00:26:59 Are there a lot of people applying for disability benefits who are barely disabled?

 

Sarah’s not wrong. There are a lot of people on disability these days who never would have dreamed of taking government help in a different kind of economy. Their reasons aren’t typically about gaming the system or being lazy. Their reasons have to do with survival.

​

The number of people who apply for and receive disability benefits both increased by a lot between 2003-2013, but the reasons listed in the linked articled from CNN Money are an aging population, welfare reform that saw states helping people on welfare to apply for disability if they needed it, and advances in medical care that have allowed more people—especially military veterans—to survive injuries that once would’ve killed them.

 

In some cases, the matter seems much more ambiguous. In this in-depth piece from NPR, journalist Chana Joffe-Walt describes a system that allows people with back pain and high blood pressure to collect disability checks. That sounds fishy at first, but Joffe-Walt goes on to explain that many people who can’t work because of seemingly mild things like back pain are less educated, less skilled workers who wouldn’t qualify for a job that allows them to sit all day. That means the jobs they could get—service positions, menial labor, factory work, stuff like that—would be impossible for them to do, and that justifies disability benefits.

 

In a lot of cases, disability checks have taken the place of welfare checks. The world has changed significantly in the last thirty or forty years, and menial labor jobs that used to grant you middle class status now barely clear the poverty line. Also, a lot of those jobs are disappearing, and the people who depended on them are ending up on disability.

 

Of course, there are and will always be exceptions.

 

But things aren’t always as they seem. There are cases in which a person may not seem to be disabled, but in reality, they are. I have a close personal friend who looks like an able-bodied young man, but he suffers from severe bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, and paralyzing depression. I’ve watched him try his damnedest to hold down a steady job for the last five years—he’s charming, sweet, and an incredibly hard worker—but his illness always thwarts his best efforts. The best he can do is work for 8-9 months during a good period before a manic episode destroys his ability to interact normally with other people. (Which is when he inevitably gets fired.) Even when things are “good,” he deals with crippling social anxiety and an inability to handle stressful situations. He also has severe irritable bowel syndrome, which is a common comorbidity with bipolar disorder, which gives him terrible stomach pain on most days. Having only a high school degree and living in a big city, the only jobs he qualifies for are in the service and retail industries. His employers have never cared or understood that he deals with illness, and he’s been fired multiple times for being sick—which is illegal, but extremely hard to prove when you have no money for a lawyer. He’s been trying to get on disability for two years now, and has been rejected every time.

 

00:26:28 Before Obamacare, was healthcare responsible for in excess of 50% of the bankruptcies in the U.S.? Did Obama himself say that, and is that the correct figure?

 

That seems to be the correct approximate figure. When he was still President-elect, Obama said, “close to 50% of family bankruptcies are caused because of a health care crisis.” A Harvard study conducted in 2005 found that about half of all bankruptcies were filed because of healthcare costs, illness, and health-related loss of work, and just over a quarter were attributed specifically to medical bills.

 

However, in 2013, three years after the ACA was signed into law, medical costs were still the number one reason for bankruptcy filings, accounting for about 60% of all bankruptcies. The ACA didn’t fix the problem of crazy high medical bills fucking up people’s financial well-being.

 

But there is hope. In May 2017, total bankruptcy filings were down by 50% from 2010. The ACA wasn’t the only factor affecting this, but experts agree it helped bring about the decline.

 

00:27:47 Who was the architect of the Affordable Care Act? Is it really an “inverted Ponzi scheme” where people with higher incomes are paying for poorer people?

 

The key architect of the ACA was an MIT economist named Jonathan Gruber. He is on record saying that the ACA requires that “healthy people pay in and sick people get money,” and that politically speaking, the only way to pass the law was to make it as opaque as possible. So it’s not exactly that high income people are paying for poorer people—it’s that healthy people are paying for sick people.

 

Which is the very foundation of how health insurance works. Let’s take a moment to remember that, in order to work effectively, health insurance companies depend on healthy people with low medical costs paying premiums that can be used to cover the high medical costs of sick people. That’s literally the premise behind the very concept of health insurance. It cannot work if healthy people aren’t paying for sick people.

