Voting Republican is Deadly

Republican politicians typically talk about freedom, low taxes, and against big government. The result of their actions in support of those notions is often not in the best interests of their constituents not even the folks that voted for them or simply contrary their claims.

A case in point is the COVID-19 pandemic and the high proportion of deaths among Republicans versus Democrats. In research conducted by Yale University School of Management’s Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham and Jacob Wallace and Jason L. Schwartz of the Yale School of Public Health they found that excess deaths during the pandemic were 76% higher among Republicans than Democrats in Ohio and Florida. In another study Mauricio Santillana, a professor specializing in epidemiology at Northeastern Univesity and a team of researchers studied 2,000 counties across the country and found that the median death rate for counties with the strongest Republican leaning was between 40% and 300% higher than the counties that leaned Democrat. Santillana believes this is symptomatic of a heavily politicized public health crisis. The combination of failure to enact strong public health measures and spouting misinformation was deadly. Lots of freedom and anti-big government rhetoric from the state’s Republicans including Gov. Abbott regarding mask mandates and lockdowns.

The Texas Tribune recently reported that “Fatal crashes in rural areas accounted for 51% of Texas’ 4,489 traffic fatalities in 2021, even though only about 10% of the state’s population lives in a rural area, according to data from the state’s department of transportation.” Many of those crashes are due to lack of safety precautions like shoulders or guardrails that are generally found on more urban highways. The high rate of fatalities is also due to high speeds and failure to wear seatbelts; think “freedom” rhetoric. Nationally the trend is similar though not quite as drastic as here in Texas. We all know that rural counties have mostly Republican voters and are run by Republican elected officials and that Texas is governed by Republicans at the state level so there are only Republicans to blame for this disparity. On the other hand they claim to be keeping your taxes low.

The Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee report called for by the Texas legislature was delayed three months and released early in December. The report estimates that up to 90% of the maternal deaths may have been preventable. Severe medical complications from pregnancy and childbirth also increased drastically between 2018 at 58.2 per 10,000 and 2020 at 72.7 cases per 10,000 deliveries in Texas. Advocates for maternal medical care suggest the report was delayed for political reasons otherwise it would have embarrassed government officials right before the election.

Obstetric hemorrhage was the leading cause of pregnancy-related death in Texas, accounting for a quarter of cases. The most common cause of hemorrhage deaths was ectopic pregnancies, in which a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus. Left untreated, these nonviable pregnancies can rupture, causing life-threatening complications such as severe blood loss and sepsis. If the woman doesn't mis-carry the only treatment is an abortion. Given the state’s near-total abortion ban you can see where death is a very real possibility. Knowing who voted for and signed into law the Texas abortion ban there is no doubt who is to blame. Being a new mother in Texas is more dangerous to life and health than most other states. Republicans are pro-life unless you’re a pregnant woman.

Voting Republican is risking your life and the lives of your loved ones.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 28, 2022

School Vouchers Eliminate Taxpayer Control

School voucher supporters believe they will finally manage to pass a bill with backing from families displeased with public schools in the last two years over pandemic response rules and about how race and history are taught. Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and the Texas GOP have already listed taxpayer-funded alternatives to sending a child to the local public school as a legislative priority for next year.

State Senator Mayes Middleton, R-Wallisville has filed the most comprehensive bill on the topic so far. Middleton claims “What my bill would do is it would empower every single parent in the state of Texas to choose which education works best for their children’s unique educational needs.” Middleton and other voucher advocates  fail to mention that such empowerment only applies to Texans who live in areas with such alternative schools or at least a population large enough to support one and transportation to get the child to that alternative location. Private schools also need not accept all children who wish to enroll.

HB 557 by Cody Vasut (R-Angleton ), HB 619 by Matt Shaheen (R-Plano), and SB 176 by Mayes Middleton (R-Galveston)​ are various forms of voucher bills that have one thing in common: diverting taxpayer dollars away from real public schools. HB 983 by Rep. Terri Leo-Wilson (R-Galveston) would remove the last sliver of local control that elected officials have regarding charter schools, which is where they are built or located. Leo-Wilson’s bill would allow charter schools to avoid the only smidgen of local oversight in existence since charters do not have elected boards, do not need voter approval for new buildings, and do not hold local meetings to determine where best to build for the community, the way real public schools do. Taxpayer dollars going to private schools is an attack on transparent, accountable governance, as private schools are largely unregulated and not required to hold public meetings, have boards elected by taxpayers, or publicly disclose spending or other records the way public schools must.

Vouchers are a fiscal drain on the public education system and those taxpayer dollars should go toward improving our neighborhood schools instead.

I’d like to see support of increasing teacher pay and decreasing teacher workloads, such as lower class sizes not just lower student to teacher ratios which still allow well over 30 students per classroom. We all need to recognize that continuing to allow teachers and support staff to be overworked to the point of burnout is counter-productive. Expecting teachers to provide the quality of education our students deserve without the resources they need is just asking them to find other jobs.

I don’t know about you but I’m not happy about the notion of my taxes going to pay someone teaching a religion class. I’m pretty sure that even Republicans would object to that if they considered that their taxes could go to paying for tuition to religious schools that aren’t Christian. Considering some of the intolerant remarks coming out of the mouths of Dan Patrick and his followers, how do you think they’d react to school vouchers to a Muslim school? Some of those folks might have a stroke.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 21, 2022

Right-wing Violence Rises

In the research paper "A comparison of political violence by left-wing, right-wing, and Islamist extremists in the United States and the world" by Katarzyna Jasko et.al. the authors state "we find that radical acts perpetrated by individuals associated with left-wing causes are less likely to be violent. In the United States, we find no difference between the level of violence perpetrated by right-wing and Islamist extremists." They then go on to show the data that proves their assertion. You may often here conservatives especially Fox News personalities, Breirbart, and others claim that leftists are the source of most violence but they never show you any evidence to back up their claims. The General Accountability Office reports that "Of the 85 violent extremist incidents that resulted in death since September 12, 2001, far right wing violent extremist groups were responsible for 62 (73 percent) while radical Islamist violent extremists were responsible for 23 (27 percent).”

That's important because a new tactic has been spreading across the country over the last several months, you might have heard about the 40,000-plus North Carolinians who were without electricity a week or so ago because someone broke into power sub-stations and shot up critical equipment causing localized blackouts. That's a tactic that right wing extremist groups on the internet have been talking about a lot lately going so far as to offer recommendations on how to do the most damage complete with photos of the equipment to look for and how to best damage it. The FBI is still investigation the attack so we can't know for sure that this particular instance was due to neo-Nazi perpetrators but it sure matches their self-published plans closely according to Rita Katz, founder and executive director of the SITE Intelligence Group, who told Newsweek that the Moore County attack is consistent with recent online neo-Nazi messaging. "The sabotage against the North Carolina substation aligns perfectly with directives and methods seen in accelerationist neo-Nazi communities," Katz said. "If this was indeed a far-right terrorist attack, my worry is that it will serve as a proof of concept for other far-right extremists.”

Just a few weeks before the North Carolina incidents there were at least six different attacks on power substations were reported to the FBI in Washington and Oregon. In recent months there have been at least half a dozen “substation intrusion events” though none involved vandalism by gunfire. Instead, the Florida intrusions involved people manually turning off the power substations by tripping switches. Most of these incidents resulted in brief outages that were quickly restored. What's really frightening about the Florida attacks is that it shows the involvement of people who know how the equipment works.

In January, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warned that American extremists have begun exhibiting a worrisome interest in attacking the power grid as a means of disrupting the country. Far-right domestic extremists “have developed credible, specific plans to attack electricity infrastructure since at least 2020, identifying the electric grid as a particularly attractive target given its interdependency with other infrastructure sectors,” according to the DHS report.

It’s unfortunate that unlike Presidents George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan who denounced racist figures like Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke when they tried to enter mainstream politics Donald Trump uses their rhetoric. If today’s Republican leaders were really patriots they would speak out, like their predecessors in opposition to the hateful messages that inspire such attacks. We know what it means that they don’t.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 14, 2022

Republicans Weak

While thousands of high school girls in Iran lead nationwide protests risking arrest or death in a fight for freedom from the oppression of a government by religious leaders, Russian men either accept being conscripted into a war of conquest with Ukraine or run away seeking asylum in other countries including the United States.

Protests began in Tehran September 16 as a reaction to the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested by the Guidance Patrol for wearing an "improper" hijab in violation of Iran's mandatory hijab law. Human rights group HRANA said that as of Friday 469 protesters had been killed, including 64 children, some as young as 9 years old. It said 61 government security forces had also been killed. More than 18,000 protesters are believed to have been arrested.

