Politics Is Viral

The virus is political. It does exist. It does not discriminate based on political party. But the response to it has been totally politicized.

Yesterday, Houston’s Democrat Mayor Sylvester Turner decided to cancel the State GOP convention, which was rescheduled from May to July at the George R. Brown Convention Center. The main business starts on Thursday, July 16th, but the committees begin meeting Monday, July 13^th, just 5 days after Turner’s breaking of the contract. All parts of the state are represented on the committees. People have to get here from Brownsville and El Paso, not just Austin or Dallas or San Antonio. They need to set out for their week-long commitment early enough to be in place Monday morning.

As of today, State RPT (Republican Party of Texas) Chair James Dickey is seeking immediate legal redress, including forcing the city to keep its contractual agreement.

That's us, and the grandkids, at the 2018 State GOP Convention

Timing is urgent. Earlier today a district judge ruled against the RPT, so tomorrow an appellate court judge will rule. If that judge rules in favor of RPT being able to hold the convention, I am told it will happen in person on Monday. If not, it gets appealed to the Texas Supreme Court; it may be appealed either way. A ruling there would have to happen on Saturday in order for plans to go forward. I don’t know whether a ruling that quick is possible.

About 9 days ago the Mayor amended the contract to remove his ability to shut down the convention at the last moment. He had previously listed a number of requirements that would have to be met to make the meeting “safe.” All of those were met. Based on the Mayor’s removal of his own authority over the decision, the State Republican Executive Committee met last Thursday to decide whether to go ahead with an in-person convention or change to an online distant convention. There was debate both ways, but the vote went strongly in favor of in-person: 40-20.

There are several factors involved in the decision, beyond that it’s nice to see one another in person. We have business we’re required to do, no matter what. And in Texas we do it the grassroots way. Individual involvement is necessary.

For example, the platform—which I help work on. It starts at precinct conventions, where each precinct has the opportunity to meet and put forth resolutions. There is more input at the senatorial district level, including personal testimonies. Then that happens again at the state convention, in the subcommittees, in the committee-as-a-whole, and then when the platform is brought to the whole body. With thousands of people there, individuals have a voice.

Similar work, and similar floor discussions, happen for Rules and Legislative Priorities committees.

Is it possible (i.e., something other than impossible) to do this through Zoom meeting? Sort of. Floor discussion can use the “raise your hand” feature. But there’s no way to separate out points of order from points of information, or arguments in favor from arguments against whatever is being discussed. And, if there’s a vote, and you use “raise your hand” as a way to indicate, you no longer have a place in line for discussion.

In other words, it’s a lot harder to get grassroots input. I’m not sure yet how they’ll handle taking testimony in committee meetings.

There has been a plan B in the works for weeks, in case the Mayor or the County Judge tried to pull the rug out at the last minute. Ten thousand people can’t turn on a dime, so we had to have ways lined up. The convention will happen. Either in person, or online.

But, was this about safety, to keep the medical services in the state from being overwhelmed? No.

Consider this: we held our senatorial district conventions June 13th. Ours had a very high turnout, in one of the largest districts in the state. It was held in a large church, but with that many people it was fairly close quarters. I spent much of the day in a conference room. We had about 3 feet of separation, chair to chair, and were facing our computer screens, not the person next to us for the most part. It was a situation where I wouldn’t normally feel at risk of getting a cold, unless someone sneezed directly on me. But in a Covid-19 world, it was somewhat risky. So, I was looking for word that anyone got sick in the weeks following. Never heard. Then our SREC Chair verified that, out of that convention of some 600+ people (whose names we have a list of), we had zero cases of Covid-19. Zero.

And it turns out, the other SD conventions had the same outcome—no uptick in cases among those who attended the conventions.

A week or two earlier, the protests (and some riots) happened downtown. In fact, Mayor Turner got out there and marched with them—no social distancing.

One news story interviewed a woman who attended and then got Covid-19. This Houston resident told KRIV News that she took part in a march to Houston City Hall attended by an estimated 60,000 people around the beginning of June. She later tested positive, as did several friends who attended with her:

Despite the illness, she said she has no regrets about her decision to march.

