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Amazing how the current Texas Government repeatedly sabotages the state’s economy. These are supposedly the business friendly party. It is a testament to the r

by pm90 5y ago

Amazing how the current Texas Government repeatedly sabotages the state’s economy. These are supposedly the business friendly party. It is a testament to the resilience of ordinary Texans (and the Mexicans right across the border) that the state continues to do so well economically.

thatsnotlikely 5y ago
jollybean 5y ago
- blamazon 5y ago
  > Mexico is almost a failed state due to cartel Can you provide a justification/explanation/citation for this claim? I have been to Mexico many times as a fascinated tourist and layperson. As yet I have not gotten an "almost failed state" vibe. While there seem to be clear challenges facing the populace, things seem to proceed fine at a day to day level.
  - nomel 5y ago
    > as a fascinated tourist Does this mean you stayed on cartel protected tourist routes, or did you have a chance to go "off the tracks" a bit?
    - blamazon 5y ago
      I like 4x4 style offroading/overlanding/camping and staying with local folks to practice Spanish far from resort land. So I'm gonna land on the latter in my opinion.
      - nomel 5y ago
        To be fair, far from resort land isn't usually where the cartels are. And, my comment wasn't meant to be as negative as it sounded. I live at the border. It's well known that the cartel regulates/protects Tijuana. A well visited Tijuana is a profitable Tijuana. They're not idiots.
    - rurp 5y ago
      I've traveled hundreds of kilometers around central Mexico in areas where I almost never saw another gringo. I've also seen zero cartel activity and had excellent experiences with local police. The extent of violence and dangerous areas in Mexico is way, way overblown by certain news stations in America.
      - twofornone 5y ago
        >I've also seen zero cartel activity and had excellent experiences with local police. What exactly do you think "cartel activity" looks like? The fact that some random international tourist didn't witness any overt "cartel activity" does not remotely imply that it is not a problem in Mexico. These cartels have been in open war with the government for decades, police and military forces are regularly compromised, and frequently the cartels form defacto local governments when they take over towns. Pablo Escobar was one of the wealthiest people in the world when he went to war with the colombian government, mexico has similar issues.
        aylmao 5y ago
        I'm Mexican, still spend plenty of time in Mexico, and have also never seen any "cartel activity" except in the news. I know it's a problem, but I also think english media depicts Mexico in a much more bleak light than it warrants.
      - jollybean 5y ago
        Your individual experience may be enlightening on some level, but it's not hugely relevatn with respect to understanding the overall level of violence and systematic degredation in Mexico. I lived in the USA for many years - and not once, ever, did I see someone do anything racist. I also never witnessed, or even heard of through colleagues, of the police doing something wrong. But clearly, systematic racism does exist, and, there are problems with the justice system. And, it's a bit glib to suggest you'd directly see some kind of 'cartel activity' as a wayward tourist. Most violent activity is focused 'among players'. Your point on 'way overblown in the American press' is definitely reasonable, in the sense that, the news will make people think that 'walking down the street in Mexico is on the whole dangerous' - when obviously it's not. In fact, it's generally safe. That's not the issue though. The relative level of violence, systematic corruption, lawlessness is very real and it affects many people in indirect ways. Living in Russia is not dangerous. Especially if you don't say anything about the the government, there's almost 0% chance you're going to have a problem. But watch videos of Russians being interviewed about the war in Ukraine - they are hesitant to the point of fearful in 'having an opinion'. There are certain thoughts, they are not allowed to have. If you can't read, write or talk about a thing, that thing dissapears. That's what oppression is: large swaths of people actually disagreeing with the government, but otherwise going about their business as normal. In a 'safe country' you'll have no problem saying anything about anyone. The government, or criminals. The next time you're in a Mexican city known to be controlled by cartel members, simply ask the question: "What do you think of so and so" cartel boss? You'll find out very quickly how pervasive influence is, and if you dig a little deeper, you might find out how systematically that corruption extends into quite a lot of small things - all the nooks and crannies. Saying 'Mexico is no bad' is like saying Putin isn't a problem, because 99% of Russians don't directly suffer consequences. It's the 1% we are concerned about, and more broadly, the systematic issues that affect us all. Mexico should be much richer and more prosperous than it is, and it will not evolve in a positive direction while it's partially a narco state. That affects everyone.
