the losses.
Banks are currently jacking up interest rates on previously accumulated credit card debt and charging outrageous fees for simple mistakes, like exceeding the credit limit. There is no law that says credit card lenders have to charge such fees—when a borrower hits the credit limit, the company could simply deny the transaction.
Lawmakers have protected the unfair credit card playing field for years. In 2008, a House bill to ban retroactive interest rate hikes, limit abusive fees and rein in deceptive marketing techniques passed by an overwhelming margin, but the banking lobby successfully prevented a similar measure from coming to a vote in the Senate. Sadly, as Mike Lillis emphasizes in The Washington Independent, policy observers are experiencing déjà vu on the current round of credit card legislation.
Earlier this year, the Federal Reserve finalized new regulations that would ban many abuses by credit card lenders, but the rules don’t go into effect until July 2010. This absurd delay was the source of much of the initial support for the legislation in Congress: lawmakers had hoped to protect consumers in the middle of a dangerous recession. While versions of the bill have cleared key committees in both the House and Senate, Lillis notes that the bank lobby has already exacted its pound of flesh, convincing members of Congress to delay the effective date of the legislation until—you guessed it—the middle of 2010. Lawmakers insist that the battle isn’t over, but we won’t know the result until the bills actually go to the floor for a vote, if they get voted on at all. No vote on the legislation is currently scheduled in either chamber.
Amid this Congressional stalemate, Obama met with credit card executives last week to emphasize his administration’s support for stronger regulations. Ezra Klein argues that the meeting bodes well for consumers in The American Prospect. The banking lobby routinely fights tighter regulation by claiming that stricter rules will lower profits, which, in turn, will force them to raise interest rates on other loans. If you reign in these abusive practices, the lobbyists say, we’ll have to raise interest rates on other borrowers. No administration in recent memory has bothered to challenge banks on the issue. A reporter raised the question at a press conference following Obama’s meeing with executives, asking whether the president believes there is a trade-off between credit card industry profits and consumer protection. Klein notes that Obama’s answer in the affirmative (“We think that it’s been out of balance.”) is a statement that has enormous implications for the policy debate, especially in the context of the president’s other comments on ensuring the extension of economically productive credit.
“We are confident that we can arrive at something that is commonsensical, something that allows the industry to continue to provide loans and to run a stable business model that’s not dependent on bubbles, that’s not dependent on people getting over-extended or finding themselves in over their heads,” Obama said.
Credit card companies clearly make a lot of money from these tricks and traps, otherwise they wouldn’t deploy them. If lenders could easily replace what they currently rake in with income from responsible loans, then there would be no trade-off between consumer protection and bank profits. But for lenders to argue that they need money earned by conning their customers is to admit that their business is dependent on predatory, economically destructive lending. This is not something that a company dependent on taxpayer support wants to acknowledge.
Obama, who has been very lenient with the banking industry, is essentially saying that banks have to earn their profits by playing a useful role in the economy, acknowledging that they have real obligations not just to their shareholders, but to the general public.
Obama’s sheer popularity will make it harder for members of Congress to water down regulations, but his willingness to play legislative hardball has already score a major victory over another key bank lobby priority: student loan subsidies. As Steve Benen notes for The Washington Monthly, the government has been giving money to private student loan companies for years in hopes that the funds are used to make responsible loans. In reality, the subsidies are squandered on executive compensation and shareholder dividends. As a solution, Obama proposed eliminating the bank handouts and replacing them with direct government loans to students.
The plan hit a temporary roadblock when Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., tried to scuttle the legislation to benefit lenders in his home state. As Benen explains, the student loan proposal wouldn’t have cleared the Senate without Nelson’s support. With 60 votes needed for any proposal to clear a filibuster, Obama usually needs every Democrat he can get. But instead of diluting the plan to win over Nelson, Obama just went around him by forging an agreement with negotiators in the House and Senate. The student lending changes will be pushed through the budget reconciliation process, allowing the measure can pass the Senate with just 51 votes, a situation which all but guarantees passage of any measure.
