Justice and Elections

 I had planned to write about the courts this week as a reminder that Texas is among the minority of states in that we elect our judges including at the appellate level. We therefore have both the opportunity and responsibility to determine who will make the final decisions in a wide range of legal cases, setting precedent and providing guidance to lower courts throughout the state. The death last week of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg brings that point home in ways that my words never could. It isn’t enough to just vote for Joe Biden and leave the rest of the ballot untouched. It’s important to vote in every race at every level.

The Court of Criminal Appeals is Texas highest court on criminal matters and has been dysfunctional for a decade. As examples please consider that a justice there once refused to consider a last minute death penalty appeal because the filing was delayed past office hours due to a printer breaking while it was being printed. Worse the same court has been slapped down by the Supreme Court of the United States twice on the same case for failing to do its job of reviewing the law regarding whether an intellectually disabled person should be executed. Judge Elizabeth Davis Frizell, Judge Tina Yoo Clinton, and Judge Brandon Birmingham are running to replace these lazy and apparently incompetent clods. All three are committed and experienced, with strong records of acting in the best interests of their respective communities. They deserve your support on election day.

In early 2016 when Justice Antonin Scalia suddenly died more than eight months before the election and President Obama had the responsibility to nominate a successor; our senator, John Cornyn, repeatedly stated that the next president should choose that nominee because it was an election year. Cornyn is quoted in numerous media sources and his own website saying: “It's not about the personality, it's about the principle ... that it's up to the American people in this next election, no matter who they choose, to make the nomination for this important seat on the Supreme Court.” “My view is that this is not about the potential nominee; it's about who chooses. And I believe strongly this should be a referendum on who chooses in November.” “I believe the American people deserve to have a voice in the selection of the next Supreme Court Justice, and the best way to ensure that happens is to have the Senate consider a nomination made by the next President." Now, when early voting has already begun in some states and election day is less than seven weeks away; he has changed his tune retweeting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s statement: "President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate."

If John Cornyn has a shred of integrity he’ll rethink that and be guided by his own 2016 statements to allow the winner of the election to choose the next Supreme Court justice. You have the responsibility of reminding him of that by calling his office either in San Antonio at 210-224-7485 or in Washington, D.C. at 202-224-2934. Another way to put the fear of God in him would be to make a donation to his Democratic opponent, MJ Hegar, at https://mjfortexas.com/ .

Published in the Seguin Gazette - September 23, 2020

Rigth-wing Partisanship Deadly Dangerous

Partisanship in the 21^st century can be deadly dangerous, let me give you a few examples. Republican led Texas continues to rise on the list of states by proportion of COVID-19 deaths as compared to population, now standing at number 17 with more than 30% greater proportional death toll than California, the state Texas Republicans like to bash most. According to a recently published study by Elisa F. Long, M. Keith Chen, and Ryne Rohla at the Anderson School of Management, University of California Los Angeles, Republicans were more than 10% more likely Democrats to disregard local orders to evacuate their coastal residences in the hours before a hurricane struck the area. The Department of Homeland Security now run by illegally appointed Chad Wolf has been downplaying and shelving reports on the threat of white nationalist terrorism according to a whistleblower complaint by intelligence-division chief Brian Murphy, he was told it was blocked because of the way it might “reflect upon President Trump.”

It’s been pretty clear for a while now that COVID-19 is deadly and while not a Black Plague level catastrophe, it has now killed nearly 200,000 Americans making it the third leading cause of death in the U.S behind cancer and heart disease. COVID-19 has proven to be more than three times as deadly as the flu and the year isn’t over yet. With more than three months left to 2020 the death toll is likely to approach four times the worst flu rate in decades. The U.S. has the tenth highest proportion of deaths to population in the world. Much of the death toll could have been prevented if the president had taken the measures that other countries such as South Korea and Germany did. Even if you’re inclined to discount the recording of Trump telling journalist Bob Woodward that he was downplaying the danger of COVID-19 to avoid a panic it is clear that the president failed to take appropriate measures in a timely manner and continued to discount the danger in public. His supporters in government and those in the public at large have followed his rhetoric with dangerous actions, some have paid the ultimate price by dying from the disease they didn’t believe was deadly.

