In Baked Sooner Country, Talk Is Of Fish...Is That Your Best Tilapia?...No, That's Flounder!...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

OKLAHOMA CITY, OK - Big Time pro basketball is big and getting bigger here. The local National Basketball Association franchise made the playoffs this year. Other than a mean tornado or two, it's been the year's best excitement. But, then, some things that at first seem not to fit the geography, like basketball in this rabid football state, somehow find that unique niche that works. Fishing in Oklahoma isn't a state attraction, for example. You need more water than what this dusty and flat panhandle-shaped shank of the U.S. has to offer. The joke around here is that there are more bottles of water in Oklahoma convenience stores than there are ponds, lakes, canals, rivers, ravines or even semi-large puddles after a rainstorm.

One doesn't come to Oklahoma City to eat seafood, however. Cape Cod in New England, along the Atlantic, is the place for that. San Francisco does right by the Pacific catch out west. Rolling in here, we thought it would be some Dust Bowl tale we'd be writing, or maybe something about the Oklahoma City bombing, or maybe something about the exciting Oklahoma City Thunder and its spectacular superstar, the former Texas Longhorn Kevin Durant.

But nooooooooooooooooh.

It's fish.

Fish is on my mind today. Yesterday, I unfolded a week-old edition of The New York Times taken from my stack at home and read a story about how the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is having a devil of a time policing stores and restaurants. Why? It seems fish is being mislabeled right and left. Labeling fraud, is how the usually staid FDA characterizes it, and it is a big, big problem from coast to coast.

That Mahi-Mahi you picked up at the store? It may not be such a thing. It could be flounder. That Grouper may be catfish. The problem, says the government, is rampant.

And it's a big deal. The pricing of fish in restaurants often is based on what it claims on the menu. But cheap fish apparently is being substituted for expensive fillets. "Yellowtail stands in for mahi-mahi," read the story in The Times. "Nile perch is labeled as shark, and tilapia may be the Meryl Streep of seafood, capable of playing almost any role."

If you don't know fish, you're at the mercy of the store or the seafood restaurant. But the FDA believes customers have a right to know what they're buying and they also have the right to get what they're paying for. The fraud is being seen even in the best restaurants, say critics. They blame the FDA for being lax in monitoring fish as it comes in from overseas. Labeling, say those critics, is not a priority in other countries, where fish simply is a bigger part of the daily diet and consumers aren't as picky. And so, the U.S. is being pressured to effect new fish identification policies, such as using "genetic bar codes" to label the fish properly before sending it on its way to stores and restaurants with the correct ID. You see trout on the store's package; you want trout on your dinner plate.

According to the FDA, 84 percent of all seafood consumed in America comes from foreign countries. Another approach the agency is considering is use of DNA testing, which provides what the FDA is calling "gene sequencing;" that is, the tracking of fish by species as it arrives from, say, Japan and is packaged for sale. With that in place, inspectors will be able to identify misbranding during routine checks of distributor supplies, store stock and restaurant kitchens.

"If you're ordering steak, you would never be served horse meat," Dr. Michael Hirshfield, chief scientist of the nonprofit group Oceana, is quoted as saying in The Times. "But you can easily be ordering snapper and get tilapia or Vietnamese catfish."

For unsuspecting fish lovers, the only thing that matters is taste.

The average diner is not knowledgable enough to be able to identify the majority of fish being served or smart enough to know the difference in taste, however minimal when it is, say, drowned by some sort of chef's choice sauce or another. It's a crapshoot, apparently. You ask for swordfish and get mako shark. Does it matter? No, unless you happen to know the difference. Most of us do not.

One way to be sure is to order a whole fish.

You still may not know exactly what it is, but the odds are a bit better that you just might...

- 30 -

Public Education: Challenging Students and Ranking High Schools...National Scores...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

HARLINGEN, Texas - There are the football teams that never seem to bridge into playing the game played upstate. Every season, Rio Grande Valley high school squads have one or two teams that run roughshod over local competition. But when they compete for state championships in their respective divisions, they all fizzle against the bigger and faster teams. It's the annual exercise in grand and busted dreams.

Well, look to Edinburg and Pharr-San-Juan-Alamo North high schools for the sort of students that will make you proud, not on the football field, but in the classroom.

A recent study of what the kids are doing in public schools undertaken by The Washington Post yielded some interesting results. Post reporter Jay Mathews has been tracking Washington-area students since 1998, using a neat Challenge Index that measures how public high schools are preparing students for college. The newspaper then published its rankings. This year, Mathews went national with his survey.

I'll use his words to explain his methodology here: "The formula is simple: Divide the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or other college-level tests a school gave in 2010 by the number of graduating seniors. While not a measure of the overall quality of the school, the rating can reveal the level of a high school’s commitment to preparing average students for college."

