Cornyn and Cruz Betray Veterans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Published in the Seguin Gazette - August 3, 2022

John Cornyn Lies About Voting Rights Bill

In Austin the Travis County Clerk's office says that as of today, their office "has rejected about fifty percent of applications for ballot by mail that have been received for the March 1, 2022 primary election," due to changes to ID requirements made by Texas' new voting law.

Last week in San Antonio a Bexar County election official told Texas Public Radio “Yesterday we received about 80 mail-in ballot applications. Forty-two of those did not fulfill the new requirements. So we have to reject those.”

In Houston Harris County elections officials are reporting similar issues rejection rates and it’s all because of the recently passed Senate Bill 1.

Sen. Cornyn called the Freedom to Vote Act "unconstitutional" in remarks on the senate floor. Coming from a former judge you’d think he’d know better since the United States constitution states in: Article I, section 4, clause 1 - "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators."

Also Justice Scalia wrote when interpreting Article I, section 4, clause 1 in AZ v. Inter Tribal Council of AZ: “The power of Congress over the ‘Times, Places and Manner’ of congressional elections ‘is paramount, and may be exercised at any time, and to any extent which it deems expedient.’”

John Cornyn publicly stated “Based on the way our Democratic colleagues talk about the state of voting rights in America, you would think the Supreme Court had struck down the Voting Rights Act.” Cornyn also claims the Voting Rights Act of 1965 "worked as congress intended" but fails to mention that it was Section 4, pre-clearance that did all the work and that’s the part the Supreme Court overturned. Cornyn also fails to mention that Texas was repeatedly sued under Section 4 and found guilty of violating the Voting Rights Act when redistricting, including during the last redistricting cycle.

Cornyn calls Democratic efforts to pass voting rights legislation "power grab" when in fact it is Texas Republicans who have grabbed power by packing and cracking congressional districts to gain partisan advantage. Without pre-clearance a state can redistrict or change any election law in a totally illegal way then until they are sued and lose, those laws or districts are in effect often for several election cycles. Texas was sued in 2011 and the case took several election cycles to get through the courts without anything ever being done about the violations. In the latest round of redistricting last year minority voters suffered discrimination again as Texas Republicans redistricted in such a way that African-American voters lost the only district from which they could elect a representative of their choosing even while Texas gained two additional congressional seats.

Cornyn’s remarks on the senate floor included the claim that Democratic concerns over voter ID are a sham but fails to mention it isn’t the requirement for a photo ID that Democrats object to it’s the difficulty that low income minority voters have in getting the very limited kind of ID that is required. Only the Texas Department of Public Safety offers the necessary ID and getting there then waiting in line can take all day which can be a real hardship for working people who don’t drive.

Cornyn makes much of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema as Democrats being unwilling to vote for the bill but fails to mention that the reason is they want Republicans to support it too.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - January 19, 2022

Republicans Holding Help Hostage

More Americans are like my brother, Michael, than like me. Like most Americans my brother doesn’t really keep tabs on politics or government in general. Michael had been out of work for nearly 6 months due to being laid off by his employer when business got so slow due to the pandemic. During that time he became quite frustrated that congress failed to pass a second stimulus and many expanded unemployment benefits had expired. My brother, like many Americans, blamed both parties for unwillingness to compromise.

I explained to him that the Democratic controlled House had passed two more stimulus bills since the initial CARES Act while the Republican controlled Senate led by Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn hadn’t even bothered to hold hearings on either bill let alone vote on them. I told showed him that members of the House leadership were continuing to negotiate with the Senate leadership but that the sticking points are serious and meeting Republican demands was dangerous for the public. It’s important to understand that what McConnell and Cornyn are demanding could result in the deaths of thousands more Americans because immunity from liability for injury caused by failure to adequately protect workers and customers from exposure to COVID-19 would encourage more employers to put workers health at risk. That’s not just a possibility, it already happened in many work places including meat packing plants in the mid-West that ended up closing back in April and May when so many of their employees became ill.

Republicans argue that business will suffer without immunity as too many spurious lawsuits will be filed. So far there have been fewer than 250 businesses sued across the nation over COVID-19 issues, which is a drop in the proverbial bucket compared to the 10,000 lawsuits brought over the usual issues that occur every year. There is a simpler way to address such concerns and but the Trump administration has failed to take action. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has the responsibility and power to write rules for workplace safety, they simply haven’t done so. Instead OSHA has written recommendations with weasel wording like “if feasible” and “when possible” rather than setting a rule stating the employers “will” follow the directive. If OSHA simply wrote and promulgated such workplace safety rules the only businesses at serious risk of being sued would be those that didn’t comply with the rules.

The other ridiculous demand that Republicans are making is to drop financial assistance to states and cities all of which have found budgets suddenly cut due to massive reductions in sales tax revenue because the pandemic has so many people staying at home and out of work so they can’t spend. Unfortunately that doesn’t mean that we don’t need police, firefighters, and other city and state workers. Since cities and states cannot legally run deficits many have already laid off critical workers because there simply isn’t enough money to pay them. This not only hurts everyone in that community by the loss of the service, it also just adds another person to the roles of unemployed and therefore need assistance paying their bills.