If Obama can win so easily on student loans, he can win on credit cards, but he has to move quickly. Unemployment call centers are being completely overwhelmed by the volume of laid-off workers seeking relief. As Marty Durlin notes for High Country News, The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment is currently taking more than 10 times the call volume it received during the recession of the early 1990s. As job cuts continue to escalate, people are relying more and more on credit cards to fund necessities. The recession is happening right now. Reform can’t wait.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy. Visit StimulusPlan.NewsLadder.net and Economy.NewsLadder.net for complete lists of articles on the economy, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical health and immigration issues, check out Healthcare.NewsLadder.net and Immigration.NewsLadder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Immigration Wire: Building Up to Change
by Nezua, TMC MediaWire Blogger
As the U.S. moves closer and closer to enacting immigration reform, the situation on the ground is evolving as well. Nothing is static for an issue that touches so many people across so many communities. This week’s wire follows up on trends observed last week: holding mainstream media accountable, enforcement tactics, and immigration’s positive effect on the economy.
But if you’d first like to get up to speed on immigration reform fundamentals, stop over at Feministing’s interview with Christine Neumann-Ortiz. (And definitely don’t miss Feministing’s call to action to stop the infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio.)
Last week, the Wire highlighted the importance of holding mainstream media accountable—especially when it comes to giving proper context to quoted sources. This week, Texas Observer’s Melissa del Bosque writes that “[t]he truth differs wildly from the perception.” when it comes to the actual political situation in Mexico and the image cultivated by mainstream media. While some outlets continue to develop an image Mexico as lawless and volatile, the actual scenario is not as dramatic.
Following up on enforcement tactics, Marcelo Balivé, writing for New America Media, explores the “backlash against immigrants” that “continues to rage countrywide.” According to Balivé, anti-immigrant sentiment is bleeding over into American perceptions about Mexican culture, “casting a pall on all Hispanic immigrants, whether they entered the country illegally or not.”
On a more positive note, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) head Janet Napolitano’s recent statements that ICE will henceforth target employers rather than workers is a move in the right direction, though she gives no indication of how that might manifest on a practical level. Napolitano also admits that there will be “no halt to arrests of undocumented workers.”
This is unfortunate. The effects of ICE raids, and the ongoing hunt for “illegals in our midst” is hurting most Latinos in the U.S., even citizens. Even the so-called “Sanctuary” cities, which refuse to enlist local law enforcement to federal duties like immigration control, are no longer offer a feeling of safety. San Francisco, much like Postville, Iowa, is now feeling the devastating effects of the ICE raids. I’m not sure how the Democratic party intends to square its support for community-shattering raids with previous promises to a large part of their constituency.
In the American Prospect, Ann Friedman writes that nearly one year after the raid in Postville, “The lingering effects of the raid make depressingly clear how misleading the “immigrants take from our communities” narrative really is.” Friedman asks that we consider what a community loses when we act as if a huge part of that same community is “illegal.”
Following up on last weeks coverage of immigration as an economic issue, Pramila Jayapal and Renee Radcliff Sinclair argue that Immigrants Keep Washington’s Economy Strong for the American Forum:
The Office of Financial Management estimated that in 2007, Washington households with at least one foreign-born member contributed $1.48 billion in tax revenue, or 13 percent of the state’s total tax revenue. Even low-income immigrant households earning less than $20,000 a year contributed a total of $50 million in tax revenue.
And in other immigration news, Wiretap’s Naima Coster writes of an ethical conflict of interest when “anti-immigrant policy and the capitalist ambitions of pharmaceutical giant Merck” are joined. Is it right to federally mandate all women immigrants to receive the Gardasil vaccine, which has claimed approximately 20 lives and produced “thousands of cases of adverse effects”?
