HALV: Brown's crocodile tears regarding SALT are all about the rev cap.

City Controller Chris Brown is flummoxed.

State, Local tax deductions are vital to Houston. Chris Brown, HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)

It's hard to forward a plan that's going to bust the rev cap and allow Turner, Brown and company to raise property taxes on citizens until their eyes bleed when those damn feds are planning to take away the partial tax-credits that residents can use to off-set the increases.

Damn you Washington DC!!!

It's a reminder that all politics is local, and all politicians, either federal, State or local have one end-goal in mind: Increasing takings  revenue from your pocketbook.

Financially the City of Houston is broken, spending money like a young frat boy in Vegas on his 21st birthday while TIRZ and other "special purpose" districts go around painting sign posts unusual colors in order to brand neighborhoods.  Meanwhile the city police and fire departments are woefully understaffed, the roads, despite Turner's pothole patrol, are in such a sad state 3rd world countries are pointing at us and laughing and the sewage/water system is so leaky we're probably losing almost as much water per year as we're using.

Of course, they passed the 'rain tax' which has accomplished.....pretty close to nothing, might run counter to the State Constitution and has been tied up in court proceedings since about 5 minutes after it passed.

Pensions are (still) a mess, ignoring what the courtiers in the media, and the politicians on whom they rely for patronage, might tell you.  All Houston basically did was refinance $1 Billion of existing debt and shit-hammer the fire department pension for not going along.  The system soon to be infused with cash, which will allow those that did the heavy lifting for Turner's campaign to walk-away with a nice little nest egg before they move on to private-sector jobs.

So how, in a time where decades of fiscal malfeasance are now coming home to roost, can the Federal Government stop accounting tricks designed to soften the blow of bad municipal and State policy?

Fairly easy it seems.

Because, as the folks on the left have been saying for years, elections have consequences. And if the other 'tribe' wins then it's reasonable to suggest that they're not going to pass or propose legislation that's going to make it easy for your 'tribe' to continue to cover up its warts.

This is agnostic as to whether or not the GOP tax plan is 'good' or 'bad' (hint: It's a start but, as is usual, doesn't go far enough) but solely a commentary on the piss-poor job of governing that the status-quo has provided Houston, and other cities, after several decades of what is basically one-party rule.

And, make no mistake about it, this is a bit of a problem for local leaders who have tied their version of a modern utopia to increasing taxes that are very burdensome to the working poor.  Which has flummoxed poor Chris Brown.

I'm sure Mayor Turner is flummoxed as well, and probably angry, which seems to be his Modus Operendi when things don't go his way.

The problem is not a tax increase, it's just that the wrong tribe, and the wrong level of government, is proposing it.  Don't be fooled, they want the money, they just want to have control over which level of patronage benefits from it.

Getting elected isn't cheap you understand.

USLV: I am SHOCKED!! that things are not working out as planned.

After 9/11 American were told by our government that it would be necessary for us to set aside some of our freedoms in order to have security.  In light of this we rewarded politicians who voted for the Patriot Act, and agreed to have the travel experienced worsened by turning over pre-flight security to the TSA.

How's that working out?  Not well....

TSA Failure: Agency Falling Short on Most Undercover Screening Tests. SmarterTravel

A recent round of undercover tests revealed an agency that continues to fail at the most basic elements of its purpose. According to ABC News, these tests of multiple airport security checkpoints found that “screeners, their equipment or their procedures failed more than half the time.” ABC News’ source indicated that number may be closer to 80 percent.

In case you're wondering, an 80% failure rate is "not good" even by government standards. In short, after all of the freedoms we sacrificed, all of the gropings and "body scans" and strip searching of 80 year old grandmothers we're just about as secure from terrorism in the skies as we were before all of this mess.  On the bright side, a ton of people who were unemployable in the pre-existing job market are now collecting paychecks funded by you.

We gave up freedom for the illusion of security and got neither.  We also got just a little more poor as well.

Well done.

TLSPM: Still Getting it wrong.

The Houston Chronicle's new "conservative" (read: slightly less liberal but still solidly Democratic) columnist chastises the Democrats for not getting their act together on the ballot, without realizing why they won't win....

