Author: mopress

The first polling place we went to after lunch was in the downtown area. We learned that there were problems around the block at Miguel F. Martinez at a special election station for voters who were not voting in their home precinct. Sure enough we came upon a line that stretched out for several blocks. A man near the front of the line told us that he’d been waiting for 5 hours. There was no shade from the oppressive midday sun.

We learned from an IFE observer that there were only 250 ballots left. He counted down to the middle of the block and informed those remaining that they would not be able to vote. He gave them the locations of other special polling places. We learned from him that this is not new. In 2000 there was a similar problem in polling places such as this one where voters wouldn’t be likely to vote for the “correct” candidate. They are simply shortchanged ballots. With five hours remaining, the polling place was out of business.

We decided to go to one of the other locations where out-of-towners can vote that the IFE observer had suggested to the people he turned away. At the Agua Caliente Tower at Fundadores Blvd. the line of people circled the entire park. A Telemondo news crew was interviewing people and we were told that this location had also run out of ballots. No new voters were being permitted to join the line, so those coming from the previous location would be out of luck here too. It was 3:00 PM – three hours remaining for election day.

People in the line noticed the badges Barbara and I were wearing and were eager to tell us how long they had been waiting in the hot sun. A woman holding a baby, standing about midway in the line looked at her watch and held out her hand with all five fingers extended. I looked around for anyone offering water to the people in the line – there was no one. Then a woman came up to me obviously distraught and hoping I could help. Oscar translated that she’d been told at her local polling place that her name wasn’t on the list. So she’s been directed to go to this special voting place. She’s waited for six hours to vote, only to be told when she got to the end of the line that she couldn’t vote here because her voter card showed that she could vote in her local place.

Gabriella showed me her voting card. The photo was clearly her, the address was Tijuana. The right to have a voice in her government was so important to this poor woman that she’d given up her day off to stand in the hot sun for six hours to cast her vote, and for her persistence she was rewarded with rejection.

Id’ read that the same company that had been used to scrub Florida’s voting lists in 2000 had been used to do the same in Mexico. Perhaps Gabriella was one of those names removed from Tijuana’s voter roll. The long lines and shortage of ballots reminded me of Ohio. Voter suppression and disenfranchisement – is this how America spreads democracy? I’d been so impressed with the transparency of the Mexican election system, but somehow corruption prevailed.

After observing the vote tally at the polling station where Silvia had been working we went back to their home to watch the results. We’d been hearing rumors all afternoon that Obrador was ahead by a huge margin. The television showed something else. First, Mr. Ugalde, president of IFE explained in an almost monotone voice that the election was too close to call. Then President Vincente Fox appeared, again repeating that the election was too close to call. The four anchor persons on the channel seemed confused and troubled. Things were not going as planned. Suddenly Lopez Obrador was making an announcement. It seemed that he was about to concede. Oscar was translating for us as he said that he would respect the outcome of the vote, even if he lost by one vote. BUT he had not lost. In fact he had over 500,000 more votes than Calderon. He was declaring victory!

Do You Know Where You’re Going To?, by JeeniCriscenzo, Wed Jul 05, 2006 at 09:38:00 AM PDT, Daily Kos

Jackson and a group of black leaders are heading a boycott against BP, and this time racial disparity is only part of the overall complaint. “We are going to engage in direct action against BP to change their behavior,” Jackson was quoted by the Associated Press as saying. “They need to stop energy exploitation, stop manipulating prices and undercutting the American people.”

His comments came during a march in front of BP’s Texas City Refinery, where 15 workers were killed and more than 170 were injured in an explosion last year. Jackson told 100 other marchers that price gouging, discriminatory hiring practices and unsafe working conditions were all characteristics of the British oil giant.

Apart from calling for safer working conditions and more diversity, the march was also part of Jackson lobbying of the government to put a cap on the price of gas. “We’re going to be marching in 50 cities until we drive the price of gas down,” he said. Forbes, Faces In The News, Jesse Jackson Leads Boycott Against BP, Parmy Olson, 07.05.06, 12:13 PM ET, dateline LONDON!

