http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57544861/is-the-u.s-senate-broken/?tag=AverageMixRelated

The U.S. Senate is broken. Shattered into a million pieces. The one-time World’s Greatest Deliberative Body is now home to the world’s most annoying political logjam.

But that’s not the bad news, according to CBS News “60 Minutes.” Nearly all the 22 incumbents up for re-election this year are favored to win another term.’

The dysfunction will continue.

“60 Minutes” conducted an interview Sunday with U.S. Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, the body’s majority and minority leaders respectively. They call themselves “friends,” but they act like they despise each other.

Oh, for the days when Republicans and Democrats would reach across to each other, to work out deals in back rooms and then announce their compromises in public. Legislation got passed, the country moved forward.

Reid took note of the more than 200 filibusters he has battled from the Republican minority during his time as majority leader. He said the late Lyndon Johnson, the one-time Democratic leader in the Senate, had to deal with exactly one filibuster during his time as leader. He implied his “friend” McConnell is responsible for the obstruction.

The interview with these two men suggests that nothing will get done in this political climate, no matter who wins the White House on Tuesday. If voters re-elect President Obama, which is looking more likely as the hours tick down, Republicans will be madder than ever that they couldn’t defeat a president still struggling to correct the nation’s economic course. And if Mitt Romney wins the election, imagine the fury Democrats will exact on his administration as he tries to get legislation enacted.

Yep, the system is broken. I’m beginning to like Sen. Tom Coburn’s remedy, which he expresses in the “60 Minutes” broadcast. Throw every one of the senators up for re-election out of office and start over with new faces.

Of course, it’s easy for him to say. You see, Sen. Coburn – an Oklahoma Republican – isn’t up for re-election this time around.

http://amarillo.com/opinion/letters-editor/2012-11-01/letter-its-time-columist-gene-lyons-be-caged

The letter to the editor contained in this link reminds me of the battles I fought for years with newspaper readers who imply they don’t want to read opinions that disagree with their own.

I remember getting a letter from a gentleman in Perryton. He just couldn’t stomach reading “liberal” commentary on the page I edited. He only wanted to read conservative views, espousing – much as the gentleman in the link attached to this blog post has done – the view that this is a conservative region and thus, the newspaper should cater to the region’s prevailing political viewpoint.

What the Perryton resident didn’t quite get is that the world contains a wide-range of opinions, bias, philosophy and perspectives. The intent of a newspaper opinion page should be to present as wide a range of views as possible. Why not expose conservatives to liberal points of view or liberals to conservative points of view?

No one’s mind is going to change. Offering a varied smorgasbord of ideas, though, does provide validation – if nothing else – to whatever view the reader already holds.

I have lost count of the times I’ve heard from individuals complaining about having to read viewpoints that run counter to their own view.

The best news of all to those folks, though, is that no one forces them to read anything.

I rather prefer to read differing ideas. Doing so can cause me to hyperventilate and that’s good for the heart. It might be good for the soul, too.

I detest straight-party voting.

You know what it is, right? It’s that place on the ballot that enables people to vote for every candidate of a particular party. One punch of the ballot and voters can walk away from the polling booth … no muss, no fuss.

It’s a profoundly lazy way to vote. Texas allows voters to cast their ballots that way. My take on it is that the Legislature needs to change the law.

I want to stipulate that my loathing of straight-party voting in Texas has nothing – well, almost nothing – to do with the state’s heavy Republican leanings. I’d hate this style of voting even if the state leaned just as heavily toward the Democratic Party. But I didn’t arrive in Texas until the spring of 1984, by which time the state’s shift from Democratic to Republican dominance was well underway.

Here’s my version of a perfect electoral world in Texas: Make voters go down the ballot, which can be lengthy, and cast their vote one race at a time. If they choose to select all candidates of one party, they are free to do so. But the generous ticket-splitters will judge each contest on the quality of the candidates seeking that particular office.

It also must be noted that Texas election law has this curious provision that enables voters to punch the straight-party spot on the ballot while allowing them to vote for individual candidates from the other party. Why allow the straight-party provision in the first place if voters have the power to override their straight-ticket choice?

Many voters in Potter and Randall counties, sadly, still like to vote for the party rather than for the candidate. And in this Republican-red region of a Republican-red state, the GOP benefits the most from this form of ballot-casting. We’ll see a good bit of it once again when the polls open next Tuesday.

Will the 2013 Legislature do the right thing and end this practice of straight-party voting? Probably not. The Texas Legislature is dominated by Republican lawmakers who are quite unlikely to cut their own party’s political throat by requiring Texans to take a moment to think before casting their vote.

http://amarillo.com/news/local-news/2012-10-30/vets-organization-chief-retires

It’s been said many times that Americans’ treatment of returning Vietnam War veterans resulted in a shameful chapter in our nation’s history.

