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UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
Obama speaks ‘US-Mexico stereotypes must be broken’ By JIM KUHNHENN ASSOCIATED PRESS
MEXICO CITY — Calling for an end to “old stereotypes,” President Barack Obama on Friday portrayed Mexico as an emerging nation that is remaking itself and said the U.S.-Mexico relationship should be defined by shared pros-
perity, not by threats both countries face. “It’s time to recognize new realities,” he declared. In a speech to a predominantly student audience, Obama conceded that the root of much violence in Mexico is the demand for drugs in the United States, and acknowledged that most guns used to commit crime in this
country come from the U.S. But he said an improving economy is changing Mexico and improving its middle class. “I see it in the deepening of Mexico’s democracy, citizens who are standing up and saying that violence and impunity is not ac-
Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais | AP
President Barack Obama, center, greets children after attending a cultural event at Casa Amarilla in San Jose, Costa Rica, on Friday.
See OBAMA PAGE 11A
TEXAS SPECIAL OLYMPICS
FEDERAL COURT
AREA OLYMPIC GAMES
Courtesy photo
A judge officially terminated a lawsuit between former Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez Jr., shown, and a county firefighter on Monday.
Zapata County Independent School District Special Olympians were on hand Wednesday morning at the United ISD Activity Center in Laredo for the Opening Ceremonies of the Motor Activities Training Day for the Texas Special Olympics.
Settlement reached in fed lawsuit
Zapata children among the competitors
Judge approves $11,500; both sides say they are satisfied with outcome
Photo by Cuate Santos | The Zapata Times
By MIGUEL TIMOSHENKOV THE ZAPATA TIMES
LAREDO — Students from the Zapata Consolidated Independent School District were among the almost-700 athletes who participated Wednesday in the Motor Activities Training Day for the Texas Special Olympics. With Laredo’s United South High School band providing background mu-
sic at the Student Activity Complex, athletes demonstrated their athletic skills, much like in the traditional Olympic games. Athletes participated in runs of 50, 100 and 400 meters, shot put and long jump, among others. Law enforcement officers from several departments ran a 5.1-mile course to the SAC from San Martin de Porres
Church carrying a lit torch. Students jumped, waved and cheered the officers. Students from the United, Laredo and Jim Hogg county independent school districts participated, as well as clients from the Border Region Behavioral Health Center. For Maribel Santoya Maciel, Special Olympics director, the activities provided encouragement to
the 670 athletes participating. “Today there will be a victory dance with live music for these athletes who will be happy to be a part of the Olympics,” Santoya said. Juan A. Salazar, director of competition for Special Olympics, said athletes who meet state standards will move on to a
See OLYMPICS PAGE 11A
By CÉSAR G. RODRIGUEZ THE ZAPATA TIMES
A lawsuit between former Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez Jr. and a Zapata County firefighter he allegedly assaulted was officially terminated Monday in federal court with both parties pleased with the outcome. U.S. District Judge Marina Garcia Marmolejo signed the stipulation for
dismissal. The case was dismissed with prejudice, meaning it is done and not subjected to further action. Parties involved in the case will bear their own court costs, court documents state. Both parties reached a settlement of $11,500, according to Attorney Charles S. Frigerio, who represented Gonzalez. Frigerio
See LAWSUIT PAGE 11A
NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION
Laredo man now with the Mavericks By JASON MACK THE ZAPATA TIMES
Photo by Eric Gay | AP
Portland Trail Blazers coach Kaleb Canales of Laredo is seen in an April 23, 2012, NBA game in San Antonio. Canales is returning to Texas to accept a coaching position with the Dallas Mavericks.
LAREDO — Laredo native Kaleb Canales is returning to his home state to accept a coaching position with the Dallas Mavericks, according to a report from The Oregonian. Canales heads to Dallas from the Portland Trailblazers. In an email to The Zapata Times, Canales said he is excited to join the Mavericks.
“I’m very grateful to Paul Allen and Bert Kolde for the opportunity to work with a first class organization for the past nine seasons,” he said. “At this time, I am excited to have the opportunity to join the Dallas Mavericks. I treasure the relationships I built with the players, staff and fans here in Portland and also want to thank Neil Olshey and Terry Stotts for the opportunity to remain with the club this past season.
Thank you Rip City!” In a statement released today, Dallas head coach Rick Carlisle confirmed Canales will replace Jim O’Brien and will coordinate the offense. "On April 16, Jim O’Brien informed me that he would be retiring from coaching when our season was over,” Carlisle said in the statement. “Jim said he loved working in the Mavs organization, but be-
See CANALES PAGE 11A
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Zin brief CALENDAR
SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2013
AROUND TEXAS
TODAY IN HISTORY
SATURDAY, MAY 4
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rep. Henry Cuellar will visit Zapata at the Holiday Restaurant, 506 N. U.S. 83 from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m.
Today is Saturday, May 4, the 124th day of 2013. There are 241 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On May 4, 1776, Rhode Island declared its freedom from England, two months before the Declaration of Independence was adopted. On this date: In 1626, Dutch explorer Peter Minuit landed on presentday Manhattan Island. In 1862, after a monthlong siege, Union forces prepared to unleash a massive bombardment against Confederate troops at Yorktown, Va., only to discover the Confederates had slipped away during the night. In 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago, a labor demonstration for an 8-hour work day turned into a deadly riot when a bomb exploded. In 1904, the United States took over construction of the Panama Canal. In 1916, responding to a demand from President Woodrow Wilson, Germany agreed to limit its submarine warfare. (However, Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare the following year.) In 1932, mobster Al Capone, convicted of income-tax evasion, entered the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. (Capone was later transferred to Alcatraz Island.) In 1942, the Battle of the Coral Sea, the first naval clash fought entirely with carrier aircraft, began in the Pacific during World War II. (The outcome was considered a tactical victory for Imperial Japan, but ultimately a strategic one for the Allies.) In 1959, the first Grammy Awards ceremony was held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Domenico Modugno won Record of the Year and Song of the Year for “Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu (Volare)”; Henry Mancini won Album of the Year for “The Music from Peter Gunn.” In 1961, the first group of “Freedom Riders” left Washington, D.C., to challenge racial segregation on interstate buses and in bus terminals. In 1970, Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire during an anti-war protest at Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine others. In 1980, Marshal Josip Broz Tito, president of Yugoslavia, died three days before his 88th birthday. In 1998, Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski was given four life sentences plus 30 years by a federal judge in Sacramento, Calif., under a plea agreement that spared him the death penalty. Ten years ago: Tornadoes swept across the Central Plains and Midwest, resulting in 38 deaths and causing a wide swath of destruction. Police in Iraq’s capital returned to work in force. Pope John Paul II proclaimed five new saints before a crowd of 1 million people in Madrid. Two American astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut landed nearly 300 miles off course after returning from the international space station. Today’s Birthdays: Opera singer Roberta Peters is 83. Jazz musician Ron Carter is 76. Rock musician Dick Dale is 76. Pop singer Peggy Santiglia (The Angels) is 69. Actor Richard Jenkins is 66. Thought for Today: “When your work speaks for itself, don’t interrupt.” — Henry J. Kaiser, American industrialist (1882-1967).
SUNDAY, MAY 5 Doors open at 3 p.m. for The Miss Jr. Zapata Texas Pageant and the Miss Zapata Texas Pageant at the Zapata High School auditorium. The pageants start at 4 p.m.
TUESDAY, MAY 7 The UISD Family Leadership Institute Training class is from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. in Room 2 of the Bill Johnson Student Activity Complex, 5802 Santa Claudia Lane. The objective of the institute is to teach parents and caregivers the art and skill of family leadership by using a practical, 10-step approach. Dinner and daycare will be provided. For more information and to register for the classes, call Nora E. Murillo at 473-6471 or Belinda Hernandez at 473-6470. The Alzheimer’s support group will meet at 7 p.m. in Building B’s Meeting Room 2 at the Laredo Medical Center. The support group is for family members and caregivers taking care of someone who has Alzheimer’s. Call Melissa L. Guerra at 693-9991.
Photo by Brett Deering | AP
In this 2012 photo, FBI agents overlook a horse ranch under investigation in Lexington, Okla. Prosecutors in Texas say Jose Treviño Morales, a brother of two top leaders of Los Zetas, oversaw the purchase of hundreds of quarter horses at a ranch in Oklahoma. He and four others are on trial in federal court in Austin, charged with conspiracy to launder drug money.
Sides rest in ‘track’ trial ASSOCIATED PRESS
SATURDAY, MAY 11 The Zapata Hawks will hold their inaugural cross country tournament from 7:30 a.m. through 5 p.m. at the Zapata High School cross country course. Divisions include Kinder and below, first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade and sixth grade. Adults may accompany runners in the K-3 races, which will all be 1K. Grades 4-6 will run 1 mile races. For more information, call Mike Villarreal at 956-500-4451 or Rick Garza at 956-765-8177. Fee is $2. Registration begins at 7:30 a.m.; first race starts at 8:30 a.m. The top 10 finishers will receive medals; all runners will receive awards. Runners will compete for awards within their genders. Water will be available at both the start and the finish lines.
TUESDAY, MAY 14 A South Texas Food Bank fundraise is from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. at Hal’s Landing, 6510 Arena Blvd., featuring music by Laredo’s Ross and Friends. Donations are $10, including several raffle prizes. Call 324-2432.
SUNDAY, MAY 19 Zapata High School will compete at state One Act Play and academics in Austin through Wednesday.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 22 The Genealogical Family Trees Exhibition will be presented by the Villa de San Agustin de Laredo Genealogical Society, from 5 p.m. to 7 pm., at Gallery 201, 513 San Bernardo Ave. Sixteen members and friends will share their family history in addition to poetic contrast readings by Raquel ValleSenties and Olga Valle-Herr. Call 7223497.
SATURDAY, MAY 25 The 10th Annual Juvencio de Anda Memorial Golf Tournament will be held at the Laredo Country Club. Tee time is 8 a.m. The tournament will honor the late Alfonso “Lefty” Valls.
AUSTIN — Jurors in the trial of five men charged with using a horse racing and breeding operation to launder drug money for a Mexican cartel will return to court on Wednesday to hear closing arguments. A federal judge in Austin gave jurors a three day break after both sides rested in the case linked to an Oklahoma ranch horse racing operation that allegedly fronted the Zetas cartel. All five men are charged with money laundering conspiracy. Lawyers for Jose Treviño Morales, Francisco Antonio Colorado Cessa and Fernando Solis Garcia declined to call any witnesses. Among those in custody is Jose Treviño Morales, the younger brother of reputed top Zetas founders and leaders Miguel Angel and Oscar Omar Treviño Morales.
Also on trial are horse trainer Eusevio Maldonado Huitron and his older brother Jesus Maldonado Huitron. Witnesses for the brothers testified Thursday about their limited education but said both were hard workers. A total of 15 people have been charged in what prosecutors said was a money-laundering operation that quietly spent millions in drug profits on racehorses for Mexican cartel. Eight of the suspects have been arrested; the rest remain at large. Prosecutor Douglas Gardner told jurors at the start of the trial that the scheme went through $16 million in horse-related expenses in 30 months. Gardner painted a picture of a conspiracy in which horse owners, trainers and others crafted bank deposits to hide the true source of the operation’s funding.
Jail inmate mistakenly released in San Antonio
Man sentenced in Fort Worth for Ponzi scheme
Police: Houston airport gunman intent on suicide
SAN ANTONIO — Authorities say a county jail inmate was mistakenly released before being sent to prison because of lost paperwork. Bexar County Sheriff ’s Office spokesman Paul Berry said Friday the woman was back in custody the next day after authorities learned about the mistake. She was released from jail Tuesday after serving time for misdemeanor theft.
FORT WORTH — A California man has been sentenced in North Texas to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay nearly $17 million in restitution for operating a Ponzi scheme. Jeffrey J. Sykes of San Bernardino County, Calif., was sentenced Friday for organizing the $40 million scheme that bilked dozens of investors who believed they were trading in U.S. Treasury bills.
2 Texas Syndicate prison gang members sentenced
Wanted sex offender arrested in San Antonio
HOUSTON — A man appeared intent on suicide when he opened fire with a pistol inside a busy terminal at Houston’s largest airport and died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said Friday. Carnell Marcus Moore, 29, of Beaumont shot himself in the temple with a 40-caliber semi-automatic pistol Thursday afternoon after shooting twice into the ceiling at Bush Intercontinental Airport.
SAN ANTONIO — Authorities say two members of the Texas Syndicate gang have been sentenced for conspiracy offenses that include drug trafficking and murder or attempted murder. Adam Chavez was sentenced Friday in San Antonio to 30 years in federal prison. Alejandro Flores was sentenced to 10 years.
One of Texas’ 10 Most Wanted Sex Offenders was arrested Wednesday in San Antonio. Noah Earl Allen Jr., 45, was wanted for failure to register as a sex offender. He was arrested when he reported to the San Antonio Police Department to update his registration, according to a Department of Public Safety release.
Ex-Maverick County official guilty of bribery DEL RIO — A disgraced former leader of a South Texas county has pleaded guilty in a bribery and corruption probe. Prosecutors in Del Rio say now-former Maverick County Commissioner Eliaz Maldonado pleaded guilty Thursday to receiving a bribe. — Compiled from AP reports
SATURDAY, JUNE 1 The Bass Champs South Region Fishing Tournament is set for 7 a.m. through 4 p.m. at the Zapata County Public Boat Ramp. The race starts at the Zapata County Courthouse.
