Selective Outrage Over Straight Ticket Voting

Regarding "Two reasons to avoid straight-ticket voting" (Friday Front Page), as she does in many of her columns, Patricia Kilday Hart goes to particular pains to besmirch Republicans, or to excuse the misbehavior of Democrats by rationalizing that their offenses are no different from those of Republicans.  In this most recent article, she compares Lloyd Oliver, this year’s Democratic Party nominee for Harris County DA to Louis Guthrie, Republican Party nominee for Harris County sheriff, and finds them equally wanting. 

 

While Oliver's resume is in fact replete with instances of lawlessness and malpractice, her recitation of Guthrie's offenses are pretty thin gruel.  We are informed that in a prior job, Guthrie was found in possession of "prohibited ammunition, 'specifically a full metal jacket bullet'."  Given that this type of bullet is less useful in stopping an assailant, it was likely just an honest mistake, as opposed to Hart's implication of a more sinister intent.  She also documents various other of Guthrie's offenses, including two minor traffic accidents, "horseplay", and cursing at a bar patron.    

 

Hart's "gotcha" anecdote regarding Guthrie supposedly exceeding his authority at a car wash where his wife claimed to have had $17 stolen is tainted as well, given that most of the dirt she dishes comes courtesy of Guthrie's opponent, current Sheriff Adrian Garcia.  And while she goes to great pains to rationalize the outcome to Guthrie's disadvantage, there is compelling evidence that Garcia's investigators skewed the investigation against Guthrie, and that the matter will ultimately be decided in his favor.

 

Beyond that, it is revealing that yet a further illustration of Guthrie (a Republican) overstepping some boundary that would result in nothing more than an administrative penalty should be in Hart's eyes the moral equivalent of Lloyd Oliver (a Democrat) attempting to suborn perjury from a witness in order to suppress pursuit of a criminal rape case.  Unfortunately, Hart and the rest of the Commentariat do this a lot more than is seemly, or warranted.

 

Pete Smith

Cypress

A Letter To The Editor

Just goes to show that you can find anything on the web.  Fond memories. The earliest archived Letter To The Editor of the Houston Chronicle that I sent in almost 21 years ago.

http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=1991_828628

Food Stamp Numbers Game

Regarding "Food Bank CEO eating on a poverty budget", Lisa Falkenberg documents the challenge taken by Brian Greene, CEO of Houston Food Bank to survive on what is alleged to be the average weekly budget provided by federally subsidized food stamps, aka SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), estimated to be $28 per week.  The intent of this article to portray welfare spending as measly is misleading on a number of levels.  First, the $28 weekly number is itself is easily challenged, since available data show that in 2011, spending for Food Stamps was $85 Billion for 42 million recipients, an average of $40 per week. 

 

Second, nowhere in her article does Ms Falkenberg bother to explain that food stamp subsidies are "means tested", with the lowest income recipients getting far more than $28 per week, and higher income recipients getting far less.  And what is totally unremarked upon is the totality of the scores of available welfare programs at the municipal, state and local level for food, housing, utilities, medical care and outright cash subsidies, which demonstrate that yearly welfare spending for the nation's roughly 105 million recipients is over $9000 per recipient. 

 

Those figures do not include the additional cost of educating the children of the poor, another $10,000 per child per year, nor the two meals per day available at the vast majority of schools, free of charge. 

 

I'm confused as to what purpose articles like this serve, other than to mislead.  With out-of-control Entitlement spending bankrupting the nation, you'd think Custodians such as Mr. Greene would have an obligation to advocate for more responsible use of taxpayers' dollars, and avoid misleading publicity stunts designed to promote more out-of-control spending.

 

Pete Smith

Cypress

LTE: Krugman's world

Regarding "Looking to the iPhone for economic stimulus" (Saturday Outlook), self-styled economist Paul Krugman puts forth for the umpteenth time his claim that government spending to stimulate economic activity is an unqualified good thing for America.  What was novel in the article was Krugman's attempt to portray consumers who desire to own the latest Apple iPhone as "Keynesians" who "have implicitly accepted the case that the government should spend more, not less, in a depressed economy".

 

Intrigued, I read on, hoping beyond hope that Krugman was going to connect the dots between Rational Consumers and berserk government spending.  I was disappointed.  Krugman instead offered his usual cart-before-the-horse argument that the only reason the economy is tanking and tens of millions are out of work is because Somebody isn't spending enough.  If that was true, every problem could not only be solved - but actually prevented - by government spending.  Follow this argument to its logical conclusion, and profligate government spending should actually make things continuously better and better.  It doesn't of course, but you've got to admire his willingness to consistently double down on the failed Socialist fiscal policies that have tanked our economy.

 

In Krugman's world, it makes no difference who is doing the spending: consumers willingly spending their own money or the Feds spending somebody else's.  This begs the question of how many more consecutive columns Krugman can replay this same theme before readers tune him out entirely.

 

Pete Smith

Cypress
-----------------------------------------------------------
Krugman's world

Regarding "Looking to the iPhone for economic stimulus" (Page B7, Saturday), Paul Krugman puts forth for the umpteenth time his claim that government spending to stimulate economic activity is an unqualified good thing for America. What was novel in the column was Krugman's attempt to portray consumers who desire to own the latest Apple iPhone as "Keynesians" who have implicitly accepted the case that the government should spend more, not less, in a depressed economy.

Intrigued, I read on, hoping beyond hope that Krugman was going to connect the dots between rational consumers and berserk government spending. Krugman instead offered his usual cart-before-the-horse argument that the only reason the economy is tanking and tens of millions are out of work is because somebody isn't spending enough. If that were true, every problem could not only be solved - but actually prevented - by government spending.

Follow this argument to its logical conclusion, and profligate government spending should actually make things continuously better and better. It doesn't of course, but you've got to admire his willingness to consistently double down on the failed socialist fiscal policies that have tanked our economy.

Pete Smith, Cypress

http://www.chron.com/default/article/Letters-FairTax-idea-iPhone-economics-3878772.php

Who Is Abusing Voter Roles?

Regarding "The ‘dead’ awfully loud in protesting voter purge" (Wednesday City & State), Patricia Kilday Hart seems to buy into Harris County Tax Assessor Don Sumners' contention that the efforts of the State of Texas to use Social Security records to purge voters rolls of the dead is unjustified.  And what evidence are we given?  Two anecdotes. 

 

That strikes me as pretty lazy proof on Sumners' part, particularly given that his office couldn't even be bothered to answer the telephone call of one such person - Mary Miller - who explained to Hart that she called Sumner's office to report that she was still alive, but "was left on hold for a 'loooooong' time", forcing her to mail him a letter.  It seems likely that the other voter identified - David Smith - also had to write in to Sumners. It's also interesting that Ms Hart so readily takes Sumner's word that he "heard.....from many presumed dead Harris County residents", without bothering to ask him exactly how many.  Was it just the two, twenty or two hundred?  And did they too have to write letters because they couldn't get their calls through?

 

As to the other major theme of the article, in which Hart imputed some sinister effort to disenfranchise Democrat voters by Republicans, that belies the facts she herself cites.  If - as Hart states - the rolls in question came from the Social Security Administration, one would be hard-pressed to say how state Republicans could - or would - corrupt them, much less why they would do so in such small numbers.  The risk/reward factor just isn't there, even assuming their basic nature is as dastardly as she suggests it to be.

 

I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that the actual number of voters identified as dead - against a social security database of some 9,000 records - is less than 1%.  I'll further predict that the actual source of the mistakes is likely the Social Security Administration, in which case this effort is performing a public service.  As to the repeated theme that others deliberately attempted to disenfranchise voters by reporting them to be dead, it is much more likely that this action was taken by a handful of Democrat activists creating a handful of anecdotes precisely because they could count on kindred souls like Patricia Kilday Hart to lend credibility to their claims of Republican misconduct.

 

Ms Hart seems intent in recent months on discrediting any Republican efforts at voter reform, and this latest effort is disturbingly fact-free.  It will be interesting to see if Hart's next report confirms the low numbers, and if she will then hold Sumners to task for misleading the Public, much less challenge him on whether he is taking phone calls from his constituents.

 

Pete Smith

Cypress

Winners & Losers At Dem Convention

Regarding "The winners and losers from Charlotte" (Saturday Nation), Richard Dunham handicapped all of the speakers at the Democratic Convention this past week.  What was interesting was the breakdown of Winners and Losers: The Winners consisted entirely of has-beens, wanna-bes and minor players in the Democrat Party, including Bill Clinton, Sandra Fluke and San Antonio mayor Julian Castro.  The Losers consisted of, well, nearly all of the Democrat Establishment, including VP Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and President Obama's entire cabinet.

 

It was also significant that President Obama was not listed as a Winner or a Loser at his own convention.  That's a fitting metaphor for a politician who has done little more than show up for most of his political career, whether it was his habit of repeatedly voting "present" on legislation while he was a Senator, or spending the past 4 years of his Presidency blaming everybody else for the failure of his policies. It's also consistent with the character of a man who, when asked recently to rate his own performance on the economy gave himself a grade of "incomplete". 

 

That can't bode well for the Democratic Party in November.

 

Pete Smith

Cypress

Way To Go Canada

Regarding "Canada cuts off all relations with Iran", our Northern neighbor finally agreed to expel the diplomats of this Islamist terrorist state, and to withdraw their own.  My question is: what took Canada so long?  Iran is the number one exporter of terrorism world-wide; they stand against everything that multicultural Canada stands for, and yet, Canada persisted in giving them diplomatic cover for 33 years after Iran's current president led the attack on America's embassy in Tehran in 1979.

It's interesting to note that yesterday - under international pressure - Iran elected not to execute a Christian minister for the crime of being: a Christian.  This was not an isolated instance.  Iran has waged genocide on non-Muslims since the overthrow of the Shah the same year they took our diplomats hostage.  Why it took Canada more than a minute to get on board is anybody's guess, but if their recent actions were responsible for Iran sparing the Christian minister's life, one can only imagine how much more good they might have done had they ostracized Iran earlier.

Regardless, better late than never.  Now, if all of our European "partners" would similarly get on board, they might actually improve our circumstances, and their own.

 

Pete Smith

Cypress

When a Republican is Captain of the Starship Enterprise

"Captain, a ship is approaching"

"Hale them, Ensign"

"No answer, sir"

"Fire"

When a Democrat is Captain of the Starship Enterprise

"Captain, a ship is approaching"

"Hale them, Ensign"

"No answer, sir; They're charging weapons"

"Hail them on all frequencies, Ensign!"

"They're firing sir; Direct hits on all decks; No answer to our hail"

"Helm, get us out of here, Warp 4!"

"We've been hit; Warp is off line, Sir"

"Impulse power!"

"Off line Sir"

"Thrusters then!"

"Also off line Sir"

"Comm, any answer to our hails?"

"No answer Sir.  They're coming around"

"Phasers and Photon Torpedos!  Prepare a warning shot!"

"Weapons are off line Sir"

"Dammit!  There has to be a way to communicate with them!"

"Perhaps if you were to do the fucking Macarena Sir"

"What was that Ensign?"

"Nothing Sir; Phasers back on line; Targeting their reactor core"

"Belay that Ensign!  I'm not risking interstellar war!"

"There's always the Macarena Sir"

"What was that Ensign?"

"Nothing Sir"