Russians Infiltrate Republicans

I was born at the height of the Cold War, just a few years after Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy was finally forced out of power. McCarthy used his position as committee chair to make himself a household name by accusing thousands of federal government employees of being communist spies and getting them fired. He kept raising the stakes until he tried to terrorize Army officers on national television and was finally called out by members of his own party.

Growing up I watched black and while movies at school that explained how the FBI watched out for communist spies; those movies showed how secret messages could be passed in hollow coins or using a folded newspaper to slip a note from one person to another as they passed each other on the street. Russian communism was feared by the public due in large part to Republicans ranting about being tough while claiming Democrats were weak. Lyndon Johnson damaged his own legacy by claiming US naval ships were attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin in order to have an excuse to send combat troops to Viet Nam as a way to show his was strong against communists.

In 2011, Maria Butina became founding chair of a new Russian gun rights group called the Right to Bear Arms. In 2013, NRA President David Keene was introduced as an honored guest at the Right to Bear Arms conference in Moscow. In December 2015, Butina’s Russian organization sponsored an NRA delegation, which included Keene and Trump campaign surrogate Sheriff David Clarke, to Moscow where attendees met with influential Russian officials including former deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin who had been under U.S. sanctions since 2014.

In 2016 the NRA doubled the size of its contributions to the National Republican Committee in the 2016 election cycle after connecting with Russian Maria Butina and her benefactors who provided millions of those dollars. Butina is also on record having cozied up to a wide range of Republican elected officials and political operatives. Butina is now in jail accused of espionage for the Russians.

The most prominent homeschooling organization in the U.S., the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) is a bastion of Republican support. The HSLDA has been associating with Russian operatives since at least 2014 when Michael Donnelly, director of global outreach, spoke there participated in a conference held in Russia. Donnelly wrote that he “met with senior leaders of the [Russian] Orthodox Church.” As Donnelly noted on Facebook, “[The] family conference I’m attending today is being held at the Kremlin and says a lot at least on its face about the value of family in Russian government.” One of the events sponsors was a foundation run by sanctioned Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeev.

The World Congress of Families (WCF), links sanctioned Russian officials to the broader U.S. religious right. The WCF, is a joint Russian-American project that reportedly receives funding from sanctioned Russian oligarchs like Vladimir Yakunin, who is the former head of Russian Railways and a close Putin confidant. One of the links between the HSLDA, the WCF and hence to sanctioned Russian officials is Alexey Komov. A Russian national and fluent English speaker, Komov is the official Russian representative to the WCF. He also works directly for Konstantin Malofeev, nicknamed “God’s oligarch” for his role in financing religious-right ventures in Russia and abroad. Malofeev is a financial contributor to the WCF also currently under U.S. sanctions for having helped fund separatists in eastern Ukraine.

So much has changed, now it’s the Republicans and their supporting institutions that are playing footsy with Russians.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - January 25, 2019

Forced Annexation and Your Tax Dollars

Forced annexation by cities in Guadalupe County has generated quite a stir lately. During the 2017 legislative session a bill was passed that essentially says if a county has over 500,000 people in it then cities in that county cannot forcibly annex land into the city, that’s Tier 2. Smaller counties are Tier 1 and cities can still use forced annexation unless the city limits run into a Tier 2 county, even if it is just a few acres, or if the entire county votes to convert to Tier 2 rules.

While residents of the extraterritorial jurisdictions (ETJ), most of whom are living on farms or multi-acre lots, often claim that the cities are annexing to generate additional revenue the fact is that the cost of providing services to those areas is usually considerably more than the increased tax income unless there is significant residential or commercial development. Cities like Cibolo which is in the midst of such a controversy usually just want to gain some element of control over the development of residential housing in those areas and be able to tax the properties for the services the city will end up providing such as fire and police. Current state law prevents cities from enforcing zoning in the ETJ.

Using Cibolo as an example, city zoning requires lot widths of no less than 55 feet and 10 feet from the lot line to the house on both sides. In at least one development proposed in the Cibolo ETJ, KB Homes wants to build homes on 40 foot wide lots leading to 8 houses per acre rather than the 6 per acre allowed under the city rules. More lots means more profit for KB Homes.

Again using Cibolo as the example, it costs about $2500 to send out a firetruck and crew on a call. Residents of the city are taxed in order to pay for those calls. In the ETJ residents don’t pay taxes to Cibolo so their fire protection is the responsibility of the county but due to the distances and time for county or volunteer fire crews to respond more often than not city crews work the call. In other words city tax dollars pay for firefigthers and equipment that ETJ residents then use for free. KB Homes gets to tell prospective home buyers that they’ll only pay county taxes so the total monthly note is at least $50 less on equivalent houses in the ETJ.

Fortunately the county commissioners offered a solution that at least partially addresses the issue by signing an agreement with the city requiring at least 60 foot lot widths. This gives Cibolo some leverage to encourage developers who want smaller lots to request voluntary annexation or some kind of development agreement wherein the city and developer come to a compromise that works for both.

In Cibolo the city council doesn’t want to annex property if the owner is willing to sign a long term agreement stating that as long as the property owner doesn’t subdivide the land to build many houses or otherwise change its use the city won’t annex them. That ought to be enough of a compromise to satisfy most people.

Ironically Republicans would say the situation is typical of Democrats wanting something for free that other people pay for. The reality is that it is generally rural Republicans fighting for the right to avoid city taxes while getting free services provided by the city.

