Three-Point Shots, Vol. 2, No. 17: December 20, 2024

In which I question the integrity of Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton and admire the serenity of Robert Frost.

Dec 20, 2024

Welcome to another edition of Three-Point Shots, a part of my Life Its Ownself Substack page. If you enjoy reading it, please 1) hit the Like button, 2) subscribe to the Life Its Ownself, and 3) share it with others in the link below. Comments are welcome and encouraged.

But first, your moment of Zen … the encroaching night frames the Christmas tree at my home as Venus watches overhead. Marathon, Texas, December 19, 2024.

Friday, December 20, 2024

Quote of the Day: “I got a billion dollars in my pocket to do it. I will go in and buy it all.”
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, on his plan to use taxpayer money to make a donation to the incoming Trump administration

Howdy, folks. We are in the middle of the holiday season. There’s always a little craziness involved in these times, but this year came a bumper crop. The GOP Congress cannot figure out who is in charge, something that makes Donald Trump very unhappy. As a result, by the time you read this the federal government may be shut down.

Texas Monthly named Jerry Jones the Bum Steer of the Year, and brings the receipts. The runner-up, Ken Paxton, is no prize, either. (More on him below.)

Say what you want about Texas government – and I’m sure you do – its mediocre leadership, misplaced priorities and mendacious dissembling to the people look good to go for the imminent legislative session. Vouchers, of course, will be the hot-button issue of the session. Before that can happen, though, the Texas House needs to elect a new Speaker, and everyone wants to tell them who it should be.

1. Dan Patrick: Arrogance Exceeded Only By Corruption

Texas Lite Guv Dan Patrick went on the Laura Ingraham circle jerk the other night to announce that he was planning to buy up border wall materials that the Biden Administration was selling as surplus and donate it to the incoming Trump Administration for its border wall projects.

In case you’re confused: No, Dan Patrick is not a billionaire who is capable to blowing a chunk of his fortune on performative assholery. The “billion” he’s referring to is OUR MONEY – Texas taxpayer dollars he wants to repurpose as tribute to the new Orange Mad King.

By way of backstory, you may recall that Donald Trump, while running for office in 2016, promised that he would build a wall along the entire 1,945-mile (3.145 km) border between the USA and Mexico. He even announced an innovative financing mechanism: Mexico would pay for the whole thing.

Reality proved challenging for the Trump Administration’s dreams of a border wall. First off, a former president of Mexico told Trump what he could do with his wall, and things went downhill from there. When all was said and done, much more was said than done. By 2021, 435 miles (732 km) of fencing was built, of which only 49 miles (79 km) covered new territory.

The Biden Administration, understandably, was less enthusiastic about a border wall,, with the result that by 2023 there were lots of surplus materials and it was looking to sell them as government surplus. This is how your tax dollars are used accountably.

Meanwhile, the incoming Trump team is all on board with starting the border wall project up again, mainly because it owns the libs and they are terrified of their own voters.

What, frankly, pisses me off (this time) about Dan Patrick is his arrogant claim that he has a billion dollars to spend on an inauguration gift for Donald Trump. That is Texas taxpayer money he is talking about, but Little Danny Goeb seems to think he can do whatever he wants with it. This is the textbook definition of corruption.

Texas taxpayers, meet me at Camera Three:

H.L. Mencken famously said that “democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." You’ve been voting for Republicans for 30 years now, and you’re getting it good and hard. School funding has flatlined despite rapid enrollment growth, and teachers have not had a pay raise in years. Rural hospitals are closing, creating multi-county health care ‘deserts.’ The state’s medically uninsured population is the highest in the nation, but Texas refuses to participate in Medicaid expansion. This means your tax dollars are subsidizing healthcare in the 40 states (and District of Columbia) that participate. Meanwhile, pregnant Texans have to go to other states to get the health care they need, while our Attorney General looks for ways to punish the doctors and clinics in other states that care for these Texans.
I know you support, or at least passively accede to, many of these policies. But how many toes do you need to blow off before you stop shooting?

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I know you support, or at least passively accede to, many of these policies. But how many toes do you need to blow off before you stop shooting?

2. Ken Paxton Seeks to Extend Legal Losing Streak

As we all know, there is no performative gesture, cheap shot, or punch down on some helpless person that Disgraced Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will not enthusiastically embrace. Let’s turn to the estimable Jessica Valenti and her Abortion, Every Day newsletter for the latest (it’s still early, though) outrage:

In this case, Paxton is suing Dr. Margaret (Maggie) Carpenter, founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine (ACT) and a provider with Aid Access. He’s seeking civil penalties of “no less than $100,000 for each violation of the law.”
Paxton claims that Carpenter provided abortion medication to a Texas resident “that ended the life of an unborn child and resulted in serious complications for the mother, who then required medical intervention.”

As Valenti notes, the “serious complications” issue is a red herring – the woman had bleeding, as is often the case after a pharmaceutically-induced abortion, but it was not life-threatening.

In any case, New York and other enlightened states have abortion shield laws that protect health care providers from legal harassment from … less enlightened states. “Less enlightened states” is in the dictionary, with a picture of Texas next to it.

Paxton will continue to press the lawsuit, of course; it’s the kind of red meat his voters love. And it may set up the kind of conflict of laws battle that will end up at the Supreme Court where, sad to say, Paxton’s chances may be pretty good.

3. What the Hell Is Going On with the Speaker’s Race?

A person in a suit holding a gavel

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As you recall, there’s been a determined effort to recast the ideological composition of the Texas House Republican caucus, driven by two ignoble motives:

1) The willingness of the pro-voucher industry, including out-of-state plutocrats, to spend ginormous sums to get rid of recalcitrant, pro-public school GOP Representatives;

2) The fatwa declared by Ken Paxton against House Republicans who’d voted to impeach him, after Senate Republicans ignored the evidence to acquit him.

Target Numero Uno is this effort was Speaker Dade Phelan, against whom millions was spent in an unsuccessful primary challenge (by a guy named Money, get it?). Phelan read the handwriting on the wall and announced he would not run for another term. Meanwhile, the GOP Caucus fixated on a previously-ignored state GOP platform plank that said it should elect a Speaker from its own ranks who a) would not give any chairmanships to Democrats, and b) would get his^[1] 76 votes from Republicans only.

That has proven impossible so far. There are two people competing for the job, and neither seems close to getting 76 GOP-only votes. Which means – for now at least – that the successful Speaker candidate will be elected with a combination of Republican and Democratic votes.

The question is, how little do the Speaker hopefuls have to offer to how few Democrats to get to 76? And how much can they promise before their own supporters turn on them for talking to the Democrats at all?

This is not the way Speaker elections are supposed to work. For one thing, the House has had a bipartisan leadership coalition for at least 40 years. Second, a Speaker’s election is supposed to be sacrosanct among the members. No outside interference. Certainly not from the parties, which is why the current GOP chair’s threats to send direct mail into some members’ districts is alarming. From our friends at the Quorum Report:

Republican Party of Texas Chairman Abraham George spent some of his weekend informing certain Texas House GOP members that the party plans to send direct mail into their districts about the race for speaker. So far, all the districts where the party intends to do this are represented by lawmakers supporting Calendars Chair Dustin Burrows to be the House’s presiding officer.

This is not, as they say, cricket. Imagine a scenario where GOP members have hard feelings over being intimidated by their own party and Democratic members have no incentive to help the body achieve its goals. It’s starting to sound like Congress.

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