One of the vets from that era, Jack Barnes, sought to do better by returning veterans. He succeeded beyond all measure. Barnes has announced his retirement from America Supports You-Texas.

The Perryton native has done his duty on behalf of returning veterans. And he deserves thanks for all he has done.

Barnes retired from the Navy as a chief petty officer. But his military retirement didn’t conclude his commitment to our nation’s men and women in uniform. He’s organized welcome-home receptions at Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport for veterans returning from battlefield sin Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s also extended “welcome home” greetings to Vietnam vets.

Indeed, Barnes has extended such greetings to me on more than one occasion over the years. I appreciate the gesture, Jack.

But he’s also been honoring World War II veterans with Honor Flights. Barnes has been relentless in his quest to give WWII vets a chance to visit the memorials along the Mall in Washington. The flights are arranged to take these aging heroes to the nation’s capital, to extend a token of thanks for their role in defeating the forces of tyranny in the 1940s. All of them have come back enriched by the experience and filled with gratitude for what Chief Barnes did for them.

I want to join others in thanking Jack Barnes for his service to the country in the Navy, and for what he’s done to salute all our brave warriors.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/83076.html?hp=l4_b2

The amount of nerve of some people in public life never ceases to amaze me.

Take the former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael Brown, for example.

You remember Brown. He led FEMA’s response to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster and turned that response into a fiasco. President Bush famously said to him, “You’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie.” Turned out he wasn’t doing such a heckuva job after all coordinating the response to the storm that nearly obliterated New Orleans, one of the world’s great cities.

He quit his FEMA job not long after Bush tossed the bouquet at him.

Brownie now is telling the world that President Obama shouldn’t have spoken so quickly about Hurricane Sandy, that he reacted too rapidly in getting federal relief efforts ready to respond.

I believe it was Abraham Lincoln who once said it is “better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

Brownie should have remained silent.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2012/10/romney-has-a-christie-problem-and-a-fema-problem.html#entry-more

This article from The New Yorker spells out Gov. Mitt Romney’s blind spot regarding the role of the federal government in people’s lives.

He said during one of the many Republican primary presidential debates that the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s duties ought to be farmed out to the states. FEMA, he implied, is a superfluous agency and that the federal government needs to eliminate it to help reduce the deficit.

It’s right there in the link. Open it and take a look.

Then think about the mountains of praise being heaped on FEMA at this moment over its response to the Hurricane Sandy tragedy that has swept across the northeast corner of the nation. Republican Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey – a major and vocal supporter of Gov. Romney – has been heaping much of that praise on President Obama precisely because of the federal government’s response to this national tragedy. I will repeat: Hurricane Sandy has produced a national tragedy.

And national tragedies require a federal response.

I have a good friend. His name is Gene, who describes himself as a conservative redneck. We agree on virtually nothing politically, but I love the guy.

He keeps harping at me about a pet issue of his: term limits. He thinks the world would be a better place politically if we limited the number of terms that members of Congress can serve. He says it works for the presidency, where the person who sits in that office can serve only for two terms. Then he’s out.

My good friend holds a view that is quite popular among rank-and-file voters. They keep insisting on term limits. However, they keep re-electing their members of Congress. In the Panhandle, that usually means re-election for the incumbent congressman, U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, by huge margins every other year. Why is that? Well, the Republican lawmaker must be doing a good enough job to keep his seat.

So, what’s the point of term limits?

As for Thornberry, it’s good to set the record straight about something the congressman never said while running for the office 18 years ago. He never vowed to serve a limited number of terms before stepping aside. Thornberry did pledge to vote for GOP-drafted Contract With America, which called for congressional term limits. And you know what? He’s carried through with that pledge every time the issue has come to a vote. The problem, though, is that members of Congress keep voting it down. Who’s going to approve a law that does away with his or her office?

The larger point, though, is that we have term limits already. Elections can be effective limiters every two years for House members and every six years for U.S. senators. The burden then falls on qualified challengers to emerge to run against incumbents. If the challenger presents a credible alternative to the individual already in office, voters will vote the incumbent out. To wit: Mac Thornberry’s victory in 1994 over Democratic U.S. Rep. Bill Sarpalius.

Term limits by themselves aren’t the answer to good government.

I’ve concluded that the 2012 presidential election is going to turn logic on its head.

What’s causing this electoral dizziness? I think the liars are on the verge of winning the crucial argument about the state of the economy.

It’s now known that Barack Obama came to office four years with an economy in free-fall. He and Congress instituted some measures to prevent the economy from bleeding out. Stimulus programs kicked lots of money into projects – and a good bit of that money came to the politically unfriendly Texas Panhandle. The government bailed out the auto industry, saving it from collapse. The feds instituted strict rules on banks and other mortgage lenders to ensure they didn’t throw money at any borrower who had his or her hand out.