 

For that reason, it's not reasonable or accurate to call the ACA an “inverted Ponzi scheme.”

 

What Sarah may have been referring to when she used those words was the fact that higher income people do not qualify for subsidies from the federal government to help cover the cost of their insurance. As a person with a decent income, she would have to pay the full cost of her health insurance premiums if she purchased insurance through the ACA, but that doesn’t mean her money is going to subsidize the health care of lower income people.

 

00:29:09 What are the fines or penalties required by the individual mandate in the ACA if one doesn’t purchase health insurance? Is it a $2000 fine? Can they levy your income if you aren’t owed a tax refund? Can they levy unemployment insurance payments or your veterans’ benefits? How does it work?

 

I was right about this one: it’s not a $2000 fine, and it is only collected if you’re owed a tax refund, at which point the penalty is deducted from your refund. Read on for details.

 

The individual mandate written into the legislation of the Affordable Care Act states that any person who doesn’t pay for health insurance will face a financial penalty. In theory, this would cause more people to buy health insurance, thereby lower premiums for everybody. The penalty was designed to graduate slowly over a three-year period, I presume to avoid shocking people with a sudden slapping of fines. It started out low in 2014 at $95 per person or up to 1% of income, and graduated to $695 per person or up to 2.5% of income by 2016. Families pay half of the penalty amount for uninsured children. That being said, there are exemptions to the rule for people who can’t afford insurance, have very low incomes, had a gap in insurance coverage that was less than three months, and a few others.

 

And here’s the crazy thing—remember how I said my friend had his penalty deducted from his tax refund? It turns out that’s the only way the government has of collecting the penalty. If you aren’t owed a refund, you don’t pay anything for not having insurance. The IRS can’t levy any of your actual income, assets, unemployment insurance, veterans’ benefits, or anything else against you in trying to collect the penalty.

 

00:32:20 What is the current approval and disapproval ratings for Donald Trump?

 

The most recent polls consistently show an approval rating under 40%, which means it’s gotten worse since my conversation with Sarah in March. The Rasmussen Reports, a poll that usually is a little more favorable to Trump, puts his approval rating at 39% as of July 31, 2017. The Gallup poll puts him at 37% as of July 30, 2017. Woof.

 

00:34:18 Can I read the article Sarah wrote about Mike Pence?

 

Here is her full article, which I found quite funny, edgy, and sharp, reprinted here with her permission:

 

CAKE WARS

By Sarah M. Ito

 

Several months ago the Cake Wars began. No, I am not referring to yet another version of a Food Network program. I am referring to the battle that began in the great state of Indiana, where the first fondant bullets were fired, forks clashed, and the apron thrown down. 

 

When a gay customer was refused a wedding cake by an offended baker whose alleged religious conviction prevented the baking and/or decorating of said cake, and the gay client became equally offended by this bizarre belief, I doubt that either offended party had any idea how truly offensive this war would become in such a short time. The governor of Indiana, one Mike Pence, a born-again Christian, was unable to find within the Bible the passage devoted to wedding cakes, and so was rendered dumbstruck, befuddled and impotent, and did nothing to offer guidance in this sticky matter. After boycotts, threats, petitions, and my own home state of Connecticut prohibiting its employees to travel to Indiana on state business, the issue seemed to fade away like, well, old stale cake. But, like the Middle East, where enemies are forever, so are the cake warriors. Now with Walmart apparently not willing to put a Confederate flag on customers’ cakes, a new wave of the offended has washed ashore. This I do not understand. Who buys a cake in Walmart in the first place? A Walmart cake is offensive enough on its own merits without adding any questionable decoration or messages. Besides, a true son or daughter of the South is more likely to be concerned with Walmart running out of Bud on a NASCAR weekend than stale cake.

 

But wait, there’s more to be offended about. Rumors abound that Walmart has put an ISIS logo on a cake. This puzzles me. Why would any American be offended by this? If that cake is not enough to drive ISIS followers from our shores, nothing will. And inquiring minds want to know – is there an additional charge for baking a cake with gelatinous dynamite and a cellphone inside? Now while I have had the misfortune of checking out in Walmart behind all kinds of people wearing truly offensive Spandex garments, I have not noticed any Arabic-looking men toting cake boxes. The women are another story. Who knows what’s underneath that offensive-looking…oh, wait, that’s a Catholic nun in a habit. Now I don’t have to be offended. Damn!

