Category Archives: inflammatory

inflammatory, Opinion, Politics

Self deportation

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One prominent bit of news today is the report by the Pew Research Center that more Mexicans are leaving the U.S. than are entering the country.

Press coverage makes the obligatory reference to Donald Trump and the Wall that the Mexican government (in his fabulation) will pay for.   It will be an interesting construction management challenge, with Mexicans working on the Mexican side and Amirkins working on the U.S. side.

It occurs to me that Trump’s Wall might have some effect.   The Pew study shows that family reunification is the primary force that is driving the “self-deportation” of Mexicans, but economic forces are also important, so by creating good jobs on the Mexican side of the border, Trump’s wall might increase out-migration.

Seriously, I think Mexico will create a lot of good jobs in the coming decades.  Anyone who has traveled in Mexico and Central America (or paid attention to the lives of immigrants here) knows that the stereotype of the lazy latin is the self-serving propaganda of lucky Americans.  Mexicans (and Guatemalans), in my personal experience traveling there, work much, much harder than Americans.  Most Americans would collapse in tears and self-pity after an hour trying to work as hard as a Mexican, here or there.  I expect that work ethic to pay off and bring Mexico closer to parity with the Yanquis.   When that day comes, I’m pretty confident that the set-upon estate class in America will figure out some way to be able to avoid paying a decent wage for their landscaping.

He sat up and wrapped his feet and pulled the boots on and stood and started up the last stretch of canyon to the rim. Where he crested out the country lay dead flat, stretching away to the south and to the east. Red dirt and creosote. Mountains in the far and middle distance. Nothing out there.  Heatshimmer. He stuck the pistol in his belt and looked down at the river one more time and then set out east. Langtry Texas was thirty miles as the crow flies. Maybe less. Ten hours. Twelve. His feet were already hurting. His leg hurt. His chest. His arm. The river dropped away behind him. He hadnt even taken a drink.No Country for Old Men, Cormack McCarthy.

Back to Trump’s wall.  He has obviously not traveled much of the border–the topography from Lajitas to Langtry will demand that some significant parts of Texas be walled off.   Here’s what the Rio Grande Canyon looks like below La Linda.

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Ray Bridge on the Rio Grande in Reagan Canyon below La Linda. 1974.

OK, I forget that the Donald will get Mexico to pay for his Wall, so, he also probably plans to force them to build it on their side of the river.

It’s true that the border has not been closed.  Here’s an undocumented alien crossing the Rio Grande in Boquillas Canyon above La Linda.

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Here’s the Rio Grande crossing at La Linda in 1999 (Mexico is on the right).   The bridge served the potash mine on the Mexican side, which shows up framed by the bridge.   It was operating when I took the photo of Ray, above, in 1974, but had been abandoned by the time this photo was taken.

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Approaching the La Linda bridge on the Rio Grande, November, 1999.

The structure on top of the bridge is a big fence with a super-fortified gate.  It is all stainless steel, including the razor wire–probably built to some DOD spec.   No one would try to cross there.  The river takes a left turn just past the bridge, with a gravel beach on the left and a sharp, steep bluff on the right.  There is a cut with a track through the bluff.   Here’s what it looks like below the bridge, looking upstream.

Roll_33_009x.WP

The guy who picked us up told me that he’s seen eighteen-wheelers come through there.

Guns, inflammatory, Opinion, Politics

Muggers, at last!

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If you get this title, you are way behind the times.   It’s probably culturally opaque to anyone who is less than about 65.

Before we go further, this post is about guns.   If that is going to make you mad, stop reading here.  Unless, that is, you like getting mad.   If so, then, be prepared for my one-strike policy on comments.

I’m going to write more about guns, from an intensely personal perspective, and that will provide more context, but events drive me to write this now.

The title is a line from The President’s Analyst (1967).  The film was a commercial failure then, but I liked it, and I think it is almost timeless in several ways.

“Muggers, at last!” was spoken by Jeff Quantrill (Joan Darling), the mother of a family of gun-toting, martial-arts-trained liberals with whom Dr. Sidney Schaefer (George Coburn), the President’s analyst, has fallen in while evading operatives from the CIA, the FBI, Russia, China, and The Phone Company.

Dr. Sidney Schaefer: These guns. Karate. Why?

Husband Wynn Quantrill: The right wing extremists. Disarm them and us liberals will disarm.

When the operatives finally find Schaefer, going out to get Chinese with the Quantrills, Jeff and Wynn (William Daniels) are beside themselves with joy to be able to use their weaponry and skills.  While Wynn blasts away with a huge handgun, Jeff expertly dispatches several intelligence operatives with the Karate.  Schaefer could not be in better hands.

