Donald Trump's Healthcare Plan is Donald-Trump-Level Crazy

Here we go folks: Donald Trump's got a health care plan! Or as Trump of course puts it, "Healthcare Reform to Make America Great Again." He'd like to repeal the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which he claims, "has tragically but predictably resulted in runaway costs, websites that don’t work, greater rationing of care, higher premiums, less competition and fewer choices. Obamacare has raised the economic uncertainty of every single person residing in this country."

As is usual with Trump, just take the exact opposite of what he says and you'll have a good reflection of reality. The average annual increase in health care costs is down substantially under the ACA, and the law is reducing the federal deficit. The health care exchanges are working fine and meeting their signup goals. The law does not ration care. People have a choice of insurance; before the law many with pre-existing conditions had no choice, or insurance, at all. And the 17 million people who gained health insurance thanks to the law through May of 2015 now have a lot less economic uncertainty, given that they no longer have to fear that a single hospital visit may bankrupt them.

Here's what Trump's got for us:

1. Repeal the individual mandate. Now Trump is known for his contradicting himself on the issues, but this is a big flip-flop even for him. Just last month in a Republican debate he said, "I like the mandate." Two problems with repealing the mandate. One, if folks are no longer required to have insurance, we'll go back to the old system where taxpayers picked up the tab for the uninsured to get all their health care in emergency rooms. Two, without the mandate premiums would skyrocket as some healthier people left the risk pools.

2. "Modify existing law that inhibits the sale of health insurance across state lines." Every time one of my conservative friends rails against Obamacare, and I ask them, OK, how would you insure the uninsured, they say, "Allow insurance companies to sell across state lines."

First of all, here's some news for Republicans: insurance companies are already allowed to sell across state lines. They don't do it because it's not a workable system. As Senator Al Franken explained recently:

"Why? Because a license to sell insurance in a given state isn't the only thing insurance companies need in order to be able to actually sell insurance. They need to learn the state, analyze the healthcare needs of its population, recruit participants, build a network of providers, negotiate rates, and more.

"If you're a huge insurance company like Blue Cross, you might have the resources to replicate this effort in states across the country, which is why you can get Blue Cross insurance in multiple states. But smaller insurance companies based in a single state have found again and again that, even when offered the opportunity to sell across state lines, it simply isn't worth the hassle."

To put it another way, from Margot Sanger-Katz of the New York Times,

"The trouble is that varying or numerous state regulations aren’t the main reason insurance markets tend to be uncompetitive. Selling insurance in a new region or state takes more than just getting a license and including all the locally required benefits. It also involves setting up favorable contracts with doctors and hospitals so that customers will be able to get access to health care. Establishing those networks of health care providers can be hard for new market entrants."

Or to put it still another way, From John R. Graham of the Hill,

"Absent Obamacare, states had dramatically different health insurance mandates. As a result, New Yorkers paid more for insurance than did Utahans. Therefore, the argument goes, if Congress passed a law allowing New Yorkers to buy policies licensed in Utah, they could buy less expensive coverage. Well, maybe they could, if they wanted to fly to Salt Lake City every time they wanted to see a doctor or needed an operation."

3. "Allow individuals to fully deduct health insurance premium payments from their tax returns". I'm going to go with the snarkiest comment I can find on this one. From Kaili Joy Gray of wonkette.com,

"Nothing treats cancer better than tax deductions for rich people, who are the people who benefit the most from tax deductions and don’t help low-income people, like, at all. But as we know, when it comes to Republican policy, that’s the point. And really, don’t poors prefer a healthcare system that lets riches take bigger deductions instead of one that provides subsidies for healthcare coverage for those folks who really do need the savings? That’s rhetorical. Don’t bother answering."

4. "Allow individuals to use Health Savings Accounts (HSAs)". Earth to Donald: They already can.

5. Block-grant Medicaid to the states. Yeah, real bad idea. From Kevin Drum of Mother Jones, 

"This would accomplish nothing except, probably, to make health care worse. States tend to do everything they can to use Medicaid dollars for non-health purposes, and giving them total control over Medicaid would only make this worse. Also, it would eliminate the automatic increase in Medicaid spending during recessions, when it's needed most. Overall, this proposal would almost certainly result in less Medicaid spending and less effective Medicaid spending."
 

