America's Coming Disaster: Reopening Schools

How many more Texans have to die because of these two clowns?

Trump is still lying about children being immune to COVID-19. I wonder if he knows anyone in Nueces County, Texas. The only big significant city in the county is Corpus Cristi. It's Trump country. In 2016 Trump won Nueces County and in 2018-- in the middle of a so-called "blue wave," Nueces County gave Greg Abbott 56.3% of its vote. All of the county is in the 34th congressional district and voters there supported Trump enabler Michael Cloud over progressive Democrat Eric Holguin. That said, 56% of the residents are Latino. Neither the lame-ass DCCC nor the Texas Democratic Party takes the district even remotely seriously. The candidate this cycle is ultimate vanity candidate, Rocky de la Fuente's scam-artist son Ricardo, who is also running in FL-24 and in March lost the primary in CA-21.

I'm only bringing up Nueces County because there is a major outbreak of COVID-19 among children, at least one of whom has died. In mid-July the county reported 85 babies with COVID-- and now that number has risen to 167-- these are children under the age of 2. The county itself, like most of Texas, is a COVID-hotspot-- over 14,000 cases in the county (including 436 reported Friday) and half a million statewide. 12% of Nueces' cases are in people under 19.

And yet... last week, Greg Abbott, the Trumpist governor of Texas, blocked local health authorities from shutting down classrooms before the school year has started. "Since then, reported the Texas Tribune, "he has repeatedly said he is trusting local school leaders to decide whether and how to bring students back to classrooms this fall. Those actions have left local officials confused about the limitations of their authority as the debate over reopening schools in the state continues. Abbott’s decision to curb the role of local health authorities has added to the ongoing conflict between the governor and local governments during the pandemic, with mayors and judges across the state voicing frustration over having their hands tied by the state’s response. Some superintendents say that despite Abbott’s statements to the contrary, their ability to respond to the pandemic is still limited, and many of their questions have gone unanswered even as school is slated to start in the coming weeks. They are worried their decisions could result in consequences from the state, including cuts to funding, and some say they would prefer high-stakes decisions affecting student and employee health to stay with medical experts... Some superintendents, especially in areas where the virus is rampant, balked at the idea of waiting for kids and teachers to get sick before shutting down their campuses in the middle of the year, instead of working with local health officials to close classrooms if cases spike again."

I'm worried about the kids-- in Texas and everywhere else-- but I'm really worried about the teachers, who are more likely to get sick and to get seriously sick and to die. My closest friend is a teacher whose district is fighting with the union about teachers being forced to show up in person everyday. Many of the teachers in his school are religious fanatics who refuse to wear masks because, they claim, Jesus is protecting them. On Saturday, writing for the Wall Street Journal, Kate King and Caitlin McCabe looked at what teachers need in order to be relatively safe if forced into reopening situations. "Teachers,"they wrote, "are stocking up on face coverings, hoping to protect themselves and their students from the coronavirus as some U.S. schools begin in-person instruction. Many states and school districts have said they would provide personal-protective equipment to those who need it, but some teachers say they haven’t received it yet and aren’t sure what will be distributed or when it will arrive. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that teachers, staff and students wear cloth face coverings whenever possible amid growing evidence that masks help reduce the virus’s spread and may offer the wearer some protection. Consistent use of face coverings, the CDC said, is most important indoors and when it is difficult to maintain social distancing of at least 6 feet. The agency also suggests that schools consider regular cleaning and hand washing or sanitizing."

In Guthrie, Okla., middle-school teacher Bryan Dearing said his district is recommending but not requiring students and staff to wear masks when schools reopen Aug. 20. Mr. Dearing said school officials told teachers they would be given two face masks but gave little other information about personal-protective equipment.

“I asked, ‘Is that two masks a week? Two masks a day?’” he said. “No one can tell me. I’m a teacher, and I have no clue what’s going on when we start school in three weeks.”

Mike Simpson, superintendent of Guthrie Public Schools, said the district has already spent more than $50,000 on personal-protective equipment, including hand sanitizer and two washable masks for every staff member. He said Gov. Kevin Stitt’s administration has promised schools more protective gear.

Mr. Dearing said he has purchased and is considering wearing scrubs similar to what medical professionals wear, which he can wash easily when he gets home every day. His wife also raised $390 on GoFundMe to buy him a 360-degree face shield with a built-in air purifying respirator. But it hasn’t arrived yet, and Mr. Dearing is worried he will start the school year without it.

A report published in mid-July by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine supported reopening schools full-time, especially for younger and special-needs students. It recommended schools provide surgical masks for teachers and staff as well as hand washing stations or hand sanitizer. It also suggests reorganizing classrooms to promote social distancing and boost cleaning and air-ventilation protocols.

These precautions would cost a school district with eight buildings and 3,200 students about $1.8 million, the report said.

As schools have reopened overseas, researchers found that widespread and proper use of masks can be integral to helping prevent outbreaks.

When a school in Israel reopened in May and subsequently exempted children from wearing masks amid a heat wave, a coronavirus outbreak swept through the school, with 13% of students and about 17% of staff members testing positive shortly thereafter, according to a study of the incident. The study also said crowded classrooms and other factors may have contributed to the virus’s spread.

Israel botched its school reopening really badly-- criminally actually, since it was all about politics-- and the country was thrown into a worse pandemic than it was originally. Ever since the school reopening began, the pandemic has been virulent in Israel. On Thursday, Israel reported 1,640 new cases, an immense number for a small country and on Friday another 1,432 cases. Yesterday, Israel reported 1,333 new cases, bringing the total to 82,324, which comes to 8,951 cases per million Israelis-- worse than any European country bigger than a postage stamp. Israel's population of 9.2 million is the 96th biggest in the world. Their caseload is the 31st biggest and their new cases per day (yesterday) was the 19th biggest. Entirely because of a botched reopening of the schools. If anyone thinks states like Texas (6,892 new cases yesterday), Florida (8,502 new cases yesterday) and Georgia (4,423 new cases yesterday) are going to do it better... they need to have their heads examined.

Progressive Democrat Julie Oliver, in a tight race with Trump enabler Roger Williams in central Texas, has a much more people-oriented perspective on this than Abbott does. She told me today the same thing she's telling voters in TX-25. "Here are the concrete steps we need to take to reopen our schools:

• Consult parents, teachers, administrators, and others on the front lines of this issue in Texas.
• Close the gaps in internet access for rural and low-income communities for distance learning.
• Ensure that schools have the equipment and supplies they need to be safe.
• Reduce the number of new cases in a county for at least 14 consecutive days as a prerequisite for districts reopening.
• Secure federal funds so our school districts can establish the infrastructure to test, trace, and isolate new cases.

