Monthly Archives: October 2014

business news, local news

'Ban the box' from job applications

OK, I’ll stipulate that I am a bleeding-heart liberal on a lot of issues.

Hiring policy is one of them.

I ran across this item in the Charlottesville, Va. Daily Progress that got me thinking about a certain question employers occasionally ask prospective employers.

http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/roanoke-joins-charlottesville-in-removing-felony-question-from-city-job/article_3e05c5c0-5073-11e4-9508-001a4bcf6878.html

It’s the one that asks if you’ve been convicted of a felony.

I believe the question is counter-productive and that employers shouldn’t ask it.

The link attached notes that Roanoke and Charlottesville — two substantial cities in Virginia — have eliminated the required question from applications for public-sector jobs.

I’ll go along with those who say the question deters employers from hiring someone who’s done his or her time and is trying to rebuild a life outside of prison. Asking the question about their criminal history acts as a disincentive to employers looking for people for their payroll.

It’s an unfair question.

Yes, I get that employers have a right to know as much as they can about applicants. They can perform background checks, though, without asking the individual to confess to whether he or she is a convicted felon.

And what about Amarillo? City Hall asks applicants to fill out a “criminal history” section, listing convictions and the nature of the charge.

I understand that some states have enacted laws prohibited all employers from asking the question. That’s a step toward enabling folks to rebuild their lives.

Will it ever happen in Texas? I doubt it. Strongly. But it should.

political news, State news

Voter ID = poll tax

A federal judge has stuck it to Texas’s desire to require photo identification for everyone wanting to vote.

She did so with unflinching language. This fight is going to get interesting.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/10/09/federal-judge-rules-texas-voter-id-law-unconstitut/

The Texas Tribune reports: “’The Court holds that SB 14 creates an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote, has an impermissible discriminatory effect against Hispanics and African-Americans, and was imposed with an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose,’ U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos of Corpus Christi wrote in a 147-page opinion. ‘The Court further holds that SB 14 constitutes an unconstitutional poll tax.’”

Oh yes. Ramos was appointed to the federal bench by President Barack Obama.

Now what? The state has vowed to file an immediate appeal to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Fifth Circuit needs to decide quickly if this matter is to be settled in time for the Nov. 4 mid-term election.

I have to hand it to Judge Ramos. She stood tall against voter suppression, which is what voter ID appears to be — to me, at least.

The Texas voter ID law requires voters to produce some form of photo identification when they go to the polls. Opponents of the law enacted in 2011 contend that it discriminates against minority voters who might not have, say, a driver’s license, a passport, a concealed firearm permit or any other valid form of photo ID.

To obtain such identification requires significant expense in some cases, voter ID foes argue, and that comprises what they contend is an unconstitutional “poll tax.”

Across the country where voter ID laws have been in force, the laws are the result of Republican-controlled state governments. That’s not unusual by itself. However, the politics of these laws requires one to wonder out loud: Is this done to suppress the vote among residents who might tend to vote, umm, Democratic?

The alleged bogeyman in this is voter fraud. According to the Texas Tribune: “The state maintains the law ensures the security of the ballots cast by voters and prevents voter fraud. Attorneys for the state argued that there is no evidence the law will keep legitimate voters from voting. Attorneys challenging the law said there is little evidence of the kind of in-person voter fraud the law is intended to prevent.”

Another question: Is voter fraud such a huge matter in Texas that it requires a law such as this?

Instances of voter fraud over the course of many election cycles comprise a minuscule amount.

I’ll leave it to state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, to put this matter in what I believe is its proper perspective:

“Texas has a long and sad history of making it difficult for people to vote. Elected officials repeatedly used the law to keep people out of the voting booth. Decades later, history rightly judges those men and women in a harsh light. As the court ruled, the voter ID law is essentially a modern day poll tax and has the same effect as other laws used in decades past to keep scores of lawful, legal Americans from voting. It was wrong then, it is wrong now, and I’m pleased the court stood up to protect the right to vote for all Texans.”

The fight isn’t over. Not by a long shot.

local news, military news

The tank is elsewhere

Social media can be quite a boon to finding answers to nagging questions in a hurry.