Russia invaded Ukraine in March and took control of vast sections of the country in weeks but failed to capture the capitol, Kyiv. Since then Ukrainian defenders with the aid of weapons provided by NATO countries including the United States have thrown Russian troops out of much of their country. Most recently Russian forces withdrew from Kherson, the only regional capitol, they’d managed to capture. Russian troops have suffered losses in the tens of thousands. While there have been some protests in Russia they’ve been quashed by local security forces.

Russian men apparently aren’t nearly as brave as Iranian teenage girls.

It was just a year ago that Senator Ted Cruz claimed that Russia’s manly army, in which same sex relationships are illegal, was a model that our armed forces should emulate. Now, those same manly men docilely accept being conscripted and thrown into the meat grinder that the attempt to conquer Ukraine has become; knowing they’ll receive no training, no winter coats or boots, and 50 year old weapons. Cruz claimed that our “woke” armed forces weren’t as effective as they could be because we have learned to accept LGBTQ service members.  Instead, it is the “woke” Ukrainian military which has thrown back the Russian aggressors and continues the fight to free their countrymen.

In 1995 George W. Bush said about his meeting with Vladimir Putin; “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. I was able to get a sense of his soul.” Earlier this year Donald Trump spoke to a crowd at a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago about Putin’s invasion; “I’d say that’s pretty smart. He’s taking over a country, really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people, and just walking right in. I mean, he’s taking over a country for two dollars’ worth of sanctions.”

Recent polls now show that 48% of Republicans think the United States is spending too much on weapons and support for Ukraine. Senator elect J. D. Vance of Ohio said earlier this year; “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.” Trump’s former Chief Strategist Steve Bannon said; “Every member of Conservative Inc. that backs this Ukraine war is a simp.” Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green just weeks ago said that; “Under Republicans, not another penny will go to Ukraine.”

What is it with Republicans praising authoritarian leaders like Putin? Why are they unwilling to assist those who are trying to defend their homes, their freedom, their democracy?

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 7, 2022

Texas Legislature 2023

We now know most of the results of the November 8 election and the story it tells is that Texas Republicans are very good at gerrymandering districts for partisan advantage. Their highly refined map drawing allowed them to pick up one seat in the state house, one seat in the state senate, and two congressional seats even though the statewide partisan vote split is approximately the same as it was in 2018. It’s amazing how well you can stick it to the other side when you control the rules of the game.

The state legislature will begin the 2023 session in just 7 weeks and they’ll have less than 5 months to pass a budget and get the rest of the people’s business done for the next two years. Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar has stated that record-high tax revenues over the last year will give Texas lawmakers an extra $27 billion to spend in the 2023 legislative session. Let’s see if our legislators and governor will allocate significant additional funds to public education where it is sorely needed or if they spend foolishly on fake border security as Greg Abbott did when he re-allocated funds from other important state responsibilities to continue and expand the National Guard presence on our southern border.

There are numerous other issues that the legislature really should address including action on the Texas power grid which is still in danger of failing when it is needed most at least in part because the model that utilities are required to use to determine whether or not they are prepared for extreme weather events doesn’t include the conditions we experienced in February 2021. Texas electricity users will be paying increased utility bills for a decade just to cover the outrageous rates that generators were able to charge for less than a week. The extra you’re paying on your bill doesn’t go toward improvements to prevent the same disaster in 2023 or further in the future.

It is way past time for Texas to make at least medical marijuana legal, the pathetic potency of the material legal in the state currently is little more than a placebo. There are clearly documented studies showing the value of marijuana for pain relief, something my wife would really benefit from. Presently she is using prescribed opioids which of course have numerous bad side effects including addiction and gastro-paresis, a condition in which the intestines don’t pump food and waste properly. The treatment for gastro-paresis is another drug which isn’t covered by many insurance plans and costs about $1000 a month so it isn’t really affordable at all. When we were out of state she was able to use medically approved marijuana edibles that relieved her pain and allowed her to function better than the drugs available here in Texas.

If the Republican leadership took a look at how successful decriminalizing recreational marijuana has been in states like Colorado where the sales taxes from it have been used to augment public school funding they might shift their perspective. I don’t really expect that to happen any time soon as it would take away one of the ways that Republicans generate fear in voters.

Various groups have been lobbying for changes to state marijuana law for years now and all we can hope is that our legislators will begin to see the light in 2023.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - November 23, 2022

Choose Wisely - Vote Democrat

Republican leaders, including Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, have been calling for violence against Democrats for several years and now that a Republican supporter has invaded Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home and beaten her husband with a hammer former President Trump and many of those he has endorsed have remained silent instead of calling for an end to political violence.

Faux New, I mean Fox News, has spent the last couple of months making spurious claims about crime in America but considering they’ve been using the FBI statistics from 2020, even if what they say is true that happened under Trump so if a president is to be blamed then blame him.

Let’s talk about objective reality, something Republican candidates don’t do much of because it doesn’t make them look good. Last week saw the release of the most recent economic statistics which show that the U.S. GDP grew at a +2.6% pace in the third quarter of this year, that’s even better than expected. Especially when you consider that Republican doomsayers have been arguing for months that the US economy is in a recession and they’ve been rooting for a downturn.

Our economy has created 10 million jobs, unemployment is at a 50 year low, and U.S. manufacturing is booming. The report also shows that in the third quarter, Americans' incomes were up and the inflation rate came down. Gas prices are falling – down $1.26 since the summer, and down over the last three weeks. The most common price at gas stations in Texas today is $3.19 a gallon. Last week I paid $2.99 a gallon.

Much of the rising cost of food is due to the current high cost of grain which is in turn caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine one of the world’s major wheat producers. The same holds true for gas prices to a large extent so if you want to blame someone blame Vladimir Putin.

Democrats in Congress and the Biden-Harris Administration earlier this year passed laws that will bring down prescription drug prices especially for those on Medicare starting next year.

Congressional Republicans have a very different agenda – they’re planning to hold the archaic federal debt limit hostage against cutting Social Security and Medicare knowing that holding up the legislation will shut down the federal government. Putting those federal employees and all those who support them out of work will cost the economy tens of billions of dollars just like it did the last time they pulled this stunt. They plan to do it so they cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans and large corporations.

The Republican’s failed economic vision is not the way to give families more breathing room and grow our economy so working families can get ahead. It’s a road map for increased poverty and shorter life spans. We know from the bitter experience of the Reagan administration that “trickle down” economics only benefits the wealthy few. Democrats see and are working toward an economy that benefits everyone. Republicans can’t conceive of an economy like that so they work toward one that benefits they’re wealthy benefactors and themselves.

When you vote, notice I didn’t say if you vote, choose wisely and vote for Democrats because they have a plan to move the country forward with peace, equity, and compassion for all of us.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - November 2, 2022

Democrats The Right Choice

There’s still time to conservative leaning independent voters to come to their senses and reject the extremism that has taken over the Republican Party both nationally and here in Texas. There are a few things that they should be reminded of when deciding on whom to vote for this election.

In May, 68 Republican members of the House and Senate voted against military aid to Ukraine. A week ago House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy made it clear that if the Republican Party takes power after the election; Ukraine will receive less support from the United States as it tries to defend itself and re-capture territory taken during Vladimir Putin's unprovoked invasion. At a recent Harvard Kennedy Center even Republican Representative Liz Cheney ripped into McCarthy for signaling support for slashing aid to Ukraine and former vice president Mike Pence called out GOP “Putin apologists” who have sympathized with Russia even as it invades a sovereign nation.

Can you imagine how different Europe and the U.S. would be today Franklin Roosevelt had been prevented from sending weapons, ammunition, and ships to the Allies while Hitler was invading country after country? If Putin isn’t stopped in Ukraine, which country will be next? How would the citizens and leaders of any other nation continue to consider the U.S. to be the leader of the free world?

Leading Republicans, including Representative Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), have stated that next year’s deadline to raise or suspend the debt ceiling is a point of leverage they'll use to cut Social Security and Medicare if their party can win control of the House in the November midterm elections. The debt ceiling is an artificial limit on the government’s ability to borrow money. That may not sound like a big deal or it might sound like a good idea until you realize that in reality it just limits the ability to pay for services and products that have already been delivered. It’s like ordering pizza delivered then when the driver arrives you take the pizza into the house and start eating it then tell the driver your spouse won’t let you use the credit card to pay for it.

