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

Republicans Suppress Votes While Democrats Fight For Voting Rights

The Republican controlled legislature in Georgia passed new voter suppression measures aimed at minority voters a few weeks ago under to the guise of protecting against vote fraud. If that’s really what it was about they wouldn’t have included measures such as criminalizing handing out bottles of water to people standing in long lines to vote. The Texas legislature said “hold my beer” and is poised to pass the onerous SB 7 which included a provision to make it harder for the disabled to vote by mail by requiring that they provide a note from their doctor declaring them disabled and therefore worthy of a mail in ballot, until a last minute amendment to strike that language sponsored by Senator Judith Zaffirini (D) was passed. None of the other amendments to remove restrictions or clarify language were accepted the bill to pass the Senate on a party line vote.

While Republicans claim that the bill is fair and applies equally to everyone in reality several provisions in SB 7 focus on increased voting regulations in only urban areas. There are restrictions specifically targeting Harris County where Democrats have won nearly all seats in local and state offices recently. The legislation also sets specific rules for the distribution of polling places in only the handful of counties with a population of at least 1 million, most of which are either under Democratic control or won by Democrats in recent national and statewide elections.

The Texas House, not wanting to be outdone, is working on HB 6 another highly discriminatory bill that drew criticism against it from a number of prominent corporations, including Dell, American Airlines and Microsoft, as well as former House Speaker Joe Straus (R), who tweeted: Major Texas employers are stepping up and speaking out against voter suppression, and for good reason. Texas should not go down the same path as Georgia. It’s bad for business and, more importantly, it’s bad for our citizens. #txlege

It isn’t just Georgia and Texas, nearly all states where Republicans control the state legislatures are working to pass similar voter suppression laws in an effort to stem in-roads by Democratic candidates. This is nothing more than Jim Crow 2.0 using the myth of voter fraud as the excuse. Since they’ve found in many states and localities that they can’t or soon won’t be able to win free and fair elections Republicans are changing the rules to disadvantage voters most likely to vote for Democrats.

Moving in the other direction the U.S. House recently passed H.R. 1, The For The People Act which includes measures such as voter registration modernization, prohibiting partisan gerrymandering, and require candidates for president and vice-president to disclose their tax returns among other measures.

Modernizing voter registration is important since roughly a quarter of eligible Americans are not registered to vote. H.R. 1 promotes internet registration because the current manual transfer of handwritten information to computerized voter rolls is costly and prone to error. The bill requires states to implement automatic voter registration such that when eligible citizens provide information to government agencies like the Department of Motor Vehicles, they are automatically registered to vote or have their existing registration information updated unless they affirmatively decline. The bill also requires same day voter registration for federal elections which helps safeguard against registration system errors, cyber-attacks, and wrongful purges.

Democrats are fighting to make our elections better and increase citizen participation while Republicans are scrambling to suppress voter participation in an effort to squeeze out victories even when their policies are not supported by the majority of voters.