6. Allow drug "importation." Trump's web site doesn't really explain what he's talking about. Furthermore, our prescription drugs are already imported from overseas manufacturers. What Trump is referring to is buying drugs from other countries who had already purchased them from drug companies at lower prices. From the Motley Fool,

"In America, Medicare can't negotiate for lower prices directly with drugmakers and insurers must negotiate prices with drugmakers individually. As a result, Americans can pay far more for their medicine than people living in other countries. For example, prices for a medicine in Canada can be less than half the price charged for the same drug in the United States."

"Under Trump, a system for importing drugs would be created that helps consumers import medicine from markets such as Canada."

Several problems with this. First, The US Food and Drug Administration requires that drug companies implement track and trace systems to guarantee the security of prescription drugs to customers. Counterfeit drugs are a major problem and accounted for $75 billion in revenue in 2010 according to the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy. All the way back in 2004, Republican Senators released two prescription drug importation reports by the U.S. Departments of Commerce and Health and Human Services (HHS) which rejected, "any lingering hope that the individual importation of pharmaceuticals is – or can be made – safe and reliable for personal use. There is simply no amount of resources that can guarantee that the content and quality of foreign prescription drugs purchased via the Internet, mail order, or other such means are safe for patients to consume."

Second, again from the Motley Fool, "Because America is a large and highly profitable market for drugmakers, medicine is often launched in the U.S. first, and therefore, new medicines or complex specialty medicines may not be available for import for months or even years after they've become available in America."

Finally, if Mr. Trump would like to solve the problem of high drug prices in the US, there's an easy way to do it: change the law so that Medicare CAN negotiate prices.

There is however one part of the Trump plan I can recommend: "we need to reform our mental health programs and institutions in this country." Indeed, I can think of a certain Presidential candidate who could benefit from said services.

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A Few Links to Dispel Conservative Myths Part Ten: Ted Cruz and Climate Change

"In Florida, up to $69 billion in coastal property not at risk today will likely be at risk of inundation at high tide by 2030. By 2050, the value of at-risk property below local high tide levels will increase to about $152 billion. In addition, the value of coastal property that will be below mean sea level will range from an estimated $5.6 billion to $14.8 billion by 2030 and between $14.8 billion and $23.3 billion by 2050. Higher seas will lead to more widespread destruction from storms. The report predicts storm-related losses attributed to climate change could increase by $1.3 billion a year by 2030 and by $4 billion a year by 2050."

Those are the conclusions of a report by the Risky Business Project, as reported by Ron Hurtibise of the Sun-Sentinel. Does anybody disagree? Well, the same article reports that, "Dr. Leonard Berry, former director of the Center for Environmental Studies at Florida Atlantic University, called the projections "reasonable and logical."" Furthermore, property insurers are encouraging, "a national effort to educate insurance consumers, public policymakers and stakeholder groups on measures to mitigate and adapt to evolving risks that may be related to climate change." A consulting company is helping advising coastal residents on, "building sea walls or barriers around homes and installing reversible pumps into drainage systems." And several south Florida counties have formed a coalition to engineer mitigation and adaptation strategies to deal with rising waters.

Great, so everyone's agreed that we have a problem we need to address quickly: the planet is warming, sea ice is declining, glaciers are shrinking and thus oceans are rising. Right? Wrong. "The summer of 2013 has come and gone, and John Kerry was not just a little bit — he was wildly, extraordinarily, entirely wrong. Had the [2014] Antarctic expedition in the picture next to it not believed the global warming alarmists, had they actually looked to the science and the evidence … they wouldn’t have been looked down and been surprised when they got stuck in ice."

The above is a quote from Texas Republican Senator and Presidential candidate Ted Cruz, in a attempt to dismiss Secretary of State John Kerry's 2009 remarks on disappearing arctic ice, by conflating it with antarctic ice. (The two polar regions are actually impacted by climate change in very different ways.)

It's well-known that American conservatives refuse to recognize that anthropogenic pollution, in the form of CO2 and methane released into the environment, is causing the planet to warm and the oceans to rise and acidify. This is a problem, because it means we cannot agree on curbing that pollution. But in theory the reality-based community and conservatives could come together and at least agree that the planet is warming and the oceans are rising, even if we can't agree that pollution is the root cause. In that eventuality, we could at least work together to keep property on the gulf coast from being flooded by Atlantic waters, and mitigate some of the other problems caused by climate change. But that will never happen as long as Ted Cruz has anything to say about it.

