Republicans Can't See the Pitchforks Coming

The two time popular vote loser and twice impeached, previous occupant of the White House has convinced nearly two thirds of Republican voters that the 2020 election was stolen and that he had  nothing to do with inciting the insurrection at the capitol on January 6^th. Texas Republicans along with those in other Republican controlled state legislatures are using that bull excrement to push through a wide range of voter suppression measures. They’re doing this out of fear that the high voter turnout seen in the 2020 election will continue and that will cause them to lose power. It’s a foregone conclusion that they’ll use partisan gerrymandering again to hold on to a greater share of the legislative and congressional seats than their vote totals support when redistricting comes up in the special session the governor plans to call later this year.

I frequently disagree with conservative pundit Jennifer Rubin on issues and policy but I think she’s spot on with her recent analysis of Republican rhetoric and actions in the Alabama state legislature regarding a nearly 30 year ban on yoga classes in public schools. While a guest on MSNBC Rubin said of Republicans, “They've come to believe that this is politics. That talking about yoga in classrooms is a substitute for governing, for solving actual problems. You know the state of Alabama is not one of the top ten states when it comes to education, health, longevity. It's not like there's any dearth of problems in the state of Alabama. But this is what they focus on. And it's actually, it's funny. But it's actually strategic because if they didn't talk about this nonsense; if they didn't fan the flames of white Christian nationalism, then they'd actually have to address the problems of Alabama. They'd actually have to vote for things and be held accountable. So they can't have that. So let's talk about yoga and Dr. Seuss and the whole, you know, grab bag of nuts that these people obsess about.”

Now replace yoga with permitless open carry or abortion and replace Alabama with Texas and Rubin’s analysis still holds. All the culture war issues they rant about are a diversion to avoid addressing real issues like the terrible maternal mortality rate in Texas, the low quality of public education in much of the state due to under-funding, the 19% of Texas children that suffer food insecurity, the high rate of families lacking medical insurance, and so much more. The same holds true for Republicans in our federal legislature.

The only point that Rubin missed is that reason Republicans cling to power is to make sure that big business and the wealthy keep their unfair tax breaks and continue to get contracts for government business funded by the taxpayers. All this has caused massive and continuing wealth inequality.

Back in 2014 Seattle based entrepreneur Nick Hanauer and member of the 0.01%, you know, the folks with private jets, 200 foot yachts, and 10 cars in the garage, wrote an op-ed for Politico titled “The Pitchforks are coming … for us Plutocrats”. In the column he said, “…there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples.”

Republicans are desperate to hold on to power but unwilling to change their policies to achieve majority support so they cheat. In a 1962 speech, John F. Kennedy said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 26, 2021

Wrong Response to Israeli Attacks

It’s not often that I think both sides, meaning both Democrats and Republicans, are the same yet the action of the Biden administration last week is the same as I’d expect from any of the last half dozen presidents. Biden has sided with Israel to allow them to continue their overreaction to violence perpetrated by Hamas militants and is killing Palestinian civilians at several times the rate suffered by Israelis. At least 122 Palestinians have been killed this week by Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, including 31 children, 1230 have been wounded according to local health officials. That compares to just 8 Israelis killed.

The United Nations Security Council, of which we are one of five permanent members, took a vote on whether to call for a cease fire in the Israel/Palestinian conflict and the only dissenting vote was the United States. Since the U.S. is a permanent member that no vote vetoes the measure.

The US supplies $4 billion in aid every year to Israel, that gives us a lot of leverage to use to moderate Israeli actions but once again our leaders fail to use it. Instead Israel is using that money and the weapons purchased from us with it on air strikes and artillery shelling of densely populated areas. That makes this country complicit with the murder of civilians. The Gaza Strip is the world’s third most densely populated polity at 1.85 million people crammed into an area less than a third the size of San Antonio. It isn’t possible to drop bombs and artillery shells without killing civilians and destroying their homes.

I make no excuses for Hamas, their rocket attack last week set off the latest round of violence. On the other hand Israel, especially as led by the corrupt Benjamin Netanyahu, has oppressed Palestinians since 1948 and due to walls, blockades, and other measures; Gaza suffers 70% unemployment among young people. Netanyahu has setup an apartheid state similar to what existed in South Africa until 1994. In 2018 Netanyahu’s government passed a racist law that affords exclusive rights to Jewish people and not available to the 20% of the citizens who are Arabs. That same law removed Arabic as an official language which it had been since 1948 when Israel was founded. You reap what you sow.

