The Taste of Sour Grapes, The Scent of Barnyard Sunshine

One of the best things about the buzzword “Climate Change” is how it succinctly sums up its own ideological battleground. Take Houston for instance: where local government is nervous about the climate, and their state-level colleagues are equally so about change. 

The latest fracas between the two involves the Texas Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Houston’s homegrown clean air provisions. According to Naveena Sadasivam’s recent article for the Texas Observer, "Texas Supreme Court Blocks Houston Air Quality Ordinance," Houston’s regulatory zeal has been much harrumphed by commercial interests since a 2007 overhaul of the city’s clean air ordinance. Among the complaints voiced were gripes about the collecting of fees from local businesses to police industrial polluters, and that the new changes to the ordinance left business owners in a pickle between inconsistent state and local regulations.

That latter part is especially true no matter which way you cut it, which is why the Supreme Court’s majority ruling to strike down the ordinance’s amendments isn’t really driving up my outrage meter. No, I think it is a perfectly satisfactory concession to business owners, big or small, that they should not have to play Calvinball with any regulatory system. Like the saying goes, “Rules is rules,” and consistency is kind of the whole point of regulation in the first place.

No, what irks me about the decision is all the backslapping and lip service about supporting small business, particularly from the Governor's office (No surprise there. I haven’t had anything nice to say about a Governor of Texas since Richards). According to Sadasivam, Abbott himself filed an amicus brief on behalf of a coalition of companies contesting Houston’s regulations. In this brief, Abbott stated what was really at the heart of the matter: “small businesses.” How small are the businesses in question? Well, that particular coalition includes such Mom-n-Pop operations as Dow Chemical and ExxonMobil. You know, just your average Main Street boutiques. 

Also, when can we be done with this: Texans lack something (women’s healthcare, clean air regulation), someone steps up to the plate to provide that service (Planned Parenthood, Houston’s clean air ordinance), State government throws a hissyfit and denies the service (That Hissyfit, This Hissyfit) while simultaneously citing a less-than-mediocre State sanctioned alternative (Texas Women’s Health Program, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality), and then, finally, Gov. Abbott ends the day by kissing a picture of pro-business hero Leopold II before bed. 

Ok, I obviously made the last one up. I was thinking of using Henry Ford instead, but I’m starting to wonder if State lawmakers would just peg him as a socialist small business owner. 

Dissenting Voices on Minimum Wage

In today’s ultra-partisan style of political discourse, I find it refreshing to come across issues that are simply too complex to be apart of any party’s cut-and-dry litmus test of political opinion. The minimum wage is, generously enough, just such an issue. Although it would seem simple enough (D’s: Yes! Living Wage!, R’s: No! Bootstraps Only!), I’ve come to find that my peers’ opinions concerning the minimum wage, regardless of political affiliation, are always more nuanced then expected.

Josh Nava, over at his blog nosce tuus imperium, provides a perfect example of this in his latest editorial “The problem, or lack thereof, with the minimum wage.” In his article, Nava expresses both support for the social safety net (in the form of welfare type programs), yet simultaneously shares his skepticism towards expanding it via an increase in the minimum wage.  Nava cites the dissenting voices of the American Enterprise Institute and Congressional Budget Office in his argument, noting their predictions of stymied job growth and the latter institution’s proposal of earned income tax credit’s as a preferred alternative.
  

I find Nava’s argument commendable. Frankly, there are too few left-leaning voices with no sense of centrist-bred economic skepticism. That being said, I personally disagree. I find the matter to have greater social implications.

Raising of the minimum wage dignifies the impoverished workers who rely on it. Brishen Rogers, an Assistant Professor of Law at Temple University’s James E. Beasley School of Law, sums up my view on the matter in a 2014 article for Texas Law Review, stating “Minimum wage laws advance social equality, and do so better than direct transfers, in several ways. They increase workers’ wages, which are a primary measure of the social value of work; they alter workplace power relationships by giving workers rights vis-à-vis employers; and they require employers and consumers to internalize costs of higher wages rather than mediating all distribution through the state.”

