Economy
Bill Moyers Interviews Former Health Insurance Insider Wendell Potter
Published August 01, 2009 @ 08:24AM PT
I was flipping through the tv channels this morning and happened to catch the rebroadcast of Bill Moyers's interview with former Cigna executive Wendell Potter about the role of the insurance industry in the health care debate.
For me it was a bombshell. I watched Sicko and I know the contours of the debate, but hearing specifics from an insider like Potter was a revelation. Looking over to Tim Foley's blog, I realize that I missed the boat on this story, which he covered when the interview first ran last month and which a reader turned into a change.org Action. This isn't strictly speaking an immigration topic, but the two topics are connected.
Potter made an extraordinary personal journey that reminded me of our recent interview with former anti-illegal immigrant activist R Jay Pearson. Potter's Road to Damascus moment came on a trip home to visit relatives in Tennessee, when he heard about a health care fair being held in nearby Virginia.
BILL MOYERS: So you drove there?
WENDELL POTTER: I did. I borrowed my dad's car and drove up 50 miles up the road to Wise, Virginia. It was being held at a Wise County Fairground. I took my camera. I took some pictures. It was a very cloudy, misty day, it was raining that day, and I walked through the fairground gates. And I didn't know what to expect. I just assumed that it would be, you know, like a health-- booths set up and people just getting their blood pressure checked and things like that.
But what I saw were doctors who were set up to provide care in animal stalls. Or they'd erected tents, to care for people. I mean, there was no privacy. In some cases-- and I've got some pictures of people being treated on gurneys, on rain-soaked pavement.
And I saw people lined up, standing in line or sitting in these long, long lines, waiting to get care. People drove from South Carolina and Georgia and Kentucky, Tennessee-- all over the region, because they knew that this was being done. A lot of them heard about it from word of mouth.
There could have been people and probably were people that I had grown up with. They could have been people who grew up at the house down the road, in the house down the road from me. And that made it real to me.
BILL MOYERS: What did you think?
WENDELL POTTER: It was absolutely stunning. It was like being hit by lightning. It was almost-- what country am I in? I just it just didn't seem to be a possibility that I was in the United States. It was like a lightning bolt had hit me.
Potter now works for the Center for Media and Democracy using his expertise to debunk the misinformation circulated by the health insurance industry. My take away from his interview with Moyers can be boiled down to this:
Basso Delivers Fact-free Version of History, Immigration Policy
Published July 27, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT
Bob Basso knows how to make a facially convincing case for additional immigration restrictions on YouTube. But he doesn't know much at all about (a) modern immigration policy or (b) the political thought of Thomas Paine. Which makes him, I suppose, ideally suited to dress up as Tom Paine and hold forth on the failings of the immigration system.
Did Basso realize Paine was himself an immigrant and a radical proponent of individual liberty? Jerome Grzeca thinks maybe not:
By all accounts, [Paine] was a radical; a man whose ideals were deeply entrenched in the belief that each person, regardless of origin or religious faction should be free. He once said, "The world is my country, all mankind my brethren, and to do good is my religion." Does this echo that of Basso’s xenophobic rant?
Restrictionism is more about theater than reality, less fact than fantasy. Which makes Basso a very good spokesman for the anti-immigrant movement.
Open Letter to John Tanton on Global Warming
Published July 08, 2009 @ 10:58PM PT
Dear John Tanton,
Mark Krikorian,
Roy Beck, and
Dan Stein:
I write concerning the landmark legislation to combat global warming currently pending in Congress. What is your position on the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) that narrowly passed recently in the U.S. House of Representatives?
You claim to oppose liberal immigration laws in part on the basis that they are bad for the environment. Specifically, you have argued that immigration fuels population growth, which in turn harms the environment by transferring people from low-polluting nations to the high-polluting U.S.
The NRDC believes that ACES, also known as cap-and-trade legislation or the Waxman-Markey bill, "has the major ingredients to generate millions of jobs, break our dependence on oil and reduce the pollution that causes global warming." To date, the U.S. is increasingly isolated among developed countries by its failure to pass national legislation to combat global warming. ACES would change that.
Yet I couldn't find much about the bill on your websites: NumbersUSA doesn't mention it at all, and FAIR mentions it once, to condemn the bill for failing to include new immigration restrictions.
I analyzed the House vote on ACES and found that the Representatives who scored highest on NumbersUSA's Immigration Report Cards, with a grade of a "B" or higher, voted against ACES at a rate of more than 5 to 1 (168-31). These numbers indicate that most House Representatives support either immigration restrictions or legislation to combat global warming, but not both.
So my question for you is this: Will you ask Congress to support ACES and other environmentally-friendly legislation? Or will you continue to assert that policies that limit immigration, rather than those that limit carbon emissions, are the key to slowing climate change?
Regards,
Dave Bennion
immigration.change.org
Immigration Restrictionists Make Bad Environmentalists
Published July 08, 2009 @ 10:44PM PT
I hear a lot from organizations in the John Tanton network about how the best way to protect the environment is to restrict immigration to the U.S.
