Build the unbuilt gappy state wall?

The Trib has a longform piece on how Tex-ass' state border wall is riddled with gaps due to landowners who refuse to let the state build.

The wall is not a singular structure, but dozens of fragmented sections scattered across six counties, some no wider than a city block and others more than 70 miles apart. Each mile of construction costs between $17 million and $41 million per mile, depending on terrain, according to state engineers.

Will Trump try to go federal on these gappy sections?

Or, will this year's Lege reverse its 2021 take that allows private citizens to say no?

Officials cannot seize private land for the wall like they can for other public infrastructure projects because the Legislature prohibited the use of eminent domain for the wall program.

I'll give you 2-1 odds against on that, in part because neither Strangabbott nor Dannie Goeb has pushed for that. As many rural people know, eminent domain is a serious issue here in Tex-ass. It's been tightened up a bit in the past few years, but bills for major tightening have never crossed the finish line. In essence, even as Texas urbanizes more and more, eminent domain is a third-rail issue.

That said?

Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, filed a bill for consideration in January that would allow the use of eminent domain for the border wall. He said it’s the only way to eliminate the possibility of holdouts.

“The Texas border wall will take years to complete, therefore we are rolling the dice in an extreme manner, potentially putting ourselves back where we are today if we do not take the necessary steps to protect our citizens, our sovereignty and our southern border,” Creighton said in a statement. “Texans should not wait on anyone to save us, including the federal government.”

Keep an eye on that.

As for the feds taking over? Even there, eminent domain on private land for this issue in federal court would surely be rough legal sailing.

Washington’s experience building border wall, however, shows how eminent domain is far from a panacea. The Department of Homeland Security has regularly filed condemnation cases to seize land, but the first Trump administration estimated it would need 21 to 30 months to secure parcels in South Texas, a 2020 Government Accountability Office report found.

Plus, as the story notes, so far, this time around, Der Grüppenfuehrer is talking mass deportations, but very little about a wall, since it's clear, contra 2017-21, that Mexico ain't paying for one.

And, per the Trib, most the state wall, gaps aside, isn't in some of the high-traffic areas, between Del Rio and El Paso, anyway, which will be the focus, one presumes, of further federal wall-building.

As of right now, "bribes," as in the form of a 5x increase in per-mile payments, have been Strangeabbott's resort.

As for these gaps allegedly being so secretive? Between some coyotes having cheap drones, or others able to study land ownership, no, they're not as secretive as Strangeabbott might be wanting the Trib to think.

And, yes, we all know — or all of us who aren't the state version of MAGAts — that this is political kabuki theater:

Raul L. Ortiz, retired chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, said the rural wall construction appeared to be more about sending a strong message than deterring border crossings.

“Part of the building of that infrastructure, even in the rural areas, was as much a political statement as it was a means to have an effective wall,” Ortiz said. “You’re making a statement that, hey, we’re going to do everything we can to deter and impede folks from crossing, to include building wall in areas where it may not be the most effective tool.”

That said, expect nothing to change.

Waiting for some minion of Strangeabbott or Goeb to call the Trib traitors.

Bye, Pretty Boy Trudeau

Well, Justin did it on his own terms. His resignation is official, along with a request to the governor-general to prorogue Parliament until just before a service-and-supply vote in late March.

So, he chased Freeland off, has no other clear successor, and wants the Crown's representative to give him 2 1/2 months of grace for that? Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives cannot submit a no-confidence vote during the prorogation period, per CBC. More weasellyness from Trudeau.

They can be submitted after that time. Trudeau seems to expect them, which means he's hoping that he can defeat them and stall out the next election until its scheduled October date.

Will that happen?

Depends on if Jagmeet Singh as NDP head thinks it's beneficial to his party or not, which in turn depends on how much or how little he has his shit together. I'm not hugely holding my breath.

That said, NDP leadership will probably see their party's performance as a referendum on Singh. The party did gain one seat in 2021, but is still far from its glory days.

Trudeau's resignation is effective as of his replacement as party leader, and not immediate. The first link notes the search normally takes four-five months, but of course will be expedited even without a formal no-confidence vote, whether a successful one or not.

Other than that? CNN's live streaming updates have lies by Pretty Boy, including that his one big regret was not getting ranked choice voting in Canada, though he doesn't use that word. Dood. When the NDP was in formal coalition, you never tried to get proportional representation, and never even discussed RCV.

Check Wiki's page or elsewhere on updates for when the 2025 election date is set.

Brief Jan. 6 thoughts

Is it arguable Trump is a quasi-insurrectionist? Yes.

Note the exact phrasing on that.

One of Trump's largest assets is being weaselly. Hence my caveats and qualifiers.

My best guess is that Trump did not want violent action on Jan. 6, 2021. That said, he was stupid enough not to consider the possibility that the event would go beyond intimidation. And, he may have lost control of things to a degree.

