Ron Paul supporters shout "Ron Paul" in a face-to-face confrontation with Dream Act supporters

Read Political views also heard outside outside GOP debate, written by the Chronicle’s Curt Prendergast and published on TucsonSentinel.com:

“Political views weren’t only being heard inside the Mesa Arts Center where Republican presidential hopefuls gathered to debate Wednesday night — they could be heard outside, as well.

DREAM Act supporters, including activist Dolores Huerta, chanted ‘Vote Romney, not the DREAM Act’ and “Education, not Deportation,” which sparked a group of Ron Paul supporters to denounce members of the media for paying attention to the demonstrators rather than their candidate.

Others wanted their voices heard about the future of women’s rights.

“We’re fed up with the GOP and their attitude toward women,” said Karen Van Hooft, spokeswoman for the Arizona chapter of the National Organization of Women.” [Read more]

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Paul and DREAM act supporters face off just outside the Mesa Arts Center

By Paul M. Ingram

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Mesa, AZ - Among GOP supporters were two distinct groups, a young and vocal throng of Congressman Ron Paul supporters who pushed through the crowd chanting “revolution…Ron Paul” and an equally youthful alliance of DREAM act supporters, who carried signs saying “Veto Romney, not the Dream Act.”

For a moment, these two groups clashed, supporters of both chanting slogans almost nose to nose with their opposition. The exchange was outside the Mesa Arts Center, the 19th and potentially final debate for the four GOP candidates. Mesa police officers kept a tight watch on the two groups, but nothing more than words were exchanged.

The Arizona Dream Act Coalition came in response to a pledge Mitt Romney made during a campaign stop in Iowa, when he promised to veto the so-called DREAM Act if it came across his desk as president. The act would create paths to citizenship for undocumented people under 35 who serve in the military or go to college.

Even as Paul supporters remain vocal, the Congressman’s support in Arizona appears weak. According to a recent PPP poll, Ron Paul has a fourth-place finish among the candidates, garnering only nine percent of the vote. In contrast, Romney and Rick Santorum are neck and neck, with 36 percent and 33 percent respectively.

Ron Paul supporters were some of the most vocal in the intersection of Main Street and Center Street. Along with more than three dozen other supporters, Adam Henriksen, 27, of Glendale, Ariz., chanted for revolution and “End the Fed!”

Sporting a blonde goatee and a Ron Paul Revolution trucker cap, Henriksen, doesn’t look like the typical young Republican.

“I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to vote for Ron Paul for a long time,”  he said. “I didn’t have the chance in 2008, but I’m here now and it’s time for our generation to vote for someone who will change things.”

When asked about the other candidates, he said, “I see no contrast between Romney and Obama.”

He cited Paul’s “consistency” as a powerful reason to vote for the 76-year old Congressman and argued that the military “supports [Paul] twice as much as they do Obama.”

“He’s the only guy who talks about the real issue, the actual cause of the problem,” said Mike Durante, 26, who studied Regional Development until 2008, only to find that the banking crisis had destroyed his chances of finding a job after graduation. In addition to supporting Paul’s views on the Federal Reserve he is an avid supporter of Paul’s views on the Drug War and the PATRIOT Act.

For April Cardenas, 29, of Mesa, Ariz. the Congressman “preaches that we have to be self-reliant.” She discovered the representative’s sometimes quixotic campaign after seeing someone’s yard painted with huge letters reading Paul. “It’s plain and simple, if you’re reliant on the government that support can always be taken away from you,” she said.

In preparation for the debate, Mesa police officers cordoned off Main Street, creating a wide avenue for GOP supporters to watch the live CNN feed on a projection screen. In a bullpen just beyond the viewing party, supporters of the DREAM act voiced their disagreements, and during Romney’s answer about immigration, booed.

George Clifton, who carried a sign stating “I stand with all immigrants. Veteran: USMC and CIA” roamed the bullpen that kept protestors away from the viewing party, shouting “same old, same old” during the candidates’ responses.

