Immigrant Bashing for Votes and Bad Policy

 Florida under Gov. Ron DeSantis is showing Texas what happens when a state passes draconian immigration laws. Undocumented immigrants flee the state which then shuts down construction businesses and leaves unpicked crops in the fields. Republicans in Florida are getting mad at DeSantis for wrecking their businesses while he grandstands on his harsh immigration policies while campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination in states like Iowa.

Gov. Greg Abbott just signed S.B. 4 last week which is similarly harsh regarding undocumented immigrants sending them to jail or deporting them quickly. In a few months there will be crops that need tending, homes that need building, and repairs that need doing but not enough people to do them here in Texas just like Florida today. Of course if Texas Republicans could remember as far back as 2011 they’d know this all played out before in Georgia and Alabama leaving millions of dollars in crops rotting in fields.

Florida has a 2.8% unemployment rate, which is more than 25% lower than the 3.9% national rate, so the argument that immigrants steal jobs from citizens is easily discredited. In fact there are only 53 people looking for work for every 100 job openings in Florida. Now the Republican controlled Florida legislature is considering solving the “problem” by loosening child labor laws to allow 16 and 17 year olds to work overnight during the school year. Such regulations were originally put in place to prevent work from interfering with children’s health, safety, and education. This isn’t about doing something positive for children it’s about bailing out the legislature from its own bad policy and giving benefits to corporations. From their point of view Republicans probably think high-schoolers that work too much and end up not finishing their education are a gold mine of future voters as the lower a voter’s educational attainment the less likely they are to vote for Democrats.

20 years ago Democrats and Republicans shared similar views in that they equally believed that immigrants strengthened the country. Today that’s no longer true as Republicans candidates and media talking heads have found a receptive audience for immigrant bashing. Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign and presidency raised such bashing to new heights all while Republican legislators have fought any form of comprehensive immigration reform. Today Republicans are using the desire of President Biden to continue supporting Ukraine in protecting its borders and citizens against the Russian invasion as leverage to push further harsh measures on immigrants and asylum-seekers.

Strangely we have blowhards like Senator Ted Cruz raising a ruckus about supposed open borders under Biden, a claim that is patently untrue, but which is getting media attention in Central and South American countries thereby encouraging migrants to rush to our southern border. Cruz and his Republican colleagues are actually a major cause of the very “crisis” they’re so loudly complaining about.

Then you have Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) whose mother was a Cuban refugee who fled the island nation in 1959 when Fidel Castro took power. When Malliotakis campaigned to represent the 11th District of New York in 2022 her rhetoric consisted of attacking asylum-seekers. That's more than a little hypocritical coming from the direct offspring of someone who came here seeking political asylum.

Democrats have repeatedly tried to pass comprehensive immigration reform that is both fair and effective but their colleagues across the aisle refuse to cooperate. If Republicans really wanted to address immigration they’ve had plenty of opportunities but have chosen not to because they prefer to use it as a hammer when campaigning and fund-raising.

Published in the Seguin Gazette December 27, 2023

School Vouchers Again!

 Back in 2017, then Speaker of the House, Joe Strauss told conference of school board members from across Texas in San Antonio “Somebody is going to pay for public education, it’s either going to come from the state or it’s going to from local property taxes. If we want real property tax reform we need real reform of school finance.” He explained that the way to improve public education and reduce property taxes is to increase state funding for education but legislation to offer state money for private school tuition is wrongheaded and counterproductive.

Gov. Abbott has claimed that “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 that were true then why have Republicans failed to fully fund public education in Texas for decades? The state portion of public education funding has been falling for well over a decade and is now about 45% of the funds needed for every child in public schools to get the limited education available. Texas K-12 public schools continue to suffer from high class sizes and under-paid teachers.

There are more than 342,000 children currently attending private schools in Texas so if the current $6160 per student amount is provided to those students then in order to continue that funding for children attending public schools the state must increase the education budget by $2.1 billion. Where will that money come from? That’s on top of the amount needed to provide the higher level of state funding needed to enable schools boards to reduce the property tax rates they have had to charge in order to adequately fund schools across the state.

In most of the state there are few if any non-sectarian private schools so if you’re not a member of one of the pre-dominant faiths in your 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 your own. The real issue though is that taxpayer funding of religious schools is a direct violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The First Amendments state in part that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. The 14th Amendment extends the same constitutional protections to state actions as well. In fact the 14th 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 such as search and seizure of your property without a warrant and the right to a trial by a jury of your peers. The Supreme Court long ago ruled against state funds supplementing teacher salaries at religious schools and that’s exactly what Gov. Abbott is advocating.

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

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.

Republican voters might still be alright with their taxes going to Lutheran, Baptist, or Catholic schools but what about a fundamentalist Islamic school?

