Six on Immigration and the Border: Corporate Press Stoops to Absurdity to Balance Trump’s Border Wall Lies; Trump falsely as
panaritisp
The corollary to the centrist truism that the truth is always in the middle is that lies must always be found on both sides (New York Times, 1/9/19).
"Barely an hour after the Democratic leaders Sen. Charles Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi had completed their on-air response to Trump’s primetime address, the New York Times (1/9/19) had published a factcheck story that stooped to ridiculous nitpicking. Of the eight statements analyzed by the Times, the lone Democratic example had all the earmarks of being shoehorned on to the end to create some semblance of balance. After quoting Schumer’s statement that the ongoing government shutdown was “hurting millions of Americans who are treated as leverage,” the Times countered by saying, “This needs context.” But what followed was a surreal example of factchecking pedantry from the nation’s leading newspaper (emphasis added):
An estimated 800,000 federal workers are furloughed or working without pay because of the shutdown. While millions of Americans are not being directly harmed, there is a multiplier effect when considering family members of those whose jobs are affected. This also spills into the broader economy, harming business owners whose customers must cut back, tourism and travel.
Treating those federal workers who aren’t getting a paycheck as the only ones “directly harmed” by the ongoing shutdown is a shameful oversimplification, to say the least. To describe the families of federal workers who might go hungry because the federally employed member of their household has been furloughed—or worse, must work without pay—as a so-called “multiplier effect” is the very opposite of journalism’s comfort-the-afflicted ethos.
It also ignores the singular role the federal government plays in the life of our country and its citizens. Millions of Americans have already been put at risk from curtailed food and environmental safety inspections, reduced healthcare access in Native American communities, and the expiration of a low-income HUD program, which now threatens the housing status of thousands of people because of the shutdown."
"In all, Trump spent around four hours on the border, including a few minutes viewing the Rio Grande at a county park that fronts the river. Across the narrow stream lies Reynosa, a violent city that's a center for illegal trafficking in humans and narcotics into the U.S.
Before his brief visit to the actual border, the president spent about an hour listening to several residents and Texas Republican politicians — including Republican U.S. Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz — praise him for pushing for the wall.
To emphasize what they said was a need for the barrier, Border Patrol and Customs officials explained a display of weapons and narcotics near or at the border.
“That says it all,” Trump said. But much of the contraband on display was seized at international bridges, perhaps undercutting the president's argument for an urgently needed barrier between such legal points of entry.
The president’s budget had called for $1.6 billion in new wall funding, matching last year’s funding, a figure that was acceptable to most Democrats and Republicans. The impasse began before Christmas when he upped the amount to $5.7 billion.
Some new fencing already is funded. Construction is scheduled to start next month on 14 miles of 18-foot-high steel bollard fencing in the Valley, at a cost of more than $300 million.
“The president’s trip this week has the feel of a bull in search of a china shop,” said Antonio “Tony” Garza, who served as the second Bush administration’s ambassador to Mexico and grew up in the border city of Brownsville.
Like many other border residents and elected officials, Garza argues that enhanced border security is best achieved by limited fencing combined with more enforcement boots on the ground, smoother processing of asylum-seekers and other migrants and greater surveillance technology.
“If he keeps his eyes and ears open to folks who really know the region, he might realize there’s a better, smarter more responsible way of getting to the safe, secure and efficient border we all want,” Garza said."
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