Don't feed the conservo-trolls, Abbott

Operation Jade Helm 15, ladies and gentlemen.

Greg Abbott's letter directing the Texas State Guard to monitor U.S. Army soldiers taking part in training exercises in Bastrop and other parts of the state drew widespread surprise and criticism from Austin to Washington on Wednesday as pundits and officials questioned what the governor was thinking.

While Abbott's aides played down the move as a normal step to tamp down some Bastrop residents' concerns that the military exercises presaged an invasion and a disarming of the populace by the federal government, some state lawmakers and even the White House were asking what Abbott was worried about.

"I have no idea what he's thinking," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in response to a reporter's question about Abbott's letter to the Texas Guard the day before.

I won't be able to say this very often, but I know what Abbott is thinking: throw the foamy-mouthed right wing freaks some red meat, or else Dan Patrick will, and that might eventually lead to a defeat in a Republican primary for Texas governor.  Glenn Smith had a better response.

"Abbott's pandering to paranoid, secessionist fools would be comical if it wasn't so costly and frightening," said Glenn Smith, director of Austin-based Progress Texas PAC, a Democratic Party group.

"Abbott has the state military confronting the U.S. military because some nut cases fear, what, armed U.S. takeover of Texas? Seriously? What next? Will Abbott call out the troops to protect us from alien abduction, abominable snowmen and Bigfoot, or should I say an invasion of Bigfeet? What will this bit of extremist theater cost Texas taxpayers? Abbott should tell us. Now."

You don't have to be a veterinarian to know what happens when you let rabies go unchecked.

Within hours after Abbott's directive was made public on Tuesday, online applause and protests heated up anew. Self-styled "patriot" group members suggested they may monitor the exercises on their own.

Abbott aides said the swirling issues and concerns were one reason he asked the Texas Guard to monitor the exercises, not any concern that any of the conspiracy theories may be valid.

"Governor Abbott deeply trusts and respects the United States military," said Amelia Chasse, Abbott's press secretary.

But.

Bo Collier, 61, a retired environmental engineer who was among the protesters at the Bastrop meeting, said Abbott was spot on with his order.

"(Abbott) knows we can't trust anything Washington says," Collier said. "Think about this, sir: The federal government has militarized our police. They want to do away with the Second Amendment. I believe this is a step to gain intelligence for martial law at some point in the future. You may call me crazy, but just wait, the signs are there."

The signs do indeed say you're nuts, Bo.  Governor Abbott thanks you for standing (somewhere) near him at this time of "crisis".

Update: Story done gone national.  And there is one lonely Republican voice of reason (again).

In his letter to the governor, Todd Smith of Euless, who retired from public office in 2013, said he is "horrified that I have to choose between the possibility that my Governor actually believes this stuff and the possibility that my Governor doesn't have the backbone to stand up to those who do."

He said he wrote because the thought that the U.S. military would be a threat to Texas is "embarrassing" and it is important "to rational governance that thinking Republicans call you out on it."

"Is there ANYBODY who is going to stand up to this radical nonsense that is a cancer on our State and our Party?" Smith asked.

That would be 'no', Rep. Smith.

This Week in Paradigm Shifts

-- After I bitched loudly about Texas House Democrats voting for HB 40 -- the bill that overturns Denton's ban on fracking and prevents other cities from doing the same -- a few Democrats let their conscience be their guide and changed their votes from aye to nay.  Specifically: Sylvester Turner, Dawnna Dukes, Jessica Farrar, Helen Giddings, Ruth Jones McClendon, and Ron Reynolds.  My representative, Borris Miles, made himself scarce (he was 'absent').  Freshmen representatives Diego Bernal and Marisa Marquez switched from a no and an absent to yes.  I have to think some money was involved.

But the most inexplicable flip-flop, no to yes, was Trey Martinez Fischer.  El Jefe stepped in some BS.  And it stinks.  Real bad.

Is it a paradigm shift or just bragging when legislators listen to constituents' complaints and change their vote?  Certainly neither in the case of the two rookie reps listed.

Speaking of money, the vote to roll back the state sales tax was unanimous.  Eye on Williamson questions why  Democrats just really don't want to distinguish themselves all that much from Republicans.  I don't ask myself that any longer.

Update: The Children's Defense Fund of Texas speaks for me (bold is theirs).

“The tax cuts passed today in the Texas House are irresponsible and shortsighted. Instead of offering Texas families pocket change and political rhetoric our elected leaders should be shoring up the foundation of our state’s future – its children.

