The Biggest Local Race

We have a very important race here in Harris County, in the Primary runoff election coming up May 24^th. This is for Harris County Judge.

I went to hear the two runoff candidates Tuesday night—along with about 200 close friends and allies who also have a stake in this decision. It was hosted by Towne Lake Republicans, and held at the Weekley Community Center. I’m hoping to see video soon, but for today I’m relying on my audio recording and notes.

Why is this race so important? What does a county judge do? Good question. At a candidate forum, moderator Rep. Mike Schofield spelled out the job description. He said,

We don't call it County Judge intentionally to deceive you. Originally—and in the small counties to this day—the County Judge actually hears cases. The last vestige of that in Harris County went away about ten years ago, when we got rid of the County Judge's jurisdiction over hearing liquor license cases. So now our County Judge is basically the county executive. The Commissioners Court, over which the judge presides, is responsible for the following: adopting a budget for the county, setting tax rates, calling for bond elections, building and maintaining county infrastructure such as roads and bridges, and overseeing county courthouse jails, libraries, parks, and the Harris County flood control district.

Then he asked the two candidates to tell us what makes them qualified to preside over Commissioners Court.

Alexandra del Moral Mealer (left) and Vidal Martinez, getting ready for opening remarks,
at Harris County Judge Republican candidate forum March 29, 2022

We have two very qualified people. Compared to Lina Hidalgo, who holds the position now, almost anyone off the street would have more experience. So it’s a blessing to have choices so far above the low bar she has set.

I made my decision well ahead of the March 1^st Primary, and this forum only solidified my choice.  But I believe I’m choosing the better candidate; I’m not choosing between a good and bad option here.

So the short version is, in the Primary I voted for Alexandra del Moral Mealer (I’ll call her Alex Mealer from here on for brevity), and I will do so again in the runoff. The other runoff candidate is Vidal Martinez, and he’ll get good coverage here as well.

I first heard them both speak in November, at a forum we held at Cypress Texas Tea Party (sorry, videos no longer available). We heard from Alex Mealer again, as our main speaker, in March (video here). And we have scheduled to hear from Vidal Martinez on April 23^rd.

Back in November we had five of the seven County Judge candidates that day. Vidal Martinez went first. I was taking notes and thinking, Wow! He has a lot of really relevant experience. He’s older, but he does seem ready to run a large organization—and Harris County is one of the largest jurisdictions in the country, bigger than many states.

Rep. Mike Schofield moderated at the
candidate forum, March 29, 2022

On Tuesday night, Martinez quantified it this way:

Harris County is a big town. 1700 square miles. 4.7 million people in here. If we were a state, we would be larger—number 22—larger than Louisiana. We're larger than the state of Rhode Island.

I think he may mean our population is larger than Louisiana, and our size is bigger than Rhode Island. Actually, I think we’re comparable to New Jersey in size. He added,

It's two real centers of the population. We have 2.1 million inside the donut with the city, which is predominantly liberal. And we have 2.5 outside of that that is predominantly conservative.

He noted that we had 44 years of conservative governance, with County Judges John Lindsay, Robert Eckels, and Ed Emmett. Until 2018, when Lina Hidalgo came in and tried to wipe out good governance entirely. More on her later, if there’s time.

As I was saying, Martinez seemed qualified.

But…  There’s a problem that struck me in November, and was the issue that brought the most sparks at Tuesday night’s forum as well. But I’d like to cover the qualifications of both of the candidates first.

Vidal Martinez

He has been working here for 47 years—since 1975. (I’m estimating that makes him 72.)

·        He has been a federal prosecutor in Houston.

·        He has been Chairman of the State Bar of Texas.

·        He has been on the Methodist Hospital board—the number 1 hospital in the state for many years.

·        He has been the Houston Port Commissioner.

·        He chaired the Transportation Committee of the Greater Houston Partnership, working for funding of the I-45 expansion (Hidalgo rejected the funding and sued instead; we need to reverse that).

·        He has served on the University of Houston Board.

·        There’s a more complete list of experience on his website. 

He summed up what the county is in charge of as three things: “public safety, public health, and transportation, which is really emergency management.” So he showed how his resume fills all of those categories. Really, his resume is stellar.

 

Alex Mealer

Alex Mealer is much younger. She’s 37, married, and has a couple of small children. Her Facebook page still looks like a regular mom enjoying her family. But packed in her relative youth she has a lot of good experience. As she says, “Not all experience is good experience.” But what she’s done is relevant for this job.

·        She graduated from West Point and began her military career right after 9/11.

·        She joined the Army bomb squad, which is full-time emergency management.

·        In her 20s, she was tasked with getting a bomb squad unit ready to deploy to Afghanistan; Army standard is one year, but she did it in four months.

·        She not only diffused bombs herself (proving calm under pressure); she worked with senior leadership to allocate scarce resources in real time with imperfect information.

·        She was promoted to lead a unit in Iraq: 600 people, 40 locations, to restore a broken unit. This required convincing people to follow her—waiving their home time after a deployment to redeploy with her.