What’s been the downside? Yes, the national debt is far greater than anyone would want. But the economy has been saved from self-immolation. The nation is in economic recovery right now.

But that’s not good enough, say the liars, who contend that the economy needs to grow faster. They ignore the obvious positive trends for their own gain. And it’s worked, to a degree. They’ve managed to turn what should be a rout for the incumbent president into a bona bide nail-biter.

I understand fully that many of my friends in the Panhandle – which probably will endorse Romney-Ryan by a greater margin than it supported John McCain and Sarah Palin in 2008 – don’t see it that way. They are frustrated with the size of the debt; I share that concern. They believe America is in decline; I, however, do not. Many of them think the nation has been seized by some foreign ideology that wants to turn America into a sort of New World Europe. Me? I take the president at his word when he trumpets America’s greatness. My friends here also are experts on health care, as they know for a fact that Obamacare is going to bankrupt the nation. I’m not smart enough to make that determination, so I’ll just wait to see how it comes together when the law takes effect in 2014.

And the thing I understand the least is how Romney has managed to remake himself with so little concern being raised among those who want to elect him. He governed Massachusetts as a moderate, yet he proclaimed during the primary season he was a “severely conservative” governor. He was pro-choice, now he’s pro-life; he favored government-run health care, now he opposes it; he supported some restrictions on guns, now he opposes all restrictions.

Newt Gingrich, of all people, was right during the GOP primary campaign when he called Romney a liar. And Romney has lied himself into a photo finish for the White House.

See you at the polls.

Is there a more political state in America than Texas? We elect everyone. We entrust all kinds of public policy decisions to politicians.

It’s not that politicians are inherently bad people. Some of my better friends are politicians.

But is it truly the right thing to have politicians deciding public education policy? I’ve long had this problem with asking politicians to perform the critical task of setting public education curriculum used to educate our children. Many of these individuals have zero experience as teachers or educational administrators. They all have opinions on what they believe is best for our kids and in recent years in Texas they’ve been fighting furiously among themselves over their philosophical differences.

The Texas State Board of Education comprises 15 individuals representing distinct districts around the state. District 15 includes a huge chunk of West Texas, including the Panhandle. The race this year is between Republican Marty Rowley of Amarillo and Democrat Steve Schafersman of Midland. And the contest is boiling down apparently to the men’s differences over whether to teach “intelligent design” in the classroom alongside the theory of evolution.

Here is where the politicization of the SBOE at times has gotten out of hand.

My concern about the SBOE is that it’s going to continue down that rocky path of argument and division among its members who, along the way, are going to lose sight of their fundamental mission, which is to educate children. Sure, these pols all say they put the kids first. But they demonstrate instead a desire to protect their own reputations. Which is why the sideshow politicization of the SBOE has at times overshadowed the panel’s critical function.

In the 1980s Texas experimented with an appointed SBOE, but then returned to the elected body. I always thought the appointed panel – which was a gubernatorial function – would have worked just fine if given enough time.

But instead we’re handing this SBOE job to politicians who see it as their duty to fight like the dickens among themselves. Other collective political bodies do that very thing as well. And the performances in recent years of the Texas Legislature and the U.S. Congress demonstrate the folly at times of putting a bunch of politicians together in the same room.

As the numbers-driven presidential campaign heads for the home stretch, one final big set of pre-vote statistics looms huge.

It will be the October jobs report, due out next Friday.

Analysts already are projecting a jobs boost of about 120,000 for the month; they add that they believe the unemployment rate will remain at 7.8 percent. What do I think of those projections? Not much. They’re usually wrong at least as often as they’re right.

I’m no economist, but I do believe this: If the numbers come in huge, say, with 200,000 jobs added in the past month, President Obama’s re-election chances will have been boosted to near-certain status. If they tank and the numbers show growth of about 50,000 jobs or fewer, then we could be looking at a Mitt Romney upset.

The timing of the release of this report will be critical for obvious reasons. On Friday, there will be just three full days before balloting begins the following Tuesday. Early voting will have concluded in many states, including Texas (not that it matters here, given that Texas is going to support Romney).

I would love to be a fly on the wall at Romney’s campaign HQ early Friday, where Mitt’s minions are going to be praying for a bad jobs report, which in effect is the same as praying for continued economic misery for millions of Americans. Of course, Obama’s campaign brass is hoping for the best possible numbers to come out Friday … and I agree their motives are just as political as those of the Romney gang.

However, a positive jobs report means much more than just determining how a presidential campaign turns out. It means Americans are getting back to work.

Isn’t that news worth cheering, no matter your political stripe?