Monthly Archives: May 2023

economic news

Compromise = good government

All right, folks, we are witnessing in real time the impact that good government can bring us.

One aspect of good government — in a representative democracy — is that compromise is essential. So, with that we have an agreement in principle to fend off the threat of our nation defaulting on payments to which it is obligated.

It came down to two men, President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, haggling, needling, cajoling and compromising to reach this agreement.

“Everybody won’t like what is the end of the agreement … on both sides,” McCarthy said Saturday morning. “But … at the end of the day I think people should see what that product is before people vote on it.”

McCarthy is going to make the details of the agreement available to House members for 72 hours before casting a vote slated for Wednesday.

Progressives are unhappy. So are conservatives. These are the hardliners on both ends who refuse to accept compromise as an essential element of good government.

I haven’t seen the details of the bill, so I won’t comment on the finished product. My focus with this post is on the method that Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy used to reach this point.

Defaulting on our debt obligations is a non-starter. Both men said so. They proceeded from that point. Default would have produced a catastrophe.

The deal that Biden and McCarthy have reached is good for the next two years. It takes this whole issue off the campaign table for 2024. It is an agreement that in a more perfect world should have been reached without the drama that led to this point.

In the end, good government has won the day.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

House acts with stunning efficiency; impeaches Paxton

Just like that, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is out of a job. It might be temporary, or … it could be a permanent removal.

The Texas House of Representatives voted today — overwhelmingly, I must add — to impeach Paxton, a move that removes him from his daily duties as the state’s chief law enforcer.

The vote to accept all 20 articles of impeachment was 121-23, with two members abstaining from a vote.

Wow, man! It’s just the third such impeachment in all of Texas’s history.

I have to say the testimony I heard today — and I didn’t settle in for all of it — had me wondering if the House of Reps would be able to do its job. Some House members argued that the body had too little time to hear all the evidence; they argued for a postponement to hear everything the House General Investigation Committee heard.

Well, at the end, Speaker Dade Phelan announced the vote. It wasn’t even close!

I had wondered in an earlier blog post about whether the Texas Republican legislative caucus would have the courage to impeach a fellow GOPer, or whether it would cower the way congressional Rs did when faced with impeaching a Republican POTUS.

I am so very happy to report that the Texas GOP legislative delegation is made of stern stuff. Most of them went along with the Investigation Committee recommendation to impeach Paxton.

The guy has disgraced his office, the state and those within his party. He has been under felony indictment for securities fraud since he took office. The FBI has been examining other complaints against him. To top it all off, the AG has asked Texas taxpayers to foot the bill on a $3.3 million settlement he reached with lawyers he fired after they blew the whistle on what they allege is extensive criminal behavior.

Uh, Mr. AG? I don’t want to pay a nickel.

Now the attorney general will take his seat in the peanut gallery and wait for a Senate trial that ought to commence fairly soon. The Legislature will adjourn early next week. The Senate will sit as jurors in a trial to determine whether to remove Paxton permanently.

None of this could have happened to a more deserving individual.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Check these out

Holy smokes, man! I have not a single to add to the link I am going to send along on this blog post.

It contains all 20 articles of impeachment being considered in the Texas House of Representatives against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Take your time, if you have it, and read these counts carefully.

They will, um, blow … your … mind.

Here are the 20 articles of impeachment filed against Ken Paxton | The Texas Tribune

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Step up, GOP lawmakers!

A nagging fear keeps rolling around my noggin concerning today’s expected impeachment vote involving Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

It is that Texas Republican legislators are as cowardly as their national colleagues. That is, they won’t vote to impeach a disgraceful “chief law enforcement officer” who’s been dogged by scandal almost from the day he took office in 2015.

National GOP members of Congress lacked the guts to impeach Donald J. Trump. I fear that same cowardice has afflicted the state’s GOP legislative caucus.

There are signs of hope. Such as the House General Investigations Committee’s unanimous vote to recommend impeachment. The panel, comprising three Republicans and two Democrats, stepped up and did the right thing to call for Paxton’s ouster after hearing from whistleblowers alleging widespread corruption within the AG’s office.

Will their House colleagues follow suit and provide the majority needed to force this guy to step aside while awaiting a trial in the Texas Senate?

Let us hope so.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Impeachment vote set!

Here we go, ladies and gentlemen. The Texas House of Representatives is set to vote Saturday on whether to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton.

The question of the moment: Are there enough Republicans to grant the House the simple majority it needs to impeach the AG?

All 64 House Democrats are likely to cast affirmative votes to impeach Paxton. Of the 149 members of the House, that means just nine Republicans need to join their Democratic colleagues to impeach Paxton.