·        After military, she and husband settled in Houston, and she began work in oil & gas—which is where she got her financial expertise and understanding of working with the oil & gas feast-or-famine cycle. This expertise includes knowing:

o   What is the appropriate leverage?

o   How do you raise capital?

o   How do you use your resources efficiently?

She summarizes the County Judge job as having two key functions: “Can you lead a large bureaucracy, and manage a large budget?” She has done both—and both under challenging conditions. With what is maybe the best soundbite for her campaign, she says,

“If I can diffuse a bomb, I can handle the pressures of this job.”

Both candidates have the relevant education, which neither mentioned on Tuesday. Martinez has a law degree, obviously. Mealer has a JD/MBA from Harvard. Mealer's website is here.

 

Improvement Plans

Both of them would probably do similar things for the County—all a 180-degree turn from the current direction. Both of them seem to have a good grasp on the situation. Martinez has long experience. Mealer has done her homework. She’s been gathering the data—and noting that Hidalgo keeps taking down data that might make her look bad, so things are likely worse than they appear. So transparency will be a high priority in the next county administration.

Here are a couple of examples of discussions to come in the general election.

We got funding related to flood control in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. It was to be distributed according to need—where floods happen. Hidalgo has decided to distribute—illegally—according to oppression status. That means, if you’re in an area she can call oppressed because of your skin color, or maybe your economic status, she prioritizes the funds there—and leaves the people who have actually suffered the flooding unserved. Considering how many people all over the county suffered from flooding, some woke nonsense is not going to go over well in November.

And there’s that other thing she’s done—making a bad-faith deal concerning bail bonds. As a result, even the pro-criminal District Attorney Kim Ogg is saying enough is enough; we’ve got to stop letting violent offenders—who are already out on bond when they commit new crimes—back onto the streets. Hidalgo has scuttled funding for law enforcement and sent those funds to whatever are her pet social projects. Note: social projects are not on the list of responsibilities for the County Judge. As a result, it’s hard to hire law enforcement. And we’ve suddenly got the distinction of being the murder capital of the nation—taking that dubious honor away from Chicago.

Martinez mentions some close-to-home examples in his opening remarks:

We now have a little girl getting shot and killed at FM 529 and Fry Road by a stray bullet in a carjacking. Then another carjacking two days later in the same area. Then a vicious attack on a lady at HEB parking lot at Tuckerton and Fry Road. This crime wave has to be taken seriously. I know how to stop it. I know how to stop this nonsense. Keep criminals in jail. Stop the decarceration. Restore funding to law enforcement, and make this community safe for all of you again.

Those are steps Mealer will take as well. And she has ten law enforcement groups endorsing her.

I believe them both on many of the things on our to-do list for the County Judge. Their strength on these things is going to show up well against Hidalgo’s feckless cronyism in a general election. The disastrous results of this County Judge are not in some faraway place; they show up in our faces every day. Even Democrats want safe streets and controlled floods in their own neighborhoods.

 

The Sticking Point

Now for what has been a sticking point for me. Back in November, during the Q&A, someone asked Vidal Martinez about his donations to Lina Hidalgo. This was during her first year, early in her administration, not during a campaign. He explained that he was trying to be supportive, and had been hopeful she would be better. It turned out she was a disappointment.

Really? Because some of us knew from day one that she was a 27-year-old twit, just out of school, with no work experience, and a whole lot of tyrannist philosophy that she was determined to foist on us. Some of us don’t give money to our paid elected officials at all; our taxes do the paying. And we certainly don’t give it for them to use in future campaigns when they are that undeserving.

On Tuesday when he tried to defend those donations, Martinez said,

With Lina Hidalgo—Yes. Every businessman downtown, and every business leader—we had a 27-year-old without a driver's license driving the family car. We were worried about that. We wanted to have access to her. We didn't know until after a donation—and, by the way, any donation to her [Hidalgo] by these businessmen, including her [Mealer’s] supporters that are replete with business, with donations to Lina Hidalgo—we didn't know until about six months later. This is donations that came in after Ed Emmett lost; it wasn’t during the election. She’s a sitting officer. There’s a whale of difference in leadership. You haven’t held any of those folks [previous county leadership] here. But anyway, there’s a whale of a difference in leadership in this county, when you have to deal with Democrats that are in positions of power. And she disappointed us. She disappointed everyone in that 2019 year…. She turned out to be the wrong person.

For someone as high powered as Martinez is, a $1000 donation here and there is like a cost of doing business. It’s like my assuming paying for toll roads is a cost of driving around Houston. Nevertheless, I’m still bothered by it.

I have more questions I would like to ask him: If it’s a cost of doing business, and the way things are done, will you expect donations from people who want access to you in that position? Did you give donations to the Republican predecessors, to have access to them? Or was giving money to “the 27-year-old without a drivers license driving the family car” your first attempt at buying access? And how do we know that you would be completely different?

Alex Mealer summed it up as, “if you can’t understand the difference between donating and pay-to-play,” and asked do “business leaders, to talk to our elected officials, need to pay?”