Call Representative John Kuempel’s office at (830) 379-8732 and tell him to vote no on vouchers.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - February 8, 2023

Republican Piety Only For Show

Republican politicians love to tout their faith, Christianity, and piety as if Democrats are somehow an evil cabal set on abolishing their religion. I know lots of faithful, devout Democrats, many are Christian but many are of other faiths as well. The differences I find between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to their faiths is that Democrats are more likely to actually behave as their scriptures instruct. A prime example is “Love thy neighbor as thyself” which appears repeatedly in both the Old and New Testaments. While the Old Testament tends toward a narrow definition of neighbor the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament broaden that definition through parables like the Good Samaritan.

If Republicans like Gov. Greg Abbott were really as devout Catholic he claims to be he wouldn’t have bused over 100 asylum seekers to Washington, D.C. to be dropped off on the street outside the vice presidential residence at the Naval Observatory on Christmas Eve without any warning to officials there. The three busloads of asylum-seeking adults and children left on the street in 18 degree weather, many without coats or other winter gear. It’s just a continuation of Republican political stunts complaining about migrants on the southern border but offering no solutions.

Real people are bitterly suffering for so our governor can score political points in his likely run for president in 2024. He’s already won re-election as governor so it can’t be for that. It’s disappointing that someone who claims to be a practicing Catholic so clearly violates the one of the most fundamental precepts of the faith. The nuns at St. Lawrence the Martyr and the brothers at Archbishop Rummel made it very clear to me during my 12 years of Catholic education that kindness to all those around you even those you don’t know is a foundational principle of the faith. How Greg Abbott doesn’t see the conflict between his faith and his actions is beyond me. It appears that he has allowed his ambition to be president to override the teachings of his faith.

I’m not the first to call Abbott out on his un-Christian behavior. 150 faith leaders of various denominations from around the country, including Republican states like Louisiana, Tennessee, Iowa, Missouri, and West Virginia, sent Gov. Abbott a letter pleading with him to stop his inhumane treatment of asylum-seeking migrants.

The letter is a powerful statement and reads in part “This crisis is not the byproduct of just Democratic or just Republican issues — it is the culmination of decades of decisions, intertwined in a web of blame that seemingly has no end. Many of us have, however, spoken to the migrants who have gotten off your buses. They told us how they fled places like Venezuela, Haiti, or Honduras, where their choices were to die there or chase the promise of a better life in America. Because while the immigrants of today are crossing up to nine borders to the United States, they carry that same spirit of the people who arrived here two hundred years ago on European ships. They face the same issue of death there or struggle here. We ask: which would you choose?”

I know that Republicans are found of asking why Joe Biden hasn’t visited the Mexican border. I’d ask those politicians if they’ve visited with any of the desperate migrants so they can learn about what caused them to flee in fear for their very lives.

Remember we are a nation of immigrants.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - January 4, 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

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

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.

Republican Leadership Absent on Holocaust

A couple of weeks ago a bunch of Holocaust denying anti-Jewish demonstrators made appearances in San Antonio and Austin. While organizers and most of the participants were from out of state they found a lot of support from local white nationalists and neo-Nazis. Their goal was to sow hate in our communities and fear among our friends and neighbors, they succeeded. The fact that Holocaust denial is as willfully ignorant as belief that the earth is flat or that the sun revolves around the earth. Unlike flat-earthers, Holocaust deniers often use violent rhetoric and occasionally act on that rhetoric. There was a spate of anti-Jewish vandalism that coincided with the demonstrations all of which served to cause fear in our communities.

Mayors and city council members in both San Antonio and Austin denounced the hateful messages and so did Democratic leaders like Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa but we didn’t hear a word from Republican leaders like Gov. Greg Abbott or Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Republican Party leaders have accommodated white nationalists repeatedly since the previous president began his campaign. The similarities to Europe in the 1930’s; when nationalists like Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler used antisemitism to take control of their countries.

To be clear Gov. Abbott, by all appearances, believes the horrible historical truth about the Holocaust. Earlier this year he signed a new law creating the Texas Holocaust, Genocide and Antisemitism Advisory Commission, responsible for producing studies of antisemitism in Texas and working with schools to fight against it. That doesn’t seem to mean that he is above the use of antisemitism for political gain by his tacit acceptance of those who espouse it within his party and political supporters.

The behavior of Gov. Abbott and others like him is actually more damaging to society than leaders who actually are anti-Semitic or racist and clearly state that they are because the public is led to believe that the leader is righteous while that leader uses dog whistles appealing to David Duke and Ku Klux Klan members and other white nationalists. Today’s right-wing politico must be more guarded in their language but still willing to at least look with other way when supporters of a less savory type act out.

Texas Republicans passed legislation earlier this year that prohibits public schools from teaching about the long lasting effects of slavery and racism and how even government regulations and procedures have perpetuated injury to the descendants of slaves up to the present, more than 150 years later. That legislation led to teachers at a training session in north Texas being instructed to provide books with the opposing view should they have books on the Holocaust in their classroom library. Whether or not that’s what the legislators who wrote the bill intended that’s what at least some public school officials interpreted it to mean.

How can we grow and prosper as a nation in a peaceful and respectful manner when our political leaders are more than willing to use our baser instincts to divide us so they can retain power?

