2021 Democratic Accomplishments

As this is the last column of 2021 I thought it important to review some of the things that Democrats led by President Joe Biden have accomplished this year. Democrats worked hard to overcome the obstruction of Republicans like our senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz. While they haven’t done everything I think they could or should have, I firmly believe that the country is better off for their efforts. Many of our families, friends, and neighbors have benefited from the legislation and policies pushed by the Biden administration with the support of Texas Democrats like our congressman, Vicente González.

To me the most important act Biden took upon his inauguration was to rejoin the Paris climate accord which former President Donald Trump had left. His action put the U.S. back in line with the majority of the world's nations and also helped place the Biden administration at the center of efforts to tackle global climate change. While Biden has repeatedly stressed the need to curb climate change by transitioning to clean energy, the administration's approach has often disappointed me. The U.S. not signing the pledge to end the use of coal power announced at COP26 conference is one of those disappointments. On the positive side, last month the president unveiled a 100 country pledge to cut emissions of the greenhouse gas methane by at least 30 percent by 2030 and joined another agreement to end and reverse deforestation. This month the Biden administration ordered U.S. government agencies to stop financing carbon-intensive fossil fuel projects abroad.

Biden, an opponent of the federal death penalty, has reinstated a 17-year pause on federal executions on federal executions that former President Trump ended allowing 13 people were put to death between July, 2020 and January, 2021. It’s important to remember that according to a study published in “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” at least 4% of people on death penalty/death row were and are likely innocent. Biden has pledged "to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, and incentivize states to follow."

President Biden supported by the 50 Democratic senators has seen 40 federal judges confirmed so far more than any president in their first term since Ronald Reagan in 1981, and twice as many as Trump appointed during his first year. Now he just needs to address the 6-3 conservative dominated Supreme Court.

Many Americans are pessimistic about the U.S. economy given inflation at a 40-year high, yet it’s important to remember that Biden's first year in office has seen significant improvements in job and wage growth. The national unemployment rate fell from 6.3% in January to just 4.2% in November, the lowest since March 2020 and jobless claims fell to their lowest levels since 1969 in early December.

Yes, inflation has increased but more importantly wages and salaries paid by private businesses rose more, outpacing inflation by 2.4% from January to October and disposable income grew 3%. The American Rescue Plan, passed on a near party line vote and the historic economy recovery, combined to cut child poverty in half.

Next week I’ll cover what we have to look forward to in 2022 and what Republicans are doing to prevent the climate and economic recovery we so desperately need through voter suppression and gerrymandering.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 29, 2021

Public Dollars Belong in Public Schools Only

Next week is the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year, unfortunately I’m feeling a truly long night lasting many years in terms of our government and political trends. Last week the radical right majority of the Supreme Court of the United States showed signs of once again reversing long held precedent to satisfy the demands of the most vocal Republican activists without regard to the consequences. This time the Court heard arguments in the case of Carson v. Makin; the question to be decided is whether the state of Maine is required to subsidize religious education. Based on the questions asked or not asked by the Republican appointed justices the consensus among Court watchers is that they’ll render a decision in favor of your tax dollars being funneled to religious schools.

While some readers may not see a problem with that as they send their children to religious schools and would like the extra funding or the lower tuition that might be available there are sound constitutional reasons for not changing the current state of affairs. The first amendment specifically states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” which given that later amendments made it clear that the constitution applies to state and local laws in addition to those passed by congress means that neither the state of Texas nor a county can favor a particular religion over another. Government funding religious activities or organizations has generally been viewed as a step toward establishing a state religion. Funding religious educational institutions with tax dollars comes under that heading.

Should the Supreme Court, as seems likely, decide that it’s fine for government to subsidize religious education realize that it can’t apply to just Christian schools. This is a case of “be careful what you wish for as you might get it”. Expect schools associated with any and all religions to demand their fair share, so look to Islamic schools asking for and getting the same subsidies. Don’t be surprised if a militant atheist group starts up a school and rightfully demands the same subsidies as well. Those on the radical right will first be stunned, then scream bloody murder that they never meant to subsidize everyone’s religious schools, just their own. I don’t mind eating popcorn while watching Republican heads explode but I’d much prefer that we continue the understanding that Constitution requires neutrality, as the Court held in Everson v. Board of Education (1947), “no tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion.”

The doctrine of “Separation of Church and State” has served this nation well for nearly 250 years and is central to our freedom. Our founders were well familiar with the consequences of religious wars such as Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), which devastated Germany and killed one third of its population. In our lifetimes we’ve seen sectarian violence in both southeastern Europe and the Middle East. Continuing to chip away at that separation as Republicans have for decades will harm us all by adding more friction to the already polarized political situation we now find ourselves in.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 15, 2021

More Than Abortion At Risk

I am an adoptive father and the uncle of a foster child, I have first-hand knowledge that society is not prepared to handle a sudden increase in the number of unwanted children that would be the result of allowing states like Texas to make abortion illegal. A massive increase in the number of children in the foster care system and those in homes that can’t provide three healthy meals a day is only one consequence of conservative zeal to return to the days when abortion was illegal.

In “What Roe Could Take Down With It” published in The Atlantic, Kimberly Wehle, professor of law at the University of Baltimore, outlines the very real consequences of the Supreme Court’s likely vote to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that found a woman has a right to an abortion until the fetus is viable at around 24-28 weeks of gestation.

Professor Wehle points out that the reason overturning Roe v. Wade is about more than abortion is that the legal logic which threatens it could quite easily extend to other rights. Reversing Roe v. Wade invites states to try out new laws that regulate such choices as who you can marry – miscegenation laws made inter-racial marriage illegal until the Supreme Court ruled such laws unconstitutional in 1967 in Loving v. Virginia. Also at risk is the right to choose with whom to be intimate, as homosexual acts were illegal in  several states until 2003 when the Supreme Court ruled those laws unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas. It was 1965 when the Supreme Court ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut that the liberty of married couples to buy and use contraceptives without government restriction is protected by the constitution. The education of one’s own children is also at risk as some states made private schools illegal until the Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional in Pierce v. Society of Sisters. They are all at risk because none of these rights we are now so accustomed to are specifically stated in the constitution and the current SCOTUS majority claim to be originalists arguing that if it isn’t stated in the constitution it isn’t protected by the constitution.

Wehle says the Court identified a “constitutional ‘right to privacy’ based on the Bill of Rights; in particular the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments” reasoning they operate to shield “an intimate relation of husband and wife and their physician’s role in one aspect of that relation” from government intrusion. The “Court in Roe acknowledged that ‘the Constitution does not explicitly mention any right to privacy,’ but seized on the earlier Griswold case’s recognition of ‘a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy’ to strike down a Texas law criminalizing abortion.”

Professor Wehle goes on to list other rights and other cases which hinge on the implicit “right to privacy”  or meaning and scope of explicitly stated “liberty” a term which is nowhere defined in the constitution leaving the Court to make that determination. Many of the freedoms we currently take for granted are not specifically stated in the constitution yet many seem to believe they are. The same reasoning that currently protects a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy was used to determine that couples have the right to use contraception, get married, and decide how to educate their children.

Wehle concludes that “from a legal perspective, if Roe falls, it’s hard to see what else will still stand.” As with other arguments made by conservatives on a variety of topics they don’t seem to understand the consequences of achieving their goals.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 8, 2021

The Problem is Lack of Competition

The glass half empty media’s economic headlines are overwhelmingly focused on inflation. But if you look deeper you’ll see there’s plenty of good news. Retail sales rose in October for the third straight month. October job growth was strong and Goldman Sachs is predicting a significant drop in the unemployment rate over the next year. Child poverty dropped by 29% in one month thanks to expanded child tax credit. Thanks to the Biden administration average food stamp benefits increased by more than 25%. Medium and long term interest rates for car and home loans are still rock bottom.

Sure, inflation is real at 6.2% in October. Regardless of that, “It’s safe to say the bottom 40 percent of Americans are definitely better off in the past year from a combination of rising wages and government aid, even with inflation,” University of Massachusetts economist Arindrajit Dube told The Washington Post. Even after you factor in inflation disposable income has been about 9.5 percent higher in 2021 than it was before the coronavirus pandemic according to Julia Coronado, president and founder of MacroPolicy Perspectives.

All this good news and Republicans with the help of the media choose to focus on inflation without bothering to discuss the causes. Why is that? Because they can rile up the public with fear which allows them to obscure things like the fact that the federal minimum wage, which affects millions of Americans, has been $7.25 an hour for over a decade even though we’ve seen significant inflation over that period.

Republican politicians complain of rising fossil fuel prices but don’t say anything about the possible benefits of investment in green energy, or they sound off on rising food prices but fail to mention that climate change is fueling droughts and/or floods that hit farming areas has made food more expensive.

