The Digital Dispatch

From NOEBIE.net

Commentary

The Facts on Unauthorized Immigration

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I received an email today from someone looking for information on political hot-button issues, and in pulling together links for her, I ran across a fact-check page from the American Immigration Council. Although the typical specious anti-immigrant argument is that unauthorized immigrants are a drain on the U.S. economy – taking jobs away from citizens and consuming tax-funded social services, education and health care without contributing to their funding – according to the AIC nothing could be further from the truth.

Here are the facts:

  • Households headed by unauthorized immigrants paid $11.2 billion in state and local taxes in 2010, according to estimates prepared for the IPC by the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy.
  • If all unauthorized immigrants were removed from the United States, the country would lose $551.6 billion in economic activity, $245 billion in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and approximately 2.8 million jobs, even accounting for adequate market adjustment time, according to a 2008 report by the Perryman Group.
  • A 2010 report from the IPC and Center for American Progress estimates that deporting all unauthorized immigrants from the country and somehow “sealing the border” to future unauthorized immigration would reduce U.S. GDP by 1.46% annually—or $2.6 trillion in lost GDP over 10 years. Moreover, the U.S. economy would shed large numbers of jobs.

So, if that is the case, why do so many Americans remain stubbornly anti-immigrant? One can only attribute it to ignorance, racism and the influence of groups and politicians with Fascist leanings. In fact, animosity toward immigrants (whether authorized or not) is a classic hallmark of Fascism. As noted before on this Weblog, Fascists glorify the past, before the country was “debased” by foreigners, homosexuals, minority religions and the like. They see themselves as a reaction to those who are a threat to “our way of life,” and they identify (and attack, sometimes literally) these scapegoats.

★ ★ ★

There is, of course, a broader set of questions that a thinking person of conscience might ask with regard to immigration. In addition to the economic considerations, let us not forget the issues of justice and solidarity involved here. After all, the Holy Family were immigrants, fleeing their home suddenly just before the slaughter of the innocents. Would the Republicans deport Jesus, Mary and Joseph?

We might also ask, once again, why it is acceptable for corporations to move jobs across borders wherever and whenever they wish, and yet it is not acceptable for workers to cross borders for jobs.

Some issues are complex and difficult to parse. This one is not.

★ ★ ★

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The New Colossus – Emma Lazarus

★ ★ ★

Read More:

Strength in Diversity: The Economic and Political Power of Immigrants, Latinos, and Asians. [Immigration Policy Center, American Immigration Council]

Justice For Immigrants. [United States Conference of Catholic Bishops]

Immigration and Work. [Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace]

They’re Gonna Have To Kick Me Out

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Quit the Church? Thanks, but no thanks. [E. J. Dionne, Jr. | Commonweal] – Recently, a group called the Freedom from Religion Foundation ran a full-page ad in the Washington Post cast as an “open letter to ‘liberal’ and ‘nominal’ Catholics.” Its headline commanded: “It’s Time to Quit the Catholic Church.” I’m sorry to inform the FFRF that I am declining its invitation to quit. They may not see the Gospel as a liberating document, but I do, and I can’t ignore the good done in the name of Christ by the sisters, priests, brothers and laypeople who have devoted their lives to the poor and the marginalized.

Brian’s Comment: I had much the same reaction as Dionne when I first saw the letter from the FFRF. Granted, it is sometimes hard to be a free-thinking Catholic these days, but the Faith is not merely the institutions and the Church is not merely the hierarchy. Our Catholic Faith belongs to me and to my family as much as it does to the bishops, to the Vatican or to any of the Right-Wing bigots to whom I may be offering the sign of peace this weekend.

The Port Huron Statement at 50

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It begins like this:

“We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit.”

It ends like this:

“If we appear to seek the unattainable, it has been said, then let it be known that we do so to avoid the unimaginable.”

In between, there is a child, observing the grand parade of America, and declaring that the emperor is naked.

The Port Huron Statement was completed on June 15th, 1962. It was principally the work of Tom Hayden, who was Field Secretary of Students for a Democratic Society at the time, and adopted by those in attendance at the SDS convention near Port Huron, Michigan. The SDS had grown out of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society of the early 1900s. During the few short years of its existence (1960 to 1969) the organization represented the intellectual core of an emerging “New Left” in the United States. It was the largest “radical” student organization in U.S. history, and the largest student organization of any kind in the 1960s.

Reading the statement again these many years later, I was struck by how it is, in almost equal measures, a relic of its time and a light to ours.