So, using all that, The Post ranked the Science/Engineering Magnet High School in Dallas as the best in the country, Number One. Number two was the Talented and Gifted High School, also in Dallas.

Alternative schools, some called Charter schools, did well.

The Science Academy of South Texas in Mercedes grabbed the highest Valley ranking, coming it at #25. Another Mercedes school, the South Texas High School for Science Professions is ranked #32. Edinburg's South Texas Business, Education and Technology High is in at #89.

From the traditional ranks came PSJA-North at #150, Hidalgo Early College at #295, Edinburg High School at #704 and Pharr's Valley View High at #850.

No other RGV high school cracked the newspaper's Top 1,000.

The findings are intriguing, especially in the face of Texas' decision to slash public school funding. The Lone Star State continues to lag behind the larger majority of the other 49 states in funding-per-student and in classroom achievement. Still, it is good news for the above-mentioned RGV schools that managed to gain a spot on the list.

Charter schools like to think they do things differently, and they do wonders with their spectacular teaching and curriculum innovations. But it's also refreshing to see traditional schools and their reading, writing and arithmetic, such as PSJA-North and Edinburg High School, do so well.

Unlike the football legends of the Fall, these are dreams fulfilled...

- 30 -

Texas Backroads: East of Austin, North of Nowhere...Lockhart, Texas Endures...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

LOCKHART, Texas - The old man in khaki pants and shirt and weathered, dark-brown cowboy hat lifted his arm and threw something at me about my parking skills. "It's crooked," he said in Spanish, referring to the car and its place between the lines that denoted my space. "Nice hat," I said in turn, smiling and drawing the same from the old coot. We were going into Black's BBQ, a local tourist attraction in beef.

You can pull in here after a drive from Austin or San Marcos to the east and know that strong whiff of smoked cow will soon get you a plate of the best BBQ the state has to offer. Nevermind the more-famous Salt Lick in Driftwood west of Austin. This place smells like smoked brisket from 10 miles out.

In fact, not that long ago, the Texas Legislature proclaimed Lockhart as The Barbecue Capital of Texas. And they were right-on to do it, cause Lockhart has four major barbecue restaurants. Smitty's is a favorite. But we cruised into Black's if for no other reason than because it was the first of the four we spotted, believing that one couldn't be any worse than the other. Black's did not disappoint this hungry cowboy.

"Brisket," I said to the mustachioed Mexican guy behind the counter after I'd loaded my plate with red barbecue beans, some cole slaw and a dinner roll the size of a softball. The mid-May day had broken too-warm, but Black's was as cool as a cucumber as we waltzed in ahead of the old man. Inside, a sprinkling of old white people sat poking at their plates, no doubt whispering sweet nothings into their ears, while across the way a group of younger men scarfed-up their BBQ chicken and sausage before headng back to the ranch.

Somewhere else, others hurried here in there, perhaps to El Gallo Tex-Mex in Austin, or to Dan's Diner in Buda, or to Tacos N Tequila on the far western side of 6th Street in Austin, where a two-taco plate will set you back $13.99. But they're tasty as all hell. Glazed beef, is what they call it at the ritzy, nouveau joint at the corner of 5th and Pressler streets.

Here in slower Caldwell County, where the ornate and aging county courthouse looms as the pride of citizenry, it is BBQ that sets the table. Red and white-checked tablecloths all over the place, iced tea at the ready, root beer there for the kiddoes. Healthy slices of my beloved pecan pie waiting their turn.

There's something about leaving town for lunch. Twenty-some miles isn't much, but 20 miles outside of Austin gets you a weeding of tiny towns where the living is easy. Lockhart is the sort of community that also suffers its young, mainly because they tend to leave town as soon as they're able. Old is in here, visible on the sidewalks and in the eateries. You can smell the meet being smoked, but you can also smell the Ben-Gay worn liberally by the elderly. It's a daily senior citizen postcard, for sure.

We ate slowly, me going for drink refills.

Alongside, the chattering went on, as if short scripts were being rehearsed by actors who'd likely uttered those same words many, many times.

"You doin' okay, Lurleen?"

"Oh, yes, Henry. How are you doing?"

The old guy in the desert storm gear had found a place at the far end of a line of tables set along a wooden rail that separated the entrance from the dining room. He waited on his take-out. We watched him a bit. He had to be in his late-nineties, the deep wrinkles on his face looking like well-grilled fajitas. The hat on his head held its place nicely, khaki pants working themselves out of his boots as he walked.

I smiled at him as he ambled past us on the way out.

At the door, he stopped and looked back, before saying, "Long road out there."

It was, I am pretty sure, an autobiographical line...

