Monthly Archives: April 2016

legal news, political news, State news

Texas AG now faces SEC accusation

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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is under indictment for securities fraud.

Now, though, the Securities and Exchange Commission has weighed in on the attorney general, charging him with a similar misdeed.

Let’s see. A Collin County grand jury — in Paxton’s home county — has issued a criminal indictment. The SEC now has accused the AG of failure to disclose he was being paid a commission for investment advice he was giving.

Is there a pattern here? Does the state of Texas really deserve to be represented by a top legal eagle who’s now under a dual-edged complaint?

As one who believes in the presumption of innocence, I have been reluctant to call for Paxton to step down from this high office.

Until now.

Paxton has proclaimed his innocence. Of course he would, yes?

I recall during the 2014 campaign for attorney general, though, that Paxton — who served in the Texas Legislature — actually admitted to doing what the grand jury accused him of doing when it indicted him. The grand jury indicted him for failing to disclose that he had been paid for the investment advice he gave.

Still, Texas voters elected him.

According to the Texas Tribune: “People recruiting investors have a legal obligation to disclose any compensation they are receiving to promote a stock, and we allege that Paxton and White concealed the compensation they were receiving for touting Servergy’s product,” Shamoil T. Shipchandler, director of the SEC’s Fort Worth regional office, said in a news release on the complaint.

SEC joins in

This doesn’t look to me like a political witch hunt. The SEC is a regulatory agency run by professionals who are charged with ensuring that investment policies are followed to the letter.

The grand jury? It’s in the very county Paxton — a Republican — represented in the Legislature. Many of the grand jurors likely voted for the guy.

This doesn’t bode well for the attorney general.

For that matter, it doesn’t bode well for the state’s pursuit of top-notch and credible legal advice from its top lawyer.

I wouldn’t shed a tear if Ken Paxton decided to quit so he could devote his full attention to defending himself against these serious charges.

 

business news, International news, national news

Here’s a thought: Let’s join OPEC

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The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has becomes something of a four-letter word in the United States.

OPEC is evil. It intends to do us harm. We don’t want to be “dependent” on oil produced in countries that hate us.

You’ve heard the mantra. I’ve heard it, too. It all started about the time of the first Arab oil embargo in 1973.

Here, though, is a notion that ought to get some serious consideration.

Now that the United States also is a “petroleum exporting country,” why don’t we join OPEC at the conference table?

OPEC comprises a lot of nations that do hate the United States. Venezuela is one of them. Iran, too.

However, now that we’re the big dog in the fossil fuel-producing pack, it would seem to make sense that we could exert our own influence over OPEC’s decision-making as it grapples with whether to reduce or increase production in an effort to control worldwide fuel prices.

Through a series of on-going efforts, Americans have eliminated this country’s dependence on imported oil. We’re now on the verge of becoming No. 1 in the world. We’ve overtaken Russia and Saudi Arabia. We’ve developed more renewable energy sources, helping increase the glut of petroleum on the world market.

OPEC, though, keeps meeting and deciding how much — or how little — oil to produce.

Isn’t it time the United States of America join OPEC? For that matter, we ought to bring our oil-rich allies in Canada and Mexico into the organization with us — providing, of course, that they’d be willing. We no longer need to curse the organization.

 

Uncategorized

Puppy Tales, Part 18

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Our learning curve about Toby the Puppy keeps us alert.

Readers of this blog know that my wife and I have been lifelong cat lovers. At this writing, we no longer have cats in our family. Our 14-year-old female alley cat, Mittens, died on Leap Day of this year. We miss her terribly.

But our puppy, well, he’s keeping us in stitches.

This morning we took Toby to the veterinarian to receive a microchip in his neck. We thought it would require a bit of minor surgery: an injection to deaden the feeling in his skin, a small incision, an insertion of the chip and then … presto!

Oh, no. It’s even less invasive than that. The vet tech said all she did was insert the chip through an oversized hypodermic needle. Poof! That’s it. He’s now registered in case he gets lost and someone picks him up.

