Category Archives: State news

local news, political news, State news

Cruz seeks to rebrand himself … yeah, right

Rafael Edward Cruz, aka Ted Cruz, is trying to pull off the biggest rebranding effort in U.S. Senate history.

The Republican firebrand now calls himself a “bipartisan” member of the Senate, citing his working relationship and friendship (if you dare believe that) with leading Senate Democrats.

It’s a joke, I’m tellin’ ya. Except that I ain’t laughing at it … except perhaps in derision.

Cruz is in for another tough re-election fight, this time against Democratic U.S. Rep. Colin Allred of Dallas, who — according to many leading polls — is in a dead heat with the two-term senator. Cruz was first elected in 2012, then won a bitter re-election battle in 2018 against former Rep. Beto O’Rourke by about 3 percentage points.

Ted Cruz angles for a bipartisan rebrand | The Texas Tribune

Allred, serving his second term in the House, has established a bipartisan reputation in the lower chamber and says Cruz’s effort is a bald-faced sham. Allred told the Texas Tribune: “I don’t think Ted Cruz is fooling anybody,” Allred said. “He spent 12 years being the most divisive — and proudly so — partisan warrior in the United States. And I think it’s kind of laughable actually that at this point, when he’s in a close race, that he wants to now stress, ‘Oh, actually I have been working in a bipartisan way.’”

He’s nothing like the bipartisan statesman he is portraying himself to be. Recall how he filibustered in the Senate in trying to kill the Affordable Care Act. He has been a front-row election denier, questioning the validity of the 2020 presidential election that gave us Joe Biden as president. He has been virtually silent about the 1/6 assault on our government and has endorsed the 45th POTUS’s bid to win back the White House after losing to President Biden in 2020.

According to the Tribune: “When I first arrived in the Senate 12 years ago, there was such a thing as moderate Democrats. They existed. You could work them,” Cruz said at the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Texas Policy Summit last month. “There aren’t any left. The Democrats, they hate Trump so much their brains have melted, and what’s happened is they have gone crazy off the edge to the left.”

Now he wants us to believe he’s willing to work with Democrats whose “brains have melted”?

Hah!

local news, political news, State news

House speaker is no ‘liberal’ … period!

I need to clear the air on a Texas politician I do not know personally, but who is someone I trust implicitly to run a state legislative chamber with conscience and competence.

House Speaker Dade Phelan, a Beaumont Republican, has become a prime target of the Club for Growth, a national right-wing political action committee that aims to spend $4 million in ads to defeat the legislator who is in the midst of a runoff election.

The Texas Tribune reports: “From failing to support school choice to allowing radical liberal Democrats to chair committees, Speaker Phelan is a certified RINO with a long record, and he will be held accountable by the voters in the runoff,” said David McIntosh, president of Club for Growth’s Super PAC.

Phelan is nothing of the sort that Club for Growth describes. The speaker let his Republican colleagues vote their conscience — and their constituents’ conscience — in opposing Gov. Greg Abbott’s dream of siphoning off public education money to a voucher plan that would enable parents to enroll their children in private schools.

Why the opposition from Republican legislators? Because they represent House districts that depend mightily on the strength of the public school systems that serve their constituents.

Why is that worthy of the attacks that Club for Growth and other hardline right-wingers plan to hurl at the speaker? I don’t see it.

Club for Growth wades into Texas primary battles | The Texas Tribune

As the Tribune reports: Over two regular legislative sessions, the House under Phelan has passed some of the most conservative legislation in the chamber’s history, including allowing permitless carry of handguns and a near-total ban on abortion. Phelan has come under particular criticism from many within his party for the House’s failure last year to approve a school voucher bill favored by Abbott.

Dade Phelan clearly considers himself to be a conservative. I guess he is not conservative enough to suit the one-issue zealots who think it’s OK to gut our public school system.

education news, State news

School vouchers: bad deal!

Gov. Greg Abbott keeps spitting in the faces of what should be his most ardent constituency, the rural Republicans who vote overwhelmingly to keep the GOP governor in office.

That’s right. He continues to push for his school voucher plan that would take money from public school districts and give Texans the choice of sending their children to private schools.

Why is that such a spitter? Because rural Republican legislators have been arguing against the school voucher plan because of the negative impact it would have on public school systems that are the heart and soul of so many rural communities.

