With only 8% built, Texas defunds state border wall program | Hacker News Reader

With only 8% built, Texas defunds state border wall program

texastribune.org

26 pointsgeox15 comments

The state government in Texas is a complete disaster. Government overreach in this state is incredible to behold. Corruption goes all the way to the top.

Greg Abbott's largest donor is someone in Vermont that owns a private school system, so what did Greg Abbott do about it? He funded Republican opponents in the primaries to remove those who voted against his school voucher bill last session. He held billions of dollars back from Texas students and school staff as an incentive for people to vote the bill this session, and of course it passed.

Dan Patrick's largest donor is the tobacco and alcohol lobby, so what did he force down the legislature this session? Making THC illegal even though something like 70% of the state wants it legalized.

I can safely say that you should not move to Texas.

The way I heard it, the one star on the Texas state flag is a review.

> Just 8% of the 805 miles the state identified for construction is complete, which has cost taxpayers more than $3 billion to date.

$3.7mm per mile is around California’s highway-construction costs.

EDIT: To be clear, $3.7mm is what it would have cost if that $3bn paid for 805 miles of fence. For these 64 miles, Texans paid $47mm per mile. That's more than it would cost Amtrak to build high-speed rail [1]. It's a quarter of what California's high-speed rail costs per mile.

[1] https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/high-speed-money-sink-w...

$3b right into the hands of contractors owned by buddies; 65 miles ain't much wall.

Waiting for Mexico to pay for the rest of it?

Is The Wall just like the "caravans" of 2016, 2018 and the Fentanyl panic of 2024?

And the panic over Communism in the 1950s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen

Once you get a few of them, the search engines will start pointing out a long list of other moral/etc panics.

https://www.ourhistory.org.uk/ten-times-america-created-a-mo...

Overwhelmingly, it does seem to be the same group of people fomenting these.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic

Add long as certain groups keep falling for it we'll keep seeing them.

Don't worry, I'm sure the "right" people got their money. It's ridiculous what people are good with their tax dollars going towards, just as long as they don't actually help anyone they don't think deserves it.

Trump seized & gave the DoD hundreds of square miles, much in the form of narrow long strips. Theres now a pretense of calling these "military bases".

In some areas yes, now we have the US military manning much of the border. At extreme expense, & denying them from being posted someplace actually useful.

More critically, anyone who so much as walks across a 60 ft so called "base" is at risk of being prosecuted for very nasty crimes. Although a number of such charges have been dismissed, because it's pretty obviously just more meanspirited puffery.

I get why the states would no longer be building this huge absurd boondoggle. It was expensive as hell & ineffective as hell. And now the feds are pouring in vastly more money to militarize the border anyways so extra why bother?

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/trump-border-military-assi... https://apnews.com/article/military-border-immigration-texas...

As Trump's (terrible) border policies show, the wall was never necessary; only iron fisted and merciless policing was needed to essentially close off the border. I said it for years that policy and tech were all that were needed to control it, along with well needed revised and improved immigration policies. Looks like only the former was instituted, so now we're doomed to stagnancy and decline

Generally speaking, “merciless” anything is inhumane, likely to be counter productive.

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