International news, national news, political news

Immigrant tide is reversing itself

citizenship

The world remains focused on events in, say, Syria and Europe.

However, get a load of this item: More Mexican citizens returned to their home country over a five-year period than came into the United States.

The Pew Research Center said that from 2009 to 2014, more than 1 million Mexicans returned home while 870,000 of them came to the United States.

Does that change the debate in this country? Quite possibly.

Presidential candidates — particularly some of them on the Republican side — have made immigration a theme of the upcoming White House campaign.

I’m not at all sure what the trend suggests. Pew is a reliable research outfit, with findings that are well-documented. One theory being kicked around is that the Great Recession of 2008-09 in the United States removed an incentive for Mexican citizens to come to the United States in search of jobs.

The inflow of migrants could increase as the U.S. economy continues to improve, according to Mark Hugo Lopez, a Hispanic researcher for Pew. According to USA Today, “In coming years, he said, the number of Mexicans may increase again if the U.S. economy continues to improve. But steady growth of Mexico’s economy and tighter controls along the southwest border mean the United States won’t see another massive wave of legal and illegal immigration like it did in recent decades, when the number of Mexican-born immigrants ballooned from 3 million to nearly 13 million, he said.”

Lopez added that the era of Mexican migration might be at an end.

So, while our attention is diverted to places far away, we see some interesting trends right at our doorstep.

Don’t look for critics of U.S. immigration policy to proclaim this as good news. Indeed, if foreign nationals anywhere in the world can find prosperity at home, well, that reduces the strain on the Land of Opportunity.

I consider that to be good news.

 

local news, Sports news

MPEV argument making more sense

matney

Paul Matney did not say this directly as he was touring Amarillo on behalf of a proposed multipurpose event venue, but I think I have gleaned a message from his pro-MPEV pitch.

It is that if we build a shiny new baseball park in downtown Amarillo we’re going to attract the attention of a serious, well-funded minor-league baseball franchise that can come here to run a team the right way — and not the way it’s being run these days.

I refer to the decision to combine the Amarillo Thunderheads with the Grand Prairie AirHogs and to split the 2016 baseball season between two locations, nearly 400 mile apart.

I believe I now get what the retired Amarillo College president was getting at.

Amarillo’s baseball fan base deserve better than to be treated to this clown show.

They haven’t broken any ground yet on the MPEV. The $32 million venue has been (more or less) endorsed by the Amarillo City Council, which has handed off implementing the development of the project to the Local Government Corporation.

I’m not certain how this combined franchise location thing is going to work for the owner of the Thunderheads/AirHogs. My gut tells me it’s a loser.

It well might give MPEV supporters additional grist to expedite the development of the new ballpark, to get it built, to market the city to the owner of a legitimate Class AA franchise and return serious minor-league baseball to Amarillo.

Hey, maybe this franchise combo deal can be a blessing after all.

 

local news, Sports news

Baseball team needs new place ID

baseball

The decision has been made to combine the Amarillo Thunderheads baseball franchise with the Grand Prairie AirHogs.

They’ll split their 2016 season between the locales: one here on the Texas Tundra, and one in Dallas-Forth Worth Metroplex.

I’ve decided the new team nickname should be the Air Heads, given that it looks like a dorky decision to combine the teams in that fashion.

The more problematic issue, though, might be how to identify the location name.

Every sports franchise has a place named in front of the nickname. Houston Astros, Denver Broncos, Houston Texans …

I’d have mentioned the Dallas Cowboys, but that pro football team hasn’t played home games in Big D since the early 1970s, when it moved from the Cotton Bowl to Irving; the Cowboys now play way over yonder in Arlington, which is closer to Fort Worth than it is to Dallas, which gives Cowtown residents fits. But that’s another story.

Will the Amarillo-Grand Prairie team be able to identify its location in a manner suitable to each city’s rabid fan base?

Let’s all stay tuned to this one.

 

Uncategorized

Fear is overwhelming us

Politically-Correct

I am attaching a link to this post.

Here it is: Stop worrying about PC-ness.

It takes a few minutes to read. It’s from a Christian pastor named Danielle Egnew.

The essay isn’t the end-all to the discussion Americans have been having about terrorism and how we should respond to the refugee crisis that’s erupted in the Middle East — not to mention the terror attacks in Paris, Beirut and places elsewhere that have escaped the world’s attention.

But take a few minutes to read this piece. I believe it speaks to what’s going on here as we seeks answers to some very troubling questions.

Enjoy …

 

International news, national news, political news

WW II internment camps serve as justification?

bowers

This takes the cake.

Of all the things that have been said in recent days about Syrian refugees and whether the United States should ban any more of them from coming to this country, the mayor of a significant U.S. city invokes the memory of … Japanese-American internment camps.

