The issue of term limits is returning to the public policy arena in the Texas Legislature.

I’ve long opposed mandated term limits, believing that we already have them. We call ‘em elections, correct?

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/03/08/conservatives-revive-proposal-term-limits/

But not to be dissuaded from limiting the terms of officeholders, conservatives want the issue put to a vote, maybe this year in the form of an amendment to the Texas Constitution. As the story linked to this blog notes, opponents of term limits are posing an interesting argument: Term limits don’t always guarantee fresh voices and faces in Texas government.

Gov. Rick Perry served as agriculture commissioner and lieutenant governor before becoming governor. When was that? Seems like he’s been in office forever. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst was land commissioner before moving into his current office. Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson served in the state Senate preceding his current gig. Comptroller Susan Combs was agriculture commissioner. Attorney General Greg Abbott was a member of the state Supreme Court.

The point is that if we limit the terms someone can serve in an office, all he or she can do is run for another office – and probably win. Do we get new ideas? No. We get old ideas in new offices.

Legislators are about as likely to limit their own terms as members of Congress would limit theirs. Some lawmakers say they favor term limits and actually have voted for them. But to amend either the U.S. or Texas Constitution, we need a two-thirds majority of legislators to sign on. Capitol Hill hasn’t done it and I’m not sure it’ll happen in Austin, either – for precisely the same reason: Lawmakers like staying in office and are unlikely to cut their own political throats.

But a larger point is whether we should mandate a turnover if a majority of voters like the job their officeholders are doing. We demand state representatives to run for re-election every two years. Some of them – such as former state GOP Rep. Jim Landtroop of Plainview in 2012 – actually lose their re-election bid. Most of them win, but that’s the voters’ call.

Do we need mandatory term limits? No. We need an electorate that is prepared to make change on its own.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush, R-Fla., got his hackles up this morning when “Meet the Press” host David Gregory asked him about his possible – or perhaps probable – run for the presidency in 2016.
“Man, you guys are crack addicts,” Bush responded.
http://thehill.com/video/campaign/287211-jeb-bush-calls-media-crack-addicts-over-2016-presidential-race-speculation-
He said the press has an “obsession” with his future political plans.
My own reaction is, well, yeah governor. What is your point? The media pay reporters and commentators to speculate on these things and everyone with half an interest in politics in this country knows that Jeb Bush is entertaining the idea of seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. It’s in his genes. Jeb knows it. So does his father, the 41st president, as does his brother, the 43rd president. Even the ex-Florida governor’s son, George P. Bush, is likely to jump into Texas politics next year as he makes a run for a still-undisclosed statewide office.
Bush should know better than anyone that the only way to dispel this kind of discussion is to declare categorically he won’t run – ever – for president. Jeb won’t take that leap because, well, maybe he, too, is a “crack addict” who cannot wean himself of the political limelight.
Absent that kind of denial, the media would be derelict in their duty if they didn’t ask him the obvious questions about his political future.

President Obama recently broke bread with several Republican U.S. senators in an effort, the White House says, to bridge the great divide that separates the Democratic head of state from the loyal opposition.

Was it for real or just for show?

U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says it’s the real deal.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/03/09/obama-outreach-to-diffuse-gop-opposition-pelosi-says/

Then again, you’d expect the California Democrat to say such a thing. But the more interesting reaction actually has come from congressional Republicans who are expressing a similar view, that they also think the president is being sincere in his outreach.

I noted in a recent blog post some of the criticism that Obama has earned for being too aloof and acting as if he’s above the fray. One of my better friends in Amarillo, a high-powered educator and dedicated Democrat, said Obama needs a little infusion of Lyndon Johnson’s knack for cajoling the other side into seeing things his way.

He took the GOP senators to dinner at a swanky D.C. restaurant, then met the following day with House Republican leaders for lunch. And all those who attended said some kind things about the president.

Now, it remains to be seen how all this nice-making will translate into actual legislation and action that moves the country forward. The two sides have to reach some kind of budget deficit-reduction deal that forestalls future automatic cuts that already have kicked in. Economists across the board say the massive cuts and government workforce layoffs could send the country into a new recession.

Does anyone, even those who detest the president, really want that? I don’t think so.

Keep talking – and eating – together, ladies and gentlemen.

I have to say I admire Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., for doing something so many of his colleagues in recent years have failed to do.

Paul stood up and actually filibustered. That is, he spoke on the floor of the U.S. Senate for 13 hours, about this and that in an effort to wheedle a pledge from the Obama administration about the use of unmanned aircraft … drones, if you will.

The object of Paul’s objection was CIA Director John Brennan, who supported President Obama’s use of drone aircraft to strike against terrorists plotting to do harm to the United States. Paul wanted some assurance from Attorney General Eric Holder that the administration wouldn’t deploy the aircraft in U.S. airspace to use against Americans on their home soil. He got such a pledge eventually – and then he called off his filibuster. The full Senate then confirmed Brennan’s nomination and the new spook in chief has taken up his post.

