Category Archives: State news

State news

How do foes become such good ‘friends’?

Politicians have this uncanny and maddening knack of burying the hatchet — and not in each others’ backs or skulls.

They campaign against each other, say some highly critical — even hurtful and hateful — things to and about each other. Then they declare winners and losers and all is forgiven. Ostensibly, at least.

They all do it. Democrats do it to each other, as do Republicans.

The latest example of this is in Texas, where GOP Sen. Ted Cruz is fighting for re-election to his seat against Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke.

Cruz is enlisting the aid of a man he once labeled as “amoral,” a “pathological liar” and a “coward.”

Yes, I refer to the president of the United States, Donald Trump, against whom Cruz campaigned for the presidency in the 2016 GOP primary. You see, candidate Trump had called Cruz “Lyin’ Ted,” he implied that Cruz’s father might have been involved in President Kennedy’s murder and then he posted that hideous photo on Twitter of Cruz’s wife, Heidi.

Cruz was rightfully enraged, outraged and aghast at the treatment. That’s when he hung those epithets on his GOP foe.

Now he’s wanting Trump to campaign for him. All is forgiven. The sniveling sucking up that Cruz is performing hasn’t gone unnoticed out here in the rest of the state and the nation.

Frankly, he was right to say what he said about Trump during the GOP primary campaign. He is demonstrating a lack of spine now as he seeks the president’s help in his fight for re-election.

Sickening, man.

State news

Beto doesn’t need Barack’s blessing?

Barack Obama is handing out political endorsements the way GIs handed out chocolate bars during World War II.

The former president has endorsed 11 Texas candidates — all Democrats, of course. Beto O’Rourke, the Democrat in the middle of a dogfight campaign to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz hasn’t received an endorsement from the 44th president.

Not surprisingly, O’Rourke says he isn’t worried about it. He told the Texas Tribune he doesn’t need an endorsement from President Obama. According to the Tribune: “I don’t think we’re interested (in an endorsement)” O’Rourke said after a town hall … “I am so grateful to him for his service, he’s going to go down as one of the greatest presidents. And yet, this (election) is on Texas.”

Obama issues endorsements

There might be a couple of ways one can take that statement. One is that President Obama isn’t terribly popular in Texas; he lost the state to GOP rivals John McCain and Mitt Romney in 2008 and 2012. Another is that the Texas election deals uniquely with Texas issues and that an endorsement from a national politician carries little weight.

Whatever he means, my sense is that he won’t disavow an Obama endorsement were it to come between now and Election Day.

How could a candidate refuse such a blessing from someone who — and I agree with O’Rourke on this one — is going to be remembered as one of the nation’s “greatest presidents”?

local news, State news

Is this a one-issue race for governor?

Honest to goodness, I usually don’t vote for public office based on a single issue. I regret, though, that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott might have tossed at my feet the one issue that might make me vote against him.

Gov. Abbott said not long ago that the Texas Legislature needs to rescind its earlier approval for cities in the state to deploy red-light cameras at dangerous intersections to help deter motorists from running through stop lights.

If he’s re-elected, Abbot said he would ask the 2019 Legislature to pull the plug on the cameras that have been deployed in cities across the state.

To be fair, I have been looking for a reason to support Democratic challenger Lupe Valdez. The campaign for governor has been so devoid of compelling issues, I cannot commit fully to supporting the former Dallas County sheriff.

Back to Abbott … I wish he wouldn’t have ignited the red-light camera discussion. I continue to support cities’ attempts to deploy this technological ally in their effort to curb dangerous motorists’ behavior. Amarillo, where my wife and I lived until this past spring, is one of those cities.

A former city commissioner, Ellen Robertson Green, once declared that the best way for motorists to avoid getting slapped with the $75 fine is for them to “stop running red lights.” Duh!

Abbott says the cameras haven’t improved traffic safety sufficiently. He said something, too, about an increase in rear-end wrecks at intersections as motorists try to avoid running through yellow lights that turn red.

What about city officials’ concerns about the hazards created by those who continue to run through these street lights? And don’t Texas Republicans traditionally cede these decisions to local authorities, preferring to keep the state out of matters that can be decided locally?

I’m still grappling with how I’m going to go on this race for governor. I hate the idea of leaving that ballot spot vacant when it comes time to vote.

I also hate deciding an important election campaign on the basis of a single issue. However, if I must …

State news

Abbott vs. Valdez: Texas campaign snoozer

Oh, man. With all the hype and hoopla being delivered on the race for Texas’s U.S. Senate seat now occupied by Ted Cruz, I was hoping the state’s race for governor might generate some energy, too, among voters.

Silly me. The race between Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and Democratic challenger Lupe Valdez has been an all-American snoozer.

The Cruz Missile is in the fight of his political life against Democrat Beto O’Rourke. I remain hopeful — but not entirely confident — that O’Rourke will defeat Cruz in this year’s election.

