Tag Archives: Texas

political news, State news

Jobs vs. 'Oops' for ex-Gov. Perry

The task awaiting former Texas Gov. Rick Perry — gosh, it feels nice to write “former” in front of his name — will be to erase a singular moment from his first run for president.

He thinks “jobs” will replace “oops” in voters’ memory if and when he declares his intention to run for president in 2016.

(OK, he’s not yet a “former” governor, but the moment is close enough that I’ll take the liberty of using it here.)

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/12/31/perry_hopes_texas_jobs_record_can_trump_oops_from_2012_125105.html

He’ll have to sell the Texas jobs record to voters looking for an economic medicine man among the Republicans who’ll be seeking to replace Barack Obama in the White House.

But that one moment still stands out as the definition of Perry’s first run for president. As Real Clear Politics reported: “It all boils down to the moment when Perry, in the midst of a 2011 presidential debate, was unable to recall the third of three federal agencies he’d promised to shutter, finally muttering ‘oops.’ Asked about it in a recent interview with The Associated Press, Perry said, ‘That’s like going back and asking a football player who dropped a pass to win the Super Bowl: ‘Did that bother you?’ ”

His campaign staff and close friends said the governor didn’t prepare sufficiently for the 2012 nomination campaign. He had a sore back and was medicated heavily to relieve the pain, they say. There was little staff preparation and development, they contend.

It all added up to a political disaster in the making.

It arrived on that debate stage in late 2011.

Can the governor take the credit for all those Texas jobs? Should he take credit? Well, they occurred on his watch.

But by the same token, millions of jobs were added nationally to company payrolls during the Obama administration. Does the president deserve credit for those numbers as well? My trick knee tells me that ex-Gov. Perry won’t give the president a nickel’s worth of credit for what happened nationally, but he’ll scarf up all the credit he can find for the Texas job growth.

It should produce an interesting tale that Rick Perry will be more than glad to spin in his favor.

First, he’ll have to purge our memory of the “oops” moment.

 

State news

I'll miss Patterson most of all

I’ve given some thought to the Texas statewide officeholders who are leaving public life at the end of the year.

Who will I miss the most?

It’s a close call. Comptroller of Public Accounts Susan Combs can be an interesting and delightful interview subject. She’s full of one-liners and has put me in stitches on more than one occasion in the years I’ve known her, first when she was elected agriculture commissioner and then as comptroller.

Combs finishes second, though, to Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson.

Patterson burst onto the state’s public attention by being known as the “gun guy,” a state senator who authored the state’s concealed-carry bill in the mid-1990s. He wanted the state to make it legal for Texans to pack heat under their jacket, provided they pass a test that demonstrates they know how to handle a firearm.

He is proud of his Marine Corps service and the tour of duty he served in Vietnam. He campaigned actively on that service. Indeed, his job as land commissioner put him in charge of the state’s veterans home loan program, which he administered with great pride.

Patterson also has a tremendous self-deprecating streak. The first time I met him, he introduced himself to me as a guy who finished in the “top 75 percent of my class at Texas A&M University,” where he said he “managed to cram four years of college into six years.”

Texas doesn’t have quite the colorful cast of characters inhabiting public offices that it used to have. Too many of them have taken themselves more seriously than they take their responsibilities. Gov. Rick Perry is Exhibit A. I won’t miss Perry in the least.

Jerry Patterson, though, reminds me a bit of the old-school Texas pol who is unafraid to poke a little fun at himself. We need more — not fewer — like him in public life.

 

State news

Abbott staying neutral in '16 GOP primary

Nice try, Chuck Todd.

The moderator of “Meet the Press” tried to lure Texas Gov.-elect Greg Abbott into endorsing someone for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Abbott didn’t take the bait, saying he is “staying out of” the primary activity. Translation: I ain’t endorsing anyone, but I’ll support whoever the party nominates.

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-politics/2014/12/abbott-staying-out-of-2016-gop-presidential-primary/

But then the thought occurred to me: The ’16 presidential field well could be chock full of current and former Texas politicians, and perhaps the son of a former Texas politician.

Look at the Lone Star lineup.

* Lame-duck Texas Gov. Rick Perry is making all kinds of racket about running once again for his party’s presidential nomination.

* Freshman U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz also is acting like a candidate in the making, delivering speeches to fundraising giants and making a nuisance of himself by showing up in front of TV cameras at any opportunity.

* Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who grew up in Texas, is a possible — some say “probable” — candidate.

* U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is the son of a former Texas member of Congress, Ron Paul, who has run unsuccessfully already for his party’s nomination.

Am I missing anyone?

Count ’em. That’s four leading politicians with Texas ties looking (possibly?) to run for president of the United States.

