The wall might well do severe environmental damage, for example if it interferes with the annual migration of the Cessnas. They come down in the fall from Canada, but their numbers have been decreasing. It’s illegal to hunt migratory Cessnas now.
Can we build a wall to keep Canada geese out though? I’d get behind that, because screw those guys (buddies, friends).
On the other hand, a lot of the border is in desert which has a lot of solar availability versus the rest of the country. I’m not sure how this balances out versus transmission losses and additional maintenance costs due to remoteness.
At any rate, I don’t think I’m a liberal when it comes to immigration, although I’m more liberal than the current GOP rhetoric which adds several -phobias to a simple desire to enforce the law. But even so, I am against a wall because it won’t work, is impossible, and would be too expensive at any rate. We’d need to expropriate 1 mile of land to the north of the border to forestall tunnels, which includes parts of San Diego and El Paso. Even at a horrible discount that land would be very expensive. Then we’d need to install guard towers every mile, and, with the help of sensor drones, shoot anything that moves. And then you’d still just have people just come in and overstay their visa. You could probably find way around that as well such as forcing people to come up with a large bond that is forfeited if they overstay, but that would hurt the economy from lack of tourism from middle class foreigners who can’t afford that $10K or more per person that would be needed to discourage illegal immigration via that route. (ETA: It might hurt the economy a bit from lack of business travel but legitimate businesses would probably be less loath to come up with such a bond.
Yes, but one of the advantages of the desert is that there’s a lot of it, so you don’t need to use the strip of land right up against the border. The only way this makes sense to me is if the marginal cost of adding the panels is very small because of X infrastructure that already needs to be in place to support the wall. Otherwise, you can just put the panels somewhere more convenient.
Plus, putting them in a near-circular array rather than strung out in a long line will obviously make installation and maintenance cheaper, and reduce transmission costs. And you can do all this without incurring the needless, stupid expense of building a wall that contributes absolutely nothing whatsoever to the power generation project.
Build a wall between church and state.
The left argument against current American immigration policy is it depresses worker wages, especially for working class minorities, and businesses exploit immigrants so Americans can have cheap vegetables. But lefties who think that aren’t going to go for a wall, unless maybe it’s constructed from the bones of the bourgeoisie.
Maybe if the wall were to be built using only labor that is part of a court-directed community service program for those convicted or removed from office for violating government ethics rules or collaborating with a hostile foreign power. I mean, so long as there’s about two dozen soon-to-be former White House officials who are working in a chain gang in the desert, they aren’t going to build thousands of miles of wall by themselves, and the punishment speaks for itself.
Yeah, I could support that.
I describe the wall as the linear pyramid. A large ego-based construction with insignificant practical value, not even as grain storage.
Adding solar panels to the concept is as equally dumb as adding solar panels to building a pyramid to justify its cost and waste.
I’m actually for a wall on the Texas border, but rather one on the border between it and the other states. Somehow get Trump supporters to self exile there and wall them off. The added electricity would just be a bonus.
This is true, illegal immigration can depress wages and they open themselves up to abuse. But lefties tend to deal with that by pushing for temporary ID so people can report abuse and a higher minimum wage.
Taking jobs is a concern. When I was in San Diego, every low wage job was done by latinos. I’m not sure how people on the lower rung were supposed to break into the economy in that situation.
I recall being surprised when I realized he was talking about an actual physical structure instead of using “wall” as a metaphor for increased border security protocols.
(I consider myself a New England conservative, which makes me more liberal on social issues than 95% of the country but fiscally I come on a little to the right of Ebenezer Scrooge.)
Can’t tell if serious.
Maybe we could teach the bears to work on the solar arrays instead of letting them sneak into the US. They could also find tortillas for us in the middle of the freaking desert! Also panthers–panthers will travel through the mountains of Northern Mexico and have been seen in Arizona and New Mexico. We have to stop this.
God, I hope not. This reads like something the Daily Caller might post in an attempt to be funny. Perhaps next the OP could offer to allow the wall to identify as its preferred gender as an olive branch to liberals.
Can we put a community co-op garden on the roofs of the guard towers? My heirloom tomatoes are real climbers, and the razor-wire trellises would be just perfect!
Alright, let’s try this: We’ll put them on the facility at Guantanamo, and use that the get liberals to back off from wanting to shut it down! Genius, or what???
Well, forget the co-op part, and just make them farms.
But then who is going to pick tomatoes in razor wire? Who can we get to do that? I can’t see the answer, but I know it’s right in front of me…
The solar-panel suggestion doesn’t address the underlying motive: Liberals and conservatives differ on what kind of compositional makeup they want the USA to have.
There are some liberals who consider the immigration - legal or illegal - of people from Mexico to be a good thing, period. Therefore it doesn’t matter how many solar panels the wall has - if the wall stymies such immigration, it is undesirable.
I disapprove of setting up a center to torture prisoners. Slapping solar panels on it doesn’t change that opinion. Same thing here.