All the news that fits after crime and animal stories

Do you ever wonder why you see so many stories on local TV about crimes or wrecks and fires? In my small, local TV market the thing is drug busts. Interstate 10 runs through the city and county, and the local drug enforcement agents have had themselves quite  an operation for some time busting big semi trucks and SUVs and other cars they profile stop for various traffic offenses.

And animals. The local TV news directors have learned that animals pull at the heart strings. Ears perk up on animal abuse stories tons more than they do for a “misdemeanor” homicide. That isn’t to say I “heart” animal abuse. I still have a hard time looking at Mike Vick without some semblance of disgust.

The reason you see so much of the above is because it is easy, or” cheap ” as David Cay Johnson points out in this excellent piece in the journalism journal Nieman Reports. Your city council or school board or water district might be ripping you off because reporters are too busy chasing dog stories their editors sent them out on. You wouldn’t know you were getting reamed though because the reporter’s beat has given way to the easy and cheap.

If you want a real insight into what local news is really all about — and it’s not the conspiratorial, political clusterf**k that the far right has led you to believe — then check out this article.

On vacation, so,

Cliff Lee and the Rangers didn’t look so great last night but there is always tonight or the next day or whenever. That’s the good thing about a best of seven series. That’s what I like about baseball, even when all looks as if it is going to Hell in a hand basket there remains calm about. Baseball will only elevate your blood pressure slowly as opposed to basketball or football. Whether that is healthy or not,  I don’t know.

But I know that I already had to rush in to do some real work today that was for some reason unfinished and my boss couldn’t call me about in the last 13 days while I was on leave, so I go in on this, my 55th birthday and work two hours. So I am planning to treat the rest of my time off this week as vacation. That even means no writing. That is, unless something comes  up that I feel I should write about.

So,

A bonding experience

It’s time for your weekend “Look Out For This Wanted Person Unless You Are Too Drunk or Wasted To Do So.”

Our good citizen in the picture is Arin Laron Antwine, 21, of Beaumont, Texas, a.k.a. as “Our Town” and “River City” with a capital “C” that rhymes with “B” and that stands for “Bond Jumper.” Our so it would seem.

Wanted. And wanted some more. And wanted evern more. And wanted ...

The Beaumont Police Department said Antwine has 12 warrants for his arrest totaling a whopping $810,250. That’s almost enough money to get Dog the Bounty Hunter away from his latest escapade and looking for this guy. Antwine has six warrants for possession of a controlled substance, car theft, three for failure to  identify, possession of marijuana, and criminal mischief.

All this leads me to ask: How’d he get six warrants for possession of a controlled substance (undercover sting?) and three for failure to identify? Did he fail three times during one questioning to give his correct name? Inquiring minds want to know. Not really. I’m just kind of curious but it’s not going to keep me up at night.

So troops, you know what to do. If you see Antwine, don’t try to apprehend him yourself, unless you are a big, long-haired, ex-con, bounty hunter, TV star. That’ll ’bout do it.

E. Texas bomb suspect makes one ask: "What's in the water up there?"

Outsiders might wonder: “What’s in the water there?”

I’m talking about northern East Texas. First there was a rash of church fires. Then came a series of pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails being found, many in mailboxes. Of the latter, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives offered a $25,000 reward for “suspicious devices:”

“Numerous of these devices have been placed in blue United States Postal Service collection boxes. The suspicious items have been incendiary-style devices as well as devices that resemble pipe bombs. These incidents have occurred in the counties of Smith, Rusk, Gregg, Harrison, and Panola.”

They resembled pipe bombs? Oh well, it must be a government thing. In fact it was, allegedly.

Authorities say Larry Eugene North, 52, of Henderson, Texas, was indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday and arrested the same day without incident.

“North had previously been identified as a person of interest in connection with destructive devices which were being placed in postal collection boxes in East Texas,” said a press release by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Texas. ” On the morning on Apr. 7, 2010, North was observed placing such a device in a Tyler collection box leading to his subsequent arrest in the 3400 block of Corporate Drive.  Following his arrest, a search of North’s vehicle revealed an additional destructive device.”

The suspect apparently ” … did not care for the U.S. government,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Brit Featherston said at a press conference in Tyler this morning. Maybe he was mad about the plan to close post offices on Saturday although somehow I think not.

