Category Archives: Uncategorized

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Tanden’s budget cred is lacking

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The media and political operatives have focused on Office of Management and Budget director nominee Neera Tanden’s stormy tirades on Twitter while they debate whether the Senate should approve her nomination.

Progressives are giving her a pass for the mean tweets she has put out there; Republicans are simply appalled, aghast and offended that she would be so angry. Actually, the GOP’s faux sensitivity is laughable on its face, given that so many Republican senators were willing to look the other way when Donald Trump was savaging his political foes with some of the most petulant tweets one can imagine coming from a president of the United States.

They are missing what I believe is the essential point over Tanden’s nomination, which is that she isn’t qualified to run OMB.

Tanden is a fierce partisan. I don’t begrudge that part of her background, per se. She also lacks any serious experience managing the kind of agency President Biden has asked of her. She has worked for progressive think tanks. Tanden has worked as an unpaid adviser  to political campaigns.

Her background is shallow. For the life of me I don’t understand what President Biden thinks what kind of experience she brings to the tough work of managing a massive federal budget.

I’ve enjoyed listening to her political commentary in recent years. She and I are on the same political page. She preaches to the proverbial choir when I listen to what she says. I just don’t know if she has the financial chops required to do the job President Biden is asking her to do.

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SCOTUS clears way for probe of ex-POTUS

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Let’s admit it: We are a nation of Nosey Neds and Noras. A lot of us  want to know all we can know about the individuals elected to govern us.

Such as their financial condition. It’s only right … right? Yes.

So it is that the U.S. Supreme Court has cleared the way for the Manhattan prosecutors to subpoena the tax records of a former president of the United States, Donald John Trump, to determine whether he broke any laws.

This is huge deal. I am among those who wants to know more about the former president’s financial dealings.

I want to know if he is as rich as he kept bragging he was; whether he manipulated property valuations to obtain financial favors; whether he broke campaign finance laws when he paid the porn star $130,000 to keep quiet about a sexual encounter — that he says never happened; and whether he has given any money to charity.

Supreme Court refuses Trump effort to block tax return subpoena (msn.com)

This is relevant especially for those who supported Trump during his two bids for the presidency, the second of which he lost bigly to President Biden.

The court didn’t specify any particulars in its decision, nor did any of the justices issue any public dissents from the court ruling.

Yes, I know that Trump is now a private citizen. That doesn’t matter in this instance. He has been all over the pea patch on this tax return matter. He said he would release them, then he back off that promise, then he said he would do so again, then he blocked efforts to reveal them to the public.

He has lied incessantly for as long as he has been a politician … and likely long before that period in his life.

Let’s see the returns. Those of us with inquiring minds want to know the truth — finally.

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Those were the days

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

A news report about the deep divisions between Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill brought to mind something I learned many years ago about the Texas congressional delegation.

The state’s U.S. House members, divided between Ds and Rs, would meet each week for breakfast. They ate with each other. All of them! They would sit in the congressional dining hall and talk to each other about common ground. They would discuss the state’s myriad problems.

I believe I heard this tale during the era when a Texan, Fort Worth Democrat Jim Wright, was serving as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. I cannot recall at this moment whether Wright instigated the weekly breakfast meetings. All I do remember is that the congressional collegiality among Texans was legendary on Capitol Hill.

A Congressional Quarterly story about the Texas delegation’s weekly meetings compared the relative good cheer among our state’s lawmakers with the open hostility among other states’ delegations. I believe the CQ story compared Texans’ warm feelings with the chill that hung over the California delegation.

Bear in mind something about the Texas congressional delegation in the 1980s. The delegation included some fierce partisans on both sides of the aisle. My congressman was a fellow named Jack Brooks, a Democrat from Beaumont who was a crusty, irascible, profane, cigar-smoking, former Marine who pretty much detested Republicans. He had next to nothing nice to say about his GOP colleagues. I recall him telling me once that he thought President Reagan was dumber than a potted plant.

But he would go to those breakfasts with his colleagues. All of them. Republicans and Democrats.

I don’t know if they’re still meeting these days in that fashion. Nor do I know whether anyone within the Texas congressional delegation has the stature or the commanding presence of Speaker Wright.

Instead, I hear stories these days about House members fearing their colleagues. They actually are frightened by the prospect of working with them, of sitting beside them in the House chamber. They fear someone on the other side of the room is going to shoot them, for God’s sake.

My strong belief is that the current Texas congressional delegation just isn’t wired collectively to exhibit the kind of camaraderie that made its predecessors the envy of Capitol Hill.

Too bad.

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Cruz seeks to make amends?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

What you see in this picture is the image of a man who was caught demonstrating his true character and who now is seeking to create an image of altruism.

Ted Cruz, the notorious junior Republican U.S. senator from Texas, was photographed cutting barbecue at a charitable event for Houston firefighters this weekend. It was nice of him to do so, yes?

Well, let’s put it in a bit of perspective.