SATURDAY, JULY 20 The PFC Ira “Ben” Laningham IV 5K Memorial Run is set for 8 a.m. through 5 p.m. There will also be a 200m Kids Fun Run. Early registration through Sunday is $8; from Monday through July 19, $10; and late registration on race day is $15. Registration for the Kids Fun Run is $5. Those who wish to participate may register at Zapata Boys & Girls Club, 306 6th St.; Zapata County Chamber of Commerce, 601 N. U.S. 83; Momentum Running Co., 1202 E. Del Mar Blvd., Ste. 103, Laredo; or by email at http://www.evenbrite.com/ event/5820121139#. Submit calendar items by emailing editorial@lmtonline.com with event name, date and time, locations and contact information. Items will run as space is available.
AROUND THE NATION New ‘3 Strikes’ law varies by county in Calif. SAN FRANCISCO — Majorities in every California county voted last fall to scale back the state’s Three Strikes law so thousands of inmates serving life sentences for relatively minor third offenses would have the chance to be set free. Five months later, there is no such unanimity among counties when it comes to carrying out the voters’ wishes. Statewide, 16 percent of 2,847 eligible inmates have been resentenced. Defense attorneys blame prosecutors in some counties for opposing inmate petitions for resentencing even in cases where the prisoner clearly qualifies.
Utah soccer league hiring security after ref hit SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah soccer league that saw one
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Johana Portillo, left, and her sister Ana Portillo, daughters of Riccardo Portillo, hold hands during a news conference Thursday in Murray, Utah. Ricardo Portillo is in a coma after being punched by a teenage soccer player. of its referees punched by a teen player and sent into a coma plans to play on — but with security present at games and without the player’s team, its president said Friday. Mario Vasquez, president of La Liga Continental de Futbol,
said he’ll hire off-duty police officers to watch over games, which will resume this weekend at a middle school in a Salt Lake City suburb. The 17-year-old’s team has been expelled from the league. — Compiled from AP reports
SUBSCRIPTIONS/DELIVERY (956) 728-2555 The Zapata Times is distributed on Saturdays to 4,000 households in Zapata County. For subscribers of the Laredo Morning Times and for those who buy the Laredo Morning Times at newsstands, the Zapata Times is inserted. The Zapata Times is free. The Zapata Times is published by the Laredo Morning Times, a division of The Hearst Corporation, P.O. Box 2129, Laredo, Texas 78044. Phone (956) 728-2500. The Zapata office is at 1309 N. U.S. Hwy. 83 at 14th Avenue, Suite 2, Zapata, TX 78076. Call (956) 765-5113 or e-mail thezapatatimes.net
SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2013
Zlocal
PAGE 3A
Two bodies pulled from the Rio Grande on Wed. By CESAR G. RODRIGUEZ THE ZAPATA TIMES
Authorities in Zapata County recovered two bodies from the Rio Grande in less than two hours, Zapata County sheriff ’s officials announced this week. Both men were taken out of the waters Wednesday, according to Sgt. Mario Elizondo. Authorities suspect the men were attempting to enter the country illegally. Information on the men being part of a group attempting to cross illegally into the United States was not immediately available.
At 4:21 p.m. Wednesday, first responders were called out to a possible drowning victim in the Rio Grande waters off mile marker 11 of U.S. 83. Moments later, a second drowning victim was reported at 6 p.m. Wednesday by the banks near mile marker 12. Texas Parks and Wildlife Game Wardens and U.S. Border Patrol agents assisted with the recovery of the bodies. “Both bodies were located almost in the vicinity of one another,” Elizondo said. “One male subject was identified but the name is being withheld (pending) the next of kin
(notification).” Justice of the Peace Fernando Muñoz arrived at the scenes for both cases to pronounce the men dead at 4:52 p.m. and 7:07 p.m. respectively. Muñoz ordered autopsies on both corpses. Since Zapata County does not have a coroner, Webb County Medical Examiner Dr. Corinne Stern has taken custody of the bodies. She’ll conduct the autopsies on the men. Elizondo said initial reports did not show signs of foul play. (César G. Rodriguez may be reached at 728-2568 or cesar@lmtonline.com)
BORDER PATROL STUDENT OF THE YEAR
Courtesy photo
Shown are Border Patrol Student of the Year 2012-13 Eloy Martinez, Nominating Educator Nelly CuellarGarcia; Border Patrol Student of the Year 2012-13 Ashley Guzman, Nominating Educator Monica Vela; Border Patrol Student of the Month for April Ashley Guzman, Nominating Educator Monica Vela; Border Patrol Student of the Month for May Alexis Garza, Nominating Educator Claudia Garza.
Congressman to hold coffee for area today SPECIAL TO THE TIMES
U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar will host a coffee in Zapata today at 10 a.m. at the Holiday Restaurant, 506 N. U.S. 83. Zapata County is in Cuellar’s district, which also includes San Ygnacio, Lopeño, Ramireño, Falcon, Bustamante, Dolores, Chi-
huahua and Escobas. This coffee will give the area’s residents the opportunity CUELLAR to share with Cuellar issues affecting them, including Social Security and Medicare, veterans’
benefits and financial aid. “As a U.S. Congressman, one of my priorities is to be easily accessible to my constituents and one way of doing so is by having these gatherings,” said Cuellar. “I invite residents to this coffee so we can discuss current happenings at our nation’s capital.”
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Zopinion
SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2013
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR SEND YOUR SIGNED LETTER TO EDITORIAL@LMTONLINE.COM
COLUMN
OTHER VIEWS
Senator: No to convention requests By KEN HERMAN COX NEWSPAPERS
AUSTIN — Remember in 1972 when Texas lawmakers called for a constitutional convention to consider amending our nation’s guiding document to say, “No student shall be assigned to nor compelled to attend any particular public school on account of race, religion, color or national origin.” Nope, I don’t remember it either. And do you remember other legislative actions, dating back to 1899, calling for constitutional conventions on topics such as a balanced federal budget, Electoral College changes and legislative apportionment? Nope, I don’t remember those either.
Requests cancelled But Sen. Craig Estes, R-Wichita Falls, is afraid somebody does, so he’s pushing Senate Joint Resolution 53 to rescind every request ever made by Texas to call a constitutional convention for anything. You know all that stuff we said about that stuff ? Nevermind, says Estes. There are two ways to amend the U.S. Constitution. Congress can propose a change and seek ratification from threefourths of the states. That’s happened 27 times. Or two-thirds of the states can call for a constitutional convention. We’ve had one of those. It was in 1787, and it produced our Constitution. Since then, lots of states have called for constitutional conventions on specific topics. The two-thirds threshold never has been reached, but lots of requests remain on the books. That’s what worries Estes. “The point here is that (constitutional) conventions are serious and uncertain events and before we trigger one we need to be absolutely sure of what we do,” he told the Senate State Affairs Committee this week. “By rescinding all of our outstanding requests we (will) have avoided a convention triggered by an old request that has been sitting on the books, forgotten for over 100 years.” I’ve seen various lists, but it looks like we have 10 to 14 pending requests for constitutional conventions.
Concerns Estes’ concern about what might go on at such a gathering is not a new one. In 1988, retired U.S. Chief Justice Warren Burger, then chairman of the bicentennial commemoration of the Constitution, wrote that there’d be “no effective way to limit or muzzle” a constitutional convention, which would be a “free-for-all for specialinterest groups, television coverage and press speculation.” (Or what some us call solid entertainment.) Estes wants to erase anything on the Texas books that could contribute to such goings-on. Good idea, said Kelly Holt of Smithville, repre-
“
The point here is that (constitutional) conventions are serious and uncertain events.” SEN. CRAIG ESTES, R-WICHITA FALLS
senting the John Birch Society, who told the Senate committee that a constitutional convention would “have the power to completely trash our existing Constitution and replace it with a completely new and perhaps very different document.” “Our modern leaders cannot even adhere to the Constitution we have,” she said, “and would very likely abuse the opportunity to create a new one.” Estes calls his measure the “Gregory Watson Bill” after a longtime legislative aide who brought the matter to the senator’s attention. Watson, a non-lawyer, is an expert on constitutional amendments. He’s the father of one. In 1982, Watson, working on a college assignment, came upon a proposed congressional pay raise constitutional amendment that had been awaiting ratification since 1789. Under James Madison’s proposal, such raises could not take effect “until an election of representatives shall have intervened.” Watson worked to get it ratified. The first state to endorse it had been Maryland in 1879. When Illinois did so in 1992, the 27th (and most recent) amendment was added to the Constitution. Watson, now an aide to Rep. Bill Callegari, R-Houston, is known as the “Father of the 27th Amendment.” Watson told me he’s particularly concerned about Texas’ 1899, and still pending, handwritten legislation calling for “a convention for proposing amendments.” That’s as specific as it gets. “It’s totally wide open,” Watson said, ”so wide open you could drive a truck through it.” State Rep. Gary Elkins, R-Houston, has legislation that would wipe out only the 1899 measure. Elkins’ HJR 101 has cleared committee and probably has a better chance of passing than does Estes’ broader measure. FYI, in 2011 there were a handful of Texas legislative calls for constitutional conventions. Looks like there is only one this year: Fort Worth Rep. Lon Burnam’s call for one to “address concerns” raised by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling barring restrictions on political expenditures by corporations, associations and labor unions. Little chance, I’d think, that someday we’ll be calling Burnam the “Father of the 28th Amendment.” (Ken Herman is a columnist for the Austin American-Statesman. Email: kherman@statesman.com.)
COLUMN
On television, violence helps sell programs, products By JOAN WICKERSHAM THE BOSTON GLOBE
It’s Sunday night. I’m channel surfing while waiting for “Mad Men” to begin. Here’s some of what I see: A man in a straitjacket, followed by several bloody images in quick succession. A voice intones, “You’ve carried out a number of murders.” It’s an ad for a TV show. On another channel, a character in a show inspired by fairy tales announces to a woman, “I killed Rumpelstiltskin. I’m sated.” Her response: “I wish I could have been there, to see you stab the dark one.” I see an ad for a car, in which a kid wishes to avenge his father’s death; an ad for a chain of sandwich shops featuring scenes from the movie “Iron Man” (“System failure, sir. The armor has sustained damage”); and an ad for weed killer where a homeowner “takes matters into his own hands” by suiting up, crouching, and spraying the weeds with what is clearly an imaginary hail of bullets. Over to “Mad Men,” where it is the spring of 1968, and the characters in the show’s fictional ad agency have been debating whether it’s shocking to run a ketchup ad that doesn’t show a bottle of ketchup. What I am won-
On another channel, a character in a show inspired by fairy tales announces to a woman, “I killed Rumpelstiltskin. I’m sated.” dering, sitting in my living room in the spring of 2013 less than a month after the Boston Marathon bombing attacks and the defeat of the gun bill in Congress, is why so many advertisers today think that in order to sell products it is necessary or desirable to show people punched, bludgeoned, kicked, shot, stabbed, held hostage, strangled, blown up, bloodied, and dead? Apparently, we’ve gone beyond the action-movie truism of “mayhem sells” to the truly shocking belief that mayhem is an effective strategy for selling anything and everything. “Mad Men” is a show preoccupied with the desires and fantasies of midcentury American consumers. It’s interesting to see what the ads running alongside the show reveal about Americans right now. During the last two episodes of “Mad Men,” I’ve seen ads that sell cars by showing multiple explosions and robots beating people up; ads that sell satellite dishes by showing men arguing while one brandishes a baseball bat
over another’s head; and an ad in which Alec Baldwin carries a smartphone which, with the push of a button, delivers a bloody neck wound to one man and electrocutes another. In this last case, the product being peddled is a credit card. I can already hear the naysayers. “Lighten up, this stuff is meaningless, it’s entertainment, it’s fantasy.” But of all the fantasies we could have as a culture, why this one? Does it really take carnage to persuade us to switch from one credit card to another? Do we need a pair of thug robots to interest us in a new sedan? One of the reasons “Mad Men” succeeds is that it lets us feel superior to our old selves — America as it was 45 years ago. The characters are oblivious to the health hazards of alcohol and cigarettes, heedless and ignorant about racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, and homophobia. We get to feel smug about how stupid and naive everybody was back then. It’s easy to identify self-delusion when
it’s 45 years old. So imagine this: In the year 2058 there will be an entertainment drama of some kind, set in 2013. Someone on the show will mention that 30,000 people a year die by gun violence. In the background of some trivial scene — a character preparing dinner, two lovers bickering — a TV will be on, running a 2013 newscast about the failure of the gun bill in the Senate. A couple of characters will be at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. We’ll keep seeing characters watching violent films and playing violent video games. We’ll see characters sitting in a living room watching that quaint old show “Mad Men” and its exploding, zapping, crashing, cadaver-strewn string of commercials, and we’ll say, “Those poor dummies — they really didn’t get it.” The point of “Mad Men” isn’t that Americans were exceptionally clueless in the 1960s. The point is that we’re all clueless in our own time, that our follies and hypocrisies and blind spots become visible only with hindsight. What will we look like in retrospect, half a century from now — we who are so titillated by and callous about violent fantasy, and so shocked when someone in our gunand-bomb-as-casual-entertainment culture actually picks up a gun or a bomb?
