Immigration irrationality

-- by Dave

The real hallmark of the right-wing rule America has endured for the better part of the new century has been its reliance on persuading the public to believe things that are factually false. The Iraq War -- in which the nation was induced to believe provably false "facts", thanks largely to a mendacious administration and a prostrate media eager to sit on its lap -- is only the most infamous example. The list -- running from the Plame affair to the Katrina debacle to Social Security and the economy, to civil rights and gay rights, to consumer-protection and environmental policy -- is not merely long, it touches nearly every facet of American governance and the public discourse.

And we can add the immigration debate to that list as well. For that matter, it's rapidly becoming the most prominent current example of the American right persuading the public to launch into another monumental clusterfuck on the basis of provably false information. And just as in those many other instances, the nation's media are playing an outsize role in helping it happen.

Immigration Irrationality

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

The real hallmark of the right-wing rule America has endured for the better part of the new century has been its reliance on persuading the public to believe things that are factually false. The Iraq War — in which the nation was induced to believe provably false "facts", thanks largely to a mendacious administration and a prostrate media eager to sit on its lap — is only the most infamous example. The list — running from the Plame affair to the Katrina debacle to Social Security and the economy, to civil rights and gay rights, to consumer-protection and environmental policy — is not merely long, it touches nearly every facet of American governance and the public discourse.

And we can add the immigration debate to that list as well. For that matter, it’s rapidly becoming the most prominent current example of the American right persuading the public to launch into another monumental clusterfuck on the basis of provably false information. And just as in those many other instances, the nation’s media are playing an outsize role in helping it happen.

A couple of weeks ago word began leaking out out about polling done by a coalition of progressive immigration-reform groups that was meant to help inform internal strategy for political candidates looking to change the shape of the discourse so far. Some of the conclusions reached along the way raise some serious red flags — particularly the possibility that liberals might simply reinforce right-wing frames along the way — but the poll itself (which was kept confidential) made for some fascinating reading.

One aspect of the polling — which I’ve received permission to discuss publicly from the groups involved — really stood out as a prime example of how deeply right-wing bullshit infects the public discourse.

An early page in the poll, headlined "Biggest Concerns About Illegal Immigration," featured the public responses to a set of concerns that were identified by the pollsters as the most common issues raised in focus groups, letting the poll respondents say what their "one or two biggest concerns about illegal immigration today" might be. They ran thus:

Immigrants receiving free public services such as health care (48%)
Immigrants not paying taxes (35%)
Takes jobs from Americans and lowers wages (20%)
Too many immigrants aren’t learning English (20%)
Weakens our security against terrorism (18%)
Causing crime problems in many communities (17%)

If you look down that list, something stands out: Each item reflects a fear based either on outright false information or on gross distortions from a highly selective set of facts.

Readers of our earlier discussions of the immigration debate will already be familiar with the groundlessness of most of these concerns, but it’s still worthwhile going through them, and getting the requisite reality checks, so we can see just how far astray from anything rational we’re wandering in this debate.

A. Immigrants receiving free public services such as health care

Reality Check 1:

Just a small fraction of America’s health care spending is used to provide publicly supported care to the nation’s undocumented immigrants, according to a RAND Corporation study issued today.

Overall, immigrants to the United States use relatively few health services, primarily because they are generally healthier than their American-born counterparts, according to the study by the nonprofit research organization.

The report – which appears in the November edition of the journal Health Affairs – estimates that in the United States about $1.1 billion in federal, state and local government funds are spent annually on health care for undocumented immigrants aged 18 to 64. That amounts to an average of $11 in taxes for each U.S. household.

In contrast, a total of $88 billion in government funds were spent on health care for all non-elderly adults in 2000.

Reality Check 2:

Health care expenditures are substantially lower for immigrants than for US-born persons. Our study refutes the assumption that immigrants represent a disproportionate financial burden on the US health care system.

Reality Check 3:

Despite the important role that immigrants play in the U.S. economy, they disproportionately lack health insurance and receive fewer health services than native-born Americans. Some policymakers have called for limits on immigrants’ access to health insurance, particularly Medicaid, which are even more stringent than those already in place. However, policies that restrict immigrants’ access to some health care services lead to the inefficient and costly use of other services (such as emergency room care) and negatively impact public health.

B. Immigrants not paying taxes

Reality Check 1:

Between one-half and three-quarters of undocumented immigrants pay federal and state income taxes, Social Security taxes, and Medicare taxes. And all undocumented immigrants pay sales taxes (when they buy anything at a store, for instance) and property taxes (even if they rent housing).

Reality Check 2:

As the debate over Social Security heats up, the estimated seven million or so illegal immigrant workers in the United States are now providing the system with a subsidy of as much as $7 billion a year.

Reality Check 3:

[The Texas] Comptroller’s office estimates that state revenues collected from undocumented immigrants exceed what the state spent on services, with the difference being $424.7 million.

C. Takes jobs from Americans and lowers wages

Reality Check 1:

Rapid increases in the foreign-born population at the state level are not associated with negative effects on the employment of native-born workers, according to a study by the Pew Hispanic Center that examines data during the boom years of the 1990s and the downturn and recovery since 2000.

An analysis of the relationship between growth in the foreign-born population and the employment outcomes of native-born workers revealed wide variations across the 50 states and the District of Columbia. No consistent pattern emerges to show that native-born workers suffered or benefited from increased numbers of foreign-born workers.

Reality Check 2:

In 2005, immigrants overall represented more than a fifth of low-wage workers—those earning less than twice the minimum wage—and almost half of workers without a high school education. Unauthorized workers were nearly a tenth of low-wage workers and a quarter of low-skilled workers. The number of low-wage and low-skilled native-born workers fell between 2000 and 2005, due to improvements in their educational attainment but also due to decreasing labor force participation.

D. Too many immigrants aren’t learning English

Reality Check 1:

Nearly all Hispanic adults born in the United States of immigrant parents report they are fluent in English. By contrast, only a small minority of their parents describe themselves as skilled English speakers. This finding of a dramatic increase in English-language ability from one generation of Hispanics to the next emerges from a new analysis of six Pew Hispanic Center surveys conducted this decade among a total of more than 14,000 Latino adults. The surveys show that fewer than one-in-four (23%) Latino immigrants reports being able to speak English very well. However, fully 88% of their U.S.-born adult children report that they speak English very well. Among later generations of Hispanic adults, the figure rises to 94%. Reading ability in English shows a similar trend.

Reality Check 2

Hispanics by a large margin believe that immigrants have to speak English to be a part of American society and even more so that English should be taught to the children of immigrants, according to recent surveys conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center.

The endorsement of the English language, both for immigrants and for their children, is strong among all Hispanics regardless of income, party affiliation, fluency in English or how long they have been living in the United States.

Reality Check 3:

Within ten years of arrival, more than 75% of immigrants speak English well; moreover, demand for English classes at the adult level far exceeds supply. Greater than 33% of immigrants are naturalized citizens; given increased immigration in the 1990s, this figure will rise as more legal permanent residents become eligible for naturalization in the coming years. The number of immigrants naturalizing spiked sharply after two events: enactment of immigration and welfare reform laws in 1996, and the terrorist attacks in 2001.

