I dropped by my Barnes and Noble bookstore yesterday for some coffee and browsing. Hadn't done that in a long time.
I noticed a book on one of the tables in the aisle way called "50 THINGS THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW." It looked like someone had been leafing through the top one so I picked it up.
I now understand, more deeply, where these crazy right-wing nut jobs might get their talking points for this stuff. This was written by a man who is the "entertainment director" for breitbart.com.
In this book, he takes 50 things...social or economic issues or topics, and presents them in such a way so that the Breitbart analysis sounds like rational argument. It is shocking, astounding and actually a little frightening.
Let me give you a few examples from the book:
NETFLIX, A LIBERAL CONSPIRACY .
Netflix, he says, is an unholy marriage between Hollywood leftists and silicon valley liberals. They have gone from renting DVDs to an organization bent on flooding the world with leftist, ultra-liberal movie and video content. All designed to turn the viewers into rabid leftists and activists and to denigrate conservative values. This is what he says the new content produced by Netflix is designed to do. It’s pretty insane, defies facts, logic and content...but he makes it sound plausible, especially if you are uneducated 65 year old blue collar, angry white voter.
PUBLIC ASSISTANCE TO THE DEAD
There is a section of the book that deals with giving public assistance to dead people. This is a favorite conservative talking point and has no basis in reality. I happen to know that since I worked in Medicaid fraud enforcement for 12 years.
There's this constant drumbeat and complaint that public assistance benefits are paid out to dead people. The truth of the matter is this: when someone who is receiving social security or Medicaid — perhaps pharmaceuticals or public assistance money dies, there is a period of time where the benefits are continued…money is mailed out, drugs are dispensed. It cannot possibly be stopped at the moment of death.
It takes 30 to 60 days to get the death certificates and statistics merged with the computer systems that send out the benefits. So it is technically true that there are benefits sent out, such as social security checks, to people who have died. What they leave out is that there is an entire system and place to recover those benefits and for the most part they simply come back into the system as a simple mistake. Are there people who keep the money and don't return it? Are their investigations of fraud and to them doing so? Absolutely. Is there wholesale payment of public assistance benefits to dead people? Absolutely not it just sounds like a pretty cool statistic.
When you think about the fact that you have one computer system in Tallahassee generating benefit checks, while another system of death certificates in Jacksonville Florida tabulates deaths —we have to understand there is a period of time between the death and stopping the benefits. where things will be paid that shouldn't have. Again most of these benefits are either in tiny amounts or are readily recovered and can even become the subject of criminal fraud inquiries.
GUNS AND GUN CONTROL
He has a section on gun control and gun legislation which goes on this long explanation as to why things like accidentally falling in the home or contracting flu are both more dangerous than our Firearms crisis.
Because a lot of people die or are hurt from falls and contracting flu every year somehow the gun control advocates are a conspiracy of leftist crazies who are not focused on the real dangers. He never addresses or even mentions that we are awash in firearms.
He goes on to rant that almost all of the shootings that we have which qualify as mass shootings, take place in “gun-free zones”. Well sure! Shooting up a school of kindergarten children is done in a “gun free zone”— what does that even mean?
He doesn't mention that of course elementary schools, high schools and musical concerts are, by their nature, gun free zones ….but that is unconnected to the fact that they also provide a grouping of innocent unarmed people to shoot.
GUN AVAILABILITY AND THE JURISDICTIONS THAT ARE TOUGH
He goes on with some really tired arguments about Firearms control and how Firearms control is ineffective because the incidents of firearms violence often occur in places that have very stringent Firearms laws.
Of course, as they always do, he fails to mention that places like Chicago / Illinois where there are strict Firearms rules and laws are surrounded by States and places where Firearms are ready readily available. It is because there is no EFFECTIVE federal control that the stringent jurisdictions are impotent.
New York and New York City are places that have stringent Firearms regulations, but one can readily purchase firearms by zipping up to Vermont just a little ways up the continent and there is no problem. By ignoring the need for Nationwide gun control legislation and background checks he is able to cherry-pick his jurisdictions for statistics
DEMOCRATS RUN THE CRIME RIDDEN CITIES
He also talks about Democrats being in charge of all the crime-ridden cities in the country and somehow equates Urban crime with the Democratic party. The suggestion is that if the cities were weren't run by Republicans they would be peaceful places of prosperity and cleanliness. It is so bizarre that it actually drops your jaw. Inner city problems and poverty are hardly some conspiracy of the Democrats, but are the product of socioeconomic mistakes and policies…and an economy, that is the fault of ALL parties. .
GOOGLE POWER
It has a section on Google…and by implication , social media…and how that they are able to change and swing elections by changing their search logarithms. He claims that the search engines can be manipulated toward leftists and socialists and that this is apparently the plan of Google and Twitter and other large computer platforms.
Google, of course, doesn’t manipulate the searches for anything and the logarithms are set for commercial inquiries and things that generate the highest interest. Google wants to make money. If Trump being a liar and a loon and a clown is popular, Google cannot help those searches. Twitter obviously remains open to full use by Trump and Co.
LAW ENFORCEMENT IS NEUTERED BY IMMIGRATION EFFORTS.
He voices an opinion that it is immigrants and illegal immigration that take up all of our federal law enforcement resources and goes on to quote one statistic after another about the number and percentage of arrests made concerning immigration and illegal immigrants. He never addresses visa overstays, which is the larger problem, and never focuses on socio political issues in Central America which drive a lot of it. Immigration issues and problems belong to both parties. The current fiasco on the southern border is primarily due to Trump, et al., not Democrats. This is a national problem. One is left with the idea that our law enforcement on a national level has been stripped of its effectiveness and is unable to do its job because of border crossings on the southern border. It is as preposterous and silly as it is shocking because the statistics are manipulated in such a way so as to sound reasonable. The guy is a loon but he's a smart loon.
IMMIGRANTS TAKE THE JOBS
He has another section on how immigrants take the jobs away from Americans and suggests he is able to debunk the idea that there are a lot of jobs that Americans won't take…jobs that would go undone if it weren't for immigrants. He talks about farm work and slaughter houses and food processing in particular.
He completely ignores the facts of the matter. When there are no Mexican and Central American immigrants to do the hard farm labor in Georgia Alabama and Florida, then the fields fill up with untended crops that rot. Americans do not want to do these jobs, and in fact will not do them. I live in an area where those are the facts I was especially taken aback by his statistics on this particular assertion. Every day, the Mexican laborers go out into the fields and nurseries, in 100 degree weather, while Americans sit at home, unemployed. Not good, but he is full of it. Since the Braceros of the 60’s, it has been clear that to actually get the farm, hot, hard, slaughter, and associated work done, migrants are the only ones who will do it.
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