DHS won't take resort and oil tycoons' land for fence

The border fence being built by the Department of Homeland Suckyurity is widely considered a joke, regardless of where you stand on the immigration issue. And now it's getting to be even more so.

That's because the DHS will only take your land for it if you're not some wealthy interest with a lot of clout.

In Brownsville, Texas, the DHS filed a condemnation suit to take a 72-year-old woman's property that she lives on. (This after the federal government already refused to pay her family a penny for taking their property to build a levee.) But just a couple miles away, the 18-foot-high border wall is proposed to simply stop where a swanky resort begins. On the other side of the resort, the fence is planned to resume - leaving a gap in the fence where the resort and golf course are.

You have to ask why they're leaving gaping holes in the border fence if the fence is so important. But like I always say: Follow the money! The resort is a large piece of real estate that caters to the very wealthy. By reflex, the government's position is that they don't want to mess with it simply for that reason. No evidence can be found that the resort's owner donated to a political campaign, but I think it's a case where the resort's opulence automatically brings a hands-off attitude by the government.

In Granjeno, Texas, a 76-year-old retired migrant farm worker and cancer patient is about to lose his small house to the serrated talons of Michael Chertoff's DHS. But the fence is slated to end at the edge of a neighboring property owned by the Hunts, a rich oil and gas family. The patriarch of this clan is Ray Hunt, a Bush pal who donated $35,000,000 to Bush's presidential library. (That's where they keep the coloring books, I guess.) As a member of Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, Hunt also got access to classified government poop. The Hunt property has been developed into exclusive neighborhoods.

Not only that, but the Brownsville property that faces demolition isn't even on the border. It's a mile north of it. This further shows that politics was a big factor in deciding where the fence goes. It gets complicated, but you have to follow the trail of dough.

I know how this bullshit works, because I grew up in the Interstate highway building boom. As a lifelong Roads Scholar, I watched Interstate 471 - a radial running from near my digs in Kentucky into Cincinnati - grow from its infancy to its completion. When I was about 4, my favorite road in the area (Lourdes Lane in Newport) was torn down to build I-471, and that set off my decades-long study of the route that now translates into practical politics.

The Interstate ruined several small-lot working-class neighborhoods that spread out from the city. But if you look at a map, you'll notice I-471 bulges to the west to avoid tearing down Highland Country Club. On another stretch of I-471, there was a strip of empty land that would have been perfect for the route, but the road was instead routed clean through a heavily populated Newport neighborhood.

As another phenomenal act of border wall stupidity, the DHS filed a condemnation suit against the University of Texas in Brownsville to build part of the fence, claiming drug smugglers were crossing the borders there. But university police say this is bunk gas, as they've never heard of any international drug runners traversing the campus.

With the fence full of so many gaps, people crossing the border will all end up crossing onto a ritzy golf course or the Hunts' property. That's going to be the unintended result of this costly boondoggle.

How long do you expect the wall to last? It's concrete and steel, so you'd think it'll still be standing hundreds of years from now. But nope. It's expected to last...25 years. That's all. During this mere quarter-century, it will cost $49,000,000,000 just to build and maintain.

Much of the opposition to the fence comes from cities along its route. Since the fence is in their towns, the cities should have the real say, instead of being bossed around by Michael Jerkoff. Maybe the cities should pass laws barring the fence from being built. Or, if the DHS succeeds at condemning land for it, the cities should condemn the land right back for use of the cities' people.

(Source: http://www.alternet.org/story/77320/?page=entire)