State news

Texas getting special attention these days

texas

Manny Fernandez has written a fascinating essay for the New York Times about Texas.

He seems to like living here. Indeed, he is not alone in being attracted to Texas, as the state’s population is growing rapidly. We aren’t likely to catch California any time soon, but the number of Texans is now approaching 30 million.

Here’s the article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/us/what-makes-texas-texas.html

As I read it Sunday, though, I was struck by something left out.

Fernandez talks extensively about how some Texans take their Texanhood so very seriously, even to the point of putting Texas soil under the bassinet of a newborn baby to ensure the baby’s Texas roots.

He didn’t mention how an anti-littering slogan coined in the 1980s has been morphed into a kind of macho mantra.

“Don’t Mess With Texas” came into being after the Texas General Land Office decided to make the state more conscious of litter and how it soils the landscape. (Note: The picture on the link does have a “Don’t Mess With Texas” sign in it.)

We can thank then-Land Commissioner Garry Mauro, on whose watch the slogan came to life.

Since then the slogan has come to mean something quite different in many people’s eyes. It’s come to mean that you don’t “mess with” the state at any level. Don’t disrespect us. Don’t insult us. Don’t make fun of us.

Don’t do this or that … or else we Texans will make you pay for it.

I have no particular problem with the Don’t Mess With Texas slogan as long as it is being used for its intended purpose, which is to admonish litterers to avoid tossing their empty beer cans or their used-up containers of Skoal onto our highways.

I wonder, though, if the Land Office ever envisioned it being perverted in the manner that it has over the years.

It’s also become, in addition to a kind of battle cry for Texans, grist for those who seek to belittle the state.

Sure, Texas is a special place. We’ve lived here for 32 years. We call it home — even if the right-wing politics here at times makes me a squirm just a little.

I encourage you to read the New York Times link. It spoke clearly to me as a Texas transplant who has learned about the state’s peculiar obsession with itself.

 

national news, political news

GOP walks tightrope with Trump at top of ballot

Republican hopeful Kelly Ayotte, former Attorney General of the State of New Hampshire, of Nashua, at a debate at Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, N.H., Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2010. The Republican hopefuls are running for the United States Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H. (AP Photo/Cheryl Senter)

You’ve heard the phrase, no doubt, of “a distinction without a difference.”

How does a politician “support” another politician without “endorsing” that individual?

This is one of the myriad dilemmas facing Republican pols across the nation as the party gets ready to nominate a certifiable huckster as its next nominee for president of the United States.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/08/us/politics/trump-endorsements-congress-republicans-gop.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

I refer to Donald J. Trump as the huckster.

Some leading Republican politicians, though, are seeking to hedge their bets in occasionally awkward manners.

Consider the statement of U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, the GOP senator from New Hampshire, who said she can “support” Trump but cannot “endorse” him.

Ayotte is facing a potentially difficult re-election effort as Democrats likely will send Gov. Jean Shaheen against her. Ayotte can’t take the full plunge by endorsing Trump but, by golly, she’s going to support him.

A distinction without a difference?

It looks that way to me.

Other leading Republicans are walking away from Trump. Still others are offering tepid support. Sure, some have endorsed the hotel mogul and reality TV celebrity; former campaign foes New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who once called Trump “unfit” for the presidency, and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who once called Trump a “cancer on conservatism” have endorsed him.

It’s the Ayotte caveat, though, that I find most intriguing.

I’ve been watching politics for nearly 40 years. I studied political science in college. I became engaged in the presidential election process starting around 1968, when I shook Sen. Robert Kennedy’s hand at a chance meeting one week before an assassin robbed us all of a chance to see if RFK could be elected president.

This truly is the first time I’ve witnessed such intraparty reticence to clutch the coattails of the presumed party presidential nominee.

But it’s there. It’s real.

Sure, Trump has appealed to millions of Americans who claim to be “angry” with politics as usual. This clown “tells it like it is,” supporters tell us, while they ignore — or laugh off — the abject crassness of his rhetoric and the tastelessness of his insults.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, another former primary campaign foe, said it well: “I just really believe that the Republican Party has been conned here, and this guy is not a reliable conservative Republican.”

Just today, on “Meet the Press,” Trump said he would consider raising taxes on wealthy Americans, which by my way of thinking runs utterly counter to standard Republican Party tax principles.

This is the problem facing Republicans across the country as they ponder their own political futures. How do they run with someone who says whatever pops into his head?

