Paxton Acquittal Proves Republicans Corrupt

Last Saturday proved that most of the Texas Senate’s Republican membership is just as corrupt as their federal counter-parts by acquitting Attorney General Ken Paxton of all 16 charges. Only two Republican senators, Kelly Hancock of Fort Worth and Robert Nichols of Jacksonville, had the integrity to vote for conviction.

The evidence presented of criminal wrong-doing, such as Article 10 accusing Paxton engaged in bribery in violation of the Texas Constitution when Paul provided extensive renovations to Paxton’s Austin home and in return, Paul received favorable legal help from Paxton’s agency, was overwhelming yet 16 of 18 Republican senators ignored the facts and testimony of former staff in order to fulfill an entirely partisan agenda. It’s not even like removing Paxton from office would have somehow placed a Democrat in the Attorney General’s office, after all an appointee of Gov. Abbott has been running the office since Paxton was suspended after the House impeached him months ago. Every senator who voted go acquit is now complicit in the Paxton’s crimes.

I’m no stranger to crooks holding high public office, I lived in Louisiana when Edward W.  Edwards served four terms as governor and the only time I voted for him was in 1991 when the Republican candidate was Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and even many Republicans voted for Edwards. At the time there was a bumper sticker that many Republicans put on their cars “Vote for the crook, it’s important”. Here in Texas we voters knew Paxton was dirty and we didn’t have such a poor choice in the last election and yet Paxton won handily.

As Common Cause Texas Executive Director Anthony Gutierrez pointed out after the acquittal, "During the course of this trial, corruption, bribery, abuse of office, and dereliction of duties were proven beyond a reasonable doubt. In any impartial court in the country, the verdict would almost certainly have gone differently." Now that even more evidence of Paxton’s corruption has been presented to the public we can hope that real independents and the few Republicans with integrity will vote him out of office in 2026.

Every Democrat will have to talk to their friends and family about Paxton’s criminality and the complicity of Republican senators when they’re up for election again. We’ll have to be more persuasive than Republican cultist and Gazette columnist Terry Harper who was one of the leaders of the effort to censure Rep. John Kuempel for among other things not being sufficiently “conservative”.

As reported in the Texas Tribune Rep. Steve Toth, a Republican from the Woodlands and a member of the House’s Freedom Caucus stood outside the Senate chamber after the acquittal and stated “The Texas House owes all of Texas a big apology, this was a sham … This is terribly destructive to the Republican Party of Texas.” Toth said he expects there to be “retribution” by voters for his fellow Republicans who supported Paxton’s impeachment. And he agreed that the party’s internecine conflict has no end in sight. Since Rep. Kuempel voted in favor of impeachment I suspect he’ll find himself challenged in the primary. Conversely Senator Donna Campbell who voted to acquit probably won’t. The radical right truly does run the Republican Party of Texas.

Edwin W. Edwards finally went to federal prison in 2001, five years after leaving office. With the current federal criminal cases hanging over Paxton we can only hope justice is served quicker than in Edwards’ case.

 Published in the Seguin Gazette - September 20, 2023

Electricity, Money, and Diversion

 For over a decade Texas and the rest of the world has been suffering record high temperatures in June, July, and August with more frequency. Across the globe we see Arctic sea ice at unusually low levels. In some parts of the world continued dissipation of glaciers have revealed bodies of early humans and extinct animals that were once encased in hundreds of feet. In the United States and elsewhere, there have been both massive wildfires spreading heavy smoke over thousands of square miles and torrential rains that caused rivers to overflow destroying homes and lives. Hurricanes have already struck both California and Florida and there are two more very powerful storms out there, Lee in the Atlantic and Jova in the Pacific off Baja California.

Here in Texas a few weeks ago we came within a hairs breadth of the rolling blackouts to prevent the entire grid from shutting down. One of the ways that the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) avoided such drastic action was to pay nearly $32 million to Riot Platforms, a Bitcoin miner to “voluntarily curtail its energy consumption”. In other words they powered down most of the computers they have running all day every day making calculations that run the crypto-currency exchanges. What’s really disgusting is that $32 million which we’re paying as part of our electric bills is nearly 4 times what Riot Platforms would have earned had they left the computers running. Riot Platforms isn’t the only crypto-currency mining operation in Texas with this kind of sweetheart deal it’s just the one that announced receiving such excessive payments in a press release.

Rather than take action to address the increasing demand for electric power in Texas by helping homeowners improve insulation or provide incentives to install solar panels and batteries the state legislature pass SB 2627 which a low interest load program funded by the state for companies that build or upgrade power plants and pay a bonus for getting them connected quickly. The program will not provide loans for battery storage facilities even though they could serve to provide significant buffers during high use periods like 5pm when temperatures are highest and people are getting home from work and turning on their air conditioners.

All this is just more proof that the Republican controlled Texas legislature is more concerned with enriching their friends in the fossil fuel industry than addressing the very real threat of global climate change. Coffee production in Columbia, corn and soy beans in Argentina, as well as other crops throughout South American has been hurt by a multi-year drought. Here in Texas, corn and sorghum production is down and cattle ranchers are selling of parts of their herds due the ongoing drought in much of the state.

To divert voter attention from their 20+ year failure to actually make the lives of Texans better the governor and legislature spend their time fighting faux villains like trans-gender athletes and drag queens. It’s up to independent voters that lean conservative to recognize that they’re being conned into voting for those who only want to enrich their already very wealthy friends while exercising power over women, those of other faiths, and people who don’t fit in easy gender classifications.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - September 13, 2023