Abbott's School Voucher Scheme De-funding Public Education

Gov. Abbott has started his campaign for re-election with two issues that rile up his base but don’t actually make Texas a better place. His expensive “Border Security” publicity stunt has been in the news several times. Abbott is using state funds to pay National Guard troops to look like they’re doing the federal government’s job and doing it so poorly that their duplicative inspections backed up truck traffic at the border for many hours costing Texas businesses and county governments more than $4 billion in just 10 days. His other issue is mis-named “school choice” and its goal is to de-fund public education.

Abbott says “We can fully fund public schools while also giving parents a choice about which school is right for their child … giving them the choice to send their children to any public school, charter school or private school with state funding following the student.” If it is so easy to fully fund public education in Texas why aren’t we doing it already? The state provides about 45% of the funds for every child in public schools. Texas K-12 public schools are plagued by high class sizes and under-paid teachers.

If the governor gets his way we can expect that the percentage of state funds per public school students to fall below 40% because the same total dollars will have to be spread over an additional 342,000 plus children currently attending private schools. Those private schools don’t currently receive state funding so unless the governor intends to increase the state public education budget by 6% that means cutting per student spending. Since most rural districts don’t have any private schools they’ll be required to educate the same number of children on 6% less state funding.

Abbott’s proposal really does several things that aren’t good for the vast majority of Texans. If you can’t afford to pay an extra $1350 or more per child in tuition you can’t take advantage of the program because private and religiously affiliated schools charge more than the state provides per student. There’s also a good chance you’ll have to provide transportation to and from school. In many parts of the state there are few if any non-sectarian private schools so if you’re not from one of the pre-dominant faiths in the area your children either won’t have the option to go to a private school or you’ll have to accept that they’re being indoctrinated in a faith other than yours.

While we’re on the topic of sectarian schools let’s review the First Amendment to the United States constitution which says in part “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. Now you might think that congress wouldn’t be responsible for funding Catholic, Baptist, or Lutheran schools so what’s the problem? The problem is the 14^th Amendment extends constitutional protections to state actions as well. In fact the 14^th Amendment is what prevents the states from doing all the things that the federal government is prohibited from doing in the rest of the constitution including the other amendments. It’s what ensures you have a right to a trial by a jury of your peers even in a state court and that local police can’t unreasonably seize your property or enter your home without a warrant. The Supreme Court long ago ruled against state funds supplementing teacher salaries at religious schools and that’s exactly what Abbott is advocating for.

What Abbott is really advocating for is essentially subsidizing wealthier people sending their kids to elitist schools while making it tougher on everyone else.

 Published in the Seguin Gazette - June 15, 2022

A Solution to Gun Violence

In the 23 years since the mass shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, CO there have been dozens of others, including several in Texas like Sutherland Springs, El Paso, and now Uvalde. Nationally there have been mass shootings in schools, churches, retail stores, night clubs and other venues. Virtually no national or state legislation has been passed to address the causes or attempt to prevent such events or even the high of suicides involving firearms. Many on the left push for some form of gun control; such as making some types of guns illegal. On the right we hear noise about the second amendment and an unwillingness to give up their guns.

In the aftermath of the Uvalde murders Gov. Abbott blamed the shooting on mental health problems. In this instance he might be correct but that doesn’t make his responsibility any less considering he signed legislation that significantly reduced state funding for mental health services. Beto O’Rourke told Abbott, “This is on you until you choose to do something different. This will continue to happen. Somebody needs to stand up for the children of this state or they will continue to be killed just as they were in Uvalde yesterday.”

In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Texas congressman Dan Crenshaw, like many of his Republican colleagues, absolutely dismissed any effort to increase limits on access to guns and instead proposed strengthening security at schools. Apparently Crenshaw and his fellow conservatives forget that the shooting in El Paso occurred in a Walmart and the one in Sutherland Springs was in a church. It might be a good idea if Crenshaw was made aware of the dozen injured in a mass shooting on the streets in downtown Lafayette, LA earlier this month or the 10 injured at a night club in Cedar Rapids, IA last month. In Dallas on April 3 at a trail ride and concert, there was a mass shooting in which 16 were injured and 1 died. There’s also the gang shootout in Sacramento April 3 that left 6 dead and 12 injured, all but 1 of them innocent bystanders.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, an independent data collection organization, there have 212 mass shootings that have occurred so far this year, as of last Tuesday. Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people were shot or killed, excluding the shooter. 27 have been at K-12 schools or on school buses. Crenshaw’s solution strengthen security at schools applies to less than 15% of mass shootings. What about the more than 85% of shootings that occurred at other venues?

