Archive for ‘Live News’

LBJ Museum 60’s Night — Part 3

By Lisa Marie Coppoletta, 6 September, 2010, No Comment

LBJ Museum 60’s Night — Part 3
Council person Christopher Jones in costume, Jon Leonard dancing, and former Mayor of San Marcos, Texas Mr. Bill G. Moore shares his personal memories of President Johnson in the 1960s.

LBJ Museum 60’s Night — Part 2

By Lisa Marie Coppoletta, 4 September, 2010, No Comment

Donations by local businesses are recognized as well as artist Daniel Scales, who tie-dyed the t-shirts for silent auction.

HQAQSM – What’s in these barrels?

By Lisa Marie Coppoletta, 3 September, 2010, No Comment

San Marcos News Live is on the downtown beat investigating barrels dumped in the heart of our community. Open Records Requests will be sent today to investigate the contents of these barrels and what air quality risks lurk here in our community.

GOOD NEWS UPDATE – Safety for Citizens & Workers: Waiting for City to Respond to Air Quality

By Lisa Marie Coppoletta, 2 September, 2010, No Comment

Just a quick update, since our Open Records request yesterday, said activity of “soda blasting” has been hauled. We were appraised of this via Mr. Rodney Cobb, Director of Community Services, with the City of San Marcos Parks and Recreation. More updates as we work with the city and continue to suggest best practices to protect Air Quality here in San Marcos, Texas. Good job Mr. Cobb!!

Safety for Citizens & Workers: Waiting for City to Respond to Air Quality Public Health Concerns

By Lisa Marie Coppoletta, 1 September, 2010, No Comment

SMNL has exclusive video and audio recordings. We are awaiting Open Records Requests. Check back this week for public health concerns related to air quality and blasting of paint particulates with no respiratory protection and lack of concern for citizens riding bikes and walking by these sights slated for blasting in our community. Moreover, there are issues raised by businesses. So lock it in live for exclusive story aired this week {as soon as City responds to our requests for documentation}.

Background video from Mother’s Day – Air Quality Issues in San Marcos – NO help from City Officials still to this day, an EPA complaint has been filed.

Below please find initial open records requests from today. Since our requests, we have been advised that said operations have ceased.

Open Records Request – Follow Up from Yesteray

Wednesday, September 1, 2010 8:12 AM
From:
“Lisa Marie Coppoletta” <lisa_coppoletta@yahoo.com>

To:

Health_Info@sanmarcostx.gov
Cc:
“Daniel Scales” <daniel_scales@earthlink.net>, “DANIEL SCALES” <daniel.scales@yahoo.com>

Mr. Brinkley,
Here is my e-mail address, you advised in voice mail you had it incorrect. This is an Open Records request for the businesses slated for graffiti blast and the materials used to remove the paint.  Also, would like any environmental studies on file regarding the air particulates when the paint is blasted off of buildings. Moreover, witnesses have seen more then the graffiti blasted off, therefore are the buildings tested for led paint.
Best, LMC

Re: Open Records Request – Part 2

Wednesday, September 1, 2010 8:35 AM
From:
“Lisa Marie Coppoletta” <lisa_coppoletta@yahoo.com>

To:

Health_Info@sanmarcostx.gov
Cc:
“Daniel Scales” <daniel_scales@earthlink.net>, “DANIEL SCALES” <daniel.scales@yahoo.com>

Mr. Brinkley,

Additionally, I’d like to review where in City policy it indicates that employees of City of San Marcos do not have to wear masks to protect their bodies from the particulates? What type of hearing protection was being used, and how is it rated?

Is there a process in place to notify surrounding businesses?  Yesterday, such an operation was being conducted at a food establishment, the particulates could go right inside when customers open the door. Moreover, the particulates can go inside via the vents.  Our video footage indicates that the particulates were going all over the cars of at least a one  block radius.

Best, LMC

The San Marcos Mold Report, Part 1

By Lisa Marie Coppoletta, 1 September, 2010, No Comment

Check back in September for breaking report in San Marcos, Texas uncovering mold lurking in our community. We are currently interviewing residents and businesses about Air Quality and mold in San Marcos. To be included in the story, please e-mail lisa_coppoletta@yahoo.com

Digital Device Report: First Responders Training Day in San Marcos, Texas

By Lisa Marie Coppoletta, 29 August, 2010, No Comment

Mr. Chris Chomel, a fire fighter/paramedic with twenty years of experience with the Sequin Fire Department and eight years as Program Director for the Emergency Medical Services of Texas Fire Academy instructs San Marcos Emergency Medical personnel on the Basics of Vehicle Extraction of Patients. Mr. Chomel provides this training to fire fighters on a regular basis and to Emergency Medical Teams several times a year. This type of cross training is invaluable to both Fire Fighters and EMTs, especially in a mass community emergency when first responders and their resources are stretched thin. Mr. Chomel is both a credit to his department and to the public he serves and protects.