E. Weakens our security against terrorism

Reality Check 1:

Using a database created from the biographical data of 373 terrorists, we have established a number of significant findings. Over forty percent of our database is made up of Western Nationals. Second, despite widespread alarms raised over terrorist infiltration from Mexico, we found no terrorist presence in Mexico and no terrorists who entered the U.S. from Mexico. Third, we found a sizeable terrorist presence in Canada and a number of Canadian-based terrorists who have entered the U.S.

Reality Check 2:

Nearly half of all the unauthorized migrants now living in the United States entered the country legally through a port of entry such as an airport or a border crossing point where they were subject to inspection by immigration officials, according to new estimates from the Pew Hispanic Center.

As much as 45% of the total unauthorized migrant population entered the country with visas that allowed them to visit or reside in the U.S. for a limited amount of time. Known as “overstayers,” these migrants became part of the unauthorized population when they remained in the country after their visas had expired.

Another smaller share of the unauthorized migrant population entered the country legally from Mexico using a Border Crossing Card, a document that allows short visits limited to the border region, and then violated the terms of admission.

F. Causing crime problems in many communities

Reality Check 1:

Although the undocumented immigrant population doubled to about 12 million from 1994 to 2005, the violent crime rate in the United States declined by 34.2% and the property crime rate fell by 26.4%.2 This decline in crime rates was not just national, it also occurred in border cities and other cities with large immigrant populations—such as San Diego, El Paso, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Miami.

Reality Check 2:

Crime Rates Have Declined as Immigration Has Increased:

Even as the undocumented population has doubled to 12 million since 1994, the violent crime rate in the United States has declined 34.2 percent and the property crime rate has fallen 26.4 percent.

Cities with large immigrant populations such as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Miami also have experienced declining crime rates during this period.

Immigrants Have Lower Incarceration Rates than Natives:

Among men age 18-39 (who comprise the vast majority of the prison population), the 3.5 percent incarceration rate of the native-born in 2000 was 5 times higher than the 0.7 percent incarceration rate of the foreign-born.

The foreign-born incarceration rate in 2000 was nearly two-and-a-half times less than the 1.7 percent rate for nativeborn non-Hispanic white men and almost 17 times less than the 11.6 percent rate for native-born black men.

Native-born Hispanic men were nearly 7 times more likely to be in prison than foreign-born Hispanic men in 2000, while the incarceration rate of native-born non-Hispanic white men was almost 3 times higher than that of foreign-born white men.

Foreign-born Mexicans had an incarceration rate of only 0.7 percent in 2000—more than 8 times lower than the 5.9 percent rate of native-born males of Mexican descent.

Foreign-born Salvadoran and Guatemalan men had an incarceration rate of 0.5 percent, compared to 3.0 percent of native-born males of Salvadoran and Guatemalan descent.

It isn’t possible for these misconceptions to spread without the willing complicity of the press, particularly ratings-mongerers like Lou Dobbs, who haven’t yet found a right-wing nativist claim against immigrants they aren’t willing to parrot as fact.

One of these, as it happens, is the claim that most Americans are up in arms about illegal immigration — something that Dobbs repeated for his audience yesterday. But as Media Matters explains in detail, most polls found that only between 4 and 7 percent of various poll respondents consider it among their most pressing political issues.

The spread of afactual garbage into the mainstream is indeed a widespread media problem. And if they’re not going to clean up their act, perhaps the blogosphere can do it for them.

The ugly reality

-- by Dave

I've pointed out previously that the people demanding the deportation of all 12 million undocumented workers in this country are probably not prepared for the monstrousness of the consequences that will result. There's a reason for that:

Many right-wing critics of American immigration policy are fond of saying that current policies would work just fine if the government would "just enforce the laws that are on the books."

It seems never to occur to them that the main reason the government doesn't do so, at least not on a massive scale, is simply that the laws as written are largely unenforceable -- or perhaps more to the point, that enforcing them actually creates larger problems, to the point of atrocities, than those they were intended to address.

Besides the brutal treatment that often occurs in the course of rounding up immigrants, and the fact that in order to make mass roundups work you have to build concentration camps, there are inevitably going to be incidents like this:

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - A woman being held as an illegal immigrant spent four days forgotten in an isolated holding cell at a courthouse with no food, water, or toilet, authorities and the woman said.

Adriana Torres-Flores, 38, appeared in court last Thursday and pleaded not guilty to a charge of selling pirated CDs, but a judge ordered her held because she is in the country illegally, Sheriff Tim Helder said.

Bailiff Jarrod Hankins put her in the cell to await transport to jail, and she was forgotten. Because of heavy snow, few staff members were in the courthouse to hear her cries and pounding later Thursday or on Friday and through the weekend.

The cell had two benches, a metal table and a light that Torres-Flores could not turn off. She slept using a shoe to cushion her head, she told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, with 14-year-old daughter Adriana acting as an interpreter.

"She was feeling like she was going to die," Adriana said.

Torres-Flores had not eaten Thursday before going to court. She had a jacket but still was cold in the cell.

"She had to use the bathroom on the floor," her daughter said.

"It's a horrible, horrible situation," said her attorney, Nathan Lewis.

Expect a lot more of these if we continue to emphasize "enforcing the laws on the books." Until we reform those laws, enforcing them is ineluctably going to produce travesties like this.

Via Jabbering Stooge.

Fine reading

-- by Dave

Normally when I link to another piece, I try to add value here by offering at least some brief commentary on it.

But Meteor Blades' post yesterday on Mississippi politics really was in a class all by itself, and I haven't anything of worth to add. Just read it.

Dobbs, Obama, and deportation

-- by Dave

So tonight on Wolf Blitzer's show, Lou Dobbs went after Barack Obama, who had earlier slammed Dobbs and his kindred spirit, Rush Limbaugh, for their Bill the Butcheresque attitudes on immigration:

OBAMA: When I hear Rush Limbaugh or, you know, Lou Dobbs, or some of these people talking about how we need to send them all back. We're not going to send them all back.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: All right. Go ahead and respond.

LOU DOBBS, CNN ANCHOR: Go ahead and respond. What is he thinking about? This is a guy who says he wants to be president of the United States. Now Rush Limbaugh doesn't need any defense. But as far as I know, he's never called for deportation of illegal aliens but let me tell you. I certainly have not.

He is either - his people are either misinforming him or he's simply not informed and I think one of the primary characteristics of anyone seeking to lead this nation should be they're well informed and the other part of that is, which he obviously is not, and secondly, these people and referring to illegal aliens as 'them' in some sort of condescending way. I mean this is to me an atrocious moment for a senator who is trying to pander on the issue of illegal immigration.

Let me tell you what Senator Obama. May I take a moment and talk to Senator Obama directly?

BLITZER: You have 15 seconds. Go ahead.

DOBBS: Fifteen seconds. I raise you one on pandering Senator Obama. You say you won't send them all back? I wouldn't send any of them back. Now it's your turn.

This is a good ol' Lou Dobbs twofer: one outright falsehood, complemented by a Bizarro-style attempt to slam Obama that instead highlights his gross hypocrisy.

First, the falsehood: As it so happens, you need only go back to less than a year ago to find an example of Dobbs advocating the deportation of all illegal immigrants -- while disingenuously claiming he's not:

Lesley Stahl: But I wonder if you think that we can possibly deport all those people.

Dobbs: I've never called for their deportation. But at the same time, when this president and open-borders, illegal-alien-amnesty advocates say, ‘You can’t deport them,’ my answer is, ‘You wanna bet?’ Because this is the United States."

Stahl: Can you even find them? How are you going to round them up, if you think it’s possible? How’s it possible?

