Project 2025 - Plan for a Dystopian Future

While Donald Trump continues his attempts to dodge connection to the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” some of the authors and contributors have been talking up their connection to the Trump campaign and telling the media how extreme the makeover of the federal government will be upon Trump taking office again. It’s important that the public be aware of the damage to governmental institutions and our lives four more years of Donald Trump will cause.

The “Mandate for Leadership, The Conservative Promise” which is the official title of the document known “Project 2025” says on page 592 “Congress should provide flexibility to employers and employees to calculate the overtime period over a longer number of weeks. Specifically, employers and employees should be able to set a two- or four-week period over which to calculate overtime. This would give workers greater flexibility to work more hours in one week and fewer hours in the next and would not require the employer to pay them more for that same total number of hours of work during the entire period.” So if your employer wants you to work 60 hours one week and only 20 hours the next week there’s no need to pay you overtime and you can’t complain about the mess that makes of your personal life.

In 1932 at the peak of the Great Depression congress passed the Glass-Steagall Act to make the banking industry safer especially for average Americans. Those protections were largely repealed in 1999 and just 8 years later the country suffered the near collapse of the economy brought on by big banks taking on risky and overly complex investment scheme. This period often called the Great Recession was marked by tens of thousands of Americans losing their homes in foreclosure. Unemployment sky rocketed and banks failed. The response from congress was the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Almost as soon as it passed big banks and their Republican toadies started complaining and have been trying to overturn it. “Project 2025” page 705 calls for merging functions of the various regulatory agencies. “The new Administration should establish a more stream­lined bank and supervision by supporting legislation to merge the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Credit Union Administration, and the Federal Reserve’s non-monetary supervisory and regulatory functions.”

Banking interests claim have always claimed that restricting banks to taking deposits and making loans while preventing investment banks from taking consumer deposits makes markets less stable. We have now have empirical evidence that they’re wrong, the 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagall protections clearly led to 2007 banking collapse yet bankers and Republicans can’t see past the chance to make more private profit while socializing the losses on the backs of the American public.

It’s bad enough that Texas women have lost their bodily autonomy and continue to suffer the lasting health consequences of being unable to get medical care while a miscarriage leaves a rotting carcass in their womb. “Project 2025” states on page 458 that the FDA should “reverse its approval of chemical abortion drugs” then goes on for another dozen pages on how abortion should be further restricted and what lies should be used to promote their nationwide anti-abortion agenda.

These are just some examples of the dystopian future that a Donald Trump win in November would bring upon you and your loved ones. It isn’t enough for you  to vote for Democrats, it is incumbent on you to inform your family, friends, and neighbors then encourage them to vote as well, otherwise we will all suffer.

 

Assassination Not Acceptable in a Democracy

 All I can say is that it’s a good thing that Thomas Matthew Crooks was as incompetent as his target. Most important is that there is no place for violence in a democracy. A distant second is that I think a live Trump is easier for any Democrat to beat than any other Republican who could point to him as a “martyr”. While Trump eggs on his supporters/cult members to be prepared to use violence if he doesn’t win the election, any reasonable adult understands that violence just begets violence and everyone suffers.

The last time a president or presidential candidate was injured in an assassination attempt was when Ronald Reagan was shot John Hinckley, Jr. on March 30, 1981. At that time 3 others were seriously injured including Reagan’s press secretary James Brady. Brady was so severely injured that he was never able to return to work or walk again due to brain damage. After his recovery, Brady and his wife, Sarah, spent much of the next 12 years working with anti-gun violence advocacy groups and later running the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act enacted November 30, 1993 and signed by President Bill Clinton, it is often referred to as the Brady Bill or the Brady Act. The Brady Bill mandates federal background checks on firearm purchasers in the United States. The intention of the act was to prevent persons with previous serious criminal convictions from purchasing firearms.

Even though the promoters of the bill were Republicans, its passage was due to 3 times as many Democrats as Republicans voting in favor of the bill. Their own beloved president nearly being murdered wasn’t enough for Republicans to take action on reducing the availability of firearms, as they couldn’t see the value of greater care in limiting who could possess one.

Today with the Republican Party being so closely tied to the firearms industry I can’t see even the small fraction of their federal legislators who voted for controls on firearms in 1993 supporting any further efforts to prevent gun violence now. I realized a long time ago that a major difference between Republican and Democrats is that Republicans lack empathy for anyone not like them. Having reviewed the history of James and Sarah Brady’s efforts to pass their simple and reasonable bill I now realize that Republicans lack of empathy even applies to their own tribe, unless something awful happens to a member of their immediate family they simply can’t appreciate that suffering and therefore don’t care to takes steps to ameliorate or prevent that suffering. Of course they’ll pray for you, for all the good that does.

Last weekend’s violence is unacceptable, not just in the political arena. A former fire chief died protecting his family and two others were seriously injured by the shooter. No one should be able to perpetrate such a violent crime and cause the suffering of others.

Unlike the 6 Republican Supreme Court justices who just weeks ago threw out Trump’s own restrictions on the modification of semi-automatic rifles that allowed the shooter in Las Vegas in 2017 to murder 60 people at a single event, I don’t believe for a moment that the founders of this nation had any intention to enable such a calamity.

I hope that it doesn’t take another dozen years to pass legislation to stop the slaughter of Americans and make it stick. I have no hope at all that Republicans will be any help in accomplishing that unless a family member is murdered.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - July 17, 2024

Project 2025 - Plan for an Authoritarian State

 Donald Trump can deny knowledge of the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” all he likes but the fact that 16 of the 39 named authors of the 920 page document are former members of his administration should tell you something. Some of the more well known members of the group are Benjamin S. Carson, Sr., MD who was Trump’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Peter Navarro whom Trump appointed to the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, and Ken Cuccinelli who served Trump as Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security. It’s hard to imagine that with that many of his former appointees involved in a project he wouldn’t know something about it.

