Category Archives: political news

local news, political news

A perk awaits semi-retired journalist

Now that I’m no longer a full-time journalist, I plan to accept an invitation I otherwise might  have declined.

I look forward to this event.

On New Year’s Day, Potter County Judge-elect Nancy Tanner is going to take office as the presiding officer of the county’s Commissioners Court. I’ll stand and applaud when she takes her oath of office.

Reporter Decorum Rule No. 1 prohibits such outward displays of support from the media. Reporters, editors and opinion writers are supposed to maintain a public appearance of neutrality. I couldn’t cheer for speechmakers at the two national Republican presidential conventions I attended — New Orleans in 1988 and Houston in 1992.

I did, though, attend the Democratic convention in Charlotte in 2012, but that was about a week after I had been “reorganized” out of my job at the newspaper where I worked for nearly 18 years. I had obtained press credentials for the convention and planned to cover it, but since I was a “civilian” when I got there, I was allowed to cheer.

Back to the present. I’m still a civilian. Sure, I might have attended the swearing-in as a journalist, but I’d have to put on my best professional face and demeanor.

Nancy Tanner was elected county judge this year in a clear statement of good sense and reason from Potter County’s voters. I am quite glad she won and I’ve stated so already on this blog and to whomever I’ve spoken about it since her victory.

Tanner sent me an invitation to attend the swearing-in at the Santa Fe Building in downtown Amarillo. Barring a catastrophic illness or some other unforeseen emergency, I plan to be there. I am likely to give the new judge a hug and will wish her well as she embarks on this new phase of her public service career.

Yes, indeed. Semi-retirement does have its perks.

 

International news, political news

No surprise at GOP balking over Cuba proposal

2 Comments

Imagine my huge surprise that two leading Florida politicians, both Republicans, would be critical of President Obama’s decision to begin normalizing relations with Cuba.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, whose parent fled Cuba to the United States, and former Gov. Jeb Bush, a probable candidate for president in 2016, both have come out against the president’s plan.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/alan-gross-released-113635.html?hp=c2_3

I get it. Really, I do.

They’re appealing to their home state political base, which includes a seriously anti-communist Cuban-American community that cannot stomach the thought of their communist former homeland getting any kind of overture from the United States.

OK, I’m just kidding about the surprise.

Obama is going to hear more angst from other Republicans. Some of them are going to openly oppose any effort to end the economic embargo because they, too, are afraid of the party’s base.

The effort got kick started when Cuba released Alan Gross from five years of wrongful imprisonment. In return, the United States sent three Cuban prisoners back to the island nation.

Given that Cuba poses zero threat militarily to the United States and that regular, run-of-the-mill Cubans deserve a chance to see their country improve its economic standing when the U.S. embargo is lifted, the decision seemed prudent and compassionate.

Yet some in Congress only heard part of the president’s remarks today. He said he intends to keep pressuring the Cubans to improve human rights and that the Havana government must allow people to express themselves freely. Did I hear the president correctly on that? I believe so.

Why didn’t Rubio and Bush hear it? Oh, that’s right. One is a probable candidate for president and the other, Rubio, might jump in, too.

An upcoming political campaign appears to be hard on politicians’ hearing.

 

political news, State news

Perry unaffected by Jeb Bush's plans

It’s a fair question to ask of the Texas governor.

Will the announcement by Jeb Bush to “actively explore” a presidential campaign in 2016 affect your own plans, your own timetable for making a decision?

Rick Perry’s answer. No change in plans.

Did anyone expect him to say anything else?

https://wordpress.com/read/post/feed/12395410/576002300/

The Republican field is starting to take some form with the former Florida governor’s announcement of an exploratory operation getting started. Many other Republicans are pondering their next move. Bush’s announcement might alter some decision-making and announcements — but not Perry’s?

An adviser to Perry told the San Antonio Express-News: “It definitely won’t affect the governor’s decision-making process,” the adviser said, adding that Perry plans to make his decision in the spring.

