Gary Polland's Texas Conservative Review
Current Issue TCR Back Issues What Other Say About TCR We Get Letters About Your Editor

Receive notice when a new issue is online (Enter email):

Volume XX Number 9 - June 10, 2021     RSS Feed   

A Periodic Newsletter for Committed Texas Conservatives

In This Issue

Chief Acevedo Nails Soft On Crime Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis

Texas Legislative Session, An Incomplete Due To House Failures

Border Follies

Restitution Due For Families Who Were Victims Of The Tulsa Pogrom 1921

Killing Jews Is Back In Style By Bruce Bialosky, Contributing Editor

What's Your Point?
FOX 26 - 7:00 AM Sundays
Tell It Like It Is
New Show Tell It Like It Is
Posts Wednesdays On YouTube
Red, White and Blue
Friday's at 7:30 pm on TV 8
Houston PBS is not a sponsor

TCR Ad

What's Ahead

Hard Hitting
Conservative Commentary
 
Contact TCR

Please feel free to forward this issue to your friends and associates.
Anyone can subscribe for free:
Subscribe

Gary Polland
1533 W. Alabama St.,
Houston, TX 77006
(713) 621-6335
Email

 

 

 

 

 

 
Thoughts This Fortnight

Chief Acevedo Nails Soft On Crime
Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis

Last week on Face the Nation, an obviously frustrated former Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo discussed runaway crime in our major "Democratic" run cities including Houston. Here is what he said:

"We've entered an era in our American psyche where our politicians have forgotten how violent our cities used to be. So we've fallen in love with criminal justice reform. And for example, in Harris County, you've got Commissioner Rodney Ellis, who believes that no one should be held pre-conviction because this is a constitutional right. Well, I've got news for Mr. Ellis. Go talk to the people in Harris County who are being shot, gunned down, the children that are being buried because we're not holding people pretrial. And the last thing is we have not been taking these criminals to court, put them through trials when it's taking three to five years to put people through a trial and they're running free, the results are what we're seeing: a tremendous increase in gun violence in this country."

And soft on crime Rodney Ellis and his co-conspirators Lina Hidalgo and Adrian Garcia (on Harris County Commissioner's Court) are directly responsible for the dangerous criminals jail break. Since their bail bond reform instituted last year, 119 people were murdered by criminals out on a free or cheap bail bond.

In Rodney Ellis' response at African American News (as people realized last Friday) ignores the massive increase in crime and claims "manipulated" statistics on how well we are doing. We don't have to follow Ellis' fictional account, we know from the Crime Stoppers organization in Harris County, crime is out of control.

Instead, Ellis complains the jail population in Harris County is 50% black. Who gets kept in jail on serious felonies depends on who is charged with the crime. So, is Ellis saying the police use a racial quota to arrest serious felons? Tell that to the victims who are mostly in minority communities.

Meanwhile, Ellis et al., are strangling the Harris County District Attorney's Office where the average case per prosecutor exceeds 1,000. Contrast that with the Ellis-favored Public Defender Office where the average caseload is around 50. It's fair to say the District Attorney's office is in triage in dealing with the exploding number of cases filed.

The fact is, Chief Acevedo's statement on Rodney Ellis was spot on and nothing he has said in his own defense changes the facts. Commissioner Ellis is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

Texas Legislative Session,
An Incomplete Due To House Failures

The clock ran out on the last session of the Texas Legislature. Inexplicably, the House took a weekend off with little time left in the session.

So that left important legislation like bail bond reform, election integrity, additional legislation on the power grid, legislation protecting girls from having to compete in sports with biological males, prohibiting local governments from using taxpayer funds to pay lobbyists, expanding broadband access, among other things, to die.

So TCR asks Speaker Phelan, what the heck happened with scheduling votes on key issues, or was running out the clock a way to avoid critical issues, period? If so, it is called cowardice in the face of a challenge.

As for the stated reason for the Democrat walk-out on voter reform, the Wall Street Journal editorial on June 1, 2021 lays it out. Here are the highlights:

"President Biden on Saturday called the Texas plan 'un-American' and 'part of an assault on democracy' ..."

"To start with, the controversial 67-page bill would roll back Covid-19 innovations like Harris County's drive-through voting and 24-hour voting. Those options were used disproportionately last year by black and Hispanic residents. But when did emergency procedures amid a 100-year pandemic suddenly become the new baseline? It's hardly crazy to think polling-place shenanigans might be more likely at 3 a.m.

"... Under the bill, Texas would still offer some two weeks of early voting. Mr. Biden's beloved Delaware won't have any early voting until 2022, when it will get 10 days. The Texas bill would also raise minimum hours. In the final week, counties with 100,000 people must currently open their 'main' polling place 12 hours on weekdays and five hours on Sunday. That population threshold would drop to 30,000, and six hours would be mandated on Sunday.

"Mail ballots and applications would ask for a state ID number or the last four digits of a Social Security number. Georgia and Florida have passed similar measures, and the goal is to verify identity without having to do subjective signature analysis. In Georgia's 2018 elections, black voters accounted for 54% of the ballots rejected for signature or oath issues. The Texas bill says if ID numbers match, the voter's signature would be 'presumed' valid.

