EL RRUN RRUN
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LONG STORY SHORT: GETS AWARD FOR TEEN SHOOTING, AND BISD MESS COVER-UP FOR CRONIES CORTEZ , ZAYAS, FULLER AND SPRINGSTEEN
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<span style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; "><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitazBoir0UJuXu-5nfKwyWSwWT0V3d75mE1pXoeviz2JGk8au-KCAruC8HKCpJgNmS_IEK1qPwoJkukszF9eT_NUBqw3umTfJe0gANz12-cMMwtcIE5UbXFpkk4kvM-oe9M-JkhjbyVeA/s1600/GARY+LONG.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitazBoir0UJuXu-5nfKwyWSwWT0V3d75mE1pXoeviz2JGk8au-KCAruC8HKCpJgNmS_IEK1qPwoJkukszF9eT_NUBqw3umTfJe0gANz12-cMMwtcIE5UbXFpkk4kvM-oe9M-JkhjbyVeA/s400/GARY+LONG.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5751739849154153746" /></a>By</span><b style="font-style: normal; "> Juan Montoya</b><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">Why is the man on the right smiling?</div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">Or is it a smirk?</div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">That is the face behind the Gary Long byline in the <i>Brownsville Herald's</i> education beat.</div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">That's right. It's the same person who defended the former Brownsville Independent School District majority and the administration under Brett Springsteen when they denied that they had gutted the district's finances and refused to call their raiding of the BISD's reserve funds to balance their budgets a "deficit."</div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">In fact, Gary not only megaphoned their denials, but provided former Chief financial Officer Tony Fuller, for Superintendent Springsteen and the motley crew of Ruben Cortez, Rick Zayas, Joe Colunga and Rolando Aguilar with a soapbox from which to issue their denials under the color of journalistic objectivity.</div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">It took Fitch's Bond Rating Service report and downgrading of BISD bonds to "negative" and the service's explanation of the budget "deficits" before administrators and Long acknowledged the fact. Come to think of it, we don't think Long ever looked back on that deceit. Long's heroes raided the reserve funds and in two short years whittled it down from $171 million to $68 million. </div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; ">In the end, the voters of the district ignored the siren songs published in Long's articles and threw the main perpetrators â€" Cortez and Zayas â€" out on their ear. Gone, too, are Fuller and Springsteen. And the taxpayers of the BISD were left to pick up the pieces of the dying carcass and try to make it whole again after the bout of obscene spending and manipulative debauchery under the old crew.</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; ">Now we learn that the </span><span style="font-size: 100%; ">Association of Texas Professional Educators (ATPE) selected Long for the </span><span style="font-size: 100%; ">Alafair Hammett Media Award</span><span style="font-size: 100%; "> </span><span style="font-size: 100%; ">for excellent public education news coverage</span><span style="font-size: 100%; "> in the category for newspapers with circulations 25,000 and less.</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; ">According to the ATPE press release, the recipients were selected by a statewide panel of seven volunteer educators who serve on the association’s public information committee.</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; ">The release further states that "the committee was impressed by Long’s reports on Brownsville Independent School Districts’s first shooting incident that killed a middle school student on campus as well as stories on local educators collaborating with business leaders to improve the area’s high school graduate rate and BISD academy helping students graduate and receive job training."</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; ">ATPE calls itself the largest educators’ group in Texas and the largest nonunion educators’ group nationwide.The association’s membership consists primarily of classroom teachers but also includes administrators, paraprofessionals, college students and retired educators.</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; ">In the case of the BISD, it is the group that </span><span style="font-size: 100%; ">most of the BISD administrators belong to. </span><span style="font-size: 100%; ">Drue Brown, the public relations maven for the district in charge of newspaper stories belongs to ATPE. Now, let's connect the dots.</span></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; ">The <i>Herald</i> has new ownership. </span><span style="font-style: normal; font-size: 100%; ">The new ownership might make personnel changes at the paper. </span><span style="font-style: normal; font-size: 100%; ">Brown and the BISD administration want to keep Gary Long as the education reporter /distorter. </span><span style="font-style: normal; font-size: 100%; ">So Drue gets her union to give Long the "award" to help him keep his job so things can stay exactly the same at BISD.