Published in the Seguin Gazette - October 10, 2021

Gov. Abbott Willing to Sacrifice Our Children

Gov. Greg Abbott is doing his best to sacrifice the life of your child or grand-child. By issuing an order banning local governments from passing mask mandates Abbott has willfully chosen to sacrifice the lives and health of the children of this state. You may hear plenty of “its might right” talk coming from Republicans and especially Libertarians who don’t want to wear a mask in public but they’re wrong.

Isn't your right to drive drunk? Shouldn't parents be able to decide whether or not to use a car seat for infants and toddlers? Why can’t paint companies and gasoline refiners use lead in their products like they used to? The answer is public health; we all have a right to life and health that cannot be subordinated to the right of an individual to just do as they please. That’s why government must have the power to mandate public mask wearing and should use it at this critical time. In fact the U.S. Constitution makes that very point in the preamble which states: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Here in Texas the weekly number of new, confirmed cases of COVID-19 is now greater than it was last year at this time. Hospital capacities in ICU’s all over the state are again near peak levels and deaths are again on the rise. As parents, children, and teachers prepare for the new school year its incumbent on school boards and administrations to look out for the best interests of those children. It’s important that they consider the best available information.

At the request of the North Carolina legislature Duke University researchers tracked COVID-19 transmission in North Carolina K-12 schools across 100 school districts, 14 charter schools, 160,549 school staffers, and more than 864,515 students attending in-school instruction.  The researchers, Dr. Kanecia Zimmerman, associate professor of pediatrics at the Duke University School of Medicine, and Dr. Danny Benjamin, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Duke Health wrote; "We have learned a few things for certain. Although vaccination is the best way to prevent COVID-19, universal masking is a close second, and with masking in place, in-school learning is safe and more effective than remote instruction, regardless of community rates of infection."

Dr. Benjamin stressed the efficacy of universal in-school masking in an interview with PBS News Hour stating "What we found was despite having extremely widespread COVID in the communities in North Carolina, if universal masking is in place, the chances of one child infecting another is less than 1 percent," he said. Voluntary masking, on the other hand, is about as useless as universal masking is effective. "Having a voluntary mask policy is like having a no-peeing section of a pool or a no-smoking section on an airplane," Dr. Benjamin explained. "That's absurd."

Given their constitutional duty to promote the general welfare, in this case public health, it is necessary for all levels of government to have the ability to impose mask mandates as appropriate in order to protect the lives and health of our children whether some parents are smart enough to understand that or not. Gov. Abbott’s presidential ambitions are insufficient cause to sacrifice our precious children’s health or lives.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - August 18, 2021

Anti-Vaxxers Threaten All

My 91 year old mother lived in a time when Diptheria and Pertussis were serious threats to the lives of children and upwards of 35% of children didn’t live to adulthood. When I was 5 years old, in 1964-65, a wave of Rubella swept the United States causing 11,000 babies to be born deaf, 3,500 born blind, and 1,800 born intellectually disabled along with 2,100 neonatal deaths. Texas public schools require that students are vaccinated at appropriate ages for Diptheria, Pertussis, Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Polio, Hepatitis A and B among other diseases. Today we rarely hear of children dying of any of these diseases and that is only because of vaccines.

Last week the San Antonio Express News reported that Bexar 55.53% of residents ages 12 and up had been vaccinated while the rate in Comal is 53.49%, Kendall is 55.73%, and sadly Guadalupe is only 47.6%. In Bexar County the positivity rate, meaning the number of people testing positive out of all COVID tests has doubled since the end of June and was 13.5% at the time the article was published. Hospitalization and ICU admissions are also increasing. 97% of people hospitalized for COVID-19 in the U.S. are unvaccinated, according to NPR. Numerous hospitals across the country have gone back to delaying elective procedures as they need the beds to treat COVID-19 patients.

COVID-19 is once again a major public health threat as hospitalizations rise and 83% of new cases are the highly contagious Delta variant yet our governor has stated he will not order a mask mandate. There is plenty of vaccine available and numerous convenient locations to get it as most local pharmacies are offering it but too many people reject the opportunity claiming they know better than the overwhelming majority of medical professionals. These are the same folks who refused to wear masks and claim that the 610,000+ deaths from COVID-19 are overstated.

I’ve lost patience with them, after all they’re mostly people who voted for Trump and continue to believe the election was stolen regardless of the lack of evidence. Early this year when we were under a mask mandate many of these irresponsible people refused to wear a mask or used material so thin that it was of no value and claimed that those who feared contracting the virus should just stay home. I take the opposite view, if they don’t want to wear a mask in public then they should be the ones who stay home and let the responsible folks take care of business in a safe, healthy environment.

