Why Did We Lose?

 After the devastating results of last week’s election it is no surprise that various and sundry talking heads and pundits have been offering their “analysis” of the cause. Turnout was down 6% in Texas even as more people were registered to vote then ever before. Nationally turnout was down about 1.5% and lower turnout is invariably bad for Democrats. 

I’ve read and seen a number of those critiques many of which blame Harris for running a bad campaign. Others say and I agree that Harris actually ran a technically great campaign yet those pundits aren’t entirely wrong. I think that Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor during the Clinton administration, and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have the best answer. Both Reich and Sanders have long promoted the idea that working stiffs like you and I are getting a raw deal from corporate interests, whether you work for one of those big corps or even run your own small business.

Businesses can right off expenses like corporate jets and even yachts if they claim they are for business use but you and I can’t even get a tax deduction for the interest payments on our student loans. Businesses can declare bankruptcy and essentially get all their loans forgiven or pay just pennies on the dollar but if you or I declare bankruptcy we still owe the entire balance of a student loan plus interest.

Reich and Sanders argue that the average American worker has every right to be fed up with neo-liberal Democrats who have passed legislation in favor of corporations while at the same time failed to pass even a long overdue increase in minimum wage. Yes, Joe Biden has been good to labor over the last four years but it hasn’t been near enough and it isn’t just his fault. Too many Democrats in Congress have been captured by the uber-wealthy donors who fund their political campaigns. It’s a lot like Stockholm Syndrome or the phenomenon known as regulatory capture, those legislators spend so much time schmoozing with big money donors that they start seeing the world through the eyes of those donors. Once their worldview aligns with big money they are more easily convinced that voting in the interests of their “friends” is a good idea.

I don’t excuse them for losing sight of the reason they were elected but I do understand how it can happen. That’s brings up another issue that Sen. Sanders points out in his analysis and has been campaigning against for a long time; which is the problem of money in politics. Campaign finance has always been problematic but ever since the Supreme Court decision known as Citizens United which overturned many of the limits on campaign donations at the federal level the amount of money donated and therefore the amount of money any campaign needs to win an election is 5 times what it was in 2000 and that’s after adjusting for inflation.

None of this is to say that Republicans have a better track record on labor issues just that Trump at least recognized it as a significant campaign issue. His “solution” was to blame immigrants just like he did in his to previous campaigns regardless of the fact that immigrants aren’t the problem. He certainly isn’t about to blame big business as those campaign donors favored him. While Trump isn’t actually going to do anything helpful many of the 60% of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck voted for him because they felt he at least was listening to them and Democratic candidates weren’t.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - November 13, 2024

Vote for Harris to Lower Grocery Bill

 Some of those complaining loudest about problems the Biden – Harris administration hasn’t solved are folks who voted for Republicans in 2022 which left Democrats with a single vote majority in the Senate and a Republican controlled House. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has such a thin majority that the high number of cranks in his party has left him unable to even pass budget bills in a timely fashion.

One of the complaints you’re likely to hear most often is that grocery bills have gone way up. There are voters who somehow believe that Trump’s policies would bring grocery bills back down, but let’s face it once inflation raises prices they rarely go back down more that a small amount. Trump’s proposed national sales tax Trump is proposing on all goods that are imported would increase prices for a typical family by thousands of dollars per year. We’re talking about staples like food, clothing, gas, and medicine. As an example, Trump would place tariffs on coffee, bananas, and seafood, of which there is little production of in the United States. Almost none of the coffee or bananas consumed and imports 75 to 80 percent of seafood are produced in the U.S. yet they are staples for many American households. In fact, an economist at the Tax Foundation, a business friendly non-partisan organization, has found that the Trump sales tax would raise costs for some families by as much as $6,000 each year.

When Trump was asked recently about his plan to bring down food prices, he responded that he would block food imports from entering the country. Obviously the fool doesn’t understand supply and demand because when you cut supply prices go up unless demand goes down and I don’t see people eating less food. All blocking food imports would do is raise food costs and cause food shortages without increasing food production here in the United States. Many agricultural products that American families rely on every day, such as bananas and coffee, can only be grown in the United States at a much higher cost than if they were grown elsewhere. Simply demanding that American families can only buy food grown here in the United States would raise costs while reducing the variety of everyday food items that working families need.

Just look at Trump’s record to see that a second term would make consolidation in the food industry, which reduces competition and drives up prices, even worse. During Trump’s first term in office, he gave Big Ag corporations and the wealthiest Americans tax handouts. When it came to help farmers withstand his trade war with China nearly two-thirds of aid funding went to the top 10 percent of applicants rather than to family farms.