“I actually got sick the day after the march… I could not move out of the bed. I was in the bed just sighing,” [she] said. “I definitely don’t regret getting the COVID, because I was out there doing the right thing for the right cause.” 

The story goes on to imply that maybe the disease wasn’t spread at the protests, because incubation periods are usually 2-14 days.

So, they’re saying, as ought to be obvious, this individual didn’t get the illness at the protest; but they fail to note, she spread it there.

She wasn’t risking getting the disease there, because she already had it. But she had bravely gone out there, risking getting it, “because I was out there doing the right thing for the right cause.” Spreading the illness. Not getting it there; spreading it there. The story includes her name, but I am not, because I don’t think I want to blame the subsequent uptick in cases that followed the protests on one person not bright enough to know the difference between 1 day and 2-14 days when she’s proclaiming her virtuous bravery to the media. She was certainly not the only one.

Despite our lack of cases coming out of the SD conventions, the RPT had arranged an amazing array of precautions at the George R. Brown Convention Center.

·         Limited entry points—and fever scanners at each one.

·         Touchless hand sanitizer convenient to everywhere.

·         Larger that usual rooms to allow social distancing.

·         Additional cleaning—deep cleaning of each room between uses.

·         Masks encouraged (not mandated by RPT, but by the county, and not disputed).

·         SWAT teams to protect attendees from protesters.

What we had the opportunity to do was show that a large gathering could happen safely in the time of the pandemic. All it takes is people being individually responsible.

But, as I said, Mayor Turner, among many others, has made this disease political. And he timed it to inflict the highest amount of damage. There’s a pandemic clause in the contract, but he will have to prove that the conditions were so much worse this week than last week that there was no way to provide the services. If he fails to do so, he has not only deprived the city of needed income and tax revenue that the convention would have brought, he has cost city taxpayers around half a million for broken contracts—for which the city and taxpayers gain nothing. But he doesn’t care about taxpayer money.

In case you’ve been hearing that Houston is the country’s new hot spot, note that new cases have been going down, now that the spike caused by the protests has run its course.

 

Data from Harris County Public Health July 9, 2020

Death rates, which lag one to three weeks behind a spike in cases, are up, but only slightly. We had 7-day rolling averages this high in mid-May. And the trend is moving back down, as the trend in new cases is doing.

What about hospital beds? That’s the important thing, right? The reason for any shutdown whatsoever? Despite what you’ve heard, no, our hospitals are not on the verge of running out of space or ICU beds.  They’re operating at about 97% capacity—which is their goal, and what they were at last year at this time. Hospitals are businesses. They try to fully use facilities. That does not mean we have suddenly filled them up with coronavirus cases. In fact, coronavirus cases are between 12-17% in the various hospitals. Most other beds are taken up by people in for a day or two because of a surgery or other issue and are likely to open up a bed soon. If things start looking dire, hospitals have ways of adjusting—postponing less urgent care, transferring to hospitals with more openings, opening up a mobile center if needed. There’s no cause for alarm—and the hospitals have apologized for not making that clear.

And more good news on the disease in general: recoveries are increasing and deaths rates are going down. 

Death rates are going down for a couple of reasons. One is that those getting it lately are younger; the average age of those contracting the disease this past month is 31. It is extremely rare for a healthy person in that age range to die of Covid-19. Another reason is that we have better treatments. Less ventilator; more hydroxychloroquine with z-pac and zinc, for example. 

Dr. Jeffrey Barke, left, and Will Will
screenshot from here

In a PragerU interview, Will Witt talks with Dr. Jeffrey Barke, about Covid-19. It’s about 22 minutes, and I suggest watching the whole thing. But one of the things they did was give Will a finger prick test that tests for memory antibodies, IGG, which means you have immunity; and also for antibodies showing your body is fighting off a current infection, IGM. He did it on camera, and showed us the results later in the interview. No sending it off to a lab. It takes ten minutes or less. (Witt tested negative for both, by the way.) I hope these become widespread soon—and I hope they’re accurate.

