Contempo Magazine Blog

This year Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) was invited to be one of the main speakers at the Conservative Political Action Conference being held from February 26-28, 2009 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington D.C.  He called on conservatives to practice “principled opposition”, avoid identity politics, adhere consistently with conservative ideals, and to reach out to minorities with a conservative message of human dignity.  Since the election of 2008 Republican Texas Senator John Cornyn has become more visible on the national scene. After serving as Texas Attorney General and a judge he was first elected to the Senate in 2002. The ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee is now the Chairman for the national Republican Senate campaign committee.

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)  is an annual political conference attended by conservatives, activists, and elected officials from across the United States. CPAC began in 1973 as a small gathering of dedicated conservatives but has since grown into a large event attracting members of Congress, college activists, and other political celebrities. It is hosted by the American Conservative Union in association with sponsors Human Events and the Young America’s Foundation. Currently there are over 9000 attendees among which many are college students. Although many Republicans attend the event there is no official affiliation with the Republican party.

Cornyn began his speech reminiscing how when he began his political career the Republican party was almost nonexistent in Texas but with patience and determination had risen to be the majority. The defeat of the Republicans in the recent national elections was due not to the failure of conservative principles but to the abandonment of those principles by Republicans. To win elections Republicans need to stick to conservatives principles consistently. He noted that some Democrats have been winning elections by adopting conservative principles such as gun rights, pro-life, and have borrowed the conservative idea of tax cuts.

The conservative movement is not dead. Even with the losses there are still enough Republicans to block bad legislation. Likely referring to recent criticism of some Republicans who have supported some Democratic economic plans he made the point that even if some party colleagues only agree 90% of the time it is better to continue to support that colleague than to support a Democrat who never agrees.
Congressional conservatives need to practice what he calls principled opposition. Blindly opposing the President and Democrats on every measure is unwise. Instead he counsels that Republicans should support the administration when they are right and oppose him when he is wrong. A very important duty for Republicans is to “read the fine print” of legislation that may have hidden agendas.

The Senator calls for the Republicans to run candidates nationwide and to increase the breadth of the party. They must look for candidates among Hispanics, African-Americans, religious groups, and from those that identify themselves as independents. At all costs identity politics targeting specific classes or groups should be avoided. Instead the party should reach out to all Americans to explain how conservatism respects human dignity.

Cornyn has made his relationship with Hispanics in Texas a cornerstone of his political success. While in the Senate, Cornyn has received various awards and recognitions relevant to the Latino community., including the 2005 Border Texan of the Year Award; the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders’s (CONLAMIC) Latino Leadership Award; and the Texas Association of Mexican American Chambers of Commerce’s (TAMACC). In his speech he discussed how even though he opposed the McCain-Kennedy immigration reform he maintained a dialogue with Hispanic leaders about their concerns.

As we have previously reported, Senator Cornyn has developed personal relationships with local South Texas Hispanic politicians. Although he supported the border fence which they opposed he championed the right of local officials to get funding for needed levee repairs which resulted in endorsements from numerous South Texas Democratic elected officials despite there being a Hispanic Senatorial Democratic candidate. While addressing CPAC the Senator made the point that Hispanics especially be courted to the conservative cause. He remarked they are conservative in core values and increasingly own small businesses. Only the Republican party has supported free trade and the democratically elected leaders of Latin America such as the presidents of Mexico and Columbia.

Conservative politicians would be wise to heed the wisdom of Senator John Cornyn. The growing Latino middle class will be a decisive factor in future elections.

Here is Senator Cornyn’s whole speech before CPAC:

Tony Magaña grew up in McAllen Texas, attended Texas A&M University, served as an officer in Army Reserve, and holds a doctorate from Harvard University. The co-founder of Contempo Magazine has participated in Valley business for over 20 years.He is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

Can private citizens get together to watch and comment on government spending?  For the past three weeks an independent group of developers without any institutional support has been making it possible.

The passage of the Democrats American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to a large extent depended upon a report put together by the United States Conference of Mayors who made a list of community projects. Although the Obama Administration has created a site that shows accountability by outlining where taxpayer money is being spent and also allows readers to send in comments this was not enough for some.