</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; ">Just what does the ATPE </span><span style="font-size: 100%; ">know about journalism? And is giving someone like lapdog Long an award really a </span><span style="font-size: 100%; ">betrayal of their members? Calls to local ATPE president Jose </span><span style="font-size: 100%; ">M. Garza went unanswered.</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; ">But it's just as well, we guess. Those who know him say that Jose probably has no idea about how this came about. When people talk to him, he doesn't know what's going on in the district and is never at the main office for board meetings or anything else, for that matter. They say there is no way he actually took the initiative on this. He's a numbers guy, a math teacher. </span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; ">"This is as much a </span><span style="font-size: 100%; ">betrayal to educators as AOBE/TSTA endorsing Ruben Cortez for the State Board of Education," said n BISD teacher.</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">And while we're at it, local residents are asking <span style="font-size: 100%; ">where is the follow-up on the shooting story that Long won the award for?</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; ">Long, as well as some of us, remember </span><span style="font-size: 100%; ">reading the police report a few months back. One of the things in there was the assistant principal who locked out the police when they arrived at the 911 call and then told them to shoot out the front door glass of the school instead of unlocking it for them.</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; "> When they did this the police claimed they believed Jaime student was shooting at them at the same time! Is it important that the police shot first? And before they even saw the student? It's illuminating that the asst. principal was no one else but Elizabeth Hatcher-Brito, a member of the Zayas/Cortez crew.</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-size: 100%; ">But don't expect those questions to be found in any Long story in the foreseeable future. Long's critics are saying that the prize should be called the Holler's Award for Non-Reporting of local events.</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; "><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px; text-align: -webkit-auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); "></span> </p></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6016803033174468094-2469270640397412786?l=rrunrrun.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
LINK: http://rrunrrun.blogspot.com/2012/06/long-gets-award-for-teen-shooting-bisd.html
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AT THE MARCHAN TRIAL: CALABAZAS AND ORANGES
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By <strong>Juan Montoya</strong><br />Let's see if we got this right.<br />In the Marchan trial, federal government prosecutors say Person A and Person B loaned disgraced 404th District judge Abel Limas X amount of money as a loan and had ex-parte conversations with him while they had cases before him.<br />Now, let's say Person A (Ray Marchan) said the money he had given Limas were loans and stated as much on the personal checks he made him.<br />And let's say that a certain Person B (say Charles Willette) said that his contributions to Limas were also "loans."<br />The federal government says the money Marchan gave Limas were bribes, and consider the $1,300 Willete gave him as just an innocent "l<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcEt-VT6g7bfwlhxIKkkZ3iFboo9FvApSwJvBp8bOr91S6CsBzNQf_EToUIJ0eOfkNSvZ7zz-tFx7brJ388IH0Tu__-22qE92QuWwdm9lsksjhk-zlJy6a3Ms7um-qovkgggnn56fKijg/s1600/see+nothimg.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 400px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 300px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5751723479020682002" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcEt-VT6g7bfwlhxIKkkZ3iFboo9FvApSwJvBp8bOr91S6CsBzNQf_EToUIJ0eOfkNSvZ7zz-tFx7brJ388IH0Tu__-22qE92QuWwdm9lsksjhk-zlJy6a3Ms7um-qovkgggnn56fKijg/s400/see+nothimg.jpg" /></a>oan."<br />As a matter of fact, local attorney Michael Young also "loaned" Limas another $1,300 and a $100 chip in Las Vegas.<br />Attorney Juan Magallanes, who also had cases before Limas, took a 1.3 acre lot in Fort Bend to as payment from Limas for a $30,000 "loan."<br />Limas also got a $3,000 loan from lawyer Oscar De la Fuentes, a name that court observers have often linked to former D.A. Armando Villalobos and Judge David Gonzales, formerly the DA's Chief Felony Prosecutor.<br />Marchan had also been "nice enough" to provide him with the use of his condominium on the island.<br />And local legal eagle Ernesto Gamez took over a property Limas owed some $68,000 on in Harlingen as a favor to the judge who was has sat (or was sitting?) in some of his cases.<br />And District Judge Arturo Nelson "understood" that he was to "play dumb" and provide a continuance for Limas' friend Joseph Moreno.<br />So what is the difference between Marchan and all the rest of the pack who provided Limas with "loans" he admitted he never paid back and favorable rulings in their courts?<br />Could it be perhaps that Willete and Young really meant it when they said they had made "loans" and played ball with the federal prosecutors and Marchan didn't? And what about the rest? Is the federal government differentiating between calabazas and oranges? Or is it rotten apples?<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6016803033174468094-8575828613147876018?l=rrunrrun.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
