Republicans the New Fascists

“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross,” is a quote often mistakenly attributed to Sinclair Lewis. Given some of his books, “It Can’t Happen Here” among them, it certainly has the ring of authenticity. While Lewis wrote in the 1930’s his commentary on capitalism and politics as practiced in the United States is still relevant today, nearly a century later, and that’s truly sad. When Donald Trump campaigned for a second term as president he quite literally wrapped himself around a flag and kissed it at the Conservative Political Action Committee convention in February 2020. Later that year, in June, after days of protests over police brutality Trump strutted over to the steps of the nearby St.  John’s Episcopal Church and struck several poses holding a bible for press photos.

Merriam Webster dictionary defines fascism as “a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition”. Trump has frequently made ugly, racist remarks about immigrants, particularly those from South and Central America while exalting white evangelicals over everyone else. Trump has threatened on numerous occasions to sue or direct the Department of Justice to punish detractors and has only been stopped from doing so by the increasingly fragile guardrails of democratic norms.

As he Republican Party has continued to move rightward becoming an expressly Christian nationalist/fascist party following Trump I fear what may happen if he or one of his clones like Florida governor Rick DeSantis were to win the presidency in 2024. Just look at what’s happening here in Texas and other southern states as women’s right to control their own bodies has been taken away and some counties even creating ordinances to make it a crime to drive a woman across that county in order to obtain and abortion out of state. They’re turning County Sheriff’s and Constables into Gestapo agents.

It’s not just the political leaders to be blamed. Republican voters are complicit as they go along with this anti-democratic behavior. If you doubt this just check the polling results for the Republican primary and you’ll see Trump leading at nearly 60%. Republican voters are willing to give up control of government by the people in order to have a leader that speaks to their bigotry. It didn’t start with Trump although he has given permission to use the ugly, racist language that until recently wasn’t spoken out loud. Look at the language and imagery attacking Barack Obama back during his term as president, it was awful including a photo of the president painted over to look like an African witch doctor and claims he wasn’t born in the United States even though Hawaii recorded his birth certificate.

In 2024 if someone votes for Trump or one of is clones they’re making a statement that they are in favor of the nation being led by a fascist tyrant. If someone tells you they didn’t want Trump or a clone but couldn’t vote for Biden because anything, they’re telling you they’re okay with an autocrat running the country. If a local official runs as a Republican and doesn’t repudiate Trump and his clones then they are complicit in wrecking this country. Whether voters or elected officials if they don’t act to stop Trump they’re as bad as Germans who joined the Nazi party but claimed they just did it to keep their jobs.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - October 18, 2023

False Patriots

When the vote to pass the continuing resolution to prevent a government shutdown was held in the House 90 Republicans voted no, 16 of them were from Texas including Chip Roy who represents Comal County. In the Senate, Ted Cruz is one of 9 Republicans who voted no. Cruz and his fellow cranks were perfectly willing to put well over 6 million Americans out of work. 4 million of who would lose out on their pay entirely as they are contract workers such as office cleaning staff, groundskeepers, and others who don’t work directly for federal agencies.

Then there are all the businesses that depend on those employees to spend their money, like the food truck or sandwich shop nearby which then furloughs employees or cuts their hours. In addition, when national parks are closed it isn’t just the park rangers who suffer, there are all the folks who made plans months in advance that would not be allowed visit the park or would be forced to leave early, the hotels they’d have stayed in, the restaurants they’d have eaten in, the gift shop in the park that is also closed so their staff is laid off. The overall economic impact on small businesses is staggering. Most estimates suggest a shutdown costs the economy over $310 million per day in direct costs.

There is also the affect a shutdown has on citizens who have business with federal agencies, often with appointments that were set weeks or months in advance. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) would stop insuring some new mortgages. The Department of Agriculture (USDA) would stop new loan and loan guarantee activity.

All the turmoil and damage to peoples’ lives and a lot of Republicans don’t seem to care at all. Here’s one example, in an interview on C-SPAN Republican Rep. Brandon Williamson of New York said “I don't think you're going to find a huge amount of sympathy, you know, for people that have been furloughed, or early retirement, or laid off, or their pension going bankrupt.”

The big concession that was made to pass the bill to keep the federal government open for 45 more days was eliminating funding for aid to Ukraine in it’s war to eject the Russian occupiers from its territory and protect its people from the murders, rapes, and kidnapping that have been perpetrated by Russian troops. Republicans talk a good game about defending freedom and were big on “fighting communism” but they’re just fine with autocrats invading democracies. The Russian invasion of Ukraine orchestrated by Vladimir Putin was unprovoked and illegal under international law, but Donald Trump and his MAGA crowd including members of the House like Paul Gosar (AZ) and Matt Gaetz (FL), was well as J.D. Vance (OH) among others in the Senate are willing to turn their backs on the desperate people of Ukraine. They are unwilling to stand up to the bully even though no American troops are involved and most European countries are handing over equipment, ammunition, and supplies in addition to providing training for troops and repairs to damaged equipment.

