The Killer Ds

And All My Life's a Circle

(This newsletter is the rebirth of a project I started in 2017. My goal here is to offer information, insight, and maybe even entertainment. There will be personal experience included since I provide a point of view. But my focus is on this confounding state, its myths and realities. I will write about travel, literature, history, movies, politics, and just life its ownself under the Lone Star, and the broader influence of Texas beyond its borders.

It’s free to anyone who wants it, but those modest paid subscriptions, if you are inclined, can help fire the engines. Go ahead and be inclined. I’ll publish at least once a week, depending on interest, yours and mine. I will also post randomly with stories worth sharing and that are not part of the weekly newsletter).

“The power of men like me does not come solely from our ability to kill–which is no small talent in itself, true, but neither is it as rare as gold. No, the true source of our power is so obvious it sometimes goes unnoticed for what it is: our power comes from other men’s lack of courage. There is even less courage in this world than here is talent for killing. Men like me rule because most men are faint of heart in the shadow of death.” 

– James Carlos Blake, The Friends of Pancho Villa

The Killer Ds

There is something unstated by the media and emotionally wrenching about what has just transpired in Texas politics. The departure of Texas House Democrats for Washington, a move to break quorum and stop legislation, has the feeling of a, “When in the course of human events….” kind of moment. Sure, it’s easy to be overdramatic about what pundits and political operatives feel is not much more than a game, but the flight of the Killer Ds to the seat of American government is more than politicians posturing. I can see it only as a very large piece of evidence that neither the Texas nor federal government is properly working.

And I find that frightening.

Blame can be passed around in abundance, but, in this case, much of it begins with the governor of Texas. Greg Abbott talks constantly about working for the people of his state, but his policies read like a hard right conservative wish list. The agenda he insisted upon for the 30-day special session, which motivated the Democrats to bolt, was more about Abbott’s political party than the needs of Texas. He forced the opposition into a corner.

What was on the agenda that Ds found so heinous? The subject matter titles were mundane enough to make it humorous they had been applied to the actual cynical purposes of the bills. A term like “election integrity” is freighted with restrictions that will harm turnout. The bills from the Texas Senate and House have all kinds of attendant horrors for democracy. In Harris County, during the last election, officials sent out unsolicited applications for mail-in ballots to make it easier for people to vote by mail, no excuses required. The increase in turnout accrued benefit to Houston area Democrats. Maybe there’s no linkage to the new proposed laws but the house version of “election integrity” would make it a state felony for election officials to distribute unsolicited mail-in ballots.

Help people vote? Go to prison.

What else? Well, no more drive-thru voting. That’s too easy for working class folks to pull up and cast their ballots on the way to or from their jobs. There is also a proposed cut back on early voting hours, and, if you have any ideas about helping three or more of your friends get to the polls, Texas Republicans will require you to fill out a form detailing your relationship to the voters and whether you are being paid by a political campaign or a committee. Partisan poll watchers will also be protected by these proposed measures. They would be entitled to sit or stand “near enough to see and hear the activity.” That is, obviously, an invitation to intimidation, and probably even violence.

Anybody want a Trumper or a Proud Boy standing over their shoulder watching them vote? Election officials would be restricted from setting distance requirements for observations. One version adds protections for poll watchers and indicates they must be given a warning before they can be removed for violating election laws, but what laws are left? All this anti-Democratic absurdity was covered with one innocent line in the governor’s call for the special session: “Legislation strengthening the integrity of elections in Texas.”

There are, in fact, no problems with election integrity. The raw numbers of voters in the 2020 election in Texas were historic with 11.2 million registered voters casting ballots. Out of that figure, which is 66 percent of all registered voters, the state attorney general’s election fraud division found 16 cases of minor issues like incorrect addresses, probably accidents. The indicted AG used 22,000 hours of staff time paid for by taxpayers to find those microscopic problems. That doesn’t even amount to piss in the ocean. Let’s not dwell on the consummate irony that the attorney general, acting like a zealot on the issue of voter fraud, is indicted for something far more egregious, securities fraud, and is being investigated by the FBI for using his office to gain political favors after being turned in by former employees. Ken Paxton has managed to avoid justice, thus far, for more than six years and is running for reelection.

