Texas has no valid plan or purpose for its recently announced $1.3 million per week commitment to expanding state trooper patrols along the border, judging from statements by Attorney General and GOP gubernatorial nominee Greg Abbott.
From the Houston Chronicle (June 29):
Asked what a secure border might look like, Abbott said Sunday he didn't have a ready-made definition, but that achieving one was possible.
"If we can land people on the moon, if we can create iPhones and iPads," he said, "I think we can measure meaningful border security."
In other words, Greg Abbott doesn't know any more about how to secure the border than he knows about how to construct an iPhone or put a man on the moon.
So here we are: For the foreseeable future, Texas will spend $1.3 million more per week on border security than we did a month ago. But state leaders cannot identify an operational goal beyond meaningless pla udes (the goal is a "secure border" but Abbott can't define the term). And they cannot identify metrics to tell if the mission is a success or a failure (Abbott "thinks" it can be meaningfully measured but can't say how).
It's impossible to solve a problem one can neither define nor measure. Texas has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years on similar border surges and by the state's own (often
dubious) account, problems worsened. So why throw good money after bad? Any project where the government a) cannot define its goal, b) cannot measure success, and c) has pledged tens of millions of tax dollars ($67.6 million per year) with no end in sight, by definition qualifies as a big-league boondoggle in my book.
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And we all know the Bible is unchallengeable accurate scientific and history tome of truth, just like Repug politicians and Fox.
Wait, Boutons literally wants to reward criminals by selling them citizenship? How is that fair to the legal immigrants who busted their ass to do it the right way?
