Monthly Archives: April 2021

environmental news

Earth is even more fragile

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Astronaut Bill Anders pointed his camera out the window of Apollo 8 on Christmas Eve, 1968 and captured this never before seen image.

The astronauts aboard the first manned lunar mission then read from the Book of Genesis and wished us good tidings on “the Good Earth.”

This picture is worth looking at once again as the world celebrates Earth Day. Anders, along with crewmates Frank Borman and Jim Lovell, all told us upon their return from deep space that our planet looked so “fragile” to their eyes as it rose from the lunar horizon.

In the more than 52 years since this iconic photo was created, Earth has become even more fragile. Humankind has damaged our “Good Earth” through a number of environmental vices: too much carbon emission and deforestation has destroyed natural habitat and caused the gradual year over year warming of our planet. The effect of that warming, of course, has damaged our polar ice caps and put more of our wildlife in peril.

Bill Anders captured a wondrous moment to share with his fellow human beings. Only these men and those who followed them to the moon can understand fully just how fragile our planet was then and has become.

Our “Good Earth” needs to be strengthened.

State news

One surprise from this session

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

If one were to press me for a response to a certain question, I would say that the Texas Legislature’s biggest surprise this session has been the absence of a bathroom bill similar to one that went down in flames in 2017.

For those who might not recall, here’s a brief recap:

The 2017 Legislature considered a bill pushed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick that would have required anyone using a public restroom to use the one that comported with their gender at birth. That meant that transgender people could not use restrooms that aligned with their current gender. Yep, transgender men had to use the women’s restroom and vice versa.

Got it? Well, Gov. Greg Abbott called a special session and put the bathroom bill on the call list of issues to ponder.

Then it ran into then-House Speaker Joe Straus’s resistance. Straus said in no way would he allow the bill to advance through the House of Representatives. He declared it discriminated against transgender individuals and had no place in the roster of state laws.

The bill died a deservedly agonizing death.

Given the Legislature’s continued campaign to forge a conservative social agenda, I am surprised that a return of the bathroom bill has failed to materialize.

Straus left the Legislature after the 2017 session. His replacement as speaker, Dennis Bonnen, didn’t bring it back in 2019. Bonnen then left the House and his successor as speaker, Dade Phelan, hasn’t said a word about bringing this bill back.

Which is just fine with me. This goofy notion needed to die. May it stay dead … forever and ever.

environmental news

Hey, it’s Earth Day!

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

We celebrate this day every year. We say the right things. We actually try to do the right things.

And yet …

Our precious, precarious planet continues to be threatened by policies and behavior that places it in dire peril. What’s going on?

Earth Day is meant to bring the world’s attention to the only planet on which human beings can inhabit. Why don’t we celebrate this world of ours every single day?

I am not going to suggest that our household is doing anything extraordinary to protect our precious Earth, but we have embraced the notion of recycling with both arms. We hug the notion tightly. We now live in a community where recycling has become something akin to a way of life among the thousands of fellow residents of Princeton, Texas.

That is one small way we do our part to protect our planet.

To be clear, ours isn’t the only North Texas community that allows residents to recycle items. We are surrounded by small towns and mid-sized cities that also provide opportunities for residents to do their part, too. For that I am grateful.

Recycling material reduces the consumption of fossil fuels used to create this stuff from scratch by as much as 40 to 50 percent, as I have understood it over the years. It takes far less finite energy to re-use material than to manufacture it.

I am not going to say that every community’s embrace of recycling is going to save our planet by itself. I do offer the belief that human beings’ involvement in recycling that can contribute to the overall goal of preserving our planet’s resources and in keeping our environment clean enough for humans to continue living here.

Our government has returned to the community of nations’ effort to preserve our planet. President Biden’s executive order to return the United States to the Paris Climate Accord is a good first step. Donald Trump pulled us out of that international agreement, calling it intrusive and an impediment to business. Hmm. Well, many of us disagreed with Trump’s call and are welcoming Joe Biden’s involvement in this critical effort.

We are going to honor our Good Earth today. Schools will dedicate class time to remind our children of the need to take care of the planet. Our public airwaves will have programming aimed at doing the same thing.

Those of us who are able also will do our part by filling up our recycling bins with items that can be re-used and re-purposed with the goal of conserving our nation’s precious resources.

Happy Earth Day! Let’s remain vigilant and attentive to our planet tomorrow, too … and for as long as we all inhabit this place.

political news

It’s a never-ending cycle

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It never ends.

We finish an election cycle and the next one begins. Immediately. There is no cooling off. No respite from the rhetoric. No rest for voters or for those of us who comment on these cycles.

As much as I enjoy being able to offer these comments, I admit that it wears me out.

