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HThe organizers of next year’s Cowboy Breakfast said the Jan. 27 event is in jeopardy because it’s fallen short of fundraising goals. The free annual event, which began 44 years ago to feed riders coming into town for the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo, has become increasingly pricy to stage, backers said.
HThe women’s Final Four is returning to San Antonio for the fourth time. The NCAA last week announced the Alamodome, already slated to host the men’s Final Four in 2025, will host the women’s tournament in 2029. San Antonio previously hosted the women’s Final Four in 2002, 2010 and 2021.
HThe annual household income needed to aff ord a home in the San Antonio area jumped to roughly $87,000 last year, a nearly 50% increase, according to new data from online real estate fi rm Redfi n. That exceeds the median household income for a family of four in the area, which stands at $83,500.
The University of Texas System Board of Regents last week unanimously adopted the Chicago Statement, commi ing the university to protecting free speech on its campuses amidst nationwide eff orts by right-wing lawmakers to dictate what teachers and academics can discuss in the classroom. UT’s intercollegiate student government also endorsed the decision.
— Abe Asher
YOU SAID IT!
Declaring ‘invasions’ and taking them back with Gov. Greg Abbott
Assclown Alert is a column of opinion, analysis and snark.
In 2019, shortly after a gunman slaughtered 23 people in an El Paso Walmart, claiming in an online screed that he was thwarting a “Hispanic invasion,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbo issued a sort-of apology for invoking similar terms in a fundraising mailer sent out the day prior.
Abbo ’s mailer urged fellow Republicans to “DEFEND TEXAS NOW” from immigrants and “take ma ers into our own hands.”
In true Nixonian style, Abbo eventually admi ed “mistakes were made” in his fundraising le er. He also assured the media that he spoke to members of El Paso’s legislative delegation to ensure “rhetoric will not be used in a dangerous way.” Phew. Glad he cleared that up.
Fast-forward to November 2022, however, and Abbo has fully embraced the I-word with zero fucks given.
In recent weeks, he fi red off le ers to the White House and county judges describing the record infl ux of migrants as an invasion. He even tweeted that he’d “invoked the Invasion Clause of the U.S. & Texas Constitutions,” something that theoretically allows him to defy the federal government on immigration policy.
Except that it doesn’t, experts said. At least not when mentioned off hand via social media.
“There’s a very specifi c, established path for invoking the Invasion Clause,” Trinity University political science professor Juan Sepúlveda explained. “You don’t just do it in a tweet.”
No shortage of racists popped boners when Abbo issued his tweet. But it didn’t take long for the rest of the world to fi gure out that — like many of the governor’s actions around immigration — it amounted to li le more than a political stunt.
“I don’t think it is a change in overall tactic as much as it is a reminder to all of Congress and into the members working the issue that this is serious,” Sarah Hicks, the governor’s budget director backpedaled on his behalf when the Austin American-Statesman asked her about the tweet.
The takeaway here, according to Sepúlveda and other analysts, is that Abbo is simply trying to keep up with the infl ammatory rhetoric of Gov. Ron DeSantis as he weighs a 2024 presidential run — or he’s simply looking to hurl red meat to his base after winning reelection.
Let’s be clear, though. The hollowness of Abbo ’s tweet doesn’t make his “invasion” rhetoric any less toxic. We’ll see how soon the assclown is forced to issue another squirming apology following the deadly actions of a racist ideologue.
Let’s hope the answer is “never,” but the rise in far-right extremism gives li le room for optimism. — Sanford Nowlin
Instagram / @GovAbbott
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— Travis County Judge Maya Guerra Gamble during the court hearing at which Infowars host Alex Jones sought to reduce his defamation payout from the Sandy Hook lawsuit.
U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Waco, last week came under fi re for comparing the legalization of marijuana to slavery. The lawmaker’s comments came during a hearing of the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommi ee, during which he said, “[Marijuana] ... is being advocated by people who are in it to make money,” adding that “slavery made money also and was a terrible circumstance.” Birmingham, Alabama Mayor Randall Woodfi n, testifying before the commi ee, called Sessions’ comments “patently off ensive and fl agrant.”
A conservative member of the Texas House fi led a bill that would let pregnant women use the HOV lane by counting their unborn fetus as a second person in their vehicle. The lawmaker behind the proposal, Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, is a perennial a ention-seeker whom Texas Monthly once ranked among the state’s worst legislators. The San Antonio Spurs se led a lawsuit with former team psychologist Hillary Cauthen, who alleged former shooting guard Josh Primo exposed himself to her on multiple occasions. In her suit, the psychologist argued that the Spurs organization knew of the player’s alleged misconduct months before ultimately releasing him in October. Cauthen also se led her suit with Primo. — Abe Asher
Find more news coverage every day at sacurrent.com
BAD TAKES
The legal arguments against Biden’s student debt forgiveness make no sense
BY KEVIN SANCHEZ
Editor’s Note: Bad Takes is a column of opinion and analysis.
ATrump-appointed district court judge in Fort Worth earlier this month ruled that the Biden administration cynically exploited the pandemic to try to make people’s lives a li le be er.
Seems that the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act, passed in 2002 by President George W. Bush, granted the Secretary of Education authority to waive federal student loans for those who have suff ered economic hardship “in connection with a war or national emergency.”
More Americans died from COVID-19 over the past 30 months than on every ba lefi eld since 1775. Might that qualify as a national emergency?
No, said Judge Mark Pi man of the Northern District of Texas. Because Hitler.
“This here is a statute that is about emergencies,” Deputy Assistant A orney General Brian Ne er argued before the court.
Judge Pi man was apparently unmoved. “You know, you could also make the argument that so was the authority given to Hitler after the Reichstag fi re,” he retorted.
Yes, a federal judge really said forgiving $10,000 in student debt for those who earn less than $125,000 a year is comparable to the declaration of martial law in Nazi Germany. What a gloriously bad take.
Back on Earth, in December 2019, 43 million Americans held federal student loans, and about 20% of borrowers were in default. The initial COVID-relief bill, the CARES Act, temporarily paused payments on most student loans — a forbearance set to expire on Jan. 1.
So far, 26 million Americans have applied for student debt cancellation, and around 16 million have already been approved, the Associated Press reports. If borrowers must resume payments next year, many could fall behind on their bills and default.
While all eyes were on Elon Musk se ing fi re to Twi er, another billionaire spent his spare time suing to stop Biden’s modest student debt forgiveness.
Bernie Marcus, who was CEO of Home Depot for almost a quarter century, founded the Job Creators Network in 2014, a neoliberal advocacy group that makes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sound like a bunch of Bolsheviks. Early in the pandemic, Job Creators Network recklessly touted unproven cures such as chloroquine as a convenient excuse not to prioritize preventable deaths over business-as-usual. They also took out Times Square billboards to blame U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for refusing to grovel to Amazon in the pathetic a empt to lure the tax-evading, worker-degrading corporation to build a second headquarters in New York City.
This summer, the organization’s Legal Action Fund kicked into gear, arguing Biden’s “illegal student loan bailout” is “fundamentally unfair to the tens of millions of hardworking Americans who never went to college and are now forced to shoulder loan forgiveness for the consultant class.” The group also argued the plan is “unfair to those who have scrimped and saved to repay their student loans.”
It’s telling when “job creators” choose to apply the logic of “moral hazard” and when they don’t. Certainly not when bailing out investment banks or injecting capital liquidity into Wall Street. In those fi nancial emergencies, government assistance is welcomed.
Suggesting that “helping out some people is unfair because other people exist is so anti-solidaristic, so anti-worker, so anti-community that it’s deserving of scorn,” progressive political commentator Briahna Joy Gray said in response to such arguments. “Should childless people pay for those with children? Should people who don’t have special needs pay for families with kids who do need more support? Should non-drivers pay for roads? Should people without homes support all the mortgage subsidies?”
Should people who opposed the Iraq War pay for returning veterans’ healthcare? Yes, to all the above — if we’re all in this together and mutually invested in one another’s wellbeing and success.
The cost of college has risen dramatically over recent decades, and thanks to high interest, we’re cumulatively charging less well-off students who had to borrow money to a end school much more than those whose families could aff ord to pay immediately. Is that fair, according to Marcus of the Job Creators Network?
The total outstanding student loan debt is estimated at north of $1.5 trillion, an albatross that precludes younger generations from buying homes and starting enterprises. And where do the opponents of relief think the money that wouldn’t go to debt payments is going to go, if not right back into the community, to small businesses and toward further education? In short, it would go back into the real economy, as opposed to the $2 trillion tax giveaway Trump made rain on the top 1%, which largely went to stock buybacks.
Speaking of disposable income, Marcus gave $7 million to Trump’s 2016 campaign and, more recently, $1.75 million to a political action commi ee supporting Senate candidate Herschel Walker.
And Marcus’ politics didn’t leave his old company when he did. Home Deport donated more money to the campaigns of election deniers than any other contributor, including fi ve U.S. House members from Texas — Pat Fallon, Pete Sessions, Jodey Arrington, Lance Gooden and August Pfl uger — all of whom handily won reelection and all of whom, on the same day a violent mob stormed the Capitol, voted to block the certifi cation of Biden’s 2020 victory as part of Trump’s a empted coup. If you were considering businesses to boyco , maybe put this big box chain at the top of the list.
Meanwhile, most other developed countries have fi gured out how to make higher education aff ordable, with dozens off ering free college outright. Tuition-free college is already a reality in seven states, most recently New Mexico. Why are these more transformative solutions off the table at the national level?
“We are endlessly instructed, rich people will not work unless they are given money, and poor people will only work if they are not,” polemicist Christopher Hitchens wrote in No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jeff erson Clinton. “These are the two modern meanings of the term ‘incentive’: a tax break on the one hand and the threat of poverty on the other.”
We have not left the legacy of this Clintonism behind. Until market-romanticizing logic ceases its hold over everyday discourse, until we unlearn the knee-jerk zero-sum thinking that has us quibbling over who paid for what while the billionaire class openly purchases political favors, even milquetoast remedies will continue to be portrayed as some slippery slope to nightmarish socialism.
Whether in the form of a trolling billboard or an errant court ruling, don’t buy it.
Courtesy Photo / White House
