Author: mopress

It’s a monetarist bubble that is popping under the global economy argues Asia Times economist Henry CK Liu, and throwing future debt into past debt is only going to result in a decade of hard times.

From Liu’s point of view, 2008 was a year mis-spent. First there was complacency and denial. Then, future debts were applied directly to past debts in a colossal waste of wealth and opportunity.

In the end, says Liu, the average taxpayer is being forced to assume “risks” made by financial elites. In return, the same elites will demand leaner capital budgets. The result? Average workers will soon be financing their own unemployment.

At some point, says Liu, emergency attention needs to turn to average worker wages. This is where the battle for economic health will be lost or won.

On the supply side of the argument, as we hear daily from CNBC, the “bailout” funds are being tossed onto assets that will some day recover their worth, keeping the tax burden low.

Since banks are now asking for even more billions, it seems sensible that taxpayers should demand assets in return for any money spent upon a banking institution. If worse comes to worst, banking functions should be nationalized.

Trillion dollar priorities are being reordered at a rapid rate these days, and workers are feeling the pain of being left outside. Yet as Henry George very sensibly observed, there is no good reason why busy people cannot be merged into an economy where each busy person helps to meet some other busy person’s needs.

Henry CK Liu puts it this way:

When unemployment of 6% of willing workers is accepted as structural in an economic system, the fault is with the system, just as if a hospital accepts an annual mortality rate of 6% of its curable patients as structural, the hospital’s operation needs to be reexamined. The fundamental flaw in market capitalism is its inherent failure to deliver full employment as a social goal.

The hard times are already hitting our Texas neighborhoods, and everyone who knows anything about it only promises that times will soon get harder.

Against the hard times we have voices that can demand: keep us working together for the things that all of us need. The average worker can afford to pay for a program like that.–gm

By Nick Braune

According to the McAllen paper, The Monitor, some 5,000 people in the Rio Grande Valley applied for jobs with the Border Patrol in the last four months. That it is not completely surprising since the agency pays almost $50,000 a year and has embarrassingly low entry-level requirements, a high school diploma. (Compare that to other federal enforcement agencies which require a college degree at minimum.)

As I have reported in previous columns, there has also been some question, arising from within their own ranks, about how well the new recruits are being screened and mentored. And The Monitor has also noted lately that there were four Border Patrol officers in the Valley arrested for felonies in 2008. Five, if you count the brother of one of the arrested agents. The brother is also in the Patrol and was arrested in neighboring Zapata County for taking $23,000 in bribes from drug traffickers. Four of the five arrested last year were involved in drug trafficking.

Why is it important to keep an eye on the Border Patrol? Well, it has been beefed up massively as part of the “virtual wall” initiated by the Bush crowd, a trend which probably will continue under Obama and his conflicted Homeland Security nominee, Janet Napolitano. And the Patrol’s rapid growth is also ominous because it is taking place during this unethical period of “criminalizing” immigrant labor violations. (“Search” for several other online articles about the Border Patrol and “Operation Streamline” in the Texas Civil Rights Review site.)

The Patrol has traditionally been hapless, and its mission unclear. Founded in 1924, its intended mission was not really to prevent Mexican immigrants, but European and Asian immigrants, from entering. Also worth noting is that it has always policed the working class – note its conflict recently with the California Day Laborers Organizing Network, which is accusing the Border Patrol of blatant profiling and operating on the basis of a quota. One often hears the chant “Abajo La Migra” in farm worker circles, and it makes sense: founded as part of the Labor Department and staying there for its first 16 years, the Border Patrol has always kept labor it its ken and served the employers.

During the 1930s it remained “poorly staffed, poorly equipped, poorly administered and largely disorganized.” (For this article I’m following Juan Ramon Garcia’s classic book, Operation Wetback, written in 1980.) And the Patrol soon developed an embarrassing reputation, which still survives in Border areas, that it will enforce the laws except when powerful interests, certain growers, don’t want it to. Even the Border Patrol’s clothing was inconsistent (generally lacking the usual military or police uniforms).