Carmen Cornejo, the executive director of CADENA, an organization that advocates for the act, carried a placard with a red and green image of a student wearing a mortar board and graduation robe.

“I’m here protesting because Romney said he will veto the Dream Act,” she said.

In addition, DREAM act supporters were accompanied by Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association with noted activist César Chávez.

As Paul supporters and DREAM act advocates faced off, there was a moment of agreement. “End the war,” yelled someone in the Paul crowd. “Yeah,” came the reply.

Feb. 22, 2012

QUESTION: Gentleman my name is Jerry Lott (ph) and I’m from Key Man, Arizona. It seems that Arizona has come under federal attack just for wanting to secure its southern border. What will you and your administrations do to fix the situation? To secure our border and to protect the American people?

Rep. Ron Paul (R- TX)

Feb. 22, 2012

John King, debate moderator, CNN Anchor and national correspondent: “Congressman Paul, I want to go to you first on this one. You’re from a border state. As you answer Gary’s question, a recent federal analysis says the cost of secure fencing, which they have a good deal of the border along this state, would cost about $3 million per mile. Is that a good investment? Money well spent?”

Rep. Paul: “Probably not, but we can do a better job, and the best way to do it is forget about the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan and deal with our borders, put our resources on this border. This is what we need. But we need to change the rules. We reward illegal immigration. They get benefits, Texas hospitals, and, you know, schools are going bankrupt.

The restraints on the states, and Obama’s restraints on the states to deal with it. Why is it if an illegal comes across the border and they go on private property, why isn’t that trespassing? And why don’t you have the right to stop it? So but there should be no mandates from the federal government about what you must do under the 9th and 10th. There would be essentially none.

But the federal government does have a responsibility for these borders. And I just hate to see all these resources — I think that we should have much more immigration service on the border to make it easier — it’s hard to even get to visit this country. We’re losing a lot of visitors and workers that could come to this country because we have an inefficient immigration service.

And then that invites the illegal. We have to deal — we can’t endorse the illegal, but the program today endorses the illegal problems. And a weak economy is always detrimental, too, because of the welfare state. We have welfare at home and some jobs go begging, we have jobs going begging in this country in the midst of the recession, has to do with the economy.

You can’t ignore the economy. But also the welfare state, allowing immigrants to come over and then get the benefits — if you subsidize something, you get more of. So there’s a lot we can do and should do and certainly this president is not doing a very good job.”

Sept. 7, 2011:

Rep. Paul: “Obviously, it’s a very big problem. I think we need to remove the incentive: easy road to citizenship. Nobody has mentioned the fact that they qualify for benefits, as well. You know, the welfare benefits, that we shouldn’t have to give. The state of Texas shouldn’t be forced to provide free healthcare and free education. There is a mess down there, it’s a big mess. And it’s the drug war that’s going on there and our drug laws are driving this so now we’re killing thousands and thousands of people. That makes it much more complicated. But people who want big fences and guns, sure we can secure the border. A barb-wire fence with machine guns, that would do the trick. I don’t believe that’s what America is all about. I just really don’t. We can enforce our laws.

If we had a healthy economy this wouldn’t be such a bad deal. People are worried about jobs. But every time you think about this toughness on the border, and ID cards and REAL ID, think that it’s a penalty against the American people, too. I think this fence business is designed and may well be used against us to keep us in. In economic turmoil, the people want to leave with their capital and there’s capital controls and there’s people controls. So every time you think of a fence keeping all those bad people out, think about those fences maybe being used against us, keeping us in.”

Fmr. Speaker Newt Gingrich

Feb. 22, 2011:

KING: “Mr. Speaker, the fence has been a point of contention in the race. And one of your high-profile supporters, a gentleman who’s been up here during this campaign, Governor Rick Perry of Texas, is here tonight. He said this: if you build a 30-foot wall from El Paso to Brownsville, the 35-foot ladder business gets really good. You signed a pledge to construct a double fence. Why is Governor Perry wrong?”