Martinez is clearly defensive about the accusation. It hurts. Because it loses votes from people like me. And he did it in the interests of business, because he thought he had to. He didn’t think he was doing anything wrong.

The problem is, he accepted it. He didn’t call out the practice. We’re in a day of such corruption, we need to know our elected officials stand against that in every way.

I know a number of respectable people who have known Vidal Martinez a long time, and feel some loyalty toward him. I accept that. They may not be wrong. But I haven’t known him long or well, so this thing really bothers me.

And I see in Alex Mealer a spine of steel. She’s a serious woman. She’s not warm and fuzzy. I can see that gladhanding is not her favorite thing to do; solving problems is her thing.

Me and Alex Mealer
at Cypress Texas Tea Party,
March 19, 2022

I told her at our March meeting that I had endorsed her, and we took a photo. When I arrived on Tuesday, I had timed my arrival just a minute before start time (Houston traffic). She was with a couple of staffers, about to enter the big room where the event was being held. She stopped and turned to come over and shake my hand and call me by name. Not a big deal if you expect that kind of thing—but I do not. A nod would have been sufficient at that moment when she was focused and ready to enter the room. But she took the extra moment. Her whole campaign has been grassroots. Meeting people and remembering them—and inspiring them to have confidence in her—has been what has put her in the lead against such a qualified opponent.

Let me address one more thing between the two candidates. Vidal Martinez has a Latino heritage, and he does speak Spanish. He does not look Hispanic. He claims that Mealer can’t get the Latino vote. She is, however, second generation American; her grandfather fought against the Franco regime in Spain, if I'm remembering right. It was over the issue of speaking Spanish that led to the discussion about the donations to Hidalgo. Mealer said,

What I would say to all that is, when you start donating to Democrats such as Lina Hidalgo and Sheila Jackson Lee, you’re speaking in their language. And what is that language? Divisive identity politics. You do not grow this party and win by saying, “You do not speak fluent Spanish.” I do not speak Spanish. But you don’t get to define how I define myself. I’m a second generation, 50%. And if you look at whose backing me, OSSO, Organization of Spanish Speaking Officers—they didn’t do that because of my ethnicity. They did it because they trusted me to enforce law and order. If you need to talk about identity politics, and want a quota on what you look like, you’re in the wrong party.

All that military background—I think she’s definitely a fighter.

 

Calling Out Corruption

We were speaking of calling out corruption, so I’ll mention, Lina Hidalgo is much worse than simply incompetent. And much worse than simply favoring all the wrong policies. She’s also all about crony corruption. This month we’ve had to deal with her personally appointed Election Administrator—a position she rammed through the Commissioners Court, taking election duties away from the elected County Clerk’s office, where there was accountability to the people. She hired a crony, Isabel Longoria, who had zero election experience and failed abysmally, to the embarrassment of the whole country. The Primary was not her first try; she started with the December 2020 runoff and has been getting worse. Longoria is under a lawsuit from the Harris County Republican Party for failing to meet contractual agreements to run the Primary Election. And Longoria has resigned—as of July 1^st. The problem there is, we have a special districts election on May 7^th and this runoff election on May 24^th. That’s two more elections for her to screw up before she stops taking our money while ruining our democratic right to vote. She says it’s so there will be less disruption, and they can take the needed time to get a replacement—who at that point will not have the practice of those two smaller elections before facing the very challenging midterm election in November.

But that’s not the worst. The same week as the bungled election, Texas Rangers and the DA’s office served a warrant and searched Hidalgo’s offices in the investigation into her crony deal last  year—a contract that she was forced to cancel because it stunk so badly, and she got called out by Commissioner Cagle for it. She chose a political ally, one-person company run out of a room, to receive an $11 million contract for COVID response. That wasn’t just a bad decision—less experience at higher cost than the other bids, including the higher scoring UT Health. Hidalgo and her staff—not her staff only as the media are claiming—were involved in crafting the language of the bid contract. That’s illegal. And very corrupt. And now they have the evidence in hand.

State Senator Paul Bettencourt put out a video giving some of the details. And Alex Mealer's campaign did another one.  Both are brief and worth watching. What I said about Mealer being willing to fight—yeah, she’s not afraid to draw blood.

Lina Hidalgo, screenshot from here

These things move at a glacially slow pace, unfortunately. Hidalgo should be under indictment. Will that happen by the November election? We can only hope.

Better than just wishing is to get out there and vote in the runoff, and then campaign from May to November, to—as Alex Mealer says—"get people excited about good governance,” which she has spent the last half year doing. When it’s something we’re sorely missing, it is something to get excited about.

Ideas Rising

I haven’t written here for a couple of weeks. I’ve been busy, working on the platform. At our precinct conventions on March 5, a few days after the March 1 Primary Election, one of the things we did was put forth resolutions for the platform. As I explained recently, the wording can have some “whereas” statements, explaining the background reasoning, and then end with a “therefore” statement. The whole thing gets sent in. Sometimes the only thing we get is the statement of an idea, as best as someone could figure out how to spit it out, maybe even just handwritten.