The other day I posed a question on Facebook about the whereabouts of a battle tank that once “guarded” one of the doors to the Potter County Courthouse in downtown Amarillo.

I got my answer … quickly. It’s been moved to Pampa, about 60 miles northeast in Gray County.

The tank is now sitting proudly with some other war relics.

I mistakenly referred to the tank as an M-48. It’s actually newer than that; it’s an M-60.

Potter County Judge Arthur Ware put the tank out there after then-Justice of the Peace Jim Tipton — a fellow Marine — procured the vehicle from someone, whose identity escapes me at the moment.

Ware, who is leaving office at the end of the year, told me several times over the years how proud he was to have the tank out there. He said it symbolized some memorial to veterans who had served their country. Ware, a Marine reservist, was called up during the Persian Gulf War in 1990-91 and went into battle with his fellow Marines against the allegedly vaunted Iraqi Republican Guard.

The tank stood there for many years. Then the county sought some historical preservation grant money to restore the courthouse. The rules from the Texas Historical Commission are quite restrictive, as they should be. The county sought to return the courthouse to its original pristine state, which in 1930 did not include the tank on the grounds.

The tank had to go. Period.

So the county found a suitable home for it.

I’m glad it hasn’t been scrapped. I also am glad the state historical preservationists stuck to their guns — so to speak — by ordering the county removed from the courthouse grounds.

The county did a good job of restoring the grand old building — while obeying the rules that took an old weapon of war to another location.

International news

Children become Nobel focus

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Children have risen to the top of the world’s attention in this quite troubling time.

Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in furthering the rights of children around the world.

http://news.yahoo.com/malala-kailash-satyarthi-win-nobel-peace-prize-090630266.html

Every so often, the Nobel committee’s Peace Prize selections draw some criticism. I dare anyone to be critical of the choice made this year — not just regarding the honorees, but regarding the cause they have taken up.

Of the two, most of us know already about Malala. She’s now 17. Two years ago she was shot in the head by a Taliban terrorist simply for insisting that girls have the right to an education in her native Pakistan.

Malala has recovered — mostly — from that terrible wound. She’s written a best-selling book, “I Am Malala,” and has gone on with her life, promoting the cause of education for young girls who had been denied an education by the Taliban.

Malala is the youngest ever Peace Prize recipient.

Kids today … indeed.

Satyarthi is a 60-year-old Indian who for years has  been a champion for children’s rights. Since 1960 he has been fighting against sex slavery and child labor exploitation. He gave up a career as a mechanical engineer and is believed to have saved thousands of children from the horrors of slavery and exploitation.

The Associated Press noted the selection creates an interesting juxtaposition as well. The Peace Prize honorees are from neighboring countries that long have had tense relations, often doing battle across their common border on the Asian sub-continent.

As AP reported: “The Nobel Committee said it was an important point to reward both an Indian Hindu and a Pakistani Muslim for joining ‘in a common struggle for education and against extremism.’ The two will split the Nobel award of $1.1 million.”

The Nobel Committee has made an inspired choice.

local news

Walking and texting pose hazard

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This isn’t a flash to anyone, but I feel the need to share it anyway.

This morning my wife and I did a little grocery shopping at a store in southwest Amarillo. We were backing our car away from the parking stall when my wife noticed a young man walking behind us.

“He’s texting and walking, not even paying a bit of attention to what’s going on out here,” she said.

I grumbled. She rolled her eyes.

The young man walked past us into the store, never once looking up from the device he was using.

My question is this: Who’s liable — the driver or the non-attentive pedestrian — if there’s a car-pedestrian collision in a parking lot?

I totally get that individuals are addicted to their, um, telecommunications devices. I struggle a bit with that form of addiction myself, checking emails that roll into my cell phone. My wife is far from addicted. She’s a lot smarter about using her cell phone than I am — occasionally.

This yahoo, though, walking through the parking lot might have needed a nudge from a car to wake his sorry backside up and alert him to the hazards of walking through traffic while engrossed in whatever message he was sending or receiving.

It’s another distressing sign of the times.

Would I be totally wrong had I given this young man a slight bump with my car?

International news, medical news, national news, State news

Ebola patient dies; now, let's stay calm

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Thomas Eric Duncan has died of Ebola.