Dr. Barke said the risk for young people is so low, it’s hard to even put a number on it. I saw on a teacher’s thread this week a great deal of hand-wringing about starting school in the fall. “Think of how many children will die!” one teacher lamented. I have the answer. Zero. The odds of a single child falling to this virus by going to school is immeasurably low. Dr. Barke suggested their odds of getting hit by a car on the way to school are much much higher. And yet no one would consider stopping a child from attending school because of the risk of an accident on the way. (Should people this uninformed and risk averse be teaching young people anything? Yet another reason to homeschool.) Teachers who are of an age or health status to be at risk, he suggests could have their needs handled individually.

Another good piece of news is that the herd immunity threshold (HIT, the point at which enough people have immunity that the virus no longer has a new host to jump to) for this virus is much lower than previously thought. We were told that somewhere between 60-80% of the population needed to contract it before herd immunity was reached. Not so. Because we all have had so many coronaviruses—common colds—in our lifetimes, many of us have developed antibodies that make us immune to this one. So, you add in the already immune to those who develop antibodies by contracting the virus, and it turns out you only need about 20% of the population to contract the disease before HIT is reached.

An example of why we should have seen this was the Diamond cruise ship, early on. The enclosed population, facing this new virus, in an environment in which spreading was inevitable—only 17% got it. That means 83% already had enough immunity to protect them. Later studies show the number in the population as a whole is probably 81%.

Sweden has given us an example; they reached about 20% of the population, and now their death rates are plummeting. So, yes, for now their death numbers are higher than other countries that shut down to prevent the spread. But that just means it will take longer for those countries—whose death tolls aren’t that far behind—to reach the HIT of 20%. By the time they do, then you can compare death rates. In the meantime, Sweden did it with some personal responsibility and without economic devastation.

South Dakota has been doing that too. So, while they have higher rates for now than some other states (they’re 35^th), they’ve done it without suspending individual rights and without economic devastation. Please take note, Governor Abbott.

J. B. Handley, in a blog post on HIT—and full of data—shares this CDC chart of Covid-19 deaths in the US: 

CDC Official US Weekly COVID Deaths
from here

Even if we have slight rises here and there, the overall US trend is down.

Further into the article he recommends this video, particularly noting a part starting just before 11 minutes in. A scientist from Stanford, Dr. Michael Levitt, discusses the failures of science in this whole situation. It’s because scientists, who are not used to dealing with things in real time, were too scared of non-scientists breaking protocols to make informed decisions. They failed utterly to give adequate, accurate information on which policy could be based.

A vacuum will be filled. In a political climate such as we’ve been in, power mongers use the vacuum in good knowledge to exert their coercive powers.

We might all have been better off if our governments had simply provided information and protected our rights, instead of pretending they could protect us from a virus by taking away our liberty and property. Funny how just following the Constitution would have led to much better outcomes.

Texas Talk--Part II

This is part II of a three-part piece, reporting what I observed at the Texas State Republican Convention last weekend. Part I covered Senator Ted Cruz’s speech, which was important because he was so clearly the Texas favorite for a 2016 presidential candidate—and it was a good speech, which we never hear from our current president. Today we’ll cover highlights of some other speakers. And in part III we’ll get to the part that’s been coming up in the news, concerning platform debate, which I found interesting but much less contentious than the media portrays it.

Greg Abbott speaks at Texas GOP Convention

Speeches aren’t really the business of a convention, but they are an opportunity for sharing views, and getting the hardcore grassroots of the party excited about candidates. More of that happens in a presidential election year. But this year includes a number of statewide Texas races: governor, lieutenant governor (that’s like vice-governor in Texas, a position with a lot of influence over the state senate), attorney general, railroad commissioner (a three-person commission over mainly the oil and gas industry and other natural resources), and agriculture commissioner.

 

Greg Abbott—Attorney General, Candidate for Governor

I want to cover Greg Abbott’s speech first. He is the current Texas Attorney General, and has used that position to sue the Obama administration numerous times. He has prevailed on allowing displays of the Ten Commandments. There are many cases still pending related to Obamacare, but he does understand the 10^th Amendment and has been asserting those rights first through legal channels, which was his job. (Ted Cruz served under him as Solicitor General before running for senator.) I have liked him since the first time I heard him speak—at a state GOP convention ten years ago. He’s been one of my favorites every year. So I was pleased to know he was running for governor, and I’ve been behind him from the beginning.