Kamala Harris has vowed to revitalize competition in food and grocery prices, because we all know that a healthy and competitive market means lower costs for consumers. She has promised to direct her Administration to crack down on unfair mergers and acquisitions that give big food corporations the power to raise food and grocery prices by instructing agencies like the Federal Trade Commission to specifically evaluate the risk that a proposed merger would raise grocery prices for consumers. On top of this, she’ll instruct her Administration to focus on investigating and prosecuting companies that illegally collude to set prices, up and down food supply chains. Finally, she will make sure the federal government has the resources to identify and take on anti-competitive practices in the food and grocery industries.

If your grocery bill is what drives your vote, then vote for Kamala Harris.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - October 30, 2024

There are so many reasons to get out and vote

When someone like my next door neighbor tells me they aren’t political and therefore they don’t vote I just want to bang my head on the wall. If you don’t vote you’re just saying that whomever those that do vote elect will be fine. That’s OK when figuring out where to eat lunch with your co-workers but it’s not so fine when the struggle for civil rights and women’s rights are at stake. We every citizen of voting age have a responsibility to ourselves, our children, our family, and our friends to vote so that the best possible people to lead our national, state, and local governments are selected.

Last week Donald Trump participated in a town hall on Univision and a 64 year old California farmer named Jorge Velazquez asked, “For many years, I have worked with these hands, hunched over picking strawberries and cutting broccoli. This tough job is mainly done by undocumented people. If you deport these people, who would do that job, and what price would we pay for food?” Trump rambled about farmers having it tough right now and how he was the best thing that ever happened to farmers but he never actually answered the question. I’ve wondered about this question myself and I’ll bet you have too, yet I have yet to see any journalist ask such a basic question of any Republican let alone Trump.

There’s no doubt that our immigration system is a huge mess. It can take over a decade for a foreign citizen to get through the hoops and hurtles even when they are the family member of a U.S. citizen. Not all applicants are successful. Our legislators keep talking about reform and even proposing legislation but as happened back in March of this year politics rears its ugly head and derails even bi-partisan efforts so that Trump can campaign on the broken system that he keeps broken because it gives him the opportunity to blame someone else.

Republicans always complain about inflation and government spending but let’s look at their solution. The Republican mantra is cut spending severely especially social programs. Argentina elected a new government early this year and their new president delivered on his campaign promises to drastically cut spending. Those spending cuts did indeed cut inflation from 26% to 4% but they also damaged the economy so much that now the poverty rate has jumped to 53%, the highest in over 20 years. Argentina’s president is an economist, though apparently a very poor one, and look at the mess he made of their economy. Trump made a mess during his first term and now he wants try again, this is a man who has filed bankruptcy 6 times. He can’t run businesses successfully so how can anyone believe he can do so for the entire American economy.

In this election we have a chance to choose between candidates, like Kamala Harris and Trump for president and Colin Allred or Ted Cruz for U.S. Senate. If elected Harris and Allred will move forward on reforming our immigration system while the same old Republicans who lie claiming that immigrants are all dangerous criminals will leave it broken or make it worse so they can continue to bash immigrants.

Even people who think their not political should recognize that letting Republicans wreck the economy over their spending cut fetish and anger to toward immigrants isn’t in their best interests.

Early voting has begun, make a plan to vote soon and bring your family, remind your friends.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - October 23, 2024

The Economy is Strong Due to Democrats

 No one likes inflation, I certainly don’t like that my grocery bill has gone up $40 or so per week in the last 5 or 6 years. Having said that many have gotten pay increases that either cover the difference are at least significantly reduce the impact. The fact is that those on the lower end of the wage spectrum have gotten the greatest increases. The reason for that is increased demand for workers.

During the Biden administration, not only is unemployment near historically low levels but overall employment is way up because the labor force has grown to meet demand. The growth is due to people who had given up looking for a job or retired coming back into the labor market, in addition there are more immigrants with work permits employed as well.

If you still want to gripe about the price of goods consider that Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods are paid by consumers, meaning you and me. Tariffs are essentially a surcharge added to the cost of goods purchased by U.S. businesses from Chinese businesses. Unless the seller chooses to lower their price to absorb the charge in order to maintain market share the buyer has to pay more for the goods and while they too could absorb the increase rather than pass it on to you and me when we ultimately buy those goods in the stores they rarely do. You can tell that U.S. businesses haven’t absorbed the tariff costs because the prices for Chinese goods have gone up and U.S. corporate profits are at record levels. Trump’s tariffs are coming out of our pockets not China’s. Does that remind you of Trump’s border wall that “Mexico will pay for”? It should because as usual he lied.