But the GOP is using a phony crisis to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. The cynicism here hardly must be explained but a taxpayer surely wonders what their elected representative thinks when they talk about election integrity and knows the new laws that they are promulgating are only about reducing voter turnout, especially among minorities.

Listen, if you will, to the 25-term state representative from Houston, Ms. Senfronia Thompson, and you will understand.

The election changes were sufficient reason for Democrats to thumb their noses and grab their roll-aboard luggage instead of heading to their desks in the state capitol. But there were other motivational items on Abbott’s agenda. He wants more detailed reporting on abortions and the prohibition of mail delivery of abortion-inducing drugs because it is not enough that the state has changed abortion laws in a manner that anyone can report an abortion provider, or patient, and can be rewarded $10,000.00 for delivering accurate information. No relationship to the woman is required.

The Texas GOP continues to control a woman’s uterus and vagina, but not guns.

Angry Abbott has a lot of dream issues he wants to become law, though. Also included in his call is a reform to the bail system, which is about keeping low-income offenders in jail when they can’t use the traditional bail process because they have no cash. He also wants more money from taxpayers to increase the militarization of the border with a surge in police, regulations to guarantee social media companies are punished if they don’t publish political lies and half-truths, disallowing transgender school children from participating in “competitions designated for the sex opposite to the student’s sex at birth,” and he also intends ot ban the teaching of critical race theory, which, of course, is not a theory but the truth about our country’s past.

There are a few other agenda items, but you can see that the governor’s interests are perfectly aligned with the conservative Trump base. The special session is not about curing issues that affect the lives of Texans. The singular purpose of the gathering is to amplify and enforce a conservative political belief system. Abbott is sending the message that if Trump isn’t around, I’m a solid substitute for all you people hoping to drive America back to the early part of the previous century.

My sense is that the Democrats would have looked more foolish if they had stayed rather than leaving. There is no longer anything such as compromise in Texas or national politics. When there are already 17 states that have passed 28 laws that make it harder for people to vote, what is there left to compromise about? Texas Republicans know that the demographic clock is ticking against them and the singular way to hold it back, if only temporarily, is to make it harder for Latins and Blacks and Asians to vote. A victory of this strategy in Texas would offer the inspiration for other states on the margin to take the same political risks and try to add complications to Election Day.

The evacuation of the Democrats from their Austin environs might have also been prompted by what was not on Mr. Abbott’s agenda. Texas utility rate payers are going to endure increases to cover the costs of the state’s failed utility grid, a problem that has not been resolved even after natural gas providers reaped an $11 billion dollar windfall during last winter’s historic storm. Why wouldn’t the governor want to fix the busted energy grid? I know this is going to sound very cynical, but here goes: It’s because his donors made so much money off its failures. Energy Transfer Partners was the biggest winner, making $2.4 billion dollars. The CEO of ETP, Kelcy Warren, who is a mega political donor gave his largest contribution ever in Texas to Greg Abbott, a million bucks. Justin Miller of the Texas Observer got a copy of Warren’s filing documents, presumably a public record from the Secretary of State’s Office or the Ethics Commission.

Pretty nice chunk of change for just doing nothing, which is Abbott’s greatest skill. Leave that damned electrical grid alone, y’all.

There’s also health care. This state has the most uninsured adults in the nation, and almost a million children without coverage, or 18.9 percent of the state’s population, double the percentage in the rest of the nation. The raw number is 5.2 million uninsured. The major cause is because Republicans refuse to accept the federal expansion of Medicaid in Texas. It’s already funded by federal taxes workers here sent into the system but instead of the money ending up with taxpayers in Texas to fund needed health care, an estimated $20 billion is going to states that have accepted the federal coverage. Meanwhile, rural hospitals around the state are going bankrupt because low-income and elderly patients cannot pay for their care. Twenty six rural faciliites have closed in the past decade because of patients unable to pay without insurance.

Property tax relief never even comes up as a subject, which is inconceivable. To subsidize all the Teslas and Musks and Apples and Samsung’s getting their giant tax breaks to move here and pay no corporate income taxes, homeowners carry the Texas tax burden. Chances of a young couple being able to afford a $250,000 starter home in an Austin suburb, for instance, are disappearing. Their annual property taxes will be around $5000.00, and if the bank wants that in escrow at closing, plus a 20 percent down payment, they are looking at $55,000.000 to get into their new home. How many young couples can pull that off, financially?

