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