The bottom line is that, to reopen our schools, we need to let experts-- including teachers and parents-- and science guide us. We can’t be reckless about this. Too many lives are at stake. Our parents, teachers, and children deserve better."

Brownsville, Texas, high-school teacher Patrick Alvarez said he bought a partial-face respirator mask and cotton masks with filters because he wanted something that offered a little more protection than the disposable medical masks he believes his school will provide. He has diabetes, and is also worried about infecting his family.

Mr. Alvarez, who owns a small educational-supplies store with his wife, estimated that 90% of sales this summer are of protective equipment.

“A lot of the teachers that come in are buying because they’re not sure what they’ll be given,” he said. “There’s a lot of anxiety.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office said Tuesday that the state has distributed protective equipment to schools, including more than 59 million masks, over 500,000 face shields, 560,000 gallons of hand sanitizer and tens of thousands of thermometers.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest teachers union, expressed frustration in a statement Friday that teachers feel compelled to buy their own protective gear.

“In a good year, teaching is one of the only professions where workers are forced to buy their own supplies to subsidize what should be a cost borne by the employer,” she said. Now, she added, “It’s become a matter of life and death.”

Some businesses have sprung up specifically to sell face coverings and other protective gear for children. New York-based Little Lives PPE makes child-size face shields that can be worn repeatedly.

Co-founder Samira Brown, a pediatrician, said she believes that “you need to be protecting your eyes, nose and mouth.”

The CDC doesn’t recommend face shields as a substitute for masks, citing a lack of evidence for how effectively they prevent respiratory droplet spread. However, Anthony Fauci, the U.S.’s top infectious disease expert, said during a recent virtual discussion with a teachers union that, in addition to a mask, teachers could consider wearing goggles or a face shield.

COVID-Wise, Will All Of America Be Like Texas? Or Much Worse-- Like Florida?

On Friday, Texas had a relatively good day in the new case department, "only" 8,552 confirmed new cases. Yesterday there were 7,735 more, bringing the total to 393,683 in total-- 13,577 cases per million Texans. The population of the state is around 29.9 million, about half as many people as Italy, which is one of the hardest-hit countries in the world. But with twice as many people, Italy only has 245,864 cases (4,067 cases per million Italians). So far 35,102 Italians have died and both new cases and new deaths have petered out (only 274 new cases yesterday and 5 new deaths). The pandemic is still relatively young and virulent in Texas, which has already had over 5,000 deaths and 135 new deaths announced yesterday). It's going to get much worse in Texas, although it doesn't have to. At least it wouldn't have to if Texas wasn't so tightly controlled by aggressively science-denying Republican politicians, all vying with each other to see who can be the most extreme and the furthest up Trump's ass.

With dozens of sheriffs telling Abbott they refuse to enforce his mask mandate, there's a new wrinkle in Texas Republicans' assertion that they have the right to spread the contagion no matter how many people they kill. Late yesterday, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that "Almost 800 bar owners across the state will participate in Freedom Fest, an event where bar owners will defy Abbott’s June 26 order that closed bars as the state’s coronavirus numbers surged." Bars that open illegally could see their liquor license suspended but no one expects that to actually happen.

Writing for the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Elizabeth Findell asked Will Texas Shut Down Again Amid Surge in Covid-19 Cases?. "In Houston, where booming Covid-19 cases have pushed many hospitals beyond their intensive-care unit capacity for the first time," she reported, "doctors have been sounding alarms for weeks. Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the Democratic elected executive of the county which includes the nation’s fourth-largest city, has been pushing to again implement stay-home orders there. Face coverings, which Republican Gov. Greg Abbott made mandatory this month, remain a lightning rod of controversy. The divide over policies to combat Covid-19 has only deepened in a state where politicians have been at war for months. The governor, who has seen his approval ratings tumble, has struggled to form a consistent public-health response to the crisis as he is buffeted from both right and left. Democrats want tougher restrictions, while many Republicans fear he has already gone too far, leaving him bouncing between policies and yet having appeased no one.

In recent weeks, Mr. Abbott has vacillated between denying another state shutdown is imminent and warning Texans that it will be necessary if things don’t improve.

“I know that many of you are frustrated,” the governor told the state GOP at its virtual convention last week. “So am I. I know that many of you don’t like the mask requirement. Neither do I. It’s the last thing I wanted to do. Actually, next to last. The last thing is lock Texas down again. We must do all we can to prevent that, but every day the facts get worse.”

In Texas, the average number of new Covid-19 cases confirmed each day jumped from around 1,000 in late April and early May to more than 10,000 on many days in July, but has begun to taper slightly. The proportion of tests that are positive, which health experts say should be below 5%, has been nearly 15%. Texans are now dying of the disease at a rate of nearly 140 a day, and more than 4,500 [5,059] have died of it total.

Texas’s largest cities, Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Austin have all seen significant virus spread, with average daily new cases per 100,000 people ranging from 20 to 60 in the past week. The Rio Grande Valley, meanwhile, has seen death rates six times the state as a whole. But some rural counties, especially in the western part of the state, have remained relatively unaffected.

Texas, like Georgia, Florida and Arizona, was relatively spared for the first months of the virus and then saw a rapid rise in cases following Memorial Day, after reopening from fairly short lockdowns. Over the past week, the proportion of positive tests those states have seen was 16%, 19% and 25%, respectively.

Like Florida and Arizona, Texas has closed bars and limited both indoor dining and large gatherings. Texas also has a mask mandate for most residents, unlike Arizona and Florida, which don’t.

In Houston, the 60 hospitals that make up the Texas Medical Center, a medical district considered the largest in the world, have exceeded their normal ICU capacity for the first time in memory and are using 17 of 273 beds added for a “phase two” surge, said Chief Executive William McKeon. The tide of incoming patients is slowing slightly, he said, after the mask mandate.

Despite the rise in Covid-19 cases in Houston, the state Republican party pushed to hold its mid-July 2020 convention in person there, ultimately losing a showdown with Mayor Sylvester Turner, a Democrat.

“This is a convention that Trump wants,” Leslie Thomas, a member of the state’s Republican Party executive committee, said as she voted on July 2 to hold the event in person. “Like it or not, Texas is the Republican state. We bear that. So we need to stand our ground.”

In a recent interview, Ms. Thomas said her vote, weeks before President Trump canceled an in-person convention in Jacksonville, reflected his views on live events, along with her belief that in-person conversations are key to a convention. She said she wasn’t concerned about risks from the virus, likening the convention to going to Walmart.

Mr. Turner blocked the convention, calling it far too dangerous for thousands of people to gather together indoors. The GOP fought it all the way to the Texas Supreme Court, but didn’t obtain the right to go forward. Instead, the party scrambled to hold the event online, where it struggled to get past repeated computer errors.

