local news

Why the big payout?

A whole array of things fly over my noggin, and the news out of Amarillo about the dismissal of City Manager Jared Miller happens to be one of them.

The Amarillo City Council effectively terminated Miller, citing some sort of lack of cohesion between the council and the city administration. Translation: Miller wasn’t leading the city in the direction mandated by the council.

So, what does the council do? It pays the former manager a ton of money as a severance.

Let’s back up for just a second. If a chief municipal executive isn’t doing the job in accordance with City Council policy, does that mean he then is being let go for cause? If that is the case, how does the justify paying him a high six-figure severance?

The money reportedly is coming from a source other than the general fund; I understand it to be a sort of rainy day fund.

Miller spoke kindly of the council and wished it and his former City Hall colleagues well as they embark down some new path that was supposed to be led by the former city manager. It wasn’t. So … he was dismissed, let go, effectively fired.

The council surely softened his landing with a payout that, to my way of reasoning, seems to lack any sense.

national news

No moral equivalence

The “whataboutism gang” is alive and functioning fully in this age of deflection and distraction.

I wrote to a critic of my blog who challenged my assertion that the Republican Party has become the “party of rage.” He said Democrats and progressives remained silent when rioters burned office buildings and marched in city streets to protect government policies.

I wrote this: I have condemned the rioting that occurred. Let me be clear on this point: There can be no possible moral equivalence between what the street rioters did and what the traitorous mob did on Jan. 6. The Jan. 6 mob launched a full-on frontal assault on our nation’s government at the behest of the POTUS. Do not equate the events. Therein lies the reason for my description of the GOP as the “party of rage.”

My critic no doubt will respond. That’s his right and I welcome the exchange. I just have lost patience, though, with those who use the “whataboutism” dodge as a justification for what their guy says or does. They seek to point fingers away from their own heroes and toward those on the other side. It’s a distraction, pure and simple.

The whataboutism strategy generally comes from those who are desperate to make a case — any case! — in favor of their guy. That’s what I can surmise in this instance. Absent any credible defense against the charges leveled against their hero, the Donald Trump MAGA moron crowd is left to hurl epithets at those who demonstrate their own anger.

Except that in the instance to which I have referred, they aren’t even close to the same thing.

Joe Biden, national news

GOP: Party of rage

Donald John Trump telegraphed the message on Jan. 20, 2017 during his astonishing inaugural speech to a nation that waited to hear what kind of president he would become.

The only memorable line from that speech came when he declared that “the American carnage ends right here, right now.”

Well, it didn’t end. However, it did signal an element of rage that Trump has used to foment throughout many Americans’ hearts. He spoke like an angry man, never mind that he had pulled off one of the great American political upsets in U.S. history.

The Republican Party that nominated Trump in 2016, and again in 2020 — and is possibly going to do so in 2024 — is now the party of rage. It feeds on some Americans’ anger at … well, you name it.

At the federal government, at “woke policy,” at immigrants, at Black people, at gay people, at the media, at local elections officials, at medical experts who mandated vaccines against a killer virus … for God’s sake!

I am thinking at this moment of President Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign theme, that “morning in America” had dawned over the country. The president parlayed that warm-and-fuzzy feeling into a 49-state landslide over his opponent that year, Walter Mondale.

Morning in America has become a thing of the increasingly distant past, if you listen — and heed — the rhetoric coming from the MAGA morons who now run the Republican Party.

I won’t suggest that a new morning has dawned over the United States. We still have plenty of issues and problems with which the current president, Joe Biden, is trying to deal.

However, this should be a nation far removed from the rage that dominated the four-year term of his immediate predecessor. Therein lies — except for the obvious criminality for which he soon will stand trial — Donald John Trump’s lasting legacy.

crime news, legal news

A trial for the ages?

Let’s not pussyfoot around the obvious, which is that any of the four trials awaiting Donald J. Trump can be categorized as the “most significant legal proceeding in U.S. history.”

Every one of them will make history. They will become trials for the ages. They likely will be included in the first line of the obituary written for the individual who will stand trial.

Donald J. Trump is the first former president of the United States to be indicted for allegedly committing felony crimes against the government he swore an oath to defend and protect.

