Posted on

Conservative Thoughts On A Border Wall

The words below are not my own, they are taken from an editorial posted by Vicky Alvear Shecter on the Medium.com site. The bulk of the editorial is information produced largely from the work of the Cato Institute, a conservative, right-wing think tank, explaining precisely why a border wall will have little to no affect on illegal immigration. These are not liberals opposing the president out of spite, these are like-minded people who deal in ideas and facts for a living. I’ve chosen to extract the text instead of sharing the editorial in an effort to share the information and not the spin that accompanied it. Like the author I have shared links to the information sources at the end.

1. Walls don’t work. Illegal immigrants have tunneled underneath and/or erected ramps up and down walls to simply drive over them. People find a way. When East Germany erected its wall, it created a military zone, staffed by booted, machine-gun carrying guards ready to shoot to kill. Yet thousands managed to make it to West Germany anyway. More to the point, do we really want to model ourselves after communist East Germany?

2. Most illegal immigrants are “overstayers.” They come to the US legally — for vacations, business, to study, etc. — and then STAY past their visas. By 2012, overstayers accounted for 58% (THE MAJORITY!) of all unauthorized immigrants. A wall is meaningless here!

3. Walls have little impact on drugs being brought in to the US. According to the DEA, almost all drugs come in through legal points of entry, hidden in secret containers and/or among legit goods in tractor-trailers. A wall will have little to no impact on the influx of drugs into our country.

4. It’s environmentally impractical. Walls have a hard time making it through extreme weather. For example, in 2011, a flood in Arizona washed away 40 feet of STEEL fencing. Torrential rains and raging waters do serious damage. Also, conservative sources generally do not address the environmental harm that walls create, but there is plenty of documentation available that show its potential for irreparable damage to both plant and animal life.

5. A wall would forces the U.S. government to take land from private citizens in eminent domain battles. Private citizens own much of the land slated for the wall. The costs of the government snatching private land — and the legal battles that would ensue — are incalculable.

6. Border patrol agents don’t like concrete or steel walls because they block surveillance capabilities. In other words, they can’t mobilize correctly to meet challenges. So in many ways, a wall makes their job more difficult.

7. Border patrol agents say, “Walls are meaningless without agents and technology to back them up.” Are we prepared to pour countless billions annually — after the wall is built — to create a nearly 2,000 mile, militarized 24-hour surveillance border operation? Because according to patrol agents, that’s the only way a wall would work. Again, are we really, going to use East Germany, a brutal communist state, as our model here?

8. Where walls have been built, there was “no discernable impact on the influx of unauthorized aliens.” In other words, they came in elsewhere, primarily where natural barriers such as water or mountainous regions precluded a wall.

9. An unintended consequence is that a wall blocks farmworkers from EXITING when their invaluable seasonal work is done. Farmers are against the wall because it makes getting cheap seasonal labor almost impossible as few American citizens want or can even do those jobs. And if seasonal worker do get in, a wall makes it harder for them to leave! A wall traps migrant farm laborers in our country.

10. Trump’s $5 billion is a laughable drop in the bucket for what would ACTUALLY be needed. For example, according to the Cato Institute: An estimate for a border wall area that only covered 700 miles was originally 1.2 billion. How much did it REALLY cost? SEVEN BILLION. And that’s only for 700 miles. Whatever we think it’s going to cost, experience shows us we have to multiply it by more than 500%.

11. According to MIT engineers, the wall would cost $31.2 billion. Homeland Security estimates it at $22 billion. Given the pattern of spending mentioned in number 10 (plus Murphy’s Law), that means we’re really talking about pouring endless billions into something that doesn’t even work. And, of course, we taxpayers will be footing the bill, not Mexico. Given all the drawbacks, is that REALLY the best use of our taxes?

As the conservatives of the Cato Institute put it, “President Trump’s wall would be a mammoth expenditure that would have little impact on illegal immigration.” (Emphasis mine) Also it would create many “direct harms:” “the spending, the taxes, the eminent domain abuse, and the decrease in immigrant’s freedoms of movement.”

And, we must add, since conservative sources do not — that the environmental harms are likely to be severe.

In other words, the facts show that walls don’t work and they create even bigger, more expensive problems.

