The Zapata Times 11/23/2016

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TRUMP’S WALL IS Residents UNWELCOME HERE may be forced to relocate Those living near mobile home community at risk

By Taryn Walters THE ZAPATA TIME S

Eric Gay / AP

In this Nov. 12 photo, a group fishes at a ranch on the banks of the Rio Grande in Los Ebanos, Texas. The area would be cut off if a border wall is build in the area.

Texans condemn disruption, say it won’t work

Oil refinery to be built near Hebbronville

A S SOCIAT E D PRE SS

Wall continues on A11

Relocate continues on A11

RAVEN PETROLEUM

By Frank Bajak

LOS EBANOS, Texas — All along the winding Rio Grande, the people who live in this bustling, fertile region where the U.S. border meets the Gulf of Mexico never quite understood how Donald Trump’s great wall could ever be much more than campaign rhetoric.

Erecting a concrete barrier across the entire 1,954-mile frontier with Mexico, they know, collides head-on with multiple realities: the geology of the river valley, fierce local resistance and the immense cost.

An electronically fortified “virtual wall” with surveillance technology that includes night-and-day video cameras, tethered observation balloons and high-flying drones makes a lot more sense to people here. It’s already in wide use and expanding.

If a 30- to 40-foot concrete wall is a panacea for illegal immigration, as Trump insisted

Residents living in Zapata County may soon need to relocate their homes after receiving notification from the International Boundary and Water Commission that they are residing on federallyowned property.

Congressman Henry Cuellar released a statement Tuesday afternoon stating several Zapata County residents contacted his office about a letter they received from the commission informing them that they were living on federally-owned property and had 180 days to remove their structures from the boundary line.

The letter was submitted

July 22, meaning residents would need to remove their homes from the boundary line before Jan. 18.

“Before the letter was sent to residents in Zapata, the IBWC surveyed what is known as the 307 boundary line near the Four Seasons Mobile Home and RV Resort. During that survey, the IBWC was made aware of people living beyond the boundary zone,” Cuellar said.

The International Boundary and Water Commission, or IBWC, is a bilateral government body that serves to maintain border and water agreements along the international border of the United States and Mexico.

By Julia Wallace THE ZAPATA TIME S

Eric Gay / AP

In this Nov. 13 photo, Central American migrants newly released after processing by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol look for clothing at the Sacred Heart Community Center in McAllen.

An oil refinery set to open near Hebbronville will be a huge economic spur for South Texas, according to local officials.

Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina said the refinery will provide a $100 million payroll every year for its thousands of potential employees.

About 1,500 initial jobs will be generated during the plant’s construction phase, eventually settling on 300-400 permanent jobs, according to Laredo Development Foundation Executive

Director Olivia Varela.

Raven Petroleum is building the refinery to help alleviate the current infrastructure constraints impacting the Mexican petroleum supply market, Christopher Moore, managing director of Raven, said in a statement.

Mexico announced in 2014 that it was aiming to boost its energy sector with foreign investment, liberalize its oil import market and revamp Pemex, which is state owned. But the import flow from the U.S. to Mexico has been limited by a Refinery continues on A11

NEW YORK

Rick Perry meets with Trump as rumors fly

By Tom Benning TH E DALLAS MORNI NG NEWS

WASHINGTON — Former Gov. Rick Perry met Monday with President-elect Donald Trump in New York, stoking rumors that the Texan might find a plum posting in the administration of the man he once called a “cancer on conservatism.”

Perry spent more than an hour at Trump Tower, joining a growing list of prominent politicos to make the pilgrimage to the iconic Manhattan skyscraper in search of a job. He didn’t answer any questions from reporters as he entered or exited the building, according to pool

reporters.

The Republican — who eventually became an enthusiastic Trump surrogate — has been floated for a number of Cabinet positions. Those could include postings over Energy, Agriculture or Veterans Affairs. The latest rumor pegs the Air Force veteran as a candidate for Defense secretary.

“He’s excited about the new administration and the potential for Trump to really be transformational,” Perry confidant Dave Carney said, adding that he didn’t have further specifics.

“And there are a lot of assets that Governor Perry would bring to a Trump administration.”

An administration job would mean a dramatic return to the public sphere for Perry after he appeared all set for a quiet retirement — save for appearances on “Dancing with the Stars” — in the rural Texas hamlet of Round Top. And the former governor has done little to dispel the speculation.

“Just got a call to #makeamericagreatagain,” he wrote on Instagram earlier this month, referencing Trump’s campaign slogan. “Saddle up & ride, bro!!”

Perry is one of several Texans rumored to be up for gigs in a Trump administration.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, a Dallas Republican, is a contender for Perry continues on A11

Spencer Platt / Getty

Former Texas Governor Rick Perry leaves Trump Tower on Monday in New York City.

Zin brief A2 | Wednesday, November 23, 2016 | THE ZAPATA TIMES

CALENDAR

AROUND THE NATION

TODAY IN HISTORY

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 24

ASSOCIATED PRE SS

9th annual Thanksgiving 10K/5K Run/Walk. 8 a.m. 603 Shiloh Dr. $10 for students, $25 for those who register ahead of time, $30 for all who register on race day. Pre-registration begins at 7 a.m. Package pickup on Nov. 23 at Town Place Suites, 6519 Arena Blvd. from 6-8 p.m. All proceeds benefit battered women and children of surrounding areas. For questions, contact Delia “Nenita” Mendez at 285-6362.

Today is Wednesday, Nov. 23, the 328th day of 2016. There are 38 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History: On Nov. 23, 1936, Life, the photojournalism magazine created by Henry R. Luce (loos), was first published.

36th annual Guajolote 10K and 1 Mile Walk. 9 a.m.-12 p.m. Hamilton Trophies, 1320 Garden St. Registration is at Hamilton Trophies and Hamilton Jewelry, 607 Flores Ave. $20 to run the 10K, $15 to walk the mile. $25 on race day for all participants. Register online at itsyourrace.com

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26 Elysian Social Club Annual Black & White Ball. 8 p.m.-1 a.m. Formal attire strictly black and white. For more information call Martha Salinas at 206-0522.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 28 Chess Club. 4—6 p.m. Every Monday.

Inner City Branch Library, 202 W. Plum St. Compete in this cherished strategy game played internationally. Free. For all ages and skill levels. Instruction is offered.

Movie and Popcorn. Every Monday, 4—5 p.m. Santa Rita Express Library, 83 Prada Machin Drive, on the corner of Malaga Drive and Castro Urdiales Avenue. Enjoy a family movie and refreshments.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 29 Rock wall climbing. 4—5:30 p.m.

LBV-Inner City Branch Library, 202 W. Plum St. Take the challenge and climb the rock wall! Fun exercise for all ages. Free. Bring ID. Must sign release form. Every Tuesday. For more information, call 795-2400 x2520.

LEGO Workshop. Every Tuesday, 4—5 p.m. Santa Rita Express Library, 83 Prada Machin Drive, on the corner of Malaga Drive and Castro Urdiales Avenue. Create with LEGOs, DUPLOs and robotics.

Kevin D. Liles / New York Times

From left: Terrance Hayes, 3, Takeyla Robinson, 11, and Ha'rhiya Bennett, 9, leave balloons and stuffed animals at a makeshift memorial near where a school bus crashed in Chattanooga.

CITY MOURNS FIVE CHILDREN CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — A school bus driver was behind bars Tuesday after a crash killed five youngsters and plunged Chattanooga into mourning over what the mayor called the “most unnatural thing in the world” — a parent losing a child.

Police said Johnthony Walker, 24, was speeding along a narrow, winding road Monday afternoon with 35 elementary school students aboard when he wrapped the bus around a tree. Walker was arrested and charged with five counts of vehicular homicide. Reeling from the tragedy, Chattanoogans lined up to donate blood,

created a memorial of flowers and stuffed toys at the crash scene.

At an evening prayer vigil, a local church overflowed and a gospel choir cried out in booming song. Preachers and officials spoke of grief, strength and faith.

Children the same age as those who died were talking, getting antsy and playing a little in the capacity-filled lobby. Reality intruded, though, as an usher walked a tearful woman through the crowd. “This woman needs a seat. She lost her daughter,” he said.

— Compiled from AP reports

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3 Book sale. 8:30 a.m.—1 p.m. Widener Book Room, First United Methodist Church. No admission charge. Everyone is invited.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 5 Movie and Popcorn. Every Monday, 4—5 p.m. Santa Rita Express Library, 83 Prada Machin Drive, on the corner of Malaga Drive and Castro Urdiales Avenue. Enjoy a family movie and refreshments.

Ray of Light anxiety and depression support group meeting.

6:30—7:30 p.m. Area Health Education Center, 1505 Calle del Norte, Suite 430. Every first Monday of the month.

People suffering from anxiety and depression are invited to attend this free, confidential and anonymous support group meeting. While a support group does not replace an individual’s medical care, it can be a valuable resource to gain insight, strength and hope.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6 Rock wall climbing. 4—5:30 p.m.

LBV-Inner City Branch Library, 202 W. Plum St. Take the challenge and climb the rock wall! Fun exercise for all ages. Free. Bring ID. Must sign release form. Every Tuesday. For more information, call 795-2400 x2520.

LEGO Workshop. Every Tuesday, 4—5 p.m. Santa Rita Express Library, 83 Prada Machin Drive, on the corner of Malaga Drive and Castro Urdiales Avenue. Create with LEGOs, DUPLOs and robotics.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 12 Movie and Popcorn. Every Monday, 4—5 p.m. Santa Rita Express Library, 83 Prada Machin Drive, on the corner of Malaga Drive and Castro Urdiales Avenue. Enjoy a family movie and refreshments.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13 Rock wall climbing. 4—5:30 p.m.

LBV-Inner City Branch Library, 202 W. Plum St. Take the challenge and climb the rock wall! Fun exercise for all ages. Free. Bring ID. Must sign release form. Every Tuesday. For more information, call 795-2400 x2520.

LEGO Workshop. Every Tuesday, 4—5 p.m. Santa Rita Express Library, 83 Prada Machin Drive, on the corner of Malaga Drive and Castro Urdiales Avenue. Create with LEGOs, DUPLOs and robotics.

Ex-SD police chief gets life term in fiancee’s killing SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — A former South Dakota police chief was sentenced to life in prison without parole Tuesday in the 2009 death of his pregnant fiancee.

The sentence against Russell Bertram, the one-time police chief of Harrisburg, came almost two months after a jury in Burke found him guilty of firstdegree murder. Bertram, 64,

was accused of fatally shooting 26-year-old Leonila Stickney out of jealousy and to collect more than $900,000 in insurance benefits.

At the time of the incident, Bertram told authorities that he was putting his shotgun into his truck after a hunting trip in Gregory County when the weapon fired accidentally, striking Stickney in the abdomen. County authorities ruled the death an accident after a brief investigation.

Authorities, however, revisited the case after Stickney’s

estranged husband, David Stickney, received a letter from a life insurance company that was processing a claim from Bertram. David Stickney contacted the South Dakota attorney general’s office after getting the letter, setting in motion an investigation that led to a murder charge against the police chief-turned-construction worker on September 2015.

