The Mexican Fence.........

The following editorial is reprinted here today without permission simply because it is too dam good not to share. I have been a subscriber of Investors Business Daily since on or about 1984 when my good friend Dave Utter took me to a meeting that his pal, Jim Damron formerly of Bateman Eichler Hill Richards invited him to. Mr. Damron I believe was the first circulation manager of the IBD newspaper. Bill O'Neill has done a heck of a job with the newspaper over these past 20 some years and I applaud him on the work he's done to improve the paper every year. Very few stockbrokers or financial consulting types use the newspaper simply because they have never made any serious money in the market and don't know how to do the work to make money in the market. It is my daily bible. As a former San Diegan and knowing intimately of the ills brought to California by the millions of criminal aliens who have passed through the San Diego-Mexican border this editorial sums things up succinctly. By the way, every time I shop at Costco I think of the old company run by Sol Price out of San Diego, Price Club, (PCLB was the symbol.)

If you ever get the chance, ask Bill O'Neill just how many millions he made on PCLB back in the late 1970's and early 80's. It was so much you probably wouldn't believe him.

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Posted 12/19/2007

Immigration: Congressional Democrats, and some Republicans, gut the Secure Fence Act in the omnibus spending bill against the wishes of the American people. In a bill with 9,000 earmarks, border security takes a back seat.

The Secure Fence Act of 2006 required the construction of 700 miles of border fence, modeled on the success of the border barriers in the San Diego sector of the U.S. border. The operative word is "secure."

That legislation specifically called for "two layers of reinforced fencing" and listed five specific sections of the border where it should be built. The omnibus spending bill removes the requirement for two tiers and the specific list of locations.

The two-tier fence in San Diego runs 14 miles along the border with Tijuana, Mexico. The first layer is a high steel fence, with an inner high anti-climb fence with a no-man's land in between.

It has been amazingly effective. According to a 2005 report by the Congressional Research Service, illegal alien apprehensions in the San Diego sector dropped from 202,000 in 1992 to 9,000 in 2004.

As local congressman and presidential candidate Duncan Hunter notes, "The success of the San Diego Border Fence demonstrates the overall effectiveness of the double-layered approach and the importance of extending this infrastructure across the southern land border."

It is that very success, we suspect, that frightens the open-border crowd and their representatives in Congress. How else to explain that, as the citizen watchdog group Grassfire (grassfire.org) notes, just five miles of fence that meets specifications has been built in the first year after the Secure Fence Act was passed.

The spending bill was written by Democrats and passed 253-154 with mostly their votes. Democrats say they weren't deliberately dropping the two-tiered fence or the locations specified. They say they were merely adopting language that passed the Senate several times this year.

Indeed, in the Senate version is a curious amendment by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas, that was added on a voice vote. Her amendment reads:

"Nothing in this paragraph shall require the secretary of Homeland Security to install fencing, physical barriers, roads lighting, cameras and sensors in a particular location along an international border of the United States, if the secretary determines that the use or placement of such resources is not the appropriate means to achieve and maintain operational control over the international border at such location."

Hutchinson's office says the amendment merely gives DHS flexibility. What it provides, however, is an excuse to do nothing at all and a license for open-border politicians to pressure DHS.

DHS is on record as preferring in many instances "pedestrian fences" or "virtual fences" that are essentially a look-but-can't-touch version of border security.

"By eliminating the double-fence requirement, the Democratic Congress is going to make it easier for drug and human smugglers to cross our southern land border," said Hunter.

"This goes against the interests of any family that has been touched by illegal drugs or any American who has seen their job taken by an illegal alien."

Congress has also made it easier for terrorists to sneak their operatives into the U.S.

This is in a nation that won two world wars and put men on the moon. The border fence would have been farther along if we'd just given the Minutemen a federal grant in the form of a gift certificate to Home Depot.

So the next time you hear candidates for any office say they support border security, give them a post-hole digger and point them toward Mexico.