Category Archives: political news

International news, political news

French fight back against fear

Is there a lesson to be learned from the French presidential election?

Oui!

It is that terror need not sway an informed electorate.

Moderate centrist Emmanuel Macron today became the youngest person ever elected president of France, defeating far-right extremist Marine Le Pen. It was Le Pen who sought to parlay certain elements of fright into an electoral victory. The source of that fear and loathing was the spasm of terrorist violence that has befallen France since 9/11.

France answers the call

Macron sought a different course for France. He wants to keep his country involved with the rest of Europe and the world, unlike Le Pen, who sought to retreat into a “France-first” dogma that mirrors much of what helped propel Donald J. Trump to victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Trump called for a ban on Muslims seeking to enter the United States; he wants to build that wall along our southern border; he is seeking to restrict travel of refugees fleeing several majority-Muslim countries. Why? Because he wants Americans to live in fear of further terrorist attacks.

The French know all about the horror of radical Islamic terrorism. Yet they rejected Le Pen’s platform of retreat.

And if you think about it, France’s decision to go with Macron mirrors earlier presidential elections in The Netherlands and Austria, where voters turned back isolationist presidential candidacies in favor of continued engagement.

I wrote in an earlier blog about how the paltry voter turnout in Amarillo shouldn’t be interpreted as a “mandate” for sweeping change at City Hall.

Get a load of this: Seventy-four percent of France’s registered voters turned out to give Macron a 30-percentage-point victory over Le Pen.

I would call that a mandate.

local news, political news

Voters clean house at Amarillo City Hall

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Amarillo voters have made a bit of history at the ballot box.

They have elected a female-majority City Council; that shouldn’t be a big deal, although I do recall there was a good bit of media and community chatter when Debra McCartt became the city’s first female mayor.

They also have booted out two incumbents, meaning that the city will have a brand new five-member governing council take office in a few weeks.

This is potentially a huge step forward for the city.

Mayor-elect Ginger Nelson will take office with a lengthy platform full of promises to do a lot of things. Many of the planks in that platform deal with economic development, wise expenditure of tax money, greater citizen involvement and (this is my favorite) beautification of rights-of-way along Interstates 40 and 27.

Council members-elect Elaine Hays in Place 1, Freda Powell in Place 2, Eddy Sauer in Place 3 and Howard Smith in Place 4 all are newcomers to city government — as is Nelson.

They all come to office with the backing of a political action committee, Amarillo Matters, that raised a good bit of money to get their message out. Yes, there was some blowback expressed on social media about the motives behind Amarillo Matters’ investment in the candidates who won.

I am not going to join that chorus of naysayers. I’m honestly optimistic about what this new City Council will bring to the community.

They all pledged in some form or another to restore a sense of cooperation among its members. Such a pledge doesn’t necessarily mean an absence of dissent or debate among council members, nor should it.

However, for the past two years residents have witnessed the occasional flareup of tempers and of at least one council member occasionally speaking out of turn, getting way ahead of the rest of the governing body. That council member didn’t seek a second term.

The City Council managed to force out a competent city manager, hire an interim manager and then make a mess of the search for a new permanent chief administrator — before settling finally on a solid choice in Jared Miller.

The city is in the midst of a significant downtown makeover. It has a lot of work to do on its streets. It is working with state transportation officials on improvements to our freeway interchange.

I welcome the new folks who’ll take their oaths of office.

I also applaud the city’s voters for deciding to make a bit of history. If only more of them would have voted to make this moment even more meaningful.

local news, medical news, political news

Talk to us, Rep. Thornberry

The fellow who represents me in Congress has made his point pretty clear: He doesn’t intend to conduct “town hall meetings” with constituents during these lengthy congressional breaks.

I beg to differ with Rep. Mac Thornberry’s reluctance to speak to groups of his constituents.

The Clarendon Republican lawmaker has just voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act and to replace it with a Trumpcare version of health care overhaul.

Congress is taking some time off. Its House members and senators have fanned out across the land. Some of them are facing their critics, namely their constituents, who are questioning them about their votes in favor of Trumpcare. Rep. Thornberry, to my knowledge, hasn’t scheduled any such public events.

He ought to rethink his schedule.

Do I expect him to get a dressing down from angry 13th Congressional District constituents? Well, I don’t know. He is considered a lead-pipe cinch for re-election in 2018; his district is as reliably Republican as any in the country. Then again, other GOP House members who are equally safe and secure have been getting pounded by their constituents.