Court records show that a $750,000 life insurance policy had been taken out on Stickney months before her death.

— Compiled from AP reports

AROUND THE WORLD Late-season storm becomes hurricane; 3 dead in Panama PANAMA CITY — Lateseason storm Otto strengthened into a hurricane Tuesday as civil defense officials reported three deaths in Panama amid heavy rain and Costa Rica ordered the evacuation of 4,000 people from its Caribbean coast.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Otto was likely to gain strength as it headed for an expected Thursday afternoon landfall around the Nicaragua-Costa Rica border. It could become the first hurricane to make landfall in Costa Rica since reliable record-keeping began in 1851.

The storm caused heavy rains in Panama as it moved off that nation’s northern coast, and officials blamed Otto for three deaths.

Jose Donderis, Panama’s civil defense director, said a land-

Arnulfo Franco / AP

Civil Defense workers look the area where a couple was killed after their home was destroyed by a mudslide, Tuesday.

slide just west of Panama City early Tuesday trapped nine people. Seven were rescued but two were pulled from the mud dead. In the capital, a child was killed when a tree fell on a car outside a school.

The country “faces one of the worst meteorological situations, with imminent risk,” Donderis said.

Panama announced it was cancelling classes and it began to release water from locks and lakes feeding the Panama Canal. Costa Rica’s National Emergency Commission said it was evacuating 4,000 people from the area where the storm was expected to hit and where rivers could overflow.

— Compiled from AP reports

On this date: In 1765, Frederick County, Maryland, became the first colonial American entity to repudiate the British Stamp Act. In 1804, the 14th president of the United States, Franklin Pierce (puhrs), was born in Hillsboro, New Hampshire.

In 1889, the first jukebox made its debut in San Francisco, at the Palais Royale Saloon. (The coin-operated device consisted of four listening tubes attached to an Edison phonograph.)

In 1903, Enrico Caruso made his American debut at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, appearing in “Rigoletto.”

In 1910, American-born physician Hawley Harvey Crippen was hanged at Pentonville Prison in London for murdering his wife, Cora. (Crippen’s mistress, Ethel Le Neve, was acquitted in a separate trial of being an accessory.)

In 1914, the seven-month U.S. military occupation of Veracruz, Mexico, ended.

In 1945, most U.S. wartime rationing of foods, including meat and butter, was set to expire by day’s end.

In 1959, the musical “Fiorello!” starring Tom Bosley as legendary New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, opened on Broadway.

In 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson proclaimed Nov. 25 a day of national mourning following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

In 1971, the People’s Republic of China was seated in the U.N. Security Council.

In 1980, some 2,600 people were killed by a series of earthquakes that devastated southern Italy.

In 1996, a commandeered Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 767 crashed into the water off the Comoros Islands, killing 125 of the 175 people on board, including all three hijackers.

Ten years ago: Car bombs and mortar rounds struck a Shiite slum in Baghdad, killing 215 people. Former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko (leetvee-NYEN’-koh) died in London from radiation poisoning after making a deathbed statement blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin. Death claimed Broadway librettist Betty Comden at age 89; jazz vocalist Anita O’Day at age 87; and French actor Philippe Noiret at age 76.

Five years ago: Yemen’s authoritarian President Ali Abdullah Saleh agreed to step down amid a fierce uprising to oust him after 33 years in power.

One year ago: The White House urged its allies to step up their contributions to the campaign against the Islamic State, as President Barack Obama faced pressure to show the U.S.-led coalition would intensify efforts even without a major shift in strategy. Blue Origin, a private space company, landed a rocket called New Shepard upright and gently enough to be used again, a milestone in commercial aeronautics. Cynthia Robinson, 71, a trumpeter and vocalist who was a key member of Sly and the Family Stone, died in Carmichael, California.

Today’s Birthdays: Former Labor Secretary William E. Brock is 86.

Actress Elmarie Wendel is 88. Actor Franco Nero is 75. Actress Susan Anspach is 74. Screenwriter Joe Eszterhas is 72. Actor-comedy writer Bruce Vilanch is 69. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is 66. Singer Bruce Hornsby is 62. Former Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., is 61. Actor Maxwell Caulfield is 57. Actor John Henton is 56. TV personality Robin Roberts (”Good Morning America”) is 56. Rock singer-musician Ken Block (Sister Hazel) is 50. Rock musician Charlie Grover is 50. Actress Salli RichardsonWhitfield is 49. Actor Oded Fehr (OH’-dehd fayr) is 46. Rapper-actor Kurupt (Tha Dogg Pound) is 44. Actor Page Kennedy is 40. Actress Kelly Brook is 37. Actor Lucas Grabeel (GRAY’-beel) is 32. TV personality Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi is 29. Actresssinger Miley Cyrus is 24. Actor Austin Majors is 21.

Thought for Today: “I’m a realist and so I think regretting is a useless occupation. You help no one with it. But you can’t live without illusions even if you must fight for them, such as ‘love conquers all.’ It isn’t true, but I would like it to be.” — Marlene Dietrich, German-born actress (1901-1992).

MONDAY, DECEMBER 19 Movie and Popcorn. Every Monday, 4—5 p.m. Santa Rita Express Library, 83 Prada Machin Drive, on the corner of Malaga Drive and Castro Urdiales Avenue. Enjoy a family movie and refreshments.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20 Rock wall climbing. 4—5:30 p.m.

LBV-Inner City Branch Library, 202 W. Plum St. Take the challenge and climb the rock wall! Fun exercise for all ages. Free. Bring ID. Must sign release form. Every Tuesday. For more information, call 795-2400 x2520.

LEGO Workshop. Every Tuesday, 4—5 p.m. Santa Rita Express Library, 83 Prada Machin Drive, on the corner of Malaga Drive and Castro Urdiales Avenue. Create with LEGOs, DUPLOs and robotics.

AROUND TEXAS Historic bricks in Houston disturbed during construction HOUSTON — Officials and preservationists are upset by damage done to bricks laid by former slaves in Freedmen’s Town in Houston when the bricks were mistakenly disturbed during construction work.

African-Americans settled in the area along the southern edge of the Buffalo Bayou. Resi-

CONTACT US dents made the bricks, which date back more than a century, on Andrews Street after city leaders refused to upgrade the area’s streets, the Houston Chronicle reported.

A city contractor on Monday displaced a large segment of the historic bricks while removing a concrete slab during ongoing drainage work, according to Houston Public Works.

Freedmen’s Town Preservation Coalition lawyer Ben Hall said the incident is disrespectful to the historical significance

of the land.

Fourth Ward Redevelopment Authority chairwoman Jacqueline Bostic said any contract for work in the area should require a provision to protect the bricks.

An earlier infrastructure project may have already disturbed the same bricks, public works officials told District C Councilwoman Ellen Cohen, who represents the area.

“I feel terrible about it,” Cohen said.

— Compiled from AP reports

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THE ZAPATA TIMES | Wednesday, November 23, 2016 |

A3

LOCAL & STATE

Officers respond to S.A. police shooting

Frying turkeys for Thanksgiving becomes Texas City event

By Matt deGrood THE GALVE STON COUNTY

By César G. Rodriguez

DAILY NEWS

TH E ZAPATA T IME S

The fatal shooting of a San Antonio Police Department detective hit close to home in the Laredo and Zapata law enforcement communities.

SAPD Detective Benjamin Marconi was fatally shot Sunday while writing a citation.

Laredo Police Department, Webb County Sheriff ’s Office and the Zapata County Sheriff ’s Marconi Office offered their condolences to the Marconi family and their brothers and sisters in the Alamo City.

Chief Raymundo Del Bosque Jr. expressed his condolences to the department and Marconi’s family on his Facebook page.

“May you rest in peace brother in blue. We will keep fighting the war against evil here on earth while you help from up above in heaven. May God bless you and your family,” the chief wrote.

LPD also reacted to the fatal shooting.

“Being that since it was so close to home, it hit us harder. That worst-case scenario can happen anywhere — even here. We just hope and pray that it doesn’t,” said Investigator Joe E. Baeza, police spokesman.

Webb County Sheriff Martin Cuellar said, “We’re all saddened with this act of cowardice that this individual committed against this officer.”

“Of all things, he was just writing a citation,” Baeza added.

Cuellar described the case as a “very sad situation.”

“Can you imagine people enjoying their holidays — Thanksgiving, Christmas — while this particular family and agency have to bury one of their own?” Cuellar said.

The sheriff pointed out that officers, aside from worrying about the people they are making contact with while on duty, now need to look out for someone who may ambush them.

“We feel that law enforcement has been targeted more than ever before,” he said.

“We stress to our deputies to be aware and to be vigilant … of their surroundings.”

TEXAS CITY, Texas — Harold Fattig and Bobby DeSanto were part of a group of friends who wanted to deep-fry turkeys for their families the day before Thanksgiving some 20 years ago.

“We just had the ability to deep-fry turkeys and thought, ‘let’s do this,”’ DeSanto said.

The Galveston County Daily News reports it turns out the idea was a hit.

Fielding request after request for deep-fried turkeys that first year, the friends decided to make people match it by donating another deep-fried turkey to the Texas City Community Thanksgiving for the less fortunate.

“The turnout has been

tremendous,” Fattig said.

“It’s a great group that does it. We’ve become an extended family.”

Since then, the deepfrying has grown from a group of three to about 20 people. And it’s grown into something of a community tradition.

This year, the group is marking its 20th anniversary by frying 100 turkeys in 30-quart fryers on Wednesday, with a private celebration at the Showboat Pavilion in Texas City.

Of those 100 turkeys, 50 will be donated to feed about 1,000 people Thursday at the Texas City Community Thanksgiving Feast at Our Lady of Fatima School.

“It’s a good cause helping those in need,” Lupe Cantu said.

Cantu is one of several members of the group

Jennifer Reynolds / The Galveston County Daily News

In this Nov. 17 photo, David Cantu, from left, Harold Silberisen, Carlos Garza, Gilbert Torres, Curry Fattig and his son, Jace, Harold Fattig, Bobby DeSanto, Lupe Cantu and Derek Duckett gather at the Showboat Pavilion in Texas City, Texas.

who got involved a few years after the initial inception.

“It’s a pretty organized event,” he said. “Everyone knows what they are doing and it’s all frying — no baking.”

The group planned to begin frying turkeys Wednesday morning and conclude just before the start of the celebration at Showboat Pavilion.

A few members of this year’s celebration have

been a part of it essentially their entire lives.

“Oh man,” Curry Fattig, the son of Harold, said. “It was 20 years ago when I got started. I was 4 when I started coming. I’ve been around it my whole life, but I’ve been helping a little more each year.”

Some of Curry Fattig’s favorite memories involve his first turkey-frying years, when he was tasked with gutting a turkey and the love and

camaraderie around the event.

He, along with several others his age, are hoping to slowly take over the event for the next generation.

“This is my third or fourth year coming,” Derek Duckett said. “I grew up with Harold’s son and his son-and-law.

Good or bad weather, this is always a good time and it’s a great way to give back.”

Tractor reported stolen to Sheriff’s Office

By César G. Rodriguez LAREDO MORNING TIME S

The Zapata County Sheriff’s Office is asking for the community’s assistance to track down the person or people responsible for stealing a tractor, authorities said Tuesday.

