Michael Davis
John Pullman
David W. Tuthill
John Willis
                             

01/09/06  Take them off the books for all of us.

This whole issue about towing cars of uninsured motorists is a simple matter of law enforcement.  It ties into everything from illegal immigration to flagrantly ignoring city laws, like code enforcement regulations.

Almost everyone I know has had a run-in with an uninsured motorist, including myself.  It was years ago on I-35 at LBJ, and my poor little Mustang was totaled.  The Mustang-killer was not an illegal immigrant.  He was a U.S. citizen, and a native Dallasite.  Two or three years later, I got a check for $54 from some settlement that got him another drivers license and car insurance.  That check didn't even make a dent in my car payment or my car insurance premium.

The Mustang was replaced by a Tempo.  Then, I drove my Red Blazer until it spent more time at the repair shop than on the road.  Now, I have a Trailblazer that's so big I could haul my extended family around -- at least all my critters could make a trip with room to spare.   Other than the car payment after years of driving the paid off Blazer, the worse thing about having a new truck is worrying about some uninsured jerk hitting my pristine Trailblazer.

There are other basic rules of living together that some people just completely ignore.  I have mixed emotions about illegal immigration.  That said, my emotions are not as mixed as they used to be.  I understand the desperation of people wanting to live in the United States.  I would not want to live anywhere else in the World.  I would never leave Texas.

I am not as sympathetic to illegal immigrants these days.  Rather than following the rules to legally enter the U.S. from wherever, hordes of unknowns are just thumbing their noses at our government.  Not only do they openly break immigration laws, they completely ignore our local laws once they get here.

There is an absolutely terrifying story in The Dallas Observer:

Run for the Border; A Mexican diplomat tells suspects to run, but Susana Loera won't stand for it By Rick Kennedy  Published: Thursday, January 5, 2006

Susana Loera remembers the first time she heard her boss tell somebody to break the law. It was in early 2004, and the parents of a Mexican man arrested in Dallas had come to the consulate seeking advice. Luis Lara, Mexican vice consul for protection, found out that U.S. immigration had neglected to put a deportation hold on the prisoner, meaning he could still be released on bail. Lara turned to the anxious parents as Loera stood nearby.    "He said, 'My advice to you is to go bond him out now and go back to Mexico,'" Loera says. "He said, 'If he stays here, he's going to get convicted. The American justice system is very corrupt. He's going to get an outlandish sentence, so you need to bond him out now and run to Mexico.'" ... At first, Loera thought she'd somehow misunderstood Lara--but in the weeks and months ahead, she says, Lara repeated that advice dozens of times to Mexican nationals accused of everything from petty theft to murder. "I had problems with two things about telling these people to run to Mexico," Loera says. "One, it makes [the accused] look guilty, and maybe he's innocent. Secondly, maybe he's not innocent--maybe he's guilty, and there's a criminal out there now who's running to Mexico for a small period of time and changes his name and he comes back and he's living next to me."    Loera has since left the consulate and is now leading a campaign to put an end to the "many ethical violations and in some cases the blatant disregard for the well-being of Mexican nationals," as she wrote in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Another charge she's leveled is that consul officials allow Dallas attorney Pablo Alvarado special privileges in exchange for cash and favors. ...    According to Loera, suspected criminals weren't the only ones Lara advised to return to Mexico. During her time at the consulate, Loera says, victims, too, were often told they would be better off escaping to Mexico than looking for justice from the U.S. legal system. ...

Is that something?  That's exactly why we must know who's coming across our borders. 

Ginger Germany who shared her Rio Grande daring-do's with us in Ginger's Excellent Adventures, has a new project.  She is most unhappy with Rob Allyn's efforts to let his client, Mexico, control our government. 

All over the city, there are neighborhoods having problems with people who abuse their neighbors by ignoring city ordinances and common courtesy.  Things you would never expect to deal with as a homeowner are now part of everyday life for some of us.  I'm not talking about foundation problems or roof leaks.

When you buy a home in a single family neighborhood, it's because you don't want to live next to an apartment house.  When the house next door or even a house on your block becomes a de facto apartment building with 3 or 4 families crammed into a 3-bedroom home, it will change the entire character of your neighborhood -- not to mention the salability of your home.  That many people will destroy a house.  When they finally move out of the house, it takes thousands of dollars to make it habitable again. 

My home was a victim of illegal immigrant abuse.  My neighbors told me there had been at least 3 families living in my house and likely dealing drugs.  They parked their cars in the front yard with no one from the city bothering them.  When something got broke, it stayed broke.  I went way over my remodeling budget, and still have major stuff to be done.  That's why I can't afford to ignore some residents of our neighborhood abusing the rest of us when they openly break city laws.   If they ruin a house and its front yard, it hurts the entire community.

There's a rented duplex at the entrance to our neighborhood that is being abused by its current tenants, who are simultaneously violating city laws against parking cars on their front yard that faces a major street.  Not only are they ruining the yard, but they have been running a used car dealership on that corner.  Here's the good news, once I got City Hall's attention to this matter, they have been on full court press for the last several weeks to make those abusive neighbors "behave".  Code Enforcement people have been issuing enough citations to them, they could wallpaper their bathroom with the tickets.  Better still, Code Enforcement is going after the owner of the duplex who has allowed his tenants to break the law and abuse our neighborhood.

I know not everyone will get the kind of attention we have had from the City Manager down to the area Code Enforcement Inspector.  There are some perks to being the town's squeakiest wheel.  It also helps to have a councilman who pays attention to our little neighborhood.

Still, all of this energy and time wasted because some jerks just will not "behave".  Before they started issuing citations, Code Inspectors warned the violators.  I tried to be a good neighbor and warn them as I said in We need accountability.  That did not go well.  Now, I leave Code Enforcement to the professionals.

But that's my point, people who think they are exempt from basic laws or even common courtesy don't stop with little stuff. 

So, let's start enforcing the laws, whether it's zoning laws or immigration laws or rules of the road.

sb