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This race could determine Texas tea party power

Republican Texas state Rep. Joe Straus has been challenged for his San Antonio Texas House of Representatives seat by one Matt Beebe, who lost to Straus in the 2012 election.

Why does this matter to anyone outside The Alamo City? Straus also is speaker of the Texas House. Beebe is a tea party darling who lost to Straus in an ugly, name-calling campaign.

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-politics/2013/12/house-speaker-straus-draws-familiar-primary-challenger/

So … what now?

By my reckoning, Straus has done a pretty good as speaker by trying to include everyone in the lower legislative chamber. That means Democrats. However, as has been the case whenever the tea party gets mentioned, the far right wing of the GOP just cannot stand it when Republicans work with Democrats to, oh you know, try to get legislation enacted. They try to make government actually work, make it function, try to get things to move forward.

I guess Beebe doesn’t see things that way. He says Straus isn’t conservative enough for the voters of House District 12. I beg to differ with him on that one, given that voters have re-elected him repeatedly. I would surmise from that electoral result that Straus’s conservatism fits his constituents just fine.

What I think Beebe really intends to say is that Straus isn’t conservative enough for, well, Matt Beebe.

Although it is true that Republicans hold a supermajority in the House of Representatives, the speaker is in charge of the entire body, not just the GOP wing of it. The speaker makes committee assignments involving Democrats, too. He must juggle multiple legislative balls in the air — and that means working with the other party when the need arises.

I believe Straus has managed to do that and it’s one reason why he deserves to be sent back for another term as state representative from San Antonio.

I’ll let the House members haggle among themselves over whether he should return as speaker.

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Boehner showing some spine … finally

I’ll admit that Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives John Boehner’s sudden display of steel is quite becoming.

It’s nice to have so many of your House colleagues on board with a plan so that you can say what you really think — at least I hope it’s what he really thinks — of the ultra-conservative interest groups that have taken your Republican caucus hostage for the past three years.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/12/13/john-boehner-back-on-top/

The House approved this week by a 332-94 margin a budget deal brokered by a committee chaired by tea party darling Rep. Paul Ryan and his Democratic Senate colleague Patty Murray. A few hardliners held out against the deal, which heads off a government shutdown, strikes down much of the mandated budget cuts created by sequestration and cuts the deficit a little bit over the next decade.

One guy who I feared might vote “no,” my own congressman Mac Thornberry, R-Clarendon, actually voted in favor of the deal. His West Texas colleague, Randy Neugebauer, R-Lubbock, stuck with his do-nothing approach to government and cast a negative vote. I am not surprised Neugebauer wouldn’t sign on; after all, he was the guy who scolded a National Park Service employee for doing her job — at Congress’s orders — when she refused to let tourists into the World War II Memorial in D.C. during the government shutdown in October.

Boehner now has taken the gloves off, more or less, in calling out folks like the Club for Growth and Heritage Action, who oppose any deal that results from compromising with Democrats. He says they’ve “lost credibility.”

I’m kind of hoping that Boehner, who I believe at heart is a decent guy with good-government instincts, finally is realizing that as the Man of the House he has the power to get things done and that he doesn’t need to buckle under to the pressure brought by factions within his party.

As the Washington Post notes, he has clawed his way back on top “for now.”

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Congress sees ‘spike’ in approval rating

What gives here?

Congress’s approval ratings, which had been languishing in the single digits for months on end, suddenly have taken a “spike” upward. According to the RealClearPolitics.com poll average — the one that takes in all the major polls’ findings and averages them out — shows congressional approval at 12.4 percent, as of Dec. 9.

I think we’re going to see even more improvement in the days and weeks ahead.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/congressional_job_approval-903.html

On what do I base that bold prediction? It’s the budget deal hammered out by Democrats and Republicans, actually working together to avoid a government shutdown that has done the trick.

I’ve noted already that the deal announced by committee chairs Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Patty Murray — a Republican and Democrat, respectively — is far from perfect. But the bigger point is that legislation rarely satisfies everyone. Good government almost always is the product of compromise, which by definition means both sides have to give a little to get something done.

