I donât understand why thereâs any dispute. People pour $5B into research into self-driving cars or anything that reduces what they have to pay in wages. Seems to me that a wall doesnât need to be paid or to eat or have health insurance. If you build it well, shouldnât it reduce overall long-term employment costs?
I liked how Trump was practical âWhy should I take a vote in the House if I canât get it past the Senate because [you guys] wonât give me the votes?â Am I missing something?
I thought Trump did well to own it. From a political theatre standpoint, he played to his base when confronted with owning a shutdown and did a really good job of it. He knew exactly what his base wanted to hear - bravo!
However, I thought that Schumer was goading Trump into owning the shutdown. Schumer was pushing all of Trumpâs buttons with the finger pointing, the â20 times,â etc. Schumer is a clever guy. Schumer knew that if Trump owned the shutdown, that the admission would be toxic to the âindependent middleâ. And thatâs where Trump got played. Had he been emotionally aware enough to know that Schumerâs plan all along was to get Trump to own the shutdown, he could have avoided turning off the âindependent middleâ.
$5 b for the wall vs $1.5b proposed by the Democrats. This was just political theater. A total joke. They wonât shut the government down for $3.5b . They probably spend that ever hour.
BTW the wall will cost more like $500b. So the whole debate is about pandering to the base of each faction.
Thumb nail cost of wall. 40â high. 3000 miles long. Means 600m sf of wall times â$100/sf means $60 b just for the cost of the concrete . Plus foundations, right of ways, drainage, gates. Bridges tunnels roads. Guard towers . Electronic surveillance. Easily double the cost to $120b
$5b is a joke. Sounds like Browns Choo Choo train .
This is the Oculus guy who got pushed out from Facebook. He has a startup that uses components from consumer tech with some AI algorithms to spot humans across the borders, and then send automatic messages to agents giving the exact locations. Luckey even offered to build the whole thing for free and lease it to the feds.
Itâs also idiotic to build a wall only on one border. If itâs really about security, the Canadian border is a lot less safe then the Mexican border.
If itâs about immigration, the biggest source of illegal immigrants in the US now is visa overstayers.
So this battle about building a wall on the south is a Nativist play
How many people illegally enter from Canada each year? What is the total population living N of the US vs S? Where do over 80% of illegals drugs sold in the US come from?
Yeah⌠For whatever reason Canadians arenât into growing Cocaine. Maybe itâs too cold?
@acre, I think Trump did well the way he owned it. Everyoneâs about protests nowadays and shutting things down, so it seems within the norm of current societyâhe essentially said âYes, border security is that important, that Iâm protesting to get it.â As that Independent Middle, I sympathized with this being a worthy cause to put oneâs foot down on.
Security is not the same as illegal immigration. Trump says terrorists and what not are coming over the southern border. If that was the case why would they be so stupid as to not switch borders if there is a wall on one side. As Elt1 says, it will be practically impossible to build the border anyway. Finally if the real problem is illegal immigration, the southern border is no longer the largest source. So why not go after the largest source
My observations about emotional intelligence were not for or against a wall, nor for or against a government shutdown. My point was that Chuck Schumer repeatedly goaded Donald Trump into a position whereby Trump lost his temper a bit and owned the government shutdown.
That was Schumerâs aim - to get Trump to own the shutdown. Had Trump been more emotionally intelligent, he could have avoided this trap. Now Trump is backed into a corner.
You avoided all 3 questions. How secure do you think Canada is vs Mexico? If people were going to try sneaking into the US, would they go to Canada or Mexico first?
I answered questions. Let me change it back since you didnât seem to understand. Why would $5B protect the border? How would a $500B wall protect us more then spending less on other mechanisms? Considering our biggest problems is opioids for drug issues and most of this is bought over the internet and shipped illegally using various lega shipping methods, how would a wall protect us?
@BA_lurker If you think you answered those 3 questions, thatâs pretty funny. This is clearly pointless as you always live in some alternate reality with a unique way of processing info.
Sorry, I honestly think itâs the other way around. I am looking for pragmatic solutions and I just see attempts by you to throw out random stuff and insist on answers for your rote talking points. If you sincerely feel that the wall will solve the problem, please explain why itâs the most effective way to address the different issues brought up and why there is no other solution that is more cost effective