During the election, Republicans made spurious claims about Democrats wanting to defund the police, in reality Republicans are the ones who are actually doing it. As in most cases this is not a both sides are to blame situation, Republicans are the ones who are withholding support for hungry children in an effort to give away worker protections. If you want something done call Senator John Cornyn and give him a piece of your mind.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 16, 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

Cornyn Failing People of Texas

The impeached popular vote loser in the White House and his enablers in the Senate fiddle while Rome burns. The House passed the HEROES Act months ago which would continue the enhanced unemployment benefits that have kept many Americans afloat along with providing funds for cities and states to allow them to continue to pay police, firefighters, health department staff or other critical city and state services while the national economy shrinks due to the pandemic. Frustratingly neither our senator, John Cornyn (R), nor the rest of Senate Republican leadership has shown any interest in taking up that bill. Instead they’ve been unable to even reach agreement on a wide ranging bill of their own. Worse they’ve decided to try slicing up the topics into separate bills because they can’t get agreement amongst their own membership on all the topics.

State and local governments have hemorrhaged 1.5 million jobs due to the huge downturn in sales tax and other revenues. Unemployment has continued to grow and yet John Cornyn’s Republican colleagues claim that continuing the extra $600 a week of unemployment benefits will somehow discourage people from going back to work. While that extra money does offer a few people more than they would normally earn in a week it doesn’t come close to offsetting the extra money they spend on insurance premiums usually paid by their employer. As in anything I’m sure a few people are taking advantage but that happens with anything, whether it’s the grocery with a sale on turkeys, limit 2, or health insurance fraud committed by doctors. That doesn’t even take into account that the reason so many are out of work is that there are so few jobs available. I know several people looking for work every day including weekends who can find nothing they qualify for.

National news often talks about Mitch McConnell as the Senate Majority Leader having the lead role in this travesty by we in Texas should remember that his second in command is our own John Cornyn  and like anyone in such a position he has tremendous influence in the course taken by his superior. Instead of showing any interest in addressing the pandemic or the economic devastation it is causing John Cornyn has marched in lock step with McConnell. Just a couple of weeks ago Cornyn had the gall to suggest that children might not be able to contract COVID-19, a day or two later San Antonio reported more than 200 of cases of infants with it. In the last week alone over one thousand Texans died of COVID-19, Cornyn is out of touch with the people of Texas as much as he is with reality.

Early voting for the November general election starts October 13, that gives us six extra days to vote. If we’re going to turn this ship of state around before it strikes an iceberg and sinks like the Titanic it is imperative that we all get to the polls, wear your mask, and elect people who are in touch with reality and the needs of Texans, a good start would be to replace Sen. Cornyn with former Air Force helicopter pilot M.J. Hegar.

Hegar was on her third tour to Afghanistan, when her helicopter was shot down near Kandahar on a combat search-and-rescue mission. She received shrapnel wounds in her arm and leg from Taliban ground fire, and her helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing. Other U.S. Army helicopters rescued her, her team, and the other soldiers. Hegar received a Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross with Valor device.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - August 5, 2020

Cornyn Votes Against the Interests of the American People - A Letter to the Editor

Last Thursday Sen. John Cornyn (R) was one of 42 U.S. Senators who voted to prevent the people of the United States from even having the chance vote on restricting campaign donations that currently influence our elected officials. He is part of the problem and not part of the solution.

The American people overwhelmingly support action to limit the amount of money that corporations, unions and other organizations can spend on elections. Public support is also bipartisan as shown a 2010 Peter Hart poll 68% of Republicans, 82% of independents, and 87% of Democrats support such an amendment. A 2012 Associated Press poll showed that 81% of Republicans, 78% of independents, and 85% of Democrats want to limit corporate, union, and other outside spending.

If John Cornyn refuses to act in the interests of the people he needs to be fired. Dr. David Alameel would make a fine replacement.

Cornyn Failing Texans Again

Senator John Cornyn is letting Texans down. He has failed to submit recommendations for any of the seven federal bench seats currently vacant, some for three years. Wednesday he voted against legislation that would allow women who have suffered harm by not being paid equally for equal work to sue.

Two of the judgeships Sen. Cornyn has failed us on are now classified as judicial emergencies due to the backlog of cases that have collected while he dithers. There are real people here in Texas who are suffering delays in getting justice and as the old saying goes “justice delayed is justice denied”.

John Cornyn has once again shown he isn’t willing to look after the interests of Texas women by voting against their rights to enforce pay equity. He apparently agrees with Rick Perry who calls it nonsense.

We have an opportunity to retire John Cornyn this November by electing Dr. David Alameel. He has served his country in the US Army, he has served his community as a dentist and philanthropist and is now willing to serve his state and the nation in the US Senate. I urge your support for Dr. Alameel.