Here’s where it gets weird. An impeachment would require Paxton to step away from his office while the Senate prepares to conduct a trial that could result in his expulsion as the state’s top law enforcement officer.

This is the most serious intraparty squabble I’ve ever seen in the nearly 40 years I’ve been watching and covering Texas government.

Paxton has been under a mountain of trouble since being elected AG in 2014. A Collin County grand jury indicted him on allegations of securities fraud; whistleblowing lawyers quit as they alleged widespread corruption; they settled with Paxton, whom they had sued, but then Paxton sought to have Texas taxpayers foot the bill for the settlement. The allegations include bribery and even an extramarital affair.

It’s been nothing but a mess with this guy.

The bipartisan House General Investigation Committee voted unanimously to recommend impeachment.

So … on Saturday, the House will make that decision.

Texas House Vote on Impeachment of AG Paxton Set for Saturday (msn.com)

The 20-count impeachment lays out a huge array of issues. The 20th article of impeachment declares: “While holding office as attorney general, (Paxton) used, misused or failed to use his official powers  in a manner calculated to subvert the lawful operation of the government of the State of Texas and obstruct the fair and impartial administration of justice, thereby bringing the Office of Attorney General into scandal and disrepute to the prejudice of public confidence in the government of this State.” 

Now we get to see what the Texas House Republican caucus will do when presented with these most serious allegations.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Reckoning arrives for Texas GOP

A moment of profound reckoning has just fallen out of the sky and landed squarely in the laps of Texas’s Republican legislators as they now must deal with whether to impeach a member of their party who happens to be the state’s attorney general.

Ken Paxton has been recommended for impeachment by the House General Investigations Committee, which has three Republicans and two Democrats serving. The panel voted unanimously to recommend that Paxton be impeached on allegations of egregious misconduct within his office.

This is, to borrow a phrase, a “big … deal.” You know?

Paxton has been operating under suspicious cloud cover ever since he took office in 2015. A Collin County grand jury indicted him for securities fraud that year. Then some whistleblowing lawyers in the AG’s office quit, citing allegations of bribery and mishandling of cases involving political donors.

Then Paxton settled with the lawyers and was ordered to pay $3.3 million. Only he wants taxpayers to foot the bill. That drew immediate push back from House Speaker Dade Phelan, a Republican from Beaumont, who said Texas taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for Paxton’s settlement.

Then Paxton fired back, saying Phelan should resign, accusing the speaker of being drunk on the job.

The intraparty conflict has exploded into a full-blown firefight.

The task before the House GOP caucus is whether they want to join their 64 Democratic colleagues in impeaching the AG. As the Texas Tribune reports, the GOP caucus has been mostly silent about Paxton’s woes. Until now.

Even some of Paxton’s friends in the House and Senate now are taking a quieter approach to speaking out on this matter.

Republican-led effort to impeach Ken Paxton is a seismic political shift | The Texas Tribune

The ground is shaking and rattling under everyone’s feet in Austin these days. Ken Paxton, to my way of thinking, has shamed his office. No AG can function effectively as the state’s top law enforcer with the suspicion that has dogged Ken Paxton from the get-go.

We have a terrible mess on our hands and to my way of thinking, it is time for the House — and then the Senate — to do its job by impeaching the attorney general and then tossing him out of office with a conviction.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news

Good government works?

The deal to increase the federal debt ceiling that appears to be in the works between President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is likely to be a triumph of center-left and right principles of good government.

Those principles will have won out over the extremists on both ends of the political spectrum. The far lefties don’t want any cuts in any discretionary domestic spending, while the far righties want to gut everything in sight.

Just to be clear, I will continue to place the bulk of the blame on this nonsense on the far right, the MAGA cult, those who refuse to govern via compromise. They are wedded to this notion of getting and keeping attention and ignoring the compromise that is essential to governing in a representative democracy.

President Biden brings decades of experience as a good-government Democrat to the table. He has given a little here and there and, to his credit, Speaker McCarthy appears also to have budged a bit from the precipice that the MAGA cult forced on him when he was elected the Man of the House at the start of the year.

If the MAGA types reject whatever debt ceiling deal emerges from Biden and McCarthy’s time together, they will be on the record as opposing the principles of good government that should be the rule rather than the exception.

Indeed, that we are having this discussion at all is a symptom of the perversion that has infected the process. This simply is a product of a Democratic president dealing with a Republican House majority that is dominated — strange as it looks — by a minority cabal of kooks who want simply to be heard and who don’t give a damn about being constructive partners in building a government that works for all Americans.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

 

local news

The journey continues

1 Comment

Well, gang, I have made another command decision from my North Texas man cave, which is that Toby the Puppy and I are going to hit the road again soon.

