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Stuck on Stupid: Dem County Supervisor Says Arizona’s Not a Border State

June 26, 2010 By Jeff

I’m almost at a loss for words here. I’ve heard all sorts of dumb things come out of the mouths of politicians, but Peggy West, a Democrat member of the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors is in a league of her own… During a debate on a measure that would call for the county to boycott doing business with companies in Arizona, Ms. West had this to say:

Huh??? She’s didn’t just say  “If this was Texas, which is a state that is directly on the border with Mexico, and they were calling for a measure like this saying that they had a major issue with undocumented people flooding their borders, I would have to look twice at this.  But this is a state that is a ways removed from the border”, did she?

Yup, she did… Idiot!

One of her fellow Supervisors, Joe Rice, quickly corrected her and she did make a rather valiant attempt at damage control:

While speaking at the meeting, West did go on to talk about National Guard troops on the border in Arizona.  West points to that as she tells us that she simply misspoke.

“I did get a passing grade in Geography in high school and in college and I do obviously know that Arizona is on the border,” West said in an interview after today’s meeting.

West claims that the point she was trying to make is that because Texas has a much larger border with Mexico, she might feel differently about such a law in that state.  “Had Texas come out with the legislation, having the largest border, I think that I would be more receptive to the fact that there was a problem.  But having it be Arizona, having it be the second largest boarder and knowing there are troops on the border in Arizona, it didn’t seem to me that this legislation was particularly necessary at this moment in time,” West said.

Sorry, but I’m not buying that she misspoke… If you watch the video it seems pretty clear she said what she intended to say.

Regardless, Ms. West needs to spend some time in Arizona… Visit Pima County where drug smugglers are reportedly setting up permanent observation posts to monitor the movements of law enforcement agents along the border. Or visit Nogales where Drug smugglers are threatening the lives police officers.

It’s easy for people like Ms. West to criticize Arizona’s new immigration law… She doesn’t live there and doesn’t have to deal with daily consequences of the Federal Government’s failure at one its most basic responsibilities — to protect it’s citizen from foreign threats.  Mexico’s violent drug war is spilling across Arizona’s border and endangering the lives of American citizens… If the Federal Government won’t fulfill its most basic obligation then the Sate of Arizona has to fill void.

Edit: I linked to this below, but I should mention that the National Guard troops Ms. West refers to are not there to help enforce immigration laws, their mission is to help stem the flow of guns and drugs across the border. That’s all well and good, but it’s only half the job… it’s the lack of effective immigration enforcement that’s helped to create the lawless environment along the border.

If we’re going send National Guard troops to the border to interdict the flow of guns and drugs they should also be authorized to help enforce immigration laws while there… The two things go hand in hand.

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Filed Under: Immigration, Politics, Stuck on Stupid Tagged With: , , , ,

What Open Borders Has Wrought

February 12, 2009 By Jeff 1 Comment

ABC News ran a story last night on the growing problem of kidnapping in Phoenix, Arizona.

In what officials caution is now a dangerous and even deadly crime wave, Phoenix, Arizona has become the kidnapping capital of America, with more incidents than any other city in the world outside of Mexico City and over 370 cases last year alone. But local authorities say Washington, DC is too obsessed with al Qaeda terrorists to care about what is happening in their own backyard right now.

“We’re in the eye of the storm,” Phoenix Police Chief Andy Anderson told ABC News of the violent crimes and ruthless tactics spurred by Mexico’s drug cartels that have expanded business across the border. “If it doesn’t stop here, if we’re not able to fix it here and get it turned around, it will go across the nation,” he said.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown warned that as the U.S. government focuses so intently on Islamic extremist groups, other types of terrorists — those involved with the same kidnappings, extortion and drug cartels that are sweeping Phoenix — are overlooked.

This is what open borders has wrought, it’s high time our government stops ignoring the problems along the southern border and starts taking steps to restrict the access Mexican drug cartels have to American territory.

If the Congress wants to spend money on infrastructure projects than how about actually building the double-layer border fence they approved in 2006. To date only 32 miles of that fence has been built in part because Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R.-Texas) slipped an amendment that watered down the original legislation into an omnibus appropriations bill Congress passed on December 18, 2007.

As Ed Morrissey notes “The primary responsibility of the federal government is to protect the nation from outside attack — and if what ABC reports is accurate, it’s failing miserably in Phoenix.”

Filed Under: Crime, Politics, Security Tagged With: , ,