On Nov. 17, a man reported that his orange 2006 Kubota tractor was stolen from a property south of San Ygnacio.

“The tractor has a front loader and an earth auger

attachment on the back,” sheriff’s officials said in a statement.

“It is believed that the person or persons that stole the tractor might have loaded the tractor onto a flatbed trailer and the trailer was possibly being pulled by a mid-size or heavy duty truck.”

People with information on the case are asked to contact the Sheriff’s Office at 956-765-9960 or Zapata Crime Stoppers at 765-TIPS (8477).

Courtesy photo / Zapata County Sheriff’s Office

This 2006 Kubota tractor was stolen from a location south of San Ygnacio.

Zopinion

Letters to the editor Send your signed letter to editorial@lmtonline.com

A4 | Wednesday, November 23, 2016 | THE ZAPATA TIMES

COLUMN

OTHER VIEWS

A time for listening I’ve been thinking a lot about the best imaginable Trump voter. This is the Trump supporter who wasn’t motivated by racism or bigotry. This is the one who cringed every time Donald Trump did something cruel, vulgar and misogynistic.

But this voter needed somebody to change the systems that are failing her. She needed somebody to change the public school system that serves the suburban children of professors, journalists and lawyers, but has left her kids under-skilled and underpaid. She needed some way to protect herself from the tech executives who give exciting speeches about disruption but don’t know anything about the people actually being disrupted.

She is one of those people whom Joan C. Williams writes about in The Harvard Business Review who admires rich people but disdains professionals — the teachers who condescend to her, the doctors who don’t make time for her, the activists whose definition of social justice never seems to include the suffering people like her experience.

This voter wants leaders tough enough to crack through the reigning dysfunction, and sure enough, Trump’s appointments so far represent the densest concentration of hyper-macho belligerence outside a drill sergeant retirement home.

This voter wants a philosophic change of course, and Trump offers that, too. The two party establishments are mired in their orthodoxies, but Trump and his appointees are embodiments of the nationalism espoused by Pat Buchanan, the most influential public intellectual in America today.

Buchanan’s organizing worldview is embodied in visceral form in the person of Steve Bannon.

“The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia,” Bannon said in his Hollywood Reporter interview. The new political movement, he said, is “everything related to jobs.”

He vowed to drive conservatives crazy with a gigantic spending program to create jobs. He vowed to use that money to create a new New Deal that will win over 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote, creating a neo-Jacksonian majority that will govern for 50 years.

It’s not my cup of tea, but I can see why some good people might be willing to tolerate Trump and Bannon’s personalities in order to pursue it.

Thinking about this best voter has helped me take an emotional pause.

Many of my fellow Trump critics are expressing outrage, depression, bewilderment or disgust.

They’re marching or writ-

“

DAVID BROOKS

ing essays: Should we normalize Trump or fight the normalizers?

It all seems so useless during this transition moment. It’s all a series of narcissistic displays and discussions about our own emotional states.

It seems like the first thing to do is really learn what this election is teaching us. Second, this seems like a moment for some low-passion wonkery. It’s stupid to react to every Trump tweet outrage with your own predictable howls. It’s silly to treat politics and governance purely on cultural grounds, as a high school popularity contest, where my sort of people denigrates your sort of people.

We’ve arrived at the moment of actual governing. We’ve arrived at the moment when Trump has to turn his vague notions into concrete proposals.

Trump promised to rip up the Iran deal, but he seems to be realizing there are six other signatories and we’ve lost leverage with the Iranians because we already gave them back their money.

Trump promises to repeal Obamacare, but how do you do that when it has already been woven into the fabric of every health care system in America?

Whether it’s reforming immigration or trade policy, his governing challenge is going to be astoundingly hard and complicated. Surely this is not the moment to get swept up in our own moral superiority, but rather to understand the specificity of the proposals he comes up with and to offer concrete amendments and alternatives to address the same problems.

Finally, surely a little universal humility is in order. Orthodox Republicans spent the past 30 years talking grandly about entrepreneurialism while the social fabric around their core voters disintegrated. Maybe a little government action would have helped?

The Democratic Party is losing badly on the local, state and national levels. If you were a football team you’d be 2-8. Maybe you can do better than responding with the sentiment: Sadly, the country isn’t good enough for us.

There will be plenty of time to be disgusted with Trump’s bigotry, narcissism and incompetence.

It’s tempting to get so caught up in his outrage du jour that you never have to do any self-examination. But let’s be honest: It wouldn’t kill us Trump critics to take a break from our neverending umbrage to engage in a little listening.

David Brooks is a columnist for the New York Times.

COLUMN

Thanksgiving is just an ‘everyday blessing’ reminder

By Gracie Bonds Staples THE ATLANTA JOURNAL -CONSTITUTION

Next to Christmas, Thanksgiving has long been one of my favorite holidays in the calendar year.

It’s never been particularly grand — just the smell of turkey and sweet potatoes mingled with the sweet sound of constant chatter and loud laughter.

Family, food and Thanksgiving, that one time of year when we’re given license to count our blessings.

In my little corner of the world, at least, kneeling in prayer to the one from whom all blessings flow is a daily occurrence.

Not just on Thanksgiving but every day.

I’m thankful for each new day that God grants to me to try again. I’m thankful for his word, my guidebook by which I seek to live my life. I’m thankful for his forgiveness, for I know that sometimes I fall short, make wrong decisions, say the wrong things, think the wrong thoughts.

I’m thankful for quiet moments alone when I search my heart for the things that shouldn’t be there and muster the will to let them go however often I find I must.

I’m thankful for the many people from the familiar to the stranger who touch my life daily.

I’m thankful for family, most especially my three remaining sisters, two brothers, my near-perfect husband of 31 years, and the best part of me, our two wonderful daughters.

I’m thankful for friends far and near and the people whom I struggle to love. I know they’re in my life to make me better.

Not a day goes by that I’m not reminded what a blessed life I live. I find it

“If we take a moment every day to look with eyes of wonder at the awe-inspiring nature around us, we can experience and understand gratitude in our daily lives. Taking a moment every day to appreciate the beauty of nature around us helps us to appreciate what is always there.”

— Kim Weiss, author of “Sunrise, Sunset: 52 Weeks of Awe and Gratitude”

in the stories I get to tell in this space. Some triumphant. Some tragic.

Those stories become part of my own because in all of them I get to witness the goodness of God. But the real blessing is being happy for the good that comes to others.

I’m thankful that my heart has been big enough to have concern for others and not just those I love and who love me.

I’m thankful for the constant reminders I get from a young woman I encouraged when she was down on her luck.

On my birthday about a month ago, she texted me to say she loved me, and when I responded that I appreciated her thinking of me, she texted back.

“Of course I will always think of you,” she wrote.

“You were heaven sent.

Because of you I am a better me.”

I felt embarrassed reading it because she’s given me so much more and is a reminder that my life has meant something, that I’ve made a difference in at least one life. I need that.

But her acts of gratitude are also a reminder that I need to express my appreciation, too. All of us want to be appreciated for who we are and what we do. It costs us nothing, but it makes someone else feel happy.

Speaking of free blessings, I’m thankful for the wind and rain and sun-

shine and darkness.

Kim Weiss, author of “Sunrise, Sunset: 52 Weeks of Awe and Gratitude,” which combines the majesty of nature with inspiring quotes from people who live their lives with a sense of wonder and gratitude, knows something about that.

Weiss told me that she is blessed by a wondrous view every day, that the sunrise takes her breath away and leaves her with a sense of awe.

“Beauty is all around us and helps us appreciate our lives and what we’ve been given,” she said. “If we take a moment every day to look with eyes of wonder at the awe-inspiring nature around us, we can experience and understand gratitude in our daily lives. Taking a moment every day to appreciate the beauty of nature around us helps us to appreciate what is always there.”

I understand that change can be good, but I’m especially thankful for the things in my life that don’t change, that are always there. Like when I turn in at night, I know Jimmy will be there when I fall asleep and when I wake up. I appreciate that I can count on him bringing me my first cup of coffee and coring me an apple to eat as I drive into work. I know he will never forget my birthday, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day or, in the craziness of

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DOONESBURY | GARRY TRUDEAU

the holiday season, our late-December wedding anniversary.

I’m thankful that I’ve never doubted he loves me.

That’s some of the good stuff, but I’m grateful for the bad stuff, too.

I’m thankful for every trial, every hurt and pain I’ve suffered. Without them, I wouldn’t know how strong I am and how faithful God is.

I’m thankful for the 20 extra pounds menopause brought with it. They are a reminder to stop eating so much, that Thanksgiving’s underlying message of gratitude, if you believe brain and cognitive scientists, helps willpower and eases temptation.

This being Thanksgiving when we gorge ourselves, you’ll want to get this from Susan Peirce Thompson, president of the Institute for Sustainable Weight Loss and author of the forthcoming book “Bright Line Eating: The Science of Living Happy, Thin and Free.”

She says that giving thanks before every meal has immeasurable health and weight control benefits because it reinforces the routine of eating meals on a regular schedule, which in turn lengthens the body’s fasting window, which increases fat loss, improves insulin sensitivity and lowers cholesterol.

It takes the burden off willpower and harnesses the brain’s ability to resist unwanted extra food. And turning our thoughts toward gratitude shifts our focus from what we want or crave to what we have.

And so as I prepare to gather with friends and family, I intend to bow once more in prayer, wanting nothing. Just grateful for what God has already done.

THE ZAPATA TIMES | Wednesday, November 23, 2016 |

A5

ENTERTAINMENT

For Kanye West, a swirling, eventful year ends in a hospital

By Mark Kennedy A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS

NEW YORK — It’s been a hectic year for Kanye West. There was a new album that had a tortured, months-long release. Two fashion shows that were plagued by last-minute changes and long delays. There also was the reopening of a bitter feud with Taylor Swift, an ambitious U.S. concert tour, a newborn son, and a harrowing robbery of his wife.

“When was the last time I wasn’t in a hurry,” West asks on the song “Real Friends” from the new CD “The Life of Pablo.” On another track, West admonishes his less industrious friends: “Y’all sleeping on me, huh? Had a good snooze?”

A relentless schedule and a churning life in the media glare with his wife, Kim Kardashian, apparently took their toll on the Grammy Award-winner.

West was taken to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles on Monday afternoon for stress and exhaustion.

“In the last 12 months, there probably hasn’t been anyone more in the spotlight than Kanye and his wife,” said Bob Williams, the CEO/COO of Burns Entertainment & Sports Marketing , which specializes in celebrity procurement and music licensing.

“I don’t know any celebrity who has been under more scrutiny than the two of them are,” Williams added. “That creates tremendous pressure from the outside — expectations to perform, pressure to respond. It takes time. It takes effort.”

Evan Agostini / Invision/AP file

In this May 2 file photo, Kanye West arrives at The Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Benefit Gala in New York.

