Disagreements Among Friends

The Texas legislature is underway. That happens late January through early June every odd-numbered year. So there an intense couple of months during which everybody is trying to get attention for their issues. The only required legislation is the budget (balanced budget is required). Everything else is extra—sometimes good, sometimes bad.

This past Saturday our District 7 State Senator Paul Bettencourt held a luncheon with precinct chairs and other interested conservatives, to talk about several issues and encourage support. Over 100 people attended.

Sen. Paul Bettencourt speaking to the crowd on Saturday

Then, Monday night was the quarterly Harris County Republican Party Executive Committee Meeting, which is made up of precinct chairs and other officials. When we do new business at these meetings, that can include resolutions, which basically are statements we vote on. They are not law, and are nonbinding, but can have some clout with the legislature since we’re a big conservative body. I didn’t get the official count, but somewhere around 200 people had a vote, while an additional 50 or so looked on.

At the Saturday meeting Paul Bettencourt talked about lowering property tax increases. The idea is to cap annual increases at 4% (down from 8%). This is in response to the average home’s taxable value being increased 36.4% between 2013 and 2016, even as the oil industry has been in a downturn.

This is SB 2 in Texas. The low number indicates high priority interest among Senate bills. It is now in the Finance Committee, waiting for consideration. Interested citizens can contact their state senator as well as members of the finance committee to express their opinions.

Paul Simpson chairs the HCRP Executive
Committee Meeting on Monday

An issue that came up at both meetings is school choice. There’s a bill containing two good ideas: Education Savings Accounts and Tax Credit Scholarships [SB 3, which is a priority for Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick]. Another bill suggests ESAs for special education students only, which is how it was handled in Arizona [HB 1335]; I would prefer this be open to any student. And there are companion bills for Tax Credit Scholarships [HB 1184 authored by Dwayne Bohac, my representative, and SB 542 authored by Senator Bettencourt].

I’ve been writing about ESAs since last spring when I learned about the idea. The tax credit scholarship idea is new to me, but it fits what I’ve had it in my mind for a long time. Businesses can receive a tax credit for donating to a scholarship fund. Students in either public or private schools can access an allotted amount for these scholarships. No money comes out of the state’s education budget. It is a free-market solution. I envision a day when we are post-public-school-monopoly, and this is the type of solutions that allows us to see that every child still gets an education.

HB 1184 came up as a resolution at the HCRP meeting, and there was a lot of disagreement. The procedure for debate is: the resolution is presented, the presenter gets 1 minute in support, then a person in opposition gets 1 minute, going back and forth until either no one else wants to speak in favor or opposition, or there have been 3 speakers for each side.

Unless you’re in the world of alternative education, you might think just the way you’ve been trained to: public school is the way we care about the education of the next generation, and care about the teachers who teach them. Anything outside that paradigm faces resistance. But among conservatives as a whole, we generally prefer free market to government solutions. And we prefer individual choice and accountability to government mandate. So the fact that there is disagreement shows there is some education of conservative activists that needs to happen if we’re going to get school choice ideas mainstreamed.

One of the arguments was that we should be against anything that takes money away from public schools—but this legislation takes zero dollars from that budget.

Another argument came from a homeschool mom I respect. She resists anything that could be skewed in any way to allow the state to regulate homeschooling. I am with her on the concern—but not about this opportunity. Tim Lambert of Texas Home School Coalition is reading every word of legislation to make sure we can support it, and feel assured it can’t do damage to homeschool freedom.

In addition, there’s a proposed constitutional amendment [HJR 62] to protect private and home schools from state and local regulation. This is already the law in Texas, but there’s so much public school mindset that well-meaning people say things like, “Well, they should have accountability” and “Someone should be making sure they’re actually teaching, for the sake of the children.” If you know better, you know that is always interpreted as government interfering the parents’ decision about the care and upbringing of their children, overruling the parent, and using governmental power to coerce certain things to be taught, regardless of the parents’ better wisdom about their own child.

When it came to the vote on this resolution, it was close. The chairman called it in favor of the proponents, but a standing vote was called for. That also looked somewhat close, but the chairman again called it in favor. A roll call vote was requested, but the body refused.

After this kind of disagreement, even among those you’re sitting next to, everybody just moves on. It’s an interesting phenomenon.

