March 4, 2006
Shooting Straight in Alpine and
D.C.
By
Jack D. McNamara
Down at city hall here in Greater Alpine, they continue to
discover
weird things. By “they” we mean the new interim city manager, the new
city secretary, the auditor and those members of the city council whose
curiosities are still intact after five years of managerial disasters
under the “professional” leadership of former city managers Bill Lewis
and Karen Philippi.
The current scandal, now almost two weeks ongoing, is the attempt to
discover what was going on in a $300,000 streets project. Unknown to
the public or the council, the city’s worst street, Murphy, was deleted
somehow from the grant project.
But the excitement recalls for us one of Karen Philippi’s greatest
moments. That was the occasion in early 2004 when Philippi declared to
a city workshop audience that “outsourcing is the way to go.”
Perhaps it reveals a perverse cast of mind but the trials and troubles
of the city of Alpine are so contemporary, so simultaneous with those
of the federal government that everywhere we look we see with surprise
and delight managerial coincidences. The managers must all go to the
same schools.
For example, we were surprised at Philippi’s judgment but even more
surprised to discover that the Bush Administration intended to
outsource the management of a half dozen major American ports to the
royal families of the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), a weird little
government on the Persian Gulf. The most critical of the concerns in
the Great War on Terrorism (GWOT) is the vulnerability of the seaborne
traffic into the U.S. by sea.
The Bush Administration’s decision is on hold pending further
investigation, like the streets grant in Alpine.
It appears that the decision to turn over ports to a country identified
with specific links to Islamic terrorism was made with the solemn
counsel of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Michael Chertoff
went to the Sunday talk shows to reassure us of the wisdom of the
decision but frequently said that the details of ports management —in
which almost 900 million tons of cargo is annually ingested — the
details are “classified.”
When bureaucrats claim secrecy we are entirely justified in allowing
our doubts some free rein. We are, or we used to be, a doubting people.
There is something wrong about a city streets grant which secretly
deletes projected repairs on our fair city’s worst street. And there is
a lot wrong with this ports deal.
Well of course that is just the carping and whining of the press; “knee
jerk reactions” is a common characterization of our venerable craft.
America’s managers are “moving forward” in the globalized economy and
the GWOT.
Another example of managerial genius is the project known as “La
Entrada al Pacifico.” Tom Mangrem, now retiring from the Texas
Department of Transportation’s Alpine office, discussed the project two
weeks ago at a full house of the local Sierra Club. The project to
bring a super highway through Alpine and Marfa is a piece of political
pork with no justification at all (if we may be allowed our own short
synopsis of last week’s February 27 Big Bend Sentinel story by Andrew
Stuart, “Politics driving La Entrada trade route TxDot official tells
Sierra Club”).
Our knees would be less inclined to jerk if we were somewhere in a
cornfield in Iowa. But instead we are here on the Last Frontier, a
region described only a century past as the “Bloody Border.”
We take our wars seriously. Our governor, Rick Perry, is a recent
convert to border emergency enthusiasm. In August he saw no crisis on
the Texas border with Mexico when the governors of Arizona and New
Mexico (both Democrats) declared state emergencies and allocated
millions to their border countries for security.
Since the Neely’s Crossing standoff in late January, however, the
governor has been a tower of resolve and a fountain of energy. During
the past week the regional press pumped up the state’s Operation Rio
Grande. It is a formidable effort and includes —
•
A state “operations center” acting as a “single hub for incident
reporting and intelligence support for law enforcement agencies” up to
100 miles from the Rio Grande” (“Governor Perry launches new border
operation,” Texas Agriculture, March 3).
•
The governor has ordered the deployment of a “DPS rapid response team,”
“covert patrols” of DPS investigators, aviation support, a “DPS SWAT
Team” and the “development of regionalized, enhanced SWAT teams with
rapid response capabilities,” a “border-wide investigation of alleged
incursions by the Mexican military, conducted by the Texas Rangers,”
and he has activated other state assets.
Texas Agriculture quoted the governor, “While enforcing our border
remains the responsibility of the federal government, the consequences
of an action are felt right here at home in Texas … the State will not
wait for Washington to take all the necessary actions.”
And while we’re at it, might we have our Texas National Guard returned
to us, please?
Texas has just cast a vote of no confidence in the federal government.
The seriousness of our vote is in doubt, however, since Governor
Perry’s security concerns have to be financed by someone. The oil-rich
petro states of the Persian Gulf may not be receptive after the ports
fiasco so we should not depend on Qatar, Bahrain or Riyadh.
Money for the border must of course come from the former Texas
governor, President George W. Bush’s Administration. And the money
better get here soon because the Mexicans are deeply involved in a
presidential election which is getting hotter as it progresses.
Almost without notice in the U.S., Mexico last week militarized the
border — at least that part of the border consisting of the
international bridge crossings from Nuevo Laredo to Matamoros. Further,
the Mexican soldiers were checking cargoes both leaving Mexico and
entering Mexico. The reasonable assumption was that the discovery of a
large arms cache in Laredo might mean that someone was trying to
smuggle arms and explosives into Mexico.
These events are serious enough of course, as one look at DHS Secretary
Chertoff will show. Allowing foreign governments and corporations to
run American ports is insane — but there has been an escalating
narcotics war in Mexico for 20 years, a war that frequently slops over
into the U.S.
The U.S. Border Patrol’s budget has increased 1000% since 1986
according to the New Republic (“Border War” by John Judis,
January-February 2006). Yet illegal immigration has increased, not
decreased.
We are looking at a succession of failures by the federal government —
9/11, Katrina, and border control. Many of the failures have been
neither resolved nor mitigated by the government which so ably brought
us through the Great Depression and World War II.
Perhaps our expectations are therefore too high. Indeed, we put a man
on the moon but that doesn’t guarantee repairs to Murphy Street.
Controversy necessarily follows. We must remember that our current
border controversy began when citizens, frustrated with what they saw
as government failures, began patrolling the border and speaking out.
The sheriffs followed them and the governors then fell in also.
All politics is local. •
(Also published by the Big Bend Sentinel of
Marfa, Texas March 2, 2006.)
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