Yes, the GOP is mighty strong in Texas.

 

political news, State news

Abbott turns focus on public education

Texas Gov.-elect Greg Abbott just cannot stand the fact that California — and not Texas — is home to five of the nation’s top 10 public universities.

That’s what he said today at his first news conference since being elected governor.

Thus, he vowed to make public education the top priority of his administration.

To which I say, “Very good, Gov. Abbott.”

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/12/08/governor-education-will-be-abbotts-top-priority/

Now comes the obvious question: How is it that California’s public universities rate so much better than Texas’s public institutions of higher learning?

Here’s a guess: Because our fellow countrymen way out west invest in their public institutions, rather than gut them.

The past two legislative sessions have seen dramatic cuts in public education at many levels. The state’s been short of money, so it takes aim at one of the bedrocks of its future: public education.

At no level at all does that make sense. Yes, conservatives — led by the TEA party movement among Republicans — keep saying you can’t “buy a good education.” Well, actually you can.

You can spend more to hire quality faculty and administrative staff; you can invest on physical infrastructure at our major university systems. Both of those things can — and do — attract top-quality students, who then boost academic performance measurements and, therefore, create a public educational system that becomes the envy of other states.

California has done that, even as it, too, has struggled to recover from the economic collapse of late 2008.

Texas public officials are fond of ridiculing California. Yes, we do a lot of things right in Texas. They also do some things correctly in California.

Developing a first-rate public university system is a strategy worth emulating.

 

 

 

local news, State news

Thrill will be gone soon from Texas Senate

Texas lawmakers of both political parties have told me over the years how much “fun” they had serving in the state Legislature. Both chambers comprised members who had pals on the other side.

They were chums. They shared an adult beverage after hours. They would talk about common interests. They would seek each other’s advice.

I remember meeting the late state Sen. Teel Bivins for the first time. The Republican knew I came to Amarillo from Beaumont and he shared in our first meeting his respect for a Democratic adversary from Southeast Texas, Sen. Carl Parker, who used to refer to Bivins and others of his stripe as “silk-stocking Republicans.” Bivins never took it personally and he actually admired Parker’s debating skill, which he would employ on the floor of the Senate.

My trick knee is telling me those days are about to end.

Dan Patrick will become the next lieutenant governor in January. Patrick has made it known his desire to abandon a couple of Senate traditions: one is the two-thirds rule that requires 21 Senate votes to bring any bill to a vote of the entire of body; the other is the practice of appointing senators of the other party as committee chairs.

Patrick, a Republican, said earlier this year that given Texas’s strong conservative leaning and the fact that Republicans stand like a colossus over the landscape, then — by golly — he would prefer to have an all-GOP lineup among the Senate leadership.

Crank up the steamroller, folks.

What does this mean for what’s left of the party’s more moderate element, which must include Sen. Kel Seliger of Amarillo, who wants to lead the Education Committee?

A friend of mine and I were talking Friday about the next Legislature. He’s been observing Texas politics for decades and he wonders how the state will function when it is run by the TEA party wing of the GOP. He mentioned former Lt. Gov. Bill Ratliff, a wise man and moderate Republican, and lamented that Ratliff no longer is in public life. “Who would have thought that Kel Seliger would be considered a ‘liberal’ within the Republican Party?” he asked … rhetorically.

There once was a time when serving in the Legislature could be considered “fun.” Hey, it doesn’t pay very much so you look for fun whenever and wherever you can find it.

The tone and tenor of the upper chamber is about to change. For my taste — and perhaps the taste of others around the state — it won’t be for the better.

 

 

Uncategorized

Go for it, Mr. President

Congress had a chance to act on the border crisis in Texas and other states bordering Mexico.

It didn’t.

Now it appears President Obama is going — get ready for it — to take executive action to at least put an immediate, if temporary, fix on the crisis.

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-politics/2014/08/texas-businessmen-obama-executive-action-on-immigration-appears-imminent/

Holy cow! Will the Congress sue him over that one, too?

I rather doubt it. Indeed, the speaker of the House of Representatives — which did pass a version of a bill to deal with the problem — has invited the president to use his power to act.

He surely should, given that Congress choked on the issue.

I’m no longer going to refer to this as an “immigration” crisis. It clearly is a “refugee” matter, given that the young people who have flooded to the country are fleeing repression, corruption, enslavement, even death. Those individuals are refugees by anyone’s definition.

They should be treated as refugees, not criminals, which is how many in Congress and around the country continue to view them.

What’s the president going to do — reportedly — to solve this issue by himself?