In the days leading to his hospitalization, West’s behavior was somewhat erratic. On Saturday in Sacramento, California, he ended his show after just four songs but not before a 10-minute tirade about Beyonce, Jay Z, Hillary Clinton, Mark Zuckerberg, the radio and MTV. West also flooded his Instagram account with nearly 100 fashion photos, many snaps of photos that were out of focus and poorly cropped. Then Sunday’s concert in the Los Angeles area was canceled just a few hours before it was to start; West soon decided to scrap the entire tour. Requests for comment from the rapper’s record label have gone unanswered.

Chuck Creekmur, the founder of AllHipHop.com , has met West several times and while he has no inside knowledge into the artist’s mind, he said it feels like the relentless publicity and stress of creativity may be too much.

“The lights are bright and if they are on you all the time — coupled with your own quest for immortality and greatness — I can only imagine it’s like

running a marathon that never ends,” Creekmur said.

For much of 2016, West has been front-and-center, showing off his work and ideas — finished or not — like a ringmaster at a never-ending cultural circus, fueled by his perfectionist streak.

“That perfectionist mentality can become a consuming state of being because there’s no such thing,” said Creekmur. “If you are in pursuit of perfection, you’ll probably find yourself going insane because there is literally no such thing as perfection.”

West’s year included debuting his latest Yeezy fashion line in baking heat that felled some of the more than 100 models during New York Fashion Week this fall. He was also on “Ellen” with a rambling speech that was full of name-dropping, ambition and “realness.”

He also went on Twitter to complain he was $53 million in debt. He rushed to the side of his wife after she was tied up and robbed of more than $10 million in jewels in Paris, which left her badly shaken. He melted down at

“Saturday Night Live” when staffers tore out the shiny stage he had requested.

And in perhaps the most jaw-dropping act of synergy and ambition, West took over Madison Square Garden in February, spinning new tracks from “The Life of Pablo” while simultaneously debuting his third clothing collaboration with Adidas. Not only did he get 20,000 people to attend at up to $500 per seat, he also streamed it live on Tidal and movie theaters. No detail was too small: There was a list of 38 rules to which models had to adhere, including “do not act cool.”

The CD — which was going to be called “So Help Me God,” then “SWISH” and briefly “WAVES” — would actually not be released until April. West had vowed it would only be available on Tidal but backed down.

The album did produce two much-discussed cultural items — one lyrically and one visually — from a single song, “Famous.” On it, he rapped: “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex” and took credit for her fame. It re-ignited the bitter Swift-West feud — West infamously snatched the microphone from Swift at the 2009 MTV Music Awards — and led to furious backand-forth between the superstars..

The video to the song only added to the firestorm. On it, West and Swift are shown naked, along with a post-coital Chris Brown, Rihanna, George W. Bush, Anna Wintour, Caitlyn Jenner, Bill Cosby and Donald Trump.

Saeed Adyani / Netflix via AP

This image released by Netflix shows Lauren Graham, left, and Alexis Bledel in a scene from, "Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life," premiering Friday on Netflix.

With quick-fire wit, ‘Gilmore Girls’ women are back in new 4-part Netflix series

By Rick Bentley THE FRE SNO BEE

LOS ANGELES — Stars Hollow has been quiet for almost a decade.

No quick exchange of witty banter. No late-night mother-daughter chats.

No rants about cell phones in the diner.

After seven seasons and 154 episodes of watching the lives of Lorelai and Rory Gilmore unfold among family and friends, “Gilmore Girls” came to an end. Fans wept.

The voices are back on Netflix in the four-part series “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.” The story is told through 90minute chapters — each spanning one season: winter, spring, summer, fall. Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel headline the returning cast that features some very familiar faces to fans of the show.

It’s been almost a decade but Graham and Bledel found it easy to slip back into their motherdaughter world.

“It was literally like no time had passed. It was not difficult. It was easy. It was joyous. It was fun. It was exhilarating. It was

the old show. I mean, there was no sense of having to resuscitate something. It was just like it was meant to continue,” Graham says.

One reason it was so easy to return was that conversations about “Gilmore Girls” never stopped, despite the cast going off to do other roles.

That’s why both actors signed on to reprise their roles even before scripts had been written.

It didn’t hurt that those scripts would be penned by series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino. The energetic writer and producer, along with her husband Dan Palladino, had left the series before the start of the seventh, and final, season.

One conversation with the fast-talking ShermanPalladino and it’s obvious the rapid fire conversations on the series are of her making. Bledel says slipping back into playing Rory was a breeze because Sherman-Palladino’s writing gives an actor all the information they need to play the role. Bledel is coy when she talks about where her character’s love life has gone.

Zfrontera A6 | Wednesday, November 23, 2016 | THE ZAPATA TIMES

RIBEREÑA EN BREVE VACACIONES ESCOLARES 1 Debido a las festividades de Acción de Gracias, el distrito escolar Zapata County Independent School District anuncia que las vacaciones por esta festividad iniciarán el lunes 21 para concluir el 25 de noviembre.

Las clases reiniciarán el lunes 28 de noviembre.

JUNTA ESPECIAL DE LA COMISIÓN INTERNACIONAL DE LÍMITES Y AGUAS 1 La Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas llevará acabo una reunión informativa con los residentes del área afectada que han sido notificados para reubicación. La reunión será el martes, 29 de noviembre de 6 p.m. a 8 p.m. en el Centro Comunitario de Zapata, localizado en 605 N. US Hwy 83.

CURSOS DE LENGUAJE DE SIGNOS (ASL) 1 El Departamento de Educación Especial local está ofreciendo clases de Lenguaje Americano de Signos para el personal profesional y paraprofesional así como para padres, estudiantes o administradores del distrito Zapata County Independent School District, todos los jueves desde el 20 de octubre al 15 de diciembre (ocho semanas de duración). En el horario de 4:15 p.m. a 5:15 p.m. en el laboratorio de computadoras de la escuela primaria Zapata North Elementary School.

Mayores informes al 956-285-6877 o a la Oficina de Educación Especial al 956-7566130 antes del 13 de octubre.

COMISIÓN INTERNACIONAL DE LÍMITES Y AGUAS

NUEVO LAREDO

Residentes serían reubicados

E SPECIAL PARA TIEMP O DE

Estarían invadiendo propiedad federal Por Taryn Walters TIEMP O DE ZAPATA

Residentes que viven en el área del Condado de Zapata podrían tener que reubicar sus casas después de ser notificados por la Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas (IBWC por sus siglas en inglés) que están residiendo en propiedad federal.

El Congresista Henry Cuéllar emitió un comunicado el martes por la tarde indicando que varios residentes del Condado de Zapata habían contactado su oficina acerca de una carta que recibieron de la comisión informándoles que residen en propiedad federal y que tenían 180 días para remover estructuras de la línea limítrofe.

La carta fue presentada el 22 de julio, es decir que los residentes tendrían

que reubicar sus casas antes del 18 de enero.

“Antes que la carta fuera mandada a los residentes de Zapata, IBWC había inspeccionado lo que es conocido como la línea 307 cerca del parque Four Seasons de RV y casas móviles.

Durante esa inspección, la IBWC se dio cuenta que había gente viviendo más allá de la línea limítrofe”, dijo Cuéllar.

La Comisión Internacional de Límites y Agua, es un organismo internacional creado con el fin de aplicar los tratados internacionales sobre límites y aguas entre Estados Unidos y México.

Cuéllar ha estado trabajando en conjunto con el Juez del Condado de Zapata Joe Rathmell, el Comisionado del Condado de Zapata Eddie Martínez, el comisionado de IBWC Edward Drusina y

el inginiero de IBWC José Nuñez para determinar un solución viable para los residentes afectados.

IBWC esta organizando una reunión informativa con los residentes del área afectada el martes, 29 de noviembre de 6 p.m. a 8 p.m. en el Centro Comunitario de Zapata, localizado en 605 N. US Hwy 83.

La comisión trabajará con los residentes en función de cada caso para determinar una posible solución, mencionó Cuéllar.

El Juez del Condado de Zapata Joe Rathmell dijo que esta enterado de la situación desde principios del mes de junio, cuando representantes de IBWC le informaron que los residentes habían estado invadiendo propiedad federal a lo largo de la Presa Falcón.

ZAPATA

“Hemos ido de un lado a otro para ver si podemos encontrar una solución y que los residentes se puedan quedar”, dijo Rathmell.

Hay aproximadamente 16 propiedades que consisten en casas móviles en el parque RV Four Seasons así como otras propiedas a lo largo de la Presa Falcón que están invadiendo la servidumbre de la línea limítrofe de la comisión, añadió Rathmell.

“He hablado con algunos de los individuos afectados y no lo tienen (un plan alterno), no tienen ningún otro lugar para ir”, dijo Rathmell.

La mayoría de los residentes que necesitan reubicar sus casas son adultos mayores, mencionó Rathmell.

La IBWC no pudo ser localizada para comentarios.

ZCISD

TOMAN POSESIÓN DE CARGO

MUSEO EN ZAPATA 1 A los interesados en realizar una investigación sobre genealogía de la región, se sugiere visitar el Museo del Condado de Zapata ubicado en 805 N US-Hwy 83. Opera de 10 a.m. a 4 p.m.

Existen visitas guiadas. Personal está capacitado y puede orientar acerca de la historia del Sur de Texas y sus fundadores. Pida informes en el 956-765-8983.

Foto de cortesía

La junta del Distrito Escolar del Condado de Zapata ratifica los resultados de las elecciones. Se administró juramento del cargo a José M. Flores Jr., Diego González, Jose M. Ramírez III, por sus respectivos precintos y Manuel González Jr. por su lugar general.

LABORATORIO COMPUTACIONAL 1 La Ciudad de Roma pone a disposición de la comunidad el Laboratorio Computacional que abre de lunes a viernes en horario de 1 p.m. a 5 p.m. en Historical Plaza, a un lado del City Hall.

Informes en el 956849-1411.

SE SUSPENDE JUNTA 1 La Sociedad de Genealogía Nuevo Santander informa a sus socios y a la comunidad en general que no habrá reunión durante el mes de Diciembre.

GLOBOS AEROSTÁTICOS EN L.I.F.E. GROUNDS 1 Del 2-4 de diciembre habrá vuelos en globos aerostáticos, comida, artesanías, musica, show de globos y más. En L.I.F.E. Grounds, ubicada E. HWY 59 de 4 p.m. a 12 a.m.

Crearán centro de logística

COLUMNA

Cae dictadura de Porfirio Díaz Por Raúl Sinencio Chávez TIEMP O DE ZAPATA

Entre berrinches y sollozos, el 25 de mayo de 1911 Porfirio Díaz abandona la silla presidencial, largo tiempo detentada. A poco de suprimida, su dictadura asesta póstumo golpe represivo a ciudadanos agraviados por las injusticias del propio régimen. Insólito e impune, el suceso ocurre en Tamaulipas.

Cárcel Bajo el orden porfiriano, los catrines monopolizan el progreso. Tan sólo en Tampico, 170 personas concentran entonces propiedades y riquezas.

El 90 por ciento del censo integra la fuerza laboral, sujeta a turnos de 12 horas diarias y jornales exiguos.

La parte restante –artesa-

nos, profesionistas libres y abarroteros—componen la clase media.