But in 1940, the Immigration and Naturalization Services was moved from the Labor Department to the Justice Department. Garcia explains that Roosevelt, when WWII was nearing, was worried about Italians and Germans entering the country, not Mexicans. However, the Patrol also did not even do well in WWII. Why? First, many agents wanted to join the real military and quit, depleting the ranks. But secondly, the government, during the war, was happy to have documented and undocumented Mexicans coming into the U.S. to work, freeing up other workers to go into the military, so the Patrol agents were held in limbo, reinforcing their do-nothing image. And lastly, no doubt it was a little unclear what kind of important national security or law enforcement role the Patrol played.

Although we might think that joining the Justice Department would have been an ego boost for the Patrol, actually it made them feel even more like a second-rate enforcement agency, compared to the famed and focused FBI, for instance. And Garcia notes that the Justice Department did little to promote the Patrol — it is not very glamorous tracking down hungry and unarmed people.

Often half-blindfolding itself, it let in enough undocumented workers to serve the growers’ interests while also making sure there were not too many immigrants. And Garcia says, “It was not unusual for them to allow undocumented workers to roam the Valley and concentrate their efforts on keeping the undocumented away from the industrial jobs up North.” Could this — controlling the flow of labor north — be the origin of today’s “checkpoints,” the ugly, racially profiling, permanent roadblocks on highways about 80 miles north of the Border? (There were no such checkpoints coming south from Canada.)

It was really not until “Operation Wetback,” a racist military operation in 1954, coordinated by General “Jumping Joe” Swing, that the Border Patrol started to get some recognition and status. (Swing, a “professional Mexican hater” who served with General Pershing chasing Pancho Villa decades before, ran a military style sweep and a flashy publicity campaign against “wetbacks.” (Even President Eisenhower used this crude term, although he apparently apologized for it once.) Interestingly, today we hear of “border security” keeping terrorists from coming up from Mexico; in 1954, they warned us of communist infiltrators coming over the border.

General Swing, within a few short months, scattered hundreds of thousands of Mexicans — he bragged it was well over a million — deep into Mexico. Today we would call it “ethnic cleansing.” A thousand people a day were moved in and out of the McAllen detention camp. Swing even used ships, one called The Constitution, to drop immigrants off in Vera Cruz, 800 miles from the Tex-Mex border. (According to Garcia, The Patrol kindly let those who were dropped off have at least three dollars with them when they reached a part of Mexico they had never seen before.)

After participating in that touted 1954 success, the Border Patrol began to be seen as a bit more “respectable,” in the sense that it was said to have been successful in something. The uniforms got spiffier. But it has always been considered seedy, in the pocket of business, and it has had an inferiority complex and a chip on its shoulder; and consequently, when we see rapidly growing numbers of agents in the Rio Grande Valley, with vans and green uniforms and side arms, we feel uneasy.

[Much of this article appeared in the Mid-Valley Town Crier.]

by Greg Moses

To seal the border would they kill the river? For the time being, US Border Patrol officials say they will not spray herbicides to kill the wild Carrizo Cane along the banks of the Rio Grande River. But wary residents along the river have filed a federal lawsuit to guarantee their rights to an ecologically safe border.

In lawsuit documents released on Wednesday, an association of residents who live near the Rio Grande River charge that the Border Patrol did not take a “hard look” before declaring that proposed helicopter spraying of herbicide would have “no significant impact” on the river environment.

Residents of the Barrio De Colores association say the August 2008 environmental impact statement issued by the border patrol “cannot stand” because the analysis of impacts was not adequate, reasonable alternatives were not fully considered, and residents were not adequately notified of their rights to participate in the environmental impact review.

Some recent news reports have villified the wild Carrizo Cane plants for their ability to grow tall and thick enough to serve as co-conspirators in border smuggling operations. But environmental scientist Dr. Jim Earhart argues that poisoning the plants is not necessary if goats and donkeys are allowed to eat them.

The plants have been considered pests in the valley since they were introduced by European settlers centuries ago. Spraying herbicides from helicopters, however, would only compound the damage done to the river by outside forces.

“The Rio Grande does not belong to the United States,” said Executive Director of the Rio Grande International Study Center Jay Johnson-Castro at Wednesday’s outdoor press conference. “Nor does it belong to Mexico. It belongs to we the people.”

