March 5th is the 31st anniversary of the day a fantastical story appeared in the Laredo Times. A daring reporter wrote about a giant worm crawling out of the Rio Grande and making its way to the Target parking lot on San Dario and Del Mar. When avid Times readers got wind of this, they flocked to the north Laredo establishment to get a peek of the enormous creature. It was all a ruse. There was no worm.
The story was fake. The story's writer was testing the vulnerabilities that existed at the newspaper, mostly that of a disengaged editor. Heads rolled after that piece was published. Here's a link to a blog post from 2007.
Today is also Super Tuesday, the day that voters in Texas get to select party candidates to compete in the November election. What the two weeks of early voting have shown, however, is a lack of interest in the democratic process. The public is disengaged. KGNS reported on Friday, March 1st, that 18,714 people had cast a vote. More than 18K went for Democrats. KGNS also has a commercial with its on-air personalities encouraging the public to vote. That's as far as it goes in getting out the vote in a county of approximately 144,000 registered voters.
D.A. Isidro Alaniz, District Court Judge Rebecca Palomo and Congressman Enrique Cuellar are unopposed in the Democratic primary. These candidates didn't bother to appeal to the apathetic voter with a television ad. Cuellar will have a republican challenger in November, so he'll put out some obligatory message to remind voters of his importance and track record. For now they're disengaged.
The internet went into a quasi frenzy over Kate Middleton's escape from the public eye. After two months it seems like she has come out of exile. Here, our royals are too eager to stay in seclusion. Their presence could only hurt matters, probably. And it's not like increased voter turnout in Webb County will help us get rid of Ted Cruz; But it's a start.
In late 2022, Daisy Campos-Rodrguez and Ricardo Rangel competed for the District 2 city council seat. A legal battle ensued where Rangel proved that his opponent had friends and family vote in a district race they were not entitled to because of residency requirements. Campos-Rodriguez made overtures of Rangel doing the same.
The voting public should turn out in droves to prevent this kind of vote rigging. Our votes should be a statement against corruption, abuses of power, quid pro quo, nepotism, etc. Voting is the least we could do. It's easy to be disengaged. Just know that there are people who will take advantage of that.
I'll follow up with the results of the primary election and see what the damage is.
Thanks for reading.
I decided to take another crack at it. I've been toying with this idea for some time after several people have randomly asked if I'm still writing for the blog, La Sanbe. The problem with me is that I get easily distracted nowadays, and it's easy to lose inspiration for writing. My only reward is the joy I get out of putting words together, gathering my thoughts on a subject, going back to edit, and so on. If I could do it all again, I think I would've pursued some sort of writing gig. But I digress. I'm not placing outrageous goals on myself. I'll try to post something on a weekly basis. Given that it's an election year, I MAY write more frequently. We'll see. Super Tuesday is a little over a week away. I'm gearing up to compose something for that day. It'll be related to the local political scene, of course. This is another first step in my blogging adventure. I hope we can share ideas and learn a thing or two. Take care fo
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