Next: Denude Our Borders

Not such a long time ago, the United States was engaged in a ground war against a brown people of diminutive size who refused to come out into the open and fight.

They would hide in the bushes. In the jungle.

Out military happened upon the obvious answer: get rid of the jungle. Denude the rainforests of eastern Southeast Asia. That way the small people would have no where to hide and shoot our soldiers.

They adopted a chemical herbicide that was called Agent Orange, to effect this, and got maximum returns for their efforts. The forests disappeared.

As a side effect, both the Vietnamese who lived there and the American soldiers who fought there started exhibiting long-term effects of exposure to Agent Orange.

Long-term effects that included cancer. Agent Orange was a carcinogen.

Today, Agent Orange is no longer used.

However, the need to keep diminutive brown people from hiding in the bushes has apparently not waned. Today, small brown people continue to hide in the bushes in their attempts to evade capture as they illegally cross the border in the Rio Grande Valley, north to America.

Today, thick carrizo cane (Arundo donax L.) occurs on the banks of the Rio Grande, up to 1.1 miles thick. This cane was planted there hundreds of years ago by Spaniards. It is not native. But it is a good cover for the small brown people.

Enter stage right a plan to denude the banks of the Rio Grande, thus depriving these people of places to hide.

There are three options in this plan”

1. Cut the cane by hand and “paint” the cane stumps with an herbicide called Imazapyr, a product of chemical giant BASF.
2. Bulldoze the cane, digging up the cane roots as well.
3. Spray the Imazapyr herbicide from helicopters. Spray it directly on the cane repeatedly until all of the cane dies.

Of the three options, the last one is obviously the most controversial. Followed by the first one. It isn’t clear whether the 2^nd one includes an herbicide.

Now I have to wonder about the sanity of wholesale spraying an herbicide, one that is non-specific and will kill anything classified as a plant. Especially adjacent to a river that forms an international border. Where the other country on that border uses the river water in its water supply system.

While Imazapyr is listed in chemical data pages and on its MSDS as non-toxic to animals, it is an irritant if inhaled or comes in contact with the skin. It is also known to cause irreversible sight loss.

It also hangs around in the environment for an awful long time, up to months, and can get into the groundwater. The only good news is that if it gets into the river, it will break down in sunlight in only two days.

But that doesn’t help Nuevo Laredo, a city that sits on the river bank opposite a targeted “cane forest”. Two days is not long enough to break down contaminants in water when they are introduced right there in front of them.

A final plan on cane removal has not materialized. In the meantime, let’s hope that sanity prevails and no one adopts the least troublesome “Final Solution” to the “Cane Problem,” the one that would be most beneficial to the corporate profits of BASF.

$110 Million in State Money Squandered at the Border

No big surprise there. It seems to be all the rage today to take money that was allocated in good faith to fight a much needed battle against, say drug trafficking and the Mexican drug cartels, and turn it into a cash cow.

The big surprise is that it took an independent watchdog group like the American Civil Liberties Union to expose this reprehensible behavior.

And the only thing wrong with that is given what your average redneck Texan thinks about the ACLU, this news of gross mishandling of government funds, a hot button in this day and age, will be shrugged off. It’s not so much a “shoot the messenger” issue as it is a “shoot the message because you don’t like the messenger” issue.

The 33 page document, prepared by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, exposes misuse of the $110 million authorized in September 2007 by the Texas legislature, funds to be used in what became known as Operation Border Star, an agglomeration of 41 federal, state and local enforcement agencies.

The report concentrated on 11 of these organizations, local sheriffs’ departments for the most part, that used this state money for day-to-day operations. Examples follow:

“The Cities of La Joya and Sullivan City, which have between 4,300 and 4,700 residents, and their police departments combined to make 9,576 traffic stops as part of Operation Border Star. The result? 3,314 citations and 5,387 warnings issued. That is roughly one traffic stop per resident.”

The ACLU suggests that Border Star funds instead be used only to stem organized crime and to patrol “drug corridors.”

“Since 2005, the heads of three Operation Border Star participating departments have been arrested, indicted or convicted of organized crime-related activity.”

The ACLU suggests creation of an integrity unit that would investigate cartel-induced official corruption.

“Measuring arrests of aliens encourages local law enforcement to detain immigrants instead of arresting gang members. Ten of the 11 departments analyzed in this report utilized Operation Border Star resources to detain 656 suspected deportable immigrants and arrested a combined total of five criminal gang members. El Paso Police Department alone arrested 53 criminal gang members and apprehended and detained no one without documentation. This is evidence that law enforcement efforts will be more effective when they are not bogged down by attempting to verify immigration status.”

The ACLU suggests not using Border Star funds to round up undocumented aliens, but instead to use them to interdict drug traffic, as intended.

None of this surprises me anymore. Taking money that was set aside for one purpose, and using it to accomplish another one, is all too commonplace. So common that it is winked at these days.

It’s too bad, though, that the messenger in this specific case, the ACLU, doesn’t share the values of your average Texas cracker.

Will You Walk Into My Parlour Said the Spider to the Fly

Will you walk into my parlour?" said the Spider to the Fly,
'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy;
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I've a many curious things to shew when you are there."
Oh no, no," said the little Fly, "to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again."

- From “The Spider and the Fly” by Mary Howitt

You know, the last time that a very popular Democratic president was asked to come to Texas, a president who despite his national popularity, had very unfavorable ratings in said state, it was none other than John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

And nothing good came of that November trip.

So it comes as no surprise that junior senator from Texas, John Cornyn is the first to offer President Obama a personal tour of Laredo. Laredo, the safest city this side of Mosul.

Quite frankly, I think Barack Obama has better things to do than to kneel to John Cornyn’s egotistical grandstanding. It makes me wonder whether Cornyn has thrown in a personal tour of Cornyn’s own hunting lease, where they will cruise around in Cadillacs with the rag tops down so they can shoot game at will. I hear that Kennedy was especially taken with that act of pure Texas culture.

No. I’m pretty sure that Barack Obama can take care of these matters at his level, in talks with Mexican President Felipe Calderon. Let’s let John Cornyn rub elbows with the Laredo locals and swap lies with the Federales. That’s his bailiwick and I’m sure he’s good at swapping lies.

And let’s let Obama do what he is good at.

Developing and communicating policy.