Tag Archives: Texas Politics

Poor Poor Pitiful Patrick

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Texas Monthly reports that there may be trouble in Tea Party paradise.

The weekly kumbaya breakfast between the big three Texas lawmakers broke down today into a round-robin of recriminations that concluded with Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick declaring he was tired of Governor Greg Abbott and Speaker Joe Straus “picking on me.”

The blow-up, confirmed by multiple sources, represents the boiling point of long-simmering disputes. The House has been upset that Patrick declared his inauguration marked a “New Day” in Texas and that he pushed a conservative agenda quickly through the Senate with expectations that the House would just pass his legislation. But, instead, most of the Senate’s bills on tax cuts, licensed open carry of handguns and moving the Public Integrity Unit have languished in the House without even being referred to committee by Straus.

The House instead has passed its own version of the same legislation, putting the Senate in a take-it-or-leave-it position. To pass the Senate bills now, the House would have to have an entirely new debate on controversial measures it already has approved.

So the Senate, in what looked like retaliation on Tuesday, ignored a House-approved border security bill to vote on its own measure, putting the House into a take-it-or-leave-it position on border security – a measure that House Ways and Means Chair Dennis Bonnen had crafted to win support of border Democrats.

This may be Patrick’s New Day, but Straus’ Old Guard still runs the House.

Wow!  Patrick has chosen the wrong game if he thinks he doesn’t deserve getting picked on.  Patrick who made his living “picking on” anyone who didn’t agree with his reactionary right-wing views on his radio show, is mighty thin-skinned when the tables are turned.  And once again, the Tea Partisans are proving that they are incapable of running the government that they hate so much.

Sid Miller – Tool of the Deep Fat Fryer Lobby?

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Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller (TP-Stephenville) likes to take on the important issues facing our state – like making sure Texas students have better access to deep fat fried foods and sodas.  As if our young ones did not have enough opportunity to consume heavily fried treats  and high fructose sugar drinks at McDonalds, Whataburger, KFC and elsewhere, Miller is committed to allowing Texas schools to once again help students become even bigger lard-asses.  Miller claims that this is not about fried food but freedom.  Curiously, Miller had also been busy trying to secure more money for the chronically underfunded Texas Department of Agriculture.  Funny how once he was in charge, the former legislator (and alleged fiscal conservative) found that his department couldn’t do its job.  But in his latest buffoonish move, Miller’s true colors show through.  The Texas Tribune reports:

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, the cowboy-hat-wearing champion of local control, is looking to buck a decade-old statewide ban on deep fat fryers in public schools. Putting decision-making back into the hands of Texas school districts, he says, “isn’t about french fries, it’s about freedom.”

Within the next couple of months, the Texas Department of Agriculture could be poised to repeal a state policy that bans deep fat fryers and soda machines on school campuses and places limits on the time and place that junk food can be sold there. In addition, Miller is proposing an increase in the number of allowed fundraiser days – when cupcakes and other sugary, fatty foods can be sold during the school day – from one to six per school year. 

The deep fat fryer and soda machine ban are the last of strict nutritional policies introduced by former Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs. In 2004, in addition to those bans, Combs introduced the more comprehensive Texas Public School Nutrition Policy, which banned foods with high levels of sugar and fats in public schools. The policy was repealed last year, when Todd Staples was commissioner, and Miller has consistently expressed his support for less regulation of food in schools. 

In January, Miller granted amnesty to cupcakes during his first act as commissioner in an attempt to reassure Texas parents that cupcakes and other treats would be allowed in schools under his administration, which he promised would increase local control of decision-making processes and protect the rights of parents.

“This is coming from when he was on the campaign trail,” said Bryan Black, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Agriculture, referring to the proposed changes. “He heard it repeatedly, when it came to cupcakes and other things. People were asking why local communities shouldn’t have a say.”

But for many parents and nutritionists, that reasoning doesn’t square with reality. In 2013, 16 percent of high school students in Texas were obese, up from 14 percent in 2005. Only Arkansas, Kentucky and Alabama reported higher rates. Nationwide, child obesity rates have jumped from 7 percent in 1980 to 18 percent in 2012. Among minorities, the rates for children and adolescents were significantly higher, with Hispanics at 22 percent and non-Hispanic black youth at 20 percent.

The Tea Party Believes in Freedom – Unless You’re Gay – Then Not So Much

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The Texas Tribune reports that a House committee has approved a bill to further restrict gay marriage – even though it is already illegal in Texas.  The Tea Party bulldozer continues sweep aside any chance that Texas will treat all of its citizens fairly.