I returned in mid-April from a monthlong sojourn out west to clear my head and begin to mend my heart shattered by the loss of my dear bride, Kathy Anne, to glioblastoma … as savage a form of cancer as one can imagine.

I’ve had time to collect myself. One of my sons has moved in with me into my Princeton home. He brought his two kitties and they have done well getting acclimated to their new surroundings — not to mention to the presence of the king of our house, Toby the Puppy.

But I have decided I need more time away from my digs. This time, it’s points east where we’ll go. Unlike the westward trek, which took us to the Pacific Ocean, this journey won’t allow us to look at the Atlantic. We’ll go as far as just south of Raleigh, N.C., where I’ll spend some time visiting my cousin and her two young sons.

Then we’ll head to Roanoke, Va., where we will see two of our dearest friends on Earth, a couple my bride and I have known for more than 30 years.

After that I will visit another friend in Charleston, W.Va., a fellow with whom I worked at the Amarillo Globe-News.

Then I’ll park for two nights in Louisville, Ky., where I will spend a day at the Muhammad Ali Museum. Oh, I do look forward to paying my respects to The Greatest.

My head is a whole lot clearer as I prepare to embark on this trip than it was when I headed west. My heart, though, remains a work in progress. I do believe what many have said, which is that my heart is likely permanently damaged. I’ll just have to cope.

I can do that. First things first. The open road awaits.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Will he end up in cuffs and leg irons?

When I hear this chatter from a former president’s lawyers that the ex-POTUS could serve time in prison, my thoughts turn immediately to a friend I haven’t seen in more than two decades.

His name is Peter and he lives in Australia. He has been saying ever since the crap hit the fan on the former president that he truly envisions the sight of the former president being hauled away in handcuffs and leg irons.

That he committed such egregious crimes as president and as an immediate past president that the feds will have no choice but to indict him, put him on trial and then, if convicted, haul his overfed backside off to the slammer.

Peter and I communicate often, discussing the affairs of our respective governments. I concede openly that he is more dialed in to what’s happening here than I am with what is occurring in Canberra. Indeed, the stakes involving the former president would send shock waves worldwide if he is convicted of felonies.

For us, the notion of sending an ex-POTUS to prison is all but anathema. For those around the world, in other democratic nations, it’s happened already.

France has imprisoned a former president; so has Peru. Other leaders of less-free governments have faced criminal charges and have served time as well.

Such a thing would be unfathomable — in many Americans’ eyes — if the criminal defendant is a former president of the United States.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a hard-nosed seasoned prosecutor to take over the twin probes involving Donald Trump’s role in the 1/6 assault on our government and the squirreling away of classified documents he took from the White House as he was preparing to leave office.

The smart money seems to suggest that the special counsel, Jack Smith, has wrapped up his documents investigation. He is going to indict the ex-president soon on serious federal charges that could — if he’s convicted — put the ex-POTUS behind bars possibly for the rest of his life. I mean, he is 76 years of age.

What’s more, none of this involves the state prosecutors’ investigations into his trying to overturn election results in Georgia and his indictment on charges that he misspent campaign funds to keep a porn star quiet about a fling she alleges the two of them had in 2006.

I hope my friend reads this blog. So, to him I want to say: It looks more possible than ever that your wish well could come true.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

See ya in the slammer, Stewart Rhodes

Stewart Rhodes, the North Texan who helped mastermind the 1/6 insurrection, is now going to get to spend 18 years in federal prison.

How many ways can I say I applaud the sentence that came from the federal judge?

Rhodes remains defiant, of course! He calls himself a “political prisoner” even though a jury convicted him of seditious conspiracy. Let us look at what sedition entails.

It is to “incite rebellion” against the government. Which is what occurred on 1/6. Rhodes, a one-time lawyer, is the founder of the Oath Keepers organization, a right-wing mob of goons who believe that Donald Trump should have remained president even though he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden.

The Oath Keepers, led by Rhodes, sought to engineer a coup on 1/6. They failed.

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes gets 18 years for Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy – POLITICO

Eighteen years in the slammer is a long time. My fond hope is that Rhodes serves every damn bit of it. Rhodes is the latest 1/6 ringleader to be held accountable for his disgraceful behavior on that day.

I’ll leave it to the presiding judge to put a cap on this commentary: “You, sir, present an ongoing threat and a peril to this country, to the republic and to the very fabric of our democracy,” said U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta, who described Rhodes as a uniquely powerful threat to democracy on 1/6. “You are smart, you are compelling, and you are charismatic. Frankly, that is what makes you dangerous.”

Lock him up!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com