How strong is the chance that the wall won't get built? I know there's part authorization from the 2006 bill that Trump can/is already using. But I think more legislation is needed to fund the monster wall. Is it possible that this was something Trump found fired up folks at his rallies, but in actuality there's not much congressional/popular support for it? Or do congressional Republicans all owe Trump this favor?
Oh, there's no question it won't get built. For 3 reasons: 1. It's impossible. The reason there is not a contiguous wall now, is because the terrain does not allow a contiguous wall to be built. Something like 900 miles of that border is simply the Rio Grande River. Rivers move. Walls don't. So if you build the wall far inland inside of America (thereby walling off any American access to the Rio Grande itself, bythefuckingway), to try and put the wall far enough away from the river that the river doesn't eventually wash up against the wall and undermine it and make it fall over. 2. It will make the US smaller. You can't build the wall in Mexico, because you don't own Mexico. But there are thousands of American's property who bump up against the border. Now you need to pay every one of those people to take their land (and build a 50-foot wall on the south side, which will block the sun and cause your lawn to die), or even better, seize their land using Eminent Domain! Now, I don't know how well you know Texans, but they ain't gonna take kindly to the U.S. Government coming in a seizing their land and building a big fucking wall (that they don't want) on it. That ain't going to go well for anybody. 3. It's a bogeyman. The "problem" the wall "fixes" is apparently "illegal immigration". Thing is, for the last fifty years, illegal immigration has been going down, and in the last 8 years - due to Obama's truly nasty treatment of immigrants - there is a net outflow of illegal immigrants from America. We LOSE more illegals every year - by their own choice, not through deportations - than we gain. 80% of illegal immigrants arrive in America by fucking airplane, anyway! I don't care how tall or "yuge" your wall is... it ain't stopping airplanes. A wall can't do anything about the thousands of tunnels that bring people and drugs UNDER the border into America. And this happens in places where we HAVE a well-defended wall, and Border Guards! Build a 50-foot wall in the boonies, and you will find 51-foot ladders. (There's a great Border Guard podcast that talks about when the current wall was raised from 13 to 20 feet. They collected so many 21-foot ladders they ran out of ROOM at the border guard's dispatching offices.) Not to mention that every single agricultural business from Arizona to Ohio is going to have a fucking conniption when they can't get enough seasonal workers to pick their harvest before shit goes bad. Because I guarantee you that perky little cheerleader Madison and high school track star Curt, aren't going to pick cabbages for $20/day. No, in short, the wall will never be built. Because at some point, some business has to place a bid for the project (or their part of it). Their engineers will go out there, look at the terrain, design something that will kinda hold up under most conditions (see: New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina to see how well THAT works out) and the numbers don't balance. Illegal immigration MAKES the US an enormous amount of money. Cutting off that flow of money will affect big business, and those people will go knocking on the Oval Office door, and have some very nasty words to say to Tinyhands McDickpunch. The economy is the American God. If you fuck with the economy, you go down. Period.
Now I want to see the Army Corps of Engineers get sucked into a wall-building vortex for the next several years. Considering it takes them six months to clear bamboo from a 4 mile stretch of river in LA, I imagine they'll have blueprints by 2024.Their engineers will go out there, look at the terrain, design something that will kinda hold up under most conditions (see: New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina to see how well THAT works out) and the numbers don't balance.
Lost in all of this conversation is the impact of the soft power in the river of cash flowing back to Mexico from all these workers over here. A good chunk of them come over here, work their asses off, and send EVERYTHING not food and rent back home. This is a hard number to pin down, but most of the anti-immigrant sites gravitate around 50 billion a year Think if we were giving Mexico $50 Billion a year via taxes, there would be riots in Texas and the Midwest. But this river of what amounts to free foreign aide is a HUGE soft power tool. This money, from the people I have met, goes home to pay for housing, food, clothing, education and the other things that families need to dig out of poverty. The Mexican government, if it is smart, wants more people crossing the border and sending cash back home, and wants an end to the drug war so those people can cross safer. The cost to taxpayer number, also forgets something. Many of these people pay into Medicare and SSI but then go home and don't need/use the services they provide. Also the illegals, and from SoCal I knew a ton of them, want nothing at all to do with la policia because la policia becomes la migra and the family back home gets cut off from its cash source. The guys coming over here to work need to be allowed in. The guys coming over here to fight a drug war, stir shit and steal everything not bolted down need to be vetted out. The last time a state got uppity and passed a wide ranging anti immigrant bill? Georgia's farmers has 140 million in crops rot because there were no people to pick, pack and do the shit labour neededIllegal immigration MAKES the US an enormous amount of money. Cutting off that flow of money will affect big business, and those people will go knocking on the Oval Office door, and have some very nasty words to say to Tinyhands McDickpunch.