  - rhexs 5y ago
    https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/mexico-travel-advisory.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/... Of course the tourist locations are nice and don't give off an "almost failed state" vibe. "Country Summary: Violent crime – such as homicide, kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery – is widespread and common in Mexico." Heck, even Wikipedia does a good job covering it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Mexico
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - aylmao 5y ago
      I'm from Mexico. I still spend plenty of time every year and/or have family in states under the "Do Not Travel To" or "Reconsider Travel To" lists. In my experience rather than having "nice tourist locations", it has the opposite: "dangerous crime locations". These are usually along the fault lines of cartel territories or in specific "sketchy areas". Mexico is nice for us non-tourists living in non-tourist places too IMO.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    ? Cartels have effective control over certain areas of Mexico and corrupted all layers of governance. > 40 000 dead from direct conflict between cartels and government forces since 2006. Just because it's technically unlikely that you're going to encounter the violence yourself, and therefore not give you a 'violence vibe' doesn't really have anything to do with how much violence there is. 40K is a gigantic number and will possibly be bigger than the Russian-Ukranian war when it's over. If power of some armed groups rivals that of government, then it's a 'near failed state'. We have the technology and wherewithal and hopefully 'learned lessons' to make progress on this. The fact that this massive, organized violence exists, is to a great extent our responsibility for letting it metastasize.
- nomel 5y ago
  > sealed, and with a GPS tracker to ensure no funny business between the inspection and border crossing. This requires that the inspection station in Mexico is not spoiled by corruption. That is not a sane perspective.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    Not if the inspection is done by American teams, just as though they were at the border.
    - nomel 5y ago
      The entire purpose of the border is to set the boundary for where the American government/control/processes ends and the Mexican government/control/processes begins. America shouldn't be doing their inspections on Mexican soil. They have no right or need.
- didibus 5y ago
  I might be a bit naive, but what are we inspecting for here? Illegal migrants? Or is it drugs? Or is it guns?
  - jollybean 5y ago
    All of the above. Anything that shouldn't be crossing.
    - didibus 5y ago
      Do you also expect all cars crossing the border to go through full inspection for all of the above all the time? I guess my personal assessment is that none of those are that big a deal to warrant so much inconvenience to most Americans crossing the border, including our trucking companies and their trucks. You could just let people buy and consume drugs if they want, don't know why we took away that freedom in the first place. Texans love guns, so not sure why we'd want to prevent them from entering. Illegal migrants can also be deported after the fact, so I'm not sure you have to catch them all on entry, and a lot of them provide valuable cheap labor. And even if we want to prevent some of that, I really don't know if it's to the point of having trucks wait days for an inspection or spending all that money on infrared, AI, and what not.
      - jollybean 5y ago
        This is really naive. Let's take the 'no borders' situation - and throw in 'no drug regulation': 1) The immediate availability of narcotics would devestate the country within a few months. The opioid epidemic is already causing great harm, and that's something that was actually contained initially within the confines of the American medical system: you had do have prescription, from a doctor, and access a controlled substance. And even then - it's bad. With fentanyl now available, which by the way, is the #1 drug of choice among recent opioid addicts because it's just 'much better' - we're seeing devestating results. A completely liberal free for all would mean all sorts of things: energy drinks, candy, food, would be embedded with various drugs. America is not 'burning man' - with mostly high responsible actors, doing stuff 'on the side' where it's not open, and not usually within 'arms reach'. Even the professionals who can 'handle their stuff' at burning man, were things to become as easy as coca cola to access, would fall under. Within about 5 months, 5% of the population would be addicted to meth or opiods, it would be a massive public health disaster of epic proportions. And while organized crime might not exist, petty crime would skyrocket. 