With Jan. 20 just two weeks away, Socratic Gadfly takes an initial snapshot look at President Obama’s legacy from the left. Updated Presidential rankings to follow.
And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.
John Wright makes five queer predictions for LGBT Texans in 2017.
Paradise in Hell wants the holes in the Texas Freedom of Information Act to be patched.
The Bloggess submits an application to become a vampire.
The TSTA Blog explains how the state abuses school property taxpayers.
It’s Not Hou It’s Me gives you a hand with your New Year’s resolutions with a guide to working out in Houston.
This week’s feature photo is the Hoya Land Office Building in Nacogdoches, Texas. Orginally constructed in 1897, the structure is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is thought to have been the first fireproof building in the city.
As America prepares for a new President and uncertain times, many across the nation have had a tough time accepting the inevitable. In the coming days, the Obama Presidency will end. Even as folks do their best to sound reasonable and put on a brave face, the coming Inauguration is going to be difficult for a large part of this nation.
But thankfully, a much-needed healing agent is available to soothe us in our grief. If you missed BET’s Extraordinary Salute to President and First Lady Obama at the final White House musical event of his Presidency, it is highly recommended. Top notch performances abound from Jill Scott and Janelle Monae, to Usher, Common and De La Soul, Kierra Sheard, Yolanda Adams and Michelle Williams, this event might leave you crying, but it may also fill the soul with hope for the future. BET pulls all the stops to let our nation’s President an First Lady know that they are loved, and will be missed. As the President said himself, “thank you for coming to MY Block Party”!!
None of us can know what lies ahead, but we can be thankful for what this First Family has accomplished over the last 8 years: always graceful, always thoughtful, and ALWAYS taking the high road despite all of the challenges thrown their way. That is definitely worth a celebration.
With all of the hope and promise that 2017 brings to the state of Texas, it also brings another set of critical opportunities to accomplish the People’s Business in the 2017 Texas Legislative Session. Per the Texas state constitution, our state legislatures meet on biennial basis for approximately half of the year. For a state more populous than the country of Australia and a GDP nearly equal to that of Russia, the work done in each cycle of the #TXLege is critical to keep the state, and the entire nation moving.
It may be a New Year, but it’s the same old Texas leadership. So it’s of little surprise that Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick is less interested in doing the People’s Business, but would rather, umm… clog it up.
Say hello to SB6– The Texas Privacy Act. But don’t be fooled by the appealing name… This is simply another Discriminatory‘Bathroom Bill’ designed to target innocent Texans, especially aimed at the Transgender Community. Lt. Gov. Patrick and others in the GOP leadership are determined to file the legislation and take it up in the Texas Senate, even after seeing that similar bills in states like Indiana and North Carolina have been met with devastating results to the state business community. As Lauren McGaughy of the Dallas Morning News points out, there’s also one other thing that SB6 would do…
AUSTIN – Cities like Dallas and Austin will have to undo local laws that protect transgender people from discrimination if Texas passes the so-called “bathroom bill” unveiled Thursday, a proposal panned by the business community that’s wreaked havoc on other states’ economies.
[…]
The bill mirrors similar legislation passed in North Carolina and Indiana in recent years. Those laws have caused substantial political headaches for those states’ leaders – Indiana’s was later amended to include some LGBT protects and North Carolina’s failed to be repealed in a special legislative session – and both cost millions in lost business investment.
The bill, Senate Bill 6, will impact cities, public schools and state agencies and will enhance some criminal penalties.
First, if passed into law the bathroom bill would prohibit cities from passing any ordinance that applies to a private business’ bathroom, locker room and shower rules. Cities that have already passed anti-discrimination laws to allow transgender people to use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity would be kept from enforcing them.
Once again, hypocrisy abounds in Austin. After spending 8 years crowing about the Federal Government’s oppressive restrictions on our state, the Texas Big Government Overlordsseem to think nothing of oppressing the will of municipal and county residents. If passed, SB6 would be yet another unprecedented move tosnatch local control from Texas citizens, from the same leaders whom preach all day against “big government overreach”.
If state government has gotten to the point where it’s monitoring Number 1 and Number 2, overreach has descended to a whole new level.
With this in mind, Texans are already organizing to fight back. Today in Houston, business leaders, political leaders and activists from across the state gathered in response to the Lieutenant Governor’s filing saying that the Texas Legislature needs to “Flush Senate Bill 6” and the hashtag #FlushSB6 was immediately trending on twitter. Here’s a link to the full press conference, via Facebook Live.
Texas State Senator Sylvia Garcia was quick to push back against the measure in a statement…
“All Texans want to go to the bathroom in peace, including transgender people. That’s why it’s already illegal to enter a bathroom to harm someone and always will be. According to the Texas Association of Business, legislation like this could flush $8.5 billion and 100,000 jobs down the toilet. We need to focus on classrooms not bathrooms. My district needs bills that will create jobs, not political grandstanding job killers.”
Given that Texas House Speaker Joe Straus has already indicated that a bill like SB 6 would not a priority in his chamber, grandstanding is a likely outcome for the Lieutenant Governor during the upcoming session. But if 2015’s HERO backlash and the 2016 elections have taught any lessons at all, the first of them should be to expect the unexpected. Any advance of such harmful legislation should be fought hard and fought now.
So there we have it… Happy New Year Texas. Let’s hope this clog gets flushed out of the Legislature quickly, so we don’t have to waste taxpayer time and money on blatant discrimination. AGAIN.