Or do they seek to split hairs as finely as they can by “supporting” him without “endorsing” him?

It is tough to be a Republican these days.

 

legal news, local news

College needs to own its policies

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Some issues just aren’t adding up regarding the matter of Amarillo College’s hiring policies, which now have become the subject of community discussion.

Who’s in charge of administering and enforcing those policies? Aren’t there some others at AC who should be held accountable for this embarrassing development?

Ellen Robertson Green quit her job as AC vice president for marketing and communication after it was revealed that she allegedly violated AC nepotism rules by hiring her daughter to work as a content producer for Panhandle PBS, the college’s public TV station.

Green supervised Panhandle PBS. Her daughter, thus, reported directly to her mother.

That violated the school’s rules against nepotism.

I’ve already declared my own stake in this matter, given that until recently I worked as a freelance blogger for Panhandle PBS and that I consider Green to be a friend.

I now am an outsider looking at this situation from some distance.

However, I do know that everyone works for someone else.

Green didn’t operate in a hermetically sealed environment at AC. I’m going to take a bit of a leap here and presume that the college has qualified and competent legal counsel advising senior administrators of matters that might cause problems.

Thus, I am unclear as to why Green is taking the fall by herself by resigning her post at AC, particularly after the college terminated her daughter’s employment when reports of this policy violation became known.

The way I see it, if the school fired her daughter, that ends the nepotism problem right off the top.

Green was one of several VPs at the school who report directly to AC President Russell Lowery-Hart. Was the president unaware of the hire? Did he let it go? If he was unaware, why was he kept in the dark?

I fear the questions will linger for a time longer and cast a growing shadow over a public institution that — until just recently — had enjoyed a stellar reputation throughout the community it serves.

It’s time to clear the air.

Fully.

 

International news

Note to Kim Jong Un: Study up on ‘MAD’ doctrine

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I have used this blog on occasion to question North Korea’s fruitcake/dictator’s sanity on judgment, but not — necessarily — his intelligence.

Still, someone in Pyongyang needs to take the young man aside and explain the MAD doctrine to him.

The letters “MAD” comprise an acronym, meaning “mutually assured destruction.”

The United States and the Soviet Union understood its implications.

If one country were to launch a nuclear strike against the other — or its allies — then all hell would break loose. Both sides would be destroyed. Gone! Obliterated.

Now, though, Kim Jong Un says he won’t use nukes unless his country’s sovereignty is threatened.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news-other-foreign-policy/279172-kim-jong-un-north-korea-ready-to-improve

Even that caveat makes any thought using nukes, well, rather MAD … don’t you think?

It’s important to note that he is the lone leader of a nuclear state that keeps referencing the potential use of nukes. Does the People’s Republic of China say anything about it? How about the United States? Or Russia?

Oh, wait! I almost forgot! Presumed GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump has said he wouldn’t oppose Japan or South Korea developing nuclear arsenals as a hedge against North Korea.

That, too, is MAD.

It’s simply in Kim Jong Un’s best interest — really and truly — to consider the implications of what MAD means.

 

national news, political news

Palin illustrates GOP affliction

2 Comments

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You might be wondering: Just how messed up is today’s Republican Party?

I might have an example to share with you.

The former half-term Alaska governor, Sarah Palin, said she’s going to work to defeat House Speaker Paul Ryan in Wisconsin’s upcoming Republican primary.

Why would the 2008 GOP vice-presidential nominee do such a thing? Because the speaker says he cannot “yet” support the probable 2016 GOP presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump.

Palin has endorsed Trump. Ryan has so far declined. It’s not clear that he ever will. Why do you suppose the speaker is withholding his support?

My guess is that Trump isn’t a “real Republican,” that he doesn’t adhere sufficiently to basic Republican principles to suit the speaker.

Palin calls herself a true-blue Republican. But she’s backing Trump. Now she wants to work against a fellow true GOP believer, Ryan.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/08/politics/sarah-palin-paul-ryan-paul-nehlen-endorsement/index.html

As near as most of us can tell, the only principle to which Trump holds dear is to himself. I believe that’s why he’s been labeled a narcissist.

Sure, it’s appealing to a lot of Republican “base” voters who like how Trump “tells it like it is.” Someone, though, has to explain to me what “it” really is.

Trump and Ryan plan to meet this week, as I understand it. Will they settle their differences? Don’t look for a kumbaya moment after their meeting.

As for Palin, I guess she’s trying to make herself relevant yet again by seeking to defeat the nation’s most powerful Republican politician.

