Hide the Mexicans. Here comes Ted Poe.


Between Ted Poe and a camera is a dangerous place to be.

Over a period of the past four months, I endured what seemed like a nightmare. I was in the hands of a huge and largely incompetent bureaucracy at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs trying to straighten out a financial mess over my bills for copayments. It all started when the VA, without any warning, started taking money out of some checks I was to receive for expense reimbursements connected with training I had in Washington, D.C., for my part-time federal job.

At the time I had written a request to Congressman Ted Poe, my representative in the U.S. House, to see if something could be done to straighten out the mess. About three weeks ago I called his office in Beaumont to see if anything had been done in my case. But alas, the case worker in Poe’s office couldn’t find my request.

I finally got this exasperating situation straightened out to my satisfaction. But it took a lot of yelling and screaming at VA employees who acted as if they had been lobotimzed. And this mess was not solved by the person and his staff who one usually turns to for such problems — my congressman.

Last night and once before, I had seen Poe on Lou Dobb’s CNN show which should be named “Lou Dobbs Hates Those Damned Illegal Immigrants.” Last evening Poe was talking to border patrol officers near El Paso. What’s wrong with that you might ask?

The problem is that El Paso has its own congressman. Poe represents an area in Southeast Texas which includes where I live.

Here is another little matter. On Poe’s Web page I found a list of his committee assignments which are:

House Committee on Foreign Affairs
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade
Subcommittee on Europe

House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
Subcommittee on Highways and Transit
Subcommittee on Aviation
Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation

Well, I guess border issues are discussed in Foreign Affairs. And the story on Lou Dobbs last evening was on the prospect of Mexican truckers taking the roads in our country so I suppose that falls under Transportation.

But the fact is that Poe was on television discussing illegal aliens because he likes having his face on TV and in the newspaper. It doesn’t hurt, of course, that illegal immigration is a hot-button issue with so much of the country including Poe’s ethnocentric right-wing base.

Poe has always been a publicity hound. He routinely made national news as a criminal court judge in Houston for his self-described “poetic justice” in handing out sentences. For example, he would order a guilty defendant to carry a sign outside a store from which he had stolen.

No doubt exists in my mind that something needs to be done about immigration. I’m not totally sure what the answer might be. But I do wonder if the reason Ted Poe’s staff cannot help out a veteran in distress is that they are too wrapped up in his quest to be a big shot when he is more like what my daddy called “a big shot, dot the ‘o’.”

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