Dobbs: I think this country can do anything it sets its mind to.

Note the neat rhetorical trick of denying he's advocated something he then immediately advocates -- sorta like saying you've never supported genocide but by God this is America and we can do anything we put our minds to doing.

And in fact, rhetoric indicating he favors such a solution has been a standard feature of his reportage on illegal immigration since he started out.

On Nov. 17, 2003, for instance, just as his immigration reportage was getting started, he put it this way:

Ten million illegal aliens live in this country. But many politicians--in fact, most--business leaders and union leaders are silent about this critically important issue.

It's not particularly clear he's advocating deportation in this instance, but it's clear that the fact these people are living here is a problem in his eyes.

The next day, Nov. 18, 2003, he reported:

There are an estimated 10 million illegal aliens in the United States, and federal agencies are doing little to investigate and apprehend them.

On Sept. 30, 2003, he lectured his guest by decrying the fact that we're not deporting illegal immigrants:

We've got nearly approximately 700,000 illegal aliens crossing our borders every single year. It continues unabated despite the national security interest in this war on terror. We have not been deporting illegal aliens. As a matter of fact, you just used the expression 'undocumented worker.' They're illegal aliens. The niceties of language--it's sort of interesting to hear how there's been this language shift, from 'illegal alien' to 'undocumented worker' to 'guest without status.' I mean, where does the nonsense end?

Dobbs further attacked the use of "illegal immigrants" in favor of his own preferred term, "illegal aliens":

You've added the word 'immigrant' rather than 'illegal alien,' which is the point we're talking about. And, really, there's quite a major, important distinction, do you not agree?

Well, legally speaking, there is in fact virtually no distinction between the terms. However, there is in fact a meaningful distinction, but not one that favors Dobbs: "illegal alien" rather nakedly demonizes the subject, which was part of the intent of the coinage of the term, which originated with the anti-Asian agitation of the 1870-1930 period. (It largely arose first during the push for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Asian Exclusion Act of 1924, both of which were in many ways the founding pieces of legislation for today's obviously dysfunctional immigration laws.) "Illegal immigrant" is widely considered the more generic alternative, which is why most press organizations (such as the Associated Press) insist on its preferred use.

Moreover, there is an important syntactical distinction: "illegal immigrant" somewhat accurately refers to an act -- that is, it means someone who immigrated illegally. Conversely, "illegal alien" only describes a person -- that is, it defines another human being in distinctly (and purposively) nonhuman terms and defines their essence as an "illegal."

Maybe Dobbs is still licking his wounds over the gashing Laura Flanders gave him over insistence on using the term. But it's downright weird that Dobbs, without any apparent irony, attacks Obama for referring to "illegal aliens" "in a sort of condescending way," when in fact Dobbs' incessant use of the term has no "soft of" to qualify it: Not only does it condescend, it is contemptuous. It belittles and demonizes.

Finally, as to Limbaugh, he merely says things like this, which achieve the same effect:

So invasive species like mollusks and spermatozoa are not good, and we've got a federal judge say, "You can't bring it in here," but invasive species in the form of illegal immigration is fine and dandy -- bring 'em on, as many as possible, legalize them wherever we can, wherever they go, no matter what they clog up. So we're going to break the bank; we're going to bend over backwards. The federal judiciary is going to do everything it can to stop spermatozoa and mollusks from coming in, but other invasive species? We're supposed to bend over and grab the ankles and say, "Deal with it." Well, the mollusks may be brought in against their will. My point is they don't know where they are, and they, frankly, don't care. So if you ship them out -- but we can't ship 'em out. It's not that we can't ship 'em out. We're not going to be able to bring 'em in now, but invasive species that, say, on their own power and of their own desire and volition cross the border and come here, we can't say diddly-squat about it.

This is classic eliminationist rhetoric, of course -- something Dobbs indulges as well. And it's something Obama must be getting tired of hearing.

As they say back home: Good on him. And shame on Lou Dobbs.

[HT to Dover Bitch.]

How to win on immigration

-- by Dave

We've all become aware, I think, that adopting the xenophobic rhetoric of the nativists hasn't exactly proved to be much of a winner with the electorate.

After all, Tom Tancredo rapidly foundered, Mike Huckabee went nowhere, and Ron Paul recently all but closed up shop, and then once again hinted at a third-party bid. The guy the Republicans wound up nominating, in fact, has one of the more thoughtful public positions on the issue.

But the recent congressional election in Illinois' reliably Republican 14th District to replace former House Speaker Dennis Hastert provided a stark example of how Democrats can not only turn that hateful rhetoric on its head but -- as we've been advocating here for some time -- can craft a powerful and effective liberal or "moderate" position on immigration.

Because the Democrat in the race, Bill Foster, did just that. And not only did he win, 53%-47%, but it's a huge win with powerful implications for Democrats and Republicans alike.

Most significantly, immigration was the focus of much of the campaign rhetoric, largely because it has been one of Republican Jim Oberweis' pet issues for a long time now. And Oberweis' approach -- the video atop the post gives you some of the flavor of this -- was largely as extreme as you could find.

Foster, in stark comparison, offered an immigration platform that was humanitarian in its overall thrust -- positive and nuanced, ensuring voters he too favored "secure borders" and the "rule of law," but wants the law changed so that it can be effective too.

Archpundit has more:

Oberweis staked out the hardcore send back 12 million people immediately and no exceptions kind of policy and not only embraced the position, but embraced fairly radical anti-immigrant activist organizations.

Most amazing is that John McCain, long a reasonable voice on the immigration debate embraced Oberweis as McCain’s flip flop to the dark side of several issues continues.

Oberweis is a Board of Director for NumbersUSA which is one of the leading right wing anti-immigration groups.

He’s spoken at Illinois Minutemen meetings such as this one on May 6, 2006 mntmn017.wav

And despite railing on the businesses using undocumented workers, Oberweis Dairy never wondered why the company cleaning for them could afford to do the work they were doing. Turns out the contractor were paying below minimum wage for undocumented workers.

It's worth understanding the electoral dynamic at work here, too. Illinois' 14th in the most recent gerrymandering was drawn to protect Hastert's status as House Speaker -- that is, it's been a rock-ribbed Republican district for many years.

But in recent years, it has also become home to a large and rapidly growing immigrant population -- mostly Latinos and Asians. Their numbers climbed from 131,000 in 2000 to 189,912 in 2005; the immigrants and their children now constitute about 30 percent of the population. And most significantly as far as voting patterns go: naturalized citizens rose in numbers from 25,224 to 40,159.

Obviously, Oberweis wasn't exactly doing himself any favors with the largest bloc of new voters in his district. Republicans waved off concerns about that, noting that Latinos had largely supported George W. Bush in previous elections. Obviously, though, those same voters were repelled by Oberweis' overt nativism.

To counter it, Foster chose not to take the "enforcement first" approach promoted by too many Beltway Democrats. Instead, he offered nuanced solutions to immigration issues: His language stressed phrases like "workable compromise," "humanitarian," "comprehensive," "nation of laws" and "border security". He reached out to immigrant advocates and Latino community leaders.

And obviously, it worked. Hopefully, other Democrats will sit up and take note.

[The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights has more, and has followed the race since its inception.]