I would accept their right to get very ill and perhaps die from a preventable illness  but the problem is having so many unvaccinated people in the community provides a pool for more variants to evolve in and threatens the lives of children under 12 who can’t yet be vaccinated and those with compromised immune systems like many cancer survivors. These folks are like Typhoid Mary and aren’t willing to accept their responsibility to the larger community in the name of some warped notion of personal freedom. To para-phrase an old quote: Your liberty to cough out a virus ends just where my nose begins.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - July 28, 2021

Abbott Fails the People of Texas

Last week Gov. Greg Abbott proved once and for all what a petty, mean-spirited, little man he is by essentially giving notice to several hundred state employees that they’re fired as of September 1^st by vetoing Article X of the budget bill passed by both houses of the state legislature. Abbott announced he would do it in a fit of pique days after House Democrats walked out late on the last day of the session, breaking quorum over the voter suppression bill known as SB7. By vetoing that line item in the budget he is making the workers who clean the capitol, operate the cafeteria, run the parking garage suffer. The veto will hardly be noticeable to the elected members of the state legislature as they only get $500 a month and they all have full time jobs elsewhere. The folks that will hurt the most are the ones that had nothing to do with the politics of the session, they take care of the building and the people, they’re just like you and me.

Abbott also signed two bills into law aimed at strengthening the electric grid and reforming the agencies that regulate it. The bills were a response to a massive winter storm that broke the state’s electric grid, which according to a Buzzfeed investigation, killed as many as 700 Texans. Prior signing the bills, Abbott confidently declared that “everything that needed to be done was done to fix the power grid in Texas.” Last week we learned there are more problems with the grid when statewide notice was sent out requesting that all electricity users take steps to conserve because several generation plants were down with unscheduled repair issues. Nothing in the bills Abbott was so proud of addresses these issues and summer has just begun.

One of the electricity grid bills Abbott signed is SB3 which power generators and transmission line operators to weatherize their facilities. That’s great but the big problem during Snowpocalypse was that natural gas supply disruptions, the law requires only gas facilities deemed to be “critical” to weatherize. The agency responsible for making the determination of what’s critical is the industry-friendly Railroad Commission so we have no reason to be hopeful that they’ll actually select all the necessary infrastructure.

SB3 will take effect in six months so the regulatory agencies have time to work out the details. The catch is that the legislature failed to set a deadline for when regulators must begin actually enforcing the law. House Democrats attempted to remedy that with an amendment to establish a six-month deadline for enforcement after the regulatory agencies create their weatherization rules. The bill’s main author, Representative Chris Paddie, opposed the idea citing “financial and operational concerns,” the amendment was voted down along with another to make penalties mandatory also failed. Does anyone actually believe this legislation will do anything to insure that our electric grid will be better prepared for the next winter storm or hurricane, or extreme high temperatures?

Abbott recently announced that he’s picking up Trump’s ball on the border wall and will use $250 million in state funds to build some of it. He says he’s going to work with the Biden administration to have the previously purchased land returned to the original landowners then negotiate with them to have the state buy that land so he can build his wall.

Greg Abbott has shown he doesn’t care about regular folks, little people, he’s just worried about re-election and his action putting state employees out of work to spite House Democrats last week shows why he must not be.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - June 23, 2021

Texas Republicans Responsible for Blackouts

Let’s start with the facts, nearly all of the power shortage last week was due to natural gas and nuclear plants being shut down due to frozen gauges, values and other equipment. Gov. Abbott lied to the public when he blamed green energy. In fact your neighbors who had power when you didn’t probably had solar panels on their roofs, that’s green energy. Texans died of hypothermia in their homes needlessly last week because they had no way to heat their homes for too long and nowhere to go to stay warm. In reality had the Green New Deal proposal been in effect years ago far fewer people would have suffered because part of the proposal includes insulating old homes and more of us would have rooftop solar panels to provide at least some power for heating.

Now you ask, how could this happen? Power generating and gas pipeline companies in Texas are lightly regulated and aren’t required to takes steps necessary to keep their equipment running in extreme conditions. Their management chose not to use equipment that tolerates single digit temperatures or provide insulated and heated coverings that would have kept the equipment operational. Were it not that the product these companies provide are relied on by every Texan every day such behavior would be reasonable as it’s been a decade since the last time Texas suffered such weather. If they produced cars, clothing, appliances, or toys and shut down for a week no one would suffer. Instead these companies are part of the public utility infrastructure that is necessary and expected to provide their product all day every day regardless of conditions.

Decades ago the Texas legislature at the behest of management and the wealthy investors in power generation and pipeline companies deregulated the energy market. The legislature also cut ties to interstate power sources in order to avoid federal regulation of these public utilities. They did both in order to make the business more profitable. No consideration was given to the effect on reliability. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is responsible for transferring power from suppliers to users but it wouldn’t surprise George Orwell the regardless of its name ERCOT doesn’t actually do anything about reliability. In fact last November ERCOT fired the organization they had previously contracted with to check on the status of power providers and didn’t bother to replace it.

Statewide blackouts have happened twice in the last 32 years, in 1989 and 2011, in both cases federal investigators found a long list of things utility and pipeline operators should have been doing and suggested that the state take action to force them to do so. As Texas Republicans generally do when regulation is brought up they ignored the recommendations and took little action. Once again the people of Texas have suffered and Republicans don’t care. Former governor Rick Perry is quoted as saying “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.” Ted Cruz fled Texas to Cancun, Mexico with his family during the freeze.

