Constitutional Amendments

In theory the election this November is non-partisan, we’ll have mayors, city council and special utility districts seats on the ballot as well as ten constitutional amendments. Most of the candidates will avoid using partisan labels as is appropriate for these races. The amendments proposed for the Texas constitution are non-partisan in as much as they passed the legislature with the votes at least a large fraction of each party.

The League of Women Voters and others publish non-partisan guides to the constitutional amendments, you can find them and the candidates on your ballot at Vote411.org. Our own state representative, John Kuempel, included the amendments and the state legislature’s approved pros and cons on the last page of the missive he mailed to voters a week or so ago.

I can only support Amendment 2 and 10. Amendment 2 provides for the Texas Water Board to issuing bonds to provide financial assistance in developing water projects in economically depressed areas that would otherwise be unable to provide adequate resources for their citizens. Amendment 10 would allow law enforcement animal handlers to take ownership of their service animals when those animals are retired leaving them in the hands of people they have come to know, love, and trust rather than the current process of auctioning the animal to the highest bidder. The auctions only generate a few thousand dollars a year and it seems unnecessary and inhumane to take the animal away from the only family it has known for many years in the last years of its life.

Amendment 3 is designed to allow yet another property tax exemption, this time for property damaged in hurricanes and similar instances. As it stands now if the property is that badly damaged its assessed value will be decreased and therefore the taxes lowered anyway.

Amendment 4 is a big no. The stated purpose is to prohibit the imposition of a state income tax. First state law already does that, as it requires a vote of the citizens to start taxing “natural persons”. The real kicker and reason to vote no is that passage of this proposition changes the language of state law to prohibit an income tax on “individuals”. To most of us such a difference of phrasing seems innocuous but in the legal world, that change is very significant as corporations are treated as “individuals” which means that Amendment 4 prohibits an income tax on corporations whereas current law does not. That’s why state law provides for what is known as the Franchise Tax which Republicans have been trying to kill by increments since the day it passed.

This week I received a mailer on Amendment 5 pushing to dedicate sales tax revenue from the sale of sporting goods to the state parks system. I’m fundamentally opposed to dedicated taxes as it hamstrings legislators and prevents them from addressing budget problems, particularly when the economy suddenly drops like it did in 2011 when the state cut 6% from the education budget. Amendment 5 would just make that situation worse.

Amendment 9 authorizes another tax exemption, this time for the wealthy and big businesses that stock significant amounts of precious metals, gold and silver among others. Right now those precious metals are eligible for property taxes so if they were to be exempted your community may find the need to increase your property taxes in order to make up the difference.

There’s not enough space to cover the rest, all I can say is that in my opinion you would be best served by voting no to all but 2 and 10.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - October 18, 2019

Trump Lied and Americans Will Suffer

Almost two years ago when Donald Trump was just a candidate for president he set himself apart from the rest of the Republican field by promising to "save Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, without cuts. Have to do it. Get rid of the fraud, get rid of the waste and abuse, but save it."

Now Donald Trump is president and his budget director Mick Mulvaney released a budget that cuts Medicaid funding nearly in half by 2027 when combined with the proposed cuts already passed by the House in Trumpcare, the American Healthcare Act or AHCA.

There are $610 billion in Medicaid cuts in the budget in addition to the $880 billion cut in Trumpcare. Nearly every American will be affected one way or another because either they or a loved one will suffer from those cuts. Nearly one in four Americans is covered by Medicaid. The elderly and disabled account for about 6 of every 10 dollars in Medicaid expenditures, with the disabled and mentally ill, accounting for $4 of every $10 of spending.

Do you have a parent or grandparent in a nursing home or likely to be in one in the not to distant future? If so, get ready to turn your garage into a bedroom because they’ll be living with you instead. You and your spouse will be doing the care too because this budget is likely cut off payments for them.

Do you know anyone working in a nursing home? You’d better tell them to start looking for a new job because when the funding dries up and the patients are forced to leave there won’t be any work for them.

Nursing homes are expensive, average annual cost is $80,000. Medicaid is the largest source of funding for nursing home residents covering about 40% of the total costs. Six of every ten nursing home residents are beneficiaries of those funds because Medicare doesn’t cover those costs.

