League City vs. the USA, Part 4: The unaccompanied migrant children

I'm re-posting (below) and relinking (here - PDF) League City's proposed resolution (reportedly, to be voted on during tomorrow's Council meeting) which opposes any potential participation in the federal government's processing of the unaccompanied and undocumented children who are currently crossing our border en masse.  In conjunction with that re-post, I'm once again going to ask a specific question regarding League City's wider actions and intentions with respect to immigration matters.

This iconic photo has appeared on numerous international news accounts of what's happening with the tens of thousands of children who are arriving.

Photo ownership is attributed to Breibart Texas via some accounts, while it is unstated on others. This version was screengrabbed from The Daily Mail.   

If you read the news at all, you can't miss the coverage of this troubling issue - it's a story of international significance.  But what our domestic commercial news media has largely failed to make clear is that this isn't so much an American issue as it is a Texas issue.

For that kind of clarity, we need to turn to a venerated source in London England.  The Economist magazine published this concise summary and graph which tells the tale in a way that no other presentation has to date.

Screengrab courtesy of The Economist.  Mind that I'm a nonprofit micro-commentator, eh, chaps?   

There isn't an American (Texan or otherwise) alive today who would judge this situation to be in any way desirable for anyone involved nor from any legal or humanitarian perspective.  The whole thing makes the Katrina evacuation look like a walk in the park by comparison.

I agree that there are genuine questions that need to be answered with respect to issues of finance, logistics, safety, and public health.  But I'm not going to comment on whether I think League City's proposed anti-minor-children resolution is fair, compassionate, or reasonable on its face - scores of others will no doubt jump on that bandwagon.  Galveston County Daily News took the unusual step of leaving this story outside of their paywall and I'm assuming that was part of their motivation - to elevate its profile and intensify the resulting scrutiny (who says American journalism is dead?).

What I am going to re-ask is whether League City's overall position on undocumented immigrants is internally consistent, because I believe that's a pivotal question from a moral standpoint (and we voters need to be evaluating the moral substrates of our elected representatives).  Let me recap some recent history for context.

In what became known as the Journaleros lawsuit, LC distinguished itself by violating the Constitutional rights of assumed-illegal day laborers within its city limits, wasting hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on legal fees in the process.

As that situation was unfolding, LC was also in the process of contracting for the construction of its new $31 million Public Safety Building - the one they funded by effectively circumventing taxpayer endorsement, by the way (they intentionally never put it to a vote as was originally proposed).

In view of those curiously-juxtaposed purposes, my question at the time was this:

Where is the labor coming from to build the new Public Safety Building?

Screengrabbed from this post.  

Half of Texas construction workers are undocumented - that much is no secret.  Is it even possible to win a large low-bid municipal construction contract using strictly-legal labor in this state?  Given that LC is consistently preoccupied with restricting the activities of illegal aliens, what steps did it take to ensure that there would be absolutely no undocumented labor within any of the supply chains for its new Public Safety Building?

In other words, I was asking whether LCPD was violating the Constitutional rights of undocumented laborers with its right hand while simultaneously capitalizing on the fruits of their labor with its left hand, to the extent of watching that very same class of people build their own brand new police station. But I never got an answer to my question.  For some reason, the outrage-driven commercial news media apparently never saw fit to see how tightly those dots might be joined by investigating that one.  Not yet, anyway.  Either way, the answers would be newsworthy, so I don't understand this.

Does League City truly oppose illegal immigration on principle, or does it do so only when it conveniences them in some headline-generating fashion?  Are they capable or even willing to put our money where their mouths are on this issue?  Those are the questions that remain unanswered.  With this new undocumented migrant resolution re-thrusting LC's handling of immigration issues back into the spotlight, we have another chance at some deeper answers, if only someone working in a journalistic capacity would seek them.  

I'm asking the same thing in a slightly different way a year later (by "whole thing" I was referring to the Journaleros lawsuit).  Screengrabbed from this post.  

