Posted on 06/01/2007 11:29:34 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
McALLEN, Texas - The chief of the U.S. Border Patrol told angry mayors, businessmen and environmentalists Friday the federal government would have the final say on the exact location of a 700-mile border fence.
Local officials have been fuming over what they consider the secrecy surrounding a proposed fence they say will cut farmers off from water, harm wildlife, ruin recreational areas and send a hostile message to Mexico, Texas' biggest trading partner.
Chief David Aguilar said that he wanted to work with members of the Texas Border Coalition, but that if they came to an impasse, the federal government would have the final say.
"The mission of securing this country is Mission One," he said.
Within months of getting Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's assurances that decisions on the fence's location would not be made without their input, coalition members intercepted a confidential U.S. Customs and Border Protection memo that included a map of the fence.
Customs and Border Protection has since said the map is preliminary.
Local leaders told Aguilar on Friday that poor communication persists, with all their information so far coming from intercepted memos, including a request for proposals for the fence contract.
"What is your plan in Texas? Where is the fence going to be built?" coalition leader Mike Allen said.
"I can't tell you today," Aguilar said. "If I told you where the fence was going that would mean we'd never partnered with you."
He said there were "no confidential memos."
But John McClung, president of the Texas Produce Association, who attended a separate fence meeting Friday between landowners and the Border Patrol, said agents rolled out maps of private property marked with lines showing exactly where the fence was being considered. The lines were drawn on the levees, which can be as much as 1 1/2 miles inland from the Rio Grande.
"When you listen to the chief of the Border Patrol say this morning that this all is subject to consultation with localities and then you go to a site meeting and you see big rollout maps with lines drawn on it, you begin to wonder what their definition of consultation is," he said.
I have serious doubts that an effective fence will ever be constructed or that Bush has any intention of closing the border.
All this incessant bickering and the ability of individuals and activists to paralyse any and every initiative is, I think, a very serious problem in America. Why should we be surprised that they are having trouble erecting that fence quickly when it took 23 years to get a new runway for the Atlanta airport and the new WTC is still just a big fight, as far as I can tell.
It's decadence.
A society becomes so encumbered that it collapses under its own weight.
Europe is obviously sinking fast in self-destructive decay. It can't even defend itself. Its people obviously have no will to survive, find nothing in their civilization worth working--let alone fighting--to preserve.
The U.S. Left is the manifestation of this same decadence in America. Evidently it's not as powerful here as it is in Europe. Middle America serves to counterbalance it. But the American Left is nonetheless powerful. The Democrat Party is its political machine. The "Mainstream Newsmedia" serves as its propaganda machine. Much of the American intelligentsia has succumbed to this decadence, embraced it, and committed to expanding it.
This decadence is probably the greatest threat to Western Civilization in history. It is certainly the greatest threat to the United States in the world today.
Note tagline. This decadence is gnawing at American society from within.
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