By: J. Charles Coughlin
I read Bob Robb’s column last week, “Don’t worry, China has big problems, and ran into the fourth paragraph which says:
“According to the report (World Bank), what China has to do to move to the next stage is breathtakingly broad and sweeping: develop more robust consumer and service markets; reduce the role of state-controlled companies and the state’s role in such companies; develop private financial markets with free movement of capital, both within the country and across its borders; establish an independent central bank and a floating currency; establish independent courts and the rule of law.
As I re-read the column and contemplated Arizona’s own struggles with Mexico, I replaced China with Mexico and read the paragraph this way:
“What Mexico has to do to move to the next state is breathtakingly broad and sweeping: develop more robust consumer and service markets; reduce the role of state-controlled companies and the State’s role in such companies; develop private financial markets with free movement of capital, both within the country and across its borders; establish an independent central bank and a floating currency; establish Independent courts and the RULE OF LAW.
This weekend I read a lengthy piece in the New York Times entitled, “In Mexico, a Kidnapping Ignored, which describes that six years into a mostly military assault on drug cartels, impunity across much of Mexico has worsened, and justice is harder to find.
As the Supreme Court prepares to hear the Justice Department’s case against Arizona this summer, isn’t it time to focus the attention of the nation on the real problem confronted by the Arizona economy, namely the mass exodus of people from a State struggling for control? This is not meant as a condemnation of the Calderon administration, but a call for our Country to begin to focus our national resources on stabilizing what is a failed State in Mexico.
As our country draws down our commitment to places like Afghanistan and Iraq, is it heresy to suggest that we invest in stabilizing our nation’s fourth largest trading partner and Arizona’s largest? Can we re-examine our nation’s own complicity in destabilizing Mexico, be that through illegal drugs or gun shipments?
Is President Obama prepared to stop playing the race card and play the statesman card and acknowledge that we don’t want a “moat“ just a country stable enough to do business with? If the Democratic Party is really concerned about human rights, let’s stop talking about the illegal immigrants trying to get jobs in Arizona and start talking about the 40,000 people who have been murdered in Mexico in the last six years.
We don’t make America greater by undermining our own laws to accommodate the lawlessness of another country. We set an example by enforcing our laws, which promote greater economic opportunity for all.
Let’s not worry about China, Afghanistan and Iraq and worry about our own neighbor right here at home, that seems like the neighborly thing to do.