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phone number IS NOT published; it is used solely to verify identity and to clarify content, if necessary. Identity of the letter writer must be verified before publication. We want to assure our
readers that a letter is written by the person who signs the letter. The Zapata Times does not allow the use of pseudonyms. Letters are edited for style, grammar, length and civility. No name-call-
DOONESBURY | GARRY TRUDEAU
ing or gratuitous abuse is allowed. Via e-mail, send letters to editorial@lmtonline.com or mail them to Letters to the Editor, 111 Esperanza Drive, Laredo, TX 78041.
SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2013
THE ZAPATA TIMES 5A
THE BLOTTER Assault
11:34 p.m. April 25 in the 1900 block of Third Street. A sexual abuse was reported at 10 a.m. A burglary of a vehicle was reported at 11:18 April 25 at Dairy Queen, off U.S. 83. The Zapata a.m. Wednesday in the 5200 block of Cuellar Lane. County Sheriff’s Office is investigating. A sexual abuse was reported at about 10 Hit and a.m. April 26 in the 100 block of Royal Street. run The Zapata County Sheriff’s Office is investigating. A hit and run accident was reported at 11:27 An assault by threats was reported at a.m. April 24 in the 1800 block of Carla Street. 11:43 p.m. Monday in the 5100 block Laredo Lane.
Theft
A misdemeanor theft was reported at 1:25 Burglary p.m. April 24 in the 1000 block of Glenn Street. A burglary of a habitation was reported at A theft of service was reported at 11:04 a.m. 9:30 a.m. April 25 in the 400 block of Treviño Wednesday at JR’s Meat Market. Street. A theft was reported at 10:11 p.m. Thursday A burglary of a habitation was reported at at Fourth Avenue and Miraflores Street.
Feds tell court man was paid $1,500 By CÉSAR G. RODRIGUEZ THE ZAPATA TIMES
LAREDO — Federal authorities said a man admitted to getting paid $1,500 for driving 303.36 pounds of marijuana into Zapata, according to court documents filed Wednesday in federal court. Victor E. Ramon was arrested Monday and faces federal charges of possession with the intent to distribute a
controlled substance. Custody records showed he remained in federal custody. On Monday, U.S. Border Patrol agents followed a gray Ford F-150 driven by Ramon heading north on U.S. 83. A federal criminal complaint states Ramon parked at Super S Foods in Zapata. Agents approached and observed several wrapped bundles in the open bed of the F-150. A K-9 unit called out to
the scene alerted to illegal contraband, a complaint alleges. The contraband added up to 303.36 pounds of marijuana. Agents seized the drugs and detained Ramon. “Ramon admitted to knowingly and intentionally driving the marijuana from Roma to Zapata for a payment of $1,500,” the complaint states. (César G. Rodriguez may be reached at 728-2568 or cesar@lmtonline.com)
Calif. prison crowding plan not enough SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Underlying California’s attempts to meet a federal court order for reducing its prison population is an unsettling question: Will the public be in greater danger as a result? The answer could determine how many inmates are ultimately released, who that would be and even whether federal judges decide to hold Gov. Jerry Brown in contempt. The Brown administration filed its plan late Thursday night to further reduce the inmate population by 7,000 inmates, a plan that comes after it already has dramatically lowered the population by shipping inmates out of state and sending more felons to county jails. The latest plan still falls 2,300 inmates short of the target set by the courts to relieve overcrowding, however. Under the court order, the state must reduce the population in its 33 adult prisons to about 110,000 inmates by year’s end to improve the treatment of sick and mentally ill inmates. The state is preparing to appeal, but the U.S. Supreme Court already has upheld the decision once. “We can’t do any more without creating huge problems for the counties, without creating huge
Photo by Rich Pedroncelli | AP
Inmates from a California prison camp practice a readiness exercise near Garden Valley, on Tuesday. To meet a court-ordered population cap by the end of the year, Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed to increase the use of private prisons. problems for this historic realignment that occurred, and without creating huge problems for the public safety, and we just won’t do that,” Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard said Friday. But the three federal judges ordering the inmate reduction could take matters into their own hands, bypass state law and release additional convicts, setting up yet another clash between a
governor who wants to end the costly court oversight and judges who say the state is not taking its orders seriously enough. The judges gave the state until late July to develop a list of individual inmates who are deemed unlikely to commit new crimes and otherwise might be candidates for early release. The state could then meet the population reduction order “through the re-
lease of low-risk prisoners” if other steps don’t work, they said. “‘Low risk’ does not mean ‘no risk,’” warned Beard. “The only remaining ‘low risk’ people that are left in the system are people that you might consider serious and violent offenders. ... That’s the group that the court would have to order the release from.” Moreover, most of the state’s proposals would require emer-
gency approval from state legislators. And while the administration said it would ask lawmakers to increase inmates’ early release or “good time” credits and parole elderly and medically incapacitated inmates, the state argued in its court filing that Brown cannot be expected to lobby for measures that he believes would jeopardize public safety. Michael Bien, one of the attorneys who sued over prison crowding, said the state’s plan “is designed to fail.” “They are kicking and screaming rather than complying with this court order,” Bien said. “I think they’re risking a contempt finding.” Beard said about 90 percent of the plan involves increasing capacity at inmate firefighting camps, leasing cells at county jails, and slowing the return of thousands of inmates from private prisons in other states. The plan would cost taxpayers at least $110 million in the fiscal year that begins July 1, with the cost rising to $137 million next year, the department said. Late Friday, the state amended its earlier court filings to make it clear it does not intend to allow inmate firefighters who have been convicted of serious or violent offenses.
State
6A THE ZAPATA TIMES
SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2013
It’s a ‘culture war,’ says NRA By JIM VERTUNO AND JUAN LOZANO ASSOCIATED PRESS
HOUSTON — The National Rifle Association kicked off its annual convention Friday with a warning to its members they are engaged in a “culture war” that stretches beyond gun rights, further ramping up emotions surrounding the gun control debate. NRA First Vice President James Porter, a Birmingham, Ala., attorney who will assume the organization’s presidency Monday, issued a full-throated challenge to President Barack Obama in the wake of a major victory regarding gun control and called on members to dig in for a long fight that will stretch into the 2014 elections.
More than 70,000 NRA members are expected to attend the three-day convention amid the backdrop of the national debate over gun control and the defeat of a U.S. Senate bill introduced after December’s mass shooting at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school. A small gathering of gun control supporters were outside of the convention in Houston. Porter’s remarks came in a short speech to about 300 people at a grass-roots organizing meeting and set the tone for a “Stand and Fight”-themed convention that is part gun trade show, political rally and strategy meeting. “This is not a battle about gun rights,” Porter said, calling it “a culture war.”
“(You) here in this room are the fighters for freedom. We are the protectors,” said Porter, whose father was NRA president from 1959-1960. Rob Heagy, a former parole officer from San Francisco, agreed with Porter’s description of a culture war. “It is a cultural fight on those 10 guarantees,” he said, referring to the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution. “Mr. Obama said he wasn’t going after our guns. As soon as the Connecticut thing happened, he came after our guns.” That theme carried throughout the day and reached a crescendo in a 31/2-hour political rally punctuated by fiery speeches from state and national conservative leaders.
“You stood up when freedom was under assault and you stood in the gap, you made a difference,” former U.S. senator and Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum told the cheering crowd of more than 3,500 at the rally. “This is a critical time in American history. Something big is happening in America,” Santorum said. “Stand for America. Fight for America.” Texas Gov. Rick Perry criticized gun control supporters as opportunists who prey on the raw emotions of tragic events. “You can almost set your watch for how long it takes for people who hate guns, who hate gun owners, to start a new campaign,” after a mass shooting, Perry said.
Photo by Johnny Hanson/Houston Chronicle | AP
Barry Bailey, of DeRidder, La., gives his wife Judy a kiss before having their 1873 Winchester rifle appraised on Thursday in Houston.
Senator has new AG ruling not causing worry retirement offer for teachers By JUAN CARLOS LLORCA ASSOCIATED PRESS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
AUSTIN — The latest proposal to shore up the pension fund for Texas’ public school and university employees would apply a higher retirement age only to employees with less than five years on the job, but would also require all workers to contribute more. The offer, pitched Thursday by Lubbock Republican Sen. Robert Duncan, would mean that workers would have to contribute 7.7 percent beginning in 2015, up from the current 6.4 percent. And school districts for the first time would have to chip in 1.5 percent for their workers’ retirement to supplement the state’s 6.8 percent contribution. The Austin AmericanStatesman reported about 20 percent of members in the Teacher Retirement System of Texas have less than five years on the job. They were hired under a different set of rules and already have a minimum retirement age of 60. Last week, members of the system objected to a legislative proposal that would have required about half of current employees to work until age 62 to receive full retirement benefits. Currently, there is no minimum retirement age but employees must reach a point in which age and years of service equal 80. Duncan, who chairs the State Affairs Committee and authored Senate Bill 1458, said his compromise addresses concerns that the state was changing the retirement rules in the middle of the game and pro-
vides long-term funding sources. The newspaper reports the plan would improve the $112 billion pension fund’s financial health and allow a 3 percent cost-of-living adjustment this year for members who have been retired for at least 15 years, about 102,000 people. But it’s unclear how far Duncan’s proposal will go. To bring up the measure for a vote on the Senate floor, Duncan needs two Democrats to join all the Republicans who have signed on. Educators groups are split on the proposal. “It is a compromise that no one loves, but it shows that educators care about their retired colleagues and believe in their pension system enough to sacrifice to protect it,” said Josh Sanderson of the Association of Texas Professional Educators. Others say the state is asking too much from members without significantly increasing its own contribution. “We’re willing to do a whole lot more, but we want to see the state get there, too,” said Ted Melina Raab of the Texas chapter of the American Federation of Teachers. The Teacher Retirement System provides lifetime pension checks to about 300,000 retirees. It is considered to be in good fiscal health but has struggled to chip away at its “unfunded liability” through investment returns alone, and the liabilities will appear bigger under accounting rules that go into effect in coming years.
EL PASO — Cities and counties that offer samesex partner health benefits don’t anticipate altering their policies after the Texas attorney general called the practice unconstitutional, though his opinion does serve as fuel for litigation against entities providing benefits to gay couples. Attorney General Greg Abbott’s opinion this week, while not binding, is the latest of several challenges to same-sex benefits across the country that so far have had mixed results in the courts and prompted changes after officials in other states took action. In Texas, local governments from El Paso to San Antonio and north to Dallas County have their legal departments reviewing their benefits plans but don’t appear ready to budge yet — noting that their policies don’t address issues such as marriage or gender. “It’s a benefits package that top companies in the area offer to their employees,” said Clay Jenkins, the top administrative official for Dallas County, which has a lesbian sheriff. “It is not only the right thing to do but also allows us to attract top talent so we can continue to have success.”
The cities of Austin, El Paso and Fort Worth already offer some benefits to doABBOTT mestic partners, while Pflugerville, outside Austin, became the state’s first school district to extend similar benefits. “If our policy violates the law, we’ll change it. But I’d conclude we are not doing that,” said Samuel T. Biscoe, Travis County’s top administrative official. “Legally, we are in good shape.” Fort Worth spokesman Bill Begley said the city does not anticipate any problems to come from Abbott’s opinion. “Our domestic partner policy does not say anything about marriage or gender.” The six-page opinion Monday came in response to tea party-backed state Sen. Dan Patrick’s request for Abbott, a fellow Republican, to review the samesex benefits matter in November. In it, Abbott stated that local governments and school districts that offer marriage benefits to same-sex partners are violating the state constitution. Abbott found that the constitution “prohibits political subdivisions from creating a legal status of domestic partnership and
recognizing that status by offering public benefits based upon it.” He said city governments and school districts constitute political subdivisions. Patrick had argued that Texas amended its constitution in 2005 to define marriage as between one man and one woman, while prohibiting government entities from recognizing anything similar to marriage. Some in Texas are already preparing lawsuits based on Abbott’s opinion. They include Pastor Tom Brown of El Paso, who says he will pursue legal action against the city and the county of El Paso “by all the appropriate means to hold these entities to the standard” of the law. Charles “Rocky” Rhodes, law professor at the South Texas College of Law and an expert on the Texas Constitution, said the opinions of attorneys general are “highly persuasive to courts.” “(The Texas Constitution) is pretty explicit that any same-sex union is not to be recognized,” Rhodes said. But there are ways around constitutional amendments. After Michigan’s Supreme Court said it was unconstitutional for governments to provide benefits to domestic partners based on an amendment
that banned same-sex marriage, a number of cities and governments in that state changed their policies to broaden the scope of domestic partnership programs so it was not only for same-sex couples. Amanda Goad, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union LGBT and AIDS Project, said there are ways to include a domestic partner in a benefits plan based on financial interdependency alone. She said in Kentucky, for example, cities like Louisville and Berea as well as public universities have developed programs that include another qualifying adult. A workaround found by Michigan governments suffered a setback when the Domestic Partner Benefits Restriction Act was passed. ACLU challenged that and the matter is pending at the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Michigan. Ken Upton, a staff attorney at Lambda Legal, a national legal organization dedicated to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people, said often before there’s a need to change the policies, courts may strike down attempts to prevent the entities from giving benefits to domestic partners or creating domestic partner registries.
