I will be adding narratives I develop as I watch changes on the Texas border with Mexico as well as issues with social threats and economic issues.
Challenges to Our State Organizations
Part 87
Sunday December 31, 2023
|
Month
|
World Virus Cases
|
World Virus Deaths
|
|
January 31, 2020
|
10,017
|
120
|
|
Sunday December 31, 2023
|
700,237,788
|
6,961,677
|
|
Month
|
Texas Virus Cases
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Texas Virus Deaths
|
| January 31, 2020 |
1,662
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23
|
|
Sunday December 31, 2023
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8,959,706
|
92,902
|
|
Immigrants
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2,400,000 in 2023
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A Record Year
|
|
Social Disorder
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Houston
|
Austin
|
USA
|
Mexico
|
|
Homicides
|
345
|
75
|
25,448
|
35,162
|
|
Unemployment
|
2.8
|
2.3
|
3.2
|
5.8
|
|
Economics
|
|
|
|
|
|
Crude Oil
|
$72.00
|
|
|
|
|
DJI
|
$37,400.00
|
|
|
|
Overview
These reports grow out of my research on organizations, individuals and cultures. The common theme in my research, writing and community activity has been how to create situations from the individual, the small group to the full organization and community that are productive and rewarding. During the course of my lifetime since about the beginning of World War II and the ending of the Great Depression, we have seen and participated in great changes in American and world culture. The years of the 1940’s and 1950’s were when the United States became the dominant country in the world.
A hundred years earlier in the 1850’s and 1860’s, the country was mostly agriculture with very few large farms. The largest were in the South where slavery made possible large plantations that grew food and more important, cotton. Cotton unlike fresh vegetables, fruits and even to some extent grains could not readily be stored and shipped. Part of the reason for the Civil War was the effort to end people owning people but also because industrial development in areas like New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and other states of the northeast were needing labor in factories and in shipping. Labor was seen as an important resource to develop and development included making labor more mobile. Some of this was occurring in Europe where England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Holland were building industrial bases but also ending colonial empires that were like the slavery of the American South. This change was visible in Mexico where Spanish colonialism was overthrown and late in the 1800’s Mexicans of mainly Indian/indigenous descent began to overthrow colonial slavery both in the control of the land but in social mobility as well.
From 1900 until about 1950 America was changing from a land of many rural communities to cities with factories that attracted rural labor. Chicago is an example. It saw new factories created in electronics, automobiles, textiles, all drawing labor from rural areas and then sent products first by shipping in the Great Lakes and then by trains and trucks to consumers. Montgomery Wards and Sears and Roebucks are examples of this movement. Both companies began by mailing catalogs to small town and rural residents of goods that could be ordered and then delivered to homes. The Postal System and catalogs were the technology that created a different economy.
A comparable development with the creation of the Internet are companies like Amazon that provide products via the Internet and then ship purchases to the customer. Amazon began as a book seller operating out of a home owner’s garage (Jeff Bezos) in Seattle and in 2023 had annual revenues of $554 billion second to the world’s largest retailer, Walmart with $606 billion. These decades saw the creation of large multi-county and then multi-state organizations. Individuals became less anchored to the land such as farms and ranches and more as residents in cities and employees in organizations. Higher education levels were needed and until the Covid educational levels rose in the United States.
Impact of Covid
The year, 2023, has seen a recovery from the Covid shutdown that began in late 2019. Where the virus came from and how it was spread across the world is filled with controversy. The dominant explanation is that the virus passed from a bat or some other animal in China to humans. A secondary explanation is that the virus was created in the Wuhan Laboratory by adding functions to an existing virus. A related theory is that the funding and the expertise to add such functions came from research money through Department of Health and Human Services in the offices ofthe National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Centers of Disease Control. Two physicians, Anthony Fauci and Rochelle Walensky, are the names most associated with identifying the virus, advising the President and Congress and prominent actors in decisions to control travel, work in offices and schools, fund research, advising on masking, etc. Through these offices funding was provided to organizations like the EcoHealth Alliance for research into bat viruses which in turn worked with the Chinese Wuhan Laboratory. Given two decades of rising tension between the United States and China concerns have repeatedly surfaced about efforts from the Chinese to create such diseases as a war strategy.