LINK: http://rrunrrun.blogspot.com/2012/06/at-marchan-trial-calabazas-and-oranges.html
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MESCALERO TURN UP THE HEAT ON SPACEX BOCA CHICA PLANS
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By <strong>Mecalero<br /></strong><br /><div>Special to <em>El Rrun-Rrun</em></div><br /><div></div><br /><div>This "whole bunch of nothing" and "it's nothing but a bunch of sand" comment by city officials is an example of why the city of Brownsville tends to lag behind the other major cities in the Valley. It demonstrates a lack of knowledge about where they live and how to best exploit it. </div><br /><div>The McAllen visitor center actively promotes ecotourism in the Valley, even to the point of sponsoring trips by tour organizers, confident that when they see what the Valley has to offer they will bring tours to the area and the center will recoup anything they spent. Weslaco has three internationally known birding sites, Harlingen has the Rio Grande V<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk6bepEEa7C8ChCarl1Ke1HdDx9e25dt_ke-Cl_42NxW7pihQKuZU-ykVq2u5GRYP-2RcfO3fb8V5cnj1AEOL4ZqMg8vSvcDx3vvsNcw0lD5KApeWYml3D7kSdMEBr2PC_o0rv7v03bzc/s1600/boca.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 377px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 287px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5751712645754847442" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk6bepEEa7C8ChCarl1Ke1HdDx9e25dt_ke-Cl_42NxW7pihQKuZU-ykVq2u5GRYP-2RcfO3fb8V5cnj1AEOL4ZqMg8vSvcDx3vvsNcw0lD5KApeWYml3D7kSdMEBr2PC_o0rv7v03bzc/s320/boca.jpg" /></a>alley Nature Festival, perhaps one of the largest in the country. </div><br /><div>These communities support these entities because they know they bring millions of dollars into the community. </div><br /><div>Brownsville has "a whole bunch of nothing" and a "bunch of sand" (note to city govenment-- 50 years ago SPI was a bunch of sand). </div><br /><div>The Brownsville Visitors and Convention Center did sponsor a nature festival but the current director is more interested in golf then in nature so we got a golf tournement instead, the Ladies PGA event. That didn't work out so well, did it?</div><br /><div>A rocket launch will certainly attract visitors until the novelty wears off, then what. I know that the launches in Florida continued to attract large crowds but I don't think you can compare the thrill of a manned shuttle launch to watching a cargo of groceries and a toaster go up after you have already seen one launch. </div><br /><div>Ecotourism, on the other hand, is a sustainable business that has a minimal impact on the envroiment and, in fact, often results in improvements to wild areas through better management. </div><br /><div>And it is not just a one shot and you have seen it all thing, either. Ecotourist, which in the Valley means birders, will return, often many times because the attractions change with the seasons. We have birds that are summer residents and birds that are here only in the winter. We have migrants that pass through in the fall and in spring. We have strays from Mexico and even Central America and, in at least one case, South America. </div><br /><div>Each of these events attracts new visitors and brings back many return visitors. True, most of the jobs created by visitors are low paying service jobs but they are jobs and they will benefit the area.</div><br /><div>However as ecotourism grows there is a call for biologist and natualist, park managers, tour leaders, natural landscape specialist and a host of other higher paying positions that can be filled from the community and a lot sooner then we will be providing rocket scientists to SpaceX, I'll bet.</div><br /><div>And these are jobs that can be taken all over the country. If you are trained as a rocket launch specialist and SpaceX closes it's Brownsville facility where are you going to go? It's not like you can hire on at the launch site in the next town over. </div><br /><div>Maybe you can sell bottle rockets on the 4th of July. Brownsville does have two fine ecotourism sites in Sabal Palm Saanctuary and the Resaca De Las Palmas state park, a world birding center site. What has the city of Brownsville done to support these sites? </div><br /><div>I know the city has contributed some money to the restoration of the Rabb Plantation House at Sabal Palm but this is a historical renovation and not related to ecotourism though I hear it may one day be the sites visitor center. </div><br /><div>it seems like ecotourism isn't sparkley enough for the community leaders. </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6016803033174468094-8059901346058981406?l=rrunrrun.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
LINK: http://rrunrrun.blogspot.com/2012/06/mescalero-turn-up-heat-on-spacex-boca.html
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HINOJOSA WANTS TOP TEXAS DEMO SPOT: HIS QUALIFICATIONS? AHEM!