Last month in Paris, 200 leading nations unanimously agreed to embrace a plan that would leave most of the world’s fossil fuels unburned, thereby limiting global warming "to well below 2°C [3.6°F] above preindustrial levels." But Senator Cruz is having none of that, and has promised to withdraw the US from the agreement is he's elected President. According to Cruz, the international agreement was disingenuous: "These are ideologues, they don’t focus on the facts, they won’t address the facts, and what they’re interested [in] instead is more and more government power." I hear this meme a lot from right-wing friends: climate change is a myth created to further a secret Stalinist one-world government conspiracy.

But Cruz doesn't stop there. He's held congressional hearings and gone on at extraordinary length in public regarding facts he claims disprove the scientific consensus on climate change. And in each and every case, he's completely, utterly wrong.

Part Ten: Ted Cruz and Climate Change

Myth: "The scientific evidence doesn’t support global warming. For the last 18 years, the satellite data — we have satellites that monitor the atmosphere — the satellites that actually measure the temperature showed no significant warming whatsoever." - Ted Cruz, 3/24/15
Fact: The scientific evidence unambiguously shows warming. This is the position of every single professional scientific society and every single National Academy of Sciences on the planet. Here is a partial list. Average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius) around the world since 1880, much of this in recent decades. The 2000s were warmer than the 1990s, and the 2010s so far have been warmer than the 2000s. 2014 was the warmest year on record.

So what is Ted Cruz talking about? From Sean Illing of Salon.com:

"To appear interested in the facts, Cruz references satellite data showing "that there has been no significant warming whatsoever for 17 years." What he doesn’t say is that his claim is based on a single study, conducted at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, which has since been discredited because it failed to account for the fact that satellites drift in their orbits over time, an error known to distort temperature records. Conveniently, Cruz ignores the findings of NOAA and NASA and the global scientific community which show that the earth is, in fact, warming."

More information on the "global warming hiatus" myth here.

Myth: Liberal politicians and scientists, "switched their theory to global warming" because an earlier global cooling theory never panned out. - Ted Cruz, of 12/9/15. The scientific community has repeatedly suggested, then retracted, various consensus views regarding climate change in order to further, "massive government control of the economy, the energy sector, and our lives." - Ted Cruz, 8/2/15.
Fact: Here we go with the conspiracy theory. In 2008, the American Meteorological Society published an article called The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus. That title says it all, but here's a good summary of what really happened from Politifact.com:

"(T)hough there were some in 1975 who believed cooling temperatures were on the horizon, climate science has improved dramatically since then... The certainty that our atmosphere is indeed warming stems from a series of rigorous observations and theoretical concepts that fit into computer models and an overall framework outlining the nature of Earth’s climate."

"By the late 1970s, research had established that the warming associated with greenhouse gases was dominant over the cooling effect of aerosols."

"And in fact, reviews of research from that era have shown that even around the time of Newsweek’s 1975 article (reporting concerns of global cooling), a warming climate was of more concern than a cooling one. A study published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society by climate scientists and a journalist in 2008 said there was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the world was cooling."

"The survey of the peer-reviewed literature between 1965 and 1979 found only seven papers "indicating" global cooling compared with 44 papers indicating warming."

Now as it turns out, a number of other folks have already written articles debunking Ted Cruz's lies at length. The next five Cruz climate change myths all come from Dr. Peter Gleick of scienceblogs.com, in a deconstruction of Ted Cruz's remarks from a December 9, 2015 interview with National Public Radio.

Myth: Cruz: As part of the global cooling consensus myth above, scientists claimed, "we were facing the threat of an incoming ice age."
Fact from Dr. Gleick, "there were a very small number of scientific papers discussing cooling, and even they did not talk about a coming "ice age." The few media stories about this have been repeatedly seized on by skeptics and deniers as evidence that scientists were wrong decades ago, and thus must still be wrong today."

Myth: Cruz: To cope with the challenges of climate change, scientists' "solution to this problem is that we needed massive government control of the economy, the energy sector and every aspect of our lives."
Fact from Dr. Gleick, "False: Cruz uses a false scientific claim to put forth a false political claim. Very few scientists offer opinions about specific policies to address climate change, but when they do – as is their right as citizens – their policy preferences are diverse."