In my senatorial district, over 600 resolutions were submitted. These included a number of duplicates—exactly the same sent in by different precincts. And there were also a number of duplicate ideas—sent in with their own wording, but essentially saying the same thing. And then there were ideas sent in singularly.

Some resolutions contained multiple ideas—ideas that seemed related, to those who sent them in, but that actually identified multiple separate ideas, usually related to the same section of the platform, but not always.

So, we scanned all the resolutions the day of the Precinct Conventions (I helped do that). Then they got categorized and placed in a huge spreadsheet. And that got divided up among the various subcommittees of the Resolutions Committee in my senatorial district. And then the subcommittees placed them near similar ideas in existing platform planks, so we could begin working on wording.

I was on Education and Health & Human Services subcommittees; I led the Education subcommittee. I didn’t realize ahead of time what that was going to entail. It turns out, Education is where there is a whole lot of interest this biennium. Of those 600+ resolutions we received, around 230 of them, so more than 30%, were for Education. I also have been handling the platform document that our resolutions turn into. So, for the past couple of weeks I’ve been working long hours just about every day. Our Senatorial District Conventions in Harris County were held this past Saturday, so my intention is to catch up on sleep now. And then grocery shopping. And maybe then some house cleaning.

The SD7 2022 Resolutions (Platform) Committee;
at the SD7 Convention March 26, 2022. That's me on the right.

There were fifteen on the committee, according to rules, plus a few extras who also worked hard but didn’t get to vote on issues. My Education subcommittee attracted all the women on the Committee. We worked well together. I love them all as friends now. We began each meeting with prayer, and I often felt God’s Spirit confirming to me His approval and help in the work we were doing. I mean that quite literally. That sense that we were working together for God's glory was present in all the committee meetings I was in. What a joy to work with such good people, who also happen to be bright and well-informed, and dedicated to preserving our freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

Today, then, I’ll share some of what we—and the people who submitted all those resolutions—came up with. What I’m showing here is what we suggest as changes to the 2020 Republican Party of Texas Platform. We’re not actually causing these changes yet; we’re passing them on up to the state committee. (A little more on that below, near the end.)

If there is a theme, it is that we want our freedoms back. We’re not willing to take tyranny any longer, and we’re trying to find solutions.

In Education, many of the ideas were specific. And oddly they weren’t as strong as what was in the existing platform. They were clearly not asking for a weaker platform; they just were thinking, “What can we do?” and coming up with ideas. So, be assured we didn’t weaken things.

In short, what parents want is to take back their power. The schools have had too much power over our kids, and they have proved untrustworthy.

As you’ve been seeing around the country, people are upset about Critical Race Theory being taught in schools—and, yes, it is being taught, even here in Texas, no matter how many times they say, “No, that’s some theory taught in graduate schools; we don’t teach that.” They are teaching that America is flawed, and our founders were evil; they are not teaching the Constitution, and how the founders identified principles of freedom, overcoming millennia of other traditions. They divide children by race—to compensate for what they’re calling “systemic racism,” even though our children don’t treat each other differently by race—until they’re taught to. Parents don’t want their children to be told, “You’re either an oppressor or a victim, and no matter what you do, that’s what you are because of the skin you’re born with.” This “anti-racism” concept, which is part of CRT, is very racist.

Connected to racism is intersectionality—gaining power according to your various grievance claims. These can be race, sex, sexual orientation, transgenderism. So a black transgender would have more intersectional power than a black woman. A black woman would have more than a Hispanic or Asian woman. A white woman would have more than a white male—who is at the bottom. It’s a power scoring system based on happenstance rather than accomplishment or character—exactly the opposite of MLK’s dream.

And because of the power generated by being homosexual or transgender, that LGBTQ agenda is promoted—even to the very young. And to that, parents are saying, “No! Now you’ve gone too far.”

So that’s what we are seeing. Other issues related to wanting more transparency, and of course more choice. People want the money to follow the child—without government strings attached.

We can go into this another day, about how education isn’t actually a proper role of government. That’s why the federal Department of Education is about nothing but control. It does not help educate, period. But in the states, including here in Texas, the government sees education as its responsibility, in fact it’s main responsibility. That’s unfortunate, because you can’t even bring up choice without major outcry reaching the ears of legislators, accusing them of hating kids, and failing them by threatening to take money away.

That’s a mindset we need to get out of. People “believe” in public schools as if it is a religion. They actually say, “I believe in public schools.” Well, I believe they exist. But I don’t believe they are “the way” to educate the next generation to be productive good citizens. Public schools tend to do that more poorly than every other option. But they suck up all the taxpayer dollars, and hold onto those dollars with clenched fists.

So what did we come up with?

