Monthly Archives: December 2018

local news, State news

This guy got the Texas Senate 31 outcome wrong

Jay Leeson is a Lubbock businessman and radio personality who writes something called “The Other Side of Texas.”

The Amarillo Globe-News published a column from this fellow, who said in his essay that state Sen. Kel Seliger squeaked by in his March 2018 Republican Party primary race for re-election to the Texas Senate 31 seat.

Actually, Leeson has it dead wrong.

Seliger didn’t eke out a narrow victory. He won a three-way contest against two capable GOP primary opponents — one of whom was well-funded by a far-right political organization called Empower Texans — by avoiding a runoff.

Sen. Seliger won with about 51 percent of the ballots cast. The other two men — former Midland Mayor Mike Canon and Amarillo businessman Victor Leal — each collected less than half the total that Seliger rang up. Therefore, I would submit to you, dear reader, that Seliger didn’t squeak by; he won big. How? Because Canon and Leal both split what I consider to be the GOP nut-job vote between them, leaving Seliger to harvest the rest of the mainstream Republican primary voters to win the party’s nomination to another term in the Senate, which Seliger first joined in 2004.

Canon did lose narrowly to Seliger in a two-man GOP primary in 2014. Leal brought significant name familiarity that threatened to chew into Seliger’s Amarillo and Panhandle base of support; Leal, though, didn’t register much in the campaign.

The way I see it, Seliger’s primary victory over more than one opponent was far from a squeaker. He won decisively

Seliger was re-elected in November by crushing a Libertarian candidate. His path to re-election was made significantly easier by his smashing win in the GOP primary against two capable and articulate spokesmen for whatever arch-conservative doctrine they were espousing.

There. I’m glad to have set the record straight . . . as I see it.

national news

Now it’s Zinke who’s gone from Trump orbit

They’re leaving seemingly in droves. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is departing from the Trump administration at the end of the year, which is about two weeks from now.

That means to me that he was canned. Booted. Pushed out the door by the president of the United States, Donald Trump.

Indeed, the president’s milquetoast announcement this weekend thanking Zinke for his service to the nation suggests that the interior boss’s ethical troubles have, um, made him expendable.

As if that was the worst of Donald Trump’s troubles.

Zinke has been under a cloud since he took office in early 2017. There have been allegations of ethical abuses involving expenditure of public money. Now he’s gone. The president says he will find a new Interior secretary in a few days.

So, if you’re keeping score, we have seen the departure of: Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was fired; FBI director James Comey, who was fired; Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, who was asked to resign; EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, who also was asked to resign; press secretary Sean Spicer, who was fired; numerous communications directors; senior policy adviser Steve Bannon, who was fired; two White House chiefs of staff, both of whom were fired; Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who was fired. And all of this happened before the first half of Donald Trump’s term as president.

Do I have ’em all? Probably not. You get the point. The White House is a chaotic blend of incompetence and corruption.

Oh, and let’s not forget about Donald Trump’s own difficulties, which are mounting by the hour.

This is not how you make America “great again.”

national news

An ‘acting’ WH chief of staff? Really, Mr. POTUS?

Welcome to the federal government’s executive branch loony bin, Mick Mulvaney.

Donald Trump has just named the current director of the Office of Management and Budget as the “acting” White House chief of staff. Mulvaney ostensibly will serve as the White House ringmaster until the president can find a permanent chief of staff to succeed John Kelly, who’s leaving the post at the end of the month.

This is a seriously bizarre move on the president’s part.

The White House chief of staff is supposed to seize the reins of the executive staff of the president. The chief, according to those who know these things, is the president’s alter ego. He or she is supposed to know the president’s every move. He or she is supposed to have the president’s full backing. The president is supposed to simply let the chief of staff handle matters that the Big Man doesn’t have time to handle.

Mulvaney already has a full time job at OMB, which is a big enough job as it is. Now he gets to spend part of his time pretending to be the White House chief of staff working at the pleasure of a president who — as we’ve seen many times already — has this incurable penchant for second-guessing the chief at every turn.

How in the world is Mulvaney going to bring a semblance of stability to a White House that is operating in full chaos mode?

The executive branch of government becomes the product of the man elected to lead that arm of government. Americans have elected someone in the person of Donald Trump who has zero understanding of how government is supposed to work. He doesn’t know a thing about public service and has no inclination to learn anything about it.

Good luck, Mick Mulvaney. You are going to need every bit of it you can find.

medical news

ACA gets the boot; now, get ready for the appeals

A U.S. district judge has booted out the Affordable Care Act, calling a key element to it unconstitutional.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that the U.S. Supreme Court already has upheld the ACA, which has withstood repeated Republican-led challenges in Congress and the courts.

The anti-ACA ruling came today from Judge Reed O’Connor, who presides on the federal court for the Northern District of Texas; O’Connor is based in Fort Worth.

