Yup, I'm a barbarian

Wow, one whole week since I last posted. Definitely slipping and the honeymoon is wearing off. Of course it could be because I've been so busy around here and by the time I get home, I'm too exhausted to write much. My next excuse will be taxes.

On NPR this morning, they were discussing the federal government and its “fence” that it is building along the Rio Grande as part of keeping out illegal aliens. I want to be clear that I have no opinion on the ultimate issue of how many aliens we need to keep out or what to do with the ones who are here. As far as I am concerned Amnesty is liberal socio-political organization. However, one of the items in the story was about the dumbest thing I’ve heard in a couple of weeks. But first a stab at the federal government.

Apparently the government issued some sort of mailing to property owners along its proposed fence line asking them to sign the paper authorizing the feds to enter the property. Some owners are fighting this in court. The federally crafted authorization basically give the property owner $100.00 in exchange for giving the federal government unlimited access for six months. This amount is also in lieu of any damages caused by the Feds during that time period. The judge has apparently stated that the Feds could stand to work on their negotiating skills, but admitted that the government has the right to enter and seize land at need. For the non-lawyers out there, that is called eminent domain. This is what allows the government to condemn houses to make new roads and things like that, but ED has a catch. You see, the constitution says the government can’t take property without due process and just compensation. We’re going to digress into that second one.

I’ve seen the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) at work in condemnation actions you see. And the problem is that they can’t read and think like a business, not a division of a government that is to serve the people. If they could read, they would realize that their mandate is to offer a FAIR price for the land they seize. Somehow, they read the word fair and translate it as LOWEST POSSIBLE LOWBALL PRICE WE CAN GET AWAY WITH. Those of you with a fine sense of distinction might realize there is ever so slight a difference in those two definitions. Personally, I think this stems from the corporate culture in to government that rewards lowest cost without looking at how it was achieved. You see, some peon thinks he looks better if he spends less and he thinks he spends less by screwing the taxpayers whose land is being condemned. Further, usually by the time the bill comes for all the delay and legal fees associated with the lawsuits as the taxpayers refuse to bend over for Uncle Sam, the peon who threw out the absurdly lowball offers is promoted or long gone from being their to get hit by the spatter. Hell, maybe the cost comes out of the legal budget, not his project budget and he can excuse himself by saying that if the DOT lawyers had done better, they’d have gotten away with screwing the taxpayers more. The point is that I’ve seen eminent domain abused by the government so much that good, rural, government-backing farmers practically became anarchs. Oh an in almost all of those cases, MoDOT condemned, the property owner said see you in court, the court appointed a commission (three citizens with sufficient experience to determine the value of what the government wanted to take), MoDOT rejected the commission’s decision forcing a trial, and the jury came back with an award close to that of the commission and vastly more than MoDOT had been offering. All this took over a year to do of course. So, how much money did MoDOT save? Not a damn bit, but they did make it hard to pass their next tax levy.

Anyway, I have no problem, having seen MoDOT in action believing that the Feds would act exactly the same or worse. I COMPLETELY understand why a property owner would not want to give the Feds a blanket right to do whatever to their property for the next six months in exchange for $100. The government has a right to build the thing if it wants to, but it has a corresponding obligation to treat its citizens fairly. I hope the judge in this case says the Feds can do their surveying but absolutely hammers them on the amount they have to pay. It’s a damn shame the petty little bureaucrat who came up with this offer can’t be made to be personally accountable for the excess cost.

SOOOOO, back on Deep Space Nine, NPR was asking opinions of local residents about the fence generally. Some were voicing environmental concerns or were being offered as ultra cute sound bytes. Aside from wondering why anyone would think to sound byte some of these people (It’s like walking into a kindergarten and asking them for detailed information on how to rebuild a steering column.), one person’s comment struck me as particularly inane.

She said something along the lines of: While I, you know, agree with putting the Fence up to keep out like illegal aliens out, you know, I think it is such a like totally barbaric way to do it. In the like modern world we must totally have something, you know, like better than that.

I admit I inserted the “likes” and the “you knows” as editorial commentary, but the gist of her comment can still be derived from the passage. In response, I have to ask 1) does she really understand the meaning of the word barbaric? 2) I translate this to mean, I’m in favor of the idea, but it is suddenly inconveniencing me and thus, I think we need to find a better (meaning different in a way that I don’t have to deal with) way to accomplish this goal. 3) Fences are like soooo yesterday! I’ll elaborate on that last one a bit.

Assuming by “barbaric,” she meant old-fashioned or primitive, one has to question why that would make it less effective or desirable. I suppose we could task permanent satellite coverage over the entire boarder to watch for illegal aliens, or fly regular recon drones over the boarder, or mount special sensors in the dirt to detect footsteps, but those would likely cost quite a bit more. Hell, we could put landmines along the entire boarder, which while undoubtedly more modern, probably actually qualifies as barbaric. Getting more into Big Brother and Science Fiction, maybe she thinks we should electronically ear tag all the foreigners so we can track their movements or maybe just erect some sort of invisible sonic fence to keep them from coming across the line. Fences, although an ancient technology, are an effective and fairly cost efficient one.

If someone is going to criticize the project because it is using a fence which is barbaric because it is so old-fashioned, I hope that someone is driving around in a hovercraft to avoid using the equally ancient, and thus barbaric, technology of the wheel.