“Never have I experienced a project that has been on such a fast track,” says a South Texas attorney explaining why a company has started work on a detention center before a contract has been signed. In this example, we find one more example of the neo-con model driving down democratic process in the name of homeland security. The timetable serves as a stand-alone excuse.–gm

---

Detention site for migrants moving ahead

Web Posted: 07/06/2006 12:00 AM CDT

Jeorge Zarazua
Express-News Staff Writer

RAYMONDVILLE — Willacy County officials haven’t formally decided who will get to build the state’s largest immigration detention facility — but that hasn’t stopped a Houston company from beginning work on the massive project.
Hale-Mills Construction has had crews at the site of the planned $50 million jail for the past two weeks, leveling land and pouring concrete for the foundation.

The company began working on the 2,000-bed facility after county officials signed an agreement June 19 with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to house detainees.

Without a county decision on how to pay for it or, more importantly, who would be hired to build it, Hale-Mills began clearing a cotton field in Raymondville the next day.

The company has been working on the project every day since, Sheriff Larry G. Spence said.

Executives at Hale-Mills didn’t return phone calls seeking comment this week and last week. A contract to hire the company has been drafted and will be presented to a public facilities corporation created by the county when it holds its first meeting today.

Ramon Vela, a Weslaco attorney representing the county in the venture, said that because of deadlines established in the agreement, the company knew work needed to begin immediately.

“That’s when Hale-Mills said, ‘We got to get started now,’ and that’s when they decided to move dirt,” Vela said.

He said the county was given 30 days from the time the agreement was signed to have 500 beds available for federal authorities. He said the remaining 1,500 beds are to be completed 60 days after that.

“Never have I experienced a project that has been on such a fast track,” Vela said.

The architecture, designed for speed of construction, is the first of its kind for ICE. The project will include 10 pod-like domes, each housing 200 detainees. The domes are to be made of steel beams covered with a tough synthetic-type fabric, said Sheriff Spence.

It is being built to help end the “catch and release” policy for non-Mexican undocumented immigrants, said Nina Pruneda, a San Antonio spokeswoman for ICE.

Unlike immigrants from Mexico who are routinely sent back across the border, immigrants from other countries are often released with a notice to appear before a U.S. immigration judge. More than 80 percent fail to do so.

President Bush, in a televised address May 15 on immigration reform, called the practice unacceptable and vowed to end it. He said more detention centers would be built to house such immigrants until their court hearings.

In Raymondville, the jail pod complex will also have a permanent building with four immigration courtrooms and an infirmary, Vela said. It is being built near a cluster of existing county and state jails and a privately-run federal detention center.

County officials are working out other details, such as how the county will pay for the facility’s construction and if Hale-Mills will build it, Vela said.

County Judge Simon Salinas said the company is working at its own risk and has no guarantees it will be chosen to finish the job.

The county formed the public facilities corporation to issue $50 million in lease revenue bonds to investors to fund construction.

Although no bonds have been issued and the county hasn’t identified the corporation’s governing board, that board is set to meet today to pick officers, consider hiring Vela as its lawyer and consider approving a contract with Hale-Mills.

It will also consider hiring a private jail company to operate the facility after it is completed.

“The project is going to happen,” Vela said.

By Greg Moses

TheRagBlog / CounterPunch / DissidentVoice

Over the Fourth of July weekend 2009, Chandrakant “Chan” Patel became a Dallas banker. But if you’ve never been to a Dallas men’s club meeting it may be difficult for you to grasp what that means.

Born in India in 1945, Patel–according to his official bio–earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Engineering from Bombay University, then emigrated to the USA where he became a citizen in 1965. He earned masters degrees at Stanford and Johns Hopkins before embarking on a business career in 1976 as a hotel owner and operator.

By 1987 Patel’s ambitions had become cramped by Dallas-area bankers who seemed to understand neither the hotel business nor the Indian community, so he put together a bank with about $2 million of family money.

From the time Patel opened the State Bank of Texas (SBT) in late 1987, he has steadily grown the enterprise into three suburban locations in Irving, Garland, and Richardson.