LBJ Museum 60’s Night – Part 1

By Lisa Marie Coppoletta, 14 August, 2010, No Comment

LBJ – Legacy of Race in San Marcos, Texas

By Lisa Marie Coppoletta, 10 July, 2010, No Comment

“This Week in History” San Marcos News Live interviews Mr. Bill Cunningham and Mr. Albert Armstead about the Legacy of LBJ and legislation passed to work towards the elimination of racism in America.

Part 1 – Discussions of legislation, dynamics of race in San Marcos, Texas and present day implications of President LBJ’s legacy of race in America.

Part 2 – Mr. Armstead provides an Oral History lesson on the movie theaters in San Marcos, Texas in the segregated South. Mr. Cunningham gives insight from research of students, and Daniel Scales tells of his personal narrative of segregation in Austin, Texas for Latinos.

Part 3 – Mr. Armstead provides an Oral History lesson on the workforce during times of segregation in Texas as we celebrate LBJ this week in history and legacy of race relations in United States.

Exclusive SMNL Video Coverage – University Star 100 Years @ LBJ Museum

San Marcos Education Report – Community Dialogues 02/11/10

By Lisa Marie Coppoletta, 13 March, 2010, No Comment

SMCISD Community Dialogues – Feb 11, 2010 – Clip 1

SMCISD Community Dialogues – Feb 11, 2010 – Clip 2

SMCISD Community Dialogues – February 11 – Clip 3

SMCISD Community Dialogues – February 11 – Clip 4

SMCISD Community Dialogues – February 11 – Clip 5

San Marcos Education Report – Community Dialogues 02/04/10

By Lisa Marie Coppoletta, 12 March, 2010, No Comment

Below is the footage from last February 04, 2010 Education Dialogues, in which parents, students, educators and administrators gathered together to discuss in small group settings “Preparing Today’s Youth for Tomorrow’s Jobs.”

Introduction Segment

SMCISD Superintendent, Dr. Patty Schaefer provides an update on the accomplishments of our school district as well as the history of Community Dialogues right here in San Marcos, Texas.

Mr. Rick Olmos, Communications Director of E3 Alliance introduces Professor Taylor Willingham, moderator of the Education Dialoges for San Marcos, Texas and provides an overview of the mission of E3 Alliance.

Taylor Willingham, moderator for tonight’s Deliberative Dialogues, gets things rolling and provides a working overview for the goals this evening.

Round Table Discussions

Character Education

Roving Microphone

Part 1 – Keypads from Texas Health Institute

Part 2 – Keypads from Texas Health Institute

Baby Boomers Bound By Buyouts

By Lisa Marie Coppoletta, 1 March, 2010, No Comment

Baby Boomers Bound By Buyouts
By Daniel Scales

As if our our current economic depression’s stranglehold round our nation’s throat were not enough, prepare for another perfect storm brewing on the horizon. An exponentially high school dropout rate that inevitably will lead to record crime and incarceration of our young people. The next generation of replacement workers that (according to tradition) should be paying taxes required to supplement millions of retiring Baby Boomers. A little known or advertised fact; approximately half of the trillions of debt racked up by our government is not owed to China or the EU but to our own Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid funds. The U.S. government has not only squandered tax revenues that Boomers invested towards retirement but jobs and workers needed to refill the coffers are missing in action. Millions of Boomers have received a letter from Social Security Administration advising them to make other financial plans for retirement because social security will be bankrupt by time of retirement.

With only 47% percent of high school students in our nation’s fifty most populated urban centers graduating, has the problem spilling out of cloistered academic halls and onto political floors of power. Mayors throughout the country are recalibrating their educational prospectus’ on dropout rates. With 77 million Boomers retiring, their future’s tethered to 20th century trained workers (Google Charter Schools) in a 21st century global economy unequivocally spells magma meltdown. What can be done in the short term for Boomers? Prayers are nice, but if you must pray… “pray that we Boomers remain healthy enough to work 2 part time jobs to pay the rent and not get sick of it because we can’t afford health insurance.”

