Guarding Our Borders

An AP article informs us that the Border Patrol is contracting with Boeing to install video surveillance towers in Detroit and New York State to help protect our northern borders. You may or may not know that they installed an “electronic fence” on our southern border two years ago and were paid hundreds of millions of dollars for it. The Border Patrol said that a single strand of barbed wire, without the barbs, would have been more effective, since a few of the illegal border crossers might have tripped over it.

The thing simply didn’t work in any respect. Cameras could not see, sensors tripped for rabbits but not for human beings, alarms sent Border Patrol agents running to where the illegals were not crossing, and not to where they were crossing. It was, I believe, eventually dismantled and shipped back to Boeing, accompanied by a host of caustic commentary from the Border Patrol. If any refund was ever issued by Boeing it was certainly not made generally public.

The article does reference that southern effort, with a masterpiece of understatement,

Boeing is the firm responsible for a 28-mile stretch of technology erected along the U.S.-Mexico border near Tucson, Ariz., as part of the government’s Secure Border Initiative. The company was widely criticized for delivering an inferior product.

Yes, "delivering an inferior product" indeed. The article continues,

Deployment of the surveillance cameras will allow the Border Patrol to evaluate whether the technology can be effective in monitoring movement in often a cold-weather, river environment.

Well, that may be a good idea, since they have certainly determined that it is not effective in a hot, dry desert environment.

We have a government which keeps giving contracts to companies that failed to deliver on earlier contracts. But it’s all good, since Boeing undoubtedly contributed to the proper campaign coffers, and is providing high-paying jobs to the proper former government officials.