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