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

Dems Should Offer Immigration Reform for Wall Funding

The odd thing about the parts of government that shutdown over the stalemate on funding Trump’s wall is that many of affected agencies are involved in immigration and national security. The Transportation Safety Administration (TSA), those are the airport security screeners you see when you want to get on an airplane are required to work but aren’t getting paid. Most of those folks, like 80% of Americans, live paycheck to paycheck. Some federal employees are going to be unable to pay their rent and utilities very soon. Also on the list of federal employees working without pay are Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who handle foreign visitors and review cargoes arriving from overseas, and Border Patrol agents who are the very people securing our borders that Trump and his admirers are so concerned about. Airport security screeners have started calling in sick rather than work unpaid. Several days ago the American Federation of Government Employees sued the federal government alleging that it is violating the Fair Labor Standards Act by forcing employees deemed essential to work without pay.

800,000 federal employees are going without pay for more than two weeks, that doesn’t count federal contractors like the folks who clean offices or accounting or a number of other jobs that are farmed out to private businesses. That’s likely to add another 100,000 then there are the businesses who depend on the other federal agencies in order to operate. One of my larger customers runs hotels and gift shops at national parks and when the National Park Service is shutdown like it is now many of those parks close which means those hotels and stores close too, on top of that there are any number of businesses, including restaurants, hotels, and entertainment venues which are outside the park but rely on park visitors.

In addition to the like likely one million Americans who are directly impacted by the shutdown there are secondary affects as those folks cut back spending which in turn affects sales at grocery stores and other retailers not to mention the landlords who lose rent payments. All this is happening when the overall economy is starting to destabilize as interest rates rise and consumer purchases of autos and homes slow down along with appliances and other big ticket items.

It’s important to all of us for this standoff to end quickly. Donald Trump has claimed he’s the consummate dealmaker since long before his ghost-written book “The Art of the Deal”. He repeatedly claimed he was a masterful negotiator during his campaign for president. Now, due to the crisis he created via the shutdown of numerous federal agencies, Democrats have a chance to find out if he’s really a dealmaker by offering to fund his wall if they get something they want.

I view this as an opportunity to think big since his ridiculous wall is, as he is fond of saying, huuuge. Since the wall is about immigration so why not demand comprehensive immigration reform including a path to citizenship for all 2.7 million DREAMers, and perhaps permanent residency and work permits to the rest of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country. Even if he and or the Republican controlled Senate won’t go for that it’s a place to start negotiations and maybe at least end up with citizenship for 800,000 currently in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program known as DACA.

It’s in the nation’s best interest to end the stalemate, let Trump have is stupid wall as long as we actually address a real immigration issue as part of the deal.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - January 11, 2019

Border Wall Just a Racist Symbol

Democrats in Congress and across America want comprehensive immigration reform, Donald Trump wants to $15 to $25 billion dollars to fulfill a campaign promise that he would build a big wall. His wall is nothing more than a physical symbol of his anti-immigrant rantings which cater to his many Confederate and Nazi flag waving, racist supporters.

China built its own Great Wall and it failed to keep out the Mongols. Roman troops built Hadrian’s Wall across Britain to keep out the Picts, it also failed. Israel has a wall but its effectiveness is questionable due to the numerous mortar and missile strikes fired from the other side.

Walls and fences are effective in prisons not because they alone keep prisoners in but because they are delayed long enough for guards to catch up to them. Trump’s wall is nothing if not closely monitored and if Border Patrol agents aren’t quickly dispatched when someone is crossing. So if we’re going to adequately monitor and staff a wall in order to make it effective why not just do the more cost efficient thing and just the cameras then increase monitoring and staffing? The answer is that a cubicle farm staffed with people watching dozens of remote video monitors isn’t the symbol Trump and his supporters’ desire.

There’s another reason Trump’s wall would be ineffective, it’s because at least 40% of undocumented immigrants crossed our border perfectly legally but then overstayed their visas. Nothing Trump has proposed addresses that problem. Trump also claims that his wall would stop drug smuggling but the facts are that the vast majority of drug smuggling comes on ships into our ports and once again he has no plan to solve that problem.

Instead of searching for and implementing real solutions to perceived problems Trump is attempting to force Congress to provide the funds for his wall without regard to the property rights of the landowners on the border which would lose their lands to the federal government through eminent domain or the environmental damage. Even though Trump said on national television that he alone would own a government shutdown over this issue he’s now desperately blaming Democrats.

If Trump really wanted to fix things instead of grand stand he could have sent a thousand immigration judges and interpreters to the southern border instead of 5,200 military troops. Trump’s supporters claim they have no problem with legal immigration they just want people to follow the rules and wait their turn. What they don’t tell you is that it can take 10 or more years under the current system and when people are fleeing violence, drought and hunger they can’t wait a decade. Those fleeing such life threatening conditions came to the border requesting asylum which is a lawful act under both U.S. and international law though you won’t hear that from Trump or his racist followers.

If all that’s not enough to tell you that the wall isn’t really about immigration then think about this, when Democrats suggest spending money on almost anything Trump and his congressional enablers demand to know how it’s going to be paid for but when House Republicans put $5.7 billion in border wall funding into the final appropriations bill of the year not a single one asked where how it would be paid for.

Published in the Seguin Gazette December 28, 2018