Uncategorized

Can’t get past this Beatles glow

For the life of me I think I need someone to intervene.

I cannot get past this Beatles glow in the wake of the Sunday night tribute that celebrated the 50th anniversary since The Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.

The link attached here contains some scathing reviews written just as The Beatles began taking the world by storm.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-beatles-quotes-20140209,0,1146431.story?page=1&utm_medium=social#axzz2syCGq3FX

I take one thing away from these blistering comments: The elders should have listened to their children, rather than the other way around.

Consider this gem from the late great William F. Buckley, published on Sept. 13, 1964 in the Boston Globe:

“The Beatles are not merely awful; I would consider it sacrilegious to say anything less than that they are god awful. They are so unbelievably horribly, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art that they qualify as crowned heads of anti-music, even as the imposter popes went down in history as ‘anti-popes.'”

Oops, sorry Mr. Buckley, wherever you are.

There are moments in our lives when we remember where we were and what we were doing at historically significant moments: The Apollo 11 moon landing, JFK’s assassination, RFK’s murder, the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters, 9/11? I recall vividly where I when all those events occurred. The moment I first laid eyes on the girl I would marry, my wedding day, the birth of my sons or the birth of my granddaughter? I can recount those moments in equally vivid detail.

I also remember the first time I heard what I consider The Beatles’ greatest song, “Hey Jude.” I was in U.S. Army basic training at Fort Lewis, Wash. in the late summer of 1968. I placed my transistor radio on my bunk, turned it on and listened to that legendary ending of a song I never before had heard. You know, the “nah, nah, nah” riff. I turned to someone and asked, “Is that The Beatles?”

It was.

That describes the impact these guys’ music had on me.

The old folks way back in 1964 had it wrong. We young people had it right.

Uncategorized

Irony involved with water savings, rate boost

There’s a certain cruel irony at work in some Texas cities.

City officials are encouraging people to conserve water and are mandating it in some places. The results have been a reduction in revenue to pay for water and other utility infrastructure. What’s a city to do? Increase water rates.

What is wrong with this picture?

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/02/10/texans-water-conservation-reward-higher-rates/

Amarillo hasn’t reached that fork in its road — yet. The city isn’t requiring people to water their lawns less during the spring, summer and early fall; nor has it put a ban on car-washing or running sprinklers so little children can cool off. It might do so down the road if this drought continues, as the National Weather Service thinks it will.

The Texas Tribune reports that Wichita Falls has become a victim of its own water-saving edict. “It’s tough to tell the consumer that ‘Yeah, well, you guys did a great job out there conserving water, but lo and behold, we got hurt financially, so we’ve got to raise your rates,’” assistant city manager Jim Dockery said.

Here’s how the Tribune is reporting other cities’ efforts to avoid the rate hikes: “Fort Worth’s goal, like that of many other cities in Texas, is to change its rate structure to avoid such ups and downs. Today, about 17 percent of the utility’s revenue comes from fixed monthly charges that all water customers pay regardless of how much they use; by 2018, (Fort Worth utility spokeswoman Mary) Gugliuzza said, 25 percent of its revenue will come from such charges. Dockery said Wichita Falls is considering a similar transition.”

My own take is that if the rate isn’t exorbitant, it should remain a small price to pay for continued water conservation.

This relentless drought is bound to cause some alarms to go off in the Panhandle, which is now relying exclusively on groundwater to quench its cities’ and towns’ thirst. The question is when. What’s more, when the alarm goes off and residents do what their cities tell them to do — use less water — how will cities respond to the accompanying loss of revenue?

Uncategorized

‘Carpetbagger’ no longer a four-letter word?

Former Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Scott Brown is considering whether to run for Senate once again.

He might run for a Senate seat in … New Hampshire!

Brown isn’t from the Granite State, which borders Massachusetts. Indeed, one can get from virtually anywhere in Massachusetts to New Hampshire in pretty short order, given that the Bay State is so small in geographical size. For that matter, so are all the New England states.

Is the former senator a carpetbagger?

http://www.rollcall.com/news/scott_brown_bares_all_but_his_senate_intentions-230764-1.html?pos=hftxt

And isn’t it a bad thing to roll into a state, congressional district, legislative district, county commission district — name it — just to win a political office?