He’s a lawyer, so you expect a cerebral approach to things, and you get that. His campaign theme is Bicentennial Blueprint. In 22 years from now—when babies born today will be about ready to graduate from college and get out into the world—Texas has its 200^th birthday. That is, when it won independence from a tyrannical Mexican dictator and became an independent republic, before some years later becoming a state in the United States. So, he points out that Texans have been pioneers in oil, in ranching, and even space exploration. “Texas is truly exceptional.” So he’s asking what it will look like 22 years from now. Because he and his opponent, Wendy Davis, have very different visions of what Texas should look like.

“Her prescription is more government. My prescription is more freedom,” Abbott says. Texas is the best business climate in America now. How to you get it better?

·        Limit the size of government, to stimulate the private sector to create jobs—so you keep more of your hard-earned money.

·        Government must live within a budget. Don’t allow the Rainy Day Fund to be used like an ATM machine. Debt today becomes taxes tomorrow. All levels of taxing entities in Texas must post online how they’re spending their budgets.

·        Government answers to you—not the other way around.

·        Reduce property taxes.

·        Prioritize roads and water. Protect the water supply. And build roads without raising taxes, fees, or tolls.

He inserted some humor here. In case you don’t know, Greg Abbott is in a wheelchair. When he was in his 20s, a couple of years after getting married, he was out running and a tree fell on him, leaving him paralyzed. I’ve heard him tell that story before, adding, “People assume I must have been the world’s slowest runner, if I couldn’t outrun a tree.” This time, talking about roads, he said, “There are places where a guy in a wheelchair can go faster than a car in traffic. Elect me governor, and I’ll get Texas roads moving again.”

Confetti Storm after Greg Abbott's speech

He also said his main plan for crime is to secure the border. “Cartel activity has contaminated across the state,” he said. Priorities are messed up. “The government stops a valedictorian from mentioning God, but doesn’t stop drug cartels.”

And while he was on federal failures, he added Obamacare and VA care: “The federal government doesn’t have a clue how to run healthcare. Get government out of healthcare. Let doctors and patients make decisions.”

“Patients first; bureaucrats last.” Of veterans, he said, “Having served on the front lines, they should go to the front of the line to get healthcare.”

He said the cornerstone of his Bicentennial Blueprint is education. His wife has been a teacher and principal, so he has some contact with the front lines. Texas reigns in jobs, energy, exports, and business climate. “It’s time for Texas to become number one for education of our children.”

I tend to cringe when anyone in government talks about education, but I think he gets it. “The job of government is to set the vision,” he said. And added that we need genuine local control, including allowing opt-outs from hurdles put in the way from the capitol in Austin. “Teachers and parents know better how to educate than bureaucrats.” And he’s against so much standardized tests. He said, what will matter in preparation for tomorrow isn’t how a student does on some test, but how prepared they are for life. He emphasized, we’ll “drive a stake through the heart of C-SCOPE (Texas’s version of Common Core) and never allow it.”

One highlight of his speech was what you might call the outreach part. He said the blueprint is to live up to greater opportunity for all, “Regardless of race, religion, or zip code.” And he said his family mirrors the state of Texas. His wife is the daughter of an Irish father and Mexican mother, and he is the son of Anglo parents. “Juntos somos una familia.” (Together we are a family.) “This blending of culture works in the Lone Star State.” I think he’s right about that. You see that at our local tea party meetings, and at the convention.

If he is elected governor, which I am planning on, his wife will be Texas’s first Hispanic first lady. The democrats, meanwhile, are offering a divorced, gold-digging, self-centered blonde, whose claim to fame is a pointless filibuster of a bill to limit late-term abortions to the point where fetuses are known to experience pain. Sometime I’ll talk about the “abortion Barbie” candidate. But for now, let’s just say, Greg Abbott is going to make an excellent governor of the biggest, most conservative and therefore most thriving state in the union.

 

Dan Patrick—State Senator District 7, Candidate for Lieutenant Governor

Dan Patrick is my state senator. So I’ve talked with him in person, and heard him speak in person many times. Plus, he’s had a radio show I started listening to when I moved to Texas. So I feel like I know him well. And he’ll be an excellent Lieutenant Governor.