2) "Texans love guns, so not sure why we'd want to prevent them from entering." Because guns are a controlled commodity for similar reasons. Every state has regulations. Do you want fully automatic machine guns, grenades, CS gas easily accessible to every baddie in America for a few dollars? It's absurd. 3) "Illegal migrants can also be deported after the fact" No, they can't. Illegal immigrants are not deported unless they have committed major crimes, because it's too expensive and politically untenable. 'Open Borders' would mean millions of people arbitrarily flowing into the US until the system was degraded to the point where there wasn't an advantage in coming to the US. When it has failed as badly as Brazil, well, people will stop coming. 4) It's really absurd that people think laws, borders, rules etc. don't matter and are somehow arbitrarily limiting. Those are part of the fundamental building blocks of civil society. Mexico is a broken state, the US is mostly a civil state, which is a delicate thing. One of the first things to happen with 'open borders' would be the Cartels themselves using it as an opportunity to corrupt American politicians. Money is a very powerful thing, unrestrained it would corrupt Arizona / New Mexico politics and Justice System relatively quickly and the dominoes would start to fall.
rayiner 5y ago
It’s weird to see reminiscing for the Bush-era GOP from people who presumably aren’t Republicans. Don’t we want the state to listen to its voters and not corporations? I mean, the GOP ignoring its voters in favor of corporations is what led to the Trump rebellion against the Bush/Cheney wing. Democrats of the time were right!
- didibus 5y ago
  Do Texans really want all trucks from Mexico inspected for drugs and harboring illegal migrants? I guess as a non Texan, I just hadn't realize how big an issue this was to Texans personally.
  - sam36 5y ago
    It is an extremely big problem: https://twitter.com/USBPChiefRGV https://twitter.com/USBPChiefRGV People that don't live here or those that just keep their head in the sand will never really see the big picture.
    - didibus 5y ago
      I checked your link, I'm not sure what to make of it though. To be honest, I probably need to be schooled on the whole thing. Generally, when there's issues at a local level, my gut reaction is I probably just don't understand the problem. But I'll also probably start by asking naive questions. My first question is, it seems that yes there are lots of people trying to smuggle drugs or illegally enter the US for... Maybe working under the radar? Escaping Mexico? And I can believe that it is a hard job to prevent this. But it also seems to me like we made up the problem, why are we wanting to prevent the drugs and migrants in the first place? For the drugs, seems we might as well manufacture them ourselves, make them in the US, label them properly, dispense correct dosers, list out side effects and risks, and tax their sales. If people can get them through other channels, the demand for the Mexican one will reduce and that seems like it would naturally cause the smuggling to decrease. Or maybe, it wouldn't be smuggling anymore, just another import they self-declare and we tax, just like avocados. For migrants, I'm curious what they're looking for. Are they running away from danger and trying to find safety? Are they looking for work? And why don't we want them? We're worried they resort to crime and theft? We don't have jobs for them? They bring anti-democratic values with them and promote things that we worry would eventually destroy our democracy and take away our freedom? I think if any of those were true for migrants, I could see it being a harder problem. I'm not sure they are true though. But say they do lead to crime, violence, loss of democracy, loss of employment, and loss of freedom. If that's the case, it's definitely going to be challenging to stop so many people from entering such a big border. I get that. I guess I'm just missing that first link, do they cause all that trouble? Or are we just making up the problem?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
refurb 5y ago
Considering Texas has been complaining for a while about the illegal immigrant issue that the federal government is causing, this actually make perfect sense in terms of looking out for their constituents?
grapeskin 5y ago
I'd dare say it's malicious, at least in this case. Perfect time to shift blame upwards following the already ongoing shipping and supply problems. Endless aggressive expansion of the starve the beast tactic is bound to reach its limits eventually, and all that's left is outright attacking it. Inventing a problem and proposing awful solutions is a proven election strategy.

