“In December, the Facilities Commission hired New York-based Posillico Civil Inc. to haul the panels from San Diego to Eagle Pass at a cost of $2 million, according to the contract awarded to the engineering firm. The company finished the job earlier this month.”

Biden’s free bollards and chains

The state of Texas, reportedly gaining population at the expense of California, has received another gift by way of the Golden State: a February 15 Texas Tribune dispatch reports that 1700 unused segments of former President Donald Trump’s uncompleted border wall that had been stashed in San Diego have been declared surplus property and quietly shipped to Texas. The “32-foot-tall steel bollard panels,” the paper says, are to be used in building GOP Governor Gregg Abbott’s Texas-only border barrier. Per the account, “In December, the Facilities Commission hired New York-based Posillico Civil Inc. to haul the panels from San Diego to Eagle Pass at a cost of $2 million, according to the contract awarded to the engineering firm. The company finished the job earlier this month.”

Gregg Abbott welcomes costly California castoffs.

Francoise Luca, a spokesperson for the Texas Facilities Commission, told the paper that the segments are being watched over by the Texas National Guard at “a temporary and secured area” in heavily Trump Maverick County at the border with Mexico. The low-key move has some Texas-based critics mad at the current president. “The Biden administration is saying, ‘We won’t build these border walls, but if Abbott wants to build them, we will give him free bollards,’” Scott Nicol of McAllen was quoted as saying. “The problem with border walls isn’t who is building them, it is the devastation that comes when they are built.”

UCSD’s Chinese farewell

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has come down hard on UCSD for its involvement with a Chinese researcher, according to a February 2 report to Congress by NASA’s Office of the Inspector General. “A researcher was removed from working on a cooperative agreement between the University of California San Diego and NASA due to his membership in the Chinese Academy of Surveying and Mapping,” according to the document. “Our investigation determined the cooperative agreement prohibited bilateral participation with China or China-owned entities.

Although the case was declined for prosecution, the University of California San Diego reversed payments of $46,124 made to the researcher and removed him from the project.” The so-called Wolf Amendment, first adopted by Congress in 2011, mandates that the U.S. space agency have no hosting or bilateral links to China unless the FBI certifies there aren’t any intelligence or human rights violation risks. Critics have called for change, but NASA chief Bill Nelson disagrees, telling Scientific American last August, “The Chinese civilian space program is, in reality, their military space program. That’s why I think we are going into a space race with China.”

...A snap inspection by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General has resulted in generally good marks for federal holding areas along the San Diego border. “During our unannounced inspections in August 2021 of four U.S. Border Patrol facilities in the San Diego sector, and two Office of Field Operations ports of entry, we observed that U.S. Customs and Border Protection generally operated in compliance with National Standards on Transport, Escort, Detention, and Search,” per a February 7 audit report.

“There were instances of prolonged detention among single adults, but conditions were not overcrowded; detainees had room to sit or lie down. We verified accessibility to water, food, toilets, sinks, basic hygiene supplies, and bedding.” On the other hand, “providing interpreters for a diverse population throughout the detention process is difficult,” and Customs and Border Protection “is dependent on other [Homeland Security] components and Federal agencies to limit the duration of detention.”

Tommy Hough’s $2000 omission

Democrat Tommy Hough, running for the Sixth District San Diego city council seat being vacated by termed-out Republican Chris Cate, has been hit with a $2000 fine by the city’s ethics commission for campaign violations during his failed 2018 challenge of the incumbent. Per a stipulated agreement approved by the commission February 10, consultants hired by ex- 91X morning-show DJ Hough’s campaign committee “prepared three different scripts that were used by both paid staff and volunteers when making campaign telephone calls.

Tommy Hough: cited for sloppy staff script slip.

The scripts all included an ‘on behalf of’ disclosure, the correct disclosure for a volunteer making calls; however, paid staff also made calls, and none of the scripts contained the ‘paid for by’ disclosure that paid staff was required to use. Callers were instructed to read directly from the scripts.” Exacerbating the problem, the document says, was the committee’s “failure to maintain records regarding the total number of calls made by paid staff,” thereby preventing ethics “commission staff from determining how many calls were made using the wrong disclosure.” In another February 10, the county Democratic Party agreed to pay a $500 fine for failing to “maintain the records of the exact number of pro-Hough door-hangers it distributed during the campaign.”

— Matt Potter (@sdmattpotter)

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