Some of my neighbors claim we shouldn’t politicize a crisis, I say a crisis like the freeze of 2021 is political to begin with. If our legislators are holding power and pipeline companies accountable the we must hold our legislators accountable, that starts with state representative John Kuempel, state senator Donna Campbell, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Gov. Greg Abbott. They are all part of the problem and we need to replace them with people who will be part of the solution.

 Published in the Seguin Gazette - February 24, 2021

Published in the Boerne Star - February 25, 2021

Texas Unprepared

Two weeks after Governor Abbott issued his executive order re-opening the state for business statewide the rate of new COVID-19 cases continues to accelerate, topping 47,000 over the weekend according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. Thursday set a record for new cases in a single day at 1448 then Saturday that record was shattered with 1801 new cases. Deaths in Texas due to COVID-19 now number over 1300 and climbing as well due to Thursday’s record high 58 deaths. Remember that COVID-19 symptoms often takes two weeks to present and patients often spend a week or more in intensive care units before succumbing to the disease so there’s a strong probability that deaths due to infections contracted since re-opening aren’t included in the latest statistics and won’t show up until the end of this week or early next week.

While there have been 645,000 tests over the last 30 days the daily number of tests hasn’t increased at near the rate of infection or death. Assuming that no one has been tested twice that means just over 2% of the 29.9 million Texans has even been tested. Unlike states that are aggressively investigating COVID-19 cases by following up with people who have tested positive one on one then contacting anyone who may have come into contact with the infected person Texas is passively collecting that information by offering to accept that information on a state website. Some cities and counties such as San Antonio are operating their own aggressive contact tracing programs in an effort to stem the tide of infection and death.

So many Texans are not only unemployed, they’re also not receiving the unemployment checks they’re due. My brother is on furlough and though he applied for unemployment as soon as he was eligible it’s been a month and he still hasn’t received the money he is due nor has he been able to contact anyone at the Texas Workforce Commission about the delay as their phone number just plays a recording saying that they aren’t answering phones so they can concentrate on processing claims. Fortunately he’s not one of the 40% of Americans who lives paycheck to paycheck. Food banks all over the state have run short of food due to the overwhelming demand for their services and aside from assistance by a few private donors little is being done to alleviate the situation.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s solution is to just let people die rather than providing timely relief while protecting the lives of Texas residents.

Clearly Texas wasn’t prepared to re-open for business as usual and the employees of Texas businesses are the ones most likely to suffer for it. With the state not providing timely payment of unemployment claims and food banks running dry many Texans are going hungry. Gov. Abbott re-opening the state for business just increases the risks to workers who face a choice between not returning to work in order to protect their health thereby making themselves ineligible for unemployment benefits whenever the state gets around to paying and putting themselves at risk of not only contracting COVID-19 from someone they come in contact with at work and then spreading it to their families.

It appears that President Trump the only people whose opinion matters to Gov. Abbott and Lt. Gov. Patrick are their wealthy campaign donors who are only interested in restoring cash flow to their businesses. Remember that in November when it’s time to vote, send them a message by voting for Democrats in the state legislature races.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 20, 2020

Why Don't Conservatives Take COVID-19 Seriously?

I’m amazed by the contradictions inherent in people’s reactions to threats. I have trouble understanding how conservatives don’t accept climate change as an existential threat but I know that obfuscation by fossil fuel companies and think tanks and politicians funded by them plays a role. The conservative response to COVID-19 though is just hard for me to explain. Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was quoted last weekend projecting 100,000 to 200,000 deaths from COVID 19. Most of those deaths will likely be in those older than 60, Trump’s base so you’d think he and they would take it really seriously.

Republican governors, such as Tate Reeves in Mississippi, have overridden local mayors who had issued stay at home orders put in place to protect their citizens. Some evangelical pastors, like Rev. Tony Spell in Louisiana, are violating local government orders banning large gatherings leading to outbreaks in their flocks. Jerry Falwell, Jr’s Liberty University welcomed its students back from Spring Break, unlike many public schools, only to find several students infected.

Governor Abbott talks out of both sides of his mouth saying that Texas is taking necessary steps to prepare but failing to issue statewide stay at home orders like governors in states that really are taking action with statewide stay at home orders. This weekend he announced  that “the number of Texans hospitalized with COVID-19 is less than 2% of the available hospital bed capacity.” According to state health officials there were 2552 confirmed cases in Texas out of 25,483 tested so Abbott claimed 90% tested negative. That’s nice except that there are over 29 million people in Texas so that means less than one tenth of one percent have even been tested. Let’s not forget that even if you’ve been tested and found to be virus free that doesn’t mean you can’t contract the illness a week or a month later. In addition 37 new cases were found last weekend in Bexar County alone. There’s not nearly enough testing going on in Texas to actually know how we’re doing. On the positive side Abbott did call up three National Guard units to assist with drive through testing and expansion of hospital bed capacity.