"The bill would change the legal standard for proving fraud to 'a preponderance of the evidence' from 'clear and convincing evidence.' If the number of illegal votes matched the margin, courts could throw out a race, without showing that fraud changed the result. Critics say this is a pander to Donald Trump, but Mr. Trump lost in 2020 under either standard.

"Whether the new rules are too lax is a judgment call: Imagine a race decided by 50 votes, with 51 illegal ballots detected. Did more slip through? Perhaps the best thing for public confidence would be to redo the election.

"The bill has many odds and ends. Offering 'vote harvesting services in exchange for compensation' would be prohibited. Tabulating machines would be banned 'if any wireless connectivity capability of the equipment has not been disabled.' Communications between public officials and voting-system vendors would be generally deemed 'not confidential.' On election returns, mail ballots would be reported separately. Employers would be barred, 'while early voting is in progress,' from refusing to excuse workers who want to go to the polls.

"The Texas bill isn't perfect, but no election law is since the exercise involves balancing ballot access, election security, ease of administration, and so forth. The point is that it's hard to take seriously Mr. Biden's narrative about an assault on democracy in a state that gives voters two weeks to cast a vote.

"... But remember that his [Biden's] histrionics are intended to give political cover to Democrats in Congress who want to override 50 state election laws by jamming through H.R.1 on a partisan vote. That's the real voting-law outrage."

Border Follies

The open border policies of Joe Biden continues. The illegal entries are skyrocketing and all the progress in controlling the border under President Trump is gone. And the recent reevaluation that is the Biden administration's plan to short circuit our citizenship process and allow a quick transition from illegal immigrant to citizen so the Democrats can vote harvest their newly created victim class.

Here are the details: The amnesty proposal called "The U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021" includes various methods for some illegals living in the U.S. to obtain green cards and put on a fast track to gaining citizenship. If this goes through, there will be around 3.3 million illegals able to vote in time for the 2024 elections. It would also allow the balance of illegals in the U.S., about 11-22 million, to be fast-tracked after 5 years on TPS status.

So it is all about politics, of course it is. The implications are described by University of Maryland Professor James Gimpel, who finds:

"If legal immigration levels remain at the current levels of over one million a year, it will likely continue to undermine Republicans' political prospects moving forward ... survey data show a two-to-one party identification with Democrats over Republicans."

Restitution Due For Families Who Were
Victims Of The Tulsa Pogrom 1921

Last week was the one hundredth-anniversary of the Tulsa Race Pogrom. The History Channel has a compelling documentary available called, "Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre."

In short, a white racist mob, some of which were deputized as police and given weapons by public safety authorities "invaded" the predominantly black Greenwood District of Tulsa. Some described it as Black Wall Street. The awful results, 1,256 houses burned, almost every black-owned business destroyed, the death toll was estimated between 300 and 800 and 8,000 were left homeless.

This was one of the deadliest riots in U.S. history. The story was covered up for years but in the 1970's onward the story has gotten more coverage.

1921 Tulsa Riot Ruins
1921 Tulsa Riot Ruins

What happened in Tulsa is like the pogroms in Czarist Russia beginning in 1881. This struck me in a personal way as I have ancestors that were victims in Europe. The pogroms there targeted Jews and was considered officially-mandated slaughter. Of course, the Nazi Holocaust was the ultimate pogrom and over six million Jews were murdered.

The riots in Tulsa are as unacceptable as the European pogroms. While TCR opposes reparations as pushed by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, Tulsa is different; it is restitution to those who suffered economic losses or the ultimate loss and their direct heirs are in many cases still living.

It is the right thing to do.

Killing Jews Is Back In Style
By Bruce Bialosky, Contributing Editor

When rioting, looting and murder was being endorsed last year by many elected officials in the name of equity, a little noticed phenomenon happened. Jewish facilities were being defaced in anti-Semitic attacks. Throughout this period, my synagogue (led by Rabbis Yoshi Zweiback and Ron Stern) was putting out regular pronouncements about matters in the Black community. When I pointed out that as a Jewish Temple that we should always focus on the needs of the Jews first, Zweiback, the head rabbi, told me "This is their time." Maybe the Jewish Left has come to realize this is the Jews' time. It seems to always be the Jews time.

Unfortunately, little is heard from Democrat elected officials about the blatant violence against Jews. Part of that may come from the fact their elected leader, Joe Biden, is in the direct line of fire for causing this recent outbreak. In the Democrats' universe where the need is to do exactly the opposite of the previous administration, they have cozied up to Iran and their surrogates Hamas by negotiating with the first and funding the second.

After the success of the Abraham Accords, I had stated there remained just two groups still buying the Palestinians' lies about wanting peace. Those two groups are the Iranians and the American Left led by liberal and leftist Jews. And recently, a vocal lead has come from Black Lives Matters. That is the same group that Jewish leaders, Jewish groups, woke business leaders and just about the entire Democrat Party apparatus got behind despite their clear anti-Semitism.