Texas Democrats need to try a little harder to put the State in play. Erica Greider, HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)

Most puzzling of all, though, is how little the Democratic Party is doing in Texas. Individual candidates, to be sure, are storming the ramparts; the most notable is Beto O'Rourke, the U.S. representative from El Paso, who is challenging Ted Cruz for a seat in the Senate. And some of the congressional primaries are, frankly, oversubscribed.

Beto O'Rourke is the latest, no name ID, fave-rave of Texas Democrats, whose candidacy is likely to invigorate the TLSPM and the InterLeft but will be destined to lose to incumbent Ted Cruz by double digits. As Greider notes, the slate at the top of the ticket looks grim. It's gotten so bad for Texas Democrats that they're going back to "Draft (insert celebrity name here) mode".

But the real reason Texas Democrats have no chance is in the comments to Ms. Greider's tome.  From a leftist with the nom de plume of ROBIN:

Texass is just a few years from turning purple, and then blue.

Yes, because you're going to win the hearts and minds of voters by insulting them and calling them names.  Enjoy the fringes of the political landscape folks, thank you and have a nice night.

The biggest problem that Democrats have right now is that they've become the party of relatively well-off, predominantly Caucasian progressives. Progressives who view themselves as functionally, mentally and otherwise superior to the rest of the rubes in America (and Texas) in every way. Unfortunately, for them, their political ideals are out of step with a majority of Texans and they are, almost to a person, horrible at the whole relatability thing. Mix in the fact that their entire political apparatus appears to be made up of low-functioning idiots with communication and relatability issues and you have a perfect recipe for electoral banishment.

It's gotten so bad for Democrats that they were relegated to choosing a gubernatorial candidate based on her tennis shoes.

The Texas Democratic Party is urban, in a State that's still got a sizable rural population. They still pay lip service to minority groups, while promoting progressive policies that have been disastrous for them. They have no solutions outside of "we're going to tax you until your eyes bleed" and even then they can't seem to agree on how to spread that message. They're bereft of leadership, have no bench strength and if they do eventually win it will be by default.

Because the Texas Republican Party is worse. They just have a ton of candidates with some name ID.

I gave up voting a couple of election cycles ago because I realize that it doesn't matter which set of morons we put in charge of the ship, it's still going to hit the iceberg eventually. It's heading that way because we've allowed our politics to be controlled not by the citizens, but by the politicians. And yes, the media helped get us to this point through hero worship of some pretty horrible people.

I've no doubt that a Texas Democrat will eventually win a State-wide race in Texas, at which point the TLSPM will erupt in euphoric joy. As for the rest of us?

That just means there's a new way for us to get screwed.  Hopefully they allow us the luxury of Vasoline.

Las Vegas Shooting: The Government We Deserve

No sooner had the bullets stopped flying in Las Vegas than certain politicians and media outlets (whom I will not dignify) started firing up the political machine. It mostly came in the form of tweets, calls for the political opposition to drop their deep-held beliefs and side with them as the only reasonable course of action.  Of course, the demonization of the NRA began almost immediately as well, and while I'm not a member of the NRA, nor do I agree with some of their resistance to certain issues, I do not think they are the PR arm of a gun-toting political movement hell-bent on allowing people to shoot one another.

They are a political group, similar in nature to the Sierra Club, or any of the single-issue political groups on the right or left, but they are demonized because they a) mostly donate to Republicans and b) have been very successful in their efforts to promote legislation.

One area in the on-going game of political PR where the Democrats have most certainly won is in casting the opponents funding groups as somehow evil or a malignant force for society.  Oil Companies? Polluting the world, the NRA? Actively trying to kill you. Drug companies? Trying to make big bucks on the backs of the dying.  It's not an accident, it's a political plan by the left that they are winning in the same way they have won the culture wars.  In short: The GOP has not become the hot-mess that they are wholly because they have bad ideas, in large part they struggle because their leadership is shite and their messaging is even worse.

It has now gotten so bad that even expressing sorrow and wishing good thoughts to victims of tragedy is seen as a negative event by the left's useful idiots. While the right makes up fake-news about Islamist terrorists where none exist, or continually tries to find a boogeyman for their adherents to latch on to.