He had gotten onto an airplane the other day to fly on vacation with his family; they were jetting to Cancun, Mexico. Big deal? Yeah, it is. Cruz was leaving while the state he represents was struggling with bitter cold, power outages, water shortages; his constituents were suffering. So he decides to be a “good parent” and take his daughters to the Caribbean resort.

It didn’t go over well at all. Critics pounded him mercilessly. Cruz returned to Texas way ahead of schedule. He admitted to messing up. He didn’t stand his post where he should have stood doing his job as a senator representing Texans who needed his help.

I am not going to give him a pass just because he showed up to cut some ribs for firefighters. He’s trying to make up to Texans.

He did the damage when he boarded the airplane and sought to get away from the misery. That initial action — not the gesture he was photographed doing — is the more accurate measure of the man.

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Put on your ‘Comforter in Chief’ cape, Mr. POTUS

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden is coming to Texas to perform one of the unwritten tasks of the job he inherited just a bit more than a month ago.

He is coming as the nation’s Comforter in Chief. I hope he is up to the task that lays before him.

I spent a good deal of emotional capital over the past four years blasting to smithereens Biden’s immediate predecessor’s unwillingness to lend comfort to Americans in trouble. I will spare you any more tirades on that score.

Biden is coming here to survey the damage done by the nasty winter storm that paralyzed so much of the state. You know the drill by now: Power went out, darkening millions of homes; the water supply failed, too, forcing millions of Americans to boil their water before consuming it. Indeed, many Texas communities to this very day still do not have water or their residents are still forced to boil it.

What can the president do in a single visit to a ravaged area? Not much. I am acutely aware that such visits serve mainly to provide the head of state an up-close look at the damage and to enable him to speak to local officials and to their constituents about the path forward.

President Biden is known as a touchy-feely kind of guy. There likely won’t be much hugging or up-close chit-chat between the president and those who are still suffering. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced all of us to keep our distance, even from a president whose presence among us likely will become part of the man’s presidential legacy.

I fully expect President Biden — despite the restrictions he will face — will demonstrate fluency in the language he must use to tell Texans the things they need to get some level of comfort.

It goes with the job.

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Biden declares 77 Texas counties to be in ‘major disaster’ mode

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott wanted all 254 of Texas’s counties to qualify for “major disaster” relief from the U.S. government.

President Biden granted that status to 77 of them, or a just a bit less than one-third of what Abbott had sought in the wake of the terrible Texas snow and ice storm.

I saw the list of all the counties and, as a Collin County resident, I was heartened to see my county on the list of declared places, along with Dallas, Denton and Tarrant counties. Others in our immediate area received the designation. So did other major counties, such as Bexar, Travis, Harris and their immediate surrounding jurisdictions.

One of the regions where I once lived, the Golden Triangle, also got the disaster declaration, but the Texas Panhandle did not get that designation.

I was struck, though, by the absence of Hunt County from the list of counties to receive federal aid under the designation. Commerce’s water supply system went kaput. It came back, but the city has been on a boil-water advisory for several days; the advisory is expected to last a while longer.

What does it take, therefore, for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to declare a county a “major disaster” when that county is suffering through, um, a major disaster?

I cannot really know what goes into the decision-making processes within FEMA. I just am an observer of how various jurisdictions within my particular orbit are dealing with the mess that the storm has left behind. From my perch in Collin County, it looks for all the world like our neighbors to our east — in Hunt County — are going through precisely the same tragedy that Mother Nature brought to my neighbors and my family members.

Abbott called the disaster declaration from President Biden a “good first step” in helping our state recover. Perhaps a “good next step” would be to expand the list of counties that receive this disaster declaration.

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Ask others, Texas

(Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

This bit of wisdom comes from a social media acquaintance of mine.

He writes: How ’bout asking people from colder climates how they supply themselves with renewable energy and take a step toward a future that is in their past? If Texas can’t lead, can it at least follow?

Texas politicians, utility regulators, energy suppliers and most certainly customers are trying to blunder their way out of the mess we’ve just endured in this state. Our power went out. Utility executives seemingly made bone-headed decisions on the power grid. Our infrastructure froze and failed. Many of us remain without adequate potable water supplies.

Granted, we aren’t used to these kinds of plummeting temperatures in Texas. We need to prepare better for the next time it happens.

So, as my acquaintance has suggested, Texas pols ought to get on the horn with their colleagues in, say, all the northern tier of states where this kind of winter event is commonplace.

No politician — especially, I have discovered, those in Texas — wants to depend on others for such advice. They want to stand on their own feet. They want to deal head-on with even the most complicated and thorny issues.

It’s like the male driver who refuses to ask directions when he’s hopelessly lost. Take it from me, that kind of “independence” is vastly overrated; I say that as someone who is not bashful about asking for directions.

So, if we cannot come up with solutions here about how to protect our energy infrastructure from future calamity, ask those who know how to do it and ask them how they have managed to produce renewable energy at a level that powers their communities — and keeps their customers warm at night.

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No more weather misery, please

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

There well might be a snicker or two coming from places north of this part of Texas. That’s fine. They can giggle, chortle and snort all they want, given that they know a thing or three about heavy snow and plunging temperatures.

