Monthly Archives: February 2018

local news

Candidacy still a head-scratcher

Drew Brassfield’s candidacy for the Texas House of Representatives is still causing some curiosity in my noggin.

He’s currently the Fritch city manager. He is seeking the Republican Party primary nomination to Texas House District 87, which currently is held by another Republican, Four Price of Amarillo.

I have raised the question about potential ethical concerns if in the event hell does freeze over and Brassfield actually defeats Price in the GOP primary next month.

One specific concern comes to mind. It involves campaign contributions from potential vendors who might want to do business with the city of Fritch.

Consider this hypothetical matter: The city wants to build some new structures, say, at a municipal park. It puts the project out for bid. Contractors submit bids to do the work. One of them decides to make a significant contribution to the city manager’s political fund. Is the contractor then eliminated from consideration because of the bid? If so, does the city deny someone a chance to present the most cost-effective bid possible? If not, then what kind of pressure does the city manager face in determining which contractor gets the job?

This presents in my mind one of the difficulties that occur when a current government administrator seeks election to another public office. That’s also why Texas ethics rules and provisions ought to frown on this mixing of public responsibilities.

I don’t expect this matter to get in anyone’s way after the March 6 primary election. I fully expect Rep. Price to be nominated by voters in his party for another term, which means election to another two years, given the absence of any Democrats on the ballot.

The issue, though, still needs to be considered to avoid venturing too far into the proverbial sticky wicket.

legal news, national news

‘An American disgrace’? Not even close

Robert Mueller is looking for the truth behind an allegation that will dog the presidency of Donald Trump for as long as he holds the office.

Yet the president calls the search an “American disgrace.”

It is no such thing.

The disgrace is being generated from another source. The Oval Office has produced a disgraceful example either of extreme naivete or willful ignorance or — in the worst case — of deliberate deception.

I don’t know which it is. The president has signed on to the continuing disparagement of the FBI, the Department of Justice and other intelligence agencies that stand by their combined assertion that the Russian government intervened in our 2016 presidential election.

Trump won’t acknowledge publicly what he must: that the intelligence agencies’ assessment is accurate.

I want to stipulate that I do not know if the Russian interference determined the election outcome. I haven’t seen any evidence that votes were changed or that local local elections officials were compromised. Maybe none exists of actual impact on the outcome.

Whether it did or didn’t, the issue is that the Russians meddled. The operative question is whether the Trump campaign was complicit in that act of aggression against our electoral system.

Mueller was selected to find the truth. Republicans and Democrats sang together in praise of Mueller’s appointment, which came from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein after AG Jeff Sessions recused himself from anything dealing with the Russia probe.

The disgrace is occurring now as Republicans are seeking to discredit Mueller, whose integrity once was considered impeccable. If the president fires Mueller, or Rosenstein, or both of them, then the disgrace moves into another category altogether.

Then we’re talking about a certifiable constitutional crisis.

Trump’s definition of “disgrace” needs work. It’s not the search that disgraces the nation. It’s the attempt to derail it that gives millions of Americans serious cause for concern.

local news, political news

This contest doesn’t pass the smell test

I have watched political contests with keen interest for nearly four decades.

I’ve seen curious matchups to be sure. An upcoming Republican Party primary race in the Texas Panhandle, though, has me scratching my noggin. I’m seriously scratching it … hard!

State Rep. Four Price of Amarillo is facing a primary challenge from Panhandle resident Drew Brassfield. Who is the challenger? He’s a first-time political candidate who also happens to serve as the city manager of Fritch.

“I want the voters to have an option, and I think the voters around here want conservative leadership,” Brassfield told the Amarillo Globe-News. There you have it. Conservative leadership. Yeah.

Of all the political campaigns I witnessed up close during my years in journalism, this one features the first one involving a full-time municipal administrator seeking a partisan political office.

It’s not illegal for a city administrator to run for a public office. It somehow seems to stink just a little bit. It doesn’t pass the proverbial smell test.

Why is that? Well, suppose Brassfield were to be elected, which is highly unlikely, given my understanding of Price’s standing within Texas House District 87. How would be possibly be able to serve the residents of Fritch while serving in the Texas Legislature for a minimum of five months every odd-numbered year?

I don’t have a dog in this particular fight. I am registered to vote in Randall County, so I cannot cast a ballot for House District 87.

However, were I to get a chance to pose a single question to Drew Brassfield, I would ask him how he intends to hold two publicly funded jobs at the same time. And I would want to know how in the world he could continue to serve in his full-time day job while traveling throughout a multi-county legislative district searching for votes.

There’s just damn little about this fellow’s candidacy that feels good.

I believe there might be an ethics issue to resolve.

national news

Political climate heads toward a boiling point

I happen to believe that the United States of America is heading toward a whole new era of political weirdness. We haven’t seen this before. I hope we never see it again.

In 2016 a carnival barker named Donald John Trump got elected president of the United States. It’s gotten worse since then … if you can believe it.

Alabama voters rejected a goofball Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate. Roy Moore, who lost a special election to Democratic Sen. Doug Jones, hasn’t conceded yet. It’s been nearly two months after the election.