Senator Dan Patrick

His speech at the convention was on fire.

“There’s this thing called Battleground Texas—they’ve picked the wrong ground to battle on.” That was his beginning. In case you’re not familiar, Battleground Texas is a sub-ACORN organization with the purpose of turning Texas blue (democrat). Mathematically, if they could do that, Republicans would never again win a US presidential race. But it’s not going to happen—because we’re being vigilant, which those guys aren’t used to facing.

Dan Patrick said, “We are the high ground on liberty. They live in a valley where the desert never blooms freedom. We will win on the high ground of principles.”

Much of his speech was on how to get the message out of who we are and what we stand for: life, job opportunity, educational opportunity. This “Be bold,” and “Share the Message” was something of a theme through all of the speeches, and probably a good plan of action for all the grassroots going forward.

His opponent, Leticia Van de Putte, he said is an ideological copy of democrat candidate for governor Wendy Davis: “Nothing she stands for has anything in common with any American or Texan.” He listed a few: “They’re for abortion, and against school choice. They’re for Obamacare, and against border security.”

Immigration is a big issue with Dan Patrick. “We’re not against immigration—we’re against illegal immigration. Hispanics are with us on securing the border.” I didn’t get all the numbers written down, but I think these are what he shared. There are 100,000 gang members in Texas, here illegally. In four years there were 113,000 violent criminal aliens arrested, and then released; 79% went back mostly into San Antonio. There are 700,000 young adults that have come in in the last several months, causing a humanitarian crisis. Our service centers are almost full, so that, if we have a hurricane or other emergency (likely in any given year), we have no place to evacuate our own citizens.

His policy on immigration is pretty much equivalent to mine: Secure the border first. No pathway to citizenship for those here illegally. Once the border is secure and no special gimmes are offered, then deal with those that are still here. (Need I point out that this is what Romney said in 2012?) And when is the border secure? “It’s secured when Texas tells Washington it’s secured—not when Washington tells Texas it’s secure.”

He’s headed the Education committee in the state senate, and is clear on education issues. (I know he’s been educated along the way on homeschooling.) Like Abbott, his wife has also been a teacher.

He’s for lower property taxes—so we don’t forever “rent” our own property from the state of Texas.

Unlike his relatively good predecessor, Dan Patrick promises, “I’m not going to put democrats in leadership of committees.” Yay!

He points out how oil and gas is an example of free enterprise working. In Midland, he says McDonald’s pays a bonus to attract workers. That’s what happens when there’s full employment and opportunity.

He’s traveled the state in this campaign, with some 1000 meetings. With no entourage. He has had a chauffeur. And a bodyguard. “She’s the same person, my wife of 39 years.”

He has been effective in the state senate. At age 63 he has no aspirations beyond being Lieutenant Governor. I believe him when he says he wants to serve, because I’ve seen that’s what he’s done consistently. 

 

Rand Paul—Senator from Kentucky

Rand Paul isn’t a candidate for anything in Texas. However, he was born and raised in Texas (son of former US Representative Ron Paul). He grew up in Lake Jackson, south of Houston, and went to Baylor, where he met his wife, a Kentuckian, which is how he ended up there. There’s a possibility he might run for president in 2016. So he came home for the convention. 

Rand Paul has the talent of talking to a room of 8,000 people as if he’s in your back yard having a casual chat over barbecue. He’s fun to listen to. And on ideas I like him better than his father. Still, there are things I disagree with him on, as I do with many libertarians. But he’s fairly careful about how he says things, and I believe we could occasionally disagree without rancor. There are so many things to agree on.

Senator Rand Paul

He starts out, “I’m a little annoyed with Obama right now.” He refers to the illegal release of five Taliban higher-ups from Guantanamo. He referred to the marine who accidentally crossed the border into Mexico and is being imprisoned there, Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi. He suggested it would be a better idea to trade five democrats for the marine—“John Kerry, Hilary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi….” Later, news media attacked him for this suggestion. He said to lighten up; it was a joke. “Except for Nancy Pelosi; I was serious about her.”

