Category Archives: State news

local news, State news

Happy Trails, Part 82

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I have to credit a fellow recreational vehicle camper for this term, but I have come down with a case of the “hitch itch.”

It strikes me whenever we’ve been parked for a length of time, yet the open road beckons us. It is beckoning my wife and me. Thus, I get the “hitch itch,” or the “itch” to hook our fifth wheel RV to the bed of our pickup and hit the road.

The cure for the itch will come quite soon as we head out on another road trip. It will be an intrastate journey, keeping us inside Texas for its length.

It will be a lengthy trip.

Our plans are to make ample use of three state parks, which is our RV campsite of choice. We have a Texas Parks & Wildlife park pass, which waives our entrance fees into any state-run park in Texas. There happens to be a lot of ’em. They’re everywhere! They’re all well-run, well-maintained and well-groomed.

They’re also inexpensive!

We’ll be heading to San Angelo State Park to start off. A couple of days later we’ll shove off for Lockhart State Park south of Austin for several days. Then we drive to Village Creek State Park just north of Beaumont for a brief visit before winding our way back to Amarillo — with a stop in the Metroplex to visit our precious granddaughter and her parents.

This “hitch itch” strikes periodically. Frankly, we suffer from it more than we don’t. We have enjoyed this lifestyle so much that we want keep enjoying it for as long as humanly possible — health permitting.

To date, we both enjoy good health. We both have our wits. We enjoy the open road. Toby the Puppy is a serious road warrior as well.

The only nagging “health problem” we cannot eradicate — nor do we want to get rid of it — is that hitch itch.

It will disappear the moment we hook it all up and hit the road.

local news, State news

Speaker candidates are lining up

Tan Parker has become the third Texas House of Representatives member to file for the race to become the next speaker of the state House.

He hails from Flower Mound; the other two are Phil King of Weatheford and John Zerwas of Richmond. They’re all Republicans.

OK. That’s all fine.

I’m wondering if we’re going to hear an announcement from another up-and-comer in the Texas House. He hails from Amarillo. He’s also a Republican, who also delivered a serious pounding to a candidate favored by Empower Texans, a far right wing political organization that sought to topple this fellow in the GOP primary this week.

Rep. Four Price? Are you listening?

Here’s what I have to say to this young man, who happens to be a friend of mine and who also has done a stellar job representing House District 87 since 2011.

Becoming speaker of the House essentially turns the office into a full-time endeavor. Price will have to come to grips with the idea that he no longer would be a part-time “citizen legislator.” He also has been a strong ally of the current speaker, Joe Straus of San Antonio, who isn’t running for re-election to the House.

Straus distinguished himself mightily by ensuring the death of the infamous Bathroom Bill that passed the Texas Senate in 2017. The Bathroom Bill would have required transgender individuals to use public restrooms in accordance to the gender assigned on their birth certificate.

It is discriminatory on its face. It had no business becoming Texas law. Straus saw it for what it was.

So, would a Speaker Four Price follow that lead? I would hope so.

I also believe that Rep. Price would make an excellent speaker candidate, giving the Texas Panhandle a strong voice in legislative matters, as it did when Democrat Pete Laney of Hale Center ran the House of Representatives.

Hey, I’m just a single voice here in the wilderness.

Still, my desire is to see my friend go for it.

local news, State news

Empower Texans had its head handed to it

Empower Texans had a bad week.

The result of the rest of us is that Texas voters — primarily Republican primary voters — had a good week. That means Texas had a good week.

Empower Texans is a right-wing advocacy group that lowered its sights on a number of incumbents around the state. State Sen. Kel Seliger of Amarillo was one of them. Seliger managed to fend off a GOP primary challenge and skate to virtual re-election to another term; he does face a Libertarian challenger in the fall, but don’t bet the mortgage on Seliger losing that one.

Empower Texans — led by Michael Quinn Sullivan (pictured) — believes Republicans and other conservatives need to toe a strictly drawn line. It is based downstate, yet it poured lots of money into the far reaches of the vast state. The Panhandle got its taste of Empower Texans’ penchant for distortion and outright lies.

Seliger survived. So did state Rep. Four Price, another Amarillo Republican, who thumped challenger Drew Brassfield by about a thousand percentage points in the race for House District 87, which Price has represented well since 2011.

The Texas Tribune reports: “The forces of extremism, like Empower Texans … overplayed their hand, turned voters off and experienced significant losses in the March primaries,” said GOP consultant Eric Bearse, who helped (state Rep. Sarah) Davis and three other candidates win amid an onslaught from Empower and other critics. “It started to become clear in some of these races that it really was a choice between our local representative and someone who is wholly owned by outside groups and outside money.”

I love the irony of that assessment.

Conservatives are supposed relish local control over the interests of others. Isn’t that what they say?

Yet we have Empower Texans tossing that dogma out the window with its strong-arming of political discussion with money and power that derives from some centrally located source.

Seliger and Price — along with a host of other Texas incumbents — were able to persuade sufficient numbers of Texans to see through this sham.

