State Senator Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa (D-McAllen) has introduced a resolution to encourage the U.S. State Department to ensure Mexico starts delivery of water to Texas as outlined in the 1944 International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC). Mexico is supposed to provide at least 350,000 acre-feet of water per year, but they are currently about five years in arrears. It’s not like the government of Mexico can do much about the shortfall; they don’t control the border area or the water flowing into the Rio Grande River, and Texas won’t negotiate with drug cartels. Chuy warned: “The reality is that even commercially, the growth of the Valley is being stunned because we cannot issue any more builder’s permits because there’s no water.”
Senator Hinojosa, who is quick to remind anyone who asks and many who don’t that he’s a former Marine, didn’t really mean the local municipalities are no longer issuing building permits; that would be crazy. He was using hyperbole to explain why Mexican real estate investments may experience anemic growth unless the cartels stop bogarting the water from the Rio Grande. It is an interesting sentiment that will have no impact on the current water woes of the Rio Grande Valley. A couple of large tropical storms would be useful in making up the backlog. But, hurricanes have decreased in intensity and frequency since the 1990s, so Mother Nature has little chance to make up for the Mexican water shortfall.
The real threat to financial prosperity for the constituents of State Senator Juan Hinojosa is men like Juan Hinojosa. Chuy was the quarterback for his Mission High School football team, did a stint in the Marine Corps, came home, got his bachelor’s degree from UTRGV (Pan Am University at the time), and then went to Georgetown, where he earned a law degree. It’s the law degree that makes him dangerous. To be fair to Chuy, he did not return to the Valley, obtain a vanity business phone number like (444) 444-4444, flood the television with ads making him look like a Top Gun pilot while promising anyone, anywhere, who was hurt in an accident that he will get them a large payday in court.
Chuy Hinojosa used his good looks and Horatio Alger-style rags-to-riches story to get into South Texas Democratic machine politics, which is statistically much more lucrative than ambulance chasing. The Democratic machine endeavors to bring excessive amounts of federal tax money into the valley, so despite their many and manifest wealth-accumulating grifts, we view them as a net positive.
But tort lawyers cost Texans 38 Billion Dollars a year, which negatively impacts much more than insurance rates. The Lone Star Alliance, representing over 950 Texas job creators, citizens, and business associations, recently explained the costs of bogus lawsuits:
“Inflationary and litigation costs have decreased the availability of insurance for individuals and businesses in Texas and have forced some businesses to increase prices, lay off employees, or close. Small businesses are burdened with soaring insurance premiums that jeopardize their survival, while the constant wave of lawsuits drives up the costs of essential items like food and medical care.”
I became interested in this topic one year after my wife was hit while pulling out of a parking space at the local HEB. There was no damage to my truck, but considerable damage to her left rear quarter panel. The woman who hit her couldn’t speak English but waited patiently for the police to show up and issue a report blaming the other driver. A year later, my insurance company contacted me about a personal injury resulting from the collision. They instructed me to send any correspondence concerning the settlement to them, which caused me to call and ask them why they were using the word “settle.” They, in turn, informed me that the settlement amount is classified.
My insurance company was founded by former military officers who recognized that the new media is like artillery: it adds dignity to what would otherwise be a vulgar brawl. As is typical of military officers, they classify everything that might embarrass them, so I’ll never know how much the deadbeat who hit my wife got away with. But I’m doing my bit by raising the alarm about the costs of tolerating shifty border lawyers and their plague of nuisance lawsuits.