Now if you hear someone talking about forced annexation and converting Guadalupe to a Tier 2 county you know the whole story.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - January 18, 2019

Dems Should Offer Immigration Reform for Wall Funding

The odd thing about the parts of government that shutdown over the stalemate on funding Trump’s wall is that many of affected agencies are involved in immigration and national security. The Transportation Safety Administration (TSA), those are the airport security screeners you see when you want to get on an airplane are required to work but aren’t getting paid. Most of those folks, like 80% of Americans, live paycheck to paycheck. Some federal employees are going to be unable to pay their rent and utilities very soon. Also on the list of federal employees working without pay are Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who handle foreign visitors and review cargoes arriving from overseas, and Border Patrol agents who are the very people securing our borders that Trump and his admirers are so concerned about. Airport security screeners have started calling in sick rather than work unpaid. Several days ago the American Federation of Government Employees sued the federal government alleging that it is violating the Fair Labor Standards Act by forcing employees deemed essential to work without pay.

800,000 federal employees are going without pay for more than two weeks, that doesn’t count federal contractors like the folks who clean offices or accounting or a number of other jobs that are farmed out to private businesses. That’s likely to add another 100,000 then there are the businesses who depend on the other federal agencies in order to operate. One of my larger customers runs hotels and gift shops at national parks and when the National Park Service is shutdown like it is now many of those parks close which means those hotels and stores close too, on top of that there are any number of businesses, including restaurants, hotels, and entertainment venues which are outside the park but rely on park visitors.

In addition to the like likely one million Americans who are directly impacted by the shutdown there are secondary affects as those folks cut back spending which in turn affects sales at grocery stores and other retailers not to mention the landlords who lose rent payments. All this is happening when the overall economy is starting to destabilize as interest rates rise and consumer purchases of autos and homes slow down along with appliances and other big ticket items.

It’s important to all of us for this standoff to end quickly. Donald Trump has claimed he’s the consummate dealmaker since long before his ghost-written book “The Art of the Deal”. He repeatedly claimed he was a masterful negotiator during his campaign for president. Now, due to the crisis he created via the shutdown of numerous federal agencies, Democrats have a chance to find out if he’s really a dealmaker by offering to fund his wall if they get something they want.

I view this as an opportunity to think big since his ridiculous wall is, as he is fond of saying, huuuge. Since the wall is about immigration so why not demand comprehensive immigration reform including a path to citizenship for all 2.7 million DREAMers, and perhaps permanent residency and work permits to the rest of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country. Even if he and or the Republican controlled Senate won’t go for that it’s a place to start negotiations and maybe at least end up with citizenship for 800,000 currently in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program known as DACA.

It’s in the nation’s best interest to end the stalemate, let Trump have is stupid wall as long as we actually address a real immigration issue as part of the deal.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - January 11, 2019

2019 Texas Legislative Session Preview

The Texas legislature’s 2019 session will begin Tuesday, January 8.  One of the first items of business will be the Biennial Revenue Estimate delivered by the comptroller of public accounts. The following Monday, January 14, the Legislative Budget Board budget estimates are delivered to the governor and the Legislature. The next day is the inauguration of the governor and lieutenant governor after which the Legislative Budget Board general appropriations bill will be delivered to the governor and the Legislature. Later the same day is the governor’s State of the State address to the Legislature when he’ll deliver his budget to the Legislature.

In the Texas Senate, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick will likely pass out committee assignments within days of his inauguration. If the new Speaker of the House, Dennis Bonnen, holds to the same schedule as the former Speaker, Joe Straus, it will be three more weeks until House committee assignments are handed out.

Pre-filing of bills started shortly after the November election results were certified and bill filing will continue until Friday March 8. Although there will likely be 5000 or so bills filed less than 1000 will likely get much attention and only a few hundred will even get voted on let alone signed by the governor. One issue that Democrats and Speaker Bonnen agree upon is that Public Education finance is a high priority item.

Public education finance is a topic with two fronts, the most obvious being how much money will the legislature allocate and the less obvious being the formula that will be used when distributing those funds to the hundreds of school districts across the state. Given the large previous budget cuts and then small increases that fail to keep pace with increased costs state funding only covers 35-40% of district budgets. Expect a big fight over how much money the state allocates and another quieter fight over how each districts share is calculated.

Dan Patrick has claimed for years and even campaigned on the idea that property taxes are too high especially the portion charged by school districts. He says he’s going to fix that by capping property taxes and other foolishness. The reality is that the reason districts have had to raise their tax rates is that the state legislature with him in the lead has repeatedly failed to adequately fund public education forcing districts to pick up the slack. Expect Patrick to use shell game tactics to obfuscate what’s really happening and his talk radio hucksterism to sell it. The best thing we can say about incoming Speaker Bonnen is that in the past he’s shown quite a lot of spine in standing up to Lt. Gov. Patrick and House Democrats hope that continues.

While in many ways less significant than public education finance marijuana legalization is also highly likely to be in the news as various groups continue the push toward that goal. In November Michigan became the tenth state to legalize recreational marijuana use, roughly twenty other states have passed some form of broad medical marijuana legalization, so it would be surprising to see the legislature finally make a move in that direction. This is especially true considering the huge tax revenues from legalized marijuana that states like Colorado are now reporting.

Our state legislators have until midnight Monday, May 27, to get all their work done. Let’s all hope they make good use of their time.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - January 4, 2019