Home of Today's Common Sense

Published Brownsville Herald July 18, 2011

I have been re-reading many opinions related to immigration issues and listening to many that on other issues I usually agree with. One in particular is the excellent article some years ago in The Brownsville Herald titled “Immigrants still wanted in hard times.” Mr. Ruben Navarrette hit the nail on the head when he said that “what Americans should know by now, even if some are reluctant to admit it: Immigrants were an undeniable and indispensable factor in the nation’s economic growth over the past decades.”
Many blame foreigners for many of our social ills. Such isolationism and scapegoating frightens me enormously. These perceptions frequently have preceded wars and some of the most embarrassing reactions in our history. Who wants to see a re-enactment of the incarceration of the Japanese in World War II or similar obscenities toward other national groups?
There are calls to close our borders to all “foreigners” and install martial law in the name of security. This scares me because our national survival depends on the infusion of new peoples to our “melting pot” and to continuously remember how our country was formed in the first place. Most new immigrants improve our work force with new enthusiasm and reinforce our understanding of how bad it could be, with stories of what caused them to come here seeking a better life and new opportunities. More »

Published Brownsville Herald July 4, 2011

Today is the 235th anniversary of our nation’s independence. It commemorates the day when the Second Continental Congress voted to approve the Declaration of Independence from kingdom of England.
The declaration had been prepared by the “Committee of Five”: John Adams of Massachusetts, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Robert Livingston of New York, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, the principal author.
On July 4, 1776, an estimated 2.5 million people lived in the new United States; today our population numbers about 311 million.
Independence Day is commonly associated with fireworks, parades, barbecues, carnivals, fairs, picnics, concerts and such.
Our founders created a “government instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” It was designed that the government would obey laws empowered by “We the people.” The folks would be sovereigns in a nation that would work in our best interest. It was definitely not the intention to create a nation ruled by professional politicos whose primary interests are selfpromotion and personal benefit. In today’s federal government aiming for one size and style for all, subsidies, programs and entitlements are created in Washington and enforced on everyone in the country, uniformly, whether or not they are needed or even work.
Lobbyists, politicos, program vendors, etc., are the real beneficiaries and rarely are they uniformly satisfied.
The nation that was conceived following our Declaration of Independence was defined as a confederation by the Constitution, which specifically limited the powers of our representatives in the Congress to reserve power to the individual — the community — then the states. More »