Women have good cause to be concerned with the immigration issue “because of the displacement and separation of families—and the inherent link … between women and family life,” writes Elisabeth Garber-Paul for RH Reality Check. It’s a point also implicit in Made in LA, an Emmy-winning documentary that follows the lives of three Latina immigrants fighting for labor protections and the right to pursue freedom, happiness and a fair living.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration. Visit Immigration.NewsLadder.net for a complete list of articles on immigration, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy and health issues, check out Economy.NewsLadder.net and Healthcare.NewsLadder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Pulse: A Timetable for Reform
Senators Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) have set a timetable for healthcare reform by this fall–a major step on the road to passing legislation this year. The Senators’ plan, set out in a letter to President Obama, calls for a bill by June, committee markups over the summer, and a final vote in the fall. (Just in time for delayed-action budget reconciliation, should the Republicans prove recalcitrant.)
As Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly notes, timetables matter, politically. Furthermore, as Ezra Klein explains at TAPPED, a pact between Baucus and Kennedy is a big step forward: these two key committee chairs now have a plan to avoid the turf wars that stymied reform in 1994. This time, the two Senators have pledged to work together to write similar bills, instead having their respective committees produce very different legislation, like they did last time.
Experts agree that successful healthcare reform must work on two fronts: Paying for care while simultaneously keeping the cost of care in check. Elsewhere on TAPPED, Klein discusses why American healthcare costs so much compared to other countries. He points to a study by the famous McKinsey consulting company showing that the extra cost is not because we’re sicker, nor because we consume more healthcare:
Marcia Greenberger of the National Women’s Law Center outlines what’s at stake for women in the healthcare reform debate at RH Reality Check. She writes:
Speaking of raw deals, Martha Rosenberg describes how big pharma distorts science to get approval for yet more drugs of questionable safety and efficacy in AlterNet. Rosenberg notes that the Justice Department is cracking down on AstraZeneca and Forest Laboratories for hiding key scientific evidence that called the safety of their products into question.
What pharmaceutical companies aren’t dumping onto the market, they’re dumping into the water supply, according Lauren Kirchner of Air America Radio: 271 million pounds of drugs, from antibiotics to tranquilizers, have been legally dumped into the U.S. water supply over the past 20 years.
The Vatican keeps nixing Barack Obama’s picks for ambassador to Vatican City for being pro-choice, according to the American Forum. Carolyn Kennedy was a front-runner until she was disqualified for being personally pro-choice. I would note that there’s something of a Catch-22 here. Minor ambassadorships are, after all, rewards for big time political backers. The only reason anyone is in line for this job is because they helped the pro-choice Barack Obama get elected. This could take a while.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care. Visit Healthcare.newsladder.net for a complete list of articles on healthcare affordability, healthcare laws, and healthcare controversy. And for the best progressive reporting on the Economy, and Immigration, check out Economy.Newsladder.net and Immigration.Newsladder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Audit: Bank Execs Looting Consumers, Shareholders and Taxpayers
by Zach Carter, TMC MediaWire Blogger
Some of the largest U.S. banks may be on the ropes these days, but the disparity between the plight of financial executives and ordinary Americans has never been starker. Over the past two decades, the banking system has grown accustomed to scoring massive profits by preying on its own customers, making 2009’s transition to pilfering taxpayer wallets an easy one. After burying the economy under a mountain of unaffordable debt, bank CEOs are now finding ways to subsidize their own paychecks with taxpayer bailout funds.
With over $550 billion in government money already dedicated to shoring up the financial system under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), it’s easy to wonder just what Wall Street and its highly-compensated executives actually do for the economy. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke offered one explanation in a speech last week in Washington, D.C. At its best, Bernanke claimed, Wall Street innovates, creating new financial products that expand access to credit, making it easier to run small businesses and improving living standards for households. Armed with ever-expanding paydays, Wall Street has indeed innovated over the past thirty years, radically altering the economic landscape in the process.
But as Ezra Klein emphasizes for The American Prospect, much of Wall Street’s so-called innovation is sheer gimmickry. Financiers have intentionally designed loan contracts to be mystifying and complex to the ordinary consumer, tricking bank customers into racking up unaffordable levels of debt. From credit cards to credit default swaps, these new products have indeed signaled progress for bank balance sheets, but in many cases, banks have enjoyed outsized profits at the expense of the broader economy.
“Innovations are not always win-win,” Klein emphasizes. “They’re often win-lose.”