I don’t think for a moment that Joe Biden or anyone in the United States can solve the situation between Israel and the Palestinians though at least Jimmy Carter made some progress toward it in 1978. Israel’s leader at the time, Menachem Begin, was no innocent but Netanyahu makes him look like one, so Carter had a big advantage. Never-the-less I just don’t see that it’s too much to ask that the United States not single-handedly prevent the call for a cease fire. At least it would give a chance to provide medical attention to those injured in the Israeli attack.

Sadly this is another situation where Biden’s primary opponent, Bernie Sanders, has a better response. In a New York Times op-ed Sanders wrote. “No one is arguing that Israel, or any government, does not have the right to self-defense.” But “why is the question almost never asked: What are the rights of the Palestinian people?” Sander’s also issued a statement saying “We must also take a hard look at nearly $4 billion a year in military aid to Israel. It is illegal for U.S. aid to support human rights violations.”

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 19, 2021

National Day of Prayer Needs To Go

At first blush the annual National Day of Prayer presidential proclamation every first Thursday in May seems innocuous. US Code Title 36, Section 119 states: The President shall issue each year a proclamation designating the first Thursday in May as a National Day of Prayer on which the people of the United States may turn to God in prayer and meditation at churches, in groups, and as individuals. The original bill, which didn’t include a fixed date, was passed in 1952 at the direct suggestion of Rev. Billy Graham. As Graham explained, its purpose was to help bring “the Lord Jesus Christ” to the nation. At the urging of evangelical Christian groups the law was amended to set a fixed date in 1988 so they could organize around it.

Doesn’t it seem at least a little insulting that government should ask the faithful to pray? I mean, if folks are going to pray aren’t they going to pray without the federal government asking them to?

The National Day of Prayer Task Force, chaired for 25 years by Shirley Dobson, wife of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, organizes 30,000-40,000 events annually. Their events are so exclusively Christian that in 2005 when the Hindu American Foundation sought to join in they were refused. They're Americans so if an organization with the tacit support of the federal government is going to hold events shouldn’t Hindus be welcome just as should Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and those of other faiths?

All this gets us to what’s really disturbing about the whole National Day of Pray business in the first place. Government in this country has no business endorsing any religion as it is expressly prohibited in the United States constitution in which the First Amendment states: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Equally significant in understanding the founders’ views on the importance of maintaining distance between religion and government is Article IV which specifies that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

It’s important for us to understand the circumstances of the time in which the constitution was written. In England, from the 1660s until the 1820s, the Test Acts were used to “establish” the Church of England as an official national church. The Test Acts required all government officials to take an oath disclaiming the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and affirming the Church of England’s teachings about receiving the sacrament. The point was to exclude Catholics, Lutherans, and members of other dissenting Protestant sects from exercising political power. In other words, you couldn’t just be a Christian, you had to be the right kind of Christian to even hold the lowliest government office.

Even after the Revolutionary War while the constitution was being adopted, many states included religious qualifications in order to hold public office. Delaware’s constitution required government officials to “profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost.” North Carolina prohibited men “who shall deny the being of God or the truth of the Protestant religion” from government posts. Those states were a little more open minded in that at least their religious tests Protestants of all varieties to serve in government. Their religious tests were still designed to exclude certain people, often Catholics or Jews, from holding office because they were of the “wrong” faith.

It’s time for this country to fulfill the promise of the constitution and get out of the religion business entirely.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 12, 2021

Biden Restores America

Last week President Joe Biden spoke to congress and the American people to let us know what has been accomplished in his first hundred days and what he still plans to do. When Biden took office he promised 100 million COVID-19 vaccine shots in 100 days – the country is on track to have provided over 220 million COVID shots in 100 days.  Unfortunately due to poor leadership Texas is among the 20 worst states in getting our populous vaccinated. 19 of those 20 states are run by Republicans, which should really come as no surprise.

The American Rescue Plan passed by congress is delivering food and nutrition assistance to millions of Americans facing hunger – and hunger is down sharply already.  In addition the plan is providing rental assistance to keep people from being evicted from their homes and providing loans to keep small businesses open and their employees on the job. Due to re-opening enrollment in Affordable Care Act insurance plans an additional 800,000 Americans have enrolled so they now have access to regular health care when needed.

As a result of American Rescue Plan, the nation is on track to cut child poverty in America in half this year. Hopefully that translates to a large drop in food insecurity among children here in Texas as   That’s important not only for those children but the future of our economy as a whole because children living in poverty don’t do as well in school and have higher dropout rates leading to lower lifetime earnings, more public assistance, and another generation of children living in poverty. 4 million individual Texans of which 1.6 million are children aren’t sure when or where they’ll get their next meal. Texas is one of just 15 states with higher food insecurity than the national average.

