Wall Street or Main Street

Recently two freshmen senators, Rick Scott of Florida and Mike Braun of Indiana, introduced a bill to end congressional pensions. Many Americans probably cheered but think about that. The two authors of the bill are millionaires many times over, they could live in the lap of luxury for the rest of their lives on the income from their investments alone. Now it’s true that millionaires make up a disproportionately large fraction of Congress at 38% as compared to 9% of the general public but this bill just makes it that much harder for non-millionaires to put in the effort to serve their country.

Truly working class people like the recently elected Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez often struggle to make ends meet given that they must cover the expenses of a home in their respective states and one in Washington, D.C. A member of Congress is paid $174,000 per year and that seems like a lot, it’s more than twice my salary anyway. Now consider what it costs just to rent an apartment in the Washington, D.C. area, one bedroom and one bath in 746 square feet goes for $2,990. That’s half the size of my house and nearly three times the mortgage payment.

Oh and the pension isn’t all that generous either, you get nothing unless you serve at least five years and don’t get a full pension, which can be no more than 80% of your last year’s salary, until you turn 62. The average annual pension as of 2016 was just over $41,000 for those in the current system which started in 2003. Millionaires like Rick Scott, worth about $255 million, won’t notice whether they get a congressional pension or not but the people we need in Congress most, people like you and me, would be much less willing to serve with no chance to even earn pension benefits.

If we really want to make our representatives more beholden to the people who elect them then bills like the STOCK Act which made it illegal to use inside information about upcoming legislation when investing can help. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) have introduced a bill that would ban members of Congress and senior staff from buying or selling individual stocks while in office. Members would also be barred from serving on any corporate boards.

Merkley and Brown cite two recent trading scandals, one involving a Republican congressman from New York and another involving former representative and one-time Trump administration Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, for inspiring the bill. You might remember that Price bought stock, then authored bill benefiting company which earned him a bundle. Rick Scott, perhaps also inspired by Tom Price, is moving in the opposite direction, he’s removing his investments from a blind trust and holding them directly, this will allow him to know how legislation he’s voting on can affect his finances.

It really comes down to whether you want the halls of Congress to look more like Wall Street or Main Street.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - February 22, 2019

David Whitley Attempts Voter Suppression

We in Guadalupe County should be thankful for Elections Administrator Lisa Adam and her staff who are handling the Secretary of State’s attempt to purge voters with dedication and professionalism. When Secretary of State David Whitley’s office decided to send lists of 95,000 registered voters that it hadn’t confirmed were citizens it was touted on social media as a “voter fraud alert”.

In Cameron County where the list contained 366 names not a single one was found to be a non-citizen. Travis and Harris Counties are still working their lists which number in the thousands but so far they’ve cleared more than half of the people on their lists. As of this morning the state has revised the list, reducing it by half.

This whole effort seems to be aimed at spreading anxiety in two ways; first to rev up the Republican base with claims of vast numbers of ineligible voters and second to suppress the votes of Latino voters to whom the majority of names on the state’s list belong.

Gov. Greg Abbott just nominated David Whitley to the Secretary of State post and that nomination is currently before a committee in the Texas Senate. Whitley is facing tough questions about his actions and his understanding of the concept of voter suppression.

Several groups that work on voter registration and empowerment have notified the Secretary Whitley that his office is in violation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) which sets out requirements with for the administration of voter registration and protects registered voters against wrongful removal from voter rolls in Section 8. The NVRA protects duly registered voters from improper removal by requiring states to “ensure that any eligible applicant is registered to vote” and mandating that, once the voter is on the rolls, the state “shall not remove” that voter except in a few limited circumstances: at the request of the registrant; by reason of criminal conviction or mental incapacity as provided by state law; or pursuant to a general program of voters list maintenance that makes a reasonable effort to remove voters who become ineligible due to death or a change in residence.

When anyone, including these naturalized citizens on the state's list submits a voter registration application they are require to sign under penalty of perjury affirming their U.S. citizenship. The guidelines sent with the advisory suggests removal from the voter rolls for anyone who can’t be readily matched to citizenship records unless they come forward and provide documentary proof of their citizenship. This violates the obligation on Texas under the NVRA to ensure that eligible applicants who submit valid registration forms are registered to vote and are removed only for one of the statutorily-specified reasons.

Failure to provide citizenship documentation is not one of the permissible grounds for removal of a duly registered voter. There’s no doubt that the state is permitted to remove non-citizens who have somehow become registered to vote, but the NVRA does not permit an overbroad program such as the one outlined in the Advisory that will inevitably sweep in significant numbers of eligible citizens due to the inadequacies of the Department of Public Safety’s database.

Numerous good government groups like the Common Cause Texas, of which I am chair, MOVE Texas Civic Fund, JOLT Initiative, the League of Women Voters of Texas, the ACLU of Texas, the Texas Civil Rights Project, and the NAACP of Texas have raised their voice regarding this attempted purge. Some are suing the Secretary of State, others are calling for his nomination to be denied.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - February 15, 2019

Time for The Green New Deal

There’s been a lot of news about proposals by young activists and some Democrats in Congress about what they’re calling The Green New Deal. Its purpose is two-fold, saving our environment by quickly converting to the use of clean renewable energy production and resetting the economic disparities broadened by crony capitalism over the last 40 years harking back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s efforts to revitalize the economy so that impoverished Americans could find jobs and care for their families.

