"THE WORST ARE FILLED WITH PASSIONATE INTENSITY..."

By Juan Montoya
Don't look now, but two public servants with a history of possessing a penchant for unabashed self promotion are striving to catch your attention again.
They are both, unfortunately, being brought to you courtesy of the Brownsville Independent School District.
The first is trustee Minerva Peña, who still thinks she is a spring chicken wearing the Porter Belle outfit that she has hanging up in her closet. We have learned that Clueless Minnie has tossed her pom-poms in the ring to be selected as the BISD's representative for the prestigious Council of Urban Board of Education (CUBE).
You've seen Minnie. She's the flighty, inane member of the board who is perpetually wringing her hands and whining about how she worries about "the kids" of the district and then turns right around and goes along with agenda items that takes resources away from them and hands them to interests that suck up to her and her vanity.
She will blabber on in left filed about issues that have nothing to do with the subject at hand to the dismay and embarrassment of her colleagues. Luckily, we understand that the members of the CUBE selection committee isn't overly impressed with our flighty Miss and it will be a miracle of Red Sea proportions that she will be elected to the board.
She, by the way, is the board member who requested that the BISD honor and recognize her former colleague on the BISD board who the voters rejected overwhelmingly in a past election for his election to the Texas School Board of Education, Ruben Cortez.
 Cortez, who has been known to put the squeeze on BISD vendors and to gouge the luckless inmates of the Cameron County correctional facilities through the commissary contract that nets him and his partner Rick Zayas more than $500,000 annually from the sales of marked up products such as underwear and toiletries, is the master of self promotion.
Cortez, by the way, was formerly on the CUBE board, where Minnie wants to go.
Having just sold untold millions in refrigerators to the natives above the Arctic Circle, he managed – through the manipulation of the notorious mail-in and hauled in absentee vote-harvesting machines of Hidalgo and Cameron counties –   to get himself elected to Region One board and now to the TSBOE above unquestionably better qualified candidates with extensive backgrounds in education.
You see, the eyes and ears of South Texas who has promised to bring us the "historical opportunity" to be represented on the board is the proud holder of a GED. He will be sworn into office by his mother, Justice of the Peace Linda Salazar. Salazar is the "marrying Judge" who often stations her office clerks to steer couples to her court while funnelling off the serious cases to the JP next door.
At $250 a pop, four or five marriages a week will net Cupid Linda at least a cool $1,000 aside from her salary.
With her flair for an endearing crudity that has been wearing thin over the years, Salazar will haunt the second floor of the courthouse for years to come.
With her as JP, her son Ruben at the TSBOE, and their ally Peña on the board of the BISD, God help us all.