Texas Senator John Cornyn’s anti-environment lifetime of achievement for the petrochemical industry is a thing of blood-curdling awesomeness.

It is always fun to watch Cornyn’s political contributions match his axing of environmental regulation.

Example: American Air Liquide Holdings, Inc. PAC got so carried away that they exceeded the contribution limit.

You’ll notice that they gave him money in 2016 when he wasn’t even running for office.  That is standard in senate races – it’s not unusual for PACs to make contributions years before the Senator is actually up for re-election, but the limit is still set for his/her upcoming election.  But, I’m just wondering if these contributions were just priming the pump or maybe an investment.

In May of last year, the Houston Chronicle reported that Texas energy companies got a break from monitoring chemical leaks during the pandemic.

From March to May, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality gave more than 100 exemptions to environmental monitoring including dangerous chemical leaks.

And …

Air Liquide, a French chemical company with a U.S. subsidiary in Houston, received an exemption from performing quarterly monitoring of leaking chemical emissions from pressurized equipment until the end of June at its Freeport chemical plant.

Throw some money at John Cornyn, y’all.

John was also at the grand opening of this company at their new plant in LaPort, just a few miles east of Houston.

Thanks to Alfredo over at the Dairy Queen for the heads up.

A new study conducted by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Medical University of South Carolina has concluded the obvious – states with Republican governors had higher COVID case rates and higher death rates from COVID.  In the report, study senior author Sara Benjamin-Neelon, PhD, professor in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Health, Behavior and Society stated,

“Governors’ party affiliation may have contributed to a range of policy decisions that, together, influenced the spread of the virus.  These findings underscore the need for state policy actions that are guided by public health considerations rather than by partisan politics.”

I know this is like concluding in an academic study that gravity makes things fall down, but it’s good that they quantified in a peer reviewed study what we all knew to begin with – politicizing public health policy gets people killed.

I understand the gravity of eliminating the filibuster for when the Dems lose the Senate again, but if they don’t, they’ll lose the House and Senate in 2022, and risk never winning again in our lifetimes.  Having lost the WH, the House and the Senate during  the last 4 years, Republicans have launched a full frontal assault on voting  in 43 states, filing over 250 bills with the goal of making it harder to vote.  These bills include new laws that reduce voting hours, shorten early voting days, purge mail voter lists, limit polling locations, reduce drop box locations, require printed voter ID in mail in ballots, severely restrict eligibility for absentee voting, and in Arizona, allow the Legislature to overturn election results by simple majority.  If successful, Republicans will have such a locked in advantage that it will be impossible for voters to control their own destiny in the states, and therefore the US Congress.

These Republicans are lying, of course, that their intent is to “restore faith” in the election system after they joined Trump in claiming non-existent voting fraud, CAUSING that loss of faith.  One politician even said it out loud this week; he’s Arizona Rep John Kavanaugh, who chairs the Government and Elections Committee in the Arizona House.  Talking about the 24 bills filed to suppress voter turnout, Kavanaugh said,

“There’s a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans.  Democrats value as many people as possible voting, and they’re willing to risk fraud. Republicans are more concerned about fraud, so we don’t mind putting security measures in that won’t let everybody vote — but everybody shouldn’t be voting.”

“Not everybody wants to vote, and if somebody is uninterested in voting, that probably means that they’re totally uninformed on the issues.  Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well.”

The translation of Kavanaugh’s statement from GOPish to English is, “We only want people who agree with us to vote.”  It’s that simple, and it is a desperate last ditch attempt to keep power even if it means trampling all over the rights of millions and millions of Americans.  There should be no doubt in all Americans’ minds the seriousness of this issue.  Having a cemented in a gerrymandered advantage, these laws could achieve what Tom DeLay and Turd Blossom sought twenty years ago, a permanent majority for the GOP.  These laws, if passed and not stopped in the courts, would mark the end of democracy in the US.  With the Roberts Court’s record of laying waste to the Voting Rights Act and other anti-democratic opinions, I have zero confidence that, with a 6-3 majority, the court will suddenly regain its sanity and overturn these new laws.