I actually want to applaud those Republicans who have voted for Trumpcare to stand before their “bosses” and explain themselves. I think much less of those who have chosen other pursuits while they are at home, ostensibly tending to “constituent business.”

Thornberry’s been in Congress for a long time now. He took office in 1995. He chairs the House Armed Services Committee. He’s got a big job. He once led a GOP effort to come up with ways to protect us against cyber-crime. I’m hoping whatever he came up with is being employed by our spooks to protect our national security secrets against hackers from, oh, Russia!

However, health care is on people’s minds these days. Even, perhaps, out here in the 13th Congressional District.

We’ve been represented in Congress by someone who has aligned himself with those who want to throw out the Affordable Care Act. The Trumpcare replacement well could cost a lot of Thornberry’s constituents their health insurance.

I believe he owes them a thorough explanation of why he cast one of the House’s “yes” votes.

political news, State news

One-punch vote abolition closer to reality

Could there be an end in sight for something I consider to be a bane on Texas politics?

Texas House Bill 25 would abolish “one-punch voting” for those who want to vote for one party. I cannot cheer this piece of legislation loudly enough.

The Texas House of Representatives approved HB 25 with an 88-57 vote. It now goes to the state Senate. I do hope senators approve it and send it to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk; and then I want the governor to sign it. If it becomes law, it takes effect in time for the 2020 presidential election.

According to the Texas Tribune: “State Rep. Ron Simmons, R-Carrollton, one of the authors of HB 25, said he filed the measure to foster more educated voters since they’d have to go down the ballot and make a decision on every race. ‘I think it’ll give us better candidates and better elected officials. It won’t have people getting voted out just because of their party identity,’ Simmons told The Texas Tribune on the House floor prior to Friday’s preliminary vote.”

I have yammered for some time — including on this blog — about how much I dislike straight-ticket voting, or more to the point, how much I dislike the notion that voters can just hit straight Republican or straight Democrat — and then walk away from the polling place.

Texas is one of just nine states that allows one-punch voting.

Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mind if voters want to cast ballots for candidates of just one party. In Texas, the predominant party for the past three decades has been the Republican Party. I long have favored the idea of requiring voters to look at their ballots one race at a time before making the decision on who gets their vote.

One-punch voting equates to laziness

Opponents of HB 25 think it could impede voter turnout. One foe is state Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie, who said: “There are a lot of races on the ballot in these general elections, and voting individually takes extra time. Instead of one-punch, you’re asking people to individually vote in dozens of races, perhaps even 100 of them. This can be a real impediment.”

I happen to believe that voting for candidates for public office ought to require some thought and, yes, some time.

For too long in Texas, we’ve seen good candidates get swept out of office because they happen to belong to the “wrong party.” Victims of this phenomenon have been Democrats; prior to that, when Democrats controlled politics in Texas, Republicans fell victim to this electoral travesty.

One-punch voting creates the potential for this kind of political purging to continue. I am acutely aware that the one-punch voting option doesn’t require voters to cast their ballots in that manner. It does, though, tempt many of them to do so. I see nothing unreasonable in removing that temptation.

I applaud Texas House members for taking this important first step. My hope is that that the other legislative chamber follows suit and that Gov. Abbott signs it into law.

local news, political news

City’s political mini-deluge about to end

I’ve wondered from time to time about what it might be like to live in one of those presidential “battleground states,” where candidates flood the local TV airwaves with ads and residents’ mailboxes with campaign circulars.

Living in Texas for the past nine presidential election cycles has inoculated my family from that kind of political browbeating. The presidential candidates haven’t fought for our votes.

Ahh, but then we get to 2017and little ol’ Amarillo has received a tiny smattering of what our battleground-state residents endure every four years.

Amarillo Matters has taken root in our city. It has generated a fair amount of interest in Saturday’s municipal election. Voters who haven’t cast their ballots early are going to show up at polling places to cast their votes for all five City Council seats.

Then the mini-deluge from Amarillo Matters will end.

My doorbell has rung three times during this campaign as Amarillo Matters volunteers have handed out circulars. My mailbox has contained campaign material almost daily for the past two weeks. Today, my wife and I returned from our daily walk through the ‘hood and listened to the tail end of an Amarillo Matters robo-call on our home phone.

I’m glad to see such activity in our city. Amarillo Matters has sought to generate some increased interest in our municipal election, and not just for the City Council. It’s been working as well on behalf of candidates for Amarillo College Board of Regents.

Amarillo Matters has kicked a lot of money into this campaign as well, reportedly spending a significant six-figure amount to back the slate of City Council candidates it has endorsed.