Journalistic standards redux

-- by Dave

I somehow missed Glenn Greenwald's piece Saturday pointing out the utterly prone position of the Beltway press corps nowadays, quite adroitly. It sprung off some comments by Tucker Carlson, who had the gall to lay into a British journalist for publishing Samantha Power's "Hillary is a monster" remark.

CARLSON: What -- she wanted it off the record. Typically, the arrangement is if someone you're interviewing wants a quote off the record, you give it to them off the record. Why didn't you do that?

PEEV: Are you really that acquiescent in the United States? In the United Kingdom, journalists believe that on or off the record is a principle that's decided ahead of the interview.

Just for the record: It's a basic component of Reporting 101 that every person you talk to in the course of your work is On The Record, and that if they wish to speak Off then that needs to be arranged beforehand.

Obviously, Carlson is like so much of the pundit class, frankly: unaware of this because they have never been reporters. So perhaps his ignorance of basic journalistic standards is excusable in one sense, though his failure to meet them ultimately is not -- and neither is his continued employment on a major cable news network. That abysmal lack ought to be why his show is being cancelled, though I fully expect it is not.

In any event, Carlson went on:

CARLSON: Right. But I mean, since journalistic standards in Great Britain are so much dramatically lower than they are here, it's a little much being lectured on journalistic ethics by a reporter from the "Scotsman," but I wonder if you could just explain what you think the effect is on the relationship between the press and the powerful. People don't talk to you when you go out of your way to hurt them as you did in this piece.

That first line gave me a big, long, belly laugh.

Journalistic standards

-- by Dave

I'm not really surprised by this Reuters piece pointing out that only about 22 percent of the populace reads political blogs -- considering that less than half that same populace reads a daily newspaper, and just over half even look at one during the average week. (What I would like to know is what percentage of newspaper readers also read blogs, but I'd guess that's not in the framework for the poll.)

But I also noticed this line:

Unlike traditional, mainstream media, blogs often adopt a specific point of view. Critics complain they can contain unchecked facts, are poorly edited and use unreliable sources.

And this distinguishes them from the mainstream press exactly ... how?

The hate also rises

-- by Dave

We've been reporting here for quite some time that the immigration debate has become the major recruitment front for far-right racists, as well as one of the main conduits for transmitting far-right ideas and talking points into the mainstream, thanks to the Lou Dobbses of the world.

Now it's come home to roost: the SPLC's latest survey of hate groups is out today, and it records that we're now seeing nearly half again as many American hate groups:

Led by three states on the southern border, the number of hate groups operating in America has swelled by 48 percent since 2000, a staggering increase mainly attributable to the anti-immigrant fervor sweeping the country, according to the "Year in Hate" issue of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report released today.

The latest annual count by the SPLC found the number of hate groups operating in America rose to 888 last year, up 5 percent from the 844 groups in 2006 and far above the 602 groups documented in 2000.

At the same time, new FBI statistics suggest a 35 percent rise in hate crimes against Latinos between 2003 and 2006. Experts believe that such crimes are typically carried out by people who think they are attacking immigrants.

"Hate groups continue to successfully exploit the immigration debate to their advantage, even though the immigration issue has largely disappeared from the presidential debate," said Mark Potok, editor of the SPLC's Intelligence Report, an investigative journal that monitors the radical right. "The fact is that they've been aided and abetted by mainstream pundits and politicians who give these haters a platform for their propaganda."

The greatest growth in hate groups came in California, Arizona and Texas, which had jumps of 27 percent, 70 percent, and 22 percent, respectively.

The Intelligence Report piece on the survey has more details:

Although there were some signs that nativist hatred may be starting to abate, you wouldn't know that by listening to the furious rants of many groups. "America is being destroyed from within by a modern version of Genghis Khan's army," the Emigration Party of Nevada, listed by the SPLC as a hate group, said. The group's leader, Don Pauly, wants to send government "sniper teams" to the border and forcibly sterilize Mexican women after a first child.

"If the Jew government waits, and hell breaks out here in the USA, our citizens will not be asking to see any documentation," added Michael Blevins, the Florida state leader of the neo-Nazi American National Socialist Workers Party. "They will go after anyone they think an illegal alien based on race first."

The growth of these groups is being helped by conspiracy theories and other racist propaganda about immigrants that is being spread by mainstream politicians and pundits. While theories about a secret plan to merge Mexico, Canada and United States into a single country began in radical groups, for instance, many key figures have endorsed them. Indeed, 18 states' houses of representatives have now passed resolutions opposing the "North American Union" — an entity that does not exist and has never been planned, but nonetheless inhabits nativists' nightmares.

Promoting such theories, coupled with a history of ties to white supremacist groups and ideology, is what caused the Southern Poverty Law Center to add a major anti-immigration group, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), to its list of hate groups last year. FAIR has also promulgated the theory that Mexico is involved in a secret plot to "reconquer" the American Southwest.

"You need to understand that WE ARE AT WAR RIGHT HERE IN AMERICA," is the way another nativist group, the Nebraska-based United Citizens of America, put it. "We are being invaded by a foreign country and we are being betrayed from within. Our government, from top to bottom, is being controlled by global elites. They have infiltrated our government at ALL levels."

The IR also has a fascinating set of profiles of some of the individuals leading this wave of hate. One of the more revealing, I thought, was this item about Jerome Corsi of "Swift Boat" fame, which ends with this note:

But Corsi soldiers on. In January 2007, he was recruited to serve as the senior political strategist for TheVanguard.org, a major conservative effort meant to serve as a right-wing MoveOn.org. At press time, the project had yet to take off.

I was unaware of TheVanguard.org, but I always sit up and take note when "mainstream" right-wingers adopt for their own purposes organizational names long used by the racist right.

Empowering the extremists

-- by Dave

The Republican empowerment of the far right -- especially the so-called "Patriot" movement folks whose anti-government extremism wreaked domestic havoc in the 1990s -- has for the most part been a systemic, ideological phenomenon: adopting ideas and talking points that originate on the fringe and gradually adopting them as "mainstream" positions that help the GOP maintain a distance that allows them a kind of plausible deniability about their relationships to these factions.

Evidently, Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons has no such compunctions:

Nevada's new Agriculture Department director is no fan of environmentalists or the federal government.

Tony Lesperance, a Paradise Valley rancher and former Elko County commissioner, was a vocal member of the Jarbidge Shovel Brigade that, back in 2000, marched down the tiny northeastern Nevada town's Main Street in defiance of the federal government, according to reports at the time.

The man taking charge of a major state office today once nearly got into a fistfight with a fellow commissioner in the dispute over a flooded-out road leading to a rural campsite. He told a national magazine, "We will rebuild the road, come hell or high water," and vowed never to compromise.

Lesperance is a real piece of work, as a Mother Jones feature about the Jarbidge brigade makes clear:

Long angered by federal restrictions on everything from water access to grazing rights, county officials and anti-federalists across the West seized upon the obscure road as a symbol of their discontent. "We will rebuild the road, come hell or high water," declared Tony Lesperance, an Elko County commissioner. The demonstrators, met by dozens of law enforcement officers and media cameras, paraded down Main Street, brandishing their shovels and singing "The Star Spangled Banner." An all-terrain vehicle pulled a trailer decorated with a tombstone reading "U.S. Forest Service." A teenager's sign declared "Tree Huggers: the other red meat." When they reached South Canyon Road -- a dusty, dead-end track leading to a campground -- they wrapped ropes around a four-ton boulder blocking the way and heaved it aside.