As to my earlier question of what’s in the water in northern East Texas? It depends on where you go. There are some places up there — as opposed to Southeast Texas to which we refer as “down here” — where the water could be contaminated with chicken waste. Chicken growing is a big deal in that part of the country. Why you can’t go up there to down here without coming across a chicken grove. Or perhaps it is chicken patties. Chicken pastures? Hey, I used to raise chickens and shovel out their excrement, so my knowledge of chickens is not a total waste.

Seriously, all of this coming on the heels of the string of church fires in the same vicinity causes one to pause and ask: What gives? The brother of one of my sister-in-laws is the pastor of one of the churches torched and is a fine man. So, even though I don’t feel his “pain” all of this is to me is not so much an abstraction. It is gratifying to many, and to me as well, that two suspects were arrested. If there has been a motive learned in these arsons I have not heard it even though a motive sometimes seems irrelevant.

Let’s let the law take its course in both of these cases of serial idiocy. These cases that just all coincidentally, perhaps,  happened in roughly the same vicinity.

Doubtful to see Juarez anytime soon

Time was when I would visit El Paso a trip across the Rio Grande to Ciudad Juarez would be standard fare. That was long ago, when my friend, Rene, with whom I was visiting and I were both much younger.

As a matter of fact, Juarez seemed to provide little to no fascination for Rene, who is Mexican-American and whose summers as a youth  included stays at his family’s ranch in the Chihuahuan interior. The pace of life in El Paso’s twin city seemed to have become too much for my laid-back old friend from our Navy days in Mississippi. Since I spent most of my life in East or Central Texas though, the bustling neighbor of El Paso to this day interests me.

Juarez, of course, has all the Mexican border town kitsch. I can once remember seeing a jackass, painted with black stripes like a zebra, with a cart it was pulling parked along a street. Trust me when I say, it wasn’t a zebroid. And donkeys have their own perverse connotation in Mexican border towns, but I won’t tread there. There were the cab drivers offering to take young males off to an adventure at a whore house or who knows where. There was all that is bad about border towns in Juarez that is bad and all that is bad about border towns that is good.

Also to be found in Juarez was the elegant, the storied and even the historical. Some spots were all three such as the Kentucky Club. A trip to Juarez wasn’t complete, at least in my eyes, without a stop for a margarita or two at the old bar with its high ceilings and carved wooden fixtures located on Avenida de Juarez. Anyone who was anyone in U.S. history during the last half of the 20th century had stopped by for a drink. Maybe they thought they needed one after seeing sights like jackasses painted as zebras!

In all during the visits I made there in the last 30 years, most while I was accompanied by a fluent Spanish speaker, I didn’t feel particularly threatened. Young, foolish and bullet-proof, a cousin of Rene’s and I once partied somewhere a good distance from the heart of the border area of Juarez. Exhausting most of our money we were forced to hoof it back to the border. We walked through some areas that, well, were probably dangerous then but we made it back safe to near the crossing where we each ate a burrito then had to borrow two cents from the lady at the taqueria to get through the turnstile to enter the U.S. side.

I even visited during my last trip to El Paso, which was on business, some six years ago when the city had begun to become more violent. Now, I am thinking of flying out to see Rene sometime this spring. I know he probably will not want to cross the border and with all the violence there — some 2,500 murders in Juarez last year and about 800 something already this year — neither will I.

The most recent episode of carnage to catch the Norteamericanos’ eyes, that is after the 15 teens were killed in January — are the killings of three people with connections to or who were employed by the U.S. Consulate in Juarez. Two children of one of the victims were also wounded in the attack.

It is a shame and unbelievable how out of control things have become in Juarez and in Mexico in general. What is at the root of it? Drugs? Well, the root of it like the so-called “root of all evil” is the love of money. Add in the lack of money, power, and if people are stupid enough to use in excess the drugs that they sell, a bundle of wired machismo and you got yourself one hell of a problem. That is exactly where the Mexicans find themselves now, to the point where walking for days with little food and water through the Chihuahuan Desert to illegally attempt a better life in el  Norte doesn’t sound all that bad does it?

Our perfectly coiffed Gov. Rick Perry wants the Pentagon to send Predator drones to patrol the border. Great. Maybe the unmanned planes will be armed and can cause a lot of things to go “boom” in the South. That is what probably a lot of the unthinking crowd feel would solve the problem.

But this is a problem that is beyond the grasp of our air-headed Texas governor. It is about, at the very least, a hemispheric economy and what kind of Mexico will be our future neighbors. Will they become a socialist state or one ruled by a dictator as in Mexico’s past? Will they become a failed state? Or will they maintain their course as one of the world’s emerging markets after getting past all the violence?

Whatever the answer, it sure seems the status quo isn’t working out.