A major reason for price rises is supply bottlenecks as the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, has pointed out. But there’s a deeper structural reason for inflation which is growing worse: the economic concentration of the American economy in the hands of a relative few corporate giants with the power to raise prices. When markets are competitive, companies keep their prices down in order to prevent competitors from grabbing away customers. But they’re raising prices while raking in record profits. The fact that corporate giants like Pepsico announced it was increasing prices, blaming “higher costs for some ingredients, freight and labor” then recorded $3bn in operating profits through September shows that they didn’t have to raise prices. Their supposed competitor Coca-Cola also raised prices at the same time, increasing its profit margins to 28.9%. Such behavior speaks to potential collusion because it doesn’t happen in a truly competitive market.

There’s a similar pattern in energy prices. If energy markets were competitive, once it became clear that demand was growing, producers would have quickly increased production to create more supply. But they didn’t. Industry experts say oil and gas companies saw more profit in letting prices go higher before producing more supply. They can get away with this because big oil and gas producers don’t operate in a competitive market. They can manipulate supply by coordinating among themselves.

Since the 1980s, when the US government all but abandoned antitrust enforcement, two-thirds of all American industries have become more concentrated. Only aggressive use of antitrust law can correct this structural problem. Don’t expect Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz to support that approach, it wouldn’ t sit well with their corporate campaign donors.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - November 24, 2021

Biden's Agenda Move Forward

Last week Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, H.R. 3684, which President Biden signed Monday. While Biden’s predecessor repeatedly proclaimed infrastructure week in an effort to gain public support not once in four years was an infrastructure bill ever voted on, let alone passed. Biden signed an infrastructure bill into law before he’s been in office 10 months. It goes to show you what competent leadership can accomplish.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act includes provisions related to federal-aid highway, transit, highway safety, motor carrier, research, hazardous materials, and rail programs of the Department of Transportation (DOT). Several other provisions of the bill address climate change, including strategies to reduce the climate change impacts of the surface transportation system and a vulnerability assessment to identify opportunities to enhance the resilience of the surface transportation system and ensure the efficient use of federal resources. H.R. 3684 revises Buy America procurement requirements for highways, mass transit, and rail and establishes a rebuild rural bridges program to improve the safety and state of good repair of bridges in rural communities like Seguin.

Passing the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is a big deal, it moves the nation forward by providing the transportation infrastructure that we’ll need for the next few decades while at the same time providing good paying jobs that will raise wages and the standard of living for everyone, but it isn’t enough. Next up is the Build Back Better Act, H.R. 5376, which will soon be up for a vote in the U.S. House. The bill includes a lot of good things for you and your family as well as the country as a whole.

H.R. 5376 will fund purchases and incentives for electric vehicles and zero-emission, heavy-duty vehicles. This is an important step in both reducing the damage from climate change and developing energy independence. There is also funding for wildfire prevention, drought relief, conservation efforts, and climate change research; all of which affect Texas greatly. The bill also provides funding transit services and clean energy projects in low-income communities, some of which Seguin would likely qualify for.

The Build Back Better Act also includes funding for up to six semesters of free community college so that our young people who aren’t interested in university degrees have a chance to develop skills that lead to good paying jobs in construction, healthcare, and a wide range of fields. For families with very young children the bill will provide funding for universal preschool. The bill will also provide funding for free child care for children under the age of six making it easier for parents to work full time jobs that pay a living wage. An important provision here in Texas is funding health benefits for eligible individuals who reside in states that have not expanded Medicaid. There’s plenty more in the bill like expanding Medicare to cover dental, vision and hearing along with require that Medicare negotiate prices on prescription drugs which is currently prohibited.

We all know that cities are perpetually underfunded so that important infrastructure, like the water lines in Flint Michigan where so many suffered lead poisoning, are unsafe and unhealthy relics nearly a century old.  If passed, H.R. 5376 will provide for safe drinking water so that water lines can be upgraded using safe materials so that you and I won’t have to worry about lead or other contaminants in our drinking water.

If you want to improve the economy and health in our community do your part by calling our congressman, Vicente González at 202-225-2531, and urge him to vote for H.R. 5376.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - November 17, 2021

Republican Leadership Absent on Holocaust

A couple of weeks ago a bunch of Holocaust denying anti-Jewish demonstrators made appearances in San Antonio and Austin. While organizers and most of the participants were from out of state they found a lot of support from local white nationalists and neo-Nazis. Their goal was to sow hate in our communities and fear among our friends and neighbors, they succeeded. The fact that Holocaust denial is as willfully ignorant as belief that the earth is flat or that the sun revolves around the earth. Unlike flat-earthers, Holocaust deniers often use violent rhetoric and occasionally act on that rhetoric. There was a spate of anti-Jewish vandalism that coincided with the demonstrations all of which served to cause fear in our communities.

Mayors and city council members in both San Antonio and Austin denounced the hateful messages and so did Democratic leaders like Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa but we didn’t hear a word from Republican leaders like Gov. Greg Abbott or Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Republican Party leaders have accommodated white nationalists repeatedly since the previous president began his campaign. The similarities to Europe in the 1930’s; when nationalists like Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler used antisemitism to take control of their countries.

To be clear Gov. Abbott, by all appearances, believes the horrible historical truth about the Holocaust. Earlier this year he signed a new law creating the Texas Holocaust, Genocide and Antisemitism Advisory Commission, responsible for producing studies of antisemitism in Texas and working with schools to fight against it. That doesn’t seem to mean that he is above the use of antisemitism for political gain by his tacit acceptance of those who espouse it within his party and political supporters.

The behavior of Gov. Abbott and others like him is actually more damaging to society than leaders who actually are anti-Semitic or racist and clearly state that they are because the public is led to believe that the leader is righteous while that leader uses dog whistles appealing to David Duke and Ku Klux Klan members and other white nationalists. Today’s right-wing politico must be more guarded in their language but still willing to at least look with other way when supporters of a less savory type act out.

Texas Republicans passed legislation earlier this year that prohibits public schools from teaching about the long lasting effects of slavery and racism and how even government regulations and procedures have perpetuated injury to the descendants of slaves up to the present, more than 150 years later. That legislation led to teachers at a training session in north Texas being instructed to provide books with the opposing view should they have books on the Holocaust in their classroom library. Whether or not that’s what the legislators who wrote the bill intended that’s what at least some public school officials interpreted it to mean.

How can we grow and prosper as a nation in a peaceful and respectful manner when our political leaders are more than willing to use our baser instincts to divide us so they can retain power?

Published in the Seguin Gazette - October 10, 2021

Republicans Eroding Our Democracy

Last week efforts to strengthen our democracy by making voting rights consistent across the nation were stymied by our United States Senators, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, when voted against the Freedom to Vote Act. The bill would have overridden parts of Texas’ new election laws by establishing automatic voter registration and lifting various state-level measures that hinder access to the ballot box. In addition, the bill would have strengthened the regulatory powers of the Federal Election Commission, tightened restrictions on foreign interference in elections and modified campaign finance regulations. To put it bluntly Senators Cruz and Cornyn voted to keep it hard for people to vote and to continue allowing foreigners to donate money to political campaigns and groups advertising in support of candidates.

Gov. Greg Abbott and his fellow schemers in the state legislature put on a big show about preventing non-citizens from voting, yet they have nothing to say about preventing foreign money being used to sway voters via political advertising and social media activities. Money provided by rich donors contributing to many Super PACs (Political Action Committees) is often anonymous and known as Dark Money. Since the funds are anonymous no one outside the Super PAC can be sure that the money they’re spending to elect a candidate isn’t from Iran, Russia, or China, or any other foreign nation or company. Our senators had an opportunity to shed light in the dark and willfully chose not to.

Republican lawmakers continue to push to solutions looking for a problem as they use fears of non-existent voter fraud as an excuse to limit voter access to the polls. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick still hasn’t paid the supposed million dollar bounty he offered for proof of voter fraud. Even Donald Trump’s own attorney general, Bill Barr, agreed there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud nationwide. Here in Texas, an official with the secretary of state’s office said the 2020 election was “smooth and secure.”

Sen. Cruz claims that improving access to the polls is somehow a "massive power grab by Democrats" even though measures such as same day registration, which allows a voter to register and vote on the same day, have nothing to do with the voter’s choice of candidate.

Every step that Republicans take to make it harder for citizens to register and vote weakens our democracy. Every time Republicans gerrymander districts to minimize the voting power of people of color in favor white voters erodes the foundations of our democratic institutions. Every measure Republicans take to retain power while only representing a minority of the electorate sends this country further down the road to becoming a failed democracy.