Also, I believe the economic problems would remedy themselves. After all, this wouldn’t be our first time raising the minimum wage and feeling its effect on the economy. The egalitarian ethos behind such a move would benefit us much more as a society in the long run.

Still, I’m glad there are multiple voices in the discussion. That’s how political discourse should be.

Rogers, B. (2014). Justice at Work: Minimum Wage Laws and Social Equality. Texas Law Review, 92(6), 1543-1598.

Austin's Pride & Prejudice

Hubris: it’s an unfortunate part of all policy decisions, the misguided confidence that assumes whatever change affected is the singularly “correct” answer for all involved. Oftentimes, the consequences of this stubborn, single-mindedness are disastrous, but not irremediable. A politician or corporate executive may enact toxic policy without the feedback of any dissenting voices, but those voices will soon make themselves heard through a unified chorus of ‘I told you so”s calling for reform. 

Tragically, in the case of David Joseph, whose life was taken by an APD officer for the crime of streaking, there truly is no remedy. There is nothing the City of Austin or APD can do that will bring Joseph back to the family and community who cared for him. This is the deadly consequence of hubris, as it was hubris which took David’s life, and as it is hubris which continues to destroy Texan lives and socially stratify local police from their communities.

Outright critics of Black Lives Matter, many of which felt the need to comment on David’s case based on pure bile bias alone, would argue that it was hubris which brought David into his situation in the first place. Certainly, streaking through a neighborhood while intoxicated requires more than a smidgen of chutzpah. However, considering that, audacity aside, David’s act constituted as little more than a frat-boy prank, one must wonder why now-former APD officer Geoffrey Freeman felt that lethal force was necessary to subdue his suspect. In 1974, during the 46th academy awards, a streaker was made momentarily famous as he rushed nude across the stage while host David Niven quipped on his “shortcomings.” How would audiences react if Niven had shot the streaker dead in his tracks on the basis of feeling threatened?

I would thus submit that it is not David’s hubris that brought him to a tragic end, but officer Freeman’s. The only problem being that Freeman wasn’t working off of any loose cannon type hunch when he pulled the trigger, he was following his training. Yes, it would seem that despite the APD’s attempts to stem the flow of officer involved shootings through policy changes (including new SOP policy affecting how officers may approach heavily intoxicated suspects), there remains a culture in officer training that promotes a “shoot first, ask questions later” mentality. The academy instructor who trained Freeman, a fourteen year veteran of ten years training experience, has already been considered for reassignment after an interview with investigators in which he revealed his gung-ho philosophy on approaching suspects. He went on record to say that Freeman violated none of his training in the shooting of David Joseph, even going so far as to say “I can understand why he did that.” Again, just as a reminder, "that" means shooting an obviously unarmed, nude teenager.

This is why hubris is so cancerous in regards to policy. Officer Freeman thought he was in the right to shoot a naked, unarmed teenager, and didn’t bother considering whether he might be wrong in making his lethal decision. Why would he? He was trained by an academy instructor who possessed equal hubris in thinking every suspect must receive some type of aggressive action to ensure the officer's survival. Neither man allowed themselves to consider that they might have an outdated and dangerous view on policing. It is hubris all around that killed David Joseph, and which will continue to others if there is no systematic change in personality, not just policy.

It may be hard to accomplish, but for police chiefs scratching their heads as to why their community denigrates them as oppressive oligarchs, they may want to give it shot, rather than giving one to the next David Joseph.

Senator Nelson's New Motto: "Blah Blah Blah I Can't Hear You!"

Lize Burr, writing in a March 10, 2016 editorial for Burnt Orange Report titled “Why Keep Secrets About Texas Women’s Health?,” has found the poster child for transparency-phobic politicians in State Senator Jane Nelson, chairwoman of the Senate Finance Committee and master of ostrich-style sandbox tactics (so it would seem). 