 

I would like to see the Cake Wars end in the world’s largest arena, with one army of the offended led by a white-jacketed Buddy Valastro and the opposing forces commanded by Duff Goldman, and we could all write our messages of hate and symbols of hate and expressions of hate on a stupid f**king cake and hurl icing and chunks of cake at one another until the fat lady goes into diabetic shock. If one slice of stupid f**king cake with a stupid f**king message attached could replace one bullet, or one IED, or one beheading, or one church arson, and some little kid in Syria or the USA could live long enough to enjoy another birthday, with or without cake, then I for one am willing to be “offended.”  Let us all eat cake.

 

00:34:38 What happened with Mike Pence and Hamilton? Did Pence respond like a gentleman and a statesman?

 

Yeah, he definitely did well with his response to this. Here’s the whole story.

 

On November 18, 2016, Mike Pence attended a performance of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton in New York City. The show features actors of color portraying our nation’s founding fathers, and the cast is chock-full of minorities and LGBTQ people—two groups who stood to suffer the most under a Trump presidency. When the show’s creator (Lin-Manuel Miranda), director (Thomas Kail), and producer (Jeffrey Seller) found out Pence would be seeing the show, they wrote a statement for lead actor Brandon Victor Dixon to read after the performance. Here is what Dixon said:

 

“Thank you so much for joining us tonight. You know, we had a guest in the audience this evening. And Vice President-elect Pence, I see you're walking out but I hope you will hear us just a few more moments. There's nothing to boo here ladies and gentlemen. There’s nothing to boo here, we're all here sharing a story of love.

 

“We have a message for you, sir. We hope that you will hear us out. And I encourage everybody to pull out your phones and tweet and post because this message needs to be spread far and wide, OK?

 

“Vice President-elect Pence, we welcome you and we truly thank you for joining us here at Hamilton: An American Musical, we really do. We, sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us — our planet, our children, our parents — or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us. All of us.

 

“Again, we truly thank you for sharing this show. This wonderful American story told by a diverse group of men [and] women of different colors, creeds, and orientations.”

 

Pence was on his way out of the theater when Dixon began speaking, but stopped and listened to the entire statement. He later told Fox News he “wasn’t offended” and that the boos from the audience that were directed at him were “what freedom sounds like.”

 

Trump, on the other hand, issued a blistering Twitter attack at the cast and creators of Hamilton, calling the show “overrated” and demanding that they apologize for “their terrible behavior.”

 

00:35:30 Were there legitimate concerns about Hillary Clinton’s health during the election?

 

There was a LOT of speculation on conservative media outlets about Hillary Clinton’s health, but there’s no evidence that Clinton has any serious health conditions that would have affected her ability to lead the country.

 

She seemed to stumble and nearly fall while departing early from a 9/11 commemoration event in September 2016, and it was announced soon after that she was overheated, dehydrated, and had been diagnosed with pneumonia. Her campaign responded to concerns about her health by releasing a letter from her doctor detailing her health records.

 

The New York Times subsequently published an article listing everything we know about Clinton’s health. Not surprisingly, it’s all pretty normal for a 68-year-old woman with a swinging career. She has a record of pushing through illness to keep working, something most ambitious, successful people I know do. (Hell, I do that all the freaking time. I've literally walked off stage during a performance to go be sick in the bathroom, returning immediately after to go on with the show.) She suffers from seasonal allergies. She has a history of blood clots, but they’re not frequent and she now takes a medication to lower her risk of developing them. In 2012, she got a stomach virus after traveling abroad that caused her to faint from dehydration. She hit her head in the fall, ended up with a concussion, and was then hospitalized for a blood clot in her head.

 

But there’s nothing at all to suggest that she has a serious medical condition that is life-threatening or would prevent her from being effective in any job, including as President of the United States. These claims of her having a secret serious illness emitted the stench of politically motivated conspiracy theories.

 

00:36:22 What’s a banana republic?

