Tag: migrants
Elon Musk

Why Migrant Musk Wants To Control The U.S. Presidency

Elon Musk is a migrant.

There is a difference between a migrant and an immigrant. An immigrant is a person who moves to another country with the intention of living there permanently. The great majority of immigrants to America come for work or personal safety or affection for the way of life. Their goal is to assimilate.

A migrant is someone who moves from one place to another, often across country borders, for various reasons with money high on the list. The United States is Musk's third nationality. He started off as a South African. He then became a Canadian. Now he's an American.

Musk is an entrepreneurial genius. Of that there's no doubt. But his pursuit of wealth and power has shown him soulless regarding the communities he lords over. And his support of the man who tried to overthrow this country's elected government does not speak of any strong attachment to American tradition, namely, the U.S. Constitution.

Though already wealthy, Donald Trump's slobbering before Vladimir Putin strongly suggests he wants to become oligarch wealthy. It's unclear whether Musk or Putin is the richest man alive. Either might assume Trump could be acquired.

For all his bashing of California, Musk got his start soaking in the advantages of being a tech entrepreneur there. In 2002, he launched SpaceX in the Los Angeles area. In 2004, he joined Tesla, based in Palo Alto, and made it the electric vehicle giant it is today. And along the way, he helped himself to more than $3.2 billion in direct and indirect California subsidies since 2009.

Musk had every right to move SpaceX and social media company X, formerly Twitter, to Texas or anywhere else. But he should spare us the baloney of his stated reason, California's law aimed at protecting transgender children. I share his aversion to a lot of the wokeness, but Musk's tweet that the bill was "attacking both families and companies" was laughably histrionic.

Look, Musk wanted less regulation, lower taxes, and official hostility to organized labor. Why didn't he just say that?

He did stop the United Auto Workers from unionizing the giant Tesla plant in Fremont, California, threatening those who joined with loss of their stock options. That would have been illegal.

In a recent conversation on X, Trump praised Musk for firing workers who went on strike. "You're the greatest cutter," Trump gushed. "I look at what you do. You walk in and say, 'You want to quit?' I won't mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, 'That's OK. You're all gone.'" They laughed in unison.

The worst part of this exchange wasn't the firings. It was the evident pleasure Trump took in visiting pain on workers.

California does have ways to get even. Tesla sales there have fallen 17 percent in the first half of this year, whereas sales by other EV makers soared — from 26 percent for Ford to 77 percent for Rivian. And a state commission just voted against more SpaceX launches from the Vandenberg Space Force Base outside Los Angeles.

Musk recently played the yahoo arguing that the budget deficit under Biden was "insane." It happens that Trump ran up the national debt by twice as much as Biden. His plans for tax cuts and spending would add $7.5 trillion to budget deficits over the next decade, according to The Wall Street Journal. Kamala Harris' proposals would add half as much.

But, you know, this isn't really about government spending. Trump says he'd invent a position for Musk in a future administration. If so, what a convenient stop the United States would have been for Elon Musk.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Right-Wing Media Praise Vance For Spreading Toxic Myths About Migrants

Right-Wing Media Praise Vance For Spreading Toxic Myths About Migrants

Right-wing websites are celebrating Republican vice presidential nominee and Ohio Sen. JD Vance for spreading a longstanding xenophobic trope in a CNN interview that “communicable diseases like HIV and TB have skyrocketed” in Springfield, Ohio, because of Haitian immigrants in the city. This falsehood follows his debunked smear that Haitian residents of the city were eating people’s pets, a lie reportedly linked to recent bomb threats.

Vance had already spread this smear in a September 10 post on X, formerly known as Twitter. But it was Vance repeating the falsehood in a CNN interview shortly after the ABC News presidential debate which right-wing websites are celebrating.

SEN. JD VANCE: And again, whether those exact rumors turn out to be mostly true, somewhat true, whatever the case may be, Kaitlan, this town has been ravaged by 20,000 migrants coming in. Health care costs are up, housing costs are up, communicable diseases like HIV and TB have skyrocketed in this small Ohio town. This is what Kamala Harris' border policies have done.

Vance repeated this smear in a September 13 post on X as well.

Right-wing blogs have responded to Vance's misinformation with widespread praise.

A Townhall post which quoted his smear that Haitian immigrants are widely spreading disease in Springfield declared his CNN appearance “masterful,” adding, “Bravo, sir.” The Media Research Center’s NewsBusters embedded a clip of Vance’s CNN interview, declaring: “JD Vance SCHOOLS CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Immigration and Cat Memes.” And RedState included a transcript of Vance’s disease smear in its post congratulating him for making “a very real and damning point about the media,” adding: “When you come at JD Vance, you better get ready for a fight. CNN's Kaitlan Collins certainly wasn't.”

