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New businesses draw opposition
This is a rebuttal to Justin Katusak’s recent commentary on the glossy photos and billion‑dollar headlines surrounding SpaceX, Rio Grande LNG and Port Alpha (July 28). The advertising spin hides what the Rio Grande Valley cannot afford to ignore: These projects carry real costs, and too many of these costs land on local communities while the profits leave.
Tax breaks and abatements aren’t “investments.” They are lost revenue for schools, drainage, emergency services and basic infrastructure. If officials call these sacrifices “necessary,” they should explain why residents must subsidize multinational corporations.
Regulations from agencies like the FAA and EPA are community protections. At Boca Chica, FAA mishap reports document explosions, debris scatter, brush fires and habitat impacts. SpaceX’s record also includes documented worker injuries and at least one fatality. Meanwhile, SpaceX attempts to increase its industrial footprint with additional acreage through a proposed land swap with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The LNG build‑out deserves equal scrutiny. Export terminals are designed to serve global markets, not local households. LNG exports can push U.S. natural gas prices higher when supply tightens, while the pollution, noise and permanent industrial footprint stay here.
Economic development shouldn’t mean trading away beaches, public lands or tax revenue for promises that may never materialize. Growth is welcome — but only when communities that share the risks share the rewards also.
Right now, the balance is off, and the RGV shouldn’t be expected to carry the weight for everyone else’s payday. Our communities deserve better than being the “sacrifice zone” for billion‑dollar ventures.
Diane Teter
Edinburg
Cities, schools should trim fat
Local news stories are sounding the alarm that the city of McAllen was thinking about increasing taxes; Edinburg wanted to do the same thing.
Usually residents get a state tax break and local entities raise their taxes to continue to feed the machine: city and local school district’s needs.
Now there is talk that instead of raising taxes the city of Edinburg just wants to raise your water rates by 11%, so they’re still taking your moolah; they are just doing it in a different way.
ECISD is saying they are in the red; they say they lost 800 students; but they don’t tell you who those students are or where they went. Why?
In the meanwhile, superintendents are making the same or more than the vice president of the United Sates. Again I ask, why?
Meanwhile, teachers are underpaid in comparison to administrators; yet, teachers do most of the work of educating your children. Why?
Solutions: trim administrative salaries at the top. Trim your departments. Cut back where it can be done because every household is doing just that — trimming the fat.
To keep picking the pockets of local residents is not the answer. As property values fall from overinflated levels, now they are heading for a correction because they are unsustainable for property owners.
It’s time to trim the fat at the top, and stop picking the pockets of residents.
Guadalupe B. Rodriguez
Edinburg
Dr. Fauci is a hero
Dr. Anthony Fauci served as the USA’s top infectious disease expert for 40 years. His work is credited for saving millions of lives here and abroad. And as Natividad Rodriguez admitted, those saved lives and their families consider Dr. Fauci their hero (Letters, Aug. 10).
Yet, Nati tells us that he can’t stand Dr. Fauci. He labeled him a “gangster” because Dr. Fauci invoked the 5th Amendment in a congressional hearing designed to demonize him. Nati also called Dr. Fauci a “narcissist-in-chief” because Fauci supposedly bragged about the recognition he received in an article that appeared in The Washington Post.
Here are the facts: Dr. Fauci never invoked the 5th Amendment in any of his previous 250 appearances before Congress. In his most recent appearance Dr. Fauci invoked the 5th 111 times. His lawyer advised him to do so because he believed the whole investigation was a joke and he did not want Dr. Fauci to participate in the comedy.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, invoked the 5th hundreds of times in various legal proceedings, including 440 times during a 2020 deposition investigating his administration.
The words, “that’s what guilty gangsters do” were not uttered by a single MAGA Republican. If this is not the epitome of hogwash hypocrisy, I don’t know what is. But, among Trump MAGA sycophant Republicans, it’s typical. Nothing new here.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson put it so succinctly: “How sad it must be, believing that scientists, historians, scholars, economists and journalists, would devote their entire lives to deceiving you. But a con-man, proven in court to be a lying felon, is your beacon of truth and honesty.”
Italo J. Zarate
Brownsville
Highlights of nature
Summer — hot, very hot. In the RGV there are multiple places to visit, trying to cool off.
I went one year to the Galaxy Lights at the Johnson Space Center close to Clear Lake, Texas — mesmerizing. A friend recently told me about her and her family’s experience at Tonga Lumina in Mont-Treblant in Canada, put on by The Moment Factory, telling the story at sundown in lights as a hike through the forest, bringing together illumination, stories about legends in that forest, and dedicated to natural points of view from stars, to sea, to forest and flora, and to fauna of the area, all to protect that environment.
It got me thinking: The RGV has the Butterfly Park, Quinta Mazatlan, McAllen Camp, Bensen State Park, and so many other places dedicated to saving a piece of Earth from “progress.”
Perhaps, just perhaps, a company would be approached to pave the way to stories of the RGV as a hike at sundown, all year through, not just during the winter holidays; something earthy, ethereal, something meaningful, something to help keep a part of the RGV safe from “progress.”
I do recommend Galaxy Lights at Johnson Space Center, should anyone make a journey during the winter months. She did recommend Tonga Lumina should a trip to Canada be in the offing.
Whatever we humans can do to remember we are stewards of the Earth and all its glory, let us consider saving a piece of our special place at the southernmost tip of Texas, here, in the Rio Grande Valley. Sundown. During gloaming. It can happen!
Martha Talamas
McAllen
The brink of war
My wife and I enjoy watching movies that teach us about the history of America. “Young Washington” is a good example and provides excellent information.
We went to see “The Brink of War” recently, about the dialogue that took place between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev.
It seems that the American people are less interested in American history and more interested in science-fiction movies like “Spiker-Man,” which had all the seats taken in the theater.
We enjoyed the dialogue between the two superpowers regarding the threat of nuclear weapons possessed by both nations and the danger they posed to humanity as a whole.
They battled it out to exhaustion, to the point where they had to break off the dialogue, walk away to cool their heads, and come back later to continue the discussion.
One thing both presidents had in common that I feel made their dialogue successful was that they were both actors in their younger years. The Russian president was a live-theater actor, and the U.S. president was a movie actor. Their communication skills made their agreement possible.
They both got on each other’s nerves at times. The U.S. president mentioned the lack of freedom of speech in the Soviet Union, where if one spoke to criticize the government, he might lose his life — or, if he was lucky, end up in prison with a long sentence. He also spoke about equality in a socialist-communist nation, where everyone is supposed to be at the same level as everyone else — which is a lie. Politicians lived way above the average Russian; that is not equal. A CIA agent in Russia reported on the long lines people had to wait in to get their portion of bread and the complaints about the long waits. Before he walked away, he said, “Hold my place; I am going to kill our president.” Shortly afterward he came back. Someone asked, “Why did you come back so soon?” He replied, “Because the other line was longer.” The Russian president cracked a smile. And that is why President Reagan is known as the Great Communicator.
Three years later, the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union collapsed, and Germany became one free nation. And that is history in the making.
Rafael Madrigal
Pharr
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