“It is unacceptable that Texas still ranks among the bottom ten states in overall child well-being and state spending per resident, two indicators that are directly connected in that ‘you get what you don’t pay for.’ If you do the math, our top leaders appear to be more interested in prioritizing tax breaks for the wealthiest Texans and corporations than investing in the health and well-being of our children and families.

“We are further distressed that the House would consider such deep reductions to its revenue stream while our state is standing on the brink of a health care crisis. In the last 24 months, ten rural Texas hospitals have been forced to shut their doors because state leaders have chosen not to invest in our state’s health care systems by rejecting billions in available Medicaid funds to cover more of our state’s uninsured.

“These tax cuts are a solution in search of a problem. Texas already ranks in the bottom ten states in overall taxes paid by its people and businesses. Texans don't need lower taxes, we need wise investments in our future, and that future demands that we invest in children and families.”

-- In New York's Eleventh Congressional District, the Southern Brooklyn Democratic Club endorsed the Green candidate, James Lane, in the special election to be held next week to replace Republican Michael Grimm, who resigned after pleading guilty to tax evasion.  This club also previously endorsed the Greens' Howie Hawkins for governor of New York, over incumbent Democrat Andrew Cuomo.

Those are my kind of Democrats.  The sad part is that the only poll conducted in the race was a hypothetical in January, and it showed the Republican with 48%, 20 points more than the Democrat who declined to run.

Only a paradigm shift there if all Democrats get behind Lane.  Speaking of which...

-- Via Egberto Willies, Dan Aronson with "Changing the Conversation", and his first part is appropriately titled: "Defeating False Paradigms".  You start at the beginning...

Premise: The battle that rages between Democrat and Republican supporters is killing any chance of reclaiming a democracy that is of, by, and for The People – and both parties love it.

And I'll cut to the end.

...(T)his is exactly the way the framers of our Constitution drew it up and not the way the process works today. George Washington fully understood the ways that political parties corrupt democracy. In his farewell address, he warned:

“They [political parties] serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community.”
 
This leads us to the understanding of why, if democracy is to work for everyone, we must unshackle our loyalties to party and ideology, and instead work to elect those who do what is in the best interest of The People, just as was intended. The question is; do the majority of Americans have the will and the willingness to make such a paradigm shift? The answer to this question, perhaps more than any other is likely to shape the next chapter in American history. Will it be more of the same, where those at the top extend their death grip on wealth and opportunity? Or will a more fair America, a more equal America, and a more decent America emerge? While it is quite likely that we will not see the rebirth of the American Dream, at least in our lifetimes, as Americans for Americans, we can do better — and we can do better right now.

The fork in the road is coming up fast.

Bernie Sanders for President

No coronation, and hopefully no cakewalk for Clinton.  Vermont Public Radio:

VPR News has learned from several sources that Independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders will announce his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination on Thursday.

Sanders will release a short statement on that day and then hold a major campaign kickoff in Vermont in several weeks.

We're about to see the separation of the Democrats from the progressives.  Last month, Bloomberg pointed out the small discrepancy in his message and actually getting elected: he's got to ask for money, and raise a lot of it, to be taken seriously in the media.

Much of Bernie Sanders' career is centered around his disgust for money in politics. He hates the fact of it, hates its effects, and, naturally, he has deep disdain for the process of raising it. The bigger the number, the more contempt he has. “I don’t do these fundraisers for $100,000 apiece or $10,000,” the Vermont senator, a self-described independent socialist, spat in his heavy Brooklyn accent during a recent speech to the National Press Club. “I don’t know anybody who has that kind of money!” His average contribution, he humble-bragged, is $45.

Now he’s thinking about running for president, in what is shaping up to be the most expensive election in history, likely exceeding 2012’s total of $2.6 billion. There is madness in Sanders’ crusade. But the madness itself is part of the method. Sanders aims to be the personification of the small but vocal movement trying to beat back the increasing political influence of millionaires and billionaires. The cornerstones of his stump speech: Wealth inequality is ruining the country. Climate change is real. And big money pollutes politics.

Supporting this mission will take, of course, money. His political advisers think he can be viewed as a legitimate candidate if he raises $50 million ahead of first-round primary contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. Victories in any of those states, which he has already started visiting, would give him credibility as a real alternative to likely Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, the thinking goes, and knock loose enough financial support to get his candidacy into the bigger states. Admittedly, a lot has to go right for Sanders—or wrong for Clinton.