The Texas Border With Mexico
Whether there were actions promoting viruses in China laboratories that would threaten other countries, the actions of China are clear in Mexico where the chemicals used to create illegal drugs like fentanyl are created in China and shipped to the west coast of Mexico. No threat anywhere in the world has the immediate consequences as Mexican disorder has for the United States.
Moving manufacturing to low labor cost countries has been a pattern for three to seven decades. During those years from about 1980 the industrial might of cities like Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Cleveland has sharply declined leaving vacant factories, increased unemployment, high crime rates and migration out to states in the South and West. Texas has benefited from this by manufacturers moving to Texas with Tesla the most prominent in Austin and great increases in manufacturing in Mexico and border traffic between Texas and Mexico.
Mexican Government
Mexico has a different form of democracy than the United States or most of Europe. It has had historically a single dominant political party. From the ending of the last Mexico revolution about 1929 until 2000, a single political party governed, the PRI (Party of the Institutionalized Revolution). In 2000 a new more conservative party captured the Presidency. The party was named PAN (Party of National Action) and led by Vicente Fox. Fox started as a driver in central Mexico for Coca Cola and then became a large and successful regional distributor and then the President of Coca Cola Mexico. The President in Mexico can serve only one term. In 2006 the new President was Felipe Calderón, also of the PAN. The PRI recaptured the Mexican Presidency in 2012 electing Enrique Peña Nieto. He was replaced by Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-present) from a new party, MORENA. Currently in office, he has implemented social programs aimed at reducing poverty and inequality. He is also known for his nationalist rhetoric and his criticism of foreign intervention in Mexico.
This November commentary from the Center for International and Strategic Studies provides a current perspective on the Mexican Presidential election in June of 2024:
“Mexico faces a monumental decision as the next presidential election approaches. Voters will decide either for a continuation of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) so-called fourth transformation or opt for a coalition of established opposition parties that have banded together to improve their electoral chances. In many ways, the election will be unprecedented. Political polarization will likely increase, and a deeper fragmentation of the traditional party system will likely result. On top of this, for the first time in Mexico’s history a woman is likely to be elected president. Despite the image of AMLO continuing to loom large, citizens are witnessing the end of his sexenio. Two women have emerged as the most likely presidential contenders. Claudia Sheinbaum, the former mayor of Mexico City and AMLO’s protégée, will represent the official governing coalition led by Morena, while Xóchitl Gálvez, a senator from the state of Hidalgo, will be the candidate for the Frente Amplio por México (FAM) alliance formed by traditional opposition parties the National Action Party (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). According to most recent polls, Sheinbaum is most likely to win next year—a trend that has held since the opening of the campaign. However, this ignores the fact that just months ago, it appeared as though Sheinbaum would not face an organized opposition with a viable, telegenic alternative. The erstwhile little-known senator Xóchitl Gálvez has burst onto the political scene in Mexico, leveraging a strong social media strategy and an affable persona with a flair for the theatrical. Importantly, as a woman with Indigenous roots, Gálvez’s humble upbringing appears to position her as less vulnerable to AMLO’s stinging, class-based rhetoric. Gálvez’s emergence has buoyed the opposition’s chances of competing next year for the presidency.
The third emerging political force in Mexico is loosely represented by the political party Movimiento Ciudadano (MC), which, adhering to electoral guidelines, has not yet revealed a chosen candidate. Several possible candidates from the party have declined to participate, including the governor of Jalisco, Enrique Alfaro, and the mayor of Monterrey, Luis Donaldo Colosio Riojas, partly to avoid playing into the hands of the president. However, the party’s internal processes remain plagued by a lack of transparency and muddled ambitions, which undermine their electoral possibilities, despite pitfalls manifested by both the FAM and AMLO’s electoral coalition. It is worth noting that the president has signaled a peculiar inkling to see the Governor of Nuevo León, Samuel García, fulfill his party’s entrusted task. With eight months to go until election day, the nascent campaign has reflected a continued expansion of the powers of the presidency under AMLO and, worse, a return to some past political practices thought to be left behind. At risk is an unbalanced scenario in which the wishes of party elites outweigh citizens’ preferences.”
https://www.csis.org/analysis/presidential-elections-and-fragmenting-political-landscape-mexico
The Mexico-Texas World
The United States is Mexico’s largest trading partner, accounting for nearly 15% of Mexico’s total trade in 2022. Mexico is the United States’ second-largest trading partner, accounting for over 14% of the United States’ total trade in 2022.