He is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty. My sense, though, is that state and federal prosecutors have done their jobs well enough to secure convictions perhaps on all the charges leveled against Trump. How many of them are there? Ninety-one!

Did any of us ever imagine seeing a former POTUS stand trial for seeking to overturn an election and obstructing the peaceful transfer of power after he lost that election? I damn sure never imagined it.

The trials that have been set constitute the most meaningful court proceedings this country ever has witnessed. We cannot possibly overstate what they will mean to the future of our democratic republic.

crime news, legal news

Date set, let justice rule

Mark down the date of March 4, 2024, which is what I intend to do.

That is the date set by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan for the start of a trial to determine whether Donald J. Trump is guilty of trying to overturn the results of a free, fair and legal presidential election.

Judge Chutkan has declared her intention to proceed with a “speedy trial” for the former president of the United States. Interestingly, for a man who says he did “nothing wrong,” Trump has been trying to delay this proceeding until sometime in 2026.

That prompts me to wonder: If Donald Trump is as innocent of the serious felonies for which he has been indicted as he insists he is, why delay the trial?

OK, we’re a long way from the start of the trial. There will be lots of “discovery” to be made. Lots of motions to consider. Chutkan, though, appears set to proceed with a trial that will begin one day prior to the Super Tuesday Republican Party presidential primary election in which several states will decide whom to nominate for POTUS.

Even more remarkable has been the statements from Fulton County (Ga.) District Attorney Fani Willis, who says she is ready to go to trial as early as October … in 2023, just a couple of months from today.

A Fulton County grand jury indicted Trump for violating state law in seeking to overturn those election results. Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, one of the 19 defendants indicted by the panel, is seeking to move the state trial to federal court, claiming he was acting as an agent of the federal government when he was doing the then-president’s bidding. Good luck with that, chief.

To be honest, all this maneuvering in all four courts has me a bit befuddled. I just hope all the judges who are hearing these cases — in New York, Atlanta, in Florida and in DC — can keep everything straight.

However this all plays out, it is looking for all the world to me that Donald John Trump is a world of some serious hurt.

national news

Impeachment inquiry … of what?

Congressional Republicans are getting ready to launch what House Speaker Kevin McCarthy calls the next logical step toward an impeachment inquiry into President Biden’s conduct.

Which begs the question: What in the hell are they seeking to learn?

President Biden’s conduct as president, as VP and as a senator has been investigated beyond all that is reasonable. The man’s been at or near the political center stage almost from the day he assumed his Senate office in January 1973. That’s 50 years worth of digging and scratching for dirt on the guy.

Have they come up with anything? No! They haven’t!

Now he’s president of the United States and is running for re-election. The GOP is desperate to find something — anything! — they can hang round POTUS’s neck.

An impeachment inquiry is going to end up in the trash bin along with the other allegations of wrongdoing that have been the subject of social media chatter. However, it won’t stop the MAGA clowns who populate House committee chairs from continuing their futile search.

And so … much of the rest of the work that Congress must tend to will remain undone.

local news, medical news

Blog performs priceless function

You know already that I love this gig of writing a blog, so much so that I have just crossed the 700-day mark.

Seven hundred consecutive days of posting a commentary on High Plains Blogger! I consider that a big … deal, if you get my drift.

I get a particular question from time to time, which goes like this: How are you able to write so frequently? My answer is that I do not know or why that it happens. I am prone to respond simply that “It’s what I do and it’s who I am.”

I’m not boasting about it. I merely want to call attention to this streak because, in a manner that many of you will understand, it has served as a form of therapy for me since I experienced the worst day of my life.

Feb. 3 came and went. The day began with my dear bride struggling to regain consciousness after suffering a grand mal seizure about six days earlier. The day ended with a phone call from the hospital telling me Kathy Anne had “just passed.” The glioblastoma lesion in her brain took her from us and it shattered many hearts.

I have sought in the months since then to tell the story of my personal journey through this darkness. My family and I are going through it together, but as a form of therapy, writing about this passage has given me strength. It helps clear my head … along with the road trips I have been able to take with my trusted companion, Toby the Puppy.

I likely would have continued this streak without the tragedy that befell us but since we have been dealt this hand, I am continuing to play it for as long as it is reasonable.