Of course, some financial stunts were so convoluted that many of the nation’s most revered financial brands– including AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and Wachovia– crumbled under their complexity. Today, something as simple as mortgage has become a byzantine, hard-to-value security, once Wall Street wizards bundle it together with hundreds of other mortgages and sell it off to dozens of investors. In the below video for American News Project, Lagan Sebert and David Murdock put a human face on Wall Street’s toxic assets, telling the story of Sandra Berrios, a mother of two who was conned into a predatory loan by a deceptive mortgage broker. The broker provided Sandra with documents promising her a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, but instead sold her an outrageous adjustable-rate mortgage in order to collect a fee from Flagstar Bank, which actually funded the loan.
“We believed the broker . . . but what they were telling us was not the truth,” Berrios says.
Even though Flagstar has received $266 million in government bailout money, the company still refuses to renegotiate Berrios’ loan. While some money from TARP went to healthy banks, but Flagstar was truly desperate for the funding. The company’s stock is trading at around $1.00 per share thanks to fears over its financial stability, and Flagstar recently agreed to be acquired by a private equity company for still less to avoid complete financial ruin. The source of the company’s difficulties? Losses on loans like the one Sandra Berrios is struggling with.
Writing for The Nation, Christopher Hayes highlights a letter from a reader who questions malfeasance on the part of Goldman Sachs, which received $10 billion in taxpayer funds under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Executives at Goldman recently decided to pay back the government before it paid off the investment from billionaire Warren Buffett, even though Buffett is reaping double the interest rate that the government is receiving from Goldman.
The scenario speaks volumes about just how lousy a deal taxpayers got under the bank bailout. Paying Buffett back first would clearly be the better deal for shareholders of the Wall Street titan, as it would save them years of payments at higher interest rates. But Buffett’s plan does not involve the same restrictions on executive compensation that are included under TARP. By prioritizing the TARP repayment, Goldman’s top brass are screwing their own shareholders to guarantee a bigger payday.
Exorbitant CEO compensation, especially on Wall Street, has played a major role in deepening income inequality in the United States. But even the onset of the worst recession since the Great Depression was cause for little alarm for top executives at American corporations last year, as Laura Flanders explains for GritTV.
“While wages and benefits have been going down for most Americans, more U.S. chief executives got pay raises than had their pay cut in 2008,” Flanders said, noting that “CEO’s weren’t just making more, they were making more while laying their workers off.”
Flanders notes that Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit slashed 74,000 jobs at his company in 2008, but did not object to paying himself a whopping $38 million salary. The outrage is compounded by the fact that Pandit allowed his company to collapse last year, ultimately tapping taxpayers for multiple bailouts that have reached $45 billion in scope, an amount nearly three times Citigroup’s current stock market value.
The financial system doesn’t have to be a contest between citizens and executives. There is no good reason why responsible regulations cannot be enacted to rein in CEO pay, ban socially destructive lending practices and reduce the influence of banking behemoths on public policy. We’d all be better off with that kind of innovation.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy. Visit StimulusPlan.NewsLadder.net and Economy.NewsLadder.net for complete lists of articles on the economy, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical health and immigration issues, check out Healthcare.NewsLadder.net and Immigration.NewsLadder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Immigration Wire: Legalize the Undocumented, Help Fix the Economy
by Nezua, TMC MediaWire Blogger
The dialogue on immigration has, historically, been contentious and cyclical. There are times when hysteria peaks, and rational thought struggles to enter the national dialogue. There are also moments of truth. This week, independent media debunked many myths about the undocumented and made the case for the positive impact of immigrants in the US, including the positive effect of legalizing the undocumented on the economy and how citizens are holding elected representatives accountable for votes against pro-immigrant measures.
Wendy Norris, writing for the Colorado Independent, held the New York Times to task for using questionable sources in an article about President Obama’s push for immigration reform. Norris exposes the background of quoted anti-immigration groups like NumbersUSA, CIS, and FAIR, who have ties to white supremacy groups and eugenics promoters and calls the New York Times out for quoting organizations “repeatedly discredited as hate groups.” When hate groups are quoted as legitimate sources, society suffers from the misrepresentation.