Then my wife asked: “Why does he keep peeing everywhere when we take him for walks? Is that normal?”

Yes, the tech said. “He’s marking his territory,” she explained. Male dogs do that. The pee on everything. Bushes. Curbs. Rocks. Light posts. Yep, fire hydrants.

I guess it never dawned on me that our pooch felt the need to mark his territory. I have watched enough Animal Planet and PBS “Nature” programs to know that male lions and tigers do it in the wild. But, hey, they have a serious need to let other male lions and tigers know who’s boss, correct?

Toby weighs about 10 pounds. He is extremely sweet. He doesn’t need to prove his male puppyhood to anyone, or so I would have thought.

Silly me.

Boys, I reckon, will be boys.

 

national news, political news, State news

Cruz and Cornyn: an uneasy Senate team?

cornyn and cruz

Every state is represented in the U.S. Senate by two individuals who, under an unwritten rule of good government, would seek to work in close political partnership.

The Texas Tribune has published an interesting analysis of the relationship of Texas’s two Republican senators, one of whom is running for president of the United States.

Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, according to the Tribune, aren’t exactly close. They aren’t joined at the hip. You don’t see them singing each other’s praises.

Is it a metaphor for what we’ve heard about Cruz?

It’s been stated repeatedly during this Republican primary campaign that Cruz hasn’t made many “friends” in the Senate. He doesn’t “play well with others,” the saying goes. He called the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, a “liar” in a Senate floor speech and then just this past week said he had no intention to take back what he said.

It might be a big deal — in a normal election cycle. This one isn’t normal. As the Tribune reports: “In any other circumstance, it would be curious that a viable presidential candidate did not have the support of his fellow state Republican. But each man in this case represents the visceral divide raging in the party: Cornyn is the consummate establishment team player, while Cruz is the TEA Party insurgent.”

Cruz has been a senator for slightly more than three years. Cornyn was elected in 2002. What’s more, the Senate is Cruz’s first elected office; Cornyn, on the other hand, served as Texas attorney general and, before that, as a member of the Texas Supreme Court.

Cornyn knows how to play the political game in Texas. He’s good at it. Is he exactly my kind of senator? Hardly, but I do respect the man’s political skill.

Cruz brings another element to this game. I would consider it his amazing degree of hubris and utter fearlessness.

It’s long been said that the U.S. Senate is a 100-member club that requires a bit of time for members to feel comfortable. It took young Ted Cruz no time at all to grab a microphone on the Senate floor and begin blasting away at his rivals.

It’s only a hunch on my part but it might be that the Texas rookie’s rush to the center of the stage could have been a bit off-putting to the more senior legislator.

It used to be said that the “most dangerous place in Washington” was the space between Sen. Phil Gramm and a microphone. Gramm left the Senate some years ago. Ted Cruz has taken up that new — apparently with great gusto.

Is he a team player? Are Texas’s two senators — Cornyn and Cruz — on the same page all the time? Consider this from the Tribune:

“There are no whispered tales in Senate circles about heated arguments between the two men or icy glares on the Senate floor. Instead, the most frequently used word observers use to describe the relationship is ‘disconnected.’”

 

 

International news

How about that? POTUS admits to ‘worst’ error

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I’m going to give President Obama some high praise for doing something one doesn’t often hear from people in high office.

He has acknowledged what he says is his “worst mistake.”

What’s more, he did it in a forum that is considered hostile territory.

The president appeared on “Fox News Sunday” this weekend and told host Chris Wallace the worst mistake of his presidency was failing to plan adequately for the fall of the late Libyan dictator/tyrant/despot Moammar Gadhafi.

When do presidents do such a thing? Did Richard Nixon ever say he erred by recording those conversations in the White House; has Jimmy Carter ever said his biggest mistake was ordering the mission to rescue the Iran hostages; did George W. Bush ever acknowledge the Iraq War was a mistake?

OK, so the president didn’t take the heat for the Libya mess by himself. He heaped some blame in British Prime Minister David Cameron for being distracted at the time of Gadhafi’s downfall.