Speaker Gingrich: “He’s not wrong. They’d have to have two 35-foot ladders because it’s a double fence.” (LAUGHTER)

“Look, the fact is I helped Duncan Hunter pass the first fence bill in San Diego when I was Speaker of the House. San Diego and Tijuana are the most densely populated border. It turned out it worked. It worked dramatically. Duncan and I would be glad to testify. He’s former chairman of the national — of the Defense Committee — how much it worked. However, it stopped. It stopped in part because there was a wetlands. It turned out none of the illegal immigrants cared about wetlands policy. Then you had to go and build around the wetlands, which we did. The further we have gone with the fence, the fewer the people have broken into California. Now, the thing that’s fascinating, though, John, is you quoted a government study of how much it would cost. That’s my earlier point. If you modernize the federal government so it’s competent, you could probably do it for 10 percent of the cost of that study.

The fact is — what I would do, I would — I have — I have a commitment at newt.org, I would — to finish the job by January 1, 2014, I would initiate a bill that would waive all federal regulations, requirement and studies. I would ask Governor Brewer here, I would ask Governor Martinez, Governor Brown, and Governor Perry to become the co-leaders in their state. We would apply as many resources as are needed to be done by January 1 of 2014, including, if necessary — there are 23,000 Department of Homeland Security personnel in the D.C. area. I’m prepared to move up to half of them to Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. This is a doable thing.”

Sept. 7, 2011:

Speaker Gingrich: “I think we have to find a way to get to a country in which everybody who’s here is here legally. But you started by referencing President Reagan, in 1986 I voted for the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, which in fact did grant some amnesty in return for promises. President Reagan wrote in his diary that year that he signed the act because we were gonna control the border, and we were gonna have an employer program where it was a legal guest-worker program, that’s in his diary. I’m with President Reagan.

We ought to control the border, we ought to have a legal guest-worker program, we ought to outsource it, frankly, to American Express, Visa, and Mastercard so there’s no counterfeiting, which there will be with the federal government. We should be very tough on employers once you have that legal program. We should make English the official language of government. We should insist that first-generation immigrants who come here learn American history in order to become citizens. We should also insist that American children learn American history. And then we have to find a way to deal with folks who are already here, some of whom, frankly, have been here 25 years, are married with kids, live in our local neighborhoods, go to our church, it’s gotta be done in a much more humane way than thinking we’re gonna automatically deport millions of people.”

Fmr. Governor Mitt Romney

Feb. 22, 2011:

KING: “Governor Romney, the border security is part of the equation, what to do about whether it’s 8 million or 11 million illegal immigrants in the country now is another part of the equation. And Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who’s with us tonight from Maricopa County — he’s in the audience — he told me – he told me this week here in Mesa — these are his words — “it’s called political garbage, if you will, to not arrest illegals already in this country.” You’ve talked to the governor about self-deportation, if businesses do their job, asking for the right documents, the people will leave. What about arresting? Should there be aggressive, seek them out, find them and arrest them as the Sheriff Arpaio advocates?”

Gov. Romney: “You know, I think you see a model in Arizona. They passed a law here that says — that says that people who come here and try and find work, that the employer is required to look them up on e- verify. This e-verify system allows employers in Arizona to know who’s here legally and who’s not here legally. And as a result of e-verify being put in place, the number of people in Arizona that are here illegally has dropped by some 14 percent, where the national average has only gone down 7 percent. So going back to the question that was asked, the right course for America is to drop these lawsuits against Arizona and other states that are trying to do the job Barack Obama isn’t doing. And I will drop those lawsuits on day one. I’ll also complete the fence. I’ll make sure we have enough border patrol agents to secure the fence. And I will make sure we have an E-Verify system and require employers to check the documents of workers, and to check E- Verify. And if an employer hires someone that has not gone through E- Verify, they’re going to get sanctioned just like they do for not paying their taxes. You do that, and just as Arizona is finding out, you can stop illegal immigration. It’s time we finally did it.”