In the wee hours of Monday morning, state Republicans participating in the online convention voted to replace their party chairman with Allen West, an Army veteran and onetime Florida congressman known for his firebrand style. His statement before the vote derided Mr. Abbott’s Covid-related executive orders as “the despotism, the tyranny that we see in the great state of Texas.”

The view reflects the ire of some of Mr. Abbott’s fellow Republicans in response to making masks mandatory. Some consider such requirements unconstitutional. Local Republican parties in a handful of counties approved censure resolutions to condemn the governor’s move.

Ms. Hidalgo first required masks in the Houston area in April, following other Texas counties and cities. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, called it “the ultimate government overreach” and local Congressman Dan Crenshaw, a Republican, said penalties could “lead to unjust tyranny.” The Houston Police Officer’s Union called the rules “draconian” and sought a ruling on whether they were legal. Looking back in a recent interview, Ms. Hidalgo said the order was the beginning of a political battle.

“But I didn’t realize how much it would grow,” she said. “It was a harbinger of things to come.”

Typical of Texas politics, which is often marked by tugs-of-war between Republican leaders of the state and Democratic leaders of its largest cities, Mr. Abbott overturned the mask mandates of Harris and other counties when he began reopening the state in May.

Two months later, however, after the number of Covid cases diagnosed each day had increased eightfold, he issued his own statewide mandate requiring face masks. Last month he was also forced to walk back the reopening, closing bars for a second time and reducing restaurant capacity.

Houston resident Kiersten Tapia, 32, said the state reopened too quickly, “like it was red light to green.” She remains a supporter of Mr. Abbott, whom she has long liked, but is concerned the changing requirements regarding masks led many in her area of central northwest Houston to take fewer precautions than she did.

“It was confusing,” she said of the mask shifts. “They should have started out with them being mandatory.”

David Van Delden, however, an owner of 14 bars in Austin, Dallas and Houston, said the state moved too quickly to reverse its reopening and shut bars down again, leaving him unable to pay his workers. Instead, he said, there should have been stronger attempts to enforce rules regarding capacity and distancing at bars.

“You can’t pick and choose who is shut down,” he said. “We need to open back up and people need to be more responsible for their own actions.”

Mr. Abbott, the most popular politician in Texas and one of the most popular governors in the nation, has seen the effects of the virus crisis on his favor. Approval of his handling of the virus has fallen from 60% in late April to 44% in late June, according to the COVID-19 Consortium for Understanding the Public’s Policy Preferences Across States, a joint project of four major universities which has surveyed governor approval ratings in all states. Texans’ opinions of their governor are now in the bottom fifth of U.S. states, according to the report.

Some local Democratic officials, meanwhile, are now beginning to test the limits of Mr. Abbott’s authority. In Hidalgo County, on the U.S.-Mexico border in the Rio Grande Valley, which has seen a death rate this month six times that of the state, County Judge Richard Cortez, a Democrat, said Monday he will issue a new stay-home order for nonessential employees.

Mr. Cortez acknowledged in an interview on local radio station KURV that such an order contradicts the state’s reopening-- so he has no way to enforce it. Asked whether he expects a punitive response from Austin, Mr. Cortez replied “I don’t know.”

Monday, Mr. Abbott tweeted that “the mask mandate is successfully slowing the spread of Covid-19 in North Texas” and “a community lock down is not needed as long as masks & other distancing strategies are used.”

Mr. Crenshaw, the congressman who had taken aim at Ms. Hidalgo’s mask mandate, retweeted it, with the comment “This is good news.”

Mike Siegel, the Democratic candidate for a central Texas congressional seat that goes from north Austin all the way into the exurbs of Houston (TX-10), told me that Abbott and his own opponent, Michael McCaul "only care about regular people when election time comes around. It was nearly June, the second half of this year, when McCaul began acknowledging the seriousness of COVID-19. In fact, the three month anniversary was yesterday, of him speaking on the House floor with no mask on. Even now he refuses to acknowledge the poor performance of the Trump administration in handling the virus and passes all the blame away. We need a Congress that cares about the people all the time and especially during a pandemic. Not some one so out of touch that one of that one of their largest campaign expenses is limousine services."

Maybe Reopening Willy Nilly Was A Bad Idea? Who Could Have Guessed?

As Chris Cilliza noted for CNN, Señor Trumpanzee has been suggesting the coronavirus is under control for 156 days now, starting with an interview on January 22 in Davos when he said "We have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It's going to be just fine." It was wrong then and was still wrong on Tuesday when he told Republican students packed into a Phoenix church with no masks that "It's going away." It isn't-- at least not soon enough to save his victims in that church. "In the interim," wrote Cillizza, "2.4 million Americans have tested positive for coronavirus and more than 121,000 have died. And just Wednesday, the three most populous states in the country-- California, Florida and Texas-- reported record numbers of daily coronavirus cases... Never has the gap between Trump's fanciful rhetoric been wider nor more dangerous. While Trump has always lived in an alternate reality in which he is winning, winning always winning, the stakes have typically been lower. Now, with coronavirus surging, Trump's desire to see a world that facts make clear doesn't exist is endangering lives in a very real way. And as the coronavirus numbers continue to pile up, Trump's insistence that it's all over (or will be over soon) seems more and more discordant. And, unfortunately, more frequent."

Want to get a nose job? Forget about Houston, Dallas, San Antonio or Austin. Trumpist Governor Greg Abbott has decreed no elective surgeries allowed in Bexar, Dallas, Harris, and Travis counties to preserve beds for coronavirus patients. Sarah Champagne, reporting for the Texas Tribune, wrote than on Thursday morning Abbott announced that he will pause any further phases of reopening Texas although he's doing nothing "to reverse any of the reopening phases he's already allowed for-- meaning that bars, restaurants, malls, bowling alleys and other businesses are still allowed to remain open with some capacity limitations. 'The last thing we want to do as a state is go backwards and close down businesses, ' he wrote in a press release on Thursday, but the 'pause will help our state corral the spread.'" Probably not nearly as much as it would have had he mandated and enforced something as simple as mask-wearing in public. But he didn't-- and won't.

Just Tuesday, Abbott stressed that hospital capacity in Texas was “abundant.” A day later, Abbott acknowledged in a TV interview that capacity issues in some parts of the state "may necessitate a localized strategy" instead of a return to statewide action.

Statewide, the number of hospitalizations has reached record highs for a full two weeks, soaring to 4,739 on Thursday morning and tripling since Memorial Day. On Wednesday, there were 1,320 intensive care unit beds and nearly 13,000 available hospital beds, but with regional disparities.