Myth: Cruz: "The scientific evidence doesn’t support global warming."
NPR's Steve Inskeep: "I’ll just note that NASA analyzes that same data differently. But we can go on."
Cruz: "But no, they don’t.  You can go and look at the data."
Fact from Dr. Gleick,  "Here are the data and NASA’s analysis clearly showing warming."
(This one is really strange. How can Cruz, who chairs the Senate Space, Science, and Competitiveness Subcommittee, claim that NASA's data doesn't show global warming? NASA's representatives have told Cruz point blank in hearings what their data shows.)

Myth: Cruz: "Climate change is the perfect pseudoscientific theory for a big government politician who wants more power. Why? Because it is a theory that can never be disproven."
Fact from Dr. Gleick, "False: This also shows a fundamental misunderstanding of science and the scientific method. Atmospheric and climatological science is well understood and produces hypotheses that are constantly tested, confirmed, refuted, and regularly revised. And as it improves, the concerns about global climate change have consistently strengthened, not declined. See, for example, the 40 years of reports on this issue from the US National Academy of Sciences."

Myth: Cruz: "(I)n the name of global warming, you have politicians trying to impose trillions of dollars of cost on the world." I’m concerned about the single mom waiting tables right now, ... what the Washington elites are trying to do is double her energy bill."
Fact from Dr. Gleick, "False: there is no evidence that addressing the risks of climate change will cost more than paying the costs of unabated climate change. Indeed, the economic evidence is the opposite – "the benefits of strong early action on climate change outweigh the costs.""

Myth: "Almost any American would agree that the core function of NASA is to explore space... I am concerned that NASA in the current environment has lost its full focus on that core mission." - Ted Cruz, 3/12/15 in a Senate hearing with NASA.
Fact: I had a right-wing friend reiterate this one to me: the fact that NASA is talking about climate change means that it's been co-opted by the government-power conspiracy.

"Our core mission from the very beginning has been to investigate, explore space and the Earth environment, and to help us make this place a better place," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told Cruz in the same hearing. Indeed, NASA has been working on climate science since its inception. From NASA.gov:

"When NASA was first created by the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, it was given the role of developing technology for “space observations,” but it wasn’t given a role in Earth science. The agency’s leaders embedded the technology effort in an Earth Observations program centered at the new Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in the U.S.. It was an "Applications" program, in NASA-speak. Other agencies of the federal government were responsible for carrying out Earth science research: the Weather Bureau (now the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The Applications program signed cooperative agreements with these other agencies that obligated NASA to develop observational technology while NOAA and the USGS carried out the scientific research. The Nimbus series of experimental weather satellites and the Landsat series of land resources satellites were the result of the Applications program."

Myth: "It is really freezing in D.C.," "I have to admit I was surprised. Al Gore told us this wouldn't happen!" - Ted Cruz 2/10/14
Fact: Cruz likes to suggest that cold weather must mean that Al Gore has been wrong and/or lying about climate change. OK, let's review:
* Weather is not indicative of long-term global trends.
* Al Gore never suggested it would stop getting cold during the winter. Furthermore, scientists have been unanimous that Al Gore has accurately conveyed the science of climate change.
* As the world gets warmer, parts of North America, Europe and Asia could see more frequent and stronger visits of cold air. Studies indicate that this is the result of shrinking ice in the seas off Russia.

The next five Cruz climate change myths all come from Emily Atkin of thinkprogress.org, in a deconstruction of Ted Cruz's remarks from a December 7, 2015 Senate hearing.

Myth: Cruz: "I would note that the history with markedly more CO2 pre-dated the industrial revolution."
Fact from Emily Atkin, "(Cruz suggests) CO2 isn’t bad, because we’ve had more CO2 in our atmosphere then we have right now. The last time CO2 was this high, humans didn’t exist, and the planet was a terrifying place. The world’s seas were up to 100 feet higher than they are today, and the global average surface temperature was up to 11°F warmer than it is now."

