Rush Limbaugh. Glenn Beck. Bill O'Reilly. Sean Hannity. Lou Dobbs: Five now-household names made rich and famous by those wonderful folks who brought us cable and talk radio.
All were gung-go for that grotesquely-misnamed government euphemism known as "enhanced interrogation techniques." All were joined at Dubya's hip as cheerleaders for "Democratizing" Iraq. All were megaphones for the CIA's "black sites" and "extraordinary renditions." And all were eager to tell us all about the superb cuisine and exquisite personal service accorded the guests at GITMO-by-the-Sea.
Until the lies and uselessness of these misadventures became so obvious that they lost their ratings value. Another headline-grabber had to be found!
And, Eureka, our five horsemen found their Holy Grail: A new cottage industry called:
Immigration.
Undocumented workers were every bit as evil as Al Qaeda. Terrorists were crossing our borders with "dirty bombs" concealed under their fruit-pickers' farmhand garb and waiters' uniforms. IEDs were being secreted among the tools they brought in to build our homes.
They pushed for 3,000-mile-long fences between us and Mexico. They attacked the Department of Homeland Security for failing to enforce our laws of entry. They proposed sending the National Guard to our Southern border. They opposed public education and health care for the undocumented, including their children - many of whom were American citizens, born in the U.S.A. They backed The Minutemen's brand of vigilante justice. They cheered when the government raided workplaces and took fathers and mothers away from their families.
They cried out for the arrest and "expedited removal" of some twelve million illegals, though they never quite got around to telling us how they were going to do that and what effect that might have on the U.S. economy.
They perpetuated the fear-mongering myths of the RNC and the Yahoos on the wingnut right.
Like this one:
Myth: Immigrants are driving up our health care costs and bankrupting our emergency rooms because they have no insurance.
Fact: Non-citizens are significantly less likely to use emergency room services than U.S. citizens. Insured immigrants have much lower medical expenses than insured U.S.-born citizens. Insured immigrants' per-person medical expenditures are 1/2 to 2/3 less than the U.S.-born with similar characteristics. Recent immigrants constitute 5% of the non-elderly adult population, but are responsible for 2% of adults' total health care costs, making their share disproportionately low. Four out of five people in America who have no insurance are U.S. citizens. U.S. citizens make up the majority of the uninsured (78%), while immigrants account for 22% of the non-elderly uninsured.
But predictably, in thousands of hours of bloviating on TV and radio, not a single one of these five horsemen has ever uttered the first word about what is arguably the most shameful aspect of the immigration issue. That word is:
Detention.
But then, why should we have expected to ever hear that word? Hell, if black sites were hunky-dory with these guys, why not for other Enemies of the State?And what are those detention conditions they never mention?
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