We addressed the CRT issue, probably in multiple places. We kept the existing Basic Standards plank (added Texas history to the list). And then we pointed out that schools are there to provide academic education, not to mold students in some way. Schools are not families; they have no business dealing with things like Social Emotional Learning (SEL is a way of indoctrinating wokeness), mental health evaluations, sex ed, anything related to gender identity, and of course CRT and any other socialist/Marxist ideology. Schools don’t have a say in the care and upbringing of children; that right is retained by the parents. (Red means we added that.) 

134.Basic Standards: The educational system should focus on basic standards, which include, but are not limited to, a curriculum of reading (with an emphasis on phonics); spelling; writing; civics (must pass the US Citizenship and Immigration Services test); the arts; music; literature; mathematics (including personal finance); science; geography; economics; and Texas, United States, and world history. We encourage teaching critical thinking skills, including logic, rhetoric, and analytical sciences within these subjects. We advocate the value of vocational training programs.

134A.  Schools Are Not Families: Schools are hired to provide academic education, while parents retain every right to the child’s care and upbringing. Therefore, we insist on the elimination in school of any Social Emotional Learning (SEL), mental health evaluations, sexuality education, gender-identity ideology, Critical Race Theory (CRT), socialism, Marxism, and other social indoctrination. Schools must be limited to teaching the Basic Standards as listed in the Basic Standards plank. All school districts, individual schools, or charter schools are prohibited from contracting with or making any payment to any third party for material concerning any of the above prohibited topics.

 

We already had a plank saying we want no sex ed taught in schools—at any level—because schools have failed in that assignment abysmally. So the multiple requests to teach abstinence 75% of the time weren’t ignored; they just weren’t added. 100% > 75%. But we strengthened the existing Sexual Education plank an added this new one related to the Obscenity Exemption plank:

145A. No Sexualization of Children: Because the fraudulent research by Dr. Alfred Kinsey has been used to allow children access to harmful, explicit pornographic materials and to be induced into sexual performance, we support repeal of the obscenity exemption [Texas Penal Code 43.24(c)], which allows children access to harmful, explicit, or pornographic materials under the guise of education [see Obscenity Exemption plank above]. We require criminal penalties from a misdemeanor to a felony charge for each count of breaking the law by showing obscene materials to a student. An educator—including teachers, administrators, board members, or personnel, as well as guest speakers—so charged must be immediately suspended, and upon conviction must be dismissed for immoral and unprofessional conduct.

 

We have a disagreement among those who want school choice—because of some fears and some misunderstandings. The typical understanding is that families can choose from four types of schools: public, private, charter, or homeschool. But that limits the possibilities. If we had, say, an education savings account sort of plan, those four options would be available, but so would a mix-and-match version of any or all, plus online programs, plus private lessons and tutoring, plus therapies (for example, equine therapy or speech therapy). If the parents could choose the options, they would be limited only by the amount in the account plus whatever additional they might want to pay. It would work similar to a health savings account: you can use the money in an HSA for any qualifying medical service or product. In an ESA, that would be true of any qualifying educational service or product.

But the fear is in the “qualifying.” In general, it would be up to the parents to decide. But it would have to be something related to their child’s education. For example, a museum pass might qualify, but a new skateboard would not. The money simply can’t be used for a nonqualifying purchase.

The fear crowd tends to be homeschoolers or private schoolers worried about intrusion by government into what they’re doing. But they do not have to take any taxpayer money. I believe their fears should not be preventing choices from happening for all the other parents—including homeschooling parents who prefer to be vigilant against government intrusion while exploring multiple options.

Anyway, we rewrote the previous School Options plank to be two planks: Education Mission Includes All Children, which explains why the money should follow the child, rather than be held in the public school monopoly; and Free Market Is Solution to Education, which reminds us that the free market is the way to higher quality at lower costs. Imagine the innovation that would be spurred in the market if parents held the purse strings and intentionally chose the customized combination of materials and approaches that would work best for their child.

141. School Options: Texas families should be empowered to choose from public, private, charter, or homeschool options for their children’s education, using tax credits or exemptions without government restraints or intrusion.

141.Education Mission Includes All Children: The state of Texas has a mission to educate the next generation to become productive good citizens, and it collects taxes for this purpose. Public school is only one tool parents can choose for accomplishing this mission, but public school is not the mission itself. The state must never create roadblocks for families for whom that tool does not meet their goals for their children. Taxing families on top of what they pay out of pocket for another choice does not further the mission. Monies allotted to education must follow the child without government restraints or intrusion.

141A. Free Market Is Solution to Education: We know that the free market leads to higher quality and lower costs. If Texans want higher quality education and would enjoy getting that for lower cost, Texas must incorporate the free market into every aspect of pre-K-12 education. This would lead to greater satisfaction for parents and teachers, could eliminate indoctrination problems, and would lead to generally improved outcomes at lower costs than what we have seen with government monopoly.

 

Beyond education, the big outcry from the public was for freedom from government overreach, and a reassertion of our God-given rights. Two years ago we were writing the 2020 Platform near the beginning of the pandemic. So we had a plank last time about Healthcare Decisions. We extended that with a new Medical Freedom plank, to get rid of those mandates of all kinds that we’ve suffered.