He said the individual mandate of the law violates the Constitution because “it cannot be separated from the rest of the law.” His ruling, therefore, means the entire ACA must be scrapped.

Democrats, quite naturally, are going to appeal this ruling.

I won’t disparage Judge O’Connor. I will stipulate, though, that the Supreme Court has heard arguments already on the ACA and has voted to uphold it. Has the court’s ideological balance changed so drastically that it would reverse what it already has ruled? Not likely.

My sincere hope is that the law known as Obamacare withstands the challenge that continues to mount. Millions of Americans already have enrolled in health insurance under the ACA. Rulings such as the one handed down by Judge O’Connor shouldn’t jeopardize Americans’ ability to obtain health insurance.

Indeed, Republican and Democratic legal scholars believe the ACA is likely to survive despite the judge’s ruling.

Let us hope that’s the case.

national news

Trump inaugural actually dwarfed Obama inaugural . . . yes, it did!

Donald Trump has bragged about the stupendous size of the crowd that witnessed his inauguration. He, um, misspoke, er, lied about it.

What he’s never bragged about is the amount of money he raised for an event that in truth was a good bit smaller, with less bling than either of the inaugurations of Barack Obama or George W. Bush.

And that has become yet another focus of federal prosecutors who are looking at this man’s presidency.

Trump reportedly raised $107 million for his 2017 inaugural. Compare that with the $53 million raised for Barack Obama’s 2009 inaugural, the one that heralded the start of a truly historic presidency.

The Obama inaugural featured headline artists galore, not to mention a crowd that totaled more than 1 million spectators. The Trump inaugural had, um, a lot fewer acts, a lot less pizzazz and drew a lot fewer spectators to watch the 45th president take the oath of office.

However, the Trump inaugural team banked a lot of cash.

That has presented prosecutors with a series of questions. Why did they raise so much money? For what purpose did the donors give that kind of dough? Is it all above board, legal, transparent? Did the new president’s team turn back any of it, the way Obama’s inaugural team did with some of the donations it received prior to the president taking office?

It looks to me as if we have a mushrooming investigation. It started with a look into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign with Russian operatives who interfered with our 2016 election. It appears to be spreading to include the president’s business dealings in Russia, along with the conduct of members of Trump’s transition team.

Hey, this kind of thing happens with these probes. Special prosecutor Ken Starr started looking at an allegedly shady real estate deal in Arkansas involving President and Mrs. Clinton; it veered into another area altogether, an inappropriate relationship between the president and a White House intern. Starr summoned the president to testify to a grand jury, the president lied to the grand jury about the relationship and, thus, handed congressional Republicans a pretext to impeach him.

Now we’re looking at inaugural fundraising?

Oh, brother. This is getting more confusing by the hour.

environmental news

Climate change will bring more storms

A report came to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk that delivers a stern message without actually saying the words it needs to say.

The Gulf Coast is going to experience more severe storms with increasing frequency, the report states. Why? Earth’s climate is changing. However, the report doesn’t use the words “climate change” to explain what is patently obvious.

Gov. Abbott won’t accept climate change as a contributing factor, but the report does contain some stern and dire warnings.

According to the Austin American-Statesman: “The enormous toll on individuals, businesses and public infrastructure should provide a wake-up call underlining the urgent need to ‘future proof’ the Gulf Coast — and indeed all of Texas — against future disasters,” according to “Eye of the Storm,’ the report released Thursday by . . . Abbott’s Commission to Rebuild Texas.”

But as the American-Statesman notes, “future proof” has become Abbott’s favorite term as it relates to what the state is experiencing.

Earlier reports note that storms as savage and sweeping as Hurricane Harvey are going to pound the coast with increasing frequency and savagery. Again, our climate is changing. Sea levels along the coast are rising. The rising levels put our fragile coastal wetlands in peril. Other reports note the shrinking Arctic and Antarctic ice caps that could cause sea levels to increase by more than four feet by 2100.

Also, according to the American-Statesman: “The current scientific consensus points to increasing amounts of intense rainfall coupled with the likelihood of more intense hurricanes,” the report states.

The president of the United States says climate change is a “hoax.” I believe he is wrong to say such a thing knowing that he is making a false declaration.

As for the Texas governor, it is long past time for him to climb aboard the climate change wagon. The evidence is there, even if a thorough report doesn’t say it in so many words.

national news

Feel sorry for The Fixer? Nope, can’t go there

Try as I tend to do, I cannot muster up sympathy for Donald Trump’s former friend, former confidant, former lawyer, former “fixer” — Michael Cohen.

A judge gave him a three-year prison sentence for lying to everyone under the sun about the payments he made to shut women up who allegedly had sexual encounters with the future president of the United States.

Cohen is now trying to atone for his greed by saying he was duped into blind fealty to Donald Trump. No, he wasn’t duped. He wasn’t fooled. He had his eyes and ears open. He knew with whom he was dealing. Trump’s reputation has been well-known ever since he got into the real estate and skyscraper building business.

