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Litigious speaker going to court

Politicians and everyday Americans have griped for decades about the lawsuit-happy society we live in these days.

Well, this one just might take the cake.

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner says he is going to sue President Obama because of the president’s penchant for issuing executive orders. He calls the president’s actions unconstitutional, unlawful and, by golly, he plans to take the commander in chief to court.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/06/25/boehners-attack-on-obamas-executive-orders-ignores-presidential-history/

But …

Is the 44th president the most executive-order-happy person ever to occupy the White House? Not by a long shot.

To date, Obama has issued 168 such orders. President George W. Bush issued 291 during his two terms; President Clinton logged 364; President Eisenhower signed 484; President Truman put his name on 907.

The all-time champ? None other than President Franklin Roosevelt, who signed 3,572 executive orders. Let’s give FDR a pass, though, given that he served three full terms and a fraction of a fourth before he died in office in April 1945.

Barack Obama has signed fewer such executive orders than any president in the past century.

Boehner, though, says he’s had enough of this executive authority business from the constitutional law professor-turned-president of the United States.

At the start of the year, Obama did declare his intention to bypass Congress to get some things done. The Constitution does give him the authority to do these things, after all. It’s just that he’s stepped on Republican goes on issues such as benefits for same-sex couples employed by the federal government and raising the minimum wage for federal contract employees.

This grandstanding by Boehner is meant to relieve pressure he’s getting from the right wing of his party.

So please, Mr. Speaker, don’t gripe in public about frivolous lawsuits. You’ve just announced your intention to file one yourself.

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Sure-fire winner gets derailed

Hey. What the heck happened in Dixie last night?

U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi was supposed to get his head handed to him by that tea party upstart Chris McDaniel in the Republican runoff. It didn’t happen. Cochran was renominated for his billionth term in the Senate.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/senate-races/210473-cochran-topples-tea-party-in-mississippi

It turns out the conservative senator who the tea party said wasn’t conservative enough turned to some unlikely allies in pulling out this comeback win: African-American voters, for crying out loud.

He also got some help by a turnout that exceeded the primary turnout in raw numbers, a feat as rare as, say, African-Americans voting for a Southern Republican these days.

McDaniel scared the bejabbers out of a lot of Mississippians, apparently. Cochran’s team targeted some racially charged comments McDaniel made as a radio talk-show host. McDaniel fired back with criticism of Cochran’s penchant for piling on pork-barrel money for projects he funneled back to his home state.

Then there was this, as reported by The Hill: “McDaniel stumbled over a scandal concerning the arrest of four men, some clear supporters of his bid, for allegedly sneaking into a nursing home to take photos of Cochran’s wife for use in an apparent political attack on the senator.”

It was a nasty, bizarre and totally weird runoff campaign.

Out here in Texas, though, we don’t have a particular hound in that fight.

I’ve got mixed feelings about it all, to be blunt. I am not a huge Thad Cochran fan, but the alternative — McDaniel — was much worse, in my humble view. I guess I’m glad Cochran won. The man has shown the ability to work with Democrats in the Senate, a skill McDaniel would have needed to learn from scratch.

All in all, a bizarre ending to a bizarre campaign.

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Potter County joins downtown game

Potter County is in the game to rehabilitate downtown Amarillo.

And why not? The downtown district sits entirely within Potter County. The county will derive direct benefit from whatever accrues from downtown’s revival — assuming, of course, that it ever gets going.

The Commissioners Court voted 3-2 Monday to approve a tax abatement for the Coca-Cola Distribution Center, which now paves the way for the center to vacate downtown for a new site at CenterPort Business Park. The county will forgo tens of thousands of dollars in annual tax revenue from Coke. It will gain — again, hoping for the best — much more in return as downtown kick starts its revival.

That revival is supposed to include a “multipurpose event venue,” or MPEV, a parking garage and a convention hotel.

It’s supposed to cost $113 million, which developers hope will come from private investors who’ll just be delighted to death to sink their money into these projects.

I truly hope it happens. I believe the downtown project has enormous potential for the city.

Just imagine Amarillo’s minor league baseball team, the Sox, playing home games in a shiny new venue other than that rat-hole facility next door to the Tri-State Fairgrounds.

Potter County’s continued foot-dragging, though, is problematic.

I applaud commissioners for seeking to perform due diligence on the project. The “no” votes came from commissioners Alphonso Vaughn and Mercy Murguia, both of whom have demonstrated a willingness to ask difficult questions of sometimes-recalcitrant principals.

The county, though, ought to stand arm-in-arm with the city on this matter. The city is taking the lead on the development, but the county also has skin in this game, given that downtown rests entirely within Potter County.