In These Times features an assessment of the legacy of The Port Huron Statement by 14 activists (including three of the document’s framers) that I found interesting. Bill Ayers had this to say. “Revolution is still possible, but barbarism is possible as well. In this time of peril and possibility, rising expectations and new beginnings, when hope and history once again rhyme, it’s absolutely urgent that we embrace the spirit embodied in the final words of The Port Huron Statement.”

I am encouraged to learn that a new Students for a Democratic Society was organized in 2006, and is active in campaigns for education rights, the protection of civil liberties, peace and anti-globalization.

Seek the “unattainable.” Occupy the future!

10 Great Container Tomatoes

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There’s nothing like stepping out back and picking a beautiful, ripe homegrown tomato for a BLT, a salad or simply for slicing and serving with a little seasoned salt. I started planting tomatoes in huge terra cotta pots more than a decade ago when I didn’t have diggable space in a decent, sunny location for a garden, and the habit stuck. I’ve always loved the first tomato of the season. No matter how fresh they are from the farmers’ market, they’re never quite as tasty as the ones you grow yourself.

Colleen Vanderlinden over on Treehugger has a wonderful post about ten tomato varieties that do well in containers. The Black Krims sound particularly tasty.

I first ran across Colleen’s article on the Occupy Monsanto blog. The more I learn, the more I realize that some of the most simple and pleasant everyday things we do – like choosing to grow heirloom tomatoes in pots – can be powerful political acts as well. For me, that makes such things all the more satisfying.

I’m hoping it won’t be too late to plant a few pots after our move next month.

A word of caution to those who want to grow container tomatoes on an upstairs balcony. Be careful where you set them. Remember that Tommy Ewell nearly got killed by Marilyn Monroe’s falling tomato plant in The Seven Year Itch. 🙂

P.S. Here’s another interesting article on best practices for pruning tomatoes.

The Bishops and the Affordable Care Act

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At Mass this past weekend, most Roman Catholics in the United States heard sermons or were read letters from their Bishops railing against a recent decision by the Department of Health and Human Services concerning implementation of health care reform. My own Bishop, Thomas John Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, said in his letter that President Obama was “being either dishonest or delusional or he is incompetent.” He also referred to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius as a “pro-abortion Catholic.” This rhetoric was apparently typical, as Bishops across the nation characterized the HHS decision as nothing less than an attack on religious liberty.

It being the (sad) case that a dedication to the facts has been lacking in some similar communications from the Church hierarchy in the past, I felt it necessary to investigate the matter myself. It has been difficult to parse, but here is what I’ve learned.

The controversy centers on which preventive services for women will be mandated for insurance plans under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act which was passed into law by Congress in 2010. The law gave HHS broad discretion to determine which services would receive required coverage.

In the Summer of 2011, HHS announced rules requiring all new private health plans to cover preventive services such as mammograms, colonoscopies, blood pressure checks, and childhood immunizations without charging a copayment, deductible or coinsurance. In the Interim Rule announced by HHS in August of 2011, “FDA-approved contraception methods and contraceptive counseling” was added to the list of required preventive services. “Religious institutions” were given an exemption from the requirement.

“The administration also released an amendment to the prevention regulation that allows religious institutions that offer insurance to their employees the choice of whether or not to cover contraception services. This regulation is modeled on the most common accommodation for churches available in the majority of the 28 states that already require insurance companies to cover contraception.”

– HHS Press Release, August 1st, 2011

So churches would be exempt from the provision, and could legally exclude such services from their employee health plans.

The problem, as I understand it, is that the exemption does not apply to organizations such as hospitals, schools, universities and charitable groups that are affiliated with churches, but only to the churches themselves. The Bishops and other religious groups were in conversation with the Obama Administration during the period of comment for the rules, advocating for a broader exemption. On January 20th, Secretary Sebelius announced that the final rule will allow the affiliated institutions an additional year (until August 1st, 2013) to comply with the law, but will not exempt them from the provision.

Whether this constitutes an attack on religious liberty (or violates First Amendment protections) I do not know. I’m still trying to understand the implications more clearly, and would welcome pointers to more information, commentary and discussions. Clearly at issue is the tension between the rights of faith-based institutions to practice and defend their beliefs, and the rights of individuals and our society to be free from imposition of those beliefs.

I’ll be posting more here as I give the matter additional study and prayerful consideration.

