Posted on 04/08/2013 7:15:01 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
We Americans are lucky, though we seldom reflect on it, that we have good neighbors.
In East Asia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines face challenges from China over islands they have long claimed in the East China Sea.
In Europe, Germany and other prosperous nations face demands for subsidies from debt-ridden nations to avoid the collapse of the euro.
When Southern Europeans look across the Mediterranean, they see Muslim nations facing post–Arab Spring upheaval and disorder.
The United States has land borders with just two nations, Canada (on which more on another day) and Mexico, where Barack Obama is headed next month. They’re both good neighbors. I realize that most of the recent news on Mexico has been about violent drug wars. You get 500,000 hits when you Google “Mexico ‘failed state.’”
But that’s a misleading picture. The war on drug lords waged by President Felipe Calderon from 2006 to 2012 has had considerable success and has been de-emphasized by his successor Enrique Peña Nieto.
The focus on the drug war ignores Mexico’s progress over the last 25 years as an electoral democracy. For 71 years, it had one-party rule by the PRI (Party of the Institutional Revolution). Under PRI rule, a president selected by his predecessor selected his successor.
But under PRI presidents Carlos Salinas (1988–94) and Ernest Zedillo (1994–2000), Mexico established a clean election system under which the opposition conservative PAN and leftist PRD parties won state and legislative offices.
This was capped when PAN candidate Vicente Fox was elected president in July 2000. When Zedillo came on television and said, “I recognize that Vicente Fox is the next president of Mexico,” thousands of Fox supporters gathered around Mexico City’s Angel of Independence and stomped so strongly in unison that the earth shook.
Fox and his PAN successor Calderon had some significant policy successes. But they were frustrated in getting changes in the energy sector, in which the state-owned monopoly Pemex has lagged behind, and in education, where teacher jobs are handed down from parent to child.
The reason is that since 2000, none of Mexico’s three parties has had majorities in Congress. That’s one result of genuine political competition, in which voters have imposed rotation in office in governorships and legislative seats.
But it also meant that the PAN presidents could not get reforms through Congress if they were opposed by the PRI and the PRD.
Things have been different since the 2012 presidential election. PRI candidate Enrique Pena Nieto seemed a depressingly conventional politician, who as governor of the state of Mexico (which surrounds central Mexico City) gained publicity for dating a telenovela star.
Pena won the July election handily and, on taking office in December, called for major reforms. He issued a 34-page Pact for Mexico, which proposed greater competition for Pemex in the energy sector plus education and judicial reforms.
Remarkably, it was endorsed by PAN and PRD, as well as the PRI. Pemex has been a sacred cow in Mexico since the 1930s, when President Lazaro Cardenas seized foreign oil operations and created the state-owned monopoly.
The Pemex union was a pillar of the PRI establishment. Now a PRI president was proposing to reform it, and his move was endorsed by a PRI party convention in March.
Pena also acted on education. In February, Congress passed a law establishing a transparent system for teacher hiring and evaluation.
The next day, the government arrested the head of the teachers’ union and charged her with spending $156 million of union funds on luxury goods.
And Pena has moved to deregulate telecommunications, which threatens the position of telecom billionaire Carlos Slim.
There is other heartening news from south of our border. Mexico’s economy is moving ahead with 5 percent growth.
Since the NAFTA treaty went into effect in the 1990s, it seemed that Mexico’s economy was tethered to ours, leaving it unable to close the gap with the United States. Now as our economy slogs along slowly, Mexico is moving toward catching up. It is, as former foreign minister Jorge Castaneda has proclaimed, a majority-middle-class country now.
It is also a country from which, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, there has been no net migration to the United States since 2007.
All this vindicates our previous four presidents, who pressed for closer ties with Mexico. But most of the credit belongs to the leaders and people of Mexico. Good neighbors.
— Michael Barone, senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor, and a co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.
Oh geez....let’s just all have a big Kum By Yah party and single Mexican Ditties....
When they honestly attack their drug lords and wipe them out. When they honestly stop helping their illegals rape and pillage THIS country. When they stop taking the money and wealth of their own country, from their peon citizens.
Then, I might join the campfire and sing.
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Sorry Mr. Barone....
As long as my taxes are feeding and providing medical care for 20 millions scofflaws who think they are entitled to these benefits...
And as along as the sundry pompous "leaders" of Mexico refuse to administer their own country with an even hand or enforce their own laws with integrity.... NOPE!
Failed state...
>most of the credit belongs to the leaders and people of Mexico
Good leaders don’t dump their trash on their neighbors and good people don’t abandon their home to steal their neighbors home.
“and Mexico, where Barack Obama is headed next month. They’re both good neighbors”
Forgive me for commenting when I haven’t finished the article, but I just couldn’t get past that one!
Good neighbor??? My butt!!! They send us their criminals, then piss and moan and sue us every time one of our LEOs lays a finger on the scum. They print up books to get them here and tell them how to get welfare. They vote against us in the UN. They TAKE TAKE TAKE.
What has Mexico ever given us except poverty, disease, political uproar, murder, rape and a BAD ATTITUDE??
“Good leaders don’t dump their trash on their neighbors and good people don’t abandon their home to steal their neighbors home.”
Amen!
Another in a series of articles telling us why there is no reason at all to oppose amnesty for illegal aliens. We’ve had many articles about how more illegals are now going home than entering the US illegally. And just yesterday we had an article about a young Dream Act type illegal who’s decided to return home simply because it’s the right thing to do.
And today, we have another feel good, no reason to oppose amnesty (whether or not he says that) article from Michael Barone concerning what wonderful neighbors we have to our south.
Definitely a pattern here, and all these articles just before the Gang of 8 introduces its amnesty for illegals bill in the Senate.
Don’t worry, just be happy, folks.
Another open borders hack writes an article. Film at 11.
Barone is a stooge for amnesty. He keeps stating the above phony 'fact' in multiple op-eds, despite the fact that border apprehensions were up 10% in 2012, and a staggering 500% in the past 6 months alone, as a flood of illegals is crossing the border on thenews of ICE releases and the coming amnesty. This is an innoculation article, as Stand With Arizona and others are beginning to expose the evils of Mexico to the public to defeat the amnesty push.
Mexico’s economy is strong. Their unemployment rate in February was 4.85% – near our best rate in the past 20 years. Mexico is the 10th richest nation on Earth, with a state-owned oil and minerals monopoly, state-owned tourist beaches, and boasts the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim Helú. How is Mexico able to do so well? Because they export their poorest citizens to the United States - their outsourced welfare state. And those workers take jobs from Americans and legal immigrants, but also drain our social services – with 57% of illegal alien Mexicans on at least one form of welfare. And not only does Mexico drain our economy by inundating us with its poorest, but its also reaps the benefits from those workers in America. Mexico gets back a staggering $25 billion annually in “remittances” – cash sent back from its illegals who work (and collect welfare) in the U.S.
Why are we continuing to subsidize the Mexican economy with open borders, and an open labor market for their lawbreaking citizens? And why on Earth would we make the situation even worse with amnesty for 20+ million illegal aliens? Let’s get America back to work, and stop helping Mexico’s economy at the expense of our own.
Canada is buying us a new bridge over the Detroit river and Mexico is dumping their problems on us.
Barone is an open borders shill. No thanks.
Mexico a good neighbor? That statement is a hot steaming pile of caca del toro if I ever saw one!
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