When I was in college as a business major it was made very clear that free trade lowered costs for consumers. Apparently that lesson didn’t stick in Trump’s small brain. Trump’s latest pandering on economic issues is his supposed plan to make auto loan interest tax deductible like home mortgages. While that sound nice at first glance, the reality is that 90% of U.S. taxpayers don’t itemize their taxes so most car buyers won’t be able to take advantage of that deduction. Those earning more than $100,000 per year are much more likely to do itemize and even then only about 10% do. Like many of Trump’s tax policies the people who really get to take advantage are the ones already quite wealthy.

The Federal Reserve has done a remarkably good job of driving down inflation while maintaining a strong job market. Yes, mortgage interest rates are still higher than they were for the previous 20 odd years but that was actually a historically low period. Even a year ago when mortgage rates reached the recent high of over 7% that’s still significantly lower than the rates seen from 1973 to 2000. For the last years mortgage rates have been trending down again and now stand around 6.3%. The strong Biden economy continues on with more Americans enjoying the benefits of decent wages and the purchasing power that comes with those wages. Kamala Harris has proposed economic policies that are at least as strong as Joe Biden’s and with momentum of the economy suggests that between Americans can look forward to continued improvement in their living standards. 

Early voting starts Tuesday next week, vote Kamala Harris for president, Colin Allred for U.S. Senate and all the Democrats if you want to see a continually improving economy.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - October 16, 2024

Colin Allred A Better Choice

 I hear independent voters as well as those who claim to be moderate Republican voters complain about border security and blame the Biden administration and Democrats for the number of migrants crossing the Mexican border into the United States. Oddly enough they seem to already have forgotten that earlier this year there was a bi-partisan border security bill written by a hard line Republican that passed the House by a significant margin and seemed as though it would pass in the Senate until Donald Trump told Republicans to kill the bill. Ted Cruz and his Republican colleagues went along with Trump and the bill failed leaving Texas and other border states without the Border Patrol agents, immigration judges, and other staff as well as facilities needed to stem the flow of people seeking asylum.

Mr. Trump’s goal was to provide himself with an issue that he could blame on President Biden, and now VP Kamala Harris. If Trump truly wanted to secure the border all he had to do was stay out of the way. If Ted Cruz was the centrist he professes to be in his most recent advertising in which he claims to work with both sides of the aisle he could have taken a leadership role and urged his colleagues to ignore Trump and pass the border security bill. The fact that Cruz didn’t step up says he doesn’t really care about border security or Texas.

Recently the American Medical Association reported that 26,000 women became pregnant after being raped in Texas and not a single one was allowed to have an abortion. Ted Cruz shares responsibility with Gov. Abbott and the Texas legislature for the fact that those 26,000 Texas women were forced to give birth to their rapist’s child since the Supreme Court overturned the right of women to choose how to care for their own bodies less than 2 years ago. Cruz was one of the senators who voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, a man who has been accused of sexual assault, to the Supreme Court and Kavanaugh is among the right wing justices who then overturned Roe v. Wade enabling Texas to prohibit abortions in nearly all instances including rape.

Among Ted Cruz’s other questionable “achievements” was the 2013 government shutdown that lasted 16 days and put 800,000 federal employees out of work. It also cost an untold number of contract workers and those employed by businesses in national parks and other federal properties out of work and those folks never recouped their losses. Speaking of national parks tens of thousands of vacationers had their long planned trips ruined when the parks were forced to close. If Cruz had caused the shutdown over some important principle his action might be seen as honorable but it was a temper tantrum over the Affordable Care Act which he compared to the oppression of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. How he got oppression out of an effort to assure that everyone who needs it can get the healthcare they need is beyond me.

In 2018 Cruz pulled out a narrow victory over Beto O’Rourke to win his second term in the senate. This term is opponent is Colin Allred, a civil rights lawyer and 3 term member of the United States House of Representatives since defeating Republican Pete Sessions in 2018. Allred has made further expanding access to healthcare a hallmark of this time in congress and vows to continue his work on the issue.

Starting on October 21 when early voting begins you have the opportunity to forcibly retire Ted Cruz by voting for Colin Allred.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - October 9, 2024

Texas Abortion Law Kills Mothers

 In October 2021, shortly after Texas passed the SB 8 abortion law Kaitlyn Kash, 37, of Austin was 13 weeks into her second pregnancy when she was told by her doctor that the fetus had a rare genetic disorder affecting bone and cartilage growth. “We were told that his bones would break in utero and he would suffocate at birth,” Kash said in an interview. “We were expecting our doctor to tell us how we were going to care for our baby, how we were going to end his pain.” Instead “We were told that we should get a second opinion, but make sure that it was outside of Texas”.

In August 2022 Amanda Zurawski of Austin was carrying her first child, she and her husband were thrilled until there were complications then they learned that although there was no chance the child would survive and it was likely she would suffer an infection she would have to carry the fetus until she either expelled it on her own or she became so sick it threatened her life. Afraid to travel out of state to get an abortion since her water could break at any time and she might not be able to get to a doctor in time she stayed in Texas. When she began running a temperature of 105 and couldn't stop shivering in the summer heat her husbad took her to the hospital but they still didn't perform an abortion until much later and by that time the sepsis infection had damaged her reproductive system so badly that she may never be able to give birth.