Of course you won’t be surprised to learn that the National Rifle Association’s response to the pandemic is to warn that everyone should buy a gun. They’re not suggesting doing so will reduce the spread of the virus, they’re proposition is that the virus will cause a breakdown in society like the Zombie Apocalypse or the Mad Max scenario.

All this and Trump’s latest conspiracy theory is his response to demands from doctors and nurses that more masks and eye protection be made available in which he claims that those same medical professionals who are doing all they can to protect us and care for our ill family and friends just want to steal the masks and eye protection.

It’s beyond me how people such as Trump, Abbott, and Reeves are selected by voters to lead us. November 3^rd can’t come soon enough.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - April 1, 2020

ACA Open Enrollment

It’s that time of year again when people without employer provided health insurance can sign up for a plan on marketplace provided under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Open enrollment started November 1 and runs until December 15. Donald Trump with help from congressional Republicans has made it harder for people to sign up by reducing the open enrollment period and cutting funding for promotion and assistance it’s still possible to find help if you need it.

Healthcare.gov has links to local assistance providers as well as renewing or updating your existing plan. While Trump has been messing with the financing he managed in some ways to accidentally lower the premium in some cases. In Guadalupe County a 40 year-old making $20,000 a year can get a Gold level insurance plan for just $32 a month or a Bronze plan for $0. If that 40 year-old earns $35,000 a Gold plan will cost them $223 a month or $105 a month for a Bronze plan. Gold level plans have lower deductibles than bronze or silver plans.

Previously I’ve spoken to folks who help people sign up for Obamacare plans and they told me that while some folks don’t qualify for the subsidies that get the premiums so low they also find people who qualify for Medicaid or their children qualify for CHIP and don’t know it so they help them sign up for that. If you know someone without health insurance now is the perfect time to help them contact Seguin Community Health Center at 1104 Jefferson Street, Seguin, phone number (830) 379 – 9797 for assistance in applying.

There are roughly 5 million Texans without health insurance or nearly 18% of the state population. Texas has both more people uninsured as well as a higher percentage of uninsured of any state in the country. Approximately 1.25 million Texas children under 18 are among those uninsured.

A study done by the Texas Alliance for Health Care., shows the lack of health insurance would cause hardships for hospitals, physicians, and ordinary Texans.

Among the study’s findings: In 2016, the cost of lower lifetime earnings and worse health for uninsured Texans was $57 billion. Barring any change in policy, that cost will rise to $178.5 billion by 2040. The $3.5 billion price tag for hospitals and physicians who provide unsubsidized and uncompensated care in 2016 will rise to $12.4 billion by 2040 without a change in policy. The value of lost earnings and poor health due to lack of health insurance in Texas is estimated to be $178.5 billion in 2040 (or $74 billion in 2016 dollars).

Speaking of uncompensated care, Texas is seeing a rash of closures of rural county hospitals primarily due to funding shortfalls caused by the state failing to accept Medicaid expansion. You can thank, our state representative John Kuempel and Governor Greg Abbott for that.

All the Democratic candidates for president are talking about how they plan to fix this nation’s health insurance mess. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren offer sweeping plans that would take Medicaid and CHIP out of the hands of the state and make sure every American has health insurance. Consider that when listening to all the candidates as you decide who to support in the March primary.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - November 13, 2019

Protecting A Million Texans Requires Your Vote

As if you needed another reason to make time to vote in November think about this, Texas is one of 20 states suing the federal government to take away healthcare from millions of Americans especially middle and lower income Texans. Our Republican Attorney General, Ken Paxton, joined the suit earlier this year in an effort to use the courts to do what Congress chose not to. Paxton is empowered by the fact that Republicans control both houses of the legislature and every statewide office.

The cynical ploy used by the Attorneys General is the claim that since the individual mandate was central to the Affordable Care Act, the fact that Congress repealed it invalidates the entire law. Since 1.2 million Texans are covered through plans purchased via the Exchange created by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) having the court decide in favor of killing it will endanger the lives and health of all of them. Of course it won’t have any effect on the 4.5 million Texans denied coverage by Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision not to accept the 90% federally funded Medicaid expansion.

Whether or not Democrats can beat Paxton directly by electing Justin Nelson to replace him or indirectly through electing a majority in one or both houses of the legislature and cutting his budget, it can be done. Readers have three or four ways to protect the healthcare of over a million Texans. They can vote to replace the current Attorney General with Justin Nelson who if elected will certainly withdraw from the suit. They can vote to replace the Governor with Lupe Valdez who can make it known to the legislature that she will veto any budget that continues to fund attacks on the Affordable Care Act. They can vote to replace the incumbent in the House with John Rodgers who would fight to force Paxton to drop the suit by cutting his budget. Rodgers would also demand that the state take the federal money to expand Medicaid which would not only be a boon to those 4.5 million Texans not currently insured, it would also stimulate the economy of the entire state leading to many more jobs and higher paying jobs as well. If you live in the part of Guadalupe County which is in Senate District 25 you can replace the incumbent who is widely recognized one of the worst legislators in Texas with Steve Kling.