If you track congressional approval ratings on the link attached to this blog back to when the government shut down in October, you’ll notice a decided tanking of public approval of Congress. Republicans leaders who run the House of Representatives took it on the chin the hardest from Americans fed up with the obstruction, the posturing and the do-nothing approach taken by the GOP.

It goes without saying — but I’ll say it anyway — that both chambers of Congress are populated by politicians … even those who say they “aren’t politicians.” Therefore, politicians depend on the people’s feelings about the job they’re doing if they want to stay in office.

All 535 members of the House and Senate should take heed at this “spike” in approval ratings. I think Americans are sending them a message: Do something — for a change.

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Writing an obituary for the living? That’s a new one

Every now and again, I run into situations that catch me totally flat-footed. They come out of the blue when you least expect them.

Today produced one of those situations.

I was at work today when a long-time friend sauntered into our service department waiting area. We greeted each other as he sat down. I asked him the question I ask all our customers, which was whether he wanted something to drink while he waited for his vehicle to be serviced.

He declined, but then dropped the bombshell right at my feet.

“I’ve been thinking about this for some time,” he said, noting that his wife “thinks I’m getting old.”

He asked me if I’d write his obituary.

I was stunned momentarily. My friend looks to be in good health. He’s elderly — just as his wife has told him — but he seems still quite fit and alert.

He walked me through his history briefly, telling me his family moved to the Texas Panhandle in the late 19th century. He grew up in Amarillo and has spent most of his life here, except for some time away on business.

“I’ve got a lot of things collected that I want to share with you,” he told me. My friend, who’s been something of a player at many levels for years in Amarillo, wants someone to tell his life story in a manner he deems fitting.

After catching my breath — given that I’d never received a request like that — I told my friend “I’d be honored to write your obituary.”

I thought about it as I finished working for the day. He’ll edit the draft. He’s certain to make changes, which of course is his prerogative. I’ll do whatever he tells me to do to tweak and polish the final text.

In my nearly 37 years in daily journalism, one of the things I learned about obituaries is that mistakes cannot be tolerated. Obituaries contain the final words that will ever be written about someone. You want to get it right, period. You take extra care to ensure that every detail — no matter how minor or seemingly trivial — is exactly right.

Writing something like this with the subject looking over my shoulder will be at once intimidating and no doubt emotionally wrenching.

I’m ready for this most unexpected challenge. My hope is that my friend lives long past the time we put a wrap on it.

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‘Affluenza’ defense pays off for drunken teen

Ten years probation.

That’s what a Tarrant County teenager got for killing four people while driving drunk. In fact, Ethan Couch’s blood-alcohol level was three times the minimum legal definition of drunken driving.

Four lives are snuffed out and for this the kid gets probation? That’s it?

Amazing.

http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/20131212-despite-four-deaths-tarrant-judge-buys-affluenza-excuse.ece

The judge who handed down this virtual non-punishment is Jean Boyd, who presides over a juvenile court in Fort Worth. As the Dallas Morning News editorial attached here, the judge apparently bought a line of defense that strains credulity to the extreme. The Morning News opined: “Boyd apparently swallowed whole the defense argument that Couch was just a poor, little rich boy effectively abused by parents who set no boundaries and gave him everything except actual parenting. ‘Affluenza,’ as a defense psychologist called it, or wealth assuming privilege.”

Prosecutors sought a 20-year sentence for the kid, who’s now 16. On June 15, his recklessness killed those four people and wounded gravely two others who likely may never recover fully from their injuries. That is a path of death and destruction that cried out for some punishment other than just a probated sentence. As the Morning News noted in its editorial, Couch might have been paroled by his 19th birthday under Texas law had the prosecutors gotten their wish.

Police on the scene called the accident the worst they had seen. Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson said he will have trouble explaining probation to his children and grandchildren, given what he witnessed from this crime.

Justice wasn’t done with this decision. Shame on the judge.