The very term “carpetbagger” became known after the American Civil War, when northerners carrying carpet suitcases went south to “reconstruct” the states of the former Confederacy. The term also applied to Republican political appointees who moved south packing the customary sturdy carpetbag luggage that was common in that era.

Well, “carpetbaggers” have moved into states to seek public office and done pretty well.

U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy fought off the carpetbagger charge when he quit President Johnson’s Cabinet to run for the Senate seat in New York in 1964, even though he lived in New York for only briefly when he was a boy. RFK won, served part of his first term, ran for president in 1968 and was killed by an assassin.

Hillary Rodham Clinton had even less familiarity with New York when she ran for the Senate in that state in 2000. She won, was re-elected in 2006, served until 2009, when she became secretary of state in the Obama administration and now appears set to run for president in 2016.

Those are the two more notable examples of “carpetbaggers” who made good.

Right here at home in the Texas Panhandle, we watched a Randall County resident, Victor Leal, move into a rental home in Potter County in late 2009 for the expressed purpose of running for a Texas House seat that included Potter County; his former residence was outside the district. The new Potter County resident lost the GOP primary in 2010. Leal had to fend off questions about his residency, which likely contributed to his defeat.

All in all, though, “carpetbagger” might technically still be a pejorative term but politicians have perfected ways of scooting past the negative implications.

Former Sen. Brown no doubt has his elevator speech lined out if and when the question comes up. He’ll likely be able to say that New Hampshire and Massachusetts are so packed so close together, they share the same media market and they share so many common interests and concerns that living in one state is like living in the other.

Times do change.

Uncategorized

Beatles tribute causes mind-blowing flashback

Music is ringing in my ears as I write these words.

CBS Television has produced a tribute to The Beatles that for people my age — heck, for anyone old enough at this moment to appreciate music — is to experience a bit of popular culture that cannot be duplicated.

Fifty years ago these four then-young men came across the ocean and changed the world.

No, they didn’t cure deadly diseases. They didn’t bring world peace. They didn’t invent some marvelous technological device. They simply made music.

I’ve been fond of saying for many years that John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr had a hand in raising me.

A half-century ago they appeared on our TV screen about the time I was coming of age. I was 14. Their music resonated from the opening chords of “All My Loving,” the first song they sang on The Ed Sullivan Show.

I’ve been in love with the music ever since.

Think about this for a moment. If you watched the tribute show this evening, did you notice all the young people singing along with lyrics that were written and recorded decades before they were born? Our generation and seemingly every generation that has come along since know the words.

Is there another contemporary artist who has had that kind of influence on us?

My heart is still broken at John Lennon’s sudden, tragic and shocking death more than 33 years ago. I mourned George Harrison’s death from cancer more than a dozen years ago. They’re gone, but then again they’re still here.

As Ringo said tonight, whenever he and Paul play together, “John and George are with us.”

That’s as it should be. Their music is timeless.

I’m now going to wait for my life to stop flashing before my eyes.

Uncategorized

What did I learn from candidate forums?

It’s an interesting exercise to try to explain what one can learn from interviewing candidates for public office.

I’ve noted already that election cycles have taught me things about my community — whether it’s back home in Oregon, or in Beaumont — where I learned that Texas politics is a contact sport — or Amarillo, where I’ve lived more than 19 years.

This past week I had the honor of taking part in a Panhandle PBS-sponsored series of candidate forums. I was among six local journalists who asked questions of candidates for the 13th Congressional District, Texas Senate District 31 and Potter County judge.

At some level every single one of the candidates — we talked to 10 of them overall — had something interesting and provocative to say in response to questions from the panel.

My single biggest takeaway from this series of interviews?

I think it’s that I learned that West Texas is not immune to the tumult that’s under way within the Republican Party.

In recent years I had this illusion that West Texas Republicans all spoke essentially with one mind. Wrong.

The campaigns for all three offices are showing considerable difference among the candidates.

The Texas Senate race between Sen. Kel Seliger and former Midland Mayor Mike Canon perhaps provides the most glaring contrast. Seliger is a mainstream Republican officeholder who knows the intricacies of legislating, understands the dynamics that drive the Senate and is fluent in what I guess you could call “Austinspeak.” His answers to our questions were detailed and reflected considerable knowledge gained from the decade he has served in the Senate. Canon also is a smart man. However, he tends to speak in clichés and talking points.