- 30 - 

Discount Baseball: Local Ballpark Is Scene Of Cheap Sport...This Is Not Pro Pitching...Ball Four...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

HARLINGEN, Texas - The local club met in Edinburg some 30 miles west of here, where its players did their best to look the part of a semi-pro team. The Rio Grande Valley WhiteWings won the game by the Little League score of 13-10, which highlighted the league's awful pitching. Players for both the Whitewings and the Edinburg Roadrunners crossed the plate 23 times, perhaps thrilling some kids with long balls and hits falling all over the place. That'll happen on a slow Wednesday in the Valley.

It's not professional baseball of the sort we've come to know.

The hopeful Wingsters are members of the North American Baseball League. NABL people are high on the game. This is part of their promotional material: With the most widespread league in the country each night history is made in the League’s storied ballparks in 10 different cities that include teams, in Texas, Illinois, California, Arizona, Hawaii and  Canada.

Each night history is made, they say. Really? But what kind of history? Who's recording it? Anyone?

In the League's storied ballparks, they go on. Storied? Storied! Harlingen Field? Plus, the McAllen Thunder squad does not even have a field of their own! Cliches are cheap in low-rung sports.

McAllen took the country roads to San Angelo in Tom Green County and won its game against the Colts, 8-4. Good start, but, out in dusty West Texas, cow-tipping is still the top sport in town.

It's something to see league folks do their best to push this baseball as something special. It isn't, not when its players are either rejects from the Big Leagues or guys who just happen to know the managers. Some are even sons of the manager. That's too-Little League for us.

But they'll keep playing, keep telling you that this or that pitcher went four innings in 98-degree heat, or this or that batter went 3-5 against pitching arms that have to be suspect. I mean, the Wingster hit 5 homeruns off Edinburg Roadrunner pitching. Five! That may have happened because it was the opening game of the season and the baseballs were still new, or maybe the pitching is, as suspected,  not up to par.

For us, it's a bit late in pro baseball to pick up the offerings of an obscure league with even more-obscure players. Major leaguers are almost to the All-Star break and there are some humdinger races in both the National and the American leagues. Do you watch the Red Sox vs. Yanks on TV, or do you blow the $30 bucks on tickets and concessions at the mosquito-infested local fields? Do you sit back and watch Yankee C.C. Sabathia duel Josh Beckett of Boston, or do you plop down on that aging seat in town and watch the manager's son, Eddie Dennis, Jr. of the WhiteWings, learn the diference between the resin bag and the pitching rubber?

With better baseball readily available elsewhere, why spend money on less-than-zero ballclubs offering nine guys who couldn't make it anywhere else against nine others who couldn't do it either?

This local baseball is not worth the price of admission, no...

- 30 -

As New Mayor Takes Oath In Brownsville, Trouble And God Keep Watch...A Happy Day...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - The days of wine and roses known elsewhere as happy times always arrive here in the form of cheap wine and wilted roses. That's the poetry of the poor. Today we suffer; tomorrow we are saved. Divine intervention will win in the end, goes the tired line in the streets. It's a peculiarly Country & Border tune.

Not much out of the ordinary happened here yesterday, other than the swearing-in of Antonio "Tony" Martinez as the new mayor. He takes hold of the weathered, leather reins at City Hall. He is the one replacing outgoing Mayor Pat Ahumada, the last of the party boy mayors.

Interestingly, the new mayor went All-Holy, welcoming the mortal figurines of the local Catholic church to his installation ceremony. The Bishop was there, as was a church choir and members of this and that congregation. All were on hand to see the new man take charge.

"We can’t thank God enough," Martinez told the giddy crowd of well-wishers.

God has a strange relationship with politicians, Martinez being only the latest one to invoke his name in the run-up to a term of office sure to try God more than Martinez. But that's Valley politics; the Catholic Church serves as that game's co-conspirator, its accomplice, its spine and its refuge.

The church, of course, will have little to do with solving this city's wild unemployment; its marital, social, and economical problems. Catholics are okay with the eternal suffering dogma they are given every Sunday morning, when the dour-faced priests stand and sing about what it's like up there. Religion and politics: the worst cocktail.

Tony Martinez will ease into the job. He'll try to work with the city commissioners, some saints and some sinners. And he'll throw out his ideas, his vision for this dusty bordertown that never has been able to shed the under-achieving tag assigned to it by neighboring communities in the ruthless and wicked Rio Grande Valley. It won't be long before Martinez sends out his pleas to the apostles, to Jesus Christ, to anyone who will hear his words.

Brownsville is not St. Louis. It is not St. Paul. It is not St. Augustine.

It is more like Mexico's San Fernando.

And perhaps that is why the new mayor wanted God front-and-center during his oath of office ceremony. It couldn't hurt, could it? Hooligans roam the streets, a step ahead of the stray animals. Cheap cantinas roil the hottest of nights. Women take their evening slappings in Southmost. Rough-hewn men, losers of the first order, lift their Mexican grass to lying lips, to endure the struggle that is poverty, to claim their place in the gutter. God is the answer here. God is great.

