Texas Progressives wonder about Jim Schutze, Julian Castro, Royce West, Ken Paxton, Jay Inslee, Mount Vernon

An interesting people-centered week here in the Roundup. Several people engaging in questionable thought processes or actions all at the same time in the last week. And, that's not to mention ongoing nuttery over the Seth Rich conspiracy theory.

With that, dive in and see what I'm talking about in this week's issue.

Dallas

Jim Schutze says the city of Dallas is probably going to lose another battle over Jim’s Car Wash in South Dallas.

Unfortunately, Schutze also continues to be a personal PR agency for Amber Guyger, apparently willfully ignoring her family social media photos, as when he claims there’s nothing to connect her fatal shooting of Botham Jean to race. I like about 90 percent of what Big Jim says, but when he’s wrong, he’s WAY wrong. And I'm pretty sure he's seen those pix before. He also doesn't discuss that courts have refused changes of venue on more serious, more legitimate grounds (whether true or not). This is not to say that Guyger's act necessarily was racial, it is to say Schutze's wrong when he makes his blanket statement that it was not.

Robot baggage handlers are getting a trial at DFW Airport.


Houston

Dos Centavos is keeping an eye on what local Houston officials are saying about the ICE raids.

Juanita recognizes Rep. Gene Wu for his words and actions on the ICE raids.

Texas politics

Kenny Boy Paxton and Gov. Strangeabbott can lose state as well as federal lawsuits. A state district judge has dismissed most the lawsuit they filed against San Antonio's sanctuary city stance. If that holds on appeal, we'll have all sorts of fallout.

As Royce West continues to play Hamlet / get fellated by Gromer Jeffers and Kuff, Latin@ activists, apparently ignoring or not caring about Sema Hernandez (I'm going to have an update on her soon) want Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez to run for Senate. Patrick Svitek, like Gromer Jeffers, and the mainly NOT Latin@s Svitek's story cites, apparently willfully can't find the name of Sema Hernandez with both hands. And she's not the only Hispanic who's already officially filed. Rather, if some of these people have serious ties to Bob O'Rourke, they're more fauxgressives than progressives.

At the Texas Observer, Michael Barajas calls out Julián Castro for turd polishing his record as San Antonio mayor, especially on housting. Schutze's done the same on his record as HUD secretary.

Off the Kuff wrote about the Obamacare hearing at the Fifth Circuit.

Christopher Hooks notes the egregious hypocrisy of Chip Roy and Ted Cruz when it comes to executive authority and the rule of law.

Better Texas Blog has the crazy idea that our state should treat asylum-seeking migrant families with respect and dignity.

Better Texas Blog has the crazy idea that our state should treat asylum-seeking migrant families with respect and dignity.

Texana

The newly football-recrazed folks of Mount Vernon, Texas, are lying to themselves first, and the general public second, if they really believe that their new Old Ball Coach, Baylor’s sexual abuse enabling Art Briles, was “clearly wronged.” What's clear is that former D(r)unca(ke)nville High and KU hoops star Greg Ostertag is politician enough about it to be mayor of Mount Vernon.

The Rivard Report commemorates 80 years of Planned Parenthood in San Antonio.

White supremacists are stepping up college recruiting, says Silas Allen at the Dallas Observer.

RIP to the talented but troubled Rip Torn.

My own RIP to the interesting but hypocritical and nutty Ross Perot.

National

SocraticGadfly says the most egregiously wrong ruling of this Supreme Court term was not the gerrymandering case but seven justices, including two liberals, hating First Amendment religious freedoms.

Speaking of, Gadfly also says RIP John Paul Stevens, a "librul" only by Rehnquist and Roberts Court modern SCOTUS standards.

Border Patrol agents speaking candidly tell Pro Publica that the inhumanity in the detention camps has become ever more accepted. One military veteran says its growing acceptance "is kind of like torture in the army."

Brains updates his Dems 2020 with kind words about Nate's Liver, I mean Nate Silver.

Beto-mania vanishes as more people learn the truth about Bob the Knob. (He's too downtrending to qualify for the header this week, even.)

Egberto Willies wonders if Jay Inslee and/or his staff have some racial issues. Note: Sea-Tac is definitely white majority, and even the core, King County, is white majority by several percentage points against all other minorities combined, with blacks behind both Asians and Hispanics. And, outstate Washington, outside of Hispanics concentrated in farm areas, is highly white.

Jeff St. Clair of Counterpunch gets it right on left-wingnut hawking of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory.:

"I think Julian Assange's lowest moment was his inculcation of the Seth Rich conspiracy in some of the more credulous precincts of the Left. The strangest part of the affair is that if the preposterous Rich conspiracy had proved true, it meant that Assange would have outed his source."

Couldn't have said it better myself, Jeff, even as I'm on a Twitter thread debate about Rich.

In addition to driving while black and cooking while black, we now have policing while black.

Paradise in Hell muses about Vice Presidents.

RIP Ross Perot, the man and the myth

A conservative billionaire decided that his business acumen qualified him to run for president. His signature issue became opposing free trade deals and contrasting free and "fair" trade. As part of that, he was an economic nationalist, not worried about how trade deals affected workers elsewhere. He believed that traditional heavy industrial manufacturing was key to America.

He also promised to balance the federal budget, including by cutting Social Security.

