local news, State news, Uncategorized

Oil price plunge: Good for U.S., bad for Texas

It’s become almost a truism that Texas marches to a different cadence than much of the rest of the country.

Take the plunging price of oil and gasoline. Millions upon million of Americans are cheering the good news, that they’re paying less for gas than they were yesterday, let alone a year ago. Meanwhile, Texas oil producers are crying the blues.

And then we have Texas government, which is likely now to face a serious shortfall in revenue derived from oil that’s pulled out of the ground in, say, the Permian Basin and along the Caprock here in the Panhandle.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/12/19/oil-prices-could-dampen-legislative-session/

What’s good for the rest of the county isn’t necessarily so for Texas. What to do?

Given that I don’t have a particular dog in this hunt — in the form of oil holdings that pay handsome royalties — I’m more than happy to see the price of gas continue to slide downward. It’s at $1.98 per gallon in Amarillo as of right now; it’s subject to change any moment.

The Texas Tribune link attached to this post notes that the state’s new comptroller, Glenn Hager, is facing a tough baptism in state government. He’ll have to produce some revenue forecasts for the next Legislature. At the rate the price of oil is falling, it’s becoming a bit problematic for the comptroller-elect to project anything for the next week, let alone for the next two years.

Gov.-elect Greg Abbott has proposed an ambitious start for his administration that will depend on money. Highway improvements? The amount of that money will depend on oil prices. Public education? Again, the state derives royalty money from oil and natural gas to help pay for public school.

So, while the rest of the country hails the falling price of oil and gasoline, lawmakers and statewide elected officials in Texas, which produces so much of it, are wringing their hands.

Yep, as the promotional slogan goes: Texas is like a whole other country.

 

local news, medical news, State news

Statewide smoking ban: Round 5

Let’s hope that the fifth time is the charm.

For what? The state ought to impose a statewide ban on indoor smoking. No exceptions, please. Everywhere should fall under the rule.

The Texas Tribune reports that the Texas Legislature is likely to take up the issue for the fifth consecutive session when it convenes in January.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/12/19/smoking-ban-stalls-capitol-cities-go-it-alone/

The odds aren’t great that it’ll pass either legislative house. Both chambers will be full of pro-business Republicans who think the government has no say in determining whether Texans should be exposed to second-hand smoke. That’s a business call, they’ll contend.

Never mind that the Texas Restaurant Association — a key business group affected directly by such a law — supports a statewide ban.

We’ve danced to this tune already in Amarillo. Voters here have rejected narrowly two city referenda calling for a citywide ban.

The state, though, can weigh in this coming year.

It’s not that Texas is plowing new ground. Two dozen states already have enacted statewide smoking bans. More than 30 Texas cities have enacted such a ban, many with exceptions made for restaurants and businesses that serve alcohol.

Yes, there will be those who contend that business owners should be allowed to make these decisions for themselves.

But if second-hand smoke presents a health hazard and if some businesses refuse to ban smoking inside their establishments, isn’t the state obligated to step in protect people’s health?

Yes, we have choices. We can choose to do business in a place where we cough at the smell of smoke, or we can choose to go somewhere else.

Still, a statewide ban isn’t an unreasonable rule to impose on business owners. Who knows? Maybe we’ll all get used to living in a totally smoke-free indoor environment.

I’m not going to hold my breath — pun intended — waiting for the Legislature to do the right thing.

 

Uncategorized

This crime needs national attention

Two New York City police officers were assassinated over the weekend.

They were “profiled,” and that’s what it was, because they were wearing their uniforms. They were on duty, protecting the neighborhood from thugs, such as the one who killed them in cold blood.

Now we find out the killer was retaliating for the Eric Garner case, in which a man — Garner — died after being choked to death by a Staten Island police officer. A grand jury declined to indict the officer — and all hell broke loose.

Then this happened.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/2-cops-ambushed-fatally-shot-in-car-gunman-kills-himself/ar-BBh3g1E

The dead officers are Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, who were sitting in their patrol car when Ismaayil Brinsley walked up to their car and shot them point-blank. Brinsley then fled to a subway station and killed himself. No great loss there.

The loss of the police officers, though, is tragic beyond description.

The men and women who take an oath to uphold the law and protect citizens from criminals — as Liu and Ramos were doing — put their lives on the line every day they report for work. They take that oath in good faith — virtually all of them do, anyway — and then do their duty.

That some moronic goon would respond to a tragedy by creating yet another tragedy simply defies one’s senses at almost any level.

This story deserves a lot of media attention, too.

 

International news, political news

Lame-duck status has its advantages

Sometimes it can be good for politicians to use their lame-duck status to move important debates forward.

Take the lame-duck president of the United States, Barack Obama. All he has done in the past few days is call for a profound change in our nation’s relationship with Cuba, with which we’ve had zero relationship for, oh, the past 50 years.

With no more campaigns to run, or elections to win (or lose), the president has done what he could have done years ago. Indeed, earlier lame-duck presidents dating back to the Johnson administration could have done it.

They chose sit on their hands.

