Aguilar Zinser is scheduled to deliver an outline of the proposal at a meeting Wednesday with Attorney General John Ashcroft. If they fool us, they fool all of us. U.S.-Mexican Lab Planned Government scientists want to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on a binational laboratory straddling the border between Mexico and the United States. Dreamed up by scientists at Sandia National Laboratory, the facility would be shared equally by both countries and would supposedly churn out new technologies to improve water quality, mitigate pollution, boost agriculture production and develop a stronger workforce. The planned facility is known as the Bi-National Sustainability Laboratory.
Poverty is rife along both sides of the border.
Presidio County in Texas, for example, has a 36 percent unemployment rate. The national rate is 6.4 percent. The emergence of Antonio Villaraigosa in the Los Angeles mayoral race was significant, even if it was less than stunning. His first-place finish on Tuesday clearly was propelled by unusually high turnout in heavily Latino precincts. The Census Bureau's recent announcement that Latinos have emerged as the largest ethnic minority group in the state and the nation should come as no surprise to Californians.