 

From Wikipedia: “In political science, a banana republic is a politically unstable country with an economy dependent upon the exportation of a limited-resource product, e.g. bananas, minerals, etc. Typically, the banana republic has a society of stratified social classes, usually a great, poor working class and a ruling-class plutocracy, composed of the business, political, and military elites of that society. Such a ruling-class oligarchy control the primary sector of the economy by way of the exploitation of labour; thus, the term banana republic is a pejorative descriptor for a servile dictatorship that abets and supports, for kickbacks, the exploitation of large-scale plantation agriculture, especially banana cultivation.”

 

00:37:19 What exactly has Trump done that is reminiscent of an autocrat?

 

From using divisive language and scapegoating minority groups, to firing people who won’t pledge loyalty to him, to spreading lies and misinformation and attacking the press, Donald Trump has consistently drawn comparisons to autocratic leaders. He has also openly praised autocratic leaders around the world, including Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines and Vladimir Putin of Russia.

 

Most recently as of this writing, rumors are flying that his public humiliation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions is merely a ploy to get Sessions to resign, so that Trump can appoint a new Attorney General willing to fire special counsel Robert Mueller. Mueller is currently leading the investigation into whether Trump campaign associates colluded with Russia in helping Trump win the 2016 election, and it’s been reported extensively that Trump is doing everything in his power to find a way to shut the investigation down. If Trump succeeds in firing Mueller, many fear that would create a constitutional crisis.

 

00:38:29 What happened at UC Berkeley that resulted in a woman getting pepper sprayed?

 

This was so, so stupid, and a great example of how liberals can be just as shitty and hateful as anyone else.

 

Outspoken right-wing pundit Milo Yiannopoulos, who’s known for his inflammatory statements, was supposed to give a speech at UC Berkeley in early February 2017, but it was canceled due to violent left-wing protests. A woman named Kiara Robles was in the middle of an on-camera interview with a local reporter when a protestor, completely unprovoked, pepper sprayed her in the face. At least five other people were injured. 

 

In addition to pepper spraying Robles, the UC Berkeley protesters set things on fire, damaged university property, and generally created havoc. The protest turned into a riot that cost the university $100,000 in damage. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Robles is suing the university and several other entities for $23 million in damages. No arrests were made.

 

The protesters were part of a group called “Antifa,” short for anti-fascist. Antifa protestors often use “black bloc” protest tactics, dressing all in black and donning face masks to give themselves anonymity when protesting at right-wing events. They are known for threatening and executing violence, and they piss me the fuck off. They’re fighting for the same things I believe in, but in exactly the wrong way. In my opinion, this kind of violent, threatening assclownery is damaging to the very causes they claim they’re fighting for. Advocates say that in the face of massive injustice, violence is the only way to be heard. I disagree.

 

00:39:49 Are their instances when Donald Trump singled out particular individuals who had criticized him and tweeted their username to his followers? Did they really get numerous death threats and rape threats?

 

Yes, this has happened twice.

 

The worst one was in October 2015, when an 18-year-old woman named Lauren Batchelder addressed Trump at a political event in New Hampshire. She said, “So, maybe I’m wrong, maybe you can prove me wrong, but I don’t think you’re a friend to women.” She also asked him about equal pay and abortion access. That was the extent of the interaction. He said if she could do as good a job, she’d get equal pay, and that he was pro-life, and that was it.

 

The next morning, Trump attacked Batchelder on Twitter, saying, “The arrogant young woman who questioned me in such a nasty fashion at No Labels yesterday was a Jeb staffer! HOW CAN HE BEAT RUSSIA & CHINA?”

 

Within hours, she began receiving numerous threats of death, rape, and violence that carried on through the end of 2015 and throughout the 2016 election. The threats came on the phone, in emails, and on social media. A Facebook message sent five days before the election—over a year after her interaction with Trump—said, “Wishing I could fucking punch you in the face. id then proceed to stomp your head on the curb and urinate in your bloodied mouth and i know where you live, so watch your fucking back punk.”

 

All because of a tweet from Trump.