Democrats recently got excited over another group being attacked – Asians. Unfortunately, that interest was principally tied to a singular event where many Asians were murdered but there was no evidence of prejudice against Asians. They were killed because they were worked at massage parlors which sent the killer over the edge due to his inability to keep his urges in check. That started a national discussion with marches to stop these anti-Asian attacks. The fact that most attacks on Asians have been done by Black men was overlooked while fingers were pointed at phantom white supremacists. Democrats organized with Republicans to pass a new law against despicable behavior toward Asians. And it was passed overwhelmingly. They want to secure the Asian vote.

When Jews are attacked on the street while peacefully enjoying their lives in multiple cities across the country, Democrats barely utter a peep. They don't want to antagonize the Left wing of their party which have been, are and will always be Jew-hating bigots. Senator Chuck Schumer, who claims to be a Jew, finally managed to condemn the multiple attacks against Jews which included his own city in his own state. Some say that his muted concern is due to a left flank attack in his election next year. Nice to know to Schumer staying in office is more important than protecting his own people.

Simple question: all these attacks on innocent Jews were done in Democrat run cities. There is video. Where were the arrests?

Other than President Biden condemning these attacks, there was nearly complete silence from elected Democrats and their propaganda arm (the MSM). The reason is clear. They have little concern about Jewish voters deserting them. I have stated for years Jews are the only group that consistently vote against their own self interests. I have probably been wrong. Most of these so-called Jews are Leftists before they are Jews. They have never learned that that the Left has always hated Jews.

I recently read a biography of David Ben-Gurion, the father of Israel and its first prime minister. A century ago, Ben-Gurion was an avowed Communist and his personal hero was Vladimir Lenin. Ben-Gurion met with Lenin after the Russian revolution. Lenin was cool with Ben-Gurion until he found out he was a Jew. That was the end of their relationship. Ben-Gurion was a changed man after that because he was more a Zionist than a Leftist.

That will not happen with the Jews who religiously support the Democrats because most are not Zionists and may not even know of Ben-Gurion. They will sell themselves a bill of goods that the imaginary white supremacists are the real danger. Don't believe your lying eyes who was out attacking Jews. Believe Nancy Pelosi's fables about white guys coming after you.

And don't believe that the attacks on Jews were coming solely from Muslim Americans because of identified garb of many people. These attacks were engineered by the Left led by groups like A.N.S.W.E.R. and Black Lives Matter.

The Democrats will tell you Marjorie Taylor Greene is the real threat, and they will deny the large Jew-hating caucus in their Congressional delegation. Jews will march to the polls next November and not punish their chosen party as their leaders will be whispering "Trump, Trump, Trump."

The only thing positive out of this entire matter is the death of the argument that you can dislike Israel and still support Jews. Stick a knife in that idiotic thought.

Matters will get worse before they get better since the party that houses most Jews fears the Left more than losing the Jewish vote and Jewish money.

Rabbis, it appears to be our time. You may wish to enlighten your flock.


Bruce Bialosky is the founder of the Republican Jewish Coalition of California and a former Presidential appointee. You can follow Bruce on Twitter @brucebialosky.


TCR on the Air

Gary Polland is now a regular on "What's Your Point?" hosted by Greg Groogan on Fox 26 Houston, appearing every other week. Tune in or set your recorder for 7:00 am Sundays.

Gary has recently undertaken the hosting duties on a new interview show, Tell It Like It Is. The show is available at American Star TV and at its YouTube Channel. Currently on hiatus.

Red, White, and Blue featuring TCR Editor Gary Polland on Fridays at 7:30 pm on Houston Public Media TV 8, replaying Saturday at 6:30 p.m. on Channel 8, Monday at 11:30 pm on Channel 8.2 and on the web at www.houstonpublicmedia.org.

Red, White & Blue returns in September, better than ever.

About Your Editor

Gary Polland is a long-time conservative and Republican spokesman, fund-raiser, and leader who completed three terms as the Harris County Republican Chairman. During his three terms, Gary was described as the most successful county Chairman in America by Human Events - The National Conservative Weekly. He is in his twenty-sixth year of editing a newsletter dealing with key conservative and Republican issues. The last twenty years he has edited Texas Conservative Review. As a public service for the last 18 years, Gary has published election guides for the GOP primary, general elections and city elections, all with the purpose of assisting conservative candidates. Gary is also in his 21st year of co-hosting Red, White and Blue on Houston Public Media TV 8 PBS Houston, longest running political talk show in Texas history. Gary serves on the Board of Directors of American Values, a national pro-family, pro-faith, conservative organization supporting the unity of the American people around the vision of our founding fathers and dedicated to reminding the public of the conservative principles fundamental to the survival of our nation. Gary is a practicing attorney and strategic consultant. He can be reached at (713) 621-6335.

© 2021 Texas Conservative Review
The Texas Conservative Review is published by Conservative Media Properties, LLC
Phone: (713) 621-6335 Fax: (713) 622-6334 E-mail: Gary@TexasConservativeReview.com
To subscribe, simply send an email to subscribe@TexasConservativeReview.com
Your thoughts and comments are welcome