I can't remember a winter that has seemed longer, and more depressing in general. However, it is now officially March, which means that even though it won't be warm and wonderful for at least another month or two, it is now permissible to reasonably expect that gardening season will return, and one must be prepared. And even though I've been gardening for almost 30 years, I still have to remind myself of everything that must be done. So here is my list of things to do to prepare for garden season.

1. Start by making a list of your overall goals for this growing season. Do you want to add fruit trees? Try new varieties? Find new flowers? Landscape a new area of your yard? Get chickens? Reduce your maintenance? My lists shrink as I run out of space, but I definitely want to try new varieties of vegetables (field peas and okra!), add a few more fruit trees to my new orchard (I was thinking quince and pawpaw), and perhaps tackle and try to civilize an area near my side porch that would make a nice woodland garden. So, as you can see, gardening for me is about the whole landscape, not just veggies. And I'm still looking for basket willows to plant.

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By Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger

President Obama is taking heat from all sides this week for his 2012 budget proposal, which proposes increased funding for immigration enforcement and border militarization. While immigrant rights advocates are predictably up in arms over the proposal, House Republicans are (somewhat uncharacteristically) demanding significant cuts to border security funding -- on the grounds that the Obama administration's efforts to secure the border have been ineffective and fiscally irresponsible.

Obama's future immigration priorities remain counterproductive

As Walter Ewing reports at Alternet/Immigration Impact, the proposed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) budget reveals the Obama administration's consistently conflicted priorities on immigration. While the budget makes good (albeit modestly) on the administration's promise to fund humane detention alternatives and better oversight of enforcement programs, the overwhelming bulk of the funding supports expansion of controversial and ineffective enforcement programs. Ewing writes:

The enforcement-heavy focus of the President's proposed DHS budget is readily apparent in the top-line numbers. The budget for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) would be $11.8 billion; up 3 percent from FY 2011. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would receive $5.8 billion, up 1 percent from the previous year. And U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) would get $2.9 billion, down 5 percent from FY 2011. As is so often case, immigration services get the short end of the stick.

The administration's continued emphasis on border security is particularly troubling in light of three recently released reports which suggest that increased enforcement efforts have proven to be totally ineffective at securing the border.

Despite increased funding, border remains unsecured

According to a newly released report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), more than 93 percent of the American-Mexican border remains porous by DHS's own standards. The American Independent's Kyle Daly reports:

Of the 1,969 miles of the border stretching from California to Texas, just 873 miles are deemed secure, according to the standards of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Within those 873, only 129 miles were classified in the GAO report as "controlled," meaning there are resources in place to either turn away or apprehend people attempting to cross into the United States illegally.

The finding flies in the face of DHS's increasingly costly efforts to secure the border. Last August, the president signed into law a $600 million border security bill and, more recently, DHS raised funding for aerial border patrol drones to $32 million. The administration's 2012 budget proposal is similarly gratuitous, including "nearly $300 million for border technology, $229 million for border personnel and more than 40,000 additional border patrol agents and officers," according to Daly.

Costly border security fails to secure

Meanwhile, the National Immigration Forum and the Immigration Policy Center have each released policy briefs arguing that border enforcement has proven remarkably ineffective. As Nicolas Mendoza explains at Campus Progress, funding for border enforcement has increased exponentially in recent years with little apparent impact on either unauthorized immigration or crime rates at the border:

Border Patrol funding has been increasing dramatically since 2005, rising at an average of $300 million per year. [...] This in spite of the fact that "crime rates were already down in the border region" before the National Guard was deployed, with border cities like El Paso, Texas and San Diego, Calif. boasting some of the lowest crime rates in the country. [...] Meanwhile, the Immigration Policy Center's report argues that "no specific policy decision to beef up border security in the last 20 to 30 years has significantly reduced the flow of illicit drugs and people into the United States."

In fact, as one brief points out, the only thing that has managed to decrease unauthorized immigration is the economy; Inflows have decreased by 200,000 since the beginning of the recession, as employment (the chief pull factor for unauthorized migrants) has dried up.

House Republicans vote to cut border security funding

On the heels of mounting evidence that border enforcement is both costly and ineffective, House Republicans are retreating from their usual pro-enforcement stance on border security and demanding significant cuts to DHS's 2012 budget.

Care2's Robin Marty reports that House members would like to cut $272 million in funding for border surveillance systems and eliminate 870 Border Patrol agents -- on the grounds that the Obama administration's border security efforts have been ineffective at quelling unauthorized immigration. While that's certainly true, Marty notes that the move may simply be an effort to obstruct Obama's agenda -- at whatever cost.

Unfortunately, if they succeed on the first count, they'll likely succeed on the second. The GOP has long stated that it would not move forward on comprehensive immigration reform until the border is secured, and the administration has attempted to meet that demand by putting off reform in favor of increasing border enforcement funding and capacity. In return, House Republicans have thumbed their noses at Obama's border security efforts, painting him as incompetent on immigration and security issues and, in doing so, making it quite clear they won't help him move forward on comprehensive immigration reform.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

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It's not often that you get to witness our society changing before your eyes. Last week I had the extraordinary opportunity to do just that. The place I saw this change was, oddly enough, not in our country, but in Argentina. And odder still, it was on a trip with a private company in the prosaic and dare I say "pedestrian" business of selling shoes. The company is called TOMS Shoes and this trip to the rural Misiones region of Argentina was another in a long series of the company's "shoe drops," in which they give away shoes to people in need. This trip was particularly special because during the course of this trip, TOMS gave away its millionth pair of shoes. (In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that TOMS paid for my trip and expenses.)

So what is a for profit company doing giving away a million shoes, you might ask? TOMS business model is simple: for every pair of shoes you buy, they give one pair away. TOMS calls their model -- appropriately -- One for One. And the name TOMS is taken from the word "tomorrow," as part of the idea that if you buy a pair of TOMS shoes today, a pair is given away tomorrow. TOMS is a new kind of business that fits into the much-hyped "social entrepreneurship" model. This term, and others variants on this theme, have become catchphrases in the business community and on college campuses, where courses and even majors with these names have sprouted from the Ivies to community colleges. in the past few years.

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Even with the rapid growth in online activity, television remains the #1 form of social communication. In the US, people still spend more time watching TV than they spend on internet, radio, newspapers, or mobile phones combined. Cable TV is still the most popular TV delivery method, and if you live in Denver, you likely only have one choice for cable television. The City of Denver has a franchise agreement with Comcast, enabling them to utilize public rights of way, utility poles, and other public resources to build their communications network. In exchange for this, Comcast makes certain concessions to the city, including channels set aside for public access, educational or government programming, and gives a percentage of their revenues from Denver subscribers to compensate the taxpayers for use of this common space.

Every ten years or so, the City negotiates a new franchise agreement with Comcast, and for the next three days, the residents of Denver will have an opportunity to tell the City what we expect from Comcast in the 2012 franchise renewal process. An online survey is available on the Office of Telecommunications website, but your best opportunity to be heard is to attend one of the six community forums scheduled for March 1-3, 2011. At these forums, every Denver resident can have direct input. Participation in this process will help the city effectively represent the community as it works to ensure quality cable television service for its residents in the Comcast cable franchise renegotiation process.

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