As author and lecturer James Waterman Wise Jr. once told an audience in 1936 - fascism would not come with a “shirt” or “insignia” but “wrapped up in the American flag and heralded as a plea for liberty and preservation of the constitution.” This sounds much like the rhetoric used by Gov. Greg Abbott, former president Donald Trump, and so many more Republicans I’ve lost count. That rhetoric works as we’ve all seen our formerly moderate Republican neighbors fall under the spell of Trump and his ilk; it hasn’t mattered to those neighbors one bit that Trump and his Texas boot lickers have proven themselves incompetent, power hungry, and greedy.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - October 27, 2021

America Needs Build Back Better

Joe Biden and Democrats in congress appear to be losing the messaging battle on his Build Back Better plan. Opponents simply shout about the cost and debt and much of the public reacts in fear. In reality much of the cost is covered by simply restoring the tax rates in place prior to Trump’s big giveaway to big business and the wealthiest among us. Even more is covered by returning to full funding of the IRS so it can collect on taxes due from tax cheats that it is unable to investigate and prosecute due to being underfunded and understaffed. Of course one of the reasons the plan is being bashed is that the wealthy tax cheats don’t want to fund the IRS so it can catch them.

The plan includes increases in educational opportunities by providing two years of free community college for all students, regardless of family income. The bill would also add $80 billion in funding for Pell Grants since funding for the program hasn't kept pace with the increasing cost of college in recent decades. It’s been clear for some years that pre-K makes a big difference in educational achievement especially to lower income children who often don’t get the kind of parental attention young minds need to fully develop. The Build Back Better plan will provide two years of universal pre-K for 3- and 4-year-olds.

For older Americans the bill would expand Medicare to include coverage of dental, hearing and vision services. Given the benefits healthy teeth and gums including protecting against heart disease it’s a wonder dental care isn’t already part of Medicare.

The Build Back Better plan aims to fix one of the problems with Medicare Part D that wasn’t addressed in the Affordable Care Act a decade ago. Americans on average pay two to three times as much as people in other countries for prescription drugs. Provisions in the legislation would allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices to get the best deal which it is currently prohibited by law from doing. Of course the pharmaceutical industry is spending millions of dollars on ads, campaign contributions, and lobbyists to fight this change just as they did back in 2009 and 2010.

The provisions I’m most interested in have to do with combating climate change. Slowing the rate at which Earth warms will mean transitioning away from fossil fuels, the major source of greenhouse gas emissions. One provision that Democratic Senator Joe Manchin has objected to is the $150 billion "clean electricity performance program," which would pay utility companies that increase their renewable energy supplies by 4% per year. Companies that do not hit this benchmark would face financial penalties. The bill also provides significant funding for forest management and other wildfire control measures. There are also measures to incentivize the buying of electric vehicles and the construction of charging stations; consumer rebates to homeowners who weatherize their houses; and financial penalties for oil and gas producers for methane leaks, among other things. Manchin’s family and major campaign donors are heavily invested in coal mining which stands to suffer further reductions as coal fired electric plants are phased out so his opposition is self-serving and not in the best interests of either his constituents or the American people.

There’s plenty more in the bill including paid family and medical leave and a wide range of other areas that would serve to improve the lot of most Americans. It would be a shame if fear of change prevented us from having what every other advanced nation on earth has.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - October 20, 2021

Texas Redistricting An Exercise In Racism

The Texas legislature is once again in special session, this time to draw new maps congressional, state senate, state house, and state board of education districts. The maps proposed are an exercise in using power to maintain power in that the districts are drawn to increase the number of districts that likely to be won by Republicans who already hold a majority that is not supported by the actual vote counts.

The Republican leadership has employed an out of state expert whose primary qualification for the job is successfully slicing up communities to enable Republicans to win more districts with fewer votes. The techniques for doing this are known as packing and cracking. Packing is when the mapmaker jams as many voters of the opposing party into as few districts as possible so while the opposition is guaranteed to win those seats they don’t have enough voters in other districts to win any others. Cracking is when the mapmaker spreads out opposition voters across enough districts that they can’t possibly achieve a majority in any of them. Careful use of such tactics has enabled Republicans to hold 64% congressional seats with only 52% of votes going to Republicans in 2020.

The newly proposed maps, providing two additional seats to Texas as required by the decennial census results, preserve the unwarranted Republican majority. Those two additional seats were necessary due to the population growth of which 95% was among people of color. It’s bad enough that Republicans skewed the maps to maintain a stranglehold on the vast majority of districts but they made it worse by doing it in the most disrespectful way possible. The 2020 census shows that Hispanics make up nearly the same percentage of the population as white Texans yet the new maps include 23 majority white districts and only 7 majority Hispanic districts. The new map removes the only Black majority district and one of the previous 8 Hispanic majority districts thereby diluting their voting power and reducing the opportunity to elect a representative of their own choosing.

House Speaker Dade Phelan admonished legislators not to use the term racist in their discussion of the maps yet looking at the demographic makeup of the proposed districts it’s hard not to conclude that there was racist intent in the process of drawing them. Until the Supreme Court gutted the bi-partisan Voting Rights Act the Department of Justice would have had to review and approve Texas maps. There is still hope that Congress will pass The Freedom to Vote Act which among other important provisions imposes new standards prohibiting partisan gerrymandering including maps drawn prior to passage.

Texas Senators Cornyn and Cruz both oppose The Freedom to Vote Act as do every other Senate Republican therefore passage through the Senate will require suspension or elimination of the filibuster something West Virginia senator Joe Manchin opposes. Our democracy is imperiled by power hungry Republicans supported by their Trump cultist voters. If this nation is to stand as a beacon of democracy for another century we must all hope that The Freedom to Vote Act is passed this year.

Wrecking Health and Safety to in the Name of Piety

Both the United States and Texas constitutions have strong protections for religious liberty incorporated in them. Unfortunately some folks have let their desire to participate in church services overwhelm their sense of self-preservation and their duty to protect their community by demanding the right to attend church services where their actions increase the chances of spreading a disease that is as much as 20 times more deadly than influenza. In response to efforts by local government to protect public health through limiting the number of attendees in churches and other businesses and in some cases closing them down temporarily some legislators proposed a bill to disallow any level of government from putting limits of any kind on services at churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples.

Should Proposition 3 pass in November the following text will be added to Article 1 Sec.6-a of the Texas constitution. "This state or a political subdivision of this state may not enact, adopt, or issue a statute, order, proclamation, decision, or rule that prohibits or limits religious services, including religious services conducted in churches, congregations, and places of worship, in this state by a religious organization established to support and serve the propagation of a sincerely held religious belief."

As Rep. John Turner pointed out during debate on the bill, if passed by the citizens of Texas the language in Proposition 3 "... would mean there could never be any restrictions on capacity." Those signs you often see at various venues servicing large numbers of people that say something like “Capacity Limit 230 by order of the Fire Marshal” would no longer be enforceable at any site where religious services are occurring because the Fire Marshal would be prohibited from regulating the number of people allowed in such a building even though that regulation is in place to prevent people from being killed in case of a fire.

Since Proposition 3 is so broadly worded, current prohibitions which have been upheld by the courts against congregations using psychedelic drugs such as mushrooms or peyote would be overridden, Rastafarians would have to be allowed to use of ganja (marijuana). I actually don’t have a problem with relaxing drug use prohibitions but point it out as an unintended consequence of unnecessary and poorly thought out legislation.

This kind of foolishness is counter to most underlying religious principles and weakens religious communities. Just like anti-mask and anti-vaccine behavior has caused far more deaths among Republicans, allowing Proposition 3 to pass likely will lead to higher death tolls from highly contagious diseases among religious people. Fortunately some religious leaders are forming coalitions to push back on Proposition 3 because they recognize that the health and safety of their flocks and the larger community is far more important than missing a few weeks of church services in the grand scheme of things.

If you truly care about your friends and neighbors push back on Proposition 3, talk to your family, friends and neighbors about it, warn them of the unintended consequences that risk so much, and urge them to vote no.

 Published in the Seguin Gazette - September 22, 2021

Martin Luther on Pandemic Responsibilities

I find it really interesting that the majority of anti-mask and anti-vaccination activists are Republican who are vocally Christian. You’d think given the early years of Christianity when much of the Roman world was consumed in plague it was Christians who cared for the sick and dying such that their caring and sacrifice made many converts that such a tradition would be maintained today. Instead we see many behaving in an uncaring and frankly un-Christian manner flouting mask requirements and worse beating those seeking to care for their fellows by reminding everyone to wear masks in their places of business.

Martin Luther had a lot to say about how Christians should behave in the midst of a pandemic, as the Black Death, bubonic plague, swept through Wittenberg and much of Europe. Luther was asked one of his followers Reverend Doctor Johann Hess, pastor in the city of Breslau, about proper behavior for a Christian in response to the deadly plague. Luther wrote a multi-page pamphlet — “Whether One May Flee From A Deadly Plague” — in response.