The matter in question, as Burr describes it, began over Nelson’s ire directed at a study published by The New England Journal of Medicine. What about a medical study could cause her such distress? Well, this study in particular carries the title “Effect of Removal of Planned Parenthood from the Texas Women’s Health Program,” and its findings can be succinctly summed up by a sad face emoticon. According to the study, It would seem that shuttering up family planning programs across Texas might have created a strange anomaly where, if you can believe it, the women who relied on said programs might be negatively affected by their absence. 

Quite a shock… if you’re Senator Nelson. See, the honorable Senator seems upset by what’s missing from the study: a healthy dose of Texas GOP talking points. In particular, the line about how under the new Texas Women’s Health Program there are more providers available than ever before (which, if you remember from our last post, this argument’s validity was completely demolished by State Representative and career health administrator Donna Howard). Nelson is mostly unhappy that anything might be published which would make Planned Parenthood look like a needed service in Texas; bringing up the new Women’s Health Program is just a distracting gimmick to compliment her partisan sniping of NEJM.

Ms. Burr, a former president of the left-leaning Capitol Area Democratic Women, does not just claim that this is a petty partisan issue, but has done the reader a great service by following the trail of Senator Nelson’s ruffled feathers to prove her point. Pressing the question as to whether Senator Nelson used political pressure to force one of the study’s coauthors to suddenly retire (that being Dr. Rick Allgeyer, a now former employee of the Texas Health and Human Service Commission), Burr filed for public information regarding Senator Nelson’s emails concerning the study. Nelson, in response, has sought permission to deny releasing her emails. This has led Burr to confirm, as her blog’s liberal readers might already assume, that obfuscation is simply the name of the game in the debate over women’s healthcare in Texas.

It's sad, really, because these are the same people who talk about Voter ID laws and the need for transparency to "preserve integrity." If only Senator Nelson and her aisle-mates could have come up with a better attempt at smoke and mirrors, then I might have actually bought that line.

Rep. Howard's Pass at Pro-Planned Parenthood Persuasion

How does a Democrat lawmaker appeal to conservatives over an ideologically divisive topic? Make it about government spending. State Rep. Donna Howard's February 23rd editorial for The Austin American-Statesman, "Inconvenient truths in Texas women’s health care", employs just such a strategy: arguing that the latest round of anti-Medicaid and Planned Parenthood hysteria has only further modulated Texas's women's health programs for the worse, with a negative return on investment for taxpayers. It's easy to see why Howard is the one going to bat with this argument: she has been involved in nursing and healthcare her entire career, and is currently a member the House Appropriations Committee. Simply put, Howard has enough experience with healthcare and budgets to present a solid, bare-bones summary of the current fiasco. Contrasting the benefits of the pre-2011 system with its replacement, the over-sized but under-serving Texas Women's Health Program, she presses the point that all Texas has gained from the change is an increase in unintended pregnancies. Howard also highlights the current Healthy Texas Women Program: a Frankenstein mixture of it's DOA predecessors, and puts forth the hope that better family planning programs might end up in the new plan. Although she will probably get no sympathy from stringent pro-life social conservatives, her editorial does deserve some merit for its attempt at wooing more moderate conservatives to her side of the healthcare debate. Still, considering the back and forth ferocity over women's healthcare in Texas, she might as well be going over the top at the Somme with a cap-gun.

Federal Judge Won't Bail Out Paxton's Anti-Syrian Sentiments

The refugee-phobic maneuverings of the Texas government, spearheaded by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, have reached another cul-de-sac in the political process. As reported by The Austin American-Statesman, a federal judge on monday ruled against Paxton and Gov. Abbot's attempts to obstruct the federally mandated Syrian refugee resettlement program via the courts. In his ruling, U.S. District Judge David Godbey stated that the issue is not one to be decided by the judiciary, and further noted the irony that “Texas, perhaps the reddest of red states, asks a federal court to stick its judicial nose into this political morass, where it does not belong absent statutory authorization.” Kudos to Judge Godbey for calling out a gimmick when he see's it. It's doubtful that Paxton will let the matter rest, but it's nice to see that systematic xenophobia perhaps isn't as easy to pull off as it used to be. 

Greetings and salutations!