The United States used to have the highest credit rating in the world because unlike other nations we always stood behind our debts. That credit rating has been damaged repeatedly over the last decade by Republican obstruction when it comes to raising the debt ceiling. You may remember when the federal government was shut down for 16 days in 2013. Or you might remember the 2018 shutdown that lasted 35 days which was caused by Donald Trump being unwilling to sign the appropriations bill that didn’t fund his useless border wall even though Senate Republicans passed the bill unanimously. Some of my customers were affected because their businesses operate on federal property, some of my neighbors were left without paychecks and had difficulty making mortgage payments.

If House Republicans take control of congress and get their way anyone on Social Security or Medicare and those who will become eligible in the next few years will suffer reduced income and higher medical bills. In contrast Democrats have raised Social Security benefits almost 9% this year to cover inflation.

So I have to ask, which party really cares about the economy? Which party cares about the health and welfare of our senior citizens? Which party truly supports in national security? Only Democrats can be trusted to address those concerns at this time.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - October 26, 2022

Biden Right on Marijuana Policy

President Joe Biden has finally taken initial steps to correcting both an injustice and bad health policy by instructing the Department of Justice to begin the process to issue full and unconditional pardons for citizens and legal residents with a federal conviction for simple possession of marijuana. This pardon will help thousands with prior convictions seeking housing, employment, benefits, and educational opportunities who are currently ineligible based on federal statutory or regulatory bars on individuals with prior drug convictions. The House passed a bill in 2020 that would have legalized and tax marijuana but the Senate never voted on it.

The President has asked the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Attorney General to begin the administrative process of reviewing how marijuana is scheduled under federal law. Marijuana is currently a Schedule I drug, treated the same as heroin and LSD and more strictly than fentanyl and methamphetamine – the drugs driving our overdose epidemic. Changing how marijuana is scheduled would advance research and facilitate the appropriate medical use of marijuana.

Until 1916 marijuana was legal in all U.S. states, by 1931 29 states had outlawed it, then came the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 which outlawed it nationally over objections from the American Medical Association regarding medical usage. Most historians familiar with the topic agree that the scare tactics used to encourage making possession and use illegal even for well documented medical purposes were just cover for racism against Mexican and Black men who were the primary recreational users.  One way to know the laws and their enforcement are racist is that white and Black and brown people use marijuana at similar rates, a disproportionate number of people arrested and convicted are Black and brown. According to historian Eric Schlosser’s article in The Atlantic “Police officers in Texas claimed that marijuana incited violent crimes, aroused a ‘lust for blood,’ and gave its users ‘superhuman strength’.” Apparently police aren’t any better witnesses than civilians as anybody who has been around a marijuana user will disagree with those characterizations. Lust for food maybe, but there’s much more evidence of alcohol fueled violence.

Laws and enforcement tightened further over the next three decades until middle and upper class whites started getting arrested at which point most states backed off due to political pressure.  Then in 1976 a parent's movement against marijuana began affecting public attitudes which lead to the 1980s War on Drugs. Mandatory sentences were re-enacted by President Reagan including the "three strikes you're out" policy, requiring life sentences for repeat drug offenders. The failed War on Drugs has persisted ever since.

I am particularly interested in the use of marijuana for treating chronic pain as my wife suffers from it and has been prescribed opiates like morphine and fentanyl which can both be highly addictive unlike marijuana.

President Biden has urge all Governors to follow his lead and issue pardons for state marijuana possession offenses. Just as no one should be in a federal prison solely due to the simple possession of marijuana, no one should be in a local jail or state prison for that reason, either. Gov. Abbott’s press office responded that he no intention of following Biden’s lead. Abbott’s Democratic opponent, Beto O’Rourke, on the other hand says he’ll work to legalize marijuana in Texas and expunge the record of those convicted of possession.

Social justice, new treatments for pain and other ailments, and better use of criminal justice resources, all from one change in policy. I’m voting for Beto O’Rourke for Governor of Texas and I hope you will too.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - October 12, 2022

Fascists Have Come to Cibolo

I’ve known for years that Republicans had lost sight of the principles on which this nation was founded but it was driven home Saturday as I was leaving my neighborhood to get the latest COVID-19 booster and flu shots. Driving toward the exit of the neighborhood I came across an older white man in a red t-shirt standing in the median holding a sign that said “Purge Democrat Voters…”. I couldn’t catch the rest at 25 mph in the smaller typeface but just what I could read said all it needs to say.

I’m among the last of the baby boomers, the children of the “Greatest Generation”, those who fought and bled in World War II. My dad was a private in the Army Air Corps, two uncles were in combat in Europe during the Battle of the Bulge, another served in the Navy in the Pacific supporting General Douglas MacArthur’s “Island Hopping” campaign. I can’t help but feel that the authoritarian direction of so many Republican candidates and voters is a direct insult to the men and women like my father and uncles who fought so bravely against fascists like Mussolini, Tojo, and Hitler. I had to restrain myself from stopping the car and getting out to confront the sorry excuse for an American.

The right to vote for our elected representatives is the most sacred right of every citizen of this nation upon reaching the age of 18. The very idea that this man and so many like him believe it is right and proper to disenfranchise someone with whom they disagree is beyond the pale.

These are the same people who rant about the constitution and yet either don’t seem to have read it or simply don’t understand it. They are the same people who will look you straight in the face and tell you that if it isn’t in the constitution then the federal government can’t do it while at the same time claiming that the United States is a Christian nation when the constitution says nothing of the sort and in fact says in Article VI: “…no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

One of their long running non-sense claims that has been pushed to the fore once again is the notion that the United States is “a republic, not a democracy”. That’s like a child saying that they're holding chocolate ice cream, not ice cream. Encyclopedia Britannica defines republic as follows: form of government in which a state is ruled by representatives of the citizen body. Modern republics are founded on the idea that sovereignty rests with the people, though who is included and excluded from the category of the people has varied across history. Because citizens do not govern the state themselves but through representatives, republics may be distinguished from direct democracy, though modern representative democracies are by and large republics. A republic is a flavor of democracy, a representative democracy, rather than a direct democracy where everyone votes on every issue of government. Not every nation holds true to the name they of their nation such as the USSR which was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; just like calling something a rose doesn’t make it smell sweet.

It’s important the people like the guy standing in the median with his frightening sign are overwhelmed at the polls so that the authoritarians that the Republican party has been raising into leadership don’t get their way. Just you voting is not enough, bring your family, bring your friends too.

 Published in the Seguin Gazette - October 5, 2022

Only Democrats Fighting to Save the Planet

While it has rained a bit and even cooled off some in the last couple of weeks much of Texas and the country still suffers severe drought conditions that have impacted agriculture. According to experts at Texas Tech University the High Plains area around Lubbock and Amarillo, the most productive of the state’s nine cotton-growing regions, will lose $2.1 billion of this year’s cotton harvest. Farmers in the Rio Grande valley will also have a much less profitable crop of vegetables as they’ve been unable to plant this year due to the drought.

You’ve probably seen news reports of various surprises found in rivers and lakes where the low water levels. Five bodies have been found in Lake Mead including one in a barrel that appears to be a mob-related murder victim. In Europe the Danube river water level has fallen to one of its lowest levels in almost a century as a result of the drought, exposing the remains of more than 20 German warships sunk during World War II near Serbia’s river port town of Prahovo. The sunken ships are now causing problems for ships navigating the river. In Spain, a prehistoric stone circle dubbed the “Spanish Stonehenge” has re-emerged; it is usually covered by waters in a man-made reservoir created in the 1960's which have fallen due to the worst drought in decades.

These world-wide droughts and outrageous temperatures are becoming both more frequent and more intense. Only by reducing the production of greenhouse gases by a large fraction by 2030 will we stand a chance of preventing starvation, disease, war, and migration all over this planet. If you think there is a crisis at our southern border now, wait until the drought in Central America takes hold.

Not a single sitting Republican in the United States Senate or House will acknowledge the threat of human caused climate change let alone take any action to stem that threat. Democrats led by Joe Biden have acted. In addition to the various incentives and projects included in the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act the Biden administration has directed all federal agencies to review and take action to reduce carbon emissions, recycle waste, set rules to make green energy projects easier to move forward, and put the funds they administer to work helping farmers, businesses, and individual citizens do the same. Another recently passed bill, the Chips and Science Act, includes funding for clean energy projects and battery production in addition to semi-conductors, nanotechnology, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence.

Joe Biden and the Democrats have made big strides toward reducing production of the greenhouse gases that are raising global temperatures but there is much more to do and not much time to do it. The only way that we’ll continue to see progress on this issue is if Democrats continue to control the House and Senate in addition to the presidency. Since Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick have not only failed to take action in Texas they’ve actively worked against protecting our environment we can look forward to more of the same here if they aren’t beaten in the November election. Fossil fuel interests all over Texas are providing massive funding for Republicans and argue that they’re producing jobs while hiding the fact that green energy projects actually employ more people in higher wage, safer jobs than they do.