Regarding the responsibility of public officials in time of such a crisis Luther wrote: Accordingly, all those in public office such as mayors, judges, and the like are under obligation to remain. This, too, is God’s word, which institutes secular authority and commands that town and country be ruled, protected, and preserved…

Luther’s view of the individual’s responsibility toward others was also quite clear, he wrote: It is not forbidden but rather commanded that by the sweat of our brow we should seek our daily food, clothing, and all we need and avoid destruction and disaster whenever we can, as long as we do so without detracting from our love and duty toward our neighbor. How much more appropriate it is therefore to seek to preserve life and avoid death if this can be done without harm to our neighbor. Anyone who does not do that for his neighbor, but forsakes him and leaves him to his misfortune, becomes a murderer in the sight of God.

Luther pulled no punches on the topic of “Disregarding Everything Which Might Counteract the Plague and Death” writing: They are much too rash and reckless, tempting God and disregarding everything which might counteract death and the plague. They disdain the use of medicines; they do not avoid places and persons infected by the plague, but lightheartedly make sport of it and wish to prove how independent they are. They say that it is God’s punishment; if he wants to protect them he can do so with-out medicines or our carefulness. This is not trusting God but tempting him. God has created medicines and provided us with intelligence to guard and take good care of the body so that we can live in good health.

If one makes no use of intelligence or medicine when he could do so without detriment to his neighbor, such a person injures his body and must beware lest he become a suicide in God’s eyes.

Luther took a dim view of anyone who couldn’t be bothered to act in the best interest of the community likening not taking protective measures to safeguard one’s neighbors to letting a neighbor’s house burn without attempting to put out the fire. He considered it murder. I imagine he’d take the same dim view of today’s right-wingers who spread their anti-mask and anti-vaccine vitriol while simultaneously spreading COVID-19 and from time to time dying of it.

Texas Republicans Reward Snitches

As of September 1 women in Texas Republicans have essentially outlawed abortion in the state. SB8 makes it illegal to have an abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy and since women are often unsure they’re pregnant before six weeks this bill essentially prohibits 85% of abortions in Texas. The five worst members of the Supreme Court of the United States, three of whom are Trump appointees, have refused to even delay the effect of the bill until it can be reviewed.

I am deeply angered that women in Texas are already suffering from losing the choice of whether or not to continue their pregnancy as I don’t see where any man has the right to control what a woman does with her body. There’s been a lot of discussion of that already and most Democrats are pro-choice so let’s put that part of this disturbing bill on the side and focus on another insidious effect of this bill.

Texas Republicans gave abortion opponents in Texas the right to sue women who seek abortions and anyone who provides assistance to them from the doctor or nurse, to the friend or family member who drives them to the clinic, or anyone who helps finance the cost of the procedure. Texas Republicans pushed this bill through the legislature over the objections of women of all ages and Democrats on both houses of the legislature. Those who snitch on their neighbors or co-workers are guaranteed a minimum of $10,000 from anyone they successfully accuse of having, providing, aiding or abetting an abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy. Given that there are typically at least three people involved in an abortion, the pregnant woman, a doctor, and a nurse the snitch stands to get at least $30,000 in rewards.

There is historical precedent for this Republican legislation going back to Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Russia. The Nazis rewarded snitches who turned in Jews or anyone who hid or helped Jews flee. In Soviet Russia snitches were rewarded for informing on anyone who opposed or criticized Stalin or his policies. In Stalin’s Russian no one could be trusted as even family and friends might turn on you at any moment. As you might imagine such snitching was often abused by jealous neighbors, spurned lovers, and others with a grudge. Sociologist Jan Gross refers to such snitching as a form of ‘privatisation’ of the totalitarian state, since they enabled individuals to draw on the state’s coercive power to settle private grievances. Texas Republicans seem to want to privatize everything else so add snitching as another means.

Reliance on snitching is something that totalitarian regimes are known for. I find it interesting that my conservative neighbors refer to many liberal policies as communist and something out of Soviet Russia yet it is their restrictive policies and practices like snitching that most resemble the totalitarian Soviet state.

According to Psychology Today the term projection “is most commonly used to describe defensive projection—attributing one’s own unacceptable urges to another. For example, if someone continuously bullies and ridicules a peer about his insecurities, the bully might be projecting his own struggle with self-esteem onto the other person.”

If conservatives quack like ducks maybe they are ducks, or in this case totalitarians.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - September 8, 2021

Gov. Abbott Willing to Sacrifice Our Children

Gov. Greg Abbott is doing his best to sacrifice the life of your child or grand-child. By issuing an order banning local governments from passing mask mandates Abbott has willfully chosen to sacrifice the lives and health of the children of this state. You may hear plenty of “its might right” talk coming from Republicans and especially Libertarians who don’t want to wear a mask in public but they’re wrong.

Isn't your right to drive drunk? Shouldn't parents be able to decide whether or not to use a car seat for infants and toddlers? Why can’t paint companies and gasoline refiners use lead in their products like they used to? The answer is public health; we all have a right to life and health that cannot be subordinated to the right of an individual to just do as they please. That’s why government must have the power to mandate public mask wearing and should use it at this critical time. In fact the U.S. Constitution makes that very point in the preamble which states: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Here in Texas the weekly number of new, confirmed cases of COVID-19 is now greater than it was last year at this time. Hospital capacities in ICU’s all over the state are again near peak levels and deaths are again on the rise. As parents, children, and teachers prepare for the new school year its incumbent on school boards and administrations to look out for the best interests of those children. It’s important that they consider the best available information.

At the request of the North Carolina legislature Duke University researchers tracked COVID-19 transmission in North Carolina K-12 schools across 100 school districts, 14 charter schools, 160,549 school staffers, and more than 864,515 students attending in-school instruction.  The researchers, Dr. Kanecia Zimmerman, associate professor of pediatrics at the Duke University School of Medicine, and Dr. Danny Benjamin, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Duke Health wrote; "We have learned a few things for certain. Although vaccination is the best way to prevent COVID-19, universal masking is a close second, and with masking in place, in-school learning is safe and more effective than remote instruction, regardless of community rates of infection."

Dr. Benjamin stressed the efficacy of universal in-school masking in an interview with PBS News Hour stating "What we found was despite having extremely widespread COVID in the communities in North Carolina, if universal masking is in place, the chances of one child infecting another is less than 1 percent," he said. Voluntary masking, on the other hand, is about as useless as universal masking is effective. "Having a voluntary mask policy is like having a no-peeing section of a pool or a no-smoking section on an airplane," Dr. Benjamin explained. "That's absurd."

Given their constitutional duty to promote the general welfare, in this case public health, it is necessary for all levels of government to have the ability to impose mask mandates as appropriate in order to protect the lives and health of our children whether some parents are smart enough to understand that or not. Gov. Abbott’s presidential ambitions are insufficient cause to sacrifice our precious children’s health or lives.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - August 18, 2021

Gulf Stream Collapse Catastrophic

Last week climate scientists reported that the Gulf Stream has become unstable and is nearly total collapse. You might remember that the Gulf Stream is the ocean current that sends warm water from the Gulf of Mexico north up the east coast and across the northern Atlantic to western Europe which moderates the winters there. The Gulf Stream is a part of what scientists call the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and it also sends cold but less salty water southward deep in the ocean. If this circulation of warm and cold water should fail as it appears ready to do it could threaten our entire civilization.

The AMOC affects the climate of the east coast of North America as well the coasts of northwestern Africa and Western Europe. Its failure would cause rising sea levels on the U.S. Atlantic coast, threatening numerous cities. That failure could also wreak havoc on the world’s food supply, due to its effect on rainfall from South America to India and West Africa. Just as concerning, would be the effect on the Antarctic ice sheets and the Amazon rainforest which are already in trouble.

Climate scientists aren’t ready to predict when such a catastrophe will occur just that we’re approaching a tipping point and they don’t know how much more it will take to get there.  Given the unknowns the only thing to do is keep CO2 emissions as low as possible in order to minimize overall climate change. Every little bit of CO2 added to the atmosphere further increases the likelihood of this extremely high-impact event occurring.

More than 30% of jobs in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras are in agriculture; the way of life of these works revolves around fairly stable climate systems doing what they’re expected to do most of the time. Climate change tossing that out the window by amplifying existing weather patterns of dry spells, then heavy rainfall, then dry spells. Rainfall is becoming either increasingly abundant or in desperately short supply, relative to longtime averages. It’s a classic case of feast or famine and right now, rural farming families across Central America are starving. Some are even taking their families and leaving their homes. Not because they want to but because they have to in order to survive.

