Home of Today's Common Sense

 Published Brownsville Herald May 17, 2007

I appreciate the many of you have spoken to me in meetings, at the mall or grocery or just by e-mail. There are some that agree but many that don’t. Most importantly you all read “Today’s Commonsense” and it precipitates a thought process and hopefully more interest in the community. That is my goal! All my articles are currently archived on the Internet with the glorious mistakes at WWW.TodaysCommonsense.com. The content only changes bi-weekly when my column is published but has still had more than 110,000 visits and requests for reprints of particular columns in the last three years of newspaper publication. I thank you all for that. It is a sign that my goal is being met.  More »

PublishedBrownsville Herald   May 13, 2007 

Most of us are assaulted with rules that tell us we can’t do this or that and warn of the terrible costs for a violation or more frequently just say you can’t do that! There are so many laws specifying what you can’t do and things that you must do just a certain way, that the vast majority of them are forgotten and never enforced or very well remembered and never enforced because it may be inconvenient. There are many reasons for the rule glut but it mostly happened when a highly publicized violation of public order resulted in our rulers rushing to create a new law with their name on it to prevent such a thing from ever happening again. In nearly all such cases there were laws on the books, with another politicians name on them, that the perpetrator was already in violation of. Even worse in nearly all moderate to large commercial organizations not to mention government agencies the same glut of procedures, policies and regulations exist frequently to keep highly paid staff assistants employed or show to some overseer that a particular manager wants to assure that such a  problem could never again arise.  To most of us, all of this is so well known that we take it for granted until these extraneous rules are used by a ruler to get even with a political foe or support an ally; and here in the Valley, the media have reported numerous instances of just that, over the years of political bosses and compadrissmo favoritism. Like many of you, I grew up in the 1950’s in a rural area and my folks did not have a lot of money. We farmed and worked for wages like every one else I knew. My folks set out a set of rules and expectations as well as some very clear boundaries that were not to be crossed. I knew very well what actions my dad would take if those lines were crossed. In some things I occasionally took a chance and was led to believe that I wasn’t found out but was always apprehensive and knew I was doing wrong.  More »