Border Wall Just a Racist Symbol

Democrats in Congress and across America want comprehensive immigration reform, Donald Trump wants to $15 to $25 billion dollars to fulfill a campaign promise that he would build a big wall. His wall is nothing more than a physical symbol of his anti-immigrant rantings which cater to his many Confederate and Nazi flag waving, racist supporters.

China built its own Great Wall and it failed to keep out the Mongols. Roman troops built Hadrian’s Wall across Britain to keep out the Picts, it also failed. Israel has a wall but its effectiveness is questionable due to the numerous mortar and missile strikes fired from the other side.

Walls and fences are effective in prisons not because they alone keep prisoners in but because they are delayed long enough for guards to catch up to them. Trump’s wall is nothing if not closely monitored and if Border Patrol agents aren’t quickly dispatched when someone is crossing. So if we’re going to adequately monitor and staff a wall in order to make it effective why not just do the more cost efficient thing and just the cameras then increase monitoring and staffing? The answer is that a cubicle farm staffed with people watching dozens of remote video monitors isn’t the symbol Trump and his supporters’ desire.

There’s another reason Trump’s wall would be ineffective, it’s because at least 40% of undocumented immigrants crossed our border perfectly legally but then overstayed their visas. Nothing Trump has proposed addresses that problem. Trump also claims that his wall would stop drug smuggling but the facts are that the vast majority of drug smuggling comes on ships into our ports and once again he has no plan to solve that problem.

Instead of searching for and implementing real solutions to perceived problems Trump is attempting to force Congress to provide the funds for his wall without regard to the property rights of the landowners on the border which would lose their lands to the federal government through eminent domain or the environmental damage. Even though Trump said on national television that he alone would own a government shutdown over this issue he’s now desperately blaming Democrats.

If Trump really wanted to fix things instead of grand stand he could have sent a thousand immigration judges and interpreters to the southern border instead of 5,200 military troops. Trump’s supporters claim they have no problem with legal immigration they just want people to follow the rules and wait their turn. What they don’t tell you is that it can take 10 or more years under the current system and when people are fleeing violence, drought and hunger they can’t wait a decade. Those fleeing such life threatening conditions came to the border requesting asylum which is a lawful act under both U.S. and international law though you won’t hear that from Trump or his racist followers.

If all that’s not enough to tell you that the wall isn’t really about immigration then think about this, when Democrats suggest spending money on almost anything Trump and his congressional enablers demand to know how it’s going to be paid for but when House Republicans put $5.7 billion in border wall funding into the final appropriations bill of the year not a single one asked where how it would be paid for.

Published in the Seguin Gazette December 28, 2018

Judge's Ruling Indicator That Medicare For All Necessary

Well over one million Texans stand to lose their health insurance due to a federal court decision, here in Texas, striking down the Affordable Care Act in its entirety a week ago today. The lawsuit was brought by the Attorneys General of 18 Republican controlled states. Interestingly the suit was brought in the Northern District of Texas where U.S. District Court Judge Reed O'Connor, a George W. Bush appointee, is the only active judge so it has the appearance of judge shopping. O’Connor held off on handing down the decision on this case for months as it was argued in his court in the Spring. Whether he did it for political reasons or not is hard to say but it sure seems odd that he waited until a month after elections were over before rendering the decision given that this issue would have been fodder for the O’Rourke and Cruz senate campaigns.

In addition to those losing health insurance they previously got through the Marketplace with subsidies there are others who will be affected by the ruling. By striking down the entire bill, limits on how much more older people can be charged for coverage compared to younger people are also eliminated so those of us 50 to 65 may find our health insurance premiums suddenly take a big jump. The ruling also eliminates the ban on annual and lifetime caps on how much your insurance will cover so if a member of your family comes down with cancer it will be possible for your insurer to stop paying for life saving medicine and treatment after paying $1 million. In addition the judge’s ruling means that children over 18 no longer are allowed to stay on their parents’ health insurance until age 26. The same ruling means that a host of preventive care services previously mandated to be provided with no co-pay are no longer required.

Then there are those like my wife who have Medicare Part D covering their prescription drugs; under the Affordable Care Act the donut hole which is the amount of out of pocket money spent on prescriptions was substantially reduced, if O’Connor’s decision stands she and others like her will go start spending thousands more for their medications. There are other less well known parts of the law such as the requirement for background checks on all nursing home staff that are also eliminated by striking down the law.