 

Then, in December 2016, Chuck Jones, a union leader in Indianapolis who represents the workers at Carrier—you may remember Trump “saving” hundreds of jobs from going to Mexico by giving Carrier a $7 million tax incentive—criticized Trump publicly for allegedly lying to Carrier workers about the deal he’d struck to supposedly save their jobs. Trump responded by calling Jones out by name on Twitter, saying, “Chuck Jones, who is President of United Steelworkers 1999, has done a terrible job representing workers. No wonder companies flee country!” Almost as soon as the tweet went up, Jones began receiving threatening calls from Trump supporters.

 

In neither of those instances did Trump share the Twitter usernames of his victims, so I was wrong about that.

 

00:41:13 Has there been a rise in hate crimes in the U.S. since Donald Trump was elected?

 

Yes. In 2015, when Trump launched his campaign, hate crimes against Muslims reached the highest levels since just after 9/11. It gets worse. Hate crimes in the U.S. rose 23.3% in 2016 as compared to 2015, with many crediting Donald Trump’s divisive rhetoric for the uptick. ThinkProgress found that 42% of hate crimes reported from November 9, 2016 through February 9, 2017, “included specific references to Trump, his election, or his policies.”

 

00:42:54 What the hell happened with Korea’s first female president? Sounds like a shitshow!

 

It was a shitshow.
 

In 2013, Park Geun-hye became South Korea’s first female president, promising to take a strong stance with North Korea while working to bridge the divide between the two nations.

 

She simultaneously benefitted from and was hurt by the legacy of her father, Park Chung-hee, who was a controversial figure viewed by some as a dictator with a shoddy human rights record and by others as the heroic architect of modern Korea. Often, these opinions are divided by generational lines. During his 18-year rule, Park made political dissent illegal and arrested and tortured those who spoke out against the government. He was eventually gunned down by his own intelligence and security chief in 1979.

 

Many said his daughter didn’t do enough to separate herself from her father’s brutal legacy, but she did publicly apologize for his human rights violations.

 

Now let's get to the shitshow part of all this. Park Geun-hye’s presidency is famous for a massive corruption scandal that resulted in her being impeached in late 2016, and it’s bizarre AF.

 

Basically, the story was that President Park was brought down by a woman named Choi Soon-sil, the daughter of a cult leader, whose influence caused Park to abuse her power in myriad ways. Choi herself was arrested and convicted for crimes related to abuse of power, and she also reportedly took bribes and engaged in extortion schemes. Choi is broadly blamed for bringing down the first female president in South Korea.

 

To add to the weirdness, it was made public in 2016 that Park’s office had bought a crazy amount of Viagra and similar drugs. The official explanation from her spokesperson was that the pills can also be used to help with altitude sickness, and that the drugs were purchased to help presidential aides on a trip to high-altitude countries in Africa. Even if that was why they were purchased, it was the last thing her scandal-ridden administration needed at that moment.

 

Park was indicted in April 2017 on numerous charges, including abuse of power.

 

Later, she issued an emotional apology for the whole craptastic disaster, saying “loneliness” compelled her to turn to Choi, an old friend, for emotional support.

 

South Koreans organized a series of massive street protests calling for Park to step down after her impeachment proceedings had begun.

 

Only days after my conversation with Sarah, on March 9, 2017, Park was officially removed from office, following weeks of mass protests. An election was held in May to choose a new president, and liberal candidate Moon Jae In won with 39% of the vote.

 

On a personal note, this whole thing makes my feminist heart extremely angry. I grew up in Korea. I know how bad sexism and patriarchal values are there. It’s a wonderful country in many ways, but the culture suffers from staggering misogyny. I worry that this episode set the country back, and I fear that people who believe women are inferior to men will point to Park Geun-hye as the ultimate example of what happens when you give a woman power and responsibility. I am furious with her for botching the incredible opportunity to enact major societal changes. All she had to do was not suck at her job. Face, meet palm.

 

00:45:28 Can you run down Trump’s gendered attacks on women? How many times has he been accused of sexually assaulting or groping women? And what’s the deal with Ivana Trump’s rape allegation?

 

Here’s a compilation of all of Trump’s most sexist public remarks over the decades.

 

Here’s a full list of the women who have publicly accused Trump of groping them without permission or engaging in inappropriate sexual conduct. There are twelve total assault allegations currently on the record.