He came to Dallas from Liberia carrying the virus that causes the disease. He checked into a hospital and was given the best treatment possible anywhere in the world. Still, the disease killed him.

It’s a sad end to a man’s life.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/10/08/dallas-patient-diagnosed-ebola-dies/

Now what? Do we panic? Do we quarantine the entire hospital staff? Or those who came into this man’s room?

Not at all.

Yes, I blogged recently about the difficulty of maintaining my composure when Duncan arrived in Dallas, given that I have immediate family members living in the Metroplex. My head has cleared since then.

I hope we start listening to the medical experts who are saying the same thing — over and over, repeatedly. The only way one can catch the killer disease is to come in direct contact with someone who’s infected.

CNN’s coverage of this “crisis,” as usual, has been a bit overblown — in my humble view. The network’s reporters and anchors keep harping on the crisis aspect of the disease in West Africa — and it’s real. However, I am concerned about what it’s doing to the American psyche as it relates to this disease.

Yet the network is trotting out infectious disease experts from all over creation to tell us that a single case of Ebola in one American city should not be cause to push panic buttons, or to sound sirens, or send people into undisclosed secure locations.

If this situation is going to produce any positive outcome, it might be this: We’ve got a lot of brilliant medical researchers right here in the U.S. of A. who are quite capable of finding it. If the Ebola scare has done anything at all, I am hopeful it has scared researchers into redoubling their efforts at finding a cure.

Uncategorized

Political discourse needs cleansing

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This is what has become of honest-to-goodness political discourse in this country.

Or so it appears.

A Fox News talk-show host has compared liberalism to a “disease,” such as Ebola.

That’s the spirit, Eric Bolling, of the so-called “big tent” philosophy preached by your pals on the right and extreme right wing of the political spectrum.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/10/06/foxs-bolling-calls-liberalism-a-dangerous-virus/201037

This kind of rhetoric is beneath contempt. Sadly, it seems to illustrate what has become of the state of political discourse in the United States. It’s “our way or the highway.”

Before you accuse me of being a liberal shill who’s taking on the righties of our great country, I want to toss a haymaker at the lefties as well. Listen to the tone of their commentary regarding those on the right. It is equally painful to hear. It suggests that conservatives are out to starve the very young and the very old, take away Granny’s retirement income and send our young men and women off to war with no clear purpose.

There once was a time in this country when conservatives and liberals could argue about ideas without trashing the other side. They were patriots of the first order. They loved their country. They merely argued over the best way to make lives better for all Americans.

***

All of this reminds me of an interview I witnessed on what was then called the “MacNeill-Lehrer News Hour” on PBS.

Jim Lehrer was interviewing two genuine war heroes: liberal Democratic former U.S. Sen. George McGovern and conservative Republican former U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater. They were commenting on the nastiness of the 1988 presidential campaign and wondered aloud to each other why liberals and conservatives no longer got along when they were off the clock.

These two political giants had earned their spurs the hard way. They both were aviators during World War II and had served heroically while fighting tyranny. They were friends and political adversaries. They shared a bond forged by fierce combat.

Goldwater became the father of the modern conservative movement in America, while McGovern became a champion for social justice and along the way became a hero to progressive all across the land.

It was at the end of the interview that Goldwater pitched an idea to McGovern: “Why don’t we run together, as a ticket, George. You and me.” McGovern and Goldwater then laughed out loud at the seeming preposterousness of the idea.

More than a quarter-century later, I wish it could have come to pass.

International news, medical news, military news, national news, State news

ISIL threat: real or imagined?

Here’s my fervent hope for the moment: it is for otherwise responsible members of Congress to quit saying things they cannot prove beyond any doubt — not just reasonable doubt.

U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., says at least 10 Islamic State fighters have been captured on our southern border.

Not so, says Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/isil-us-border-homeland-security-duncan-hunter-111722.html?hp=l8

Who’s telling the truth?

My relative lack of cynicism leads me to believe the guy in charge of protecting the homeland. That would be Secretary Johnson.

“Let’s not unduly create fear and anxiety in the American public by passing on speculation and rumor,” Johnson told CNN.