I doubt strongly that Perry and Bush would target the same GOP bloc of primary voters. Perry is a member of long standing of the TEA party wing of the GOP. Bush isn’t. He’s more mainstream, although the two men do share a compassionate view of immigrants, particularly those who are here illegally. Indeed, immigration is the one area where I support Perry’s agenda.

We shouldn’t expect Rick Perry to change a thing with regard to his own presidential campaign planning. He’s not wired that way. Bush will do whatever he plans to do and Perry will march ahead — to his own cadence.

 

 

political news

'Officially exploring' means Jeb is in

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Take this to the bank. It’s a lock. Done.

Jeb Bush is running for president of the United States in 2016.

Yes, another Bush is, um, beating the bushes for votes. He wants to become the third member of his immediate family to occupy the White House. George H.W. “Poppy” Bush served from 1989 until 1993; big bro George W. served from 2001 to 2009.

The Bush “brand” is well established, correct?

And what do the first two Bushes have in common? They presided over an economy that tanked.

It Poppy’s case, the economy cost him re-election in 1992. As for W, the “Great Recession” caused untold grief for millions of Americans who watched their retirement investments vanish into thin air.

OK, were either recessions the direct result of the men’s presidencies? As I’ve noted before, presidents don’t deserve all the blame when things go wrong any more than they deserve all the credit for when things go right.

But these events happened on their respective watches.

And that is the “brand” that Jeb will have to overcome.

Voters’ memories are long, you know?

But Jeb Bush has a record of his own as a former Florida governor. It’s a decent one at that. The state ran well under his governorship. And I do like his moderate stand on immigration reform, which is natural, given that he’s married to a Mexican woman.

He shouldn’t take too seriously the notion that a Republican moderate is doomed to lose the next election. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said as much. But hey, the Cruz Missile is considering a presidential run as well and no one with an ounce of sanity ever is going to suggest Cruz is a moderate on anything.

Bush is yet another old shoe set to run for president. The Democrats have their own in Hillary Rodham Clinton.

My own GOP preference remains Mitt Romney, who’s now sounding as though he, too, will start “actively exploring” a campaign of his own.

This will be fun to watch, yes?

 

national news, political news

Can Sen. Warren actually defeat Hillary?

OK, let’s be clear that while the media routinely refer to a former secretary of state as “Hillary,” no one is going to call the senior senator from Massachusetts “Liz.”

One prominent conservative columnist, though, does believe that Sen. Elizabeth Warren has an honest chance of defeating Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2016 race for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/david-brooks-elizabeth-warren-113594.html?hp=l3_4

New York Times columnist David Brooks believes Warren has tapped into the Democrats’ populist/progressive base. She is taking on the banking industry, a favorite target of those progressives.

Brooks isn’t predicting a Warren nomination, he’s merely stating that he thinks she’s got a puncher’s chance.

Pardon me if I seem a bit skeptical.

Money wins these things. Hillary Clinton has tons of it in the bank and even more of it awaiting her the moment she announces her candidacy. The former secretary, senator and first lady can thank the Supreme Court for that advantage, given its ruling that well-heeled political action groups can give unlimited amounts of money to campaigns.

I’ll hand it to Brooks, though, for going out on a limb.

One more thing. Warren said today she isn’t running for president. She didn’t vow to stay out of the 2016 race until the end, just that she isn’t running. That means today. Tomorrow? It hasn’t arrived yet.

It’s still Hillary Clinton’s nomination to squander.

 

medical news, national news, political news

Senate approves surgeon general … finally!

For the first time in I don’t know how long, the United States has a top doctor.

He is Vivek Murthy, who today was approved by the U.S. Senate to become the nation’s next surgeon general.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/senate-approves-obama-pick-for-surgeon-general/ar-BBgQAMd

Despite his sparkling medical credentials and the work he has done to combat HIV/AIDS, senators had held up his nomination because he has spoken out against gun violence, calling it a public health issue.