Is Trump legally an insurrectionist? Given the above, no, even before John Roberts' presidential criminality ruling, there's no way you could hang a charge on him.

Since then, is the national security state paranoid? Yes, and here's Ken Klippenstein:

Today is not a day to celebrate democracy. January 6, 2025 represents a leviathan, a juggernaut of government extremism casting a shadow over American civic life. An event meant to ratify the will of the American public will be flooded by an army of federal agents, police, and military personnel from all over the country.

Well put.

And why?

This:

If Washington does anything well, it is overcompensating for past embarrassing failures. Like 9/11, January 6 represented an intelligence failure for which none of the responsible agencies were punished. In fact, the opposite happened, with more resources lavished on the same agencies that had dropped the ball. For the national security state, every failure turns into an opportunity to “learn,” which really means punishing the public through demands for greater surveillance, policing and of course bigger budgets. 

Again, well put.

We continue to take our shoes off at airports even though another shoe bomber Richard Reid hasn't happened since then and almost certainly never will. This is political kabuki theater.

As a third-party voter, I consider the real threats to democracy to be both duopoly parties, but especially Democrats, fighting against third-party ballot access, both duopoly parties fighting against ranked choice voting, and more.

Top blogging of December 2024

As is normal, not all posts are from the last month, but these were the 10-most read pieces within the last month. As is normal, I'll mention the date of the ones that have become newly evergreen.

No. 10? Yes, indeed, state-level Democrats are environmental hypocrites at times, too. New Mexico is offered up as a detailed example.

No. 9 is connected to the top three posts on this list. Tex-ass Gov. Greg Abbott, or at least people connected to him, seem willing to talk out both sides of their mouths on the David Cook vs Dustin Burrows Texas House Speakership battle.

No. 8? I discussed looming climate crisis tipping points.

No. 7? I decried armchair psychology being practiced on Luigi Mangione.

At No. 6, I dissected the efforts of at least one librul Millennial snowflake practicing psychological projection to try to explain away Kamala Harris' loss.

No. 5 was one of December's weekly Texas Progressives Roundups, this one's header featuring my piece about failing states.

No. 4 was a blast from the past and maybe started trending because of the Washington Commodes, aka Commanders, beating Philadelphia to inch near an NFL playoff spot they now have. A decade ago, I called for new names for the then-Redskins in light of the NFL push to get them more acceptable.

Since Nos. 1-3 are all connected, and to No. 9, we're going to take them top to bottom rather than reverse order, as they make more sense that way.

At No. 1 was Dustin Burrows' claim to have enough votes to be elected Tex-ass House Speaker, and how these claims collided with reality.

No. 2 was my take on current (for a few days) Speaker McDade Phelan bailing on running for another term.

No. 3 was my thoughts on whether the Texas GOP would really censure any GOP Legiscritter for voting for Burrows rather than Cook, and whether the two-year primary ban would hold up in court or not.

Texas Progressives say sayonara to 2024

Off the Kuff considers the ethics and value of putting courtroom proceedings on YouTube. 

SocraticGadfly read Jessica Pishko, and disagrees with some of her premises, including but not limited to the idea of abolishing sheriffs.

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project said the work of fighting for democracy will be up to rank & file citizens of Houston/Harris County, rather than people dependent for their livelihood on the mainstream systems bringing the authoritarian outcomes.

The Observer rounds up its best longform stories from the year.  

El Paso Matters reports that Ken Paxton's efforts to kill Harris County's guaranteed income program succeeded in doing so in El Paso. The Barbed Wire remembers an iconic Christmas gift.  

Your Local Epidemiologist highlights 22 public health accomplishments from the past year. 

The San Antonio Report brings you its year in photos.

The Teamsters didn't really strike Amazon; here's what they actually did and its results.

It's more important than ever to bust myths about Hanukkah

As promised, I am pulling this from last week's Texas Progressives roundup, with today being the last day of Hanukkah.

Kuffner found this piece, and it's all wrong.

Rabbi Levi Greenberg writes about Hanukkah's message that evil can be defeated. 

It's got a picture of Chabad at the top of the column, plus Greenberg being a Lubavitcher. It's Zionist just from the Chabad angle, and it's also messianic (and not in that "Messianic Christian" sense) with the Lubavitch angle, especially if Greenberg holds to the Schneerson as Messiah cult within the Lubavitcher world.

Also, since Hanukkah was adapted from an already existing Persian winter solstice festival, it's a lie; more thoughts on that and related here. (A bit more here; more myth and legend in general deconstructed here.) And, reading between the lines about the celebration of the fall of the House of Assad in Syria, and the silence on something else, it's anti-Palestinian. Shock me that Kuff, who passes by the plight of Palestine and pro-Palestinian protestors in silent contempt, would like something like this

Finally, some Hanukkah alt-history, riffing on the first "here" link, here.