Allow me two points.

First, the use of drones to target Americans abroad who are engaging in acts of war against their country doesn’t give me the least bit of concern. Paul had some concern about that, as did Sen. Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat, who joined his Republican colleague in filibustering Brennan’s nomination. A drone did kill a U.S.-born terrorist in Yemen in 2011. I didn’t mourn that American’s death, given that he was a senior al-Qaida operative who allegedly was close to the late Osama bin Laden, who died in May 2011 in a commando attack in Pakistan.

Second, it seems inconceivable to me that any president would dare use a drone aircraft flying in U.S. airspace to attack an American suspected of plotting terrorist activity. That American would have to be caught in the act of committing a heinous act, such as, say, flying a commercial jetliner full of innocent passengers into a skyscraper.

The new CIA boss is on board with the president’s policies regarding the use of drones. They have proven effective in our ongoing anti-terror campaign. President Bush ordered their use during his time in office. Barack Obama merely has extended their deployment well into his own presidency.

And even though it is highly unusual for a senator to filibuster a Cabinet nominee, I have to applaud Paul for actually standing on the Senate floor and blathering on and on, which is what the filibuster by definition allows him to do. Too often in the past so-called “filibusters” have been the result of some senator making a motion to block legislation simply because he or she disagrees with it. But the senator never has been forced to do what Rand Paul did.

At least Paul, the up-and-coming champion of the tea party wing of the GOP, has put himself on the record. Stand tall, Sen. Paul.

The Labor Department put out some big numbers Friday.

The economy added 236,000 private-sector jobs in February. The unemployment rate fell from 7.9 to 7.7 percent. Governments at all levels shed some jobs, which detracted a bit from the total number of jobs gained during the past month.

But those who’ve been blasting the Obama administration because of its allegedly “failed economic policy” aren’t joining the chorus of praise for the positive turn in the economy.

I would ask “why?” but I know the answer already. It’s politics.

Past monthly reports have shown similar dips in the jobless rate, but the “loyal opposition” has been quick to say those prior declines were a result of people ending their job search. They’re despairing of ever finding a job, so they’ve quit looking, say the critics. Economists across the board, though, hailed the latest monthly jobs numbers as a sign of actual economic growth, suggesting that the recovery is accelerating.

But the doomsayers aren’t about to sing those praises.

I think I’ll say what many of them likely are thinking privately … but don’t dare say out loud: “Hey, we might have been wrong about Barack Obama’s strategy to rescue the nation from its 2008-09 economic free fall.”

A letter to the editor in today’s Dallas Morning News asks a pertinent question of Sen. John Cornyn, the Texas Republican who declared there to be an enormous inflow of illegal immigrants streaming across the border onto land owned by a friend of his.

The letter writer asks why, if it’s such a huge national security breach, didn’t the senator notify the feds immediately instead of posting it on Twitter.

Cornyn says his pal — who he declines to identify — is watching 300 illegal immigrants come onto his land daily. Local police officials say it isn’t happening. Who’s telling the truth?

My hunch is that if really was occurring along the Rio Grande River, Cornyn — himself a former trial judge, state Supreme Court justice and Texas attorney general — would have fallen back on his judicial instincts and called the Justice Department right away.

Isn’t that what dedicated public servants do?

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn is making what some Rio Grande Valley lawmen say is a bogus claim about the status of border security.

I must stipulate that Cornyn is a Republican and the law enforcement officers are Democratic sheriffs. So, one must understand the politics involved.

Cornyn said recently that a South Texas rancher has told him that as many as 300 people are crossing the Rio Grande River illegally every night. He won’t identify the name of the individual making the claim, but does say he’s a friend of the senator’s. The Dallas Morning News, though, reports that sheriffs along the border scoff at Cornyn’s assertion, saying that such a mass migration across the border would produce 110,000 illegal crossings annually, which they say is more than double the estimated number of people estimated by the federal government who elude capture every year.

Zapata County Sheriff Alonzo Lopez, one of the Democratic lawmen who say Cornyn is making this stuff up, said: “We would be acting on that if it were true. We never hear about large amounts of people crossing ’cause it’s not happening.”

Sure enough, the sheriffs have their political turf to protect. They can’t acknowledge this kind of massive breach along the border for fear of creating election-year issues for opponents to use against them. However, Cornyn also has some worries awaiting him, particularly if the tea party wing of the GOP mounts a challenge against him in the 2014 Republican primary. Cornyn wouldn’t be the first member of either the Senate or the House to embellish something for political effect, to give himself a straw man to knock down just to demonstrate his toughness on a particular hot-button issue.

And the way Cornyn’s been acting in recent years, by swinging far to the right to avoid that kind of political ambush, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to learn that he, too, is telling a tall tale.