National
SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2013
THE ZAPATA TIMES 7A
Bomb suspect’s family makes funeral plans By BRIDGET MURPH AND BOB SALSBERG ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photo by Ringo H.W. Chiu | AP
A fire burns around lemon trees at a farmland along a hillside in Point Mugu, Calif., on Friday. Firefighters got a break as gusty winds turned into breezes, but temperatures remained high.
New evacuations for Calif. wildfire By RAQUEL MARIA DILLON ASSOCIATED PRESS
CAMARILLO, Calif. — A huge Southern California wildfire burned through coastal wilderness to the beach on Friday then stormed back through canyons toward inland neighborhoods when winds reversed direction. The wind shift forced fire commanders to order a new evacuation of homes in a Thousand Oaks neighborhood along a two-mile stretch of road overlooking smoke-filled coastal canyons. Fears arose after gusty Santa Ana winds from the northeast faded and ocean breezes from the southwest pushed inland. The “worst-case weather scenario” sent flames ripping through fresh fuel just to the east of where the blaze charred wildlands a day earlier, said Ventura County fire spokesman Bill Nash. “In the perfect scenario we’d just hope for the wind to go away but what happened is the wind just turned around,” Nash said. The wind-whipped fire erupted Thursday in the Camarillo area, threatening as many as 4,000 homes but only damaging 15. No injuries were reported. The 15-1/2-square-mile blaze 50 miles east of Los Angeles was only 10 percent contained, and the work of more than 900 firefighters, aided by air tankers, was just beginning. Evacuations had been lifted overnight for neighborhoods as the fire moved toward the coast. California State University, Channel Islands remained closed, and new evacuations were called for scattered homes in coastal canyons, Nash said. Those areas mainly included ranches, orchards, camps and vacation homes rather than dense neighborhoods. Some expensive ridge-top and canyon homes also were in the path of the flames. Fire engine crews took up positions to defend the dwellings as helicopters made water drops. The fire was 20 miles west of Malibu, burning mostly in rugged mountains. Nash said it was not moving toward Malibu as of midafternoon. Earlier, it jumped the Pacific Coast Highway at Point Mugu and burned on a beach shooting range of Naval Base Ventura County. The base ordered an evacuation of a nearby housing area as a precautionary measure and urged personnel in other Point Mugu housing to voluntarily leave. The fire reinforced predictions that California is in for a bad summer fire season because dry winter and spring weather has left brush tinder-dry. In addition, the California Department of Water
Resources found the water content in the snowpack was just 17 percent of normal. The snowmelt is a vital water source for the state. More than 3,000 firefighters were battling six major wildfires on Friday in California, the state fire agency said. Fire crews have responded to more than 680 wildfires since the beginning of the year — some 200 more than average for the period. Hot, dry Santa Ana winds gusting to 50 mph or more swept flames from the Camarillo-area fire toward the coast on Thursday. Cooler, calmer ocean air was beginning to move ashore on Friday and could send the humidity soaring — the beginning of change that could even bring a chance of rain in the fire area by Sunday night or Monday morning. The change pushed relative humidity at Camarillo from just 3 percent to 19 percent in an hour. The temperature hit 96, then fell into the low 80s. Smoke that had been streaming offshore began stagnating over the fire. The National Weather Service canceled mountain wind advisories and predicted onshore winds of only 10 mph to 15 mph, with some 20 mph gusts. That raised concerns of flare-ups along the path of the fire. “The fire can jump up at any time and any place,” Tom Kruschke, a Ventura County fire spokesman, said earlier. “There’s that hot bed of coals out there covering thousands of acres.” Overnight, the fire
roared down a canyon in Point Mugu State Park and through an evacuated campground, but firefighters managed to protect a nature center and other buildings. “We had 20-, 25-foot flames. They were having a devil of a time making a stand,” said Craig Sap, a state parks supervisor for the district. “We had a moment of calmness, maybe a wind shift, and they were able to get a line around it,” he said. “I don’t think a single picnic bench burned.” Elsewhere, a 4-1/2square-mile blaze that destroyed a home burned for a third day in mountains north of Banning, 85 miles east of Los Angeles. It was 65 percent contained. In Tehama County in Northern California, the size of a wildfire north of Butte Meadows was revised down from more than 15 square miles to 10 square miles, state fire spokesman Daniel Berlant said. The fire, which was 10 percent contained, was burning in a remote area and wasn’t posing an imminent threat to any structures. Elsewhere, crews expected to fully contain a 125-acre blaze in Sonoma County and a 200-acre fire in Glenn County on Friday. Containment of a 55acre Butte County fire was expected this weekend.
BOSTON — The family of slain Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev made arrangements Friday for his funeral as investigators searched the woods near a college attended by his younger brother and fellow suspect. A funeral parlor in Worcester that is familiar with Muslim services said it will handle arrangements for Tsarnaev, whose body was released by the state medical examiner Thursday night. The body was taken initially to a North Attleborough funeral home, where it was greeted by about 20 protesters. Peter Stefan, owner of Graham Putnam and Mahoney Funeral Parlors in Worcester, an hour’s drive west of Boston, said everybody deserves a dignified burial service no matter the circumstances of his or her death and he is prepared for protests. Tsarnaev, 26, died three days after the bombing in a furious getaway attempt in which authorities say he and his brother, ethnic Chechens from Russia who came to the United States about a decade ago, killed an MIT campus police officer and tossed homemade bombs and grenades at police. The younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, ran over his brother’s body as he drove away from the scene to escape, authorities have said. The medical examiner had yet to release the cause of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s death, pending the filing of a death certificate. Relatives had said they would claim the body, but
Stefan said Friday funeral arrangements had yet to be worked out and he could STEFAN not say whether he has possession of the body. Meanwhile, two U.S. officials said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told interrogators that he and his brother initially considered setting off their bombs on July Fourth. Boston police said they planned to review security procedures for the Independence Day Boston Pops concert and fireworks display, which draws a crowd of more than 500,000 annually. Authorities plan to look at security procedures for large events held in other cities, notably the massive New Year’s Eve celebration held each year in New York City’s Times Square, Massachusetts state police spokesman David Procopio said. Gov. Deval Patrick said everything possible will be done to assure a safe event. “I think the most important thing is that we got them, and there’s investigation continuing about where the other leads may lead,” he said. “I can tell you, having been thoroughly briefed, that the law enforcement at every level is pursuing everything.” As part of the bombing investigation, federal, state and local authorities were searching the woods near the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth campus, where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a student. Christina DiIorio-Sterling, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, could not say what investigators were looking for,
but said residents should know there is no threat to public safety. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was found hiding in a tarp-covered boat in a suburban Boston backyard, faces a charge of using a weapon of mass destruction to kill. Three of his college classmates were arrested Wednesday and accused of helping after the bombing to remove a laptop and backpack from his dormitory room before the FBI searched it. The April 15 bombing, using pressure cookers packed with explosives, nails, ball bearings and metal shards, killed three people and injured more than 260 others near the marathon’s finish line. The brothers considered setting off their bombs on July Fourth but decided to carry out the attack sooner when they finished assembling the bombs, the surviving suspect told interrogators after he was arrested, according to two U.S. officials briefed on the investigation. Investigators believe some of the explosives used in the attack were assembled in Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s home, though there may have been some assembly elsewhere, one of the officials said. It does not appear that the brothers ever had big, definitive plans, the official said. The brothers’ mother insists the allegations against them are lies. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security ordered border agents to immediately begin verifying that every international student who arrives in the U.S. has a valid student visa, according to an internal memorandum obtained Friday by The Associated Press.
Politics
8A THE ZAPATA TIMES
SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2013
Senators Feds: Students must have visas approve new name for agency By ALICIA A. CALDWELL ASSOCIATED PRESS
By MICHAEL BRICK ASSOCIATED PRESS
AUSTIN — Seeking to clarify the mission of the agency that primarily regulates the oil industry in Texas, state senators on Thursday approved a name change. Under a bill unanimously approved by the Texas Senate, the Railroad Commission would become the Texas Energy Resources Commission. Founded in 1891 to regulate the railroads, the agency quickly extended its powers amid the big oil discoveries of the early 20th century. It has become a powerful national force influencing oil supplies and prices. Last year, in a review of the agency’s work, state analysts from the Sunset Advisory Commission reported significant new challenges on the horizon with the expansion of the drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing. They included complex matters of safety, pollution and the potential for damage to state infrastructure. But they opened their report with a more pedestrian issue. “Despite its misleading name, the Railroad Commission of Texas regulates the state’s oil and gas industry and has nothing to do with railroads,” the analysts wrote. “The clarity of its name matters now more than ever as the Commission’s job takes center stage in overseeing an unprecedented expansion of oil and natural gas drilling in the state.” While the bill would also give the commission new powers to charge fees and enforce regulations, senators seemed more concerned with the name issue. Sen. Craig Estes, R-Wichita Falls, offered an amendment that would have changed the name to the Texas Energy Commission. “I think it’s shorter and cleaner,” he said. But he withdrew his amendment, deferring to a different name idea from Sen. Glenn Hegar, R-Katy, who suggested the Texas Department of Oil and Gas. After a series of closely contested votes, during which the chamber grew uncharacteristically quiet, Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, managed to win the day on behalf of his favored name. The proposal still must gain the approval of the House. The new name, Nichols wrote in a bill analysis, should reduce confusion among voters.
WASHINGTON — The Homeland Security Department ordered border agents to verify that every international student who arrives in the U.S. has a valid student visa, according to an internal memorandum obtained Friday by The Associated Press. The new procedure is the government’s first security change directly related to the Boston bombings. The order, effective immediately, was issued by a senior official at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, David J. Murphy. It was circulated Thursday, a day after the Obama administration acknowledged that a student from Kazakhstan accused of hiding evidence for one of the Boston bombing suspects was allowed to return to the U.S. in January without a valid student visa. The student visa for Azamat Tazhayakov had been terminated when he arrived in New York on Jan. 20. But the border agent in the airport did not have access to the information in the Homeland Security Department’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, called SEVIS. Tazhayakov was a friend and classmate of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Tazhayakov left the U.S. in December and returned Jan. 20. But in early January, his student-visa status was terminated because he was academically dismissed from the university. Tazhayakov and a second Kazakh student were arrested this week on federal charges of obstruction of justice. They were accused of helping to get rid of a backpack containing fireworks linked to Tsarnaev. A third student was also arrested and accused of lying
Photo by Evan Vucci/file | AP
Shown is Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. The department ordered border agents “effective immediately” to verify every international student who arrives in the U.S. has a valid student visa. to authorities. A spokesman for the department, Peter Boogaard, said earlier this week that the government was working to fix the problem, which allowed Tazhayakov to be admitted into the country when he returned to the U.S. Under existing procedures, border agents could verify a student’s status in SEVIS only when the person was referred to a second officer for additional inspection or questioning. Tazhayakov was not sent to a second officer when he arrived, because, Boogaard said, there was no information to indicate Tazhayakov was a national security threat. Under the new procedures, all border agents were expected to be able to access SEVIS by next week. The government for years has recognized as a problem the inability of border agents at primary inspection stations to directly review student-visa information. The Homeland Security Department was working before the bombings to resolve the problem, but the new memo outlined interim procedures until
the situation was corrected. Under the new procedures, border agents will verify a student’s visa status before the person arrives in the U.S. using information provided in flight manifests. If that information is unavailable, border agents will check the visa status manually with the agency’s national targeting data center. It is unclear what impact the new procedure will have on wait times at airports and borders. Customs officials will be required to report any effect, including longer waits, on a daily basis. A Buffalo, N.Y., college has advised student-visa holders from Canada to add two hours to their daily commute. In an email sent to D’Youville College students, staff and faculty, International Student Office Director Laryssa S. Petryshyn said the security change “is causing and will cause numerous delays for all international students entering the United States.” The Obama administration announced an internal review earlier this week of how U.S. intelligence agen-
cies shared sensitive information before the bombings and whether the government could have prevented the attack. Republicans in Congress have promised oversight hearings, which begin Thursday. Sen. Charles Grassley, RIowa, asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Thursday for details from the student-visa applications of Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev, the Kazakhstan students implicated in helping Tsarnaev after the bombings, including information about how Tazhayakov re-entered the United States. Lawmakers and others have long been concerned about terrorists exploiting the student visa system to travel to the United States. A 20-year-old college student from Saudi Arabia was arrested in Texas in 2011 on federal charges of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. Authorities accused him of plotting to blow up dams, nuclear plants or the Dallas home of former President George W. Bush. He was later convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
SABADO 4 DE MAYO DE 2013
Agenda en Breve LAREDO 05/04— Fiesta de Bellas Artes y Festival del Mariachi en United ISD, de 8:30 a.m. a 6:30 p.m. en el Bill Johnson Student Activity Complex, 5208 Sta. Claudia Lane. Costo: 3 dólares, adultos; 1 dólar, niños. 05/04— First United Methodist Church invita a su venta de libros usados, de 8:30 a.m. a 1 p.m. en 1220 avenida McClelland. Libros de pasta dura a 1 dólar; pasta blanda, a .50 centavos; revistas y libros infantiles, a .25 centavos. 05/04— Recital a cargo de Larysa Davis, Susan Berdahl y Dana Crabtree, a las 7:30 p.m. en el Salón de Recitales del Center for the Fine and Performing Arts de TAMIU. 05/04— Clase de producción de teatro en TAMIU presenta: “The Dinner Party” de Neil Simon, con presentación a las 8 p.m. en la Galería del Center for the Fine and Performing Arts. Costo: 5 dólares (gratis para alumnos de TAMIU). 05/05— Clase de producción de teatro en TAMIU presenta: “The Dinner Party” de Neil Simon, con presentación a las 3 p.m. en la Galería del Center for the Fine and Performing Arts. Costo: 5 dólares (gratis para alumnos de TAMIU). 05/06— El Consulado General de México invita a la guardia de honor que con motivo del 151 aniversario de la Batalla de Puebla, a las 9 a.m., al pie de la estatua del general Ignacio Zaragoza, ubicada en la Plaza San Agustín de Laredo. 05/07— Marianne García presentará su Recital Senior de Piano, a las 6:30 p.m. en el Salón de Recitales del Center for the Fine and Performing Arts de TAMIU. Evento gratuito. 05/10— El Juan Francisco Farias Military Museum Artifact Collection, es de 9 a.m. a 3 p.m. en las escuelas Cigarroa High School, 2600 Zacatecas St.; Martin High School, 2002 San Bernardo Ave.; y, Nixon High School, 2000 Plum Street. Se aceptará: ropa, medallas y condecoraciones, herramientas, muebles, artículos personales, armas, vehículos, miscelánea. Los artículos serán donados o prestados al museo por un periodo mínimo de un año. 05/11— Celebrando el 258 aniversario de la fundación de Laredo, el Webb County Heritage Foundation tendrá su ‘Comida del Día de los Fundadores’ a las 12 del mediodía en el Student Center Ballroom de Texas A&M Internacional University. Será la inauguración de las nuevas Presidentas de la República del Rio Grande, así como la enrtrega del Heritage Awards. Adquiera su boleto llamando al (956) 7270977. 05/12— Hoy es el Recital de Jóvenes Pianistas en el Salón de Recitales del Center for the Fine and Performing Arts de TAMIU, a las 3 p.m. Entrada gratuita.
