Monthly Archives: June 2018

environmental news

Waiting for the wind to become part of our energy policy

SNYDER, Texas — This picture really doesn’t do justice to the subject of this blog post, but I thought I’d show it anyway.

I snapped this shot Thursday as we sped along U.S. Highway 84 on our way to Interstate 20. I intended for it to show the seemingly endless array of wind turbines along this stretch of West Texas highway.

It begs a question I have had kicking around my noggin for some time: Where is U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry and why isn’t he using his new federal platform to carry the message of wind power to the nation?

I ask the question for what I believe is a valid reason. He served for 14 years as Texas governor and on his watch as the state’s leader, Texas became a model for alternative energy production through the use of wind turbines. Texas and California moved to the head of the line in the promotion of wind energy.

Think about that for a moment: Two states with wildly different political profiles had this one important energy-related matter in common!

You see them everywhere in West and South Texas. For as far as you can see — and even if you stand up on your tip toes — you see the turbines blowin’ in the wind. They are cranking out megawatts of electrical power. For every megawatt of wind-generated electricity, that’s a megawatt that is not necessarily produced by fossil fuels.

Wind energy is as clean as it gets. “Clean coal” is a misnomer, yet the Donald Trump administration keeps harping on its plan to “save” coal jobs by producing clean coal energy.

Those of us who live — or have lived — in West Texas also know that wind energy is the ultimate renewable energy source. Those fossil fuels? They’re finite, man! You pull the oil out of the ground, it’s gone forever. The wind keeps coming. It keeps blowing. It keeps providing “fuel” to make those turbines turning and making energy.

Rick Perry knows how this system works. If only he would use his Cabinet post as a bully pulpit to promote it to the rest of the energy industry.

His silence is quite unbecoming.

entertainment news, national news

Trump makes uneven demand over use of foul slur

I don’t want there to be a hint of acceptance for what has been said recently about Ivanka Trump, the daughter of the president of the United States.

Comic Samantha Bee used a hideous, profane slur regarding Ivanka Trump. She should be condemned for using that kind of language against her. Bee has apologized for calling her the “c-word.” No word on whether Trump accepts the apology.

That said, Daddy Trump’s demand that Bee should be punished by the TV network that hired her is hideously hypocritical. Then again, hypocrisy is part of the president’s modus operandi.

Ted Nugent, the guitarist/NRA activist/Trump supporter used the same word when referring to former first lady/secretary of state/U.S. senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Trump’s reaction to the Motor City Madman’s foul mouth? He invited him to the White House to pose for pictures with him, along with Sarah Palin and Kid Rock.

My point is that Trump’s selective outrage is so very transparent — while being so astonishingly phony at the same time.

Samantha Bee said something she clearly should not have said about Ivanka Trump. To be honest, I know little about Bee — far less about her than most of us know, or think we know, about the president’s daughter. I’m not likely to take a single thing Bee says in the future with any degree of seriousness.

However, Ivanka’s father needs to calm down and reflect — although I doubt he is capable of serious self-reflection — about how he has treated other public figures’ use of that identical derogatory term.

Furthermore, the president himself has exhibited his own brand of rhetorical callousness.

Oh, I almost forgot: Donald Trump is “telling it like it is.”

local news, Sports news

Expensive stadium needs an expensive repair

I found myself smiling while watching a news report regarding a brand new high school sports venue.

Maybe I should have been more, um, understanding.

McKinney High School is supposed to begin playing football in a $70 million stadium. The season starts this fall. The stadium — which is still under construction — is a beaut. It looks real pretty. It’s billed as a state-of-the-art venue for a growing high school in North Texas.

But … they have a problem. They found cracks in the concrete. McKinney school district officials have to repair the damage before they allow thousands of high school football fans sit and cheer their team on to victory.

If that sounds familiar, well, it should. Down the road a bit, in Allen, they encountered a similar difficulty with that school district’s shiny new football venue. The Allen Eagles had to vacate their new $60 million stadium for a couple of seasons while the contractor repaired the stress fractures officials discovered. The contractor fixed the problem at no additional cost to taxpayers. The stadium opened. The fans have cheered.

The Allen Eagles, by the way, won a state championship this past season.

Another thing: Now that my wife and I live nearby, we have a keener interest in these matters.