Myth: Cruz: "Here are the inconvenient facts about the polar ice caps. The Arctic is not ice free. This year’s minimum sea ice extent was well above the record low observed in 2011. In the Antarctic, a recent study… indicates that the ice is not only not decreasing, but is in fact increasing in mass, directly contrary to what the global warming alarmists had told us would be happening." 
Fact from Emily Atkin, "Sea ice in the Arctic and land ice in the Antarctic have been dramatically decreasing for decades. Cruz said that minimum sea ice extent in the Arctic "was well above the record low observed in 2011." First, Cruz just directly admitted the lowest-ever-recorded minimum sea ice extent in the Arctic was just four years ago. Second, Cruz doesn’t mention that Arctic ice as a whole has been decreasing for decades. As for Antarctic ice, Cruz is right when he says sea ice is growing. But Antarctic land ice — glaciers, ice sheets, and ice masses that have accumulated over thousands of years — is decreasing at dramatic rates. And that’s arguably much more important than sea ice, considering Antarctica’s sea ice completely melts every year (one of the many differences from the Arctic, where sea ice is never supposed to melt completely)."

Myth: Cruz: "The summer of 2013 has come and gone, and John Kerry was not just a little bit — he was wildly, extraordinarily, entirely wrong. Had the [2014] Antarctic expedition in the picture next to it not believed the global warming alarmists, had they actually looked to the science and the evidence … they wouldn’t have been looked down and been surprised when they got stuck in ice."
Fact from Emily Atkin, (Cruz suggests) "A bunch of scientists got stuck in Antarctic ice last year, so John Kerry was wrong about Arctic ice melt. John Kerry said Arctic ice would be gone in 2013. But here are a bunch of scientists, in 2014, frozen in Antarctic ice.

This is a laughably false comparison. The Arctic and the Antarctic are literally polar opposites, and each is impacted by global warming in fundamentally different ways. From LiveScience: "Strong circumpolar winds may be compacting and thickening the Antarctic ice. But the Arctic ice is much more vulnerable to ocean warming, and summer storms only speedup the thaw."

Cruz was, however, right about one thing — Kerry was wrong in 2009. Arctic ice is not gone. But Kerry’s statement didn’t represent the mainstream opinion of climate scientists at the time. The mainstream opinion of climate scientists was, and still is, that summers in the Arctic could be ice-free by 2050 if global warming remains at its current level or worsens. That prediction is playing out now — This year’s maximum Arctic sea ice extent was the lowest on record, and the total extent of Arctic sea ice has gradually and dramatically decreased over the last several decades."

Myth: Cruz: "In the year 1615, if you asked 97% of scientists at the time, would’ve said categorically that the sun rotates around the earth."
Fact from Emily Atkin, "This is ostensibly why Cruz disagrees with the fact that multiple peer-reviewed studies show 97 percent of climate scientists agreeing that humans cause global warming: because in 1615, scientists thought the sun rotated around the Earth.
Today, scientists use the scientific method. This is really great, because the scientific method requires people to back up their evidence using empirical data — they can’t apply their own personal biases to it. To have success using the scientific method, a person with a completely different worldview will be able to replicate what you have found. The scientific method means looking outside yourself to find empirical truth.

In 1615, by contrast, scientists didn’t use the scientific method. Scientists were philosophers and ideologues, smart white men who sat in armchairs thinking about what made sense to them. After they thought about it for awhile, they’d say things, and then people would believe them or they wouldn’t.

So in other words, Ted Cruz is essentially saying that the scientific method is no more reliable than a bunch of white dudes sitting in armchairs yelling about how they believe the world works." 

Myth: "On the global warming alarmists, anyone who actually points to the evidence that disproves their apocalyptical [sic] claims, they don’t engage in reasoned debate. What do they do? They scream, “You’re a denier.” They brand you a heretic. You know, it is, today the global warming alarmists are the equivalent of the flat-Earthers. You know, it used to be, it is accepted scientific wisdom the Earth is flat, and this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier." - Ted Cruz, 3/24/15
Fact: This is sort of a repeat of the myth above, I just like to note that although Cruz loves to talk about Galileo, he doesn't seem to know much about him or the time in which he lived. From Politifact.com: "Galileo’s struggle against the Catholic Church had nothing to do with debate over the shape of the planet. In fact, he was persecuted for supporting the idea of a Copernican system, which posited that the sun was the center of the universe and the Earth revolved around it. At the time of this struggle with the church, in the early 17th century, it had long been accepted that the planet is in fact round. Explorer Ferdinand Magellan’s crew completed the first circumnavigation of the globe in 1522 — 42 years before Galileo was born."

