An emergency Trump administration plan to tap storm protection funds to pay for a border wall was slammed Friday by Houston lawmakers who said it could endanger the city’s recovery from Hurricane Harvey and jeopardize the region’s preparedness for future storms.
While details of the proposal remained unclear, lawmakers in both parties scrambled to win assurances from the White House and allay concerns about projects in the Gulf Region, including a proposed coastal barrier to protect Galveston Bay and the Houston Ship Channel.
Reports that President Donald Trump has been briefed on a plan to use unspent money from Army Corps of Engineers projects heightened tensions in Congress about his threat to use emergency powers to build hundreds of miles of barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border, much of it in the Rio Grande Valley.
The controversy also highlighted long-standing concerns about the slow pace at which Washington has released emergency disaster funds to Texas since Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
I wonder if this is what Trump meant when he said that Dan Patrick had offered to help pay for the wall? Maybe someone should ask him. There’s too much mendacity and stupidity here to waste time analyzing this, though my friend Amy Patrick took a crack at it from an engineering perspective. Not that any of this really matters, since Trump changes his mind every five minutes about what he does and doesn’t want. It does serve as a good distraction from the reporting that Trump is an asset of Russian intelligence, so there’s that. Happy Monday, everyone.
Amy has an interesting write up. I wonder how Amy the certified wall expert feels about the existing sections of fence. Are they flooding problems? Should they be torn down?
What is Amy’s expert opinion on the walls the US taxpayers have built for Israel and Jordan? Do they work, or nah? I’d really like to hear her opinions on other walls we have actually built.
She says steel slats could be defeated by a ladder and a guy welding a perch on top, 30 feet in the air. Seems like such an undertaking would be pretty easy to spot, and stop. I mean, portable welder? They aren’t exactly super quiet, and that should be pretty easy to see, even at night.
The drone theory resonated with me, and that’s an interesting workaround. Seems like laser tracking guns like we have on naval vessels would be helpful to stop that kind of incursion, but then, if we actually used force to repel invaders, we wouldn’t need a wall. Just shoot any person that crosses the demarcation line. How many troops have served at the DMZ in Korea. We know how to do that, if we had the will to do so.
How many presidents talk about immigration? How many presidents have visited McAllen, Texas? No statement of support our dissent, but when small towns get a voice, as opposed to New York, Washington DC, and L.A., people should listen.
Bill your ignorance never ceases to amaze me, if you bother to study how Israel has done with the fencing, about 90% is fencing, you may realize how ignorant you appear to many people.
“Although critics have sought to portray the security fence as a kind of “Berlin Wall,” it is nothing of the sort. First, unlike the Berlin Wall, the fence does not separate one people, Germans from Germans, and deny freedom to those on one side. Israel’s security fence separates two peoples, Israelis and Palestinians, and offers freedom and security for both. Second, while Israelis are fully prepared to live with Palestinians, and 20 percent of the Israeli population is already Arab, it is the Palestinians who say they do not want to live with any Jews and call for the West Bank to be judenrein. Third, the fence is not being constructed to prevent the citizens of one state from escaping; it is designed solely to keep terrorists out of Israel. Finally, only a tiny fraction of the total length of the barrier (less than 3% or about 10 miles) is actually a 30 foot high concrete wall, and that is being built in three areas where it will prevent Palestinian snipers from around the terrorist hotbeds of Kalkilya and Tul Karm from shooting at cars as they have done for the last three years along the Trans-Israel Highway, one of the country’s main roads. The wall also takes up less space than the other barriers, only about seven feet, so it did not have a great impact on the area where it was built.
Most of the barrier will be a chain-link type fence similar to those used all over the United States combined with underground and long-range sensors, unmanned aerial vehicles, trenches, landmines and guard paths. Manned checkpoints will constitute the only way to travel back and forth through the fence. The barrier is altogether about 160 feet wide in most places.
The land used in building the security fence is seized for military purposes, not confiscated, and it remains the property of the owner. Legal procedures are already in place to allow every owner to file an objection to the seizure of their land. Moreover, property owners are offered compensation for the use of their land and for any damage to their trees.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/background-and-overview-of-israel-s-security-fence
I would provide better links but they are behind walls where people have to pay for the hard obtained information.
If only that border wasn’t a pesky 2,000 miles wide, we could have an ICE Agent posted every 50 feet… you know, to properly observe the migrant hoard massing at our border wall. We’d need what, around 212,000 Agents in place 24/7 ?
Took the Chinese a couple hundred years to construct their Great Wall. I’m sure the US could get theirs constructed in less time.. say 150.
You can’t fix stupid…
CL:
I have a solution where NO wall is built. Every 1,320 feet, we put a put up a fortified pillbox with two men. That’s 8 soldiers per mile, so roughly 16,000 to crew one shift, making it 3 shifts puts the total number at 48,000. We already have large bases near the border anyway, like Ft. Bliss, so manpower is close by.