Obama met with some Texas business executives to discuss the problem, according to the San Antonio Express-News. They indicate that the president is looking at all legal options available to him. “The businessmen said they voiced their support for expanding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which pushes back deportations of young immigrants who aren’t legally in the country,” the Express-News reported on its blog.

So, does the president take action where the legislative branch has failed so far? Absolutely. Will the House of Reps take issue on this action, should it come, by adding it to its list of gripes against the president?

Pardon me while I laugh.

Uncategorized

Senate Loudmouth Caucus about to expand

I’ve taken great pleasure the past several months savaging the boorish behavior of rookie U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

His “crime” has been an inability to keep his trap shut while learning the ropes of the institution to which he was just elected in November 2012. He jumped right into the thick of the fray — and right in front of every TV camera in sight — to tell the world what he thinks about everything under the sun.

I’m sick of the sound of his voice — and he’s only been a senator for nine months.

Cruz is a member of what we ought to call the Loudmouth Caucus in the Senate.

His ranks are likely to expand early next month. The beauty of the Loudmouth Caucus is that it’s a bipartisan organization. Anyone can join. Cruz is about to be joined, no doubt, by a Democratic colleague from New Jersey.

Ladies and gents, let’s welcome Sen. Cory Booker.

Booker is the mayor of Newark, N.J. He won a Democratic primary a few weeks ago and is set to be elected to the unexpired term of the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg. Yes, Booker has a Republican opponent, but it doesn’t matter. Booker’s going to win the election. Then he’ll run for re-election to a full term later and he’s likely to be re-elected.

Why is this man’s pending entrance into the Senate worth noting? It’s because he’s going to battle Cruz tooth-and-nail for face time on every TV news camera one can find on Capitol Hill. I’d put money on that.

Booker is as uninhibited as Cruz. He loves the sound of his voice. He loves seeing his face on TV. He talks and talks and talks — and at times it’s nearly impossible to follow the man’s train of thought.

Booker has made a name for himself as Newark mayor by doing some unconventional things, such as rescuing a resident from a burning building. He’s also picked up a shovel and cleaned out storm drains. He’s a working mayor, or so he would have us believe.

Booker is likely to set out proving he’s a working senator, too — although I’m not sure we’re going to see him performing manual tasks the way he has done as mayor. He’s likely just to talk a lot about all the hard work he will do.

I’ll make this prediction: Booker will anger his Democratic colleagues as much as Cruz has angered his fellow Republican senators. Given the anger that permeates the capital these days across party lines, it’s a given Booker is going to have enemies on the other side — just as Ted Cruz did — the moment he takes the oath of office.

Get ready for a lot more noise coming from the World’s Oldest Deliberative Body.

Uncategorized

Perry continues his job-poaching mission

Gov. Rick Perry’s effort to stimulate the Texas economy at the expense of some of the other 50 states in the Union still has me scratching my head.

His latest target is Maryland — which, not coincidentally, is governed by a Democrat, Martin O’Malley. Perry has taken out ads on broadcast media there touting Texas as a place to relocate businesses while also criticizing Maryland as a state that is unfriendly to business.

The Pride of Paint Creek has visited other states, such as California and New York — which also are governed by Democrats — in the hope of luring companies away from those states and toward Texas. He’s used the same tactics in those states as well, telling Californians and New Yorkers, in effect, that they live and work in states that foster horrible business environments.

He had sought to make a foray recently into Missouri, where Gov. Jay Nixon runs things. Did I mention that Nixon also is a Democrat? Gov. Nixon was a bit more forceful in telling Perry to stay away, lambasting the Texas governor for trying to pilfer jobs from the Show Me State. Nixon told Perry that his strategy isn’t very neighborly and he takes great offense at Perry’s effort to bolster his state’s fortunes at others’ expense.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/09/13/brief-texas-political-news-sept-13-2013/

I’ve long thought that Perry was taking a bit of public-relations gamble with this strategy. I do salute the governor for having Texas’s interests at heart, which is one reason why he’s been so electable here. I cannot fault him for wanting to tout the Texas economy.

I remain troubled, though, by his continued politicization of this economic development strategy. Maybe all those other states need to change their regulatory structure, as Perry suggests. Perhaps they can reduce their tax rates or restructure their incentives to retain business and commerce. Isn’t that their call?

And isn’t enough for the Texas governor merely to say that our state is a great place to do business — citing all those positives of which we all should be proud — without resorting to the denigration of those other places?

I find it a bit curious as well that Perry is so fond of touting states’ individualism, referring often to the Constitution’s 10th Amendment when lambasting what he calls a federal government overreach into state matters. Well, doesn’t that individualism also apply to the way states are governed within their own borders?

Therefore, Rick Perry’s job-poaching strategy is an exercise in hypocrisy.