The reason “Project 2025”; officially titled “Mandate for Leadership, The Conservative Promise”, is important for every American to be aware of is that it is a plan for how the next Republican administration can gut our federal institutions and remake this nation into a authoritarian state.

In 1883 the Pendleton Civil Service Act was adopted, requiring government jobs to be awarded to individuals based upon merit and not political affiliation. The Pendleton Act also made it illegal to fire government workers solely for political reasons. Trump already tried to overturn the protections of this act in his first term but waited too long to implement it. “Project 2025” offers a plan far more thorough, going deeper into all federal agency structures to replace scientists, accountants, and other subject matter experts with people whose sole qualification for the job is loyalty to Trump.

President Nixon signed the Environmental Protection Act in 1970 and it has been improved upon over the decades such that we now have cleaner air and water than we did a century ago leading to healthier lives for all. The author of the “Project 2025” section on the Environmental Protection Agency suggests that Trump’s hand waving reclassification of High-Level nuclear waste to Low-Level is a great way to complete cleanup of various retired nuclear facilities and sites. This attitude toward safe disposal of nuclear waste carries over into all forms of hazardous waste site cleanup. Reclassification doesn’t magically render hazardous materials less hazardous it just allows inadequately processed dangerous materials to continue to threaten the health and well-being of anyone who ends up living or working near the site or the disposal location in the future.

“Project 2025” proposes abandoning efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change, including by repealing regulations that curb emissions, downsizing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and abolishing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). They want to abolish NOAA because the agency provides much of the data that enables scientists to track climate change and its effects.

“Project 2025” seeks to extend the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and recommends simplifying individual income taxes to just two brackets, 15% and 30%, thus creating a nearly flat tax on wage income beyond the standard deduction. It aims to reduce the corporate tax rate to 18%, while suggesting setting taxes on capital gains and dividends at 15%. After these changes are implemented, it recommends that a three-fifths vote threshold be required to pass legislation that increases individual or corporate income tax, making it virtually impossible to ever change tax rates again. The Congressional Budget Office has reported that extending the 2017 tax cuts would increase the deficit by $4 trillion by 2028. You'll notice that Republicans only complain about the budget deficit when Democrats are in office even though it is Republicans who increase it the most.

There is much more that you should make yourself aware of.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - July 10, 2024

Biden Debate Results

 Many of us who watched the Presidential debate last week were disappointed in Joe Biden’s performance. Maybe that’s because he set such a high bar at the State of the Union address or at various venues during the primary. Those of us who want a Democrat in the White House wanted him to hit it out of the ballpark, but even great players have bad nights. Ask Barry Bonds who broke Hank Aaron’s Major League Baseball home run record.

Yes, Biden had a difficult night on stage and there was suddenly lots of fantasy talk that he should step down. You and I know what it’s like to have to go to work or take care of the family with a summer cold; we don’t have the energy to be cheerful and forceful. The reality is the people who most needed to be reached and convinced to vote for Biden, overwhelmingly saw through the lackluster energy and the verbal stumbling. Univision, the Spanish language television organization, hosted a focus group of independent and undecided Hispanic voters whom they interviewed after the debate. The previously undecided voters swung hard for Biden because they saw through the noise and recognized that Biden’s policies and aspirations were better for them than the vitriol and lies spewed by the convicted felon who opposed him.

Other news organizations found the same thing in their focus groups and the polls that checked in on voters after the debate showed similar results. Those who were previously undecided and watched the debate generally said they were more likely to vote for Biden than before the debate and less likely to vote for the former president.

If you still have anxiety over Biden’s debate performance check out his campaign event a day later, he’s far more energetic and forceful in his delivery.

I’m not sure that Trump made a single truthful statement the entire night other than perhaps when talking about his golf game. He most certainly lied about who thought it was a good idea to overturn Roe v. Wade and send abortion regulation back to the states. Trump lied about his purported success controlling the flow of undocumented immigrants, as such border crossings were higher during his administration’s 4 years in office than under former President Barack Obama’s 8 years.

If you go to the grocery you can’t have missed that grocery prices have gone up significantly over the last several years. My experience of around a 20% increase turns out to be about what the national statistics say grocery prices have increased which is a far cry from the tripling or quadrupling that Trump claimed. Heck, if Trump’s claim was true my monthly grocery bill would be significantly than my mortgage payment.

Trump is still making claims about election fraud in the 2020 election even though various state officials, including Republicans in Georgia, said the 2020 election was legitimate. Trump’s own attorney general, William Barr, said that he had not seen fraud on a scale that would invalidate Joe Biden’s victory. Those aren’t all the lies Trump told, just some of the highlights.

The most important reason to support Joe Biden is the same reason former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger has endorsed Biden despite his differences on policy. Kinzinger said “I’ve always put democracy and our Constitution above of all us. It’s because of my unwavering support for democracy that today, as a proud conservative, I’m endorsing Joe Biden for reelection.”

Published in the Seguin Gazette - July 3, 2024

Justice Alito Would Make Trump King

I have come to expect some outlandish ideas to come out of the mouths of Donald Trump, his lackeys/supporters like Rudy Giuliani, and appointees like former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. I’m no longer surprised when conservatives who opposed Trump like Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Nevertheless last week I was stunned to learn the Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito thought it might be a good idea for presidents to have total immunity for any action taken while in office including private actions.

The Supreme Court held oral arguments for 2 and half hours last week regarding whether or not the case for attempting to overturn election results through fraud could go to trial.  Speaking to Michael Dreeben, an attorney representing special counsel Jack Smith, Alito began by stating: “I’m sure you would agree with me that a stable democratic society requires that a candidate who loses an election, even a close one, even a hotly contested one, leave office peacefully, if that candidate is the incumbent?” I think any reasonable person would agree so to that point but then Alito follow up with: “Now if an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement, but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?”

