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Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, Arizona
Posted: July 21, 2010 11:13 AM
On the road to the November election, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer continues to see an illegal alien under every bush. This is the path she has chosen and this is the path from which she will not stray.
Brewer announced she is granting $10 million in federal stimulus funds to Arizona law enforcers so they can fight crime caused by illegal immigrants.
In this overheated political environment, this seems like a prudent move. Trouble is, it's well established that border crime and the apprehensions of illegals have been on a steady decline. These are facts Brewer hopes you ignore.
Thanks to leaders like Brewer, the police state ossifying along the border will continue to grow. Adding insult to injury, much of the $10 million will be spent on SUVs.
That money would have been better used to lure alternative-energy businesses, to help residents convert to sustainable energy sources, to help school districts facing teacher layoffs.
The Washington Post is in the midst of a blockbuster series that attempts to quantify the unbridled growth of our security apparatus. This series illustrates that billions of dollars are being wasted in the name of security -- including border security-- with a burgeoning expansion of law enforcement, an alphabet soup of spy agencies, too many private contractors to count.
More than 850,000 people now have top-secret security clearance. That's more than the populations of five U.S. states -- Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming and Vermont.
We throw ever more of our dwindling resources at the Security Industrial Complex, which has become a self-perpetuating machine. The larger it grows, the more it demands, and politicians like Brewer obediently feed it. Redundancies beget redundancies -- more money for more gadgets, more gas-guzzlers, more National Guard troops to militarize the border -- and still the root causes of our problems remain unaddressed.
Continue reading here.