 

Trump’s first wife Ivana accused him of violently raping her while under oath during her divorce deposition, according to Harry Hurt III, author of Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump. Much later, in 2015, she issued a statement and said the rape allegation was “totally without merit.”

 

According to the linked Politico article, “the divorce was granted on the grounds of ‘cruel and inhuman treament’ of Ivana,” and she’s legally prohibited from discussing her marriage to Trump publicly without permission from him.

 

00:45:27 Is there body language evidence that perhaps Melania Trump doesn’t like the Donald so much?

 

Elle Magazine asked two body language evidence to analyze photographs and videos of Donald and Melania from when they first starting dating in 1999 until now, and they saw significant “breakage” in the relationship, complete with lots of awkward moments, hand swats, and that epic Inauguration Day face fall.

 

Body language expert Susan Constantine has said the First Lady seems unhappy with her marriage and her role in the White House and has predicted that the Trumps’ marriage won’t last.

 

00:47:51 How bad was JFK when it came to using and abusing women?

 

He was really, really bad. From affairs with teenaged interns to elevator hook-ups with hookers, JFK’s sexual improprieties make Bill Clinton look like a Boy Scout.

 

00:50:48 Are hateful comments and actions on the rise because of Donald Trump’s rhetoric?

 

It’s difficult to definitively connect the rise in hate crimes in 2016 and following the election with Donald Trump’s hateful, violent rhetoric, but many have opined that that connection exists.

 

00:53:39 When has Trump publicly condemned hate crimes, and were those condemnations “lukewarm”?

 

The most vocal Trump has ever been regarding hate crimes was in his speech to Congress on February 28, 2017. (This was the “not-State-of-the-Union” speech that Samia references later in the episode.)

 

In that speech, he said, “Recent threats targeting Jewish Community Centers and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, as well as last week’s shooting in Kansas City, remind us that while we may be a nation divided on policies, we are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all of its very ugly forms.” (Links in quote copied from the Time article.)

 

Critics said this wasn’t nearly enough to make up for the months of divisive, hateful rhetoric Trump used on the campaign trail. And this happened after Trump remained silent on the issue for weeks following a rash of threats to Jewish community centers in the U.S., as well an actual attack on two Indian immigrants in Kansas, one of whom was killed.

 

Before giving the speech to Congress, Trump was asked about the anti-Semitic attacks by an Israeli reporter in a press conference in February 2017, and he responded by talking about how he won the election.

 

In May 2017, he did condemn the brutal train stabbing in Oregon in a tweet, saying “The violent attacks in Portland on Friday are unacceptable. The victims were standing up to hate and intolerance. Our prayers are w/ them.” Nice that he tweeted about it.

 

In that gruesome incident, a man was yelling anti-Muslim epithets at two young women who appeared to be Muslim. Two other men came to the women’s defense, and the man pulled out a knife, stabbing and killing them both. One other man was badly injured but survived.

 

So have Trump’s condemnations of hate crimes been lukewarm? It’s really a matter of opinion, so I’ll let you be the judge.

 

00:54:19 Where is this speech that George W. Bush gave after 9/11? Did he really say “Islam is peace”?

 

Yes, he did, in a speech he delivered on September 17, 2001. Here is the full speech, and here is the section when he said, “Islam is peace.”

 

00:55:05 What not-State-of-the-Union speech does Samia mean?

 

This speech right here. In it, Trump said, “Our obligation is to serve, protect, and defend the citizens of the United States. We are also taking strong measures to protect our Nation from Radical Islamic Terrorism.”

 

00:55:39 What do most Muslims think of ISIS? Are they peaceful?

 

A Pew survey conducted in 2015 found that the overwhelming majority of Muslims in ten Muslim-majority countries have an unfavorable view of ISIS. (The word “unfavorable” seems so lukewarm to me—I want a strong word!—but that’s how they do their surveys.)

 

It’s also important to note that most of ISIS’s victims are Muslims. No other group has suffered more death and damage than Muslims in regions where ISIS has strongholds.

 

Islam, like all major religions, can be interpreted to endorse violence or peace, and the overwhelming majority of Muslims are peaceful and don’t approve of violence. Furthermore, Muslim-majority countries have on average a lower homicide rate than Western countries.