Cohen’s latest admission came in an interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos.

See the story here

Cohen was motivated by the same self-serving goal that fueled Trump’s entire professional existence prior to his shocking election to the presidency in 2016.

He well might parlay his guilt into an even lighter sentence eventually by spilling even more beans about what he did for Trump. That will be up to the prosecutors and to the special counsel, Robert Mueller, who has benefited from Cohen’s turning on Trump.

However, Michael Cohen doesn’t deserve pity from the public that also is paying a grievous price for the election of a charlatan, a phony, a disgrace. Cohen was a party to that egregious mistake.

political news

Term limits for congressional leaders? Why not?

I dislike the idea of term limits for members of Congress.

However, the idea of imposing such limits on congressional leaders is another matter. To that end, the next speaker of the House of Representatives is on to something constructive.

Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the House Democratic caucus, has agreed to serve only two terms as speaker once she takes the gavel in January. She is set to favor a vote among congressional Democrats to impose similar limits on committee chairs, following the lead set by their Republican colleagues.

Pelosi getting push back

I like the notion of imposing those limits on leadership, despite my aversion to mandatory limits on the number of terms House members can serve on Capitol Hill. I have said all along that we already have limits on terms; they occur in the House every two years and every six years for senators. The 2018 midterm election demonstrated quite vividly the power of the electorate to give incumbents the boot.

Congressional leaders, though, aren’t necessarily beholden to the voters for the power they obtain in the halls of Congress. They are beholden to their fellow lawmakers.

Why not enact mandatory regular changes in committee chairmanships — as well as the speaker of the House?

It’s a good call from the new speaker.

national news

One more stark difference between Trump and Bush 41

Americans have just bade farewell to a great and good man, George Herbert Walker Bush, with tributes and praise that brought instantaneous comparisons to one of his presidential successors, Donald John Trump Sr.

The tributes honored the former president’s empathy, compassion, the size of his heart, wisdom and coolness under the most extreme pressure imaginable. Many of us drew a straight line between the 41st president and the 45th president and found the latter man lacking in all those categories.

What has gotten almost no attention has been the qualifications chasm that exists between the men.

We went from electing arguably the most qualified man ever as president to electing — without question, in my mind — the most fundamentally unqualified man. Yes, we made that leap between 1988 and 2016. In just 28 years we reset the standard for electing the leader of the free world and the commander in chief of the world’s greatest military machine.

Bush served as a U.S. Navy aviator in World War II (who came within a whisker of dying in combat), successful West Texas businessman, two-term member of Congress, CIA director, special envoy to China, Republican Party chairman, ambassador to the United Nations and then vice president of the United States. All that occurred before his smashing election as POTUS in 1988. He also was married to the same woman for 73 years, with whom he produced six children.

And Trump? His business record has been, shall we say, mixed. He had zero public service experience. His entire professional life was aimed at self-enrichment. He has filed multiple bankruptcies. The only public office he ever has sought is the presidency of the United States. The personal part? He’s been married three times and has admitted to cheating on his first two wives — with evidence mounting that he did the same thing to his current wife.

President Bush brought honor and an enormous well-spring of commitment to public service to the world’s most powerful office. Donald Trump has brought — um, let me think — not a single shred of any of it to the office to which he was elected. We have turned the presidency into an office where the occupant can receive on-the-job training. No experience necessary. How utterly astonishing!

George H.W. Bush was worthy of the praise he received. Donald J. Trump is equally worthy of the scorn he is receiving.

local news, media news

Blogging brings a particular joy

My calling as a full-time blogger gives me so much joy, it’s difficult to chronicle all of it.

It keeps me in the game of public policy and politics-watching; it allows me to have my voice heard and my “throat” cleared; it reaches a wide audience that includes those who like what I have to say and those who, well, dislike my message.

I want to speak to the particular joy I receive from those critics, the folks who take the time to give me grief.

They aren’t likely to comment on those matters with which they agree. I have some series going: I write about my Chihuahua mix dog, Toby; I comment on the retired life my wife and I enjoy; I now am writing about the joy that my career as a journalist gave me over nearly four decades.

When I turn my attention to issues relating to Donald Trump and my critical view of the man’s presidency, that brings out the critics. They dust off their weapons and fire away.

Yes, I enjoy getting ’em riled. Not because I want them fired up, that I want to cause them heartburn or cause anxiety attacks. My joy comes only in knowing they, too, are engaged at some level.

Bear in mind this important note, though: No one is required to read these musings. We’re all free to look the other way, to ignore whatever it is that is posted under the name of High Plains Blogger.

That these critics choose to read it and then to comment tells me that (a) they want their blood pressure to increase or (b) they cannot get enough of whatever anger they have pent up inside of them.

Whatever, man.

I know it’s too much to ask these critics to share these messages. I ask only one thing: Just keep reading.

Many thanks to you all. Some of you keep me humble. All of you, though, keep me energized.