250A. Medical Freedom: We call for an addition to the Texas Bill of Rights that explicitly states that Texans have the natural right to refuse vaccination or other medical treatment. Therefore, the following are expressly forbidden even in an emergency or a pandemic:

a.     Any attempt to mandate, force, or coerce any medical test, procedure, or product, including vaccines or masks.

b.     Any attempt to use a citizen's health, infection recovery, or vaccination status as a condition to maintain or obtain housing or employment or employee benefits, attend school or childcare, or access state services.

c.      Any mandates by public, private, government, or medical entities for treatment, vaccination, vaccine passports, mask requirements, health insurance surcharges, or use of controlled substances of any kind.

d.     Any involuntary isolation or quarantine of anyone not experiencing an active contagious infection.

e.     Any prevention of visitation to the ill when risks are acknowledged and mitigated according to patient and visitor choice.

f.     Any Nuremberg Code violations—including but not limited to the requirement that use of experimental use medications must provide full knowledgeable consent and be free from any form of coercion or inducement.

 

That was in Health & Human Services. In addition, we altered and added a couple of specific planks up in Business, Commerce & Transportation:

58.    Mask Mandates: Government should not be able permitted to force businesses or governmental workers (including election workers and school personnel) to require face coverings.

58A.  Vaccine Mandates: The Republican Party opposes vaccine mandates, opposes any effort to impose such mandates through emergency declaration, legislation, or regulatory action, and supports legislative efforts to allow consumers and patrons to freely conduct business without regard to vaccination status.

 

There are other intrusions into our freedoms as well. I like this addition:

234A. One World: The United States is a sovereign nation founded on the principles of freedom.  We call on the dissolution of the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, New World Order, One World Government, The Great Reset, and other groups who have taken on the role of a government entity and act as such to control freedom of thought, speech, religion, and trade.

We find that these things coming at us from multiple directions, so people are trying to list every iteration and prevent any new ones.

Speaking of which, concerns of mine, which I put forth as resolutions that were accepted, were to stop ESG scoring and DEI programs—both by governments and by businesses, which are being recruited to take away our freedoms at the behest of governments when the governments know they can’t get away with that sort of tyranny outright:

21A. Values Scoring: The Republican Party opposes the use by financial institutions, social media companies, businesses, or any level of government, of any social credit system (such as used by the Chinese Communist Party), ESG (Environmental, Social & corporate Governance) scoring system, or similar system or method designed to discriminate against a person’s beliefs, values, medical decisions or lawful behaviors. The use of such systems prevents citizens from exercising their constitutional rights, including the rights of free speech, assembly, and religion, and further prevents citizens from the full enjoyment of the unalienable rights of our Republic. The Republican Party calls for federal and state legislation banning governmental use of such systems and protecting the rights and liberties of citizens from the use of such systems by businesses.

21C. No Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Policies: When Diversity means no diversity of thought; when Equity means equal outcomes rather than equal opportunities; and when Inclusion means exclusion of anyone not fitting the DEI orthodoxy; then DEI is an abominable forced bigotry and must be made illegal in public and private businesses, government at all levels, schools and universities, and financial institutions.

 

We had a fairly strong Abolish Abortion plank last time. But we’re strengthening that.

325. Abolish Abortion: Since life begins at conception, we urge the Texas Legislature to enact legislation to abolish abortion by immediately securing through enacting legislation that would immediately secure the rights to life and equal protection of the laws to all preborn children from the moment of fertilization and by ignoring and refusing and would ignore or refuse to enforce any and all federal statutes, regulations, orders, and court rulings that would deny these rights, and to oppose legislation that discriminates against any preborn children and violates the US Constitution by denying such persons the equal protection of the laws.

 

Of course we’re asking for some additional safeguards for the election system. We added to the existing Fair Election Procedures plank, and added a new plank detailing what would trigger a full forensic audit:

210. Fair Election Procedures: We support the right of eligible voters to cast a ballot in each election once but oppose illegal voting, illegal assistance, or ineligible persons registering. We support:

a.     Vigorous enforcement of all our election laws as written and oppose any laws, lawsuits, and judicial decisions that make voter fraud very difficult to deter, detect, or prosecute.

b.     Voter Photo ID.

c.      Prohibition of Internet voting for public office and any ballot measure.

d.     Sequentially numbered and signed paper ballots to deter counterfeiting.

e.     No private funding of the election process.

210A. Forensic Audit: For races contested by the candidates, Certification must be postponed, and a full forensic audit of preserved paper ballots and voter records must be performed, including a hand recount of paper ballots, if any of the following is detected:

a.   Statistical anomalies and/or impossibilities.

b.   Voter turnout is more than voter registrations.

c.   Missing audit logs.

d.   Dropping signature verifications for mail-in ballots.

e.   Astronomical numbers of error events in vote tabulators.

f.         Extremely low rejection rates for mail in ballots.

g.   Suspiciously high adjudication or participation rates.

h.   Accepting votes that "scanned" faster than the scanner could physically scan.

i.        Any tabulation error, such as "votes exceeds ballots cast", which must be investigated, allowing no override.

j.        Counting ballots after the Election Night Deadline if the resulting numbers significantly change the outcome.