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By <strong>Juan Montoya</strong><br />After having lost to Republican Carlos Cascos for Cameron County Judge, presiding over the Democratic Party in the county and seeing Cascos again defeat John Wood, his party's nominee for judge, Gilbert Hinojosa now thinks he is eminently qualified to hold the chairmanship of the Texas Democratic party.<br />Never mind the fact that two years ago, for the first time in 28 years, Republican Blake Farenthold became the first GOP congressman in District 27 that includes the state's southernmost tip, a traditional Democratic seat held by his bud Solomon Ortiz.<br />What are the Democratic Party leaders in the state thinking?<br />With primary runoffs nearly two months away, the Democrats will be picking a new leader to take charge of a party that hasn't w<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6Qf1mPKQE2NcolGUCqMumlImYd8tYvqPiwt8W2ocQ19LPv0wLw-bP-Q5P9r2X0JvsJWzZQplhDtcVN4STQ3t3iw9b0fslPFBjVvI5LTSOChx1mHrjm9x19NouhyphenhyphenrmbXotQMIpU2u4teM/s1600/gilbert.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 309px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5751710945266409138" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6Qf1mPKQE2NcolGUCqMumlImYd8tYvqPiwt8W2ocQ19LPv0wLw-bP-Q5P9r2X0JvsJWzZQplhDtcVN4STQ3t3iw9b0fslPFBjVvI5LTSOChx1mHrjm9x19NouhyphenhyphenrmbXotQMIpU2u4teM/s320/gilbert.jpg" /></a>on a statewide office since 1994.<br />"If you're running for the Democratic Party chairman's race, you're running to build a party from scratch," Matt Glazer, executive director of progressive advocacy group Progress Texas, told Austin newsmen.<br />Glazer pointed to the sweeping defeats of Democratic candidates in 2010 that have exacerbated many Texas Democrats' frustrations.<br />Enter Hinojosa, who left a badly-polarized party in Cameron County but who, surprisingly, is considered by the insiders' to be the pick to assume the party's helm during this weekend's convention in Houston.<br />"I think what the Republicans have done has been devastating to the future of this state," Hinojosa told news writers from KVUE. "The massive cuts in public education this last session have hurt us, have hurt us not in the present only, but for the future and have put us in a situation where it's going to be very, very difficult for us to structurally make the changes necessary to put us back on track towards developing the talent that this state needs to become a strong, economically vibrant state."<br />If elected, Hionojosa will take over a party whose fortunes have reversed int he past 20 years. During the recent May 29 primary election, more than 11 percent of voters turned out, but only 4.5 percent, about 600,000, of those voted for Democrats.<br />"The turnout numbers in the State of Texas are abysmal," said Glazer, who lays part of the blame on Republican-led redistricting and voter identification efforts that have both wound up in federal court. "We rank 50th out of 50, and the only thing we can do right now is start getting people to show up."<br />"I believe that the numbers are there," said Hinojosa. "I believe that if you look at the demographics in this state, the people that fall within the natural constituency of the Democratic Party far exceeds those that would fall within the natural constituency of the Republican Party. Our problem as a Democratic Party is that we've been so fractured for so long, and there's something of a self-fulfilling prophecy out there that we've not been able to get out of this funk that we've been in for the last 20 years."<br />In border counties with typically low voter turnout, Hinojosa says it will take time and patience to reverse the trend.<br />"Right now, they don't believe that it makes a difference in their lives," said Hinojosa. "They don't believe that people listen to them, they are scared of the process many of them. They don't think that it's something that is going to be beneficial to them, it's not a priority for them. If you change that mentality, if you change that culture Of not voting to a culture of voting, and you don't have to do it by a lot, it changes the whole scenario of electoral politics in the state of Texas."<br />So there you have it. Will the Democrats turn a blind eye to the work Hinojosa has done at the county level and pick him to run the party's efforts despite his record? Or will cooler heads prevail and guide them to make a better choice for their party?<br />We're sure the eyes of the Republicans in the state are cheering Gilbert on.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6016803033174468094-4693207011354574348?l=rrunrrun.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
LINK: http://rrunrrun.blogspot.com/2012/06/hinojosa-wants-top-demo-spot-his.html
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