Imagine that. A physician wanting to control gun violence because bullets injure and kill people.

His confirmation vote today was 51-43, with Republicans overwhelmingly opposing him because he is no friend of gun-rights advocates. Some Democrats joined their Republican colleagues in opposing Dr. Murthy.

One of them was Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who issued a statement opposing the doctor because, according to Manchin, his political views muddled his medical policy. I understand why Manchin joined other senators in opposing Murthy. It’s because he’s scared of gun-rights groups such as the National Rifle Association and the potent political power they possess.

That doesn’t make it right.

Vivek Murthy is perfectly qualified to serve as surgeon general. His views on gun control are well-known, but they do not infringe on his ability to help set medical policy or recommend measures to promote good health on behalf of the Obama administration.

Indeed, had their been a surgeon general on board during the recent Ebola mini-scare, there might not have been a need for the president to appoint an “Ebola czar” to coordinate the administration’s response to the disease’s arrival in the United States.

OK, so that task is done. We have a surgeon general. It’s good to know that at least 51 senators had the guts to vote in favor of hiring a chief medical officer to advise the nation on how to take better care of its health.

 

political news, State news

Abbott getting good early reviews

Texas Gov.-elect Greg Abbott is getting some good reviews from at least one unlikely source.

They’re coming from Texas Monthly blogger/editor Paul Burka, who salutes Abbott for (a) setting a constructive agenda for the state and (b) selecting a team of grownups to advise him.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/finally-real-governor

Burka, of course, isn’t always kind to Republican politicians, given the sharply rightward shift the GOP has taken during the past decade or longer.

I share some of what Burka says about Abbott. However, I’ll withhold further comment on the new governor after I see how he handles the TEA party pressure he’s going to get from Republicans who comprise super-majorities in both legislative chambers.

The TEA party politician in chief is going to be the lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, who will preside over the Texas Senate for the next four years.

Rest assured that Patrick will have his eyes focused sharply on Abbott, pressuring him to keep tacking to the right on spending and perhaps even on some social issues near and dear to TEA party followers’ hearts.

Some folks are suggesting that Patrick might challenge Abbott in four years if the governor doesn’t govern the way he wants.

How will Abbott respond to the pressure that many of us think will come? He can remind Patrick that he — Abbott — is the governor and that the governor speaks for the state.

Lt. Gov. Patrick might not see it that way.

Hang tough, Gov. Abbott.

 

political news

It's getting even messier on Capitol Hill

Winston Churchill had it exactly right when he sought to describe a democratic form of government.

He lamented its messiness and inefficiency when he said: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”

I wish he was here today to see what’s transpiring on Capitol Hill. Republicans are fighting among themselves in a TEA party vs. establishment conflict. Now the Democrats have begun cannibalizing each other in a progressive vs. centrist fight.

At the center of it all is a $1.1 trillion spending bill that extremists in either party don’t like, for differing reasons, obviously.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/elizabeth-warren-budget-cromnibus-2016-elections-113561.html?hp=t4_r

Just as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has become the face of the TEA party insurgency within the Republican Party, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has assumed the Democratic mantle of gadfly in chief.

They both have at least one thing in common. They’re freshmen legislators. Neither of them has much Capitol Hill seasoning under the belts. Cruz is more of a loudmouth. Warren doesn’t bellow her dislike of Democratic comprises, but she’s becoming a tiger in the Senate.

Warren has become the liberals’ latest best hope for a possible challenge to prohibitive Democratic presidential favorite Hillary Rodham Clinton. They see Warren as a spokeswoman for the common man and woman who distrusts the power brokers who are lining up behind Clinton’s still-unannounced presidential candidacy.

Cruz, meanwhile, has become the darling of the conservative movement within his own party. Will he challenge, say, Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination?