If you think immigration is a problem now, wait until severe drought conditions go on for decades in Central and South America as has happened in millennia past and brought down civilizations like the Maya and Aztecs. More than 140 million people across three regions of the world; Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America, could be displaced by 2050 due to foreseeable climate impacts like sea-level rise, extreme heat, drought, and crop failures caused by changing farming conditions. That’s not counting those displaced by hurricanes and flooding.

One of the most important reasons I wanted to see Democrats return to the White House and control of Congress was the difference in climate policy between the two parties. I was thrilled when President Biden returned the U.S. to the Paris Climate Accord though I’m frustrated that congress still hasn’t enacted legislation and budgets to actually get moving on our commitments. The longer we wait the higher and steeper a hill we’ll have to climb to get the world out of trouble. It’s past time to act decisively.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - August 11, 2021

Anti-Vaxxers Threaten All

My 91 year old mother lived in a time when Diptheria and Pertussis were serious threats to the lives of children and upwards of 35% of children didn’t live to adulthood. When I was 5 years old, in 1964-65, a wave of Rubella swept the United States causing 11,000 babies to be born deaf, 3,500 born blind, and 1,800 born intellectually disabled along with 2,100 neonatal deaths. Texas public schools require that students are vaccinated at appropriate ages for Diptheria, Pertussis, Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Polio, Hepatitis A and B among other diseases. Today we rarely hear of children dying of any of these diseases and that is only because of vaccines.

Last week the San Antonio Express News reported that Bexar 55.53% of residents ages 12 and up had been vaccinated while the rate in Comal is 53.49%, Kendall is 55.73%, and sadly Guadalupe is only 47.6%. In Bexar County the positivity rate, meaning the number of people testing positive out of all COVID tests has doubled since the end of June and was 13.5% at the time the article was published. Hospitalization and ICU admissions are also increasing. 97% of people hospitalized for COVID-19 in the U.S. are unvaccinated, according to NPR. Numerous hospitals across the country have gone back to delaying elective procedures as they need the beds to treat COVID-19 patients.

COVID-19 is once again a major public health threat as hospitalizations rise and 83% of new cases are the highly contagious Delta variant yet our governor has stated he will not order a mask mandate. There is plenty of vaccine available and numerous convenient locations to get it as most local pharmacies are offering it but too many people reject the opportunity claiming they know better than the overwhelming majority of medical professionals. These are the same folks who refused to wear masks and claim that the 610,000+ deaths from COVID-19 are overstated.

I’ve lost patience with them, after all they’re mostly people who voted for Trump and continue to believe the election was stolen regardless of the lack of evidence. Early this year when we were under a mask mandate many of these irresponsible people refused to wear a mask or used material so thin that it was of no value and claimed that those who feared contracting the virus should just stay home. I take the opposite view, if they don’t want to wear a mask in public then they should be the ones who stay home and let the responsible folks take care of business in a safe, healthy environment.

I would accept their right to get very ill and perhaps die from a preventable illness  but the problem is having so many unvaccinated people in the community provides a pool for more variants to evolve in and threatens the lives of children under 12 who can’t yet be vaccinated and those with compromised immune systems like many cancer survivors. These folks are like Typhoid Mary and aren’t willing to accept their responsibility to the larger community in the name of some warped notion of personal freedom. To para-phrase an old quote: Your liberty to cough out a virus ends just where my nose begins.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - July 28, 2021

Fascism Comes to Texas

Merriam-Webster dictionary defines fascism as: a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition. 77 years ago today American troops, perhaps your father or uncle, or grandfather among them, were fighting fascist forces not far from the Normandy beaches where they’d landed June 6^th. Today we’re still fighting against fascism.

One of the tactics of fascists the world over is claiming that something or someone is to blame and getting people angry about it, usually it’s a lie. Here in the US fascists are trying to persuade Americans to support them is through claiming that the 2020 election was fraught with massive voter fraud causing the 2 time popular vote loser and reality TV star to lose the election, it’s nothing more than “The Big Lie”. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick offered a $1 million reward and they still can’t provide proof of fraud 8 months later. A.G. Ken Paxton spent $1 million on staff salaries investigating voter fraud in the last year alone yet no one has been jailed. Those failures aren’t stopping them from taking actions to suppress voting rights under the guise of preventing that non-existent fraud. It’s all just Jim Crow 2.0.

Saturday morning the legislature held committee hearings on SB 1 and HB 3, both are highly complex, 40+ page bills which were only filed Thursday with over 200 other bills. Republicans are trying to give partisan poll watchers access to disrupt voting despite their notorious track record of intimidating voters of color. They’re also spreading fear to voters, election officials, and good samaritans to discourage their participation by further criminalizing Texas’s electoral process, targeting election officials in particular for minor mistakes. Republicans are gutting the ability of election officials to communicate with Texans about voting by mail. They’re making it substantially harder for Texans to access vote by mail applications and add new requirements for voter ID on a Vote by Mail ballot. Targeting voters with disabilities and forces those voters to disclose private medical information about one’s disability to access vote by mail.

The Republican written bills also eliminate pro voter policies that made voting safe and secure during the pandemic such as extended voting hours for shift workers and drive thru voting. The bills also authorize new lawsuits that can be brought by disgruntled losing candidates, in which a voter could be forced to disclose who they voted for - violating the very basic right to a private and secret ballot.

While the Republican authors have dropped provisions from the regular session that eliminated access to Souls to the Polls by restricting Sunday voting hours to the afternoon, a direct attack on traditional GOTV efforts in Black communities, that doesn’t mean they won’t try to add it back in the dark of night.

The courageous men who stormed the beaches at Normandy, fought through the bitter winter at the Battle of the Bulge, and marched into Germany and Italy to put an end to the fascist aggressors would be deeply disappointed if we roll over and let fascism take over the United States without even putting up a fight. Call Representative John Kuempel’s office, at 512-463-0602, and let him know what you think of these voter suppression bills HB 3 and SB 1.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - July 14, 2021

Texas' Senators Should Be Ashamed

Our two United States senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, shamed themselves last week by voting against even discussing S1, known as the “For the People Act”. The legislation would insure that all states offer early voting for at least 15 consecutive days of early voting for federal elections. The bill also requires that early voting locations be near public transportation, in rural areas and open for at least 10 hours per day. In other words our senators voted against requiring other states to offer similar voting opportunities to what Texas offers.

S1 also requires states to permit voters to register on the day of a federal election, including during early voting, something Texas doesn’t offer but is available in 18 other states plus Washington, D.C. States that allow citizens to register to vote closer to Election Day have higher participation rates. In Texas, at 30 days before election day; we have one of the earliest deadlines in the country, that's the earliest allowed by the National Voter Registration Act.

The “For the People Act” declares the right of citizens to vote in federal elections will not be denied because of a criminal conviction unless a citizen is serving a felony sentence in a correctional facility. The bill requires states and the federal government to notify individuals convicted of state or federal felonies, respectively, of the restoration of their voting rights. Texas offers a variation of this but voting rights aren’t restored until probation etc. is completed. Florida didn’t even offer that until recently when a citizen initiative passed overwhelmingly to restore voting rights then Republicans in the state legislature over-ruled the vote of the people to make it much harder for former convicts to again be able to vote.

S1 requires states to use individual, durable, voter-verified paper ballots and that those ballots are counted by hand or an optical character recognition device. Texas has no standard requirements on recording votes so Guadalupe and Kerr counties purchased machines that comply with this standard but neighboring Comal County spent millions of dollars on machines that don’t use voter-verified paper ballots. Republicans often talk big on election integrity but don’t walk the walk.

S1 prohibits a state from imposing restrictions on an individual’s ability to vote by mail. Texas already restricts vote by mail to voters over 65 and the disabled, in the last legislative session they tried to add a requirement that mail ballot voters provide proof of disability such as a doctor’s note and they’ll probably try again next week when the special session starts as voter suppression is one of the topics Gov. Abbott has called the session to address. 7 states, including heavily Republican Utah, offer all mail voting and people really like it. California also offers it as an option and last year over 85% of presidential election voters there used mail ballots.

S1 ensures equitable and efficient operation of polling places, reducing long lines and wait times for voters. In many areas of the country Republican election officials cause long lines and multi-hour wait times in minority voting precincts by providing too few voting machines while having an abundance in largely white precincts. Cornyn and Cruz voted against addressing this problem.

