All things Texas border: A roundup

First, I think it's kind of funny that Wallbuilder Joe has either actually pissed off, or else, more likely, caused major loss of face at home, to Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Speaking of? The Monthly drops in on Eagle Pass and says it's become a "movie set" fulled with political posturing, especially by wingnut media and then by wingnut state guvs, non-Texas division. 

A second piece looks at how the Border Patrol and DPS, once, and recently, bosom buddies enough that Strangeabbott's Operation Lone Star got takeoff assistance from the BP, have now become frenemies at best. The Lone Star aid from Wallbuilder Joe is itself semi-disgusting, and probably is a partial explainer of why Biden has yet to federalize the Texas National Guard. That aid didn't just start with the tonks on the ground with the BP. Oh, the piece is another good argument for us going back to the old system of putting BP agents on a 4-5 year rotation, like Methodist preachers.

In light of all that, is "Texit" moving closer to reality in light of the SCOTUS ruling on border razor wire? Maybe Texit lite? The Monthly looks. Realistically, as people who read such things know, in terms of dinero, Texas is a "taker" state, not a "donor" state, on net federal government money. If it seceded, all US military bases would close. All defense contractors would have to leave the state to keep US DoD dollars.

Steve Vladeck takes his own long look at federalism versus state immigration enforcement.

Biden and the border; Hypocrisy alert

Team Biden (maybe in part the Deep State within DOJ, but the buck has to stop somewhere) refused to make publicly available documents on the legal negotiations re the Fisher private border wall until threatened with legal action. The new story on that makes pretty clear why, IMO; Biden doesn't want to actually remove the wall.

Sounds like the tonks at the Border Patrol are abetting Strangeabbott and the DPS on locking up Ill Eagles. Be nice if Biden fired more people. Be nice if he also pushed to restore mandatory service location rotations. Neither is likely to happen. For a mix of political reasons and, I believve, personal belief, Biden's actually pretty hardcore on border issues, at least for a Democrat.

Speaking of tonks and hypocrisy, or something, Kyrsten Sinema would indeed think it's a grand compromise to help out the Dreamers, in exchange for BOTH extending Title 42 another year (at least, could be more!) AND giving the tonks even more money than Trump was asking for in his 2018 proposal. Also, any idea that allegedly "immigration moderate" Rethugs like Cornyn will buy in, as long as he's claiming Biden's not enforcing the border, is baloney.

Texas Progressives truly remember Colin Powell and more

Best takedown obit of Colin Powell? Counterpunch. Not only Iraq and Vietnam, but Reagan-era Central America and Iran-Contra. It's detailed and needs reading. DC Babylon is a decent second, and it mentions his prevarications on torture.

Del Rio native Raul Ortiz talks about running the Border Patrol and what he doesn't like about Abbott's Operation Loan Star. He doesn't mention his own agency's problems, though, which go far beyond border lassoings. And, as a career guy, surely he could have said something about "tonks."

The Monthly looks at the hemp biz, especially after the Delta-8 ruling from DSHS.

Texas infrastructure gets a C-minus; the Observer discusses details on the ground. (Note: ASCE has legit concerns around the nation, but it also wants engineers to get more jobs.)

Off the Kuff warns about Greg Abbott's pick for Secretary of State and his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election.

SocraticGadfly took note of Fauci's latest anger, calling people who disagree with him conspiracy theorists, and from the left, wrote about Fauci's self-inflicted mistakes. (And, this was before NIH said the US DID fund gain of function work at WIV, and Fauci's puppies issue, which will be in a new post.)

Justin Miller discusses Danny Goeb's continued battle against antiracism.

Stace stays local and reminds us that we are in the middle of an election, which includes races and bonds in Alief ISD. Get out and vote! 

Pay the homeless to pick up trash? Dallas is considering an idea from other states.

Keep Austin Wonky shows how that city's Proposition A will cost a lot more than its proponents suggest.

Space City Weather presents its official 2021-2022 winter outlook.

Texas Monthly reports on advances in pet cloning.

The Texas Living Waters Project finds good news in Austin's plans for its future water supply.

Texas progressives look at COVID-related, other hypocrisy

As hinted at several times, after "Lucky 13" last week, we've ended separate breakouts for coronavirus news at this corner of Texas Progressives. Per Yascha Mounk, let's hope we can continue that not only through the summer but through the fall. I'm not as pessimistic as him, but I'm not "optimistic," either. Nor, via a piece at Massimo Pigliucci's latest readings, do I care for the use of the "war" metaphor. (Mounk, a Cold War 2.0 guy, likely loves such metaphors.)

That all said, for the second week in a row though, I DO have a separate breakout on police racism, brutality and related issues. It's coming up on Thursday.

With that, let's dig in.


Texas coronavirus

Texas Monthly notes that Gov. Strangeabbott et al have shifted to a "it's your responsibility" plan for "fighting" COVID. And? Isn't that what, on paper, Texas Republican voters have voted for? Of course, blue-ish urban areas have the higher population densities. If they act on their own, how short of a leash will Strangeabbott try to put them on? VERY short, and he's not up for re-election. How would this affect, say, state Lege races?

COVID testing? The Guard helped. Results of said tests? Still AWOL for many for several days.

And yes, cases are continuing to climb.