 

Lastly, nearly a quarter of the world’s population identify as Muslim. It just doesn’t make sense to demonize the whole religion based on the actions of a very few.

 

00:56:56 Did Trump set up a unit just to document immigrant crimes? What was the logic behind that? What did the critics say?

 

In late February 2017, Trump gave a speech announcing the formation of a new office to serve American victims of crime perpetrated by undocumented immigrants. It’s called the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement office, or VOICE. Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said he would reallocate funds and resources that were being used to advocate for undocumented immigrants in order to create the new office.

 

In the same executive order that created VOICE, Trump also called for weekly reports detailing crimes committed by illegal immigrants, in order to call out and publicly shame sanctuary cities.

 

Critics of these moves say they’re specifically designed to negatively influence the public’s opinion of immigrants.

 

00:57:10 Are undocumented immigrants more law-abiding than American citizens?

 

Yes, studies have shown that undocumented immigrants are more law-abiding and less anti-social than U.S. citizens.

 

00:57:47 Does the intelligence we have support targeting immigrants from Latin America and Muslims?

 

I obviously can’t speak to whatever the intelligence community might actually know about all this, since much of their information isn’t available to the public. So I actually kind of spoke out of turn here. Instead of the word “intelligence,” I should have used the word “research.”

 

That being said, experts are on record saying that the countries targeted in Trump’s travel ban didn’t really make sense with the data we currently have, and that the ban might actually make the threat of terrorism worse.

 

As for immigrants from Latin America, see the above show note about how undocumented immigrants are more law-abiding than American citizens.

 

Which makes Trump’s speech in Youngstown, Ohio, on July 25, 2017, during which he graphically described immigrants murdering “beautiful,” “young girls” even more chilling. What was he talking about??? We don’t know, because he never gave any concrete details. Just an overly graphic depiction of terrible violence with nothing to back it up.

 

00:57:58 What’s the update on the Muslim travel ban? And are most of the terrorists in the U.S. homegrown, and did the intelligence community say that in a leaked document?

 

Most recently, the Supreme Court ruled that parts of Trump’s travel ban on refugees and immigrants from six Muslim-majority countries could go into effect. The only exception they made was for people who had “bona fide relationships” in the U.S., like family members or employers. This was a temporary lifting of the restrictions imposed by lower court rulings, until the Supreme Court reviews this case again in October.

 

Most of the terrorists in the U.S. are indeed homegrown.

 

And yes, a leaked document showed that Department of Homeland Security intelligence analysts—or at least one of them—had concluded that there wasn’t any evidence to support the idea that a person’s country of citizenship had anything to do with terrorism threats. It also said that over half of the people who had attempted or succeeded in carrying out terrorist attacks in the U.S. were U.S. citizens. A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security told the Associated Press that the document was authentic but “incomplete,” and that it reflected “commentary from a single intelligence source,” and wasn’t “an official, robust document with thorough interagency sourcing.”

 

01:01:20 Back during George W. Bush’s presidency, were there a lot of farmers and ranchers along the U.S.-Mexico border complaining about illegal immigrants destroying their crops, harming their cattle, and polluting their water? Did they ask for walls and/or barriers to be built?

 

Okay, I have searched and searched, and I can’t find any news stories about farmers or ranchers along the border with Mexico asking the government to erect walls or barriers to stop illegal immigrants from hurting their crops, cattle, or anything else. If you have info on this, please email it to me at makeamericarelateagain@gmail.com.

 

The only stories my searches are turning up are ones about how landowners along the border were angry at the government for buying their land at shit prices or just seizing it outright in order to build George W. Bush’s extremely expensive border fence. People who lived on the border were super pissed about it. The mayor of a town called Brownsville told the Chicago Tribune, “To appease people in middle America, they are going to kill our communities along the border. The rest of America has no idea how we lives our lives here. We are linked by the Rio Grande, not divided by it. Our history, our families, our neighbors are tied together on both sides of that river.”

 

The government’s response to these angry landowners, who did not want them building a fence on their property, was to take them to court. Many landowners sued them right back. And if you’re thinking, well, maybe normal people were angry about it, but the farmers and ranchers were probably stoked—think again. The farmers and ranchers of Texas were super against that border fence, too.

