7 Texas border mayors' message on the wall: No

[Judi Lynn]

Jan. 17, 2007, 11:40PM
7 Texas border mayors' message on the wall: No
Capitol Hill policymakers told fence would harm trade and relations


By MICHELLE MITTELSTADT
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Texas border mayors carried a clear message Wednesday to federal policymakers: Walling off the United States from Mexico is a costly, foolish idea that will harm commerce, travel and foreign relations.

The seven mayors, representing cities that stretch from El Paso to Brownsville, raced from meeting to meeting on Capitol Hill, urging Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and lawmakers to abandon Congress' mandate to build 700 miles of fence and instead rely on other border security measures.

"It's a united front: No to the wall," said Laredo Mayor Raul Salinas. "It's just money misspent."

Call for sensors, lights
Instead of fencing off more than 300 miles of the Texas-Mexico border, the mayors recommended that Chertoff and Congress improve border security by using technology such as motion detection sensors and lighting as a "virtual" fence, or by adding more Border Patrol manpower.
(snip/...)

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/4478479.html

[babylonsister]

1. Good for them; some sanity is welcome. Misspent money indeed. nt

[rodeodance]

2. move over Lou Dobbs and Duncan Hunter!

[xchrom]

3. lol -- well isn't that something?

to badly paraphrase robert frost -- i think -- there's something that doesn't love a wall.

[Bridget Burke]

6. Yes, Robert Frosts's poem us generally misunderstood....

In "Mending Wall" the Poet says "something there is that doesn't love a wall." His flinty New England neighbor is the one who keeps repeating "good fences make good neighbors" & piling stone on stone.

....Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'

www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15719

(American Lit 102.)

[xchrom]

10. i think that poem is perfect for this wall we're talking about.

[Sequoia]

12. Those who want the Wall don't even live in the border states.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Democrats in no rush to build Mexico border fence

Democrats in no rush to build Mexico border fence

The Associated Press
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
WASHINGTON

Mayors of Texas border towns who met with U.S. Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff said they are confident a 850-mile (1,367-kilometer) fence will not be built on the U.S.-Mexico border.

It is "highly unlikely" that the fence, as authorized in a law signed by U.S. President George W. Bush, would be funded, Laredo Mayor Raul Salinas said Wednesday.

"It's a turnaround here," Salinas said.

Chertoff said after the meeting there are parts of the border where a fence will work, and the agency wants to be "expeditious" in building it. But he said a mix of technology will be needed on some parts of the border.

Bush signed the law last year, and the Republican-controlled Congress provided money to start work on the fence. But now that Democrats have a majority on Capitol Hill, Republicans worry they never will see the fence built. Democrats generally oppose the fence. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, among others, voted against it last year.
(snip/...)

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/01/18/america/NA-GEN-US-Border-Fence.php

[Vidar]

5. Glad to know the locals display more wisdom than Washington.

[cboy4]

7. Oh gawd....this is worth a least two months of programming

notes for Lou Dobbs. :eyes:

But I agree with the mayors.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

8. What, I'm the first here to say "DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS?" -nt

[UTUSN]

9. K&R for the teeniest bit of sanity. The wingnut kneejerk reaction on "border security"

is nothing more than a boondoggle. So far on the SOUTHERN border in the past several years they have been equipped with thousands of personnel, now National Guard units, administrative buildings like palaces, horses, dunebuggies, surveillance cameras, boats, web cams---not to mention hours of HOT AIR from Tex (heir to Kotex) SENSENBRENNER and TANCREDO, and outright racists like the Minutemen.

All the fence will do is to wreck the economies on both sides. There is a "smart" way of doing this, and this ain't it.

However, some of those mayors in this article backed Governor Goodhair for re-election, because they were betting he would win (which he did) and therefore they would be in his good graces for goodies.

[FormerDem06]

11. My youngest brother works on a pretty big cattle farm on the border .....

I wish they'd concentrate on fixing the real problems instead of building walls. The other day he turned a corner and came 50 yards away from 3 Jeeps with big guns mounted on the back escorting a old army surplussed cargo truck.

Said that they see evidence of drug smuggling across their property all the time and can do nothing about it. A wall won't fix that, they'll just blow a hole in it and keep driving through.