Anyone who thinks that if Putin succeeds in Ukraine he’ll stop hasn’t studied history at all. They should go back and review Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement when Hitler violated the terms of the treaty that ended World War 1. Hint, Hitler invaded Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Yugoslavia, and Greece in just 2 years.

Republicans are willing to wreck American lives and the economy as well as world peace. Remember that when they claim to be patriots.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - October 4, 2023

Paxton Acquittal Proves Republicans Corrupt

Last Saturday proved that most of the Texas Senate’s Republican membership is just as corrupt as their federal counter-parts by acquitting Attorney General Ken Paxton of all 16 charges. Only two Republican senators, Kelly Hancock of Fort Worth and Robert Nichols of Jacksonville, had the integrity to vote for conviction.

The evidence presented of criminal wrong-doing, such as Article 10 accusing Paxton engaged in bribery in violation of the Texas Constitution when Paul provided extensive renovations to Paxton’s Austin home and in return, Paul received favorable legal help from Paxton’s agency, was overwhelming yet 16 of 18 Republican senators ignored the facts and testimony of former staff in order to fulfill an entirely partisan agenda. It’s not even like removing Paxton from office would have somehow placed a Democrat in the Attorney General’s office, after all an appointee of Gov. Abbott has been running the office since Paxton was suspended after the House impeached him months ago. Every senator who voted go acquit is now complicit in the Paxton’s crimes.

I’m no stranger to crooks holding high public office, I lived in Louisiana when Edward W.  Edwards served four terms as governor and the only time I voted for him was in 1991 when the Republican candidate was Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and even many Republicans voted for Edwards. At the time there was a bumper sticker that many Republicans put on their cars “Vote for the crook, it’s important”. Here in Texas we voters knew Paxton was dirty and we didn’t have such a poor choice in the last election and yet Paxton won handily.

As Common Cause Texas Executive Director Anthony Gutierrez pointed out after the acquittal, "During the course of this trial, corruption, bribery, abuse of office, and dereliction of duties were proven beyond a reasonable doubt. In any impartial court in the country, the verdict would almost certainly have gone differently." Now that even more evidence of Paxton’s corruption has been presented to the public we can hope that real independents and the few Republicans with integrity will vote him out of office in 2026.

Every Democrat will have to talk to their friends and family about Paxton’s criminality and the complicity of Republican senators when they’re up for election again. We’ll have to be more persuasive than Republican cultist and Gazette columnist Terry Harper who was one of the leaders of the effort to censure Rep. John Kuempel for among other things not being sufficiently “conservative”.

As reported in the Texas Tribune Rep. Steve Toth, a Republican from the Woodlands and a member of the House’s Freedom Caucus stood outside the Senate chamber after the acquittal and stated “The Texas House owes all of Texas a big apology, this was a sham … This is terribly destructive to the Republican Party of Texas.” Toth said he expects there to be “retribution” by voters for his fellow Republicans who supported Paxton’s impeachment. And he agreed that the party’s internecine conflict has no end in sight. Since Rep. Kuempel voted in favor of impeachment I suspect he’ll find himself challenged in the primary. Conversely Senator Donna Campbell who voted to acquit probably won’t. The radical right truly does run the Republican Party of Texas.

Edwin W. Edwards finally went to federal prison in 2001, five years after leaving office. With the current federal criminal cases hanging over Paxton we can only hope justice is served quicker than in Edwards’ case.

 Published in the Seguin Gazette - September 20, 2023

Electricity, Money, and Diversion

 For over a decade Texas and the rest of the world has been suffering record high temperatures in June, July, and August with more frequency. Across the globe we see Arctic sea ice at unusually low levels. In some parts of the world continued dissipation of glaciers have revealed bodies of early humans and extinct animals that were once encased in hundreds of feet. In the United States and elsewhere, there have been both massive wildfires spreading heavy smoke over thousands of square miles and torrential rains that caused rivers to overflow destroying homes and lives. Hurricanes have already struck both California and Florida and there are two more very powerful storms out there, Lee in the Atlantic and Jova in the Pacific off Baja California.