 

That last link, from the Associated Press via the Washington Post, has one line that addresses what Sarah was claiming: “Texas landowners—sick of illegal immigrants cutting their fences, stealing and trespassing, and tired of worrying about smugglers of humans and drugs endangering their families—have been demanding for years that Congress tighten the border.” Then, the next line says, “But not, some say, with a double-layer, $6 billion fence cutting through their land and keeping them and their livestock from the river.”

 

So basically, while strengthening border security is something a lot of people want, a giant wall along the U.S.-Mexico border was never a feasible solution to the problem. Not in George W.’s day and not now. For a really detailed argument about why border walls don’t work from someone who knows what they’re talking about, read the written testimony of Stephen E. Flynn, a retired U.S. Coast Guard commander and homeland security expert, to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. This happened back in 2004, before Bush started plans for his border fence, which ended up costing about $3.6 billion of taxpayers’ money from 2006-2009. Flynn argues that border walls not only do not work, they also make it easier for criminals to exploit desperate immigrants in complex smuggling schemes, creating chaos at the borders.

 

Direct quote from Flynn’s testimony: “The experience over the past decade of stepped-up enforcement along the Mexican border suggests that U.S. efforts aimed at hardening its borders can have the unintended consequence of creating precisely the kind of an environment that is conducive to terrorists and criminals. Draconian measures to police the border invariably provide incentives for informal arrangements and criminal conspiracies to overcome cross-border barriers to commerce and labor movements. In addition, unilateral measures pursued on one side of the border create political impediments for enforcement cooperation on the other. The result is that the border region becomes more chaotic which makes it ideal for exploitation by criminals and terrorists.”

 

I highly suggest you read the whole thing, especially if any part of your brain still thinks border fences or walls are a good idea. Walls don’t work. They make things worse.

 

What does work? According to Flynn, cross-border cooperation between countries’ immigration and customs officials. That means you need a good working relationship with your neighboring countries so that you can develop systems, together, that allow the vast majority of law-abiding travelers to cross borders without a huge hassle, while effectively targeting potential threats. This can be done with technology and lots of cooperation with your friendly neighbors across the border.

 

It’s hard to have a good relationship with a neighboring country when your president is calling them “rapists,” “criminals,” “bad hombres,” and “animals" who “prey on innocent young people” and “slice them and dice them with a knife, because they want them to go through excruciating pain before they die.”

 

In short, Trump’s approach to border security is all kinds of wrong. For many reasons.

 

01:08:31 I still haven’t read that dossier thing. Where is it? And how much of it has been substantiated?

 

Here is the now-infamous dossier as posted by Buzzfeed on January 10, 2017. At the time, they admitted the allegations were unverified, and the report contained some errors. The dossier claims that Russia has been “cultivating, supporting, and assisting” Trump for years. It alleged claims of contact between Trump aides and Russian operatives—some of which have now been verified.

 

Conservatives want to dismiss the dossier as unverified crap, but Christopher Steele has an impeccable reputation in the international intelligence community for being extraordinarily credible and competent.

 

The dossier also alleges that Russia has an extremely salacious video of Trump cavorting with prostitutes that could potentially be used to blackmail him. Golden showers are involved. This has sparked some really great pee-pee party jokes.

 

01:09:44 Does Russia have a weak economy?

 

Yes. This article from Time concisely explains the issues surrounding why the Russian economy is so bad, as does this article from the New York Times and this one from Bloomberg. Essentially, a focus on centralizing power within the government and feeding the people a daily diet of pro-government propaganda are major factors that are stifling the Russian economy. Russian wealth is centralized, and corruption is a major reason for that.

 

Another factor is the worldwide lowering of oil prices. Russia’s economy saw decent growth back when oil prices were high; now that they’re so low, their economy has hit a major recession after 13 years of growth from 2000-2013. Add to that a shrinking population—low fertility rates and high death rates among young men due to illness, suicide, alcoholism, and violence—social issues, and severe problems in regions like Chechnya and Crimea…and yeah, the Russian economy isn’t looking like it will recover anytime soon.