by pm90 5y ago

thatsnotlikely 5y ago

jollybean 5y ago

blamazon 5y ago
> Mexico is almost a failed state due to cartel Can you provide a justification/explanation/citation for this claim? I have been to Mexico many times as a fascinated tourist and layperson. As yet I have not gotten an "almost failed state" vibe. While there seem to be clear challenges facing the populace, things seem to proceed fine at a day to day level.
- nomel 5y ago
  > as a fascinated tourist Does this mean you stayed on cartel protected tourist routes, or did you have a chance to go "off the tracks" a bit?
  - blamazon 5y ago
    I like 4x4 style offroading/overlanding/camping and staying with local folks to practice Spanish far from resort land. So I'm gonna land on the latter in my opinion.
    - nomel 5y ago
      To be fair, far from resort land isn't usually where the cartels are. And, my comment wasn't meant to be as negative as it sounded. I live at the border. It's well known that the cartel regulates/protects Tijuana. A well visited Tijuana is a profitable Tijuana. They're not idiots.
  - rurp 5y ago
    I've traveled hundreds of kilometers around central Mexico in areas where I almost never saw another gringo. I've also seen zero cartel activity and had excellent experiences with local police. The extent of violence and dangerous areas in Mexico is way, way overblown by certain news stations in America.
    - twofornone 5y ago
      >I've also seen zero cartel activity and had excellent experiences with local police. What exactly do you think "cartel activity" looks like? The fact that some random international tourist didn't witness any overt "cartel activity" does not remotely imply that it is not a problem in Mexico. These cartels have been in open war with the government for decades, police and military forces are regularly compromised, and frequently the cartels form defacto local governments when they take over towns. Pablo Escobar was one of the wealthiest people in the world when he went to war with the colombian government, mexico has similar issues.
      - aylmao 5y ago
        I'm Mexican, still spend plenty of time in Mexico, and have also never seen any "cartel activity" except in the news. I know it's a problem, but I also think english media depicts Mexico in a much more bleak light than it warrants.
    - jollybean 5y ago
      Your individual experience may be enlightening on some level, but it's not hugely relevatn with respect to understanding the overall level of violence and systematic degredation in Mexico. I lived in the USA for many years - and not once, ever, did I see someone do anything racist. I also never witnessed, or even heard of through colleagues, of the police doing something wrong. But clearly, systematic racism does exist, and, there are problems with the justice system. And, it's a bit glib to suggest you'd directly see some kind of 'cartel activity' as a wayward tourist. Most violent activity is focused 'among players'. Your point on 'way overblown in the American press' is definitely reasonable, in the sense that, the news will make people think that 'walking down the street in Mexico is on the whole dangerous' - when obviously it's not. In fact, it's generally safe. That's not the issue though. The relative level of violence, systematic corruption, lawlessness is very real and it affects many people in indirect ways. Living in Russia is not dangerous. Especially if you don't say anything about the the government, there's almost 0% chance you're going to have a problem. But watch videos of Russians being interviewed about the war in Ukraine - they are hesitant to the point of fearful in 'having an opinion'. There are certain thoughts, they are not allowed to have. If you can't read, write or talk about a thing, that thing dissapears. That's what oppression is: large swaths of people actually disagreeing with the government, but otherwise going about their business as normal. In a 'safe country' you'll have no problem saying anything about anyone. The government, or criminals. The next time you're in a Mexican city known to be controlled by cartel members, simply ask the question: "What do you think of so and so" cartel boss? You'll find out very quickly how pervasive influence is, and if you dig a little deeper, you might find out how systematically that corruption extends into quite a lot of small things - all the nooks and crannies. Saying 'Mexico is no bad' is like saying Putin isn't a problem, because 99% of Russians don't directly suffer consequences. It's the 1% we are concerned about, and more broadly, the systematic issues that affect us all. Mexico should be much richer and more prosperous than it is, and it will not evolve in a positive direction while it's partially a narco state. That affects everyone.
- rhexs 5y ago
  https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/mexico-travel-advisory.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/... Of course the tourist locations are nice and don't give off an "almost failed state" vibe. "Country Summary: Violent crime – such as homicide, kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery – is widespread and common in Mexico." Heck, even Wikipedia does a good job covering it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Mexico
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - aylmao 5y ago