En puestos clave del municipio tamaulipeco, a tono con la época, predominan funcionarios reelectos, surgidos de las élites. Para mantener el status quo dispone el gobierno de 62 gendarmes, reforzándolos 327 policías rurales. Elementos castrenses guarnecen además el puerto. Los detenidos por faltas menores en cercanos años previos equivalen de manera continua a la cuarta parte de los 20.000 lugareños. Ello denota rígidos afanes de control.

Frente a la Plaza de Armas, el recinto edilicio aloja la cárcel. En aquellas fechas ahí encierran a varios opositores. Según cierta bibliografía, son partidarios de Francisco I. Madero, líder del antirre-

leccionismo.

Vísperas Corre de boca a oreja: al cabo de seis meses, el movimiento revolucionario acaba de obtener clamoroso triunfo. Porque el general Porfirio Díaz ha caído el jueves anterior, exiliándose aprisa. La noticia causa regocijo en sectores mayoritarios, víctimas de la modernidad despótica que impera arriba de tres décadas.

Aunque el conflicto bélico ningún impacto directo tiene en la zona, permanecen a flor de piel legítimos anhelos de cambios democráticos, ante el temor de acaudalados porfiristas.

Por el oriente del primer cuadro porteño acuden numerosos vecinos a reunirse el 28 de mayo de 1911. El “grupo de aproximadamente 100 individuos […] del barrio proletario

de Doña Cecilia” –hoy Ciudad Madero–, llega “al edificio” del ayuntamiento “y […] desarmó a la policía […]. Después, se dirigió hacia la prisión con el fin de poner en libertad a los presos, pero” antes “paseó jubilosamente por […] calles céntricas de la localidad” ribereña de Tamaulipas, relata Steve Lief Adleson Gruber. El cuerpo de rurales se había ido del área en las vísperas.

“Entonando consignas pro [Francisco I.] Madero” –complementa Marcial E. Ocasio Meléndez–, la columna de manifestantes regresa al inmueble del cabildo “para liberar prisioneros. Sin embargo, tropas” de línea “se colocaron [mientras tanto] frente a la” ergástula “y dispararon contra la multitud”, que “volvió a Doña Cecilia dejando seis […] muertos” por militares.

Para fomentar la innovación en el crecimiento económico, impulsar el posicionamiento y las oportunidades que tiene Nuevo Laredo, el gobierno municipal creará el Centro de Innovación Socioeconómica, Tecnológica y Logística de Nuevo Laredo, México.

El centro será constituido y asesorado por la empresa internacional TECNALIA. El Presidente Municipal, Enrique Rivas en la rueda de prensa “Lunes de informe”, señaló que como parte de la modernización de la ciudad, se determinó utilizar los servicios de TECNALIA, el principal centro de investigación aplicada y de desarrollo tecnológico de España Rivas y uno de los más importantes de Europa, para la creación de este centro en la frontera.

"El gobierno municipal impulsa el Centro de Innovación Socioeconómica, Tecnológica y Logística de Nuevo Laredo y contará con los servicios de TECNALIA, que tendrá la función de extender la semilla de la innovación en la región, a través de acompañar al Ayuntamiento de Nuevo Laredo en el proceso de conceptualización y puesta en marcha del Centro de Innovación Socioeconómica, Tecnológica y Logística”, dijo Rivas.

El proyecto, pone especial énfasis en la formación académica de los jóvenes, para mejorar la preparación del recurso humano, además de divulgar, hacer conciencia y socializar a la comunidad en el tema de la innovación.

Rivas destacó que como parte del trabajo que realizará en conjunto con el Gobernador del Estado, Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca, este centro habrá de participar a la vez en la creación del clúster energético, que anunció el gobernador en su visita a Nuevo Laredo.

"Este Centro de Innovación puede ser coyuntural para llevar a cabo lo que pretende el Gobernador Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca y nosotros como municipio, por eso buscamos contar con los especialistas para este proyecto”, dijo el alcalde.

Con la creación de este centro, Nuevo Laredo se coloca a la vanguardia como agente impulsor del cambio en la región, integrando en sus actividades a actores clave del sistema regional de innovación. TECNALIA es una empresa constituida por más de mil 500 investigadores económicos.

El proyecto del Centro de Innovación se encuentra en revisión y se están afinando detalles para la firma del convenio de colaboración con la referida empresa. Este proyecto contempla un lapso de 18 a 24 meses para que el concepto funcione de manera normal; el objetivo es que este Centro sea autosuficiente.

Sports&Outdoors THE ZAPATA TIMES | Wednesday, November 23, 2016 |

A7

NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE: HOUSTON TEXANS

Texans moving on after tough loss Houston blows lead in Mexico City to Raiders

By Kristie Rieken A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS

HOUSTON — The Houston Texans dealt with a fan’s hand-held laser pointed at quarterback Brock Osweiler’s eyes, questionable placement of the ball on two key plays and a would-be touchdown that was whistled dead in a loss to Oakland on Monday night.

Sure, the Texans were unhappy with all of those things, but a day later they know that dwelling on what happened in Mexico City won’t do them any good this week.

The message for the Texans was clear on Tuesday: It’s time to move on.

They really have no other choice but to put the 27-20 defeat behind them with the San Diego Chargers heading to town in six days and Houston needing a win to remain in control of the AFC South. Houston (6-4) remains atop their division, but the loss put them within one game of the

Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle

Houston running back Lamar Miller and the Texans lost a close 27-20 game in Mexico City on Monday night to the Raiders.

second-place Colts.

“The feeling in that locker room after that game is there’s a lot of football left and we have a lot to build on from that game,” coach Bill O’Brien said. “Being in first place is a good thing. The other teams in the division are playing pretty decent. So we’ve got to understand what is coming down the road here, but the first thing is San Diego, getting a good start on them on

Wednesday.”

O’Brien didn’t want to discuss any of the calls from Monday night on Tuesday, but he did address the laser pointer after learning more about what happened since his postgame news conference. He said that running back Lamar Miller had it pointed in his face along with Osweiler.

“It doesn’t even enter your mind that someone would bring a laser into a

game and point it at one of your players ... I think that’s terrible,” O’Brien said. “I don’t know what you can do about it.”

While dealing with the laser pointer and the questionable calls by the referees certainly weren’t ideal for the Texans, they can’t blame the loss entirely on those things.

Their defense played great for three quarters before a 75-yard touchdown reception by Jamize Olawale

tied things up and Amari Cooper took a screen pass 35 yards for the winning touchdown.

Houston’s pass defense entered the game ranked third in the NFL and the Texans had a rush defense that was among the worst in the league. On Monday night, the Texans allowed just 30 yards rushing, but were hurt by the receiving of the Oakland’s running backs, who combined for 199 yards receiving.

“There were some missed tackles. Give them credit,” O’Brien said. “But on a positive note, we held them to 30 yards rushing.

So in the last three games we’ve done a good job against the run, but last night their running backs did a good job about us in the passing game. No doubt about it.”

A positive to come out of Monday night’s game was the continued strong play of defensive end Jadeveon Clowney , the top overall pick in the 2014 draft. Clowney, who was slowed by injuries in his first two seasons, had five tackles, including two for losses, to give him 12 tackles for losses this season.

“He was very disruptive in the game even when he didn’t make a play,” O’Brien said. “He’s having a good year for us and the key for him, like all of our players at this time of the year, is staying healthy.

But I thought he really impacted the game last.”

Osweiler , who has been inconsistent in his first season in Houston, wasn’t great on Monday, but O’Brien believes that he is making progress. He threw for 243 yards on Monday after managing just 99 yards passing last week in a win over Jacksonville.

NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE: DALLAS COWBOYS

USA SOCCER

DALLAS’ RARE BREED

Arena returns as US coach, replaces Klinsmann

By Ronald Blum ASSOCIATED PRE SS

Tom Pennington / Getty Images

A pair of rookies have led the Cowboys to nine straight victories this season in quarterback Dak Prescott and running back Ezekiel Elliott.

Rookie duo leads Cowboys to 9 straight wins

By David Moore TH E DALLAS MORNI NG NEWS

FRISCO, Texas — The historic run the Cowboys find themselves on began against the team they face on Thanksgiving.

A win against Washington on Sept. 18 was the first notch in a franchiserecord nine-game streak.

That was back before the Chicago Cubs ended a 71-year NL championship drought, Donald Trump was the president-elect and the Cowboys forged the NFL’s best record.

These are truly rare times.

"This is a rare team," owner Jerry Jones said in the wake of his team’s victory over Baltimore.

Jason Garrett does little to acknowledge accomplishments during the season. The Cowboys’ head coach believes doing so distracts from the focus required to keep moving forward. Garrett did talk to his team about how hard it is to win in the NFL after beating the

Ravens, but that’s a message he emphasizes every week.

"It means we have a great team that believes in ourselves," quarterback Dak Prescott said of being two months removed from the Cowboys’ only loss.

"We’re not going to flinch, and we’re not going to blink.

"We don’t really focus on the score. Just take it one play at a time. We just keep moving forward and know things will break for us."

Opponents have been the ones to break over the last 72 days. Prescott and running back Ezekiel Elliott have formed a rookie firewall between the team and defeat.

Prescott has thrown from 227 and 319 yards in each of the nine games. He has a quarterback rating of 103.8 or higher in all but one of those games.

Seattle’s Russell Wilson is the only player in league history to have more games (nine) with a quarterback rating to exceed

100. Prescott finished with a rating of 127.2 against Baltimore despite being 4 of 10 for 31 yards with a sack to open the game.

"It’s really rare when young players can do that," tight end Jason Witten said.

There’s that word again.

"That’s not the first time we’ve seen that," Witten continued. "He continues to answer it every single week. You just can’t say enough about how that’s worked out, good preparation to see the coverages then to capitalize with some big throws."

Elliott has rushed from 83 and 157 yards during each game of the winning streak. He failed to average at least 4 yards a carry in only one game during this stretch.

These two rookies have been more than brilliant.

They’ve been consistent.

But they aren’t alone.

Four different players have led the Cowboys in receiving during the nine games. None of them had

done it in back to back games until Dez Bryant did so these last two weeks.

Players on both sides of the ball are stepping up.

Three different players have led the team in tackles, and 10 have had at least one sack during the streak.

Touchdowns have been spread among 10 players as well.

It’s a democratic approach that has led to an autocratic streak. The next-longest streak in the league at the moment belongs to the New York Giants and Miami at five games.

"That’s incredible, man," Cole Beasley said of nine consecutive wins.

"It’s so awesome to be a part of, but it’s not what we’re here for."

What the Cowboys are here for, Garrett will tell you, is a rematch against Washington, the first victim in this burgeoning streak. Kickoff is 3:30 Thursday afternoon at AT&T Stadium.

NEW YORK — Bruce Arena is returning to coach the U.S. national soccer team, a decade after he was fired.

The winningest coach in American national team history, Arena was hired Tuesday, a day after Jurgen Klinsmann’s dismissal for two losses to begin the final round of World Cup qualifying.

With the Americans 0-2 at this stage for the first time, the U.S. Soccer Federation wants to spark a turnaround when competition resumes March 24 with a home game against Honduras followed four days later with a match at Panama. The 65-year-old Arena starts work Dec. 1.