The Supreme Court is known for looking deeply at the issues before it in regard to the meaning of the law, the applicability of various aspects of the constitution, and the potential future consequences of the decision they render, as well as precedent and history. If Justice Alito's concern about consequences were valid then shouldn't there be historical evidence to support it? In the nearly 250 years of our democracy, power has been transferred from a president to his successor post-election 40 times. On 11 of those occasions the challenger defeated an incumbent, a situation that is fraught with bitterness and the potential for messy post-election actions. Yet, there has been only one losing incumbent to have been further troubled by attempts to prosecute them and that ex-president is Donald J. Trump.

There's a reason Trump is being prosecuted in four separate courts, he's the only ex-president who tried to foment a coup against the United States of America and denying the rights of millions of voters by overturning a free and fair election. He's also the only ex-president to have claimed to have declassified sensitive national security documents in his head then kept them as souvenirs even after being asked to return them, denying that he had them, and then went out of his way to try to hide them.

Alito is often considered an originalist in that his interpretations of law are based on the original meaning of the words and phrases in the constitution as well as the perceived intent of the founding fathers. In this instance it’s pretty clear that’s all a crock because the nation’s founders were revolutionaries who made it quite clear that unlike a king no one in this land is above the law, not even ex-presidents.

Trump must be tried in order to insure that he remains the anomaly that he is today and future presidents think twice before attempting to remain in office after losing.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 1, 2024

Independents Uninformed but Key to Victory in November

Political researchers have found that independents and soft partisans (voters who lean Democrat or Republican) are woefully under-informed regarding Donald Trump’s criminal indictments and trials. They’ve also found that once those voters learn of the charges behind those trials they are much less likely to support his re-election. Worse in some ways, these voters don’t see Trump’s actions including those on January 6 as an attack on our democracy. In fact, those voters aren’t even clear on what a democracy is.

When doing market or political campaign research organizations use polling to learn how people feel or what they believe about a topic. In order to get a better understanding of why they feel or believe as they do they’ll hold what are called “focus groups”. In a focus group just as in polling the organization tries to select participants that fit their needs. In political polling that is usually registered voters or when an election is close what are defined as likely voters, often those who vote nearly every election. Polling organizations usually try to find a mix of genders, ages, and economic groups that is also representative of the overall population of the area they’re researching, congressional district or state for example. For a focus group the organization may choose from a narrower group in order to better understand how that group thinks and why they might vote a particular way.

In focus groups organized for Navigator Research in three swing states, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Nevada, voters who lean Republican or consider themselves independent generally were very disturbed to learn that Trump had been indicted on 91 charges over 4 criminal trials. Participants were also concerned with Trump’s claims of immunity for anything done by the president including the use of the military to murder opponents.

Even some voters who lean Republican cited Fox News as part of the problem regarding the political divide in the country, misinformation, and distrust of media. Unfortunately that has caused many voters to distrust main stream media entirely rather than find more reliable sources. It’s also frightening that the voters participating in the focus groups didn’t have a common understanding of political violence or recognize it beyond the insurrection on January 6, 2021.

The only positive point I see is that for the most part participants in the focus group and hopefully others like them were less likely to support Trump upon learning more about the indictments and criminal trials as well as his claims of total immunity.

It is important to remember that Trump lost the popular vote in both 2016 and 2020. He only won in 2016 because of a relatively small number of votes in a handful of swing states giving him the edge in the electoral college. It will only take a small number of independents and soft Republicans voting for Biden to insure that Trump never again has political power in the United States.

As a Democrat and believer in the peaceful transfer of power through free and fair elections I hold out hope that readers of this column and others will reach out to family and friends to insure that they are informed about they recognize the dangers of re-electing Trump.

Published in the Seguin Gazette February 7, 2024

Believe Trump When He Tells You Who He Is

Respected media sources such as NBC and the right leaning Washington Post have recently reported disturbing plans that show Donald Trump and groups supporting him, especially the Heritage Foundation, marching further into right-wing authoritarianism. What’s more frightening is how positively Republican voters have reacted to his plans and pronouncements.

Trump hasn’t even been subtle about his desire to turn the Department of Justice into a retribution organization that he’d unleash on his “enemies” including his own former Attorney General William Barr, and Chief of Staff John Kelly. Trump is miffed by their harsh criticism of him since he left office in 2021. That’s in addition to Trump threatening to tap a special prosecutor to “go after” Biden and his family.

The Heritage Foundation is working on a guide for use by the next Republican administration which they’ve named Project 2025. The guide envisions changing federal service rules that would allow Trump to cut tens of thousands of civil service workers and replace them with ones deemed loyal to Trump’s agenda. The guide also calls for invoking the 1871 Insurrection Act on the first day in office in order to use military forces against protestors.

CNN reports that according to a source familiar with it Trump’s anti-immigrant plan involves rounding up undocumented immigrants already in the US and placing them in detention camps to await deportation. This sort of thing has been done before and often ends up with U.S. citizens being deported because they have brown skin and no one believes them when they claim citizenship even when documentation is provided.

Trump has said he would require local law enforcement agencies to use the widely disparaged stop-and-frisk tactic in order to receive some Justice Department funding. He’s also suggested he would deploy the National Guard to cities dealing with high levels of crime.

In a policy aimed at combating homelessness Trump calls for the building “tent cities” on “inexpensive land” staffed by health care workers, then giving homeless people a choice between relocating to the tent city or facing jail time. That’s not a solution, that’s hiding the problem and past experience with other attempts to hide problems like orphanages and homes for pregnant girls shows the residents are often abused, sometimes fatally.