Residents of the Barrio De Colores association are not satisfied by this week’s assurances that the spraying has been postponed as a consequence of meetings between the border patrol and Mexican officials.

Says attorney Israel Reyna, “The day the court says it’s not going to happen, that’s when it’s not going to happen.”

[Sources: KGNS, FoxNews.com, and Barrio De Colores. Read the federal court petition here.]

By Nick Braune
Mid-Valley Town Crier<br
by permission

Although I am a sourpuss and think President Obama is beholden to much the same crowd as was ex-President Bush, there are many people anticipating that things will change for the better soon. And so there is a resurgence of progressive activity going on, and that is good.

One source of optimism is that Michael Chertoff is gone as Homeland Security head. Two weeks ago, after another disturbing factory raid by ICE in Bellingham, Washington, Janet Napolitano, the new DHS chief, said publically that she had not even been informed the raid was going to happen and that she was ordering a full review of it. “I want to get to the bottom of this,” she said. It is not a clear message, but it provides a glimmer of hope that the recent workplace raids, dramatically handcuffing and imprisoning working people, might be softened in favor of restarting discussions about comprehensive immigration reform.

Interestingly, Napolitano also sent the Rio Grande Valley a signal last month. When Brownsville’s city commissioners had been pressured by Homeland Security to put up more border fencing right in the middle of an area that the city had planned for development, Napolitano stepped in, saying that she was not aware that a deadline had been given to the city and that she wanted to reconsider some of these projects. How far she will go is a mystery, but recent events have provided some hope.

Another sign of hope is that President Obama seems more favorable to labor organizing, and a press release I saw from a local uni*n group quotes Obama that labor is not “part of the problem but…part of the solution.”

Since I have not reported anything on labor recently, let me do that now.

Several weeks ago I reported attending an interesting anti-NAFTA event held by the Southwest Workers (SWU), which is based in San Antonio but also does work here in the Valley. SWU has started an organizing effort in Edinburg, trying to reach the school district’s bus drivers, cafeteria workers and other low income employees. I phone-interviewed organizer Anayanse Garza.

Braune: The SWU is trying to reach workers in Edinburg, but the district is balking. Is that correct?

Garza: Yes, we already have members, but we want more. But the ECISD (Edinburg School District) has been uncooperative. About a month ago, an assistant superintendant yelled at us, saying that if it were up to him there would be no uni*ns allowed. After we made his comments public, we had a series of meetings.

Braune: You certainly should have the right to organize.

Garza: Certainly, and we feel that the workers are being given false information and it is having an intimidating effect. Some are being told what we are doing is illegal. Some are being told it is against ECISD policy to be part of the SWU. Actually, it goes against ECISD policy to discourage us from getting members.

Braune: I know you had a rally in front of the school board last Tuesday night. What was your message there?

Garza: We were trying to inform the board about our continuing problems. We have met with a couple of board members but not with the whole board, and we have not spoken, even after about a month of this dispute, with the head of the school board. One of our SWU representatives and one of the bus drivers spoke at the public testimony session last night while the rest of us were rallying with signs outside. We told them that we want to have a meeting and that we have been trying to schedule a way to work out the problems. But so far today we have not gotten a call from them.

Braune: Your organization has experience with this sort of organizing; I take it what you immediately want is a fair opportunity to meet with the workers.

Garza: Yes, and we are surprised at the problems we are facing. The school district workers have mandated lunch and break time, and they discourage employees from leaving the campuses. So there are lunch rooms and meeting rooms where the workers congregate. We have simply asked that we can meet with them at the breaks on occasion. Part of the disinformation is that we want to interrupt the work time, which is not true. We simply want to visit during the breaks.

Another bit of disinformation is that we are demanding that we can just walk into the schools at any time. That is ridiculous. We would sign in at the desk like all other legitimate visitors. In other districts where we have members, we are able to meet with the workers in an orderly way with no problem.

We hope the ECISD School Board will hear us so that we may work together to correct these issues and help our schools, our families, and the community of Edinburg prosper as a whole.

Braune: Thanks for your work and the interview. Keep us informed how it is going.