The president continues to foment division and disunity among the two parties — and has created a widening schism within his own Republican Party.

Donald Trump has declared war on the FBI and the Department of Justice. When did you ever see that happen? How many of you thought it would happen now?

The social medium Twitter has become the favored method of communication among the president, members of Congress, high-powered federal government agency heads and, oh I don’t know, just about anyone with a platform from which to spout public policy.

The government cannot fund itself past the next fortnight. Congress is fighting among its members over immigration. The president wants to build that wall along our border with Mexico. He still insists Mexico will pay for it. Mexico’s president says, in effect, “Ain’t no way, dude!”

In Arizona, a former sheriff who Trump pardoned for civil rights crimes and for violating federal court orders, is now running for another U.S. Senate out west. Joe Arpaio might win his Republican primary race! Can you believe that? Me neither, but it could happen.

Members of Congress are retiring in droves. Some of them have flat-out quit. Democrats and Republicans are being accused of sexual misconduct.

And, oh yes, the president himself is now believed to have paid a porn queen $130,000 to keep quiet about an alleged affair the two of them had. Trump and the “actress” deny the affair, but no one is denying that the president paid her the dough.

Trump told us as he ran for president he would shake things up. He promised to toss out the orthodox playbook.

He has lied about damn near everything. Trump has insulted our allies, recharged the bogus allegation that Barack Obama wasn’t qualified to serve as president, accused Hillary Clinton of committing crimes, fired an FBI director, called the media the “enemy of the American people” and stoked cynicism at every opportunity.

The special counsel is continuing his probe of “this Russia thing.” Trump accuses Robert Mueller of engaging in a “witch hunt” and then promises to speak to him “under oath” if he is asked; oh, but then he backed off of that, sort of …

Many millions of Americans, meanwhile, are on the verge of going crazy as we watch all of this unfold in real time before our eyes.

Help!

national news

Not all in GOP are buying into Nunes memo

I am happy to acknowledge that the Republican Party’s ranks of power players aren’t singing off the same hymnal page as it regards Russian interference in our electoral process.

Donald John Trump and many of his GOP “friends” in Congress have released a memo that accuses the FBI of bias in its investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., isn’t one of them.

He has released a blistering statement telling Trump that the memo is doing “Putin’s job for him.”

McCain’s statement, issued prior to the release of the memo from the House Intelligence Committee’s Republican members, said, in part: “In 2016, the Russian government engaged in an elaborate plot to interfere in an American election and undermine our democracy,” McCain said. “Russia employed the same tactics it has used to influence elections around the world, from France and Germany to Ukraine, Montenegro and beyond.”

According to the Huffington Post: McCain said Russia’s interference has, at best, sown political discord and succeeded in “dividing us from each other.” Attacking the intelligence community is not how to fix the discord, he said.

I am acutely aware of Sen. McCain’s longstanding antipathy toward Donald J. Trump. The then-GOP presidential candidate disparaged McCain’s heroic service during the Vietnam War. The men haven’t made peace yet.

That doesn’t diminish the importance of what McCain is saying about the release of the memo, written by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif. The intelligence community opposed its release, as did the FBI leadership.

McCain wrote further: “The latest attacks against the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests ― no party’s, no President’s, only Putin’s,” McCain added. “The American people deserve to know all the facts surrounding Russia’s ongoing efforts to subvert our democracy, which is why Special Counsel (Robert) Mueller’s investigation must proceed unimpeded. Our nation’s elected officials, including the president, must stop looking at this investigation through the lens of politics and manufacturing political sideshows. If we continue to undermine our own rule of law, we are doing Putin’s job for him.”

This is not how you protect the interests of the people you were elected to govern, Mr. President.

International news, national news, political news

When will POTUS ever recognize the Russia threat?

I guess there’s not a single thing I do can do except keep yapping out loud about it. So, therefore, I will.

When is the president of the United States going to acknowledge publicly what many of his fellow Americans already know: Russia threatens our sacred political process.

Instead, Donald John Trump Sr. continues to disparage our law enforcement agencies, our counterintelligence organizations, our criminal justice system, our key protectors.

Trump ratcheted up that criticism of our law enforcement agencies today by allowing the release of a Republican-authored memo that accuses the FBI of bias in its investigation into Russian hacking of our electoral process.

The president attacked the leadership of the FBI and the Justice Department. Oh, sure, he managed to say a good word about the “rank and file” within the FBI. The men and women on the front line, though, work for the very leadership that Trump has continued to criticize, undermine and — some might argue — defame.

I won’t accuse the president of defaming the FBI and DOJ leadership, but I keep returning to a fundamental question: When is the president going to admit in the open that Russia is a bad actor?

Russian President/strongman Vladimir Putin is no “friend” of the United States. I don’t know this as fact, but I cannot believe for an instant that the former KGB boss thinks as highly of Trump as the president says he does. A large part of me believes Putin is laughing his backside off at the confusion, chaos and controversy he has delivered to the United States as a result of the Russian meddling in our 2016 presidential election.

Putin committed an act of aggression against this country and for the life of me, I cannot accept why the president of the United States refuses to call that aggression what it is.