Also in New America Media, Jacqueline Esposito and Jumana Musa explore the kinds of “enforcement” that groups like NumbersUSA and FAIR claim is the most important part of Immigration Reform. Esposito and Musa cite the case of Guido Newbrough, a detainee who made multiple requests for medical attention; there was a treatable bacterial infection in his heart. Newbrough was locked in an isolation cell and died of the ailment.
“As the country moves forward on comprehensive immigration reform,” they write, “We must uphold American values by ensuring that all people, no matter where they come from, are afforded fundamental rights, including the right to a fair day in court before being deprived of liberty and the right to be free from inhumane conditions of confinement. As a nation, we cannot stand for anything less.”
The San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee (DCCC) would no doubt agree with that sentiment, as Beatriz Herrera reports for Wiretap. Apparently, the DCCC voted 20-1 against San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to preserve Sanctuary ordinances for juvenile offenders. These ordinances ensure that offenders have a chance to prove their innocence instead of facing immediate deportation.
During the 2008 election season, voices calling for reason in the immigration debate were often drowned out by the near-hysteria that certain elements of the Right called forth. Another encouraging sign that we are, perhaps, at a new juncture: Today, even democratic state senators are being held accountable. Colorado Sen. Morgan Carroll (D-Aurora) was recently forced to defend her vote against SB 170, the tuition bill was one that would provide in-state tuition equity for undocumented Colorado high school graduates, on the air.
According to the Colorado Independent, Sen. Morgan appeared on progressive talk radio host Mario Solis-Marich’s show on April 10—after “a week of being beat up in the press and on the blogs” for her opposition to the bill.
In Public News Service, Doug Ramsey has news about a report which focuses on the benefits of legalizing currently undocumented workers. Compiled by the nonpartisan Immigration Policy Center, the report breaks down how legalizing the undocumented community would increase the amount of income that the immigrant community brings into the economy. Rather than immigrants costing us, “legalization would boost tax collections at all levels of government by $66 billion over the next few years.”
Public News Service also explores the economic benefits to bringing the underground economy above ground. According to David Kallick, an economist with the Fiscal Institute, billions of dollars are simply “lining the pockets of employers who hire folks in the underground economy and avoid contributing to payroll and other taxes.”
And OneWorld US reports that Hispanic rights advocates are eager to hear the president’s plan for immigration reform and note that very reform is key to economic recovery. Janet Murguía, President and CEO of the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the US notes that “the path to a strong economic recovery includes strategies that lift wages, increase revenue, and create a level playing field—and immigration is a crucial element of that equation.”
Even the American Prospect’s Ezra Klein is writing about immigration in a more proactive light. Just last week, Klein wrote Why Immigration Reform Won’t Happen. He is now making The Political Case for Immigration Reform.
So maybe we’re figuring it out as we go. The costs of letting parts of our country fail and fall away are more than economic, they are moral and profound. We have time to act, but opposition voices are gathering in number. There are many anti-immigrant myths, and many oppose a truly progressive stance on immigration. But we have the will for the struggle and the payoff will come not only in a healthier economy, but in a sounder national soul.
Are you ready? Let’s go.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration. Visit Immigration.NewsLadder.net for a complete list of articles on immigration, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy and health issues, check out Economy.NewsLadder.net and Healthcare.NewsLadder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Pulse: Signs of Hope in the Senate
Of all the hurdles facing healthcare reform in 2009, the U.S. Senate is arguably the most formidable. But the prospects for passing a healthcare bill this year have brightened noticeably over the past few days, thanks to a senate seat pickup in Minnesota, solidifying support for the budget reconciliation strategy, and tentative overtures towards bipartisanship from key Republicans.
A three-judge panel declared Democrat Al Franken the winner of the Minnesota senate race. We don’t have a firm date for seating Franken, but Harry Reid said to be looking forward to doing so in the near future. Franken is an outspoken advocate for healthcare reform and favors expanding the public insurance system to cover more people.