Space City Weather revisits the question of COVID-19 and the Texas weather.

Texas politics

TM notes Strangeabbott is a hypocrite (in multiple ways, not all enumerated there) for calling on county GOP chairs to resign over racism. Reality? Behind closed doors, Abbott thinks the state GOP stables aren't that Augean.

The Monthly suggests renaming Fort Hood for Roy Benavidez. How about defunding it?

The House District 24 Dem runoff is getting nasty. Olsen's a sort of ConservaDem and vet; that said, Valenzuela is trying to score cheap points off her comments, and I get what Olsen was saying.

Steve Toth makes it into "The Encyclopedia of American Loons."


National

It's official. We're in a recession. Here in Tex-ass, Comptroller Glenn "We're not an oil economy" Hegar's office used the R-word at the start of the month.

Punch Trump in the face enough, metaphorically, and he caves in. He's now admitted he could lose, and if he does, he'll move on, not barricade himself in the White House.

In a surprisingly insightful piece, given its last two or three years of history, High Country News notes that Democrats as well as Republicans like border walls in some way, shape or form.

David Bruce Collins looks at this year's Green Party platform amendment proposals. (The social justice chapter is especially good. That said, I'm with him on cops carrying liability insurance; it would feed the I part of the FIRE maw and might be prohibitively expensive for small governments.)

COVID

A philosopher of science has a great piece on viral virulence evolution in general, and specific information on what we know to date on COVID evolution, and philosophy of science issues behind that.

Fired Florida data scientist starts her own data website. Meanwhile, Florida cases continue to rise even as the GOP moves its convention to Jacksonville to meet in person.

Global

Despite the pandemic being, on paper, a big boost for Amazon, what if people want to shop online, but LIVE and with video assistance? Amazon could get undermined — even though, per the story, it's tried that on a minimalist scale before.

Build the "wall" — out of fiber optic cable?

Business Insider reports on this intriguing option.

First, it works, and was already tested and proven to work a decade ago.

And, contra kneejerk responses by MAGA-heads it worked well enough already back then to tell the difference between weights of people and between individuals and groups.

Indeed, even the Border Patrol is down with it. Well, people on the line are:

"We have a tactical advantage of being able to classify a report, a sensor hit, whatever indication we have of possible illegal activity along the border," Stephen Spencer, an assistant chief patrol agent in Tucson, told the agency in a press release posted Thursday. 

He continued: "It might take 45 minutes to an hour and a half to get to point of that indication. The benefits [of the new technologies] are a rapid response to make the judgment call whether that is something we need to assign assets to look at. If I spend an hour and a half walking to discover a goat tripped a device, I've just wasted three hours of my patrol time."

Customs and Border Protection refused to respond for comment.

Here in Tex-ass, the not-totally wingnut Rep. Will Hurd is down with it. Of course, the biggie is Senate Republicans.

More from Hurd here, in part echoing Spencer

"A physical barrier in some places does make sense, when there's urban-to-urban contact," he said. "But it's not along all 2,000 miles of the border, and there's probably only a handful of miles where something like that is needed." 

The main problem with a physical wall, he said, was that Border Patrol's response time can take between hours and days in remote areas, rendering a wall effectively useless. 

"You need something that can detect a threat and track that threat until you're able to deploy your most important resource — the men and women of Border Patrol — to do that interdiction," he said.

Bingo. As opposed to this stupidity I got on Twitter:

Ye,s and add speakers to tell them to stop since the nearest available Border Patrol is 200 miles away. https://t.co/Oie6IzfvQy

— scott (@mhscott16) February 7, 2019

And, of course, Spencer and Hurd directly refudiate this guy.

So do other news stories, which show immigrants climbing Trump's precious wall with ladders, mayors of border cities saying a wall isn't needed and more.

Border Patrol — how unionism can go wrong over smuggling

President Bush got bashed, rightfully in many ways, in 2002 for trying to emasculate various unions that represented agencies that were folded into the Department of Homeland Security.

But, even before that point, the Border Patrol’s Union, already back in Clinton Administration times, was strongly resistant to the idea of mandatory rotation from post to post.

Well, this story about the prevalence of BP agents either taking bribes to let smugglers across the border, or even engaging in smuggling themselves, show it’s time, past time even, to revisit the issue.

James Tomsheck, the assistant commissioner for internal affairs at Customs and Border Protection, said the agency was “deeply concerned” that smugglers were sending operatives to take jobs with the Border Patrol and at ports.

Especially given that Texas has the longest border with Mexico of the four border states, and has the most documented problems with BP corruption, this is a must issue. And, it isn’t a Democrats vs. Republicans issue.

An old Dallas Morning News story provides more Texas-level details.

Some other things to note.

One is that the illegals are coming from as far south as Brazil.

Two is that guns and drugs are joining the human cargo as among items being smuggled.

Three, contrary to Tomsheck, it’s not just new agents turning bad cop, either. Several of the people in the story had a decade or more of experience, with the Border Patrol or elsewhere in Customs and Borders Protection.

That all said, I can understand the resistance of BP agents to being rotated to new patrol sectors. But, I’m not suggesting a one- or two-year rotation. Every three or four years should be good as part of working to keep bad agents from developing bad connections. Perhaps unannounced, “snap” temporary transfers could be used, too.