Brownsville, unfortunately, does its best to go against God's tenets most days of the week. Goofing off is embedded in the city's DNA. And when they get angry at the world, they damn their God in the strongest of vulgar terms.

The same God that the new mayor welcomed in the commission chambers over at City Hall. God have mercy...

- 30 -

Vignettes: Tattoo You...New Mayor...No New Mayor...No Smoking...Ah, Writing...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

AUSTIN, Texas - Writing anything during the summer months is always a drag, mainly because it's the time of the year when you want to be someplace else. Winter, now winter is the best time for creative writing. Some warm cabin up in the Rockies, with a small fireplace, with good company, with a canyon path into town down below.

This morning, we're not going to plumb the depths of any one topic. We've done enough of that all year. So here are a few short stories and observations from the world of news:

THE WOMEN OF TEXAS - We have led the photo offerings here with the tattooed woman atop today's special because it represents the wild and fighting side of the fairer sex. And it plays into our belief that women in Texas take it all too often from state lawmakers. This year, the Texas Legislature shoved a sonogram down the throats of women opting to terminate a pregnancy by way of abortion. This, mind you, in the land of freedom. But it's now law, and Texas women will have to subject themselves to an invasive probe while being asked if they want to see the fetus inside their tummies. My surprise lies in the fact that women did not respond with any sort of rage when confronted by this silliness. It is, of course, the result of the ultra-conservative, pro-life Republican crowd in Austin. We're all for life, but we're also big believers in the idea that a woman is the one who answers to and for her body. Tattoos on women, meanwhile, are everywhere.

THE NEW MAYOR - Antonio "Tony" Martinez takes over today as figurehead political leader of our beloved Brownsville, home of the five-cent dream and the $60 marijuana ounce. Here's hoping Tony can get that broken down fruit stand back in the black. Of late, the city's politics has been nothing short of a bad corrido's boring lament. A bloody drug war rages next door in Matamoros, Mexico. People are being killed daily. Brownsville, meanwhile, moves as if a tepid caldo on its way from the cafe's kitchen to some fat fuck's table. The veggies are rotting in town. No dream emerges even as Martinez sets sail his administration. That city commission has had its facelift. Now, let's see if the next bowl of caldo de pollo is better than the last one.

HARLINGEN - Again, some slick dude wants to waltz in and be the next mayor of this sleepy, God-abandoned town between McAllen and Brownsville. Rick Morales is his name and the record shows that he arrives as a loser, following his defeat in a re-election contest for mayor of nearby Donna. Donna! Tiny, dusty, annoying Donna! It's a stretch, because Hispanics hate to settle for used tires, cheap barbacoa, battered Buicks, or oft-divorced women. That's just the way the romantic moon moves across that cultural sky. Pretender Rick Morales has as much chance of winning election in Harlingen as heavyweight Leon Spinks had of being elected anything anywhere. Morales hasn't said much, not even that he plans to seek the post. But that, too, is telling. A politicians who sics a throwdown blogger at this community in hopes of drawing attention is a weak-kneed fellow whose approach must be questioned. Even when the idea drew criticism, Morales laid low, perhaps thinking that one horrible step cannot be followed by another. It appears his candidacy has fizzled at the starting gate. No one is more relieved than the old women of Harlingen.

NO SMOKING - Texas is about to pass a law stomping on smoking in just about every public place in the Lone Star State. The future may well record that such a law was the best to come out of this, the 82nd State Legislature. Clean air is good. Smoking doesn't bother me, but there are times when one simply wants nothing to do with the aroma of a rotten Bugler being lit across the bar. Plus, New York City has banned smoking just about everywhere, including aboard the water taxis that take tourists on a sail up and down the East River or the Hudson. Try and find a cafe in Austin where lighting a Camel is okay with management. Not happening. And, you know, it may be a tad too late for the planet, but there's something to be said for going down fighting...

- 30 -

Season Of Shame: Real Info Not Forthcoming On Team's Contract, Team's Failures...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

HARLINGEN, Texas - No one disputes the fact that the Rio Grande Valley WhiteWings baseball club is a for-profit operation using a taxpayer-owned ballfield to make its cash, money it funnels out of the city to league headquarters up north. And no one argues the fact that the team apparently owes the City of Harlingen some money, said to be in the $40,000 range, for utilities used last season while doing its best to bring a semblance of semi-pro ball to local fans.

This week, the team flexed its business muscles to literally strong-arm the city into allowing it to keep playing while the utility bill goes unresolved, or explained to the local taxpayers, and begins to roll anew. The team's season is still a few weeks away, but the WhiteWings already use venerable Harlingen Field. Yesterday, the Wingsters walloped a bunch of kids playing for an obscure college from Reynosa, Mexico. It was, by all accounts, a distasteful display of putting-it-to-the-puny.