I do give Obama credit, though, for admitting to a lack of planning as the world watched the chaos unfold in Libya. The so-called “Arab Spring” went into full bloom in Tripoli as rebels took over the government, captured the dictator — and then killed him.

It got worse, of course, as the U.S. consulate in Benghazi came under attack and four Americans died in the melee. Perhaps some adequate planning could have forestalled that event, yes?

The president’s greatest triumph? Without question, he said, it was his decision to jump-start the economy with stimulus packages upon taking office. I won’t argue with him on that. The economy was in free-fall and something needed to be done quickly.

It might be, too, that the president deserves props for telling all this to a broadcast journalist employed by a media outlet known as being patently unfriendly to politicians of Obama’s particular leaning.

I’ll give some to him for that alone.

Sure, there can be some debate on “worst mistakes” of the Obama presidency. Some might rank his failure to act on Syria crossing the “red line” when it used chemical weapons; others might rank the president’s unfortunate description of the Islamic State as the “JV team.”

The Libya coup aftermath, though, surely ranks as a critical error.

It’s just rare to hear a politician actually admit to making such a mistake.

 

national news, political news

No mandatory vote law needed, Mr. President

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Barack Obama is frustrated at the political division and the apparent apathy among voters in the United States.

I share the president’s frustration.

However, I don’t share his enthusiasm for a suggested remedy.

Make voting mandatory, he said in a speech at the University of Chicago law school.

The Australians  do it right, he said, by requiring citizens to vote. He said such a requirement would be “transformative” by boosting turnouts to the 70 to 80 percent range.

There are ways to encourage turnout without making citizens do it, Mr. President.

We could declare Election Day a national holiday. Give everyone a day off from work to vote. That’s an idea.

As for mandatory voting, the U.S. Constitution grants us the right to vote. It doesn’t specify it as a condition of citizenship. Our rights as citizens depend on whether we choose to take full advantage of them.

I am proud to vote. I almost always wait to do so on Election Day, whether it’s in the primary or in the general election. There’s just something ham-handed and, dare I say, dictatorial in declaring that Americans must vote.

I also lament the pitiful voter turnouts. Only 53.6 percent of Americans voted for president in 2012. The Australian turnout was greater than 90 percent in its most recent general election. Yes, that is vastly better than our own electoral performance.

“We really are the only advanced democracy on Earth that systematically and purposely makes it really hard for people to vote,” Obama told the law students.

That might be true. There are many options out there to make it easier for Americans to vote. Writing that requirement into law isn’t one of them.

We must remain free to vote — or not vote — as we see fit.

For better or worse, that’s the American way.

business news, local news

Beam signing signals huge step forward

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They had a beam signing this weekend in downtown Amarillo.

The beam is set to become part of the superstructure that’s going to hold up a new hotel currently under construction.

The Embassy Suites Hotel eventually will open its doors to business clientele coming to Amarillo for conventions touting this and/or that product, or provide professional development for the attendees.

It’s part of what has been called a “catalyst project” aimed at reconfiguring downtown Amarillo. There’s more to come.

I happen to be one of those Amarillo residents who’s quite excited about the prospects for the city’s downtown district.

It’s been a sometimes-rocky ride. The downtown district hasn’t yet reached a smooth road or calm waters. There well could be more tumult to come.

The beam signing, though, suggests — to me, at least — that the city is moving forward.

The Embassy Suites is being financed by a private developer, Chuck Patel, who seems to see a big future in this city. He rounded up some investors to buy in, made his pitch and has broken ground. The hotel is rising up as I write this brief post.

It’s worthwhile to remember the last time anyone saw three construction cranes moving heavy pieces on sites downtown. The Southwestern Public Service building construction is well under way; a parking garage is going up, too.

The Big Enchilada, of course, is The Ballpark, or MPEV, or whatever you choose to call it. It, too, is planned for downtown’s district. There could be a major tenant taking up residence there once it’s built: a AA minor-league baseball franchise.