If you want to have a livable climate here in Texas for your children and grand-children there is no more important action you can take than voting for every Democrat on the November ballot.

 

Ted Cruz Fights Against Workers

This week includes Labor Day, a celebration of the workers who actually do the jobs that allow us to have food on the table, clothes on our backs, and roofs over our heads.

Last week Senator Ted Cruz sent out one of his email blasts touting his four week tour around the state and purported accomplishments in Congress. Among the topics included in the email was his tour of a Bitcoin mining operation in Rockdale, TX a rural town between Austin and Bryan/College Station. Bitcoin is one of the more well-known brands of cyptocurrency. The facility is a big warehouse style building with rack upon rack of computers and huge amounts of air conditioning drawing a significant fraction of the total electricity used in the entire town while providing very few jobs. In Cruz’s email he says he is proud to “lead the fight to promote and protect this burgeoning sector of our economy.” That’s really interesting since when he campaigned for president in 2016 one of his “big ideas” was to return to the gold standard, something antithetical to the whole concept of cryptocurrency.  I’m not sure if this is a flip flop on his views or pandering to a segment of his campaign donors.

Cruz also pushed his effort to abolish the Internal Revenue Service, a scheme that would leave millions of federal employees without a paycheck since half of federal revenue comes from income taxes. Cruz is fear-mongering that the 87,000 new Internal Revenue Service employees that the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act authorizes will somehow take food off the table of average Americans when in fact due to Republican led budget cuts the agency has been unable to investigate wealthy tax cheats for decades. If you don’t cheat on your taxes you as an individual have nothing to worry about especially if you are filing on Form 1040-EZ or a basic 1040A as nearly all the info you enter is already available to the IRS. The only people who benefit from fewer IRS employees are wealthy tax cheats, a group who if they actually paid their fair share would pay more than five times as much as the salaries of those additional IRS employees.

Cruz is also fighting against President Biden’s effort to forgive student loans, an effort that stands to improve the lives of 43 million people while boosting the economy. Cruz called folks who work at coffee shops and have student loans slackers. I don’t know about you but anytime I walk into a coffee shop the folks there are hustling to take care of the customers in line, that’s not slacker behavior.

The rest of his email is about Cruz talking to local government officials and business people but he apparently couldn’t be bothered to speak to average workers and struggling parents. Let’s remember that Ted Cruz spends his time in congress fighting for the wealthiest among us to pay less taxes and get more federal contracts, while hundreds of thousands of Texans aren’t sure when they’ll eat their next meal and can’t afford medical care to ease their suffering or protect their lives.

 Published in the Seguin Gazette - September 7, 2022

 

Wealthy Controlling Politics - Oligarchy

Conservatives would have you believe that liberals are all communists and offended by wealth. I can tell you I don’t have a problem with rich people, I do have a problem with rich people who use their money to control our government. That’s why I’ve long supported public campaign financing or at least reasonable limits on how much any individual or group can donate to a political campaign. Frankly I’d like to see a campaign donations limited to just the people who live in the district that the candidate is running in since I don’t think my elected officials should be beholden to anyone but the people they represent.

Did you know that in Texas there is no limit to how much can be donated any political campaign by a single person, that goes from the office of Governor all the way down to city council or school board? That means some oil billionaire from west Texas can finance the campaign of a school board candidate right in your town. It happens all the time and has had consequences like firing a school principal that was perceived as not adhering to the billionaire’s agenda.

Many voters don’t know that all candidates whether city council, county commissioner or all the way to governor are required to file campaign finance reports showing who their donors are and how much each donor gave and those reports are public record. I’d advise you to take a look at them for every candidate before you vote so you know who is influencing your elected officials.

Retiring Texas Senator (R), Kel Seliger, has compared the state of affairs here in Texas to the Russian Oligarchy because two Texas billionaires essentially control the state legislature by using their vast wealth to fund political campaigns across the state often providing more than 80% of a candidate’s campaign budget. Even when their candidate loses in the primary they win because they have dragged the other candidate in their preferred direction.

These kinds of wealthy individuals don’t just make direct campaign donations, they also don’t millions to political action committees (PAC’s) and Super PAC’s that use innocuous names to obscure their true agenda to the public. Often Super PAC’s are created for the sole purpose of hiding the source of their funds so that the voters don’t know whose agenda they are working toward.

This is a national problem but there is a terrific story on what’s happening in Texas that was shown on CNN a few weeks ago and is now available on YouTube so you can watch it when you have time. Take 45 minute to watch Deep in the Pockets of Texas. The report covers Farris Wilks and Tim Dunn, how their money controls how legislators vote and what their agenda is. These two men aren’t content with just the legislature though and fund school board candidates and city council candidates all over the state as well as presidential candidates in order to further their agenda. The two billionaires’ agenda is just a scary as using wealth to advance that agenda.

For the record, I’m no happier about billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros making big donations to Democratic candidates than I am Wilks, Dunn, and others making huge contributions to Republican candidates.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - August 31, 2022

Republican Rhetoric Leads to Violence

Monday last week the FBI served a search warrant at the previous president’s residence in Florida. Within hours and without knowledge of the grounds for the search warrant; Texas Republican leaders jumped to his defense. Sen. Ted Cruz tweeted “The FBI raiding Donald Trump is unprecedented. It is corrupt & an abuse of power. What Nixon tried to do, Biden has now implemented: The Biden Admin has fully weaponized DOJ & FBI to target their political enemies.” Gov. Greg Abbott used similar language in his tweet as well, "This is next-level Nixonian. Never before has the country seen an Administration go to such extent to use the levers of government to target a former President and political rival. This weaponizes power to squelch dissent. Such abuses must have limits".

More importantly they and others in the Republican leadership used inflammatory language which has been picked up and acted upon by armed men. In Cincinnati on Thursday Ricky Shiffer, armed with a rifle, tried to force his way into the FBI office leading to a standoff and ultimately his death. On Friday, in Phoenix, Arizona protestors armed with rifles showed up outside the FBI office.

Trump’s one time political advisor Steve Bannon called the FBI “the Gestapo” and said, “We need to choke down the FBI and choke down the Justice Department.” Another former Trump adviser, Michael Caputo, said, “With this militant raid on President Trump’s home, we have become Russia. The FBI is the KGB.” Fox News political commentator, Dan Bongino called the FBI’s action “some third-world bullshit.” In an interview former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, said the FBI has “declared war on the American people at such a level and with such total dishonesty.” We are seeing “the ugly face of a tyranny.”

There’s plenty of talk of “lock and load” and a “civil war” on social media, especially Trump’s Truth Social platform. Much of that language has long used by top cable pundit Tucker Carlson.

Amazingly or not the calls for violence and death threats against federal law enforcement have surged following the raid on Trump’s home, but Republicans have largely been quiet about the spike, despite previous campaign rhetoric claiming to support law enforcement when Black Lives Matter protests against repeated local police shootings of unarmed Black people were occurring across the country.

In an interview Steve Scalise, R-LA suggested that FBI agents who executed the warrant were rogue agents. Considering that the FBI is run by Christopher Wray, a Trump appointee, and that Attorney General Merrick Garland and federal judge Bruce Reinhart both signed off on the warrant I don’t see any “rogue” agents involved.

Trump and others called for the search warrant to be unsealed so A.G. Garland requested that the judge do so and late last week the warrant was published for all to see. Now Judge Reinhart is receiving death threats.

Republican leaders and conservative commentators are using the same kind of rhetoric bashing federal law enforcement as Timothy McVeigh, the man who bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, OK and killed 168 people including 19 children.

Republican leaders are both irresponsible and behaving like the authoritarians that took power in Europe a century ago. I am frightened for our nation and its citizens.

In November you have a chance to send them a message they can’t ignore by voting them out of office. Get out and vote, bring your family, bring your neighbors, it has never been more important.

 Published in the Seguin Gazette - August 17, 2022

Cornyn and Cruz Betray Veterans

Republicans would have you believe that they’re all about supporting the troops and our veterans. Last week our senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, proved once again that support is just talk as they both voted against medical care for our veterans.

Back in March, when President Joe Biden made his State of the Union address one of the issues he brought up was U.S. troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan who were exposed to toxic smoke from burn pits. “These burn pits that incinerate waste — the wastes of war, medical and hazardous material, jet fuel, and so much more,” said the president.