But sure, let’s worry about whether a gender-transitioning teenager gets to play football.

The Texans had not vacated the premises long when the governor started making hollow threats. He intended to dispatch the Texas Rangers to Washington to have the five dozen Democratic lawmakers arrested. Of course, he left out the fact that the Lone Star badge has no authority in that jurisdiction without a cooperating warrant. The District of Columbia was certainly not likely to issue one, either. Oh yeah? Well, when they get back to Texas, Abbott said, he’d have them arrested and even handcuffed and delivered back to the statehouse. His claim later was that he would have them “cabined.” Yes, for those who are not aware, cabin is also a transitive verb, which loosely means to have restrained boundaries or environs. I assume that would be the house and senate chambers.

The Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan said he was going to have a charter flight on standby in Washington to retrieve the recalcitrant officeholders and demand they get onboard. He probably wasted his money, though he told taxpayers not to worry it was coming out of his campaign war chest. It is not a good thing to know that the man in charge of the chamber that passes tax bills, and the budget, isn’t very smart about spending money.

The Killer Ds said they had no intention of getting airborne back to Austin.

“The Speaker should save his money,” they said in a joint statement. “We won’t be needing a plane anytime soon as our work to save democracy from Trump Republicans is just getting started. We’re not going anywhere and suggest instead the speaker end this charade of a session, which is nothing more than a monthlong campaign for Gov. Abbott’s re-election. The speaker should adjourn the House Sine Die.”

The Texans do appear busy. They held a news conference on the Capitol steps, which got national coverage, were lauded by the vice president, and appeared on various cable network shows on MSNBC and CNN, and beyond. MSNBC has scheduled an hour-long broadcast special on the folks from Texas for Monday night.

The Lone Star Democrats also met with another intransigent thinker from their own party, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Manchin came out of their confab saying that he was in favor of a voting rights bill, though he used a few weasel words to suggest he was not all that excited about current pending legislation. A couple of days later, though, “No Go Joe” was on a plane to Houston for a fundraiser in one of America’s wealthiest neighborhoods, River Oaks. A gaggle of Republicans, most from the energy industry, was having a fundraiser for a man from the hollers of the Blue Ridge. I wonder if they will be whispering to him about voting rights.

Elsewhere south of the Red River, GOP members of the Texas Senate were tweeting, or more likely someone was tweeting for them, about laws being passed in their chamber where a quorum was still sitting. Oddly, the communications were about bills like a thirteenth check for retired teachers and an increased homestead exemption for seniors. Nobody was a-twittering about voting laws. I am only guessing but I suspect the GOP has some internal polling that shows the Democrats are getting a lot of support for throwing themselves in front the new Jim Crow.

The lieutenant governor of Texas, who used to wear blue Styrofoam hats to do sportscasts at my old TV station, had an idea that might be of some value in Washington. He suggested that the house speaker introduce rules that only a majority, and not two thirds, is needed for a quorum. This is a grand idea, and I hope Patrick, who suggested the elderly should be willing to die to end the pandemic, will push the simple majority concept at the national level (not that anyone would listen to him) while he brings it up locally. A plain ol’ majority will end the jam up in the U.S. Senate that requires two thirds vote before a member can leave the chamber to go pee. Fifty-one votes and we have an infrastructure bill and new voting rights protections, and a quorum in the Texas house that can pass all the restrictive laws it wants that won’t mean a thang when overridden by federal statutes.

The Texans are helping President Biden. I argued in this piece for CNN that they have raised the national discourse on voting rights, and increased political pressure for Congress to act. But the task is in Mr. Biden’s workbook, nobody else carries that weight. He must get the Senate to move to blow up the filibuster. I have zero understanding of why this is so difficult for him to ask of the current majority leader in the Senate, Democrat Chuck Schumer. In 2013, Democratic Senator Harry Reid ended the filibuster rule for most nominee confirmations, but not the Supreme Court. Republicans, just four years later, decided Reid had set a precedent and immediately moved to do away with the filibuster for high court nominees. This gave McConnell and the Rs the opportunity to get three conservatives on the highest judicial court in all the land, and we are suffering yet from their rulings.