How to summarize Senator Cruz on the subject of climate change? In November, the Associated Press asked a group of climate and biological scientists to score each of the presidential candidates on their scientific knowledge. On a scale of 0 to 100, Cruz scored six, the lowest of any candidate.

"This individual understands less about science (and climate change) than the average kindergartner," Pennsylvania State University meteorology professor Michael Mann told the AP. "That sort of ignorance would be dangerous in a doorman, let alone a president."

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A Few Links to Dispel Conservative Myths Part Nine: Syrian Refugees and the Conflict in the Middle East

America is a nation of immigrants. We have always held that American freedom will attract the best and the brightest from all over the world.

Sometimes we have lost our way. Between 1924 and 1965, an immigration quota system was in force that overwhelmingly favored people from northern Europe. Now-whites were kept out almost entirely. The United States did not officially allow refugees from war-torn nations into the country until after World War II. Although thousands of Jews fleeing Hitler's Europe reached the U.S. by 1941 under the relatively generous immigration quota for Germans and Austrians, many more would have come had they been allowed.

Why were boatloads of refugees turned away from American ports? Why did the U.S make it more, rather than less difficult for them to come to America as the war dragged on? One reason was pure prejudice. There was widespread bigotry in America towards Jews. A 1939 poll showed that most Americans were against allowing even a modest number of Jewish refugees into the country.

The U.S. government also had groundless fears that Jewish refugees posed a security risk, and raised an increasing number of barriers to Jewish immigration. Otto Frank, father of world-famous diarist Anne Frank sought her entry to the U.S. in 1941. Had he succeeded, Anne Frank might be a 77-year old writer living in Massachusetts today. But that was not to be. From Patricia Cohen of the New York Times,

"By June 1941, no one with close relatives still in Germany was allowed into the United States because of suspicions that the Nazis could use them to blackmail refugees into clandestine cooperation. That development ended the possibility of getting the Frank girls out through a children's rescue agency."

To date, the U.S. has accepted fewer than 2,000 refugees from the civil war in Syria. In September, President Obama announced plans to resettle 10,000 refugees in the country in 2016. In the wake of the recent attacks on Paris and other cities, the President's plan has created a firestorm of anger, bigotry and lies among Republicans and conservative leaders who believe the refugees represent a threat to America. Those who have forgotten the mistakes of the past are, as always, doomed to repeat them.

For the record, the current refugee vetting process is incredibly thorough. From Stephanie Condon of CBS News:

"The process for any refugee begins with the processing of biographic information (such as an applicant's name and date of birth) and biometric information (such as fingerprints). The information is checked against databases in several different U.S. agencies including the FBI, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

If an applicant has applied for an overseas visa in the past, their biometric information should be on record. It can be used to ensure that the applicant has had a consistent story about the circumstances that prompted them to seek asylum. 

After that, applicants go through a lengthy, in-person interview process overseas. The interviews are conducted by specially-trained DHS officers who spend at least eight weeks learning skills like how to question applicants and test their credibility. These adjudicators receive special training for interviewing refugees from Iraq or Syria."

And with that dose of reality, let's move on to fantasy with:

Part Nine: Syrian Refugees and the Conflict in the Middle East

Myth: Congressional Republicans have cited gaps in the screening process for Syrian immigrants. The bill recently passed by the House halts the President's refugee program until those gaps are closed.
Fact: Asked to cite the dangerous gaps in question, Republicans have nothing to say. From Jennifer Steinhauer and Emmarie Huetteman of the New York Times:

"When pressed, most Republicans could not specify which aspects of the rigorous refugee vetting program that they found inadequate. Mr. Ryan’s staff members cited a Bloomberg poll of 1,002 adults released on Wednesday, conducted by Selzer & Company, that found that 53 percent of those surveyed said the resettlement program should be halted."

"The bill, which received the full support of Speaker Paul D. Ryan, would require that the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and the director of national intelligence confirm that each applicant from Syria and Iraq poses no threat. The bill did not go into specific measures; rather, it said that officials "shall take all actions necessary" for a "thorough" background check."

FBI Chief James Comey has condemned the House bill, while endorsing the current refugee vetting process. From Evan Perez of CNN:

"Comey has told administration and congressional officials that the legislation would make it impossible to allow any refugees into the U.S., and could even affect the ability of travelers from about three dozen countries that are allowed easier travel to the U.S. under the visa waiver program, the officials say.