In hard-hit regions, some hospitals have begun moving coronavirus patients from crowded ICUs to other facilities and local leaders have warned that hospitals could get overwhelmed if the number of infections keeps climbing. In the greater Houston area, the Texas Medical Center warns that the intensive care units are 30 beds away from filling up to their normal capacity. Hospitals and care facilities would then employ their surge plans to build out additional capacity.

Some hospital leaders had also pointed out that treating both patients could become unsustainable: “Should the number of new cases grow too rapidly, it will eventually challenge our ability to treat both COVID-19 and non-COVID 19 patients,” Dr. Marc Boom, head of the Houston Methodist hospital system, wrote in an email Friday.

...Laredo's hospitals are also reported to be hitting their ICU capcity. The Laredo TV station KGNS reported Wednesday night that Dr. Victor Treviño, the health authority, has contacted the Commissioner of Texas Department of State Health Services, to fast track the diversion of COVID-19 patients to other hospitals.

Covering this on a national basis for the NY Times, Jack Healy, Mitch Smith and Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio, noted that Americans are facing a new halted reopenings and a sense of limbo, a payment for botching the first spike of the pandemic. "Soaring cases of the coronavirus," they wrote, "are forcing cities and states across the country to halt plans to restart their economies and even reimpose earlier limits on public life, increasing worries that premature reopenings could lead to a second round of closures. In Texas, which reported a record high of more than 5,000 new cases on Tuesday, the governor told local officials they could restrict outdoor gatherings to 100 people and urged residents to stay home. Maine officials called off plans to allow bars to resume serving drinks inside on July 1. The governor of Kansas said rising cases showed that the state was 'not ready' to continue easing restrictions. And in parts of central Idaho, where coronavirus cases have exploded in recent weeks, bars are shutting down and gatherings of more than 50 people are again outlawed.

With the number of new daily cases now rising in more than half of the United States, the debate over whether to reimpose restrictions or push ahead with reopening is creating divides between neighboring cities and states that mirror the scattershot responses that emerged as the country went into lockdown this year.

“There’s very little appetite among the American public to go backwards,” said Michael Mina, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “As reopenings started there were no plans for what would constitute a red flag to close things down. People just said, ‘We’re reopening, everything’s fine, let’s move ahead.’”

Face To Face by Nancy Ohanian

Will Americans start feeling that appetite when the numbers go from 34,000 new cases a day to 100,000? How about when the deaths go from 125,000 to 500,000? No? Will they feel the appetite when they start losing close friends and relatives? Many Americans have a problem thinking abstractly. But they understand what it means when mama or grandpa dies. Or when virtually the whole Clemson football team goes down because 23 players contracted COVID. Kansas State too. At Louisiana State football 30 player are in quarantine. "But public health experts who supported the original shutdowns now worry that governments will not be able to constrain the resurgent coronavirus with a blizzard of shifting restrictions that can change the moment a person crosses a city limit or state line," wrote the Times team. "Hundreds of city, county and state governments have created their own reopening plans, each with different 'phases' of economic reopening and each with their rules for how many people can gather at a party, what portion of a restaurant’s tables can be full and when people must wear masks. The results can be a baffling patchwork, and one that residents are left to navigate on their own. Much of the new tension over the safety of reopening is playing out in the West and South, where the numbers are getting worse, and has split along partisan lines.

The governors of Louisiana and Oregon, both Democrats, recently paused their plans to ease restrictions on businesses and public life, saying it was not yet safe to more fully reopen. And on Tuesday, Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington ordered most people to wear face coverings in public.

“It is clear that Covid is alive and well in Louisiana, and as we see more people testing positive and admitted to hospitals, we simply are not ready to move to the next phase,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said, noting that about 90 percent of new cases were coming from spread in the community, not within nursing homes or other group living facilities.

But Republican governors in Florida, Arizona, Texas and other states grappling with rising daily case levels have resisted the prospect of locking down again.

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas has declined to require Texans to wear masks and said that locking down the state again would be a last resort. But on Tuesday he urged residents to stay home in an interview with the television station KBTX.

“Because the spread is so rampant right now, there is never a reason for you to have to leave your home unless you do need to go out,” he said. “The safest place for you is at your home.”

In Utah, Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican, said he had “no plans to shut down Utah’s economy” after the state’s epidemiologist warned that the “only viable option to manage spread and deaths will be a complete shutdown” and urged the governor to reimpose tougher limits on public life.

Shelby County, Tenn., which includes Memphis, was poised to ease its coronavirus restrictions to “phase three” last week, allowing businesses to operate at 75 percent of their normal capacity, but county leaders reconsidered as the number of active cases grew to more than 2,000. Since the start of the pandemic, about 8,000 people have been infected across the county, and 165 have died.

“We ramped up to reopen too quick,” said Tami Sawyer, a county commissioner who has urged the county to impose even tighter limitations. “We weren’t ready.”

With guidance from governments hard to pin down, the burden of deciding whether to stay open or shut down again in the face of a positive coronavirus test is falling on individual businesses.

Restaurants, electronics retailers, salons and bakeries across the country have been reopening only to shut down weeks later after workers or customers report illnesses-- a pattern that business owners fear will repeat itself for months until there is a vaccine or treatment for Covid-19.

In Arizona, Gila River Hotels & Casinos announced on Thursday that three reopened casinos would close again for two weeks because of rising coronavirus cases in the state.

...But even as health officials imposed new restrictions on bars and nightclubs in Boise, conservative state legislators met on Tuesday to rail against what they called an infringement of freedoms because of the pandemic limits. Idaho reported 242 new coronavirus cases on Monday, its highest single-day tally, according to a New York Times database.

“What we’re seeing now is the effects of our earlier phases of reopening,” said Ben Ridenhour, a bio-mathematician and assistant professor at the University of Idaho who has modeled the virus’s course through the state. “It’s a little bit scary. The models are showing things are going to be getting worse unless we do something to rectify the situation.”

COVID doesn't pay attention to politics-- although it does hunt down people walking around without masks. No one picked this to happen and no one predicted the societal side-effects. The coronavirus calls the shots, not us. That's what I keep telling my friends when they ask when we're going to re-book our trip to the Dordogne region of France. Besides... does the virus like caves or hate caves? I'll have to check, but it's moot now because the EU countries are wisely excluding Americans from entering their countries.

Republican Death Cult Wants You To Die Too-- Otherwise They Would All Just Drink Bleach Or Inject Lysol

The Cure by Nancy Ohanian

What is Trump's consiglieri-like Attorney General, William Barr, doing to further mire the country in the pandemic? On Monday, one of the 3 or 4 worst AGs in American history ordered federal prosecutors to "be on the lookout" for Democratic governors who issue public health regulations that violate the constitutional rights of right-wing fanatics and extremists who are dedicated to steepening the curve or are too simple-minded to understand what a curve is.