“We need to build the chemistry of this team and have a common goal and really work on a team concept,” Arena said during a telephone news conference. “I really believe individually and positionally we have good players and we’ve just got to get them working together as a team.

“There are no real secrets on how you build good teams: It takes a lot of hard work, it takes communication, it takes discipline and it takes some talent, and I think we have enough talent to build a good team and end up in Russia 2018.

It’s going to take a little time, a little bit patience and a lot of hard work.”

Arena first took over as national team coach after the 1998 World Cup and led the U.S. to a 71-30-29 record. His contract runs through the

2018 World Cup. “I don’t view it as Bruce 2, but sort of Bruce 2.0,” Arena USSF President Sunil Gulati said. “I think he’s got far more experience than he did when he had the national team the first go-round.

He’s proven and re-proven many times at all levels of the game in the United States that he’s an extraordinarily capable and successful coach.”

A wisecracking Brooklynite known for blunt talk and sarcasm, Arena coached the University of Virginia to five NCAA titles from 1978-95, then led D.C. United to titles in Major League Soccer’s first two seasons before losing in the 1998 final.

He guided the Americans to the team’s best World Cup finish since 1930, a 1-0 loss to Germany in the 2002 quarterfinals.

Arena was let go after the team’s first-round elimination by Ghana in 2006. He coached the New York Red Bulls of MLS from July 2006 to November 2007, then was hired the following August by the Galaxy. He led the team to MLS titles in 2011, 2012 and 2014.

Arena was inducted into the U.S. National Soccer Hall of Fame in 2010.

Hired by Gulati in 2011, Klinsmann coached the U.S. to the 2013 CONCACAF Gold Cup title and the second round of the 2014 World Cup, where the Americans lost to Belgium 2-1 in extra time.

A8 | Wednesday, November 23, 2016 | THE ZAPATA TIMES

NATIONAL

Trump again disavows Vilsack says Democrats alt-right, white supremacists need better message for

By Bill Barrow A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS

ATLANTA — President-elect Donald Trump is again distancing himself from the alt-right movement as its white supremacist members claim his election as a boon for their agenda.

“I disavow and condemn them,” Trump said Tuesday during a wideranging interview with staff members of The New York Times.

It’s the latest attempt from Trump to separate himself from groups and individuals widely condemned for their advocacy of white supremacy in American culture.

The Republican president-elect added that he does not want to “energize” the groups, one of which garnered viral headlines this weekend with a gathering in Washington, where organizers and attendees evoked Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich with cries of “Heil Trump” and reprisals of the Nazi salute.

The Times has not yet released a full transcript or video of the meeting, but participants used Twitter to share his remarks throughout the exchange.

Richard Spencer, an alt-right leader who convened the weekend gathering sponsored by his National Policy Institute, told the Associated Press he was “disappointed” in Trump’s comments. But Spencer said he understands “where he’s coming from politically and practically,” adding that he will “wait and see” how the real estate mogul’s administration takes shape.

Still, Spencer argued Trump needs the alt-right

movement and should be wary of shunning it because of a few news cycles of bad pubSpencer licity “that do not define what we’re doing.”

Spencer said Trump needs people like him “to actualize the populism that fueled his campaign.”

Trump’s denunciation also comes amid continued criticism over Trump tapping Steve Bannon, who managed the final months of the billionaire businessman’s presidential campaign, as chief White House strategist.

Bannon was previously the leader of Breitbart News, an unapologetically conservative outlet that Bannon has described as a “platform for the altright.”

At the Times, Trump said Breitbart “is just a publication” that “covers subjects on the right” and is “certainly a much more conservative paper, to put it mildly, than The New York Times.”

Before Trump’s latest denunciations, Spencer told AP earlier Tuesday that he doesn’t see either Trump or Bannon as members of his movement, though “there is some common ground.”

He said he and likeminded “identitarians” — his preferred label for white identity politics — see Trump’s election as validating their view that the United States is flailing because it has embraced multiculturalism and political correctness at the expense of its European heritage.

Spencer said “without an intellectual vanguard”

that white nationalists can provide, Trump would have a “meaningless” tenure mired in the “mainstream conservative movement” that he’s railed against. “The whole promise of his campaign was that he wouldn’t do that,” Spencer said.

Throughout his campaign, white nationalists have embraced Trump’s hard-line approach on immigration and other issues. He sometimes used his Twitter account to distribute comments and links from white supremacist accounts, including a famous quotation from Benito Mussolini, the 20th century fascist leader of Italy.

The president-elect’s son, Donald Trump Jr., also became a flashpoint by using social media to distribute imagery with xenophobic or racist connotations. In September, the younger Trump posted a doctored image of himself, his father and several other prominent Trump allies next to Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character that Spencer chose as a mascot for his movement.

Trump Jr. also retweeted an academic who argued that anti-Semitism is a “logical” response to a belief that Jews control the world’s banks.

In February, the elder Trump refused during a CNN interview to denounce the Ku Klux Klan and one of its former leaders, David Duke, saying he “didn’t know anything” about Duke. Initially, he said a faulty ear piece left him unable to hear the questions clearly, but days later he issued a clearer condemnation.

“David Duke is a bad person,” he said in an MSNBC interview.

rural America

By Mary Clare Jalonick ASSOCIATED PRE SS

WASHINGTON — No one listened to Tom Vilsack.

As agriculture secretary during the entire Obama administration, the former Iowa governor has for years been telling anyone who will pay attention — farmers, members of Congress, even Hillary Clinton — that Democrats need a better message for rural America. And he’s spent most of his tenure focusing on rural development, trying to revitalize areas that ultimately voted for Republican Donald Trump in this year’s presidential election.

“The Democratic Party, in my opinion, has not made as much of an effort as it ought to to speak to rural voters,” Vilsack said Tuesday in an interview with The Associated Press. “What’s frustrating to me is that we actually have something we can say to them, and we have chosen, for whatever reason, not to say it.”

Vilsack is a longtime friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton and was close to becoming Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential running mate. She chose Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine instead. Clinton ultimately won Virginia but lost, deeply, in many rural areas of the country.

He says he understands why party leaders chose a different path to try for electoral victory, focusing on expanding populations like Hispanics and African-Americans who had come out in large num-

bers to vote for Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president, in 2008 and Vilsack 2012.

The problem, he said, is those groups represent around the same percentage of the population as rural voters. And he says Democrats didn’t have enough of a counter argument to powerful Republican themes of less regulation and lower taxes.

“There wasn’t an overarching theme that a person in a small town could go, ‘Oh, they’re talking about me,”’ Vilsack said.

According to exit polls conducted for AP and television networks by Edison Research, about 17 percent of voters in this year’s election were from small cities or rural areas, and 62 percent of them said they voted for Trump.

Since the election, Democrats in Congress have also been talking about how to turn around the rural vote. Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan is challenging California Rep. Nancy Pelosi for House Democratic leader, saying that the party’s message needs to be heard beyond the two coasts.

“We lost those voters,” Ryan said last week.

“We’ve got to find a way to get back in, and that starts with a message that resonates in the flyover states.”

Vilsack says the party should have had a tougher countermessage to

Trump’s positions on deporting immigrants who make up some of the farm workforce and opposing trade deals that are good for agriculture.

“If you have no market and no workforce, what good does it do,” Vilsack said. “My guess is, if you confronted the average farmer with that dilemma, they’d go, “Well, let me think about that.”’

He said Democrats didn’t do that “because we didn’t think we’d have to,” because Clinton appeared to be on track to win the election.

Vilsack is the only remaining member of Obama’s original cabinet.

As secretary, he’s focused on rebuilding rural communities, increasing the diversity of types of agriculture, boosting innovation and research and making school meals healthier. He’s also worked to resolve civil rights claims against the department.

He said he thinks the Obama administration’s work on many of those issues will hold, particularly because of millennials’ deep interest in food issues and because the agriculture and food industries have already adapted to many regulations.

As for his successor, he says he hopes the person has some executive experience, like being a governor as he was. He says he hasn’t talked to Trump or the transition.

“Rural America is now getting some attention,” he says. “The question is whether that will translate into positive policy.”

THE ZAPATA TIMES | Wednesday, November 23, 2016 |

A9

BUSINESS

Dow surpasses 19,000 as a record-setting drive continues

By Marley Jay A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS

NEW YORK — The Dow Jones industrial average surpassed 19,000 for the first time Tuesday as a post-election rally drove indexes further into record territory. Discount store chains made large gains, but health care companies tumbled.

Stocks opened solidly higher after setting records on Monday. They gave up some of their gains around midday but reached new highs late in the afternoon. Health care stocks slumped after weak results from medical device company Medtronic.

Retailers soared after strong earnings from Dollar Tree and Burlington Stores.

“The consumer in general is far more budgetconscious than they were in previous generations,” Ken Perkins, president of research firm Retail Metrics, said of discount chains.

The Dow picked up 67.18 points, or 0.4 percent, to 19,023.87. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index added 4.76 points, or 0.2 percent, to 2,202.94. The Nasdaq composite gained 17.49 points, or 0.3 percent, to 5,386.35.

The Russell 2000 index,

which tracks smaller companies, continued to set records as it traded higher for the 13th day in a row. It jumped 0.9 percent.

The Dow has closed at a record high six times in the two weeks since the presidential election, but trading volume has fallen in recent days. U.S. trading will be closed Thursday for Thanksgiving and markets will close early on Friday.

Shoppers continued to flock to discount stores.

Dollar Tree raised its profit and sales forecasts after the chain reported solid results in the third quarter. Burlington Stores also raised its outlook after it posted a larger profit than analysts expected. Dollar Tree jumped $6.69, or 8.2 percent, to $88.68 and Burlington Stores added $11.86, or 16 percent, to $86.04.

Other retailers like Home Depot, TJX and Signet Jewelers also rose as consumer stocks reached all-time highs.

Perkins, of Retail Metrics, said chains like Dollar Tree were able to win over new customers after the Great Recession, and low-cost clothing companies like TJX, the parent of TJ Maxx, have also performed well since that time.

Spencer Platt / Getty

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday in New York City.

Health care stocks, which are still trading lower than they were at the start of this year, took hefty losses after weak results from Medtronic, one of the world’s largest medical device companies.

Matt Miksic, a medical device analyst for UBS, said some investors worried that Medtronic’s results mean a lot of drug and medical device companies will face slower growth. Miksic said Medtronic reported weak sales “across pretty much every one of their categories in the U.S.” The company also cut its profit guidance. It sank $6.98, or 8.7 percent, to $73.60. Health care products giant Johnson & Johnson slid $2.26, or 2 percent, to $112.74 and Abbott Laboratories,

Obama white-collar overtime pay mandate blocked by judge

By Laurel Brubaker Calkins B L OOMBE RG NEWS

An Obama administration policy that would have given more whitecollar workers overtime starting Dec. 1 was blocked nationwide by a federal judge in Texas.

The decision Tuesday is a victory for 21 states and dozens of business groups that sued, complaining the new rule would increase government costs in their states by $115 million next year alone and would put private employers on the hook for millions of dollars more, possibly leading to layoffs.