Another issue of disagreement Monday night was a resolution to eliminate multilingual ballots. I wasn’t in favor of the resolution, although I understand where this is coming from. I am in favor of making English the official language of the United States, and I’m in favor of making it the official language of the state I live in—and any other state where the people choose that. We have official state trees, birds, and flowers. Of course we should have an official language. If you don’t speak that language, you’re at a disadvantage in our society.

But that doesn’t mean we outlaw every other language, or act like we’re too good to tolerate anyone who doesn’t speak our language. We’re a country of immigrants. My grandfather arrived here in 1906, unable to speak English. Of course, he learned the language, and became a citizen.

Learning the language is a requirement for citizenship. That is why there’s some resentment about a law that forces us to spend money to provide ballots in multiple languages. There seems to be an assumption, as well, that if a person can’t speak English, then how can they legally be a voting citizen?

They have a legitimate question. But, if someone is a citizen and not in prison, they have a right to vote.

Learning a language is a challenging thing. I’ve learned two foreign languages. I’ve gotten good in at least one of those to study the materials for citizenship in that language (hypothetical, since you study in English here). I have opportunities to speak in these languages usually a couple of times a week. But I’m not fluent enough to read and fully understand the wording such as we see in ballot propositions—which are sometimes oddly worded and cause confusion.

As a good citizen, I study the issues before going to the polls. Arguably, a person who speaks English only marginally could study ahead of time, and prepare. Look up words. Maybe even read a translation ahead of time. But you have to admit that a great many English-speaking Americans don’t do that level of preparation before going to the polls. We let them vote anyway.

So, while I don’t think the law should require us to provide ballots in multiple languages, it is a courtesy I think is good to do. I qualified this past election to be a bilingual election clerk. My polling place was expected to have bilingual clerks for Spanish, Chinese, and Vietnamese; a precinct with 50+ surnames related to those ethnicities is expected to offer these services if we can. Those who need language help can also bring in their own helper, who is sworn in with an oath not to influence the voter. We usually get 2-3 Spanish speakers and maybe one of each of the others on a busy election day. Those who speak other languages must provide their own helper, and they won’t get the ballot in their language. They know that ahead of time. Since they’re in an English-speaking nation, this shouldn’t surprise them.

But since we use e-Slate machines, rather than paper ballots, there’s very little printing costs—only the estimated amount for those who request a paper ballot. So, as a courtesy, it doesn’t seem too big a burden to provide a ballot in these three common languages.

There was debate on both sides at the meeting. An argument against is that it makes us look bigoted to have this resolution go through, where media will its spin without allowing the full context of the arguments. Proponents won handily.

And then we went on to the next issue.

I’m surprised at how much disagreement there is, sometimes passionate, all in one party where conservatism is the rule. But the example of civil discourse, and moving on while remaining friendly with your differing neighbors, is something I’m glad to experience.

Primarily Speaking, Part II

It’s a long ballot this primary season. Yesterday we only got through the statewide races. We still need to cover judicial and local/county races. And I’m ignoring for now the races with no challenger in the primary. (Technically that includes my uncontested race for precinct chair; I’m told that at the close of voting day, that makes me official. Yay me!)

By way of review, among other sources, I’ve been looking at endorsements from several sources. CCHC is the Conservative Coalition of Harris County, and is a self-funded grassroots group, including several people I know personally; they try hard to get to know the candidates and share what they find. They do a silent ballot, and offer the percentage of the vote; 70% or more means endorsement. TFR stands for Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, which gives scrutiny to taxes and other fiscal issues. TCR stands for Texas Conservative Review, and HRBC stands for Houston Realty Business Coalition. These both claim conservative credentials. I vary in how much I agree with them, but they give me additional data. I also have personal resources: DA stands for a couple of friends in the DA’s office who share their inside opinions on judicial races with friends who ask. PC is a neighboring precinct chair with quite a lot of experience, so I add her endorsements to the data. 

Texas is set up with a two-part Supreme Court, consisting of the Supreme Court, which handles mainly civil cases, and the Criminal Court of Appeals, which is the “supreme court” for criminal cases. 

going through the avalanche of info

In Harris County (which includes the Greater Houston Area), the courts are divided into district courts, with numbers based on whatever number came up when the division was made. Different courts typically have a specific assignment, like criminal courts, or family courts. 