There are always risks in allowing any foreigners into the U.S., Comey told the officials, adding that the FBI believes it has an effective process with intelligence and other agencies to conduct vetting of refugees."

Myth: Refugees represent a serious, demonstrable threat to American security.
Fact: Of the nearly 750,000 refugees admitted to the U.S. since 9/11, the number arrested on domestic terrorism charges is zero.

Myth: "Opposition to Jewish refugees (during WWII) was “racial”; opposition to Syrian refugees is based on security concerns." - Joel E. Pollak, Breitbart.com

Fact: The core of opposition to Syrian refugee is bigotry against Muslims. Senator Ted Cruz has said that America should welcome Christian Syrians while banning Muslims. Jeb Bush has also said our "focus" should be on Christian refugees above others. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal would like to exclude Muslims from immigrating to the U.S. based on a test of their political beliefs. Outside the realm of (relatively) mainstream political leaders, bigotry is even more widespread. Influential Christian evangelist Franklin Graham would like to ban all Muslim immigration, as would Daniel Horowitz, Senior Editor of the Conservative Review.

Myth: "At least one Syrian refugee who had recently entered Europe was among the seven terrorists who carried out the deadliest attacks in France since World War II, according to authorities." - Yaron Steinbuch, the New York Post, 11/15/15, in an article regarding the Paris bombings.

Fact: All the attackers identified so far in the Paris bombings were European nationals. It is true that a fake Syrian passport was found near the body of one unidentified attacker. If that document did in fact belong to the attacker in question, records show he arrived in Greece from Turkey on October 3, posing as a visiting Syrian national loyal to the Assad regime. There is no indication that the man was in fact Syrian, and he was not posing as a refugee.

Myth: 77 percent of the refugees who have gone to Europe are young men, and "The director of national intelligence has said that among those refugees coming into Europe are no doubt ISIS terrorists." - Senator Ted Cruz. The majority of Syrian refugees are, "young males." - Presidential candidate Ben Carson.
Fact: Republicans would like you to believe that most Syrian refugees are actually Muslim jihadists or young men who are otherwise dangerous. Some facts: Among Syrian refugees, women outnumber men, and children 11 years old and younger account for 38.5 percent. Furthermore, U.S. National Intelligence Director James Clapper has never said that the refugees are "no doubt ISIS terrorists." Instead, Clapper said that it’s a, "huge concern" that ISIS could attempt to infiltrate the refugees, but he's expressed confidence in the government’s ability to screen the refugee applicants. 

Myth: Young Syrian men, "have left their wives, young children and elderly relatives in the face of the ISIS threat." The media portray them as refugees, "when they are more accurately described as economic migrants." - Donna Rachel Edmunds, Breitbart.com
Fact: The refugees are undoubtedly seeking better lives. But many young men are fleeing Syria in order to avoid being drafted into the fighting by dictatorial regimes that they do not support. For example, the PYD, a Kurdish nationalist party that has assumed power in parts of Syria with the tacit consent of the al-Assad regime, is prohibiting men over the age of 18 from leaving the country so that they can be drafted into the fighting.

Myth: On November 16, eight Syrian illegal aliens were apprehended attempting to enter Texas from Mexico.
Fact: From ABC News, KTXS 12: "DHS confirms that on Tuesday, members of two Syrian families, two men, two women and four children, presented themselves at a port of entry in Laredo.  They were taken into custody by CBP and turned over to ICE for further processing." In other words, the families simply traveled to the U.S. border and asked for asylum. They were not apprehended as illegal aliens. Donald Trump of course immediately jumped on the false report and tweeted, "WE NEED A BIG & BEAUTIFUL WALL!" and Ben Carson from stated, "our worst nightmare may be unfolding before our eyes." (For the record, there is no illegal immigration crisis at our border with Mexico. See part three in this series.) 

Myth: President Obama plans to bring 100,000 or 200,000 or 250,000 refugees from Syria to the United States, according to, respectively, Carly Fiorinia, Ben Carson and Donald Trump.
Fact: The President has no such plan. Current law allows the U.S. to accept up to 70,000 refugees from around the world in 2015. The U.S. State Department has suggested this number will increase to 100,000 by 2017. However, only 30% of refugees coming to the U.S. are from the Middle East, and most of these are from Iraq. The President has asked only that at least 10,000 be accepted from Syria in 2016.