Their exploits made the evening news. "The major media practically engulfed us at times, trying to out-quote each other and line up for photo ops," one participant noted gleefully. It was a classic fin-de-siècle American protest: a staged telegenic moment steeped in Western symbolism.

The protests have not been confined to assaulting boulders on federal land. In recent years, Elko has gained a reputation as the most lawless county in the West. In 1995, on the same day a bomb exploded in a Forest Service building across the state in Carson City, a detonated pipe bomb was discovered in an outhouse at a campground near Elko, the county seat. Federal employees and their families have been harassed and threatened by local residents, prompting one top-ranking Forest Service official to resign. Snowmobilers venture into protected habitats, ranchers "trespass" their cows on pastures set aside as off-limits, and residents take firewood from federal lands and forests without permits. In Jarbidge, even local politicians have abandoned civility and due process. The week before I visited, two county commissioners feuding over floor time at a public meeting had to be physically separated by the sheriff, and the former publisher of the local paper expressed his civic spirit by shooting an officer's dog in the middle of town.

... "We gave up too damn much," says Tony Lesperance, a rancher and one of the commissioners who was stopped by the sheriff before getting into a fistfight with a colleague during a discussion of the issue. Lesperance is willing to fight the feds in court, despite the tremendous public cost and the shaky legal ground.

"I can't go on with extinguishing our rights," he says. "It's a line we cannot cross. To people who say, 'How are we going to pay for it?' I say, 'Go to hell.'" Once the lawsuit is filed, he adds, many supporters "will be willing to put their shoulder to the wheel" to help pay for it.

So now Nevada has as its agriculture chief a radical who believes in gutting the government, and who thinks a fistfight is the proper way to settle a political dispute.

Ah, nothing like right-wing governance, is there?

[HT to Myrna Minx.]

The real Christians

-- by Dave

I think growing up a religious minority in a community dominated by one faith (I was raised in a town that was, and I think still is, nearly three-quarters Mormon) must have made it easy for me to understand why we have a First Amendment separation of church and state.

It was always fairly obvious that the main bulwark it creates keeps the people who have the most votes from cramming their religious beliefs down everyone else's throat. And of course, in our town, Mormons were always rubbing up against church-state separation, especially in the schools, and that made me especially grateful. Visions of dress codes requiring us to wear white shirts and ties and ride bicycles danced in our heads.

Of course, if anyone should be sensitive to the matter of religious freedom and the utility of church-state separation, you'd think it would be Mormons, since probably no other modern American faith (besides Judaism) has such a clear history of enduring religious persecution. But I think Mitt Romney's Muslim-bashing of a few months ago revealed just how confused the issue is wherever religious conservatism in general can be found.

The modern religious right, which constantly has placed church-state separation under attack (even claiming, with great frequency, that it's a "myth"), really puts my old hometown Mormons to shame, though. I can't tell you how many times in the ensuing years "born again" Christians I've known, swollen with spiritual pride, have questioned whether or not I and others, mostly on the liberal side of the faith equation, are "real" Christians -- often based on narrow doctrinal standards that actually only exist within their own fairly narrow, cultic fundamentalist belief systems.

And when they do, I've thanked God that they don't have the means to force those beliefs down my throat. Yet.

I was reminded of this when reading about the pastor who is demanding that Barack Obama explain the detail of his faith, evidently still suspicious of his "Muslim background":

For his part, Schenck declared that he has no reason not to take Obama “at his word” regarding his Christianity … and then proceeded to question the legitimacy and depth of his faith, saying “The question becomes: How serious, how profound is the religious commitment that Barack Obama has made" considering that United Church of Christ to which he belongs has strayed dramatically from “historical, Biblical Christianity … from historic, moral Christian instruction.” Schenck also says it is interesting that Obama claims to “pray to Jesus” rather than “pray to God in Jesus’ name” and takes issue with Obama’s claim that his views on topics like civil unions and abortion don’t make him any less of a Christian, saying that “he owes the public a further explanation of that and most certainly religious people.”

Actually, he doesn't owe Schenk or anyone else any more explanation than what he's given. Because faith, in the end, has to be an innately private matter, a question of each person's "walk with God," as it were. And no one but God has the right to judge that.

Even the Mormons I grew up with understood that. After all, it's an article of faith for the Schenks of the world that they're not real Christians either.

But you know, I think they're just projecting again.

A friend in need

-- by Dave

An Idaho blogger I've been reading the past few years, Sara Anderson at F-Words, could really use our help. So I'm sending out the signal flares.

Sara was diagnosed a couple of weeks ago with a brain tumor. She underwent surgery earlier this week, and is now recovering.

As her husband Andy, who's now blogging in her place, puts it, the financial ramifications of these kinds of operations are frightening. Obviously, insurance only begins to cover this sort of thing.

Sara's bright, funny, and smart, and a real asset not just to the blogosphere but the human race. There's a donation button atop her site. Send her some love.

First Adolf, Now Damien

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

If you thought the wingnuts had reached their nadir with the comparisons of Obama to Hitler, it’s important to remember: when it comes to the right, things can always get worse.


So this week we could find CNN’s Glenn Beck, in an interview with religious crackpot John Hagee, wondering aloud if Obama is the Antichrist:

BECK: Let me ask you, and this is — ’cause I got — I get so much email on this, and I think a lot of people do, and I’ve only got a couple of seconds. Then they say "Glenn, you in the media, you’ve got to wake up. Barack Obama’s making people faint and cry and everything else. And he’s drawing people in and — "

There are people — and they said this about Bill Clinton — that actually believe he might be the Antichrist. Odds that Barack Obama is the Antichrist?

Note that Beck somehow manages to not just overlook Hagee’s many outrageous remarks about other faiths, but also lets Hagee misrepresent the reasons that Catholic activists have called him a bigot: "I have criticized the Catholic Church for its past anti-Semitism. But I have also been very critical of the Protestants and their anti-Semitism, especially as led by Martin Luther," he says. "Standing against anti-Semitism does not make me an anti-Catholic."

In reality, Hagee has done much more than just criticize Catholic anti-Semitism. In his latest book, he writes: "The sell-out of Catholicism to Hitler began not with the people but with the Vatican itself."

He also has variously called the church "The Great Whore," an "apostate church," a "false cult system" and … you guessed it … "the "anti-Christ."

I guess that’s why he told Beck that Obama isn’t the anti-Christ. He’s already got some other entity in mind.

Not that an ever-incisive observer like Glenn Beck could be bothered to mention this.

Of course, no one really takes Beck very seriously, except for the CNN poobahs who’ve given him a national megaphone to spew his verbal smegma. But you know how these things work.

In couple of weeks, it’ll be on the tongues of the Village Idiots. Look for Tim Russert to grill Obama at some point about whether or not he has 666 tatooed on his ass.

After all, we were treated this week to the vapid maunderings of Maureen Dowd channeling Steve Sailer by depicting the Obama candidacy as being propelled largely by white guilt. And of course, the "Adolph Obama" theme first could be found out in wingnut territory before it came bubbling up in the mainsteam. Thanks to Beck, we’ve now skipped the fringe step and are broadcasting nutcase ideas to a mainstream national cable TV audience.

Next up: Obama is an alien!

A win for the cetaceans

-- by Dave

I've been trying to monitor the situation involving the Bush administration's attempts to bypass the law and proceed with its cetacean-killing sonar tests along the Pacific Coast.

