Far out on the west side of Hidalgo County, the land is dark and rich and flattened into an alluvial plain by ancient floods in the Rio Grande Valley basin. There is no end to growing season this close to the Mexican border and the fields are only barren between Read more…
While Ted Cruz was happily meeting with home schoolers in Iowa, the residents of the Rio Grande Valley in his home state were getting ready to sign up for health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Cruz, a Republican, has been to Iowa four times in the eight months Read more…
(McAllen, Texas) – We flew down on a cold January day. A dome of Canadian air that seemed to collapse from the arctic top of the world had reached all the way to the sub-tropical region of the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Nothing kills in the tropics as Read more…
Guest post by Ken Vest Democrats today remind me of the scene in the Godfather when Johnny Fontane whines about being denied a movie role he covets. The only problem is there is no Godfather to help the gutless wonders Democrats have become in this political season. The NYT reports they Read more…
The accident that changed Greg Abbott’s life was so improbable as to be almost statistically immeasurable. A healthy 27 year-old, he was jogging through the Houston community of River Oaks in 1984 when a large limb broke from a tree and fell on his back. Abbott, who spent months in Read more…
(Coming Monday: Greg Abbott and the Politics of Anger) There were a large number of people wondering what had gone wrong with John Mack, and I was still coming to terms with why I was in his office. Mack was a cum laude graduate of Harvard’s medical school, a psychiatrist, Read more…
The people promoting Texas as a location for business constantly push the idea that the state does not have an income tax. While that has some appeal, newcomers learn that there are property taxes that are almost punitive, and that force homeowners to carry the tax burden for corporations. Not Read more…
Commercial aviation is safe, ridiculously safe, which means the probability of a catastrophic mechanical failure in the Malaysian Airlines jet is miniscule. There are millions of take offs and landings each year around the world and in 2012 there were only 475 fatalities. MIT research indicated the average passenger could Read more…
Instead of a romp through various topics of interest, Fridays will sometimes be devoted to a single subject, which is today’s case. Our attempt will always be to provide a context and perspective we don’t see elsewhere, and that’s why this piece is about abortion and the Texas men trying Read more…
We were afraid to think much about spring during the month of March up in Michigan. Too many days gave us false hope of warmth, a Chinook wind might melt the ice and show frozen green from the previous summer, and then a heavy snow could fall and cover our Read more…
by R. G. Ratcliffe This is a follow up to my previous post on how everyone should take the University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll with a huge rock of salt. Not many people did in advance of the election. In fact, all of the state’s major papers, other than the Read more…
God apparently wants creationism taught in Texas public schools. Or at least the Texas Tea Party does. Conservative and semi-crazy State Senator Dan Patrick won a big victory over Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in the state’s Republican primary, and appears likely to defeat the eleven-year incumbent in the May runoff. Read more…
We call them blue northers; they are usually Canadian cold air or arctic weather systems that push far enough south to dramatically alter the weather in Texas. Often, a person can be standing outside in 80 degree temperatures and the cold can lower it as much as 60 degrees in Read more…
The first time I rolled into Eagle Pass, a little town down on the Rio Grande, I wondered if I were still in America. Below the street and on the riverbank there were a few hundred people living in shacks fashioned of cardboard and sticks. These were impoverished Kickapoo Indians Read more…
The following is the first of many guests posts we hope to publish, which will bring additional expertise and insight to the Don’t Grow Texas community. R.G. Ratcliffe is a senior political writer and analyst with decades of experience in newspaper journalism. When I was a child in Dallas, I Read more…