Barr sent a short memo to the 93 U.S. attorneys, warning that some state and local directives are infringing on protected religious, speech and "economic rights. If a state or local ordinance crosses the line from an appropriate exercise of authority to stop the spread of COVID-19 into an overbearing infringement of constitutional and statutory protections, the Department of Justice may have an obligation to address that overreach in federal court, he wrote, trying as best he could to sound like a sane person instead of a homicidal maniac and mad dog.

He has assigned two DOJ prosecutors to "take action... Many policies that would be unthinkable in regular times have become commonplace in recent weeks, and we do not want to unduly interfere with the important efforts of state and local officials to protect the public. But the Constitution is not suspended in times of crisis. We must therefore be vigilant to ensure its protections are preserved, at the same time that the public is protected," he said, still trying his best to sound like a rational persona rather than a psychotic and sociopath like his boss.

Barr has been warning state and local governments against restrictions that single out religious gatherings even though as many as a third of all cases can be traced back to religious services in many locales. A couple of weeks ago Barr issued a statement saying that "Even in times of emergency, when reasonable and temporary restrictions are placed on rights, the First Amendment and federal statutory law prohibit discrimination against religious institutions and religious believers."

"Too restrictive"-- that's the hard core Trump-Republican base

Most-- though not all-- Republican governors don't need to be reminded by Barr. They're way into his line of thinking. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, for example-- who many people consider a worse governor than even Ron DeSantis (R-FL) or Brian Kemp (R-GA). Noem wouldn't be more guilty for the 2,245 cases in her state had she personally run around injecting people. South Dakota has an astonishing 2,598 cases per million and it has been spreading from South Dakota into North Dakota, western Minnesota, northwest Iowa, Nebraska and Wyoming. South Dakota is the Midwest's Typhoid Mary state and Kristi Noem is up for the grand Typhoid Mary Governor of 2020. But Texas fringe maniac Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has no intention of letting her walk away with the award without a fight. By the end of the week, Abbott will allow restaurants, movie theaters, churches, museums, libraries, retail stores and malls open. Texas has a very low case/million inhabitants rate-- 907. Watch what happens to that by mid-May, which will be when he expects to also open barber shops, bars, gyms and hair salons

Abbott made the announcement during a news conference at the Texas Capitol, which he began by saying he would let the stay-at-home order expire because it "has done its job to slow the growth of COVID-19." While the spread of the virus in Texas has slowed down throughout April, the number of cases is still increasing day to day, and it is unclear if the state has yet seen its peak.

...Abbott said his new order "supersedes all local orders" saying those businesses must remain closed. He also said his order overrules any local government that wants to impose a fine or penalty for not wearing a mask-- something the latest statewide rules encourage but do not mandate.

Speaking shortly after Abbott in Houston, the city's mayor, Sylvester Turner, told reporters that Abbott's new order "pretty much will take these measures, the ability to [issue] stay-at-home orders and things of that nature, out of our hands locally." He said he hoped Abbott's plan works but offered a "cautionary note," pointing out that there is still no vaccine and statistics show the "virus is still here," even as local measures have slowed it down.

Abbott's new order comes as questions continue to persist about Texas' low testing level and what is being done to increase capacity. State Rep. Chris Turner of Grand Prairie, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said in a statement that Texas is "near last in the nation on per capita testing and Gov. Abbott didn’t present a clear plan how that’s going to change, even though experts agree that widespread testing is essential to any reopening plan."

"We don't know the magnitude of the problem," U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, said during a Texas Democratic Party conference call after Abbott's news conference. "Without robust testing, then we continue to remain in the dark."

Raleigh, North Carolina's CBS affiliate reported yesterday evening that one of the leaders of the Re-Open North Carolina, Audrey Whitlock, posted on her Facebook page that she has tested positive for the coronavirus. She described herself as "an asymptomatic COVID19 positive patient."

Whitlock is one of the administrators of the ReOpen NC Facebook page-- which has helped organize two protests in downtown Raleigh calling for Gov. Roy Cooper to lift his stay-at-home order.

In Whitlock’s post, she wrote about how the restrictions put in place amid the COVID-19 pandemic are violating her First Amendment rights as well as her 5th and 14th Amendment rights.

She said she was “forced” to quarantine which violated her First Amendment rights.

“The reality is that modern society has not been able to eradicate contagious viruses. A typical public health quarantine would occur in a medical facility. I have been told not to participate in public or private accommodations as requested by the government, and therefore denied my 1st amendment right of freedom of religion,” Whitlock wrote.

She went on to say that “It has been insinuated by others that if I go out, I could be arrested for denying a quarantine order.”

She says an arrest in that situation would violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.

ReOpen NC said it would hold rallies in Raleigh every Tuesday until the governor’s restrictions are lifted. On Thursday, Cooper extended the stay-at-home order until May 8.

As of Monday evening North Carolina had reported 9,415 confirmed cases, and just 927 cases per million, which is very low and widely attributed to Gov. Cooper's relatively fast shelter-in-place orders, the ones ReOpen NC is complaining about. Yesterday, though, Politico noted that it isn't only Democratic governors who are coming under fire from the GOP Death Cult but Republican governors who have been acting responsibly as well.

Across Texas, Arizona, Missouri and Ohio, dozens of conservative and libertarian state leaders and business owners told POLITICO they are planning more demonstrations and agitating to open more businesses, even after President Donald Trump sideswiped Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp last week for including spas, barber shops and gyms in the initial stages of his recovery plan.

Tea Party Patriots and other groups are rallying behind Kemp in Georgia, with some activists concerned that national backlash to Kemp’s orders-- which includes resuming dine-in service at restaurants-- could discourage Republicans in other red states from forging ahead. In Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott announced plans for a phased restart weeks ago and followed up Monday with more details, Texas House Freedom Caucus members contend it’s ultimately the responsibility of individual Texans to keep themselves safe by wearing protective gear and following social distancing guidelines. Across other red states, conservative activists are pleading with governors not to extend or bolster stay-at-home orders set to expire in the coming weeks.

Polls show widespread support for maintaining social distancing guidelines, but Republicans are more aggressive than Democrats about their hopes for the timing and scope of reopening. Local GOP officials in states where demonstrations are occurring said that their offices have been inundated with calls and letters from exasperated constituents who are urging swift action.

And with Trump sending mixed messages, they’re turning more sharply to state leaders to press their case about the damages.

Trump and political allies are torn over both the precise timing of reopening and the visuals of the demonstrations that swept the country. The president has broadly left it up to individual states to decide their procedures-- a stance that critics believe allows him to take any side of the coronavirus debate depending on how the circumstances turn. Before slapping down Kemp in successive news conferences last week, Trump positioned himself as a national leader for the “reopen” side. The president agitated early and has sent supportive tweets calling for the “liberation” of states.