The current president has no choice. He must pressure Senators Manchin and Krysten Sinema of Arizona that the country’s future and the midterm elections are endangered by their resistance. Their two votes, with Kamala Harris VP as the tie breaker, could end the filibuster, pass the infrastructure bill, protect voting rights with the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and change the “course of human events.” I fear, however, our president believes in a collegial senate and thinks we can all get along and live happily bipartisan ever after. Why he thinks such a thing is baffling. Mitch McConnell wants nothing good to happen because the positive effects will accrue to Democrats. He needs to be run over by a simple majority, and soon.

Meanwhile, back down in Texas, not much is happening, and that’s a good thing. The Texas Ds keep working the Hill in Washington, and the governor of our state says he will call another session immediately as soon as this one runs out on August 8. He can do that, and again thirty days later, and, eventually, the Democrats will have to return to their lives and families and voting buttons on their desks. They are doomed to lose in Texas.

But they might have made victory in Washington more likely.

All My Life’s a Circle

I was reminded this week that it had been forty years since the tragic death of singer Harry Chapin. I had seen him perform only once at the old Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, the famed music venue that had beer-soaked carpet and legendary talent showing up on stage. I will always remember that warm spring night south of the river in Austin. I knew every word of every song he had ever written, and I fear I was singing along loudly enough to annoy people standing nearby in the crowd.

Chapin was a philanthropist from the time he started earning money as a musician and he made it his goal to perform as many concerts for charity as he did to make a living.

“I play one for me,” he said. “And I play one for the other guy.”

The song I am sharing here is one I played a thousand plus times on a cassette in my 1978 Dodge panel van with no air conditioner down on the border. Whenever my bride and I were exploring the mountains of northern Mexico or running up to Corpus to see the Gulf, we put on Chapin and sang along with, “All My Life’s a Circle.”

A lot of very fine music and humanity went out of the world when Harry slipped away.

This is Us?

Texas politicians may not be living up to the legacies of their predecessors. Sure, we’ve had a couple of attorneys general indicted, a house speaker investigated by the FBI for taking bribes, a lieutenant governor and governor investigated and politically ruined for stock fraud during the Sharpstown Scandal, and we even endured a state rep who had himself shot to generate sympathy to use as an advantage in a run for the state senate. (He was later arrested when police found him hiding in his mommy’s closet in East Texas). 

But we’ll probably never again see the likes of Robert Potter. He came to Texas from North Carolina and became an activist for the state’s independence as a country. Potter, who became the Secretary of the Texas Navy, was among the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence. But he had already earned Lone Star bonafides back in his home state when he pulled a knife and castrated two men he was convinced were having adulterous affairs with his wife. He had been kicked out of North Carolina’s House of Commons for “cheating at cards” and “for brandishing a gun and knife during a fight over a card game.” 

So, he figured he’d fit in if he could get to Texas. Potter settled in East Texas after the Texas Revolution and got caught up in the strange Regulator-Moderator War, which was a conflict caused by a dispute over economic control in a strip of isolated land between Texas and Louisiana. Spain and the U.S. did not want to go to war over what was known as the Sabine Free State or the Neutral Ground, and lawlessness ensued.

Potter was at his home on Caddo Lake when it was surrounded by Regulators who shot him before he could run away and jump into the water. His body sank before being recovered. Potter was later buried on his property but was eventually reinterred at the Texas State Cemetery in Austin. He had a raucous 42 years, and the state’s Potter County bears his name.

But it’s a bit curious how a thug with a knife in North Carolina became a man of honor on Texas soil.

A Level Field

There are no level fields in modern politics. He who has the most money, wins. That is what prompted the entrepreneurs at Level Field to develop an app that empowers the little guy. They approached me about using their new tool and I agreed to try it out to raise money to support causes, organizations, and candidates that pursue the truth.

The Level Field app, essentially, makes it possible for an individual to have a super PAC. The software is written to comply with reporting and ethics rules in the states where it is being launched for a beta rollout. A user can raise money, deploy it for the desired purpose, and have all reporting and filing managed by the technology. I am well persuaded this type of a tool, widely deployed, can make a difference in political fundraising for campaigns, and can level the field.

My app is called Truth for Texas, and as a launch project I am seeking donations to support the Killer Ds and to help cover their expenses. Please consider donating by clicking on the above name, or simply look at the app and see what you think.