Here in Texas a few weeks ago we came within a hairs breadth of the rolling blackouts to prevent the entire grid from shutting down. One of the ways that the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) avoided such drastic action was to pay nearly $32 million to Riot Platforms, a Bitcoin miner to “voluntarily curtail its energy consumption”. In other words they powered down most of the computers they have running all day every day making calculations that run the crypto-currency exchanges. What’s really disgusting is that $32 million which we’re paying as part of our electric bills is nearly 4 times what Riot Platforms would have earned had they left the computers running. Riot Platforms isn’t the only crypto-currency mining operation in Texas with this kind of sweetheart deal it’s just the one that announced receiving such excessive payments in a press release.

Rather than take action to address the increasing demand for electric power in Texas by helping homeowners improve insulation or provide incentives to install solar panels and batteries the state legislature pass SB 2627 which a low interest load program funded by the state for companies that build or upgrade power plants and pay a bonus for getting them connected quickly. The program will not provide loans for battery storage facilities even though they could serve to provide significant buffers during high use periods like 5pm when temperatures are highest and people are getting home from work and turning on their air conditioners.

All this is just more proof that the Republican controlled Texas legislature is more concerned with enriching their friends in the fossil fuel industry than addressing the very real threat of global climate change. Coffee production in Columbia, corn and soy beans in Argentina, as well as other crops throughout South American has been hurt by a multi-year drought. Here in Texas, corn and sorghum production is down and cattle ranchers are selling of parts of their herds due the ongoing drought in much of the state.

To divert voter attention from their 20+ year failure to actually make the lives of Texans better the governor and legislature spend their time fighting faux villains like trans-gender athletes and drag queens. It’s up to independent voters that lean conservative to recognize that they’re being conned into voting for those who only want to enrich their already very wealthy friends while exercising power over women, those of other faiths, and people who don’t fit in easy gender classifications.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - September 13, 2023

Chaplains Don't Belong in Public Schools

On Friday, September 1, one of the new laws taking effect in Texas, SB 763, authorizes public school districts to hire chaplains using funds allocated to improve school safety and security. There are several problems with this, no requirement for training in child psychology or development, no prohibition on proselytizing, and it is clearly unconstitutional.

Conservative Christian proponents of the bill claim without evidence the bringing religion into public schools will somehow reduce violence, drug use, and suicide in schools. I went to Catholic schools for 12 years with nuns and brothers as teachers and I can tell you from personal experience there was no lack of violence or drug use in Catholic schools. House Democrats offered amendments that would have required chaplains to have similar accreditation as chaplains who work in prisons or the U.S. military, to bar proselytizing or attempts to convert students from one religion to another; to require chaplains to receive consent from the parents of school children; and to make schools provide chaplains from any faith or denomination requested by students. All of those amendments failed.

In legislative hearings, the bills proponents like Rocky Malloy, assured lawmakers that chaplains were not interested in proselytizing. Malloy, a self-described former drug-smuggling pirate saved by divine intervention, founded and runs Mission Generation, the  group’s website says “Mission Generation has 20 years of experience bringing Jesus to the classrooms of public schools.”

The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty opposed the bill and has organized efforts to urge school boards to keep chaplains out of public schools. In a letter to school boards signed by over 100 certified chaplains they state “As trained chaplains, we are not qualified for the duties envisioned by SB 763. We cooperate with mental health counselors – we do not compete with them. Further, professions which help children with sensitive matters, such as therapists and police investigators, typically require special training on how to interview and treat juveniles. Few chaplains have this expertise.”

I don’t know about you but when my daughter was in public school I’d have been quite upset if some Protestant or Evangelical chaplain had been proselytizing to her in the guise of counseling.

SB 763 is part of a broad push by conservative Christians to insert religion in public life claiming that separation of church and state is a false doctrine. Mind you these are the same folks who claim that if it isn’t specifically stated in the constitution that it isn’t constitutional when arguing that the Department of Commerce or Department of Education shouldn’t exist. Anyone who reads the constitution will see that there are only two mentions of religion. The first is in Article VI which says in part “The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” The second is in the First Amendment stating “Congress make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise.”

You have an opportunity to put a stop to this in your community. Find out when the school board meets and plan to attend at least long enough to participate in the citizens to be heard segment which is usually in the early part of the meeting. Tell them you want the board’s official policy to be that chaplains are not hired or accepted as volunteers.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - August 30, 2023

Injustice Clarence Thomas

Congressional Republicans like Monica de la Cruz and Speaker Kevin McCarthy are talking about impeaching President Biden as a way to deflect attention from all the indictments and very real corruption of the real estate con man who lost the popular vote twice and is once again the leading candidate for the Republican nomination. They’ve also now got their work cut out diverting the public’s eyes from the lengthening list of ethical and legal violations of several Republican members of the Supreme Court most especially Justices Clarence Thomas.