I’ll stand by my earlier blog post and wonder when they’re going to start construction on this project. I’m getting a tad impatient, as I’m sure many other observers have become anxious for the work to begin.

All in all, though, the county made the right call. Now, let’s fire up the bulldozers.

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Tip the server, not the 'pool'

The Big Texan Steak Ranch — arguably Amarillo’s most well-known eating establishment — has been hit with a settlement that requires it to pay $800,000 to employees for tip revenue allegedly misused by the restaurant.

I won’t comment on the settlement itself, as I haven’t kept abreast of it as the complaint has proceeded. It involves allegations that the restaurant used tip money pooled together for purposes other than paying the servers the revenue they earned for their good work. Big Texan management denies any wrongdoing.

At issue — at least for me — is this practice of tip-pooling. As a customer of many eating establishments around town, I really dislike the practice of putting my tip money into some pool, where servers get to split the tips evenly among themselves.

I’ve been known to ask a restaurant waiter or waitress about the establishment’s tipping policy: Do they get the money individually or does it go into a pool? Most of the time the answer is: We pocket our own tips individually. I’m totally fine with that.

I consider myself a fairly generous tipper when the service merits it. I — along with just about every living American — am well aware that these service employees work for a miserable wage. They earn the bulk of their income from the tips they collect. Thus, the tips incentivize them to do a good job for the customers they serve. Tip-pooling, on the other hand, is a disincentive for the bad servers to pick up their game.

Here’s hoping the Big Texan settles up with employees in a timely manner. The employees — particularly the good servers — deserve a little reward.

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MLK gets Gold Medal … finally

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King, no doubt would be honored to receive the Congressional Gold Medal, which was given to them today in ceremonies on Capitol Hill.

Are there more deserving people than the Kings? I think not.

MLK receives Congressional Gold Medal

Why, though, did it take 46 years after Dr. King’s assassination to award him this medal?

Some things escape my sometimes-feeble ability to understand certain processes. It took a decade to honor Rev. and Mrs. King. Congressional leaders from both parties hailed them as the “first family of the civil rights movement.”

It astounds me nonetheless that an honor — the highest civilian award given by Congress — would take this long, more than four decades after that rifle shot in Memphis, Tenn., ended Martin Luther King Jr.’s life.

Mrs. King would live until 2006. She carried on much of her husband’s work, speaking out on racial injustice and seeking equality for all Americans.

I’m not going to keep carping about the delay. I’ll just add that MLK and Coretta Scott King were two of this country’s greatest citizens. Their work stands for all time and it speaks for itself.

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Iraq crisis produces huge scramble

It’s becoming harder to keep up with all the competing interests in the burgeoning crisis in Iraq.

Consider the complexity of it:

* The Sunnis want to take the government back from the Shiites. Saddam Hussein was a Sunni Muslim. The current Iraqi prime minister is a Shiite.

* The insurgents fighting the government, led by ISIS, are deemed to be more violent than al-Qaeda, which has disavowed any association with ISIS.

* Iran is an Islamic republic governed next door to Iraq by Shiites also, but the Iranians detest the United States, which is involved up to its eyeballs in trying to broker a political solution.

* U.S. officials now are considering asking Iran for help in negotiating a deal.

* ISIS also is involved in the Syrian civil war, with rebels seeking to overthrow the dictatorship run by Bashar al-Assad.

* President Obama has ruled out “ground troops” returning to Iraq, but is sending in about 300 “advisers” to assist the Iraqi military in its fight against ISIS.

* The Kurds in northern Iraq also want a say in a “unity government,” which could include Sunnis and Shiites.

I need to keep sitting down. My head is spinning.

How in the world does a regular human being navigate his or her way through this mess?

http://time.com/2916436/kerry-back-in-iraq-meets-kurdish-leader/

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VA scandal: worse than we thought

You’re probably wondering: Will the bad news ever stop piling up on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs?

I know this: I’m wondering when it’ll stop.

CNN uncovered a major scoop this week with revelations that the Phoenix, Ariz., VA clinic had covered up the number of veterans who died because of too-long wait times to obtain health care.

The number of deaths is worse than we thought!

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/23/us/phoenix-va-deaths-new-allegations/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Until the Veterans Affairs Department, the White House and the president of the United States himself get to the bottom of this mess and fix it, I am going to be leery whenever I go to the Amarillo VA hospital and clinic for my routine checkups.

The Thomas Creek Veterans Medical Center in Amarillo hasn’t been fingered specifically in any of this investigation. The problems with wait times, though, appear to run throughout the vast VA health care network.

Whistleblower Pauline DeWenter told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that “deceased” notes on patients were removed from files to make the clinic’s job performance look better. As CNN.com reports: “DeWenter should know. DeWenter is the actual scheduling clerk at the Phoenix VA who said for the better part of a year she was ordered by supervisors to manage and handle the so-called ‘secret waiting list,’ where veterans’ names of those seeking medical care were often placed, sometimes left for months with no care at all.”