On the federal side we have an opportunity to put a stop to Republican efforts to repeal the ACA in whole or in part by taking back one or both houses of Congress. We need to hold onto a House seat by voting for Vicente González so that in other districts where Republican incumbents are in jeopardy of losing their seats we can gain enough to achieve a majority there. This is really important as Republicans in the House are still working to undermine the ACA by any means available. They are also plotting to cut Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid benefits claiming that they are causing a deficit; when in fact that deficit is caused mostly by the tax breaks they just gave big banks and billionaires. A Democratic House majority insures that Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the ACA all continue to be adequately funded.

There is also the very real possibility of replacing one of the Senate’s most unpopular members if we all get out and vote for Beto O’Rourke. If Texas voters flip that seat it will go a long way toward making it possible to win a majority in the Senate.

Vote! Vote! Vote!

Wishful Thinking About Joe Straus

I don’t agree with Joe Straus on a lot of things, he’s a Republican after all, but I have to say he’s shown real leadership as Speaker of the Texas House and it’s a real shame Governor Abbott and Lt. Governor Patrick aren’t more like him. For that matter it’s a shame that the Republican leadership at the federal level isn’t more like him.

Here in Texas Gov. Abbott has called a special session of the legislature to deal with, among things, Dan Patrick’s bathroom emergency. I don’t mean he has food poisoning or some such, I’m talking about his burning desire to require that the bathroom you use matches the gender on your birth certificate. Now, like North Carolina before us if the legislature passes his bill and Gov. Abbott signs it, Texas stands to lose $3 billion a year in tourism spending of which $412 million would be lost by San Antonio and the surrounding area, according to a study by the Perryman Group for the San Antonio Tourism Council. That translates into a heckuva lot of jobs lost over a solution in search of a problem.

The other non-sense Patrick is pushing and Abbott is caving in on is school vouchers. Texas already underfunds public education and the state keeps reducing its share of that funding, school vouchers will simply reduce the total available for public schools while giving a discount to folks wealthy enough to send their kids to private schools. Don’t forget that private schools don’t typically operate in rural areas so 80% of the state would never see one anyway.

Joe Straus isn’t having any of it, last week he told school board members from across Texas at a conference in San Antonio “Somebody is going to pay for public education, it’s either going to come from the state or it’s going to from local property taxes. If we want real property tax reform we need real reform of school finance.” He explained that the way to improve public education and reduce property taxes is to increase state funding for education but legislation to regulate bathrooms and offer state money for private school tuition is wrongheaded and counterproductive.

At the federal level Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell continues hiding the ball on healthcare bill. There has been no public hearing, there has been no published text of the bill. In fact, according to Senate Finance Committee Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), he doesn’t intend to hold a hearing. Apparently Hatch knows the bill will cause problems for Republicans if it is opened for debate. He claims that he’s getting no cooperation from Democrats on the healthcare bill but perhaps it’s because he won’t let them see it in order for them to offer any suggestions or even opinions.

It isn’t just Democrats who can’t see the bill, the Republican leadership is hiding it from the American Medical Association, the Association of Hospitals, and the American Cancer Society. So if you aren’t a lobbyist for an insurance company it’s a secret. That’s not the way Democrats handled the Affordable Care Act in 2009. That bill had months of hearings in several committees in the Senate alone and the those were public hearings unlike the smoke filled room deal McConnell and his lackeys like Hatch are working out.

If we have to have a Republican in the White House why couldn’t it be Joe Straus?

Published in the Seguin Gazette June 23, 2017

Call for a Constitutional Convention a Distraction

If you thought it was only Donald Trump who lived in his own universe using alternate facts think again. It seems or dear Governor, Greg Abbott, does too. Knowing full well that the state budget is once again in crisis due to a significant drop in oil and natural gas prices and therefore production, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar has already informed the legislature it will have $3 billion dollars less to spend over the next two years than it did in the last two. Rather than allowing the legislature to focus on state budget issues Abbott has designated a call for a federal Constitutional Convention as an “emergency” item on the agenda, requiring it to be put in the front of the line for hearings and action.

Abbott’s collaborator in the Senate is Brian Birdwell of Granbury and the bill he filed is SJR 2. The bill calls for an Article V convention "for the limited purpose of proposing one or more amendments to the constitution to impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, to limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, and to limit the terms of office of federal officials and members of Congress."

The first problem with this whole notion is that there is nothing in the Constitution that says a convention can be limited to certain topics. In fact the last time there was a Constitutional Convention was in 1787 and they threw out the Articles of Confederation and drafted a whole new Constitution. Given the current high level of polarization of today’s political climate and the big money thrown around by lobbyists it’s not hard to imagine a runaway convention controlled by multi-national corporations. And don’t think, “Well, 38 states would still have to approve any amendments from convention” because there’s nothing stopping a convention from rewriting the rules of ratification while they’re at it.