Then, on July 2, with the acquisition of the short-lived Millennium Bank of Texas–which was closed by the FDIC and sold to Patel’s bank–the Indian-born entrepreneur finally put his banking footprint down inside the Dallas city limits.

Ironically enough, reports the Dallas Business Journal’s Chad Eric Watt, Patel will soon be losing his Irving bank headquarters. It will be razed by the Texas Department of Transportation in order to widen Airport Freeway.

With the closing of Georgia’s Haven Trust Bank in late 2008, Patel’s SBT became the third largest “Indian Bank” in the USA, behind two billion-dollar operations in Chicago: Mutual Bank and the legendary National Republic (see an excellent overview of the players by Lavina Melwani at Little India dot com.)

According to FDIC figures, SBT reported first quarter average assets of $589 million. The Millennium acquisition will add $118 million in assets, says the FDIC, bringing the value of Patel’s bank to over $700 million.

Patel’s Fourth of July gambit into Dallas banking says something doubly remarkable about his business skills and the role of immigrant entrepreneurs in the recovering economy of the USA.

On the matter of Patel’s business skills, the prudent observer will want to wait about two more years to see how he fares a widely predicted cyclone in commercial real estate and the hotel sector.

Just a day before the FDIC announced the transfer of Millennium’s assets to Patel, the entire hotel sector was downgraded from “Neutral” to “Negative” by Barclay Capital analyst Felicia Hendrix.

“While the industry declines should be less negative next year, we do not expect to see positive growth until at least 2011,” said Hendrix in a report filed by the AP.

A good example of Patel’s challenge can be found in a February dispatch out of Florida in which Patel’s bank was reported to be filing a foreclosure lawsuit against a $13 million dollar property east of the Tampa Convention Center.

The lawsuit was filed against Indian entrepreneurs who–like so many others those days–thought they were picking up property at bargain rates in 2006, before the real estate bubble burst.

The report from the Tampa Bay Business Journal implies that Patel has worked out a modified agreement with the Tampa entrepreneurs.

Another report from Chad Eric Watt of the Dallas Business Journal indicates that Patel is still scouring the hotel business for promising leads. In a June 26 story, Watt reports that the Texas Patels are being sued for unscrupulous bidding practices by the Georgia Patels–the same Georgia Patels who lost the Haven Trust Bank last year.

According to federal court documents, the Texas Patels outbid the Georgia Patels by $20,000 for a note on a property that the Georgia Patels owned and operated. But this was after the Texas Patels said they could not finance the lower bid that the Georgia Patels were planning to make. Federal Judge Robert L. Vining, Jr. has given the Texas Patels until July 22 to answer the charges.

It seems that the Texas Patels–who by the way are not without their J.R.–have never been too proud to earn money the old fashioned way. As Michael Davis of the Dallas Progressive Blog is fond of remembering, the Texas Patels have admitted to the Dallas Morning News that they sometimes charge hotel fees by the hour.

As I recall, it was a license plate study of Dallas motels back in the 1950’s that first revealed the hot data that most Dallas motel customers were in fact from the Dallas area. In attempting to verify my memory I checked a prestigious academic database for key words “sex, motel, Dallas” and only came up with one hit–a plot summary for the Mike Judge classic, Beavis and Butthead Do America.

Which brings us back to the Fourth of July in all of its red, white, and blueness. Somehow a code is working itself out in the symbolic collision of Patel, Millennium, State Bank of Texas, and the Fourth of July. You see, it’s not Cowboys leading the charge for the New American Dream anymore, it’s the Indians.

In contrast to the frozen giants of global finance who drag us every day down closer to the next bottom rather than up to the next top, the Texas Patels are moving their Dallas banking enterprise into competition with billion-dollar Chicago houses, actually making finance possible for one of the toughest sectors of the 2009 depression.

By the light of the Patel example we have a right to ask: how many more immigrant entrepreneurs are out there who only need a respectful certificate of citizenship to begin hauling this country up again by its own financial bootstraps? The spirit of independence, remember?