Will the contractor who built the McKinney stadium fix it on its own dime? They had better. I cannot imagine asking taxpayers — who already have agreed to shell out a lot of money — to dig even deeper to repair a flaw that is not their fault.

local news, political news, State news

Getting to know the political lay of the land

A move to another region of Texas gives bloggers such as yours truly a chance to get acquainted with the political movers and shakers of the community.

I’ve been sniffing around the Collin County legislative lineup and have discovered that the 2019 Legislature will be received two rookies from this suburban county.

Texas House District 89 will be represented either by Democrat Ray Ash or Republican Candy Noble. We all know this about Texas politics, which is that it’s highly likely the Republican will win the House race to seat the new state representative.

How do I know that? I don’t know it, although it’s important to note that Collin County voters gave Donald J. Trump 55 percent of their ballots cast in 2016.

The race for the Texas Senate had piqued my interest a bit more. Angela Paxton is the GOP nominee; she’ll face off against Democrat Mark Phariss this fall. Paxton is an interesting candidate, in that she is married to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is going to stand trial later this year on charges of securities fraud.

But here’s the question that needs to be dealt with head on: Will a Sen. Angela Paxton be able to vote on budget matters that involve salary matters relating to her husband’s income? That seems to smack of conflict of interest. I believe Paxton would need to tread carefully on that matter if she gets elected, presuming of course that her husband gets acquitted of the felony charges that have been leveled against him.

With all this chatter about Texas “turning blue” in this election cycle, I am not yet holding my breath. We have moved from the deeply red, fiery conservative Texas Panhandle to the doorstep of a county — Dallas County — that voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Given my own political bias, I feel a bit more at home politically in this region of Texas.

The learning curve about the politics of these new surroundings remains fairly steep. I’ll need to catch my breath and keep climbing.

national news

Bannon offers spot-on comment on Sessions’s recusal

As a general rule I am not inclined to offer praise for a former Donald Trump policy adviser who has been portrayed as the Grim Reaper on “Saturday Night Live.”

However, Stephen Bannon has offered a spot-on analysis of U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from anything relating to the Russia meddling matter in the 2016 presidential election.

Bannon said Sessions made precisely the correct call in backing out. He added that former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani also would have made the same decision had they been put in that position.

Why? They all had direct involvement in the president’s campaign and, thus, could not possibly be trusted to conduct a thorough, fair and unbiased investigation into Russian meddling in the campaign. The question of the moment is whether the president obstructed justice by firing FBI Director James Comey and whether his campaign “colluded” with Russian operatives who had dug up dirt on Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Yet, Trump has been trashing Sessions for making that decision. He has said repeatedly he regrets selecting him as attorney general. Trump has disparaged the leadership at the Justice Department and the FBI.

The president doesn’t understand the complexities of conflict of interest. Sessions got it when he backed out of the Russia matter. Accordingly, Bannon — someone who hasn’t generally served the nation well — happens to be totally correct in his assessment that Trump is wrong to condemn the AG for acting properly.

I do have to chuckle when Bannon keeps insisting that he still admires and respects the president, saying he cherishes his relationship with him. He offers that caveat while reminding him publicly that he doesn’t understand why he is so damn wrong when he ridicules the attorney general.

business news

Good news, then a trade war … nice!

Donald J. Trump has just managed to piddle on his own good-news report. This is weird, man.

The U.S. Labor Department this morning released some seriously positive news: 233,000 non-farm jobs were added to the payrolls in May, which is greater than what economists expected; the nation’s jobless rate fell to 3.8 percent, the lowest rate since 2000.

We’re cheering the news! Yes, the economy is showing signs of rocking along. The president deserves his share of credit for the serious uptick in employment activity.

But … wait!

The previous day, the president announced a huge tariff on imported steel and other goods. Who’s going to get slapped with this protectionist measure? Our major trading partners and allies: Canada, Mexico, the European Union.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a statement this week about how this policy might make sense to someone in Washington but at this moment he cannot figure out what Trump is trying to do.

I’m not an economist, but I know enough about global economics to understand that trade wars rarely produce winners. Everyone loses. The cost of manufacturing items goes up because companies — that are in the business for make maximum profit — must increase the price of what they produce to cover the cost of sending it to trading partners.

Who pays the cost? You do. So do I.

