Monthly Archives: February 2014

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Georgia prepared for the worst … and got it

Who knew?

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal got it right this time. He declared a state of emergency ahead of a monster winter storm, as did President Obama.

Lo and behold! Georgians got the message, stayed off the roads and spared themselves a whole lot of the chaos that enveloped the state during the first monster storm that pounded it in January.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/deep-freeze/bone-chilling-winter-blast-wipes-out-power-south-n28156

Deal, a Republican, today thanked his constituents for heeding the call to stay off the roads and highways. For their part, Georgians ought to thank Deal for alerting them in advance of the trouble that was arriving — rather than ignoring the forecasters’ predictions prior to the January storm, which is what Deal did.

His state’s residents paid a huge price for the traffic jams that clogged the state’s interstate highway system in Atlanta. Deal was left with a huge public relations nightmare, as was Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed.

They weren’t about to snooker the public a second time.

It’s good to know that public officials actually can learn from their mistakes.

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Criminal appeals court needs public defender

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals long has been considered a lost cause for those seeking to appeal criminal sentences. The CCA has a long history of denying sentences handed down by trial court juries. It’s seen as a prosecution-friendly court.

Why not elect someone with experience as a public defender?

The Texas Tribune has put together an excellent analysis on the upcoming Republican primary for the state’s highest criminal appellate court. Seven GOP candidates are running for three seats on the court. One of the incumbents, Tom Womack, is leaving the court. His Place 4 seat has drawn three challengers. One of them is Jani Jo Wood, a public defender from Harris County.

According to the Tribune, Wood “has billed herself as a constitutional conservative with the most experience fighting ‘government overreach’ on behalf of defendants.”

“Currently, no one on the court has been a public defender,” she told the Tribune. “One judge out of nine doesn’t make a decision, but one judge out of nine can provide an insight into cases that other judges wouldn’t have.”

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/02/11/larger-turnover-shapes-texas-criminal-court-race/

I’ve long thought the CCA, along with Texas Supreme Court — the state’s top civil appellate court — needed more diversity. The Supreme Court is loaded with pro-business lawyers and none from the plaintiff’s bar. The CCA is top-heavy with prosecutors.

Why not add someone with a different perspective to lend at least a touch of balance to the court’s decision-making process?

I believe that is the kind of message Jani Jo Wood is trying to convey.

In a perfect world, we could elect judges with no particular axe to grind. How do we find that person? They come either from the defense bar or are prosecutors. Lawyers running for these courts have to walk a fine line and seek to sell themselves to voters as jurists who can examine every case on its merits without regard to any bias they might have for one side or the other.

However, the Court of Criminal Appeals — with its long and sometimes contentious history of denying criminal defendants’ appeals — could use at least a little fresh perspective in its ranks.

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Perry-Christie animus is showing within GOP

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s big re-election victory last year was heralded by Texas Republicans.

A lot of Texans welcomed it. A lot didn’t.

One of those Texans who didn’t much care for Christie’s victory apparently was fellow GOP governor, Rick Perry.

Imagine that. My hunch is that Christie shouldn’t take it too personally. Perry doesn’t like a lot of politicians, particularly those who might steal his thunder.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/07/politics/christie-perry-2016/index.html?sr=sharebar_twitter

A lot has happened, of course, since Christie’s victory. His brand has been damaged by that bridge lane-closing controversy that’s getting bigger and more complicated every day.

Still, Perry and Christie are rivals for a possible GOP presidential nomination battle in 2016. Both are considered possible candidates. They’re both big hitters in the Republican Governors Association, at least for now. Perry is stepping down from his office next January to “pursue other interests,” such as exploring whether to run for president again.

Perry’s comments after Christie’s big win have been quite instructive. “He was a successful governor in New Jersey,” Perry told ABC’s “This Week.” “Now does that transcend to the country? We’ll see in later years and months to come. We’re all different states. Is a conservative in New Jersey a conservative in the rest of the country?”

Christie’s brand of conservatism surely doesn’t much look like it does here in Texas.

As CNN.com reported: “In Perry-world, Christie is seen as pompous and disrespectful, both to his fellow governors and the sense of collegial decorum that has ruled the governors association for years. To Christie and his allies on the committee, Perry is regarded as unserious, past his prime and too conservative for the national stage.”

I would add that the “pompous and disrespectful” label also could be hung on Perry as well, given his recent job-poaching forays into other states that didn’t go down well with his fellow governors.

Two big egos may be set to clash at some point as the next presidential campaign gets going. The boom will be heard all across the nation.

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Restore voting rights for felons?

This one is giving me a touch of heartburn.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has come out for a major criminal justice change, which would be to restore voting rights for those who have been convicted of a felony.

http://www.msnbc.com/politicsnation/criminal-justice-reform-gains-steam

I’ve had trouble with this notion for many years. I long have thought that someone who commits a felony ought to lose his or her right to vote, given that they have committed serious crimes against society. Thus, they have surrendered their right to determine who should govern the society against which they have committed their crime.

