Republican Rhetoric Leads to Violence

Monday last week the FBI served a search warrant at the previous president’s residence in Florida. Within hours and without knowledge of the grounds for the search warrant; Texas Republican leaders jumped to his defense. Sen. Ted Cruz tweeted “The FBI raiding Donald Trump is unprecedented. It is corrupt & an abuse of power. What Nixon tried to do, Biden has now implemented: The Biden Admin has fully weaponized DOJ & FBI to target their political enemies.” Gov. Greg Abbott used similar language in his tweet as well, "This is next-level Nixonian. Never before has the country seen an Administration go to such extent to use the levers of government to target a former President and political rival. This weaponizes power to squelch dissent. Such abuses must have limits".

More importantly they and others in the Republican leadership used inflammatory language which has been picked up and acted upon by armed men. In Cincinnati on Thursday Ricky Shiffer, armed with a rifle, tried to force his way into the FBI office leading to a standoff and ultimately his death. On Friday, in Phoenix, Arizona protestors armed with rifles showed up outside the FBI office.

Trump’s one time political advisor Steve Bannon called the FBI “the Gestapo” and said, “We need to choke down the FBI and choke down the Justice Department.” Another former Trump adviser, Michael Caputo, said, “With this militant raid on President Trump’s home, we have become Russia. The FBI is the KGB.” Fox News political commentator, Dan Bongino called the FBI’s action “some third-world bullshit.” In an interview former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, said the FBI has “declared war on the American people at such a level and with such total dishonesty.” We are seeing “the ugly face of a tyranny.”

There’s plenty of talk of “lock and load” and a “civil war” on social media, especially Trump’s Truth Social platform. Much of that language has long used by top cable pundit Tucker Carlson.

Amazingly or not the calls for violence and death threats against federal law enforcement have surged following the raid on Trump’s home, but Republicans have largely been quiet about the spike, despite previous campaign rhetoric claiming to support law enforcement when Black Lives Matter protests against repeated local police shootings of unarmed Black people were occurring across the country.

In an interview Steve Scalise, R-LA suggested that FBI agents who executed the warrant were rogue agents. Considering that the FBI is run by Christopher Wray, a Trump appointee, and that Attorney General Merrick Garland and federal judge Bruce Reinhart both signed off on the warrant I don’t see any “rogue” agents involved.

Trump and others called for the search warrant to be unsealed so A.G. Garland requested that the judge do so and late last week the warrant was published for all to see. Now Judge Reinhart is receiving death threats.

Republican leaders and conservative commentators are using the same kind of rhetoric bashing federal law enforcement as Timothy McVeigh, the man who bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, OK and killed 168 people including 19 children.

Republican leaders are both irresponsible and behaving like the authoritarians that took power in Europe a century ago. I am frightened for our nation and its citizens.

In November you have a chance to send them a message they can’t ignore by voting them out of office. Get out and vote, bring your family, bring your neighbors, it has never been more important.

 Published in the Seguin Gazette - August 17, 2022

Cornyn and Cruz Betray Veterans

Republicans would have you believe that they’re all about supporting the troops and our veterans. Last week our senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, proved once again that support is just talk as they both voted against medical care for our veterans.

Back in March, when President Joe Biden made his State of the Union address one of the issues he brought up was U.S. troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan who were exposed to toxic smoke from burn pits. “These burn pits that incinerate waste — the wastes of war, medical and hazardous material, jet fuel, and so much more,” said the president.

Medical evidence says that as a result, many servicemen and women who breathed in fumes from these burn pits returned home and experienced serious symptoms. Prolonged exposure to burn pits may be responsible for cancer in some veterans. Biden has made no secret that he believes toxic exposure may have contributed to the brain cancer that killed his son Beau.

In his speech Biden called on Congress to approve a law “to make sure veterans devastated by toxic exposure in Iraq and Afghanistan finally get the benefits and the comprehensive healthcare they deserve.” The legislation congress introduced, known as the Honoring Our PACT Act (Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act), would expand treatment eligibility, and it has wide support in Congress.

At least it had wide support until it was announced that Senator Joe Manchin had reached agreement with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to support a bill on an entirely different topic that has no effect on veteran health care. Then in a fit of pique 25 Republicans who previously supported the Honoring Our PACT Act flip flopped and voted against it which stopped the bill dead in its tracks as it only had 55 of the 60 votes needed to break the filibuster.

The bill Republicans are angry about is The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 which includes measures to reduce the budget deficit by among other things raising taxes on billionaires to fight inflation. The bill also calls for investing in domestic energy production and manufacturing, and reducing carbon emissions by roughly 40 percent by 2030. In addition the bill will finally allow Medicare to negotiate for prescription drug prices and extend the expanded Affordable Care Act program for three years, through 2025.