In his speech at a Veteran’s day rally Trump said that “we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” The “vermin” comment wasn’t an off the cuff remark, it was contained in the written remarks provided to the press. Trump is using the same kind of language as previous genocidal leaders. Nazis characterized Jews as “rats” infecting their pure Aryan society, in Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge described their enemies as “worms” and “leeches” and in Rwanda, Hutu leaders called Tutsi “cockroaches”.

The poem on the Statue of Liberty says; “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Apparently welcoming and openness is no longer appreciated by Trump and the vast majority of Republicans.

All this ugliness has been revealed by Trump and his team yet he is gaining support among Republican voters. Both Trump and his supporters are telling us who they really are, we should believe them and act accordingly.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - November 29, 2023

Trump Indictment Charges No Comparison

 When the topic of the latest indictment of Donald Trump comes up you’ll no doubt here various defenses, excuses, and what-aboutism, don’t accept any of their weak arguments. The indictment makes very clear with quotes from the evidence heard by the grand jury that the crimes Trump is charged with are serious and involved others in a conspiracy. The indictment includes 34 felony charges against Trump for which the penalties range from 5-20 years in prison and fines of up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Trump engaged in entirely different behavior than Joe Biden and Mike Pence with regard to classified documents they had in their possession after their terms were up. After Biden and Pence became aware they were in possession of classified documents they immediately contacted the relevant federal agencies and arranged for their return. Trump always knew he had classified documents and there is clear evidence that on several occasions he showed it off to people with no security clearance at all. Trump then attempted to retain possession of the documents claiming he didn’t have them, then that he had de-classified the documents and they belonged to him, then returned some claiming that was all he had, while he conspired with an aide to hide some of them when the FBI informed him they were coming to look for themselves.

While any president can de-classify some types of documents there is a process for that which Trump didn’t follow therefore the documents were never legally de-classified. In addition not all documents can be de-classified by executive action including one of the documents Trump held onto and referred to in the indictment as document #19 from the Department of Energy which is labeled as “Undated document concerning nuclear weaponry of the United States”. Such documents typically include information about the US nuclear weapons stockpile quantities, nuclear weapons safety and storage, nuclear weapon yields, and locations of US nuclear weapons.

The indictment includes a transcript of an audio recording of a meeting on July 2021 at Trump National Golf Course in Bedminster, New Jersey in which Trump shows a writer, a publisher, and two of his staff members a document that he says a senior military official whose name is redacted, but believed to be Gen. Mark Milley, gave him discussing a possible attack on a country the name of which is also redacted, thought by most reporters to be Iran, and proceeds to tell them “This is secret information. Look at this.”  Later Trump says “See as president I could have declassified it.” After laughs and a response by as staff member Trump says “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.” The recording makes clear that Trump knew that documents in his possession were still classified and therefore not to be shared.

The indictment includes photos of the boxes containing classified documents that were found stored in various locations within the Mar-a-Lago Club including a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, Trump's bedroom, and a storage room. The ballroom, bathroom and shower, were not secured locations and easily accessible to the public, in fact an events were held in the ballroom while the boxes were stored there. The office space is the business center where Trump employees and others routinely visited.

You can read the entire indictment for yourself, it’s only 49 pages double spaced and many pages are only half full or have photos taking up much of the page so it’s a quick and fascinating read.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - June 14, 2023

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

Right-wing Anti-Science Threat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Published in the Seguin Gazette - April 21, 2021

Yes It's A Cult

The Republican Party has become a cult of personality. The most recent evidence is the gold plated statue of a certain twice impeached former president at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last week in Orlando, FL. Considering that the current conservative movement leans heavily evangelical Christians you’d think such a statue and the worshipping of the former president would bring to mind Exodus 32:4 in which the Israelites put together a golden calf idol and Moses and shames them for their lack of faith.

In the last 12 months more than 500,000 Americans have died of COVID-19, many of them might never have contracted it if our federal and state governments had taken it seriously rather than calling it a hoax or as Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick famously suggested grandparents should be willing to sacrifice their lives for the state’s economy. Patrick made that ridiculous statement in May last year, as of last week nearly 44,000 Texans have died from COVID-19. No Republican elected officials criticized him for his callousness and many of local conservatives still don’t want to wear a mask and when they do won’t wear it properly over their nose. Much of this refusal to accept reality is shear partisanship following their cult leader, he of the golden statue above, who at times called the pandemic a hoax and said it would just go away like magic.

The violent takeover of the nation's capitol January 6^th seems to have pushed away the former president's supporters, as evidenced by the growing number of Republicans around the country who have changed their voter registration to Independent or Democrat. Unfortunately diehard Trump loyalists have become even more fervent followers. The twice impeached loser and his devotees have long been known for their divisive rhetoric, strong affinity for conspiracy theories, radical views of the world that are divorced from reality, and support for authoritarianism. Since the electoral loss in November they have started exhibiting clearer characteristics of cult followers, such as victim mentality, and a tendency to blame others.

Cultists place blind and absolute faith in their leader. They believe that they are on the side of truth and in the righteousness of their group. When presented with facts casting doubt on their beliefs, they are unwilling to seriously consider the possibility that they're wrong. Instead, they simply deny reality or embrace a conspiracy theory like the nonsense presented as QANON.

Conspiracy theories can be very attractive as they offer intriguing stories about "truth that is not reported by media" and you've been let in on the secret. Such "theories" often provide support for the persons own views and feelings. Those who become fully committed to a conspiracy theory no longer have to fact-check or evaluate information. They are spared the effort of soul-searching and agonizing over weighty questions.

The aftermath of the U.S. presidential election has unfolded is graphic evidence of the danger inherent in allowing cult thinking to quietly gain ground. A prime example of this is Japan's experiences with Aum Shinrikyo. Chizuo Matsumoto the founder of a religious cult called Aum Shinrikyo, ran for election to Japan's parliament. Confident he would win, Asahara instead suffered a massive defeat. He then claimed there was vote-rigging, saying some votes had been "replaced." Any of that sound familiar? Aum Shinrikyo was allowed to grow into a powerful organization eventually committing numerous crimes  culminating in the 1995 sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system, the world's first indiscriminate terrorist attack using a toxic chemical.