This week there was an important victory on this front, picked up by Hunter at Random -- a court ruling requiring the Navy to stop with its current plans:

A federal appeals court has ruled that the Navy must protect endangered whales from the potentially lethal effects of underwater sonar during anti-submarine training off the Southern California coast, rejecting President Bush's attempt to exempt the exercises from environmental laws.

In a Friday night ruling rushed into print ahead of the next scheduled exercise on Monday, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a federal judge's decision that no emergency existed that would justify Bush's intervention.

The Navy is engaged in "long-planned, routine training exercises" and has had ample time to take the steps that the law requires - conduct a thorough review of the environmental consequences and propose effective measures to minimize the harm to whales and other marine mammals, the three-judge panel said.

The court noted that the Navy has been conducting similar exercises for years, has agreed in the past to restrictions like the ones it is now challenging, and was sued by environmental groups in the current case nearly a year ago. The lower-court judge reviewed the evidence and found nothing to support the Navy's claim that the protective measures would interfere with vital training or hamper national security, the court said.

Past rulings have established that "there is no 'national defense exception' " to the National Environmental Policy Act, the court said. That law requires government agencies to review projects that might harm the environment and propose reasonable protective measures.

The best news for Northwesterners is that the court's action will also block similar tests in the waters of Puget Sound and elsewhere:

The ruling sets a precedent for federal courts in California and eight other Western states. One of those states is Hawaii, where a federal judge on Friday ordered similar restrictions on Navy sonar exercises off the Hawaiian islands. The ruling by U.S. District Judge David Ezra includes requirements to reduce sonar when whales are detected within certain distances or when conditions make monitoring difficult.

The Navy has completed six of the 14 large-scale training exercises scheduled off Southern California between February 2007 and January 2009. It decided not to conduct a full environmental review before the operations, saying it had already agreed to post lookouts for whales and taken other adequate protective measures.

In an August 2007 ruling, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper of Los Angeles said the Navy's measures were "woefully ineffectual and inadequate" and would leave nearly 30 species of marine mammals at risk, including five species of endangered whales.

She said the Navy's own research shows that its use of mid-frequency sonar can damage the hearing of whales and dolphins, can interfere with their ability to find food and mate, and has been linked to the beaching of whales.

I'm sure our local killer whales would be relieved to know.

How the Conservatives Got It Right

-- by Sara

As of this week, I'm halfway through my tenure as this quarter's blogger-in-residence over at the Campaign for America's Future. It's been quite a ride.

This week, I've put up Part II of a three-part series that's taking an in-depth look at the basic strategies the conservatives used to win (to the extent that they did win) the culture war. Mainly, it's about how they built their entire movement around the single goal of promoting the conservative worldview, which provides the cognitive foundation for every other program and policy on their agenda. Once we learned to see the world their way and accept their foundational assumptions about how it worked, they knew that getting the rest of their agenda passed would happen far more easily and naturally.

This plan was solidly grounded in the social sciences, and relied on understandings gleaned from social psychology, cognitive psychology, linguistics, and sociology. In other words: it was damned insightful and smart -- and there are a lot of useful lessons progressives can glean from it as we try to pull together a movement that will endure for the long haul.

You're invited to go take a look.

Part I
Part II
Part III will go up next Monday.

The Clinton Rules for the Obamas

-- by Dave

The Boston Globe's Joan Vennochi -- who has a history of clutching her pearls over the thought of Democrats standing up to Republicans, and offering sanctimonious advice that's simultaneously bad -- weighed in this week on Michelle Obama:

If Michelle Obama isn't careful, she could get the Hillary Clinton treatment, circa 1992.

... Bill Clinton may have a tough time trying to define his role as "first laddie," but Michelle Obama also walks a delicate line. Smart, tough political wives like Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, and Laura Bush are acceptable; in public, they are adjuncts to the husband elected by the voters, even as they wield power behind the scenes. As first lady, Hillary Clinton openly crossed the line into politics and policy, often to harsh reviews.

Michelle Obama can expect more scrutiny from the right, from the sentiments expressed in her senior thesis -- "I will always be a black first and a student second" -- to her push for more African American faculty and students at Harvard Law School. So far, she isn't intimidated.

I hate to burst Vennochi's bubble, but both Obamas are going to get the Clinton treatment. It happened to Al Gore and John Kerry as well. And we've already seen it in action this week. It's really just getting underway now, but expect it to be operating at full tilt by midsummer.

What we're confronted with is a Beltway media mindset that is systemically hostile to Democrats while simultaneously coddling (and propping up) conservatives. It's just a fact of life, and an ugly one. And until self-hating "liberals" come to grips with that reality, they're doomed to irrelevance.

When government is good

-- by Dave

One of the staples of Republican politics since Reagan -- both at the national and the local levels -- has been to bash government as fundamentally "the problem" and to argue for tax cuts, deregulation, and other reductions in the reach of government as the solution to all our ills.

Well, as Rick Perlstein and Co. have been steadily documenting at The Big Con, it's mostly a load of hooey. While any massive bureaucracy is going to have built-in dysfunctions that have to be overcome, the reality of what we've experienced through the cumulative effects of conservative governance has spoken for itself: toxic toys and dead pets, Katrina, mine disasters, Enron, housing foreclosures ... the list of domestic disasters is endless.

And then there is the example of what happens when you get good governance.

Darryl at HorsesAss has a terrific post up about this, using our own Washington state as a prime example. As he explains, the right-wing anti-tax mantra has produced a string of initiatives all built on the notion that we need to cut back on government generally. It's used three basic claims consistently over the past two decades, really:

--The Washington state government performs poorly.

-- The state government hurts the business climate.

-- We are overtaxed for what we get out of our government.

The first two points, in fact, are simply not true:

In February, 2005 we learned just how good we have it government-wise. The Pew-sponsored Government Performance Project (GPP) graded Washington state a B+. From the individual scores, Washington ranked as the third best state government, with only Utah and Virginia doing better. When the report came out, we were in the midst of a contested gubernatorial election. The report seemed largely overlooked.

Last year we learned just how good we have it business-wise, when Forbes’ annual survey ranked Washington state number five in the nation for business climate. And Fortune magazine rated Washington the fourth best state in which to start a business—specifically citing our “low taxes”.

And earlier this week we learned how consistently good we have it government-wise when the 2008 GPP report was released. The 2005 results were not a fluke. Once again, Washington state ranks third behind Utah and Virginia. Our grade improved slightly to an A- overall. Individual grades were A- for money, A- for people, B+ for infrastructure, and A for information (see the full report for what these categories mean and how the grading was done).

Together these four reports strongly suggest that Washington’s government and business climate are near the top in the nation.

Darryl, as it happens, is a good number-cruncher, and he crunches the numbers and finds that Washington actually ranks sixth in national efficiency as far as returning value to its taxpayers -- which flatly contradicts the right-wingers' claims otherwise.

He concludes:

The perpetual whiners in this state who claim that our government is broken, inefficient, poorly performing, bloated, ineffective, incompetent, and expensive are wrong—they don’t know how good they have it. They’ve hunkered down so tightly on the compound that they’ve lost touch with reality.

The facts are plain and can be evaluated objectively…Washington state is one of the greatest values around in state government. And, judging by the recent increases in both the GPP scores and the Forbes rankings, Washington is not only a great value, but has been improving.

I've always thought we had it great here, but government hasn't been part of why I've thought that. Just goes to show how easily we can take these things for granted -- which is part of the problem, electorally speaking.