Among the provisions of The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 related to health care is a cap on Medicare patients’ out of pocket costs at $2,000 per year, with the option to break that amount into monthly payments of around $170 each. Currently, there is no cap on spending for prescription drugs seniors buy from pharmacies. This bill ensures that a devastating diagnosis, like cancer, will never again mean paying tens of thousands out of pocket for just one drug.

On the deficit reduction and tax side the current statutory corporate tax rate is 21%, but more than 200 highly profitable, large corporations use various tax loopholes to avoid paying that rate and actually pay below 15%, some pay no income tax at all. The corporate alternative minimum tax proposal would impose a 15 percent minimum tax on adjusted financial statement income for corporations with profits in excess of $1 billion.

So the reason that Ted Cruz and John Cornyn betrayed sick veterans is they’re mad their billionaire campaign donors might pay slightly higher taxes and pharmaceutical companies could see some of their outrageous profits reduced.

Just like the lies that Republicans spout about voter fraud, they also lie supporting veterans. Remember to vote them out of office in the upcoming election.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - August 3, 2022

Texas Republicans Endangering Lives

By now you’ve heard and seen plenty of reactions and protests regarding the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and therefore allow states to outlaw abortions. What you may not have noticed is news reports of Texas women who have been denied treatment for miscarriages because our over-zealous and incompetent Republicans in the state legislature made it financially dangerous for a doctor to perform anything that might be construed as an abortion.

Marlena Stell, a Texas woman, carried the fetal remains for two weeks before she could find a doctor to perform what is commonly known as a D and C because doctors feared prosecution under Texas law. The recently passed law allows any idiot to claim the doctor performed an illegal abortion, hoping to collect a $10,000 bounty offered by Texas and the doctor would have to go through an expensive trial then even if they are found not guilty pay their own legal expenses.

Now let’s consider what continuing to carry around a dead fetus can mean. The dead tissue can break up and get into the woman’s blood stream causing infection that can result in death. In other cases it can cause damage to the woman’s reproductive system making them unable to have a future child.

Consider this thought experiment, take some ground meat about half the size of a meatball and wrap in cling wrap then hang it outside on a tree branch during the summer for two or more weeks, then go back and see what you’ve got. Now think about it would be like to have that inside your body as it rots.

Sure, in many cases the woman’s body expels the fetal remains on its own after a while, but all too often it doesn’t. As the husband of a woman who had three miscarriages I also know the emotional toll carrying around that dead fetus causes for the woman. Texas Republicans didn’t care enough when they wrote the bill outlawing abortions to consider the no doubt unintended consequences of their actions. I often hear folks blame it on men in the legislature but the reality is that all 13 Republican women in the legislature voted for the bill.

Part of Guadalupe County is represented by state senator, Dr. Donna Campbell who signed off on the bill without expressing the slightest reservation. She’s an emergency room physician and given her failure to consider the potential life threatening consequences of her vote I’m hopeful no one I care about ever ends up in an emergency room she staffs.

To compound the issue Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit challenging an executive order by President Joe Biden giving hospitals the right to pre-empt state abortion restrictions when there’s an emergency.

All that’s bad enough but unfortunately they aren’t stopping at abortion, Republicans are going after contraception as well. In Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion overturning Roe v. Wade he said the court “should reconsider” its past rulings codifying rights to contraception access.

The right to contraception was established in 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut case in which the court found that a constitutional right to privacy protected women’s ability to take birth control. That’s the same right to privacy which was the basis for Roe v. Wade in 1973 and dismissed last month.

In order to protect the right to use contraception in the United States the House passed a bill this month and not a single one of the 24 Republicans in Texas’ congressional delegation voted for it. We’ll have to see what happens in the Senate.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - July 27, 2022

Texas GOP Should be Careful What They Wish For

The Republican Party of Texas’ 2022 platform calls for special privilege for Christians and demands that Christian prayers, Bible reading and the Ten Commandments be returned to public schools. Aside from the fact that the same folks who claim to be originalists venerating the U.S. Constitution don’t seem to understand either Article VI or the First Amendment which make it quite clear that this nation is secular. There is a great reason with historical examples of why they should be happy it's secular.