Roanoke (Va.) Mayor David Bowers, a Democrat, said this: “I’m reminded that President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and it appears that the threat of harm to America from Isis now is just as real and serious as that from our enemies then.”

Oh, my.

The internment of Japanese-Americans after the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 — over the course of history — been declared a national tragedy. Yes, FDR felt compelled to order the internment of those loyal Americans out of fear of what he thought might happen. It was in fact a xenophobic response aimed at imprisoning people of a certain racial minority. The U.S. government did not respond in nearly that fashion to German-Americans or Italian-Americans, whose own ethnic ancestors also had declared war on the United States.

Now we have the mayor of Roanoke suggesting that the internment camps justify the near-panic being expressed in many political corners of this country in response to what occurred this past week in Paris with the massacre of 129 innocent victims by European jihadists.

I should add that many decades after the internment of tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans the U.S. government issued a formal apology to the descendants of those who were held captive by their own government. The actions taken then are now considered a shameful breach of our Constitution’s guarantee of civil liberties for all its citizens.

The ACLU of Virginia issued this statement: “The government’s denial of liberty and freedom to over 100,000 individuals of Japanese descent — many of whom were citizens or legal residents and half of whom were children — is a dark stain on America’s history that Mayor Bowers should learn from rather than seek to emulate.”

Mayor Bowers has said he never intended to offend anyone with his remarks.

Well, Mr. Mayor, you damn sure did.

See story here.

 

local news, Sports news

Play ball … in two cities next year

ama thunderheads

Amarillo’s minor-league baseball fortunes have taken a bizarre turn.

I cannot yet tell if it’s for the better or the worse. Let’s just call it bizarre. Weird too. Strange? You bet.

The Amarillo Thunderheads have merged with the Grand Prairie AirHogs, according to the American Association of Independent Baseball, the league to which both teams belong.

What does it mean? Well, the team will play 25 of its “home” games in Amarillo and 25 in Grand Prairie (a Dallas-Fort Worth suburb) for the 2016 season.

There’s more strangeness. According to a league statement: “We appreciate that Southern Independent Baseball, owner of the Amarillo and Grand Prairie clubs, agreed to the league’s request to operate its two teams as one in 2016. We fully expect that both teams will return in 2017 as individual entities with a full schedule in their respective markets.”

The league had 13 teams. It wanted to pare it to 12 to provide a more even schedule for everyone concerned. So, the league decided to combine the Amarillo and Grand Prairie franchises for the upcoming season. Is this a one-season gig? Time will tell.

OK. I know what you’re thinking. What does this mean for the future of the multipurpose event venue that many of us — yours truly included — hope will be built in downtown Amarillo?

To be honest, at this very moment I have no earthly idea what this means. Here, though, is my hope.

It is that the $32 million MPEV construction will proceed and that marketing gurus here will be able to locate a first-cabin minor-league franchise — say a AA outfit affiliated with a major-league team — to bring their organization to Amarillo. Here, the theory goes, the baseball team will play ball in a gleaming new sports venue, fill the 4,500 or so seats on most days or nights with fans — and the enterprise will be deemed a success.

I have to say, though, that this merging of two teams into one for the 2016 season seems a bit fraught with peril for those who’ve been hoping that the Thunderheads could make a go of it in Amarillo.

The Dillas became the Sox and then the Thunderheads, all in the span of just a few years.

What now? The Thunder Hogs? The Air Heads?

How about we just get this new baseball venue built and then bring in an outfit that can lend some stability for those who want to cheer for their very own minor-league baseball team?

 

International news, military news

Women play key role in defending Israel

female pilots

This picture showed up on my Facebook news feed today and it brings to mind something I witnessed six years ago during a four-week tour of Israel.

Yes, more women fly F-16s than drive cars in Saudi Arabia. I’m not going to thrash Saudi cultural norms. I am, though, going to remember one of the major takeaways from my tour of Israel.

It is that the country must rely on every single able individual — men and women — who are able to serve in the armed forces.

Israel has a mandatory conscription law. If memory serves, men must serve three years in the military; women are called up for two. And, yes indeed, women are ordered to perform dangerous duty in defense of their country, such as flying high-performance tactical jet aircraft; for that matter, so are American women.

I arrived in Israel in early May 2009 as part of a Rotary International Group Study Exchange team. One of the first sites we visited was a military museum in Be’er Sheva, a modern city on the edge of the Judean Desert.

It was at that museum where we were told that enemy jets can cross the width of Israel in less than five minutes. The individual who told us that was a young woman who was serving in the Israeli air force.

Later on our tour, I stayed in the home of a family in Karmiel. One of my hosts was a young woman, the daughter of the couple who owned the home, who had just gotten out of the Israeli military. She informed me of her country’s insistence that all young people don the uniform of their country. Israel does grant religious exemptions to Hasidic Jews — which I also learned is a source of some tension among less-observant Israelis.

