The Wall and The Left’s business Plan

The Left’s business Plan

The Wall

Hey, Ese, what we do now, Man?

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            The Christmas season is waning.

            The world is gearing up to celebrate the New Year. Even the hoodlum wagon with its full array of fireworks and low altitude bombs has pulled into Mesilla to exchange money for a half hour of suppressed societal pyromania release. Yes sir, they’ll have horses knocking down fences and dogs running for cover for a full week before they run out of pyrotechnic munitions.

            Let’s hope there is an externality.

            Maybe between the generosity of Santa and the pending fireworks spectacular the so called Republican leadership can gain some pelotas como en testiculos. With rare exception, they seem more comfortable with surrender than standing in a storm united. The disappointment is immense. Other than a tax break and the appointment of two Supreme Court judges, their time in the barrel is going to yield to us what the little boy shot at.

            To those of us in the federal lands West that means … nothing.

            The Left’s business plan

            Although it is implicated with Green Peace, the tried and true leftist business plan has been effective. It stems from four actions. The first is to invent a problem of strategic interest. It doesn’t have to be genuine, and, in fact, few to none of these major causes ever have multigenerational legs. To support the premise of the problem, a deluge of anecdotal evidence is introduced by some expert and then picked up and carried by the press.

            The next step is to invent a reasonable solution. It must sound plausible. Again, anecdotal evidence is needed. Peer reviewed science is only set forth if it is a closed union.

            The next step is to pick an enemy. What follows is like a barrio dog fight. Just think of who public enemy number one has been over the last two years. If a crossover Repub can be trotted out to agree, all the better. The benefit is twofold. It can score immediate press impact. And, a no vote from the suddenly elevated, rainy day antagonist can be counted upon. He or she will feel the love.

            Finally, and most importantly, any and all alternative solutions and or inclinations must be dismissed with viral prejudice.

            The Wall

            This business about ‘The Wall’ has become torturous.

            As usual, the greatest distance from ground zero seems to generate the loudest voices and most profound logic. The business plan problem has become humanitarian good. Anecdotal evidence is promoted in spades. The President is the target and every statement from him or in his support is dismissed with poisonous indignation and projected emotion.

            The barrio dogfight is being played out in full color.

            What taxpayers should realize, though, is there is a cost. Notwithstanding the cost to the nation, the cost limited to the four border states is poco grande any way you cut it.

            The place to start is the estimated illegal population in the four states.

            There are an estimated 6,671,000 illegals in the four border states. The low is 140,000 in New Mexico and the high is 4.1 million in California. Certainly, there are contributions made by those illegals. One source suggests that a total of $4.954B is fed back into the economy annually by their direct spending. That is a lot of money, and, interestingly, nearly equates to the current request for border wall construction.

            The dynamics of their spending, however, pales in comparison to the net costs of education, welfare, health care, justice related expenses, and all the general category combinations. The net cost to my state, New Mexico, is $684M. Since New Mexico is so dependent on federal infusions (the state budget depends on over a third of its total from the feds and the rest of you taxpayers), the suggestion that taxpayers of the state are on the hook for that total is somewhat misleading. As a marker of the significance of that number, though, that general level is about what oil and gas revenues have been from the royalties paid to the state by fluid mineral producers. Basically, what they pay into the state offsets the costs to support the state’s illegal population. Surely, that should make somebody swallow.

The number for Arizona’s 631,000 illegals is $2.4B.

The net for Texas’ 1,800,000 illegals is a staggering $10.8B. That represents an annual $1197 household cost for every resident breadwinner.

The similar cost for the grand dame of welfare border states, California, is $25.3B. Comparing the household cost similarly to Texas, each breadwinner should know that represents about $2,370 each year. That eso no es un poco eso es mucho to support that state’s 4.1 million illegal nonresidents!

The combination for the four states comes to throbbing $39.2B each year for the cost of our hospitality to illegals in border states alone. That doesn’t imply a thing about what that influx has done to American wages or the societal cost of collateral consequences to this nation.

The question can only be asked, “How much wall can you build with that?”

Hey, Ese, what we do now, Man?

            My goodness, how that subtitle takes me back to football practice too many years ago as we talked trash among ourselves. Dislodge all the racial nonsense, we were brothers and that memory is only reinforced today. We played many games in El Paso some of which we could see the lights of nearby Juarez from the field of play. Those lights are all still there, but so is the border wall between the cities. Don’t let anybody kid you that the wall that now exists between El Paso and Juarez is not hugely effective.

            It is, and, without it, it would pose a greater threat to every one of us.

            Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “As resistant as some of these legislators have become, it makes one wonder how much campaign funding is flowing across the border.”