Category Archives: political news

national news, political news

Open the White House visitor logs

Transparency has been tossed into the crapper at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

That’s where the president of the United States hangs out for part of the week; his posh Florida resort appears to be where Donald J. Trump’s heart belongs.

But the White House is the people’s house. The president is just staying there. We own the place. You and I do. It’s ours, man.

Which is why the White House visitor logs need to be opened up to public review, as it was done during the years the Barack Obama family was living there. The White House announced that those logs will be kept secret. The White House brass contends there’s some issue with national security.

Closed logs anger watchdogs

As The Hill reported: “‘It’s disappointing that the man who promised to ‘drain the swamp’ just took a massive step away from transparency by refusing the release the White House visitor logs that the American people have grown accustomed to accessing over the last six years,’ Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said in a statement.

“Bookbinder said the records ‘provide indispensable information about who is seeking to influence the president.'”

Drain the swamp, eh?

The swamp isn’t drained in the least. It remains as infested with special interests and well-heeled fat cats as always. The public has a right to know who is calling on the president, or on his senior staff. The public pays the bill for that big ol’ house and as its landlords, the public has every right to know who’s darkening its doors.

business news, national news, political news

Tax returns, Mr. President … give ’em up

Gosh, I hate talking about Donald John Trump’s tax returns.

Just kidding. No, I don’t.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., says tax-filing time is a good time to see what — if anything — the president is hiding from the American people he governs.

I agree with the Bay State’s senior senator.

We’ve waited long enough to see what precisely is in those returns. Trump has balked long enough at doing what other presidential candidates for 40 years have done, which is to release their complete returns for public inspection.

Trump keeps telling us he can’t release his returns because he’s being audited. The Internal Revenue Service says, in effect, that the president is engaging in a dodge; an audit doesn’t prohibit the returns’ release.

Meanwhile, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has said that any hope of enacting tax reform depends on the president releasing those returns. Sure, that’s hardball politicking. Inquiring minds want to know, especially the minds of those of us who didn’t vote for Trump in 2016.

Time to come clean

I mean, he’s still the president of all Americans. We’re all required to file our taxes. Here in Amarillo, candidates for public office are required to provide full financial disclosure.

The president of the United States of America is not above the law. In this case, even though releasing the returns isn’t a legal requirement, it has been a longstanding custom that’s been accepted as standard operating procedure for all candidates for the presidency.

Sure, many Americans don’t seem to think these returns matter. Others of us, though, think quite the opposite.

Many of us are waiting, Mr. President. Please show us, sir, that you aren’t hiding something.

national news, political news

‘My military’? No, Mr. POTUS, it’s ‘ours’

Some commentators and analysts on MSNBC are getting a bit worked up tonight over Donald J. Trump’s use of the first-person singular pronoun.

Trump was speaking today of the use of the so-called “mother of all bombs” on Islamic State targets in Afghanistan. He referred to “my military” taking charge of the mission and executing it with precision.

My military? Umm, no sir. It’s our military, the people’s military, the nation’s military.

Now, to be fair …

Other presidents have done the same thing, taking direct ownership of the office they occupy. Barack Obama was fond of referring to “my national security team,” or “my vice president,” or “my economic team,” or “my presidency.”

I once challenged the former president’s generous use of that pronoun, trying to remind him that none of it belongs to him personally. I also sought to remind him that every single government employee — and they number in the millions — belong to the taxpayers who pay the bill.

That includes the president of the United States of America.

The message I imparted then still applies to the current president.

“My military”? No, Mr. President. The men and women who defend our nation do not belong to you.

They belong to us. For that matter, Mr. President, so do you.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2014/07/take-ownership-not-possession/

 

local news, political news

Elections provide a valuable education

I listened today to a candidate for the Amarillo City Council tell his audience about the things he has learned about running for public office.

Eddy Sauer is seeking to be elected in Place 3 to succeed incumbent Councilman Randy Burkett, who isn’t seeking re-election.

