This is getting to be predicable.
Even as major media declares Brownsville the poorest city in the United States, some local would-be liberators of the masses continue to serve out heaping spoonfuls of drivel for mass consumption.
Whether it's shooting for a Guinness World Record Zumba dance, the largest group of people fishing in a resaca at one time, or the fastest city administration and city commission to encumber public debt, local politicians seem to be disconnected from reality.
Remember the anencephalic baby tragedy some years ago? You know, the sudden appearance of some 30 or 40 babies born without brains in the Brownsville-Matamoros area? Remember what the Texas State Department of Health mavens recommended?They urged the local population ans pregnant women especially to eat...corn tortillas and beans.
OK.
Just as inane and redundant is the recommendation from city commissioner Rose Gowen that we emulate her in her memories of the past with her Grandma and take up walking. Alright. Let's see if we got this right.
She is addressing a city where the public mass transit system is not what you would call a model of efficiency. If you drive around town, you will see old men and women, children, entire families, waiting by a bus stop sign for the bus to pass. The majority of these bus stops have no shelter from the elements. Often people will crowd under a nearby tree or just wait in the heat for the blue bus to come if it hasn't broken down along the route.
Gowen, however, espouses something called "Walkability," to enhance the health options of the local populace. There is, as she tells us a whole science to this. Planner of the past, she said, underestimated the value of walking. It's like telling people who cannot afford a car that they are better off without one.
Then you have the "Walking Score" (I'm not making this up, I swear!) based on accessibility to restaurants (if people in the barrios can afford to go to one), retail, parks, schools, libraries, etc.
Based on this score, Gowen strives to make the point that whole economies are based on the ability to walk places. This increases housing values, the wealth generated by using bicycles, and the flourishing economy of walking-friendly Vermont.Grandma, she "suspects," would have loved to live in a city with high Walk Scores for generations.
Good luck in most neighborhoods in the city where sidewalks were often deleted from the plans by developers to save money. In fact, the county is still debating the point of whether to include sidewalks for new subdivisions.
I don't say this to ridicule Ms. Gowen. I'm sure she has the best for all of us in mind. But next time I see some old man or lady dodging traffic walking up Southmost toward town to a Social Security appointment or in some colonia children fending off stray dogs walking down the middle of a caliche road, I will remind myself of the beauty of walking and won't deprive them of the pleasure by offering them a ride and thereby contribute to the destruction of their health.
How about protesting against the proposed construction of a $200 million power-generating plant between the PUB and private company Tenaska that will discharge water from its cooling tower blowdown and low volume wastes at a daily average flow of 2,300,000 gallons per day that will go into the Port of Brownsville Channel that is connected to fragile estuaries and the Laguna Madre?
That same plant will – once in operation – pump 3,265,993 tons per year of carbon monoxide a year into the environment.
What do you recommend for that, corn tortillas and beans?
11 comments:
Rose gowen the FAILED DOCTOR is promoting UN AGENDA 21. PLEASE check out
http://www.democratsagainstunagenda21.com/ and informed yourself how the elite want to control the masses AND FIGHT THIS MONSTROSITY
They need to add sidewalks.
Especially at intersections between the hike and bike trail and roads leading to stores like HEB and restaurants. A biker just got killed run over on Price. There is no sidewalk on price for bikes and walkers to use and the truth is drivers in Brownsville do not look out for people on bikes.
Installing sidewalks for easier "walkability" ever cross her mind? Heads full of air up there.
I know that these days science is all suspect but the reason those foods were recommended was because they are high in folic acid. It was suspected that a folic acid deficiency in pregnant women may have been a factor in the birth defects. By the way, as I suspect you know, the victim were not born without brains but that is a glib way of describing a tragedy so if it makes you feel better go ahead. However, if it did describe a condition of brainlessness the number would not be 30 or 40. It would be in the hundreds or thousands in Brownsville alone.
Rose Gowen talks about "walking" but we don't see sidewalks where most of the people live and poor lighting. Rose expects us to drive to one of the walking trails to walk; or drive to the mall to walk; or drive downtown to walk while our car is likely to be stolen. Rose Gowen and Tony Martinez are out of touch with this town.
but gee, in my Statist catechism it says government makes people smart and the will of popularly elected officials know whats best. You mean it isn't so!
Clearly some of those babies born without brains grew up to be elected officials here in the Valley.
From what I have seen of Rose Gowen she looks like she could shed a few kilos. She should take her own advice.
The folic acid was bullshit. The anaencephaly was caused by an airborne chemical from the maquillas. Notice how it stopped as abruptly as it started? Do you really think a dietary deficiency, for multiple persons, works like that? But congratulations to business, media, and universities for covering that up.
That is true. Here on the border we are like lab rats. No one cares how or why babies are born with only rudimentary brain stems and incomplete skulls they send the fetuses in jars of formaldehyde to Galveston and Houston for the med students to study. And add one or two questions about it on exams.
Yet families were devastated to find out they were giving birth to a malformed baby without a head, while the ANTI ABORTION protestors those dumbasses were standing outside harassing the poor mothers from aborting this chemical-retarded no brain mutant and yelling BABY KILLERS as they did the humane thing and aborted a wasted life and prevented its useless suffering, but does anyone care? Nope.
How do you explain people of "the poorest city in the nation" spending thousands of dollars on parties for the kids? I'm not talking 15 year olds here. I'm talking 5 or 6 year olds. You've got these party places popping up all over the place at thousands of dollars a pop.
These people aren't "poor". They're "poor" by government standards because they make 20-25K a year. They qualify for every fucking freebie under the sun...foodstamps, housing, phones...and when the census comes around again, instead of taking all the "free" stuff they're getting into consideration, the only thing they count is their paycheck. Democrats take these fake stats back to the guilty white folks up north who throw more money into a system that's already fattening up and rendering the poor useless.
All these people need to come here to the valley and see how the nations "poor" actually live. Everyone should be outraged.
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