Rep. Hunter is feeding the national anxiety over the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Does he have proof that these individuals were apprehended and they, indeed, are members of the monstrous terrorist organization? No. Johnson replies that his agency has seen no “credible intelligence” that ISIL is at our southern doorstep, ready to cross into the U.S. territory and begin its reign of terror on unsuspecting and innocent Americans.

There is, though, another way to look at this matter.

It is that Border Patrol, Immigration and Naturalization Service, the FBI and local police authorities are on their toes. Suppose they are capturing individuals linked to ISIL. Wouldn’t that mean they’re doing their job?

I’ll stick with Secretary Johnson’s assessment that the situation lacks “credible intelligence” to suggest ISIL is on the march in North America.

We need physical proof, folks, that this is happening. And I’m not talking about fuzzy photos that Bigfoot believers produce to “prove” the existence of a mythical creature.

Let’s deal in reality and forgo the fiction.

International news, military news, national news, political news

Name's the same: It's called 'war'

The “fair and balanced” network that keeps proclaiming its journalistic integrity is at it again.

The Fox News Channel is trotting out a military expert to gripe that the war against the Islamic State doesn’t have a name, as in Operation Destroy ISIL or Operation Kill the Bad Guys.

The expert, whose name escapes me at the moment, was complaining that the Obama administration’s campaign to “degrade and destroy” the Islamic State needs a catchy name to rally the nation, to give the mission a sense of purpose, to send a message to the Middle East terrorist monsters that, by God, we mean business.

Then he went on to suggest that absent a name President Obama is engaging in some form of denial about the severity of the heinous organization with which we’re dealing in Syria and Iraq.

Sigh …

Someone has to tell me in language I understand precisely why we need to call this campaign something catchy.

I heard the Fox expert prattle on about national purpose and unity. However, if memory serves, Operation Iraqi Freedom — which is what the Bush administration called its March 2003 invasion of Iraq — didn’t exactly gin up a whole lot of national unity simply because we hung a label on it.

The only thing that produces such unity is battlefield success. Yes, the United States succeeded on the battlefield. Our forces defeated Saddam Hussein’s overhyped army with ease — just as we did in 1991 when we liberated Kuwait in Operation Desert Storm.

However, we weren’t greeted as “liberators,” as then-Vice President Cheney predicted would happen. Then that unity thing kind of fell apart as public opinion began to sour on our continued occupation of Iraq.

Did the name chosen produce the sense of mission and national esprit de corps envisioned at the time?

Hardly.

Let’s get back to debating the merits of the air campaign against ISIL. I hasten to note, incidentally, that more nations are taking part. We aren’t alone in this fight.

Thus, it would be helpful if critics here at home — such as the Fox News “experts” — would cease carping on these side issues.

They serve only as a distraction from the bigger fight.

political news, State news

Abbott is swimming in campaign cash

Greg Abbott has become a fundraising dynamo in his campaign for governor, which a lot of observers think he’s going to win next month.

He’s got an estimated $30 million in the bank. He won’t spend it all, according to the Texas Tribune.

What’s the deal?

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/10/08/brief/

It appears he’s saving it up for the next campaign in 2018, which could get serious if another Republican — state Sen. Dan Patrick — is elected lieutenant governor.

Patrick might be so darn full of himself that he’ll want to challenge Abbott for governor in four years. I’m worried far less about Patrick’s challenge of Abbott than I worry about what kind of governor Abbott would become.

Here’s the deal.

If Abbott wants to fend off a challenge from the right wing of his party, he’ll have to govern from the far right. That means he’ll let loose with fiery rhetoric about border security, working with Texas congressional Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act, appointing right-wing ideologues to all those boards and commissions and perhaps even raising the specter of secession when the moment presents itself.

There might be a formidable Democrat out there who’ll challenge a Gov. Abbott in 2018. Let’s not kid ourselves, though, about where the stiffest challenge might present itself.

It’ll come from within the Republican Party.

As the Tribune reports: “The target of this cash juggernaut, of course, may not be a Democrat at all, but rather GOP lieutenant governor candidate Dan Patrick, who as (Austin American-Statesman reporter Jonathan) Tilove writes, ‘would like to be governor someday.'”

Therein lies the concern of where an Abbott governorship will take the state in the meantime.