He talked about how difficult it is to cut even the rate of growth of government spending. During the shutdown, he said everyone in government was “asked to list who was essential and unessential on our staff. So I asked my staff to get together the list from the EPA, the IRS…” Those entities listed 90% of their staffs as unessential. Still, they manipulate things so that the unessential get paid while not working. “The government could be shut down completely, and it costs more than when it’s open.”

He’s good with examples. “One woman was paid for not working—over $100,000 a year—and hadn’t even clocked in in five years.” They didn’t fire her.

One government employee was discovered to be downloading port six hours a day. He wasn’t fired.

There was John Biele, a senior EPA official, who collected a salary for work he didn’t do—for 13 years, getting $150,000, whether he showed up or not, and the time he didn’t show up totaled 2 ½ years. He told the EPA that when he wasn’t in, it was because he was on secret assignment with the CIA. It took more than a decade before that TV script story was questioned, and someone called the CIA and found out he’d faked the story.

“But the democrats say there’s nowhere we can cut.” So he offers help. There’s $100 billion in the budget unaccounted for. A simple hiring freeze, allowing for attrition, would save $6 billion a year. We pay $20 billion a year keeping up unoccupied federal buildings. We pay $20 billion in aid to corporations—an average of $200 million a year to each company receiving corporate welfare.

He admits that the 2/3 of mandatory social spending, like social security, requires some difficult choices. But he suggests we raise the retirement age by 1-2 months a year for 30 years. He offered this solution, and asked the democrats to “work with us, do the right thing.” The response? They accused him of “pushing grandma off a cliff.”

A third of the budget goes to the military. During the shutdown, the president was afraid you might not notice—“so he had to make you notice.” He closed down private monuments. One great image was of WWII veterans cutting through the barrier tape.

He told of one ridiculous example: Twiggy the waterskiing squirrel. There’s $3 million in the budget for this. Now, compared to the whole budget, when they’re saying we can’t cut anything—we find Twiggy? It turns out, Twiggy the waterskiing squirrel is used to promote American walnuts in Spain. “I’ve got a suggestion,” Paul says; “If you’ve got a walnut farm, pay for your own d**n advertising.” When it came to a vote, Twiggy the Squirrel funding passed 320-90. It’s not just a democrat problem.

He took a moment to refer to the “Old McDonald’s Farm” of scandals, “here a scandal, there a scandal, everywhere a scandal.”

Benghazi means the death of four Americans. The ambassador had spent six months asking for reinforcements. Specific request: a DC-3, a 50-year-old plane, just in case they needed to evacuate. Hillary said no. They ended up begging Libyans to let them use a plane to evacuate.

Three days after turning down the Libyan ambassador’s request, she approved $100,000 for changing (I think he said) carpet in the Italian embassy. She approved $650,000 for Facebook ads. Later that season the Brussels embassy got $100,000 for landscaping, and $5 million went for crystalware.

In August 2012, Ambassador Stevens sent a cable to Hillary asking if she’d read his requests for help. She said no. “That is dereliction of duty.”

“To win nationally, we need to be a bigger, better, bolder pary. We need to keep on message and be bolder with our message.” There’s that “be bold” theme of so many speeches.

He reminded us Reagan was dramatically, boldly, for cutting taxes—to create jobs. We bring new people into the party when we speak that truth.

He said we’ll keep on emphasizing the Second Amendment—“Don’t give up on that. But also the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and First Amendments.”

There more examples—of abuses of freedom, and why we need the protections. And also ways to address those things in Congress. Here was one not likely to pass: “Cut congressional pay in half—have them there only half as much. And institute a work requirement.” He also said, “There’s no monopoly on knowledge in Washington.”

He ended with that bold theme again: “Bigger, bolder, better—with optimism.” He used a memorable image for this a quote historian David McCullough has used. It’s from painter Robert Henri, about the joyful, bold way he paints. Rand Paul changes it slightly for the political party: “Proclaim our message like a man coming over the hill singing.”

I believe a bold, clear, uncompromising message is many times better than defensive, compromising off-message talk. Let’s defend the Constitution, let people know why we believe in it, show why it makes better opportunities for everyone. Conserving the Constitution has so much more to offer humanity than any other political path. That bold talk is something I really like about Texas.