By Nick Braune
Mid-Valley Town Crier
by permission

The Border Patrol is planning on doing some aerial spraying (herbicides) near Laredo, Texas. Because Laredo and the Mexican city across the river from it, Nuevo Laredo, each have about 350,000 people (not exactly one of Texas’ sparsely populated county areas), concern about the spraying has been growing.

However, the Border Patrol says it is not going to be spraying people, it is simply intending to spray a herbicide over a one mile-long stretch of unpopulated land, the purpose being to kill a tall plant (carrizo cane, similar to bamboo) which has been growing wildly there. The Border Patrol thinks it is too easy for undocumented people to hide in the carrizo where the Patrol does not have a clean line of sight.

The Border Patrol argues that spraying the carriso is a practical, common sense, solution, although quite a few people in the Laredo area, on both sides of the border, are not convinced it is necessary and are not staying quiet. Logically, the burden of proof falls heavily on the Border Patrol — they are not spraying in a desolate region and the spray must be pretty powerful to knock out these bamboo-like shoots. The stretch lies between the Laredo Railroad Bridge and the Laredo Community College, directly across from a populated area in Mexico, according to an article in Frontera NorteSur on March 21st.

According to the Frontera article, the manager for Nuevo Laredo’s water utility said that the Border Patrol advised his office to start turning off water pumps when the spraying takes place. The fact that the Border Patrol has warned the Mexican side that it should not pull water from the Rio while the spraying is taking place made a water manager for Nuevo Laredo raise the obvious question: The utility manager is quoted as saying, “If there is no problem, why are they asking us to do this?” And in a phone interview for this column, Jay Johnson-Castro, the Executive Director of the Rio Grande International Studies Center at Laredo Community College, said that the U.S. authorities are actually suggesting the Mexicans not draw off any river water for a day or two after the spraying as a precaution.

Johnson-Castro was at a meeting of the city council in Nuevo Laredo where they voted 20 to 0 to call on the U.S. to stop the spraying. No doubt many people felt there was a danger and felt confused about the necessity of the project: if the carrizo cane is such a problem, why doesn’t the Border Patrol just hire some crews to cut it down? The Border Patrol has two million dollars for the project, according to Johnson-Castro.)

Johnson-Castro, in the phone interview, said bluntly, “The Border Patrol has not been upfront.” They have been talking about “eradication” of the carrizo cane for some time, but they were not telling many people that they were intending aerial spraying with herbicides. “Back in July, they advertized for one day that they were carrying out an environmental assessment. People just didn’t know this was being discussed.”

Later, according to Johnson-Castro, government people said that they had done an environmental assessment, although the city council members and the city’s environmental department personnel told Johnson-Castro that they hadn’t even seen the report. “The environmental assessment process was abused.” And as far as Mexico goes, says Johnson-Castro, “I myself sent out the initial warning to the health and water departments in Nuevo Laredo and Tamaulipas. If I hadn’t done that, I wonder if the Border Patrol, now sending warnings on the water, would have ever informed them.”

The chemical being used is Imazapyr. Versions of this are made by BASF and Monsanto. Is it safe for people, plants, animals, water? Well, chemical safety standards vary by country. It is labeled as relatively safe in the U.S., but Mexican regulators label it as more toxic and dangerous. And the Europeans have virtually banned it for these defoliation uses, according to Johnson-Castro.

How does the matter stand at present? An association of citizens called Barrio De Colores, composed of residents of the barrios El Cuatro and De Colores, whose homes are near the proposed Border Patrol pilot project site for helicopter spraying, filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security to prevent the planned action. It was filed one day before the March 25th starting date for the spraying. A judge has responded and the spraying is temporarily being held off. This may be extremely important in the long run because the Laredo spraying is intended as a “pilot project” for several stretches of the river, Great Bend to Brownsville.

(Just some thoughts-in-progress. In the above discussion, I didn’t connect this arrogant Border Patrol spraying plan to the increased militarization of the Border. But President Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano have just this week pushed — good grief — for more Feds down here on the Border. And they are deliberately, it seems, giving mixed (friendly/unfriendly) messages to Mexico and seem to want to run Mexico’s anti-drug campaign.)