The National Butterfly Center Is Taking A Stand February 13, 2019February 13, 2019 Have you seen the Governor of New Mexico’s viral video? Thirty seconds. (Read about it here.) Her point — colorfully made — is that $5.7 billion could be better spent than on a wall. I’ve already posted a forensic engineer’s assessment of the wall. (“Ridiculous.”) Here’s a tool to build your own $5.7 billion budget. This may all seem irrelevant if Congress gets Trump to accept 55 miles of fencing instead. But as he’s shown in needlessly deploying thousands of troops to the Southern border, he may well find ways to waste taxpayer money on his obsession even without this specific $5.7 billion demand. It’s our money. We should fund smart, effective, (humane), border security . . . but that shouldn’t be the stuff of campaign rallies; it should the be the stuff of experts And here’s a post from the National Butterfly Center (I have eyes everywhere! thanks, George Mokray), noting how Trump’s wall runs right through it — and our Constitutional rights. . . . In this 38-mile length of fence the Trump Administration seeks to build, more than 30 million square feet of vegetation may be cleared. Some of this will be private land, such as ours, but some of it will be public land, like the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge and Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park. These are YOUR lands. These lands hold our history as a nation; our cultural history and natural history. They are home to our natural treasures and, in many cases, the last foothold for endangered species, like the Ocelot. For this reason, the National Butterfly Center is taking a stand. We are joining dozens of private property owners in taking legal action against the efforts of the federal government to deprive us of our property rights. . . . Joel Wesson: “I have been getting 3% interest for the past 8 years at a credit union — check out Kasasa checking. I am amazed that so few people seem to know about it. Only limit is that it only applies (at my credit union, others have different rates and limits) to the first $25k in the account. So I have been getting about $800/yr that is basically free money just for changing my checking account. It is kind of the opposite of the ‘Bill Gates is so rich he loses money if he stops to pick up a $20 on the ground.’ Why are all these other people not picking up the free money?” ☞ Available only through 2,931 community banks and credit unions, but perhaps one near you. I guess you know what tomorrow is. Don’t forget flowers or a card or a phone call. Or a poem. Like this one, I wrote just for you: Roses are yellow, white, or vermillion / You are my choice, out of all seven billion. Won’t you be my Valentine?