It’s the fourth time in 21 months that a federal judge in Texas has issued a nationwide injunction blocking one of President Barack Obama’s executive orders. Other stalled Obama initiatives involve

shielding undocumented immigrants from deportation, mandating bathroom access for transgender students, and requiring labor-violation disclosures by federal contractors.

The rule would have doubled the maximum salary cap to $47,892 a year for full-time executive, administrative and professional workers to be exempt from overtime pay requirements. The higher cutoff, along with a provision to periodically increase it, would have extended overtime protections to millions of fulltime salaried workers, just 7 percent of whom are currently protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act compared with 62 percent in 1975, according to the government.

U.S. District Judge Amos L. Mazzant III in Sherman, Texas, rejected a request by the federal

government to limit any order to the states that filed the lawsuit and issued a preliminary injunction blocking the new salary cutoff nationwide.

By requiring employers to pay overtime wages based on salary rather than an employee’s duties, the Labor Department exceeded its authority under the Fair Labor Standards Act and ignored Congress’s intent, Mazzant said in his ruling.

“If Congress intended the salary requirement to supplant the duties test, then Congress and not the department, should make that change,” he said.

The White House declined to immediately comment on the ruling.

The U.S. Labor Department failed to consider regional salary and economic differences in setting the nationwide base pay rate, opponents said.

which makes infant formula, drugs and medical devices, gave up $1.66, or 4.2 percent, to $38.10.

Medical supplier Patterson Cos. plunged, touching a three-year low, after it said its dental business struggled in the second quarter and its animal health business was hurt by weak prices for brand-name drugs.

Patterson cuts its profit forecast and its shares dropped $7.95, or 16.7 percent, to $39.56.

Campbell Soup’s profit in its fiscal first quarter was better than expected thanks to lower expenses and better sales of snacks like Pepperidge Farm.

Hormel, the maker of Spam, reported better results from its refrigerated foods business and its Jennie-O turkey unit.

Hormel also gave solid guidance for the current fiscal year. Campbell Soup gained $1.98, or 3.6 percent, to $57.02 and Hormel rose 92 cents, or 2.6 percent, to $35.86.

Dr. Pepper Snapple Group said it will buy fruit drink maker Bai Brands for $1.7 billion. Bai Brands markets its drinks as having fewer calories than other brands and doesn’t use artificial sweeteners. Dr. Pepper Snapple stock picked up $2.25, or 2.6 percent, to $87.50.

Industrial companies, including makers of aircraft and engines and other equipment, continued to rise. Companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman were trading around record highs before the election and they have done better than the broader market since then. Boeing climbed $2.50, or 1.7 percent, to $149.52 Tuesday.

Oil prices wobbled and energy companies fell.

Benchmark U.S. crude lost 21 cents to $48.03 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 22 cents to $49.12 a barrel in London.

The price of oil rose about 4 percent Monday.

Investors continued to sell short-term bonds,

which sent their prices lower. The yield on the two-year Treasury note rose to 1.09 percent, its highest in six years. Longer-term bond prices held steady. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note remained at 2.31 percent.

The dollar, which is trading around 13-year highs, was little changed.

It rose to 111.14 yen from 111.07 yen. The euro inched up to $1.0624 from $1.0612.

In other energy trading, wholesale gasoline picked up 1 cent to $1.41 a gallon.

Heating oil remained at $1.53 a gallon. Natural gas rose 3 cents to $2.98 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Gold rose $1.40 to $1,211.20 an ounce. Silver gained 11 cents to $16.63 an ounce. Copper added 3 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $2.54 a pound.

Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.6 percent. France’s CAC 40 added 0.4 percent while the DAX in Germany gained 0.3 percent.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 dipped after a powerful earthquake in northern Japan, but the index finished 0.3 percent higher. The earthquake set off a small tsunami, but it appeared to cause only minor damage and injuries. South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.9 percent and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong climbed 1.4 percent.

Cargo pilot strike in Ohio may delay Amazon, DHL shipping ASSOCIATED PRE SS

WILMINGTON, Ohio — Pilots for a cargo airline that carries packages for Amazon and DHL went on strike Tuesday, potentially causing delivery delays just as the holiday shopping season swings into high gear.

The airline, ABX Air, said it would seek a court order to end the strike by about 250 pilots.

The Teamsters union, which represents the pilots, said the strike had caused 75 flights to be canceled. ABX operates 35 daily flights for Amazon and 45 daily flights for DHL, according to the union.

The pilots allege that ABX is understaffed and forces them to work on days off without giving them the compensatory time off that they are owed under their contract.

The airline’s president, John Starkovich, said the

Al Behrman / AP file

In this June 5, 2008, file photo, two ABX Air cargo planes sit at Wilmington Air Park, in Wilmington, Ohio.

strike is illegal and that the dispute should be settled through arbitration.

A spokesman for ABX parent company Air Transport Services Group Inc. said the company would not comment on the impact of the strike.

Neither Amazon nor DHL responded immediately to requests for comment.

Wilmington-based Air

Transport Services earned $22 million in the first nine months of this year, down from $26.5 million in the same period of 2015. The company’s labor costs have increased 30 percent in that time, according to a regulatory filing.

The company’s shares fell 24 cents, or 1.4 percent, to $16.44 on Tuesday. They have gained 86 percent in the past 12 months.

A10 | Wednesday, November 23, 2016 | THE ZAPATA TIMES

NATIONAL

Trump’s charity admits to violating IRS self-dealing ban

By Chad Day and Michael Biesecker A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump’s charity has admitted that it violated IRS regulations barring it from using its money or assets to benefit Trump, his family, his companies or substantial contributors to the foundation.

The admissions by the Donald J. Trump Foundation were made in a 2015 tax filing made public after a presidential election in which it was revealed that Trump has used the charity to settle lawsuits, make a $25,000 political contribution and purchase items such as a painting of himself that was displayed at one of his properties.

The filing’s release, first reported by The Washington Post, comes as the New York attorney general’s office investigates whether Trump personally benefited from the foundation’s spending.

The filing also shows Trump’s foundation accepted money from a Ukrainian businessman who also gave money to one of Trump’s favored targets on the campaign trail: The Clinton Foundation. The charity also donated to a conservative group that backed Trump during his candidacy.

The 2015 tax filing was posted on the nonprofit monitoring website GuideStar on Nov. 18 by someone using an email address from the foundation’s law firm, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, said GuideStar spokeswoman Jackie Enterline Fekeci.

In the tax filing, the foundation acknowledged that it used money or

assets in violation of the regulations not only during 2015, but in prior years.

Trump But the tax filing doesn’t provide details on the violations.

Questions about the violations sent via email to Trump’s transition team weren’t immediately answered Tuesday.

Marcus S. Owens, a partner at the Washington law firm Loeb & Loeb and a former director of the IRS exempt organizations division, said the lack of detail in the tax filing makes it difficult to determine the extent of the charity’s violations.

“There’s no way to tell for sure whether the selfdealing is small and trivial or large and a pattern of ongoing deliberate misuse of the charity’s assets,” Owens said.

Generally, he said, selfdealing violations require the violator to pay an excise tax equal to 10 percent of the amount involved in the transactions.

The violator also would

have to repay the foundation for the full amount involved. Owens also noted that self-dealing is a violation of New York state law, where the charity is registered.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a Democrat, launched an investigation into the charity after reporting by the Post drew attention to some of the foundation’s purchases, three of which are listed in the latest filing: two portraits of Trump and a football helmet autographed by former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow.

As the Post reported previously, Trump bid $12,000 for the football helmet, and his wife, Melania, bid $20,000 for one of the portraits. The other portrait, which Trump bid $10,000 for, has been hanging on a wall at his golf course in Doral, Florida, according to the Post.

Despite the high-dollar price tags, the foundation’s latest tax filing now values them at a combined $1,675. The tax filing does not specify if any of the items are related to the self-dealing violations.

THE ZAPATA TIMES | Wednesday, November 23, 2016 |

A11

FROM THE COVER Trump says humans may be causing global warming

By Michael Biesecker A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump appears to be softening his tone on whether climate change is real and on his stated plans to scrap the recent multinational agreement to limit carbon emissions.

In a wide-ranging interview on Tuesday with editors and reporters at

PERRY From page A1 Treasury secretary. Rep. Michael McCaul, an Austin Republican, could be up for Homeland Security secretary. Dallas investor Ray Washburne is a prospect for Commerce secretary and, according to reports Monday, Interior secretary. And the list goes on.

On Monday, former Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert was named to one of Trump’s “landing team” groups that will visit federal agencies during the presidential transition.

Leppert, an early Trump supporter, will be the point person for handling the Social Security Administration. His selection drew immediate

REFINERY From page A1 lack of infrastructure, a news release states.

The refinery will be built near the corners of Webb, Duval and Jim Hogg counties. These county judges have formed a tri-county partnership leading up to the project. Tijerina said he’s been involved in talks for about a year.

“I think it’s going to bring a lot of economic development here. Refineries last forever,” Tijerina said.

WALL From page A1 during the campaign, the locals are not convinced.

And few were surprised when the president-elect seemed to soften his position five days after the election, saying that the wall could include some fencing.

“The wall is not going to stop anyone,” said Jorge Garcia, who expected to lose access to most of his 30-acre riverside ranch after the U.S. Border Fence Act was enacted a decade ago.

Under the law, 652 miles of border barrier were built, mostly in Arizona. The 110 miles of fences and fortified levees that went up in Texas are not contiguous but broken lines, some as much as a mile and a half from the river.

Eight years after government surveyors marked Garcia’s land, he and his wife, Aleida, are still waiting to see if the Border Patrol will sever their property.

“This lets me know that whenever they want to build the wall, they can,” said Aleida, holding up a tax bill that shows the nominally expropriated sliver of property.

If a fence or wall goes up, the couple will be paid $8,300. So far, the Garcias and the rest of the village of Los Ebanos have been spared because the erosion-prone clay soil is simply too unstable, she believes.

Geology conspires against wall-building up and down the Rio Grande Valley. So does a boundary water treaty with Mexico and endangered-species laws.

Catwalks and tunnels had to be built into exist-

The New York Times, Trump said he would “keep an open mind” about the Paris accord, which he has repeatedly said he planned to either renegotiate or cancel if elected.

Trump was also reported to have affirmed in the interview held two weeks after the election that human activity and global warming may be linked. “I think there is

some connectivity,” he said. “Some, something. It depends on how much.”

That’s a significant shift from Trump’s past statements that climate change is a “hoax” perpetrated by the Chinese to make U.S. manufacturing less competitive.

Trump has also cited winter cold snaps as evidence that climate change is a “con job” and a “myth.”

“The entire country is FREEZING — we desperately need a heavy dose of global warming, and fast!

Ice caps size reaches all time high,” Trump tweeted during a 2014 blizzard.

If he doesn’t change course, Trump would become the only head of state on the planet to deny the reams of scientific evidence that the Earth is warming, according to a Sierra Club com-

pilation of public statements by the leaders of the 195 nations recognized by the State Department.

While Trump’s climate-change denial has become orthodoxy within the Republican Party, it is at odds with the overwhelming consensus of the world’s scientists.