Many in the legal community were surprised by the ruling and believe it will be overturned since the Affordable Care Act has survived 70 other attacks including twice in the Supreme Court, especially since Congress just had an opportunity to repeal the law and instead chose to eliminate only the individual mandate to purchase insurance. If they’re right we’ll have dodged a bullet aimed squarely at those of us least able to afford the cost of recovering.

Regardless of whether or not Judge O’Connor’s decision is overturned it’s quite clear that there is still a long way to go to truly become the equitable society that this nation aspires to be. It’s past time for the United States to convert to a single payer system like that proposed in the Medicare for All bill supported by most Democrats including our own congressman, Vicente Gonzalez. Claims that Medicare for All is un-affordable are ridiculous given that nearly every other industrialized nation in the world has used such a system for decades.

This January Medicare for All should be part of the Democrats agenda in Washington. Look for a similar bill in the Texas legislature as well.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 21, 2018

Republican Conspiracy to Seize Power

Speaking one hundred years after the Republican Party ran its first presidential campaign, Dwight Eisenhower who worked to convert it into a modern party in the mid-20th century, encouraged party colleagues to develop “a certain kind of principle, or doctrine, or belief to fall back on” and warned that “If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.”

For decades Democrats and Republicans alike have used redistricting to build partisan advantage by designing districts that gave themselves outsized majorities in both federal and state legislatures. After the 2010 census Republicans used the latest computer software to turn their 2010 wave victory into “permanent” majorities all over the country. Now that even with the abuses of partisan redistricting they’re beginning to lose their control they’ve begun taking other power grabbing measures.

Today in Wisconsin and Michigan Republican state legislators, many of whom lost re-election campaigns last month, are now passing legislation in lame duck sessions that will take power from the incoming governor, secretary of state, and attorney general – all democrats – and put it in the hands of the state legislature which will still be controlled by Republicans, albeit by narrow margins.
Within days of the election Wisconsin Republicans hurriedly drafted and passed a bill that blocks incoming Governor Tony Evers’s ability to change state welfare policy and withdraw from a lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act — two things he campaigned on. It also limits the state’s early voting period, a move that would make it harder for Democrats to win future elections. Other suddenly proposed legislation would change the date of Wisconsin’s 2020 presidential primary in what is an obvious attempt to lower turnout for a separate state-supreme-court election scheduled for the same day.

In Michigan Republicans are working to shift the power to intervene in litigation from the governor’s and attorney general’s offices to the legislature, where Republicans maintain a majority. Democrat Gretchen Whitmer captured the governorship last month after Republican Rick Snyder ran the state for two terms. Democrats also won the offices of attorney general and secretary of state, and another lame-duck GOP proposal would move campaign-finance authority from the secretary of state to a six-person bipartisan commission.

Both Wisconsin and Michigan are following the playbook written by North Carolina Republicans after their 2016 loss of the governorship. Late in December 2016 North Carolina’s Republican Governor Pat McCrory called a special session and within 48 hours bills were passed that limited the incoming governor Roy Cooper’s ability to make key cabinet appointments without their approval, drastically cut the size of Cooper’s administration, and changed the Board of Elections so that Republicans would control it in election years. They also ensured lawsuits had to first go through the Republican-controlled appeals court, before the Democratic-majority state Supreme Court. Since some of those bills were fully fleshed out 40 page documents upon submission this was an organized ambush.

This is not how a healthy democracy works, lame duck sessions should be used to complete work on pending legislation and tie up loose ends. Unfortunately Dwight Eisenhower’s concerns regarding lack of principle have proven correct as Republicans around the country are indeed conspiring to seize power.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 14, 2018

Rep. Gonzalez Supports Wall Street Over Constituents

Last week I wrote about our congressman, Vicente Gonzalez, co-sponsoring legislation that empowers debt collection attorneys to our detriment. Just a day or two later I saw him promoting his successful efforts to encourage the US Department of Agriculture to load $50 million to the San Miguel Electric Co-op so it can continue providing electricity to 40 or so South Texas counties with 220,000 customers. That sounded like something to be proud of until I learned that it will keep one of the dirtiest coal burning plants in the country operating for another 19 years so that investors don’t lose $489 million if it is forced to shut down before the loans are paid off.

The reality then is that rather than let the “market” work and wealthy investors lose money he’s proud of using our tax dollars to bail them out while polluting our air with both toxins and climate damaging greenhouse gases. This particular plant is so dirty and inefficient because it burns lignite coal, a fuel so inefficient that operators build plants on top of coal deposits as it is too expensive to haul it by train.