Sept. 7, 2011:

Gov. Romney: “First, we gotta have a fence, or a technologically approved system to make sure that we know who’s coming into the country, number one. Number two, we gotta have enough agents to secure that fence and to make sure that people coming over are caught. The third thing, and I learned this when I was with Border Patrol agents in San Diego, and they said ‘Look, they can always get a ladder to go over the fence. People will always run into the country. The reason they come in such great numbers is because we’ve left the magnet on.” I said “what do you mean ‘the magnet.” When employers are willing to hire people who are here illegally, that’s a magnet and it draws them in. And we wanted to talk to them about sanctuary cities, giving tuition breaks to the kids of illegal aliens, employers that knowingly hire people who are here illegally, those things also have to be stopped.

If we want to secure the border we have to make sure we have a fence, technologically determining where people are, enough agents to oversee it, and turn off that magnet. We can’t talk about amnesty, we cannot give amnesty to those who’ve come here illegally. We’ve got 4.7 million people waiting in line legally. Let’s let those people come in first and those that are here illegally, they shouldn’t have a special deal.”

Fmr. Senator Rick Santorum

Feb. 22, 2012:

KING: “Senator Santorum, we had the conversation about the border and the fence. Governor Romney talks about E-Verify, making sure business is doing their part of the equation. What about the individual? You said in our last debate employers should be sanctioned, as Governor Romney just said, if they hire illegal immigrants. About a quarter of all workers in private households are undocumented. What about the homeowner who hires somebody as a household cleaning worker, as a nanny, perhaps? Does that person — if you’re going to be consistent, have enforcement across the board, should that person be sanctioned?”

Senator Santorum: “I’m not going to require homeowners to do E-Verify. I think that’s one step too far. But I think what we need to do is to give law enforcement the opportunity to do what they’re doing here in Arizona and what Sheriff Arpaio was doing before he ran into some issues with the federal government, which is to allow folks to enforce the law here in this country, to allow people who are breaking the law or suspicious of breaking the law to be able to be detained and deported if they’re found here in this country illegally, as well as those who are trying to seek employment.

This is enforcing not just upon the employer, but on those who are here illegally and trying to do things that are against the law, like seeking employment here.

Sept. 7, 2011:

Senator Santorum: “My solution is very similar to Newt Gingrich’s. Look, I’m the son of an Italian immigrant. I think immigration is one of the great things that has made this country the dynamic country that it continues to be. People who are drawn because of the ideals of this county and so we should not have a debate talking about how we don’t want people to come to this country. We want them to come here, like my grandfather and my father came here. They made sacrifices. They came in the 1920s. There were no promises, there were no government benefits. They came because they wanted to be free and they wanted to be good law-abiding citizens. So we have to have a program in place that sets that parameter, that says ‘You’re going to come to this country, come here according to the rules.’ It’s a very good first step, that the first thing you do here is a legal act, not an illegal act.”

Debate moderator Jose Diaz-Balart: “A quick follow-up, 30 seconds, so there are eleven million people that fait accompli they’re already here, what do you do with them if you are able to secure the border?”

Senator Santorum: “Well, I think we can have that discussion, you know, that whether what we do with people, how long they’ve been here, whether they’ve had other types of records, but to have that discussion right now and pull the same trick that was pulled in 1986 when we say ‘We’ll promise to do this if you do that’…No more. We’re going to secure the border first and that’s the most important thing to do. And then we’ll have the discussion afterwards.”

Speaker Newt Gingrich (response)

King: It’s a tough policy question, obviously, and this state has been part of the driving force. It also becomes — especially for four gentlemen who would like to be the next president of the United States, it’s a difficult political question in the sense that the Latino population is the fastest-growing demographic in our country. And some Republicans — some Republicans — Marco Rubio, for example, the senator from Florida that all of you have complimented, said — could be a leading force in your administration if you’re elected — he said this recently. He says he worries that some of the rhetoric used by Republican politicians on this issue has been harsh, intolerable, inexcusable.”