I asked the two of them their thoughts on term limits for legislators: Seliger said voters can discern whether their lawmaker is doing a good job and that there’s no need for term limits; Canon vowed to impose a two-term limit for his own service and said fresh faces mean fresh ideas. Of the two, Seliger provided the more honest answer.

The congressional race pitting incumbent Rep. Mac Thornberry against Elaine Hays and Pam Barlow provided more of the same. Both challengers are seeking to outflank the incumbent on the right and for the life of me I cannot fathom how they can get more to the right than Thornberry. They, too, used talking points to make their case, with Barlow asserting that she is a true-blue “constitutional conservative,” whatever that means.

Even the county judge race provided differences among the five Republicans seeking that office. Nancy Tanner, Debra McCartt, Bill Bandy, Jeff Poindexter and Bill Sumerford all spoke clearly to their points of view. They differed dramatically on several questions, ranging from whether the county should take part in a taxing district aimed at helping downtown Amarillo rebuild itself to whether they could perform a same-sex marriage ceremony were it to become legal in Texas.

You’ll be able to hear for yourself this week. Panhandle PBS is airing the congressional and state Senate forums Thursday night, beginning at 8 p.m. Each runs for 30 minutes. The county judge forum airs Sunday at 4 p.m., and will last an hour.

West Texas Republicans’ political bubble has burst.

Uncategorized

Fla. candidate shows rare courage on embargo issue

A tip of the hat today goes to former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who’s trying to win back his old job.

Crist, a former Republican who’s now running as a Democrat, has called for an end to the United States’s foolish trade embargo against bad ol’ Cuba.

Crist: End Cuba embargo

You remember those frightening Cubans, don’t you? The country was taken over by communist guerrilla leader Fidel Castro in 1959, who overthrew the strongman who ran the island nation with the heaviest of hands. Castro then proceeded to run the country’s economy into the ocean. He sidled up to the Soviet Union, became a puppet of the Evil Empire and scared the dickens out of us all by allowing the Soviets in 1962 to start building missile launchers that could send nuclear weapons into the U.S. heartland.

That’s when the trade embargo began.

President Kennedy forced them to take the launchers down. Castro went on to further destroy his country’s economy. The United States kept its trade embargo in place.

The Soviet Union is now gone; Fidel has left office. Cuba remains a communist country.

Florida is home to a lot of Cuban expatriates — who fled the island to the nearby Sunshine State — who want the United States to keep the embargo going.

It no longer makes sense. Into this maelstrom Crist has stepped. Good for him.

Crist won’t have the Cuban ex-pat vote anyway, so why bother courting them? He’s making sense to suggest that ending the embargo would stimulate his state’s economy, which has suffered terribly from the Great Recession of 2008-09.

He’s also showing some guts in taking on the Cuban-American political juggernaut in his state by suggesting the 52-year-old embargo no longer makes sense.

Uncategorized

Question doesn’t produce desired result

Hopes dashed, I’m afraid to say.

I noted in an earlier blog post that I was going to ask U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry a question about how he would work to restore a sense of civility, comity and gettin’ along in Congress. It was during the recording of a candidate forum that will be broadcast this coming week on Panhandle PBS.

My hope was for an answer that would restore my belief in the “nobility” of politics.

I didn’t get quite the answer I hoped for. Indeed, Thornberry — who faces two Republican Party primary challengers, Elaine Hays of Amarillo and Pam Barlow of Bowie — really didn’t pledge to do anything specific himself. For that matter, neither did Hays or Barlow; and in fact, Barlow seemed to hint that she would be even more combative if she were elected to Congress this year.

I won’t give any more of this away, given that the candidates still have a TV appearance scheduled to be broadcast.

Thornberry, though, does seem to be falling into the same old trap that snares other politicians. He is blaming, more or less, the other side. The other side, meanwhile, is blaming his side.

The result? No one is holding themselves accountable.

The blame game continues.

Uncategorized

Panhandle trio makes senator jealous?

Texas state Sen. Tommy Williams came to Canyon to take part in an interesting event put on by the Texas Tribune, but offered a comparison that I cannot let pass without some comment.

Williams, a Republican from the Houston area, was on hand at West Texas A&M University to honor state Reps. Four Price and John Smithee and state Sen. Kel Seliger, all Amarillo Republicans. He joked about how jealous he is that the three of them get along so well, unlike his colleagues in Southeast Texas, who — according to Williams — don’t enjoy the same level of legislative collegiality.