 

We don’t do a lot of asking for programs—more often we ask to get rid of them. But a resolution came in asking for the restoration of an education program for families. Those of you familiar with “The Family: AProclamation to the World” might recognize the call for citizens and governments “to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.” So we were able to echo some of that proclamation in this plank:

240A. Healthy Family Formation: We call upon the Texas Legislature, in conjunction with responsible citizens, to promote measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society. Toward this end we recommend reintroducing a Healthy Family Formation program, providing messages on risk avoidance and abstinence outside of marriage, complete fidelity within marriage, and equipping parents to share in the responsibilities of rearing children in a nurturing atmosphere of love and mutual respect and providing the necessities of life and protection for the family.

 

In all, we’re suggesting an additional 41 planks, with changes to many existing planks. The process from here is for us to submit these to the Republican State Platform Committee. So ours get assessed along with suggestions from around the state’s 31 senatorial districts. And the state committee will be comprised of a representative from each of them.

It’s more formal at that level. In subcommittees there is a fairly open exchange of ideas, but when the Committee of the Whole meets, members address the Chairman, not each other, and parliamentary rules are strictly followed.

It looks like I will be editing for the State Platform Committee again this year (3^rd time). It’s an interesting thing to do, and I feel like I’m contributing, using my skills. But at that level I get very little say in how things are worded, and no input on what should be said. So my opportunity to do that was at the senatorial district level. I forget how many times I’ve done this level, but I think I started in 2014; if that is so, then this is my fifth time. As contributions to the party go, this is my wheelhouse.

What new people on our committee commented on was how much respect we show to every resolution that comes in. We’ve always paid attention to each one, but this time we tracked on a spreadsheet what we did related to each resolution, so those who submitted could actually see whether and where their ideas were included.

The system is designed to grow the platform, which explains why it’s so long. I wish that weren’t so. And yet, most of what was in there from last time was worth keeping, at least in some form. We added far more ideas than we took out.

Each of those ideas started out in someone’s head, and they got written down and submitted at the precinct level. We have now handled them at the district level. And they will make their way up to the state level, where they will direct our grassroots work—and the work of our elected officials—for the next two years.

This system is designed to hear what the grassroots are saying. Those are the ideas that are rising up. People are figuratively shouting, “We want our freedoms back!” We want to run our own lives, including our own medical decisions. And we don’t want governments or anyone else telling us how to raise our children, or what we are supposed to believe.

The question now is, will our voices be heard? People with power—the ones who have usurped that power from the people—don’t willingly give it up. But in the end they can only rule by the consent of the governed. And that’s those of us who are speaking up.

 

 

What’s Going On?

There’s a meme going around this week, picturing Forest Gump saying, “And just like that your social media friends change from infectious disease experts into international relations experts.”

I am neither. Just a curious person who reads and listens to a lot of different sources in my efforts to understand what’s going on. I think I’ve gotten better at understanding, the more I educate myself. Right now I’m just beginning to try to understand this Russian invasion of Ukraine.

I’m going to step back from that and look at some history, starting with a prophecy.

Doctrine and Covenants 87:1-2

1 Verily, thus saith the Lord concerning the wars that will shortly come to pass, beginning at the rebellion of South Carolina, which will eventually terminate in the death and misery of many souls;

2 And the time will come that war will be poured out upon all nations, beginning at this place.

That was given December 25, 1832. It was reiterated April 2, 1843:

Doctrine and Covenants 130:12

12 I prophesy, in the name of the Lord God, that the commencement of the difficulties which will cause much bloodshed previous to the coming of the Son of Man will be in South Carolina.

The Civil War indeed began in South Carolina, not quite 30 years after the 1832 prophecy was given. After that time, what has war looked like throughout the world? It may not look to us as if war has been continuous, but since that time, somewhere in the world there have been nation-entangling wars.

screenshot from the PragerU video "WWI: The War That Changed Everything"

This is more obvious when we get to World War I, in 1914. As historian Andrew Roberts explains in a Prager U video,

If there had been no World War I, there would have been no Russian Revolution, no World War II, no Holocaust, no Cold War.

And that doesn’t even consider the millions who died in the war itself.

It happened after a period of growth and prosperity brought on by the Industrial Revolution. As Roberts puts it, “The future of civilization never looked brighter. And then, suddenly, it all went up in flames.”

It was kind of a forest fire, with one tree lighting another. Roberts makes the connections for us:

The fuse was lit in June 1914, in a street in Sarajevo, Bosnia. It was there that Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist. It should have been no more than a sad footnote in history. Instead, it changed history.

In its attempts at revenge for the murder, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. They got the blessing of their ally Germany to do so.

Small and vulnerable Serbia then reached out to its ally Russia for protection, which Russia agreed to do.

Russia sought support from France, in case war broke out. France was suspicious of Germany’s intentions and agreed.