Mr. Speaker, is he right? (response to Santorum’s comments on Feb. 22, 2012)

Speaker Gingrich: “I don’t know who he’s referring to, so I’m not going to comment in general on a statement. Is there somebody somewhere who’s done that? Sure. Was it also intolerable for President Obama to go to El Paso and make a totally demagogic speech in which he fundamentally — no. The great failure here — I voted in 1986 for the bill which was supposed to solve all this, which Ronald Reagan solved — signed. And in Reagan’s diary, he says, I signed this bill because we have to get control of the border and we have to have an employer-sanctioned program with a guest worker program.

Now, all of us who voted for that bill got shortchanged on everything we were supposed to get. President Bush couldn’t get it through. President Obama can’t get it through. I believe you cannot pass a single large comprehensive bill, the 2,700-page kind of bill you described. I think you’ve got to go one step at a time. The first step is to control the border. I don’t believe anybody who’s here illegally — and I talked last night, for example, with folks who are of Hispanic background from Nogales who are in the import-export business dealing with Mexico every day. They don’t want a border that’s closed, they want a border that’s controlled, that has easy access for legality and impossible access for illegality. And that’s the model that I think you can talk about in my community of any ethnic background in this country.”

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Alfonso Espinoza and Erin Fiorini speak with Marisela Centeno Lara about her composting toilet in Nogales, Sonora. Photo by Curt Prendergast.

“Thanks to eco-toilets that compost human waste, 75 families in Colinas del Sol, a hardscrabble neighborhood clinging to a hillside just south of the border, don’t have to use homemade latrines anymore.

On Saturday, students from the Technological Institute of Nogales and the University of Arizona visited the neighborhood to check for design problems with the toilets and to ask residents if the toilets had been a help. Judging by the reactions at several houses, the toilets have turned out to be a godsend.

“Before these toilets were here almost everybody used open pits and latrines. It caused a lot of illnesses,” said Marisela Centeno Lara, a 12-year resident of the neighborhood who, like many of her neighbors, now owns an eco-toilet. With the new toilets, many health problems have gone away, she said. “We don’t get that same aroma, either,” she added with a laugh.” [Read more]

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Photo by Curt Prendergast.

“(Reuters) – U.S. authorities have upgraded six miles of border fencing in a remote Arizona ranching town with a taller barrier that will be tougher to breach, in the latest effort to tighten their grip on the isolated stretches of the Mexico border.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency said it has replaced outdated panel fencing that carved across the southern reach of Douglas, in the far southeast corner of Arizona, with an 18-foot-tall bollard and steel-mesh fence design.

The move to refurbish the barrier separating Douglas from Agua Prieta in Mexico’s northern Sonora state follows an overhaul of 2.8 miles of fencing in Nogales, the largest city on the Arizona-Mexico border, last year.

“Every time we get a new technology it allows us to expand.” said David Herrera, a spokesman for the U.S. Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, of the overhaul completed this week. [Read more]

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Review by Paul M. Ingram

The cause remains a mystery, but in early October 1947, a fire incinerated the entire Phoenix streetcar fleet. The city, suddenly without a public transport system had two choices: rebuild the fleet from scratch or follow Los Angeles and purchase buses from General Motors.

To General Motors’ glee, the city picked the buses, setting the city on a pattern of public transport that remained for sixty years, ended only by the opening of the city’s new light-rail system. By then Phoenix’s sprawling development had metastasized into the enormous megapolis that balances on the edge of complete failure.

Phoenix may be a metropolis jinxed by the myth of its namesake. The valley was once the center of Hohokam culture, but was abandoned simply because life there became unsustainable. The modern story isn’t much different, the city depends on water from the drought-stricken Colorado River delivered through the Central Arizona Project.