Little is being said about the working contract between the city and the team, or the North American Baseball League sponsoring the WhiteWings. Local blogger and team public relations man Jerry Deal has folded his journalism wings and flown-off in defense of the team that pays him to promote baseball that is not advertised. His latest story pillories Assistant City Manager Gabe Gonzalez following Gonzalez's suggestion that the city rip-up its contract with the WhiteWings.

The WhiteWings are professional only because they do pay their players something, not because these guys could challenge for a spot on the New York Yankees roster. Most of the players are minor leaguers on the downside of their careers; that is, they have had their shot in A, AA, or AAA ball and, well, here they are in the magical Valley. A few others are players who ended their college playing careers, were not invited by any major league team to at the very least tryout and now continue to live the dream out of sheer hope.

These games are not worth whatever the WhiteWings charge at the admission gate.

That is a subjective statement, true. But paying to watch a team offering baseball at this level, the lowest in any sort of definition of the pro game, while knowing the Wings do not hold-up to their end of the deal with use of the field is absurd.

It's his part-time job, but city resident and respected blogger Deal lashes Assistant City Manager Gonzalez for daring to make the team accountable, yet he ignores a ton of relevant info, such as: (1.) Exactly how much does the team owe, or says it owes in those utility bills? Deal has the access to team management, but he won't press for an answer. (2.) What exactly are the financial requirements to be met by the team for use of the field? Again, blogger Deal has that info, but has not come near revelaing it to his readers. (3.) Why does Harlingen need a business out to bend the contract it works under? What else have the WhiteWings been woeful in doing to comply? (4.) Exactly what does the city get out of this arrangement? Any revenue? Once more, Blogger Deal could easily grab these facts and post then in a story, but he won't.

It isn't the city's biggest or most successful renter, but something grates when a business enterprise begins soft-welching on its responsibilities. Independent ballteams, those not affiliated with a major league baseball club, are largely hand-to-mouth businesses; that is, they don't make a lot of money and the profit & loss margin is at times unbearably thin. All you have to do is read the pages of a few hometown newspapers, such as The McAllen Monitor, to see that money problems tend to blow up a minor league team's dreams.

Harlingen city leaders should divulge the arrangement it has with the WhiteWings in its entirety to the press and to the community.

It's not as if this is a Spring Training operation for the Houston Astros or the Texas Rangers, where good publicity would be the trade-off. Fans do not see Craig Biggio or Lance Berkman or Josh Hamilton nor Michael Young at Harlingen Field.

They go there for the love of the game.

And it's also true that die-hard fans likely would go see the WhiteWings play in some dusty pasture or vacant lot. That would at least get the city off the expense hook at a time when City Hall budgets are being cut to the bone. Can Harlingen afford to carry the WhiteWings debt? It might.

But why should it?

Residents should protest until the team explains itself or proves it has paid-up...

- 30 -

Sanctuary Cities: They're Out There, Have Always Been There In The Nation Of Immigrants...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

HARLINGEN, Texas - When I wrote for The Boston Globe in the late 1980s, Republican Ronald Reagan's Amnesty Law was being unfurled in an effort to assimilate millions of undocumented immigrants into the national citizen and tax rolls. One story to do with the topic took me to the old mill town of Lawrence, Massachusetts, where a sizable population of Puerto Ricans had come to settle.

Lawrence residents seemed perplexed by the influx, but the story ultimately went along traditional immigration lines: Most of the newcomers knew someone in town, hence the migration. Being natives of an American commonwealth, the Puerto Ricans, really, could have gone anywhere in the country. But it serves to show that new immigrants often will go where they find commonality.

The so-called Sanctuary Bill being entertained in the Republican-led Texas Legislature seeks to enlist the help of local law enforcement - police and sheriff's department - in an effort to find and arrest anyone in the the country illegally. It is meeting some opposition from Democrats and law enforcement. The Democrats say immigration is a charge of the federal government, while some in law enforcement say the new law would create adminsitrative and jail nightmares for cash-strapped localities.

Of course, there was a time in this country when such shelter from the law was commonplace, only back then it was people helping the Irish, the Italians, the Poles and every other wave of immigrants that arrived at our shores. Churches led the effort to assist, as did some within the ethnic groups.

Libraries of news stories have been written about outlawing Sanctuary Cities, yet the nation's history is steeped in this.

According to Wikipedia, cities in the United States began designating themselves as sanctuary cities during the 1980s, ahead of the amnesty law of 1987. Notes the online encyclopedia: The policy was first initiated in 1979 in Los Angeles, to prevent police from inquiring about the immigration status of arrestees. The internal policy, "Special Order 40," states: "Officers shall not initiate police action with the objective of discovering the alien status of a person. Officers shall not arrest nor book persons for violation of title 8, section 1325 of the United States Immigration code (Illegal Entry). " Some of the 31 American sanctuary cities are Washington, D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Santa Ana, San Diego, San Jose, Salt Lake City, Dallas, Houston, Austin, Detroit, Jersey City, Minneapolois, Miami, Denver, Baltimore, Seattle, Portland, New Haven, Somerville, Cambridge and Portland, Maine.