Biden’s proposed American Jobs Plan seeks to create jobs by addressing some of the nation’s most pressing concerns. Today up to 10 million homes and more than 400,000 schools and child care centers use lead pipes in water lines. The American Jobs Plan would replace 100% of the nation’s lead pipes and service lines so every American can turn on the faucet and be certain to drink clean water that will not cause brain damage and shorten their life span.

In order to keep the United States competitive in the world economy the American Jobs Plan wouId create jobs connecting every American with high-speed internet, including 35% of rural Americans who still don’t have it. It creates jobs by building a modern power grid, something Texans know from our experience in February is desperately needed.

It will cost a lot of money to do what Biden has proposed and to pay for it he wants to increase taxes on the wealthiest among us, which of course has Republicans making evidence free claims that it will hurt the economy. After the speech Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman pointed out that the upper-class tax increases Biden is proposing to help him pay for this middle-class renaissance are unlikely to affect the economy the way Republicans envision. They’ve been running this same trick play for decades now, and it looks like we may finally be learning how to stop it. Bill Clinton’s tax increases on top earners didn’t just fail to bring disaster, they brought robust job growth. Krugman also noted that people “seem to forget that Barack Obama presided over a significant hike in high-end taxes at the beginning of his second term; the economy continued to add jobs rapidly, at the rate of about 2.5 million a year.”

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 5, 2021

Kuempel's Mis-placed Priorities

Here’s a review some of the legislation our state representative, John Kuempel, thinks is important enough to be the author or co-author. Authoring or co-authoring a bill indicates either it’s important enough to the representative that they’ve put in the put in the time and resources to draft a bill or they’ve accepted a bill written by a lobbyist or other source and put their stamp of approval on it. Sometimes legislators submit a bill with no intention of following up on it as they just want to be able to claim the bill when talking to their constituents in order appease them without actually making a real effort.

Of course, the Kuempel bill getting the most news, HB 4237, is one that proposes to legalize casino gambling at four locations in Texas. It’s almost guaranteed that if the bill passes those casinos will go in high population cities like Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, etc. There’s less chance of one being built in Guadalupe or Wilson County than there is of you winning the Powerball lottery this week without having purchased a ticket. Now I’ll agree that it’s time to legalize casino gambling in Texas, I just wonder why our representative feels the need to put his energy into a bill that will have zero benefit on his constituents when there is so many other issues directly effecting the residents of House District 44 that could use his energy.

Then there’s HB 336, which would make it criminal offense for any Texas law enforcement officer or district attorney to enforce a federal judge’s extreme risk protective order involving guns in the hands of known violent individuals. This bill is going nowhere fast. Who is Kuempel appeasing by joining Briscoe Cain as a co-author of this bill?

It’s another legislative session with Republicans in control of both houses and the governor so it should be no surprise that there’s another effort to outlaw abortion in Texas. It is disappointing the John Kuempel is a co-author of HB 1280 which is a companion to SB 9 which passed the Senate and has been referred to a House committee. Both bills seek to penalize doctors performing abortions for any reason other than to save the life of the pregnant woman with a first or second degree felony.

It wouldn’t be Texas if Republicans didn’t include a bill to legalize nearly anyone to tote pistols nearly anywhere which is what HB 1927 does and of course Kuempel co-authored. The bill and it has passed the House and is waiting for a hearing in the Senate committee to which is was assigned. Apparently our state rep feels everyone walking around armed is a good thing. I’m going right out to buy a few cans of pepper spray and if I see some pistol toting yahoo in the grocery or coffee shop I may just spray the yahoo then beat them unconscious. When asked by police why I did it I’ll claim I was in fear for my life. Heck, it works for police officers shooting unarmed black men all the time.

There are a number of other bills Kuempel authored which are in keeping with adjusting state law to meet current needs or fix things that have been found burdensome or counter-productive. One of the important topics Kuempel didn’t put any effort into is marijuana reform. Why Kuempel feels the need to pander to gun nuts and won’t make an effort to help people seeking pain relief through marijuana products is beyond me.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - April 28, 2021

Right-wing Anti-Science Threat

A century ago an influential man convinced the leader of great nation that his pseudo-scientific notions about agriculture were valid and used his influence to reject the findings of thousands of biologists. That nation outlawed teaching genetics and Darwinian evolution and disallowed plant hybridization which then led to the starvation of millions as crop yields projected by the pseudo-science purveyor failed to materialize. When the nation’s leader finally lost power the country was decades behind other competing nations in biological sciences and continued to have trouble feeding its population for decades more. The country was the Soviet Union, the political leader was Joseph Stalin, and the pseudo-science advocate was Trofim Lysenko.

