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Open Border, Militarized Interior
Remember when borders were militarized and cities were policed? That is just so yesterday. Welcome to the latest example of fundamental transformation.
The front page of my local newspaper this morning featured a striking juxtaposition: A new Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicle freshly arrived from Afghanistan to patrol the mean streets of my Silicon Valley town—a gift from the Department of Defense to the Redwood City Police Department—positioned just above the president’s non-response to the man-caused disaster playing out on our southern border.
Did you know that President Obama is visiting Texas? Neither did I, but fear not: our president is in no danger of discovering his missing feck. Obama plans to duck Governor Rick Perry’s invitation to visit the border in favor of headlining a trio of Democratic fundraisers, including—and I am not making this up—”one at the home of Austin filmmaker Robert Rodriguez, known for his ultra-violent Machete movies.”
Posturing with the wealthy is infinitely more hip and cool than witnessing actual concentration camp-style squalor and disease. And some distance is required for the poor, abandoned children awaiting their Greyhound tickets out of ICE custody to serve their primary function as fundraising props for our Avoider-in-Chief.
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) worries that this could be Obama’s “Katrina moment.” Let’s hope so.
But remember: While you are free to stroll into the United States from just about anywhere and for any reason whatsoever, best not to speed in Redwood City, California.
Published in General
George,
Obama’s incoherent foreign policy can now be matched by his incoherent domestic border policy. I named it the “Nightmare Policy”. It is wrong in so many ways at so many levels that the mind boggles.
The next few days are critical. I think if Obama can come out of Texas unmarked he can keep on lying. If instead his baloney falls flat and the border issue continues to hammer him he is going to look like a fool.
Josh Earnest is cool and slick. However, he hasn’t been on the receiving end of a massed attack yet. If the white house press corps starts to really give them trouble Obama can play all the pool and golf that he wants. He is going to have another few points shaved off his pole numbers.
Just 4 months to go.
Regards,
Jim
President Obama has already said that it’s Republicans in Congress who need to stop being obstructionists and pass ‘immigration reform’, so that 20,000 new border patrol agents can be hired.
Long after people have forgotten that he visited Texas today, he will be constantly blaming Republicans; their leadership will negotiate with the Democrats and pass a funding bill for these agents.
The justification will be that we have an ‘humanitarian crisis’ on the border and very soon beyond (as disease begins to accompany these migrants, and starts to spread to other US cities and towns), which we do.
He wins.
Our county (Passaic, NJ) has one of these MRAP monsters too, most often seen in parades. But the Passaic river has a “100 year flood” every 3 or 4 years now. The MRAP can be a lifesaver in rescue operations just due to its road clearance and power. So while it’s mostly a big honkin’ toy, we’ll take it.
Oh, and we also have our share of illegal immigrants.
Let’s hope its role will always be as a “lifesaver”, and not in a Tiananmen Square -style action!
To be fair excess military equipment routinely made its way into SWAT or police units since the days of Al Capone (police forces back then had machine guns, and I don’t mean the hand-held kind). So this isn’t a “new” development. What’s different is that now there are thousands of these useless MRAP in storage, and the US military is giving them out for free.
I don’t see a problem with SWAT having such vehicles. They are no more “threatening” than an armored bank van, since they essentially do the same thing.
Also I fail to see the connection the border. It’s not as if one can exchange resources between one or the other. These are free vehicles that need to be removed from US Army storage. Border Patrol has no shortage of vehicles (they’re everywhere in the border regions). And armored vehicles aren’t suited for that role anyway.
Getting rid of excess resources isn’t a substitute for creating new resources for a different mission.
You *so* want one.
MRAPs, security cameras everywhere, civil forfeiture, war on Drugs, Homeland Security stocking gigantic quantities of ammo, IRS overreach, “if it makes us safer, it’s worth it,” etc.
When all the pieces are put together, the picture isn’t pretty.
Points for that one.
As for the main issue, there comes a point where you have to look around at the debris strewn about you, and accept the evidence. Whatever you’re doing isn’t working. When harmless bureaucracies have SWAT teams, but the border is so porous that children are crossing it trying to get caught, that has got to be evidence that something’s out of whack.