A Few Links

Conscience Protection (USCCB)

Bishop Paprocki’s Letter

E.J. Dionne’s Analysis (RealClearPolitics, 24 November 2011)

CBS New Coverage of the Bishops’ Letters

HHS News Release August 2011

HHS News Release January 2012

Correcting Rmoney

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“We have to have a president who understands how to get an economy going again. He [Obama] does not. He plays 90 rounds of golf when you have 25 million people out of work. He says gasoline prices doubled during his presidency. He says don’t build a Keystone pipeline.”

– Mitt Romney, Florida Debate, 23 January 2012

I am utterly amazed that this sort of argument in favor of Keystone XL goes unchallenged. The fact is that the project would likely increase our gasoline prices. The oil that would be produced from the project would be exported,  because that’s where the money is to be made. Take a look at this from a December 31st USA Today report, noting that fuel is now the largest U.S. export, and that we are now a net fuel exporter.

There’s at least one domestic downside to America’s growing role as a fuel exporter. Experts say the trend helps explain why U.S. motorists are paying more for gasoline. The more fuel that’s sent overseas, the less of a supply cushion there is at home.

Keystone XL is not expected to lower gasoline prices in the United States, nor would it help us move toward “energy independence.” It would, however, help to increase the profits of Big Oil while despoiling environmentally fragile areas and contributing to global warming.

The question remains whether Rmoney is ignorant, cynical or just a big fat liar.

Freedom and the Problem with the Constitutionists

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This will likely be a longer essay once I have the opportunity to do some more research and to collect my thoughts, but I wanted to get at least a short note out on the subject while Ron Paul’s showing in New Hampshire is still in the news.

Here are two crucial points that Dr. Paul’s legion of true believers seem to miss, or perhaps ignore.

First of all, The Constitution of the United States was not handed down on stone tablets, nor was it written by people who were particularly more wise or prescient than we are. It is certainly a very advanced framework for its time, and brilliant in the use of checks and balances to protect the set of rights that were foremost in the minds of the framers. But throughout our history, through legislation, through jurisprudence and through other formal and informal precedent, a complex overlay of generally accepted addenda has been created. Kluge, that overlay may be, but it requires a special kind of ignorance to pretend as if all of it is irrelevant, harmful or lacking in benefit.

Beyond that issue, though, there is also the notion that the federal government is the only (or even the foremost) threat to our liberty. Paul’s logic and rhetoric suggests that if we simply return to a properly strict adherence to his view of what our Constitution dictates, then all will be well. The problem with this pretense is that it refuses to face the fact that the most serious threat to our liberty – indeed, to our very lives – is the unfettered power of huge, wealthy, corporate interests. Granted, their domination of the government also poses a threat, in that governmental powers are increasingly being used as instruments of subjugation to their will.

There is no escaping the fact that government, at this point, is part of the problem. The irony in Dr. Paul’s philosophy is that his program would make the larger threat to liberty worse, and would only result in broader and deeper enslavement of the people.

Faith in market forces to keep us free, secure and prosperous is, in my view, magical thinking. It depends on turning a blind eye to clear and overwhelming evidence, contemporary and historical, to the contrary.

Still At War

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Sgt. Jared Dillon, a member of the Personal Security Detachment for 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, carries a duffel bag full of cookies, candy and personal hygiene products for the Soldiers of Forward Operating Base Pacemaker on Dececmber 25, 2011. On Christmas Day Sgt. Dillon and the other Warhorse Soldiers traveled to five different forward operating bases delivering gifts and holiday cheer.

Throughout our decade of war in Afghanistan (and, indeed, throughout the war in Iraq), there has been an eerie disconnect between the reality of the situation for those who have been called upon to serve and the experience of the vast majority of the rest of us in American society. It is like we have been sleepwalking.

I, for one, am redoubling my efforts in 2012 to be mindful of our service men and women, of their families, of the Afghan People and of all others around the world who are living with war.

It is way past time to wake up.

What You Need To Know About Fracking

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As noted here yesterday, officials from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources have ordered several fluid-injection wells to be shut down after a series of earthquakes hit the area near Youngstown over the past year. The suspicion is that the injections of wastewater from the hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) process is linked to the increased seismic activity. The latest quake occurred on New Year’s Eve. Its epicenter was 5 miles northwest of Youngstown and 55 miles east-southeast of Cleveland, and at 4.0 magnitude, it was forty times stronger than the ten others that preceded it in 2011.

Although I’ve yet to see conclusive proof from an authoritative source (at least from one that has no side-agenda), the evidence that fracking poses serious risks to the environment and to human health is mounting. It seems prudent that we carefully consider this evidence before allowing new projects to commence, and that we closely monitor current fracking operations for signs of trouble.