A different kind of rage

-- by Dave

One of the unpleasant facts about being a journalist is that sooner or later, you're going to be wrong and make mistakes. I've certainly made them here before, and doubtless will again. But as always, when it happens I do what I can to correct.

A couple of weeks ago I popped up a quick post about the rampage by an enraged citizen in the council chambers of Kirkwood, Mo., and suggested that it fit into a pattern of anti-government extremism playing out in a violent spiral as it often has in other locales. Even though the perpetrator was a black man, in most other respects this incident initially resembled those earlier incidents.

But it turns out that the matter is considerably more complex than that.

Brad Hicks has been looking deeper into the case, noting that Kirkwood has a history of being something of a "sundown suburb" (which we've discussed at length previously:

Fortunately, James Kirkwood's experiment had accidentally shown the way out of this dilemma. Kirkwood didn't buy into this idea, much, but all of the suburbs north of Kirkwood, the ones that were unsuccessfully trying to copy James Kirkwood's formula, revamped themselves as working class communities. Then the city of St. Louis not-to-gently encouraged the entire working class population of the north half of St. Louis to evacuate to north and northwest county, to make room for all-black tenements. To this very day, if you're black, and you want to live in a neighborhood that happens to be less than 10% black, good luck getting a realtor anywhere near St. Louis to show you a house, or a landlord to admit that there are any apartments for lease.

Moreover, there's evidence of a racial animus at play in the drama that played out last month, Hicks reports:

But unless they can show even one white contractor in Kirkwood who was treated the same way when he didn't immediately pack up his business and leave town, they still have something important left to explain, because the evidence is clear and unambiguous: for a span of roughly one year, the city of Kirkwood, and specifically one of Thornton's targets that night Public Works Director Ken Yost, absolutely was trying to put him out of business in an over-the-top campaign of harassment.

Hicks has done exemplary work on this case, and hopefully he will get answers to some of the questions he raises.

In the meantime, I'm glad to correct the record on this. (And a hat tip to Brennan.)

The hate bubbles up

-- by Dave

If you want to get a good look at the corrosive power of bias crimes within a community, a prime example recently occurred in San Bernardino, where the increasing presence of neo-Nazis and other white supremacists has been noted in recent years:

A Calimesa man will stand trial on a hate crime charge in addition to murder and attempted murder counts, a judge ruled Monday.

Christopher Fulmer, 30, will be tried in the fatal Dec. 4 shooting of Joshua Morales, also 30, of Bermuda Dunes, and the wounding of a second man during a confrontation on a Yucaipa street, San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Brian McCarville decided.

Fulmer's attorney, James Gass, argued that it was not a hate crime and said his client was defending others.

Yeah, right:

On Friday, when Fulmer's preliminary hearing began, Robert Alexander, a San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department homicide detective, testified that Gilbert Aguilar had told him that he was walking alone to a friend's house between 4 and 5 p.m. Dec. 4 when four white men confronted him at California Street and Avenue B.

According to a witness, the men used a racial slur when they saw Aguilar, who later identified one of the men as Fulmer. After exchanging words, Aguilar and the four men parted ways.

On Monday, sheriff's Detective Greg Myler said the four men went to a park where, according to witnesses, they were upset because Aguilar had not backed down, which they thought he should because he's Hispanic. They talked about wanting to beat him up and to teach him a lesson, Myler said. Witnesses described Fulmer as the leader, Myler testified.

Myler said a friend of Fulmer's who was at the park and involved in the confrontation told him they are part of a group that tries to start fights with Hispanics and blacks by making derogatory comments. The only reason the group confronted Aguilar was because he's Hispanic, Myler said, recounting the interview.

Deputy District Attorney Dan Detienne presented a group photo that shows Fulmer and others making a Nazi salute. Fulmer has a swastika tattooed on his chest.

Detienne argued Monday that Aguilar was targeted because he is Hispanic.

As we've been reporting, violent bias crimes against Latinos are rapidly increasing, doubtlessly fueled in large part by the ugly rhetoric of demonization used by both anti-immigrant activists and their media mouthpieces -- not to mention leading right-wing politicians.

Most of the work in dealing with these crimes is going to occur on the local level -- and fortunately, San Bernardino's police responded properly and professionally in dealing with this incident. But there are going to be many more of these coming down the pike, as evidenced by the increasing boldness of the overt white supremacists. Just wait until that prison population of Aryan Brotherhood members starts hitting the streets over the next few years.

It's important to remember that last year's federal Hate Crimes Prevention Act -- which met an untimely death at the hands of spineless Democrats -- was in fact predicated on enhancing the ability of local law enforcement to handle the extra burden that dealing with bias crimes entails.

And as I said at the time:

Let's face it: This legislation was tagged as a "gay issue" -- mainly because the opposition to it arose almost wholly from the inclusion of sexual preference as a category of bias, fueled by the homophobes of the religious right. And gay-rights groups were certainly in the forefront of pushing the bill. However, other progressives, including those directly affected by hate crimes, neglected to join in the fight to any notable extent. Where were the civil-rights groups, the immigrant-rights groups, the labor unions?

How was it possible, for instance, for thousands of African Americans to march on the Justice Department and demand hate-crimes enforcement, as they did last month, and have no one mention the pending hate-crimes law?

After all, the bill specifically addresses the very issue that lies at the heart of the "Jena 6" controversy -- namely, the failures of law enforcement to adequately enforce these laws. The legislation, as I've noted previously, is carefully written to emphasize helping local law enforcement do its job -- provide training, help identify bias crimes, provide funds for strapped prosecutors -- and it specifically defers to local jurisdictions. At the same time it makes it possible for federal authorities to move in when local law enforcement fails to do so, particularly in any of the seven states that have no bias-crime law.

Similarly, it's been hard to find much in the way of serious support for the Shepard bill from Latinos and immigrant-rights organizations. There have been exceptions: The Latino Coalition made an effort to support the bill, and Latino bloggers like Xicanopwr chimed in as well. Nonetheless, the support was surprisingly muted and not particularly broad, in spite of the fact that Latino immigrants have been among the chief victims of the recent spike in hate-crimes nationally reported by the FBI.

One has to hope that in the coming year, when this legislation comes up again, those Latino and African American civil-rights advocates will be linking arms with their allies in the GLBT community to get the job done. Because the cops in places like San Bernardino are going to need all the help they can get.

Another Story about Dick

-- by Sara

I'll step in here and second Dave's recommendation below of Rebecca Solnit's excellent piece on the devastating implications of the ongoing disconnect between arrogant urban environmentalists and (often justly) suspicious locals. I'd also like to offer, by way of example, a tale of how well this can work when it does work, and why it's so important to bridge this gap -- a long-ago episode in which the participation of one smart local gave environmentalists the piece they needed to win a battle that ultimately affected the entire ecosystem of the West Coast.

I grew up not far south of Mono Lake, a vast salt-water lake that's wedged in between Yosemite's eastern Tioga Pass gate and the California-Nevada border. Mono is one the continent's most ancient lakes -- a strange, sere and otherworldy landscape marked by lumpy columns of tufa, water so salty you simply float on it, and more birds than you've ever seen in one place in your life. (High Plains Drifter and Alien Planet were both filmed on Mono's shoreline, which gives you some idea.)