Conservative Sources Outlining the Uselessness of Trump’s Wall:

The Cato Institute: https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/why-wall-wont-work

Former Reagan staffer and Tea-Party liaison: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2011/10/12/the-conservative-case-against-a-border-fence-trying-to-stop-illegal-immigration-with-a-really-big-fence-would-be-a-futile-waste-of-money

Chicago Tribune (conservative paper): https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-perspec-chapman-trump-wall-mexico-immigration-20180314-story.html

The National Review (conservative magazine): https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/04/donald-trump-border-wall-plan-ridiculous-guaranteed-failure/

Nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute (MPI) think tank: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/borders-and-walls-do-barriers-deter-unauthorized-migration

Posted on

The Hill Worth Dying On

Mitch McConnell is a hero.

Not to me, of course, and certainly not to the democratic people of America. But to those who would subvert the constitution at any cost, to those for whom wealth and prosperity comes before responsibility to their fellow human, and particularly to those who would impose their religious prejudices and their ideas of morality on a nation long ruled by the separation of church and state, Mitch McConnell is a sort of Moses. Someone who, unlike all those who struggled before him, has managed to lead the anti-abortion, post-Citizens United obscenity that is the alt-christian, alt-right, white nationalist Republican party to the promised land. A land where no election can take away what they have long wanted – the right to end abortion and the freedom to hate at will.

(Before moving on let me take a moment to explain what I mean by “alt-christian”. A Christian is a follower of Christ. You know, the God-Man who gave the Sermon on the Mount and talked about loving your neighbor and not casting the first stone? Yeah that guy! An alt-christian believes that this is who they’re following, and they love to carry around the leather-bound book with His words written clearly in red for all to understand. But if you try to find that Jesus in their own words, thoughts, and deeds, it’s really, really hard. And worse yet when you ask them to find Him in the policies and actions of the politicians they support they generally shout something about Hillary being worse and unfriend you. OK, now you’ve got it.)

You see most Americans have a very warped sense of where the power lies in our government. For most they believe that the President is the most powerful position that can be held in this nation – just ask the current holder of the title. In many ways it is, but without the will and consent of our elected representatives their will has words and no teeth. You’ll remember, our last President spent 6 years fighting tooth and nail to effect any legislative change against a Congress run by an opposing party publicly committed to giving him “no victories”.  But even unencumbered presidential power is wielded with the knowledge that you’ve only got 4 years before America can remove you. So as is evidenced by the last 6 years of the Obama administration, it would be easy to say that Congress is capable of wielding far more power in its feckless inaction than the man elected to run the nation, and you wouldn’t be wrong.

And this brings us back to Mitch. During the 6 years he, along with a couple worthless humans named Boehner and Ryan, controlled Congress he successfully blocked President Obama at every opportunity. If I were to ask you what the most significant or egregious of these incidents was I believe most of you would point to Merrick Garland, the man appointed by President Obama to fill the seat on the Supreme Court made vacant by the death of Anton Scalia. Garland is a well-qualified and far from radical adjudicator – someone without controversy or questionable voting record. Yet the Senate majority leader refused to even sit down and have a conversation with him, let alone to allow him to be voted on by the Senate as is demanded in the Constitution. Instead he let a seat on the highest court of the land sit open for over a year citing that it was somehow justifiable to deny President Obama his Constitutional right to make that appointment. Instead Mitch held the position hostage for the next president to fill – because the people somehow now “deserve a voice” after half a decade of shutting out the man they’d elected to be one.

But this was nothing new. From the beginning of his presidency Barack Obama faced repeated blockades in the Senate as he attempted to fill vacancies in the Federal courts. Truth be told the old man from Kentucky blocked more Obama nominees to the bench than had been cumulatively blocked in the 40 years before the Obama Presidency. Think about that! Republicans stopped more of nominees from even getting a vote in the Senate during Obama’s presidency than every Congress combined had since Nixon won election in ’68. Sure, the Senate confirmed some – just enough to keep the media mum on the issue. But in the end McConnell subverted both long standing Senate ethics and the Constitution to create the ultimate gift to his alt-christian patrons, a guaranteed shot at an ultra-conservative judge on the Supreme Court, and a vacuum to be filled in every court below it.