Medical evidence says that as a result, many servicemen and women who breathed in fumes from these burn pits returned home and experienced serious symptoms. Prolonged exposure to burn pits may be responsible for cancer in some veterans. Biden has made no secret that he believes toxic exposure may have contributed to the brain cancer that killed his son Beau.

In his speech Biden called on Congress to approve a law “to make sure veterans devastated by toxic exposure in Iraq and Afghanistan finally get the benefits and the comprehensive healthcare they deserve.” The legislation congress introduced, known as the Honoring Our PACT Act (Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act), would expand treatment eligibility, and it has wide support in Congress.

At least it had wide support until it was announced that Senator Joe Manchin had reached agreement with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to support a bill on an entirely different topic that has no effect on veteran health care. Then in a fit of pique 25 Republicans who previously supported the Honoring Our PACT Act flip flopped and voted against it which stopped the bill dead in its tracks as it only had 55 of the 60 votes needed to break the filibuster.

The bill Republicans are angry about is The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 which includes measures to reduce the budget deficit by among other things raising taxes on billionaires to fight inflation. The bill also calls for investing in domestic energy production and manufacturing, and reducing carbon emissions by roughly 40 percent by 2030. In addition the bill will finally allow Medicare to negotiate for prescription drug prices and extend the expanded Affordable Care Act program for three years, through 2025.

Among the provisions of The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 related to health care is a cap on Medicare patients’ out of pocket costs at $2,000 per year, with the option to break that amount into monthly payments of around $170 each. Currently, there is no cap on spending for prescription drugs seniors buy from pharmacies. This bill ensures that a devastating diagnosis, like cancer, will never again mean paying tens of thousands out of pocket for just one drug.

On the deficit reduction and tax side the current statutory corporate tax rate is 21%, but more than 200 highly profitable, large corporations use various tax loopholes to avoid paying that rate and actually pay below 15%, some pay no income tax at all. The corporate alternative minimum tax proposal would impose a 15 percent minimum tax on adjusted financial statement income for corporations with profits in excess of $1 billion.

So the reason that Ted Cruz and John Cornyn betrayed sick veterans is they’re mad their billionaire campaign donors might pay slightly higher taxes and pharmaceutical companies could see some of their outrageous profits reduced.

Just like the lies that Republicans spout about voter fraud, they also lie supporting veterans. Remember to vote them out of office in the upcoming election.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - August 3, 2022

Texas Republicans Endangering Lives

By now you’ve heard and seen plenty of reactions and protests regarding the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and therefore allow states to outlaw abortions. What you may not have noticed is news reports of Texas women who have been denied treatment for miscarriages because our over-zealous and incompetent Republicans in the state legislature made it financially dangerous for a doctor to perform anything that might be construed as an abortion.

Marlena Stell, a Texas woman, carried the fetal remains for two weeks before she could find a doctor to perform what is commonly known as a D and C because doctors feared prosecution under Texas law. The recently passed law allows any idiot to claim the doctor performed an illegal abortion, hoping to collect a $10,000 bounty offered by Texas and the doctor would have to go through an expensive trial then even if they are found not guilty pay their own legal expenses.

Now let’s consider what continuing to carry around a dead fetus can mean. The dead tissue can break up and get into the woman’s blood stream causing infection that can result in death. In other cases it can cause damage to the woman’s reproductive system making them unable to have a future child.

Consider this thought experiment, take some ground meat about half the size of a meatball and wrap in cling wrap then hang it outside on a tree branch during the summer for two or more weeks, then go back and see what you’ve got. Now think about it would be like to have that inside your body as it rots.

Sure, in many cases the woman’s body expels the fetal remains on its own after a while, but all too often it doesn’t. As the husband of a woman who had three miscarriages I also know the emotional toll carrying around that dead fetus causes for the woman. Texas Republicans didn’t care enough when they wrote the bill outlawing abortions to consider the no doubt unintended consequences of their actions. I often hear folks blame it on men in the legislature but the reality is that all 13 Republican women in the legislature voted for the bill.

Part of Guadalupe County is represented by state senator, Dr. Donna Campbell who signed off on the bill without expressing the slightest reservation. She’s an emergency room physician and given her failure to consider the potential life threatening consequences of her vote I’m hopeful no one I care about ever ends up in an emergency room she staffs.

To compound the issue Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit challenging an executive order by President Joe Biden giving hospitals the right to pre-empt state abortion restrictions when there’s an emergency.

All that’s bad enough but unfortunately they aren’t stopping at abortion, Republicans are going after contraception as well. In Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion overturning Roe v. Wade he said the court “should reconsider” its past rulings codifying rights to contraception access.

The right to contraception was established in 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut case in which the court found that a constitutional right to privacy protected women’s ability to take birth control. That’s the same right to privacy which was the basis for Roe v. Wade in 1973 and dismissed last month.

In order to protect the right to use contraception in the United States the House passed a bill this month and not a single one of the 24 Republicans in Texas’ congressional delegation voted for it. We’ll have to see what happens in the Senate.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - July 27, 2022

Texas GOP Should be Careful What They Wish For

The Republican Party of Texas’ 2022 platform calls for special privilege for Christians and demands that Christian prayers, Bible reading and the Ten Commandments be returned to public schools. Aside from the fact that the same folks who claim to be originalists venerating the U.S. Constitution don’t seem to understand either Article VI or the First Amendment which make it quite clear that this nation is secular. There is a great reason with historical examples of why they should be happy it's secular.

Let’s start with our 13 original colonies. As the Church of England was striving to establish a single, uniform religion across the kingdom, colonial America was divided, each of the colonies being dominated by their own brand of Christianity. Anglicans, who conformed to the Church of England, populated Virginia. Massachusetts was home to the Puritans.  Pennsylvania was ruled by and filled with Quakers.  Baptists ran Rhode Island.  Roman Catholics had Maryland. From Puritan Boston’s earliest days, Catholics often referred to as “Papists” were banned from the colony, along with other non-Puritans. Four Quakers were hanged in Boston between 1659 and 1661 for persistently returning to the city to stand up for their beliefs. Anglican Virginia was the scene of notorious acts of religious persecution against Baptists and Presbyterians.  In 1771, a local Virginia sheriff dragged a Baptist preacher from the stage at his parish and beat him to the ground outside, where he was also horsewhipped.  In 1778, a pair of Baptist ministers were conducting services at the Mill Swamp Baptist Church in Portsmouth, Virginia where a gang of men rushed the stage and grabbed them, took the ministers to the nearby Nansemond River swamp, then dunked and held their heads in the mud until they nearly drowning them.

In the 1830s and 1840s, a wave of anti-Catholic violence broke out in the Northeast and elsewhere, mostly directed at recent Irish immigrants.

The Mormons were chased out of New York, then Ohio, then Missouri. A few years after settling in area of Illinois they named Nauvoo an anti-Mormon mob attacked the settlement on June 27, 1844 and burned it to the ground. They also invaded the jail cells where Smith and his brother were being held “morals” charges, and executed them.

Between 1933 and 1939, the period of the Great Depression, anti-Semitic fervor reached new heights in areas such as New York and Boston, Jews were violently attacked. Assaults, propaganda and intimidation were mostly carried out by special societies, like the Ku Klux Klan.

Televangelist John Hagee of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, which boasts of 22,000 active members, once claimed the Roman Catholic Church was the “great whore of Revelation,” a “false cult system” and the “anti-Christ.”

Temple Beth-El, in San Antonio canceled Shabbat services in-person and online last Saturday, July 9, due to security concerns presented by the local FBI office regarding threats to the safety of San Antonio synagogues. Anti-Semitic flyers appeared on residents' lawns in Alamo Heights and Helotes in February. The flyers have been tied to multiple anti-Semitic and neo-nazi groups.

The various Christian sects can’t even agree on the contents of the Ten Commandments let alone a single bible version.

Republicans who say they want a Christian nation might want to re-think that as President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are both Catholics as are six of the nine Supreme Court Justices: John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. So all those apostate Protestants here in Texas might just find they’re not so happy to have the Papists in control.

Progress of the Human Mind Requires Change in Law

Republican leaders and activists are found of claiming they want to follow the constitution as the founding fathers intended it 235 years ago. Many including those in Texas even want to reverse the 17^th amendment which changed the method of selecting United States senators from being elected by the state legislatures to being elected directly by popular vote of the citizens of each state. Of course, their interpretation of the constitution and the founders’ intent is often self-serving and just cover for their own desires much as their bible interpretations so often are.

