Headless bodies and other immigration tall tales in Arizona
The Arizona governor, seemingly determined to repel every last tourist dollar from her pariah state, has sounded a new alarm about border violence. "Our law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert either buried or just lying out there that have been beheaded," she announced on local television.facts bounce off conservatives the bullets bounce off Superman. Republicans are impervious to reality. It keeps them from having to hold honest debates about any issue.
Ay, caramba! Those dark-skinned foreigners are now severing the heads of fair-haired Americans? Maybe they're also scalping them or shrinking them or putting them on a spike.
But those in fear of losing parts north of the neckline can relax. There's not a follicle of evidence to support Brewer's claim.
The Arizona Guardian Web site checked with medical examiners in Arizona's border counties, and the coroners said they had never seen an immigration-related beheading. I called and e-mailed Brewer's press office requesting documentation of decapitation; no reply.
Brewer's mindlessness about headlessness is just one of the immigration falsehoods being spread by Arizona politicians. Border violence on the rise? Phoenix becoming the world's No. 2 kidnapping capital? Illegal immigrants responsible for most police killings? The majority of those crossing the border are drug mules? All wrong.
This matters, because it means the entire premise of the Arizona immigration law is a fallacy. Arizona officials say they've had to step in because federal officials aren't doing enough to stem increasing border violence. The scary claims of violence, in turn, explain why the American public supports the Arizona crackdown.
Last year gave us death panels and granny killings, but compared with the nonsense justifying the immigration crackdown, the health-care debate was an evening at the Oxford Union Society.
Two months ago, the Arizona Republic published an exhaustive report that found that, according to statistics from the FBI and Arizona police agencies, crime in Arizona border towns has been "essentially flat for the past decade." For example, "In 2000, there were 23 rapes, robberies and murders in Nogales, Ariz. Last year, despite nearly a decade of population growth, there were 19 such crimes." The Pima County sheriff reported that "the border has never been more secure."
FBI statistics show violent crime rates in all of the border states are lower than they were a decade ago -- yet Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) reports that the violence is "the worst I have ever seen." President Obama justifiably asserted last week that "the southern border is more secure today than any time in the past 20 years," yet Rush Limbaugh judged the president to be "fit for the psycho ward" on the basis of that remark.
Dean Baker’s” THE CONSERVATIVE NANNY STATE – How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer”
Obama urges boosting clean energy tax credit
While campaigning for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is in a tough fight for re-election in Nevada, Obama called on Congress to extend a tax credit program to foster private investment in clean energy manufacturing.There words say one thing, but their actions say another: Republicans like dirty energy and being dependent on Saudi Arabia and Russia for energy. And they do not want to transition to a green economy because that would mean more employed people which they cannot blame Obama for.
He estimated that a the $5 billion expansion would generate nearly 40,000 jobs, and the $12 billion or more in private sector investment it is expected to trigger could create up to 90,000 more jobs.
A now-depleted $2.3 billion in clean energy tax credits was part of a $787 billion economic stimulus Obama signed last year to help lift the economy out of the worst recession in a generation. Many independent economists credit the package with helping to stave off a worse crisis.