Today, though, we have a beam signing to symbolize some major strides forward for the city’s future.

Not bad at all.

 

media news, national news, political news

Boston Globe crawls under Trump’s skin

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Donald J. Trump’s thin skin causes some hysterical reaction.

Take his response to a satirical front page the Boston Globe published today that imagines a Trump presidency.

The paper’s front page screamed with headlines about deportation of illegal immigrants, a tripling of immigration enforcement personnel and the filing of libel lawsuits against the media.

Trump called the Globe “worthless” and launched into a tirade in which he said the paper wrote a “dishonest story.”

It was a joke, Mr. Trump. I get that he wouldn’t find it funny. I also get that he dislikes any media outlet that criticizes him for the statements he has made while campaigning for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.

But the Globe’s editorial page laid down the predicate for the bogus front page. There was no secret agenda involved here. The paper’s view of Trump is well-known. The editors of the Globe do not want the real estate mogul to become president. So, they engaged in a bit of satire to illustrate their point.

In the highly unlikely event that Donald Trump ever were to be elected president, he would certainly face a torrent of criticism for the statements he would make and for the policies he would enact. Sure, he also would get praise from some quarters.

This kind of critical analysis, though, simply goes with the territory.

The man needs to toughen up his skin.

 

International news, military news

‘Rolling Thunder 2.0’ … perhaps?

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B52

Bring on the B-52s.

The Pentagon has deployed an unspecified number of the Cold War-era strategic bombers to Qatar to take part in the fight against the Islamic State.

The brass says the aircraft bring “multi-platform” forms of firepower to rein down on the terrorists. The Air Force describes the weaponry as precise and finely tuned to hit military targets.

Good to hear!

The B-52 remains one of the U.S. Air Force’s most potent weapons. It went into operation in the 1950s and has gone through several upgrades over the decades.

It poured thousands of tons of ordnance on North Vietnamese and Viet Cong targets during the Vietnam War. The planes played a key role in softening up Iraqi troop positions during the Persian Gulf War in 1990-91.

Now the Islamic State is about to feel the wrath of a weapon that our nation’s enemies always have feared on the battlefield.

My very first visual sight of the Vietnam War occurred as I peered out the window of a jetliner en route to Bien Hoa, South Vietnam in the spring of 1969. I looked down and saw a flight of the big birds flying out over the ocean after, I presume, completing a bombing run over South Vietnam.

Once I settled in at our Army aviation base near Da Nang, I could hear the thunder to our west as the planes fulfilled their mission. It was music to our ears, but it meant something quite different to those on the receiving end.

I welcome the news of the B-52 coming back into active wartime duty. I’m quite certain the terrorists who are about to find themselves on the receiving end of some serious pain will not.

 

national news, political news

Paradise awaits political panderers

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New York is a paradise for those who love to pander for votes.

That’s especially true in New York City, the Big Apple.

Think of it: The city of 8 million-plus residents has a large Jewish-American population; the Catholic Church is big there, as well; it has a large African-American bloc of residents and a significant LGBT community; it is home to blue-collar and white-collar residents; progressives and conservatives live there; a lot of veterans call NYC home; immigrants from all over the world have settled there.

Why, there’s a group to which to pander for any of the five candidates competing for their parties’ presidential nomination.

The city has enough groups to go around several times among all five of them.

The state’s all-important primary is coming up a week from this coming Tuesday.

For Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, this is it. He’s got to win it to stay viable as a presidential hopeful. Donald J. Trump must win the Republican primary big, too. Bernie was born in Brooklyn; Trump was born in Queens. They’re home boys. They might have less need to pander than the others.

Rest assured, though, they’re going to pander to the home-boy crowd, the folks who want to vote for one of their own.

I can hear them now talking smack with crowds about how they know more about the city than their rivals. Yep, that’s pandering, too.

Meanwhile, the others — even Hillary Clinton, who represented New York in the Senate for eight years — are going to try to out-pander each other in their quests for votes.

It won’t be pretty.

Then again, gut-fighter politics hardly ever is a thing of beauty.