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Immigration reform gets big boost

The overwhelming approval this week of the bipartisan budget deal signals a big win for U.S. House Speaker John Boehner.

The question now becomes whether he is feeling his Wheaties enough to push through some other legislation that needs to be enacted — such as immigration reform.

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/193034-does-boehner-victory-pave-the-way-for-immigration

The 332-94 House vote approving a budget deal that forestalls a government shutdown has been described as Boehner’s win over the tea party wing of his Republican Party. The tea party clowns also have been yammering against any effort to reform the nation’s immigration laws.

Boehner, until right about now, has been listening to the tea party crowd and saying things like the House won’t act on immigration this year, or maybe even next year. The budget victory now sends other signals that Boehner — who many believe wants to do an immigration deal — might be willing to step on a few more tea party toes.

Go for it, Mr. Speaker.

The nation needs desperately to give the 11 million or so undocumented immigrants living here a chance to come out of the shadows. Do they deserve a complete amnesty? No. They do deserve a chance to become citizens if that’s their desire. President Obama wants to enable those who were brought here as young children a chance to wipe the slate clean, given that they’ve grown up as Americans and know nothing other than life in this country.

The president has an unlikely ally in that effort in the form of GOP Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who also happens to be a tea party darling and who might run for president himself in 2016. Perry, though, governs a state with a large illegal immigrant population and he understands the complexities of the issue and knows how hard it is to round ’em all up and send ’em back the country of their birth.

So, I’m hoping Boehner can decide that the tea party wing of his party isn’t quite so fearsome and he can move immigration reform through the House of Representatives. If nothing else, he can help head off the designation that this Congress has earned for being so unproductive.

No one wants the “do-nothing” label hung around their neck, correct Mr. Speaker?

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FCC has lost its collective mind

I have drawn this clear and unequivocal conclusion about the Federal Communications Commission.

Most of its members have lost their minds. They need to be committed, institutionalized, given treatment. They need an intervention of some kind.

This news is horrifying to the extreme.

The FCC has voted 3-2 to consider lifting its ban on in-flight cell phone use by airline passengers.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/12/travel/fcc-cell-phones-on-airplanes/

I’ll concede right now that humanity has made plenty of terrible decisions. Enslaving human beings perhaps is tops. Going to war is right up there.

However, I’m thinking that the day we allow passengers to yap to their hearts’ content at 30,000 feet above the planet’s surface while sitting in cramped seats next to other passengers just might rank with the worst decisions in all of human history.

What might happen next? Beats me. The FCC vote means only that the panel will consider it. The Federal Aviation Administration has to sign off on it as well, given that the FAA regulate air travel.

I’ve said before that a decision to allow this kind of activity aboard commercial aircraft is likely to spell the end of my domestic air travel forever. I also know that I hardly am alone in this belief.

Flight attendants and their union leadership are adamantly opposed to allowing it. I daresay that flight deck officers are opposed as well. I also believe a majority of air passengers oppose this notion.

So, how is it that the FCC even can consider this ridiculous notion?

Therein may lie the origin of the assertion I made at the top of this blog.

Three of the FCC’s five members have lost their minds.

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Bipartisanship clawing its way back? Maybe

The U.S. House of Representatives, led by the Republicans — who are in turn being rattled by the tea party wing of their own party — is beginning to rumble with bipartisanship once again.

Perhaps.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/12/12/house_passes_budget_bill.html

The House voted 332-94 in favor of the two-year budget deal hammered out by a conference committee co-chaired by Republican House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray.

Is the deal perfect? Hardly.

But it prevents another partial government shutdown, which turned out to be a nightmare for Republicans in October — when the latest shutdown occurred.

The usual right-wing crazies are calling the deal a loser. They gripe about it not cutting enough money from government spending. They want to keep the mandated budget cuts called “sequestration,” which the committee managed to toss aside.

Some lefties also are unhappy, about the failure to provide long-term unemployment insurance for about a million jobless Americans. I happen to agree with their unhappiness — therefore, I won’t call myself “crazy,” if you get my drift.