*     *     *

Here is a text transcript of the resolution in case the JPG images below are too pixilated to read on some mobile devices:

RESOLUTION NO. 2014-_______

A RESOLUTION OF THE CITY OF LEAGUE CITY, TEXAS TO PROTECT THE HEALTH, SAFETY, AND SECURITY OF OUR CITIZENS AND COMMUNITY; AND PROVIDING FOR OTHER MATTERS RELATED TO THE SUBJECT

WHEREAS, the citizens of League City, Texas recognize their duty as law-abiding citizens to act in accordance with the U.S. Constitution and the Texas Constitution, and agree that their right to life, liberty, and property shall not be infringed; and

WHEREAS, the federal government has failed to protect the homeland in accordance with Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, Texas has the right and obligation to protect its citizens in accordance with Article 1, Section 1 of the Texas Constitution: Freedom and Sovereignty of State. Texas is a free and independent State, subject only to the Constitution of the United States, and the maintenance of our free institutions and the perpetuity of the Union depend upon the preservation of the right of local self government, unimpaired to all the States.

And is supported by Article 1, Section 29 of the Texas Constitution: Provisions of Bill of Rights Excepted from Powers of Government; To Forever Remain Inviolate. To guard against transgressions of the high powers herein designated, we declare that everything in this (Texas) "Bill of Rights" is excepted out of the general powers of government, and shall forever remain inviolate, and all laws contrary thereto, or to the following provisions, shall be void.

WHEREAS, the citizens of League City Texas are greatly concerned regarding the ongoing massive influx of illegal aliens seeking unauthorized entry to the United States; and

WHEREAS, it is estimated that more than 90,000 minors will arrive in the United States during
the 2014 fiscal year and an additional 145,000 illegal alien minors in 2015 fiscal year, with most expected to remain in Texas cities and communities; and

WHEREAS, the leaders of League City question the impact that the sudden influx of school-age illegal minors will have on our Independent School Districts’ (ISD) educational funding, school resources, campus security, and health safety for our children; and

WHEREAS, health advisories report that many illegal aliens suffering from diseases endemic in their countries of origin are being released into our communities; and WHEREAS, the federal government is actively seeking more locations within Texas towns and counties to accommodate the unprecedented overflow of illegal aliens and unaccompanied minors; and

WHEREAS, the increasing volume of illegal aliens is already bankrupting some cities and counties in the State of Texas by overwhelming the local medical, educational, law enforcement, and judicial systems; and

WHEREAS, members of dangerous transnational criminal organizations and radical Islamic terror groups continue to exploit the situation to infiltrate the United States for the purpose of establishing criminal activity, terror cells, and training operations within our homeland; and

WHEREAS, without a secure border Texas cities and communities cannot protect the health and safety of their citizens;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF LEAGUE CITY, TEXAS, as follows:

Section 1. That all agencies of the City of League City are instructed to refuse requests or directives by federal agencies to permit or establish any facility for the purposes of processing, housing, or detaining any illegal aliens, designated as “refugee” or otherwise.

Section 2. That in order to control the potential threat of communicable diseases reported to be prevalent among illegal aliens, all appropriate agencies of the City of League City are instructed to prudently exercise the City’s police power in any manner necessary to protect the health, safety and welfare of the citizens of League City.

Section 3. We hereby appeal to our state legislators and elected officials for action and accountability to urgently address the continuing influx of illegal aliens across our border.

Through State executive and legislative actions demand that the Federal government provide additional resources for new and/or existing Border Patrol checkpoints, and employ a contiguous physical barrier where strategically prudent.

Demand the Texas State Legislature to enhance state smuggling and human trafficking laws, and provide civil liability protections for Texan land owners against criminal trespassers.

Demand the Texas State Legislature abolishes any and all state-controlled or sponsored magnets that exacerbate the problem of rampant illegal immigration, such as (but not limited to): in-state tuition subsidies, welfare benefits, and free non-emergency health care for illegal aliens.

Require the State to perform a cost/benefit analysis of the illegal alien presence and report that cost to Texas taxpayers and state agencies.

Pass legislation to prohibit “sanctuary cities” which restrict law enforcement from determining the immigration status of detainees after the commission of a crime within our communities.

Section 4. That civic responsibility demands that community and state leaders begin crisis planning immediately to address the unprecedented wave of foreign minor school age children that could be enrolled in Texas schools this summer; and

Section 5. That the City of League City, State of Texas, calls on other communities and jurisdictions to join with us in this action by passing similar Resolutions.