From the perspective of safe location, natural resources and capable human resources like government, schools and neighborhoods, Texas is one of the most favored locations in the United States and in the world. Mexico has two of these features, safe location and natural resources but its development of honest and responsive government has been a failure. The most distressing feature is the Cartels that control traffic in many areas of Mexico and human and drug crossing of the border.
This is reflected in sharp increases in illegals coming into the United States with the largest numbers into Texas. Record numbers have entered since 2020 and has reached over 1 million in the current calendar year. Increasingly, the illegals are not just from Mexico and Latin America with growing numbers of Chinese migrants crossing the Southern Border. More than 24,000 Chinese citizens have been apprehended crossing into the United States from Mexico in the past year. That is more than in the preceding 10 years combined! This creates an instability in the communities of Texas and is visible in Austin with rising crime including murders.
Looking Ahead
We may be entering an age where fewer people are needed. Most of Europe, much of Asia including China and the countries of North America are seeing populations growing below replacement rates. The United States only adds population from immigration. Africa is the only continent continuing with high birth rates but also the highest poverty and lowest education levels.
We have begun slowly a process to more self-sufficiency in Texas. Water, electricity, oil and open spaces favor us. But we have to recognize what we face and increasingly connect and work together! As we have noted in any community, state and nation, there are three forms of Capital. One is physical capital such as quality of land including grasslands and forests, natural resources (minerals, oil, water). Two is human capital which is the levels of education and training such as simple measures like the percentage of the population that has a high school degree. Three is social capital, which is the level of engagement and trust among individuals including family, neighbors, community and organizations.
And a couple or five articles that seem germane:
The recent attacks — all in the past month — are the latest in a string of mass killings in Mexico that have drawn renewed attention to the government’s struggle to control the violence raging across the country.
Violence in Mexico
“Wherever you look, there is a nephew, a brother, a friend dead,” said Angélica Zamudio Almanza, whose nephew was killed in the shooting at the holiday party on Sunday in Guanajuato, one of the most violent states in Mexico.
Harvard and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
As universities across the country strained under pressure to take a public position on the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, few were as tormented as Harvard. The decline of these universities particularly moving from measures of achievement such as quantity and quality of research to the vague intents of DEI are disturbing.
Chinese Companies in West Texas
Quoting from the newspaper: “None of this would be known had Mr. Yu’s company — BitRush Inc., also known as BytesRush — not run into troubles in the tiny Texas Panhandle town of Channing, population 281, where contractors say they weren’t fully paid for their work on his mine there.
A flurry of lawsuits over the work has shaken loose documents that bring to light transactions not normally made public as Chinese investors have flooded into the United States, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build or run crypto mines, after the Chinese government banned such operations in 2021.”
Image
December migrant encounters at the southern border are on track to exceed November’s numbers by 30%, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol sources confirmed to NewsNation Monday. CBP encountered roughly 130,000 migrants in the first 17 days of November. For the first 17 days in December, CBP reported about 167,000 encounters, according to a CBP source. That is a jump of 37,000 encounters, or 28%. CBP suspends operations at two rail bridges into Texas amid migrant surge. Migrant encounters have spiked in the Tucson Sector, but the sector is also leading the charge in self-surrenders. NewsNation’s Ali Bradley reported that a majority of those surrenders crossed through holes cut in the border wall by human smugglers. Roughly 10,000 or more people were apprehended daily last week and every day surpassed 10,000 migrants with the exception of Sunday, which only saw 9,900 encounters. Friday surpassed 11,000 migrants.
This surge in migrant crossings has overwhelmed local officials in southern border towns in areas such as Eagle Pass, Texas. On Monday morning, over 2,000 were waiting to be processed!
https://www.borderreport.com/immigration/december-migrant-encounters-up-nearly-30-from-november-cbp/
We end with a chart of the prices of oil. It is the key to much of the economy in America, even the world and especially Texas. Oil above $60 and below $100, things are in harmony.