Sauer gave some fairly standard remarks to the Rotary Club of Amarillo about how a lifelong Amarillo resident can have his eyes opened about the complexities of governing a city of roughly 200,000 residents. He spoke mostly about economic development, speaking intelligently about how the city should continue to seek companies willing to locate here; offer them financial incentives and then seek to ensure that they provide sufficient numbers of new jobs to make the investment worthwhile.

He also spoke of improving “transparency” on the Amarillo Economic Development Corporation.

Yes, the man is learning about the city, about its challenges. Sauer is an impressive fellow who I hope gets elected on May 6.

***

Sauer and I visited for a few minutes before he stood behind the podium. I mentioned to him how elections have been educational to me during more than 22 years living in Amarillo and, for most of that time, commenting on them as a full-time opinion journalist at the Amarillo Globe-News.

Indeed, these municipal elections have managed during every election cycle dating back to my first year here — 1995 — to tell me something about the community I didn’t know previously.

I suspect that is perhaps the most gratifying aspect of these elections. Twenty-two years after settling in at my new post at the G-N, I’m still learning about this community.

Before you ask what precisely have I learned, I must tell you that I cannot define it in tangible terms. Early on I learned about the landmark 1989 city election that resulted in a dramatic turnover of the five-member City Commission; the local economy was in deep trouble, the city had been feuding with leading business leaders; folks were angry.

By the time I arrived at my post, much of that anger had subsided. The city, though, had plenty to teach this newcomer to the Texas Panhandle.

I’ve been learning a little more every odd-numbered year when the City Council’s five members are selected by city voters.

Think, too, about this: Given that Texas elects its Legislature every even-numbered year — as do the state’s 254 counties — we residents get a chance to be “educated” every single year.

I told Sauer that even my perch in the peanut gallery — given that I no longer “work for a living” — provides me with an election-year opportunity to learn something new about Amarillo.

This, I suppose, is my way of revealing my biggest takeaway from these local elections. It happened in Beaumont, when my wife and sons and I first moved to Texas back in 1984. I can go back even to my first full-time journalism job in Oregon City, Ore., which bears little resemblance to my familiar surroundings in big-city Portland.

The upcoming election is likely to teach me more, still, about Amarillo. Indeed, elections can provide teachable moments if we all keep an open mind.

The good news is that the learning curve isn’t nearly so steep these days. Still, it never will level out. Nor should it.

media news, national news, political news

Spicer earns dubious place in flackery annals

As if we needed proof of the seemingly obvious …

Sean Spicer’s performance this week has confirmed what many Americans have long suspected, which is that he’ll go down in history as one of the most inept White House press flacks in the history of the office.

My goodness. How does one calculate the impact of this man’s performance as he sought to clarify, re-clarify, and then re-re-clarify a statement he made about the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons on civilians?

However, at another level, I feel a bit badly for Spicer. He is merely representative of the most incompetent presidential administration I’ve ever witnessed. Hey, I’m now 67 years of age. I’ve been watching these transitions with some interest now for quite some time. I’ve witnessed presidents assemble governments quickly in the wake of intense national tragedy and national scandal. None of them compares with the bungling boobery  we’ve witnessed with the Donald John Trump administration.

Spicer this week demonstrated precisely the muddled messaging that occurs with startling regularity.

During his daily press briefing, Spicer said — during the week of Passover, for crying out loud! — that Adolf Hitler didn’t use “chemical weapons” on millions of Holocaust victims. Huh?

He implied that Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad’s gassing of civilians somehow was worse than what Hitler did to European Jews prior to and during World War II.

OK, then he backed off of that … more or less. He said he meant to acknowledge that Hitler gassed millions of people, but was comparing it to Assad’s use of aircraft to drop chemical weapons on “innocent victims.” OK. Then, did he mean that the Holocaust victims weren’t, uh, innocent?

No, that’s not what he meant … he said.

Throughout all this stumbling and bumbling, he dropped in the term “Holocaust center” to refer to the Nazi death camps erected throughout eastern and central Europe during World War II.

Social media exploded.