What dies in all of this is reason, and reasonable arguments. For all of the bemoaning of the depths to which our politics has fallen both sides firmly believe that the root-cause of this is the actions of the other 'side' exclusively. This is because we've elected a group of carnival barkers to rule us, with no thought given to their intelligence or ability to actually govern.  I've said this many times before and I'll say it again.

The problems in America are not caused by Trump, or by Obama or by the media, or anyone other than US.  We have allowed things to devolve this far because WE abdicated our position of power in the Republic and handed it over lock, stock and barrel to a group of low-functioning idiots with a penchant for strongman style histrionics and rhetorical flair.

In a sane world, reasonable people could disagree on the merits or extent that gun control is needed. However, no reasonable person should disagree that every legal option should be investigated when it comes to preventing mass shootings.

Reasonable people can disagree on whether or not healthcare is a "right" or a "privilege" but should be able to agree that what we currently have is irreparably broken and the entire system needs an overhaul. Reasonable people can also disagree on what exactly the overhaul should be.

Reasonable people can disagree on taxation and government revenue, on where the money is going, but should be able to agree that the current tax code is a partisan, rent-seeking mess filled with too many rules and give-aways to political patrons.

But, and this is a big, big but, we no longer operate as reasonable people in our politics, either in the murky, stupid world of social media or in the increasingly page-click driven world of actual media.

I have made no secret of my disliking of the Republican party. The GOP is a dysfunctional, anti-intellectual mess right now. And while I dabbled with independence before I believe this time it will stick because where before I still found GOP politicians with ideas, I currently find many of the ideas from both parties to be lacking in both reason and logic. I can never be a Democrat because of their authoritarianism and, frankly, pretty scary ideas about how the country should be ran, but I can never be a Republican either because of the same.

It is possible, albeit unlikely, that the current Supreme Court case on gerrymandering could help alleviate some of this by removing the incumbent protection system but I doubt it. I doubt it because we've now all firmly entrenched ourselves within our tribes and our only goal is to "sick-burn" the other tribe.  We don't want to govern, we have a NEED to win. And not just that, to humiliate the other side in large part to feel like we're something, instead of just floating along in life, accomplishing nothing and generally being......a loser.

To be honest, I'm not sure of the fix, if any exists.

And that might be the most depressing bit of all. That this cannot be fixed because most Americans, despite protestations to the contrary, don't WANT it to be.  We NEED to hate the other side because it makes us feel superior, we need to gloat, to assure ourselves through smugness that we are, in fact, the superior people. We NEED to laugh at the stupidity of our political opposites because it helps us cover up our own.

You can't fix stupid, increasingly, it seems that we don't want to.

BadPolitics: The Trouble with Taxes....

Here we go again. If you feel like the show from Washington D.C. is a never-ending wheel of misfortune you'd be forgiven.  While Florida, Texas, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands work to climb out of the muck created by Harvey, Irma and Maria the political types in our Nations cess-pool of a capital have been trying, and failing, to repeal the Affordable Care Act and are now focusing their attention on cutting taxes.

This, as you can imagine, has the usual suspects in somewhat of a tizzy. It's even got the New York Times play-pretending that they're deficit hawks again.  Of course, the Politifarce 'fact-checkers' are out in force trying to convince us that their opinions on the matter are in fact, facts, and voices from the left side of the political aisle are here to remind you that you don't NEED a tax cut at all.  All that's left is an idiotic think-piece from Vox. Wait, nevermind, they've delivered.

Winning the prize for non-seriousness however is, as is typical, the non-relevant Houston Chronicle Editorial Board, who have decided to plant their flag directly within the confines of the Alternative Minimum Tax.  Let that sink in for a minute. (Seriously Chronicle, it's past-time to shutter the Ed Board and redeploy the resources to something you can do fairly well [hint: local reporting])

Of course, there will be no shortage of opinion pieces telling you what you want and need by members of the ruling class. None of them actually touching on what could, or should, be done.

This happens because politics is a mess, the media has fallen down on the job for the last eight years and the rest of America is too busy arguing whether a bunch of Millionaire athletes protesting during the National Anthem is sufficient enough reason for them to either stop (or start) watching NFL football.