    I'm from Mexico. I still spend plenty of time every year and/or have family in states under the "Do Not Travel To" or "Reconsider Travel To" lists. In my experience rather than having "nice tourist locations", it has the opposite: "dangerous crime locations". These are usually along the fault lines of cartel territories or in specific "sketchy areas". Mexico is nice for us non-tourists living in non-tourist places too IMO.
- jollybean 5y ago
  ? Cartels have effective control over certain areas of Mexico and corrupted all layers of governance. > 40 000 dead from direct conflict between cartels and government forces since 2006. Just because it's technically unlikely that you're going to encounter the violence yourself, and therefore not give you a 'violence vibe' doesn't really have anything to do with how much violence there is. 40K is a gigantic number and will possibly be bigger than the Russian-Ukranian war when it's over. If power of some armed groups rivals that of government, then it's a 'near failed state'. We have the technology and wherewithal and hopefully 'learned lessons' to make progress on this. The fact that this massive, organized violence exists, is to a great extent our responsibility for letting it metastasize.
nomel 5y ago
> sealed, and with a GPS tracker to ensure no funny business between the inspection and border crossing. This requires that the inspection station in Mexico is not spoiled by corruption. That is not a sane perspective.
- jollybean 5y ago
  Not if the inspection is done by American teams, just as though they were at the border.
  - nomel 5y ago
    The entire purpose of the border is to set the boundary for where the American government/control/processes ends and the Mexican government/control/processes begins. America shouldn't be doing their inspections on Mexican soil. They have no right or need.
didibus 5y ago
I might be a bit naive, but what are we inspecting for here? Illegal migrants? Or is it drugs? Or is it guns?
- jollybean 5y ago
  All of the above. Anything that shouldn't be crossing.
  - didibus 5y ago
    Do you also expect all cars crossing the border to go through full inspection for all of the above all the time? I guess my personal assessment is that none of those are that big a deal to warrant so much inconvenience to most Americans crossing the border, including our trucking companies and their trucks. You could just let people buy and consume drugs if they want, don't know why we took away that freedom in the first place. Texans love guns, so not sure why we'd want to prevent them from entering. Illegal migrants can also be deported after the fact, so I'm not sure you have to catch them all on entry, and a lot of them provide valuable cheap labor. And even if we want to prevent some of that, I really don't know if it's to the point of having trucks wait days for an inspection or spending all that money on infrared, AI, and what not.
    - jollybean 5y ago
      This is really naive. Let's take the 'no borders' situation - and throw in 'no drug regulation': 1) The immediate availability of narcotics would devestate the country within a few months. The opioid epidemic is already causing great harm, and that's something that was actually contained initially within the confines of the American medical system: you had do have prescription, from a doctor, and access a controlled substance. And even then - it's bad. With fentanyl now available, which by the way, is the #1 drug of choice among recent opioid addicts because it's just 'much better' - we're seeing devestating results. A completely liberal free for all would mean all sorts of things: energy drinks, candy, food, would be embedded with various drugs. America is not 'burning man' - with mostly high responsible actors, doing stuff 'on the side' where it's not open, and not usually within 'arms reach'. Even the professionals who can 'handle their stuff' at burning man, were things to become as easy as coca cola to access, would fall under. Within about 5 months, 5% of the population would be addicted to meth or opiods, it would be a massive public health disaster of epic proportions. And while organized crime might not exist, petty crime would skyrocket. 2) "Texans love guns, so not sure why we'd want to prevent them from entering." Because guns are a controlled commodity for similar reasons. Every state has regulations. Do you want fully automatic machine guns, grenades, CS gas easily accessible to every baddie in America for a few dollars? It's absurd. 3) "Illegal migrants can also be deported after the fact" No, they can't. Illegal immigrants are not deported unless they have committed major crimes, because it's too expensive and politically untenable. 'Open Borders' would mean millions of people arbitrarily flowing into the US until the system was degraded to the point where there wasn't an advantage in coming to the US. When it has failed as badly as Brazil, well, people will stop coming. 4) It's really absurd that people think laws, borders, rules etc. don't matter and are somehow arbitrarily limiting. Those are part of the fundamental building blocks of civil society. Mexico is a broken state, the US is mostly a civil state, which is a delicate thing. One of the first things to happen with 'open borders' would be the Cartels themselves using it as an opportunity to corrupt American politicians. Money is a very powerful thing, unrestrained it would corrupt Arizona / New Mexico politics and Justice System relatively quickly and the dominoes would start to fall.