Finally, Spicer spoke to NBC News and offered a fulsome apology for the mistakes he made. I give him great credit for refusing to say, “If I offended anyone … “, which I consider to be the phoniest form of apology one can offer. He took ownership of his inarticulateness.

He came to the White House after serving as press secretary for the Republican National Committee. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt when Trump selected him. Then, during his first press confrontation, he excoriated the media for reporting that Trump’s inaugural crowd was far smaller than the one that welcome Barack Obama in January 2009.

Actually, young man, the crowd was much smaller. There was no need to scold anyone in the media for reporting the truth. Thus, we heard the term “alternative facts” presented for the first time by another White House adviser, the inimitable Kellyanne Conway.

The president keeps telling us that things are going swimmingly at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., when in fact they are not. The president cannot fill key staff jobs; critical political appointments haven’t been made. So, Mr. President, stop insulting our intelligence by repeating such outright falsehoods about your “fine-tuned machine.”

Now we hear that the annual White House Easter Egg Roll — set for Monday — is in trouble because the administration lacks the staff to assemble an event that has become a staple of first families’ occupancy of the White House.

Speaking of first families, where is the first lady, Melania Trump? Isn’t it her responsibility to put this event together?

I’m actually beginning to pity Sean Spicer. He delivered a clunker of a performance this week. It’s tough being the face and the voice of a presidential administration that doesn’t have a clue.

national news, political news

Nunes surveillance claim shot down in flames

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Here it is, yet again.

Members of Congress appear to have disproved Rep. Devin Nunes’s contention that someone spied on Donald Trump’s campaign. At the very least they have cast serious doubt on the things Nunes said about in response to Trump’s ridiculous/slanderous assertion that Barack Obama “ordered” the wire tap on Trump’s campaign.

Nunes has removed himself as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, which is supposed to investigate whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russian government officials to influence the 2016 presidential election.

That’s the good news, in my humble view.

The bad news is that the controversy surrounding so-called surveillance will continue to swirl around the Trump administration. It will swirl until we know with absolute certainty whether there was collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russian government hackers.

The president can bring this controversy to a close as well by disclosing what he knew about his campaign’s activity and when he knew it.

This story will not go away

There’s also the angle about Susan Rice, President Obama’s national security adviser. Trump suggested Rice might have broken the law by revealing the names of individuals who might have been tracked by U.S. intelligence agencies. The lawmakers who have slammed the lid on Nunes’s assertion about the surveillance also seem to have debunked any notion that Rice did anything wrong.

The murkiness of this story only is worsening.

We need clarity. Now.

national news, political news

Trump keeps teeing it up

I am not going to join the critics’ chorus that is yapping about Donald J. Trump’s penchant for golf.

I defended Barack Obama’s golf outings even as Trump was criticizing him. Why? The president is never off the clock. He should be allowed to play golf on occasion, which Obama did.

Now … fast-forward to the present day.

The current president spent a lot of time campaigning for the office that he wouldn’t have time for golf. He’d be “too busy working for you.” He wouldn’t take a lot of time to hit the links. He would stay on the job, in the White House, in the Oval Office, in the Situation Room. He would spend his time “making great deals.”

That’s what the president said while campaigning for the office he now occupies.

Has he delivered on that key campaign promise? Umm. No. He hasn’t.

He has spent 17 of his 81 days as president at Mar-a-Lago, the ritzy resort Trump owns. He’s been playing golf. A lot of golf.

My beef isn’t that he’s playing golf, per se, mind you. My concern is that Donald Trump is breaking his word. He promised Americans he’d keep his shoulder to the wheel of running the government. He’d be diligent in luring all those jobs that have been pilfered to overseas markets.

I know this is a surprise, but I believe the president lied to us. He made a campaign promise he had no intention of honoring.

national news, political news

Congressman gets a taste of retribution

What in the world do you make of this?

U.S. Rep. Joe “You Lie!” Wilson went home to his South Carolina congressional district, sought to conduct a town hall meeting with constituents, and was given a healthy dose of the treatment he tossed at then-President Barack Obama.