Abbott, though, is looking like a shoo-in against Valdez, the former Dallas County sheriff. In at least a couple of aspects, though, Valdez has made Texas political history already.

She is the first Latina in Texas history to be nominated for governor; she also is the first openly gay candidate to run for the state’s highest office. Neither aspect, though, has become an issue in this contest.

It’s not that I think Abbott has been a terrible governor. It’s just that I was hoping Valdez would have made it more of a race. Polling data I’ve seen suggest that Abbott will win handily, maybe by 20-plus percentage points.

Abbott and Valdez have engaged in their only political debate. It didn’t change anyone’s minds. Or, as they say, it didn’t “move the needle.”

Oh well. Maybe in 2022 we can get a truly competitive race for governor. I was hoping we’d have one this time.

education news, local news, medical news, State news

Go for it, Jerry Hodge, in your effort to oust regents chair!

I hereby endorse former Amarillo Mayor Jerry Hodge’s effort to oust the chairman of the Texas Tech University System Board of Regents, Rick Francis.

Hodge is steamed over the way the Tech board treated former Chancellor Bob Duncan. I am, too. Angry, that is. Duncan got the shaft, the bum’s rush and was shown the door after what well might have been an illegal meeting of the Tech regents.

Regents took what was called an “informal vote” in executive sessions to deliver a no-confidence decision against Duncan, who then announced his “retirement” from a post he had held for the past six years.

State law prohibits governing bodies from voting in private, but the Tech regents did so anyway. Thus, we might have a violation of the Texas Open Meetings Law.

Hodge also is miffed that Francis might have sought to undermine Tech’s decision to build a college of veterinary medicine in Amarillo, which has drawn full-throated support from the Amarillo City Council, the Amarillo Economic Development Corporation and a number of corporate donors who have pledged money to help finance the project.

Committee targets Tech chairman

Will the campaign succeed? That remains a wide-open question. The committee that Hodge leads wants Gov. Greg Abbott to take action. Count me as one who doubts the governor will jump to the committee’s cadence.

Still, as a Texas resident with strong sentimental attachments to Amarillo, the Panhandle and a deep and abiding respect for the long public service career of the former Texas Tech chancellor, I want to endorse Jerry Hodge’s effort to raise as much of a ruckus as he can.

State news

Then we have this race for Texas ag commissioner

Sid Miller wants to be re-elected as Texas agriculture commissioner.

If the Republican wins, he will do so without my vote. I intend to cast my ballot for Kim Olson, a Mineral Wells farmer. Indeed, she is a third-generation farmer.

Miller has embarrassed the state since being elected agriculture commissioner. He pops off without thinking. He likes making an ass of himself — and has shown himself to be quite good at it.

My favorite bit of ass-making occurred when he decided to bitch about a steak he was served at a trendy downtown Amarillo restaurant. He raised all kinds of public hell about it.

The guy is a buffoon. I want him to lose his contest against Olson in early November.

But … what about the Democratic challenger? She has some baggage of her own. The Texas Tribune reports that her trailblazing career in the U.S. Air Force came to an inglorious end when questions arose about her relationship with a contractor who did business with the Air Force.

Here’s the Tribune story

Is this a dealbreaker for me? No. It isn’t. She and her husband have been farming since they moved to Texas after her USAF days were over. She has sought to build a new life and from what I understand she has done well in that regard.

What’s more, she has campaigned with dignity, unlike the manner that her opponent did when he ran four years ago.

And here’s the final point: Olson is campaigning much like another Democrat, U.S. Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke, by visiting all 254 Texas counties. I like that campaign strategy, given that Olson is meeting and chatting with voters in heavily Republican voting precincts.

Texas needs a serious commissioner of agriculture, not one whose goal appears to be to make waves just because he likes rough water.

local news, political news, State news

Beto vs. Cruz: Round One

I had wanted to attend the first debate between Ted Cruz and Beto O’Rourke. It took place this evening in Dallas, at Southern Methodist University … just a few miles south of where I live.

But wouldn’t you know it? Family business took me away from the Metroplex and my wife and I are spending a few nights in Amarillo.

Cruz, the Republican U.S. senator, is trying to fend off a challenge from O’Rourke, the Democratic U.S. House member who wants to join the Club of 100, aka the U.S. Senate.

By all accounts, the men exchanged in a lively exchange. They traded a few insults, but generally minded their manners while talking to and about each other.

I am glad that these two fellows faced off in person. They’ll have two more of these joint appearances, in Houston and San Antonio.

From what I have read, I take heart in the view that O’Rourke did well in his debate with Cruz, a noted debater whose skills were honed at Harvard.

The event did include some tense moments, such as this one, as reported by CBS News:

The two also disagreed over what the punishment should be for the police officer who shot and killed Botham Jean, an unarmed black man, in his own apartment. Cruz said that O’Rourke had compared police officers to the “modern Jim Crow,” which he said was “offensive.” O’Rourke denied that he said police officers specifically were the “modern Jim Crow,” and accused Cruz of dissembling.