Zfrontera BUSCAN DAR CON PARADERO DE JUAN C. MARIZCAL
Ofrecen 20.000 por pista TIEMPO DE ZAPATA
La recompensa por información que conduzca a la captura de Juan Carlos Marizcal, un presunto miembro de una pandilla de Laredo acusado por homicidio, fue incrementada a 20.000 dólares, anunciaron autoridades el jueves. Marizcal, de 35 años de edad, es uno de los 10 Fugitivos Más Buscados de Texas. La recompensa por información que conduzca a su arresto, si la pista es presentada durante el mes de mayo, será de 20.000 dólares. El miembro del Texas Mexican Mafia tiene un pasado criminal violento y es buscado por homicidio, participación en actividades del crimen organizado, y huir para evitar ser procesado. Texas Crime Stoppers garantiza que se mantendrá el
anonimato. Marizcal tiene lazos con Laredo, que fue su última ubicación conocida. Su expediente criminal incluye homicidio, asalMARIZCAL to, agresión causando daño corporal, amenazas terroristas, e incendios. Es buscado en relación con un homicidio que ocurriera en Laredo en el 2010. Marizcal es acusado de participar en la balacera donde falleciera Gustavo “Brandon” Benavides, de 29 años, el 10 de diciembre de 2010. Oficiales de Bomberos descubrieron su cuerpo dentro de una Ford Expedition estacionada en la cuadra 2200 de avenida McClelland. Registros de la corte indican que Benavides murió por herida de bala
en la cabeza. Después Marizcal fue detenido en conexión con el homicidio. Él y tres más fueron acusados el 1 de febrero de 2011. Marizcal huyó antes de su juicio en diciembre de ese año. Marizcal mide 5 pies y 8 pulgadas de estatura, y su último peso conocido era de 200 libras. Tiene múltiples tatuajes, incluyendo un “joker” en el exterior de la pantorrilla derecha y otros tatuajes en el cuello, pecho, brazo derecho y brazo izquierdo. Un delincuente del Programa de los 10 Más Buscados de Texas aparece cada mes en espera de la mayor recompensa monetaria por parte del Governor’s Criminal Justice Division (División de Justicia Criminal del Gobernador). La cantidad más alta de la recompensa solo se entregará si la pista es dada el mis-
mo mes en que el fugitivo es mostrado. Cualquier persona con información puede proporcionarla de manera anónima de cuatro maneras diferentes: Llame a la línea de Crime Stoppers al 1-800-252-TIPS (8477). Escriba las letras DPS – seguido de su pista – al 274637 (CRIMES) desde su teléfono celular. Introduzca la información que tiene a la página de DPS, seleccionando al fugitivo del que tiene información, y presionando el enlace debajo de su fotografía. Introduzca la información que tiene a la página de Facebook en http://www.facebook.com/texas10mostwanted presione el enlace “Presente su información”, (Sumit a Tip), (debajo de la sección “acerca”)
INTERNACIONAL
SALUD
VISITA PRESIDENCIAL
Anuncian plan ‘Be Covered Texas’ POR MIGUEL TIMOSHENKOV TIEMPO DE ZAPATA
Foto por Pablo Martínez Monsivais | Associated Press
El Presidente de EU, Barack Obama habla durante un mensaje en el Museo de Antropología en la Ciudad de México, el viernes.
Obama: EU y México son socios iguales POR E. EDUARDO CASTILLO ASSOCIATED PRESS
MÉXICO — El presidente Barack Obama llamó el viernes a mexicanos y estadounidense a dejar atrás viejos estereotipos con los que suelen verse y dijo que la relación entre México y Estados Unidos debe definirse por la prosperidad compartida y no por las amenazas que enfrentan. “En esta relación no hay socio principal o socio menor. Somos dos socios iguales, dos naciones soberanas”, dijo el mandatario estadounidense ante un auditorio compuesto en su mayoría por cientos de estudiantes mexicanos en su última jornada por México y antes de partir a Costa Rica. “Es tiempo de reconocer las nuevas realidades”, dijo Obama, quien también elogió a su vecino del sur por considerar que ha logrado importantes progresos económicos y políticos. “Veo que México está ahon-
dando en su democracia”, dijo en un discurso en el que intercaló algunas frases en español y con referencias a autores mexicanos como los poetas Octavio Paz y Amado Nervo. “Muchos ciudadanos están levantando su voz para decir que la violencia y la impunidad no es aceptable”. En el Museo Nacional de Antropología de la capital mexicana dijo que a pesar de los lazos y valores que tienen México y Estados Unidos, las actitudes en ambos países “están a veces atrapadas en viejos estereotipos”. Por ejemplo, señaló, algunos estadounidenses sólo ven al México representado por titulares que hablan de la violencia, mientras que algunos mexicanos ven a Estados Unidos como un país que no los respeta o quiere imponerse sobre ellos. “En ambos países tales distorsiones crean malentendidos que hacen que sea más difícil que podamos avanzar juntos”, dijo.
NUEVO LAREDO, MX 05/05— El Grupo de Teatro Laberintus presenta la obra “Alicia en el país de las maravillas”, del Clásico de Lewis Carroll a las 12 p.m. en el teatro del IMSS, Reynosa y Belden, Sector Centro. Costo 20 pesos. 05/06— “Oremos por México”, con la participación de dirigentes religiosos de todo México, se realizará a partir de las 6 p.m. en el Centro Cívico. 05/07— Laberintus Teatro presenta “Diálogos de Nostalgia y Pollos” a las 7 p.m. en el Teatro del IMSS, Belden y Reynosa. Costo: 20 pesos.
PÁGINA 9A
Obama visitó México como parte de su primera gira por América Latina durante su segundo mandato como presidente de Estados Unidos. Junto con su colega Enrique Peña Nieto busca que la relación bilateral se enfoque más en las fortalezas económicas de ambos países. Dijo que veía emerger a un nuevo México que encontraba un lugar importante en el mundo. En momentos en que promueve una amplia reforma migratoria, Obama aseguró que “la solución” al reto de la migración irregular “es un México próspero y en crecimiento que cree más empleos y oportunidades para los jóvenes aquí”. En materia de seguridad, Obama insistió en que su país tiene aún muchas cosas que hacer a nivel interno para reducir la demanda de drogas y combatir el tráfico ilegal de armas. Dijo que personalmente no cree que la legalización sea la solución al problema de las drogas.
Tejanos que carecen de un seguro médico individual pudieran estar cerca de obtenerlo guiados por una campaña que se lanzará en octubre bajo la nueva ley de salud de Estados Unidos. Hasta un 25 por ciento de tejanos carecen de seguro de salud, expresó Esteban López, portavoz del programa “Be Covered Texas” de Blue Cross Blue Shield Texas (BCBSTX, por sus siglas en inglés). “‘Be Covered Texas’ LÓPEZ estará respaldada por varios grupos cívicos y comunitarios, se centrará en ayudar a las personas no aseguradas a comprender cómo la nueva ley de salud los afectará y qué medidas deben tomar para acceder a un seguro médico individual”, indica un comunicado de prensa. “A partir del 1 de octubre del presente año y hasta el ultimo día de marzo del 2014 se intensificará una campaña de orientación para que (las personas) se afilien a las aseguranzas de salud”, dijo López. Agregó que el período de inscripción para residentes no asegurados de Texas comienza en octubre, mientras los planes de salud se iniciarán en enero de 2014. López dijo que se pretende recorrer Texas para hablar directamente con la gente, ya que cuando inicie el periodo de inscripción habrá una variedad de opciones, precios y programas. La cobertura se ofrecerá a todo aquel que carezca de seguro, sea un estudiante con recursos limitados a alguna persona con ingresos superiores al nivel de pobreza. “La nueva ley de salud no permitirá que nadie quede fuera, incluso aquellas con una enfermedad de nivel terminal, tendrán aseguranza de salud”, sostuvo López. El comunicado de prensa aclara que a medida que se acerque la fecha límite para la adquisición de un seguro individual, los residentes de Texas podrán guiarse al visitar www.becoveredtexas.org.
FRONTERA
Impulsa Tamaulipas turismo de salud ESPECIAL PARA TIEMPO DE ZAPATA
CD. VICTORIA, México — Tamaulipas cuenta con todas las ventajas competitivas para recibir al turismo de salud, lo cual representa una oportunidad de crecimiento económico y una excelente alternativa para promover la inversión y generar empleos. Mónica González García, Secretaria de Desarrollo Económico y Turismo, informó que con las campa-
“
“Nuestra entidad tiene la gran oportunidad de atraer el creciente mercado de turismo médico”. MÓNICA GONZÁLEZ GARCÍA, SECRETARIA DE DESARROLLO ECONÓMICO Y TURISMO
ñas de promoción actuales Tamaulipas se posiciona como líder en la frontera norte en la captación de pacientes extranjeros procedentes de Estados Unidos y Canadá.
“Por su excelente conectividad fronteriza y su calidad en servicios de salud y turismo, nuestra entidad tiene la gran oportunidad de atraer el creciente mercado de turismo médico de
Estados Unidos y Canadá, que genera una derrama económica de 122 millones de dólares en el país”, dijo González. Explicó que la infraestructura de salud de Ta-
maulipas le da un alto nivel de competitividad y confianza en los servicios que brinda a lo largo de la frontera con Texas, propiciando el desarrollo de esta creciente actividad. “Tan sólo el año pasado tuvimos un registro del 8 por ciento de incremento respecto al 2011, ya que los turistas de Estados Unidos y Canadá confían cada vez más en nuestros médicos y en la infraestructura de calidad con que cuenta nuestro estado”, comentó ella.
State
10A THE ZAPATA TIMES
SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2013
Farmer now raises fish By ANDREW D. BROSIG THE DAILY SENTINEL
Photo by Jerry Lara/The San Antonio Express-News | AP
Crew member Mario Gonzalez cleans up the area around David Holdsworth’s Lease No. 7 in Zavala County, on March 27.