Sen. Kristin Gillibrand, D-N.Y., spoke out in favor of passing healthcare reform through the budget reconciliation process this week, as Public News Service reports. Gilibrand is the latest in a string of Democratic legislators to support the reconciliation process, which would allow the Senate to circumvent a filibuster and pass legislation with simple majority vote.
Some Republicans might even be willing to work with the Democrats on healthcare reform. Senator Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, is hinting that she might be willing to cooperate with Democrats, Steve Benen writes in the Washington Monthly. And according to Public News Service, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is expected to work closely with Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. on healthcare reform legislation: “I think [Grassley] and Senator Max Baucus of Montana are really the champions of bi-partisanship in this whole debate. I think that in order for us to get an effective piece of legislation it’s going to have to be bi-partisan,” Lee Hammond, president-elect of the AARP national board, told Public News Service at a healthcare forum attended by Grassley.
A personal essay in The Nation underscores how badly healthcare reform is needed: Medical bills are threatening to tear Kate Michelman’s family apart. First, her uninsured adult daughter was paralyzed in a horseback riding accident. Then her husband was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Eventually Michelman couldn’t afford to keep her husband in a nursing facility, so she brought him home, which means she’s unable to work. The irony is that she thought that her husband had good health insurance plus long-term care insurance, and relatively speaking, he did–it just wasn’t enough to keep his family from being bankrupted by a major illness.
For all the good news coming out of the Senate, the private insurance industry won’t go down with out a fight. James Ridgeway of Mother Jones reports that insurance companies that provide private Medicare coverage are holding elderly clients hostage in a battle with the government over subsidies. The government cut off the subsidy and the insurance companies sending out propaganda to their policy-holders threatening to raise premiums and urging them to lobby the government to reverse the subsidy, Ridgeway explains:
Finally, for a refreshing change of pace, The Nation tells the story of healthcare reform in photographs.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care. Visit Healthcare.newsladder.net for a complete list of articles on healthcare affordability, healthcare laws, and healthcare controversy. And for the best progressive reporting on the ECONOMY, and IMMIGRATION, check out, Economy.Newsladder.net and Immigration.newsladder.net.
This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets,
and created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Audit: Time to Shake Off the Bank Lobby
Filed under: Economy, Health Care, Immigration, Live From Main Street, Syndicated Reporting Project, Uncategorized
by Zach Carter, TMC MediaWire Blogger
While the national economy struggles under the weight of a massive bank bailout effort, the banking lobby’s ability to influence public policy is more problematic than ever. The too-big-to-fail bankers may be dependent on U.S. taxpayers for their survival, but corporate lobbyists still have members of Congress, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve asking the banks’ permission to bring the Big Finance behemoths under control. The relationship between Wall Street and the government is so out of whack that it’s difficult to distinguish the political players from the panhandlers.
In Mother Jones, Daniel Schulman and Jonathan Stein detail the ease with which important congressional staff switch careers and move into the banking sector. In recent years, dozens of key staffers for powerful Senators have left the political arena to work for as lobbyists for the financial sector, and policy gurus from both sides of the aisle are jumping ship for lucrative careers as influence peddlers on Wall Street.
“Financial firms seeking big bucks and favorable terms from Congress and the White House are deploying Capitol Hill aides turned lobbyists to win favorable treatment from the congressional lawmakers,” Schulman and Stein write. Many lawmakers, including Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn., are refusing to disclose whether they’ve had contact with former staff who now work for Wall Street. Small surprise, then, that so many of the recent bailout packages have allowed failed bank CEOs to stay in power and saved their shareholders from bad investments in inept, even predatory, companies.
Sometimes these reinvented bank defenders are even former Senators. Susan Douglas of In These Times highlights the career of former Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, who is currently a lobbyist for UBS. The Swiss banking giant has been plagued by a seemingly endless stream of scandals over the past year, for everything from diamond smuggling to tax fraud. And Gramm helped push for looser predatory lending laws—including those pertaining to the now-decimated mortgage sector—while he on the UBS payroll.
