Category Archives: State news

local news, State news

Governor’s race presents conundrum

The upcoming Republican Party primary race for Texas governor presents a serious conundrum for GOP voters.

They will get to choose from among three top-tier candidates, two of whom are nut jobs.

We have the governor, Greg Abbott; challenging him are former Texas GOP chairman Allen West and former state senator Don Huffines. I won’t vote in the GOP primary this March, but I do have a thought or two I want to share.

Abbott is being challenged on the right by West and Huffines. Those two clowns don’t believe Abbott is conservative enough. West is the former one-term Florida congressman who moved to Texas because his political career in Florida was shot; Huffines is another far right-winger who says we need to ban all immigration into Texas.

Then we have Abbott, the guy who is fighting with the Biden administration over mask mandates.

I believe Abbott will survive this primary challenge, chiefly because West and Huffines are going to carve up the nut-job vote, paving the way for Abbott to skate to the party nomination.

It reminds me of the Texas Senate District 31 race in 2018 that enabled Sen. Kel Seliger of Amarillo to win his party’s nomination in a three-man race. His foes that year were former Midland mayor Mike Canon and Amarillo businessman Victor Leal. Both men sought to outflank Seliger on the far right. Seliger ran as a true-blue,  mainstream Texas conservative and won the primary fight with 50.4 percent of the vote; no runoff was needed.

Canon and Leal split the goofball vote in that year’s Senate GOP primary.

I see the same thing happening this year in the GOP primary for governor.

Texas politics is really weird, indeed.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, State news

Cruz misfires with impeachment threat

(Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

Ted Cruz has lost his marbles. His butter has slipped off his noodles. He has gone ’round the bend. He is nuttier than a Snickers bar.

The junior U.S. senator from Texas — the guy who once described Donald Trump as a “sniveling coward” but then became Trump’s primo suck-up senator — believes President Biden can be impeached if Republicans take command of the House after the midterm election.

According to the Texas Tribune: “​​Democrats weaponized impeachment,” he said, referring to House Democrats twice voting to impeach former President Donald Trump. “They used it for partisan purposes to go after Trump because they disagreed with him. And one of the real disadvantages of doing that … is the more you weaponize it and turn it into a partisan cudgel, you know, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

https://www.texastribune.org/2022/01/04/ted-cruz-joe-biden-impeachment/

Wow! I am trying to catch my breath.

The Cruz Missile has misfired — again! Democrats didn’t impeach Trump for “partisan purposes.” They impeached him for trying to persuade a foreign leader to do him a political favor; then the House impeached Trump for inciting the riot on 1/6. The weaponization of the impeachment process occurred on the Republican side of the great congressional divide when all but a dignified handful of GOP House members and senators decided to give Trump a pass when he clearly committed “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

For Cruz to suggest that President Joe Biden faces potential impeachment if the GOP takes command of the House is tantamount to inviting a constitutional crisis where none should exist.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Few discrepancies found

Well, what do you know about this? The first reports of the “forensic audit” that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott launched — at the behest of Donald J. Trump — of balloting in four Texas counties shows minuscule discrepancies.

That means the voting was not rife with “widespread” fraud that Trump has alleged without offering a shred of evidence.

Trump came to Texas this past summer and got Abbott to call for an audit of four of the state’s most populous counties: Harris, Dallas, Tarrant and Collin. I live in Collin County. Of the counties audited, Collin voted for Trump narrowly, while the rest of them all voted for President Biden.

The Texas Tribune reported: The first phase of the review, released New Year’s Eve, highlighted election data from four counties — Harris, Dallas, Tarrant and Collin — that showed few discrepancies between electronic and hand counts of ballots in a sample of voting precincts. Those partial manual counts made up a significant portion of the results produced by the secretary of state, which largely focused on routine voter roll maintenance and post-election processes that were already in place before the state launched what it has labeled as a “full forensic audit.”

Texas secretary of state’s partial audit of 2020 election finds few issues | The Texas Tribune

Hmm. I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that the audit of these counties won’t find anything worth mentioning. The audit that Abbott seeks was done because Trump continues to perpetuate The Big Lie about the results of the 2020 election. Trump lost! Biden won! The election was fair and legal and clean. Texas went for Trump, giving the then-POTUS its 38 electoral votes.