This is not to say that there are no good arguments against this tax cut. There certainly are.  Kevin D. Williamson of the National Review (and a favorite read by the author of this blog) lays out the case against fairly succinctly, and without falling into the nutty trap surrounding the 'rich'.  Unfortunately, most (if not all) of the criticism from the Left gets fixated on that and just.won't.stop.

Does America need a massive tax cut right now?  My answer is probably not.  But tax REFORM on the other hand is much needed.  Let me explain.

The current tax code contains 74,608 pages of regulation. Not only is that a draw on time, resources and energy but it creates a complex web of regulation that's impossible to correctly navigate except under the simplest of returns, or with the greatest of financial resources.  Part of the reason for this is just the nature of Federal regulation. Its designed, despite bills requiring regulation to be "clear and concise", to be complicated and vague in almost all cases. Government bureaucracies don't want things to be easy, because they always want to a) be able to come back and charge more and b) keep the option for fines and civil penalties open.

There's a reason that all guidance from Federal agencies is considered "non-binding" after all. This allows a low-level staff employee to come back on an audit and make a determination against even guidance by the organization itself. If you've ever sought guidance from the federal government at your work, and then been audited, you understand what I'm on about here.

The income tax code is no different. It's designed to do three things. First, to maximize the amount of revenue the government can extract from you under threat of force. Second, to create an unruly tax structure which increases the risk of error, which increases the government's ability to levy fines and penalties. Third (and most importantly) to reward political patrons.

Streamlining the tax code, flattening and broadening it, and reducing the gifts to political patrons should be of primacy in any reform plan. It's not entirely clear that Trump's GOP has this in mind. A secondary goal should be to reduce the number of people who are not paying in and not sharing in the tax burden with the rest of us.  Current numbers put that figure at close to 50%. This means that almost half of Americans are being subsidized by the other half. If that number gets to 50% plus one, our democracy is kaput.

This doesn't mean that the rich should get a shave, that the middle class need more heaped on them, that businesses should be punished or that the poor should be made to pay 'their fair share'.  What it means is that a flattening, broadening and simplification is desperately needed in order to knock the system back into balance.

Does the GOP plan do that?  I'm doubtful.  As a matter of fact, I think any plan that would do that would be so unpopular that Americans would fly into an apocalyptic rage were it to be proposed.  The goal in America is to see the tax cut benefit them and start to be punitive at a level that's just above what they are making. Until we change that thinking, we're going to get what we have today, which is a wonky, hard to decipher mess of a system that can be gamed providing you have sufficient money.

In short: We're getting the tax code we deserve and we're getting it good and hard.

BadScience: The Lack of Trusted Voices Matters a LOT.

Given my history of writing, and knowing my occupation within the oil and gas industry, you might be surprised to find out that I DO believe that the Earth's climate is changing. I believe that the climate of this pebble has been changing for somewhere around 4.54 Billion years and it continues to do so today.

You may also be surprised to find out that I'm very concerned about pollution that results from modern society including, but not limited to, my very own oil and gas industry.  As you read above, I also, despite my open Christianity, believe that the Earth was NOT created 5-6,000 years ago but more like 4.54 Billion years ago and that evolution is a very real thing.

I also think that one of the worst things to happen in modern society is the politicization of pretty much everything.  This despite, for years, writing what is known by my handful of readers as being a pretty horrible politics blog.

And yes, I believe in, and appreciate, science.  Most importantly I value the scientific method and frequently mourn it's recent passing.  I mourn it because there are a lot of bad things that happen when we don't believe in science, or the scientific method, and allow our politics to dominate the conversation.

 - Vaccines (or the refusal to use them)
 - Nutrition (and the obesity epidemic)
 - Food supply (ethanol and GMO's being two examples of this)

But the things I worry most about are pollution and climate change, in that order.

When Al Gore first formed his investment group and realized that the American populace was a) sadly uneducated on the scientific method and b.) he could make a mint off of this fact, it all started to go downhill.  What followed was a movie with nine proven factual errors being given the Oscar for "Best Outstanding Documentary" and outsized influence because those of a similar political disposition liked the cut of Gore's jib.

