Monthly Archives: April 2019

local news

Just wondering: When will this city reform its voting plan?

Amarillo, Texas, is a wonderful place to call home. I did so for 23 years. I have moved away but my interest in my former “home town” still burns hot.

Every so often the debate surfaces about the city’s municipal voting plan. I want that discussion to re-start.

Amarillo is governed by a five-member City Council. They’re all elected at-large. Four council members have precisely the same constituency as the mayor. I believe the city has grown enough to modify its governing system.

The debate I have heard over many years was whether the city should stay with its at-large plan or should it elect all four members from wards, single-member districts. I do not understand why no one has pitched a reasonable compromise.

Let’s look at this idea: Expand the council by two, from five to seven. Elect four of the six council members from wards; elect two of them at-large; and, of course, continue to elect the mayor at-large.

I saw this voting plan work quite well in Beaumont, where I lived and worked for nearly 11 years before gravitating to the Texas Panhandle in early 1995.

Beaumont’s demographic makeup admittedly is quite different than Amarillo’s. It is divided roughly 50-50 between white and black residents. Amarillo is much whiter than Beaumont, but it does have an increasing Latino population.

Amarillo also is considerably larger than Beaumont, with 200,000 residents living there now, compared to around 120,000 residents in Beaumont. Amarillo, moreover, has been on a steady growth pattern for many decades, while Beaumont’s growth has been stagnant.

I believe Amarillo is big enough, mature enough and diverse enough these days to look seriously at an important change in its municipal voting plan. There is no need at all to impede that debate just because it’s “the way we’ve always done it.”

I used to argue when I worked for the Globe-News that the current system works well enough. There was no need to change. I have changed my mind. I don’t believe a drastic change from at-large to strictly single-member districts is in order. There ought to be a compromise to be reached.

Why not debate it openly, seriously and with vigor?

national news

Sen. McConnell is a jokester supreme

Mitch McConnell just slays me. He knocks me out. He throws out jokes when he’s trying to be serious.

Such as when he writes an essay on Politico.com and urges Democrats to stop obstructing Donald Trump’s myriad appointments.

Yep, the Senate’s chief obstructionist masquerading as its majority leader, is scolding Democrats for playing politics.

You can read Sen. McConnell’s essay here.

I want to have my say for just a moment.

Majority Leader McConnell has set a new standard for obstruction. He rolled it out in early 2016 when U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died suddenly. The president at the time, Barack Obama, was empowered — by the U.S. Constitution — to nominate someone to replace Justice Scalia.

President Obama sought to do so. He nominated federal judge Merrick Garland — a superb jurist, a centrist — to join the SCOTUS.

McConnell’s response? He would not allow Garland to have so much as a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. He wouldn’t meet with the nominee. He instructed his GOP colleagues to stiff Garland.

In fact, McConnell made clear his intention within hours of Justice Scalia’s death. He said a “lame duck” president shouldn’t be allowed to fulfill his duty. We were going to have an election that year, McConnell said, and we should let the next president fill that vacancy.

It was a tremendous gamble on McConnell’s part. He was hoping for a Republican to be elected president. It turned out to be Donald Trump, who then won the election that November.

So, for McConnell today to excoriate Democrats for “playing politics” with these appointments — in the words of a former boss of mine — is like the Happy Hooker, Xaviera Hollander, lecturing someone on the virtues of chastity.

local news

Puppy Tales, Part 68: The time does fly

Toby the Puppy became an instant part of our family nearly five years ago. I have two versions of the story explaining how he joined us: There’s the epic version and the 30-second elevator-ride version.

Here’s the latter story: Our great niece found him shivering next to a Dumpster in Amarillo; she brought him home, asked what we should do with him and then, well, after a few days we decided he was ours to keep.

Today is Toby’s fifth birthday. How do we know his precise age? That, too, is a bit of a story.