Our form of government works best when more people participate and feel like their voices are heard. Republicans apparently prefer low voter turnout believing that increases their chances of winning. The shameful behavior of senators Cornyn and Cruz is in line with Republicans across the south and especially here in Texas. They don’t care if government works as long as they retain power.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - June 30, 2021

Abbott Fails the People of Texas

Last week Gov. Greg Abbott proved once and for all what a petty, mean-spirited, little man he is by essentially giving notice to several hundred state employees that they’re fired as of September 1^st by vetoing Article X of the budget bill passed by both houses of the state legislature. Abbott announced he would do it in a fit of pique days after House Democrats walked out late on the last day of the session, breaking quorum over the voter suppression bill known as SB7. By vetoing that line item in the budget he is making the workers who clean the capitol, operate the cafeteria, run the parking garage suffer. The veto will hardly be noticeable to the elected members of the state legislature as they only get $500 a month and they all have full time jobs elsewhere. The folks that will hurt the most are the ones that had nothing to do with the politics of the session, they take care of the building and the people, they’re just like you and me.

Abbott also signed two bills into law aimed at strengthening the electric grid and reforming the agencies that regulate it. The bills were a response to a massive winter storm that broke the state’s electric grid, which according to a Buzzfeed investigation, killed as many as 700 Texans. Prior signing the bills, Abbott confidently declared that “everything that needed to be done was done to fix the power grid in Texas.” Last week we learned there are more problems with the grid when statewide notice was sent out requesting that all electricity users take steps to conserve because several generation plants were down with unscheduled repair issues. Nothing in the bills Abbott was so proud of addresses these issues and summer has just begun.

One of the electricity grid bills Abbott signed is SB3 which power generators and transmission line operators to weatherize their facilities. That’s great but the big problem during Snowpocalypse was that natural gas supply disruptions, the law requires only gas facilities deemed to be “critical” to weatherize. The agency responsible for making the determination of what’s critical is the industry-friendly Railroad Commission so we have no reason to be hopeful that they’ll actually select all the necessary infrastructure.

SB3 will take effect in six months so the regulatory agencies have time to work out the details. The catch is that the legislature failed to set a deadline for when regulators must begin actually enforcing the law. House Democrats attempted to remedy that with an amendment to establish a six-month deadline for enforcement after the regulatory agencies create their weatherization rules. The bill’s main author, Representative Chris Paddie, opposed the idea citing “financial and operational concerns,” the amendment was voted down along with another to make penalties mandatory also failed. Does anyone actually believe this legislation will do anything to insure that our electric grid will be better prepared for the next winter storm or hurricane, or extreme high temperatures?

Abbott recently announced that he’s picking up Trump’s ball on the border wall and will use $250 million in state funds to build some of it. He says he’s going to work with the Biden administration to have the previously purchased land returned to the original landowners then negotiate with them to have the state buy that land so he can build his wall.

Greg Abbott has shown he doesn’t care about regular folks, little people, he’s just worried about re-election and his action putting state employees out of work to spite House Democrats last week shows why he must not be.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - June 23, 2021

Our Unjust Tax Code

Bill and Ted both make $100,000 a year, each have a wife who isn’t working so they can stay home with their one year old child. Bill works for a big company and handles their computers and network, sometimes he works 60 hours a week. Ted’s income comes from his stock portfolio. Since they make the same amount of money each year and have the same number of dependents you’d think they would pay the same amount of federal income tax, but you’d be wrong. Ted’s income is taxed at a lower percentage because the federal tax code privileges capital gains with a lower rate. While this has been a problem for decades the Trump tax “reform” of 2017 made it worse. 

Of course much of the rhetoric surrounding work and taxes claims that poor people don’t pay enough taxes and those who get jobless benefits are the problem when in reality it is the very wealthiest among us who not only don’t pay their fair share they use their wealth to actively push to increase the differential. The very wealthy make campaign donations for the maximum allowed by law, then they setup dark money groups to donate more and run their own ads pushing their chosen candidates. The only things the wealthy ask in return for their largesse is that their privileged tax rate continue and the Internal Revenue Service be underfunded so it doesn’t have the staff to audit them and take them to court.

People like you and me, who work hard all day to actually earn our money, pay more in taxes than people who just sit back and collect a check.

Republicans campaigning for midterm elections in 2022 are claiming that the Trump tax cut in 2017 was a great success. They claim wages went up and unemployment went down because the corporate tax cut created a demand for labor that helped disadvantaged groups. The truth is that the unemployment rate has been going down from 2010 to the beginning of the pandemic 10 years later. Nothing remarkable happened in 2017, 2018, or 2019 other than continuing the trend that had been going on for years. 

The 2017 tax law also includes incentives for investing in plants and facilities outside of the United States. Didn’t Republicans claim they were all about “America First”? Those incentives are in the tax code because Republican donors told them to include it. Republicans are not about “America First”, they are about campaign donors first. The only people the Trump tax plan was good for were the small number who fund the political campaigns of the people who voted for it. When pushing the tax bill Republicans claimed that companies that are actually overseas and happen to do incidental business in the United States shouldn’t have to pay taxes. The defined the tax code based such that the higher the percentage of physical stuff a company has outside of the United States the lower taxes they have to pay. That gave every company an incentive to move as much physical plant and equipment overseas as possible.

ProPublica, the non-profit public interest journalism organization, recently published a number of articles on how our tax code and the Internal Revenue Service have been undermined. While Trumps big tax bill was the latest injury Republicans aren’t the only ones who have favored their big campaign donors with tax breaks. On the positive side Joe Biden is pushing to raise taxes on capital gains and revitalize the IRS so that it can audit more of the wealthy people who are not paying their taxes.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - June 16, 2021

Voter Fraud Investigation is a Fraud

As reported in the Houston Chronicle; Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s “office spent nearly twice as much time working on voter fraud cases this year as it did in 2018 — logging more than 22,000 staff hours — yet resolved just 16 prosecutions, half as many as two years ago.” That’s according to records obtained from the agency by nonprofit government watchdog American Oversight.

Everyone prosecuted were Harris County residents who supplied false addresses when they registered to vote. Not a single one served even a day in jail. There were over 11 million votes cast in the presidential election here in Texas so Paxton’s teams found that .00000145% of them were cast by voters registered at the wrong address. If shoplifting and speeding had rates that low we’d hardly ever assign officers to those crimes.

Paxton considers the voter fraud a top priority of his office. Between January and October of 2020 assigned eight additional law enforcement sergeants in addition to the nine already assigned to the election integrity unit and doubled the number of prosecutors to four. Given the pay rates of the attorneys and experienced investigators assigned a conservative estimate is that Paxton spent $750,000 to investigate and prosecute a bunch of nobodies for very minor violations of election law.  That’s like the city assigning a sizable fraction of police officers to catch people speeding less than 5 miles an hour over the posted limit. There is plenty of more important work to be done with that kind of expenditure of Texas taxpayer money.

Like the previous occupant of the White House, Paxton and Gov. Abbott continue to claim that organized voter fraud is rampant and even with massive expenditures of investigative resources they’re unable to provide any proof. Even if Paxton is honest and competent, and I’d argue he’s neither, numerous academic studies and journalistic reviews have also failed to find evidence of widespread voter fraud. Even a wide-ranging investigation of election fraud conducted by the U.S. Justice Department under former Attorney General William Barr in the 2020 elections found no evidence of such fraud. Prior to his resignation Barr publicly admitted that investigators had “not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”

So to be clear, even the Republican attorney general who protected the former president from the Mueller investigation couldn’t gin up a shred of evidence for the big lie his boss and nearly every Republican in office today, except Liz Cheney and a handful of others, continue to extol and use as the excuse for making it harder for people to register to vote and cast their ballot.

If there is no organized voter fraud and elections aren’t being won with fraudulent votes then why is Gov. Abbott so upset that SB7, the omnibus election bill, failed to pass last month? He’s so upset he has threatened to veto the budget line that pays the salaries for the thousand staffers who work full time for our senators and representatives. Making government employees suffer because you don’t like the outcome of the legislative process is a whole new level of childish temper tantrum.

The real reason that Republican leaders like the former president, Gov. Abbott, Paxton and others claim widespread voter fraud is that it provides a fig leaf for their efforts to prevent the voters most likely to vote for Democrats from voting. They know that their policies aren’t popular and that they can’t win when more people vote so their strategy is simply don’t let them vote.

Published in the Seguin Gazette June 9, 2021

Republicans Can't See the Pitchforks Coming

The two time popular vote loser and twice impeached, previous occupant of the White House has convinced nearly two thirds of Republican voters that the 2020 election was stolen and that he had  nothing to do with inciting the insurrection at the capitol on January 6^th. Texas Republicans along with those in other Republican controlled state legislatures are using that bull excrement to push through a wide range of voter suppression measures. They’re doing this out of fear that the high voter turnout seen in the 2020 election will continue and that will cause them to lose power. It’s a foregone conclusion that they’ll use partisan gerrymandering again to hold on to a greater share of the legislative and congressional seats than their vote totals support when redistricting comes up in the special session the governor plans to call later this year.