For all of their congratulations to Vance over continuing to push this smear, these right-wing blogs missed the reality that Vance is simply lying. Making it up.

Data from the Ohio Department of Health and Clark County Combined Health District — which Vance presumably could easily obtain, given that he’s one of the state’s senators — shows that there are barely any new cases of either TB or HIV in Clark County, of which Springfield is the county seat.

The most recent data available, for 2018-22, shows that in 2018, Clark County reported 10 new HIV infections. Six new HIV infections were reported there in 2019, six again in 2020, 12 in 2021, and 13 in 2022. These five years of data reveal that between 2018-22, the county had a cumulative total of 322 HIV diagnoses — while the state’s cumulative total during this time period was 39,729 HIV diagnoses. To put it simply, Clark County, which includes Springfield, represented less than 1% of all HIV diagnoses in Ohio during this time period.

A December 2022 report of TB cases in Clark County prepared for the Clark County Combined Health District goes back a full decade, showing several incidences of 1, 2, 3, and sometimes zero cases of active TB in the entire county each year.

Clark County Combined Health District Commissioner Chris Cook told NBC News that Vance’s claim of a surge in diseases there is false: “Overall, we have not seen a substantial increase in all reportable communicable diseases. In fact, if you look at all reportable communicable diseases together (minus COVID) for the year ending 2023 you will see that we are at our lowest rate in Clark County since 2016.” And according to Bruce Vanderhoff, the director of Ohio’s Health Department, the state isn’t seeing a “measurable or discernible increase” in vaccine-preventable illnesses, further debunking Vance’s smear.

As Advocate explained, Vance is reinforcing “historical stigmas, stoking xenophobia and racial fear.” Right-wing media may be celebrating Vance pushing these cruel lies, but legitimate media organizations should be prepared to call him out.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Senator JD Vance

Disgraced Vance Admits 'Creating Stories' About Migrants And Cats

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance (R-OH) is facing significant backlash after he admitted his claim that Haitian immigrants are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio is a lie.

The Bulwark's Sam Stein reported via X: "JD Vance acknowledges the cat and dog stories are urban legends and then rationalizes it (via CNN): 'If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do.'"

After Donald Trump parroted the debunked claim during his debate against Kamala Harris on Tuesday, a Springfield, Ohio spokesperson told ABC News earlier this week that "these claims are false, and that there have been 'no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals in the immigrant community.'"

The spokesperson added that "there have been no verified instances of immigrants engaging in illegal activities such as squatting or littering in front of residents’ homes. Furthermore, no reports have been made regarding members of the immigrant community deliberately disrupting traffic."

A slew of political experts and journalists immediately rebuffed the VP hopeful's Sunday CNN interview admission.

The anti-Trump Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson replied: "'If I have to create stories' will be on his political tombstone."

Marie Claire former contributing editor Karen Schwartz added: "The GOP VP candidate is proud to have made up stories that have lead to closed schools and bomb threats in hospitals."

Zack Beauchamp, Vox senior politics correspondent, said: "Vance isn’t as good at lying as Trump because he feels a deep need to be respected intellectually. So you get humiliating admissions like this"

Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias wrote: "If they told you the truth about their plans for abortion rights, health care, and Social Security you wouldn't vote for them so they're making stuff up instead."

National Journal columnist Natalie Jackson added: "I usually refrain from using the f-word on social media, but truly there is no other way to describe this than completely fucked up."

Austin Chronicle culture editor Richard Whittaker commented: "Where I come from, you call people like this liars. It's now perfectly fine to call him a liar - because he acknowledged that he lied."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Moderator Fact Checks Trump Lie On Migrants 'Eating Dogs And Cats'

Moderator Fact Checks Trump Lie On Migrants 'Eating Dogs And Cats'

DONALD TRUMP: What they have done to our country, by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country, and look at what's happening to the towns all over the United States. And a lot of towns don't want to talk -- not going to be Aurora or Springfield -- a lot of towns don't want to talk about it because they're so embarrassed by it.

In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats, they're eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what's happening in our country, and it's a shame. As far as rallies are concerned, as far as -- the reason they go is they like what I say. They want to bring our country back, they want to make America great again. It's a very simple phrase, 'Make America Great Again.' She's destroying the country, and if she becomes president, this country doesn't have a chance of success -- not only success, we'll end up being Venezuela on steroids.

DAVID MUIR (MODERATOR): I just want to clarify here. You bring up Springfield, Ohio, and ABC News reached out to the city manager there. He told us "there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by individuals within the immigrant community." All of this --

TRUMP: I've seen people on television --

MUIR: Let me just say, here --

TRUMP: The people on television say my dog was taken and used for food, so maybe he said that and maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager. But the people on television said their dog was eaten by the people that went there.

MUIR: Again, the Springfield city manager says there's no evidence of that.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters .

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