Myth: Saudi Arabia has refused to accept Syrian refugees.
Fact: Saudi Arabia has given residency to 100,000 Syrian refugees.

Myth: TV news reports showed "thousand and thousands" of Muslims in New Jersey cheering the terrorist attacks on 9/11. "It did happen. I saw it. It was on television. I saw it. There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down." - Donald Trump, 11/22/15
Fact: This simply did not happen. Trump's delusion appears to stem from old, debunked newspaper reports of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the attacks.

Myth: President Obama gives Muslim refugees priority over homeless military veterans.
Fact: I see this one a lot. It's an easy excuse for Islamophobes, "Hey, as long as there are vets in need, we shouldn't spend money on anything else." That is not the worst idea. However, when conservatives are given the chance to help veterans, they consistently refuse to do so. In 2014, Senate Republicans stopped Democrats from advancing a bill that would have expanded healthcare and education programs for veterans. Between 2009 and 2012, those same Senate Republicans blocked seven different bills that would have provided jobs for veterans and assistance to homeless veterans. Meanwhile President Obama has actually done a great deal for homeless vets. His Opening Doors plan has reduced homelessness among veterans by 50% over the past four years.

Myth: The torture of detainees during the war in Iraq yielded valuable intelligence, including information leading to the capture of Osama bin Laden.
Fact: Donald Trump can't wait to bring back waterboarding. The idea that torture yielded information that led to the capture of bin Laden is a favorite of former Vice President Dick Cheney. In fact, the vital intelligence leading to bin Laden was obtained without torture, and torture did not provide good intelligence during the war. Experienced interrogators have said that torture actually prolonged the hunt for bin Laden. An exhaustive five-year Senate investigation of the CIA’s secret interrogations of terrorism suspects was released in 2014. That report’s central conclusion was that harsh interrogation measures, deemed torture by program critics including President Obama, did not work. Khalid Sheik Mohammed was waterboarded  a staggering 183 times. The torture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed produced only false and misleading information, while the best intelligence gained from a CIA detainee, information describing Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti’s real role in al-Qaeda and his true relationship to bin Laden, was obtained through standard, noncoercive means. In 2014, 17 former top CIA, FBI and military intelligence officials to signed a public statement denouncing harsh interrogation techniques as morally reprehensible and ineffective.

Myth: The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was justified, as the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction cited by the Bush administration were eventually found.
Fact: No they weren't. First let's recall the Bush administration's case for invasion, which we can summarize entirely through quotes of Vice President Dick Cheney: "We do know, with absolute certainty, that he is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon," "Hussein is reconstituting his biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons programs," and from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: "(Saddam) has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX, sarin, and mustard gas." All of this was a pack of lies of course; the administration's own intelligence showed no evidence of WMD.

While it's true that America troops in Iraq discovered what had been  roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs in the scrapyards of Iraq, this stuff was a lot of rusty junk, not WMD. From C.V. Chivers of the New York Times:

"All had been manufactured before 1991, participants said. Filthy, rusty or corroded, a large fraction of them could not be readily identified as chemical weapons at all. Some were empty, though many of them still contained potent mustard agent or residual sarin. Most could not have been used as designed, and when they ruptured dispersed the chemical agents over a limited area, according to those who collected the majority of them.

In case after case, participants said, analysis of these warheads and shells reaffirmed intelligence failures. First, the American government did not find what it had been looking for at the war’s outset, then it failed to prepare its troops and medical corps for the aged weapons it did find." 

Myth: As a U.S. Senator, Hillary Clinton voted for the disastrous war in Iraq.
Fact: There was never a vote, "for the war." There was a vote to give President Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq, an authority Bush lied that he needed, "to keep the peace." Clinton talked pretty tough regarding Saddam Hussein, but she never endorsed the Iraq invasion. On October 10, 2002, she said, "My vote is not, however, a vote for any new doctrine of preemption, "I support this resolution as being in the best interests of our Nation. A vote for it is not a vote to rush to war; it is a vote that puts awesome responsibility in the hands of our President. And we say to him: Use these powers wisely and as a last resort."

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Final Thought: President Barack Obama urged Americans to show generosity to Syrian refugees in a Thanksgiving message on Thursday, reminding them that the Pilgrims who came to America in 1620 were themselves fleeing persecution.

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