Helping anyone enter the country is illegal. That is known and established.

But immigrants keep coming. Not everyone who came back when the country was unfolding itself arrived via Ellis Island, as American History books like to teach. That is a myth. Many in the earlier ethnic groups merely took a boat or an airplane in the ensuing years, overstayed temporary visas and left it at that. It still happens. In a free society, it is possible to hide for years, especially if you do not break any laws.

It doesn't make it right; it's just part of the country's history.

Immigration is - and always has been - a touchy, hot-button topic. Yet, most of the noise you hear goes to the political bent of things. The Republicans currently own the anti-immigrant line; Democrats continue to posture themselves as protectors. What else is new?

Nothing will stop immigration. America is the world's Disneyland.

People from poorer, oppressive countries will keep coming, for jobs, for peace and for freedom. And the world economy being what it is tells us that won't change anytime soon. Today, around here, it is the Hispanic immigrant in the crosshairs of some short-sighted Americans. Once, it was the Irish and the Italians and the Poles and Germans and the Asians and the others.

No law will stop immigration.

Well, unless these insular Republicans somehow pass one that calls for shooting every brown-skinned person they see walking across our harsh southwestern geography on their way to meat packing plants and restaurants and construction sites and custodial jobs up north...

- 30 -

For Republicans, A Season of Strange Sex...Newt, Mitch And Now Arnold...A Maid, Too...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

AUSTIN, Texas - The one out west is now being called The Fornicator. It's a take-off on his popular movie, The Terminator. Yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former action actor and Republican Governor of California who this past week announced a separation from his wife and then admitted he'd fathered a child with a housekeeper while married. Great script; soon to be a minor motion picture.

It's been a whirlwind of political revelations for the suddenly-whipped Republican Party. Public relations as a field has not had a better epoch. Well, because it's not just Arnold flirting with disaster.

There's chubby Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of The House who wants to be the Republican flag-bearer against President Barack Obama in 2012. His problems? Yeah, where to begin: Countless affairs with office staffers, two divorces, abandonment of his first wife while she battled uterine cancer. Oh, boy. Talk about a role model for America's young. Newt should play Arnold in the dwarf version of that sordid tale. The short and stocky Gingrich isn't getting much support from his party. And yesterday, he was showered with confetti during a book signing by a book-buyer who wasn't exactly thrilled with the Georgian.

Republican Mitch Daniels has a weird problem. The Indiana governor's wife, Cherie, shown in photo below with Daniels, is in the news. No, not in a Lady Bird Johnson way, but more in the Ana Nicole Smith manner. Cheri is being hit right and left by married women who wonder why she left her husband for another man a few years back, and why she left her daughters with their dad while she flitted-off to California with the new guy.

Forgiving Mitch and Cheri are married once again, but her story of errant love is not playing well with Mitch's desire to run  for president. Of such stuff are great novels, not presidential campaigns, made. It's a throat-blocker, but Mitch Daniels is said to have sucked it up and still wants to run for the highest office in the land.

There's something dirty in all of this.

Arnold is an actor by trade, so his affair won't derail anything he wants to do in Hollywood.

Newt Gingrich may as well pack it in. His campaign is off to the worst start in the party's history. When ultra-conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post and syndicated columnist George Will say Gingrich is going nowhere, well, Gingrich is going nowhere.

Daniels likely won't run for president, either.

Something is lost when the country's First Lady has, ahem, slept around...

- 30 -

From Kenneth Benton, A Bit of Rage...Politics Pushes All Buttons...It's A Cool Medium...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

HARLINGEN, Texas - It's all about the friends you keep. That's what they say about politics, the friends being the ones who help you win or the ones who help you lose. Good politicians know that. The winning ones learn quickly; the losers never learn.

Rio Grande Valley residents, as ever-hopeful a lot as history has ever recorded, know a few who take repeated stabs at gaining election, but never get over the hump, never get their moment in the lights, their reward for daring to spurt-forth a dream carrying public service as its singular aim.

Kenneth Benton, a gent shown in photo above, is one such fellow.

He seems to have a few good ideas for the comnunity, but he can't seem to bridge from political gadfly to elected official. Is it the friends he keeps? That's a question without a clear answer at present. But one thing is certain: his friendship with rabble-rousing blogger Tony Chapa, shown in photo at right, cannot possibly help. Does Benton not see that? Chapa, a local high school graduate with a flair for the obvious, has been concentrating on being the town naysayer for months. If it isn't the donuts, it's the cops. If it isn't the city commission, it's the commission's agenda. If it isn't his lack of reader comments, it's his lack of writing skills. If it isn't Chapa attacking the editor of this blog, it's Chapa attacking the editor of any other blog!