Section 6. That copies of this Resolution be immediately transmitted to the Governor of the State of Texas; the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives of Texas’ legislature; each individual legislator that represents our City in the State of Texas; the Commissioner’s Court of Galveston County; and the Sheriff of Galveston County.

PASSED AND APPROVED on the _______ day of July, 2014.

_________________________________
TIMOTHY PAULISSEN,
Mayor

ATTEST:
_______________________________
DIANA STAPP,
City Secretary

Centerblog on Pinterest

FYI, I am now Pinteresting via http://www.pinterest.com/centerblog/

I'm taking just the best content posts (minus the blabbermouth editorials) and consolidating them for easy reference under a series of headings.  

With more than 650 blog posts by this time, I've basically lost mental control of my own content.  And Blogger doesn't help - despite being a Google product, it has one of the worst search engines I've ever seen.  I can't find half of what I search for, even when I'm sure of my keywords.  Even if I search by tags (labels), it's unworkably cumbersome.  I don't think the developers figured that the average blogger would be as prolific as I am, because the tools don't match the task.  

Recursive screengrabs from Pinterest. 

Some of my stuff gets Pinterested by other internet users anyway, so I decided to start consolidating all of that in one visually-navigable place.  So if you think that you once saw something mildly interesting on this blog, browsing through Pinterest might be your most efficient way to re-access it.

And you only have to look at all my garden critters if you choose to.
:-)

A take on local snakes, Part 2

WOW - did you see that KTRK story on the coral snake that was found inside a League City residence?

This image above looks like one of those crazy annoying advertisements you'd see on the right hand side of your computer screen as you're trying to read the REAL news - but it's not.  This IS the real news.  Judging from CAD records, the home in question was on the west side of League City in the general vicinity of Clear Springs High School.

The coral snake identification mantra (used to distinguish them from less harmful snakes that mimic their protective coloration):
Red touches yellow, kill a fellow.
Red touches black, friend of Jack (or "fellow be back"). 

Screengrab courtesy of KTRK.  

Just in case you're freaking out right about now, rest assured that this kind of event is *extremely* rare.  Profoundly rare.  It never would have occurred to me as a possibility, and I do know a little bit about local snakes.  The chances of this happening in League City are probably less than the odds of winning the lottery and then forgetting to claim the prize money.  Coral snakes are extremely evasive, extremely reclusive - they avoid humans like the plague.  In all of my years of camping and hiking on the upper Texas coast, I've only ever come face to face with one of them - and even to see one deep in the woods (Lake Houston Wilderness Park, one mile from the park headquarters) was so rare that I had to text just about every friend I have in North America to share the unprecedented news.  People around here usually go their whole lives without a coral snake encounter, even if they are hunting and fishing enthusiasts who spend a great deal of time outdoors.  Coral snakes are deadly but their bites happen so infrequently (i.e., never) that no antivenin has been manufactured in more than a decade.  To discover a coral snake in a suburban home??  That is unthinkable.

In contrast, finding the likes of this guy around here is fairly routine.  This is a non-poisonous water snake we rescued one day a few years ago in Heritage Park down by Butler Longhorn Museum.  He was tangled in some fishing line and the young child next to me helped to un-do the damage.  I'm wearing gloves in this pic not because the snake is harmful but because he was listless (being throttled with fishing line will do that) and so I was initially cautious about the potential for zoonotic diseases.  

I wrote "A take on local snakes" more than three years ago and since that time, I've been humbled by the sheer number of people who are possessed by an abject fear of snakes.  I can see those fears laid bare in their search strings:  They assess the snake risk before deciding to move to Texas (career opportunities be damned).  They assess the snake risk before even stepping one toe onto the beach at Galveston.  They assess the snake risk before visiting any local park, no matter how much concrete it contains, no matter how developed with urban or suburban improvements it may be.  I never realized how extensive these concerns really are.  If you are one of those people, you can rest assured of one thing - your odds of finding a coral snake in your own suburban home are basically nil.

This is the closest most people are ever going to get to that type of experience.  

Update on the IH-45 construction in Clear Lake

I retweeted this, but because the link is not active in the original tweet due to a formatting issue, I thought I'd repost it here as well.  Houston Matters interviews a TxDOT spokesperson on the progress being made with respect to the IH-45 reconstruction through Clear Lake.