So in this week in which we celebrate the Declaration of Independence which was written but a man who, while not among those who wrote the constitution, did influence it through his discussions with those who did write it, let us consider something else he wrote. Thomas Jefferson, flawed individual and slaveholder, was a thoughtful, erudite man of his times. One of his concerns about the constitution as expressed in a 1787 letter to William Stephens Smith, son-in-law of John Adams, relates to the lifetime appointment of members of the Supreme Court. “What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a Chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life.” Lifetime appointments when many of us now live into our 80’s and 90’s leave us with appointees who now routinely serve for 25 years or more. In the days of the founders far fewer survived even a decade on the bench. I don’t doubt that there are some advantages to experience and wisdom but at the same time spending so much of one’s life in such an elevated position often leads to a loss of touch with the world that the rest of us live in and the changes that have moved society forward.

In an excerpt from a letter to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816 which is carved on the Southeast Portico of the Jefferson Memorial, Jefferson is quoted: "I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as a civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."

Until as recently as 1986, when Antonin Scalia took his seat on the bench, even Republican Supreme Court Justices considered the constitution a living document which allowed them to address Jefferson’s concerns without the upheaval and blood-shed of a revolution. Since then more members of the misleadingly named Federalist Society have been appointed and they’re anything but federalists in that they push against federal power claiming the states should make the rules, such as in the recent case known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health the six member conservative majority rejected a federal right to abortion in favor of allowing state legislatures to decide as they may. Leaving gerrymandered  and thus conservative controlled states like to Texas to essentially outlaw abortions even though the majority of Americans and likely Texans believes that abortions should be legal.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - July 6, 2022

Trump a Danger to American Democracy

The televised January 6^th Committee hearings have brought to light quite a bit of evidence not previously available to the public showing Donald J. Trump knew he lost the 2020 election, that there was no widespread voter fraud, and conspired to overturn the results. Most elected Republicans at the state and federal levels will not admit this as they need the support of the most rabid members of the electorate and don’t have the spine to tell the truth if it means losing an election. Only a relative handful are like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, both dyed in the wool Republican hardliners, who are committed to a democratically elected government. There is little I agree on with either of them but I have to admit they are among the very few patriots among elected Republicans today.

The committee heard testimony from Trump's own aides and advisers that he knew the claims he was making of election fraud were untrue and that steps he was taking to overturn the results were illegal.

Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, testified that the president called her to discuss plans to organize "alternate" presidential electors who would claim that Trump actually won their states. Republican officeholders in Georgia and Arizona appeared before the committee to describe Trump's efforts to pressure them into taking steps to reverse Joe Biden's victory in their states. Georgia Secretary of State Brian Raffensperger spoke in detail about a nearly hour-long phone call during which the president urged him to "find" the votes necessary to put him ahead in the state's vote tally.

Evidence was presented that Texas congressman Louie Gohmert, among others, asked for a pardon from Trump before he left office. As committee member Adam Kinzinger pointed out "The only reason I know to ask for a pardon is because you think you committed a crime."

Trump Justice Department officials testified that the president personally pressured them to issue findings of possible election fraud and encourage state legislatures to overturn results showing Biden won. Trump told them to "just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen," according to acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue’s testimony.

Those same former Justice Department officials also detailed how Trump himself had urged them and senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security to seize voting machines from state governments in pursuit of a conspiracy theory that Italian satellites changed vote totals, without evidence for taking such an unprecedented step. According to testimony from Donoghue, during a December 2020 meeting at the White House, Trump said "Why don't you guys just seize machines?"

Among those testifying were two Atlanta election workers, Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who spoke of facing death threats and being forced to leave their home after Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani mentioned them by name, claiming they were "trying to steal the election". Freeman said "There is nowhere I feel safe." Even Republican officials who have debunked Trump’s election fraud claims have faced multiple death threats such as Arizona state senator Rusty Bowers who also testified.

The actions of Trump, his congressional enablers, the rioters, and those who have threatened to murder opponents are frighteningly similar to those of Benito Mussolini and his Black Shirts as they took power in Italy in the 1922.

Retired federal circuit court of appeals judge and icon among conservative legal scholars Michael Luttig, testified on June 16 and said "the former president and his party are today a clear and present danger for American democracy." I believe Judge Luttig.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - June 29, 2022

Abbott's School Voucher Scheme De-funding Public Education

Gov. Abbott has started his campaign for re-election with two issues that rile up his base but don’t actually make Texas a better place. His expensive “Border Security” publicity stunt has been in the news several times. Abbott is using state funds to pay National Guard troops to look like they’re doing the federal government’s job and doing it so poorly that their duplicative inspections backed up truck traffic at the border for many hours costing Texas businesses and county governments more than $4 billion in just 10 days. His other issue is mis-named “school choice” and its goal is to de-fund public education.

Abbott says “We can fully fund public schools while also giving parents a choice about which school is right for their child … giving them the choice to send their children to any public school, charter school or private school with state funding following the student.” If it is so easy to fully fund public education in Texas why aren’t we doing it already? The state provides about 45% of the funds for every child in public schools. Texas K-12 public schools are plagued by high class sizes and under-paid teachers.

If the governor gets his way we can expect that the percentage of state funds per public school students to fall below 40% because the same total dollars will have to be spread over an additional 342,000 plus children currently attending private schools. Those private schools don’t currently receive state funding so unless the governor intends to increase the state public education budget by 6% that means cutting per student spending. Since most rural districts don’t have any private schools they’ll be required to educate the same number of children on 6% less state funding.

Abbott’s proposal really does several things that aren’t good for the vast majority of Texans. If you can’t afford to pay an extra $1350 or more per child in tuition you can’t take advantage of the program because private and religiously affiliated schools charge more than the state provides per student. There’s also a good chance you’ll have to provide transportation to and from school. In many parts of the state there are few if any non-sectarian private schools so if you’re not from one of the pre-dominant faiths in the area your children either won’t have the option to go to a private school or you’ll have to accept that they’re being indoctrinated in a faith other than yours.

While we’re on the topic of sectarian schools let’s review the First Amendment to the United States constitution which says in part “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. Now you might think that congress wouldn’t be responsible for funding Catholic, Baptist, or Lutheran schools so what’s the problem? The problem is the 14^th Amendment extends constitutional protections to state actions as well. In fact the 14^th Amendment is what prevents the states from doing all the things that the federal government is prohibited from doing in the rest of the constitution including the other amendments. It’s what ensures you have a right to a trial by a jury of your peers even in a state court and that local police can’t unreasonably seize your property or enter your home without a warrant. The Supreme Court long ago ruled against state funds supplementing teacher salaries at religious schools and that’s exactly what Abbott is advocating for.

What Abbott is really advocating for is essentially subsidizing wealthier people sending their kids to elitist schools while making it tougher on everyone else.

 Published in the Seguin Gazette - June 15, 2022

A Solution to Gun Violence

In the 23 years since the mass shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, CO there have been dozens of others, including several in Texas like Sutherland Springs, El Paso, and now Uvalde. Nationally there have been mass shootings in schools, churches, retail stores, night clubs and other venues. Virtually no national or state legislation has been passed to address the causes or attempt to prevent such events or even the high of suicides involving firearms. Many on the left push for some form of gun control; such as making some types of guns illegal. On the right we hear noise about the second amendment and an unwillingness to give up their guns.

In the aftermath of the Uvalde murders Gov. Abbott blamed the shooting on mental health problems. In this instance he might be correct but that doesn’t make his responsibility any less considering he signed legislation that significantly reduced state funding for mental health services. Beto O’Rourke told Abbott, “This is on you until you choose to do something different. This will continue to happen. Somebody needs to stand up for the children of this state or they will continue to be killed just as they were in Uvalde yesterday.”

In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Texas congressman Dan Crenshaw, like many of his Republican colleagues, absolutely dismissed any effort to increase limits on access to guns and instead proposed strengthening security at schools. Apparently Crenshaw and his fellow conservatives forget that the shooting in El Paso occurred in a Walmart and the one in Sutherland Springs was in a church. It might be a good idea if Crenshaw was made aware of the dozen injured in a mass shooting on the streets in downtown Lafayette, LA earlier this month or the 10 injured at a night club in Cedar Rapids, IA last month. In Dallas on April 3 at a trail ride and concert, there was a mass shooting in which 16 were injured and 1 died. There’s also the gang shootout in Sacramento April 3 that left 6 dead and 12 injured, all but 1 of them innocent bystanders.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, an independent data collection organization, there have 212 mass shootings that have occurred so far this year, as of last Tuesday. Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people were shot or killed, excluding the shooter. 27 have been at K-12 schools or on school buses. Crenshaw’s solution strengthen security at schools applies to less than 15% of mass shootings. What about the more than 85% of shootings that occurred at other venues?

