Saturday 9/19/2020: Working on this now; maybe half done?

Here’s a video of Trump supporters being interviewed about bigotry:

Huff Post – Trump voters on racism, misogyny, xenophobia

We made an imperfect but reasonably accurate transcript.
And then we looked into some of the claims.

“Donald Fucking Trump” T-Shirt Hawker: “Hillary sucks, but not like Monica!”
[not worth repeating, let alone fact-checking]

Trump at a rally: “I hope the people that are pouring in are not angry with me … but to hell with them, right?”

In line for Trump rally, when asked about Trump saying Mexicans are rapists: “any time you use the term ‘all’ that’s very … because only a very small sample of those people are going to do that … he should really change his wording around, maybe like a small percentage … ”

Another guy in line, about banning Muslims for a bit not being such a bad idea: ” … let’s see if they are honest Muslims …

A lady in line: “he’s against the illegals that continue to suck on the tit of the American people, and continue to take from us, us hardworking people … ”

[GW Bush Center – flyer on immigration myths
https://www.bushcenter.org/publications/resources-reports/resources/immigration-debunking-myths-infographic.html
Current immigration rates in line with historic norms; immigrant-owned businesses have an average of 11 employees; a higher percentage of immigrants 16 and older are working than native-born adults (about 62% versus 58%); etc.

[https://4thworldmovement.org/immigrants-come-use-welfare/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI1vKRkOj16wIVivOzCh1V8wUmEAAYASAAEgI8KvD_BwE

An analysis by the Libertarian think tank The Cato Institute found that using the same numbers when you control for socioeconomic factors, “Overall, immigrant households in poverty consume less welfare than native [U.S.-born] households in poverty.” [emphasis added] [4]

Going farther, the Cato Institute broke down the numbers available by individuals in a report titled, (SPOILER ALERT!) “Poor Immigrants Use Public Benefits at a Lower Rate than Poor Native-Born Citizens.”

The study found that, you guessed it, “Low-income immigrants use public benefits […] at a lower rate than low-income native-born citizens.” [5] Adult low-income immigrants used Medicaid at a lower rate (20% vs. 25%) than citizens, and their children were less likely to use CHIP (49% vs. 65%) or SNAP (33% vs. 51%). Moreover, even when immigrants are qualified and enrolled, their cost per person is lower than that for citizens. In the case of Medicaid, for instance, low-income immigrant adults cost 42% less per person than citizens. In the case of CHIP, low-income immigrant children cost 66% less per person than citizens. [5]

And then lastly, we have to point out that this whole discussion focuses on documented immigrants, who are eligible after five years to apply for welfare programs. Undocumented immigrants never have this right unless they change their immigration status, which means that despite the fact that undocumented immigrants pay close to a billion dollars in taxes each year, they never have the right to benefit from the system they help support [3].

There is a deeper question that we should be asking here though: If immigrants pay taxes, and those taxes contribute to our social safety net, isn’t it reasonable that they should be able to use that safety net when times get tough? Why does this idea create such a backlash?]

Another lady: “it’s people here that are causing my insurance rates to go up, my car insurance rates to go up, their kids are getting free meals, and I’m paying for it — and I’m against that.”

[It looks like immigrants use proportionately less medical services than native-born Americans:

https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.25.6.1700
Foreign-born adults in Los Angeles County, California, constituted 45 percent of the county’s population ages 18–64 but accounted for 33 percent of health spending in 2000. Similarly, the undocumented constituted 12 percent of the nonelderly adult population but accounted for only 6 percent of spending. Extrapolating to the nation, total spending by the undocumented is $6.4 billion, of which only 17 percent ($1.1 billion) is paid for by public sources. The foreign-born (especially the undocumented) use disproportionately fewer medical services and contribute less to health care costs in relation to their population share, likely because of their better relative health and lack of health insurance.]

[https://www.uclahealth.org/u-magazine/the-true-healthcare-costs-of-undocumented-immigrants

UCLA study finding that California would save money by providing health insurance to undocumented workers:

“‘The great majority of the undocumented in California are working-age adults who contribute greatly to California’s economy by working in physically demanding service, agriculture and construction jobs,’ Dr. Pourat says. ‘It makes financial sense to make sure they have affordable health-coverage options so they can stay healthy.’

“Lower utilization of care comes at a great cost, the study findings suggest. The undocumented don’t get preventive care, potentially leading to more-advanced disease and higher public expenditures. If undocumented immigrants had access to health insurance, the authors say, their doctor and ER visits would remain below or be the same as documented residents.”]

[It looks like car insurance rates are slightly decreased when illegal immigrants are allowed to have auto insurance:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/soej.12022
“Proponents of issuing driver licenses to undocumented immigrants argue that the number of uninsured motorists and car accidents would decrease, thus improving public safety and lowering costs associated with car insurance. This study gives an overview of competing cost reduction and public safety arguments and examines the issues surrounding undocumented immigrants and driver licenses. It empirically assesses the effect on the average cost of auto insurance of restricting undocumented access to legal driving documents. We use a fixed effects model for panel data to test the effects on real average insurance expenditures of restricting undocumented immigrants’ access to driver licenses, while controlling for other relevant factors suggested in the literature. Our main finding is that on net such restrictions raise the average annual cost of auto insurance by an estimated $17.22 ($2009) across states that have enacted such restrictions.”]