Texas House committee on Wednesday passed a bill that seeks to prohibit same-sex marriages, even though the state already bans such unions. 

The measure is one of several proposals at the Texas Capitol targeting same-sex marriage and the first one that has cleared a legislative committee this session, according to the Texas Freedom Network, which describes itself as fighting initiatives backed by the state’s religious right.

The State Affairs Committee passed House Bill 4105, which would forbid the use of state or local funds for issuing same-sex marriage licenses. The 7-3 vote was along party lines, with only Republicans supporting the measure. The proposal now heads to a committee that schedules legislation for debate by the full House.

“The intent is to assert the sovereign rights of Texas and of the citizens of Texas,” said Rep. Cecil Bell [TP-Magnolia], the bill’s author. “I believe it is a bipartisan issue — our social rights and our traditional values.”

You sir, are a bigot.

We Just Knew Greg Abbott was a Closet Socialist

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The Texas Tribune  reports that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s committee of hand-picked Tea Partisans has come out against Gov. Greg Abbott’s plan to boost Pre-K education in Texas.

In a letter dated Tuesday, the lieutenant governor’s Grassroots Advisory Board, filled with Tea Party activists and appointed by Patrick, called House Bill 4 and Senate Bill 801 “a threat to parental rights.” The bills are aimed at improving the quality of the state’s pre-K programs at a cost of about $130 million over the next two years.

“We are experimenting at great cost to taxpayers with a program that removes our young people from homes and half-day religious preschools and mothers’ day out programs to a Godless environment with only evidence showing absolutely NO LONG TERM BENEFITS beyond the 1st grade,” the letter said.

So the Tea Party is against giving the children of the poorest of the poor anything that might interfere with options that very few of them are likely to take anyway.  Okay.  Red might even concede that Pre-K programs aren’t as effective as we would like, but that is hardly an argument for shutting them down or not trying harder.  And the argument that Pre-K programs keep parents from choosing other options also might be legitimate if it were backed up with any facts.  Of course, it isn’t.  Facts and the Tea Party really don’t get along that well.  Facts tend to interfere with a reactionary agenda based on fear and loathing.  But wait, there’s more.

The Tea Party-infused group, put together at the beginning of the session to advise Patrick on major policy initiatives, said that if the $130 million program becomes law, “Texas would be sending the message to the rest of the nation that parents do not or cannot love and care for their children as well as the state can.”

It also associated the pre-K program, which has already passed the Texas House with overwhelming support, with socialism.

“This interference by the state tramples upon our parental rights,” the letter said. “The early removal of children from parents’ care is historically promoted in socialistic countries, not free societies which respect parental rights.”

Yes, Texas parents – show how much you love your children by refusing to send them to public school.  Patrick should be ashamed of having put this group of morons together.  But as with facts and the Tea Party – shame and Dan Patrick are not even remotely acquainted.

Has Long Has it Been Since We Bashed Ted Cruz? Well that’s too Long!

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Actually this time we will let John McCain do the bashing for us.  On the peripatetic campaign trail, Sen. Cruz claimed that  he had been “pressing” Sen. McCain to hold hearings on gun restrictions on military bases.  McCain responded that Cruz had never mentioned anything about it to him, and then seized the opportunity to make Cruz look foolish – not that difficult a task it seems – but always worth the effort.  The Daily Kos reports on McCain’s take on Cruz’s credibility.

 “I was fascinated to hear that because I haven’t heard a thing about it from him. Nor has my staff heard from his staff,” McCain said of Cruz (R-Texas). “It came as a complete surprise to me that he had been pressing me. Maybe it was some medium that I’m not familiar with.” […]

McCain went to great lengths to ridicule Cruz for suggesting the two had discussed the issue. He joked that perhaps Cruz was bouncing messages off the “ozone layer.”

“Maybe it was through, you know, hand telegraph. Maybe sign language,” McCain said. “Ask him how he communicated with me because I’d be very interested. Because who knows what I’m missing.”

Ted, Ted, Ted. You just don’t piss off crotchety old SOB’s like McCain without expecting some retribution.  But McCain outdid himself with this one.  It takes a special kind of enmity to break out the ridicule stick and smack you around like this with it.  And in Ted’s case it is no doubt well-deserved and keeps him firmly entrenched as the senator most hated by his colleagues.

