Ha ha Heritage open Friday thread

by liberal japonicus

Don't get me wrong, I like the word heritage. If you haven't noticed, I'm someone who often dwells in the past, and the whole idea of finding out stuff about the past, be it digging up ancient mysteries, contemplating the enamel on dinosaurs' teeth, or reading about the last member of a vanished Indian tribe, makes a firm believer in Faulkner's turn of phrase "The past is never dead. It's not even past." And heritage, with its link to heir and inherit, makes me feel all fuzzy. However, these guys are giving it a bad name.

DeMint no doubt hoped that this week, when Heritage released its updated version of the 2007 report, the document would have a similar impact on the immigration debate. Instead, something very different happened: Republican officials and conservative writers tore the report to shreds, criticizing it for its shoddy analysis and intellectual dishonesty.

Larry Kudlow, a cable-news host, asked one of the authors of the study, “Did you calculate economic benefits from immigrants?” He answered that he had not.

Haley Barbour, the former governor of Mississippi, said the report was “a political document” and “not a very serious analysis.” At the libertarian Cato Institute, Heritage’s sometime rival, the analyst Alex Nowrasteh said that the study was essentially worthless. “I criticized an earlier version of this report in 2007,” he wrote, “arguing that their methodology was so flawed that one cannot take their report’s conclusions seriously. Unfortunately, their updated version differs little from their earlier one.” He added, “Its flawed methodology and lack of relevancy to the current immigration reform proposal relegate this study to irrelevancy.” The authors simply made estimates—wild guesses, really—about the benefits earned and taxes paid over the lifetimes of immigrants who would earn citizenship under the law, and then added it all together to get the enormous multi-trillion-dollar figure. They ignored any other economic benefits from immigration that might offset the costs they tallied up, while making dismissive assumptions about their potential social and educational attainments.

When you got Haley Barbour brushing you off, well, you got a problem. So much for heritage.

Comments

[Turbulence]

If it makes you feel any better, the author of the Heritage study is also a crazy racist who writes for "nationalist" websites. He was supported by AEI, the other big conservative think tank, while writing his thesis on the inferiority of Hispanics (I guess they're the new Irish/Italians/Poles/Blacks). So, his idiocy has more to do with the intellectual wing of the conservative movement in general rather than heritage in particular.

[Laura Koerbeer]

The Republican party has a dilemna: keep on peddling hateful bullshit to the base and alienate a growing Hispanic demography, or tailor the hatemongering so that Hispanics are not directly offended.

They are in the process of pivoting on gay-bashing, too, since it is no longer an effective techique for winning elections.

They have made pivots before.

THere was the attempt last fall to demonize federal employees. Actually that was an attempt to mainstream the demonization of federal employees which has been a rightwing theme for years and years (the Oklahoma bombing But hating on federal employees used to be characteristic of the militia movement, not a theme out of the mouths of Republican politicians at the national level.

This has been the pattern since Lee Atwater's day with the Republican party: take themes that used to be far out of the mainstream and repeat those themes in more pseudo-civilized terms so as to make the themes exceptable to a broader spectrum of people. Then milk the hate for as long as possible. When when hating o a certrain target doesn't work any more, drop it and pick another.

Niggers on welfare to welfare queens to unspecified big government money wasting programs, for example. ("Niggers on welfare " started out as a slogan within the the Democratic party, but was adopted in a sanitized form when the Repulbicans decided to make racism part of their appeal, a decision that was very sucessful and turned the South red

According to Repubican politicians, everything is always the fault of someone else.

I don't know who they will pick next. You'd think they'd run out of targets sooner or later.

[cleek]

THere was the attempt last fall to demonize federal employees

only some federal employees. federal employees who kill foreigners are still the tits.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

@ Laura Koerbeer:
"I don't know who they will pick next. You'd think they'd run out of targets sooner or later."

It's not like the object of paranoia and loathing has to be "real", in the usual sense of "existing in the present space-time continuum".

"The insidious Outer Vulgarian menace has be infiltrating our country for years now; they're preparing landing sites for Black Helicopters, while sapping our Purity of Essence with vile fluoridation."

See? Just apply a tiny bit of imagination, and you can have a bottomless font of crazy. They'll NEVER run out of targets.

[Countme-In]

"You'd think they'd run out of targets sooner or later."

That's the biggest tent of all.

[wj]

To put it another way, when you are unconstrained by facts or reality, you can keep inventing targets -- no problem. It's the one area where these guys seem to have no problem with letting their imaginations run wild.
.
Which is why you can't know what their next target will be: even if you understand how their mind works, which product of the imagination will catch on is hard to predict. It's the same problem that book publishers and TV producers have.

[geographylady]

You'd think they'd run out of targets sooner or later.
Its been 200+ years of hating on the newcomers. I don't see it stopping any time soon.
And I should point out its not just US - it happens everywhere.

[Doctor Science]

I'm getting ready to go to bed, planning to get up at an extremely early hour to go birding in the rain. May 11th is the World Series of Birding, which takes place in NJ; it's also a date for many birding organizations to hold a "Birdathon" for fund-raising. If I get a chance, I'll put up a post tomorrow saying how things are going, but it's quite possible I'll be too wet. I'm just covering a local "patch", so I don't expect to see more than about 50-60 species.

[Laura Koerbeer]

Have fun! I used to go birding, but my vision sucks so...Well, I could still go. I just wouldn't see much more than black specks identified by other people.

But I hope you see lots of interesting birds!

[JeffnSon]

OBAMA TO SAVE PLANET
The United State pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas pollution by 17% by 2020.
The U.S. is now 2/3 the way to its goal after just 1/3 of the time has passed.
By this measure climate policy looks like a runaway success.
Just think where we would be if the 1/3 of the stimulus that went to tax cuts had gone to green infrastructure investment.
http://nymag.com/news/features/obama-climate-change-2013-5/index1.html

[Barry]

Turbulence: "while writing his thesis on the inferiority of Hispanics (I guess they're the new Irish/Italians/Poles/Blacks). "

I made a joke that his dissertation is 'Bell Curve II - This Time We Pick on the Hispanics'.

It's also an interesting data point - to my mind, the recent and ongoing anti-hispanic movement on the right is basically the GOP Base saying to them 'you're not white'.

[JeffnSon]

My Bad? Was not trying to hijack the thread. The word 'Heritage' brings Johnny Appleseed and the good stewardship of our planet to my mind. Then Doc and Laura mentioned bird watching.

On the topic of immigration (particularly from south of the boarder) so many folks think they are coming here to freeload. They were coming here to work back when work was easy to find.