And everyone loves a villain.

Trust me when I tell you that there is NO better villain in this world than so-called "Big Oil".  Not that they're evil, but that they operate on a massive scale, generate some fairly hefty profits at times, are primarily led by old Caucasian guys and, when accidents happen, they are whoppers.

But they usually are just that, accidents. In my over a decade working in the industry I've never heard, or been part of, conversations about harming the environment, or cutting corners to put people in harm's way.  I'm not suggesting this goes on, but most of the engineers that I've met have no desire to have their project 'in the news' or 'creating a headline'.  That's just truth.  I realize few believe it but since you probably aren't in the industry there's no way I can prove it and it probably wouldn't matter anyway.

That's because we've been conditioned, by our politicians and society, to discount information that contradicts our beliefs no matter how compelling the facts are surrounding the case.  For example:

The Climate Change Computer Models (around which there is such scientific "consensus" that they are treated as Gospel) are not accurately matching what is going on in the real world.  They neither foresaw the "pause" in heating that occurred nor are they accurately reflecting the real-world results of a decrease in carbon. This doesn't mean that human activity doesn't contribute to the change, only that it might not be the main driving force behind it.

In "scientific" circles, that makes me a "climate denier' which symbolizes my empathy and de facto agreement with Holocaust deniers according to leading scientific lights such as Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye (the Science Guy).  There are some who even suggest (seriously) that those who point this out should be arrested, sent to 'reconditioning camps' even.  I guess so that we can have the heresy beaten out of us?

But again, those two distinguished thinkers that I just referenced are less scientists now and more political activists. That's where the money and fame lie. There is also the problem that neither Tyson, or Nye are actual climate scientists.  That's right, the leading argument used by Michael Mann against those who pointed out flaws in his hockey stick diagram (namely, that they weren't climate scientists) can be leveled accurately against the two proponents of the same.

And this gets us to the point of this post (finally):

The biggest problems with climate change are not that enough resources are being spent, too few economies are being destroyed, too little money is flowing into the already sizable bank accounts of Al Gore's investment groups, too-little power is being handed over to the world government, that the poorer nations aren't getting paid enough money by the richer ones, no.  The biggest problem is that the politicization of the issue is preventing us from figuring out what we can do to deal with it rather then destroying society in a fairly useless attempt at stopping something that's been going on before man was even a single-cell organism.

The biggest problem is us.

Because we choose to listen to politicians who are simply trying to punish political enemies (and, in many cases, impede the other 'side' from fund-raising or rent-seeking), get re-elected and gain majorities at all levels over government in order to increase their power base and pay off their political patrons. We chose to forget what the scientific method really is in lieu of some neat Power Point slides and a movie or three with gee-whiz special effects. Think about this: It was a Democratic US Representative who stated she wanted to "Nationalize the US Oil companies" and you know what?  Once that happened the debate over "carbon-caused climate change" would disappear overnight.

We put too much power in the hands of functional idiots, and then we wonder why things are as they are.

We currently have a President who couldn't make a solid go of it as a casino owner in an industry that basically prints money.  And look at the US Senate. To quote Obi Wan Kenobi: "You will never find a bigger hive of scum and villainy."  And REALLY stupid people.  The House of Representatives is just as bad.  Even worse are your state-elected officials, and then your municipal and county politicians. It's an ever growing pile of incompetence, inability and utterly clueless people. (Not to mention, horribly socially awkward)  And, no, it's not the fault of everyone else, your elected representatives are just as bad.  You won't admit it in most cases because then you have to admit that you voted for them.

The worst thing about all of this is that not only have we elected low-functioning idiots to rule us (and, make no mistake about it, they're not public servants, THEY ARE RULERS in America at this point) but we're taking totally gormless entertainers seriously.

No, Jennifer Lawrence, it wasn't God who was punishing us for Donald Trump that caused the hurricanes, and no Neil deGrasse Tyson it wasn't climate change that suddenly caused them to appear.

It was primarily the Atlantic mulitdecadal oscillation.

That you haven't heard that term on a newscast, from a politician or from *snicker* Leonardo DiCaprio is everything wrong with the entire situation in one.neat.package.