The wall won’t help

Editor:

Government wall-building has a bad history. Back in the 1930s, France built the Maginot Line along its northern border to prevent a German invasion. The Germans simply marched around the end of it.

Farther back, Roman Empire soldiers built Hadrian’s Wall across Britain near what is now the English-Scottish border. After 25 years, it was abandoned and has spent the last two millennia fencing sheep.

Well, what about the Great Wall that’s rambled across northern China for 2,000 years? The huge structure you see in photos, finished about 1644, runs more than 5,000 miles, even more grandiose than the proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall. Problem was, by then, the wall had long since failed its purpose — preventing Mongol invasions.

Our proposed “Great Wall of Pointlessness” seems designed to solve a non-problem. It wouldn’t keep out drug dealers and other criminals. Those guys don’t mess up their pointy, patent-leather shoes by trudging across miles of dangerous desert. They fly, sail, tunnel or come through legal entry points. In fact, most immigrants from Central America and Mexico arrived through legal entry ports, then overstayed their visas.

In 2016, illegal crossings outside of authorized entry ports had fallen by 90 percent since 2000, according to the Office of Immigration Statistics.

But just for argument’s sake, suppose the wall could keep out immigrants. How would that affect the United States? The Brookings Institute calculated the net pluses and minuses (brookings.edu/essay/the-wall-the-real-costs-of-a-barrier-between-the-united-states-and-mexico).

Their conclusion? Eliminating immigrants would significantly damage the U.S. economy through lower sales, less tax revenue and higher prices.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, the proposed wall would cost about $22 billion, not including maintenance, property acquisition or staffing. (Having spent years around construction, I suspect cost overruns will push the price to twice that amount at least.)

Actual construction of the wall would require wholesale seizures of private property along the border. (What happened to the right-wing defense of property rights?)

Our taxes would be paying those billions. Mexico is not, will not, never was going to pay for this nonsense. Anyone who says Mexico will pay is lying to you.

Laura F. Sanchez

Los Lunas

EMTs need better training

Editor:

Recently, there was an incident in Bosque, where a small child was attacked by dogs in front of my house.

My daughter ran them off and brought her inside. Naturally, she’s hysterical, screaming and in pain. She had deep bites with moderate bleeding on her upper arms, but not another mark anywhere else.

Her terrified mom called the ambulance. I’m a registered nurse, so while we were waiting for the ambulance, I cleaned and dressed her wounds and they were ready for sutures with only minimal oozing of blood by the arrival of the ambulance. It could have been handled at urgent care.

Of course, the poor, terrified little child is still screaming, which caused her oxygen level to go down and some disorientation. Oxygen was needed — that’s it. Her blood pressure became elevated because of fear and pain. Any EMT should be able to handle that and if ambulance companies don’t have better trained EMTs, maybe they should close their doors.

Rather than reassuring the parents, they let them think it was life-threatening and flight-for-life was called. They could have had her to Albuquerque by the time the helicopter arrived.

The child received sutures and I saw her at the store the next day. I heard it cost about one quarter of a million dollars.

Question: Why is health insurance so high?

Pamela Sky

Bosque

No need for tax credit

Editor:

After looking through the pre-filed bills coming up in the 2019 Legislature, one in particular drew my attention. It’s HB 185 (Creating the Electric Vehicle Income Tax Credit and the Electric Vehicle Charging Unit Income Tax Credit), introduced by Democrat Jim Trujillo from Santa Fe.

This same bill, or similar, has run the gambit through the Legislature for about the past seven years and has always been defeated.

According to the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (Obama administration), buyers of electric cars can already receive up to $7,500 worth of federal tax incentives (your tax dollars). But now, the creator of HB 185 proposes that New Mexicans pony up another $2,500 to $3,500, depending on the car purchaser’s income.

In other words, at the federal level, taxpayers are already paying $7,500 per car to subsidize the purchase of an electric car by relatively wealthy elite car buyers.

The creator of HB 185 has the audacity to ask New Mexicans to add another $2,500-$3,500 out of your pockets to help out people of affluence for a total of $10,000 to $11,000 per car. And if the owner of the electric car decides to install a charging station for his/her car at his home, he/she can apply for another $300 of taxpayer’s money.

When is the last time anybody ever paid you a pot-load of money when you bought a car? This is more federal and state level spending, and a stick-it-to-the-taxpayers attitude from the green leftist faction.

What makes these particular car buyers think they’re so special that they have to have special legislation from the government and squeeze the poor taxpayers for money?

The reason this bill has been defeated many times before is because of a few reasonable-minded people in the Legislature. But now, with a full Democrat Legislature and governor, you can expect to be helping out the wealthy electric car buyers with your tax money.

If people want to buy an electric car, that’s great, but our legislators should not expect the taxpayers of this state to help pay for it.

Donna Crawford

Los Lunas

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The Valencia County News-Bulletin is a locally owned and operated community newspaper, dedicated to serving Valencia County since 1910 through the highest journalistic and professional business standards. The VCNB is published weekly on Thursdays, including holidays both in print and online.