From Peculiar:
"I really don't hope for much these days in terms of taxation, liberty, shrewd foreign policy, immigration, &c. About the acme of my fondest hopes for the next administration is a Forest Service with a reasonable budget and some BLM personnel with detectable humanity. I do think Palin has a certain amount of appeal, but the crowds chanting "Drill, baby drill!" last night were decidedly a turn-off. Likewise, while I can be sympathetic to her environmental record in the context of a vast, utilitarian, Federally-owned state like Alaska, I fear her sensibilities may be less agreeable in a West with exploding population densities. I'm definitely not anti-drilling per se, but I invite anyone pondering the putative environmentally-friendly next-generation extraction technologies to drive some BLM roads near, say, Vernal, Utah and report back. And please report back from Vernal itself, recently a qiuet, medium-small Mormon agricultural town, now covered in billboards advertising meth addiction hotlines and pre-employment drug testing, rife with pregnant Mexicans and tattooed punks ranting to themselves, property taxes soaring. If we're going to drill, could we please see some long-term benefit to the drilling communities instead of rapid degeneracy and bust?"
RTWT. And make sure you read the comments too.
4 comments:
"rife with pregnant Mexicans"
You're off my list.
Don't know if it's worth arguing, and I might not have used such provocative language myself-- it is called a link after all, and I agree with the general message.
But for the record I live in a Hispanic village, attend a church there when I go at all, and have for thirty years. These people are Americans (and are patriotic enough they have a better record fighting our wars, whatever THEIR merits), than the class I grew up with.
And have nothing to do with the political, economic, and ecological
problems caused by unchecked illegal immigration. Many of us wonder how long Mexico can use us for a safety valve for their corruption.
And I know any amount of Spanish New Mexicans who feel the same way.
Also, in Mr P's defense (though he doesn't need it) , he was born, schooled, returned twice to, and lives in an even more Spanish town than I do.
Sorry for the grammar slip in the last-- should are BETTER Americans.
And this is not merely a conservative ideas either-- read Patrick Burns, who is far more outspoken about immigration than I am.
Whoops, I've been out of the loop on this thread.
Not sure it's worth arguing either, and I'm not going to beg P.C. forgiveness, but yes, it's a more provocative phrase than ought to have used. More than being wrong, it's rather rude, and for that I apologize.
My point, however, regards the abrupt disruption of a small town's population and economy, and that point stands regardless of which ethnicities are involved. A Mexican population would be unremarkable in some parts of the country; in the oil-and-gas lands of Utah and Colorado, it demonstrates blatantly that outsiders are being imported for these jobs. Hence, the touted benefits to existing communities seem pretty dubious.
As for pregnancy, I should certainly have written "pregnant 20-year-olds," of which you now see many of various ethnoi. Fecundity in geographically unstable populations linked to boom-and-bust employment: not an encouraging trend anywhere.
My feelings on immigration generally are highly mixed, but I will say some good Mexican food and culture in Vernal would be a very welcome import. Increasing population and economic disruption are my point, not culture. That's why I live in New Mexico and visit Utah.
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