Germany then thought it wise to move pre-emptively against France, invading through neutral Belgium. This invasion got Britain’s attention, and they stepped in to protect France from Germany.

And just like that an obscure murder led to the outbreak of war across a continent. Germany’s long-time Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, had designs on dominating Europe—and then the world. (As I read that description, I picture the mad laughter that must accompany such a declaration.)

Fighting raged on for three years, and then seemed to be at a stalemate, with appalling casualties heretofore unseen.

Andrew Roberts, screenshot from PragerU video
 "WWI: The War That Changed Everything"

Then the US got involved. Woodrow Wilson, who was elected on the promise that he would keep America out of the war, changed his mind. Canada, as part of the UK, was involved and pressuring their American neighbors, if I’m remembering right. But, as Roberts explains,

[Wilson’s] attitude changed when Germany attacked American merchant ships in the Atlantic.

The final straw was the infamous Zimmerman Telegram in which Germany promised to give Mexico, in exchange for its military support, much of the American southwest, including Texas.

A year later the war ended. There were massive casualties. And the outcomes did not really look like peace:

Russia was now in the hands of Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks. France and Britain were physically and morally shattered. Germany, forced into a humiliating surrender treaty at Versailles, would soon be further decimated by runaway inflation that destroyed what was left of its economy. Meanwhile, the United States retreated into isolationism.

It was pause, not a peace. The stage was being set for a new and very much worse disaster—a second World War, one that would lead to three times the deaths of the first one.

It would be instigated by a madman who fought for the Kaiser and shared the same dream of world domination.

Had it not been for WWI, we would have never heard of him.

But we did hear of him. A literary time-traveler question is, if you could go back in time and assassinate Hitler before he could come to power, should you do it?

You can’t change history after it has happened. And evil has a way of finding those willing to perpetrate it.

So, the years between WWI and WWII were really just a pause while pressure built up.

screenshot from PragerU video "What Was the Cold War?"

WWII ended without completely ending—which led to the Cold War. Andrew Roberts does another Prager U video about that. In describing it, he says,

It was cold only in the sense that the Russians and the Americans never came to direct blows.

But it was certainly not cold for the Cubans, Koreans, Vietnamese, and others who got caught up in the Communists' relentless drive to destabilize the free, democratic, capitalist world.

There were, to be sure, many morally complex moments during this long struggle, but the Cold War was, at its core, as clear a conflict of good versus evil as World War II had been. Just like that war, the Cold War was a death match between the forces representing freedom and the forces representing totalitarianism.

The instigator, Roberts asserts, was the mass-murdering Russian dictator Joseph Stalin. As he says,

Stalin knew that his Soviet armed forces could not take on the might of the free West. Instead, he decided to wage this fight through the use of proxies, and by a massive use of disinformation and misinformation.

screeenshot from "What Was the Cold War?"

Did we mention that he was mendacious? At the end of WWII, he had troops in Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia. He promised President Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference that he would remove them, but he never had any intention of doing so. Instead, he easily took control of their governments, pulling them into the Russian-dominated Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

When he threatened Greece and Turkey, that’s when Pres. Truman stepped in and declared the Truman doctrine of containment. It was at this point that:

The Cold War was on.

For the next five decades, and across four continents—Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America—the US and the Soviet Union battled for influence—sometimes overtly, like in Korea and Vietnam; and sometimes covertly, through their various spy agencies. But the moral lines of this battle never changed: the freedom of the West versus the communist tyranny of the Soviet East.

Containment wasn’t really enough. Stalin and his successor made it clear then—and archival evidence now proves—that there was no appeasement possible. The intention was always to make Communism the worldwide preeminent ideology—which is tyranny.

It was thanks to three strong leaders—Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II—that liberty prevailed in the Cold War. The USSR at this point was defeated—and broken up. Roberts explains,

The Soviet Union was, at the close of the 1980s, to use historian Paul Johnson's description, “a bewildered giant”—economically bereft, militarily exhausted, no longer able or willing to enforce its will.

Communism, he reminds us, failed economically, politically, and morally—as it always has. All that suffering was for a “never-viable and now badly discredited cause.”

The Cold War ended. Take a breath, and almost immediately thereafter was the Gulf War. That ended with a treaty that was never kept, so ills just kept brewing.

Then in 2001 came 9/11, and that meant war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Relative peace was forfeited in Afghanistan just months ago. Now Russia has invaded Ukraine.

Wars and rumors of wars are mostly continuous now.

Are there reasons and intrigues that it would help to understand? Yes. But our understanding won’t prevent them.

Another scripture, about the approach of the Second Coming of Christ:

Matthew 24:6–7

6 And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.

I think this means the wars we’re seeing now are not temporary. Specific ones may end, but others are likely to rise up elsewhere.

If you want to understand what’s happening, study the scriptures and read about the last days. And then, instead of being in fear, stand against tyranny and savagery, and stand up for freedom and civilization. Stand on God’s side. Then watch, with personal peace, as His coming, for you, is the long-anticipated Great, rather than Dreadful, Day of the Lord (Malachi 4:5-6).