Read all of that piece.  Beyond the money conversation -- Socratic Gadfly doesn't like him much for many other reasons -- Sanders is... well, old.  Seventy-three years old (Clinton is 67).  He's also, as everyone knows, well to the left of where the Democratic Party has been since, oh maybe George McGovern or Hubert Humphrey.

In short, there's lots of reasons why he's a longshot.  But I'll support him as far as he goes and as long as he lasts, because his philosophy needs a public hearing, and it gives me an even greater opportunity to figure out just how far right the Democrats are going in 2016.  It's going to expose a lot of people who have been masquerading behind "progressive", misusing the word to advance their very not-progressive interests, and that absolutely needs to happen.

Actual progressives who have abandoned the centrist, corporate, conservative Democratic party might even re-enter the fray.  It could send a little shiver up the spine of a few hedge fund managers, some big CEOs, and more than a few state and local activists.  Get on board with what the Democratic party once stood for, before it veered right in the first Clinton administration... or stay on board with Hillary.

Can't think of party more in need of separating the stooges from the base.  The Republicans have been undergoing this exercise for six years, and it doesn't seem to be hurting them much, after all.

Update: More from Vox.

Update II: The HuffPo poll aggregate has Sanders trailing Clinton by 55 points.  In order, it's Hillary at 61, Warren at 12, Biden with 11, then Sanders at 6, O'Malley at just under 2, Jim Webb with 1, and Brian Schweitzer at 0.0.  No emails from Bold Progressives with the name 'Warren' in the subject line as yet.

Scattershooting the Lege and legal things

-- Kuff wrote the post I intended to write on the opening arguments at the Fifth Circuit on Texas' odious photo ID law.  Everything you need to know -- and the links you need to click on -- is there.  Update: Here's what I wrote last September about Texas and photo ID.

Update (4/29): And Hair Balls and the TexTrib were on the scene for the arguments.

-- People are excited about the SCOTUS hearings on the gay marriage cases, but frankly that's going to be as dramatic as falling down for Christianist doom-and-gloomers.  God would be real mad at them, and not LGBT people who want to get married... if there were actually a God, of course.  Here's six things you need to know about the case, and I've excerpted from the end of #5 and all of #6.

It’s impossible to know how any justice will vote, but here, as in so many areas, it seems highly likely that everything will turn on the vote of Justice Anthony Kennedy. And the plaintiffs have reason to be hopeful here: Justice Kennedy wrote the opinion in Windsor, as well as two important, earlier gay rights decisions -- one in 1996 and one in 2003.

6) When will we learn what the court has decided, and what are the potential decisions? What will the various outcomes actually mean in real terms?

SHAW: I’d guess we’ll know in the very last week of the term, perhaps even the very last day -- at the end of June. This is a hugely important decision, and it’ll come down to the wire.

I would guess Justice Roberts breaks with the conservative Catholic minority (in this case) and joins Kennedy and the liberal majority, making it 6-3.  As a private attorney almost twenty years ago, Roberts worked on a case advocating against discrimination based on sexual orientation.  And that case, Romer v. Evans, prevailed on a 6-3 SCOTUS vote (the dissenters were Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas).

It is all but a done deal.

Update:  A couple of court interpreters at today's arguments dramatically read some ominous tea leaves, but the TXGOP in the Lege is already plotting ways around approval.

-- State Sen. Kirk Watson's bills -- requiring disclosure by lawmakers of their wining and dining expenses by lobbyists -- suddenly woke from their slumber and started to move yesterday.

(Watson) had complained that he was beginning to hear the “death rattle” on Senate Bills 585 and 586 after they sat bottled up for several weeks in the Senate State Affairs Committee.

But he got a public hearing on Monday, and the committee voted the bills out unanimously.

“I’m real gratified,” Watson said. “It continues to move this conversation that needs to happen and is part of the governor’s goals for the session.” Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, has said he wants to "dedicate this session to ethics reform."

We'll see what happens, but when there are so many bills dying in committee at this point of the session, it's nice to see some glimmer of hope for government accountability.  Update: Here's what I blogged previously about lobbyists' food and bar tabs.  Legislators already got a per-diem increase this session.

-- Here's what else is on Dan Patrick's and Joe Straus' priority list: The budget (good comparison chart between Senate and House versions here), state contract reform, education, energy and environment, ethics, guns, healthcare, immigration and border security (some are withering on the vine), tax cuts, transportation, and veterans' affairs.  Go to the first link and find your issue, the bills associated with it, and their status.

It's nut-cutting time with about five weeks to go to Sine Die, on June 1.