Let’s start with our 13 original colonies. As the Church of England was striving to establish a single, uniform religion across the kingdom, colonial America was divided, each of the colonies being dominated by their own brand of Christianity. Anglicans, who conformed to the Church of England, populated Virginia. Massachusetts was home to the Puritans.  Pennsylvania was ruled by and filled with Quakers.  Baptists ran Rhode Island.  Roman Catholics had Maryland. From Puritan Boston’s earliest days, Catholics often referred to as “Papists” were banned from the colony, along with other non-Puritans. Four Quakers were hanged in Boston between 1659 and 1661 for persistently returning to the city to stand up for their beliefs. Anglican Virginia was the scene of notorious acts of religious persecution against Baptists and Presbyterians.  In 1771, a local Virginia sheriff dragged a Baptist preacher from the stage at his parish and beat him to the ground outside, where he was also horsewhipped.  In 1778, a pair of Baptist ministers were conducting services at the Mill Swamp Baptist Church in Portsmouth, Virginia where a gang of men rushed the stage and grabbed them, took the ministers to the nearby Nansemond River swamp, then dunked and held their heads in the mud until they nearly drowning them.

In the 1830s and 1840s, a wave of anti-Catholic violence broke out in the Northeast and elsewhere, mostly directed at recent Irish immigrants.

The Mormons were chased out of New York, then Ohio, then Missouri. A few years after settling in area of Illinois they named Nauvoo an anti-Mormon mob attacked the settlement on June 27, 1844 and burned it to the ground. They also invaded the jail cells where Smith and his brother were being held “morals” charges, and executed them.

Between 1933 and 1939, the period of the Great Depression, anti-Semitic fervor reached new heights in areas such as New York and Boston, Jews were violently attacked. Assaults, propaganda and intimidation were mostly carried out by special societies, like the Ku Klux Klan.

Televangelist John Hagee of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, which boasts of 22,000 active members, once claimed the Roman Catholic Church was the “great whore of Revelation,” a “false cult system” and the “anti-Christ.”

Temple Beth-El, in San Antonio canceled Shabbat services in-person and online last Saturday, July 9, due to security concerns presented by the local FBI office regarding threats to the safety of San Antonio synagogues. Anti-Semitic flyers appeared on residents' lawns in Alamo Heights and Helotes in February. The flyers have been tied to multiple anti-Semitic and neo-nazi groups.

The various Christian sects can’t even agree on the contents of the Ten Commandments let alone a single bible version.

Republicans who say they want a Christian nation might want to re-think that as President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are both Catholics as are six of the nine Supreme Court Justices: John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. So all those apostate Protestants here in Texas might just find they’re not so happy to have the Papists in control.

Progress of the Human Mind Requires Change in Law

Republican leaders and activists are found of claiming they want to follow the constitution as the founding fathers intended it 235 years ago. Many including those in Texas even want to reverse the 17^th amendment which changed the method of selecting United States senators from being elected by the state legislatures to being elected directly by popular vote of the citizens of each state. Of course, their interpretation of the constitution and the founders’ intent is often self-serving and just cover for their own desires much as their bible interpretations so often are.

So in this week in which we celebrate the Declaration of Independence which was written but a man who, while not among those who wrote the constitution, did influence it through his discussions with those who did write it, let us consider something else he wrote. Thomas Jefferson, flawed individual and slaveholder, was a thoughtful, erudite man of his times. One of his concerns about the constitution as expressed in a 1787 letter to William Stephens Smith, son-in-law of John Adams, relates to the lifetime appointment of members of the Supreme Court. “What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a Chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life.” Lifetime appointments when many of us now live into our 80’s and 90’s leave us with appointees who now routinely serve for 25 years or more. In the days of the founders far fewer survived even a decade on the bench. I don’t doubt that there are some advantages to experience and wisdom but at the same time spending so much of one’s life in such an elevated position often leads to a loss of touch with the world that the rest of us live in and the changes that have moved society forward.

In an excerpt from a letter to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816 which is carved on the Southeast Portico of the Jefferson Memorial, Jefferson is quoted: "I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as a civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."

Until as recently as 1986, when Antonin Scalia took his seat on the bench, even Republican Supreme Court Justices considered the constitution a living document which allowed them to address Jefferson’s concerns without the upheaval and blood-shed of a revolution. Since then more members of the misleadingly named Federalist Society have been appointed and they’re anything but federalists in that they push against federal power claiming the states should make the rules, such as in the recent case known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health the six member conservative majority rejected a federal right to abortion in favor of allowing state legislatures to decide as they may. Leaving gerrymandered  and thus conservative controlled states like to Texas to essentially outlaw abortions even though the majority of Americans and likely Texans believes that abortions should be legal.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - July 6, 2022

Trump a Danger to American Democracy

The televised January 6^th Committee hearings have brought to light quite a bit of evidence not previously available to the public showing Donald J. Trump knew he lost the 2020 election, that there was no widespread voter fraud, and conspired to overturn the results. Most elected Republicans at the state and federal levels will not admit this as they need the support of the most rabid members of the electorate and don’t have the spine to tell the truth if it means losing an election. Only a relative handful are like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, both dyed in the wool Republican hardliners, who are committed to a democratically elected government. There is little I agree on with either of them but I have to admit they are among the very few patriots among elected Republicans today.