Wildcatter leads uncertain life By JENNIFER HILLER SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
BATESVILLE — Harvey Howell trails carefully behind David Holdsworth, who details the ways his vast ranch can stick the unsuspecting. Holdsworth lists a number of cactuses and twisting brush. A tall wooden stake stands in the tangle, looking out of place but marking a potential oil well. “We’re going to get something this next time, aren’t we?” Holdsworth asks, touching the stake as if for luck. His land is hobbled by drought but on this Saturday in early March, spring emerges anyway and Holdsworth’s Tortuga Ranch reveals a stark beauty. Early settlers in Zavala County told tales of lost and buried treasure, but today’s riches lie thousands of feet below ground. Holdsworth and his family own miles of mesquite — more than 14,000 acres — but he wants oil. So does Howell, a San Antonio geologist and wildcatter who hunts hydrocarbons in places no one else has found them or in depleted fields where others think oil is already gone. Howell is coming off a recent dry hole in Frio County. And not far from this stake on Holdsworth’s property sits a $600,000 wildcat well that isn’t making money. It’s producing just five barrels of oil per day and 50 barrels of briny water, which costs hundreds of dollars daily to dispose of. Trying to fix the well will cost Howell and his investors $77,000 this month. It might not work. Marginal wells are financially prickly. It’s easy to drop more good money down a bad well. And Howell must start drilling new wells quickly or the mineral lease that lets him explore the historic ranch will expire. Howell needs a success, and he must stake his next spot in the brush carefully. “You have to really want to be here,” Howell tells the San Antonio Express-News as he plucks an inch-long thorn from his cowboy boot. Holdsworth’s then 8-yearold grandfather arrived in Zavala County in the spring of 1882, a wet year that produced a sea of wildflowers. It was a time before barbed wire fences enclosed local ranches, when cleansing wildfires kept the countryside a savannah that ran with perennial streams. Thick mesquite and thorny brush did not yet blanket the landscape. But Holdsworth’s family soon struggled with drought and poverty in what one of his ancestors came to call “this dedgum country.” For a while, they lived in a tent. Cattle ranching eventually lifted the family’s fortunes. Oil and gas production starting in the 1960s helped, too, although it was never a bonanza. Holdsworth’s property includes the Indio Field, drilled while he was growing up. But those wells dried up in the 1980s. A different oil boom came and went in the ‘90s in South Texas. In the oil field, it’s easy to be so close but so far
away. Not far to the southwest, a map of oil and gas wells in Zavala and Dimmit counties reveals a slew of riches — deep, horizontal wells slashing under the landscape through formations such as the Austin Chalk, Buda Limestone and Eagle Ford Shale, now one of the most profitable oil fields in the country. But the oil and gas history of Tortuga Ranch and others nearby looks spottier, with successful wells mostly surrounded by a series of dry holes. Howell has poked around here for a decade trying to solve the riddle of its underground volcanoes, called serpentine plugs, and a web of faults that can trap and hold oil but also make it maddening to find what’s still there. One side of a fault is like hitting the lottery; a few yards away yields heartbreak. The first well produced only water. But the second paid, producing about 25,000 barrels of oil. A quarter of that oil went to Holdsworth when he really needed it. He didn’t have to work his land so hard or truck cattle himself to the Midwest. Holdsworth could spend more time with his new bride Tamara, whom he met at a dance in Uvalde while she was working on a master’s degree in range ecology and fire behavior. “I didn’t have to run so many cattle. I used to have a vicious cycle,” Holdsworth says. “When Harvey drilled that, it really helped Tamara and me.” When the oil first came in, Holdsworth rubbed it on his arms and face in delight. He got sunburned. But after that, Howell and Holdsworth’s luck ran dry. “I’ve been eroding his confidence ever since,” Holdsworth says. After the men walk to the No. 3 well, which produced some natural gas but no money, Holdsworth turns a wheel and releases the 215 pounds of pressure. The methane gas smells like a kitchen stove for a moment and turns the air wavy. Holdsworth calls it the “sad-story well.” When the No. 4 and No. 5 wells also turned into sad stories, “that’s about the time everyone got disgusted and had had enough,” Howell says. The investors lost interest. His original lease expired. Then the Eagle Ford Shale boom began. The formation starts around 6,000 feet down in Zavala County, the northern edge of the giant oil and gas field. National and multinational companies dominate the South Texas oil patch these days, but they don’t lease everything. There are always pockets for smaller, longtime wildcatters like Howell to make deals. Nearly three years ago, Holdsworth leased the rights to drill the Eagle Ford on his property to Oklahoma-based Chesapeake Energy Corp. Holdsworth received a large bonus payment for the right to drill, and an Eagle Ford well on the ranch last year made more than 46,000 barrels of oil, a quarter of that going to Holdsworth.
MOUNT ENTERPRISE — Several years ago, changes in the way the poultry industry operates meant some broiler producers couldn’t afford the cost of doing business. The result of the company-mandated changes was hundreds of empty chicken houses dotting the East Texas landscape. A group of innovators have found a way to breathe new life, and a new agribusiness venture, into those empty structures. But instead of feathers, their crop has fins. Enter East Texas Tilapia, a relatively new enterprise, raising what’s quickly becoming the most popular seafood option in restaurants and on dinner tables around the country. Farming fish, or aquaculture, isn’t a new enterprise by any stretch of the imagination. But Van Vaught and his partners, Jim Reed and Don Walker, both of Shelbyville, are coming at the venture in a whole new way. Vaught started in agribusiness with his father, Tom, running a dairy operation. When small dairy farms were disappearing in the late 1970s in favor of larger operations able to supply processors with thousands of gallons of milk a week, the Vaught dairy closed down. But his family couldn’t stay out of agriculture. It wasn’t long before Vaught’s brother Lance built some houses and started raising broiler chickens. A few years later, Van and another brother, Allen, built eight more houses east of Mount Enterprise. Then came the word from the poultry company: Drop another $500,000 in your farm to make the upgrades or go out of business. Investing that much capital at that time in their lives just didn’t make sense, Van Vaught said. “He would have been an old man before he owned his own property,” Reed told The Daily Sentinel of Nacogdoches. “And he had no contract guarantees.
Photo by Andrew D. Brosig/The Daily Sentinel | AP
Van Vaught uses a net to transfer fish from a tank to a drain barrel to be weighed before transfer to truck-mounted transport tanks at the East Texas Tilapia aquaculture facility in Nacogdoches. They could have shut him down the next month and he’d have been half-a-million dollars in debt.” That was a common experience around the area at the time. Vaught estimated about 100 other broiler growers, who were in the same boat he was, shut down rather than sink additional funds into their operations. For a family who grew up in agriculture, no other industry would do. That’s when Vaught and Reed came up with a revolutionary idea. Reed and Walker already had a similar business venture underway in aquaponics, mating fish farming and vegetable production. They were successful on a small scale, one-person operation basis, Reed said. But Vaught had loftier ideas. “Van and I sat down one day,” Reed recalled. “Actually, we didn’t sit down. We were standing at a football game. “My daughter was in the band and his daughter was a cheerleader,” he said. “We were standing out on the football field one day and we conceived of a business. A month later, we were drawing up papers. Two months later we were building.” Each of the three partners invested in the new venture, with the addition of one of Vaught’s eight idle broiler houses, which
would be home to the operation. They reclaimed as much of the material from the farm as possible, using metal roofing from one side of the house to enclose the first fish tank and insulation stripped from the walls to line the enclosure before fitting it with a rubber liner and filling it with water and fish, Vaught said. “This is about as redneck as it gets,” he said with a laugh, pointing out details of that first tank which is still in operation. “We were going to buy tanks, but I thought about the backyard, aboveground pools. “We tried to utilize as much as we could from the chicken house,” Vaught said. “Basically, the only things we purchased were the four-byfours (to make up the superstructure of the tanks) and the rubber liner.” That first venture was mixed aquaponics and aquaculture — fish on one side and vegetables on the other — with the nutrientrich water circulating, being filtered and oxygenated by the vegetables before returning to the tanks. But once Vaught started running the sales numbers, vegetables versus fish, it quickly became apparent which direction the business would go. And that is Vaught’s strength: Knowing his way around an agribusiness
and making it work, Reed said. But it’s about more than work, he said. “If it was just about hard work, every farmer in America would be successful,” Reed said. “The ones who become successful are smarter, and I’m not talking about intelligence. It’s the ones who work smarter. They think ahead.” And that’s what Vaught did. He quickly realized fish was the way to go. But, to make a truly successful operation, the team had to have total control over the process. And that meant building a fish hatchery, which they did by converting that first tank and building others, eventually expanding to a second chicken house on the property and installing four new, 80,000 gallon fiberglass tanks and a massive filtration system. It’s essentially an aquarium, similar in concept to what you might have in your home, but on a much larger scale, Vaught said. And proving it can be done, and be profitable in the long run, is just as important to Vaught, Reed and Walker as doing it in the first place. “I’m not going to say we’re pioneers,” Vaught said. “But I think we’re probably the first ones to take an old chicken house and try to turn it into a tilapia farm.”
SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2013
THE ZAPATA TIMES 11A
OLIVIA ‘LIVI’ ARREDONDO Olivia “Livi” Arredondo, 53, passed away Thursday, May 2, 2013, at Doctor’s Hospital in Laredo, Texas. Mrs. Arredondo is preceded in death by her parents, Conrado Jr. and Clemencia Arambula; and a brother, Daniel Arambula. Mrs. Arredondo is survived by her husband, Alejandro Arredondo; children, Alejandro Arredondo Jr., Maribel (Paz) Bedarte, Arturo (Kathy Ann) Arredondo and Alberto Arredondo; grandchildren, Jasmine Lynnette Arredondo, Allyna Jae Bedarte and Janelle Lizette Arredondo; brothers, Reynaldo Aram-
bula, Ignacio Arambula and Fernando Arambula; sisters, Linda (Anselmo) Solis, Dolores Arredondo, Josefina (Gilberto) Salinas Jr. and Araceli Solis; and by numerous nephews, nieces and other family members. Funeral arrangements are under the direction of Rose Garden Funeral Home, Daniel A. Gonzalez, funeral director, 2102 N. U.S. 83, Zapata, TX.
LAWSUIT Continued from Page 1A said he’s pleased Gonzalez has been taken off the lawsuit. Not going to trial has saved the county money, he said. Frigerio added that if the case had gone to trial, it would have cost twice to try the case. However, Frigerio and Attorney Guillermo G. “Memo” del Barrio Jr. maintained they were both ready to win if the case if it had gone to trial. Del Barrio, who represented firefighter William Butterfield, said though this was a difficult case, his client was happy with the settlement at the end of the day. “He was not in it for the money,” del Barrio said. “We reached a point where Butterfield was satisfied
with the outcome. As long as he’s satisfied, I’m satisfied.” This case dates back to March 2009. Butterfield claims Gonzalez punched him in the mouth as the firefighter tried to restrain Gonzalez from punching his own son, who was handcuffed to a stretcher, court documents state. Butterfield’s efforts to intervene were unsuccessful. At one point, Gonzalez allegedly told the firefighter, “If you ever touch me again, I will kill you.” Butterfield in his petition had sought physical impairment and physical and mental anguish, court records state. (César G. Rodriguez may be reached at 728-2568 or cesar@lmtonline.com)
CANALES Continued from Page 1A ing away from family made his decision easy. I consider Jim O’Brien a great basketball man of high integrity and thank him for everything he taught me, my staff and our players this past season. We are fortunate that Kaleb Canales became available and had interest in joining the Mavs organization. “Kaleb has worked for the Portland Trailblazers organization in multiple capacities for the last nine
years, and brings great knowledge, enthusiasm and work ethic to the Mavs. He will join Monte Mathis and Tony Brown on the bench and take over in Coach O’Brien’s capacity of coordinating our offense." Canales joined Portland as a video department intern in 2004 and spent three seasons as the video coordinator. (Contact Jason Mack at 728-2577 or at jmack@lmtonline.com)
OLYMPICS Continued from Page 1A regional competition in San Antonio. Salazar acknowledged the work of volunteers who were present to help the athletes. “We are very excited,” he said. “The family is also important because they are dedicated and committed to our athletes.”
Student Luis Infante was happy to participate in a jumping competition and the shot put. “I like doing it. I feel very happy,” Infante said. (Contact Miguel Timoshenkov at 728-2583 or mramirez@lmtonline.com. Translated by News Editor Mark Webber.)
Pepsi fires Lil Wayne over lyrics By CANDICE CHOI AND CHRIS TALBOTT ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK — PepsiCo is bowing to public pressure for the second time in a week and cutting ties to Lil Wayne over the rapper’s crude reference to civil rights martyr Emmett Till in a song. Lil Wayne, one of the biggest stars in pop music, had a deal to promote the company’s Mountain Dew soda. Earlier this week, PepsiCo also pulled an online ad for the neon-colored soda that was criticized for portraying racial stereotypes and making light of violence toward women. That ad was developed by rapper Tyler, the Creator. PepsiCo Inc. said in a statement late Friday that Wayne’s “offensive reference to a revered civil rights icon does not reflect the values of our brand.” It declined to provide any further comment. A publicist for Lil Wayne, Sarah
Cunningham, said that the split was due to “creative differences” and that it was an amicable parting. “That’s about all I can tell you at this LIL WAYNE time,” she said. Rev. Al Sharpton, who had been working with the Till family to arrange a meeting with Lil Wayne and PepsiCo officials, said he is still working to arrange a meeting between the family and company officials. Sharpton said this was a “teaching moment for corporate America, Wayne and the family of Emmett Till,” according to an email from his publicist sent to The Associated Press. The controversy erupted after Wayne made the reference to Till on Future’s song “Karate Chop” earlier this year. He refers to beating someone during a sexual act and says he
wants to do as much damage as was done to Till. The black teen from Chicago was in Mississippi visiting family in 1955 when he was killed, allegedly for whistling at a white woman. He was beaten, had his eyes gouged out and was shot in the head before his assailants tied a cotton gin fan to his body with barbed wire and tossed it into a river. Two white men, including the woman’s husband, were acquitted by an all-white jury. Till’s body was recovered and returned to Chicago where his mother, Mamie Till, insisted on having an open casket at his funeral. The pictures of his battered body helped push civil rights into the cultural conversation. Wayne had sent the Till family a letter offering empathy and saying that he would not reference Till or the family in his music, particularly in an inappropriate manner.