Upon welcoming Toby into our family, we took him to the veterinarian’s office. She looked him over, then peered into his mouth. We asked her, “How old is he?” She didn’t bat a lash when she said, “He’s 5 months old.” How did the doctor know? His teeth, she said; they’re a giveaway.

She was lead-pipe-cinch certain of his age.

So, that was in early September 2014. We backed it up five months. Presto! That puts his date of birth on or around April Fool’s Day.

That has been the day we have celebrated as Toby’s birthday ever since. I won’t bore you with the epic version of how his arrival into our family unfolded. Suffice to say that given all that transpired with our great-niece as we sought to figure out Toby’s future, the very idea that he would have been born in April Fool’s Day is utterly poetic . . . and just!

We fell madly in love with this pooch right away. He has made us laugh every single day since he joined us.

We look forward to much more laughter.

medical news

GOP secretly rooting against Trump on ACA repeal effort

Psst. This isn’t really a secret, but I’ll treat it like one anyway.

Republican congressional leaders are “secretly” rooting against Donald Trump’s effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Why? They don’t have a replacement ready to go. They aren’t even close to having one on the back burner.

Plus, they got roasted in the 2018 midterm election because Democrats made enough of an issue of ACA repeal to give them control of the House of Representatives.

ACA fight scares GOP

GOP officials are scared, man. They don’t want the president to succeed in his effort to toss aside President Obama’s signature legislative triumph.

It’s not as though they like the ACA. They don’t. Reasonable Republicans see ways to improve the ACA with their own repairs to make it better. Wow! What a concept! Legislating improvements to landmark laws to allow it to deliver on the promise that its sponsors made when they enacted it in the first place.

They did that with Social Security in the 1930s. And with Medicare in the 1960s. Republicans linked arms with Democrats and improved both of those groundbreaking laws to make them suitable for most Americans. Now, who can live without either of them? Uhh, that would be no one.

It’s being argued that the president didn’t think about the follow through when he announced this past week that he intends to seek judicial rulings to toss aside the ACA. Gee, do ya think? Trump tends to avoid thinking about anything before acting on impulse.

But, there he was. Flush from a victory of sorts with the conclusion of Robert Mueller III’s investigation into The Russia Thing and he steps on his own applause line. Trump trumpeted “no collusion!” and “total vindication!” and then gave Democrats a gift by declaring war on the ACA, giving Democrats loads of ammo to launch at Republicans as they prepare for the 2020 election.

Don’t tell anyone, but I’m kind of thinking that the president doesn’t know what he’s doing, doesn’t know with whom he is dealing and doesn’t understand the consequences of his impulsive behavior.

national news

What happens if Trump goes into the gutter against Biden?

I cannot help but wonder about a hypothetical political matchup.

Former Vice President Joe Biden is going to have to answer for a complaint filed publicly by a former Nevada politician who says the ex-VP touched her and kissed her “inappropriately.” He has said he doesn’t “recall” the incident involving Lucy Flores.

Biden also is considering whether to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2020. So . . . suppose Joe Biden jumps into the race.

On the other side of the political chasm sits Donald Trump, the Republican president of the United States.

We all know about Trump’s Twitter fetish and how he likes to use that social medium to say some amazingly crude and inappropriate things — at timed!

What might happen if Trump — who has his own, um, admitted sordid history regarding women — decides to dive into the gutter with intemperate tweets about the allegations regarding Biden’s alleged misbehavior?

Not only do we know about Trump’s (over)use of Twitter, we also know about his utter lack of shame and his absolute lack of self-awareness.

I’m just wondering how ugly this next presidential campaign could get. My hunch, if it’s Biden vs. Trump at the end of the parties’ nominating campaigns, it is going to get hideous beyond measure.

State news

Texas going into battle on behalf of . . . Chick-Fil-A?

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton put a message out via Twitter that said this . . .

The City of San Antonio’s decision to exclude Chick-fil-A based on the religious beliefs associated with the company and its owners is the opposite of tolerance. It’s discriminatory, and not only out of step with Texas values, but inconsistent with the Constitution and Texas law.