Just for the sake of argument let’s assume the convention doesn’t get out of hand and rewrite the constitution to resemble a corporate charter. Abbott’s call for imposition of fiscal restraints, is in other words a call for a balanced budget amendment. Even Richard Nixon, who famously said “We’re all Keynesians now”, understood that in times of an economic slump it is the job of the federal government to stimulate the economy through deficit spending. Had Abbott’s balanced budget amendment been in effect in the 1930’s there’s no telling how much worse the Great Depression would have gotten. We’ve had varying degrees of economic downturns over the last 80 years including the one in 2007 precipitated by the bursting housing bubble and each time to greater or lesser degree the federal government has used deficit spending to mitigate the damage. Are you really prepared to accept the consequences of the next economic downturn without the option of federal intervention? Herbert Hoover was and look where that got him and our nation.

In addition to wrecking the economy Abbott seeks to put a crimp in regulatory power of the federal government by removing the power to write and enforce laws. Were we really better off before Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency? Did you watch coverage of the Beijing Olympics in 2008 showing the smog so bad people had to wear masks over their mouth and nose? That’s what happens with we don’t have nationwide environmental protections.

What of civil rights law, or food and drug safety?

In essence Abbott is calling for restoration of the failed Articles of Confederation. If they didn’t work back in 1787 what makes Abbott think they’ll work now?

A "miracle" that never really was

The “Texas Miracle” is no more, in fact it never really was. Texas women are suffering high rates of death in child birth or shortly thereafter and our economy has soured with the downturn in oil and natural gas prices.

Recent reports show maternal death rates have doubled in recent years making Texas the most deadly state in which to give birth. In fact if we were a stand alone nation we’d be worse than every other developed country. There is as yet no definitive answer to why more Texas women die in child birth or for associated reasons but it’s not hard to imagine that the fact that Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the nation might have something to do with it. You can thank our Republican leadership for that since our governor and state legislature have refused to accept Medicaid expansion even though the federal government will cover 90% of the cost.

There is also a likely connection to our Republican led government cutting funding to Planned Parenthood and other providers of women’s health care. There is certainly a connection to the increased number of births covered by Medicaid.  

When running for governor in 2014 Greg Abbott promised continued growth of the economy and that we would be number one in the United States. He has failed miserably; Texas has fallen from third in the nation to twenty first. Republicans have taken credit for a strong economy in Texas for the last 20 years which they claimed was due to a “business friendly” read low tax, low service government. No change in either taxes or services have occurred, the rest of the country continues to recover from the 2007 Wall Street implosion and yet Texas’ economy is well on its way to the bottom.

When Greg Abbott sought the governorship in 2014 he said he didn’t want Texas to be like California, well he got is wish. Massachusetts, Oregon, Delaware, Colorado and California are ranked as the top five economies in the nation by Governing magazine. The one thing they all have in common is Democratic leadership in the governor’s mansion and the legislature. Some of those states have raised the minimum wage, some have increased spending on infrastructure, they’ve all accepted Medicaid expansion. Remember that expanding Medicaid not only means more people get health care it also means more people are employed providing health care and those people spend money and buy houses.

In short our Republican leadership has taken the wrong road and all of Texas is suffering for it. We have an opportunity in November to start cleaning house. The only way that happens if we all vote so take a family member, take a neighbor or take a friend and if anyone tells you that their vote doesn’t make a difference or they’re all alike remind them that we could be growing like California instead of tanking like Kansas.

Republicans again found to unconstitutionally under fund public education, it's time to do better

Once again the system Texas uses to fund public schools was found to violate the state's constitution by not providing enough money to school districts and failing to distribute it fairly. The situation is so bad even the conservative SCUC ISD Board of Trustees approved suing the state over the unjust funding formula.

What’s worse is that the same judge, John Dietz, found the system unconstitutional well before the last legislative session was over and yet state our Representative John Kuempel and state Senator Donna Campbell voted for it anyway.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott who as Attorney General is defending the state has again lost in court. Senators Wendy Davis and Leticia Van de Putte, now running for governor and lieutenant governor, both worked hard to overcome resistance to adequately funding public education in the legislature.

On November 4th we’ll elect our state leaders, I’ll be voting for people who have shown they believe in public education and are willing to work hard to invest in our kids futures. I hope you will too.

Greg Abbott isn’t confident he can win on the issues

Most of the analysis of Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott’s withdrawal from the only statewide televised debate talks about it in horse race terms. The various talking heads say it’s a smart move because it removes a chance for Democratic candidate Wendy Davis to get statewide exposure and possibly close the increasingly tight gap. Unfortunately I haven’t heard any analyst talk about what the citizens of Texas lose by not getting the opportunity to hear from both candidates on the issues.

Abbott’s withdrawal is called smart by Republicans and cowardly by Democrats but it’s really a disservice to the people of Texas. We should be exposed to both candidates and their ideas on how to best service our state. We should hear from them in their own words and not some script read for a 30 second television spot.

The real problem here is Greg Abbott isn’t confident he can win on the issues so he’d rather play it safe and hide until the election is over.