The volume of carbon dioxide put out by the San Miguel plant is much higher per kilowatt of electricity generated than almost any other type of generator. That excess carbon dioxide just hastens the very climate change that is already damaging the residents of the district. Both Seguin and McAllen where the bulk of the district’s population resides have experienced several devastating floods in recent years and such floods are likely to become both more frequent and more damaging as the climate heats up.

The National Climate Assessment (NCA) was released by the federal government the Friday after Thanksgiving, it assesses the science of climate change and variability and its impacts across the United States. Among its findings were that “In the absence of significant global mitigation action and regional adaptation efforts, rising temperatures, sea level rise, and changes in extreme events are expected to increasingly disrupt and damage critical infrastructure and property, labor productivity, and the vitality of our communities. Regional economies and industries that depend on natural resources and favorable climate conditions, such as agriculture, tourism, and fisheries, are vulnerable to the growing impacts of climate change. Rising temperatures are projected to reduce the efficiency of power generation while increasing energy demands, resulting in higher electricity costs. The impacts of climate change beyond our borders are expected to increasingly affect our trade and economy, including import and export prices and U.S. businesses with overseas operations and supply chains. “

Overall “…the continued warming that is projected to occur without substantial and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions is expected to cause substantial net damage to the U.S. economy throughout this century, especially in the absence of increased adaptation efforts. With continued growth in emissions at historic rates, annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century—more than the current gross domestic product (GDP) of many U.S. states.”

I don’t know about you but I’m more than frustrated that the man we elected to represent us seems to be more interested in his Wall Street backers like Charles Schwab, Credit Suisse Securities, and UBS Americas Inc. just to name a few, than he is in the wellbeing of his constituents. If you feel the same way call his office and let him know. His Washington office number is 202-225-2531.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 7, 2018

We Deserve Better Democrats Than Gonzalez

It’s deeply disappointing to find that someone you voted for isn’t living up to their stated principles. Late last week I noticed a news article about a bill that if passed will make it legal for attorneys doing debt collecting to harass debtors once again. While that in itself is disturbing the fact that our congressman, Vicente Gonzalez, is the co-sponsor of the bill is even more so. The bill passed out of committee with a largely party line vote with Gonzalez being the only Democrat voting in favor.

The bill Gonzalez sponsored would prevent the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (CFPB) from exercising supervision or enforcement authority over them and exempt debt collection attorneys from the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). H.R. 5082 will enable some debt collection law firms to engage in abusive and deceptive practices and get away with it.

Public interest attorneys like Carolyn E. Coffey, the Director of Economic Justice at Mobilization for Justice, and Claudia Wilner, Senior Attorney at the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, who wrote the article say they know that debt collection attorneys engage in some of the worst debt collection misconduct. Only the FDCPA and the CFPB keeps them even partially in check.

In an example they wrote about their organizations used the FDCPA to sue a debt collection law firm for obtaining hundreds of thousands of default judgments against unsuspecting people,  mostly low-income people of color, by filing false affidavits with the court. The debt collection attorneys used the fraudulently obtained judgments to freeze their victims’ bank accounts, garnish their wages, and coerce them into entering “voluntary” payment agreements. Our FDCPA lawsuit returned tens of millions of dollars to their clients as part of a settlement and resulted in reversing of 200,000 state court judgments.

In a 2016 report by Human Rights Watch, Rubber Stamp Justice: US Courts, Debt Buying Corporations, and the Poor, the authors documented widespread abuses by debt collection attorneys in courts across the country, including cases brought beyond the statute of limitations and hundreds of cases where people never received notice of the suits, all of which resulted in wrongful judgments, often against the wrong people.

Congressional District 15 here in Texas is one of the poorest in the nation and based on the propensity for debt collection attorneys who abuse the law to do so in low-income communities it is likely that we’ll be among those to suffer the most. I find it deeply disturbing that it is our elected representative working to open the door to abuses that were outlawed 30 years ago when Congress first added attorneys to the definition of debt collector in the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. When Vicente Gonzalez met with voters in the district during the 2016 primary he claimed he would work for all the people here, his actions say something else entirely. Apparently Gonzalez made friends with the wrong kind of people at the New York office of his law practice.

It isn’t enough to elect more Democrats to Congress or the Texas legislature, we have to work to elect better Democrats too.