It’s bad for Empower Texans. Good for the rest of us.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2018/02/empower-texans-hitting-fan/

political news, State news

Texas may become competitive, if not yet ‘blue’

The “blue wave” that some folks thought was getting ready to wash over Texas didn’t quite build into an epic event on primary election night.

Despite some reported “surge” among Democratic early voters in 10 of the state’s largest counties, the primary election produced a Republican lead over Democrats in the number of total ballots cast.

The verdict? Texas remains a Republican state.

The Texas Tribune reports that about 1.5 million votes were cast in the Republican primary, compared to about 1 million Democrats ballots being cast.

If you’re a Democrat, that’s the bad news.

The good news? Texas might be more competitive this year than it has been for the past couple of decades. Democrats are banking much of their party’s fortunes on a young congressman from El Paso, Beto O’Rourke, who’s going to face GOP U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in the general election this November.

I won’t predict that O’Rourke will beat The Cruz Missile this fall; nor will I predict that he’ll even give Cruz a legitimate case of the nervous jerks as this campaign unfolds.

The serious uptick in Democratic Party primary votes, though, does suggest that the predicted flip from Republican to Democrat might be starting to take shape. Has it taken full form just yet? I won’t say that, at least right now.

Political analysts suggest that the state’s changing demographics, with more Latinos living in Texas, mean the state well could become much more Democrat-friendly than it has been since the 1990s. Republicans likely can lay the blame at the man in the Oval Office, whose campaign and governing rhetoric has managed to enrage many Americans with Latin American heritage.

The talk concerning a reported Democratic “surge” among early voters, though, didn’t translate to a surge among all Texans who voted this week. Maybe that will occur later this year.

Or … maybe it won’t.

local news, State news

Texas set to take political center stage

It hasn’t been often of late that Texas has drawn the nation’s political attention. This big ol’ state is about to do that in just a few hours.

Texans are casting their primary votes and national pundits are looking at how the state votes not just in the Republican Party primary, but also in the Democratic primary.

Election officials report a significant surge in Democratic early voting, suggesting that Texas Democrats — for the first time since The Flood — are more energized than Texas Republicans. Democratic voting numbers are outstripping GOP early voters in places such as Dallas, Harris, Bexar and Travis counties.

Might there be a Donald Trump backlash developing in a state the president carried in 2016 by nearly 10 percentage points?

This is merely anecdotal evidence, but if the plethora of campaign signs is any indication, then I am inclined to believe the pundits are on to something with regard to voter interest in this year’s primary.

In Allen, Texas, where my wife and I have been visiting for the past few days, several corners along Bethany Road are festooned with signage proclaiming the virtues of candidates. Hey, I’ve even seen some Democratic candidates’ signs alongside the Republicans who usually dominate the discussion.

So, the first round of campaigning is about to conclude. Our mailboxes have been stuffed to the brim with campaign flyers and assorted forms of propaganda.

I am looking forward to the end of this round. I also am looking hopefully toward some outcomes I want to come true in the Texas Panhandle.

There will be plenty to say about those races once the results come in. You’ll be the first to hear from me.

Meanwhile, let’s all bite our fingernails and watch our cherished representative democracy do its work.

State news

Happy Trails, Part 81

SHERMAN, Texas — My wife and I have been recreational vehicle owners for about three years.

We have joked in the past while we have traveled that we have arrived “home” when we return to where our RV has been parked.

Then came the realization sometime today. We spent some time visiting with our granddaughter and her parents. Then we called it a day and returned home.

Except this time it’s no throw-away line, or good-natured joke.

We understand that as of three days ago, we no longer own a home attached to the ground.

Our former home is now in someone’s hands. I was half-expecting to feel just a tad lost. It hasn’t happened. I don’t expect it to happen. If it does, then my hope is that it’s just a feeling that passes by quickly. I’ve been known to feel such emotional tugs; they come and they go.

As of this moment, though, we are feeling strangely liberated. Neither of us has gone through this kind of change of life. We’ve always been tethered to property. I spent a couple of years in the Army and moved around a little bit: Fort Lewis, Wash., to Fort Eustis, Va., to Vietnam, back to Fort Lewis — and then home. Uncle Sam always looked over my shoulder to ensure that I would get to my next place on time.

This is different. We’re on our own. We have no deadlines. No timetable.

We have instead the open road.

Pretty damn cool.

local news, national news, political news, State news

Conservatives are winning the labeling war

Let’s give a sort of shout-out to the conservative media and the politicians they are backing.

Those on the right wing of the spectrum are winning the war of epithets, labeling and name-calling. They have turned the term “liberal” into a four-letter word.

I see it daily as I watch the political debate swirl and churn across the land. To be called a “liberal” in Texas — which is run by Republicans at every level of government — is to be called the son of Satan himself. A candidate for the Texas Senate who is running against state Sen. Kel Seliger, an Amarillo Republican, has called him “liberal” and “corrupt” — in that order. Do you get it? The implication is that to be liberal is to be corrupt. By the way, Seliger is campaigning for re-election as a dedicated conservative, which he is.

It’s gotten so bad among liberals that they no longer are even identifying themselves with that epithet. Oh, no. The operative word now among those on the left is “progressive.”

