Home of Today's Common Sense

Published – Brownsville Herald October 22, 2006 

October 11, I witnessed the best of America in action. The South Texans for Good Government provided a forum for six candidates who want to work hard and incur personal abuse to help guide the Brownsville Independent School District.
I believe that candidates are community heroes for serving the community either for identifying ideas that need to be heard or for securing the confidence of the electorate and allowed to serve the community in the public position, often at very low or non-existent remuneration and nearly always criticized by all sides of an issue. Five heroes were there to face the scrutiny of their neighbors.
The incumbent Dr. Enrique Escobedo was present and was challenged by Moises Gonzalez and Michael Rodriguez for place 1.
Dr. Escobedo defended his position very well in face of a number of very pointed questions relating to long held criticisms of the BISD Board, on the part of several very passionate constituents.
Michael Rodriguez, an attorney with the United States attorney’s office and Moises Gonzalez a Special Agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement brought freshness to the fray with a perspective from outside “in crowd politics” and with the studied observation only learned in a law enforcement atmosphere. All three of the presentations demonstrated very competent folks that would be an asset to the community however Mr. Gonzalez expressed an interest in reviewing the Strayhorn Report in the context of the changes that have taken place. 
To date the only apparent action taken was that a committee of very competent community leaders was convened; no report was ever allowed to reach the real bosses (the public). The issue should be dealt with to substantiate or discredit issues raised.                              More »

Published Brownsville Herald October 8, 2006

Last year at this time this column has criticized the partnership of Texas Southmost College and The University of Texas as just a way to get more money to support the University of Texas by taxing one of the poorest parts of Texas twice and was not in favor of additional taxation to support a proposed bond issue. Once, just as the state normally collects taxes and a second time as a property tax. In my own case, the tax collected for Texas Southmost has gone up 50% in two years. The tax rate went up 1/3 from 2004 to 2005 from a rate of $0.128782 per $100 to $0.162772 per $100.00. Then for the 2006 year the rate dropped slightly to $0.161089 per $100, but my home was appraised even higher which still resulted in an additional increase in my tax of about 6%. More »