I am not sure when it began to wear me down and out. Maybe it began with the 2000 election cycle. Or perhaps when social media began to take a firm hold on our attention, providing so much information and pseudo-information. It only has accelerated over the two decades since that time.

We finished the 2020 election cycle, which was a blessed event for those of us who wanted the presidential campaign to end the way it did. But now …

Lo and behold, the 2022 mid-term election campaign has begun. Republicans want to take back Congress from them nasty Democrats before turning their sights on the White House in 2024.

In fact, the 2024 campaign rhetoric already is getting ginned up. GOP Sen. Ted Cruz is seeking to obstruct President Biden’s nominees at every turn, offering pointed and wrongheaded criticism of Biden.

Give me a break … will ya?

It’s only going to ratchet up more rapidly as Election Day 2022 approaches and then, by golly, we’d better batten ’em down in preparation for the 2024 election.

Are you ready? I clearly am not! I had better get ready … or else!

crime news

Chauvin verdict hardens ‘fault lines’

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The cheers for the jury’s verdict convicting Derek Chauvin of murdering George Floyd has come from one side of the political chasm.

The other side has been virtually silent.

This is according to a report published in Politico, which reports that Democrats at all levels of government have endorsed the verdict. Meanwhile, Republicans at all levels have stayed virtually silent.

Chauvin trial political fallout: Groundbreaking verdict, same fault lines – POLITICO

My goodness. The divide just seems to deepen and widen even as a troubled nation watched a jury deliver long-needed justice to a rogue cop who killed a man by employing unreasonable and cruel force. The ex-cop is white; his victim was black. That is the story of this case.

Why are GOP pols sitting on their hands? Why are they quiet? Why can’t they bring themselves to condemn what the whole world witnessed and cheer a judicial system that has delivered justice?

Instead, Republican politicians have criticized President Biden for declaring — as the jury was deliberating — that he wished for justice, which GOP pols interpreted as meaning a “guilty” verdict. Did I mention the jury was sequestered during its deliberation and did not hear what the president said in real time?

Derek Chauvin has received what he deserved, guilty verdicts on all three murder and manslaughter charges. It took the jury 10 hours to make it determination.

Some folks had hoped there might be a sign of unity with this verdict. Hah! It has hardened both sides. Shameful.

environmental news

Green New Deal is back!

 

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Just in time, a newer version of legislation that got stalled a couple of years ago in the U.S. Senate, has returned to the center stage of environmental policy discussion.

The Green New Deal — the bogeyman of the Republican Party — has been reintroduced by U.S. Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York; indeed, AOC herself has become a favorite target of GOP critics.

Why is this so timely? Because we have Earth Day coming up Thursday. It’s the one day of the year — as if we should dedicate just a single day — we call attention to the fragility of the only planet we can inhabit.

I’ll save a discussion on the nuts and bolts of the Green New Deal for another day. I do want to make a point about the importance of what the GND intends to accomplish. It seeks to preserve our environment, to retain Earth as a place where human beings can inhabit.

President Biden has made climate change one of the linchpins of his tenure in office. He appointed former U.S. Sen. and Secretary of State John Kerry as a special international envoy on climate change. The president signed an executive order upon taking office to return the United States to the Paris Climate Accord, from which Donald Trump had walked away when he took office.

Climate change presents an existential threat to our national security. Never mind the spring chill that has swept across the nation in recent days. The evidence continues to show that Earth’s median temperatures continue to increase year over year. Ice caps are melting. Sea levels are rising. Third World nations continue to fell millions of acres of forest each year. The industrialized nations of the world continue to pour millions of tons of carbon-related pollutants into the air.

We must find some answers to these crises. Many of us say it when Earth Day rolls around every year: We only have one planet … and we have to protect it.

Is the Green New Deal too much? Too little? I don’t know. However, I believe we must not continue to do what we have been doing. We are contributing to the destruction of our Good Earth.

crime news

No federal rules on policing

1 Comment

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

As a “good government progressive,” I feel the need to weigh in on an issue that is beginning to get some traction, particularly in light of the conviction of Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Floyd.

It’s the issue of police reform and whether Congress should enact laws that dictate how local police departments should do their business.

I don’t consider that a level of “good government” by the feds. Congress would be well-advised to keep its hands off what is fundamentally a local-control issue.

Floyd’s death while being arrested in Minneapolis for passing some fake currency was a shocking reminder of how cops can go rogue and how the consequences of their actions can cause such tragic results. A jury convicted Chauvin of second- and third-degree murder and of second-degree manslaughter. He is likely to spend many years in prison.

