Category: Uncategorized

Any one of the plans put forth by the three major candidates for Mexico’s presidency would help to move Mexico in a progressive direction. So whoever wins should be greeted with patience and respect by the USA. In other words, Obrador is no Chavez.

In terms of the hyped up climate over immigration politics, it is time for the USA, its leaders, and its people to face the facts: the USA relationship to Mexican immigration can only be addressed with a long view of social change.
I think this sums up Pamela K. Starr’s helpful preview of the Mexican election coming up July 2. Maybe it should be subtitled: “waiting for Obrador.”

Starr’s tone of patience, and her reminders of complex context read like antidotes to an environmental anxiety that has been deliberately fomented around the immigration issue. It is especially helpful to be reminded how Mexicans perceive NAFTA as a national trauma. The crash of the Peso in 1995 also looks in retrospect like an effect of Mexico’s fall to “dollar hegemony” after NAFTA (although I take this point from recent work of Henry Liu at Asia Times, not from Starr or the CFR.)

The only scary thing about Starr’s report is that it recommends a set of behaviors that the USA is unlikely to exhibit during our own heated election season. Will the Republican Party let the steam out of the immigration issue by Labor Day? Or will we witness neo-con redux at the Rio Grande? Will high-powered business councils keep a respectful distance from structural reform? Or will the clamor for competitiveness be amplified into loud-talking pressure from the Bush juggernaut? We can’t help but think about that scorpion who offered to give somebody a ride across the river.

We asked again, just to be sure, but the Governor’s Office says it has on file no plans or approvals for Operation Jump Start.

On June 30, the Governor announced that Operation Jump Start was on schedule, so we asked the Governor’s Office for a copy of the schedule. But there isn’t one, came the reply from his office.
Neither is there a record of the Governor’s pre-approval of the mission, although such pre-approval is required by a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) posted over the Governor’s signature at his official website.

It’s the strangest thing. We don’t know what to make of it. If there’s a simple explanation, nobody’s offering one yet.

If the Governor is not getting his bearings from documents on file in his office, then how does he know the mission is on schedule? If the Governor’s Office doesn’t keep copies of the Governor’s approvals for military operations in Texas, then who does?

Surely, it can’t be the case that no plan exists or that the Governor hasn’t enforced his own MOU?

Maybe the Governor is splitting his identity as Commander-in-Chief and keeping all his military records on federal property. But then we’d have to ask the metaphysical question: why is the Commander-in-Chief of the Texas National Guard issuing “on schedule” press releases from the website of the Governor’s Office?

Frankly, we’re stumped.

KXAN-TV has the best available coverage of yesterday’s arrests involving an alleged smuggling operation:

http://www.kxan.com/Global/story.asp?S=5082228

Jenny LaCoste-Caputo of the San Antonio Express-News breaks word that the lawyer who filed the last school-funding lawsuit in Texas is preparing a new one.

“David Thompson, former general counsel for the Texas Education Agency and attorney for West Orange-Cove ISD, whose lawsuit was the subject of the Supreme Court ruling, said a second lawsuit claiming the new business tax amounts to a personal income tax, is imminent.”
LaCoste-Caputo reports this little gem in the middle of a story about San Antonio area school superintendents who are finding that the so-called funding solution passed by the lege this year doesn’t do much besides solve the state’s need to comply technically with the last lawsuit filed by Thompson.

“That’s a real concern, not just immediately but in the long term,” said one super. “We’ve gone so long without any additional revenue for maintenance and operations. We’ve cut and cut and cut some more; meanwhile our fuel costs, our utility costs, everything is going up every year.”

“Lawmakers passed this with no real understanding of what these new taxes would generate,” said another super. “There are a lot of traps in this law.”

Which is why we spend so little time on legislative shenanigans when it comes to school funding. The main purpose of the last session seemed intent to produce lying headlines, with bad faith so heavy as to crush all scales of measurement.

Here’s what Thompson told the Dallas Morning News in May:

“David Thompson, a lead attorney for school districts in the lawsuit that resulted in the Supreme Court’s ruling, said that the plan will definitely require monitoring on issues of adequacy and equity. Still, he said, the Legislature has ‘done something that is very significant, and I personally applaud them.’ “

Let’s All Declare Victory and Drop It?

“WASHINGTON, June 20 — In a decision that puts an overhaul of immigration laws in serious doubt, House Republican leaders said Tuesday that they would hold summer hearings around the nation on the politically volatile subject before trying to compromise with the Senate on a chief domestic priority of President Bush.”

Can it be true that the issue has been turned down to a simmer until after the elections? The scorpion promises not to sting?