Opinion

We are in the midst of a digital revolution fueled by technology and information. It is the dawn of the awakening age of information, and the arousal of seminal moments of machinations and exaggerations that feed the ravenous need to believe in someone, in something, in anything, that can transform the reality of disillusionment and bitterness into an illusion of Biblical dimension and delusional proportion. It was foretold, and it has come to be.

Letters to the editor published in The Monitor, Valley Morning Star and The Brownsville Herald during the week of July 1-6, 2024.

News of Carlos Cascos' sudden passing was a jolt to many people throughout the Rio Grande Valley. Officials across the region were quick to voice their shock, and their condolences. Their statements also reflected the widespread respect he earned through decades of involvement in local and state politics, representing both major parties.

News that Cameron County has received a State Department permit to build a new international bridge is welcome. The Flor de Mayo International Bridge will run from Flor de Mayo Avenue in Matamoros to West Alton Gloor Boulevard in northwest Brownsville, which is a heavy growth area. It also will help relieve congestion at other ports of entry, where wait times often exceed an hour.

Unless the Texas Health and Human Services Commission decides to cancel a procurement or delay a decision until the Legislature can act, three of the state’s largest nonprofit children’s health plans, including Driscoll Health Plan (DHP), may lose out on the state’s $9 billion annual Medicaid contract. This decision could impact 700,000 families, pregnant women and children statewide. The commission’s focus should be on making the right decision for the recipients rather than strictly following a flawed procurement process that affects nonprofit health plans currently serving our communities. Losing Driscoll Health Plan from this contract would be detrimental to the Corpus Christi community and the South Texas region.

The Texas Republican Convention in May passed a resolution requiring people to register as party members before they can vote in future party primaries. Democrats, on the other hand, chose not to follow suit.

America has experienced some embarrassingly cultic, racist and repressive moments over the past couple of hundred years: the Mormon polygamy experiment in the 19th century; Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow politics in the south after the Civil War; the anti-Chinese riots in San Francisco in the 1870s; Woodrow Wilson’s crackdown on free speech during World War I; internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II; McCarthyism’s “liberals are pinko communists” campaign in the 1950s, to name just a few. The leaders of those movements all knew they were turning the citizenry in an anti-American direction, but were too drunk on ignorance, self-importance and power to stop themselves from going there.

Some 21,000 to 23,000 years ago, in what is now called White Sands National Park in New Mexico, a cluster of people, young men and women, perhaps some children, were playing in a shallow water hole. They may or may not have seen, far in the distance, herds of mastodons and wooly mammoths. Judging from the evidence they left in the form of fossilized footprints, this group was neither running away from nor walking purposefully toward something. They were simply milling about, like people do when they are having fun splashing in the water.

Letters to the editor published in The Monitor, Valley Morning Star and The Brownsville Herald during the week of June 24-29, 2024.

Two weeks after establishing perhaps the most restrictive refugee policies in our nation's history, President Joe Biden has about-faced and announced more compassionate, and reasonable policies regarding undocumented immigrants.