Then a certain light bulb came on.

If you sentence someone to prison and that someone serves his or her term, has the prisoner then repaid — in full — a debt to society? Furthermore, if that debt is paid in full, doesn’t the felon have the right to become a full citizen, given that the sentence has been carried out according to the law?

Holder spoke to a Georgetown University Law School crowd when he said: “At worst, these laws, with their disparate impact on minority communities, echo policies enacted during a deeply troubled period in America’s past – a time of post-Civil War discrimination,” Holder said. “And they have their roots in centuries-old conceptions of justice that were too often based on exclusion, animus and fear.”

I’m still wrestling a bit with this one, but my inclination is to allow felons — I do not want to call them “ex-felons,” because the record is permanent — the right to be re-enfranchised in the voting process.

They’ve paid for their crimes. So why not allow them back into society?

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Cruz upset we haven’t caught Benghazi terrorists

Right-wing politicians and their pals in the right-wing media just won’t let the flames from Benghazi smolder and die.

Benghazi refers to the U.S. consulate in Libya that was attacked on Sept. 11, 2011. Four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya. It was a terrible event. The right wingers keep stirring the pot looking for things to hang on Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was then secretary of state and is a possible candidate for president in 2016.

Then comes Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to weigh in today on the Fox News Channel. I caught a snippet of the interview today on TV while at work. He was offering up the usual stuff about accountability and trying to assess blame on Clinton over her department’s response to the chaos that erupted in the Libyan city.

Then he made the one point that caught my attention: He’s upset that “17 months to the day we haven’t yet brought the terrorists responsible for the attack to justice.”

Seventeen months later and we still haven’t caught the bad guys. Does that really upset you, Sen. Cruz?

Allow me to put this into a little different perspective.

Osama bin Laden plotted the attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, nine months into George W. Bush’s presidency. U.S. forces went to war the following month in Afghanistan. We looked for bin Laden and nearly had him in Tora Bora. He got away.

Then, after President Bush had left the White House, U.S. intelligence analysts located bin Laden in Pakistan. Nearly 10 years after the 9/11 attack, President Barack Obama ordered a team of Navy SEALs, CIA operatives and Army Special Forces pilots into Pakistan to kill the terrorist mastermind.

They did the deed.

It took a long while, nearly a decade.

I’m pretty sure we’ll get the individuals responsible for the Benghazi attack. It’s going to take some time. That’s how meticulous intelligence-gathering works.

Let’s stop the carping, Sen. Cruz.

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Governor issues needed storm warning

Give credit where it’s due to Gov. Nathan Deal, R-Ga.

The man can take a hint. After letting the state’s guard down in the face of an earlier snow and ice storm — and getting pounded by critics for the chaos that ensued — the governor has sounded the alarm to be alert to the next historic storm that’s about to pound the Peach State.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/11/us/winter-weather/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

He’s taking no chances this time, nor should he.

Deal is heeding the warnings issued by the National Weather Service, which he inexplicably ignored the first time just a couple of weeks ago.

“It certainly looks like it could be of historic proportions, especially in the last 10 to 20 years,” said National Weather Service forecaster Jason Deese.

To get ready, Deal has mobilized National Guard units and has issued stern warnings to local first responders to be ready for anything.

That’s what governors get paid to do, among other things.

Recall also that Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed took plenty of hits over his city’s shamefully inadequate response to the earlier storm. I’m betting Reed is going to follow the governor’s lead on this storm.

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Bully for Boehner on debt ceiling vote

Hell hasn’t exactly frozen over — even with the cold spell that’s chilled so much of the country.

But the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives is talking sense now about how to proceed with a vote on whether to increase the nation’s borrowing limit.

John Boehner, R-Ohio, plans to bring a “clean” bill to the floor of the House without strings attached to increase the nation’s debt limit.

Earlier plans had called for a vote but only if it was linked to reductions in military pensions, which House Republicans want reversed. The plan has now given way to a clean vote, which Boehner acknowledges will make some GOP members unhappy.

The debt ceiling needs to be increased so the government can pay its bills. There need not be threats of default or stalemates or gridlock or continuing quarrels over something that Republicans and Democrats historically have agreed needed to be done.

Boehner sought concessions from congressional Democrats and the White House. “As I said before, this is a lost opportunity. We could have sat down and worked together in a bipartisan manner to find cuts and reforms that are greater than increasing the debt limit,” Boehner told The New York Times. “I am disappointed, to say the least.”

Congress and the White House can move forward on the other issues separately from the debt ceiling.

Meanwhile, if both congressional chambers approve increasing the borrowing limits without another donnybrook, the nation will have saved itself from another potential crisis.

