Where is Texas headed?

While the current Texas Governor is in court defending his bully tactics, the newly elected governor is out letting the fringe know that he will take them where they want to go.

I caught just a short video on the news where supposedly the Texas Governor-elect Greg Abbott validated what his priorities would be in his first term at the wheels of the Texas Government.

I did not personally see the news conference, but read about it in several papers and on even more internet websites. Evidently, Abbott listed his three priorities as jobs, border security and Texas schools. If this is truly the case, then how did the twist happen in what was reported?

The lead of nearly every article or web-post centered on Abbott’s comment: “If Open Carry is good enough for Massachusetts, it’s good enough for Texas.”

There seems to be some link to a campaign promise that Abbott had made to the “Gun Lobby” during his run for the office. This may or may not be true, I don’t know and that’s not really my problem here.

My problem here comes from either one of two sources:

(1)   The newly elected Governor is lying about his stated priorities

Or

(2)   The news media is more concerned about drubbing up exciting outcomes regardless of what is actually said

I have a hard time trying to find anyone in Politics that can tell the truth most of the time. I always read those PolitiFact articles and it seems anytime they challenge a member of the political network of our fine state, the “Truth-O-Meter" always comes out with a rating of Half-True to Mostly-False to False to Pants-ON-Fire.

Checking today’s PolitiFact web page the ratings came out like this:

True                 4

Mostly True     2

Half-True        4

Mostly False    4

False                6

Today’s Total  20

If you group the True & Mostly True together, that leaves 14 of the 20 ratings as some level of false or 70%.

How can a state as smart as ours keep putting liars into office? For that matter, one might ask the same question of our nation.

So, what does this have to do with our governor-elect? It just seems to me that the priorities stated in his first post-election interview shows that not much has changed. There seems to be a new opportunity to tell the truth at every split in the road, but hardly anybody seems to take the truth road.

Maybe, it is the media (print, TV, cable and the internet) that is really the problem. I can’t tell. I thought I used to be able, but that seems to no longer be the case.

Political Lies -----What should we do?

So, when is a lie about someone else protected as free speech under the First Amendment and when is it not?

Should we really need the U S Supreme Court to weigh in on this question or do the states with laws banning “actionable infringements” on one’s ability to protect their reputation in the justice system? I am, for one, tired of the almost daily regurgitation of PolitiFact stating that the latest statement made by some Republican running against some Democrat (or Vice Verse) was totally untrue (pants on fire) or just mostly false. (see http://www.statesman.com/ap/ap/political/court-to-weigh-challenge-to-ban-on-campaign-lies/nfbPd/)

The tactic is used by both parties and independents as well. It means nothing to these guys running to lie to us constantly—they don’t care one iota.

I am open to the use of a truth commission” that would be able to weigh in on these statements and fine the fib teller, oh heck, let’s say $1,000,000 for each lie they put before the populous. We would soon see just who would be willing to keep the practice going.

As a matter of fact, I would even volunteer to be the clearing house (or finer, you might say) that levied the denomination to be paid. The task doesn’t seem to be too challenging. We should also beef-up the journalistic endeavors who investigate these alleged miss-steps and the cost of operations would likely be far offset by the intake of “fine” money.

What say you?