“They’ve got cabin fever. They want their lives back,” Trump said at one point, swatting away at a question about whether he was inciting violence.

Trump met with retail executives and spoke with governors Monday about the virus response and “economic revival,” an approach that could put the president on firmer footing with his base.

Some on the right are distancing themselves altogether from the public demonstrations: Americans for Prosperity-- the main political arm of the libertarian-leaning Koch network-- backed away from the protests in favor of engaging policymakers to focus on standards to safely reopen the economy.

But Tea Party Patriots agreed to promote demonstrations to its members, provided they followed social distancing guidelines. Several events are also being showcased by the conservative group FreedomWorks, including rallies in Ohio and across Texas last weekend, and in Arizona and Nevada on Friday along with a big event outside the White House.

“I think that for the first month, the reason we didn’t have protests like this is people were saying, ‘OK, this isn’t going to last forever, and we should be able to get through it,’” said Jenny Beth Martin, cofounder and national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots.

Martin credited business owners in her home state of Georgia with successfully pushing Kemp to act swiftly to get businesses up and running again, calling the governor’s order “measured” and a positive first step. She joined with scores of local leaders in imploring supporters to reach out to Kemp to show their appreciation.

“Right now, if you don’t have the cell phone or email of your elected officials or their staff it is very difficult to get through with any sort of real, meaningful communication to them,” Martin said. “A lot of these people who have left their home to go make their voices heard are only doing that because they cannot get through to the government otherwise.”

Hundreds of protesters have swarmed Ohio, where Republican Gov. Mike DeWine was an early proponent of strict state actions. They’re worried DeWine and Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton-- who is drawing considerable ire-- will move too slowly on May 1 when the stay-at-home order runs out.

“Government has a role, but it should not be overreaching-- and that’s certainly what’s going on right now,” said Tom Hach, organizer for an “Open Ohio Now” rally in Columbus. He and several others believe there needs to be more focus on people who had the virus but didn’t show symptoms, which Hach said could ultimately show the state and country overreached.

“Every decision comes with a price,” said Hach, a retiree from the Cleveland suburbs who serves on several local boards. “We may on the one hand be saving some lives with the stay-at-home order, but we’re going to cost lives and livelihood and diminish people’s lives in general if the economy tanks. It’s all got to be balanced. And I don’t think that it is. And that is something Gov. DeWine has to look at.”

More than 965,900 1,010,300 people have been infected with Covid-19 in the U.S., which has led to nearly 55,000 57,000 deaths as of Monday. CDC guidelines for states lifting various orders as part of a multi-phase process call for downward trends of positive tests over two weeks along with robust testing programs for at-risk hospital workers.

Protest organizers hold up Georgia, along with South Carolina, Florida and Tennessee as early Republicans models for states that have moved quickly to begin reopening. Several credited Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis with moving away from a more aggressive stay-at-home order into a new phase with more businesses able to operate-- and they want every Republican to follow.

Kemp, who held a prayer service as restaurants began reopening Monday, has stood by his decision despite not meeting the federal guidelines. Many Georgia business owners say they don’t plan to open right away and Kemp’s moves have already revived political feuds in the state. Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA) sided with Trump and accused his opponent in the November Senate special election, GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler, of taking both Kemp’s and Trump’s side in the fight.

Trump And American Disunity

Blue skies, nothing but blue skies

If you were shocked to hear polling that indicated that a majority or plurality of Americans approved of how Trump was handling the pandemic, keep in mind that whenever there's a national calamity, Americans tend to rally round the flag. Sometimes that is short-lived though-- and in this case it was very short-lived. A new poll from Navigator shows most Americans have now regained their senses and see Trump as part of the problem, not part of the solution. When asked about Trump's erratic and self-serving handling of the pandemic, we see a 13-point swing in his net approval on this from 52% to 42% (+10) to 47% to 50% (-3). "Trump is wildly out of step with Americans with his new push to relax social distancing," concluded the pollster. "Only 5% say we should roll back precautions, even at the expense of economic losses, while 74% say we should wait however long it takes for public health experts to say it’s safe, including 70% of Republicans... Trump didn’t cause coronavirus, but his actions have made it worse-- and Americans are looking to others, from governors to health experts, to lead us out of this... Lives have been put at risk by Trump’s senseless delay on invoking his authority to produce more needed supplies like masks and ventilators."

One of my sisters is tucked away in self-imposed isolation at her home in Brooklyn, venturing out only rarely and only with her N-99 mask and latex gloves. The other-- who is married to a dyed-in-the-wool Trumpist-- has been incredibly hostile to the idea of precautions... until yesterday when her fearless leader announced he was considering some kind of a enforceable travel quarantine against New York and parts of New Jersey and Connecticut, whatever that means. If Trump says it's real, in her mind, it's real.

Some of Trump's political allies-- the reactionary governors of Florida and Texas for example-- had already put up barriers against New Yorkers. And now the truly repulsive conservative governor of Rhode Island, Gina Raimondo, a pretend-Democrat, who has adamantly refused to issue shelter-in-place orders, announced Friday that "members of the National Guard, along with local law enforcement, would be going door-to-door in shore communities to look for people who have come here from New York. The troops will collect their contact information and work to enforce the 14-day quarantine. They will do their best to target homes where the state believes people may have come from New York, Raimondo said. People who violate quarantine orders would be subject to a fine at first, and prison time on subsequent offenses, Raimondo said." Her troops have been ordered to pull over cars with New York license plates... respectfully. Cuomo said he would sue her if she didn't roll back her diktat immediately. [Instead she just announced that the restriction apply to any non-Rhode Islander-- so she's giving the finger to the rest of the country. No comment.]

Raimondo is widely considered one of the most disgusting, puke-worthy governors of any state regardless of party. She told the media that "This is an emergency. What is constitutional in one scenario is different than in another. This is pinpointed, this is targeted, this is a state of emergency, this is limited in time, and it’s going to be enforced in a respectful way. And it’s a public health necessity." She said "Right now we have a pinpointed risk. That risk is called New York City."

He backed off today

Janet Mills, Maine's lame (Democratic) governor hasn't had the brains or spine to order Mainers to shelter in place either. Officials on the island of North Haven, Maine issued an order banning all visitors to the island-- even ones who own homes there.




Vox's Ian Millhiser noted the same thing and wondered how much this is going to weaken the union, "testing the very notion that the United States are united."

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed an executive order on Thursday that would require travelers from some coronavirus hotspots to self-quarantine: It provides that “every person” who flies into Texas from “New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, or the City of New Orleans, or in any other state or city as may be proclaimed hereafter, shall be subject to mandatory self-quarantine for a period of 14 days from the time of entry into Texas or the duration of the person’s presence in Texas, whichever is shorter.”

Other states have imposed similar orders. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) imposed an order on Tuesday that requires anyone flying from New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut to self-isolate for 14 days. Alaska and Hawaii also imposed self-quarantine orders on people traveling from other states.

These orders implicate one of the fundamental premises of the union among the 50 states: the right of American citizens to travel among them freely.

As the Supreme Court recognized more than 170 years ago, “we are one people with one common country. We are all citizens of the United States, and as members of the same community must have the right to pass and repass through every part of it without interruption, as freely as in our own states.” The right of all US citizens to travel freely among the states, the Court later explained in United States v. Guest (1966), “was conceived from the beginning to be a necessary concomitant of the stronger union the Constitution created.”

If states can decide that some US citizens are not welcome within their borders, it may cease to be a union at all. This right to travel is implicit in the notion that citizens are Americans, and not simply Texans or New Yorkers.

But should that principle hold during a pandemic? Does the Constitution forbid states from taking drastic actions to slow the spread of a potentially deadly disease within their own borders?

Gov. Abbott’s order, at the very least, is probably carefully drafted enough to survive constitutional scrutiny. That order applies to “every person” who flies into Texas from the designated areas, regardless of whether that person is a resident of Texas or some other state. Read in that light, it does not discriminate against non-Texans.

But orders like Gov. Abbott’s do raise troubling constitutional questions. And they cut against the concept of a union of states that has prevailed in this country, especially since the New Deal.

The modern notion that every US citizen has the same rights, no matter where they travel within the nation, is rooted in a notion of nationwide solidarity that depends on a strong and competent federal government. And the Trump administration is not holding up its end of that bargain.

...But even if such travel bans are legal, they are still indicative of a greater rot within our constitutional system. The premise of our Constitution is that the states gave up some of their sovereign authority to the federal government, in return for mutual benefits such as collective national defense and free trade among the states. The premise of the post-New Deal order is that the federal government must take on additional obligations, including providing a basic social safety net.

And the evolution of the right to travel played a significant role in establishing this new order. The right to travel is fundamentally tied to our conception of what it means to be a citizen of a nation. We’ve spent most of the last century fleshing out our understanding of what obligations our nation owes to its citizens.

...The United States was one collective community, not 50 insular communities.

But Trump is slashing the safety net that holds this national community together. He spent much of the first three years of his presidency dismantling the federal government’s permanent infrastructure, that his predecessors set up to deal with a pandemic-- including ordering the White House National Security Council’s (NSC) entire global health security arm shut down. He’s repeatedly proposed budgets making sharp cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.

Trump abdicates his role as the custodian of a nationwide safety net. Indeed, he recently told a group of governors who needed ventilators to deal with the rise of coronavirus cases to “try getting it yourselves.”

Thursday night, after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) requested tens of thousands of ventilators to protect the lives of infected New Yorkers, Trump dismissed this request in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators,” Trump claimed. “You go into major hospitals sometimes, and they’ll have two ventilators. And now, all of a sudden, they’re saying, ‘Can we order 30,000 ventilators?’”

Nor is Cuomo the only governor frustrated by the federal government’s inaction. After Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) sought much needed medical gear and equipment to protect the people in his state, the federal government provided only a fraction of what his state needed.

Moreover, as Pritzker wrote on Twitter, Trump’s inaction forces governors to compete with each other-- potentially even pushing them into a bidding war. “I have medical professionals and first responders begging for the things they need to keep them safe-- but so does” Cuomo. So does Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R). So does Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D).

Trump, meanwhile, was extraordinarily slow to use the Defense Production Act, a federal law that would allow the federal government to coordinate a national response among state and private industry. As Pritzker writes, “it’s the federal government’s job to make sure that a nurse being properly equipped in Illinois doesn’t come at the cost of a doctor being ready for work in California.”

If the Trump administration is unwilling or unable to uphold its end of the post-New Deal bargain, the implications are staggering. Trump’s inaction does not simply threaten to exacerbate a pandemic. It threatens the very concept of what it means to be the United States of America.

Could Putin have foreseen all this when he invested a measly few million dollars towards getting Trump elected in 2016? What an absolutely brilliant investment-- at least from a Russian perspective! Shrewdest foreign policy move in Russian history!

Tom Wakely Wants To Make Texas Great Again-- A Guest Post By A Gubernatorial Candidate

-by Tom Wakely

My name is Tom Wakely and I am a candidate for Governor of Texas but before we get into that I’d like to tell you a story or two of how I came to the decision to run and why I am running.

My wife and I run a private care home for hospice patients in San Antonio. We offer them a place in our home to die. We have been doing this for a little over eight years now and we have helped 48 people to die with dignity and respect. My wife is from Mexico and she just became a US citizen this past spring. I was born in San Antonio and right after high school at the age of 17, I enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. After my discharge, I returned to San Antonio and soon found myself working with Cesar Chávez on the grape boycott campaign in Texas. I was very political active during the 70’s. But all my work, all my idealism, came crashing down in the Fall of 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan as President. I was 27 years old. I was lost, bewildered, not sure what I should do or where I should do it. For the next few years, I was an aimless wanderer, traveling all over the country. I tried going back to college but it didn’t hold my interest. I became a stockbroker for a while but decided that wasn’t my thing. I flipped burgers for a few months, drove a cab, I even took a job on the Mississippi cleaning the inside of river barges. I eventually drifted back down to Texas with nothing more than a few bucks in my pocket. The political revolution that I had been so much a part of had failed and nothing I did or thought I wanted to do could fill the emptiness in my soul.

I was now 32 years old, alone and tired. I had just broken my right ankle in a stupid accident and as I lay in my hospital bed, thinking about my life, I had an epiphany. Of course, at the time, I didn’t understand it to be an epiphany, but it was. Anyway, I healed and after a few phone calls followed by a few interviews, I found myself back in the Midwest, enrolled at the Chicago Theological Seminary. I mention this because it is relevant to why I am running for Governor of the State of Texas.

Now, you have to remember when I entered seminary in 1985, apartheid was still the political and social system in South Africa. I had been and was now again very active in the anti-apartheid movement, this time in Chicago. To my surprise my seminary had a relationship with a South African seminary and with Desmond Tutu. It worked like this. When it looked liked an ANC fighter, a college professor or a shopkeeper was about to be arrested and imprisoned by the authorities, they were immediately whisked away, enrolled in the South African seminary, then within a few days, they were in Chicago, in class with me. I became friends with all of them and still maintain that friendship with a few of them today.

These men taught me two very important life lessons. The first was don’t give up hope. Don’t let losing a battle discourage you. Keep on resisting. The second lesson was when a political opportunity presents itself, grab on to it as you may not get another chance. Which brings me to the question that everyone is asking me. Why in the hell are you running for Governor of Texas.

To answer that question, you need to understand Texas politics. Texas is not a red state; it is a no-vote state. In the 2014 general election that saw the rise of Greg Abbott and his tea-party brethren to power, Abbott becoming Governor and Dan Patrick becoming Lt. Governor, only 38% of our state’s registered voter’s voted. Abbott took 60% of the 38% which means he only received the support of 22% of the state’s registered voters. The Democratic candidate, Wendy Davis did far worse. She only received 40% of the 38% which means just a little over 15% of the state’s registered voters supported her. This voting pattern has been fairly consistent and repeated over and over again for decades.

Something is terribly wrong here. Over 60% of my state’s registered voters are consistently not voting.

The result is that Texas is now controlled by a small minority of politically, socially and religiously conservative people and the Texas Democratic party has no clue what to do about it or if they do know what the problem is, they simply have chosen to ignore it. We all know there is still a hell of a lot of money to be made losing elections.

Over the past 4 months I have talked to literally thousands of non-voters all across the state and asked them why they didn’t vote and they all have told me basically the same thing, They don’t vote because they know the Republican party doesn’t care about them or their family and the Democratic party has abandoned them. That is the reason why over 60% of our state is not voting - they know that neither party cares about the working men and women of this state. To paraphrase Bernie Sanders, Texas cannot survive morally or economically much longer when so few have so much and so many have so little.

I entered a 2016 Congressional race here in Texas on the heels of Bernie’s bid to secure the Democratic Party nomination for President. I ran as an economic populist on a strong bold progressive agenda against 30yr. Republican incumbent, Lamar Smith, the Chair of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. While we lost that race, we did manage to secure a few moral victories. We received more votes than any candidate who had ever run against Smith; we managed to drop Smith’s percentage of the vote total to it’s lowest level ever-- 56.9%; and our campaign received more votes than any Democrat in the State of Texas running against a incumbent Republican member of Congress. And we did all that with no institutional support from the Texas Democratic party and with very little money - a tad over $70,000 which included a $15,000 loan I made to my campaign.

Like my old ANC friends from seminary said, when a political opportunity presents itself, grab on to it as you may not get another chance. Well, the political opportunity in Texas is now. Gov. Greg Abbott’s attacks on labor, on women, on refugees and immigrants, on Hispanics and other minorities, on the LBGTQ community, on the poor in our state, on our environment and on our great cities, needs to be responded to with the most forceful weapon we have at our disposal - the ballot box.

I am entering this race for Governor not because I want to but because I have to. When I was in seminary I learned about Martin Niemöller, the Lutheran minister who was an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and who spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps. He summed up perfectly my feelings and why I am running for Texas Governor. Niemöller said: “First they went after the Communists, and I did not stand up, because I was not a Communist. Then they went after the homosexual and infirm, and I did not stand up, because I was neither. Then they went after the Jews, and I did not stand up, because I was not a Jew. Then they went after the Catholics, and I did not stand up, because I was Protestant. Finally, they went after me, and there was no one left to stand up for me.”

As far as I am concerned, the defining principles of the 2018 Texas Governor’s race are moral issues: respect for the dignity of everyone living in Texas; respect for the dignity of work and the rights of workers; the call to family and to community; the rights and responsibilities of all Texans; a preferential option for the poor in our state; valuing our fellow Texans and respecting who they are as individuals; and caring for God’s creation-- the air, water and land.

As I mentioned above, with only a little more than 22% of the state’s registered voters supporting Gov. Abbott and his tea-party brethren, I again have to ask myself why are over 60% of our state’s registered voters not voting. The answer I believe to why so many Texans are not voting is because no serious candidate for Governor has ever talked to them about income inequality. Well, I intend to talk to the 60% about income inequality in our state. Look, Texas has the world’s 12th largest economy but we rank 8th among the states as far as income inequality goes. San Antonio, the 7th largest city in the country, my home, ranks # 1 in income inequality. If we are serious about reducing income inequality in Texas we need to make it easier for people to join a union, not harder and that is why I support repealing our state’s right to work laws. I also support raising Texas’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. It’s a start.

I will also talk to the 60% about how a person can be a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment and at the same time support common sense stuff like background checks at gun shows. Advocating for gun violence prevention programs is in no way, no how, inconsistent with being a 2nd Amendment supporter.

I will attempt to explain to the 60% why abolishing the death penalty in our state makes sense. Look, I understand if someone killed a friend or family member of mine, I would want vengeance as surely as the next man would. But I refuse to give that power to the state. Texas has already executed at least 2 innocent men over the past decade. A mistake that can’t be undone. If you look at the death penalty strictly from an economic perspective, the death penalty system is much more expensive than sentencing inmates to life imprisonment. The cost for sentencing a person to life costs the Texas taxpayer about $700,000 vs. sentencing someone to death, including court appeals, can easily run over $2 million. Besides nothing could be worse than spending your life in an 8’ x 6’ cell.

I also want to reach out to the 60% and ask them a simple question, does your child or grandchild have asthma. I will point to the fact that Bexar County, home to San Antonio, leads the state in the number of children hospitalized for asthma. I will tell them that Texas is the number one source of oil and gas methane pollution in the country. I will tell them that is why I want to ban fracking and flaring in our state. I will also tell them we can create tens of thousands of new jobs by moving our state from a fossil fuel economy to a renewal energy economy.

Today, like in many states, the number one issue is rising personal property taxes to fund our public school systems. So, I want to know why Governor Abbott is not supporting a proposal by a colleague of his to abolish school property taxes altogether and find new revenue streams. Well, I think it is a great idea and among the dedicated revenue streams I see available to us are scraping my state’s complicated franchise tax system and replacing it with a business income tax. I also support the legalization and taxation of marijuana in Texas. The revenue from both sources would put a serious dent in the funds needed to make Texas public schools number one in the nation and at the same time lowering the personal property taxes that so many of us are suffering to pay each year. Side note here, last year, my wife and I had to pay our tax bill with a credit card.

I want everyone to know I am running for Governor because I want to make Texas Great. After decades of abuse, the women and children of our state need someone to stand up for them. When I see so many Texans hurt and killed by senseless gun violence, they need someone to stand up for them. When I see racist legislation like the anti-sanctuary city bill SB 4 signed into law by Gov. Abbott and his support of Lt. Governor’s Dan Patrick’s effort to regulate bathroom use by transgender people in public buildings, I cringe with fear. Fear of the word’s that Martin Niemöller spoke so long ago, ‘Finally, they went after me, and there was no one left to stand up for me.”