BACKLASH: Pahrump flag ban won't fly:Sheriff refuses to enforce law targeting immigrants

[NVMojo]

PAHRUMP -- In a small act of civil disobedience, Pahrump residents Bob and Liese Tamburrino on Saturday raised an Italian flag and a Polish flag over their garage.

In a not-so-civil act, a vandal or vandals, in the middle of the night less than 24 hours later, egged their Italian flag.
"They probably thought it was a Mexican flag," Bob Tamburrino said of the Italian flag, which was chosen as a tribute to his ancestry.

The Pahrump Town Board on Nov. 14 adopted an ordinance that bans the flying of foreign flags by themselves.

The board also declared English the town's official language and denied unspecified, and apparently nonexistent, town benefits to undocumented immigrants.

The Tamburrinos, who are incensed at the ordinance they say is unconstitutional and smacks of racism, called police after the egging even though they could have been ticketed for violating the new ordinance.

But officers did not cite the couple, and Nye County Sheriff Tony DeMeo said Wednesday that he has no plans to ever enforce the ordinance.

DeMeo also called it unconstitutional.

more...

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2006/Nov-23-Thu-2006/news/11008521.html

[NVMojo]

1. this is a sick ticket ...

snip...

During the heated Nov. 14 meeting at which the ordinance was adopted, several proponents promised they would take it upon themselves to enforce the ordinance after Town Board Chairman Richard Billman called it unenforceable.

Since then, some Latino Pahrump residents have been harassed.

Lucero Enrriquez, a Mexican immigrant and the owner of Mi Ranchito market in Pahrump, received an anonymous postcard last week that said, in part, "We are sick to our stomachs of seeing Mexicans on every street walking with 2 or 3 kids and the mother has (2) more in her belly. ... You people are draining and abusing our welfare system and we are frankly sick of it."

snip...

[Demeter]

2. I Suppose Welfare Should Be Reserved For the Rednecks?

shakes head sadly

[Cleita]

8. Actually, I have dug up articles that indicate that the immigrants

are reluctant to accept welfare even when offered to them. Here's one of them:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-stamp13oct13,1,224178.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

So all these cries of outrage of immigrants using our social services are only made up by people with hidden agendas in order to foment hatred for these people.

The food stamps in question actually are for the immigrants to feed their American born children and so the children can get minimum medical care.

Once a DUer said to me that only people who speak English should get services. Said DUer did get tombstoned but it's a widespread idea among those who are anti-immigration.

[proud2BlibKansan]

10. Sadly, that attitude

does exist here. And not all who believe that way get TSed.

[bperci108]

15. Not only that...

...I seem to remember hearing about a study done in CA that found that non-citizens actually pay more into the system versus the services they use, meaning that they are effectively subsidizing the rest of us (in a very small way, but how ironic nonetheless...).

I wouldn't be surprised, as they are often reluctant to get into "the system" in any way, lest they be identified and deported, so they pay in but get little in return.

But I don't suppose this would make any difference to those who just want any excuse to heap hate on brown people of any sort.


:(

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. Interesting article on same page:

IMMIGRATION'S EFFECTS
Pahrump's now-infamous new ordinance conjures images of a desert town fighting back against a surge of illegal immigrants.

Local officials paint a different picture.

Police, school and health care administrators in the town 60 miles west of Las Vegas said they have seen none of the drain on public services often cited by proponents of ordinances targeting undocumented immigrants.

Nye County Sheriff Tony DeMeo said he has seen no increase in crimes because of illegal immigrants -- or anyone else, for that matter.

<skip>

The impact of illegal immigration also has yet to be felt at the community's only hospital, which opened in late April.

"We really don't have a way to track it, but it doesn't appear to be a big issue," said David Rencher, administrator of Desert View Regional Medical Center.

<skip>

"We don't have any idea which students are illegal aliens and which ones aren't. We would have no way of knowing that. We're not allowed to ask that question," Roberts said. "Whoever walks through the door, we have a moral obligation to educate them."

<skip>

Asked if the district must struggle to provide for those students, Roberts said the problem is "no greater here than anywhere else."

"We struggle with being the 47th or 48th state in the country in per-pupil spending. That's what we struggle with," he said.

<skip>

Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for welfare benefits under federal law, said Jeff Brenn, chief of eligibility and payments for Nevada's Division of Welfare and Supportive Services. "If they're illegals, they aren't eligible for anything but emergency medical services."

more . .

[NVMojo]

4. enmasse ignorance and racism ...just like in the ole days of lynchings

[Neshanic]

5. Pahrump defies description. Generally insane place.

My parents moved to Pahrump in 1977. There was no television, no FM radio, nothing really except a greasy little spot in a low desert valley between Mt. Charleston separating Pahrump from Las Vegas, and a mountain range on the west. You could buy land real cheap, and put a house on it.

It is a bigoted creepy place that has lax to no zoning laws, which they take pride in as people buy some land and put up an outhouse and live in a plywood shack. As time went on the Las Vegans fleeing found refuge in this backward valley of freaks. They drive the 60 odd miles over the mountain range to worj every day, and it seems the massive influx of them has not changed the morans there one iota.

My parents left in 1996. Thank GOD they did.

[lapfog_1]

14. Isn't one of the economic mainstays a brothel? - n/t

[NVMojo]

20. About the only highlight I know in Pahrump is a great winery/vineyard

but I hear that is now surrounded by McMansion developments. I think there are brothels there as we bought our registered Weimaraner from a woman in Pahrump who works at a brothel in the bar as a manager a couple of years ago.

There are some Pahrumpers who work at Yucca Mountain and the Nevada Test Site.

[xchrom]

6. now that little article makes my day.

pahrump's exercise in racism is having trouble flying it's flag.

[NMDemDist2]

7. wonder if the Sheriff really looks like John Goodman did in the Studio 60

on Sunset strip episode a couple weeks ago


and here i thought Pahrump was a made up place :rofl:

[DeepModem Mom]

9. Me, too! Pahrump is real??? nt

[billbuckhead]

11. Art Bell is in Pahrump

<http://www.smeter.net/pahrump/art-bell.php>

[mahatmakanejeeves]

17. Art Bell

is in the Philippines now. He left "the Land of Nye" some time ago. As of last month, he's back to broadcasting every weekend.

Art Bell, Wikipedia

[colorado_ufo]

19. I have Colorado friends who have family in Pahrump,

and moving to Colorado has not diminished their level of crazy. I am starting to think that there is something in the Pahrump water.

[ck4829]

12. Here's a photo of the Sheriff

[w4rma]

18. The Sheriff sort of reminds me of Andy Griffith. (nt)

[High Plains]

21. He sort of reminds me of Andy Warhol

[w4rma]

22. All good men. (nt)

[iverglas]

13. I knew it existed ...

but it sure is funny to see life imitate art! Pretty good coincidence in choice of locale, that was.

Mind you, John Goodman was a redneck with a heart of gold ... just like the fundie Christian persona on the show doesn't really hate homos and struggles with all that stuff ... the art doing not such a great job of imitating life.

[Cleita]

16. John Goodman played the judge not the sheriff I thought. n/t

[dchill]

23. "They probably thought..."

Doubt it.