According to a investigation by the New Yorker magazine Yeniifer Alvarez of Luling, Texas who died in 2022 would likely be alive today as all indications are that SB8 tied the hands of the doctors caring for her until it was too late to save her. Kate Cox, Kristen Anaya, and Elizabeth Weller along with many other women have also suffered and continue to suffer life threatening health emergencies under Texas’ draconian abortion ban.

Of course all those horror stories are anecdotes, they’re just here to give you a taste of what the statistics from Centers for Disease Control mean in the lives of Texas women. CDC data for 2019 to 2022 show that Texas has experienced a 56% increase in maternal mortality during that time and it’s pretty clear that the cause of that is the Republican passed SB8. Nationwide maternal mortality has only increased 11% and without states like Texas and much of the south where similar abortion bans are in place there would have been decrease nationally.

Dr. Donna Campbell, representing Senate District 25 in the Texas Senate is an emergency room physician. She is one of the Republicans who pushed SB8 through the state legislature. She had plenty of opportunity to address the problems with the bill both before it was originally passed and then in the following session 2 years later. She failed her constituents and all Texas women twice. Current law says that an abortion isn’t legal once a fetal heart beat is recognized, about 6 weeks after conception. What it fails to include is that when there is no longer a heart beat the prohibition is removed. The current language means that Texas women have to carry around a rotting carcass in their uterus until they are sick enough for a doctor to risk their license to practice medicine and prison time.

Starting October 21 you can retire Donna Campbell by electing Merrie Fox for Texas Senate.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - October 2, 2024

Texas Republicans Work to Defund Public Schools

Governor Abbott and his Christian nationalist billionaire campaign donors made progress in their effort to defund and destroy public education in Texas when they succeeded in getting Alan Schoolcraft nominated as the Republican candidate for State House District 44 which encompasses Guadalupe and Gonzales counties. I have disagreed with John Kuempel, our state representative since 2010, on most issues I’ve always respected his strong defense of public education. That defense cost him support from Gov. Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick earlier this year which led to his defeat in the Republican primary by Schoolcraft. Some of the money used by the Schoolcraft campaign came from out-of-state billionaire Jeff Yass, of Pennsylvania, who gave Gov. Greg Abbott $6 million to use in support of pro-voucher candidates Schoolcraft.

The coalition supporting the destruction of Texas public schools includes people like West Texas billionaires Tim Dunn and brothers Farris and Dan Wilks, who contribute to various political action committees pouring millions into legislative campaigns for candiates who support school vouchers. The men also fund or serve on the boards of a host of public policy and advocacy organizations that have led the fight for vouchers in Texas. An example of Tim Dunn’s Christian nationalism is that he once told Republican Speaker of the Texas House Joe Straus that he believed only Christians should hold leadership posts. Earlier this year, Baptist News Global published an article by Pastor Rodney W. Kennedy titled "Sorry, Tim Dunn, you are a Christian nationalist".

Recently the campaign donations from Dunn and the Wilks brothers have reached into local communities across Texas, supporting fights over library books, curriculum and vouchers.

There a many examples of the failure of school vouchers to provide high quality education to all our children. There are many reasons for this including the fact that private schools don’t have to accept students with behavioral issues, or learning disabilities. Typically research has shown that parents who use school vouchers to transfer their children to private schools end up with their 4^th or 5^th choice and those schools typically are underperforming their public school counterparts.

Since 2005 when hurricane Katrina struck it New Orleans replaced all traditional public schools with charters run by ostensibly non-profit corporations. Education results for the generation of students passing through those schools has been mixed at best, generally worse than the national average. One of the tricks used by people seeking to profit from charter schools is that while the charter is held by the legally mandated non-profit organization they turn around and subcontract with a for profit group to actually staff and run the school. Often the same people on the board of the non-profit are also on the board or payroll of the for-profit sub-contractor. It’s a scam.

As reported by the Texas chapter of the American Federation of Teachers in their 2022 report “The Lost Decade”, when you take into account actual per-pupil spending in each state compared to the amount needed to achieve the modest goal of U.S. average test scores, Texas comes in 44th place. That leaves more than 90% of Texas public school students are attending inadequately funded schools. Since government budgets are moral documents this tells you what our state leadership thinks of future generations of Texans.

Starting October 21 when early voting begins you have an opportunity to show your support for public education in Texas by voting for Democratic party candidate Eric Norman. Eric believes “It’s time we live our values and support Texas’ public schools.”

Published in the Seguin Gazette - September 25, 2024