RGV Life

Currently, the disaster relief effort in the wake of Hurricane Katrina is undergoing some challenges. Getting people and supplies in and out of the disaster area is the biggest problem. It isn't that people and supplies are not available, they are. The main problem is that much of the infrastructure is in such bad shape or underwater. Once there, another problem of the relief effort is what to do with the thousands of victims who are homeless. We dodged a hurricane in the Rio Grande Valley this year. The problems in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama could easily have been us. Please help our fellow Americans by donating money to charities. My preference is the American Red Cross. After the September 11th attacks, I am wary of United Way. You can call the American Red Cross at 1-800-HELP NOW (435-7669) to donate over the phone. You can also visit the Red Cross website and donate online. Their servers are running slow right now, so wait for the pages to load or try again later. Th...

Last night after driving home from work, I had $6 for gas and was riding on empty. I stopped at the Circle K on 23rd and Buddy Owens in McAllen. $2.99 a gallon! Two blocks away at the Circle K on Ware and Buddy Owens, it was $2.49. As you drive around the Rio Grande Valley, you see this huge gulf between the prices of gasoline at some stations and the prices at another. HEB gas station on 10th and Trenton has been able to hold off price increases. There are a few mom and pop stations that are in the $2.49 range. Usually, you don't really have to shop around. Most stores will have gasoline priced within 10 cents of their neighbors. Last night, and today, it would pay off to look around for the best prices. When you only have $6 for gas like me, a poor Mexican, a 50 cent price difference is a big deal. I sympathize with those who have gas guzzling SUVs with 40 gallon tanks. That's a $20 difference if they refuel at the higher price versus the lower price. I think I will have to s...

Here is a post by Ben Christensen at the Brownsville Herald regarding the execution of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Our our men and women victims or heroes? I vote heroes.

Staff Sgt. Nick Martinez (left), of Eagle Pass, Texas, and Staff Sgt. Jose L. Padilla of San Antonio, Texas, hand out drinking water to Bedouin children in their patrol area. Members of Company B, 1st Battalion, 141st Infantry Regiment, the Guardsmen are assigned to Company C, 2nd Battalion, 142nd Infantry Regiment, based in Lubbock, Texas. Master Sgt. Lek Mateo Here is a recent blog post by Rep. Aaron Peña : Did Cindy Sheehan's Vigil Work? WASHINGTON Cindy Sheehan's month of fame - or infamy, depending on one's vantage point - is drawing to a close. The grieving mother of a US soldier slain in Iraq will end her vigil at the president's ranch on Wednesday, almost certainly having failed in her stated goal of a face-to-face meeting with Mr. Bush.If nothing else, the spectacle she launched added an American point of focus to the larger tableau of bad news for the US effort in Iraq, dominated by a US military death toll approaching the symbolically significant 2,000-perso...

We all know how government works. If you are in charge of a department, you ask for a certain amount of money that is more than you really need. You do this so that the powers that be will grant you the same amount you had last year or more. You know, and they know that you will not receive what you request. If for some reason you happen to be efficient at spending your money, you splurge it all at the end in order to spend all the budgeted money. If you have any money left over, your next year's budget is cut. If you have taken managerial accounting, you know how a company determines its budget. First, accounting asks marketing how much product they can sell. If Marketing thinks it can sell $1 million in goods and services, then you go to the production managers. You ask them, how much will it cost to make $1 million in goods? You then go and take that figure, add fixed expenses, and you have a budget. Not so with government. It doesn't matter how much production costs are or...

I am going to tell you of a recent adventure that I had. I don't know that what I did was illegal or not. I do know that it was a 10 foot pole situation. Those of you who know me, know that I do some work for a Chinese restaurant. Logically, my boss is Chinese. This means that he often gets calls from Customs and the Border Patrol to translate for them when they catch Chinese OTMs crossing the river. Of course, they ask for asylum, which gives them a chance to roam around the country until they get their court hearing. Some show up at court and others don't, choosing to remain as illegals rather than risk being deported. Well, being Chinese, the OTMs sometimes come asking my boss for help. If you know a Chinese person in the RGV, you know that they work their tails off to get ahead. My boss is the same way. These two Chinese OTMs came asking for help to get to Houston for their connection to New York City. They asked him to rent a car and send them on their way. Of course, he s...

I've been working on a new blog that houses the menu for China Wok in McAllen and the Quick Woks in Edinburg and Mission. You can see the the work at http://www.thewoks.com , feel free to visit whenever you feel like eating Chinese food. I still need to work on the site a little bit.