Usually when there’s a primary challenger, it’s because there’s an open seat: a judge has retired or been appointed to another court. Candidates don’t necessarily know who their challengers are prior to signing up to run. So sometimes we find a number of really good people in one race. We’ll eventually get to a couple of those.

 

Chief Justice, Texas Supreme Court:

I am struggling to make a decision here. Nathan Hecht is the incumbent, recently appointed by Governor Perry. He has been a justice on the court since 1988. Among my sources, DA, TFR, and HRBC support Hecht. His opponent is Robert Talton, whom I became aware of during his tenure as a Texas representative. He was a brave standard-bearer of conservative causes. He left the Texas House to run for US House, a race he didn’t win. Because I recognized his name, my first reaction was to lean toward him. He also gets 60% support from CCHC, as well as support from TCR and PC. However, there ought to be a good reason to take out an incumbent. Last time around, David Medina had come to our Tea Party and talked about his position on the Supreme Court. He had been appointed by the governor as well. I liked him. I thought he was the better candidate, from what I could find. But he lost—because he’d been appointed rather than elected to the position. While I don’t think appointments just need to be rubber stamped, I think judges need to be taken on their actual merits. I can’t find a significant reason for removing Hecht, who has served well as an elected Supreme Court Justice for so long. So I am inclined, right now, to vote for Nathan Hecht.

 

Supreme Court Justice, Place 6:

The two choices are Joe Pool and Jeff Brown. CCHC gives Brown 100% support. He also gets support from all of my other sources. No one gives anything positive about Pool. I can’t add any additional knowledge to this race. So I’m voting for Jeff Brown.

 

Supreme Court Justice, Place 8:

Phil Johnson gets 100% support from CCHC, plus support from TFR, HRBC, DA, and BC. Only TCR supports Sharon McCally. I am inclined to go with Phil Johnson.

 

Court of Criminal Appeals 3:

Bert Richardson gets 85% support from CCHC, plus DA, TCR, and HRBC support. PC supports Barbara Walther. I haven’t met either one, but I think I’ll go with Bert Richardson.

 

Court of Criminal Appeals 4:

This is an open seat with three people running: Richard Dean Davis, Kevin Patrick Yeary, and Jani Jo Wood. All of my sources support Yeary, with CCHC giving him 100% support. Incidentally, the Houston Chronicle thinks Yeary is a nice guy but prefers Wood. I don’t know what criteria they use, but I seldom agree with them, so an endorsement might be a point against. I think I’ll vote for Kevin Yeary.

 

Court of Criminal Appeals 9:

David Newell and W. C. “Bud” Kirkendall are running for this position. I met David Newell at a judicial candidate forum recently and found him quite impressive. I haven’t met his opponent. David Newell gets 90% support from CCHC, plus support from DA, HRBC, and TCR. PC goes for Kirkendall. I think I’ll go with my personal opinion and go for David Newell.

 

That finishes the statewide races. Now we’ll go to more local/regional.

 

State Senate District 7:

This position opened up when Dan Patrick decided to run for Lieutenant Governor. Paul Bettencourt and James Wilson are running for the position. Paul Bettencourt, former Harris County Tax Assessor, was nicknamed the Tax Man, and was known for going out of his way to inform people on how to get their property assessments lowered. Locally, we’ve liked him a long time, and he has name recognition. James Wilson used to work with the legendary Phil Gramm. He seems like a nice guy. But he doesn’t have the fire to overcome Bettencourt’s name. I hope he’ll do some other good work in the future. But I’m voting for Paul Bettencourt—who also got 100% support from CCHC, plus HRBC, PC, and TCR.

 

State Representative District 150:

I’m not in this district, and wouldn’t comment, except that I want to give a good word for Representative Debbie Riddle, who has been a treasure. It’s hard to overstate how hard-working she has been, and responsive to the very issues important to us grassroots conservatives. Her opponent, Tony Noun, was scheduled to speak at a recent Tea Party meeting and didn’t show. I can’t figure out why he’s running.

 

State Representative District 132:

I’m not in this district either, but it’s close to mine. I have a lot of friends in this district. It’s an open seat, because of the retirement of Bill Callegari. Of the four candidates, I think I like Michael Franks best, a lawyer, very logical and well spoken. However, I think the leading candidates are Justin Perryman and Mike Schofield. People feel strongly positive about both; Schofield is new to the district, but has been active nearby for a long time. Perryman has a resume that looks like a character on NCIS—varied and talented, with some military, some business, some out-of-country experience. There may be some family challenges going on there, however. All I can say is, good luck deciding.