The government has said for decades that veterans deserve the best medical care possible. They’re not getting it. Even though I, too, am a veteran I’ve been blessed with good health, so I’ll refer to the vets in jeopardy as “they” or “them.”

Until we get this situation repaired to everyone’s satisfaction, I am going to pray for the good health of all veterans who seek medical care every one of our VA clinics. That includes the Thomas Creek VA Medical Center right here in good ol’ Amarillo, Texas.

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Will they ever start busting up some cement?

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Potter County is on board, finally, with a plan that is supposed to get downtown Amarillo’s rebirth started. Maybe. Eventually. Or will it ever get done?

http://www.connectamarillo.com/news/story.aspx?id=1061498#.U6jrcFJOWt8

County commissioners voted 3-2 Monday to grant a 10-year tax abatement for the Coca-Cola distribution plant, which will relocate to a business park near Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport.

Now construction can begin — one should hope — on a new ballpark downtown that will go where the current Coke distribution plant is located.

Given the closeness of the vote on the commission, one understands the contentiousness of this issue.

City planners had hoped, I’m guessing, to be a lot farther along on this project than they have gotten.

The County Courthouse project is done; the city has rebuilt some curbs at intersections; it has knocked down the old jail; it has welcomed a downtown business hotel in the old Fisk Building; a new convenience store has opened up across the street from a new bank complex.

But the Big Three of the downtown redevelopment effort — the stadium, parking garage and a new convention hotel — haven’t yet begun. It’s been more than three years since the city signed the deal with the Wallace-Bajjali development firm to spearhead a $113 million project that is supposed to occur with a single dime of public tax money being spent.

Officials connected to the project keep saying they have a lot i’s to dot and t’s to cross. It’s complicated, we’re told.

I’m as anxious as anyone else to see the downtown project move forward. However, I’m getting a little nervous about the time it’s taken to line up all the elements.

I’m ready to start seeing some pavement being busted up downtown.

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Memo validates drone strike on American

Maybe there’s something wrong with me … but I doubt it.

I might be one of few Americans who can justify a drone strike that killed an American citizen who happened to be an al-Qaeda terrorist.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-memo-justifies-drone-hit-american-citizen-al-awlaki-n138431

The U.S. Justice Department has released a declassified version of a memo that validates the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born terrorist. He had been plotting against the United States of America. He was a traitor to his country. His death in the Yemen drone attack, which occurred in September 2011, has become a cause for civil libertarians who contend that the United States should not target an American citizen in its war against international terror.

Al-Awlaki was a very bad man. He deserved to die on the battlefield. He had taken up arms against the United States. He was an enemy combatant. My understanding of war is that enemy combatants become targets of the forces that oppose them.

“We believe DoD’s contemplated action against al-Aulaqi would comply with international law, including the laws of war applicable to this armed conflict and would fall within Congress’ authorization to use ‘necessary and appropriate force’ against al-Qaida,” the memo said.

The memo concludes, saying that al-Awlaki was “engaged in continual planning and direction of attacks upon U.S. persons from one of the enemy’s overseas basis of operations, the U.S. government does not know precisely when such attacks will occur, and a capture operation would be infeasible.”

“There are few questions more important than the question of when the government has the authority to kill its own citizens,” according to deputy ACLU legal director Jameel Jaffer.

My own feeling is that when one of those citizens takes up arms on the field of battle against his country, then he has answered the question himself. He becomes a target.

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Hottest May in human history

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http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/may-was-hottest-recorded-history-n138446

Planet Earth just experienced the hottest May in recorded history.

That’s according to those left-wing, socialist, tree-hugging, anti-business organizations such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and the Japanese government.

OK, so the reaction to this latest report will be quite predictable.

The righties will contend it’s all cooked up, fabricated, tailored to support the climate-change agenda being put forward by the communists who run the White House. The lefties will say these findings prove what they’ve been saying all along, which is that Earth is getting hotter.

I haven’t yet decided how I feel about who’s to blame for what I believe to be happening, which is that the planet is warming up.

Is it manmade or is it part of the planet’s evolutionary cycle?

A lot of scientific data suggest that human beings are largely responsible for this, through the emission of greenhouse gases and the deforestation of large tracts of land that used to serve as a counterbalance to what humans spew into the atmosphere.

I tend to believe the data. I haven’t yet drawn any firm conclusions. I’m still open to the possibility that Earth is beginning a cycle repeated every million years or so.

NOAA, NASA and the Japanese, though, have laid it out — once more — for all the world to see. This past May was the hottest on record. How can we possibly deny that the climate is changing?

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