GOP again fighting imaginary election villains

Also, surprising praise for Greg Abbott, the horrors of ‘wokeness’

In the before-times, the people who mostly complained about the administration of elections were those on the losing end. Those who won just smiled and thanked supporters.

That was then, this is in the Republican now. Texas Republicans win most every state office and are still convinced that they are being cheated.

Action is needed now to stop this injustice!

Thus, looking at the bills that have been pre-filed for the Texas Legislative session, a trend is becoming apparent: The Republican-led legislature is going to work to further clamp down on imaginary fraud and Democratic villainy in the election process.

There’s no indication (much less, proof) that anything untoward is happening in Texas elections but that hasn’t stopped legislators from pre-filing a whopping 62 bills attempting to fix heinous problems that don’t exist.

It is true that Harris County, one of the nation’s largest counties, did have trouble during the last election involving election supplies and delays but, again, no reason to believe that there were any “extra” votes allowed, or legitimate votes not counted.

So, 62 bills to further restrict voting for no cause, other than Republicans want to do it and hope to put up more barriers to those who might not vote the way they want them to.

Republican State Sen. Paul Bettencourt wrote SB 220, which would set up a system of “election marshals” to investigate allegations of election and voting laws, filing criminal charges if needed.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because Florida has already done this, and a few charges have already been filed — and some already dropped — but no one has yet been convicted of anything.

Assuming Texas has the money to develop an entire new agency of police to investigate crimes that don’t really occur, surely it has the money to improve health care for children, where Texas now ranks last in the nation.

Any little bit will help, at least more than spending it foolishly on boogey men.

Early estimates are that the Legislature will have a $30 billion surplus for the next session. The guess here is that little of that will go to help children’s insurance, either. It’s more likely that those funds will be funneled into some sort of border wall that will ultimately prove to be ineffective.

At least the legislature should not be compelled to loosen gun laws any further. About the only thing we could do further is to require that students be issued handguns on the first day of class.

Some Democrats have pre-filed bills, too, but most of them have zero chance of ever even getting to the floor for a vote.

The most interesting of these is a bill that would allow a simple vote up-down vote by Texans on whether abortions should be limited here or, if so, in what way.

This is not a measure Republicans want brought up for a popular vote. It would quite likely not go the way they might hope. So far abortion restrictions have failed in every state where the people have voted, including conservative states like Kansas and Kentucky. Texas will almost certainly avoid that chance.

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I send along a lot of grief to Gov. Greg Abbott, so when he does something worthy, he should get praise. Read carefully, because you may not see something like this again.

Abbott has been an opponent of fentanyl testing strips, which would allow a drug user to test the drugs he is about to use to see if they contain fentanyl, a drug so powerful that unless used carefully, it can be deadly.

Abbott has changed his mind, though, and now sees that the strips could save lives and help people avoid getting hooked. Most conservatives in the legislature have opposed the strips, perhaps thinking that users “deserve whatever they get.”

Not all who consume drugs, though, are addicts. Some are casual users, others may be engaging for the first time. They don’t deserve a death sentence. The strips can be used to test the drugs to see if they are laced with fentanyl.

This is the right choice by Abbott. Here’s hoping other Republicans follow his lead.

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The fringe right believes that the educational establishment all across the nation are working to turn your children into little closet liberals who are (gasp!) woke. The fringe right seems to see “wokeness” is just about the worst fate that could befall a person.

One of the ways MAGA Republicans suggest to find out about this threatening crisis is to run for school boards or, if that is too much, at least attend school board meetings and speak up when wokeness rears its ugly head.

Getting involved with school boards is positive. While there is no getting the “crazy” out of some folks, others will understand that there is not a secret cabal working to awaken their children.

In little Lindale, just north of Tyler, there was a call on the “Neighborhood” app, urging people to go to the next school board meeting. Somebody was upset that the board had spent $1 million to buy laptops for a huge portion of the district.

Lindale the city is small, but not Lindale the school district. The Class 5-A school is in the second largest classification for the state. Spending $1 million on computers for the Lindale ISD is not outrageous. People of average intelligence are capable of understanding this.

Attending school board meetings just might allow them to believe that nothing sinister is going on behind closed doors.

The MAGA lies can be overcome with some truth. Maybe this will help.