EXCELLENT additions. Thank you! And you are right. The bad actors - drug dealers, car thieves, etc. - need to be weeded out, but we already have those systems in place: Police and DEA. They need to be properly funded and empowered - and then backed properly by the legal system - to put the hurt on those that are trying to hurt us. The problem is that America is a huge drug vacuum, and it sucks in drugs through every little crack in the armor. Dramatic public policy changes toward drug use and drug users, needs to be implemented to decrease the demand, and cut power to the drug vacuum. Until we do something systemic to make drugs cheaper and less exciting, people are going to make shitloads of money selling them to us any way they can. Remove the financial incentive, and the drug problem goes away. Treating drugs as a health problem, rather than a legal problem, would change these dynamics dramatically. The guys coming over here to fight a drug war, stir shit and steal everything not bolted down need to be vetted out
I've swam the Rio Grande myself, guess that's not gonna be a thing anymore
These all seem like rational arguments one would deploy against someone open to evidence and fact. I don't know if that's what we're up against. Trump conveniently believes global warming is a fiction, that 3 million people illegally voted for Clinton and robbed him of the popular vote, etc. That said, the points you make are prickly and stubborn enough that they may very well frustrate any Trump effort to build a wall. Construction of a mammoth physical object is an endeavor more constricted by reality than merely refusing to believe in human-caused global warming, or tweeting some crazy bullshit.
Trump is not the government. Trump is a part of the government - and a very powerful, very important part of the government at that. But the rest of the government has spent much of their adult lives becoming as powerful and important as they can possibly be and there's only so much to go around. There are very few people in the government who desire a radical, disruptive change to the American way of life. All of them would like things to be more their way than the other guys' way, for sure... but you don't generally get involved in government unless you relish the grinding of sausage. Governance is a process-oriented profession. It is a life-long, avocational application of nuance. The goal is to get what you want, deny your opponents what you don't, and live to fight another day. The Trump administration (still hard to say that) is governing as if they expect the world to end next week. They're blasting through everything they can. They're riding roughshod over everyone who stands in their way to make as much leeway as possible before they get mired in the mud. Let's pretend you're Paul Ryan. You've been in Congress eighteen years - nine terms. You've built coalitions, relationships, alliances, non-aggression pacts and vendettas. You've put up with Democratic bullshit since Clinton was President and here you are, Speaker for the House. And the President is acting like you aren't there. And it's not like he's an ally. He's the guy that you couldn't publicly decry because apparently this is what we're doing now. And it would be righteous to have the House, the Senate and the Executive but apparently the Executive belongs to - wait for it - Breitbart. There are literally bloggers with more power than you. How long are you going to take that? How long are your friends going to take that? Here's the thing: the gerrymandering has worked really damn well. You'll own the House for the next twenty years. After this dumpster fire, the Democrats will win the presidency. At least, you certainly have to consider the strong possibility that whatever follows, it's not gonna look great on the Republicans. ...unless you take a principled stand to check the power of the Executive in the name of stability, equality, and serving all Americans. The Dems will go along with it no problem. Everyone that isn't Tea Party will go along with it no problem. You're kicking the shit out of any future Democratic president and ensuring that whoever runs on the Republican side next time, he'll be a Company man toeing the Company line. Never attribute to malice that which is more easily explained by incompetence. -Napoleon et. al. We've seen plenty of evidence that the Republican Party doesn't know what to do with this dumpster fire. For the Democrats, it's easy: protest or be pilloried. For the Republicans, you're theoretically getting everything you want... along with a bunch of stuff you don't want... all at once, and with no real organization, and delivered to you as if you were on a not-very-good Reality TV show. But at some point you start looking long-term and you recognize that either they're going to take you down with them or you need to check the runaway excesses of an unprincipled Executive branch. Trump is entirely too cozy with Russia. Russia helped get him elected. He's your guy, sure. But guys change. And who's calling the shots here? Multiply times 248 for the House and 54 for the Senate. The Trump agenda may be closer to the Republican agenda than the Democratic agenda, but it's still the Trump agenda. And everybody who signed on enthusiastically before the election? They're cabinet members now.
This sounds exactly like how the Madisonian system of checks and balances is supposed to work. But until I see Trump out of office, I don't know if my blood pressure will dip back into the healthy range (figuratively speaking). Here's me hoping that Realpolitik does some heavy lifting.
I mentioned that the Obama Admin deported more foreign nationals than any other US resident and was call a neonazi. Must be one of those alternate facts because reality is the alternate timeline now.3. It's a bogeyman. The "problem" the wall "fixes" is apparently "illegal immigration". Thing is, for the last fifty years, illegal immigration has been going down, and in the last 8 years - due to Obama's truly nasty treatment of immigrants - there is a net outflow of illegal immigrants from America. We LOSE more illegals every year - by their own choice, not through deportations - than we gain.