The House vote, though, did attract a lot of GOP support, which produced the overwhelming victory for common sense and compromise … which ought to be the hallmark of legislating.

I still fear the tea party cabal in the House is going to find a way to torpedo further attempts to make government work. For now, it’s been pushed aside. I’m happy about that.

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Potter County judge race handicapping is tough

Let’s play a little game of political prognostication regarding Potter County’s five-person race for county judge.

Five Republicans have filed to fill the seat occupied by County Judge Arthur Ware, who’s decided not to seek another term. He’s still trying to recover from a devastating stroke.

I’ll stick by my contention that the two frontrunners remain Nancy Tanner, Ware’s long-time assistant, and former Amarillo Mayor Debra McCartt.

Three more candidates have filed: Bill Bandy, Bill Sumerford and Jeff Poindexter.

Of the three, let’s look at Bandy as the serious third choice behind Tanner and McCartt. Bandy has been involved at many levels of government and civic organizations … or so I understand. Sumerford and Poindexter have run unsuccessfully for other offices. Poindexter is a nice fellow. Sumerford is nice enough, too. Neither of them should be serious factors.

Back to the top three.

Tanner, McCartt and Bandy all figure to gain the lion’s share of votes. In a five-person race, therefore, it becomes difficult — as I see it — for one candidate to emerge with an outright majority in the GOP primary next March. That means a runoff would take place with the top two candidates.

If I were a betting man — and I’m not — I’d suggest that in a runoff, the second-place finisher is in the catbird seat. The individual who finishes first has his or her supporters on whom to count. The person who finishes second has his or her supporters, plus the whole rest of the votes cast for candidates other than the person who finished first.

I’ve seen this scenario play out before in Randall County, where the No. 2 candidate scarfs up enough of the anti-first-place vote-getter’s supporters to win a runoff.

Will this occur next March in the critical race to see who becomes the next Potter County judge?

I cannot predict it will, but it could emerge quickly as a distinct possibility.

Stay tuned for a most entertaining campaign.

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Handshake should be an ice breaker

The Obama-Castro handshake at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela has drawn plenty of chattering from the left and the right.

I’ve long thought the time had come for the United States to thaw its frozen relationship with a tiny island nation that no longer poses any serious threat to this country.

President Barack Obama shook the hand of Cuba’s President Raul Castro. It was a brief, spontaneous moment at the start of ceremonies honoring the life of South Africa’s Nelson Mandela. That’s all it was.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/12/11/the_obama-castro_handshake_dont_stop_there_120920.html

Republican pols bristled at the moment. Democratic pols loved it.

For more than five decades, American presidents starting with Dwight Eisenhower have ignored Cuba, a country taken over in a revolution led by communist despot Fidel Castro, Raul’s older brother. The Castros overthrew an equally despicable tyrant and U.S. officials thought initially life would get better for Cubans. It didn’t.

Fidel Castro cozied up to the Soviet Union, allowing the Big Bear to introduce intercontinental ballistic missiles to the island. U.S. spy planes discovered them, President John Kennedy quarantined the island and threatened to blow the place to smithereens if the Cubans and Soviets didn’t take the missiles down; the other side blinked and the crisis was over.

Then the Soviet Union disintegrated. Cuban remains a communist dictatorship. But what precisely is the threat that Cuba presents to this country? None as far as I can see.

The United States maintains diplomatic relations with nations with equally dismal human rights records as Cuba. The People’s Republic of China comes to mind; Vietnam’s human rights record is pretty abysmal. We still have relations with Zimbabwe, yes?

A fleeting handshake between two leaders doesn’t amount to anything in the context of where the greeting occurred. Nelson Mandela fostered a feeling of forgiveness and compassion when he came out of prison in 1990. He had been held captive for 27 years because he fought for the rights of the black majority in his country.

I think it’s time for the United States — which has left some travel restrictions to Cuba — to finally open the door to full relations with a country that poses no threat to the world’s greatest military and economic power.

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