I have my share of theories as to why he remains quiet on Russia. I maintain my belief that Americans deserve to see the president’s full tax returns and financial disclosure. They very well could tell us plenty about the president’s reluctance to call the Russians out.

Donald Trump’s silence is deafening in the extreme.

business news

Market craters: Time for calming words from POTUS

Wall Street took a header today.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted more than 600 points, signaling — possibly, maybe, perhaps — a new Black Friday.

I get that one day does not portend a stock market crash by itself.

However, I am wondering if the president of the United States is capable of offering some calm words of assurance rather than assigning blame for what happened today to millions of Americans’ retirement portfolios.

Ours took a beating today. I am not worried irrationally about our retirement future based on the market’s woes.

Donald Trump has spent a lot of emotional energy of late boasting about how Wall Street has reached record highs in record time. He has taken all sorts of credit for the market performance. He deserves some of it, although millions of the rest of us understand that the market has been climbing steadily during the past eight or nine years after it went through a serious crash to trigger the Great Recession of 2008-09.

Here’s what I would like to hear from the president: I would prefer he would provide some calm words of assurance. I mean, he is a self-described business whiz who’s made zillions of dollars. If he has any knowledge of what transpired today — and if it is a harbinger of more to come — then let’s hear it.

Talk to us, Mr. President, but speak to us like a grownup.

national news, political news

There goes the quest for national unity

The all-too-brief search for national unity has ended.

Donald J. Trump said his State of the Union speech would be a unifying message. The president delivered it Tuesday night and then went on another Twitter tirade that blamed Democrats for the failure to reach an agreement on immigration reform.

Then the president officially called off the unity quest this morning. He agreed with the release of a memo written by Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes that accuses the FBI of bias in its investigation of the Russian meddling allegation.

The memo release has launched yet another partisan battle. Democrats opposed its release; Republicans favored it. The FBI opposed it, too. Its release just might trigger the resignation of FBI director Christopher Wray, whom Trump selected to lead the agency. Who knows, too, whether the release is the last straw for the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, who has drawn plenty of presidential pique himself because he decided to recuse himself from the Russia probe.

I am no Sessions fan, but he made what I consider to be the right decision by recognizing his own bias in the Russia investigation, given his former role as a key member of Trump’s presidential transition team.

So, the president has now pitted the parties against each other; he also has squared off against the Department of Justice and the FBI. It’s now Trump vs. the DOJ/FBI.

Unity? Are you kidding me?

The president isn’t wired to unify anyone. He thrives on confrontation. He basks in conflict. He glories in calling attention to himself.

Oh, and have I mentioned that Donald Trump is unfit to lead the greatest nation on Earth? Hey! I just did!

legal news, national news

POTUS takes aim at FBI, DOJ

Donald John Trump has unloaded on the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Christopher Wray runs the FBI; Jeff Sessions is attorney general of the United States.

What do these men have in common? They were nominated by the president, the same Donald John Trump who’s now disparaging their leadership of these critical law enforcement agencies.

Someone will have to explain to me how this engenders confidence in the agencies’ ability to do their job and the president’s ability to find “the best people” to run them.

Trump is likely to release a memo that condemns the FBI’s handling of the investigation into Russian meddling in our 2016 presidential election. Wray doesn’t want the memo released; he says it is incomplete and it paints an inaccurate picture of what the FBI has done to get to the truth about alleged “collusion” between the Russians and the Trump presidential campaign.

The president’s latest tweeet storm has called into the question the leadership of these agencies, while at the same time praising the “rank and file” employees.

He wrote this today: “The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans – something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago,” the president tweeted. “Rank & File are great people!”

He’s already trashed AG Sessions for his decision to recuse himself from anything dealing with Russia. If he had known Sessions would take himself out of the probe, Trump has said, he would have picked someone else.

So help me, I cannot remember a time when the president has disrespected his own appointees in the manner that we’re witnessing at this moment.

Bizarre.

national news, political news

Suck it up, Michael Wolff, and take the heat

I am well into Michael Wolff’s book “Fire and Fury” and am finding it an interesting and entertaining piece of work. Much of it rings true as well.

But when the author goes on these national TV talk shows to discuss some of the more, um, salacious elements of the book, he needs to prepare for the grilling he should expect to get.

He got grilled hard this week on MSNBC by “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski, who wondered why he would suggest that U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley would be engaging in an affair with Donald John Trump.

Wolff took offense at the question. Brzezinski persisted, noting that he implies an alleged Haley-Trump “relationship” near the end of his book.

The back-and-forth continued for a few moments before Brzezinski shut the interview down.

Wolff defamed Haley, according to Brzezinski. Wolff decided to go after the MSBNC co-host in a series of tweets after his appearance on “Morning Joe.”

I won’t comment yet on “Fire and Fury,” as I have a good bit of it yet to read. I do object, though, to assertions he is making about our nation’s U.N. ambassador and the president. This is a serious head-scratcher, given the ubiquitous presence of cameras, recording devices and other gadgets that can detect any kind of, um, “suspicious” behavior.

As for the author’s inability or unwillingness to endure tough questioning from journalists, well, he needs to toughen up.