I haven’t heard a lot of grumbling about all this attention, although there’s likely been some muttering under people’s breath around the city. That goes with the territory.

But here comes a dose of bad news.

All this juice from a well-heeled, deep-pocketed political action committee isn’t likely to boost total voter turnout in Amarillo to anything remotely significant. Mayor Paul Harpole, who isn’t running for re-election, said on Panhandle PBS that he projects a turnout of 12,000 to 14,000 voters. Hmm. That’s slightly more than 10 percent of the city’s registered voters.

To be candid, I am far less concerned about whether Amarillo Matters’ slate of candidate wins on Saturday than I am about the dismal turnout we can expect when all the ballots are counted.

Ten-plus percent turnout doesn’t grant bragging rights to anyone.

Thus, Amarillo Matters’ infusion of interest in this campaign has a long way to go to declare victory.

Still, I now have a smidgen of an idea of what occurs in those presidential battleground states. If only it translated to more involvement at the polling place — where it really counts.

national news, political news, religious news

Trump is evangelicals’ ‘dream president’?

Jerry Falwell Jr. attended an executive order signing ceremony today and declared that Donald J. Trump is the “dream president” for the nation’s evangelical Christians.

Wow. Let’s ponder that one.

* Trump has been married three times. I don’t fault him for that, per se. However, he has boasted about cheating on his first two wives.

* The president was riding a bus a dozen years ago with Billy Bush and was overheard telling the “Access Hollywood” host that he grabbed women by their private parts. He said he could get away with that kind of behavior because he is a “celebrity,” a “star.”

* The president has mocked a reporter with a serious physical disability.

* Trump has talked about how he was able to walk in on half-dressed beauty pageant contestants because he owned the pageant.

Today, though, the president signed some executive orders that allows preachers to endorse political candidates from the pulpit. He also signed an order that enables business owners to cite religious objections when they refuse to provide services to, say, gay customers.

He did all this in the name of “religious liberty,” which pleases Falwell, the president of Liberty University.

Thus, evangelicals’ dream has come true. All the other stuff, the boorish behavior, doesn’t matter.

Oh, boy.

local news, political news

No gunfire in Amarillo — get out and vote!

I visited today at lunchtime with Daniel Martinez, a candidate for the Amarillo College Board of Regents — and heard a bit of news about the upcoming local election.

It is that, according to Martinez, about 7,000 voters cast ballots early. Martinez thinks that bodes well for a big turnout when Election Day rolls around on Saturday.

I do not share my friend’s optimistic outlook.

What I think it means, sadly, is that a lot of Amarillo’s voters are casting their ballots early. And that’s it!

Then I watched a video posted on Facebook of an interview with outgoing Mayor Paul Harpole. The mayor said the city is projecting a turnout of 12,000 to 14,000 voters. Let that sink for a moment.

Harpole told Panhandle PBS’s Karen Welch that the city has 104,000 registered voters living here. Amarillo’s population is on the cusp of 200,000 residents.

If Harpole’s projection is correct, that puts the percentage of voter turnout at slightly more than 10 percent.

Hey, let’s stand up and cheer!

On second thought, let’s not!

Harpole then told a story about a couple in Fallujah, Iraq, who made sure to vote while gunfire was erupting just blocks away. The wife handed her infant child to her husband while she voted, Harpole said; she came back out, took the baby, and then her husband went in to cast his ballot.

Harpole then told Welch that Amarillo residents don’t have to face the prospect of getting shot on the street while they vote — which is his way of saying that we have no excuses, none at all, for refusing to have our voices heard in this critical election.

I am running out of ways to urge residents to cast their ballots in these local races. The very idea that nine out of 10 Amarillo residents would sit this election out — and leave these decisions to other residents — means that the democratic process is in danger of going on life support.

medical news, national news, political news

Get set for next fight over health care overhaul

Congressional Republicans kept their vow to vote — no matter what — on repealing the Affordable Care Act.

It was a squeaker, 217 “yes” votes to 213 “no” votes. Every congressional Democrat voted “no,” which gives the minority a faint claim of bipartisanship, as some moderate Republicans joined them in voting against the Trumpcare health bill.

I want to make only a couple of observations about this effort.

First, Republicans yapped and yammered that Democrats shoved the ACA down the GOP’s throats in 2010. The GOP response was to do precisely the same thing to Democrats. Payback is a bitch, right?

The GOP throat-shoving, though, took on a little different tone than what the Democrats did in 2010. President Obama tried to get Republicans to sign on, but was unsuccessful. Donald J. Trump didn’t make that effort; neither did House Speaker Paul Ryan. Oh, no. They relied on their healthy Republican majority to win the day — barely, it turns out — in a now-or-never vote on the House floor.