What she is managing to do, though, is demonstrate — as if it needed further demonstration in the context of this year’s presidential primary season — how dysfunctional this once-great political party has become.

 

legal news, State news

How are they going to find that kind of dough?

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Stories like this pique my interest partly because I once was part of this community, and also because I wonder about the nature of the judgment handed down by the court.

Here’s the summary: A Jefferson County, Texas, judge has ordered two former Beaumont Independent School District administrators to pay the district $4 million apiece in funds they admitted to embezzling.

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/article/Ex-Beaumont-ISD-officials-ordered-to-pay-back-4-7397631.php

Devin McCraney once served as BISD’s chief financial officer and Sharrika Allison was the district’s comptroller. I don’t know either of them, as they came on board long after my wife and I left Beaumont in January 1995.

District Judge Milton Shuffield ordered the two of them to pay $4 million each, plus another $93,000 in interest.

Here’s what makes me scratch my head.

I worked for nearly 37 years in daily journalism. I made a decent salary during a good bit of my working life. My combined salary over the course of my entire career never even came close to a fraction of the amount of money assessed by the judge in this embezzlement case.

How does the judge expect these individuals to pay back the money?

Did they pocket the money somewhere in a secret place? Will they be able to just hand it over once they uncover it?

I guess I should note that both of them received prison sentences, which took them out of the work force for several years.

I don’t know what these individuals earned while working for BISD, which has fallen on extremely hard times in recent years. The state education agency swooped in and took over day-to-day management of the district. Its former superintendent, Carroll Thomas, “retired” after helping steer the district into the tumult that resulted in the state takeover.

Now a district judge has ordered these two former administrators to repay the district millions of dollars.

I’m a layman watching this story from afar. How does that work?

 

political news, State news

Perry portrait unveiled … sans glasses

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Let’s talk about something truly insignificant for a moment.

I’ve had a busy day doing one of my part-time jobs. I am a bit worn out, so I thought I’d share my view on former Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s portrait unveiling at the State Capitol in Austin.

He’s not wearing the glasses he donned prior to running for president the second time.

No, his portrait depicts him barefaced. No specs.

That’s all right with me. I came to know the governor without the corrective lenses. I always thought he donned the glasses prior to running for president for effect, anyway. They were intended to make him look smarter.

Actually, he didn’t need them for that purpose.

It’s not that I believe the former governor is a dummy. I don’t … and he isn’t.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/05/06/perry-portrait-unveiled-and-burning-question-answer/’

As a glasses-wearing individual myself, I am kind of partial to eye wear on politicians.

Now for a quick aside: I’ve worn specs since the eighth grade. I want to salute Mr. King, my science teacher at Parkrose Heights Junior High School in suburban Portland, Ore., for noticing I was squinting one day while watching a film strip.

The bell rang for the next class and he took me aside and asked, “Can you read what’s on the blackboard?” I responded incredulously, “Well, no-o-o-o,” as if he thought I should be able to read it.

He sent me home that day with a note to my parents.

Looking back on it many decades later I am convinced I was born blind.

I got the glasses. I threw up in the car on the way home from the optometrist. Why? Seeing the leaves blowing in the breeze made me sick to my stomach.

The glasses might have made me look smarter, too. They didn’t make me a better student.

Back to the former governor …

I’m glad the portrait shows him without the eyeglasses. I made his acquaintance in 1990 when he campaigned for Texas agriculture commissioner without them.

He did pretty well over the years in Texas — politically speaking — without dressing up his face.

national news, political news, religious news

Once again: Constitution is a secular document

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Tom DeLay knows his audience and he speaks their language.

In this case, the former U.S. House majority leader was speaking a couple of years ago on a religious program hosted by John Hagee Ministries.

If only, though, he would speak accurately about the very founding of this great republic.

Host Matt Hagee asked DeLay where he thought the nation had gone wrong. DeLay’s response was, shall we say, more than little off the mark.

http://www.rawstory.com/2014/02/tom-delay-people-keep-forgetting-that-god-wrote-the-constitution/#.VTt_WhZmKvw.facebook

“I think we got off the track when we allowed our government to become a secular government,” DeLay explained. “When we stopped realizing that God created this nation, that he wrote the Constitution, that it’s based on biblical principles.”

Well …

Where do we begin?

