With nearly $1 billion spent, Texas officials are gearing up to dish out far more cash for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1450148
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1450148
Will this Wall™ wash away down the rio grande, like the last one?
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Thank goodness they didn’t spend that money on their power grid. Anyone who crosses the border will keep going until they get to a state with reliable electricity.
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Texas has had a “F_ck You” mentality from day one! F_ck them!
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You can bet that the huge chunk of those 800 million has found its way into Republican aligned PACs if not outright numbered accounts in Cyprus.
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Abbott’s wall will never come close to completion and that will be obvious even to slower peckerwoods as soon as Abbott decides his ambitions for higher office and bigger profits won’t pan out.
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Abbott has a very practical sense of his personal electability. I’ve seen it up close. This feels to me like he’s holding back on a presidential bid unless and until Trump gets indicted. Because building a dumb wall isn’t going to beat the original dumb wall builder, but it could easily be something that differentiates Abbott from the other candidates with the MAGA base if Trump drops out.
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15th century answer to a 21st century problem
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The article misses out on the core corruption going on with the wall building:
The state gave the latest contract to the Sullivan Land Services Company (SLSCO), a construction and disaster response firm owned by a trio of brothers from Galveston. The Sullivan brothers’ outfit has won major government business in Texas over the years, including over $300 million in services provided for the state’s COVID-19 response and Operation Lone Star border mission, state spending records show. Much of that has come in the way of no-bid emergency purchases, permitted by Abbott’s ongoing disaster declarations that suspend typical competitive bidding procedures.
The brothers — John, Todd and Billy — have also been generous donors to Abbott’s campaigns, collectively giving him over $250,000 in contributions over the years, according to state campaign finance records.
Abbott ensuring that his donors keep suckling off Texas taxpayer dollars.
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Can somebody do me a favor? Can somebody articulate to me what the harm of immigration is, why we limit immigration to this country, and why whenever I ask these questions do people get mad at me?
Every time I see an article in The Times about immigration, the comments are filled with people talking about law and order and rules and illegal this and illegal that, with no real reflection on how stupid, how undemocratic, how blatantly hypocritical, and how ignorant they sound.
It seems the obviously be racism. Am I the only human who sees this? Why do so many people I know who in every other aspect of life are actively anti-racist, xenophobic and racist in this circumstance?
Edit: this is a serious request. I have lost the ability to debate this issue because I literally don’t understand my opponents’ position.
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I guess it’s too much to hope for that Texans across the State might want to know where that billion dollars is coming from. I know Texas has a pretty good-sized economy and they get a lot of Federal dollars, but that’s a pretty exorbitant number.
Someone should want to know, especially when/if the money is coming from outside the State. Hard to imagine this isn’t coming with some strings attached.
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But I thought the wall was going to be paid for by Mexico.
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Texas was once a part of Mexico, so I guess it counts?
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I’m still waiting for the day that Mexico demands the Tejas land be returned to them.
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The people of Texas need that border wall more than they need absolutely anything that the Abbott administration is willing to provide.
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Texas should be an example in an abnormal psychology book. It is the textbook example of mass overcompensation. What an awful place it is.
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I feel disoriented. My mind is unable to process the circular reasoning of the concept of state ownership of land, the state itself, the state as a reflection of the populace, etc.
90% racism, 10% zero-sum/I-got-mine thinking. You can play with the specific proportions if you like, but that’s the basic mix.
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I don’t see any mention of it, but I thought the Biden administration was trying to claw back the CARES funding that was misused.
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Indeed, How they gonna keep executing people without reliable electricity.
The State executed five people in 2022 and has put three people to death to date in 2023.
Texas currently has six more executions scheduled for 2023 (as of 02/09/23).
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