Public schools so often in Texas are the center of social life in many towns. GOP legislators know it better than anyone, which is why they have been battling with the governor over his desire to rob the school systems of money they need.

Abbott said that pro-voucher legislative candidates fared well in the March primary this month. He said the state is “two votes away” from making the voucher plan law. He is urging Republicans to put his plan over the top in the Texas House by electing just two more pro-voucher Republicans.

According to the Texas Tribune: “We are now at 74 votes in favor of school choice in the state of Texas. Which is good, but 74 does not equal 76,” Abbott said, referring to the number of votes he needs to pass the bill into law. “We need two more votes.”

Greg Abbott says Texas close to passing vouchers | The Texas Tribune

He tried to get the measure enacted through four special legislative sessions after the 2023 Legislature adjourned this past May. He failed every time.

This effort disgusts me, as a taxpaying Texas resident who sent his own children through public schools. They received fine educations, earned their college degrees and have become productive members of this great state’s population.

Therefore, I am going to root against the effort to put Gov. Abbott’s notion over the top.

local news, political news, State news

Non-GOP observers feeling the pain

The fight that is developing in Texas between non-believers of certain politicians and those who adhere to their every proclamation gives us non-Republicans considerable angst.

How come? Because I, as one of them, find myself rooting for the non-believers in their scrap with those who follow the will of the crooks who happen to hold high public office.

I want to point directly to the troubles that continue to dog Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The AG has taken dead aim at several pols who had the temerity to favor his impeachment in the House. His slate of candidates in this month’s Republican Party primary did pretty well.

One of Paxton’s “enemies” hails from a city I once called home. He is House Speaker Dade Phelan of Beaumont. Phelan faces a runoff against some political newbie, a guy named David Covey. Paxton recruited Covey to run against Phelan. He finished first in the GOP primary, but the two of them are headed for a runoff to see who gets the nomination. Covey finished first and Phelan finished second, but Covey didn’t get the 50% margin he needed to win outright.

I am rooting for Phelan to win the runoff. Not that I care about his politics, per se. I just favor the stance he took in voting to impeach the crooked AG and the manner in which he conducted the House proceedings that led to Paxton’s impeachment. Phelan is a conservative and, frankly, not my ideal politician. Yet the AG refers to him as the “liberal speaker.” What a fu**ing crock!

This intraparty squabbling is playing out in states across the country. I drive through Collin County, where I live, and I see signs for politicians proclaiming themselves to be a “conservative Republican” running for office. How do they define “conservative”? Everyone’s a conservative Republican, yes? You have one conservative Republican running against another of the same ilk. How does a GOP voter choose?

The election season is playing itself out a little at a time. Those of us who sit on the sidelines watching this GOP internecine battle being fought are left to cheer silently for those who respect the system and who put the law above party loyalty.

local news, political news, State news

‘Will of the House … ‘

Pete Laney’s name comes into my head when I think of the Texas speaker of the House of Representatives.

Laney is a Hale Center cotton farmer and businessman who once served as speaker … until Republicans took control of the Legislature. Then he got the boot prior to the 2003 Legislature.

One of Laney’s governing principles was to “let the will of the House” dictate the flow of legislation. He chose to avoid exerting the considerable power he possessed. My memory of the latest Democrat to hold the speaker’s gavel came to mind as I watched the current speaker, Republican Dade Phelan of Beaumont, seek to fend off an intraparty challenge from a first-time candidate named David Covey.

Phelan and Covey are headed for a runoff after neither man failed to win 50% plus one vote in the GOP primary. Covey finished first and Phelan finished second. Covey was endorsed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Why the AG endorsement? Because the “will of the House” produced an impeachment of the AG, who then was acquitted in the Senate trial.

Paxton is so angry at Phelan that he recruited Covey to run against the speaker who, by almost anyone’s reckoning, is a traditional GOP conservative.

Phelan has sought to tout the conservative legislation that the House has approved on his watch. That doesn’t matter to Paxton, who — along with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — calls Phelan a “liberal” speaker. They make me want to laugh — and then vomit!

Pete Laney established a reasonable template for how the Texas House speaker should conduct business. The House’s will resulted in an overwhelming impeachment vote on the way Paxton has performed as AG.