He was an ardent hyper-patriot in the sense of confusing support for military missions with patriotism. Along with that, he was originally anti-gun control, though he moved leftward.

And, he was, and remained, an ardent War on Drugs cold warrior.

And, he did much better than mainstream media punditry expected.

The year was 1992 and the man was Ross Perot.

Other than not sexually assaulting women, and not pandering to a Religious Right that was not as powerful or self-conceited as today, there's really not that much to distinguish Perot from Donald Trump now, is there?

And, that all IS Ross Perot.

He became a billionaire through EDS getting government Medicare processing contracts. And, as National Review notes, was also a hypocrite on lobbying and carve-outs related to that. And, as Gerald Posner notes in "Citizen Perot," he also was getting inflated profit margins, technically working for Blue Cross — a Medicare contractor — while also running EDS at the Medicare start-up time, ie, a big conflict of interest, not disclosing contract details, and other huge lacks of business ethics, big hypocrisy in a man so morally prudish on sex and drinking in the Navy, at EDS and beyond.

To the best of my knowledge, he never talked about how American Big Ag, via NAFTA, drove many small Mexican farmers out of business, leaving them little recourse but trying to cross the border.

He was a conspiracy theorist on POW-MIA issues, believing Vietnam had a secret stash of them squirreled away, even while grifting to be its "business ambassador" to the US. Vox notes he beleived in other conspiracies; who can forget the "Bush is spying on me" claim? That's not to mention the actual fact that he spied on the Bushes in the 1980s and flip-flopped on some issues in the 1992 campaign.

NAFTA was halfway like a blind hog finding an acorn for him.

And yet, Bernie Sanders (or staff running his @SenSanders Twitter account) can still fellate "Ross is Boss."

Or maybe Bernie's doing this deliberately, as a semi-dogwhistle.

In any case, the divergence between man and myth on Sanders in 2019/20 sometimes is not much different than 2015/16.

I will give Perot credit for his take on the Constitution. He noted it was written in an era far different than today. At the same time, he never indicated he would challenge originalist judicial interpretations. He was pro-choice and supported gay rights — eventually.

==

In Texas, his influence was much bigger, and generally better.

No-pass, no-play was huge. It partially knocked the props out from under "football is god" parents and coaches. His backing for other educational reforms was also important, above all the 22-1 student-teacher ratio in elementary schools, though he later stood by when it was largely gutted. And, the national newspaper of Texas, the Texas Trib, failed to mention both.

==

I offer more yet from my re-reading review of Citizen Perot.

Citizen Perot: His Life and Times by Gerald Posner

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Call him H. Ross Hypocrite, and an even bigger hypocrite than I realized.

Perot railed against federal budget deficits in particular, and the federal government in general, during his 1992 presidential run.

But, not only had he become a billionaire off EDS getting major Medicare processing contracts, which I knew, but Posner shows how he was actually working for Blue Cross at the time, a no-no, but was taking unacceptable profit margins, and also fought hard against revealing anything in those contracts.

That leads to H. Ross Hypocrite part 2. The man was no more a straight shooter than the mythical Schmuck Talk Express, John McCain, nor than more typical career politicians. Like Donald Trump, though, versus those politicians, he lied more bluntly and perhaps while batting even fewer eyelashes.

H. Ross Hypocrite part 3 is about his biography vs reality. This lover of all things military tried to get out of his mandatory naval service early because he was a moral prude to the point of being a prig. He then tried to cover up that attempted opt-out history.

H. Ross Hypocrite part 4 gets back to why he ran in 1992. Current (of then) and former EDS staff told the "pros" like Jordan and Rollins that this man who was attacking budget deficits didn't even understand budgets that well in the business world.

Beyond that, one other issue stands out more. That's Perot's being a sucker for a wide variety of conspiracy theories, and con men and grifters promoting them.

Beyond the scope of this book, could he have gotten elected in 1992 if he hadn't done his initial drop-out, or even with it, if he hadn't done his nutty "Bush is spying on me" late October 1992 interview?

Quite possibly. And, as an independent, not a party candidate, might have been even worse in some ways than Trump.



View all my reviews

Where's Ross Perot at on Texas state budget?

And, I mean Ross Sr., as in "Ross is Boss" from the 1992 presidential election, not Ross Jr. of Alliance Airport and Dallas sports background.

As longer-term Texas residents know, Ross Sr. was a spearhead behind the Texas Legislature's passage of the 22-1 student-teacher ratio for elementary school classrooms.

The ratio is almost certain to go by the boards if the Texas House, not Senate, gets its way on the future budget.

Well, I don't know where Ross is at, but 22-1 co-spearheader Tom Luce says it's no longer needed.

At the start of this year's session of the Lege, he warned of the money it would cost.

Yet, he says class size is still important, and other than finances, can offer no good reason for junking it. Here he is:



Ross himself appears to be emitting crickets from his mouth and nothing else, though.

David Brooks yearns for Ross Perot

Brooks, though, as is often the case, in his lust-crush for a new Perot to arise, doesn't let facts get in the way.

Namely, while excoriating Democrats for rejecting budget cuts and the GOP for rejecting tax increases, he conveniently forgets ...

That Perot himself never proposed a tax increase to narrow the deficit.

That the solutions Perot did propose were largely simplistic.

Etc., etc.