Since something needs to be done, I propose a carrot and stick approach to getting legislation passed.  Republicans should write legislation, including providing funding for everything they think will address gun violence while protecting their “gun rights” and Democrats should support the bill but there would be a trigger that says that at the end of three years there must be a 30% reduction in gun violence and a further reduction of 10% per year for the next three years or strong gun control measures go into effect. Those gun control measures might include a background check for every gun purchase regardless of whether or not it is a private sale, no weapon with a magazine of more than 9 rounds may be possessed by any individual. Making, selling or possessing a kit or parts to modify a weapon to full automatic or possessing a weapon modified to full automatic would be a federal felony.

No more political posturing.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - June 1, 2022

Republican Party is White Supremacist

I’m fairly certain that the Top’s Supermarket massacre in Buffalo, NY last weekend will generate more arguments about the Second Amendment but all I’m going to say about that is; what about the right 13 people shot to live their lives and shop for groceries safely? Oh, and one other thing, the “good guy with a gun” argument doesn’t hold water since retired police officer Aaron Salter shot the perpetrator but since the perpetrator was wearing body armor it was ineffective and then Salter was shot down.

The massacre was planned and prepared for over a period of months. The perpetrator carried a rifle and fired upwards of 50 rounds, wore a bullet proof vest, a tactical helmet with a video camera mounted on it so he could live stream the murder of innocents. The shooter was apparently radicalized online by white supremacist/neo-Nazis. In March 2021 the Director of National Intelligence warned that racially-motivated extremists posed the most lethal domestic terrorism threat. It said the menace was now more serious than potential attacks from overseas.

Don’t think for a moment that this is just some loons winding each other up online. White Supremacist ideology and rhetoric has a large presence in the Republican Party nation-wide. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito cited the "domestic supply of infants" as reasoning for overturning Roe v. Wade while the Buffalo shooter's manifesto focuses on "white birth rates." This isn’t a coincidence.

Representative Elise Stefanik replaced Liz Cheney as the #3 Republican in the House when Cheney demanded the truth about Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Stefanik launched a Facebook ad campaign pushing the same “white replacement theory”, aka “great replacement theory”, cited as impetus for the Buffalo mass murder.

Like Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, Stefanik uses violence-provoking conspiracy claims to further her own career but refuses to take any responsibility for the deaths caused when violent believers decide that terrorism is the only solution. The "great replacement" conspiracy is now widespread in Republican rhetoric; there is now no great difference between the conspiracies of neo-Nazism and those of Republican Party "leadership".

The theory has been cited by several other mass shooters since 2018, including Robert Bowers who killed 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2018 and Patrick Crusius who murdered 23 people in an El Paso, Texas, Walmart.

Last December, the Associated Press and NORC conducted a large national poll and found that nearly half of Republicans agree to at least some extent with the white supremacist/neo-Nazi propaganda that there’s a deliberate intent to “replace” native-born Americans with immigrants.

Republican leaders are making a direct attack on our democracy using white supremacist propaganda to motivate voters to vote for them. This is how fascists came to power in Europe in the 1930’s.

Where does the country go from here? The people of this country must decide is if we want to live in a world where fear and division are able to take root, because after you dehumanize everybody that’s when the killing start. Do you remember the 1994 Rwandan genocide? It started much like what we’re seeing now in the United States with the majority ethnicity blaming a minority group for their problems. Then the finger pointing turned into murdering their neighbors.

Inciting a riot is a federal crime with a penalty of 5 years in prison, shouldn’t there be a penalty for inciting mass murder?

In my book anyone who votes for Republicans is aiding and abetting the enemy of the people of the United States.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 18, 2022

Overturning Roe is Hypocrisy

The big news maker last week was the draft opinion regarding the abortion case heard by the Supreme Court published by Politico. The document indicates that 5 of the 6 Republican appointees have agreed to overturn the 50 year old Roe v. Wade decision and once again allow states to make abortion a criminal offense. Had Sen. Mitch McConnell not stolen a seat by refusing to hold hearings on Pres. Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, when Justice Scalia’s death created a vacancy this decision would almost certainly been to continue the right to abortion as the law of the land.

Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion includes the justification that “the domestic supply of infants” is insufficient to meet demand. This sentiment has previously been expressed by Justice Amy Coney Barrett saying that we don’t “need” abortion anymore because the supply of adoptable domestic infants cannot meet demand. I don’t see how that argument is morally sustainable.

According to Adopt US Kids, there are 117,000 children waiting to be adopted in the United States right now. So Alito and Barrett’s argument doesn’t hold up factually either.

Alito and several other conservative members of the court claim to be originalists, which they define as believing that the constitution is a dead document, in other words it means only what it meant at the time it was written and is to be understood as it would have been understood in the 1780’s. There’s a real problem with that notion, founders Alexander Hamilton and James Madison both rejected Originalism. You’ll often hear Republicans use a similar argument about government agencies they claim shouldn’t exist because it isn’t stated in the constitution. Neither is the right to travel but no one argues that Americans don’t have the right to travel within their states, or within the country, or even to other countries.

Then there’s our Firsts Amendment right to religious freedom, which this decision actually runs roughshod over. There are numerous Christian denominations, not to mention other religions that are pro-choice on a theological basis and at least as many other religious denominations that believe that abortion is a matter of individual conscience. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, and the United Church of Christ are just a few of those.

In Judaism when a mother’s life is endangered by a pregnancy, it is Jewish law that the mother’s life, a life in being, takes precedent. Keep in mind that Jesus, being born a Jew, would likely accept this position since nowhere in scripture does he speak out against it. Justice Alito has essentially ruled that a pregnant Jewish woman who will risk death if the pregnancy is carried to term can be denied an abortion – against her own religious beliefs. That makes Alito and other four Justices joining him Christian supremacists. Alito has essentially declared orthodox Catholic theology to be the law of the land on abortion. Such a ruling is counter to the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment.

Alito’s draft says that a right to abortion services is not deeply rooted in this nation’s history. Women on the Supreme Court are not deeply rooted in this nation’s history either, nor are anyone but white men. The Constitution doesn’t say that women or black people can serve on the Supreme Court. By Alito’s argument apparently the founders thought only white men should ever serve on the Supreme Court. So why has he never advocated for rejecting Clarence Thomas or Amy Coney Barrett’s positions on the court.

It all boils down to hypocrisy in service to an agenda that is incompatible with democracy.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 11, 2022

Abbott Caused Inflation

Our dear governor, Greg Abbott, likes to claim the superiority of his administration and policies in hosting the supposed economic success of Texas. In reality Texas has some of the most economically disadvantaged citizens in the country and higher wealth disparity between its citizens than 37 other states. Texas, unlike California – the state conservatives love to bash, doesn’t even make the top 25 in gross domestic product per resident.

Most recently conservatives have been bashing President Joe Biden on his handling of the economy and the “security” of the southern border. Abbott and his fellow liars claim that the current state of inflation is somehow Biden’s fault, especially high gas prices and that Biden has an open door policy on the Mexican border.

Let’s be clear, no president controls gas prices to any great degree. Oil and gasoline are international commodities and their prices fluctuate based on projected availability of that commodity. The notion that “energy independence” and higher production in the U.S. would somehow insulate us from price fluctuations is beyond ludicrous. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine along the subsequent embargo of its oil shipments has made oil more scarce on the world market and countries that previously purchased Russian oil now must buy it from somewhere else and even if it isn’t U.S. oil directly oil produced here still ends up covering the gap created and therefore is priced accordingly. Any action that Biden might take to increase oil production in the U.S. would take years to percolate through the system as there are thousands of acres of federal land that have been leased to oil companies for years but never drilled on.

Gov. Abbott’s calamitous political stunt targeting international trade cost Texas more than $4 billion in damages, the economic consulting firm The Perryman Group. The consultants estimate that Abbott’s now-rescinded policy which required commercial vehicles to undergo additional inspections after passing through federal border check points but didn’t actually do much checking “will cost the equivalent of 77,000 job years for the country and 36,300 for Texas’ economy,” according to The Dallas Morning News.

In the city of Pharr, one of the busiest land crossings in the country, Abbott’s political stunt cost the area roughly $200 million every single day in losses. The Perryman Group estimates that Abbott caused the nation roughly $9 billion in lost gross domestic product.

“The biggest losses were to the manufacturing sector, which took about 50% of the hit, followed by retail trade, wholesale trade and financial activities,” The Dallas Morning News reported. “Manufacturing and retail made up the bulk of the job losses.”

When Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador called Abbott’s border shenanigans “a very despicable way to act”, Abbott responded by threatening to reinstate his unpopular policy, claiming he has “the capability at any time” to resume his unnecessary secondary inspections.

Even Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, a real right-wing nut-job, complained to NPR that "You're already seeing things like bananas, avocados, lemons and limes" go up in price because of this stunt.

The next time your conservative neighbors try to bash Joe Biden on the economy, remind them that it was Greg Abbott alone who cost the state billions of dollars and caused higher inflation on grocery store shelves all to look good to Trump voters when he makes a run for the presidency in 2024.

Constitutional Amendment Election

Not everyone realizes that there are to separate elections in May. There’s the run-off for congress and other partisan offices on May 14 and the less well known Constitutional Amendment election on May 7. There are two propositions on the May 7 ballot, both are related to property taxes.

Proposition 1 says “The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for the reduction of the amount of a limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary public school purposes on the resident homestead of a person who is elderly or disabled to reflect any statutory reduction from the preceding tax year in the maximum compressed rate of maintenance and operations taxes imposed for those purposes on a homestead.”

Yes, it is widely agreed that the ballot language sound like gibberish, even lawyers have to ask experts what it means. Those experts will you refer back to the actual legislation that generated the proposition and the Texas constitution and explain that if passed it would reduce property taxes for elderly and disabled Texans by decreasing the amount they pay to public schools, which is generally the largest part of a homeowner’s tax bill. The state is responsible for making up the reduced revenue for school districts. This amendment will increase the state’s share of public school funding by more than $744 million from 2024 to 2026.

The reason that the Texas legislature passed this amendment by a wide bi-partisan margin is that in 2019, they passed a law which provided a property tax reduction to many homeowners but failed to include disabled or elderly homeowners because under the Texas Constitution, their tax rate is frozen. Proposition 1 would amend the Constitution to allow disabled and elderly homeowners to receive the benefits from the 2019 property tax reduction that other homeowners received and freeze their tax rate at a lower rate.

The language of Proposition 2 is much more straight-forward and says “The constitutional amendment increasing the amount of the residence homestead exemption from ad valorem taxes for public school purposes from $25,000 to $40,000.”

If passed by Texas voters, Proposition 2 would raise Texas’ homestead exemption from $25,000 to $40,000 for school district property taxes, saving an average homeowner around $180 on their annual property tax bill. The amendment requires the state of Texas to make up $600 million annual decrease in school district revenue.

Opponents of these propositions make the argument that they don’t fix the real problem which is that our public schools are largely funded by property taxes. While that’s true these propositions do make the issue slightly less onerous and swing the pendulum back toward the state with regard to the percentage of funding provided by the state versus local property taxes. For the last decade or so, in most districts, the local portion has steadily increased so in that sense these propositions are a welcome reversal.

Monday April 25^th is the first day to early vote and Saturday May 7th is election day, I urge you to make time to vote “For” both these important propositions.

 Published in the Seguin Gazette - April 20, 2022

Republicans the party of fraud, fear, and fascism

The leadership of the modern Republican Party have taken the party down the path of fraud, fear, and fascism. First they use fraud to create scenarios and conspiracy theories on topics that will instill fear in conservative voters. The next step is to blame liberals and Democratic officials and candidates in particular for participating in or enabling the feared behavior. All of this is in aid of winning electoral contests so that the Republican Party retains power in order to do the bidding of the oligarchs that provide their campaign funds and very lucrative jobs when they are out of office.

Republican leaders and media figures peddled non-sense like the 2016 Pizzagate conspiracy in an effort to defeat Hillary Clinton. In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election Trump made claims that refugees from Central and South America were mostly criminals and we therefore needed a wall on the southern border to protect us. Now, many of those same Republican leaders have added equally absurd, yet even more dangerous hokum such as connecting homosexuality with pedophilia or Gov. Abbott and Lt. Gov. Patrick throwing vulnerable transgender children under the bus by making them scapegoats with their overwrought claims that they somehow threaten to overwhelm high school athletic competition.

Proponents of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory - like Trump’s National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn Lt. General, U.S. Army ret. falsely claimed that illegally hacked emails between John Podesta, Hillary Clinton, and others contained coded messages that connected several high-ranking Democratic Party officials and certain restaurants with an alleged human trafficking and child sex ring. Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, D.C. was purportedly the central hub of the conspiracy and holding children in the basement. A North Carolina conservative bought into the conspiracy theory so strongly that he drove to Washington, D.C. and barged into the restaurant whereupon he fired a rifle in an effort to unlock the door to a storage locker that was supposedly the entrance to the non-existent basement. Washington , D. C. police and numerous other respected organizations have thoroughly de-bunked the entire conspiracy theory.

With very few exceptions the people trying to cross the southern border to get into the U.S. are suffering from poverty and violence in their home countries very often caused by drug traffickers that are financed by their customers in the United States. Often the migrants are unaccompanied children who have been sent on their way after being threatened by drug gangs. If Republicans really wanted to do something constructive so that those migrants would stay at home they’d advocate for legalizing all drugs especially marijuana to undercut the finances of the drug gangs. But then, they couldn’t rail at Democrats about open borders or fill up private prisons with men of color who then can’t vote for their opponents or compete for jobs with white men of similar education and skills.

Frankly, there is stronger evidence of a conspiracy to protect pedophiles and groom children within the Catholic Church than there is for gay men but you don’t see Republicans attacking the Catholic Church.

Republican justifications for bill’s restricting transgender students from participating in high school sports largely rely on scare tactics, stereotypes, and unwarranted claims that transgender women have a physiological advantage over cisgender women—despite a complete lack of evidence that transgender sports participation has had any measurable impact on the success of cisgender athletes.

Republican candidates still genuflect to Trump because their voters demand it. The Trump-Putin axis scares me as Trump has continued to speak admiringly of Putin even as Putin endeavors to annex Ukraine through armed invasion.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - April 13, 2022

Religious Freedom For Me Not For Thee

Religious freedom is near and dear to me and I’ve written here before on the topic. To me and others it means being able to practice your faith or non-faith without interference or coercion by government at any level. Republicans seem to mean something else entirely when they speak of the topic. As exemplified by the cases below, to Republicans religious freedom means the freedom to push their faith on everyone else.

Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, is a case which will be argued before the Supreme Court in April on behalf of the public school district in Bremerton, Washington, which is trying to protect the religious freedom of its students and their parents. Kennedy is a one-time football coach who was placed on paid administrative leave after he refused to stop leading prayers on the 50-yard line after games.

Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram of Knoxville, Tennessee are a Jewish couple who wanted to foster and adopt a Florida child, and they needed to obtain foster-parent training and a home study authorized by Tennessee to do so. The only accessible place to get those services was Holston United Methodist Home for Children, which is funded by the state to provide the services. But Holston canceled the couple’s training because it only accepts “families that share our [Christian] belief system.”

Aimee Maddonna of South Carolina, was denied a similar opportunity because of her Catholic faith as was another South Carolina couple. Both have sued after they were rejected by Miracle Hill Ministries, the largest state-contracted and government-funded foster care agency in South Carolina, because Miracle Hill restricts "eligibility to prospective foster parents who are evangelical Protestant Christians." U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina denied a motion to dismiss those suits, ruling that "to the extent defendants' assert that their actions are immune from challenge under the Establishment Clause as 'religious accommodation,' such argument is directly contrary to the well-pled allegations in the complaint and long-established federal jurisprudence and must be rejected at this stage of the proceedings."

According to the civil complaint "For prospective foster parents who live in South Carolina's upstate region and do not meet Miracle Hill's religious requirements, the primary foster care agency serving the region is not available to them. Such denial creates a practical barrier to fostering, as not all foster care agencies are equivalent or offer the same services, and also stigmatizes these families, branding them as inferior and less worthy of serving as foster parents. Moreover, this discriminatory treatment of prospective foster parents denies children access to families they need."

Lawyers for the families allege that the state violated the establishment and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment to the Constitution by essentially establishing a religious test for foster parents in northern South Carolina.

Under the Trump administration, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had granted a waiver to Miracle Hill Ministries from federal non-discrimination rules. The Biden administration stopped this blatantly unconstitutional practice.

All of these folks are paying taxes to support discrimination that victimizes them. I don’t know about you but if I paid my taxes and got such a slap in the face I’d be pretty upset.

This is exactly the kind of government funded discrimination that our founders were concerned about and which the first amendment clearly opposes yet Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, refers to as “so-called separation of church and state”. We all have reason to worry about out religious liberty when Republicans are in control.

 Published in the Seguin Gazette - March 23, 2022