Paxton is angry that Phelan presided over a House of Representatives that saw fit to do its constitutional duty and rise up to effectively condemn the attorney general’s conduct.

I don’t know Phelan, nor do I know much about him. I know that he is the son of a prominent Beaumont developer who I did meet back when I worked in the Golden Triangle. I don’t know Covey, either, other than he is running for the first public office he has sought.

If the voters of Phelan’s legislative district have any brains, they’ll reject the trashy notion of replacing him just because he followed the path blazed by one of his predecessors as speaker.

He let the “will of the House” do its job.

environmental news, State news

Yes on DST!

My man cave wall calendar caught my eye this morning as I was getting my day started.

It told me that on March 10 we return to Daylight Saving Time. My first reaction? Why can’t we just make it a permanent feature of our calendar? No need to switch to Standard Time in the fall and then back to DST in the spring.

We go through this drill every year. We switch back and forth and every … single … year we hear the same gripes from those who bitch about their body clocks needing adjustment. How they cannot get used to the extra hour of daylight in the evening or having to “fall back” in the autumn.

Personally, I never have had a problem with switching to Daylight Time and then back to Standard Time. However, if we’re going to keep bitching about doing it, my own preference would be to keep the Daylight Saving Time as a permanent fixture.

I like the extended daylight in the late spring and summer months. As for the fall and winter months, well … I wouldn’t care. It gets darker earlier in that time of the year.

The Texas Legislature a couple of sessions ago toyed with the idea of asking Texans what they preferred. The proposed resolution would have placed three issues on the ballot: Keep it as it is; permanent DST; or permanent Standard Time. I was prepared to vote for permanent Daylight Saving Time … but then the Legislature couldn’t get its crap together in time to put the issue on the ballot.

Maybe the 2025 Legislature can get organized early enough when it convenes in January to enable us to decide what we want to do. I know that’s a big ask, given the nature of our Legislature and the idiocy that seems to govern the legislative flow at times.

I’ll hope for the best. Meantime, I am going to enjoy Daylight Saving Time when it arrives in a couple of weeks.

local news, State news

Censure House speaker … for what?

For the life of me I cannot understand what in the world has gotten into the noggins of many Texas Republicans these days.

Now the state Republican Party has censured one of their own, House Speaker Dade Phelan of Beaumont, because he didn’t stop the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton this past year.

Have these people lost their MAGA-muddled minds? Have they all gone ’round the bend? Have they all swilled the MAGA Kool-Aid offered by the former POTUS, the guy who has called for Phelan to resign from the House, even though he doesn’t know a damn thing about how Texas politics works?

Phelan presided over Paxton’s impeachment, which occurred after a House committee recommended the AG be impeached because of the shabby way he runs his office. The House voted overwhelmingly to impeach Paxton, but then the Senate acquitted him in a trial that lasted about a week.

The state GOP is still chapped over the impeachment. The censure is being fueled by the MAGA wing of the Texas GOP

To be clear, I want to stipulate a couple of things about Phelan. I don’t know the fellow, even though I lived and worked in Beaumont for nearly 11 years. I only was casually acquainted with Phelan’s father, an uber-rich Beaumont developer. I have heard from some of my Golden Triangle snitches that Dade Phelan was cut from the traditional Republican fabric that creates a politician who favors wealthy Texans. Therefore, he is a standard GOP pol.

He also just happens to be a fellow, apparently, who dislikes corrupt politicians … even when such allegations stain the records of fellow Republicans.

Texas GOP censures House Speaker Dade Phelan over Paxton impeachment (houstonchronicle.com)

It makes me wonder: Why in the world is that such a bad thing, something the produces censure?

As the Houston Chronicle has reported: Phelan has remained defiant in the face of the criticism and has touted the House’s work to ban abortion and allow the permitless carry of handguns as conservative wins passed under his leadership.

Doesn’t any of that other stuff matter … or is the Texas GOP intent on protecting an attorney general who continually makes many Texans wince over the way he conducts himself?

local news, State news

Politics of revenge: unbecoming and ugly

Two of Texas’s top politicians are seeking to exact revenge against members of their own political party and frankly, it is unbecoming of both of them to seek to get back at their fellow Republicans.

Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton have launched their revenge strategies seeking to defeat pols who voted against school vouchers and voted in favor of an impeachment initiative.

