FARMER EDDY PREACHES MODERATION AND NUTRITION

By Juan Montoya

When he's not taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from corporations doing business in his district for "consulting," or selling out his "services" to the highest bidder, Farmer Eddy Lucio Jr. (also a Texas State Senator) want us to eat veggies and fruits and be healthy.

This is the same Eddie Lucio who persuaded the Port of Brownsville to change engineering firms and then sat back and watched the dough roll into his pockets as the big-city engineering firm Dannenbaum duped the rubes and cleaned them out.

In just seven short years, $21 million disappeared into thin air and the residents of the Brownsville Navigation District got nothing – nada – in return. Dannenbaum and its subcontractors pocketed millions,
Eddie got his 30 pieces of silver, and really, you guys should eat better. I certainly do.


This is a newer, friendlier, "greener," Eddie than the one who convinced Willacy County commissioners to hire his employers to build more jails, made hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions, and then sat back as the indictments for bribery and graft flew fast and heavy and resulted in some of those same commisioners getting convicted for taking a few bucks under the table from the big-city boys.
Partly as a result of listening to Smiling Eddie they got to try the new jails firsthand. They sure won't grow obese on that fare.

Now he wants to tackle obesity by having us invest in farmers’ markets.
What the hell?

Not content to feed this kind of tripe to the Brownsville Herald every week, Eddie is now branching out from submitting inane health sermons to the daily and going out on a limb stressing that education is the road to a slim-and-trim future.
It kind of reminds us of the time there was a spate of anencephalic births in Cameron County and no one knew what was causing these grotesque deformities. Health officials couldn't explain the reasons behind the tragic rise in these births so they advocated a preventive dietary response: "Eat more folic acid," they said.
What contains folic acid?
How about tortillas and beans? That was the response. Eat more beans and tortillas.

Now Eddie, who can't quite understand that he lives in an area where more than 30 percent of his constituents don't have any kind of health insurance, where 34 percent are below the poverty level (more than twice the state rate), and where the median income is only $29,346 compared to $47,548 in Texas has hit upon the answer: Farmers' markets.

Could someone tell this man that Cameron County isn't his grandaddy's county anymore?
The average 313 acre farm grows commodity crops like sorghum and cotton while vegetables and orchards account for a minuscule portion of the agricultural production.
The agricultural operations nowadays are geared toward volume. Real farmers couldn't give a rat's butt about selling a few oranges to wannabe yuppies from the university on a Saturday morning by the federal courthouse. And the Loops out on Oklahoma Road wouldn't be caught dead pushing their produce to the Saturday crowd that gathers to hear folk music as they feed their faces with produce that "is picked at the peak of flavor, maintains its nutritional content and saves on fossil fuels because it is locally grown and thus not transported far."
Uh?


Then, jumping on the wave of fuzzy warm feelings generated by the federal(and city)-subsidized Brownsville Farmer’s Market, he asks parents to "encourage a youngster to snack on a piece of fruit versus a candy bar. It is a wonderful opportunity to encourage and practice better nutrition habits and explore nature’s healthy wonders."

"These markets complement legislation I have authored that expanded access to nutritional foods in schools, increased fruit and vegetable consumption, and improved the coordination of obesity-related efforts throughout the state," Eddie's hacks continue.

We can already see his cohorts like Cameron County District Clerk Aurorita De la Garza and County Clerk Joe Rivera in their checkered shirts and overalls wandering through the stalls pinching the fruit for ripeness and taking a few free grapes on the sly.

This is the same Eddie that has grown corpulent feeding on our trust and gullibility, who has grown fat on the fruit of our labors, and who now has the gall to try to pull off a gratuitous public-relations blitz riding the wave of the farmers' markets fad far removed from the stark reality facing his constituency.