Police departments answer to local governing authorities. City councils or senior city administrators have the final say over how the cops should do their job. They hire police chiefs, who then administer policing rules and regulations for their officers to follow. The burden must remain with them — not Congress — to determine what is correct and proper. If the voters in their cities, counties and states don’t like the way these matters are being handled, they can take measures to rectify the situation.

And yet some zealots are pushing Congress to enact federal laws that prohibit certain policies. No, Congress should stay away from that particular discussion and let local communities have their say.

I, too, am horrified at what has been happening in communities across the land. Too many police officers are acting badly when arresting racial minorities. The result, such as what happened to George Floyd, have occurred with shocking regularity.

It must rest with those communities to repair the damage being done and to find permanent repairs. Congress need not get involved in what belongs to others to resolve.

crime news

Next up? The other 3 cops

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Now that Derek Chauvin has been convicted of murdering George Floyd on that Minneapolis street a year ago and might spend the rest of his life in prison, attention now turns to his three fellow former cops who are awaiting trial in that hideous incident.

Of all the questions that need answering, the one I want answered is this: Why in the world did you stand by silently while Chauvin continued to press his knee against George Floyd’s neck, suffocating a man on whom you had placed handcuffs?

Any one or all of those former police officers could have intervened when they realized Floyd no longer was offering resistance, let alone even breathing!

They didn’t. They allowed Chauvin to snuff the life out of a man they were arresting for seeking to pass some counterfeit currency. Good Lord!

The first act of this drama is drawing to a close as the world now awaits the sentence that will come for Derek Chauvin. The rest of this tragedy, though, has yet to play out.

local news

New feud brewing in Texas Senate?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Even though I am far removed from state and local politics these days by virtue of my retirement from full-time journalism, I do maintain a fairly high level of interest in the goings-on.

Such as what might be brewing in Austin between Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and a longtime nemesis, Republican state Sen. Kel Seliger of Amarillo.

I’ll stipulate up front that I have declared my pro-Seliger bias. I know the senator quite well and I consider him a friend. He and Patrick have butted noggins already in previous legislative sessions. Patrick has sought to punish Seliger for allegedly “insulting” a key aide of Patrick’s. My reading of Seliger’s response has been it’s rolled off his broad back.

Now, though, comes this nutty legislation that might get stalled in the Senate. It’s the one that would allow any Texan who lives to pack a firearm even without obtaining a state-issued permit under the state’s concealed-carry law. Seliger thinks the current system works just fine and hasn’t signed on to the bill already approved by the House of Representatives.

Patrick, meanwhile, says he’ll move the bill forward once it obtains the required 18-vote majority it requires under Senate rules; Seliger’s holdout leaves the bill one vote short before it can be taken up by the full Senate.

Seliger is leaving open the possibility that he could be persuaded to support the bill. I hope he stands firm. It’s not that I want Patrick to punish him some more. Indeed, there’s little more that Patrick can do to Seliger above what he’s done already, which was to strip him of committee chairmanships and reassign him from some of the higher profile Senate panels on which he served.

I dislike the proposed legislation. No … I hate it!

With that, I will implore my friend to stand firm. Be strong.

crime news

Jury speaks; we must listen

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

There is no longer any need to hide behind terms such as “allegedly” and “reportedly.”

Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd this past Memorial Day. A Minneapolis jury this afternoon ruled that the ex-cop murdered Floyd by using unreasonable force to subdue a man who was in handcuffs while Chauvin pressed his knee on the back of Floyd’s neck.

It took Chauvin just 9 minutes, 29 seconds to suffocate Floyd.

The jury convicted Chauvin of three counts: of second- and third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

I won’t cheer the verdict. I won’t high-five anyone. I am not smiling because a man is headed to prison.

I want there to be further work done to transform police work. Chauvin is a white former cop who murdered a black man. We have witnessed too many of these cases over too many years. It must stop.

What might be the takeaways from this verdict? A couple of them stand out.

  • One is the testimony of the Minneapolis chief of police, Medaria Arradondo, who shattered the “blue line of silence” by declaring on the witness stand that Chauvin used unreasonable force against Floyd. Chief Arradondo wasn’t alone. Other colleagues of Chauvin said the same thing. For that I am grateful to see these officers speak against a wrong committed by one of their brethren.
  • The other is that prosecutors called this a simple case, that the jurors only needed to remember what they saw with their own eyes during video evidence presented during the three-week trial. Chauvin’s defense counsel called it a complicated case, seeking to introduce prior medical conditions and crowd reactions into their defense of their client. The jury took 10 hours to deliver justice, telling me they bought the simplicity argument and dismissed the complicating factors.

President Biden believes we have taken a step toward a “more perfect Union.” Perfection is an impossible standard to reach, as the founders knew. But, yes, we have taken another step forward … or so we all should hope.