What it is - How It works
Posted on 08/20/2008 9:38:58 AM PDT by the anti-liberal
It’s your Fence In Name Only alert. Remember all that talk of how the Secure Fence Act allowed DHS to speed up construction with a special waiver process? Well, the waiver process — like the non-existence fence — is full of holes. And it’s another Bush administration agency that’s standing in the way:
Work on “virtual fences” planned for Arizona’s stretch of the U.S.-Mexican border has been brought to a halt.
The Interior Department has not granted the Homeland Security Department permission to use the land for constructing the surveillance towers that form the backbone of the virtual fences, said Barry Morrissey, spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Washington, D.C.
Without authorization to use the land, no work could begin, which prompted agency officials to instruct the lead contractor on the project, Boeing Co., to suspend activities until further notice, Morrissey said.No date has been set to resume work.
The suspension of work has forced at least one subcontractor, EOD Technology Inc., to lay off 40 security guards who already had been hired and trained, EOD spokesman Bill Pearse said. The company, based in Lenoir City, Tenn., with a small office in Tucson, had plans to hire a total of 100 security guards for the project, Pearse said. The guards were protecting Boeing personnel who were constructing equipment for the virtual fence as part of the SBInet project, he said.
“If Boeing doesn’t have a project, we don’t have a project either,” Pearse said.
Disappointing yes, but not to surprising.
sigh
No kidding.
We should've gotten the fence built and done before either McCain, Bambi, or Shrillery gets in the Oval Office. So much for that...
Disgusting!
This is the item that need to be promoted beyond the internet.
Rush is place number one.
That would be nice, however, the attention seems to be going to Russia/Georgia, the DNC, and veeps - even here at FR this isn’t getting much attention, certainly not as much as it ordinarily would.
ping
Perfectly apropos!
Jorge El Segundo BUSHwacks America - AGAIN!!!!!!!!
This is the MAIN reason this guy’s approval ratings are in the tank - his open border policy and his criminal failure to enforce American border and immigration laws.
No date has been set to resume work.
Sooooo, what little REAL fence (dual layer with "enhancement") has been built that we have been hearing sooo much BS about the past oh, two years is now not going to be supplemented by the oh-so-effective virtual fence because of 100% typical Fed Gov inability to do a single DAMN THING.
Is their anyone and I mean ANYONE here (or damn near anywhere) that did not expect this?
This hardly qualifies as news it is so absolutely pathetic.
Your tax dollars not at work.
I made a post a few hours earlier about that I don’t trust the Interior Dept. It’s been foul from the get go of this administration. This article is a perfect example why.
I had hoped getting Gale Norton out of interior would help! So is Kempthorne just as envirostupid?
Did you know she and Grover Norquist founded their own enviromental non-profit before she was named secretary?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/12/AR2006101200889.html
Report Says Nonprofits Sold Influence to Abramoff
“The groups named in the report are Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform; the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, which was co-founded by Norquist and Gale Norton before she became secretary of the interior;”
No one wants to touch immigration now, except constant appearances before the illegal alien lobby non-profits (there’s a contradiction in terms!).
Laura Ingraham had McCain on this morning. Didn’t get near the subject.
btt
Houston Chronicle en Español, my translation, July 23, 2008
Will Mexico accept a virtual fence or a green fence on the border?
Por NESTOR IKEDA © 2008 The Associated Press
Mexico has "many environmental concerns” regarding the presence of a metal wall on its border with the United States, and it believes that a “virtual” or “green” wall would be less damaging to border ecosystems, Mexican Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources Juan Elvira said Wednesday.
Elvira met with U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne to discuss the actions of Mexico and the United States regarding ten kinds of flora and fauna along the common border. Elvira said that Mexican delegation delivered to Secretary Kempthorne a compilation of reports written in May by experts in Mexico on the environmental effects of the wall that the United States is constructing on the border...
The same level of security that the United States it is looking for on its border with Mexico can be obtained with “virtual” or “green” walls, without the environmental impact of rupturing an ecosystem with the construction of infrastructure, Elvira said.
Nevertheless, he said, the Mexican government has still not made its own ecological evaluation...because it passes through several ecosystems and the construction materials vary from one section to another.
"We are not interested in doing such a study unilaterally,” Elvira said, speaking to reporters at the Mexican embassy. "We want to do it bilaterally.”
He admitted that he arrived at the interview without the clarity of his own scientific study because in order to have one, “We would need to locate the places the fence is being built and the types of impact" the wall is having on ecosystems and populations, studies which the Mexican authorities have yet to perform.
Whether Mexico would accept a “virtual” fence (with electronic equipment) or “green” fence (shrubs or other natural barrier) would not be up to the Mexican Secretary of the Environment, but rather the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations, Elvira said.
"I am not going it categorically to declare what type of wall Mexico would accept,” he said. “But an analysis of all the possibilities indicates it could be a ‘virtual’ wall or a ‘green’ wall.....”
He indicated that the final decision would be based, nevertheless, on a study to be produced by SEMARNAT – the Mexican environmental secretariat – linked to the wall’s economic impacts on Mexico...
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