Admission time: As one who tilts to the left, I find myself using the this new P-word when describing myself. Have I gotten, um, self-conscious about what liberalism? Oh … maybe.

Liberals, er, progressives, haven’t yet been able to turn the right wing’s labeling against them. I suppose they could shorten the word “conservative” to, oh, “con,” which of course brings up another connotation altogether. I mean, liberals are called “libs” on occasion. But I digress.

The political debate often becomes a contest of sorts. One side seeks to demonize the other with words that sound a bit jarring. Republicans back in the early to mid-1990s began using the term “Democrat” as an adjective, referring to “Democrat politicians,” which doesn’t sound quite the same as “Democratic politicians.” That word usage was part of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s strategy to label “Democrats as the enemy of normal Americans.”

If I were wearing a cap at this moment, I would tip it toward Republicans, conservatives and those in the right-wing media for the success they have enjoyed in this rhetorical battle with those on the other side.

However, as a dedicated political liberal, I offer my salute as a form of damning them with faint praise.

local news, State news

Price vs. Brassfield: test of GOP sanity

I have drawn a conclusion about the state of the Texas Republican Party, which is that if state Rep. Four Price of Amarillo is taken to anything approaching a close finish in his primary contest against a challenger from Fritch, then I believe the Texas GOP has gone around the bend.

What does the rising Republican legislative star need to do to vanquish Drew Brassfield? I’m thinking he needs to win the GOP primary by something like 25 to 30 percentage points.

Brassfield, the Fritch city manager, is challenging Price for reasons I don’t quite grasp. He is campaigning as some sort of “conservative option” to the lawmaker who has represented House District 87 since 2011.

As if Price isn’t a conservative. Is that what Brassfield — and his Empower Texans benefactors — are suggesting? I guess they believe he isn’t conservative enough.

Actually, the Amarillo lawyer who’s done a bang-up job representing his legislative district, is tailor-made for this political post. He has been re-elected every two years with token opposition since he first won election to the seat held by David Swinford of Dumas from 1991 until 2010.

The Texas Republican Party’s internal strife mirrors much of what is going on around the country, with mainstream GOP officeholders being “primaried” by challengers from the far-right fringe of the party. So it is with Price, who under normal circumstances would breeze to re-election.

My hope is that he does so again this year, even with a well-funded challenge from a young man who is getting a lot of campaign money from political activists based way downstate.

If Price is forced to sweat his re-election out a couple of days from now, if Brassfield makes this a contest, then I fear the Texas GOP has flipped its wig.

local news, State news

Democrats feeling a ‘wave’ coming on?

Democrats across Texas are heartened by a surge in their party’s early primary voting numbers, saying that they are rivaling the primary interest generated by the 2008 presidential campaign struggle between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The Hill reports a surge in some urban areas, such as Harris County. They believe the Democratic primary uptick signals a potential “wave” sweeping across the state this fall.

Count me as mildly skeptical of that, although I do hope for a wave, given my own progressive leanings.

I clearly recall the heavy Democratic interest in 2008, even in heavily Republican Randall County, where I am registered to vote. The lines at the Democratic polling station was far longer than it was at the GOP station, signaling to my mind a bit of GOP crossovers seeking to commit a bit of mischief in the other party. Hey, that happens on occasion.

The Democratic surge then didn’t translate to victory in the fall, as Democratic nominee Obama lost Texas to GOP nominee Sen. John McCain.

Moreover, I don’t necessarily equate large early-vote numbers to increase overall turnout. It means quite often only that more voters are casting ballots early … and that’s it!

My own preference this year was to vote in the GOP primary, given my intense interest in helping return Kel Seliger to the Texas Senate. But that’s just me.

“You can’t underestimate the surge that we’re seeing out there with the blue wave coming,” said Ed Espinoza, executive director of the Democratic-leaning Progress Texas.

Let’s just wait this one out. Shall we?

State news

Texas pols stay quiet about Trump gun talk

Barack Obama sought to legislate some remedy to the senseless slaughter of school children and other innocent victims.

The Texas Republican political leadership’s response then? They went apoplectic! They accused the president of seeking to repeal the Second Amendment, disarm law-abiding Americans and toss their firearms into the ocean … if you get my drift.

Donald Trump has just pitched an aggressive set of proposals to regulate gun purchases, make it more difficult to purchase assault weapons and raise the minimum wage for those who can buy these weapons.

The Texas GOP response? Nothing, man! Zip. Zero. Nada.

Hey, what gives here? Isn’t the president a Second Amendment champion? Doesn’t he believe its words are sacred, that they shouldn’t be tinkered with?

The president has gotten the attention of gun enthusiasts, although it’s not at all clear that the president is going to hold firm to what he is pitching. I am struck by the silence of key GOP politicians on this matter.

I happen to believe the president has presented a reasonable start to a serious discussion. I want to offer a full-throated endorsement of what he is pitching — except, of course, for the nutty notion of arming school teachers with firearms.

It is fascinating in the extreme to watch politicians from within the president’s own party remain silent as he fires off these proposals. If they had come from former President Obama, why, they’d be going nuts.

Do they stand behind a principle, or do they stand behind the man … who doesn’t seem to have any consistent political philosophy?