This would be a shameful legacy for any former public servant, but for Gramm, Douglas notes, this behavior is particularly disgraceful: his two chief legislative “accomplishments” helped create and intensify the current financial crisis. Gramm co-authored the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, which compounded the financial world’s too-big-to-fail problem by letting traditional commercial lenders like Bank of America and Citigroup buy up riskier, unregulated investment banks like Merrill Lynch. Gramm then pushed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 through in a midnight budget amendment, a tactic which made sure that “credit default swaps” were not subject to either securities regulations or gambling laws. Just eight years later, credit default swap gambling destroyed insurance giant AIG, to the dismay of taxpayers everywhere.
When lawmakers stop cowing to the bank lobby and start answering to their constituents, the result is a big boost for the entire economy. Last week, committees in both the House and Senate dealt the credit card industry a rare defeat by approving bills that crack down on abusive credit card billing practices. Even though Sen. Dodd insists keeping his lobbying contacts a mystery, he is capable of crafting responsible legislation. The bills were introduced by Dodd and Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., but still face major uphill battles clearing the full House and Senate.
As Harry Hanbury details for the American News Project, conservative lawmakers and bank lobbyists are already hard at work watering down the legislative language to ensure that it will not actually curb any abuses if enacted. Take a look:
The bills would ban dozens of billing gimmicks that are as outrageous as they are common, including raising interest rates on credit card debt after it has been accumulated and hiking rates due to completely unrelated activity, like returning a library book late. The banking industry deploys a lot of clever words to mask the predation inherent in the tactics, and most common of all are the terms “price according to risk” and “risk-based pricing.” These phrases make it sound as if all the poor little credit card companies want to do is set interest rates at levels appropriate for a borrower’s credit profile. Of course, that’s not what’s actually happening: lenders are radically changing the terms of loan agreements for no other purpose than to gouge borrowers, and give borrowers no say in what happens.
It’s crazy that banks are legally permitted to raise interest rates on cardholders after they have charged debt to their credit card. If you pay full price for anything else—a shirt, a bag of groceries, a guitar—it would be laughable if the shop clerk demanded more money from you months later.
Banker apologists insist that banning these practices will restrict the flow of credit. But more credit cards will not fix a problem caused by massively over-indebted consumers. We need higher wages, not a fresh flood of predatory, high-interest debt.
But if taxpayers can win on credit cards, we can win on the bailout, too. Yes! Executive Editor Sarah van Gelder posted an open letter to President Barack Obama this week, citing half a dozen economic experts and urging him to change his bailout strategy before it’s too late. “Watching your appointees’ latest bank bailout makes me wonder if all your administration’s good work on health care, education, and jobs will be swept away by the extraordinary giveaway of trillions in taxpayer money to a group of powerful Wall Street operatives,” van Gelder writes.
And indeed, in other arenas of economic policy, the president has made significant steps in the right direction. While Obama’s proposed federal budget is less than perfect, it moves away from some of the worst trends of the past eight years. GritTV’s Laura Flanders details some of this progress in a roundtable discussion with Irasema Garza, President of Legal Momentum, former New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston, and New York City Coalition Against Hunger Director Joel Berg. By implementing robust job creation plans and a massive increase in anti-hunger and nutrition programs, Obama has signaled that the plight of those hardest hit by the recession cannot simply be ignored.
But these positive budget strides do not involve the banking lobby, which still maintains a stranglehold on any realm of U.S. public policy it can loot for a profit. Obama standing up to the financiers is not an improbable pipe dream, it’s a prerequisite for economic recovery and a necessary step toward rebuilding the integrity of our democracy.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy. Visit StimulusPlan.NewsLadder.net and Economy.NewsLadder.net for complete lists of articles on the economy, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical health and immigration issues, check out Healthcare.NewsLadder.net and Immigration.NewsLadder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Immigration Wire: Binghamton Shootings Impact all Sides of Debate
by Nezua, TMC MediaWire Blogger
Last Friday, 13 people were killed at the American Civic Association in Binghamton, New York. The event shocked the nation and was “the worst mass shooting in the United States since the 2007 massacre at the Virginia Tech college,” as New America Media reports. Because the violence erupted at an immigrant service center, the immigrant community has been especially affected, and immigration opponents are predictably using the tragedy to justify, or at least voice, their vitriol toward the undocumented population.