Guys in line being asked about the “all lives matter” retort to “black lives matter”

1. doesn’t see the world through color
2. “they believe that all lives matter, but they just want to address the black issues? ”
interviewer points out history of slavery, mistreatment at the hands of the police …
“first of all, if you have someone that is promoting black lives matter, they are promoting one race over another — they’re racist. If I started a movement called ‘white lives matter’, would I be a racist?” Interview says he would be labelled a racist. “OK, then why isn’t ‘black lives matter’ racist?”
Interviewer says because they’re trying to cure a particular problem that effects one group disproportionately.
“OK, so we’re now somehow responsible in the year 2016 for something that happened 200 years ago with slavery, with people being brought over, what about the Irish … ”
A lady chimes in: “Yeah, I’m Irish, what about my slaves, huh?”
[I know that Ireland was colonized by England and the people there mistreated. I assume this is in reference to that. There was, I’ve heard, also racist sentiments against Irish immigrants earlyish in the last century: “Irish not welcome”
https://www.history.com/news/when-america-despised-the-irish-the-19th-centurys-refugee-crisis
https://irishsig.wordpress.com/research/general-ireland-research/irelands-troubling-history-british-colonialisms-effect-on-irish-research/]
The guy #2: “How about Irish lives matter?”
3 “All lives matter. Animals matter. Everybody matters to me.”

One of the ladies from above about Trump being called misogynistic: “I think that’s something that’s been targeted. I think that’s something that’s an easy way to portray him, and I don’t think that’s accurate. If you look at his history, if you look at his business practices, I think he does promote women, I think he does respect women.”

The guy #3 above: “I don’t think he hates women at all. I think the media causes all that.”

A lady in line (50s, blond haired; all the people interviewed were white, most around 50ish): “Women love Trump!”

Guy#3: “He gets the best-look’in women, I don’t see how they hate ‘im.”
[the premise is a matter of opinion and cannot be fact checked; the conclusion commits a number of fallacies – straw man (the reporter didn’t say women hated Trump, but that Trump had a history of misogyny), small sample (the argument goes from his popularity with a few women to the inability of any women to hate him), and just generally ‘what??’]

Kid like 30ish, when asked how is America not great (he had the hat): “We have no border; we seem to be arming and funding all the groups that we later attack; we destabilize sovereign nations”

[which groups are we funding that we later attack? Afghanistan? That was not Democratic presidents, particularly. Who was that, though?]

[how to assess ‘we have no border’?]

[does this last one refer to decisions made by GW Bush? The invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq? And there’s our long history in Central America, but you can’t blame that on the Democrats.
What sovereign nation did Obama destabilize?
maybe this is what the kid’s referring to?:
https://www.google.com/search?q=obama+destabilizes+sovereign+nations&oq=obama+destabilizes+sovereign+nations&aqs=chrome..69i57.10943j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
n a Fox News interview last Sunday, Obama was asked about his “worst mistake.” It’s a classic gotcha question, but he had an answer ready. “Probably failing to plan for the day after, what I think was the right thing to do, in intervening in Libya.” This was yet another act of presidential contrition for the NATO operation in 2011 that helped to overthrow Muammar Qaddafi but left the country deeply unstable. In 2014, Obama said: “[W]e [and] our European partners underestimated the need to come in full force if you’re going to do this. Then it’s the day after Qaddafi is gone, when everybody is feeling good and everybody is holding up posters saying, ‘Thank you, America.’ At that moment, there has to be a much more aggressive effort to rebuild societies that didn’t have any civic traditions.” In recent interviews with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg on the “Obama Doctrine,” the president bluntly said the mission in Libya “didn’t work.” Behind closed doors, according to Goldberg, he calls the situation there a “shit show.”

What went wrong? Obama has placed the responsibility on the entrenched tribalism of Libyan society, as well as the failure of America’s NATO allies to step up to the plate. Blaming the Libyans and Europeans may be satisfying, but it misses the deeper reasons for the debacle, which are rooted in how Americans think about and fight wars
]

Guy #2: “Do we have the best economy in the world? I don’t believe that at all.”
Lady who’d chimed in about being Irish: “I don’t believe that either.”
Why not?, asks the interviewer.
Irish Lady: “Because we live it. We’re here. We’re the people. We’re the hard workers. We see it’s not true.”

Guy #3: “We gotta get our jobs back. There’s so many people without jobs. Where I come from, the coal’s done. And we have one factory in a town of 19,000 people. We’re dying a slow death. Politicians didn’t do nothing to save our community. And we’re dying. He’s our only hope. If he can’t do it, America’s done.”

[I’m thinking of two items that need looking up: Didn’t 2016 Clinton have a lot of ideas about how to reinvigorate coal country’s economy? And didn’t Appalachia go for Clinton over Obama but then for Trump over Clinton?]

“When I talk to average people — and I work in healthcare — everybody is one step away from bankruptcy when they get sick. I have gone to patient’s apartments that are sick. The next day, they are in an apartment. Because they lost their house; because they got ill. We don’t take care of our people here. … They only care about themselves — these politicians.”

Has your own life gotten any worse?
“Yes, social security. … it’s not changing. insurance is going up, so there’s … ”

“What isn’t great? Well, people are losing jobs. Say Obamacare, Obamacare is killing working people.”

[These ones boggles my mind. Before Obamacare, insurers could refuse coverage due to preexisting conditions, and I personally never had more than a six-month insurance policy for most of my adulthood. And I always knew that if I actually got sick and those six months were up, I’d be SOL. More people can also afford better healthcare thanks to the very Obamacare that Trump’s been attacking. What are these people talking about? It seems so obvious to me that we should build upon the relative success and reasonable starting place of Obamacare.]

Then there’s a little uncertainty about how he’ll make America better.