Jerry Brito is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. His research has focused on government transparency and accountability, specifically how the internet can be harnessed to crowd source the task of keeping officials accountable. After attending the Mayors Conference he came up with the idea of creating a database that would allow citizens to keep track and comment on projects funded or aided by the stimulus plan. He was joined by three other developers:Kevin Dwyer, Senior Computer Scientist at White Oak Technologies, Free Software contributor, and GNU/Linux zealot, Eileen Norcross, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Her research has focused on state and local budgets, economic development, and the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, and Peter Snyder, contract programming. He specializes in Web 2.0 projects and Cocoa programming in Chicago, IL. According to Joshua-Michéle Ross at Oreilly Radar none of the developers had ever really worked together till they came together for this project. They have founded the project out of pocket without any outside bias or influence.

The intent of the developers is to create  a site that allows for more interactivity about the projects beyond what the government has done. They created a database based upon the Mayors report. Specifically they want to get the benefit of “local knowledge.” On individual project pages there is a “wiki” where you can vote yes or no for the project, comment on it, or edit the page.  There is a running vote ratio score on whether the project is critical or not.  The site went live on February 2 and is called Stimulus Watch

The image above shows a typical chart graph on the site. Already the site has caused communities to begin discussing projects in their local media. Another effect has been the publicity generated for the project has brought out that many projects have significant errors or were poorly put together proposals. For example a request for $ 1 billion instead of $1 million was mistakenly given to the Federal government for a Mississippi project. For the “Doorbell” project to give improvements to public housing it was reveled that much of the project’s projected costs were inaccurate.

Although according to several recent polls a majority of Americans still support the idea of a stimulus plan many Americans remain skeptical that the funds will be wisely spent. On Stimulus Watch at the time of this writing, the most critical project listed was building a nursing home for Veterans in Tennessee for $4,300,000 which would yield 310 jobs while one of the least critical was building a “disc” golf course in Austin TX for about $ 1,000,000 which was listed as a “water” project and would give 2 jobs.

I applaud the developers of Stimulus Watch. Their website is worth more than one visit. This type of project can be very useful to keep the public both involved and informed in an unbiased way.

Tony Magaña grew up in McAllen Texas, attended Texas A&M University, served as an officer in Army Reserve, and holds a doctorate from Harvard University. The co-founder of Contempo Magazine has participated in Valley business for over 20 years.He is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

Imagine the Chief Justice of the United States asking the question if a person born in the United States is a citizen of the United States or asking an American attorney graduating from a prestigious law school if he will need an interpreter. Despite hundreds of thousands of naturally born Mexican American’s fighting in World War II’s bloody battlefields this was the world they found when they returned home. On February 23, 2009 at 8 central time, the PBS Series, The American Experience, will be presenting “A Class Apart”.  The program tells the story of how two South Texas Mexican-American attorneys took the case of Hernández vs. Texas all the way to the United States Supreme Court.

Although the Treaty of Guadelope Hidalgo ending the Mexican American war in 1848 conferred American citizenship to the native Hispanic population of the territories ceded to the United States it was not borne out in reality.  Mexican-Americans where treated as a separate and invisible class.  More often then not they were openly barred from restaurants or schools despite being given the status as “white” in the segregated South.

By the end of World War II there was beginning to be a movement in the Mexican American community to push for their rights. ( see our story about Felix Longoria) Although it was very unusual  for Hispanics to be admitted to professional school those that were lucky enough to get the opportunity began to champion the cause of Mexican American civil rights. The PBS documentary tells the story of a team of Texas Mexican American lawyers demanding that Mexican Americans who stood trial had a right to be judged by their peers. At that time no Mexican American had ever served in more than 70 Texas counties. Some well known local professionals from the Rio Grande Valley including Dr. Ramiro Casso and attorney Robert Sánchez remember the people and events of the day in the program.

Hernández vs. Texas was the first time Mexican American attorneys ever appeared before the Supreme Court. It is a case that many legal experts say has been mistakenly forgotten in it’s importance. There is no official transcript surviving so the documentary performs an important function in memorializing the memories of those involved who are still living.

Although one can argue that Mexican Americans have come a long way since the 1950s when the documentary is set there is still some very relevant lessons to be gleaned.  After reading the transcript and seeing some of the footage, I strongly recommend Carlos Sandoval’s production of “A Class Apart” for everyone to see. The attitude at that time of the average non-Hispanic American who saw a Latino on the street was to assume he was an illegal alien, uneducated,  and not proficient in the English language who was a member of an underclass. The question remains: Has that really changed?

Tony Magaña grew up in McAllen Texas, attended Texas A&M University, served as an officer in Army Reserve, and holds a doctorate from Harvard University. The co-founder of Contempo Magazine has participated in Valley business for over 20 years.He is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.