We must address our production of greenhouse gases soon because scientists working together from all over the world and involving multiple disciplines have concluded that the earth is on track for 5-7 degrees Fahrenheit of warming, causing sea level rise of several feet and making extreme weather more frequent and dangerous. The next 4 to 12 years are critical if humanity wants to limit that warming to something survivable. Every year we wait to reduce greenhouse gases makes it harder to achieve.

So far, America’s efforts to address the problem have failed like the Obama administration rules to reduce coal use, which have been stalled by lawsuits brought by polluting industries. Donald Trump is rescinding most of those rules and Republicans have generally opposed any substantial action using the truly stupid argument that it is too expensive. That’s like telling a 40 year old with a bad heart that surgery is too expensive you’ll just have to die.

Right now The Green New Deal is a statement of principles, just the goals to be achieved, there are plenty of details to work out which is why it’s important to start work on it now and not wait until 2020 with the hope of a Democrat in the White House. The goals of the 10 year plan will require the effort of World War II and the scientific focus of the Apollo project to land a man on the moon. Some key points are dramatically expanding existing renewable power sources and deploy new production capacity with the goal of meeting 100% of national power demand through renewable sources.

Achieving the goals of The Green New Deal will require upgrading every residential and industrial building for state-of-the-art energy efficiency, comfort and safety. We’ll have to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from the manufacturing, agricultural and other industries. We’ll work eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from transportation by repairing and improving roads, highways, bridges, and other infrastructure.

The effort to save our climate will require all hands on deck which makes it a great opportunity to provide all members of our society the opportunity, training and education to be a full and equal participant in the transition, including through a job guarantee program to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one.

Our congressman, Vicente Gonzalez, should be a vocal supporter of The Green New Deal given that his district including Guadalupe County will be among those suffering the most if we don’t address climate change quickly. Unfortunately he hasn’t joined the other 40 Democrats including Joaquin Castro in speaking out in favor of the effort.

There is a way to get him to join the call for The Green New Deal and that involves you, your family, and your friends. If we all take 5 minutes to call his office and let his staff know that climate change and good paying jobs in the green energy industry are important to us he can be convinced to join those other Democrats already working toward The Green New Deal. Call his Washington DC office at 202-225-2531.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - February 8, 2019

Tax Cuts or Cost Shifting

One of the most popular promises politicians, like Donald Trump and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, make is tax cuts because the so many voters immediately think that they’ll get more in their pay checks. Sometimes they really do get more each month but then find that other costs go up and the end result is roughly the same. One example of this in Texas is state taxes that should fund public education being cut so the state legislature reduces the dollars per student it pays districts which then are forced to increase property taxes to make up the difference.

Since Texas doesn’t have a state income tax, who gets the tax cuts that force you and me to pay higher property taxes? Big companies of course.

You say you don’t own property so you don’t pay property taxes? If you believe that you’re mistaken as part of your rent goes to pay your landlords property taxes and when property taxes go up you can bet increased rent isn’t far behind.

Texas used to have some of the best highways anywhere in the south, that’s no longer true. State highway and road funding has been far from adequate for so long that toll roads are popping up in more places all the time just like the controversial one in Cibolo. If the state adequately funded the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDoT) cities like Cibolo would be unlikely to feel the need for alternate funding sources to build needed roads but as things stand now they don’t feel they can wait 25 years or more in the hope that TxDoT will get around to funding them.

Another result of lower taxes is increases in user fees at both the state and local levels. Examples are: increased park and museum fees,  increased licensing fees, increased business registration fees, increased ticketing, increased fines,  increased parking fees, increased permit costs, increased court fees, and so on. 

Another way you and I pay for reduced corporate taxes is the additional costs we absorb sending our children to school. If you have a child in a public school you’ve found that a significant proportion of items on the school provided list of supplies are things like paper towels that you’d think would be supplied by the school. If your child participates in sports or band or many other extracurricular activities you’ve probably noticed the high fees expected from parents. If you’re a teacher you find yourself spending significant amounts of your own money to provide supplies for you classroom.

Tax cuts like the one Donald Trump signed into law last year often just lead to deficit spending which simply means that future generations will pay for today’s spending. That whole notion is anathema to Republicans when Democrats are in control of government and want to build things but seems to be just the thing to do when they can line their supporters’ pockets.

Every example above illustrates the concept of cost shifting, which is making someone else pay for what beneficiaries are getting; most of the time that someone else is you and me.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - February 1, 2019

Russians Infiltrate Republicans

I was born at the height of the Cold War, just a few years after Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy was finally forced out of power. McCarthy used his position as committee chair to make himself a household name by accusing thousands of federal government employees of being communist spies and getting them fired. He kept raising the stakes until he tried to terrorize Army officers on national television and was finally called out by members of his own party.