The Congress must pass a new Voting Rights Act 2.0 that reinstates federal oversight to changes in voting laws by Jim Crow states that went nuts after the tragic 2013 Shelby ruling and went right back to doing precisely what Roberts said they wouldn’t do, suppressing minority voting rights.  They also need to make non-partisan redistricting a federal law and to standardize voting systems to protect the rights of all voters.  The Congress can only do this by eliminating the filibuster and passing these laws as quickly as possible before the 2022 elections.  Not doing so could have disastrous consequences for American voters, and fulfilling DeLay’s and Turd Blossom’s dream of a permanent majority.

Okay, as you know I have always adored Joe Biden. As a human being he stands tall in the self-actualization triangle.  I believe he is a genuine adult.

He was not my first pick to be president.  I thought we needed someone younger with new ideas and a new plans.  Maybe I was wrong.

Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote about Abraham Lincoln’s Team of Rivals and here’s Joe repeating history. Look at his cabinet. Look at his advisors. I guess old guys know stuff, too.

I listened carefully to his speech last night.  He calmed the waters, he gave cautious hope, he has a plan, he loves his country, he passed a major bill, and he understands how I feel.  I think he’s what we need right now.

By the way, I am told that the rightwing over on Twitter is calling the president Dementia Joe.  They say he relied on a script. Yes, he did. That’s what presidents do unless they want to start an insurrection and get people killed. They also say he can’t remember Trump’s name so he calls him the former president. No, he knows Trump’s name but he’ll be damned if he’ll say it, and calling him “the whining ninny baby I whipped,” seems harsh.

I liked the speech. It gave me hope.

Written by Nick Caraway

Allow me to help out our friend Ken Paxton. He seems to be a bit confused about how government is supposed to work. He was voted in (twice) as the attorney general to the state of Texas. That means he is the number one law enforcement officer in the state. Usually, that kind of position would be out of bounds for someone under indictment. Of course, that would be a message directed more at the voters than him.

Yet, here he is threatening a suit against the mayor and city of Austin. Why would he do such a thing you might ask? Well. it seems that Austin wants to continue on with a mask mandate. Didn’t the governor lift the mask mandate? Funny you should ask. Let me break this down using small words so that Paxton can understand.

His boss, the governor, lifted the state mandate for masks. That means there is no more statewide rule that you must wear masks. However, in true conservative fashion, he didn’t mandate zero masks. He simply left it up to local governmental entities to make up their own minds about whether they would mandate masks.

Now, depending on your political leanings, this is either cowardly or brilliant. It’s hard to look at a governmental executive passing the buck as brilliant, but I suppose you could buy the argument. It means that local officials can use the facts on the ground in their particular location to govern whether they have their own mandate. Larger cities probably would want to keep the mandate. Positivity rates are higher in denser population centers.

So, Edna, Texas or Dublin, Texas might shed the mask mandate since they are small towns with likely lower rates of COVID. Bigger cities like Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio might keep the mandates because their rates are higher.

So, in some way it might seem wise to let local governments decide for themselves how to proceed. Yet, if you choose to do that then you cease to have control over what those government agencies choose to do. It is the same when the TEA left it up to local districts. When you leave a decision to someone else you cease to have control over that decision. You can hem and haw about that decision, but if you really felt that strongly about it then you should have stood up and made a decision.

This is what we call having your cake and eating it too. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot shuck responsibility for a decision and then turn around and remove the ability to make a decision from someone else. You either lead, follow, or get out of the way. But sue on McDuck, go on wasting the court’s time and patience.

Governing is hard work. The concept of federalism makes it that much harder. To put this in plain words for Mr. Paxton, that means that the national, state, and local governments must share power and responsibility. Wise leaders know when to exercise their power and when to allow others to make decisions for themselves.

Abbott has given Texans a definite choice in 2022. His governing philosophy seems to be not to govern. He is willing to allow private business and profit motive run our power grid and he seems to be willing to let local governments and businesses take the bullet for unpopular mask mandates. The problem is that those mandates were making us safer. Giving up the mandate is akin to giving up an umbrella in the middle of a thunderstorm. I’m perfectly dry now, so I obviously didn’t need it.

If Texans are okay with a governor that doesn’t govern then they are free to choose Abbott again. If Texans are okay with the number one law officer in the state being a crook then they are free to choose Paxton again. If we want them again I would politely suggest that they should be enrolled in a high school Government course. They must have skipped a few chapters when they were in school.

Nick

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