Research and reporting by ProPublica the nonprofit Pulitzer Prize-winning newsroom that investigates abuses of power has provided an ever lengthening list of corrupt behavior by Thomas.

During his 32 years on the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas has enjoyed a lifestyle most Americans can only imagine which has been provided by a list ultra-wealthy corporate magnates and executives who have taken him on lavish vacations aboard their yachts, invited him to premium suites at sporting events and sent their private jets to pick him up. On more than one occasion, a 737 was sent just for him. The list of luxury is both longer and from a larger group than has been previously understood or reported. The broad range of leisure activities have been paid for by wealthy conservative benefactors who share the ideology that drives Thomas' judicial philosophy but didn’t have any connection to him until he gained his seat on the nation’s highest court.

Pro-Publica reports “At least 38 destination vacations, including a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas; 26 private jet flights, plus an additional eight by helicopter; a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox; two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast.”

None of the men who have provided the luxury travel - oil baron Paul Novelly, billionaire H. Wayne Huizenga, former Berkshire Hathaway executive David Sokol, and Texas real estate tycoon Harlan Crow - appear to have met Thomas prior to him taking a seat on the Supreme Court. Crow is the only one whose name appears in Thomas’ financial disclosures, where justices are required by law to publicly report most gifts. The total value of the undisclosed trips they’ve given Thomas since he was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1991, is difficult to measure. But it’s likely in the millions. All indications are that Thomas violated the law when he chose not to disclose flights, yacht cruises and expensive sports tickets, according to ethics experts.

Maybe more important is that even if reported the breadth of free vacation travel is well outside of judicial norms according to seven current and former federal judges appointed by both parties and other experts. Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge who served for years on the judicial committee that reviews judges’ financial disclosures said “In my career I don’t remember ever seeing this degree of largesse given to anybody, I think it’s unprecedented.”

Since Chief Justice John Robert’s can’t be bothered to take action of Thomas’ ethics and Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy isn’t about to impeach Thomas we’ll have to wait for Democrats to return to majority in the House. Sadly even that is unlikely to actually accomplish much as it takes 60 Senators to convict and its doubtful Democrats will gain such a majority in 2024.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - August 16, 2023

Bidenomics and You

You might think that the more than 13 million jobs created under President Biden are just recovering the jobs lost in the pandemic, but even if you exclude the 10 million jobs that got us back to pre-pandemic level, job growth since then has been about twice as fast as pre-pandemic job growth under Trump.

Something often overlooked is the incredibly low unemployment rate during this recovery for veterans. Nationally veteran unemployment hit a record low of 2.2%, and has been under 3.5% for 19 straight months, the longest such stretch on record. Workers without a high school diploma and workers with a high school degree who did not attend college are also seeing extremely low unemployment rates. Adjusted for age, a larger share of our population, 16 or older, was working at a job last month than anytime in the last 45 years, or probably ever. Unemployment in 24 states is at or below 3%, a new record. Texas is not among them, we're at just over 4%.

Private business investment in facilities and equipment accelerated, contributing 1 percentage point to second quarter growth. Private construction of facilities alone, such as factories, contributed about 0.4 percentage point, this category’s largest growth contribution since 1981.

The recovery under President Biden has been significantly stronger than Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected when he first took office. In 2023, the CBO says there will be more than 3 million more individuals employed than they projected when Biden took office. The latest data shows we’re on track to have the first, second, and third best years for new business applications on record, all under President Biden.

It’s not just government agencies making these claims, Morgan Stanley has revised its economic projections upward. Here’s why, infrastructure spending is surging and manufacturing is booming. Both of those forces, manufacturing and infrastructure, are the key parts of President Biden’s economic agenda, which the media is beginning to call Bidenomics.

There’s been a shift in economic arguments that have gone on for many years to one that says investing directly in American workers and American families, via the expanded Child Tax Credit, was the right thing to do in bad economic times. Then in 2021 and 2022, as we moved from relief to recovery, the administration pushed Build Back Better which was not just a slogan, but an actual idea premised on a better way to manage the economy, the Biden team made an affirmative decision to invest in America directly, including over a trillion dollars in infrastructure. And even more cutting-edge was their decision to build safer, stronger supply chains: bringing jobs back home through laws that would build everything from semiconductors to wind and solar to cars and batteries, mostly here at home.

This is Keynesian economics all over again; that’s the Depression era policy that President Roosevelt used to start the country on the road to recovery.

The experience of the past 2.5 yrs shows that we have the tools to avoid painful spells of unemployment and to keep workers empowered with a strong job market. President Biden has been focused on using these tools, and American workers and the American economy have reaped the benefits.

In short Biden’s and the Democrats he leads have been incredibly good for workers in this country and all indications are it will only get better while he’s in office.