There really is no telling how this cult will end.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - March 3, 2021

Reasons for Cheer and Caution

Today a new president will take the oath of office, one who doesn’t utter lies in every other sentence, one who is competent, one who respects his oath and the democratic principles and institutions of this nation. Today we reason to look forward to a brighter future.

While I’m certain that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be sworn in today I’m less certain that it will go forward without interruption and perhaps violence. Trump cultists have not given up and the FBI has warned of the potential for an even larger attack on our democracy today. We can hope they are as incompetent as the outgoing president and the January 6^th insurrectionists.

25,000 national guard troops have been called up to protect the inauguration and the FBI is reportedly vetting every one of those troops. There is cause for concern of an attack from the inside because while those troops have sworn to protect and defend the constitution, January 6^th showed that some, like Retired Lt. Colonel Larry Rendall Brock Jr. of Texas, were willing to violate those oaths. Dozens of law enforcement officers from around the country including some in San Antonio and Houston are also under investigation as well. The insurrectionists came within a handful of minutes of taking members of congress hostage. What would have happened to our nation had they been a little quicker?

We are in the midst of a critical time in this nation’s history and our form of government has been put at risk by Republicans including Ted Cruz and other members of the Texas congressional delegation who incited the insurrection and continue to spread lies. The failure of the January 6 assault on the capitol hasn’t stopped Cruz and others from fanning the flames of discontent. Neighbors and relatives of mine still believe the election was stolen even after Republicans in charge of elections in disputed states have insisted that there was no appreciable fraud committed in the election. After Twitter banned Trump, there was a 73% reduction in election misinformation spread on the Internet in a single week.

Unfortunately it isn’t just national figures inciting insurrection, prominent Republicans here in Guadalupe County have made chilling remarks in their social media such as “Mitt Romney needs to be introduced to Mr. Guillotine”. These folks aren’t just sore losers grumbling in their beer. Our community must stand up to them and refuse to allow them to sow discontent and threaten violence to get there way. Not doing so simply sets the stage for future insurrection, perhaps planned and implemented by more competent demagogues who will succeed.

The disgraceful spreaders of conspiracy theories and lies about the validity of elections, from Trump to Ted Cruz to our local leaders must not be allowed influence in the public sphere. Those who have been elected must be unseated in the next election. Those who are seen by neighbors and peers as community leaders must be shamed and their opportunities to spread their seditious speech limited. They must not be invited to speak to groups or have their writings published. Remember censorship is when the government prevents someone from speaking their mind, it is good judgement when community members choose not to provide a bully pulpit for those who would overthrow the legitimately elected government.

Republicans Are Responsible For Insurrection

The insurrection at the nation’s capitol a week ago has brought out a wide range of responses from conservatives but very few have acknowledged a shred of responsibility. YouGov released a survey Thursday last week which found that 45 percent of Republican voters backed the attack on the Capitol building, while 43 percent said they "strongly or somewhat" opposed the protesters' behavior. Six percent of Republicans were unsure while a further 6 percent said they were unaware of the events. The excuses I’ve heard from my neighbors go something like this; violence from any side is unacceptable but I agree with the rioters that the election may have been stolen.

It isn’t just that so many still think the election was stolen, even those that disagree with the violence claim Trump had nothing to do with inspiring they attack. Their denial that he incited the riot and egged the rioters on reminds me of a child denying responsibility for breaking the cookie jar while their hand and face are smeared in cookie crumbs. At the same time they’re blaming Facebook, Twitter, and Google for “censoring” content when it violates their terms of service. It’s only been since the election that the tech giants have begun to at least mark some of Trump’s claims as questionable let alone fact check or block them.

Texas Republicans, like Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Louis Gohmert, were among those who inspired the insurrection in the weeks leading up to it. They and other Republican leaders continue to make public claims of vote rigging without ever presenting any evidence but when lawsuits are filed the only claims are spurious and have nothing to do with the actual validity of the election and are thrown out of court often by Republican and even Trump appointed judges. Not even one of the nine Supreme Court justices where Republicans hold a six to three majority, three of whom are Trump appointees, couldn’t bring themselves to give credence to the falsehoods.

In most cases the claims made Trump’s supporters have been debunked entirely and on the few occasions where there was a shred of truth like the claim that military mail ballots had been thrown out it was thousands or even hundreds, it was three and they were found and counted before the election results were announced. In a case where supporters claimed of dead people voted the nearest they got was one 90+ year old widow of the deceased. The claim was that James Blalock, a deceased WWII vet and retired mailman, voted in the presidential election when in fact his wife who is registered to vote as Mrs. James Blalock is the person in whose name the vote was cast. Some 60 lawsuits have be brought by Trump’s supporters and in every case they’ve been thrown out of court because their claims are either unfounded, spurious, or even if true would affect so few votes as to have no effect on the result.

I’m disgusted and disappointed with many of my neighbors as they claim to want to work with the other side but are unwilling to accept that they and their fellow travelers are the ones causing the division by failing to challenge the falsehoods and their lying leaders.

I’ve begun to have a new appreciation for how Germany fell under the sway of Hitler and the Nazi’s and it isn’t comforting at all.

Transition and Democracy

The Sore Loser-in-Chief has delayed a peaceful transition of power for over three weeks and though he’s finally allowed some of the transition to move forward he and his minions are still actively the incompetently attempting to overturn the election results. Over six million more Americans voted for Biden than the squatter in the White House, that’s more than twice the margin that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by and still 28% of Republicans think the election was stolen. The “dear leader” continues to spread his anti-democratic message, that small “d” democratic meaning the concept not the party. Even Republican Secretaries of State and Governors have taken exception to his claims of voter fraud.