According to NASA, 97 percent of the climate scientists agree that the world is getting hotter.

blowback from Democrats over a CNN report that resurfaced Leppert’s plan from his 2012 Senate run to privatize Social Security.

But a high-profile partnership between Perry and Trump would form the capstone to a stunning turnabout in the two men’s relationship.

As a GOP presidential candidate, Perry was among the first contenders to take on The Donald.

Trump responded with ridicule, saying Perry wore glasses “so people think he’s smart.” But that caused Perry to double down, peaking with a speech in July 2015 that savaged Trump.

“Donald Trump’s candidacy is a cancer on conservatism, and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised

and discarded,” he said then.

Once Perry dropped out, he backed his fellow Texan, Sen. Ted Cruz. But he ultimately came around to Team Trump, saying that the billionaire “loves his country and he will surround himself with capable, experienced people, and he will listen to them.”

Trump has returned the favor, saying that Perry was “one great governor.”

The real estate mogul has said that he likes Perry — that he’s “very, very good.”

And he made no secret that he would “like to get him involved in some capacity at a high level.”

Perry allies downplayed the earlier friction between the two men, drawing the distinction between campaigning and

governing. And they pointed to the fact that the mogul would meet with a onetime foe as a good sign of how things would work in a Trump White House.

Further, they said, Perry is reportedly being considered for posts that fit his portfolio.

With the Pentagon, he’s a military veteran. With Veterans Affairs, he’s been active in efforts to help the troops — particularly in the transition to civilian life. With Agriculture, he was once state agriculture commissioner. With Energy, he was the governor of a state that has lots of it.

“He has strong ties to each of those areas,” said Ray Sullivan, another Republican operative close to the former governor.

“He can make a strong case for his ability to lead

in those areas.”

At least one would require further explanation. Though Perry is remembered for once forgetting that the Energy Department was one of three agencies he wanted to eliminate- “oops” — he wanted to cut it nonetheless. So that would make an interesting Day 1 for Energy Secretary Perry.

But Sullivan, for one, said the past comment would be no big hurdle.

“There’s a difference between being a candidate who is aspiring to the highest office and serving the president of the United States in a Cabinet,” he said. “And the job of the Cabinet secretary . is to serve at the pleasure of the president and to help implement his or her policies.”

Varela said the key partners in developing the workforce for this refinery will be Laredo Community College’s Economic Development Center, Texas A&M International University and South Texas Workforce Solutions.

“They have already started the process of planning for their workforce development projects,” Varela said. “They are going to be offering customized skill programs that are geared specifically toward the need of the refinery project.”

These new jobs will

range from all kinds of construction to more vocational skills like welding, to oil and gas accounting and various specialized engineering positions.

This refinery — South Texas’ first — is a symbol of hope for the beleaguered oil and gas industry, which is still slowly recovering from the bust in 2014.

“This is one of the first indications, a very strong indication, that there is a positive outlook,” Varela said. “And because of this particular project we are already receiving inquiries on other oil and gas proj-

ects.”

Varela said LDF has been trying to promote this region as a key point in the oil and natural gas supply chain for the U.S. and Mexico.

“This particular project will serve to move us in that direction,” she said.

Preliminary construction phases have begun for the refinery, although Varela said it may take as long as 18 months for the final state environmental permits to come through.

In spite of this, she said the project has been moving forward faster than they originally anticipated.

Raven expects to break ground in late 2017, and the refinery could be up and working as soon as late 2018. The oil products and liquified petroleum gas refined here will be exported to Mexico and the Caribbean, according to the news release.

Moore said that Raven could consider building a pipeline from Laredo area to Brownsville for oil products to the Caribbean.

The refinery is also expected to accommodate direct rail service via the Kansas City SouthernMexico railroad, he said in a statement.

ing fences to accommodate endangered ocelots and jaguarundi, two species of wild cat.

The gaps in the border barrier include an entire flank of the River Bend golf club and resort in Brownsville. University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley political scientist Terence Garrett calls them “gaps of privilege” because many landowners were politically connected.

Other landowners fought the Border Patrol in court.

“The wall might make mid-America feel safer, but for those of us that live on the border, it’s not making us feel any safer when we know that people can go over it, around it, under it and through it,” said Monica Weisberg-Stewart, security expert for the Texas Border Coalition, a consortium of regional leaders.

The coalition wants federal dollars to go instead to bolstering security at border crossings, where heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine are smuggled in. A poll conducted in Southwest border cities in May found 72 percent of residents opposed to building a wall. The Cronkite News-Univision-Dallas Morning News poll had a margin of error of 2.6 percentage points.

The wall is popular in distant cities “because you can see, feel and touch it. But politically it just doesn’t make sense,” said J.D. Salinas, the coalition’s chairman.

As commissioner of the border county of Hidalgo from 2007 to 2009, Salinas won public backing for 20 miles of border barrier by reinforcing an existing levee with concrete and topping it with a fence. In

2010, the project paid off.

The levee held back flooding from Hurricane Alex. The cost was about $10 million a mile, though.

In the Nov. 8 election, only three Texas border counties — all sparsely populated — went for Trump. The rest are solidly Democratic, at odds with the Republicans who control most state capitals and have been demanding more border barriers.

Rural ranchers worried about drug traffickers and other criminals are less likely to benefit from border walls and fences than city-dwellers, said Adam Isacson, a security expert with the nonprofit advocacy group Washington Office on Latin America.

“What a wall ultimately does is slow a border crosser for 10 to 15 minutes,” Isacson said. “In an urban area, that 15 minutes is crucial.” Border patrol agents can arrive quickly. In rural areas, they may be an hour or more away.

The U.S. side of the border is quite safe, said Weisberg-Stewart. “We are not in a war zone.”

In fact, cross-border trade has been booming.

In 2014, more than $246 billion worth of goods and 3.7 million trucks crossed the Texas-Mexico border, according to coalition figures.

Trump needs to remember that Mexico is the second-largest U.S. export market, said Rep. Filemon Vela, a Texas Democrat whose district includes most of the valley. Only Canada buys more American goods.

“There’s no way in hell he’s going to see his great wall,” Vela said.

The region bears the usual hallmarks of

American prosperity: strip malls, well-maintained interstates, prosperous gated communities with hacienda-style McMansions. Cold-storage warehouses proliferate for northbound Mexican okra, avocados and tomatoes while other warehouses brim with southbound used clothing. Cotton, grapefruit and corn fields abound.

Much of the Mexican side of the border has been afflicted by drug cartel-related violence, but crime in the Rio Grande Valley, which is home to 1.3 million people, has been consistently lower than other Texas cities.

If lots of “bad hombres” are crossing the border, as Trump has claimed, they are mostly taking their lawbreaking elsewhere. Further, there’s no record of anyone sneaking across the border to commit acts of terrorism.

The Border Patrol’s buildup after 9/11 is one reason, argues David Aguilar, who was named to the agency’s top job in 2004 by a fellow Texan, then-President George W. Bush, and is now a private consultant. Since then, the number of agents has climbed from 9,500 on the southwest border to 17,500 in 2015.

Meanwhile, the number of apprehensions along the border is down from a peak of 1.6 million in 2000 — when Aguilar said at least as many got away — to 409,000 in the year ended in September.

Nearly half were caught in the Rio Grande Valley.

Many analysts believe the Great Recession was a bigger factor than Border Patrol enforcement in making the U.S. less attractive to Mexican migrants in particular.

Since tower-mounted video surveillance cameras began going up in 1999 in the Brownsville area, illegal cross-border traffic in the area “dried up by 85 to 90 percent,” said Johnny Meadors, the sector’s assistant chief for technology. He said the traffic moved west, where there were no cameras.

Seventy-two more of the towers, which are 80 to 120 feet tall, are to be installed in the valley by 2021, and could include motion sensors and laser pointers, Meadors said.

Since 2013, the Border Patrol has also had five blimp-like aerostats that float from 1,000 to 5,000 feet above the valley on tethers. High-flying Predator drones have patrolled vast areas of southwest borderlands since 2011. The agency also has underground sensors along the border.

How many, Meadors wouldn’t say.

All the gadgetry has been a bonanza for defense contractors. The government spent $450 million last fiscal year on border security fencing, infrastructure and technology.

“If you had a sensible immigration policy, there would be no need for all this,” said Garrett, the political scientist.

What Trump’s policy will be remains a mystery.

During the campaign, he said he would deport all the estimated 11 million immigrants living illegally in the United States. Days after the election, he appeared to back down somewhat, saying he would expel the criminals among them.

Whether fear of a Trump victory has anything to do with a recent

RELOCATE From page A1 Cuellar has been working with Zapata County Judge Joe Rathmell, Zapata County Commissioner Eddie Martinez, U.S. Commissioner of IBWC Edward Drusina and IBWC Principal Engineer Jose Nuñez to determine a viable solution for residents facing removal.

The IBWC is hosting an information meeting with the affected residents on Tuesday, Nov. 29 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the Zapata Community Center, located at 605 N. US Hwy 83.

Affected residents will be able to work with the commission on a caseby-case basis to determine a possible solution, Cuellar said.

Zapata County Judge Joe Rathmell said he became aware of the situation in early June when representatives from IBWC informed him of the residents that were encroaching on IBWC’s flowage easement along Falcon Lake.

“We’ve been going back and forth seeing if we can find a solution for residents to stay,” Rathmell said.

There are approximately 16 properties consisting of mobiles homes in the Four Seasons RV park as well as other properties along Falcon Lake that are encroaching on the boundary commission’s flow easement, Rathmell said.

“I’ve spoken with some of the individuals who have been affected and they don’t have a (backup plan) — they don’t have anywhere else to go,” he said.

Most of the residents being asked to relocate their homes are elderly citizens, Rathmell said.

The IBWC could not be reached for comment.

Taryn Walters may be reached at 956-728-2528 or twalters@lmtonline.com.

spike in arrivals from violence-wracked Central America isn’t clear. They account for more than half of Border Patrol apprehensions in the Rio Grande Valley, where many migrants turn themselves in at frontier bridges.

After processing, released migrants are given court dates in destination cities where relatives typically await. Others are sent to detention centers.

An average of 350 migrants, some adults wearing ankle monitors, now arrive daily at the Sacred Heart parish community center in the border city of McAllen, up from 100 a day in August, said Gaby Lopez, a volunteer at the makeshift shelter that opened in June 2014.

New arrivals get a shower, a hot meal and can pick through donated clothing.

Ingrid Guerra, 21, a Guatemalan who is eight months’ pregnant and bound for Kansas, said she was fleeing an abusive relationship and didn’t tell the father. The father of her other child, a 2-year-old who stayed behind with Guerra’s mother, was killed in a drunken brawl, she said.

Sitting with her is Erika Machuca, a 19year-old Salvadoran.

Machuca, also eight months’ pregnant, is bound for Dallas, where her husband lives. She says two of her brothers and three uncles were killed in El Salvador in violence she did not understand.

Both women said they merely want to earn a living and raise families in peace.

“Back there,” Guerra said of Guatemala, “they kill at the drop of a hat.”

A12 | Wednesday, November 23, 2016 | THE ZAPATA TIMES