It's clear: Both Benton and Chapa crave attention, and they do it at the expense of their reputations.

But while Chapa, unemployed at present, has only the operation of an obscure blog to worry about, Benton might do well to think about his future in city politics. Is it the right thing to do, to associate with a nattering nabob of negativism? Does he actually believe that he gets positive traction with local voters by calling people "fools" and "clowns," as he did yesterday, when posting a story (we're being wildly liberal by labeling it a "story") on Chapa's dead blog? That stuff you post on the Internet is there forever, ready for someone to pluck it and sling it back at you at the opportune time. Lawyers love it. Is that Benton's political style, this well-known and hated slash-and-burn approach that helps no one get anywhere? A thoughtful observer would say, "No."

So, who knows why Benton got his hair all in a tizzy?

Experienced politicians know how to deflect criticism with grace. Benton does not seem to have that talent. Instead of responding to whatever pains him with an intelligent retort, he seems to favor the counterpunch to the kidney. There appears to be a little Joe Frazier in Mssr. Benton, which would be good in a bruising political tussle against a sharp opponent. But to merely throw punches in the middle of a rolling cantina brawl masquerading as a blog paints him as a rank amateur, someone to worry and wonder about.

We won't tell him what to do, but clear-thinking heads would suggest to Benton that he step aside and re-assess his political future, find a way to stand on his own two legs. He failed in his last run at the city's mayorship. He nonetheless has been Mr. Foghorn on a variety of business issues affecting Harlingen lately, posting however-shallow commentaries on every blog that will accept his submissions. His foot is in the door, his words sort of speaking of an interest in helping solve local problems.

But, it too is clear that he fails miserably in reading the lay of the land when he aligns himself with the under-achieving crowd...

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The Moneychangers: Religion & Financial Destiny...Which One Gets You There...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

AUSTIN, Texas - Let's get the juicy bits of info out of the way: Reform Judaism and Hinduism tends to get you more cash. Annual income, we mean. Pentecostals and Jehovah's Witnesses get the least. Those are part of the findings by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life in a recently-released survey.

Catholics?

Hang on, pilgrim. The national survey looked for members of all religions earning more than $75,000. Practitioners of Reform Judaism (they want Jewish traditions modernized) count almost 70 percent of their memberships as making more than $75,000. Hindus (they believe in eternal life) place second with 65% of their members in the upper category. Catholics are in the middle with their 34% - above Baptists and their 22% and Muslims and their 28%. Mormons are at 33%.

Conservative Jews are third at 58%.

Anglicans/Episcopalians land at fourth with their 54%.

Methodists arrive at 35%, while Lutherans barely slip past Mormons at 34%. Buddhists do well at almost 40% of their membership, while Presbyterians beat them at 43%.

As for seculars, well, they don't do too badly, coming in at 38%. Unitarians hit 39%. Orthodox Christians count 37% of their memberships as hitting the $75,000 income mark.

A variety of reasons are given for the differences, with the more socially-conscious religions seeming to opt for lower-paying public service jobs, such as teaching and social work. Religious discrimination in the job market also plays into the discrepancies, with Buddhists and Hindus suffering there, although Hindus, because they are a smaller group, actually fare well as a collective.

Culture is said to be another factor. Hindus, largely in India, stress education. And education, say the researchers, tends to translate to higher income.

It's something to think about...

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For Cesar Chavez, A Family Fight Soils Legacy...Sons In Bitter Squabble...Mom Not Aware...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

AUSTIN, Texas - The fields of California's San Joaquin Valley still carry the blood, sweat and tears of farmworker saint Cesar E. Chavez. No one disputes that. Not even the farmers who once tried to quiet him, buy him and deport him. Chavez's battles for farmworkers are still vivid in the minds of Hispanics and other Americans who fought for a more humane treatment of the nation's crop pickers.

No, however, it is another Chavez fight that's hit home.

An article in yesterday's New York Times tells about a lawsuit filed by Chavez's youngest son, 51-year-old Anthony, against his older brother, Paul, 54, and the family's farmworker foundation. As explained, the lawsuit alleges Paul fired Anthony from his job after Anthony declined to fire an employee who had stolen $500,000 from the organization.

Anthony claims he is being squeezed out of the family enterprise.

It's been almost 20 years since Cesar Chavez's death in 1993, and the farmworker situation is not what it used to be in the 1960s and 1970s, when Chavez called harvest strikes against lettuce and grape farms while fighting for better pay and tools.

In the interim, the foundation now overseen by his sons has pretty much wallowed in nothing of any substance. "It has become a family-run organization that is sort of purpose-less and does little or nothing to help farm workers," writer Miriam Pawel, who has authored a book about the union, told The Times.