In the days before hurricane Irma struck Florida in 2017, right wing blowhards Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter used their media platforms to downplay the seriousness of the hurricane claiming it was a liberal hoax. Evacuation patterns show that a significant fraction of Republican voters fell for their spiel and risked their lives as a Category 5 hurricane made landfall nearby.

While the popular vote loser occupying the White House continues to spout claims of the dangers of antifa and Black Lives Matter, he and his appointees are misleading both the public and state and local law enforcement agencies with distorted reports downplaying white nationalist groups like “Boogaloo Boys” and others while at the same time falsely claiming liberal groups are the real danger. Since these reports are coming from federal agencies that have been respected for providing factual information in the past state and local law enforcement act on that information and thus improperly allocate resources and endanger the public.

The final run-up and aftermath of the November election likely will see all of this get worse as Republican voters fall for the president’s claims of voter fraud and election results are delayed by the need to unusually high numbers of mail in ballots. Remember that when asked if he would leave the White House if he lost the election he said “We’ll see”.

Don the Fascist and Police Violence

I have no doubt that most police officers take on the responsibility they do for the right reasons and most are disturbed by the murders committed by their fellow officers. However, the fact is that all the protests across the nation and the mood of even white suburbanites swinging toward demands for accountability hasn’t stopped some officers from continuing to murder unarmed black men. The former reality show star in the White House had little to say about stopping violence against citizens perpetrated by police during his record length 70 minute acceptance speech Thursday night. Instead he talked about stopping rioting, looting, and arson; none of which would be happening if police stopped shooting black people who weren’t shooting at them.

There’s a reason for police violence hasn't stopped and it’s important that we realize that those officers aren’t just a few bad apples. In order for Derek Chauvin to have been able to kneel on George Floyd’s neck for over eight minutes while two other officers stood by, there has to be a culture within that department that says it’s acceptable to do. If such a culture didn’t exist at least one of those officers would have demanded that Chauvin back off long before Floyd suffocated. The fact that those two officers witnessed the murder and took no action at all says to me that either of them might very well have done the same thing. It also begs the question: What other less extreme abuse have these three officers perpetrated on people they’ve come in contact with? Since all three were fine with Floyd’s death and that attitude can’t have been limited to just them that entire department needs a thorough house cleaning.

As I write this, Jacob Blake is paralyzed from the waist down after being shot seven times in the back by officers in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The fact that officers continue to use extreme violence against black men three months after the start of protests against such violence says there is a culture in many departments that says extreme violence perpetrated against black men is okay.

The president’s fascist “law and order” rhetoric is being repeated by Republicans up and down the ticket, most recently by Alabama Republican congressional nominee Barry Moore who praised the white 17 year old vigilante who is charged with the murder of two and shooting of another as they were organizing a protest against police violence in Kenosha. The police chief there had the gall to blame the protesters for their own deaths and injuries because they violated curfew. The vigilante is not surprisingly a big fan of the president.

Since the election of this president there has been a significant rise in hate crimes. This year alone there have been arrests in 90 cases of domestic terrorism and the majority of those cases “are motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacist violence” according to FBI Director Christopher Wray in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The reality TV star is behaving much like his fascist predecessors in the 1930’s who exhorted their followers to commit violence against those they blamed for their countries’ problems. Here, in this era he blames anyone not white and anyone who disagrees with him. This is the man who hinted at “Second Amendment” remedies to the possible election of Hillary Clinton in 2016. The same man who says that there are some very fine people amongst white supremacists. The same man who says he isn’t sure he’ll leave the White House if he loses the election.