Growing up I watched black and while movies at school that explained how the FBI watched out for communist spies; those movies showed how secret messages could be passed in hollow coins or using a folded newspaper to slip a note from one person to another as they passed each other on the street. Russian communism was feared by the public due in large part to Republicans ranting about being tough while claiming Democrats were weak. Lyndon Johnson damaged his own legacy by claiming US naval ships were attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin in order to have an excuse to send combat troops to Viet Nam as a way to show his was strong against communists.

In 2011, Maria Butina became founding chair of a new Russian gun rights group called the Right to Bear Arms. In 2013, NRA President David Keene was introduced as an honored guest at the Right to Bear Arms conference in Moscow. In December 2015, Butina’s Russian organization sponsored an NRA delegation, which included Keene and Trump campaign surrogate Sheriff David Clarke, to Moscow where attendees met with influential Russian officials including former deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin who had been under U.S. sanctions since 2014.

In 2016 the NRA doubled the size of its contributions to the National Republican Committee in the 2016 election cycle after connecting with Russian Maria Butina and her benefactors who provided millions of those dollars. Butina is also on record having cozied up to a wide range of Republican elected officials and political operatives. Butina is now in jail accused of espionage for the Russians.

The most prominent homeschooling organization in the U.S., the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) is a bastion of Republican support. The HSLDA has been associating with Russian operatives since at least 2014 when Michael Donnelly, director of global outreach, spoke there participated in a conference held in Russia. Donnelly wrote that he “met with senior leaders of the [Russian] Orthodox Church.” As Donnelly noted on Facebook, “[The] family conference I’m attending today is being held at the Kremlin and says a lot at least on its face about the value of family in Russian government.” One of the events sponsors was a foundation run by sanctioned Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeev.

The World Congress of Families (WCF), links sanctioned Russian officials to the broader U.S. religious right. The WCF, is a joint Russian-American project that reportedly receives funding from sanctioned Russian oligarchs like Vladimir Yakunin, who is the former head of Russian Railways and a close Putin confidant. One of the links between the HSLDA, the WCF and hence to sanctioned Russian officials is Alexey Komov. A Russian national and fluent English speaker, Komov is the official Russian representative to the WCF. He also works directly for Konstantin Malofeev, nicknamed “God’s oligarch” for his role in financing religious-right ventures in Russia and abroad. Malofeev is a financial contributor to the WCF also currently under U.S. sanctions for having helped fund separatists in eastern Ukraine.

So much has changed, now it’s the Republicans and their supporting institutions that are playing footsy with Russians.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - January 25, 2019

Forced Annexation and Your Tax Dollars

Forced annexation by cities in Guadalupe County has generated quite a stir lately. During the 2017 legislative session a bill was passed that essentially says if a county has over 500,000 people in it then cities in that county cannot forcibly annex land into the city, that’s Tier 2. Smaller counties are Tier 1 and cities can still use forced annexation unless the city limits run into a Tier 2 county, even if it is just a few acres, or if the entire county votes to convert to Tier 2 rules.

While residents of the extraterritorial jurisdictions (ETJ), most of whom are living on farms or multi-acre lots, often claim that the cities are annexing to generate additional revenue the fact is that the cost of providing services to those areas is usually considerably more than the increased tax income unless there is significant residential or commercial development. Cities like Cibolo which is in the midst of such a controversy usually just want to gain some element of control over the development of residential housing in those areas and be able to tax the properties for the services the city will end up providing such as fire and police. Current state law prevents cities from enforcing zoning in the ETJ.

Using Cibolo as an example, city zoning requires lot widths of no less than 55 feet and 10 feet from the lot line to the house on both sides. In at least one development proposed in the Cibolo ETJ, KB Homes wants to build homes on 40 foot wide lots leading to 8 houses per acre rather than the 6 per acre allowed under the city rules. More lots means more profit for KB Homes.

Again using Cibolo as the example, it costs about $2500 to send out a firetruck and crew on a call. Residents of the city are taxed in order to pay for those calls. In the ETJ residents don’t pay taxes to Cibolo so their fire protection is the responsibility of the county but due to the distances and time for county or volunteer fire crews to respond more often than not city crews work the call. In other words city tax dollars pay for firefigthers and equipment that ETJ residents then use for free. KB Homes gets to tell prospective home buyers that they’ll only pay county taxes so the total monthly note is at least $50 less on equivalent houses in the ETJ.

Fortunately the county commissioners offered a solution that at least partially addresses the issue by signing an agreement with the city requiring at least 60 foot lot widths. This gives Cibolo some leverage to encourage developers who want smaller lots to request voluntary annexation or some kind of development agreement wherein the city and developer come to a compromise that works for both.

In Cibolo the city council doesn’t want to annex property if the owner is willing to sign a long term agreement stating that as long as the property owner doesn’t subdivide the land to build many houses or otherwise change its use the city won’t annex them. That ought to be enough of a compromise to satisfy most people.

Ironically Republicans would say the situation is typical of Democrats wanting something for free that other people pay for. The reality is that it is generally rural Republicans fighting for the right to avoid city taxes while getting free services provided by the city.

Now if you hear someone talking about forced annexation and converting Guadalupe to a Tier 2 county you know the whole story.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - January 18, 2019

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