I just am delighted to know that we are powering through the misery that visited us a week ago when that Arctic blast swooped down on us. A week ago, we awoke to zero-degree temperature. Our home was dark. The water wasn’t running.

But … we soldiered on. We got through it.

Now, to be sure many Texans are still struggling with water quality issues. The lights are on, but they still have to boil water before drinking it. We managed to wiggle our way out of that particular issue in Princeton, Texas. Yes, the city issued a boil-water advisory when it restarted its treatment plant, which had failed when it lost its power. The city then rescinded the advisory a couple of days later.

Were we prepared for this event? Hah! Hardly. That might be source of the snickering up yonder.

Here is my hope for the Texas Legislature, which is one month into its planned five-month legislative session: Lawmakers need to find solutions to the crisis that unfolded here; they need them on the books this session and sent to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk, where Abbott needs to sign them into law.

I’ll be candid. The cost of those remedies don’t give me much pause. I mean, we went through hell around here. If we can get our energy grid better suited to handle this kind of freeze, then I am willing to pay the price. OK, spare me the lecture about whether I would pay “any price.” I have my limits, just like everyone else.

We are products of our surroundings. I have never lived in a place that gets buried by snow every year, or has to endure sub-zero temperatures each winter. I have a cousin who lives in St. Paul, Minn.; we have two nieces who were born in Alaska; another cousin of mine once lived in the Land of the Midnight Sun (and Perpetual Darkness) as well.

Today is a new day for us here in North Texas. The sun will come out later. The temperature will rise to a seemingly “balmy” 60 degrees.

Few of us will forget the nightmare … and while we’re at it, let’s send good thoughts to those who still are battling water quality issues.

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Start looking for new OMB boss, Mr. POTUS

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Neera Tanden’s status as the next director of the federal Office of Management and Budget suddenly has run into a serious roadblock.

U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, has said he will oppose her nomination when he gets to vote on it. That means a 50-50 Senate composition puts Tanden’s nomination in serious jeopardy. All of the Senate’s 50 Republicans will oppose her selection; Democratic support stands at 49 votes maximum. Got it? She cannot be confirmed, if the numbers hold up.

To be honest, I was skeptical of her nomination from the get-go … and not because of her fiery Twitter messages that savaged Republican lawmakers. My concern always had been that she is light on budgeting experience. To be candid, I am not clear why President Biden chose her in the first place.

Politico reports: Two early contenders to replace Tanden are Gene Sperling, a two-time director of the National Economic Council, and Ann O’Leary, who just came off a stint serving as California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s chief of staff, and who was considered a leading alternative to Tanden back in November when Tanden’s nomination was announced, according to people familiar with the matter.

The jockeying to replace Neera Tanden has begun – POLITICO

At one level it is laughable on its face that GOP senators would be angry because of her partisan Twitter messages, given that the 45th president of the United States used that social medium to inflict serious insult and damage to his foes.

Even without all of that, Tanden’s pick is suspect, given that she is a hard-core partisan and someone with little experience implementing budget policy on a scale required by the OMB director.

“I believe her overtly partisan statements will have a toxic and detrimental impact on the important working relationship between members of Congress and the next director of the Office of Management and Budget,” Manchin, a moderate Democrat, said in a statement. “For this reason, I cannot support her nomination.”

Whatever. It looks to me as though her Twitter activity should be the least of the issues that work against her.

President Biden ought to start looking seriously for someone with actual budgetary chops to handle a daunting task.

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Cruz needs to ‘show up’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Ted Cruz is continuing to take heat over his ill-conceived, ill-advised and ill-considered family vacation to Cancun, Mexico.

The Texas Republican U.S. senator deserves every single bit of it.

The latest broadside comes from state Rep. Jeff Leach, a fellow Republican from Plano, a former member of the conservative Freedom Caucus. Leach says Cruz erred badly by jetting off with his family to the resort in Mexico while the state he represents is suffering from the ravages of the monstrous winter storm.

Freedom Caucus loses a member . . . more to follow? | High Plains Blogger

Leach said, “It’s important for us to show up, to be present, such a big part of leadership is to be present, and as state representative for over 200,000 people here just north of Dallas, I’m here, I’m present, I’m on the ground, I’m available. I work for the people, not the other way around. They’re the boss, not the other way around. It’s important for us as policymakers to show up for work and do our jobs.”

Texas Republican Slams Ted Cruz’s Cancun Trip, as Second GOP Lawmaker Under Fire for Fleeing State (msn.com)

This is the kind of criticism that Cruz can expect perhaps until hell freezes over. Cruz has shown a propensity for popping off about other elected officials’ misbehavior, all of which seems to heighten the hypocrisy quotient for what he did.

Cruz’s abrasive, aggressive and rampant ambition hasn’t exactly endeared him to many of his Senate colleagues. I am finding it hard to find anyone standing up for him, although there well might be someone out there who can excuse his dereliction of duty.

I am going to side with state Rep. Leach. I mean a big part of being a good leader is just showing up.