rayiner 5y ago

It’s weird to see reminiscing for the Bush-era GOP from people who presumably aren’t Republicans. Don’t we want the state to listen to its voters and not corporations? I mean, the GOP ignoring its voters in favor of corporations is what led to the Trump rebellion against the Bush/Cheney wing. Democrats of the time were right!

didibus 5y ago
Do Texans really want all trucks from Mexico inspected for drugs and harboring illegal migrants? I guess as a non Texan, I just hadn't realize how big an issue this was to Texans personally.
- sam36 5y ago
  It is an extremely big problem: https://twitter.com/USBPChiefRGV https://twitter.com/USBPChiefRGV People that don't live here or those that just keep their head in the sand will never really see the big picture.
  - didibus 5y ago
    I checked your link, I'm not sure what to make of it though. To be honest, I probably need to be schooled on the whole thing. Generally, when there's issues at a local level, my gut reaction is I probably just don't understand the problem. But I'll also probably start by asking naive questions. My first question is, it seems that yes there are lots of people trying to smuggle drugs or illegally enter the US for... Maybe working under the radar? Escaping Mexico? And I can believe that it is a hard job to prevent this. But it also seems to me like we made up the problem, why are we wanting to prevent the drugs and migrants in the first place? For the drugs, seems we might as well manufacture them ourselves, make them in the US, label them properly, dispense correct dosers, list out side effects and risks, and tax their sales. If people can get them through other channels, the demand for the Mexican one will reduce and that seems like it would naturally cause the smuggling to decrease. Or maybe, it wouldn't be smuggling anymore, just another import they self-declare and we tax, just like avocados. For migrants, I'm curious what they're looking for. Are they running away from danger and trying to find safety? Are they looking for work? And why don't we want them? We're worried they resort to crime and theft? We don't have jobs for them? They bring anti-democratic values with them and promote things that we worry would eventually destroy our democracy and take away our freedom? I think if any of those were true for migrants, I could see it being a harder problem. I'm not sure they are true though. But say they do lead to crime, violence, loss of democracy, loss of employment, and loss of freedom. If that's the case, it's definitely going to be challenging to stop so many people from entering such a big border. I get that. I guess I'm just missing that first link, do they cause all that trouble? Or are we just making up the problem?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

refurb 5y ago

Considering Texas has been complaining for a while about the illegal immigrant issue that the federal government is causing, this actually make perfect sense in terms of looking out for their constituents?

grapeskin 5y ago

I'd dare say it's malicious, at least in this case. Perfect time to shift blame upwards following the already ongoing shipping and supply problems. Endless aggressive expansion of the starve the beast tactic is bound to reach its limits eventually, and all that's left is outright attacking it. Inventing a problem and proposing awful solutions is a proven election strategy.