We’ve had a “secular government” since its very founding. The Constitution — as I’ve noted in this blog before — contains precisely two religious references. That would be in Article VI, which declares that there should be “no religious test” for anyone seeking election to public office; and in the First Amendment, where the founders declared there would be “no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

That’s it, folks.

The founders knew precisely what they were doing when they omitted any other religious references in the Constitution. They intended for the government to be free of religious pressure or coercion.

I happen to be totally OK with that.

DeLay, though, sought to parse the Constitution differently when he told the Hagee Ministries audience about how God “wrote the Constitution.”

This gets to the debate that continues to this day. Indeed, it’s been going on virtually since the United States of America emerged from its revolution.

The Rawstory item showed up on my Facebook feed today I suppose as a reminder that this national debate likely never will go away.

Can’t we just accept the notion that the founders built a government framework that would be free of religion, but which allowed each of us to worship as we see fit?

That happens to be — in my humble view — one of the true-blue beauties of a secular government.

national news, political news

Now, here’s a political dilemma

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My dictionary defines “conundrum” most succinctly.

“A riddle; a dilemma.”

By that definition, the Republican Party is facing a classic conundrum with its presumptive nominee for president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

Do the conservative purists who run he party want to stick with their guy — who they detest — and watch him lead the party to a potentially historic defeat? Or do they look for an alternative, a true believer, to run as an independent candidate and then assure that historic loss?

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/278941-third-party-push-gaining-steam

The Hill reports that the third-party push is “gaining steam” within the ranks of the GOP.

The publication says the push got some added juice when House Speaker Paul Ryan said he cannot support Trump’s nomination. At least not yet. Trump’s got to “unify” the party, Ryan said.

Frankly, I don’t care which way the GOP goes as it struggles with this, um, dilemma.

Were the party brass to ask me, though, I’d possibly advise them to back their guy. Stand by their nominee and then set out to rebuild the party once the ballots are counted in November.

The Republican Party as many of us have known and respected — if not loved — appears to be drawing its final breaths.

It’s no longer even the party of Ronald Reagan, let alone the party of Abraham Lincoln. It’s the party of Trump. Think about that for a moment.

A man with zero government experience — at any level — is about to become the party’s nominee for president of the United States. By almost every calculation imaginable, he is patently unfit for the office he seeks. Qualifications? He possesses none of them.

The fitness level, though, is even more frightening.

Either way the party goes, from my perspective — and factoring in my own bias — the GOP is headed for the political boneyard. A third-party/independent bid by a true believer merely seals the party’s fate.

I’ve long favored a robust two-party system. I like having two healthy parties argue policy differences in public. I’ve grown used to divided government, but prefer it to actually work, to function productively. We haven’t seen much productivity in the past eight or 10 years.

And, yes, Democrats bear some responsibility for the stalemate as well.

Maybe once the smoke clears from the upcoming election, we’ll find a Republican Party ready to reach out and re-engage in the act of governing.

Uncategorized

‘Bama judge defies highest court

moore

Roy Moore is back in the news and it has nothing to do with the brilliance of some legal opinion he wrote.

Instead, it is because the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court has decided to flout a ruling by the nation’s highest court about gay marriage.

Moore got into a pickle once before when he refused to take down the Ten Commandments from the court building grounds in Montgomery, Ala. He got removed from office, then was elected again to the court. I didn’t have as much of a problem with that as I do with his latest bit of judicial grandstanding.

This time, the judge has ruled that Alabama doesn’t have to follow the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision legalizing same-sex marriage.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/alabama-chief-justice-faces-ouster-after-gay-marriage-fight/ar-BBsJrvw?ocid=spartandhp

He ordered in January that probate judges can keep enforcing the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. A state judicial conduct office has filed a formal complaint against Moore, resulting in his immediate suspension from the bench until this matter is resolved.

Let’s just consider for a moment a critical element here.

Alabama is one of 50 states. Its judges take oaths to follow the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court, moreover, is empowered to interpret that Constitution and to determine what’s legal under its framework.

The high court has determined that the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause gives gay couples the same rights of marriage as heterosexual couples. The ruling makes gay marriage legal in all 50 states … and yep, that includes Alabama.

Chief Justice Moore, it appears to me, lacks the standing to make unilateral decisions when they contradict rulings by the duly appointed U.S. Supreme Court.

The complaint against him will play itself out in due course.

It’s interesting to me that a true-blue conservative jurist would rail against what he would consider to be acts of “judicial activism.”

I think I would describe Chief Justice Roy Moore’s edict as just such an act.

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