The argument isn’t intuitive, but it goes like this: Immigration leads to population growth, which harms the environment by transferring people from low-polluting nations to the high-polluting U.S. Poor people who stay outside the U.S. maintain a relatively low carbon footprint. But once they come to the U.S., they adopt the high-polluting lifestyle that Americans enjoy. Therefore, immigration causes global warming.
Walter Ewing at Immigration Impact doesn’t think much of this reasoning:
[A]ccording to the World Resources Institute, the United States is home to 23% fewer people than the European nations of the EU-15, yet produced 70% more greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, as of 2000. The production of greenhouse gases in the United States is a function not of population size, but of the degree to which we as a society rely upon fossil fuels, power plants, industrial processes, and automobiles that actually produce greenhouse gases.
I have also discussed the reasons I think it's wrong to focus on minimizing U.S. population growth instead of implementing smart, eco-friendly energy policies.
But there are other reasons to doubt the Tanton network’s commitment to the environment. One of these is the fact that the members of Congress that NumbersUSA, a Tanton outfit, rates most highly on immigration policy voted against the recent Waxman-Markey climate change bill by a margin of more than 5 to 1.
The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), also known as the cap-and-trade bill or Waxman-Markey, is a landmark bill that represents the first national effort in the U.S. to seriously combat global warming. It is one of Barack Obama’s principal domestic priorities. The NRDC believes that ACES "has the major ingredients to generate millions of jobs, break our dependence on oil and reduce the pollution that causes global warming."
When I heard about the recent vote in the House on ACES, I wondered how the Representatives who tend to support immigration restrictions voted on the bill. As it turns out, the members of the House who get NumbersUSA’s highest ratings (a “B” or higher) voted against ACES 168-31, with one member not voting.
Temporary Tax ID Number (ITIN) Explained
Published June 30, 2009 @ 08:08PM PT
Immigration Impact has written your one-stop ITIN post. For the uninitiated, ITIN stands for Temporary Tax ID Number. If you are an immigrant in need of a way to pay taxes without a social security number OR if you are in need of a handy fact sheet to combat anti-immigrant falsehoods, then this post and fact sheet (pdf) are for you. A sample:
- Although many use ITINs to file their federal tax forms, ITIN holders are not eligible to receive most of the benefits their tax dollars go toward. For example, an ITIN cannot be used to get Social Security benefits or the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).
- An ITIN does not grant anyone legal status or work authorization.
- An ITIN cannot be used in lieu of an SSN on the I-9 work authorization form.
- An ITIN cannot be used to prove legal status.
And here is the IRS ITIN page, with the W-7 Form itself (pdf).
QOTD: Yglesias on Climate Change and Global Redistribution
Published June 29, 2009 @ 08:59PM PT
It’s very difficult to imagine Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) wading through the jungles of Vietnam slaughtering villagers and redistributing their possessions to the people of Missouri. It’s easy, by contrast, to imagine her tweeting complaints about Waxman-Markey being unfair to coal-dependent states like Missouri.
New American Media: Time for Immigration Reform Is Now
Published June 29, 2009 @ 08:00AM PT
[Editor’s Note: This editorial comes from New America Media, a national association of ethnic media, and is being published by ethnic media across the country this week to bring attention to the urgency of immigration reform.]
The White House and members of Congress must move quickly on enacting a just and humane immigration reform package that will reunite families, reinvigorate the economy, and remove the term “illegal or undocumented immigrants” from the dialogue in this country. Ethnic media, which reaches over 60 million adults in the United States, calls on Congress to move decisively on immigration reform because there are few issues as important to the nation's well-being as an overhaul of the inefficient, inhumane and economically debilitating immigration system. More importantly, we are also urging our readers and viewers to contact their Senators and Congressmen and let them know that immigration reform must be a national priority.
The immigration system is broken not just for 12 million undocumented immigrants, but also for specialized workers blocked from joining the American economy because of narrow quotas, and mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens who must wait for years before being reunited with their families.
Our nation needs comprehensive immigration policies that will replace a broken system of raids and roundups with one that protects all workers from exploitation, improves America's security and builds strong communities. It’s time to end the division between workers, which has allowed big business to exploit both sides. Clearly, working-class citizens and immigrant workers have much in common – dreams of better homes, education for their families and quality healthcare. There is more that brings us together, than separates us. United we can be a strong force for change, changes that that bring more workforce safety and humane conditions.
Immigration is often portrayed as an explosive, divisive issue. In reality it's not. Since the repeal of the national origins quota system in 1965, which discriminated against certain immigrants, a consensus has been building towards an immigration system that respects the country's core values. These include economic opportunity, equality under the law regardless of ethnic background, and an embrace of the world's most innovative, energetic and ambitious workers. Now, with the country facing serious competition from workers abroad, it's more important than ever to create a world-class immigration system. It's for the good for families, good for communities and good for America.
[Ed.: Two caveats here: (1) There is a role for business in the immigration reform puzzle (Who employs the workers who come to the U.S.? Why would they come if not to work?), and a bill is not likely to pass without the support of the business community; and (2) the "protect America from competition abroad" argument in favor of immigration reform has never struck me as a sensible argument. Otherwise, all good!]