 

County Treasurer:

The incumbent is Orlando Sanchez. He has been quietly effective as a conservative in liberal-run Houston for many years. I know very little about his opponent, Arnold Hinojosa. Sanchez gets the support of all my sources (100% CCHC), and my support as well.

 

District Clerk:

Chris Daniel came from among us in the grassroots. I think he was a law student his first time as a state delegate, the same time I was. I think he’s done a good job as District Clerk. I like his opponent, Court Koenning, who offers suggestions for technological improvements. However, most of those improvements are already underway, within the constraints of the actual budget, but making what looks to me like real progress. So I’m going to stay with Chris Daniel. All of my sources agree (82% from CCHC), except PC, who likes both and won’t endorse.

 

OK, we’ve gotten through the statewide judicial races and most of the local non-judicial races. But the interesting races, the ones, I’ve wanted to write about in order to think through them fully, are still to come. There are some additional county judicial races as well, but I need one more post to cover the 247^th Family Court, the 311^th Family Court, and the Justice of the Peace Precinct 4 Place 2 race. And after all those, I’ll render my decision about the County Republican Chair. I don’t usually post on Saturdays (or Fridays either, this year), but it’s a long ballot, and now is the time, if it’s going to be useful to people getting ready to vote. So stay tuned for Part III.

Defund It

Senators Mike Lee and Ted Cruz
image from here

I’m on Team Ted Cruz/Mike Lee/Marco Rubio on defunding Obamacare—even if the other side threatens to shut down the government and blame Republicans for it.

The House, where government funding originates, has done its job and put through a continuing resolution (before the current one expires September 30, since the Senate has refused to pass an actual budget for years) that continues current funding through mid-December, with no changes—except without funding for Obamacare. It’s particularly important to defund NOW, because key provisions kick in October 14. It has to be stopped.

I could spend a very long post enumerating the anti-American, harmful effects to health care and the entire economy, but I’m guessing if you’re reading this, you already have an adequate list of your own. We all know the ironically named Affordable Care Act makes medical care less affordable and less available—while giving all kinds of intimate control over our lives to cold, distant bureaucrats. Nothing about the thousands of pages in the bill, and the hundreds of thousands of additional regulations, can be identified as an improvement over what we had--which had plenty of problems mainly caused by separation from market forces. I don’t think we can even give the bill and regulation writers the assumption that they meant well.

So, since we’re agreed on that—and a solid majority of Americans are agreed that the whole thing needs to be scrapped—the question at hand is how to put a stop to it. Before all our freedom options are done away.

In an ideal world—well, in an ideal world, this would never have been proposed, let along been passed; and in an ideal world the Supreme Court would never have stretched the Constitution beyond breaking point to declare this monstrosity lawful. But in a hypothetical ideal world, what should happen next is that the Senate should agree to the continuing resolution minus Obamacare spending. Let’s say that would happen. Then the spending bill would go to the president for a signature. In an ideal world (so, one with a different president), the president would see that the American people have spoken—loudly—through their representatives, that they do not want this bill, so he would acquiesce and sign the defunded bill. And then he’d go ahead and encourage Congress to vote to repeal (again for the House, but the Senate is the bottleneck).

But since this isn’t an ideal world, what can we expect in the Senate? That depends on how much fight the Republicans have in them—and add to that a little bit of worry among Democrats about the heavy anti-Obamacare majorities among voters. Do they want to kill their careers over this extremely unpopular monstrosity, just because their Democrat president says they have to?

Democrats have the majority. So much is in their hands. As it was, entirely, when the bill passed in 2010.

At this past Saturday’s local Tea Party meeting, one of our speakers was Paul Bettencourt, the Tax Man. He used to be Harris County Tax Assessor. Currently he’s running for Dan Patrick’s state senate seat (the large and conservative District 7) while Dan Patrick runs against David Dewhurst for state Lieutenant Governor. Bettencourt also has a gig on the radio (the Dan Patrick owned AM 700 The Voice in Texas), talking about taxes and politics. We know in Texas we have Ted Cruz on our side. John Cornyn, who is more long-time establishment, was a question. But Bettencourt said they had Senator Cornyn on the radio, pressed him pretty hard, and believe he has now committed to vote for defunding.