Add to that, the recent incidents between armed feds. and unarmed private citizens (the Bundy ranch ‘showdown’) and the fed’s moving of immigrants to various parts of the country where they are and will be meeting with resistance (Murrieta, CA) and the ceaseless demand for legislation to outlaw the use of guns by law-abiding US citizens.
Exactly. Something is seriously amiss when a Department of Education SWAT team rolling up in a 30-ton armored vehicle to inquire about your student loan payment is a greater probability than deportation when apprehended illegally entering the country.
I think the root cause may be nothing more sinister than end-stage political correctness. For example,we have an enormous national security apparatus charged with preventing another 9-11. However, the worst thing one can possibly do is “profile” anyone about anything–seems racist. So in response the NSA deploys its enormous budget to collect everyone’s personal information; just because it can. And doing so is “fair.”
Similarly, since PC orthodoxy holds it to be racist to enforce immigration laws against aliens committing the “act of love” of illegal entry, we withdraw resources to the interior–to Redwood City. It is so much more fair-minded to lavishly equip SWAT teams in suburban towns and poise them to go after anyone than to array them on the open border.
The message I get is that the citizen is supposed to feel intimidated, while the illegal alien is meant to feel welcomed.
And the immigration flood is obviously intentional. Consider the clockwork multinational coordination required to convey Central America’s surplus population to Texas. As evidence, today’s scheduled shipment of 1,300 aliens was interrupted when the train derailed in Mexico yesterday. How do 1,300 people stowaway on a freight train? And how do they do this each and every day unless it is an approved policy of the Mexican government?
Have no fears, the Obama Express will be back up-and-running in no time.
Something WOULD be amiss, if stories like the one you just described, or the assumptions throughout many of the responses here…were true.
But they’re not.
This specific example you gave, of course, is a very good example to demonstrate how things get misinterpreted and blown out of proportion. DoE investigates loan fraud, not loan payments. It serves warrants on fraudsters, who if they are suspected to be armed and dangerous, requires a bit of force.
I generally feel the whole “anti-police” sentiments that have developed recently on the “right” (mainly libertarians) are far too irrational.
I’m kind of with AIG on this one. My hometown of Walla Walla recently got one of these, and all my conservative friends and family were outraged. I said “What’s the big deal? The only time you are going to see that thing is during the county fair, when they let kids climb around inside it. I know that because our county sheriff’s department has one, and that’s all they ever do with it.
The issues at the border notwithstanding, I’m not too worried about these MRAPs.
Most city SWAT teams are problematic, simply because they don’t get much of a workout. As a result, when SWAT teams are called on, they go into high stress situations with little experience. It used to be that there’d be one team for, say, the whole SF Peninsula. They’d get fairly regular workouts, so they knew how to handle themselves. But now you’ve got inexperienced cops getting sent into stressful situations with military toys. This seems like a recipe for disaster (along the lines of tossing a flash-bang grenade into a baby’s crib because the cops were too lazy to do basic recon – but hey, why bother with recon when you’ve got flash bang grenades and giant military vehicles?)
I’m shaking my head at all of the so-called limited government types who are hunky-dory with police forces being outfitted as though they are in downtown Baghdad circa 2005 as opposed to Small Town, USA. Shaking my head. You people are why I am arming up. Hoping more join me.
I think you are misunderstanding what people are concerned about; it is the ‘nationalization’ of your local and state police so that they become an enforcement arm of the federal government.
That’s my fear, anyway.
A friend who has the inside track on these deals told me that the Feds give these things away like candy to towns and cities because the machines still run, but are old enough to cost a fortune to maintain or dispose of, so the problem is redistributed to municipalities.
I see no evidence of this happening.
Why does the DoE investigate loan fraud? Investigating fraud is clearly within the jurisdiction and responsibility of the FBI. One could also argue that it falls under the jurisdiction of the Treasury/Secret Service. There is absolutely no reason for the DoE to *also* have jurisdiction to investigate fraud. It is entirely outside of the Department of Education’s core mission. They should simply turn their evidence over to the FBI/Secret Service for investigation like everybody else has to do when defrauded.