Here’s an idea, senator: Tell the world who’s feeding you this intelligence and let that individual answer the questions directly.

This just in: Researchers have “functionally cured” a 2-year-old toddler of the virus that causes AIDS.

Who’s next? Perhaps it will be the adult who’s battled the virus for years, maybe decades, and who’s been living with the faint hope that a cure is on the horizon.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/03/health/hiv-toddler-cured/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

The toddler, a Mississippi girl, is the first child cured of the virus that causes AIDS. Some observers are calling it a “game changer” in the three-decade-long fight against AIDS.

Remember when the disease was thought to be exclusive to gay men who got the virus through sexual contact? Many Americans scorned these patients, vilified them publicly. But since the first case was reported in 1982, the disease has spread its tentacles across the entire spectrum of the world’s population.

In 2004, I was privileged to attend the International Conference on AIDS in Bangkok, where I learned this stunning fact about HIV: The most vulnerable demographic group, the folks most likely to get the disease, were the wives of promiscuous men. Our group of journalists traveled from Thailand to Cambodia and to India, where we studied the impact the AIDS virus was having on people in that part of the world.

I learned in India about an outreach to long-haul truck drivers that is intended to educate them on the dangers of contracting HIV when they come in contact with prostitutes or other women while they are traveling through the country. That outreach includes extremely graphic material handed out at truck stops that shows what happens to certain human body parts when they are infected with sexually transmitted diseases.

The Mississippi toddler contracted HIV after being born to a mother who received no prenatal care and who, herself, had the virus. The findings about this stunning “functional cure” demonstrates just how the disease has progressed across our own population.

Let’s hope the little girl’s cure is a game changer.

http://amarillo.com/news/local-news/2013-03-02/statewide-property-tax-idea-floated

If I were wearing a hat at the moment, I’d take it off and tip it to state Sen. Bob Duncan, R-Lubbock, who’s taken a courageous step toward making the state system of school financing more fair and equitable.

He’s going to file a bill to create a statewide property tax to pay for public schools, replacing the local property taxes that homeowners and business owners have to pay.

I’m wondering now if the Legislature is going to seek to stop this idea from becoming law by proposing a constitutional amendment to require a vote of all Texans before if becomes law. Can’t happen? Yes it can. Legislators did that very thing back in the late 1980s to prevent a state income tax from occurring in Texas.

Duncan’s idea would almost resemble a state income tax in that it would be applied across the state. One of Duncan’s West Texas colleagues, state Rep. John Smithee, R-Amarillo, told my pal Enrique Rangel he doesn’t believe Duncan can muster the support in the Legislature for a statewide property tax, which also would require a constitutional amendment. Thus, Duncan needs two-thirds of all legislators to sign on … just to put the issue on the ballot this November.

What’s interesting – to me, at least – as that this idea comes from a West Texas Republican. Duncan has never been associated with the more radical wing – the tea party wing – of the GOP. He’s a centrist, moderate, clear-thinking, legally trained lawmaker who routinely rises to the top of lists that identify legislative superstars.

But what also is clear is that the mish-mash system of school financing has to be retooled into something that makes sense. State courts keep ruling this property tax system to be in violation of the Texas Constitution. It isn’t fair to so-called “property poor” school districts. They lack the funds to provide a quality education to their students; Amarillo and Canyon, sadly, fall into that category of school districts that suffers under the current system.

If nothing else, Duncan’s proposal is going to put a lot of legislators on the record either in support or opposed to the idea of overhauling the state school finance system. I’ll be waiting with bated breath to see what his Panhandle colleagues decide.

I was in San Antonio recently and learned something about Texas’s second-largest city.

The city’s governing council works virtually for free, just like the Amarillo City Commission. San Antonio, with a population of about 1.4 million inhabitants, pays its city council members something $20 per meeting, plus reimburses them for whatever expenses they incur on behalf of the city.

Then I learned of some discussion in the Alamo City to provide at least a more livable stipend for those who serve the public. The issue on the table wouldn’t amount to an exorbitant salary that would enable these folks to quit their day jobs, but it at least would reward them for the grief they have to endure from angry constituents.

The San Antonio Express-News editorial board favors boosting the pay for council members. It noted in an editorial that, according to the Pew Charitable Trust, “Houston pays council members $55,700 yearly; Dallas, $37,500; and Austin, $63,000. Mayors typically earn more.”

Such a discussion hasn’t ever really been raised seriously in Amarillo, where we seem proud of the fact that we pay our commissioners 10 bucks per meeting and pay them back for expenses.

But the announcement the other day that only one candidate – other than the five incumbents – has filed for the May election makes me wonder: Isn’t it time at least to begin discussing the idea of paying these folks a little more for their time and service?

I keep thinking a little bit of cash might provide some incentive for those who think they can do a better job of setting policy for our city.