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Weekly Newspaper and Tourism Guide for Ward County Trans Pecos, Big Bend of West Texas

Opinion

Thursday, February 5, 1998

Cyber Gab

Hello . . .

My handle is Vendetta and I'm an addict.

If there was a support group for Internet Addicts then I'd
have somewhere to go a couple of nights a week.

It all started about a year and a half ago when my parents
got connected to the internet. I was hooked immediately and
have been an active participant in the Cyber World ever
since. I have three homepages (only two of which are worth
surfing) and many good internet friends whom I have never
formally met but like, nevertheless.

I'd like to make this column as "user friendly" and as
interactive as the internet itself. It should be a place to
talk and learn a little about the internet world. So many
people are getting connected everyday that there needs to be
a place to discuss the issues. This is that place. I'm
asking that you send questions and comments to me. I may not
always have the answer but I'll give it my best. Also, if
you have a homepage and would like to tell the town send me
the address and I'll put it into the Hometown Homepages
section. If you have a favorite website, send that too.

Until next time, Get Connected!

Net Tip of the Week

If you're surfing the net and you find an article or some
writing on a page that you would like to keep but don't want
to print the whole page, try this:

1. Highlight the material you want to keep.

2. Push the "CTRL" key plus the "C" key at the same time.
(This saves the material.)

3. Minimize your net browser.

4. Open a word processing program (Wordpad, Microsoft Word,
etc.)

5. Make sure your cursor is blinking on the page and press
"Ctrl" and "V" at the same time.

6. Voila! Your highlighted material should appear on the
program in front of you. It's now ready to print, save or
edit as you see fit. All you have to do is maximize your
browser to continue surfing. This is great if there are a
lot of graphics on a page and you don't want to waste your
ink. Also, it can be used at any time, not just for the
internet.

Hometown Homepages

My two homepages . . .These are case sensitive. Type them
just as they are printed.

www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/5872

www.angelfire.com/tx/Vendetta

Please send E-Mail to:
silvervendetta@hotmail.com
Snail Mail:
PO Box 187
Wickett TX 79788

Monahan's Well

By Jerry Curry

If I needed anything to terrify me, the assorted network
polls erupting since the State of the Union address should
do it. These polls are scary.

According to CNN, ABC and assorted other broadcast networks,
their polls indicate President William Jefferson Clinton has
a citizen approval rating approaching 70 percent.
There haven't been approval ratings like these since Germans
decided in the middle 1930s Adolph Hitler was God with a
funny mustache.

On his best day in office, George Washington would not have
received citizen approval ratings remotely comparable to
William Jefferson Clinton's. George Washington, among other
things, did not lie. He also loved and respected his wife,
which admittedly is old fashioned, but that is the way
George was.

Today in Denver, it is doubtful the NFL champion Denver
Broncos would receive an approval rating this high.
Miss Mona, in her heyday, would not have been approved by
nearly 70 percent of the citizens of La Grange even if Miss
Mona had funded the local hospital, the kid sports programs,
meals for the needy and could throw one heck of a party -
all of which she did.

Moses did not have these ratings.

Mother Theresa never saw numbers like this.

Someone said Richard M. Nixon did in the year before his
fall from grace, his resignation and Gerry Ford's pardon for
all sins committed and any Nixon might consider committing.
But I don't believe that's true. I was around in that era. I
even did a little Watergate work and I do not remember
Richard M. Nixon approval numbers this high.

These are approval ratings by the citizenry, according to
the broadcast polls, for a President who made more than a
dollar from a little savings and loan fraud in Arkansas, who
helped the Chinese establish a naval base in Long Beach,
Calif., who gleefully shattered federal laws with the
solicitation of campaign contributions on taxpayer funded
White House telephones, who turned the White House into a
high dollar Motel 6 in exchange for campaign contributions,
whose initial presidential campaign still owes me money.
These are approval ratings for a President who has been
linked, not by gossip, but by tape recording and court
affidavit, to so many women not his wife Woody Allen would
blush.

These are approval ratings for a President who is alleged to
have suggested that one of the aforementioned women deny the
relationship if she is ever asked the question by an
investigator.

Have I mentioned the President's Campaign stiffed me in 1992
when I was doing a little media work for him in South Texas,
the only place in Texas, as I recall, where William
Jefferson Clinton got enough votes to count? I remember
getting a letter after the election suggesting I donate my
services to the cause. I declined. As I recall, I declined
rather loudly but I still didn't get paid. Hey it wasn't
that much money. It sure wouldn't have bought a night in
Lincoln's Bedroom.