Some folks in communities across our nation resort to horizontal oppression and blame our young people’s lack of initiative and fortitude for the current state of affairs. Fact: cut the dropout rate by 50% automatically generates $45 billion in new tax monies annually. One major problem belies this equation, the assumption that enough jobs will exist to accommodate graduates. Even if the difference in lifetime salary for a dropout and a high school graduate is $300,000, it don’t amount to a hill of beans if you ain’t got no job.

With America well over 14 trillion dollars in official debt (Google $73 trillion) and our official unemployment rate at 12% (Google 21%) the numbers do not add up, but become meaningless abstract place holders. And let us make sure to petition that our leaders to never again resort to consecutive regional wars much less a sustained global war to end any further economic depressions. Mean while back on the farm, saddled with exponential numbers of students not graduating, rising costs of social programs, prisons, and tax revenue loss due to lack of trained workforce, what to do indeed?! Dropouts are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system. They are our children, we must find a wiser solution.

Some stalwart steps are being taken by government officials and educators alike, with better counseling services and efforts to design curricula that makes sense, workforce wise. Will these efforts be enough to stem the uneducated tide from rising to Tsunami proportions? Are Baby Boomers overboard, drifting on a raft of hope manned by uneducated sailors just trying to tread enough to keep their own heads above water?

What’s In Your System?

By Lisa Marie Coppoletta, 28 February, 2010, 8 Comments

WHATS IN YOUR SYSTEM?
BY
Daniel Scales

Why does the city of San Marcos, Texas continue to fluoridate its water supply when extensive studies conducted by researchers from Harvard and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have shown the practice to be extremely harmful and deleterious in numerous ways? Reputable investigative researchers have unequivocally shown that fluoridation of drinking water can result in brain and physiological damage, producing a perfect storm of abnormalities unbeknown to living systems until the mass production of fluoride.

In 1997, the New York Times published a report of once classified documents dating back to the Manhattan Project. Investigative reporters managed to solve an enigmatic puzzle, uncovering the secretive rationale for adding fluoride to the drinking water of U.S. cities. Why do our duly elected city representatives omit in their calculations (when following the EPA’s guidelines of 2-4 ppm) the OBVIOUS. The obvious being that already existent in our food chain is found an inordinate amount of fluoride due to food processing with fluoridated water. Studies of adolescent diets found plenty of fluoride in the food and adding more to the water supply would exceed the public health department’s maximum daily dose.

The reason “WHY,” for San Marcos’ ignorance, may well be conjoined with the reason “WHY” the fluoridation establishment is practically Omnipotent. Even after publicly registering the testimony of legions of physicians and scientists stating unequivocally that fluoride is a toxic poison deadly to all living systems, they retaliate with a vengeance. The political and financial forces encrypting the fluoride industry are vicious and unrelenting in their assaults upon anyone daring to stand up to the decaying tooth about deadly fluoride . Scores of reputable doctors and scientists have had their careers ruined as the result of trying to inject truth into the global abyss of fluorosilicic acid.

It’s actually quite elementary; fluoride is a waste product of industry, especially phosphate fertilizer production as well as a matrix of other manufactured pollutants. The captains of industry could not dispose tons of toxic waste with out detection unless abstracting a plausible use for it, so they concocted a Trojan Horse fable about it being good for dental health. The “fact,” that fluoride was declared to be beneficial was the cornerstone of the government’s defense against lawsuits stemming from an environmental contamination that took place at Du Pont’s New Jersey chemical complex in 1944.

A study published in I948 by scientists in the Journal of the American Dental Association categorically undermines the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission’s right to cite national security in order to censor all evidence concerning the adverse health effects from fluoride. In addition to the dental and skeletal damage caused by fluoride, research states another prominent finding, the significant reduction of cells associated with the Hippo-campus, the brain’s CPU. Its the primary decision making part of the brain, damage to it causes many of its victims to become unable to self regulate their daily existence.

The EPA’s own research clearly indicates that not only does the presence of fluoride reduce the body’s ability to utilize oxygen and nutrients, but actively inhibits the system’s ability to rid itself of waste. This creates a deadly synergistic spiral poisoning the body with its own waste while shutting down its ability to utilize nutrients required in the detoxification process.