OBAMA Continued from Page 1A ceptable,” Obama told several hundred people gathered on a cool, breezy morning in a covered, outdoor plaza at Mexico City’s grand National Museum of Anthropology. Obama said he is optimistic that the U.S. will change its patchwork of immigration laws. With about 6 million Mexicans illegally in the United States, the issue resonates deeply in Mexico, which also has seen deportations of its citizens from the U.S. rise dramatically under Obama. Underlying Obama’s visit was his desire to persuade the U.S. public and lawmakers that Mexico no longer poses the illegal immigration threat it once did. “The long-term solution to the challenge of illegal immigration is a growing and prosperous Mexico that creates more jobs and opportunities for young people here,” said Obama. To that end, he called for improving the growing trade relationship between the two countries. Mexico is the second-largest export market for U.S. goods and services. The U.S. also buys more Mexican exports than any other country. Still, the reality of Mexico’s economic surge is perhaps not as rosy as Obama portrayed it. While Mexico’s economy has grown, it has yet to trickle down to average workers. Huge poverty rates held steady between late 2006 and 2010, the most recent year for which government statistics are available. Between 40 percent and 50 percent of the population of 112 million Mexicans live in poverty, earning less than $100 a month. Obama also cited Mexico’s healthy manufacturing sector as an example of the country’s “impressive progress,” with new factories turning out TVs and automobiles for foreign markets. But some of that growth is due to the fact that wages largely have stagnated, while China’s have risen, making Mexico more of a lowwage paradise. Mexico’s economy grew by about 1 percent in the first three months of the year and the country isn’t creating anywhere near the million jobs annually it needs to employ all the young people entering its workforce. Obama spoke on the second day of his Mexico City visit, peppering his remarks with Spanish phrases, including that he was “entre amigos”
or “among friends.” He concluded with “Viva Mexico. Viva los Estados Unidos. Que Dios los bendiga” or “Long live Mexico. Long live the United States. May God bless them.” After the speech, he was heading to Costa Rica, where he planned to deliver a blunter message to Central American leaders struggling with weak economies and drug violence. Obama was to meet with Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla before joining leaders from the Central American Integration system. The regional network also includes the leaders of Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. The U.S. view of the region is that its pervasive violence and security weaknesses are holding back economic growth, and that with fewer Mexicans crossing the border illegally, the rest of the region has become the main source of illegal immigration into the United States. As a result, Obama is expected to call for stepped up security cooperation, regional economic integration and improvements in human rights and democratic reforms. “We want to make sure that our hemisphere is more effectively integrated to improve the economy and security of all peoples,” Obama said Thursday. “There is a whole range of opportunities, and that will be the purpose of this trip.” Friday’s speech came as Obama’s popularity in Mexico has risen in recent years and as views of the United States also improve. A Pew Research Center poll in March found that two-thirds of Mexicans have a favorable opinion of the U.S., compared with 44 percent in 2010. About half of Mexicans have confidence that Obama will do the right thing on world affairs, up from 38 percent in 2011. Still, dozens of migrant families deported from the U.S. even though their children were born there rallied outside the U.S. Embassy before Obama’s arrival Thursday. “Obama, don’t deport my Mama,” one sign said. So far, the Obama administration has deported more than 1.6 million people. For all the attention to commerce and trade, the visit to Mexico — less than two days long — was not designed for major breakthroughs or new initiatives. Indeed, on one of the
top economic pacts before them, Obama and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto merely reaffirmed a goal to conclude negotiations this year on a Trans-Pacific Partnership, an Asia-Pacific trading bloc that is key to Obama’s efforts to boost exports to Asia. Both men, however, did announce a new partnership to build on the business relationship with closer cooperation between top officials in Mexico and the U.S., including Vice President Joe Biden. At a joint news conference Thursday, Obama and Peña Nieto carefully sidestepped potential trouble spots. Obama steered clear of commenting on Peña Nieto’s decision to end the broad access that U.S. security agencies have had in Mexico to combat drug trafficking. The decision has alarmed some U.S. officials. “President Peña Nieto and his team are organizing a vision about how they can most efficiently and effectively address these issues,” Obama said. “And we will interact with them in ways that are appropriate, respecting that ultimately Mexico has to deal with its problems internally and we have to deal with ours as well.” For his part, Peña Nieto declined to be drawn into the immigration debate in Washington, a top priority for Obama but one that is at a delicate stage in Congress. Asked to comment, the Mexican president merely acknowledged the efforts under way in Congress. “Mexico understands that this is a domestic affair for the U.S. and we wish you the best push that you’re giving to immigration,” he said. Likewise, Peña Nieto demurred when asked to react to the failure of the U.S. Senate to pass gun control legislation, including an expanded background check for firearms buyers, even though many guns obtained illegally in the U.S. end up in the hands of drug dealers in Mexico. He said he agreed with Obama’s campaign to stem gun violence, but added: “This is a domestic issue in the United States.” Obama vowed to keep pressing for gun legislation, saying: “We recognize we’ve got obligations when it comes to guns that are oftentimes being shipped down south and contributing to violence here in Mexico.”
12A THE ZAPATA TIMES
SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2013
SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2013
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Sports&Outdoors NFL: DALLAS COWBOYS
KENTUCKY DERBY: COMMENTARY
Picking the winner Photo by Tony Gutierrez | AP
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones expects an expanded role for Tony Romo after signing him to a $108 million extension.
Photo by Morry Gash | AP
Exercise rider Jonny Garcia rides Kentucky Derby entrant Goldencents for a workout at Churchill Downs Tuesday in Louisville, Ky.
Goldencents stands strong chance at Derby By DICK JERARDI PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The best way to understand a race is to envision how it will be run. I have decided that
Goldencents is fast enough to clear Saturday’s Kentucky Derby field in the first few hundred yards, set moderate fractions and be in front from start to finish. Whenever you can find a quality
horse that possesses an attribute that is different from the other logical contenders, you have a live play. Unlike many Derbies, this one just
See DERBY PAGE 2B
HIGH SCHOOL TRACK AND FIELD: ZAPATA HAWKS
THE ZAPATA TIMES
Zapata was well represented at the region IV-3A track and field meet in Kingsville on April 26-27 at Javelina Stadium on the campus of Texas A&M University-Kingsville. The best athletes of region IV congregated in Kingsville with aspirations of placing in the top two places to earn a
trip to the holy grail of high school track and field: the state meet. While Zapata sent a slew of athletes on the boys’ and girls’ sides to the regional meet, only one athlete was able to produce a top-two finish and qualify to the state meet. Senior Luis Garza placed second in the 3,200-meter run to become only the third male
from Zapata to earn a trip to the state meet. “Congratulations Luis and good luck at state, on behalf of all the student body, staff, administration and the community of Zapata,” Zapata coach Roel Ibanez said. Garza will run on May 11 at 8 a.m. at Mike A. Mayers Stadium on the University of Texas in Austin. Garza placed fourth in the
Cowboys quarterback ready to live up to high expectations By SCHUYLER DIXON ASSOCIATED PRESS
IRVING — Jerry Jones says Tony Romo has committed to spending “Peyton Manningtype time” trying to turn the Dallas Cowboys into Super Bowl contenders again. Reaction to the words from the Dallas owner and general manager came fast: Does that mean Romo hasn’t done enough to make team headquarters his second home in six full seasons as the starting quarterback?
See COWBOYS PAGE 2B
Garza gets state-bound By CLARA SANDOVAL
Romo ready to play role
MLB: TEXAS RANGERS
1,600-meter run and was just shy of a medal as he concluded his high school career in that event. In the boys’ division, Mike Alvarez competed in the long jump, triple jump and 100-meter dash. Alvarez made it to the finals in the long jump competition and came close to plac-
See ZAPATA PAGE 2B
NBA PLAYOFFS: SAN ANTONIO SPURS
Photo by Brandon Wade | AP
Texas Rangers’ Elvis Andrus (1) glances back toward home plate umpire Fieldin Culbreth, right, after striking out in the second inning against the Chicago White Sox in Arlington on Wednesday.
Photo by Mark J. Terrill | AP
San Antonio Spurs’ Tim Duncan, left, Manu Ginobili, center, and Tony Parker, watch from the bench in the closing minutes of Game 4 of a first-round series against the Los Angeles Lakers. After completing a sweep of the Los Angeles Lakers on April 28, the Spurs are awaiting Golden State.
Waiting for the Warriors By RAUL DOMINGUEZ ASSOCIATED PRESS
SAN ANTONIO — The San Antonio Spurs know the playoffs require physicality, focus and teamwork. They have learned patience is needed, too.
For the second consecutive postseason, San Antonio will wait at least a week between series in the Western Conference playoffs. After completing a sweep of the Los Angeles Lakers on April 28, the Spurs are awaiting Golden State.
Waiting is nothing new for the playoff-veteran Spurs. San Antonio waited eight days last season after sweeping Utah in the opening round and then had a week between games after sweeping the Los Angeles Clippers. They opened the Western
Rangers wither with bats Texas fails to take advantage of scoring chances By GIL LEBRETON FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM
Conference finals with two straight wins over the Oklahoma City Thunder before dropping four straight to lose the series. So, the Spurs aren’t concerned about losing the
ARLINGTON — Nope, they’re still not there yet. The pitching remains encouraging. The win-loss record has been stout. The new guys have mostly exceeded the club’s boldest expectations.
See SPURS PAGE 2B
See RANGERS PAGE 2B
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Zscores ZAPATA Continued from Page 1B
ing. Senior Jerome Cabugos ran the 3,200-meter run and the 1,600-meter run, displaying a lot of heart running in his last meet at the high school level. On the girls’ side, Casey Peña competed in the pole vault while Janet Chapa ran the 400-meter dash. Senior
Kristina De Leon competed in the long jump and triple jump. Senior Jazmine Garcia, one of the most decorated long distance runners to come out of Zapata, concluded her high school career with a fifth place finish in the 3,200-meter run. (Clara Sandoval can be reached at sandoval.clara@gmail.com)
RANGERS Continued from Page 1B But, no, the Texas Rangers aren’t there yet. The hitting remains tepid. Would-be rallies continue to wither on the vine. The second inning Wednesday night was just the latest screaming example. Though five of the first six Rangers to bat reached base off tough Chicago lefty Chris Sale, the home team was able to score only two runs. It wouldn’t score any the rest of the night, falling to the White Sox, 5-2. Sale, a 17-game winner for Chicago a year ago, stomached the Rangers’ second-inning scare and never looked back. He faced only one batter over the minimum through the next five innings. The Rangers, we media grousers figured, would dismiss it later as Sale’s night. One of those "tip your hat" opportunities that the once-feared Rangers lineup has succumbed to all too often early this season. Sale, admittedly, looked as good as he was in 2012 before the White Sox signed the gangly 24-year-old to a five-year, $32.5-million contract. He went seven innings Wednesday and gave up only five singles and Jeff Baker’s solo homer. But as dominating as Sale eventually looked, the Rangers had him where they wanted him in the second inning. Baker’s homer had trimmed the Chicago lead to 2-1. Mitch Moreland walked, and Geovany Soto, Craig Gentry and Ian Kinsler each followed with singles. Kinsler’s single could well have been a two-run double, but Soto misread the long drive to the left field wall, and Gentry had to skid to a halt behind him. The score was only tied. The bases remained loaded with only one out. But the inning soon ended with the bases still filled. Elvis Andrus struck out after a nine-pitch at-bat, and designated hitter Lance Berkman, who began the night batting .319, grounded into a force play.
Whatever hook Sale was hanging by quickly vanished as he retired 16 of the next 18 Rangers he faced. As efficient as Rangers starter Nick Tepesch was, he failed to match that. Tepesch had a string of seven retired in a row as he began the seventh inning, but Chicago’s Conor Gillaspie ended that with a leadoff home run. Manager Ron Washington, more impressed with Tepesch’s overall performance than the momentary thunder from Gillaspie’s go-ahead home run, tried to allow the rookie right-hander to finish the inning. Alejandro De Aza foiled that optimism with a two-out, two-run homer, and so went the night. The Rangers’ bats, however, would have two more opportunities, putting two men on in both the eighth and ninth innings. But White Sox relievers Jesse Crain and Matt Thornton snuffed the Rangers’ rally in the eighth, and Addison Reed struck out Andrus to end the ninth. It was Elvis’ third strikeout of the night as his average dipped to .248. Third baseman Adrian Beltre, who’s now hitting .214, left runners in scoring position in the first and eighth innings. The Rangers are scoring runs this season, but the sporadic futility with runners in scoring position has been noticeable. They began the night seventh (of 15 teams) in the American League in scoring. Right behind them? The Houston Astros and the struggling Los Angeles Angels. That stat alone deserves no tips of the hat. No, they’re not there yet. They aren’t clicking on all cylinders. The cylinders are rattling. The cleanup hitter needs to start cleaning up. The bottom of the order needs to start hitting its weight. The record, granted, has been good. But don’t let it mislead you.