Now we sit and look at Poll results so bizarre they are
unbelievable. That was my first refuge - denial. The polls
were unbelievable, I thought, therefore they were false. But
now Aunt Lois reports from Missouri that Missouri loves
William Jefferson Clinton, with only a few exceptions, who
are afraid to say they're exceptions loud enough for the
Secret Police to hear. Similar reports are coming from
across the United States.

I'm terrified. The tube polls may be right. If so, the
Yahoos and the MTVs control the nation.

Hey, did you know William Jefferson Clinton owes me money?

OUR VIEW

Nuclear trash trail on I-20

The Sierra Blanca Con is beginning to gain momentum.
And we really don't know how to stop it.

All those politicians with dollar signs in their eyes have
decided they are going to dump the nuclear trash from Maine
and Vermont near Sierra Blanca in West Texas and they are
going to drive that trash down Interstate 20.

Isn't there something in federal environmental laws about
danger to human beings? Those laws protect itty-bitty bugs
and antisocial lizards. It's about time they started
protecting people.

The biggest lie the proponents of this scam have going is
the people of Sierra Blanca and environs want their
surroundings to glow green at night.

That is an absurd canard created and promulgated only by
those from East of Interstate 35 who stand to make money
from it and by the residents of Maine and Vermont who do not
want to take care of their own trash.

Now hear this!

Absolutely no local or regional governing body supports this
idiot plan to use West Texas for a nuclear waste dump and
this particularly includes the citizens and governments of
the area of Sierra Blanca. But that isn't the tale you hear
from the Texas Low Level Radioactive Waste Disposal
Authority whose spokespersons say the people of the area
involved support this draconian and egregious plan. Then
they stumble a bit when asked to name one group from the
area which does. They can't.

We don't want this nuclear trash trucked out Interstate 20
through Ward County and we support Sierra Blanca in its
opposition to being nuked in the name of Yankee dollars.

Letter from the editor

By Steve Patterson

Under the prevailing conventional wisdom of our times, only
a cold-hearted capitalist would dare attempt to defend the
use of sweat-shop labor in developing countries. As the
syndicated comic strip "Doonesbury" preaches to the choir on
the political correctness of Nike's business practices in
Southeast Asia, we also watched as the media devoured one of
its own over the conditions in which Kathy Lee Gifford
reaped the profits from her line of sportswear. Righteous
indignation and outrage poured forth from liberals and
organized labor.

Granted, I can understand labor unions being upset with
foreign competition which pays workers a daily wage of about
half of the unions' hourly wage. Unions have a vested
interest in keeping a lid on competition. At the same time,
unions can pat themselves on the back for being responsible
for chasing investment overseas. I guess the Teamsters could
try to organize the workers of the world, but it did not
work for the Communist Party and I doubt it will work for
the son of Hoffa.However, something is going on along the
U.S.-Mexico border which has been largely ignored by the
liberals - and conservatives for that matter. That something
is the success of Mexico's maquiladoras. According to a
recent feature story in the Dallas Morning News, the Mexican
assembly plants set up under this program, which has been in
existence since 1965, total 3,833 factories with a work
force of one million plus.

Ciudad Acuna, on the other side of the Rio Grande from Del
Rio, has 53 such factories with a workforce of 20,000.
According to the president of the Maquiladora Association in
Acuna, factory owners offer their workers such incentives as
food coupons for supermarkets, free-transportation, on-site
schooling and technical training. These incentives are in
addition to the benefits mandated by Mexican law of complete
medical coverage, paid vacations, maternity leave and
Christmas bonuses.

So, while admittedly the average daily wage of maquilaoras
workers are chicken feed compared to their U.S.
counterparts, the standard of living may not be as bad as
what our liberal friends would have us believe.

The story cited one family, a father and two sons, who
worked at the same factory. Altogether they average $150 per
week. The family had moved to the border from a rural area
in the state of Durango where they rarely averaged $25 per
week. Something tells me they are glad to have these
low-paying jobs.

These factory jobs have been cushion for the country during
the various rounds of peso devaluations and - I have little
doubt - at least slowed the amount of illegal border
crossings. My guess would be that critics of the Mexican
program are trying to compare the U.S. standard of living to
that of Mexico. We made the same mistake in Haiti, in Costa
Rica and, yes, in Southeast Asia. As much as it would pain
me to see one of my own children working in sweat-shop
conditions, it would pain me even more to see them starving
and without the option to work.

While Mexican factory workers are a long way from
prosperity, they have gained a toe-hold on the path to free
enterprise. It may take a couple of generations before
Ciudad Acuna looks like its sister city of Del Rio, but with
the mere presence of an opportunity of a better life, we may
be surprised how Mexico will look in the next century.
I became convinced several years ago that people in
developing countries don't really want foreign aid from the
U.S. as much as they want a job and opportunity to improve
their lot in life. It's the American way.



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