There was a rally a couple of weeks ago to conclude a month-long awareness campaign at which notable local Democratic politicians -- Mayor Annise Parker, Council member Ellen Cohen, Harris County Education board member Diane Trautman -- called for an end to the scourge of human trafficking in Houston.
And this week, a raid on Telephone Road.
So the reality is bad enough, but there's nothing so hideous that the Houston Chronicle's Khronically Konservative Kommenters can't make worse.
What's missing among the most vile of the reader remarks on that article is a "Let the market decide" whine. And that's because even the Ayn Rand devotees know that there's a simple economic theorem at play here: supply and demand.
Just as there would be no supply of cheap immigrant labor if Republican business owners would not hire people for less than minimum wage, there would be no supply of underage girls as sex slaves if there weren't men lined up wanting to buy them.
In order to make themselves feel better (yet doing nothing) about this travesty, conservatives blame it on someone's else's race, culture, etc. Yet, try as they might to convince themselves otherwise, not all of the men doing the buying are Mexican. Not all of the girls being forced to sell themselves are, either. What the girls have in common is not their country of origin but their economic caste.
That's two inconvenient truths for libertarian-inclined Republicans. Here's a third.
Border guards, border walls, and bigoted rants aren't going to stop human trafficking. They aren't even slowing it down. But as long as conservatives have some poor brown people to blame for something evil -- and to justify their political beliefs -- that's good enough for them.
Sick of this racist, misogynist shit.
And this week, a raid on Telephone Road.
The FBI and other state and local law enforcement agencies raided clubs in the southeast Houston area on Thursday night.
The FBI agents and other law enforcement officials began serving search and arrest warrants about 6:30 p.m. at multiple nightclubs, including one in the 5600 block of Telephone Road.
Neighbors said they saw 20 or more clearly underage girls being led out of the Nuevo Amanecer nightclub after the raid.
Margarita Martinez said the girls -- who appeared no more than 12 or 13 -- were wearing miniskirts and high heels. "They could hardly walk," Martinez said. The girls were taken away by officials in a bus.
Agents at the scene wouldn't talk and local FBI officials said the details of the investigation remain sealed, but federal officials have made human trafficking a top priority.
So the reality is bad enough, but there's nothing so hideous that the Houston Chronicle's Khronically Konservative Kommenters can't make worse.
What's missing among the most vile of the reader remarks on that article is a "Let the market decide" whine. And that's because even the Ayn Rand devotees know that there's a simple economic theorem at play here: supply and demand.
Just as there would be no supply of cheap immigrant labor if Republican business owners would not hire people for less than minimum wage, there would be no supply of underage girls as sex slaves if there weren't men lined up wanting to buy them.
In order to make themselves feel better (yet doing nothing) about this travesty, conservatives blame it on someone's else's race, culture, etc. Yet, try as they might to convince themselves otherwise, not all of the men doing the buying are Mexican. Not all of the girls being forced to sell themselves are, either. What the girls have in common is not their country of origin but their economic caste.
That's two inconvenient truths for libertarian-inclined Republicans. Here's a third.
Border guards, border walls, and bigoted rants aren't going to stop human trafficking. They aren't even slowing it down. But as long as conservatives have some poor brown people to blame for something evil -- and to justify their political beliefs -- that's good enough for them.
Sick of this racist, misogynist shit.