However, Trump wants to continue fostering doubt into the most secure election in U.S. history.

I will say once again that Donald Trump’s Big Lie only defames the hard work done at the local level by elections officials who take an oath to ensure that our elections are secure.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Hate partisan election of judges

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I want to raise an issue that I have bitched about for years, but which needs further bitching from me.

It deals with the partisan election of judges in Texas. Yes, judicial candidates in this state run as Democrats and Republicans. They don’t run necessarily on their judicial philosophy, which should be the determining factor on whether to elect these men and women. Oh, no. They run as partisan politicians.

For the life of me I do not understand why we cannot shed the party labels for judicial candidates.

For nearly four decades watching Texas politics up close and personal I have seen fine men and women drummed out of office because they were of the “wrong party,” or the party that wasn’t in control of the political landscape. Good Republican judges and candidates would lose to inferior Democratic opponents in the old days because they ran as members of the “out” party. Then the tide turned in Texas and we have watched qualified Democratic judges and judicial candidates losing to numbskull Republicans for the same reason; Republicans dominate politics in this state and Democrats are still trying to get a foothold.

I have asked judges and those who want to be judges a question ever since I arrived in Texas in early 1984: What is the difference between Democratic justice and Republican justice?

So help me, I cannot remember a single cogent answer to that question. Not a single judge or judicial contender has been able to answer that one for me. I hope during the upcoming election season to be able to ask future candidates for judicial office that question.

Judicial candidates should run on their philosophy and how they interpret the law. I am not a lawyer, but I know enough to be able to discern the difference between a liberal judicial candidate and a conservative one. Whether those differences comport with partisan labels is utterly beside the point.

I know full well my argument won’t hold much sway with those in power. I will keep harping on it, though, until I no longer can harp on anything. Texas’s partisan election of judges does not do justice to the judicial system.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news, local news, State news

Paxton should pay a big price

What do you know about this? It appears that the Texas Republican Party primary race for attorney general is shaping as a fight over the incumbent’s self-inflicted legal difficulties … not to mention the shame he has brought to the high office he occupies.

AG Ken Paxton has it coming to him.

Paxton was elected attorney general in 2014. The very next year he got indicted by a grand jury right here in Collin County on allegations of securities fraud. He continues to await trial in state court. He also has been chastised by the Securities and Exchange Commission; the FBI has launched a probe into complaints from former senior legal assistants at the AG’s office that Paxton has been behaving illegally; then he got that idiotic lawsuit tossed by the Supreme Court in which he sought to overturn the presidential election returns in several other states that voted for Joe Biden.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton facing challenges from all fronts | The Texas Tribune

Three Republicans have filed to run against Paxton: Land Commissioner George P. Bush, former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman and U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert. They’re all singing off the same song sheet, which is that Paxton’s legal troubles are enough to get him booted out of office.

I am glad to hear it. Yes, even from Rep. Gohmert, a fellow for whom I have zero respect.

Whatever does the job. Paxton is a joke, an embarrassment, a disgrace.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Beto has a shot, if …

Photo by Richard W. Rodriguez/AP/REX/Shutterstock

A gentleman with whom I had breakfast today has a theory about the upcoming race for Texas governor I feel like sharing.

It goes like this …

Beto O’Rourke is likely to get hammered by Greg Abbott if O’Rourke is nominated by Democrats and runs against the Republican governor in the fall. But he has a possible path to victory.

It depends on whether Abbott fails to deliver on his promise to keep the electricity flowing this coming winter. If the lights go out because the electrical grid cannot withstand the demand placed on it by severe cold, then O’Rourke might be able to say, according to my friend, “I can do better than that.”

Sure enough. O’Rourke then would have to explain how he would ensure that the electric grid managers keep the lights on and our furnaces functioning.

Absent that, my friend said, O’Rourke has no chance to defeat a Republican governor in this still-quite-Republican state.

Gov. Abbott had better pray that the Electrical Reliability Council of Texas keeps the lights on for the duration of the winter. His political career might depend on it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmai.com

State news

‘Lights will stay on’? They had better

Good news has arrived — maybe — for Texans who shivered earlier this year during the killer freeze that paralyzed the state in February.