Since something needs to be done, I propose a carrot and stick approach to getting legislation passed.  Republicans should write legislation, including providing funding for everything they think will address gun violence while protecting their “gun rights” and Democrats should support the bill but there would be a trigger that says that at the end of three years there must be a 30% reduction in gun violence and a further reduction of 10% per year for the next three years or strong gun control measures go into effect. Those gun control measures might include a background check for every gun purchase regardless of whether or not it is a private sale, no weapon with a magazine of more than 9 rounds may be possessed by any individual. Making, selling or possessing a kit or parts to modify a weapon to full automatic or possessing a weapon modified to full automatic would be a federal felony.

No more political posturing.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - June 1, 2022

Republican Party is White Supremacist

I’m fairly certain that the Top’s Supermarket massacre in Buffalo, NY last weekend will generate more arguments about the Second Amendment but all I’m going to say about that is; what about the right 13 people shot to live their lives and shop for groceries safely? Oh, and one other thing, the “good guy with a gun” argument doesn’t hold water since retired police officer Aaron Salter shot the perpetrator but since the perpetrator was wearing body armor it was ineffective and then Salter was shot down.

The massacre was planned and prepared for over a period of months. The perpetrator carried a rifle and fired upwards of 50 rounds, wore a bullet proof vest, a tactical helmet with a video camera mounted on it so he could live stream the murder of innocents. The shooter was apparently radicalized online by white supremacist/neo-Nazis. In March 2021 the Director of National Intelligence warned that racially-motivated extremists posed the most lethal domestic terrorism threat. It said the menace was now more serious than potential attacks from overseas.

Don’t think for a moment that this is just some loons winding each other up online. White Supremacist ideology and rhetoric has a large presence in the Republican Party nation-wide. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito cited the "domestic supply of infants" as reasoning for overturning Roe v. Wade while the Buffalo shooter's manifesto focuses on "white birth rates." This isn’t a coincidence.

Representative Elise Stefanik replaced Liz Cheney as the #3 Republican in the House when Cheney demanded the truth about Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Stefanik launched a Facebook ad campaign pushing the same “white replacement theory”, aka “great replacement theory”, cited as impetus for the Buffalo mass murder.

Like Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, Stefanik uses violence-provoking conspiracy claims to further her own career but refuses to take any responsibility for the deaths caused when violent believers decide that terrorism is the only solution. The "great replacement" conspiracy is now widespread in Republican rhetoric; there is now no great difference between the conspiracies of neo-Nazism and those of Republican Party "leadership".

The theory has been cited by several other mass shooters since 2018, including Robert Bowers who killed 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2018 and Patrick Crusius who murdered 23 people in an El Paso, Texas, Walmart.

Last December, the Associated Press and NORC conducted a large national poll and found that nearly half of Republicans agree to at least some extent with the white supremacist/neo-Nazi propaganda that there’s a deliberate intent to “replace” native-born Americans with immigrants.

Republican leaders are making a direct attack on our democracy using white supremacist propaganda to motivate voters to vote for them. This is how fascists came to power in Europe in the 1930’s.

Where does the country go from here? The people of this country must decide is if we want to live in a world where fear and division are able to take root, because after you dehumanize everybody that’s when the killing start. Do you remember the 1994 Rwandan genocide? It started much like what we’re seeing now in the United States with the majority ethnicity blaming a minority group for their problems. Then the finger pointing turned into murdering their neighbors.

Inciting a riot is a federal crime with a penalty of 5 years in prison, shouldn’t there be a penalty for inciting mass murder?

In my book anyone who votes for Republicans is aiding and abetting the enemy of the people of the United States.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 18, 2022

Overturning Roe is Hypocrisy

The big news maker last week was the draft opinion regarding the abortion case heard by the Supreme Court published by Politico. The document indicates that 5 of the 6 Republican appointees have agreed to overturn the 50 year old Roe v. Wade decision and once again allow states to make abortion a criminal offense. Had Sen. Mitch McConnell not stolen a seat by refusing to hold hearings on Pres. Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, when Justice Scalia’s death created a vacancy this decision would almost certainly been to continue the right to abortion as the law of the land.

Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion includes the justification that “the domestic supply of infants” is insufficient to meet demand. This sentiment has previously been expressed by Justice Amy Coney Barrett saying that we don’t “need” abortion anymore because the supply of adoptable domestic infants cannot meet demand. I don’t see how that argument is morally sustainable.

According to Adopt US Kids, there are 117,000 children waiting to be adopted in the United States right now. So Alito and Barrett’s argument doesn’t hold up factually either.

Alito and several other conservative members of the court claim to be originalists, which they define as believing that the constitution is a dead document, in other words it means only what it meant at the time it was written and is to be understood as it would have been understood in the 1780’s. There’s a real problem with that notion, founders Alexander Hamilton and James Madison both rejected Originalism. You’ll often hear Republicans use a similar argument about government agencies they claim shouldn’t exist because it isn’t stated in the constitution. Neither is the right to travel but no one argues that Americans don’t have the right to travel within their states, or within the country, or even to other countries.