The bottom line for San Marcos residents can be summed up by the salient words (to his children) of a visitor from Guadalajara, Mexico to the Outlet Mall, said in Spanish…”Remember don’t drink the water,” takes on a whole new meaning and “Good to the last Drop,” doesn’t sound so appealing.

March 2010 Elections

By Lisa Marie Coppoletta, 20 February, 2010, No Comment

MR. RIGO AMAYA, CANDIDATE FOR CALDWELL COUNTY JUDGE

I have served in the law enforcement profession for approximately fifteen years. I have proudly served in four different agencies, beginning with Southwest Texas State University as a University Police Parking Control Officer. Then in July 1998, I was able to begin a long journey of accomplishing one of my life’s aspirations,  serving as a Texas Highway Patrolman. I graduated from the academy after twenty-six weeks of  the most intensive training provided to elite law enforcement agencies.  In January of 1999, I was assigned to the License and Weight Service stationed in Eagle Pass, Tx. After a year, with my family life stabilized, I was hired by the Austin Police Department in June 2001.  I was assigned as a patrolman to the Sixth Street Sector.

I rejoined the Department of Public Safety and was again assigned to Eagle Pass in Jan. 2002. I was finally able to come closer to home in September of 2002 when was I transferred to our State Capitol. From 2002 throughout 2004, I was with my beloved family until being reassigned to License and Weight Service in Pharr, working at Port of Entry until transferred to Laredo in May of 2005. Less than a year later I was transferred back to Eagle Pass on January 1, 2006, Highway Patrol division until my resignation on December 11, 2007.   I applied and was hired by the City of Lockhart to head the newly created City Marshal’s Office on Jan.  2008, which  has  been a great honor. I have amassed a copious amount of knowledge regarding the intricate inner workings of  law enforcement policy and procedure and how that translates to the inner workings of county government. I would appreciate the opportunity to share this knowledge in practicum with the stalwart citizens of Caldwell County. Thank You for your support, and May God Bless America.

MR. BILL HUDDLESTON “I KNOW WHAT RIGHT LOOKS LIKE,” CANDIDATE FOR HAYS COUNTY SHERIFF

Bill Huddleston was born in Abilene, Texas where he attended public school. In 1968 Bill graduated from Texas Christian University with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree. After serving in the United States Marine Corps, Mr. Huddleston moved to the hill country. Bill owned and managed a successful construction company where he honed his administrative skills. In 1987 he began his law enforcement career as a Hays County Deputy. He is well respected by law enforcement personnel and other governmental entities.

The Blight Which Project? Past, Present, Future

By Lisa Marie Coppoletta, 31 January, 2010, 1 Comment

THE BLIGHT WHICH PROJECT? BLIGHT IN SAN MARCOS PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE
Segment 1 of a 3 part report. Join SMNL as we drive throughout San Marcos to investigate the various types and locations of blight in our community. As we get to the root causes and the implications of to effects of blight.

PART 1: What exactly is BLIGHT? It appears to be a double edge sword but with one edge exponentially sharper than the other as it relates to environmental racism. E.R. protocols enacting or enforcing any policy, practice, or regulation that negatively affects the environment of low-income and/or racially-homogeneous communities at a disparate rate than affluent communities can be consider a Blight Which Project.

MUSIC BY: The Black Angels “Manipulation”; Transient Dreams; Blue Hit; Carrie Ann “Little Black Heart”; Massive Attack “Inertia Creeps”; The Black Angels “Mission District”

In Memory of Capt. Paul W. Pena

By Lisa Marie Coppoletta, 27 January, 2010, No Comment

On January 28th, Hilltop Drive, sitting atop a butte on the east rim of San Marcos, was lined with hundreds of American flags saluting Capt. Paul W. Peña. It was his neighborhood paying tribute to a fallen soldier to celebrate his life and support of his loved ones. Paul, who died in Afghanistan this past week when his unit triggered an improvised explosive device, lived with his mother Cecilia, a teacher.

HAZZ WASTE Collection in San Marcos: Teamwork to Protect the Environment

By Lisa Marie Coppoletta, 23 January, 2010, 1 Comment

Mr. Friedman addresses Texas State Democrats

By Lisa Marie Coppoletta, 20 January, 2010, 1 Comment

Dr. Martin Luther King – A Day of Celebration in San Marcos, Texas

By Lisa Marie Coppoletta, 18 January, 2010, No Comment

Video coverage shot today, Monday January 18, 2010 in San Marcos Texas of the various celebrations in memory of Dr. Martin Luther King.