What follows is a collection of news stories and resources that I hope you’ll find useful in better understanding the issue. I’ve tried to assemble information that, taken together, represents an honest picture of what we know at this point. There are obviously many questions yet to be answered.

I would also welcome your comments and any suggestions for further reading on the matter.

What is fracking?

In short, fracking is a process that uses fluid injections to create cracks in layers of rock deep underground in order to make it possible to extract fossil fuels, or to increase extraction rates. After the fluids create the fractures, sand or some other particulate is injected as well in order to keep the fractures from closing back up once the injection is stopped. Here’s how Schlumberger Limited, a leading oilfield services provider, describes hydraulic fracturing. “A stimulation treatment routinely performed on oil and gas wells in low-permeability reservoirs. Specially engineered fluids are pumped at high pressure and rate into the reservoir interval to be treated, causing a vertical fracture to open. The wings of the fracture extend away from the wellbore in opposing directions according to the natural stresses within the formation. Proppant, such as grains of sand of a particular size, is mixed with the treatment fluid to keep the fracture open when the treatment is complete. Hydraulic fracturing creates high-conductivity communication with a large area of formation and bypasses any damage that may exist in the near-wellbore area.”

Why is it controversial?

There is evidence to suggest that the process can release hazardous chemicals that eventually find their way into waterways and even into drinking water supplies. There are also the aforementioned concerns about seismic instability that can be caused by the fracking process itself as well as the process of disposing of waste fluids. Mining of sand used in the process may also cause environmental degradation. Of course, there is also the overall concern about climate change caused by continued burning of fossil fuels.

Here’s an excellent article from the BBC that presents a clear explanation of the process and an extremely balanced view of the issues and concerns involved, both economic and environmental.

Additional Recent Reports, Resources and Related Links of Interest

These are simply things that have caught my eye apropos to the subject at hand. I’ll continue to post relevant material on this Weblog as I find it.

Expert: Wastewater well in Ohio triggered quakes. [CLEVELAND (AP)] – A northeast Ohio well used to dispose of wastewater from oil and gas drilling almost certainly caused a series of 11 minor quakes in the Youngstown area since last spring, a seismologist investigating the quakes said Monday.

EPA: Fracking may cause groundwater pollution. [CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP)] – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced in December that fracking may be to blame for causing groundwater pollution.

Oklahoma quakes may have been induced by injection. [Oklahoma Geological Survey] – “Clear cases of anthropogenically-triggered seismicity from fluid injection are well documented with correlations between the number of earthquakes in an area and injection, specifically injection pressures, with earthquakes occurring very close to the well.” Still, the study concludes (as have other studies that preceded it) that at present it is “impossible to predict the effects of injection with absolute certainty.”

U.K. firm accepts report findings. [Oil and Gas Investments Bulletin] – A British-based shale exporter, Cuadrilla Resources, stated on November 2 that hydraulic fracturing was, indeed, the impetus for small earthquakes that occurred in Blackpool in northwest England earlier in 2011. Their CEO said “We unequivocally accept the findings of this independent report.”

Scientific study links flammable drinking water to fracking. [ProPublica] – A peer-reviewed study conducted by scientists at Duke University and published last May in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that levels of flammable methane gas in drinking water wells increased to dangerous levels when those water supplies were close to shale gas wells.

Sierra Club calls on Board to protect Starved Rock. [Illinois Chapter Sierra Club] – On December 15, the LaSalle County Zoning Board voted unanimously to recommend giving Mississippi Sand, LLC a special use permit to mine directly adjacent to Starved Rock State Park. The proposed project will mine for frac sand. The Sierra club believes that the location of this proposed mine threatens Starved Rock State Park and the rare brackish wetlands in LaSalle County.

Greetings From Gasland. [Gasland the Movie] – Josh Fox obviously has an agenda that he’s promoting with this film. Some may believe that it’s an extreme agenda. At this point, I do not. Caveat lector. Caveat spectator.

Improving the Safety and Environmental Performance of Hydraulic Fracturing. [U.S. Department of Energy] – Read the recommendations from the Natural Gas Subcommittee of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board. Again, caveat lector.

Why Ron Paul is NOT the Answer

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Bastardised Libertarianism Makes “Freedom” an Instrument of Oppression. [George Monbiot, The Guardian] – Modern libertarianism is the disguise adopted by those who wish to exploit without restraint. It pretends that only the state intrudes on our liberties. It ignores the role of banks, corporations and the rich in making us less free.

Read the full article here.