It is this city that Andrew Ross, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University, has decided to study the pratfalls and successes of sustainable development.

Ross draws on interviews with hundreds of Phoenicians, including state legislators, urban planners, developers, green business advocates, community activists, and energy lobbyists, to develop a history of the city and its future as a growing city in the desert.

By understanding the history of the city, Ross is also able to appraise its future and thus gives a road for a future Phoenix shifted away from sprawl and endless subdivisions to sustainable culture.

With aplomb, Ross evaluates the difficult relationships between politics and green development, as well as the state’s drive toward anti-immigrant laws like SB1070. He criticizes what he calls “eco-apartheid” noting that wealthy Phoenicians can afford clean air and mountain views while poor residents suffer in toxic pollution. Ross calls upon readers to reconsider sustainability, arguing that small individual gestures aren’t enough. To really change the city’s future, and for that matter the future of southwestern United States, a significant change must happen.

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“Sometimes positive outcomes are born of bad practices.

The current Nogales police station in the Nogales City Complex. Photo by Curt Prendergast.

Take, for example, the Nogales Police Department’s planned funding method for a new station.

The department, with its 56 uniformed officers and 18 other staffers, says it has outgrown its current digs at City Hall, which were built in 1978 to accommodate 30 people. But when an effort to convince the city council to finance a new station with bond and grant money fell short of support, NPD needed a Plan B.

So now it’s turning to another, relatively abundant source of funding in Santa Cruz County, one that doesn’t place an additional burden on taxpayers: forfeitures of “dirty” money.” [Read more]

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The rarest rocks on Earth are actually chunks of other planets, and Tucson’s  Gem, Mineral and Fossil Showcase is ground zero for the meteorite-obsessed.

Meteorites – space rocks that survived a fiery plummet through Earth’s  atmosphere – are the main attraction for an eclectic community of enthusiasts  from around the world every February. It offers Tucsonans the opportunity to see  the rarest of the rare and learn from the world’s leading meteorite experts.

“The mineral show is a chance for people to see things before they go to the  museums and things the museums can only dream of having,” said Marvin Kilgore,  curator of the meteorite collection at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and  Planetary Laboratory. [Read more]

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Photo by Curt Prendergast.

“For the past 30 years, the San Juan Bosco shelter in Nogales, Sonora has welcomed deported migrants with nowhere else to go.

The shelter opened its doors on Jan. 31, 1982 and hasn’t closed them since. On Tuesday night, local government officials, migrants, and friends of the shelter gathered to celebrate three decades of helping those most in need. The celebration included a dinner, a Catholic Mass, and a dance featuring hits like Michael Jackson’s “Beat it” and “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and the Comets. There was also a belly dancer.

Since it opened, almost 900,000 people – mostly deported migrants – have found a warm meal, medical care, a soft bed, and protection for few nights at the shelter, said Francisco Loureiro, who founded the facility with his wife Gilda. Today, the safety offered by the shelter is especially important considering the violent drug war raging in Mexico, he said.

“They’re afraid of the thousands of things that can happen with the violence we are living right now,” Loureiro said.” [Read more]

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“North of Albuquerque, the people of the Pueblo of Jemez may hold a secret to dealing with wildfires in the ponderosa pine forests of western New Mexico and eastern Arizona.

The tribe has lived in these forests since before the Spanish conquistadors explored the region in the 16th century. This long history makes the pueblo an ideal place for University of Arizona researchers to study how humans in the Southwest have dealt with wildfires over the centuries.

With backing from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the USDA under a four-year, $1.5 million grant, the UA-led team includes experts in tree-ring science, fire ecology, forest fire behavior, archaeology, anthropology and education.

The team’s goal is to figure out how to keep forests healthy using prescribed burns and other methods to minimize the destructive power of large fires. This goal will become increasingly important as drought conditions make woodlands more likely to burst into flames.” [Read more]

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