Then there’s our Firsts Amendment right to religious freedom, which this decision actually runs roughshod over. There are numerous Christian denominations, not to mention other religions that are pro-choice on a theological basis and at least as many other religious denominations that believe that abortion is a matter of individual conscience. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, and the United Church of Christ are just a few of those.

In Judaism when a mother’s life is endangered by a pregnancy, it is Jewish law that the mother’s life, a life in being, takes precedent. Keep in mind that Jesus, being born a Jew, would likely accept this position since nowhere in scripture does he speak out against it. Justice Alito has essentially ruled that a pregnant Jewish woman who will risk death if the pregnancy is carried to term can be denied an abortion – against her own religious beliefs. That makes Alito and other four Justices joining him Christian supremacists. Alito has essentially declared orthodox Catholic theology to be the law of the land on abortion. Such a ruling is counter to the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment.

Alito’s draft says that a right to abortion services is not deeply rooted in this nation’s history. Women on the Supreme Court are not deeply rooted in this nation’s history either, nor are anyone but white men. The Constitution doesn’t say that women or black people can serve on the Supreme Court. By Alito’s argument apparently the founders thought only white men should ever serve on the Supreme Court. So why has he never advocated for rejecting Clarence Thomas or Amy Coney Barrett’s positions on the court.

It all boils down to hypocrisy in service to an agenda that is incompatible with democracy.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 11, 2022

Abbott Caused Inflation

Our dear governor, Greg Abbott, likes to claim the superiority of his administration and policies in hosting the supposed economic success of Texas. In reality Texas has some of the most economically disadvantaged citizens in the country and higher wealth disparity between its citizens than 37 other states. Texas, unlike California – the state conservatives love to bash, doesn’t even make the top 25 in gross domestic product per resident.

Most recently conservatives have been bashing President Joe Biden on his handling of the economy and the “security” of the southern border. Abbott and his fellow liars claim that the current state of inflation is somehow Biden’s fault, especially high gas prices and that Biden has an open door policy on the Mexican border.

Let’s be clear, no president controls gas prices to any great degree. Oil and gasoline are international commodities and their prices fluctuate based on projected availability of that commodity. The notion that “energy independence” and higher production in the U.S. would somehow insulate us from price fluctuations is beyond ludicrous. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine along the subsequent embargo of its oil shipments has made oil more scarce on the world market and countries that previously purchased Russian oil now must buy it from somewhere else and even if it isn’t U.S. oil directly oil produced here still ends up covering the gap created and therefore is priced accordingly. Any action that Biden might take to increase oil production in the U.S. would take years to percolate through the system as there are thousands of acres of federal land that have been leased to oil companies for years but never drilled on.

Gov. Abbott’s calamitous political stunt targeting international trade cost Texas more than $4 billion in damages, the economic consulting firm The Perryman Group. The consultants estimate that Abbott’s now-rescinded policy which required commercial vehicles to undergo additional inspections after passing through federal border check points but didn’t actually do much checking “will cost the equivalent of 77,000 job years for the country and 36,300 for Texas’ economy,” according to The Dallas Morning News.

In the city of Pharr, one of the busiest land crossings in the country, Abbott’s political stunt cost the area roughly $200 million every single day in losses. The Perryman Group estimates that Abbott caused the nation roughly $9 billion in lost gross domestic product.

“The biggest losses were to the manufacturing sector, which took about 50% of the hit, followed by retail trade, wholesale trade and financial activities,” The Dallas Morning News reported. “Manufacturing and retail made up the bulk of the job losses.”

When Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador called Abbott’s border shenanigans “a very despicable way to act”, Abbott responded by threatening to reinstate his unpopular policy, claiming he has “the capability at any time” to resume his unnecessary secondary inspections.

Even Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, a real right-wing nut-job, complained to NPR that "You're already seeing things like bananas, avocados, lemons and limes" go up in price because of this stunt.

The next time your conservative neighbors try to bash Joe Biden on the economy, remind them that it was Greg Abbott alone who cost the state billions of dollars and caused higher inflation on grocery store shelves all to look good to Trump voters when he makes a run for the presidency in 2024.

Constitutional Amendment Election

Not everyone realizes that there are to separate elections in May. There’s the run-off for congress and other partisan offices on May 14 and the less well known Constitutional Amendment election on May 7. There are two propositions on the May 7 ballot, both are related to property taxes.

Proposition 1 says “The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for the reduction of the amount of a limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary public school purposes on the resident homestead of a person who is elderly or disabled to reflect any statutory reduction from the preceding tax year in the maximum compressed rate of maintenance and operations taxes imposed for those purposes on a homestead.”