I think of this line and the scene often when reading comments about “Good Guys with Guns”.  (By now, that term may be trademarked by the NRA.)  In the wee hours Friday, Steven Jones got hit in the face during a fistfight with some fraternity boys near the campus of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona.   I think we can be certain that alcohol was involved.  During the altercation, a group came out of the fraternity house and chased Jones, who ran to his car and retrieved his handgun (equipped with a cool flashlight).

By this time two of the eventual victims had stopped following him, but they turned around when Jones yelled that he had a gun.    Jones said that he then shot them both.  Two others were also shot.  One witness, a friend of Jones, said that one of the victims asked Jones why he had brought a gun before Jones shot him multiple times.  One young man was killed and three were wounded.

Jones said that he then provided first aid to the dying and wounded.

Jones sounds like a “Good Guy with a Gun”.  He apparently has no psychopathy, at least in the formal sense.   I’m sure he will plead self defense, and that may be effective.

What I have related comes from news reports.  If I were on a jury, I would give Jones the benefit of the doubt.  But, I’m not, and I won’t, because I think his behavior is typical of an attitude that is unfortunately very common among Gun Nuts.

Can anyone really doubt that Steven Jones was looking for trouble?  That he was looking for glory, looking to be a hero, almost desperate for the “righteous shoot”?   Why else the call that he had a gun?   In this sense, Steven Jones is no different than Chris Harper-Mercer, who a few days ago killed nine fellow students and wounded nine more in a quest to become “somebody”, to become famous.   And, neither of them was motivated any differently than a two-bit gang banger.

The bottom line here is that if Steven Jones had not had a gun, no one would be dead, unless Jones was man enough to beat them to death with his fists, or maybe a stick.  Somehow, I think that if he had not had a gun in his car he would have kept running.

Will the NRA and the Gun Nuts style this as a righteous shoot, and Jones as a “Good Guy with a Gun”?

How many people die each year because a “Good Guy with a Gun” goes looking for trouble?

Bicycles, Boulder, inflammatory, Opinion, Politics

Speeds

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Wherever the law is, crime can be found.  Aleksander Solzenitsyn

I feel a little awkward featuring this quote, because I was introduced to it by Ta-Nehisi Coates in his article on incarceration and the Black family.   But, it is entirely relevant to the topic, and perhaps the contrast between his use and my use will emphasize that most of us face only first-world problems here in Boulder.

It’s also worth remembering that just before the initiation of Right-Sizing on Folsom Boulder Police shot and killed a young CU math student who was evidently under the influence of “bad LSD.”  Samuel Forgy was naked and armed with a hammer.  He was 22.   Only a couple of anguished people wrote “wait a minute, folks” letters about Forgy’s death.   They were drowned in a sea of anger about a minute or two delay on whatever errand, and about government overreach and arrogance.  The irony of that last thought in the face of Forgy’s death leaves an acid taste.

But, back to the first world (or, perhaps the zeroth world, in Boulder).    One thing we got out of the Right-Sizing project is a little data, and one of the things we learned was that 15% of drivers exceed the 30 mph speed limit on Folsom north of Bluff by at least six or seven mph.  The average speed there exceeds the speed limit by two or three mph.  These speeds are a couple of mph lower than before the Right-Sizing, which is one of the objectives of the approach.

Boulder Mayor Matt Applebaum reportedly asked City transportation staff why, instead of installing the three-lane configuration, they didn’t just lower the speed limit.  I don’t know how the staff answered him, but I hope they told him that reducing speed limits has very little effect on speed, because that is true.  Raising speed limits has more effect, but less than you might imagine.

It turns out that road conditions, traffic conditions and the road configuration determine how fast people drive.   Hence the logic of the three-lane configuration.

The one thing that raising the speed limit does do is reduce the frequency of noncompliance.   Right now approximately half the drivers on this stretch are violating the speed limit.  If we raised the speed limit to 36 mph only about fifteen percent would be in violation.

This most recent spasm of anti-bike rage in the local paper is different from those that periodically preceded it only in the intensity of the anger expressed.  I think that intensity is more a function of the time than anything else, and has little to do with actual attitudes toward cyclists.  One thing that was the same-old-thing, though, was the complaint that bicyclists wantonly run stop signs and commit other infractions, and should be called to account.  This is often a prelude to calling for visible license plates and taxation of these freeloading miscreants.

Whenever I read these letters I think, “What’s the big deal, lots of motorists breaks the speed limit.”  Now we have the data.

So, I suggest we give bicycles the same latitude taken by motorists.  On Folsom that’s 36 mph versus a speed limit of 30.   At a stop sign that translates into 6 mph versus a speed limit of zero.  Take a deep breath, and chill.