Trump’s attacks on domestic democratic processes mirror those of Hitler according to Burt Neuborne, one of the nation’s foremost civil liberties lawyers. In his book When at Times the Mob Is Swayed: A Citizen’s Guide to Defending Our Republic Neuborne notes “Hitler attacked the legitimacy of democracy itself, purging the voting rolls, challenging the integrity of the electoral process, and questioning the ability of democratic government to solve Germany’s problems.” “Trump has also attacked the democratic process, declining to agree to be bound by the outcome of the 2016 or 2020 elections when he thought he might lose, supporting the massive purge of the voting rolls allegedly designed to avoid (nonexistent) fraud, championing measures that make it harder to vote, tolerating—if not fomenting—massive Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, encouraging mob violence at rallies, darkly hinting at violence if Democrats hold power, and constantly casting doubt on the legitimacy of elections unless he wins.”

In addition to the damage the “Sore Loser” is doing to our democratic institutions by his failure to accept losing the election by the biggest margin for a sitting president since 1932, the delays he is causing in the transition endanger both national security and the lives of many Americans. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage causing hospitalizations and deaths to rise for the third time this year. Millions Americans have lost their jobs and many small businesses have closed permanently. Lines at food bank distribution centers continue to lengthen and more children go hungry every day. Delays in passing information to the next president’s team puts the entire country at risk as the new administration will be less well prepared to take the reins of government than they should be.

On the positive side Joe Biden has made it very clear that he takes climate change seriously and says his taking an administration-wide approach so that every agency will be expected to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As climate change is the existential threat to human civilization that our children and grand-children will be force to live with I’m grateful that we’ll finally have a president who is willing to take action. Unfortunately none of the measures he has proposed go far enough to actually reduce the threat. It’s going to take action from all of us to convince him and our congressman to do what’s needed and not just give lip service to addressing the crisis. There is no time left to act.

In January and Biden’s inauguration I’m looking forward to Donald Trump returning to something he’s good at, perhaps as a contestant on the USA Network’s reality show “The Biggest Loser”.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 2, 2020

Vote Like Your Life Depends On It

With 7 days left before election day, the popular vote loser in the White House claims COVID-19 is going away. Hospitals are once again reporting a surge in patients with COVID-19 all across the country, including in San Antonio. We’re into the third surge in infections while Republican elected officials continue their push to re-open everything and even relax mask requirements. Over 18,000 Texans have died of COVID-19 so far that’s 61 deaths per 100,00 residents giving Texas the 18^th highest rate of deaths in the country well ahead of Republican’s favorite punching bag California which has had 44 deaths per 100,000.

The U.S. death toll stood at 225,000 as of this weekend, that’s the ninth highest rate per hundred 100,000 worldwide. Sunday, contrary to the president’s remarks his own Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, said “We’re not going to control the pandemic”. That’s pathetic considering that so many other nations with much less to work with have done so much better at caring for their people.

Last week I listened to an interview with former National Security Advisor John Bolton in which he tore into the administration’s pandemic response. Bolton told the interviewer that the Obama administration developed a complete playbook on how to handle a pandemic and that document was left for future administrations to use, in addition the current administration had run its own exercise and developed its own playbook in 2019 yet the president didn’t bother to use either one. In the interview, Bolton referred to the president as “the empty chair behind the Resolute desk”; a reference to the desk nearly every president since 1880 has used which is made from the oak timbers of the British ship H.M.S. Resolute and presented as a gift to President Rutherford B. Hayes from Queen Victoria.

After his tantrum shortened interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl, the president’s staff provided Stahl a thick binder which they claimed held the present’s health care plan. When Stahl reviewed the binder, all it contained were copies of his executive orders and existing legislation. The president has been claiming to have a plan since he was running for president the first time in 2016 and still there is nothing. Republicans in Congress like John Cornyn have been talking about Repeal and Replace for years and still have not produced a replacement plan either.

In the midst of a worsening pandemic, Republican leaders have no plan to protect the health of the American public. Those same Republican leaders are suing to kill the Affordable Care Act which will cause 28 million Americans to lose their health insurance at a time when a million Americans have been hospitalized due to the pandemic. Even with insurance many of those who have been hospitalized have been left with large medical bills and men like John Cornyn and the president want to destroy what little protection many of us have from bankruptcy or death. Back in May, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told Fox News “Those of us who are 70 plus, we’ll take care of ourselves. But don’t sacrifice the country”. The only people sacrificing the country are Republican senators who refuse to hold a vote on the HEROES Act that would provide aid to states, cities, and individuals during the economic downturn caused by the pandemic.

There are 6 days left until election day, and the race has tightened here in Texas. Your vote could be the deciding factor in throwing out John Cornyn in favor of MJ Hegar so make a plan to vote and then go VOTE.

Your Health Insurance At Risk

Today, around 28 million Americans have health insurance they would not otherwise have had because of the benefits of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In Texas alone nearly one million more would have those same benefits if Gov. Abbott accepted federal money to expand Medicaid like many other states did. Considering that the state would only have to contribute $1 for every $9 provided by the feds and even that $1 would be largely or totally recovered from taxes on additional spending by the medical community there’s no financial or economic reason for that refusal.

It’s that same petulance that has made the popular vote loser in the White House work to reverse everything done by his immediate predecessor. It is the same petulance that has infected the entire Republican Party since the passage of the Affordable Care Act in March of 2010 and given rise to their slogan Repeal and Replace. They had a full two years at the beginning of the president’s term when they controlled all the levers of power and couldn’t pass a bill to either repeal or replace, not once did they offer a replacement plan. The president claims to have finally offered a plan a few weeks ago but it is so lacking in detail that it doesn’t even appear on his campaign website. His fig leaf of an executive order on pre-existing conditions is meaningless to private insurers as executive orders are nothing more than directions to federal agencies and the only one that actually insures people is Medicare which has always covered pre-existing conditions.