This is classic protectionist policy, favored by union leaders who understandably want to protect their members’ jobs against foreign competitors.

Free trade? It’s out the window, flushed down the crapper, tossed onto the trash heap.

I’m still unclear about what Trump is trying to do.

I’m delighted with the jobs report. The trade war might tamp down a lot of our enthusiasm.

Goofy.

Sports news

It’s all about baseball ‘marketing’

I am beginning to soften my view of those goofy finalist names for Amarillo’s new minor-league baseball team.

But only just a little.

I still dislike the five names they came up with. However, I am beginning to grasp the marketing techniques that the AA minor-league team ownership is using to sell the team to the public when it begins play in the downtown Amarillo baseball park in the spring of 2019.

The team’s general manager spoke this week of creating a “wholesome family entertainment” product that will play baseball at the multipurpose event venue.

They aren’t going to go with the usual Major League Baseball team nicknames, such as Cardinals, Giants, Tigers, Marlins … etc.

So what did the Amarillo management do? They pored through more than 3,000 submissions and came up with Jerky, Bronc Busters, Sod Poodles, Long Haulers and Boot Scooters.

If I had to choose a favorite among those finalists, I would settle on Bronc Busters. The worst happen to be Jerky and Sod Poodles.

An ABC 7 morning news anchor, Lisa Schmidt, noted this morning that she has lived in the Panhandle her entire life and has never heard the term Sod Poodles to describe prairie dogs. I’m hearing a lot of that around Amarillo over the past few days.

However, I am beginning to get why the team management has embarked on this goofy course. They want to establish a unique brand for the minor-league team that will play hardball in downtown Amarillo.

Let’s hope the brand sticks.

national news

Kim Kardashian is one of the ‘best people’?

Did I hear this correctly?

Kim Kardashian, the reality TV celebrity — the know-nothing with no talent — spoke today to the president of the United States about “prison reform”?

Is that what transpired? Kim Kardashian is now an expert on prison matters and that Donald Trump invited her to the White House — to the Oval Office — to make a pitch to reform the nation’s prison system? I also understand that Kanye West’s wife wanted to argue for the presidential commutation of a life sentence in prison for someone convicted on a drug charge.

Oh … my … goodness.

Trump vowed to surround himself with the “best people” to give him advice. This individual — Kardashian — fits that description in Trump’s world of narcissistic fantasy.

Aren’t there actual experts on whom the president can rely to give him recommendations based on research and knowledge of the criminal justice system?

Heaven help us!

local news

The road provides stern test, but we passed!

You may now call me the Maximum Road Warrior.

Mad Max has nothing on me. Or on my wife, for that matter.

We have just completed some sort of unofficial personal record for time spent behind the wheel of a motor vehicle. I’m proud to declare that we survived a supreme test of endurance. It was a a tag-team effort, to be sure. We both took turns behind the wheel of our Prius.

We made it home! Hooray for us!

Our day began at 7 a.m. Thursday in Amarillo. We set out for points south and east downstate. Through Lubbock we went. Then through Post and Snyder. On to Sweetwater and then to Abilene.

We stopped for a meal in Santa Anna, then proceeded to Brady, Mason, Fredericksburg and on to Dripping Springs. We delivered my wife’s brother to his house, then decided we weren’t done driving yet.

That leg took us about 10 hours total on the road. There was more to come.

We decided we wanted to get home to Fairview. We said so long to her brother and then set forth.

We drove east toward Austin, then north through Austin along that race track aka Interstate 35. Past Austin we trudged on.

More than four hours later, long after the sun had set, we plowed through Dallas, diverting from I-35 over to Interstate 45. North we proceeded through the urban center, then to Central Expressway.

We pulled in at our digs at 10:45 p.m.

The way I figure it, subtracting some time we took to have two meals (breakfast in Amarillo and lunch in Santa Anna), we spent 14 hours on the road.

I believe we covered roughly 850 miles today.

Are you proud of us? If not, you should be. We spent 23 years in Amarillo, where we never really had the kind of traffic headaches known to become inflicted on motorists in the Metroplex and Austin.

Today, dear reader, we endured both of those stress deliverers … on the same day!

I am relaxing late this evening with a beer while taking a few moments to brag on our road worthiness.

Tomorrow is a new day. I plan to do a lot less driving.