Wilson, a Republican, infamously shouted “You lie!” at the president during a televised speech to a joint session of Congress. He received a stern look from then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Joe Biden at that heated moment.

Wilson received bipartisan scolding

As Mother Jones reported: “In 2009, Wilson was the subject of bipartisan condemnation after he interrupted Obama’s address to Congress by calling him a liar when the president said his proposed health care plan wouldn’t cover undocumented immigrants. The congressman was forced to apologize for violating congressional decorum with the heckling, but he benefited in the end: Shortly after the incident, an aide confirmed Wilson had raised more than $1 million in campaign contributions thanks to the outburst.”

Well, he was telling constituents this week about how hard he has worked to deter violence against women. The response from the crowd? A chorus of “You lie!”

Wilson stepped away from the microphone as the chants continued, which was something the president couldn’t do when the congressman shouted the epithet while sitting among his congressional colleagues.

Payback can be a bitch. Can’t it, congressman?

local news, political news, religious news, State news

Texas Senate deciding whether to defy U.S. Supreme Court

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I cannot believe the Texas Senate is considering a bill such as the one it is considering.

Senators are debating whether to allow county clerks to deny gay couples a marriage license.

Let’s see. How is this supposed to work?

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled two years ago in a landmark decision that gay marriage is protected under the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. It ruled that every state in the country should allow same-sex couples to marry, which requires them to obtain the legal documentation necessary to become married — just as straight couples are required to do.

The highest court in the nation — to which Texas belongs — ruled that gay marriage is legal.

County clerks, thus, are required to obey the oath they take to honor the laws of the land. Isn’t that right? A handful of county clerks quit their posts rather than perform the duties required of them as a result of the court ruling. Those who remain, though, must fulfill the oath they take — regardless, it seems to me, of their own religious conviction.

Amarillo straddles a border separating Randall and Potter counties. Renee Calhoun and Julie Smith, who serve as county clerks in Randall and Potter counties, respectively, both declared they would issue licenses to gay couples who requested them.

Given the political nature of this discussion, I feel compelled to note that both Calhoun and Smith are Republicans. A healthy majority of Republicans are inclined to oppose gay marriage as a matter of principle, relying on their belief in biblical assertions that marriage should be performed only between one man and one woman.

To my way of thinking, there shouldn’t even be a bill considered in the Texas Legislature that would give county clerks an “out” if they chose to deny gay couples a license to marry.

The Supreme Court of the United States, acting as the final arbiter on these constitutional matters, has decided the issue once and for all. Gay marriage is legal and county clerks ought to be required to do the job to which they swore an oath to perform faithfully.

I must stipulate that they swear their allegiance to the Constitution, as secular a governing document as any ever enacted.

International news, national news, political news

Building ‘The Wall’ faces mountain of obstacles

Donald J. Trump’s mouth provides an endless supply of nonsense.

The wall he intends to build to keep an imagined horde of criminals and terrorists from entering the United States of America provides a stark example of his “ready, fire, aim” approach to public policy.

The New York Times, in an editorial published Sunday, took note of the enormously complicated task associated with building a wall across our nation’s southern border.

Did the Republican candidate for president consider any of them before riding down the escalator to announce his candidacy in the summer of 2015? Umm. Nope. No way, man.

The Times asks:

“How do you build a wall along the 1,200 miles of the Rio Grande, the Texas stretch of border? Do you put it on our side and abandon the river to Mexico, or seize Mexican territory for it, or put it in the middle of the river, or do some zigzag compromise? What do you do then about a treaty requiring that both countries have open access to the river?

“How do you make a concrete wall see-through, so smugglers aren’t invisible to the Border Patrol?

“How do you get private landowners to go along? What about the Tohono O’odham Indians, whose reservation straddles the border in Arizona and who want no part of any wall on their sacred land?

How do you wall out deep tunnels, drones and catapults? What about the tons of drugs that pass through existing ports? Did you know that drug cartels have ships and submarines? What happens when drug bales start coming ashore in San Diego, or over from Saskatchewan?