But the women of that small but mighty country are asked to step up and to do their part. Who should doubt that the entire country is on notice to serve? It comprises slightly more than 8,000 square miles; it is home to around 7 million residents. It is surrounded by nations with which it has gone to war multiple times since Israel’s founding in 1948.

Israel has peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt. However, it holds the Golan Heights, which once belonged to Syria … and we all know what’s happening there.

It’s good to put some things in perspective as we consider the cost of war and whether we’re asking everyone to commit to its defense.

In Israel, such a commitment becomes essential for the embattled nation’s very survival.

business news, local news

MPEV might need a new name

amarillo hotel

Dan Quandt isn’t fond of the acronym “MPEV.”

He runs the Amarillo Convention and Visitors Council and, quite naturally, is glad the proposed $32 million multipurpose event venue received the voters’ endorsement earlier this month.

But as he told the Rotary Club of Amarillo this afternoon, he wishes city planners could have come up with a different name for the facility to be built across Seventh Avenue from City Hall.

But, hey, as long as we’re stuck with the acronym, Quandt suggested it stand for “multiple people entering our vicinity.”

Therein lies his belief in the MPEV. It’s going to bring people here. They’re going to spend money, generating sales tax revenue and additional revenue from the city’s hotel occupancy tax — aka the HOT.

He noted that 60 percent of the city’s revenue comes from sales tax collections — and a good portion of that revenue comes from those who don’t live here. They are traveling through the city or are spending a night or perhaps longer here.

Quandt also noted something most Amarillo residents likely don’t know. It is that Amarillo has as many hotel rooms as Arlington, a city of nearly 400,000 residents sitting, as Quandt said, “in the heart of the Metroplex.” He also pointed out that Arlington is home to the Texas Rangers and a “professional football team that plays there”; he must not be a Dallas Cowboys fan. Whatever …

Amarillo’s fortunes are bound to improve with construction of the MPEV and the completion of the new Embassy Suites hotel across the street from the Civic Center, which he said is in line eventually for some “long-awaited” improvements and expansion.

One would expect Quandt to speak well of the MPEV and the city’s downtown future. He’s in the business of promoting the city.

However, from where I stand, Quandt and other city boosters are going to have quite a bit more material with which to lure visitors to our city.

 

local news

Things you wish you could have seen …

tornadic beauty

Take a look at this picture. This event occurred about 50 or so miles east of Amarillo on Monday.

I couldn’t see it. Man, I wish I could have laid eyes on this sight.

It’s a tornado that tore through parts of Gray and Roberts counties. It brought a good bit of destruction.

What it didn’t bring was nothing short of miraculous! It didn’t result in human death or injury.

Weather forecasters that afternoon and early evening did a marvelous job of warning residents of the area of what was coming their way. They battened down their homes the best they could. I presume some of them got the heck out of Dodge. Some of them came home to find, well, no home.

But this is one of the enduring images of that frightful evening.

I join my Texas Panhandle neighbors in expressing gratitude that no one was hurt and in thanking the weather forecasters for keeping them informed.

I wish, though, I could have seen that spectacular sight in real time.

 

International news

Rooting out potential danger remains most challenging

atta

Surely you remember this guy, but if not, here’s the answer.

His name was Mohammad Atta. He hailed from Egypt. But in the spring or early summer of 2001 he made his way to the United States. He then received lessons from instructors who taught him how to fly a commercial jetliner.

Atta didn’t receive any instruction on takeoff or landing; just how to control a massive airplane in mid-flight.

Then on Sept. 11, 2001, he and about 18 other men hijacked four jetliners. Atta seized control of one of them and flew it into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York City. Another jet crashed into the second tower, the third jet crashed into a Pennsylvania field while passengers fought with hijackers. The fourth jetliner crashed into the Pentagon.

You know what happened after that.

What’s the point?

We’ve grown anxious about how we can find terrorists before they commit terrible deeds. Mohammad Atta and his gang of merciless thugs managed 14 years ago to slip undetected through U.S. security systems. Atta received and several of his fellow monsters received flying lessons of the nature I described here — without causing anyone to raise a red flag of alarm!

Making sure we detect evil among us is difficult and tedious work. Do we overreact and ban everyone who seeks to flee repression and bloodshed, which many thousands of them are doing at this moment in Syria?

Yes, we’ve long needed to secure ourselves against those committed to evil deeds. This need pre-dates by a very long time the events of just the past few days, weeks or months.

Indeed, the threat has existed all along.

Still, we have welcomed refugees who seek deliverance from misery. Check out this blog post from Texas Monthly. It speaks to a long-standing Texas tradition.

Why haven’t we panicked long ago?

Mohammad Atta gave us ample reason, didn’t he?

 

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