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Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

(Copy of my comment posted below)

This article is about Brownsville-RGV.

Local government there is some of the worst nationally.

The FBI has been running a massive anti-corruption operation there for over a decade now that has found corruption from the Mayor to the County DA all the way to their Congressman [0][1][2].

It's sad because the people there are hardworking, but because a large portion of the RGV's population is undocumented or an immigrant and is littered with fiefdoms and multi-generational political families, it has been neglected. The principal mentioned in the article is herself a member of one of these multi-generational public servant families in RGV

[0] https://www.expressnews.com/news/local/article/South-Texas-a...

[1] https://www.npr.org/2015/07/06/413463836/corruption-on-the-b...

[2] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/22/henry-cuellar-king-...

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What's an RGV?

Rio Grande Valley

It's in the links.

Rio Grande Valley. It's the name for the region that is the southern tip of Texas. It's overwhelmingly Latino, and was never economically integrated into the rest of Texas as Tejanos (the Mexican settlers in Texas) were able to retain power there after 1834. RGV is basically split between Tejanos (who have US citizenship) and immigrants (documented and undocumented) from neighboring Mexico. Within the RGV, a handful of Tejano political families essentially run everything there. There have been some attempts to clean up politics and governance there, but it's hard when a significant portion of the population there cannot vote, and a significant portion of the rest will vote for existing patronage networks. It's the similar issue in the Missippi Delta, portions of Central California, and portions of Upstwre New York - multi-generational patronage networks have a stranglehold on power.

Could you recommend somewhere to learn more about the NY component?

It's upstate New York, not the rest of NY.

A notable example was the Buffalo Billion scandal with bid rigging to open a tech campus in Albany for photovoltaic cell, nanotechnology, and semiconductor manufacturing. [0][1]

It was a legacy making project for Gov. Mario Cuomo (he started the precursor in the 90s) and his son Gov. Andrew Cuomo [1]

Albany was largely cleaned up after Cuomo "resigned" because there was a bottom-up revolt by millennial lawmakers and staffers working in Albany and on the Hill to coordinate a way to clean up Albany poltical culture [2]

You're Irish though, so I'd compare it to the corruption crackdown that happened in Ireland after the collapse of Anglo-Irish Bank and the very improper relations between builders, banking, and govt in Ireland in the 90s and 2000s.

[0] https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/201...

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/07/after-scandals-and-...

[2] https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2021/0...

Appreciate it, and the localisation.

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