How can that be a bad thing?

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A-Rod to sit on bench quietly

That defiant talk by tainted baseball superstar Alex Rodriguez has been replaced by … silence.

The New York Yankees slugger and his blustering lawyer have decided to drop their lawsuit against Major League Baseball and Commissioner Bud Selig after the league suspended A-Rod for using performance enhancing drugs.

He’s going to sit out the 2014 season.

I’m more than happy that he’s decided to take his punishment, sit on the sidelines, do whatever he plans to do and avoid the embarrassment of dragging this seedy saga through the courts.

I’ve drawn only one conclusion from Rodriguez’s decision to drop the suit: He’s guilty of what’s been alleged, which is what most baseball observers have known almost since the beginning.

This story angers and saddens me all at once.

I’m angry that a young man with all that talent would allow the injection of human growth hormone and other PEDs to make him bigger and stronger. Spare me the false argument that he did only what other superstars did.

I’m sad because when Barry Bonds broke the career home run record of the real HR king — Henry Aaron — I had hope that Rodriguez would be able to break Bonds’s record because, at the time, I believe A-Rod had not used the PEDs.

For my money, Hammerin’ Hank’s record is likely to stand for a good while longer. I hope it’s forever.

Meanwhile, A-Rod, sit back and enjoy the season along with the rest of us.

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Can’t get past this Beatles glow

For the life of me I think I need someone to intervene.

I cannot get past this Beatles glow in the wake of the Sunday night tribute that celebrated the 50th anniversary since The Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.

The link attached here contains some scathing reviews written just as The Beatles began taking the world by storm.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-beatles-quotes-20140209,0,1146431.story?page=1&utm_medium=social#axzz2syCGq3FX

I take one thing away from these blistering comments: The elders should have listened to their children, rather than the other way around.

Consider this gem from the late great William F. Buckley, published on Sept. 13, 1964 in the Boston Globe:

“The Beatles are not merely awful; I would consider it sacrilegious to say anything less than that they are god awful. They are so unbelievably horribly, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art that they qualify as crowned heads of anti-music, even as the imposter popes went down in history as ‘anti-popes.'”

Oops, sorry Mr. Buckley, wherever you are.

There are moments in our lives when we remember where we were and what we were doing at historically significant moments: The Apollo 11 moon landing, JFK’s assassination, RFK’s murder, the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters, 9/11? I recall vividly where I when all those events occurred. The moment I first laid eyes on the girl I would marry, my wedding day, the birth of my sons or the birth of my granddaughter? I can recount those moments in equally vivid detail.

I also remember the first time I heard what I consider The Beatles’ greatest song, “Hey Jude.” I was in U.S. Army basic training at Fort Lewis, Wash. in the late summer of 1968. I placed my transistor radio on my bunk, turned it on and listened to that legendary ending of a song I never before had heard. You know, the “nah, nah, nah” riff. I turned to someone and asked, “Is that The Beatles?”

It was.

That describes the impact these guys’ music had on me.

The old folks way back in 1964 had it wrong. We young people had it right.

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Irony involved with water savings, rate boost

There’s a certain cruel irony at work in some Texas cities.

City officials are encouraging people to conserve water and are mandating it in some places. The results have been a reduction in revenue to pay for water and other utility infrastructure. What’s a city to do? Increase water rates.

What is wrong with this picture?

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/02/10/texans-water-conservation-reward-higher-rates/

Amarillo hasn’t reached that fork in its road — yet. The city isn’t requiring people to water their lawns less during the spring, summer and early fall; nor has it put a ban on car-washing or running sprinklers so little children can cool off. It might do so down the road if this drought continues, as the National Weather Service thinks it will.

The Texas Tribune reports that Wichita Falls has become a victim of its own water-saving edict. “It’s tough to tell the consumer that ‘Yeah, well, you guys did a great job out there conserving water, but lo and behold, we got hurt financially, so we’ve got to raise your rates,’” assistant city manager Jim Dockery said.

Here’s how the Tribune is reporting other cities’ efforts to avoid the rate hikes: “Fort Worth’s goal, like that of many other cities in Texas, is to change its rate structure to avoid such ups and downs. Today, about 17 percent of the utility’s revenue comes from fixed monthly charges that all water customers pay regardless of how much they use; by 2018, (Fort Worth utility spokeswoman Mary) Gugliuzza said, 25 percent of its revenue will come from such charges. Dockery said Wichita Falls is considering a similar transition.”

My own take is that if the rate isn’t exorbitant, it should remain a small price to pay for continued water conservation.

This relentless drought is bound to cause some alarms to go off in the Panhandle, which is now relying exclusively on groundwater to quench its cities’ and towns’ thirst. The question is when. What’s more, when the alarm goes off and residents do what their cities tell them to do — use less water — how will cities respond to the accompanying loss of revenue?