In the U.S., over the past decade similar anti-science attitudes have taken over an influential group of politicians and their supporters. The clearest example of it is the current pandemic during which we’ve seen Republicans denigrate those who wear masks in public as unnecessary regardless of the public health science showing wearing masks reduces the spread of COVID-19. Our Governor prohibited cities from enforcing mask requirements. The previous White House occupant even claimed that the pandemic was a hoax and it would go away after the election.

In the United States, more than 565,000 deaths have been attributed to COVID-19, research results released at a Brookings Institute conference indicates 250,000 of those deaths were avoidable if by last May the country had adopted widespread mask, social distancing, and testing protocols while awaiting a vaccine, estimated Andrew Atkeson, economics professor at University of California, Los Angeles.

Recent polling shows that 42% of Republicans say they will definitely not get any of the COVID-19 vaccinations. The percentage hasn’t changed in months and recent concerns about the safety of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine have had no impact. For months conspiracy theorists have been claiming that Microsoft founder Bill Gates has worked behind the scenes to see to it that a microchip is injected into everyone when they are vaccinated. We’re not talking about a handful of loons, there are thousands of believers showing up at protests. They offer no evidence to support their ridiculous claims yet their movement grows.

I guess none of us should be all that surprised at any of this as Republicans have been taking anti-science positions on global climate change for decades but at least on that topic we could see that it was largely due to the influence of corporate campaign donations. In the case of the pandemic it seems to simply be a way to activate Republican tribal behavior as a goal unto itself rather than as part of a specific policy goal.

It seems as if anti-science attitudes have joined with guns and bible thumping as part of the identifiers for being a good Republican. It hasn’t always been this way as the National Academy of Sciences was founded under Abraham Lincoln and NASA was founded by the Eisenhower administration.

These right-wing anti-science views are not exclusive to the United States, in fact such idiocy has spread across Europe. If it were just about COVID-19 vaccines I’d says just let the fools die off but it’s not. It plays into the more important issue of fighting global climate change and that is an existential threat that will impact future generations and cause untold suffering if we allow the right to control national policy again while they are still in the grasp of insanity.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - April 21, 2021

Immigration Can Be Fixed

The use of fear to drive votes and actions is a common tactic employed by Republicans to divert attention from real issues or to distort the conversation in order to achieve their ends even when it isn’t in the best interests of the average American. As usual Republicans are doing their best to scare Americans about immigrants on the southern border.

If Republicans really wanted to address undocumented immigration and the tens of thousands seeking asylum in the United States they’d call for increased funding of immigration judges  and look for ways to improve conditions in the countries where most immigrants are coming from. Instead they rail against desperate people as if they were violent criminals seeking to destroy our homes. There are real solutions to be had if only we look to what has worked in the past and apply those lessons today.

In the 1950’s to the 1980’s many European nations saw huge numbers of immigrants Spain looking for jobs because the Spanish economy was in shambles and opportunities were scarce. As the effects of joining the European Union caused modest improvements in the national economy during the 1990’s the rest of Europe saw a drastic decline in the number of Spaniards within their borders as fewer left their homes and many who had returned to them. Leaving your home, your family and friends, your society and culture to go to a place where another language is spoken and you have no contacts is something only desperate people do. If they feel that they have any chance at all to feed their families and have a roof over their heads few will risk giving that up for an uncertain reward.

Now look at Germany, a nation of 82 million, which has absorbed around 1.2 million immigrants from Syria and the surrounding area. Those immigrants were driven from their homes by violence and the poverty it caused to a nation with a drastically different culture, climate, and language. Germany chose to accept them in spite of right wing nationalist demonization and then invested in easing their assimilation by providing counseling, language classes, and access to their public education system. In a decade those immigrants have by and large joined the workforce and through their taxes and economic activity are well on their way to repaying the country’s investment in them.

We can also look back to successful programs from our own past such as the Bracero program of the 1950’s through which Mexican farm workers got temporary work visas allowing them to work legally in the United States and travel back and forth across the border. Americans farmers got the workers they needed when they needed them and undocumented immigration was drastically reduced. There were abuses of the program often by the farmers and corporations who withheld or discounted the workers’ pay but it generally worked.

There are now between 10 and 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, a decline of more than 10% since 2010 mostly due to Mexicans leaving as their home nation’s economy improved thus reducing the incentive to stay here.

In order to address undocumented immigration the United States must assist Central and South American nations build their economies so that their citizens can hope to earn a decent living, implement some form of guest worker program, increase the number of asylum hearing officers at the border to address the multi-year backlog of asylum cases, and legalize marijuana and perhaps other drugs which will stem much of the violence in Mexico, Guatemala and other Central American nations that in turn drives immigration.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - April 14, 2021