Let’s think about this for a moment: Cruz and Warren both catch fire enough to snatch their parties’ nomination from the favorites. Clinton lost in 2008 to a young senator with zero name ID nationally. Barack Obama went on to win the presidency in a near-landslide and then score a decisive re-election victory four years later. Will history repeat itself? I doubt it — for now.

As for Cruz, the GOP establishment will fight him tooth and nail if he keeps roiling the waters, demanding government shutdowns and insisting on outcomes that won’t occur.

Our form of representative democracy, Sir Winston, is about to get a whole lot messier.

 

political news, Uncategorized

This story went untold: Edwin Edwards's loss

While most of the U.S. political press was fixated on the U.S. Senate race in Louisiana, another contest ended and virtually no one cared about its conclusion.

Except me.

The Sixth Congressional District race featured a contest between Republican Garret Graves and Democrat Edwin Edwards. Yes, that Edwin Edwards. The former governor and former prison inmate.

He once was the state’s governor and served also in Congress, representing the state’s Seventh District. Edwards also was, shall we say, one of the more colorful politicians ever to serve Louisiana, a state known for colorful pols. Huey Long might have written the book on political flamboyance, but ol’ Cajun Edwin wrote a chapter, maybe two, in that book.

Edwards wasn’t your run-of-the-mill character. He was proud of the trouble he kept finding. Edwards once said (reportedly) that the only way he’d ever lose an election was to be caught frolicking with a “dead girl or a live boy.” (Maybe it was the other way around, but you get the idea.) Another quote attributed to Edwards is that Louisianans “don’t expect their politicians to be crooked, they demand it of them.”

I had the pleasure of watching his 1991 campaign for Louisiana governor against Ku Klux Klansman David Duke, who was the Republican nominee that year. I attended a couple of political events in southwestern Louisiana back when I was working for the Beaumont Enterprise. Edwards crushed Duke that year in a landslide.

Seven years later, he was indicted and then convicted of several counts of racketeering, mail fraud, extortion and money laundering. He spent two years in a federal lockup in Fort Worth. Yeah, he’s a prince of a guy.

Well, he wanted back into public life. He’s 80-plus years old now, a bit past his prime, no doubt.

I was pulling for him to score an upset. If nothing else, the House of Representatives could use a little proverbial color in its ranks. Edwards would have provided it — and then some.

 

 

national news, political news

Cruz doesn't play well with GOP 'team'

You just have to love the way Sen. Ted Cruz is antagonizing his fellow Senate Republicans.

They want to finish a budget deal so they can go home for Christmas, finish their shopping, kick off their shoes and relax with their families.

What does the freshman lawmaker from Texas do? He launches a procedural move that keeps the Senate in session through the weekend because, by golly, he wants to undercut President Obama’s executive action on immigration.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/ted-cruz-does-it-again-113560.html?ml=po

His Republican pals, even some of his TEA party allies, are having none of it.

What gives with this showboating grandstander?

Oh, I forgot. He wants to run for president of the United States eventually and he might jump into the 2016 race. It’s all about Cruz. Forget that the government needs money to function, you know, do things like entertain visitors who visit our parks and do perform certain essential services that citizens demand.

As Politico reports, the GOP leadership is unhappy with this new guy: “Senior Republicans say there’s a problem with Cruz’s strategy: The GOP lacks the votes to stop Obama on immigration now, the $1.1 trillion spending package was speeding to passage, and they won’t resort to shutting down the government to mount their objections. Plus, the weekend session could allow Obama to get even more of his nominees confirmed.”

According to Politico, some Republican senators are openly angry with the Cruz Missile. Even fellow TEA party advocate, Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., is ticked off. So is Susan Collins, R-Maine. Oh, and how about the incoming Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.?

Suffice to say that McConnell is likely to have a few four-letter words with the young Lone Star blowhard.

Keep yammering, Ted. Some of your fellow Texans — such as me — are enjoying this sideshow.