Sigh.

I am truly undecided on this one.

San Antonio officials have decided to remove Chick-Fil-A from its new airport terminal. Why? Because the fast-food owners have said they oppose same-sex marriage. The city said it cannot support a company that has “anti-LGBTQ” sentiments.

Paxton’s argument is that the prohibition violates the religious liberty clause in the U.S. Constitution and it runs counter to state law that bans discrimination on the basis of religion.

My own view is that I do not choose to patronize businesses on the basis of their politics. I don’t boycott films by actors whose politics differ from my own, either.

I have no particular bone to pick — no pun intended — with Chick-Fil-A one way or the other. Its food is OK. I do recall not long after the company CEO made his anti-gay-marriage comment that the lines grew long at the Chick-Fil-A in southwest Amarillo. I didn’t want to wait forever for a so-so chicken sandwich. I guess some folks in the Texas Panhandle were hot to trot over the CEO’s comment; they said, “Hell yes!” to his view and decided to demonstrate their support by waiting in line for a very long time.

It ain’t my bag, man.

This matter is much ado about nothing too much.

I think I can predict that the lines at Chick-Fil-A are going to grow long once again.

Fine. Knock yourselves out, folks.

International news

Cutting off aid will stop migration? Really?

I need someone to explain to me how this is supposed to work.

Donald Trump says the United States of America is going to cut off aid to three Central American nations — Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras — because too many people are fleeing those countries; they want to enter the United States illegally.

The aid totals something around $450 million.

So, they are fleeing their countries because their living conditions are so horrible they no longer consider them safe havens. They are plagued by gang violence. These individuals, whole families, are fleeing to escape.

Isn’t this so-called strategy only inflaming the problems that are causing people to flee? Is the president directing his punitive measures in the wrong direction?

I agree with the president that government officials in those countries need to do more to crack down on gang violence. Isn’t this where diplomatic pressure could be put to good use? Talk to these officials, offer them the best assistance we can provide. Work with them; do not cut them off and then walk away.

This foreign-aid cutoff, though, seems counterproductive — not to mention counterintuitive. 

Is the president simply playing yet again to his base that seems to believe we “spend too much” on foreign aid already?

That is what it looks like to me.

International news

Border shutdown does more harm than good

Donald Trump wants to make good on his boast that he intends to stop illegal immigration altogether, no matter what, no matter the measure he intends to implement.

So now he’s threatening to shut down the southern border. All 2,000 miles of it. From the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. From California to Texas. He’s gonna shut ‘er down!

OK, but at what cost?

The trade that flows between the United States and Mexico contributes billions of dollars each year in income for businesses in both countries. I long have thought that Mexico was a good neighbor.  I still do. The president of the United States acts as though Mexico is that annoying next-door neighbor who plays his music too loudly or whose dog poops on his yard.

You may spare me the comments uttered by Jeh Johnson, homeland security secretary in the Obama administration who says the border crossing numbers have reached a crisis proportion.

Shutting down the border isn’t the way you fix a problem. You don’t punish an entire nation the way Trump wants to punish Mexico. Make no mistake, the damage he intends to inflict on our southern neighbor is going to ripple into four border states: Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

He wants Mexico to stop the immigrants traipsing through its land from Central America. They can stop it, he says. If they don’t, he intends to shut down the border. “I’m not kidding around,” the president said.

I get it, Mr. President.

It’s not going to stop the drug flow that comes into this country through legal ports of entry. You know, airports and maritime docks . . . those kinds of places. Indeed, that’s where most of it enters the United States, not on the backs of asylum seekers fleeing repression in Latin America.

Send in more agents. Deploy more technology. Round up illegal immigrants, frisk ’em and then send the bad guys back. I have no problem with that.

I simply refuse to acknowledge the existence of a phony “national emergency.” It doesn’t exist. Shutting down the border is a solution in search of a problem.