I have since seen a fair amount of corroboration from Senator Cornyn. He has made the declaration pretty clearly. This was from his Facebook page this morning: “I intend to support the House bill that defunds Obamacare and will vote against a bill that funds it.” There’s also a piece in the Dallas News on his announcement. A couple of days ago I got a link to sign Cornyn’ petition to defund Obamacare. (I signed it, in addition to the Ted Cruz petition I signed weeks ago, just to make sure Senator Cornyn knew constituents out here back that decision.)

Paul Bettencourt suggested getting hold of friends in other states and encouraging them to contact their senators, to encourage them to vote in favor of the continuing resolution that defunds Obamacare (which, for technical procedural reasons, also includes standing firm against a cloture vote).

If nothing else, one thing that the vote should do is, as Bettencourt put it, “put jerseys on every senator,” so you know what team they’re on. That gives some significant leverage in the next election.

If, by some miracle, we were able to get to the point where there is a choice between defunding Obamacare or shutting down the government—the very thing establishment Republicans fear—that would be a great blessing. The fear comes from what happened in 1995, with the government shutdown during Clinton’s term. It was a public relations nightmare for Republicans. The GOP got blamed for everything from shutting down national parks to starving children.

But PR isn’t everything. We need a reminder of what actually happened back in 1995.

Bettencourt recounted a part of the story I hadn’t known. On Sunday, the 21^st day of the shutdown, Senate leader Bob Dole caved. He had been worried about his image, since he was thinking of running for president. What he didn’t know was that Clinton had already decided to fold on Monday, the 22^nd day of the strike.

Had Dole waited, the GOP would have won the entire battle. But even as it was, Clinton took on welfare reform—claimed it as his own, but we got it, so that was a win.

Last time around the media portrayed the shutdown as a disaster for the GOP. But it actually wasn’t. In the next election, the GOP won something like six Senate seats and held the House. Clinton kept himself politically afloat only by co-opting GOP policies as his own. Rush Limbaugh reviewed the history a couple of months ago, in anticipation of this week’s showdown--worth reading.

Back then, the media voice for the GOP was very limited. As Rush put it, “In 1995 I was it, as far as conservative media goes. The blogosphere had not come into existence; the Internet was still essentially an infant in this regard. There were no other conservative talk shows. Fox News was still two years away. I was it. It was still a media monopoly: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Washington Post, New York Times, local news, you name it. I was it.”

That’s what I’ve been thinking. The mainstream media will malign conservatives no matter what we do—even if we played for the media audience by praising Obamacare against all the evidence. MSM is a lose-lose black hole for conservatives. There is no changing that. Nor is there getting through to the uninformed voters, who just don’t pay attention. But we have more media outlets now. The internet is, so far, still a free voice. Fox News isn’t as conservative as the MSM portrays it, but it’s at least not the propaganda arm of the administration. The true story will get out—it will be told to every ear willing to listen.

And what is the worst that can happen from a temporary government shutdown? The president will try to make it as painful as possible—just as with the sequester, where he has cut soldier food in Afghanistan to two cooked meals a day (because there’s not enough money with the sequester temporary cuts in the rate of increase, even though there is plenty for him to use Air Force One to transport his dog to wherever he’s vacationing). He will try to make it appear Republicans are trying to starve children and kill old people—same old same old.

But there are other voices now. And it’s possible that, even with the worst case scenario, people will notice little more than occasional irritations at government—nothing new. And with every painful choice the president makes, there will be new voices pointing out that it was his choice, with the purpose of inflicting pain.

If that’s the worst case scenario, maybe it’s worth finally getting past the fear and standing on principle.

The worst-case scenario if this fails is dire. Business and labor already agree that Obamacare is an abomination. Putting off employer mandates was done for two specific reasons: First, employers couldn’t do it, and the effort threatened to pretty much shutting down the economy that is already (still) floundering under this administration. Second, the worst damage was put off until after the 2014 election, because Democrats would have been demolished by the knowledge that Obamacare was the cause of so much pain.

So even the Democrats realize Obamacare is a gross negative for America. Since we all know that, now is the time to act on that truth.