The reference drew some laughs in the packed room at the Jack B. Kelley Student Center. The Tribune’s editor in chief and CEO Evan Smith moderated a discussion with the three legislators, grilling them with questions about the state of the state, water planning, infrastructure development, taxes, education … the whole range of issues.

Back to Williams’s brief expression of envy …

Of course Smithee, Price and Seliger get along. They’re all from the same party and they all represent constituencies that look virtually identical. They’re three peas in a pod, triplets, if you prefer.

Williams, however, represents a part of the state where residents — let alone officeholders — cannot agree on the time of day.

I lived for 11 years in Beaumont, which comprises part of Williams’s Senate District 4. I know the region pretty well. It’s contentious, hot-headed, racially and ethnically mixed and politically diverse with a healthy portion of Democrats and Republicans finding reasons to disagree with each other.

For all I know, there might even be some Cajun influence at work there, with typically opinionated Cajuns named Boudreau, Thibideaux and Guidry preferring to disagree rather than work together.

It doesn’t surprise me in the least that Williams would draw such a comparison between his region of the state and this one. It’s also why I found the upper Texas Gulf Coast such a fascinating place to live and work for more than a decade.

It is a journalist’s version of Heaven on Earth, made that way by the contentiousness that is inbred in the good and colorful folks who live there.

Uncategorized

Politics shows nasty side once again

Once upon a time I thought of politics as a noble profession. I subscribed to the Robert F. Kennedy view that politics should be a force for positive change and reform of what we think is broken in our society.

I continue to believe politics has the potential for nobility.

Then we hear the carping that arose from the U.S. Labor Department’s jobs report for January.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/02/07/republicans-slam-president-over-jobs-report/?hpt=hp_bn3

Republicans were quick to pounce on the numbers, which weren’t as good as the White House had thought would come out. The nation added “only” 113,000 jobs in January, down from the expected 178,000. The jobless rate ticked down a bit, to 6.6 percent. It’s down from its high of 10 percent in 2009, but still too high to suit the loyal opposition.

“Today’s jobs report underscores that there remains a real crisis for the chronically unemployed in this country. It’s too hard for many to find good jobs, wages are stagnant, and it’s harder to get ahead,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va.

I guess the most annoying aspect of the reactions to these jobs numbers is that the “other side” is quiet when they’re good, as they were in November and December. The labor market added about 400,000 jobs at the end of 2013. Did we hear anything then from Cantor and his congressional Republican colleagues? Their silence was deafening.

Yes, I am acutely aware that Democrats do the same thing to Republican presidents. George W. Bush couldn’t buy a break from congressional Democrats whenever his administration welcomed good economic news.

The nobility of politics has been replaced by something far less high-minded. It’s become a game of who can get the better of the other guy. It goes on and on.

I’m going to talk today to U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Clarendon, who’s running for his 10th term in the House. I intend to ask him what he’s going to do to restore some sense of comity in Congress and repair its relations with the White House.

Let’s hope he can offer a noble answer.

Uncategorized

Hey, Sen. Paul, Bill Clinton’s not running for president

Rand Paul needs to break out his copy of the U.S. Constitution and turn to the 22nd Amendment.

It says that no person can serve more than two full terms as president of the United States. Were he to read it again — I’m sure he knows what it says — then he might be brought back to Earth in his budding campaign to become the 45th president.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/02/07/rand-paul-keeps-attacking-bill-clinton-why/

The Kentucky Republican U.S. senator keeps mentioning the 42nd president’s scandalous relationship with a White House intern in the late 1990s, which led to his impeachment by the House of Representatives. He says Democrats cannot claim the mantle of being the Party of the Woman because the president committed a terrible act of sexual harassment against that intern.

Paul also is urging those who took money raised by Clinton should give it back.

Oh, did I mention that Bill Clinton isn’t running for the presidency, that the Constitution forbids the former two-term president from seeking the office?

I also haven’t mentioned — yet — that the ex-president’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is a possible candidate for the high office in 2016.

Do you get it? Sen. Paul is seeking to link Hillary Clinton to the misdeeds of her husband — even though Bill Clinton’s popularity has soared into the stratosphere in recent years because of his great work on all kinds of worldwide issues.

Rand Paul is sounding like a fool if he intends to smear the former secretary of state and ex-U.S. senator with that kind of defamatory rhetoric.

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience