Posted on

84th Texas Lege must think guns need their full attention

Texas is a wonderful place. If you don’t believe it, just ask a Texan. Personally, I think The Lone Star state is a great one. I’ve lived for brief times elsewhere. For instance, I lived in Mississippi for 2 and a half years when I was stationed there in the Navy. I served aboard a warship for a year after that. No one ever pulled a gun on me and said I had to live in Texas. It was a decision that I made alone.

So bunches of Texans, myself included, will attest to the greatness of our home state. Thus, it baffles me how one of the most prominent topics shaping up for the biennial session of the Texas Legislature appears to be firearms — guns. That is guns both long and short, concealed or unconcealed, worn either on the inside or outside by both citizen and official, and even packed by paramedics and volunteer firefighters.

Looking at the early bills filed today — the 84th Legislature begins Jan. 1, 2015 — I found no less than 10 bills filed in the House and one in the Senate seeking much more freedom for those who carry guns. Now if you happen to think of Texas, one of the things that comes to mind is guns. Texans love their guns. So one might wonder how much freedom do Texans want when it comes to firearms?

Texas has had a concealed carry law for almost 20 years. The legislation — signed into law by then-Gov. George W. Bush — had a number of restrictions with it such as where handguns could and could not be carried. So-called “long guns,” such as rifles and shotguns” had no statewide prohibition as to how and when they were carried into the open.

Almost seven years ago an amendment to the gun laws almost silently became effective as to how, when and where handguns could be toted. The state had long had a “traveling rule” saying guns could be carried by unlicensed individuals if they happened to travel through several counties. This became expanded considerably with the 2007 amendment. People could now travel from their home and back with a handgun as long as it is concealed. No license needed. The person carrying had only to have the gun hidden from plain view and they could not belong to a criminal enterprise. “Okay, I don’t have a gun anywhere that you can see. I’m also not a member of the Bloods, I swear.”

Discontent by some gun enthusiasts over the carry law for long weapons heated up this year in Texas. Here in Beaumont, where I live, is one of the places where demonstrations were held by people walking down the streets carrying their rifles, along with their kids slinging rifles, in the open.

It seems now the debate over how Texans carry weapons — either concealed or not concealed — has come full circle.

A push for openly carrying handguns has arisen and a black Republican lawmaker from East Texas has filed bills which would allow open carrying of pistols. Rep. James White, a former Army infantry officer and teacher from rural Tyler County, has filed HB 164 which changes the concealed carry law to include carrying a handgun openly.

North Central Texan Rep. Jonathan Strickland, a former community college student and pest control salesman who describes himself as a “Conservative Republican,” helps neatly trim the legal edges of both open and concealed debate. His HB 195 would abolish the offense of “Unlawfully Carrying a Weapon.” This would apparently also include legalizing illegal knives and clubs.

The pre-filed bills also broaden the places and circumstances where weapons may be carried. A curious bill filled by freshman Republican Rep. Ken King, an oil and gas service owner from the Panhandle-South Plains area, allows open carry by some of those issued concealed carry permits such as retired law enforcement officers. The bill adds, however, the authority for handguns to be allowed for “certain emergency services personnel” who operate within a county with less than 50,000 people.

Now I am not certain what King’s bill, HB 353, means. Is he talking of allowing volunteer EMS and fire personnel in counties with less than 50,000 to carry pistols openly? With some quick figures I put together using the U.S. Census database, I would estimate that about we are talking about 80 percent of the 254 Texas counties. That would include a lot of armed volunteer firefighters and EMS folks.

What is wrong with arming volunteer firefighters? That is partly a question that has hovered over the fire service for many years. The question has gone back at least for a half-century or more, back to the days when Southern firefighters were shown on national TV news turning their hoses on those protesting civil rights. This may also have caused injuries or even death for those “firemen” who later tried to extinguish the too many blazes set during the race riots of the late 1960s across the U.S.

Many larger, professional, fire departments later recognized the danger of their being used as a tool of the police. This especially was true once firefighters became the most logical choice for delivering emergency medical services. Here is an example I was given while training as a rookie firefighter. Let’s say you have a medical call. It turns out there is a patient overdosing on heroin or another drug. The EMT needs information about what the patient was doing prior to the emergency to properly treat and maybe save the person. If the patient could say anything, upon seeing an armed medic, he might not disclose that he ran up a bunch of junk in his veins. Such a scenario also is used in the battle over fire departments and so-called “public safety agencies.” The latter are cross-trained as cops and do all three jobs as cop, EMT and firefighter. Some places it works. Others it fails.

I know the zealots want zero restrictions on guns. No regulation whatsoever are wanted. As much as I enjoy target shooting with both long guns and pistols, I believe moderation in all things. I say that now, but I mean it with weapons. I once thought handguns that were openly carried was the way to go. I no longer think so. I think too many complications are in the way of that working. The bills advocating open carry and these other bills filed for 2015 in Texas, they need watching, closely.

Posted on

Local football game will be interesting for wrong reasons

Tonight one of the most interesting high school football games in the country will be played literally down the road — about two miles — from me. Unfortunately, it will not be interesting in a positive way.

You see, one of the top teams in its class in Texas will play arguably one of the worst, in a playoff match. The team that makes it, sadly, interesting is 0-10. That’s right. It has a 0-10 record this season and makes the playoffs. That is because there are only four teams in its district and the school’s classification allows for four playoff spots per district. And it just gets worse. The Spartans of Houston Scarborough High School also have an unenviable 57-game losing streak.

The Goliath to the Spartans’ David is West Orange-Stark. It is a “football powerhouse” — to put it in trite sports-speak — for its division. This is despite the Mustangs have twice been beaten in non-district games.

The WO-S losses came from a school in a larger division and another from a smaller division, the latter is my high school alma mater as a matter of fact. Both teams are ranked in their respective Top 10 in the same year-end poll.

That the Spartans are playing West Orange-Stark at the neutral site just two miles away from me has nothing to do with the hubbub that has landed Scarborough in nationwide media outlets this week. That the Spartans are meeting the Mustangs or any team at all, “that’s the ticket,” as long ago Saturday Night Live  Jon Lovitz character Tommy Flanagan “the Pathological Liar,” would say.

Such a scenario as that for the Spartans stirs up the hard-core fans who listen to sports talk radio and who despise that whole “Every kid gets a trophy” mindset. What really is behind the changes that added playoff spots at the same time divisions based upon school enrollment were reconfigured? One stated reason by the University Interscholastic League — the University of Texas System-run entity which governs public school athletic and academic competition — is the addition of divisions and added playoff spots will create a “perfect storm” of football that will let all championships take place on the same weekend. Well, kind of. The two Division 1A, or six-man football team championships, will happen the weekend before.

All 12, yes 12, playoff games will occur at the Jerry Jones palace to football, a.k.a. AT&T Stadium in Arlington.

 “Having all football championship games in one location truly makes for an amazing experience for the coaches, athletes and fans, and last year it lead to a Texas high school football attendance record,” said UIL Executive Director Dr. Charles Breithaupt, in a press release. “We are excited to return to AT&T Stadium and continue to improve on a world class event in the state of Texas.”

And I am sure that all the games on the Dallas Cowboys’ turf will make for one big Jerry-load of money to be spread around — likely from the UIL, the schools, TV, and not to mention Jerry Jones.

Some coaches argue that allowing more teams a playoff spot can be good for the team and the fans, that the kids can actually get better by competing in a playoff game. Maybe so.

Or, it could mean that teams such as Scarborough will add needlessly to its long string of defeats and be blown out of the water by ridiculous scoring margins.

I have kind of mixed feelings over the “every kid gets a trophy.” I won’t elaborate due to the complexity of my sentiments. But I think, regardless of the outcome of WO-S versus Scarborough tonight just down the street, the pitfalls can be many with four playoff spots in a district that ranges from four to seven or so. The quality of the game can change where lopsided scores are the norm and the confidence of young players sink instead of rises.

Lots of luck to the Mustangs and Spartans tonight. The wind chill right now is 37 F, pretty cold for late fall here in Southeast Texas. Dress warm!

Posted on

Accidents, believe it or not, do happen

There are no accidents.

I am not saying that sentence in the sense that everything happens for a reason. I do not know whether that is true or not true. No, I say there are no accidents, anymore. Once that was the case.

My body has scars that have been with me through much of my life.

Weird little first-finger top? It was an accident. Believe me!
Weird little first-finger tip? It was an accident. Believe me!

Take a look at this finger picture.

It’s my finger. And I’ll cry if I want to, cry if I want to, cry if I want to. You would cry too if it happened to you.

Well, if you were a 5-year-old inquisitive kid who just HAD to see if he could make the belt stop on my Father’s Shop Smith table saw. You might cry. Or maybe not. All I remember is all that freaking blood coming from the top of my finger.

 

And, naturally, I wasn’t supervised. Well, I was “supervised” by my older brother. He was 13 or 14 then. He was using a buffer-type attachment to the saw to buff his shoes. And what a pretty shine his shoes had. I guess. He was, after all, cutting the table saw off! I don’t think I got any blood on his shoes. Jeez, what a mess. My brother Robert passed away last April he was the one buffing his shoes. My brother John died about two months later. He was the one who, while visiting a cousin picked a shotgun from up off a rack and decided to do some remodeling of our cousin’s home. He missed me, the child standing on the other side of the wall, by not very much. Of course, my brothers’ recent deaths had nothing to do with what child safety advocates today would be doing flips over. Take it easy everyone! These were accidents. Nothing but accidents. Parents with five boys cannot be five places at once! “Lib, you take those two and I’ll take these three,” I could hardly imagine my Pop saying to my Momma. “We’ll put a rope around them all.”

No they couldn’t do that. If it was today they’d end up on the 6 o’clock news for ropin’ the kids. But Holy Moses Lincoln-Mercury! Whatever happened to accidents?

An interesting aside. The belt almost severed the top of my finger. It was just hanging by very thin skin. My doctor cleaned it thoroughly. Then he put the top of my finger back on my index where it belonged. Nary a stitch was used. And my finger grew back, rather ugly. But it grew back. I can still smell the hydrogen peroxide the doctor flooded my finger with that Sunday afternoon.

Up in the East Texas Pineywoods near the place where I grew up, a man driving a tractor-trailer the other day ran into the back of a stopped school bus. The 72-year-old Louisiana man who was driving the pickup reportedly dozed off for a split second and struck the Kirbyville school bus. Maybe a half-dozen students were taken to the hospital though none were seriously hurt. It was said the gentleman driving the truck went to the hospital to check on the kids. One of those commenting on the story on local media said one of the kids the man went to check on was his daughter and the father had a lot of empathy for the driver, who reportedly was told to leave.

A number of people were apparently outraged that state troopers filed felony injury to a child charges on the driver. A felony charge! The 72-year-old could be sent away for up to two years in prison if convicted. And why was this? Was the driver drinking? No, said the troopers. Was he on druuuggggssss? No. No. The man nodded off. Has that ever happened to anyone before?

There’s a meme that has gone around Facebook asking mostly us Boomers how on Earth did we ever survive as children? Our parents let us stand up in the seat with no seat belts and car seats were as foreign as tofu back then. Why my parents, let us boys ride in the back of our pickup truck all the way from East Texas to Houston and back one time. How dare they? And we just loved it! And we loved them.

We’ve come to a point in the road where the concept of “an accident” has gone the way of riding our bikes all over town as kids and coming home on hot summer nights when it turned dark. There is nothing wrong with safety and saneness and all of those “s” words. But having an ogre in every story seems as if it is a coping mechanism for the insecure. No we shouldn’t tear down our fences and let the whole world’s kids play in our swimming pools unattended. Yes, we have car seats and seat and lap belts. And we should use them.

We also need to realize that someone might be to blame when something bad happens and some folks may not. We have to realize that there are accidents. And that they happen and sometimes we just can’t do anything about it.

Posted on

Republicans won Tuesday night. At least some did, while others lost big.

The national media has seemingly examined this mid-term General Election ad nauseum. Some say it is a referendum on President Obama while others believe that it was simply a matter of the turnout being limited to old white guys. Hey, I resemble that remark, since I just turned 59!

Whatever the reasoning for more “reds” than “blue,” the elections on specific issues and issue-oriented candidacy seem more difficult to grasp when one puts aside the Republican congressional majority and my entire state of Texas once again electing GOP candidates. Oil and gas did not fare particularly well, for instance.

Voters in the San Francisco Bay-area city of Richmond rejected the council candidates on which oil giant Chevron spent millions to elect. Mayoral hopeful Tom Butts whipped Chevron candidate Nat Bates by a 16-percent margin. Chevron, the city’s largest employer, is facing a lawsuit filed by Richmond over a 2012 fire — one of three in recent years — that sent about 15,000 people to local hospitals for treatment. Chevron had sought candidates who would push for a favorable outcome for the oil and gas company. The company, through PACs spent millions on billboards and mailers for Tuesday’s elections. This led one professor to tell NPR that a favorable outcome should not be expected throwing money at a “no” election.

The issue of hydraulic fracturing — at least within the city limit of Denton, Texas — was also nixed. Here, some 58.6 percent of voters in this North Central Texas north of Fort Worth chose to keep so-called “fracking” out of the city. The oil and gas industry outspent opponents by more than a half-million dollars. The city, a college town that is home to the University of North Texas, sits within the 5,000-square-mile Barnett Shale, one of the nation’s largest natural gas fields.

This election in Denton is not the last word, at least when it comes to the powerful oil and gas industry in Texas. The state’s largest petroleum-related lobby and the Texas General Land Office — headed by Republican stalwart Jerry Patterson — have filed lawsuits against the city of Denton over the election results.

Republican State Rep. Phil King of Weatherford says he also plans to introduce legislation that would prohibit such bans as the one voters enacted in Denton.

Perhaps those oil and gas interests who found themselves beat in Richmond and Denton are just a single part of the Red State folks who were not as lucky as the candidates winning Tuesday evening. Outgoing Land Commissioner Patterson, himself defeated in the Republican primary as a lieutenant governor candidate, will turn his office over to a young Hispanic fellow named George P. Bush. This Bush is the son of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and is grandson of President George H.W. Bush and nephew of President George W. Bush. Figure out what all that means. Or maybe, one should read it and weep.

Although one might get the idea that this writer is anti-oil and gas, such an assertion would prove wrong. I own minerals that I would love someone to drill or, even to just lease. The latter usually brings me more money than the former since I do not own vast minerals. I don’t agree large petrochemical companies such as Chevron who perhaps derives more income from overseas interests, should push around cities with their money. If they have that much freaking money, send some of it my way.

As for fracturing, there is the distinct possibility that it is causing earth tremors, particularly in areas of East Texas. That cannot be good. Neither is it good some of the unknown about what fracturing can do to underground resources such as our water. The industry needs to give a s**t first about quality of life instead of the immediate petro dollars it will receive from buyers around the world.

Perhaps I am preaching to the choir. But the distinction is that this choir members makes a little, very, very little, off oil and gas. And though my opinion means nothing to those operators who drill in my tiny mineral interests, my voice along with those in Richmond and Denton can mean a lot when we get together. It is something the oil and gas industry needs to think about. Although that is probably just a pipe dream. When industries spend millions to influence a local election outcome, that spells greed and associated with it is tank trucks full of arrogance.

 

 

Posted on

Young cartel leader gets his initial proceedings in federal court

One never knows whose path you might cross. For instance, 23-year-old Mexican national Juan Francisco Saenz- Tamez was on a leisurely shopping trip a couple of weeks ago in Edinburg, Texas, when he ran into federal agents who promptly arrested him. Saenz-Tamez wasn’t just some day shopper from across the border though. No, through supposed hard work as a Mexican version of a rags-to-riches Horatio Alger character, U.S. law enforcement agents say the Camargo, Tamaulipas, resident Saenz-Tamez heads the Gulf Cartel. The organization is allegedly one of the most violent of the Mexican drug smuggling gangs.

“Juan Francisco Saenz-Tamez became the head of the Gulf Cartel following the 2013 arrest of former leader Mario Ramirez-Trevino,” said DEA Administrator Michele M. Leonhart, in a press release from the U.S. Justice Department. “He moved steadily up the cartel ranks, working as a lookout, record keeper, plaza boss, and finally its leader. Thanks to the quick actions of DEA and our local partners, we were able to identify and safely arrest Saenz-Tamez while he was in the United States.  He oversaw much of the violence and bloodshed that has plagued Mexico and DEA is pleased he will face justice in the United States.”

The alleged drug kingpin found himself yesterday inside a courtroom in the Jack Brooks Federal Building and Courthouse in the town where I reside, Beaumont, Texas. The press release from Eastern District of Texas U.S. Attorney John Bales said Saenz-Tamez was transferred from the Rio Grande Valley to Southeast Texas to appear before U.S. Magistrate Zach Hawthorne for an initial hearing as well as for proceedings that determined he should be detained until trial.

A grand jury in September 2013 indicted Saenz-Tamez. He is charged with conspiracy with intent to distribute cocaine, conspiracy with intent to distribute marijuana, and conspiracy to launder money. He faces a sentence of from 10 years to life in federal prison if convicted.

Sources said a number of federales and perhaps those from other Mexican and U.S. law enforcement agencies were in town to see for themselves that the wunderkind criminal leader was caught and on the first step toward a long career in federal prison.

News reports indicate the Gulf Cartel has been losing steam in recent criminal enterprises. Bales attributes that to hard work put into the investigations of the drug gang

“The news that Juan Saenz-Tamez has been arrested is further proof that justice is prevailing in Mexico,” said Bales.  “I am encouraged that the efforts of so many law enforcement officers are now paying off. Congratulations to them and I look forward to seeing Saenz-Tamez answer for his crimes in a Beaumont courtroom.”

Whether such involved operations are truly making a dent in the drug-based organized crimes that have plagued Mexico remains over time to be seen. New factors such as legalization or semi-legalization of marijuana in certain U.S. states have not operated in the open long enough to determine whether marijuana smuggling will remain viable for criminal gangs across from the southern U.S. borders. Even so, cocaine and meth aren’t facing a legal market anytime soon in the U.S. in general and specifically in Texas.

During the meantime, trials likely to take place here in Beaumont for Mexican gangs as well as those from violent white supremacy prison-based outfits cannot help but make some folks in mostly quiet Southeast Texas feel uncomfortable. Federal authorities do not release information on security during such trials which is sensible to most people whose brain is clearly functioning. One might feel more secure if the Justice Department provided snipers hiding up in the ceilings as their fellow federal lawmen and women in the Secret Service do on occasions while protecting the president. But I guess we wouldn’t know about that unless something happened.

I for one, truly, hope things remain serene here in town, Likewise, in the temple of justice where mostly good people may stand in judgement of those who are allegedly some really bad folks.