I frequently disagree with conservative pundit Jennifer Rubin on issues and policy but I think she’s spot on with her recent analysis of Republican rhetoric and actions in the Alabama state legislature regarding a nearly 30 year ban on yoga classes in public schools. While a guest on MSNBC Rubin said of Republicans, “They've come to believe that this is politics. That talking about yoga in classrooms is a substitute for governing, for solving actual problems. You know the state of Alabama is not one of the top ten states when it comes to education, health, longevity. It's not like there's any dearth of problems in the state of Alabama. But this is what they focus on. And it's actually, it's funny. But it's actually strategic because if they didn't talk about this nonsense; if they didn't fan the flames of white Christian nationalism, then they'd actually have to address the problems of Alabama. They'd actually have to vote for things and be held accountable. So they can't have that. So let's talk about yoga and Dr. Seuss and the whole, you know, grab bag of nuts that these people obsess about.”

Now replace yoga with permitless open carry or abortion and replace Alabama with Texas and Rubin’s analysis still holds. All the culture war issues they rant about are a diversion to avoid addressing real issues like the terrible maternal mortality rate in Texas, the low quality of public education in much of the state due to under-funding, the 19% of Texas children that suffer food insecurity, the high rate of families lacking medical insurance, and so much more. The same holds true for Republicans in our federal legislature.

The only point that Rubin missed is that reason Republicans cling to power is to make sure that big business and the wealthy keep their unfair tax breaks and continue to get contracts for government business funded by the taxpayers. All this has caused massive and continuing wealth inequality.

Back in 2014 Seattle based entrepreneur Nick Hanauer and member of the 0.01%, you know, the folks with private jets, 200 foot yachts, and 10 cars in the garage, wrote an op-ed for Politico titled “The Pitchforks are coming … for us Plutocrats”. In the column he said, “…there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples.”

Republicans are desperate to hold on to power but unwilling to change their policies to achieve majority support so they cheat. In a 1962 speech, John F. Kennedy said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 26, 2021

Wrong Response to Israeli Attacks

It’s not often that I think both sides, meaning both Democrats and Republicans, are the same yet the action of the Biden administration last week is the same as I’d expect from any of the last half dozen presidents. Biden has sided with Israel to allow them to continue their overreaction to violence perpetrated by Hamas militants and is killing Palestinian civilians at several times the rate suffered by Israelis. At least 122 Palestinians have been killed this week by Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, including 31 children, 1230 have been wounded according to local health officials. That compares to just 8 Israelis killed.

The United Nations Security Council, of which we are one of five permanent members, took a vote on whether to call for a cease fire in the Israel/Palestinian conflict and the only dissenting vote was the United States. Since the U.S. is a permanent member that no vote vetoes the measure.

The US supplies $4 billion in aid every year to Israel, that gives us a lot of leverage to use to moderate Israeli actions but once again our leaders fail to use it. Instead Israel is using that money and the weapons purchased from us with it on air strikes and artillery shelling of densely populated areas. That makes this country complicit with the murder of civilians. The Gaza Strip is the world’s third most densely populated polity at 1.85 million people crammed into an area less than a third the size of San Antonio. It isn’t possible to drop bombs and artillery shells without killing civilians and destroying their homes.

I make no excuses for Hamas, their rocket attack last week set off the latest round of violence. On the other hand Israel, especially as led by the corrupt Benjamin Netanyahu, has oppressed Palestinians since 1948 and due to walls, blockades, and other measures; Gaza suffers 70% unemployment among young people. Netanyahu has setup an apartheid state similar to what existed in South Africa until 1994. In 2018 Netanyahu’s government passed a racist law that affords exclusive rights to Jewish people and not available to the 20% of the citizens who are Arabs. That same law removed Arabic as an official language which it had been since 1948 when Israel was founded. You reap what you sow.

I don’t think for a moment that Joe Biden or anyone in the United States can solve the situation between Israel and the Palestinians though at least Jimmy Carter made some progress toward it in 1978. Israel’s leader at the time, Menachem Begin, was no innocent but Netanyahu makes him look like one, so Carter had a big advantage. Never-the-less I just don’t see that it’s too much to ask that the United States not single-handedly prevent the call for a cease fire. At least it would give a chance to provide medical attention to those injured in the Israeli attack.

Sadly this is another situation where Biden’s primary opponent, Bernie Sanders, has a better response. In a New York Times op-ed Sanders wrote. “No one is arguing that Israel, or any government, does not have the right to self-defense.” But “why is the question almost never asked: What are the rights of the Palestinian people?” Sander’s also issued a statement saying “We must also take a hard look at nearly $4 billion a year in military aid to Israel. It is illegal for U.S. aid to support human rights violations.”

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 19, 2021

National Day of Prayer Needs To Go

At first blush the annual National Day of Prayer presidential proclamation every first Thursday in May seems innocuous. US Code Title 36, Section 119 states: The President shall issue each year a proclamation designating the first Thursday in May as a National Day of Prayer on which the people of the United States may turn to God in prayer and meditation at churches, in groups, and as individuals. The original bill, which didn’t include a fixed date, was passed in 1952 at the direct suggestion of Rev. Billy Graham. As Graham explained, its purpose was to help bring “the Lord Jesus Christ” to the nation. At the urging of evangelical Christian groups the law was amended to set a fixed date in 1988 so they could organize around it.

Doesn’t it seem at least a little insulting that government should ask the faithful to pray? I mean, if folks are going to pray aren’t they going to pray without the federal government asking them to?

The National Day of Prayer Task Force, chaired for 25 years by Shirley Dobson, wife of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, organizes 30,000-40,000 events annually. Their events are so exclusively Christian that in 2005 when the Hindu American Foundation sought to join in they were refused. They're Americans so if an organization with the tacit support of the federal government is going to hold events shouldn’t Hindus be welcome just as should Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and those of other faiths?

All this gets us to what’s really disturbing about the whole National Day of Pray business in the first place. Government in this country has no business endorsing any religion as it is expressly prohibited in the United States constitution in which the First Amendment states: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Equally significant in understanding the founders’ views on the importance of maintaining distance between religion and government is Article IV which specifies that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

It’s important for us to understand the circumstances of the time in which the constitution was written. In England, from the 1660s until the 1820s, the Test Acts were used to “establish” the Church of England as an official national church. The Test Acts required all government officials to take an oath disclaiming the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and affirming the Church of England’s teachings about receiving the sacrament. The point was to exclude Catholics, Lutherans, and members of other dissenting Protestant sects from exercising political power. In other words, you couldn’t just be a Christian, you had to be the right kind of Christian to even hold the lowliest government office.

Even after the Revolutionary War while the constitution was being adopted, many states included religious qualifications in order to hold public office. Delaware’s constitution required government officials to “profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost.” North Carolina prohibited men “who shall deny the being of God or the truth of the Protestant religion” from government posts. Those states were a little more open minded in that at least their religious tests Protestants of all varieties to serve in government. Their religious tests were still designed to exclude certain people, often Catholics or Jews, from holding office because they were of the “wrong” faith.

It’s time for this country to fulfill the promise of the constitution and get out of the religion business entirely.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 12, 2021

Biden Restores America

Last week President Joe Biden spoke to congress and the American people to let us know what has been accomplished in his first hundred days and what he still plans to do. When Biden took office he promised 100 million COVID-19 vaccine shots in 100 days – the country is on track to have provided over 220 million COVID shots in 100 days.  Unfortunately due to poor leadership Texas is among the 20 worst states in getting our populous vaccinated. 19 of those 20 states are run by Republicans, which should really come as no surprise.

The American Rescue Plan passed by congress is delivering food and nutrition assistance to millions of Americans facing hunger – and hunger is down sharply already.  In addition the plan is providing rental assistance to keep people from being evicted from their homes and providing loans to keep small businesses open and their employees on the job. Due to re-opening enrollment in Affordable Care Act insurance plans an additional 800,000 Americans have enrolled so they now have access to regular health care when needed.

As a result of American Rescue Plan, the nation is on track to cut child poverty in America in half this year. Hopefully that translates to a large drop in food insecurity among children here in Texas as   That’s important not only for those children but the future of our economy as a whole because children living in poverty don’t do as well in school and have higher dropout rates leading to lower lifetime earnings, more public assistance, and another generation of children living in poverty. 4 million individual Texans of which 1.6 million are children aren’t sure when or where they’ll get their next meal. Texas is one of just 15 states with higher food insecurity than the national average.

Biden’s proposed American Jobs Plan seeks to create jobs by addressing some of the nation’s most pressing concerns. Today up to 10 million homes and more than 400,000 schools and child care centers use lead pipes in water lines. The American Jobs Plan would replace 100% of the nation’s lead pipes and service lines so every American can turn on the faucet and be certain to drink clean water that will not cause brain damage and shorten their life span.