Let’s face it, the GOP nominated one of the most morally and ethically indefensible human beings imaginable, one that would leave any true evangelical screaming, “Get behind me, Satan!” But the promise of a guaranteed vote against the reproductive rights of women was more than enough for 86% of the Bible carrying, cross wearing pew-taters in this alt-christian nation to cast a ballot for a man who celebrated his right as a celebrity to grab a married woman by the pussy, and to actually call their support, “a vote for Christian values”.

After years of fighting they found themselves in the wilderness, hungry and thirsty for power. Then Satan appeared before them and said, “Bow down to me and all this will be yours” … and bow they did.

And on the 8th day they got Neil Gorsuch.

Yes, this nation’s power, as the alt-christians have come to realize so acutely since 1973, lies in its judiciary, a group of individuals appointed for life with the single job of deciding what is “just” and “unjust”, constitutional or unconstitutional with regard to the laws of this nation. It can uphold and strike down questioned state and federal laws at will in the name of the Constitution and judicial precedent. And with the subverting of the Merrick Garland nomination Mitch McConnell not only handed a Supreme Court vacancy to these benefactors but he gifted them a federal court system with a huge slate of open and (now) easily filled seats – seats waiting to be occupied by young and compliant justices on lists supplied to an ignorant and uninterested president by the ultra-conservative Federalist Society. Once these seats are filled the hate-fueled agenda of alt-christian nation can live on for a generation or more without fear of reversal by elected officials. For even a Democrat in the White House with fully Democrat-controlled Congress can do nothing to remove these new judges outside of impeaching them one judge at a time (which requires cause), or changing the Constitution to set term limits, which would require ratification by 2/3 of the (more than predominantly red) states.

Since January 2017, Mitch’s Senate has quickly confirmed nominee after nominee to the plethora of vacancies on courts throughout the land. At present 1 of every 8 judges in our circuit court system is a Trump (i.e. Federalist Society) appointee. In just 20 months the Senate has placed 68 judges on Federal benches with 73 additional nominations still awaiting approval – something sure to happen for many before the November elections.

The biggest, and likely most perilous of those 73 is the staunch anti-Roe, pro-presidential power judge and accused-rapist Brett Kavanaugh, a barely vetted, highly suspect, likely perjurer that the alt-christians want to have seated NOW!! And seat him these old white men will, because Brett Kavanaugh is the hill worth dying on. OK, maybe not die – he’s the hill they’ll all retire on.

Let’s face facts, once that SCOTUS seat is filled, these septa- and octogenarians can finally hear White Jesus say, “Well done soulless but well-paid servant. You’ve given us courts that will uphold laws that severely restrict or eliminate access to abortions and all other meaningful reproductive care for women. You’ve given us courts that will allow us to deny service to the ‘sinners’ of our communities – you know, the ones who commit same-sex adultery, not the one I give you married guys a pass and a wink on. You’ve given us courts that will allow the rich among us to give as much as they want to whatever candidate they want without limit and without being identified. You’ve given us courts that will secure the right of every corporation to, now and forever, have the same power under the Constitution as a person. And you’ve given us courts that will allow the states that deem it necessary to be allowed to make this finally ‘great again’ nation ‘white again’. Now go and enjoy all that money you’ve made in the name of serving the US taxpayers. No longer will you need to seek elected office because you’ve made it so that even if those godless liberals want to pass universal healthcare all the poor and uneducated Red states can opt out – because the courts you’ve given us will allow it. And no priest, pastor or nun will ever have to use an insurance plan that covers contraceptives or any form of godless birth control –  because while we want to end abortion we certainly don’t give a damn about unplanned pregnancies or what happens to the babies afterward.”

Yes, Brett Kavanaugh is the cherry on the top of a Republican sundae decades in the making. A sundae whose assembly instructions recognized that if you can distract the opposition long enough while spreading enough lies and propaganda through your own media to sufficiently gaslight the faithful, that at some moment there would be a chink in the armor of democracy that will allow it to be subverted for most of the next half century. And they followed the recipe perfectly.

So, with a month left before an election that can see a large number of this Republican Congress voted out in a “blue wave”, these vile white men will confirm an equally vile and dishonest likely-rapist to the highest court in the land, protecting both the president that allowed them to do it and the hatred fueled benefactors that helped them stay in power long enough to see this day. And as the blue wave comes crashing down on the steps of the US Capital building in January it will wash away the sand of decades of subversion to reveal a democracy handcuffed and stained with the permanent taint of a now-sainted turtle from Kentucky.