Abbott wants so badly to rob the public education till to benefit private schools that he’s targeting GOP lawmakers in the House who opposed the notion; most of the Republicans opposing the notion represent rural school districts where public schools are the centerpiece, the lifeblood of their communities

Paxton avoided being kicked out of office after the House impeached him on allegations that he’s a vengeful crook who did sweet deals to benefit a leading political ally. The Senate tossed the articles of impeachment aside.

These two MAGA Republicans are singing off the hymnal offered by Donald Trump, who has vowed to be “your retribution” in 2024.

It’s disgusting, man.

Abbott’s striking is more repugnant to me, given that he is attacking lawmakers who are listening to their constituents and following their wishes rather than heeding the demands of the governor. I am not excusing Paxton for an instant, though. I long have believed that Paxton is a disgrace to the legal profession and to the AG’s office.

But … here we are, on the eve of an election year. Two statewide politicians are vowing to engage in local elections and try to persuade legislators’ constituents that these Republicans should be defeated. Why? Because they aren’t doing governor’s and the AG’s bidding.

Disgraceful.

political news, State news

Hand-count ballots? Seriously?

Gillespie County, Texas, Republicans clearly have rocks in their heads if they believe that hand-counting every ballot cast in next year’s primary election is going to go without a hitch … or three.

Word to the wise: Don’t get any ideas, officials in other counties, about following the lead set by the Hill Country county of roughly 30,000 residents.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, let’s see. Human frailty, flaws and tendency to mistakes are likely to cause challenges to whatever tallies the many workers are going to face when they finish their work.

The Texas Tribune reports: This summer, leaders of the GOP in counties as large as Dallas and as small as Uvalde in South Texas seriously considered hand-counting ballots for their primary elections, according to public records and interviews with election officials.

Think about Dallas County relying on thousands of people hand-counting ballots in a county populated by more than 2.6 million people.

I guess the misplaced GOP fear of machine counting has gotten pols in Gillespie County — which is overwhelmingly Republican — to push some sort of panic button.

In addition to its potential unreliability, hand-counting is going to bring tremendous additional expense to Gillespie County, which is expected to train an additional 100 workers to count the ballots individually. Sheesh!

Again, according to the Texas Tribune: Citing his opposition to hand-counting ballots, Gillespie County GOP Chair Mo Saiidi resigned in September. Days after his departure, the remaining members of county Republican leadership finalized their decision to move forward.

“I could not in good conscience continue presiding over an election using a method that I did not feel was the right process to go through,” Saiidi said. “And I felt it was flawed. I felt it was not well thought out. I didn’t think it was the right thing for the community.”

Republicans led by the ex-POTUS have thrown an unreasonable fear into political leaders who used to depend on normal county election procedures to produce valid election totals. Are those days gone, along with trust in government at any level?

Let us hope not!

education news, State news

They work for us … not them!

How many times am I going to say what I’ve been saying since The Flood … which is that our legislators — be they state or federal — work for the people who elect them, not for those who run their respective legislative bodies?

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, throttled in his effort to rob public schools of money and handing it to private institutions, is targeting Republican legislators who had the temerity to vote against his school voucher plan. He is endorsing opponents of GOP incumbents seeking re-election in 2024.

Let’s set the record straight. The GOP legislators who oppose school vouchers represent rural districts that depend heavily on the health and livelihood of their public schools. They pledge to their constituents to support public education, given that in many rural communities the school system serves as the lifeblood of the community. Abbott wants to unseat House Republicans who oppose his crusade for school vouchers, which would allow parents to use taxpayer dollars to help pay for private school costs.

They did not pledge to support every single legislative agenda topic favored by Abbott!

This is ham-handed governance at its worst.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is employing the same strategy against those lawmakers who voted to impeach him earlier this year. For the purposes of this blog post, I am going to concentrate on Abbott’s campaign of revenge.

It is absurd!

To their credit, the rural GOP legislators who dug in against vouchers have held firm in their opposition, likely signaling an end to the string of special legislative sessions Abbott kept calling in an effort to foist his voucher plan on Texans. Their resistance infuriates Abbott, to be sure.

My response to that? Big … fu**ing … deal!

These lawmakers are looking out for the interests of the folks who sent them to Austin to do their bidding, not dance to the tune called by Greg Abbott.