Have the demarcation line of the border very clearly marked , have another line 50 feet into the interior of the US clearly marked, and give orders for the soldiers to shoot to kill any person entering the kill zone from the Mexican side, period. Women? Children? Old people? Military age males? Waste anyone that crosses from Mexico into the US. Back that up with predator drones . and perhaps an A-10 every 3 or 4 hundred miles, for close air support for larger groups, and you’ve secured the border, with no fences.
The soldiers will meet and greet with the various land owners, who will only lose the area of the pillboxes through eminent domain, as well as an easement to access the border, which I am sure the government already has anyway.
The soldiers will learn who belongs on each ranch, who should be near that 50′ zone, and all workers and visitors will be made known to those soldiers manning the machine gun nests.
I suppose the bleeding hearts here won’t go for that solution, though.
Manny,
What do you think that article says that indicates a wall wouldn’t work for us?
Bill it does not work for them, except when they have armed men shooting, and they are more civil and certainly more humane than you because they don’t shoot everything that moves.
But you are like Trump and all other Republicans you hate anything that is not a white male and probably straight.
Bill but you are asking the wrong question, what do you think the wall does? Because it does not stop people from coming across, it just makes it harder. Those that solve that problem should be given immediate citizenship and a person like you should be shipped to Antarctica.
East German Border Guards 2.0.
You are truly reprehensible.
Former Naval Intelligence Officer Jim Wright has a very good take on walls:
https://mobile.twitter.com/Stonekettle/status/1076224542589284353
Fly,
Your comparo hits a little snag….the East German border guards were keeping people IN, not out, but you knew that already. I’m proud of you for using the Ron Paul argument, though.
Reprehensible? That’s a little harsh. You say you want to solve the border security issue with no wall. I just solved it for you. Would you feel better if our troops used rubber bullets on the first ammo belt, then switched to live ammo if the invaders didn’t stop or turn back? OK, I can go for that, because hey, I’m compassionate.
As to your Twitter dude,
“They ALL had to be monitored and patrolled. Or they were no more an impediment to migration than any natural barrier. ”
He’s right. Manny’s right. You put up a barrier, then monitor and patrol it. The barrier slows people down, it doesn’t stop them by itself. Isn’t that what our BP is supposed to be doing? Isn’t that their job? Twitter dude says you can’t move a permanent barrier, it’s fixed. So what? Unless we have designs on invading Mexico and seizing land, the border is the border, and the wall will be in the right place today, tomorrow, and 100 years from now.
If illegals weren’t pouring over the border, we wouldn’t have to be such dicks about this, but the fact is, they are pouring across the border and we have to insist, with force, that they stop.
Problem is Hillary, Obama, Schumer, etc…. are on record of being in favor of more border protection in the past. They are just not for it now.
“Your comparo hits a little snag….the East German border guards were keeping people IN, not out, but you knew that already. I’m proud of you for using the Ron Paul argument, though.”
The direction people are running makes no moral difference. In both cases people are fleeing from something bad. You are advocating the sort of thing that gets people put on trial for war crimes, expect you can’t even use a “fog of war” excuse here.
I doubt moral arguments are unique to Ron Paul.
“He’s right. Manny’s right. You put up a barrier, then monitor and patrol it. ”
Except then you are not being anywhere near to upfront about the actual total cost. You also can’t adapt to changing tactics from people trying to get in. You seem to have skimmed over the part about not needing the wall if you have enough monitoring.
“If illegals weren’t pouring over the border, we wouldn’t have to be such dicks about this, but the fact is, they are pouring across the border and we have to insist, with force, that they stop.”
And again you show the true moral rot in your character, as you’re all about shooting refugees , even children, yet you say zip zilch, nada about sanctions for people who hire under the table. The same with DonnieDimwit- there are no chants of “Lock them up!” regarding those employers. The silence speaks just as loud.
“Problem is Hillary, Obama, Schumer, etc…. are on record of being in favor of more border protection in the past. They are just not for it now.”
There are places where fencing makes sense. and what do you know- those places tend to already have fencing. Given Schumer is the only one in office currently, his opinion is of more import than the other 2, and he isn’t opposed to more border security. Just the stupid boondoggle wall.
Paul why show up and push the same lies that they feed you. One Clinton is not an elected official, neither is Obama.
Trump in his budget asked for 1.6 billion, they gave him 1.3 billion, he has not spent a penny of it.
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/mexico/2017/05/23/border-wall-funding-shrinks-trumps-2018-budget
Don’t you all ever get tired of pushing lies, do you just not know better. Do you think everyone is as stupid as most Republicans? If not stupid racists or bigots.
But if it is terrorist you want to stop then go build a wall on the Northern Border, 4,000 miles long. Four times as many terrorist have been caught coming in through Canada. But the vast majority fly in, let us stop all flights in. I would provide links but then it won’t post. If just people coming in illegally, try airports again.
Don’t you’ll ever get tired of pushing lies?
Good luck in finding Americans doing the labor on building that wall.