The lights “will stay on” this winter, says the head of the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the guy who runs the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the outfit that manages the state’s electrical grid.

Oh, man. They had better be right.

PUC chairman Peter Lake and ERCOT interim CEO Brad Jones have given assurances that the power grid won’t overload and break down as it did in mid-February, sending millions of Texans into the deep freeze, some of them for several weeks. What’s more, the grid failure resulted in the loss of water delivery for many thousands of Texans; that crisis lasted for weeks in many communities.

The Legislature convened a special session to fix the problem and Gov. Greg Abbott assures us that it’s fixed. And we believe this politician, right? Not necessarily.

One of the pols who wants to defeat him, Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke, says the natural gas lines haven’t yet been fully winterized, that they need more attention. I’m not going to buy into O’Rourke’s criticism fully, either.

Still, with winter just a few days away from when the calendar tells us it’s here, I am going to follow the time-honored advice handed down by my parents: hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

Which is my way of saying I don’t trust the folks who are supposed to deliver the goods on the product for which I pay good money!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

‘No’ on special session!

How many ways do I have to say the same thing? Which is that the COVID-19 vaccine is saving lives, it is preventing infections from the deadly virus and that government entities are within their right to order vaccines for employees and for the public who the government is charged to protect.

Accordingly, I do not want Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to call a fourth special legislative session to enact a statewide ban on future COVID vaccine requirements.

The Texas Tribune reports that a growing number of Texas Legislature Republicans want Abbott to call a special session. They want Gov. Abbott to ask the Legislature to approve a ban on businesses and local governments issuing vaccine mandates.

The Tribune reports: “We know legislators are tired and nobody wants an extended special session,” Texas GOP Chair Matt Rinaldi said in an interview Monday, pointing to states such as Tennessee and Florida that recently passed legislation on vaccine mandates on short timelines.

“While I am happy to be home after three special sessions in Austin,” GOP state Rep. Briscoe Cain wrote, “I would happily return to Austin if called upon to protect the rights of my fellow Texans.”

How about protecting the lives of your “fellow Texans,” Rep. Cain? A state-mandated ban on local COVID restrictions puts your “fellow Texans” in jeopardy.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, State news

Why can’t they fix this electrical grid?

The Texas Tribune has written a story with a frightening lead paragraph, which states …

Electricity outages in Texas could occur this winter if the state experiences a cold snap that forces many power plants offline at the same time as demand for power is high, according to an analysis by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. The outages could occur despite better preparations by power plants to operate in cold weather.

What the hell? I thought the Texas Legislature was going to repair those problems, that it was going to “invest” lots of money to ensure that ERCOT’s electrical system was winterized sufficiently to protect us against the misery that befell us this past February.

I am one Texas resident — who I am sure speaks for millions of others — who does not want to endure what we went through early this year. Our homes went dark. Many of our water pipes froze. Our water supply went down for a time.

ERCOT estimates show Texas grid vulnerable this winter, despite preparations | The Texas Tribune

I am not going to predict we’ll have sub-zero temperatures again this winter. I saw a forecast that suggested the La Nina current is going to create a warmer, drier winter for Texas in 2021-22. I hope it’s true.

If it isn’t, then that Legislature of ours ought to have hell to pay if ERCOT’s grid shuts down.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Texas to check elections in random counties

Texas, in its bid to fight nonexistent widespread voter fraud, has a new law on the books that allows the state to audit the results of every November election in four randomly selected counties.

The state already is coming after the phony fraud in Collin County, where I live, along with Harris, Dallas and Tarrant counties. Good luck finding anything untoward in any of those counties.

I also suspect the state will come up empty no matter where it looks in its hunt for widespread vote fraud that — and I know I am repeating myself, so bear with me — does not exist!

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/11/19/abbott-emergency-funds-election-audits/

All of this effort is a trumped-up hunt (pardon the use of that adjective) for vote fraud emanating from the 2020 presidential election. Donald Trump carried Texas by about 5 percentage points, yet he insisted that Gov. Greg Abbott call for a “forensic audit” of the four large Texas counties. Abbott bowed to his good buddy Trump and got it done.

Ridiculous.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com