Senator John Cornyn has been at the forefront of the movement to kill the Affordable Care Act and take away health insurance from 28 million Americans who are only covered because of it. Killing the Affordable Care Act will also remove the requirements that insurers covered annual wellness checkups and mental health as well as pre-existing conditions. Killing the ACA will also mean that insurance companies can go back to charging different rates for men and women, as well as eliminating the requirement that they spend at least 90% of premiums on health care instead of executive salaries and advertising.

Texas is at the forefront of the effort to kill the ACA another way, the state is a plaintiff in a case before the Supreme Court that seeks to invalidate the law. John Cornyn’s willingness to steal a Supreme Court seat from President Obama in 2016 and his advocacy for swift consent on the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the court weeks before the presidential election is just another way to influence the result of the case. If Republicans get their way and the Supreme Court does overturn the ACA there will be many consequences unforeseen by the public and I expect you’ll see Republican elected officials distance themselves and blame those consequences on the court.

In some ways I hope Republicans finally succeed in overturning the Affordable Care Act so Joe Biden and the new Democratic Party majority in the senate are prompted to create a new more comprehensive plan with expanded coverage that leaves no one behind even in Texas. The only way to make sure that there are people in power who will work to mitigate the damage and make life better for all of us is to elect Joe Biden for president and MJ Hegar to the United States Senate. The polls are open, go vote. If you’ve received a mail-in-ballot, get it in the mail so you can be sure it gets to the elections office in time to be counted.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - October 21, 2020

The President's Dereliction of Duty

 “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle—it will disappear”, so said the science denier-in-chief on February 27. The president repeated such claims for months. Now it’s the first week of October, he’s is in the hospital with a case of COVID-19. As of Sunday afternoon the smoke and mirrors put up by the White House has obscured just how sick the president is.

We do know that his symptoms are severe enough that his doctors have given him a three drug cocktail including an experimental drug and Dexamethasone, which is a steroid that the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health recommend be given only in severe cases. One in ten cases of COVID-19 requires hospitalization; less that two in a hundred require treatment in an intensive care unit (ICU). Being the president it’s likely that he is being monitored similarly to an ICU patient regardless of the severity of his condition but the drugs he’s being given suggest he is in bad shape and of those who have been ill enough to be treated in an ICU less than half survive. I’d like to point out that his doctors are not treating him with his fantasy drug of choice, hydroxychloroquine, which he touted repeatedly as a cure.

We know the president tested positive on Wednesday so he was infected already when he appeared at the debate and made fun of Joe Biden for always wearing a mask. Perhaps if he had shown the leadership that Americans expect of a president he would have been wearing a mask since March and would have encouraged his followers to do so as well instead of advocating against them. Had he done so, his aide Hope Hicks and three Republican senators might not have also tested positive for COVID-19 last week. This nation might also not have suffered at least some of the 210,000 deaths attributed to COVID-19 so far if he’d actually taken the leadership role expected of a president.

This president’s failure to act according to expert advice from the medical community has put public health at risk. That failure has left us with the ninth highest rate of deaths per capita in the entire world. We’re in company with such third world nations as Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Ecuador. This isn’t just incompetence; as Professor Allan Lichtman, a historian at American University for 50 years, put it “This is the greatest dereliction of duty in the history of the U.S. presidency.”

Typically a COVID-19 hospital stay is one to two weeks while those who are treated in an intensive care unit and survive typically exit the hospital in two to four weeks. So if the president recovers he’ll likely have just three weeks left to campaign and possibly much less. I wonder how his supporters will spin his hospitalization. How will they react if he actually dies of COVID-19 in the coming weeks? Will they shrug it off? Will they claim some sort of liberal or deep state conspiracy is responsible? More important, how will the 4% of likely voters who are undecided see this failure to even protect himself?

Republicans from the president on down to the state legislature have failed to take action to minimize the spread of a deadly contagion and they deserve to be voted out. In Guadalupe County there are fourteen races with Democrats running and this is the first election since straight ticket voting was eliminated. Be sure to pick all fourteen Democrats when you go to the polls or fill out your mail in ballot.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - October 7, 2020

Don the Fascist and Police Violence

I have no doubt that most police officers take on the responsibility they do for the right reasons and most are disturbed by the murders committed by their fellow officers. However, the fact is that all the protests across the nation and the mood of even white suburbanites swinging toward demands for accountability hasn’t stopped some officers from continuing to murder unarmed black men. The former reality show star in the White House had little to say about stopping violence against citizens perpetrated by police during his record length 70 minute acceptance speech Thursday night. Instead he talked about stopping rioting, looting, and arson; none of which would be happening if police stopped shooting black people who weren’t shooting at them.

There’s a reason for police violence hasn't stopped and it’s important that we realize that those officers aren’t just a few bad apples. In order for Derek Chauvin to have been able to kneel on George Floyd’s neck for over eight minutes while two other officers stood by, there has to be a culture within that department that says it’s acceptable to do. If such a culture didn’t exist at least one of those officers would have demanded that Chauvin back off long before Floyd suffocated. The fact that those two officers witnessed the murder and took no action at all says to me that either of them might very well have done the same thing. It also begs the question: What other less extreme abuse have these three officers perpetrated on people they’ve come in contact with? Since all three were fine with Floyd’s death and that attitude can’t have been limited to just them that entire department needs a thorough house cleaning.

As I write this, Jacob Blake is paralyzed from the waist down after being shot seven times in the back by officers in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The fact that officers continue to use extreme violence against black men three months after the start of protests against such violence says there is a culture in many departments that says extreme violence perpetrated against black men is okay.