The impact of the Binghamton shootings on the U.S. immigrant community, already aggravated by ICE raids that funnel them into an abusive system, evokes multiple concerns. One is of further violence. But a grim possibility has also emerged: Immigrant activists who want to become integrated members of U.S. society might stop patronizing the places that can help them do just that, as Public News Service reports. Facilities like the American Civic Association provide many services for the immigrant community, one of which is improving their English. It’s hard enough for those with a limited grasp on a new language to navigate life in a new country. If immigrants fear the places that help them learn, it only makes their lives harder.
When issues like immigration become politicized, nothing is off-limits. Even the national census is “morphing from sociological project into a political one,” according to RaceWire’s Michelle Chen. Conservatives fear losing votes and political power to regions where “illegals” are counted as a part of the census (As if they didn’t lose the Latino vote all on their own in 2008). Civil rights and immigrant advocates fear a worse miscount this year of the Latino population than 2000’s 3 per cent under count.
Erin Rosa reports on possible census-count solutions for the Colorado Independent. Rosa writes of “Ya es hora! Hagase contar!” (It’s time! Make yourself count!), an “unprecedented media campaign” that encourages Latinos to participate in the census.
The Colorado Independent has a few interesting articles on immigration this week. In Bush Admin’s Environment Waivers Remain Intact at Border, a contrast is drawn between President Obama’s recent speech in Germany about walls “between races and tribes” being “the walls we must tear down” with the controversial construction of a border wall in southern stated. Construction proceeds, despite President Obama’s professed philosophy. And in Senate kills immigrant in-state tuition bill, Wendy Norris writes about Colorado’s legislative “companion to the federal DREAM Act” that would have provided college tuition equity to undocumented Colorado high school graduates was lost on a 18-16 vote.” One Democrat explained her vote against the bill as a practical one: Because children of immigrants are at risk for deportation, the bill is “at odds” with federal law.
This type of legislative deadlock doesn’t escape Ezra Klein of the American Prospect, who comments on Senator John Mccain’s “testy” rejoinder to a number of Hispanic business leaders who questioned when reform would come. “Where the reformers will turn,” Klein asks. In 1986, a particular alignment of politicians enabled the last major reforms in immigration law to pass—a configuration of forces not currently in place.
So, who will reform immigration? It’s an important question. The terrain is dangerous because there is no clear consensus or policy to rely on. In the legal gaps that this absence creates, questionable legislative bridges spring up, like agreement 287(g), which enlists local law in enforcing federal immigration violations. The most famous symbol of 287(g) is, of course, Sheriff Arpaio, who has left an entire community “terrified and afraid to call the police.”
“We’re dealing with a climate of hate, people don’t understand they’re being moved by people who hate,” says Phoenix attorney Danny Ortega. “Then you’ve got the Joe Arpaio’s of the world making it politically popular to hate.”
The power that can be leveraged by law and political agenda is vast and must be closely monitored. Immigrants, especially women of these communities, have long been a target of such iniquities. National Radio Project reports on yet another instance in a long line of oppressive reproductive health policies that target women of color and the immigrant community.
Going back to RaceWire, Michelle Chen follows up on President Obama’s Aunt Zeituni’s fight for citizenship, and how anti-immigrant groups have fixed upon her case as a high-profile example of how immigrants “game the system.” The article outlines precisely how ludicrous this stance is.
Finally, make sure to check out In These Times‘ thoughtful review of the new “immigration/baseball drama” Sugar, by Brooklyn-based filmmakers Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden. Reviewer Brandon Harris writes that “Sugar’s experiences reveal the labors of all immigrants who struggle to adjust to the harsh realities of American life on the margins.”
That phrase could apply to many today. And to many who paved the way for us today. It is a story we must not forget.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration. Visit Immigration.NewsLadder.net for a complete list of articles on immigration, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy and health issues, check out Economy.NewsLadder.net and Healthcare.NewsLadder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder.