Author: iexposedus

Non-profit Housing Finance Corporation Achieves Critical First Step

Non-profit Housing Finance Corporation Achieves Critical First Step in proposed Marshall Lofts Project           

The non-profit Harrison County Housing Finance Corporation (HCHFC) announced today that the first critical step, which needed to be accomplished in connection with the proposed Marshall Lofts Project, was successfully achieved last week. The Marshall Lofts Project envisions the conversion of the historic Marshall High School building, located on West Houston Street in the historic New Town district of Marshall, Texas, into low-and-moderate income apartments. The HCHFC’s application for a reservation of allocation for authority to issue tax-exempt bonds to finance the conversion of the historic building was approved by the Texas Bond Review Board in Austin on February 26, 2021.

The application was filed by former State Senator and former Harrison County Judge Richard Anderson who serves as general counsel for the HCHFC.   The application was filed on behalf of the developer, STC Marshall Lofts, L.L.C., a Texas corporation. The application authorizes the issuance of some $20 million in tax-exempt bonds during calendar year 2021.

The bond proceeds, together with additional dollars generated by the sale of Federal and State historic tax credits and housing tax credits, will be used to develop up to 130 apartment units on the property. The financing package assembled by the developer, Mr. Jim Sari, will include these funds, as well as other funding from private investors. These funds will be used to construct the apartments as well as amenities on the ten-acre tract, which was formerly known as the old Marshall High School and, more recently, as the old Marshall Junior High School, prior to being sold by the Marshall Independent School District in 2018.

Notably, the bonds will not constitute an obligation of the City of Marshall, Harrison County, or the State of Texas, but will be payable solely from apartment rentals and associated income from the developer.

Judge Anderson stated, “We are very pleased to have assisted with this critical first phase needed for the proposed Marshall Lofts Project. It’s a general consensus that there’s a need for low- to moderate-income housing in our community and, if successful, the Marshall Lofts Project will help to address this need, in addition to repurposing an historic local building for a beneficial use in our community.”

 HCHFC President Anne Yappen, a local realtor, shared: “In addition to assisting with these important housing needs, our Board of Directors felt that this project could also help to ensure that this ten-acre tract in the west end of the Marshall central business district does not fall into a blighted condition in the future.”

The other members of the Harrison County Housing Finance Corporation Board of Directors are Mr. John LaFoy, a Hallsville-area builder, Mr. Barry Lovely, a Marshall businessman, Dr. David Nelson, the owner of Texas State Optical, and Mr. Jack Redmon, former interim Marshall City Manager and long-time director of Public Services for the City of Marshall.

Judge Anderson explained that, in late October of 2020, County officials, including County Judge Chad Sims, City officials, including Mayor Terri Brown and City Manager Mark Rohr, as well as Tom McClurg of Marshall Housing Authority, and other community leaders met to consider the proposal for the Marshall Lofts. All were in fundamental agreement that this represented both a challenge and an opportunity to rehabilitate this property which had been dormant for more than two years. A consensus emerged that the project move forward with the Harrison County Housing Finance Corporation heading up the application process for the project.

Judge Anderson explained that it’s now up to the developer to pursue additional funding through the applicable tax credits and private financing, following HCHFC’s successful reservation of allocation for authority to issue tax-exempt bonds to finance the conversion.

Anderson said, “We’re familiar with this rather complex structure as we have utilized historic tax credits to create the Courthouse Endowment in 2009 to assist Harrison County, and have utilized housing tax credits to promote multi-family housing projects in Smith County in the past. Again, we’re glad to have been able to have done our part to afford the developer this opportunity and we wish great success for this project.”

Hilltop Securities of Dallas, Texas will serve as financial adviser of the Marshall Lofts Project. Mr. Tim Nelson, a principal with Hilltop, noted that Mr. Sari is in the process of completing the conversion of the historic Hotel Grim in Texarkana into apartments, with the opening of this project in Texarkana scheduled for the spring of this year.  Robert Dransfield of Norton Rose Fulbright law firm will serve as bond counsel.

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Background on the Harrison County Housing Finance Corporation

The Harrison County Housing Finance Corporation is a Texas corporation chartered by the State of Texas in 1979. It was formed in Judge Richard Anderson’s initial term as County Judge, and was designed to address the crisis in housing mortgages that existed at that time. The establishment of the Harrison County Housing Finance Corporation was the first county housing finance corporation in the State of Texas, using the state’s recently-enacted statute.

With present mortgage rates of less than 3.5%, it is difficult to imagine the crisis which existed in the 1980’s. However, during 1980, fixed rates for thirty-year mortgages had reached some 14.5%. As a result, some young families were simply not able to afford to purchase a home. Realizing this problem and working with a recently enacted statute, the HCHFC worked with local lenders, and sold tax-exempt mortgage revenue bonds for some $23.8 million in the public markets, and produced a mortgage rate of some 9.45%. These funds were then made available to local lenders to loan to families in the County in order to address this problem.

The program made a tremendous difference in affordability since the monthly payment for a $60,000 home in 1980 was the difference between a payment of $735 per month and $505 per month, a savings of some 30%. When compounded over a thirty-year period, this represented tens of thousands of dollars in mortgage payments saved on the $60,000 mortgage.

Through this public-private partnership, the HCHFC worked with local financial institutions to make the benefits of home ownership available to over 430 families in Harrison County, saving millions of dollars in interest over the thirty-year life of their loans for young home-owners.

The HCHFC was also instrumental in the construction of West End Park on West Houston Street in the historic New Town district of Marshall in 1995.

A proposal had been made to utilize this site for a solid waste collection site, as it had long-since been vacant following the location of Maverick Stadium to the new high school on Pinecrest Street. This property had devolved into a blighted 18-acre site, which had been the location of the old Stephen F. Austin School and football field. Judge Anderson proposed instead and structured a plan to convert this property into a public park to serve the community in an underserved area of Marshall. The structure for the plan to build the park was to bring local, county, state, and federal resources together to provide the funding and services needed to construct the park.   

Long-serving MISD Superintendent Pat Smith-Gasperson, facilitated the approval of the donation by MISD of this 18-acre property to assist this HCHFC-driven project to transform the acreage into an urban park. The structure for the park plan included a grant obtained from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, contributions of labor and equipment from Harrison County, and federal assistance provided from the AmeriCorps program. AmeriCorps is a federal program which was established in 1993 to provide labor and resources to help address critical infrastructure and other needs in local communities in America, plus educational grant funding opportunities for the students and other citizens who serve in the AmeriCorps program to help strengthen these communities.

West End Park represented the first park constructed in the underserved west end community in many years. The park now consists of two basketball courts, a covered pavilion, a soccer field and children’s playground equipment. More recently, lights and a concession stand were added to the facility through the efforts of SWEPCO and Mr. Jack Redmon. The HCHFC continues to maintain this park for the benefit of the residents of the city’s west end. The HCHFC is also currently in the process of planning upgrades for West End Park.

With the participation in the Marshall Loft project, the HCHFC continues its mission to assist with making sanitary, safe, and affordable housing available for the benefit of the Harrison County community.  #

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I-just-don’t-get-it headline of the day

I-just-don’t-get-it headline of the day:

“Nearly 180 Democrats support forming $12 million, 13-member slavery reparations commission”

I don’t care about the number of members in any federal commission. Many commissions are turned to boost egos and memorable change from the efforts is elusive, at best. The point of even discussing cash slavery reparation payments is box-of-hair dumb.

The fact there ever was slavery in this country is appalling. Period. Paragraph.

“We, the people…all men are created equal….” should say it all today, even though when the document was written, those words were understood to mean “We, the people (white men only)….”

Paying money to people whose great great grandfathers and great-great grandmothers were slaves does not undue the generations of abuse blacks suffered at the hands of white owners. A check from the government is a here-and-gone gesture made in an attempt to say, “Sorry that some of our ancestors used some of your ancestors as livestock. Here. Here’s some money snd let’s just let bygones be bygones.”

No. That’s not the answer. Some ills cannot be cured with money; some events in history are carved into history like a brand; some wrongs are lodged in the souls and psyches of the human spirit.

We don’t need a feel-good reparations commission; we need a different commission, a group of forward thinkers that have the wherewithal, the clout and the blessing of the federal government to create a pathway — a true roadmap — of equality for every citizen and m, yes, prospective citizen.

Equality. That should be the goal, equal treatment under the law, protected once and for all by the power of federal government. True, there are laws already on the books demanding equality for all citizens that are being blatantly ignored. While the commission is doing it work, every law needs to be reviewed as compliance should be enforced.

Equality is the goal, for minorities, for women, for all citizens regardless of skin tone, sexual orientation, religious preference, nation of origin, individual beliefs.

Total equality is an impossible goal; it is impossible to legislate thoughts, beliefs, visceral human emotions.  But that should not deter the effort to further strengthen the foundation of equality via reviewing and renewing the 1964 Civil Rights Act to reflect today’s realities.

No citizen — NO CITIZEN — in society, school, business or under the laws of this nation, should be judged by any measurement other than, to quote Martin Kurher King Jr., “…the content of their character.”

Regardless of law, regardless of educational efforts, there will always be bigots. Like the poor, every nation has its share of ignorant, prejudiced people who ostracize others they deem “not worthy” by standards foisted upon them from the cradle or learned through indoctrination and cult-speak.

You cannot legislate morality and ethical behavior, but you can legislate public behavior, set enforceable business standards against prejudicial treatment and educate the populous in the value of a diverse society.

Now, right now, is the time to reevaluate the existing laws and  ensure they are sufficient to move the nation into the next era of seeking improved equality … the united people of the United States.

Equality: An impossible concept to achieve, but a goal this nation is duty-bound to pursue.

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I Have A Dream

By Ron Munden – 2/18/2021

2021 has proved one thing – Texas is unprepared for cold weather.  I am one of the lucky ones. I have power currently.  I do not have the internet, so I have lots of time to write about the past.

I don’t dream often.  At least I do not remember my dreams very much.  When I do dream it is often the same dream.

In the dream – I am always carrying a football going for a touchdown.  I take a hit and go down just inches short of the goal line.  The outcome of the dream never changes.

My football career started on a Saturday afternoon in June 1954.  That was the day for Little League tryouts in Marshall Texas.  I have been practicing baseball with my friend Charles McIntire for weeks prior to this day.  At noon Charles’ dad drove us to sign-up for the tryouts.  He dropped us off and drove home.  All was going well until I found out that it cost $2 to register.  I had no money.  I panicked, put my baseball glove under my arm and ran home from the Little League park to 902 East Burleson.

By the time I arrived home my dad had come home from work.  He ask me why I was home.  I explained.  He seemed concerned but not mad at me.  He just said, “Get in the car.”

I assumed he was driving me back to the Little League park, but I was wrong.  Instead, he drove to Logan and Whaley Sporting Goods Store and bought a football.  The rest of the afternoon he and I passed the football in the backyard.

During one of our breaks my dad told me what my future was going to look like.  He said that he did not have the money to send me to college, but I was going to college on a football scholarship and I was going to be an engineer.  He then said that if I did not do this, I was going you spend the rest of my life working in the body shop.  Since I have been working summers in the body shop since I was 9-years old, I knew exactly what that meant, and I also knew I did not want that life.

While it might be blind luck, what dad told me happened just like he said.  However we lived in a railroad town, I had never met an engineer and I really did not know what an engineer was, I spent the next couple of years thinking I was going to spend my life driving trains.

My father telling me that I was going to play football came as a surprise.  I had never thought about playing football but that fall my dad took me to sign up for midget football.

My first year of football could not be rated as a big success.  Football is a contact sport and I hated hitting and being hit. I have always been blessed with speed, but I used that speed to run away from action, not toward it.  So that first year I played bench warmer.  I hated playing football but I hated thought of telling my father I was quitting much more.

I continued holding the well-deserved position of bench warmer through the 7th and 8th grade.  But something happened in the 8th grade.  I changed from hating contact and hitting to loving it. The high point of my 8th grade year was overhearing a 9th grade player let his friend I really hit hard.

I was an undiagnosed dyslectic throughout grade school thru graduate school.  I only found out later in life.  Now I understand why school was so difficult for me during my early years.

Though grade school and the first two years of junior high I hated school.  I dreaded going to school every day.  I was at the bottom of my class and my twin sister Carol was at the top.

Finally, in the 9th grade I found something I was good at – algebra. I had always understood all of the concepts and processes of arithmetic, but I often got the answer wrong because of transposing numbers.  In algebra it is hard to transpose an “x” or “y”. 

In football, after three years of bench warming, I made the starting lineup.

My high school football years were good but not great.  I played a lot and I did make all-district my senior year. I got to play because I was fast not because I was big.  I ended my high school senior at 6 foot 1 inch and 142 pounds. 

I never thought about where I would go to college.  I knew the school would choose me by offering me a scholarship or I would not go to college.  I quickly found that very few schools wanted to offer a football scholarship to a 142-pound halfback.  Because of my speed I did get track scholarship offers from some major schools but at that time track scholarships were only half-scholarships and that was not an option.  I also knew my father wanted me to play football.

That left the junior colleges, Kilgore and Tyler JCs were talking to me.

Fortunately, Bob Mason, a Marshall coach, took me under his wing.  No one in my family had been to college so I knew nothing about college and even how to apply.

Coach Mason was coaching at Marshall but had announced that he was leaving to take a coaching position at Austin College in Sherman.  He asks me if I would like to see Austin College.  Of course, I said yes.  He and his wife took me to AC for a weekend.  At the end of the weekend, he asked me if I would like to go to school there.  The rest is history.  He helped me complete all the paperwork and I was off to Austin College in the fall of 1961.

I arrive at Austin College in August to start two-a-day workouts.  I was probably in the best shape of my life.  I spent most of the summer building fence but quit two weeks before leaving for college.  I sent 8 to 10 hours each day working out at the old Mav stratum with other guys that were also headed off to college.

I was up to 152 pounds when I arrived at AC.  Even though I was small, I was the fastest player on the team and that earned me a starting position as defensive safety my freshman year.

Being a college athlete was a completely new experience for me.  I got to eat on the training table.  I got all the food I could eat and things that I had not eaten before. I don’t recall eating a baked potato before getting to AC but I had one every night after that first night. Between classes I would go to the gym and get high-cal chocolate drinks, I returned home to Marshall at Christmas weighing 195 pounds.  I was longer one of the small guys.

Coach Mason once told my father that he thought the more I played the better I played.  In track he registered me for the maximum number of events allowed in a track meet.  He must have passed that on to the head football coach, Coach Gass.

My sophomore year at AC, I continued to play defensive safety but also played running back on the offensive about half of the time.  I loved being on the field that much.  I reached 200 pounds that year which made me a more effective ball carrier.  Unfortunately, my ability to receive a pass did not improve.

My junior year at AC was my dream year.  It started with a bang – a bang I was not expecting.  Coach Gass always called the plays from the sideline and a player took the play to the huddle. The first game of the year, AC received the kickoff, and then I carried the ball the first 5 or 6 plays in a row, including a 45-yard run that was called back for clipping.  After the last play in the series, I was laying on the ground in the end zone and thinking “do I have enough energy left to walk off the field.”

After being on the sideline for a series or two, I was back in the game, but I never carried the ball two plays in a row for the rest of the game.  At half-time I remember sitting against the wall in the locker room sipping on coke from a cup.  The coach was discussing the game plan for the second half.  At one point he looked at me and said, “Horse can you keep running?”  When though I was so tired it felt like my arms were asleep, I said, “yes sir.”  I must not be very convincing.  I only got to carry the ball a few times the second half but still went over 100-yard rushing for the game.

Things continued going well for the season and I racked up more 100-yard plus games.  The last game of the season I did pull a groin muscle, but I just slowed me down for that one game.  All-in-all it was a good season.  I was lucky enough to be named to the Dallas Morning News All-Texas Football Team and even started getting letters from some of the pro team.  At this point I only remember the San Francisco 49s and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Even though I had increased my weight to about 210, I had a successful track season recording a series of 9.7-hundred-yard dashes.

I was honored to be selected as the athlete of the year at Austin College.

It was a very good year.

Austin College is a well-respected liberal arts school, but I went there because I could get my education paid for not because I want a liberal art degree.  Remember, I was going to be an engineer.  My plans called for me to transfer to University of Texas, Austin at the end of the year three to work on my engineering degree.  I considered my athletic career over.

In the late spring of that year, I was contacted by the Head Football Coach and he suggested I consider coming back to AC for one more semester.  He outlined some of the benefits.  Almost immediately after that my father called and said he had been talking to the Coach.  He said that he really wanted me to go back to AC for a semester and if I decided to go back, he could afford to buy me a new car.  At this point all of my cars had been cars that had been totaled in a wrench and repaired by us at the body shop.

So just like that my plans changed, and I was going back to AC for a semester and I would be driving a new car.

Maybe if I had been honest with people, they would not have pushed me to come back to AC.  I never told my coaches or my father that my groin injury had not fully gone away.  I could sprint because you don’t use the groin muscle but when I moved to the side, I could still feel it.  I just thought if I gave it enough time it would heal.

The 1st of July was when I started training for football each year.  1964 was no different but the day after my first workout was quite different.  After running several sets of sharp cuts, it was clear that the groin injury was still there.  I knew I had a problem.  I called the coaches at AC.  They said to come up to Sherman immediately and they would send me to an athletic doctor.

After the doctor did his exam and a series of x-rays, he said that part of the groin muscle had pulled loose from the bone taking a piece of bone with it. He said it could be repaired with surgery, but I would not be ready by the start of the football season.  Surgery was out. So, they started treatment with shots and physical theory.

My senior season was not a good season.  I played every game, but my numbers did not match by junior year.  I could run but not without pain.  My senior year the routine became to play the game on Saturday and run like nothing was wrong.  By Sunday morning the groin was very sore and hurt with each step.  At 1pm each Sunday I met the trainer at the field house, and we began therapy. Therapy was mainly hot water, ultrasound and an occasion shot. This continued through the week.  My workout was limited to mainly running in straight lines.  By Friday I felt fairly good.  Saturday, we started the routine over.

No one ever said anything, but I know I disappointed a lot of people that year.

After the season ended there was one more chapter.  In December.  I was called by the Head Coach.  He said a scout for the Pittsburgh Steelers wanted to talk to me.  They gave me the number.  I called him.  The scout was a nice gay, and we had a series of conversations.  I kept wondering why anyone in their right mind would offer a free agent contract to anyone that had such a disastrous season.  Finally, during a conversation, he said that they were looking for a running back that was over 200 pound and had sub 10 flat speed.  So, at 210 with 9.7 speed, I got in the door.

I had a conflict.  Although the money was good, there were a lot of negatives – I would have needed surgery, I would have left college without a degree, and statistically the chances of me making the team were not good.  

My coaches did not try to influence me but my dad wanted me to sign the contract.  Finally, I told dad that I was going to engineering school and my football days were behind me.

I spent 2 ½ year at UT and 3 year at UC Berkeley and never attended a football game. During the past 50 years, I may have watched 6 games on TV.  I loved playing football but watching is just not the same.

I wonder why I keep having my dream.

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What is up with Lindsey Graham?

By George Smith

There was a time when he loomed large over the main pack of GOP presidential contenders. He was a political comet, soundin like he was up-to-the-task competent, a man committed to a better America. Then, after being eviscerated by Trump’s broadsword tongue in the primaries, he embraced the liar-in-chief like a scared kindergartner holding onto his mommy at the school door.

Now, after Trump effectively divided the Republican Party into Trumpuppets and anti-Tremors,  Graham is doing his best asshat-duty routine to his fuhrer. There is no apparent reason for his pitiful mouthing.

I believe he is only concerned with … what? Not re-election (doesn’t run again til 2026), not history (his historical fate already set)…so what?

A marital indiscretion Donald is holding over his head? Financial impropriety? Photos of him and a labradoodle?

It’s head-scratching, for sure.

Come back to the light, Lindsey. If not all the way, then, at least, step out of the suffocating, Republican party-killing shadow cast by Trump..

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After Trump

After Trump

By George Smith

It’s an old adage that has common sense repercussions in 2021 A.T. (After Trump): Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.

In the 2020 presidential election, the National Republican Party made the same mistakes that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party did in 2016: Took certain states and electoral votes for granted.

Five years ago Hillary knew — KNEW! — she would win Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan; she campaigned little in those states. She was wrong. Last November Trump KNEW he would win Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, Utah, Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan. He was wrong.

A sense of ego, inevitability and political history rocked both candidates in those respective elections.

What now? Where do the parties go?

For the next two years, the Democrats, controlling both the legislative and executive branches of government, plan to try and lead the country back onto a more unified approach to legislating. President Biden wants compromise and bipartisanship to be the driving force during his administration.

The GOP, at least at first blush, are digging in their heels and playing hardball, forgetting that Biden is the pitcher and they are outnumbered at every position. Plus, they are already proving they would rather fight than compromise by some of the statements by party leaders and  actions by states with Republican-held legislatures.

Rather than do an autopsy on the 2020 ejection/election disaster and try and figure out how to overcome the deficits they suffered in key states, and rather than strategizing on how to win more converts to the Republican Party through programs and reasonable inclusion platform planks, they are trying to figure out how to suppress votes.

Dumb. Blind turtle on the interstate dumb.

Several states, including Georgia and Arizona, have already floated voter suppression ideas designed to create barriers to certain voters — read: minorities and/or immigrants — even registering, much less casting votes.

In 2016, the GOP urged their constituents to vote absentee, either early or by mail. This year, with the pandemic requiring more absentee voting and an incredible registration and get-out-the-vote campaigns on swing states, the Democratic Party performed election cycle miracles, including creating a tsunami in Georgia, which went for Biden and followed up that stunner by shooing in two Democratic senators.

The brain-dead Republicans, rather that go “Hmmmmmm. We need to work harder and figure out to appeal to the new voters”, are trying to figure out how to keep folks from voting.

Dumb move, Elephant People. Most of the schemes you’ve already tried previously to suppress those you consider dissident voters have been ruled unconstitutional. Any new plans that are specifically aimed at lowering the number of people voting will suffer the same fate.

Idea: Stop. Regroup. Think. Ask the question: What do we need to do to appeal to a much larger voter base?

Well, staying the POT (Party of Trump) won’t work. That plan got slapped slobberjawed sideways in November.

Back to the drawing board, boys and girls and figure out how to shy away from the  Cray-Cray Chronicles of the last four years and return to some theme like…hmmm, maybe “Compassionate Conservatism.”

It worked before. And, Lord knows, it’s better than you have come up with lately.

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WHERE TO GET VACCINATIONS

SOME OLD, SOME NEW

1/22/2021

1.     CHRISTUS IN MARSHALL WILL NOT LIKELY HAVE MORE VACCINATIONS UNTIL A BIG HUB IS ESTABLISHED IN MARSHALL IN ANOTHER FACILITY (LIKE THE CIVIC CENTER?). THIS WILL HAPPEN WHEN SUPPLIES OF VACCINE ARE  AVAILABLE. NO NEED TO CALL THEM. CHRISTUS LONGVIEW IS IN THE SAME SITUATION. WATCH THE PAPERS AND THE NET.

2.     VACCINATION SITES IN HARRISON COUNTY, TX VACCINATION SITES IN HARRISON COUNTY, TX:                

SUPER 1 PHARMACY ON HWY 59      — 903 938 3096                                                          

HALLSVILLE BROOKSHIRE PHARMACY   — 903 668 1409

3.     MARSHALL/HARRISON COUNTY HEALTH DEPT (BEST VACCINE SITE IN MARSHALL AT THIS TIME)

https://mhchd.org/

(and click on the sign up for a COVID 19 Vaccine link) THE INTERNET IS BETTER THAN CALLING OVER AND OVER UNTIL THEY ANSWER. SIGN UP. THEY GET VACCINE SHIPMENTS PERIODICALLY, SO DOES GREGG COUNTY.

THE MARSHALL NUMBER IS 903-938-8338

4.    TEXAS VACCINATION INFORMATION EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW RE VAC. IN TX           COVID-19 Vaccine Information TEXAS 

5.     SOME LONGVIEW DRUG STORE NUMBERS:       

BROOKSHIRES ON GILMER RD. LONGVIEW 903-297-6963, SUPER ONE ON HWY.80 LONGVIEW 903-753-1964, SUPER ONE ON HIGH ST. LONGVIEW 903-234-2785, AND BROOKSHIRES IN WHITEOAK, 200 W.US80, 903-297-2785, LOUIS MORGAN #4 IN LONGVIEW 110 JOHNSTON ST. 903-730-6580

6.    TRY SHREVEPORT, LA. THEY SOMETIME HAVE VACCINE.

SEE KSLA.ORG TO GET A LIST OF NUMBERS

7.     TWO HUB VACCINE SOURCES IN TYLER: 

NORTHEAST TEXAS PUBLIC HEALTH DISTRICT WILL BE DISTRIBUTING VACCINE TO ANYONE WHO QUALIFIES REGARDLESS OF COUNTY OF RESIDENCE. NET HEALTH CEO GEORGE ROBERTS SAID THE HEALTH DISTRICT WILL BE HOSTING VACCINE DRIVE-THRU CLINICS AT HARVEY CONVENTION CENTER IN TYLER EVERY WEEK BASED ON AN APPOINTMENT AND WAITING LIST SYSTEM.

TO BECOME A PART OF THE WAITING LIST, VISIT nethealthcovid19.org.

THE NEXT DRIVE IN EVENT WILL BE SOON.  THOSE ON THE WAITING LIST BE THE FIRST CALLED ON AN APPOINTMENT. GET ON THE WAITING LIST

THE SECOND HUB IN TYLER IS UT HEALTH SCIENCE CENTER AT TYLER: I DON’T KNOW WHEN THIS HUB WILL START DISTRIBUTING VACCINE.

THE TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF STATE HEALTH SERVICES SAID THAT THIS WEEK MOST COVID-19 VACCINES WILL BE DISTRIBUTED TO LARGE SITES AROUND THE STATE TO VACCINATE MORE THAN 100,000 PEOPLE. THE GOAL IS TO PROVIDE MORE PEOPLE WITH THE VACCINE AND AN EASIER WAY TO SIGN UP FOR AN APPOINTMENT. ALL PHASE 1A AND 1B INDIVIDUALS ARE ELIGIBLE TO RECEIVE A VACCINE AT THESE HUBS, NO MATTER WHERE THEY LIVE.

PHASE 1A INCLUDES FRONT-LINE HEALTH CARE WORKERS AND RESIDENTS AT LONG-TERM CARE FACILITIES, WHILE PHASE 1B INCLUDES PEOPLE OVER 65 OR WITH A CHRONIC MEDICAL CONDITION THAT PUTS THEM AT INCREASED RISK FOR SEVERE ILLNESS FROM COVID‑19.

PEOPLE SHOULD NOT SHOW UP TO A HUB IF THEY DON’T HAVE AN APPOINTMENT. PROVIDERS ARE FOCUSING ON VACCINATING AREAS AND POPULATIONS HARDEST HIT BY COVID‑19, DSHS SAID. 

ACCORDING TO THE STATE, VACCINE SUPPLIES ARE LIMITED BUT MORE SUPPLY IS COMING EVERY WEEK. 

FOR WEEK FIVE OF THE VACCINE ALLOCATION, NET HEALTH AND UT HEALTH SCIENCE CENTER AT TYLER EACH RECEIVED 1,500 DOSES OF THE VACCINE. 

APPOINTMENTS ARE FULL AT UT HEALTH SCIENCE CENTER AT TYLER, BUT UT HEALTH EAST TEXAS SAID THAT OFFICIALS WILL PUBLICIZE THE NEXT APPOINTMENT AVAILABILITY THROUGH THE MEDIA. APPOINTMENTS HAVE BEGUN, AND PEOPLE USED AN ONLINE LINK TO SIGN UP FOR THESE APPOINTMENTS AS WELL. 

I WOULD GUESS THAT THERE ARE DRUG STORES IN TYLER OFFERING VACCINE????

IF YOU KNOW OF FRIENDS OR RELATIVE OR ACQUAINTANCES WHO MIGHT HAVE TROUBLE FIGURING OUT HOW TO SIGN UP FOR VACCINATION,  PLEASE TRY AND HELP THEM.

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Everythig Is Political

1/22/2021

The 21 January story in the Washington Post caught my eye.  I immediately thought “Another dumb decision by some  bureaucrat.” My second thought was, “That person’s head should roll.”

I worked for the Navy for 32 years.  One to the Navy traditions is that managers must be held responsible for bad decisions.  It seemed like a simple thing to find the highest level person that decided to move the National Guard to a parking garage.and take action after a review of the situation.  It seems like something that could be quick and simple.

When it dawned on me that in the United States of America in 2021 nothing is simple. It’s all political.

For starters this story was reported by the Washington Post and on CNN.  For four years Trump has been brainwashing people to believe that everything in the Washington Post is “fake news” and cannot be believed.  That means 30% of the people in the country will not believe the story.  This leaves only the Democrats, the Independents, and Mitt Romney  to believe the story.

I must admit I was wrong once more.  Republican Representative Kevin McCarthy, rested after trying to overturn the last election, decided that it was time to blame the Democrats since they had been in power for a day.  Ok, let me cut him some slack – they have been in power for a day and a half.

Using our government’s official form of communications, Twitter, Mr. McCarfthy blamed Democrat Nancy Pelosi for ordering the National Guard into the parking garage.

I have never thought of Mr. McCarthy is a mental giant but surely he knows that the Secretary of Defense  does not report to the Speaker of the House and the National Guard is in the Department of Defense’s org chart.

To be perfectly fair to Mr. McCarthy, I am not sure Speaker Pelosi knows that the Secretary of Defense does not report to her.  After all she did call the Joint Chief of Staff to express her concerns about Donald What’s His Name having the nuclear codes. Fortunately, What’s His Name no longer has a football and only carries golf balls these days.

Hell – after listening to many members of the House of Representatives speak,  I feel fairly confident that fewer than 10% of them know the Secretary of Defence does not report to the Speaker of the House.  Let me make one correction.  Since more women joined Congress after the last election, let me say now 15% of the Representatives know that the Department of Defense does not report to the Speaker. 

Since some of you might feel I am being a little hard on McCathy and Pelosi, I would like to conclude by saying that Senator Chuck Schumer and Senator Mitch McConnell have outlived their useful service life and should be put out to pasture with Pelosi and McCarthy.  It’s  time for them all to develop an exit strategy if one of them  knows what an exit plan is.

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Democracy

Democracy

By George Smith

Democracy is a cool word: It means, simply, the power in government rests with the people.

Many people believe that to be true. Well, actually, the United States is a democratic socialist republic, which is akin to a democracy, but with more of a “friends with benefits” arrangement.

America in the most recent past was shaping itself into a plutocracy (government by the wealthy) and, the last four years, was leaning toward an autocracy (one person in charge). President Donald Trump, backed by his legislative allies and the Supreme Court ruling that corporations were ‘people’ and could spend as much money as they could afford on political candidates and issues, put into place a take-no-prisoners  form of government.

“My wish, my want, my way” was his unspoken Oval Office mantra.

Plutocracy, in its basic form, is inherently bad. It is the ruling of a government by the wealthy class. It is the government of the day in this nation, the government that is making decisions for you and me. Our government is ruled by rich individuals and corporations who push massive amounts of money into the political process in order to control it.

And control it, “they” do. It is a fact that elected federal officials spend more time raising money for their next political race than they do working for the citizens they represent. 

We have a distinct separation of the “common” folk in this country and the privileged class; a majority of those money-holders are making sure that the division between the two classes remains a vast chasm, an ever-growing chasm, with the economically middle and lower class perpetually falling lower on societal’s financial ladder.

During the past year, as COVID-19 devastated lives and the economy, the wealthiest citizens gained more wealth; new billionaires popped up like daisies after a spring shower.

The foundation of this country was laid by the mental, financial and physical labors of highly educated (for the time) men, all  landholders and relatively wealthy individuals who wanted to control their own destiny. The foundation was solidified by these believers in freedom joining forces with Everyman, all believers in the limitless opportunities this country had to offer.

Over the past 250 years or so, there have been shifts in the individual political power bases of the legislative and executive branches of government, but, mostly,  elected leaders tried to work together to ensure that the main principle on which this country took root — “…that all men were created equal…” and maintaining certain freedoms — were sacrosanct. (Women and people of color were afterthoughts then, and to various degrees, are still in that category today.)

Now, due to the philosophical divisions inside both political parties, and the amount of rabid anti-themism exploding from the “Far Left is Best” attack bullies of the Democratic Party and the ultra-conservative, “white-is-right” arm in the Republican Party, the gap between common sense and senseless partisanship is as wide as any time in our history.

The Republican Party is being held captive by a bevy of radicals (some newbies and some old hats trying to stay in power), a corps of Trumpuppet aginners elected on platforms of hate and division. These professional naysayers have pledged to run the country’s fiscal future and global standing aground rather than work for compromise on key issues: pandemic response, education, continued economic recovery, deficit and debt, hand-up funds for the nation’s poor and disadvantaged, the future of foreign aid, immigration reform and right-to-vote issues.

On the other side of the aisle, young representatives joined with long-time socialist advocate Bernie Sanders to demand reforms in climate change, gun laws, introduction of specific socialistic programs, open borders and equality — in human rights and opportunity, but even when the “right” has not been earned or is not fiscally practical.

No longer does the art of compromise have a prominent place in political discourse; the legislative miracles accomplished with Republican Ronald Reagan and Democrat Tim O’Neill are ancient history. President Bill Clinton, despite his personal problems in the White House, built a legacy of compromise with Republicans via the passage of the bipartisan welfare reform act and the bill that unregulated the financial institution (not the best piece of legislation to pass but it was a “compromise”.) Under Clinton, a “free-spending Democrat”, our government had its last budget surplus.

Clinton was not a political chameleon as many opponents charged, then and now; he was a civil rights liberal and a fiscal conservative…perhaps the last of that particular political species we will see in our lifetime. More of his ilk (politically speaking, not on a personal level) is needed.

In a positive political environment, Republicans and Democrats prosper, as both sides use compromise as a way to get at least part of the individual parties’  (and individual lawmakers’) agenda enacted. 

In today’s heated environment, which is a buttress of pettiness, rock-hard immovable stances on key issues and political division, rancor and bully-boy tactics is commonplace. Civility is something found only in a dictionary; bile and bitterness flows down the aisles of both houses of Congress like stagnant wastewater.

As a people, we are into using “labels” for individuals and ideas rather than looking  at different ways to build a coalition embracing different views to form the basis of compromise legislation.

The overall political picture is further clouded by deep-pocket lobbying groups and special interests that back candidates based on single-issue stances rather than what is the best pathway for the country.

In a word, the present political melting pot is a mess of unappetizing ingredients, heated over a coal-fire of personal dislike, whiney-baby rhetoric and further fueled by our elected officials afraid of being removed from office by a demanding constituency that puts short-term interests over long-term national gains.

Is it too late to stop the slide that could end up with America as a non-player on the global scene? It is not too late. We have a new start with this new president.

But with the specter of Donald Trump hovering over the landscape, with the festering divisions and red-hot political rhetoric heating up social media, with our present crop of ME-in-the-spotlight legislators, and with no way to get them out of the way sans term limits, the present is looking more and more like the future.

Only we, the voters, can change it. The question is: Do WE have the will, the courage, the determination to say, ‘Enough!”

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Poetic column

Poetic column

By George Smith — 1/18/2021

We know which way Trump’s cult leans
Mindless, brainless, feckless fiends
They believe all his lies
Breaking all rational ties
As they create regular chaotic scenes

What is awaiting ahead of us?
Do we still fight, scream and cuss?
What really lies ahead?
Will democracy be dead?
Any rational subjects to discuss?

We’ll see the future before too long
Let’s stand together and be strong
Learn from the past
Build our nation to last
Let’s make “rights” from all the “wrongs”

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CULT (definition)

CULT (definition)

By George Smith — 1/13/2021

* A misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person or thing.

“a cult of personality”

If you are a believer in the actions, deeds, musings and pronouncements of President Donald Trump despite his constant stream of lies, deranged attacks on enemies and allies, blatant examples of inciting his followers to commit unlawful acts, and being responsible for the failed efforts to control the pandemic in this country, you are a member of a cult:

If you are a politician and believe your livelihood , your freedom, and, your very life, is umbilically connected to supporting the president, right or wrong, you are a cult member.

If you see Trump as a messenger from God, sent to do battle with the liberal elements trying to turn America into a socialist nation, you are a member of the Cult of Trump.

If you see the president as being solely responsible for the uptick in the stock  market and refuse to recognize the steady growth in stocks since 2010, you are a cult member.

If you do not see a

systemic racist bent of the white establishment in the US, or acknowledge Trump actively encourages members of the white supremacy movement, you a card-carry cult member.

If you believe the president is an honest businessman, ignoring his six bankruptcies, thousands of lawsuits from former business contacts, the shutting down of his foundation for misuse of funds, the close of Trump University and massive cash settlement with former students on charges of fraud and giving his cozying up to the world’s most abusive  dictators a pass, you are a Trump cultist.

Do you believe the president focused his attention and the immense power  of the federal government on attacking  the COVID virus and minimizing its effect on US citizens, or still believe the virus is a hoax and scientists are double-dead-dog wrong, you are a cult member.

And, if you refuse to denounce his fiery words on January 6 when he gave his followers tacit permission to “attack” the nation’s Capitol, leading to five deaths and extensive property damage…look in the mirror and you’ll see a member of Trump’s cult. 

President Trump incited an insurrection of citizens against the government because he could not accept the absolute fact he lost the 2020 race for re-election.

He will go down in history as a liar, an insurrectionist and the most corrupt president in the nation’s history.

Don’t be a part of that legacy. Make a decision to leave the cult…now.

Help save American by, first, saving yourself.

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