In order to keep the United States competitive in the world economy the American Jobs Plan wouId create jobs connecting every American with high-speed internet, including 35% of rural Americans who still don’t have it. It creates jobs by building a modern power grid, something Texans know from our experience in February is desperately needed.

It will cost a lot of money to do what Biden has proposed and to pay for it he wants to increase taxes on the wealthiest among us, which of course has Republicans making evidence free claims that it will hurt the economy. After the speech Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman pointed out that the upper-class tax increases Biden is proposing to help him pay for this middle-class renaissance are unlikely to affect the economy the way Republicans envision. They’ve been running this same trick play for decades now, and it looks like we may finally be learning how to stop it. Bill Clinton’s tax increases on top earners didn’t just fail to bring disaster, they brought robust job growth. Krugman also noted that people “seem to forget that Barack Obama presided over a significant hike in high-end taxes at the beginning of his second term; the economy continued to add jobs rapidly, at the rate of about 2.5 million a year.”

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 5, 2021

Kuempel's Mis-placed Priorities

Here’s a review some of the legislation our state representative, John Kuempel, thinks is important enough to be the author or co-author. Authoring or co-authoring a bill indicates either it’s important enough to the representative that they’ve put in the put in the time and resources to draft a bill or they’ve accepted a bill written by a lobbyist or other source and put their stamp of approval on it. Sometimes legislators submit a bill with no intention of following up on it as they just want to be able to claim the bill when talking to their constituents in order appease them without actually making a real effort.

Of course, the Kuempel bill getting the most news, HB 4237, is one that proposes to legalize casino gambling at four locations in Texas. It’s almost guaranteed that if the bill passes those casinos will go in high population cities like Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, etc. There’s less chance of one being built in Guadalupe or Wilson County than there is of you winning the Powerball lottery this week without having purchased a ticket. Now I’ll agree that it’s time to legalize casino gambling in Texas, I just wonder why our representative feels the need to put his energy into a bill that will have zero benefit on his constituents when there is so many other issues directly effecting the residents of House District 44 that could use his energy.

Then there’s HB 336, which would make it criminal offense for any Texas law enforcement officer or district attorney to enforce a federal judge’s extreme risk protective order involving guns in the hands of known violent individuals. This bill is going nowhere fast. Who is Kuempel appeasing by joining Briscoe Cain as a co-author of this bill?

It’s another legislative session with Republicans in control of both houses and the governor so it should be no surprise that there’s another effort to outlaw abortion in Texas. It is disappointing the John Kuempel is a co-author of HB 1280 which is a companion to SB 9 which passed the Senate and has been referred to a House committee. Both bills seek to penalize doctors performing abortions for any reason other than to save the life of the pregnant woman with a first or second degree felony.

It wouldn’t be Texas if Republicans didn’t include a bill to legalize nearly anyone to tote pistols nearly anywhere which is what HB 1927 does and of course Kuempel co-authored. The bill and it has passed the House and is waiting for a hearing in the Senate committee to which is was assigned. Apparently our state rep feels everyone walking around armed is a good thing. I’m going right out to buy a few cans of pepper spray and if I see some pistol toting yahoo in the grocery or coffee shop I may just spray the yahoo then beat them unconscious. When asked by police why I did it I’ll claim I was in fear for my life. Heck, it works for police officers shooting unarmed black men all the time.

There are a number of other bills Kuempel authored which are in keeping with adjusting state law to meet current needs or fix things that have been found burdensome or counter-productive. One of the important topics Kuempel didn’t put any effort into is marijuana reform. Why Kuempel feels the need to pander to gun nuts and won’t make an effort to help people seeking pain relief through marijuana products is beyond me.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - April 28, 2021

Right-wing Anti-Science Threat

A century ago an influential man convinced the leader of great nation that his pseudo-scientific notions about agriculture were valid and used his influence to reject the findings of thousands of biologists. That nation outlawed teaching genetics and Darwinian evolution and disallowed plant hybridization which then led to the starvation of millions as crop yields projected by the pseudo-science purveyor failed to materialize. When the nation’s leader finally lost power the country was decades behind other competing nations in biological sciences and continued to have trouble feeding its population for decades more. The country was the Soviet Union, the political leader was Joseph Stalin, and the pseudo-science advocate was Trofim Lysenko.

In the U.S., over the past decade similar anti-science attitudes have taken over an influential group of politicians and their supporters. The clearest example of it is the current pandemic during which we’ve seen Republicans denigrate those who wear masks in public as unnecessary regardless of the public health science showing wearing masks reduces the spread of COVID-19. Our Governor prohibited cities from enforcing mask requirements. The previous White House occupant even claimed that the pandemic was a hoax and it would go away after the election.

In the United States, more than 565,000 deaths have been attributed to COVID-19, research results released at a Brookings Institute conference indicates 250,000 of those deaths were avoidable if by last May the country had adopted widespread mask, social distancing, and testing protocols while awaiting a vaccine, estimated Andrew Atkeson, economics professor at University of California, Los Angeles.

Recent polling shows that 42% of Republicans say they will definitely not get any of the COVID-19 vaccinations. The percentage hasn’t changed in months and recent concerns about the safety of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine have had no impact. For months conspiracy theorists have been claiming that Microsoft founder Bill Gates has worked behind the scenes to see to it that a microchip is injected into everyone when they are vaccinated. We’re not talking about a handful of loons, there are thousands of believers showing up at protests. They offer no evidence to support their ridiculous claims yet their movement grows.

I guess none of us should be all that surprised at any of this as Republicans have been taking anti-science positions on global climate change for decades but at least on that topic we could see that it was largely due to the influence of corporate campaign donations. In the case of the pandemic it seems to simply be a way to activate Republican tribal behavior as a goal unto itself rather than as part of a specific policy goal.

It seems as if anti-science attitudes have joined with guns and bible thumping as part of the identifiers for being a good Republican. It hasn’t always been this way as the National Academy of Sciences was founded under Abraham Lincoln and NASA was founded by the Eisenhower administration.

These right-wing anti-science views are not exclusive to the United States, in fact such idiocy has spread across Europe. If it were just about COVID-19 vaccines I’d says just let the fools die off but it’s not. It plays into the more important issue of fighting global climate change and that is an existential threat that will impact future generations and cause untold suffering if we allow the right to control national policy again while they are still in the grasp of insanity.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - April 21, 2021

Immigration Can Be Fixed

The use of fear to drive votes and actions is a common tactic employed by Republicans to divert attention from real issues or to distort the conversation in order to achieve their ends even when it isn’t in the best interests of the average American. As usual Republicans are doing their best to scare Americans about immigrants on the southern border.

If Republicans really wanted to address undocumented immigration and the tens of thousands seeking asylum in the United States they’d call for increased funding of immigration judges  and look for ways to improve conditions in the countries where most immigrants are coming from. Instead they rail against desperate people as if they were violent criminals seeking to destroy our homes. There are real solutions to be had if only we look to what has worked in the past and apply those lessons today.

In the 1950’s to the 1980’s many European nations saw huge numbers of immigrants Spain looking for jobs because the Spanish economy was in shambles and opportunities were scarce. As the effects of joining the European Union caused modest improvements in the national economy during the 1990’s the rest of Europe saw a drastic decline in the number of Spaniards within their borders as fewer left their homes and many who had returned to them. Leaving your home, your family and friends, your society and culture to go to a place where another language is spoken and you have no contacts is something only desperate people do. If they feel that they have any chance at all to feed their families and have a roof over their heads few will risk giving that up for an uncertain reward.

Now look at Germany, a nation of 82 million, which has absorbed around 1.2 million immigrants from Syria and the surrounding area. Those immigrants were driven from their homes by violence and the poverty it caused to a nation with a drastically different culture, climate, and language. Germany chose to accept them in spite of right wing nationalist demonization and then invested in easing their assimilation by providing counseling, language classes, and access to their public education system. In a decade those immigrants have by and large joined the workforce and through their taxes and economic activity are well on their way to repaying the country’s investment in them.

We can also look back to successful programs from our own past such as the Bracero program of the 1950’s through which Mexican farm workers got temporary work visas allowing them to work legally in the United States and travel back and forth across the border. Americans farmers got the workers they needed when they needed them and undocumented immigration was drastically reduced. There were abuses of the program often by the farmers and corporations who withheld or discounted the workers’ pay but it generally worked.

There are now between 10 and 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, a decline of more than 10% since 2010 mostly due to Mexicans leaving as their home nation’s economy improved thus reducing the incentive to stay here.

In order to address undocumented immigration the United States must assist Central and South American nations build their economies so that their citizens can hope to earn a decent living, implement some form of guest worker program, increase the number of asylum hearing officers at the border to address the multi-year backlog of asylum cases, and legalize marijuana and perhaps other drugs which will stem much of the violence in Mexico, Guatemala and other Central American nations that in turn drives immigration.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - April 14, 2021