Texas Legislature 2023

We now know most of the results of the November 8 election and the story it tells is that Texas Republicans are very good at gerrymandering districts for partisan advantage. Their highly refined map drawing allowed them to pick up one seat in the state house, one seat in the state senate, and two congressional seats even though the statewide partisan vote split is approximately the same as it was in 2018. It’s amazing how well you can stick it to the other side when you control the rules of the game.

The state legislature will begin the 2023 session in just 7 weeks and they’ll have less than 5 months to pass a budget and get the rest of the people’s business done for the next two years. Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar has stated that record-high tax revenues over the last year will give Texas lawmakers an extra $27 billion to spend in the 2023 legislative session. Let’s see if our legislators and governor will allocate significant additional funds to public education where it is sorely needed or if they spend foolishly on fake border security as Greg Abbott did when he re-allocated funds from other important state responsibilities to continue and expand the National Guard presence on our southern border.

There are numerous other issues that the legislature really should address including action on the Texas power grid which is still in danger of failing when it is needed most at least in part because the model that utilities are required to use to determine whether or not they are prepared for extreme weather events doesn’t include the conditions we experienced in February 2021. Texas electricity users will be paying increased utility bills for a decade just to cover the outrageous rates that generators were able to charge for less than a week. The extra you’re paying on your bill doesn’t go toward improvements to prevent the same disaster in 2023 or further in the future.

It is way past time for Texas to make at least medical marijuana legal, the pathetic potency of the material legal in the state currently is little more than a placebo. There are clearly documented studies showing the value of marijuana for pain relief, something my wife would really benefit from. Presently she is using prescribed opioids which of course have numerous bad side effects including addiction and gastro-paresis, a condition in which the intestines don’t pump food and waste properly. The treatment for gastro-paresis is another drug which isn’t covered by many insurance plans and costs about $1000 a month so it isn’t really affordable at all. When we were out of state she was able to use medically approved marijuana edibles that relieved her pain and allowed her to function better than the drugs available here in Texas.

If the Republican leadership took a look at how successful decriminalizing recreational marijuana has been in states like Colorado where the sales taxes from it have been used to augment public school funding they might shift their perspective. I don’t really expect that to happen any time soon as it would take away one of the ways that Republicans generate fear in voters.

Various groups have been lobbying for changes to state marijuana law for years now and all we can hope is that our legislators will begin to see the light in 2023.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - November 23, 2022

Choose Wisely - Vote Democrat

Republican leaders, including Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, have been calling for violence against Democrats for several years and now that a Republican supporter has invaded Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home and beaten her husband with a hammer former President Trump and many of those he has endorsed have remained silent instead of calling for an end to political violence.

Faux New, I mean Fox News, has spent the last couple of months making spurious claims about crime in America but considering they’ve been using the FBI statistics from 2020, even if what they say is true that happened under Trump so if a president is to be blamed then blame him.

Let’s talk about objective reality, something Republican candidates don’t do much of because it doesn’t make them look good. Last week saw the release of the most recent economic statistics which show that the U.S. GDP grew at a +2.6% pace in the third quarter of this year, that’s even better than expected. Especially when you consider that Republican doomsayers have been arguing for months that the US economy is in a recession and they’ve been rooting for a downturn.

Our economy has created 10 million jobs, unemployment is at a 50 year low, and U.S. manufacturing is booming. The report also shows that in the third quarter, Americans' incomes were up and the inflation rate came down. Gas prices are falling – down $1.26 since the summer, and down over the last three weeks. The most common price at gas stations in Texas today is $3.19 a gallon. Last week I paid $2.99 a gallon.

Much of the rising cost of food is due to the current high cost of grain which is in turn caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine one of the world’s major wheat producers. The same holds true for gas prices to a large extent so if you want to blame someone blame Vladimir Putin.

Democrats in Congress and the Biden-Harris Administration earlier this year passed laws that will bring down prescription drug prices especially for those on Medicare starting next year.

Congressional Republicans have a very different agenda – they’re planning to hold the archaic federal debt limit hostage against cutting Social Security and Medicare knowing that holding up the legislation will shut down the federal government. Putting those federal employees and all those who support them out of work will cost the economy tens of billions of dollars just like it did the last time they pulled this stunt. They plan to do it so they cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans and large corporations.

The Republican’s failed economic vision is not the way to give families more breathing room and grow our economy so working families can get ahead. It’s a road map for increased poverty and shorter life spans. We know from the bitter experience of the Reagan administration that “trickle down” economics only benefits the wealthy few. Democrats see and are working toward an economy that benefits everyone. Republicans can’t conceive of an economy like that so they work toward one that benefits they’re wealthy benefactors and themselves.

When you vote, notice I didn’t say if you vote, choose wisely and vote for Democrats because they have a plan to move the country forward with peace, equity, and compassion for all of us.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - November 2, 2022