The committee heard testimony from Trump's own aides and advisers that he knew the claims he was making of election fraud were untrue and that steps he was taking to overturn the results were illegal.

Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, testified that the president called her to discuss plans to organize "alternate" presidential electors who would claim that Trump actually won their states. Republican officeholders in Georgia and Arizona appeared before the committee to describe Trump's efforts to pressure them into taking steps to reverse Joe Biden's victory in their states. Georgia Secretary of State Brian Raffensperger spoke in detail about a nearly hour-long phone call during which the president urged him to "find" the votes necessary to put him ahead in the state's vote tally.

Evidence was presented that Texas congressman Louie Gohmert, among others, asked for a pardon from Trump before he left office. As committee member Adam Kinzinger pointed out "The only reason I know to ask for a pardon is because you think you committed a crime."

Trump Justice Department officials testified that the president personally pressured them to issue findings of possible election fraud and encourage state legislatures to overturn results showing Biden won. Trump told them to "just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen," according to acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue’s testimony.

Those same former Justice Department officials also detailed how Trump himself had urged them and senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security to seize voting machines from state governments in pursuit of a conspiracy theory that Italian satellites changed vote totals, without evidence for taking such an unprecedented step. According to testimony from Donoghue, during a December 2020 meeting at the White House, Trump said "Why don't you guys just seize machines?"

Among those testifying were two Atlanta election workers, Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who spoke of facing death threats and being forced to leave their home after Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani mentioned them by name, claiming they were "trying to steal the election". Freeman said "There is nowhere I feel safe." Even Republican officials who have debunked Trump’s election fraud claims have faced multiple death threats such as Arizona state senator Rusty Bowers who also testified.

The actions of Trump, his congressional enablers, the rioters, and those who have threatened to murder opponents are frighteningly similar to those of Benito Mussolini and his Black Shirts as they took power in Italy in the 1922.

Retired federal circuit court of appeals judge and icon among conservative legal scholars Michael Luttig, testified on June 16 and said "the former president and his party are today a clear and present danger for American democracy." I believe Judge Luttig.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - June 29, 2022

Abbott's School Voucher Scheme De-funding Public Education

Gov. Abbott has started his campaign for re-election with two issues that rile up his base but don’t actually make Texas a better place. His expensive “Border Security” publicity stunt has been in the news several times. Abbott is using state funds to pay National Guard troops to look like they’re doing the federal government’s job and doing it so poorly that their duplicative inspections backed up truck traffic at the border for many hours costing Texas businesses and county governments more than $4 billion in just 10 days. His other issue is mis-named “school choice” and its goal is to de-fund public education.

Abbott says “We can fully fund public schools while also giving parents a choice about which school is right for their child … giving them the choice to send their children to any public school, charter school or private school with state funding following the student.” If it is so easy to fully fund public education in Texas why aren’t we doing it already? The state provides about 45% of the funds for every child in public schools. Texas K-12 public schools are plagued by high class sizes and under-paid teachers.

If the governor gets his way we can expect that the percentage of state funds per public school students to fall below 40% because the same total dollars will have to be spread over an additional 342,000 plus children currently attending private schools. Those private schools don’t currently receive state funding so unless the governor intends to increase the state public education budget by 6% that means cutting per student spending. Since most rural districts don’t have any private schools they’ll be required to educate the same number of children on 6% less state funding.

Abbott’s proposal really does several things that aren’t good for the vast majority of Texans. If you can’t afford to pay an extra $1350 or more per child in tuition you can’t take advantage of the program because private and religiously affiliated schools charge more than the state provides per student. There’s also a good chance you’ll have to provide transportation to and from school. In many parts of the state there are few if any non-sectarian private schools so if you’re not from one of the pre-dominant faiths in the area your children either won’t have the option to go to a private school or you’ll have to accept that they’re being indoctrinated in a faith other than yours.

While we’re on the topic of sectarian schools let’s review the First Amendment to the United States constitution which says in part “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. Now you might think that congress wouldn’t be responsible for funding Catholic, Baptist, or Lutheran schools so what’s the problem? The problem is the 14^th Amendment extends constitutional protections to state actions as well. In fact the 14^th Amendment is what prevents the states from doing all the things that the federal government is prohibited from doing in the rest of the constitution including the other amendments. It’s what ensures you have a right to a trial by a jury of your peers even in a state court and that local police can’t unreasonably seize your property or enter your home without a warrant. The Supreme Court long ago ruled against state funds supplementing teacher salaries at religious schools and that’s exactly what Abbott is advocating for.

What Abbott is really advocating for is essentially subsidizing wealthier people sending their kids to elitist schools while making it tougher on everyone else.

 Published in the Seguin Gazette - June 15, 2022