I want to thank you for reading it and sharing it when the spirit moves you.

Seven hundred consecutive days of blogging means a great deal to me. It happens to mean even more as I am able to continue to use this forum as a guide path that leads me toward the light.

national news

Biden fluffs Maui response

I am going to join President Biden’s critics who are scolding him for his oddly tone-deaf response to the wildfires that wiped out a historic community in Hawaii.

The president was far off his game when the fires began ravaging the island of Maui. The town of Lahaina, known for its historic exhibits and artifacts, at this moment no longer exists. Joe Biden’s first response when asked if he planned to visit the state and examine the damage was a terse “no comment.” Then he said he would go at the right time.

Americans have every right to expect their president to rise to occasions such as the one brought on by the horrific fire that destroyed a town, killed more than 100 citizens and has all but wiped out a local economy by rendering its tourist trade almost non-existent.

I heard some chatter about the president not wanting to get in the way of rescue and recovery efforts. That’s nonsense.

Yes, President Biden did issue an emergency declaration, clearing the way for federal aid to be rushed to help the residents of Maui. And, yes, he and first lady Jill Biden did take time away from their family vacation this past week to walk among the ruins to offer their moral support to a grieving community.

The deadliest wildfire in our nation’s history deserved far more than the tepid response it produced from the president of the United States.

local news

GOP picks Houston for ’28 gathering

Houston, you have a convention coming your way in 2028.

So says the head of the Republican National Committee, who this week announced that the nation’s fourth-largest city will play host to the GOP presidential nominating convention.

This is a big deal and I am going to set my partisan spurs aside for a moment and congratulate the city for landing this big-league event.

RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel praised Houston’s sales job in persuading the committee to stage its 2028 convention there. She credits the city’s growth in Hispanic residents as a key factor in the party returning to the Bayou City. “We all know that Hispanic voters have been shifting toward the Republican Party. Texans like Monica De La Cruz and Tony Gonzales and Ted Cruz and Mayra Flores have been front and center leading that charge in 2022,” McDaniel said.

I had the pleasure of attending the 1992 GOP convention in Houston while I was working for the Beaumont Enterprise, which is part of the Hearst Newspapers group. It was the second consecutive GOP convention I got to cover, as I attended the 1988 event in New Orleans.

These events are a complete blast to cover. You get a ringside seat at a four-day-long party in which attendees wear ridiculous costumes, complete with elephant ears and vests festooned with pins and badges. Then you realize they are there to nominate a candidate for president of the United States; that’s when it becomes obvious how ridiculous it seems.

I attended the 2012 Democratic convention in Charlotte and I will tell you the Democrats do precisely the same thing.

The Texas Tribune reports:

McDaniel thanked Houston’s Democratic Mayor Sylvester Turner, Gov. Greg Abbott and the city’s host committee in their efforts to bring the convention to the country’s fourth largest city.

“Texas is the heart of the conservative movement,” Abbott tweeted following the announcement. “Together, we’ll secure Republican victories up and down the ballot to chart a brighter course for our party and our nation.”

Despite their party differences, McDaniel said Turner was a “great partner” in selecting the host city and helped put together “one of the best bids I have ever seen for any city for any convention.”

Of course, Mayor Turner is going to go all out to lure the GOP.  The money generated by this event knows no partisan divide.

International news

Gipper called for ‘open border’

I came across an astonishing social media video today of Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States and the one-time godfather of American conservatism.

His topic was immigration. President Reagan spoke of the need to buttress U.S.-Mexico relations by maintaining what he called a “two-way open border.” He said the United States should allow Mexicans into our country “legally,” where they would work and “pay taxes” and then return to their homes in Mexico.

He feared that the nations were headed toward a state of hostility. Reagan believed the best way to ensure tranquil relations would be to keep the border between the U.S. and Mexico wide open, enabling citizens of both nations to travel freely — back and forth — across an “open border.”

He also spoke of the dangers of building walls to keep residents of Mexico out of this country.

Hmm. Wow!

The late president’s remarks only heighten the divide that exists between the Republican Party of his era and today’s GOP. The party activists today will have nothing to do with the immigration ideology espoused by Ronald Reagan.

Go … figure.

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