Yes, it is widely agreed that the ballot language sound like gibberish, even lawyers have to ask experts what it means. Those experts will you refer back to the actual legislation that generated the proposition and the Texas constitution and explain that if passed it would reduce property taxes for elderly and disabled Texans by decreasing the amount they pay to public schools, which is generally the largest part of a homeowner’s tax bill. The state is responsible for making up the reduced revenue for school districts. This amendment will increase the state’s share of public school funding by more than $744 million from 2024 to 2026.

The reason that the Texas legislature passed this amendment by a wide bi-partisan margin is that in 2019, they passed a law which provided a property tax reduction to many homeowners but failed to include disabled or elderly homeowners because under the Texas Constitution, their tax rate is frozen. Proposition 1 would amend the Constitution to allow disabled and elderly homeowners to receive the benefits from the 2019 property tax reduction that other homeowners received and freeze their tax rate at a lower rate.

The language of Proposition 2 is much more straight-forward and says “The constitutional amendment increasing the amount of the residence homestead exemption from ad valorem taxes for public school purposes from $25,000 to $40,000.”

If passed by Texas voters, Proposition 2 would raise Texas’ homestead exemption from $25,000 to $40,000 for school district property taxes, saving an average homeowner around $180 on their annual property tax bill. The amendment requires the state of Texas to make up $600 million annual decrease in school district revenue.

Opponents of these propositions make the argument that they don’t fix the real problem which is that our public schools are largely funded by property taxes. While that’s true these propositions do make the issue slightly less onerous and swing the pendulum back toward the state with regard to the percentage of funding provided by the state versus local property taxes. For the last decade or so, in most districts, the local portion has steadily increased so in that sense these propositions are a welcome reversal.

Monday April 25^th is the first day to early vote and Saturday May 7th is election day, I urge you to make time to vote “For” both these important propositions.

 Published in the Seguin Gazette - April 20, 2022

Republicans the party of fraud, fear, and fascism

The leadership of the modern Republican Party have taken the party down the path of fraud, fear, and fascism. First they use fraud to create scenarios and conspiracy theories on topics that will instill fear in conservative voters. The next step is to blame liberals and Democratic officials and candidates in particular for participating in or enabling the feared behavior. All of this is in aid of winning electoral contests so that the Republican Party retains power in order to do the bidding of the oligarchs that provide their campaign funds and very lucrative jobs when they are out of office.

Republican leaders and media figures peddled non-sense like the 2016 Pizzagate conspiracy in an effort to defeat Hillary Clinton. In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election Trump made claims that refugees from Central and South America were mostly criminals and we therefore needed a wall on the southern border to protect us. Now, many of those same Republican leaders have added equally absurd, yet even more dangerous hokum such as connecting homosexuality with pedophilia or Gov. Abbott and Lt. Gov. Patrick throwing vulnerable transgender children under the bus by making them scapegoats with their overwrought claims that they somehow threaten to overwhelm high school athletic competition.

Proponents of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory - like Trump’s National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn Lt. General, U.S. Army ret. falsely claimed that illegally hacked emails between John Podesta, Hillary Clinton, and others contained coded messages that connected several high-ranking Democratic Party officials and certain restaurants with an alleged human trafficking and child sex ring. Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, D.C. was purportedly the central hub of the conspiracy and holding children in the basement. A North Carolina conservative bought into the conspiracy theory so strongly that he drove to Washington, D.C. and barged into the restaurant whereupon he fired a rifle in an effort to unlock the door to a storage locker that was supposedly the entrance to the non-existent basement. Washington , D. C. police and numerous other respected organizations have thoroughly de-bunked the entire conspiracy theory.

With very few exceptions the people trying to cross the southern border to get into the U.S. are suffering from poverty and violence in their home countries very often caused by drug traffickers that are financed by their customers in the United States. Often the migrants are unaccompanied children who have been sent on their way after being threatened by drug gangs. If Republicans really wanted to do something constructive so that those migrants would stay at home they’d advocate for legalizing all drugs especially marijuana to undercut the finances of the drug gangs. But then, they couldn’t rail at Democrats about open borders or fill up private prisons with men of color who then can’t vote for their opponents or compete for jobs with white men of similar education and skills.

Frankly, there is stronger evidence of a conspiracy to protect pedophiles and groom children within the Catholic Church than there is for gay men but you don’t see Republicans attacking the Catholic Church.

Republican justifications for bill’s restricting transgender students from participating in high school sports largely rely on scare tactics, stereotypes, and unwarranted claims that transgender women have a physiological advantage over cisgender women—despite a complete lack of evidence that transgender sports participation has had any measurable impact on the success of cisgender athletes.

Republican candidates still genuflect to Trump because their voters demand it. The Trump-Putin axis scares me as Trump has continued to speak admiringly of Putin even as Putin endeavors to annex Ukraine through armed invasion.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - April 13, 2022