Clear Lake in my rear view mirror.  Of course the reason why I'm able to fool around and take artsy photos like this is that, like everyone else, I'm sitting stock still in gridlocked traffic for extended periods of time.  And with 158,000 vehicle transits per day and only three lanes in each direction, it's no wonder.  

New construction at West Walker and League City Parkway

You may have noticed this just south of the SH 96 - West Walker intersection:

Somebody is breaking ground on something.  "SWPPP" stands for (construction) storm water pollution prevention plan.  

I haven't peered intently at the SWPPP notice in order to identify the contractor and/or the owner, but I believe that this might be the beginning of the new 368-unit Watermark apartment complex that was referenced six months ago by Houston Chronicle (paywalled), reported more recently by Galveston County Daily News (paywalled), and referenced two days ago by Houston Business Journal.

I don't have more information than that speculation, in part because Galveston CAD has been plagued with technical issues for as long as I've ever used it (i.e., years).  I'll have to report more when the info becomes available.

Even when it does get updated with current real estate transactions, a lot of it doesn't run properly.  

There are a variety of errors that tend to stymie any given property research effort.  

These issues are no secret to anyone, including the CAD itself.  How many billions of dollars worth of appraised property do we have in Galveston County, and yet we can't even get a simple GIS system to run properly??  I've never seen this kind of shenanigans occur with HCAD, which is a Sherman tank of a robust website.  

The suburban F bomb: Fleas

Yesterday I saw something for the very first time in our four-year tenure in Centerpointe:

It's very a propos that the maker labeled the genitals, given that reproduction is what fleas do best.

Diagram screengrabbed from Wikipedia.  

We do our own dog grooming (it's extremely labor-intensive and very expensive to get a large dog groomed professionally).  We do shaving and trimming outdoors on a table we have set up behind our garage.  Our dog has been kept up-to-date on her Spinosad (Comfortis, which is a highly effective oral flea treatment and preventative) so imagine my surprise when I began shaving her only to discover that she was hopping with fleas.

Proud pic taken post-grooming yesterday:  The spiffiest, handsomest GCARC alumna in all of League City.

Let me say it again because it's important: Four years I've been regularly shaving and grooming this dog, and not once during that time did I find a single flea.  Until yesterday, that is.  This dog spends most of her days snoozing underneath my home office desk and serving as my official foot-warmer.  You better believe she's the cleanest mutt in town.  

Here's the scary part for all of you:  Given that our dog doesn't "have" fleas per se, and given that there are none in our home, and given that any dog correctly dosed with Comfortis simply can't support an active flea population (they will die as soon as they bite - that's the happy miracle of Spinosad), what likely happened yesterday is that the live fleas all piled on her as soon as she stepped outside our door.

In other words, the concentration of fleas in our external environment appears to be abnormally high right now (abnormal relative to the levels I observed historically).  There are probably a couple of factors contributing to this:

• It's mid-summer, the time of year when fleas are at their most active.

Well, according to this screengrab from Weather.com, they're active year round here, but maybe the 2014 polar vortex had something to do with a summer surge this year.  

• We seem to have a larger-than-usual concentration of outdoor dogs in Centerpointe right now.  Consistent with this observation, did you notice that most recent email blast from the POA?  Here's an excerpt:

From an email in late May 2014.  It seems like barking issues have been on the upswing.  Think about what that implies:  If a dog's owner is ignoring their dog's physical and social needs to the point where the neighbors are ready to call the police because of the resulting barking, how likely is it that the owner is attending to their dog's medical needs??  Answer:  Not too friggin' likely.    

I have definitely noticed an increase in the number of people keeping outdoor dogs on our side of the subdivision.  Furthermore, I've noticed that some families who formerly kept their dogs primarily inside have transitioned to keeping them outside.  Overall, the number of outdoor dogs has increased, and here is my concern with that:  People who keep their dogs outdoors aren't always as diligent about grooming and flea-treating because they have so much less physical contact with their animals.  They figure, "Our dog doesn't come into our house, so who cares whether it gets those expensive parasite medications on time?"