Second, the initial effort to repeal the ACA and replace it with the American Health Care Act, ran into a Congressional Budget Office “score” that told a grim story of 24 million Americans losing their health insurance under the new plan.

This time the GOP didn’t bother to wait for the CBO to “score” this latest rendition of the replacement bill. Republicans forged ahead anyway. Damn the scoring! Who needs to know how this is going to affect Americans?

Oh, and the polls around the country indicate a growing base of support for the ACA. Hmm. Imagine that. The House of Representatives isn’t exactly representing its constituents.

The AHCA now heads to the Senate, where it faces an even steeper climb than it had in the House. The GOP majority in the upper chamber is pretty skimpy and the Republicans cannot afford to lose any support among their ranks. The initial signs don’t look good for final approval in the Senate.

House Republicans sought to win over reluctant conservatives by sweetening the pie for them; then they assuaged some moderate GOP concerns by tossing in some money to pay for those with pre-existing medical conditions.

What say you, senators?

Now it falls on the Senate to decide what to do with this legislation that doesn’t yet have any analysis on how much it will cost and how many Americans might lose their insurance.

Meanwhile, House Republicans are back-slapping each other like crazy. They said they’d cast that vote to repeal President Obama’s signature domestic achievement.

They got the job done. Now they can go home for their 11-day recess. I would bet real American money they’re going to run into a good bit anger among the home folks.

entertainment news, medical news, national news, political news

Former congressional loudmouth pops off

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Joe Walsh once was known as a loudmouth politician from Illinois.

Now he’s just a former loudmouth pol, who has entered the discussion about health care reform in a most undignified and ironic manner.

Late-night TV comedian Jimmy Kimmel went on the air Monday night and revealed that his newborn son was born with a heart ailment. Nurses detected a problem with the baby, a renowned cardiac surgeon was summoned and he repaired the infant’s heart.

Kimmel gave a heartfelt and tearful testimony that saluted the medical staff at the hospital where little Billy was born — and argued on behalf of efforts to guarantee health insurance for all Americans.

Then came Joe Walsh, who tweeted, “Sorry Jimmy Kimmel: your sad story doesn’t obligate me or anybody else to pay for somebody else’s health care.”

Social media erupted with outrage at Walsh’s insensitive reaction. Walsh is a former Republican lawmaker who once popped off with remarks about Black Lives Matter and President Barack Obama that some folks had interpreted as a threat. Walsh, who’s now a TEA Party activist and a talk-radio host (imagine that), was defeated for re-election.

There’s more — of course.

Walsh also once was caught failing to pay child support for his own children; he reportedly owed about $117,000 in support payments.

Tsk, tsk, tsk …

For this clown to interject himself into a heartwarming story involving an entertainment personality and his family speaks pretty graphically about this individual’s profound lack of character and compassion.

The word “hypocrite” also comes to mind.

national news, political news

Comey didn’t order Hillary to stay out of Wisconsin

I didn’t realize David Axelrod is such a smart aleck.

Axelrod, former President Barack Obama’s trusted political guru, offered a tart response to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s assertions over who is to blame for her stunning election loss in 2016 to Donald J. Trump.

“Jim Comey didn’t tell her not to campaign in Wisconsin after the convention,” said Axelrod on CNN. “Jim Comey didn’t say ‘don’t put any resources into Michigan until the final week of the campaign.'”

Clinton had said earlier this week that Comey, the FBI director, might have torpedoed her campaign by issuing the letter to Congress informing lawmakers that he had some additional information pertaining to the Clinton e-mail controversy.

Yes, the former Democratic presidential nominee took plenty of blame for losing to Trump. But Axelrod’s assessment is on target in that Comey didn’t call the campaign shots that ultimately cost her critical Electoral College votes on election night.

Axelrod added: “She said the words, ‘I’m responsible’, but everything else suggested she doesn’t really feel that way,” he said. “And I don’t think that helps her in the long run.”

The complete history of this amazing election is being written. It no doubt will dish out its share of blame — or credit — to individuals and/or actions that deserve neither.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were the candidates for president. One of them did a lot of things wrong while the other one did many things right.

We can argue ourselves hoarse over our whether the election turned out the right way. Axelrod, though, is correct to admonish Hillary Clinton about shifting responsibility for her loss. She needs to own it — and then leave it at that.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/03/david-axelrod-reacts-hillary-clinton-james-comey-237924