Contrast that context with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a possible — if not probable — candidate for president in 2016. He’s a TEA party Republican who’s backing the Democratic president on this deal.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/rand-paul-supports-opening-cuba-113677.html?hp=b2_l3

Paul will have some answering to do if he faces the deeply split Cuban-American community in south Florida in a couple of years.

Obama has staked out an important change in U.S. foreign policy with this push for “normalization” of relations with Cuba, which came with the release of Alan Gross, an aid worker who’d been held prisoner for five years on a bogus spying charge by the Fidel/Raul Castro regime in Havana.

He had to have figured he could act now that he’s a lame duck. Of course, no politician ever admits to such a thing. They offer up high-minded rhetoric about “doing the right thing” or “acting in the best interests” of the city, state or nation.

That explains, perhaps, the president’s change of heart on Cuba. It doesn’t explain Sen. Paul’s courage on the issue, given that he’s bucking many fellow Republicans on this matter.

About the only thing that makes sense about Paul’s support of Obama on the Cuba policy issue is that he’s not going to run for president after all. I hope that’s not the case.

As for the president, well, lame duck status does have its advantage.

 

Uncategorized

Staying ready for Christmas

The question comes to me — and everyone else — every … single … year.

“Are you ready for Christmas?”

Upon making a pact with myself some years ago to avoid the “hassles” associated with Christmas, I initially found the question a bit awkward. I’d come up with some kind of semi-catchy response, although I no longer can remember what I’d say.

These days, my answer is simple.

Yep. I’m ready. I’m always ready. I stay ready. I was born ready.

In fact, my current response is taken from something a friend of mine down Beaumont way, the late Gene Dumatrait, used to say. He was always “ready” for anything. You name it, Gino was ready for it.

Back to my point, which is that Christmas is something for which I always am ready. I spend very little time worrying about anything this time of year. Indeed, the holiday shouldn’t be about getting prepared for things. I choose to take time to reflect on simple pleasures, on the many blessings I have … such as my family. I want to consider the real “reason for the season,” which Scripture tells us is the birth of Jesus.

I no longer concern myself with getting “ready” for Christmas.

I’m not denigrating others who get caught up in the hustle, bustle and sometimes tussle of this holiday time. That’s their call to make and more power to them.

Me? I’ll just go with the flow.

Isn’t Christmas a time for joy? I intend to have a joyful time of it.

 

political news, State news, Uncategorized

Perry to Aggies: I'm thinking about running

Here’s a news flash: Texas Gov. Rick Perry said some other things to college graduates besides declining an offer to have a building named after him at Texas A&M University.

Such as — he’s thinking about running for president of the United States of America.

That’s kind of a big deal, yes?

Perry spoke at the Texas A&M convocation. He told graduates the school from which he graduated shouldn’t name the Academic Building after him. Then he went on to say that he’s pondering another run for the White House.

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-politics/2014/12/perry-teases-presidential-run-in-speech-to-aggies/#13219101=0

He ticked off his credentials as someone who governed a state with the world’s 13th-largest economy and oversaw a group of individuals who “bicker a lot,” referring to the Legislature.

He told the A&M grads he’ll be looking for a job in about 30 days, just as they will.

Is this a precursor to a presidential run? Yes, it sounds like it to me.

I hope he jumps in. I’ve already spoken out in favor of Mitt Romney getting back into the game. I’m inclined also to welcome Jeb Bush into the Republican presidential field.

Why not — to coin the late Molly Ivins’s term — Gov. Goodhair?

He’s got the look, the charisma, some governing experience and he’s developing a pretty good gift of gab.

Perry’s ideas about the role of government, though, don’t quite set well with some of us out here. He’s inclined to be anti-federal government, which is sort of an dubious stance for someone who wants to oversee it.

But what the heck. He gave us a few laughs the last time he ran for the White House in 2012. Maybe he’s got a few more gag lines up his sleeve the next time around.

Bring it, governor!

 

entertainment news, national news

Rethinking this Sony film matter

Mea culpa time, kind of.

I’ve been getting beaten up over a blog I posted about whether Sony erred in making a comedy about an attempted assassination of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un. I said Sony Pictures’ biggest mistake was in making the film at all.

The chastening I’ve taken has forced me to reconsider what I wrote. Here it is:

https://highplainsblogger.com/2014/12/19/sonys-bigger-mistake-was-in-making-film/

President Obama said this week that Sony “made a mistake” in pulling the film from its scheduled release. He said the filmmaker should not be intimidated by a two-bit dictator. Others have noted that the United States, the strongest nation on Earth, shouldn’t be cowed by a tinhorn despot.

My friends on the left and the right have slung barbs at me for suggesting that Kim Jong-Un had a legitimate beef with the filmmakers and the film, “The Interview,” which stars Seth Rogen and James Franco.

No one likes admitting they were mistaken, but I think I’m about to go there.

Maybe I got caught up in the heat of the moment and didn’t think through the implications — all of them — in suggesting Sony had messed up.