The president’s fascist “law and order” rhetoric is being repeated by Republicans up and down the ticket, most recently by Alabama Republican congressional nominee Barry Moore who praised the white 17 year old vigilante who is charged with the murder of two and shooting of another as they were organizing a protest against police violence in Kenosha. The police chief there had the gall to blame the protesters for their own deaths and injuries because they violated curfew. The vigilante is not surprisingly a big fan of the president.

Since the election of this president there has been a significant rise in hate crimes. This year alone there have been arrests in 90 cases of domestic terrorism and the majority of those cases “are motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacist violence” according to FBI Director Christopher Wray in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The reality TV star is behaving much like his fascist predecessors in the 1930’s who exhorted their followers to commit violence against those they blamed for their countries’ problems. Here, in this era he blames anyone not white and anyone who disagrees with him. This is the man who hinted at “Second Amendment” remedies to the possible election of Hillary Clinton in 2016. The same man who says that there are some very fine people amongst white supremacists. The same man who says he isn’t sure he’ll leave the White House if he loses the election.

 

Trump Violates Oath of Office

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks, the squatter in the White House continues to violate his oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution by adding three new attempts to violate the Constitution to his already lengthy resume. His first violation occurred immediately upon taking office and the court case continues on his violation of the emoluments clause prohibiting a sitting president from accepting things of value from foreign governments, something Trump does every day as his Washington, D.C. hotel rents rooms to ambassadors and other foreign dignitaries. Now in the wake of declining poll numbers he’s on a tear.

The most recent three started when Trump called for re-opening the economy as he also demanded that churches be allowed to hold services with no restrictions on attendance and insisted he could force governors to do his bidding thus proposing to violate the Tenth Amendment which states: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. Since nowhere in the Constitution does it give the president or congress the right to force states to act in a manner contrary to their need to protect public health Trump doesn’t have that power. Any attempt to assert such control would be a violation of states’ rights. Given that the conservatives often much spurious claims that Democrats especially President Obama don’t recognize the Tenth Amendment I find it curious they haven’t made strong statements opposing Trump’s claims.

In Trump’s response to violent protests following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police he stated “…when the looting starts the shooting starts” indicating that police should shoot protestors a looting sites. Here Trump indicates his willingness to violate the Fourth Amendment which the Supreme Court said in the 1985 case Tennessee v. Garner  “…a police officer may use deadly force to prevent the escape of a fleeing suspect only if the officer has a good-faith belief that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.” Aside from constitutional considerations a president who was truly a leader would be acting to calm the situation and address the very real concerns of the protestors, not seeking to inflame tensions with incendiary language and threats of official violence.

And then Trump made threats to shutdown Twitter when they marked two of his tweets with fact checks showing that claims he made in those tweets weren’t truthful. Taking official action against Twitter in such a case would be a violation of the Tenth Amendment protections of freedom of expression which is oddly enough what he claims Twitter violated by showing the public he lied. Since Twitter is a private company and not a government agency nothing they could do would ever violate the Tenth Amendment as it only prohibits government censorship. Just the act of threatening to shutdown the company is in itself a violation of Tenth Amendment protections as such threat of official action can have a chilling effect on public discourse.

Sadly you won’t hear either Senator Cornyn or Senator Cruz calling out Trump for failing his oath of office or attempts to violate the constitution and that means that at least in spirit they too have violated their oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Remember in November and vote both Trump and Cornyn out of office.

 Published in the Seguin Gazette - June 3, 2020

Stimulus, Unemployment, and Your Health

In the last week there were nearly 15,000 deaths in the United States due to COVID-19 for a total of 55,415 and of those 623 were in Texas where another 150 died last week. All that and much of Texas re-opened for business as of last Friday. While we’re still told to practice social distancing and wear a mask though many still don’t like the police officer I noticed walking into an urgent care medical office to drop off some material from the city.

That $1200 stimulus payment we’re all supposed to get won’t go far for many who were put out of work as they still have to same bills to pay. Worse too many still haven’t gotten the money that was authorized over a month ago. Loans to small business provided by the second stimulus were absorbed by big businesses because too many banks would rather loan to them than small businesses. The third stimulus just added more funds and rules but still doesn’t address the needs of those out of work.

The unemployment rate is over 23% with around 26.5 million Americans out of work. Many workers were furloughed but still aren’t going back to work as their businesses aren’t on the re-open list yet. Many others were laid-off and therefore have less hope of returning to work in the near future. Food banks all over the country are running out of food as they experience three and four times normal demand. Given the difficult straits so many are in right now it’s a good thing Democrats in the House are working on another stimulus bill that will offer direct payments to the American people as well as provide funds for state and city governments so they can continue to pay their police, fire and other essential workers.

Unfortunately there may be problems getting such a bill passed by the Senate as Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said "My guess is their first choice would be for the federal government to borrow money from future generations to send it down to them now," McConnell said in a radio interview. "That's not something I'm going to be in favor of."

New York Republican congressman Peter King was livid calling "McConnell's dismissive remark that states devastated by Coronavirus should go bankrupt rather than get the federal assistance they need and deserve is shameful and indefensible, to say that it is 'free money' to provide funds for cops, firefighters and healthcare workers makes McConnell the Marie Antoinette of the Senate."

Trump seems worried that taking too long to re-open businesses will leave the economy in a slump that will cost him the election. I worry that re-opening without taking the necessary measures which the medical community says involve mass testing and contact tracing followed by quarantine of those found testing positive will insure that many more people die than necessary and a second shut down may become necessary insuring further economic damage and uncertainty. We’d all be better off if we do it right the first time but Trump and Gov. Abbott don’t seem to share my view.

We’ll be continuing to stay at home for all but essentials like groceries and prescriptions as I have the good fortune of working from home. I hope anyone else that can work from home will so they can remain healthy.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - April 29, 2020