I will tell you who cares - your neighbors care very much, especially your neighbors who walk their own dogs and then return with those dogs to their homes.  Those neighbors don't want high concentrations of fleas hitching a ride on their treated dogs long enough to get inside.  For while fleas can't survive on a medicated dog, if they get a toe-hold in a residence they can instead thrive quite nicely on the blood of humans and other pets that may be present.  And the quality of your life goes downhill on roller skates from there, because fleas are profoundly difficult to eradicate once established in a home.

So please double check your dog's parasite maintenance schedule and treat him or her if necessary.  Like, immediately, because something seems to have happened to change our flea status quo here, and by my observation, it has happened for the worse.

Moral of this story:

If you have an inside dog, even if that dog is treated with effective products such as Comfortis, Trifexis, or Advantage, you would be wise to keep a closer watch on both the dog and your home.  This Aggie site describes the steps that should be taken in addition to dog treatment to ensure that a flea infestation does not occur.   Screengrab above from that site.  

I try to explain to my teenager what life was like before we all had access to technologically-advanced products for flea control, but it's another one of those phenomena like rabbit ears and rotary dial telephones.  You can explain until you're blue in the face, but unless you've lived it, it's just a vague notion of little relevance.  People of my generation will fully understand this meme above.  Younger generations, not so much.  

Landscaping made easy, Part 12: Incorporating planters

I take the idea of incorporating "large planters" to an extreme in our landscape plan, using stock tanks for vegetable gardening in our tiny subdivision back yard.

One of my favorite stock tank pics from 2011 before we stained our fence and incorporated stone edging around the mulch beds.    

But this is not a landscaping aspect where you need to "go big or go home".  Smaller planters of the type that are found in any home improvement store make wonderful additions to the landscape, especially when grouped together.

Here is an example.  To the left of this waterscape are hibiscus, asparagus fern, and a strawberry cultivar spilling out of that pot in the foreground.

See this post for information on constructing the waterscape, which includes the basalt fountain visible in this photo and a kettle pond to the right of this photo.  

You can see that this available space would be too small to hold multiple in-ground plantings.  Furthermore, from an artistic standpoint, a couple of rounded containers are helpful in softening the hard stone edges of the house corner and waterscape.  

Here are a couple of things to keep in mind from a design perspective when arranging a planter configuration:

1. Remember the rule of cross-referencing (repetition of elements).  In the example shown above, there's stone in the waterscape and also stone "mulch" surrounding the planters.  The color of the fountain is very close to the color of the strawberry pot, which is an ordinary $17 Mexican-style clay vessel from that I got at Home Depot and spray painted with a metallic Rustoleum to make it look more modern.  The form of the large hibiscus flowers is repeated in the art glass flowers in the middle of this grouping.   
2. Plants in close proximity look best if they incorporate extremities of color and texture because otherwise, they blend together and don't look distinctive.  In the grouping above, you see a strawberry plant sending runners over the side of the pot, an upright, dark-leaf'd hibiscus with bright red flowers, and a light green airy asparagus fern with tiny white flowers.  Furthermore, there's an extremely tall bamboo in the background.  These plants could scarcely be any more diverse.  
3. Particularly in greater Houston where the land is flatter than a pancake, the attractiveness of any given grouping is maximized when the heights of the plants are staggered.

It creates interest because your eye moves from one level to the next.  And again the cross-referencing - the staggered heights of the plants repeat the staggered height of the chopped stone in the waterscape.  

There's another advantage to using pots.

Keeping plants within pots initially can help you to determine if they are going to do well in your chosen locations.  This hibiscus is really too large for a pot like this, but with the tall bamboo behind it, I wasn't sure if it would receive enough sunlight to thrive.  But after a month of being plopped in this location, it is still showing good form and good flower production.  Therefore I will go ahead and plant it in the ground here (after our daytime temperatures fall by about 30 degrees, that is).  The other two of this grouping I will retain in planters to maintain the visual interest.  

The only downside to using planters in a landscape setting is the degree to which they dry out in hot weather.  In greater Houston, you're basically on the hook for watering planters daily in the summer months, unless they contain cacti or succulents which can withstand our temperature extremes.  If you don't water daily, your plants simply won't survive.  

But there's always room for hibiscus, isn't there??  Potted or ground-planted, they are worth the maintenance hassle.  Nothing else has quite the same visual impact.  They are relatively hardy and flower readily if they are given proper soil, fertility, sun exposure, and watering.