Perhaps if I were running Sony, I would have been reluctant to depict the killing of an actual sovereign leader. Here’s the thing, though: I am not running Sony. That was someone else’s call. They had the right to make that decision.

Kim Jong-Un, therefore, didn’t have the right to bully Sony into pulling back the release of its film.

There. I actually feel better now.

 

national news, political news

Bring on the State of the Union

House Speaker John Boehner has put an end to one of the more idiotic notions to come from the TEA party wing of the GOP in, oh, maybe ever.

The speaker officially invited President Obama on Friday to deliver the State of the Union speech on Jan. 20. It’s in keeping with congressional custom, which says the speaker invites the president into the House chamber to speak to a joint session of Congress — and the nation — about (yep!) the State of the Union.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/19/john-boehner-obama-state-of-the-union_n_6354448.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

A minor tempest popped up a few weeks ago when some TEA party advocates in Congress actually suggested — apparently in all seriousness — that Boehner ban the president from making his speech. Don’t extend the invitation, Mr. Speaker, they said, because we want to punish the president for issuing that executive order that saves 5 million illegal immigrants from deportation.

That’ll teach him, isn’t that right, Mr. Speaker?

Well, Boehner didn’t listen. Good for him.

The president will deliver the State of the Union speech. He’ll lay out his agenda for the next two years. Democrats will clap; Republicans will (mostly) sit on their hands. That’s the way it goes at these events, no matter the party to which the president belongs.

 

national news

Vacation for first family; POTUS will need the rest

President Obama has jetted off to his home state of Hawaii for some R&R with his family.

I’ll be interested now for the next several days whether we’re going to hear any carping about the golf being played, or whether the first lady is spending a lot of money on shopping excursions, or whether the first daughters are behaving themselves.

This kind of carping goes with the territory, I guess, and I am hoping that now — six years into the job — that the president and his family have grown used to it.

Social media being what they are, criticism hits cyberspace in swarms. It’s immediate, quite often mistaken and misplaced and also quite cruel.

I recall a couple of other notable presidents who’d take lengthy vacations.

* President Ronald Reagan would get holed up in his ranch near Santa Barbara, Calif., uttering hardly a peep in public. He’d come back down from his Rancho del Cielo refreshed and ready to take on the challenges of the day. You’d hear the occasional gripes from the media about the president’s lengthy hiatus, but hardly none of the nitpicking one hears today.

* President George W. Bush liked to “clear brush” at his own ranch in Central Texas, near Crawford — which is near Waco. Again, the media would gripe about that time off, although my hunch is that they disliked hanging out in rural Texas, which I’m guessing lacks some of the creature comforts to which those big-city media hounds had grown accustomed.

In both instances — and regarding vacations other presidents have taken — such criticism is unfounded and ridiculous.

Barack Obama doesn’t have any planned public events while he’s enjoying Christmas with his clan in Hawaii. He’ll get his usual daily national security briefings and updates on other matters way back east in Washington.

For now, enjoy your time in the sunshine, Mr. President. A new Congress controlled by the “other party” awaits you when you return for the home stretch of your time in office. You’ll need all the rest you can get.

 

national news

Boys kept out of White House queries

President Obama’s final press conference of 2014 made news in an unexpected manner.

Eight reporters asked him questions in the White House Press Room. All of them were women. Obama said at the outset he had checked his “naughty or nice” list when developing his list of questioners.

I guess the men among the White House press corps had been naughty.

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-answers-female-reporters–questions-only-at-year-end-press-conference-212200355.html

What’s the statement here? I haven’t a clue.

One of the other interesting elements of the roster of questioners was that most of them rarely, if ever, get a chance to ask the president something at one of these events. They were “unknowns.”

The “big hitters” among the White House press cadre — the men and women who get the front-row seats — comprise the major broadcast and cable news networks, along with The Associated Press, the pre-eminent print news outlet. They sat there stone-faced while Obama called out names of people sitting in the back of the room.

Actually, I thought it was rather cool for the president to call on those who don’t usually participate in these televised news conferences. It gives others whose job is to report on presidential events a chance to put their own questions on the record with the Leader of the Free World.

Enough of the major-media echo chamber, thank you very much.

***

A memory came to mind just as I was typing this post about “no-name journalists.” Here goes.

Back in the 1980s, NASA announced a plan to send a working journalist into space aboard a space shuttle mission. It then put the word out for any journalist who was interested to apply.

I applied for a spot on a shuttle mission. What an amazing opportunity to report first hand, up close, in real time the immense thrill of orbiting Earth from outer space. Hey, I could do this.

As it turned out, NASA scrubbed its “civilian in space” after the Challenger disaster in January 1986, when school teacher Christa McAuliffe died along with her crewmates.

But after I submitted my application to NASA, I was sharing my desire to fly in space with a colleague of mine at the Beaumont Enterprise, where I was working at the time. I mentioned to my friend, Rosemary Harty, that NASA likely would go with some big-name network TV news celebrity — someone like Walter Cronkite.

“Oh, no they won’t, John,” Rosey said. “They’re going to pick a nobody, just like you.”

 

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