Packing Heat

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PBS News reports that Texas is on the verge of passing an open carry law that will allow Texans to pack heat in public.

On Friday, the Texas House of Representatives voted 96-35 in favor of House Bill 910, which extends the rights of citizens who have a concealed handgun license to allow them to openly carry a holstered handgun. A similar bill passed the Texas Senate last month; the two versions must be reconciled before heading to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott for signing.

Abbot is likely to give the measure his approval. During a February press conference, he said, “I will sign whatever legislation reaches my desk that expands Second Amendment rights in Texas.

Red favors sporting a Smith & Wesson 357 Magnum in a custom leather holster worn Matt Dillon style on the right thigh.  Red also favors telling anyone foolish enough to walk around with a pistol openly strapped on to any appendage that they must be suffering from a deep inadequacy complex that packing heat probably isn’t going to cure.

The Anti-Business (Tea) Party

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Richard Parker posits that the extreme positions taken by Texas Tea Partisans make the movement openly hostile to big business.  The Texas Association of Business has come out against two of the Tea Party’s most cherished legislative goals – enshrining the right of religious bigots to discriminate based on their say-so and keeping undocumented kids as  poor and ignorant as possible.  The schism between the merely self-serving but more or less live and let live Country Club Republicans and the Tea Party extremists who want to fundamentally reshape the way you can live your life is growing.

Welcome to Texas, Toyota, and all the accountants, lawyers, contractors and other companies — big and small — that are making the long trek to relocate here. You will find Texas to be immensely friendly. We’re especially friendly to business, which is why you’re coming, of course. Hence, the outlook for Texas is bullish: It’s on track to supplant Germany as the world’s fourth-largest economy by 2050. Texas is so friendly to business that even Democrats stress the word pro-business before mumbling the word Democrat.

But there’s something the eager chambers of commerce and glad-handing mayors probably didn’t tell you before you made up your mind to come to Texas. There’s a political party emerging in Austin the likes of which we’ve never seen. Until recently known as the tea party, it’s the Anti-Business Party of Texas, and it’s about to open the door to a future of uncertainty that will affect your workers, worry your shareholders and befuddle your customers. If you saw the uproar from businesses — from Apple to American Airlines — in Indiana over a so-called religious freedom act, then brace yourself, because Texas could be next.

Two measures in the Legislature would unravel a law that seems to have worked well since 1999. State Sen. Donna Campbell and Rep. Matt Krause, both of the Anti-Business Party, propose to bar state or local governments from enforcing anti-discrimination laws in the event of a religious claim. They even want to enshrine the ban in the Texas Constitution. This would effectively gut anti-discrimination protections, particularly for gay people, in most cities. Campbell also is effectively trying to deny an affordable college education to the children of unauthorized immigrants.

TP stands for Tea Party or Texas Politics or the Same Thing Perhaps

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The Houston Chronicle reports on the Tea Party’s legislative successes in Texas – a state where it rules the roost like in no other.  If you have any doubts about whether the Tea Party is running (some say ruining) this state, this article will disabuse you of that notion.   Only Joe Strauss and some House comrades stand in the way of ceding complete control of Texas to extreme conservatives.

Before 2009, the tea party was more like a tea brunch. The movement that has found such success in Texas, unlike arguably anywhere else in the country, brought its six years of work at the local level to Austin.

At a Wednesday rally at the Capitol, conveniently on Tax Day, the first-ever statewide gathering of local tea party groups took pride in their legislative gains that have remade Texas politics and have launched – and killed – many politicians’ careers.

Rep. Jonathan Stickland, the Bedford Republican who was introduced at the rally as “the No.1 conservative,” went on his usual tirade against House leadership. He seemed less of a legislator and more of a kingmaker as he introduced several new Republican lawmakers, mostly in the Senate, who have yanked the upper chamber to the right this session.

“This session, so far, has been filled with great things” in the Senate, Strickland said. “Conservative legislation is dying every single minute that ticks by.” There are about 47 days left in the legislative session before lawmakers go home until 2017, barring a Gov. Greg Abbott-called special session.

Texas Is Redder than Red, New York and California are Blue and Florida is . . .?

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Letters From Texas explains why the Tea Party ignores Electoral College math at its peril and why another Bush and Rubio might last for a while in primary winnowing process.  The succinct point is that there is no path to victory for a GOP presidential candidate that does not lead through Florida.  In contrast, a Democrat that wins Florida is almost assured of victory but has other routes to the White House.