Oh, you say none of your family will be in a nursing home anytime soon, are any of them disabled and on Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI)? The Trump budget cuts that too. SSDI is funded through your FICA payroll taxes so cutting it won’t have any effect on the national budget. Just like Social Security for those over 65, SSDI recipients must have worked a certain number of years and have accumulated social security credits, but be younger than 65. Social Security Disability isn’t easy to access contrary to some claims, in fact only four out of ten applicants are approved for benefits. The standards for receiving it are much higher than they are in other developed countries while the benefits are nearly lowest of all developed nations.

Recipients of payments aren’t getting rich off of SSDI, since payments average under $1200 per month with many receiving much less. The actual amount varies depending on how long you worked and how much you earned while working just like regular Social Security. Can you imagine paying rent, utilities, food, clothing and medical expenses on less than $1200 a month? Now think about doing on 25% less or even no benefits at all since some people will simply lose benefits or those who would have previously qualified will now be denied.

Candidate Trump promised to take care of the people of this nation especially the most vulnerable. President Trump is cutting off their lifeline. Donald J. Trump is a liar and the sooner we all recognize it the sooner we can take action to prevent further harm to the American public.

Published in the Seguin Gazette May 26, 2017

Even the IMF says austerity doesn't work

Television talking heads and Republican legislators have been screaming about the federal deficit since Obama took office in 2009. They keep telling us that the way out of the recession is to reduce taxes and cut spending also known as austerity.

Until this week we’d been operating for a decade under the lowest taxes in over half a century and that didn’t seem to generate jobs before or after the crash of the financial system. A couple of days ago the International Monetary Fund released a report that shows austerity doesn’t work either; in fact austerity actually makes things worse. That hasn’t stopped the conservative media from continuing to tout austerity in the U.S. as the solution to our problems.

What this nation really needs is not austerity or lower taxes it’s a full employment policy. We need to emphasize putting every able person to work in meaningful jobs so that they’re able to meet their responsibilities to feed and clothe their families and our society gets the benefit of the services and products they provide.

Letter to the editor: Calling out Texas Republican leadership for failure to fix the budget

After ten years of Republican control of Texas state government and calls for small efficient government we’ve gotten a $27 billion state budget shortfall and nothing but talk about cutting spending. If there was really such waste in our state budget for the last decade why didn’t Texas Republicans deal with it earlier? The answer is there isn’t much waste in our already proportionally small budget but since the Republicans leadership hasn’t seen fit to address the structural problems of our tax code they need a scapegoat.

This Republican leadership failure will hurt citizens all across Texas because state agencies will be forced to cut jobs in an already depressed economy and add to the jobless rate. Those lost jobs will further reduce tax revenues because those folks won’t be spending and paying sales tax and they’ll be collecting unemployment insurance all further deepening the deficit.

With those jobs cuts will also come cuts in services like education and health care even though a recent poll shows that more than 70% of Texans don’t want those areas cut. In addition we can look forward to higher property taxes so that cities and counties can fund police and fire departments as well as hospital districts and schools.

All this and yet Gov. Perry and the Republican led legislature refuse to tap the Rainy Day Fund’s $9.4 billion which would at least ease the damage. If a $27 billion shortfall isn’t a rainy day I don’t know what is.

Guns vs. Butter in earnest

Our federal legislators are currently considering a budget for next year that imposes a spending freeze for most domestic programs yet somehow there's money to spare when it comes to nuclear weapons pork. The budget requests $7 billion for nuclear bomb making capacities, a $1 billion increase over last year's budget for the same programs and an astounding 40% jump over average annual spending, after adjusting for inflation, on nuclear weapons during the Cold War era.

The budget has hundreds of millions for new bomb plants that would enable the U.S. to increase its capacity to create new nuclear weapons in the future. A new plutonium facility in New Mexico to enable a huge increase in the production of radioactive cores for nuclear weapons is just one example of several proposals in the budget. This piece of pork will cost taxpayers $225 million in the coming year and about $4 billion by the time construction is complete.

While the president is working with the Senate to ratify the New Start Treaty which would reduce the threat of nuclear war, we don’t need to be building capacity to make more nuclear bombs. Just as importantly, we shouldn’t be spending money on unneeded weapons when we can’t balance our budget without cutting domestic spending in areas such as education and alternative energy that would create jobs now and be investments in our future.

Congressmen Lamar Smith and Henry Cuellar need to know that we want to invest in our future not our past.