Remote and bizarre as it is, the lake plays a defining role in the life cycle of hundreds of migrating bird species. It's a major north-south migration depot that's relied on by birds migrating all the way from South America to Alaska. It's too salty for fish, but rich with algae, brine shrimp, and brine flies, which the birds rely on to fuel their further flight. Two large islands in the lake's center also served as the predator-free breeding grounds for about a third of California's seagulls (the rest are hatched at the Great Salt Lake -- the only two places these iconic coastal birds breed). An experienced birder could spent a weekend at Mono in June and add 70 or more birds to his or her life list. (I know, because I've done it.)

It was the birds that first brought a quiet young ornithologist, David Gaines, to the lake in the early 1970s. After he finished his degree at UC Davis, he moved to the lakeside town of Lee Vining (pop. about 250 at the time) to settle in and spend his life studying the lake's birds, and the larger ecology that supported them.

Gaines was the first one to notice that the lake was in serious ecological trouble. Millions of humans depend on Mono Lake, too: in 1941, it was appended as the new northern terminus of the long aqueduct system that brings the eastern Sierra's water to the taps of Los Angeles. The city had diverted four of the lake's five feeder streams into the aqueduct, leaving only one to feed the lake. About 15% of LA's water supply came from these four streams.

The one remaining creek wasn't enough to sustain the ecosystem, and evaporation did the rest. By the late 1970s, the lake had shrunk by a third. The surface level had dropped 45 feet, exposing a land bridge between the shore and the gulls' main breeding island that allowed coyotes to come across and devastate the chick population. The water doubled in salinity, to the point where it was getting too salty to sustain the algae and the brine shrimp. The hundreds of bird species that depended on the lake as a migration stop were arriving to find there were fewer safe places to rest, and less and less to eat. The loss of those birds would, in turn, affect ecosystems thousands of miles away. Mono Lake, we were learning the hard way, was an essental keystone in the ecology of the entire West.

Gaines formed an environmental organization, The Mono Lake Committee, to raise money for a legal fight to challenge LA's water diversions. The Audubon Society and the Sierra Club lent their support to the battle; and a noted San Francisco law firm volunteered to take on the case pro bono. Environmentalists in both Los Angeles and the San Francisco area went on high alert. Ultimately, the city of Los Angeles was sued for refusing to file the required environmental impact reports, for violating air quality standards (the alkaline dust rising off the exposed shoreline created horrific air pollution), and for whatever else the environmental attorneys could think of. Millions of dollars were raised. State officials were taken on tours of the lake. A public awareness campaign put "Save Mono Lake" bumper stickers on cars all over the west.

But the city of LA, which had gotten its way in the Eastern Sierra for 75 years, fought back hard. They had money, momentum, and nothing but time on their hands. What they didn't reckon -- what nobody on either side reckoned -- was the winter of 1982, which turned into the wettest winter anybody had ever seen.

There was so much water coming down the Sierra's eastern mountainsides that year that the aqueduct couldn't take it all. The LA Department of Water & Power was left with no choice but to let some of it run back down into the four Mono Lake feeder streambeds, none of which had seen anything but trickles in over 40 years. And that -- though nobody realized it at the time -- was the beginning of the end.

My mother, who was the water commissioner for the next county south of the lake (which was also suing the DWP for other reasons) still remembers the meeting. David was there, along with officials from Mono County, attorneys from San Francisco, and various concerned locals. It was their regular public task force meeting to coordinate strategy on all the various lawsuits both counties and the Mono Lake Committee had in play. In the middle of the discussion, one good old boy -- that would be our only Dick, a retired geezer who was a stalwart of the local fishing club -- stood up and asked to be heard.

"We've got 'em where we want 'em now," he declared.

We do? The commissioners, lawyers, and activists looked at him, puzzled and expecting an unnecessary digression from the matters at hand. Dick was known as concerned citizen -- but was not, shall we say, noted for his keen command of the issues.

"Yep. We do. The state fisheries law says you can't turn the water out of a stream if there's fish in it. All four of those creeks have fish in them now. So they can't take that water back out again."

Everybody suddenly woke up. This guy had to be kidding.

"No -- here it is." Dick fished a crumpled piece of folded yellow-pad paper out of his pocket, and read aloud the pertinent piece of an obscure early 1900's state fisheries code -- which he'd copied down, chapter and verse. The San Francisco lawyers scribbled furiously. The commissioners sat, stunned. The activists suppressed huge whoops of glee.

Dick was right. The lawyers went back to their Bay Area offices and quickly confirmed that that old code was still in force; and that there was no legal way the DWP could take the water back out of those streams, ever. The whole direction of the fight was transformed in that moment. From that time forward, the negotiation was not whether or not LA had the right to take the water; but how much water they'd be allowed to divert each year and still maintain the fisheries.

The battle for Mono Lake ground on for another ten years. But those who were involved with it remember the moment that old Dick stood up as the turning point. Until then, the legal argument had turned on enforcing the new bushel of environmental laws passed in the early 1970s. Nobody had thought to research the pertinent fish and wildlife or boating laws, some of which dated back into the 19th century. But those were the legal precedents that ultimately won the fight.

Once they were onto the fish-protection law, the attorneys kept digging -- and soon uncovered a another large body of old "public trust" laws that covered navigable rivers and lakes. In the end, the state Supreme Court ruled that Mono Lake was subject to the public trust laws regarding navigable waters; and that the DWP would also have to maintain and restore the fish habitat. In 1994, the State Water Resources Board ordered the city of Los Angeles to reduce diversions until the lake is returned a sustainable level and the habitats are restored. The lake level is now rising at about a foot a year, and is expected (barring drought) to meet a sustainable level by about 2015. The victory is still fragile, as both LA and other western states try to undermine the laws that supported the state's decisions; but for now, the lake is on track to be saved.

David Gaines didn't live to see that victory. He was killed in a truck accident in January 1988, leaving behind his wife and a baby girl. He was a friend, and I still think of him whenever I see the many birds -- nighthawks, jaegers, buntings, plovers, and wrens -- he taught me to find. But the fight he waged to save Mono Lake ended up saving the local economy as well. It put Lee Vining on the map as a tourist destination drawing photographers, hikers, and birders from all over the world. The town has more than doubled in size thanks to him. There are good jobs to be had in the restaurants, hotels, and interpretive centers -- all of which exist because this shy introvert who was far more comfortable with birds than people took on the monumental task of educating the country about the lake's unique ecological role.

Dave's work was embraced by the locals because his research and interpretive skills gave them a new and broader respect and reverence for a place they already loved. Though he could easily hae been the very kind of evil urban environmentalist that rural towns dread, he proved that this antagonism isn't inevitable. Dave didn't come on like an outsider coming in to show them a better way. His approach was more like that of a young, bookish pastor who made a permanent commitment to the community, and chose the place to be his own home. His job was to win hearts and minds for the preservation of the lake -- and he understood that the first piece of that task was winning over the souls of Lee Vining and Mono County.

That's why Dave would have been the first to give credit for the victory to the locals. He'd have told you about the courageous Mono and Inyo county commissioners who were game to take on LA City Hall, and stayed the course even when the legal fights threatened to drain the finances of those sparsely-populated counties. And he'd have special praise for the fishermen and hunters like Dick, who realized that the fight for the lake was their fight, too -- and then supplied the legal sling and stones that ultimately helped this particular David defeat the biggest Goliath in the country. If it hadn't been for the wider viewpoint provided by these locals, it's quite possible that the legal battle for Mono Lake would still be going on today.