In Keene, a desolate, hardscrabble community in California's San Joaquin Valley, the union has staffed the National Farm Workers Service Center, kept its eye on farm worker housing, community services and operated Radio Campesina - broadcasting to farm workers in Spanish. According to The Times, the center merged with the Cesar Chavez Foundation earlier this year. The latter's mission is to keep the elder Chavez's legacy alive.

Some family members blame Paul Chavez for taking over the organization and, said one former employee in The Times report, is getting rid of those he does not get along with or who queston his decisions. Others in the organization charge that Paul Chavez has done little for farm workers and focused more on bringing in money from a variety of supporting sources.

"Paul cares more about building his assets than helping people," said Liz Villarino, one of Cesar Chavez's daughters. "He wants all the power, to be the go-to person whenever people have questions about his father and his legacy and create his own little empire."

Helen Chavez, Cesar's ailing 83-year-old widow, has been kept out of the loop.

As things stand, Anthony Chavez awaits the lawsuit's arrival in court and his brother, Paul, is doing the same.

Said Mike Davis, a former activist for the union and the crusade's historian, "We have this wonderful myth and a model for kids to emulate Cesar Chavez, but you could basically go to any field and rewrite 'The Grapes of Wrath' all over again."

It is a sad episode in a great man's life...

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Election Day: Tight Races in Brownsville, McAllen and San Benito...Changing of The Guard, Or No Change At All...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Hurry, sundown. Voters from here to the western fringe of the Rio Grande Valley go to the polls today, to cast ballots for and against incumbents carrying huge baggage that only begins with moral stumbles and reputations for not doing anything of note.

Mayor Pat Ahumada is on the clock here. He's been this far down the pier before, however. Like the mythical Phoenix, Ahumada, shown in photo at right, has tasted the ashes of defeat and risen to again catch the winds of local political power. Will he emerge victorious later today?

Standing in the way of a wild celebration is Tony Martinez, an attorney who is said to be the favorite in a town where favorites change from one neighborhood to the next. Ahumada has not done himself any good following a series of bad moves the entire town knows about, and, at times, laughs-off or laughs with him. A DWI charge looms over his head and that adventure with depositing a $26,000 City of Brownsville check not meant for him into his bank account still draws frowns from the glitter of Sunrise Mall to the cultural pall of Southmost.

Sixty-five-year-old Tony Martinez, meanwhile, is said to be giddy with anticipation. He is shown in photo below.

Will he be this ill-omened town's mayor at the end of the day? Who knows, but the mood of change appears to be on his side, although that mood is a chrysalid phenomenon here, forever popping-in and never fulfiling the promise.

Elections also are on the schedule for McAllen, where city commission spots are up for a vote. The race between City Commissioner Jim Darling and newcomer Jose Cabeza De Vaca appears to be the juicy one, with many in the City of Palms wondering if Cabeza will win, thereby connecting his Reynosa-bred dots with the local politics.

In San Benito, it is the old against the older, and we are led to conclude that the winner there will likely not shake things up too much in Tex-Mex rocker Freddy Fender's hometown. San Benito is a player in Valley politics in the same way that Tiny Tim was a player in rock 'n roll. But, still, the vote is on in Greyhound Country.

Results will drip slowly out of the respective courthouses...

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In The World Of Food Stamps, Texas Not A Top-10 Recipient State...Surprise, Surprise...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

HARLINGEN, Texas - The grouches here and in other Rio Grande Valley communities like to talk about the overweight Hispanic mom who rolls her snack-laden grocery store shopping cart to the checkout register and, upon being given the total for her goods, quickly flashes her Lone Star food stamps card with a smile, sees her groceries bagged and is soon off for the drive home.

Well, it does happen.

But the Valley is not part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's latest survey, which shows Texas is not on the Top 10 list of citizen recipients. The country's economy is still in a struggle, and many unemployed Americans have turned to welfare services such as the food stamps program to feed themselves and their families. It is socialism at its best.

Here are the Top 10 states that get the lion's share of the stamps, with the percentage of their population on the government culinary dole.

1.) Mississippi... 20.7%
2.) Oregon... 20.1%
3.) Tennessee... 19.8%
4.) Michigan... 19.8%
5.) New Mexico... 19.8%
6.) Louisiana... 19.2%
7.) Kentucky... 18.8%
8.) West. Virginia... 18.7%
9.) Maine... 18.6%
10.) South Carolina... 18%

So, don't even think about going ballistic the next time you see someone using food stamps to pay for their groceries while you unfold your wallet and pay for your ham and eggs with hard cash. Too many Americans, of all colors, now use them and need them for anyone to feel anger. According to the same USDA survey, 14.2% of the country's population is on food stamps, or some 44.2 million people.

We could take it a step farther and tell you that most of those Top 10 states are so-called "Red" states dominated by Republicans, but we won't...

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