DERBY Continued from Page 1B does not have much early speed. Other than Goldencents, Falling Sky is the only other horse that regularly runs from in front. And I think Goldencents is inherently faster than Falling Sky. If Goldencents comes out of the first turn with a clear lead and isn’t going too fast, I give him a 50-50 chance to win. So, he has to be my pick, especially since he is likely to be 6-1 or so at post time. If Goldencents does not make the front, the good news is that he is a twoway horse who does not need the lead to win. He can rate off another horse, as he did in the Santa Anita Derby, and still have a strong punch in the stretch. “If they are in front of me, they are going too fast,” Goldencents’ rider, Kevin Krigger, told me. The other big edge Goldencents has over every contender but one is that all of them have similar running styles. The traffic in this Derby is very likely to be five to eight lengths or so off the early pace. Terrific horses like Normandy Invasion, Itsmyluckyday, Orb and Vyjack could get caught in the middle of that maelstrom and find bad luck. There is less chance for bad luck when 18 or 19 horses are behind than when a horse is in the midst of a large pack vying for the same spot on a crowded track, with a large group in front and a large group behind. Unbeaten Verrazano is the other contender who figures to get a great trip from the 14 post. I envision him no worse than third coming out of the first turn and making a strong run at Goldencents around the far turn. That could be a key moment in the race. Verrazano may be good enough to run by Goldencents, but he has never
chased a horse with the talent of Goldencents. If Verrazano does not get by, it comes down to one of the quality closers. That group would include Normandy Invasion, Revolutionary, Mylute, Overanalyze, Itsmyluckyday, Orb and Vyjack. And, if you are looking for a long-shot closer that could hit the superfecta, consider Frac Daddy, a colt that has been very unlucky in 2013 after running two great races at Churchill Downs last November. If it’s not Goldencents, Orb is the most likely winner. He turned in an amazing workout on Monday. He has been brilliant all year. The colt’s trainer, Shug McGaughey, the best in his profession (along with Bill Mott) never to have to won the Derby, is very confident and also amazed. If you had told Shug a few months ago that Orb would be in the Derby, much less the Derby favorite, he would have laughed. The horse has exceeded all expectations. “I’d love to be the favorite, because the favorite’s going to have something under his name that makes him the favorite,” the Hall of Fame trainer said. “I wish every one of my horses was favorite. They’re not all going to win, I understand that, but I’m on board with that.” McGaughey had the horse that could not lose for the 1989 Derby. Easy Goer finished second to Sunday Silence, starting one of the great Triple Crowns in history. “I think I have a lot more confidence in myself than at that time, not that I didn’t have confidence,” McGaughey said. “When Easy Goer came here, he couldn’t lose, so I had to go up against that. I knew who I was going up against. I was 37 or something, and he (Sunday Silence’s legendary
trainer, Charlie Whittingham) probably already won that many Grade I’s that year. I feel good where we are and am glad we’re here and hope down the road we’re here a lot more times.” The trainer also gets the services of Joel Rosario, the hottest rider on the planet. He just won a Keeneland spring meetrecord 38 races and is riding in the form of his life. Owners don’t win races, but it is interesting to note that Orb is coowned by two of America’s great racing families, neither of which has won a Derby. The Phipps family owned Easy Goer. They were also on the losing side of the historic coin flip that determined the ownership of Secretariat. The Janney family owned Ruffian, the brilliant filly who never lost a race until she was fatally injured in that match race with Foolish Pleasure. Itsmyluckyday is fascinating because he is likely to get overlooked in the betting. He finished second to Orb in the Florida Derby, but it was his first race in two months, a race clearly designed to get him to this race. If Itsmyluckyday can duplicate the form he showed in January, he is a serious threat. Six months ago, they held the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Santa Anita Park. Just to demonstrate how much this sport has changed in recent years and how it is about current form and not longterm foundation, there is not a single horse from the Breeders’ Cup in the Derby. Goldencents was not nominated to the Breeders’ Cup, so trainer Doug O’Neill sent the colt to run in a Louisiana stakes race two weeks later. He had something bigger in mind even then. That would be the Kentucky Derby.
SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2013
SPURS Continued from Page 1B rhythm as they await their second-round opponent given last season’s success. “We kind of enjoy it; to have a couple of days off (to) practice,” Manu Ginobili said. “Last year we did great with those days. Hopefully we maintain that trend.” San Antonio has been practicing, getting healthy and watching a lot of televised playoff games this week. “I watch every game,” Tony Parker said. “I’m a student of the game. I love watching the games. It’s the playoffs. (With) all the games, you can always learn something.” Of particular interest was the matchup between the Warriors and Nuggets, naturally. Golden State, the sixth seed, took homecourt advantage away from third-seed Denver by winning three of the first four games, but the Nuggets won 107-100 on Tuesday to extend the series. “Those games have been really fun to watch,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. “Both teams have people that are really difficult to guard. With Steph Curry, specifically, I don’t know if anybody is better at shooting the ball today.” Both teams featured up-tempo offenses, which has given San Antonio an advantage in preparations for the second round. “Both teams are good, it’s going to be tough,” Boris Diaw said. “They are playing pretty similar style of basketball. It’s good for us, we didn’t have to prepare for two different styles of basketball; we can do the same thing.” While both teams are known for their offense, the series grew testy defensively with Golden State coach Mark Jackson accusing Denver of “dirty play.” Jackson accused the Nuggets of intentionally trying to injure Curry during Game 5 with what he saw as a pair of questionable fouls. “They tried to send hit men at Steph,” Jackson said following Game 5. “There were some dirty plays early. It’s playoff basketball. It’s all right. Make no mistake, we were up 3-1 (in the series) playing hard, clean physical basketball, not trying to hurt anybody.” Diaw didn’t classify the fouls as “dirty,”
but said all teams can expect added physicality during the playoffs, especially if a team has a hot shooter like Golden State has in Curry. “It’s always good to be physical, but you don’t want to injure anybody,” Diaw said. “But in the playoffs, everybody is going to be physical with everybody. You’ve got to be as close as possible from players, especially with shooters like this — you don’t want him to slip away.” Diaw is especially happy with the time off after undergoing back surgery April 11 to remove a cyst. He has fully participated in 5-on-5 practices this week and expects to play whenever the second-round series opens. “Actually, it’s good for my recovery, personally,” Diaw said of the break. “It’s a long time between the first and second rounds for my teammates, but for me, it’s good.” Diaw’s return could be critical for San Antonio considering Golden State is known for using smaller lineups that feature perimeter players. A 6-foot-8 forward, Diaw is shooting 39 percent from 3-point range and gives the Spurs an added ballhandler. “He’s like another point guard on the court,” Parker said. “He gets a lot of shots for everybody very unselfish.” The Spurs have also used the time off to get Tracy McGrady further acclimated into their system. McGrady played 5 minutes in San Antonio’s series finale against the Lakers, his first action since signing with the Spurs on April 16. The break has also aided Tiago Splitter, who is expected back at some point during the second round after injuring his ankle in Game 3 against the Lakers. “We need to get Tiago back, and Boris is just getting back and Tracy needs a couple more practices,” Parker said. “And for myself, Manu and Timmy, it doesn’t hurt to get a couple of days off.” Parker and Ginobili both battled leg injuries during the final month of the regular season, but both said they are feeling stronger every day.
COWBOYS Continued from Page 1B “No. It’s a bonus,” Jones says. “Anybody will tell you that Peyton Manning’s involvement in what they do is a bonus as opposed to what the general commitment is of top quarterbacks in the NFL. We’ve committed and he’s committed to that type of in-season and offseason approach for these years under his contract — as part of the $100 million.” Jones winks and smiles as he throws out the ballpark figure of the six-year, $108 million extension he gave Romo in March — a deal with more guaranteed money than Super Bowl winner Joe Flacco of Baltimore. While Jones sees Romo as something of a budding business partner, a skeptical fan base sees a full-time golfer and part-time quarterback who used to date celebrity girlfriends before settling down with his wife and first child. Critics are looking through the lenses of one playoff win and a 1-6 record in elimination games since Romo took over in the middle of the 2006 season. And the last thing they saw was a huge interception that ended a chance to beat Washington and sent Romo to his third loss in five seasons in playoff-or-bust finales against an NFC East rival. Jones’ glasses — call them rose-colored if you’d like — see that playoff win as the only time a quarterback not named Troy Aikman won in the postseason since the Cowboys stopped winning Super Bowls nearly two decades ago. Plus, the owner wonders where the Cowboys would be without Romo, considering they were second-to-last in rushing a season ago with a struggling offensive line and an unreliable defense. Romo is the franchise leader in touchdown passes and probably two seasons away from catching Aikman in yards and completions. That’s where Jones was coming from when he started hinting in the statement announcing Romo’s contract extension that his 33year-old quarterback would be something of a playerCEO when it comes to the Dallas offense. Jones showed he wasn’t kidding by seeking Romo’s input before Dallas drafted Wisconsin center/guard Travis Frederick late in the
first round and grabbed a complement to tight end Jason Witten in Gavin Escobar of San Diego State in the second round. Neither player was projected as high as he was picked. “The more Tony can be involved in what we’re doing offensively, the more the product we have out there (that) complements his skills, the more we’re going to do it,” Jones said. The draft talk is more symbolic — Jones says a few minutes of input can’t outweigh a year’s worth of scouting work — but it was noteworthy that Romo called Frederick “the best player in this draft at his position” the day after he was taken. The cameras from the post-draft news conference with coach Jason Garrett were gone when Jones, the self-professed gambler, went more all in than he already was with Romo by invoking the name of Manning, the Denver quarterback and Super Bowl winner in Indianapolis who’s been known to beat coaches to the training facility in the morning. “I can speak for Jason in this respect,” Jones said. “Everything he’s about wants more buy-in and more participation from the player. So that if Tony for instance would be here Monday through Saturday, that is far better, and be here from 7 in the morning till 6 o’clock at night and all over the place. Then that’s better than the way it’s been. We’ll have more success.” Romo has left open for interpretation his comments after the signing that things were changing. He didn’t have to answer questions from reporters, but he tried to address through a statement what he knew was on the minds of many fans who question whether he deserved such a huge payday without a better playoff pedigree. “There will be no greater reward, besides winning a Super Bowl, than playing my entire career as a Dallas Cowboy,” Romo said. “This football team that we have is a good team and with all the people we have coming back and the things we are doing behind the scenes, it will make us a very difficult ballclub to beat.” The fans know of one big change: an overhaul of the defensive coaching staff. Defensive coordinator Rob Ryan was fired, replaced by
Monte Kiffin and one of his most respected lieutenants, Rod Marinelli, who is in charge of the defensive line after turning down a chance to remain the defensive coordinator in Chicago. Dallas is scrapping Ryan’s tricked-up version of the 3-4 and going with a more traditional 4-3. The offense? Garrett and offensive line coach Bill Callahan have been coy since Jones suggested that Garrett was likely to give up play-calling duties. Callahan was the logical choice for that job because he called plays at Nebraska and with the Oakland Raiders, but Garrett keeps saying he hasn’t decided if he will give up something he’s done since Jones brought his him as offensive coordinator in 2007. This is where Romo enters the conversation again. Will he or should he call his own plays? How much input should he have on the offensive game plan? Jones isn’t ready to declare that Romo will have Manning-type control off the offense, but the owner seems several steps beyond the days when he released polarizing receiver Terrell Owens after missing the playoffs in 2008 and said the offense needed to be more “Romo-friendly.” “That’ll all be ironed out,” Jones said. “Romo will be very comfortable and will be how he’s comfortable relative to the playcalling.” For fans to get comfortable with him, Romo will have to do what he did in 2007 when he led the Cowboys to a 13-3 record — plus a couple of things he couldn’t do that season. He’ll have to stay away from Cabo San Lucas during the bye week that goes with being the top seed, and he’ll have to win a playoff game, probably more than one. Jones still believes Romo can be Aikman in something more than stats, and the owner has proven it throughout the offseason with his mouth and his pocketbook. “It meant something to him and to me that he commit to what I’m talking about doing more time and that he commits to doing more time,” Jones said. “It’s part of his job description.” Call it the Peyton Manning clause in his new contract.
SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2013
THE ZAPATA TIMES 3B
HINTS | BY HELOISE SIMPLE, YET SO HELPFUL Dear Heloise: A friend of mine recently had a death in her family. Many relatives and friends left Mass cards and remembrance cards at the funeral home. Unfortunately, most of the cards had only the person’s name. My friend said she had to spend several hours LOOKING UP NAMES AND ADDRESSES on her computer. My hint is, please, friends and relatives, put your address on the cards. They are supposed to be acknowledged with a thank-you note. It’s just a simple thing, but it’s more helpful than you can imagine. — A Friend of the Family, via email Your hint will help a lot of people. Also, please put a last name down — you’d be amazed how many Tom and Sues or Bill and Janes there are! — Heloise PET PAL Dear Readers: Linda Little sent a photo of her schnauzer, Doc, posing by the water. Doc looks just like my little schnauzer Cabbie, whom I love dearly.
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HELOISE
To see Doc’s portrait, visit my website at www.Heloise.com and click on “Pets.” — Heloise TENNIS-SHOE HELPER Dear Heloise: My daughter isn’t very fond of having to tie her tennis shoes. Seems she is always in a hurry. So instead of purchasing costly locking-type shoestrings, which make tie shoes into slip-ons, I recently purchased a handful of “cord locks” on the Internet. They are very inexpensive — a few cents each. These things will look familiar, and they are so easy to use. Just lace the shoe as usual, and slide a cord lock on the ends of both sides of the laces. From there, tie a small knot at the end of the laces, and use the cord lock to slide the laces tighter or looser. It works great and is a great way to make all tie tennis shoes into “slip-ons”! — Susan in Ohio
DENNIS THE MENACE
FAMILY CIRCUS
PEANUTS
GARFIELD
DAILY CRYPTOQUOTES — Here’s how to work it:
DILBERT
4B THE ZAPATA TIMES
SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2013