“This is your trick in the trade: to confuse, and to incite fear,” O’Rourke said to Cruz. He accused the senator repeatedly of misrepresenting his words.

What might we expect during the second and third debates? That well might depend on what polls show about the state of this campaign. It isn’t supposed to be this close … but it damn sure is! The candidates are running neck and neck in a state that has leaned Republican for the past two decades.

I’ll stipulate for the umpteenth time that I want O’Rourke to win this contest. There. That said, I also know it’s a steep climb for the young congressman from El Paso.

My hope is that if he fares as well in the next two debates as he did in this first one, O’Rourke will do just fine, although “just fine” doesn’t mean necessarily that I predict he’ll actually win.

Then again, I hope for all the world that O’Rourke can take down the Cruz Missile.

State news

Those polls are all over the place

Beto O’Rourke leads Ted Cruz by 2 points in one poll.

Oh, but in another one Cruz leads O’Rourke by 9 points.

Who do you believe? Who do you want to believe? Me? I’ll go with the first one, because that’s what I want to happen on Election Day. I want O’Rourke, the Democrat who’s challenging the Republican Cruz for the U.S. Senate seat that Cruz now occupies.

The Ipsos poll done for Reuters puts O’Rourke ahead by a margin that makes the race a dead heat. It was an online poll of “likely voters.” The Quinnipiac poll was done over the phone; it shows Cruz with a fairly comfortable margin as the campaign heads toward its conclusion.

I know this much — which, admittedly isn’t all that much: O’Rourke making this race such a tight contest is news in and of itself.

Cruz represents Texas in the U.S. Senate. Texas is one of the most Republican states in America. He isn’t exactly a warm-and-fuzzy kind of guy. Cruz is a darling of the TEA Party wing of the GOP, the one that opposed Barack Obama’s presidential agenda every step of the way. He once led a phony filibuster in an effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

The idea that O’Rourke would make this a close contest boggles the mind of a lot of observers.

I believe O’Rourke still has a steep hill to climb if he hopes to knock Cruz off his Senate seat. The state still loves its Republican officeholders. No … matter … what!

However, just as Donald Trump proved every political “expert” wrong by being elected president in 2016, there remains a good bit of hope that Beto O’Rourke can upset the political gods yet again in Texas. That’s my hope anyway.

education news, State news

SBOE switches gears: They were ‘heroes’ at the Alamo after all

The Texas State Board of Education came to its senses, with a little push from Gov. Greg Abbott.

The SBOE had voted tentatively to remove the term “hero” from its description of the men who died at the Alamo in 1836. Hey, we all know that they died heroically while defending the mission against superior Mexican armed forces.

SBOE reverses course

The board of education, though, almost knuckled under to some form of “political correctness” by deciding they weren’t heroes after all. Abbott said the SBOE should resist such PC activity. Late this week, the 15-member elected board reversed itself and said the heroes at the Alamo will be labeled as such in Texas public school curricula.

I’m not a native Texan, but I certainly accepted the idea long ago that the men who died in the Alamo battle were heroes. That’s how we were taught in Oregon when I was growing up and studying these historic events.

I’m glad that the SBOE has declared what the rest of us knew already: Those men were heroes.

local news, State news

‘Open borders’: the stuff of demagogues

I am weary in the extreme of Donald John “Demagogue in Chief” Trump’s assertion that opposition to building a wall along our nation’s southern border means a favoring of “open borders.”

Trump wants to build that damn wall. Others don’t want it. I am one who opposes the wall. The nation is full of politicians who oppose construction of a wall, too.

Trump said initially Mexico would pay for it. Mexico responded, um, no we won’t. Now the president wants to stick U.S. taxpayers with the bill.

He’s planning to come to Texas soon to campaign for “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz (which is Trump’s one-time epithet for the Republican U.S. senator). Cruz favors the wall. His Democratic foe, Beto O’Rourke, opposes it. Trump will declare at some undisclosed political rally location that O’Rourke favors “open borders.” He’ll draw cheers, whoops and hollering from the crowd.

It’s a lie. Donald Trump knows it’s a lie, but he’ll say it time and again anyway.

I have grown weary of the demagoguery that keeps flowing from the president’s pie hole. This “open borders” canard is just one statement that I cannot let stand.

For the record, I favor stronger border security measures along our borders — south and north. I mean, if we’re going to insist on cracking down on illegal immigrants who try to sneak in along our southern border, then let’s devote more emphasis and energy along our northern border with Canada.

Walling off this nation from a neighbor with whom we share a 2,000-mile-long border is utterly un-American on its face. That doesn’t bother Trump, who took office without an understanding at any level of what this nation has stood for since its creation in the 18th century.

Does any reasonable American favor an “open border” where we don’t enforce immigration laws? Of course not!

Yet that doesn’t stop the demagogue who sits behind the big desk in the Oval Office from uttering the disgraceful rhetoric that suggests otherwise.

I grew sick of it long ago.